Forced Vacation: You will have fun, dammit!

I haven't blogged in a while. I was boring myself, let alone the five people who read this. But I've decided to force my 16 year old son and daughter to go on vacation with their parents and thought I'd briefly jot down the reasons why.

As my kids get older, they get more independent, which is a good thing. Really, it is. (If I keep telling myself that, eventually I'll believe it.) But I also feel increasingly out of touch with both of them.

My son has a job -- he's getting cash under the table from a recreational sports league -- but I have no idea how much. And yes, it is my business. I need to know so I can gage how much less I have to dole out for gas and other expenses. I think he recently had a girlfriend...but I'm not really sure if it was a real relationship or one conducted solely via text messaging. He leaves at 7 in the morning and comes home at 10 at night...and I know where he is all day, but how was his day? What did he do? Did he enjoy coaching the kids? Who shows promise? Who's being a little stinker? I just want to have a conversation with him that doesn't involve money, pizza or car repair.

My daughter is, depending on the day, sullen and secretive, or loving and effusive. It's a crap shoot when I'm going to get which girl on which day. I'd like one long block of time where maybe I can start to recognize the signs when she turns from Jeckell into Hyde.

So off we go to forced togetherness up North. We will float down innertubes on the Platte and climb the sand dunes and go see a move at the Cherry Bowl Drive-In. And I know, even though they will never admit it, that fun will be had.

No, you cannot bring a friend along.

Drapery Tassel Bling

I'm at that age where a lot of my friends' children are graduating from high school. My son is 16; he's got a couple of years to go. But I have decided one thing: when he graduates, he will wear some drapery tassel bling, dammit.

I was struck by the extremes when I was browsing graduation photos on friends' facebook photo albums. Group pictures were the most telling: a group of friends standing in a row, all in their caps and gowns but a couple of the kids had tassels and some had none. Some had purple and white and gold, some just a purple...what does it all mean? Honor society, French honor society, cumulative GPA of 3.9 or higher...I'm sure there are many others, in rainbows around their necks.

My kids are smart...but neither one of them is going to be valedictorian (nor would I want them to be...being valedictorian these days means you've basically got about two years of college under your belt when you graduate, resulting in a 4.5 GPA...I really do want my kids to enjoy high school.) But I want them to stand out from the crowd when they walk with the 800 other kids in their graduating classes...and that means they gotta get some bling.

Is there bling for social life? My daughter might have a shot at that one.

My Life in .25

I realize, as I write this, that I've been keeping track of my time in 15 minute increments for more than 20 years. That lovely .25 -- it gets a little old when you figure there's 32 of those .25s in a day.

But what all that time keeping has done for me is make me value my time...even when I'm not at work. Before I put that sod in or paint, or take the time to run around town to comparison shop, I think about what it will cost...in human time. My time. And more often than not, that human time factor and its related cost points me in a different direction. I either hire it out, find a better way to do it or just don't do it at all. I definitely think about ROI when I decide to expend some time and energy.

Time. It's the only commodity I truly own outright.

My Twitter Honeymoon is Over.

When I first started playing around with Twitter, it was fun. All these people, communicating in real time, finding interesting articles, weighing in with opinions, making pithy comments and wry observations.

But alas. All good things must come to an end. First, there was the onslaught of the multi-level marketers. I figured out how to avoid them (if you have more than a few thousand followers, you are either a vapid celebrity -- Hey, Oprah! - or all you are interested in is ramping up your twitter stats. That's fine, but either way, you won't miss me if I don't follow you back.)

Then there are the self-absorbed twitteraholics. They never reply to anyone. And they spew out twits -- mostly retweets from genuinely intelligent, helpful twitterers -- every five seconds. Seriously, if you can twit every five seconds all day (and sometimes all night) long, you are an unemployed loser who lives in his mother's basement. Ergo=who cares what you think.

My favorites are the ones who merely retweet others twits then add 10 hash tags. The ultimate is when they are arguing a point with you, can't substantiate their opinion, get frustrated, then tweet the ubiquitious #fail. Apparently on twitter, "# fail" is the pinnacle of debate skill.

I envisioned twitter as a two-way street. Short, direct conversations punctuated with helpful bits of information. With some humor strewn about. Some of the best twitterers are congresspeople and news anchors. Some of the worst? The self-proclaimed twitter "experts."

Some days, the fail whale is a welcome sight.

Sometimes Age just gets up and Slaps You in the Face.

This blogging stuff is sending me over the edge. Now that I created one, I feel the need...obligation...pressure...to populate it on a regular basis. Regular, to me, means at least every few days. I don't have enough original thoughts in my head to blog daily. (Neither do most people, but that doesn't stop them.)

Today it's about my ambivalence about getting older. I'm heading into my late 40s this year, and I have to admit, I don't like the sound of that. I used to say I would never have cosmetic surgery...please, now I'm trying to figure out how to save up for botox and laser hair removal...at the very LEAST. On the other hand, chances are I won't be getting pregnant at my age!

Chuck (he's the ex husband I'm dating, and I'll blog about that eventually, but it's still playing itself out) and I had a moment of clarity the other day when we were looking for concerts to go to over the summer and we realized the bands we would like to see are either swilling prune juice in an old folks home or they are DEAD.

I talk to my folks every couple of weeks...Dad is 80, Mom is 78...and they are fixated on their health problems. To the absolute exclusion of anything else. I do wonder sometimes if they remember they have grandchildren.

I truly hope I never get that way. I have visions of being a sassy old lady who still drops the F bomb occasionally.

Not the Write Stuff.

My children are terrible writers. Really, truly. Oh, they can write a quick, down and dirty paper for school. But an essay with a point of view? A creative writing assignment that is supposed to take you to another place and time? A poem? A haiku, for pete's sake? No. Just...no.

I guess I shouldn't be suprised. When I ask my son where he's going, he says "places." When I ask him with who, he says "people." When I ask him what he'll be doing at those places with people, he says "stuff." I know, part of it is a "back off, you're prying," message to Mom. But the other part is that he's just too lazy for good, old fashioned conversation.

That's the boy. Now, the girl...she is full of drama. The facial expressions and the tone of voice I am subjected to on a regular basis are the stuff of Lifetime Television for Women. But when it comes to translating this to a piece of paper...total deer in headlights.

MEAP testing (which I despise, but it does point out areas needing drastic improvement in the school system) indicates my kids' school system is piss-poor when it comes to teaching solid writing skills. My experience with their homework proves this true. But they've also forgotten how to converse in colorful language...too much texting, too much IDK, LOL. I read that the average vocabulary in 1950 for a teenager was 25,000 words. Today...more like 10,000.

Not surprised.

Scary Water Cooler Talk at Hospitals

I was carted off the hospital the other day from work (I won't bore you with the details, and I'm fine, but there's nothing like getting hauled away in an ambulance with chest pains to ramp up the stress level at work!), and while I was waiting on a gurney for a room in the ER, I couldn't help but eavesdrop on the nurses chatting behind the desk.

Normally, water cooler chat is harmless...or at the most, petty and spiteful. This talk, however, was enough to induce a heart attack if you didn't already come in with that problem. I heard how over worked they were, how stupid some of the doctors were, how George doesn't know what he's doing half the time, and Lisa is hungover, and that policy just causes people to get infections...well, you get the drift here.

The only point to this blog post? When you are in charge of caring for the public--in whatever capacity that might be such as nurse, doctor, day care worker, social worker, therapist--your idle chatter about your job might be scaring the hell out of some of us.