the most wonderful time …

This is it:  The most wonderful time of the year.  Christmas morning has come and gone, and it’s the Saturday after.  There’s a new ping pong table, an xbox 360, treats to polish off (keep that See’s chocolate away from me, would ya?), and another week to go before the kids have to return to school. We are in full-swing holiday  here.  We saw Nannie and Pop Pop off in their car home bound for New England at 6 a.m., then I poured a hot cup of coffee from my new Cuisinart 12-cup press-and-go coffee maker they gave me and curled up on my sofa in my robe to watch … can you believe it … “Love Story.”  Totally girled and comfied out in my heat-inducting slippers and Pier One Christmas throw, I sipped my coffee, thought about the Christmas I had thrown and wished that I’d put out at least one more appetizer!  After a few days, when you still have hungry company around, you’d better be ready or you have to dig up what you can.  Big tip:  If you’re hosting family for the holidays, be sure to stock up plenty of appetizers, chips, dips, nuts, cheeses and assorted delicacies — this will make or break your Christmas!  In quiet repose on my sofa, I thought about Nannie and Pop Pop driving away as my husband resumed snoring again having returned to bed … and our kids, ensconced in the xbox zone upstairs.  A whole, wonderful, lazy day is splayed out before us.  Tonight, Stewart and I will resume our backgammon tournament and maybe play a ping pong game after a homemade taco fiesta with the kids.  Lots of sour cream. Love the holidays.  It’s the most wonderful time of the year

what makes you merry

I do too much, I admit it.  I’m what is called an over-achiever, except that what I’m achieving is not something that can be measured on a report card.  I’m achieving the day-to-day … and I can be pretty intensely focused.  So when someone asks, “How do you do it?” I don’t flap a wing, don’t raise a brow.

You just do it.  Yeah, all four of my kids play soccer, two are also in ice hockey at the same time … we have winter training going on and piano lessons, voice, school, work … you know, LIFE.

You can get so slammed that people start to behave as though you are odd because you are constantly working in a cylinder-like manner, chasing your tail, getting it all done.

Engaged in life … I told my 13-year-old … it’s the secret to happiness.  To go after what you are interested in.  That’s what makes you happy.  To pursue it and never let it go.

Merry, merry.

I’m Cool (cuz I’m Tough)

My 14-year-old daughter says I’m cool.  ”Really?” I asked her, swinging around in my chair as I munched on a crunchy Gala apple.  ”Yeah, you are,” she said.  ”Not like a lot of moms who are all fat and out of it and everything …”  ”Hey, some people can’t help it, you know?”  ”Yes they can,” she answered fast.  ”I’m glad you’re cool … My friends think you are, too.”

All right.  So I’m a cool mom.  You want to know the secret?

Don’t take any lip.  Be aware with eyes in the back of your head.  Hold your kids accountable.  Make them have good manners.  Make them do their homework, eat vegetables, get exercise.  Call their bluffs.  Know that they will seek out every loop hole in every equation if it means they will end up getting their way and work darned hard to close that loop hole yourself.

I’m cool.  Cuz I don’t buckle on nothin’.

Too much, too little, too late? No way.

My two youngest are in The Circle Player’s production of “Oliver!” opening this Friday night, October 17.  It has been an amazing experience for them although exhausting.  They have had rehearsals every night this week and don’t get home with their dad (who also has a cameo) until 11.  I’ve been driving them to school to let them get an extra hour of sleep in the morning, skipping the bus.  We are one of the over-scheduled families … I wonder how we stack up to others?  My oldest plays high school soccer and takes voice lessons.  My middle school son is on the JV soccer team at school, takes trumpet lessons and plays both travel soccer and rec ice hockey … I worry that he doesn’t get enough time to build roller coasters in his room which is what he really wants to do … My fourth grader is in “Oliver!” and also plays travel soccer and recreational hockey and my youngest, in kindergarten, is playing soccer and does run club after school.  We are a competitive bunch.  I love competitiveness … It leads us to go, go, go and bite off a lot from all of the things we really like to do.  It is the edge that drives excellence.  Too many people are scared to death of that attitude and want me to believe that “we are all the same.”  I don’t believe that.  We are all made up of different stuff and are driven to follow what we’re made up of if we can hear that beat, beat, beat of the drum within our selves.  I hear it.  I’m trying to help my kids to hear theirs.  That’s why when my 10-year-old whines after school that he has nothing to do I can drop the groceries I just slogged through the door and say, “Man, I’d give anything for five minutes of boredom!”  Five minutes of boredom would be a glorious thing.  Instead I have 24 hours of chasing my tail through the day!

can one write too much?

The blogosphere is charged with high-wattage ranting and raving and it worries me that so many talented writers are just yammering away day in and day out and blathering about everything as if anyone cares to hear them.  It’s like a person who talks too much.  A person really has to care about another person to stand and listen to them and the same thing goes with writing.

I’m trying to teach my kids how to write, but in so doing, I’m encouraging them to figure out what they really want to SAY.  Something fresh, something original, something that’s not cliché and fraught with the same old ideas that everyone else has.

The dangers in over-writing is that you play yourself out, get repetitious, self-important, BORING.

If I can teach my kids to listen to what they think and then to think before they write I’ll have accomplished something.  This emote and send stuff is really sad to see all over the Internet for the most part because there’s a real break-down in good, decent communication with all of the barbs thrown around in blogs.

eyes of a girl

A Smith county girl has gone missing with an armed Hispanic guy. The picture of the girl, 16-year-old Laura Pewitt, is posted in local news outlets. Why is it that some girls take on this kind of hardened look?  If you look at her, one of her eyes is hard like coal.  The other still has a sparkle left in it.  

Hold your hands over her face and just look at her eyes.  The hardened one is the one that led her to involvement with this guy in the first place.  

She’s missing.  Somehow she got involved with him.  I hope her family gets her back.  These young girls are so susceptible to boys/men. Mothers have to be exceedingly strong-willed to fight back.  Don’t let them go with just anyone. Know who they are with at all times and don’t be a doormat afraid to hurt your child’s feelings.  Do not stand for disrespect and fight like mad not to let the predatory males get near your daughters.

out with the old

Tax-free weekend’s coming up and I need clothes.  My 14-year-old soon-to-be-a-freshman daughter needs clothes.  My 12-year-old who will miss the first day of school as he’ll be arriving home that day from England needs clothes.  My 10-year-old and my 5-year-old need clothes.  The problem is, t’aint much to make that happen!  So you have to go through everything and figure out what will work and pass some things down, get ready to give away what won’t.  That’s a mom’s job, usually.  The clothes.  The parade of the clothes.  It’s my least favorite aspect of child-rearing because I stink at it.  I try, I really do, and I’ve managed to save outfits that I’d like to see on grandchildren some day.  But the seasonal shift that has me pawing through wardrobes and sizing up exposed ankles thanks to a couple additional inches in height or in the case of my 12-year-old, four inches in a year … IT’S A REAL BORE!  Wish I had a million bucks. I’d chuck it all and start over.

single mom in the city

I understand taking care of children.  But I don’t like to do it by myself.  I’m really good at being by myself — as long as I can be with HIM for awhile and HE’S helping me with the kids. But I don’t like the idea of taking care of three children by myself for an extended period of time — and you know, I’m flying solo for the next two weeks.  I know you don’t feel sorry for me.  Why should you?  How about the fact that I work full-time, cook, clean and all that.  No?  You suspect I have help like Angelina or one of those coddled stars?  Nope, I don’t.  OK then. I’m solo. I get no breaks.  Unless the break is going out of your mind.  So how do you raise kids by YOURSELF without going out of your mind?

a dark night overseas

High above the Atlantic, my husband of 17 years and my 12-year-old son, a blonde, lanky soccer-bound boy with a cool haircut, are bound for the U.K.   I’m in Nashville flying solo for the next two weeks with our three other kids. Stew and Noah had a fast-and-furious, skin-of-the-teeth departure narrowly making the flight, so we really didn’t get to have the loving goodbye I wanted to have.  Feeling kind of mopey, we all went to my office for a while and then I christened my new four-member family unit with an afternoon showing of Wall•e complete with popcorn, soda and candy.  I was salving my sense of missing my other two.  We loved Wall•e and drove home chatting together about the beautiful sky, clouds and sun breaking through.  Only a few days ago, my husband said in a quick, hushed passing, “What do I do if the Arabs get me?”  Irritated that he’d even raised the subject, and irritated that there were so many odds and ends to complete before I could send them off, I retorted, “Well, I’d say you’d be cooked!”

It’s too bad that kind of thought is embedded in me today. In all of us.  And it will continue to be.  Even with faith there’s an asterik when it comes to flying today.

it’s a dark day for the dark knight

The desensitization of our youngest children — already numb from the Teen and Mature video games many parents blindly allow them to play (which set them on a sort of addict’s quest for more, give me more, and make it really cool this time, come on, make it better than before!) continues jarringly along in The Dark Knight, a continually violent film which doesn’t need a drop of blood for its horror to seep in.  Yes, Heath is amazing, licking those stinging, puss-filled lips.  Yes, his is a performance adults can really relish in. Yes, the film is an astonishing display of cinematic style and brilliance— but WHERE oh WHERE is the sense in taking children to see a movie as dark as this?  When did PG-13 become so maniacally dangerous?  Every 10-year-old in my neighborhood wants to see this film and only tight-lipped moms will say no.  So sitting in the Green Hill’s movie theater with my 10-, 12- and 14-year-olds I worried about my youngest one the most — he’s most likely to be influenced for better or worse. His face riveted forward, more than once I put my hand on his chest to feel his heart pounding hard in his chest.  He was loving the Joker.  I don’t want the world to be so romantic about villains.  I don’t want to take my kids to movies like this.  I didn’t know it would be so glaringly dark. I mean look, it ended up destroying Heath Ledger.  And as far as I’m concerned, we need to keep the innocence in our children’s world longer and stop feeding them content they can’t say no to.  Come on!