Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Embarrassment Campaign

 My latest GateHouse News Service column — in Parents & Kids Magazine this month — chronicles my campaign to embarrass my three children just simply by being me. I seriously don’t need to put any effort whatsoever into it. It just happens.

I specifically mention how The Youngest Boy this spring banned me from shouting or cheering for him when he was playing baseball (ask other parents, they’ll tell ya, I had to ask them to cheer on my behalf) and how the fact that my bathing suit tops expose some cleavage is horrifying to them. They prefer that I wear a burka, thank you very much.

Anyone else conducting a similar campaign with your kids, trying to embarrass them? Please, weigh in below in the comments section. There’s strength in numbers you know.

Item #2: Father-Daughter Tearjerker of a Column

I read a column, “Raising a Princess Single-Handedly” in the New York Times on Sunday about a father raising his 4-year-old daughter Madeline on his own after his wife, her mother, died, leaving them “living in a world we could not have imagined.” I found it poignant, particularly the way he can still see the silly, lighter side of every day.

“Madeline and I have a groove now. I always wake up before she does, and we take turns picking restaurants, outfits and movies. When we do have a crisis, it seems like the end of the world only for a few minutes.

The other morning I was frying bacon, drinking coffee and trying to scramble Madeline’s eggs. In a single moment of craziness, the bacon turned black, which triggered the smoke alarm. The eggs began welding themselves to the pan; the garbage bag I was tying split open at the bottom, covering my slippers in three-day-old linguine and rice pudding.

As I fanned the smoke detector furiously with a towel, Madeline rushed off the couch to see what was going on, tripped and spilled her orange juice on herself and the floor. From the corner of the kitchen, a little girl covered in juice looked up at her father and said, ‘We’re like clowns!’

I think it was Charlie Chaplin who said that close up, human life is tragic, but from a distance, it’s funny.”

Item #3: Sick Days

So I was that annoying parent who pestered my three kids’ teachers, principals and schools nurses with e-mails this past spring inquiring about the protocol for pre-lunch handwashing in light of the fact that there had been reports that the flu was going around. One of my kids’ two schools provided me with a satisfactory answer, while I learned that the other let students play outside for recess then come in for lunch with no stopping in between to wash hands before eating. (To put this in context, this wasn’t too terribly long after the Vice President was panicking everyone saying that he wouldn’t want to have anyone in his family in an enclosed public space lest they get sick.)

At the no-handwashing-before-lunch school, I was told my kid could independently carry anti-bacterial gel or excuse him or herself to go to the bathroom and clean his or her hands, even though none of their peers was doing it.

And wouldn’t ya know it, the mom who was harassing them about trying to use good hygiene to prevent the spread of illness has spent the better part of two weeks with various members of the Picket Fence Post family — myself included – sick with fevers, headaches and congestion. Between the sickness and the rainy, inclement weather, it’s been one heck of a lousy start to the summer vacation.

Item #1: Grandparents Want Hip Names

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about how I thought the media were unfairly maligning Baby Boomer grandparents — specifically grandmothers – portraying them as too narcissistic to be bothered to do “grandmotherly” duties and pitting them against one another.

This week I saw yet another grandparent-centric article which deepened my suspicion that the media have grown tired of the old working mom/at-home mom “mommy wars” and is trying to drum up some excitement for the so-called ”nana wars.” This page one article in the Boston Globe focused on the fact that some grandparents don’t want their grandkids to call them by traditional names and prefer either their first names or something quirkier, hipper. The article entitled, “They love being grandparents, but call them something else,” begun this way:

“As the youth-obsessed baby boomers advance, albeit reluctantly, into the next phase of their lives, they are embracing grandparenthood with the same gusto they have expressed for everything else, be it exercise or adventure travel. They’re loading the grandkids’ video games onto their own iPods, listening to their music, and taking them on trips.

But grandparenting comes with a catch: It means you are getting old — or at least older. And that’s not sitting well with a generation that grew up on The Who singing, ‘I hope I die before I get old.” Sure, they want to be grandparents. Just don’t call them that.”

The article offered examples of grandparents who prefer to be called by their first names or unusual monikers such as Bubbles, Sharky, Pebbles, Rock, Gram-E and Nanno. Somehow I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the this-generation-of-grandparents-isn’t-playing-by-the-so-called-”rules” stories.

Item #2: ‘Free’ the Kids

I’m currently finishing reading the book Free-Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy, with whom I’m hoping to conduct a Q&A for posting on this blog next week. She makes the compelling argument that we’ve become too over protective of our children in all areas of their lives. And she’s not the only one who thinks so.

In my June Parents & Kids Magazine column entitled, “Free the Children: Not a Slogan for This Generation of Parents,” I addressed how different childhood is for kids today versus when we were youths (like when my parents used to regularly send me to the store to buy them cigarettes whereas today they’d be jailed for doing so). The column calls attention to an incident this spring involving the police, a 10-year-old boy and a mother who let said boy walk down the street solo to soccer practice and got harassed about endangering her child.

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There’s nothing like sitting in a room full of people – most of whom are roughly in the same place you are in your life – and sharing laughter over the insanity of your common lot.

Like laughing at the fact that you’ve all lost your personal privacy. (Such as being in the bathroom and, while you’re USING the facilities, someone is on the other side of the door, screaming at you and demanding to know the whereabouts of ”the Star Wars guy.” The one with the gray helmet. And the black gun. Because you’re supposed to know. Because apparently you must have a GPS locator on that sucker and everything else in the house.)

Over how you used to feel hot and sexy, but now you drive a mini-van filled with kid crap, empty coffee cups and car seats.

Over the utter ridiculousness of some of the conversations you wind up having these days. (When you’re asked to field questions such as, “Which would you rather do, swim through a lake completely filled with dead poisonous snakes, or swim through a lake with one poisonous snake that’s still alive?” “Which would you rather do, eat snot or vomit?”)

Over your lack of sanity and your dearth of patience.

More than 200 women got to laugh for a solid hour last week in Natick, MA as comedian Dena Blizzard told jokes and bizarre-but-true stories about modern moms’ lives. Organized by the podcasting goddesses, the Manic Mommies (Erin and Kristin), Dena’s “One Funny Mother” show reminded me that the best antidote to feeling as though you suck as a parent (and I had fresh evidence last week which indicated a high level of parental suckitude on my behalf) is bawdy humor.

Before the show, I actually got to socialize (imagine, socializing someplace OTHER than on the sidelines of the youth soccer fields or baseball diamonds) with some cool moms, like the ones in the photo above. The photo has my friend Sharon, Manic Mommy Kristin, P&K  Mag editor Heather, and me, standing awkwardly, half leaning backwards for some unknown reason and trying not to spill my drink.

Afterwards, I decided that moms smack dab in the middle of raising kids are in dire need of enjoying more laughs like the ones Dena gave us that night. Maybe she could do a weekly comedic podcast or perhaps a videocast to which we could look forward.

 Or maybe I — and the community of parents who read this blog (and I know many of you by name) — should start something here on this web site, like a joke of the week, a weird story of the week.  Something. Don’t we need something? Anyone have any ideas on how we can keep the comedy vibe goin’?

In the meantime, be sure to check out the video samples of Dena’s comedy below. Warning: These clips are NOT appropriate for kids or for the workplace. They contain “adult” language. (Link to the first video here. Link to the second video here.)

Who among us hasn’t hosted or attended a holiday dinner/event from hell? I’ve had a number of them myself.

There was the year my grandfather died on Christmas morning . . . and no, he wasn’t run over by a reindeer walking home from my house Christmas Eve. And we didn’t debate what to do with his gifts, thank you very much.

There was the Christmas when my mother, sidelined by a neck injury, still managed to engage in a sweet potato tossing incident with my father and hurled the F-bomb at him, all while my then-fiance cowered in an adjacent room having overheard the whole exchange but was unable to flee because the only exit was through the kitchen.

We can’t forget Christmas Eve from two years ago where The Spouse and I hosted my family’s traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner for the first time. All was going swimmingly well until the moment I put down my fork at the end of the meal and I succumbed to a nasty case of what I believe was food poisoning that felled my father within hours. I spent Christmas lying in bed feeling like stuff you scrape off of the bottom of your shoe.

Then there was the year when my mother was recovering from a serious illness and my father, The Spouse and I had to call a plumber the night before Thanksgiving in order to fix the gas stove which I’d accidentally busted while trying to make a potato dish.

When my twins were 2, they literally ate decorations off of our Christmas tree, leaving it looking as though it had been ravaged by rampaging wild beasts.

There’ve been family gatherings punctuated by lovely arguments between relatives about the best, fastest route from point A to point B.

The list could go on and on.

But for you, my faithful Picket Fence Post readers, your holiday anecdote could pay off. Parents & Kids Magazine is having a special contest. The magazine is looking for funny, snarky or really interesting family holiday stories. Four winners will be selected and will each receive an autographed copy of my collection of humor/parenting columns, A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum, which is a testament to my life filled with snark, messy family gatherings and all manner of imperfection. E-mail your tale to: parentsandkids@cnc.com. The deadline is December 22.

Shameless self-promoting addendum: Copies of Suburban Mom would be fantastic — and inexpensive – Christmas or Hanukkah gifts (available via Amazon.com.) They would add some laughter to the life of a suburban mom you know and love, as well as provide relief that her parenting’s not as nutty as mine, as she’s free to laugh at my many foibles mentioned throughout the book. I’ve been told by moms who’ve read Suburban Mom that, because it’s a collection of brief columns, it’s easy to dip into when they’re out and about picking up kids from activities or while waiting in the car pool line.

In its October review of the book, a Literary Mama writer:

“In this collection, O’Brien adroitly handles the balance between relating what could have been tedious anecdotes about the specific frustrations and joys that come with three young children and offered a universal message. With essay titles like ‘The Scrapbooking Cult’ and ‘To Yell, Perchance to Scream,’ it’s easy to picture O’Brien as one of your funniest friends, the one who can make you laugh through your tears and shore you up with the all-important validation that you’re not alone.”

And by sharing YOUR holiday anecdotes, you’ll be doing the same thing . . . letting other moms know that they are not alone with their less-than-perfect family celebrations. I’ll post the winning ones — once Parents & Kids editor Heather Kempskie shares them with me – here on the blog.

Remember, by December 22 people!

Image credit: Wikipedia.

Item #1: Yuletide Simple

Still haven’t gotten anywhere with my Christmas cards, although I did spend two quality hours in Target yesterday racing around, trying to make sure I didn’t forget stuff. Have tons more to do. In the meantime, my plea for a simple Christmas is featured in this month’s Parents & Kids Magazine.

Item #2: Christmas Carol Reading

So, even though I’ve been aspiring for the Picket Fence Post family to have a holiday season filled with simple pleasures, I’ve been toying with the idea of reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol aloud to the kiddos. Wonder if they’d even be interested or if I’d be wasting my time trying to force a wholesome family moment?

Item #3: Mama Drama?

During Thanksgiving weekend in between our two family dinners, The Spouse and I stayed up way too late one night watching a string of Entourage in order to finish the fifth season of the HBO dramedy. After many hours of wallowing in the world of Entourage, we engaged in a ridiculous conversation about characters and who was most like whom. And that’s when The Spouse said I was most like Johnny Drama. (He, of course, fancies himself as Eric.) Then he put a twist on it. Started calling me Mama Drama. Sweet, huh?

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