Filed under: Parenting | Tags: Bath and Body Works, Christmas, cologne, family, humor, Middle-Age, perfume, shopping, southern, subourbonmom, teenagers, teens
What is it about the Bath & Body Works store that attracts the pre-teen crowd like Christmas shopping attracts bad drivers? It can’t be their low prices—seriously, $10 for a candle that smells like ashes from my fireplace? Or, $3 hand disinfectant that leaves your steering wheel smelling like stale cookies? This summer, one of the girls even purchased a candle called Mahogany Teakwood that, I swear, smells like Drakkar Noir. Remember that? Or, for you youngsters who may not be familiar with that scent from the 1980’s, the candle smells like teenage boy who’s just discovered cologne. I think I might borrow it, just for the trip down memory lane. Maybe I’ll watch Top Gun while I burn it.
All of these things I can live with, because it’s a place where my kids can shop that doesn’t sell clothes for hookers in teen-age sizes, and doesn’t get them all hopped-up on caffeine. And, being a pre-school teacher, I’m all for the disinfectant. I just wish they sold Lysol in flavors like Warm Vanilla Sugar and Japanese Cherry Blossom.
HOWEVER…I have come to loathe the scents the teen girls seem drawn to…the cloying, heavy sprays and lotions so sweet and thick, they must have been inspired by a mortuary trying to cover up the scent of formaldehyde. Sleepovers are the worst. In the morning, the downstairs has a miasma of “Twilight Woods” drifting amid the sleeping bags and piles of clothes and hairbrushes. You can practically see the blue haze, like a layer of smoke from a speak-easy in the 1920’s. I can only imagine this must be what a brothel would have smelled like before the age of deodorant and sanitation.
But, I think we may have finally emerged from the darkness. This morning, Daughter #2 came up to me with a glass of milk and said, “Mom, this glass smells like Bar-B-Que.” Now, normally, I would say dump it out because it’s 7:30, we’re already running late, and no I don’t want to smell your sour milk; but, since we’ve begun buying organic milk, I wasn’t about to toss out $4 worth of white gold. So I sniffed it while she held the glass up.
It smelled like her Bath & Body Works perfume.
“It’s your perfume,” I said.
“No it’s not. It’s BBQ.”
I took the glass away and gave it to Hubby. “Does this smell like BBQ to you?”
“Nope,” Hubby answered.
“Now sniff her hand.”
He did. “It’s your perfume, Cutie,” he said.
Horrified, Daughter #2 looked at us and shrieked, “You mean I smell like pork loin?”
Sorry, Bath and Brothel Works, but I think it’s safe to say we might be moving on to the other teen scents, probably with catchy marketing names “I Can Drive,” or “SnapChat Me.”
But I might go get one of those Mahogany Teakwood candles and put it in my stocking.
Filed under: Sports | Tags: coliseum, football, Giants, gladiators, humor, NFL, Redskins
I love football. I was at the Giants/Redskins game on Monday night, and I loved every minute of it—and not just because I’m a Redskins fan (but how awesome was that? RG3 is being hailed as the Second Coming).
I love watching men grunt and throw each other to the ground. I love the superior athleticism on display as they launch themselves into the air, or chase the quarterback to the ground like lions after a wildebeest. I love the rhythm of the game, as the fan noise swells and crests, only to fall again as a play disintegrates. I even love the referees’ shrieking whistles and drunken bellows from the crowd. I’ve learned a lot of new insults over the years, especially sitting in the cheap seats.
But most of all, I love the visceral, instinctive reaction within myself that makes my stomach clench and my fist pump in the air as I scream at my flat screen. As much as I’m ashamed to admit it, I can’t turn away when a player gets hurt—the worse the better. Inside, I feel terrible that this man’s career is probably over, and his wife and family will have to help him find a new career, or even spend months in rehab with him, but I still watch the replays and cringe when a leg or arm snaps like a twig.
Watching football is probably about as close as today’s polite society will ever come to feeling like a Roman citizen watching the Gladiators battle to the death in the Coliseum.
The similarities to our Roman ancestors are interesting (and a little disturbing):
• The players are giants among men, trained and fed for one purpose: to defeat their opponents in violent contact while fans watch;
• Players have sponsors and backers, although their rewards are money and adulation, not just favors to make their meager lives as prisoners and slaves more bearable;
• Fans can be roused from sitting quietly with beers cradled in their hands to raging heart-attacks-waiting-to-happen with spittle flying from their lips within a matter of seconds;
• 80,000 fans chant the names of their favorite players, much like the fans of old chanted the name of their Ceasar. Did anyone hear the fans cheering for RG3? There is something eerie about hearing so much humanity calling one name—it gets into your blood until you find yourself chanting right along with them, even though you know it’s only a game, and the guy isn’t saving the world, just your playoff hopes.
• Calls for blood still ring out from the stands;
• Even our stadiums still resemble the old Coliseum—tiered seats, the arrival of the combatants from beneath the stadium, and beer and food hawked from the stands, and the elite still watch from a polite distance in their box seats; the peasants peer at the show form the nosebleed seats;
• But most disturbing of all is that we haven’t changed. We still love a good fight—UFC, boxing, football, even tennis (have you heard the constipated grunting? What is that?). We love a good fight.
None of this changes my Sunday routine—church (how hypocritical is that?), snacks and football until my eyes bleed. Maybe it’s a good thing, this blood-letting may even absorb some primal energy we have, preventing some violence further down the road. Why yell at your kids when you can safely yell at your tv?
Tomorrow night is Thursday, the new Sunday in the NFL—Are you ready for some football???
Filed under: Exercise, Parenting, Sports | Tags: cheering, family, humor, kids, love, mom, parenting, soccer, sports
It’s the end of soccer season, at least the outdoor variety. Thanksgiving is over, and with it our three-day respite from two-hour practices, smelly cleats and hairbands strewn about the house. So, to honor the occasion, I wrote this poem to let Daughters #1 & 2 know that I GET IT. I just can’t help being their biggest (and loudest) cheerleader. If they’ve learned nothing from living with me all these years, it’s that I do everything with enthusiasm (just look at the circle of food around my plate when we go to a nice restaurant—waiters LOVE me).
A Soccer Player’s Prayer
I huddle in the corner, away from other players.
Please, don’t cheer for me, I think, please answer a soccer prayer.
I’m not afraid of getting hurt when the ball is kicked my way.
I’d love to score the winning goal and brag I saved the day.
But there’s one thing I can’t stand—it has me quaking in my cleats.
I shake inside my shin guards, the laces tremble on my feet.
What was that? Did someone call my name?
I’d know that voice on any field. Oh no! My mom is here—she came!
I break into a clammy sweat whenever she looks my way.
Please don’t pass it to me, she’ll just yell while I’m trying to play.
The ball whizzes past me as she plunks down her chair.
Someone trips on my frozen toes while I can only stop and stare.
How will I live it down? Oh, the Horror, oh the shame!
How can I prevent her from screaming out my name?
I hate it when she does that–it’s obnoxious, rude and loud.
It’s humiliating and debilitating, and it bugs the soccer crowd.
But how do I tell her? It will only make her sad.
After all, she loves to watch me, though her screaming makes me mad.
So I slouch here on the sideline, desperate to disappear.
Maybe someday she’ll stop her shouting, and like a normal mom, just cheer.
Someday, girls, your mom might just make it through “Silent Saturday….”
Filed under: Middle Age, Parenting | Tags: cars, driving, humor, Marriage, southern, tailgates, traffic martyrs
You’ve all seen them as you’re stuck in a hideous line of traffic going from four lanes to two, or as 20,000 people are trying to leave a stadium at the same time. Either way, somebody farther up is LETTING PEOPLE IN. That person is a Traffic Martyr.
Sacrificing your spot in line for a Slider (a.k.a. the I’m-going-to-try-and-get-over-even-though-I-saw-the-line-backing-up-a-mile-ago-guy) not only rewards rude driving, it has historically caused an immeasurable and unrecorded rise in health care costs. The lemmings behind the Traffic Martyr have to up their Lipitor dosage, or risk having their hearts explode as their blood pressure escalates faster than the General Patraeus sex scandal.
If you are, or ever have been, a Traffic Martyr, maybe you’re one of those genuinely nice people who believe in letting Sliders in once a day. I’ll bet you even do it with a smile and a wave. And you probably believe in unicorns.
But I doubt you’re really that nice, down deep inside. Letting Sliders in your lane probably made you feel good, maybe a little self-righteous, and definitely a little superior. After all, you were the nice one. I’ve been there myself. And in the right situation, Traffic Martyrs can be useful, like when they slow the pace down enough to let you safely whack your teenager with a “punch-buggy-no-punch-back” hit while driving with your knees.
But if there’s one thing people hate more than Traffic Martyrs, it ‘s Sliders.
When Hubby encounters a Slider attempting to invade his driving space, he usually creeps up until he’s one inch behind the car in front, blocking the Slider. It’s as effective as a girl saying “let’s be friends.” Hubby’s move usually results in lots of honking and bird-flipping. But recently, in a rare act of being a Slider, Hubby ran into the ultimate Slider Hater.
Literally.
At the horse races last week (the same ones where the Irish news interviewed me), Hubby was trying to leave the infield with 10,000 other wind-burned, inebriated tailgaters. Having thoughtfully parked on the end of the aisle, facing out, he was quickly ready to merge into the line of stop-and-go traffic. One driver, however, was very upset that Hubby was going to be allowed to join the vehicular Conga line so soon. But instead of quietly cursing the Traffic Martyrs and like most people, Slider Hater called out to Hubby:
“You can’t just get in line! I’ve been waiting here for a half-hour.”
Hubby, having already gotten permission from the Traffic Martyrs around him, answered in typical Slider fashion, “Seriously, you’re not going to let me in? We’re all just trying to get out of here.”
Slider Hater: “Hey Buddy, I’ve got my kids in the car back here. Now you can do the right thing and let me go first, or you can do the wrong thing.”
Now, to be fair, Hubby had gotten permission from all the other cars around him,and Slider Hater had probably been sitting there for a while. Tempers were flaring. “It’s a rental,” Hubby yelled back. Daughter #1 cringed.
Hubby then attempted to merge. Misjudging the width of the rental car, Hubby took out the front of Slider Hater.
Yep, that was fender-bender #3 for our family in nine days.
Karma….freakin’ chipmunk.
Subourbon Mom 