Suburban Island

Travel Constraints

I don't know whether it is better to never go anywhere when you are a mom or go wherever you want and just let the chips fall where they may until you come back to create some vestige of order in the universe again.

A few weeks ago I went to Seattle for a conference. When I came home my son had no car (he had totalled it), the AC/Heating in our house had finally given up the ghost (nobody's fault), a retired Sid Dickens memory block had been knocked from the wall and glued back together (look, you can barely tell, my husband says to me with a straight face). And in the laundry room our dying dryer had been replaced with a "new" dryer that has to be about 20 years old. That's how he knocked the Sid Dickens block off the wall. Believe me when I tell you that this would not have happened on my watch (dryer or disaster).

While he was dragging in dryers and knocking artwork off the wall, he also managed to rearrange my whole office including undoing a cable for the wireless. It took me two days to find the problem after my return. I spent hours moving furniture, crawling around on the floor, and fighting dustballs in my little home office trying to figure out how to get it to work again. All the time the mysterious cable that turned out to be the key to creating harmony and efficiency in the daily lives of most of the inhabitants of our household was curled like a little black garden snake in a pile of nearby cords. That's what was wrong! My husband is very neat. Once the cable was out of the router he must have tidied up by adding it to the group where it might never have been discovered except for my persistence and the desperate prayers I shouted to the high Heaven's at strategic intervals for assistance in solving the lost wireless problem. Both tactics were necessary for as you can imagine, all the kids in the house are nearly weeping for want of the web while I tried to figure this one out. It did allow me to dust behind my desk and discover a foot massager had been deposited next to the wireless router while my husband was reorganizing things for me.

I don't know about you but I believe we all need a little space of our own. My office is my sanctuary. There is no room in it for my husband to store a foot massager and no call for anyone to rearrange my abundance of knick-knacks, papers, books, movies, and music. This is my landscape. My oasis. Hands off. How quickly the world will impinge on our sacred places if we give them an inch. He's going to find another place for that foot massager or it is going to find its way to the garage (his sacred space). I have a feeling I will be putting my stuff back the way that it was for months. I have just spotted a bobble head elephant stuffed behind a picture of my daughter and I at Dunn's River Falls in Ocho Rios. Now obviously the glass bag of goldfish that I bought from the Dollar store belongs next to that. If you are going to move things around at least use some common sense.

This isn't the first time that calamity has struck while I am away. Last time I took a trip my son stabbed himself in the leg with a pocket knife that opened up while he was sitting down.

Perhaps next time I should confiscate all car keys, potentially injurious possessions, and lock the office - the perfect center of life as we know it at our house - until I return.

But then, where would my sense of adventure be?

Banking for Dummies

Sometimes bloggers are sitting there minding their own business when something so blog-able happens that it is all we can do not to jump up and push people out of the way so we can get to a keyboard. I had one of those moments today at the drive-in window of the bank.

I was glad for it because I have been bad about blogging and had been tossing around some potential posts for a while with no actual post to show for it. Yes, I do want to tell you about the cruise I took to Alaska, and the conference I went to in Seattle, and the earthquake that occurred in my quiet Virginia neighborhood, but I just couldn’t write about those things because life got in the way or the words could not congeal as they should into a proper post.

But this – this was perfect. Imagine a yellow Toyota MR2 Spyder shining in the summer sunshine – top down, guy with baseball cap sitting inside it. He is happy with the world, happy with himself, happy with himself in this yellow convertible. He’s feeling pretty damn good. Little does he know that life is going to rain on his parade before he can lift the top on his spiffy little car or even pull out a tiny umbrella such as the ones we sometimes stuff under car seats for emergencies.

He was sitting at the drive-in window in all his happy ignorance as I pulled up behind him in the happy knowledge that I was about to check off one of my must-do chores for the day from my list. It looks like he is finishing up when a pivotal event occurs that sets everything into motion and it occurs in a clumsy flash. Mr. Cool Sports Car Guy drops the canister that goes into the pneumatic tube on the ground. This is not any tube but one of the tubes that belongs to the brand new pneumatic tube system just installed by the bank to replace the old beat up stuff they had in place before.

My friends, in life it is the little things that bite you in the ass. And so it is for this gentleman. He now makes what I like to call “a lazy-ass decision”. He doesn’t really want to get out of his car to retrieve the canister and so he makes a half-hearted effort to find it and then begins to pull away. Crunch. Grind. Oh my!

I am pretty sure that it was stuck under his car. Now he has upped the ante because he has to get this canister out from under the vehicle after all. And besides, to make the whole thing even better, it turns out that he had not quite finished his transaction. My brain is screaming – Blog post! Blog post!

So he has to back up. And that means that I have to back up too. I don’t mind because after all, as entertaining as all of this is, I have to get some banking done too. I pull up into an empty drive-through lane and start my banking transaction. In the meantime the guy is out of his car and he is holding the shattered tube in his hand. He asks the teller, “Do you have any more of these? I’m not done with my transaction.” He takes the broken tube and stuffs it down on the side of the booth and begins to conduct his business standing in front of the glass window with a whole new little container. I’m sure that it’s pretty hard to do this without feeling like an ass. Finally, business transacted, he hops back into his car with a slightly hunted look and drives away like he is expecting to be stopped and made to pay up for damage done at any second. A moment later a bank teller appears and makes a visual sweep of the area with great dignity edged in disbelief until her eyes fix on the demolished tool of business that had been so cruelly crushed beneath the wheels of a bright yellow MR2 Spyder.

Knowing my bank as I do, once a friendly community member and now a grasping heartless business entity, I believe Mr. Cool Sports Car Guy should not be surprised to discover a charge on his account.

As the teller said to him as he pulled away: "Have a nice day, sir."

Fashion and Coffee

Coffee is a sweet addiction and on the weekends going up to the coffee shop takes on a special significance because I get to get my coffee without rushing, in a t-shirt and jeans, and not on my way back or forth from work. I also get to stop in to see my daughter who works near the coffee shop at this very cool gift boutique. While there a man comes into the shop with his wife. They are about my age. He makes a comment about my t-shirt that says Rock Boat Alumni from the Rock Boat cruise I took this winter. He links it up with some crazy scandal about football - already he is losing me. His wife is shopping away so here I am trying to explain why they are two different things and I was not advertising my participation in this wacky event to which he is alluding. It's about music, my friend. JUST MUSIC.

Okay, that's cleared up.

Then that sets him on another track. He asks me if I was a hippy. I hated to break it to him but in the day I was a sorority girl. It is clear to me that his wife is the standard for how a woman "of a certain age" ought to look. Tailored shirt, nice pants, big jewelry, hair above the shoulder. Perfect southern belle. She's gorgeous but it's not my style. I don't want to be perfectly put together just to hang out on the weekend.

Evidently, there's a price for such fashion rebellion. And the line you have to cross to be considered as having committing such a crime is easier to skip obliviously over when you are 50 than when you are 20. Here's the thing. I'm cooler now than I was at 20. Trust me on this point. And, shocking as it may be, I still like t-shirts and jeans. I don't want to be tailored and coifed seven days a week. Furthermore, If I want to wear a damn t-shirt to get an expensive cup of coffee, I'm going to do it.

Luckily Clinton and Stacey didn't jump out from the back of the store to start my fashion intervention. However, I got an impromptu one without any credit cards of tv show appearance from this guy. I guess old guys in baseball caps with pretty wives that you have never meet before think that they should feel free to tell you in so many words that you are blowing it if Clinton and Stacey aren't available. This seems rather unfair when you think about it.

Oh well.

So there I stood in jeans and nice comfy t-shirt, long blond hair way falling down my back in curls I had to pay for, dangle earring that cost more than the more generic stuff she was wearing (I'm just saying), and silver shoes (my nod to dressing up when I shouldn't have to do it). I guess the silver shoes were not enough to override the other aspects of my outfit and he doesn't know enough about jewelry to realize I was holding my own and better in that area (I love nice jewelry).

Evidently it is a given that at my age you must switch from dressing however you want to being uncomfortable all day in the name of fashion sense so men you don't even know can give you the nod of approval - even though you didn't ask for it and don't care one way or another.

Can't a girl just relax?

No?

Excuse me, I'm going to go put on my Nickelback t-shirt and go shopping. If you are a guy wearing a baseball cap don't say a word unless you are a Nickelback fan.

And by the way, I'm not cutting my hair either.

Eating Out

This is my first ever post from a mobile device. I am writing from a local restaurant that serves great curry puffs. I have time to write this post because my daughter had to go home to get the bankcard. I must have put the card in a jacket pocket. I forgot to look for it this afternoon and used the card my daughter has that is linked to the account. I gave it back to her right before we left to put back in her wallet. Little did I know she would decide to leave her wallet at home. She went home to get the card and I am left to look innocuous and write this blog post while I wait for her return. The price of a good dinner might be higher than you think. Lesson learned. At least I have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Targeted Again

I am pretty excited because I am going to Jamaica. The thing is that there is always more to do than just hop on a plane. For instance, no matter how hard I try there is always a trip to Target. I endeavor to avoid it. I go to J.C. Penney, and Macy’s, and the specialty shops but always, always – there is something – something that must be gotten at Target.

That is how I wound up in the clothing and hanger littered dressing room at Target again. I was trying on bathing suits because Target actually had cute bathing suits for women who are not size 2, 4, or 6 – thank you. The entire staff in this area – working over carts of clothes to be put back onto the racks – consisted of women who had head-coverings and garments that went to the floor. I felt underdressed and slightly defiant. I had the sense that I had suddenly been airlifted to a third world country without having a chance to read the State Department travel advisories. They were all really busy talking to each other. There was not a moment to be lost to assisting customers in all the excitement. At one point a supervisor came by and suggested that the party come to a close. They did not seem to be very taken by the suggestion but after some additional encouragement the crowd of extremely modest but extraordinarily chatty employees dispersed into the nooks and crannies of Target.

 

 

After I tried on the bathing suits, I gave the clothing that I did not want to buy back to the lady working the dressing room counter. However, it was not to be such a simple transaction. She became distressed and warned me off. Put those over there – she said and pointed to the carts surrounded by the women who had fanned off from the town hall meeting/potential riot. I’m allergic to latex – she told me and then went into a great deal of detail about her exposure to latex and the potential problems that could ensue – citing everything from swimsuits to paint in the ladies room at Target. How to escape this unexpected mire of needless information and the currently AWOL crowd of unhelpful help shifting clothing back and forth between carts in the dressing room area of Target was becoming a real puzzler for me. I only managed to escape when the latex-adverse clerk stopped talking for an instant to help another customer.

Sadly, I escaped a moment too soon. Like Cinderella running off and leaving her crystal shoe as she departed the ball, I left something important behind in my hurry to be gone.

Almost fully across the length of the mall, I realized that I had forgotten my jacket back in that fateful dressing room area and had to return and face the latex-lady in the quest. Only my need for my jacket could override the dread of the hike that had now been complicated by the addition of carryout food in hand. The jacket was there and the woman, surrounded by a sea of underwear, bathing suits, and sundry summer clothing items pointed me back to the carts now devoid of ladies with headscarves. There it was – looking a little lost and crying out to be rescued from an uncertain fate. I grabbed it and made my getaway without looking back.

At least I found a bathing suit.

Chaos and Caffeine

Dear Spritopias has made mention of a mutual rehab stint and oh, that it were so. That sound like it might be preferable to the trials and tribulations of being a mom with teens. I wonder if they take people who would like to start drinking because their kids are driving them crazy? I could really use a break from the homefront.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my kids. My kids are good kids, great kids, cool kids. In fact, my life would not be half as much fun or rewarding without them. However, my kids are not perfect kids. Moreover, I am not a perfect mom and their dad is not a perfect dad. Okay, I may almost perfect but still… not quite. Their dad is less perfect than me in that his sensibilities are so easily offended. For instance, he cannot abide chaos – which from his perspective can be something as simple as somebody switching around their schedule or not cleaning their room. I, on the other hand say – adjust your calendar, close the door, pick your battles. As you might imagine, these two significantly different parenting styles do not often find an easy meeting of the minds. Yet, such is – so often – the life of the parent.

Chaos loves our house. I might rent it a room if I thought it would cough up the rent. The last two weeks alone has been mostly composed of unforeseen dramas for which I get no compensation for withstanding with remarkable grace – most times not even a thank you can be expected. Evidently, I am forced to work in this reality series without cameras for only my room and board. If I didn’t like Suburban Island so much I would be tempted to protest. I tell you, it’s a modern form of indentured servitude from which, as far as I can see, there is no natural end. We have endured apartment hunting, roommates unexpectedly bailing, college applications, summer job interviews, late schoolwork, a car accident (which my kid was not responsible for – thank God but did some damage to the car we acquired for him within the last six months), a visit to the emergency room for x-rays that lasted longer than the entire A&E Pride and Prejudice miniseries (a personal favorite of mine), missed days of school and the subsequent pile of extra homework for my son, a broken washing machine (which sorely tested my husband's patience and belief in the justice of the universe), an invasion of ants, and more – so much more.

A lot of the much more has to do with the running battle between my two kids, who fight like they are paid mercenaries every time they glimpse each other. If I could find out who their commanding officers were, I'd negotiate a cease fire. Sadly, I cannot and the battle wages on, day and night, in the most unrelenting fashion. Ah, my kingdom for some peace.

I filter all this through sips of iced tea, dulce de leche lattes, and the constant drone of my iPod. It seems to help. I suppose it will have to do as I don’t think there are any rehab programs for fancy coffee drink addicts – at least as yet.

Santa Says It All

This winter has been a wild ride for me. All through the busy days things happen that surprise me, or make me laugh, or even want to cry – and I say to myself: that would be a great Suburban Island post. Then I find myself not writing it down and sharing it here – and I heartily regret it. I would like to say that it is from laziness because I think it would be easier to remedy that than a season of chronic overwork, two teenagers with driver’s licenses, and a household that, though not run very well, still must be run.

Someone needs to write about the ridiculous aspects of daily living that must be dealt with by each of us. Never one to miss the value of the ridiculous myself, I have been happy to share my personal experiences here to remind everyone – including myself - that all this stuff may not be funny when it is happening but it probably will be later on. I recognize that I have an obligation to begin doing so more regularly again – as I feel like I am squandering these perfect moments of ordinary desperation and delight that have been provided to me like so much manna from heaven for retelling on Suburban Island.

Waste not, want not. Or something like that.

The state of modern living requires, at least upon occasion, a sense of humor, a cup of expensive coffee with a fancy name attached to it, a willingness to go without the proper amount of sleep for days or weeks at a time, an attachment to our technologies (cell phones, blackberries, iPods, DVRs, laptops, and the like), and an understanding that no matter how much we know, we don’t know enough - we will never know enough - and that’s okay.

With all this in mind, I walk past the kitchen table still festooned with a red vinyl Santa Claus table cloth that we forgot to put away back in January with a smile because really, it is a metaphor for the impossibility of true order in the modern life. Somewhere, no matter how well one looks to be doing it all – there is some betraying sign of our inability to be perfect lurking in our home, our car, our yard, or our workplace. I do mean to put the tablecloth away before Easter but until then I cherish its presence a little because it reminds me that maybe I actually have this modern living thing down better than I think I do.

How Does She Do It?

Yes, I know, dear friends… I have been remiss. I have not written here on Suburban Island as often as I ought to do of late. It is not for want of desire. It is more a time available versus number of tasks to be done issue. I am overwhelmed - it is true. So are many others, I am convinced. However, a busy life can be a great pleasure – since it even affords one the added bonus of complaining about it and enjoying the commiseration and grudging admiration of your friends and acquaintances. How does she do it all? They ask - just a little begrudingly.

Well, I am going to tell you the secret. You may be relieved to know it.

The secret is – she doesn’t. Or, at least, I don’t. It’s all an illusion. The truth of it is that there are more tasks on the lists that we all keep on paper or, if you are more daring - in your head, than can really ever be done by even the most dogged and diligent of us. Getting it all done - really all done - is quite unlikely. The trick is to keep the right balls in the air and kick the ones you drop quickly aside with as little fanfare as possible, so that they go quite unnoticed until you can scoot over and pick them up when you have the time or inclination.

My approach has always been to keep a positive attitude and do what must be done, as well as diving into the stuff I want to do so desperately that I will even give up my sleep for it. For the rest, I say – let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes this approach works splendidly and then I feel the glow of real accomplishment. I have picked the right things to do and to neglect.

My tactic for getting it all done without really doing it all is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes we lose our cell phone service because I forgot to pay the bill. Sometimes there is milk and bread in the house before the big snowstorm. It's not foolproof but then, some might say - what's the fun of that? When it all goes well there is bread and milk in the snow and cell phone service too. Of course, I do not believe that I am the only one who is taking this approach. It is just that I may be one of the few who is willing to admit it. I do so for the good of all who feel that others are beating them out in the great competition of life. Don't worry. We're all struggling.

Come on - you with the lists and the glow of accomplishment that is the envy of all those who know you. You don’t get it all done either. Admit it. Even if just to yourself.

There. Don’t you feel better?

I do.

Someone Else's Resolutions

Mother Nature is such a tease. Today is like springtime in the Washington, D.C. area. The temperature where I live is a perfect 70 degrees today. Everyone is running around in short sleeved shirts and I am looking for my flip-flips. At Starbucks everyone is ordering frappes and iced drinks. Yesterday I saw a flock of robins in my yard and had the most overwhelming longing for daffodils and cherry blossoms. We realize it’s a cruel lie but for today it is spring so why not go with it. You know what they say – if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. I tend to agree. I am sure she wants us to play along or she will be very disappointed.

I’m thankful for the pretty weather as it makes it easier for me to put the Christmas decorations away – something that usually depressed me a little after the uber-ho-ho-ho spirit of the holidays. It may be a mistake but I usually take leave around the holidays, which makes diving into the new year especially traumatic.

I didn’t do my new year’s resolutions this year but I am thinking about just xeroxing the one’s from last year and giving those another shot. I don’t think I am alone in this.

Even though I didn’t make time for my own resolutions, I have enjoyed putting some together for the rich and famous as it seems they don’t often get around to making them either. Here’s a few that I would like them to add to their lists:

• Britney – Buy a boatload of underpants right away.
• K-Fed – Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
• Nicole – Get a driver and eat something, girl.
• Tom – Try not to be so freaky. It took me about a third of the way through MI III before I could stop thinking about you jumping on couches, marrying ridiculously young women, and spouting off on medicine and psychology like you know anything about it at all.
• Lindsey – Put down the drink. Leave the party.
• Dr. Phil – Shut up once in awhile. You really don't know everything.
• Rosie – If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all worked for you well once. Try it again.
• Pamela – Yeah, you with those really big breasts. Big breasts or not, maybe marriage isn’t for you right now.
• Angelina – Stop lying to yourself. Of course you stole Jen’s husband.
• Leonardo – Just leave Orlando Bloom alone. You still think you're a hearttrob no matter what you say.

I could go on… but I won’t. After all, providing resolutions to others is always easy than following your own.

Fried on Friday Night

I don’t know what it is – age, overwork, lack of imagination - but Friday nights are not as productive for me these days as they used to be. In the past I looked forward to Friday nights with great eagerness because I could cast off my work worries and everything else for that matter and just relax. I would spend a lot of time playing on my computer – writing, tiding up my blogs, visiting my favorite online reads, and generally just having fun. It was so relaxing. I could stay up until all hours goofing off in this manner. Of course, if my kids were around I would hang out with them (but at 17 and 20 you don’t usually see them sitting around the house with me on a Friday night much these days). I don’t take it personally. Usually, I am totally happy for some “me time”.

However, Friday nights have changed for me lately. I am still just as happy as always to see Friday evenings arrive but I can’t seem to squeeze as much out of those lovely Friday evenings nowadays. Last night for instance, I wanted to write a post or two, consider some new sidebar elements for my blogs, and catch up with every one of my online reads. Instead, I sat dazed and exhausted with not a drop of creative energy left in me or even the brain power to leave a comment in response to someone else’s efforts. I had my freedom from the workday demands – my Friday night – but my Friday night had lost its luster. The power of total exhaustion had claimed my evening.

By 9 PM I had turned the laptop off and found my way onto our nice soft sofa in the living room where I settled in to watch Court TV forensic shows and a special on women in prison somewhere in Tennessee. It’s serious entertainment… as they say on Court TV. It's also highly addictive to those settled on the sofa and a hard week of work just behind them. Besides, the new seasons of Monk and Psyched haven't started yet.

If this were a 3x5 index card I would write down my recipe for relaxation when in a state of exhaustion for you. It would boil down to this:

• One soft sofa
• The remote control all to myself
• Other household members otherwise engaged
• A blend of Court TV, the Food Network, and the Shopping channels
• A glass of wine
• Leftover Chinese food
• And after the TV is switched off – one good book to read in bed.

It’s not how I expected to spend my Friday night but it will do.