Archive for the 'Family & Life' Category

March 28, 2006 | Family & Life

First, I need to take care of a couple of housekeeping details. I won my singles match, Sunday. I won the first set, lost the second (I started thinking about food), and won the third set tiebreaker. Next, I’ll be posting the final questions and answers from Jan Springer, Wednesday. If you have any questions, please email me.

Now, on to my rant of the YEAR! Cell phones. Remember when cell phones were a rarity? When you had to have good credit and a credit card to purchase one? Remember when the cell phone was so LARGE, you needed a separate case to carry it? Remember when you had a cell phone for emergencies? Now everyone has one, and I do mean everyone. The health club where I play tennis, has a sign as you enter the courts, reminding players to turn off their cell phone. In some matches, a ringing cell phone can constitute a penalty point. I remember one summer, a female player actually took a phone call during her match to check up on her infant! I should have seen that as an omen. A couple of years ago, I was in the motor vehicle license office, and went to the ladies room. A woman, in the next stall, was talking to her best friend about how she’d caught her husband cheating! She was asking for advice. “Lady,” I wanted to yell, “First, throw him out and second, this is not the place to be discussing your personal life.” Teenagers and young adults LIVE on the cell phone. Now, instead of the ‘old days’ of being in your bedroom talking on the phone to your friends, you can carry on the conversation, at home, in the bathroom, out the door, in the car, to the mall, or where ever else you plan on going. Don’t laugh, I’ve seen adults do it too! In Chicago, you must have a hands free device when driving, if you’re on the cell phone. If you’re caught, it’s a fine and ticket. A cell phone will ring ANY DAMN WHERE! Movies, restaurants, funerals, church services, the list goes on. Now with the Bluetooth technology, everyone is walking around looking like they’re a telemarketer gone wild! That little damn blue light, flicking off and on, almost gave me a headache and was downright distracting one time at the movies. The man in front of us had one on his ear. It flashed, and out the corner of my eye, I kept watching it. Now tell me, do you go to the movies, to watch the movie, spending seven dollars, or do you go, so you can tell your friends you’re at the movie?

Even when you fill out forms, now they want your cell phone number in addition to your home and work numbers. I found it upsetting that a nurse last year, kept calling me to schedule my colon test, when I wouldn’t return the message she left for me at home. Yeah, like that was really going to make me schedule the test even quicker. My husband will call me on his cell phone because we have friends and family talk free. I no longer want to be his friend or family member. I appreciated the cell phone when my son was in grammar school. The boy had migraines at least twice a week, and I needed to be accessible. JMan, my son, has the correct attitude, right now, about the use of a cell phone. He has one and his monthly usage is three minutes. JGirl, on the other hand, has a separate account. We’re not stupid, if she was on our account, we’d never have any minutes. Her generation thinks text messaging is the dominant form of communication. Chirping, is what they do, because they have the walkie talkie cell phone. That and ringtones! One time, her phone was cut off for a couple of hours. The girl called at 2am, on her roommates’ phone, to tell us her phone was off, and would her father please be sure and check to see if he’d paid the bill. That was an ugly nightmare sight in my bedroom.

I resent the intrusion of the cell phone. I have one, a Blackberry PDA. Okay, Beth and Sloane will tell you I’m a gadget freak. But I don’t talk on it 24/7. I hate going somewhere, and having to listen to a. someone’s love life gone sour, b. how terrible a person’s boss is, c. what she said, he said and then what they said, d. where that person is going next, or e. just called to talk.

A cell phone is now so inexpensive, they’re almost disposable. You can even, for your child’s protection of course, purchase a small cute green cell phone programmed with three numbers and 911. Talk about catching early consumerism. I hope I’m not offending you, and if I am, please consider this as a fashion warning. Cell phones ARE NOT, I repeat, ARE NOT, to be worn as a belt accessory. I don’t care how much it sparkles, or how expensive it was.

Businesses use the cell phone to keep their employees on a tight lease. Gone are the days of taking a trip and maybe having a nice long lunch without the boss knowing. Now, the boss can call you, and some phones have GPS tracking. Ha! You think your boss thinks you’re at a meeting, and WHAM! They know you’re at local tavern. The cell phone also means, your work can be sent to you via email. You don’t have to wait to get back to the office, the office comes with you, weighing about 4oz. I once watched a father at a tennis match, stare at his PDA as it vibrated across the table. He knew it was work. Cell phones are prohibited from exams, becuase students can and do take pictures of the questions, email them to someone who knows the answer, who then emails it back to them. Ain’t progress lovely?

February 8, 2006 | Family & Life

A couple of days ago I blogged about my son, JMan and how well he played in a tennis tournament. He was awesome, focused, committed, and made me very proud. APPARENTLY, Blogger saw fit to first post my blog, and then take it away, along with a previous blog I had written. According to a Maya, a writer friend of mine, there have been some technical problems. UGH. I had told a couple of tennis pros about the blog, and thankfully they got to read it. I’m hoping this blog gets published! Although JMan, made it to the second round of the tournament and lost to the second seeded player, he was still happy about how well he did. A couple of years ago, he’d lose in the first round, and spend the next few days talking about how he was a first round loser. Now, he’s got the first round under his belt, and the goal is to go further into a tournament. My son is a shy fifteen year-old, who is deaf in his right ear. His left ear is called a ‘Golden Ear’, because he can hear 100% out of it. He doesn’t like having a handicap. Football and basketball were eliminated because they’re contact sports, and he might damage the left ear. Plus, there is a lot of noise in both sports, so it’s difficult for him to tell where sounds come from sometimes. The school system has been great helping him learn how to cope with the disability. Tennis is a sport he can play, either singles or doubles. It’s competitive, and he maybe able to play in college. Are we proud of him, yes. He plays again this weekend. Oh Joy! Mom will be there, nervous, excited, and ready to support him whatever the outcome.

January 26, 2006 | Family & Life

“Congratulations, it’s a beautiful, healthy, baby girl.” With those words one’s life as a woman changes. It’s a bigger event than the half yearly shoe sale at Nordstrom. It means now you have a little bundle of joy, that shares all of your female characteristics. At that moment, when you hold her in your arms, and she looks at you, you consider leaving her at the hospital. I did, but only because my beloved child was born in December, in Chicago when the wind chill factor was 40 below. I asked if I could come back and get her in the spring. I was nervous, scared, and oh not so ready to be a mother. I was thirty my own mother thought I had waited, er partied, long enough and needed to have children before she was too old to enjoy them. My husband I were overjoyed with our new arrival and she was spoiled from day one.

I should have known she was going to have the best and worse of my gene pool, when her first real word, other than Dada, to me at eleven and a half months of age was “No.” I was trying to get her to put on her first pair of walking shoes and the little fat pumpkin, bent over in my face and said, no. I was in shock, my mother couldn’t stop laughing.

As I said, she was spoiled, but only in a good way. She was even tempered, sort of, as a small child, and really didn’t present any problems. She ‘adapted’ to the birth of her brother when she was six and a half. When it came time for him to be born, she was there with me for the first couple of hours in the labor room until her grandmother, my mother-in-law came to pick her up. My mother-in-law was shocked when she took her home, and discovered she could take care of her own personal hygiene without her assistance. I had taught J-Girl to take care of her self, since I knew I was going to have a C-section and would be in the hospital a couple of days. Mother-in-law told me she admired how independent J-Girl was.

Now, I’m not saying J-Girl is perfect. Her one fault is never knowing when to shut her mouth. She has to make that last statement, that sends her over the cliff, resulting in her crashing and burning. Then she’s pissed at you for letting her get that far. Independence is her big thing, as long as you’re there to back her up in case she’s got a problem and needs money or to be bailed out of a bad situation. She’s tall, lean, very attractive, and extremely book smart. Common sense is taking a little longer, and for about three years we weren’t sure she had any. Especially when it came to guys. As a mother, we know what types of guys there are out there, we’ve dated them! But a daughter doesn’t believe you, she has to experience it before she realizes you’re right. Sometimes, reality hits before something bad happens if you’re lucky, sometimes it doesn’t. I wore the color off my rosary beads, lit incense and chanted, and then considered becoming Tony Soprano’s older sister and having these guys wacked!

Mother’s have a sixth sense as to what their daughters are doing. My mother had it, it worked when I was in college, living at home. When I went away to grad school, it still worked. So of course, it worked with me and my daughter and she hates it. At times I hated it also.

When does a daughter first start to exhibit behavior that makes you want to send them to the highest mountain in another country, to be taught by nuns that still wear habits, and don’t speak English? It could be eight, for us it was sixteen. That’s when the veil of secrecy and lies begin to cover their behavior and you become Colombo, ferreting out information, checking ever word they say, who their friends are, etc. Ok, it could have been earlier, if I believe what she wrote in a diary, she left at home under her bed so the carpet cleaning guy could read it. He didn’t, I found it first. Hubby asked did I read it? Hell yeah, I told him. He said he wouldn’t have done that, but could I tell him what she wrote. My mother read my diary, she tried to be very mature about it didn’t work, she stayed mad at me for about a month.

I found myself in the same position my mother occupied with me. Deja vu all over again. Girls are Daddy’s little girls FOREVER. I was my father’s. Mothers are left to referee and be the bad cop. A role my mother filled. Did I know how to fill this role? Hell, yeah! As I told J-Girl, you may get away with 99% of whatever you’re doing, but when I catch you, you’ll pay. They also believe you won’t catch them. Please, master criminals – NOT! Been there, done that, done a lot more than she needs to know. A lot more than I want to remember, but it does make me smile. So experience teaches mothers what to look for. Freaks the kid out every time. Did hubby and I handle everything right? Nope, but she’s still alive and about to graduate from college. So, I don’t mind coloring my hair every six weeks.

How do you handle her Yasmine? Well, I drink, – not really. Today’s generation is about six years ahead of where I was at their age. I’ve been reminded that the music they listen too, with all the sex, is no different than the Isley Brothers or Marvin Gaye. I tried the keep your mouth shut and be around for them to talk to routine. Nope, that ain’t me. If I held it in, Mount St. Helen would have looked like a little bonfire. I said what I thought, we fought over what I said, and two years later, she admits I was right. She could’ve just admitted it earlier, and saved my sanity. But why make a parent happy?

Tomorrow, I’ll blog about the guys our daughters date. Urkel or 50 Cent.

January 23, 2006 | Family & Life

Last Friday, I had gum surgery. Today, I felt like a released prisoner. It was my first time out of the hous. Forty eight hours in the house with hubby and son is crazy without the pain. Someone today, complimented me on my son’s tennis playing Sunday evening. I responded, “He didn’t play last night.” After the gentleman described my son, I realized that yes, he did go hit with a team mate of his.
I spent this morning and early afternoon, watching the daughter of the tennis pro I take lessons from win a major junior tournament. Oh yeah, I did run errands in-between the two matches she played.
So, now I’m playing catch up with my writing. I won’t be blogging until Thursday. Yes, I know you’ll miss my witty comments and sly humor but hey, jog on over and see what my brazen vixens are up to.
Thursday, I’m going to start a once a week blog on raising a daughter. For those of you who have young adult daughters, you can laugh, and cry right along with me. For those who don’t, or have young daughters, I say this – ‘Be afraid, Be very afraid.’
Later and keep writing.
Yasmine