May 2008 -- The Month of Living Crappily

Hi! Remember me? I used to blog here.

Then some stuff happened, and some other stuff happened, and some of it I could talk about because it happened to me, but other parts of it I couldn't talk about because they happened to someone else, and in the World According to Betsy Bird, you only have free rein to blog about it if it's your stuff. If it's someone else's, maybe not.

No one's dying, and no one's getting divorced. No one's been arrested, and no one's run away from home (although I've considered it). All I can say is that the words "New Post" at the top of my Blogger screen tonight might as well have been "Welcome Home." I've missed this space.

So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to write about what I can, a sort of "Since I've Been Gone" for the blogiverse.

1. I kept running ... for awhile.

As some of you may recall, not long ago me and my great whites began a Couch to 5K running program, with a goal of running an actual, real-live, finish-line race the end of June. Last week, a miracle occurred. I actually ran 3/4 of a mile, walked a half-mile, then ran another 3/4 of a mile. Celestial sounds poured forth from the heavens. Birds sang along. Rainbows appeared.

And then I got bronchitis.

Not to be a wimp, I decided to keep running anyway. This was a bad idea. By last Friday night, as the Memorial Day weekend began to suggest itself, I was really sick.

But I didn't take my bed. Are you kidding? I'm the mom. Instead ...

2. I packed Billy off for a trip to the beach with some friends.

How nice, you're thinking. Well, yeah.

Except for finding out 48 hours before he left that he and his friends would be staying in a place by themselves. "Don't worry," the host mother told me. "We'll be just down the beach."

Oh, and there was also the part about how, since they were renting a place FOR THE TEENAGE KIDS, MANY OF WHOM HAD JUST TWO DAYS BEFORE GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL, TO STAY WITHOUT ADULT SUPERVISION, we would need to contribute $150.

Billy's one of these kids who's never given us a reason not to trust him. Sometimes those are the hardest kind. In the lengthy time we had to weigh all our options and thoughtfully consider the pros and cons of letting him go on this trip, which of course had been planned for weeks -- in other words, 30 minutes -- we decided he'd earned the right to go.

Let the worrying begin.

Before we knew it, the phone rang. It was Billy, who'd insisted it was a really, really great idea to take his new, 140,000-mile Volvo, seeing as how he needed to come back earlier than the other kids they day after Memorial Day.

"Mom," he began. "We stopped at KFC, and when we got back in the car, the check engine light came on, and now it's driving sluggish, so we went to an auto parts place, because we thought they'd know how to fix it, but they don't, and now I need to know what to do."

Oh.

"Call Daddy," I said. There's a time and a place to take a feminist stand but this wasn't it.

Daddy concluded that Billy and his friends should join the other cars and leave his car. Which meant that we got to spend the first day of the Memorial Day weekend driving to a little town, which didn't have much more than a KFC and an auto parts store, to figure out why the check engine light was on.

Which it wasn't.

Meanwhile, I coughed. I coughed so much that

3. I spent Memorial Day at a Doc-in-the-Box.

Previously in this forum I have taken a stand against Z-pak abuse. Like a child raised in an alcoholic home who grows up to abstain, I was raised by people who toss back antibiotics like some folks eat M & Ms.

But there's a time and a place for everything. After a weekend of fever and coughing up stuff the same shade as this year's most fashionable paint colors (one of these days thousands of Americans will wake up and realize they painted their living room walls the color of infection), I would have robbed a pharmacy for some antibiotics.

But we don't have a gun. So instead, I went to a so-called "urgent" treatment center.

Apparently "urgent" means different things to different people. To me, it meant get there and back before the Law & Order Memorial Day Marathon ended. To the 137-year-old doctor on duty that day, it meant treat me before the end of the month.

In theory I think doctors should wait for the results of a blood test before doling out antibiotics. In practice, when the blood is drawn by a nurse who apparently hasn't seen a vein since Christmas, and when it takes two hours to get the results back, during which the nurse and the doctor and some other folks sit around and eat pizza while I wait alone in an examining room where the paper won't stay on the table, I think we should see if the Mafia would be interested in pursuing a new line of business.

Eventually, and with considerable help from me ("Well let's see, what could we try?" "I've done well on Zithromax in the past." "Say ... now there's an idea."), the doctor "treated" me and went back to his pizza.

Did I mention he never listened to my chest? Isn't that Bronchitis 101? Maybe that's why I'm still sick.

But I have to get well, because

4. I scheduled my shoulder surgery for next Thursday, June 5.

I still haven't 100% committed to a surgeon. As you may recall, I had issues with the first surgeon. So last week I went to see Shoulder Guy.

I liked Shoulder Guy. Yes, he had on cowboy boots, which seemed a little "I'm so cool that I wear cowboy boots in a seven-story medical office building 10 miles from the closest horse," but he was nice, and he explained lots of things, and best of all was he said that actually what needs fixing is not my rotator cuff but my cartilage. This may not sound important, but apparently cartilage heals a lot faster, which means my shoulder won't hurt as much or as long, and my summer won't suck nearly as much as it was sounding like it might a couple of weeks ago. Besides, Shoulder Guy has had his own shoulder cartilage fixed. He didn't do it himself, of course, and I didn't feel comfortable asking who did. But it certainly didn't sour him on the procedure. "I LOVE doing these," Shoulder Guy said.

Of course, I love doing crosswords. That doesn't mean I'm any good at them.

Stay tuned ...

College is Making Me Crazy

Many of you out there in the blogiverse are captivating reads.

I’m especially enamored of late with Whiskey in My Sippy Cup, BooMama, and breed ‘em and weep. These blogs are very different, but they share a common denominator: those ladies can write.

But I must confess that recently my eye has been roving. College Confidential has me hooked.

Those of you still worried about finding the right preschool probably haven’t heard of College Confidential. I hadn’t either, until I read a harrowing piece in the New York Times about the struggles of teenage geniuses who started free tutoring programs in the Sudan to get accepted at top colleges.

If your last brush with college admissions was two or three decades ago, let me tell you: things have changed.

Back in my day (What's that siren? Oh yeah ... the old coot alert!), you took the ACT the fall of your senior year. If your parents were rich and you could look at private schools, you took the SAT. You sent in an application or two or three (which took all of an afternoon to complete), and then you went back to riding around in cars with boys who horrified your parents, clandestinely drinking beer.

These days, if your family includes both a really promising kid (I’m not trying to brag, I'm just establishing the context – if Billy were a football player, we’d be fending off booster club offers of party girls and free Hummers) and one head-spinningly neurotic parent (see if you can guess which one), the whole process is way, way more complicated than that.

Unfortunately, we’ve come late to this party. The other completely wacko parents with talented children started getting nervous way earlier than I did. These kids were visiting colleges and taking the SAT "for fun" back in ninth grade. They were earning community service hours while still in diapers and doing promising research toward a cancer vaccine while Billy was still fixated on Pokemon cards and toilet humor.

Billy and I didn’t realize how competitive and crazy this whole thing had become until midway through his sophomore year, by which point it was getting a little late. We’re doing our best to catch up, though.

Billy is taking and re-taking entrance exams, meanwhile spending lots of money on test prep books that seem to have taken up permanent residence next to his toilet. (He clearly has inherited my tendency to prepare for any and all circumstances with a trip to the bookstore. When in doubt, buy a how-to book.)

I’m keeping up with the reams and reams of paper that various colleges send us, all of which show a group consisting of a white male, an Asian girl, a black professor, and a really happy person in a wheelchair sitting under a tree on a sunny afternoon just shooting the breeze. I'm trying to forget that the Class of 2009 is projected to have more kids applying to college (and thus more kids vying for top college acceptances) than any class in history.

Bob is earning the money that is just enough to keep us from qualifying for financial aid but not nearly enough to pay for anything other than a state school that’s really not a good fit for Billy. (Just this morning I learned that our EFC – Expected Family Contribution, or Extremely Fantastical Concept – was a figure so high we’d have to stop eating and using electricity in order to come up with it.)

Ben is going along for the ride on our trip next week to visit colleges. I keep telling him this trip is a good thing – that he’ll be happy later that he’s already visited those four schools. I think he believes he’s being cheated out of a perfectly good week at the beach.

And College Confidential? College Confidential is doing its best both to educate me (“need-blind admissions means the school is blind to your need”) and scare me to death (“I had a 2350 on the SAT, was first in my class, ran a multinational corporation, placed first in the state tennis tournament, and got rejected at Really Prestigious U.”) It’s one part Encyclopedia Brittanica (“it’s really easy to get from South Bend to Chicago – there’s a bus from campus that will drop students off at either airport”), one part US Weekly (the murder of Eve Carson at Chapel Hill last week “looks to be a carjacking gone bad. Vehicle is a favorite of gangbangers.”)

For a person the tinest bit prone to get TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY OBSESSED with a topic, College Confidential is a godsend. I haven’t visited TMZ in weeks.

Can We Talk?

WARNING: The following post contains the ravings of an old fuddy-duddy. Please read it anyway.

My kids were born back in the dark ages. The neighbor's children drove five miles to school through the snow in a sedan, not an SUV. There was no such thing as TiVo. The Internet was that thing in a man's bathing suit.

Moms of my generation had to muddle our way through on our own, without the aid of technology. Oh sure, we had baby monitors, and a few people I knew actually sprang for that thermometer you stick in your kid's ear, but by and large we were on our own, stumbling alone in the dark through a pre-wired world.

Somehow, we survived, as did our children. Mine are teenagers now, which means I can once again read the newspaper. And that's how I happened upon Brad Stone's recent article in The New York Times. Headlined "The Modern Nursery, Batteries Required," this piece told me some of what I am now missing, having gotten out of the infant-raising game.

My, how things have changed! Some of the new gizmos sound fabulous. Did you know, for example, that there is now a pacifier that keeps itself clean? Aptly named the AlwaysClean Pacifier, this "na-na" (that's what Billy called his, and it stuck) "reliably falls backward, onto its handle, which activates a plastic shield that snaps closed over the nipple, so parents do not have to clean the thing repeatedly," according to Stone. That sounds so terrific that I almost want to have a third baby just to try it. (Almost. Not quite. Hear that, uterus?)

But some of the new technology sounds ... mmm, let's see ... how do I say this? ... well, stupid.

Take, for example, the Angel Care Movement Sensor, which Stone describes as a product "for parents who can and do imagine the absolute worst."

Those words got my attention, as I am a card-carrying member of the "if you can imagine it, it can happen" club. I am therefore not unsympathetic to parents who freak out on a regular basis. It comes with the territory, and I have indisputably done my share of it.

In my case, however, a genetic component clearly is involved. My sister became an absolute whirling dervish of anxiety during her second pregnancy when her husband, who was painting their kitchen, accidentally sanded a dime-sized spot on a cabinet that my sister feared was coated with lead-based paint. Now they weren't certain the paint was lead-based, mind you, and the spot was smaller than a thumbnail, and my sister herself hadn't been doing the sanding, but really, did any of that matter? Jennifer was absolutely. dead. certain. that she had inhaled enough paint dust to maim her six-month-old fetus, and she was even more convinced that her three-year-old's IQ had just dropped by about 40 points. Jennifer sat herself down in front of the computer and spent the next few months reading Internet horror stories about the dangers of lead poisoning. On the phone, she sounded like a woman who saw a tornado on the horizon and couldn't find the key to the storm cellar. Then she got up out of the chair, went to the hospital, and delivered a baby who has turned out to be so smart it's kind of scary. (That three-year-old is now in first grade, and I knew exactly what Jennifer was thinking when the girl's teacher told Jennifer last fall she was only reading at grade level. Since then, however, she's caught on, and now she beds down with a book and a flashlight each night. Stay tuned, however: I fear we are not out of the woods yet. Precalculus awaits.)

Anyway, here's the idea behind the Angel Care Movement Sensor. If you are terrified that your child might, as Stone puts it, expire in the crib, for $130 you can buy a pad that you put under the crib mattress. This pad, according to Stone's article, has "highly refined sensors that measure pressure and the slightest baby movements. If the sensors detect no movement for 20 seconds, an urgent alarm sounds on a receiver unit in the parent's room."

Now let me quickly say I can't imagine anything in the world worse than losing a child. Nothing. So if an expectant parent out there wants to buy an Angel Care Movement Sensor, I think she should go right ahead and do it. But, as a long-time parent, I would like to gently suggest she first consider the following.

It has been my experience that babies wake up. A lot. Especially at night, the only time, sadly, when our society dicates that it's okay for adults to try to sleep. Now I'm sure the creators of the Angel Care Movement Sensor know more about baby's sleep patterns than I do, but I am positive I've seen sleeping babies lie completely still for more than 20 seconds at a time. And that would seem to suggest that several times a night, the owners of the Angel Care Movement Sensor are going to awake to the sound of an alarm going off in their room.

I don't know about you, but if alarms had repeatedly gone off in my room at night when my kids were babies, I would have been even more nervous than I was just lying there worrying about them in the quiet. In fact, if I were going to design something to drive a parent absolutely freaking bananas, this might be it.

And it wouldn't be just the parents who were disturbed by the Angel Care sensor. If the crib is in the parents' room, as they so often are in the early days, the baby is also going to wake up and quite possibly act altogether un-angelic.

Expectant parents, take my word for it: this will not a happy family make. Nor will all be sweetness and light when, as Stone has apparently learned firsthand, a parent (probably the dad) removes a completely healthy baby from the crib in the middle of the night for a bottle or a fresh diaper and forgets to turn off the alarm, thus abruptly awakening the other parent (probably the mom), whom in all likelihood the hapless dad was just trying to let grab a little more sleep because the sleeping parent had lately become the teensiest bit bitchy, because after all she hasn't had more than two hours of sleep at a stretch for three months and none of this baby weight is coming off even though she's nursing every 25 minutes the entire day and she realized she never even buttoned her shirt yesterday and her brain has turned to complete mush but you wouldn't understand because you, you, get to go out every day and talk to adults and have a life and--

Sorry -- flashback there. Anyway, were this to happen, the parent who allowed the alarm to go off would likely find the parent who was awakened by the alarm someone forgot to turn off had become even bitchier than she was when she went to sleep and frankly a hell of a lot less attractive than she was back when they were dating.

Suffice it to say that I believe the expectant couple's $130 is better spent elsewhere than on the Angel Care Movement Sensor.

But you could buy three of those for the price of one LENA System, which is quite frankly the most ridiculous product I've come across since those $399 talking Elvis heads that department stores stocked up on this past Christmas. (If you missed them, I suggest you keep an eye out at Big Lots. The last I saw of them they were marked 75% off.)

Here's how the LENA System, which coincidentally is also priced at $399, works. A parent, having read there's a connection between how much you talk to a baby and that baby's chance of making the Forbes 400 later in life, dresses his or her child in a special outfit with a pocket on the front. (The pocket on the blue outfit is adorned with a truck, which doesn't make any sense, because as any blue-collar worker will tell you, trucks won't get you on the Forbes 400 unless you own entire fleets of them.) The parent sticks something akin to a credit card in the pocket, where it records the "conversation" between the baby and the adult. The parent then takes the credit card, sticks it into a computer equipped with special software, and looks at the resulting analysis of how much the adult talked, how often the baby gurgled, and -- this being America -- how these stats compare to the rest of the population.

Now, not to brag, but I am an EXPERT at raising children who talk. If there's one thing the Bird boys are good at, it's talking. All the time. Everyday. About everything.

My mother used to tell me the reason I was so exhausted was that raising two of my children was like raising four of someone else's. Not only did they run around and make messes and drop toys and wake up at night: they also talked the entire time they were doing it. To me. And they expected a response. I'm certain that I will someday have to have a jaw replacement because mine will simply give out.

And this hasn't stopped with adolescence. "You should be so proud of Billy," a teacher will tell me. "He really knows how to talk to adults." Yes, I tell her. I know. "I love it when Ben's in my carpool," mothers will tell me. "That's the only way I ever find out what's going on at school." Me too.

Yes folks, talking is the Bird boys' sport. And I'm grateful, to a point: talking does not require expensive equipment, it does not require Bob and me to sit on bleachers till our butts bruise, and there's not much chance Billy or Ben will ever break a bone doing it. Unfortunately, however, I have not yet found a college that awards talking scholarships.

So I know how to raise talkers. And believe me, it does NOT require technology. Here is Betsy Bird's three-step plan for raising children who talk.

Step 1: Talk to your children. Any little thought that comes into your head, say it. Until they hit about 18 months, you can even say bad words.
Step 2: Listen.
Step 3: If in Step 2 you determine that you have stopped talking, start again. (See Step 1.)

It's really that simple. Better yet, the Bird system is free, does not require electricity, and is completely portable.

And believe me, when that baby gets to be a junior or senior in high school and you see just how expensive college is, that $399 the LENA system costs will really come in handy.

At Least They'll Fit In With The Other Diesel Mechanics

It has come to my attention that the Bird boys lack certain fundamental hygiene skills.

It's nothing I smell -- we undoubtedly consume more Speed Stick per capita than most households in Fox Valley. I'll never need air freshener as long as Billy and Ben and their manly-yet-fresh aromas are around.

No, the clues are more subtle than mere B.O.

The first came a couple of years ago, when Billy began to develop acne. When I bought him special cleanser, he couldn't seem to get the hang of what he was supposed to do with it. That's when I learned that he didn't actually wash his face. He just let the shower run over it and called it clean.

(Perhaps this misunderstanding of product usage is genetic. Years ago my mother and I ascertained after exhaustive investigation that the reason my father's hair always looked peculiar was that he thought cream rinse was to be used to rinse shampoo out of hair. The man was wearing a 20-year accumulation of Tame and Prell.)

Then there was Ben's hair. He's got more of it than the other three of us put together, and I began to notice that about two-thirds of it wasn't wet when he finished shampooing. It turns out that he was only washing the top of his head, not the sides. We've repeatedly discussed the fact that all of it gets dirty, but I haven't seen much improvement.

The boys' hygiene is weighing heavy on my mind this week, as they dress rehearse for their roles in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Ben is PigPen, which means the girls in the cast take great delight in smearing his face, neck, hands, and arms with all manner of brown cosmetics to make him look appropriately filthy. (Boys who won't do theatre because you have to wear makeup are missing a vital point: it's the girls in the cast who know how to apply it. You don't see football players sitting there being rubbed on by several girls, at least not while they're actually playing football.) He's arrived home each of the last several nights a complete mess.

The problem is that when he comes down to breakfast the next morning, he's still a complete mess. Twice I've had to grab a washcloth and start scrubbing to get the "dirt" off his arms and neck. He seems to think this is much ado about nothing.

Bob and I have done our best to coach on these things, but I fear we've waited too late. Only a couple of neat-freak girlfriends can save our boys now.

I wish I'd been as smart as that clever Anne Glamore, who writes Tales From My Tiny Kingdom. Earlier this week Anne pulled on her bathing suit, instructed a particularly grimy young son to don his, and took him into the shower for a body washing workshop. (Here, read for yourself. She and her brood are ever so entertaining.)

Unfortunately, 17-year-old Billy and 14-year-old Ben are way too old for us to legally teach them the same way.

Sleeping Through the Night

I knew my boys would keep me up all night when they were babies. The surprise is that they still do.

There were a few years in there, from around 3 to 13, where pretty much everyone in this house went to bed when I thought they should and got up when I wanted them to. But those days are over.

The last couple of weeks have been particularly sleepless ones for the Bird family. Bob and I do our best to make sure one of us is awake until the kids get home, although sometimes exhaustion takes over, in which case the late arrival has to wake us up when he gets in. There's an obvious flaw in this plan; a child who doesn't come home isn't going to be rousing us. But sometimes it's the best we can do.

Billy's into technical theatre, and last week he was working on a show till 11 or later most every night, arriving home just in time to do a few hours of homework. One night he called Bob (I was in California) when rehearsal was over. It was 11. "I'm going to Kate's for a study group for the AP Chemistry test," he said. Had I been home, my response would have been a quick "Oh no you're not." But Bob's a pushover, and so Billy was out studying -- and Bob was up vegetating -- till 1 a.m. (I know what you're thinking, but based on his test grade, if he was somewhere besides Kate's, AP chemistry was nonetheless being discussed.)

The final production of Billy's show was Sunday night, and again, he didn't get home till after midnight -- with a paper yet to write. Now here's the amazing thing. HE WASN'T PARTICULARLY TIRED. The same could not be said for Bob and me. Monday our asses were dragging. By that night, when Billy and Ben arrived home from practice for a different play at 9:30, Bob and I were propping our eyelids up with toothpicks. But relief was not in sight. Ben was so freaked about how much homework he had left to do that he was literally vibrating. I thought he needed a good dose of Momitol, so I sat nearby while he plowed through. By the time Tuesday rolled around, I felt like I'd been plowed.

Even had I been well rested, I would've still been Bitchy Mom when Billy announced that night at 10 that he was headed out for another group study session. I put my foot down. Which was why I was surprised when 15 minutes later he announced he was running to the grocery store to get the cookies and Cokes he had signed up to bring for the next day's student government blood drive. He would've gone, too, if I hadn't convinced him all the groceries in our area were closed. (This is because they are operated by adults, not teenagers.)

By Wednesday a.m., I was so tired it hurt. But help was finally on the way.

The last year or so, I've become quite the snorer. My husband, who is sweet, merely has to wake me up a few times a night to ask me to reposition. My friends, who are not sweet, refuse to room with me on our annual trips and make obnoxious jokes about the insufficiency of earplugs. So I saw a sleep specialist, who set me up for an overnight sleep study. Wednesday was The Big Night.

For some reason I had to be photographed when I checked in. The nurse told me I was the first patient who'd smiled for the camera all evening. "Why are you so happy?' she asked.

"Because I'm so excited to be here!" I told her. Yes, folks, this is what I've been reduced to: an exhausted mother smiling like a crazy person about the prospect of a night in a sleep clinic.

It's not that I like wires, about 700 of which are taped to you before they let you turn in, or hospital breakfasts, which they serve you the next morning. (Beware of orange hash browns.) It's that when you go to a sleep disorders clinic, no one there wants you to help with homework or finish cleaning up the kitchen or spend another four or five hours on a work project. You're not expected to stay up until someone else is ready for bed. The only thing they want you to at the sleep clinic is sleep. It's your job.

I excel at sleeping, or so I thought. According to some of those 700 wires, I was asleep exactly 90 seconds after the nurse told me good night. But some of the other wires revealed something else. My snore is so loud that I'm waking myself up. A lot. Okay, if you must know -- approximately every 30 seconds.

This puts my constant exhaustion in perspective. Not only am I staying up way later than I want to, when I'm sleeping I'm not really asleep. I'm just impersonating a sleeper. And Bob? He's what they refer to in the sleep business as "collateral damage."

Obviously this has got to stop. Next week I'll see an ENT to decide what to do. Apparently there are all sorts of vaguely menacing sounding surgical procedures -- you don't really want details -- that will likely take care of the problem.

"If they can't fix it, though, we're not done with you," the doctor said. "We'll bring you back in here, and after you finish your night sleep, we'll keep you here for a day and watch you while you take five naps."

I can hardly wait.

Birds and Bees and Bonds

Saturdays are usually slower around here (proof that there is a God), and we often begin the day with the paper and several cups of coffee. This morning, Ben joined us, although he drank peppermint tea.

I glanced at yet another headline about the economy going down the tubes. These things worry me, and not just because we rely a lot around here on money.

"Ben, you know all these stories in the news about the recession?

"Yeah?"

"I know they're scary. But the economy's basically been in good shape since you were born. Daddy and I have been around long enough to know that--"

"I know, I know -- every 10 years or so we have a recession."

"Right," I said. "These things come in cycles. Things may be bad now, but they'll get better."

Ben looked at me like I was both precious and clueless. "Aww, we're having 'the talk,' aren't we? 'When a Mommy and Daddy's assets get together and lose value, it's a recession.'"

In his best fatherly voice, Bob chimed in. "That's right. So you need to be sure to practice safe consumerism."

You Think It Was That One Glass of Wine in the Third Trimester?

I'm not bragging, but my kids are smart. Just today, Billy came home to tell me he'd moved up three places to 27th in his class of 340. (A major corporate relocation or an epidemic of some sort and he could make it to the top 5 % before he graduates. Just kidding. Really.) And Ben always hits the highest percentiles on standardized tests.

But sometimes I wonder about these boys. You will too when I tell you about the thank you notes. (Yes, that would be the Christmas thank you notes. I ask you -- is it better that they write them promptly or that they write them, period?)

My boys -- who both have jobs; who sometimes wash their own clothes when they're beginning to run out (you know what they say about good help); who have checking accounts they've yet to overdraw -- still don't address their own correspondence. They write it; they stick it in the envelope; they expect me to do the rest.

This year, though, they helped ... a little. They wrote the name of the addressee on each envelope.

At the very top.

Without a last name.

I was left with a stack of sealed envelopes with things like "Uncle Joe" and "Dee-dah" scrawled on them in big letters. (Please imagine the graphic I'd insert here if only I could figure out how to do it.) Suspecting these names would not be particularly helpful to the letter carrier, I slapped big white address labels over them and wrote the recipients' grown-up names on the envelopes. And mailed them. And worried a little about what's going to happen in 18 months when Billy leaves for college.

But at least he knows what to do with cheese.

Ben came to me a couple of weeks ago with a yellow square in his hand. He handed it to me. It was a Kraft single. And then he said:

"How do you open this?"

Maybe he's been cheating on those tests.

Out on the Edge

Betsy’s been the eensiest bit testy the last few days.

A little friend who comes bearing hormones is about to visit, which is always good for making me want to slap anyone even remotely cheerful. And the month-long talent competition I’m co-chairing at Ben’s school is well underway, reminding me that the reason today’s kids don’t read is because their parents don’t read. “Are you aware that you’ve scheduled rehearsals the same week as cheerleader tryouts?” a mother asked one night this week, way past the time polite people have quit using the phone for the evening. As a matter of fact, I was. I was also aware that since said rehearsals were during the school day, when absolutely no cheerleader tryouts would be taking place, this wasn’t going to be a problem, a fact of which said mother also would have been cognizant had she read the copious amounts of information we’ve provided her and her multi-talented daughter these last few weeks.

Anyway, in retrospect, I guess this might not have been the best week to select new glasses frames. But I’m tired of not being able to see like I did as a minor. Talk about testy – being nearsighted, presbyopic, dry-eyed, and vain is a combination guaranteed to put one in a chronically foul mood. With my glasses off, I can’t see anything. With them on, I can’t see much. My doctor told me that even after laser surgery I'd still need reading glasses, which, as you 40-something readers undoubtedly have learned, actually means I'd need several pairs of reading glasses to account for phone books, regular books, computer screens, and the fact that reading glasses tend to end up in the same spot where socks escape to. (She also told me I have tiny cataracts, which is guaranteed to make a gal feel like she ought to start shopping for a Lil’ Rascal.) I’ve still got contacts, but after a few hours they start sticking like burnt cheese on the rim of a 9 x 13. New glasses with even-stronger progressive (i.e. bifocal that don't look like bifocal) lenses seemed the least unsatisfactory of an array of bad options. Besides, I’d been feeling vaguely unsettled about my eye wear since my sister suggested over the holidays that my glasses were both the wrong color and out of style.

As (I hope) readers with bad eyes know, one must never go glasses shopping alone. Who knows how many social lives have been tragically cut short by solitary eyewear-selection excursions? Back in the early 80s, on a day I was feeling feisty and independent, I acquired all by myself a pair of gigantic pink glasses that Elton John would have coveted. Only the intervention of a kind friend saved me from a life of Star Trek reruns, cat breeding, and eating Rocky Road alone.

Thursday, however, when I was ready to buy glasses, the only person available for consultation was Ben. This was not necessarily a bad thing. He’s the only man in this household who’s remotely fashion conscious; true, his taste tends toward mall stores that blare OSHA-infringing rock music and spew cologne through their air vents, but I’ve watched Project Runway with him, and he recognizes good lines. What’s more, he’s terrifically concerned with what I wear. He has studied the matter and determined that white is my best color; he’s thrilled when the pockets of my jeans bear designs that looks vaguely expensive. His ultimate compliment is “you’re looking very Fox Valley today.” A mom could do worse than have Ben serve as her eyewear consultant.

In taking the kids for eye appointments in recent months (guess who’s vision needs came last?), I’d spotted a comely pair of frames at a nearby optician’s, and it was to that office that we drove Thursday after Ben’s allergy shot. Despite my surly mood, I felt a bloom of cheer; this was going to be a quick trip. These frames were perfect; Ben would agree; I’d write a big check and we’d be home by 5.

We entered the store, and I made a beeline for the adorable frames. What luck! They were still there. I pulled off my old glasses, put on the new ones, turned to Ben, and smiled. “What do you think?”

“I think they make you look like a librarian.”

Well.

Hmmm.

And how were you planning on getting home, son? It’s a long walk, and it sure is cold.

Actually, I’d love to be a librarian. It’s nice and quiet where they work, and they get to see all the new books fresh off the presses. But I don’t want to look like one – at least not the way a 14-year-old boy thinks of one. If my own flesh and blood thought I looked frumpy, what would the general public think? And that wasn’t the only reason I wanted Ben’s approval. I wanted this whole process to be quick and easy. I have a talent show to co-chair; I don’t have time to scour the countryside for glasses.

“What do you mean, a librarian? I think they’re cute.”

“I just think you need some that don’t make you look so old.”

What had ever made me think this child was adorable? Clearly he was a mouthy adolescent who needed to establish himself a college savings plan posthaste.

Ben could tell he’d touched a nerve. “It’s not that they look bad, Mom. I just think it would be better if you got some that were edgy.”

Has Ben looked at me lately? I wear low-heeled shoes and flannel pajamas and the occasional pair of elastic-waist pants. My idea of a thrilling evening is watching Jane Austen on Masterpiece Theatre. Edgy? I wish.

Clearly we needed the voice of reason. I asked one of the women who worked there, a gal around my age, for help.

She liked the frames, as well as several other pairs, all of which elicited the same librarian look from Ben. But though they weren’t on exactly the same page, they were simpatico on one thing: everything in the store was better than what I’ve been wearing.

“Let’s see,” she said. “How long have you been wearing those?” She pulled my file and searched for a date. “Goodness – four years. The styles have changed a lot.”

Since when did glasses become extinct after four years? My mother wore the same pair of cat eyes for most of my childhood. Of course I was embarrassed to be seen outside the house with her, but that was my own immaturity, not any fashion statement. And whose side was this lady on, anyway? After all, Ben had whispered to me that her glasses looked like a secretary’s.

“Well, I’ve really liked them,” I said defensively.

“Oh, they’re fine,” she said. “I’d just like to see you in a darker color. Something edgier.”

Great – just great. Now even the woman with secretary eyes was on the edgy bandwagon. Not only did this crew want me to look like something I’m not; they were both insinuating that I’d been walking around the last four years with glasses that made people think “I sure hope she’s got a great personality.” Had my sister set this whole thing up? It was like finding out I’ve had my skirt tucked in the back of my pantyhose for the greater part of George W.’s presidency.

The whole affair was enough to push my mood from foul to toxic. I said it was time to get home and I’d think about it. Ben and I engaged in a round of “you’re mad” – “no, I’m not” on the way home. I called Bob and told him I wasn’t cooking, and we all had nachos for dinner.

The next day I went glasses shopping alone. I know – I’ve already said that’s dangerous. But I was still nursing my vanity wounds from the previous day – and wearing corrective lenses only when it was absolutely essential that I be able to see.

I made the rounds of a few stores and put a couple of pairs on hold. After I touch up my roots this morning (if those glasses looked like a librarian, then my hair must look like Janet Reno’s), Bob and Ben are going to take a look and tell me what they think. (Perhaps mercifully for him, Billy is taking the SAT this morning. Bob and Ben probably wish they could trade places with him.) I think Ben at least will be surprised at my choices. “I love those!” the woman who was helping me yesterday shrieked. “They’re so … edgy!”

Maybe. But I’m not ready to give up elastic-waist pants. And I can’t wait for Masterpiece Theatre tomorrow night.



R.I.P.
2004-2008

A POSTSCRIPT: Yesterday's trip to the eye wear store was a success (not so much the hair coloring; I give Nice 'n Easy's new Perfect 10 only one thumb up). I ended up buying the edgy frames from Friday. In an unexpected development, I actually fell in love with an even edgier pair, sort of miniature tortoise-shell Buddy Hollys with an inner, lavender layer. But they cost $200 more, and since Billy taking the SAT has ramped up the paying-for-college anxiety level to red from orange, I went with the less edgy of the two. Ben actually didn't say a lot; I think he was afraid to.

So in a couple of weeks I'll have a whole new look. I've got my fingers crossed these glasses won't induce anyone to begin a comment about me with the words "Bless her heart ..." But if you see a middle-aged woman walking around and you think she looks like Bono, just leave her be. You'll know she tried.

At Least the Older Ones Sleep Through the Night

Gather 'round, mothers of young children.  But first, pour yourself a glass of wine.  I've got some bad news.

You know how you tell yourself that as soon as Sam and Sally sleep through the night/stop nursing/start walking/give up Pull-ups/pick up their toys/stop throwing their toys/start sharing their toys/toddle off to school, it's going to get a lot easier?  Well, honey, I hate to break this to you, but it's not.  Oh sure -- you'll get to sit down more.  But easy?  I'll let you judge for yourself.

Picture this.  My guys and I are in line yesterday at a fast-casual restaurant for a little light lunch after church, and the following conversation (the transcript of which contains a few editorial comments) takes place:

Billy:  So last night, after work, I went by Circuit City to use the rest of my gift card.

Me:  That's nice.  What'd you buy?

Billy:  "Last Tango in Paris."  (Glances thoughtfully at menu.)  I think it's Brando's best work.

Me:  (gasping sound, hand waving, eyes bugging)

Billy (indignantly):  What?  What's wrong?  Roger Ebert gave it four stars!  

Me:  Billy!  You're kidding!  That movie's an X!

Billy:  Not anymore.  Now it's an NC-17.  And I'm 17-and-a-half.  (A 17-and-a-half-year-old who's grinning like a 7-and-a-half-year-old who just learned a new bad word.)

Me:  Who would sell a movie like that to a kid your age?  (A kid who can't yet grow sideburns.)

Billy:  Circuit City is not a sleazy store.  It's a chain! 

Me:  What were you thinking!

Billy: What's wrong?  It's just a story with images.

Me (to Bob):  Can you believe our son watched "Last Tango in Paris" last night?

Ben:  Shhh!  There are people I know in here.

Billy:  It got an 80% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  Besides, it's Brando's best work.  (Again with the Brando. That's supposed to persuade me this was okay?  The thought of Marlon Brando naked is almost as horrifying as the thought that my son watched a movie in which Marlon Brando was naked with a woman.  I hope she got paid a lot.)

Me:  Just how many movies have you seen Marlon Brando in?

Billy (grin ever-so-slightly diminishing):  Two.  "The Godfather" and "Guys and Dolls."

Waitress:  May I take your order?

Despite my sudden nausea, I manage to squeak out an order, and we proceed to our table.  Perhaps this would be an appropriate point to explain to you young folk that "Last Tango" was quite the scandal when it was released in 1972.  It was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, who is an artsy director who's made lots of "stories with images" that are rated NC-17.  Here's a plot summary from the Internet Movie Database:  "A young Parisian woman begins a sordid affair with a middle-aged American businessman, who lays out ground rules that their clandestine relationship will be based only on sex." Oooooh-kay.  Roger Ebert did in fact give it four stars, describing it as "one of the great emotional experiences of our time."  Pauline Kael wrote that "Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form."  Some amateur reviewer on IMDB wrote that it "offers more than just the average 't & a' the genre has come to be known for." Well, that's a relief.

Back to the table.

Billy:  I don't get what the big deal is.  Lots of kids my age were out drinking and doing drugs last night, and I was home watching a movie.

Me:  That's a very good point, and I'm proud of you that you don't do those things.  But "Last Tango"?

Billy:  (growing frustrated)  People in this society are just too uptight about films.  (Warning:  When Sam and Sally get to be teenagers, they'll quit calling them movies and start calling them films.  And PG-13s will be the least of your worries.)

Bob (finally!):  I never saw it so I don't know that much about it.

Billy:  It's about lust as a devalued counterpart of love.

Ben:  It's about SEX!  (Another of the things you'll have to worry about in a few years is what Sam talks about in front of Sally.  And I don't mean whether there's a Santa Claus.)

Me:  Oh my God -- you didn't watch it, did you?

Ben:  No.  But Billy, would you please start keeping the volume lower?

Bob (changing subject):  Have you guys written those Christmas thank you notes yet?

Billy:  We'll get on it as soon as we get home.

Me (sarcastically):  Great.  "Dear Uncle George and Aunt Mary, Thank you for the gift card.  I used it to buy a really dirty movie."

Bob:  Were they the ones who gave you the gift card?

Billy:  No, it was Uncle Joe.  (Single-with-no-kids Uncle Joe.) 

Bob:  Well, that's different.  You can go ahead and tell him.

We went home, and I went online to learn more about the movie, which I can assure you I have never seen.  It was all very disturbing.   Billy and I had a long talk about the difference between being mature for one's age, which he is, and being grown, which he's not, and the difference between loving sex and the depraved, depressing acts that it seems Last Tango is known for.  I praised him once again for being the kind of kid who's not out drinking and doing drugs on the weekend.  But I also pointed out that there are lots of movies that got 4 stars from Roger Ebert and 80% Fresh ratings from Rotten Tomatoes that aren't rated NC-17, and that if he is really interested in seeing quality "films," he could try some of those as well.  Meanwhile, I learned a little more about this newfound reverence for Bertolucci.

It seems that during Billy's 5-week stay in France last summer as an exchange student, his host family took quite a liberal view of what was appropriate viewing for teenagers.  They introduced him to Bertolucci.   I learned, in fact, that he watched "The Dreamers," a more recent Bertolucci movie, with the grandmother of the family.  "The Dreamers" is also an NC-17.

"It was rated '12 and up' in France," Billy said.

"No way," I said.  "12?"

"It must work kind of like the exchange rate," Bob said.  "Or dog years."

Meet the Birds

Call me Betsy. It's not my real name, but it protects the innocent. I’m under 50, but not for much longer; the mother of two boys, ages 14 and 17; a gratefully retired lawyer; the author of an unfinished-but-pretty-damn-funny-and-full-of-potential novel; a so-so wife (it’s the thought that counts, right?); a tragically bad housekeeper; and an ambivalent Southerner. I spend an amazing amount of time on what I like to think of as “child maintenance” –- carpools and college planning and co-chairing school events that I’m really not all that interested in attending. Sometimes –- oh okay, lots of times –- I have snarky and unkind-but-true stories to tell about the people I encounter in my daily life (myself included). You may think “she shouldn’t say that,” but in your heart-of-hearts I know some of you’ll be whispering “I’m glad she did.”

As for the rest of my brood, there’s my husband, Bob, who hasn’t bailed out on the law yet. I am forever indebted to him for saving me from a life of billable hours and advance sheets. He works for a big corporation, loves not to spend money, “fixes” lots of things around the house, and fortunately for us all is quite receptive to my fashion advice. Billy is our 17-year-old. He’s involved in the maximum number of extracurricular activities allowed by law and is determined to live at least 12 time zones away from us as soon as is legally possible. And then there’s Ben, 14, who never met a Simpsons episode he couldn’t quote chapter and verse and has the hots for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

We live in a suburb –- let’s call it Fox Valley –- of a mid-size Southern city. Citizens of this community tend to be well off, conservative, gregarious, thin, and blonde –- in other words, pretty much the antithesis of me. Yet I call many of them my friends. I’m watching their children grow up and they’re watching mine. I doubt I'll ever be "from here," and yet sometimes, this place feels like home.

For much of the last 17+ years, I’ve been first and foremost a mom. Like many of my peers who earned expensive graduate degrees and then decided not to use them, I’ve treated child-rearing as rocket science rather than something that women have been doing since the beginning of time, including some mothers who were certifiable bumps on pickles but managed to raise productive citizens nonetheless. Now my children are getting older. They need less of me – still the best part of me, but not all of me. And I welcome and resist that change in equal measure. Sometimes eagerly, sometimes with a breaking heart, I’m emptying my nest. That's a lot of what I'll write about.

I've also entered what even the kindest of folks would have to describe as middle age. That means things hurt: my feet, my back, my hips, and sometimes, even now, my feelings. Sometimes I'll write about that, as well as wrinkles, gray hair, my neck, my memory (or lack thereof), and various forms of puffiness.

I'm a girly girl from way back, so sometimes I'll talk about clothes and makeup and shoes and how I look. I love to cook so I'll talk about recipes. I have 20 to 30 pounds that continue to return home to me like the prodigal son, so I'll talk about losing weight. It probably won't take you long to notice there's an inherent conflict between the recipes and the weight loss. To quote then 4-year-old Billy, when I nagged at him about something he kept doing, "That's just the way God made me. You'll just have to get used to it."

I'll talk about housekeeping, and it won't be pretty. Apparently, I am constitutionally incapable of keeping a house either clean or orderly, despite the fact that nothing would make me happier. (A nicer gal would say something here about world peace, but I warned you, I'm not that kind of girl.) If I found out I had six months to live, I'd ask those Magic Moments people to get me a full-time maid.

And sometimes, I'll just talk about what's going on, in my household, my neighborhood, my city, my state, my region, my country, and/or my world. I was raised in the South, so I'll try to be sweet, but I'm not making any promises.