Snow Day Reveals Ugly Side of Oldest Son

We had a day off school today due to snow. Yea! Snow days are the best days in the world. You get to sleep in, eat, then nap and sleep some more.

My favorite part of snow days is having my kids at home. That said, they all made plans (rather quickly) to abandon me and leave me home alone. Now that the kids are older, they are no longer interested in me. I’m not sure why because I think I’m really interesting. I like origami and beavers. Who wouldn’t love to hang out with someone like that?

Many parents feel slighted when their teens would prefer to hang out with their friends rather than the family. I never feel slighted. The emotions I feel are better described as rage or vengefulness. Anyway, it makes no difference to me whether my kids think they are close to me or not. I have access to something all teens like, but few have. Something that strengthens our bond much more strongly that some friendship with another teen. No, it’s not a grasp of the English language. It’s money. I have money.

So if I feel lonely, I can use this money to buy my kids’ company. I recommend young parents get out their notebooks and write down this advice because it’s invaluable.

For example, say your teenager is about to leave the house to go to McDonalds with his friends. You can casually say, “Oh, you’re going out with friends? I was going to take you to The Cheesecake Factory" (that’s a nice restaurant, for those of you who don’t know the place). Now your teen faces a dilemma. Does he want to hang out with his "homies" or with his old mother, who is offering him fine cuisine? If you’ve raised your teen properly from Day One, the child will pick food every time. (If you didn't raise your kid right, stop reading my blog right now and choose another website. Shoo!)

Today I won over my youngest son by taking him to an Indian restaurant. My other kids don’t like Indian food, so I got to have special time with Roberto. (Remember, it is pronounced Robert-Oh, like Jackie O.) He is grateful for any kind of food, so Wendy’s would have worked, but I felt generous.

Sometimes you make horrible mistakes as you are raising your kids. I did this with my first son. I introduced him to expensive foods when he was young. He quickly developed a taste for lobster, crabs, mussels, filet mignon, Crème Brulee. Once you make the mistake of introducing real foods and creating a sophisticated palate, you are just plain screwed (pardon my French). For goodness sakes, younger readers, learn from my mistakes . . . avoid feeding your toddlers expensive foods! You are just creating a monster. There is no turning back, believe me, because when your kid is older, you may be forced to decide to sever the relationship with said child. My oldest son, Hans, is a great person. He's quick-witted, and I just love being around him, but it doesn’t matter. I cut ties with him years ago.

So anyway, when we went to the Indian restaurant for lunch today, the food was horrible. But I didn't care. I had a great time with my youngest son, who is always a delight and very entertaining. Plus they gave us free soda.

Raphael, my middle son, did not join us for lunch. Instead, he left me for his friends. Not a problem. I will find some superficial reason to ground him when he comes home tonight. For example, I might notice that he dropped a napkin on the floor of the car and then I can punish him for littering. Then we’ll be able to spend the whole day together tomorrow.

In case you’re wondering, the oldest son was left to fend for himself at lunch. Again, we wouldn’t be in this situation if he liked cheaper food. It’s his fault, not mine, and I don’t appreciate your accusatory tone. He’s lucky I let him live in our house after what he’s done. Many parents would have thrown him out on the street by now. I’m just kinder than most parents. I like to think of myself as a giver.

Well, I hope you are enjoying this snow day, wherever you are, whether in Maryland, Pennsylvania or New Jersey (like many of my old friends) or in Utah (like all the people I don’t know). I am assuming that everyone in our great nation, except for the Hawaiians, were out of school today due to the snow. I hope you enjoy the rest of your three-day weekend, America.

Your friend, Jackie

By the way, I've been neglectful of notifying people when I publish a new posting. Scroll down to see if you missed other postings in the past. Thanks.

Has Christmas Gone to the Wolves?

My, my. Another Christmas has passed. What a great holiday, but even the nicest people who keep the Christ in Christmas (me, for example) can easily be sidetracked by running around malls and dumpsters looking for the perfect gifts. Before you know it, advent is almost over and you’ve spent most of December looking for “stuff.”

I’m so against stuff. I wanted no part of it, so we decided to do something different this Christmas. Back to basics, if you will, and it was a doozey. We kept it as a surprise, so the kids had no idea what we had planned. Then Christmas morning came, and while your Average Joe’s kids were running down the steps looking at yet another boring tree surrounded by meaningless stuff, my kids ran down to see a living room filled with . . . . chinchillas.

You should have seen the looks on my three boys’ faces. Their mouths were agape, speechless with excitement. We told them that instead of presents, our family was going to attempt to break the Guinness Book record for the largest number of chinchillas squeezed into a North American, two-story residence. And break the record we did! Chinchillas were pouring out of everywhere – the stockings, the furniture, even the water supply. We posed for a Polaroid picture and sent out for the film to be developed. The kids loved it.

Now something the folks at Guinness Records don’t tell you is that the chinchillas don’t automatically leave after the pictures are taken. This came as a surprise to all of us. Naturally, we rented a manatee, a predator of chinchillas according to Wikipedia, to come scare the chinchillas away.

We told him our problem and left him alone for an hour while we went for a burger. We were horrified when we came home to find that we had it completely mixed up. Manatees are the natural prey of chinchillas. Very embarrassing.

Anyway, we called an exterminator, who asked for $5,000! I was not going to spend another $5,000 after losing my deposit on the manatee (never rent from Home Depot, by the way) and, besides, Christmas is about the thought, not the money, so we had to find a creative solution. We had to find a way to think outside the box, which is something we’re not used to.

Luckily, we remembered that we have a gang problem in our community. A gang of wolves terrorizes the woods behind our house. We lured them in to take care of our chinchilla issue. And take care of it they did, but then another unforeseen problem presented itself. The wolves now occupied the living room, and they didn’t want to leave. They were smelly, messy, and shed too much hair. It was pure chaos. Strangely, our son Hans was like a fish in water amongst those wolves. He connected with them immediately. As he passed out cups of egg nog to each of them, he asked if he could keep them, but I was livid when I saw that none of the wolves were using coasters. That was the last straw!

“For goodness sakes,” I said to Hans, “what would the neighbors say if they saw a pack of wolves in our house?” The fun was over.

After some thinking and a quick vote, we determined that we could strap meat to our son Raphael when he returned from the restroom, and then he could run back into the woods to restore the wolves to their natural habitat. It would be risky because we wanted the steak back. It was a certified Angus Kobe Delmonico, an expensive cut, you know. (The Japanese hand feed and hand massage these cows to create a tender cow. Oh to be a cow in Japan – that’s a better life than I have here in America.)

Anyway, why we sent the kid with ADD to solve this wolf problem is beyond me. As he ran by my neighbor’s house, Raphael saw that SpongeBob was playing on their TV. He never misses an episode. Bam, within seconds he forgot his mission and ran directly into our neighbor’s house. So, sad news, the meat fell off in their living room and we were not able to recover it. The good news is that there is no longer a wolf problem. Raphael trotted home when SpongeBob ended, and that’s how our Christmas adventure ended. We had a quiet dinner and enjoyed the rest of the evening. We avoided the materialism that seems to entrap the massess and realized it was our best Christmas ever. Likewise, I hope your holiday was fun and memorable. Merry Christmas fashionably late.

Poll Shows Disturbed Readership

Valued readers, in my last poll, I wanted to see who you predicted would win the World Cup. This was the poll.

Who Will Win the 2010 World Cup?
- Holland
- The Dutch
- Netherlands
- Vatican City
- AARP Soccer Team
- Other (Do not specify)

Voters could vote for more than one option, and polling closed after the final game of the World Cup. As any impartial pollster would do, I hired a statistician and a psychologist to interpret the results. Their findings were astonishing. The statistician gasped, and the psychologist rubbed his greedy little hands together, telling me he’s hit the motherload of potential disturbed clients who need to seek professional help. I couldn't wait to share the results with you.

Let me remind you that I ran the poll the day after the final World Cup game. As a result, the “predictions” of the winner of that game should have been 100% correct. That would be the case if it was a poll of Wall Street Journal readers. But this is Jackie S. Phillips’ blog, where we attract a “different” caliber of readers, a unique demographic of weirdoes, shoplifters, small children, wanderers, and my friend Lisa from Haverford. . . you know, the craziest of the crazy. (Except for you, you’re normal.)

A picture is worth a thousand words, so look at the chart. It shows the results and what shape they would take if they were turned into a mountain. Very steep and rocky. Wouldn’t want to fall off of that. My old neighbor Cindy said it looks like a unicorn. She needs glasses. By the way, happy birthday Cindy! She’s going to be around 75 on October 7. She says she’s 60, but I don’t buy it.

The second chart, the bar graph below, is a better picture. It clearly shows that most of the votes identified “Vatican City” as the winner of the 2010 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament. This is a sad reflection of the readers’ grasp of reality. Vatican City is not a soccer team, people. It’s just a city (actually a city-state), but let's not get bogged down with that. The key word is “City.” That’s where the Pope lives, along with lots of priests and Vatican workers.

Priests, for those of you who don’t know, are not professional soccer players. That’s why they wear different uniforms. The psychologist told me I should include a picture of a priest and one of a soccer player so my readers could tell the difference, but that would cost extra. So I’ll just say this: contrary to popular belief, no Pope has been on a professional soccer team since 1974, and there has never been a professional athlete priest since the days of John the Baptist.

The second runner up in this poll was the AARP soccer team. Fifty-two percent of the votes said the AARP soccer team won the World Cup. "AARP" is not an acronym for a county name. Many readers asked me if AARP means “Argentina.” Yes, you pointed out that three of the letters in AARP are also in the word Argentina, but AARP and Argentina are still not synonymous, just as USA and USSR were not synonymous. Don’t feel embarrassed if you were one of the confused. Even Connie, whose husband is from South America, got that wrong.

Moving on, 35% of the votes went to “Other/Do not Specify.” I received many impudent e-mails where people did specify Spain as the winner. I have no tolerance for people who don’t follow directions, so I threw out their votes. That is my blog’s no-tolerance policy, which is clearly indicated in the sidebar entitled, “No Tolerance.”

The final statistics were a real treat: 17% of the votes said the Netherlands won, 11% said the Dutch won, and 5% said Holland won. Don’t you realize Netherlands, the Dutch, and Holland are all synonymous? They should have gotten an equal number of votes. You think AARP and Argentina are synonymous, yet you have no clue about this? The psychologist and the statistician both laughed about that one. (I'm not mean like that, so I laughed later, when no one was watching.)

In conclusion, Spain really won the World Cup. Even an octopus could predict the winner better than the readers who took this poll, but that’s because an octopus, much like a potato, has eight eyes.

P.S. Roy Halladay just pitched a no-hitter in the National League Division Series. Go Phillies! (And, no, there will not be a poll on that.)

Fair Day is Not So Fair for Some

We live within 1,000 miles of the great state of Nebraska, so this Monday our schools are closed for Fair Day. That’s when the farmers and their families take their prized pigs, horses and cows to the local fair. Animals pay the same admission price as a child, but they get to ride the rides for free. I don’t know what else they do there, but apparently a good time is had by all. This year’s motto is “What happens at the Fair Stays at the Fair.”

We’ve never been to the fair, though we’ve lived here ten years, but attending is a long long-standing Midwestern tradition, like hog calling and wearing cowboy boots with those little wheels on the end.

Our family is from New Jersey, so we're at a huge disadvantage in this state. We don’t wear cowboy hats, and we don’t know our way around a farm, a fair or even a pig. The kids at the high school can tie a goat and ride a sheep, but my boys can’t do any of that. They get teased for it.

They’re also the only boys in the whole school district who don’t own livestock. It’s a sensitive subject. People think diversity refers to race, religion or culture. Out here, you’re diverse when you don’t have that farm animal to boast about, and God bless people like us who don’t fit in! I was thinking of buying the boys a small calf for Christmas, but our apartment has a strict no-bovine policy. Very sad.

I try to keep it all in perspective. One hundred years from now, no one will care what kind of job I had, what kind of car I drove or what kind of farm animal I didn’t own. (I saw that on a bumper sticker.)

Anyway, high school may have its challenges for the boys, but at least all three are in the same building this year. It’s great because I work at the quickie mart just behind the school, so I get to see my sons whenever they skip classes or run away at lunch time. It’s a thrill to see them in the middle of the work day. I just love it.

I didn’t love this past week, though. My husband went to California on business, so I felt sad without him. I don’t like being separated from Joe. The house feels empty when he’s not around, and the kids feel his absence too. Sure we filled the time by going out to fancy restaurants every night, renting movies, and going bowling, but it wasn’t the same without Joe, even if it was one of the best weeks of our entire lives.

My husband is usually full of spunk and energy, but things have changed recently, especially when he's around me. I’ll give you an example. After Joe’s flight arrived last night, I recounted everything we did this past week. His demeanor quickly became distant and he appeared to be in a catatonic state as I spoke. Maybe it was jet lag, but why did he suddenly become reenergized when the phone rang, ending our chat? I’m suspicious about who called, and I think it was a guy.

Well, no sense in dwelling on the unknown. The boys are very happy to have Joe back because he took them to play tennis the first thing Saturday morning. He plays tennis with them a lot. Joe was a great tennis player when we were in college. He'd beat my sister, Annabel, and my friends Jane and Jack all the time. They'll all attest to that. They used to call him Bjorn Borg, and it wasn't just because of Joe's long, flowing hair. But time has changed Joe's game. He can no longer see the ball or his opponents well, much like Mr. Magoo. Basically he swings his racquet every now and then, unaware that my sons are playing a real match around him. It’s much like you would play if you had a little child on the court. My boys are good kids. Every couple of minutes one will say, “Good one Dad!” as if Joe actually hit the ball. Sometimes, unbeknownst to Joe, his racquet hits the fence that surrounds the court. The kids yell “Ace!” whenever that happens. Aren't those boys just so sweet? They deserve a million bovines.

So anyway, we’re set up for a nice, lazy weekend for a change. We’re just doing whatever strikes us at the moment. I’ll probably put some plant food in my herbs on the windowsill. Maybe look at some cats. Typical late September stuff.

Well, before we know it, Halloween will be here and then Christmas. Time flies when the days start to get shorter and depression kicks in. Have a great week.

Jackie

COMMENTS:
I quite enjoyed your recap of Joe's tennis aptitude. Very funny!
~ Amanda from Nebraska
Jackie's husband's response to Amanda: At least my kid doesn't eat grass.

Enough with the Lady GaGa,how about some Bollywood music?
~ Ron in NJ
Jackie's Rebuttal: Woah Ron, this isn't Burger King. Special orders DO upset us. Second, considering I am your wife's client (readers, his wife delivered two of my babies), aren't you concerned that you might anger me? Keep it up, and I may not use her to deliver the next child.