So I’m wondering: have you ever actually run out of ways to punish your wayward child?
Hello again, Hausguests, and apologies for a lone, overdue drive-by posting in the middle of my typical August beach-a-thon. We had a most excellent time at the Cape (Note to Pandolfo cousins: I do, however, think we should have moved the car one last time), and we are off to spend most of the rest of the summer (random work days aside) at the shore house before school starts exactly two weeks from today and my annual post-Labor Day crushing depression settles over the Haus (this year to be flavored with horrendous pre-election anxiety — awesome!). So pardon both the infrequency and brevity of posts until then.
The one jarring interruption of my blissed-out August faux reality of sea, sun, sand, beach reads, and lazy days has been the onset of full-blown behavioral meltdown on the part of The Spare, requiring me to parent to an extent that exceeds my standard August minimum: ensuring that they not get swept away with the Atlantic undertow; that they not erupt in sun-poisoned, full-body blistering; and that they eat enough to subsist, even if the meals consist entirely of boardwalk cotton candy and fried Oreos. This displeases me, as you can imagine. But The Spare had, over the past couple of months, released his inner Angry Dwarf with a vengeance, and, as I learned during Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, the only creature in nature ever known to best Angry Dwarf is Responsible Mommy. Who usually takes August off. Oh well.
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Filed under Behavior issues, Punishments.
So I’m wondering: How long is your to-do list before vacation?
I am currently packing for our family of four and otherwise preparing for our upcoming week on Cape Cod (otherwise known as “Texas“). We’re just back, actually, from an extended shore stay with friends (thus explaining my Offsprung absence for two weeks), but I didn’t have to pack for that; I transport half of our summer wardrobes and a bunch of extra toiletries to the shore house in mid-June every year and don’t worry about anything for the rest of the summer. But the Cape is different, because unless this resort is hoity-toitier than I expect, there will not be clothing and contact solution awaiting our arrival. And unlike Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, Brewster, Massachusetts is not a mere hour away from our regular house, so there will be no easy returns to fetch any forgotten necessities or tend to any neglected duties.
And of course, given the troupe of circus clowns that is the remainder of my little family, in addition to the other two equally clueless gents who will be joining us from Monday through next Saturday (Uncle Little Eddie and Cousin God — er, I mean, Nick), I am the designated Responsible Adult, tasked with pre-vaca arrangements large and small. These are the five questions that weigh most heavily on my mind in the month leading up to any trip, and especially a trip on which I will be the lone female among five males.
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Filed under Vacation.
So I’m wondering: have your kids fallen in love yet?
Though I’d be particularly, albeit fearfully, interested to hear from those of you with teenagers (Oprah and “Dateline” having convinced me that most 14-year-olds spend their days making pregnancy pacts with their friends and their nights writhing about at rainbow parties straight out of a “Swingtown” script), my own vantage point at the moment is love of the “puppy” variety, with The Heir, my seven-and-a-half-year-old, the mutt in question. He has decided, at the midpoint of the summer, that he misses his Lady.
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Filed under Puppy love.
So I’m wondering: Do horses come with training wheels?
I ask because The Spare has apparently decided that it is time he learned how to ride a horse — on his own, freely, minus the distracted teenager holding the rein and wanly leading him around in a circle almost enough times to justify the $5 it invariably costs at these hot, dusty state fair type things that seem to clog our summer calendar. (Yes, we have state and county fairs here in Jersey. Granted, they’re generally held in vast fields atop wiseguy corpses and New York’s exported garbage, but…fair is fair, as they say.)
Given the trouble his big brother until recently had been having simply learning how to ride a bike, however, I have my doubts as to whether these two should rely on anything to get them around except for Mommy and their Buster Browns. Yes, roller coasters and George Clooney now have company in our “things the Pandolfo Roys like to ride” category. As The Spare embraces his inner hippophile, The Heir, with all the gritty determination of someone who would rather be anywhere else including church, a morgue, and Phoenix in August, has been forced by his mean-ass father to finally, at age seven-and-a-half, learn how to ride a bike.
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Filed under Quirks, Sports and hobbies.
The Heir, yesterday, the day before his first day of hockey goalie camp:
“I don’t think I want to go anymore, Mommy. I would rather spend time with you this week.”
The Spare, yesterday, upon being picked up from a week-long stay (without NotClooney or me) at his grandparents’ house down the shore:
“Why are you here? Where are you taking me? Not home already! Home stinks. The beach is so much better than home! You can leave now.”
The Heir, last week, to NotClooney:
“I think I’ll go to law school. You met Mommy when you were in law school, so I’ll try my luck there when I grow up. Mommy’s my kind of wife.”
The Spare, last week, to me:
“Can we trade Daddy in and get Rocco Bama instead?”
Filed under Behavior issues.
So I’m wondering: do you agree with Kermit and Fozzie and their road trip philosophy?
I can hardly believe that we have essentially reached midsummer — the 4th of July is but a memory, while the All-Star break is upon us — though when I reflect on the number of miles of bad Jersey highway I’ve driven in the past few weeks in my efforts to squeeze as much seaside holidaymaking as possible from my limited available amounts of time and cash, the swift passage of the season does, alas, make sense.
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Filed under Uncategorized.
So I’m wondering: Is there anything more adorable than watching your kids with their friends?
As I did at the end of the last school year, I will now present the coveted Hausfrau Awards to a select group of young men who helped make each son’s 2007-08 school experience “a laugh-a-minute thrill ride set to a pounding rock soundtrack,” according to Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times.
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Tags: Friends, Hausfrau Awards
Filed under Friends.
So I’m wondering: do you read your kid’s journal?
Actually, my kid only just finished first grade, and I’m apparently supposed to read the journal his teacher, Mrs. Rourke (no relation to Mr. Roarke, your host, who welcomes you to “Fantasy Island”), sent home with him on the last day of school. Every Monday morning throughout the year, Mrs. Rourke’s first-graders would reflect on their weekends and write about them in these journals. I suppose the exercise was meant to keep them writing, improve their spelling and handwriting, and even sharpen their storytelling skills. But I just found the whole damn thing depressing.
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Filed under Clueless parenting, Extended family, School.
I’m 39.
My husband and boys bought me a pink bicycle.
I am invited to The Heir’s end-of-the-school-year party at noon.
My mother and sister are taking me out to lunch afterward.
We are leaving for the Jersey shore for the weekend as soon as school’s out.
Still, though. I’m 39.
PS: Many thanks to Erin and Godfather Dan for just about the perfect card.
Filed under Birthdays.
Alternate title: “Speaking Truth Without Power”
So I’m wondering: What did we, the good citizens of northern New Jersey, do to so enrage the enviro-gods this week?
A series of freak storms visited themselves upon us in recent days, culminating in an apocalpytic weather event on Tuesday night that left enormous old trees splattered all over formerly shady lanes, not to mention homes, cars, and probably a few yippy dogs, too; power lines dangling menacingly; locusts and frogs overtaking the land; and much of the area without power for a full day. [See aftermath pictures here.] It left us, however, without power for a full two days! It’s now official: not only is our house craptacular, 100 years old, and held together with spit and Scotch tape, but so are our entire neighborhood and its infrastructure. In a town full of craptacular, 100-year-old houses lining craptacular, 100-year-old streets, ours is officially the craptacularest. That is a distinction I accept with no small measure of pride.
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Filed under House.
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