Department Lazy: Who Reads ALL the Labels?

From where I sit in my home office I can see my bookshelves, stocked with reference materials and favorite fiction, the portraits of my children used on a magazine cover last year, and some of my favorite mementos – like the brass cube from Arthur Andersen and my Junior League Star award. (Stop laughing.) I can also see the oversized decorative clock that my mother sent us for Christmas.

At least, I think my mother sent a clock.

I realize that we’ve never discussed this clock, my mother and I. It’s not that I’m ungrateful; it’s just that there was a special UPS delivery route established just to handle Mom’s QVC purchases this year. What? They have good deals! There were so many packages that I stopped looking at the labels. Some everyday items ended up under the tree. Is it terribly nerdy to admit how excited I was to open my Parenting Squad business cards on Christmas morning?

Anyway, I should call my mother and thank her for the clock. And find out if it really shouldn’t have been delivered to my neighbor.

Cotillion Revisited

I wrote last year about my confusion over cotillion, my inner conflict about whether or not my son should participate, and confidence that my daughter would refuse to do so when her turn comes around. Though I’m still unsure why we parents pay the tuition, at least now I understand why the kids are willing to do it. Two words: after party. Yes, that is what they called it. And apparently, there is great pleasure derived from riding go-karts in sports jackets and pretending to be James Bond at laser tag. All that and the fox trot too. I am coming around.

Not So Frickin Fast

I am on after school pick up duty for my son and a friend at ye olde middle school. The following exchange recently occurred between The Friend and myself:

“Could you please turn it up?” Responding to such a polite request, I increase the radio volume, which he appreciates. ”This song is so frickin awesome!”

[insert sigh] ”Are you allowed to say “frickin” at home?”

“Yeah.” [insert pffft noise and eyeroll]

“Really?”

At this point my son is literally holding his breath.

The Friend shrugs. “Well, I don’t actually say it in the house.”

Uh huh. He’s not saying it in my car anymore either. Way to uphold the community standards, Lela! You go!

Overheard In My Kitchen

My family is still enjoying the benefits of my recent return to super-healthy eating. This is to say they are loving the broiled salmon and adoring the brown rice. They are head over heels for my pureed cauliflower soup. I’m trying new things, like muesli, a lovely mixture of oats, seeds, dried fruit, and the recycled boxes of sugary cereals. I’m trying to get the family to join in my fibrous fervor.

“I bought some new cereal,” I lift the bag like a particularly pretty baby so my husband can admire its wholesome goodness. ”You should try it.”

He eyes it at that angle we both use because we are in between regular lenses and bifocals and cannot bear the indignity of readers.

“You know what?” His eyes light up. “I’ll bet that would be good in the bird feeder!”

Community Building Goes Commando

I have learned in the past couple of months that when you say yes to attend a meeting because they “just really appreciate your input”, that means you have actually committed to working on the project. And when you tell the organizers that you can “help” in a particular area of the project’s execution, this means you will be heading up that committee. Try it, you’ll see.

Anyway, I accidentally volunteered to build a playground. And when I say “build a playground” I don’t mean showing up on the work day and assembling some pre-fabricated pieces. I mean I signed on to “make it happen.” (What could I say? They appreciated my input.) While I’m sure I’ll meet some wonderful people and learn valuable skills (including community building) throughout the process, so far it’s just a source of material.

Picture a dozen adults tasked with choosing playground colors. The organizer pulls out 30 or so metal and plastic samples and tells us we must choose two metal colors and one plastic color–and we must devise three different color combinations. 30 x 2 + 1 to the 3rd power? That’s like infinity, right? I looked at the clock and tried to ignore the growl in my gut.

Almost immediately preferences emerged. Clear factions formulated and soon there developed a rift between The Bolds and The Naturals. Voices of reason tried to steer the color conversation to practical matters like the color’s effect on the temperature of different surfaces. Heated debate about reds vs. yellows vs. greens and browns continued. An old man wondered aloud why we were even building a playground. “Let them play with sticks!”

After much shuffling of metal and plastic samples, two natural color schemes and a combat motif were chosen.

Ahh… I love the smell of community building in the morning.

Containing Myself

I lost my Container Store virginity last week. I’d heard the hype so I walked around an outdoor shopping mall in north Dallas for forty minutes waiting for it to open on July 4th. Sure, I was also avoiding my family, but that’s another story. Inside the store I had to pry myself away from magnetic doohickies that stick to your locker door – holding lipgloss, concealer sticks, and other essentials for surviving high school. Despite the fact that I’m not in high school and have no locker of any kind, I actually had to tell myself-repeatedly-that I had no use for such things. This is how intoxicating the Container Store and any other place of its ilk is for me. I’m mesmerized in certain sections of Staples, dumbfounded in the closet area of Lowes, and stupefied among the office supplies at Target.

I am a consumer of home organization porn. I want to believe–I do believe–that life is better when its contents are properly stowed and labeled, preferably in a clear typeface. Getting organized causes me to simplify, to cull all those unnecessary objects from my life, or at least contain them in space-efficient decorative bins. The process works for ideas too. Just check my hard drive, my internet spaces, the 3-ring binders that grace my not-very-orgnized shelves, the post-its on the white board I’m using to plot my novel.

A friend of mine has a pantry that has to be at least 100 square feet. Her custom built home is not some ridiculous mansion and she has no servants to fetch the Sunday linens; the woman simply values organization. There is a place for every can of mushroom soup and tiered platter in that miracle of modern kitchenry. To be that organized, equipped…. well one could probably survive the apocalypse in a place like that – if one had enough adjustable shelving and plastic boxes.

Sometimes I think it’s a joke, all this planning and organizing – just one more way to procrastinate. But then the loan officer calls about my refinance. I reach into the drawer next to my computer and pull out the file labeled “refi” and pull out the document she’s requesting before she finishes her sentence. Sickening, isn’t it?

Breaking Up Is Always Hard to Do

I took my son and a friend to the pool the other day, where they ran into the friend’s ex – AND her family. Apparently it was a pretty bad break up. While these 12-year-olds managed to avoid court, there was some lengthy arbitration over the custody of the silly bands.

Field Day Debrief

School’s out, but somewhere at this moment a group of women sit scheming new ways to make next year’s Field Day even better than this year’s celebration extraordinaire. These dedicated souls have been crossed trained on the Candy Walk and the Sponge Race; they have screened the best DJs; they have scoured the internet for more inventive crafts; and they have negotiated the best price on sugar sand and plastic tubes. They know when to put more kernels in the popper, understand the MIT developed matrix scheduling of class rotations, and know just how long it takes to inflate a bouncy slide. Quiet as its kept, I hear next year we may even have misting stations to keep the spoiled little snots more comfortable.

I say we go old school. Toss them in the playground with a rope and a hose (sunscreen optional), blast some music we can all agree on (can you say Guitar Hero?), and cordon off the grown-ups in a beer garden. I’ll chair.

Youth is But an Afternoon Away

Ah, youth, that fleeting feeling of being immortal, invincible, even irresistible. Short of things that are against the law, abjectly amoral, or just really bad for us, how do we recapture that feeling? Cosmetic procedures, that’s how!

In my inbox today, advertising for all the youthening I can afford:

Botox
I have yet to try this new old standby, though I have actively been trying for a year to get my neighbor, who is an ear, nose, and throat doctor, to let me host a party where we gals drink mojitoes and he shoots us up with botulism. So far, he’s not biting. Not a very good friend, that one. I mean, so what if the toxin can spread away from the injection site, causing everything from breathing problems to loss of bladder control? No who would believe I am perpetually calm anyway.  My friends would think I’d been replaced by an alien. Or a robot.

Organiceuticals

This is the latest marketing spin on youthful potions that are supposed to erase all the lines and somehow reverse the effects of gravity. Made with ingredients like coffeeberry, these sound more like breakfast food than magical elixir. And why so pricey? I’m thinking of whipping up something in a compost pile out back. Come on over.

Laser Hair Removal

The offer of the day is “Buy One Area Get 2nd Area For 1/2 Price”. Of course, the 1/2 price is for the “equal or lesser value” area. How exactly is this determined, this valuation of my hairy areas? Is it the quality of the hair? The quantity? And how does one get a handle on that before committing to the procedure? Is there an appraisal process? Does someone drive by the house and snap shots of me in unfortunate postures? Is there a hidden camera at the yoga studio perhaps?

So much to ponder. It makes my brain feel tired, and old.

Valerie Bertinelli on The View, and in Cleveland

I hate to admit I was planning to tune in to The View tomorrow just to see if Valerie Bertinelli had started to gain all that Jenny Craig weight back. I’m petty like that. But when I started picking around the internet, I found another reason to watch. VB’s got a new sitcom scheduled to air this summer called Hot in Cleveland. She will star with Wendi Malick (Just Shoot Me) and Jane Leeves (Frazier) in the show about three best friends from L.A. stranded in Cleveland.

Why am I excited about this? It has recently been suggested that agents and editors are only interested in women’s fiction set in New York or L.A. Maybe this TV show will lend some cred to the un-sexy, the non-coastal–therefore legitimizing Bentonville, Arkansas as a respectable setting for my novel.

Stop laughing.

Besides, she was married to a rockstar and worked with a woman who engaged in consensual incest. Val’s got stories.

I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review.

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