Quite a Ride

So I need a nickname for the gang of teenagers that hangs around my house.  The little guys are the Street Urchins.  The sixteen-year-olds?  What do I call them?

It's been a rather difficult week in Teenage World.  Parenting teenagers definitely resembles a roller-coaster ride.  You're strapped in for the duration (7 years, give or take time for those rocky pre- and post-adolescent stages).  There are the ups and downs, twists and turns, and occasional spins that turn you upside down.

In the past week, we have experienced

• curfew battles
• playing one parent off another
• sulking
• plenty of eye-rolling, stomping up the stairs and slamming of the bedroom door
• The Silent Treatment
• and an ill-fated trip to the mall.

They've got nothing to do and way too much time to do nothing in. The bunch of them went job-hunting--together--after swimming at my house yesterday.  I'm not sure that the best way to look for a job is to show up as a Six-Pack at the pizzeria or Edible Arrangements with wet hair, wearing short shorts and flip-flops.  I asked the kids if any potential employer had wondered if he was expected to hire the whole crew.  (They didn't get why I thought that was funny, or even worth wondering about).

But we've also got a teenager who dissuades her younger brother from styling his hair like Eddie Munster, who "takes" me grocery shopping so she can do all the heavy lifting, pushing and loading that I can't do, who takes 3 AM phone calls from friends in despair over a family member's bad health and questioning the existence and benevolence of God.  While I'm not thrilled over a 3 AM phone call, I am so gratified to know that when her friends have crises like that, they turn to her.  That says a whole lot about my daughter, right there.

I've got to take the bad with the good here.  A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.  Ultimately, I think I've got a good kid, and maybe her friends are good kids too, but I don't know them well enough to really determine that.

Today is the feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, patron of teenagers.  And they need his intercession and inspiration more than ever.  So today, I prayed for that bunch of teenagers (and they still need a nickname).  And I'm on my way to the supermarket, driven by my very own teenager, to stock the fridge with sodas so her friends will find something cold to drink when they show up later.

image credit

The Lost Boys

What IS it with the kids on this block?

There are four boys on my street who are the same age as Little Brother.  I call them the Street Urchins.  They wind up here a lot, perhaps because I'm the one who lets them in.

They know that if they play at my house, they've got to play by my rules.  Street Urchins who drop the f-bomb in my family room get sent home.  That's me, the Mean Mommy.

This morning, I mentioned to TheDad that last night one of the boys' moms had come here looking for him about an hour after his sisters picked him up.  That's when he told me that he'd heard there were marital problems in that household, and this boy might be moving soon.

One of the other boys lives with his mom and older siblings.  His parents have been on-and-off separated for several years now.  His dad, though, stays involved and is a Cub Scout leader.

I don't really know much about the new kid on the block, other than the fact that his parents just opened their second pizzeria.  He seems to be on his own quite a bit.

And then there's Adventure Boy, who (like his 3 older siblings) is being raised by his grandparents though his mom lives across town.  Sometimes he goes there.  Sometimes he spends a few hours with his dad, and his grandmother reports that the custody issues aren't pretty.  He's been left to his own devices since he was a preschooler.

A week or so ago, two of these boys knocked on my door at 8:20 on a school night, looking to play with Little Brother.  Ten minutes.  That's all I gave them.  Who lets their kids out at 8:20 on a school night?  Who lets their kids disappear after school, never looking for them until they have a baseball game or soccer practice?  Who doesn't call their kids home until after 8 (if then)--kids who have been out since 4 or earlier, who haven't been fed dinner, who haven't been nagged about homework?

Sometimes I think I should stop calling them the Street Urchins and refer to them as the Lost Boys.

I've ranted about these kids again and again and again.  I resent being Mommy to the whole block.  This isn't what I signed up for.

After yesterday's Cheese Ball Debacle, in which two of the Street Urchins thought it would be fun to toss Utz cheese balls into each other's mouths, and then pulverized the ones that missed--all over my back porch--I was more than a little bit hot under the collar.  They come here, make a mess, help themselves to snacks and drinks, make a mess, kick soccer balls at my pool filter and front door, make a mess, and (apparently) never have to go home.  And I resent that.  A lot.

I plan to come down hard on the Street Urchins next time they show up, about the cheese balls.  That is disrespectful to me and to my home, and wasteful of food.  If I'd found the mess before they left, they would have been the ones out on the porch with the ShopVac.  Instead, it was Little Brother.

But after TheDad mentioned that yet another Street Urchin is dealing with problems at home, my heart melted just a little bit.  These kids need what they're not getting at home, I realized.  None of them is in a situation of his own making.

I was wondering, the other day, if refusing to buy Johnson's Baby Shampoo and Starbucks lattes really does any good.  I'm not convinced that it does.  And while I'm happy to be able to afford the big box of diapers every month that I donate to a local crisis-pregnancy center (and I will continue to do so), that effort is a drop in the bucket.

What I need to do is give where it really counts, and that means giving until it hurts.  That means putting up with the Street Urchins and continuing to remind them that baseballs are not Pool Toys and sending them home when the streetlights go on.  It means welcoming them, but setting (and sticking to) limits.  It means praying for them.  It means doing the right thing even when I don't feel like it; even when I'm cranky and resentful and feeling put-upon.  Maybe especially then.

Honestly, this may be the most pro-life thing I can do right now.

In your charity today, please offer a prayer (or several) for the Lost Boys.

You Just Never Know

The Leaning Tower of Beverages

It was a rough night last night at the Tech Week Dinners.  Nothing bad happened or anything, but through a perfect storm of my usually-barely-controlled social anxiety, a heavy introvert tendency, and my current hormonal state, I really wasn't dealing with even a small disturbance in the force field I prefer to generate around myself at all times.

And that force field was breached when the sweet and energetic mom who coordinates these dinners asked me to bring the muffin trays to the table where some other moms were setting out bagels.  Instant Mom-timidation ensued.  I was wearing a red t-shirt, tan capris and running shoes (after all, I was carrying 5-gallon jugs of lemonade, mixing iced tea, and standing for three hours on end.  I was dressed for the job, apron and all.)  They were wearing fashionable wrap dresses, strappy sandals, and coordinating jewelry.  But that's not all.  The Mom-timidators launched into complaints about a lack of tablecloths, centerpieces and matching balloons.  For a pancake-and-bacon dinner for 75 teenagers in a high-school cafeteria.  Then they started lining up the butter, syrup and jelly in perfectly straight lines.

To be fair, these moms did nothing and said nothing that should have bothered/upset/intimidated me.  Really, they didn't.  I'm sure they're perfectly lovely people, but I can't know that because I couldn't stay there.  As soon as I could, I got out of the Mom-timidation Sector and went to my Cozy Corner with the big stack-o-beverage coolers and got busy pouring lemonade and iced tea.  I vented a bit on Twitter, just to blow off a little steam.

A friend came over at one point to tell me some funny stories of things that had happened to her that day.  That was well-timed, though I'm sure she doesn't know it.  (She may have seen those Tweets of Desperation, though).  It gave my brain a break from dwelling on my completely irrational response to the Mom-timidation that I was completely aware I was imagining, but couldn't stop myself from feeling.

When dinner was over, I cleaned up the drink stuff and headed home.  It took a while to wind down from my strange emotional response, which I'm seriously hoping didn't show on my face all evening.  And this morning, I got a quick email from the lovely Tech Week Dinner coordinator, thanking me for showing up, stepping up, and jumping in and getting things done.  She's very faithful and very sincere about thanking people.  And boy, that 3-sentence email could not have come on a better day.

Yet another friend saw those Tweets of Desperation and tweeted me this morning to make sure I was OK.  (yes, and thanks!)

The moral of the story is:  you probably never know the effect you are going to have on people.  So if you have the chance to do so, have a good effect on someone.  Send them that quick "thank you" email.  Give that compliment.  Tell that funny story.  Especially if someone has that Deer-in-the-Headlights look, like I probably did yesterday.

To the folks who came to my rescue, intentionally or not:  thank you!  I love you!

From the Department of "How Did THAT Get There?"

Things found on the living-room corner hutch while decorating for Christmas:

--one giant oak leaf, almost too big to fit in a Ziplock gallon-size bag
--two complete decks of cards
--the three of hearts from a third deck of cards
--one guitar pick
--six pieces of Lego U-Build Battleship
--one sea shell (clam)
--one nonfunctional laptop battery
--two Cub Scout awards
--one penny
--one "little black book" of Lent reflections
--one big black patch with a white star and Indian chief pictured on it (I'm guessing this belongs to one of my Scouts?)
--one video camera
--program from MAME
--Middle Sister's certificate from her school's fall Honors Assembly
--one blue plastic frog
--and a black-and-white plastic chicken foot, broken off some long-tossed action figure.

This is, of course, in addition to all the stuff that's supposed to be on those shelves:  photos of all the cousins, our framed wedding invitation, and a statue of St. Joseph.  That cabinet is my living room's very own, very dusty Black Hole.

The Pot Calls the Kettle Black

Middle Sister missed the bus (again) this morning.  As she opened the door of the van to load her stuff in, a video-game cartridge fell out.

"Little Brother doesn't take care of his things," she complained as she threw her backpack onto the back seat, followed by her laptop and enormous sports duffel.

I just looked at her and then at her pile of stuff.

"What?  The IT people test those laptops by throwing them down the stairs!  I think it can handle my 2-pound sports bag."

(She underestimates the weight of this sports bag by a factor of 10.)

"I don't think they actually throw the computers down the stairs," I replied.

"Yes, they do!  My freshman English teacher told us that," she informed me.

"I have a hard time picturing the members of the Technology Department tossing laptops down the stairs," I commented.

"And the keyboards are supposed to be spillproof too!  I kinda want to test that..."

An Island Never Cries

When I first heard Simon & Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock" I felt an instant connection.  That's me!

A winter's day 
In a deep and dark December; 
I am alone, 
Gazing from my window to the streets below 
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow. 
I am a rock, 
I am an island. 

I've built walls, 
A fortress deep and mighty, 
That none may penetrate. 
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain. 
Its laughter and its loving I disdain. 
I am a rock, 
I am an island. 
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/simon+and+garfunkel/i+am+a+rock_20124809.html ] 
...

I have my books 
And my poetry to protect me; 
I am shielded in my armor, 
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. 
I touch no one and no one touches me. 
I am a rock, 
I am an island. 

And a rock feels no pain; 
And an island never cries.

Well, except for the poetry part (I prefer fiction, thankyouverymuch.  Failing that, a good cookbook will do.)

Sometimes, though, I find a few chinks in my emotional armor.  Today, I am not a rock.  Or an island.  And there is no perfectly good explanation for that.  I want to be in control of my emotions--and I pretty much knew, the second I woke up today, that such control is beyond my abilities today.

Unfortunately, I do not have the luxury of staying home and sipping tea and finishing the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy today.  It's going to take every ounce of strength I have--plus plenty of strength I do not have--to keep it together today.

It's easier, sometimes, to be an island.  But when you can't, make sure you bring along plenty of tissues.

High Anxiety

Remember that prayer that was on all those posters in the 70s: "Lord, help me to remember that nothing is going to happen today that you and I together can't handle"?

I've been letting anxiety get the better of me a little (a lot?) more than usual recently. And really, this has got to stop. When I was talking about this with a good friend, she mentioned that, lately, she has been making an effort to pray when anxiety starts to overcome her. She asks God to help her hand over the situation, to guide her words and actions.

Good advice.

But I don't want to pray that prayer from the 70s posters. To be honest, I find that prayer a little arrogant. 

As Father Cavanagh says in the movie Rudy, "I have come up with only two hard incontrovertible facts: there is a God, and I'm not him."

Better to pray that God will guide me through a situation. I prefer this prayer, attributed to Father Mychal Judge, OFM, who perished in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center:

Lord, take me where you want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what you want me to say, and
Keep me out of your way.

There's only one thing I may need to add to that: "Keep my foot out of my mouth."

Amen.

Because She Can

I've got no other explanation.

I left the house for an hour to attend Little Brother's Vacation Bible School closing performance. When we returned, I found some onion peels on the floor, and the kitchen smelled like onion. Busy with lunch, I didn't ask about it.

But Middle Sister told me anyway. "I cut up an onion before," she declared. "I wanted to see if I would cry."

"Oh...so what did you do with it after you cut it up?"

"Well, some of it fell on the floor, so I threw it away."

"That's too bad. I could have used it in tonight's dinner. Later, you can cut up another one for me."

She agreed, announcing proudly, "It made me cry, too!"

So she can cry again later. Saves me from having to do it.

Living Dangerously

Sometimes a little Boy Scout Camp can be a dangerous thing.

Right now, my back porch is full of Hood Ornaments. That's my nickname for the bunch of Boy Scouts who hang around with Middle Sister and the Boy Next Door. I call them Hood Ornaments because they ride their bicycles in such an unsafe manner that sooner or later (I'm betting on sooner), one of them is going to become one.

I don't usually mind the Hood Ornaments, though they tend to be loud and messy. But they're good kids.

However, they came back from Boy Scout Camp last week, and they're eager to put their newfound knowledge to good use. I just went out there and found one of them standing in the middle of a pile of yellow ropes and large carabiners.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm making a Swiss rappel seat," he informed me.

I warned him to stay off the pool deck, shed roof and house roof, as well as my clothesline. I'm not sure where else he might go with all his mountain-climbing equipment, and I'm not sure I want to. I just hope that when he gets hurt (it's a matter of time), it's on someone else's property.

Going Underground

We got some new furniture for the living room last week. I've been getting used to it (translation: I've been falling asleep in the new love seat a lot). But what has taken even more getting used to is the fact that my desk no longer fits into the living room.

Middle Sister, you see, talked me into investing in a "chair and a half" which is about the size of the old love seat. Plus we got a love seat and a couch. There's lots of seating in that room now, which is great. But there's no room for my desk.

That's OK, in a way...I like that the living room seems less cluttered without my desk. But putting it in the family room means that I am right in the middle of all the action--rather than close to the action, where I can see and hear it, but not in a spot where Nerf basketballs regularly rebound off my laptop screen (note to self: close laptop when not in use).

Summer's coming--two kids are already out of school and Little Brother only has three half-days left. I'm not yet used to having kids at home during the day--and the combination of one child who leaves the radio on in one room and the TV on in another, which happens to be the room I'm in, and another child's musical experimentation with a homemade didgeridoo is making me crazy. I can hardly wait to add an eight-year-old boy, who's in motion so much that he's blurry in nearly every picture he poses for, to the mix.

I'm jealous of Barb's "teacher's meetings" at Panera. I think I'm going to have to work in one of those every week or so. Middle Sister can babysit, since Big Brother starts work on Monday. (What are the odds that he'll be taking that didgeridoo with him?)

We have an empty desk in the basement that my husband was going to use for his home business. He doesn't use it--ever. So I may be taking my laptop downstairs, at least to get my work done (see "Blogging for Coupons" in the sidebar). I'll see how that goes.

The Real Thing

Grabbing the milk when we were ready to sit down to dinner, I noticed some writing on the red cap. After I poured my glass of milk I flipped over the cap to read it.

"Organic."

"Drat, I bought organic milk," I complained, turning the milk bottle around to see if the label matched the cap. (It did.)

"So what's wrong with that?" Big Brother inquired.

"I paid twice as much for the same gallon of milk," I explained.

He responded, "At least you know it came from real cows."

Translation, Please

To a mom, the phrase "tidy up the family room" means things like: pick up your toys off the floor, put away the video-game controllers, and put books back in the bookcase.

To Little Brother, the same phrase means: get a big piece of clear package-sealing tape, stick it on the (finished-wood) toy box, and write on it, in silver Sharpie, "Basketball place." Then put the basketball on the floor in front of this label.

Discretion is the better part of motherhood

Otherwise known as: You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."

Things I'd like to say to my daughter's friend, but don't: "If you're that interested in the clothespins that you've got them hanging from your ears, perhaps you'd like to take the laundry down from the line and fold it neatly."

Things I'd rather not have to say to my daughter's other friend, but do, since he's a neighbor and I've picked him up at school once in the past 2 weeks, in the pouring rain, because of a foot injury: "Don't you have a sore foot? Should you be doing barefoot gymnastics?"

I'm Giving Up Basketball for Lent

Much as I love basketball, I am relieved that, except for the upcoming (but as yet unscheduled) playoffs, Middle Sister's season is over for the year.

Watching her basketball game was a near occasion of sin for me today. We're supposed to avoid those things, right?

No, I wasn't swearing. I was tempted, but I didn't. I signed that CYO basketball agreement that said I would keep my language clean and encourage my child to do the same. Swearing wasn't the problem.

However, the problem was holding my tongue. I did it, but it wasn't pretty, and I wasn't proud of the struggle I had to go through to do it. Jesus spoke about the intent being as bad as the sin itself (Matthew 5:28) and if it weren't for the fact that my daughter was out there on that court playing her heart out, I could have easily gotten up and walked out.

No, I wasn't yelling at the refs. Plenty of parents were--and most of those were from the other team. At one point I thought that the refs were going to kick out one kid's dad, who wasn't satisfied that an intentional foul was called against one of our players who had mugged his daughter, and that she had 2 shots on that technical foul. (What did he want? Should our player have been arrested for assault and battery? The kid is a 7th-grader!)

I spent an awful lot of time during that game trying to keep my mouth shut. OK, I did yell stuff like "Good defense" and "Great job" because that's what I do when I watch basketball. I am not the coach. I am not the ref. It is not my job to tell the girls what to do, or to call the walks and fouls and back-court passes. But there were a lot of parents sitting on the bleachers today (close enough so I could hear them) who were trying to do the refs' job.

Let me tell you, those refs don't get paid enough for what they put up with from the sports parents.

Anyway, I was trying very hard to keep my mouth shut during that game. Because I wanted to shoot back at those parents who were yelling about my daughter who was working hard on defense, covering the player she was assigned to cover. Yeah, sometimes she covered a little too, well, physically. But there was plenty of ugly to go around on both sides. Middle Sister didn't foul out (she had four, before the 4th quarter) and, like the rest of her team, she never gave up. Those kids fought hard right to the bitter end of this game. They lost by 15 points and the other team's parents were still busy going on about how our team "needs to learn to play basketball" and was "too physical." But the Mama Bear in me was struggling with whether to open my mouth and tell those other parents to stop dissing my child and her teammates, or whether to keep it charitable since I had just been to church.

I was outwardly charitable, anyway. But that was a really hollow victory. And I'm still really upset about this whole thing.

CYO basketball this week has been fairly ugly. After Thursday night's game, as Middle Sister and I walked through the parking lot to our car, a girl from the other team mouthed "You suck" at her through her car window. Nice. Did I mention that this is a CYO league? And then today.

Middle Sister has a bad taste in her mouth after all this; she claims that this is her last season of basketball. And while I think that she'll do well in track next year, it's a shame that she's leaving the sport on bad terms.

It's only a game. Why do people have to make so much of it? Why can't they just let the kids play, and learn, and listen to the coaches and refs? These are 7th- and 8th-graders--this is not March Madness. Get a grip, basketball parents!

Overheard

...from the laundry room:

"Little Brother, were you chewing on your sweater?"

"Yes."

"Don't do that?"

"Why?"

"If you want to chew something, get food!"

"Sorry. It was almost dinnertime..."

Bad Connection

Every Thursday afternoon I volunteer in the school library. I help out with the first grade, then the kindergarten, and then I do some other library tasks such as entering new books into the computer catalog, straightening books on the shelves, or whatever the librarian needs done. I enjoy it, and I like seeing the kids.

Yesterday the librarian needed to speak to another teacher between the first-grade class and the kindergarten class. So I greeted the incoming kindergartners, got them settled down in the story area, and we waited for the librarian to return.

While we waited, the kids asked lots of questions, because after all, that's what little kids do best.

"Mrs. (mumbled, mangled version of my last name), do you know Little Brother?"

"Yes," I smiled. I was kind of amazed that they knew Little Brother's last name and that they'd made the connection.

"Are you his grandmother?"

Way to make me feel old, kid!

Table Manners R Us

Overheard in my dining room:

"Big Brother, get Little Brother a fork, please."

"No! Get me TWO forks!"

"You don't even eat with ONE fork. What do you think you're going to do with TWO?"

She's nothing if not contradictory

The same child who doesn't think that a long-term project constitutes "homework" casually mentioned to me today:

"I've got to start thinking of April Fool's Day pranks. I like to plan ahead."

Define "Homework"

Every day, Middle Sister comes home from school and I ask about homework. Usually she has some; not too much. She gets it done and packs it up. So, I think, it's all good.

Today she was hunting for poster paper, an old magazine, and some glue for a "project" she had to do for one class. It was a kind of scavenger hunt--she had to cut out representations of certain terms. I told her where to find the items she needed, and she headed up to her room to turn on some music and get to work.

Three hours later, she finished her "project." Then she complained that it had taken her three hours.

"Um, how long have you known about this assignment?" I wondered. "Did your teacher just assign this today?"

"No, she told us about it two weeks ago," she answered.

"But every day I ask you about homework, and some days you tell me you don't have any. You could have been working on this."

"This wasn't homework. This was a project!"

He's Being Green!

So there we were, enjoying our lunch in Chick-Fil-A, when I noticed that Little Brother's face and shirt were liberally adorned with barbecue sauce. "Little Brother," I scolded, "stop wiping your hands on your shirt! Use a napkin!"

Middle Sister chided me, "But the shirt is reusable!"