Tuna Girl

My Husband Will Love This

2012-01-24T11:15:00.003-05:00

One of the ways I've been dealing with my husband returning to the Middle East after his R&R vacation is by watching a lot of movies.

I've been watching movies that he probably wouldn't enjoy watching with me. I've been enjoying curling up with my laptop after the kids go to bed and watching a bunch of rom coms.

A couple of nights ago I was watching Closer and had to go to the bathroom. So I hit pause and jumped up.

When I came back to my computer, this was paused on my screen.

Hello, Jude Law.

I've never even really been a big fan of Jude Law, but, hello.

Although Closer was all about sex, there really weren't any explicit scenes. Jude wasn't even shirtless. My pause caught the one moment he was pulling on pants to go for a smoke.

Thank you small bladder. And hello libido.

I think I'll go see that Sherlock Holmes movie again.

Tuna Boy's First Awesome Decade

2011-12-20T20:38:00.004-05:00

As of today, I am the mother of a twelve-year-old and a ten-year-old.

That's insane.

That's an entire decade of parenting two kids and I haven't gotten any better at it in the last ten years.

When you're a mom, one of the first questions people ask when they meet you is, "How old are your kids?"

It's funny because back when both kids were under five, people would always react to my answer with something akin to horror. "Oh, you have your hands full!"

Then for many years, people didn't react that way at all. Suddenly, I'm hearing horror again.

But, as hard as it can be, I actually love having kids these ages. They are more fun now. Our relationships are more meaningful. More full. (Plus, they are old enough to really help with chores.) These two kids and I have been through a lot together.

My son and I are especially close. And I am so very happy that his father could be here for his birthday.

He is one very special kid. Words cant really describe how special, but I suppose I could start with empathetic, appreciative, loving, so very funny, creative, musical, exuberant, accepting, smart, hard working and self assured.

I guess that's a pretty good start.

My kid loves life more than anyone I know. And I am so appreciative for that.

So, happy 10th birthday, baby boy! I don't know what I would do without you.

Adam Sandler Can Suck It

2011-11-19T21:11:00.003-05:00

Tonight we blew off two local parades (I even had tickets for seating at one of them) to go see Jack and Jill at the movies instead.

Why?

I don't know. I just didn't feel like being outside and braving crowds tonight. And the kids wanted to see Jack and Jill. And I wanted to eat popcorn.

That's 91 minutes of my life I'll never get back again.

The popcorn was good and fresh though thanks to all the Twilight fans.

My daughter said the movie was better than she thought it would be. She's getting old enough to get some of the jokes that used to go over her head.

But my son hated it.

I looked over at him at one point and he was crying. Crying! At an Adam Sandler movie!

He said he didn't like it because the brother and sister's relationship was so terrible. He said, "It was heartbreaking!"

As we were leaving the theater he put his hand on his sister's back and asked her, "We'll never be like that, will we?"

Holy crap. Leave it to my kid to be the only person in the world to walk out of an Adam Sandler movie having learned some deep moral lesson.

On Failing and Jealousy

2011-11-15T22:38:00.006-05:00

Lately I find myself feeling kind of jealous of other parents.

Okay, that's kind of a lie. In truth, I go through phases of feeling superior to other parents (patting myself on the back for the awesome kids I've raised) and being completely jealous of the normal, happy families and kids that seem to be everywhere (when my kids are going through yet another thing).

Sometimes, I want to go up to parents whose kids are doing something normal like riding bikes and say, "Um, hello. Do you realize how completely freaking lucky you are to have a kid who can ride a bike?" My kid couldn't and wouldn't learn how to ride a bike until he was 9 1/2.

I know it probably isn't rational but I am jealous of people with normal kids who seem to have normal problems and often don't appreciate how good they have it.

My kids are great in a lot of ways. They are extremely polite, they get along with each other better than any siblings I've ever met, they are bright and engaging, and they are well behaved at school. And I know that there are people who are probably jealous of ME for having kids with those qualities.

But I feel like they have the "buts".

It is parent/teacher conference time for most and my friends are posting on Facebook about their conferences.

It feels like everyone is saying, "We had such a great meeting with Timmy's teacher!"

Or, "We're so proud of Brittany. She got all A's on her report card. Her teacher says she is the best in her class!"

And I want to throw eggs at my laptop. Oh, poo. It must be nice to be you.

What I get to hear every year is, "He is so wonderful and polite. And funny! And bright and creative. BUT now lets talk about his speech problems and his spelling problems and..."

Or I get to hear, "She is so sweet and well-behaved, BUT she doesn't participate in class and she is overly sensitive and she has melt downs and she is so disorganized it affects her grades and..."

Basically it always comes down to, "Your kids are so great! But..."

I know I am an extremely intense person when it comes to something I believe in. And I believe in teaching my children values and respect. And that is not easy. So I feel like I am constantly correcting and admonishing and teaching and not spending enough time celebrating and laughing.

So, for example, I can't just ignore that my daughter lied to me again and take her shopping. But I am jealous of parents who can!

My husband thinks I am completely nuts. (Probably rightfully so.)

He tells me that every kid has their problems. But most parents choose not to see most of them because they don't want to see them. They hear what they want to hear. And besides, they would be posting, "Our little Johnny is so awesome!" even if he was failing every subject and spending most of his time in detention.

He's probably right but there is a part of me that wishes I could be like that too.

I don't want to be critical of my kids. (My biggest fear in life is turning into my father!) But I am the only one here to teach them the millions of important lessons of life and I can't just shake one off because I don't feel like dealing with it.

But, man. I just wanted one freaking parent/teacher conference without a giant BUT.

And I finally got it.

Woo hoo!

My son's teacher has been teaching fourth grade boys at our school for 45 years. At first she annoyed me a little bit because she isn't quite as tech savvy as most (AND SHE USES ALL CAPS TOO MUCH) but I have come to really love her. She's hysterical. And she loves my kid which of course makes me love her back.

But I walked into this parent/teacher conference not knowing what to expect. Of course I knew his grades but I didn't know how they matched up to the rest of his class. And I'm so used to getting BUTS thrown at me that I brace myself for them days ahead.

So after she told me how great he is doing and gave me his great report card we spent the rest of the time just talking and exchanging stories.

To brag for a minute (Don't hate me!) she said that my son's sense of humor is absolutely legendary among all the teachers and staff. Even the headmaster has shared stories of things my son has said that crack him up. "The teacher next door practically has a crush on him!" she told me. Too funny.

But she ended up telling me how the other parents are always making excuses for their kids. And doing the work for their kids. And blaming everybody and anybody for their kids' failures.

Then she told me that she can tell we are wonderful parents because of the way our son knows himself. She used phrases like self sufficient, comfortable with who he is, responsible for himself, and independent.

And, boy, did I need to hear that.

Letting my kids fail is something that I know I need to do. And I do it. I do. I secretly blame myself and am in agony over every one of their failures. And I certainly don't just let them not care that they failed. But it is the hardest thing I do as a parent.

It makes it seem like my kids are mediocre at everything they do. Because other kids are succeeding because of their parents or they are half assing it and their parents are praising them so much it seems like they are better than my kids.

I hate it!

So, his teacher sent an op-ed article from the Washington Post out to all the parents from her class about letting your kids fail.

My daughter and I were sitting together when I felt the need to read the following part of the article out loud to her.

"We’re so afraid our kids won’t measure up that we drive them crazy with overbooked schedules and expectations, and then create a sense of entitlement by assigning blame elsewhere when their performance is lackluster. Sideline parents who challenge coaches, teachers and umpires on behalf of their children are a relatively new development that can’t be considered positive. When I wrote recently about the failure of colleges to teach core curricula that engender critical thinking skills, dozens of professors wrote to complain of students who aren’t willing to work hard yet still expect good grades. Even in college, they said, parents pester professors for better marks for their little darlings."

Then I asked her, "Who do I blame when you fail?"

And she replied, "Us."

"Yup. See?" I told her. "You might hate it but I'm just being a good mom. Aren't you lucky?"

It is kind of sad that I needed that kind of reinforcement but I did. Frankly, things have been kind of hard around here lately. And I needed that little pat on the back and reinforcement of what I'm struggling to do.

Of course what my daughter doesn't know is that I may be telling them to take responsibility for their failures, but secretly I'm blaming myself and judging myself more harshly than she could ever imagine.

And I'm still jealous of normal parents of normal kids.

Parents

2011-11-10T10:24:00.005-05:00

So, let's talk a little bit about my parents.

I have gotten to an age when many of my contemporaries are losing their parents. I hear them and see them mourning their parent and I can see how life changing an event it can be.

So, I try to be appreciative. My parents are still alive and together. That makes me lucky, right?

They love my kids. They love my husband more and more each passing year.

I swear on everything that is good in my life that I try to have a positive attitude about my parents. The last thing I ever want to do is complain about some asshole comment my father has made and then have a friend say, "You're lucky you still have a father. Stop being an immature, whiny brat."

But that puts more pressure on me to accept all of my parents' shit than I probably deserve.

When the kids were babies I used to look forward to my parents' visits. It was a break for me. With my husband gone so much, my mother was really the only person in the world I truly trusted to take care of my kids so that I could have a break. (My father doesn't babysit, even his own grandbabies.)

But in the last, well, maybe 5 or 6, or even 8 years, their visits bring nothing but stress and anxiety.

My father is a very selfish person. My mother waits on him hand and foot. (Quite literally, she ties his shoes and everything.) He is as self-centered as it is possible for a person to be. So my mother, who could be a very nice person to be around if left to her own devices, is a complete wreck. She is afraid of him. She treats everyone else in the family like we're going to criticize her constantly the way my father does. She is always apologizing and qualifying.

It is very annoying.

But his criticizing is the crux of the problem for me, his daughter.

I always knew he criticized a lot, but I don't think I truly realized how much until I was an adult with a family of my own. He'd criticize my parenting and I'd say, "But aren't they the best kids in the world? I must be doing something right."

And he'd say, "Yeah, but..." And continue to criticize me even more.

I put up with this behavior my entire life because, 1) I know he loves me. 2) I'm supposed to appreciate even having a father. And 3) because he is my kids' grandfather and they need family associations in their lives.

But, well, my husband has been deployed a long time. He was gone a long time, came back and left again for a long time. And I'm doing the fucking best I can here, with no help from my parents or anyone else. When they visited a couple of weeks ago, I'd had enough.

My mother says I am the only person who stands up to my father. But the truth is that deep down I am just as afraid of him now as I was as a kid. I don't really know why. What's he going to do? Hit me? I doubt it, but what he will do is throw a fit and make everyone's lives miserable. A fear born in childhood can linger a long time.

So, I tried to joke it out into the open.

My father wasn't here five minutes when he started to criticize me. First off, it was my car. I told him, "You know, I am going to keep a list of every time you criticize me while you're here and then send it to (my husband) so he can see what I have to deal with while he's deployed."

He kind of laughed and purposefully added a few more criticisms for me to pass along.

This went on and on during their visit. I'm too hard on the kids. I'm not hard enough on the kids. I'm fat. My kids are fat. My door doesn't work right. I don't clean my car windshield the right way. On and on and on. And every single criticism big or small has a story and a justification to go along with it.

Well, on the last day he was here he was criticizing my husband for something he had done eleven years ago. Eleven years! Our daughter was crawling and headed toward some bricks she wasn't supposed to be on and my husband said "no" to her in too harsh a tone for my father's liking. Though if he had let her crawl on the bricks, we would have heard about that too.

"He yelled at her like a dog!" my father said.

Eleven years ago.

"You know," I told him, "Has it ever occurred to you that he was just trying too hard because he knew you were watching and you are so absolutely critical?"

Well, that did it. I crossed a line. I got yelled at. A lot.

Later that day, my father said to me, "You don't need to be so sensitive. I'm just trying to help. It takes a village to raise a child."

And it occurred to me right then and there that my father has missed one key element of my life that makes me me.

I left the village.

I chose to leave the village because the village sucked. My husband and I both chose to leave the village because we didn't want to have our kids subjected to the same things we were.

I just shook my head at my father that day. I'm done. Done.

My mother always justifies his behavior (and it is much worse than I have stated here. Some things are not for public consumption) by saying that he doesn't drink or beat her (apparently the occasional hitting doesn't count) and somehow her mindset found its way into me. But is that any way to judge a person?

Personally I think the long term damage that man has done to my mother's self esteem by his constant emotional abuse and control is just as bad. (My mother isn't allowed to go into a doctor's exam on her own. Ever. I just found that out. How horrible is that.)

I want to take complete responsibility for who I am. I really do. But the older I get I notice more and more these weird little things that I do because of the way I was treated by my parents.

And so I sit here and berate myself for every similar thing I've done to my own kids.

There is a time to cut people out of your life. I've always believed that. You can only try so much with some people. If they hurt you, even after you've made it clear to them that they are hurting you, then they need to go.

But cutting your father out of you life? That's a tough one.

I really don't know what to do. The "ignore him!" stance I've been trying to use for the last 16 years really isn't working so well.

But when he is gone, I'll be picking up the pieces of my mother. I know it.

And that sucks.

Stealing the Show

2011-11-07T20:55:00.004-05:00

Things have been a little craptastic here on the parenting front lately. My choice today was either to fold myself into a ball of despair and cry quietly on the side of the highway (raising 12-year-olds will do that to you) or try to find some damn positive.

So I'm on the lookout for anything even slightly positive with these offspring of mine.

Big time.

My son's play was last Friday night. And although he has made me cry in public at least twice recently because he is killing me by slow degrees, his performance in the play did make me laugh. I thought he did a great job.

But he must have done an even better job in the performance they did during the school day on Friday afternoon for the kids. Because every time I turn around, a teacher or student is grabbing me or him to tell us how awesome he was.

His music teacher even told me, "He really has a future as an actor, I mean, if his violin thing doesn't work out for some reason."

He has been eating up all the attention he's been getting for the play. "My classmates treated me like a star at lunch," he told me, beaming ear to ear. "I had a small role but people loved me the most!" (People always love the comic relief.)

This morning he went to the orthodontist before school to get his braces off. (Holy heck, he looks like my husband even more now.) He ended up being just a minute or two late for school. But he is never usually late.

So when he walked in the classroom his teacher exclaimed, "There you are! I was just going to call Hollywood to see if they had stolen you away from us to go be a big time movie star."

He loved it. Loved it!

I asked him how he replied and he said he just laughed because it made him so happy.

How sweet is that?

His teacher has been teaching fourth grade boys at our school for forty-five years. And, man, I can see why. She has a way of making them feel so good about their unique talents.

Maybe I need a fourth grade teacher to come in and lift my spirits like that.

My parents visited recently and it was just an awful time. My father shot down my daughter's interest in being a music education major. Right in front of her. And he lectured me about discouraging my son's unrealistic dream to be an actor.

Which pretty much only makes me want to do everything in my power to make my baby boy's dream come true.

It's going to be interesting to see how long this dream of being an actor sticks around. I think I'm going to love getting to be in the audience for every minute of the journey. No matter how it turns out.

Neatly Summed Up in One Example

2011-10-13T20:15:00.004-04:00

I love my daughter to death. I mean, seriously, sometimes I want to kill that kid I love her so much.

I really worry about her making her way in the world and so I am hard on her. Probably too hard, I know. But we somehow still manage to have a pretty darn good relationship and it seems to be getting better as she gets older.

But I will never understand that girl.

We are so fundamentally different that it is sometimes hard to believe she is mine.

But yet, we are so much the same, that we can drive each other nuts. How does that even work?

This year she is finally able to play on her school sports teams and she loves it. (Same as me.) She already made the volleyball team but she plans on trying out for her two favorite sports, basketball and softball. (Same as me.) She is strong and tenacious but not fast so she tends to be the scrappy one. (Same as me.)

She has been going to open basketball practices at school on weekend nights. She's been the only girl there and so she has gotten a lot of practice time (and face time) with the girls' J.V. and varsity coaches. That's so great, right?

But this week she wants to invite all of her friends who want to try out for basketball to come with her. (So NOT the same as me.)

If I was having this practically secret, under-the-radar practice time with the coaches who would be evaluating me at try-outs, I wouldn't tell a soul.

I guess when it comes right down to it, she is just a better person than me. I guess she had a better upbringing.

FaceTime from the Front

2011-10-06T06:29:00.005-04:00

I pretty much have two separate sets of friends on Facebook. There are my "blog friends", which I think of as my Tuna Girl friends (who know who Rose Johnson is) and my real life friends and family.

Of course over the years many of these lines have crossed but in my mind, they are still two separate groups of people.

Well, last night and today just about every single one of my Tuna Girl friends has posted something on Facebook about the passing of Steve Jobs. But not one of my real life friends and family have mentioned it.

Except one who mentioned it only to say that with American soldiers serving and dying around the world, it is horrible that people are giving so much attention to the death of a celebrity.

First of all, I don't think Steve Jobs qualifies as a celebrity per se. Maybe it isn't fair to all celebrities, but to me that word connotes people who are famous for very little reason.

Second of all, as the wife of a service member, I could sit here and watch my daughter with her iTouch and my husband with his iPhone communicate with each other via FaceTime from half way around the world. And I can sit here with my MacBook Pro in my lap and see my husband talking to me from thousands of miles away.

And I am completely and totally okay with the massive mourning of Steve Jobs passing and the celebration of his life and accomplishments by so many.

True vision is such a precious thing. May Steve Jobs' legacy live on.

Bundle of Dichotomy

2011-10-03T09:20:00.003-04:00

My junior year in college was a big year for me. It was the year my husband asked me to marry him. It was also the year I led my college softball team to our first ever championship title.

I say that not to brag, but to shed a little light on the following story:

So, you know, when college girls (maybe especially those at a women's college) get engaged, inevitably the rumors will fly that she is pregnant.

I wasn't pregnant when the rumors flew about me. (In fact, I was the exact opposite of pregnant.) But people like to believe the dramatic.

So the two captains of my softball team came to my dorm room to talk to me about the possible pregnancy. (Never mind that I had just borrowed a tampon from one of them the night before...well...not borrowed. But, you know...got a tampon from her.)

When I explained that I was very much not pregnant, one of them jumped up and hugged me. She said, "I'm so glad! Since you're not pregnant I can tell you this. When I heard the rumor, my first response wasn't to worry about you. The first thing I thought of was, who's going to pitch for us?"

I always thought that was so funny. For all I know, if I had found out I was pregnant back then, I might have thought the same thing.

So, cut to about midnight last night.

Since my husband is deployed, I wake up many times during the night to check my e-mail. (Stupid, I know.) But last night I got a mass e-mail from our violin teacher and my dear friend telling us that at long last, she and her husband are expecting a baby.

I am so happy for her. Really. Truly. She and her husband are just those types of people that you meet and immediately know that they will be amazing parents.

But I couldn't help but think about how this will affect us.

She is the best violin teacher ever. We love her.

She says she is going to take three months off, (April through June) and she has a substitute teacher lined up. Then she says she'll teach a light schedule like she does every summer and then be back to her normal teaching load next school year.

But I say, hogwash.

It is so hard to know what it will be like to have kids before you have them. Plans fall apart. Especially when you don't have any family locally. I know. I've been there.

I just cannot imagine her going back to teaching past 8 o'clock five nights a week when she has a little baby.

The other violin moms and I have been speculating about this possibility for a long time.

So I have told myself a thousand times in the past nine hours, "Her motherhood is a hell of a lot more important than your kids' violin future." And I will tell myself that a million more times before April.

I have been both anticipating and dreading this day for the past three years. I am so beside myself happy for my friend. And I am so worried that this will mark the end of a wonderful violin experience for my kids.

Selfish much? It's my softball captains worrying about who will pitch all over again.

It is such a wonderful thing to see such a happily married couple bring a child into the world. I really am so happy for them. In truth, I hope she doesn't go back to teaching. But I am sure going to miss what once was.

Thinking of Me

2011-09-23T09:21:00.007-04:00

My husband sent me this picture he found on the Internet...

...just to make me smile.

I think he knows me quite well.

Update: The rest of the photo essay can be seen here.

Just a Peck

2011-09-22T20:56:00.004-04:00

On the day my husband received his wings (I think it was 13 years ago) the guys in his class decided to honor their wives by giving each one roses as part of the winging ceremony.

I was one of the last wives called up and when my husband handed me the bouquet of roses, I gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

I didn't think about it. I just...did it. Your husband gives you flowers, you give him a smooch. Am I right?

But after, I realized I was the only wife who had done that and as I always do in the aftermath of any social situation, I wondered if I had made a fool of myself. Deep down I was saying, "Well, fuck them if they don't like it. He's my husband. The rest of those wives were weird for NOT kissing their husbands." It's not like I slipped him tongue.

Was it inappropriate to kiss my husband during a military ceremony while he was in uniform?

I don't actually know.

But, according to recently updated regulations, it is now.

Our service recently updated a bunch of regs including some uniform stuff, new rules on tattoos and new guidelines on public displays of affection.

Now I may be cynical, but my very first thought when I read about the PDA changes was that they were getting ready for the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell by making sure no one was going to have to watch guys kissing.

Rather than trust the gossip and hearsay I was hearing about the new rules, I decided to look them up myself. And basically they say no PDA. At all. Except in the kind of social situation like a wedding or leaving for or returning from a deployment where social norms would expect an expression of affection. But then it can only be a quick hug and kiss. They actually use the word "quick".

Now, I may not be quoting my husband exactly, but I'm pretty sure his take on it is, "Fuck them." I'm pretty sure as an officer of sixteen years and a veteran of three wars my husband can determine for himself what proper affectionate behavior toward his wife and children should be while in uniform.

But aren't we all lucky that now we won't have to watch anyone exchange more than a "quick" hug and kiss when they come home from 18 month long deployments.

As long as he doesn't come home with a tat, I'll keep him.

2011-08-31T22:30:00.009-04:00

My husband and I have the kind of relationship where we can joke about divorce. We've been through so much and come so far that the thought of getting a divorce is actually laughable.

So he'll sometimes say, "Hey, I'm coming home early. Better kick your boyfriend out."

And I'll sometimes say, "Well, you better tell your next wife that upfront."

Or, you know, some other much funnier infidelity or divorce based witticism.

But I was recently joking about how he's going to be too good for me when he comes home from this deployment and he'll need to find a better wife, and it hit a little close to home.

You see, he always loses weight while he is deployed and comes home looking all hot. And that's when he's only gone for a few months. This time he's going to be gone a year! Can you imagine how buff he'll be by next June?

He's already lost about thirty pounds and he's lifting. For some weird reason, he always puts his shirt on when we Skype, but his biceps and shoulders are looking...well..damn. (What's with that shirt thing anyway? What? Is he shy? Or...oooh...maybe he isn't sure he can keep it PG.)

So he teases me that he's going to look like the guy in "my" video by the time he gets home.

Yes, yes he is teasing me endlessly about the video I posted here. I don't help matters when I say things like, "Oh, hey you know the guy with the gun at the end? He's Australian!"

And then my husband says, "Yeah, I haven't actually done any research on your video."

So I just had to tell him today that the buff boy who grabs his junk in that video has posted a few more to YouTube.

No, I don't sound obsessed at all. Why do you mention it?

So I'd post the video for the short/buff boy's many adoring fans but I don't want to suffer through more teasing. Plus, the guy...well...it is a good thing he is pretty. I just want to pat his head and say, "Aw, shhhh, honey. Just stand there and show your abs. You don't need to talk."

I guess I better get to the freaking gym (I usually gain weight when my husband is deployed, but this time I'm just losing and gaining the same five pounds over and over again.) If my man is going to come home all drool worthy, I don't want to be the wife people point at and say, "What is he doing with her?"

Besides, all divorce joking aside, I want to keep my man to myself. He's cute and I can stand to listen to him talk.

*Oh, all right Here is the video. Buff boy gets wet.

Oh, dang! Speaking of my man...today is his birthday. Happy birthday, Honey. We love you!

Reason Number 498

2011-08-20T19:42:00.004-04:00

One of the many of thousands of reasons I miss my husband when he is deployed is his ability to tie a tie. This is especially true since my son has to wear ties to school sometimes.

In the past I have had my long-suffering husband tie a tie before he deployed and then tried to keep the knot neat as my son pulled said tie on and off during the months Dad was gone.

Pathetic, I know.

This year, my daughter had to have a tie for her summer reading project, so I was on the hook again before the school year even started!

Learn to Tie a Tie ap to the rescue. Yes, there is an ap for that.

And here is my little photo journalist report of the outcome.

My first attempt. Eek.

My second attempt. Marginally better.
My third and final attempt. Good enough for a girl!

And that is how I make it through all the challenges of a deployment, big and small. In this case, very small.

Just Missed His Fifteen Minutes

2011-08-18T23:28:00.003-04:00

The other night I was Skyping with my husband while he was getting ready for work. As he pulled his flight suit on I told him, "I should record this and post it on YouTube."

"Ha," was his reply. That is often his reply.

But later I realized, all I had to do was run that recording backwards, set it to some Britney Spears, and we'd have a YouTube hit on our hands.

Here's to private rooms. RHIP, baby.

Speaking Of...

2011-08-05T21:34:00.002-04:00

I love how tall Anthony Edwards looks next to Tom Cruise. And Slider still does it for me, even after all these years.

This is classic.

My husband has enjoyed teasing me about the last video I posted. But he grew up in the Top Gun generation (there is a whole generation of military aviators who were inspired by Top Gun and my husband is old enough to be one of them) so lets see what he can say to tease me about this one.

Hi, Honey. Miss you! ;-)

Counting Days

2011-08-05T20:55:00.003-04:00

We are seven weeks into this 52 week deployment. And I have been reduced to watching the volleyball scene from Top Gun over and over.

How am I going to make it another 45 weeks?

I haven't felt this desperate in a long, long time.

Every guy I see gets checked out. Even the way the guy near me at the movies today laughed was grabbing my attention.

Is this how men always feel? Or is it only seventeen-year-old boys?

I have a whole new understanding and appreciation for the way men are.

Ah, men.

51 days down. 314 to go.

Damn.

Young Love

2011-08-02T14:14:00.005-04:00

Last winter my friend told me her middle-school-aged son had a girlfriend. And I judged her.

Never mind that the topic only came up because my own daughter wanted to ask her son to dance at cotillion. But all I could think was he's in the seventh grade! That is too young. What kind of mother lets that happen.

But, oh...people in glass houses and all that.

About a month later in the Spring my daughter came home from play practice and told us that one of her best friends was "going out" with one of the boys from the theater group. Now, since this best friend also happens to be the daughter of one of the school heads (who didn't even let his daughter go to cotillion) my husband and I both asked the same question.

"What do her parents say about that?"

Well, as it turns out, after the boy asked her to "go out" she asked her parents permission. (Smart kid.) And her parents quite reasonably asked her what it meant to be "going out" with someone.

Apparently "going out" in my daughter's sixth grade universe meant...well...pretty much absolutely nothing. They don't actually see each other or hang out together or do anything different at all. I guess knowing that they'll all be graduating high school together in a few years they are just staking their claims now. I don't know.

So, yes we had heard that a certain boy (I wish I could use his real name because it is oh so perfect, but I must protect the innocent and all that)...(let's call him...Neal, shall we?) had told my daughter he was "into her" a few months before. But we hadn't heard much about it since then.

Neal, did however have my son's seal of approval of not being a bad kid. So that was good.

But not long after her friend started "going out" with her costar, Neal asked my daughter to "go out" too.

So my daughter asked our permission. (Smart girl.) And my husband (surprisingly reasonably) asked, "What does he mean by "go out" with you?" And of course it means, well, nothing.

And now my daughter is going out with a boy.

My daughter who just a couple of weeks ago turned 12-years-old and still has to be reminded to wash her hair has a boyfriend.

My glass house is shattered!

For years our friends and families and I have been joking about how intimidating my husband will be to any boy crazy enough to try to date my daughter. I mean, he knows what boys are like. I was 15 when he started dating me! And he's afraid that she'll turn out like me. (It's a very valid fear for a dad, believe me. I spent so much time trying to get my 16-year-old future husband in bed. Or to give it up in the car or wherever! Unsuccessfully, I might add. At least for a few years.)

But I was actually genuinely worried about how he would take her teen years. He's a very stubborn guy. And more than a little intimidating. Plus, his first meeting with his own future-father-in-law involved a gun, so...

I was worried.

But he has totally rolled with it. He's asked her a few times, "So, was Neal there?" or "So, did you tell Neal any of this?" and things like that. But mostly he has been totally fine with it.

I'm the freak.

I had to know more about this kid, so I broke out the kids' yearbook. Honestly, I was expecting kind of a geeky theater kid (sorry, guys!) like her best bud's boyfriend. But he was actually pretty cute and non-geeky.

So, I went on the school website and found out that he has two older twin brothers who just graduated from our school.

And now I know where he got his gutsy, sixth-grade manly man ways. (Can you imagine the conversations he had with his brothers?)

But his last name, and his dad's name seemed really familiar to me. (Never mind that his last name is as alphabetically as close to our last name as you can get and Neal and my daughter will have adjoining lockers for the next six years!)

So, Google, here I come.

It turns out that I had seen his dad's name on a wall in an art gallery. When he had his own show. As it turns out, his dad is kind of a famous sculptor. And he has got mon-ney! Serious money. Plus, he's the director of a very big charity in town.

Yes, I am completely nuts. I Google searched my daughter's sixth grade boyfriend.

But Neal was starting to look like a better and better candidate as a future son-in-law. Plus his dad has aged very very well, so there was that for my daughter to look forward to.

(See, completely nutso!)

A couple of weeks later I went to school to have lunch with my son. I was curious to watch my daughter in her native habitat interacting with her boyfriend. My son pointed out the pre-teen Lothario to me.

And I saw what was possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life.

At one point during lunch, my daughter was on one side of the deli line all by herself. And Neal was on the other side. Neal kept staring at her. And flipping his hair back at her. And trying to get her attention without actually saying anything to her.

And she completely ignored him

And now I know why Neal is interested in my daughter.

Guys love that chase, right!

My son and I thought that it was hilarious, but poor Neal. When I asked my daughter about it she had no clue what I was talking about. She hadn't even noticed him there making eyes at her.

But poor Neal did get to play the Gypsy King to her Gypsy Queen in the play. And they got to sing together and hold hands. (Eeeeeeek!)

Other than that I have no idea what they have done while they have been "going out".

Though she did write to me from summer camp and ask me for Neal's address. That is a letter I would have loved to have read. I wonder what his parents thought of it. Did he ask their permission to go out with a girl? I doubt it. Of course they also have eighteen-year-old twin football players, so they are probably used to a lot.

When she got back from camp I asked her about the dance they had with the neighboring boys camp. She didn't enjoy it. "Too many random boys asked me to dance," she complained.

"Did you dance with any of them?" I asked her.

"Of course not," she replied.

But I couldn't imagine why not. So, I asked her, "Why not?"

"Because of Neal!" she told me, like I really should have known that already.

And right there and then I knew that my husband has nothing to worry about. She is nothing like me.

I would have danced with every single one of those boys who asked me. Cute or not. No twelve-year-old playboy would keep me from having fun. In fact, I would have asked a few boys to dance with me.

So, we'll see how long Neal lasts. No matter what, I hope it ends well. Because the lockers could get quite awkward for the next six years if it doesn't.

And I worried about my man over there. Pshaw.

2011-07-17T01:42:00.005-04:00

So, I was going to write about my grandmother's funeral, but instead, let's all just watch some hot boys.

I totally stole this from Tonka. Oh, and just ignore what I was saying about middle aged men. Sometimes, you must make exceptions.

Mid Life Turns Me On

2011-07-06T21:09:00.007-04:00

I think my husband thinks I'm just stroking his ego when I tell him that I love his gray hair.

But I'm not. I think it is so hot. I especially love the gray in his beard.

You know, it's funny...not in a "ha ha" kind of way but in a "you've got to be fucking kidding me" kind of way...but my libido has pretty much been dead for at least three years now. I think I had to turn it off so many times while my husband was away that I forgot how to turn it back on.

(I also think there is probably something wrong with me, but let's not go there right now.)

But now that my husband is gone for a year...A YEAR...my libido is back with a vengeance.

I don't know where it came from. It totally just hit me out of the blue.

That is so wrong.

But it has been a long time since I actually checked out men online (if you know what I mean) and I had forgotten how young they all are.

I'm not really attracted to guys in their twenties, or even their thirties. Somewhere along the way, without realizing it my tastes shifted to guys in their forties. Maybe even early fifties.

But you try finding hot guys in their forties to ogle.

Ugh. This all makes me sound kind of sick.

With so little online options, I'm left checking out real men. And that's not cool, or productive.

So I'm left checking out that one hot cowboy guy in that Viagra ad. Which, maybe, inspired me to read a few erotic cowboy novels. *ahem*

And then maybe I noticed how hot a lot of the guys in those Viagra ads seem to be.

Doesn't that just seem sad and wrong somehow?

When I do see a hot celebrity (Like Joe Matarese who I saw on Chelsea Lately) I maybe do a few more Internet image searches then are really seemly.

But with 48 and a half weeks to go before I can ogle my husband's gray stubble again, I'm just going with it. And if searches for "silver fox" show up in my Internet history more than they should, hopefully my man will find it encouraging (and stop shaving his head).

On Saying Goodbye

2011-06-20T13:12:00.004-04:00

Last Wednesday, my husband left for a year-long deployment to Qatar.

I had just started getting used to having him around again after his last deployment, and now he's gone again.

But we're doing fine. Actually, it is a little scary just how well we're doing. Should this stuff really be normal to us? Should we really be used to it?

Maybe it is easier this time because we chose this. My husband volunteered for this deployment to do a pretty cool job in a not so horrible place so that we can stay here until his military retirement and the kids can graduate from our wonderful school.

Truthfully, I'd rather have him do a year in Qatar than another six months in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And he's the type of man who does this stuff without an once of regret or resentment. He's finishing up twenty year of service to his country by contributing to the safety of his fellow warriors AND putting his family first.

I'm not sure how he does it.

So, I always find farewells and homecomings to be awkward and sort of weird. I think this is my husband's sixth deployment and we have never had a big official send off. My husband always insists that we just drop him off wherever he needs to go. The flightline on base, the airport, or the terminal on the Navy base...it doesn't matter.

He always drives us there, hops out of the driver's side, gives us all a hug (sometimes leaning in the window, sometimes on the curb), basically just says, "Goodbye, love you, I'll call you when I get there," and he's off.

I always figured he was just avoiding a big scene, especially back in the days when media was hanging around with cameras. But last week we were just going to the local airport and dropping him off for a commercial flight, so I asked him if we should park and walk him in and say goodbye at security.

But he didn't want that. "Why prolong it?" he asked. And he's right. It's inevitable. Thirty more minutes in the airport won't make it easier. Besides, he shows us he loves us every day.

So we were standing on the curb saying goodbye and there were about six or seven people standing around staring at us. One woman walked by and said, "Thank you for your service."

Part of me thought, "That was nice." Part of me thought, "Um, hello, whore. Private family moment here. Mind your own fucking business."

But I smiled inanely.

With just a few tourists and businessmen watching us, I felt like I was putting on a show. The Poor Military Family show. And I did not like it.

I've always understood my husband's need for the hurried drop off. But I never saw his point quite as clearly as I did last week.

I've spent ten years avoiding the media at all costs. But I got through what will hopefully be our last big goodbye with grace and relative privacy once more.

Driving away from that curb always goes exactly the same way.

I get a little teary eyed, mostly because I can't stand to hear my daughter cry. And then my son manages to say exactly the right thing to her to comfort her (even though I have no idea what to say to her, even after all these years). He's been doing that since he was four or five years old. And then the tears fall on my face because I have these amazing kids even though I've been given free reign to mess them up all by myself for about half of their damn lives.

So we're back at it again. And the first five days have flown by. Here's to the next 360 of them going just as fast.

The Turn Around

2011-04-22T01:37:00.004-04:00

Being an eleven-year-old girl has got to be the fucking hardest thing in the entire world.

Being my eleven-year-old daughter can't make it any easier. I'm a hard ass with high expectations. Not to mention, being a military brat can't be easy either. Sure it's all we know, and it has its positives, but it isn't exactly the ideal situation for a highly sensitive girl like mine.

So I've mentioned before, the month of February was just about the worst month of my daughter's life.

That girl failed in so many ways in the span of about three weeks that it had me questioning everything I believe about parenting and maternal love.

Sure she failed tests, but she failed because she didn't do the work. And then, worst of all, she lied about not doing the work. She hid stuff. Manipulated situations (or tried to). And in those three weeks, she lied more than she ever had in her whole life combined.

The people who love us kept telling me, "But she's such a good kid..." Yet all I could think was, "Really?"

Do good kids lie? And lie and lie and lie?

It got so that every time the phone rang, I was worried that it was another one of her teachers calling to tell me something else she had done. Or not done.

Our school's entire philosophy is based on an honor code. The kids sign a pledge every year and also sign a pledge on every test, quiz and project. They are known for having "open lockers" with no doors. The honor code is central to all that they do.

So an honor code violation is a very big deal.

During those three weeks, my daughter was caught having not done her math homework. Which would have been okay, except that she didn't tell her teacher. When her teacher called her on it after class, she just cried and sobbed and was so upset the teacher was taken aback.

Lucky for my girl, the teacher decided that based on her excellent (former) reputation, maybe she just didn't quite understand that not admitting that she hadn't done her homework was as bad as lying about it. She gave her a firm but understanding talking-to, and let her off the hook.

Unfortunately, I had to find out about that whole incident by having the teacher call me. My daughter hadn't told me on her own.

And that was the last straw.

Frankly, I don't have a friend close enough to share any of this with. And while I always share with my husband, I didn't want to lay it on too thick, because he was in Afghanistan. The only thing he could do from that far away was worry.

It ended up being my mother who helped me the most. Here is a woman who loves my daughter more than anyone on the planet (possibly even more than me) yet she agreed with me. She wasn't being a good person. She needed something.

My mom advised me that I needed to stop trusting her. Clearly that wasn't working. "You've got to sit with her and watch her do every bit of her homework. You've got to make her study. You have to make sure she has no failures to lie about until she can mature and handle these things. And most of all, you need to get her some help."

My mom never gives advice. She always just says that she knows that I know better than her. (Seriously, she's been telling me that since I was eleven.) So for her to say something like that, well, she only confirmed what I already knew.

She also said, "Maybe she's getting her period."

And I said, "God, I hope so! At least raging hormones would be some kind of excuse."

So our school has a full period at the end of every day when the kids can participate in activities, get extra help from their teachers, or do their homework. I declared she would have no more activities and would spend every free period with her teachers.

I designed a white board to-do list. I set up a calendar system and taught my daughter to use it. I made sure she used it every day. I micromanaged every second of her homework time. I forced her to study even when she insisted that she already had. I made up practice tests and quizzes.

I pretty much became the Tiger Mom from hell.

Sure there were tears at first. But then came the good grades. She went from 30's and 40's to 90's and hundreds. She went from twelve dings on her tri-weekly responsibility report to zero. And slowly but surely, she started to believe me. She started to believe that when you go to a school as challenging as hers, you have to spend three hours a night doing homework. You have to go above and beyond.

We decided to read a book together. The school had assigned the girls to read The Secret Language of Girls as part of their "Ophelia Project", a project designed to proactively teach girls about treating each other well and with respect.

We both hated the book (the writing was weak) but it got us talking a lot about right and wrong. It got us talking about how hard it can be to do the right thing sometimes.

We reaffirmed ourselves to her violin study. Violin is one aspect of her life where she can really have some success. And that girl needed a win more than any child I have ever known. She had been avoiding practicing with me in the morning. So I declared that for every minute she was late to her violin practice time, she would be grounded that many days. (See, hard ass.)

Her teacher noticed the difference. And next weekend she will be playing in an advanced student chamber group.

I grounded the kid for sure. But once my husband got home, I also spent more time with her. We went to the movies and shopping and out for meals. Just the two of us.

And we took her to counseling.

The counselor mostly worked on how to handle stress, how to handle failure, and how to handle anxiety.

The truth is, the counselor didn't say anything to her that we haven't said a hundred thousand times. But having someone else say it probably helped. Also, I think just the fact that her parents love her enough to get her that kind of help affected her in some way.

Oh, and also, she got her period.

It just two months, her life has completely turned around. Her grades are great. (She managed to pull out of that horrible semester with all B's and a C.) She's the Gypsy Queen in Mary Poppins. She finally moved beyond the Vivaldi concerto she's been working on in violin. A boy at school told her he's "really into" her. And she starts softball at school in May.

We're closer than ever.

I deeply believe that when you love each other enough, you come through the hard times even better. Back in 2005 my husband and I had a tough time in our relationship. We grew through it and came out the other side better off. I think my daughter and I have had our tough period too.

The damage was thankfully minimum.

The thing I am most grateful for is that she talks to me so much now. She tells me all the little things she won't tell anyone else.

She's having a tough week this week. One of her best friends is moving this summer and she just found out that her very best friend is switching schools in the fall. And her third best friend...well...she's growing into quite the little bitch.

Her classmates suddenly all seem to be struggling. They've had more honor code violations then ever this past couple of weeks. Actually, these are the first real honor code violations her classmates have ever had.

But, today she told me a story. The kids were supposed to bring in a local newspaper with a tides chart for science class. She asked me to stop on the way to school and pick one up this morning, but she also went online and printed one out just in case we couldn't find a paper.

So when her friend asked her if she had an extra tides chart, she immediately replied, "Yes." But when her friend asked to borrow it for class, she told her, "Um, I'm sorry but I don't feel comfortable with that. You didn't do your homework and if I gave you my chart, that would be like cheating."

Can you even imagine how hard that was for her to do? Her friend is mad at her. She's probably telling everyone what a bitch my daughter is. But my daughter still did what she thought was right.

She learned!

Can you believe it?

Being eleven-years-old has got to be the fucking hardest thing in the entire fucking world. And it can't be easier when you go to a school where the expectations are so high. And it can't be easier when your hormones are raging.

But she's making it though. And now I have hope.

An Audience of One

2011-04-06T09:05:00.007-04:00

So, I wrote this very long post about homecomings. I went on and on about my very strong feelings on the reunion part of a deployment and the media's portrayal of such. I got way too personal to illustrate just how hard reintegrating a member of your family can be.

And I never finished it.

I just had too much to say. I couldn't wrap all of my words around what I was really trying to express. So I decided to let it all go. (I mean, seriously. If I can't choke something to death with words, who can?)

I'll just sum up by saying that it was really hard. Very hard. And it is still ongoing. But we've all learned a lot. We're making it through.

My husband was home for a little more than two weeks when he had to leave again. He is currently nearing the end of a three week long TDY to train for his next deployment.

Somehow, this short TDY has been harder than the entire sixth month deployment. Isn't it funny how that happens? Maybe it is just because I know he'll be gone for a year pretty damn soon and if things stay this way, I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through.

But I'm just so sick of doing everything on my own. I'm mostly sick of sitting in audiences all alone while my kids perform on stage. I'm sick of going to concerts alone. The kids deserve more and I deserve someone to share it all with.

He'll be back Friday and then we'll make the most of our time together until June. And then I'll survive another deployment. We'll all be just fine.

And come June 2012, I'll be looking forward to another reunion and chastising myself for whining about what I'm going through now. But after eight reunions (Eight! Seriously?) I hope I can start to get them right.

Always Blame It on the Sperm

2011-02-24T13:24:00.003-05:00

Something just occurred to me about five minutes ago.

I have given birth to the most independent child on the face of the Earth AND the most dependent child on the face of the Earth.

How is it possible that two eggs from the same basket could produce such polar opposite offspring?

I'm blaming the sperm.

The carrier of the sperm is on his way home, finally. It will take all of my will power not to dump the problems of the dependent child in his lap immediately. I can hold them on my own for a while longer. I can. I swear. I am strong. What difference will a few days make?

Thank god the sperm no longer have a means of escape. Another offspring would break this mother's back.

Portraits of Death's Bitch

2011-01-25T10:36:00.004-05:00

I love peaking in people's houses. I especially love when someone's home is a surprise.

A few years ago I made friends with a really wonderful former military psychologist. She was one of the most down-to-earth people I ever met. She dressed simply and never wore make-up. She was a lot like me.

And then she invited me to her house.

It was a friggin' Taj Mahal! It was all marble and huge windows and staircases and more rooms than you can count. It was full of original paintings by artists you've probably actually heard of. It had it's own lake.

Her home was so unexpected and I loved it. It is nice to see really awesome people living so well. Rich people have such a bad reputation.

This past weekend we went to a violin concert at the home of one of the families in our studio. They live in a lovely historic home in the trendy part of downtown. Again, I was surprised.

This women is really outgoing and nice. She's bubbly and happy. And in her home is a portrait of her flanked by her small children in which she looks like death's bitch.

She apparently liked that portrait a lot because she has it displayed in three different places in her house.

It reminded me of something that happened when my son was a baby.

I was just getting to know one of the wives in the squadron. She also had a small baby and she and her husband seemed really nice. And then she invited me to her house for a baby shower.

The first thing you saw when you walked in her front door was her wedding portrait. It was a little more formal than I like, but it was a decent picture.

It was also larger than life. Literally. The portrait was at least 6 feet by 8 feet. It barely fit on the wall. In the picture her head was bigger than a beach ball. Big headed much?

A couple of years later she and her husband divorced. I'm dying to know what she did with that portrait! Oh, then she renamed her daughter (who was five-years-old by then) after herself. Yeah. Like she was named Mary and then she renamed her own kid Mary.

I don't know. It's fun to get a glimpse into people's homes. They say a lot about a person. But sometimes, what they say is kind of scary.

I wonder what my house says about me.

Deployment Gremlins Can Suck Donkey Balls

2011-01-21T09:26:00.003-05:00

So we're a bit past the 4 month point of this deployment. We've had some rocky spots here and there, but overall, things were going pretty well.

Until this week. See, I made a huge mistake. About a week ago (when we hit the 4th month) I stopped and took a moment to reflect. And I thought, hey, we're doing pretty damn well here. I kind of rock.

And then the universe decided to prove to me just how much I don't rock.

Why didn't I knock on wood?

It's been little things and big things. It's been food poisoning and flat tires. It's been pre-teen drama and a stuck front door. It's been scheduling conflicts and missed deadlines.

Ugh.

And all of a sudden I go from perfectly fine to oh, my god, this sucks. I'm done with this now.

To top it all off, I didn't learn my lesson. Because last night I thought hey, it's been months since the boy banged his head in his sleep. I thought man, it's nice to be past that worry.

And of course, you guessed it, his nocturnal head banging woke me up at 2 a.m. last night.

It's kind of like the opposite of "Be careful what you wish for." I wish I could twist it around and make it work for me.

Hey, I love how I haven't been able to sleep through the night for the last month or so. Yeah, that totally kicks ass.

Freedom 2011

2011-01-06T11:59:00.004-05:00

I am so very, very thankful that I am past the stage of early parenthood. All in all, those years were pretty wonderful at our house. But society has such intense reactions to new motherhood and I don't miss those at all.

I don't miss the parenting magazines and books. (Though I never read many.) I don't miss the impassioned advice about everything from breast feeding to picking preschools. (Though I never listened to much of it.) I really don't miss the intense and often forced or strained relationships with fellow stay-at-home moms.

I especially don't miss all the judgement. The intense judgement.

So many new mothers are so fearful of messing up that they develop these strongly held beliefs and anyone who doesn't jive with those beliefs is harshly judged, mostly so the insecure new mother can look and say, "See! I am such a better mother than her!"

What? We've all done it.

People look at a stay-at-home mom with babies and toddlers and they want to share with her. They want to teach her and give her advice and lure her over to their ways of thinking so that they can feel right and vindicated!

People look at a stay-at-home mother with school-age kids or preteens and they think...

Well, I don't know what they think.

And I don't care!

Woo hoo! Freedom! It is so freeing not to care.

For the first time in my life I am feeling a bit old. But that's okay. I feel like I have gotten to a place where I know so much. I am seeing the results of my sacrifice and decisions. And I feel good about them all.

I am one of the few stay-at-home mothers left in the car pool line. And I am the only one without a doctor or entrepreneur for a husband. And I am happy. You know what? We were smart. And lucky. And good planners.

I know without a doubt that we have done the right things, made the right choices, not just for our kids, but for our marriage and ourselves too.

It feels so good to be on the other side of the playground. I know this may be the lull before the storm of parenting a teenager but I have faith in the foundations we built. And as always, I am enjoying the present and looking forward to the future.

A future that in a few years will not include deployments.

That's the most freeing thing of all.

Gotta get it off my chest somewhere!

2010-12-12T18:13:00.005-05:00

Alternately titled: Mothering eleven-year-old girls is not for the weak!

Is it possible to be a truly awesome parent to one of your children and simultaneously be a completely crappy parent to your other child?

Is it?

Because it might not all be rainbows and unicorns raising my son, but in general it is rewarding.

But my daughter...

*sigh*

That kid is going to be the death of me.

I've really been struggling with her this school year, and I realize that it is because my husband is deployed, and she's at a hard age, and she goes to a school where an 83 average is a C and a 75 average is failing, and she's a girl so she doesn't want to turn into me, and she's lazy by nature, and she got all of my crappy personality traits and my bad skin...

*deep breath*

...but none of those things make me feel better when she lies and is irresponsible.

I know I have failed this child by somehow managing not to teach her to work hard. I am very much afraid of what she will become. I am scared that she will miss out on so much in life. But my fear is too distressing to deal with every day so it turns into anger.

I feel like I am angry with this girl all the damn time.

Lately I am having an especially hard time because things are going really well for my son. I am having a hard time finding ways to celebrate his accomplishments while she is failing at every turn.

I'm afraid that my daughter and everyone else in the world assumes that I love my son more because I understand him better and get along with him better, but that is just not true. It is because I love my daughter so damn much that I am so anxious about the lack of coping skills she has to deal with the world.

People always say that she is such a sweet girl, so happy and polite. And she is. She is. And if I were her aunt or her coach or her friend's mom that would be great. But I'm not. I'm her mother and I can't send her out in the world with only sweet and smiley to fall back on.

This week she has decided that she wants to be an author when she grows up. Why? To quote her exactly, "Because authors don't have to get up in the morning."

In the meantime, she is failing English.

We're going to be supporting this girl until we die. I can see it now. She'll be living in our garage when she's thirty.

I hope she finds a rich man to marry. I hear sweet and smiley go pretty far with rich guys. And my daughter needs a staff.

It's Official

2010-12-07T13:31:00.004-05:00

Not only did my husband and I make a decision about our future, but my diligent husband made it all happen.

We are going to get to stay here in Virginia, basically, for the rest of our lives. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. The sacrifice is that he will be deployed again. For a year. And he'll leave only three months after he gets back from his current deployment.

We talked about our options, or the options we were going to create for ourselves, for days. I kept going back and forth in my head. We could go back to the bayou or another flying squadron somewhere else. He would requalify in his aircraft, be a member of a crew, probably deploy a bunch, and have little chance to be a leader. All while we lived in a place we wouldn't choose for ourselves.

Or he could volunteer to go away for a year where he might have a job commiserate with his rank, we would live right where we are and the kids would stay in a school that we all love.

As much as the second option seemed to make better sense, I love my husband too much to just blithely send him away for a year so that I could have what I want. So I dithered.

In the past I always told him, "Whatever is best for you is best for us. Do what you need to and we'll make the rest work," and I felt like I was going against that principle by suggesting he volunteer to deploy and pretty much end any chance he has to advance any further in his career.

But he sent me an e-mail that said, "It looks like the volunteer deployment might be a go. Are you sure this is what you want?"

As soon as I read the words, "...might be a go," I let out a huge sigh and breathed, "Oh, thank god." And so I had my answer. My gut reaction to those words told me all I needed to know.

He's deploying again. But not to Afghanistan or Iraq. He's going to have an important and interesting job that will actually really contribute to keeping people safe during the war. And he's going to retire in just a few years knowing he did his part and his duty.

And I get what I want too. (Except for the being separated from my husband for another year part of it.)

I am so thankful to him for making it all work out. And I am grateful that he is willing to sacrifice this one year of his life for the overall benefit of our family. And I still feel guilty for asking him to do it.

But the kids are happier with our decision than I thought they'd be. Everyone else in my life has acted like it's awesome news. As happy as I am to not have to move, I still don't think it is awesome news.

I'm still going to miss the hell out of my husband for a really long time.

Didn't I get vaccinated for that?

2010-11-30T08:12:00.003-05:00

Last night my son asked me if I had tuberculosis.

He was reading a book entitled Why You Wouldn't Want to Live in the Wild West (or something like that) and it had a whole page on diseases.

So he has evaluated my symptoms of the last two weeks and decided that yes, I have tuberculosis.

He might be right.

This morning when he gave me a good morning hug he told me to go take my temperature because I felt hot. "Even your hands, Mom," he told me.

And my temperature was 100.2 degrees.

Do I have a future doctor on my hands?

These last couple of weeks have sucked because I've spent the majority of them either hacking up a lung or asleep. But a lot has gone on 'round the ol' Tuna homestead. Now if only I could stop barking like a seal for a few minutes to sort it all out.

By the way, I am weeks behind on my e-mails, and some of you have sent me some wonderful ones. I appreciate your kind thoughts more than you could ever know and I will answer your e-mails soon! (Even yours, Honey.)

Finding Power in Choice, Maybe

2010-11-18T05:52:00.005-05:00

Okay, so here is what has been on my mind constantly lately.

To completely over-simplify things, this summer we have a choice. We can either move back to the bayou for the next four years (until my husband's retirement). Or he can deploy for a year and we can stay here.

Now remember, he'll be getting back from his current deployment in the Spring (I'll optimistically say it would be mid-March). And he'd have to head back out again for a year in June or July.

I say this is a complete oversimplification because it is. The powers that be might not really let him choose. They might decide they absolutely need his ass in the wilds of Alaska or in the middle of the ocean. There's never really any telling what the powers that be might do.

Two years ago, I would have loved to move back to the bayou. It was the devil I knew. But now I would hate to. If it were just me, I'd probably be okay with it. I do have a lot of friends there and the cost of living is cheap.

But the idea of taking my children back there makes me want to cry and cry. To the point where I was actually looking into boarding schools for high school. (It sounds crazy, but my daughter would be half way though high school when we would be able to retire and get the hell out of there.)

On the other hand, living without their dad for a year, right on the heals of living without him for six months can't be good for them either. But it would only be a year. And the rest of their lives would stay the same. Same school. Same great neighborhood. Same opportunities to become adults in a really wonderful area of the country.

Let's just say that I can't explain it all, but to me, this is a complete and total fork in the road of my children's lives. And there are no good choices. And we might not be allowed to make the choice at all anyway.

After sixteen years I must say, I am over being a military wife. I used to be so good at it. Now I feel like we have so little power over our family's future.

It is a very bitter pill for this over-protective and overly passionate parent to swallow.

I didn't defriend you! I need you!

2010-11-16T04:09:00.003-05:00

As if the rest of this shit weren't bad enough...

Facebook disabled my account for using a fake name. Which I am so I can't really fight it.

So if you think I defriended you, I didn't. I only had 43 Facebook friends.

You know...here's the thing. I was just thinking about this.

I got some crappy news yesterday and I'm going through some crappy stuff. And my husband is away and I barely ever get to talk to him. And I don't really have any close friends.

But I have you guys.

I can't talk to my parents about what's going on because they'll be upset. And I can't let my kids know what's going on because nothing is final and they don't need to worry about it too. That's my job. I can always write to my husband, but e-mail and chat aren't the best ways to discuss major life choices. Plus, while I am always honest with him, I want to be careful what I say because I know he is struggling too. I don't want him making hard decisions based on the words I spew when I'm just venting.

But I can always "talk" to you guys.

Except now I'm right back in that place where I wish I had never been Tuna Girl.

I started blogging back when everyone was anonymous. Everyone had blog pen names. Nobody used real names. That seemed completely crazy.

And with my husband's job, we both felt more comfortable having my blog be anonymous.

So I went ahead and said anything on my blog. Anything. So now, if my parents were to find my blog and read back, well, I would just die.

So I have these two separate worlds. And they can't cross.

So Tuna Girl can't be on Facebook anymore. And quite frankly, that was where most of my interaction and moral support was coming from.

I didn't need this shit right now.

How sad and pathetic am I?

Oh, well. I dug this hole. I'll sit in it all alone. It's just the timing that sucks.

And it's just, well, my real life/real name Facebook friends are so boring compared to you lovelies!

My Hound of Hell

2010-11-11T11:42:00.004-05:00

There are few good things about a deployment. But I think we all try to find the silver linings, if only to give ourselves the illusion that we have some control of the situation.

One of my silver linings for this deployment is that I inherited my husband's iPhone when he left.

Recently I was endlessly and aimlessly shifting through the phone's apps (I spend a lot of time checking and rechecking my e-mail these days) when I decided to see what music my taste-challenged husband had left me on his device.

And I found Dos Gringos.

Dos Gringos are apparently a group of singing, music playing and song writing fighter pilots. So their songs are all about our branch of the service and the experiences aviators all share.

I find it fascinating.

First of all, I am a complete sucker for male bonding. I find it damn hot. The CD was recorded live at a bar and I love to hear a roomful of guys belting out a war mongering tune.

Secondly, the music explores a side of my husband's personality that I'm not all that familiar with.

To me he is a total family man. He's kind of soft spoken, except when he's not. He's sort of shy. He's a homebody. He's kind of sweet but mostly he is placid. He has one default facial expression and it is pretty dower. I mean, I can get him going, but for the most part, he is as even keeled as they come.

He very rarely ever goes out with friends or hangs in the O' Club bar after work.

But I know that at work he is stubborn and passionate about what he does. He yells. I've heard stories. He's an old crusty colonel now. He drinks Jack and has been known even to smoke cigars. (Though only on special occasions. Right, honey?)

Nobody knows his name. They all call him by his call sign. Everybody.

He could be a character in a movie. But I never see that side of him. I only hear stories (and see the Jack bottles).

It's when he goes TDY that he gets loose. That's when he goes out and has a good time with his friends. I've gotten the drunken phone calls. I've heard the stories. I'm not allowed to tell the other wives.

And so this CD with song titles like, The Legend of Shaved Dog's Ass and My Wife's Vibrator and lyrics like...

"I spent five months TDY, and the bitch spent all my money."

And the one that is stuck in my head...

"...raining fire from above for the freedom that we love, we are the hounds of hell and the bloody dogs of war."

...I am reminded of my husbands alter ego.

He is a warrior. He's seen combat. I should remember that.

But, still. On the desktop of our computer is a picture of my husband in his plane during his first post 9/11 deployment. He's wearing the baseball hat he wore on combat flights. He's wearing his headset and a mic.

And he's wearing a big fucking smile. His smile. His happy smile.

And I just can't think of him as the hound of hell or dog of war.

He may be a warrior, but mostly he is just...

Mine.

Occasionally I miss it wicked bad.

2010-11-03T22:48:00.001-04:00

One of my New England friends took her baby out trick-or-treating dressed as a lobster.

In a lobster pot.

She put her baby in a pot.

How awesome is that?

The Rich, and How They Stay That Way

2010-11-02T14:39:00.003-04:00

How did our middle class asses get here?

You know, they say the rich get richer and they are right. Part of it might be the way wealth builds, but mostly, it is all about associations.

So, we are not rich. By far. My husband has a government job and I don't work. But we are fucking lucky. Through the generosity of family, we are able to give our kids opportunities we never would have dreamed of ourselves.

It all started when we picked a preschool.

Now, I picked a preschool for my three-year-old based solely on the kind of experience she would have. I wanted her to go to the school with the best academics and the best spirit. So I wormed our way in.

Little did I know the type of lifestyle I was setting my kids toward for life. Choosing that school led to violin lessons, Junior League invites, and inclusion in an inner circle I had known nothing about.

The first time we went to a preschool friend's house for a party, and they had valet parking at the circular drive leading up to their freaking mansion...I knew we weren't in a mill town anymore.

Eight years later...

We're still middle class. Maybe upper middle class. We have some savings. We're upside down on our house. (Isn't everyone?) We still live pretty much paycheck to paycheck. (But combat pay helps!) But we have a financial safety net most people don't have, and our kids are still going to private school.

But the level of school, um, let's say "prestige" has gone up a notch.

Now that my daughter is a preteen, it has hit me hard.

A few weeks ago, she got an invitation in the mail for the cotillion season at a country club. I put it in the recycling. Since it had a fee I assumed it was like all the other pageant-type schemes we've been getting "invited" to since our daughter was born.

Then we went to school that day and I found out that it was a thing. All the sixth graders go. Unbeknownst to me, my daughter and her friends had been planning for it for months.

So I came home and dug the damn invite out of the trash.

Does this mean I'm raising a deb? Does it?

How the hell did that happen?

Now my daughter wants to go to a summer camp for girls. Desperately. But not any summer camp. Oh, no. The summer camp. A summer camp that has legacies. Apparently, it's a thing.

Here's the thing about us. We're not going to say "no" based on just the principle that it is a rich girl thing. We've been researching the heck out of the place. And it looks awesome. We think it will be a wonderful experience for her.

But now she'll be a "_____ Girl" for the rest of her life. And that's a term that has some clout, especially in this region. In fact, as an alumnae she can bring her husband and children to Family Camp. She wants us to go to Family Camp. But we can't. I spent my summers in my own dang backyard.

It's the associations that make the rich get richer.

Hell, we get discounts at businesses in our area just because of where my kids go to school. (Free cookies at Subway anyone?)

The cop's kid in me thinks it is not right. But the parent in me says, "What the hell!" If my kids can have an easier life than my parents had, even then my own husband had, why would I deny them?

My kids are part of a society that my husband and I never really will be. We're pretty much depending on his military rank and our stunning personalities to get by.

Luckily we have learned one really important lesson along the way. Rich people are not bad people. They're like most people. Most are pretty okay. Some suck major ass. And some are really awesome.

We're pretty damn sure we're raising some awesome ones.

So my "_____ Girl" is going to cotillion.

And I find myself asking yet again, "How the hell did we get here?"

American Boyhood

2010-10-29T22:33:00.003-04:00

Do you know that Wayne Gretzky's sons don't play hockey?

They don't.

Well, at least the oldest two don't. The first quit after riding the bench for a year. The second one chose baseball. The youngest two are just around my son's age

So the great one...the greatest hockey player of all time...his kids don't play hockey.

And he's okay with that.

That makes me feel so great! It totally puts into perspective that my son will never be an athlete.

Even before kids are conceived, I think every parent has a preconceived notion of what their kids will eventually be. Even those of us who try really hard not to, still do. It is so hard, no...impossible not to imagine them caring about the things we care about, excelling at the things we wish they would, and generally being happy about 99.7% of the time.

And then they're born. And they are nothing like you imagined. And as much as you love the heck out of them, and appreciate them for who they are, there is always this tiny, deeply covered part of your most inner self who mourns, just a bit, for the kids we thought they'd be.

Just one small comment by my son's teacher at our conference yesterday put it all into perspective for me.

She was telling me that third grade is a huge year of change for boys. Some of the them start caring about clothes. Some of them get serious about sports, and have the physiques to prove it. And some of them care about popularity and image for the first time. It's a time when boys assert their individuality.

And then she said, "Like your son...he's really found his direction in the fine arts. He's so amazing at music and art and drama."

She went on to tell me all these stories about how the other boys respect his talent (which is really just years of hard work) so much that they ask him to play violin for the class whenever he brings it to school. She told me how he read a script for the video the class is making, and the teaching fellow showed all the other teacher's his clip because it was so great.

I think if you've read this blog for any length of time, you have probably rolled your eyes at some point (over and over) and thought, there she goes, bragging about her kids again. And I do think they're pretty great. But what you don't read here is how sometimes I am disappointed that they don't care about what I cared about when I was a kid.

I worry all the time that they got all of my worst qualities and none of my good ones. I hate that they are not physically fit. I feel massive amounts of guilt and anxiety about it.

They drive me crazy when they are lazy. They make me nuts when they don't try things that are hard. They make me want to scream when they don't try hard.

I mean, heck. They're not perfect. I love them. But sometimes I am sad about they are not.

I'm sad that they are not passionate about sports like I was. That's not something most parents would probably admit. But what the heck.

But my son's teacher? She's taught hundreds of kids in an almost 20 year career. She greets 20 boys at her classroom door every morning. And because she is not their parent, she can love them for the unique individuals they are, without any of the regret for what they are not.

She looks at my son and sees an artist. A musician. An actor. And as she told me, the most polite, conscientious, agreeable, and happy boy she's ever taught.

Before I had kids, I pictured my son as this rough and tumble, athletic, captain of the baseball team type.

And what I got was this sensitive, empathetic actor, artist and musician. And he's happy 99.7% of the time.

How could I ever have any regrets?

It's time to let the preconceived notions of boyhood go.

I love this kid more than I could ever say.

I bet Wayne Gretzky's kids can't play the violin.

Please Welcome, Tuna Man!

2010-10-27T21:37:00.005-04:00

I talked to my husband today. I haven't gotten to talk to him very much in the six weeks that he's been deployed, so it was very nice. Even though I spent most of the conversation acting incredulous about things that go on in our life. Like...

"I know!"

"She kills me!"

And, "I know!"

Recently, he found out that he was actually able to read my blog from the dry part of hell in which he currently resides. So now I feel like I need to rethink what I write.

Not that my writing has been so scintillating lately. But still.

So...

Hi, Honey!

(Damn. There goes that post I had all written out complaining about my mother-in-law.)

Hey, Honey! Look over here!

(And there goes that post I had half written about my nutso father-in-law.)

Woo hoo, Honey! Check me out!

(And I can't even tell you about how my daughter has a "boyfriend" now.)

Breathe, Honey. Breathe. It will be okay.

But the rest of you, check back for stories of pre-teen love.

And, Honey, there is no reason to practice your marksmanship. Unless you need it to fight off bad guys. I got the whole boyfriend thing covered. I swear.

(I don't have a clue.)

2010-10-20T08:38:00.000-04:00

Wearing Purple

2010-10-19T14:12:00.002-04:00

My family will be wearing purple tomorrow, October 20, to show that we stand up to bullying.

Well, three of us will be. One of us will be wearing desert camo like he does everyday.

I talked to each of my kids about just what I felt we were wearing purple for. I told them:

1) We show that we support all kids, gay or straight who are being bullied, feeling left out, or having a hard time. We want those kids to know that we'll listen to them, and stand up for them no matter what.

2) We show that we'll never bully other kids. (I'm not so much worried about that one.)

3) We show that we will never accept anyone bullying us. We know that no one has the right to make us feel bad about ourselves. We will stand up for ourselves to the best of our ability.

And finally 4) We promise that if we are being bullied, we will get help from a trusted adult. We acknowledge that our school has a zero-tolerance for bullying and we will go to a teacher to support a friend or stand up for ourselves if we have to. The kids promise to come to me if they've tried to stand up for themselves and it hasn't worked, and I promise I will do my best to handle the situation without making it worse.

Having this talk with each kid yielded some interesting results.

My daughter was all gung ho about it. We shared some stories of how we've dealt with bullying in the past. And then she started to cry. She was sad for the kids who had killed themselves, but she was upset for her brother too (who had a small run in with a kid recently).

My son asked a bunch of questions. The first of which was, "What does gay mean?"

What? Huh? How did I miss out on that one? My kid with all his gay uncles and living in his gayborhood cul-de-sac? (I was going to call it the gay-de-sac but that sounds bad.)

So I gave him an answer and he said, "Like Matthew and Kevin."

And I said, "Exactly."

Then he wanted to know how those kids had killed themselves. And why.

So they are very on board with wearing purple tomorrow. And even if no one else in the world wears purple, it gave me the opportunity to have this dialog with my kids. And that is totally worth it.

You know, I don't exactly have an "It Gets Better" message. Life has always been pretty damn easy for me. I can't show my support that way. But I can let kids know that there are other kids out there being raised to be accepting and supportive. And I know lots of moms who are doing the same thing.

Let's Shake On It

2010-10-14T08:57:00.007-04:00

This is where you learn about what a "weird" parent I am.

In our family we have a rule about sports. After every practice or game, our children shake their coaches' hands and thank them.

Our school has a culture built around handshaking and I love it. Every morning their teachers meet the kids at the doors to their classrooms, shake their hands and exchange a few words of greeting.

At the end of every violin practice or lesson my kids take a bow and say, "Thank you for teaching me," in both English and Japanese. It is a common practice among Suzuki trained kids and my kids have been doing it for years.

(I then answer them, "Thank you for working so hard," because it is the work that matters, not the talent or outcome. I don't say it in Japanese though.)

Why shouldn't the same courtesy reign in the world of sports?

After all, many, if not most of these coaches volunteer their time.

So, my son, the king of the handshake (you should have seen the General's face at my husband's promotion when my son introduced himself and stuck out his hand for a handshake) wholeheartedly believes in our sports rule.

In the locker room after every hockey game or practice, he goes up to his coach and shakes his hand, without any prompting from me.

His coach is used to it now, but was obviously confused the first couple of times. My son usually says, "Thanks for a great game," or something similar. And the coach always has trouble coming up with a reply.

I think that the other kids on his team think he is a freak. First he's got the weird teeth and braces thing going on right now. Then, he's not very good at hockey. And now he's shaking hands! They look at him weird.

But I'm okay with it. It might make him stick out. But I'd rather he stick our for good manners then anything else.

It's all about values, people.

So, last Monday my son had his very first rehearsal with the orchestra he auditioned for. He had been looking forward to it for months.

At the end of rehearsal, I was distracted by my daughter for a second as she headed to her own rehearsal. When I looked up to find the boy, he was up by the podium shaking the conductor's hand.

She laughed a bit so when my son made his way back to me, I asked what he had said.

"I said, 'Thank you for a good practice. I hope to see you in the future.'"

Never mind that we see her every Thursday when we go to group class and every Monday night for orchestra. He hopes to see her in the future.

Sometimes I don't know whether to be embarrassed by my little future politician or incredibly proud of him.

He is kind of weird. A lot like me. But he likes himself just fine, and I'm okay with that.

Mr. Swift

2010-10-13T11:44:00.007-04:00

Totally out of the blue my daughter announced to me, "I think the boy who sings Billionaire is cute."

What? Whose child is this?

"How do you know what he looks like?" I asked her.

"Last week you were watching TV and I had to come downstairs and get something and a cute blond boy was singing that song before you hit pause. It was like a music video."

How does she even know what a music video is? MTV hasn't played music videos since I was her age.

I had to think for a minute and then I remembered. "That wasn't a music video, hon. That was Glee."

So I love learning about my kid. I'm so very glad she isn't pining for the bad boy type. She likes blonds though.

Lucky for her, about half of the boys in her class look like mini Chord Overstreets. Living in a city with the word beach right in the name means there are lots of surfer-types around.

Yesterday she asked me, "Can you believe that none of my friends know who John Williams is?"

Um, yes.

She went on, "When I told them, they shrugged and said, 'Never heard of him.' Then they asked me if I liked Taylor Swift and I said I had never heard of him."

Eleven is such a great age.

One Month In

2010-10-12T09:55:00.002-04:00

So, for the record, I've been doing pretty well these last couple of weeks. I feel like I've been pulling myself together step-by-step and day-by-day.

I can't even believe that it has been one month since my husband left on his deployment. We're one fifth of the way there. And I just got around to picking up the half empty soda cans he left on his nightstand.

You know, I keep composing this blog post in my head where I say, "Contrary to the evidence at hand, my life isn't all kids' violin and kids' hockey and kids' theater." But the truth is that it is!

It sounds like it should be sad and depressing, but to me it's not. But it is probably pretty boring to read about though.

I don't really know how I used to do it. How did I take care of little kids 24/7, but still have adult things to talk about?

I guess I was having sex back then. That was one adult thing to talk about. And I occasionally went to the gym or spent time with blog friends. But I don't do that anymore.

Also, kids are funnier when they are little. I rarely have the opportunity to throw them in toilets or watch them strip at the playground now that they are older.

So for now, life is all kids' violin and kids' hockey and kids' theater. And I'm going to enjoy it while I can. Especially for the next five months. Boring or not.

And the Oscar goes to...Boy #2

2010-10-05T20:58:00.003-04:00

Today,the kids got their roles for the play they are performing with their theater group. They are putting on an original version of The Emperor's New Clothes. I hear it is very funny.

My son got a speaking role, which is very cool because he was the only third grader who did. They use the third graders as the chorus. But he is Boy #2 and he gets to say, "The Emperor isn't wearing any clothes!"

My daughter is Lady #2. *sigh* This is her third play with this group and they keep telling the kids that the bigger roles should go to sixth graders. Well, she's a sixth grader. But she seems happy enough.

The coolest thing is how happy they are for each other. Apparently when her name was called, my son cheered and hugged her. And when his name was called, she went nuts for him. They have each separately told me how proud they are of the other.

My daughter even said, "He has such an important line, I think he has an even bigger role than me. I'm so happy for him!"

This parenting gig is all about priorities, people. I've messed up plenty, but in this one way, we've gotten things right.

You know what, I take it back. The coolest thing is that all that speech therapy my son slogged though has paid off. His speech isn't perfect, but it's no longer holding him back.

Go Boy #2!

Headshots

2010-10-04T16:55:00.005-04:00

I know I have mentioned it before, but my son really, really wants to be an actor.

I thought it might be a phase. That makes me sound almost thespiaphobic doesn't it. (There's a word I just made up. I like it!) But you know how kids are. They all want to be firefighters, dolphin trainers, and the president at some point in life.

But my son doesn't want any of those things. Just yesterday my daughter said to him, "You're either going to be a billionaire or the president, buddy."

To which he replied, "I don't want to be the president. But my career might make me a billion dollars. Really famous actors sometimes make a lot of money."

I mean, the kid's not dropping it.

Except for a few weeks when he was four-years-old and wanted to be a plane driver, he has only ever wanted to be an actor.

So I put him in the Young People's Theater Program at school. And he loves it. It takes him a couple of hours to turn off the acting after his rehearsals. (The kids in the hockey locker room think he's a weirdo.)

But I wonder.

If he really, really wanted to be a professional baseball player, I'd go out and play catch with him. He'd be playing Little League, but he'd also be going to the batting cages, clinics and camps too. I'd probably get him a private coach.

Well, his chances of being a professional athlete are close to nil, but why do I take acting less seriously?

Am I doing a disservice to him by not letting him do the local players group? Am I letting him down by not putting him in acting classes with a professional?

Is acting like an instrument? If you want to be awesome and make a living at it, you should start when you're a little kid. Heck! He's been seriously studying the violin since he was four-years-old!

An old acquaintance (and professional actress with some pretty decent credits) opened an actors' studio this year. She does online teaching and coaching, plus has summer intensive training back in Louisiana.

Another old acquaintance has her kid in the young actors class.

Today she posted her kid's headshots on Facebook. And I felt...yucky looking at them.

It just seems...icky to promote your child. Head shots smack of marketing. Well, actually it is marketing. And that seems...distasteful to me.

So even though my son would love to go to those disgusting casting calls he hears about on the radio, I know in my heart that I could never let him do it.

Supporting your kid's passion is one thing. Marketing your kid is another.

He has years and years left to be a kid. And I'm doing my damn best to make him a well-rounded kid. He'll have plenty of time after college to pursue a career in acting.

If he still wants to.

Right?

What do you think? How seriously can you take the dreams of an eight-year-old?

Think about it while I go get the kids some head shots for their violin concert programs. Thanks.

Flushing It Out

2010-09-30T12:24:00.003-04:00

Well, whew! It's nice to know that yesterday's melancholy vent was a result of undiagnosed PMS.

Now that I'm down with the menses, I feel normal again. I've really got to see a professional about this PMS shit. It is getting ridiculous. Speaking of fears, if my PMS is this bad, can you imagine how bad menopause is going to be for me. And, well, of course for my family. But mostly for me!

You know, I have always thought that it's not really depression if you have something to really be sad about. It's not an anxiety disorder if you have real reason to be anxious.

I don't think much about what my husband is doing in Afghanistan. I didn't think much about what he was doing in Iraq. You can't think much about it and function on a daily basis. You have to put it aside. I'm good at that.

But that doesn't mean that my real knowledge of the situation isn't buried deep.

Before he deploys he tells us how he is going to be doing pretty much the same thing over there that he does here. Office work. And that he'll be just as safe. But when he gets home, little stories come out. Plus, when I stop my self-imposed moratorium on all war related media, I stumble upon other people's stories.

It is both much worse and much better over there than I think I imagine.

The first week he was gone I had a terrible cold. The second week, terrible PMS, apparently. Giving myself a break for not living up to my own high expectations has taken the pressure off. And writing out all of my very worst feelings yesterday helped to clear my mind too. (And so did your very sweet comments. You guys are the best! This is why I can't give up blogging.)

Today, the kids and I had a great morning. My son cruised through violin practice and my daughter actually got her hair clean in the shower (a real and true miracle, I'm telling you).

I blew my daughter's hair dry without tears. Hers or mine. I got my son into a pair of dress pants that fit him. And we got him into a tie without any strangling. It's school picture day.

My daughter is taking origami classes at school this month. As she got out of the car this morning, her box of finished origami projects went flying. And her brother went running all through the car pool lane to catch them and pick them up for her. All while she cried, "No buddy! Be careful! Buddy, come back!"

(She really does call him Buddy.)

The whole incident made me smile. They're good kids who love each other. Enough to risk getting hit by a car for the sake of a few precious bits of folded paper.

I haven't messed them up too bad.

And this afternoon I joined my daughter for lunch at school. It was chicken pot pie. Yum. I have always loved school food.

I talked to other moms and was, like, completely normal.

To top it off, tonight's violin classes are canceled due to flooding. Woo hoo.

As long as we don't float away here I feel like it is the start of a very good change. I'll flush out my bad feelings as I flush out my unused womb.

And then I'll worry about cleaning the house.

Confessions

2010-09-29T09:04:00.005-04:00

I'd love to tell you how well we've been doing for the last two weeks. I'd love to be one of those military wives who is all sunshine and strength.

But the truth is that I'm about 45% sunshine and strength. And about 55% frustration, sadness and weariness.

When it comes right down to it, we're fine. The kids are really fine. I'm pretty fine. My husband seems pretty much not fine.

I'm a little afraid though. I'm seeing some scary signs.

In these last two weeks since my husband left on his deployment, I've been seeing some tiny glimpses of just how bad things could get, if I let them.

I'm seeing the very first signs of depression. I've been sleeping during the day and not at night. I've been letting things go, like housework and volunteer work. I've gotten way behind and the scary thing to me is that I don't care. But I've been completing the tasks that really have to be done and taking care of the kids.

I haven't been wanting to leave the house. I'm not lonely. In fact, the scary thing is that I'm not lonely at all. I just don't want to be around people. What I think of as shyness has escalated. I've been turning down invitations. I haven't been returning phone calls, even to the bug guy. All because I don't want to talk to anyone.

My biggest fear has always been that I would turn out to be clinically depressed. Or agoraphobic. The agoraphobia is something that has worried me since I was a kid and my parents took in my cousins while my aunt was treated for agoraphobia.

I'm feeling a little down. I'm feeling like I need some alone time. I'm feeling typically shy. But I'm a little freaked at how easily I could let that slip into depression, agoraphobia and a social anxiety disorder.

So last Friday I decided to take the kids on a little surprise weekend trip and left the messy house and my big, enticing bed behind.

Last night I washed the dishes. I did laundry. This morning I took out the trash.

Those are little things, but they have helped me feel better. It's not hopeless. I can claw my way out of this rut.

Today I am going to go to the post office and mail my husband a package. He's cold there. He needs a warmer blanket and some sweat pants. It will be the first time in two weeks I've done something that wasn't just for the kids.

And then I need to decide. Am I better off wallowing for a bit, pampering myself and saying to hell with it all. Or should I push myself.

Right now, I just want a nap.

Layover

2010-09-15T16:19:00.003-04:00

Okay, I take that back about my man being officially in Afghanistan.

Apparently, he got bumped from a flight (Who knew the military bumped service members?) and is stuck in some Russian blah-blah-i-stan country for the week.

He's sharing a bunk bed with a Marine Master Sergeant.

Yes, the "top" and "bottom" jokes are endless. Let's not go there, eh?

Blue Star Flag Hung Again

2010-09-14T20:08:00.003-04:00

I've been wanting to write for a while.

You see, I saved this little outdated, naval-gazing thing called a blog for just this purpose. So that when my husband was deployed, and my alone hours stretched far and long, I'd have an outlet.

And he'd have one more way of keeping up with us and what is going on in our lives, from a different perspective. He says I'm much different on my blog. He gets more, or maybe a different part to the story than I tell him in e-mail or on the phone.

But, it's been so long since I've written, I forgot my user name and password. It took me a few days to remember. Hell, there was a time in my life when if you suggested I might forget my blog user name, I would have laughed at you. "Impossible," I would have said.

Now, well, blogs are so 2004.

So my husband is officially in Afghanistan.

It's fine.

Yesterday was totally fine. Today kind of sucked. We're tired. Ridiculously tired.

I've been waiting for this deployment for so long, now that it is finally here, I'm not sure how I feel. Except tired.

And I need to make a to-do list. For months I've been putting off doing anything that wasn't immediately necessary, telling myself, "I'll get to it when he leaves." But now that he's gone, I just want a rest.

So, the Blue Star flag is hung in our window once again. And we take on a day-by-day approach to life. And the days march by in relative peace and happiness.

2 down. 178 to go.

Hockey Hips Don't Lie

2010-08-18T15:17:00.005-04:00

Speaking of skating...

My kids are going to hockey camp this week. I had no idea that their coach was a former NHL player. I'm not sure how I missed that. But he is the type of gung ho, tough-but-fair coach I remember so fondly from my own sports camp days.

My son, poor guy, is as usual the worst one on the ice. I keep trying to remind him that he has come so very far and improves every single time he gets on the ice. He has a great attitude, but he just doesn't the have the natural talent of most of these kids.

But as his coach told him yesterday, "Hey, you could be at home playing video games. But you're here working hard and that makes you a winner in my book."

Today he was doing a drill where he was supposed to jump over his stick with his feet together. Um, it didn't go so well. You might be able to slide a piece of paper between his skate blades and the ice, but not a hockey stick.

So the coach was standing in front of him and trying to talk him through it. And he just kept jumping up an inch off the ice and straight back down. And finally the coach just had to laugh. It was quite funny to watch. My kid is all effort from the top of his head to the toes of his skates. But he looked like he was on a pogo stick that had lost its spring.

The girl, on the other hand, is one of the best out there. She's so funny. That child doesn't have a graceful bone on her body, but she does well in sports just by sheer desperation of will. Now that she's switched from soccer, where she was nowhere near fast enough to keep up, to hockey, where proper skating technique will take her far, she's building huge amounts of confidence.

Today at the end of practice they played a game where they tried to hip check each other out of the circle or onto the ice. My daughter won three out of four rounds. Much to the chagrin of a dozen boys.

What can I say? Her hips are bigger.

Skate On, Faster

2010-08-18T05:40:00.005-04:00

I thought it would be nice, but now I have to admit it...

...by the way, always be careful what you wish for...

...but the lead-up to this upcoming deployment has been waaaaaay tooooooo long.

I've spent the last, what, three months mentally preparing myself for my husband's deployment. And I'm tired. I'm beat! I have actually gotten to a point where I'm thinking, Just go already, would you!

I know I'm not the only one feeling that way.

We have so much going on these next couple of weeks, and all of it stressful, that my husband and I both just want August to be over.

He gets promoted on August 27 (our anniversary) and to celebrate, we have lots of family coming to stay. My parents, my nephews, his mother, his father.

Wait. What? What was that? His mother and his father, who have been divorced for 35 years and haven't said more than a word or two to each other in 35 years are both going to be staying at our house and attending the same ceremony, reception and party???

Seriously?

Truthfully, I'm glad for my husband that for once in his damned life his father is going to man up and do the freaking right thing. (I mean, seriously. His son is getting a big promotion in one of the most noble professions possible. You'd think the man would be a little proud.)

But it ain't going to be fun.

Even if everything goes as smooth as can be, the stress of preparing for all this family is wearing on us.

And my house looks and smells like crap.

I know my husband has been beyond stressed because the other day he said, "Hon, I love you to death, but I can't wait to leave."

How bad does your work stress have to be to consider a trip to a war-torn desert as a relief?

And I don't know how I let it happen, but our fall schedule is packed beyond belief. Violin lessons, violin rehearsals, orchestra rehearsals, swim conditioning training (I've got to trim my babies up!), theater program, and hockey.

And both of the kids are doing all of those things!

And, of course, my daughter has excelled at hockey and she may be playing on a "select" traveling team. It's not that I don't want her to do well, but sheesh. How much more can I do? We can't be at two places at once.

Things are going to have to cut back in the winter. It hasn't even started yet and I already know I can't keep up this pace. Not alone.

So for me, August has felt like the big countdown to "The Leaving" and I'm not sure how much more stress I can handle.

But I know a few hours of sleep would help.

Yes, I think I'll start there. I can sleep for an hour before I have to take the kids to hockey. Again. Wrestling two kids into a hundred pounds of extremely smelly hockey gear is always a nice way to start the day.

Skate on, August. Skate on!

Spoiled at Eleven

2010-07-14T23:34:00.002-04:00

Thanks to her grandparents, my daughter is in the running for Most Spoiled Child Ever.

My kid has a cell phone, an iPod, a digital camera, a Flip video camera, and a nook e-reader. She has a freaking e-reader! I don't even have an e-reader.

But she is the first grandchild in our families. And the only girl. And her grandparents spoil her rotten. Admittedly, Santa brought her the cell phone and iPod bought she doesn't even use those.

In addition to the Flip and nook, her grandparents also sent her two pairs of gold earrings, a $100 Barnes & Noble gift card (for e-books), and a grand.

Yup! A grand! A thousand dollars. Her savings account is now bigger than ours.

And what did we, her loving parents, get her for her birthday? A subscription to American Girl magazine, a reading lamp, and decorative turtles for her wall. Yes, turtles.

Okay, sure, I can go on and on about the stuff she has that I don't, but I have to admit that she is really very appreciative of everything she has. She is a very good present receiver.

Still, that kid is NOT getting a MacBook, and iPhone, or an iPad before me. And she's getting nothing but socks and underwear for Christmas. I swear.

Catching Up on Summer, Part 2

2010-07-13T13:06:00.003-04:00

Speaking of hockey, my husband still plays. I try to take my kids to as many of his games as I can. This past week he got in a shoving match with a real asshole on the other team. It's funny, because I saw it coming. One of the player's wives was sitting next to us with her two kids under 2 and she was bragging to her friends about how many penalty minutes her husband has racked up and how many fights he's been in.

Yes, this is recreational hockey we are talking about. On a men's league with five teams. Some of the teams don't even have uniforms. It is a "no checking" league. But HER man is all important because he trips people and acts like an asshole.

I don't know if he realizes it, but my husband's protective streak goes way beyond his family. So I knew once this guy started acting out, my husband would be the one to put him in his place. Within the first minute, the guy rode him into a corner, elbowed him in the head (which I'm not even sure of my husband realized) and checked him. So he stood up to him. He's not going to let some guy get rough with him and then the rest of his team.

They both got sent to the box.

My kids were not happy with the situation.

By the end of the game the guy had gotten tossed out. It takes a lot to get tossed out of a recreational hockey game. His wife was proud though, so I guess that's something.

When we were waiting for my husband to come out of the locker room, the guy's baby was crying. My son asked me, "I wonder what that baby is saying when he cries."

And I replied, "He's wailing, 'My parents are bad people!'"

What? It just slipped out, I swear. I didn't mean to say it and I wasn't considering my audience. Don't worry though. My son chastised me.

So, other than that great bit of parenting, I've also sent the kids to two weeks of day camp at school. Last week my daughter took photography, which she loved. This week she is taking a babysitting course, which I love. Last week my son had art camp with a member of the Guggenheim family. This week he is taking a class on candy making with his best bud. Guess which one he likes best.

Next weekend my husband is taking the kids camping. In a tent. I'll be home in the air conditioning.

But today is my daughter's birthday. She's turning eleven. She's creeping on up there.

She's such a good kid, even though most of the time she is such a trial to me. (She's the kind of trial that makes me roll my eyes and sigh and laugh, but still a trial.) I'm finally starting to understand her a bit though, and that is huge for us. I think she's finally at an age that I remember being myself. I was a much bigger dork at eleven than she is. I thank classical music, a good school and sweet friends for that.

She has three best friends that do everything together. They are quite a crew. But one of the girls is definitely sweeter and more mature than the rest and luckily, she's the one my daughter thinks of as her best friend. We're taking her out to dinner with us tonight.

Oh, I bought Justin Bieber concert tickets for my daughter's birthday, thinking I would earn the title Coolest Mom Ever. But nope. A little probing taught me that apparently she doesn't like Justin Bieber and thinks his music is completely annoying crap. I guess I should have probed before I purchased. Now I have to decide if I want to sell the six tickets, or still give them to her and make her friends happy.

Decisions. Decisions.

All in all I have to say that we are extremely lucky. We're very proud of our daughter. She's a very special person. She's strong enough to play hockey but sweet enough to hover over the little kid who falls to the ice and starts crying. Now she wants to be a violin teacher or a preschool teacher when she grows up. But she still dreams of training dolphins and having awesome animal adventures. She loves kids and animals. And her brother and her dad.

She's growing up, and mostly not into that annoying preteen stage that we've been dreading. She is an awesome mix of mature and naive that works well for her. She never whines. (But she cries.) She wants to wear lip gloss and perfume. (But she doesn't want to wash her hair.) She is a complex mix of kid and grown up, but she is sweet and empathetic above all.

She's a musician. She's a real artist. And she is everything that entails.

And I love her.

Catching Up on Summer, Part 1

2010-07-12T17:41:00.006-04:00

My son is at his friend's house. My husband is still not home from work. And my daughter is asleep on the sofa. I haven't felt this alone in months!

Every single summer I have these fantasies about enjoying an idilic summer full of beach days, art projects and popsicles. But the truth is I'm scared of the jelly fish at the beach, I suck at art projects, and popsicles make my teeth ache.

So I fill our summers with stuff. I never mean to. It just happens.

We started this summer with a trip to Washington D.C. for a summer violin institute. It's hard to explain what the institute is like. It is intense. It is one of those great experiences that teaches the kids that hard work has its own rewards. That fun doesn't have to be frivolous or silly. That enjoyment can come from immersing yourself in a challenge and exceeding your own expectations.

It's kind of like one intense week of college for young musicians. The kids work hard but have fun too in "play ins" and at the pool. I attend parent lectures while they have fun.

This particular institute is very competitive, but they're really not supposed to be that way. Imagine spending at entire week with the stage moms of 260 kids. My son wants to go back to the same institute next summer. My daughter wants to try another one. (Probably because she happened to fall into that place where she was at the top level of each of her classes and she didn't enjoy it. She even had orchestra with her baby brother. She's right on a cusp and that is no fun for a tween.)

Also this summer, we finally let our little princess talk us into letting her play ice hockey.

She's wanted to play for years but hockey is so expensive. It was also the one thing her brother did that she didn't do. It doesn't seem right that they both play violin, both are taking theater class, and both are joining the swim program at school. Don't they need their own things? We figured they could at lest have different sports.

Bu she kept asking to play hockey and she has to go with me to the rink for her brother's games and practices anyway, so it did kind of make sense to let her. A few grand later (and a pair of $350 ice skates!) and we have two hockey playing kids. They're even on the same team.

So much for having their own things.

I guess I have to remember that my kids are kind of weird in one key way. They really do enjoy each other's company. They really are very supportive of each other. It's like they totally missed out on the sibling rivalry gene. It's kind of weird. I hope it doesn't mess with their future development.

Even though she is way better than him, my son still loves to have his sister on his team. When she scored a goal last week, he was the one who announced it to us enthusiastically in the locker room after the game.

I don't know how long the ice hockey thing will last for a girl in a place where she has to play with 6 through 10 year olds this summer and then 11 through 18 year olds this fall, but we'll see.

Dragged Off By My Hair

2010-06-23T23:10:00.003-04:00

Recently, friends of ours traded in their Prius for a Lexus GS 460 SUV. Yeah, like this one.

The wife had been driving the Prius (her husband had been driving their Toyota Highlander Hybrid) so we were all teasing her about trading up to something fancy schmancy.

But she let us know that her husband would be driving the Lexus and she would be driving his old Highlander.

What the?

I'm sorry, call me old fashion, but I believe the woman should always drive the nicer, newer, safer, more luxurious car.

Okay, I realize I'm digging myself a serious hole here. I mean, I claim to be a feminist (but I'm a housewife...go figure) and I don't mean to be heterocentric (which spellcheck doesn't recognize as a real word), but come on!

What husband could handle watching his wife drive around in the worse car?

Do I just live under a rock? Is this a common thing?

Today I drove my husband's used Honda Civic to the grocery store. I came home feeling very spoiled and very grateful. And it wasn't just because I was missing my Mazda's (not Lexus) navigation system, leather seats, blind spot monitoring and snazzy paint job.

My husband has a way of...I don't know...

He has this way of taking possession of something, and then working it into the fucking ground. Now that I write that I realize that it goes way beyond cars.

I don't know why that is. Maybe it is partly just because he has an eh, it will be fine casual ass attitude about just about everything. Or maybe it is just that his nose doesn't work. (The smell of moldy coffee was so overwhelming in his Civic that I had to hold back the bile!) Or maybe it is just that he is destined to be hardworking, down to earth (and not fancy schmancy) his whole life.

I'm okay with that. As long as I get to have my luxurious things. And as long as I'm not one of the things he's taken possession of and worked into the fucking ground.

Call me spoiled (no really, go ahead and call me spoiled). Call me old fashion. But I love that my man can provide expensive violins, a nice car, a nice house, private school and then not resent driving around in a POS.

And I love even more that when I tell him I appreciate all those things he provides he tells me I deserve it. And when I point out that I don't have job and earn nothing and therefor really don't deserve it, he scoffs and tells me that I am doing the most important thing of all.

Hell, I had no idea just how caveman my tastes really ran until I wrote it all out.

I think I'll go put a bone in my ponytail.

Here Comes the Gayborhood

2010-06-17T23:14:00.002-04:00

When we first moved here to this little cul-de-sac in heaven we met all of our neighbors at a farewell party for our neighbors James and Rob who were moving to Palm Springs.

It was a very welcome culture shock for us. We had gay neighbors. Two sets of them actually. We had lesbian school teachers on one side and gay professionals across. A retired Asian couple, a retired Navy couple, and a German family all lived on our cul-de-sac.

We were a long, long way from the bayou.

But I was sad to see James and Rob move. They seemed like very good guys. But hell, they were moving to Palm Springs. You can't get much better than that.

The unmarried Navy couple who moved into James and Rob's beautiful house were a train wreck. The guy was so high ranking in the Navy that if I told you what job he had, the military among you might know who he was. And he was an asshole. An A class asshole.

Well, his concubine (also a Navy officer) smartened up and left the prick. And he proceeded to wreck that house. I mean, like, Hoarders wreck. She was smart enough to get him out of the house somehow and cleaned it up. But that house was never the same as when James and Rob lived there.

But, apparently, Palm Springs wasn't what it was all cracked up to be and James and Rob are coming back.

They're moving into the house that the German family has been renting out since they returned to their home country last year. The one right next to us that has been housing the most annoying child ever born for the last year.

Woo hoo!

We couldn't ask for better neighbors.

For two years our lesbian neighbors have been showing us up with their yard work. Now we're going to be sandwiched between two gay couples.

We don't stand a chance!

But professional landscaping is a price I'll pay to keep these great neighbors in our life.

Welcome to our gayborhood.

Waiting

2010-06-08T18:09:00.004-04:00

This may be my all time favorite photograph ever.
To me it tells such a story.
Waiting to play...
Preparing...
While his sister watches the little kids on stage, my son is in his own head thinking who knows what.
It is also poignant to me for what (or who) is not there.
It's funny. It's so him. So us.
We're always, always, waiting.

He's No Bobby Orr

2010-06-02T19:45:00.005-04:00

Do you know what I love about my son?

That he sucks at sports.

Well, okay, I'm not so much psyched that he sucks at sports. If he was good at sports he'd be all fit and...kind of normal. I sometimes wish I could go up to parents whose sons can ride bikes and throw balls like it is not a big deal and tell them to be more appreciative.

I'd love it if my kid was good at sports. Because I love sports. But he's not. He sucks.

But, I love that he still loves them.

Yes, my son who struggles at sports jumps at any chance to play anything. And he loves hockey. He absolutely loves it.

It takes a special kind of person to always be the worst on the team, yet practice harder and show more commitment than anyone else.

This weekend he was talking about which hockey team he'd play on as a teenager. He sees that he's improving, albeit slower than everyone else, and with a lot more hours of sweat. He sees a future for himself.

After Hockey Academy this weekend he told me, "I'm so proud of myself."

And that's why I love him. Because he sucks at sports and he happily sticks with them anyway.

He tells me, "You can't be good at everything, Mom. I'm good at violin. But that doesn't mean I'll stop playing hockey."

He's turning me into the most well-adjusted hockey mom ever.

Glee for the Ten-Year-Old Set

2010-05-27T18:45:00.003-04:00

Why have I never heard a elementary school chorus that was good? I mean seriously, kids! Why join chorus if you're just going to stand there awkwardly "singing" in a breathy little voice? I just don't get it.

Sing out, Louise! You're ten!

And seriously? What's up with these music teachers? Do they not have any ability to teach voice at all?

Okay, admittedly, this comes from a recover(ing) Catholic school girl who was forced to join Glee Club by the nuns at school. We were assigned to Glee. No choice about it. And we practiced daily. During math class. In fact our entire grade was forced to sing four part harmonies of How Great Thou Art and Amazing Grace at mass every week.

I may have hated Sr. Winifred's yelling and berating back then. But that women taught us to sing.

She would have been appalled at the concert I attended today.

It started with the Lower School string orchestra. My daughter finally, finally, finally sits and plays with "professional" posture. She finally looks like she knows what she's doing up there.

Their orchestra has such diverse levels of talent and skill, it must be tough for the director to pull it together. But it is still a little painful to watch half of those kids plod through these elementary arrangements when I hear them playing standard orchestral pieces every Monday night at our regional orchestra.

Then the fifth grade bell choir played. They were actually pretty good. I'm impressed that the music teacher could get every single kid in the grade to play in tempo.

Then the chorus sang.

Oh, dear lord.

I really do give those kids credit for getting up there and singing in front of their school mates. But it was hard to watch and listen to them. I felt bad for them.

After three songs of awkwardness, (including Beat It with choreography...seriously) the awkward got ramped up a thousand notches.

The music teacher announced that they would paying homage to their favorite show Glee with Journey's Don't Stop Believing.

Okay, wait. Stop. Seriously? You're telling me that this group of nine to eleven-year-olds are big fans of Glee.

Glee?

With the teenage pregnancy and sex story lines?

With the word "faggy" being thrown around?

With the fake pregnancy and baby selling?

With Sue Sylvester?

And you think that is appropriate?

Well, we were all treated to a Glee-ish version of the worst song ever written complete with magically appearing instrument accompaniment. (One thing I have to give to our new school....they always use lives bands. No karaoke tapes for them.)

And okay, I clapped as loud as anyone when they finished with jazz hands. I mean it takes a lot of guts to get up on stage and...do that.

But I can't help but wonder...(What? It's Sex and the City weekend, right?)

What has Glee done to our future generation of Glee clubbers? And how far is my ten-year-old from wearing a bubble-covered mini dress to school?

He's Not Normal, He's My Kid

2010-05-24T20:46:00.004-04:00

Last night I did something I haven't done in years. I read back over my own blog.

Man, I was in a fucked up place last year. I mean, I knew it, but I didn't really know it. I knew I was unhappy, but I thought I was dealing.

Actually, now that I say that, I guess I did deal. By writing it out. Because I am in a great place now, so I got through it all okay, and that's all that matters. Right?

Last year I was drowning in the word gifted. Gifted. Gifted. Gifted.

Blech. Blech. Blech.

As I was told, my kids were both struggling, because they were so gifted. Now, I haven't even heard the word gifted all year, and my kids are freaking happier than ever.

Here's something I haven't shared at all.

My kids have both done very well at school, in general. But they both have one subject in which they struggle. The teachers agree that it seems each kid has a bit of a blank spot in their education, probably because they have attended three different schools in three years.

But my son struggles so much with his "word attack skills" (that would be daily spelling to you and me) that they were a bit worried. I was a bit worried.

When a child does exceptionally well in most things, but struggles a lot in one thing it can signal a learning disability. Throw in his struggles in speech and his family history and there was reason for concern.

So without my having to ask, his school put together a committee to figure out what was going on with him. (Love them!) They reviewed his history. They interviewed him. They tested him. As it turns out, he scored in the 94th percentile in phonics. He has no learning disabilities. He just never learned good work attack skills because he went through three different systems and philosophies on teaching those skills these past three years.

As his teacher put it, "I was a little surprised he tested so high, but then again, he's in a class where pretty much every kid is in the 99th percentile, so..."

And that is the beauty of it all.

Now he's going to start with a tutor and we're going to nip the problem in the bud.

So, he went from being gifted and bored in school to having to get a tutor to keep up?

This is why their tuition is worth it. Believe me. I'd rather have a completely normal, hardworking kid than a gifted kid. We're all happier.

And today he finally, finally, finally graduated from speech therapy. (With the caveat that he should come back for a refresher/reevaluation if I think he needs it.) They are throwing him a party for being "our hardest worker."

The director said she'd buy me a drink. I think I deserve it.

Sometimes normal is the nicest word of all.

On Entering My 37th Year

2010-05-18T23:20:00.005-04:00

How did I spend my 37th birthday? I can sum it up like this: violin, piano, chores, violin, chores,violin. Basically it was like any other day.

But that's okay.

This year my husband is away at training to prepare for his deployment. My son had a violin lesson and my daughter's orchestra had a concert. So I spent my day practicing violin with the kids, driving the kids to violin, taking notes at violin lessons, and sitting through a violin concert.

But that's okay.

My kids are old enough to feel bad that nobody did anything special for my birthday. But they're too young to really make anything happen either. I kind of felt bad for them. But we were so busy today. They swear they're going to make Daddy take them shopping for me when he gets home. And they want to take me out to dinner this weekend.

And that's okay.

I suggested that the best birthday gift they could ever give me was to clean up the house. This is especially true since the parts of the house that are messy are their responsibility. It would be heaven for them to clean without my nagging. They didn't think that idea was "good enough."

That's too bad.

But my daughter gave me the best birthday gift ever! She had perfect posture during her concert. You have no idea what a big deal this is. My daughter plays the violin beautifully but always looks like she wants to fade into the woodwork. We've been working on it. Hard. Tonight she looked like a professional.

It was awesome.

I can't tell you how great they sounded either. They played Palladio (you'd know it if you heard it) and selections from West Side Story. They sounded as good as any professional orchestra I've ever heard. It makes me so happy to know that my kids' lives are being enriched in this special way.

That's awesome too.

As for traditional birthday stuff...I bought a cake. I thought it was too sweet but the kids loved it. I got flowers from my husband. And I got a card from my son's godparents. They ALWAYS send a card. I also got a super awesome new camera. My little point and shoot is great because I always have it in my purse, but it wasn't cutting it at the kids concerts, plays and sporting events. My husband bought me a Canon Rebel T1i and a couple of lenses.

It totally rocks.

My birthday is always a little bittersweet. I am always happy to turn another year older. Actually, I would say that I am proud to turn another year older. I am thirty-seven and my life is just what I want. My life is full of choice and hope and love. But my birthday often underscores to me how geographically far I am from so many of my friends and family. But today my inbox was full of birthday wishes from afar.

It was sweet.

Mostly, I took today to look around at these three people I get to share my life with. These three beautiful, happy, wonderful, talented, flawed and perfect family members of mine. And I don't see how anyone could reflect on those three sets of eyes, those three hearts and not feel like the luckiest person on Earth.

And that is my life.

Like Nails on a Chalk Board

2010-05-11T21:19:00.004-04:00

I have been having this recurring dream where I'm on stage and expected to play this really amazing violin solo.

Except, um, I don't play the violin.

But for some reason I'm pretty sure I can fake my way through it and no one will be the wiser.

Then I play the first note and I produce a sound somewhere between cats being murdered and a whale song. Except flat. Or maybe sharp. I don't know the difference.

And then I wake up. Or at least I force myself to stop dreaming that particular nightmare.

I believe this dream has some really important meaning. I'm just not sure what it is.

In other news, my piano teacher says I'm just about ready to start teaching children and beginners. Clearly, my piano teacher is insane. Or maybe delusional. I don't know the difference.

Best Behavior!

2010-05-08T22:21:00.002-04:00

Today I dropped my daughter off at her headmaster's house on campus.

Yes, of course, my kid befriended the headmaster's kid and she's having a birthday slumber party.

I always remind her to behave and be polite when she visits other people's houses, but this time...

This time, I have never meant it quite so much.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys

2010-05-07T12:57:00.003-04:00

Alternately titled: A Really Long Story about being a Private School Mom

For the last few weeks, I have been volunteering at the kids' school a lot. Frankly, it is part of my plan to get out and meet some new people and make some new friends before my husband deploys. But I also, ummm, do it for the kids. Yeah. That's it.

One of the things I've been doing is walking my son's class (that's 20 boys) from his classroom to the pool locker room, turning all of their clothes inside right (underwear and sweaty socks included) once they leave the locker room for the pool, and then offering to help tie shoes and the like when they get changed back into their school clothes.

My least favorite part of this process is walking the boys all the way across campus to the aquatic center.

Before we switched to this school, people kept warning us that we might not want to. "They march their kids in silent lines through the hallways like a military school," they said.

Little did they know that just made it sound even more appealing to us, the strictest, meanest parents in the whole wide world. This is how I look at it. Teaching the children to be respectful of the hard work going on all around them is a good thing. (Imagine that.)

But, then we actually went there and we learned that, yes, the kids are expected to walk quietly in line through the hallways, but they rarely do. Or certainly they don't always do that when accompanied by someone other than their classroom teachers.

So, as I lead the boys through the lower school, at least half the time, they are chastised by a staff member for being rowdy.

After enduring this torture--I MEAN--happily volunteering every day for two weeks, I was getting a little tired of this yesterday. And the boys were getting even more rambunctious. So as we passed a gymnasium, one of the P.E. teachers called out to them, "Gentlemen! Stop swinging your bags. Walk quietly!"

She used a no nonsense, but not yelling voice.

But as soon as we rounded the corner, the boys started hitting each other with their swim bags, yelling and rough housing again.

I picked the worst culprit, stopped, and focused my no nonsense voice on him, the voice that makes my own kids tear up and run to do what they are told. "Stop it. Now. You are making me look bad to your teachers. You are being very disrespectful. Stop it now."

He and the rest of the kids stared at me for half a second (except for my own son who probably thought oh, crap! they've done it now) and continued acting exactly the same way. As I turned back to deal with this, I found that they were laughing at me.

Oh, snap. Nope. Not cool. I didn't yell. I used my same no nonsense "coach's" voice. "And if you think it is funny, you can go sit with your teacher."

This was a pretty real threat because their teacher doesn't take any crap.

Unfortunately, their regular P.E. teacher just happened by as all this went down. He's my newest fan because of an unrelated incident at carpool, so he quickly stood up for me. He took over the boys, we all walked to the locker room and as the boys got changed, the P.E. teacher and the swim coach drilled me on what happened.

Ugh. I was a tattle tale. I wasn't sure what to say so I told them the truth. But I tried to downplay it. The last thing I wanted was for the boys to get in trouble and take it out on my son!

But the teachers were having none of that. The boys got a lecture. They lost pool time. They had to apologize to me.

It was all mortifying!

I was horribly embarrassed.

After, on my way past the refectory, I ran into their teacher.

"Did you have a tough time with them today?" she asked me. "We had a rough morning."

Now I really like this teacher. She loves my son. She is incredibly supportive. I wasn't sure what to say, but I know she was headed into the refectory to eat lunch with the swim coach, so I didn't want to say nothing!

So I told her. And she told me her story. They had lost their recess that morning for acting the exact same way. She was especially disappointed with them that morning because they were acting that way with parent volunteers in the classroom. So she was not happy.

You know, I went home and thought about it. Yes, I felt awkward and horrible, but there is a lesson here. Or a couple in fact.

People are always telling me how polite, well-behaved and wonderful my kids are. I mean, they really do. Like, people go on and on. And I've always taken it with a grain of salt. I'm thankful and flattered, but how much better behaved than your average kids could they really be?

One of them pouts. One of them is irresponsible. They both have crappy handwriting.

But they are polite. And, maybe 95% of kids are not. Politeness shocks people now-a-days. It is sad but true.

At my son's last parent teacher conference, his teacher actually said to me, "In the fifteen years I have been teaching, I have never met a more polite child." When I expressed doubt (although pleased and a little embarrassed) she went on to assure me that she meant it. That she doesn't make those kinds of comments ever. That he truly had one of the best characters she had ever encountered.

She said he is the kind of role model she wants for her own kids.

Well, hell.

What do you say to that? Thank you doesn't seem to suffice.

But enough bragging. (ahem!) What I learned is that my expectations for children's behavior are all out of whack. I am just not used to dealing with children who don't say, "Yes, ma'am" and "Thank you, ma'am."

But that doesn't keep me from being disappointed in these boys. I know their parents care about them. I know their parents want them to be respectful. I know their parents are paying a crap load of money to send their kids to a school where the Honor Code and Community Commitment really do come first.

I think parents just don't know how to teach their children anymore. (Not you parents, of course! I really do think my blog friends are all really great parents.) They have no guidelines. No parenting role models. Their expectations are all out of whack too. What is acceptable behavior today is different than what was acceptable behavior even thirty years ago.

Grandparents often live far away. Parenting books are a mess. We all have the kids and we love them so much and we want them to be happy, and very proper behavior usually takes a far back seat to all of our hopes and dreams for our kids.

So, I am an anomaly. Oh, don't get me wrong. I am a massive failure at a lot of parenting. Massive! You only have to look at my kids to know I failed in one of the most important parts of parenting. But I taught them to behave and to treat each other with love, by god. And in my value system, that is the most important thing.

But I am still embarrassed.

When I picked the kids up, I apologized to my son for possibly embarrassing him. He couldn't care a less. He doesn't get embarrassed. I also told them, "I know I don't tell you this enough, but I am very proud of you and your behavior. I know it isn't always easy and I really do appreciate how polite you are."

"Don't worry, Mom," my son said. "You have nineteen apologies."

I did. When my son opened up his homework folder there were nineteen neatly written letters of apology inside.

And I cried. And cried.

Now I'm too embarrassed to ever volunteer again.

eMatch dot Harmony

2010-05-05T23:02:00.002-04:00

My husband wants to know what would happen if he and I put up profiles on one of the many dating sites purporting to match people based on character. Would we be matched?

I kind of doubt it. On paper, we don't really match. But it works. Pretty damn well if I do say so myself. Although, I guess our values really do match pretty well.

Now, if they asked about sexual preferences, I think we'd match up pretty quickly. And if not, I'd want to meet the girl who does.

"Let's do it for Johnny, man. Do it for Johnny!"

2010-05-03T22:38:00.005-04:00

Part of my daughter's homework this week was to ask us about our favorite book back when we were her age. She is then supposed to read the book and we can all share in the literary goodness.

This poses more of a problem than you might think.

When I was in fifth grade, I read The Outsiders 19 times in a row. Then I read S. E. Hinton's other books (does anyone remember Rumble Fish, Tex, or That Was Then, This is Now?) Then I read Forever by Judy Bloom and learned all about sex. Which transitioned into me reading every historical romance I could get my hands on. And probably how I developed into the highly sexual creature I am today.

I do remember reading all of the Misty of Chincoteague books when I was in fourth grade (back in my innocence)(and I think it is totally cool that I live near the island now), but she read those back in second grade.

This really illustrates the vast difference in our educations. My daughter seeks out Newbery Award winning books. I read about sex and cute men, over and over and over again.

And my husband? Frankly, I don't think he had read a whole book back then.

In fact, when I couldn't think of a single appropriate answer for her, I gave her the best answer of all. "Ask Daddy."

His first guess was Lord of the Rings which I vetoed. I then suggested that he meant Lord of the Flies which I actually have sitting around somewhere. He interjected that maybe we were thinking of A Clockwork Orange and I practically choked in my rush to make sure she didn't write that down.

We settled on Lord of the Flies. But that didn't fly because they read that in class in a couple of years.

So it was back to the drawing board tonight.

Apparently we weren't the only parents who struggled because her teacher sent an e-mail out to us suggesting that we just pick one of the Newbery Award winners from the year we were 12-years-old and play along.

She even sent a link.

Do you remember what you loved to read in fifth grade? Is it indicative of the adult you've become?

I wonder, because if it is, my daughter is likely to become that crazy cat lady at the end of the block. And me and my romance novels won't be any help to her.

UPDATE: We ended up choosing Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. She read it in one night and loved it. Now all of her friends want to read it, but I have first dibs before it goes back to the school library.

I Smell Tuna Up in Here

2010-05-01T01:12:00.003-04:00

Last night I finally got around to watching Julie & Julia. That's right. I'm still living right on the edge, people!

I didn't really enjoy it. In fact, I found it quite boring. (Please, don't hate me.) But it did bring back both fond and pathetic memories of my early days of blogging.

I think that my writing here has become more sporadic, not because I don't have a lot to say, but because I don't feel the need to be at the center of something anymore. I don't feel the need to be witty or deep on a regular basis. I don't still enjoy shocking people by saying what no one expects me to say. These days I'm happy to just live, and if I'm still sometimes composing blog posts in my head, well, I really should be writing a damn book.

I did have fun in those early days of blogging though. And there's some pretty decent writing buried among the narcissism and angst.

And I still feel a deep need for connection with other people. But I'm trying to overcome my shyness in real life and make some real friends. I'm getting there. There are people I like.

But more than anything right now, I am dealing with my husband's upcoming deployment and all the uncertainty it brings. And I know for a fact that writing helps me deal with all of those feelings...one way or another.

Besides, he loves to read my blog while he's deployed. (If it's not blocked, that is.) I'd do it for that reason alone.

So I'll be back with some more writing here soon. And I'll be sure to start lots of sentences with conjunctions. (Don't you hate that?) And I'll be sure to throw in unnecessary parenthetical phrases as much as possible. (Don't you hate that too?)

But I won't be committing to cooking from a cookbook for 365 days in a row. Because that shit is nuts. And it doesn't make for good movies. Even if they star Amy Adams with a bad haircut.

Slowly...slowly...

2010-03-31T18:42:00.003-04:00

This morning I laughed so hard I couldn't even breathe. I was snorting and wheezing. All because my son did a slow motion fall from the backseat of my car onto the driveway.

You should have seen the look on his face. With one butt cheek balanced precariously on the car's seat, he lost his balance and couldn't save himself, but his grasping hands and backpack made his fall slow and almost graceful.

From my spot in the front seat, I was the only one who could see him, but I couldn't possibly save him. So I just watched. And he narrated.

"Whoa...

I'm falling...

slowly...

slowly..."

And then from his ass on the pavement, "My slowness saved me."

I don't know why I find this so hilarious. But even now I can't think about it without cracking up.

Sometimes it is the little damn things.

"Slowly...

slowly..."

Crack my ass up!

Hot Boy

2010-03-24T20:16:00.003-04:00

I think, every once in a while for parents it just hits you that your kids are growing up. And I love that. I love every second of it.

This weekend we went to a violin workshop. After the play in (an informal concert where anyone who can play the chosen song just gets up and plays) my daughter asked me if I had seen the boy on the end.

"He was so hot," she said.

Now there is a sentence I've never heard her utter before. She's liked boys before, but usually boys she's known for years and who are nice to her in some way. This was the first time she had signaled one out on looks alone.

But I was a bit worried. If I recalled correctly, the boy on the end was about 17 or 18, had a shaved head, goatee and tattoos. If her taste is swinging that way, I should probably put my husband in anger management classes now.

So at the last concert I asked her to point out this "hot" boy to me.

She pointed out the most angelic, baby-faced twelve-year-old ever to grace the Earth. He was actually very cute, almost pretty. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief!

You know, I was thinking about it. She's never gotten into actors or singers before. She scoffs at all things Jonas. But she has had what one might consider "celebrity crushes" on violinists she's seen perform live.

She's actually gotten to have master classes with a couple of those violinists. For her that would be like having a singing lesson with Justin B-whatever-his-name-is. Except these guys really can play the violin.

Ultimately, I'm glad she's comfortable enough with me to share her "hot" ratings. And I'm even more grateful she doesn't share my taste in men.

Careful What You Wish For

2010-03-18T11:52:00.003-04:00

I have a kinda-sorta secret and it is driving me nutso. I'm not good at keeping secrets. I'm just too damn honest. Besides, it is a kinda-sorta secret that my husband and I share and want to talk about sometimes. And occasionally we blurt.

In fact, my mom figured out our kinda-sorta secret by overhearing something completely innocuous that I said when she was two rooms away.

My husband is deploying again.

We've been expecting it because he is long overdue. We were just hoping that we wouldn't get just a couple of weeks notice again like we did when he went to Iraq.

So now the opposite is happening. He is going to that other desert place next September. That's the longest lead time we have ever had before a deployment. Or a move, or anything!

And it's actually made things harder, I swear.

He still has a bunch of training he needs to do this summer, so he'll be gone half of June, half of July and some of August. But he doesn't know exactly when he's leaving yet so he doesn't want to tell the kids.

Plus, three (to six) months is a long time for them to be stressed about Daddy leaving. It just feels like it is too early to tell them. So we have to be careful what we say.

I hate that. They're smart enough to figure out that something is up anyway. They've been through this four times before. They know the signs. It feels like it is against our value system to withhold information from them. We're walking a line here.

But also, my husband doesn't want to tell his mother yet. He just doesn't want to deal with her worry. I think it is...funny, or maybe weird that he is more worried about telling her than he was about telling me.

So, I can't really tell anyone. (Except the blog-o-sphere) I'm not really worried or stressed yet. But occasionally I do think Oh man! Soon I'll be doing this all alone again.

If it is even possible, I am now even more grateful for the way our life has settled this year. And that I turned down that symphony job. And that I am slowly but surely making some friends here.

Ah, sigh. My warrior is heading back to be a warrior again. Sixth grade and third grade will forever be remembered as years when Daddy was gone. And I'll start sleeping diagonally across our bed again before too long.

Unplugged Six Years In

2010-03-17T10:01:00.005-04:00

Given how little I have been writing lately, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I just don't have anything interesting going on. You'd be right, and you'd be forgiven.

I don't know. I've actually had plenty of things going on but I find myself drawing into myself more and more lately. I'm just not feeling the need to share.

I've been simplifying my life more and more. Which has been great. But it means that I talk to less and less people. And I'm okay with that. For now.

During the first week of March, my kids were on Spring Break. I'm not sure how it happened, but my father somehow used his impending blindness to guilt me into letting my parents take my kids for the week.

So my husband and I were going to maybe take a trip or spend the week at home remodeling the bathroom. But he ended up going TDY (and not inviting me along...pout) so I spent an entire week home alone doing absolutely nothing.

It was heaven.

Okay, actually I took a couple of days to Spring clean, but I spent the rest of the week reading and watching Bones and Spartacus, Blood and Sand.

I had intended to blog every day, since I was alone and all that, but I ended up barely going online at all.

I find myself being more and more resentful of technology and its ability to keep us absolutely connected and available all the damn time.

Sometimes I worry that I'm going to be one of those old widows who lives alone in a house filled with crap and never goes outside. I can envision it too easily. I'll never wash my hair and I'll re-read the same dozen books over and over and watch handsome men on television all day long.

I'm going to have to get a boyfriend in my old age.

And on that note, I just realized...today my blog turns six-years-old. If it was a kid it would be in Kindergarten. Holy heck!

Mighty Aphrodite

2010-02-24T19:48:00.003-05:00

My kids are both obsessed with Greek mythology right now. My daughter is obsessed with the Percy Jackson books and my son just completed a really in depth and creative unit of study on ancient Greece at school.

It's almost scary how much they know.

So they like to talk about the gods. A lot.

Last night in the car they were trying to pick what god was most like each family member. After debated for a while I decided to try and make them laugh.

"Well, I think I'm most like Aphrodite!" I announced.

I got three vastly different yet simultaneous reactions.

My husband rolled his eyes at me. (He doesn't think I'm funny.)

My daughter yelled out, "No way! You're not self conscience about your looks. You don't care about appearances at all!" (I'm kind of glad she noticed.)

And my son said with much relief, "That's right! Because you're so beautiful."

Guess which one of them gets clean laundry, extra helpings of dessert and help cleaning his room.

When I Grow Up

2010-02-09T14:15:00.003-05:00

If I had life to do all over again, I think I would become an orthodontist.

I had a consultation with my son's orthodontist this week and I found it absolutely fascinating. He's a very interesting guy anyway*, and I think he kind of likes me and the kids, so he took a long time to show me how they figure out all this ortho stuff. It was all angles and time lines and math and pretty pictures.

Fascinating.

Besides, what better job could there be than to help people smile and laugh and talk and eat without feeling pain or self-conscience?

(Okay, I'm sure there are more noble jobs, but they all sound hard.)

A friend of ours who was an ER doctor (who left the hospital to start a fat clinic, by the way) always tells his son, "Become an orthodontist, not a doctor. You'll make all of the money with half the work and stress."

That sounds good to me. Tuna Boy thinks it sounds good too. Now he's thinking he'll have something to fall back on if his Hollywood stardom should fall through.

*****

*Here are some other reasons I find the orthodontist "interesting":

1) He highly approves of my son's name. It is his own son's name and he likes to go on about what a great name it is. So, he has good taste.

2) He showed me charts of my child's perceived beauty. Apparently, his facial features are symmetrical and his profile is "classic" which equals a "very attractive" face. So, the orthodontist has quantified the superiority of our genes. That's always a good trait in a person.

3) I've never known an orthodontist who didn't own a yacht. Yachts are cool.

Planning Ahead

2010-02-03T09:48:00.004-05:00

Last night my husband asked me, "What would you like...(long pause)...for Valentine's Day?"

I thought he might be asking about what I wanted for my birthday at first. For that I had a prepared answer. But for Valentine's Day?

"I don't know. Actually, flowers or candy would be nice."

See. I'm easy.

Then I asked him, "What would you like?"

What am I? Stupid?

What a pointless question to ask a man. I know what he wants.

Sex.

A blow job.

More sex.

Sex with accouterments.

A little more sex.

And sleep.

But, that sounds like a lot of work to me.

I'm baking him brownies.

He likes brownies.

Preventing Infection

2010-02-01T13:24:00.003-05:00

You know when you have a small cut, or a bit of a scratch, like scraped knees or over-itched skin?

You know how it hurts, but not too bad? It's just an annoyance.

Until you decide that you should do the right thing, the smart thing, and clean that wound with soap?

And then it burns like a fucker?

That's what my life has been like this last month.

Most things are fine. Great even. But there have been, as there always are, a few small annoyances.

Until I tried to do the right thing, the smart thing, and deal with those annoyances in an adult, straight-forward manner.

And, man, has it burned.

It's interesting though, at least to me, how these burns have affected me. I am actually more grateful and thankful for my life than ever before.

I've had a hard time dealing with people lately. Because people are stupid, mean, or petty. And I'm not.

People bounce checks to me and I'm just glad that I don't have to worry about money like they do. People are rude and I'm just glad that I have a reputation of being polite. (In real life, anyway. I get all of my rudeness out here.) People are turning their children into little shit losers and I'm just glad that I'm not.

I've got love, security, loyalty, happiness and family. And I'm learning that most people don't. Who knew? But more, I'm learning that some people who have all of those things still somehow manage to rip the misery from the jaws of joy. They revel in nastiness.

I'm not going to let people infect me with their nastiness. Uh uh. Not me.

I'm getting some hurt-free Neosporin and a Band-aid, baby! I know where the good people are. And I'm sticking with them.

What I Learned in the Boys' Locker Room

2010-01-26T12:58:00.003-05:00

Somewhere along the line, I left behind the Teddy Bear Relay races and preschool craft parties. Now when I volunteer at school, I do things like walk the kids to the pool for swimming and supervise the locker room as they change in and out of their swimsuits.

Have I mentioned that my sons' class is all boys? Our school separates the boys and girls in class until the fifth grade. I believe it is a leftover tradition from the year when the original boys' academy merged with the girls' day school.

(Don't worry for Tuna Boy, though. Girls still have crushes on him.)

I have learned a great deal about boys volunteering in this way.

Mostly I've learned that I know nothing about boys.

Nothing.

Would you believe that a handful of them go commando every day? Did you know that their private parts (and whether or not someone has hit them in their private parts) are their favorite topics of discussion? Did you know that it is really, really important to be the first one out of the locker room and the first one in line? Did you know that "cutting" is the ultimate evil?

And did you know that just one kid can get the others all riled up singing "Pants on the Ground" and make the entire class late for lunch?

I didn't know any of this. My son never talks about his private parts, unless he's having a real issue. He'll never be first in line because he's too damn slow (and doesn't care anyway). And he hasn't the slightest clue what this whole "Pants on the Ground" thing is about.

He does go commando sometimes, though. But only because he's too lazy to find clean underwear and too fastidious to wear dirty underwear.

I guess I should count my blessings.

Flat is Best

2010-01-13T09:10:00.004-05:00

My son turned eight last month.

Eight.

I have a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old. I'm not quite sure how that happened. (Yet, 36 still sounds so young to me. I feel young, at least.)

I am finally starting to see my son as a boy, as opposed to a little boy. He is, very suddenly, a boy. I've sort of been waiting for it to happen--the change in my perception, I mean. I've been watching him grow taller and listening to his speech finally mature.

And I've been really hearing what he is saying. He is so damn funny. He's always had a sophisticated sense of humor for his age. Now I wonder if he really will become an actor or performer of some kind. He just has the best delivery.

His world has become very boy-centric lately. He's old enough now that his sports teams are made up of all boys. And his class at school is all boys.

There are still girls who like him though. He has always been popular with girls. I think it is because he's nice but not wimpy. And he makes them laugh. (Isn't that every girl's dream man?) His big, beautiful eyes might have something to do with it too. (After all, those same eyes helped me fall for his father.)

But he's thinking that he might not get married. Girls, in his opinion, are too much work. They like stuff like hair, clothes, Kids' Bop and Bumpits.

My son hates Bumpits with a passion. They represent all that is evil and wrong with the world. He implores his sister and I to never use Bumpits. I'm not sure he'd love me anymore if I did.

You know, he is the first person to tell me, his sister, grandmother or teachers that we look pretty. But he thinks "flat" hair is prettiest.

In fact, he finally decided, after much deliberation, that he might marry a girl, if she were nice and fun.

And didn't wear Bumpits.

This pleases me immensely. I think I might have a chance at having a daughter-in-law I can stand after all.

Sticking with the Bon Bons

2010-01-11T09:48:00.004-05:00

I got the job.

I turned them down.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

Or, well, you know...not so much beautiful as spoiled.

The whole experience really put things into perspective for me. My husband and I talked some big stuff out and made choices that are really the best for everyone. Including me.

As my husband put it, "We don't need the money so you should only do something you really want to do. As much as I complain about my job, and as much as it totally sucks sometimes, I love it. It is my calling. What's your calling, honey?"

I only have one simple answer to that.

Motherhood.

So, I'm happy and I feel like celebrating. I feel very liberated. Except, I really think I pissed off the girl who interviewed me and offered me the job. It was a very awkward conversation.

But it's done and over, and I remain free. Free to be at the kids' school for two meetings this week and every day for two weeks to help with swimming and for the Greek festival next week and the concert the week after that...

And you see where I'm going with this.

I have to say, I love my damn life. And my future as a Lady Who Lunches is secure. Anyone want to meet me for martinis and bon bons?

Interview with Generation Y

2010-01-07T11:36:00.004-05:00

Once I had an interview for a marketing internship position that didn't really exist. My professor got me in the door by insisting to the marketing director (a woman he barely knew) that I was the best marketing writer she'd ever see and she'd be crazy not to interview me.

No pressure though.

So I walked in, nervous but confident. She didn't even shake my hand. She looked up at me, narrowed her eyes, tossed a legal pad at me and said, "So I hear you can write. So write something." And left me alone.

Today was like that.

I'm not sure what I was expecting but it has been a long time since I had an interview. I didn't expect to be asked so many blind, "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" or, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" type questions.

The majority of interviews I've had, especially for jobs I actually got, mostly consisted of the interviewers trying to sell me on their organizations.

I think I did okay. But they surprised me at the end. They had a computer test for me to complete. I had to do a Word letter, an Excel spreadsheet, a Mail merge and a Word table all on a version of Office that probably came out back when I was working in the corporate world many moons ago. (Seriously. Was there an Office '95 version?)

It was much more of a corporate cubicle farm than I expected. And my potential boss is about six months pregnant. They want me to fit 20 hours a week between 9 and 5.

I'd be making about $300 a week which hardly seems worth it. But my biggest problem would be the summer schedule. The kids' school day camp would cost me about $500 a week. I'd be in the red.

I have a lot to think about. I guess if nothing else, this was a good chance to dress up and go speak to some adults (albeit adults much younger than me) in a professional manner. If I get the offer, at least I know I still have the ability to rock out a job interview.

And if not, well, then I'm off the damn hook.

I Told Myself So

2010-01-05T12:46:00.003-05:00

Guess who has a job interview on Thursday.

Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I don't have anything to wear!

I haven't had a boss or a dress code since the 90's!

I don't even know if I want to do this!

My husband thinks I'm nervous because I don't see that I'm perfect for the job and that they'd be lucky to have me. He mistakes me for someone without a huge ego.

My fear isn't that they won't like me. My fear is that they will! And then I'm really going to have to make a decision about what I want.

Scary.

Wrapping Up Another One

2009-12-31T23:16:00.004-05:00

I'm sitting here in my living room this New Year's Eve doing something I haven't done since college. I'm typing on my own computer!

Since we first got married and pooled our money to pay for a "refurbished" piece of crap desktop computer, I have been sharing. With my husband, with my kids, briefly with my parents. Having my own computer seems absolutely decedent and...liberating!

My husband bought me a very cute HP Mini for Christmas. So far, I am loving it. It is so light and has as much (actually more) power and memory than my husband's laptop. He keeps finding more and more ways to get me to write my book.

Speaking of writing, I have done little of it of late. This last month has been, well, just weird. I'm not even sure how to describe it. I have been very withdrawn from the world, but in a very nice way. I'm not depressed or sad or anything. I've just been in my own little world, taking care of my little family, reading and thinking. A lot.

2010 has the potential to be a very dynamic year for us. Or it could be business as usual. I'm just not sure.

I have been looking for a job. Job searching sucks, by the way. I'm not just looking for something to make money or fill time. I want a writing job or a part time job that actually sparks my interest. Frankly, I don't want life to change for my kids in the least. If I can't do a job while they're in school, I won't do it. and since I don't want to pour coffee or sell anything, it's been a challenge.

Three months later I've found exactly one prospect.

I've applied for a part time job in the development office of our local symphony. I think I would be a perfect fit for this job, but now it is up to the symphony folks to realize it too. I'm hoping that the fact that we've been subscribers and donors since we've moved here will help my case.

If I get this job, 2010 will be vastly different, especially with a deployment looming in May.

If I don't get it, I think I'm going to stop looking for a while. I certainly have plenty of things to do that I won't get paid for.

So I am looking forward to the new year with hope and excitement. It's funny, it seems like so many of my friends have hated 2009. even my horoscope mentioned how awful my last two years have been. (So does my husband's and my son's.) But I found 2009 to be, well, perfectly fine. 2009 is the year I got my kids settled in an awesome school It doesn't take much else to make me happy.

This year I resolve only to bring more love to my house on a daily basis, no matter what it takes or how much I have to bite my lip.

I hope you have a love-filled 2010 too.

Chemical Imbalance

2009-12-03T16:30:00.003-05:00

I am in an excessively bad mood today. Seriously, I am unreasonably angry and annoyed. At everything. And more to the point, everyone.

I know it is hormonal. And so I thought that the knowledge of the reason for my horrible mood would help me lessen its impact.

I even said it out loud to my empty house before I picked the kids up. "Knowing that your bad mood is just hormones, you can control it."

Bullshit.

Bullshit!

It doesn't help that most people are stupid or rude or mean or some combination of the three. It also doesn't help that the garage is such a freaking mess that I can't find what I need. It also doesn't help that my usually responsible child is trying to take shortcuts with his homework.

My husband should be very glad he's a bunch of states away today.

Not even the King-sized Snickers is helping. That's what I call a lost cause.

So, I've been thinking...

2009-12-01T21:25:00.003-05:00

There are three little words that when spoken by my darling husband strike fear into the very core of my being.

"I've been thinking..."

I can only reply in one simple way.

"Uh, oh."

So, he has come up with some variations on the theme like...

"I have an idea."

The other day he hit me with a "So, I've been thinking and I have an idea."

That deserves more than an "uh, oh". That deserves an "Oh, shit!"

And what was his idea?

*shaking my head*

You know, I love that man. I love that even though in the twenty years that he's known me, I have never been successful at anything even remotely career related, he still thinks that I can do anything.

Sure, I've managed to keep two kids alive and plump (and not disturbingly messed up) for a number of years. And even I'll admit that I was a very good student once upon a time. But when it comes to jobs or work, I suck.

But he still believes that I can do anything. Anything! Really. Like...anything.

His brilliant idea is that I should start my own business. He thinks I should start a marketing firm. He even did a bunch of research to get me started.

Never mind that my fifteen year old degree in marketing is next to worthless now. I mean, think about it. The Internet hadn't even really gotten off the ground back then. But I don't even want to run a marketing firm.

Generating clients and pitching marketing plans is the very last thing in the world I want to do right now. That would involve actually talking to strangers.

That husband of mine has had a lot of "uh, oh" ideas over the years. He's thought of everything from planting a garden to having a baby. But his ideas--the things that he thinks I can do, and the things that he thinks we can do together--they're one of the reasons why I love him.

Light Dawns on Marble Head

2009-11-21T10:41:00.004-05:00

My daughter wrote a letter to Santa with a wish list. It's all American Girl stuff, which she assures Santa is her favorite. She even starred the things she wants most.

Then she left her letter taped to my computer monitor.

Me thinks the child has finally figured something out.

At least I don't have to steal the letter from under her pillow anymore.

Cookies Fix Everything

2009-11-19T11:14:00.003-05:00

Note to self:

Hey, crazy! There are people out there with real problems. Now quit your bitchin' and go shave your legs.

And make a dentist appointment.

And eat a cookie.

All the best,

Me

Just call me Nelly!

2009-11-18T19:42:00.004-05:00

Like 99.9% of the people on the planet, I care too much about what others think of me.

I think that's why I'm so very shy. I know that first impressions are everything, and I dread having to make one at all. (We have talked about my fear of failure before, right?)

This fall I decided, shyness be damned, I was going to go out and do something I've been wanting to do for years. So I started taking piano lessons.

It's been going pretty well. I'm learning a great deal about myself, things I should have known a long, long time ago but that I've likely been ignoring in order to live with some illusion of coolness.

Lets' see. Like, for example, I'm a complete nut ball. I like to do things perfectly right from the beginning. I hate to not be the best at something. I think way too much. And...oh! My fingers like to stick out at odd angles like I'm forever clutching a tea cup before the queen.

Yesterday at my lesson, I was feeling strangely nervous. I don't know why. Possibly with our Nor'Easter, my husband being off work, the kids being off school, and my cleaning frenzy to prepare for our home concert, I didn't feel prepared for my lesson.

Now, my teacher is a very nice guy. He's primarily a jazz pianist, but he's the music director at his church too. (He inadvertently made me admit that I don't go to church last week. I wonder if he hates me now.)

He's never been anything but positive and constructive, yet I worry.

When I flub the music all up, I don't want him to think I'm not practicing. I don't want him to think that I'm wasting his time. I don't want him to think I don't respect him as a teacher.

My husband tells me I'm nuts. He says that I pay for the time, it's mine to do with as I please. Cynic that he is, he says that my teacher really only wants to get paid. As long as my check clears, he doesn't care about anything else.

But I think my teacher likes me. We laugh a lot. He's got me playing music I have no business playing after only two months.

But yesterday, as I flexed my fingers to get ready to play, I had to stop and look at him.

"I'm nervous today" I told him. "I don't know why."

"I can tell," he told me. "I'm the most laid back guy around! You don't need to be nervous. But let's warm up with some scales."

So then halfway through the lesson, when I finished up a song I thought I had done pretty well on, he remarked, "Yeah. It's hard to play when you're nervous."

What the...? Do I suck that bad?

He went on to tell me that the first time he met me he could tell that I was a really nervous person.

"I made a note to myself to be as calming and encouraging as I could," he told me.

Seriously? I'm a person that people have to treat with kid gloves? Seriously!

I made a great first impression. And now I won't believe anything positive that comes out of that man's mouth.

Here I was thinking that I'm all strong and courageous, and shy for sure, but gregarious and confident for all that.

Apparently I was wrong.

I feel like I should have just stayed home and never tried something new. I'm embarrassed. And while I sat before my teacher and felt my face flame with a hot blush, I was mortified.

This has affected me more than I like to admit. Probably because I'm such a weak, nervous Nelly.

I won't quit because we all know how bad I am at that, but I am starting to fantasize about the day the kids get out of school when I can tell him that I won't be able to take lessons over the summer because I don't have a sitter.

I've decided to start my own practice challenge. I have next week off because of Thanksgiving, so I am challenging myself to practice every single exercise and song, every day for two weeks. My plan is to be so comfortable with my music that I couldn't possibly be nervous.

There is nothing worse than people who reflect our true selves back at us. Illusions are so very comfortable. They don't make me nervous at all.

Energy to Nest

2009-11-17T12:47:00.005-05:00

Have you ever wanted to have sex really bad? I mean really bad. Bad enough that you kept thinking about it at inopportune times? But, you were so bone-deep weary and tired that you just couldn't make it happen?

Yeah. That's how I feel about blogging right now.

I've had tons of things to talk about and keep composing posts in my head, but I just haven't had the time or energy.

I have been in a major nesting mode lately. My husband took a few days off of work and we finally, finally, finally got this house decorated. Or at least the ground floor of it, anyway.

I can't tell you how happy this makes me!

It's about time. We got a new chandelier to replace the 1990's brass monstrosity that we've been pretending isn't actually hanging in our faces for a year and a half. We replaced kitchen cabinet knobs and door knobs. We hung pictures and curtains.

This all makes me unaccountably joyful!

I guess I just needed an impetus.

A few months ago I volunteered to host a home concert for our teacher's violin studio. I did it purposefully knowing that it would finally push me to make the house presentable. I guess it worked.

As it turned out, we had to host two back-to-back concerts because our teacher has so many students this year.

I was nervous about the whole thing, but it was a blast. I even had fun moving out our furniture to set up the stage and chairs. Oh, and my piano was extremely happy to be played by the professional accompanist we hired. She was awesome.

The design of our house does lend itself well to a concert setting. I have a feeling will be hosting a few more concerts in the years to come.

Now, there. I did it. I blogged something.

Now if I can just get myself to seduce my husband (when he gets home from D.C. this weekend) I'll really be getting somewhere.

In the meantime, enjoy some pictures.

Fill 'er Up!

2009-11-04T21:40:00.003-05:00

Last year I was bored and miserable.

I didn't have anything in my life that I found interesting. I'd lost my (poorly) paying writing job when I moved. I'd lost my zero paying volunteer job when I moved. And I lost the friends I spent the rest of my free time with when I moved.

And so I wished I hadn't moved.

But, hello! I live in a beautiful place with a way better quality of life.

So once I met my most important goal and got the kids accepted at their new school, I decided to take definitive steps to fill the rest of my life with interesting things.

I looked for a steady writing job. (Ha! What a joke. People expect you to give your writing away for the honor of being published.) When that didn't work out I considered going back to school and making a major career change.

And then I remembered how much I hate work.

So I signed up for piano lessons. I started a parent group. I volunteered at the new school. I volunteered for the soccer program.

And now I'm so overscheduled and busy it is ridiculous.

And I don't have the time to enjoy my beautiful new city. But I'm not bored anymore. And I'm not miserable.

Mission accomplished.

"Rest if you must, but just don't quit."

2009-11-03T11:44:00.005-05:00

I'm a bad quitter.

Once I start something, I hate, hate, hate to quit. I've always been that way.

Unfortunately, it means that I sometimes end up staying in situations that aren't good for me (like crappy jobs) just because I am too prideful to quit.

It also mean that I will sometimes take years to start something I'd really like to try. I'm afraid that if I don't like it or it doesn't work out, I'll be stuck.

Because god forbid a quit.

That goes for everything from piano lessons to writing a book to decorating my damn house!

What if it is too hard? What if I fail? In my fucked up brain, I won't be able to live with myself.

That's why it took me years to try NaNoWriMo. And why it is now almost impossible for me to admit that it was bad timing. That I bit off more than I could chew in an incredibly busy month.

For now I'm going to do what generations of parents have done.

I'm going to live vicariously through my kid. She's kept to her NaNoWriMo Youth Program word count goal. She's written with utter abandon. She's having fun.

Hey, my kids aren't ever going to be pro athletes. Believe me. I have to live my dreams though them somehow.

(At least my piano lessons are going okay.)

In Honor of The Demon Dog's Birthday

2009-10-31T08:55:00.000-04:00

Dear Buffy the Wonder Puppy,

if only you didn't defecate
or urinate
you would be so great

The End

And it Begins

2009-10-30T11:13:00.003-04:00

I came home from dropping the kids off at school Wednesday and found a piece of notebook paper on the floor. I figured my daughter the princess of disorganization had dropped a page of her homework.

Nope.

It was a MASH game.

My husband had no clue what I was talking about when I mentioned it to him. Please tell me that you all know what I'm talking about.

You know...

Mansion
Apartment
Shack
House

This kind of thing is extremely new for her. But she has a new best friend who has a sister who is in Middle School. So it begins.

I'm actually thinking...well...it's about time.

We had the kids' teacher conferences yesterday.

Side note: Both kids are doing really great at their new school. They are both a little behind in specific disciplines of language arts because of the crap schooling they got last year, but both of their teachers couldn't say enough good things about their personalities, work ethic, or manners and that's the most important thing. (Yeah!) Plus, both of their report cards were very good.

(Why does every fucking blog post devolve into me bragging about my kids? Remember when I blogged about other stuff? Yeah. Me either. Oooh! And remember when I hated parents who could do nothing but brag about their kids? Yeah. Me too.)

But anyway...

My daughter's teacher assures me that this is the best group of kids she's ever worked with. Not a Mean Girl in the bunch. And she sees my daughter in a way we never had. Outgoing. Gregarious. Theatrical (well okay, we see that one, but usually we're the only ones). Competitive.

She said, "You daughter is exactly the kind of student this school serves best."

Yeah, we know. Hence my desperate need to get her in the place.

She also said that she's never seen a new child adapt so quickly. And as happy as we are to be a part of this new school, they are just as happy to have her as a part of their community.

This is an incredible load off of my mind and soul.

Plus, the girl hasn't cried at school once this year. Not once! Last year I was looking for a good therapist to diagnose what I thought might be an anxiety disorder. And this year I never even have to look over the kid's homework. Or drill her about what went down at school. Or beg her (and yell at her) to please, for the love of god, tell me why she is crying AGAIN!

She's found a place where she's comfortable enough to play MASH and hang with a whole gaggle of nice girls who tell her they like her clothes and can't wait to see her in the play.

All is right with the world. Even if we do start having to worry about boys calling.

Sometimes "normal" is the most beautiful word of all.

If this is wrong, I don't want to be right.

2009-10-29T13:05:00.005-04:00

I feel really, really wrong and sick for checking out the president's ass.

But not wrong enough not to do it.

Keep on keeping on, Big B.

p.s. Are those shorts from Target?

p.p.s The picture is blatantly stolen from darling Nicky.

A Star Isn't Born

2009-10-28T19:04:00.001-04:00

My son very seriously wants to be a movie star when he grows up. He doesn't understand why people laugh every time he mentions it.

He was just telling us the other day that he wants to live in New York after college because he thinks there are lots of acting jobs there. My brilliant husband told him that if he wants to be a movie star he really needs to move to Hollywood. So, now that's what he wants.

Thus far our declarations that our kids can do whatever they like, as long as they go to college first have been completely accepted. But my son had a sudden realization today.

"Hey," he said out of the blue. "There are kid movie stars too. Why can't I be an actor now?"

Oh, man. Here it comes.

My daughter is enthusiastically involved in the Young People's Theater Program at school and she absolutely loves it. She was cast as "woman" in The Pied Piper. This cracks me up. She is actually playing the comic relief townsperson but she tells everyone she is playing "woman".

I'm pretty proud of her. Her teacher says that it takes someone special to play comedy. It takes timing, of course, but also a complete disregard for looking stupid.

She has no problem looking stupid.

But it is my son who has the highly developed sense of humor. So far it is the kind of sense of humor that teachers and adults enjoy and occasionally goes over other kids' heads. I'm very okay with that.

So I think I have him convinced. Wait until third grade when he can participate in the theater program at school. Wait until he graduates from speech therapy (for god's sake). And then we'll talk about acting professionally.

I don't have it in me to be a stage mother. (Has anyone read Hell is Other Parents?) I'm hoping he'll forget it by then and decide to be a doctor or something.

What? A mother can dream.

Too Bad, So Sad

2009-10-05T21:34:00.006-04:00

So, last May 38 kids tried out for the super fancy travel soccer program. 36 kids made it. My kid wasn't one of them.

Now, their goalkeeper broke her arm, and all of a sudden they want my kid.

Ha. We might say no just out of spite. *Harumph*

Well, hello there!

2009-10-02T10:44:00.004-04:00

Well, hello, October! Don't you look smashing.

The last couple of posts I wrote here on the ole' blog were so negative, I've been meaning to write something, just to move them down a bit.

I was down for a little bit. But I'm fine now. Well, I'm cranky and moody and sleepy and nuts, but, you know...fine.

I've decided I won't worry about the future and just live in the moment. It's how I made it through the last twenty years. Why change now?

In the meantime, I have been busier than I've been in years. I've been volunteering at the kids' new school. I've founded a parent group for violin moms and dads. I'm learning to play the piano. And I'm shuttling the kids around to a ridiculous number of activities.

Those damn kids keep getting better and better at their stuff, and so their stuff keeps getting more and more demanding.

This weekend I'm taking my daughter to the Shenandoah Valley for a fiddle camp and violin performance. I was supposed to take my son too, but I decided that he and daddy just needed a weekend to chill. They'll be chilling at the hockey rink being all manly man together.

Now I'm off to come up with an art project for the second grade boys to auction off at the school's big gala. Because I'm good at that. Yeah. *ahem*

Picture Day

2009-09-25T09:56:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was picture day at school.

Crappy

2009-09-24T10:46:00.002-04:00

Resentment is a crappy, crappy thing.

My husband has been home from a TDY less than a half hour and we already had a fight.

I felt like he was yelling for no good reason. But it all ended when I said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of everything. Just like I always do."

What a crappy thing to say.

He went upstairs without a word.

Sometimes I feel like a failure as a military wife.

This sucks.

Give Me Strength

2009-09-18T23:53:00.000-04:00

I drove my husband to work this morning so that I could pick him up after work and not leave his car stranded. He had his promotion party this afternoon.

So, as we were driving across the bridge this morning, my dear, dear husband said, (and I quote, for the record!) "I can't wait to retire."

It was his plan when we moved here to do whatever it takes to stay put and retire here. He says things like, "My family is more important than my career." And, "I love it here." Jesus, just last week he was wondering how everyone would react if he kissed the kids' new headmaster on the mouth. That's how much he loves the kids' new school. (We all do.)

But around lunchtime I got an e-mail from him saying, "We need to talk!"

When a military husband e-mails home those four words, it is never good.

But we never connected before his party. And by the time the kids and I got to his party he was slurring drunk. Slurring and happy drunk.

Once we got home and got the kids to bed, and had ice cream, he wanted to talk. He got a few e-mails today. They were asking him to come work deputy positions in North Florida. Which would hopefully lead to commanding positions, most likely in glorious places like Alabama, North Dakota or Louisiana. He also found out he is eligible to put in for a command position.

So he went from, "I can't wait to retire," this morning to "I want to be a commander," this afternoon.

Oh, oh oh! Never mind that just this morning I asked him why he didn't get selected for a certain something and he told me that he chose to spend his time with us before a deployment over studying for the required tests. He insisted it was a good choice that he had freely made.

We can't stay here if he really wants to push his career. If he pushes to be a commander, we'll move a lot. A lot.

He wants to know what I think.

I don't know what to tell him.

I want him to be happy. Faced with the reality of fulfilling the dream he's had since he was...oh...about 19, he can't pass it up. He's too proud to tell people he just wants to quietly play out the last few years of his career for his family's sake. The allure of finally having the chance to be in charge, run things his own way, and probably get promoted to colonel is just too irresistible to resist.

I don't want him to regret not going for it.

But I am extremely happy here. The kids are extremely happy here. We are incredibly lucky to have them accepted at one of the best schools in the country. And we are even luckier to be able to afford to send them there.

I don't want to move to a place where I'd have to put the kids in public or church school. Where I can't even find a violin teacher. Where we've lived before and know we don't love.

He asked me, "What would you do if you were me?"

I can't answer that.

I am a woman who gave up a very promising career to marry a military man. I've sacrificed a lot to give my children everything I thought they needed. I love being "just a housewife" and a stay-at-home-mom, but it has come at a personal price.

When it comes right down to it, at the very core of me is the instinct to sacrifice myself for the sake of those I love. That's not good or bad. It just is.

I can't ask him to make the same sacrifice of personal fulfillment that I would. He doesn't know what it is to give everything up for his family. And I don't know what it is to have to provide for that family.

Without him there would be no violin lessons, private school or stay-at-home mom, because we wouldn't be able to afford it.

When it comes right down to it, I just want him to be happy. And he just wants me to be happy. And for the first time, those two things just can't line up.

So he joked, "Maybe I'll be divorced by then and I can just go on my own."

And I told him, "We shouldn't talk about this while you're drunk."

But he insisted he was sober. And he went on to suggest that maybe we could just live apart for a few years.

I maintain that no school can trump having a loving father in your life. He maintains that a great education is more important than anything he can give them.

I just don't know. Two years ago when he was in Iraq he was ready to get out of the service. I think is his excitement over advancement he has forgotten just how miserable he was. We'd be moving to the armpit of America again only to be separated from him for six months out of every eighteen.

I have no answers for him. I don't know what to say. He knew this decision was coming, I just don't think he thought enough about how he was going to feel about it.

I've always taken the same stand when these kinds of decision come up. I tell him, "Do what you need to do. We'll be fine. I'll make it work."

It's the stoic answer. The strong one.

I'm not sure how much strength I have left.

Pay Raise, Baby!

2009-09-09T23:19:00.002-04:00

Today my husband found out that he's getting promoted to Lt Col.

Woot! Woot!

It's a pay raise, baby!

I'm really proud of him. But it is hard for me to imagine anyone referring to him as Colonel. We're not old enough for that! Wasn't it just last week that we were pegging our jeans and bagging groceries for four bucks an hour?

He brought me home roses and congratulated me on "our" promotion. How sweet is that?

Doesn't seem very Lt Col-like to me.

The Mouthes of Babes

2009-09-03T08:28:00.004-04:00

A friend and I were expounding on and on about money and the haves vs. the have-nots when I spouted off, "Money makes the world go 'round!"

Overhearing this, my son felt the need to object. "Money doesn't make the world go 'round."

"What does make the world go 'round, buddy?" I asked him.

And he answered simply and matter-of-factly, "Love."

My friend and I then fell into the black hole of his sweetness.

No Yarn in This House

2009-09-02T09:21:00.000-04:00

"You homeschool, right?"

A new friend asked me this quite casually the other day.

Assuming that she was asking because she is a homeschooling proponent, I curbed my instinct to cry out, "Oh, dear GOD NO!!!"

I've always known a lot of homeschooling families because so many of them are involved with Suzuki violin. I don't think it is fair to categorize them all in one fell swoop (although I'm probably guilty of doing exactly that). I've known a couple of really great homeschooled kids. And I've known a couple of nutso ones. But like any group of people, most of them have at least something in common, or they wouldn't be a group.

Homeschool kids all have one thing in common. Homeschool moms.

I am so not a homeschool mom.

And as I talked to my new friend about her plan to try homeschooling her five-year-old, I pretty much said just that.

"I think there are probably a lot of great things about homeschooling, but I know that I couldn't handle it."

There is no way in hell I could handle it.

I think homeschool moms tend to be more "supermoms" than most others. And that is neither positive or negative. It just is.

I am so not a supermom.

The list of supermom things that I don't do could line the dog's pee place for a year!

I don't knit.
I don't quilt.
I don't cook.
I certainly don't cook organic or vegetarian.
I don't craft.
I don't like kids.
I don't like pets.
I don't laugh at children's antics.
I don't think my kids hung the moon.
I don't moon over my kids.
I don't go to swap meets.
I don't collect anything.
I don't have patience.
I don't comparison shop.
I don't even clean.
I don't do any of the things people think of when they think of good moms.

Seriously.

Plus, I do do a lot of things that a supermom would never do. (Like write "do do"!)

I swear (but not in front of the kids).
I write about sex and masturbation for the world to see.
I yell.
I use sarcasm. With my kids.
Mostly...I yell.

About the only supermom-type thing that I do is insist that my kids use good manners.

That's it.

So, I have to wonder, why would my new friend mistake me for a homeschool mom?

And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I do have to admit though, that I often wish I could be more supermom. Oh, not the vegan, crafting, moony kind. But the patient kind. The kind who does "projects" and doesn't send the kids out to play so she can watch an old CSI:NY on TiVo.

I need to show my kids more love. Without getting all moony about it. Because that is just not my style.

Old Men and Their Toys

2009-09-01T13:28:00.004-04:00

In all of the fervor of Back to School (my most favorite holiday of the year!) I forgot to mention my dear husband's birthday.

The old man turned 37 yesterday. Damn, how did I end up married to someone so old?

Buying gifts for my husband is one of the fucking hardest things in the world to do. Why is it so hard to buy gifts for men? Oh, that's right. Because they're all incommunicative bastards who won't answer a simple question like, "What would you like for your birthday?"

As he put it, "It is more fun and meaningful to see what you come up with on your own."

This makes me feel like he’s just setting me up to fail.

Considering that what he really wants is new rims for his car, I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell.

So I did what I always do when I have no idea what to buy him. I throw a bunch of shit on the wall and see what sticks. If I buy him six or seven gifts, at least one of them will be acceptable, right?

For our anniversary I got him a small wine fridge and a pretty decent bottle of wine. For his birthday I got him Swedish Fish, two different clip boards (for coaching), two books on goalkeeping, a humor book on coaching soccer (yes, I know he's not a big reader but he's almost finished with the second Harry Potter book and I want him to keep at it), brownies, a barbecue set with LED lights, and at the very last minute, Guitar Hero.

Guess which gift was a hit.

The good news is that while he struggles at Guitar Hero I get a sudden compulsion to practice the piano.

The next gift I'm buying him is a set of headphones.

Honestly, I am ecstatic to have this man in my life and (bonus!) home for his birthday. Happy birthday, Tuna Man! I love you.