Smells Like...

The house is empty, and I decide to indulge myself: I am going to download music. That's right, I am going to redeem that $15 music card that I got for my birthday back in December.

First up: correct an embarrassing gap in my catalog by adding Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Oh, yeah, I am so hip. The music starts to play, and I start waving my arms around as if I am the Queen of the Mosh Pit. Oh, yeah, I am tearing it up here in my chair in front of this computer! I am one middle-aged woman who knows how to live! Those kids were just getting in my way - watch out world, here I come!

...to the medicine cabinet. Turns out what it really smells like is Bengay. Sigh. The heat wrap isn't working, looks like I'll have to haul out the back brace. If anybody asks, I hurt myself vacuuming under the sofa, okay?

Warning Label

So Rosie is at Oberlin, and she is hosting her first prospective student, or "prospie." Apparently hosts are given a few rules, such as:

• Do not give drugs to your prospie (no matter how much they beg you)
• Do not have sex with your prospie (no matter how much they beg you)
• Do not have sex with someone else in close proximity to your prospie

"Rose," I moaned, "they have to tell you that?"

"Well," Rosie mused, "apparently some prospies come to visit wanting the whole college experience..."

Now, did they have to warn the hosts about those forbidden actions in the mode of stating the obvious, like the WARNING - FLAMMABLE notice that they put on gas cans? Or are these warnings in reaction to prior events, like the admonition on the label for the frozen pizza that says "be sure to remove the cardboard from the bottom of the pizza before placing in oven," since anyone could get distracted and forget that step, and in fact lots of people probably have forgotten that step, and by forgetting that step they have created a situation which would result in the smoke alarms going off and their children laughing at them and never, ever forgetting that one little mistake...

Where was I? Oh, right, I wonder if these warnings should have a name, like, say, the "Pete Campbell Subset of Rules," in honor of that one overly hospitable host student...

Anyway, Rosie says that right now her worst problem is that "everyone in Asia House seems to go poop right when I'm brushing my teeth!"

"Sweetie," I gagged, "get yourself a spit cup. Honestly, that's too disgusting to contemplate."

"No," Rosie said, "no spit cup. For now, I'll just suck it up."

I had to disconnect the Skype because I have too active an imagination. The best thing about not being in college is that in your house, in your bathroom, the only poop you have to smell is your own.

I Love This Job!

Just got finished carefully picking my way across Ben's bedroom to kiss his fuzzy head. Of course, I discovered that he had sneaked milk and cookies into his room (against the rules) and there was absolutely no chance that he had brushed his teeth afterward.

But when I look at my sleeping boy all is forgiven, and when, as I kiss his head, he exhales with a sigh and seems to settle more deeply into slumber, I remember the same exact sound coming from him all of his life. His life, his normal naughtiness, a slumbrous sigh that bridges the years, all of that makes me feel so alive and happy. For now.

Befuddled by Beowulf

So my 17-year-old son has struggled in school, but he honestly seemed to be making an effort so far this year. So when I logged on to his school website and discovered that he had gotten a zero on a Brit-Lit quiz, I thought that there must have been some mistake; perhaps the teacher lost his paper, or...

No such luck. "Well, Mom," Benjamin said, "I gotta say, I just don't get Beowulf."

Of course you don't, I thought, flashing back to a 12-year-old with his arms crossed defiantly over his chest while he exclaimed, "I don't like to read, I won't read, and you can't make me!"

He seemed like such an alien back then. "Hell's bells!" I thought at the time. "I can't make you? My mother couldn't stop me when I was your age!" I knew that his attitude would hurt him, and sure enough, it is. Dang it, it's not fun to be right when being right means that your children are suffering the consequences of their stupid and stubborn behavior. There is no such thing as schadenfreude when it comes to your kids.

Anyway, he is going to read something called Sparks notes before he actually reads the text, in the hopes of improving his comprehension. Heck, he has nowhere to go but up, right?

Getting A Life

I need to stop obsessing about this election. I feel like my anger about racial slurs, etc. have caused me to turn the steering wheel of my emotions so hard and far to the left that I am just circling around.

Sometimes it seems like I need someone to be angry at in order to motivate myself, but at this point I am too upset to concentrate on anything else. As of right now, I pledge to spend 24 hours without looking at any political news stories. I am going to turn off the NPR and turn on the MP3 player.

Right now I am going to surprise Rosie at school by downloading a few songs she wanted and shipping them off to her at Oberlin.

Something Stinks!

...and it's my son. He walked in tonight, stood in the middle of the living room floor, and grinned at me. I love him so much, and I was so happy that he had returned home safely, but my heart sank. He reeked of cigarettes. I mentioned it to him and his face fell, and the moment changed from happy quiet loving moment to the usual Mommy haranguing and son stalking off to his room.

I don't know what to do about it. Ben has just turned 17. His father and I are both smokers, and our GP says, "Monkey see, monkey do!" Very helpful. What is it with doctors and homilies? My sister the geriatrician has washed her hands of us all, saying, "I just figure you'll get sick and tired of being sick and tired."

It's so weird to be a parent knowing that your child is like you in bad ways as well as good ones. This whole smoking thing creates a farrago of emotions and uncertainty. Smoked Benjamin is a pretty bitter dish for his parents. If anyone has any useful ideas, let me know.

Should A Mean Girl Like Sarah Palin Be Elected?

Honestly, when I listened to Sarah Palin's speech last night, all I could envision was her getting hit by a bus and ending up in a body brace. Apparently I wasn't the only one with that image in my head:



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/4/2545/78566/1012/585799

Here's my confession: I used to like John McCain, I much preferred him to Bush, eight years ago I didn't think it would be a disaster if he got elected. Now, every smart-but-unpopular-didn't-go-to-the-prom-girl cell in my body is on red alert. That Mean Girl's speech was energizing, all right. When I log off I am emailing the Obama campaign to see what I can do for them. I'll show her pit bull!

Sarah Palin - WTF?!?

Wow.

This reminds me that my children are probably unaware of the meaning of the phrase "Hail Mary pass." I'll take this opportunity to define it for them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass

What was he thinking?

I am a black woman who has listened to all kinds of criticism of affirmative action (usually from Republicans), and as I understand it, they most object to moving unqualified people to the front of the line based on their race and/or gender. This is a stunning example of the very, very worst form of affirmative action. This choice offends me so much on so many levels. This lady is thin-skinned (loyalty tests), irrational (Creationism in schools), anti-environmentalist (polar bears should not be considered an endangered species, despite strong evidence of their peril), clearly illogical (promoting abstinence-only sex education, despite that policy's personally evident poor results), and deceptive (saying that she is against earmarks, despite having hired a lobbyist to score millions in earmarks for her small city).

Wow.

By the way, in case anyone else doubts the endangered status of polar bears, here is a link to one of my favorite pages ever: http://www.squidoo.com/polarbearaware The bears' situation is absolutely heart-wrenching.

Countdown to Launch

So this is Rosie's last night at home - her Dad's house, not mine. She has to know that we love her, because my ex and I are planning to share the same automobile for about sixteen hours, all told. Rosie is swinging between clinging and being a snot to me, and I spend an unhealthy amount of time worrying about spontaneous human combustion - mine.

Honestly, it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that I could simply burst into flames. When she got her driver's license I had to wait until I had finished throwing up before I could take her to the DMV.

Ben is going to stay home alone with the dog. God bless the boy, he didn't realize that deleting the browser history was a red flag to his mother about possible porn site visitation. He didn't admit to any wrongdoing and he promised he wouldn't do it again. Sigh.

Online Adventures

Okay, friends, I have decided that I am going to make this internet thing work for me. If I can figure it out, that is. One of my more unsuccessful adventures was with paid email, particularly a site called SendEarnings. If you want to know exactly how that train wreck occurred, please check out the following site: www.squidoo.com/SendEarningsReviewed




The site which has been working for me is http://www.sweetprofitsfromhome.com/. Email me if you want any information about it.

Enough, Already!

So last night I took my children out to eat in order to celebrate the oldest child's last day of high school. Things didn't go well. At some point there was a threat to drop someone off and make them walk the rest of the way home, and a counter-threat/dare to jump out of the car themselves because they would gladly walk home. There were also accusations of ingratitude by children who at one time were composed entirely of material derived from their mother's being - which could in some other circumstances be termed "parasitism." This pronouncement was followed by some rolling of the eyes and whispered murmurs by siblings about "adjusting her medication."

After we finally got to the restaurant, I attempted to make conversation by asking Rosie how her birthday gift of body lotions and gels were working out. She told me that she believed that the lotions were making her break out. Ben then asked if she was using the lotions on her face, and it was on.

Everyone behaved badly. I told Ben that if he didn't break down and let me be his Facebook friend I was going to make all of his friends my friends and post a picture of him in drag. I was teasing him of course, but he actually got tears in his eyes, and I believe that he would have cursed me if he had dared.

Then Rosie told me that she didn't want to hear any more from me about Facebook, that I was obsessed and making myself ridiculous, and I that I didn't understand anything about Facebook or its etiquette.

There were recriminations over cookies which had been baked and taken to school and manifestly not shared with family, and an unpleasant discussion of Benjamin's college options if his grades did not significantly improve. I asked him why he didn't seem to be at all worried, and he leaned across the table and whispered, "I'm Black." Then it was really on.

We degenerated to the point where Rosie was screaming, "In three months I'll be gone and I won't have to deal with you people anymore!" Why wait three months, I was thinking, you could simply move in with your father right now. But I kept my mouth shut.

Fortunately, by the end of a very edgy evening I had re-established my intellectual and popular-culture superiority by successfully guessing the occupant of the coffin on "Lost." "How did you know?" they whined. "It was obvious from the clues," I told them. "Really, you guys should pay attention."

They permitted me to kiss them good night, and tuck them into bed. Their father is watching them tonight, so I'll be given the opportunity to miss them a little bit before it all starts again.

Why do I even bother?

A very recent conversation, again with a sixteen-year-old boy:

"Did you eat dinner?"

"Yeah."

"What did you eat?"

"The roast beef you left for me."

"Where's your plate?"

"I washed it."

"Maybe so, but not in this lifetime. Let's start the conversation again..."

Sweet Revenge

For all of you beknighted parents out there, I have a great way for you to turn the tables on your teenager. If they insist on tuning the channel to their station when you're in the car, listen carefully to the dreck that issues forth. Then, after you have memorized the most objectionable items, sing them as you work around the house.

Trust me, when your sixteen-year-old hears your soprano belting out the words "She turned around and gave that big booty a slap," it just might make their head explode. At the very least, it will cause them to keep you as far away from their music as possible in the future.

Happy to be of service!