Word of the Day: One of a Kind

My husband, who has been on a sock jihad of sorts in our basement laundry room, has stuffed a large, black trash bag  full of mismatched socks, ranging from plain white sports socks, to black dress socks and thigh-high soccer socks to novelty holiday anklets with black cats and candy canes.  He secured the bag with a twist tie lugged it upstairs into the living room where I was sprawled out on the floor with the newspaper . “I’ve got a great idea for our next dinner party,” he announced as he dropped the bag squarely onto the MetroWest section. “We can invite our friends over to match socks. Every time someone matches a pair, they have to drink a shot.”He looked pleased with himself.  “They can even bring their own bags of single socks  – it will be like speed dating for knee-hi’s.”  

“But it would be a terrible party,” I said. “Everyone would leave completely sober.” Alas, his enthusiasm would not be dampened bya mere shot of reality.

“We could create an art installation!” he continued. “We’ll string a clothesline along the length of the street and all of the neighbors can hang their single socks. It will be a testimony to the isolation of suburbia, a commentary on consumerism and society, a statement underscoring our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint!”  

Or we could just stash the bag in the corner of the basement and  forget about socks and be glad it’s warm enough to wear flip flops.

Word of the Day: Facebook

 

In the midst of the turmoil that recently rocked Egypt and culminated with the toppling of a corrupt government, a baby was born. As a tribute to the social media that fueled the protests, the parents of the infant girl named her “Facebook.”  It’s a moniker that I believe might be surfing the crest of the newest wave of baby names.  After all, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is worth $12 billion dollars. I would think he might want to send little Facebook a onesie with the company logo or maybe spring for her college tuition (after all, you wouldn’t want to sully the company name by having Facebook unemployed or working as a pole dancer).

Which opens the door to other baby naming possibilities. 

I think Alcoa is a rather pretty name for a girl and its stock is up to twenty one cents a share. Also up to forty-seven cents a share, is Pfizer, a name which really could work for either sex.  Boeing is a nice boy’s name and their stock is up, too, as is Merck, a easy, forthright name for a boy and it beat its earnings estimates during the last quarter. Move over Aiden and Ella, here come Exxon and Verizon! Take a look at the NASDAQ and you’ll see potentially millions and millions of dollars in corporate sponsorships available to enterprising families and their well-named off spring.

Of course, Gwyenth Paltrow did name her child Apple. Does Steve Jobs know?

Word of the Day: Tiger Mom

Usually, in the woman’s locker room, there is not much conversation. It is a bunch of women mentally comparing their lumps and jiggles with the other naked women’s lumps and jiggles. Occasionally, there is a request to borrow a squirt of conditioner or a comment on the temperature of the water in the pool.

But yesterday, was different. Women were actually talking to eachother.  With wet hair, standing naked, their voices echoed off the tiled walls and carried into the showers. They were talking about Amy Chou’s Book “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom.” More specifically, they were talking about whether the no-nonsense, no sleep-overs, practice, practice, practice tactics touted by the author were inspired parenting or borderline child abuse.

I don’t know.

I do know, now that my kids are mostly beyond the age of parental influence, that I wish that I had cracked the Tiger Mom whip a little more effectively. Sure, I nagged them to do their homework and they spread their notebooks out on the dining room table and did it. At least they said they did it. But their report cards revealed that they were missing assignments, not always prepared for class and certainly not working up to their potential. This doesn’t happen to children of a Tiger Mom. My kids all took piano lessons and violin, too. But they never practiced. Even when I yelled, my tantrums would result in an angry rendition of Bach’s Minuet in G or a slammed bedroom door and no practice at all. So I let them quit music lessons. Some of us are Tigers, some of us are just moms trying to get our kids to remember to flush the toilet and turn out lights.

Indeed, Amy Chua’s daughters straight A’s and prodigious piano playing might be the result of superior parenting, but I suspect that their achievements are due largely to genetics.  Amy Chua is a Yale law professor with degrees from Harvard University. She’s  no dummy. In fact, she’s a marketing genius.

www.memegenerator.net

Word of the Day: Pot Luck

I feel totally lucky to live in a neighbodhood where I like the people who live next door, across the street and down the block. In fact we like eachother so much, that we often get together for impromptu dinners, like the one at my house the other night.

Everyone was drinking wine and mulling around the kitchen. I was rummaging through the fridge to see what I could use to make salad dressing. As I tossed some oil,vinegar and mustard together, my neighbor said, “Hey! Isn’t that my bowl?” 

I don’t actually remember buying the bowl, but it’s been in my kitchen and played a key role in food preparation for  at least two or three years.  I wanted to say “Prove it!” Because I really like that bowl. It’s perfect size and the color goes great with my countertops.

“Maybe, it is yours,”  confessed. “But I left my favorite yellow bowl with the stripes somewhere, so I need this one.” I also need the little ceramic cheese tray that someone left at my Christmas open house, the salad tongs that were orphaned at a block party last  summer and a basket that was abandoned after I broke my elbow and the neighborhood responded with an outpouring of food delivered to our house.  

“I don’t have your yellow bowl,” she said. “But I do think that I have three of your wine glasses,” she  said, “and your fondue forks.”

 “You do?” I tried to remember when  I lent them to her.

“Let’s call it even,” she said. “The dressing needs more salt.”

Love this neighborhood.

Word of the Day: Leftover Chinese

According to New Tang Dynasty Television, a pot of 2,400 year old soup was found buried among ruins in Xi’an, China.  Big deal.

If these archaeologists are impressed with a measly pot of soup, I can unearth more exciting moldy leftovers in my fridge. They might be older, too. There’s blue cheese that’s supposed to be yellow, a container of organic yogurt that expired in September, wilted kale and a take-out box with petrified Peking ravoli  from the Wok Inn.

If that’s not impressive enough, then I invite the crew from China to excavate  my freezer where, just today,  I discovered a frozen mass, entombed in a zip lock bag. Carbon-dating is on going to determine the contents which may or may not be the carcass from the Thanksgiving turkey. The  2002 Thanksgiving turkey.

Word of the Day: Stuffed

When it comes to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I am stuck in my ways. No, scrap that. I am a dictator. For  that reason, I have a hard time relinquishing the dinner prep to say…my mother in law or my sister in law or even Rachael Ray.

It’s with trepidation that I travel to my sister in law’s house this year. Or any year.

I love her. She’s a fabulous cook. She makes her family’s stuffing which chock full of celery, savory herbs, butter and bread crumbs. It’s delicious, but it’s not my family’s stuffing. 

She is as passionate about her ancestor’s recipe as I am about mine.

So, after feasting in New York, we will drive back to Boston where I will make  two pans of corn bread, dry it out and crumble it up with sausage, apples, cider and cranberries. Then I will take the 22-pound turkey that is defrosting in the fridge and I will stuff it.

 

Word of the Day: Soft Scrub

It’s Friday and I am cleaning the house. Not because I am having a fancy dinner party, but because my daughter is coming home from college for the weekend and my oldest son will be here for dinner. Yes. I am cleaning for my kids. The same kids that just two or three years ago I nagged to pick up their socks and put their dirty dishes in the sink.  It’s not like I have to impress them.

I guess I am cleaning to prove to them that the messy house that they grew up in was all

their

fault.

Word of the Day: Heavy Metal

Some kid in Worcester brought a jar of mercury to class to show his teacher. The teacher opened the jar, touched the mercury and a few drops spilled on the floor. Major panic.

Now, children are being evacuated from the school, homes are being tested, backpacks sealed in hazmat bags and a specialized cleaning of the school is in progress.

Whew!

What anyone was doing with a jar of mercury is open for discussion. Maybe the kid’s mom is a dental hygienist. Mine was. She worked every day but sometimes when if I was home sick from school, she would come leave work in her white uniform and shoes and come home at lunchtime to heat me up a can of chicken noodle soup. Sometimes she’s bring me home a little present  – like a sparkly ring that she nabbed from the dentist’s prize drawer or a Highlight’s magazines from the waiting room or sometimes…she brought me home a little jar of mercury.

They used it to mix up silver amalgam filling material. The mercury was magical.  It was beautiful and shiny – surprisingly heavy – and it burst into perfect tiny balls when you squished it with your finger or accidentally dropped it on the kitchen linoleum. I rocked the blob of mercury in my palm, rubbed it between my fingers and kept it next to my box of Kleenex while I lay on the couch and watched “Perry Mason” reruns.

The Massachusetts Department of Health says that mercury exposure poses a serious health risk and that only after extensive testing and thorough cleaning will the kids in Worcester will be allowed back into the school building.

Sure, I think that pulling kids out of school was an overreaction. But just the same, the next time I go to the dentist, I will insist on the white fillings – there’s no mercury and they look nicer.

Word of the Day: Lock-Her Room

Summer’s almost over and I’ve been swimming at the town pool as often as I can. The goal was to lose weight, but all it’s done for me is increase my appetite (conveniently, there’s an ice cream truck in the parking lot). But I digress.

What I wanted to talk about was the locker room at the pool. It’s a basic facility with two benches, cube lockers, a couple of showers, toilets and a fuzzy, distorted mirror that doesn’t reveal when I leave with mascara smudged under my eyes.

But what I really want to talk complain about is women who bring their little boys and particularly their not-so-little boys, into the locker room. As a mom of two former-little boys, I understand that you can’t send your three-year old into the men’s room alone. But…comes a time to separate the boys from the big boys.

Call me a prude, call me overly-modest, but I think that a nine-year old belongs in the men’s locker room. Okay, even  a seven-year old. Yeah, the one who is already wearing his swim suit but stares unabashed at me while I unhook my bra and pull on my Speedo.

Sure, it’s easier to bring him into the women’s room. You can see him when he walks by the showers, opens all the curtains and turns the water on in each one, you can hear him when he yells as that he can’t find his goggles and you can feel the discomfort of other women and girls in the locker room when he leans against the cinderblock wall in a pose that’s pre-teen cool and watches us females wiggle in and out of our bathing suits.

Word of the Day: Wish list

Really,  is it too much to ask?

That at the town pool, 19 year-old Swedish au pairs be required to wear armbands that identify them as such. That way I won’t feel like such a schlump when I look at their thighs and think, “I have three kids, she has three kids, why don’t we look the same?”  Maybe instead of armbands, they should be required to wear  baggy, one-piece, turtleneck bathing suits that say “NANNY” in block letters on the back.

Is it too much to ask?

That people who have family money come clean so I don’t beat myself up wondering how come I can’t afford to go on vacation to Borneo and drive a new Volvo when the part-time poet with the glassblower husband  down the street can. I’m thinking maybe lawn signs. “This mortgage-free house courtesy of Mom and Dad.”

Is it too much to ask?

That anyone who says “Oh, you are a stay at home mom? I  could never do that. I’d be so bored,” be punished for their ignorance by having to host a sleepover with six nine year-old boys (including two who have asthma, one who is lactose and gluten intolerant  and one who is “gifted”), take a two year-old, a five year-old  and a six month old grocery shopping and then spend four hours at the mall shopping for prom dresses with a fifteen year-old girl and end the day teaching a sixteen year-old boy to drive  stick shift. Your stick shift.    Boring? Hah.