Mid-CenturyModernMoms

And a good time was had by all (amazingly)

Imagine there's no heaven 

It's easy if you try 

No hell below us 

Above us only sky 

Imagine all the people Living for today 

Imagine there's no countries, 

It isn't hard to do 

Nothing to kill or die for 

And no religion too 

Imagine all the people Living life in peace 

You may say I'm a dreamer 

But I'm not the only one I hope some day you'll join us 

And the world will be as one I

magine no possessions I wonder if you can 

No need for greed or hunger 

A brotherhood of man 

Imagine all the people Sharing all the world 

You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one 

I hope some day you'll join us 

And the world will live as one

John Lennon IMAGINE

 

Now imagine, 23 people spread out over 3 rooms eating, talking and playing games with each other.  16 of these people are all related to each other (and the other 7 are all related to each other, but the two groups aren't related to each other!)

So you have many adults, some teenagers (young to older) and a bunch of kids.  Now imagine (because it was real), that NO ONE was fighting with each other.  The kids and the younger teens were all playing nicely together and the adults were talking in different combinations.

I do have to admit that the barely controlled chaos of this dinner on the second night of Rosh Hashana caused Abe to run away and hide out playing computer games.  But, when I think back over the years where he would've had some sort of outburst, verbal or physical, which would destroy the mood for everyone, the fact that he knows his limits and pulled back was just fine in my book.

But the kids and young teens were all playing together nicely.  And this group included more than one special needs kid!!  There was a mankala game sitting out on the side of the fireplace- simply because the place where it normally was kept had been moved. 

It was so sweet that my little niece came up to me saying, "Auntie Ora, can you teach me how to play this?" (She normally decides that she wants little interaction with me.)  So we played and then more of the kids wanted to learn how to play, and then some of the boys asked about another game and someone went downstairs and brought up Battleship.  But the kids were all behaving so nicely in the midst of lots of commotion.

Just imagine.  It was a holiday dinner in the truest sense of the words.  I'm glad that I slaved to put it on. (but it won't happen again for a loonnng time!)

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!

Chaperoning a school trip

Can you say masochist?  That's what I thought that I was going to be when I volunteered to chaperone the 9th grade trip to Canobie Lake Amusement Park for Physics Day.  Rosie, at first, didn't want me to do it (does any 15 year old want her Mom around when she's having fun?), but it really was a token comment because with our recent events, she likes knowing exactly where I am.

First stop in the morning was the gymnasium (or Field House) at her high school.  Oy, I should've brought earplugs with me.  2-300 some-odd (and some were very odd) 9th graders can make a lot of noise in a room that reverberates- even if they really were well behaved.  Hurry up and wait.  And wait.  And BTW, is there someone that I'm supposed to check in with?  What bus am I going to be on?  And what are my responsibilities with regard to this day?  In other words, help- because I have no idea what I should be doing!

Finally, I get my bus assignment.  Bus #7 (and Rosie is on #1).  Fine; but then there is another mother who is going and her kid is on #7 and she wants to go with her.  They switch me to Rosie's bus and she makes a token comment to stay away from her.

Wait for the buses to arrive.  School buses.  And BTW, they need to be back at school in the afternoon in time to do the end of the day runs- and Friday is an early day.  These kids are not going to have too much time at the amusement park!

It turns out that my responsibilities begin and end with keeping them quiet on the bus- and not going around with any of them at the park!  Wow, that sounds easy!

And easy it was!!  4 adults (the other 3 were male teachers) and 36 kids.  Those kids were so well behaved that we only looked back in the bus to make sure that they weren't standing up.  Wow.  The one teacher who had them this year was highly laudatory of this year's 9th graders. 

So I got a free pass to the amusement park for sitting in a school bus.  All I did really was count them the number of kids getting on, count them getting off and issue dire warnings for them to be back on the bus in 2.25 hours!!  And then I got to go on whatever rides that I wanted to go on and wander around myself- and it was a gorgeous, pleasant day.  The temperature was hot, but there was such a nice breeze blowing off the lake that it didn't feel hot.

When Rosie hopped off the bus, she popped me a kiss and ran off.  But about 3/4 of the way through our time there, we both found ourselves in line for the same ride.  And from that point on, she hung around with me!  Rosie's friend Adina hadn't wanted to go on any of the water rides, so I knew that Rosie really wanted to, so we tried to talk Adina into joining us as we went off to get wet (the 2nd time for me!) on one of the signature rides.

Well, Adina held our bags.  And then I held their bags as they went on some sort of spinning ride.  I don't do high velocity spins and I certainly don't do roller coasters anymore.  Although why I still like water splash rides, I don't know.

We had enough time for an overly sweet Italian ice and then back on the bus.  All of the kids came back in good time and our bus was the first one out of the parking lot (but we were the second bus back to school!)

I had a lot of fun and very little work.  I would certainly do this volunteering again (although it won't be for Rosie again)- but rumor (or was it a threat) is that I'm signed up for the sophomore sleep-over.  That one sounds like a LOT more work!

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I'm going to be starting up a new (and password protected closed) blog.  It's going to deal with Abe and Rosie, but it's also going to be my vent when something goes wrong in life, or my place to kvell when something goes right. 

So ladies, please think about some name choices and write them in the comments.  Also, let me know if you'd like to be on the list for this new blog.  You'll have to send your email address, real name and where you live to orabrucha@gmail.com

Thanks!!!

One idea is : From This Day Forward; another is Life Marches On.  Already shot down is "All the days of my Life"- because I don't plan to post every single day.

            

A smile isn't the same as getting the task done, but it's nice anyway.

'Do not pass Go.  Do not collect $200.' is a direction everyone who has ever played Monopoly understands - and hasn't everyone played Monopoly at least once in their lives?   When I use this directive to my children they understand I want something done NOW, there will be no reward involved, it just has to be done.

My teenagers have grown up with different games though.  Sure, we still play Monopoly and Scrabble, and 500, and Uno and all the good 'ol games, but they have electronic game playing as well, and its phrases are also entering their vernacular.

I told Davey it was getting late and he needed to take his clean clothes into his bedroom, have a shower and go to bed.   He duly disappeared to his room with his stack of folded clothes to put away.  A minute or two later I heard the sounds of his much loved ukelele, and I kept hearing the sound of his ukelele for several more minutes. 
"Hey Davey" I yelled  "That doesn't sound much like the shower running".
"Side quest" came the instant response.
"What?" I asked Em who shrugged her shoulders.
"What are you doing?" I yelled back to Davey.
"Side quest"  he yelled back, then as he appeared back in the lounge room, still strumming his ukelele, "It's worth a hundred bonus points" he said while grinning cheekily at me.

So, when giving directions now, I say "No side quests" rather than "Do not pass Go.  Do not collect $200".  It doesn't mean I have a higher success rate, it just gets a bit of a smile as they trudge off to find a way of avoiding doing what I want them to do.

Cell phones equal hilarity these days

A bunch of the Boy's friends are over. It's mostly the usual crowd, the boys are loud and crazy and run in and out of the house. There's usually one or two girls, and they often range from friends to girlfriends. But everyone seems to have the same sense of humor. I'd describe it as immature, inane, and totally dumb myself, but then again I'm an old lady and we have different tastes in humor.

Whenever the kid's get together, someone gets the bright idea to phony phone call someone or a bunch of someones. Tonight it was a kid in the western part of the state who was also with a bunch of friends, and so the pranking went on and on as both sides tried to outdo the other. Both parties had their friends on speakerphone, and were yelling all sorts of crap at each other. It was like a dis contest only by phone. Every time they would get off a good riff, the room would fill with hysterical laughter. Funniest thing ever.

They used different voices and accents. They talked sad suburban trash talk. And they laughed their asses off. In the middle of this hilarity it occurred to me that prank calling has entered a new phase. With cell phones and their accessories like speaker phones, a group of kids can really go wild with the prank calls.

It was, to me, so lame. But they laughed to the point of hysteria. I guess this is just one more bit of proof that I am old and out of it. What a shock!

Guess. Just guess.

It's been snowing steadily for more than 48 hours. We have a lot of snow. Like 2 feet of the white stuff. More snow than I've seen in a while.

So yesterday afternoon my son, the one without the coat and the boots, decides he's going sledding at the golf course. Without boots and a coat. I beg him to put on a jacket. But nooooo. He's going to wear his freaking trench coat because he apparently lost his jacket, having never even worn it. It's in the house someplace, but lord only knows where. I've looked, he's looked. It's lost.

So off he goes, and a couple of hours later he comes home, soaked through to the skin. He changes every bit of clothing, down to his boxers, and comes downstairs dressed like a gigantic elf. Totally adorable.

He lays down on the sofa and he's watching TV and then he turns to me and says, "I need a pair of boots." 

NO SHIT SHERLOCK.

This is the kid I begged and pleaded with just a few days ago to buy a pair of boots. Tims. Nice Tims. On sale at Marshalls. But NOOOOOO. He doesn't LIKE boots. They aren't comfortable. Moron.

So, in two feet of snow, he determines that maybe boots might be a decent idea. OMG, I wanted to punch him.

We'll look for boots when we can get out of the driveway. Which should, according to my determination, be sometime in mid-April.

Soccer Moms (pitbull, no lipstick)

I spend a lot of hours on the sidelines of soccer fields. My son plays on two teams, one travel and one school. Seven days a week – practice or games, twice on Saturday. Hey, it keeps him out of trouble. And gets me out of my office to get some fresh air.

Every once in awhile we play a team where awful parent behavior rears it's ugly head. In this case the head was a frizzy one on a little pitbull of a mom. She sat on the bottom of the bleachers and taunted the poor ref the entire game. She had a little help from the guy behind her, but she had the big screechy, nails-on-a-blackboard kind of voice that cuts right through you.

Hey Ref, what are you blind? (um lady, could you be more original)

Hey Ref, are you kidding me? You better watch your back when you leave the field! (yeh, right, lady you are 5 feet tall and 105 lbs dripping wet)

Hey Ref, you suck. Get a new job! (again, extremely articulate AND original)

This kind of behavior went on the whole game. And yellow card after yellow card went out to their team. Some of them looked to be a bit excessive. This ref was a little card happy. From where we sat anyway, but after the game my son told me how the other team was trash talking like crazy.

Gee, I wonder where they could have picked up that behavior? It never ceases to amaze me when I see parents act like this at kids sporting events. Mind you, I have seen much worse. It is just that this little rat-faced mom really got on my last nerve. You know the type, when a kid on our team gets injured and the ref doesn't see it instead of yelling 'Man Down' she yells, 'keep playing'.

Bad karma if you ask me.

At the end of the game a father from the other team came up to my husband and asked him if he thought the ref called a fair game. As only Gary can, in his charming way he said, "My friend, there was a woman on your team, and I am hoping she was not your wife, she was a bit out of line. Don't you think she might have pissed that ref off enough to make sure he called every foul on your team?"

Me, not so nice. "Listen, the parents on your team were just damn rude." The guy kind of backed away.

My son? Mortified and pushing us towards the car. "What?",I asked.

His response, "Ugh, who does that?"

"What?", I asked repetitively.

"Who actually answers the crazy parent from the other team?", he said.

"Um, the crazy parent from our team?", I answered.

"EXACTLY! Now let's go home."

It Must be Chanukah!

But wait!  Ora has her times of the year totally messed up!  But I can't think of another reason for "Nes Gadol Haya Sham" (A Great Miracle Happened There).  You've all heard me rant on that Abe and Rose can't get along, especially sitting in a car, as well as the stuff that I have to endure from their father....  But it must've been a miracle that occurred.

We, as in all four of us, had a great, long, weekend.  It was Columbus Day here in the US- a day for shopping and totally forgetting the original meaning of the holiday (wait, that's another rant).  But in any event, we knew that we had extra time to relax.  Going into the weekend, we really needed that time since we had just finished up atoning all day on Yom Kippur.  But wait, there's more- Succot, the harvest festival where you put up a little booth (Succah) and eat (and sleep) in it starts at the end of the weekend!!  Arghhhh!  Whoever scheduled the Jewish holidays during this time of year wasn't a woman.

Oh well.  In any event....  My company's Employee Activity Committee (EAC) worked a deal where we were able to get complimentary (read- FREE) tickets to a show.  It was a political monologue dealing with older issues, but it was very, very topical to today. (see Margalit's previous post on "According to Tip") 

All four of us went, and surprise, surprise, all four of us had a great time (although Rosie kept needing a bit of history lessons).  No one complained about going, no one picked on another and everyone was laughing their head off.  What a success.  Such a miracle!

The next day, homework was getting done, the succah was getting up (it's easy since it's already made pieces, numbered where to go together with some screws and a power drill).  And the weather report for the following day was still good weather- no raining on this parade!

So everyone got up and did what they had to do (including packing and picking up for Abe as he headed back to school) and in the car we were- very close to the anticipated time!  First a stop at Abe's school to pick up his glasses (the child is SUPPOSED to wear them all the time except when reading......) Now he can drive the rest of the way there and practice his driving.  Ulp!!  You are supposed to look behind you when merging!!  Rose was VERY well behaved and didn't say a word (although inside she was screaming).

We, all four of us, had agreed that it would be fun to go to a Medieval/Renaissance fair (or faire, in the colloquium).  Rosie agreed when she saw that there would be shopping.  The place was south of Abe's school, so it was convenient to go to since he had to take him back sometime that day anyway.

We had a lot of fun!!!  Everyone did.  And there were no hassles about food, no griping about what to see, no complaining about being cold (late in the afternoon).  So a good day was had by all.  In my house, that counts as a certified MIRACLE!!!!

Then to round out the day, after dropping off Abe, we went to that big Swedish mega-store.  I'd never been there yet.  We wanted to see some possibilities for a new bed and desk for Rosie, and the patient wanted to look for CD/DVD racks. 

And a good weekend was had by all.  Wow!

Before School: It's a Vacation

We just got back from a lovely, restful vacation.  It was only Abe and Rose and me.  The largest (adult) child took himself to a Bar Mitzvah in California and left us to go on vacation without him.  I think that we had a much better time without him than we possibly could with him along.

We had "bought" 3 nights in a condo near Loon Mountain, in Lincoln, New Hampshire at the school silent auction from Rosie's old school.  Since we don't downhill ski, we like to go up to the mountains in the summertime.  We've actually been up at that area about 4 or 5 times.

This time, we had no major plans set, although we were probably going to go to the water park.  We hiked a little (very, very, mild walks), played mini-golf twice, went to the hot tub at the condo village twice and generally relaxed and sat around.  We did a little bit of shopping - mostly shirts for Rose, but also a dress for Mom and a windbreaker for Abe (who had lost his at school!) 

We ate in (the condo), we ate out, we relaxed.  And one of the reasons that Mom could relax was that (wonders of wonders, miracles or miracles....) the kids were EXTREMELY good.  There was a little bit of squabbling and sniping, but overall, everyone (mom included) gave a bit and the vacation was very calm.  This was just what mom needed, even if the kids weren't highly entertained. Abe had to (shudder) actually perform some (very mild) exercise and Rosie had to put up with her brother.But, mostly, Abe got to read and watch TV, Rose got to shop and watch TV, Mom got to sleep late, spend some time outside, not feel guilty about not doing a bunch of chores, eat wonderful meals that she hadn't prepared and not have to yell at the kids.  Mom certainly got the best of this deal. 

But now it's back to school and work.  Abe is back at FLC where he still has another day of vacation there.  Rosie will go to orientation and then start public school in a few days and Mom gets to water the new lawn.  Vacation is always over too soon.

What happens when your 16 year-old boy stays up all night

My son isn't the world's greatest sleeper during the school year, and during the summer he turns totally nocturnal, just like his mom. Most of the time he can be found in his room, playing with his XBox, watching TV or working on his new computer. God forbid he should do his summer reading or try to get some sleep. Oh mom, you're so STOOOOPID, he'd say.

Um, yeah. Such a lovely age, 16.

The other night he decided to do a bit of rearranging. See, he has figured out how to hook up his computer to the television to watch movies in HD. I know nothing about this.

I wake up and see the computer on the floor of the living room, keyboard on the coffee table, and the TV seems to be focused on his Facebook page. Of course, he's fast asleep on the sofa and almost impossible to awaken, so I just wait for the explanation.

Around 4 or so he rises from the dead and I ask him why his computer is now in residence on our living room floor. He tells me that he has figured out some way to connect it to the HD and we can now watch movies that he has <Del>illegally</del> downloaded off the net. At first I'm all, "That's a terrible things to do and I don't want any knowledge of your nefarious activities and they better all be on your external hard drive, blah blah blah."  You know, the mom talk.

Then he shows me the list of movies he's been downloading for the past year. And my goodness, how my animosity turns to admiration. He's got freaking great taste in movies, my boy does. Like right this second they are both watching "In Bruges" which is a spectacular film, if you haven't yet seen it.

And the boy downloaded the entire first season of Mad Men for me because I've been dying to see it and we don't have cable.  Not only does he have good taste, he also is a kind soul sometimes.

So now we're in this sort of impasse. I know that downloading is wrong, and so does he. But should we watch the movies before I make him get rid of them? What kind of horrible mother would I be if I did that?

You know what kind? The kind that has finally been able to see movies that I've missed over the years. That kind. Sigh. I'm so weak.

Heh.