Mom in the Mirror

Welcome DotMoms

I have asked friends and family to contribute to a group weblog called DotMoms. They've just started posting stuff. Please check it out and add your voice.

UPDATE: Some of you have asked if you can contribute. Yes! Just send me an e-mail with a submission and you'll be on your way.

I'm going as a twister

Some people might say that my M.O. in life is to blow in, wreak havoc, then move on. So, on Halloween, I'll prove them right. I'll be a tornado. Here are the directions from "National Geographic Kids":

Dress in a dark-colored outfit. Glue or tie toy people, animals, cars, and houses to pieces of yarn and fasten them to your clothing with safety pins. Twirl around saying, "I'm a tornado!"

They have some other suggestions in the same article, "10 Costumes under 10 Dollars."

Costume Idea Zone also has some creative concepts that require little or no sewing, including Miss Smarty Pants (buy a big bag of Smarties candies and tape them all over your pants).

As a back-up, I'm going as a pile of dirty laundry (no costume required).

Introducing the Momoir

I saw the word "momoir" in an article on Salon.com about how Gen Xers are "navel-gazing their way through parenthood." So, I Googled the term and found that it may have been coined in 2002. The article I found, by Linda Howard Clark, lists five reasons you think you can't write a momoir and 10 reasons you should.

Progress reports

Colter's report card came home last night. For the first time in his academic career, he got all Es (for excellent). Here's what his teacher wrote:

Colter is a delightful addition to our class! He has many interesting and creative ideas to share wtih his peers. Colter is working hard to raise his hand before sharing his ideas. He has a happy and enthusiastic attitude about school!

Why are teachers so fond of exclamation points?

Here's where he needs improvement:

Demonstrates self control

Uses time wisely

Here's where his mommy needs improvement:

Handles conflicts & problems

Cooperates in group activities

On the menu

We had hamburgers, corn on the cob, and new potatoes tonight. The meat was fresh, but the potatoes were canned, and the corn was frozen. Which makes our dinner typical, based on some statistics quoted in a recent article in TIME magazine about food labs. It says: "Fully 25 percent of all meals are now consumed in restaurants, and of those eaten at home, two-thirds are either prepared entrees or restaurant takeout." Guess I can stop feeling guilty now.

How one thing leads to another

New DVD player --> New TV --> New questions

About a month ago, we finally joined the 21st century and bought a DVD player. A week or so later, Colter and I bought Gary a set of Grateful Dead DVDs for his birthday (View From The Vault I-III). They sat unopened. And sat. And sat. I finally asked Gary why he wasn't watching them. He said, "I'm waiting for the new TV." True, our television was about 10 years old. But it worked OK. So I resisted. For a while.

This weekend, we decided to go ahead and get a new TV. We did some research yesterday, and today we went to Best Buy and picked one out. We all agreed that the first thing we'd watch was the Grateful Dead. So, we got everything set up, then sat on the couch and watched "Touch of Grey."

Gary told Colter that Jerry Garcia is dead. Then, he told him Brent Midland died. Then, he left the room to change his shirt.

We continue to watch. Soon, Colter asks, "How did they die?" I say, "They did a lot of drugs that hurt them." Colter turns to me and says, "What are drugs, mommy?"

Why didn't I see this coming?! And why wasn't the resident expert in the room to respond?!

I told him some things can make us feel good, but be bad for us if we take too much of them. And I told him that taking medicine your friends offer you can make you really sick. Sometimes, I said, you can even die of an overdose if you take too much of something.

I think that was about all his 7-year-old mind could absorb. It was definitely all my 38-year-old mind could come up with on short notice. Why hadn't I planned for this moment? What would you have said?

LifeFiles #3

Here are a bunch of columns I wrote that don't make me cringe when I read them. They're about my husband and son:

Bonding by the light of a propane flame

My husband is my wife

Infinite beginnings, only one ending

A license, a map and the open road

Schools need to score high on fit

A combustible combination (or, the day my son sprayed gasoline in my face)

Gone fishin'

Please let him miss, please let him miss, please let him miss. Shit. The first ping pong ball Colter threw went right into the bowl, and before I could say cat food, we won a goldfish at his elementary school's fall carnival. I don't know why schools give live animals away like lollipops, but I do know that one of my best childhood memories is sitting on the kitchen counter feeding the goldfish I won at my elementary school fall carnival. How could I deny my son the same memory?

No thanks, I'm just browsing

I love this store, even though they sell lots of things I'll never buy, including:

glass nail files

veggie pens

after-therapy mints

greeting card organizers

Kleenex with the American flag printed on it

The best seat in the house

Born on the West Side of Chicago, my dad lived and died a sports fan. He took me to White Sox games, Cubs games, even a Blackhawks game. There wasn't a sport he didn't follow. Loudly.

We had season tickets to the Bears games, and come what may, we climbed and climbed and climbed to our seats, just under the scoreboard. My family still remembers how I -- a quiet child -- shifted into maniacal mode, screaming "Avellini sucks!" Sunday after Sunday, season after season. It was windy and wild and usually winless. Yet, I loved it.

I never expected the Bears to win. Winning was irrelevant and had nothing to do with my loyalty, or my father's, which was to the city we loved and the others who loved it just as much.

It wasn't until the Bears became Super Bowl champions (by then I was in college) that I found the courage to hope our teams would become respectable. And then came the Bulls, who gave the city a mistaken faith in the power of faith.

It was long-lived, but surely shaken, and yet stirred, now.

It's important to believe in something, and why not cultivate the resilient optimism of a Chicago sports fan with her ever-ready comeback -- "Wait Until Next Year"?

Well, in the words of Steve Goodman, a Chicago folk singer and songwriter whose "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request" has been recently resurrected:

"What do you expect,
When you raise up a young boy's hopes
And then just crush 'em like so many paper beer cups."

The song's refrain echoes in the sad city today: "Do they still play the blues in Chicago when baseball season rolls around?"

For those of you who have never been to the Second City, the Blues play yearlong in Chicago. They're the city's soundtrack.

So, while next year may not come soon enough for Chicago's fans down here, heaven can wait, right Dad?