My daughter sat on the couch, her phone never leaving her side. Every now and then it would vibrate. Like clockwork, she would flip it open, read it, then send back a quick reply. This wasn’t just going on for a short time, this had been going on all day long. I asked her who she was texting, and after many retorts of how little business it was of mine, she finally told me it was a boy at her school. The fact that she was texting a boy was not alarming. Most of her friends are guys, and one of her guy friends and her texted each other often. Most of their texts consisted of “Sup”, or “LOL”, or “My brother’s a dweeb”. Nothing to write home about. And definitely nothing that raised my eyebrows (except to roll my eyes at how lame it was). But this was different, this was a boy I had never heard of. And with the way they were texting each other for hours on end, it was obvious that this was not just some friend.
This had to be a boyfriend. (more...)
Texting Queen
My mother called me over the weekend before the clock even hit 9 am.
“Are you at home right now?” she asked.
“I am.”
“What time are you going to take the kids over to their dad’s house?” she asked.
“Around 2,” I told her.
“Oh. That’s too late. Nevermind.”
She was being awfully cryptic, which of course got my curiosity up.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Well…..” She asked me if I remembered the Ninja Star that the Taz had been coloring at her house. Of course I remembered. He had colored it pure black and told me how all he had to do was throw it and it would whip through the air slicing anything in its way. I suggested that he not throw it in the kitchen, at least.
“I remember. Why?” I asked her.
“Well, apparently he was coloring it in my living room…” 
I need to confess something. Sometimes I am afraid to read my comments on this blog. Sometimes when my phone pings and alerts me to another email, I’m afraid to look. Sometimes when I write a new entry in this blog, I pray that it won’t inspire conversation. It’s not that I don’t love feedback. I do. I want each and every one of you to tell me how much you can empathize with what I’m going through, how you were just experiencing such and such in your own household. I want you to tell me that what I wrote made you laugh outloud, or shed a tear, or how you can’t wait for my next installation.
The other day I had an hour to kill, so I thought I’d try on swimsuits for fun. I headed out to Macy’s and perused the aisles of little tiny pieces of cloth meant to cover just the barest essentials. And then I locked myself in the dressing room and stripped to my skivvies. One by one I tried them on.
I got up at 6 am this morning, just like usual. I started the coffee and cleared out the dishrack while it brewed. I got out my small pan and threw in a scrambled egg to make my goat cheese and avocado omelet. Then I sat with the newspaper and got caught up on the news. The kids’ alarm went off at 7 am, and we started the hustle and bustle of getting ready in 45 minutes. Quick shower, hair and make-up, the long process of figuring out what to wear – all while the kids got themselves dressed, made their breakfasts, and packed their lunches. A couple of the usual reminders that hair and teeth needed to be brushed and shoes needed to be put on, and we were out the door. We started down the road while I mused once again if I had remembered to turn off the coffeepot. I always did without thinking, a habitual flick of the switch when I set my coffee cup with its traditional third of a cup left unsipped. I thought about turning around again since we were on time, but decided against it, placing faith in my automatic pilot to have done it for me. 
Everyone has a Facebook. And you? You have, like, 3,000 friends! It’s easy to feel popular every time you log on. And you are getting to know all these people as they update their statuses. At any given hour, you can find out what your friends ate for breakfast, that they are bored, that they have a lot of homework to do, that their parents are dweebs, that they went to the bathroom 5 times in an hour…..
Before I left my husband, back when I knew I was actually going to leave him, I was scared of divorce. What would that mean for me? How would I make it on my own? Could I really care for the kids without another adult as a back-up? It was a scary step to actually leave and venture out into the world alone. Even though I had been raising the kids anyway with very little help from him, it was a very different feeling to know that there was no one there. Thank God I had my family to lean on in this time as they took me in for the first few years. But eventually I did move out. There was no child support, no joint custody, nothing. There was just me and the kids, facing the world boldly with hopes that we wouldn’t be swallowed up too badly. 
Life is full of seasons. In the spring of our lives, we are protected and cared for by our parents. We grow and learn, we change and mature. We are in love with our parents, we hate our parents. We make friends with our neighbors just because they live near us. Our whole world is in the very neighborhood we live in. Hours feel like days, days feel like years, and years feel like an eternity. We are young, we are carefree, we will live on forever. In our season of summer, we have realized that we have minds of our own. And with that knowledge, we are brilliant! We become experts on certain subjects, knowing more than anyone else could possibly know about it. We are the beautiful people, the ones who are on top and going to make this world so much better than our parents – their generation truly screwed things up for us. 
Imagine, if you will. Colleges send their scouts out to all the different high schools looking for their next Tim Lincecum or Zack Greinke. They sit in the stands at numerous games, taking notes and writing down names for those ballplayers they wish to extend invitations to for the next season’s college teams. Several students will receive scholarships to guarantee their entrance to their college. And a select few of those star ballplayers will go even farther and be drafted to a major league baseball team.
Wine Country Mom 