Thank God that's over

My house looks like a Halloween hurricane blew through it.
I found out around 11 this morning that about 10 eighth-grade boys would be meeting at our house to begin the candy quest.
Then the twins ransacked nearly every drawer and closet in their attempts to put together a "costume," which to them means "hat."
Over the years we've collected two giant Rubbermaid bins full of costume parts, many of which were part of my work wardrobe in the '80s.
After trying on and rejecting most everything they'd pulled out, Henry wore a $10 vampire cape over basketball clothes and Mason wore an old lampshade from the attic on his head. He was a lamp. See what he did there?
Owen, on the other hand, had pointed out which costume he wanted when the Costume Express catalog arrived two months ago: the SWAT officer.
The costume sat waiting for him in the dining room for three weeks.
I had a really weird moment later after I drove Owen to my parents' neighborhood for a visit. My dad walked around their subdivision with us, and for a minute I felt like an 8-year-old with him walking next to me.
As I watched Owen walk up to ring a doorbell and heard my dad saying, "Be careful on the steps," I literally felt like it was 1977 and I was the one carrying the candy bag.
Instead of heading home to dump out all the candy I'd collected in my pillow case, I had to drive my baby home and then drive around our darkened streets picking up all those eighth-graders who had walked too far to make it back on their own.
They only had a couple of minutes to admire their candy before bed. It is a school night after all.
Yep, Halloween sure looks different from a 42-year-old perspective.
When the kids get on the school bus, I'll be able to clean a little in the calm after the storm.

Incriminating receipt tracks hubby's whereabouts

I found something shocking in my husband’s pants pocket last week as I sorted our various whites, darks and in-betweens.

I have to check pants pockets when I do laundry because Tim is famous for scribbling “important” phone numbers on Post-It notes and filing them in his pockets. Most of the time, I find only work-related gibberish like the number 42, the word “rivet” and an arrow for emphasis.

This most recent search, however, yielded something different: an incriminating receipt.

From the time stamp, I could see that my husband had made a late-night trip to Publix. The itemized list made me pause: He’d bought a pack of gum, a 20-oz. Diet Coke and three 24-packs of toilet paper.

This, combined with our 14-year-olds’ recent string of sleepovers here, only pointed to one conclusion. My husband was helping turn our sons into suburban outlaws.

Yep, he’d actually driven them and three friends to our neighborhood Publix to buy toilet paper so they could meet some other neighborhood friends and roll the yard of the unfortunate friend who couldn’t come that night.

I’m sure they didn’t look suspicious at all; a bunch of giggling 14-year-old boys elbowing each other as my husband tried to decide if want wants his TP haul bagged in paper or plastic.

Apparently getting your yard rolled, or “TP’d,” as some may call it, is like a tip of the hat. It’s a sign of affection, if you will, not an insulting act of vandalism the way I thought of it growing up.

The first time my boys rolled someone’s yard, they were invited to go by a friend of theirs who had another friend sleeping over. No kid comes up with this idea alone, apparently. If yours does, you may want to make sure he isn’t turning into some modern-day Boo Radley.

Still, my neighbors and I all consider ourselves to be conscientious parents. Not wanting them to walk the streets in the middle of the night, her parents drove them to the intended victim’s house. Then her dad had to remind them to at least try to be discreet about sneaking up to roll someone’s yard. Not exactly hardcore rebels, they were sashaying up the front walk like they were calling on Sunday.

This particular house only had one new sapling and a huge euonymus bush in the front yard, so they wrapped about a dozen rolls around those two plants and then scampered back into the truck to try another house.

I don’t mind their rolling their friends’ yards because they usually go by the next day to help clean up. They never use anything permanently damaging, like eggs, or anything super messy like the melted Pudding Pops someone left in my mailbox once in seventh grade.

I suspect it’s much more of a social activity for them, since most of the TP is only half-heartedly tossed about eight feet in the air.

Back in my day, I knew a few boys who could throw so high they’d make you regret for three weeks that our society doesn’t still use a Sears catalog in the bathroom.

I guess I should be glad they’re participating in a physical activity outside rather than playing Xbox all night, right?

Maybe not, but there are worse things they could be doing. And worse things I could find in my husband’s pocket.

All that for one casserole

This is why I don't make chicken spaghetti very often.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

I wrote a column for Brentwood Home Page about one of the reasons I haven't been blogging as much lately. You can find it here.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

Who knew so much anxiety could precede a birthday party? And I wasn't even hosting!

If it's on the counter, it's fair game

We have not reached the point in our family where I am responsible for cooking the entire Thanksgiving meal, but I do make some items to take the pressure off my mom.

Yesterday I made green beans from my Memphis Junior League cookbook, macaroni and cheese, and a tarte tatin for dessert. I'd swear that almost every time Mason, my hungry child, would walk through the kitchen, he'd point to something and say, "What is that? Can I eat it?"

Plain macaroni noodles? Sure. Cheese? Yes. Almond sliver? Go ahead. Sugar? Mm-hmm.

Phyllo dough out of the box? WAIT!

Pull up a chair

The first Thanksgiving that my oldest nephew, Walker, sat down at the “adult table,” I didn’t know how to act.

It’s not like we were telling dirty jokes in the dining room, but it just never occurred to me that, at age 15, he’d want to be there with us geezers. He’d always seemed happy at the kids’ table in my mother-in-law’s kitchen with his two brothers, one sister and four younger cousins.

He’s a smart kid, like all his siblings, who must have outgrown the tedious mealtime banter with my then-fourth-graders and 3-year-old Owen, who had learned enough information to be dangerous.

Back then, for instance, you could just mention how good the Easter ham is, and Henry would randomly say, “The Inuits didn’t have to do anything to their food. They just buried it in the snow to keep it from getting spoiled.”

Then Owen would hold up his fork and add, “This is the Jaws of Life. If Nana’s house catches on fire, call 911. I’m a fireman.”

Why wouldn’t a high-schooler want to stay for that?

At my parents’ house, it’s easy. I’m an only child, so there was no kids’ table. We all fit at one table there and, as long as there are Sister Schubert rolls and Owen hasn't gotten up too early, holidays go nicely. At my in-laws’ house, it’s more involved. There are three sets of brothers- and sisters-in-law with eight grandkids. That makes for a lively kids’ table, though most of them aren’t kids anymore.

Now we have a house full of tweens, trapped somewhere between kids and teens, who are in holiday limbo because they no longer use the phrase “go potty” but they aren’t old enough to drive themselves home.

During my tween-year family gatherings, the only thing my adult relatives knew to ask me was, “How’s school?” Then they’d go back to discussing taxes or football and I’d hover over the dip bowl.

When my twins were 10-year-olds, they claimed they still preferred the kid’s table because, as Henry said, “I understand what they’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” said Mason. “I don’t have to listen to how Joe fired Betty today on The Bold and the Beautiful.”

Even Walker would agree that’s not all we discuss. Besides, if the kids move to the adult table, we’ll have a new audience for those old stories we rehash about the time David tried to stop the blender blade with his finger. Or Tim’s exquisite display of Boy Scout skills when he saw David cut his face on a fence and yelled, “Run home! Run like the wind!”

Both of them are still making oldest bro Steve pay for the year they had to wait to see what Santa brought until Steve took a shower.

Walker may start taking his plate out to the porch, though, because now we just grill him about college and, of course, girls.

The zen of Mondays

I've grown to enjoy Monday because it's my chance to reclaim the house from the weekend pillaging that inevitably takes place when we're all home.

Putting away crayons, DVDs, newspapers, blankets and whatever else we left in our wake is all part of getting my mind set right for the week. And laundry...so much laundry to wash, dry, fold and put away. Every Monday, the hampers seem to hold enough clothes for a weeklong trip. My kids manage to change clothes at least three times a day on the weekends. Our weather being as schizophrenic as it is now, with cold mornings and warm afternoons, it's common to find sweatshirts mingled with shorts. Somehow, even when I think I've washed every thing in this house, no one can find that perfect hoodie or just the right shorts to wear to school.

Still, I perform this ritual every Monday, and it feels good. Katherine Paterson said, "What a gift of grace it is to be able to take chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order." That's how I like to think of my mundane Mondays, anyway, as I picture myself with a bullwhip and a stool facing down all that crap that didn't get put back last night. Even with our nightly prep-for-school routine, not everything is in its place.

Just cleaning out my e-mail inbox and emptying the refrigerator door of notices about events that have passed helps settle me down mentally. If I can accomplish that, I will have done the world a favor.

You won't find us where the wild things are

We are not big puppet people around here. My husband and I both have always found puppet shows particularly cringeworthy, and it looks like that aversion has passed down to our kids, especially Owen.
Well, the twins weren't morally opposed to puppets the way Owen is. They at least would watch Sesame Street, and I have always given credit to Sesame Street for teaching them letters and numbers as well as, you guessed it, cooperation.
Owen, on the other hand, gets pissed if you try to leave the TV on a program with puppets. His unexplained opposition to this kind of kid's show is legendary around here, so we're usually watching the History Channel, the Military Channel, Discovery or House Hunters, which teaches a surprising amount of geography. I guess his one exception is Phineas and Ferb, which is hilarious enough for adults but has no snotty twins calling people "loser."
So I wasn't too concerned about hitting Fandango to get tickets for Where the Wild Things Are. Though it's a classic, we don't even own the book. Owen said he had seen that book at preschool, then went back to playing Star Wars. Tim brought it home from the library because, of course, neither of us had read it since childhood.
You know what? I thought it was a terrible kids' book. I really could not believe that Maurice Sendak would start a book and then just stop writing in the middle when it's getting good. I guess when it came out it was a fun idea to think about kids going to their wild place. But I much prefer The Salamander Room for imagination.
My interest in the movie version of the wild things piqued when I heard it was directed by Spike Jonze. Still, I'll stick with what I think are Jonze's most important contributions to date, which are showing us that Christopher Walken can, in fact, dance like a mofo and introducing us to his spoof with the Torrance Community Dance Group performing to the Fatboy Slim song Praise You.
There be genius, and it won't depress my kids.

...And you smell like one too!

So it's FINALLY not Owen's birthday anymore. Next year, I must remember to plan his party as close to his actual birthday as possible.
This year Owen's birthday fell on a Wednesday. I scheduled his party for Sunday afternoon. Somehow Owen surmised that all the days between his actual birth date and his party counted as his birthday. All I know is that by Sunday, I was officially over this whole birthday thing.
I know, I know. I do this to myself. Birthdays are only as big a pain as I make them. But I wanted to make this birthday special for Owen because he has always been our "understanding" child. That really means we end up taking advantage of the fact that he is the third child, both agreeable and eager to please. The last two years we've had a family party for him. "It's just as fun as bouncing in some inflatable castle with your friends! Grandparents! And cousins! Cake! You'll love it!" We told him his present would be a family camping trip.
Somehow, between sports schedules, work demands and parental exhaustion, we did not make good on his birthday camping trip until this past July. Ten months later!
So I wanted this birthday to be like a "real" kid birthday. I let him pick the venue. He chose Glow Galaxy, mainly because he wanted to sit in the big throne in the party room and wear a crown. But the party wasn't until Sunday. To make up for his having to attend kindergarten all day on his birth date, I planned through the cafeteria manager to spring for ice cream for everyone in his class at lunchtime. They actually suggest this now as an alternative to sending in homemade treats, and I was glad to do it.
I prepaid for the ice cream and showed up to the cafeteria at lunchtime. I told everyone we ran into that day that it was Owen's birthday. He got to go to a middle school cross country meet to cheer on his big bro, and all the big kids told him happy birthday. So by Wednesday night, as my mom used to say, I had had too much birthday.
Then he woke up on Thursday with that famous quote, and I knew I was in for it.
He talked about the party all day, every day. It really did seem like it was his birthday 24/7. The mailbox seemed to overflow with cards containing cash. Neighbors bearing gift cards stopped by. I spent Saturday making a Star Wars-themed cake, which was for the better because it distracted me during the Tennessee football game.
Then Sunday finally showed up.
Glow Galaxy wasn't my first choice, but it also wasn't my birthday. His friends came, he got to wear a crown, and he sat on a throne. He also woke up the next morning with some random 102-degree fever and has missed the past two days of kindergarten.
Like my mom used to say, I guess he had too much birthday.

There's no food in your food

I think it was Neil Armstrong who said, “Houston, did y’all pack my Gatorade Xtreme?”
OK, maybe that’s not his most famous quote, but I’m sure Armstrong and his Tang-swilling Apollo crewmates would feel right at home eating out of a typical school lunchbox these days.
It's time for me to get back into the lunchbox mindset, and I'm starting to feel like I’m preparing my brown-baggers for a space voyage every time I pack lunches for school. Nearly everything I put in looks and is named like it’s packaged to endure a three-year journey to Mars.
Take Go-Gurt “portable yogurt,” made by Yoplait. You rip off the end and suck it out of a plastic tube. The Danimals Crush Cup is even worse. No complicated spoon needed, and no crumbs to float away and get stuck in the instrument panel.
The flavor names sound like a nuclear acidophilus reaction is imminent. While mom is content with blueberry or peach yogurt, kids have been hypnotized by commercials to believe they need “watermelon meltdown” and “extreme red rush,” whatever fruit that’s supposed to be.
Fruit Roll-Ups and Fruit-by-the-Foot are favorites with my kids. It’s basically fruit (and sugar) jerky, but the name’s the thing with this product. My picky eater wasn’t interested until he found out I had bought “Tropical Tango Twister,” which may or may not be in the citrus family.
I guess adjectives I grew up with, like “great-tasting grape,” aren’t convincing enough. Food marketed to kids can’t just be food anymore. It has to be extreme and fierce and thermostabilized with lots of other descriptors you’d hear in the halls of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
For a few years now we’ve seen snack foods miniaturized even as our butts and guts have maximized, so that lunchboxes are full of Mini Oreos, Baby Goldfish crackers and, occasionally, baby carrots with itty-bitty ranch dippin’ cups.
By the way, you should know that Pepperidge Farm has “flavor blasted” those innocent little Goldfish.
The metamorphosis of beverages is the most hilarious, though. To improve “the science of hydration,” the guys at Gatorade have taken the same four or five fruit flavors we’ve always had and added “fusion” or an X to the name to make it seem different.
Thanks to the science of marketing, I have to search Mapco’s drink cooler for Cascade Crash or X-Factor flavors on the way to my kids' games.
Of course, as a child I was enthralled with the Sprite Lymon ads. Who didn’t beg their mom to glue a half a lemon to half a lime?
In fact, it’s probably good that my TV-loving generation wasn’t the first to land on the moon. It wouldn’t have sounded as cool to hear, “That’s one small step for man, one nice Hawaiian Punch for mankind.”

Not enough RAM

I’ve discovered a new twist on an old mom trick.
Sometimes when we're mad, moms will run through a list of names of everyone in the family until we remember which kid is standing in front of us. You remember the old Bill Cosby joke: "Come here, Roy, er, Rupert, er, Rutabaga... What is your name, boy?! And don't lie to me, because you live here, and I'll find out who you are."
This roll call is not limited to moms of multiple children. I’m an only child, and if I made my mom mad enough, she sometimes called me my dad’s name and even the dog’s name before she remembered who I was.
My twist on this trick is that I now apply it to the kids’ electronic stuff. They have so many portable electronic devices now, each with its own specific name, that I cannot keep them straight.
Say it’s mealtime, as it usually is in our house, and I need someone to set the table. I happen to stop whichever boy is running through the kitchen at that moment. I point out the small, black rectangular device on the table. It doesn’t go there, and we all know it doesn’t go there. If we want to eat and we don’t want to lose the expensive toy, it has to be put away WHERE IT GOES. So my kid waits while I run through our inventory.
“Mason, whose Gameboy, uh, DS, um, Ipod is that?”
My twins, who are in the middle of middle school, don’t have cell phones yet, so the list is not as long as it could be. Shameful, I know, but we’ve been using the Ipod Touch as a test to see how they’ll keep up with a phone.
Of course, whatever is on the table never belongs to whichever boy I’m addressing, so I have to continue holding the steaming hot whatever I’ve cooked and explain how, from the goodness of his heart, he needs to put it WHERE IT GOES. As usual, WHERE IT GOES is never near where they leave it.
I think it was also Bill Cosby who talked about “idiot mittens,” the kind attached by a long string that ran through your coat sleeves so they didn't get lost when you removed the coat. I’m not saying my kids are idiots, of course, but based on our summer experience with little electronic things, I may look into getting them a kind of idiot phone, something I won’t continually find all over the house. They have to keep up with it or else they get a Jitterbug.

Camp fever

Is your child enrolled in a camp yet?
School was out before any of us realized it, and now we’re smack in the middle of summer break. Most moms, library-weary and waterlogged from the pool, are seeking something else to occupy their children, I mean, enrich their kids’ summer.
Around here, there is no shortage of camp choices. Fortunately, most camps are well organized and beneficial. The number of offerings is staggering. When I was a kid, your choices were overnight summer camp or YMCA day camp. In the ‘80s, specialized classes like computer camp hit the cultural radar.
Now there’s every kind of sports camp, dance camp, art workshops, space camp, horseback riding camp, chess camp, Spanish immersion camp, summer history camp at Travellers Rest, cooking camp at the Young Chef's Academy, drama camp, cheer camp and about a hundred others.
Locally, the FSSD Young Scholars program consistently gets rave reviews for its class selection and organization. Not every program, though, is done so well. Some are glorified babysitting for $150 per kid. Most are very expensive if you enroll multiple children, and classes can be canceled at the last minute because of low enrollment.
Other times camps are hit by random acts of government. When my twins were 8, I signed them up months in advance for zoo camp, which I assumed would be a weeklong wildlife experience from 9-3 every day.
Because Metro government cut funding to the program that spring, organizers were left without a school bus to take the kids from the round-up point at Croft Middle School to the zoo itself. A zoo board member donated a smaller van, which meant kids would visit the zoo every other day.
I didn’t expect my boys to be leading elephant rides, but with it being called ZOO camp, I did expect them to be at the zoo. It turned out to be much more of a classroom experience than they anticipated, with an emphasis on conservation. That being said, the boys had fun, and the counselors brought small animals from the zoo to the kids on the days they didn’t go.
I’m thinking of starting my own camp next year, though. For only $99 per child, I will conduct a “domesticities experience” where your kids can learn valuable life skills while having a ball cleaning my house. An after-hours session on cooking dinner will be available for an extra fee.
For those who prefer outdoor play, my husband will offer a weekly lawn-mowing and Weed-Eating camp for half the price.
Sign up early so your kid won’t be left out!

So that's why it's called VACATION Bible school

In the book of Matthew, Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.”
However, I do not recall Jesus ever saying, “Let the little children attend every vacation bible school in the county so Mom can get some cheap, scripture-based babysitting.”
I was unaware that people were sending their kids to multiple vacation bible schools until one year a schedule conflict kept my kids from attending VBS at our church. I wondered if they could attend at a friend’s church.
Believe me, missing VBS is a loss for our family because our church puts on one heckuva bible school. I don’t mean hymns, Hydrox and pineapple juice. With crafts, outdoor games and multimedia presentations, our church serves nearly 500 happy kids that week.
Like most kid stuff, VBS has mutated into something that can seem huge and chaotic. Our volunteers pack a lot into those three hours a day, and they manage to keep the message at heart.
I just never noticed how many churches advertise their vacation bible schools as community outreach. I always assumed those ads were for people who don’t go to church, or “the unchurched,” as I’ve heard them called in committee meetings.
But then I heard a woman at the pool veritably bragging about signing up her daughters for three consecutive vacation bible schools.
“It’s cheaper than any camp, and I get a few hours off,” she giggled to her friend. I moved away in anticipation of the lightning strike. Fortunately, the Lord is more forgiving than I.
If your first-grader truly needs a Bible immersion program, then I guess hitting every VBS you can get into would do it. Most of the local churches use variations of themed curricula from Cokesbury or LifeWay, though, so your child might tire of it by the second week.
We all know parents who would drop off their kids almost anywhere there’s an adult with a name tag on and a craft to be made. That’s the beauty of church programs, though. Regardless of Mom’s intent, the kids will have some fun, sing a few songs, eat a snack and learn about God. The churches don’t care how you get there or why; they just want you to show up and get the message.

Footwear, above all

Since we took our family vacation early this year, I'm offering my helpful advice on how to go from an "after" to a "before" on your summer vacation.

1) Choose shoes based on looks, not function. I was so excited when I bought my adorable Crocs Patricia sandals. (Crocs also makes wedges now! I know!!!) I stood in Macy's and proclaimed, 'These shall be my Disney sandals!' because they are comfy, somehow very lightweight yet supportive. Also, they're Crocs, so it wouldn't hurt them to get wet since we'd be riding Splash Mountain and sitting in the Soak Zone at Shamu Stadium. I hurried home to plan all my Orlando outfits around these vaunted shoes.

I did not anticipate 95 degree weather in early May or the Florida humidity. These, coupled with a 12-hour car ride and many more hours standing and walking than I am used to, caused my feet to swell and the evil Crocs sandals rubbed a nickel-sized blister on the top of my left foot. Actually, I knew by the time we walked across the concrete prairie from our truck to the Seaworld entrance on our first day that my feet were in trouble. Of course, I'd packed Band-Aids in case THE BOYS needed them, but I used at least a dozen that day.

2) You might not think a blister would affect your look. That leads me to tip #2, which is the blister walk. I had to modify my walk to compensate for that blister as much as I could, so other Seaworld visitors must have thought I was smuggling baby sea lions out between my knees as I hobbled across the park. I resisted complaining audibly and instead chided myself for thinking I could be cute at a theme park. On Day #2 at Animal Kingdom, I still refused to succumb to tennis shoes and wore my bathroom flip-flops because they didn't rub the blister spot. After only an hour in the simulated jungle, my legs were so tired that I walked like the 80-year-olds. Actually the 80-year-olds were doing great on their scooters and Hoverounds. Between the motorized old folks and the stroller brigade, we were about the only people walking!

3) Ride the wettest rides first, so your freshly sprayed hair will get soaked and form an impenetrable crust that looks wet all the livelong day.

4) Drink much more lemonade and Diet Coke than you usually do since that's what you can get in your refillable Disney mug.

5) Accidentally leave your expensive face soap at the Hampton Inn in Cordele, Georgia, so that you have to use the super fatty Mickey soap provided by Disney resorts.

6) Slather sunscreen on your face, especially if you usually don't, then try to put on blush as you normally would. Coppertone does wonders for powder makeup, making the colors more vibrant and clownlike.

7) Finally, accept the fact that no one at the theme park except your youngest children ever looks at you. They are all just trying to survive the crowds with their own family members intact. Fashion is not a consideration. If you want proof, scroll down to the photo of my boys in front of the Animal Kingdom gate, click on it and look at the crowd in the background. That's what everyone looked like. See the grown man wearing Mickey's magical wizard hat? People wore that stuff all day. I saw dads wearing rhinestone-studded, princess-themed Mickey ears that their daughters had discarded on the Peter Pan ride. NO ONE cares what you wear. By the third day I did something I would never do in Brentwood. I pulled out the only pair of capris I'd brought and wore them with my tennis shoes, which mercifully did not hit the blister. And I walked from Pirates of the Caribbean all the way to Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin with nary a limp.

8) Don't forget to pose for pictures without sucking anything in so you look pregnant. Clutch your giant lemonade as if life depended on it. Be sure to turn so that the angle showcases the fleshiest part of your arm. Ahhhh, success! I've included the above photo for demonstration purposes only. You results may vary.

How much is a dent, anyway?

Me, to the 5-year-old: "Owen, you're breaking my No. 1 fashion rule for boys. I cannot allow you to wear that black T-shirt with those navy blue shorts."

Owen: growls loudly, once he understands that he is not in actual trouble: "GAAARRRR. I like it. I like it. I WANT to wear it. I don't care about fashion one dent!"

Me, surprised by his ferocity: "Well, your dad will be happy because he doesn't care about fashion one dent either."

The eternal question

If you believe newspaper ads, the most important tradition of the Easter holiday is dressing up.
We all know, though advertisers won’t say it, that the dressing up is for Sunday church services. If you’re gonna celebrate the resurrection of your lord and savior, you might as well do it in a new outfit.
Besides, anyone with little boys knows you wouldn’t attempt to dress them up just to sit around at Grandma’s house unless they are having their picture taken or they’ve just come from church.
There is a special stress associated with buying Easter clothes, however. Well, it’s stressful for women. We’re the ones who maintain these holiday traditions. If there were only men on this planet, holiday greetings would consist of one guy looking at the other between March Madness games and saying, “Isn’t Easter coming up?”
In fact, if men got to choose, the Fourth of July would be the biggest holiday of the year because of the potential involvement of fire.
Still, most men don’t appreciate the role of Easter clothes: They announce the departure of winter drab and bulk and the arrival of breezy, springlike colors and fabrics. We are reunited with white and linen and all the other forbidden fruits we stored away for winter.
Shopping for Easter clothes is wearisome, though, because you can’t predict the Easter weather. Weather matters more on certain holidays because it sets the mood. My mom actually gets mad if the forecast says “60s and partly cloudy” the third week of November. And what kid wants to wear his winter coat over his Halloween costume?
Likewise, the ideal Easter weather would be like when Dorothy steps from the black-and-white farmhouse into Munchkinland for the first time –bright and sunny with flowers blooming and little people frolicking about.
What ruins the shopping trip is that sometimes Easter falls in March and sometimes in April. Up North, like in mid-Michigan, you can bet that it will be in the 40s or colder on Easter. But in Tennessee, we sometimes get a warmer Easter, so much so that chocolate candy has been banned from the last few egg hunts I’ve chaperoned. It melts in the egg and in your hand.
But here we are, looking at a high in the 50s, which sucks the fun out of the strappy high heels and summery sundresses at Dillards. Even if you do find a dress that comes with a cardigan, the sweater will be silk, and you’ll still be shivering during your in-laws’ egg hunt. And stiletto heels are no good in the mud.
I don’t think Jesus would have cared, though, since he wore sandals year round anyway.

Worst Spring Break Ever

This is photographic evidence of what my kids did during Spring Break last year. Thanks to a combination of my husband's inability to take time off work and something we'll call "the economy," my three boys and I spent the week exploring whatever free stuff Nashville offered. Come to find out, that's called a "staycation," and I was apparently ahead of the trend in family travel. When we weren't eating free birthday cake at the Belmont Mansion or climbing the walls at Ft. Negley, the boys got pretty bored outside. So while their friends were bragging about ski trips or Caribbean getaways, you can bet the big boys left out the details about how they Macgyvered our riding toys together.

Thanks to my parents, though, the twins will have something to brag about this year.
I'm sure that what happens in D.C. won't stay in D.C.!

Belly up to the feeding trough

If you want to know what the end of the world will look like, go to Golden Corral restaurant around lunchtime on a Sunday.
Sunday is when Golden Corral is most frighteningly apocalyptic because that’s when you’ll see the best mix of diners eating like it’s their last meal: from executives whose wives have warned them they’re not in the mood to cook to country folks who’ve roused themselves from the holler for a trip to “town.”
Usually, I have just two strict criteria for dining out. I want food I have to eat with a fork -- nothing wrapped in paper, please. And I want someone else to bring the food to me. That’s all. I don’t ask for much.
Golden Corral, which says it’s the “largest buffet in Middle Tennessee,” doesn’t meet one requirement since I have to get my own food. But it does have a whole lotta food, which works because we have one child who eats everything, one who takes one bite of everything, and another who eats only the bottom layer of the food pyramid.
Variety often trumps service in our family. When we just want everybody to eat something, we go to Golden Corral. Somehow, though, our family transforms into less civilized creatures the minute we hit the door. The change starts in the lobby, which at peak times resembles the waiting area at the Jim Warren Park driver license renewal office.
At Golden Corral, they like to throw you off by doing everything backwards. Right away you are dehumanized just a bit by being required to pay up front for food you haven’t even seen.
Once inside, you understand why it’s called Golden Corral as you get caught up in the stampede toward the buffet. All that matters is you and your plate, and all bets are off if the guy brings out the fresh tray of ribs.
Feeling obliged to keep up our end of the deal with the area’s biggest buffet, we’ll each pile up at least five half-finished plates on the table because we couldn’t decide what to get. That’s how you end up eating bizarre combinations like ham, potatoes and gravy, macaroni, pizza, chips and queso, cooked cabbage and sautéed mushrooms.
And banana pudding.
With half a frosted brownie.
Once I was heading back to the buffet for more fried chicken when I realized I was walking across the room while still chewing. Kids, adults, Harley riders in leather and grandmas with canes all scurry about like ants on a hill, darting in front of each other to grab the last hush puppy. In the face of such bounty, it’s like we never had manners at all.
The baby? Oh, he’ll be fine. He’s in one of those rolling high chairs. The crowd will drag him back around here in a minute.
Did they bring out any more hush puppies yet?

Puttin' on airs

I adore offbeat shirts and accessories, like this crime scene tape scarf I found on Girlz Lyfe.com.

My problem is that I usually get stuff like this and then, the first time I wear it out into The World, I'm overcome by a fit of self-consciousness and wish that nobody would ask me about my really cool item that just begs to be asked about. I know I've written here before about this old T-shirt I had that read, "Just researching my novel." One time as I stood waiting for the Sam's Club guy to check my receipt on my way out the door, he said, "What's your novel about?" I never thought someone might not buy into the irony of my oh-so-clever T-shirt. And some things just turn out to be stupid when explained.
Once Tim got me these awesome earrings that are miniature levels, the kind you'd find in a toolbox, but I cringe when people lean in to get a closer look. I know, 'Make up your mind, Mrs. Passive-Aggressive Deviationist! Notice me! Don't notice me! Which is it?'

I could just keep getting this stuff and enjoy it without an audience. The truth is, though, it's no fun to be fabulous at home all day. The kids are not adequately impressed by my intermittent eccentricities. I like to wear stuff that has a sense of humor. I just get embarrassed when everybody's not in on the joke.