a day in the life, aka parenting in two parts

Can you guess the age of the perpetrator?^ (Left on the kitchen table for 2 days; I actually thought there were still brownies within.)

 

Only Daughter, as the only remaining-at-home child of a perpetually-distracted parent in her late 40s has developed some bad habits regarding snacking. To be specific, junk food junk food junk food. The daily salt intake could preserve an entire ham. She tried to take salami (no bread) and goldfish (the cracker) in her lunch one day; the day after I had discovered that between when she got home on the bus (4:10 p.m.) and dinner (7:30 p.m.) she had eaten salami, a large cereal bowl full of pistachios, a same-size bowl of tortilla chips and salsa and a same-size bowl of goldfish (the cracker). Yesterday Husband came out to get her dinner while I was at a rehearsal to discover that she was in the process of eating chips and salsa for the THIRD TIME that day.

This morning we had the first of a two-part conversation regarding healthful eating and what’s going to happen to her favorite food choices if she doesn’t start demonstrating some ability to make reasonable decisions.* This includes my approval of what she eats for breakfast, what she puts in her lunch, and permission for any snacks. Like when she was four. (She’s 12 going on 25. As if.)

The second part will include a list of foods that she can eat as much of as she’d like (spinach, carrots, whole wheat toast with peanut butter)(rightthat’llhappen) and foods that need to be approached a bit more judiciously (everything that she eats when given the chance).

Here is my contribution towards judiciousness, waiting to greet her when she arrives home from school today (during which time I will be teaching a piano lesson):

^The perpetrator is 19. He tried to tell me the other day, when I was questioning his decision not to work over spring break, that he was “20″ and that I should trust him to make his own decisions. This was two days before he told me that his housing payment had been due a few days earlier, that he needed me to pay it since he was out of savings. It was also the day that he washed his popcorn pan while leaving the rest of the dishes in the sink and was doing all of his laundry in our washing machine using our soap.

You know, some species eat their young. (I hear they taste like chicken.)

*Second Son also tried to convince me the other day that his bad eating habits are my fault. Since I raised him feeding him mostly healthful foods, he has developed a taste for white bread, cereal of the Cap’n Crunch persuasion, and Kraft macaroni and cheese. If I had raised him on junk, he would now be a vegan. He actually told me this, and I believe that he actually believes it.

and this just proves that I’m a big fat baby

(Husband says it just proves that I’m a sap. I say it’s the same thing.)

I cry every single time I see this.

Every. Single. Time.

 

Murakami, and why I won’t be reading him anymore; UPDATED

I had this all written this morning, (some of my best work,) and when I went to insert the picture I lost the whole post. (Ain’t technology grand?) I’m still not sure I have the heart to start over. But here goes.

***********

Still taking a break from The Street Sweeper, although I plan on finishing it. Instead, though, I just read Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. Supposedly his readership went into the millions with the publication of this book, but I can’t really figure out how, unless it was high schoolers looking for the sex scenes.

Ugh.

Toru is a “preternaturally serious” student. In case we miss this by the fact that he has very few friends, and spends all of his time going to class, doing his homework, and working at his job at a “lame” record store (is there a geekier job than working at a “lame” record store?), the few friends he does interact with can’t seem to stop telling him how “strange” he is, or how “strange” he talks, even when what he says seems perfectly normal.

In this way, Murakami seems to demonstrate very little faith in his readers. Another example: Toru travels to visit the young woman he truly loves, Naoko, who has secluded herself in the mountains of northern Japan at an idyllic mental institution retreat recovering from the emotional trauma of first her older sister’s, then her long-term boyfriend’s, suicides. (There is a lot of suicide in this book; it seems to be the solution of choice in Murakami’s Japan; and surprisingly, many of those who commit suicide in this story don’t seem to have demonstrated any signs of emotional or psychological instability beforehand.) The line between patient and doctor is particularly blurry — when Toru first meets Naoko’s roommate, she is introduced as “Dr.” because she teaches music to some of the patients; a fellow patient wears a white coat and makes his “rounds” from table to table at mealtimes expounding on arcane topics. The “patients” live calm, idyllic lives, eating prepared meals, living in austere yet comfortable houses, performing “meaningful” menial tasks. Many patients stay for years. In case the insidiousness of this is lost on us, Toru just happens to have a copy of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain in his backpack. “How could you bring a book like that to a place like this?” Reiko asks him. How indeed?

And then there’s the sex.

Murakami is clearly trying to write the way the teenagers/twenty-somethings talk about, think about, sex. But I don’t think he’s very good at it. It’s too self-aware, too self-conscious, too proper. And that’s not the worst part. Besides the fact that, except for Toru, none of the men treat their girlfriends very well, the women themselves seem to have no sexual desire, no needs, no agency, of their own. (Update: Actually, this isn’t true, I somehow forgot one twist to the story. There is one “woman” with sexual desire and agency, she just happens to be a “pathologically lying” 13-year old girl who tries to seduce Reiko during one of the girl’s piano lessons. An event so traumatic it triggers Reiko’s latest psychological break. And, as far as I can tell from the story, the only lie the girl has told is after her seduction fails, and she reports that Reiko tried to seduce her. Apparently the idea of a 13 year old girl being sexually assertive and/or curious, or that she would spitefully lie about it later, is too bizarre for Murakami to consider.)

But back to the rest of them:

Naoko is a virgin when her long-term boyfriend commits suicide; apparently she was unable to, well, open herself to him. Naoko and Toru have one apparently mutually-satisfying sexual encounter, immediately after which she disappears and checks herself into the rehabilitation center. (There’s a ringing endorsement.) When Toru visits, Naoko services him in various ways, (Ugh), but waves off his offers of reciprocity.

Toru’s one male friend at university sleeps with dozens of women, despite having a beautiful, accomplished, intelligent young woman as a girlfriend. This girlfriend apparently knows about his philanderings, but tolerates them, claiming that she loves him and this is just what he must do. Reportedly she, too, will commit suicide, around four years after the end of this particular story.

While Toru waits patiently for Naoko to decide she can return to society, he is befriend by Midori, a “sexually liberated” young woman in one of his drama classes. They are physically attracted to each other, but are unwilling to consummate the relationship because she is “trying” to be faithful to her boyfriend (this is Murakami’s version of “sexually liberated”? That a twenty-something young woman has sex with her boyfriend?), despite the fact that the boyfriend criticizes the way she talks, the way she dresses.

And then there’s Reiko. Reiko is in her 30s, and, perhaps as an outward symbol of her long-term struggle with mental illness, is apparently extremely wrinkled. Reiko comes to visit Toru in Tokyo after (spoiler alert) Naoko’s suicide (see?), finally leaving the “center” after 8 years, on her way to teach music lessons in yet another secluded location. They cook together, and then make love, four times, in one evening. The first two are strictly for Toru, iykwim*; but afterwards, she lies in bed, eyes dewy, and declares: “I never have to do this again, for the rest of my life.”

Seriously?

Ugh.

The next day, Reiko departs, and Toru calls Midori, telling her that “all [he] wants in the world is [her].”

Funny way of showing it, but whatever.

*if you know what I mean

Horrifying

Read this, and watch the clips.

Take a good look at the young woman who is faulted for having “too big” of hips.

And then refuse to buy a single magazine with an underage, emaciated, and/or exploited female model in it.

Who knows, it might actually make a difference.

maybe I’m just not qualified

Those of you who visit here regularly probably know that I’ve recently acquired a dog.

Meet Dexter.

He is, as you can see, very cute, and very sweet.

He also seems to be pushing all of my you-suck-as-a-parent buttons, and I’m having a really hard time deciding I’m qualified to even potty train this dog much less be held accountable for my children. (For some reason “So far I’ve let them live” fails to qualify as a ringing endorsement, although there have been times that this alone was a heroic accomplishment.)

I actually spent several hours today wondering if this 10-week old puppy could actually be smart enough to be manipulating me by running around the kitchen sniffing so that I would take him outside to go potty play.

This isn’t possible, right? He’s a 10-week old puppy. Right? (I have my doubts, and I am definitely watching for other signs of coercive behavior. Just give me a minute until I’ve finished rubbing that soft spot on the back of his ears. . .)

So I spend my only 2 hours off between 9 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. snatching him up from where he’s running and taking him outside so he can sniff bits of bark, chase the leaves that are blowing around and chew on acorns and sticks. Over and over and over, to no avail. Well, to no avail to me; he got to sniff bits of bark, chase the leaves that were blowing around, and chew on acorns and sticks. He’s a puppy. What more could he want?

I then discover that he had actually already gone poo in his “bed,” and this is not the first time, and dogs aren’t supposed to like to do this, so I decide his “bed” must be too big, and put a giant soup pot in the back of the crate, with the lid on upside down so the crate will close but he can’t get into the pot. I finally manage to coax him into the crate with a toy and a “bully stick” (this is actually, to my surprise and chagrin, a smoked bull penis, but we do not speak of that, although I do like to imagine the boardroom meeting while they settle on the name .  . . bull dick, hmm, can’t call it that, bully dick, only slightly better, and it sounds like someone who would beat you up on the playground so he could steal your Hardy Boys book and pocket protector, [you know, that bully, Dick?] hey! I got it! bully stick! Ah, advertising.)

I digress.

Back to the puppy.

At first he settles in, but then he realizes that he’s been “had,” and starts to express his displeasure over this act of subterfuge and deception. He starts yipping, and just won’t stop, so I finally really start to lose it and put the crate in the garage so I don’t kill him*  can’t hear him anymore. About 20 minutes later Only Daughter gets home from school, so we have a peek to see if all is settled down, and we can’t see him anywhere. When I get closer, bending over and peering through the gate, I realize that he has managed to squeeze himself into the 2″ of space between the top of the pot and the top of the crate, and is now curled up in the inverted lid, sleeping.

What a goofball.

All of this is the day after an exchange with Second Son that went something like this.

Me: “I have kind of a busy day on Wednesday to come pick you up from school,” (it has already been determined that his college isn’t far enough away; IMHO there must be a 200 mile minimum to really encourage independence), “can I buy you a bus ticket?”

SS: “Seriously? You can’t pick up your child?”
Me: “Well, I can, but I have a lot to do, and that’s two hours out of my day, and it’s really not that long of a bus ride, and I’ll buy your ticket.”

SS: “I hate the bus. Can’t you pick me up?”
Me: “Well, I can. But I have a lot to do. Would you be willing and able to help with some Thanksgiving dinner preparation Wednesday night then? I was going to do some of that Wednesday afternoon.”

SS: “Is it really not possible for you to do something for me without me having to do something in return?”

Yeah, that went over like a lead balloon.

After I had shown Husband the email^ I wrote to Second Son, explaining how much I hate entitled children with selfish, narrow world views, and how offended I was that my contribution to his well-being that extended far beyond food, shelter, and clothing, but into tuition and vehicle provision and insurance and maintenance etc., etc. seemed to be not only unreimbursed, but also, more importantly, unappreciated, Husband huddled, shuddering, in the corner of the couch. “Don’t hurt me” he says.

As if.

First of all, he would never say anything so offensive, or ridiculous.

Second of all, well, what else is there?

So I raise selfish, ungrateful children, and my puppy won’t pee outside.

Sigh.

*He was not hurt. Except for maybe his feelings when I told him to shut up. He’s lying at my feet licking his paws, so I think he’s forgiven me.

^Second Son apologized on the phone last night for being ungrateful and selfish. It turns out that he hadn’t even read the email yet (apparently college students don’t check their email anymore, although they sure seem to send me a lot of them). I guess it’s not all as hopeless as it seemed.

And Dex pee’d AND poo’d this morning first thing, and his crate was clean. But the pot’s staying. For now.

guess which is which

On my way to bed last night I fetched my phone from wherever I had left it and noticed I had 2 text messages, one from each son, each away at their respective colleges.

Guess which is from “First” and which is “Second”

Text message A:  How do you make those baked home fries so delicious?

Text message B:  Guess who has ibs?

 

I’d offer a prize for the winner, but it’s a) just too obvious and b) I’m broke.

Ah, parenthood. Who knew it would be this much fun?

 

 

too late, too tired, so just randomness

Took Second Son to college yesterday. That was weird. The house is pleasantly but discomfitingly quiet without him. Spent an hour yesterday throwing out four years’ worth of homework papers from high school and sweeping spent spider egg sacs from his “closet” floor. (Ick. This sounds really bad, like we’re some of those people living in filth and squalor, 3 days away from showing up on TV, like those men who were found in their apartment behind walls of newspapers. The only thing in the closet was four years’ worth of homework papers and a box of miscellaneous computer/cell phone/random cords we’ll never need but for some inexplicable reason can’t throw away. Does that sound a little less Collyer brothers?)

Last night Husband asked if I was going to continue to check in with Second Son about when he would be “home.” When I asked Secondo how he felt about that, he texted back “For the record, I will be in my room every night by 9 p.m. doing my homework.”

Allrighty then.

I miss him a little, plus now Husband is using his room as his office, since he has a big desk down there and a really !!! bright light so I have to go looking for him if I need my back scratched or for him to tell me if my butt looks big in my pants. (It does, always, but never mind.)

Second Son does go to college where Husband works, so I decided I would “recycle” some of the stale cereal we found in the cupboard (in the kitchen, not in the closet with the spent spider sacks; ew!?!) by making some “Rice Krispie” treats to deliver to him tomorrow along with his bike and a pair of his jeans and the Apple AirPort because hisdormroomdoesn’thavewificanyoubelieveit?, except the marshmallows were so stale they wouldn’t melt.

I didn’t even know this could happen.

The new academic year starts tomorrow. I don’t wanna. Summer, like all good things, went way too quickly, and I want just a few more years weeks of sleeping until I wake up and only teaching people who actually want to learn something.

Couldn’t I just make that a requirement or something? I wonder how empty the universities would be if that were a prerequisite.

Only Daughter is looking forward to an extended run of being an Only Child. Hope that works out, although she’s already a bit of a hypochondriac and needs a lot of attention. Maybe that will get better when she’s not competing for high-carbohydrate snacks and TV time with a 6’2″ hyperthyroid 18-year-old.

Heard at Dinner

Daughter’s told that she is going to get driven to, and thrown in to, the lake if she doesn’t stop being ridiculous (we can’t remember what she was doing, but it doesn’t really matter)

Daughter: “That’s okay, I’m a good swimmer.”

Me: “No, you’re not.”

Daughter: “I am with good goggles.”

Right.

 

please sir, can I have another?

Just submitted the payment for the first installment of Second Son’s first semester at University.

Included in the bill was $1,684 for a semester in a dorm room, and $2,393 for a semester on the “silver” meal plan. (Don’t get excited: the “silver” meal plan is the cheapest one available. Those in charge of naming the meal plans are apparently not up to speed on the relative value of the nation’s precious minerals — I’m thinking zinc.) All students living in the dorm must purchase a meal plan, and all freshman must live in the dorm. It’s a beautiful system, really, if you think about it.

In other words, we are being extorted, and we have only ourselves to blame. And this is a state school, you know, one of the land grant universities whose mission is to provide educational opportunities for all and sundry.

First objection: we are paying $7.12 per meal for a child who lives on cereal. Even HE can’t eat this much cereal, and God knows he’s tried.

Secondly, we are paying $421/month for “room.” This equals $1263/month for a 12′ x 14′ room to be lived in by three 18-year-old boys (the thought of the “aroma” alone makes one shudder), which is more than I am paying for house payment, taxes, and insurance for 1300 sq. ft. + finished basement on 2 acres of wooded land in a perfectly lovely city with excellent schools.

And yet, universities are in trouble.

Husband speculates that the areas of the sciences cause the most trouble, as schools want their programs to be taught by the best and the brightest, and the best and the brightest in medicine, engineering, physics, etc., can expect to make six figures many times over in the private sector and for universities to compete they must pay accordingly.

Would it be “fair” to suggest that medicine and engineering tuitions be higher to cover those differences? I think the argument could be made. The people graduating with degrees in those areas can expect to make more money throughout their careers: wouldn’t a cost/benefit analysis and the “laws” of fairness dictate that their education also cost more? And some consideration of the Canadian system, where a certain number of schools are “allowed” to teach certain programs and others are not, might not be out of order. This system allows individual colleges to prioritize and focus, and the situation of every school competing for every student is avoided, and more efficiency gained. I imagine that the average American would protest, as part of the American mindset is the right to have whatever you want wherever you want it, and if you don’t “qualify” through your grades and industry you should at least have the right to pay whatever premium necessary to get it anyway.

In any case, at this point in every child’s development, perhaps the most compelling motivation to the average American parent is the tradeoff between becoming a voluntary extortionee, and having the 18-year old move out of the house.

*

If you’re reading this, Second Son, I love you dearly. Now off you go.

*This is NOT a picture of Second Son’s room. This one was downloaded from the internet, the source which can be viewed if you click on the picture, chosen for its dramatic impact. I regret any misapprehensions. p.s.  He has more guitars, two amps, and less crap on the floor. However, the dust bunnies under the bed were beginning to form their own government, until they were vacuumed up in preparation for visitors, that is.

When life gives you lemons. . .

. . .make limoncino.

Anybody know something productive I can do with these, now that they’re naked?

Okay, never mind.

A friend suggested we make fermented lemons, which can be used in sauces, on pasta, etc., and sounded not only delicious but interesting in a science-experiment sort of way, so we quartered them, salted them, and mashed them in a glass cookie jar that I got when I was 18 and somehow managed to keep for 28 years without breaking. It broke. We threw the 6 lbs. of lemons and chunks of glass in the dumpster.

Despite my sadness over the loss of the lemons, and the cookie jar, I can’t help but be amused by the fact that the lemon on the right in the front row of the picture looks an awful lot like a nipple.

This observation makes me think maybe I should maybe stop reading the bloggess, although this and this are two of the funniest things I’ve ever read. This one was pretty funny, too, and I’m thinking really hard about what I can write on my bananas. “Clean your room,” while both timely AND apt,  just doesn’t seem to cut it.

Which reminds me, in a related story, about leaving the house in the care of the 18-year old. So, I was off teaching at a music camp for three weeks, and my husband was home one or two nights a week, when he wasn’t up at camp with me and Only Daughter. (First Son doesn’t come home anymore — I just keep sending him Tshirts and sweaters that we find in closets and which he has forgotten he ever owns, and trying not to look at his bank balance since there will be a tuition bill in October that he can’t even BEGIN to cover and I’d like this to be hisproblem, notmine.) Since Second Son, for the three weeks I was gone and not forcing him to eat a meal with us (if he eats he has to do the dishes — this creates an intense mental cost/benefit analysis on a nightly basis, and fuhgeddaboudit if the entrée is fish), was basically living on cereal and the free food he could scarf at the-job-he-has-recently-been-let-go-from-for-no-apparent/good-reason (I’m assuming these two things are not related, hmmmmm. . .), Husband would occasionally lay in supplies like organic milk, Tide laundry soap (S.Son is a little OCD) and bananas. The bananas were apparently not getting eaten, as, upon our return, two of them had managed to ripen SO far, past when one has the olfactory and culinary fortitude necessary to pinch one’s nose to squeeze them out of the peel into a bowl to make banana bread with, that they had split their skins and begun to foam.

I think one of them actually said something to me as I scooped it up with a plastic bag, but I can’t be sure. It might have been the sound of me, lightly gagging.

**********

Oh, and I have yet to have any takers on the offer of a teenager for the low, low price of $545, and I found a similar pair of boots at Sundancecatalog.com for a little less, so I’m offering a $50 discount for any offers received in the next 24 hours.

Please disregard any disparaging thing I have ever written about either Son; they are a delight, the light of my world, and a comfort in my upcoming old age. Yours for only $495, I’ll even waive the handling charge.

Just let me know.

week 3, and after

Wrapping up camp:

Conductor, in rehearsal, when the orchestra plays for another .25 seconds after the soprano cuts off her last note: “Never outsing the soprano. O. My. Lord.”

What is wrong with the algorithm at theweatherchannel.com that lists the day’s current temperature, i.e. 91˚, and the projected high at 86˚. Is there NOONE there who notices this and decides that perhaps the projected high should be projected higher?

And a question for all of you parents out there: Which is more stressful, being away from home for 3 weeks when you’ve left the house empty, or being away from home for 3 weeks when you’ve left the house in the “care” of the 18-year old?

***************

I had completed all of my camp responsibilities by noon Saturday, so husband and I went into Traverse City to act like tourists. We had a delicious lunch at Amical, and then did a little shopping. At first we may have upset the balance of the universe when husband bought two pairs of shoes and I didn’t buy any, but I did have some fun taking pictures.

I call this the “Embarrassed” sandal. It knows it’s hideous, but it must sit on its shelf, in plain view, for all to see. It doesn’t even have hands to hide behind.

I call this the “Beautiful” sandal. I would like them in brown, as shown, and black, 8 1/2 W. Sigh.

I call this “The Why Shoe.” I believe the title is self-explanatory.

These are just beautiful. I would consider selling one of my children for them — a deal at any price, but yours for a mere $545 plus tax and shipping/handling. First Son only has one year left of college, and I would include his college fund balance as long as it’s actually paid to his college; Second Son may have just hit a car in a mall parking lot, but it only did $500 worth of damage, which he (or I) will take full financial responsibility for, and he has been let go from his summer job 3 weeks early, but I suspect that, rather than this being a direct fault of his, his manager is an asshole and had an opportunity to hire someone for the fall and took it. Only Daughter is not yet a teenager, so she is still, as they say in the Master Card commercials, priceless, and therefore, not (yet) available for purchase. It is, as they say, only a matter of time.

[In a kind-of related story, related to the cowboy boots, that is, we watched Brokeback Mountain last night -- neither husband nor I had seen it yet -- and we both think they did a good job with a story that could have become campy or self-conscious. I do wish Heath Ledger could have mumbled a little bit more articulatively, but there's nothing wrong with a good lookin' man in jeans and cowboy boots.

To whit:

(Despite the fact that Husband posed for this photo, and he does actually know I have a tendency to "use" just about anything for my blog, he may insist that I take this photo down, so I hope many of you get to see it while it's still here.)]

Anyway, back to Saturday.

When we were done at the shoe store, we investigated one of the galleries along Front Street.

This floating coffee table was kind of cool,

I thought it looked like it would maybe bounce a little, but I didn’t actually try.

I also liked these wood cuttings (sorry about the quality of the photos; I wasn’t sure how the woman in charge would feel about me taking pictures of stuff with my iPhone, so I was trying to be both quick AND surreptitious.)

I was NOT so crazy about the coffee table manufactured from the tailgate of a Ford pickup,

I’m not sure what this painting? collage? source of non-drug-induced freaky dreams?was called, so I called it Scary Alien Art.

I assume someone’s buying these, as there were at least a dozen on the walls, and the artist was featured, but really, really, thankyoubutno.

*************

Now we’re home; laundry’s done, I’m about to make my second cappuccino of the morning, and it’s time to return to reality. I must say, three weeks living in a cabin make air conditioning, floors that can actually get clean, and a washer and dryer within the residence feel like real luxury. It’s probably good to lower that bar every year or so.