I find it very tempting, when bad things happen in the world, to become furious with everyone and everything and assume that life is hopeless and awful, etc. But I'm trying to figure out how not to do that, so much. Yesterday Monkey called me from school because he was unwell, and I tried to focus---step by step---on all of the good things this showed me. Yay for a kid who has become able to identify problems even though his own body is often a mystery to him! Yay for ease of communication to relay that information! Yay for flexibility of schedule (me) and health insurance (us) and...
I love reading articles about "today's teens" because they never actually sound like they're about any real-life teenagers I've met. Granted, my special snowflakes are the specialest and the flakiest (haaaa) and their friends also tend to be anything but regular, but still. "Kids today" are risk takers! "Kids today" act first and think later! Well, okay---that's true even of my kids, I guess. Except instead of using drugs and sleeping around, my kids are doing things like stabbing each other in Minecraft "by accident." (OOOOOHHHHHHHHH! Rebels!!) Therefore, I humbly offer as an antidote to...
It has come to my attention that my perception of "normal" may be... a little off. Weird, right? I---and my family/home---am the picture of boring normalness, surely. (Voices in my head: Yeah, no. Also, don't call me Shirley.) I mean, doesn't everyone reassure others about their competence by announcing that they're a dog door? No? Or own their stupidity by exclaiming "Gorgonzola!"? Also no? Weird. For some reason, this morning, I started thinking about all of the weird little things which happen around here and strike me as perfectly normal even though it's POSSIBLE that they're not. Or...
I've got sleep on my mind, because we are currently experiencing a shortage. It's no one's fault, really, it's just a lot of stuff on the schedule and less-than-ideal time management and the usual crop of minor crises. Everything's fine. We're just tired. It did seem like a golden opportunity to make with many words about how important sleep is to growing teens, though. I swear I am more or less following my own advice, it's just that life is unpredictable and also morning seems to come very early. You can read more on Alpha Mom while I fantasize about taking a nap. (I won't actually be...
Back in Real Job Land, I continue to be paid to act like I know things about parenting. Ha! This is the greatest scam in the whole world. Uh. I mean. Wow, I AM SUPER KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT STUFF. Yeah. That's the ticket. Can you imagine how excited I was when that whole study about how teenage girls are more successful when their mothers are nagging bitches came out? Posing aside, I can nag like nobody's business. I'm sure you've never figured that out about me. And while I have learned in spades that I cannot simply bend my children to my will (but I'd be down for that if it worked...),...
I often refer to our housekeeping style as "tidy with hidden pockets of disaster." We spend most of our family time in the kitchen and family room; those rooms are clean and orderly, for the most part. My office desk tends to suffer from pile-itis, but I'm working on that. I exhort the children to keep their spaces free of clutter, or at least not covered in dirty laundry, which in teenage parlance is the same thing. But I must confess that somewhere along the way, part of how we kept the main areas of the house looking reasonable was to dump anything "to be dealt with later" into our master...
I watch way more TV than I probably should, and some of it is great, but a lot more of it is downright terrible. I'm okay with this. I don't go out and get plastered or gamble; if watching stupid programming is my biggest flaw, I figure I'm doing okay. Recently Chickadee got first me, and then Monkey, hooked on Girl Code. Have you seen it? It's AWFUL. Just, like, cringeworthy in every possible way. It's so bad, it's FANTASTIC. If you're not easily embarrassed and are looking for an open door to talk to your teens about sex and other uncomfortable topics, Girl Code is your show. It is MTV's...
The older I get, the easier it is to figure out what really matters. I had a friend in high school who often proclaimed that she didn't "suffer fools gladly," and while it was a grandiose turn of phrase, at 16 or however old we were, it felt kind of... rude. It felt like the point was that stupid people are stupid. Now that I'm older and arguably wiser, it feels more like a declaration of focusing on what's important. I'm not always good at it, even now, but I'm improving. Also, I believe God has a wicked sense of humor, so of course I have a couple of teenagers to help show me the way via...
I spent last week in a grudging state of malingering. Malingerment? Whatever. I was not SICK sick, you understand. I was not so ill that I could take to my bed without guilt, but I had a cold (THANKS, KIDS!) and just didn't feel 100%. I got up in the morning and packed lunches and did the other morning routine things, then tried to work for a while and often ended up taking a nap at some point and trying to work some more and then making dinner. And I felt really stupid about it all, because: not sick. Not really. Just a little puny, that's all. [Aside: Now that I am officially Working Less...
