Good Advice

My oldest son is now 14 years-old and taller than me. I've resorted to making him sit down when I need to fuss at him. I can't stand looking up to give him the evil eye.

Anyway, like most teenagers, he has a quick temper with his siblings, who can aggravate him just by walking through the room. Usually his anger is accompanied by a sharp insult, such as, "You're a dork," or physical contact in the form of a near trip, or something similar.

But on one recent occasion, when his youngest brother completely blanked on the teen imposed rules, "Don't go in my room. Don't touch my stuff. Don't breathe the same oxygen I'm breathing," my maturing lad took a moment to give his irritating sibling a solid piece of advice:

"You've got to think, even if it hurts!"

A piece of advice he drove home with a firm planting of his knuckle on the smaller child's upper arm, leading the smaller one to wisely observe, "If it hurts worse than not thinking, I don't want to go there."

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Survey

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The Way Boys Think

I've recently been enlightened on the way boys think, when they think at all, which isn't so often. But when they bother to put the effort forth, they actually are very calculating about it.

Last Saturday, we had a long day trip in the car, so I told my children to take their backpacks and work on their homework during the ride. My 6th grade son sat in the back, right behind my seat, with his backpack open, books pulled out. I could hear him rustling papers and zipping his pencil case open and shut, sounds that assured me he was diligently completing the task at hand.

Or so I thought.

Monday, I received three e-mails (plus a fourth on Tuesday) from his teachers, telling me my child had failed to turn in his assigned weekend homework. How could this be? I saw him put his backpack in the car next to his seat. I heard him doing his work.

Well, you can bet I asked him for an explanation. "Did you lose your homework?" I questioned. He shook his head, No. "Did you leave it in your locker?" I interrogated. Again, he shook his head, No. "Were you afraid your answers were all wrong?" I continued, trying to get at the source of his negligence. Another head shake, No.

"Well what then?" I exasperatedly asked. "Did you just not do it?"

The look in eyes was all the response I needed. "What were you doing the whole time in the car then?" I exclaimed.

"Drawing pictures," he admitted.

"Drawing pictures! Why didn't you do your HOMEWORK!" I shouted. I know I shouldn't shout at my children, but it just happened. I couldn't stop it.

"I forgot to bring home the books I needed."

"So, why didn't you tell me that? Why did you wait for your teachers to e-mail for me to find that out?" I was still yelling.

Sheepishly, he replied, "Because I thought you would fuss at me."

Now, I know what you're thinking. It sounds like it sort of snowballed on him and he was just a kid being a kid; that he didn't have the ability to see into the future and weigh the consequences of his omission, that he was living in the moment, as children do, and the moment caught up with him.

I assure you, information has surfaced that tells me otherwise. Boys plot and plan these things. He knew exactly what he was doing. I am certain of this because I heard the following conversation between two boys in the 6th grade hall of my son's middle school:

Boy 1: I tell you, I've learned something, Buddy.
Boy 2: What's that?
Boy 1: The less stuff you tell your parents, the less trouble you get in.

And there you have it. Boys, when they bother to use their brains, bank on the risk of only getting in trouble on the back end, instead of owning up to their actions and risking getting in trouble on the front AND the backside.

I'm living proof that the boy approach works, because, although I raked my son over the coals, he only had to endure it in the aftermath. Where as, if he had told me of his predicament in the car, I would have chided him into a fetal position then and then again on Monday when I was reminded of it by his teachers.

Shake the Glitter Off Your Clothes Now

I feel like I entered a contest in which the mom with the most miles on her mini-van wins. And as I'm dropping kids off at one place then back tracking to pick kids up at another so that I can turn right back around, without taking a breath, to be late to let them out at their next activity and collect the ones (I've lost track of exactly which ones) previously dropped off, I hear a voice in my head singing, That's what you get for waking up in Vegas.

I don't know what Vegas has to do with any of this, except that perhaps I rolled the dice in my early twenties and this is how they came up in my forties. On the bright side, odds are I'm going to win the miles on the mini-van contest. Problem is, the jackpot isn't quite what I expected when I rolled the dice all those years ago: bald tires and an empty gas tank and kids in the backseat singing, Get up and shake the glitter off your clothes, now, at eardrum damaging volume.

Ah, so, things didn't turn out the way I pictured them, all cakes and ale, when I first gambled on the family track. Such is life. And I'd roll the dice the same way again, if I had the chance.

Granny Lines

I entered the lingerie store looking for underwear that wouldn't show pantie lines while also not sawing me in half, either. I exited the store with something akin to fashionable granny panties.

Fashionable was the salesgirl's word for them, not mine. It was her evasive counter attack to my shock and awe and utterance of the word granny. She also used fashionable to make me feel better about being 20 years older than her and too mature to wear a thong, something, I explained to her, I reserve for footwear only.

She just couldn't get over her own youth, as she wrapped my unmentionables in pink tissue paper and tucked them into one of the store's larger shopping bags with handles, so I wouldn't strain under the weight of the largess. So offended, by her insulting customer service, I wanted to throw down a hissy fit right there at the cash register . . . but I maintained my composure. She had already run my credit card.

The good thing is, however, I don't have pantie lines anymore. On the other hand, the bad thing is, I have granny lines now.

Makes me want to tuck my skirt in my panties and run.

Going Broke on School Supplies

I'm face to face and eye to eye with the start of school and it's winning the stare down contest. So I've resolved to wrap my head around obtaining the mountain of sundry school supplies required for my four children, which, these days, amounts to way more than pencils, scissors, and a bottle of glue. Binders alone are, at minimum, $5 a pop, and they all gotta have at least a hundred.

Standing in the store aisle, lined with miles of folders, notebooks, loose leaf paper, clips, clasps, and so on and so forth, saying, "No," to anything and everything with cute puppies, WWF wrestlers, and porches on the front cover, I suddenly think of the Trapper Keeper I always, always coveted as a school child.

My devastatingly practical mother answered all my pleas for a Trapper Keeper, which was synonymous with cool-kid-in-school, "Your teacher doesn't have that on your supply list." Of course not. She wanted to start out the year torturing her students, laying the groundwork for crowd control even before the first day of school.

Oh, heartbreak, to be relegated to the side of the classroom with kids whose mothers sent peanut butter balls rolled in wheat germ for a recess snack and made them carry spiral bound notebooks with plain grey cardboard covers to school in their satchels.

Pamela Anderson in her red Bay Watch bathing suit waves in front of my face, snapping me out of my reverie. "Can I have this folder, Mama? Pleeeaase?" I didn't even know Pamela Anderson was still in. But, I guess in middle school any pretty woman in a bathing suit is in, whether the boy knows her name or claim to fame or not.

I think about the Trapper Keeper I longed for but never had. I picture myself as a child standing in the store watching all those other kids' mothers put Trapper Keepers in their shopping carts. I look at my son, desperation in his eyes, and say, "No. Your teacher didn't put Pamela Anderson on your supply list."

Why? Because I have to trust the practical wisdom of my mother. I am who I am today, because I never had a Trapper Keeper.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Balance

How do YOU define balance?

That's the question the Inspirista wanted me to answer if I had any chance of being a guest on her Blog Talk Radio show. Specifically, her media inquiry read: Looking to interview fun, energetic females who have a message to share with a female audience. In your response, answer this question, How do YOU define balance? Put your name in the subject line.

Ughh, I thought, she'll never have me on her Girls Night Out radio show. I mean, for sure, I'm mostly, usually fun and I think other people would describe me as energetic, although I try not to strain my delicate self. But I doubt very seriously that MY definition of balance will pass muster:

Balance in life occurs at that moment when I suck in hard as the teeter-totter teeters back in the other direction and for that split second before pounding the ground of the other extreme is exactly, perfectly level; also defined as the ahhh moment before chaos is released like a pack of snarling foxhounds after a coyote, determined to rip it to shreds in a frenzy of barking and mayhem.

To me, the question is not how to define balance - we all know it when we see it - the question is how to achieve it on a more regular basis. How do we get our body to sit just right so that the teeter of the teeter-totter is delayed for more than a second? How do we keep the foxhounds penned and give the coyote more time to meander through fields of daisies.

Okay, coyotes in fields of daisies is a bit melodramatic, but you southern girls get my meaning.

Today's Assignment: 1) In your Book of Lists, define balance, using as many metaphors and similes for it as you can think up. 2) List your personal strategies for achieving it more often.