Category Archives: Life

by | August 6, 2014 · 6:23 pm

Contact Lenses Tango


I think I’m finally learning how to get my son to compromise. Okay, I knew how to do this years ago, but it’s always a struggle. He’s 13 and has a very stubborn will – wonder where he got THAT from. I now have an intimate understanding of something my father told me for years while I was growing up: “I can’t make you do it, but I can certainly make you wish you HAD.”

My son decided a month or so ago that he wants contacts instead of eyeglasses, which he’s been wearing for about 3 years. And he wants them BEFORE the start of the new school year, in which he will be entering 8th Grade. (!!!!!) Which is now less than 2 weeks away. I didn’t want to tell him “no” outright, because I remember being his age and HATING wearing glasses. And he’s about the same age I was when I got my first pair of contact lenses. So I searched for a way out of this potential parental quicksand – other than the usual: It’s not in the budget, blah, blah, blah.

Then I came up with a brilliant compromise! We’ve been attempting (with limited success) to teach my brilliant, strong-willed-ADHD-oppositional-defiant-disordered teenage son about maturity and taking personal responsibility. So. I told him that he will get new glasses for the new school year and around his 14th birthday in January – 5 SHORT MONTHS FROM NOW – we will revisit the issue of contact lenses. IF he begins to display more maturity, more personal responsibility – because contact lenses ARE a big responsibility….I mean, you could put your eyes out if you put them in incorrectly!….okay, maybe not, but HE doesn’t know that – pulls up his grades in school, and works on being more respectful.

I suggested he might want to write notes to remind himself that he’s working toward a large reward and what he needs to do to earn said reward. And his response itself was a sign of his maturing: he didn’t argue with me, just became quite for a few moments, and said “Okay.”

Score one for the parent!

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by | August 20, 2012 · 3:26 pm

It’s the simple things…


Once again I find myself grateful that my kiddo IS NOT a bus rider. No. I cart him to school each morning, and my mother is kind enough to pick him up each afternoon, pitching in with homework duty (she deserves a medal!!) until I arrive home from work.

With all the issues Broward County School District (that’s us) has had this new school year in not getting bus numbers & route assignments out to families prior to the start of school today, thousands of parents were forced to stand in line at the district bus depot this past weekend to try and get some answers. A friend of mine who has two daughters, one entering 6th grade, the other entering 8th, told me all they have are their bus passes. They don’t know the bus number or route. Her girls will just have to stand at the pick up and get on the bus that comes and sort it all out at school. Meh!

So even though the morning rush causes anxiety sometimes: lighting the proverbial fire under my son, who wears a uniform to school – thank God – packing his lunch – I think that’s going to become a do-it-the-night-before-and-store-it-in-the-‘fridge task – getting myself ready (whatever doesn’t need to be ironed and helps me look thinner than the scale says I am), and breakfast for both of us – he’s going to be fixing his own breakfast from now on and I usually eat when I get to work – I’m doubly thankful that I “get” to sleep until approximately 6:20 each morning, letting him sleep until 6:40, not having to rise at the ungodly hour of 5:00 to be ready for a 6:30 (or whatever time they pick up middle school kids these days) bus pickup. I know, I know, it wouldn’t BE so much of a morning rush if we both rose half an hour earlier – but neither of us are morning persons…er, people…. more’s the pity.

My poor child didn’t quite make it through it first day of middle school. In homeroom (a new term for me to add to my repertoire – I was in a private school & then homeschooled), he hyper-extended his left arm a bit while stretching (as confirmed by the doctor). He’s dominate right, but his left shoulder was bothering him enough that he couldn’t concentrate on his work. So grandmother was kind enough to pick him up early and take him to the doctor. So the rest of first day of 6th grade has been spent reading, drawing and otherwise being completely bored out of his video-game-loving mind. That oughta remind him to be careful next time he stretches in school. : – )

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by | December 22, 2011 · 7:51 am

Early Resolution for Next Christmas


I love Christmas cards. Especially the ones with old-fashioned, Victorian designs, and the ones with pithy quotes. I collect them like crazy. If I have the means and the price is just right, I’ll snatch up a box or two of those wonderful boxes of holiday well-wishes. I’m a Christmas card addict.

With all those cards, you probably think I send out bundles each year to family and friends, yes? Ah…no, not quite.The boxes of cards sit throughout the year collecting dust. Then around Thanksgiving, I dig them out of whatever dingy hole they fell into during the past 11 months and revisit my treasures. And I think about all the people I want to send Christmas greetings to. I plan to have them all written and sent out by the 2nd week of December, so friends and loved ones will receive them before THE BIG DAY. And then life steps in. My best laid plans are put aside for a few weeks, in deference to holiday parties, children’s dramas, concerts, shopping, decorating and gift wrapping. Before I know it, December 21st rolls around and I’ve sent out no cards at all. Haven’t even written notes or addressed the envelopes.

I love receiving Christmas cards. I love sending Christmas cards. I love Christmas. But somehow the holiday rushes by way too fast and my good intentions are left in the dust. Part of the problem I think is that as a writer, I can’t just pen a quick note and send it on its way. No. I’m compelled to compose a missive that will fill the entire card, and perhaps the back also. I hate white space. If there’s too much of it, I’ll blissfully blather away about nothing and everything just to fill the empty spaces. I blame this in part on my journalism classes many years ago, where they repeatedly instructed us to “fill the white spaces.” I was brainwashed, utterly and completely.

I think for 2012, I’m going to purchase leftover Christmas cards after the 2011 holiday season and leave them on my desk. I’ll be sure to see them each time I sit at my computer and won’t forget where I’ve stored them. I’ll have holiday photo cards printed up of my son & I sometime around April. I’ll start working on the cards in August or September, and have them all addressed before Thanksgiving. That way, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, all that will need doing is purchasing lovely holiday stamps and sticking them on the envelopes. The first of December, in the mailbox they go. Yes, lovely.

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