Now That You've Dropped Your Kid Off at College...

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about dropping your kid off at college--kind of a dos and don'ts sort of a thing. After rereading it, and after having done even more kid-dropping-off in the ensuing half decade, I think I can safely say it still pretty much stands up.

If you're so inclined, go ahead and read it now.

OK, so, now that your pookie is off to sleep-away school, the rules have changed a bit. This is when the Growing Up Portion of little Junior's life starts.

Please note: I'm not just making this stuff up. This is what I've learned from personal experience and hearing stories from my peeps on the front lines--people who actually work at these institutions of higher learning and have seen the horror wrought by this group of mammals to which we now belong: College Parents.

And I need to warn you at the outset that, while I love my children dearly, my life did not stop when they went away to college. I recently heard a fellow mom say, "It took me a year to adjust to the empty nest." I almost spit out my drink. Are you kidding me? The best sight I've ever seen is our son's back going down the security line at an airport. Not that I don't miss them and love having them around, but isn't this why we have kids? So they can grow up and live their own lives?

We start with the assumption that your child is old enough and mature enough to handle living on her own and dealing with the rigors of a college curriculum and has the social awareness to live peacefully in a communal setting. Because if she doesn't, well...

Let's not think about that right now. Let's focus on this new journey you're on and allow me to offer a few observations.

• It's COLLEGE. Back the eff off. And by that I mean, leave him alone. Let him figure out what he's supposed to do, when he's supposed to do it, and how he's supposed to do it. You can give him a little nudge now and again, but seriously, this is his journey and you need to let him be on it. Now this does not mean you shouldn't help him set things up--everything from his residence hall room (they'll tell you not to call it a dorm, just wait) to his student accounts. You should. And get the passwords while you're at it, because if your kid is anything like mine those passwords are out of the brain the second they're typed into the computer. But stuff like registering for classes and making his schedule and actually going to class? That's his deal. And, trust me, if you are one of those parents who keeps calling the desk receptionist to check on your kid's whereabouts on a Saturday night (FYI, the DR has no idea where your precious munchkin is playing his current game of beer pong) you will become the focus of much ridicule and abuse at the next hall staff meeting.
• Don't be what colleges refer to as a Velcro Parent. As in, you need to be peeled away from your child. Let's take a little test. When talking about your daughter heading off for college, what pronoun do you use? If it's "we" or "our" (like, if you ever uttered: "we decided on Princeton" or "our college choice was Harvard") then honey, you might have a problem with this whole letting-go thing. One mom I talked to last year said these actual words to me: "I am ready to stay in the room with her that first night in case she needs my help falling asleep." The scary thing? She wasn't kidding. I had this picture of this poor girl's roommate going to the RA that first night and saying, "Yeah, uh, so there's this woman in our room..." In a case like this, there's a really thin line between excessive parenting and felony loitering.
• Your kid is the one who should be getting--and heeding--the school's Public Safety alerts, not you. Marquette University has a phenomenal social media presence, which as a mom I'm grateful for, but when other parents start posting on the parent Facebook page things like "There's been a push-in robbery at 16th and Kilbourn" I'm not sure how to respond. I live more than 1,000 miles away from each of my kids' colleges, so am I supposed to hop on a plane with my pocket flaming torch and collapsible pitchfork so I can join the Parental Lynch Mob? I mean, there could be a major problem with TSA, for starters.
  
  If your kid's college is in a city, he's going to be dealing with everything a city has to offer, like fantastic restaurants, excellent museums, great public transportation, and the occasional mugging. Even if Junior's headed off to a campus in the middle of nowhere, there's still a chance he might have things stolen out of his room or be accosted on the way home from the bars/late night chess club meeting. Make sure Buffy listens to and abides by all of the dos and don'ts of the Safety Talk she'll be given about 29 times during orientation week. Encourage her to keep her head up, lock her door when she's not in her room, and take care of her valuables. But this is her deal, not yours.
• Don't use social media to work out your kid's social or academic problems. Your precious little pumpkin's struggles with her roommate, her professors, or her class schedule really have no place on the school's public social media pages. Your child would be mortified (I hope) if she discovered she was the topic of conversation on Facebook--and god forbid the roommate's parents figure out you're talking about their little pumpkin. Unless that's what you intend, and that's just passive aggressive and mean and, not to put too fine a point on it, you're a bad person.
• Yes, college is expensive. Shut up about it. We all get the same friendly emails from the bursar's office twice a year, and while our bottom-line balance due amounts vary, none of us is really getting away for free. This isn't a police state, so this whole college choice thing is completely up to Junior and, to some extent of course, you, so when you start sentences with the words, "Given the amount of money we pay..." I, for one, want to punch you in the face. Go find a school where that amount of money you're paying is a good ROI for you and just shut the hell up. (This also applies to people who send their children to private elementary and high schools. Sort of a me-proclaimed universal law, if you will.)

This list is by no means comprehensive, but I've got to cut this short since happy hour's about to start and we have a lot to celebrate. Joe just texted that he's arrived in Spokane for his junior year at Gonzaga, and I think I finally found a type of Febreze that might actually get that horrific smell out of his room.

Good luck as you begin this new phase of your life. Trust me, it will all be fine! Or, at the very least, a couple of drinks will make it seem way better,

I Never Liked You

A couple weeks ago I packed up my trophy husband, lots of loose-fitting clothes, and extra migraine medication and traveled to Milwaukee for my 30th college reunion. The Marquette University Class of 1985 came out in impressive numbers, as usual, and, as far as any of us remember or will testify to, there were no casualties. So, great success.

Here are a few of my observations from those three booze- and cheese-fueled days:

• Three decades is enough time to forget a name, but not a grudge. I walked into our class party on Friday night, saw a woman in a black shirt, and instantly thought, "OMG. I hate her." I mean, it was a visceral reaction like I can't even explain. Here's the problem with that. I racked my brain, asked a bunch of other people, and I still have no idea what her name is or why I even hated her in the first place. I think that says something about how horrible I am as a person, but I've decided not to be self-aware enough to figure out what that is, exactly.
• Those lanyard name tag thingys seem like a good idea, but they can be the cause of some pretty intense social awkwardness. Everyone has those Who IS That? moments at these gatherings, and when the tags get flipped around, well... One of my classmates, coming up for air after chugging a PBR tall boy, gasped out, "See that woman over there? I reached down to get a better look at her name tag and accidentally touched her boob. Then I realized, once I'd figured out who she was, we'd had a one-night stand that I spent most of senior year trying to forget. Now I think she's going to try to stalk me." We sent someone over to the bar to get him a refill because, judging from the look she was giving him when we all turned around to see who she was, it was going to be a long night.
• And on the subject of name tags: It's really humbling when someone looks at you, takes a glance at yours, and then just moves on.
• The upside of social media: You get to skip all the boring So What Have You Been Up To? conversations, since you've been following all the kid updates, job changes, and other life milestones that have happened since the last reunion and jump right to the discussions that start, "OMG, did you hear..."
• You know that weaselly guy you just wanted to punch in college? Be comforted in knowing that some things never change. Plus, because life simply isn't fair, it turns out that that guy is now a very rich jerk, which makes it all the more irritating. But good news: 30 years out, you get to be brutally honest because what do you have to lose? Hands-down the best thing I heard during the whole reunion was when one of my buddies managed to weave into his conversation with Class A##hole, "You know, you always were a giant dick."
• The older we get, the more we all start looking alike. At one point when a couple of the guys were having one of those horrible, slightly drunk "No, we lived on the fourth floor!" "No, it was the tenth!" arguments, they decided to look around for the one person who could settle it and we all realized at once that at night, in a beer garden, it's hard to discern one bald head from another.
• Do not begin gossiping about a fellow classmate until you've checked to make sure a) she's not within earshot b) her husband's not within earshot and c) her fiercely loyal sophomore year roommate isn't within earshot. Wait, better rule: don't gossip at all until you're in the car on your way home. It's just safer that way. Trust me.
• There's a huge downside to going to college in a city where the chief exports are beer and farm animals. It took me three days to completely sober up after the whole thing was over, and judging from the ERROR MAX WEIGHT EXCEEDED message I got on my scale when we came back, I think I consumed pretty much the entire Class of 85's RYA of Miller Lite, Real Chili, cheese curds, brats, butter burgers, and frozen custard. Talk about taking one for the team. You're welcome, Fellow Warriors.

Finding God in all things

God has a sense of humor. And he enjoys messing with me.

A few months ago, in an effort to get myself in better spiritual shape, I managed to find a sweet, patient Jesuit who was willing to lead me through an adapted version of St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. I'm about halfway through and so far it's been great. I spend some time every day in quiet contemplation, reading a bit, reflecting a bit, and having some pretty good one-on-one conversations with Jesus.

Actually, Ignatian spirituality is perfect for an ADD-afflicted human like me. Whenever I find myself going off the rails, getting distracted when I should be focusing on my meditation for the day, or even when I'm out in the world and start having very uncharitable thoughts, I usually can get myself re-focused by using Ignatius' tenet of trying to find God in all things.

Like this morning, for example, when I walked into the gym still in my post-meditation, content, I'm Going to Look for God in Everything I See Today mode and I'm instantly accosted by the Resident Creeper, the guy who wears cargo shorts, bad 70s-looking t-shirts, smells faintly of a mixture of Pine-Sol and moth balls, and who tries to strike up a conversation with any woman under the age of 100 who happens to be working out.

RC: Hey, you weren't here yesterday.

Me (trying to be pleasant while still trying to discourage a major conversation): No, I took the day off. Had some other stuff to do.

RC: Stuff, huh?

Me (trying to step around him because he's a close talker and, you know, the smell): Yep.

RC: You got any plans for the weekend?

Me (as I'm walking away): Yeah, my husband and I are headed to a family reunion in Nebraska.

RC (loudly, because by now there are all of five feet between me and him and he wants to make sure I can hear him): You shouldn't tell people you're leaving town. That's how houses get robbed.

Me: Yeah. Thanks!

I kept walking and escaped to the locker room, thinking the whole time, "Really, God? Really? You have to test me like this?"

As I was putting my stuff in my locker, Holly, one of my fellow gymgoers who overheard the whole encounter with RC said to me, "What is with that guy? The other day he told me I should wear my hair shorter and get some highlights."

A few other women chimed in about him, too (apparently I'm not special), and then Gloria, one of the octogenarian aquasizers, momentarily stopped her struggle with her bathing suit (at that point the bathing suit was winning) and said, "Girls, he's lonely. He obviously doesn't have any social skills, and this is where he feels comfortable, so would it kill you all to just be a little tolerant of him, make his life a little better by being nice?"

Then, looking at Holly, she said, "And you know what? You could maybe use some highlights. Brighten up your face a little."

And there it was. Just as I was trying really hard to remind myself that God was in the RC, Gloria speaks up and says pretty much what I imagine Jesus would say in that situation.

And, of course, how does the voice of Jesus come to me? Through a half-naked 80-year-old woman in the locker room of an LA Fitness.

Seriously. God has a helluva sense of humor.

A Weekend in Vegas

A couple of observations as I sit in the Las Vegas airport waiting for my flight home after a weekend spent roaming casinos, eating good food, watching bad football, and drinking far too much.

1. I'm neither a fashion model nor a fashion designer, but I can tell you without question that a dress with big horizontal blocks of florescent green, black, and cherry red that barely covers a 250-lb woman's behind is NOT a very flattering choice. And if I had to guess, the sparkly 10-inch platform heels weren't comfortable, either.

2. You just have to wonder what the one giggly, scantily clad woman in the group of seven loud, over-served men is really thinking. If I had to guess, it's got something to do with a business transaction and nothing all to do with being entertained by stories about the insurance business back home in Erie.

3. In order to get a cup of coffee in the morning you have to traipse through the casino, where, if you had a rough night (which we actually did), the smell of cigarette smoke and the sight of people swilling cheap bourbon at 8 a.m. does nothing to ease your budding hangover.

4. How do they get all the cigarette smoke out of those casinos? That's got to be a pretty amazing ventilation system.

5. The cutest thing I saw: a couple who looked to be in their 80s holding hands while they both played the slots. Whenever one of them won, they gave each other a kiss. It was even cuter when their caretaker/daughter came up and said loudly, "OK, you two, time for lunch. You have to take your medicine and get a little nap and so you'll be fresh for the show tonight!" They picked up their canes and shuffled off, then two portly women wearing I (heart) Quilting sweatshirts swooped into their seats. "They left just as they were paying out!" PW 1 unnecessarily explained to me, a bit defensively.

6. We watched the Super Bowl in the bar of a very nice restaurant and were entertained not by the game but by the table full of men with Jersey accents throwing money around (and buying Mark and me a drink or two while they were at it), and a table full of guys speaking what sounded like Russian who kept putting their heads together and whispering, leaning back nodding vigorously, then ordering another round of drinks and food. They were either very serious about reaching a consensus on their beverage choice or they were plotting something big. I hope it's the former, but if it's the latter I don't think I'll be a good witness because, due to all the drinks we were getting, when I tried to recall their faces this morning all I could conjure was Vladimir Putin in his boxing getup.

7. I think your fellow citizens should get to vote on whether or not you are allowed to wear a t-shirt that declares, "I'm bringing the sexy back."

8. I really wanted to strike up a conversation with the woman who was wearing the "I'm Still A Virgin" t-shirt. What's the thought process involved there? Are you trying to get a guy? Are you willing to change? What?

9. As I was waiting for Mark in the MGM lobby this morning, I overheard a group of 20-something guys recount their weekend. Sounds like all in all they had a good few days, but my heart went out to the guy who said, shaking his head, "I can't believe she was a hooker! Damn. I really thought I was getting somewhere with her!"

10. I usually try to take a live-and-let-live attitude when I'm waiting in an airport, but listening to the slot machines jingle and the shouts of the overserved gentlemen speaking a language I don't understand is starting to get on my nerves. For fun, I think I'm going to start fantasizing a way to shut them up that involves the garbage lady's cart, the hand trolley the stocker guy is using, and a couple of the plastic trash bins stacked up behind me. I'll let you know if I can get all the logistics worked out before I have to board the plane.

The January 15 Christmas Letter

After the Current Husband, the Girl Child and I finished putting away all the Christmas stuff a couple weeks ago, I surveyed the now-back-to-normal living room and said, "Well, THAT never happened." I was all ready to put the Christmas season behind me and begin the new year with a good attitude (no easy feat for me) and a firm resolve to try to be nice to people (even more difficult).

Then it arrived.

On January 15, in a red, holly-trimmed envelope, we got what is annually The Most Annoying Christmas Letter Sent By The Most Annoying Family We Know. I'd been wondering where it was, since every year I look forward to making fun of TMAFWK and their horrifyingly posed photo and the wife's grammar-massacring prose. This year's offering did not disappoint.

Guess why it was so late? Because TMAFWK spent their Christmas on a cruise ship, sailing to a tropical locale that was "like a dreaming." The photo included the whole family in matching swimwear, showing off some pretty scary Midwestern-white skin and featuring the wife's newly tightened face and, if I'm not mistaken, newly enhanced breasts.

Good news. The kids are still perfect geniuses, the husband's job is going great (five extravagant vacations this year!), and the wife is "filling her days with children and managing the dally lives of their sports achievements and schoolwork!!!" (you can't make stuff like that up)

Seven poorly written paragraphs that are sure to set your teeth on edge, ended with the inevitable "Love! The Smith's."

What's with the excessive use of exclamation points? And people, will you stop with the unnecessary apostrophes? Sheesh.

Which brings us to the Skoog Annual Christmas Letter, a direct response to those chirpy TMI, OMG-Isn't-Our-Life-Great missives that make actual normal people want to barf. Is ours perfect? Nope. But, well, it kind of sums up what our particular family is all about.

Here is our 2013 edition:

The smart, cute, and well-behaved Skoog children.

After a pathetic showing last year (writing the letter on a laptop on our way home from Christmas dinner), we’re excited that this might actually get to you all before actual Christmas. But what are we doing, taking up valuable time like this? Let’s get to the news!

Joe:

· 19 years old, a freshman at Gonzaga University

· Ended a superlative high school debate career and was actually recruited by several universities (no! seriously! we’re not kidding!), including Michigan State and Mary Washington, but ended up choosing Gonzaga because of its coaches, philosophy department, and because it’s included on the list of 28 mom-approved schools.

· Shortly after arriving on campus, ducked into McCarthey Athletic Center to avoid the white stuff falling out of the sky (he later learned it’s called “snow”), and accidentally joined a shoot-around with the men’s basketball team. After Joe hit seven straight threes, Coach Mark Few instantly offered him a scholarship. Joe’s initial “no thanks” to Coach Few has evolved, over the past few months, from “Please, I need to get to class,” into “What are you doing in my room?” Apparently the poor guy doesn’t take rejection well—but he seemed to take the restraining order OK.

Catharine

· 21 years old, a senior at Marquette University

· Was accepted into MU’s Physician Assistant Program and is currently in the first year of her master’s degree studies. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in the spring and is currently the facilities manager at McCabe Hall.

· Inadvertently caused the government shutdown earlier this year when a high-level government worker found and plugged in the website she developed in her high school HTML class and launched it as healthcare.gov. After several panicked phone calls from Kathleen Sebilius’ office, Catharine was able to use her excessive amounts of spare time (freed up when she ended her urban farming venture) to completely redo the website while, at the very same time, brokering a compromise with members of Congress and getting the government back up and running.

Lady:

· 7 years old, a cocker spaniel

· During a summer visit to the vet, we learned that Lady has become a much sweeter, calmer dog, making her the first member of the family to actually become less dysfunctional during her time as a Skoog.

· Because of her obvious intelligence and copious amounts of free time, she was tapped by Amazon to be one of their first drone test pilots.Initial results seemed promising, until it came to light that deliveries were being delayed because the drones were constantly dive bombing unsuspecting bunnies. Apparently it’s all fun and games until PETA gets involved.

Mark:

· Vice president of marketing at JDA Software.

· Is splitting his time between Scottsdale and Chicago, where he has been hired as Derek Rose’s personal trainer and rehab supervisor due to the storied success he enjoyed after his own meniscus repair. His job has just gotten more complicated with the addition of a new client, a young and extremely demanding man named Kanye, who is determined to have a better meniscus tear/rehab than anyone else’s and is really putting Mark through his paces.

Brigid:

· Recently left my job and am now devoting myself full time to my art (mark my words—the previously undiscovered beauty of doorknob decoupage is about to sweep the nation) and resuming my freelance career.

· Thanks to a flaw in the facial recognition software of onlyfarmers.com, I’ve spent a good deal of my time these days trying to answer emails/inquiries for someone named Marge from Wahoo, Nebraska, who apparently is looking for a sturdy man who can help her move pivots, tend the cattle, and whose interests include animal husbandry, aquifer conservation, hand harvesting, and beet canning. I’m just sending along the messages, but if I was Marge I’d go for Dewayne, who looked downright sexy in his (obviously) new overalls and seemed sincere when he wrote about his love for calving.

In other news:

· We moved Mark’s mom, Jeanne, down here in April. She’s living in Belmont Village, an assisted living facility about a quarter mile from our house, and she seems to be adjusting well. 

· Catharine will graduate from Marquette on May 18. Anyone who’s up for a trip to Milwaukee is more than welcome. Just a warning, though: there might actually be some beer consumed.

Just a typical weekend

A few snapshots from the past three days.

Friday afternoon, standing in line for lunch at a place where I happen to be friends with the owners, I overheard this conversation:

Worker girl 1: I'm thinking of calling in sick.

Worker girl 2: You should. This job sucks.

Worker girl 1: She's crazy, though. If she finds out I'm lying, she'll fire me.

Worker girl 2: She is crazy. But if you're sick, you're sick.

Worker girl 1: But I won't be sick. I want to hang out with my boyfriend.

Worker girl 2: She doesn't have to know that.

Worker girl 1: I think that woman in the pink sweater is friends with her.

Worker girl 2: Really?

Me (who is, in fact, sporting a pink sweater, although I think it's more of a cantaloupe color): Yes, she is.

Worker 1 and Worker 2 both stop dead in their tracks and stare at me with something akin to horror in their eyes because my friend the owner is, in fact, a bit crazy.

Me: But don't worry, I won't say a word. I promise.

Twenty bucks says neither of them is still working there the next time I go back.

Saturday afternoon at the beauty salon, there was a fellow patron with a voice like a bullhorn who was going on and on about stuff I--nor, if I had to guess, anyone else in the English-speaking world--cared about, like her new sink fixtures ("brass, but not shiny, because that's tacky"), her boss's flaky scalp ("I mean, it gets all over my desk when he leans over me to see my computer screen"), and her boyfriend's dog's fungus problem ("not all over, just in spots, and I don't think I can pick it up, do you?"). By the time they stuck her right next to me to wait for her hair to process, I had run through several scenarios for bringing about her untimely demise and settled on one that included--but was not limited to--a hairdryer, some nail polish remover, and a carelessly lit match.

As she sat down, she was telling the stylist, "I could've taught at (insert name of college prep high school here) but I am just too intelligent for them. I walked into that interview and you could just tell I intimidated everyone in the room."

The kicker came when the stylist asked her if she wanted a magazine while she waited, but she shook her head no. "I have paperwork to do!" she chirped, and proceeded to pull out a crossword puzzle. And it wasn't even the NY Times Saturday puzzle, either--it was one of those lame ones with big squares, which kind of bummed me out because I was going to see what she got for 5 down.

Sunday morning found Mark and me at the local sports bar, watching NFL football with dozens of beautiful people. Mark's a Bear fan and I'm a Packer fan, so it was a win-win-win-win today, since our teams weren't playing each other, they both won AND they were on screens next to each other. Woo-hoo.

Our fellow patrons included

• A youngish couple and their son. I knew right off the wife and I would never be bffs because when they sat down the mom announced "We're huge football fans!" and then proceeded to order a mimosa. In a sports bar. Please. That's almost disrespectful to football. But I cut them some slack because when the Bears did something spectacularly stupid (the first of about 50 idiotic plays for the day), Mark screamed the f-word, so we owed them a big apology, since using the swears in front of the small children is decidedly not cool.
• A guy who kept yelling, "Go, Forty, go!" whenever the Bears' QB gave Matt Forte (pronounced For-tay) the ball, which was a lot, and he was either doing that random nickname thing I hate or he doesn't really know football. I suspect it was the former, but it was irritating. It also underscored how overused Forte was today since the guy behind us yelled it about 10,000 times.
• A table full of college girls wearing various NFL jerseys who started off drinking beer (good) but then when the (I believe it was the Falcons) scored, one girl said, "Time to celebrate with some shots!" and the waitress brought something that looked like chocolate milk to lots of squealing and T-Rex-armed clapping. Epic sports bar fail. Shots in a sports bar = something brown or something clear. THEN they all stood underneath the tvs and proceeded to get as many pictures of themselves as possible so they could post it to whatever Instatweetbookchat they're using these day. (When I become benevolent dictator the word "selfie" will be outlawed and those who use it will be severely punished. And what's with that hand-on-the-hips, shoulder-thrown-back pose thing?)
• The girl in the bathroom who was in the stall on the phone asking someone if she should just go to the Walgreens down the street for the morning-after pill because, and she actually said these words out loud in a public bathroom, "I don't think he's going to call me again." But it would be OK to have unprotected sex if he DID call you again? Kids these days.

A trip to the nail salon after the game to get my hooves polished ended with the nice Asian guy who, every time he gives me a pedicure holds up the thing that looks like a cheese grater and says, "I remove callus? Please? Eet bahd" shook my hand, saying thank you three times to me, getting a box and cleaning out his station, and walking out the back door in a huff. At first I thought it was just me (eet ees bahd, to tell the truth), but apparently there was some brouhaha with another patron and he ended up having to redo her nails twice and things got a little heated. Who knew there could be such drama in a nail salon?

But the best thing? Well, it came out of a not-so-good thing, when Catharine called from a Culver's parking lot in Milwaukee and reported her car wouldn't start and she didn't know where to get it towed. Turns out, neither did I. So I called my Milwaukee-dwelling friend Sue, whose first words, once I told her the situation, were, "I'll take care of it." And she did. Tonight Catharine's back on campus, her car will be taken to Sue's trusted mechanic in the morning, and all's right with the world.

I don't know why I'm so blessed to have such good friends, but I am. And this afternoon was yet another reminder to be grateful for them every single day. And to have a chat with my kids about the evils of casual sex, of course.

The Judges' Lounge

My kids are nerds.

I'm excessively proud of that fact, mostly because after that initial Aren't They Cute When They Try to Play T-Ball stage and a few sketchy years of Catholic grade school sports (my stint as a girls' basketball coach is why my left eye twitches), I haven't had to spend entire weekends baking in the sun, watching my kid play (insert name of sport here) while hanging out with other (insert name of sport here) parents, and for that I'm eternally grateful.

And don't worry. Catharine and Joe are both relatively well-rounded, if not athletically gifted. As a matter of fact, Joe is a very accomplished policy debater, an activity that requires an incredible amount of research, advanced logical reasoning, and this weird type of yelling that is very upsetting if you don't know what you're listening to. It's held in classrooms and hotel rooms and generally parents aren't required or encouraged to go. Plus, as an added bonus, because debaters are expected to spend their summers researching the topic for the year ahead, they have actual debate camps where kids like Joe spend weeks at a time living on a college campus.

As in, not here at my house. Yeah, it's pretty excellent.

So when I listen to my friends go on about their sunburns, bad backs, snack issues, fellow sports parents, and carpool woes, I have to admit I feel a little guilty since I've managed to emerge relatively unscathed from all that.

Of course, being Catholic, that guilt thing can get pretty intense, so when I got the annual Welcome to the New Year, Speech and Debate Parents! email that announced Brophy was hosting a debate tournament in September and they needed parents to help stock and staff the judges' lounge, I volunteered, with another parent, to head up the effort.

And let me tell you, after the weekend we had, that guilt? It's gone.

Unless you've attended a speech and debate event, you can't truly appreciate the bizarre collection of humans these things attract. A few years ago, when I was still trying to convince myself that there was a chance that Joe was cool, I was helping out at another tournament, and while I was loading up a cooler outside in the hallway a bus pulled up and unloaded a group of business-suited high school students.

Wow, I thought to myself. Look at these kids. They're all professional, serious-looking, studious types. This is great.

Until one of them, a young man wearing a bright purple tie and green shoes, walked up to the pillar about four feet away from me and started talking to it.

Ruh roh.

Not that they're all like that. They aren't. But let's just say some of them have more social skills than others. One time, walking through a large group of speech kids hanging around in a hallway waiting for their results to be posted, I said, "Wow. Looks like a Young Republican convention here."

One kid looked at me, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and said, in a monotone, "You're saying that because we're all in suits. It's a stereotype. But I actually think I'll vote Democratic when the time comes."

Now the judges at these speech and debate tournaments, they don't tend to dress up. As a matter of fact, if you walk into a judges' lounge, it kind of looks like the local homeless shelter is giving their best and brightest the night off. Lots of questionable hygiene, unmatched socks, bad fashion choices, and, my personal favorite, horrendous manners. Oh, and I should probably mention that judges are simply grown up speech and debaters, so you can imagine the diverse personality of the crowd.

Let's just say we knew we'd be having an interesting weekend.

Right after we got the food set up on Friday night, a huge guy who must've gone about 320 waddled in, heaved his backpack down on the ground, and started rummaging around on the table for something to eat. His clothes and epic b.o. indicated that he wasn't a big fan of any type of soap and water, but he was pretty personable and started chatting us up.

"This is a nice school," he said, grabbing seven cookies, three brownies, and a piece of broccoli (you know, for the vitamin C and the roughage) in one fell swoop. "Are you parents here? How old are your kids?"

We told him. As we got to talking, he told us he'd judged one of our sons in a speech event last year and that the kid was really good. (We moms live for that crap)

Then he said, "Yeah, I don't have kids of my own. I never found the right woman to settle down with. I just started internet dating..."

That's when I stopped listening and found something else to do. I mean, come on, really? Thanks a lot, dude. First I'm forced to watch you eat, and now you're conjuring up a mental picture of you on a date? Ewww. Plus, if we're being honest here, my eyes were starting to water from the smell coming off him.

Later that same evening, we ran out of food. And of course we felt bad, because hello! we're all moms and it's in our nature to make sure everyone gets fed. But then the mousy, bitchy woman with bad teeth came up to me and said, "Did you know how many people were coming? How could you run out of food?"

Hang on, hang on, I said. Are you scolding us? Can we help it if you judges are a bunch of locusts? I almost directed her to the really, really big girl in the sundress (what is it with really, really big girls and their sundresses?) who took four sandwiches but at that point had only powered down two, because I really think I would've enjoyed watching a catfight and in a best-of-three-falls, the big girl would've totally kicked the mousy, bitchy woman's ass.

I finally just said, Okay, we're sorry. There's nothing we can do about it now. But hey! Look! A granola bar! These things have over 25% of your RDA of riboflavin, and I know just from looking at you that you haven't had enough of that today. Here, take two. Then you'll be halfway there.

A few of the people within earshot laughed as the mousy, bitchy woman stomped off, clutching her granola bars to her chest.  Then a round-faced, red headed-kid in a Mr. Wizard t-shirt with actual duct tape holding his glasses together stood in front of me and declared, "You're cool."

I'm bummed I didn't get his name. I'd like to use him as a job reference.

And so it went. Friday night morphed somehow into Saturday morning, and I found myself back in the Judges' Lounge again, dealing with another group of speech and debate parents (who were delightful) and the exact same group of judges, some of whom were wearing the same clothes as the day before.

I overheard a group of six or seven college-age kids debate who was the worse villain--Darth Vader, Voldemort, or Khan. I saw two guys playing cards and thought, Excellent! Someone actually does something normal in here! until I realized that instead of poker or even Go Fish they were playing a game called Magic, the Gathering, which seems to me to be a bit like Pokemon for older kids. There were countless conversations about the validity of this argument or that, and there was even a group of young men who, due to the giggling I was hearing, I'd have to guess were looking at something untoward on their iPads.

Oh, but good news. Mousy, bitchy woman hovered and hovered in the lounge on Saturday and I'm happy to report she was the first one in line for our Mexican food luncheon extravaganza. After she filled her plate, squirreling away tortillas and piling on the refried beans and machaca like it was her job, my red-headed buddy with the duct tape on his glasses who was filling his own plate looked over at her and said loudly, "Does anyone know how much riboflavin is in this Spanish rice?"

It's official. I have inside jokes with Debate Nerds. Not exactly what a girl dreams of, but at this point I'll take it.

We Have a Dog

Joe's the one on the right.

You can ask any of my friends -- I am not an animal person. I'm allergic to cats, and, while we always had a dog when I was growing up, I've found that it's tough enough trying to keep a house clean with two kids and a husband. Like I always say: what do I need a dog for? I just got Joe to stop pooping on the floor.

And of course, animals can sense that. Every time I walk into a friend's house who has a dog or a cat, that thing is on me like acne on a freshman. Somehow they figure out exactly who isn't thrilled to see them and the next thing I know I'm the only one wiping dog slobber off my shins. It's eerie. So imagine my excitement when I answered the doorbell early one morning and our neighbor's daughter was standing there with Lady straining at the leash.

Backstory: Phyllis, our across-the-street neighbor, lost her husband six years ago and her kids decided that, instead of just hanging out with her, it would be a good idea to get her a cocker spaniel puppy as a companion. (Pause for eye roll.) Phyllis herself could barely walk, so when Lady knocked her down in the middle of the street going after a rabbit one morning, it became apparent they needed a backup plan to get the dog some exercise if Lady was going to stick around.

Enter young Joe Skoog.

He would haul his butt out of bed at 5:30 every weekday morning and take Lady for a walk. It wasn't a really long walk or anything, but it got her out of the house, and occasionally, during breaks from school and on weekends, he'd bring her over to our house and she'd hang out with us for awhile.

So we had a nice relationship, the Skoog family and Phyllis. She'd call us to do things like fix her tv or show her how to work her answering machine, and in return my kids could think they had a dog for short periods of time. Perfect.

Until that April morning, when Lady came bounding into my house, slightly traumatized, very hungry, and more than a little happy to see me. "We had to take Mom to the hospital," Phyllis' daughter explained. "You want to watch her here, or we can just leave her at the house and you can look in on her. We left her alone last night and she seemed fine."

Now, I'm no animal behaviorist (we'll get to that later), but even I could tell that poor Lady was freaked out by what she perceived as her abandonment the night before. So I took the leash, asked about Phyllis' health (not good), closed the front door, and suddenly the Skoogs had a dog.

A dog with dependency issues.

And who has she become dependent on? ME. If I'm in the house, she never lets me out of her sight. Right now, as I type this? She's lying right next to my chair. Snoring. And apparently also dreaming, since every once in a while she makes a yelpy, barking sound that is more than a little distracting. If I get up to, say, get another glass of water or a snack, she follows me. She follows me when I go to the bathroom. She even follows me when I start down the stairs, forget something, and then have to turn around and go back for it.

I have to say, this is a whole new thing for me. My kids were never this attached to me. Never. I remember looking on in wonder when my sister would leave her children's sight and they'd start wailing uncontrollably (my dad once commented, raising his voice above the shrieking, "Did you forget them at the mall one time or something?"), since my kids would, from a very young age, actually hand me my keys as I was getting ready to leave the house.

And Lady's a nice companion. Really she is. We go for walks a couple times a day, she provides me with someone to talk to when no one else is around, and she's very affectionate. But let me be clear about one thing: I'm not one of these Animals are Better than People types. Even though it's a close race, I can still honestly say I still like my kids better than the dog.

So I was more than a little dismayed when we realized one Sunday night that there was something wrong with Lady, and it was going to be necessary to take her to the vet. We called the same vet she'd seen before, loaded her up in the car, and I got to experience my first-ever Vet Visit.

Right off the bat, here's what I noticed: At the vet's office, they separate the cats from the dogs, and the cats have a much nicer waiting area. Discrimination! We were forced to sit on hard concrete benches with little dividers on them while some People's Court-type show was on in the background (I sided with the woman whose husband slept with her sister and lit her car on fire) while the cat people got nice chairs and the Today Show. But they finally called us into the examining room, and then the fun really started.

When the vet tech tried to take Lady's temperature, Lady got a little aggressive. And who can blame her, really, since it's not like they're putting the thermometer under her tongue. The tech sort of smiled at me sweetly, patted Lady on the head, and went to get the vet. And a muzzle.

About five minutes later, here comes the vet, followed by the vet tech. The vet, whose name is Dr. Nick (it's his last name, really), looks to be about 17 years old and has that earnestness about him that comes with being young and smart and good at what you do. He started off the conversation by holding up Lady's chart and showing me the big red W on it. "See this? This is a W for warning, since we've had issues with her trying to bite us during examinations."

I stifled the urge to say, "Then shouldn't it say B for biter?" and just nodded at him. I was new at this, after all. Then he started talking to me in that slow way you speak to people who you're trying to keep calm during Big Crises. "So, we're going to put a muzzle on her to keep everyone safe. Then I'm going to examine her..."

I held up my hand. "Okay, I need to stop you right there. I'm going to be honest with you. I like this dog, I'm worried about her seeming to be in pain, but I'm not all freaked out about this. You do whatever you have to do to examine her and figure out what's wrong, and I'll be over here holding the leash."

He looked a little startled at first, then started the examination. Diagnosis: she pulled a muscle in her leg. Treatment: rest and a dog anti-inflammatory. Total cost for visit: $87.

After he was done examining her, he sat down across from me and got all serious and dad-like. "First of all, do you have any idea how you saved the dog when you agreed to take her? She never would've been readopted. But as we discussed with Phyllis several times, there are a few behaviors Lady exhibits that might need to be addressed. I know a good animal behaviorist in Mesa who you could take her to. There's about a six month wait to get into see her, but..." I stopped listening at that point. Come on! A dog behaviorist? I have enough trouble scheduling my kid to see his counselor--I'm not going to get on a waiting list to take my dog to a dog psychologist just because she bites at someone trying to put a thermometer in her butt. Please. Heck, if you tried to do that to me, I can't be certain I wouldn't bite you.

Plus, it's bad enough that my son's teachers also have that young earnest thing going on, do I need it in a vet? Last fall I'm sitting there at a parent night listening to one of Joe's teachers (who looks like he's been able to legally drink for about a month and a half) go on and on about the importance of the class and how this is going to impact our son's ability to get into a good college and how high the expectations are and all I can think is, "Skippy, lighten up. This is history. It already happened. We aren't doing high level espionage or any sort of life-saving surgery in here, are we?"

But I digress. The bottom line is, the Skoogs are now dog owners. And it's been a surprisingly good thing, having Lady around. I kind of like her.

There's one thing I can't get used to, though. Last week I took Lady to the groomer, and when I went to pick her up, the receptionist leaned over the counter and hollered down the hall, "Meggan! Lady's mom is here!"

Really? Lady's mom? No, I'm Catharine and Joe's mom. As far as I know, I've never given birth to a dog.

This is going to take some getting used to.

Parenting, Part I

I'm going to admit this right out of the gate: I'm not a great parent. In fact, I'm not even particularly fond of children. I mean, sure, I love my own kids, but I also blame them, to put it bluntly, for ruining my life. And not for the usual reasons (ruined body, no sleep, no money, no time to yourself). No, it's because when you have kids, you're forced to hang out with other people who have kids, and that's when things really start to suck.

It's all well and good when your brothers and sisters and your high school and college friends start reproducing, because these are people you  grew up with and drank with and you all kind of come from the same place. You know you don't know what you're doing, and that's cool, since you're in the same boat with a bunch of other people who don't know what they're doing, either, so you're learning together. And generally, there's beer.

But these cute little non-communicative infants don't stay infants. They grow up. They talk, they walk, and then you're forced--by law!--to send them to school.

That's when the fun starts.

I could not have been more excited to send my kids off to preschool. As a matter of fact, I almost wept with joy when our pediatrician told me at Catharine's 30-month check-up (after a long discussion where the two of them talked about little brothers, colors, and Congressman Dan Rostenkowski's recent defeat at the polls), "This is a child who needs school. Have you checked into preschools in the area?" And I did. And initially I was scared.  But that's a story for a whole other blog post. (I mean, have you ever visited a Waldorf school? Really? What's with the wood?)

Joy of joys, I discovered that our parish in Chicago had a Montessori preschool. Now, when I was in college and learning about all those different education philosophies, I have to admit I thought the whole Montessori thing was a little off. I came from a pretty rigid Catholic school background, and the idea of basically doing what interested you, at your own pace, made me more than a little skeptical. (This was reinforced when I student taught in an inner city high school in Milwaukee. If I had let those little darlings do what interested them, I would've witnessed more felonies in one semester than you see in an entire season of Law and Order--regular, Criminal Intent, and SVU. Combined.) But I figured, she's young! What can a little free choice education hurt? Especially when the education was taking place somewhere other than in my home.

And the actual school part of it was great. Catharine totally thrived, had great teachers, made a lot of friends, and I had the added bonus of a few kid-less hours to myself every day. But then I realized that once your kid ends up at school, you are, by default, a member of the worst group of mammals imaginable:

School Parents.

You can't get away from them. Because by the very virtue of you having a student, you're sort of forced to hang out with other students' parents. You want your kid to have a social life, right? But then these kids come to your house and you start to realize that not everyone has the same exacting standards of child raising that you do.

Not that I ever had any standards, exactly. Mainly my child rearing revolves around trying to get the least annoying kid possible. You know, use the inside voice, put your stuff away, don't touch my stuff, here's how you open the refrigerator and get Mommy a beer. Basic community living, don't-be-an irritant skills. But these other people? Ohdeargod, it's awful.

I realize that not everyone parents according to the Darwinian School of Child Rearing like I do (kids either figure it out or don't survive). That's fine. But then there are the mothers who, early on, basically give it all up and let the kid take over. "Johnny doesn't like to sit in his car seat." "Johnny won't eat at the table." "Johnny doesn't want me to wash his hair." "Johnny only drinks juice."

So let me get this straight. Johnny is a smelly little bugger with bad teeth who's going to trash my house when he comes for dinner but I won't have to worry about any of it because he's going to end up in the ICU with a head injury after you get into a fender bender on the way over. Oh, okay.

My eyes were permanently opened to this phenomenon after Catharine started school and I started trying to be a Good Mom by volunteering in the classroom and offering to have kids over to play. I could go on and on about the wacky moms I was forced to hang with, but all the craziness I encountered during those first years can be summed up into one person: The man hating, obviously frustrated fundamental Christian repressed lesbian teacher who was more than happy to lecture me about how my husband was neglecting his family (the fact he traveled on business meant he didn't care about us), how I needed to raise my son to be a feminist (I should encourage him to try on Catharine's dresses now and again), and how raising my children Catholic was going to cause them to kill me in my sleep one day (which they may still do, but it's going to be for bigger reasons than me simply taking them to church).

Oh, and her kids? She had three daughters who were all budding sociopaths. The oldest was one of those kids who smiles sweetly at the grownups while stealing and hiding another child's favorite toy. Or, better yet, taking away another kid's floaty thingy in the pool and watching passively while the kid slowly sinks to the bottom. ("I wanted the green one and she had it," she squeaked matter-of-factly after the other child was fished out of the pool and eventually revived.) The middle one was just a brute--I watched her toss a boy down a flight of stairs at preschool because he got in front of her in line. (The poor boy's sprained wrist and black eye were shrugged off by the MHOFFCRLT: "Buffy gets aggressive when she's hungry.")

The littlest one seemed fine, until it came time to toilet train her. One morning the mom brought her over to my house, stripped her naked, and explained to me that she thought the only way for a child to learn about her bodily functions was to let things happen "organically." That right there was the last straw. I told her to bundle her kid up before anything organic ended up on my newly cleaned carpet, then I started talking about how I thought the only way to heaven was through the Catholic Church, women shouldn't be allowed to drive, and Republicans were generally awesome. She left shortly thereafter and didn't come back.

And don't even get me started on the whole competition thing. "Oh, Catharine's reading?" the MHOFFCRLT said to me one day when Catharine was struggling through Hop On Pop. "My kids showed signs of early reading comprehension at 18 months." Pause in the conversation while I pried her daughter's teeth off my dining room table leg. "Of course, it's been proven if they read too early it affects their reading appreciation and spatial skills as they grow. And they tend to be less social. But, you know, good for her!"

And this has continued through the grade school, high school, and even college years. Different people, but the same basic conversation, now dealing with test scores, athletic ability, grade point average, shoe size--everything is some sort of competition. It's exhausting.

Trying to raise children while being a School Parent is the hardest thing I've ever done. But it's also made me more realistic. After listening to these nimrods, I came to the realization that being a student is my kids' experience, not mine. We aren't in high school--Joe is. And I'm probably doing the worst job of parenting in the history of the world, but we've had our share of laughs and I think we've raised these kids not to be complete jerks. I guess that's just going to have to be good enough.

I did feel a small flicker of hope recently. The other night, at a Mother-Son Dance, I got a little bottle that contained a questionnaire Joe filled out about our relationship. Question 3: "What is the one piece of advice your mom has given you that will always stay with you?"

Joe's response: "Don't be an idiot."

Phew. My work here is done.

You Can Name Your Kid Whatever You Want, But...

A few weeks ago, I found myself chatting with the World's Cutest Young Couple who also happen to be expecting what you just know will be the World's Cutest Baby and inevitably, we meandered onto the topic of Baby Names. "Oh, we aren't really sure about that," the girl half of the WCYC said. "There are so many things to consider when you're naming your child. We need to think about it."

I didn't offer it at the time (I think a plate of food went by and I got distracted by the brownies around the edge), but after spending time working in a school, as a parent, and, let's face it, as a person with opinions, I have an abbreviated list of Things to Consider When Naming Your Kid. Here it is:

Spell the name out and take a good look at it before you sign the birth certificate. I have to believe that Mrs. Thorpe didn't take a lot of time to ponder what she was doing when she named her son Craphonso, since the first time I saw the All-American's name during a Florida State football game, I hollered, "CRAP-onso? Who names their kid that?" The men in the room quickly assured me it was pronounced Cray-fonso, but you can see where I was confused, right?  My own brother named his daughter (our goddaughter) Riane, pronounced Ryan, but everyone says Ree-ann when they see her name. Even I'm not immune. A few months ago I was at the doctor's office and the tech announced, "BRIG-ed?" I corrected her ("It's Bridge-id") she peered at my name on the chart for a few seconds and then chirped, "Are you sure?" And while we're on the spelling thing...

Avoid the Creative Spelling. This, I know all about. My own name?  Brigid?  It's the Irish spelling of Bridget, and it's been a pain in my butt ever since I can remember. I've been spelling it out and correcting people (don't get me started on telemarketers or customer service reps) my whole life. Thanks, Mom and Dad.  Our own daughter, Catharine, is named after my grandmother, and that little extra 'a' in there has caused her more than a little consternation. Those are sort of understandable. But what's with the random substitution of letters? You know what I'm saying, right? For example: "I want him to stand out," one mom who named her kid Awstyn once explained to me as I was filling out a discipline form for him after he'd taken an Exacto knife to the class photo and had bitten the teacher who was trying to stop him. I don't think she had anything to worry about, since the fact her kid is a budding serial killer makes him stand out even more than the spelling of his name. Well, wait--I guess the creative spelling will stand out on his Wanted poster on the Post Office wall, so, you know, bonus!

What's with the place names? A few years back there was an alarming flood of people naming their kids after state capitals. You know, Madison, Austin, Denver, Jackson. I once ran into someone who explained her daughter's name with, "We named her Madison because that's where we met and fell in love." My response? "We were going to name our daughter Glascott's Bar, but we thought it might be confusing for people." You know, "Where's Glascott's?" "On the corner of Halsted and Webster.... Oh, no, wait, you mean the kid.  She's down in the playroom doing quantum physics." We toyed with the idea of naming our kids Montpelier, Des Moines, or Sacramento (Sac, for short), then just decided to stick with Catharine and Joe.

Think about your kid's future, for goodness sake! Your name is the first impression people have of you, right? So think about what your poor kid's name says about him or her. Case in point: this clip from one of my favorite movies, "The Sure Thing."

Whatever happened to naming your child after a family member? Or a saint? I'm constantly amazed at the names people come up because they want to make some sort of statement or, see above, they want their kid to stand out.  Oh, please. My friend who's a teacher has lots of students with very different names with very different spellings, but the worst I've heard is Secret Box. Really, what's that poor kid going to end up becoming? Judge Secret Box Smith? Doctor Secret Box Jones? Another of our friends had a client whose first name was Bodacious, and I've always hoped I'll see him running for president someday.

Watch the rhyming thing. My oldest sister? Geri Barry. My sainted great-grandmother and favorite second cousin? Both are Mary Barry. The name Skoog offered lots of good possibilities when we were thinking of names for Joe, not the least of which were Boog and Scooter. (I also liked Skippy, because I have a thing for alliteration.)

The day the WCYC and I chatted about their new baby, the guy said, "Well, you know, the one thing about
actually naming your baby is that once you do it, nobody's going to say anything to you about it."

Sorry, kids. I can't promise anything.  But here's hoping your World's Cutest Baby has a normal name so I don't have to blurt something out that's going to make our relationship all awkward--I need all the cute friends I can get.

You Know What's Annoying?

I'm crabby. Let me rephrase that--I'm crabbier than usual. Why? Two reasons: a hot flash and a pimple.

This Getting Older Thing isn't going to be a walk in the park, is it? I mean, one second I'm sitting at my desk, checking my email and making pithy, relevant comments on my friends' Facebook statuses, and the next second I feel like I'm sitting in a pizza oven, sweating like a whore in church and completely unable to focus.  WTF? as the kids say.

Combine the hot flash with the gynormous pimple I've sprouted on my forehead, and let's just say it's a bit confusing being me these days. Hot flash = old person. Zit = adolescent.  And this isn't just a tiny zit that's slightly annoying.  This zit is so big that I'm pretty sure it ordered its own drink at breakfast yesterday, since the waitress brought an extra juice that she swore up and down she'd heard we wanted. Hmmmm.

So, you know, great.  Now I have visions of myself in the nursing home, wrapped in a badly crocheted afghan, smelling slightly of Ben-Gay and urine, my face covered with patches of unevenly applied Oxy-10 while I stuff bars of chocolate in my face and shriek about how I can't hear my stories on the television.

I'm gonna be an awesome old person.

And in the spirit of getting older, and because I'm crabby, I'm dwelling a bit on all the stuff that drives me crazy.  My pet peeves, if you will.  I could never make a complete list, of course, because I'm one of those people who gets irritated randomly by very stupid things, but here are just a couple of things (in no particular order) that are sending me over the edge a bit these days:

• Gum chewers/snappers.  I can't think of anything more annoying than listening to or watching someone chew their gum. I understand why people chew gum--hey, even I need a little breath freshening now and again and have been known to pop a piece in my mouth. But a gum-snapping receptionist or clerk? A gum chewing Eucharistic Minister? No, no, no, no.  I'm sorry you have some sort of oral fixation that didn't get worked out when you were a toddler.  But why should the rest of us suffer because of your developmental issues? It's disgusting. Stop it. Oh, and wrap your gum in something before you throw it out, please.

• Disrespectful kids. I was going to say kids in general, but since I'm a parent I think I'm supposed to act like I enjoy children. And I do, actually, for the most part. I like hanging out (in a non-creepy way) with my kids' friends. But mouthy little buggers who talk back to their parents or, worse yet, to other non-parental units? Uh-uh. 

• Excessively skinny people who say they're starving, order a salad, and then only eat half of it while complaining about how fat they are. How are these mammals not set upon and dispatched (I'm currently reading a novel set in medieval times, in case you were wondering) by the rest of us hungry humans?

• The odor emanating from my son's room.  What is that, exactly?  Why doesn't Febreez take care of it?  You know that commercial where the blindfolded people walk into the scary, dirty, disgusting room and they think it smells like a meadow or a fresh sea breeze?  Yeah, well, you want a real challenge, you get yourselves over to the Skoog house and try to eliminate whatever that is coming out of the room at the top of the stairs. I guarantee you no one's going to say, "Oh, it smells like I'm in a field of flowers!" because I don't care how many spray cans you use or how many candles you burn, it's still going to smell like a garbage dump mated with a boys' locker room in there.

• Mirrors that allow their owners to go out looking like that. You know what I'm saying, right? You see these total Glamour Don'ts wandering around with their ill-fitting clothing, bad hair, stuff hanging out in all the wrong places, wearing poorly matched outfits and you just know they think they look okay. My own mirror would never let that happen.  My mirror says things to me like, "Hello, you're in your late 40s!" or "Don't you dare leave the house with that on!" or "Really?!? Like you didn't think those extra brats and beers were going to catch up with you?"

• People with loud, annoying voices who are also (bonus!) either really, really boring or incredible know-it-alls.  Today, as a matter of fact, I listened to a woman drone on and on in what was quite possibly the most irritating voice I've ever heard about her countertops (she might be going with the granite, but the poured concrete is good, too, and then there's the natural stone that's not exactly granite but isn't marble...). Since I was trapped in the beauty salon, I started trying to imagine how I could  get her to shut the f up without using an actual weapon--kind of a MacGyver-type project. I finally settled on a strategy that utilized a hairbrush, a curling iron, tin foil, and the bowl with the animal crackers in it. Unfortunately, she left before I could put it to use, but if you ever find yourself in that situation let me know and I'll share my plan with you.

Those are just a few things that bother me.  Today.  And don't worry, I completely understand that I, myself, am a really annoying person.  As a matter of fact, in college, after a particularly trying time romantically and socially for both of us, my friend Sue and I devised an entire system where we could eliminate all the people who drove us crazy.  It was kind of complicated, but it boiled down to this:  Everyone got five kills. But if you didn't want to kill someone, you could maim them. Three maims equaled one kill, and if you used one maim you had to use all three or lose them. We had it all figured out where, in our world, you could check out a pocket flame thrower using just your Marquette ID (why not? you could check out a vacuum--how is that different from a flame thrower?) and take care of that one guy who blew you off or, even better, the one skanky girl who was hanging all over that one guy who blew you off.

Yeah, we drank a lot in college.  A LOT.

But you know what the problem was with our plan? No matter how we worked it out, we realized that as soon as it became operational, we had maybe a day before someone used up a maim or a kill on one of us. And, bottom line, we weren't actually homicidal.  We were just annoyed. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference when your irritation is fueled by beer and hormones, you know?

So here's what I've learned.  The older I get, the more there is to deal with--emotionally, physically, and, yes, spiritually. I sometimes think about those two college students, sitting on barstools at the Ardmore, calmly planning out the demise of a few perky blonde coeds, inept professors, and overly preppy Biffs over dollar pitchers of Miller Lite. Can you imagine if either one of us had a hot flash during one of those planning sessions, or, worse yet, during an encounter with one of those intended victims? Gives you pause, doesn't it?

But, um, on a totally unrelated note, does anyone know where you can pick up a pocket flame thrower?

The Gym

Yes, I go to the gym.

I know this shocks anyone who's ever seen me, since usually people with my physique and pallor spend their days in a dimly lit room, lying on a couch clad in an outfit with ample elastic in all the right places, consuming mass quantities of chocolate and yellow-hued snacks while watching General Hospital and endless reruns of whatever Law and Order franchise happens to be showing at that particular time. But I'm not kidding!  I do, on occasion, work out.

I mean, take a second to think about what I'd look like if I didn't.

Kinda makes you a little sick to imagine it, doesn't it?

And in the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a fitness nut or anything.  I go, do some cardio, try to work on the beer gut and 16-year-old baby weight, and get the heck out.  But on the bright side, I've met and observed some pretty interesting people, which is what keeps me going back.

Take, for example, the dozen or so ladies who used to go to the 9 a.m. water aerobics class. (I say used to because apparently they've discontinued the class and my life is much less richer for it.) This class was filled with senior citizens who I believe hailed from a nearby retirement community. And let me tell you, there's some (use vibrato voice) drama going on over there.

Let's start with Silvie.

Now, Silvie must be the, um, Retirement Community Slut.  See, those words just don't look right together, but that's the impression I got. One of the best lines I've ever overheard was about Silvie (and I'm always trying to overhear good lines).

Margie (the Retirement Home Gossip): So, I guess Silvie won't be coming for awhile.  She just had some [loud whisper] face work done. [pause] Although at her age, who's she trying to look better for, the undertaker?

Then, a few weeks later, the locker room was all abuzz because apparently Silvie is having an affair with Mike, who's actually Daisy's husband.  Daisy's also an aqua-sizer, but she wasn't there that day because she had a doctor's appointment and then she was going to lunch with her daughter, maybe at Coco's since they have a good senior citizen menu but the pie just isn't what it used to be. (You get a lot of information from the seniors.) Anyway, Daisy had no idea about Mike's infidelity, but Margie was convinced that she'd find out because Silvie and Mike weren't exactly, you know, discreet.

I'm not even kidding, these women are all at least 80 years old. I can't decide if I'm excited to get older and retire or if I dread it since it seems a lot like high school, except with softer food, removable teeth, and lots more polyester. And there's the ewwwwwwwwww factor with all of it.

But the fun doesn't stop with the senior citizens.

Quite possibly the most gorgeous man I've ever seen (and that's saying a lot, since I'm married to a trophy husband and all) is part of a same sex couple who comes to the gym pretty regularly, and they are, in a word, hilarious. A few weeks ago, Gorgeous Guy was chatting with another gym goer, talking about how his boyfriend didn't like veal, and the two Senior Citizens next to me had a field day with it.

SC1 [loudly]: Did he say BOYFRIEND? He's GAY?

SC2 [just as loudly]: He did. He said boyfriend. Will you look at that? He's so, so, so....attractive!

SC1: He's just the type I would've gone for back in the day. But he would've broken my heart.

[GG, by this time, is smiling and waving at them, since he--and everyone else in the cardio area--can hear them]

SC2: And he's so polite!

The Gorgeous Guy and his partner were working out right in front of me one day last week, and the partner was complaining about the people he worked with. "I mean, they think I'm gay because I keep my office clean and always have everything just so."

Gorgeous Guy reassured him: "But that's not why you're gay.  You're gay because you like men. Duh."

The two of them, if they're working out together, have a running commentary going about our fellow gym-goers.  Like me, they tend to dislike too much plastic surgery on a woman ("Like you can't tell those aren't real."), they're alarmed by the really short shorts on larger women ("If something drops out of those shorts, I hope someone's held responsible."), they think big bellies should be covered ("Congrats, sweetie, you have stretch marks. Now put 'em away."), and people who grunt while they're working out are "just beyond help." It always makes me happy when they're there, since usually they're saying exactly what I'm thinking.

If it wasn't excessively creepy, I'd start following them around and asking them what they think of other gym characters like The Jolly Numbers Boys, The Wannabe Muscleheads, and The Medicated Mommies. But I do my best to be invisible at the gym, because I'm afraid someone's going to take my gym membership away after they notice that I've been coming for what? almost 20 years and I still look like this. So for now I'll just be content to watch everyone, keep my ears open, and try to figure out what The Former Stripper tries to prove by wandering completely naked through the locker room every day. If she's trying to make us feel bad, it's not working.  As one of the senior citizens put it so beautifully: "If I slip her a dollar, do you think she could cover that stuff up?"

Dropping The Kid Off at College: Helpful Hints

Update: I wrote this two years ago, and now, as I prepare to take Kid #2 to college, I feel like an old pro at this. Except I'm not. Joe's going to a different college on the other side of the country (Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington), and the fact he's headed to unfamiliar territory kind of freaks me out. Stay tuned for updates. But for now, I think this is still pretty relevant.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say this: I only dropped my kid off at college once. Does this make me an expert on this subject?  No.  But in this day and age, when total closet cases call themselves Life Coaches and people pay actual money to grab hold of a metal bar and have someone tell them why they're sick, I figure I'm as good a source for information as any, right?  Plus there's the whole Me Being A Service Person Thing, so, you know, I'm here to help.

Okay, for my friends who are getting ready to drop their kids off at college, here's what I figured out.

• It's not as bad as you think it's going to be.  As anyone who was around me at this time last year can tell you, I was a wreck just anticipating taking Catharine to school.  It almost made it worse that she was going to my alma mater (Marquette University), because every time I closed my eyes I pictured her sitting in the Ardmore with a bottle of beer in her hand, or, even worse, wasting time by watching pro wrestling on Sunday mornings with the World's Smelliest Humans.  Then there was the small, insignificant fact that somehow, over the previous 18 years, I actually started liking this kid, and I was truly going to miss her.  But you know what?  Once we got her settled, met her awesome roommate and her family, and figured out that all the old bars were gone and they have cable so they don't have to watch wrestling on Sunday mornings, I felt better about leaving her.  As I told my friends, it was like I thought I was going to get cancer, but only ended up with a bad cold.  I was sad, but I didn't come completely unglued.  You'll survive!
• There are other kids besides yours going to school there. There is nothing--and I mean NOTHING--more annoying than the mom who seems to think her child is the center of the universe.  Well, except the progeny of the aforementioned parental unit.  When we went for orientation, we were sitting in a classroom with a bunch of other parents, and one mom started in on how her son was in this class, but he should've been in that class, and he really wanted to take blah, blah, blah... The head of the program finally cut her off, saying, "Well, we'll have time to get more specific after while. Right now this is an overview."  Did that shut her up? Nooooo.  She kept going.  Now, normally I would've been very tolerant of this, but it was starting to look like we were going to be late for lunch and I didn't want to miss the salad.  I was thisclose to standing up and shrieking, "Clearly your kid didn't inherit his brains from you! Take a social cue, you idiot! Shut the f up, willya? Did you miss the part about them giving us food?  I need to eat, dammit!" And, on a related note...
• Yeah, yeah, yeah, your kid's a genius.  Now will you just shaddup? This is not necessarily the same person mentioned above, but it certainly can be.  Okay, here's the thing.  They're already in college, the playing field's basically been leveled, so now you can just can it about the test scores and whatever honors your kid got in high school. One mom actually said to me, "Well, Timmy's a golden boy and if he goes after something, he gets it.  That's a little heads-up in case your daughter's competing with him for something."  No, really, she said that. What are we, Texas cheerleading moms?  Was that a threat? I looked around for a camera, thinking I was being punked, but she wasn't kidding.  They actually make people like that!
• If your son's being a jerk, it's because he's nervous, too.  I mean, I don't know your kid, it's very possible he's a full-time jerk, but this is a nerve-wracking time for some of these students and things can get a little tense. I can't count the number of times I got snapped at, witnessed the just-short-of-a-seizure eye roll, or got the silent treatment just because I didn't move fast enough or anticipate a need or was standing in the wrong spot in the room during move-in.  Get a thick skin, and kill the little idiot with kindness.
• Don't eat Real Chili with beans before helping her move into the dorm room.  It's a small space.  That's all I have to say about that.
• The rules DO apply to you. If the school has a policy about things like elevator usage or time allotted with a dolly or bunking beds, follow it!  There are about a million other parents trying to do the exact same thing you are and as much as you think the procedure the school follows doesn't make sense, they've been doing this a lot longer than you have, so just be patient. Nothing worse than the person who overloads the elevator or the person who takes up all the room in the hallway with all their crap so no one can get by. And don't stand by the elevators and complain endlessly about how messed up the process is and how you're being inconvenienced.  Because no one else's time is as valuable as yours, you selfish lout. In short, don't be a jerk.  And if you are a jerk, trust me on this, the rest of us parents are going to judge you and talk about you endlessly.
• Be nice to the school staff people.  For the most part, these are just college students, maybe a couple of years older than your own child, and they're just doing their jobs.  Don't start lecturing them on how things can be done better (see above) and for goodness sake, don't start yelling at them when something goes wrong.  The worst thing I saw was a mom shrieking at a staffer about how her daughter was not going to take a top bunk and these rooms are too small and, my favorite part, "What do you know, anyway?  You're just standing there like an idiot, staring at me.  Why are you even working here?" She stormed off, and the poor little RA stood all hunched over her clipboard, looking like someone just kicked her.  Thank goodness for my fellow parents--about five of them rushed over to her to comfort her.  So, yeah, be nice.
• Dress and act like someone's parent, not someone's buddy or a scary, Mrs. Havisham-ish college student. I only mention this because there was this one woman who wore extremely high heels, short shorts, and a top that revealed a little too much, if you know what I mean, and she caused quite the stir among her fellow parents. My favorite part was when she was waiting for an elevator and she flashed a big smile at one of the dads and said, completely out of the blue, like she was a mind reader or something,"I know, it's hard to believe we're old enough to have kids in college, isn't it?" His wife answered for him, after looking her up and down: "Oh, we're not having any problem believing it, dear."
• It's okay to cry, but just don't make a mess.  Going down in the elevator with another mom who looked a little shaky, I said, "So, how're you doing?" and she burst into tears.  I couldn't make everything out, what with the sobbing and all, but it seems as though little Mary wasn't even supposed to go to college and (something something something)... Anyway, I put my arm around her, and she buried her face in my shirt and got tears and boogers all over my shoulder. Thank goodness I had tissues, but come on! If you know you're a blubberer, the least you can do is carry around a handkerchief.
• Leave when they tell you to leave. Honestly, these people at the institutions of higher learning know what they're talking about.  If they say you should leave before a convocation or after a dinner, just do it. Nothing worse than being the Parents Who Wouldn't Leave.  It's creepy!  These kids need to get to know each other, they need to figure out what their new normal looks like, and they have to work out on their own how to balance all the new demands on their lives.  Oh, and so do you!  So say goodbye, don't make a scene (unless your kid's being a pain and deserves it), and get the heck out.

In short, be nice, be patient, and (I almost forgot the most important part!) responsibly administered liquor, in reasonable doses, will help you get through the tense times. But don't carry a flask around--it's too tempting.  If I'd had unfettered access to vodka during the actual move-in, I would've ended up either falling asleep in the hallway at around noon and having my large unconscious body contribute to the chaos, or picking up a closet rod and beating the crap out of a couple of my fellow parents.  So, restraint!

For the past three years, Catharine has gone up to school all by herself, set up her room all by herself, and is now happily training for her year ahead as a facilities manager in a residence hall (if some parent starts shrieking at her during move-in, I'll get names, you mark my words).  So, see?  They do grow up, and they start living their own lives.  Without us.

Sigh

I need to find some vodka.

Whalegate

I have a thing about whales.

I can't help it, I just do.  I think they're cool, I'm fascinated by them, etc., etc.  And my poor family indulges me in this, sort of.  We actually went on a cruise to Alaska a few summers back, under the guise of a post-eighth grade graduation trip for Joe (like it's a big deal to make it past eighth grade--pssshhh), so I could see whales and bald eagles. Oh, and so we could enjoy nature and marvel at the natural beauty of our 49th state.  Blah, blah, blah. But on said cruise we didn't take the whale watching excursions, so I had to be content to view said whales from the deck of the ship, 10 stories above the water.  It was good, but not good enough.

So when Mark announced that he wanted Skoog Family Vacation 2011 to take place in Santa Barbara, I got on santabarbara.com to see what sort of stuff we could do during our stay.  And there it was, right in the lower left hand corner: Whale Watching.

I was all excited.  The family, not so much.  But on Day 2, after carefully reading all the Whale Watching Literature we had available (a pamphlet from the company and info on their website) we dressed up in layers, ate a light breakfast, and then went to the dock.  As we stood there waiting (me, eagerly; the other Skoogs, not so much) with about 50 other people, most of them speaking different languages (and I'm pretty sure saying that my green jacket washed me out and made me look fat), the captain of the boat came up the gangplank and started talking.

"So, the whales have moved farther west and it's going to take longer to get to where they're feeding.  Plus the sea is rough and we'll be headed right into the wind. So if you have Dramamine, you should probably take it now.  But if you don't like rough seas and you don't like rocking boats, you should get a refund and come back another day.  Okay, who's ready?"

How bad could it be?  I thought.  I don't mind rocking boats.  Let's DO IT!

I scampered aboard the boat, the family followed, we sat through the Naturalist Volunteer's spiel about whales and their feeding habits, and soon we were on our way.

Then the fun started.

Now, I have to say, we met some delightful people on deck.  There was the honeymooning couple from Ireland who were both woefully under-dressed in shorts and t-shirts (they didn't read the literature, obviously) who told us all about their wedding and all the fun stuff they'd been doing since they got to America.  I loved how they said things were "brilliant" when they meant cool.  And there was my friend Oscar and his sister Olivia and their parents.  Oscar is four, Olivia's going into second grade, and it turns out that Oscar's daddy is some sort of Hollywood director.  It was Oscar's first whale watching expedition, and he was a little shocked it was my first, given my advanced age, until he learned I lived in Arizona and "don't they just have desert stuff out there? You don't have an ocean.  What do you do for fun?"  (Ah, if only my dad was a Hollywood director--then I would've grown up on a beach in Montecito like Oscar.) I told him I drank and gambled.  He seemed cool with it.

Now, I stayed glued to my seat on the top deck because I'm a complete idiot and I thought whales were just going to start jumping out of the water at random. (They don't tend to do that, btw.)  Apparently there were all sorts of hijinks going on below deck that I completely missed, but the kids and Mark witnessed first hand.

Yes, it got really, really bumpy.  And the wind was incredible.  Then there were the waves. At first, the people down below sounded like they were on a roller coaster, hollering "Eeeeeeee!" every time we hit a big wave.  Then, not so much, you know, due to the danger of being swept overboard by an errant wall of water and all.  One highlight for me came when the 300+ lb. heavily tattooed woman wearing a sundress and flip flops (again, people, read the literature!) tipped over and ended up in my lap. "My daughter's not feeling well," she said, like that explained...well, there was lots to explain but I don't think her daughter had anything to do with it. (After she got up and weaved her way to her seat, Oscar leaned over to me and said, "That looked very uncomfortable for you. Did it hurt?")

Mark came up to me a long way into the trip and said, "There's a family of Japanese Olympians downstairs.  I'm pretty sure they're gold medalists in synchronized puking."  Catharine and Joe tried to seek shelter down in the covered cabin but were greeted by a woman throwing up in her hand.  They turned around to make a speedy exit, only to come face-to-face with two Japanese people throwing up in the blue garbage cans on deck.  "And it was too late," Joe said, shaking his head. "I wanted to tell them that vomit isn't recyclable, but the damage had already been done. They're ruining the environment."

There was the Communist Snowman, a Polish boy all dressed in red and soaked from head to toe, who kept wandering around the boat, getting thrown back and forth like a pinball, munching on some foul-smelling sandwich.  He'd walk by a group of people, they'd get a whiff of him, and the sickness bags would come out.  It was like a scene straight out of a (bad) sitcom.

There was Plastic Surgery Lady who sat next to me, rubbing the recent scars behind her ears while mumbling, "I can't remember if they say it's a bad idea to mix Dramamine with Xanax, but I wonder when they're turning the boat around." Pause, eyes at half staff, then snapping open. "Can you walk?  Because I don't think I can.  I think the boat is moving."

There were lots of other people, too, most of them non-literature-reading Europeans who all looked like they were going to first freeze to death and then die from seasickness.  In that order.  But guess what?

We saw whales!

Actual, living, breathing whales!  We saw humpbacks and blue whales, along with sea lions and dolphins.  At one point a humpback whale started playing with our boat, swimming back and forth underneath it and breaching--our Naturalist Volunteer said that was unusual, and this whale obviously liked us.  It was awesome, and as I shared my unbounded enthusiasm with the other members of my family, Joe leaned over to me and said, "Mom, you know what this trip is going to be known as?  Whalegate."

Oh, no, I said, it hasn't been that bad, has it?

Catharine said, "Well, getting to see the whales this close is pretty cool. I think it's fun." (She's a trooper.)

Then I looked over at Mark, who was sitting on the bench, arms folded, with a big smile on his face. I was about to share my joy with him when I noticed his left hand.  His smile never wavered, but his middle finger, saluting me, told me that he was not nearly as enthusiastic as I was about the whale sighting.

The trip back was much smoother and way more uneventful.

The rest of the vacation was great, but suffice it to say, I was not allowed to suggest any more activities for the rest of the week.  Or, possibly, the rest of the decade.

But did I mention I got to see whales?