Mid-CenturyModernMoms

Holiday stress

 

 

Can I just go spend the next four days on some tropical island?

 

I am just so tired of being in the middle!

 

My ex husband/current boyfriend wants our girls to spend Thanksgiving with him.

 

My parents and sisters want the girls to spend the day with them.  Drew is NOT invited.

 

Drew's suggestion, a compromise -- lunch at his house, dinner at my parents.  the girls aren't thrilled with that, but they're OK with it.

 

My sisters are up in arms!  they told my parents that Jen was hysterically crying about how she "didn't want to go" to her father's house.

 

My parents are upset because my sisters are upset. 

 

And I am being portrayed as evil incarnate because I dared to support a father's right to see his daughters for the holiday.

cross posted at Songbird's Crazy World

Regression

I'm starting to tear my hair out about Abe hibernating in his cave.

The deal when he moved home was that he was going to a) keep his room almost as clean as he had to at school, b) use the exercise room, c) go out to events and not just sit around his room playing on the computer and d) keep himself clean.

He was doing great with all of these when he first came home from school and all throughout the summer.  But now that the school year has started, all of these have just fallen off.

I vocally remind him to take his shower and brush his teeth.  Sometimes I remind him when I get a sensory cue, or I see the oil on his hair.

But Abe is close to 6 feet tall, and weighs over 220 pounds, so it's not like when he was a baby and I could pick him up.

One of the things that I'm doing (he doesn't know this yet) is removing him from the advanced (pay for) player category on his multi-player computer game.  He'll be back down to standard (free) level and it won't be as much fun.  Right now, he literally spends 6-10 (or more) hours each day on that game.  Too much!!!  And therefore, he doesn't go to sleep until 2-4 am, and sometimes misses classes.

I had found a social group, a pizza and games night, that he enjoyed.  But this last month, it was just too much work for him to RSVP for it.  He'd rather spend in on the massive player computer game.

If Rosie didn't need the computer/internet access, I'd totally disable the internet each night when I go to sleep.

HELP!!

 

Freaking Out

Rosie just started her junior year of high school, 11th grade.  In some countries, this is the last year of high school, but in the US, we have 2 more to go (including this one).

But she's already freaking out over where to go to college, but even more so over her classes this year.

To start with she didn't get the Ceramics teacher that she wanted (and had had the last 2 years).  She got the mean one.  Who everyone else is transferring out of the class.  And she was supposed to TA (teaching assist) for this woman.    So she tried to switch her amth class with her ceramics class- because that was the best blaock of classes to switch into the good teacher's class- but the honors math class was all filled up there- and Rosie was actually the 2nd person on the wait list for that class.

Then, she was freaking out that she didn't understand her Honors Biology and it was going to be too much memorization, and....  So I got her to go talk to the teacher- who basically said, if you think that this is hard now, you'd better drop down to college prep Bio.

So Rosie is then freaking out because she's dropping one of her honors classes and she has friends who are taking 4 of them, and she's never going to get into a good university ..... etc....

And then because she's freaking out, she is having trouble falling asleep.  So a few nights of giving her Benadryl (and it not working), she starts crawling into bed with me.  Which wouldn't be a problem except that the first few nights she tried this, she kept getting up to go back to her bed- and then coming back a few hours later...  So I was very tired- and she wasn't getting a lot of sleep either.  Now she's just coming to my bed for the night.  After all of her switches get taken care, I think (hope) that she'll calm down and I'll edge her out again.

And then there was going to 4 bookstores to get a book assigned for her English class. All of the local ones were sold out!  But she's doing her homework now, and I jsut get to guess what the next trauma will be.

Freewheeling

First she has to get a pillow to sit on.

Then she reaches down and pulls her seat in close.

And then even closer.

She looks in the mirror, and she likes what she sees.

Then her hand snakes forward and gives a little twist to the right ...

And the engine roars to life.

Oh my stars. My little girl is behind the wheel of a car.

Yep.

The Roo-girl finally had her first official driving lesson, which then, according to our state law, finally validates her learner's permit and allows her to get behind the wheel of a large deadly weapon with her mother in the death seat.

Please hold me.

Actually, she is doing well. A little nervous yet and not paying as much attention to detail to suit me, but we're all still in one piece.

And she is pleased with me as well.

I am actually a very calm driving instructor, even though I must tell you that there is nothing in this world -- and I seriously mean NOTHING in this world -- more frightening than sitting in the death seat of a car with your child behind the wheel.

But she views me as very straightforward, issuing instructions in measured tones and never raising my voice.

Calm on the outside.

Inside, however, my stomach lining is rapidly being eaten away.

I should get an Academy Award.

Crossposted at From the Planet of Janet

Extra Responsibilities

This is Ora reporting for our dear Margalit, who once again has taken a turn for the worse and is in the hospital.  Yuk!!

So Ora has extra responsibilities.  Why?  Because I am Margalit's health care proxy.  And by the way, everyone is really worried about the Boy and the Girl.

What? You don't have a health care proxy?

You simply must take care of this at once- especially if you are single.  A spouse is assumed to be able to make medical decisions for you in cases of emergency, but what if you don't have a spouse (or worse, you do but you don't want him/her making your medical decisions!)

It's a simple form.  Margalit and I did ours through a lawyer, but you can easily download a copy for your state off of the web and get it signed and notarized.  Make sure that you tell the person you've picked what you've done, because they don't have to sign the form.

But in Margalit's case, the hospital (her standard one) was very concerned about the Boy since he was just recently released from a hospitalization to change his meds and we are all worried that he won't take the meds and won't go to his day program (he's started down that road already).

And, of course, the girl is very upset too.

And poor Ora is trying to manage all the stuff going on in her life, run to the hospital every day, check on the Boy and the Girl and juggle calls to and from the hospital. 

Rosie, though, always comes through in an emergency.  She received the first phone call from the hospital looking for me and gave them my cell number.  She offered to give up going to one of her drivers' ed classes to ease up on running around time.

The first night it seemed on the dire side for Margalit, but she is much better now.  The seizure didn't cause too many lasting effects- but she needed to be in the hospital anyway to deal with her congestive heart failure.  I think that she'll be there for a while.

Meanwhile, Ora is trying to juggle better.

Shopping

It's time again for that most dreaded of all parental occurences- seasonal shopping with a teenager.

Rosie and I set out to find her a pair of sneakers for gym class.  I didn't want to spend a fortune but she turned her nose up at everything under $50.  And how long (ha) that I know these shoes will last, more than that I didn't want to spend.

And to make matters worse, we also went off on a tangent and did some clothes shopping at the same time.  That probably made the shoe shopping that much worse.  She needs shorts and summer dressy outfits.  But the length of both is enough to make most mothers blush- not to mention the fit!!  She seems to think that the tighter the better.  But when I made her try on a (dreaded) medium size in some of them, she actually agreed that (most of them) is was better fitting.

But after 4 stores, we still don't have the sneakers- more shopping to come.

What goes around comes around ... and around ... and around

Another cheer season has come to an end.

And I think I am the happiest one in the room.

Roo's small varsity competition team went out in a blaze of ... well ... not glory.

The long-standing championship earned almost every year for the entire school team went down in flames.

Not because the girls didn't do well, because they were awesome. But the judges viewed the competition the way they viewed it, and the girls came away with third.

And as team photographer, I have chronicled it all.

Football.

Competition.

Basketball.

Ups.

Downs.

I'm tired and ready for a break.

Oh, wait.

I have to collect everything I shot this year and turn it into a DVD for the end-of-the-year cheer banquet.

Crap.

Let the Packing Begin

The Olympics are over and now let the packing begin!!!!

We are moving in just a few days.  I had spent the previous time throwing away and giving away and selling all sorts of things, but there is still too much to move into the smaller space. 

I had decided that the movers were going to do the majority of the packing (less stress to me), but there is still stuff that I want to pack- and more importantly, there is stuff that Rosie wants to pack herself.

So this past weekend, she had a giggle of girls over (and there was MUCH giggling) and they filled up a trash bag of stuff to throw out and another box of paper to recycle and a few boxes of fragile things.  After all of her protestations that she didn't want the movers to be touching her stuff, she ended up saying that they could pack up most things.

As for Abe, he isn't even coming home this weekend for the move.  Mom and the movers get to deal with all of his stuff.

Someone's gonna be in hot water

There are several reasons for having to take a cold shower.

None of them are very good ones, in my opinion.

There is the cold shower taken to cool off unsatisfied ardor.

There is the cold shower that is required when the pilot is out on your water heater.

And then there is the cold shower that you have to take in the morning when your teenage daughter has already used all the hot water.

Need I say more?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

 

In search of balance -- or at least the drugs to get me there

When I sat down to write this post, I looked at the empty page and snarled.

"I shouldn't write today," I said to Wonderhubby. "I'm really pissy and won't say anything nice."

"Who said you have to be nice?" he asked.

Who indeed.

But I feel like there is a nasty theme running through my posts these days.

Because really? Everyone is still ticking me off. Is it a side effect of being -- ahem -- a menopausal mid-century woman? Or is it that raising teens and 20somethings has finally sent me over the edge?

I have gone there before in this space. And the only thing that has changed since that post is that Z-man was rehired by the restaurant that had laid him off several months ago. So at least he's working. Although since he works evenings, he still sleeps till mid-afternoon. Sluggard.

But it was a blunt conversation with J-bear that has flipped me on my axis.

I felt it was time to address the problem of the elephant in the room. If you have read me for very long, you know that two of my three sons are gay. So homosexuality is not a big deal in my house. You are gay or you are straight, but you are still my kid. The end.

The fact that J-bear has made this SCREAMING statement with her appearance without the common decency to speak the words offended me. In our house? With me?? Are you KIDDING me?? It's the safest place to come out EVER.

But no. Finally I had had enough.

And so ... in an emotional, hourlong conversation that touched on many things (including whether her current look was acceptable for "polite society"), I asked her flat out.

Her answer was in the affirmative.

Yippee.

I then moved on to her appearance and an upcoming all-skate family weekend celebrating my parents' 60th anniversary at a very high-end resort and spa, where the mohawk, tattoos and industrial-sized piercings will. not. fly.

I thought that, by the time I was finished, I had made my point clear and that she needed to decide if she was willing to conform in order to attend and be part of the family.

As of Sunday morning, she had decided she wanted to go. When I spoke to her that afternoon -- and reminded her what that meant -- she gave me the big heavy sigh.

"If you think it's just appearances and why should that matter," I snapped at her, "then please remember that it works in reverse: For those four days in June, it shouldn't matter to you that your appearance conforms to social norms."

She actually snorted.

"But I like it."

I think I'll go scream in my pillow now.