Brief Blogging Break ‘Til Aug. 8

I’ll be enjoying a blogging hiatus until next Monday, trying to spend some quality time with the Picket Fence Post family (provided the boys don’t send me to the hospital with one of their pranks).

Not to worry, though. I’ll be covertly taking notes on all our adventures. (And when all this family togetherness gets to be too much family togetherness, I'll retreat to a "Mommy timeout" with a book in my hand.)

In the meantime, enjoy my latest piece over on Modern Mom about how I'm okay with the fact that I often say, "No" to my kids when they want to do things like watch The Hangover or play Call of Duty, making me supremely uncool and unhip. But it's okay. I can take it.

Notes from the Picket Fence Post Homefront

The velcro, plastic cone is back. Back around Max the dog’s neck. Why? Because the knucklehead bit the heck out of the inside of his right paw down to his pink skin because he appears to have two mosquito bites that are aggravating him to the point of compelling him to gnaw at his skin. I’m trying not to make him wear the plastic cone 24/7 -- as he’s quite sullen and listless when I do -- but unfortunately he needs to don the terribly unattractive accessory for a bit of time to keep the fluffy pooch from giving himself an infection.

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The Eldest Boy was initially stung when, after his school’s band performed at a school band competition this week, one of the judges offered lengthy, constructive criticism of his drumming in front of the whole band and parents as the poor kid blushed. However his hurt feelings evaporated when he was later honored for being an outstanding musician. (*glowing as one proud mom*)

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The Youngest Boy has been really pulling at my heartstrings lately, trying his very best to make me feel like a guilty mom, which, sadly, isn’t a very difficult feat to accomplish. Just today when I told him I wouldn’t be able to take him to a sporting goods store so he could spend some of his cash on a Miami Heat cap and jersey (yeah, I have no idea why he wants this unless he just wants to rub in the Celtics' loss to a house of Celtics fans), he yelled, “Mom just ruined my day!” Later he amplified his feelings, “Can’t believe my day’s so ruined!” I responded by telling him that I’m mad with power.

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Speaking of The Youngest Boy . . . I need to start checking his alarm clock every night when I put him to bed because he’s clearly not setting it (or if he is, he’s ignoring it) because this previously early-rising child has been getting up very late on school days and hasn’t been able to get ready in time to make the school bus for more than one or two days over the past two weeks. That means I wind up driving all three Ungratefuls to school in my pajama pants and a sweatshirt, with a baseball cap pulled down over my hair. It’s not a pretty picture.

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The Girl is irate. She’s distinctly unhappy with the casting decisions made for the upcoming film The Hunger Games, based on the first book in the Suzanne Collins popular series. She plucked the brand new issue of Entertainment Weekly out of our mailbox this afternoon and, when she saw the film’s lead actress on the cover, proceeded to explain to me why Jennifer Lawrence is all wrong to play the pivotal character Katniss. The Girl cannot stop talking about this book, so I guess, as a connoisseur of pop culture and the mom of two 12 ½ year-olds who loved the books, it’s incumbent upon me to tackle this series, I’ve just got to finish Pride & Prejudice first.

Image credit: Amazon.

Three for Thursday: The Pop Culture Edition: 'The Middle,' 'Modern Family' & 'Parenthood'

Image credit: ABC

The Middle: Don’t Cave on the Punishment

The latest episode of The Middle sparked all kinds of debate in the Picket Fence Post house about how far The Spouse and I would go to make a point and stand our ground when we punish a kid in the hopes of teaching him or her a lesson.

In The Middle’s fictional Heck family, the obnoxious, clueless teenage son Axl would not stop leaving his dirty socks all over the house. This habit was driving his father Mike absolutely insane. After repeatedly asking Axl to refrain from abandoning his socks, Axl continued with his slovenly ways until Mike threw down the gauntlet: If Mike found one more dirty sock lying around the house, he’d punish him, big time, take away something Axl cares about.

That next time occurred shortly thereafter. Mike was highly frustrated and, when Axl got all snarky and challenged Mike to take away whatever he wanted, Mike told him he couldn’t play in his final basketball game of the season . . . a move Mike immediately regretted and which his wife Frankie, behind closed doors, said she thought was idiotic. (She said she would’ve taken away use of the car, his iPod, his cell phone or TV before going to the extreme of taking away a kid’s season ending hoop game.)

And when Mike and Frankie learned that Axl was on the cusp of breaking his father’s high school record for the most free throws in a single season, they started actively looking for ways to try to back off the punishment without looking like they were backing off. They, in essence, caved.

The Spouse and I agreed that had one of us hastily punished a kid without realizing that he or she was on the verge of breaking a record, we’d likely offer the kid a choice: Miss the game OR lose the car/iPod/cell phone. However if it wasn’t the last game, too freakin’ bad. Next time, pick up your damned socks kid.



Modern Family’s 'We Love the Word'

Modern Family was so fun this week. I really needed the laughter it gave me like a little gift I didn't know I needed.

From Phil Dunphy’s ill-advised minivan shrink-wrap scheme to promote his real estate business – which would up making the family minivan look like a giant ad for an escort service with Claire and Haley serving as Phil’s escorts – to Cameron’s over-the-top middle school musical direction, I was thoroughly entertained.

As the end of the season draws near, I’m already starting to feel Modern Family withdrawal symptoms.

Image credit: NBC

Parenthood: Dealing with Teens is a Massive Emotional Challenge

Boy was NBC’s Parenthood a tough watch this week, leading up to the season finale next Tuesday.

There was the distinctly uncomfortable scenario of parents learning that their 16-year-old was having sex with her boyfriend. Sure, the mom, Kristina Braverman, had come right out and asked her daughter Haddie if she and her boyfriend were having sex, so when the girl eventually told her they were, Kristina should’ve had some kind of plan about what she’d do with that information. Instead, Kristina, who first had sex at age 15, looked baffled and uncertain as to what she was supposed to do next. Her husband Adam was horrified, wouldn’t even look at Haddie and had a great deal of trouble dealing with the contrast of him seeing her as a little girl and seeing Haddie as a young woman who was discovering her sexuality. (I covered this in more detail in my episode review.) The subject of teenage sex was dealt with in such a realistic fashion that The Spouse was definitely squirming in his seat.

Then there was the sadness surrounding the whip-smart and edgy Amber, the high school senior who plunged into a downward spiral when she learned that she didn’t get into either of the colleges to which she applied. She started doing drugs, drinking and engaging in reckless behavior, including showing up at a restaurant to meet her mother for dinner while high and dressed bizarrely.

It just breaks your heart as a parent to watch a child endure emotional pain and watch her mother Sarah struggle with how to help her child guide through this wrenchingly difficult time.

The entire episode made me admire parents of teens – which I’ll become at the end of the summer – all the more for the challenges with which they must deal and still attempt to retain their sanity.

Image credits: Eric McCandless/ABC and NBC.

Notes from a Snow Day: Ice Rink, Movie Surprise, Chicken Stir Fry & Max in the Snow

Hey, What's This? Could It Be . . . an Actual Skating Rink? In Our Yard? YES!!!

I present to you . . . the ice rink as the foot-and-a-half of snow that fell from the sky since early this morning was being shoveled off of it.

The rink is brought to us by many, many hours of hard work and loving maintenance by The Spouse for his three children.

This week, I've added "buy skates" (for me and The Eldest Boy) to my "To Do" list this week.

The Spouse, who broke his wrist last year while skating on a public rink, is still shying away from skating, in spite of this great effort.

Eat, Pray . . . Whoa!!!

While the males in the family were snuggled up in front of the fireplace this weekend watching NFL playoff games, The Girl and I retreated to my room to watch the PG-13 rated film Eat Pray Love on DVD.

I'd read the book, so I figured that there might be one questionable scene near the last third of the film when the main character Liz is in Bali, which might require fast-forwarding or for me to mute the TV while The Girl averts her eyes. While I waited for Liz's relationship with Felipe, the man who would become her spouse, to commence, I totally did not expect a twentysomething male to drag Liz down to the waterfront and suddenly strip naked as he was trying to entice Liz to go skinny dipping.

Both The Girl and I shrieked as his butt was in the center of the screen and I hit, "Stop." The irony is that when Felipe and Liz were about to physically commence their love affair I suggested that The Girl go fetch a snack from the kitchen, only there was nothing she couldn't have seen, no nudity, no sex.

'Delicious' Chicken Stir Fries

More irony . . .

Whenever I pull out my wok, the Picket Fence Post kids roll their eyes. They're not fans of anything I might create inside of that thing. I've tried making them sweet stir fries, garlicky ones and even plain, soy sauce-based ones. But no matter how I prepared a stir fry, the kiddos usually take one bite, wrinkle their noses and wind up having cereal for dinner while The Spouse and I eat what I made.

Unless, of course, The Eldest Boy and The Girl happen to be the ones who made the stir fry. They're both currently taking Home Ec in their middle school -- which has been relabeled with the politically correct moniker, "Family Consumer Science" -- and in the past week they've both come home from school with a container of a chicken, vegetable noodle stir fry that they'd made. They were absolutely delighted with their creations and gobbled them up while I watched, amazed.

My new plan: The next time I pull out the work, I'm also going to pull The Eldest Boy and The Girl into the kitchen with me so the "experts" can show me how it's really done.

Cute Max Snow Pic

Max the dog -- who still spends much of his time rooting around the house looking for non-edible items that he can eat or gnaw on (tissues, dryer sheets, ball point pens, socks, etc.) -- was startled when we let him out onto our deck this morning and the snow was nearly as high as he is tall. He tried pushing his body through the snow, but stopped after traveling only a few feet and tried to get back into the house. (If snow was up to my eyeballs, I'd want to retreat too.)

However once The Spouse shoveled out several pathways for him, he romped around his little paths as though he were in a hedge maze. 'Twas very cute. The wet dog smell he has now that he's drying off, not so cute.

Christmas Flicks/TV Specials: Moms in the Background

While writing a recent Pop Culture & Politics columns I gave a lot of thought to Christmas movies and TV specials, in particular, how moms are portrayed.

With the exception of Doris Walker, the strong divorced mom in Miracle on 34th Street, most of the moms who appear on the Christmas movies/specials the Picket Fence Post family owns on DVD, were mostly background figures, like Mary Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life (which the Picket Fence Post family just watched together), who was mostly just an accessory for George Bailey. Ditto for the moms in Elf, The Year Without a Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

I wrote at length about all this on my pop culture blog and declared that only one other mom, Mrs. Parker from A Christmas Story, really asserted herself, albeit in a passive aggressive manner. (Think the leg lamp’s “accidental” demise.)

Do you have a favorite mom character from a Christmas movie or TV special?

'The Kids are All Right:' Parents are Parents

*Cross-posted from Notes from the Asylum.*

The Spouse kindly agreed to accompany me to the movies last week where I dragged him to see The Kids are All Right, the new Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo flick.

By the time we left the theater, we were convinced that the whole point of the film was this: Regardless of the fact that the main couple was comprised of two women who had raised two children, ages 15 and 18 (they each got pregnant with donor sperm from the same guy), their gender didn’t really matter all that much. What DID matter most was the fact that raising children changed their relationship, challenged it and sometimes obscured the romantic partners’ ability to see one another as they really are, not simply a collection of assorted weaknesses and flaws that can prove irritating.

In my pop culture column this week I wrote about the commonalities I felt I had with the film’s characters, saying, “. . . I felt as though I was observing some of the similar challenges facing my marriage to my husband being played out on the silver screen, witnessing the inevitable scars child-rearing, and life in general, can cause to a relationship.”

Me, 'Mad Men-ned' as a 1960s Housewife Like Betty

The good folks at AMC -- the network which airs my very favorite show Mad Men (now that Lost/I'mgoingtopretendthatfinaleneverreallyhappened is no longer on TV) -- have once again tapped the extraordinary talents of illustrator Dyna Moe to produce 1960s-styled avatars which you can personalize by selecting various options (hair, body, clothing, etc.) and insert into various scenes from Mad Men.

When it was first introduced last year, it was a huge internet hit so AMC is trying to recreate "The Wheel" with a new and improved version of Mad Men Yourself. With new scenes (like Betty's fainting couch, and Don at an outdoor restaurant in Rome), accessories and clothing, you can Mad Men Yourself all over again.

Here are two versions of me, circa the Mad Men era, one with java and one with a newspaper:

Wonder what it'd look like if I had the Picket Fence Post kids Mad Men themselves? I'll pick a moment when they're driving me stark, raving insane and then pull out the laptop and see what happens.

Welcome to the Picket Fence Post: Retooled Blog, New Location

Hello Picket Fence Post readers!

Hopefully you've made your way over from my former blog on the Parents & Kids/Wicked Local Parents site. I'm going to continue blogging in this location, writing not just about parenting in the suburbs of Boston, but about life behind the cliched picket fences.

I'll write about my three kids: The Girl (11, almost 12), her twin brother The Eldest Boy and The Youngest Boy (8 almost 9), as well as The Spouse and our 1-year-old Havanese/mini-Wheaten Terrier ball of fluff named Max.

I'll continue The Paper Project which I started last September when the Picket Fence Post kids started the third and fifth grades and I wanted to know exactly how many pieces of paper they'd bring home from school over the course of a year.

I'll do "Three for Thursdays" where I recap three newsy/buzzy news stories about parenting. Plus I'll delve into other lifestyle stuff I didn't touch on when I was writing for Wicked Local Parents that don't necessarily have anything to do with parenting, like coping with the dog's annoying chewing habits and my hatred of most things domestic (like cleaning, gardening, etc.).

If you're a pop culture buff, please check out my pop culture blog, Notes from the Asylum. I also write for other publications including: Mommy Tracked where I write a pop culture/politics column and I contribute to CliqueClack TV where I write about, cooking . . . no, where I write about TV of course.