Magazines and Other Fashion Things

I love fashion magazines. They take up the smallest portion of your brain to thumb through and less than that to read the articles. Plus, the colorful pictures and digitally stretched and enhanced models are just so pretty to look at. However, there is one thing that bothers me about these magazines. The section wherein the reader is subjected to; “What Women Should be Wearing in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s!" drives me crazy. In some enlightened magazines (that realize older women in their 60's and 70's do not run around naked) they will deem to include these age groups in their fashion advice.
You mean women aren’t relegated to wearing burlap sacks when they're turned out in the pasture at 60-years-old?
Good to know…
So, it’s not that I mind the fact that the magazine is attempting to dictate to the public what the latest fashion trend is. After all, I spent my $5 to be told as much. I just hate that once you reach the age group of “women in their 40’s,” automatically, it is assumed that; 1) you will be revisiting the age of Dynasty and covet huge and severe-looking shoulder pads, 2) beige, gray and (ick) tweed, become your best color choices, 3) everything needs to be paired with black or brown alligator or snakeskin high-heels, and, 4) draping your body in gaudy, gold jewelry or layers of gold chains is the thing to do.
At 45-years-old, my shoulders are not quite stooped enough to need shoulder pads, I’m fighting the gray at my temples and have no need for that color in my wardrobe, alligator and snakeskin look best on, oh, I don’t know…alligators and snakes.
And that much gold jewelry is going to make me look like I need to be committed into the nearest asylum. Or look like Mr. T...if you remember who he is.
Now, let’s examine what women in their 20’s get to wear.
Cute, trendy dresses in bright colors such as; apple green, pumpkin orange, rose pink and cardinal red. Plastic, chunky jewelry in a rainbow of colors and shapes. And shoes in an array of styles; heels, flats, boots…with not an alligator or snake in sight.
Yep, those gals in their 20’s get to wear all the good stuff.
Women in their 30’s? Same thing…sort of. But you can sense that they are already starting that downward slide that lands them into the fashion dustbin filled with the 40-year-olds.
Now, once women hit their 50’s and 60’s…there, the fun begins. Apparently, if you’ve made it to those venerable ages, you get to wear whatever the hell you want. Cute, little, A-line Mod dresses in all colors imaginable? The green light is on. Long, gothic-inspired skirts with flouncey or fitted tops? You go right ahead, sister. The world of fashion is your oyster, because you have earned it. We, the fashion police, have given you license to wear anything and everything. You have our blessing.
Or, maybe women at this age won’t stand to be fashionably boxed-in and told what to wear.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all fashions were available for every age (and size) of women out there? Personally, I hate being shuttled over to the “Women’s” section of the department store. Quite frankly, the styles of clothing there just makes my skin crawl. Give me the fun and colorful fashions of youth…in a size 12 (the new plus size, but we won't even go there), thank you very much.
But, no. The cute fashions are sequestered in the Misses section, far, far away from the dreary Women’s section of the department store. And, to add insult to injury, the Misses section clothing sadly stops at size 6 which, (and I have actually held the clothing up to clothing that my 9-year-old daughter wears) the only variation between it and a kids size 8, is that the Misses size 6 is slightly wider in the shoulders.
It’s a crying shame.
So, I will continue to buy the fashion magazines. And I will continue to rage against being fashionably boxed-in and laid to rest at 45-years-old.
I will skip that section completely.
Perhaps once I turn 50, I can have some real fashion fun.
Or perhaps I will continue to troll the Misses section in the hopes that one day; everything they have will be available in my size.

Pirate Squirrels

I love animals. I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years and would do anything and everything for an animal in need. Just ask my family. They share their house, bless them all, with no less than three cats, two dogs, two turtles, two mice and eight tanks of fish. It's quite a menagerie.
However, the squirrels in my backyard are not part of my brood, and are probably the most crafty and pirate-like little tree rats in Raleigh. The latest thing I'm lamenting over is that they've taken to draining my hummingbird feeders of all the sugar water.
I hope they get cavities.
Anyways, I got home today from the movies and I looked outside to see one chewing away on, of all things, a poisonous ant bait trap. I had no idea where he got it from, but thinking of his welfare, I ran outside yelling at the top of my lungs like a maniac. Oddly enough, the thing hightailed it off my deck and up the nearest tree, staring at me triumphantly with his beady, little eyes. So there I stood, at the base of my tree, heart pounding and visions of convulsing, dying squirrels in my head. Frantic and wondering why on earth he had failed to see the error of his ways, I started tossing sticks up at him, trying to get him to drop the ant bait--all the while, yelling that he's making a huge, life-altering mistake.
The thing just sat up there on the tree branch, chewing away on the ant bait, like the stubborn, little tree-rat he was.
In a fit of despair, and because I couldn't have his death on my conscience, I kicked off my shoes and went climbing up the tree, hoping I could scare the little, ratty pirate into dropping the poison.
My one thought; "What dumb squirrel eats ant bait?"
Oh yeah, mine do.
I managed to get half-way up the tree, cursing like a sailor, before I realized:
1) I had my lacy and expensive brown skirt on,
2) it was now hung up on a tree branch behind me and fluttering in the breeze--way over my head.
3) My bright pink Victoria's Secret "I see Paris, I see France, I see Pink Underpants" were now flashing my neighbors who were,
4) having a civilized BBQ with about five of their closest friends in their backyard. And all were looking up at me with either amusement or shock--I couldn't tell which, because suddenly everything was much too bright.

Meanwhile, the squirrel had nimbly leapt over to the next tree--ant bait still clutched in his ratty little paws.

I stared up at the pale, blue sky wondering what the weather was like somewhere else and casually reached behind me to tug my skirt down to a more acceptable level, backing quietly with my remaining dignity down the tree--all the while thinking the worst squirrel hating thoughts you can imagine.
The battle rages on....

The Ripple Effect

A friend of mine is a social worker. She was recently worrying that what she did for a living was related to her ego rather than a genuine desire to help people. Yes, before you shake your head, I too, say, "If it's ego,then so be it. You are doing so much more than 99% of the population of the world!"
It takes a very special person to dedicate their lives to helping others. And really, the rest of us could do a little of the same. Sharing the milk of human kindness with this ailing world would make the drink go so much further. My response to her thoughts was that the world operates on a ripple effect. There are "good" ripples, and there are "bad" ones. Any good ripple is valuable, regardless where within yourself it comes from.
Here's what I tell my kids, and bear with me, because it is extreme to illustrate a point.
Let's say you are on the playground and there is another child there that looks a little dirty, acts a little unacceptable, and generally isn't someone you would walk up to and play with. And, let's say, that child decides, through some twist of fate, to come over and ask you to play. What do you do?
Of course, my girls, being the lovely children they are, decide that they would both run away screaming.
So, let's go with that.
You run away screaming. The child, unfortunately, assumes that he is unworthy of playing with and his self-esteem sinks even lower than it started at that morning. Never mind that his mother's washing machine broke earlier that week, which explains the dirty clothes. And never mind that the stress at the child's home has been high that week because the father has lost his job due to the economy and can't provide for his family. The child has come to the playground that morning to escape the fact that his parents are, at that very moment, arguing at home and contemplating a divorce.
This would be, the pre-ripple effect.
So, back to my kids running away screaming.
The child has come to the unfortunate conclusion that he is unworthy of playing with. Tiring of playing alone, he decides to go back home. Unfortunately again, he walks in on the argument his parents are having and it has turned ugly. The parents, embarrassed by their behavior, turn their stress on their child and compound the child's feelings of unworthiness.
And it goes downhill from there.
The "bad" ripple effect. Everybody loses.
Here's another scenario.
My lovely children, playing at the playground, see another child there that looks a little dirty, acts a little unacceptable, and generally isn't someone they would play with. And, through some twist of fate, they decide to go over and ask him to play.
If only because there happens to be no other children at the playground that day and my children don't wish to play with just each other.
Or perhaps, because it is what my children should do.
In a perfect world.
The child is able to escape, if only for an hour, from the stress at home. Which has been caused by the father losing his job and inability to provide for his family. Which has been compounded by the washing machine breaking and the mother's inability to clean her family's clothes.
The child is able to have fun and be a child. If only for an hour. And at little cost to my children.
The child's self-esteem inches up a fraction. He goes home and is able to completely miss the argument his parents have had, and were eventually able to talk out.
Things go up from there.
The "good" ripple effect. This may be an extreme example.
Or not.
Every little thing you do affects something. Every ant you step on, every disapproving look you give to your kids, every telephone call or email you don't return, every "white lie" you tell, every smile you don't give, every stray you don't take in, every favor you opt out of, every child you ignore, and every "hand up" you choose not to offer.
I hope my children will realize that any little "good" thing they choose to do, is valuable.
And I hope my social worker friend does too.

The "New" Kid Food Pyramid-from "Mom E-mails"

My mom was a health nut. Growing up in the 70’s only fueled her fire to subject myself, her only child, and my step-father to her nutty, crunchy ways. Many times we found ourselves eating questionable food—we knew it was healthy, but we were never quite sure what was in it. Combined with the fact that I also grew up in a household that was forever pinching pennies, there was never the option of not finishing my dinner or being picky to any degree. Casserole? Who knew what leftovers were lurking in it? We ate it all. Meatloaf? We ate that too, even when she was going through her soy nut-loaf phase. Sunflower seeds, homemade bread, barley soup? Always in my school lunches; shelled and unsalted, crusty and burnt on the bottom, stinky and lumpy (but nutritious!) I ate it all. Penny pinching led my mom to make some very unpopular choices. When the ferries went on strike and we couldn’t get milk delivered to the island we lived on, we drank powdered milk for an entire three months out of necessity. After the ferries were able to bring the "real stuff" to our island, my mother decided that we had saved so much money drinking the powdered stuff, she would continue to purchase it.
And there is nothing that tastes more disgusting than powdered milk.
But, we drank it. Because we had no choice.
Fast-forward many years later to myself and my own two children.
Where did I go wrong?
We are all well-acquainted with the Food Pyramid set forth by the USDA. It is well-balanced, can be adjusted for different cultural groups and dietary needs, and looks sound and sane...on paper. There is even a separate Food Pyramid for children.
It is comprised of; 6 oz. of grains, 2-1/2 cups of vegetables, 1-1/2 cups of fruits, 3 cups of milk, and 5 oz. of meat or beans.
Let me pause for a moment because I cannot write and laugh at the same time.
Here is the Food Pyramid for children, as it exists in my household.
There is the “White Food” group. It is comprised of potatoes, rice, noodles and milk (not powdered) and includes bread, with the crusts cut off, and bagels with cream cheese. It is well received, coveted in fact, as long as you don’t try and put anything, I mean anything, upon or in the first three things. A serving size could range anywhere from several grains of rice to a spoonful of mashed potatoes or quite possibly a whole entire, small bagel with a smear of cream cheese.
There’s the “Fruit” group. No issues there as long as there is no white stuff left on the peeled oranges or bruises and other suspect color variables on the outside of the fruit and it’s skin. A serving size could be 20 blueberries or even a whole, entire banana...on a good day.
There is the “Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich” group. Without this group, most children would starve. As long as the jelly is grape. If there is a one inch by one inch cube missing from the very center of the sandwich, chances are, the sandwich is finished and can move onto the bird feeder outside.
There is the “Sugar and Other Yummy Things that Mom Won’t Let Us Have” group. Let your mind go wild with that one. Serving sizes vary according to how generous I'm feeling that day.
And then there’s the other one. The “Vegetable” group.
Oh yeah, those things.
Serving size: whatever you can sneak or suffer "The Look" through.
Once, in a fit of despair and self-righteousness, I chopped up broccoli and mixed it into my daughter’s peanut butter for her jelly and peanut butter sandwich.
It was not well-received.
I tell my children that because they do not willingly eat their vegetables, I am forced to hide them within my cooking.
Cooking.
Ha. Let me digress a bit.
A definition of cooking is as follows. Cooking: to combine several single ingredients thus creating a new and complex dish that is both edible and palatable.
Not in my house.
Combining ingredients would mean that two or more things would be touching each other on the same plate and we all know, that would be breaking an unspeakable kid-law punishable by looks of disgust, screams of pain and torture, and retching.
In other words, I don’t even try.

So, here is my letter to the USDA Food Pyramid people.


Dear Sirs or Madams Who Do Not Have Children of Your Own:

While the Food Pyramid undergoes revisions to include the Vegetarian Food Pyramid,the Mediterranean Food Pyramid, the Asian Food Pyramid and the Latin-American Food Pyramid, it appears that your Kids Food Pyramid may need some revisions as well. In order to keep parents everywhere sane and boost our crumbling egos, please revise your Kids Pyramids along these lines:

(Serving Suggestions will be omitted in order to better facilitate parental and child harmony.)

Thank you,
Clarissa Johal

Where Do Babies Come From? from "Mom E-mails"

December 21, 2006


My six-year-old daughter’s first grade teacher is pregnant. So consequently, my daughter has been coming home with a lot of questions.
Questions that her teacher had been avoiding quite adeptly.
The latest question was at 6:00AM in the morning.
My husband was conveniently taking a shower at the time and my darling came running top-speed into our bedroom asking how babies were made.
Being half-asleep and on autopilot, I replied with, "The sperm and egg meet in the mommy’s body and blah, blah, blah..." Basically, my mother’s explanation. The explanation which carefully avoided the semantics of sex; but explained in great detail the development of the fetus to the magical arrival of the baby.
However, my daughter, always full of questions impossible to dodge, replied with, “How does the sperm get inside the mommy’s body?”
"Ummm, the daddy puts it there." I was suddenly wide awake and realized that I had stuck my foot in it, big-time.
"How?"
Long silence. “Can you give mommy a chance to wake up? It’s kinda early, honey.”
“Okay.”
I lay there as I listened to her footsteps pattering away and swore I could hear my mom in my head…laughing and laughing.
A couple of days later, my persistent child asked the same question...again.
“So, how does the sperm get inside the mommy?”
Sigh.
“I’ve ordered a book and I promise we will sit down and discuss it when the book arrives, okay?”
“Okay.”
I know what you’re thinking at this point. And I swear I wasn’t really buying time hoping she’d move onto something else.
Not me.
Quite honestly, I had trolled around on the internet the day she had asked me the “Big Question” and had come up with a book called, It's So Amazing! A book about Eggs Sperm, Birth, Babies and Families by Robie H. Harris. Of course after I got it, I realized that it covered everything.
I mean everything.
And all for ages 5 and up.
When my husband and I were expecting our first child 6 years ago, and before the reality of being parents had settled in, I swore that I would have an open-door policy talking about sex. Consequently, I reasoned, it would allow me to lay a great foundation with my children that would last throughout their teen-age years. However, oddly enough, I now felt this overwhelming desire to keep my 6-year-old innocent as long as possible and tell her the sperm was put into the mommy by the sperm fairy.
But she was asking me an honest question.
And the sperm fairy died in the 1950’s.
The evening I received the book, my heart was beating wildly and my mind was racing as I unwrapped it. I gave myself the, “you’re such a good mom” talk as I carefully leafed through the pages. I was going to end generations of ignorance! I was a child of the 70’s! Female liberation and empowerment was what it was all about!
But the sperm fairy would make a great story…
I sat down with my 6-year-old daughter the next day and we read the book from cover to cover. I only stumbled a couple of times on the v-word and the p-word but managed to not dissolve into an embarrassed fit of the giggles.
And thankfully, her curiosity was abated.
For now.

Bug-Girl-from "Mom E-mails"

September 7, 2008

Our 8-year-old daughter has earned a dubious title in our family; Bug-Girl.
From the tender age of six, my little darling decided that she was going to grow up to be an entomologist and travel around the world collecting bugs.
I love bugs.
Actually, I really don’t.
But because I don’t want to be responsible for killing her dream, or her bugs, and sending her to therapy once she’s grown, I’ve allowed her to collect and observe a plethora of bugs in her bug jars. Fireflies, spiders, assassin bugs, flies, pill-bugs, assorted beetles, centipedes, dragonflies and walking sticks; they’ve all come to spend a night or two in an empty Prego jar.
I always think twice before rummaging around in my daughter’s room for anything, because you just…never...know.
And it doesn’t just stop at the collecting and observing--we’ve saved crickets from a sure death in our turtle tank, hatched praying mantises, gone through the caterpillars-into-butterflies life-cycle, fed a spider “fresh-caught flies” (until it happily reproduced and laid about a million eggs) and have had the pleasure of owning a “space-age gel” ant-farm.
When I’m secretly squishing ants on the counters of our kitchen, the irony is not lost upon me that we’ve purchased ants for my daughter’s “space-age gel” ant-farm.
However, through it all, she has taught me to appreciate all forms of insects. I’ve been educated on what it looks like to see hundreds of baby mantises hatch and crawl all over their netted and enclosed home like little ticks. And, I must admit, seeing caterpillars turn themselves into the alien-like cocoons which burst magically in the blink of an eye into wet and crumpled butterflies is pretty darn exciting. Especially, if you are a fan of butterflies.
I personally, am not a fan of butterflies.
I would sooner go into a cage of lions, and have had the pleasure of doing so, rather than witness a butterfly with wings the size of dinner-plates, spastically fly towards my head.
But I suck it up like any mom…because I love my daughter.
So, it goes without saying that I am constantly looking for classes and books to enrich my daughters bug-loving knowledge and experience. And it also goes without saying, that when I saw in our Parks and Recreation booklet that they were having an all-day Eco-Adventure kayaking trip around the wetlands, "Sure to be filled with insects and wildlife! A hit with your budding insect and wildlife-loving eco-child!" I signed us up immediately.
With no thought at all to the fact that…I don’t like bugs.
Wildlife yes, bugs no.

My daughter was thrilled.

Sadly, the night before our adventure, it rained and rained. However, the weather forecast promised sun and warm temperatures by the next morning, so I proceeded to pack and prepare for 8 hours of hot sun and humid wetlands. I packed our sun-hats, our camera, our waterproof sun-block and mosquito repellent, an emergency medical kit and our most rugged and element-enduring clothing. I packed our lunch in waterproof containers.
I was ready for anything.
Or so I thought.
True to the weather forecast, it was sunny and warm the next morning. In fact, it was 90 degrees of warm. However, it didn't seem hot in the wetlands at all. I think the fact that we were sitting in 2 inches of water all day, which had mysteriously pooled in the bottom of our kayak, made us feel much cooler.
And apparently, the heavy rain from the night before had flushed out many creatures we wouldn’t have normally had the gift of observing.
The neat thing if you should ever decide to participate in an Eco-Adventure trip; lots of wildlife. We saw beavers and beaver dams, egrets, vultures, frogs, flocks of birds; including Pileated woodpeckers, schools of beautiful fish, and the highlight—a bald eagle.
The not-so-neat things; bugs
Thousands of them.
Not the mosquitoes I thought there would be, I had prepared for that, but apparently after a hard rain, all the bugs in North Carolina were stranded in the trees around the wetlands and looking for "dry land."
In this case, “dry land” was our kayak.
There's nothing more nightmarish than being out in a kayak in the middle of a lake and seeing spiders the size of your hand scuttling across the water to dry-dock themselves in your boat.
Followed by; hundreds of more spiders.
After realizing that it was impossible not to have spiders in our kayak, we got used to flicking them out of our boat as they came.
And they came....and came...and came.
In addition to the spiders, every time we hit a tree trying to maneuver our kayak around the wetland area, hundreds of grasshoppers would rain down on our heads.
And I won't even go into the leeches.
Yes, leeches.
But, I was proud of myself. I didn't scream or jump into the lake and attempt to swim to shore like I wanted to. I didn’t tell my daughter she was crazy for thinking every spider and grasshopper would make an awesome and wonderful pet. I just endured. To be honest, I would do it again in a heartbeat to see my daughter as happy as she was. She didn’t stop smiling the whole time.
It’s what you do when you’re a mom.
I keep telling myself.
So this year, when the same trip came up once again, I bravely asked my Bug-Girl if she wanted to go.
Thankfully, she had, “done that, been there,” and didn’t.
No arguments here.

43-year-old Cartwheels-from "Mom E-mails"

June 17 2008

Today I took my 6-year-old to gymnastics and they were practicing cartwheels and handstands. She understood the concept of the handstand but cartwheels involved too many things going on at once. After watching ten other little girls whip off a cartwheel like they've been doing it all their lives, she attempted to copy them, crumpling to the floor in a sparkly, spandex'ed heap.
On the way out, the instructors handed all the girls a sheet of paper, which turned out to be an incentive program to practice the skills at home. For each skill they master, they got a puzzle piece. When the "puzzle" was completed, they got 10 free tokens to Adventure Landing.
Very nice.
Being extremely goal-driven, my child asked me for help.
And not knowing this was a set-up, I said yes.
We got home and our practice session went something like this:

Step 1) I throw myself into a somewhat round'ish cartwheel--akin to throwing my 43-year-old body off a 5'4" bridge onto the floor.
Step 2) I laugh at myself, feeling kind of surprised that 30 years should make that much of a difference on my cartwheels. However, I try again--this time counting off what was supposed to hit the ground first.
Step 3) I suffer a withering glance from my 6-year-old as she notices all of my counting can't cover up the fact that everything kind of hit the ground all at once.
Sighing, she tries to duplicate my lame attempt.
Step 4) I take a deep breath and try again to perform a cartwheel. I mean really, 30 years was not that long ago. This time, I try it without counting.
Step 5) I pick myself up off the floor and determined to look like the gymnast I was, try again. This time, I crash over my child as she was trying out her own cartwheel and smack my head into the coffee table.
Step 6) At this point, my little gymnast gets very angry at me because she can't "get it," and of course, as with everything, it is my fault. Plus, she informs me, I have squashed her finger with my big foot.
I apologize profusely.
I kiss her upturned finger, which, oddly enough, is the middle one.
I tell her that her cartwheels look as good as mine.
She doesn't laugh at my joke.
On top of that--she gives me "The Look."

For those of you unfamiliar with, “The Look,” I will translate it for you;
"Mommy sucks right now because I'm hurt and mad."

This echoes similar “Looks” such as;
"Mommy sucks when she is waving a book in front of my face and trying to get me to read,"
"Mommy sucks because she is lecturing me about something I can't possibly care about right now," and,
"Mommy sucks because she is trying to get me to eat broccoli."

I can't win.

In the words of Claire from “The Breakfast Club”: "I'm sooo popular, do you know how popular I am?"
Of course, dear Claire was high at the time...