April 2010
Last time I was home, Gramma, Aunt Liz and I were sitting around the table having tea and discussing our Fibromyalgia.
Yes I'm getting to the age where I talk about my ailments, some days that's all I can do is talk.
We all have been diagnosed with Fibrositis which is one of the most painful, debilitating diseases out there and up until ten or fifteen years ago was thought to be a psychiatric issue.
What made me laugh was the way each of us handles the pain. I think of us as the "Got a Problem ==take a pill," generation, my kids as the "culture conscience" generation, Aunt Liz as the Hippie Generation and Gramma as the Old School generation. Each generation has it's pros and cons but I'm really leaning towards Gramma school of medicine.
Medicine has changed that's for sure.
I remember when my doctor would tell me a good family meal consisted of lots of red meat, mounds of potatoes and butter, whole milk and vegys. This is a recipe for an early heart attack today.
When Gramma was a young mum and her kids were sick, she would call the family doctor and he would drop by.
When Aunt Liz was younger, she would call for an appointment later in the day at the doctor's office if it was an emergency or later in the week if it could wait. If she was unlucky she would have to wait a month for a full physical appointment.
I had to wait in a 12 hour Emerg room or walk in clinic and if I want a full physical they can probably squeeze me in next November. That's if I'm lucky enough to have a family doctor.
My kids are probably going to end up videoconferencing their doctor from home like the Jetsons when they are my age.
Then we got to talking about pain management.
My kids manage their health by preventing it, building up their immune system, making sure they are taking their vitamins and getting exercise. My son won't even let his kids have antibiotics unless they are on deaths door.
I just pop some Tylenol #3, keep my weight down and go to bed with a good book.
Aunt Liz tries to keep her weight down, does yoga, uses a hot water bottle and goes to physio and massages and lives at spas. She's eats grass and nuts breads, skim milk and would never think of eating something with more than two grams of fat.
Gramma has my vote. Tell her you pulled a muscle or have a cold. She'll lather you up with Vicks, Ben Gay or her favourite-Dr. Watkin's Horse Linament. You'll stink to high heaven but you will feel better. If you have a cold she will make a "Hot Toddy," Tea, butter, sugar and a tot of medicinal brandy! One day in a whisper, she admitted that her medicine cupboard under her bathroom sink has brandy. "It's good for the nerves." I almost died of shock.
We all drink tea homeopathic teas, mint or ginger for stomach upset, rosehip and hibiscus for energy and chamomile to sleep but knowing my little 'ol Gramma spikes hers puts me fairly in her camp.
Friday, January 07, 2011
pre xmas Gramma letter 2010 or The War of the Ugly Butt Chair
Dear Family;
First Big Hugs to All, especially Gramma. I know I haven't called you enough but I really am having serious hearing issues. I am seeing a doctor about it but I can't get an appointment until February. Because of the surgery on my ears a few years ago scar tissue has built up. (Or it could be the loud music but I think it's the scar tissue.) Leaving the radio on the car at gangster volume could be a symptom of the war but I'll tell you about that in a minute. Let me just first say that I am sitting here imagining big Gramma hugs and I hope you had a wonderful Birthday.
Well I know I've been bad about keeping in touch and I do apologize. I don't have a good reasons. I've just been so busy lately that I keep meaning to sit down and write and there always seems to be something coming up. I'm so sorry.
It's funny because with me not working right now; you'd think I'd have more time or even that it would be ultra important things that would keep us busy. It really is just little things, getting ready for the holidays, rediscovering the living room floor, selling some costumes and catching up with friends.
Oh yeah....and the Great Wars in the house. Forget WWI and WWII, It's "the Big Ugly-Butt Brown Chair War with the Coffee Table Battle," and "The War of the Smurfette Blue Hair," topped off by the fact that I seem to be turning into the "Monster in Law of the Year." (I'll have to send the history of the Monster in Law award in another letter.)
Let's start with the "War of the Ugly Butt Brown Chair."
Now that the kids have kind of grown up, I finally reached every Mother's dream. I have (had) a matching cream living room. I have white bookcases, bureau and desk. I wanted a white coffee table and was saving for an amazing one at IKEA that I've had my eye on for years. It was very expensive, 325.00 but it was one of those "One of these days when we can afford it," items. My living room was finally bright, light and co-ordinated. Breyan often commented to his friends, "if you have a small space and you want it to feel big and airy, get my Mum to decorate it." Yes I take great pride in that.
Like any war this started out as a small battle. I wanted a coffee table and the Mountain Man (otherwise known as Hubby) didn't. Our living room is very small, 8 x 12. The Mountain Man likes the clean open concept. He won't even agree to a rug. I think he just likes being able to cross the living room without being ambushed by guerilla furniture sneaking into the middle of the floor at night.
I did want a coffee table and we bickered for months. I think everyone needs a coffee table. We can't have end tables, there isn't enough room.
My reasons.
Reason 1. You have to have a place to put your tea or coffee or for grandgirls to colour on. Putting tea on the floor involves a lot of bending (which I am now old enough to avoid doing at every chance and often end up with my back out, looking like one of those cheerleaders that spell out words at home games--- without the cute skirt.)
Hubby's answer: He bought a set of those TV tables that you see in fifties TV shows. They set up on a frame? I admit he bought nice ones, they are pine. There is a set of four and they go on a nice holder that sits in the corner and doesn't take up much space.
My counter answer: I broke my stupid finger when I caught it in the stupid frame when I was putting it away because SOMEONE left them set up all over the living room!!!!!
If you don't mind leaving those table up all the time, then why can't we have a coffee table?
Reason 2
If you don't have a coffee table to put your feet up, the kids will put their feet up on the couch. Teenage feet not only leave unsightly marks on the white sofa that I earned after years of couches that didn't show the peanut butter, marker, crayon stains, or the dog hair that would mysteriously show in the morning--- they also have teenage feet smell. I don't care what anyone says; teen feet smell should be classifed as bio-warfare. No matter what you do; the smell just lingers.
Hubby's answer: Febreeze it to death. Bleach the slipcover.
My counter answer: Too much Febreeze or bleach is like sitting next to the kid on the bus who overdosed on Axe. I actually had an asthma attack from him soaking the couch in Febreeze. And by the way Mountain Man, just because something is cream coloured, it does not mean it can be bleached! How is it men do not know this? Why do they not know that bleach can break down the stain repellent. It's fourth grade science.
(Yet oddly they know that a kid can put his babytooth in a glass of Coke and it will break down in two days? They know that if you drop a Mentos in a bottle of pop and put the lid on, it becomes a bomb?)'
And last but not least,
Reason 3: Storage. If you don't have a coffee table, ideally one with a shelf, then where do you put down your book and glasses when you go to make a cup of tea?
Hubby's Answer: The floor--- it's only going to be a minute or two.
My Answer: What is that noise? Oh yeah, that was my glasses under your foot Mountain Man.
So you can see that there is every reason for us to have a coffee table. These reasons are valid enough that hubby went and bought me a little IKEA kitchen cupboard and put wheels on it. This is not a coffee table: this is a box on wheels.
The thing that turned this into a war? A big ugly butt, Archie Bunker, 1970's brown corduroy lazy-boy chair.
Mountain Man's father called Hubby one day and asked if he'd like the old Lazy Boy Chair. I will admit that it is in good condition. There was only one problem; it's brown---1970's plush corduroy brown. The Mountain Man knew my answer if he asked if I wanted it so he just brought it home as a 'fait accompli.'
The problem for me was first: Brown. It doesn't match anything in the room. My walls are robin's egg blue, my furniture is white and cream with blue throws, pillows and accents.
Second; A lazy boy takes a lot of room. You can't put it against the wall, it needs room to open and lean back. Our living room doesn't have the space.
Third; It's brown. A colour I personally find draining. Some people call chocolate brown cozy. I find a room full of brown furniture makes me feel like I'm buried, which at my age is not something I personally want to be reminded of.
Well, Caitlin and the MM love this chair. It sits awkwardly in the corner, dominating the room like a big 'ol quarterback having tea in china cups with a room full of little old Japanese ladies. Worse, Caitlin will often leave it locked open. I have to manouver past the foot jutting out and sit in it to put the lever up and reset the position every morning.
After months of bickering and downright arguing I felt I had two options; Either accidently burn the chair or recover the furniture. (Mountain Man says he has plans to buy a leather couch and loveseat that is more co-ordinated but since I've wanted a simple Ikea coffee table for seven years, I knew the living room set was a pipe dream.)
I couldn't think of a way to burn the chair "accidently" without burning down the rest of the house so I finally convinced myself to recover the furniture. The cream couch was looking really beat up and stained so I went with slipcovers. Do you know how hard it is to find a slipcover that fits a ten year old IKEA couch? Almost impossible. Even shopping online, a slipcover is very expensive. (I didn't want a throw cover because experience has taught me that it will get bunched up, slip down the back or one of my kids will use it as a blanket. I think a stretchy cover looks tidier.)
I decided I would have to make one. There are three steps. Make a pattern. Fit the material. Sew it together. It's a little time consuming, takes about a full work day. For me it took four days.
Day One: Make a pattern. This should be easy. I bought dust cover material. It is really cheap and you can reuse any excess for covering plants in the winter, packing, as a cheap interfacing or even leave it on the couch as a lining.
So I bought 12 metres of dust cover material and brought it home. Where Evil Kitty was delighted to discover he'd found a new scratching post.
Back to Fabricland. Got new dustcover material. Hid it from the cat in a closet. A closet that Evil Kitty somehow magically found a way to get into and he sprayed it.
(Evil Kitty is a cat that Caitlin offered to look after for her friend for a month . That was two years ago. Evil Kitty is not fixed, not declawed and has a rabid disposition and got away with everything up until he sprayed and peed and pooped all over Caitlin's room which even she found too much to handle. Since she's not working, she couldn't afford to fix, spay or get shots for him and has agreed to give Evil Kitty a new home prompting the Blue Smurfette Hair war but I'll get to that later.)
Back to Fabricland. I wonder what they think I'm doing with all this dust cover material?
I finally was able to get the material home and keep it safe. So we are up to about 60 dollars for material that would normally be 15.00.
Day Two: I needed to make the pattern. The easiest way is to pull out the couch and pin the fabric to it. Then you just baste and cut it. Instant pattern. Sounds simple? Not if there is a big ugly-butt brown chair dominating the living room. So I wrestled the stupid chair out of the way and squeezed around the couch which involved new yoga positions, and I made the pattern. This went well. Had it done in about an hour.
Decided I deserved a break with the bending and stretching and all. Went and had a cup of tea, caught up on my mail; only to return to find Mischeif had sneaked up on the couch and left dog hair all over the pattern.
Went and got the lint roller and spent two hours getting dog hair out of the pattern.
Day Two: Went to Fabricland and spent three hours looking for a light coloured material that would match ugly-butt brown and cream love seat colour.
Spent the trip over there with Mountain Man questioning whether we can afford to buy 12 metres of material and bitching at the traffic and hinting that we were spending more in gas running back and forth to Fabricland than it would cost to buy the couch. Be proud of me. I didn't hit him.
Spent three hours listening to Hubby sigh with boredom and answering all my requests for his input about material colour and texture with, "Whatever you want is fine with me." (Then after I found something he would complain it was too expensive or maybe didn't go perfectly with the other funiture.)
Did the Snoopy Dance of Joy when I found a stretch fabric, in a champagne colour that was 2.00/metre.
Spent the trip home with the Mountain Man being very very quiet because I let him know loud and clear that if he was going to bitch about cost, gas, traffic, or boredom the answer was very simple. Get rid of the chair.
Day Three: Wrestled the furniture back into place, cleared and washed the floor to cut the material.
Spent two hours looking for my sewing scissors that even though they have a huge sticker on them that clearly says, "Mum's Sewing Scissors: Do not use for milk," were covered with dried milk stains. Scrubbed the scissors.
Laid out the material, cut the material. Dog was still hiding under the dining room table and Hubby was hiding in the dining room.
I admit I did use a few words Gramma would call "sailor talk" because cutting out a six foot pattern in an 8 x 12 ft living room full of furniture required at one point, that I was cutting while crouching under the desk.
By this time my back was screaming, my patience was at it's end and I just gave up.
Then Hubby came down and inquired, "Did you make dinner?"
Be very proud of me. He's alive. For now.
Day Four: Getting out my sewing stuff. Now when Breyan moved out I was upset, my little boy was grown up and moving out with his own family. A tramautic time for any mother which impact should not be lessened by the fact I had a measuring tape in my back pocket and that five minutes after he left I was measuring his old bedroom for my sewing room.
I had great plans for that room. A sewing desk, a cutting table, maybe some nice checkered curtains.
Somehow, over the last three years it's become less of my sewing room and more of Mountain Man and Caitlin's extra closet.
First we had to put in a guest bed because Keegan, Caitlin's boyfriend was spending quite a few nights sleeping over. And yes, it also became the Snoring room. Mountain Man has this ambush snore. He'll snore and I'll hit him and he'll stop. Until just as I'm slipping back into sleep, he'll belt out a snore that makes the bed vibrate and makes me become a parody of Sylvester the cat with his claws in the ceiling.
I will tell him to "Please stop snoring, he's making the bed vibrate," and he'll sleepily ask me to give him a quarter. After months of sleepless nights, not even those earplugs they make for shooting guns could block out this sonorous snoring, I got up the courage to kick him out when the snoring gets to be too much.
Breyan came over one day and asked where Dad was. I said he was sleeping. Breyan answered that he checked our room and Dad wasn't there. When I informed him he was sleeping in the spare room Breyan turned to me with tears in his eyes, gave me a hug and said, "Is it so bad you guys have seperate rooms? I'm so sorry Mum. Are you getting a divorce?"
Which of course leaves me to wonder exactly why my son thinks MM and I are on the brink of divorce????
So I had had to take my cutting table out of the room but I still had a sewing desk. Then Caitlin got a job, bought a slew of electronics for her bedroom and decided she needed to put her dresser in the spare room to make space for the game system and huge TV in hers.
To compromise, since I was working at the time and didn't have much sewing time, I decided to put a cabinet in the living room and store my sewing machine and paraphenalia in it. I would take it out and set it up on the living room desk when I needed it.
I thought this was a good compromise until I had to spend a few days sewing and realized that each night I needed to pack it all up because if I leave a sewing project it magically transforms itself into a food, dog hair and Evil Kitty magnet.
So I hauled out the serger, the cutting mat, the sewing machine, pioneered into the basement over mountains of "stuff that builds up in the basement" to get my sewing box with thread, needles etc....
I finally got everything set up prepared to sew the cover. This went pretty well with the exception that Evil Kitty thought we were playing a catch and release game with the fabric going through the machine, resulting in me locking him in Catie's room and him retaliating by spraying, pooping and peeing all over Caitlin's bed, even though there was litter box in the room.
But I now have a champagne coloured couch with some nice pillows that I reworked. The furniture matches now, though I still have to repaint some of the picture frames, get throw blankets and accessories that match the new furniture colour. (This brown is not the kind that goes well with blue.)
I feel like I've played the entire Hamilton Tiger Cats and I can barely move but I have a nice matching set of furniture again. I'm happy, Sort of; I still need a coffee table.
I know this is long but this has been months of irritation and I felt I had to fully explain the War of the Ugly-butt Brown Chair.
The other major war is between Caitlin and I. Caitlin had to quit her job to go back to school to get her last credit for Grade 12 graduation. ( Last year when she caught the swine[I hate using H1N1 it looks like I'm writing hiney] flu she was in hospital during exams. Because she was an honour student all of her teachers but one gave her a pass. The one teacher that wouldn't pass her? Her sewing teacher.)
The relocating of Evil Kitty has stirred some resentment. Yes I did lock him in her room. Yes I am very allergic to him and I think I've shown Goddess like patience over the past two years. She was the one who decided Evil Kitty would be better off in a good home that was not ours. She and the Mountain Man were the ones who lied their little faces off telling the new owner that he was a lovable, sweet little kitty but we just couldn't afford proper care for it.
For some reason, Caitlin resents me demanding the removal of Evil Kitty.
She doesn't say it outright but I can see it in her behaviour. It's a passive aggressive type thing.
Examples:
She conviently forgets to call me when she's staying at a friends house until about 2 am when she will email me that she's not going to be home. Meanwhile I'm sitting by the phone chewing my nails and waiting for the cops to call and trying to convince her Dad that driving around in the middle of the night looking for his daughter is a bad idea and that tying up the phone calling every hospital and morgue in town might not be a good idea since the cops might be trying to call us. (He hasn't figured out how to use the call waiting feature.)
I told the kids I really wanted a new family picture that included the grandgirls and she went and dyed her hair Smurfette blue.
I planned for three weeks an afternoon tea party for my birthday. I emailed her, I reminded her on facebook, I wrote it on the family calendar but an hour into it she came and advised me that she needed to meet up with her friends for Xmas shopping because she had forgot the date of the tea party and had made plans with her friends. Besides, I had so many people there that she was sure I wouldn't miss her.
She leaves carpets of wet clothes and towels in the bathroom and manages to stain the counter and the fresh painted walls with make up and blue hair dye.
She leaves the ugly-butt chair out in the middle of the living room floor wide open and locked into position.
All inquiries into how school, friends or job hunt are going are met with one word answers.
I have tried talking to her. I've asked what I've done to upset her but she opens up those big blue eyes and says she has no idea what I'm talking about?
I've finally resorted to the Jewish Mother school of guilt. I spent my birthday money on getting her this really expensive perfume she's been craving for Christmas. I sigh and yes I know this is low but on some occassions I actually go silent. (Though I'm not quite sure on whether this is harder on me or her.)
It's like cold war with Blue Hair.
Finally to top it all off. Mountain Man's best fishing buddy from across the street has moved to Quebec. This is killing me. I swear my hubby has become a fourteen year old girl who has lost her first boyfriend. Every time the phone rings he runs hoping it's Joe. (Joe calls at least once a day.) Hubby mopes around the house. He wonders what Joe is up to. If Joe does invite him over he's elated for days. When the doorbell rings the MM practically runs to the door hoping it's Joe stopping by. He wonders what Joe would think about every damn fishing item in the stores.
Worse I HAVE TO GO TO FISHING STORES with the Mountain Man now.
I swear I want to put a personal ad in the local paper for a new best buddy for Doug.
So you can see, the holidays are going to be rough but I will get through,
I wish I was spending them with you!
Big Hugs
Kimberley
First Big Hugs to All, especially Gramma. I know I haven't called you enough but I really am having serious hearing issues. I am seeing a doctor about it but I can't get an appointment until February. Because of the surgery on my ears a few years ago scar tissue has built up. (Or it could be the loud music but I think it's the scar tissue.) Leaving the radio on the car at gangster volume could be a symptom of the war but I'll tell you about that in a minute. Let me just first say that I am sitting here imagining big Gramma hugs and I hope you had a wonderful Birthday.
Well I know I've been bad about keeping in touch and I do apologize. I don't have a good reasons. I've just been so busy lately that I keep meaning to sit down and write and there always seems to be something coming up. I'm so sorry.
It's funny because with me not working right now; you'd think I'd have more time or even that it would be ultra important things that would keep us busy. It really is just little things, getting ready for the holidays, rediscovering the living room floor, selling some costumes and catching up with friends.
Oh yeah....and the Great Wars in the house. Forget WWI and WWII, It's "the Big Ugly-Butt Brown Chair War with the Coffee Table Battle," and "The War of the Smurfette Blue Hair," topped off by the fact that I seem to be turning into the "Monster in Law of the Year." (I'll have to send the history of the Monster in Law award in another letter.)
Let's start with the "War of the Ugly Butt Brown Chair."
Now that the kids have kind of grown up, I finally reached every Mother's dream. I have (had) a matching cream living room. I have white bookcases, bureau and desk. I wanted a white coffee table and was saving for an amazing one at IKEA that I've had my eye on for years. It was very expensive, 325.00 but it was one of those "One of these days when we can afford it," items. My living room was finally bright, light and co-ordinated. Breyan often commented to his friends, "if you have a small space and you want it to feel big and airy, get my Mum to decorate it." Yes I take great pride in that.
Like any war this started out as a small battle. I wanted a coffee table and the Mountain Man (otherwise known as Hubby) didn't. Our living room is very small, 8 x 12. The Mountain Man likes the clean open concept. He won't even agree to a rug. I think he just likes being able to cross the living room without being ambushed by guerilla furniture sneaking into the middle of the floor at night.
I did want a coffee table and we bickered for months. I think everyone needs a coffee table. We can't have end tables, there isn't enough room.
My reasons.
Reason 1. You have to have a place to put your tea or coffee or for grandgirls to colour on. Putting tea on the floor involves a lot of bending (which I am now old enough to avoid doing at every chance and often end up with my back out, looking like one of those cheerleaders that spell out words at home games--- without the cute skirt.)
Hubby's answer: He bought a set of those TV tables that you see in fifties TV shows. They set up on a frame? I admit he bought nice ones, they are pine. There is a set of four and they go on a nice holder that sits in the corner and doesn't take up much space.
My counter answer: I broke my stupid finger when I caught it in the stupid frame when I was putting it away because SOMEONE left them set up all over the living room!!!!!
If you don't mind leaving those table up all the time, then why can't we have a coffee table?
Reason 2
If you don't have a coffee table to put your feet up, the kids will put their feet up on the couch. Teenage feet not only leave unsightly marks on the white sofa that I earned after years of couches that didn't show the peanut butter, marker, crayon stains, or the dog hair that would mysteriously show in the morning--- they also have teenage feet smell. I don't care what anyone says; teen feet smell should be classifed as bio-warfare. No matter what you do; the smell just lingers.
Hubby's answer: Febreeze it to death. Bleach the slipcover.
My counter answer: Too much Febreeze or bleach is like sitting next to the kid on the bus who overdosed on Axe. I actually had an asthma attack from him soaking the couch in Febreeze. And by the way Mountain Man, just because something is cream coloured, it does not mean it can be bleached! How is it men do not know this? Why do they not know that bleach can break down the stain repellent. It's fourth grade science.
(Yet oddly they know that a kid can put his babytooth in a glass of Coke and it will break down in two days? They know that if you drop a Mentos in a bottle of pop and put the lid on, it becomes a bomb?)'
And last but not least,
Reason 3: Storage. If you don't have a coffee table, ideally one with a shelf, then where do you put down your book and glasses when you go to make a cup of tea?
Hubby's Answer: The floor--- it's only going to be a minute or two.
My Answer: What is that noise? Oh yeah, that was my glasses under your foot Mountain Man.
So you can see that there is every reason for us to have a coffee table. These reasons are valid enough that hubby went and bought me a little IKEA kitchen cupboard and put wheels on it. This is not a coffee table: this is a box on wheels.
The thing that turned this into a war? A big ugly butt, Archie Bunker, 1970's brown corduroy lazy-boy chair.
Mountain Man's father called Hubby one day and asked if he'd like the old Lazy Boy Chair. I will admit that it is in good condition. There was only one problem; it's brown---1970's plush corduroy brown. The Mountain Man knew my answer if he asked if I wanted it so he just brought it home as a 'fait accompli.'
The problem for me was first: Brown. It doesn't match anything in the room. My walls are robin's egg blue, my furniture is white and cream with blue throws, pillows and accents.
Second; A lazy boy takes a lot of room. You can't put it against the wall, it needs room to open and lean back. Our living room doesn't have the space.
Third; It's brown. A colour I personally find draining. Some people call chocolate brown cozy. I find a room full of brown furniture makes me feel like I'm buried, which at my age is not something I personally want to be reminded of.
Well, Caitlin and the MM love this chair. It sits awkwardly in the corner, dominating the room like a big 'ol quarterback having tea in china cups with a room full of little old Japanese ladies. Worse, Caitlin will often leave it locked open. I have to manouver past the foot jutting out and sit in it to put the lever up and reset the position every morning.
After months of bickering and downright arguing I felt I had two options; Either accidently burn the chair or recover the furniture. (Mountain Man says he has plans to buy a leather couch and loveseat that is more co-ordinated but since I've wanted a simple Ikea coffee table for seven years, I knew the living room set was a pipe dream.)
I couldn't think of a way to burn the chair "accidently" without burning down the rest of the house so I finally convinced myself to recover the furniture. The cream couch was looking really beat up and stained so I went with slipcovers. Do you know how hard it is to find a slipcover that fits a ten year old IKEA couch? Almost impossible. Even shopping online, a slipcover is very expensive. (I didn't want a throw cover because experience has taught me that it will get bunched up, slip down the back or one of my kids will use it as a blanket. I think a stretchy cover looks tidier.)
I decided I would have to make one. There are three steps. Make a pattern. Fit the material. Sew it together. It's a little time consuming, takes about a full work day. For me it took four days.
Day One: Make a pattern. This should be easy. I bought dust cover material. It is really cheap and you can reuse any excess for covering plants in the winter, packing, as a cheap interfacing or even leave it on the couch as a lining.
So I bought 12 metres of dust cover material and brought it home. Where Evil Kitty was delighted to discover he'd found a new scratching post.
Back to Fabricland. Got new dustcover material. Hid it from the cat in a closet. A closet that Evil Kitty somehow magically found a way to get into and he sprayed it.
(Evil Kitty is a cat that Caitlin offered to look after for her friend for a month . That was two years ago. Evil Kitty is not fixed, not declawed and has a rabid disposition and got away with everything up until he sprayed and peed and pooped all over Caitlin's room which even she found too much to handle. Since she's not working, she couldn't afford to fix, spay or get shots for him and has agreed to give Evil Kitty a new home prompting the Blue Smurfette Hair war but I'll get to that later.)
Back to Fabricland. I wonder what they think I'm doing with all this dust cover material?
I finally was able to get the material home and keep it safe. So we are up to about 60 dollars for material that would normally be 15.00.
Day Two: I needed to make the pattern. The easiest way is to pull out the couch and pin the fabric to it. Then you just baste and cut it. Instant pattern. Sounds simple? Not if there is a big ugly-butt brown chair dominating the living room. So I wrestled the stupid chair out of the way and squeezed around the couch which involved new yoga positions, and I made the pattern. This went well. Had it done in about an hour.
Decided I deserved a break with the bending and stretching and all. Went and had a cup of tea, caught up on my mail; only to return to find Mischeif had sneaked up on the couch and left dog hair all over the pattern.
Went and got the lint roller and spent two hours getting dog hair out of the pattern.
Day Two: Went to Fabricland and spent three hours looking for a light coloured material that would match ugly-butt brown and cream love seat colour.
Spent the trip over there with Mountain Man questioning whether we can afford to buy 12 metres of material and bitching at the traffic and hinting that we were spending more in gas running back and forth to Fabricland than it would cost to buy the couch. Be proud of me. I didn't hit him.
Spent three hours listening to Hubby sigh with boredom and answering all my requests for his input about material colour and texture with, "Whatever you want is fine with me." (Then after I found something he would complain it was too expensive or maybe didn't go perfectly with the other funiture.)
Did the Snoopy Dance of Joy when I found a stretch fabric, in a champagne colour that was 2.00/metre.
Spent the trip home with the Mountain Man being very very quiet because I let him know loud and clear that if he was going to bitch about cost, gas, traffic, or boredom the answer was very simple. Get rid of the chair.
Day Three: Wrestled the furniture back into place, cleared and washed the floor to cut the material.
Spent two hours looking for my sewing scissors that even though they have a huge sticker on them that clearly says, "Mum's Sewing Scissors: Do not use for milk," were covered with dried milk stains. Scrubbed the scissors.
Laid out the material, cut the material. Dog was still hiding under the dining room table and Hubby was hiding in the dining room.
I admit I did use a few words Gramma would call "sailor talk" because cutting out a six foot pattern in an 8 x 12 ft living room full of furniture required at one point, that I was cutting while crouching under the desk.
By this time my back was screaming, my patience was at it's end and I just gave up.
Then Hubby came down and inquired, "Did you make dinner?"
Be very proud of me. He's alive. For now.
Day Four: Getting out my sewing stuff. Now when Breyan moved out I was upset, my little boy was grown up and moving out with his own family. A tramautic time for any mother which impact should not be lessened by the fact I had a measuring tape in my back pocket and that five minutes after he left I was measuring his old bedroom for my sewing room.
I had great plans for that room. A sewing desk, a cutting table, maybe some nice checkered curtains.
Somehow, over the last three years it's become less of my sewing room and more of Mountain Man and Caitlin's extra closet.
First we had to put in a guest bed because Keegan, Caitlin's boyfriend was spending quite a few nights sleeping over. And yes, it also became the Snoring room. Mountain Man has this ambush snore. He'll snore and I'll hit him and he'll stop. Until just as I'm slipping back into sleep, he'll belt out a snore that makes the bed vibrate and makes me become a parody of Sylvester the cat with his claws in the ceiling.
I will tell him to "Please stop snoring, he's making the bed vibrate," and he'll sleepily ask me to give him a quarter. After months of sleepless nights, not even those earplugs they make for shooting guns could block out this sonorous snoring, I got up the courage to kick him out when the snoring gets to be too much.
Breyan came over one day and asked where Dad was. I said he was sleeping. Breyan answered that he checked our room and Dad wasn't there. When I informed him he was sleeping in the spare room Breyan turned to me with tears in his eyes, gave me a hug and said, "Is it so bad you guys have seperate rooms? I'm so sorry Mum. Are you getting a divorce?"
Which of course leaves me to wonder exactly why my son thinks MM and I are on the brink of divorce????
So I had had to take my cutting table out of the room but I still had a sewing desk. Then Caitlin got a job, bought a slew of electronics for her bedroom and decided she needed to put her dresser in the spare room to make space for the game system and huge TV in hers.
To compromise, since I was working at the time and didn't have much sewing time, I decided to put a cabinet in the living room and store my sewing machine and paraphenalia in it. I would take it out and set it up on the living room desk when I needed it.
I thought this was a good compromise until I had to spend a few days sewing and realized that each night I needed to pack it all up because if I leave a sewing project it magically transforms itself into a food, dog hair and Evil Kitty magnet.
So I hauled out the serger, the cutting mat, the sewing machine, pioneered into the basement over mountains of "stuff that builds up in the basement" to get my sewing box with thread, needles etc....
I finally got everything set up prepared to sew the cover. This went pretty well with the exception that Evil Kitty thought we were playing a catch and release game with the fabric going through the machine, resulting in me locking him in Catie's room and him retaliating by spraying, pooping and peeing all over Caitlin's bed, even though there was litter box in the room.
But I now have a champagne coloured couch with some nice pillows that I reworked. The furniture matches now, though I still have to repaint some of the picture frames, get throw blankets and accessories that match the new furniture colour. (This brown is not the kind that goes well with blue.)
I feel like I've played the entire Hamilton Tiger Cats and I can barely move but I have a nice matching set of furniture again. I'm happy, Sort of; I still need a coffee table.
I know this is long but this has been months of irritation and I felt I had to fully explain the War of the Ugly-butt Brown Chair.
The other major war is between Caitlin and I. Caitlin had to quit her job to go back to school to get her last credit for Grade 12 graduation. ( Last year when she caught the swine[I hate using H1N1 it looks like I'm writing hiney] flu she was in hospital during exams. Because she was an honour student all of her teachers but one gave her a pass. The one teacher that wouldn't pass her? Her sewing teacher.)
The relocating of Evil Kitty has stirred some resentment. Yes I did lock him in her room. Yes I am very allergic to him and I think I've shown Goddess like patience over the past two years. She was the one who decided Evil Kitty would be better off in a good home that was not ours. She and the Mountain Man were the ones who lied their little faces off telling the new owner that he was a lovable, sweet little kitty but we just couldn't afford proper care for it.
For some reason, Caitlin resents me demanding the removal of Evil Kitty.
She doesn't say it outright but I can see it in her behaviour. It's a passive aggressive type thing.
Examples:
She conviently forgets to call me when she's staying at a friends house until about 2 am when she will email me that she's not going to be home. Meanwhile I'm sitting by the phone chewing my nails and waiting for the cops to call and trying to convince her Dad that driving around in the middle of the night looking for his daughter is a bad idea and that tying up the phone calling every hospital and morgue in town might not be a good idea since the cops might be trying to call us. (He hasn't figured out how to use the call waiting feature.)
I told the kids I really wanted a new family picture that included the grandgirls and she went and dyed her hair Smurfette blue.
I planned for three weeks an afternoon tea party for my birthday. I emailed her, I reminded her on facebook, I wrote it on the family calendar but an hour into it she came and advised me that she needed to meet up with her friends for Xmas shopping because she had forgot the date of the tea party and had made plans with her friends. Besides, I had so many people there that she was sure I wouldn't miss her.
She leaves carpets of wet clothes and towels in the bathroom and manages to stain the counter and the fresh painted walls with make up and blue hair dye.
She leaves the ugly-butt chair out in the middle of the living room floor wide open and locked into position.
All inquiries into how school, friends or job hunt are going are met with one word answers.
I have tried talking to her. I've asked what I've done to upset her but she opens up those big blue eyes and says she has no idea what I'm talking about?
I've finally resorted to the Jewish Mother school of guilt. I spent my birthday money on getting her this really expensive perfume she's been craving for Christmas. I sigh and yes I know this is low but on some occassions I actually go silent. (Though I'm not quite sure on whether this is harder on me or her.)
It's like cold war with Blue Hair.
Finally to top it all off. Mountain Man's best fishing buddy from across the street has moved to Quebec. This is killing me. I swear my hubby has become a fourteen year old girl who has lost her first boyfriend. Every time the phone rings he runs hoping it's Joe. (Joe calls at least once a day.) Hubby mopes around the house. He wonders what Joe is up to. If Joe does invite him over he's elated for days. When the doorbell rings the MM practically runs to the door hoping it's Joe stopping by. He wonders what Joe would think about every damn fishing item in the stores.
Worse I HAVE TO GO TO FISHING STORES with the Mountain Man now.
I swear I want to put a personal ad in the local paper for a new best buddy for Doug.
So you can see, the holidays are going to be rough but I will get through,
I wish I was spending them with you!
Big Hugs
Kimberley
Small town vs City kids
I've often been complimented on my kids. This makes me really proud. People ask how I've raised emotionally stable, happy kids who are so polite and well-mannered. I answer them because I've brought them up as small town kids. I did this by getting to know most of my neighbours and local merchants. Paid a lot of attention to what they are doing and resorting to parental guerilla warfare. It's tiring but it's so worth it.
When I was seventeen and living in a small town, I hated it. I was constantly teased for having green hair, having old ladies, "Tsk" because I wasn't wearing a slip under my six layers of taffeta Madonna skirt. I was called a slut because I liked to party or being called mental because because I loved the theatrical and at one point wanted to be Ethel Merman. I couldn't wait to get to the city with the theatre, the lights, the shopping. Almost every other kid I knew couldn't wait either. We thought people who brought their kids to the country to raise, outside of the city limits were insane. I couldn't wait to get out and when I did, I loved every minute of the city. Well sort of. Yes I ended up living on the streets and yes I did have life threatening moments but believe me, I can find trouble anywhere.
I now know exactly why they did it and if I had been able to, I would have brought my kids up in a small town. Not farm or rural and not the kind of town where you end up marrying your cousin, but the kind of town with a five figured population. Why? It's safer and it's easier and if you are related to half the town even better!
You see there is a huge difference in the upbringing of children in City vs Town.
First lets talk teen boys and safety.
I remember when Breyan came home with a gage in his ear. He didn't do this until he was 18 because Dad threatened to rip it out if he did and I threatened I would go get one of those magnetic cranes from the construction site down the street.
In the city there seems to be this unwritten urban rule that you have to look and act tough to be safe. You don't make eye contact, you wear subdued colours so you don't draw attention to yourself. As a teen boy in the city, you be as scary as you can to those around you so they don't mug you. Most city boys nowadays do this by piercing obvious parts of their bodies, tongues, eyebrows, noses etc.... they are a walking artists canvas. They walk and wear clothes that in their way are supposed to tell people they may a 12 gauge hiding in their pant leg. (That's how you get the Cripp walk. It's that walk that boys do that makes them look spastic. It's supposed to infer that they have a heavy weapon strapped to their leg.)
This has become such an ordinary fashion statement in the cities that I don't even notice it anymore and if I do I just wonder when they are they going to pull up their pants?
In a small town if you get a guy with 80 piercings and 25 tattoos, you know he's a freak. You know that if he should show up on your front doorstep, you need to lock the doors and find the 12 gauge.
I'm not saying guys in small towns don't get piercings or tattoos, it's just that they are more reasonable about it. On average a small town guy will be wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, a baseball cap and his weapon of choice is a baseball bat.
In a small town you worry if the boy your daughter is dating is driving a truck, getting drunk and bashing mailboxes as they drive by.
In the city you worry if the boys have a sedan, are on drugs or are shooting people out the back window.
This is all the city's fault. Because though you would think that a small town would make people feel claustrophobic what with the gossip, knowing each other's business, few places to go where no one knows you. When you get labelled it takes forever to outgrow it. This is true. Small town kids have a great deal of pressure to make friends because there just isn't that many people to be friends with. They have to guard their reputation because thirty years after you get labelled as "the kid who peed his pants in second grade," you will walk down the street and somebody will yell, "Hey Peepants, How are you?"
In a city though, there are so many people that you feel isolated in the largest crowd. You are overwhelmed of choices for making friends but yet the kids are trained to keep themselves safe and therefore are afraid to make any overtures. It is because of the anonymity that pedophiles and muggers feel bolder. They know that being described as male, 6' 4" can apply to ninety other guys around them. So we tell our kids, "Don't talk to strangers, don't accept anything from anybody, keep your head down..." By the time they are six we create a paranoiac bubble around them. Its' a sad thing that we have to do this.
Teen girls
This is the reason why you usually have two types of teen girls in the city. The Prosti-tots and the Gangsta-Girlz.
It wasn't just because the boys wore their hair long that I had trouble defining whether my kids friends were He's or She's. It was because I often couldn't tell if the kid with the huge pants, the black sweatshirt, the tats and gages was a girl! I have met girls in the city that scare the crap out of me. They have a cold stare that says, "Ya, what's your problem lady? I'd kill you in a heartbeat."
It's not their fault. When you spend a lifetime of family, friends and society trying to prepare you to protect yourself from rapists, pedophiles, pimps, you are going to react to that fear by protecting yourelf best as you knows how. When a city girl looks around her peer group and see it's the gangsta' guys who are perceived as the tough ones, she will emulate them.
As a teen in a small town I was terrified of the farm girls. I'm not talking your Octoberfest blonde milkmaid farmgirl. I'm talking a real life farm girl. A girl who's father proposed to his wife because a wife who can lift a pig under one arm and hold up the tractor while you change a wheel is a definite asset on a farm. The kind of women who do get marriage proposals for their cooking skills because when you are a farmer and you work from morning to night, you deserve a hearty meal and as my granddad used to say, Everything else about a woman goes downhill after she gets married but the cooking only gets better.
There was this one group of farmgirls that made my life living hell. They were often wearing overalls or jeans with wellies and when they didn't like you, look out. They would corner you in the bathroom and intimidate you. They would intimidate World Judo-Wrestling champs. They were scary.
The other side of the coin for city girls is the Prosti-Tot. This is the six year old wearing a miniskirt, a tube top, 80's hair and more jewelry than a gypsy telling fortunes. These girls have chosen another way to stay safe. They get men to do it. They figure the best way to do this is to use the time honoured sex kitten look. They are surrounded by media that tells them that sex sells. They may not understand what they are doing but think of it this way.
A town girl will get media in the form of movies, TV, magazines and the Internet. Most of these have limited access to your towngirl. There just isn't enough outlets in a small town to seep a girl in this nonsense. But a city girl who takes public transit to school is basically riding in mobile ad campaign. There are ads inside and outside the bus. There are billboards everywhere. Since sitting outside on the front porch is not considered safe, she spends more time inside the house or clubs open to the media brainwashing. Since there is so much competition around you, you feel you can have an edge in the dating game by being sexy.
You know how they say to show your infant flashcards or to play classical music to your infant as they can absorb knowledge even before they are born? Well for a city girl, A is Apple Computers, G is for Gucci and M is a golden arch. You can't protect them from all of it because that is just what city advertisers have to do to compete on such a large scale. Therefore how can you blame a girl for accepting that this information is correct? You can't. You can just educate her, show her a good example and pray.
In a small town if some guy pulls the car over and offers you a ride there is a good chance you are related to him. I know this doesn't make it safe to get in the car but Mum and Dad have identified most of the freaks so there is a better chance it's a safe thing to do. If Goddess forbid it isn't, pedophiles know that almost every father in town is a member of the Rod and Gun Club and they understand that a bullet can reach you faster than a cop can. Or in reality maybe a baseball bat.
In the city taking a ride with a guy who pulls over is a Deathwish.
In a small town you don't have to do everything today. The pace is slower. You get groups of kids playing D & D because there isn't anything better to do. Yes your Mum worries because you spend more time online and are not "socializing" but really Mum, with the new chat programs on game systems, you are probably talking to more of your friends than the amount of people she's seen all week, Dad is not grousing about you being on the phone all night and you probably don't have a car to gallivant all over and the public bus doesn't come by your front door.
In the city you become anaesthetised by the time you are seven. You are surrounded by noise, cars, music, other people 24/7 from before birth. You begin to tune everything out. A citykid has to or they will go insane. So you shut down your senses and by the time you are a teen you have a ceramic shell. To have fun in the city takes loud club music, drugs, the thrill of danger. The result is burned out 12 year olds. I see these burnt out kids all the time.
I blame city parents for this. The idea is to put your kids into a rigorous schedule of afterschool programs. Dance, Music, Gymnastics, second languages type of things to keep them busy. I've actually seen five year olds with daytimers to keep their schedules straight. Mom's have to schedule playdates. No wonder these kids are 14 going on 40. It's no wonder half the school populations are on Ritalin. These parents will tell you they are doing it to give their kids a better chance in life. They use words like networking and future career prospects. He's six, his networking should be conducted with a towel around his neck, not a tie. Give your kids a chance to veg or you will be doing your networking in the prescription line at the drug store.
It's a proven fact that humans need downtime. Time to relax and taking all these courses may be fun for the little guy but you know how you always feel you need a vacation when you come home from vacation? Give them a vacation. Make good choices for tv viewing, use the parental control on the computer and if they just want to sit on their butt on Saturday morning let them. These parents make life so intense for their kids that by the time they are twelve they have attention span of gnats because you haven't structured their thoughts for them.
It takes a village.
In the city, the citykids look over their shoulder for the cops when they do something they know is wrong. Thanks to the cop shows, they know that most cops would rather avoid the paperwork than arrest you if you're doing a misdemeanour.
A town kid will think twice because HE knows that old lady Carmicheal is looking through the net curtains and will call his mother, his grandmother and the cops. The small town kid knows that the cops are paying attention because that cop is probably his Uncle Mike. It's really simple; small towns are filled with busybody snitches and everyone knows this. Therefore, lower crime rate, your child is less likely to end being known as "person or persons wanted for questioning in last nights incident."
To conclude, if I had my way, every kid in Canada would grow up in a small town. Large enough to support two movie theatres and the requisite Pizza Hut and McDonalds. Their idea of "clubbing" would be a bush party with the speakers on the back of the truck and a bonfire. They would be hailed as "Peepants" thirty years later and the biggest gang war they will ever witness is their aunts at a wedding, tippled to the gills taunting their enemies with battle cries that include, "We know what you said about our Doris, Clarice. Don't think I've forgotten and Mother did want me to have the second best China you thief!"
You will have to make their life better by driving to the city for the Arts or shopping but there are some pretty good local Amateur groups in small cities. You will have to make an effort to protect your Charlie from "that freaky girl with the green hair." Your hubby may have to have some strong words with "that boys" father but you will have happy, healthy, mentally balanced kids and that's the goal right?
Kimberley
PS: Hubby's idea for a safe living environment for kids is to move to a shack in the deep woods with no electricity and possibly barbed wire to keep the demented squirrels out of the garden.
When I was seventeen and living in a small town, I hated it. I was constantly teased for having green hair, having old ladies, "Tsk" because I wasn't wearing a slip under my six layers of taffeta Madonna skirt. I was called a slut because I liked to party or being called mental because because I loved the theatrical and at one point wanted to be Ethel Merman. I couldn't wait to get to the city with the theatre, the lights, the shopping. Almost every other kid I knew couldn't wait either. We thought people who brought their kids to the country to raise, outside of the city limits were insane. I couldn't wait to get out and when I did, I loved every minute of the city. Well sort of. Yes I ended up living on the streets and yes I did have life threatening moments but believe me, I can find trouble anywhere.
I now know exactly why they did it and if I had been able to, I would have brought my kids up in a small town. Not farm or rural and not the kind of town where you end up marrying your cousin, but the kind of town with a five figured population. Why? It's safer and it's easier and if you are related to half the town even better!
You see there is a huge difference in the upbringing of children in City vs Town.
First lets talk teen boys and safety.
I remember when Breyan came home with a gage in his ear. He didn't do this until he was 18 because Dad threatened to rip it out if he did and I threatened I would go get one of those magnetic cranes from the construction site down the street.
In the city there seems to be this unwritten urban rule that you have to look and act tough to be safe. You don't make eye contact, you wear subdued colours so you don't draw attention to yourself. As a teen boy in the city, you be as scary as you can to those around you so they don't mug you. Most city boys nowadays do this by piercing obvious parts of their bodies, tongues, eyebrows, noses etc.... they are a walking artists canvas. They walk and wear clothes that in their way are supposed to tell people they may a 12 gauge hiding in their pant leg. (That's how you get the Cripp walk. It's that walk that boys do that makes them look spastic. It's supposed to infer that they have a heavy weapon strapped to their leg.)
This has become such an ordinary fashion statement in the cities that I don't even notice it anymore and if I do I just wonder when they are they going to pull up their pants?
In a small town if you get a guy with 80 piercings and 25 tattoos, you know he's a freak. You know that if he should show up on your front doorstep, you need to lock the doors and find the 12 gauge.
I'm not saying guys in small towns don't get piercings or tattoos, it's just that they are more reasonable about it. On average a small town guy will be wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, a baseball cap and his weapon of choice is a baseball bat.
In a small town you worry if the boy your daughter is dating is driving a truck, getting drunk and bashing mailboxes as they drive by.
In the city you worry if the boys have a sedan, are on drugs or are shooting people out the back window.
This is all the city's fault. Because though you would think that a small town would make people feel claustrophobic what with the gossip, knowing each other's business, few places to go where no one knows you. When you get labelled it takes forever to outgrow it. This is true. Small town kids have a great deal of pressure to make friends because there just isn't that many people to be friends with. They have to guard their reputation because thirty years after you get labelled as "the kid who peed his pants in second grade," you will walk down the street and somebody will yell, "Hey Peepants, How are you?"
In a city though, there are so many people that you feel isolated in the largest crowd. You are overwhelmed of choices for making friends but yet the kids are trained to keep themselves safe and therefore are afraid to make any overtures. It is because of the anonymity that pedophiles and muggers feel bolder. They know that being described as male, 6' 4" can apply to ninety other guys around them. So we tell our kids, "Don't talk to strangers, don't accept anything from anybody, keep your head down..." By the time they are six we create a paranoiac bubble around them. Its' a sad thing that we have to do this.
Teen girls
This is the reason why you usually have two types of teen girls in the city. The Prosti-tots and the Gangsta-Girlz.
It wasn't just because the boys wore their hair long that I had trouble defining whether my kids friends were He's or She's. It was because I often couldn't tell if the kid with the huge pants, the black sweatshirt, the tats and gages was a girl! I have met girls in the city that scare the crap out of me. They have a cold stare that says, "Ya, what's your problem lady? I'd kill you in a heartbeat."
It's not their fault. When you spend a lifetime of family, friends and society trying to prepare you to protect yourself from rapists, pedophiles, pimps, you are going to react to that fear by protecting yourelf best as you knows how. When a city girl looks around her peer group and see it's the gangsta' guys who are perceived as the tough ones, she will emulate them.
As a teen in a small town I was terrified of the farm girls. I'm not talking your Octoberfest blonde milkmaid farmgirl. I'm talking a real life farm girl. A girl who's father proposed to his wife because a wife who can lift a pig under one arm and hold up the tractor while you change a wheel is a definite asset on a farm. The kind of women who do get marriage proposals for their cooking skills because when you are a farmer and you work from morning to night, you deserve a hearty meal and as my granddad used to say, Everything else about a woman goes downhill after she gets married but the cooking only gets better.
There was this one group of farmgirls that made my life living hell. They were often wearing overalls or jeans with wellies and when they didn't like you, look out. They would corner you in the bathroom and intimidate you. They would intimidate World Judo-Wrestling champs. They were scary.
The other side of the coin for city girls is the Prosti-Tot. This is the six year old wearing a miniskirt, a tube top, 80's hair and more jewelry than a gypsy telling fortunes. These girls have chosen another way to stay safe. They get men to do it. They figure the best way to do this is to use the time honoured sex kitten look. They are surrounded by media that tells them that sex sells. They may not understand what they are doing but think of it this way.
A town girl will get media in the form of movies, TV, magazines and the Internet. Most of these have limited access to your towngirl. There just isn't enough outlets in a small town to seep a girl in this nonsense. But a city girl who takes public transit to school is basically riding in mobile ad campaign. There are ads inside and outside the bus. There are billboards everywhere. Since sitting outside on the front porch is not considered safe, she spends more time inside the house or clubs open to the media brainwashing. Since there is so much competition around you, you feel you can have an edge in the dating game by being sexy.
You know how they say to show your infant flashcards or to play classical music to your infant as they can absorb knowledge even before they are born? Well for a city girl, A is Apple Computers, G is for Gucci and M is a golden arch. You can't protect them from all of it because that is just what city advertisers have to do to compete on such a large scale. Therefore how can you blame a girl for accepting that this information is correct? You can't. You can just educate her, show her a good example and pray.
In a small town if some guy pulls the car over and offers you a ride there is a good chance you are related to him. I know this doesn't make it safe to get in the car but Mum and Dad have identified most of the freaks so there is a better chance it's a safe thing to do. If Goddess forbid it isn't, pedophiles know that almost every father in town is a member of the Rod and Gun Club and they understand that a bullet can reach you faster than a cop can. Or in reality maybe a baseball bat.
In the city taking a ride with a guy who pulls over is a Deathwish.
In a small town you don't have to do everything today. The pace is slower. You get groups of kids playing D & D because there isn't anything better to do. Yes your Mum worries because you spend more time online and are not "socializing" but really Mum, with the new chat programs on game systems, you are probably talking to more of your friends than the amount of people she's seen all week, Dad is not grousing about you being on the phone all night and you probably don't have a car to gallivant all over and the public bus doesn't come by your front door.
In the city you become anaesthetised by the time you are seven. You are surrounded by noise, cars, music, other people 24/7 from before birth. You begin to tune everything out. A citykid has to or they will go insane. So you shut down your senses and by the time you are a teen you have a ceramic shell. To have fun in the city takes loud club music, drugs, the thrill of danger. The result is burned out 12 year olds. I see these burnt out kids all the time.
I blame city parents for this. The idea is to put your kids into a rigorous schedule of afterschool programs. Dance, Music, Gymnastics, second languages type of things to keep them busy. I've actually seen five year olds with daytimers to keep their schedules straight. Mom's have to schedule playdates. No wonder these kids are 14 going on 40. It's no wonder half the school populations are on Ritalin. These parents will tell you they are doing it to give their kids a better chance in life. They use words like networking and future career prospects. He's six, his networking should be conducted with a towel around his neck, not a tie. Give your kids a chance to veg or you will be doing your networking in the prescription line at the drug store.
It's a proven fact that humans need downtime. Time to relax and taking all these courses may be fun for the little guy but you know how you always feel you need a vacation when you come home from vacation? Give them a vacation. Make good choices for tv viewing, use the parental control on the computer and if they just want to sit on their butt on Saturday morning let them. These parents make life so intense for their kids that by the time they are twelve they have attention span of gnats because you haven't structured their thoughts for them.
It takes a village.
In the city, the citykids look over their shoulder for the cops when they do something they know is wrong. Thanks to the cop shows, they know that most cops would rather avoid the paperwork than arrest you if you're doing a misdemeanour.
A town kid will think twice because HE knows that old lady Carmicheal is looking through the net curtains and will call his mother, his grandmother and the cops. The small town kid knows that the cops are paying attention because that cop is probably his Uncle Mike. It's really simple; small towns are filled with busybody snitches and everyone knows this. Therefore, lower crime rate, your child is less likely to end being known as "person or persons wanted for questioning in last nights incident."
To conclude, if I had my way, every kid in Canada would grow up in a small town. Large enough to support two movie theatres and the requisite Pizza Hut and McDonalds. Their idea of "clubbing" would be a bush party with the speakers on the back of the truck and a bonfire. They would be hailed as "Peepants" thirty years later and the biggest gang war they will ever witness is their aunts at a wedding, tippled to the gills taunting their enemies with battle cries that include, "We know what you said about our Doris, Clarice. Don't think I've forgotten and Mother did want me to have the second best China you thief!"
You will have to make their life better by driving to the city for the Arts or shopping but there are some pretty good local Amateur groups in small cities. You will have to make an effort to protect your Charlie from "that freaky girl with the green hair." Your hubby may have to have some strong words with "that boys" father but you will have happy, healthy, mentally balanced kids and that's the goal right?
Kimberley
PS: Hubby's idea for a safe living environment for kids is to move to a shack in the deep woods with no electricity and possibly barbed wire to keep the demented squirrels out of the garden.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
The advantages of getting your kids a cell.
I've just realized what a great thing a cell phone is for a kid. You can yell at them without getting into a huge argument.
I was upset about my daughter not cleaning up after herself. Everytime I say something to her, she rolls her eyes, whines, or just does the "whatever Mum," she learned from her Uncle the Sarcasm King. (Which I'm just gonna have to kill him for one day.)
But I couldn't find her so I texted her that these things were not acceptable. Whether this works or not, I can now officially say that I have mentioned it to her 100 times and I have documentation to prove it.
This is awesome!
For people with younger kids, like teens (preschoolers and toddlers do not need cell phones. They need parental supervision, a leash and maybe one of those gps things you can get for your poodle.) it can be a wicked parental tool and you can do it without your kid becoming a text monster if you pay just a little attention. I know what I'm talking about, I've worked cell phone billing and there are some great things out there for parents.
So how do you do this?
First of all, you present the cell phone like it is the keys to the car. You are the greatest, coolest mum on earth who knows that a kid needs a cell and you know your daughter/son needs it to function. Therefore you are trusting that they are mature, grown up people who will take responsibility.
Then you don't buy the iphone, a blackberry or any high end phone. You go to the Factory Direct type store and you get them the phone that construction guys use. The ones that are water and dropping resistant. It should not have a keyboard.
This will mean you will not be replacing the phone three times a month and your kid is less likely to whip it out in front of his friends because it's not "cool."
Then you give them back a bit of the cool factor by allowing them to have many of those little dolly things to hang off of it.
The practical advantage is it will get so bulky, they are less likely to lose something that chimes when they drop it.
Next you advise them that they are getting Facebook but they have to friend you though you promise you will never ever post or comment on their status. Eventually they will forget you are there. You can get alot of information just by seeing what their friends are posting.
Facebook is like Get Smart's shoe. An unobstrusive way to check and see what your kids are thinking.
You then advise they have unlimited texting.
Any parent who gets their kids a phone without unlimited texting is going to be facing a 500 dollar overage bill. And your kids can't say they didn't get your text because you have cell records to prove it. You can then transmit all the information like, "you are supposed to be home for ten," without the argument. They can also text you when they are going to be late and they can't say the text isn't working because you will have a record of them texting nine friends in the same time period.
Alot of companies now have gps locators program. Get it. It's easier than convincing the vet to put a poodle finder in your kid.
Most of all, get to know the lost/stolen number for the cell company. Most companies have automatic turn the phone off websites or call in lines that will turn the phone off. More weapons for your arsenal of consequences because you turn a kids cell off for one day and you will have a very pliable child.
When you're kids are going out with their friends, ask for their friends cell number in case of emergency.
Keep this hidden from your kids. Once a month, check out their call details. You can now see who and when they are talking to and when a new number comes up, you know you're kid is hanging out with a potential threat and you get more information on the person. The best way to do this is to casually tell them you saw a new number on the calls missed list and you wondered who it is.
Last of all. Take the time to review your bill. Do not get your kids minutes if you can help it. Stress the texting, it's cheaper. Remember to tell them if they are texting out of the country, it's extra.
The downside is that you need a cell for it to be really efficient but stay at home or work mom's can send texts to their kids through email on the cell companies site.
Yes it can be expensive but if you buy the phone outright you can usually get away without having a contract.
Besides, being able to tell your kids to clean their room without a six hour argument is priceless. On top of which, it usually works out with less cost than the poodle finder.
I was upset about my daughter not cleaning up after herself. Everytime I say something to her, she rolls her eyes, whines, or just does the "whatever Mum," she learned from her Uncle the Sarcasm King. (Which I'm just gonna have to kill him for one day.)
But I couldn't find her so I texted her that these things were not acceptable. Whether this works or not, I can now officially say that I have mentioned it to her 100 times and I have documentation to prove it.
This is awesome!
For people with younger kids, like teens (preschoolers and toddlers do not need cell phones. They need parental supervision, a leash and maybe one of those gps things you can get for your poodle.) it can be a wicked parental tool and you can do it without your kid becoming a text monster if you pay just a little attention. I know what I'm talking about, I've worked cell phone billing and there are some great things out there for parents.
So how do you do this?
First of all, you present the cell phone like it is the keys to the car. You are the greatest, coolest mum on earth who knows that a kid needs a cell and you know your daughter/son needs it to function. Therefore you are trusting that they are mature, grown up people who will take responsibility.
Then you don't buy the iphone, a blackberry or any high end phone. You go to the Factory Direct type store and you get them the phone that construction guys use. The ones that are water and dropping resistant. It should not have a keyboard.
This will mean you will not be replacing the phone three times a month and your kid is less likely to whip it out in front of his friends because it's not "cool."
Then you give them back a bit of the cool factor by allowing them to have many of those little dolly things to hang off of it.
The practical advantage is it will get so bulky, they are less likely to lose something that chimes when they drop it.
Next you advise them that they are getting Facebook but they have to friend you though you promise you will never ever post or comment on their status. Eventually they will forget you are there. You can get alot of information just by seeing what their friends are posting.
Facebook is like Get Smart's shoe. An unobstrusive way to check and see what your kids are thinking.
You then advise they have unlimited texting.
Any parent who gets their kids a phone without unlimited texting is going to be facing a 500 dollar overage bill. And your kids can't say they didn't get your text because you have cell records to prove it. You can then transmit all the information like, "you are supposed to be home for ten," without the argument. They can also text you when they are going to be late and they can't say the text isn't working because you will have a record of them texting nine friends in the same time period.
Alot of companies now have gps locators program. Get it. It's easier than convincing the vet to put a poodle finder in your kid.
Most of all, get to know the lost/stolen number for the cell company. Most companies have automatic turn the phone off websites or call in lines that will turn the phone off. More weapons for your arsenal of consequences because you turn a kids cell off for one day and you will have a very pliable child.
When you're kids are going out with their friends, ask for their friends cell number in case of emergency.
Keep this hidden from your kids. Once a month, check out their call details. You can now see who and when they are talking to and when a new number comes up, you know you're kid is hanging out with a potential threat and you get more information on the person. The best way to do this is to casually tell them you saw a new number on the calls missed list and you wondered who it is.
Last of all. Take the time to review your bill. Do not get your kids minutes if you can help it. Stress the texting, it's cheaper. Remember to tell them if they are texting out of the country, it's extra.
The downside is that you need a cell for it to be really efficient but stay at home or work mom's can send texts to their kids through email on the cell companies site.
Yes it can be expensive but if you buy the phone outright you can usually get away without having a contract.
Besides, being able to tell your kids to clean their room without a six hour argument is priceless. On top of which, it usually works out with less cost than the poodle finder.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
What can you do for your friend that is grieving?
As you know, I have lost a daughter to SIDS. It was 20 years ago and though there are some bad days, I think I cope well.
I read an article today on another set of parents who lost their 7 year old son. I realized that sometimes it's just as hard to be the friend of someone who lost their child as being the grieving parents. The worst part is you just don't know what to do. Oh you can send flowers and cards, I fully encourage this but you are often left with feeling like you should do more. That there should be something practical that you can do that won't seem intrusive. In fact I have often been asked what people can do when they are supporting a friend through grief.
So here's a list of practical things you can do for a parent who is grieving;
Shine shoes. You are never prepared for a funeral and often men are so used to wearing running shoes they forget to dust and shine up their dress shoes. Ask if you can go in the closet and get their dress shoes and shine them. If you are close enough to the family, do it anyway without asking. It's a simple little thing but it's those things that overwhelm you.
In the same vein, do the laundry or offer to go out to get a dress shirt or dress or in Canada, a warm dress jacket for the siblings for the funeral. How many five year olds have dress pants and suits. Yet the child may feel disrespectful when everyone else is dressed up. Dad may not have worn his suit in three years and it may need airing, dusting or ironing.
Casseroles, juice, coffee, chocolate
Make food that can go in the freezer and be microwaved. If you are very industrious, make one person portions for the nights they need to feed the kids and can't eat themselves. The family will go through three or four cans of coffee, gallons of tea and juice. Don't forget cream and sugar.
"Make or buy a grieving basket." I make these for grieving friends. I just get candles, lavender, chocolate, a journal to have visitors write down their favourite memory of the lost one so the parent can read it later when they can deal, boxes of kleenex--the kind with the lotion, Vitamin B12 and D, rosehip and hibiscus tea for energy and chamomile for calmness, eye drops to sooth burning eyes, a list of phone numbers for later of local support groups such as Bereaved Families.
(You can buy Lavender seeds or oil at Bulk Barn usually in winter.) Lavender is an herbal remedy for stress. Sachets on their pillows or that can be hand carried are not only pretty, they can help create a better nights sleep. (They will get very little and it will not be a deep sleep so anything will help.) Chocolate has a natural anti-depressant. Having white candles in the house to light helps as well. You can cry so much that normal light is just too much to take.
Gas up their car. If you can afford it, a tank of gas allows them the freedom of running away from all the stress, going to the funeral home and later when they need to go the five hundred places that you have to file the forms or just to get to therapy.
Get them the contact numbers of local Bereaved Families. It's a support group that's funded by the United Way and it is made up of people who have lost family members.
Give any visiting grieving child paper and art supplies so they can express their own grief in their own way. A friend did this for the children visiting with their parents. It also keeps the kids quieter. The children of the neighbourhood made me a picture of black hole. They were scared that my daughter would get cold. Getting the picture allowed the parents of these children to open a dialogue.
If it all seems to overwhelm them, put them in your car, drive to a rural area and let them go out into the middle of a field and just scream!
Contact their doctor and update them on the situation, grief can excaberate alot of conditions such as heart conditions, stress/anxiety disorders etc.... This will give the doctor a chance to contact the parents if he/she is worried. I saw a man once who went into a diabetic coma at his wife's funeral because he forgot to take his insulin. Nobody knew he was a diabetic.
What you can say at the funeral.
"I don't understand how bad things keep happening to good people, I'm so sorry that it happened to you."
This meant to me that the person was saying. I don't think this is your fault. I still thought it was my fault but it didn't weigh so much on me.
"I know that he/she is in the arms of (someone who died before that loved them or only if they are very religious people Jesus.) By all rights, they should be in yours."
I found great comfort in the idea that Dee was buried with Hubby's mum and she was taking care of my daughter.
"You know, now might be the time to tell that bi**& that she's always annoyed you. Give her a piece of your mind. You can always claim it was the grief anyway."
Yes I know this sounds stupid but it will give them a minute of thinking of something other than their loss. I said this to a friend who's son had commited suicide and she came back a year later and thanked me.
In one month or year from now, grab a bottle of drink of their choice and let them talk and cry. You get so busy with the funeral and there are so many people willing to support you at the time but it is when the hue and cry quiets down that you actually have time to process and examine your feelings and need someone to talk to. There is usually nobody there two months later but oh how it helps.
At Xmas, make an ornament that symbolizes the person they lost. You think you will be reminding them of their loss but I tell you this, they will be thinking about it anyway, even twenty years later. Knowing that people remember the child will help keep those memories of good times alive for the parent.
And last but never the least,
I remember at Dee's wake, Hubby's dad introduced me to a pair of his friends who had lost their daughter to cancer. I needed them to tell me it was going to get better. That I wouldn't hurt so much forever because I just couldn't bear it. They did and though it didn't seem that way, it's was important to hear.
"I know it feels like a greating yawning hole of pain right now but I can promise that it will get easier to bear. You will not feel like this forever. You will never get over it but it will get easier to bear. I just want you to know that I am here and you have family and friends who will do everything in their power to help fill that hole up with love and caring."
Since I've listed the Do's, I also want to include a few don'ts.
DO NOT SAY
"You can have other children." or "At least you still have other children." This should be self-evident about how stupid it is but you won't believe how many people still say it. No child is replacable.
"I just don't how you can deal with this. I know they were not my children but it is affecting me so hard."
You can talk to other friends and family about how it is affecting you but the parents have enough to deal with without them having to comfort you too.
"You'll get over it."
No they won't. They will learn to deal with it but the loss will be felt forever. Acknowledge that and give them hope it will get easier.
I hope this will help you help your friends and family. I had such amazing friends and family when Dee died that I never thought once of harming myself. I've tried to thank them many times but I don't think they know even today how much their actions and words saved my sanity.
I read an article today on another set of parents who lost their 7 year old son. I realized that sometimes it's just as hard to be the friend of someone who lost their child as being the grieving parents. The worst part is you just don't know what to do. Oh you can send flowers and cards, I fully encourage this but you are often left with feeling like you should do more. That there should be something practical that you can do that won't seem intrusive. In fact I have often been asked what people can do when they are supporting a friend through grief.
So here's a list of practical things you can do for a parent who is grieving;
Shine shoes. You are never prepared for a funeral and often men are so used to wearing running shoes they forget to dust and shine up their dress shoes. Ask if you can go in the closet and get their dress shoes and shine them. If you are close enough to the family, do it anyway without asking. It's a simple little thing but it's those things that overwhelm you.
In the same vein, do the laundry or offer to go out to get a dress shirt or dress or in Canada, a warm dress jacket for the siblings for the funeral. How many five year olds have dress pants and suits. Yet the child may feel disrespectful when everyone else is dressed up. Dad may not have worn his suit in three years and it may need airing, dusting or ironing.
Casseroles, juice, coffee, chocolate
Make food that can go in the freezer and be microwaved. If you are very industrious, make one person portions for the nights they need to feed the kids and can't eat themselves. The family will go through three or four cans of coffee, gallons of tea and juice. Don't forget cream and sugar.
"Make or buy a grieving basket." I make these for grieving friends. I just get candles, lavender, chocolate, a journal to have visitors write down their favourite memory of the lost one so the parent can read it later when they can deal, boxes of kleenex--the kind with the lotion, Vitamin B12 and D, rosehip and hibiscus tea for energy and chamomile for calmness, eye drops to sooth burning eyes, a list of phone numbers for later of local support groups such as Bereaved Families.
(You can buy Lavender seeds or oil at Bulk Barn usually in winter.) Lavender is an herbal remedy for stress. Sachets on their pillows or that can be hand carried are not only pretty, they can help create a better nights sleep. (They will get very little and it will not be a deep sleep so anything will help.) Chocolate has a natural anti-depressant. Having white candles in the house to light helps as well. You can cry so much that normal light is just too much to take.
Gas up their car. If you can afford it, a tank of gas allows them the freedom of running away from all the stress, going to the funeral home and later when they need to go the five hundred places that you have to file the forms or just to get to therapy.
Get them the contact numbers of local Bereaved Families. It's a support group that's funded by the United Way and it is made up of people who have lost family members.
Give any visiting grieving child paper and art supplies so they can express their own grief in their own way. A friend did this for the children visiting with their parents. It also keeps the kids quieter. The children of the neighbourhood made me a picture of black hole. They were scared that my daughter would get cold. Getting the picture allowed the parents of these children to open a dialogue.
If it all seems to overwhelm them, put them in your car, drive to a rural area and let them go out into the middle of a field and just scream!
Contact their doctor and update them on the situation, grief can excaberate alot of conditions such as heart conditions, stress/anxiety disorders etc.... This will give the doctor a chance to contact the parents if he/she is worried. I saw a man once who went into a diabetic coma at his wife's funeral because he forgot to take his insulin. Nobody knew he was a diabetic.
What you can say at the funeral.
"I don't understand how bad things keep happening to good people, I'm so sorry that it happened to you."
This meant to me that the person was saying. I don't think this is your fault. I still thought it was my fault but it didn't weigh so much on me.
"I know that he/she is in the arms of (someone who died before that loved them or only if they are very religious people Jesus.) By all rights, they should be in yours."
I found great comfort in the idea that Dee was buried with Hubby's mum and she was taking care of my daughter.
"You know, now might be the time to tell that bi**& that she's always annoyed you. Give her a piece of your mind. You can always claim it was the grief anyway."
Yes I know this sounds stupid but it will give them a minute of thinking of something other than their loss. I said this to a friend who's son had commited suicide and she came back a year later and thanked me.
In one month or year from now, grab a bottle of drink of their choice and let them talk and cry. You get so busy with the funeral and there are so many people willing to support you at the time but it is when the hue and cry quiets down that you actually have time to process and examine your feelings and need someone to talk to. There is usually nobody there two months later but oh how it helps.
At Xmas, make an ornament that symbolizes the person they lost. You think you will be reminding them of their loss but I tell you this, they will be thinking about it anyway, even twenty years later. Knowing that people remember the child will help keep those memories of good times alive for the parent.
And last but never the least,
I remember at Dee's wake, Hubby's dad introduced me to a pair of his friends who had lost their daughter to cancer. I needed them to tell me it was going to get better. That I wouldn't hurt so much forever because I just couldn't bear it. They did and though it didn't seem that way, it's was important to hear.
"I know it feels like a greating yawning hole of pain right now but I can promise that it will get easier to bear. You will not feel like this forever. You will never get over it but it will get easier to bear. I just want you to know that I am here and you have family and friends who will do everything in their power to help fill that hole up with love and caring."
Since I've listed the Do's, I also want to include a few don'ts.
DO NOT SAY
"You can have other children." or "At least you still have other children." This should be self-evident about how stupid it is but you won't believe how many people still say it. No child is replacable.
"I just don't how you can deal with this. I know they were not my children but it is affecting me so hard."
You can talk to other friends and family about how it is affecting you but the parents have enough to deal with without them having to comfort you too.
"You'll get over it."
No they won't. They will learn to deal with it but the loss will be felt forever. Acknowledge that and give them hope it will get easier.
I hope this will help you help your friends and family. I had such amazing friends and family when Dee died that I never thought once of harming myself. I've tried to thank them many times but I don't think they know even today how much their actions and words saved my sanity.
When are they old enough to stop being your children?
The other day a parent of a fourteen year old turned to me and said, "I think my daughter is having sex. I wish I knew, so I can be sure she's protecting herself."
I was stunned. First of all she's 14 and you think she's having sex and you are not tearing down her door and asking her? If ever there was a time for WTF, this is it.
"No," says the mum, "I can't intrude too much in her life or she'll never talk to me again. I have to respect her privacy."
I had to get out of there before I said what I really thought. And then I said it anyway.
I don't think my friend is going to talk to me again.
What the hell? My fourteen year daughter is having sex? I'm gonna talk to her. Then I'm going to slap her up the back of the head, take her to the STD clinic, volunteer her to babysit at 'single mom with three kids two days before baby bonus comes in' house, ground her for life and threaten to tell her father.
I have always let my kids know about birth control and I have talked to them about the ethics of sex and I NEVER expected my 19 year old son to tell me he got a girl pregnant and it freaked me out but when it happened, he talked to me about it. Because he knew I would be mad as hell but I would deal with it and support him and the girl and whatever choice they would make.
I hope that's good parenting.
The thing is, what age is it okay to let your kids have secrets? What age do they have to be, for you to have confidence that they are going to make good, mature decisions? What age do you let them live with the consequences?
Okay so Breyan has two children and another on the way. Caitlin is 20 and is finishing school, has held down a job. They are grown up right?
Well then, why do I still see them at 6 yrs old in my mind? Why does it break my heart when they are tired or sick and I can't tuck them into bed or make them soup?
When exactly did they stop being my children and start being adults?
For example;
The Evil Kitty has been removed from the house. We had to do it. We cannot afford it's shots, spaying or declawing and it was destroying my house. Caitlin agreed we had to do it after it sprayed her entire room and pooped and peed all over her bed.
It made Caitlin so sad. I felt like a right royal (&*&. She talked to her friends about how she was feeling. She talked to her boyfriend and she talked to her dad. Who didn't she talk to? Of Course, ME. I tried to hug her and she did hug me back but in that frozen, pat on the back way you give to the drunken aunt at Xmas who insists on pinching your cheeks.
So I made her cooked vanilla pudding, pure comfort food. Then I left her to herself. What happened to the days when I could put her on my lap, hug her, feed her cookies, kiss the booboo and it would all be better? What happened? Seriously, I can't figure it out.
Breyan doesn't even live at home but still calls me when he, Sarah or the kids get sick. He still wants his mum when he's got the flu and his wife says she doesn't mind because hey, she doesn't have to put up with his whining.
I keep thinking that I should mind my own business and stay out of theirs but something will happen and I'm seeing them as six and they're seeing me as a busybody.
But when they need money, a ride, a babysitter; then I'm the Mum.
So when does the trade off come? When can you say, You take care of this yourself, you are a grown up?
I see parents of fourteen year olds afraid to ask their kids if they are on drugs, having sex or skipping school and not saying anything because they "respect their children's privacy." I gotta wonder if they are insane. I'm sorry but if I'm the Mum of a fourteen year old who's doing any of those things--It's my parental duty to ask so I can kick their ass before they are calling for bail money.
If I have to eavesdrop, grill my teens friends, siblings or the guy down the street who sees them on the bus everyday then I'm gonna do it. It's not my right, it's my job as a parent.
I will respect their privacy to the point that I will not read their diary's, I will not make them tell me stuff but if I have the slightest suspicion they are doing something life threatening---all bets are off.
If we had more parents doing that, maybe we would have less gangs and less Columbines.
The hard part is that parenting options have been cut back. I don't say bring back the woodshed and the leather belt, goodness no but I do say that while you live in my house and I support you, you will respect me.
I know that alot of this has to do with mum's and dads having to work two jobs to make ends meet or having kids with the ability to play divorced parents off against each other. That's when as a parent you need to have a support group of friends and family who are willing to spy and snitch to you. That's why small towns are awesome for bringing your kids up and if you're related to half the town, even better.
I have always let my kids know, "When you work and you pay your own bills and you move out you will still respect me even when you don't agree with me because I have earned it. I will always respect your opinion as a person and I will listen to your side of the issue. We can discuss it and if you make sense I will change my mind. However, not when you are six."
How do you pinpoint the moment when you should respect your children as adults. Is there a certain age? Is there an emotional milestone? Is there a bar graph with maturity vs respect? C'mon, pin it down for me.
Do you just wake up one day and say, "She is twenty, has a job, has an education, it's time for me to back off?" Cause really, I'm seeing myself with Breyan, forty years old having the flu and he's on my couch. I'm seeing Catie at thirty-five having her first child and I'm at the hospital with her bag and some Skittles, sleeping in a chair.
Maybe I should just move back to Southern Ontario and be physically too far away from them to be intrusive? Nah, I'd just stress more and my phone and Internet bill would be sky high. Not to mention the gas bill from her Dad driving back to Ottawa to check the tires on her car.
I still make sure to write my Gramma once a month. I still bite the inside of my cheek when hubby's Dad goes on about something he doesn't approve of in his grandchildren. Why, because they deserve my respect. If it was really important to me, I would talk to them, explain my position and hope they got it. Then I'd go and do it my way in clear conscience.
I guess that is the moment. If it's a life threatening issue like drugs, there is no age limit. I'm gonna get in your face. I'd do that for my brother or sister so why not to my kids? However the less life threatening moment for letting your kids live their own lives and being an adult is when you know they can live with the consequences and they have a good chance of making the right decision for them.
But you can always have a blanket and pillow for the couch made up...just in case.
I was stunned. First of all she's 14 and you think she's having sex and you are not tearing down her door and asking her? If ever there was a time for WTF, this is it.
"No," says the mum, "I can't intrude too much in her life or she'll never talk to me again. I have to respect her privacy."
I had to get out of there before I said what I really thought. And then I said it anyway.
I don't think my friend is going to talk to me again.
What the hell? My fourteen year daughter is having sex? I'm gonna talk to her. Then I'm going to slap her up the back of the head, take her to the STD clinic, volunteer her to babysit at 'single mom with three kids two days before baby bonus comes in' house, ground her for life and threaten to tell her father.
I have always let my kids know about birth control and I have talked to them about the ethics of sex and I NEVER expected my 19 year old son to tell me he got a girl pregnant and it freaked me out but when it happened, he talked to me about it. Because he knew I would be mad as hell but I would deal with it and support him and the girl and whatever choice they would make.
I hope that's good parenting.
The thing is, what age is it okay to let your kids have secrets? What age do they have to be, for you to have confidence that they are going to make good, mature decisions? What age do you let them live with the consequences?
Okay so Breyan has two children and another on the way. Caitlin is 20 and is finishing school, has held down a job. They are grown up right?
Well then, why do I still see them at 6 yrs old in my mind? Why does it break my heart when they are tired or sick and I can't tuck them into bed or make them soup?
When exactly did they stop being my children and start being adults?
For example;
The Evil Kitty has been removed from the house. We had to do it. We cannot afford it's shots, spaying or declawing and it was destroying my house. Caitlin agreed we had to do it after it sprayed her entire room and pooped and peed all over her bed.
It made Caitlin so sad. I felt like a right royal (&*&. She talked to her friends about how she was feeling. She talked to her boyfriend and she talked to her dad. Who didn't she talk to? Of Course, ME. I tried to hug her and she did hug me back but in that frozen, pat on the back way you give to the drunken aunt at Xmas who insists on pinching your cheeks.
So I made her cooked vanilla pudding, pure comfort food. Then I left her to herself. What happened to the days when I could put her on my lap, hug her, feed her cookies, kiss the booboo and it would all be better? What happened? Seriously, I can't figure it out.
Breyan doesn't even live at home but still calls me when he, Sarah or the kids get sick. He still wants his mum when he's got the flu and his wife says she doesn't mind because hey, she doesn't have to put up with his whining.
I keep thinking that I should mind my own business and stay out of theirs but something will happen and I'm seeing them as six and they're seeing me as a busybody.
But when they need money, a ride, a babysitter; then I'm the Mum.
So when does the trade off come? When can you say, You take care of this yourself, you are a grown up?
I see parents of fourteen year olds afraid to ask their kids if they are on drugs, having sex or skipping school and not saying anything because they "respect their children's privacy." I gotta wonder if they are insane. I'm sorry but if I'm the Mum of a fourteen year old who's doing any of those things--It's my parental duty to ask so I can kick their ass before they are calling for bail money.
If I have to eavesdrop, grill my teens friends, siblings or the guy down the street who sees them on the bus everyday then I'm gonna do it. It's not my right, it's my job as a parent.
I will respect their privacy to the point that I will not read their diary's, I will not make them tell me stuff but if I have the slightest suspicion they are doing something life threatening---all bets are off.
If we had more parents doing that, maybe we would have less gangs and less Columbines.
The hard part is that parenting options have been cut back. I don't say bring back the woodshed and the leather belt, goodness no but I do say that while you live in my house and I support you, you will respect me.
I know that alot of this has to do with mum's and dads having to work two jobs to make ends meet or having kids with the ability to play divorced parents off against each other. That's when as a parent you need to have a support group of friends and family who are willing to spy and snitch to you. That's why small towns are awesome for bringing your kids up and if you're related to half the town, even better.
I have always let my kids know, "When you work and you pay your own bills and you move out you will still respect me even when you don't agree with me because I have earned it. I will always respect your opinion as a person and I will listen to your side of the issue. We can discuss it and if you make sense I will change my mind. However, not when you are six."
How do you pinpoint the moment when you should respect your children as adults. Is there a certain age? Is there an emotional milestone? Is there a bar graph with maturity vs respect? C'mon, pin it down for me.
Do you just wake up one day and say, "She is twenty, has a job, has an education, it's time for me to back off?" Cause really, I'm seeing myself with Breyan, forty years old having the flu and he's on my couch. I'm seeing Catie at thirty-five having her first child and I'm at the hospital with her bag and some Skittles, sleeping in a chair.
Maybe I should just move back to Southern Ontario and be physically too far away from them to be intrusive? Nah, I'd just stress more and my phone and Internet bill would be sky high. Not to mention the gas bill from her Dad driving back to Ottawa to check the tires on her car.
I still make sure to write my Gramma once a month. I still bite the inside of my cheek when hubby's Dad goes on about something he doesn't approve of in his grandchildren. Why, because they deserve my respect. If it was really important to me, I would talk to them, explain my position and hope they got it. Then I'd go and do it my way in clear conscience.
I guess that is the moment. If it's a life threatening issue like drugs, there is no age limit. I'm gonna get in your face. I'd do that for my brother or sister so why not to my kids? However the less life threatening moment for letting your kids live their own lives and being an adult is when you know they can live with the consequences and they have a good chance of making the right decision for them.
But you can always have a blanket and pillow for the couch made up...just in case.
What I want to say to my kids; what I mean; what I said
Sometimes being a parent is extremely tricky. There come these moments when you want to say something but you know if you do, you will inspire a hissy fit, you will be arguing for three hours or you're kids will hate you. So you take the screaming voices in your head and you transform them into words that tiptoe their way across the emotional landmines and you hope they get the message.
Doesn't this make sense to you? It will if you are a Mum or Dad and especially if you have a teenager anywhere in the house.
Example;
Breyan, at 15 has been seeing a girl who he has no respect for, doesn't want to go out with anymore but she's threatening suicide if he breaks up with her. He thinks he cannot live with that so he continues to see her. He is unhappy, spiralling into depression and making everyone else around him miserable.
What I want to say; Are you frigging nuts? Can't you see this girl is manipulating you? Don't be a wimp. She's not going to do it, she's just using you. Man up and tell her to get some help and stay away from her. Tell her parents to get her some help or I will take a cheese grater and a rope over to her house and sort her out for you.
What I mean is; why does this 15 year old girl have the ability to make my entire family pay for her selfishness. Why can't I make you see that she is manipulating you. Why won't you let me sort this out for you by calling her parents and telling them they have a nutjob for a daughter?
What I say is; that sounds a little manipulative don't you think? I mean, you know the girl better than I do but if she's really serious about commiting suicide shouldn't you warn her parents so they can get her some help? It's not tattling when you can save a life. I know it's hard but if you can't go the parents, you might want to go to your school guidance counselor and tell them how depressed you are feeling over this.
Luckily I have a younger daughter who just spoke up at the dinner table and said, "Wow, she's got you by the shorthairs. Do you enjoy being jacked around like that?"
He broke up with her two days later.
Siblings are a great joy to parents.
If you are really lucky you will get information from one sibling about the other.
I know why some kids can't talk to their parents about certain things. The idea of Caitlin talking to the mountain man about sex locks me between horror and insane laughter. So you pray they have good solid friends or family they can talk to and you let them know the door is open. That is good parenting.
However it's very hard as a parent to be that restrained. When it comes to being a Mum or Dad you have to learn to restrain yourself or you will be consigned to a life of " the sullen silent treatment," or sighs in the passive aggressive or thrown shoes and slammed doors with your more emotional type teenager.
Another hard one is when a boy breaks up with your daughter. What do you say? If you say, "It's better this way," or "I'm glad to hear that. I didn't like him anyway." It is guarenteed that they will be back together within the hour.
How I handle it?
I buy lots of ice cream and comfort food, let her have a five-friend sleepover and mumble under my breathe, "Where did I put the cheese grater again?"
Doesn't this make sense to you? It will if you are a Mum or Dad and especially if you have a teenager anywhere in the house.
Example;
Breyan, at 15 has been seeing a girl who he has no respect for, doesn't want to go out with anymore but she's threatening suicide if he breaks up with her. He thinks he cannot live with that so he continues to see her. He is unhappy, spiralling into depression and making everyone else around him miserable.
What I want to say; Are you frigging nuts? Can't you see this girl is manipulating you? Don't be a wimp. She's not going to do it, she's just using you. Man up and tell her to get some help and stay away from her. Tell her parents to get her some help or I will take a cheese grater and a rope over to her house and sort her out for you.
What I mean is; why does this 15 year old girl have the ability to make my entire family pay for her selfishness. Why can't I make you see that she is manipulating you. Why won't you let me sort this out for you by calling her parents and telling them they have a nutjob for a daughter?
What I say is; that sounds a little manipulative don't you think? I mean, you know the girl better than I do but if she's really serious about commiting suicide shouldn't you warn her parents so they can get her some help? It's not tattling when you can save a life. I know it's hard but if you can't go the parents, you might want to go to your school guidance counselor and tell them how depressed you are feeling over this.
Luckily I have a younger daughter who just spoke up at the dinner table and said, "Wow, she's got you by the shorthairs. Do you enjoy being jacked around like that?"
He broke up with her two days later.
Siblings are a great joy to parents.
If you are really lucky you will get information from one sibling about the other.
I know why some kids can't talk to their parents about certain things. The idea of Caitlin talking to the mountain man about sex locks me between horror and insane laughter. So you pray they have good solid friends or family they can talk to and you let them know the door is open. That is good parenting.
However it's very hard as a parent to be that restrained. When it comes to being a Mum or Dad you have to learn to restrain yourself or you will be consigned to a life of " the sullen silent treatment," or sighs in the passive aggressive or thrown shoes and slammed doors with your more emotional type teenager.
Another hard one is when a boy breaks up with your daughter. What do you say? If you say, "It's better this way," or "I'm glad to hear that. I didn't like him anyway." It is guarenteed that they will be back together within the hour.
How I handle it?
I buy lots of ice cream and comfort food, let her have a five-friend sleepover and mumble under my breathe, "Where did I put the cheese grater again?"
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