Round Two

How can a little thing like changing your cable company lead to a major screamfest? All I wanted to do was discuss the possibility of switching to Comcast. Sounds innocuous enough, right? So how did I end up eating my dinner alone?

I may be crazy but, for me, it all comes down to tone. I didn't have a problem with my husband questioning my motivation. I didn't mind that he thought the persistent salesman who came to our door was less than truthful about the product he was pushing. I've been married for twenty-seven years; this kind of thing has come up before. No, what I have a problem with is being talked to as if I'm a child. When anyone takes that 'I know more than you do' tone with me, I tend to tune out whatever comes next. Shocker, huh?

The problem is, he honestly doesn't hear it. He thinks he's just making observations or providing me with necessary information. All I hear is the condescending tone of a know-it-all bully. As I learned in cross cultural training (a program designed to help you understand the linguistic minefields you might encounter living overseas), the source of the trouble resides in our different upbringings. My husband's homeland is big on delivering information. They're not overly concerned about being tactful and they sure don't understand Americans' tendency to sugarcoat everything that comes out of our mouths. I get it. I try to understand it. I just don't have to like it.

Surprising Yourself

When you're young, you think you have all the time in the world to take advantage of all the opportunities life offers. By the time you realize you don't, your mind and body are often not eager to cooperate. That's one of the reasons I insisted on taking our dream trip to Italy even when I knew it wasn't the best use of our financial resources. Some things are worth doing no matter what the cost. Ask my husband now about his reservations about that trip and he'll tell you it was the best money we ever spent. That's the thing about grasping opportunity when it comes your way. You're not usually sorry about the things you do. It's the opportunities you leave on the table that come back to haunt you.

That's why I couldn't be happier for my sister. This weekend, she didn't let a little thing like being terrified out of her mind stop her from stepping out on the edge and trying something new. Twice she stood for two hours on a stage and conquered that frightened inner voice that holds us back. Despite being a seasoned musical performer, this time she took a leap out of her comfort zone - a role in a new serious comedy called My Occasional Torment. The play's themes of love, marriage, aging and insecurities hit a bit too close to home. That would have been reason enough to have said no to the part (which she did more than a couple of times). Once she got past that roadblock, she had to face her real demon - memorizing one hundred pages of dialogue. As someone who struggles to recite her own cellphone number, I don't know how she did it. Didn't she? She did. (Sorry. Had to steal a line from the show). There she was, in the spotlight, in front of one hundred and fifty people, pushing herself to do something that she truly feared she would be unable to do. Two packed houses and two standing ovations begged to differ.

And next weekend, she gets to do it again. Maybe she'll be a little less terrified, maybe not. But she'll be there. As she wrote on her Facebook wall the morning after opening night, 'We're capable of so much more than we ever think we are'. Amen.

Bumps in the Road

Yesterday was a particularly bumpy ride on my way out of the motherhood. Can't say that anything major precipitated this emotional meltdown other than a less than perfect phone call with my son but that seems to be the pattern. The act of letting go of the reins of full-time motherhood is a dicey operation. Sometimes you're able to steer your way around the potholes and sometimes you're not.

Expecting your grown up male child to keep you informed of what's going on in his life is a little like peace in the Middle East. You want it to happen with all of your heart and soul but know there's not a chance in hell of it actually taking place. So while I think I'm asking for something completely reasonable, he sees it as an invasion of his privacy. While I think I'm just trying to forge the new and improved version of our relationship, he thinks I'm trying to keep him a child forever. I honestly don't think that's true but I did underestimate how hard it was going to be to let go.

The day did end on a happy note when he and his girlfriend showed up on our doorstep with dessert. I tried to keep the conversation light. He gave me extra hugs. I didn't pry or give advice. He brought chocolate. We're getting there.

Football Blues

I know this blog is supposed to be about the transition out of full time motherhood but today I'm mourning another transition - the end of the football season. Every year is difficult but this one ended with a spirit crushing, hard to swallow Super Bowl triumph by our arch rivals so it's even tougher than usual. The fact that we wasted the opportunity to knock them out of the playoffs not once but twice makes the upcoming off-season even worse. Not that I held out much hope that we could have won it all. I'll cop to being a crazed Bears fan but I'm actually sane enough to know that the better team moved forward. But you can't blame me for hoping our luck would hold out for a little while longer.

I was surprised how much it all bothered me. It's just a game. I know that. But seeing Aaron Rodgers and his cohorts hoisting that trophy when we were unable to do it when we had the chance a few years ago; not gonna lie, it made me a little sick to my stomach. I also had to deal with a couple of zealous Packer fans the next day at work. Didn't make Monday morning any easier.

So, now what? What the heck am I going to do with my Sunday afternoons? Baseball's months away and I'm not that big of a fan anyway. Golf? Except for the pleasure of seeing Tiger lose another one, there's not much fun in that snoozefest. Basketball? I might get interested in the last two minutes and the NCAA can be addictive with all that bracket nonsense but nothing holds my interests in the same way those helmeted Monsters of the Midway do. I guess I'll just have to find another outlet to get through this never ending winter. Since I'm still procrastinating editing my book, anybody up for a scintillating game of Trivial Pursuit?

eHarmony and Friends

My daughter joined an online dating network a few weeks ago. She now has one hundred and sixteen matches waiting for her perusal. So far she has gone out with four of them. To be honest, if I were single again (perish the thought), I would definitely give online matchmaking a try. It can't be worse than the way I used to meet potential boyfriends; i.e. blind dates, bars and my sister's discards. But it is a little scary. As a parent, you can't help envisioning a demented serial killer waiting for your firstborn at Starbucks. I've looked at their pictures and profiles. They all look normal (except for one that looked exactly like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast) but so did Ted Bundy.

Luckily, my daughter wants my opinion. She sifts through her favorites before asking what I think of each potential candidate. I'm amazed how many men are on the site. I'm even more amazed by how honestly and thoughtfully many of them seem to answer the questions. (Although there was one who answered 'Why are you on eHarmony?' with one word - sex. Got to give him props for honesty. Wonder how many responses he got?) Despite the requisite weirdos, there seem to be a lot of nice, hard-working, family oriented guys who say they want what my daughter wants - someone to accept and love them for who they are; someone to laugh with; someone to share their life with. Don't we all?

It all sounds too good to be true. But, given the chance to find real love, how often do women ignore the great guy right under their noses in order to hook up with the good looking bad boy who's bound to break their hearts? In our house, way too often so I am encouraged by the fact that my daughter is trying to break the pattern. If this doesn't work, I may be forced to resort to that age-old remedy of finding your children a mate - a good, old-fashioned arranged marriage.

Digging Out

It's a weird feeling to have your life in the hands of a stranger that operates a truck with a big, metal plate attached to the front. After experiencing the biggest snowstorm since I was a teenager, I'm now a prisoner in my own home. Granted, it's a nice place to be imprisoned, what with the HD TV and fully stocked fridge. Don't think I haven't taken the time over the last twenty-four hours to thank God for that particular blessing.

Every winter I ask myself what I'm doing here. Every winter my answer gets a little louder. I DON'T KNOW. Shoveling two feet of snow at 8:00 A.M. is not my idea of a fun wake up call. And my crazy husband refuses to use our perfectly good snow blower that resides in the basement. 'It's too heavy', 'It's too small', ' 'I can do it quicker by hand' are his favorite excuses. Today he rolled out a new one. "The fumes make me nauseous", he said as our neighbor offered him the use of his heavy duty machine. I tried to remind him that nauseating fumes were preferable to a coronary but he wasn't hearing any of it. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if my son were still here to man the second shovel but since that job now falls to me, I'm not empathizing with my husband's sensitive nose as much as I probably should.

Now he's informed me to be ready for "night shoveling" after the plow makes it through to our cul-de-sac. This winter just keeps getting better and better.

The Pity Party is Over . . . For Now

If you look at the description of this blog, it's supposed to be an "often humorous" look at the transition from full-time motherhood to whatever comes next. As anyone who's been reading this over the last few weeks knows, it's been anything but funny. Well, that's about to change. Beating myself up about the mistakes I've made as a parent could easily turn into a full-time job. Since that occupation doesn't pay very well, I've decided to direct my energies elsewhere.

Although I have one foot out the door of full-time parenting, our daughter is still gracing us with her presence so I still have opportunities to impart my hard-won wisdom on somebody. God knows, she's having her own transitional issues. She's between boyfriends and jobs. She's undecided about returning to school. She's confused about where she wants to live, although I did hear her mention to a friend that she might as well live here until she's thirty. She did laugh after she said that. That means she was kidding, right?

So, from now on, I'm going to concentrate on getting my own act together. I'll help my kids when I can (hopefully, not before I'm asked) but I'm going to stop focusing on the things that I cannot control and start working on what I can. That bestseller is not going to edit itself.