Category: random stuff

On one hand, we expect our kids to do their absolute best.

But at the same time, they need to learn their limitations.

But in teaching them their limitations, are we inadvertently teaching them to give up too soon?

But when we push them too hard, are we telling them that we expect them to be perfect?

And through all of this, what if we are sending out the message that if they aren’t perfect, that must mean they are failures.

And if they fail at one thing, does this mean they fail at everything?

AARGH. This parenting gig is HARD.

Dude and Kevin had a minor blow out this weekend. For once, I wasn’t involved. This must be a new record.

Wait. Scratch that. I did inadvertently start it.

*SIGH* Figures.

Every weekend, the boys get out to help Kevin mow the grass. Jazz drives the riding mower, Dude is in charge of trimming with the push mower.

One of the biggest reasons we assigned the boys these particular duties was because Jazz was simply too small and too weak to push the mower.

But he’s grown. And I thought it would be a good chance for him to build up the muscles in his arms and chest (he has a rather prominent breast bone that sticks out, WAY out, [he gets that from Kevin] and I’m constantly nagging suggesting that he do push ups or something to build up his chest and even that bone out).

So, I told Kevin that we should shake things up this weekend and ask Dude to mow with the riding mower and Jazz with the push mower.

Things were fine. Until the end.

The boys finished up and came into the house to take showers. Only, Kevin found a few spots that Dude missed and instead of fixing them himself, (which he would have done at any other time), I told him that Dude needed to learn that he can’t do a half-ass job on something – he needed to not only finish the job, but finish the job correctly.

Kevin asked him to go back out and mow the spots he missed.

And Dude threw an absolute FIT. As in a full-blown 16-year, UGLY, wild, and totally uncalled for temper tantrum. In fact, it was so bad, that it made Kevin mad and he grounded his butt, for a solid week. (I got him to reduce the sentence because I felt like some of the attitude was our fault. Read on …)

The kid was really, really upset.

I talked Dude back off the ledge and he finally tells me what is really bothering him.

He doesn’t feel like he ever does anything right. He feels like he fails at everything. Nothing he does is ever QUITE good enough for us.

When tempers cooled and everyone has had enough time to calm down and eat something (because you’d be surprised how mellow men are when their stomachs are full), we talked.

Well, I talked to both Kevin and Dude, separately.

I shouldn’t expect perfection.

I tell him I don’t expect him to be perfect, and yet, don’t I? I expect him to do his best. I expect him to try his hardest. I expect him to conquer his battles.

But what if his best isn’t good enough? What if he has reached his limitations and I’m putting unnecessary pressure on him? The boy can’t succeed at everything – it’s impossible. But he’s so afraid of failing that he doesn’t even try.

That’s why he buries himself in his videos games – because he’s GOOD at them. He feels powerful. He feels in control.

He doesn’t feel those things in real life.

Some of this fear of failure is due to his perfectionist “must win at all costs” personality. He’s INSANELY competitive, always has been. In fact, that’s the biggest reason he would never try out for sports – he knew he just couldn’t handle the thought of losing. And he couldn’t handle disappointing himself, his team mates, or us.

But part of his fear stems from our expectations. It’s so much easier to just not go there than to try and fail. It doesn’t help that Jazz is our “golden” child. Everything that kid does, he does well. And we praise him for it. And we brag to others about him. And we try not to do that too much in front of Dude because we don’t want him to be jealous of his brother, but I KNOW it’s hard for him.

Dude just hasn’t found his “groove” yet. He will. I’m confident. But in the meantime, he’s stuck in limbo. He wants to do well. He wants to please us. But he’s scared to try.

And at the same time, we’re pushing him. We EXPECT him to do his best. Actually, we don’t expect him, we demand it. But at the same time, I don’t want to put too much pressure on him. Everyone cracks from too much stress at some point.

The problem is – how much is too much? If we keep excusing his reluctance to TRY, aren’t we hurting him in the long run? But if we push him too hard now, aren’t we hurting him at this moment?

Aargh. It’s so hard to know how much to push and when to pull back.

We (I) explained all of this to Dude; he’s a smart kid and I think he gets it, but he’s unsure, timid, uncomfortable — in short, he’s a hormonal teenager.

Though this was another learning experience for me, I have walked away from the issue just as clueless as I was when I walked into it. There are no answers. All I can do is try to do the best I can do for him.

Let’s hope I’m good enough for HIM.

Claire McCaskill was in Springfield for a town hall meeting today. I didn’t go, but watched it live via ustream.

I couldn’t hear half of what was going on, but I did hear how passionate people were. There were several moments where the theater just exploded with enthusiasm and other moments the walls reverberated from the boos.

Here’s what I don’t understand about these town hall meetings. They are set up so that people can ask questions about issues, right? And when those questions are asked, the politicians do what they do best – they hedge around and never truly answer the question. I “get” why they can’t simply say yes or no, they have to protect their political careers after all, but OMG, it’s frustrating to not ever get a straight answer out of these pinheads.

And then, on top of the run around, politicians stand up there and scoff and turn up their noses at their opposition claiming that what they’re hearing is bogus and totally ridiculous and yet they never bother to disprove the claims.

Ever.

Why couldn’t town hall meetings be set up like this:

Citizens copy the portions of the proposed bill they have questions about. It comes STRAIGHT from the bill – no second hand, diluted, “edited” versions.

They then give those excerpts to the government official and ask their questions – is what is in this bill true or false? For this is what I understand it to mean. Am I wrong? If so, please tell me what it really means.

For example:

“Senator, here are three sections of the bill that I’m most concerned about:”

Pg 59 lines 21-24- Govt will have direct access to your bank accounts for electronic funds transfer

“WHY does the government need direct access to my finances and an electronic funds transfer to … where?”

Pg 239 Line 14-24-Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors, low income, poor will be affected. Expendable.

“So the people who need health care the most will be denied services? Why does the government think it has the power to decide who is expendable and who is not?”

Pg 430 Lines 11-15- The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life.

“So, my life has been reduced to a dollar amount? And correct me if I’m wrong, but WHY exactly does the government feel the need to play God with my life?”

And then make the damn official stand up there, with a copy of the bill in hand, and DISPROVE the fears, the questions, the concerns. Only THEN will people get the answers they need.

It may not be what we want to hear, but at least we’ll know where we stand so we can make the plan better. People interpret the bill to mean one thing, and yet, the officials claim that’s not what it means and refuse to offer an alternate explanation. If it doesn’t mean what we think it means, then what the hell DOES it mean??

I can’t tell you the number of questions that McCaskill dodged today by simply saying, “that’s simply not true. That is incorrect. You don’t have your information right.”

And then leave it at that!! She didn’t even bother proving us wrong! How is this helpful!? How does this reassure people that things are under control? That our concerns are being addressed?

The short answer? It doesn’t!

If we TRULY want answers from our elected officials, we need to pin them to a board, shove the actual bill in their faces and wait for them to squirm their way out of the explanation because from where I’m sitting? The TEXT in this asinine bill is literally black and white.

It’s called cold, hard facts. And nothing will get done in this country until we stop with the “he said / she said” mentality and start talking about what the bill actually SAYS instead of what people PERCEIVE what the bill says.

We need to make our government ACCOUNTABLE for it’s actions.

(By the way, here’s a copy of the bill if you haven’t looked at it).

Oh, and I just found the entire town hall meeting here.

And while I’m on a ranting roll here …

I’m a writer. So, I naturally pay attention to how people write. I pay attention to how they say it and I especially pay attention to syntax – I honestly can’t help myself. It’s just an ingrained habit.

A lot of times, if I see someone has used the wrong word for something or has made a simple there/their/they’re mistake, it’s no big deal. We’re all human. Heck, MY prose is certainly not perfect. I make mistakes. And a lot of times, if I write ya’ll or ain’t it’s because that’s how I talk and given this venue, it’s appropriate and even appreciated.

It keeps it real.

But I judge. If I’m reading someone and they consistently make mistakes, their grammar is consistently bad, then I lose interest. I sit back, cross my arms, shake my head and assume that the person who is writing the nonsense is actually an idiot.

Or worse, a lazy idiot.

Because if you think people don’t judge you by your writing, then you’re naive.

Again, I have a lot of patience with people’s writing because it’s a “thing” with me. I’m overly sensitive, I guess. I went to school and studied language – it’s just part of who I am. And I’ve had people tell me that they were afraid, or intimidated, to write me because of my “writer” status.

And I feel bad about that. I don’t want to make people uncomfortable and AGAIN, I’m okay with about 98% of what I read from other people. I look past the syntax and concentrate on the message behind the prose.

But there ARE a few things that drive me absolutely bat sh*t crazy (excuse my language).

And one of those things?

COMMONLY misusing LOSE and LOOSE.

I don’t know WHAT is going on, but people, seriously, when you LOSE something, it’s not spelled LOOSE.

I’m seeing this more and more across the internet board. It’s becoming ACCEPTABLE, it appears, to use LOOSE in place of LOSE.

I can not hold my tongue anymore. I solemnly swear that if I see a blogger consistently using the wrong LOSE/LOOSE combination, I’m going to call them out.

I have to. We must stop this trend. It seems silly, I know. But if we don’t start sticking up for our language, there’s no telling how low it will go before we’re *back to talking like cavemen.

In fact, if you follow me on Twitter, you KNOW this is a constant thorn in my side.

So, this is fair warning. Misuse the LOSE/LOOSE combination and **I will make fun of you.

You’ve been warned.

*I don’t believe in evolution so the whole referring back to the caveman days was said because it sounded good, not because I believe that nonsense.

**I just wanted to make sure that ya’ll knew that this whole rant? Is supposed to be taken with a grain of salt. I’m serious, yet I’m not. I wouldn’t REALLY make fun of you.

Or would I? 😉

Dude doesn’t have that many friends (I can’t imagine where he gets THAT trait from – *ahem*), but the ones he does have? He sees a lot.

Once again, he stayed over at a friend’s house this past Friday night. Whenever he and his friends get together, they stay up all night and do the LAN party thing, playing XBox games together.

Dude packed up his XBox, and all the gear that went along with that, as well as our flat-screen TV that sits on a shelf over our treadmill (which I use to watch movies when I walk on the treadmill). He has to take his own TV because, well, TV’s don’t grow on trees. At least, they didn’t the last time I checked. And in order to participate in a LAN party, you sort of need a TV. It’s really hard to play games when you can’t see what’s going on.

So, Kevin dropped him off. I had to stay home because I was waiting on a very important email from a school that wanted to post their class lists online (see how accommodating I am about helping the schools out? I’m tellin’ ya, if your child’s school doesn’t have a decent website, you’re missing out! Contact me and let’s talk).

Because I was distracted, I forgot to feed the kid. Which is a problem. A hungry teenage boy? Yeah, picture a hormonal teenage girl – times about twenty. So, Kevin calls him on his cell phone to ask if he needs us to bring him anything to eat. Now I know the kid will probably eat a little something over at his friend’s, but I hate to assume that someone else is going to feed him, so we checked just to make sure. They hadn’t said anything about food at that point, but I wasn’t worried, they usually ordered pizza in times past so I just assumed they would do the same thing again.

Uh, no.

The next morning, Kevin and I ran back over to pick Dude up. (I’m really looking forward to the day he can drive himself places!) We noticed there was a giant SUV in the driveway, one we weren’t familiar with.

Hhmm, one of his friends must be driving now, I thought to myself.

We gave him a chance to get settled in the car and succumb to a yawn or two before interrogating him.

And by interrogating him, I mean, just ask him simple questions.

“So, did you have fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“A little.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you end up eating for dinner?”

Silence.

I glanced in my rear-view mirror to try and catch Dude’s eyes.

He’s not looking at me.

I raise an eyebrow to Kevin and we give him a little more time to formulate his answer. After all, the kid is tired, and the brain synapses thing? Is running slow.

“We went and ate Chinese food,” he finally answered.

“Oh?” Kevin asked innocently. “Who drove you over there?”

“My friend, J,” was Dude’s answer.

My knee-jerk reaction was shock and then alarm. My kid was in the car with a new 16-year old driver?!? ACK! We’ve always told Dude that when he got his license, he wasn’t allowed to drive any of his friends around for at least a year, not until he had had some experience under his belt. So, the fact that he willingly went with his buddy was sort of surprising.

To me, at least.

But I held my tongue and swished that information around my pea brain for a bit. He was alive. He was fine. Calm down, mom.

My very next thought was, “COOL!” How cool was it that he and his buddies were able to hop into a car and just go eat Chinese food on the spur of the moment? How exciting! How grown up! And .. uh oh …

“What did you do for money? Who paid for your meal?” I asked.

Dude said his buddy paid for it and I immediately felt bad. I’m confident Dude will see his buddy again and when he does, he can pay him back. But in the meantime, that was a good lesson for us — always make sure the boy has some money on him.

I asked Dude if he felt grown-up when he and his buds went out to eat. He gave me a lazy smile and said, “yeah.”

That lone word, and the way he said it, said it all, really. He not only liked it, he LOVED it. He got his first REAL taste of independence.

Dude has been a different kid this weekend. He’s been more relaxed, more … mature. I really think we’ve turned another corner in his life and I’m predicting this is going to be a HUGE “growing up” year for Dude.

Even though I’m tickled pink that he had a good time and that he got a taste of what being a teenager is all about, do you want to know what I’m MOST happy about?

The fact that he COULD tell us about the trip out with his buddies. He trusted us not to go ballistic and we didn’t. THAT to me is a huge milestone, I think.

***************

Speaking of cell phones … I ordered Dude’s cell phone from Virgin Mobile over the weekend. His choices were red or gold. He thought the gold one might be a bit too “pimp-ish”, so he went with the red. Only, we’re hoping it’s a true red and not a reddish-pink, because if so, that puppy will be sent back.

In the meantime, Jazz recorded his own voice mail message on his phone (the old phone). It’s pretty funny and I wish you could listen to it, but in essence, it goes a little something like this:

“Hey, this is Jazz. I’m not here right now because either 1. I have my phone turned off, or 2. I can’t answer the phone. So, either call back in 20 minutes or so, or I’ll get back to you eventually.”

And he sounds totally bored with the whole thing.

HAHA! Love that kid.

***************

I spent several hours on Sunday going through old clothes. Since Jazz had a pretty big growth spurt these past several months, I had a TON of clothes to sort through.

Considering Jazz has grown so much, he not only had to try on old clothes to make sure they still fit (most didn’t), he also had to try on Dude’s old clothes to see if he was big enough to wear them (and he was, for the most part).

I ended up with FIVE trash bags full of stuff he could no longer wear, as well as about four pairs of shoes.

So, I kept Jazz pretty busy Sunday afternoon. But he was a really good sport about it. In fact, he sort of acted excited about his new “wardrobe.” A lot of Dude’s old stuff was BRAND NEW because that was the time period that Dude refused to wear anything but about three t-shirts and two hoodies – the entire school year. It drove me bonkers, but I couldn’t get the kid to wear anything else.

When I asked Dude why he wouldn’t wear anything other than the same crap over and over again he said, “I don’t want the other kids to think I’m rich or something by wearing different clothes all the time.”

Wha?! So, I guess it was okay to allow the other kids to think he was dirt poor? I don’t understand why it has suddenly become a BAD thing to have money. It’s like everyone is apologizing for the fact that they are successful or they have worked hard to earn their own money.

We certainly aren’t rich and we certainly don’t have a lot of money, but we’re comfortable and I guess we should apologize for that?

Thanks for that, Obama. Grr. Don’t get me started.

Anyway, Dude and I drove to my sister-in-law’s house today to drop off those five bags of clothes. My SIL’s son is about four years younger than Jazz and he just worships him. My nephew really gets a kick out of wearing Jazz’s hand-me downs and I’m happy that the clothes are being used. (Not to mention, it saves my SIL tons of money!)

We’re starting to reach the point though, that we won’t have any clothes to give up after a while. I think Dude has pretty much stopped growing at this stage, which means less hand-me downs for Jazz and less sorting and discarding for me.

Even though going through clothes is my least favorite thing to do, I’ll miss it when I no longer have to do it.

***************

Kevin took Dude to practice parallel parking Sunday. (Dude told me that there was a cop parked across the street watching him. The cop had been sitting there before Kevin and Dude pulled up to practice, but it nearly gave Dude a heart attack).

When they got back, I talked everyone into climbing back into the car and driving down to Missouri State University (MSU). My plan was for us to get out and actually walk around the campus. I wanted to to show Dude what college life was like because now that he’s a Junior and will be taking the ACT Prep course first thing this semester, I knew that he would be hearing a lot about college and how important it was for him to start thinking seriously about it.

However, I didn’t realize, until we reached campus and the place was PACKED and crawling with people, that the Fall semester started today which meant that all of the kids were busy buying books and moving into their dorm rooms.

We didn’t end up walking around, we just drove around, but I think Dude got a “feel” for what it was like.

I couldn’t help getting excited myself. I LOVED college. Just loved it. And I miss it. I would love to go back and get my masters someday, but I need to pay my student loans off first before I think about going back for more.

I confess, I think part of the reason I wanted to go to MSU and look around was because of me.

I’m selfish like that. 🙂

***************

It’s the eve of another school year. Dude will be a Junior, Jazz will be a Freshman. In some ways, it’s hard to believe both of my boys will be high school, but in other ways, this is the point we’ve been working towards.

I’m quite confident that these next two / four years are going to ZOOM by. They will be monumental growth years for my kids – both physically and emotionally. I’m sure there will be dates, and friends, and driving, and jobs and just a whole slew of new and worrisome exciting experiences for the boys.

On one hand, I’m looking forward to the challenges. I’m looking forward to watching them grow up and reach out to grab their goals by the tail and hang on for dear life.

And on the other hand, they are growing away from me, they need me less and less and it makes me sad.

It’s weird. It’s almost as if I’m watching them morph into totally different beings from the outside, as a passer-by, instead of an interested party. I feel like I’m observing them through a glass snow globe and though the flakes start flying when their worlds are upset, I’m there to hold it steady and make everything calm once again.

My role has changed. I’m no longer an island they swim toward, I’m a rock to steady themselves against when the tide becomes overwhelming.

Soon, very soon, they will be swimming by themselves and I will be reduced to a dot on their horizon.

*sigh* It’s both sad, and a bit exciting, all at the same time.

I’ll be glad when tomorrow is over. The first day of school has always been hard for me. There is just something about watching them walk away from me … knowing they will be different people when I pick them up later.

It just makes me cry.

***************

Because the first day of school is so tough on me, I will have to distract myself. I plan on packing up my laptop and heading toward the MSU library.

I plan on getting back to my writing.

It’s really hard for me to write at home during the summer months. Even though the boys are virtually invisible during the long summer days, they are still PRESENT. And I can never fully turn off my mom mode when they’re around. I find that incredibly distracting. I can’t get anything done and writing, well, I don’t even try.

I have to get away from home, to physically leave, before I can get any writing done.

So, I’ll kill two birds with one stone tomorrow. I will distract myself from the first day of school blues and get some writing done to boot.

In case you weren’t aware of this, the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge is coming up in November and to help prepare myself for the challenge, I thought I would “ask” my main character to write some posts for this blog. A creative exercise, if you will. I thought it would be fun to introduce you all to something new and it would allow me an opportunity to get to know her better before NaNoWriMo starts.

I think, instead of writing a novel this year, I’m going to write 30 short stories all starring my lead character (that you will all come to know through this blog). I don’t know why, but I seem to work better in the short story format. I also enjoy it – a lot. I get so bored whenever I write anything longer than about 3,000 words. This way, I’ll mix things up a bit and have produced a mini-portfolio of my work to boot.

This will be my fifth year participating in the NaNoWriMo challenge (see sidebar for past winner’s badges) and I plan on crossing that 50,000 word line yet again this year. The NaNoWriMo site has published their web badges early, so hop on over, grab your badge and show the world that you’re up to the challenge!

Thanks for sticking it out with me. I always feel so much better after writing these random posts – it feels so good to purge!

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