Picket Fence Post

Max the Mini Wheat says, Happy St. Patrick’s Day to y’all, Boston Red Sox style. (Actually, he doesn’t say anything since he’s a dog, can’t speak and had to be bribed with food to pose for this photo.)

Anyway, while I’m on the subject of St. Patrick’s Day, I have an open question to families of Irish descent:

When did it become common practice for a leprechaun named “Lucky” to visit the homes of children who have an Irish background and leave presents (toys!) for them on St. Patrick’s Day Eve so that the little lads and lasses discover them on St. Patrick’s Day morn?

My 8-year-old just came home from school all confused and wanted to know why some of his friends received visits from Lucky but he never has and, in fact, none of the Picket Fence Post children ever have.

After I blurted out, “Toys?! For St. Patrick’s Day?” I regained my composure and promptly informed him that when I was a child, no one left my brother or I any toys on St. Patrick’s Day either and that we were never visited by Lucky.

What this will mean to the boy’s psyche in the long run is anyone’s guess (will he be telling his therapist in 20 years that he’s been unlucky in life and it’s all because he was the only Irish-descended child in his class not visited by the leprechaun?), although he did add, “Maybe Lucky will visit us next year . . .”

Item #1: Forgetful Mamas

It’s not even the insanely busy spring yet — the time when we’re overloaded with school projects, school events, national holidays, Little League & spring soccer games/practices — and I’ve still been forgetting stuff like sending my kid to school with lunch money, birthday parties, etc. So, when I was trying to get the Picket Fence Post family’s schedule into some semblance of order last week, I felt a bit better about my slacker-ness when I witnessed moms on TV shows being overwhelmed and forgetful too.

I dedicated my Mommy Tracked column this week to this topic, saying that:, “. . . [T]he depiction of two fictional moms on TV this past week screwing up in big ways when it came to their family’s schedules made me realize that, if moms feeling overwhelmed by the weird administrative complexity of contemporary child-rearing is now a punch line on TV shows, I can’t be the only one who’s feeling burned out.”

At least I haven’t forgotten my kids’ birthdays. Yet.

Do you find yourself forgetting stuff, repeatedly, despite your best efforts to get organized?

Item #2: Dysfunctional TV Families

I’ve been going on and on about how much I adore the ABC comedy Modern Family and how much hope I have for NBC’s brand, spankin’ new dramedy Parenthood. Well, the Boston Globe’s Don Aucoin mentioned those two shows when he wrote about a trend in family-centric TV shows as of late: A lack of parental authority.

In his piece, “Dysfunction Junction: Who’s the boss? TV parents these days are often as adolescent as their children,” he asserted that today’s TV parents aren’t as stable and authoritative as TV parents of years past, like on The Cosby Show. He quoted a woman who writes about media and parenting issues as saying: “Bill Cosby was hysterically funny, and yet when push came to shove on The Cosby Show, there was no question that he and his wife were the authority figures, no question that ‘We’re the parents here, we’re here to take care of you, we’re not your friends.’ We lost something there and it’s time to get it back. A better sense of parents not so much as dominant authorities but as parents.”

While I agree that we’ve lost an overall sense of authority over today’s kids, I think the TV shows are simply reflecting today’s reality.  (Ever try to lightly reprimand/correct the behavior of  a kid who’s not yours? Be prepared for pediatric snark and smirks.) If you’re going to complain that TV parents are acting too much like kids, we need to start with the actual parents they’re depicting.

Item #3: Boston Baby & Family Expo

Mark your calendars New Englanders: Next Saturday — that’s March 20 — I’ll be appearing at the Baby & Family Expo at the Bayside Expo Center to tell parents that, while they’ll see lots of products and get lots of parenting advice at the Expo, the most important thing they need to keep in mind is this: If you don’t keep your sense of humor about this child-rearing adventure, you’ll go nuts.

At 10:30 a.m., I’m slated to give a talk/book reading called, “How to Keep Your Sense of Humor (Believe us, you’ll need it!)” where I’ll give expectant and current parents a humorous pep talk and read some of the more embarrassing columns from my parenting/humor book Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum. People who attend the talk will not only get a signed copy of the book, but they’ll get the added bonus of meeting “The Girl,” (otherwise known as my daughter) who’ll be helping me out at the Expo.

In addition, my Parents & Kids Magazine editor Heather Kempskie and her twin sister Lisa Hanson, authors of The Siblings Busy Book, will be giving pointers at 1:30 p.m. about activities you can do when you have children of different ages.

If you’re heading to the Expo on Sunday, March 21, you’ll get a chance to meet my buddies, the podcasting divas that are the Manic Mommies,  Erin and Kristin who’ll be taping their show at 1 p.m.

Here’s the link for more info. Hope to see you there.

Image credit: Baby & Family Expo.

Hey, have you heard that there’s a U.S. Senate election happening today in Massachusetts? It hasn’t received all that much coverage, has it? Have you caught any of the ads for Republican candidate Scott Brown and Democratic candidate Martha Coakley? Maybe you’ve heard a bit of talk about it on the radio, that’s when you weren’t being incessantly reminded that some 62-year-old would-be rapper recently sang a ditty called “Pants on the Ground” on American Idol.

Seeing that I’m a politics and news junkie (read tons of news, watch political TV shows, listen to talk radio), the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts to select someone to complete the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s term has become major grist for kitchen table conversations at my house. The three Picket Fence Post children joined The Spouse and me and watched some or most of the final Senate debate on TV last week (seems like eons ago) and they kept asking who that “Kennedy guy” was since they hadn’t heard The Spouse or me mention that he was even running. They found it patently unfair that the third party candidate — Joseph L. Kennedy – was asked by the moderator whether he’d vote for Brown or Coakley if he had to choose between them.

As political ads (many negative ones largely from the Coakley campaign) have been rolled out at such a brisk pace that their sheer volume nearly blocked out the sun, the kids asked more questions, like why the negative ads had such grim music and ominous voice-overs making it sound as though the world would end if the other person were elected.

In short order, the members of the Picket Fence Post family started lining up behind candidates, and suffice is to say there wasn’t unanimity, which has caused some friction . . . like when The Youngest Boy pumped his 8-year-old fists into the air and started chanting his candidate’s name in the face of his 11-year-old sister who’s backing a different candidate.

I’ve attempted (key word *attempted*) to tamp down my own enthusiasm for a candidate as I’ve been vigorously lobbying The Spouse (who always waits until the last minute to decide on a candidate) that my choice is the right one. However I didn’t want the rugrats to witness me pestering their dad while I was simultaneously preaching about the importance of being civically engaged and voting, no matter what one’s political views might be.

Today, on Election Day, The Spouse was working from home and the children had no school so we decided, as a family, to go vote together. There was jostling over who got to hold the two ballots and over who got to feed them into the machines (we have fill-in-the-circle ballots at our precinct). The jostling was exacerbated by the deep red/blue division between two of the kids and inevitably devolved into tears because The Youngest Boy didn’t get a chance to put a ballot into the machine.

Seeking political reconciliation, after we got home, The Youngest Boy and I baked some vanilla cupcakes and swirled red food coloring into six and blue into the other six. Once they’ve cooled, we’ll frost them and decorate them all with red, white and blue sprinkles. The plan is to enjoy them together in front of the TV at around 8 p.m. after the polls close, with some hot cocoa in hand. It’s supposed to be a celebration of Election Day and how lucky we are to have choices. I’ve warned both factions within the Picket Fence Post household that poor sportsmanship and gloating will not be allowed. That’s the goal anyway. Political, all-American unity. Under one roof. While enjoying red cupcakes and blue cupcakes decorated by red and blue sprinkles. My fingers are crossed.

Image credit: Metrowest Daily News.

Item #1: Meet Max

After nearly seven hours of driving to a dog shelter in New York State and back, the Picket Fence Post family now has a new member: A three-month-old wheaten terrier/Havanese puppy whom we named Max. (At least we think he’s a wheaten terrier/Havanese. That’s what we were told by the shelter folks, though his paperwork mentioned something about a Skye terrier. . . )

Max didn’t sleep well in his crate last night, even though I quasi-slept on the sofa near him. The scared little thing whined intermittently, reminding me of a baby awakening and crying during the night. After dusting off our baby gates and using caffeine this morning like a controlled substance, I feel as though I’m returning to my “new mom” days. A column on our search for Max is in the works.

Item #2: Papi Letdown

I was out on the road all day yesterday with the Picket Fence Post family getting Max, so I didn’t catch up on the heart-rending news regarding Big Papi until late yesterday and then read full coverage in the newspapers this morning. (Reading newspapers, on dead trees, how old school.) Hearing that David Ortiz in 2003 tested positive for performance enhancing drugs felt like someone had taken away Christmas, especially because of how it endangers the perspective on the special, glittering gem of a 2004 season. It’s a gut-level disappointment for someone like myself who hopes and wishes that seemingly good, decent guys like Ortiz wouldn’t and don’t mess around with such things. This, according to the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan, makes me “terminally naive.” However I think it’s one thing for a show-off of a guy like Manny to test positive, quite another for the quiet, affable Papi.

Item #3: Pot-Dealing Mom on ‘Weeds’

Over on Mommy Track’d, I wrote about my recent Weeds-a-thon, where I OD’d (pardon the pun) on the Showtime comedy/drama about the widowed, pot-dealing soccer mom who used to peddle her wares to fellow suburbanites in order to provide for her kids. However after watching the Nancy Botwin character evolve over several seasons — in a recent episode she gave birth to the baby of a Mexican drug lord — I wasn’t thrilled by the transformation. Despite all this, the show continues to be riveting.

Item #4: Potter is the New Skywalker

In my latest GateHouse News Service column, I make the argument that, for kids today, the Harry Potter series is to them what the Star Wars series was to us in the days when Star Wars was merely a trilogy and not a six-pack. I also think that, as heroes go, Potter is better than Skywalker, writing, “. . . [U]nlike Luke Skywalker, who had the tendency to whine and be gratingly self-absorbed, Potter suffers and doesn’t whine, which sets my kids’ favorite childhood character several notches above the one I admired as a kid.”

Talk about a high-wire act. You’re picked to play on the All-Star team for the second consecutive year. Your pregnant wife who’s due at the end of August, winds up being hospitalized in premature labor. Then she’s stabilized, though still hospitalized.

Now there are a handful of  macho guys who’re apt to say that there is no question or decision to be made here. You play the game, no matter what’s going on at home. They’d tell Pedroia to go to the All-Star game in St. Louis and be a starter. It’s his duty, they’d argue. He can be with his family when his baseball career’s over.

Then there are legions of others — myself included — who think that family comes first. Pedroia and his coach agree. Pedroia will be staying in Boston with his wife.

The Boston Globe had a good story on Pedroia’s decision.

Red Sox Manager Terry Francona, who helped Pedroia through his decision process, told the Globe: “I said, ‘Pedey, look. What’s the worst-case scenario if you don’t go to the All-Star Game? He said, ‘Well, I’m mad.’ I said, ‘What’s the worst-case scenario if you go and Kelli is not . . . ‘ And he said, ‘I can’t go.’ . . . I think he has been stressing about it. I think Kelli has been stressing about it. It’s not something he took remotely lightly at all. I know it’s the right decision. Because you can’t predict the future it’s the only decision.”

In a written statement, Pedroia said, “I am disappointed that I will not be able to enjoy the amazing experience with the other All-Stars, especially with my Red Sox teammates, but it is important that I put my family first at this time.”

I browsed through a number of Red Sox blogs, fan sites and the comments sections of news media sites and, with the rare exception of a few stray knuckleheads, people largely seem to be supportive of Pedroia. Which is a wonderful thing to behold.

Image credit: Jim Davis/The Boston Globe.

Item #1: Dear Summer

To: Summer, c/o Mother Nature

From: Meredith

Dear Summer,

Words cannot express how disappointed I’ve been with you in recent weeks. You’ve been dour and temperamental and unpredictable. You’ve been behaving like an insane toddler. Or Gov. Mark Sanford, whichever analogy works for you.

For weeks on end, you’ve given us gray days where the temps don’t exceed the 60s (sometimes many daylight hours have lingered in the 50s), not to mention the rain and the hail. It’s July in New England for goodness sake, what’s up with that?

I tried to revel in and deeply appreciate the beautiful weekend you bestowed upon New Englanders over the 4th of July holiday. While my husband and children enjoyed your outstanding weather at Fenway Park while they watched our beloved Red Sox win (a team for whom I know Mother Nature now roots, as does God), I celebrated you and your dear mom by finally filling the wooden window boxes on my house with thriving pink and white petunias. They looked fabulous. I even removed weeds from several locations around my front yard, though I’ve still got lots more to tackle in the back yard.

Then you proceeded to unleash two straight days of lightning, pounding rain and vicious hail which rendered those bright petunias in two of the window boxes destroyed. Plus, you ruined the afternoon of swimming my kids were counting on. (I’d been dangling the possibility of allowing them to go to the pool after I finished up some of work in order to get them to give me some peace, but by the time we were ready to leave, we heard the first crack of thunder.) You also flooded basements, back yards, streets and municipal buildings in the greater Boston area, causing loads of problems for people.

Did I mention that it’s July in New England, not March or April? On behalf of the Picket Fence Post family, I respectfully request that you start behaving in ways to which we’ve become accustomed. Either that, or take a Prozac, or Zoloft.

Yours truly,

Meredith

(more…)

I really have no good excuse for why I’m so dreadfully tardy in doing this “Friday Funnies” post. My weekend was insane. This past Friday, the day on which I usually do this, was packed with deadlines and To Do’s and, frankly, I haven’t been feelin’ the funny.

The Red Sox, however, cheered me up for a large part of the past few days, except for yesterday’s game – which I heard on the radio en route to the Picket Fence Post family’s bazillion activities – and about which we will not discuss thank you very much. But, better late than never, here are two Red Sox-related funnies for you to enjoy. Except if you’re NOT a Sox fan. In that case, you’ll have to obtain your moments of amusement elsewhere.

I first saw this “Blame It on the Rain”/Milli Vanilli satire on NESN on Saturday night during a rain delay. It’s a video where pitchers Jonathan Papelbon and Manny Delcarmen, along with Wally the Green Monster, lip synch the song while wearing goofy wigs and having water dumped on them. Priceless. The kids didn’t get it though. They’d never heard of Milli Vanilli. (Link to video here.)

Then there’s this classic post-2004 Red Sox World Championship MasterCard spoof with Denis Leary. Sure, it’s several years old, but it still makes me laugh. (Link to video here.)

Remember! Send your suggestions for a Friday Funnies post to me at: meredithobrien@hotmail.com.

Friday Funnies . . . because parents need to laugh. At least once a week.

The other day while writing about what a good time I had at the mom-centric comedy show “One Funny Mother,” I suggested that parents raising young kiddos – moms specifically – are in dire need of humor. And after last night’s Grey’s Anatomy manipulative weep-a-thon of a season finale that left me feeling dirty and used by the time 11 o’clock rolled around (this was on top of a trio of Boston sports losses with the Celtics, Bruins & Red Sox), I know that I certainly could use some funny.

That’s when I decided; we need the Friday Funnies. Once a week I’ll post something amusing on this blog, whether it’s parentally-related or not. It can be an anecdote, a video (one found online or made by me or a blog reader), a photo, anything that makes you crack a smile. Because when you’re told, “You’re the best mom” and “You’re the worst, meanest mom in the world” by the same individual within a 10 minute span, you could use a hearty chuckle AT LEAST once a week.

To commence the weekly Friday Funnies installment, I’ve selected two items for your viewing pleasure. They’re brief videos from the snarky parenting web site Babble’s “50 Funniest Kid Videos Ever” list.

Favorite number one is actually an ad for an insurance company, but the kids are adorable and ramble on innocently:

Favorite number two is a toddler Phillies fan “leading” a crowd in a cheer:

If you have any suggestions for an item for the Friday Funnies, please e-mail them to me at: meredithobrien@hotmail.com.

Friday Funnies . . . because parents need to laugh. At least once a week.

Item #1: Sad About Rem-Dawg

Fans of the Boston Red Sox had been curious as to the whereabouts of Rem-Dawg (Jerry Remy for the uninitiated). A Massachusetts native and former Sox player, Rem-Dawg has been doing color commentary for NESN Red Sox broadcasts for years with Don Orsillo. My kids watched their first Red Sox games with the down-to-earth Remy behind the mike.

Now we hear that Jerry Remy, a former smoker, is recovering from pneumonia and an infection that set in following lung cancer surgery late last year. He’s on an indefinite leave from NESN while he recuperates. In a statement on his blog, Remy said, “I hope that by stating all this publicly, it will emphasize the dangers of smoking to everyone, especially children.”

The Boston Globe last month did a big story on Remy in its Sunday Magazine where I learned a great deal about the guy. Good piece. Worth reading, though it didn’t include a peep about lung cancer which, apparently, Remy was keeping under wraps at the time.

Item #2: Disappointed in Manny

When news broke today that former Red Sox star – and a member of the brotherhood of 2004 and 2007 — Manny Ramirez, now a Dodger, has been suspended by Major League Baseball for 50 games for using performance enhancing drugs, I was really ticked.

I tweeted about it on Twitter and how The Girl (10), who’s a big Manny fan, would be disappointed when she learns the news. One of the responses I received was this: “How does your daughter feel about the elderly clubhouse guy Manny beat up last season? Sorry, he’s not a good person.”

Another person chastised me for allowing my daughter to be a Manny fan (though I suspect this person, a Sox fan, wasn’t exactly unhappy when Manny’s hits helped the Sox win games). He said, tongue-firmly-in-cheek: “Don’t you have any control [over] who [your] daughter idolizes? After he quit on the team last season you should have said, ‘Manny is a turd and anyone that mentions him in a positive light won’t watch TV for a week.’ End of story. You can save your daughter from being disappointed by [plural expletive] for a few more years.”

I thought about their visceral reactions to my Twitter lamentation for a bit, as well as the fact that I never shared the tale of the Manny altercation with The Girl when it happened. Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have burst her rose-colored glasses bubble about her favorite player a long time ago. But I didn’t. She was still mourning the departure of her first favorite Sox player, Nomar Garciaparra. (She walked around for at least two years wearing a Nomar/Chicago Cubs T-shirt feeling angry that he was no longer on the team.)  I didn’t want to harp on the ”Manny being Manny,” bird-dogging, childish behavior. Was I trying to protect her? I don’t know. You want to be the one to tell your 9-year-old that her favorite player is acting like a schmuck? Then, when Manny parted ways with the Sox last summer in the middle of our summer vacation, she was heartbroken.

Now that Ramirez has been found by MLB to have been using a banned substance, I’m going to have to tell her that he’s in the same boat as other disgraced baseball players whose names are mud in our house. Like Barry Bonds. It’ll be a tough conversation.

The world of sports fandom sure is a heck of a lot more complicated for her than it was for me when my player of choice was the low-keyed Dwight Evans. The consumption of banned drugs, high profile bad behavior, fights. Sounds more like Hollywood than Major League Baseball. Or at least it used to.

UPDATE: The Girl just came home from school. I told her about Manny, including the altercation from last year. She has since sadly retreated to her room.

Item #3: Mother’s Day Wishes

What do moms want for Mother’s Day? Well isn’t that that million dollar question, particularly on the Thursday before Mother’s Day? In my latest GateHouse News Service column, I assert that we could do all moms a great big Mother’s Day favor by being a whole heck of a lot more supportive of one another and a heap lot less judgmental. Those things don’t cost a cent.

Image credit: AP via ESPN.

The kiddos watched two out of the three Red Sox-Yankees games this weekend, after the Old Towne Team did some good old fashioned sweeping of the series.

During game one — which The Spouse was able to attend in the flesh (I would’ve attended had he not gotten the tickets last-minute, too late to rustle up babysitting so I could join him) — the kids watched until around 9 p.m. or so then caught the rest of the 4-hour-21-minute odyssey on the DVR the next day. (”YOUK!!!!” I e-mailed to The Spouse after Kevin Youkilis won the game for the Sox, cheering wildly by myself in the family room, not really caring if I woke the kids. I didn’t by the way.)

On Saturday, we all watched the beginning of the game together, set the DVR, then went out to dinner. (It was killing me to hear the folks in the restaurant’s bar cheering and yelling, so The Spouse pulled out his BlackBerry and we followed the game’s progress on that.) When we returned home, the five of us watched the rest of the 4+ hours of the game off the DVR. (Can you say “grand slam?”)

Last night, with a dreadful 8 p.m. starting time on ESPN, the kids didn’t get to watch any of the game. They had to get up early to return to school after a long spring vacation. (*kicking up my heels*)

Until today. When they saw the Big Play. You know the one. That steal. Of home plate. By Jacoby Ellsbury, he with the fleet feet.

The Youngest Boy and I watched the home plate steal on SportsCenter this morning after his siblings had already left for school.  The two fourth graders had to wait until after school to see the SportsCenter video, during which I beamed with enthusiasm as I watched them watching.  However The Eldest Boy complained that the ESPN clip didn’t provide a good view of the amazing feat. So we went searching on YouTube for another vantage point and found a poor quality clip of the play, but because it provided the best, overhead view of something,which I told the kids is very rare, we thought it was awesome. (The Red Sox web site, we found later, has the same video, but I couldn’t embed that video here.)

I’ve played this clip multiple times for the kids. It still makes me smile.