Going to Church

How I manage to show up at church once in a while, in ten steps or less...1. Become informed that my presence is required at my daughter's confirmation. 2. Decide that I should probably wear something half way decent since the usual attire I wear to drop my kid off at the back door of the church doubles as my pajamas (TMI? sorry). 3. Open the closet. Actually I can skip this step as the folding doors of the closet are wedged open and have been for about ten years by various junk mashed up against them in such a way that renders them permanently open. How convenient. On to step 4. With much effort, extract the most recently bought old lady dress with a vintage of circa 2007, which is not really that old for me. I am usually 20 years behind the times, or even more since I only recently stopped wearing what I call Laura Ingalls Wilder dresses. I only stopped wearing them because they no longer fit. (No wonder the Mennonites used to give me that "eye" when I went anywhere near them.) Anyway, I digress. 5. While trying to wrestle said dress out of the closet, I silently chant: "I hope it fits, I hope it fits, cause God knows what I'm going to wear if it doesn't (the thing is, He does)." 6. Put it on and smile because it does indeed cover my body, even though I had to do a bit of wriggling to get into it (and NO there is no video) and be glad it comes with a loose shirt to go on top. 7. Try and zip it up but realize that the front just doesn't fit right and realize that I have put it on backwards. 8. Go downstairs and ask husband to help get the dress off. Ignore the look of glee and eyebrows raising on his forehead and hope that he doesn't have to get the fire department to help (that actually might make a really interesting video). 9. Thank goodness for a really "with it" husband who saves me from putting the dress on inside out. 10. Smooth out the wrinkles, get a flashlight to search for some decent shoes in the basement and rush out the door... Voila! All in ten steps. Notice I did not say "easy".

An Old Person at a Young Person's Concert

An Old Person at a Young Person’s Concert

Ahhhh.   I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Montreal.  Heavy traffic to get here. Found a nearby parking space after depositing the girls on the sidewalk with all the other emos (they said it, not me) to wait in line for the show.     What luck. There is a Starbucks right at the place where the girls are waiting in line.  I have two hours, a credit card and a kindle.  What a wonderful way to pass a two hour wait til the doors open -  not til the show,  just to get in the doors.  In fact I can even sneak back here during the show if I so desire.  I have a seat in the coffee shop where I can look right out at the girls standing in the street sipping their chai tea lattes. But alas.  Even though when I come to Quebec I almost never hear the English language spoken, despite the large percentage of anglophones, I hear it next to me. It is very distracting. A young man and woman.  He must be talking about his break up.  "I just want to lie in bed with her all day, tangled in the bedsheets..."  No. It appears they are composing or practicing a play.  I look over and see highlighted packets. Must be scripts. Something about making love...bodies, naked... raw ... Flesh coming together...and...  I try and tune it out to read my book but it is impossible. Since I’m a Therapist, I'm reading a book about bullying, which is good, but not gripping enough to tune out the goings on next to me.  If I were reading 50 shades of gray, which is not any more gripping, I could just close my eyes and pretend I'm listening to the audiobook.  If they were only speaking French...


Okay.  Now she is saying "that was great! Now we can ('please say now we can go home, please...') take it from the top. I love your expression, keep going with that."   But they stop after a few sentences and are now going on and on about scars and poetry.  And something about stardust.  Now the other available seats are filling up.  Why do things always have to be bait and switch with me? Murphy’s law all the way.   Oh. OH.  They have their date books out for next week. Thank Goodness!   No.  They are taking it from the top again.   Only louder.  With even more expression about how he wants to be tangled in the bedsheets again. I know the play by heart now.  He keeps fucking up after "bed sheets" and has to start over. All this sex is making me begin to fantasize. About all the ways one could strangle a man in a coffee shop with a set of bedsheets.  I imagine myself as a character like Katniss Everdeen, running through the streets of Montreal, cops and bedsheets in tow... hot cops at that. And French. It takes a LOT of imagination, but it can be done.    Now there is some other entertainment.  A young woman with her laptop just sat down right next to them. I'm peering over my reading  glasses trying to read her expression. She would make a much better Katniss than I, but twenty years ago I could have kicked her ass  and everyone else's.   Plus I have more cleavage. Not necessarily better,  just more.  Her eyes are moving back and forth. How can she read with this going on?  The girl of the pair got up to get coffee. I read for a wonderful few minutes.  But then he begins to recite the lines alone.  Someone shoot me.

Now I'm in the concert hall to have an hour wait for the opening band. The two hour wait was worth it to the girls (not to me) apparently as they are near the stage. They do not have varicose veins and give no thought to the idea of standing for hours practically nestled up to next to goodness knows who. So much for stranger danger.  As an old person at a young persons concert, my first order of business is to scope out a place to sit.  And a beer.  I was going to wait a while to order my one beer but like Pavlov's dog, I don't know what else to do in a bar (sorry, venue) other than to order a beer.  My first goal actually was to lounge, beer-less and engrossed in my kindle  in the glorious balcony that beckoned  to me from above and that was clearly pointed out by my daughter.  It was closed.  Barred by a huge gate and padlock. I entertained briefly some hilarious scenes in my mind  if an almost 50-year old parent scaling the walls, trying to be Katniss Everdeen, or worse, Jane of the Jungle and landing effortlessly on the balcony.  I don't see a chandelier or I would be dangerously close to actually breaking the fantasy-reality barrier. I would hate for my kid to miss the concert or to have to hitchhike home afterwards and tell her dad to bail her mom out of a foreign jail in the morning.  Or the hospital. I digress from my search for a chair.  I spy a bench.  Is it a bench or merely a ledge?  I can't see from across the room but when I get closer it turns out to be the latter.  No worries.  It will do fine for my butt.  And my beer.  It is like finding a cup of water in the desert.  And it is mostly unused.  I hope the bouncer doesn't kick me off, or I'll have to resort to my Katniss impersonations again.  It appears that the girls room is near by as a stream of girls are parading by. If I get bored, which I already am, I can entertain myself by tripping people and then pretending it was an accident.  I wonder how many times I can get away with it. Probably once.  Or less. I see a woman who looks ten years my senior.  Will I be obliged to give up my perch on the ledge if it gets crowded in here?  I ask myself "what would Katniss do?"  Damn.  She would certainly not trip people on purpose, that's for sure. Neither would I.  But In my mind I can channel my inner mean girl who never had a chance to flourish all I want.

I've been here 20 minutes and I'm already experiencing muscle fatigue from perching.  If I cross my legs to get more comfortable I will trip someone and it will be an accident, which means I'll waste my one "free" chance at entertainment.  Pulling the fire alarm would just be totally inappropriate.  I realize that I can now most certainly go back to Starbucks, leaving the girls pressed up against goodness knows who but now I have the dilemma of losing my perch, as it is beginning to fill up.  Damn Again. Plus my butt is asleep and it is entirely possible that I am unable to walk. I wish I had downloaded a more interesting book.  I'd take book three of 50 shades right now if it were the last book on earth even though I vowed I'd never read it.  Oooooh. Lights out.  Cheers from a thousand girls.  Crap. I might have to un-perch to ask at  the bar if they have earplugs. At the last concert  I made  Alison wear them and now I'll have to fight through all those goodness knows who's to get them to her if they even have them.  I have enough to buy two more pairs. Gosh, what an oversight. Those girls are feet from the speakers.  There is a sea of bodies between me and them. Perhaps I can get the crowd to "mosh" me over there.  Perhaps I'm nuts.  

My butt has enough feeling left in it to feel every vibration of the music, despite the slight reprieve provided by the earplugs that I am most selfishly wearing at the back of the concert "venue" as the girls make a point of calling it.  Put another feather  in my “bad mother”  cap.  Oh. Fancy that.  The older lady has found a place next to me on our ledge.  I don't have to move after all.  I feel so cozy sitting next to what appears to be a kindred spirit.  I try to chat her up by pointing out that the bar has earplugs for two bucks, but she turns away from me, oblivious (or because of) my friendly overtones. Or because she doesn't hear me or is French.  Or all of the above.  Perhaps I won't trip her when she goes to the bathroom.  Maybe I'll offer to save her perch while she goes.  Although most old ladies pee all over the seat so if she does, maybe I'll...  Oh this is getting ridiculous.  

I'm going back to my kindle.  All I have on there are educational books about parenting and Mental Health or preteen books about dragons, and I'm afraid of dragons. Gosh how boring is that?  How boring am I? The most gripping thing I could find was Anna Karenina, which I have already read. Fortunately I am old and can  remember only that the book is about a girl - and the picture on the cover clued me in to that as it is.  The old lady has left me. Do I smell?    Oh. She's back. I feel like we are old friends, albeit silent ones.   Perhaps my next form of entertainment should be to sidle up to her (although I'm as close as I can get to her already) and put my arm around her, just to revel in her reaction.  I could try my hand at a duckface perhaps.  As I said, this is getting ridiculous.  As ridiculous as my sitting here for five hours and then getting lost on the way home like I always do.  I have been informed that we are in fact going to stand in the cold for as far into the night as we need to to get an autograph.  I am in trouble for not doing so on that rainy night last fall in Boston when I insisted on hitting the road at midnight so I could make it to work in the morning.  What a kill-joy, eh?

Score!  Take that feather out of my cap, I am a good and dedicated parent after all (depending on the age of whom you ask)!  During the break I purchased two pairs of plugs with the last of my cash and "excused me'd" my way through the crowd to deliver them.   My reward, other than a look of utter disdain, bordering on hatred, from my beloved offspring today will perhaps be a thank you years from now when my daughter is able to hear me yelling from the other room for her to bring me another Depens. She will not connect her ability to hear with my supreme sacrifice when she was sixteen, but I will remind her many times.

I left my perch to watch the band for a while.  I actually like the singer, although he is certainly no Neil young (I hope Neil never finds out that I was in Starbucks, since we are supposed to be boycotting it).  However, there is a mom in front of me, waving her arm in the air in the same manner as is her daughter and 95 percent of the audience, but she looks as if she is having a religious experience. She is not young, either. Younger than me, but not young by a long shot.   I'm all for being a cool mom within reason and identifying with the younger generation and all, but there is such a thing as over-doing it, lady (So says Miss I'm-Katniss-Everdeen-in-my-mind). This is what parenting is all about, isn't it?  Shameless put-downs of others to bolster our own shaky sense of security.  Right?  RIGHT? Incidentally,  the daughter waved her left hand for the entire duration of the concert.   Her mom gave up after five minutes.

My perch has been taken.  By a young hairy guy.  I'm next to him with my back against a picture frame. I sit in fear of knocking down a giant canvas. And I'm sorry but he smells.  I wonder if he has been scoping out my treasured spot near the wall. With no picture frame.  I am sure of it.  Katniss is tired.  Can't even drum up any visions of kicking his sorry ass.   As I said,   Ridiculous.  It is this or Anna K.  

Okay. I'm enjoying the show. I'm trying not to, but it certainly rivals Leo Tolstoy at this moment.  I bet even Katniss Everdeen would like it.  I actually really liked this guy’s other band before they broke up.  But I'm NOT going to wave my hands in the air, especially because some young punk who is half my age with a microphone tells me to.  Okay?

I am happy.  Blissful, in fact. Bordering on numb (at least my buttocks are).  Not to the point of religiously blissful, mind you, but blissful, nonetheless.  I am blissful because Alison is no doubt full of bliss at this moment. I am vicariously as happy as an aging mother can be, perched on a ledge trying desperately to hold up an enormous canvas so she doesn’t make a total fool of herself when it all comes crashing down and the bouncers totally come over and give me a rash of shit. The punk (who in reality is a nice guy) who is singing is my daughter’s favorite human being in the world besides her dad.  I'm probably third in line I am hoping, but ill take up to fourth if I have to.  This guy’s picture  is on my daughters wall and has been for years. There is a creepy likeness of him, in the form of an action figure (unopened) on her bookshelf.  She wears a picture of him on a t shirt. She loves him. He is singing a few feet away from her and other than the fact that he is robbing her of her hearing I really appreciate him for this.  And his band is quite nice.  Now he is giving advice for life.  A twenty five year old. Half my age (almost).  Giving advice.  But it is  good advice, in fact. "You gotta figure out what the fuck you want to do in life and go do it". Good advice.  I can't argue. I could give the same advice and be ridiculed til the cows come home. But I don't care.  It doesn't matter who gives it as long as it’s good.   Now this is getting seriously ridiculous.  No it's not.  He's telling the kids to go out and find somebody to talk to if they need to.  He's making a plug for Therapists. Awesome.  Keeping me in business and dispelling the stigma.  I wish I could ask this guy over for dinner.  Too bad he is already married and can't date my daughter.  And is way too old. For her. 

I am actually disappointed that there is no autograph line. I find out because I make the sacrifice to miss the last song in order to get in line outside the venue so we can be first and get on the road. The guys at the door tell me this is the last stop on the tour and the singer has to get home to his wife and daughter. But we get over it, we get more coffee and head home.

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen - More on ADHD

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen: How to man the snackbar with ADHD: (I know this is long and belongs on a blog; will get it there eventually)

I have a fear of making change. I am perfectly capable of doing it, but I have a fear. In fact, I have a fear of snack bars. Running them that is. And I do not work well in groups. There is usually someone who is super competent and in charge, which always gives me some sort of compulsion to be the yang to the ying, the mirror opposite, whatever you want to call it. We can't all be leaders, there have to be some followers, so I am happy to do what I'm told, except that I usually forget what I was told.

A woman comes over and gives me the drill on the popcorn machine. I do a bit of this, a bit of that, and I handle a few customers and start to feel a gust of confidence and tell myself "hey, I can DO this." Then some kid asks me what we should do with the popcorn. I look over and see that I am the only one in the vicinity and realize that the popcorn lesson was given because I was apparently assigned to that duty. I do remember now that I had asked to be assigned to a duty. Oh crap. It is burned. Now, in most situations, I have matured enough to just admit my mistakes with a laugh that says "silly me", but this situation seemed to warrant a cover-up. So I looked to see that everyone else was distracted with customers, emptied the burned popcorn onto a paper plate, opened the back door and handed the plate to Johnny while whispering to him to take it outside. "Where?" "Anywhere - anywhere, but here..." So he bumps into the door and knocks the plate and the burned popcorn all over the floor and the snack bar is getting busy and I quietly ask a kid for a broom and he starts asking everyone for a broom. And Johnny whispers: "I'm just glad you are not cooking the burgers, Mom." I am assuming he is talking about the "hockey pucks" I make at home but then I realize he is referring to last week's stint at the snack bar.

I had a similar experience last week at the snack bar when someone put me on grill duty. The wind blew the flame out, unbeknownst to me, so I turned the dial a little past the picture on the flame that I assumed to mean "highest heat" to see if perhaps the flame might go higher. I smelled gas and was about to turn down the dial when a man (of course) came over and said "you don't need to turn these up this far". I wanted to say "yes, (Duh) I realize that and I was just about to turn it down" but I saw him reaching for the red button and I said "I don't think that's a good...." and then he pushes it with an air of expertise and I hear a pop and the door at the bottom of the grill flies open and the grill is all dislodged from the explosion and so are about a hundred black specks that have landed all over the burgers. Just a long winded way of saying that I'm glad snack bar duty is over.

How to Mow the Lawn When You Have ADHD

How to mow the lawn with ADHD (yes, I know it is over-diagnosed but please don't take the Dx away from me, I need it desperately)...

Take an hour to decide that you are actually going to mow the lawn. Locate the mower. Drag it out and check for gas. Locate the gas, fill mower, don't worry about spilling a little gas in your hurry to fill the tank. Go inside to wash gas off your hands. Come back out. Look for ages for the cap to the gas tank of the mower. Go inside in case you brought it in. Go in and out of the house five more times because the darned thing was JUST here five minutes ago and it can't have gone far but you might have left it in the bathroom, at the top of the ladder, who knows... find some earbuds on one of your journeys through the house, locate ear protection and spend a few minutes fixing the music under the ear protectors so you will have something to listen to while you are losing your sanity looking for something that was JUST here. Realize that yelling and screaming will do no good since no one is at home and the most likely people to hear you are the brand new neighbors whom you have yet to meet. Decide to attach a baggie with a rubber band over the gas tank. Pull on the starter a few times and realize you have lost your gloves. Go in and locate them fairly easily on the kitchen counter. Pull a few more times and swear under your breath because you have to call a MAN to help you out. Reluctantly pull Tom Petty out of your ear and call your out -of-town husband in case there is a spark plug to attach or something. He says to put it on "choke" and you just want to kick yourself and say "DUH" and are really glad your husband is too nice to say it for you. Spend some time re-inserting Tom Petty under the ear protectors, move the bar to "choke", congratulate yourself on starting it on the first pull and watch something shoot out of the side of the mower. Examine it and realize that the gas cap is no longer missing, but mangled beyond repair. Leave the whole mess and come in and write about it on facebook.... Then, having recovered from the brink of insanity, go out and mow. Half way through, when you replace the earbuds that have fallen out, ask yourself, "where the hell are the ear protectors?" Shrug and say, "well the Indigo Girls are probably going to damage my eardrums more than the sound of the mower." And, no, I do not make this stuff up or embellish just to write about it. I only wish that were the case.

The Easter Bunny is tired

My advice to a young parent: First, if you are getting an Easter basket that you plan to use in subsequent years for your little cherub, or if you are planning to have more children, choose a very small basket. If you are trying forgo junk food overload and plan to dilute the pounds and pounds of chocolate with some non-edible trinkets, know that you are screwing yourself over forever afterwards because you have just perpetuated the “Easter is the New Christmas” ritual in your house; an idea at which you vehemently scoffed before you had any children. Although it might be easy to fill a basket with cheap, Chinese, lead-laden plastic when your child is three, it becomes exponentially difficult in subsequent years to fill that same basket with anything for $5 that you plan to spend.

My advice is if you choose the basket idea at all, which I highly advise to never take up in the first place, to choose a small one (we never had Easter baskets and we woke up early and watched my big brother find all the Easter eggs and eat them in front of us and we all turned out fine -yes, I know that last fact is debatable). Fill the basket to the brim with high-quality chocolate and eat most of it yourself and when it's gone it's gone. Plus you wont have to step on broken plastic junk for the next six months.

If you carry the charade for years after the kids no longer believe in the Easter Bunny, you can just tell the kids that the Easter Bunny went bankrupt and do the minimum and they won't even notice as long as there is some degree of chocolate in the morning.

Or you could move to Europe where people undoubtedly think that the Easter Bunny is the most ridiculous thing they have ever heard of besides Santa Clause.

There you have it. Unsolicited advice. I love to give it out and it's free.

Five in the Bed

This is a new post but it was written years ago....

FIVE IN THE BED...

“You could be divorced quite comfortably in a king-sized bed,” my dad announced to me one day. “Your mother and I slept in one at a hotel on the way back from your sister's, and we felt like we were miles apart.”

I have heard that kids can be a barrier to intimacy. I would say they are more like ten-foot stone walls topped with barbed wire. Nature has it's way of making sure that children are sensibly spaced in a family. My husband and I have gone through three bed sizes during our ten-year marriage. We upgraded with each new addition to our family. We now have a king-sized bed so that six elbows can jab us in the ribs even though in theory there is plenty of room for morning snuggles. It's hard to even hear your own thoughts while hearing “scootch over!” “No you scootch over!” “Mommmmyyyyyyy...he won't scootch over...” “OUCH! Watch the family jewels there, son!” Never mind hearing sweet nothings whispered from the other side of creation.

We got a cheap bed for half the price of a fancy no-flip brand, so we can truthfully say that our sex life is in a rut. We just have to decide “will it be my rut or yours?” In addition, at least one of us has to have the desire and the wherewithal to ascend the growing mountain of mattress between the ruts in order to make any intimate contact whatsoever. To a childless couple that may seem easy, but to tired parents it can be as daunting as ascending Mount Everest. All the right conditions have to be met before any mountain climbing can be done. The kids have to be in their own beds, ASLEEP. It can't be too late. It will NEVER be too early. It is always better if the dishes have been done, preferably without argument, because even the slightest tiff can ruin the mood for a tired couple. Even if all the right circumstances are in place, in fragile harmony, if one of the parties is nursing, all bets may be off for the next year or so.

Just in case anyone is wondering why we don't just flip the mattress more than once a year - well, first of all, we're just too tired. Plus, last time we flipped it I had a raging backache the next morning and every morning after that until we re-flipped it. Besides, let's face it - sometimes it's just more comfortable to stay in a rut.

The last time we spent the night at my parents' house, the kids and I brought them their morning tea in bed. Well, what a coincidence. Turns out my parents are in a rut also, although their's is smack dab in the middle of their full-sized bed. There they were, sleeping, arms wrapped around each other; I don't know if a chisel could have separated those two. It was a very endearing scene. One that not too many of us get to see any more. It all ended too soon. The threat of the next course of porridge in bed got them up in a hurry. No need for a chisel.

Working Together - A Labor of Love

Working Together

(Sadly,  since I wrote this a year or two ago,  we lost Grandma)

As a child growing up in rural Vermont, there were some chores I hated doing,

and, yet, for some reason I have this strange compulsion to drag my kids through

the same motions I so despised in my childhood. Why? Because now I see these

experiences as valuable.

This past weekend, while my husband and daughter were out on a father-daughter

trip, I spent the afternoon with my boys, ages 7 and 9, stacking wood for my

parents. There have been times when the kids have balked at the idea of manual

labor, but on this particular day they were amenable to participating. It was a

beautiful sunny, but chilly, day and perfect for such an activity. We went with

Grandpa to fix the tractor , but as daylight waned we decided to use more old

fashioned methods instead. The boys cooperated (a rare sight between

brothers in our household) to fill a dolly with wood and transport it across the

dirt road. My youngest, in little brother fashion, tried to one-up his big brother in

strength, but had to accept the fact that his brother had two years on him which

was not going to be ignored.

For a while, my 7 year old helped stack wood in the basement. He made a game

of it and started trying to see how many logs he could throw in before I grabbed the

next one to stack. Later, while I collected wheelbarrows full to add to the pile, he

showed me a marvelous stack that impressed me, and him. He was so proud of his

work, celebrating the sense of mastery he felt over a job well done. He didn't even

need praise from me, although I acknowledged the size of the stack he had built.

I left him to finish his work and went to look for his brother who was shirking in the

kitchen. After a bit of coaxing, my older son came with me to add to the stacks in

the woodshed. While he worked, he talked about the exercise we were getting

from all this work and mused: “Ya know, we don't do this to get rewarded, we do

this to help out the family; to be out on this nice day and so Grandma and Grandpa

will be warm”. All of this came not from me, but from the act of putting in some

good honest work. Sometimes, as a busy parent,  I forget how these experiences

provide, all by themselves, a sense of accomplishment, mastery and strength. Had

I paid the kids or even tried to sell the activity as a “good deed,” the point that didn't

need to be made would not, in fact, have been made at all.

As I worked, I thought to myself how thankful I am to have such an experience

to share with my children. As I breathed the fresh, crisp air that was infused with

woodsmoke and looked at the setting sun over the mountain, I thought about how

valuable this whole experience was and on how it was right on so many levels. It

would be a challenge to conjure up an activity that could rival this one for teaching

self-esteem, healthy exercise, the value of hard work and giving to others. And

the best thing of all is that it was free. Plus, when it was too dark to work, we

went inside and had endless cups of tea and chocolate-covered tea biscuits with

Grandma and Grandpa.