Filed under: Middle Age, Parenting | Tags: adulthood, aging, elderly, family, growing old, humor, memory, menopause, Middle-Age, mom, parenting, parents, south, southern
I remember the day I was with my kids in an antique shop, and I had to explain what a typewriter was and how it worked. They were interested for about twenty seconds, and then I heard myself droning on and on and on, like all older people do when they get a chance to reminisce about “The Good Ol’ Days.”
When I mentioned this incident to some friends, we began talking about the things that we will one day start doing to our kids to drive them crazy. So, while drinking our coffee on the deck at some un-Godly hour in the morning (because that’s when us Middle-Aged people get up now), we made a list of things to remember as we approach The Golden Years:
1. Make sure you have a hobby and stay busy. It will help keep your mind alert, and it will help keep you from driving the rest of your family crazy.
2. Go out and make new stories so you’re not telling the same ones over and over. It’s ok to tell the same family history stories over and over again—especially if you’re Southern. That’s how family legends are born. But make sure you have new ones, too. Otherwise, you’ll become one of those crazy legends. (I suppose that’s not half-bad, either–at least they’ll remember you).
3. Keep a list by the phone of things you want to discuss with people. When they return your call, you’ll have a better chance of remembering why you called them in the first place.
4. Don’t wear Velcro shoes. Those are for preschoolers ONLY.
5. Don’t talk about your sex life. Nobody wants that mental image.
6. Label the furniture and knick-knacks in your house. If it has a story behind it, write that down, too. Let your heirs know why it’s in your house in the first place, and maybe it’ll end up in theirs instead of an estate sale.
7. Clip your fingernails and toenails—enough said.
8. Make it a regular practice of being fully clothed during the day. Nobody wants a preview of what’s to come.
9. Admit you really can’t hear/see/remember things. Don’t try to work through them. In the words of Clint Eastwood, “improvise—adapt–overcome.” Get a hearing aid/glasses/notepad. (Refer to #3 if you forgot)
10. Stop trying to convince yourself that the Darth Vader wrap-around glasses are cool. They’re not.
11. Trim ear/nose/eyebrow hair. No one likes hanging out with a living chia pet. Grandchildren can help you with this. They love scissors.
12. Help protect the environment—turn down the heat and put on more clothes. Just because you’re almost done with the environment doesn’t mean the rest of us are.
Feel free to add to my list in the comments. Now, I’m going to post this list somewhere important, like next to my pill-a-day box. Then, I’m going to try to remember where I put the remote and turn up the t.v. I’ll bet it’s somewhere near the phone.
Filed under: Sports | Tags: family, French kiss, humor, kids, Kissing, Middle-Age, mom, parenting, parents, raising kids, sex, south, southern, subourbonmom, teenagers, teens, Valentine's Day
I’m beginning to understand now why my mom never talked to me about anything to do with sex or relationships. The topic of sex and love with your kids is a minefield, and I am regularly blowing my opportunities to impart wisdom.
Take, for example, the topic of first real kisses (the French kind).
While driving to pick up the girls from school on Thursday, I was thinking about Valentine’s Day, which led to reminiscing about past Valentines, and from there I digressed into past boyfriends. Somewhere between Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble I remembered my first kiss. Not the fireworks that I anticipated…
I can’t remember where my keys are, but I can bring THAT up from the vault?
I vaguely recall it as being in a dark room with a boy I didn’t really like that much, REO Speedwagon playing in the background, and a spinning bottle… and a lot of spit.
As I waited in the carpool line, I wondered why people kiss in the first place. I mean, think about it. Who on earth thought touching lips and tongues would be sensual? We eat, sneeze, cough, and probably have bad breath most of the time. Not to mention the weird thing in there we call a tongue—not a particularly attractive anatomical feature, if you ask me.
According to a couple of strange and unreliable websites, some anthropologists speculate kissing is a primal way of sampling a potential mate’s pheromones, determining a mate’s personality and potential. If that’s the case, no wonder I was so grossed out.
Others speculate kissing was a learned behavior, since other animals do it. I don’t believe that one–after all, we don’t lick ourselves, do we?
So I took a survey of some friends’ first kisses, and the nearly universal response was that it was…”awful.” But there was one caveat—if you were kissing someone who was older (read “more experienced”), it was definitely better.
The other thing I found out is there are several kinds of “awful” first kisses:
The Slobberer
The Tongue Thruster
The Tongue Sucker
The Lip Biter
The “I-Have-No-Idea-How-Much-My-Head-Weighs” Leaner
The Absentee (no tongue at all)
The Stuffer (similar to the Tongue Thruster but more tongue, less movement)
The Side-to-Side Rotator (just pick one side of the face to stay on for a while!)
So, when my daughters asked me what it would be like (and I’m assuming, like an ostrich with my head in the sand, that it still hasn’t happened yet), I told them it probably wouldn’t be all that great the first time, and poured myself a drink.
And then, in a moment of stupidity, I told them it would get better.
Yep, I basically said practice makes perfect.
Excellent parenting.
Filed under: Sports | Tags: bourbon, commercials, Dancing, family, football, Half-Time, humor, Middle-Age, mom, NFL, Redskins, south, southern, sports, subourbonmom, Super Bowl, tailgate
You know you’re getting old when you realize the half-time show and commercials during the Super Bowl are clearly not aimed at you. And yes, People-Who-Knew-Me-Back-In-The-Day, I am aware of the HUGE hypocrisy I’m about to sling, like Flacco to Anquan Boldin.
So there I sat with twenty people in my living room, excited to see what new heights of comedy the advertising community could come up with. Within five minutes, I was glancing back and forth between my 75-year-old mom and my 13-year-old daughter, trying to take their mental temperatures as I watched a larger than life make-out session on tv. Yep, nothing better than watching slimy tongues do their thing as surround sound speakers amplify the lip-smacking, sucking noises, coming from the couple on the screen. At least porn has cheesy music to cover up what no one wants to hear (so I’ve been told). My mom was pursing her lips in disapproval—no surprise there. But Daughter #2 had actually glanced up from her phone, a look of fascinated horror on her face, as if she had caught me (again) watching another episode of The Vampire Diaries.
The Half-time show was the usual spectacular light and dance extravaganza, with the same strange group of kids screaming madly at the bottom of the stage (Who are they, anyway? Professional seat fillers?). All was as expected, except that Beyonce, a beautiful girl and phenomenal singer, was wearing…a teddy? Maybe this is the reason the Grammys have put limits on the “puffy skin” exposure. But I give Beyonce full credit—she can dance and move her body in ways I never could, even at parties with way too many beers and AC/DC pounding “You Shook Me All Night Long” on the stereo. She’s amazing. Ten years ago, I probably would have been fine with it, but these days, when I’m having weekly discussions with my teenage daughters about what’s appropriate to wear, I found myself wincing with every glimpse of black lace.
Thanks for backing me up, NFL.
I could have overlooked all of that because I really enjoy the Super Bowl commercials, and all the western gluttony that they portray. And a few of them were great—the traditional Clydesdale and “God made a farmer” commercials come to mind–but the creepy, dark Budweiser commercials that tried to make a bunch of Twenty-Somethings look mysterious and sophisticated missed the mark. Chances are, those post-Twi-Hards in the ads are probably broke, still living at home, and have college degrees that are useless. And I don’t care what color you name the beer (Sapphire, Black Crown, etc.), or what sophisticated-looking label you slap on the bottle, it’s still Budweiser…the same Bud our dads drank when they were working on the car, mowing the grass or fishing.
You may ask, “Are you banning the Super Bowl?” Hell no. I’m just going to turn down the sound at half-time, put on some cheesey porn tunes (can you buy those on iTunes?), and see if I can tell the difference. I’ll still judge the commercials.
Filed under: Middle Age, Parenting | Tags: bourbon, Bumper stickers, carpool, cars, chipmunk, driving, family, football, humor, kharma, magnets, Middle-Age, minivans, mom, politics, south, southern, subourbonmom, SUV, tailgate
Being the parent of teens who can’t drive yet, I spend approximately half of my day in my car, driving to and from sleepovers, sporting events and subsequent visits to the orthopedist. I have become an expert at iPhone games, deciphering vanity license plates (if it takes more than 5 seconds you need to pick another one), and reading bumper stickers. It’s the bumper stickers I want to talk about.
Bumper stickers came into popularity after WWII, in the form of flags attached with wire to car bumpers, according to that bastion of nebulous truth, Wikipedia (Since I’m in my car right now I don’t have a way to verify this). Magnets have been around even longer. So why has it taken us 70 years to figure out how to make flat magnet stickers that don’t ruin your paint job?
As if FaceBook, Instagram, and SnapChat aren’t enough, we have bumper stickers/magnets for everything, announcing to the motorized world our political affiliations, accomplishments, beliefs, and travel habits. There are stickers for Republicans, Democrats, Tea Partiers, and someone named Ron Paul who I still haven’t Googled; there are pro-life, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-term limits, pro-America, anti-war, anti-Israel, anti-Islamist, anti-Christian, anti-Wall Street, and anti-gun stickers, to mention a few.
Please explain to me how, if I can watch an entire debate and still not know who I’m voting for, why you think a bumper sticker is going to make up my mind? Same thing for the religious bumper stickers–if I’ve been going to church my whole life, have read books on various world religions, and I’m still searching, do you really think that criss-cross fish thing is going to make me Born-Again?
There are Soccer Moms, Baseball Dads, Football Fanatics, and entire families made of stick figures on every mini-van and SUV. My favorite of these was one that has a parent stick figure missing, and hand-written in marker were the words “Position Vacant.” Maybe they could add stick figure step-parents by having them on a staircase; or, half-brother and –sisters by cutting the stick figures in half. The modern family defies stick figure decals.
And let’s not forget the rampant joggers and runners who brag about their marathons, half-marathons and 10k races with stickers. If I put a running sticker on my car, it would say .1K—Car to Bar Relay.
Last year I finally bought a bumper sticker. It said, “Don’t use your turn signal –keep me in suspense”—a HUGE pet-peeve of mine. Turn signals are NOT optional. I was excited to put it on until I realized no one across an intersection would be able to see it if I put it on the front of my car. So, there it sits on my kitchen counter, taunting me with the knowledge I will have to keep my snarky comments inside my car instead of telling the world how I feel. Perhaps it’s just as well. Very few people would understand a sticker that says, “1 frozen chipmunk =3 car accidents—I dare you.”
Filed under: Parenting | Tags: boogers, children, education, family, humor, kids, Middle-Age, mom, nose, south, southern, subourbonmom, talking with kids, teenagers humor, teens
For years I’ve been secure in the knowledge that the days of awkward, existential questions from my kids were over. No more sitting at a stoplight in the minivan while a high-pitched voice asks from the backseat, “Mommy, do angels sleep?” Or, “Does Heaven look different then here?”
I was safe in the anticipation that with the onset of the teenage years, our conversations would digress from angels and God to the 4 D’s: Drinking, Driving, Drugs and Dating. I was ready to partake in Teachable Moments, to share my values and offer advice gleaned from decades of experience.
But clearly, my daughter is not.
The following is an actual conversation I had in the car with Daughter #2…
Daughter #2: “Does your nose get used to the smell of your boogers so you don’t smell them?”
Me: “They don’t smell.” Now I’m secretly trying to see if I have any in my nose, and if they do in fact, smell…I never really thought about it before…
Daughter #2: “How do you know? If your nose is used to them, you wouldn’t know if they smelled or not.”
Me: “I know because if they smelled, I would be able to smell yours, or anybody else’s.” Ugh–horrible visual of me noticing a strange scent, wafting over from someone else’s nose…
Daughter #2: “But what if all boogers smelled the same? Then you wouldn’t know if your nose got used to them or not.”
Yep, actual, recent conversation.
I’m pretty sure that eventually, those normal mom/teen conversations will happen, but probably not for a long time.
And I’m ok with that.
But you’re trying to see if you can smell them, aren’t you?
Subourbon Mom 