Suburban Kamikaze

Signs of Spring

Patches of mud are sprouting everywhere – and not just in the house.

The teenager and his adorable tween sister have grown surly from months of being cooped up with every form of entertainment imaginable. Is it any wonder that requests for cooperation or housework are met with unalloyed resentment? 

"OH MY GOD," they exhale with as much indignance as they can muster without taking their eyes from whatever urgent text message they are currently receiving.

How can they be expected to pick up their own hairbrushes, dirty socks, milk glasses, pizza crusts, stray homework, gum wrappers, Pepsi cans or wet towels? Can't you see they are right in the middle of SOMETHING?

Whatever it is, it is more important than whatever you are doing. What exactly is it that you do all day anyway? Seriously, the 15-year-old wants to know.  

Wouldn’t it be faster to do it yourself instead of standing there railing at the children? How long did it take you to make all those little signs? That is not even his mess. Probably. Or if it is, he is going to take care of it. He will.

He says he will. OH MY GOD. You could have done it yourself by now. He was going to do it. Also, he needs money. Why is there never anything to eat? When are you going to take him to get his hair cut?

She writes NO WAY across the chore list you have taped to the door of the refrigerator. She says something under her breath. It sounds like "beach."

It sounds like Miami Beach.

Study of teen texting habits reveals parents are annoying, there is never anything good to eat

Snowcapped

Inspection casts doubt on teen's bathroom cleaning claims

Study: Stray shoes and other household debris piled on staircase fails to convey intended message

Winter log, Day 137: In Which I Am No Longer Charmed By My Snowboots...

 

Some saw a rake, but Stephen preferred to think of himself as more of a libertine.

Ode on a Grecian Post-It Note

Andromeda's mother spends the afternoon collecting the pieces for the girl's sixth-grade Grecian debut. 

A roll of ribbon, a few yards of cloth, some construction paper, a wreath of ivy and some plastic combs. A little cutting, a little glue, a couple of knots. 

Andromeda's mother packs her daughter and her little friend Athena into the chariot for the trip to school.  Later, she will be called back. Both the princess and the goddess have left their props behind. 

Still, it was finished. Another boulder pushed to the top of the hill. With any luck it would stay there.

Perhaps Dionysus, the god of parenting wine, would stop by later to congratulate her on a job well done. And the Olympic-caliber bickering would cease long enough for her to enjoy it.  She will wear laurels in her hair. There will be toasts in her honor.  And the laundry baskets will be empty!

This is what is known as a Greek myth.

Periodic table of the elements

 

A valentine for whoever keeps sabotoging Sarah Palin's delusion that she is ready for more responsibility

This can't be accidental. The woman has advisers, right? Political consultants, public relations people, friends?

So who is it who allows this woman to take the national stage with a tattoo on her hand that says whatever you do, don't take me seriously... ? Or words to that effect.

Because if you are Sarah Palin - an ambitious woman whose chief, and possibly insurmountable political liability is that she comes off in public as not very bright - writing stuff on your hand as a crib sheet for a question and answer session is NOT AN OPTION.

And don't misunderstand me: one of my closest friends is a woman who happens to write stuff on her hand. We don't even let her be president of our playgroup. I am just kidding. Our playgroup never even had a president. It was more of a parliamentary system...

Anyway, my point is this: there is nothing wrong with working from notes, even notes on your hand if that's what you prefer. Unless you are Sarah Palin. This is so glaringly obvious that even the dumbest marketing intern working in the office of whoever came up with the new Dockers campaign could not fail to see it.

It has to be deliberate.

Someone in her posse is trying to save frustrated tea-drinking conservatives from their most desperate impulses. Roses are red, violets are blue, I can't think of any other explanation, can you?

A Valentine for Jenny Sanford

For her game-changing performance as the politician's woman scorned, South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford has us fawning in admiration.

Not only does she manage to castrate her creepy, lying Appalachian Trail hiking, soon-to-be-ex husband Governor Mark Sanford in a memoir The New York Times calls an "elegant evisceration" - she does it without ever seeming to relinquish the high ground.

Why expose the father of her children as a "laughably cheap, self-absorbed, soulless, cheating, first-class jerk?" asks a reporter.  Because he's a laughably cheap, self-absorbed, soulless, cheating, first-class jerk?  

But Jenny merely looks puzzled. "It's not the book that put him in a bad light," she says.

And later in the interview there is this:  "He didn't have a lot of experience courting women, let's just say."  Take note Mrs. Spitzer: a kick in the cojones doesn't get any more elegant than that. 

Of course, as campaign manager for Mark Sanford's three congressional and first gubernatorial elections, Jenny Sanford does have to answer for her role in foisting this guy upon the citizens of South Carolina.  But if this book is half as entertaining as it looks, they might be willing to forgive her.

Photo: Roses are red, violets are blue... the best revenge is in hardback at a bookstore near you.

Andromeda strain

Here we are just barely having escaped from last weekend's Emergency Parenting Quest, (the so-called "hoodie shortage") and another round of deadlines and adventure is upon us.

This one, as in so many EPQs, arises out of one of those inspired lesson plans in which teachers pretend not to realize that Dress Like a Character from History/Literature/Greek Mythology Day is really just Homework for Parents. (And who do we think we are kidding here with our use of the gender-neutral "parents"?)  

Thankfully, this assignment falls during a week in which, except for the Clarinet Supply Checklist, Competitive Baton and Pom Pom Twirling class registration, Class Schedule Change permission slip, 450-page Math and Science Academy application, freshman English composition editing, Emergency Lunchroom Account Replenishment and an orthodontist appointment, I am relatively free.

Even so, there is no time to waste. We have less than a week in which to assemble an Andromeda costume for the sixth-grader's Greek Mythology Character day.

The Princess Andromeda, I learn from my lazy googling, is best known for having almost been eaten by a sea monster sent to punish her mother for bragging that she was hotter than the sea nymphs. 

Andromeda is chained to a rock and offered up as a snack in hopes of appeasing Poseidon, who was really irritated by a mortal suggesting that she was even in the same league as a sea goddess. Oh no, you di'nt.  At the last minute, she is rescued by a big strong man, they go on to have many children and she spends the rest of her life filling out permission slips and driving to soccer practice.

Not necessarily the most inspiring character in Greek mythology. But this is going to be the easiest costume ever.

 

Andromeda by Sir Edward Poynter (left) and Gustave Doré (right).

Live, love, laugh, but it is better if you do it in low lighting

CoverGirl and Olay want to know:  Tell us what you do to live agelessly!

People are always asking me how I manage to stay so youngish and vibrant well into what should rightfully be my declining years, if I were not one of those hateful skinny bitches with a personal trainer and a calendar full of salon visits.

At the lavish birthday parties I force my friends to organize for me every year, I am frequently accused of aging backwards, as if that were even possible! 

I laugh and open the gift certificates for expensive spa and beauty treatments that I have asked them to bring and say "I don't know what you are talking about! Just the other day, I thought I saw a gray hair!"

But when they insist on knowing my secrets, I tell them:

Live, love, laugh; do not concern yourself with age! After all, you are only as old as your last birthday and it won't be long before things like that are going to slip your mind anyway, along with the location of your car keys and the names of your neighbors. I am just kidding, I say. I crack myself up. Which may explain some of those little lines around my eyes...

Seriously, I say, the important thing is...  Then I go through a list of cross-stitch platitudes about wisdom and fine wine and agelessness, all of which is meant to convey the idea that age is really just an attitude that has nothing to do with whether CoverGirl's Simply Ageless concealer does or does not settle into the fine lines and wrinkles across your ageless face.

Because agelessness is kind of a mixed message when you think about it.

Photo: A tiara and a scowl add a little glow to any makeup routine. You're welcome.