Another 80s indulgence

One of the most fun things I do as a parent, although admittedly trivial in the grand scheme of things, is introduce my kids to things I love and see their reactions. Many favorite movies, books, and television shows of mine are waiting for the boys to be old enough to see or read. Much of my favorite music has already been played repeatedly in the van and around the house.

Last week, using Netflix's online instant viewing feature, we all started watching Simon & Simon, season 1. What a time warp! Imagine private detectives in 1981, before computers, before cell phones, before caller ID for crying out loud! This was one of my favorite shows from the time I was 12 until it went off the air in 1989. A true '80s indulgence. I remember I kept a notebook of all the episodes, who guest starred, plot synopses, and favorite lines from the episodes. Yeah, I was obsessed. Mostly due to the extensively gorgeous Jameson Parker, I admit. I'll have to hunt up the picture of the giant Simon & Simon collage I had on my bedroom wall. It was awesome.

Anyway, for such a dated show, the storylines are usually fun and exciting, if a tad predictable. The best parts of every show are the banter between brothers Rick and A.J. and the times they use disguises to get information. Watching this show again, it's no wonder I wanted to be an actor. It looks like they're having so much fun! And I really like that even though there are plenty of murder mysteries, we don't have to see close-ups of the corpse. And even though the brothers have many lady friends, we don't have to look into their bedrooms. Much better than today's television.

So now every night the boys come running upstairs asking to watch Simon & Simon. I told my oldest two they were lucky I didn't know for sure I'd have two boys in a row or they'd be named Rick and A.J. They didn't seem to mind the idea too much.

Changes and years

I was chatting on Facebook with a girl who graduated from my high school the year after I did. She remembered me, said I looked just the same (oh, how I wish I could pass for 17), and then commented that I had always been quiet.

Me, quiet? It's funny how you forget things about yourself. Once she said it, I realized that of course she would remember me that way. I really WAS quiet back then. Years of being told I had nothing to contribute by boys in my class made me clam up. It took me almost all four years of college (at a women's college) to get over that. And even then, some of my professors told me I was too quiet.

But you know what I learned? Everyone else is just as insecure as I am. And the positive responses far outweigh the negative when you talk to a new person for the first time. I love meeting new people and talking to old friends, and once you get me started, I hope you have some spare time because I WILL talk your ear off.

It turns out, she and I probably would have been good friends back then if I had been willing to talk to someone I didn't know. At least I get a chance now!

Should I or shouldn't I torture myself?

My high school reunion is coming up in October. Twenty years, believe it or not. I've recently found some of my old classmates on Facebook and am starting to get excited about the idea of seeing them in person. Then again, these people were not really my friends in high school. I haven't been in touch with my actual friends in quite a while.

In actuality, I'd rather have a reunion with some of my teachers than with a lot of the people in my class. I remember being really relieved when I graduated because I wouldn't have to see any of those people again if I didn't choose to. And now I'm thinking of paying $50 to do just that.

I don't know. I'm sure I'll be glad when I go, but this is bringing up a lot of feelings about high school I thought were long gone.

And people ask me why I home school??

Honeymoon of horror!!

You know how people always say you'll laugh about something later? Today is my 16th wedding anniversary, which got me thinking about our honeymoon. We didn't laugh about it much at the time, but sure enough, it makes me grin now. Here are a few of the highlights:

• The honeymoon suite at our chosen hotel, booked six months in advance and confirmed beforehand, had been given to someone else when we got there.
• We were ignored for over an hour in at least two different restaurants (maybe more and I've blocked them from my mind) - one of them the night after our wedding when neither of us had eaten all day.
• The van we had borrowed to make the trip from MD to TX couldn't really back up uphill. Consequently, at one campground when we tried to back up, it caught fire.
• So I went screaming through the campground yelling, "FIRE!" until someone gave me a fire extinguisher.
• By which time Hubby had found a towel, dunked it in a nearby creek, and beaten out the fire.
• The van also had carburetor problems and we had to rebuild the carburetor... I'm thinking twice, maybe more. We had to use nail polish to seal it at one point.
• I got a very painful UT infection and went to the hospital. Only to find out it was the wrong hospital (I am not a Cherokee Indian, so I can't use their hospital), and we had to travel half an hour to another one.
• One day when the van was broken down, we had to walk four miles to an auto parts store in 95 degree weather. Fun.
• Somewhere along the way, we stopped at a hotel where they charged us more for two people in one room than they would have for two separate rooms with one person in each. We wouldn't have stayed, but the van was broken down again.

Those are just some of the highlights. Of course, we had plenty of good times, too. We saw some beautiful scenery between here and Texas, visited some wonderful places, and just enjoyed being together. Because after all is said and done, we were finally together and that was the most important thing.

Happy anniversary, honey! I love you!

Going to extremes

Last night I though about what I would have been doing six years ago, with an infant son and two boys age 2 and 5 running around the house. And I remembered...

My third son didn't take to nursing very well. He seemed to be latched on correctly (and after two other babies I would have thought I knew what I was doing), but he wasn't. He became extremely jaundiced and had to go back to the hospital and lay under special lamps for two days.

Because he clearly wasn't getting enough milk the normal way, the doctor wanted me to supplement with formula. I refused. I have been a proponent of breastfeeding since long before I had kids, and I knew if I started formula it would be a downward spiral. So he told me the only alternative was to pump and manually feed the baby, so I could measure the amount of breastmilk he got.

So I rented a pump. In between his regular nursing, I would pump and store the milk. Then I would feed it to him through a supplemental nurser, which is a bottle connected to a long, thin tube. The tube gets taped to your finger and then you press it lightly against the roof of the baby's mouth. When he sucks, he gets the milk. It's a slow process, but it gets the job done.

I thought this would be a one week thing and then I'd be able to nurse him normally again. Imagine my shock when the doctor said (after one week) that he wanted me to do this for another month! I remember we had a post-partum doula coming over once a week, and she was really concerned for my health because I was doing little except eating, sleeping, pumping and feeding. And very little of the sleeping.

But eventually the baby gained weight and the doctor said I could continue nursing and stop the supplemental feeding. Things went back to "normal". He's a regular, rambunctious, healthy six-year-old now. He'll probably never really care about the lengths I went to when he was a baby, but that's okay. It was worth every minute.

To quote a famous quoter...

"There's nothing you can't accomplish when you put your... what is that thing called? That thing in my head? Um, that's hot." - P. Hilton

When I was in high school, my best friend and I were really into this fantasy series called the Myth books. The author, Robert Asprin, would start every chapter with a relevant quote by a famous person. The twist was they weren't actual quotes: he made them up. As the books got farther and farther between, he claimed the reason was because he couldn't think of quotes for all the chapters.

Michele and I thought that was a lame excuse. So we started writing our own fake quotes. And because I happened to be in an independent study and had to sign my supervising teacher's chalkboard every morning, we thought it would be more fun to write our fake quotes on his board. It turns out he and his class had fun discussing them every morning, too. And we proved that if you just put your mind to it, it's not that hard to make up funny and/or ironic things for real and fictional characters to say.

But of course he was older than we were, and maybe not as flexible of mind. So I'm going to challenge myself again. I'm going to see if I can think of a relevant fake quote for my posts. And certainly, if you the reader think of any, add them to the comments! It's fun!

So You Think You Can Pun?

I had this friend in college who used to challenge me to pun. It usually started by accident. One of us would take whatever subject the group had been discussing, and make a really bad pun. Then we would look at each other and the challenge was on. Back and forth we'd go, and the first of us to not think of one would lose. Once we went through something like 30 puns about cows. I don't remember who won, but in games like that you tend to remember the match and not the winner.

Yesterday when I was writing, I had a scene where the two main characters are playing off the names of television shows. He's a singer being stalked by a fan, so we had "CSI: Concert Scene Investigations," "Law and Order: Special Vocalists Unit," "How I Stalked Your Father," "Stalking With Celebrities," you get the idea. I had fun thinking of new ones. So here's your assignment: combine stalking, singing and t.v. show titles and give me your best shot! Alternatively, if you want to use cooking instead of singing, my other character's a chef.

Have fun!

It's a grand slam

I find myself missing Denny's this morning. What could I possibly miss about overpriced food, slow service, and the much-less-than-five-star dining experience? Well, it's not so much the place, it's the time in my history.

My senior year of high school, they built a Denny's literally around the corner from my house. Lots of kids from my class applied to work there. I don't remember if I did or not, but future-Hubby came home from college and started a painting business, and I decided that would be a good way to spend time with him - work as a house painter.

While the days were long and the work was hard, I always looked forward to the evenings, because future-Hubby would come from whichever job he'd been supervising and we'd go out to Denny's. I don't remember getting meals there, just dessert - the chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream on top in particular. But then, we didn't go for the food. We went to hang out together, talk, laugh, or even just be quiet together. In the fall we'd be going to different states for college and we wanted as much time together as we could get.

And sometimes we'd bring his friend Dan along, who was just about the funniest person I'd ever met, and he kept us both in stitches. It was a fun summer. And every now and then, it would be nice to go back there.

Do you have a special place you'd like to revisit?

Six years ago

I worked as the childcare person at a local gym, for two hours every weekday morning, 9 a.m. to 11. This particular morning, one of the regulars had brought her two preschoolers, I had my five and two year olds, and I was a few weeks pregnant with #3. Like every other morning, the kids played and watched Nickelodeon.

A few minutes before 10, the other mom came back into the room. She looked at me. "Did you hear?"

"Hear what?"

"Change the channel. Two planes flew into the World Trade Center."

I jumped up and started flipping channels. My older son wanted to know why. "I want to see the news," I replied. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center."

Yes, I heard her say two planes. I did. But out loud I said one. Because in the back of my mind I knew instantly that if two planes hit, it was deliberate. And then she said it again. "Two planes." I looked up at her, and we both knew what that meant.

Mere moments after I changed the channel, the first tower crumbled. The news commentators didn't even notice at first. I remember shouting, "The building is falling and they're not even paying attention!" We watched in utter disbelief as one and then the other building fell. And our world changed forever.

Never forget.

Please go read my tribute from last year, if you feel so inclined.

Scary stories

The other night, I was watching the movie When a Stranger Calls, which is just a variation on that old campfire story about the girl who keeps getting phone calls while she's alone babysitting, and when the police trace the call, "The call is coming from inside the house!" I actually really liked the movie, because it didn't have any blood and guts. When you see the two dead people, they're just dead. Most of the movie is the fun kind of jump-when-the-music-swells suspense. I like that.

Anyway, this movie got me thinking about all those scary tales we used to tell each other at slumber parties. You know, when you'd hold a flashlight under your chin and tell tales guaranteed to make your friends jump and squeal? Many of them have become urban legends ("..and when he got out to open her car door, there was a hook hanging from the door handle!!"), others have become movies.

My favorite one ends with the line "Humans can lick hands, too." Brr! Gives me the cold shivers, just like a good scary story should. (If you don't know the story, email me). What's your favorite scary story?