Sandy + Spinning Class = Suffering & Shame

Last Saturday I decided to ride my bike to the book mobile which visits my neighborhood Publix each week. This is quite a ride for me since my house is 6 miles from the front gate and even though the Publix plaza is across from my development, the crosswalk is another quarter mile. Luckily the weather wasn’t too horrible. There was a nice breeze thanks to Tropical Storm Bonnie and it was slightly overcast so the sun wasn’t beating down on me. I took my time and reminisced about why I got a bike in the first place.


About 4 years ago, a bunch of ladies from my church were singing the praises of our brand new YMCA. The exercise equipment was state-of-the-art complete with televisions and IPod docks. They offered yoga, Pilates and Zumba classes. There were high tech weight machines to get you buff and even a personal trainer assigned to you to help design your very own exercise regiment and counsel you on your nutritional needs. But what sold me was the child care. You could go dump, I mean, drop off, your child under 6 and have 90 minutes to yourself. Just like the songs says-sing it with me now-“It’s fun to be at the YMCA!” I was ready for a little fun, 90 whole minutes without a child and hopefully loose a few pounds in the process so people would stop asking me when my baby was due.

Even though I gravitated towards the treadmill, my personal trainer introduced me to the awesomeness of the elliptical. I fell in love. It was easy, it was fun and since I’m practically a senior citizen, my trainer pointed out it would be much easier on my knees and hips than walking on a treadmill. I ended up getting into an elliptical rut. I’d throw on some sweats and one of my husband’s t-shirts, drive to the Super Y, bring my toddler to her “class”, get on the elliptical and loose myself jamming to my IPod for 30 to 45 minutes depending on the way the shuffle shuffled, go in the woman’s locker room and spend the rest of my allotted 90 minutes reading a book in peace and quiet. Of course, what I was doing was better than nothing but my results were slow. Then my friend Michele told me about spinning.

“You’ve got to go to the spinning class” she touted. “The pounds will literally fall of in no time.” That got my attention, but I had no idea what spinning was. I tried the Zumba class – once – and just embarrassed myself since I have the coordination of a stroke victim. “It’s just riding a bike that is bolted to the floor” she explained. I could do that, I thought. I could ride a bike bolted to the floor. So, I checked the schedule for the beginner’s spinning class and decided to give it a go.

I showed up to class about 5 minutes early. There was already someone peddling the road to nowhere on a bike in the first row. He looked like Wilford Brimley’s father so I felt a little more relaxed. A woman in her 20’s easily 6 months pregnant waddled in, smiled at me and began adjusting the bike she chose. Now I was really confident. Others came in, smiling and nodding. I observed how the others were adjusting their bikes and tried to copy their moves. A 20ish boy/man came in wearing a JFRD t-shirt picked the bike next to mine. “Do you need help?” he kindly asked. It’s nice to live in a city were the youth respect their elders. “Thanks, this is my first class.” I explained. He got the bike to the right height and explained how to adjust the tension of the wheels. Our instructor marched in and spotted me right away. “A newbie – great” she slapped me on the back joyfully. She was probably about one inch taller than the requirement to deem someone as an official little person and weighed about as much as my 2 year old. “Let me get you a pad. Since this is your first time we want you to be comfortable, but you won’t be sitting much!” she laughed hysterically. Then she reached down and strapped my Merrell’s onto the peddles and strode to the front of the room. “Okay, she shouted, “George requested Techno Dance last week so I have put together an AWESOME mix of the best DJ’s in the country.” George, aka Wilford Brimley’s father, began yowling like a wet cat. Then the female version of Richard Simmons clipped a microphone to the front of her shirt, turned a switch that started the fans which bordered the ceiling. She turned off the lights, an actual disco ball began twirling and she blasted the thumping music at ear bleeding volume. While standing she began to peddling so I followed. This wasn’t too bad. “Remember your tension” she said in a somewhat serious tone and then started peddling faster. Tension. Tension is the key to spinning. Logically you would think that the more tension you have the easier it would be to go slow and the less tension the easier to go fast, like on a real bike. But I wasn’t on a real bike. I was on a spinning bike. And when you are spinning, the less tension the better. But I didn’t know that. Oh, how I wish I had!

Our little instructor had a big voice and started shouting directions like “incline, 20 seconds at 45” and began peddling like a mad woman. I followed, adjusting the tension knob to make the wheels harder to turn. My legs felt shaky, but when I would sit down, my nether regions felt like I was sitting on one big skinny board with nails sticking out of it, so I’d quickly stand back up. I was beginning to feel more and more unstable so I kept turning the tension knob tighter hoping to gain more balance. Then she yelled “downhill at 60!” and the room went wild! Everyone began screaming and peddling like they were biking from the devil himself. I glanced at the pregnant chick and she was right in there with the rest of the group so I started to try and match everyone’s speed. And then I did what most people would think would be impossible. I actually flipped over the handle bars of my spinning machine of death. But since my sneakers were strapped to the peddles, my feet stopped me from completing my Olympic worthy gymnastic move and I flopped to the side and landed on the floor.

My one saving grace was that the room was dark and the music loud, so my spectacular slip went unnoticed. As I lay on the wood floor I tried to figure out how to unstrap myself from the peddles and the crawl out of the class without none the wiser. And then I realized I was looking at the face of my firefighter neighbor. “Are you alright? I didn’t even know that could happen.” he said in a tone mixed with both awe and humor. Dang, I’d been seen. “Oh, I’m fine” I reassured him, waving my hand as if to say that this was an everyday occurrence for me. “Here, I’ll unstrapped you and help you up”. He began unhooking the braces that held me in and offered his hand to help me stand. Suddenly Madame Spinner was at my side demanding to know what happened. After the firefighter gave her an abbreviated version of my flight to freedom she actually gasped. “I’m fine; I just got confused with the whole tension thing I think.” I was hoping to come off sounding blasé. “Well, okay,” she said anxiously “you’ll know next class.” Noticing that all eyes were now on me, I tried to be cool. “Is the class over?” I asked hopefully. “Um, no we still have another 15 minutes” she said and then yelled “start cooling down- go to 20.” “Do you need help?” she asked still concerned. “No, I’ll just finish the class and keep my tension light” I said brightly although my knees, ribs and ego were bruised. “Wow, you are incredible” she yelled. “The newbie is INCREDIBLE” she screamed into her microphone. The class began clapping and George began yowling. My now best friend firefighter strapped my shoes back on the peddles, turned off the bike’s tension entirely, and gave me a thumbs up. When class was over I walked out with my head held high, a smile plastered on my face, grabbed my kid and went home.

Needless to say I never went back to spinning. I kept to my nice, safe elliptical. But childhood memories of how riding a bike was my first real taste of what freedom felt like I asked Santa for a bike that Christmas. I had learned that you had to be very specific when requesting presents from Santa or else he would go hog wild. So I asked for a simple bike, with a basket and a bell. I even emailed a picture of the exact bike I wanted to Santa so there would be no confusion. And although it practically killed Santa to not get me the latest in bicycle technology he gave me exactly what I asked for. I began riding the bike trail at our neighborhood park on the weekends and when my 2 year old turned 3 she began Pre-pre K so I started biking while she was in school. The weight I wanted to loose didn’t exactly fall off, but I did loose enough to stop people from trying to plan my baby shower. I still have my bike and even though I don’t ride it every day, I love to take it for a “spin” now and then. And I haven’t flipped over my handle bars once!

Christmas In July

As I turned the key to start my Expedition, I glanced at its digital dash message display. It was telling me that the exterior temperature was 96 degrees but I knew it was actually much higher. I don’t know how meteorologists factor heat index but in the 4.2 seconds it took me to walk through my laundry room door, around the back of my SUV, open the driver’s door, toss my purse on the front passenger seat, shut the car door and turn the key in the ignition I was already sticky with sweat. My legs burned on the car’s leather seat and touching the steering wheel was like taking a batch of brownies out of the oven without using oven mitts.


If there is one thing you understand deep down in your bone marrow when you grow up in Florida it is heat. I’ve been places when it’s been hot but the heat in Florida is so specific -so distinctive-that it is easy to tell the difference between an 85 degree day in ,say, Cleveland and an 85 degree day in Ft. Lauderdale. Florida’s heat is a soupy mixture of hotness and humidity. Breathing in the summer months of June, July and especially August is like breathing through a snorkel – you can actually feel the weight of the air with every breath. True Floridians can do heat - no problem. But when I reached my destination, Hobby Lobby, and walked through its sliding doors I immediately became chilled. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

I needed yarn for a baby kimono I wanted to knit for a friend that just found out she was pregnant. I thought I’d try knitting matching cardigans for both mommy and baby too. I never get the chance to knit baby stuff so I was really excited. The mom-to-be favorite color is yellow and of course, even though I have drawers full of all kinds of yarn – wools, cottons, and nylons in just about every color you can think of I had no yellow. So my mind was on the softest, buttery yellow yarn I could find which is why when I walked in the doors of the Hobby Lobby and found myself staring at dozens of beautifully decorated Christmas trees I literally stopped in my tracks and forgot what I was there for in the first place. And was that Muzak really playing O Holy Night? I knew it was July, but Christmas had arrived in all its sparkling, glittery glory. I have spent my entire life in Florida and even though I never have had the Currier and Ives white Christmas experience there is one thing I was sure of. No matter where you live in the world and no matter what the temperature is outside Christmas is in December and not July.

A Hobby Lobby employee noticed my perplexed expression and asked if I needed any help. “Are these Christmas trees?” I muttered. She gave me a strange glance and said, “Yes” very slowly as if I would have trouble understanding the word. “We’re a little late getting everything done. If you are looking for Fall Décor it’s all 80% off.” She smiled at me but I could tell she really wanted to get back to the 9ft pre-lit pine decorated with glittered birds and garland that looked like bird nests strung together. I walked past the trees and the boxes of ornaments, what seemed like hundreds of decorated wreaths and garlands by the mile. Even though I have somewhat been aware that Christmas seems to show up earlier and earlier each year this was the first time I consciously noticed. Why? School hasn’t even started; there was still Halloween and Thanksgiving to get through. We were still in the middle of summer for Pete’s sake! Are other people so super organized and well prepared and I’m just a Winter Holiday slacker because I don’t even think about Christmas or decorate anything until after Thanksgiving?

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas. But I’d begun to feel each year more and more stressed out about December 25th. I think it started around the year of Tickle Me Elmo – 1996. That particular toy had been deemed as the must have gift. If your child didn’t have a Tickle Me Elmo to open on Christmas morning their lives would be ruined according to every news reporter, talk show host, magazine and newspaper article. People were standing in line for days just on the whisper of a rumor that their local Toys R Us might be getting a shipment of the elusive Elmo. Others turned to EBay and literally paid hundreds of dollars for a toy that retailed for $28.99. I began calling everyone I knew all over the country and put out the ‘Get My Kids A Tickle Me Elmo’ SOS. There was no Elmo to be found anywhere. And then my husband asked me a very simple question – “Do they even want one?” “Of course” I replied baffled at the thought. “It’s the must have toy, honey”. Needless to say, Elmo was not under our tree that year. But two months later in February when my then 2 year-old opened her Tickle Me Elmo that was now a bit dusty from sitting idle on the store shelf and was even on clearance, she barely gave it a glance.

All working moms feel the pressure of keeping every single Christmas tradition or else they believe their kids will grow up feeling like they missed out, once again according to the “experts”. We must have dozens of Christmas cookies, homemade of course. I would stay up late into the night baking ginger snaps and snicker doodles, snowballs and of course sugar cookies cut out into the required Christmas shapes such as stars and stockings, bells and trees. These my girls decorated with gobs of colored sugars and tinted frosting. “We’re making Christmas memories” I kept telling myself when my girls would whine – “How many more do we have to do?” Then while decorating the tree, the kids would hang a half dozen or so ornaments and then be done. “Hey” I’d tell them “this is fun!” And the gifts – well each gift had to not only be perfect but it must be perfectly wrapped. Once again, I’d remind myself that these Christmas memories would stay with my kids for the rest of their lives and if I’d have to stay up until 2 am to make sure their gifts were wrapped to Martha Stewarts standards, well it was worth it right?

As a full-time stay-at-home mom the pressure for the perfect Christmas is even worse. Now there was no excuse of why you didn’t make handmade gifts for all your neighbors, the mailman, and your kids’ teachers. Since I now had “so much more time” (ha ha ) because I no longer worked there was no reason why I couldn’t gather branches from the Christmas tree lot and wire them into wreaths for the front and side doors. And of course, one tree no longer cut it. You need a “theme” tree each year. Plus a “family tree” and a kitchen tree decorated with all your Christmas cookie cutters – after you’ve made all those beautifully decorated sour cream cut-out cookies with homemade royal icing delicately piped around the edges of course. Each year I began to look less forward to Christmas. It was becoming expensive and exhausting and quite frankly annoying! Then it happened. The Christmas of 2008. I got sick. Very, very sick.

As I was driving home from my husband’s office Christmas party I started to feel a slight tinge in my ear. I ignored it and continued on with my day, a Friday, and although the pain in my ear kept getting worse and I noticed that I felt a little feverish. I just did what all us moms do – just keep on going. I did turn in for the night earlier than normal hoping that a good night’s sleep and a couple of Tylenol would make for a brand new girl in the morning. Instead I awoke around 2am screaming at the top of my lungs. The pain and pressure in now both of my ears was unbearable. It felt as though my entire head was going to explode. My husband, who can usually sleep through anything, woke up and was ready to take me to the emergency room. And then I felt a pop. And another. White goo started gushing from both my ears, matting my hair to the sides of my head. The pain receded but my husband and I knew what had happed. Both of my ear drums had burst. I waited until the morning and went to an urgent care center. After looking in my ears and giving me prescriptions of antibiotics and pain killers the physician’s assistant told me to see my doctor first thing Monday morning. It was 11 days before Christmas. The family tree, the tree where my beautifully wrapped presents (none of which were wrapped as of yet) hadn’t been decorated yet. Only about 3 kinds of Christmas cookies had been baked and sorted into freezer bags. Heck, most of the gift shopping still needed to be done. Plus the menu for the Christmas dinner needed to be finalized and the groceries bought. But I really didn’t care about any of it. My ears were still oozing, I was in pain, I had a fever and felt terrible. I went to bed. And instead of getting better, I just got worse. My husband needed to do some traveling for work before the holidays so instead of making gingerbread houses and cutting out snowflakes and other Christmas-ish activities my girls spent the beginning of their Winter Break left to their own devices and choose to either stare at the television or a computer screen while texting their friends until the middle of the night. They ate whatever they could find in the kitchen and didn’t even mind that we had missed watching It’s A Wonderful Life – my favorite movie of all time. “Don’t worry, it will all get done” my husband would tell me each time he would call from wherever he was – D.C., New York, Texas or Miami. I had to put my trust in him that somehow that would happen, because just getting out of bed and shuffling to the bathroom took all my energy. The antibiotics weren’t helping, I still had a fever, my throat was now infected and I was literally sleeping all the time. So I put my trust in my husband and my bachelor brother (who didn’t even own any Christmas decorations) to finish our perfect Christmas. After all, we were making memories.

The tree did get decorated and no, it would not have made the cover of Martha Stewart’s Living. The gifts got bought and wrapped in a variety of Christmas papers and any gift bags that my husband and brother could find. We had a pre-cooked ham for dinner and my mother and mother-in-law took care of all the sides. The desserts were from the Publix bakery. My neighbors received nothing from the Carns family that year and all the Christmas cards delivered after my ears exploded never even got opened. And guess what – it was still Christmas! We still had fun opening our badly wrapped gifts with no ribbons, we drank hot chocolate from a mix, we stayed in our unmatched pj’s the entire day and just had fun being together. And even though I still felt horrible physically I have to say it was one of my favorite Christmas’s ever. Memories were made that year. And they had nothing to do with what was under the tree or what the tree even looked like. We were together, we were family, we were merry and bright and all the other things that we sing about in all those ageless carols.

With my Christmas lesson learned, I have become much more casual about Christmas. Not that I don’t think it is important, I just don’t think that if my tree doesn’t look like it took a professional decorator hours to get it just right, my families’ Christmas won’t be ruined. And even though I love to bake, if things are hectic, I just buy the pre-made cookie dough. And since ribbons just end up frustrating everyone, I no longer bother with them. We even skipped putting up lights on the house last year simply because my husband was traveling so much there just wasn’t time. And it was okay. I don’t pay attention to what the experts say are the must have gifts of the season, I don’t shop on Black Friday and I don’t look for bargains on Christmas Eve. I do love to walk through my neighborhood at night and look at all their beautiful decorations, drink hot chocolate while staring into a blazing fire, watch Charlie Brown’s Christmas with a bowl of popcorn that I now eat instead of trying to string into garland. My kids pick a different Christmas book to read before bed every night during the month of December and we put out cookies and milk for Santa on Christmas Eve after attending Candlelight Service. Instead of worrying about making memories, I try and show my kids how to soak Christmas in, to feel it in their hearts and to keep it with them throughout the year.

So even though Toy R Us is running a big Christmas in July campaign, Sears has it’s Summer Snowstorm Sale and the big discount stores already have cleared away their patio and garden sections and have replaced them with decorated trees and all the trimmings, remember it’s July. It’s summer. Enjoy this season while it’s here. Even though it isn’t Christmas, you are still making family memories every day – holiday or not.

Merry July Christmas!

Summertime and the Livin's Easy

Remember summer? Just take a moment and close your eyes and remember what it felt like to wake up that first morning after the last day of school during your elementary years. It was almost magical, wasn’t it? Not a Christmas morning magical, but you could definitely feel a difference. It was a little taste of freedom mixed with mysterious possibilities of the day ahead. Why, you could do anything. There were no arranged play dates, day camps that taught you how to become the next Picasso, educational workbooks with daily exercises to keep you from forgetting all that you had learned that school year. There was an entire day ahead just waiting for you to do what you did best – be a kid. Summer has changed a lot since the Dinosaur Age – otherwise known as the 1970’s and 1980’s. But looking back, I wonder – have we stolen a little of that wonderment from our kids in this fast-paced, multi-tasking, fiercely competitive society we all dwell? Maybe turning back the clock and slowing down a bit might not only help our kids but us bigger kids as well.


If Norman Rockwell and Frank Capra had collaborated on creating the perfect childhood summertime experience, the summers my brother and I had would have been their model. We were lucky to grow up in a neighborhood full of kids at a time where you could play outside freely without fear. Not that bad things didn’t happen, but our parents didn’t hoover over us at every moment which gave us the freedom to explore, do really stupid stuff, and learn a little about personal responsibility. We lived across the street from a park with swings, a butt-scorching metal slide and monkey bars. The city’s baseball field and football field were across from our home too. At the end of our block was the city’s marina and boat dock. We spent our days on the playground or playing out our favorite TV shows; Land of the Lost, Dark Shadows, and H.R.Pufnstuf. Mr. Seymour, our neighbor, built a tree house one year and it was the most wonderful thing that could have happened. It was on stilts so you had to climb a ladder to get in. The roof was thatched with palm fronds so it wasn’t an ideal place to be when it rained, but the entire neighborhood spent lots of time playing card games like Go Fish and War, board games like Sorry and just plain hanging out and talking. If we bothered to take a lunch break it would be quick and then right back outside to either run through someone’s sprinklers, beg one of our moms to set up the Slip and Slide (which never really quite worked like on TV) ride our bikes or swim in someone’s pool. There was no checking in with our parents, asking permission to swim or ride our bikes or go to the marina. My mom’s rule was once you’re in, you’re in – so my brother and I usually stayed outside until the unwritten parental rule of once the football and baseball lights turned on you came home. No one’s mom seemed to worry about our nutritional needs – when we were hungry we went home and ate. And there wasn’t the worry about applying sunscreen every 20 minutes or drinking enough water. If we were thirsty, we’d just drink from someone’s hose. I learned how to fish, ride a skateboard, catch tadpoles, do a round-off and front handspring, ride my bike without holding onto the handle bars, do a flip into the pool off our porch roof, and I even jumped off the marina’s bridge into the disgusting C-14 canal a few times. We would walk to Galaxy Skateway for afternoon roller skating and to the Farm Store for bubble gum and candy bars. Eddie the Ice Cream Man’s truck came down our street every afternoon around four so there was always a rush to get to your house and dig up some quarters for a screwball or ice cream sandwich.

Summers during the middle school and high school years were a lot different. It was all about the beach, the movies and the mall. Way back then parents weren’t so inclined to take on the role of chauffeur so when we wanted to go to any of those three must be seen at places we had to – get ready to gasp- ride the city bus! Today if a parent let their 12 year old daughter ride the bus to go to a movie or the mall or the beach without any parental supervision I’m sure they would be arrested and their mug shot would be shown nightly on Nancy’s Grace’s show as an example of a negligent parent. But that is how we got around back in the Little House on the Prairie days. And even though we were living in South Florida, the place to be seen on Saturday nights was Sunrise Ice Skating rink. Sleepovers were a weekly occurrence. And a little pizza place called Domino’s opened up and delivered the required sleepover pizza for only $5 each! And if the delivery driver took longer than 30 minutes, it was free! Guaranteed! My friends and I used to stand outside in the driveway and pray he would be late so we wouldn’t have to waste our well-earned babysitting money. Cable television was the latest and greatest and if you had both HBO and MTV – well you were living large! Once in high school you knew older students who drove so instead of the scary bus you just crammed yourself in with 7 other kids into their hand-me-down 1973 Volvo station wagon and you were off! Having a job was crucial because the realization that everything you wanted to do cost money suddenly hits you out of left field. Your once generous parents for some reason stop handing out cash like it was candy. And then that dark cloud – college – starts to hover lower and lower as each high school year went by and saving money suddenly became extremely important. And then you graduate and all of a sudden – poof – summer disappears.

I was terrified that first summer when I was a full-time stay-at-home mom. Until then I had the adult equivalent of a fairy godmother when it came to summer time. My in-laws would literally pick up my kids on the last day of school during their elementary years, take them to their house in South Florida, entertain them each day, take care of all their school shopping, then return them the weekend before the new school year would begin. When I would tell people this they would literally stare at me, mouth wide open in both awe and horror. How could I be away from my kids for so long? How could they get in-laws like mine? I missed my kids like crazy, but I wanted their summers to be as special as the summers I had and not just another day at their daycare center. So I did what I do best – I planned the perfect summer. I researched free and low cost activities in our area. I called other moms and made arrangements for picnics at parks and play dates at each other’s homes. I bought workbooks for the grades ahead so they wouldn’t be behind come the new school year. Each day had its own itinerary and I must say I was quite pleased with myself. On that first official summer day I woke my sleepy darlings and explained that we had exactly 25 minutes for breakfast because we were going to go on a guided nature walk at a local nature preserve. We’d have our lunch there in the picnic area and then come home and work on the first page of our school workbooks. I had put vocabulary flash cards for them to review in a zip lock bag in the backseat between their booster seats so as we drove not one moment was wasted. Day 2 we went to a puppet show at our library. Day 3 was free movie day at the theater near the mall. Day 4 we met some friends at our local YMCA splash park. Day 5 – nothing. I couldn’t even get them out of bed. “Are you feeling okay” I asked concerned. The Slimy Critter exhibit at the zoo was at 10:30 and if we didn’t get a move on we would miss the beginning. “Mom”, my oldest at the time asked, “can’t we just stay home and maybe play with our Barbies or something?” I looked into her 7 year old face and saw exactly the opposite of what I had tried to do. Instead of making summer magical I had turned it into something to be endured. My mom had never planned our summers. My brother and I did. If we complained about being bored there was always that standard mom answer “If you’re bored, I’ll give you something to do” so we just kept ourselves entertained. And on rainy days a little boredom wasn’t such a bad thing. It was the perfect time to daydream or read a book or just look out of the window and watch a South Florida summer storm complete with dramatic lighting bolts and booming thunder. So I smiled and said, “Sure, whatever you want. It’s your summer.” “Really?” she asked. “Can we have a pajama day?” “Absolutely!”

So the perfect summer plan got tossed and I have never planned another summer since. There are days we don’t do anything and there are days it seems like we have done everything and then some. Some nights we don’t eat dinner until 9pm and some mornings we don’t eat breakfast until noon. As my kids have gotten older our summers have changed with them. Last year my kid’s wanted to go on an old-fashioned road trip – planning everything themselves. There always seems to be a friend over for a night or the weekend. Each kid has their own activities that require them to attend summer camps and they now visit their grandparents one at a time for a week each. Some days we swim and stay in our swimsuits all day. And there are lots of pajama days of course! On rainy days we might play dozens of hands of the card game my kids are obsessed with, Dutch Blitz. We have a Wii and a PlayStation 3 so some nights we have a family bowling tournament that lasts well after midnight or our own version of Rock Band-Polooza! And as far as keeping up with school stuff – they know what’s on their required reading lists- it’s their choice to either read or not. So far their brains haven’t become too mushy!

No, my kids will never have a summer quite like I did. But even though it seems that the summers of my youth and the summers of theirs are vastly different the basics are still the same. Take each day and enjoy it. Feel free to accomplish something or to do absolutely nothing. Because the dark cloud of adulthood is looming. And before they know it, poof, their summers will have disappeared into wonderful memories. And hopefully they will get to pass on the wonderment of summer to their kids someday.

Texting - 1980's Style

A couple of months ago I got really industrious and decided to organize my closet. Luckily I have a huge closet since in goes way back under the stairs. So I have lots of room for lots of junk! I started at the very back and found a large plastic container big enough for Tony Soprano to put to good use. I dragged it out into my bedroom, took a deep breath and pried open the top. Inside was my childhood – finger paintings and report cards, a scrap book dedicated to Donny Osmond, my baby book, a pair of Sassoon jeans, my old tap shoes, countless photo albums, yearbooks from middle and high school, graded book reports, and several large manila envelopes. It was the envelopes that caught my eye. Curious about the contents I gathered them up and flopped down on my bed. Each envelope had a hand written label – Middle School, High School, Birthday Cards, Pen Pals and Boys with lots of red hearts drawn on the front of that one. Each envelope was full of notes; notes that my friends and I would pass to each other during classes or stick in each others lockers. There were love notes from boys that I barely remembered. Letters from a young sailor friend of my next door neighbor because getting mail was supposed to help his morale and letters from another neighbor’s nephew in India who wanted to correspond with someone from America so he could understand what our culture was like. Back in the day notes were our texts. But making the transition from writing to texting is something I have had a hard time with. There are so many confusing abbreviations, too many symbols. How can anyone get their point across with a bunch of letters strung together that don't even form an actual word? During my time we would never had communicated like that!


When I first got my ‘smart phone' I felt incredibly stupid. I had just gotten used to my old fashioned cell phone and even started to remember to put it in my purse instead of leaving it on the kitchen counter or in the console of my SUV. But the new ‘can do it all' gismo was a whole new technological ballgame. As the cell phone representative explained how my smarter-than-me phone would change my life all I could think of was how it would make my life more complicated then it already was. My two teens were already setting up their contact lists and down-loading apps while my very patience cell phone master was showing me how to turn the phone on. Once he was sure I got the hang of making calls he moved on to texting. “Oh, I won’t need that” I told him confidently. “Look, you have unlimited monthly texts and that’s mostly how you will be communicating. Hardly anyone calls anymore.” He gestured toward the seats my girls were slumped in and I noticed both had their thumbs flying over their mini-keyboards like they were in some type of Olympic thumb duel.

Mr. Cell Phone was right about going with the unlimited text because that is all my kids do-they text. They text the second they wake up until I finally have to pry their phone out of their clutched fists after they have fallen asleep. They will even text each other while they are both in their bedrooms or even while they are sitting next to one another in the backseat of our SUV. It was starting to annoy me. Why can’t people just talk to people? I just didn’t understand the need to constantly write about everyday mundane, unimportant things.

With English being my native tongue, that is how I communicate. I write in sentences made up of entire words complete with punctuation. So when one of my kids would send me a text that looked something like WRU@ when I would be on my way to pick them up from school or ZUP when I would be relaxing in my bedroom after a very long day I felt like I was reading a WWII Enigma code. Every one of my texts to my girls would be answered either with an OMG or K. I felt like I was reading Klingon and didn't understand most of what they were trying to tell me. Finally my thirteen year old (volunteered by the rest of the family) was brave enough to tell me “Mom, everyone hates your texts.” “Why?” I asked a little hurt. “Because they are just way too long. It’s like reading a letter.” A few days later I was on the phone with a very good male friend and was explaining my bruised ego over the whole texting dilemma. He just laughed and said, “You are my favorite MILF.” “What’s that?” I asked. “Ask a teen age boy – he’ll know.” I don’t know any teen age boys so I kind of put that question aside and figured the next time I ran into a young boy I ask him.

Moments after that conversation I pulled into my neighbor Walgreens to pick up some odds and ends. At that time Walgreens was the closest store to my neighborhood since our development is surrounded by cow pastures. So you become familiar with the employees that work there and they become familiar with you. When it was my turn to check out I placed my purchases on the counter; a box of Benadryl, a bottle of Aussie hair conditioner, a bag of peanut M&M’s and a get well card for a friend who was feeling under the weather. I noticed that my customer service representative was an older teen boy who lived in my neighborhood. “You probably know all about texting” I said pleasantly. He smiled innocently at me while he was scanning my products. “Yes ma'am.” “Could you tell me what a MILF is?” I asked naively. I noticed his polite smile quickly disappeared and his face started to turn crimson. The gentlemen behind me started to cough. It must be something bad I thought. Was it some kind of racial slur or a horrible insult? “Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s just...” I didn’t get to finish my apology because that sweet boy shoved my bag of items towards me while he kept his eyes glued to the floor. I took the plastic bag and power walked out of the store and to my car. I couldn’t even remember if I had actually paid for anything. While sitting in my Expedition, I used my smarty pants phone and Goggled the offensive abbreviation. After reading the meaning I mentally yelled to my soon to be former friend ”Hey buddy this is UFB! From now on I’ll have to drive all the way to CVS!”

Back to the envelopes I had now spread all over my bedspread. I opened the one that I had labeled High School. The contents of each folded wide-ruled piece of notebook paper were filled with important teen dilemmas, gossip, and injustices. What if Keith finds out I like him, I’ll die! Can you believe that so-and-so wore that skirt- again? Mr. Stevens is such a jerk to give homework over the weekend. Can I borrow your geometry proofs index cards? Warning – pop quiz in American History! Meet me at the front of the gym for lunch. Do you have an extra pair of shorts for P.E.? I yelled to my teens to come and check them out. “What are these” they wondered. “They’re texts” I explained. “Old school style”. We laughed as we took turns reading. “Oh, my gosh mom!” my thirteen year old exclaimed. “You were like a real teenager!” And the more I read the more I realized that being a teen way back in the 1980’s wasn’t that much different than being a teen in the twenty-first century. The worries about looks, clothes, boys, popularity, parties and grades were still the same. The gripes about parents and teachers, homework, curfews and the horror of being deprived of a coveted item that everyone else in the universe had but you hasn’t changed either. The only difference is the method of delivery. I was now on the other side of the looking glass understanding what my girls were feeling and the revelation of what my parents had gone through.

My friends and I also had abbreviations sprinkled throughout our notes – TTFN, FYI, LYLAS, BFF, TLF, SWAK, AKA, and MYOB just to name a few. Not that much different than the texts my kids send, I realized. “Why did you keep all these Mom?” my high schooler asked. “Oh, I guess because there just a little piece of who I was way back then.” “You were almost like a little cool mom.” she exclaimed looking slightly impressed. “So, can we look in the Boys envelope?” she asked with a sly smirk. “NWNH” I replied as I began to gather up the papers and put them back into the envelope. “NWNH – what’s that?” “No way, no how" I said with my own sly smirk. There are just some pieces of yourself you shouldn’t share with your kids!

Declare Your Independence

I love the 4th of July because it is a no-stress holiday. You don’t have to worry about buying presents, decorating the house, baking dozens of cookies and pies, or offending your in-laws because you want to spend the day at home. There is no getting up at the butt crack of dawn to prepare a very large dead bird and there is no gravy to fuss over because Aunt June always complains about lumps. It is most definitely a stay-at home mom’s kind of celebration. You go to the store and get some paper plates, plastic cups, chips, hot dogs, hamburgers, a gallon of ice cream and a jug of sweet tea. Your husband gets to stand outside and cook in the sweltering heat while you stay inside and relax on the couch. It is also the only day of the year that you can let your kids hold an object engulfed in flames and nobody can call child services!


This past July 4th my family did what a zillion other families all across the nation did – we started the day attending a patriotic church service, had a cookout with some neighbors and family and we watched our neighborhood firework show while being eaten alive by mosquitos. As the day was coming to a close a thought hit me. Why do we wait for New Year’s Day to resolve to change something in our lives? Doesn’t Independence Day make more sense? After all, aren’t’ we supposed to be celebrating our freedom to be who we want to be, to live how we want to live, to say whatever we want to say, to worship how we want to worship, to think want we want to think and to love whomever we want to love?

So on July 5th I decided to declare my independence and do something worthy of the lives given in order for me to have the life I have. I declared to – are you ready – live my life. I mean really live it. Not just get through the day. So I bought a pair of roller skates. What do roller skates have to do with freedom? A lot actually.

Close your eyes and think way back to the last time you roller skated? Was it in 5th grade at the Galaxy Skateway? Was the DJ blaring your favorite songs like Boogie Wonderland? Did you couple skate to How Deep is Your Love; hands sweaty and heart pounding? Did you wonder how Tootie on Facts of Life got away with wearing her skates everywhere? At first I felt like a fool going to Sports Authority and buying the skates. They had about 14 different choices of in line skates but only 2 of the oldie but goodie four wheeled skates. When I got home I grabbed a pair of socks and laced them up. Standing up slowly from the living room sofa I was only a little wobbly. I gingerly scooted around on the living room carpet until I felt like I wasn’t going to keel over. Then I was ready for the true test – outside.

As my two teenagers fled to their rooms and my husband suddenly became very busy with some last minute spreadsheets, I half skated/half marched out the laundry room door onto the driveway. With my six-year old as my only spectator, I started slowly down the drive; hands spread wide to help me balance. I was doing great, much better than I had expected. But then I started to go faster and faster. It wasn’t the most convenient time to find out that my driveway had a decent downward slope but off I flew towards the street, my six year old yelling encouraging words the whole time. “You’re doing it mom! Good job!” I heard screaming and realized it was me. My driveway was most definitely not Galaxy Skateway. Praying that I would at least fall on my rear and not break a hip, something in my brain clicked back on. Instinctively I bent my knees and slowly dragged my right skate stopper on the ground. I stopped just at the edge before the street and my driveway meet. I was still standing and my 6 year-old was cheering! It took another 10 minutes before I was zipping down the street like my former 10 year old self. I was shuffling, turning backwards and had more fun than I have had in a long time. I felt free.

It doesn’t matter that my driver’s license says I’m 41, that my teens think I have no clue about life, my kindergartner thinks my favorite show is Wonderpets or my husband gets annoyed because I don’t wash the dishes before I put them in the dishwasher. Those are just small pieces of who I am. Flying down the street with my IPod blaring Donna Summer’s Bad Girls I felt young and free and full of life. I declared my right to put my life’s puzzle together one piece at a time and create my own finished picture. I’ll add pieces and put aside those pieces that no longer fit. And I'll even rediscover some pieces that I thought I’d lost. Like roller skating. Let freedom ring!