Wily Sister

Yesterday I got an email from my sister. She sent along this photo. She says she climbed a mountain in Africa. But, this was obviously taken in front of one of those totally cool high tech green-screens inside a Universal Studio ride. What makes it so unbelievably realistic is that they had all the cool climbing gear (in her exact size), and a frosty wind machine to make her cheeks pink (just like on a real mountain summit), and they made her run for 2 hours uphill on a treadmill at the crack of dawn to get that just-finished-scaling-an-incredibly-steep-mountain-in-Africa in the wee wee hours of the morning look! Isn't it oddly realistic? It truly looks as if she physically climbed Kilimanjaro and got to the top of Uhuru Peak in Tanzania.

It's strange since she did mention a few times that she was "training" for some adventure or another - - and she did send a couple of odd emails about how she was leaving for Africa - - and she did post some emergency contact information surrounded by some blather about "just in case I run out of oxygen or slide down the side of a steep slope due to faulty ropes and ill prepared sherpas." What a great set-up, eh? She's wily, that sister of mine. All that prep work just to head to Florida to bask in the sun, play golf and spend the day at Universal at a photo shoot. Like I said, she's wily. Really wily.

So, to my super-adventurous sister I submit the loudest "YOP"! to you all the way to the continent of Africa!! It's an amazing accomplishment! You're the best big sister anyone could ask for. All that - - and you climb mountains too. I'm no where near even the tiniest bit surprised.

We are a model family

Over the weekend, we got the annual Cloz catalog. This is the vendor that sells all manner of required gear and clothing for the boys' summer camp. Cloz assists you (the parent) in successfully obtaining all the items listed on the very detailed four-page-Packing-List so that they (your campers) are sufficiently outfitted for their weeks of camp activities.

Truthfully, what this catalog really is is an opportunity to shell out $1000 on t-shirts, shimmer shorts, and sweatshirts bearing the required Camp X insignia. Camp X gear is mandatory. Apparently, only if campers are sporting the camp logo on a daily basis can they effectively bond with their camp mates and achieve the Camp X spirit that will foster them in to manhood full of high ideals and solid values. Only in a Camp X t-shirt will my sons truly embody the soul of the camp. Yup, alrighty then.


This will be my boys 4th year at Camp X. One would think that after 4 years of spending $1000 on camp wear we would be enjoy at least one year where we would have enough miscellaneous camp crap (I mean wonderous things) that we would be able to fulfill the four-page-Packing-List without having to order anything new. One would be wrong. Way wrong.

One would think that George the Younger would grow out if his things and Henry would grow in to them. One would be wrong there as well. Physically, this is a logical progression. Physically, it does happen with their normal daily at-home wear. In point of fact, Henry looks exactly like George did in 4th grade because he's wearing the same exact things George wore in 4th grade (although according to George, Henry looks like a Geek. In his mind's eye, he himself was significantly more stylish in those same clothes). But, camp-wear has unique properties that defy the laws of physics and logic. In other words, I still need to spend $1000.


First,I need to spend $1000 because there are Camp X activities which require the removal of camp gear sleeves. I get pictures from the camp nearly every day when they are gone. One day the pictures show all boys with sleeves on their shirts and the next day the photos capture a fair number of them in similar shirts curiously without sleeves. There are no photos of this mystical camp ritual where all sleeves are torn away. I guess it is worth noting that many of the boys are now sporting head-bands that strangely seem to be made out of the sleeve remnants. This camp ritual effectively renders said torn shirt useless for the next year's camping season. It is useless, since the same mystical ritual will happen again next year and you obvisouly cannot rip the sleeves off a shirt that already has no sleeves. Duh.

Second, each of them returns home after their camping experience with far fewer things than they left with. Camp is akin to a giant washing machine that systematically eats socks. Only this washing machine not only eats socks, but it consumes shirts, shorts and beach towels. Come to think of it, it has a special hankering for beach towels. We send 4 with each, they come back with one.

So, while I am peeved at having to order more shirts and shorts and, yes, head to Ikea where they sell the cheapest and most easily relinquished beach towels, Cloz does its best to make you feel a little better about it. How? They put your kid's pictures in the catalog.

Two years ago, George the Younger was on the cover. It was exciting for him, and somewhat humorous for us. Suffice to say that with the obvious exception of our two guys, the campers at Camp X were mainly nice Caucasian boys from the East Coast. Interestingly, they choose a photo of George for the cover. More interestingly, the diversity of the camp has broadened significantly over the past years. Obviously, a picture is worth a thousand new campers. Or so the adage goes. And more campers = more Cloz gear. Yippee! Everyone's a winner here.

Anywho, this year, both of the guys made the catalog. There was much oohing and awing! Look! We are FAMOUS!! George the Younger is highlighted on the sock page. I am curious whether this was intentional. Historically I have never ordered socks from their outfit. According to the four-page-packing-list, I am required to send 20 pairs of socks to camp. Upon returning, George the Younger typically brings home about 5 full pairs of socks of his own and about 10 odd socks of unknown origin. All look like they were used to clean the latrines while they were there. I buy the cheapest disposable socks I can find.

Henry made the back page. He is wrapped in a Cloz towel. This is the one towel that I ordered from Cloz the first year and it has made it back and forth from camp for three consecutive summers. It is undoubtedly a magical towel.

Procrastination

Today I am procrastinating. Procrastination is one thing I am very good at doing. If there is a task that lacks the spark that I might find self-satisfying, I am an expert at putting it at the end of my to-do list.

I need to do insurance stuff. We have been living without "stuff" insurance since we moved to SF. Last night while we were watching TV, the couch started shaking in that "is this the beginning of the BIG ONE??" way and I realized that in the event of THE BIG ONE, or even the small one, we would be woefully under insured. Woefully as in - -we don't even have coverage for a wooden spoon in the kitchen. Turns out that the "Big One" was just George shaking his foot back and forth. So after I began clutching the sides of the couch waiting for the tremor to get bigger and the house to slide off its foundation, I ended up just punching him in the arm and telling him to CUT IT OUT! Yet, it reminded me that I need to get on the horn and get some damn insurance.

So, now I need to hunt through our paperwork and locate the home inventory. We have this. People who move often always have this. An itemized inventory of every single thing in their homes. You need this in the event that all of your possessions are mistakenly dumped in to the ocean during their transit from one country to another. Containers of household goods have been known to fall off ships. Yet, while I know that we have this full and detailed inventory, I need to take the 15 excruciating minutes to try and locate it in the paper file that I surely labeled aptly at the time but is probably named "London" or "San Francisco" or "Whatnot" which will not make sense now but surely did then. Either that, or I need to navigate through copious computer files and programs to print a new one. Not appealing. Hence the lack of "spark" in the task.

I also need to make an appointment for the car to get its "check-up". They have written me a letter, which I ignored. They have had their automated calling center call me twice. I have ignored them. Why? First, we haven't yet achieved the full 5,000 miles necessary to warrant the service. But, more importantly, I am not eager to spend the morning hanging out in a coffee shop in a not-so-great part of SF without wheels. I suspect that they have a Lend-a-car program, but see how that falls in to the "no spark" category?

So, now that I have taken the time to write this tiny entry, I have successfully extended my procrastination period another 15 minutes. Go me. Now I will head off to clean the bathroom downstairs. It appears that I am willing to do most anything to avoid tackling the insurance issue or make an appointment for the car. My priorities are not aligned.

Play it Again Sam

George the Younger has been begging for a Facebook account. According to him, EVERYONE he knows has one and he is the ONLY ONE who is not allowed to have one. All I can say is, "well, here we go again."

Here we go again in the sense that I have walked this lonely road before. EVERYONE was mentioned a least nine hundred thousand times when Shannon was wrestling, meandering, and striding through her pre-teens and regular-teens. "EVERYONE" I have come to understand can mean anywhere from a single friend to say, three friends. It never truly means EVERYONE. "EVERYONE" doing something is statistically impossible.

In George's case, I have come to understand that EVERYONE he knows that has a Facebook account is the sum total of three guys in his class. Three guys who also have I-phones, very expensive clothing and everything that they could ever want or ask for. Want a new phone, electronic gadget, $100 hat or sweatshirt. Sure! Why not? As for me, George needs an I-Phone like he needs growth-hormone therapy and since he grows out of his clothes so often I shop at Old Navy. Yes, I know, he is deprived and child services should be contacted immediately.

The thing about Facebook is that they have rules. Hard to believe, but they do. You have to be 13 to open a Facebook account. Having an account of my own, I know why this is. Hell, at the age of 49 I have trouble deciding whether or not to add the "bumper sticker" application or what the whoody-hell I am supposed to do with friends who request that I be-friends-with-other-people-that-I-would-really-prefer-not-to-be-friends-with-at-all-because-they-are-not-really-my-friends. You know, in that "we are friends" in real like life kind of way.

It occurs to me that Facebook may need to add a new category. Friends and then Acquaintances or more aptly, Electronic Acquaintances. This way, you would monitor the difference between people that you actually care to hear from or hear about, as opposed to letting Ivanka I-Don't-know-who-you-are in on everything. Like why would Ivanka want to see my photos. So she can recognize my children when she is stalking me?

So, since I have trouble coping with the attributes of Facebook - the security, the friend-thing, the people who share too much or too little - - I am even more firmly fixed on my decision not to let George the Younger in on this big world-wide electronic party. So, he is pouting. Break out the violins - learn to play the sad, sad song with righteous indignation about how the Mom is keeping you down. Keep practicing, you will need to know it well over the next several years. You will be playing this song a whole, whole lot.

George the Younger will have to live his life as the ONLY ONE who does not have a Facebook account. At least for the next 6 months. When, according to Facebook he will have the necessary maturity to navigate the tricky world of electronic friendships. Should I tell George now that he can have one at 13 as long as I get the password and can monitor his account until I am confident that he is acting responsibly? I'm gonna go with "probably not" at this point. I will fight that fight on September 1st. You may be able to hear the sad, sad, violin song from wherever you are that day.

The Postman Cometh

The divergences of overseas life as compared to US living can often be exemplified by the little things. The minutia of everyday life that one, who has never left, would never consider. One of those things is the receipt of mail. Sure, the stamps were different, but what I'm talking about here is the stuff found in your mail box every day.

First, you got letters from friends who still cotton to the art of the personal Letter. I love those people - - in fact, who do you know that doesn't like to get a "real" letter in the mail? Why do you think that we all love Christmas? Letters! Second, of course I was getting my weekly crack-habit of People Magazine. But since my mag was delivered at least 30 days behind schedule, it was akin to living in a virtual dentist's office where old magazines come to die. As a result, I tended not to want to hear, for instance, when Ellen had come out of the closet. In my overseas world she was still stuck in there arranging hangers for at least another month. Finally, you received Bills. However, often times given language constraints, it may not have been immediately apparent that they were, in fact, requests for payment.

You didn't know that they were Bills until one day when you consciously acknowledged that unlike sorting through the mail here in the U.S. what you are not having to rifle through is the aptly categorized Junk Mail. That's right folks, being an expatriate means that your daily receipt of Junk Mail is pretty much nil. Hence, if the item did not fall in to the category of Magazine or Letter, then you could be reasonably assured that it was likely a Bill. Bills were quickly taken to my secretary for translation and handling. If it was not a bill, it was highly probable that is was some official government agency explaining in exquisite detail that you forgot to register at your local Office for Foreigners - - and then you could tip your head in that doggie way that indicates confusion and wonder - - if they know I am a foreigner why are they sending me stuff only in Japanese or German? Yet, I deviate from my topic...

(A quick note before I continue: In London we did get some Junk Mail, however it was unlike US Junk Mail in that it consisted mainly of 1)people putting lots of crap through your mail slot - i.e. not really mail per say, but Junk Hand Delivery, and 2) Real Estate magazines. Nice big glossy magazines showcasing lovely pictures of London flats for the bargain basement price of a decamillion pounds for 1,000 sq ft.)

But getting back to the mail here. These days my mail consists generally of a copious number of fliers for products I have no interest in purchasing and usually cannot figure out who would really want this (a stand alone Amish fireplace heater?), requests for donations to any number of worthwhile charities (but gee golly, I've plenty of return address labels), enough credit card application offers that my shredder is 90% composed of tiny little shreds of paper from Capital One and Citigroup, and of course catalogs.

It's highly likely that I'm preaching to the choir here, but aren't there days when there is not a single worthwhile thing in your mailbox? At the end of a week, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some disparate percentage of my recycling bin is composed of bunkum I got in the mail that I didn't ask for, want or more importantly, need.

(Another note: You may have observed that I did not bellyache about Catalogs. Sadly, I actually missed them in my absence. I've only been back several months, and since then I have been scratching an itch I didn't know was there. I'll get back to you in 6 months when the catalog influx has increased thanks to the wonderful world of Address Sharing. At this point the only thing that concerns me is LLBean. They send out a fair number in a month selling practically the same thing in each one. They must think consumers are stupid and need lots and lots of reiteration before we finally decide to purchase those rubber boots.)

It's about at this point where you are now wondering, "What is her point? Who cares about the mail, junk or other wise?" Well, I'm getting there. It's about an "offer" I got in yesterday's mail. There I was looking for Henry's report card and instead, I got an open-handed slap of reality. Should I still be living overseas, I would not have seen this. It was definitely something I didn't ask for, want, or more importantly, need. It was this:

Please note that my name is etched in the same little white box with the words "Senior Citizen Offer". Please note that it is for a magazine called "Sunset" - as in "the sunset of our lives" or some other euphemistic blather. Slap. slap and bigger slap!! Would I have been happier to get the letter that stated, "Hey you old bag, guess what? In just a few short months you will be able to get cheaper movie tickets and want to eat dinner at 5:00 in the afternoon! Our magazine can help you with that transition!"? In fact, it did say that, but with fewer words. Is it because us Senior Citizens can't concentrate that long?

So, no this post wasn't really about the mail. It's about the not so subtle ways that you can be reminded that you are no Spring Chicken. It's about the fact that when you take that walk to the mailbox you can be feeling youthful and sprightly. You are infused with that unrealistic internal vision of yourself practically glowing at the age of 25. It's about how you then shuffle aimlessly away from that same mailbox with an imagined dowagers hump, craving some butterscotch hard candy that you wished you now kept in a little dish on the coffee table - - right next to your AARP card and your monthly copy of Sunset Magazine. Damn that Junk Mail!

The Maid's Nose

Oddly, I have been living under the (obviously) misguided notion that upon reaching the second half of my life (assuming a nearly 100 year life span) that one of the things that I should no longer have to worry about are pimples. Pimples as in what appears on a hormone permeated 15 year old's face.

But noooooo. Today I am sporting not one, not two, not even three, but four real beauties. I practically have a small mountain range on my face. I am thinking of naming it. Something snappy like the foothills of the "Yuve Goda Be Shitten Mi."

For starters, I have enough crows feet surrounding my eyes to handily meet the requirements of your classic nursery rhyme black-bird pie. Four and twenty birds - - that means 24 total birds possessing 48 total feet. Okay, it is possible that I could sport two avian stuffed pies. One for each eye. In what scenario should pimples be emerging on this same multiple pie yielding face? I can think of not a one, and yet the damn things are there.

I was lamenting my malady at dinner, and "malady" is what I'm labeling this as surely I am not going through puberty again. There is no omnipotent being so spiteful, so damning that it would thrust puberty on a creature twice - - even if that creature were just a meager human being. So assuming a kinder, gentler omnipotent being, I'm lamenting this at dinner and whining about how I think I am going to have to actually go to a drugstore to get both Clearasil and cover-up.

The dinner conversation subject eventually changed to my questioning George-the-Younger as to whether he had fully completed gathering his science fair testing stuff. George said "yes", but in that way that a mother immediately knows that he has gotten his stuff together with about the same likelihood as he has recently graduated from medical school at the age of 12 by studying on the internet. Not. So, I said, "Do you think that I fell off the turnip truck yesterday?" And quick as you can say who's-your-momma, Henry pipes up with, "No, but it sure looks like you were hit by it!"

What speedy witty repartee comes from my little impudent child. And who knows if he even connected the earlier conversation regarding my spotted complexion or if he was just focused on the topic at hand. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter because I will log this little comment away the way that only a woman can. And I will dredge it up later. That's right, go ahead and tease me my little future pizza face. Those foothills of ""Yuve Goda Be Shitten Mi" have a tricky way of showing up on other continents.

Our first "Superbowl"

Tomorrow is the big day. The Steelers play the Cards. This Superbowl is the first one for George the Younger. Since returning to the States, US football is one of the things that just rings his bell.

I wonder, of late, whether his love of the game is a "genes by osmosis" kind of thing for him. I come from a HUGE football family. Thanksgiving dinners were planned and executed with game times being the most critical work-around obstacle. Nary a bird would be carved nor a cranberry consumed if there was a pigskin on the move. God forbid the man holding the electric carving knife got over excited by a play. Fingers could be lost, families shattered. Most Americans have heartwarming memories of the Thanksgiving feast (oyster stuffing or no?), the familial conversations (how's school, look how short you've gotten), the extended family enveloping them (three, count them three great-grandmothers at one table!). These are profoundly woven in to the warp and woof of my own thanksgiving memories, but so is the sight and sound of all of my uncles rising up in unison and screaming, "RUN you son-of-a-bitch...RUN!!"

To further illustrate the family love of both football and, specifically the Steelers (since I suspect that many Turkey dinners are served at odd hours thanks to fluctuating time zones and game times), my family owned a "Steeler Vehicle". Yup, they had an RV for the sole and singular use of tailgating at the Steeler home games. Or at least that's that way I remember it. Dem Steeler fans really take their pre-games seriously. And since it's pretty dang cold in Pittsburgh - - why, of course it makes sense to have the necessary vehicle in which to enjoy hanging out in a massive asphalt parking lot while maintaining the appropriate body temperature without having to rely strictly on alcohol consumption. To my knowledge, this vehicle was never used for anything but driving the 20 miles to Three Rivers and for housing the necessary vittles and libations to last until kick-off.

If George the Younger were to have lived during this past-history-time of my life, he would be existing in a world that simply couldn't get any better. A group of people who not only share his new love of the game, but also buy vehicles in which to transport themselves to the games. Simply heaven.

And so, George-the-younger-now-extreme-lover-of-football waits for kick-off tomorrow afternoon. Conveniently, this will happen a little earlier for us on the West Coast than for most of my family in the East. We don't have nearly as long to wait, or as many nachos to consume until the Steelers have the opportunity to beat the living crap out of those pansy Cardinals.

And you know what's somewhat ironic about this? I don't really follow football. I grew up with it having great weight and meaning. It's likely that I will lose some points with the fam when I confess that I don't get what the whole big thing is during the regular season. I have never owned, nor will I ever own a piece of football logo gear. But, there's something about the Steelers that brings back wondrous memories of home - and so I'm jumping in with both feet for this game. Further, I know that if I don't start showing a modicum of enthusiasm for the game that my son adores, who obviously got them game-lovin'-genes from my uncles in some amazing non-biological DNA transfer, he will think I'm a real loser. Can't have that happening. So - I'm waving that terrible towel and it wouldn't be a total shock if George-the-Younger just happened to get a Steeler's jersey in the near future.