Summer's End

As I happily wrap up my work week in anticipation of the long Labor Day weekend ahead, here are a few data points that hopefully will help to keep you sane as we rush headlong through the remainder of the year.

1.     There is a holiday weekend every month remaining in 2013.

2.     Sweater weather is just a few weeks away – useful for those of us who carry a tire around our middle that is difficult to hide in seasonal summer duds.

3.     Cooler weather at night = better rest, or at least it does for me.  And better rest means I’m nicer and kinder to others.  Just ask my husband.

4.      Once you hit Halloween, the year is essentially over.

5.     The end of year holidays offer ample opportunity to eat the things you like the most. Now that’s something to look forward to!

6.     The New Year holiday means you can do penance starting January 1 for eating the things you like the most.  No guilt!

7.     People just seem a bit friendlier as they get closer to the holiday season.

8.    New Year can be all about a “New You” if you want it to be.

9.    You’re one year closer to retirement.

10. You’re still here.  Isn’t life grand?

Enjoy the last gasp of summer and don’t work on Labor Day unless they’re putting a little something extra in your paycheck, ok?  Which also means that, unless my check is in the mail, you won’t see me again until next week.

 

 

10 Things that Make Me Crazy About My Husband

He is sometimes argumentative.

He is (almost) always right.

When he buys groceries, he mostly buys what he likes.

He hates giving me backrubs (and he's very good at giving them).

He rarely walks the dog on weekends.

Did I mention that he's messy?

When he starts something, it can take him weeks to finish it.

He doesn't always like to talk to me.  (Imagine!)

He leaves his shoes everywhere.

His handsome face and blueish-green eyes.  Sigh.

 

Day One

My daughter was a little glum last night when I asked about her first day as a 7^th grader.

 

“It was sooo boring, Mom, ” she whined.

That’s not how I remembered 7^th grade.  For  me,  changing classes and dashing to your locker to get a notebook you needed while trying to wave, chew gum and make an afterschool date at the same time was thrilling, even if the school work itself wasn’t always.

“I have 8^th graders in my PE class,” my daughter noted with dissatisfaction.

“What wrong with that?”

“They’re not my friends.”

“They’ll become your friends.  You make friends easily.”

“None of my friends are in my classes.  I want my real friends.”

“They’ll be real friends. And class is about learning, not hanging out with your friends."

“Oh, nevermind,”  she said.  “Plus Global Citizenship is boring and I have that teacher twice during the day.”

I hate the word boring because it’s so…boring.  And that teacher would be Ms. Epstein.  She is smart, she is pretty and she is probably tough in the way 7^th grade teachers need to be.  (Unlike, say, 6th grade teachers).

On the plus side for the first day?  No homework and our inaugural carpool experience, which is liberating my husband and me from the daily task of getting into work late, or leaving early, to accommodate our daughter’s school schedule by ourselves.

It takes a village. 

In fact, once we get the hang of our new 7^th grade routines, I’m pretty sure we’ll all like it.  But this morning, enroute to our carpool pick up (it was my turn today) my daughter was having none of that.  She looked out the window and said, somewhat wistfully, “I wish I didn’t have to go to school today.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she has at least 10 more years of it ahead of her.  Guess she’ll realize that at some point on her own.

 

 

Back to School

My daughter’s extended August vacation jaunts to camp and Florida are over and the cooler mornings of the fall are just around the bend.
In the 3 days since her return…

1.       Her father rimmed our driveway and stairs up to the front door with nearly 2 dozen balloons and posted a “Welcome Back” sign so that my daughter knows how much she was missed while she was gone.  (I think she got the message.)

2.       My daughter’s had light highlights put in her hair under the trusted care of my colorist.  Given her young age (2 months away from the big 1-3) I wanted to be sure that they would be subtle but satisfy her thirst for blonde.  We settled on a pretty caramel-color – beautiful -- and even her father approves!

3.       I’ve spent $200 at Staples on school supplies.  And here’s the thing:  We didn’t deviate much from the list of required items from the school.  I’m talking notebook, dividers, pencils and pens, math tools (protractor, calculator, rule, etc.), dictionary, highlighters, paper, lock for the locker…that sort of stuff.  Wow.  When did pens become so bloody expensive?

4.       My daughter and I put together most, if not all, of the above items in said notebook so we are properly prepared for the important work of 7^th grade learning.

5.       I’ve taken a gaggle of neighborhood girls to the movies at the Mall to see the new Percy Jackson movie.  Now, if only I could get my daughter to read the book!

6.       My daughter finalized 3 book reports on summer reading assignments – which will receive the first grade of her new school year.  My daughter did these on her own, and it’s pretty clear she’s not into novels.  I’m just saying….:-(

7.       I interrupted the iPad production of a zombie movie directed by my daughter and featuring above-mentioned gaggle of neighborhood girls.

8.       We celebrated a summer Sunday night with an impromptu barbeque with our next door neighbors and our respective girls. 

Bliss.  Life feels like its settling back into that lovely rhythm of school-life-work. 

Here’s to Fall!

IM

I hate arguing via text message.  It’s so…aggravating.  Preparing a snappy comeback (take that, oh 12-year-old daughter!) is really hard on my crappy phone’s touch screen where I seem to miss every third letter in what I type.
Yet I’m increasingly turning to text messaging to reach folks because (1) people are hard to reach, despite the fact that their phones go everywhere they go and (2) people hate to make time for phone conversations with each other.   Now that we’ve made our phones so smart, we want them to shut the *#@! up.

This is especially true for my child and her friends:  none of them really enjoy talking on the phone but my-oh-my they love their text messaging.   I originally encouraged my daughter to text because any written language usage was good in my book, but now I’m not so sure.  First off, I’m worried that she will permanently write the letter “u” for “you” and secondly, her tone is sometimes (I really mean often) kind of bossy.

Hmmm.  All of this presents a true dilemma because I’m a word gal.  Speak ‘em, write ‘em, doesn’t matter to me – I’ll write and spew or talk and spew, either way works for me.  But written words, I think have the added benefit of being able to last (until deleted or tossed away, of course) which also makes them more powerful than they sometimes should be.

In any event, all of this is on my mind today because my tween is coming home tonight after spending nearly 3 weeks away from her overbearing Mom.  In breathless anticipation of our reunion, it seems we’re getting back into mother-daughter practice by engaging in a few texting jousts over admittedly small stuff but stuff, nevertheless.  All I want is a hug when she comes home, and I fear that what I’ll get is attitude.  All she wants is her way and, what she fears she’ll get is her fearsome helicopter mom. 

We’re both right.

Thank god school starts next week.  Thank god the world will return to the routines that matter and the reality of our relationships as a family.

Signing off for this week because I have way too many back-to-school errands to get done before Monday and I need sufficient time to match wills with my daughter.

Have a great weekend.

 

My Sentimental Education

A friend recently shared on Facebook a Buzzfeed list of 32 books that “will actually change your life.”

I’ve read about 6 of them.  Frankly, I thought it was a pretty grim and eccentric list, weighted overwhelmingly to late 20th century fiction and the struggle to find meaning in modern life.  But it did get me thinking about the impact of books – you know, the ones that stick in the brain like chewing gum because they baffle, surprise, delight or sadden, or just satisfy in a hot fudge sundae sort of way.

Because my list of favorite books is as long as I am old, I thought I'd just share with you my “Vintage Jan” Top 25 today; these are mostly fiction books that made an impression in my youth (e.g., under the age of 20) for all the reasons stated above…my “sentimental education,” as it were. 

You will readily note from reviewing this list that I read these books for pleasure, not for development of the higher mind, and in fact, a few of them have no redeeming social value beyond entertainment.

The Kid Lit List:

1.        A Wrinkle in Time. (1962)  Spooky book with a plucky tween heroine, Meg, and three intriguing ladies with magical powers…Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which.    

2.       Little Women (1869) This American girl fell madly in love with Jo March and her wonderful, aggravating, heroic sisters. 

3.       Dr. Seuss.  All of them, each and every one.  And they still bring a smile to my face.

4.       The “Blue Book” biographies.  I think my love for all things historical was initially stirred by this blue cloth covered series of books --  short biographies in my elementary school library of our Founding Fathers with a few outstanding women thrown in for good measure, like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton and Helen Keller.  I devoured them.

The War List: 

5.       Gone with the Wind (1936).  Whatever you think of this sentimental and not so subtly racist romantic novel of the Old South, Scarlett is something else.  And so is Rhett. 

6.       The Winds of War (1971).  Epic family saga against the backdrop of World War II.  Hard to put down, especially if you’re a history buff.

7.       Exodus (1958).  A novel about the post-war establishment of Israel.  Ari Ben Canaan is one of the great, sexy heroes in 20^th century fiction.  A gripping read.

8.       Mila 18 (1961). Heroic retelling of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  Another terrific Leon Uris page turner.

9.       Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). I was a little obsessed with World War II and Nazis for a while there.

10.   Slaughterhouse 5 (1969).  Grim, bitter and brutally funny when Vonnegut isn’t breaking your heart.

11.   Book of Daniel (1971) A great historical novel by E.L. Doctorow about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the impact on their children of the Rosenbergs’ espionage and subsequent execution.

The Anglophile list: 

12.   Great Expectations  (1861).  My favorite Dickens novel.

13.   David Copperfield (1850).  “I was born….”

14.   Tale of Two Cities (1859).  Madame Defarge knits as the French Revolution unfolds and heads roll.  ‘Tis a far, far better thing I’ve done than I have ever done before…”   

15.   Pride and Prejudice (1813).  Mr. Darcy, sigh.  Elizabeth Bennett, a truly modern woman of her time.

Dickens and Jane Austen (whom I’ve written about recently).  Enough said.

The “All American” List:

16.   To Kill A Mockingbird (1960).  Scout, Jem, Dill, “Boo” Radley and Atticus Finch, a truly heroic father figure for the Civil Rights era.  One of my favorite books ever. 

17.   The Godfather (1969).  It took me out of commission for days because I could not put it down.

18.   Catcher in the Rye (1951).  Published the year before I was born (!) Holden Caulfield remains the spiritual role model for angst ridden adolescents in contemporary American fiction of the later part of the 20^th century, male or female.  It is simply un-American to be a teenager who hasn’t read Catcher in the Rye.

The “Grown Ups Sure Are Complicated” List:

19.   The Group (1963)  Oooh, the naughty book about the post-collegiate life of eight Vassar girls.  Yum. By the witty, dark Mary McCarthy.

20.   The Bell Jar (1963) Tragic Sylvia Plath, of course.

21.   The Sun Also Rises (1926).  The only Hemingway book I truly loved.

The “Pop Goes the Culture” List:

22.   Rosemary’s Baby (1967).  Spooky good.  Gotta love the Dakota!

23.   The Exorcist (1971).  Nothing like a foul-mouthed, 12 year-old girl to scare the beejeezus out of you!

24.   Candy  (1963)  Terry Southern’s porno-satire of a female “Candide.”  Very funny, very dirty, very 60s, and certainly memorable.  I was probably 15 when I read it, having discovered it hidden away in the back of one of my older sister’s drawers.  Not sure what I was looking for at the time, but reading this made the search worth it! J

25.   Valley of the Dolls (1968).  What a bad, bad book and good, good read.

Take it from me, most (if not all) of these books are worth reading at least once.  Enjoy!

 

Ode to August

Florida heaven of Seaworld, Legoland and Gulf Coast beaches

occupies fully the last few days of my daughter’s summer

Our small dog whimpers, lost in a dream on a puffy sofa pillow in Arlington

The King of our castle sits in his throne chair, lazily fingering the TV remote,
searching for something worth watching while reading his Kindle with one eye

Time to make dinner.

It will be whatever we want to eat

Lazy mornings, lazy days, lazy nights

Text messages provide reassurance that all is well near and far away

The child will return home a teen

but tonight

August is alright with me