Another reason moms aren't boys

For the record, telling boys, "You're shaking the whole house," will not discourage them from doing whatever loud, thumping, crashing activity they're doing. In fact, if they're like my boys, they'll probably say, "Cool!" and assume you're cheering them on.

I know this because I work from home. My desk backs up to the wall on which their new Nerf hoop is located.

I cannot concentrate during a game of what they call "Contact Basketball" because they do shake the whole house, and I cannot edit a magazine about Glasgow, Kentucky, when it sounds like they are literally killing each other.

When I do get up and check on them through the glass door, they all pop up with innocent smiles. The youngest gives me a thumbs up, saying cheerfully, "We're okay!!!"

BTW, do not Google "basketball injuries" if you're queasy about bone stuff.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

Read all about how picking up your kids from school can be so unexpectedly stressful.

...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.

The inevitable

I’ve been thinking a lot about a mom I used to know named Laura. We weren’t friends; her daughter was in the same preschool class as one of my twins. Still, she was one of my favorite people to see four days a week because she always smiled, and her daughter was sweet. She didn’t gang up with some cronies in the school entrance like a sorority clique, ignoring anyone who didn’t serve one of her purposes. She walked her kid in, spoke a few friendly words to any moms who also happened to be there, and went on her way.
I was fascinated by her because she just seemed above it all, but not in a snobby way. She had a life waiting for her, you could tell, but she wasn’t trying to prove it to anyone. And she influenced me a lot.
See, some moms behave the way they probably behaved in high school, the way a lot of grown guys act like frat boys when they get together. A really good blogger I like to read calls them the Muffia, because they can be pretty intimidating if you’re just trying to get your kid in the door and to the right classroom. They’re the ones who drive the biggest SUVs, park where there’s not really a parking spot (oh, wait, I used to do that sometimes), talk really loudly about the awesome stuff they’re doing, and wear kitten heels on field day.
So if you know you’re not one of the Muffia (and you know when you’re not), it’s a relief to come across someone who just is open and friendly to everyone, even someone like me who dares to wear house pants to preschool drop-off instead of True Religion jeans.
Sometimes during field trips or class parties, Laura and I would talk, and I found out that her preschool daughter was her third child, not her first, which would explain why she was not one of the giddy sorority types. She had done it all before, and she could control herself in the presence of her peers.
Not only was this her third child, but there was a significant age difference between her first two and her third kid. Kind of like how Owen is seven years younger than his brothers. At the time, I just had the twins, but hearing Laura talk about her family and the perspective the age difference gave her made me consider having another child someday.
Up until then, I always said, “No way, no how. Never, never, never again.” Caring for the twins as infants and toddlers was so hard for me that I told myself that we would always be a family of four. Then during the twins’ last year of preschool, when they were 5, I lay awake one night and realized that they would both leave the house for college at the same time and that would be it. I didn’t want that.
Now my third child, the one who is seven years younger than my first kids, is barreling toward kindergarten, and I think about Laura a lot. One thing she told me as we finished up that last preschool year was that she couldn’t wait for summer. I shivered because, with the twins, I was at the preschool any time the doors were open, looking for something else to entertain my two boys, someone else for them to look at and talk to instead of me. A change of scenery, if you will.
“No, I’m really looking forward to this summer,” Laura said, “because it’s the last one before they start real school. I’m just really going to enjoy my time with her because once you get on that school schedule, you don’t get off until they graduate.”
She was speaking from experience, and I knew she was right. She didn’t see her child’s childhood as something to get through. Moms can and should enjoy it, too, and I do now, thanks to Laura.
My 13-year-olds don’t give me good pajama hugs anymore, but my 5-year-old still does. I’m so glad I have him, even though a party of five is way harder to seat at a restaurant than a party of four.

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.

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.

The Happiest Place on Earth

...except for Henry.
We posed for this photo on the last day of our 2001 trip to Walt Disney World, when the twins were 5. I found it while looking for photos to show Owen, who now is 5 and will visit Disney for the first time when we go next month.
This picture perfectly displays the dynamics of that entire trip because Henry was not sad. He was PISSED. He did not want to go to that breakfast at Chef Mickey's because he was terrified of characters. We knew this and tried to be sensitive about it the entire week, not forcing him to get too close to any giant upholstered mammals. Fortunately the Disney characters are excellent at backing off when they see that a child is shy or scared.
On the morning documented here, however, I was bound and determined to get my photo, which was included in the pricey package we'd bought. By the time we posed here, Henry had already ignored Minnie Mouse and slid from the booth under the table as a man-sized Chip from Chip and Dale approached us. As we got to the picture area, there just happened to be a ginormous Goofy standing nearby in a chef's coat. Henry balked, I insisted strenuously, and I got my picture. I guess Henry decided he'd make me pay by ruining it.
But I think that face makes it even better. Click on the picture to see it in full effect.

Why I hate the Cumberland Plateau

In today’s episode, we will analyze a growing geographic prejudice against the area known as “The Plateau.”
There is, in fact, a group called Haters of the Cumberland Plateau that largely consists of me and my three sons, though the 5-year-old is only an honorary member with no voting privileges.
We started the club because the Cumberland Plateau gets all our snow, and it’s just not fair. I can’t watch TV news while the twins are conscious because if they see one tiny snowflake on the five-day forecast, they think it’s time to get the “sleds” out.
Not real sleds, of course. We have those plastic disks that slide across the snow because we don’t get enough snow to really go sledding. It’s a shame, too, because Middle Tennessee has all these sweet hills.
Technology hasn’t helped us love The Plateau, either, since folks who live there are having too much fun sending digital photos of what should have been our snow to the Nashville TV weathercasters like some kind of high-tech ransom notes.
Then we end up with cold rain while The Plateau gets big, fluffy drifts, and I have to deal with questions like these before breakfast: Where is The Plateau? Why did they get all the snow? Can we move there? Why do we have to be so close to the equator? Can you check my math homework?
To paraphrase 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks’s comments about the Soviets, I am sick and tired of hearing about how much snow they’re gonna get on the Plateau. Their time is done. It’s our time!
The goal of the Plateau Haters is simple: It’s for the children. Our kids need a really decent snow, significant enough that their dad has no choice but to stay home from work. Bless their hearts; they’re so optimistic when the flurries start flying. At daybreak, they’re planning snowmen and snow angels and snowball fights and snow forts, even though the grass still peeks out because we only got “a dusting.”
Once when we got about a half-inch, Henry found a one-square-foot patch of ice in a dip on the driveway. The boys looked so pitifully happy taking turns, sliding around. “Look, Mom, we’re skating!”
I should be careful what I wish for, since I end up spending the rest of the day counting gloves and forging through the wet, muddy clothes cast off during those fleeting, snow-dusted hours. I can’t imagine the laundry that would be spawned by a foot of snow.
Maybe we only got a dusting last time, but it was ours. Do you believe in miracles? Yes!

One to grow on

“Oh, you poor thing,” the Dillards clerk exclaimed as she copied numbers from my driver's license onto the check I’d just written. “Born on Christmas Day! You really got ripped off, huh?”
I glanced up from my checkbook, where I’d been trying to remember what I did with check #2642. Already that morning I had battled my way through Stein Mart’s customer service line to exchange a sweater, and I still had Toys R Us looming before me. For expediency’s sake, I stood ready to agree with her.
I couldn’t do it, though. Whenever anyone finds out I was born on Dec. 25, they always react with sympathy and attempt to comfort me about my bad luck. It makes as much sense as when grandmotherly strangers try to console me for having three boys and no girls, as if I could have -- or would have -- done anything about it.
The truth is, though, that I hadn’t thought much about my birthday falling on the biggest holiday of the year. Maybe it bothered me a bit when I was a kid. We were never in school on my birthday, so I didn’t get to see Mrs. Turner draw a birthday cake with my name on it in colored chalk on the blackboard. Since second grade, however, I’ve gotten over it.
A Christmas birthday does lend itself to interesting variations of the usual holiday practices. As a child, I left Santa a piece of my birthday cake instead of milk and cookies. And contrary to the apparent consensus of many Cool Springs store clerks, no one close to me has ever forgotten my birthday or tried to pass off one gift to cover both celebrations.
Of course, I do have to wait all year if there’s a gift I really would like to ask for, but that’s gotten easier to overcome with each birthday.
In fact, my family members have always gone out of their way to make the day special for me, from their cheery “Happy Birthday!” in response to my “Merry Christmas!” greeting to the specially designated birthday presents wrapped in paper that is any color but red or green.
Remembering those times, I realized right there at the cash register that being born on Christmas Day is anything but a rip-off. I know of no better day to come into the world than when peace and joy reign, when a child’s anticipation is almost unbearable, when people in every nation rejoice to commemorate a birth that changed history.
Sharing a birthday with Jesus Christ is a great blessing to me, and that store clerk inadvertently reminded me why. Christmastime can be hectic and stressful. But it’s also when most of us are intently focused on someone other than ourselves.
Every day, but especially on my birthday, I have the chance to thank God for gifts I’d never want to exchange.

It's not nucular science

"Mom, when's it gonna be time for munch?"
I looked down at my 5-year-old, who had run into my office after changing out of his church clothes.
"Do what?!" I said. "What are you talking about, 'munch'?"
He started bucking back and forth. "You know, you said we were gonna eat munch after church today."
"Oh, BRUNCH!" I laughed. I tried holding it in because he is a very serious old man inside a 5-year-old body and he hates getting stuff wrong. I tried to soften the blow.
"'Brunch' is when you combine 'breakfast' and 'lunch.' You know, like a 'spork.'" This explanation served as a jumping off point for names he thought they should have given brunch, such as "lekfast" and "brupper."
I enjoy these episodes because they prove Owen has inherited our family's infamous Granddaddy Disease, wherein he gets words wrong in the most entertaining ways just like my grandfather did. Probably the most enduring example is when my grandfather told us my grandmother was stressed out because she had to get her monogram that day. It took us a few tries to figure out she actually was having a mammogram.
On Fireman Sam the other day, a lady called a little boy a "hooligan." Owen said, "What did she call him?" His attempts to repeat it ranged from "hoogleland" to "hoolan" and kept us giggling and punchy for at least a few minutes.
My older boys had adorable baby words, like the way Henry used "cha-box" for lunchbox and Mason would say "walkamama" when he wanted me to come to him. But by age 5 they were pretty much ready for a spot on Jeopardy. Owen's mix-ups persist.
My favorite came out at age 3 when he threw himself backward on the couch and said, "Help me be a afroback (acrobat)."

Code Kablooey

Last night was the first time my 12-year-old twins attended a Titans Monday Night Football game, and we still made them catch the school bus at 6:42 this morning. I'm guessing that the late night is hitting them right about now, as one sits in science and the other in English.

ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

Are you a peeker?

"I'll say the prayer," five-year-old Owen said as my other two boys and I slid into our chairs at the kitchen table before dinner recently. He makes this announcement at every meal, even though he almost always says grace at our table because he is a very bossy boy and does not delegate unless the task requires carrying something. We always let him say grace because, well, we're hungry and we want to eat.
If my husband is home from work by dinnertime, we hold hands in a circle around the table. This is also how I tell if Henry has washed his hands. If my husband is not home in time, we individually clasp our hands in the prayer position because the circle is not complete without him and because I can't reach Owen from my seat without getting my front in my plate.
"God is great, God is good...," Owen began, and I realized as he was almost finished that I had not closed my eyes but was watching him. Yes, I am a prayer peeker. More often than not, I watch my child as he is praying, but I can't make myself feel guilty about it because there is something divine in a child's face that is exquisitely concentrating on thanking God. I nearly tumbled out of the church balcony one Sunday when I peeked over to see my preschooler saying the Lord's Prayer with the rest of the congregation. I didn't know that his father, who is in charge of bedtime, had taught it to him.
Since then, I compulsively peek during group prayers, usually right at the beginning, and I'm thinking I shouldn't do it because no one else is looking, just me. I know I'm probably breaking the eleventh commandment, but it humbles me to see friends, relatives, elders and young'uns with their own heads bowed in relationship with their Lord.
"...Let us thank Him for our food, amen. MOM!!!!"
Oops, busted!
"Owen, you're not supposed to yell at people after the prayer," Henry said.
"Yeah, but Mom was watching me! I saw her peeking," he rebutted. That's when Mason introduced Mr. Bossypants to his first conundrum.
"The only way you would know Mom was peeking is if you were peeking, too."
Can I get an amen?

The dame can't help it

Just as my oldest sons are entering their awkward phase, I've hit an unexpected awkward stage in my life in which I feel self-conscious when I hear myself using the word "girl" to describe my friends. It just doesn't sound right to say, "This girl at Bible study said the funniest thing today," to my husband and then turn to my 12-year-old and ask, "Who was that girl you were talking to after football today?'
I mean, we're all around age 40, and I can't use the same word to describe my friends and my kids' friends, can I? I need a new word for everyday use, I guess, but I can't use "lady" for obvious reasons and I don't like "gal" because I hate how it sounds. "Girl" has been perfect for so long, and everything else is either too formal (woman, female, milady) or too loose (chick, babe, broad, etc.) I may have to make up my own word, unless you have suggestions...

Most evil

So I thought about it all summer, and I've decided that the French pedicure must be the most evil of all beauty treatments.
It hit me as I sat in the orthodontist waiting room across from another mom who had on the standard Capri pants and sandals. Scanning down to her feet, I noticed that she had the most precise French pedicure I'd ever seen, and I tried to picture the person who did that lovely job.
My biggest problem with the French pedi, beside the fact that you are paying someone to work on your FEET, is that it requires two things I don't have a lot of: (1) a good, clear block of previously unclaimed time to just sit and let someone work on your feet, and (2) anywhere from $35 to $50 about every two weeks.
Those things and the image of a nail tech hunched over my feet in pursuit of that straight white line under my toenails make me hate the French pedi.
Or maybe I'm just jealous.

Personal Ad for Parents

Starting when my twins were about 8 or 9, they’d occasionally come home from a sleepover or an outing with friends with a couple of unsavory habits. They weren’t smoking or anything, but one morning after spending the night with the youngest of four boys, one of mine casually asked, “Is ‘f***’ a bad word?’ or they’d say, ‘We spent the whole night looking up funny videos on You Tube!’”
I remember wishing I could place a personal ad somewhere to seek out like-minded parents who were trying to raise their kids with generally the same ideas my husband and I were. That way I could ask the stuff I wanted to know but couldn’t manage to bring up without awkwardness in a normal front-porch conversation. Something like:

“Parents of boys seeking other parents with boys who have manners and don’t break stuff on purpose. Decent phone etiquette a plus. Picky eaters okay, but cruelty to younger siblings (yours or ours) or a smart mouth won’t be tolerated. We promise to maintain lights out during sleepovers at midnight for younger kids, a bit later for older. If your son has cable TV in his room or unlimited Internet access, our kids probably won’t sleep over there. We can guarantee no (real) weapons at our house and no Johnny Knoxville-type stunts or neighborhood roaming will be allowed. Fun, mom-approved food and drinks available with preset limits. Willing to do drop off, pick up or both.”

If I did get that involved in my kids’ friendships, though, they probably wouldn’t have any friends at all.

Good luck in 6th grade! Don't lose your $150 calculator.

Middle school has rocked for almost two weeks now. My oldest boys have had a smooth transition to 6th grade: bus ride, fine; lockers, fine; teachers, great. I am still adjusting to being a mom of more mature students. In other words, I am trying not to micromanage.
I can’t stop, though, because I have more invested in this school year -literally. It started with two $90 checks I wrote to the school for “supplies,” including PE uniforms, but we had to buy additional pens, pencils, paper and a colored binder for each class.
It’s convenient, and I almost prefer not knowing exactly what I’m paying for, since things started to get ridiculous during elementary school when half their supply bags would be filled with paper towels, wet wipes, Kleenex, Purell and other classroom maintenance items.
Then Mason made the JV football team, for which we would pay a $35 fee plus another $70 on team clothing that is optional unless you are a mean parent who wants to deny your son the chance to be cool and wear a team hoodie around town.
Out of the blue Henry went out for cross country, and my parents generously sprung for designated running shoes since Henry somehow grew into a men’s size 9.5 over the summer. Add another $25 for the cross country fee plus their random team clothing, and you can see why I’m hypervigilant about asking them, “Do you have your cleats? Where are your running shoes?” and oh, yeah, “Did you do your homework?”
My husband advocates the “throw them in the ocean and they’ll learn to swim” approach to back to school, reasoning that one strike for a missed assignment will make more of an impression on them than my nagging. I relented, but then on the third day of school, the math teacher sent home a note about graphing calculators. An experienced mom warned me to get the one that they’d use next year, which happened to be the one the teacher would be using.
Hubby did a preliminary internet price search. After a minute, he called from my office, “How much do you think those calculators are?”
I paid about $9.99 for the one I use at home, so I considered what I thought would be a ridiculous price for a 6th-grade tool. “Ummmmm, $55!”
“They’re $149 each! At Wal-Mart!” he yelled back.
Times two. Ah, the joy of twins. Guess my fall wardrobe will come from Target.

Can't Teach an Old Mom New Tricks

Last week was orientation at the preschool my 5-year-old will attend this year, the same school my 12-year-old twins began attending when they were 1-year-olds.
Since the stairstep method of family planning prevails in our society, most of the new moms there don’t have a seven-year gap between kids like I do.
I walk in the building where lots of these new moms are gathered, and it looks like sorority rush. Girls ten or twelve years younger than me greet each other with squeals, dressed like bright summer flowers holding monogrammed purses.
Their faces turn earnest as the teachers outline the things their babies will do during the preschool day. With apprehension, they glance at their boyish husbands when the teacher mentions the little ones feeding themselves at lunchtime.
We old moms try to contain our impatience with their rookie questions, remembering the guy in high school who always asked, “If we study this, will we pass the test?”
I can’t judge too harshly, though. My first time around, I was the biggest wad of maternal anxiety ever, leaving my twin babies to fend for themselves in the rough world of church preschool.
Now that I am a mom over 35, I’ll never forget three special words the doctor said to me at my first OB visit – advanced maternal age. I felt like I’d be raising my own grandchild.
By the time you move from preschool to elementary school, not much has changed. When I was a new mom, I used to think older moms were so cranky and unenthusiastic. Now that I’m 40 years old with a little 'un, I realize they weren’t cranky. They’d just done it all before.
So now I’m one of them. I want to be involved in my kids’ school. I’m not going to clap and sing about it, but I’ll be there.
No, nothing can match a new mom’s enthusiasm for helping out in class, and school wouldn’t be as fun without them. We old moms, however, have been down this path, and we usually have to leave to pick up another kid soon. We just want the new moms to tell us what to bring and when.
My friend Trish says she often finds herself saying, “Sounds great. I’ll do whatever.” I think that’s going to be my new motto at school.
Class Halloween party? Sounds great. No, you can do the craft. I promise I don’t mind. Lollipop spiders? Yes, that will be very cute. The kids will love it. I’ll do whatever.
In fact, it would be nice to hear that from the kids every once in a while. “Sounds great, Mom. I’ll do whatever.”