10/01/2008
Watch This
I knew the day would eventually arrive. My arm is not long enough for me to read my watch. Over the last several years, I’ve been holding it further and further from my face so that I could focus on the tiny numbers. Now, when I look at it, no matter how far away I hold my arm, the numbers are unrecognizable and the hands keep disappearing into the background. If you were to ask me the time, all I could give you was an estimate based on whether I’d had lunch or not, and whether at least one of those rascally hands made a sudden impromptu appearance. “Excuse me. Do you know what time it is?” “Well, I’ve had lunch and I’m not hungry yet. I haven’t heard a school bus, and my mail hasn’t arrived yet, so I’d say it’s somewhere between half past one and 2:15. “Don’t you want to check your watch?” “Oh, that won’t help.” Of course, I still wear my watch, because I wouldn’t want anyone to think I can’t read it. But I have started hanging around jewelry departments when no one is looking … and trying on reading glasses incognito. I can’t decide whether I’d feel older wearing reading glasses or wearing a watch with three-inch numbers that light up. After all, my whole family wears glasses. I’m the last hold-out. My brothers and sister started wearing them before high school and I never saw my parents without glasses. So it’s not that I think other people who wear glasses look old. I just know that the reason I need them is because I’m getting older. I can’t thread a needle. Thank goodness I don’t have to do that very often. It’s become very difficult to solve a crossword puzzle when the clues are all swimming around the page; disappearing from the 3-down position and showing up in 45-across. These inconveniences I can deal with by installing better lighting in my sewing room and bathroom… (yeah, like you don’t do the crossword in the bathroom). However, not being able to see what time it is has caused me some problems. When I look at watches in the store, I know which ones I should get, but they all look like something my grandmother would wear. They are dead giveaways to the fact that I’m on the backside of middle age. The pretty, dainty ones were all equipped with the disappearing hands, but they were deceptively readable in the 400 watt lighted display case. It wasn’t until I asked to try a few on that I realized that fact. As soon as the salesperson took them out of the display case, I knew I wouldn’t be able to read them. So, I asked her to put them all back. “But, you haven’t even tried one on!” “I know, but my arms aren’t going to be long enough for those.” With a puzzled look, I could see her trying to mentally measure my arms. I was desperate enough to consider the Tinker Bell and Winnie The Pooh watches. Why are the numbers on children’s watches so big? Kids have a little trouble reading time, true; but not because they can’t see the numbers. I could probably live with Tinker Bell, but the cloth/Velcro strap would chafe. I finally spotted a beautiful watch with a dark blue background and silver hands. Now that’s a possibility, I thought, excitedly. The contrast would surely help me read it. I bought it, took it home and tried it on. It was gorgeous but… the hands started disappearing. I should have taken it back, I know, but, irrationally, I wanted to keep it because it was so pretty. I finally decided that needing to actually read your watch was highly overrated. If I needed to know what time it was, I would simply ask someone who was wearing a watch with three-inch light-up numbers. 9/26/2008 Competence and Capabilities My husband is very good at fixing things and building things. He seems to know instinctively just what to do and which tools to use. I can wield a Phillips head screwdriver with the best of them (“them” being the Phillips head screwdriver wielders, I guess) but if something is broken, I have little trouble diagnosing the problem. As a result, my husband may find me wielding a screwdriver where I should perhaps be wielding a toilet bowl plunger. As for building things, I can’t even build a two-layer birthday cake, much less a two-story addition. In fact, a two-story birdhouse would probably be beyond my capabilities. If my husband told me where to put the nail, I could probably make that hammer sing, though, admittedly, those first few swings would be kind of dicey because my fingers would still be in danger of painful consequence if I missed. I’m not so incompetent in emergency situations, however. If my husband was not around, I could fix a leaky pipe with bubblegum and duct tape. It wouldn’t be a sexy fix, but it’d hold until he came home. As capable as my husband is when it comes to fixing or building, he seems to be lost when it comes to things that are second nature to me. He tries to handle his share of the housework but…he’s not very good at it. And for the life of me, I haven’t been able to figure out in 27 years of marriage whether his household chore-related incompetence is real or contrived. He must feel the same way about me. “You couldn’t possibly be that stupid!” I don’t know whether I’d rather that he thinks I’m stupid, or that he thinks I’m pretending stupidity to get out of fixing something. It’s a no-win situation for both of us. When I see my husband head for the laundry room with a basket full of dirty clothes, some of which are mine, I make an excuse to help him sort the clothes. Sorting is apparently an alien concept to his mind. He can usually get the whites right, but a white shirt with colored stripes does tend to confound him. The categories for colored and dark clothing are something he is simply incapable of understanding. While he flings clothes indiscriminately into random piles, I’ll be bending over tossing them into the correct piles. He’ll hold up something and say “Is this a light color or a dark color?” Without looking up from my task, I’ll ask, “What color is it?” “Red.” “Well, is it a dark red or a light red?” You can see the challenges he has to face, the poor dear. It also has apparently never occurred to him what happens to the outside of a laundry detergent jug when you don’t rinse out the measuring cup/cap before putting it back on top of the jug. So even though I’m the one who rinses the cap out, he gets the benefit of a goo-free laundry experience and I get his detergent backwash all over my hands. It is second nature for me to clean out the lint trap between loads; a difficult thing to do with detergent on my hands. Although he has learned (finally) to clean it out due to the many times he still had wet clothes after a drying cycle, he still tends to collect the lint balls on top of my dryer instead of tossing them in the trash can less than a foot from his body. The lint balls combine with the goo from the backwashed laundry detergent to make my dryer look like a giant, dead Chia Pet. Maybe he’s got a latent desire to create abstract art while he’s doing the laundry. That’s an obscure talent to be sure. 9/15/2008 Until Death Do You Part I came of age in a time when “free love” was just starting to look like the fraud it was and just before a promise of love became something more like a threat. We understood that if you love someone, you have to set them free. If they came back, they are yours. If not, it was never meant to be. This simple adage bridged the gap between the free-lovers who “loved the one they were with” even if you were “with” someone different every four hours, and the couples who took a vow of marriage with an aside that, by God, their new spouse had better be faithful. At some point that adage became distorted by a fear of abandonment. It became less important for your lover to love you and more important that he/she stick around even if they didn’t love you…or else. The adage was changed to: If you love something, let it leave the house occasionally. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, hunt it down and threaten its life. The news is full of stories about people who, at one time, took a vow of eternal love and commitment, and then, a few years later, decided to permanently dispose of their spouse using various nefarious means. I can understand a couple who falls out of love. That is acceptable. But when you feel the urge to do mortal harm to one another, it’s time to think about whether the marriage was meant to be. There are a myriad of reasons why marriages fall apart. Most of them fall into the “irreconcilable differences” category that invariably shows up on most divorce papers. Whether your differences are irreconcilable or not is all relative, I think. Citing the sense of entitlement that some of the younger generations have, it’s all about a couple’s threshold of tolerance. But I would say that if your thoughts are murderous, your differences are way beyond reconciling. Don’t let some mediator or church official talk you into staying with someone whom you believe the world would be better off without. Remember that this may very well be your exclusive opinion. Divorce is hard, I’ve heard, but so is 30 years to life. It was simply not meant to be. My husband and I have been happily married for 27 years. I’ll readily admit to times of frustration, unkind thoughts, and an occasional wish to be single. I’ve gotten so mad during hormonal surges that appliances became airborne before crashing into walls. I want to add here that the airborne appliances were never aimed at my husband and if I had aimed at him, I wouldn’t have missed. We’ve had many arguments over issues that are now in the “agree to disagree” column on our marital ledger. But I’ve never once dreamed of hacking up his body and hiding it in my freezer. I’ve never once had the urge to put him permanently out of my life and everyone else’s. We have a true respect for each other as human beings, not simply as the other half of our marriage. Our marriage is a life separate from our own. One we have to feed and nurture if we want it to grow and stay healthy. If we can’t work out a problem, we put it aside and move on. There is no sense in dwelling on a divisive issue unless your motive is, in fact, to divide. If your intention is to be there for each other forever, then your only options are to earmark the issues that cause friction and either solve them in a way that is satisfactory to both partners or flush the issue. If these issues cause more than mere friction and your thoughts are leading to a dark place in the basement of your soul, then flush the marriage before anyone gets hurt. This advice is coming from a couple who has had some success where the longevity of a happy marriage is concerned. I’m not a marriage counselor or a psychiatrist, but I can tell you for certain that if you can no longer live with the part of your marriage vows that say “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”, and if “until death do you part” starts sounding like an escape clause, then you need to move on because… it was never meant to be. 9/01/2008 In My Dreams I never realized how much your “real” life can affect your dreams. Last night I had a dream that was straight out of a nightmare. I must have been particularly stressed this week to have allowed these events to creep into my subconscious in such a bizarre way. Let me tell you my week’s worth of stresses. Just typical stuff, really. First, we have been preparing for the first day of school, meeting teachers, filling out forms and buying supplies. Second, I sent a new cell phone by UPS to my son who goes to college five hours away. The package was somehow lost and now we have to get him another phone and go through the hassles of an insurance claim with UPS. Always fun. Third, I have been practicing a monologue for a speech I’m to give at the end of this month. The monologue is Mrs. Gilhooey’s Bungaloo. She is an old Scottish cook who inherits a bungalow when her employer dies. She found twelve bottles of champagne in the cellar and, because of Prohibition, she decides to “turn them oopside doon into the sink and empty all of the contints, all excipt a small woine glass full…which Oi drank.” By the last of the twelve bottles, she is happily smashed and trying to count the bottles as they “revolve ‘round me loike the meery-go-round at Cooney Island.” Lastly, though not a stress, but still obviously on my mind, my mother called to tell me that she got a hole-in-one while out golfing yesterday. While I know next to nothing about golf, I do know that a hole-in-one is nearly impossible; more so for a well-over-par golfer with a high handicap like my mother. I can’t help but wonder what cosmic event happened that made that little white ball decide to enter that little hole on her very first shot. These four episodes collided with each other in my dreams and made for a very interesting night. It started in a dollar store. My mom and I were sauntering around a dollar store. I was buying school supplies and my mom was sporting a nine iron. Not because that’s the club she used to get her hole-in-one, but because that’s the only club of which I know the name. Mrs. Gilhooey came in, three sheets to the wind, and asked my mother “How mooch diz this cell phone cost?” My mother answered, “I don’t know, but this wide-ruled paper has three holes-in-one.” “One dollar,” I said sarcastically. They both looked at me loike I wiz out of me moind. “Hey, this is my dream, stop narrating in Scottish! And, by the way, we’re in a dollar store! Everything is a dollar!” A little miffed and more than a little schnockered, Mrs. Gilhooey said, “Now, Oi moight not have it a-right, boot Oi say thet three holes-in-one would bring more then one dollar.” “Yeah! What she said!” yelled my mom, brandishing her nine iron. My son somehow came to my rescue by suddenly appearing in the stationery aisle between me and my elderly assailants. He said “Yes, but cell phones only cost a dollar if you buy a two-year contract with it. Oh, but wait…you lost my cell phone, right mom?” “I didn’t lose it, UPS did. Say, aren’t these protractors spiffy? I’ll take three of them.” “That’s par for the course,” my mom said, taking a hit of Mrs. Gilhooey’s champagne. “What’s par?” I asked. “Three,” said mom. “You sid it wiz the woide ruled paper,” slurred Mrs. Gilhooey. “That’s holes,” I explained. “No, that’s what grandma had – in one,” interrupted my son. “Hold on, I’ll call dad to find out for sure. No wait…you lost my cell phone,” he said, pointedly. “Like your dad would know,” I said. I heard ringing. “There it is. The cell phone is still in the package on someone else’s porch. Quick, look for it while it’s still ringing!” “Noo, noo, me frind. The ringin’ is all in me head. Oi’m afraid oi’m a bit stinky, ye know. Oi mane, Oi’m tinklin’, noo, noo, Oi’m tipsy, that’s what Oi am. “It’s the school bell ringing, Laura,” my mom said. “Hurry the children will be late for school!” Actually, it was my alarm clock set for an ungodly hour so that I can get used to school hours again. I could have lay down and gone back to sleep, but…it was a little too crowded in my dreams right now. 8/28/2008 Strangers In My House There are three strangers wandering around my house. I’ve never seen them, but I know they are here. Now, before you call the guys with the strait jackets, you ought to know that although I might not be considered sane even on a good day, this is not one of those things that is all in my head. I know they are here because they leave lots of clues; almost as if they want me to know they are here. Maybe they are ghosts, or elves, or malevolent little pixies. I even know their names because, apparently my kids know them and have called them by name: Nott Mee – an oriental madman. Ida Know – a sneaky thief and promoter of anarchy. Ididint Dooit – a mastermind of catastrophic events. If I could just catch one of these miscreants, I would call the police and have them all hung by their little toes. These elves, or ghosts or whatever they are, are ruining my home and making it look like my children are doing it. Despicable! A classic bad-guy-sets-up-the-innocent ruse. Of course, my children are little angels. This morning, I asked them who was experimenting with the blender and pancake mix and left a trail of gooey stuff all the way to the bathroom. “Ididnt Dooit,” said one of my angels. I knew it! But just to be sure, I asked another one. “Who decided to fling the mix around the stove and counters so that it would harden into little, yellow, cement puddles and make it virtually impossible to remove?” “Nott Mee,” she said. Aha! Ididint Dooit had an accomplice who was apparently thoroughly trained in the art of mess-making. I mean, he is good! The mess he made was such that one would need a sandblaster to rectify the situation. These evil doers will not go unpunished, but I have to catch them first. Until that time comes, I have taken to putting out notes just to let them know I’m on to them. In the bathroom I left a note that said: “Dear Ida Know, please be more careful when brushing your teeth. It’s very difficult to see around the globs of toothpaste that you have smeared on the mirror. (Although, I have to say your toothpaste illustration of Calvin urinating on a Math book is very good.)” In the laundry room: “Dear Ididint Dooit, Your clothes are, of course, exceptional, but as far as I know, they do not have the ability to transport themselves to their respective drawers. Please assist them.” In the kitchen: “Dear Nott Mee, Chocolate pudding is to be eaten at the table. If you feel the need to eat off the floor please inform me of your decision, or you will be required to buy me a new pair of socks.” “Dear Ida Know, Although it shows a certain creativity, please refrain from lining up the kitchen chairs like a choo-choo train. Are you also the one who keeps stacking up the couch cushions? Or is that Ididint Dooit? If so, please speak with him about it.” “Dear malevolent pixie-ghosts, The next one of you cretins who uses four kitchen towels to mop up a Koolaid spill, leaves them in the sink, and tries to cover up the evidence with leftover ravioli, carrot peels, and the dregs of your Ramen noodle cup, will be drawn and quartered!” Ideally, I’d like to catch one of these villains and duct tape them to the wall, but something tells me that’s never going to happen. They’re just too good. 8/21/2008 A Case For Women Drivers Finally, a study has been done that proves what women all over the world have known since the dawn of automobiles. Men, on the average, are much worse drivers than women. I am, of course, a woman so I am slightly biased on this issue, but let’s face it, it’s true. However, it is obvious that most men think they drive better than anyone (just ask them) and they have made it their sacred duty to correct the driving habits of everyone else on the road. This is done by using various dubious methods that are annoying at best and, at worst, dangerous. For example, to encourage a slow poke to drive faster, our most inferior drivers will tailgate so close to the car in front of them that if the slow poke was to slow down further because of say, a goat crossing the road, the tailgater would then be dining on tailpipe and occupying the slowpoke’s trunk space until the paramedics could pry him out. Of course, no matter what his insurance company says, it would be the slowpoke’s fault for slamming on his brakes when it was plain to see that someone was so close behind him. The slowpoke may be in the category of inferior drivers as well. The only way to snap these guys out of their daydreams of being Jessica Simpson’s bodyguard (dream on) is to pass them. But, when you are parallel to their car, assuming there is no goat, they speed up until you have to go 80 MPH to get around them and then they call you a maniac. Then there are those guys who never actually grip the steering wheel. They simply rest their hands on it as if the car can drive itself and the driver is simply there for moral support. I remember my dad teaching me how to drive. He told me to “palm the wheel” when I was turning. This was in the days when power steering was not so wide spread. My mom had to use all of her strength to turn the wheel and as a result, she often looked like she was giving our old Buick CPR. My dad thought she looked silly and wanted to teach me the “right way.” I just didn’t want to give any car I was driving that much freedom. I learned the hard way that if you give a jalopy an inch, it’s going to get you into an accident. So I hold on to the wheel. I was driving my family home from a weekend trip to the beach. It was a three-hour drive. My husband had hurt his gas pedal leg, so he wasn’t able to sit in the driver’s seat, but that didn’t stop him from telling me how to drive. There was a particularly trying section of the trip where I was following a car that was going about ten miles under the speed limit. It drove my husband nuts to be behind this guy, but what really put him over the edge is that I was not in any hurry to pass him. Every time he thought it was clear, he’d say “Punch it!” I’ve learned to ignore these helpful hints and instead simply obeyed the traffic rules: Those insignificant little things like Do Not Pass signs, solid yellow lines, and the rule that says “never pass a car when there is oncoming traffic, no matter what your passenger says.” I never read that in a driving manual, but it was clearly implied. As far as I was concerned the guy wasn’t going so slow that I needed to put unnecessary stress on me or the engine. I’d just wait for the right moment. Finally, the driver ahead of us flipped on his right turn signal and slowed down as if to turn into a driveway. I started to pass him on the left and then he apparently decided that it was the wrong driveway. He sped up. I got a good look. Yes, it was a man. By now, a car had come up over the hill and I, being in the left lane, trying to pass an idiot, was in imminent danger of a head-on collision. I was forced to “Punch it!” He probably thought I was a maniac. My husband certainly did. After the danger had passed, he laughed at me. “You had all those chances to pass him and you decided to punch it when he was going to turn anyway.” I told him I only had two options after the other driver forgot where his driveway was: “I could have sped up and followed through on my action, which is what I did. Or I could have slammed on my brakes, swung in behind the undecided driver, honked like a lunatic, and flipped him the bird… which is what you would’ve have done.” Simply more proof that women drivers have evolved. 8/18/2008 Grandma Gets a Bad Rap My mother recently became a great-grandmother. Just to be clear, this status did not come about because of anything my children did; I’m not a grandma yet. But for my mother, her change of status is something to celebrate, and not just because there is a beautiful new baby to spoil. The other reason to celebrate is because she is no longer just a grandma. The word “grandma” carries a silly stigma these days. “Grandma” is the subject of many jokes, but when you add “Great” to grandma, it gives this dearly-loved matriarch a bit more dignity. How many times have you heard a joke about “grandma?” There are jokes about her bad eyesight, her dentures, and the fact that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s puttering along to BINGO. It’s so stereotypical. She doesn’t deserve all this bad press. In fact, my mom hasn’t gone to BINGO in at least three months. It’s true that she can’t see as well as she used to and her remaining teeth are barely hanging in there, but is that anything to joke about? Grandmas get a really bad rap. What about all those wonderful cookies grandmas bake. Wait a minute, that’s probably stereotypical, too. My mom baked once a year at Christmas time and hated every minute of it even after she became a grandma twenty-five years ago. I am secretly a little jealous of her great-grandma status, though. She gets to do things that us mere moms cannot. For example, she gets to wear white pants whenever she wants to. Do you know why grandmas wear white pants? Because they can! I haven’t been able to wear white pants since my first child started eating solids. If I did wear them, by now they’d look like something out of a psychedelic nightmare. Another thing I’m envious of is the fact that my mom can ignore the knowledge of any new technological wonder and get away with it because of her age. My utter bewilderment about anything with a circuit board and buttons is regarded with distain by members of the Technologically Informed, of which my husband is a charter member. My mother can suggest using squirrels on a hamster wheel for an alternative energy source and she would merely get an indulgent smile. Hey, the Flintstones made it work, didn’t they? You want a new mass transit system that runs on something besides fossil fuels? Just built a monorail with a giant wheel and throw a couple hundred squirrels in there. They’re not doing anything but digging holes in our yards and frolicking on high tension wires anyway. Let’s make them contribute to society! Okay, so that was my idea. But I didn’t get an indulgent smile when I suggested it. A got a look that said, “We’re going to have to start looking for long-term care for you, aren’t we?” My mom recently had a problem with her TV. It would randomly switch channels all by itself. She’d be watching a documentary on the migration pattern of the Sooty Albatross and it would switch to The Price Is Right. I was there once when it happened. She didn’t seem to notice until I mentioned it, though. Ah, grandma-hood! She said she didn’t know what caused it, but I decided not to mention it to my husband just in case the solution was something I was supposed to know. A week later, she told me that her neighbor said she had the same problem. When my mom called the cable company, it was discovered that their remotes were on the same frequency and that they had been switching each other’s channels for a month and a half. When the cable guys finally came to fix the problem, she had just finished working out a TV viewing schedule with her neighbor and was a little miffed that they showed up so soon. She was enjoying getting to know her neighbor better. Her neighbor was clearly a grandma, too. 8/15/2008 Chick Flicks & Other Horrors My husband is like any other man with a lick of testosterone. He would rather see a movie with violent explosions or be scared out of his pants by some horror flick than be subjected to a romance or a musical. But he is different in some ways, too. He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it. Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him. No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche. My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace. My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together. Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go. It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way. His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment. We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome. I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet. When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn. When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts. No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought. Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car. 8/12/2008 Photographic Memories Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
Now, when I look at it, no matter how far away I hold my arm, the numbers are unrecognizable and the hands keep disappearing into the background. If you were to ask me the time, all I could give you was an estimate based on whether I’d had lunch or not, and whether at least one of those rascally hands made a sudden impromptu appearance.
“Excuse me. Do you know what time it is?”
“Well, I’ve had lunch and I’m not hungry yet. I haven’t heard a school bus, and my mail hasn’t arrived yet, so I’d say it’s somewhere between half past one and 2:15.
“Don’t you want to check your watch?”
“Oh, that won’t help.”
Of course, I still wear my watch, because I wouldn’t want anyone to think I can’t read it. But I have started hanging around jewelry departments when no one is looking … and trying on reading glasses incognito.
I can’t decide whether I’d feel older wearing reading glasses or wearing a watch with three-inch numbers that light up. After all, my whole family wears glasses. I’m the last hold-out. My brothers and sister started wearing them before high school and I never saw my parents without glasses. So it’s not that I think other people who wear glasses look old. I just know that the reason I need them is because I’m getting older.
I can’t thread a needle. Thank goodness I don’t have to do that very often. It’s become very difficult to solve a crossword puzzle when the clues are all swimming around the page; disappearing from the 3-down position and showing up in 45-across. These inconveniences I can deal with by installing better lighting in my sewing room and bathroom… (yeah, like you don’t do the crossword in the bathroom). However, not being able to see what time it is has caused me some problems.
When I look at watches in the store, I know which ones I should get, but they all look like something my grandmother would wear. They are dead giveaways to the fact that I’m on the backside of middle age. The pretty, dainty ones were all equipped with the disappearing hands, but they were deceptively readable in the 400 watt lighted display case. It wasn’t until I asked to try a few on that I realized that fact. As soon as the salesperson took them out of the display case, I knew I wouldn’t be able to read them. So, I asked her to put them all back.
“But, you haven’t even tried one on!”
“I know, but my arms aren’t going to be long enough for those.” With a puzzled look, I could see her trying to mentally measure my arms.
I was desperate enough to consider the Tinker Bell and Winnie The Pooh watches. Why are the numbers on children’s watches so big? Kids have a little trouble reading time, true; but not because they can’t see the numbers. I could probably live with Tinker Bell, but the cloth/Velcro strap would chafe.
I finally spotted a beautiful watch with a dark blue background and silver hands. Now that’s a possibility, I thought, excitedly. The contrast would surely help me read it. I bought it, took it home and tried it on. It was gorgeous but… the hands started disappearing. I should have taken it back, I know, but, irrationally, I wanted to keep it because it was so pretty.
I finally decided that needing to actually read your watch was highly overrated. If I needed to know what time it was, I would simply ask someone who was wearing a watch with three-inch light-up numbers.
9/26/2008
Competence and Capabilities
My husband is very good at fixing things and building things. He seems to know instinctively just what to do and which tools to use. I can wield a Phillips head screwdriver with the best of them (“them” being the Phillips head screwdriver wielders, I guess) but if something is broken, I have little trouble diagnosing the problem. As a result, my husband may find me wielding a screwdriver where I should perhaps be wielding a toilet bowl plunger. As for building things, I can’t even build a two-layer birthday cake, much less a two-story addition. In fact, a two-story birdhouse would probably be beyond my capabilities. If my husband told me where to put the nail, I could probably make that hammer sing, though, admittedly, those first few swings would be kind of dicey because my fingers would still be in danger of painful consequence if I missed. I’m not so incompetent in emergency situations, however. If my husband was not around, I could fix a leaky pipe with bubblegum and duct tape. It wouldn’t be a sexy fix, but it’d hold until he came home. As capable as my husband is when it comes to fixing or building, he seems to be lost when it comes to things that are second nature to me. He tries to handle his share of the housework but…he’s not very good at it. And for the life of me, I haven’t been able to figure out in 27 years of marriage whether his household chore-related incompetence is real or contrived. He must feel the same way about me. “You couldn’t possibly be that stupid!” I don’t know whether I’d rather that he thinks I’m stupid, or that he thinks I’m pretending stupidity to get out of fixing something. It’s a no-win situation for both of us. When I see my husband head for the laundry room with a basket full of dirty clothes, some of which are mine, I make an excuse to help him sort the clothes. Sorting is apparently an alien concept to his mind. He can usually get the whites right, but a white shirt with colored stripes does tend to confound him. The categories for colored and dark clothing are something he is simply incapable of understanding. While he flings clothes indiscriminately into random piles, I’ll be bending over tossing them into the correct piles. He’ll hold up something and say “Is this a light color or a dark color?” Without looking up from my task, I’ll ask, “What color is it?” “Red.” “Well, is it a dark red or a light red?” You can see the challenges he has to face, the poor dear. It also has apparently never occurred to him what happens to the outside of a laundry detergent jug when you don’t rinse out the measuring cup/cap before putting it back on top of the jug. So even though I’m the one who rinses the cap out, he gets the benefit of a goo-free laundry experience and I get his detergent backwash all over my hands. It is second nature for me to clean out the lint trap between loads; a difficult thing to do with detergent on my hands. Although he has learned (finally) to clean it out due to the many times he still had wet clothes after a drying cycle, he still tends to collect the lint balls on top of my dryer instead of tossing them in the trash can less than a foot from his body. The lint balls combine with the goo from the backwashed laundry detergent to make my dryer look like a giant, dead Chia Pet. Maybe he’s got a latent desire to create abstract art while he’s doing the laundry. That’s an obscure talent to be sure. 9/15/2008 Until Death Do You Part I came of age in a time when “free love” was just starting to look like the fraud it was and just before a promise of love became something more like a threat. We understood that if you love someone, you have to set them free. If they came back, they are yours. If not, it was never meant to be. This simple adage bridged the gap between the free-lovers who “loved the one they were with” even if you were “with” someone different every four hours, and the couples who took a vow of marriage with an aside that, by God, their new spouse had better be faithful. At some point that adage became distorted by a fear of abandonment. It became less important for your lover to love you and more important that he/she stick around even if they didn’t love you…or else. The adage was changed to: If you love something, let it leave the house occasionally. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, hunt it down and threaten its life. The news is full of stories about people who, at one time, took a vow of eternal love and commitment, and then, a few years later, decided to permanently dispose of their spouse using various nefarious means. I can understand a couple who falls out of love. That is acceptable. But when you feel the urge to do mortal harm to one another, it’s time to think about whether the marriage was meant to be. There are a myriad of reasons why marriages fall apart. Most of them fall into the “irreconcilable differences” category that invariably shows up on most divorce papers. Whether your differences are irreconcilable or not is all relative, I think. Citing the sense of entitlement that some of the younger generations have, it’s all about a couple’s threshold of tolerance. But I would say that if your thoughts are murderous, your differences are way beyond reconciling. Don’t let some mediator or church official talk you into staying with someone whom you believe the world would be better off without. Remember that this may very well be your exclusive opinion. Divorce is hard, I’ve heard, but so is 30 years to life. It was simply not meant to be. My husband and I have been happily married for 27 years. I’ll readily admit to times of frustration, unkind thoughts, and an occasional wish to be single. I’ve gotten so mad during hormonal surges that appliances became airborne before crashing into walls. I want to add here that the airborne appliances were never aimed at my husband and if I had aimed at him, I wouldn’t have missed. We’ve had many arguments over issues that are now in the “agree to disagree” column on our marital ledger. But I’ve never once dreamed of hacking up his body and hiding it in my freezer. I’ve never once had the urge to put him permanently out of my life and everyone else’s. We have a true respect for each other as human beings, not simply as the other half of our marriage. Our marriage is a life separate from our own. One we have to feed and nurture if we want it to grow and stay healthy. If we can’t work out a problem, we put it aside and move on. There is no sense in dwelling on a divisive issue unless your motive is, in fact, to divide. If your intention is to be there for each other forever, then your only options are to earmark the issues that cause friction and either solve them in a way that is satisfactory to both partners or flush the issue. If these issues cause more than mere friction and your thoughts are leading to a dark place in the basement of your soul, then flush the marriage before anyone gets hurt. This advice is coming from a couple who has had some success where the longevity of a happy marriage is concerned. I’m not a marriage counselor or a psychiatrist, but I can tell you for certain that if you can no longer live with the part of your marriage vows that say “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”, and if “until death do you part” starts sounding like an escape clause, then you need to move on because… it was never meant to be. 9/01/2008 In My Dreams I never realized how much your “real” life can affect your dreams. Last night I had a dream that was straight out of a nightmare. I must have been particularly stressed this week to have allowed these events to creep into my subconscious in such a bizarre way. Let me tell you my week’s worth of stresses. Just typical stuff, really. First, we have been preparing for the first day of school, meeting teachers, filling out forms and buying supplies. Second, I sent a new cell phone by UPS to my son who goes to college five hours away. The package was somehow lost and now we have to get him another phone and go through the hassles of an insurance claim with UPS. Always fun. Third, I have been practicing a monologue for a speech I’m to give at the end of this month. The monologue is Mrs. Gilhooey’s Bungaloo. She is an old Scottish cook who inherits a bungalow when her employer dies. She found twelve bottles of champagne in the cellar and, because of Prohibition, she decides to “turn them oopside doon into the sink and empty all of the contints, all excipt a small woine glass full…which Oi drank.” By the last of the twelve bottles, she is happily smashed and trying to count the bottles as they “revolve ‘round me loike the meery-go-round at Cooney Island.” Lastly, though not a stress, but still obviously on my mind, my mother called to tell me that she got a hole-in-one while out golfing yesterday. While I know next to nothing about golf, I do know that a hole-in-one is nearly impossible; more so for a well-over-par golfer with a high handicap like my mother. I can’t help but wonder what cosmic event happened that made that little white ball decide to enter that little hole on her very first shot. These four episodes collided with each other in my dreams and made for a very interesting night. It started in a dollar store. My mom and I were sauntering around a dollar store. I was buying school supplies and my mom was sporting a nine iron. Not because that’s the club she used to get her hole-in-one, but because that’s the only club of which I know the name. Mrs. Gilhooey came in, three sheets to the wind, and asked my mother “How mooch diz this cell phone cost?” My mother answered, “I don’t know, but this wide-ruled paper has three holes-in-one.” “One dollar,” I said sarcastically. They both looked at me loike I wiz out of me moind. “Hey, this is my dream, stop narrating in Scottish! And, by the way, we’re in a dollar store! Everything is a dollar!” A little miffed and more than a little schnockered, Mrs. Gilhooey said, “Now, Oi moight not have it a-right, boot Oi say thet three holes-in-one would bring more then one dollar.” “Yeah! What she said!” yelled my mom, brandishing her nine iron. My son somehow came to my rescue by suddenly appearing in the stationery aisle between me and my elderly assailants. He said “Yes, but cell phones only cost a dollar if you buy a two-year contract with it. Oh, but wait…you lost my cell phone, right mom?” “I didn’t lose it, UPS did. Say, aren’t these protractors spiffy? I’ll take three of them.” “That’s par for the course,” my mom said, taking a hit of Mrs. Gilhooey’s champagne. “What’s par?” I asked. “Three,” said mom. “You sid it wiz the woide ruled paper,” slurred Mrs. Gilhooey. “That’s holes,” I explained. “No, that’s what grandma had – in one,” interrupted my son. “Hold on, I’ll call dad to find out for sure. No wait…you lost my cell phone,” he said, pointedly. “Like your dad would know,” I said. I heard ringing. “There it is. The cell phone is still in the package on someone else’s porch. Quick, look for it while it’s still ringing!” “Noo, noo, me frind. The ringin’ is all in me head. Oi’m afraid oi’m a bit stinky, ye know. Oi mane, Oi’m tinklin’, noo, noo, Oi’m tipsy, that’s what Oi am. “It’s the school bell ringing, Laura,” my mom said. “Hurry the children will be late for school!” Actually, it was my alarm clock set for an ungodly hour so that I can get used to school hours again. I could have lay down and gone back to sleep, but…it was a little too crowded in my dreams right now. 8/28/2008 Strangers In My House There are three strangers wandering around my house. I’ve never seen them, but I know they are here. Now, before you call the guys with the strait jackets, you ought to know that although I might not be considered sane even on a good day, this is not one of those things that is all in my head. I know they are here because they leave lots of clues; almost as if they want me to know they are here. Maybe they are ghosts, or elves, or malevolent little pixies. I even know their names because, apparently my kids know them and have called them by name: Nott Mee – an oriental madman. Ida Know – a sneaky thief and promoter of anarchy. Ididint Dooit – a mastermind of catastrophic events. If I could just catch one of these miscreants, I would call the police and have them all hung by their little toes. These elves, or ghosts or whatever they are, are ruining my home and making it look like my children are doing it. Despicable! A classic bad-guy-sets-up-the-innocent ruse. Of course, my children are little angels. This morning, I asked them who was experimenting with the blender and pancake mix and left a trail of gooey stuff all the way to the bathroom. “Ididnt Dooit,” said one of my angels. I knew it! But just to be sure, I asked another one. “Who decided to fling the mix around the stove and counters so that it would harden into little, yellow, cement puddles and make it virtually impossible to remove?” “Nott Mee,” she said. Aha! Ididint Dooit had an accomplice who was apparently thoroughly trained in the art of mess-making. I mean, he is good! The mess he made was such that one would need a sandblaster to rectify the situation. These evil doers will not go unpunished, but I have to catch them first. Until that time comes, I have taken to putting out notes just to let them know I’m on to them. In the bathroom I left a note that said: “Dear Ida Know, please be more careful when brushing your teeth. It’s very difficult to see around the globs of toothpaste that you have smeared on the mirror. (Although, I have to say your toothpaste illustration of Calvin urinating on a Math book is very good.)” In the laundry room: “Dear Ididint Dooit, Your clothes are, of course, exceptional, but as far as I know, they do not have the ability to transport themselves to their respective drawers. Please assist them.” In the kitchen: “Dear Nott Mee, Chocolate pudding is to be eaten at the table. If you feel the need to eat off the floor please inform me of your decision, or you will be required to buy me a new pair of socks.” “Dear Ida Know, Although it shows a certain creativity, please refrain from lining up the kitchen chairs like a choo-choo train. Are you also the one who keeps stacking up the couch cushions? Or is that Ididint Dooit? If so, please speak with him about it.” “Dear malevolent pixie-ghosts, The next one of you cretins who uses four kitchen towels to mop up a Koolaid spill, leaves them in the sink, and tries to cover up the evidence with leftover ravioli, carrot peels, and the dregs of your Ramen noodle cup, will be drawn and quartered!” Ideally, I’d like to catch one of these villains and duct tape them to the wall, but something tells me that’s never going to happen. They’re just too good. 8/21/2008 A Case For Women Drivers Finally, a study has been done that proves what women all over the world have known since the dawn of automobiles. Men, on the average, are much worse drivers than women. I am, of course, a woman so I am slightly biased on this issue, but let’s face it, it’s true. However, it is obvious that most men think they drive better than anyone (just ask them) and they have made it their sacred duty to correct the driving habits of everyone else on the road. This is done by using various dubious methods that are annoying at best and, at worst, dangerous. For example, to encourage a slow poke to drive faster, our most inferior drivers will tailgate so close to the car in front of them that if the slow poke was to slow down further because of say, a goat crossing the road, the tailgater would then be dining on tailpipe and occupying the slowpoke’s trunk space until the paramedics could pry him out. Of course, no matter what his insurance company says, it would be the slowpoke’s fault for slamming on his brakes when it was plain to see that someone was so close behind him. The slowpoke may be in the category of inferior drivers as well. The only way to snap these guys out of their daydreams of being Jessica Simpson’s bodyguard (dream on) is to pass them. But, when you are parallel to their car, assuming there is no goat, they speed up until you have to go 80 MPH to get around them and then they call you a maniac. Then there are those guys who never actually grip the steering wheel. They simply rest their hands on it as if the car can drive itself and the driver is simply there for moral support. I remember my dad teaching me how to drive. He told me to “palm the wheel” when I was turning. This was in the days when power steering was not so wide spread. My mom had to use all of her strength to turn the wheel and as a result, she often looked like she was giving our old Buick CPR. My dad thought she looked silly and wanted to teach me the “right way.” I just didn’t want to give any car I was driving that much freedom. I learned the hard way that if you give a jalopy an inch, it’s going to get you into an accident. So I hold on to the wheel. I was driving my family home from a weekend trip to the beach. It was a three-hour drive. My husband had hurt his gas pedal leg, so he wasn’t able to sit in the driver’s seat, but that didn’t stop him from telling me how to drive. There was a particularly trying section of the trip where I was following a car that was going about ten miles under the speed limit. It drove my husband nuts to be behind this guy, but what really put him over the edge is that I was not in any hurry to pass him. Every time he thought it was clear, he’d say “Punch it!” I’ve learned to ignore these helpful hints and instead simply obeyed the traffic rules: Those insignificant little things like Do Not Pass signs, solid yellow lines, and the rule that says “never pass a car when there is oncoming traffic, no matter what your passenger says.” I never read that in a driving manual, but it was clearly implied. As far as I was concerned the guy wasn’t going so slow that I needed to put unnecessary stress on me or the engine. I’d just wait for the right moment. Finally, the driver ahead of us flipped on his right turn signal and slowed down as if to turn into a driveway. I started to pass him on the left and then he apparently decided that it was the wrong driveway. He sped up. I got a good look. Yes, it was a man. By now, a car had come up over the hill and I, being in the left lane, trying to pass an idiot, was in imminent danger of a head-on collision. I was forced to “Punch it!” He probably thought I was a maniac. My husband certainly did. After the danger had passed, he laughed at me. “You had all those chances to pass him and you decided to punch it when he was going to turn anyway.” I told him I only had two options after the other driver forgot where his driveway was: “I could have sped up and followed through on my action, which is what I did. Or I could have slammed on my brakes, swung in behind the undecided driver, honked like a lunatic, and flipped him the bird… which is what you would’ve have done.” Simply more proof that women drivers have evolved. 8/18/2008 Grandma Gets a Bad Rap My mother recently became a great-grandmother. Just to be clear, this status did not come about because of anything my children did; I’m not a grandma yet. But for my mother, her change of status is something to celebrate, and not just because there is a beautiful new baby to spoil. The other reason to celebrate is because she is no longer just a grandma. The word “grandma” carries a silly stigma these days. “Grandma” is the subject of many jokes, but when you add “Great” to grandma, it gives this dearly-loved matriarch a bit more dignity. How many times have you heard a joke about “grandma?” There are jokes about her bad eyesight, her dentures, and the fact that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s puttering along to BINGO. It’s so stereotypical. She doesn’t deserve all this bad press. In fact, my mom hasn’t gone to BINGO in at least three months. It’s true that she can’t see as well as she used to and her remaining teeth are barely hanging in there, but is that anything to joke about? Grandmas get a really bad rap. What about all those wonderful cookies grandmas bake. Wait a minute, that’s probably stereotypical, too. My mom baked once a year at Christmas time and hated every minute of it even after she became a grandma twenty-five years ago. I am secretly a little jealous of her great-grandma status, though. She gets to do things that us mere moms cannot. For example, she gets to wear white pants whenever she wants to. Do you know why grandmas wear white pants? Because they can! I haven’t been able to wear white pants since my first child started eating solids. If I did wear them, by now they’d look like something out of a psychedelic nightmare. Another thing I’m envious of is the fact that my mom can ignore the knowledge of any new technological wonder and get away with it because of her age. My utter bewilderment about anything with a circuit board and buttons is regarded with distain by members of the Technologically Informed, of which my husband is a charter member. My mother can suggest using squirrels on a hamster wheel for an alternative energy source and she would merely get an indulgent smile. Hey, the Flintstones made it work, didn’t they? You want a new mass transit system that runs on something besides fossil fuels? Just built a monorail with a giant wheel and throw a couple hundred squirrels in there. They’re not doing anything but digging holes in our yards and frolicking on high tension wires anyway. Let’s make them contribute to society! Okay, so that was my idea. But I didn’t get an indulgent smile when I suggested it. A got a look that said, “We’re going to have to start looking for long-term care for you, aren’t we?” My mom recently had a problem with her TV. It would randomly switch channels all by itself. She’d be watching a documentary on the migration pattern of the Sooty Albatross and it would switch to The Price Is Right. I was there once when it happened. She didn’t seem to notice until I mentioned it, though. Ah, grandma-hood! She said she didn’t know what caused it, but I decided not to mention it to my husband just in case the solution was something I was supposed to know. A week later, she told me that her neighbor said she had the same problem. When my mom called the cable company, it was discovered that their remotes were on the same frequency and that they had been switching each other’s channels for a month and a half. When the cable guys finally came to fix the problem, she had just finished working out a TV viewing schedule with her neighbor and was a little miffed that they showed up so soon. She was enjoying getting to know her neighbor better. Her neighbor was clearly a grandma, too. 8/15/2008 Chick Flicks & Other Horrors My husband is like any other man with a lick of testosterone. He would rather see a movie with violent explosions or be scared out of his pants by some horror flick than be subjected to a romance or a musical. But he is different in some ways, too. He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it. Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him. No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche. My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace. My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together. Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go. It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way. His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment. We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome. I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet. When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn. When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts. No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought. Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car. 8/12/2008 Photographic Memories Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
As for building things, I can’t even build a two-layer birthday cake, much less a two-story addition. In fact, a two-story birdhouse would probably be beyond my capabilities. If my husband told me where to put the nail, I could probably make that hammer sing, though, admittedly, those first few swings would be kind of dicey because my fingers would still be in danger of painful consequence if I missed.
I’m not so incompetent in emergency situations, however. If my husband was not around, I could fix a leaky pipe with bubblegum and duct tape. It wouldn’t be a sexy fix, but it’d hold until he came home.
As capable as my husband is when it comes to fixing or building, he seems to be lost when it comes to things that are second nature to me. He tries to handle his share of the housework but…he’s not very good at it. And for the life of me, I haven’t been able to figure out in 27 years of marriage whether his household chore-related incompetence is real or contrived. He must feel the same way about me.
“You couldn’t possibly be that stupid!”
I don’t know whether I’d rather that he thinks I’m stupid, or that he thinks I’m pretending stupidity to get out of fixing something. It’s a no-win situation for both of us.
When I see my husband head for the laundry room with a basket full of dirty clothes, some of which are mine, I make an excuse to help him sort the clothes.
Sorting is apparently an alien concept to his mind. He can usually get the whites right, but a white shirt with colored stripes does tend to confound him. The categories for colored and dark clothing are something he is simply incapable of understanding.
While he flings clothes indiscriminately into random piles, I’ll be bending over tossing them into the correct piles.
He’ll hold up something and say “Is this a light color or a dark color?”
Without looking up from my task, I’ll ask, “What color is it?”
“Red.”
“Well, is it a dark red or a light red?”
You can see the challenges he has to face, the poor dear.
It also has apparently never occurred to him what happens to the outside of a laundry detergent jug when you don’t rinse out the measuring cup/cap before putting it back on top of the jug. So even though I’m the one who rinses the cap out, he gets the benefit of a goo-free laundry experience and I get his detergent backwash all over my hands.
It is second nature for me to clean out the lint trap between loads; a difficult thing to do with detergent on my hands. Although he has learned (finally) to clean it out due to the many times he still had wet clothes after a drying cycle, he still tends to collect the lint balls on top of my dryer instead of tossing them in the trash can less than a foot from his body.
The lint balls combine with the goo from the backwashed laundry detergent to make my dryer look like a giant, dead Chia Pet. Maybe he’s got a latent desire to create abstract art while he’s doing the laundry. That’s an obscure talent to be sure.
9/15/2008
Until Death Do You Part
I came of age in a time when “free love” was just starting to look like the fraud it was and just before a promise of love became something more like a threat. We understood that if you love someone, you have to set them free. If they came back, they are yours. If not, it was never meant to be. This simple adage bridged the gap between the free-lovers who “loved the one they were with” even if you were “with” someone different every four hours, and the couples who took a vow of marriage with an aside that, by God, their new spouse had better be faithful. At some point that adage became distorted by a fear of abandonment. It became less important for your lover to love you and more important that he/she stick around even if they didn’t love you…or else. The adage was changed to: If you love something, let it leave the house occasionally. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, hunt it down and threaten its life. The news is full of stories about people who, at one time, took a vow of eternal love and commitment, and then, a few years later, decided to permanently dispose of their spouse using various nefarious means. I can understand a couple who falls out of love. That is acceptable. But when you feel the urge to do mortal harm to one another, it’s time to think about whether the marriage was meant to be. There are a myriad of reasons why marriages fall apart. Most of them fall into the “irreconcilable differences” category that invariably shows up on most divorce papers. Whether your differences are irreconcilable or not is all relative, I think. Citing the sense of entitlement that some of the younger generations have, it’s all about a couple’s threshold of tolerance. But I would say that if your thoughts are murderous, your differences are way beyond reconciling. Don’t let some mediator or church official talk you into staying with someone whom you believe the world would be better off without. Remember that this may very well be your exclusive opinion. Divorce is hard, I’ve heard, but so is 30 years to life. It was simply not meant to be. My husband and I have been happily married for 27 years. I’ll readily admit to times of frustration, unkind thoughts, and an occasional wish to be single. I’ve gotten so mad during hormonal surges that appliances became airborne before crashing into walls. I want to add here that the airborne appliances were never aimed at my husband and if I had aimed at him, I wouldn’t have missed. We’ve had many arguments over issues that are now in the “agree to disagree” column on our marital ledger. But I’ve never once dreamed of hacking up his body and hiding it in my freezer. I’ve never once had the urge to put him permanently out of my life and everyone else’s. We have a true respect for each other as human beings, not simply as the other half of our marriage. Our marriage is a life separate from our own. One we have to feed and nurture if we want it to grow and stay healthy. If we can’t work out a problem, we put it aside and move on. There is no sense in dwelling on a divisive issue unless your motive is, in fact, to divide. If your intention is to be there for each other forever, then your only options are to earmark the issues that cause friction and either solve them in a way that is satisfactory to both partners or flush the issue. If these issues cause more than mere friction and your thoughts are leading to a dark place in the basement of your soul, then flush the marriage before anyone gets hurt. This advice is coming from a couple who has had some success where the longevity of a happy marriage is concerned. I’m not a marriage counselor or a psychiatrist, but I can tell you for certain that if you can no longer live with the part of your marriage vows that say “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”, and if “until death do you part” starts sounding like an escape clause, then you need to move on because… it was never meant to be. 9/01/2008 In My Dreams I never realized how much your “real” life can affect your dreams. Last night I had a dream that was straight out of a nightmare. I must have been particularly stressed this week to have allowed these events to creep into my subconscious in such a bizarre way. Let me tell you my week’s worth of stresses. Just typical stuff, really. First, we have been preparing for the first day of school, meeting teachers, filling out forms and buying supplies. Second, I sent a new cell phone by UPS to my son who goes to college five hours away. The package was somehow lost and now we have to get him another phone and go through the hassles of an insurance claim with UPS. Always fun. Third, I have been practicing a monologue for a speech I’m to give at the end of this month. The monologue is Mrs. Gilhooey’s Bungaloo. She is an old Scottish cook who inherits a bungalow when her employer dies. She found twelve bottles of champagne in the cellar and, because of Prohibition, she decides to “turn them oopside doon into the sink and empty all of the contints, all excipt a small woine glass full…which Oi drank.” By the last of the twelve bottles, she is happily smashed and trying to count the bottles as they “revolve ‘round me loike the meery-go-round at Cooney Island.” Lastly, though not a stress, but still obviously on my mind, my mother called to tell me that she got a hole-in-one while out golfing yesterday. While I know next to nothing about golf, I do know that a hole-in-one is nearly impossible; more so for a well-over-par golfer with a high handicap like my mother. I can’t help but wonder what cosmic event happened that made that little white ball decide to enter that little hole on her very first shot. These four episodes collided with each other in my dreams and made for a very interesting night. It started in a dollar store. My mom and I were sauntering around a dollar store. I was buying school supplies and my mom was sporting a nine iron. Not because that’s the club she used to get her hole-in-one, but because that’s the only club of which I know the name. Mrs. Gilhooey came in, three sheets to the wind, and asked my mother “How mooch diz this cell phone cost?” My mother answered, “I don’t know, but this wide-ruled paper has three holes-in-one.” “One dollar,” I said sarcastically. They both looked at me loike I wiz out of me moind. “Hey, this is my dream, stop narrating in Scottish! And, by the way, we’re in a dollar store! Everything is a dollar!” A little miffed and more than a little schnockered, Mrs. Gilhooey said, “Now, Oi moight not have it a-right, boot Oi say thet three holes-in-one would bring more then one dollar.” “Yeah! What she said!” yelled my mom, brandishing her nine iron. My son somehow came to my rescue by suddenly appearing in the stationery aisle between me and my elderly assailants. He said “Yes, but cell phones only cost a dollar if you buy a two-year contract with it. Oh, but wait…you lost my cell phone, right mom?” “I didn’t lose it, UPS did. Say, aren’t these protractors spiffy? I’ll take three of them.” “That’s par for the course,” my mom said, taking a hit of Mrs. Gilhooey’s champagne. “What’s par?” I asked. “Three,” said mom. “You sid it wiz the woide ruled paper,” slurred Mrs. Gilhooey. “That’s holes,” I explained. “No, that’s what grandma had – in one,” interrupted my son. “Hold on, I’ll call dad to find out for sure. No wait…you lost my cell phone,” he said, pointedly. “Like your dad would know,” I said. I heard ringing. “There it is. The cell phone is still in the package on someone else’s porch. Quick, look for it while it’s still ringing!” “Noo, noo, me frind. The ringin’ is all in me head. Oi’m afraid oi’m a bit stinky, ye know. Oi mane, Oi’m tinklin’, noo, noo, Oi’m tipsy, that’s what Oi am. “It’s the school bell ringing, Laura,” my mom said. “Hurry the children will be late for school!” Actually, it was my alarm clock set for an ungodly hour so that I can get used to school hours again. I could have lay down and gone back to sleep, but…it was a little too crowded in my dreams right now. 8/28/2008 Strangers In My House There are three strangers wandering around my house. I’ve never seen them, but I know they are here. Now, before you call the guys with the strait jackets, you ought to know that although I might not be considered sane even on a good day, this is not one of those things that is all in my head. I know they are here because they leave lots of clues; almost as if they want me to know they are here. Maybe they are ghosts, or elves, or malevolent little pixies. I even know their names because, apparently my kids know them and have called them by name: Nott Mee – an oriental madman. Ida Know – a sneaky thief and promoter of anarchy. Ididint Dooit – a mastermind of catastrophic events. If I could just catch one of these miscreants, I would call the police and have them all hung by their little toes. These elves, or ghosts or whatever they are, are ruining my home and making it look like my children are doing it. Despicable! A classic bad-guy-sets-up-the-innocent ruse. Of course, my children are little angels. This morning, I asked them who was experimenting with the blender and pancake mix and left a trail of gooey stuff all the way to the bathroom. “Ididnt Dooit,” said one of my angels. I knew it! But just to be sure, I asked another one. “Who decided to fling the mix around the stove and counters so that it would harden into little, yellow, cement puddles and make it virtually impossible to remove?” “Nott Mee,” she said. Aha! Ididint Dooit had an accomplice who was apparently thoroughly trained in the art of mess-making. I mean, he is good! The mess he made was such that one would need a sandblaster to rectify the situation. These evil doers will not go unpunished, but I have to catch them first. Until that time comes, I have taken to putting out notes just to let them know I’m on to them. In the bathroom I left a note that said: “Dear Ida Know, please be more careful when brushing your teeth. It’s very difficult to see around the globs of toothpaste that you have smeared on the mirror. (Although, I have to say your toothpaste illustration of Calvin urinating on a Math book is very good.)” In the laundry room: “Dear Ididint Dooit, Your clothes are, of course, exceptional, but as far as I know, they do not have the ability to transport themselves to their respective drawers. Please assist them.” In the kitchen: “Dear Nott Mee, Chocolate pudding is to be eaten at the table. If you feel the need to eat off the floor please inform me of your decision, or you will be required to buy me a new pair of socks.” “Dear Ida Know, Although it shows a certain creativity, please refrain from lining up the kitchen chairs like a choo-choo train. Are you also the one who keeps stacking up the couch cushions? Or is that Ididint Dooit? If so, please speak with him about it.” “Dear malevolent pixie-ghosts, The next one of you cretins who uses four kitchen towels to mop up a Koolaid spill, leaves them in the sink, and tries to cover up the evidence with leftover ravioli, carrot peels, and the dregs of your Ramen noodle cup, will be drawn and quartered!” Ideally, I’d like to catch one of these villains and duct tape them to the wall, but something tells me that’s never going to happen. They’re just too good. 8/21/2008 A Case For Women Drivers Finally, a study has been done that proves what women all over the world have known since the dawn of automobiles. Men, on the average, are much worse drivers than women. I am, of course, a woman so I am slightly biased on this issue, but let’s face it, it’s true. However, it is obvious that most men think they drive better than anyone (just ask them) and they have made it their sacred duty to correct the driving habits of everyone else on the road. This is done by using various dubious methods that are annoying at best and, at worst, dangerous. For example, to encourage a slow poke to drive faster, our most inferior drivers will tailgate so close to the car in front of them that if the slow poke was to slow down further because of say, a goat crossing the road, the tailgater would then be dining on tailpipe and occupying the slowpoke’s trunk space until the paramedics could pry him out. Of course, no matter what his insurance company says, it would be the slowpoke’s fault for slamming on his brakes when it was plain to see that someone was so close behind him. The slowpoke may be in the category of inferior drivers as well. The only way to snap these guys out of their daydreams of being Jessica Simpson’s bodyguard (dream on) is to pass them. But, when you are parallel to their car, assuming there is no goat, they speed up until you have to go 80 MPH to get around them and then they call you a maniac. Then there are those guys who never actually grip the steering wheel. They simply rest their hands on it as if the car can drive itself and the driver is simply there for moral support. I remember my dad teaching me how to drive. He told me to “palm the wheel” when I was turning. This was in the days when power steering was not so wide spread. My mom had to use all of her strength to turn the wheel and as a result, she often looked like she was giving our old Buick CPR. My dad thought she looked silly and wanted to teach me the “right way.” I just didn’t want to give any car I was driving that much freedom. I learned the hard way that if you give a jalopy an inch, it’s going to get you into an accident. So I hold on to the wheel. I was driving my family home from a weekend trip to the beach. It was a three-hour drive. My husband had hurt his gas pedal leg, so he wasn’t able to sit in the driver’s seat, but that didn’t stop him from telling me how to drive. There was a particularly trying section of the trip where I was following a car that was going about ten miles under the speed limit. It drove my husband nuts to be behind this guy, but what really put him over the edge is that I was not in any hurry to pass him. Every time he thought it was clear, he’d say “Punch it!” I’ve learned to ignore these helpful hints and instead simply obeyed the traffic rules: Those insignificant little things like Do Not Pass signs, solid yellow lines, and the rule that says “never pass a car when there is oncoming traffic, no matter what your passenger says.” I never read that in a driving manual, but it was clearly implied. As far as I was concerned the guy wasn’t going so slow that I needed to put unnecessary stress on me or the engine. I’d just wait for the right moment. Finally, the driver ahead of us flipped on his right turn signal and slowed down as if to turn into a driveway. I started to pass him on the left and then he apparently decided that it was the wrong driveway. He sped up. I got a good look. Yes, it was a man. By now, a car had come up over the hill and I, being in the left lane, trying to pass an idiot, was in imminent danger of a head-on collision. I was forced to “Punch it!” He probably thought I was a maniac. My husband certainly did. After the danger had passed, he laughed at me. “You had all those chances to pass him and you decided to punch it when he was going to turn anyway.” I told him I only had two options after the other driver forgot where his driveway was: “I could have sped up and followed through on my action, which is what I did. Or I could have slammed on my brakes, swung in behind the undecided driver, honked like a lunatic, and flipped him the bird… which is what you would’ve have done.” Simply more proof that women drivers have evolved. 8/18/2008 Grandma Gets a Bad Rap My mother recently became a great-grandmother. Just to be clear, this status did not come about because of anything my children did; I’m not a grandma yet. But for my mother, her change of status is something to celebrate, and not just because there is a beautiful new baby to spoil. The other reason to celebrate is because she is no longer just a grandma. The word “grandma” carries a silly stigma these days. “Grandma” is the subject of many jokes, but when you add “Great” to grandma, it gives this dearly-loved matriarch a bit more dignity. How many times have you heard a joke about “grandma?” There are jokes about her bad eyesight, her dentures, and the fact that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s puttering along to BINGO. It’s so stereotypical. She doesn’t deserve all this bad press. In fact, my mom hasn’t gone to BINGO in at least three months. It’s true that she can’t see as well as she used to and her remaining teeth are barely hanging in there, but is that anything to joke about? Grandmas get a really bad rap. What about all those wonderful cookies grandmas bake. Wait a minute, that’s probably stereotypical, too. My mom baked once a year at Christmas time and hated every minute of it even after she became a grandma twenty-five years ago. I am secretly a little jealous of her great-grandma status, though. She gets to do things that us mere moms cannot. For example, she gets to wear white pants whenever she wants to. Do you know why grandmas wear white pants? Because they can! I haven’t been able to wear white pants since my first child started eating solids. If I did wear them, by now they’d look like something out of a psychedelic nightmare. Another thing I’m envious of is the fact that my mom can ignore the knowledge of any new technological wonder and get away with it because of her age. My utter bewilderment about anything with a circuit board and buttons is regarded with distain by members of the Technologically Informed, of which my husband is a charter member. My mother can suggest using squirrels on a hamster wheel for an alternative energy source and she would merely get an indulgent smile. Hey, the Flintstones made it work, didn’t they? You want a new mass transit system that runs on something besides fossil fuels? Just built a monorail with a giant wheel and throw a couple hundred squirrels in there. They’re not doing anything but digging holes in our yards and frolicking on high tension wires anyway. Let’s make them contribute to society! Okay, so that was my idea. But I didn’t get an indulgent smile when I suggested it. A got a look that said, “We’re going to have to start looking for long-term care for you, aren’t we?” My mom recently had a problem with her TV. It would randomly switch channels all by itself. She’d be watching a documentary on the migration pattern of the Sooty Albatross and it would switch to The Price Is Right. I was there once when it happened. She didn’t seem to notice until I mentioned it, though. Ah, grandma-hood! She said she didn’t know what caused it, but I decided not to mention it to my husband just in case the solution was something I was supposed to know. A week later, she told me that her neighbor said she had the same problem. When my mom called the cable company, it was discovered that their remotes were on the same frequency and that they had been switching each other’s channels for a month and a half. When the cable guys finally came to fix the problem, she had just finished working out a TV viewing schedule with her neighbor and was a little miffed that they showed up so soon. She was enjoying getting to know her neighbor better. Her neighbor was clearly a grandma, too. 8/15/2008 Chick Flicks & Other Horrors My husband is like any other man with a lick of testosterone. He would rather see a movie with violent explosions or be scared out of his pants by some horror flick than be subjected to a romance or a musical. But he is different in some ways, too. He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it. Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him. No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche. My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace. My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together. Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go. It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way. His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment. We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome. I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet. When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn. When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts. No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought. Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car. 8/12/2008 Photographic Memories Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
We understood that if you love someone, you have to set them free. If they came back, they are yours. If not, it was never meant to be. This simple adage bridged the gap between the free-lovers who “loved the one they were with” even if you were “with” someone different every four hours, and the couples who took a vow of marriage with an aside that, by God, their new spouse had better be faithful.
At some point that adage became distorted by a fear of abandonment. It became less important for your lover to love you and more important that he/she stick around even if they didn’t love you…or else.
The adage was changed to: If you love something, let it leave the house occasionally. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, hunt it down and threaten its life.
The news is full of stories about people who, at one time, took a vow of eternal love and commitment, and then, a few years later, decided to permanently dispose of their spouse using various nefarious means. I can understand a couple who falls out of love. That is acceptable. But when you feel the urge to do mortal harm to one another, it’s time to think about whether the marriage was meant to be.
There are a myriad of reasons why marriages fall apart. Most of them fall into the “irreconcilable differences” category that invariably shows up on most divorce papers. Whether your differences are irreconcilable or not is all relative, I think. Citing the sense of entitlement that some of the younger generations have, it’s all about a couple’s threshold of tolerance. But I would say that if your thoughts are murderous, your differences are way beyond reconciling.
Don’t let some mediator or church official talk you into staying with someone whom you believe the world would be better off without. Remember that this may very well be your exclusive opinion. Divorce is hard, I’ve heard, but so is 30 years to life. It was simply not meant to be.
My husband and I have been happily married for 27 years. I’ll readily admit to times of frustration, unkind thoughts, and an occasional wish to be single. I’ve gotten so mad during hormonal surges that appliances became airborne before crashing into walls. I want to add here that the airborne appliances were never aimed at my husband and if I had aimed at him, I wouldn’t have missed.
We’ve had many arguments over issues that are now in the “agree to disagree” column on our marital ledger. But I’ve never once dreamed of hacking up his body and hiding it in my freezer. I’ve never once had the urge to put him permanently out of my life and everyone else’s.
We have a true respect for each other as human beings, not simply as the other half of our marriage. Our marriage is a life separate from our own. One we have to feed and nurture if we want it to grow and stay healthy. If we can’t work out a problem, we put it aside and move on. There is no sense in dwelling on a divisive issue unless your motive is, in fact, to divide. If your intention is to be there for each other forever, then your only options are to earmark the issues that cause friction and either solve them in a way that is satisfactory to both partners or flush the issue. If these issues cause more than mere friction and your thoughts are leading to a dark place in the basement of your soul, then flush the marriage before anyone gets hurt.
This advice is coming from a couple who has had some success where the longevity of a happy marriage is concerned. I’m not a marriage counselor or a psychiatrist, but I can tell you for certain that if you can no longer live with the part of your marriage vows that say “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”, and if “until death do you part” starts sounding like an escape clause, then you need to move on because… it was never meant to be.
9/01/2008
In My Dreams
I never realized how much your “real” life can affect your dreams. Last night I had a dream that was straight out of a nightmare. I must have been particularly stressed this week to have allowed these events to creep into my subconscious in such a bizarre way. Let me tell you my week’s worth of stresses. Just typical stuff, really. First, we have been preparing for the first day of school, meeting teachers, filling out forms and buying supplies. Second, I sent a new cell phone by UPS to my son who goes to college five hours away. The package was somehow lost and now we have to get him another phone and go through the hassles of an insurance claim with UPS. Always fun. Third, I have been practicing a monologue for a speech I’m to give at the end of this month. The monologue is Mrs. Gilhooey’s Bungaloo. She is an old Scottish cook who inherits a bungalow when her employer dies. She found twelve bottles of champagne in the cellar and, because of Prohibition, she decides to “turn them oopside doon into the sink and empty all of the contints, all excipt a small woine glass full…which Oi drank.” By the last of the twelve bottles, she is happily smashed and trying to count the bottles as they “revolve ‘round me loike the meery-go-round at Cooney Island.” Lastly, though not a stress, but still obviously on my mind, my mother called to tell me that she got a hole-in-one while out golfing yesterday. While I know next to nothing about golf, I do know that a hole-in-one is nearly impossible; more so for a well-over-par golfer with a high handicap like my mother. I can’t help but wonder what cosmic event happened that made that little white ball decide to enter that little hole on her very first shot. These four episodes collided with each other in my dreams and made for a very interesting night. It started in a dollar store. My mom and I were sauntering around a dollar store. I was buying school supplies and my mom was sporting a nine iron. Not because that’s the club she used to get her hole-in-one, but because that’s the only club of which I know the name. Mrs. Gilhooey came in, three sheets to the wind, and asked my mother “How mooch diz this cell phone cost?” My mother answered, “I don’t know, but this wide-ruled paper has three holes-in-one.” “One dollar,” I said sarcastically. They both looked at me loike I wiz out of me moind. “Hey, this is my dream, stop narrating in Scottish! And, by the way, we’re in a dollar store! Everything is a dollar!” A little miffed and more than a little schnockered, Mrs. Gilhooey said, “Now, Oi moight not have it a-right, boot Oi say thet three holes-in-one would bring more then one dollar.” “Yeah! What she said!” yelled my mom, brandishing her nine iron. My son somehow came to my rescue by suddenly appearing in the stationery aisle between me and my elderly assailants. He said “Yes, but cell phones only cost a dollar if you buy a two-year contract with it. Oh, but wait…you lost my cell phone, right mom?” “I didn’t lose it, UPS did. Say, aren’t these protractors spiffy? I’ll take three of them.” “That’s par for the course,” my mom said, taking a hit of Mrs. Gilhooey’s champagne. “What’s par?” I asked. “Three,” said mom. “You sid it wiz the woide ruled paper,” slurred Mrs. Gilhooey. “That’s holes,” I explained. “No, that’s what grandma had – in one,” interrupted my son. “Hold on, I’ll call dad to find out for sure. No wait…you lost my cell phone,” he said, pointedly. “Like your dad would know,” I said. I heard ringing. “There it is. The cell phone is still in the package on someone else’s porch. Quick, look for it while it’s still ringing!” “Noo, noo, me frind. The ringin’ is all in me head. Oi’m afraid oi’m a bit stinky, ye know. Oi mane, Oi’m tinklin’, noo, noo, Oi’m tipsy, that’s what Oi am. “It’s the school bell ringing, Laura,” my mom said. “Hurry the children will be late for school!” Actually, it was my alarm clock set for an ungodly hour so that I can get used to school hours again. I could have lay down and gone back to sleep, but…it was a little too crowded in my dreams right now. 8/28/2008 Strangers In My House There are three strangers wandering around my house. I’ve never seen them, but I know they are here. Now, before you call the guys with the strait jackets, you ought to know that although I might not be considered sane even on a good day, this is not one of those things that is all in my head. I know they are here because they leave lots of clues; almost as if they want me to know they are here. Maybe they are ghosts, or elves, or malevolent little pixies. I even know their names because, apparently my kids know them and have called them by name: Nott Mee – an oriental madman. Ida Know – a sneaky thief and promoter of anarchy. Ididint Dooit – a mastermind of catastrophic events. If I could just catch one of these miscreants, I would call the police and have them all hung by their little toes. These elves, or ghosts or whatever they are, are ruining my home and making it look like my children are doing it. Despicable! A classic bad-guy-sets-up-the-innocent ruse. Of course, my children are little angels. This morning, I asked them who was experimenting with the blender and pancake mix and left a trail of gooey stuff all the way to the bathroom. “Ididnt Dooit,” said one of my angels. I knew it! But just to be sure, I asked another one. “Who decided to fling the mix around the stove and counters so that it would harden into little, yellow, cement puddles and make it virtually impossible to remove?” “Nott Mee,” she said. Aha! Ididint Dooit had an accomplice who was apparently thoroughly trained in the art of mess-making. I mean, he is good! The mess he made was such that one would need a sandblaster to rectify the situation. These evil doers will not go unpunished, but I have to catch them first. Until that time comes, I have taken to putting out notes just to let them know I’m on to them. In the bathroom I left a note that said: “Dear Ida Know, please be more careful when brushing your teeth. It’s very difficult to see around the globs of toothpaste that you have smeared on the mirror. (Although, I have to say your toothpaste illustration of Calvin urinating on a Math book is very good.)” In the laundry room: “Dear Ididint Dooit, Your clothes are, of course, exceptional, but as far as I know, they do not have the ability to transport themselves to their respective drawers. Please assist them.” In the kitchen: “Dear Nott Mee, Chocolate pudding is to be eaten at the table. If you feel the need to eat off the floor please inform me of your decision, or you will be required to buy me a new pair of socks.” “Dear Ida Know, Although it shows a certain creativity, please refrain from lining up the kitchen chairs like a choo-choo train. Are you also the one who keeps stacking up the couch cushions? Or is that Ididint Dooit? If so, please speak with him about it.” “Dear malevolent pixie-ghosts, The next one of you cretins who uses four kitchen towels to mop up a Koolaid spill, leaves them in the sink, and tries to cover up the evidence with leftover ravioli, carrot peels, and the dregs of your Ramen noodle cup, will be drawn and quartered!” Ideally, I’d like to catch one of these villains and duct tape them to the wall, but something tells me that’s never going to happen. They’re just too good. 8/21/2008 A Case For Women Drivers Finally, a study has been done that proves what women all over the world have known since the dawn of automobiles. Men, on the average, are much worse drivers than women. I am, of course, a woman so I am slightly biased on this issue, but let’s face it, it’s true. However, it is obvious that most men think they drive better than anyone (just ask them) and they have made it their sacred duty to correct the driving habits of everyone else on the road. This is done by using various dubious methods that are annoying at best and, at worst, dangerous. For example, to encourage a slow poke to drive faster, our most inferior drivers will tailgate so close to the car in front of them that if the slow poke was to slow down further because of say, a goat crossing the road, the tailgater would then be dining on tailpipe and occupying the slowpoke’s trunk space until the paramedics could pry him out. Of course, no matter what his insurance company says, it would be the slowpoke’s fault for slamming on his brakes when it was plain to see that someone was so close behind him. The slowpoke may be in the category of inferior drivers as well. The only way to snap these guys out of their daydreams of being Jessica Simpson’s bodyguard (dream on) is to pass them. But, when you are parallel to their car, assuming there is no goat, they speed up until you have to go 80 MPH to get around them and then they call you a maniac. Then there are those guys who never actually grip the steering wheel. They simply rest their hands on it as if the car can drive itself and the driver is simply there for moral support. I remember my dad teaching me how to drive. He told me to “palm the wheel” when I was turning. This was in the days when power steering was not so wide spread. My mom had to use all of her strength to turn the wheel and as a result, she often looked like she was giving our old Buick CPR. My dad thought she looked silly and wanted to teach me the “right way.” I just didn’t want to give any car I was driving that much freedom. I learned the hard way that if you give a jalopy an inch, it’s going to get you into an accident. So I hold on to the wheel. I was driving my family home from a weekend trip to the beach. It was a three-hour drive. My husband had hurt his gas pedal leg, so he wasn’t able to sit in the driver’s seat, but that didn’t stop him from telling me how to drive. There was a particularly trying section of the trip where I was following a car that was going about ten miles under the speed limit. It drove my husband nuts to be behind this guy, but what really put him over the edge is that I was not in any hurry to pass him. Every time he thought it was clear, he’d say “Punch it!” I’ve learned to ignore these helpful hints and instead simply obeyed the traffic rules: Those insignificant little things like Do Not Pass signs, solid yellow lines, and the rule that says “never pass a car when there is oncoming traffic, no matter what your passenger says.” I never read that in a driving manual, but it was clearly implied. As far as I was concerned the guy wasn’t going so slow that I needed to put unnecessary stress on me or the engine. I’d just wait for the right moment. Finally, the driver ahead of us flipped on his right turn signal and slowed down as if to turn into a driveway. I started to pass him on the left and then he apparently decided that it was the wrong driveway. He sped up. I got a good look. Yes, it was a man. By now, a car had come up over the hill and I, being in the left lane, trying to pass an idiot, was in imminent danger of a head-on collision. I was forced to “Punch it!” He probably thought I was a maniac. My husband certainly did. After the danger had passed, he laughed at me. “You had all those chances to pass him and you decided to punch it when he was going to turn anyway.” I told him I only had two options after the other driver forgot where his driveway was: “I could have sped up and followed through on my action, which is what I did. Or I could have slammed on my brakes, swung in behind the undecided driver, honked like a lunatic, and flipped him the bird… which is what you would’ve have done.” Simply more proof that women drivers have evolved. 8/18/2008 Grandma Gets a Bad Rap My mother recently became a great-grandmother. Just to be clear, this status did not come about because of anything my children did; I’m not a grandma yet. But for my mother, her change of status is something to celebrate, and not just because there is a beautiful new baby to spoil. The other reason to celebrate is because she is no longer just a grandma. The word “grandma” carries a silly stigma these days. “Grandma” is the subject of many jokes, but when you add “Great” to grandma, it gives this dearly-loved matriarch a bit more dignity. How many times have you heard a joke about “grandma?” There are jokes about her bad eyesight, her dentures, and the fact that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s puttering along to BINGO. It’s so stereotypical. She doesn’t deserve all this bad press. In fact, my mom hasn’t gone to BINGO in at least three months. It’s true that she can’t see as well as she used to and her remaining teeth are barely hanging in there, but is that anything to joke about? Grandmas get a really bad rap. What about all those wonderful cookies grandmas bake. Wait a minute, that’s probably stereotypical, too. My mom baked once a year at Christmas time and hated every minute of it even after she became a grandma twenty-five years ago. I am secretly a little jealous of her great-grandma status, though. She gets to do things that us mere moms cannot. For example, she gets to wear white pants whenever she wants to. Do you know why grandmas wear white pants? Because they can! I haven’t been able to wear white pants since my first child started eating solids. If I did wear them, by now they’d look like something out of a psychedelic nightmare. Another thing I’m envious of is the fact that my mom can ignore the knowledge of any new technological wonder and get away with it because of her age. My utter bewilderment about anything with a circuit board and buttons is regarded with distain by members of the Technologically Informed, of which my husband is a charter member. My mother can suggest using squirrels on a hamster wheel for an alternative energy source and she would merely get an indulgent smile. Hey, the Flintstones made it work, didn’t they? You want a new mass transit system that runs on something besides fossil fuels? Just built a monorail with a giant wheel and throw a couple hundred squirrels in there. They’re not doing anything but digging holes in our yards and frolicking on high tension wires anyway. Let’s make them contribute to society! Okay, so that was my idea. But I didn’t get an indulgent smile when I suggested it. A got a look that said, “We’re going to have to start looking for long-term care for you, aren’t we?” My mom recently had a problem with her TV. It would randomly switch channels all by itself. She’d be watching a documentary on the migration pattern of the Sooty Albatross and it would switch to The Price Is Right. I was there once when it happened. She didn’t seem to notice until I mentioned it, though. Ah, grandma-hood! She said she didn’t know what caused it, but I decided not to mention it to my husband just in case the solution was something I was supposed to know. A week later, she told me that her neighbor said she had the same problem. When my mom called the cable company, it was discovered that their remotes were on the same frequency and that they had been switching each other’s channels for a month and a half. When the cable guys finally came to fix the problem, she had just finished working out a TV viewing schedule with her neighbor and was a little miffed that they showed up so soon. She was enjoying getting to know her neighbor better. Her neighbor was clearly a grandma, too. 8/15/2008 Chick Flicks & Other Horrors My husband is like any other man with a lick of testosterone. He would rather see a movie with violent explosions or be scared out of his pants by some horror flick than be subjected to a romance or a musical. But he is different in some ways, too. He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it. Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him. No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche. My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace. My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together. Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go. It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way. His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment. We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome. I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet. When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn. When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts. No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought. Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car. 8/12/2008 Photographic Memories Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
Let me tell you my week’s worth of stresses. Just typical stuff, really. First, we have been preparing for the first day of school, meeting teachers, filling out forms and buying supplies.
Second, I sent a new cell phone by UPS to my son who goes to college five hours away. The package was somehow lost and now we have to get him another phone and go through the hassles of an insurance claim with UPS. Always fun.
Third, I have been practicing a monologue for a speech I’m to give at the end of this month. The monologue is Mrs. Gilhooey’s Bungaloo. She is an old Scottish cook who inherits a bungalow when her employer dies. She found twelve bottles of champagne in the cellar and, because of Prohibition, she decides to “turn them oopside doon into the sink and empty all of the contints, all excipt a small woine glass full…which Oi drank.” By the last of the twelve bottles, she is happily smashed and trying to count the bottles as they “revolve ‘round me loike the meery-go-round at Cooney Island.”
Lastly, though not a stress, but still obviously on my mind, my mother called to tell me that she got a hole-in-one while out golfing yesterday. While I know next to nothing about golf, I do know that a hole-in-one is nearly impossible; more so for a well-over-par golfer with a high handicap like my mother. I can’t help but wonder what cosmic event happened that made that little white ball decide to enter that little hole on her very first shot.
These four episodes collided with each other in my dreams and made for a very interesting night.
It started in a dollar store. My mom and I were sauntering around a dollar store. I was buying school supplies and my mom was sporting a nine iron. Not because that’s the club she used to get her hole-in-one, but because that’s the only club of which I know the name.
Mrs. Gilhooey came in, three sheets to the wind, and asked my mother “How mooch diz this cell phone cost?”
My mother answered, “I don’t know, but this wide-ruled paper has three holes-in-one.”
“One dollar,” I said sarcastically. They both looked at me loike I wiz out of me moind. “Hey, this is my dream, stop narrating in Scottish! And, by the way, we’re in a dollar store! Everything is a dollar!”
A little miffed and more than a little schnockered, Mrs. Gilhooey said, “Now, Oi moight not have it a-right, boot Oi say thet three holes-in-one would bring more then one dollar.”
“Yeah! What she said!” yelled my mom, brandishing her nine iron.
My son somehow came to my rescue by suddenly appearing in the stationery aisle between me and my elderly assailants. He said “Yes, but cell phones only cost a dollar if you buy a two-year contract with it. Oh, but wait…you lost my cell phone, right mom?”
“I didn’t lose it, UPS did. Say, aren’t these protractors spiffy? I’ll take three of them.”
“That’s par for the course,” my mom said, taking a hit of Mrs. Gilhooey’s champagne.
“What’s par?” I asked.
“Three,” said mom.
“You sid it wiz the woide ruled paper,” slurred Mrs. Gilhooey.
“That’s holes,” I explained.
“No, that’s what grandma had – in one,” interrupted my son. “Hold on, I’ll call dad to find out for sure. No wait…you lost my cell phone,” he said, pointedly.
“Like your dad would know,” I said.
I heard ringing. “There it is. The cell phone is still in the package on someone else’s porch. Quick, look for it while it’s still ringing!”
“Noo, noo, me frind. The ringin’ is all in me head. Oi’m afraid oi’m a bit stinky, ye know. Oi mane, Oi’m tinklin’, noo, noo, Oi’m tipsy, that’s what Oi am.
“It’s the school bell ringing, Laura,” my mom said. “Hurry the children will be late for school!”
Actually, it was my alarm clock set for an ungodly hour so that I can get used to school hours again. I could have lay down and gone back to sleep, but…it was a little too crowded in my dreams right now.
8/28/2008
Strangers In My House
There are three strangers wandering around my house. I’ve never seen them, but I know they are here. Now, before you call the guys with the strait jackets, you ought to know that although I might not be considered sane even on a good day, this is not one of those things that is all in my head. I know they are here because they leave lots of clues; almost as if they want me to know they are here. Maybe they are ghosts, or elves, or malevolent little pixies. I even know their names because, apparently my kids know them and have called them by name: Nott Mee – an oriental madman. Ida Know – a sneaky thief and promoter of anarchy. Ididint Dooit – a mastermind of catastrophic events. If I could just catch one of these miscreants, I would call the police and have them all hung by their little toes. These elves, or ghosts or whatever they are, are ruining my home and making it look like my children are doing it. Despicable! A classic bad-guy-sets-up-the-innocent ruse. Of course, my children are little angels. This morning, I asked them who was experimenting with the blender and pancake mix and left a trail of gooey stuff all the way to the bathroom. “Ididnt Dooit,” said one of my angels. I knew it! But just to be sure, I asked another one. “Who decided to fling the mix around the stove and counters so that it would harden into little, yellow, cement puddles and make it virtually impossible to remove?” “Nott Mee,” she said. Aha! Ididint Dooit had an accomplice who was apparently thoroughly trained in the art of mess-making. I mean, he is good! The mess he made was such that one would need a sandblaster to rectify the situation. These evil doers will not go unpunished, but I have to catch them first. Until that time comes, I have taken to putting out notes just to let them know I’m on to them. In the bathroom I left a note that said: “Dear Ida Know, please be more careful when brushing your teeth. It’s very difficult to see around the globs of toothpaste that you have smeared on the mirror. (Although, I have to say your toothpaste illustration of Calvin urinating on a Math book is very good.)” In the laundry room: “Dear Ididint Dooit, Your clothes are, of course, exceptional, but as far as I know, they do not have the ability to transport themselves to their respective drawers. Please assist them.” In the kitchen: “Dear Nott Mee, Chocolate pudding is to be eaten at the table. If you feel the need to eat off the floor please inform me of your decision, or you will be required to buy me a new pair of socks.” “Dear Ida Know, Although it shows a certain creativity, please refrain from lining up the kitchen chairs like a choo-choo train. Are you also the one who keeps stacking up the couch cushions? Or is that Ididint Dooit? If so, please speak with him about it.” “Dear malevolent pixie-ghosts, The next one of you cretins who uses four kitchen towels to mop up a Koolaid spill, leaves them in the sink, and tries to cover up the evidence with leftover ravioli, carrot peels, and the dregs of your Ramen noodle cup, will be drawn and quartered!” Ideally, I’d like to catch one of these villains and duct tape them to the wall, but something tells me that’s never going to happen. They’re just too good. 8/21/2008 A Case For Women Drivers Finally, a study has been done that proves what women all over the world have known since the dawn of automobiles. Men, on the average, are much worse drivers than women. I am, of course, a woman so I am slightly biased on this issue, but let’s face it, it’s true. However, it is obvious that most men think they drive better than anyone (just ask them) and they have made it their sacred duty to correct the driving habits of everyone else on the road. This is done by using various dubious methods that are annoying at best and, at worst, dangerous. For example, to encourage a slow poke to drive faster, our most inferior drivers will tailgate so close to the car in front of them that if the slow poke was to slow down further because of say, a goat crossing the road, the tailgater would then be dining on tailpipe and occupying the slowpoke’s trunk space until the paramedics could pry him out. Of course, no matter what his insurance company says, it would be the slowpoke’s fault for slamming on his brakes when it was plain to see that someone was so close behind him. The slowpoke may be in the category of inferior drivers as well. The only way to snap these guys out of their daydreams of being Jessica Simpson’s bodyguard (dream on) is to pass them. But, when you are parallel to their car, assuming there is no goat, they speed up until you have to go 80 MPH to get around them and then they call you a maniac. Then there are those guys who never actually grip the steering wheel. They simply rest their hands on it as if the car can drive itself and the driver is simply there for moral support. I remember my dad teaching me how to drive. He told me to “palm the wheel” when I was turning. This was in the days when power steering was not so wide spread. My mom had to use all of her strength to turn the wheel and as a result, she often looked like she was giving our old Buick CPR. My dad thought she looked silly and wanted to teach me the “right way.” I just didn’t want to give any car I was driving that much freedom. I learned the hard way that if you give a jalopy an inch, it’s going to get you into an accident. So I hold on to the wheel. I was driving my family home from a weekend trip to the beach. It was a three-hour drive. My husband had hurt his gas pedal leg, so he wasn’t able to sit in the driver’s seat, but that didn’t stop him from telling me how to drive. There was a particularly trying section of the trip where I was following a car that was going about ten miles under the speed limit. It drove my husband nuts to be behind this guy, but what really put him over the edge is that I was not in any hurry to pass him. Every time he thought it was clear, he’d say “Punch it!” I’ve learned to ignore these helpful hints and instead simply obeyed the traffic rules: Those insignificant little things like Do Not Pass signs, solid yellow lines, and the rule that says “never pass a car when there is oncoming traffic, no matter what your passenger says.” I never read that in a driving manual, but it was clearly implied. As far as I was concerned the guy wasn’t going so slow that I needed to put unnecessary stress on me or the engine. I’d just wait for the right moment. Finally, the driver ahead of us flipped on his right turn signal and slowed down as if to turn into a driveway. I started to pass him on the left and then he apparently decided that it was the wrong driveway. He sped up. I got a good look. Yes, it was a man. By now, a car had come up over the hill and I, being in the left lane, trying to pass an idiot, was in imminent danger of a head-on collision. I was forced to “Punch it!” He probably thought I was a maniac. My husband certainly did. After the danger had passed, he laughed at me. “You had all those chances to pass him and you decided to punch it when he was going to turn anyway.” I told him I only had two options after the other driver forgot where his driveway was: “I could have sped up and followed through on my action, which is what I did. Or I could have slammed on my brakes, swung in behind the undecided driver, honked like a lunatic, and flipped him the bird… which is what you would’ve have done.” Simply more proof that women drivers have evolved. 8/18/2008 Grandma Gets a Bad Rap My mother recently became a great-grandmother. Just to be clear, this status did not come about because of anything my children did; I’m not a grandma yet. But for my mother, her change of status is something to celebrate, and not just because there is a beautiful new baby to spoil. The other reason to celebrate is because she is no longer just a grandma. The word “grandma” carries a silly stigma these days. “Grandma” is the subject of many jokes, but when you add “Great” to grandma, it gives this dearly-loved matriarch a bit more dignity. How many times have you heard a joke about “grandma?” There are jokes about her bad eyesight, her dentures, and the fact that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s puttering along to BINGO. It’s so stereotypical. She doesn’t deserve all this bad press. In fact, my mom hasn’t gone to BINGO in at least three months. It’s true that she can’t see as well as she used to and her remaining teeth are barely hanging in there, but is that anything to joke about? Grandmas get a really bad rap. What about all those wonderful cookies grandmas bake. Wait a minute, that’s probably stereotypical, too. My mom baked once a year at Christmas time and hated every minute of it even after she became a grandma twenty-five years ago. I am secretly a little jealous of her great-grandma status, though. She gets to do things that us mere moms cannot. For example, she gets to wear white pants whenever she wants to. Do you know why grandmas wear white pants? Because they can! I haven’t been able to wear white pants since my first child started eating solids. If I did wear them, by now they’d look like something out of a psychedelic nightmare. Another thing I’m envious of is the fact that my mom can ignore the knowledge of any new technological wonder and get away with it because of her age. My utter bewilderment about anything with a circuit board and buttons is regarded with distain by members of the Technologically Informed, of which my husband is a charter member. My mother can suggest using squirrels on a hamster wheel for an alternative energy source and she would merely get an indulgent smile. Hey, the Flintstones made it work, didn’t they? You want a new mass transit system that runs on something besides fossil fuels? Just built a monorail with a giant wheel and throw a couple hundred squirrels in there. They’re not doing anything but digging holes in our yards and frolicking on high tension wires anyway. Let’s make them contribute to society! Okay, so that was my idea. But I didn’t get an indulgent smile when I suggested it. A got a look that said, “We’re going to have to start looking for long-term care for you, aren’t we?” My mom recently had a problem with her TV. It would randomly switch channels all by itself. She’d be watching a documentary on the migration pattern of the Sooty Albatross and it would switch to The Price Is Right. I was there once when it happened. She didn’t seem to notice until I mentioned it, though. Ah, grandma-hood! She said she didn’t know what caused it, but I decided not to mention it to my husband just in case the solution was something I was supposed to know. A week later, she told me that her neighbor said she had the same problem. When my mom called the cable company, it was discovered that their remotes were on the same frequency and that they had been switching each other’s channels for a month and a half. When the cable guys finally came to fix the problem, she had just finished working out a TV viewing schedule with her neighbor and was a little miffed that they showed up so soon. She was enjoying getting to know her neighbor better. Her neighbor was clearly a grandma, too. 8/15/2008 Chick Flicks & Other Horrors My husband is like any other man with a lick of testosterone. He would rather see a movie with violent explosions or be scared out of his pants by some horror flick than be subjected to a romance or a musical. But he is different in some ways, too. He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it. Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him. No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche. My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace. My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together. Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go. It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way. His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment. We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome. I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet. When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn. When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts. No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought. Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car. 8/12/2008 Photographic Memories Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
I know they are here because they leave lots of clues; almost as if they want me to know they are here. Maybe they are ghosts, or elves, or malevolent little pixies. I even know their names because, apparently my kids know them and have called them by name:
Nott Mee – an oriental madman.
Ida Know – a sneaky thief and promoter of anarchy.
Ididint Dooit – a mastermind of catastrophic events.
If I could just catch one of these miscreants, I would call the police and have them all hung by their little toes. These elves, or ghosts or whatever they are, are ruining my home and making it look like my children are doing it. Despicable! A classic bad-guy-sets-up-the-innocent ruse.
Of course, my children are little angels. This morning, I asked them who was experimenting with the blender and pancake mix and left a trail of gooey stuff all the way to the bathroom.
“Ididnt Dooit,” said one of my angels. I knew it! But just to be sure, I asked another one.
“Who decided to fling the mix around the stove and counters so that it would harden into little, yellow, cement puddles and make it virtually impossible to remove?”
“Nott Mee,” she said. Aha! Ididint Dooit had an accomplice who was apparently thoroughly trained in the art of mess-making. I mean, he is good! The mess he made was such that one would need a sandblaster to rectify the situation.
These evil doers will not go unpunished, but I have to catch them first. Until that time comes, I have taken to putting out notes just to let them know I’m on to them.
In the bathroom I left a note that said: “Dear Ida Know, please be more careful when brushing your teeth. It’s very difficult to see around the globs of toothpaste that you have smeared on the mirror. (Although, I have to say your toothpaste illustration of Calvin urinating on a Math book is very good.)”
In the laundry room: “Dear Ididint Dooit, Your clothes are, of course, exceptional, but as far as I know, they do not have the ability to transport themselves to their respective drawers. Please assist them.”
In the kitchen: “Dear Nott Mee, Chocolate pudding is to be eaten at the table. If you feel the need to eat off the floor please inform me of your decision, or you will be required to buy me a new pair of socks.”
“Dear Ida Know, Although it shows a certain creativity, please refrain from lining up the kitchen chairs like a choo-choo train. Are you also the one who keeps stacking up the couch cushions? Or is that Ididint Dooit? If so, please speak with him about it.”
“Dear malevolent pixie-ghosts, The next one of you cretins who uses four kitchen towels to mop up a Koolaid spill, leaves them in the sink, and tries to cover up the evidence with leftover ravioli, carrot peels, and the dregs of your Ramen noodle cup, will be drawn and quartered!”
Ideally, I’d like to catch one of these villains and duct tape them to the wall, but something tells me that’s never going to happen. They’re just too good.
8/21/2008
A Case For Women Drivers
Finally, a study has been done that proves what women all over the world have known since the dawn of automobiles. Men, on the average, are much worse drivers than women. I am, of course, a woman so I am slightly biased on this issue, but let’s face it, it’s true. However, it is obvious that most men think they drive better than anyone (just ask them) and they have made it their sacred duty to correct the driving habits of everyone else on the road. This is done by using various dubious methods that are annoying at best and, at worst, dangerous. For example, to encourage a slow poke to drive faster, our most inferior drivers will tailgate so close to the car in front of them that if the slow poke was to slow down further because of say, a goat crossing the road, the tailgater would then be dining on tailpipe and occupying the slowpoke’s trunk space until the paramedics could pry him out. Of course, no matter what his insurance company says, it would be the slowpoke’s fault for slamming on his brakes when it was plain to see that someone was so close behind him. The slowpoke may be in the category of inferior drivers as well. The only way to snap these guys out of their daydreams of being Jessica Simpson’s bodyguard (dream on) is to pass them. But, when you are parallel to their car, assuming there is no goat, they speed up until you have to go 80 MPH to get around them and then they call you a maniac. Then there are those guys who never actually grip the steering wheel. They simply rest their hands on it as if the car can drive itself and the driver is simply there for moral support. I remember my dad teaching me how to drive. He told me to “palm the wheel” when I was turning. This was in the days when power steering was not so wide spread. My mom had to use all of her strength to turn the wheel and as a result, she often looked like she was giving our old Buick CPR. My dad thought she looked silly and wanted to teach me the “right way.” I just didn’t want to give any car I was driving that much freedom. I learned the hard way that if you give a jalopy an inch, it’s going to get you into an accident. So I hold on to the wheel. I was driving my family home from a weekend trip to the beach. It was a three-hour drive. My husband had hurt his gas pedal leg, so he wasn’t able to sit in the driver’s seat, but that didn’t stop him from telling me how to drive. There was a particularly trying section of the trip where I was following a car that was going about ten miles under the speed limit. It drove my husband nuts to be behind this guy, but what really put him over the edge is that I was not in any hurry to pass him. Every time he thought it was clear, he’d say “Punch it!” I’ve learned to ignore these helpful hints and instead simply obeyed the traffic rules: Those insignificant little things like Do Not Pass signs, solid yellow lines, and the rule that says “never pass a car when there is oncoming traffic, no matter what your passenger says.” I never read that in a driving manual, but it was clearly implied. As far as I was concerned the guy wasn’t going so slow that I needed to put unnecessary stress on me or the engine. I’d just wait for the right moment. Finally, the driver ahead of us flipped on his right turn signal and slowed down as if to turn into a driveway. I started to pass him on the left and then he apparently decided that it was the wrong driveway. He sped up. I got a good look. Yes, it was a man. By now, a car had come up over the hill and I, being in the left lane, trying to pass an idiot, was in imminent danger of a head-on collision. I was forced to “Punch it!” He probably thought I was a maniac. My husband certainly did. After the danger had passed, he laughed at me. “You had all those chances to pass him and you decided to punch it when he was going to turn anyway.” I told him I only had two options after the other driver forgot where his driveway was: “I could have sped up and followed through on my action, which is what I did. Or I could have slammed on my brakes, swung in behind the undecided driver, honked like a lunatic, and flipped him the bird… which is what you would’ve have done.” Simply more proof that women drivers have evolved. 8/18/2008 Grandma Gets a Bad Rap My mother recently became a great-grandmother. Just to be clear, this status did not come about because of anything my children did; I’m not a grandma yet. But for my mother, her change of status is something to celebrate, and not just because there is a beautiful new baby to spoil. The other reason to celebrate is because she is no longer just a grandma. The word “grandma” carries a silly stigma these days. “Grandma” is the subject of many jokes, but when you add “Great” to grandma, it gives this dearly-loved matriarch a bit more dignity. How many times have you heard a joke about “grandma?” There are jokes about her bad eyesight, her dentures, and the fact that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s puttering along to BINGO. It’s so stereotypical. She doesn’t deserve all this bad press. In fact, my mom hasn’t gone to BINGO in at least three months. It’s true that she can’t see as well as she used to and her remaining teeth are barely hanging in there, but is that anything to joke about? Grandmas get a really bad rap. What about all those wonderful cookies grandmas bake. Wait a minute, that’s probably stereotypical, too. My mom baked once a year at Christmas time and hated every minute of it even after she became a grandma twenty-five years ago. I am secretly a little jealous of her great-grandma status, though. She gets to do things that us mere moms cannot. For example, she gets to wear white pants whenever she wants to. Do you know why grandmas wear white pants? Because they can! I haven’t been able to wear white pants since my first child started eating solids. If I did wear them, by now they’d look like something out of a psychedelic nightmare. Another thing I’m envious of is the fact that my mom can ignore the knowledge of any new technological wonder and get away with it because of her age. My utter bewilderment about anything with a circuit board and buttons is regarded with distain by members of the Technologically Informed, of which my husband is a charter member. My mother can suggest using squirrels on a hamster wheel for an alternative energy source and she would merely get an indulgent smile. Hey, the Flintstones made it work, didn’t they? You want a new mass transit system that runs on something besides fossil fuels? Just built a monorail with a giant wheel and throw a couple hundred squirrels in there. They’re not doing anything but digging holes in our yards and frolicking on high tension wires anyway. Let’s make them contribute to society! Okay, so that was my idea. But I didn’t get an indulgent smile when I suggested it. A got a look that said, “We’re going to have to start looking for long-term care for you, aren’t we?” My mom recently had a problem with her TV. It would randomly switch channels all by itself. She’d be watching a documentary on the migration pattern of the Sooty Albatross and it would switch to The Price Is Right. I was there once when it happened. She didn’t seem to notice until I mentioned it, though. Ah, grandma-hood! She said she didn’t know what caused it, but I decided not to mention it to my husband just in case the solution was something I was supposed to know. A week later, she told me that her neighbor said she had the same problem. When my mom called the cable company, it was discovered that their remotes were on the same frequency and that they had been switching each other’s channels for a month and a half. When the cable guys finally came to fix the problem, she had just finished working out a TV viewing schedule with her neighbor and was a little miffed that they showed up so soon. She was enjoying getting to know her neighbor better. Her neighbor was clearly a grandma, too. 8/15/2008 Chick Flicks & Other Horrors My husband is like any other man with a lick of testosterone. He would rather see a movie with violent explosions or be scared out of his pants by some horror flick than be subjected to a romance or a musical. But he is different in some ways, too. He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it. Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him. No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche. My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace. My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together. Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go. It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way. His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment. We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome. I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet. When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn. When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts. No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought. Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car. 8/12/2008 Photographic Memories Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
I am, of course, a woman so I am slightly biased on this issue, but let’s face it, it’s true. However, it is obvious that most men think they drive better than anyone (just ask them) and they have made it their sacred duty to correct the driving habits of everyone else on the road. This is done by using various dubious methods that are annoying at best and, at worst, dangerous.
For example, to encourage a slow poke to drive faster, our most inferior drivers will tailgate so close to the car in front of them that if the slow poke was to slow down further because of say, a goat crossing the road, the tailgater would then be dining on tailpipe and occupying the slowpoke’s trunk space until the paramedics could pry him out. Of course, no matter what his insurance company says, it would be the slowpoke’s fault for slamming on his brakes when it was plain to see that someone was so close behind him.
The slowpoke may be in the category of inferior drivers as well. The only way to snap these guys out of their daydreams of being Jessica Simpson’s bodyguard (dream on) is to pass them. But, when you are parallel to their car, assuming there is no goat, they speed up until you have to go 80 MPH to get around them and then they call you a maniac.
Then there are those guys who never actually grip the steering wheel. They simply rest their hands on it as if the car can drive itself and the driver is simply there for moral support.
I remember my dad teaching me how to drive. He told me to “palm the wheel” when I was turning. This was in the days when power steering was not so wide spread. My mom had to use all of her strength to turn the wheel and as a result, she often looked like she was giving our old Buick CPR. My dad thought she looked silly and wanted to teach me the “right way.” I just didn’t want to give any car I was driving that much freedom. I learned the hard way that if you give a jalopy an inch, it’s going to get you into an accident. So I hold on to the wheel.
I was driving my family home from a weekend trip to the beach. It was a three-hour drive. My husband had hurt his gas pedal leg, so he wasn’t able to sit in the driver’s seat, but that didn’t stop him from telling me how to drive.
There was a particularly trying section of the trip where I was following a car that was going about ten miles under the speed limit. It drove my husband nuts to be behind this guy, but what really put him over the edge is that I was not in any hurry to pass him. Every time he thought it was clear, he’d say “Punch it!” I’ve learned to ignore these helpful hints and instead simply obeyed the traffic rules: Those insignificant little things like Do Not Pass signs, solid yellow lines, and the rule that says “never pass a car when there is oncoming traffic, no matter what your passenger says.” I never read that in a driving manual, but it was clearly implied. As far as I was concerned the guy wasn’t going so slow that I needed to put unnecessary stress on me or the engine. I’d just wait for the right moment.
Finally, the driver ahead of us flipped on his right turn signal and slowed down as if to turn into a driveway. I started to pass him on the left and then he apparently decided that it was the wrong driveway. He sped up. I got a good look. Yes, it was a man. By now, a car had come up over the hill and I, being in the left lane, trying to pass an idiot, was in imminent danger of a head-on collision. I was forced to “Punch it!” He probably thought I was a maniac.
My husband certainly did. After the danger had passed, he laughed at me. “You had all those chances to pass him and you decided to punch it when he was going to turn anyway.”
I told him I only had two options after the other driver forgot where his driveway was: “I could have sped up and followed through on my action, which is what I did. Or I could have slammed on my brakes, swung in behind the undecided driver, honked like a lunatic, and flipped him the bird… which is what you would’ve have done.”
Simply more proof that women drivers have evolved.
8/18/2008
Grandma Gets a Bad Rap
My mother recently became a great-grandmother. Just to be clear, this status did not come about because of anything my children did; I’m not a grandma yet. But for my mother, her change of status is something to celebrate, and not just because there is a beautiful new baby to spoil. The other reason to celebrate is because she is no longer just a grandma. The word “grandma” carries a silly stigma these days. “Grandma” is the subject of many jokes, but when you add “Great” to grandma, it gives this dearly-loved matriarch a bit more dignity. How many times have you heard a joke about “grandma?” There are jokes about her bad eyesight, her dentures, and the fact that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s puttering along to BINGO. It’s so stereotypical. She doesn’t deserve all this bad press. In fact, my mom hasn’t gone to BINGO in at least three months. It’s true that she can’t see as well as she used to and her remaining teeth are barely hanging in there, but is that anything to joke about? Grandmas get a really bad rap. What about all those wonderful cookies grandmas bake. Wait a minute, that’s probably stereotypical, too. My mom baked once a year at Christmas time and hated every minute of it even after she became a grandma twenty-five years ago. I am secretly a little jealous of her great-grandma status, though. She gets to do things that us mere moms cannot. For example, she gets to wear white pants whenever she wants to. Do you know why grandmas wear white pants? Because they can! I haven’t been able to wear white pants since my first child started eating solids. If I did wear them, by now they’d look like something out of a psychedelic nightmare. Another thing I’m envious of is the fact that my mom can ignore the knowledge of any new technological wonder and get away with it because of her age. My utter bewilderment about anything with a circuit board and buttons is regarded with distain by members of the Technologically Informed, of which my husband is a charter member. My mother can suggest using squirrels on a hamster wheel for an alternative energy source and she would merely get an indulgent smile. Hey, the Flintstones made it work, didn’t they? You want a new mass transit system that runs on something besides fossil fuels? Just built a monorail with a giant wheel and throw a couple hundred squirrels in there. They’re not doing anything but digging holes in our yards and frolicking on high tension wires anyway. Let’s make them contribute to society! Okay, so that was my idea. But I didn’t get an indulgent smile when I suggested it. A got a look that said, “We’re going to have to start looking for long-term care for you, aren’t we?” My mom recently had a problem with her TV. It would randomly switch channels all by itself. She’d be watching a documentary on the migration pattern of the Sooty Albatross and it would switch to The Price Is Right. I was there once when it happened. She didn’t seem to notice until I mentioned it, though. Ah, grandma-hood! She said she didn’t know what caused it, but I decided not to mention it to my husband just in case the solution was something I was supposed to know. A week later, she told me that her neighbor said she had the same problem. When my mom called the cable company, it was discovered that their remotes were on the same frequency and that they had been switching each other’s channels for a month and a half. When the cable guys finally came to fix the problem, she had just finished working out a TV viewing schedule with her neighbor and was a little miffed that they showed up so soon. She was enjoying getting to know her neighbor better. Her neighbor was clearly a grandma, too. 8/15/2008 Chick Flicks & Other Horrors My husband is like any other man with a lick of testosterone. He would rather see a movie with violent explosions or be scared out of his pants by some horror flick than be subjected to a romance or a musical. But he is different in some ways, too. He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it. Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him. No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche. My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace. My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together. Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go. It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way. His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment. We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome. I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet. When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn. When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts. No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought. Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car. 8/12/2008 Photographic Memories Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
The other reason to celebrate is because she is no longer just a grandma. The word “grandma” carries a silly stigma these days. “Grandma” is the subject of many jokes, but when you add “Great” to grandma, it gives this dearly-loved matriarch a bit more dignity.
How many times have you heard a joke about “grandma?” There are jokes about her bad eyesight, her dentures, and the fact that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s puttering along to BINGO. It’s so stereotypical. She doesn’t deserve all this bad press.
In fact, my mom hasn’t gone to BINGO in at least three months. It’s true that she can’t see as well as she used to and her remaining teeth are barely hanging in there, but is that anything to joke about?
Grandmas get a really bad rap. What about all those wonderful cookies grandmas bake. Wait a minute, that’s probably stereotypical, too. My mom baked once a year at Christmas time and hated every minute of it even after she became a grandma twenty-five years ago.
I am secretly a little jealous of her great-grandma status, though. She gets to do things that us mere moms cannot. For example, she gets to wear white pants whenever she wants to. Do you know why grandmas wear white pants? Because they can! I haven’t been able to wear white pants since my first child started eating solids. If I did wear them, by now they’d look like something out of a psychedelic nightmare.
Another thing I’m envious of is the fact that my mom can ignore the knowledge of any new technological wonder and get away with it because of her age. My utter bewilderment about anything with a circuit board and buttons is regarded with distain by members of the Technologically Informed, of which my husband is a charter member.
My mother can suggest using squirrels on a hamster wheel for an alternative energy source and she would merely get an indulgent smile. Hey, the Flintstones made it work, didn’t they? You want a new mass transit system that runs on something besides fossil fuels? Just built a monorail with a giant wheel and throw a couple hundred squirrels in there. They’re not doing anything but digging holes in our yards and frolicking on high tension wires anyway. Let’s make them contribute to society!
Okay, so that was my idea. But I didn’t get an indulgent smile when I suggested it. A got a look that said, “We’re going to have to start looking for long-term care for you, aren’t we?”
My mom recently had a problem with her TV. It would randomly switch channels all by itself. She’d be watching a documentary on the migration pattern of the Sooty Albatross and it would switch to The Price Is Right. I was there once when it happened. She didn’t seem to notice until I mentioned it, though. Ah, grandma-hood! She said she didn’t know what caused it, but I decided not to mention it to my husband just in case the solution was something I was supposed to know.
A week later, she told me that her neighbor said she had the same problem. When my mom called the cable company, it was discovered that their remotes were on the same frequency and that they had been switching each other’s channels for a month and a half. When the cable guys finally came to fix the problem, she had just finished working out a TV viewing schedule with her neighbor and was a little miffed that they showed up so soon. She was enjoying getting to know her neighbor better. Her neighbor was clearly a grandma, too.
8/15/2008
Chick Flicks & Other Horrors
My husband is like any other man with a lick of testosterone. He would rather see a movie with violent explosions or be scared out of his pants by some horror flick than be subjected to a romance or a musical. But he is different in some ways, too. He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it. Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him. No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche. My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace. My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together. Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go. It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way. His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment. We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome. I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet. When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn. When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts. No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought. Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car. 8/12/2008 Photographic Memories Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
He will see a romance or a musical if it’s something I really want to see. Before you think “Well, that isn’t so different,” let me tell you one more way that he’s different. He will go with me without complaining about it and even tell me that it was good when it’s over. He does this so well, now, that sometimes I really think he means it.
Those kindnesses have kept our marriage a happy one for 27 years. He also understands that there is a difference between him seeing a chick flick for me and me seeing a massacre movie for him.
No matter how strong my stomach is when it comes to diaper changing and other horrors that would traumatize my husband, I just can’t stand to watch some villain threaten, hurt or kill someone else. I’m not that strong. It would severely damage my psyche.
My husband senses this and wouldn’t have it any other way. He needs that sensitivity in me as much as I need the tough part of him. Part of being so tough is surviving a chick flick with such grace.
My oldest son could learn something from his dad. His girlfriend and I wanted to see Mamma Mia. We could’ve and would’ve gone together without the men, but my husband and I don’t see them that often and it would’ve been nice to do something together.
Picking up on this, my husband immediately volunteered to go with us. He’s been introduced to many chick flicks in our 27 years and is used to them now. My son, however, declared that he’d rather stick a hot poker into his eyeballs than watch a musical. He wasn’t being literal…I hope. But needless to say, he really didn’t want to go.
It took quite a bit of cajoling and probably a promise from his girlfriend to see Lord of the Rings trilogy with him again, before he agreed to go, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about it every step of the way.
His girlfriend and I were really looking forward to it, though, and my husband was just happy that I was happy. When we arrived, we bought some snacks. My son bought what he called his “Chick Flick Kit,” which incidentally, may be a new way for theatre owners to market their wares. His kit was comprised of an order of nachos, the largest popcorn he could get and a large drink which was refillable. The refillable part was mandatory because it would give him the necessary excuse to exit the theatre in the middle of a particularly mushy musical segment.
We had to stand in line for a short time. During that time, my son imagined that every able-bodied man that was going to see Dark Knight was staring at him as if trying to determine what his sexual orientation was. I pointed out that there were many men standing in line for Mamma Mia, but he decided they were all missing a Y chromosome.
I looked again. What I saw were happy couples and I knew that these men were still in love with their wives. They were men who intended to stay with these women forever and were committed to their happiness, even if they had to choke down a stupid musical every now and then. Either that, or they lost a bet.
When Pierce Brosnan began to sing, my son could’ve been a poster child for spontaneous combustion. Suddenly, he decided he needed more soda and popcorn.
When we finally left the theatre, my son’s girlfriend and I were still humming ABBA tunes while my son turned green. We soon found out that it was not because of the songs we were humming, but because of the amount of popcorn and soda he had consumed. He said he felt like a humongous bag of wet packing peanuts.
No wonder he didn’t like chick flicks. He got sick on popcorn and soda whenever he saw one. Well, he’ll learn someday, I thought.
Thankfully, my husband gets it, though. I looped my arm through his and hugged him as we walked to the car.
8/12/2008
Photographic Memories
Like a good mom, I have dutifully filled the pages of a scrapbook for each of my children since the day they were born. I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans. A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history. Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced. Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera. I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door. There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table. Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those. Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth. There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween. How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must. Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much. In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings. “This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.” 8/12/2008 New Car At The Races My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
I intend to give them their scrapbooks when they acquire a safe place to house them. Safe places do not include the underside of their bed or a dorm room shared by three other slobs that would not think twice about using such a precious memento as a coaster for their beer cans.
A safe place for my sons will be one where a woman with at least a semi-permanent status in their lives will be there to protect these treasures that I have toiled over for two decades. That someone will love my sons as much as I do and will understand the importance of preserving their history.
Other than the people who live in my house, these scrapbooks are the only thing for which I would willingly walk back into a burning house (if the fire was a little, tiny one and was on a different floor than the scrapbooks). These pictures are the only way their ancestors will know them. They cannot be replaced.
Sadly, these scrapbooks are missing whole blocks of time, accounted for only by the fact that I had no batteries in my camera.
I still have an antiquated 35 mm camera, because although I have conquered the process of taking a picture with a digital camera, I have not yet figured out how to get them off the camera and into a scrapbook. I know there’s some invisible door that you have to open because that’s where the little photo fairies make the pictures. I just can’t find the door.
There are only certain photos that qualify for scrapbook status. You can have a thousand photos of a newborn baby, but the ones that make it to the scrapbook are the close-up of the smile that grandma always said was gas, and the full frontal photo of a stark naked cherub lying on a changing table.
Then there are the pictures that can only be explained by remembering that my husband and I had not slept properly in six months. You know the ones I’m talking about: The photo that was taken after a baby had plastered himself with an entire bowl of strained peas. Or the First Birthday photo where mom thought it would be great to give the child a piece of chocolate birthday cake. Yeah… gotta have those.
Another required photograph for the scrapbook is the close-up of a wide grin that’s missing the two front teeth.
There’s always one that is meant to embarrass them when it’s shown to a significant “other” when they grown up. Sitting in a bathtub covered with a bubble beard. Urinating on a tree in the front yard. A boy dressing up like a cheerleader for Halloween.
How about all of those “Firsts?” The first tooth, first steps, first day of school, first school play, first bubble gum bubble, and the first car. Oh yes, these are a must.
Although I try very hard to chronicle these wonderful shots for posterity, I also try very hard not to pick the shots in which I am pictured. The older I get, the more photogenically-challenged I am. It never fails, if someone takes a picture of me, I either have my mouth open wide enough to see my many fillings, or my eyes are at half-mast and I look like I’ve been popping Quaaludes. Most memories are very precious, but those… not so much.
In fact, I’d burn them all if no one else was in the picture, because eventually those are the photographs that will inevitably make it into the hands of my ancestors: people who will never actually know me. I do not want to be remembered for my mouthful of fillings.
“This was my great-great-great-grandmother. She had a lot of fillings.”
New Car At The Races
My baby is only one week old. In fact, it only has a few hundred miles on it. When we drove it off the lot, the odometer said “1”. It’s still brand-spanking new. I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance. “You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.” “But, Mom, I want to play with it!” “No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!” Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked. Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options. I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper. My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination. “We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?” Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point. If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold. This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl. My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one. So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you. 8/6/2008 Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
I’m so ecstatic to own a car that has no finger prints or nose prints on the back windows and no footprints on the windshield. It has clean cubbyholes with no gum or used Kleenex stuffed in them. The cup holders have nary a drop of some sugary gooey stuff left over from fast-food cup leakage. There are no bits of popcorn, or candy wrappers, or pieces of crayon, or Legos, or Polly Pocket parts hiding in the crevasses between the seats. In fact, it’s perfectly clean (hallelujah!) and I’ve been able to keep my baby that way for a full week…with constant vigilance.
“You don’t need to take the straw wrapper in the car with you.”
“But, Mom, I want to play with it!”
“No, you don’t. You want to stuff it into some nook or cranny where you can see it, but you can’t get it out!”
Is it any wonder, then, that when my husband decided to have a “Boy’s Night Out” with two of my boys, my brother, and my immaculately clean car, I balked.
Don’t get me wrong. I would never stop my husband from going somewhere he wanted to go. I just didn’t want him to take my baby. Take a car that already had gum in the door handles and footprints on the windshield. Between him and my brother, they had other options.
I mean, they’re going to the races for Pete’s sake! A bastion of male bonding over sloppy food, loud, greasy engines, and dusty bleachers, punctuated by the sound of testosterone-induced Hoo-ah!’s after each collision. A place where it is almost mandatory to spill a 32 oz. drink on one’s jeans and wipe it off with a corn dog wrapper.
My youngest boy is six years old and loves cars. It would not be humane to leave him home with me, but unfortunately he cannot hold his liquids. Thirty-two ounces in his bladder is a recipe for disaster because my baby has cloth seats and my husband has an unreasonable aversion to pulling to the side of the road for little boy pee elimination.
“We’re almost home, buddy. Can you hold it for another hour?”
Plus, my husband is directionally challenged. If he doesn’t bring his GPS navigator with him, then there will be at least two missed turns, which always involve pounding on the steering wheel to invoke the direction gods, and a U-turn at 90 miles an hour. The 32 oz. drink sitting in the cup holder, if it hasn’t done so already, will bite the dust at this point.
If he brings his GPS, that will involve slobbering on the suction cup so that it will stick to the windshield, and which, when removed will leave a permanent spit-circle on my windshield that will not be removed until the day the car is sold.
This would also be the maiden voyage of our new in-the-headrest DVD player we had installed for our children’s’ entertainment and their continued existence. This means that my husband, who is a hands-on kind of instructor, will be fiddling with it, while he’s driving, until either it works or he crashes… whichever comes first. Unfortunately, I am not a gambling kind of girl.
My car is so new it doesn’t even have a trash bin in it yet. Not that a bunch of “boys” on a joy-ride to the races would ever consider using one.
So, no, I just can’t do it. It’s too new. It’s too clean. It’s too…wonderful.
Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let them hurt you.
8/6/2008
Marley and the Ghosts of Car Buying
The whole car-buying experience left us feeling like Scrooge in A Christmas Tale except that Scrooge had not yet been convinced when the ghosts came. We were. But Marley, the salesman, told us about the different ghosts that would be visiting us before we could call the sale complete. There was no way out of this. We had to sit there and listen to each ghost before they would hand us the keys. First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present. Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on. Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able! “Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said. We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did! We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi. “Hey! What day is today?” She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious. Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us. 8/4/2008 Mom's Law When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
First, there was the ghost of Cars Past. She told us about all the different things that could go wrong. These descriptions echoed all the jalopies we’d ever driven in the past and she warned us to take advantage of the extended warranty to avoid the same problems with our new car. Because we were stingy, like Scrooge, and liked to gamble, not like Scrooge, Cars Past did not convince us to change our wicked ways and we passed on the extended warranty. Cars Past gave us a look that said, “You like to live on the edge, huh?” and told us to remain seated. She would send in the ghost of Cars Present.
Cars Present was a pleasant enough fellow. He was there to show us how our new car would work. I was as stubborn as Scrooge. I knew already that it was as simple as turning it on, putting it in gear, and pressing the gas pedal. I didn’t need to hear any more. But Cars Present insisted on telling us in excruciating detail just how a hybrid car’s insides worked; as if I would ever find myself opening the hood with a screwdriver and a socket wrench in hand. No thanks, Cars Present. If I have any trouble, I’ll just bring it back here. I can see the little pictures on the dashboard. If anything pops up, blinks insistently, or bleeps annoyingly, I’ll read the manual. Let’s move on.
Cars Present led us to the scariest part of our car-buying journey. We needed to talk to the ghost of Cars Future. I wanted to skip this part. If anything would prevent us from buying this car, it would be Cars Future. He was to go over just how much this wonderful car would cost us every month for the next five years. After Cars Future finally got to the bottom line, we learned that the payments were definitely do-able!
“Sign here, press hard, keep a copy,” Cars Future said.
We signed, we pressed hard, we got a copy. Then Marley returned, jingling his chains. No wait. Those were the keys to our very own Prius: The car that would save us a bundle in gas and didn’t cost anymore than our minivan did!
We woke up the next morning, threw open the window, and yelled to our neighbor who was walking her Corgi.
“Hey! What day is today?”
She looked shocked to see a couple of lunatics hanging out of a window in their pajamas. “Saturday,” she answered, hurrying away. She was clearly concerned that whatever we had was contagious.
Saturday! That means we can drive our new Prius all day long, I thought, as I skipped to the garage in my bunny slippers…and the gas gauge probably wouldn’t move one iota! We knew that because the ghosts of buying cars had told us.
8/4/2008
Mom's Law
When it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer.
There is a certain age when your children will no longer listen to your sage advice. You’ve taught them right from wrong from a very young age and you’ve also taught them to question authority. Not to aggressively combat it, mind you, merely to understand that authority isn’t always right. Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts? As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right. Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one. In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well. Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to: 1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t. 2. Never throw sand… inside or outside. 3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back. 4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are. 5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home. 6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.) 7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day. 8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub. 9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring. 10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments. 7/29/2008Three-layer MotelWhen it comes to rating hotels and motels, we generally use the number of stars as a guide: Five stars being the best, one star being the worst. That’s an okay system, but I find that my system is a better indicator of good or bad accommodations. My system is called the Caulk System. Instead of stars, I use the number of layers of caulk around the bathroom fixtures as my barometer. If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night. Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them. Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4. Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare. Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room. I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see. We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though. If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it. 7/25/2008Princess PalaceOnce upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like. This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge. This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan. As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress. I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.” As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome. Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana. My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair. “Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed. “Gold, silver, or rainbow?” “Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all? “How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?” “Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world. We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess. In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress. 7/22/2008 Silence Is GoldenI have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old. The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out. The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon. I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying. My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend. I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was. “What’s egotistical mean, Mom?” “An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained. “Oh.” “You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.” “Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.” “A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” “But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?” “Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.” As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked. It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. 7/18/2008 On My Pillow CloudYou know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze. That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud. Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered. “Are you sleeping?” To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom. Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?” When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day. Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away. “Are you hungry?” I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?” Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head. “Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.” I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend… Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up. Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state. Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day. It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much. This website is the property of Laura Snyder, author of Laura On Life columns. It is not to be copied, republished, or distributed without the express consent of the author. Visit Laura's web site at - lauraonlife.com
Well, from the time they were babies, you have been the authority figure in their young lives and around the age of 14 or 15 years old, they’ll realize that fact, and put you squarely in the authority-that-isn’t-always-right category. No matter that you’ve been there for them 100% of the time, and consistently correct about 95% of the time. They simply assume you are wrong 100% of the time until they figure it out themselves. This is a normal, and indeed, even healthy part of a child’s progression into adulthood and independence, but doesn’t it just drive you nuts?
As parents, it’s our job to herd these wayward children, while they are still willing to listen, toward a path that will land them somewhere besides a jail cell or a homeless shelter. When they stray off the path, we have to pursue them, corral them, and set them back on the path again using several tools of the trade. These include time-outs, grounding, pulling privileges, and an occasional smack upside the head. Praise works too, if they actually do something right.
Most children wander in a reasonably straight line through life with intermittent veers toward the right or the left. Then there are those other children that insist on zig-zagging their way through life, needing constant supervision and corrections. Every parent has at least one zig-zagging child; always hitting one boundary and then, once they are rerouted, careening immediately into yet another one.
In our house the boundaries have been dubbed “Mom’s Law.” Mom’s Law is the set of rules that everyone has to follow if they want to continue living in our house. Of course, mom hopes these rules will magically tweak their conscience when they are in someone else’s house as well.
Mom’s Law includes, but is certainly not limited to:
1. Love one another as you will be grounded if you don’t.
2. Never throw sand… inside or outside.
3. If you open it, close it. If you take something out, put it back.
4. Do not steal…especially other people’s teeth. The Tooth Fairy knows whose teeth they are.
5. Never go into someone else’s house to play, when they are not home.
6. For insurance reasons, no Legos are allowed upstairs. (This insures that I won’t step on them.)
7. Don’t put animals, dead or alive, into your pockets to surprise mom on laundry day.
8. No remote control cars or Playdoh in the bathtub.
9. Anything (or anybody) that “accidentally” lands on the roof will not be retrieved until gutter-cleaning day next spring.
10. Anyone found with an animal in their bed that has not been preapproved will be forced to take a bath, wash bed sheets and endure lice removal treatments.
7/29/2008
Three-layer Motel
If a certain hotel has only one layer of caulk, that is a very fine hotel indeed. With only one layer of caulk, one can be assured that this hotel will have fluffy towels that will have only been used by a select few and washed thoroughly between uses. The coffee machine will come equipped with herbal teas, hot chocolate, and the finest Columbian coffee in decaf and extra bold. Someone will bring your suitcases to the room, and extra blankets can be had with a single call to housekeeping. You may even be delightfully surprised by one of those little mints on your pillow each night.
Two layers of caulk is still a nice hotel that might be falling on hard times. Two layers means you can still get a free continental breakfast served cafeteria-style, but forget about those little wipes with which to polish your shoes or an iron to press your shirt. The towels are still fluffy, but you have to pull someone’s teeth to get an extra one. The shower caps are still on the bathroom vanity, but that’s only because no one has used a shower cap since Jimmy Carter was president. They usually have a surplus of shower caps and are just hoping someone will wrap their wet swimsuit in one and take it home with them.
Three layers of caulk means that the hair dryer might short out on “high” and at least one light switch won’t turn on a light. The shower has two temperatures: ice cold and hotter than Hades, and in order to operate at full capacity, no one else in the motel can take a shower at the same time. The three-layer motel has a pool, but there may be unidentifiable foreign objects floating in it. The towels are low on the fluffy scale and they are only about the size of a postage stamp. When wrapped around you, it wouldn’t completely cover your behind if you are larger than a size 4.
Four layers of caulk is getting pretty dicey. The TV has only one channel… the Playboy channel. The air conditioner coughs to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 5th and bed bugs have built condominiums in the mattress. The bathroom vanity is made of plywood and covered with contact paper and the fluorescent light bulb, flashing like a strobe light, makes one feel like putting on platform shoes and doing the Electric Slide. Towels are scarce and threadbare.
Five layers of caulk means that there may not be any towels… or drywall. The first thing you experience is the overwhelming aroma of stale beer and vomit. It means that the five layers of caulk are obviously not working because the faucets drip out of sync and the shower has one sub-par stream of water that shoots at a ninety degree angle directly at the shower curtain. If you move the showerhead so that you might use the stream to wash your body, the stream changes direction and shoots directly at the ceiling. Five layers of caulk also means that you will be unwillingly introduced to the sexual habits of the amorous couple in the next room.
I find myself writing this column on the back of a breakfast menu for a three-layer motel in the middle of Nowhere. I would much rather stay in a one- or two-layer hotel, but sometimes a girl’s got to take what she can get. For one thing, Nowhere doesn’t have any one- or two-layer hotels because there is nothing in Nowhere that anyone with some spare change would want to see.
We came here because my husband is part of a rocket club. If you are going to launch rockets, there is some kind of rule that you need to do this in the middle of Nowhere, just in case a rogue rocket should decide to take a side trip through some one-layer hotel’s lobby. No need to worry about that small detail, though.
If a rocket decided to fly horizontally from one end of Nowhere to the other, there would be nothing in its way except this three-layer motel. I think, perhaps that a rocket careening through this particular room could only improve it.
7/25/2008
Princess Palace
Once upon a time, there was a princess who collected frogs, turtles and rocks. She was fascinated by worms and befriended spiders. She intercepted bugs from the traps her mother put out and, in general, was very un-princess-like.
This princess had four brothers who all had princely qualities but rarely ever used them. This is why our princess felt the need to defend herself against her brothers’ un-princely-ness. She also defended any creatures that might otherwise become the target of her brothers’ curiosity. Curiosity, I might add, that had more to do with life-threatening insect experimentation than with a harmless want of knowledge.
This little princess was friend to one and all, creatures and humans alike, including a certain babysitter onto whom she would launch herself and demand a piggy-back ride. Her friendship of animals might bring to mind an image of Cinderella and her troop of housekeeping forest friends… but for one exception. Her bedroom always looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Apparently she had not yet acquired the skills to teach her animals friends how to handle a broom and dust pan.
As for feeling a pea under her mattress, it is highly unlikely given the abundance of items unrelated to sleeping that she is amassing upon her bed. It is not uncommon to see her awaken in the morning with her knees resting on a two inch volume about horses, a plastic miniature teapot balancing on the end of her big toe, and the imprint of a Polly Pocket she had slept on embossed into her cheek. No, she would never notice a pea in her bed, much less under the mattress.
I took my little princess to a beauty salon just for little girls. She needed her hair cut. The sign on the door said “No Boys Allowed.” My princess thought she had finally come “home.”
As we walked through the gates of a pearly paradise, we were enveloped in the essence of girlhood. The walls were all shades of pink, from rose to mauve. Hot pink and silver boas were draped on chairs and fairy dust was being strewn hither and yon and settled on anyone without a Y chromosome.
Everywhere were the scents of cotton candy and fruit, and the sights of all things shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and dainty. Bejeweled fabrics and lip gloss in every imaginable color covered pink and silver shelves and bins. Best of all, according to my princess, was that, being played at full volume over their loud speakers, was Hannah Montana.
My princess was in fairy-tale heaven. She eagerly sat upon her “throne” to have her “lady-in-waiting” work a miracle with her tangled mane of hair. Then the head fairy asked if she’d like some glitter in her hair.
“Heck, yeah!” my little princess exclaimed.
“Gold, silver, or rainbow?”
“Ooooh! Rainbow!” she squealed. Why settle for one color when you can have them all?
“How about a glittery heart stamp on your cheek?”
“Okay!” she said, deeply immersing herself in this temporary me-world.
We left this little chunk of heaven with some cherry-flavored lip gloss, a stuffed fuzzy raccoon, a lollipop in the shape of a slice of kiwi and one very happy, glittering princess.
In fact, she now looked so princess-like, that I just knew she’d feel that pea under her mattress.
7/22/2008
Silence Is Golden
I have often heard that talk is cheap because the supply always exceeds the demand. Never is that adage as true as when I am having a “conversation” with my eleven-year old.
The conversation is mostly one-sided with an occasional “uh huh” when I can fit a word in edgewise, just to prove I was listening. I really do try to listen because you never know when a pearl of wisdom or a stroke of genius might emerge from his constant stream of yammering. But after fifteen minutes of listening to a Bionicle adventure about some creature that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like a sneeze, I tend to zone out.
The child does not know how to stop talking without someone telling him to do so. I believe it might be some kind of disease. Recently, I heard on the radio about a new program to help people who are addicted to talking. It’s called On and On Anon.
I wonder if they take children who talk about things nobody else cares about. I mean, it seems to me that if you were to belong to such a group, you should be required to have something meaningful to contribute. I think, though, that if everyone is talking at the same time, it really doesn’t matter what they are saying.
My son will be going into 7th grade this year and like all middle-schoolers, he’s concerned about the other kids liking him. Up till now his strategy has apparently been to take the entire contents of his brains and dump it into the ears of his listeners until they decided that he was so smart and witty they couldn’t help but be his friend.
I tried to tell him that he might be considered egotistical if he was trying to win friends by telling them how smart he was.
“What’s egotistical mean, Mom?”
“An egotist opens his mouth and puts his feats into it,” I explained.
“Oh.”
“You know, your grandma used to say that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we talk.”
“Well, people might think I’m dumb if I don’t talk.”
“A wise person, obviously not me, once said that it is better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
“But what if I do something really cool? How will I tell people about it?”
“Well, your work will speak for itself. And when it does, you probably shouldn’t interrupt. It’s rude.”
As this sunk in, he started telling me about a video game he’s into that he thinks “speaks for itself.” He talked…and talked… and talked.
It reminded me of another famous adage, “Silence is golden”…but duct tape is silver.
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7/18/2008
On My Pillow Cloud
You know that place where you are truly asleep, not just lying down with your eyes closed and your ears open, waiting for a crisis? It happens so rarely. Your pillow transforms into a soft cloud, cradling your head, and the sheets feel like heaven. You are neither too hot nor too cold and every brain cell is enveloped in a dreamy haze.
That’s where I was this morning. I was blissfully unaware of the daylight creeping through my window and never heard my husband get up. So deep was my slumber that drool was dribbling down my cheek and saturating my pillow-cloud.
Through the pastel-colored haze of my dreamless sleep, a voice thundered.
“Are you sleeping?”
To be fair, my husband probably spoke in his normal tone of voice, but it sounded like a sonic boom.
Startled, all the muscles in my body tensed at the same time and I jumped about a foot off the bed. That movement let a blast of cold air into my cozy blanket-cave. I became aware of the drool on my pillow-cloud and I vaguely remember thinking, “Did someone spill milk on my pillow?”
When you sleep so deeply, your brain temporarily empties itself, so upon awaking, you initially think you have absolutely nothing on your schedule today. What a great feeling that is! You think you can somehow capture that pastel-colored fog again and stay there all day.
Except…there’s this sonic boom in my bedroom that won’t go away.
“Are you hungry?”
I throw my wet pillow at him. “Are you insane!?”
Maybe I am, I thought. Now I have no pillow-cloud on which to cradle my empty head.
“Get up will you? We have to sign papers at the bank in 45 minutes.”
I groaned as I felt the pain of hundreds of pieces of information flooding into my brain. I just wanted my pillow-cloud back so I could cover my head and stop the flow. First the bank, then grocery shopping, dentist appointment, pay bills, drum lessons and what can I make that everyone will eat for dinner? If I can hunt down a babysitter, my husband and could go out for dinner and the kids could eat the TV dinners. Let’s see, Susie has Driver’s Ed tonight. Wendy’s on vacation. Eliza has a boyfriend…
Stop! I just want to stay in my blanket-cave a little longer. It’s so…yummy. But no, it’s too late. The brain-haze has been penetrated. I have to get up.
Still lying on my stomach, I swing both legs over the side of the bed with a groan, unwilling to leave the incredibly warm softness. Okay legs are out. Now comes the tough part: Raising the rest of my body from its coma-like state.
Using super-human strength, I push on the bed until I am upright and sit on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and the drool off my cheek. One last regretful glance at my little piece of heaven and I’m off to start my day.
It worries me, sometimes, how much I wanted to stay in that bed. It makes me think that if I were ever bed-ridden for some reason, I might not mind so much.
