Eat Yer Veggies

Today I attended an info session at work about a new feature in our database. It was supposed to be held from 11:30 to 12:15. Starting at a few minutes to twelve, my stomach growled softly. My fault for eating breakfast at 5:30, eh? So at 12:15 I went to grab my lunch, nuked it, and brought it to the conference room to eat it while the meeting was still going on. Good thing, since it didn't end until 12:35 and I would've been completely famished by then.

Two of my buddies scolded me as we were all leaving the meeting, as they were enthralled by the smell of my food. I had the leftover veggies from last night's dinner: a large sized Tupperware full of spaghetti squash. I guess it was the way I'd seasoned it: lots of garlic, some black pepper, a handful of grated cheese, and a small amount of margarine. Yup, it was the garlic.

I laughed at the thought of other people coveting my lunch because I sometimes have to resort to threats to get the kids to eat spaghetti squash. Regular spaghetti? No problem. Even whole wheat spaghetti is fine since they're used to that by now. I've even tried mixing real spaghetti with spaghetti squash. That really made them mad! Something about the consistency of the squash strings that puts them off. Oh well. I enjoyed it!

Who Dat?

This morning, I cooked a pot of rice mixed with quinoa and two kinds of chicken sausage, for tonight's dinner. Son #1 has "mini band camp" from 6 to 9 at the high school, and I have to go hand in a bunch of paperwork there as well. At least he'll get to eat real food before I dash home from work to grab him and take him over there, and the rest of the troops will eat real food. Tomorrow night and Thursday are a question mark right now.

After I ate my breakfast, finished cooking, and left everything on the stove top to cool, I took my crocheting bag to relax for a little while. After I looked at News 12 weather, I flipped through the movie channels. Finding "So I Married an Axe Murderer" I smiled and started watching it midway through. I love these screwball comedies, and I enjoyed the casting. Nancy Travis is the cute widow who unbeknownst to Mike Myers is covering up the trail of husbands that her mentally ill sister (Amanda Plummer) has offed. The prospective groom instead suspects that his bride to be is the murderess, and it goes on from there. Great cameo by Steven Wright as a rather unconventional airline pilot.

Anyhow, Son #2 wakes up and comes in to join me while I'm watching. He asks what's on the TV so I tell him...and uncover just enough of the plot to pique his interest. We come to the wedding scene, with the groom's family in full Scottish garb. My son's incredulous reaction: "She's marrying Austin Powers?!?"

Teen Theatre

This was the last week of the July theatre arts program sponsored by our school district's youth council. The kids going into fifth through seventh grades constituted the junior group, and the incoming eighth through twelfth graders were the senior group. Son #1 is entering the ninth grade, so he was in the elder group, but this was his first time in the theatre arts program. Many of his peers had four more years of experience there, so he really picked up a lot and worked on his dancing skills (I had failed to visualize him performing hip hop numbers until I actually saw him do it, and he was good!).

The older kids' show, last night, had some standout vocal solos and some impressive ensemble dance numbers. They were quite talented. I have to admit that I didn't enjoy a lot of the actual material as much, as it was very far removed from actual show music and more about current teenage alternative genre. The younger kids' show, on Wednesday, was much more up my alley. It was a Wizard of Oz motif, loosely based on the original story, but also pulled in songs from Wicked, Into the Woods, Tarzan, and other shows as we followed the chronicles of our four friends wandering the forest in search of the omniscient, omnipotent one.

One of the songs, which I hadn't heard before, really did move me. Part of the reason for this is that the young lady who sang it was not miked up properly, and yet we were able to hear her all the way in the back of the auditorium, over the pit band. A shame about the mike, of course...but in the second act, one of the players called her on stage in between two other numbers and said that he didn't hear her song before...and asked her to sing it again. This time the mike was working. Stunning! The program said she's going into the sixth grade. I can't even fathom what she'll do in high school, with that big voice.

The song was "What It Means to be a Friend" from the musical 13. This really tugged on my heart strings and my memory threads. At that time of life, I was just discovering friendships in my own peer group at school and had major trials...but I'm also feeling it for Son #1 who's also an intellectual and an introvert (as I was) and even though it might not be as bad for a guy he's having the same kinds of struggles as far as I can tell. These lyrics hit home with me big time.

A friend’s not a cheap little phony creep
Or a jerk trying to make a deal
A friend is a person who, most of all,
Cares about what you feel;
And nothing is harder
Than learning a friend isn’t real

A friend sends notes back and forth all day
And doesn’t care that you can’t spell
A friend knows you’ve got a crush on your teacher,
But a friend would never tell
A friend’s outside waiting
The minute you both hear the bell

And if your heart is always breaking
Cause the world is just not fair
When you’re at your worst
Your friend’s the first one there
Giving you something to lean on
And that’s what it means to be a friend

And if your heart is always breaking
And you want to run and hide
When your hope is gone
Your friend is on your side

If someone moves in ‘round the corner
And you want to show him you care
So you give him all your last month of vacation
And all of the time you can spare
But then, on the first day of classes
He acts like you’re not even there,
Then he doesn’t know…
He doesn’t know!
He’ll never know what it means
To be a friend

So last night we finished in the auditorium at about 10:10PM, and then the kids had to change and take off makeup and collect all their things. My son had procured $20 from his dad so he could go to the diner with the cast afterwards, so I dropped him off and asked him to please call no later than 11:30. I got a text from him at 11:29, asking me to meet him out front of the diner but not come in. (How embarrassing, to have your mom come inside and be seen by everyone!)

I remember what it was like at that age, to feel like I was being accepted by a group...or hope that I was, and I was willing to travel anywhere or hang out with people I really only kind of enjoyed because I was gaining that acceptance and it gave me confidence to build on. Even though the entire cast reported to the high school at 7:00 yesterday morning for the early performance, and they really only got a break for a couple of hours in the afternoon, my kid didn't seem tired at all when stepping into the shower at midnight. Meanwhile, Mama Bear was ready to drop!

Naturally I'm not the picture of energy today, but my parental satisfaction meter is off the charts.

Random Musings of...

...Son of Geek Soccer Mom?!?

Yup. Last night my eight-year-old came home from camp with a yellow spiral notebook that had his initials written on the front, and the word "Personal." He informed me that he was now keeping a journal. Before bed time, he was sitting on my bed watching TV, writing in it. I asked him what kinds of things he wrote, and he said it had a lot of emotion. "Like yesterday, when you didn't walk into the room with me, when you brought me to Care?" I reminded him that I did indeed go into the breakfast room when we arrived at his camp, and I recounted our conversation. "Oh yeah," he mumbled. At once he opened the book and crossed out a tearful face that had "Sad" written next to it, and another one just below that had "Nervous" next to it.

I asked him what else makes him nervous, and he said being alone in his room with the door closed...because someone could come in and sneak up behind him and scare him. I asked him whether he knew that we lock all the doors and windows at night, and he said yes. Then I asked whether anyone had ever come in and scared him. He said no. So what was he nervous about? One of his brothers walking in. Sigh.

Oh, to be eight again, with all the anxieties. He got lots of hugs and kisses before shut-eye last night, and more than usual this morning. I wonder what else about the family might be in his journal...but at least his musings aren't on the Internet like mine. Yet.

Five Minutes of Terror

Yesterday afternoon, another scorcher in the recent Long Island heat wave, seemed a great time to take the Amigos to the community pool. After an hour there, the sky grew dark and a few raindrops began to fall. (Not a bad thing since we need the rain.) But, without warning, a wall of water began to crash down upon us. Naturally, the lifeguards all stood up and blew their whistles repeatedly to summon everyone out of the pool.

Sprinting towards the perimeter of the deck where our towels, shoes, and pool bag were, I became drenched. Once under the overhang, I realized that the wind was whipping the rain at such an angle that there would really be no shelter there. So I decided to grab the kids and all the stuff and head for the building. However, only the older two were next to me, trying to collect our stuff while being pelted hard in the face with raindrops. Son #3 was not with us, and it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.

Of course the hearts started pounding and I could detect a shrillness rising in my voice. We agreed to split up and cover the area, meeting by the lifeguard area. It was barely possible to be heard, even while shouting, because of all the other people shouting. My heart sank as I pondered the fact that it would not have been unusual for a grownup to carry a screaming eight year old kid (mine) out of the pool area under these circumstances...and if my son were to have been dumped in a stranger's car and driven out of there, my heart would be broken forever. I tried not to freak out.

Still no luck as we met up at the lifeguard station. The boys checked the men's room and the front desk. I began to give a physical description of my son to the lifeguard in charge when, mercifully, he appeared, shivering with a towel covering his body head to toe. He hadn't heard his brothers calling for him in the rest room amid the commotion of all the people hiding from the rain in there. He'd taken his towel and gone in there because he actually had to use the facilities...which would have been fine if he'd told one of us where he was going. PHEW!

Not caring that all four of us and all of our belongings were completely waterlogged at this point, we made our way to the car as the rain continued to pour down. As we drove home, Son #2 (Mr. Melodrama) and I implored the little one to remember to always tell someone if he needed to leave the group. Murphy's Law is unfortunately still in effect. Whatever can go wrong usually does, at the worst possible time. But the feeling of relief was also washing over me at that moment, and I'd forgotten all about begin waterlogged.

Quick showers for all, and a load of laundry done, made everything seem okay again. I made an early dinner and was physically drained by 8PM. Monday morning came, and it felt like a typical one...until I got into the car to take Son #3 to camp. My seat cushion had not yet dried, and I managed to become soaked through before I realized what was happening. %$#@! I made the best of it by putting down a few canvas grocery bags from the trunk. It only took two hours to dry off. But I'm smiling, all things considered.

Rain and Sun

Harumph, I didn't hear that it was going to be so gloomy today on Long Island. I thought it would be at least a sunny or partly cloudy day. But the rain has ignited my sister-in-law's multiple sclerosis, and her nerve endings are killing her today. Bummer. Our dinner plan has been blown to bits. However...we made an alternate plan with my niece, who recently got engaged to a young man whom we haven't met yet...so we will meet him tonight! Lemonade comes from lemons, that's what I think.

No Humans Need Apply

You may know that I'm in charge of tech support where I work (otherwise known as a service desk or help desk) and we pride ourselves on spoiling our customers rotten. One aspect of this is our response time to emails. During "on shift" times we often answer within minutes. Many of our replies include some customization of a canned letter, or a fully customized reply if it's a one-off problem. I realize that not every tech support bureau operates this way, and I don't attempt to hold everyone to our high standards...but some things do make me cringe. Here's one of 'em.

In the middle of last week, the service provider for my personal email account had a catastrophic outage. Email was inaccessible for over 24 hours, and there were rumors that their corporate email even had an outage. Facebook and Twitter buddies of mine were posting frustrations about the outage. When the problem was fixed on Friday afternoon, I thought I'd be the atypical customer and send a quick note to their support portal to thank them for fixing it. I chuckled when I got the autoresponse email that said I'd receive an answer within three business days. I figured the rep who read it would be relieved that it wasn't a complaint, and would put a smile on his/her face.

Late last night (three business days plus about seven hours) I did receive a response from a rep named Pat. I could only tell it was Pat because his/her name was in parentheses in the From field. The message was a generic "we regret that you suffered an inconvenience" note, signed generically. So much for the personal touch. I might've received the same note if I'd written to say "you %$#%$# have held my email messages hostage for the past 24 hours you &%@&%@" or something similar. No customization and certainly no personalization. Does their software not allow for this? Or are they completely not motivated to respond to a "thanks" and a smiley face any differently than they would a complaint?

Definitely a case where I would not say "vive la difference."