Another Gray Hair

British Invasion

I was doing my best to get some editing work done this evening while I waited for dinner to cook so, being the fantastic mother that I am, I sat my kids down in front of the TV, turned it to PBS and went to park my arse in front of the computer. About 20 minutes later, I kept hearing uproarious laughter coming from my son and a few giggles from my daughter. Excellent, I thought, PBS must really know what kids like. A couple minutes later my son ran into the kitchen (where my desktop is) and said, "Mommy. You have got to see this hilarious movie we are watching." I went in to find my kids mesmerized by Are You Being Served?

I guess we've got a backup show when the cartoons run out. I wonder when the appropriate time to introduce, Keeping Up Appearances to the kiddos is.

Status Quo

Julianne has a little problem with Facebook. She's hooked on it and has, as a result, begun thinking in terms of her Facebook status which, for those of you unfamiliar with Facebook, always starts out with the word, "Julianne" and must be confined to 160 characters or less.

Julianne now thinks in the third person. She worries this may be a tad narcissistic.

Julianne likes for her Facebook status to either be clever, poignant, humorous or some combination of the three. This is difficult for her to accomplish in less than 160 characters.

Julianne hopes that this thinking in terms of Facebook status condition of hers doesn't seep into her everyday life. She may hear herself say things such as this:

Julianne wants her daughter to stop asking for a snack and start eating her meals. If this doesn't happen, her daughter will be placed in time out.

Julianne does not want to ask her son to turn off the Wii again. If she does, she will take his privileges away tomorrow.

Julianne is trying to talk on the phone. She wishes her two children would stop making requests long enough for her to change her doctor's appointment. If they don't, Julianne will be forced to lock herself in the closet.

Julianne is now locked in the closet. Thankfully, she remembered to bring her laptop.

 

 

Monday’s Rant

Be forewarned I'm feuding with my husband over something about which he has no control and I'm feeling the urge to scratch my own eyes out with a rusty knife. It's been a great day. Suffice it to say this post may seem, hmmm…, a tad bit angry.

For those of you who are unaware, I have lupus. I realize this may seem like a random statement but it becomes relevant later. I have lupus and so do 1.5 million other Americans yet very few people even know what the disease is. There is no celebrity spokesperson for the disease even though it is statistically impossible that a celebrity or five does not have the disease. The only press it ever gets is when one of the staff members on House throws it out as a possible diagnosis every week. I'm not kidding. EVERY week. Pay attention. This lack of awareness drives me nuts. Fret not, all of this will make sense in a few minutes.

Anyone watch The Shield out there in cyberland? My husband and I have been fans of it since the first episode and have watched it faithfully until its painful conclusion last week. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it is a gritty (that might be the understatement of the century) cop drama about police corruption and the activities of one particular group of cops in L.A. It's violent and thought provoking and shocking at times. It's the kind of show that I love. I was so pleased last season when one of the show's primary characters came out of the closet with a lupus diagnosis. She's a smart, successful, highly capable woman and I was thrilled that lupus was finally going to get some serious treatment on a relatively high profile show. My pleasure turned to shock when it was revealed that the reason for the revelation about the character's diagnosis was that she was going completely insane. She was losing perspective, unable to perform the functions of her job, getting irrationally emotional and had even let her house get so filthy that it could have been condemned, all of this from a woman who, prior to her lupus diagnosis, had been an exceptionally successful woman in every aspect of her life. Are you kidding me?

So the character she came clean to took it upon himself to shelter and protect her from those who might discover her illness and subsequent meltdown. Being the gentlemen that he is, he talked her down when she was overly emotional, over compensated for her rash behavior, and hired someone to clean her house. What a gent!

The final few episodes revealed that it was her medication, not her disease, which was making her crazy. This left her with a difficult choice: continue to take the medication and remain a crazy person or stop taking it, get some normalcy in her life, and die a slow painful death from a relentless disease. She chose the latter. Nice. My heart swells with pride at this oh-so-accurate portrayal of a relatively common and treatable disease that affects many intelligent, successful, capable-of-keeping-our-homes-clean women who take their medication regularly without going crazy. Come on!

Wary Googlers

A friend of mine is starting a blog and I was helping her with it today (it was a paid service so I did my best to be professional). I used my own blog as an example and showed her the stats section where I can check where the visits to my blog are coming from. I clicked on the first search engine hit to illustrate the nifty feature that allows you to see what people are searching to arrive at your blog. What were the search words you ask? In the past I've had such gems as Bret Michael's hair, Furries, and many others. This one, though, takes the cake: Hugh Hefner STD. Thank goodness she is a friend or I would have been mortified. We both had a hearty laugh about that and moved on. Just remember, if the urge to uncover Hef's seedy medical history strikes you, have no fear. Just do a google search and Another Gray Hair will be the 9^th entry. I'm here to please and provide massive amounts of useless information.

Since my post about Hef did not actually answer the question as to whether or not he has an STD, I thought I should address that now for wary Googlers looking for answers. According to the ever-reputable Wiki Answers, yes, Hef did have an STD, syphilis, in 1991 from an unknown partner. We can all rest easy tonight knowing that this question is answered and that Hef has recovered from syphilis to live a long happy life full of pure American debauchery. Go Hef!

In completely unrelated news the Wii has become a major source of contention in my home. I feel like we should be interviewed for the next E! "Curse of the Lottery" special where we could serve as a cautionary tale for families who win small household luxuries in Bingo games. Sure, you think you're lucky now. Just wait! WAIT! Ever since I purchased the Legos Star Wars game for $19.99 (that's the only reason I bought it!), my son has become completely obsessed with it. He dreams about it, talks about it, and collapses into a ball of desperation when I deny him the privilege. This week is not going well for him. Due to his unpleasant attitude when asked to complete simple household chores (I insist that my kids do these things with a "willing spirit"—think that's a bit of a stretch?), he has lost his Wii privileges for two days. His response to this punishment was similar to that of a rabid, Ferrell cat trapped in a small space. I confined him in his room and shut the door but I never, ever want to hear those noises again.

To add insult to injury, my husband, who knows that my son's Wii privileges have been revoked is, at this very moment, attached to the Wii remote giving Darth Vader a run for his Lego money. He's got the volume down to conceal his illicit game play from my son. What a gent.

Scrooge

No matter which candidate you were rooting for, I think we can all breath a collective sigh of relief that the election is over. The madness is through. I may go into a little CNN Ticker withdrawal but I'll be alright. And you will too.

Moving on. Let's talk about Christmas, shall we? My good friend Jacquelyn and her lovely troop of Daisy Girl Scouts are participating in a Christmas parade. The parade takes place in the perimeter of the local mall and is meant to welcome Santa Claus and his elves to the celebratory world of consumerism. What's the big deal, you ask? Why does this event even qualify for blog fodder? Well, the answer to this question has much less to do with the event itself than it does with the date of the event. The parade, you know, the one to welcome Santa Claus into his cardboard house in the climate controlled "North Pole" of the mall, is tomorrow night. Tomorrow is NOV. 6, a full 50 days before Christmas! That's 7 weeks people! Absurd.

Maybe I'm a closeted Ebenezer Scrooge but I feel like this tradition is ridiculous and should be changed. Maybe they can replace Santa and his sleigh with a perfectly prepared turkey dinner or some pilgrims, something, anything that represents a holiday within a reasonable proximity to November 6. Jacquelyn and the Daisy Girl Scouts of Troop 507, I love you all dearly but I must, on sheer principle, boycott this parade and all it stands for. Have fun ushering a fake Santa into consumer hell tomorrow night. I'll be thinking about you while I make my lowly assistant shovel coal into the wood burning stove.

STD’s

The stress in my life melted away yesterday when my OB's nurse called me to inform me that I did not have gonorrhea. Phew. Thank goodness. That was keeping me up at night. When it comes to my list of stressors, "Fear of STD's" is at the very top, above "In 5 months the children will outnumber the adults in my household" and "Holy crap what is my stomach going to look like after this?" I guess I should be thankful for the small things, right?

Speaking of STD's, I read today on CNN.com that Holly Madison and Hugh Hefner are splitting. This upsets me a great deal. What will poor Hugh do without his beloved Puffin? Word on the street is he's got a set of 19-year-old twins chomping at the bit to take her place. If this relationship comes to fruition, Hef's new gal pals will be 63 years his junior. My question is this: what do their parents think? I would be mortified. That gives me two primary goals for my daughter(s):

1. Keep them off of the pole (thank you Chris Rock)
2. Keep them out of Hugh Hefner's bed.

Sure, I'd also like them to be happy, well-adjusted, successful women but I'm thinking right now in terms of concrete objectives and these, my friends, are two of them.

Pluggity Plug Plug Plug

I'm all about supporting other moms trying to get their feet wet in the world of business and Gloria Moser is one such Mom. She works full time, has two kids under 4, and has recently started a local website geared at parents in the Cleveland, Tennessee area. The website is www.funandfrugal.com and it lists upcoming events, coupons, sales and contests that would be useful for area moms and dads in the Cleveland (and Chattanooga for that matter) area. Go check her out and if you live in East Tennessee, subscribe to her feed for updates on local family-friendly happenings that won't break the bank.

Stranger Than Fiction

Long after my college days of devouring Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan and participating in "Take Back the Night" marches, I have finally come to appreciate what the feminist movement has done for me, for my daughter, for every generation of women to come. This appreciation came from a most unlikely source: a television show. After reading about all of the award nominations that the AMC show, Mad Men, has garnished, I had to see the show for myself. I moved it to the top of my Netflix que and have been watching Season 1, one disc at a time, for the past few weeks. For anyone who hasn't watched the show, it depicts the professional and personal lives of New York Advertising execs in the 1960's. Let's just say the glass ceiling was in another galaxy and sexual harassment was not only legal, it was a freakin' expectation. This is the work environment that my parent's generation began their professional lives in. It blows my mind.

On a recent episode, one of the men in the office was describing his experience while brainstorming with the secretaries (lovingly referred to as the "hens") in which he was astounded to find that one of the women actually had some pretty good ideas. He described the scene, "It was like watching a dog play the piano." This is so foreign and offensive to me that I cannot fathom behavior like this ever being tolerated. My daughter will be even more astounded and baffled by this type of talk. You know what that is called people? Progress. So, thank you Mad Men for giving today's generation a real glimpse of what it was that the women of the sixties and seventies were fighting for. And thank you bra-burnin', protestin' women of generations past for making such behavior seem stranger than fiction to me.

Abracadabra

Siegfried and Roy watch out! My son is only five years old and well on his way to becoming the next hot magician. I'm going to encourage him to stay away from sequins and albino tigers but, other than that, I'm all about him making his mark on the magic scene.

Today, for instance, he put on a dynamo magic show. The first couple of tricks were standard fare involving cards and pennies but the last one was a doozy. He walked into the room and stood on his "stage" in front of the coffee table, waving his magic wand in dramatic circles,

Son: Would you believe that I can turn myself into a metal robot?

Me: No way. I'll believe it when I see it.

Son: Close your eyes. Don't open them until I tell you that you can.

Me: OK

Lots of rustling takes place at this time, and I can hear him walk from the living room to his room and then back. There's some additional rustling and then some footsteps into the kitchen.

Son: You can open your eyes now

I look around and try to figure out what is going on. There, on the coffee table directly in front of where my son's "stage" was, is a little silver plastic robot, an Ironman Kid's Meal toy. I hear a voice from the kitchen,

Son (in best monosyllabic robot voice): I'm a robot. Would you like me to bring back the magician?

I did my best not to laugh and oohed and aahhed in amazement at my son's trick.

Me: Yes, please bring him back.

We went through the same process, lots of rustling and footsteps and the next time I opened my eyes my son was standing there with a proud grin on his face. I could have smeared him with butter and swallowed him whole, he was so adorable. Maybe I should take him on, "America's Got Talent" and let him perform his trick for David Hasselhoff in the hopes of becoming someone that won a show once and now does weddings and bah mitzvahs. Vegas, here we come!

Claiming My Summer…

I took the kids to my parent's house last night and my husband and I are off to Atlanta today for the Jimmy Buffett concert with some friends. We've got big tailgating plans and I cannot wait to immerse myself in the Buffett culture. Our friends, Jacquelyn and Michael, are weathered parrotheads. This is their 18^th concert. It's my second and my husband's first. Jacquelyn tried her best to get me to wear a coconut bra but that is simply not happening. No way in hell. I'm wearing a lei and a Hawaiian shirt. That's the best I can do. We'll be drinking lots of margaritas and cold beer and grilling some cheeseburgers in the paradise of the parking lot. I fully plan on waking up in the morning with a brand new tattoo and no clue how it got there.