HOLLY GOES LIGHTLY

To Kiss a Thief

2012-02-14T07:00:00.001-05:00

It’s Valentine’s Day. If you’re single or your husband is a boob who’s out of town, hanging out with flirty political operatives, worry not. We have this guy:

It is time for my annual Valentine’s Day homage to Cary Grant’s kisser, observed last Valentine’s Day in the film Notorious.

I’ll be honest. Nothing can beat the smooch in Notorious. But this scene from To Catch a Thief is classic.

Cary Grant plays John Robie, a retired cat burglar living in the Riviera. Because if you were a retired cat burglar, isn’t that where you’d settle? You should see his digs. What a view. And we’re not even talking about Grace Kelly yet.

Unfortunately, a copycat burglar is putting Robie’s freedom at risk, so he sets out to catch him (or her) by tailing potential wealthy victims. One such victim is Francie Stephens, played by the incandescently beautiful Grace Kelly. In the following scene, she tantalizes him with (fake) diamonds.

The fireworks are, um, suggestive.

Oh, you're welcome.

For Valentine's Day

2012-02-13T11:10:00.000-05:00

The husband is out of town half the week, so I was seriously contemplating posting a song full of angst and resentment, like that song Adam Sandler sang in The Wedding Singer after his fiance left him at the altar.

I was feeling a little sad and abandoned.

Then I thought maybe I was being a tad dramatic. After all, I get to spend Valentine's Day with four of the biggest lovebugs I've ever met. We're going to make cupcakes and cookies and watch Kiah the Wonder Dog chew her beef-flavor infused Valentine's Day dog bone. Also, we're going to fold some laundry. Any Valentine's Day that includes a beef-flavor infused Valentine's dog bone and laundry folding is bound to be glorious.

Today, I'm posting the most beautiful love song I know. The one I sing to my kids each night:

"The Talk"

2012-02-08T14:29:00.005-05:00

“How do babies get into their mother’s tummy?”

“Ask your father.”

This exact conversation has been going on since Caleb was 5. And I still refuse to have “the talk” with him.

I know. I’m a terrible, horrible parent. And it’s not that I’m a prude, but… Fine. I’m a complete and total prude. Not too much of a prude, obviously (4 kids in 4 years and all that),but let’s just say I don’t feel comfortable hearing about the ins and outs of your sex life and I’d rather keep the ins and outs of mine to myself, thank you very much. No pun intended.

Last week, we introduced Caleb to a guy in his mid-thirties who has a newborn baby at home. His first child.

“See Caleb,” we said, “we had you when we were really young. Some people our age are just starting to have babies!”

"Wait,” said Caleb. “You get to choose when you have a baby? What do you do, just say, I’m ready to have a baby and one just starts growing in your stomach?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s exactly how it happens,” I said.

I realize how wrong I am to do this. Yet I can’t seem to help myself. Case in point: I’ve never told Ella the proper name for her girl parts, so she refers to that area as her penis. Can you imagine how awkward it is for me in the little girls room with a four-year old who’s asking me to help wipe her penis?

Some parents choose to give their kids private parts silly names, like “pee-pee” or “pooter” or “woo-woo.” Others insist on using proper scientific nomenclature. I could never decide, so I opted out of calling Ella’s anything. And now I’m paying for it in a big way.

John’s no better. I told him it was time to have “the talk” with Caleb.

“No,” he said. Just no. End of discussion.

He is a horrible, terrible parent.

We have to have the talk soon, however, because any day now he could hear all sorts of weird, misinformation on the big yellow school bus, or, as I call it, the den of iniquities.

"Mom. I heard that boys need to stick their penises in a girl's belly button and a tiny baby shoots out and gets planted in her stomach. Is that true?"

(I may or may not have heard that in the den of iniquities when I was in elementary school.)

I imagine that having “the talk” is like jumping into a chilly swimming pool. It’s so hard to make that initial jump, but after you do it, you’re fine with swimming around for a bit. In other words, relaying the nuts and bolts of sex (no pun intended) seems terrifying. But after I take that jump, I can see myself having healthy, normal conversations about sex and relationships and all that stuff with Caleb. I just don’t want to take that initial jump. I really don’t. Especially when I read things like this was so-called professionals:

Dr. Berman says making them feel good about themselves is key. "Feeling good about their bodies. Feeling good about their genitals. Feeling good about their sexual function. Feeling empowered about who they are as people and as sexual beings. And then that makes the path so much easier when they're in their teen years."

Feeling good about their genitals? I’m suspicious of her whole thesis, here. I get where she’s coming from, but dear God. As if relaying the ins and outs (no pun intended) wasn’t hard enough, you want me to help my kids feel good about their genitals? I can’t even say genitals. I can type it, but just barely.

And if, in this poorly conceived analogy, my standing at the edge of a diving board for a good 20 minutes is akin to finding the nerve to explain the birds and the bees, when the day comes I’m going to stand looking dumbly at Caleb for a good twenty minutes before I sputter something like, “When two people have sex, here’s what happens (insert what happens here. No pun intended.) Having a baby is a decision not to be taken lightly you need to know that there are ramifications to actions and that you should never have sex until you’re at least 30 and you should be married and you might have something called wet dreams and that’s okay and talk to your father about the rest. Glad we had this talk.” And then I’ll catch my breath and resume treading water. Because raising kids is exactly that: treading water for the rest of your life, hoping you don’t get too tired.

I really don't want to do this! (The sex talk part, not the raising kids part. Also, I lied. All puns were intended.)

It's not a party until...

2012-02-06T10:38:00.008-05:00

... your six-year old has diarrhea all over your friend’s bathroom floor.

But that was later in the evening.

Before the diarrhea came the chicken wings.

We begin on Saturday evening, when our family went to eat out at Quaker State and Lube, which is supposed to have the best chicken wings around. Unfortunately, the wings were not up to par. They were overcooked and, for a place that has the word “lube” right there in their name, incredibly dry.

“This is unusual,” John insisted. “They are not up to par.”

“Denny’s wings are better than these,” I said.

Yesterday, we had big Super Bowl plans, and I set our to prove that I could make better chicken wings than the ones that had been served at Quaker State and Lube. ("They're usually so much better than that," said John. "They really weren't up to par.") I was going to follow the traditional Frank’s Red Hot recipe, but John had a better idea. He had read about the “best way to make Buffalo wings” from a guy who writes for Deadspin. I was strongly encouraged to follow said recipe.

The Jamboroo is a weekly Deadspin column written by Drew Magary, whose book The Postmortal I received for Christmas. (Thanks Lisa!) I actually had no idea he was a sports writer, so this was an odd coincidence. Recently, Magary gave 20 rules for having a Super Bowl party, including: You must have a high definition television. Do not mix partisan and nonpartisan guests. Buy a plunger. Mandatory food items: Wings, Nacho Cheese Doritos, Nachos, chips and salsa, chili, guacamole, eight foot long italian sub, cookies, jar of frosting with spoon in it (for me only). Always keep a separate room to stage monkey fights in. Etcetera, etcetera… all very practical suggestions. I would’ve totally have fought him over the jar of frosting with spoon in it. We ignored his no kids rule, however, and found out how very wise he actually was in making these rules. Comes from years of experience, I suppose.

Anyway, the wings. My initial plan had been to use the slow cooker, but the slow cooker was dismissed as “disgusting” and “what are you completely crazy, are you not even from western New York you idiot?” by both a beloved family member and the internet.

I found Magary to be an irreverent chef with a foul mouth. Rachael Ray he is not. Nonetheless, I had great success with his baked chicken wing recipe. Here is a modified version. (I improved it even further- no kidding!):

Buy a club pack of cheapo wings from your local favorite spot to buy club packs. Take (thawed) wings and mix them with olive oil (2-3 TB) and Adobo seasoning ( 2-3 TB; found in the ethnic section, by all the Goya.)

Line a casserole dish with tinfoil, and make sure it is covered with olive oil so the wings don’t stick. You don’t want to lose the skin! You can also line the dish with parchment paper to avoid using extra oil, but the tinfoil makes the wings crispier. Yum.

Bake chicken wings at 400 degrees for 40 minutes, flipping halfway through.
Meanwhile, melt a stick of butter and mix with half of a large bottle of Frank Red Hot, less if you prefer “mild” wings, more if you prefer “hot.”

When wings are done, douse those suckers with the buffalo wing sauce. Stick them back in the oven for another 20-30 minutes, reducing heat to 300 degrees. This allows the sauce to really bake into the wings. You will have plenty of sauce left over for dipping.

Serve with blue cheese dressing and celery. Impress friends and family. Become referred to by all as “the wing lady.”

Ben possibly ate too much junk food. While my girlfriends and I were doing our Superbowl thing, i.e. playing Rummikub and deciding that Madonna looked like person whose chiropractor had told her to take it easy that night, Ben was sampling the chicken wings, the éclair cake, the chips and dip, cheese balls, cupcakes, cookies, etc. Hence, the diarrhea on my poor friend’s bathroom floor.

We took the kids home after that incidence, right before the end of the third period. The three boys were determined to stay awake to see whether or not Tom Brady would fail and take his anger out on his model girlfriend. 2/3rds didn't make it:

Caleb is glad to see the Giants win.

Today's song is, of course, from Queen. Sorry Patriots fans.

I've heard this song dozens of times in my lifetime, but I've never seen this video. Holy cow, what is he wearing. It's audacious, even for a gay man. And there are an alarming number of men without shirts on in the audience.

All I Know About Hockey I Learned From The Mighty Ducks

2012-02-03T10:23:00.003-05:00

When deciding whether or not to accompany John to various soirees, I seriously consider two things: the horrors of mingling versus good food. Sometimes the food comes out on top. Sometimes it doesn’t. On Wednesday night, the food was linked to a free Sabres game, so I went. I had a massive hankering for a stadium cheeseburger.

I had a bad day Wednesday. My cowlick refused to conform to the basic architecture of my head, I had a huge zit right smack in the middle of my forehead, my kids were completely stir-crazy, and I’d received what I’m sure are the first of many rejections in the mail. Writing rejections are the worst. There’s no sugarcoating. They never say, “It’s not you, it’s us.” They might as well write the following:

Holly,

It’s not us, it’s totally you.

This isn’t what we’re looking for at all.

I guess you can submit again sometime, but get a clue first. Sheesh.

From,
A very, very mean editor.

Little did they know I would later attend Buffalo’s most highfalutin event on a Wednesday evening. That’s right. My day was bound to get better!

And what does the stay-at-home mom wear to a post-work highfalutin event at a hockey arena? These are the types of fashion questions that boggle my stay-at-home mom mind. John intended to go in his suit. If I had gone in a suit, people would’ve assumed I’d come from work. I would be faced with awkward, “What do you do?” questions. So, I opted for jeans, a nice top, and high-heeled boots. I made John change into khakis and a sweater.

We were very underdressed. And there were no cheeseburgers. Just a lukewarm pasta bar. I shook hands with one of the most powerful men in New York State government, and stood by sanguinely while John chatted with Mayor Brown and former Mayor Masiello, who shook my hand and told me it was lovely to see me again.

We’ve never met.

“The food here sucks,” I told them. “I want a cheeseburger.” (I didn't really say that. But I was thinking it.)

One state legislator shook my hand for what seemed an excessive amount of time and then gave me his card, and told me to call him if I needed anything, anything at all. The card is still in my jacket pocket, and I intend to use it the next time I get lost in Buffalo.

“I'm looking for the exit to 33. No, I don’t need a GPS; I have your business card.”

At least there was the hockey game to look forward to! And we had great seats. Unfortunately, we were seated next to a perfect contender for that show Girls Gone Wild, and she also happened to be a Rangers fan. In the middle of the first period, we moved down and proceeded to watch the most boring hockey game that has ever not been broadcast on Time Warner Cable.

Luckily, at the beginning of the second period, Buffalo’s only gay, black, die-hard Sabres fan joined us, automatically raising our spirits, warming me up with a good cuddle, and flamboyantly explaining the makeup of the Sabres’s fourth line, which was helpful because even though I’ve watched hundreds of Sabres games over the past 15 years, I still don’t know what icing is.

“Icing! Icing!” I yell.

“That’s not icing,” says John.

“High sticking, then? Was it high sticking?”

Honestly, everything I know about hockey I learned from the Disney film The Mighty Ducks.

“Treat it like an egg, Gerbe! You’re not treating the puck like an egg! Form the flying V! Where’s the flying V? Why don’t they ever do the flying V?”

This is when John buries his face in his hands and doesn’t come up for a while. Gay, black, die-hard Sabres fan wasn't embarrassed to be seated next to me. We scorned the hot Rangers fan and yelled at Ryan Miller for his lazy goal-keeping.

On the way home, John and I listened to a most excellent podcast called, “How Did This Get Made?”, a show that discusses movies so terrible they’re amazing. They deconstruct gems like “Jingle All the Way,” “Twilight,” and “Superman 3.” We listened to the podcast about "Superman 3", or, "Superman: The One Where Supes Gets all Rapey."

On Wednesday night, I took a gamble, and I chose food over the horrors of mingling. And I lost that bet. But I had a good time anyway.

Mayor, it was lovely to see you again, too.

The Introvert Lost

2012-01-30T10:50:00.003-05:00

“But small talk with stiff-backed strangers at a swanky cocktail party is by far my least favorite part of my job. Send me to a famine of a flood and I’m comfortable. A few rounds of the room at a social event, however, leave me exhausted.” Bryan Walsh, The Upside of Being An Introvert (And Why Extroverts are Overrated) Time Magazine

In middle school, Horizon Skate was the place to be on a Friday night. In those days, Horizon was a dark, dank, foggy with smoke destination where a deejay played a rotating assortment of pulsating top 40 hits. Every single kid piled onto the rink whenever he played The Beach Boys’ Kokomo. As an interminably shy 12-year old who would never quite fit in, but who kind of wanted to, I went a couple of times. I found the whole experience to be emotionally draining.

20+ years later, Horizon is pretty much the same, minus the smoke. I know because I lost Ben there on Saturday afternoon.

Rather, “they” lost Ben on Saturday afternoon. I was just there to pick my kid up from a birthday party. The host had no idea where he was.

“He’s around somewhere,” she said.

“Somewhere” was a vast area mobbed with elementary school-aged kids maneuvering about the place in roller skates, playing arcade games in wobbly roller skates, trading tickets for prizes in wobbly roller skates, and drinking large sodas in wobbly roller skates. In other words, Horizon Skating Rink is the fifth circle of hell.

I went to the laser tag room: no Ben. I checked in the jungle gym area: no Ben. I checked in the arcade: no Ben. (I did, however, get hit in the thigh with a skee ball.) I sat and stared at the kids circling around and around on the skating ring, twisting and shaking to a Justin Bieber song. No Ben.

I noted the many unguarded exits, the strange men loitering in the vicinity, seemingly enraptured with whatever was on their cell phones. I watched people pour in and out of the front door.

I began to become unhinged.

They called his name over the intercom. Three times. He didn’t show.

Eight employees on walky-talkies were deployed to find him.

“He’s wearing a blue shirt, jeans, has blonde hair, and he’s six. He’s only six,” I blubbered.

We found him waiting in line with his arcade tickets to redeem his prize of two small rubber lizards, one of which would consume the other in the van on the way home.

“Did you hear them call you name?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you go to the snack bar?”

“What’s a snack bar?”

I was livid. I was angry at the hosts of the birthday party, angry at Horizon for not being militant about the entry and re-entry of their most precious clientele, but mostly angry at Ben for his complete apathy regarding my near breakdown.

So I did anything a mom with a bruised thigh courtesy of a rogue skee ball angry with her child for running off would do: I took Ben to the store and bought him copious amounts of candy and treats.

The prodigal son came home.

Later that evening, I accompanied John to a swanky ball at the convention center. I acquiesce to being John’s date if he follows one rule: he does not leave my side.

The event, of course, had an endless shrimp cocktail bar, and who can resist endless shrimp cocktail? I sure can’t.

“I’m going to get more shrimp cocktail,” I told John. When I returned to where he was, he was gone.

I did a lap around the room. No John. Another lap. No John.

I was starting to become unhinged. It appeared everyone in the room was comfortably chatting with someone they knew intimately while I was wandering around, lost and unbridled.

I finally found him talking to friends in the complete opposite corner from where I had last seen him. He greeted me like I was another acquaintance on the VIP floor, completely unaware that I was yay-close to dissolving into a weepy puddle in the middle of the ballroom floor.

I read the above-quoted article in Time Magazine with interest. (Also learned in Time Magazine: The Miller’s grizzled langur monkey, believed to be extinct, was recently found in Borneo, in areas it had never inhabited before. Good news for grizzled langur monkey fans!)

While the extrovert (i.e., my husband) becomes energized in large social situations, the introvert becomes emotionally taxed. While extreme shyness is hopefully a thing of my past, according to the innie or outie quiz in the magazine, I am a hard-core introvert. And it can be difficult to be an introvert in an extrovert’s world. (There are those, of course, who fall in the middle of the spectrum. They are called ambiverts.)

“From the moment we wake up to the second we go to sleep- preferably after relaxing with a book in bed- introverts live in an extrovert's world, and there are days when we’d prefer to do nothing more than stay at home. But while our temperaments may define us, that doesn’t mean we’re controlled by them- if we can find something or someone that motivates us to push beyond the boundaries of our nerves. I’m happy to be an introvert, but that’s not all I am.”

Next Saturday, I choose to stay home. Ben’s staying home too. And there’s nothing at all wrong with that.

Your happy song of the week is a request by Miss Corrie: “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees, a song, I think, that speaks to introverts and extroverts and even ambiverts alike.

Take the quiz: Are you an introvert or an extrovert? http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/27/quiz-are-you-an-introvert-an-extrovert-or-an-ambivert/

Elladay Part 2

2012-01-27T16:15:00.002-05:00

In the waiting room, a group of girls were playing with a train track. Ella marched right up to them and said,

“Hey girlfriends!”

Have I mentioned how much I love her? How her exuberance and passion for life brightens dreary January days?

She shucked her coat and joined them. She didn’t seem to notice that they were staring at her incredulously. She wouldn’t care if she knew. Life, to Ella, is too wonderful to give heed to the criticisms of her peers. Life is shiny, brand new every day, and she greets each day with a smile as big as Texas.

Remove her from the fun before she’s ready though and Houston, we have a problem.

Today, we found out that Ella has a significant hearing loss in her right ear. Her hearing is just in the normal range in her left ear. Without going into a lot of details, it’s probably treatable. And this is wonderful news.

It also explains some things.

One more Ella mystery solved.

Elladay

2012-01-25T10:54:00.000-05:00

“Mama has baby in her tummy,” says Ella to a group of moms and daughers waiting for dance class to begin.

“What? No! No, mommy does not,” I say. “Just Christmas cookies, people. I made an astonishing number of Christmas cookies this year.”

With two new baby cousins in the family, Ella is lobbying hard, in her own way, for a baby brother or sister. She has made it clear that gender is of unimportance: she just wants a small round baby the size of a loaf of bread who coos and cries and wears diapers. You know. Your average nightmare.

“I loooove babies.”

Yesterday was Ella’s first dance class. I dropped the three boys at a friend’s house, to Ella’s dismay. She is adamantly opposed to being separated from her twin. She screamed all the way to the community center. We waited in the car until she calmed down. I pleaded. I threatened. I counted to three. She would not stop screaming. I reminded her how badly she wanted to take dance class. I threw out words she loves: ballet! Tap! Gymnastics! Pink! Girlfriends! She sobbed.

When she finally settled down, we joined the gathering of waiting moms and daughters, all of the little girls dressed in pink tutus and worn ballet slippers. This is my first girl. I had no idea where to buy relatively inexpensive tutus and ballet shoes, so we arrived in sneakers and comfortable stretch pants. (Turns out, Payless and Target! Who knew?)

This did not go over well with Ella.

“Pink! I want pink! I need dress!” I promised we would get her dance clothes this week. Another tantrum commenced, and I held my squirming, squalling child while the other moms looked on with fear. This little girl will be in my daughter’s class?

And just like that, Ella was quiet. With the flick of some mysterious switch, she was happy again. She pointed at me and announced the impending arrival of my phantom cookie baby.

Earlier that day, I had given Ella the Heimlich maneuver. One moment, she was happily devouring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; the next moment, she was struggling to breathe. I took three long strides across the room, pulled Ella toward me, squeezed beneath her rib cage, and she spit up a large chunk of bread. Her raspy, choking breaths were like music. I held her and promised she would be okay, promised I would always take care of her. She smiled at me, held my cheeks with her small hands and said, “I know.”

Before the girls entered the gym, I pulled the dance teacher, Miss Nikki, aside and told her Ella was a bit different. Special. I spoke of learning disorders and speech delays and receptive communication issues. Miss Nikki clapped her hands excitedly,

“I have a graduate degree in special ed! I love working with kids like Ella!”

Through the window, I watched six little girls walk on point, practicing wobbly plies to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Miss Nikki helped them form proper poses, one little girl trying her hardest in cumbersome sneakers. And I can’t be sure, but I think that little girl was Miss Nikki’s favorite.

Alabama Shakes and Shopping at the Home Depot

2012-01-23T10:48:00.002-05:00

We're in the process of moving the kids' rooms around. I lost my office. Ella is gaining her own room painted the color "Ballet Slipper" by Benjamin Moore.

This morning, after I convinced the fine gentleman at the paint store I didn't need primer (ample quantities of primer came with the house), I stopped by the Home Depot for an edger, some blinds, and just to browse.

Women enjoy browsing. Men shop with purpose, and the Home Depot is filled with men who are shopping with purpose. I meander lazily through the paint aisle and am nearly trampled by contractors and salesmen who assume I have a purpose for being in the paint aisle. I did have a purpose- getting an edger- but the purpose was really secondary to checking out the Martha Stewart paint colors. So pretty! Who gets to make up the names for paint colors? I want to paint my kitchen "Wooden Spoon," even though it's grey and doesn't match my kitchen at all.

John often mocks me because of my short attention span.

"And that's why I feel so passionate about this. I mean, it really comes down to- ooooh look! A butterfly!"

I feel like that in the Home Depot. There's the hanging blinds I'm looking for, gotta make sure to get cream and not white- oh look! Carpets are on sale!

I like the Home Depot, and I'm excited about Ella's new- oooh! Look! It's your Monday Happy Song!

I'm really looking forward to this album coming out in April. If you like Janis Joplin, etc. etc.:

From The Planet Mexico

2012-01-22T20:08:00.006-05:00

“Mom. Is our planet called Earth?” asked Ben.

“Yes. We are earth. The blue planet.”

“Huh. I thought we lived on the planet Mexico.”

Sometimes I fear the public school system is failing him.

We were in the car, Ben in the back seat dressed in full Darth Vader regalia. He was speaking to me from beneath his black, shiny helmet. Honestly, he resembled Rick Moranis in Spaceballs more than the tall guy they got to play Darth in Star Wars.

Ben is trying desperately hard to be a good boy, which is really hard for people from the planet Mexico- not to be confused with the country in North America here on the blue planet, earth.

In my refusal to mention what racist thing Ben said the other day, I should have mentioned no pejorative terms were thrown about. I was told that because I did not relay what he said, people’s imaginations went to the worst possible places. Compared with the guesses family and friends made, Ben’s statements were almost inoccuous. Relief swept over faces when I told what had been said.

“That’s nothing. Listen to what my kid said about…”

In the car, we named all the planets.

“There’s Mercury, and the Venus, which is covered with a poisonous gas,” I said.

“Jupiter’s the gaseous planet,” John said.

“ALL the outer planets are gaseous,” I retorted. I know this from reading The Magic School Bus Chapter Book #4: Space Explorers, which is a scientific work on par with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

“Caleb, do you know what color Mars is?”

“Blue and green,” he said with confidence.

“Nope. Mars is the red planet.” I was starting to feel smug about my space knowledge.

“I thought you said 'what color ours is.' Our planet is blue and green.”

Tonight, the husband is out watching the final playoff game; this week he travels. I am left alone here on the planet Mexico to discuss basic astronomical nomenclature with my kids.

“Mars people are called Martians,” said Ben proudly.

He is a good boy. They are all good boys. But sometimes I ache for grown-up conversation.

Tonight it is too cloudy to see Venus burning in the winter sky.

Nine Years Ago

2012-01-18T18:03:00.000-05:00

Before Caleb was born, mommy looked like this:

After Caleb was born, mommy looked like this:

Was it worth it?

It surely was.

Happy Birthday Caleb!

Born 9:12 pm on 1/13/03

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Don't make me beg.

Love,

Holly

Pride

2012-01-16T08:39:00.001-05:00

I have a list of Happy Song Project suggestions, the first of which I will get to next week. For today, however, this song, though not entirely "happy", seemed appropriate.

HGL is in the process of migrating to its own Facebook page! To receive or continue to receive HGL posts on your Facebook news feed, please press "Like" on the Facebook plug in toward the top of the right column. You rock. Love, Holly

That Awkward Moment When You Realize Your 6-Year Old is Racist: A Martin Luther King Day Post

2012-01-15T13:24:00.002-05:00

The other night, and I don’t even remember how we stumbled upon this topic, Ben said something... a bit racist. I can't even repeat it, I have so much shame.

To say that I freaked out would be an understatement.

“What? WHAT? What did you say? Why do you think that? Who told you that? Was it that god-forsaken public school system?” (Further freaking out commenced, and I turned to John and may have said things like the following):

“Why don’t we just call up the KKK and send him on over to Arkansas or wherever it is the KKK hangs these days.”

“I knew we should’ve sent him to the city schools for the first few years of his life. Then he’d know what it’s like to be the minority.”

I became irrational, which is what happens when freaking out goes unmitigated. Sometimes John just lets me go on:

"Why would you say that? I need to understand the root of his statement right now or I'm going to totally freak out!!!

“This is what happens when you let kids watch too much television.”

“I failed! Somewhere along the way I failed.”

“YOU FAILED JOHN! SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY YOU FAILED!”

Ben: “Waaaaaaahhhhhhh! I don't want to go to a different school!"

And then, the voice of reason interceded. Caleb, who just turned nine on Friday, said the following:

“Ben, you’d better not say things like that or Martin Luther King will come out of his grave and get you.”

Stunned, both Ben and his guilt-ridden mother dropped the subject. I decided a lecture on pacifism would come later, after I could be sure Ben was no longer a racist.

I think Martin Luther King Jr. would want it that way.

MLK Jr.: Racists, he's coming for you...

HGL is in the process of migrating to its own Facebook page! To receive or continue to receive HGL posts on your Facebook news feed, please press "Like" on the Facebook plug in toward the top of the right column. You rock. Love, Holly

Blog Annoucement

2012-01-11T17:56:00.002-05:00

After some consideration, I've decided not to publish blog posts on my Facebook page anymore. However, since some people won't remember to read my blog unless it's on Facebook (you know who you are), I am creating a Facebook page for the blog. You can find the page HERE.

If you would like to continue to receive my blog posts in your news feed, please "like" the page.

If you'd rather not, then you can subscribe to the blog via Google, Yahoo, etc. or stick your email address in the Feedburner spot over there and have the posts arrive in your inbox. Neat, right?

If you don't want to do that, either, well. Fine then. I don't care.

(Except I do care. Deeply.)

I will post a couple more posts through my regular Facebook page and then move completely over to the Holly Goes Lightly Most Awesome Community Facebook Page in America Thank You Very Much where I will post pithy quotations, witty sayings, what I'm eating for lunch, how I'm feeling, plus my deepest darkest secrets every half hour or so.

(I won't. I will only post blog posts and rarely anything else. Promise.)

Again, the link is HERE.

Next post: Back to Our Regular Scheduled Programming...

Feeding the Hungry

2012-01-10T10:53:00.000-05:00

Has someone told you that you're callous, selfish, and that you hoard food? Me too! I've proved them wrong by voting for the Calvert County food pantry to win $5000 to help feed the hungry. And you can too. It's easy!

Vote for Rev. Robert Hahn at THIS LINK. It takes less time than it did to contemplate who called me selfish, callous, and a food hoarder! (Scroll down to find the answer to this enigma.)

My sister works hard to help run this food pantry, and your vote would really be appreciated. Again, it's THIS LINK. Thanks so much my lovely readers!

Kiah the Wonder Dog

Dreams of Walking in the Snow

2012-01-09T09:31:00.000-05:00

When there are spiderwebs hanging from your Christmas tree like tinsel, perhaps you've kept it up too long. Unfortunately, Christmas trees are not easy to dust. The needles just keep falling off.

All this to say, I finally took the tree down and the stupid thing gave me a rash on my hand. Apparently I'm allergic to sap. Or bark.

I'm so over Christmas.

I am, however, uncharacteristically excited about winter. If it would just snow!

Ben (solemnly): I pray for snow every single day, mom.

And he does. (Dear God, thank you for this food. Bless it to our bodies. Thank you for mom and dad and all my grandmas and grandpas and for my teacher and for my toys and fireplaces and Kiah and robots, and please let it snow today. Amen.)

We want to go sledding and make snowmen and throw snowballs at my neighbor who hates me. But that's a post for a different day.

Today's happy song: Brandi Carlile's "Have You Ever." I could listen to it over and over and over and over and over and over...

Fire in the Hole! (Or New Year's Resolutions)

2012-01-05T09:50:00.003-05:00

This is not my oven. I did not, in the middle of a slight emergency, take the time to find my camera and take a picture. This is a picture from the internet I'm using for illustrative purposes because, according to blogging experts, blog posts should come with at least one picture.

One seemingly calm evening in early fall, I baked something, which happens every full moon during leap years. I bake in the oven that came with the house and hasn’t been cleaned since we moved into said house. There are bits of charcoal that have gathered on the bottom of the oven which I think lend the foods a nice, smoky flavor, appreciated when baking pizzas but not so much when baking, say, banana bread.

I was baking macaroni and cheese when the fire alarm went off. I opened the oven to find that my charcoal collection had caught on fire, which was an inevitable development, I suppose, but I panicked nonetheless. Here is Caleb’s account of what happened:

“Yeah, my mom screamed really loud and then threw water on it and the next day she went out and bought a fire extinguisher.”

This account was relayed to my babysitter, who had to contend with her own charcoal fire when making frozen pizzas for the kids last week.

“Why didn’t she just clean the oven?” the babysitter asked.

Why didn’t she, indeed. (Fires in the kitchen are actually a somewhat common occurrence in the Jennings’ household.)

This event is indicative of the level of chaos my kids have come to expect in our household.

All this to say that my new year’s resolution is to get my sh@# together. Because setting your house on fire is not being a good parent.

I’m on a new cocktail of meds that will supposedly help to keep me out of the mental ward (ha ha!), but they make me dizzy and forgetful. So, the next month will be about playing around with dosages, etc. Sometimes the cure is worse than the malady, but I guess I’d rather be forgetful than, you know, an inert weirdo.

(Which sounds better?)

Babysitter: So why didn’t your mom just clean the oven?

Caleb: Because she’s an inert weirdo, of course.

OR:

Babysitter: So why didn't your mom just clean the oven?

Caleb: She just forgot. No biggie. Everyone's okay.

(I thought so.)

New year’s resolutions:

• Don’t obsess over little things

• Hug my kids every day

• Respond with kindness, not impatience and anger

• Let go of those things I have no control over

• Take hold of the things I do have control over

• Be the more loving one

The More Loving One by WH Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

The Year in Books: 2011

2012-01-02T07:00:00.014-05:00

I read 28 books this year: one book fewer than last year. In my defense, I read longer books in 2011 and I did more writing than, well, ever. Not on my blog, per se, but there was other, more boring types of writing.

Breaking it Down

I read 12 by male authors and 16 by female. There were 5 memoirs, 2 non-fiction books, and 3 classics. This year, I thought I’d focus on my favorite ten of 2012. They are ordered by time period; Great Expectations was read at the beginning of 2011, The Lonely Polygamist I finished a couple of days ago.

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

I begin with one of the great works of classic literature- Charles Dickens' tome, Great Expectations. I personally love the novel's gothic allure (Bleak House has a similar tone) as well as the romance and the rags-to-riches tale. Plus, I think Joe Gargery is one of my favorite all-time literary characters.

Great Expectations is published with Dickens' revised ending. Originally, the novel had a much less hopeful conclusion, but novelist Wilkie Collins encouraged Dickens to give his work a more conventional happy ending. Some criticized Dickens for changing his original conclusion. George Bernard Shaw said that Great Expectations "is too serious a book to be a trivially happy one. Its beginning is unhappy; its middle is unhappy; and the conventional happy ending is an outrage on it."

I believe the ending is ambiguous enough not to be considered flagrantly sappy or happy, but what do I know? I was angry when Charlotte Bronte blinded poor bigamy-minded Mr. Rochester.

I love gothic novels.

This year, I also read Jane Austen's famous satire Northanger Abbey. Generally, I adore Ms. Austen, but I also adore a good gothic romance, so her mockery of the genre didn't do it for me. When the lead protagonist's imaginations of macabre goings on in the abbey fell flat, so did my hopes for an interesting novel. Blah.

If you haven't read Great Expectations since high school, I highly suggest you try it again. You can download it for free off of Amazon.

2. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

There's a fabulous scene in the television show Parks and Recreation where Leslie, the optimistic and ambitious deputy director of the parks department, is handing over research documents and a copy of the novel Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, to her best friend, Ann. Ann is supposed to use the documents to study for an interview for a job Leslie desperately wants her to get.

Ann looks at Freedom and asks, "And why am I reading this?"

"Because I'm almost done with it and I wanna talk to you about Patty!"

I keep waiting for someone I know to finish Freedom so we can talk about Patty. Alas, no one has pulled through for me yet. Maybe now that it's out in paperback...

3. The Waiting Place by Eileen Button

Read this exquisite book of essays in 2012. And buy a copy for a friend. You can read a longer review of the book here. I stole the above picture from this blogger, who also wrote a lovely review. Oh yeah- did I mention I'm going to hang with Eileen at the Calvin Faith and Writing Conference this April? I'm a lucky duck.

4. Life of Pi by Yann Martel

This is a terrific book. It's fresh, original, smart, devious, and crammed with absorbing lore. And no, I didn't steal this quote from Margaret Atwood. Why do you ask?

I'd had this book on my shelf for a few years and, on a whim, picked it up and couldn't set it down. Life of Pi is a breathtaking allegorical tale that's part fairy-tale, part family saga, part fable. I've never read anything like it.

5. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

The prose is flowery and pretentious. After the first chapter, you want to kick the protagonist in the head. Her father, too. They are irritating and smug and wow... I thought Ms. Pessl was the most ostentatious, snobby author I had possibly ever come across. I mean, the protagonist’s name is BLUE. I think there was some literary reason for this, but I forget what it was. We’re talking that kind of pretension.

But the story was good. It drew me in. It became clear that in spite of the protagonists’ supposed vast intelligence, even she could never imagine the twists and turns her story would take. This is such a weird, wonderful, fun story. If you enjoyed Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is probably right up your alley.

“Hurry up and read it ‘cause I wanna talk about BLUE!!!”

6. Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Two families adopt two little girls from Korea. The girls arrive on the same day. The story begins pre 9/11, and families are gathered at the terminal to greet the newest members of their respective families. The first family is a large, gregarious, quintessential American family. The second, a small Iranian family that consists of a husband, wife, and the husband’s mother. The two families forge a tangled yet strong bond and the novel follows their wobbly but important relationship as their sweet adopted daughters grow up as friends.

Ms. Tyler’s novels almost always take place in Baltimore. They are always relationship-driven, and they are among the most perfectly written pieces of work I’ve ever read. This is a gorgeous book. Read it.

7. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

The Art of Fielding is supposedly one of this year’s great novels. The husband actually read it first and then made me read it before it was due back to the library. Of my ten listed, this is the one I vacillated upon including. I can’t pinpoint exactly what bothered me about it. I suppose some of the storylines seemed a bit trite and everything concluded a little too neatly. In other words, Shaw would not have been all that impressed.

On the other hand, this is a spectacular debut that tells a compelling story and, if I may draw upon the words of Harbach’s enthused fans, is:

“Intensely readable!”

AND ALSO:

“Harbach (has a) knowledge of baseball that is encyclopedic but never ponderous…”

The NY Times states:

“Detractors went looking for entertainment, and found art instead.”

I agree with above said statements.

The book is about college life and friendship and a tangled romance and forbidden love and baseball and more baseball and Moby Dick. And that pretty much sums it up. Also, it’s intensely readable.

8. Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens

Lori Lansens is fast becoming one of my favorite contemporary female authors. A while back, I read The Girls, a novel about a pair of conjoined twins. Rush Home Road was completely different in tone, voice, and everything else that distinguishes a novel.

Sharla, who had been living in a trailer park with her mother, is left under the care of “Mum Addy,” an elderly black woman who tries her hardest to give the little girl a safe, normal life with birthdays, clean sheets on the bed and all of those things our own kids take for granted. However, Addy soon realizes she cannot keep up with a troubled child and begins to worry about what will become of Sharla when she is gone. As she grows to love Sharla, we are privy to Addy’s memories, mostly painful, many beautiful. Lansens ties her modern-day tale with Addy’s past perfectly.

This was the “I can’t put this book down” of the year. Vivid, haunting, sentimental but not sappy, and ultimately, satisfying. I couldn’t recommend a book more highly.

9. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Another big novel in 2011! Still on the bestseller’s list, I believe. Eugenides wrote the wildly well-received novel, Middlesex- the most intriguing story about a hermaphrodite you’ll ever read.

The Marriage Plot follows Madeleine, Mitchell, and Leonard as they try and make their way in the world after college.

Madeleine is beautiful and intelligent, though not as intelligent as Leonard, her brilliant, bi-polar boyfriend. Mitchell is in love with Maddy, and kind of has a chip on his shoulder about it. He runs off to Greece (where else?) and other parts of Europe to forget about her. Mitchell finds God, but can’t forget Maddy. (Of course he can’t.)

The title The Marriage Plot refers to Madeleine’s college thesis, which is an examination of 19th-century marriage through a postmodern lens.

Eugenides is a great writer, a compelling storyteller, and the concept of The Marriage Plot would invoke great discussion about what marriage means in an age of rampant divorce, pre-nups, and religious apathy.

So hurry up and read it! I wanna talk about Mitchell.

10. The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

Four wives, 28 kids, and the guy’s… lonely? And is on the verge of having an affair with his boss’s wife? And he has gum stuck in his pubic hair and he has no idea how it got there?

This is an interesting story.

Polygamy fascinates me. I’m not alone. When asked why polygamy fascinates so many, Udall answered:

Why the obsession? It has to do with sex, of course. Everything we are obsessed about has something to do with sex, and polygamy is no exception. But I think there may be more to it than that.

Fine, I am definitely interested in the sex aspect of polygamy. I said it. I’m not ashamed. As for the “more to it than that”:

I find polygamy intensely depressing. I watched some of the first season of Big Love and had to stop after the Bill Paxton character began having an affair with… his first wife. His legal wife. The wife who began to regret agreeing to live “the principle.” It was just so sad.

Udall doesn’t write to condemn Mormon fundamentalism, but rather to examine the concept of a family. The story is told from the vantage point of the tall, bumbling, rather incompetent patriarch ironically named “Golden,” his maligned 11-year old son, Rusty, and his beautiful, young, and lonely fourth wife, Trish. The novel embraces the universal joys and pains of any American family: grief, jealousy, the hardship of raising multiple children, and of course, how to deal with the rogue ostrich that lives next door.

So, how does a man juggle four wives? The answer: he doesn’t. Each wife in the novel eventually divulges that she hasn’t been touched in months and months. Although, cut Golden some slack. The poor guy has gum in his pubic hair.

In Conclusion:

I didn’t read one book I “hated” this year because I have discovered something incredible. If I begin a book, and I don’t like it, I don’t have to finish it. The world will not end. No one will find me and beat me. The characters will not jump out of the book and chastise me for my lack of commitment.

I can’t tell you what a relief this discovery is. It’s also remarkable it’s taken me 34 years to discover this.

I would love to hear your favorite books read in 2011. Recommendations are a beautiful thing.

Happy New Year, Peeps.

2012-01-01T11:14:00.001-05:00

It's 10:30sh and I just recently got up because MY HUSBAND ROCKS.

First on today's bloggy agenda: I've simplified the blog layout. I've stripped it of advertisements and other stuff and changed the blog header. Someone I live with mocked it.

" 'The blog' in parantheses? Ha ha ha ha!"

I became offended, but thankfully we started speaking to one another again in time for me to sleep in today.

Stripping the blog is one step in my major life goal in 2012: Simplify MY ENTIRE LIFE before the crap hits the fan on December 21st. Or 23rd. Or whenever it is we're all supposed to perish. But discussing one's New Year's resolutions is a bit of a yawn when compared to presenting the Monday Happy Song, so I will move on.

Today's song has a backstory:

My father cruelly hid all my stepmom's Christmas music this year, so she's been listening to the soundtrack from The Sound of Music as a substitute. I do not think her Christmas music was ever recovered. I try not to get in the middle of these little marital spats, but I might suggest she hide something that's important to him? His grand piano, perhaps? I know a guy.

Anyway, she requested the following as a Happy Song for Monday, and she was so excited about it (I think she said, "Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!") that I had to oblige her.

On a side note: Caleb is not a fan of yodeling as a musical art form. Or, rather, not a fan of his mother's yodeling as a musical art form.

Comments below are for you to tell me how much you like my simplified blog:

The Reality of Christmas

2011-12-23T12:23:00.006-05:00

Today, there are two things on my agenda: clean the house and bake more Christmas cookies. Molasses, gingerbread, crème de menthe truffles, snickerdoodles… Tonight, John will make a crackling fire and I will snuggle on the couch with my four perfect children and watch the film Nativity.

Ella’s actually not so perfect right now. Her upper lip is so chapped and red I call her Rudolph.

“I not Rudolph. I Ella! I a girl!” (Her speech is coming along, people.)

We will wish for snow, because mud doesn’t invoke cozy Christmas feelings the way clean white snow does, and we will send the kids to bed with visions of sugarplums in our heads. Or crème de menthe truffles. Or whatever. After they fall asleep, I will continue wrapping presents. (I finally started this most arduous process last night.)

Last evening, at 9:30, as John was bringing in Barbie dolls and Imaginext Batman toys from his trunk (our super secret Christmas hiding spot) to our living room, a mother whose three children were already slumbering in their own beds slipped from this world into the next. She had been fighting an aggressive form of cancer for the past 2 years. Her three children are just about the same age as mine.

I read the news with a heavy, bitter heart. I thought of how the shadow of her death will forever darken her children’s Christmases to come.

And then I thought better.

I thought of how the miracle we celebrate on December 25 makes it possible for these kids to have hope. That there is something serenely beautiful about leaving this broken earth at the same time of year we celebrate Jesus’ coming,remembering that Jesus came for the sole purpose of bridging the unfathomably large gap between heaven and earth.

Tonight, I will hold my kids close and remind them of our temporary condition. Their toys, which bring them such short-lived joy, are nothing in comparison to the ultimate gift of Christmas. And they will probably tell me to be quiet mom, that I always talk during movies and hug them so tight they can’t breathe so good. So I’ll tickle them and one will inevitably rush off to go to the bathroom, and we will all laugh. Oh, how blessed we are to have one another. To have faith.

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” C.S. Lewis.

Merry Christmas.

My Husband Sexually Harassed Me Under the Mistletoe (& other Christmas stories)

2011-12-12T17:55:00.004-05:00

It’s the Christmas season and you know me, holly in my heart (Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember)

The following are directed at me every year over the holiday season. I would like answer concerns and questions about being a girl named Holly born four days after Christmas so that I never, ever have to answer them again.

1. “You name is Holly? Wow. You must, like, really love Christmas.”

Oh, I do. I love Christmas, and so much more than people named, like, Beverly. How can you love Christmas when you’re named Beverly? Also, I love Christmas so much more than people NOT born in December. How can you love Christmas when you were born in July? Preposterous.

2. “You were born at Christmastime? Did you, like, get cheated out of gifts?”

Not when I was younger. My mother always made my birthday very special.

However, things are different now, and yeah, I totally get gypped come my birthday. It’s an awkward time of year to have a birthday. It’s not like you can compete with, well, you know. And the one time I crossed my arms and complained that I wasn’t getting enough attention, people thought I was being “selfish” and “sacreligious.” (Wasn’t Jesus actually born in June?) So I don’t complain anymore- I just weep silently in my bed. Birthdays are for kids, not adults, anyway. And I don’t need anything. I want a lot of stuff, but I don’t need anything. So, don’t worry about me and the presents I’ve been swindled out of. I’m okay.

My Husband Sexually Harassed Me Under the Mistletoe

Today, the Christmas season is a shell of its It’s a Wonderful Life former self. Mr. Potter, despite what you saw on film, has not been defeated. Nativity scenes are out: singing the tune of "The Carol of the Bells" to sell bargain-priced designer-labeled clothes is in. Christmas caroling in the mall is a potential fire hazard, but Black Friday shopping has become a tradition in many families. Mistletoe is being banned from office parties so that corporate executives can still have “Santa Shots” (this is an actual drink) and not get stuck under the mistletoe while inebriated. Darn that mistletoe, inviting sexual harassment charges with its lascivious plant motives.

I was never kissed under the mistletoe until after I was married. Not that I didn’t want to be. I mean, how romantic is that, getting caught under the mistletoe with the object of your affection? I may have lingered by a sprig on an occasion or two, just to see if I could gain the experience of being kissed under the mistletoe, but alas… no one ever noticed.

One year, John and I were at a party where mistletoe was prominently hung from a doorway. I stood boldly underneath and called my husband over. Utterly clueless, he wanted to know what I wanted. Why had he been dragged away from playing Call of Duty? (Which is a wonderful wartime game that’s a staple at any traditional Christmas gathering, along with eggnog and candy canes.) Also, I think maybe he’d had a couple of Santa Shots.

I directed his attention to the mistletoe above us, and this is what happened: John sniggered, grabbed my butt, pulled me in close, and laid a noisy, lingering smooch on my mouth. He tasted like peppermint schnapps.

My husband sexually harassed me under the mistletoe.

And I loved it.

III

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The twins have been happily practicing their preschool Christmas program songs. At home, they sing loudly and unabashedly, so I was surprised when their teacher informed me that during practice at school, Ella had repeatedly dissolved into tears, ran into her teacher’s arms, and had hid her head while shaking like a leaf. Ella, who is not a naturally quiet individual, has auditory sensory issues and is unnerved by resounding ambient sound. Being in large, cavernous places where echoes bounce and shrill voices carry brings my usually boisterous little girl to her knees. So on the day of her program, I made sure to get a spot right up close, so that if she began to withdraw, I could grab her and hold her.

Ella sashayed down the aisle in her Christmas gown, beaming at us, shaking her hand bells with enthusiasm. She came down first because she was the smallest and needed to be placed at the front of the group. Daniel stood a little ways behind her. The first song began, and Ella’s face went from joyful to terror-filled. She stared at me. I grinned at her. “Sing,” I mouthed.

The sanctuary was packed with moms and dads and grandparents and siblings, and the crowd absorbed the sound beautifully. No echo. No reverberating bells. Ella relaxed noticeably and stayed with her classmates. She didn’t open her mouth and sing during the first song, but she stayed there and stared, somewhat dazed, at the crowd.

By the last song, she was into it. The following is a video of her preschool class singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Ella got a little carried away. She was the only child who twirled during the program. (Which was no big deal considering two songs before, she jumped up and down and then sat for half the song.) Note her unique dance movies during the “singing” verse. Please ignore the constant wiping of her nose with her hand.

Daniel was incredibly proud of his tie. When I showed it to him he gasped.

“It’s a real tie?”

"Yes! A real tie!”

"Just like daddy’s?”

“Daddy would never wear a black vest over a red shirt,” John said. “We are not gangsters.” Daniel was too busy taking his tie out of his vest and putting it back in to listen to his father's weirdness.

Today’s song for Monday: We Wish You a Merry Christmas:

Under the Boardwalk

2011-12-06T12:37:00.001-05:00

I'm a day late with my Monday happy song. This is actually typical behavior that I am going to try and rectify in the new year.

Several Valentine's Days ago, John took me out to eat at my favorite restaurant (since closed), and then to Eastman Theater to see Ben E. King. The place was filled with a bunch of 60-year olds and us, but it was one of the most enjoyable concerts I have ever been to. Mr King, of course, sang the below song, which is a wonderful antidote for grey and gloomy day.

For a few minutes, even I can pretend that the space under the boardwalk is NOT filled with broken glass, used prophylactic devices, and needles. It's a respite from the hot sun and, apparently, a great spot for dancing with my baby.

That's-a-where I wanna be...

Why Reading To Kill a Mockingbird Will Help When it Comes Time to Read Conceptual Physics

2011-12-03T15:07:00.003-05:00

Part 1

This morning, I came downstairs to spy the husband sitting in our dilapidated rocking chair in front of the television wearing a headset in order to talk to strangers online.

I cannot express how disturbed I am by this development.

Yesterday, John bought a wireless router so we could access Netflix through his Xbox. Unfortunately, this means subscribing to Xbox Live. If you have Xbox Live, you can play arcade games with other people live over the internet- through the television. If he starts playing Warcraft, I am going run off and become a lounge singer on a cruise ship. He wasn’t even excited about all the Gregory Peck movies we could watch right in a row! Or the karaoke features! He just wants to play hockey with 12-year olds who swear at him if he fails to prevent the opposing forwards from screening his goalie.

In my next life, I am going to marry someone whose idea of gaming is playing Scrabble on a Friday night. Good grief.

In other horrible news, we moved the television from the basement up into the playroom, which means we have two TVs on the first floor. The Wii is in the playroom, and the Xbox is in the living room, which means when I came downstairs, everyone in the house was playing video games.

Video games, of course, are not inherently bad in themselves, and I guess have some “benefits,” like in that 80s movie where the boy’s impressive gaming skills get him recruited to battle in an intergalactic war.

Of course, as a mom, I am naturally concerned that TV, video games, and other forms of technology are turning my kids’ brains into the consistency of the gruel served to Oliver Twist in Dickens’ classic.

“What’s gruel?” asks Ben.

“Kind of like porridge.”

“What’s porridge?”

“What the three bears ate.”

“Oh, yeah! That stuff is good!”

(I assume he decided that based on contextual evidence.)

Part 2

While some argue that the reading and writing kids do online “counts,” I am suspicious. And here’s why: reading a friend’s poorly conceived e-mail or participating in online forums or threads on Facebook does not develop the critical reading skills kids need to succeed.

I’m a huge fan of fiction: it’s fun, it allows kids to learn to sit in one place and read for an extended period of time, improves analytical thinking, expands vocabulary, improves memory, and helps kids become better writers. However, other types of literature, including comic books, magazines, and non-fiction books achieve these same goals.

Online reading doesn’t generally improve critical thinking skills. Since most kids aren’t logging on to The Atlantic or online literary journals, they are susceptible to the strategies websites use to get readers on to their website. Strategies include writing short paragraphs that are written around “keywords,” lists, emboldened headings, low-level vocabulary, and water-downed pieces of information people can scan to get the gist of the message. And then, there are the built-in links that drive online users from one page to the next, where eventually they become lost in cyberspace. There is no discernable ending when reading online, and time is literally sucked up into a vacuum as we aimlessly wander through a virtual world of our own creation.

Yes, digital literacy is a valuable asset in today’s technology-driven world, but are kids really gleaning valuable, factual information while web-surfing on their own? Outside of the classroom, kids troll YouTube, Facebook, celebrity sites, and personal blogs. Sure, you can find an answer to a question a lot faster on the internet than by visiting the library, but how do kids know if that source is reliable? I love this quote from a NY Times article:

Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/) about a mythical species known as the “Pacific Northwest tree octopus.” Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.

Extensive web-surfing fosters extremely short attention spans. The average time a person spends on a web page? 27 seconds. In a rush, we search for the answer to our question, then click on an advertisement that proclaims to have pictures of Ashton Kutcher’s latest tryst. (The pictures were questionable, by the way.)

If kids don’t grow up reading books, they miss out on developing critical thinking skills. When they get to college and a professor gives them a reading assignment, a lot of freshman can’t do it. They don’t know how. If they can’t sit still and read the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird, how are they going to read two pages of Conceptual Physics? How are they going to be able to dissect and respond to case studies, poetry, historical documents, and political science articles?

In short, if the future of mankind places extreme value in virtual hockey playing, intergalactic starfighting, finding songs on YouTube in less than 10 seconds, and cyber-bullying, by all means, let’s allow our kids to spend unprecedented amounts of time gaming, web-surfing, and texting. However, if the future still calls for doctors, physicists, engineers, novelists, poets, teachers, and lawyers, we should temper gaming and surfing with reading. (Maybe not the lawyers. Unless they are like Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.)

Part 3

The best way to foster a love of books in your kids is to:

1. Read to them.
2. Read in front of them.
3. Provide them with interesting reading materials.

(In the husband’s defense, his nose is in a book as often as or perhaps more often than he’s in front of the Xbox.)

I’ve been reading the boys A Christmas Carol, because of the holiday season and also because of a possibly premature and over-zealous desire to introduce them to Dickens. We stop a lot because they want to know what words mean.

“What does frigid mean?” asks Ben.

“Let’s see if you can figure it out. I’m so frigid! Brrrr!”

(A snicker comes from a corner of the room.)

“NO COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY!”

The boys are really enjoying the book, even though it’s a bit beyond a first and third-grade reading level.

“It’s like that movie, Monster House!” says Ben.

“I would never wear tights. Even if I lived back then,” says Caleb.

The other night, we unwittingly allowed Caleb to stay up past 11:00 on a school night. He was reading Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen.

I’ve never been so proud.

Fun articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/07/children-who-dont-read-grow-up-bad.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/aug/23/survey-children-reading-habits

A Tale of Thanksgiving Woe

2011-11-29T13:25:00.000-05:00

It’s a very manic time of year. There’s a lot going on. There are Christmas concerts and projects and shopping and decorating and cookie baking and tortuous exercise because you are determined to lose that weight before New Year’s. So what if you procrastinated a bit. This is the perfect time of year to go on a diet.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving. I made rolls- from scratch- and they were delectable. I spent the day before Thanksgiving in the kitchen, in constant search of things I had purchased at the store and immediately misplaced.

“Where’s the cinnamon? Does anyone know where the cinnamon is?”

“Up your butt!” said my 4-year old, Daniel.

For the record, that’s not where I found it.

The best thing about Thanksgiving, of course, is reflecting on all of the things God has blessed me with. Four healthy, rambunctious children with their father’s primitive sense of humor, a husband who has a good job in this horrific market, a supportive extended family, wonderful friends, food in the cupboards, clean water, medical insurance, and warm cups of tea on dreary, grey days.

The second best thing is leftovers.

I like turkey sandwiches. Leftover turkey warmed up on regular sandwich bread with a bit of mustard and mayo. Simple, but I look forward to it. Yesterday, I fed the twins their lunches, sat with Ella through her speech therapy after which I proceeded to make my turkey sandwich. As I worked, squeals of delight came from the other room, happy sounds that always make me nervous. I peeked in to discover Ella attempting to straddle the dog like a horse. Kiah looked quite put out, so I extricated my petite Lone Ranger from atop of her furry Silver. Ella said, and I quote, “Awww, man!”

“You could hurt Kiah,” I said. Ella was dubious, but she promised not to ride on the dog, so I went back to my sandwich.

The sandwich was gone, having probably been consumed in two large gulps by the very beast I had just rescued. There was mustard on her whiskers.

There are no words to express my incredible grief, which turned swiftly into anger. I composed myself, gave Kiah the hairy eyeball, and called Ella in from the other room.

“Ella?” I asked, “Do you know what a jockey is?”

Look for us in the circus.

Christmas Joy

2011-11-28T12:58:00.000-05:00

Tis the time of year to dance around the kitchen to the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.