New Thanksmas Eve Day

I get it. The earlier retailers get you in the stores to do your holiday shopping, the more you’ll spend and the more likely it will be (in this rotten economy) for them to make a profit this Christmas season. That’s always been the case. I’ve watched over the last few years as Christmas decorations have appeared in store windows and holiday items on the shelves earlier and earlier. First, it was right before Thanksgiving that you’d start seeing Santa on display to get you in the buying spirit. Then it was November 1st, before you even had time to take down your Halloween decorations. But this year, I spotted a snowflake or two decorating the toy aisle at Walmart, some time in early September while finishing up my back-to-school shopping.

That was just the start of the new holiday season timeline. We no longer have Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Years. The retailers have found it more profitable, and we as consumers have bought into it, to condense them all into one holiday that my family has started calling, New Thanksmas Eve Day. It’s out of control. The first and second week of November, Disneyland and a high end mall in L.A. called the Grove, both held their tree lighting ceremonies, complete with Santa and faux snowflakes falling from the sky. All the store ads and television commercials are hawking Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales weeks before their real dates – the Friday and Monday AFTER Thanksgiving. And to make matters worse, driving home last night, we noticed that more than a couple of houses in our neighborhood have already turned on their Christmas lights.

What ever happened to Thanksgiving? We’ve skipped over it all together for the sake of creating a more robust economy. Because of all of this pressure to rush into Christmas, my daughters and I have made a conscious effort to put the brakes on and not race over November 24th. We’ll take a moment to be thankful for the family and friends around us, our health, and a roof over our heads. We’ll chow down on some turkey, sip some cider, read a book or two about the pilgrims (remember them?) and have the dishes washed in time to rush out to the midnight opening of Target! I might be frustrated about the rush into the holidays, but I’m not going to miss out on the savings either.

But clearly, my family isn’t up-to-speed on this New Thanksmas Eve Day tradition the stores are trying to start. Natalie, my eight year old, asked me what Black Friday was. I asked her what she thought it was and she said, “Black Friday is the day that they celebrate Black people.” I laughed and said, “No, that’s February, we get a whole month, not a day.” Nicole, my eleven year old, quipped, “…the shortest month.” So my kids aren’t shopping savvy, but at least they have a strong sense of irony.

Happy New Thanksmas Eve Day to all of you!

The Silent Treatment

My 11 year old daughter Nicole got angry at me the other day. She decided that as punishment, she would give me the silent treatment. She huffed and puffed around the kitchen, getting ready for school, her usually chatting self completely silent. She was so happy with herself and the punishment she had selected for me. When Natalie came into the kitchen, Nicole conferred with her. When I said good morning to Natalie, they both said, "Do you hear something?" And then Natalie joined in the silent treatment with Nicole. They were united in their efforts to ignore me. Can I tell you, it was the best thirty minutes of my week! Quite possibly the year! Nobody asked me for anything, nobody chattered on about who was doing what to who at school when they should have been getting dressed and eating breakfast. Nobody complained about what was packed into their lunch or why I'd decided to serve pancakes for breakfast instead of waffles. I was downright giddy! There was nothing but quiet from the children and for once, I could watch Good Morning America without having to turn up the volume so I could hear it over their incessant chatter.

I love my girls dearly, but (like their mother, I guess)they do LOVE to talk. Endlessly, they can rattle on about nothing with great belief and conviction in the importance of everything they are saying. Sometimes, on that rare occasion when there is nothing left to say, they will make up things just to hear their own voices. We always joke that Nicole was born talking. She even talks in her sleep. Natalie came to it slightly later, sometime after she turned a month old. They started talking early and they've never, ever stopped. People always comment on how polite and verbal they are. Oh yes, they are verbal...but now they were silent.

They'd seen someone give someone else the silent treatment on tv and they thought that was a great way to punish me. Little did they know that to their stressed out, over stimulated parents, giving them the silent treatment isn't a curse, it's a blessing.

But all good things come to an end and by the time they were ready to go to school, whatever Nicole was mad about had passed and she announced she was talking to me again...and she hasn't stopped. If I could just figure out another way to piss her off, maybe I can get some rest over the weekend.

The Toaster Oven is My Friend and Other Lessons I’ve Learned in Suburbia

I cooked a three tier chocolate cake in a toaster oven last week. It was my daughter Nicole’s eleventh birthday and a few days before her party, my regular oven decided to break. In addition to filling the house with gas fumes when it coughed its final breath, my oven left me with no way to make the food or cake for the birthday party. Panic started creeping in. I had 35 kids from her homeroom class and assorted aunts and uncles and cousins descending on the house and no way to feed them.

Normally, I would never have agreed to host a party this big for a kid’s birthday. Last year she had a few girls sleepover, I made pancakes in the morning and they were done. But this year I was riddled with guilt. I’d dragged Nicole around in the car for the last 6 weeks while her sister, Natalie, performed in a show out in Thousand Oaks. Nicole endured hours of endless car rides and late nights and waiting a Starbucks for rehearsals to end, rarely uttering a complaint. So when she asked for this extravaganza of a birthday, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. But now my oven was broken.

I revamped the party menu so I could cook everything on the stove – pasta, spaghetti sauce – it would work with a little salad on the side. But there was still the cake to bake. I called my friend and neighbor Lyn and asked her if I could use her oven. She kindly agreed, but when it was time to finally bake the cake, it was the night before the party and it was late…very late. I didn’t want to knock on her door, pans in hand. I was about to give up and call the bakery department at Ralph’s to order a cake when the Kitchen Aid toaster oven I’d bought my husband David last Christmas caught my eye. It had been sitting on the counter barely unused for almost a year. I got it for him almost as a joke because he’d always complain about using the microwave and reminisce about how he used a toaster oven all the time in college. Well, I think he has used the toaster oven twice since last year. He must have realized that he doesn’t have much need for it since he’s moved beyond his college diet of broiled cheese sandwiches.

I took the largest of the cake pans and stuck it in the toaster oven to see if it would fit. When it did, I was giddy with the idea of trying to cook the entire cake, one layer at a time, in a toaster oven. Now it wasn’t just a cake that needed to be made, it was a challenge! Nicole wanted a s’mores cake. It needed to be three tiers of chocolate cake with fudge filling and dark chocolate frosting. On top, a glob of marshmallow fluff which would ooze down the sides and be covered with graham cracker crumbs and shavings of dark chocolate. The cake turned out beautifully and I was bursting with pride that I’d actually pulled it off. Who knew you could bake a cake in a toaster oven? That necessity mother of invention thing is powerful stuff. On party day, I couldn’t help but bring people inside and show them the toaster oven cake.

Over the week it took to get a repairman out to fix the regular oven, I cooked everything in that toaster oven, my new best friend. I beamed when I talked about it to the point that my family tired of hearing me announce what was for dinner only to follow it up with the phrase, “And I made it in the toaster oven!” I cooked pot roast and meat loaf and a roast chicken. I cooked 4 frozen pizzas – one at a time, of course. Each time I pulled a dish out of the toaster oven, I felt like some type of new age domestic diva. Who needed Viking or Thermador or some other high end appliance? With just my toaster oven, I felt like I could conquer the culinary world. We had bonded, like new friends who instantly seem like old trusted ones.

Just as I started eyeing the toaster oven to see if I could cook my Thanksgiving turkey in it, the repairman came and replaced the simple but expensive part which had caused the whole problem – the starter. Now my regular oven worked without gassing us and I’m back to my old cooking routine. But now every time I pass the toaster oven, it’s bittersweet. I miss it, but I also happily remember the fine meals we shared together. Who knows, maybe I’ll cook my turkey in it anyway, just for old times sake.

Afraid

I’m afraid of the dentist. Not the actual person. My dentist is a very nice man, as is the hygienist. No, it is the whole concept of the dentist and what they do to you there that scares me. It is not the normal, “I hate going to the dentist” kind of fear. No, it’s one that is almost overwhelming and causes me to change my behavior in ways to avoid this every six month ritual of having my teeth cleaned.

I always postpone my appointments. Sometimes it is for legitimate reasons, a work conflict, a school thing for the kids. But sometimes, it’s just because I’m scared. I’ll postpone it several times, pushing it months into the future. When the day finally comes and I have to go, my palms sweat as I flip through an Architectural Digest in the waiting room. Once they get me into the chair, I try to make small talk to keep my mind off of the inevitable. My heart palpitates and I get the sudden urge to get up and run. Then they start with the scraping. The noise vibrates in my head, I feel as if my teeth are about to shatter. They put that suction thing in my mouth to keep me from drowning in my own saliva – and how embarrassing would that be? My obituary would say, “Died in the dentist chair, choked on her own spit.” Not the way I want to be remembered. Then more scraping and poking and prodding which reminds me of the Nazi dentist in Marathon Man and all I can hear is Laurence Olivier saying “Is it safe? Is it safe?” Then images of Steve Martin as the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors flash through my head and I’m certain that I’m about to be tormented by the real life version of these evil movie dentists. I feel on the verge of panic until they finally say, “…all done, now rinse and spit.”

This is an irrational fear. I know that. I still can’t shake it with all the logic in the world. I don’t admit it to my children because I don’t want them to pick up my phobia. I want them to love the dentist. And they do. In fact, my eight year old has already decided what she wants to be in life…a dentist. Sometimes I find her searching the internet for pictures of teeth or information about dental schools. She’s serious about this dental thing. It figures…anything to upset your mother.

Happy Halloween!

The Bed You Lie In

There’s an old saying that goes, “You make your bed, now go lie in it.” It roughly means, if you create a situation, you have to deal with it yourself. But whenever I see my children’s beds unmade and my repeated pleas for them to pull up their comforters are ignored, I think of that phrase and of the literal importance of my kids making their own beds. Yes, it would be easier not to push them to do it. That would be one less daily battle to fight in a seemingly endless war of skirmishes over shoes left in the middle of the living room, clothes dumped everywhere, and an endless array of dishes that pile up in the family room, making it look more like a diner than a place to watch t.v. Yeah, letting them skip making their beds would be easier. I could make the beds myself in a shorter time than it takes for me to yell at them. Or I could let the cleaning lady do it. But then what would my kids learn if someone else always does those types of things for them?

When I was about six or seven and my mother worked as a nurse, there was a woman who came to our house to watch us after school and to clean and cook until our parents came home. Her name was Ernestine Johnson, I think – funny I can remember that far back when I can barely remember my own children’s names. Even as she cleaned the rest of the house, Mrs. Johnson was given strict instructions not to empty the trash cans or make the beds in our bedrooms. My brother and I had to do those ourselves. I vaguely remember complaining to my parents and wondering if Mrs. Johnson was here to clean and make beds, why she didn’t clean and make beds in our rooms.

When I was in my early 20s, some old family friends came to stay with us for the weekend. I went to make the bed in the guest room. Our friend watched me do it for a second, and then shook his head. He pulled the sheets off and instructed me to make the bed again, but this time he wanted to show me how to make a bed the way he’d learned in the army. To this day, I don’t know if he was every really in the army or not, or if he was just trying to give me a difficult time about my sloppy bed making. Whether he was a military man or not, he sure knew how to fold crisp hospital corners and make the bed look as if, once tucked in, you could bounce the proverbial quarter on it. Here was a guy, a very successful businessman with a car and a driver, a own household staff and several vacation homes, making the bed with great precision. It’s important to know how to make a bed correctly,” he said, carefully tucking in the last corner, “It’s not just about how you make your bed, it’s about how you make your life.”

He was right, although it took many years of unmade beds for me to figure it out. I know it’s silly, but in a way, I find I feel better when my bed is made. Things feel more in order. In a weird way, I feel more in control. If I can have some order in my bed, in my room, at my desk, then maybe, just maybe, can be at peace with the chaos in life I can’t control.

My children need to know how to make a bed correctly because just as you make a bed, you make your life and however you do it – well or sloppy – you will be the one who will have deal with what you do. So will I continue to push them to make their own beds? Will I force myself to pull up my own covers and tuck the corners in properly during the rest of the week and not just on the weekends? I will try. Now if I could just remember the trick to those hospital corners!

All Bets Are Off

Lefty liberal that I am, when I’m searching for my daily news fix, particularly when I’m looking for someone to validate my opinions, I’ll channel surf my way over to MSNBC. There I can find a plethora of pundits who share my viewpoint on the world. I usually find myself in agreement with Rachel Maddow on most things, that’s why when I saw this article about her reaction to the al-Awlaki killing, I was surprised to find myself on the other side of the fence for a change. Maddow and other journalists and politicians have raised questions about the legitimacy of the president issuing a kill on sight order for an American citizen without due process. The argument is that since there was no trial, no conviction, no court determined guilt to justify an execution order, how could the president issue one.

When they announced Bin Laden was killed, my daughters were surprised by my reaction. Nicole asked me why I was happy that a man was dead. I tried to give her context, explain to her what Bin Laden had done not only to the people who died in the building on 9/11, not only to their families and co-workers and friends, but to an entire nation. We had a friend and a friend’s mother who worked in the Towers. Thankfully, both got out, but despite that, our world and our outlook changed that day. Everyone’s did. I talked to Nicole about how life was in our country before 9/11, what our perceptions were – that we were so naïve to believe that an act of terrorism wouldn’t and couldn’t happen on our own shores. I described to my ten year old about a time before airport security checks and homeland security departments and terror alerts. I told her about planes crashing into buildings, underwear and shoe bombers, lone shooters on military bases, the reason officers with mirrors check under our cars when we enter parking garages, and why back then, before all this happened, we weren’t so afraid. I tried to explain to her that back then, the average person never believed that groups of people in foreign lands hated us so much that they would take their anger to the streets in a campaign of terror and target civilians rather than soldiers. Still, on some level, to my child, it didn’t justify why I was happy that someone had been killed. Hadn’t I always taught her that killing was bad?

When they announced al-Awlaki’s death earlier this week, again, I was pleased with the action and again, my daughter was confused. Another man had died, this time, an American. I started to repeat what I had explained months earlier; finally, I gave up and just said, “If you publish on the internet, make video and audio recordings, stand at a pulpit and declare that you are at war against America and urge others, even help them plan how to kill Americans, all bets are off.” It wasn’t the best answer a mother could give. I know that. But in a way, it’s true. If you do something bad, all bets are off. You might get a trial, you might not. Maybe you should have thought before you started doing bad things. A guy walks into a bank with a gun drawn; I’m thinking he’s declared his intentions, whatever happens after this, he brought it on himself. I really don’t want to hear him complaining if he gets shot by the police before he gets a chance to have a fair trial before his peers – that’s on him. Like I said, I usually find myself on the side of the left wing pundits but in this case, I’m not too worried about the precedent being set by the president placing a kill order on an American citizen (here or abroad) without due process. Obama campaigned saying that he would target and dismantle the terrorist network. That’s what’s he’s doing, systematically, thoughtfully. I’m pretty sure he didn’t make the decision to sign the kill on sight order between grabbing a bowl of Cheerios and watching an Everybody Loves Raymond rerun on t.v. But now even Obama’s own supporters are giving him a hard time for doing the very thing he promised to do. Despite getting to live in a really big house with someone else to clean the bathrooms, it can’t be all that fun being president.

There was clearly no question that al-Awlaki was an enemy combatant and was engaged in behavior that resulted in a military action being launched against him. Is the lady on our block that leaves out peanuts for the squirrels going to be taken out by a drone missile without first being given due process of law because this precedent has been set? Sadly, no. As much as I would like her to stop her behavior – can I tell you how many rats she attracts to the block through her actions – I think it’s safe to say she’s not going to be targeted by the U.S. government for execution.

My daughter doesn’t get it. Maybe someday she will. Sorry Rachel, as much as I’m a fan, this time I’m not on the bandwagon.

If you want to read more about Maddow’s response, check out: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/01/rachel-maddow-al-awlaki-killing_n_990394.html

Now This…

We’ve been warned social security will be gone by 2025. We’ve been threatened with the elimination of Saturday mail delivery. But now this...they’ve fired the librarians from the public elementary school libraries in Los Angeles. How can you have a public school with no librarian? Libraries are a fundamental need in our schools and communities and yet some collective of Einsteins at LAUSD thought that getting rid of the librarians/library aides, which would then require the schools to close the libraries if they were not adequately staffed, was a good money saving idea. Really? Why don’t we just eliminate the cafeterias too and stop feeding those kids? We have a childhood obesity problem in this country anyway, right? That would save some money for the school district, too.

It makes absolutely no sense that an educational system that is designed to enrich its students and support learning on every level would think that a library was not an essential tool in that learning process. So, now that our school has no library aide, the parents must sign up for shifts in order to keep the library open until another plan can be developed. In order to save the library, parents, grandparents, even the principal’s cousin, many of whom have neither the time nor energy to add yet another thing to their already chaotic lives, have volunteered to train and staff a public school library because the district won’t do it. At first, the district refused to even let us use the district wide system unless a union aide was present. They relented, and now the parent staffed library will be open for now. All I can say is, somewhere, Ben Franklin is rolling over in his grave.