Snide Reply

Category: Blogging

  • Adoption–and Stupidity–are Forever

    When my daughter was in kindergarten, her teacher developed a semester-long unit of study on Antarctica. Being the helpful soul that I am, I suggested the class sponsor a penguin. They’re cute, they live in Antarctica and they are endangered. The teacher agreed and the class collected money for the sponsorship. They sent the money off to whichever  “Save Antarctica” organization it was that was collecting children’s pennies for penguins.

    Some time later, my daughter asked me, “ Mommy, when will we get the penguin?”

    “What penguin,” I asked, having forgotten the penny collection.

    “The penguin!” she said, vehemently, apparently believing that additional verbal force might force my brain into remembering.

    “I’m sorry, honey,” I said, “I just don’t know what penguin you’re talking about.”

    “The one we adopted, Mommy! When do we get to bring him home?”

    My daughter wasn’t trying to be cute. The penguin-saving organization called their sponsorship an “Adopt a Penguin” program. In our house, when you adopt something, you take it home and then you care for it and love it forever. My daughter was thinking it was about time we flew down to Antarctica and brought that penguin home, just as we’d flown to China to bring her home. I’m relieved that my daughter’s school didn’t adopt a highway. I don’t think it would fit in our living room.

    My daughter has been home for nearly eight years now and one thing I’ve learned in all that time is that people can be pretty darn stupid when it comes to adoption. Actually, people can be pretty darn stupid about a lot of things, but adoption really seems to bring out the insensitive jerk in a whole lot of people.

    We may get more than our share of stupid adoption comments because my daughter is Asian; my husband, my son and I aren’t. If you have eyes that work, it’s pretty evident that our daughter was adopted. My son is particularly annoyed by people who, on seeing him with his sister, ask if she was adopted. “No,” he likes to say, “my parents converted to Chinese after I was born.” I will admit, with shame, that I have used a similarly smart-assed response to one too many questions about how I came to be the parent of an Asian girl.

    Actually, asking if my daughter is adopted is annoying to me because no one ever asks me if my son is born. That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? My son was born, of course, but I’m really glad he isn’t born over and over again. Adoption, however, is something that many apparently believe happens repeatedly, as if my daughter wakes up every morning and we have to become a family all over again. She was adopted. It happened once, just like being born. Let’s move on, people.

    I’m pretty sure people who adopted children from the United States that look like their parents don’t get some of the super stupid questions that we who adopted internationally do. I was once asked if we planned on teaching our daughter English. English, for crying out loud! Chinese, I could understand. I don’t speak Chinese. My husband doesn’t speak Chinese. Our son speaks some Chinese, but didn’t then. I wanted to say, “Of course, we’re going to teach her English. Are you going to stop being an idiot?”

    When my son was born, a switch in my brain was flipped and I became vigilant about protecting him. With my daughter, the protection factor went into overdrive. Perhaps it’s understandable, given the moronic comments adoptees must endure. Because society forces it on families built through adoption, we see potential adoption-related issues in every situation. Recently, a friend’s daughter confessed that she was very worried about being labeled different at her school. She was in tears over her anxiety. My friend assumed, of course, that her daughter’s adoption was at the root of the problem. Nope. Her daughter didn’t want the other children to know she doesn’t like pie.

    The real stupidity about adoption comes out over reality. I like to think of myself as real. I’m pretty honest and down to earth. Plenty of people have complimented me on how real I am. But when it comes to parenting my daughter, I become an imaginary being. Apparently, some people believe my daughter was adopted by fairies because I keep getting asked where her real parents are. Her real parents are right in front of you, Ding Bat, and we’ve got the papers to prove it.

    As put out as I get when someone asks the real parents question, it really ticks me off when I note that I am her real mother and I get, “Oh, you know what I mean.” No, I don’t know what you mean. I refuse to know what you mean. Because what you mean feels pretty mean to me. It feels particularly mean to me when it’s said in front of my daughter.

    Imagine telling a little girl that her father really wanted a boy. Or walk up to a kid and tell him that his mother wasn’t really sure she wanted to have a baby. Even if you know that little girl’s father really did want a boy and that mother really wasn’t sure she wanted to have a baby. You can’t imagine it, can you? But children who were adopted hear how their real parents didn’t want them all the time. They hear it from adult strangers and strange adults. Those are the easiest comments to deal with because I’m usually there when it happens. School, however, is another story. So I’ve given my daughter words to use in response. She lives with her real parents; her birthparents couldn’t take care of any baby so they made a plan for her to be adopted.

    I feel pretty good about my daughter’s attitude toward her adoption. On a routine car pool trip recently my daughter had this conversation with her best friend:

    “What would you say if someone asked you who your real parents are,” she asked Best Friend. (I swear I did not prompt this discussion.)

    “What?” her friend asked. “That’s really weird.”

    “Yeah,” my daughter said. “My real parents are my parents.”

    We’ll continue to get stupid comments about adoption. We’ve heard them all from “Didn’t you want your own children?” to “How much did she cost?” Usually, I ask why someone wants to know because there are lots of people who are considering building their own families through adoption. But, every now and then, I have to let loose with a snide reply, something along the lines of “She cost too much? Well, how much did your car cost?”

    I hope you’ll excuse me now. I have to go feed the penguin.

    © Copyright 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • It’s Always Greener

    “It doesn’t have to be this way,” the note said. “It will take time, but we can fix this.”

    I knew there were problems. Hell, everyone on our courtyard could tell there were problems.  But I really didn’t think my lawn was so bad that the TruGreen® guy needed to leave me a personalized note.

    The physical move from Oak Park to Naperville, IL covered only twenty-three miles. The cultural move, however, was more like going from a hippie commune to, well, to an All-American mom-and-apple-pie suburb in all its suburbity.

    In Oak Park, where herbicides are only slightly less maligned than Agent Orange, my “if it’s green, it’s a lawn” attitude was applauded. In fact, if you’re not green in growing your green, you’d best not come outside until the sun goes down.

    Mine was a typical Oak Park lawn. In short, I pretty much ignored it. It got mowed once a week, fertilized twice a year with an all-natural lawn food, and was watered when it rained. Sure, there was grass in my grass, but there were also some dandelions and a little crabgrass. In the shady areas, there was some Creeping Charlie and even some nut sedge. It was all green, it all mowed. It was a lawn.

    In Naperville, lawn growing is a competitive sport. It’s not enough for the lawn to be green here; it should be a particular shade of green. A “good” lawn consists primarily of a single species of grass: Kentucky Blue. It’s really more of a dark blue green, but you get the idea.  The problem is that Kentucky Blue is the Naomi Campbell of the grass world. It requires copious amounts of exactly the right kind of attention or it does the herbivorous equivalent of flinging a flip-phone at you.

    While a good Naperville lawn is a monoculture, mine is a veritable botanic garden of all that is low-growing and green. I’ve got Blue grass, of course, along with dandelions, some little creeping things, some other little creeping things, some ferny-looking creeping things, some thistles and lots and lots of clover.

    I like clover. Clover is the right color. In fact, I think white clover leaves are an even nicer shade of green than Kentucky Blue grass. Clover has really cute little flowers. When I was a little girl, I made wreathes and garlands of white clover blossoms. My daughter makes them now. Clover is even an indicator of nitrogen—the stuff that turns grass green—in the soil.

    The biggest reason I like clover, though, is the bees. Clover is perfect food for bees, especially honeybees. And honeybees are endangered. In grad school, I wrote an entire integrated lesson plan for third- through fifth-graders focusing on the importance of healthy honeybees to our food production capabilities. When I see clover, I see orchards full of fruit trees pollinated by happy little honeybees.

    My neighbors? Not real big on clover. In fact, when they see clover, I’m pretty sure they see weeds. This wouldn’t be much of a problem if clover didn’t also spread so readily. One of my neighbors did not want clover in his yard so, in a pre-emptive strike, he sprayed my clover. He did this without asking while I was standing right there in front of him. Just took out his nasty Weed-B-Gone pump and blasted away at the clover on my side of the property line. I think I said something like, “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’ll pull the clover out before it gets to your yard,” but I was thinking something like, “You presumptuous son of a goat!”

    Well, the clover died. And left a very large dead brown spot in the middle of my front lawn. I left the spot there, hoping my neighbor would feel terrible about defacing my property. He never mentioned it. Finally, one day I began raking away the old dead foliage, preparing the soil for seed. Now, I may not be the best lawn-grower in the world, but I know how to prep a seedbed. I finished the raking, watered the soil to soften it and left the soil loosening for the next day. Imagine my surprise when I found that the bare spot had been seeded over. My neighbor had apparently felt guilty after all. He didn’t feel guilty enough to plant decent seed, however. This became abundantly clear when the new grass came in fluorescent green. He told me it would turn darker when it got older. It did not. It merely got taller. Eventually, I had a three-foot diameter circle of glow-in-the-dark grass in front of my house. Because the fluorescent grass was also stiff, after I mowed it, it looked like someone had stuck bright green toothpicks in the lawn. I lived with the toothpick lawn for an entire summer. My only consolation was that my neighbor used the same cheap, crappy seed to spot seed his own lawn. While I had a circle of fluorescence, he had little tufts of bright green toothpicks through his lawn.

    The radioactive green grass has since died off, giving way to other things greener and hardier, including clover, but I’m thinking it may have altered the genetic makeup of my horticultural haven. Recently, my daughter came running into the house squealing, “Mommy! Mommy! I found a four-leaf clover!” Well, of course I thought she had smooshed two clover stems together to make them look like one four-leaf clover. But she hadn’t. In her hands, she held a perfect four-leafed clover. She gave it to me and ran outside to find more. “That’ll keep her happy for a while,” I thought, but she was back in the house in a matter of minutes. Turns out, one particular spot in my yard is full of four-leaf clover. My daughter and her friend even found a five-leaf clover.

    I’m not a superstitious person on the whole, but I’m thinking the TruGreen® guy is going to have to find another yard to spray. In fact, the only way he’s welcome back is on his knees, looking for a six-leaf clover.

    Copyright 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • Inside My Head

    There is a foul-mouthed, judgmental witch in my life. I’m ashamed to admit that I even know her, but there is nothing I can do to eradicate her presence. You see, she lives inside my head.

    I am, by nature, a curious person. At the same time, I like to do things “the right way,” which means that I do lots and lots of research on what is the right way to do particular things, especially household tasks. The voice inside my head, therefore, has an opinion about everything, from how people should brush their teeth (two minutes, reaching all tooth surfaces) to how they should fold their sheets (the way I do).

    Naturally, I am a huge fan of Martha Stewart. Martha understands me. She knows that there must be a best way to do everything and she will find it, by God. Take the dishwashing liquid bottle on the counter, for example.  Probably eighty percent of the households in America have a big plastic bottle of green or blue liquid dishwashing soap sitting to one or the other side of the kitchen sink. I had one. I thought it was ugly. Martha had one. She thought it was ugly. In a stroke of genius worthy of a NASA engineer, Martha decanted the brightly colored liquid into a beautiful glass bottle and topped it all off with an attractive liquor pouring spout. I immediately bought a beautiful glass bottle, filled it with Dawn and set it beside my sink. It made me smile. But that wasn’t good enough for the voice inside my head. No, every time I spy a plastic dishwashing bottle while visiting someone’s home the voice inside my head says, “Ewwww!”

    “Ewww” is one of the tamer things that rattles around my brain. “Hooker” pops up more often than I like to admit. I have no idea why, but the “inside my head” voice sees hookers just about everywhere I go. I was in Target this past winter. I was doing the economy a favor, pushing my cart up and down the aisles. I turned a corner to find a young woman wearing a heavily ruffled blouse under a pea coat, which was heavily ruffled in the back. My eyes traveled south of the ruffled pea-coat-butt to the thigh-high, black suede high-heeled boots and “Hooker!” popped into my head. I saw similar boots on a five-year-old girl at the mall not long after that. Right after “Hooker boots!” popped into my head, I wondered, “Who buys hooker boots for a five-year-old?”, immediately followed by “Who makes hooker boots for a five-year-old?”

    While playing Fashion Police is a favorite activity inside my head, I really get cranking when someone ticks me off. This seems to be happening more and more during my regular runs. I mostly do trail running, usually through a prairie preserve near my home. Recently, my daughter begged to join me. Inside my head I was whining about not getting my mileage for the week but my mommy instinct won and my daughter and I headed to the prairie despite 20 mph winds and a constant drizzle.  We ran one and one-half miles with the wind yanking my daughter’s hat off her head every chance it got. Back at the trailhead, I spied a couple dressed, to my mind, completely inappropriately. Being the considerate person I am, I attempted to warn them that the wind was fierce that day. “I’m sure it is,” said the woman runner, giving me her best “maybe you can’t hack it, but I can” smile. I do not like condescension and, inside my head at least, I’m not particularly mature either. “I hope your hat blows away,” I thought.

    While condescending runners get my goat, it’s the cyclists on the trail that really set my inner witch to wagging her tongue. When I was a cyclist, I was ever so considerate. I never cut anyone off; I never rode on the wrong side of the path. Readying to pass another cyclist or a runner, I announced myself. “On your left,” I said, and then thanked the passee.  Not so those who share the trail with me. Many are the cyclists who whiz past me unannounced, scaring the whiz out of me. To each and every one, I think, “Get a bell, asshole!” as they speed out of sight.

    Inside my head, the trail I run is “my trail” and I am not particularly kind to those on my trail that I consider, shall we say, stupid. Witness the happy runner who trotted toward me on the wrong side of my trail. In America, we drive to the right, we walk to the right, we run to the right. I looked right at the wrong-sided runner. She did not yield. Instead, she smiled. “WTF,” I thought, so I gave her the universal WTF sign: palms raised to the sky, eyebrows up, quizzical look on my face. She did not yield. No, she smiled wider, waving, and trotted happily down the trail. “Idiot!” I thought, as I stepped out of her way.

    Immediately after thinking the idiot an idiot, I felt bad. “Maybe she’s from England,” I thought. “Maybe she has some leg length discrepancy that requires she run on the left side of the trail. Maybe I’m just mean and intolerant.” By the time I reached the end of my run, I had convinced myself that I am a nasty-minded, judgmental witch. See, as nasty-minded as I am toward others, I am hardest on myself. My children have called me fat, mean, stupid and ugly, though never all at once. It doesn’t get to me. I realize I am not fat, mean, stupid or ugly. But inside my head there is a constant barrage of insults. Can’t find my keys? “You are so stupid,” I tell myself. Gained a pound after having my annual turtle sundae? “Ack. You’re fat!” Reading a book instead of de-cluttering my office pig mess? “You’re so lazy!” You name it, my inner witch has a nasty comment for it.

    This morning, my daughter wanted me to hear a Selena Gomez song. In it, Selena sings, “Who say’s you’re not perfect?” My daughter sang merrily along while I held her in my lap and cried. Inside my head I thought, “I hope you never have a nasty, judgmental witch inside your beautiful, perfect head.”

    © 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved. Photo: Martha Stewart.com

  • Never Never Land

    The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is closed . . .for good. All of the exhibits are being dismantled, the artifacts sold. Michael Jackson’s glove? Elvis’ jukebox? Grace Slick’s fringy vest? Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout shirt? Bet you can find ‘em all on ebay. At least, that’s what my son thinks.

    A little background is in order here. When I still thought I would find a full-time teaching job, we made plans for a family car trip from Illinois to Boston, where we’d check out the Berklee School of Music, our son’s dream college. Since Cleveland is sort of on the way, we figured we’d stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Then, since Boston is closer to upstate New York than Illinois is, we thought we should check out the Eastman School of Music, our son’s dream-on college. Sure looked like Canada was pretty close, so we added a trek up to Toronto. By the end of our planning night, we were going to be on the road for about three weeks and our son was wondering if it was possible to drive to China.

    Fast forward to today. I am still under-employed so the three-week driving trip to Cleveland, Boston, Toronto and Beijing is out of the question. Still, my husband and I believe that our under-motivated son needs the kick in the pants that a meeting with an admissions counselor might provide. And, we reasoned, touching the actual college might make more real the idea that he has to work to get there. Sort of “See, Mom and Dad weren’t lying. There really is a place called college.” We decided that I would accompany our son on a trip to Boston. I was looking forward to it, thinking my son would, too. A couple of days with Mom—the fun parent—in a pretty cool city without his sister. What’s not to like?

    “Son,” I said, “Dad and I decided that we can’t afford the big family trip. So, you and I are going to fly out to Boston to check out Berklee.”

    “What?! We’re not going to Cleveland?”

    “No, we can’t do Cleveland and Boston and the point behind this whole trip was for you to check out Boston and see Berklee. We’ll have fun, just us!”

    “Oh, my god!” he yelled. “Now, I’ll never see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!”

    It is a sign of my maturity as a parent that I simply rolled my eyes and walked away.

    Never seeing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is just one of the things that will never happen in my son’s family. For instance, we never have anything good to eat. Typically, we have a wide variety of foods, from fresh fruit, yogurt and gourmet cheeses to crackers, popcorn, cold cuts and, of course, bacon. There is enough food that my husband and I work at not eating too much. Still, there is nothing to eat, according to our son.

    We never do anything fun, either. This Sunday evening, for instance, the four of us played poker together. Our son happens to be one of the funniest people I know and he was in very good form. He noticed our cat, Oliver, had crawled into a shopping bag. Now, you need to understand that Oliver is a terrible cat otherwise what I am about to say might make you think that we are cruel to our cat. Feel free to check out my post about our pets, then come back for the rest of the story.

    So, we were all playing poker. Oliver was hanging out in the shopping bag. My son picked up the bag and Oliver settled down into the bottom, belly up and all four paws sticking up in the air. It was one of those permanent shopping bags, made out of recycled bottles, very sturdy. I, half joking but remembering all of the teapots Oliver has broken, said, “Hang it from a hook!” Just as my son was about to hang the shopping bag from a door handle, my daughter burst past me saying, “Wait, I’ll get my bungee cord!” Now, I don’t know about you, but I was thinking this was some fun stuff, in addition to wondering why my daughter has a bungee cord.

    “Never” is not the only negative thrown around in our house. Its close cousin is “no one.” No one cares about my daughter. She makes a point of telling me this at least twice each week. No one cares about her when her best friend has gone home for the night and I am busy making dinner, forcing her to entertain herself. Frequently, no one cares about her when she is expected to clean up her messy room by herself since she’s the one who made the mess.

    I’m convinced that my children’s catastrophic thinking comes from years of watching Dora, the Explorer.  I realize that Dora is beloved by generations of children around the world but, to me, she’s just a wimp with a head shaped like a football. Dora’s gotta know by now that Swiper is waiting around the corner just itching to screw up her plan to get the baby bird past the Grumpy Old Troll and over the bridge to Blueberry Hill. But every time Swiper throws a monkey wrench into Dora and Boots’ best-laid plans, Dora has the same reaction, “Now we’ll never. . .” Well, you get the picture.

    Recently, my daughter was so convinced that no one cared about her that she decided she would leave.

    “Where will you go?” I asked, watching her stuff one of my tote bags with her clothing.

    “I’ll go live on the streets,” she said, turning back to stuffing the tote bag.

    As she continued to pack, I remembered my own running away from home adventure. Convinced no one cared about me, I got on my bike to ride away, expecting my mother to run out of the house, begging me to stay. She didn’t. She merely said, “We’ll miss you if you go.” I didn’t go.

    “I’d better take some sweaters,” my daughter said, mostly to herself, but loud enough for me to hear. “I might get cold.”

    “Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to get cold. You know, we’ll miss you if you go.”

    She snorted a little “Sure, Mom” snort and continued packing. But she didn’t go.

    Life’s problems come in black and white for my children. “Never,” “no one,” “always,” “everything” are their constant companions. I envy them their certainty but don’t have the heart to disabuse them of it. Besides, I’ve got to go check out the auctions on eBay. I’m thinking Grace Slick’s fringy vest would look pretty stylish on me.

    © 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • The Stupid Files

    My son grew up with better cartoons than I had. Oh, the Jetsons were ok and I really did love “Rastro,” but my son was lucky enough to be a ‘toon watcher when “Dexter’s Laboratory” was in its heyday on Cartoon Network. Dexter, the boy genius, was constantly vexed by his less intellectual sister, Dee Dee. In every episode, Dexter would tell her “Dee Dee, you are stupid. You are stupid. And don’t forget, you are stuuupid.”

    I think I love that line so much because there is so much that is stupid in this world. As evidence, I offer the following. There is a road that runs east and west through Aurora and Naperville, crossing Route 59. On the Naperville side of 59, it is called “Aurora Avenue.” On the Aurora side, it is called “New York Avenue.” If you go north on Ogden Avenue from my house and you keep going north, you have to turn right to continue onto Ogden. Continuing north, without turning, will not keep you on Ogden. You will find yourself on Raymond as if you had entered an alternate universe. And, while turning east to stay on Ogden keeps you on Ogden, turning left does not put you on the westbound part of Ogden. A left hand turn will put you on North Aurora Avenue.  The Naperville area is not alone in street naming stupidity. There is a sign in Palatine, I’m told, identifying Meacham Road that reads: “Meacham Road road.”

    Massive amounts of stupidity emanate from the myriad fast food drive-thrus in our area. I just adore those disembodied voices that don’t even say “hello” or “welcome” before diving into a guess as to why I drove up there in the first place. “Would you like to try the Triple Burger Death from Hell?” they ask. I am always polite and say “No, thank you” to their gracious suggestion. Some day, though, I’m going to say “Wrong! Guess again!”

    A friend recently visited a drive through to order three two-cheeseburger meals, one cheeseburger and two shakes. Well, of course, the little video screen beneath the disembodied voice (let’s call it “DV,” shall we?) showed that my friend ordered two cheeseburgers and two shakes. My friend corrected DV; the order became three cheeseburger meals. My friend corrected DV twice more and the order was finally correct, but that is not the most egregious incidence of DV’s stupidity. No! Each burger had to be decorated with the proper condiments, so DV asked, “Do you want cheeseburger number one with everything: pickles, lettuce, tomato, mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup?” “Sure,” said my friend. DV went on to cheeseburger number two. “Do you want it with everything: pickles, lettuce, tomato, mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup?” “Sure,” said my friend. Cheeseburger number three got similar treatment. Finally all of the cheeseburgers had been decorated and accounted for. DV forgot the shakes.

    My kids can do some stunningly stupid stuff. My son, for instance, can stand within arm’s distance of the back door. Should he open it, he could step directly out onto our deck. No stairs required and he’d be outdoors. Instead, he shouts to his father, “What’s it like out?” Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I wanted nothing more than to sit in my gazebo with a cup of tea and scan the news on my iPod. I finally got my wish and was glorying in a beautiful morning when my son appeared at the patio door. He looked at me pleadingly through the glass. I got up and went into the house, hoping for a “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.” I got, “What do we have for breakfast?” Now, this is the child who went with me to the grocery store the night before. He himself selected two boxes of cereal and a half-gallon of milk and placed them in the shopping cart.

    The dumbest thing I’ve ever heard come out of my children has probably come out of every child in the world at some point. Hell, I’ve said it. “Are we there yet?” they ask. Every time the car has been moving more than 15 minutes, one of my children will ask it. They will repeat it. I have always said the same thing: “No, not yet.” I have, in short, been patient. The last time I was asked if we were “there” yet, something broke in my good-mommy brain segment. Smart Ass Mom replied.

    “Dear child,” I asked, “what happens when we get where we are going?”

    “We’re there,” said the child.

    “Yes. And then what happens?”

    “I don’t know, Mommy. What?”

    “Well, the same thing happens every time. Mommy parks the car, I turn it off and we all get out. Now, has Mommy parked the car? Have I turned it off? Are we getting out?”

    The child was silent. A few miles later, she said, “Mommy are we getting close to being there?” No child of mine is stupid for long.

    The most consistent sources of stupidity in our lives, though, are the administrators of our children’s schools. They truly shine at registration time. Each year, for the past four years, I have been asked to complete the forms contained in a registration packet. Even though the first page of the packet is a computer-generated form, printed front and back, containing all the information that is necessary for my child’s continued presence at school, I am required to fill out five additional forms with the same information. I write my daughter’s name five times. I write my own name five times. I write my husband’s name five times. I fill out the same information on the new Emergency Card that I supplied in prior years. Ditto with the health card. One year, I pointed out that the school had all of the information on the cards I completed the prior year and that nothing had changed. Ah! But something had changed. They threw those cards away. They sent the un-completed cards back and threatened to exclude my daughter from classes until they received the completed cards.

    Now, all of that sounds pretty darn stupid, doesn’t it? But, it’s not the dumbest thing that has come out of one of my kids’ schools. Not by a long, long shot. No, the dumbest thing that has come out of their schools—maybe the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen—came from my son’s principal. Apparently, the staff at my son’s school spent too much time delivering stuff students had forgotten to the forgetful little buggers’ classrooms. Henceforth, Mr. Principal announced, the staff would no longer deliver such items. Nay, he said, they would be reserving their efforts for “more poignant responsibilities.” Yup. He said it. All I can say is “Mr. Principal, you are stupid, you are stupid. And, don’t forget, you are stuuupid.”

    © 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • The Other “F” Word

    I collect refrigerator magnets. I’ve never stopped to count how many there are but I’ve got quite a few. My favorites are the ones you get in trendy gift shops that have a vintage picture of a woman with a witty saying. For instance, I have one very large one with a picture of a woman leaning on a pillow. The saying? “I dreamed my whole house was clean.” I also have one with a pensive woman. Her caption reads, “She thought she might enjoy being mature.”

    My favorites, though, go hand in hand. One, of a woman embracing a man states, “Darling, let’s get deeply into debt!” Its mate shows a picture of a beautiful woman with bleached blonde hair and deep red lips. She’s saying, “Frugal is such an ugly word.”

    I firmly believe that frugal is an ugly word, but as we are deeply in debt, I’ve resolved that I shall attempt to become frugal.

    My grandmother was very good at being cheap—I mean, frugal. I remember she had a wire basket with a long handle in her kitchen. You know those little hunks of soap that are too little to effectively wash your hands with but too big to throw away guilt-free? My grandmother collected them, put them in the wire basket then, when she needed soap for doing dishes, she would swish the basket around in the hot water.

    I’m pretty sure they don’t make the soap my grandmother used anymore. Until my own family entered the frugal zone, I bought really nice soap. One particular favorite is French-milled and smells like gardenias. I’m not really sure what French-milled means, but it makes the soap nice and hard, but not too hard. Unfortunately, my favorite gardenia soap costs $5 for a bar. Now, it’s a big bar, but one can purchase a crate of Ivory soap for $3.99 at Target so I switched to Ivory. My husband liked that it’s cheap—I mean inexpensive. My daughter liked that it floats. I remember liking that when I was her age. I don’t remember the soap costing more than $100 to use, though. Here’s the problem with Ivory: it’s soft. It’s soft and gushy and all that soft, soapy gushiness combined with my daughter’s long, long hair creates a drain clog that requires a plumber to remove. Our foray into cheap soap cost us $65 per hour to remove. That gardenia-scented soap is smelling better and better these days.

    I’ve tried to save money on clothes and shoes. Back when I was young and trendy, I had more than twenty pairs of black shoes. “How can one person need twenty pairs of black shoes,” my husband asked? I was astounded that he could question owning so few black shoes. I tried to explain to my husband the difference between sandals, pumps, sling backs, oxfords, loafers and ballet flats. All he retained is that the ones he thinks are hot are called “pumps.”

    I used to spend a LOT of money on shoes. One pair was made entirely of leather, from the buttery smooth uppers to the little stacked heels. They were sleek, almost austere and I wore them with everything from pants to skirts. They were $200. I wear them still. Last year, I bought a pair of tan Mary Jane pumps at Target. They cost $19. Within half an hour of putting them on, my feet are screaming in agony. I remind myself of this every time I am drawn into the shoe section at Target. For me at least, there is no cheap and chic when it comes to shoes.

    I can’t save money on my daughter’s shoes, either. She has long, narrow feet that can only be shod by the local outrageously expensive children’s shop or Nordstrom. My son, however, wears the same pair of shoes every day. While I admire his cheapness—I mean, frugality—I am sure we will have a doctor visit for some disgusting fungal growth in the near future.

    Since our grocery expense is rather large, I thought I’d cut costs there. I bought the huge store-brand of frosted flakes. It came in a floppy bag with “Cheap Frosted Flakes” plastered all over it in big, bold letters. I needed a proper disguise. I bought a really cool plastic, reusable cereal container. My mother would have called it “Tupperware,” but a genuine Tupperware cereal container costs $20. I think I paid $5 for mine and felt guilty about it. I put the $1.99 worth of cereal in the $5 cereal-serving container. The next day, my son poured a huge bowl of flakes, added three pints of milk and took a bite. He immediately ran to the sink, spitting the flakes out as if they were coated with arsenic. “These aren’t Kellogg’s!  These suck!!” His sister heard his pronouncement; hence she wouldn’t eat the offending flakes either. So, I tasted the flakes. They suck.

    I moved on to makeup, another considerable expense. Foundation, in particular, is something I am very particular about. I routinely bought $45 foundation, made specifically for me by Prescriptives. Apparently, I didn’t buy enough of it. Prescriptives went out of business. There being three aisles of makeup at Target, I selected a promising shade. It cost $15. I put it on. Though a lovely shade of rose in the bottle, it turned instantly orange on my skin. I tried another brand for $12. It turned orange. Another brand. Another $15. It turned orange. Forty-two dollars later, I still need a foundation that doesn’t turn orange.

    My husband would say that one of our biggest problems is the fact that our regular grocery store is Target, coupled with the fact that I like nothing better than going to Target and pushing a cart around for an hour or two. I’m better about non-grocery items landing in the cart, but the kids aren’t. Some surprise treat always makes its way onto the belt. And, while I bring a list, I always find something we need that isn’t on it. At the check out counter, the children have fun guessing if the total will go over $200. I’m pleased to say it frequently doesn’t. Still, one of my son’s favorite jokes is that Dad goes to Target to get milk and comes out with milk. Period. Mom goes to Target for milk and comes home with milk and a flat screen TV. What? You mean you don’t? What are you, cheap—I mean, frugal?

    © 2011 by Janice Lindegard. All rights reserved.

  • Neighbors and Naked Barbies

    I like to sit on the deck looking at my garden. Some people find gardening relaxing. I’ve found that looking at the garden is actually much more relaxing than working in the garden. I particularly like to look at the garden in the morning and especially on significant days. So, it’s no surprise that Easter morning found me sitting on the step of my deck sipping a mug of hot tea while I surveyed my yard. What was surprising was the sight of three naked Barbies playing on the neighbor’s swing set, which sits just on their side of the property line.

    My daughter’s Best Friend lives in the naked-Barbies-on-the-swing-set house. In fact, the naked Barbies are hers. I wasn’t so much surprised to see the Barbies as I was surprised to see them on the swing set. They had been lounging on the chaise in our gazebo for the past week or so. Saturday night we had celebrated Passover with friends of ours we seldom see. They have a daughter who is close in age to ours. When these two meet, they form that fast, frenetic bond that only children who rarely play together achieve, as if they need to pack years’ worth of activity into three hours or so. In the maelstrom of their interaction, the Barbies somehow went from the chaise lounge to the slide and whatever you call that thing that two kids swing on facing each other.

    I smiled when I saw the Barbies and I knew Best Friend’s mother would smile, too. We have informally vowed to leave the area between our houses fenceless so things like naked Barbies on swing sets can happen while the children flow freely from one yard to the other.

    These are the best kind of neighbors. I consider them my reward because I also live near the worst kind of neighbor. Best Friend lives directly behind us. Worst Neighbor lives next door. Worst Neighbor bought the house and moved in with his wife and son. Every couple that has lived in the house has divorced and it wasn’t long before Mrs. Worst Neighbor and their child skipped out of the country.

    So now I live next door to Mr. Single Worst Neighbor. Given the current real estate market and the fact that he lives in “The Divorce House,” I’m pretty sure we’re in it for the long haul with Worst Neighbor.

    Worst Neighbor, being single, neglects many things in his house, most notably his dog. I’m sure the dog was purchased to appease Mrs. Worst Neighbor but as the dog is the Worst Dog, the purchase was for naught.  We’ll call Worst Neighbor’s dog “Lucy,” because that is her name and I don’t care about protecting her privacy.

    Frankly, Lucy doesn’t need privacy. She’s the neighborhood tramp. One particularly difficult day, I was pouring out my troubles in a phone call with my best friend. As we dished and drank our coffee I was beginning to chipper up, until I spied Lucy on my back deck and my own dog on Lucy. “I’ve gotta go!” I said, “Pogo’s humping the bitch from next door.” I separated the dogs and returned Lucy to her home. She was out and about soon afterward. Pogo lay whining in his cage.

    In an attempt to contain his canine strumpet, Worst Neighbor installed an electric fence, but did it himself and did it wrong. Lucy continued to roam the streets, looking for love. Last year, Worst Neighbor finally had her spayed and I held out some hope for a more peaceful life for us and for Lucy. It was a dark and stormy night when my hopes were dashed. Really. It was dark and stormy. It was night. And there was Lucy, whining at my back door. I called Worst Neighbor. He asked me to hold on to her while he finished having dinner with friends. We don’t call him about Lucy anymore. We call Animal Control. Maybe Worst Neighbor and Lucy will be getting divorced soon.

    Much as Worst Neighbor vexes us now, he is not the Worst Neighbor Ever. I believe that honor goes to the neighbors whose back porch rotted after years of neglect. With no safe way of getting from their back door to the garbage dumpster, they simply dropped their trash out the door into the yard where it accumulated. Eventually, of course, it attracted vermin, which were then attracted to the warmth in our house. I found them frolicking in the laundry hamper one memorable morning. Exterminators and health department officials got involved.

    My husband insists even they are not the Worst Neighbors Ever. To his mind, the Worst Neighbor Ever was the woman who lived in the apartment next door to his in graduate school. Or, I should say, “women,” as the person in question clearly suffered from multiple personality disorder. Every other night, just about 2 am, she would argue with herself, screaming and railing. Eventually, she would kick herself out of the apartment, slamming the heavy metal door on herself and waking the entire building.

    Sleep deprived, my husband called the landlord, who refused to believe him. Out of desperation and sleep-deprivation, my husband took to calling the landlord every time the women next door kicked themselves out. The landlord caught on eventually, answering the phone and immediately hanging up, but never evicted the woman/women. My husband moved out six months early but his middle-of-the-night phoning binge established a life-long habit of relieving pent-up frustration through creative, albeit hostile, retribution.

    Lately, the Best Neighbors have been dropping hints about moving, mumbling such selfish nonsense as needing a guest room for visiting grandparents. Our declining property values have forestalled what is probably inevitable, but Mrs. Best Neighbor assures me that they are taking us with them when they move. I hope this is true. I am far too old to discover what could be worse than living next to a promiscuous pooch, a vermin farm or the local psych ward.

    In the meantime, I’ll sit on my deck, survey my quarter acre of the American Dream and ponder where the naked Barbies will pop up next.

  • I See London

    Lately, my daughter has been asking about embarrassing moments.  “Mama,” she said, “what was your most embarrassing moment?” I don’t embarrass easily, so I had to think hard. I recalled a truly embarrassing incident in fourth grade when a teacher wouldn’t allow anyone to use the bathroom. I really had to go; the teacher really wouldn’t let me. I waited until lunch period, but we weren’t allowed to use the bathroom at lunch either. So, I got in the lunch line. My bladder reached the end of the line just when I did. I wet my underpants, copiously, as I handed my lunch money to the cafeteria lady.  I understand my dad come to school and ripped the teacher a new one. I take great satisfaction in this.

    My daughter, however, was not satisfied. Apparently, wetting my pants more than forty years ago isn’t embarrassing enough. She wanted something more up-to-date, so she supplied it.

    You need to understand that I am on a first name basis with my pharmacist. These things happen when you’re on the auto-refill until eternity program. For some reason known only to the god of chaos, my prescriptions auto-refill on different days. For some other reason, known only to the god of reason, this cannot be changed so that I can maintain my version of sanity with a once-monthly visit to “Chris.” Until the planets align, I am at the pharmacy counter at Target a minimum of two times per month.

    Last week’s toothache and antibiotics to cure it required an additional visit to Chris. He’s a pleasant guy, always ready to answer a question. As I chatted with Chris about drug interactions and other pharmacy-related topics, I heard my daughter say, “Ewwww!!!”

    “What is it,” I asked?

    “That!” she said, and pointed to the latest Target flyer. I admit to feeling a little awkward explaining pretty lingerie to my daughter in front of Chris. But I thought I had it covered when I told her that some women like to wear pretty underwear and reminded her that she, in fact, likes to have things like princesses and ponies on her undies.  She didn’t let the subject go, though.

    “My mommy doesn’t wear panties sometimes,” she said to Chris.

    I had no idea what she was referring to. Really. Honestly. So I said the first plausible thing that came to mind.

    “That was only once when I had to run down to the laundry room to get some, Sweetie.” “Sweetie” was the only publicly acceptable name I could think of for her at the time.

    Somehow, Chris filled my prescription without looking at me. I managed to pay for it without looking at him.

    Two days ago, I remembered what she was talking about.

    “Mommy,” the evil mistress of embarrassment said, “you went commando at the Y.”

    And she’s right. I did indeed go commando at the Y. See, I can get my kids to school with everything they need from lunches and homework to water bottles and notes to the teacher. Me? Not so much. I am usually stuffing my stuff into my gym bag as I push the kids toward the car. Frequently, I find myself missing some essential workout ingredient. One day—and it really was just one day—I finished my shower and reached into my bag to find no underwear. I looked right, I looked left, then pulled my pants on and got my GI-Joe self home as quickly as possible.

    My mother would have been appalled. What if, God forbid, I had been in an accident on the way home? What if I had been grievously injured? What if I had been taken to the hospital where the doctors cut away my pants to find that I had not just failed to wear nice underwear but had failed to wear underwear at all?

    Many mothers have the same rule mine did—wear your nicest panties when you go out because you never know when you’ll be in a terrible car accident. My best friend’s mother had that rule. Naturally, my best friend was in an automobile accident on a low-laundry day. She blessed her luck that she wasn’t grievously injured else the doctors would cut away her pants to find her wearing her husband’s tidy whities.

    Sometimes wearing panties can be a source of embarrassment. Another friend prides herself on her appearance in public. No gnarly sweats and socks with Birkenstocks for her. She undoubtedly wears nice panties when she goes out. Sometimes she wears them in surprising places. Once, in a hurry, she grabbed a pair of pants from the laundry basket. She tossed them on and ran out the door. At the grocery store, she felt as if she stepped on something once or twice, but thought nothing of it until the third time. She looked down to find a pair of panties peeking out of the leg of her pants. It says something about my friend that she was embarrassed not only about the panties but by the fact that they were her everyday plain old white ones. I have another friend who is as frazzled on her way to workout as I am. She found herself at dance class once with her underwear on over her workout pants.

    Wearing thongs is particularly problematic. My best friend reports that her daughter believes women over fifty should not wear thongs. Apparently, we are supposed to suffer VPL in our yoga pants. I gave up thongs with yoga-type pants a few years ago, when I bent down to retrieve something while wearing a pair of lovely pale pink sweat pants. A man standing behind me, who I thought was a gentleman, remarked, “I thought thongs were no longer fashionable with you girls.” My daughter doesn’t believe anyone should wear thongs. I’m following her advice these days.

    About three days after I started the antibiotics for my tooth, the phone rang. Though I didn’t recognize the number, I answered anyway. It was Chris, the pharmacist, wondering how I was doing on the antibiotic. I’m betting that isn’t all he was wondering.

  • Let Me Take You To Funky Town

    It had to happen eventually. I’ve been riding pretty high on this writing thing. Every week, I told myself, I would write 1,000 words. I would get them written and published without fail. I set my deadline: Monday before noon. It’s been about six months now and I’ve achieved my goal every week. Copious pats on the back for me.

    Then, this week rolled around and shoved me right into the writer’s block wall. I’m not really surprised. I kind of felt it coming early in the week. “What will I write about,” I asked myself. “Hell if I know,” I told myself. “Maybe I’ll write about what goes on inside my brain,” I thought, then realized there wasn’t enough going on to fill 1,000 words. There wasn’t enough going on to fill the back of a Target receipt.

    I’ve gotten to Saturday and wondered what I would write for Monday many times. I’ve always come up with something. Maybe not what I originally intended, or how I originally intended, but generally, Saturday ends with me set on Monday’s topic. Not this week. At the end of the day on Saturday all I knew was that “Camelot,” the new series on Starz, looks like it might be good, though Joseph Fiennes looks really silly bald.

    This week, though, it was Sunday night and I still didn’t know what to write. It became our dinner table conversation.

    “What should I write about?” I asked.

    “Write about me and my friends,” my daughter said.

    “Did it already.”

    “Pets!,” she said. “Write about pets.”

    “Done,” I said.

    Not to be deterred, she said, “Houses. Write about houses and how they protect you.”

    “I try to write about funny things.”

    “Oh,” she said. “It has to be funny?” That ruled out houses in her mind though I had considered writing about how I coped with a portion of Spring Break by allowing her to string yarn all over the house.

    “Write about condoms,” my son said.

    “I have,” I told him. “You came up in it.”

    He offered suggestions for a number of truly obscene things about which I could write. I informed him that my mother’s cousin reads my blogs. He shut up.

    I turned to my husband, who had said nothing throughout the children’s suggest-o-rama, though I did see him hide his head in his hands over one or two of our son’s suggestions. He looked at me and without saying a word, I knew that he knew the problem.

    “I’m in a funk,” I said, “and it’s not very funny to write about being depressed.”

    The conversation turned to lethargy, which is a fancy word for feeling so tired that you just want to stay in bed forever even though you aren’t really tired and you know you’re not tired but somehow getting out of bed just seems impossible. I mentioned that antidepressants can actually give some depressed people the energy they need to off themselves. I am already on antidepressants so there’re no worries about that here.

    My neighbor calls our house “The Fun House.” I know she means that I don’t care if the kids paint or build a blanket fortress in the family room or tie the house up with yarn. But, to me, it’s a pretty good description of the atmosphere in our house. Things are a little wonky, often outrageous, definitely not normal and that’s fine by us. So, I laughed full and loud when my son described how I could commit suicide without leaving the bed by having our cat nap on my face.

    While I’m in no danger of taking the feline express to the afterlife, I am most decidedly down. I’m sure its primary cause is the whole morbidly underemployed thing and the now-due student loans that are part of my economy-induced nightmare. There are also a number of other factors inhibiting my ability to maintain my generally cheerful-ish demeanor.

    First, there’s my health. You know how people will go on about the problems they are having in their lives and you don’t know what to say and so eventually you wind up saying something lame like “Well, at least you have your health”? Well, I don’t have my health. Now it’s not like I’m really, really sick. I don’t need a benefit for me. (Wait . . .a benefit might help pay off those loans.) No, I’m not gravely ill. I have a nagging respiratory infection of some sort with one of those coughs that doesn’t bother you until someone makes you laugh and then you wind up hacking up a chunk of lung. And a toothache. I have never had a toothache in my life. Now I have a toothache. And a pulled groin muscle. What the heck is that about? I’m not a linebacker. How do I rate a groin pull?

    Ordinarily, I’d be running and laughing to cope with my troubles. Can’t run, because I’m still resting and rehabbing the offending muscle. Can’t laugh without paroxysmal coughing.  I thought I might garden away the blues, so I decided to clean out the garden beds. Seeing all those little green and purple shoots sticking through the soil would surely improve my mood.

    Gardening didn’t improve my mood at all. On the contrary. with every dead grass whacked back and every dried-up leaf pulled, I was more and more convinced that it was time to move into a nice little townhouse. It was sounding better and better in my mind until I got to the selling the house we already own part. Then I got to the packing up everything we have part and the part where the movers somehow misplace the box containing all of my shoes. I went inside for a cup of tea. The garden beds looked better, but my pity party continued.

    With laughing, running and gardening put out to pasture, all that was left was reading. Usually, reading helps me relax. Lately, though, reading is just making me feel terrible. It started with “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss. I am thoroughly enjoying the story and its imaginative setting. There are just enough fantasy elements to remove the story from reality but not so much as to overwhelm the narrative. It is, in short, wholly imaginative and beautifully crafted. And it makes me feel completely inadequate as a writer. When I tell my husband this, he tells me I am being ridiculous and that, if I were a full-time writer who started full-time writing when I was in my twenties and who had someone to take care of everything else, I would be writing wholly imaginative, beautifully crafted fiction.

    He’s right, of course. I am a mom, a wife, a teacher, a dog trainer, a cat wrangler, a gardener, a runner and a writer who somehow managed to write more than 1,000 words despite a week-long bout of the blues.

  • With Friends Like These

    When I was a teenager, I fell in with a bad crowd. Cognizant that some of my loyal readers were friends of mine when I was a teenager, I should immediately state, “I’m not talking about you.” It is most likely that none of the bad crowd with which I fell in are regular readers of Snide Reply. I suspect one or two may not be regular readers of anything, but that is neither here nor there. My parents felt it their duty to point out that I had fallen in with said crowd and to do all they could to discourage further falling.

    Though I don’t necessarily believe it, apparently the crowds children fall into these days are even badder—in the bad sense of bad—than those I encountered. There was binge drinking when I was a teen, there was sex when I was a teen, there were drugs when I was a teen. (Again, my high school buddies, I am not talking about you. Oh, OK, I am but I’m not telling who did what or with whom.) The drinking, the drugs and the sex are all bad enough and I’ve worried about my kids doing them since probably a day or two after they started kindergarten. I don’t need to think about worse vices my children may be pressured to try.

    Now that I own a teenager, my parental friend radar has been tuned to high gear. It’s a wonder my son hasn’t noticed the brain hum in the background. Every time a new name is mentioned, my “who the hell is that” button gets switched. I try to be nonchalant as I grill my son.

    “Fred?” I’ll say, “I don’t think I’ve heard you mention a ‘Fred’ before.”

    “He’s a friend,” my son will say.

    “Well, duh!” I think.

    “Well, duh,” I say. “Where did you meet him? Is he in one of your classes? Does he drink, do drugs or have unprotected sex? Is he a member of a weird religious cult?” Well, maybe I don’t say that last bit, but it’s only because I know that’s not an appropriate thing for a parent to say outside of her head.

    As if worrying about new friends weren’t enough, I’ve discovered old friends can go bad.

    We moved to Naperville just as our son was entering fourth grade. He spent his entire first year here friendless. Oh, we made sure he saw his Oak Park friends and installed a phone line in his room so he could call them whenever he liked. Still, fourth grade was tough. In fifth grade, he made friends with a very nice boy. So, he had a friend. One friend.

    Middle school started out miserably, friend-wise. Our son was placed into the gifted program; his one friend wasn’t. Friend ground zero all over again. But, having found his tribe, he started making friends more easily. Eventually, he had a bunch of friends.

    All of his friends, at least all that I’ve met and I’ve met quite a few, appeared to be fine young people. I might have written, “appear to be fine young people” but recent events necessitate a change in verb tense. One of those fine young people has turned out to be quite a . . .hm. . . what’s the word . . .well, it rhymes with “spit head.”

    Spit Head has twice, in the last month, hurt my son’s feelings deeply. The first time, Spit Head convinced my son that he was over-reacting. I wanted to give Spit Head a good talking to, but held my tongue. If my son wanted to remain friends with Spit Head, then I needed to let him do it, I reasoned.

    The second time Spit Head hurt my son, Spit Head’s mother got involved. Now, before you think that she was telling Spit Head he was behaving badly, stop yourself. Spit Head’s mother was proving the old apple falling from the tree thing. Surprisingly, my son has dealt with Spit Head’s latest antic much more calmly than me. “He’s a douche,” he said. “He’s a douche,” one of his other friends agreed. Then, they moved on.

    Me? I never want to see the kid again. And I if I ever see his mother? Well, let’s just say Naperville is gonna look a little bit more like the Jersey Shore that day.

    My daughter is having friend troubles but it wasn’t her feelings that were being hurt. Instead, my daughter is the grand prize in a battle for affections that is largely waged by a gang of siblings we’ll call “The Delightful Children” with all due credit to “Code Name: Kids Next Door.”

    The Delightful Children include two brothers and their younger sister. She adores my daughter, who I’m sure she sees as a big sister substitute. Problem? The Delightful Children seem intent on breaking my daughter’s considerable bond to her Best Friend.

    My daughter plays with Best Friend nearly every day. They can play together for hours on end. In the winter months, things are fairly quiet on the friend front. The Delightful Children are, for some reason, not allowed to play in other people’s houses. So my daughter and Best Friend trash, I mean, “play” in our house. Sometimes they “play” in Best Friend’s house.

    In the summer, the wars begin. The Delightful Children have one of those redwood things with a playhouse on top. The monstrosity is nestled in the branches of willow tree so the playhouse is hidden from sight. I believe the tree may be a Whomping Willow because, invariably, Best Friend rushes home from the playhouse in tears. It being illegal to water board children, we’ll probably never know the details of what ensues in the Playhouse of Pain but it seems to involve harsh words from The Delightful Children toward Best Friend.

    My daughter recently wailed, “It’s like I’m being forced to choose between hurting my Best Friend and hurting a little girl!” My little girl being the one getting hurt, I decided to lay down a law. No playing with Best Friend and The Delightful children together. My husband reports the law is being respected with unexpected results. Recently, Best Friend and The Delightful children played together while my daughter practiced gymnastics in the family room.

    I figured we were finished with friend issues for a while until my son started a conversation like this, “Well, I was talking with one of my pothead friends . . .”