Author Archives: Jill

Slice of cafeteria life

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Verbatim snippet from today’s lunch with my fifth-grade-son and his friends.

The name “Barack Obama” comes up randomly in a conversation that had been, thus far, mostly about football teams.

Boy 1: “I don’t like Barack Obama.”

Boy 2, who is (incidentally) African American: “Why? Because he’s black?”

Boy 1: “No. Do you want to know why?”

(No one responds. This does not deter Boy 1.)

Boy 1: “My mom has a small business. And because of Barack Obama…”

Boy 2, grinning, interrupts: “I follow Obama on Twitter.”

Boy 1, now distracted, “I follow Snape! I wrote to him once but he didn’t write back.”

Me, sotto voce, to my son: “Does he know Snape isn’t a real person?”

Son, for some reason looking strangely relieved, shrugs.


(Don’t Fear) The Reaper

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Reid is going through a phase where he is thinking a lot about death. He brings it up almost every day, and many recent nights he’s come into my room, after he’s been put to bed, with tears in his eyes, saying “I don’t want to die!” I think he lies in bed and worries about it.

Aidan also has gone through years of this same kind of worrying, so I’ve dealt with it before. (Mack has never expressed these fears, probably because it has never occurred to him that he is not invincible.) But the years of experience have not taught me how to deal very effectively with their concerns. I mean, you can reassure your kids about a lot of things: you are going to do great in your soccer game, your hair looks cool, of course you will have a pretty girlfriend someday. But you can’t tell them that they aren’t going to die. Well, I guess you can, but I don’t think that’s doing the kid any favors in the long run.

I usually tell them that they will live a long life, and do all the things they want to do. “You’ll go to college, and have a job you like, and get married.” I tell them they’ll get a chance to be a daddy, and a grandpa, and a great grandpa. Then, I say, when they are about 100 they will be tired and they will be ready to rest and they won’t mind dying. (By the way, I think Aidan has always taken “100″ to be a hard number, and if he dies when he is 98 I think he’ll be really pissed at me.)

This talk usually calms them somewhat, although it sometimes leads to other hard questions. “What if I don’t get a wife?” “What if I don’t get a job I like?” and Reid’s latest, “What if I get diabetes?” I usually give an answer that is a variation on, “We all worry about these things. But if you worry about them all the time, you won’t be able to enjoy your life. Try not to worry so much.”

I’m not sure where the preoccupation with death comes from. We certainly don’t talk about death a lot…until they bring it up. The kids haven’t been faced with much death during their lives, and they’ve never known a child who died. Somehow, though, I’ve managed to create these little metaphysical kids. It makes me sad to think of them worrying about this stuff. They’ve got the rest of their lives to worry; shouldn’t the years before 10 be angst-free?

Sometimes these depressing little conversations do lead to a good laugh for me, though. The other day I was giving Reid the spiel about all the things he will get to do as an adult. I was talking about how he’ll get married and have kids. I said, “And I will be their Grammy! Won’t that be funny?” Then I asked him whether sometimes I could babysit his kids, the way his Grammy babysits him. I said, “And that way you could have a break to go out to dinner with your wife.”

He cocked his head, thought for a second a replied, “Or maybe like a friend from work.” Five years old, and already he wants to go out with the boys, and not with his wife!


The future of photography

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Two different people, within the last week, have complimented photos I have taken by saying, “You must have a really good camera.”

Both times, I wondered whether they were being snide, or making legitimate attempts to be nice. After all, when I have dinner at someone’s house, and the food tastes good, I don’t tell the host, “You must have a really nice kitchen.”

I think in both cases the people were probably trying to be nice. So neither time did I answer, “Yes, I just set the camera down and then check it later and see what it has captured. I get the best photos that way!”


No, Reid, don’t become one of them

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Living in a house full of stinky old boys can corrupt even the sweetest soul.

Take, for example, my delicious little Reid, who just turned five. He’s a sweet little darling…but I can already see the signs that he is turning to the dark side.

Today we had the twin boys who carpool with us over to play after school. The three little guys hopped out of the van and came tearing inside, heading for the basement and the bounty of toys and video games therein. Reid got to the basement door first and pulled it open. Then he turned, smirked and, with an elaborate flourish of his hand, exclaimed, “Ladies first!”

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And we all drove to the bank in our newfangled covered wagon

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A couple of weeks ago our whole family headed to the bank to open savings accounts for the three boys. They already have accounts we created for them at birth, with money that is put away for college. But we wanted them to also have personal savings accounts, where they could deposit their allowances and have some sense of ownership and responsibility for their money.

I fondly remember opening my own savings account, 30-some years ago. I had a little blue bank book where the cashiers would manually record every deposit I made, and keep a running total of my balance. Thirty five cents. A dollar twenty. These were the types of deposits I made. The amounts were small, but I was proud of my little nest egg.

Of course, times have changed. Byron handled the paperwork for these new accounts while I kept the boys occupied. Afterwards, he told me, “Well, I wanted them to have something to start off with. So I put $500 in each account.” Way to teach them the value of money, dad.

No matter how much I talked up the Opening Your First Savings Account Experience, the boys just weren’t enthused. The bank is boring. The only part they cared for at all was the gathering of all their change from their piggy banks, so we could pour it in the change machine. That was dirty and noisy and mechanical, so they approved.

But my little blue bank book story did nothing for them. They are used to Mommy’s nostalgia for the days before computers and cell phones and they just aren’t impressed. I did interest one listener though. The account manager at the bank was listening as I wove my tale of bank transactions from the days before Steve Jobs and Paul Allen. When I finished, she asked me incredulously, “Is that true? Did they really do that?”

Sigh. I’m old.


Random ramblings about Target….bear with me as I try to get writing again

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I’ve been to Target three times in the last three days. So…about an average week. Ha! No, I don’t usually go quite this often. But the first trip led to the second trip which led to the third trip. And the third trip guaranteed that I won’t be going back for a fourth any time soon. Let me give you the run down on the week’s visits to Tar-jay.

Visit 1
On Monday, Reid had his birthday party and he received two identical Star Wars Legos kits. Luckily, one parent was nice enough to include a gift receipt (which I always forget to do, myself). So, on Tuesday after school, Reid and I went to Target to exchange his toy. The whole way there he was moaning, “What if there is nothing I like? I don’t want to do this.” Post-preschool exhaustion is a real problem for Reid. But then we walked into the Legos aisle and he immediately saw a Harry Potter set that apparently he was born to own. He grabbed that thing and clutched it so tightly in his little white hands that I don’t think anything could have pried it out of his grip.

Okay, so objective achieved. Now all we had to do was get from the toy section in the back of the store to the registers in the front of the store without spending $5,000. Ha! Okay, maybe we didn’t quite spend $5,000. But we grabbed quite a few things, some necessary some…not so necessary. The not-so-necessary included a six-pack of Reese’s peanut butter eggs. I don’t need them. I know I shouldn’t have them. But, damn, those things are delicious. And they were on sale! Normal price $3.49, marked down to $3.00. There was a big sign saying so.

Let me just interject that, as a true candy connoisseur, I believe that Easter is by far the best time of year for candy. Some people will make the case for Christmas time, or maybe Halloween. Those people are wrong. Peanut butter eggs. Starburst jelly beans. Cadbury carmel eggs. Peeps. Sweet sugary deliciousness. Every spring my Twizzlers have to look the other way, because they know I have no will power and will be cheating on them for weeks on end.

Anyway, so we rang up all our items and were headed out of the store when I noticed that my peanut butter eggs had rung up at full price, not the sale price. Well, it was only 49 cents, you say? Hardly worth worrying about, right? To that I respond, “Have we met?” I hate when things don’t ring up the right price at stores. And it has happened to me more than once at this particular Target, so I am even less likely to let them off the hook. Reid and I headed to Guest Services to remedy this gross injustice.

Of course, it took about ten minutes to get my 49 cents back. (Not my personal record, mind you. I once spent almost 20 minutes getting 99 cents back at Modell’s. I am nothing if not committed to being consistently idiotic about this stuff.) The first cashier wasn’t sure what to do, and was all aflutter. Then the employee at the next register said, “Who cares. Just ring it up at $3.00. It’s 49 cents.” This was said with a really expert withering look in my direction. I replied, “Yes. But I like to bring these things to your attention, because I figure you need to fix them in the system so everyone isn’t overcharged all day.” Blank stare. Yeah, that’s not happening.

So finally, finally, the guy figures out how to return my peanut butter eggs and then ring them up again with the correct price. I have to hand over my Tinkerbell Visa card again, and then we’re finally done. By this point even I was like, “Why, Jill, why?” But we’d done it. We’d struck a blow for consumers everywhere, and shown Target that they can’t take advantage of me.

Until I got home and realized that, after our transaction, the cashier had handed me my two receipts…but not my peanut butter eggs.

Visit 2
So the next day I had to go back to the same evil Target to get the peanut butter eggs that had been so viciously stolen from me. This time I went before picking up Reid from school, because he may be just five years old, but he would definitely have called me on this ridiculousness if he had been aware of it. After I got my candy (I just went back and got one off the shelf – the shelf that still said $3.00 on it! – and put it in a bag with my receipt from the day before. I was not willing to face the humiliation of asking permission at Guest Services. How do you explain that one? “I was here haggling over 49 cents…”)

I had a few extra minutes, so I walked around a bit and got my Target on. Construction paper. Yes. Birthday present for the party next week. Yes. Swim and sport shampoo for Aidan’s shower. Yes. Pajamas for Mack. Yes. Then I saw a rack of cute t-shirts. I went and tried one on and I liked how it looked. So I picked out three different colors. This is how people like me – people who don’t like looking at themselves in the mirror anymore – shop. We find something that doesn’t look too bad and we buy it in a whole bunch of colors. Saves time and agony.

I went up to the register, realizing I was running out of time before I had to be at the preschool for pick up. The cashier held up the pajamas I had chosen for Mack and commented on how they were on clearance. “That’s a good price! Were there other ones?” I chuckled to myself, thinking she was just like the Target Lady character on Saturday Night Live, who is always exclaiming over everything that comes through her lane. I replied that there were a couple other sets of the pajamas on the rack, in a couple of sizes. She said, “No, but were there other ones? Other kinds? I don’t like these.”

I’m sure she didn’t mean it to sound as rude as it did, but I couldn’t help replying, “How nice of you to say that, since I am buying them.” But the good news was that everything rang up the correct price and I made it to the preschool on time. A successful trip to Target!

Until I tried on the light pink t-shirt I had bought and realized that it made me look like warmed-over death.

Visit 3
Now, I return a lot of things to Target. By “a lot” I mean that I return more things to Target every year than most people will ever buy – and keep – in their lifetimes. It is Target’s own damn fault, though! They’ve made their returns process so simple and convenient. So if I see some shorts, but I’m not sure whether they will fit Aidan, I buy them anyway, knowing I can always bring them back with no hassle.

I never gave much thought to my addiction to Target returns. And then once I said something to fellow DwCer Erinn about returning something and she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever returned anything to Target.”

I don’t think there could be a sentence in the English language that would be more bewildering to me. I was absolutely floored. I. Cannot. Imagine. That. Life. That life is as foreign to me as being Paul McCartney or a Sherpa or a drug mule. What does she do with her time? Why does her brain allow her that flexibility? How can I get to that happy place?

Anyway, I, of course, was back at Target the next day to return the pukey pink shirt (and replace it with the same shirt in two different, better, colors). And…since I had time…Gatorade for football practice? Yes. A birthday card for Byron? Yes. Drain cleaner? Don’t mind if I do.

But my sojourn through the second happiest place on Earth was marred by the screaming of a little girl being wheeled around the store by her mother. This dear, sweet little harridan, who looked like maybe a young three-year-old, sat in the back of the cart screeching for the entire 20 minutes I was shopping. Her mom was moving at about the same pace I was, so I couldn’t get away. This girl was having a fit because “I….WANT….A….PUZZLE.” Over and over with the I want a puzzle. For 20 minutes.

The mother was mostly just ignoring her. (And ignoring the looks of fellow shoppers.) Every few minutes she’d coo, “I know. It’s hard. It’s so hard” or “I’m so sorry.” or (this was my favorite) “I think it is wonderful that you want a puzzle. I know it’s hard that there aren’t any ones you don’t already have.”

No “Stop crying.” No “That’s enough.” No “Stop making a racket – you are driving everyone nuts, you spoiled little asshole.” She didn’t take the kid outside. She just ignored it and then acted like it was cute the way her kid was SCREAMING like the world’s most obnoxious prima donna. I could imagine this girl’s future and I predict that it includes a lot of tiaras, a mostly-ignored pony and some really inappropriate men.

Don’t judge me. I was seriously pissed at this mom by the time we hit the grocery aisles and I saw her at the end of a row, sheepishly telling a fellow shopper, “She wants a puzzle.” with a little half-smile, as if to say, “Isn’t it cute?” I went around the corner, where the little angel could see me but her mom couldn’t. I waited for her to look at me and then I quietly but firmly said, “STOP. IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW.” Her eyes got wide and she stopped right in mid scream and watched me as I walked backwards down the aisle. At the end of the aisle I put my finger up and pointed at her and mouthed “STOP IT.” again.

I’d like to think I saved this poor girl from a lifetime as a spoiled brat. Like maybe her tiny brain would have an epiphany right there near the soup – “Hmmm, just because Mommy doesn’t make me act right doesn’t mean it’s okay to torture all the innocent people in this shopping establishment.” But no. My influence was short-lived. I could hear her screaming again a few minutes later.

I bet her mom stopped at another store on the way home to find her a puzzle she doesn’t have already.

The good news is that I came home with everything I paid for, and nothing needs to go back. I don’t have to go to Target tomorrow. Victory! (Although, come to think of it, I am already running low on Reese’s peanut butter eggs.)


Well, every super villain needs them

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Two of my kids are picky eaters. It is the bane of my existence.

Now, I’m not talking picky eaters like, “That’s the wrong brand of macaroni and cheese.” or “This steak is too rare for me.” I’m talking picky eaters like absolutely refuse to eat almost anything. Ever. If Reid and Mack took up smoking and got hair weaves, they would be indistinguishable from the models for Italian Vogue. Food rarely passes their lips.

Yesterday Reid burst into tears in the car because I mentioned that we might go to a restaurant he doesn’t like. “I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” Last night Mack and I had a 20-minute showdown because I wanted him to eat a piece of bread with butter on it. Yes, I know, I’m really pushing the limits on cuisine. We went back and forth, with the whining (him) and the threatening (me) and the begging (both of us) until he finally choked down half of it – by holding his nose for each bite and then immediately washing it down with water. Bread and butter.

In order to get them to eat, sometimes we play a game called Questions. It’s not too hard to explain. I come up with a topic (Star Wars, Presidents, Math, etc.) and then I ask each of them a question related to that topic. If they get the answer wrong they have to take a bite of food. This game works well at getting them to grimace and have a few bites of asparagus or mashed potato. But it is a lot of work. I have to think of the topics, then come up with questions that aren’t too easy or too hard, depending on the age of the kid who’s up.

Byron is no help with this game at all. If the topic is baseball, he’ll ask Reid, “How many hits did Roberto Clememte have in 1969?” When we give him the stink eye, he’ll ask, “What? Isn’t the point to make them get it wrong?”

But that isn’t the point. The point is to make them have fun and forget that they are being made to eat gross, disgusting FOOD. It’s also a nice way to interact because they each get a turn, and they know they will get that turn. So there isn’t as much interrupting and yelling over each other.

The other night, while playing Questions, I did a round of Reid questions. That led to Aidan questions, Mack questions, Daddy questions and finally Mommy questions. For Reid, my Mommy question was “How many brothers does Mommy have?”

This led us into an off-game discussion about all the people we know with two brothers. Mommy has two brothers! Auntie Emmy has two brothers! Grandpa has two brothers! And, of course, I said, “All of you have two brothers.”

Reid started shaking his head adamantly. “What, Reid?”

“I have zero brothers.”

I laughed, “What? You have two.”

“Nope. None.”

“Well then, what do you call these two guys?” I asked, gesturing to the brothers sitting on either side of him.

He looked to the left. He looked to the right. Then he looked back at me and said, “Minions.”


Give it to me straight, Doc

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A few weeks ago I wrote about my realization that my son Mack probably has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I thought some of you might like an update on how the situation has progressed. For those of you who have contacted me to ask me how things are going, thank you for your thoughtfulness and I hope you don’t mind getting the scoop via blog post.

First, I thought I’d write about the process of diagnosing Mack.

I was convinced that Mack had ADHD within about 30 seconds of finding my first web page about the disorder. However, it turns out that medical professionals require a little more than a “his Mommy says so” before they will diagnose your child. So at the end of November, we began the process of having Mack evaluated for ADHD. The first step was that I went in, without Mack, to meet with a pediatrician. She asked me a lot of questions, and I told her what I’d observed. At one point I said, “I know kids are usually diagnosed earlier than this, but…” The doctor interjected, “But he’s gifted, right?”

I was impressed that she’d figured that out just from the anecdotes and observations I told her, but it seems that Mack’s case was “textbook” in a lot of ways. The doctor was particularly able to recognize it because, she told me, she has a gifted, ADHD son of her own. We discussed things further and I found, to my embarrassment, that I made use of the box of tissues she’d put at the edge of her desk. I don’t consider myself a big crier. But when she talked about the pain that ADHD kids go through, being criticized and misunderstood, I couldn’t help myself. The good news was that the doctor was sure that we would be able to help Mack.

To diagnose a child with ADHD, medical professionals have specific guidelines for what they need to see. The short version is that they need to know that symptoms started at a young age, that they have continued consistently, and that they are exhibited across multiple environments (home, school, sports). These symptoms also must be shown to be having a negative impact on the child’s life. (So I guess if you’re a kid who can’t sit still, talks all the time, can’t sleep, is losing friends, is unable to finish schoolwork, and fights with people…but it isn’t negatively affecting your life at all…you don’t have ADHD.)

The doctors learn whether these conditions are true by having various adults fill out a form indicating how often they see certain tendencies and behaviors in the child. The form looks for ADHD, and it also screens for other disorders that often come with it – like depression, anxiety and behavioral problems. The questions range from “Does the child often lose things necessary for tasks and activities?” to “Does the child feel useless and inferior?” to the delightful “Is the child physically mean to animals?”

In Mack’s case, we had six adults fill out the assessment. Byron and I each did it, separately, and then we had four of Mack’s teachers fill it out. (I considered sending one to Mack’s abusive football coach from the fall, but thought better of it. Ha ha.)

When I initially asked the teachers to fill out the form, they each pretty much had the same response. It was something along the lines of, “Happy to help…but I don’t think Mack has ADHD.” Then the forms came back and three of the four teachers had answered enough “yeses” to indicate that Mack did actually meet the requirements for ADHD. Even if they liked Mack, and didn’t think he was overly disruptive, they had to answer yes when they read the specific questions.

Well, except for his current Signet teacher. (Signet being the pull-out gifted program for fourth and fifth graders.) She has a watermelon-sized soft spot for Mack. As the pediatrician put it, later, when we were going over the responses. “Well this one just thinks he’s a saint.” Softy.

After all the forms were done, the pediatrician scored them, and Byron and I went in for another meeting. At that time the doctor felt she had enough information to preliminarily diagnose Mack with ADHD. Five of the six diagnostic forms confirmed it. The good news was that none of the forms screened positive for anxiety or depression. That means we had, hopefully, caught the problem before it could really get going on Mack’s psyche. (I wasn’t surprised to see that Mack wasn’t suffering from self-doubt. He recently wrote a poem about the three most awesome things in the world: Christmas, football and Mack.)

Also good news – there were no indications that Mack suffers from any behavioral disorders. I was relieved. I always tell my kids I love them and will always love them no matter what, but I am hoping never to have to explore the outer reaches of that promise as, say, the weeping mother of the defendant in a serial murder trial.

At this point, our pediatrician was ready to see Mack himself. He came in for an appointment and she gave him a thorough evaluation to exclude any physical concerns from being the reason for his issues. Apparently, vision or hearing problems can look a lot like ADHD, as can heart problems. Mack checked out healthy, and the doctor talked with him for a while and then told us that she was making the call to diagnose him with ADHD.

I was…happy? Not happy. But not sad, either. When you see your kid struggling, it is actually a relief to think that it is something that can be fixed. Or, if not fixed, at least managed. So I guess mostly I felt hopeful, that knowing this “officially” about Mack would lead to a better future for him, and for all the people who have to deal with him…because, like Christmas and football, Mack is loud, nerve-wracking and exhausting…but also awesome.


Miss me?

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So, one minute it was November and I was getting into a groove with this blog, writing fairly regularly. I had a list of topics for the future and was enjoying the chance to express myself.

Then, all of a sudden, it was February.

Sorry.

I was really happy to be back writing semi-regularly. But then we went to Disney World, came back and landed in the middle of Christmas season. Then it was the dregs of January and all my writing mojo just evaporated. Thankfully, Tanya picked up the slack and has managed to keep new content coming. But it isn’t fair to ask her to entertain the whole Internet all by herself. So I promise I’m back.

I’m off to work on my first piece of 2011. Coming soon. I promise.