It's School Time . . . Where Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

There comes a point during the summer when you're a work-from-home or an at-home parent, where you feel like you're going to lose your mind. Either the kids won't stop fighting over stupid stuff or they're telling you they're bored (like you're their cruise director in charge of their amusement or something) or they're nagging you to death for a) TV b) video games c) snacks d) all of the above.

Today as the three Picket Fence Post children went off to school, I was saddened to see the summer come to an end, but was pleased that I'll get a reprieve from moments like this one (though I'm not usually lying down in a bed when the children are still awake):

Where Have You Gone Troy Bolton?

Shortly after she turned 12, I found a framed movie poster leaning up against a wall in my bedroom. It was the High School Musical poster I’d given her a few years ago.

She was done with it, she said. Maybe her younger cousin would like it, she suggested.

That wasn’t all.

When she told me what music she wanted me to load onto the new iPod The Spouse and I got her for her birthday, left off the list of tunes were all the High School Musical songs, the Cheetah Girls tunes and the Hannah Montana music.

“Really? You don’t want any of these songs?” I asked, surprised that I suddenly cared about music sung by the characters of Troy Bolton, Gabriella Montez and Sharpay Evans.

She glanced at the ground and said plaintively, “Mooomm!” slightly embarrassed that I cared that she was moving on, musically speaking.

Have I heard, “Breaking Free” for the last time in our house? Is this goodbye to High School Musical? Sure, the franchise drove me crazy when I heard their songs non-stop, but now I think I’m really gonna miss them. And that shocks me.

Image credit: Disney.

'Mad Men's' Betty Francis (Formerly Mrs. Draper) Continues Her Campaign for Mother of the Year

For anyone who saw Sunday night’s Mad Men, the scenes between Betty and her 10-year-old daughter Sally were tough to watch.

First Betty slapped Sally across the face after learning that, in a desperate cry for attention, Sally cut her hair when she was staying with her father. Then, in another scene, Betty threatened to cut off Sally’s fingers after the mother of one of Sally’s friends found Sally touching herself and promptly drove the kid home.

Come to think of it, other than Mona Sterling whose daughter got married last season, are there any mothers from Mad Men who could be considered “good moms?” I’m drawing a blank. . .

(The actress who plays Betty, January Jones, did a Q&A about the challenge of acting out the slapping scene with Kiernan Shipka. She once cut her hair when she was a girl.)

School Supply Shopping: It's Not Just About Pencils Any More

There was this one scene from the movie You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan, who played the owner of a children’s bookstore, is happily arranging freshly sharpened pencils on her check-out counter after her e-mail “pen pal” had written to her, "Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”

All those lovely, nostalgic thoughts about the promise of the new school year can get me in the mood for autumn, but any poetic sentiments I might’ve been holding about the smell of freshly sharpened pencils were immediately eclipsed the moment I walked into the store (two separate stores, actually) to buy my kids' school supplies. Why? Because back to school time is no longer just about some pencils and notebooks and maybe a new backpack. It’s about these dang school supply lists whose items parents are supposed to buy because schools no longer provide the stuff.

I spent this afternoon racing back and forth in a wildly disorganized fashion through the packed, disorganized aisles of Target and Staples with the three Picket Fence Post kids trying to locate the items on their school supply lists. I started off hoping that we’d get this done quickly, sans drama, but alas, it wasn’t long before I started getting cranky and frustrated.

(The Youngest Boy suggested that after we found the school supplies that we pick out school clothes. This proposal was swiftly rejected. I told him there was no way that I was doing that again without his father in tow. I’ve been down that road before, taking the three of ‘em clothing shopping alone. Wound up sweating, racing from one changing room to the next, trying to get the right sizes, demanding that they show me the clothing on their bodies to check how they fit, arguing with them . . . not doin’ that again solo if I can help it.)

If you can believe it, Target was out of block erasers. They were also out of those sturdy, 100-page composition books with the black and white covers. I must’ve looked five times in the school supply and office supply sections, but had no luck. When I was finally resorted to asking a clerk about those items, he shrugged and led me to another guy who was nice but gave me that, “Boy are you late lady,” look and said, “Sorry, we’re all out of those.”

Later at Staples, the kids could only find these fairly expensive erasers, and I needed to buy a total of 24 of them. I refused to believe that Staples would be completely out of those pink block erasers, so I asked a sales clerk there if those were the only erasers Staples had in stock and he . . . you guessed it . . . shrugged his shoulders. I later found cheaper, Staples-brand pink erasers, no thanks to that guy.

And for what, pray tell, were we shopping? Here’s the exact list that my fourth grader’s teacher sent to him:

“1 pair of Fiskar pointed-tip kid scissors

2 large glue sticks

2 packages of 12 #2 pencils with erasers

1 box of 8 ct. Crayola washable markers (conical tip, fat)

2 Ultra fine tip black Sharpie markers

1 box of 24 ct. Crayola Colored Pencils

1 – Sharpie Accent Highlighter

7 twin pocket folders, one of each color: red, green, blue, purple, orange, yellow, white

2 twin pocket folders – your choice of color or pattern

3 (100 pg. wide ruled) Mead Composition books, black and white firm marble covers

2 Black 3-ring binders (1/2”)

1 package (100 sheets) 3 hole punched line paper

1 plastic pencil box

4 packages of “super sticky” post-it notes (3”X3” size, solid colors)

2 rolls of scotch tape – clear

2 boxes of tissues”

We couldn’t find a white pocket folder, so we bought a clear plastic one. The only pointed-tip kid scissors were larger and for older kids, but I bought them anyway. (Speaking of which, why do we have to keep bringing in a new pair of scissors every year? Where did the ones we bought last year go? Why can't the kids put their names on their stuff and be responsible for their own scissors?)

Here’s the recommended supply list for the two older children, who are starting sixth grade next week:

“8 Two Pocket Folders, one each- red, yellow, blue, green, purple, orange, and two colors of your choice

24 Pencils

12 Red Pens

12 Erasers

Ruler (Vinyl)

Protractor

Package of Index Cards

You will also need an assignment book or planner. [The Middle School] assignment book may be purchased for $5.00 when school reopens. If you choose not to purchase a [Middle School] planner, please bring your own planner on the first day of school.”

Additionally, in a letter sent home to the middle schoolers by the principal, the students were told they also needed “a notebook.”

Total cost of all of the above supplies (not including the “extras” the kids wanted/said they needed, like stuff for the middle school lockers, multi-subject notebooks and expandable folders to keep their papers organized, etc.): $81.45.

Me, I’d be happy with a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils.

Notes from a 9-Day Canadian Odyssey

Family vacations can be memory-making and fun, but they're double-edged swords, which can leave you with the distinct feeling that what you really need after the family vacation concludes is a RELAXING one, particularly after traveling 1,100 miles in the car with three kids.

It had been four years since The Spouse and I had taken a long road trip with the Picket Fence Post kids. The last time was when we went to New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. The Spouse thought we were clearly due so he planned a road trip to Montreal and Quebec City with a one-night stop in North Conway, New Hampshire to break up the ride home.

Thus we took off -- armed with a borrowed portable DVD player for the car and a bunch of used DVDs – and headed for the land where more people speak French than English. And let me tell ya, the four years of French The Spouse took in high school . . . totally useless. I'd taken Spanish in high school and, while I brought a couple of English/French books with me and tried to remember some key phrases, every time I was face-to-face with a French speaker, Spanish words started involuntarily popping up in my mind and I had to stop and fumble around in my brain for the right word. Most of the time I wound up just smiling mutely like some kind of idiot.

By the end of the trip, the three kids were comfortable saying, “hello,” “please” and “thank you,” as well as saying in French that they didn’t know how to speak French, how to ask someone if they spoke English and how to inquire where the toilet was located.

What they weren’t comfortable with was eating cuisine that didn't resemble American "kid fare." Every night, after a long day of traipsing around Canadian landmarks (La Citadelle, the Quebec parliament building, Old Quebec City, Parc Olympique, the botanical gardens in Montreal), we’d face the evening battle royal over where to go for dinner and what to eat when we got there. The Spouse and I only made them have one “fancy” meal where we all were served soup, salad, steaks and “frites.” Two out of the three Picket Fence Post kids were miserable all the way through the dinner, which, I will admit, we were having at a later hour than the kids were used to, contributing to their ire. On most other evenings, it felt like a Herculean struggle to try to lobby them to eat anything other than pizza, a hamburger/cheeseburger, some version of chicken fingers or pasta with "red sauce." On the side.

Not to mention that there were all these little fights that, by the end of the week, had picked away at my patience until there was nothing at all left. It was the non-stop bickering over the small stuff that really got to me, like who got to push the hotel elevator buttons, who got to open the hotel door with the cool key card, who went first on the escalator, who had to sit in the middle seat in the car, who "crossed the invisible line" in the car, why there weren't better snacks in the car, who got to sit next to The Spouse at meals, who got to sleep on the cot and who had to share the other bed with a sibling, especially The Youngest Boy who was apt to roll all around the bed.

I think the stress had started taking a toll by the time we got to the Citadelle for a tour and to witness the changing of the guard ceremony. The soldiers were all decked out in red uniforms and the black English hats (they're dressed like the guards in front of Buckingham Palace). During the ceremony, they marched around the parade area, submitted to an inspection by a superior, guards in the band played some music and one soldier brought out this ceremonial goat named Batisse, the latest in a long line of regimental goats. As we stood there in the hot sun and kept telling our 9-year-old to chill out and stop bellyaching, I started feeling punchy, so I started making whispered inappropriate jokes including telling the kids that after the guard members who were going off duty were inspected, the least prepared soldier would get shot in the knee as punishment. Terrible, I know, but what can I say, I was tired and cranky. The Spouse, appealled, set the kids straight – “No one’s getting shot!” – nonetheless, the children kept giving me sidelong glances as if they weren’t too sure about how this ceremony was going to conclude. (Fear not, there was no bloodshed.)

On the vacation’s lone rainy day, we went to the aquarium near Quebec City and saw some cool walruses and a whole mess of really ugly fish, then headed in the direction of this insane indoor amusement park at a shopping mall called MegaParc. Only problem was, the directions we’d received from our hotel's concierge didn’t happen to mention that there was a detour along the route. Said detour – the detour signs led us nowhere -- had us lost for quite some time as we kept circling around and around. The directions and crude map drawn by a French-only speaking clerk at a random store we'd passed were moderately helpful, while the offspring kept reminding us that they were hungry (I plied them with Jolly Rancher candies), that they needed to use the toilet and were sick of being in the car. I was with ‘em. On all three counts. Eventually, we found the place and man, was it loud in there what with an indoor Ferris wheel, roller coaster, bumper cars (which I feared would put my back out as the impact of hitting another object was so intense), spinning rides, rock climbing, a carousel, etc.

Amusing moments:

-- The kids telling us after our first historic tour that they were all done with this tour business. When The Spouse told ‘em they might very well learn something from the tours, he was informed that it was summer and summer was no time for learnin’ stuff.

-- Everyone was greatly amused that when you muted the TV in our Quebec it said, “Silence” on the TV screen.

-- When we arrived at one particular hotel we decided to be cheapskates and parked our own vehicle in the parking garage, lugging our stuff from the garage to the front desk. The route took us up and down seven flights of stairs -- the kids' luggage loudly slamming against the stairs -- and to an ancient, potentially killer elevator that nearly closed on The Youngest Boy, clipped his shirt sleeve a bit. Okay, so that’s not funny, exactly, but we joked about it during our hours on the road, that and getting shot in the knee for being ill-prepared the changing of the guard ceremony.

Now we're back and on the precipice of a new school year. Hockey practice starts for The Youngest Boy this week -- all of our first forays into playing on a hockey team (pray for me to locate my patience) -- and we still have to go back-to-school shopping and tackle that supply list. Our Canadian odyssey already seems like it was a long time ago.

We'll Be Back After This Brief Break . . .

Not to be alarmed my Picket Fence Post peeps, but I'll be taking a break from blogging for the next week to recharge the writing/blogging brain.

When I return to this space I'll bring y'all fresh tales and anecdotes from the front lines of suburbia.

'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.”