Raising teenagers -- it's all about the math

Raising Teenagers

It's all about the math

So, as is normal in the lovely Pacific Northwest, it rained on Friday.  Rain in Oregon is nothing like rain in the midwest, or even on the East Coast. Here, the rain is more like walking through a foggy cloud.  It's a wet misty drizzle.  Or, as we like to call it, a mizzle.

And even though Autumn has finally settled in (if you don't count today's beautiful, sunny 75 ˚ day), and starting tomorrow the rains are coming to stay until, oh, say, mid May, the children are in complete denial.  On Friday, the rain rain rain came down down down, so I sent them both to school with their raincoats.  They were prepared.  I was a good mom.  I was.  Really.

And yet, when we picked up our daughter at the end of the school day, her raincoat was no where in sight.  Standing in the drizzle, her hair growing bigger by the moment, she looked less like the dazzling, well-put together fabulous young woman we dropped off, and more like a half-drenched, pathetic dog.

Thank you to: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nerdvin/372908560/in/photostream/

When we asked why she wasn't wearing her coat? Her answer all came down to math.  "Mom, I think you underestimate how lazy teenagers are."  Yes.  I guess we did.

As she dripped dry in the back of the car, we got in the car line to pick up our son.  Not long after, he came trotting out to the car, hand over his head, raincoat tucked under his arm, trying to avoid the raindrops.

As he dripped all over the back seat, buckling himself in, we asked him why he wasn't wearing his coat.  His answer also came down to math.  "Mom, I think you grossly overestimate my common sense."

Yes, raising teenagers all comes down to the math.

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Bubba, The Sea Fern

           Bubba, The Sea Fern

             Bubba, The Sea Fern

In the great grand scheme of things, there really is nothing terribly funny about memory loss.  Early onset Alzheimer's, dementia of any sort or kind, aphasia, dysphasia, or, well, frankly, any type or sort or ilk of memory loss is nothing to be joked about.  These illnesses affect so many many people and cause so many struggles, and much grief, that I hope and pray that all you lovely neuropsychologists out there are studying and experimenting and coming up with solutions that can prevent, stave off, and eliminate these illnesses and problems for the entire human race.

That said, I shall take this time and opportunity to profess that I have become one of the few, the proud, the lost.  My memory leaks like a sieve. And although I would love to blame my memory loss on something clever and long-named, and on some sort of medical deficiency.  NOT because I WANT a clever, long-named sort of medical deficiency.  But rather because then I could blame it on something other than what it appears to be.  Alas, I cannot.  *Sigh.*  My memory loss evidently comes from, ugh, old(er), old(ish) age.

Not that I'm old, mind you.  I'm not even what I'd considered middle age.  Close, but not quite.  But alas, my memory is failing me.  Not the long term stuff, just the short term stuff.  The silly stuff like, oh, say, forgetting where I left my phone.  Or forgetting to buy the sour cream at the grocery store.  Those are the easy things I forget.  Not serious stuff like, oh, say, forgetting that I was supposed to pick up my son early from school.  On Thursday.  Each and every Thursday.  Nope.  Not like that.  Because that only happened the one time.  Yep.  Just the once.  And he only reminded me four or five times that morning, so you could almost blame him.  Almost.  But, well, not really.  Because honestly?  What kid wants to be blamed for the fact that his mom forgot to pick him up?  But in all reality, I actually DIDN'T forget to pick him up.  I just forgot what TIME I was supposed to pick him up.  See? Nothing to fuss over.  Just good, old fashioned, old age.  Yep. That's the stuff.  Poor kid.  He did forgive me though.  So that's something at least.

To compensate for my rapidly deteriorating short term memory, I started using the kitchen timer to remind me to do things.  Yay!  The timer!  So I set the timer, I zip off going about my day, and eventually the timer goes off, and I ... uh... what was I supposed to do?  No idea whatsoever.  Unless a pot of water is boiling in front of me, or a lovely aroma of cookies is emanating from the oven, the timer going off no longer does me any good.  So, I've had to come up with a new plan.

My iPhone!  The customized alarms I can create on my iPhone have saved my katookus more times than I can count.  I set them to go off at various times of the day.  One reminds me to leave at a certain time (in the red car) to pick up my daughter from school.  Another one reminds me to leave at a certain time (in the blue car) to pick up my son from music lessons.  I have others that remind me to go places, and what to do when I get there.  I can even set the alarm to go off every day, or every Thursday, or every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.  Whatever.  It's awesome.  Thank God for the iPhone!

But then there is this teensy weensy memory problem that just isn't solved with the iPhone alarm system.  It's my problem with words.  As I writer, and a talker (!), losing words has become a bit of a problem for me.  When I'm writing it's not as big of a deal.  The thesaurus works wonders. :)  So does asking my kiddos.  They're great at coming up with just the right word for just the right situation.  I just talk around the word I'm looking for -- describing it as best as I can, and my kiddos take turns trying to figure out what word I need.  Kinda like when I was in France, and I couldn't remember the name for a certain noun, and I'd describe the noun to the lovely French people whom I still love and adore to this day, using my best French adjectives and descriptors, and 9 times out of 10, they'd figure out exactly what I was trying to say.  The system works great.

Most of the time when I lose a word, or worse yet, mix up the words, they laugh and they help me figure out what I really mean.  So when I ask my son to put his shoes in the dishwasher, I'm pretty sure he knows his glass goes in the dishwasher, and his shoes go back up into his room.  But one of these days I'm going to find sneakers in my dishwasher's lower rack, and he'll say, "What?!? You asked me to put them there."  Sigh.

So back to Bubba.  (I always get there eventually.  I just like taking the circuitous route.)  This summer we went camping at the coast for a relaxing few days in the rain.  Our children nicknamed a lovely bird who came up to our picnic table and started begging for scraps.  They named him Birbing Birbingston.  He never got what he was looking for from us.  Poor fella.  I kinda felt bad.  Not bad enough to feed him (my food!  Mine! Mine! Mine!), but bad enough to feel, well, bad.  I'm a bit protective around my food.  Kinda like these guys...

My husband's travel coffee mug.  Bought it at DisneyWorld.  Perfect, no?

So anywhooooo, later that day when I dropped a cracker on the ground, I started looking around for the bird thinking maybe I could make his day.  My daughter asked me what I was looking for, and I said I was looking for Bubba.  You know, the sea fern.

They spent the entire rest of the camping trip making fun of me.  And Bubba.  The Sea Fern.

Bubba, The Sea Fern

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Hands in Unusual Places

Hands In Unusual Places

Have you ever truly given yourself a moment to wonder about how many experiences we allow ourselves to have that are truly and utterly odd and, frankly, a bit absurd, if taken out of context?

A simple example might be, perhaps, how close we stand to one another in a room.  If the room is 10 feet long, and we have 8 people in the room, we may give ourselves a good foot or two between each of us.  But if we shrink the room to the size of, oh, say, an elevator, then we think it's completely normal for all four of the people to be standing side by side, front to back, touching even and we wouldn't think anything odd about it.  But if the same 8 people were to stand in the same formation in the 10 foot long room, we'd think it odd.

So what about hands in unusual places?

In a normal situation, would we be comfortable if we were, perhaps, sitting in a local coffee shop, just chillin', and a person came up, pulled on some gloves, and then asked you to open your mouth and then they spent the next 45 minutes playing about with your teeth, squirting water in, sucking water and saliva out?  Seems absurd, no?

And yet, we allow dentists to probe our mouths for 45 minutes and think nothing of it.  That is what I call hands in unusual places.

These past few months I've realized there are several scenarios in which people are allowed to poke their hands in strange and unusual places, that in normal situations, we simply would not accept.

Say, for example, the gastroenterologist, who poked a couple holes in my belly, and then pulled out body parts and sewed me back together.  Someone ACTUALLY had his hands INSIDE of my belly, and I not only thought it was a nifty idea, I PAID him to do it.  His hands.  Inside of my tummy.  INSIDE.  That's so weird.  Hands in unusual places, I tell you.  Hands in unusual places.

Or what about the yearly trip to the gyny who frolicks about in my nether regions without so much as a howdy do.  Again, another experience of hands in unusual places.  Seriously weird.

We think nothing of the ophthalmologist who sits INCHES away from our faces, probing bright lights into our eyeballs, feeling their breath on our faces, while we sit there placidly looking at the big giant E at the end of the wall.

We babysit toddlers who stuff their fingers into our mouths or poke their fingers into our ears and pull our hair out by the handful.  But if a grown up were to do the same thing?  Our reaction would be quite different.  Hands in unusual places.

Life is so weird.  How did we, as children, come to accept these oddities as "normal and acceptable behaviors" in some situations, but not in others?  No sweetie, if you're walking home from school and a man drives up in a van and offers to give you candy, you do not take the candy.  You run away as fast as you can and you tell mommy.  But, yes, sweetie, it's okay to go up to the stranger's door, ring the bell, and ask them for candy.  But only if you dress up in a costume and say the words, "Trick or Treat."  And only on the 31st of October.  No sweetie, we do not sit on the laps of old, fat men.  But yes, sweetie, we DO sit on the lap of this one old, fat, man, who wears a red suit.  He'll give you a piece of candy afterwards.

Sometimes life is just pretty darned weird.  And when you find yourself with someone else's hand in a strange and unusual position, don't get all creeped out when you realize that as soon as she walks out that door, she's just going to walk into another room, and poke her hands in someone else's strange and unusual place.

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