Young Adult Christmas

I haven't written about my kids much because they're getting past the age when I can write about them without disclosing personal stuff. Their issues are different. When they were three and resisting potty training, it might have been funny to write about that, but they weren't reading my blog and neither were their friends. In fact, none of them were reading anything, so they couldn't even accidentally come across it. Now if one of them Googles "gender confusion" or  "prison bitches" they can find my blog. Also now their issue might be staying up at night upset about ___ and though I might find it funny and worth blogging about, they take it very seriously.

Yes, sometimes I find the things that they're upset about funny. Of course they're upset about ___. Everyone gets upset about ___ when they're fourteen, and now that I'm thirty___ years old and not fourteen I find it amusing that I was ever worried about such a thing. I don't laugh while they're upset of course. Just on the internet with you.

This is where fairness comes in. Because if they wanted to they could find my blog by Googling the term "magic space bears," read about how I find some of their anxiety funny, and then write a fair rebuttal in the comment section. Or start a blog of their own called "My Mother's Lies." But I don't think I have anything to worry about because if they Google "magic space bears" the first thing they'll find is Hyperbole and a Half. I can't help it if they prefer Allie Brosch to me. Still, I will leave ___ to them and continue to only slander myself.

But I will say that the mood has changed a lot in my house since the kids turned 10, 12, and 14. There are sometimes when I look at them that I can actually see their hormones chugging Red Bulls and doing mad skateboard stunts all over the inside of their bodies.

The skateboarders inside of them make them sullen and moody. I don't blame them. Their bodies have been high jacked. They're beginning to change from the inside out in ways that they feel their mother never properly explained. Because there, um, might have been some information she skipped.

"Mom, what is __?"

"Oh? ___? That's normal."

(Child looks horrified) "It is?"

"Yeah. I forgot to mention that part."

"How did you forget to tell me about ___???"

"Because I don't really love you."

"WHAT??"

"Just kidding. But you're not worried about ___ anymore, are you?"

For my complete parenting guide tips, look for my new book, When Mom Makes Us Laugh Nervously. 

Though my daughters' moods have been up and down I really thought that Christmas would even them out. Because you know, NO ONE gets bummed around the holidays. But really, it's usually such a fun time for us. We have our little rituals, like getting hot chocolate and going to see the lights in City Park. And running loose through the tree lot. They don't even look at the trees except in passing, they just run like maniacs through the rows and giggle, while I pick out our tree. Then I call them to me when I find one and we all vote on it. It's a giggly time in general I would say. They giggle when I take out the decorations, they giggle when I put up the lights on the house. They giggle when I get frustrated from untangling wires. That's a whole lot of smiling.

But this year those smiles have been replaced by mostly blank looks. And when it's not blankness it's frustration, as if they are all untangling wires in their heads. Mostly I think I've done a good job with not taking their bad moods personally. I know that they're all changing in complicated ways and it's hard. But I felt hurt when no one showed enthusiasm about Christmas this year. When the decorations came out and no one cracked a smile. When I mentioned stringing lights on the house and no one looked up from their electronic devices. I wondered if I'd done something wrong, or if I'd had more money I could buy cooler stuff instead of the same old stuff that we put up every year.

"The tree will be new," I thought.

I had an idea. I would take us all out to dinner, get some new decorations to replace the old ones that were falling apart and then we'd hit the tree lot. This was brilliant.

This was a terrible idea. First we argued for a half hour over where to eat. Whenever I mentioned a place none of them would agree on anything. Claire doesn't like Mexican, Emma doesn't like sushi or Chinese and Christopher doesn't like any place he's never been to before. I realized that the problem was that I was leaving it up to them so I announced that we were going to Applebees, they groaned about it and I told them just to be quiet and eat it. The main problem with this that I didn't mention is that I don't like Applebees. It was just the only place I could think of that was nearby and had a vast assortment of American and Americanized versions of ethnic foods for the kids to choose from. Which is why I don't like it.

There was minimal groaning during dinner, mostly from my 12 year old. Then we went shopping. More Emma groaning. So much that I couldn't focus on what we were looking for. Then we went to the tree lot.

There was no running. There were no smiles. They browsed through the trees. I watched them walking through the rows and considering the merchandise like grown people and was horrified that they didn't take the time to run wildly. It was a relief when my son finally grinned and said, "I'm going to look over here," and tore off running to the other side of the lot.

We picked a tree and by the time we tied it to the roof and drove home, I was too tired to decorate it. No one protested. So we gave it water and left it bare that night. And the next night. The day after that they went to their dad's for the weekend and I couldn't believe it wasn't decorated. I'm the kind of Christmas woman who has her tree, decorations and lights up within a week after Thanksgiving and here it was well into December and I had a naked tree in my living room. I thought about decorating it myself while they were gone but that just felt so lonely.

It made me wonder why it is I really do what I do at Christmas. Do I do it for them? Is all of this some kind of sacrifice and now I'm feeling like a martyr because, like the Applebees compromise, these aren't things that I really want? What is it that I really like to do at Christmas when left to my own devices?

So I experimented while they were gone. I took out the outdoor lights and began stringing them up. And I giggled. I drank hot chocolate. I played the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. It turns out that the things I share with the kids are the things I really love to do, and I would do them anyway.

But I missed them. I thought about them the whole time I strung up lights. I realized that the things I really like doing might not be the things they like. The holidays are just like anything else. They don't have to like what I like. Soon they'll be old enough to make their own traditions and figure out what it is they like to do. I had been trying to force them to enjoy the same old stuff and it wasn't working.

I spent Saturday afternoon fixing up the house, and took pictures of the end result and texted them to people. I was like a kid proud of a drawing. I had decided to decorate the tree that Sunday before the kids came home, and then I got a phone call from Claire.

"What's up, kid?" I said.

"I miss you," she said.

"Awe. Well, I miss you too. Hey, did you see the picture of the lights I sent you?"

"Yeah, they look good! You haven't decorated the tree yet, have you?"

"Well, I was going to. You want me to wait?"

"Yeah, don't do it without me."

So I waited until they came home. It's a rare day when all of their mood swings line up in the same direction, but that day it was happy. We decorated the tree while the latest episode of "Once Upon a Time" played in the background, which is a little different for us. Usually it's something like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, and not something with evil wizards, but that's ok. All four of us were smiling.

Baked Lunch - it's like Naked Lunch only with brownies and with clothes on

After studying the figures, I've noticed that I get more hits on posts with the following labels: Literary panels, Angelina Jolie, Spleens, and Allie Brosch. The one with the most hits was the one where I wondered if Allie Brosch (writer of Hyperbole and a Half) was doing ok. The second winner was "No Risk Anglina Jolie" based on spam mail that I got. And third was "My Hetero Spleen," which could have been popular because I mentioned Jake Gyllenhaal, also possibly because of my sexual orientation questions, and also possibly because spleens are trending. I don't know. But somewhere in all of that is the winning combination to make me a Blog Star so I'm throwing them all in one post. And I'm going to include Stephen King who starred on my a literary panel because that was the fourth popular one, and also because it's in his contract. But what to make them all do together?....

They're going to bake brownies. Cue the cooking show music! (bah tah tah tah TAH! Bah bah BAAAAH! Ba-dum)

You are now looking into a studio kitchen with a really REALLY long counter. It's about the size of the low brick wall that Charlie Brown leans against when he's having a heart to heart talk with Linus - with no visible ends in either direction. Behind the counter, smiling back at you, is Angleina Jolie, Allie Brosch, Stephen King, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Bette Midler because I mentioned not liking the song "Wind Beneath My Wings" in one of my last posts and I'm afraid that I might have hurt her feelings so I'm going to make it up to her with brownies.
"That was a run-on sentence, Gen," Stephen King says to me.
"What was?" I ask him.
"That last sentence. It needs editing."
"Thank you, Stephen, we will not be discussing my editing skills today."
"It's what you brought me on for. And really if you want any success as a writer-"
I cross my arms at that guy. "Do you WANT a brownie?"
Stephen King closes his mouth. He lowers his head, and pushes back his glasses. "Yes."
"Well, alright then. Grab an apron."
He gleefully takes the apron folded neatly next to his bowl on the counter. It is blue and in white letters it says, "Genevieve Rheams is my favorite writer and overall human." In fact, all of them are wearing this apron.  "So I guess we should start by introducing our bakers for today," I continue.  "To our far left we have Angleina Jolie."
Angelina is wearing a helmet, elbow pads and wrist guards because she is the No Risk Angelina Jolie version of herself and she's nervous about baking accidents. She grins through her mouth guard.
"And next we have Hyperbole and a Half blogger Allie Brosch."
"Genevieve," she says, wearing her triangular pink dress and her blonde hair in a pony tail sticking straight up on her head. "Are you sure you want me around sugar? You've read The God of Cake, you should know that if my inner child eats too many brownies it could destroy you all."
"I know, it's why the producers asked you to join us. Ratings suggest that people like to watch cooking shows where the cooks tweak out on sugar and destroy the studio. If possible they would also like you to develop a moonshine addiction, sell ducks on the black market, and fall in love with Stephen King."
"I'm your girl."
"Excellent. And to Allie's right we have Jake-"
Jake Gyllenhaal's eyes go wide. "My name is Carl."
"We have...Carl?"
"Yep," says Carl who is not Jake Gyllenhaal, even though he has the same smile that makes my toes go numb. "I'm a bus driver."
"What kind of bus driver?"
"I drive the tour bus for a Green Day Tribute band called Teal Day. See, I enjoy pot brownies and I was sent here by the court to learn how to cook clean ones. I brought my paperwork."
He pulls a folded white piece of paper out of his back pocket and hands it to me. I scan over it.
"Yes, well, this seems to be in order. Ok, uh Carl, I don't know how much you'll like these brownies after you've had the special ones but-"
"Oh I've never eaten a pot brownie," he says.
"But," I hold up the paper. "Yeah, you have."
"No, no. I just enjoy the idea of them. I was sentenced by an ideal court."
I look back at the paper.
"Well I'll be damned," I say. "Ok. Welcome to the show. Next we of course have Stephen King, who is chatting up the baker next to him who is the lovely! The legendary! Miss Bette Mid-"
"Don't try to flatter me, pip squeak," says Bette Midler. She narrows her eyes at me and then begins sifting flour into her glass bowl.
"Oh Ms. Midler we haven't started yet," I tell her.
"I don't have to listen to you," she says, narrowing her eyes even more until they are coin slot sized. But what shows through that slit is so much loathing that I know if I put a coin in it wouldn't be candy that comes out but hate. "I know what you said about my song."
"Oh, uh, about that. I didn't say I necessarily disliked it. I just said-"
"That you'd rather stick your head in a beehive than listen to it?"
"Uhhhhhhhh..."
"Listen, sister. That song has inspired millions of people. Make that billions. BILLIONS of people, world wide. I bet everyone here likes it." She looks down the line of bakers. "Who here likes 'You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings'?"
One by one, all of their hands go up, Angleina Jolie pausing only to spray Lysol above her head before she sticks her hand in the air.
"See," Bette tells me.
"That song reminds me of Brad and the kids," Angelina muses.
"I play it when I need writing inspiration," says Allie.
"The guys in the band ask me to play it constantly on the road," Carl-who-is-not-Jake-Gyllenhaal says.
"You don't like that song?" Stephen King asks me. "Are you missing a soul?"
"The ideal court would not approve," Carl warns.
"Alright! Alright! Look, Bette, I'm sorry I said that. I think you're a fantastic actress and I love your voice. I love 'The Rose'."
She scowls at me. "You would."
Seeing that I can not win her over I decide that it's time for our bakers to start baking.

Which will happen in part two of this post. Oh come on, don't be disappointed. It's only a 24 hour commercial break. In the mean time, Carl-who-is-not-Jake-Gyllenhaal insists that you enjoy Green Day.

Is Anyone Else Worried About Allie Brosch?

Who is that, you ask? And then, if you haven't read the title of this post, you're asking me, "Who is who, and what kind of opening sentence is that for a blog post? Please take more writing classes or I will be forced to start reading Lady Gaga tweets again, and I just can't go back to that place in my life, I can't!"

Ok, well first, calm down, we'll get through this together. All celebrity tweets are addictive, the most addictive of course is Steve Martin's. You can't help it. Steve Martin is the world's most brilliantly funny human. His last tweet was "Is the election this year or next year?" See! See! He's being silly because the election is SO obviously this year. And it's even funnier when I explain the joke.

But that's not why I'm writing tonight. I am writing because Allie Brosch, writer of Hyperbole And a Half has not posted anything for about a year and the last thing she wrote was about depression. This woman is so funny that it should be against the laws of perpetual entertainment for her to stop writing. And drawing. I love her drawings so much that, for a while, this was my Facebook profile picture:


I know that I've never posted a picture of myself here, but you'll have to trust me that this is exactly what I look like when I get the impulse to clean. My cleaning cycle happens in mad bursts where I run around with a broom, shaking my stick arms, with my googly eyes popping out. Allie might not have realized that she was drawing me, I'm sure that she thinks she was drawing herself, but I recognized it and I've kept up with her blog ever since to see how I'm doing.

I haven't had any update lately though. Maybe I should do some internet stalking - I mean, google research. (15 minutes later) Ok, I found her. Sorta. She answered a question on AskReddit.com and the question was, "Does anybody know what's happening with Allie Brosch?" And she has, indeed, been suffering from depression, but that update was from six months ago. I've wondered from time to time when I read her stuff if she suffered from depression and insecurity. The first thing I'd think was, "How could she possibly feel bad about herself? She's got over 50,000 followers. How could she think she sucks when she's so talented and makes so many people laugh?" But I know that shameful feeling, the feeling of disliking yourself not because you are a bad person but just because you ARE, and it's so hard to shake. Nothing on the outside can cure it, it's all inside stuff and it can shade everything in your life if left untreated.

I just finished reading Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott, and one of my favorite things that she about success as a writer was this, "the realtionship between getting published and mental health was summed up in one line of the movie Cool Runnings which is about the first Jamaican bobsled team. The coach is a four-hundred pound man who had won a gold metal  in Olympc bobsledding twenty years before but has been a complete loser ever since. The men on his team are desperate to win an Olympic medal, just as half the people in my [writing] classes are desperate to get published. But the coach says, 'If you're not enough before the gold metal, you won't be enough with it.' You may want to tape this to the wall near your desk.'"

I forget that just because a person is successful doesn't mean that they don't get insecure about themselves or their work, just like I do. I have 27 followers so if I don't write for a while, that means about a handful of poeple will be disappointed, whereas, the suffering of Allie Brosch has affected thousands of people, and caused me to internet stalk her to make she she's alright which I never NEVER do, unless I'm really worried about someone or unless they said that they were going to call me and they didn't or when it's Steve Martin and he's Tweeted something about going shoe shopping and I suspect that it might be the Payless near my house, then MAYBE I might do some web snooping but other than that I'm a typically well-adjusted non-obsessed person.

Hmm, reading back over this I don't sound all that considered about her as a person, just as someone's whose writing makes me laugh. It's ok, Allie! Take all the time you need to heal yourself! What you're dealing with is something that's not you're fault and is really REALLY hard to fight but you can do it! I'm ok, I've got backup, I can reread my Bloom County collection, and I can follow Ellen Degeneres for good measure...

But wait...Bloom County...That cartoonist hasn't come out with anything in years. Is anyone else worried about Berke Breathed?



ps- I also just found this which I thought was a good, both as an update on Allie Brosch and about depression.

It's the Knuckle Head's Fault

Hey! I have new followers. I don't know who some of you are, but welcome aboard.

I've been reading a LOT of Hyperbole and a Half (which I highly encourage you to look up because I still don't know how to link things so that you can click on its name and become magically transported to the delight of Hyperbole) and I find that I've been inspired, not only by Allie's wacky humor and superb illustrations, but by how often she posts. She went through a phase about a year ago or so where she posted every day. There was great fulfillment in this for me and the rest of us who love reading it, but apparently not so much for her because she stopped doing that.

So here's where the inspiration comes in...hmm, maybe it's not inspiration. I don't know the exact word for it, but that's not the point. The point is that in this post
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/apparently-i-am-failure-at-success.html
which I can not highlight and magically transport you there, and is also called "Apparently I am a Failure at Success," she doubts herself. This brilliantly funny person actually doubts whether or not her magic space bears are funny. How can they NOT be? And she has a zillion followers! I'm excited just to have 16!

And so I reflected upon my own self doubts. And so now I'm blogging.

What am I blogging about today? Magic space bears!...Oh wait, it's been done. Damn! Oh! I know, I know! I will tell you about a conversation I had with a coworker this morning, which is one that we have most mornings, and that conversation is called, "Things were better in the 1960's and your generation sucks." Well, it's not really a conversation as it is just me listening to a sixty-something year old man talk about how things used to be cheaper and safer, and how now we just live in an over-priced apocalyptic nightmare.

Usually I listen to this stream of reflection and complaints without much argument.
"Man oh man!" he'll say. "Music was music back then. You had guys gettin' together, it didn't matter what bands they were in they would all just play together. And to see 'em was maybe five bucks. What can you do with five bucks now?"
I shrug.
"Exactly!" he says. "It ain't shit! Back then you could fill your tank, catch a show, and eat dinner. You can't even buy a Coke at McDonald's for that now! Unfreakinbelievable!"
When I first started working here and he would rant I would attempt a friendly debate.
"Well," I would say. "That's true, but there were also less rights for minorities back then. Including women. Which is why I can have a job now and am not looked at like a freak. Wasn't that what all that change was about?"

He would cringe. I've since then learned that the word "change" will spark an Obama rant.
That time that he criticized modern music by saying that musicians don't intermingle and perform together anymore, I brought up the New Orleans music scene in which one musician usually plays several different instruments and performs in as many bands as he or she can handle. But he just pressed on as if I hadn't said anything and cried, "Unfreakinbelievable!" So I stopped.

But today, goddamn it, I couldn't help myself. It started off, innocently enough, about the price of gas. Not bad. Everybody complains about the price of gas. If you don't complain about the price of gas then you probably just can't speak (struck dumb as you are by the price of gas) and you write it down on slips of paper to show people how disgusted you are.

So Man of the Past says, "And gas these days!"
There is a groan of agreement among our crowd.
"Unfreakinbelievable! When I first started driving I could fill my tank for less than a buck. Now? You can't even get gas fumes for that much!"
"Yeah!" Somebody Else Who Enjoys the Past says.
"And what the hell is it with all these people dyin' in car wreckss? Back when we were kids nobody died in freakin' car wrecks!"
I said, "What?"
"No!" he waves his hands at me. "We didn't have all of that."
I leveled my eyes with his. "You're saying there were no fatal car accidents 45 years ago?"
"No, no, people knew how to drive back then!"
"You're telling me that no one died in a car. Not a single person."
"No one that I knew!"
I pointed at him accusingly. "James Dean!"
Man of the Past retorted by blowing a raspberry. I wasn't sure if this was directed at me, James Dean, or the very idea that he died that way when of course NO ONE died that way back then. But in any case, the gloves were off. And, crazily enough, all of the other people who loved the past took his side.
"That was in California!" one of them said. "Those crazies!"
"I didn't know a single person who died that way!" another told me.
"Forget about it!" Past Man who started it all said.
"GUYS!" I exclaimed. "That's not possible! I'll agree that gas was cheaper, but I know people died in car wrecks! How could they NOT die in car wrecks! That's the whole reason seat belts became mandatory by law. Somebody had to have died for that to happen!"
"It's all James Dean's fault," one of them said.
"Knuckle head," said Man of the Past, shaking his head.
"I can not believe we are having this conversation," I told them, and they all shook their heads at me.

To them, I am the young one in the office which my kids think is funny. Me, who can not link a word on my blog that, when clicked on, will magically transport you to a website.
Maybe, just for my coworkers, I'll figure out a way to click on a word that will magically transport them to The Past. They can bring ten dollars with them, and that should feed and cloth them for about a year.