Ginger Unplugged

Like all Moms I hate the phrase, "Mom! What should I do?" I usually claim I can think of lots of things and start giving them work around the house until they magically come up with something to do on their own. Trouble is, they're so well trained now, most of the housework I actually want them to do (those things besides painting the bathrooms or pruning the roses) is actually done. So I got out a list Butterfly's online school sent me for the summer. "40 Things To Do The Next Time You Are Bored!" I told Crash--surprisingly the most bored of my children--that when he asked me for something to do I'd make him pick a number and he'd have to do whatever the list said. He quickly chose #27. "Order a pizza." I accused him of cheating and hid the list but to prove I wasn't kidding, I ordered him a pizza. Paybacks were today when he chose #4. "Bead some bracelets and sell them for charity." The bracelets turned into toe rings ...

Today, after I volunteered in one my kids' classes, I decided to say a quick hello to my other two children at the school. This was in part because I love them and in part because they are having fantasies that they are terribly abused and are telling the home teachers about this in my presence in order to embarrass me (I think). I am trying to make them feel guilty about this stunt by all my niceness. Because really, if you're not a child abuser and you say you're not--who's going to believe you? I could KILL them!! (Hah, just kidding!!!!) Anyway, by the time I got to the last kid it was getting late--I almost didn't go but finally raced over and peeked in the window of his classroom. They were in the middle of math. At least twenty pairs of eyes were glued to the teacher, but Crash's eyes were glued everywhere else. He was front and center, squirming on his desk, around his desk, nearly under his desk and perhaps had just crawled out of his desk. I wondered i...

Yeah, so just this morning I was blissfully admiring my amazingly bright children while organizing their cupboards, wiping off their counters, cooking their dinner, falling in the Wal-mart parking lot buying presents for their friends (Wal-mart and I have a hate-hate relationship--unfortunately we're stuck together). But it was all worth it! Because they (my children) were Turning Out . They were blooming. They were nearly BRAG WORTHY. And I really hate bragging. I even wrote that last braggy blog in all my "their blooming" bliss. And I didn't even mention how Butterfly has won the best behavior award in her class for two months running. How she got the coveted WOW award at school and is still floating around on cloud 9 about it. How she's better at being social than Oprah Winfrey (once she got over that meowing thing). Nor did I mention an email I got from Crash's teacher yesterday (you know, the "Can we please stick a shocking dog collar on him s...

After twenty-four years of waiting I have finally seen The Police in concert! I still wish I could have gone with my dad when I was twelve but for some reason he wasn't too excited about taking me. I sulked in my room all that night while drawing a pencil sketch of Sting. I was very good at sulking. Husband and I had a lot of fun watching dancing grannies and being the young people at a concert. Oddly enough, Sting looked like my dad (especially my dad after a week of camping) and I was worried the guitarist (Andy Summers) didn't have his teeth in. Whether he did or didn't, the guy can rock. Stewart Copeland, the drummer, looked like he was having the time of his life. He was amazing. Random Observations 1. "Doodle-up" is a very weird thing to repeat in the middle of a song a thousand times. 2. If you haven't heard the serious percussion version of Wrapped Around Your Finger , you need to fill that hole in your life. 3. Sting still pronounces Nabokov wrong b...

It's been hard to blog lately. Why? My mom refuses to do anything blogworthy for fear I will write about her some more and, as you know, the holiday season is all about family. So what is there to blog about? She spent our Christmas shopping trip explaining just how and why one would heat up the turkey and cheese and not the bread for a sandwich--it all makes perfect sense now (see The Curious Production of My Dad Getting Himself Lunch in August of 2007). Apparently, the selective heating is all about juice being added to unsmoked turkey to make it tender and it gets in the bread if you heat it when it doesn't make the turkey slimy prematurely because juice does that you know (deep breath). My mother would also like to add that whatever I write about her is completely untrue. But whatever I write about my father isn't near enough.