Mid-CenturyModernMoms

Cheerleading -- just another word for drama

There is always drama in cheer.

Let me say that again.

THERE IS ALWAYS DRAMA IN CHEER.

Oh, sorry. Was I yelling?

This year's drama is starting early. After all, the 2009-10 squad started practicing in earnest just weeks ago.

Last week, the teams were set and announced. There will be no frosh-soph team this year; only junior varsity and varsity.

My girl? Varsity all the way. No problem.

However ... with no frosh-soph team, this means that all freshmen -- even those who have never cheered before (it does happen) -- are on JV.

Along with everyone else who didn't make varsity.

Including a couple of juniors.

Are you seeing the glimmer of trauma drama that has erupted in cheerland?

One junior in particular who feel that it is U.N.F.A.I.R. to have to be on JV, instead of on varsity with all her friends.

Now, to be absolutely fair, it is a requirement of all varsity members to have a consistent back handspring.

The specific young lady in question? Does not.

At all.

After two years of gymnastics with the team.

And she is upset with a capital UP. In fact, she AND HER MOTHER demanded a meeting with the coach to plead (argue?) her case and get moved to varsity. (It didn't work, by the way.)

I was horrified by this girl's sense of entitlement but, in my usual calm, collected, let's-make-this-a-life-lesson sort of way, decided to probe the Roo-girl's opinions about these events.

"She needs to suck it up," Roo sneered. "And then get a freakin' back handspring."

Love that kid.

Pansy Girl

One of the classic signs of real poverty is when you run out of something, you're out until you get your check at the beginning of the month. In our case, we were out of everything because poverty is a constant, we had to replace everything in our fridge and freezer that got ruined when the power was out, and that happened to come at the same time as being out of toilet paper, garbage bags, paper towels, and all cleaning supplies.

This means that we couldn't clean out the fridge until my check came, which it did on Friday. Being the red letter day we hit the market and filled up two shopping carts with everything we needed. Not only did it cost WAY more than we had to spend, it also was questionable whether it would fit in the Toymoter. But with some deft packing and a lot of swearing, we got it all in both the trunk and the entire back seat.

Once we got home, my son unloaded the car and then declared that he was done, having been the shopper and hauler. It was his sister's turn to help clean the fridge and freezer and then put all the food away. Only one problem. She wasn't home. So I called her and told her to get her butt home asap, which she did, and then I gave her the rundown on what needed doing,

Perhaps I'vc mentioned before that my precious little snowflake is a tad bit squeamish, no? Well, she is one freaking pansy, and she lets you know with freaky freak-out dancing and screaming and crying and she's gonna vomit no no no she can't handle it drama. Bette Davis couldn't beat this kid for the freak out act. Really.

So we fill up three huge bags, double bagged for your protection, of fridge and freezer crapola, and it's time to clean the machine. Here is where I admit that I do a thorough cleaning only a couple of times a year, at Passover and the High Holidays. Because it's hard, and because it's the worst damn job in the kitchen, in my opinion. It takes FOREVER to take out every drawer and bin and wash them, and then there are always the boy's leftovers that have glued themselves to containers, ewwww.

I pulled out the junk and then had my daughter wash the shelves and bins. The complaining! The angst! The back breaking labor she was unused to, why it was just wrong, she says, wrong!

And then she pulled out the right vegetable bin and went absolutely bonkers. Stark raving mad. A moment for reality television.

"THERE IS A SNAKE IN THE BOTTOM OF THE REFRIGERATOR" she screamed. And the freak out dancing commenced.

I toddle over from the freezer bags I'm packing with stuff for the freezer, and look. She's in tears and bending over swearing she's going to vomit. I peer into the fridge and there is a small, but impressive dessicated carrot perched on the very bottom of the fridge. Indeed, it looks like a lizard of sorts, all brown and shriveled. More like a giant gnute.

I tell her it's a carrot, but no... I'm a moron if I don't see it's a snake. Wah wah wah, much tearing at the flesh and renting the clothing ensues.

Seeing that there is no way she's going near that fridge until I clean it, I sit in my wheelchair and roll over with a long tongs in my hands and remove the carrot.

Still freaking out, she insists that I put it in a special plastic bag of it's own and then in the double plastic garbage bags. There goes our carbon footprint for the month!

I get the sponge and scrubber and try to erase any sign of the errant carrot, but she's still threating to vomit in the hallway.

Being the bitch I am, I make her go back to work cleaning the rest of the fridge, but she refuses to clean out under the other vegetable drawer. No way, no how.

I'll let her brother do it tomorrow. After all, I did the shopping, put the food away, cleaned out the fridge of the stuff that needed to be tossed, and cleaned the freezer. He can wash under one drawer, right?

Might I just mention that carrot was gross?

I can't hear you!

Have you noticed that however old you are, your hearing is better than your kid's hearing. I'm not just talking about selective hearing, either. I'm talking about watching the TV hearing, and listening to the music in the car hearing. For example, when I go to the movies, I cram cotton in my ears because movies are just too loud for me. But when my kids go to the movies, the louder the better.

I notice it with TV more than anything. Our tv has a volume control that uses numbers to indicate how loud the volume is. When I'm alone, the volume is a nice low 9 to 11 and I can hear everything just fine. But they can't hear anything at that low volume. They watch TV at 19-25, depending on the show. It's like living with an elderly relative that blares the PBS news, only backwards.

I blame Ipods. And cell phones. And the fact that they're morons. Yeah, that's it.

My soni s trying desperately to get out of being grounded. He was smoking in his bedroom and I caught him and grounded him. Now I'm SO MEAN and he's QUIT SMOKING and I'm SO MEAN because I won't let him have friends over to smoke and be all Emo. He whinges and whines and WHY's me to death, but I stand strong. I even got him to apply for a J O B today. I know. I'm feeling the power!

Three days later, he's still arguing on being grounded, Same exact argument, but I won't engage. I have never seen such a tenacious whiner. Too bad his mean mommy is even more stubborn than he is, 

Nina sent me this link. Go read the article, you bad mommies!

Happy Canada Day! (Phew...)

Wednesday was Canada Day here in the North, when we celebrate the anniversary of Confederation, the founding of our country. (A mere one hundred forty-two years ago. We are a baby country.) Like many urban Canadians, we headed to the woods... and the mosquitoes and the blackflies and the horseflies and the deerflies. Sounds like heaven, no?

In fact, it was. The insect life was not too outrageous, the lake was beautiful, the surroundings idyllic, the peace undisturbed. Lovely. Stephen and I took "relaxed" to a whole new level, and the dog? She was in Fuzzy Canine Paradise.

And the teens, you ask? Fifteen-year-old Rebekah and sixteen-year-old Aisling? (Isn't it pretty? An Irish name, pronounced 'Ash-LEEN'.)

Stephen and I several long discussions about this. Would we turn down the invitation? Would one of us stay home? Would we just cheerfully pull rank -- "Guess what, girls? We're going to a cottage for Canada Day!!" Or would we give them a choice? Their decision wasn't a totally foregone conclusion, at least for Rebekah, who quite likes cottages, but, if we gave them the choice, we had to be ready to allow them to stay home. Alone. 

Though we've left Rebekah and her siblings alone for that long before (it would be about 36 hours), Aisling is new to the family mix. She's only been with our family a little over a week. Is she trustworthy?

The only way we would find that out, we decided, was to try. It was only 36 hours, we were less than an hour away, and though there's no cell phone reception, there is a phone. We would alert certain neighbours, to stand by as backup for emergencies, and give the girl a chance to prove herself. For good or ill.

We presented the possibilities, and let the girls talk about it. Faced with a choice between this

this

this

and this...

OR...

this

this (click on this one to get lovely large image; quite something!)

and this...

They opted for the latter. We weren't really surprised.

"If it just wasn't Canada Day, mum!" Rebekah said. With sincerity. Aisling, for her part, was fervently relieved not to have to leave the city. Turns out cottages are not her thing, even plumbing-and-electricity equipped cottages less than an hour out of town. Cottages have all that... nature... everywhere. And (gasp!!) no cell phone reception. What is life without texting?

Not.Worth.Living.

So. The girls would be staying alone in the house. They laid out their plans for the day. We laid down certain ground rules.

- You may not invite anyone into the house.
- You must call when you're in each night.
- If your plans change, you must call.
- I will be calling your cell phones at intervals to check in. You must pick up.

And then we left. And you know what? I didn't even worry.

Much.

Thursday morning, 7:15, we arrive back, dump our stuff in the living room. The place is untidy, but not outrageously so. It's been lived in by two adolescent girls. It has not been partied in by multitudes.

Phew.

In her basement bedroom...

Aisling is sleeping.

Phew.

Upstairs, In Rebekah's bedroom... 

The bed is empty.

Empty?

Rebekah?

Not here?!?!!?

Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep breath. THAT I wasn't expecting. Aisling, now? Though she's been Rebekah's friend for a while, and have formed a good opinion of the girl, that is not the same thing as living under the same roof. For that, she's still mostly an unknown commodity. I don't know what her home patterns were like... well, I know that "patterns" is the wrong word to use. It's abundantly clear that patterns and stability were not features of her home, poor kid. So. Though we like her enough to take her in, we do have eight teens between us and over a decade of teen-parenting experience under our belts. We're not naive.

I wasn't 100% sure whether I'd see Aisling's snoozing form in her bed. But Rebekah? I was sure she'd be there! SURE. I'm not panicking yet, but obviously we have to find the girl, and fast. I only hope she hears her cell to pick it up.

She picks up on the first ring.

Phew.

Obviously woken by the phone. (GOOD. Little cretin, scaring me like that. She deserves a rude awakening. But I keep my voice calm. Mostly.)

"Where ARE you?"

"Mutter, murmle, gftuszysdx."

"Pardon?"

"I'm in your bed."

My bed? Seems my mattress is more comfortable than hers.
My bed. She's sleeping in my bed.

Phew.
Phew.
PHEEEEEEWWWWWWW...

I think my sigh of relief wafted the curtains in the neighbour's house across the street.

So, there you go. Stephen and I left the girls alone for 36 hours... and I've only gained one-half of one grey hair as a result.

Phew.

authentic learning & summer fun

It's all part of being the sandwich generation: we helped my in-laws move from their home of 40-some years to a condo. Packrats that they are (bless their hearts), they couldn't manage to downsize quite as much as they needed. Result? A condo basement full of Random Indescribable Stuff. Good son and daughter-in-law that we are (patting selves on back), we offered to host a rummage sale to sell off as much of their crap, er, collection as possible. We enlisted La Petite and Amigo, of course, and away we went.

We put Amigo in charge of handling money and making change. If you're a frequent reader, you might remember that Amigo, age 17, is blind. U.S. currency isn't the greatest for vision impaired folk with its identically sized and shaped bills, so blind citizens of our fair country learn to fold it in various ways to keep track of their cash. Amigo knows how to do this, but resists because he sees no purpose in it. "Mom, will you put this in my wallet?" "I'll bring you your wallet. You fold it and put it away." "Mom, why do I have to do all the work?" Imagine the last phrase in the whiny tone that only a teen can manage. If you're wondering, I hand him the wallet to handle on his own and then I walk away. Every. Stinking. Time.

At the sale, however, I fitted him with the fanny pack (we don't use a cash box), showed him which pocket was for $5, which for $1, and which for change and for bigger bills. Without a word, he folded the fives, the tens, and the rare twenties exactly the way he's been taught, and made change each time we asked. We watched over him a few times, and then went on serving customers because, duh!, he was fine on his own. All we had to do was add up the purchase total, tell him what kind of bills they were using to pay, and he handled the rest.

In between, he read news articles about Taylor Swift, his favorite country star, who'd performed in the area two nights earlier.

Darn kid. He is capable of taking care of himself; he just digs in his heels and gets snippy at home with his parents. Growl. But behind his back, I'm smiling proudly. The kid might make it on his own after all.

Trudging through words, finding beauty.

Way back when Em was 11, she was given a book called 'Rain May and Captain Daniel' by Catherine Bateson, to read at school, which I also read and enjoyed.  5 years later I only remember snippets of the story.  It was very real book which told the story of a 12 year old girl coping with her parents' divorce.  Living with her mother, one of the ways she shared her deepest thoughts, was through the restricted language of fridge poetry.  I hadn't heard of fridge poetry before and the concept stayed with me as something I'd like to have hanging around on my fridge.

Apparently fridge poetry is passe now (though I don't know anyone who actually owned it), however on our trip to Sydney back in April, we went to a fantastic games store that had every game you could possibly want and then some.  We left with a new Scrabble set and Magnetic  Poetry. (Our house is party central - not!)

Apart from giving my fridge a new look, as I had to remove the collection of school notes and what nots that accumulate under fridge magnets, fridge poetry has been the source of much laughter and discussion.  Here's a selection of what we've written:

Frantic storm gone
Music floods the garden

Black does not leave with the rain

There be useless drunks on me ship

Bitter winter love crushes the delicate petal
Shadow light whispers a vision of Spring

Worship my smelly head

Trudge through the forest of language
Produce beauty

Lick your smelly head.


Can you guess which lines were written by 14 year old Davey?  It's really not hard to pick huh?  Davey really enjoys our fridge poetry and was horrified when he came home one day to find I'd wiped the poetry section of the fridge clean and placed all the words back in the word pool lower down on the fridge.  Once I told him I'd written all the craziness down on paper to keep, he was OK with it, and could see that we needed to start again, as the lines had all begun to stagnate and nothing new was appearing.

16 & 17 year old boys who visit our house make a bee line for the fridge now to share little gems like:

Smooth knives chant death over sausage

Water sleeping delicious dreams

TVs swim like sweat in black puppy drool

Girlfriend scream honey blood

The boys really work at these little lines.  Some of them profess to hate English and reading novels, yet they'll spend a lot of time pondering how to put the odd collection of words that are provided, into some sort of recognisable structure.

I like how our fridge poetry is a mixture of seriousness, silliness, beauty, gaucheness, poetry and mangled words.  It's life with teens encapsulated on my fridge door!

Slave Labor

Abe is going to be a slave this summer.

Slaves cannot leave an employer or a territory without explicit permission.  This is a true statement that applies to this summer.

Forced labor is defined as "all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily".  But this one ISN'T totally true because there was no menace of penalty, even though it certainly wasn't his idea- but he is game for it.

So what am I talking about???

Abe is going to be an unpaid intern at Brookfield Engineering.  This company is in the same town as his boarding school, and his therapist was working hard with this company in order to get them to offer internships to one or two students.  Brookfield normally only gives internships to college students, so this is really going out on a limb for them.  The fact that both of these boys are already 18 allowed their human resources department to okay it.

And the fact that mom uses Brookfield equipment in her lab at work doesn't hurt things either!  The therapist heavily dropped that fact while he was working at convincing the company.

It turns out that Brookfield already has some ties (in some unspecified way) to other people with Aspergers, so the fact of these kids' diagnosis actually didn't hurt the process!

So it's not definite yet.  But Abe may work 20 hours each week there.  The company usually pays its interns, so they are having some trouble working out that these kids CAN'T get paid.  It certainly is payment enough that they are learning to hold down a job, as well as a brownie point for their resumes.  But they may also get some payment in gift cards.  Abe would vote for one from Barnes & Noble.

One thing that Abe is going to have to get used to is dressing nicely- it's all business casual.  So I need to go get him some khakis or Dockers, some shoes that aren't sneakers (that is going to be hard on him) and some more polo shirts.  And he's going to have to make sure that the clothes aren't totally wrinkled.

Oh, mom is just kvelling over the idea.