Motherhood – Page 2 – hellsfunnybelle

I’m ready for Christmas

November 4, 2014November 5, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in parent life, southern life, the girl with the inner purple hair

It’s been a rough week.

My hip hurts. And even though the doctors say it’s arthritis, I’m way too young to hear that come out of any professional’s mouth.

One of my cats died Sunday morning. But he was 417 years old, so it was time.

My house is not the kind of clean I would like it to be, but we’ll blame that on the aforementioned hip, and ignore the fact that I tend to have piles of clean laundry in my bedroom always.

My shoes are strewn about my bedroom in the pattern of a mad woman looking for golden slippers in the bottom of a stack of casual canvas boots, but that, too, is somewhat normal.

I’ve had to say “Good-bye” to someone who hated me with the class and debonair air that would have made my Dad proud, and “Hello” to someone who doesn’t know me with a restrained giddiness. Neither of these things is easy for me.

jobs-pic My kid got a job, but his grades are wanting and after a round of going toe-to-toe with one of his teachers for her inane rules, I can’t seem to get him to realize that doing well at school and adhering to those stupid rules is more important than skateboarding.

My other kid can’t understand why I’m not jumping at the bit to chauffeur him off to Hickory, NC to see his online girlfriend and leave him there alone with her for a couple of hours. Did I mention that Hickory is “only” five hours away? Did I mention he’s only 14?

I’ve wrapped up one fund-raising event, but am settling in the realization that I still have several more to go, and the illusion of having a break between them is a pipe dream.

I’m a little homesick for Cincinnati, my friends there and its never-ending buffet of arts and culture, all the while ignoring, of course, its crappy football team, crazy politics and pollution.

There’s a part of me that wants to cross off everything on my “to do” list and replace it with “stay in pajamas, retire to bed and pull covers over head.”

There is an end in sight though.

Christmas is coming.

It’s only four days after Halloween and Christmas is upon us.

Since Saturday, November 1 by my calendar, I’ve received more than 12 holiday emails from retailers, avoided no less than six holiday specials on Lifetime and listened to zero holiday tunes on a local radio station, even though they are now playing them non-stop.

Usually, this is where I go into a holiday rant about giving me a break and allowing me to revel in one holiday before we go into another. Mostly, I think this is based on the guilt of not having even so much as looked at a single purchase in that “Oh, this would make a great present for someone” mindset or having knit a single stitch for that “oh so perfect handmade present.”

Usually, I get upset about the idea of Christmas decorations going up in stores on October 30 and how we ought to at least get through the Day of the Dead and Veterans Day before we start thinking about Thanksgiving, let alone Christmas. Usually, I’m already bemoaning what disasters will befall us THIS Thanksgiving day (and there are disasters) even without the sister-in-law from Hell in the house, and railing against how oppressive the Christmas holidays are.

But this year, it’s different.

This year, I think I need a little Christmas cheer. Maybe not 54 days of it, but still…

This year, I think I’m ready to start putting up lights and bringing out the Santas early.

Halloween-decorations In September, we put out the Halloween decorations in the yard. The inflatable “Pop Goes the Evil” maniacal clown Jack-in-the-Box with it’s creepy music has been playing in my yard and in my psyche for a month alongside the inflatable black cat, the inflatable overgrown spider and the inflatable “Witch meets Pumpkin.” Zombie corpses dot our graveyard front yard and a new skeleton dog has joined the troop. Tombstones line the top of my tea pot cabinet and Jack o’Lanterns loom from every surface of our living room, bathroom and kitchen. Wicked witches and ghostly pictures hang where we see them every day.

And I didn’t even get all the Halloween decorations out.

But now, I’m ready to put them away. I think I kind of want some joy.

I want to replace our black glittered roses in the bathroom with holly and evergreens. I want to see Santa and the promise of a happy Christmas morning instead of macabre faces and grimacing skeletons. I want to hold a season in childlike wonder instead of feigned fear.

Maybe I am getting old.

I miss the days when our kids looked forward to advent calendars filled with candy and presents under the tree and trips to the mall Santa who only mildly wreaked of cigarette smoke and bourbon. I miss the days when they counted down the “sleeps” ’til Christmas like the days ’til summer vacation.

I miss the days of my kitchen smelling of cloves and cinnamon and nutmeg and sugar cookies instead of barbeque and pumpkin spice.

I miss the days of happy embraces and red noses and long lingering hugs on the front steps, instead of the creepy movies on TV designed to scare the bejesus out of us.

That’s not to say we don’t have those feelings and expectations of happy anymore despite the season, but I want the most perfect of them now.

I want to feel that happy giddiness that comes with the expectation of a joyous morning and the coma-induced aftermath of present opening and unexpected surprises. I have plans for a few of those awe-inspiring surprises in store for the people who mean so much to me. I want to see them now. I want to linger on their expressions when they rip away the wrapping paper.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving. I love the feeling of having the people I care about close to me and eating with me the food that I’ve cooked. I love lounging on the couch and watching parades and football while the world’s most perfect turkey cooks in the oven. I love the lazy happiness that comes after a great party of mismatched dishes and more food than a family and friends could ever possibly eat.

Heck, I even like the bliss of a perfect Thanksgiving leftover sandwich, complete with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce.

But I think this year, after all the hardships and all the stress and all the turmoil, I need to just be happy for a while. Maybe even 54 days worth. Fridgi-Xmas-Photo-Presents-Open-1

There’s a carefree attitude that comes with Christmas that brings out the happy in those who let it infect them. And they tend to spread it amongst their friends and companions.

It’s the ebola of holidays.

So, for once, I’m ready to forego the whining and moaning about “One holiday at a time, please.” I’m ready to give up my pretense that I want to have breaks between my holidays and actually enjoy creating a warm, comforting environment. I’m ready to stop pretending that I don’t like it and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m ready to start seeing circles in the “Toys R Us” catalogue and turned down pages of “Wireless.” I’m ready to know that what I do over the next 54 days will bring some joy to someone.

I need some happy.

It’s been a really tough week.

Dear women’s magazines, I give up

September 10, 2014September 10, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in parent life, southern life, the girl with the inner purple hair

Okay, women’s magazines, you win.

I give up.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to stop reading you, I’m just not going to succumb to your particular brand of torture anymore.

I’ve read women’s magazines since I was a little girl. I drooled over recipes and wondered what it would be like, as a teenager, to have the freedom to make “Pan-seared Duck with orange confit and a bed of microgreens.”

I’ll admit it, I’ve been a foodie since I was knee high to a Kitchen Aid, but now… I just don’t think I can take this anymore.

You’ve all just gone over the top.

Like any good foodie mom, I read your “How to make a gourmet dinner for your family in less than 30 minutes” and I want to be able to do that.

Making a dinner for my family that would please the palate of Gordon Ramsey in half an hour using only 15 simple ingredients? So doable, I thought.

Gone are the days of salmon patties with buttered egg noodles and corn. Tomorrow, it’s Korean beef lettuce wraps with soba noodles and edamame. I can do this!, I thought.

But now, you’re just being silly. Now, you’re putting in your magazines things no kid who isn’t starving or on a forced diet would eat.

It’s just that, recently, reality has hit me.

I don’t care what your cooks do in your kitchen, no matter how hard I try, there’s no way I’m making a three course dinner for four in less than an hour. I know, I know, you’ve got all those timing things outlined in your directions, but honestly, how you do all that chopping when you’ve got to help with homework and clean the house is beyond me.

And another thing, do you think you could start printing recipes that use ingredients I might actually have in my kitchen?

One recently included mashed parsnips. mashed-parsnips

Parsnips?

Really?

Who the hell buys parnsips on a regular basis?

I’d like to make gourmet meals, really I would.

But I think if I were to serve pomegranate, watercress and roasted macadamia nut salad my guys would look at me like I had stepped off of the pages of Bourgious Kitchen and straight into the world of la-la land.

And as much as I’d like to make a panko and peanut crusted chicken breast with orzo and a side of pan roasted broccolini, I’ve only got stove top stuffing mix, a can of cream of mushroom soup and some french-style green beans in my pantry.

I can’t go out spending $40 on one dish that my family will say “Eh. It was okay” to, when I’ve got another 13 dishes to make and only $300 to spend, over the next two weeks – and that includes money for pizza night!

A quick look at some of my cookbooks proves my point. In the Betty Crocker Family Dinners in a Hurry cookbook, circa 1969 (yes, I’m well aware that some of my cookbooks are just as old as I am – almost), there’s a recipe for Broiled Round Steak with Mustard Butter and Herbed Tomatoes that lists 8 ingredients for the main and side combined – and that’s INCLUDING the round steak! – that takes less than 20 minutes to make and serves 6.

In Southern Living’s May 2014 edition, the recipe for Flank Steak and Cucumber Salad lists 16 ingredients, including Asian chili paste (“such as Huy Fong” it says) and English cucumbers (in my head, I swear I was thinking “I say, are you a regular cucumber, or do you come from across the pond, dear chap?”).

Sixteen ingredients. For a salad. That takes nearly an hour to prepare. And serves 4.

Are you kidding me?

When the boys were younger, I was an industrious chef.

I’d make Halloween dinners that looked like witches’ fingers with ghostly shaped mashed potatoes. I made weekday dinners of tuna melts that looked like little boats with American cheese slice sails. I made decorated cupcakes for school birthday parties.

(Just a note – when you make cupcakes in ice cream cones decorated to look like.. well, ice cream cones… uhm, there’s no way you can ever get over the look in your kids’ school friends’ faces when they realize it’s not, in reality, ice cream.)

But today, … uhm… not so much.

Tonight when I went into the kitchen, I had no idea what I was making until I found a freezer bag of the poultry variety, a box of long grain and wild rice mix, some potato chips, shredded cheese and a can of mushroom soup.

Thank God, for cream of mushroom soup.

Throw that together with sauteed onions, pimentos and frozen peas, and viola! Casserole surprise!

Still took an hour though. And that’s not counting the time spent pondering what the hell am I supposed to make tonight.

But it was affordable. I would say I probably spent $7-$10 on the whole meal, and that’s including the meat substance – whatever it was.

And they ate it! They actually ate it and said “Not bad, Mom.”

Running to the store to buy the ingredients of the aforementioned flank steak and I would have easily gone through $40, and that’s not including Huy Fong (whatever the hell that is, and depending entirely on whether my small town Southern grocery store would have actually had anything remotely resembling it).

It’s just too much.

If I’m honest, I just don’t have the time for that crap. Heck, I don’t even know where I would find pomegranates in my hometown.

I’m all about good cooking and living with nice things, but enough is enough. I’m not ever going to host a party where my friends are going to turn up their noses at my cornbread salad, or homemade guacamole. I like all your stuff, but, damn, it’s just too over the top anymore. Can’t you just print normal recipes?

I want my family to be happy, but not at the cost of spending beyond my means. And I’m not alone. Making a gourmet dinner for my family at the cost of their college funds? Not likely.

You all go ahead and make your spinach infused fish fillets with cous cous and sauteed Italian eggplant.

I’ll be the one making fried chicken in my cast-iron skillet and smiling when my kids actually eat it.

Course, that does cut down on the money I save in eating leftovers though…

Back to drool shopping

August 19, 2014August 20, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in parent life, southern life, the girl with the inner purple hair

It occurs to me that high school is the denouement of back-to-school shopping.

Or maybe it is the eye of the storm between kindergarten and college.

It’s hard to tell.

Mostly, because it’s so boring.

This year, back-to-school shopping for my high school students has been less than fun.

When my boys and I went shopping a few weeks afo – with obligatory stops at Hot Topic, American Eagle and Aeropostale – the reaction ranged from “Yeah, it’s cool, I guess” to “Mom! Stop! You’re touching me in public! Have we not discussed this?”

And no matter where we go, it’s all the same stuff.

I’ve bought enough jeans to clothe the entire male population of Bolivia.

Half of these jeans look as if they have been worn BY the male population of Bolivia every day for all 378 days of the World Cup. The other half looks as if they have been dipped in the vat of dye that changed forever the color of the Joker’s hair.

Everything else is black. Or blue. To match, one can only assume, my kids’ moods.

Where are the dress shirts and the kicky sweaters that got pulled out for the first day of school and on picture day?

No where, that’s where.

Which, of course, is also where their underwear is. Every time I ask if they need new ones, they mumble and shrug, leaving me to believe that all the good underwear I bought them last year has been traded to the Bolivians for pairs that show more wear and tear. Ditto their socks.

Come to think of it, maybe the Bolivians are to blame for our recent spoon shortage as well.

Gone are the long discussions where my sons and I anxiously decided between Iron Man or Bakugan for the perfect backpack personality for the new school year. Gone are the smells of a brand new Trapper Keeper, or the never before opened box of 64 Crayola crayons – complete with silver, gold and bronze. Gone are the walks down the aisles of Kmart, buying matching Granimals and Underoos.

Now, instead, I buy notebooks, dry erase markers, loose-leaf graph paper and 3-ring binders.

Bleah.

I used to look forward to back-to-school shopping as a kid.

The new backpacks, the new lunch boxes, the loose leaf paper and crisp sharpened pencils – it’s like you get to go crazy at Office Depot! And the clothes! Oh, my GOD, don’t get me started.

When I was a little girl, each August meant two new pairs of jeans, one dressy outfit, a new pair of Nikes, at least three or four new shirts, and a smattering of really cool skirts that would spend more time on my closet floor than on my hips, but that came straight out of the pages of Seventeen, so I knew I would look good whenever I got around to wearing them.

God, I loved those go go boots... is it okay for a middle aged woman to wear short skirts, sweater vests and go go boots still? — God, I loved those go go boots… is it okay for a middle aged woman to wear short skirts, sweater vests and go go boots still?

One year, I got a red plaid school lunch box with matching Thermos, that matched two of my new outfits in red and black. I even had red, shiny go go boots to go with them, which was WAY cooler than the year before’s purple corduroys and purple turtleneck body suit that SO did not match my Jonathan Livingston Seagull lunch box.

“Thanks, Mom! I love them!” I said, flinging my arms around my mother’s neck.

It really was much easier to please me back then.

In years past, I even looked forward to buying all the things my kids would need to be stellar students.

One year, their back-to-school supply list included, along with the regular paper, pens and pencils – one ZipLock gallon freezer bag, one box of Kleenex, one bottle of anti-bacterial liquid and one bag of candy. The boys used to get a kick out of picking out their candy, their favorite colored folders and their new pencils with their almost sharp enough to be deadly tips.

Not anymore.

This year’s list included: one artist’s sketch pad, one Pearl eraser (pink), two TI-83 calculators (cost $140 per), four packs of index cards (that I can guarantee you will never be used), post-it note pads and a different 3-ring binder for every subject.

Not one mention of a Trapper Keeper anywhere!

And when I ask my sons if they like the new stuff we’ve picked out, their responses range from “Eh.” to “I guess so.”

Joy.

This past week, I bought what we needed in terms of pens, and pencils, and paper. Whatever.

Seriously, how much paper do teachers think that two teenagers are going to go through in a school year? I’ve bought enough paper to keep my office in business for half a year, and we’ve got seven people in there! I’ve bought enough blue and black pens to write “I will not chew gum in school” for my junior high school teacher Ms. Ford seven BILLION times – which coincidentally, is roughly double what I wrote for her when I was actually in her class.

I know that in two years, it will get better. My oldest will tromp off to college and there will be new college-themed clothes, the microwave and the mini fridge to buy – along with the matching bedroom set and the bathroom towels. And I know most of this he will use and then inevitably throw on the floor, only to bring home to me to clean and get rid of the “funky smell.”

It’s just not fair. It’s like this let down after years of detailed lists and character stuff that forever reminded me that they were kids.

Where’s the fun in buying warehouse store quantities of office supplies? Where’s the challenge? Where’s the creativity?

Maybe it’s the fact that they are in high school. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re not “kids” anymore. Maybe it’s just another fact of being a mom to boys. But there’s no getting over the fact that it’s boring.

I blame the Bolivians.

2014 (c) Copyright Liz Carey

Cooking discovery nights

June 13, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in parent life, the girl with the inner purple hair

We’ve reached the moment during the week that I hate the most.

I hate cooking discoveries... really. — I hate cooking discoveries… really.

It’s the cooking discovery moment.

It happens every week, so I should be better prepared for it… maybe even plan for it or something, but I never do and I just assume that each one will be the last one and we won’t fight like this.

Me and my kitchen that is.

I hate my kitchen during cooking discovery moments too.

Right now, it is 6:13 p.m., on Thursday, June 12. It is the first night I’ve had the chance to cook a real home-cooked meal for my family this week… I don’t know that burrito night on Monday counts, since all I did was sauté up some chicken with a packet of seasonings and slice veggies or open cans of stuff. Okay, so it’s a lame home-cooked dinner, but I’ll still take it.

Anyway… every two weeks, I write up a list of what we will eat for the next fourteen days, noting on the schedule any after school/after work activities that might interfere with a normal cooking and eating pattern. For instance, Monday – I had to run to the grocery store and do shopping since we didn’t get a chance to do it this weekend, and then Tuesday, I had to cover the primary election for the Associated Press, and then Wednesday was Working Woman’s Wednesday, which meant margaritas with my BFF and schmoozing.

So Monday was burritos; Tuesday was Hubbie cooking hot dogs and French fries; Wednesday was salmon and noodles.

this or cooking fish... you chose... — this or cooking fish… you chose…

Like I’m going to hurry home to slave in a kitchen to make fish instead of drinking margaritas, right?

But now it’s Thursday. And it’s supposed to be Pepper Steak night.

My steak is defrosting in the microwave and I’m sautéing up some onions and garlic, and my rice is on the boil, and I’m looking for my green pepper, and…of course, there’s no green pepper.

Which is weird because I know I bought a green pepper. In fact, I know I bought two on Saturday when I was making brats, but I only sliced up one because no one ever eats the green pepper and onion stuff I make to go with my brats except me. I know there should be one left.

It’s not like anyone in this house is going to open up the fridge and say to themselves “Hmmmm, you know what I’d really like right now? Some green pepper… with ranch! That’s a good snack!”

Yes, peanut butter and cheezits is a real thing... — Yes, peanut butter and cheezits is a real thing…

No, these are guys who are more likely to say “What can I snack on that does not require an inordinate amount of work to get out and/or put away?… We’ve got fruit loops, but that would require a bowl, finding a spoon and the act of pouring some milk. Jeez, I might as well cook… there’s tortilla chips and salsa, but that would also require a bowl and getting the tortilla chips off the top of the fridge… there’s peanut butter, crackers in a sealed box, cocoa powder, a half-opened box of Cheezits and a microwavable pizza roll snack box … Okay, peanut butter on Cheezits it is!”

SO…I’m half way through making pepper steak, and I discover we have no green pepper. This is cooking discovery time. I’ve discovered I have no green pepper and will have to discover what to make in its place.

Invariably, this happens at least once every other week. I go to the store as soon as I get off work, grab a few mad dash items and come home to start supper only to find that I am missing the one key ingredient that makes the dish whole.

And because I’m too lazy, or tired, or busy to run back to the store, I have two choices – make something else, or get someone else to do it for me.

Hubbie was exhausted from being in the heat all day so there’s no way I’m making him get up. For a few moments, I actually consider giving my 14-year-old son the keys to my Jeep. Then I remember what it was like when we were practice driving, and realized I was too tired to have my face all over the evening news if he drives through a gas station pump or the new sliding doors of the grocery store.

And just as inevitably, while I’m standing here pondering what the heck to do, someone asks – “What are we having for dinner?” To which, the response is, as always, “I have no idea.”

While I stir the rice and pour myself a glass of wine to calm my nerves, I look through the kitchen cabinet… canned carrots, canned chili, canned pineapple, canned mushrooms, some canned clams, a half-empty package of Arborio rice and four different kinds of cereal, none of them with marshmallows in them.

Not only was dinner going to be difficult, but also the lack of marshmallow cereal meant no dessert. Bummer.

I decided to improvise and make a stir-fried beef with the mushrooms and pineapple, throwing in some oyster sauce and sesame oil from the refrigerator for good measure.

I had just enough time to pop some frozen egg rolls into the oven and finish the rice while the beef was cooking down its sauce. It was going to be a good dinner after all.

It just doesn’t look right. It looks bland. I think that’s why the Chinese put so many vegetables in their stir-fries, to make them look better. Otherwise, it’s just a pile of drab sitting on a pile of white on your table.

When Hubbie comes in to talk to me and grab a beer, I make one last look for a few more veggies to pop into the dish – just to brighten things up – like a carrot or some thing green.

Hubbie goes outside and grabs summer squash from the garden, but just as quickly he forbids me from putting it in the stir fry saying squash doesn’t GO with stir fry…

It’s discovery night, I’m thinking to myself…. Let’s discover if you’re wrong… But no, he’s right. Squash doesn’t sound like it would go all that well with oyster sauce.

Instead, I turn back to the refrigerator. The carrots have seen better days. The radishes don’t look all that edible, and no one wants limp celery in anything.

Then, as I close the vegetable bins and moved aside the tortillas and cheese,something peaks out at me from the bottom refrigerator shelf and I know I could just scream. I’ve just found exactly what I needed to add.

A green pepper.

Stupid cooking discovery moments…

Mommy Snearest

May 13, 2014May 28, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in parent life, southern life, the girl with the inner purple hair, Uncategorized

There are days when I find myself trying to measure up to the idea of the perfect mom.

You know the ones… they’re online – on Twitter and on Facebook – always talking about their perfect lives and their perfect families and their perfect days at home, working around the house.

They’re the ones that are all matchy-matchy, from their bows in their hair to their designer shoes. And while they talk about their problems, they actually don’t have any because their kids are actually perfect, as are their husbands, their dogs and their houses.

While there are days I wish I could live like them, the fact of the matter is I will never live like them.

In the first place, I have to work for a living. In the second place, I’m about as far from perfect as you can get. And in the third place, I just wasn’t brought up that way.

Don’t get me wrong; my mom brought me up right. If it weren’t for my mother, I would still be dressing in nothing but jeans and t-shirts… okay, I still do that on the weekends, but that doesn’t count. I mean, if it weren’t for my mother, I would not be making a conscious effort to have my underwear match my outfits… kinda like that clean underwear mama mantra on steroids.

It’s just that she also brought me up to be myself and to love who I was instead of always trying to live someone else’s life.

So, that kind of mom isn’t really my way of life.

They are the moms who drive their BMWs to the local organic farm to purchase local fresh produce for their gourmet meals, made possible by the fact that they have all the time in the world to drive to the organic farm and come home and cook a gourmet meal.

I am the mom who roars up to the farmers’ market in her Jeep, in a tie-dye t-shirt and matching sunglasses, with INXS blaring out the windows and grabs the closest box of strawberries to save a few minutes before roaring home to throw something together for dinner.

They are the moms who “salon” to have all manner of their body hair teased, tweezed, tweaked or otherwise tamed.

I am the mom who calls her kid from the back porch and asks them to bring her a razor, because she missed some hairs while she was in the shower.

True story. Just happened.

They’re the moms whose housekeeper takes care of all of the problems in the house while they “work” on their “mommy blog” next to the pool.

I am the mom who writes at night after my second glass of wine and sweeping the kitchen floor for the seventh time since I got home from work.

And while they are the moms whose children were in their perfectly spotless rooms before Mother’s Day making them gifts to celebrate their motherliness – like knitting them a coffeemaker to replace their broken one, or creating art out of tooth picks and dryer lint that would most certainly be hanging in the Louvre if it weren’t on her walls, I am the mom whose kids borrowed my credit card last weekend to buy my Mother’s Day present and argued for the better part of an hour over whose was better.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge those moms their perfect lives, and I’m sure they are happy.

There’s just always that niggling little voice in the back of my head that reminds me I am not one of them. And that for some reason, I should strive to be one of them.

But I can’t live like that.

I’m not home baking cookies; I’m at work. I’m not president of the PTA – I did that once. It wasn’t pretty. I’m don’t have dinner ready by the time they and their father get home from their important things. I slap together the occasional casserole when I have my own important things to do.

And more than that, I’m not perfect. I have curves. I haven’t had the same hair color six months in a row since I was 29. I have a wardrobe that consists primarily of jeans, stretch pants and business attire in red, black, white and tan. I’m a workaholic. I live in flip-flops and bare feet whenever I can from April until November. I can be a little crazy.

Stop rolling your eyes and saying “a little?”

I’m not the ideal mom to others, I suppose, but my kids and husband think I’m pretty okay, even when I dance in the grocery store aisle or sing off key.

I guess all that’s important is that I’m the ideal mom to them.

I can live with that.

Riding in cars with mom

May 11, 2014May 28, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in parent life, the girl with the inner purple hair, Uncategorized

The other day I came home to see my 15-year-old, Mason, in the passenger seat of a car driven by his newly drivers’ licensed friend.

They just were pulling out of our driveway as I drove up. While my heart sank, Mason looked at me from the window and waved.

I really could only think of one thing.

“Okay, Mom. I get it.”

All of a sudden, I could hear my Mom’s voice in my head – “I’m not sure I want you in a car with someone who just got their license.”

And I could feel it beginning to come out of my throat as I mouthed the words “Wait!”

As Moms we get to experience a lot of things – the joy of having your child wrap their fingers around yours; the frustration of a poop explosion at exactly the wrong moment; the heart-bursting pride of watching your child succeed when even they thought they couldn’t; the unexpected blend of concern and consternation when the projectile vomiting begins, and the awe of watching them grow up.

Life has its ups and downs.

We never really think about what it meant to be our moms, until one day, you’re confronted with the reality of being a mom yourself.

My Mom was pretty cool when I was Mason’s age.

She let me be myself, even though there was more than a little bit of gentle prodding to wear something other than jeans and a t-shirt, my Dad’s surgical scrubs or purchases from the Army/Navy store clearance rack.

She let me date losers to find out on my own what kind of losers they really were. And never ONCE did she say “I told you so.” Well, not to my face anyway. She told me once that she knew if she said “No,” I would run right to him and really be in trouble. Smart woman. And she did confide in me years later that she was really, really, REALLY glad her plan worked.

She bought me beautiful dresses and skirts when I needed them, even though I hardly ever wore anything other than jeans and usually ruined the whole girly look by doing something stupid like pulling the crinoline all the way up to serve as makeshift strapless bra or matching my beautiful madras plaid skirt to a popped collar polo under a ripped neck sweatshirt.

Look, I was going for a “Flashdance” meets “punk” meets “preppy” look. Don’t judge.

She was always there for me, always teaching me how to be a better person, how to let go of expectations, how to deal with tragedy with courage and bravery.

Still is, in fact.

But she always worried about me, especially when I was in a car.

“Don’t let your friends drive too fast,” she’d say. “Stay off those country roads. Be careful at four-way stops. Don’t go too fast. Where are you going? Who are you going to be with? When will you be back?”

For me, it was pure torture.

“OH MY GOD! Does she NOT understand? Doesn’t she trust me? It’s not like I’m out doing drugs or screwing around, I’m just going out with friends! What harm is there in that? ”

What could possibly go wrong?

I’m sure that’s what Mason thought when I looked at him from my car with that look of abject terror on my face. “Relax, Mom, what could possibly go wrong?”

I’m sure that’s what Mason thought when I looked at him from my car with that look of abject terror on my face. “Relax, Mom, what could possibly go wrong?”

I was worried. I didn’t want him to go. He was already out of my reach and slipping through my ever-controlling fingers more and more every day. I started to worry.

My Mom still worries when I’m driving.

I’d like to say this is due to the time I sort of stole the family station wagon and took all my friends for a joy ride before wrecking the car, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that.

She worries about what could go wrong.

Recently, on a drive from Kentucky to South Carolina, she was worried about me being careful. Not that she thinks I can’t drive, she says, but that other people are crazy.

“Look, pot, I want you to watch out for all the kettles…”

She warned me about the semis.

“You know, keep an eye out for those semis. Those truck drivers can be just dangerous. Every time you see one of those horrific accidents where a semi wrecks into another car and bursts into flames, it’s almost always on a Sunday afternoon.”

Thanks, Mom.

For the longest time, I used to roll my eyes and shake my head at her concerns.

But as I sat there in those fleeting seconds while Mason and his friend pulled out into the road, every possible “what could go wrong” – from running out of gas, to being attacked by mutant hill people, to getting hit by a semi – ran through my head.

Yes, those were actual thoughts that went through my head.

And I let them go anyway.

I realized being a mom is a job you keep forever. My mom will always worry about me, just like I will always worry about my sons.

But you have to let them go in order for them to come back.

I’m so not ready for mine to leave yet. There’s so much I still have to teach them… I’m not even sure if they wear clean underwear when they go out yet.

It takes strength to let someone go and trust they will come back to you.

As I waited for them to head out, Mason flashed me a smile and waved. He was elated. They were in charge of themselves for a while. They were making their own history.

Then he made a heart shape with his thumbs and fingers and blew me a kiss.

And I realized what my mom had gone through when she watched as I ran headfirst into the wind that was the rest of my life

And it clicked.

“Thank you, Mom, I finally get it.”

Our lifelong science experiment

April 23, 2014May 28, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in Uncategorized

I don’t know how our home turned into an ongoing science experiment.

And not in that “Oh, look Mom, the leftovers from three weeks ago are moving” kind of way, but more in that “Gee, I wonder what happens if you put fire crackers in a four-month old pumpkin” kind of way.

It seems like there’s always something weird going on in our house… an experiment on how long it takes Peeps to get really good and stale, the deconstruction of one of those Fushigi balls to see if it could lead to a renewable energy source, whether or not you can boil a shark’s jaw to firm it up like it looks like they do in Jaws…

Maybe it’s because I live with men.

I mean, I can understand the firecracker thing. It was New Year’s Eve and we were running out of things to blow up (which is also, technically, an entertainment source in our house) and so the guys looked around and saw a pumpkin. Now, I should probably explain that it had been there since September and was supposed to have been used in a praline pumpkin cheesecake, but somehow that didn’t happen and it ended up just sitting outside for three months.

This in and of itself isn’t really all that unusual for our house either. We have a pretty substantial garden off of our porch that we fill with vegetables every year, but by around August I get kind of tired of picking everything and it gets hot, so the vegetables just sort of sit out there… Helps reduce the amount of planting you have to do the next year, though, I’ll tell you that.

Anyway, so the pumpkin was sitting there and someone noticed it had a soft spot in it and said “Oh, hey… I wonder what would happen if we put a firecracker in there?” which they proceeded to do.

Anyway, so the pumpkin was sitting there and someone noticed it had a soft spot in it and said “Oh, hey… I wonder what would happen if we put a firecracker in there?” which they proceeded to do.

What happens? The little soft spot in the pumpkin turns into a little hole, that’s what happens. And then, since you can’t ever just do an experiment once, and you have to test your results, the little hole turns into a bigger hole, and a little bit bigger hole, until eventually someone gets the bright idea of putting four or five fire crackers in there, since it now has room, and the whole top of the pumpkin blows off.

Which, of course, is when we discovered that smoke bombs inserted into a pumpkin with the top blown off look really cool cause the smoke comes up and sort of pours over the sides like bubbling wispy ooze. Who wouldn’t love to figure that out?

The Pumpkin Fire Cracker Experiment, of course, led to the Great Fourth of July Fire Crackers in the Soda Bottle experiment, where the idea was to see what would happen if you put water-proof fire crackers in a almost empty 20-ounce plastic Mountain Dew bottle, put the cap back on and let the fire crackers explode. Result? With a muted snap-thud, the bottle jumps almost up to the ceiling of your porch causing outbursts of testosterone-fueled giggles and screams of “Dude, wait! Let me do it!” until someone doesn’t put the top back on all the way and sulfur-infused, firecracker debris-laden Mountain Dew leftovers spill all over someone.

Really.

I guess some of that experimenting comes from me. I tend to be a little “creative” in the kitchen, and probably tend to wonder “what if” a little more than some … okay, a lot more. And some of it they get from their Dad, who is always interested in trying to figure out ways to blow things up or set things on fire or make them work faster or rework them to get them to work for him when other things don’t. As a matter of fact, Max, my youngest son, is outside right now trying to figure out how to make fire with two rocks since I took the lighter away from him. Maybe it’s inherited.

So, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that this year, we had tie-dyed Easter eggs. We hard-boiled them just like everyone else does, but then we cracked the shells and left them in the dye for about a million hours (okay, 30 minutes) until the dye had seeped into the white of the eggs.

And then we peeled them and turned them into deviled eggs. You know, when you think about it, why should the color only be on the eggs when the shells are on? I’m sure it would make egg salad pretty non-appetizing but for deviled eggs, It really did look cool. Of course, it all started with the question, “I wonder what would happen if… ”

Despite the minimal risk of danger and the frequent messes, I kind of like the idea of our never-ending experiments. It’s not just about science, but about exploration and questioning and never being satisfied with the status quo. It’s about continuing to learn every day for the rest of our lives. It’s about expanding one’s boundaries and pushing the envelope – even if the envelope is a pumpkin. And I like that my sons are learning that.

As long as they’re not questioning me.

When he saw the tie-dyed deviled eggs at Easter dinner, Max asked if I was trying to poison him so I could steal his Peeps. I told him I wasn’t.

They were still technically part of the Peep staleness experiment… duh.

Taking care of business from a million miles away

April 19, 2014May 28, 2014 by lizcarey2014, posted in Uncategorized

A week ago, I was sitting down to dinner in the midst of more than 300 of the most amazing and funny women I had ever met.

But my head wasn’t really with them. It was at home.

For four days in April, every other year, more than 350 women and a few men gather together at the University of Dayton for the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop. And for more than six years, it was a dream to attend. This time around, I decided to go.

It was a huge sacrifice for everyone involved. I wouldn’t be there for my son’s last concert. The boys would have to get up and take the bus instead of having me drive them to school. Someone would have to cook dinner. There would be no one to remind people to take out the dishes, clean the bathroom, close the refrigerator door and empty out the cat litter box.

I imagined that they probably wouldn’t even notice that I wasn’t there until it was time for dinner to magically appear on the table.

I couldn’t have been more worried or more overjoyed.

Four days with complete control of the television remote, no dishes or laundry, a bed all to myself and no bickering over who got to listen to the iPod. I could go to the bathroom without some form of human or animal coming into the room. I could sit down to dinner without having to pop back up every time my butt hit the chair to get something for someone.

And as I live in South Carolina, it is only a 1,784,329 mile drive which takes roughly nine hours with the occasional pit stops… eight and a half if you wear those astronaut diapers. So, the plan was to leave on Wednesday afternoon and cover half the trip, then drive the rest of the way the next day. After four days of enlightenment, I would leisurely drive home, reveling in the experience and letting the knowledge and tutelage I had received absorb into my brain.

It didn’t take long after I left for my head to return home.

On Wednesday, things were fine. My son had had the courtesy of waiting until the night before to tell me that he had given his good suit pants away to Goodwill and had nothing to wear to his concert, so my husband was spared the last minute trip to KMart – one which I dutifully made at 8 p.m. instead of packing. On Wednesday night though I drove through the darkness and talked to them and my mother on the phone periodically, so I didn’t feel quite so alone.

The boys had refused to let me load all of my favorite songs on to a CD (“Mom, that is SO old school”) and had instead loaded them onto the iPod, which served the dual purpose of entertaining me, and preventing my husband from killing them for arguing over it for one more time. I cranked the tunes, sang at the top of my lungs through Tennessee and Kentucky and arrived Thursday afternoon, safe if not exhausted.

I got to the hotel just in time for the phone report on how the dinner preparations were going. I called later to find that the concert had been good, even if the drive in Dad’s Jeep had been a little cold. I imagined them getting pneumonia from riding with the top down, but I was assured all was well.

It wasn’t until Friday that I began to worry. While I was saying “Yes, I think I will have another glass of wine” to the waitress, the first call came in.

“Honey, where’s the duct tape?”

This is never a good thing.

No amount of distance can overcome the fear of what could possibly need to be fixed with duct tape.

According to my husband, everyone was in their rooms, innocently watching television, when they all heard the sound of glass breaking.

“I went into our bedroom, and there was a hole the size of a softball in the window.”

The duct tape was to hold the glass together until he had a chance to replace it. And he will. But still. The window was broken. I was in Dayton. He couldn’t find the duct tape.

They needed me.

We decided that it was probably a bird that overshot the roses that grow outside of our bedroom windows. With no evidence of a rock or baseball or brick, it was the most logical conclusion. The duct tape was found, the hole was covered and all was well with the world again.

The next day, my son called during lunch to ask me if I knew where any of his high school teachers lived.

This in and of itself is not the oddest question he may have ever asked me, but rightfully so, probably one of the more worrisome. It was all innocent, he protested. According to him, a restricted drivers license needs the signature of a person who works at his school.

“Honey, you don’t have a restricted license.”

No, but his friend was getting one, and they figured if they could get one of their teachers to sign the paperwork, they’d be able to take a quick trip to the DMV, get the license and go for a ride.

Clearly, they had never actually been to the DMV if they felt accomplish something through a “quick trip” there.

“As this is the weekend and the first day of Spring Break, I am pretty sure that showing up on the porch of one of your teachers would not endear them to you or resolve your issue,” I said.

Begrudgingly, he relented, although I’m pretty sure they resorted to the next best thing to Mom – Google. If only Google knew where their new shoes were.

Later that night, another call let me know that things weren’t going well. It was 7 o’clock and Dad was just starting the burgers on the grill. A warning to the boys that they needed to close their windows since they didn’t have screens in had been ignored and two other birds, apparently looking for revenge for their fallen brethren, flew into the house through my older son’s window while their Dad was at work. My son, his brother and his friend chased the two birds around the house in an attempt to catch them and get rid of them, and finally caught one of them with an old T-shirt.

As a mom, several things went through my head at this news:

A) did no one open the doors?

B) where were our four cats during this? and

C) what happened to the other bird?

All of this was relayed by phone. Naturally, I thought about running home and taking care of everything.

My husband said to stay.

“I’ve got this. We can survive without you. I’ve got everything under control.”

So, maybe they didn’t need me.

I went back to talking to my new friends, trading stories of motherhood and drinking more wine. While my head was there and I was enjoying my time, my heart was with my family.

The next day, I drove home quickly. I stopped, as I had planned, at an art museum to be free and artsy once again, but there was no one there to share it with, no one there to talk about it with, no one there to say “Mom, can we go now?”

I should have been happy to have had the time to myself, but all I could think about was getting home.

I drove straight through to get home before everyone went to bed. My arm and shoulder hurt from leaning on them in the car and my legs were cramping from the driving. But I made it home – to hugs and stories and kisses and a plate of dinner.

Instead of a mess of a house, I found a mopped kitchen, laundry thumping away in the dryer and a sink conspicuously clear of dishes.

They wanted me to be happy when I came home. And I was.

They may not have needed me, but they missed me, even through tribulations and an apparent bird invasion. And even though I wasn’t there to handle it for them, they managed… not because I had trained them, or they had learned from me, but because they were smart, capable men who could do for themselves.

I’ll remember that next time I don’t want to do dishes.

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