the christmas letter

you know what i love about the holidays? getting a really long letter from someone telling you how fabulous their life is. but sometimes, if you look closely, you can see through the glitz and get a glimpse of what is really going on. i got one such letter this season and i would like to share it with you. below is the letter, in its entirety, and word-for-word - because i can't make this shit up. i have, however, made a few comments, in brackets, and changed the names to hopefully keep these people from recognizing themselves in the event that they should stumble onto my blog now that it is in its new easy-to-find location at www.luckycharmsandbeer.com.

Hello to all our dear friends and family. Wow, I truly do not know where this year has gone, let alone that I turned 40 this year! [as a side note, this sentence makes no sense] Desi and I celebrated our 25th anniversary of marriage this year. We have been spending a little bit more time together since Desi's company has slowed down the work load. Desi also has had alot more time to work with Larry on his baseball skills and now with Curly's wrestling. Desi is really enjoying that!

Speaking of Larry, he is a ray of sunshine [if she does say so herself]. He is 13 and is always happy [oxymoron] and so conscientious. It makes mama proud that he is very neat too! He finished 7th grade with a very high average, a math award, and a science award, and so this year he was placed in advanced classes. We were not sure how he would do, but he is maintaining excellent grades. He is still playing travel baseball, which we all enjoy very much. He has pitched some great games and even won a "game ring."

Curly entered the high school this year after finishing the middle school with "a presidential award." [don't know what that is? well here, let her tell you] That award is given for always maintaining an A average throughout the entire 3 years. He too is in advanced classes and doing very well. He played on the football JV team as a wide receiver and now he is starting on the varsity wrestling team as a freshman. We are very proud of his accomplishments, especially dad who loves to share his experiences and knowledge of the sport with him. He finally decided to get a buzz cut and it looks great on him. He also got the braces off. What a hunk!

Moe is, yes indeed 21. He is still working at Publix part-time. He also works another part-time job and in between the two jobs, he is in his 3rd year in college. He obviously has little time for organized sports which is a shame because he is so talented, but he does play at leisure with his high school buddies. He does continue to work out in his little gym in his room. It has taken well over a year to learn to let go of my "little boy" and let me tell you, it is not easy! We are very proud of him and love him dearly.

As for me, I'm still in the same routine. I take the boys where they need to be and wash all of their uniforms. That is the down side to sports. I have started a new mural in the basement and I paint when I get the urge.

Well I hope this letter finds you doing well. We want to wish you all a Blessed Christmas and a very Blessed New Year.

Lucy, Desi, Larry, Curly and Moe

my interpretation of lucy's letter: desi is an alcoholic about to lose his job. larry has, at the tender young age of 13, discovered that he is gay. curly, the high school sports star and "hunk," has contracted at least one venereal disease and may or may not have fathered a child. moe smokes alot of pot, sometimes with his "high school buddies" and sometimes alone in his "little gym in his room." lucy is on the brink of a mental break - and why wouldn't she be? everyone else's lives are filled with academics, sports and friends and she is "in the same routine" washing uniforms.

i think it would be really refreshing to get my version of the christmas letter. in fact, i may just write my own.

the mountain house

a while back, i found myself talking to this very attractive and very typical "southern woman." you know the type - always looks perfect, has the perfect family, is always telling stories about her perfect life. i knew this was going to be a painful conversation because it started out with her telling me how busy she had been - so busy in fact, that she had not even gotten to her mountain house that season.
the story continued and somehow this girl managed to do the two things that irritate me more than anything else - yes, even more than talk of her mountain house - she subjected me to her religious beliefs and she tried to get me to buy into her pyramid home-business scheme. i'm sure you are wondering how she managed to get both of those things into one conversation. well, it went something like this:
(for purposes of this story, i will call her scarlett and her husband, rhett. also, this conversation took place poolside where i sat in my mom-tankini and she posed in her bikini, looking absolutely flawless (except for her ridiculously huge fake boobs) holding her 3-month-old baby that she did not adopt. i will refer to the cosmetic pyramid-scheme company as "pyramid scheme."

scarlett: i'm just so busy with the boys. i know you must be too since you are working part-time.

me: yeah.

scarlett: i can't imagine if i had finished residency how hard it would be to manage my career and the boys. and i felt really bad when i first wanted to quit residency. i worried that i had wasted all that time and money going to medical school only to quit residency. but then one day, it just hit me. i realized that god had not sent me to medical school to be a doctor. he had sent me to meet rhett.

me: yeah. (swallowing a little vomit)

scarlett: but rhett's practice is doing well and a friend told me about pyramid scheme, a home-based business. it's a great opportunity and i think you would be really good at it. rhett was skeptical at first, but after he went to the meeting with me, he saw what a great opportunity it was for me to be able to share great products with my friends and family and supplement his income. you would be great at it and it's the perfect way to work from home while your kids are little and need you.

me: hey, speaking of kids needing me, mine are drowning, so i should go. it was nice talking to you.

as i am looking for ways to work, from home or otherwise, i reflected on this conversation with scarlett. she truly presented a picture of having it all. and i wonder if she does or if like so many people, she is just better at marketing and selling her life to others than i am. i'm afraid that my pitch isn't nearly as impressive - i mean, how could it be? i don't even have a mountain house.

family fun

friday night. i was actually excited because steve and i decided to take the kids to dinner and bowling - something the kids have been asking to do and something that steve and i both enjoy (or at least that we enjoyed while extremely intoxicated in college). so we loaded up the kids and headed to loco's - about a ten minute drive. it was raining, but i was in a good mood - excited to be excited about having a family night out. we parked the car and i opened mac's door to let him out and realized he wasn't wearing shoes. immediately, my mood soured. i was mad as much at myself as i was at him, since he does this about 5 times a week and i should have checked. but, we decided to go in anyway. we took mac into the restaurant with his feet bare. i was painfully aware of everyone that noticed his dirty wet feet - and i saw them look directly from the feet to me, the mother of the child with no shoes on in a family restaurant.
as soon as we got menus, things went even further down hill. amelia recently got a massive orthodontic appliance in her mouth and her diet is limited. i had promised her there would be soup on the menu. there was not. and now her mood had soured too.
after the meal, that i will describe as mildly unpleasant, we drove to the nearest store to purchase shoes and socks for mac. forty dollars later, we were on our way to showtime bowling. we arrived and got our lane and shoes. they asked our children's ages and pointed out that they would only do bumpers on the lane for ages 10 and under - i.e. mac but not amelia. amelia handled this news surprisingly well - at first.
we started bowling and i was all over the gutter for my first 3 turns, putting me in last place, then amelia, then steve and mac in first. but as the night progressed, my mediocre bowling skills came back to me and i moved ahead of amelia, who had by this time become familiar with both gutters. she was totally frustrated and following each attempt, she would storm back to her seat and say crappy things. mac, who threw the ball with all that he had (which isn't much) and ran back immediately to look at the scores on the screen, had fallen into second place and started crying because he was no longer winning.
steve, meanwhile, had had it with amelia's bad attitude and told her we were leaving and for her to come with him. as they walked over to pay, i tossed amelia her shoes and as luck would have it, one shoe hit the ground and then bounced up and smacked her right in the face. she burst into tears and stormed off to the bathroom. i coaxed her out of the bathroom and then explained to her that while the shoe in the face was unintentional, she deserved it because she was acting like such a brat. so we loaded both of our crying kids in the car and headed home.
next time, i vote for getting a sitter, drinking heavily and maybe skipping the bowling altogether since it might just bring back memories of all that family fun.

checking in with randy joe

my dad, randy joe, was cursed with a stomach ailment called diverticulitis. i am no doctor, but i know that for him, the condition flares up on occasion and can be serious - should an infection develop or the colon decide to perforate - or as randy joe says, "bust op'n." recently, such a flare up occurred and in fact, there was an infection and a 5-day hospital stay was required. i called my dad every day to check in and got to hear the minute-by-minute of life in the south georgia medical center. the following is a summary of those conversations (in the words of randy joe - unless otherwise noted. as a reminder, ronnie is my mom):

day 1: i knew what it was - i ain't eat in days. i coulda died. if you get an infection bad enough in there, that thing'll bust op'n and from then on, you'll be shitting in a bag.
nicole: how long are they keeping you?
rj: well, they said til monday, but i'm going home on saturday to watch that football game.

day 2: i can't talk. the nurse is here to take my blood.
rj to nurse: i don't know why you wanna take it again, you took it yesterday. i got the same blood today i had yesterday.

day 3: can you believe georgia lost that football game?

day 4: (to nicole) tell ronnie to bring me a box a cheezits.
nicole: are you allowed to have cheezits?
rj: i don't know - i ain't eat in 7 days. i'm starving.

day 5: i can't talk. i'm getting the hell outta here. i'll call you when i get home.

he made it home and seems fine, although a surgery is likely in his near future. he is no stranger to surgery though. several years ago, he had a hip replacement. the recovery was worse than he expected. not too long after the surgery, his orthopedic surgeon told him he would need the other hip replaced, to which he responded that he would "drag that sonofabitch to the grave" before he had another hip replacement. the doctors should probably consider going ahead and removing his entire colon since it is not likely he will be doing any additional surgeries.

my public v. private identity crisis

up until this year, my kids have attended public schools. my husband and i also attended public schools growing up. but when we moved recently, not knowing what area of town we would live in, we opted to enroll them in private schools - mac at a montessori school and amelia at what i refer to as "the academy." i don't know what my expectations were, but i am surprised at how different these two schools are. they are, in fact, polar opposites. amelia's school is everything one might expect from an "academy," right down to its old headmaster who says academy in such a way that it rhymes with dichotomy. the car pool line is packed with escalades and navigators and parent meetings are a virtual fashion show where you would be hard-pressed to find a woman there with flat shoes or unaugmented breasts. mac's montessori school, on the other hand, has a parking lot full of hatch-backs - and i don't mean crossovers, i mean actual hatch-backs - from the 70s. i haven't attended the first parent meeting yet, but i am fully expecting to be passed a bong while we all sing kumbayah. when dropping the kids off, i feel like i need to change clothes between schools. i haven't made many friends yet but surely there are some other hybrids like me out there. i mean, i recycle, but i get botox. i wear birkenstocks with designer jeans. i can't afford the environmentally-friendly vehicle i want, so i am driving a jeep, that's paid for (but regularly stalls in the car pool line). maybe i am over-thinking it, but i think life was easier in public school.

recreational hobos

my children hate the local rec center. i don't know why - other than perhaps it makes them feel like "other children." so i was not surprised when recently, following through on a threat, i made them go there for the day and my son threw an absolute fit about it. he told me that he couldn't go because the last time he was there a hobo tried to kill him. amelia reluctantly joined her class, but mac refused to go. so as i stood there in the rec center lobby trying to explain to him that maybe he misunderstood the hobo's intentions last time, an acquaintance walked up with her two boys, who are the same ages as and go to school with my children. this was great news for my daughter, who likes the boy that is her age but it is terrible news for mac, who upon seeing the other boy starts yelling "oh no, not timmy." well, of course, timmy's mom looked offended but she proceeded to drop her children off (with ease) and was quickly back out in the lobby where mac was still going on about how timmy would try to kill him with a machine gun if i left him there. so this other mom kneels down to mac's level (and i assume she is trying to help me out here and console him so that i can get out of there) and she says to him "well, mac, as i recall, at the spring program at school, it was you and not timmy who was hitting other kids and making everyone mad." at this point, all i could think was "are you fucking kidding me?" so while i was trying to console my son and drop him off so that i could have three hours of peace, this woman was seriously going to stand there and argue with a crying seven-year-old over who was worse - mac or her son timmy? i tried to give her some perspective by explaining to her that before timmy walked up, the hobo had been the target of mac's anger, but she seemed unaffected by this information. for some unknown reason, i apologized to her and then whisked mac away to where the well-adjusted seven-year-olds were happily playing. i bitterly and sarcastically wished his teacher good luck and stormed out into the parking lot, peeled out and headed for starbucks for a $4 cup of transfat-and-sugar-laden peace.

year-round school - making the case

what ever happened to all that talk about year-round school? i, for one, support it. and not just because my kids fight with each other and drive me crazy all summer. okay, actually that is the only reason. but surely there would be some economic benefits. working parents would be better employees, not having to deal with summer camps or temporary babysitters. and teachers would make more money that would go right back into the economy, right? stock in fiskars and crayola would likely skyrocket.

and let's not forget the benefits year-round schooling would bring to the children. i can attest to the fact that summer equals fighting with siblings. the nonstop, obnoxious and sometimes violent, fighting. not only is it dangerous, but surely it is damaging to their delicate, still-developing self-esteem. and for children with no siblings with whom to fight, clearly they need the socialization that only a school classroom can provide.

opponents of year-round schooling (probably just teachers), might ask "what about summer vacations?" as my sister says, vacations are for grown-ups, something you earn - by finishing all of your school. this would provide motivation for kids to stay in school. let's make them earn that weekend of cruising the miracle strip in panama city beach. drop-out rates would plummet.

in closing, economic windfall, psychologically healthier, more motivated kids, diminished drop-out rates, i can't find a downside here.