Do We Have the Attention Span of a Two-Year-Old?

I’m not much of a television watcher, but the mercury has been climbing at my house and it’s forced me to look for my entertainment indoors.  So, I flip the channels and find myself popping bag after bag of popcorn because I can’t take my eyes off the T.V., and I’m just watching the news!  When did the networks decide that they needed to actually reach out and grab our attention by the collar by putting their news anchors in ridiculous situations?  I’m watching a reporter being harnessed up to a wind machine, strapping on a pair of goggles as he’s blasted by 80 mph winds.  He’s trying to sound confident and knowledgeable, with his lips flapping and drool is rolling up his cheek, while the news-desk anchor is asking him stupid questions like, “Is this how it would feel if you were in the middle of a hurricane?”  My bet is no, because people don’t generally stand outside during a hurricane.

I remember a time when the news was read to us calmly while still pictures popped up over the reporter’s shoulder, but those days are long gone.  Now they interview a Senator, and the next minute they have to diaper a baby while grilling a rack of ribs.  But the best is watching those poor weathermen.  They make them stand in the middle of flooded roads wearing gators, all the while asking dumb questions like, “Does the water appear deep to you?”  I’m waiting for one to answer, “Nope, I’m wearing rubber pants because I like it!”

All I know is that we must not have much of an attention span anymore, because the networks are wearing themselves out trying to keep us from changing the channel. Imagine what my kids are going to expect of me!  I am NOT going to juggle while serving dinner—a mom has to draw the line somewhere.

R U rdy 2 tlk?

I had an entire conversation with my sister today via text message. She was working and I was sitting at yet another football practice. And, sadly, it’s the longest conversation we’ve had in months. I’m trying to be more “tech savvy”, which I’m not--as evidenced by my vanilla-ish blog that is constantly plagued by technical problems. I hear people make lots of money off their blogs—I just don’t know any of those people. Still I try not to be a dinosaur although I was recently told by my teenager that I carry a “smart phone,” and I had no idea what that meant. Apparently I can get email and browse the web on my smart phone for a mere $40 more per month. I’m already not a great driver so I have spared my fair city the pain of having another driver on the road making a left turn while trying to pull up Mapquest on their phone. Plus it will be a cold day in hell before my cell phone company gets another dime out of me—I’m sure you can all relate.


But I have a confession to make about texting. I don’t understand the language. My sister and I managed fine because we’re both text illiterate and we typed out everything without a single abbreviation in the mix except for the :) , but that’s been around since PacMan.

I’ve been working with a lady who is decades younger than me and she sends me emails that I can’t begin to read. Words are so misspelled that I need the Rosetta Stone to translate. “I” is never capitalized and punctuation is permanently on vacation. I strain, I re-read several times trying to figure out what she’s asking me and I respond by making complete guesses—much like communicating with a pre-verbal toddler, I think I know what she wants but I could be way off. Sometimes the emails arrive IN ALL CAPITALS!!! with lots of question marks and exclamation points and I wonder what I did to deserve being yelled at.

I understand our desire for the shortcut. It feels like the world is spinning at a faster pace and we scramble to keep up. But this dinosaur thinks that we’re losing something very important—our ability to actually communicate. I hate to list blogs as evidence since I’m an addicted blogger, but I’m also a reader and I’m shocked at the number of posts out there that are impossible to read. They’re confusing, they fail to proofread or even run a simple spell check, and they’re plagued with run-on sentences.

I just hate to see the written word crumble into a bunch of abbreviations and shortcuts. And so, while I did enjoy catching up with my sister today, I’m going to make a point to actually call her. I’m also going to pick up a book by an author who labored for months or even years to produce a dazzling story and I’m going to read it. It’s my little contribution to the dream that great words and great storytellers live on.

Family Dinner Handbook

A friend of mine was recently working on putting together a family medical history. She wanted to know what her relations might pass on to her. She was concerned about cancer and heart disease. My relations have definitely passed a few things on to me and I have to say that I’m far less concerned about the possibility of cancer than some of the other traits that roll around my family tree.


For instance, we all have hot tempers that are firmly anchored to our strong opinions. This makes for some pretty interesting family dinners. When any of us girls brought a boy home to have dinner with our parents, we had to give them a study guide and urge them to cram for the exam. Bringing up certain topics was considered ill advised while others were basically the kiss of death. It was “ill advised” to bring up politics, but since the conversation would eventually come within hitting distance of that topic anyways, then it was considered the “kiss of death” to speak kindly of a Democrat in front of Dad and complete annihilation if a boy actually admitted to having a relative who was a registered Democrat. Complete annihilation was roughly translated as “there’s no way on earth you’re taking my daughter to prom, Tree Hugger!”

Using phrases such as “woman’s work” or “that’s a woman for you” was also ill advised for an entirely different reason—you would be castrated by four women and finished off by my dad. My dad may have thought that he had raised devoted Republicans but he never questioned where feminism landed in the political landscape. Despite living through that confusing transition between marrying a woman who was a wonderful, traditional homemaker and retiring with an independent, and equally opinionated woman, he is fiercely proud of his accomplished daughters and wife. He always expects the men in our lives to recognize our value and respect it.

With a ridiculously lengthy list of topics to avoid, bewildered dates weren’t sure what topics were safe. That’s because no topic was entirely safe when thrown into the den of lions known as my family. I recall a time when my future husband was eating with my family and my dad and sister got in such a heated discussion that they wound up standing up and shaking their dinner rolls at each other. They went at it for a few minutes. My husband was staring, wide eyed while the rest of us calmly scooped up our peas. Once the discussion was over, they sat down and acted like nothing unusual had happened.

To me, this was the norm—a legacy passed down to me without me understanding just what I was getting into. It made those first years of marriage pretty interesting since I was used to arguing and my husband was used to letting me talk at him. But eventually we found our groove and now we’re passing bad habits on to our kids. I have the most opinionated five-year-old you have ever met, and my eight year old has a bright future as a con man or car salesman since he won’t take no for an answer. I’m not sure how I feel about this legacy, but it’s pretty difficult to fight genetics.

The Snowball

Have you ever noticed that a day is like a snowball rolling down a hill? Once you get out of bed inertia takes over and trying to catch the rolling ball is like trying to stop Kobe Bryant on a drive to the basket. But then maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one who mysteriously loses control of her day—everyday.


Today my snowball ran down a hill, picked up mud, grass and a few earthworms before slamming into me and ruining my clothes. At least that’s what it felt like. What started out bad just kept getting worse until there was nothing left of my personality whatsoever and I could easily have nuked everyone who came near me with just the cruel look in my eyes. I’m pretty sure that’s why my husband was pretending to be asleep (at 9 pm) when I returned from a rush shopping trip because my son had to have black basketball shorts before school the next day.

I’ve heard all that garbage about how you can turn a day around by just reacting to the little annoyances of life differently, but I’ve never known a woman who could put it successfully into practice. There’s really only one logical way to react to dropping an entire gallon of milk down the driveway and it’s not pretty. Similarly there’s only one logical way to react to tripping on the pile of school junk that was dropped at the top of the stairs—especially when a bloody nose is involved. There’s also only one way to react to a report card filled with A’s—I voice a few “great jobs” and then break out my wallet since I’m stupid enough to pay for good grades. But at least my children have a decent idea what to expect in the world at large since I react to things logically and I see no reason to change that.

I cleverly hide my illogical reactions because I don’t want to confuse my kids, but mainly because they’d probably have me shipped to a lock-down mental health facility if they knew. For instance, after an especially trying day I wish my husband would get a clue and sleep on the couch. I want the freedom to do whatever I want to do without having to be concerned about him getting in my way. It’s selfish, I know, but sucky days bring out the four-year-old in me. I want my bedroom to myself so that I can watch T.V. and stay up late and surf the internet and paint my toenails without having to worry about waking him. And then, when I’m finally sick of Jimmy Fallon, I want to crawl in bed and sleep on the hump between the two canoes we’ve dug into our mattress because it’s much more comfortable—even if I take up the lion’s share of the bed.. I also tend to want to go dresser diving looking for my kids hidden candy stashes—another illogical reaction to a bad day.

Thankfully, all days are the snowball—not just the bad ones. Sometimes the snowball rolls through my to-do list with the efficiency of a computer, other days the snowball rolls pleasantly along like a scene from a Julie Andrews movie. What’s most curious is that even when I try to wrestle the day down and make it do my bidding, it presses forward with a mind of its own. And maybe life is supposed to take you for a ride because it’s not always good to be stuck in the driver’s seat—otherwise you’d never see the scenery.

Money on the Lawn

Saturday mornings provide quite the display. Drive around residential neighborhoods and you will see people who have laid out on their lawns all manner of items for sale. People empty their garages, storage rooms and closets in an effort to make room for the next thing they can’t live without. And we wander around, hoping to find our next treasure at a discount.


Every garage tells a story about the people who live there and the choices they’ve made. A decades old sewing machine, pots and pans that lack the name of a TV chef, used crockpots in the original packaging and soft leather boots reveal people who have been frugal about what they buy. They care for the items, often retaining the original paperwork from 1970 in case they needed to order a replacement part, until they no longer see a need for them. The decision to part with the item is often rational, “I had to sell my sewing machine, my arthritis was just getting too bad,” or “I just don’t cook for large groups anymore so I didn’t see the need to keep my crockpot.” They’ve lived careful lives, spent judiciously, and they often find bargain hunters curious when their worn but still useful items remain untouched. They can’t understand why anyone would buy something new when they have a perfectly serviceable one that they will sell to you for half price.

This contrasts sharply with the yard sale where the proprietor inadvertently reveals their weaknesses for the world to see. A yard filled with thousands of stuffed animals for sale at three for a dollar reminds us how easily we will throw away thousands of dollars, without even realizing that it’s happening because we are shelling it out in $10 increments over days and months and years. It’s only when shelves and closets are emptied that the truth stares at us from a tarp on the lawn. Some of the smallest homes yield the largest garage sales, making me wonder why we believe buying everything that catches our eye is the same as living the American dream.

I’m not immune. I frequently empty my closets and storage rooms and if I were to reveal my nature by holding a yard sale, you would see a person who likes projects and who rarely finishes them. I’ve pitched remnants of business ventures that I tried without success, crafts and scrapbooks that never even got started, and mountains of home décor that was replaced as soon as I got the new paint color on the walls. I look at an item I’m about to toss and find myself wondering why I thought this item was so important that I was willing to trade hours of working for the money it took to buy it. Most of the time I’m completely baffled. If I was making rational decisions, all my plates would be unbreakable and white so that they would never need to be replaced because the colors or design was out of style. I would buy classic clothing pieces only and a single pair of diamond studs for my ears since they work with everything. But that’s not how I roll, and based on what I saw out on my neighbor’s lawns today, most people don’t roll that way either. So tonight my question is this, why do we spend our lives and our money contrary to logic and what does cleaning out a closet reveal about yourself?

Coupons and Competition

I just finished cutting out all the coupons from my Sunday flier and tucking them into an embarrassingly big box that I will tote around the grocery store. Now, before you mock me relentlessly let me just say that I have a good excuse for being a Couponer. At this point most of you will jump to the obvious conclusion—families are expensive (especially the all-you-can-eat teenagers) and so no one can fault a full-time working professional for having to clip and sort coupons on the weekends. You are so kind! But, no that is not the reason at all. I’m not nearly that altruistic. I add up all the money I save using coupons and then I use those pinched pennies to buy me really pretty shoes and purses. The real reason I clip coupons is because it brings out the competitive beast in me.


Follow me on this one. We start out in school, clawing our way to good grades and bad-mouthing our competition in our race to get on the football team, cheerleading squad or student council. In college it’s a race to meet the preferred recruiters and land that all-important career launching pad job. We work our way up to the office with the window, or the supervisor’s truck, or whatever we view as the dream job. And then the competition subsides or ends, depending on your point of view. We get soft around the middle, do stupid things like aerobics or walking in place on a treadmill to get in shape, and we are supposed to play nice with everyone around us. Ah, utopia. Unless you’re me.

I’m competitive and I need something to conquer. So imagine my surprise when I coupon clipping brought out the fighter in me. It’s a game to see how many bags of groceries I can get for $100. I pull out the ads and I plot and sceme. Can I combine two coupons on this item? How many things can I pair with a coupon to get them totally free? My mind whirls as I plot against the enemy—the grocery store. I hate spending money on groceries and I hate it even more when my husband stops by the store for a few things, spends 50 bucks and walks in with a single pitiful bag. So I’m determined to pay them back, one sale price and one coupon at a time. So the next time you see a crazy woman walking out of a grocery store dancing to the “Rocky” theme, you’ll know that she just beat the grocery store—nearly as satisfying as beating the house in Vegas.

What about you? How do you handle your competitive streak?

The Recession is Killing More Than Car Sales

The recession is a killer. I know, I know, you’ve heard this all before—in fact you’re probably hearing it now. It’s inescapable. Every news story is about the recession these days. You can now buy a 3000 square foot home with granite countertops for $20, but you won’t qualify for financing. Detroit is out of the auto industry because suddenly everyone needs to drive a car that runs on something other than oil since we’ve spilled it all into the gulf. And if you actually still have a job, then you’re so desperate to join the unemployed that you’re willing to jump out of an airplane carrying a beer in each hand.


Does anyone else find all of this insane? I swear I overheard a Sponge Bob episode on the recession when I was cooking chicken last night. When cartoons start worrying about their home values, then we’ve officially crossed over to the dark-side. It’s like a shadowy plague that is crawling over us—determined to beat us down until we cry out for mercy and a car that doesn’t run on a battery.

Every piece of bad news is somehow linked to the recession, no matter how flimsy the tie-in. If you listen to the news, summer box office receipts were the worst in years because American’s don’t have any discretionary funds left. I don’t know about you, but I just wasn’t willing to drop good money on the garbage movies Hollywood presented us this summer. So now some idiot director who spent millions blowing up cars, houses, and chisel-chinned actors without bothering with a plot is going to get to keep his job because the tanking of the movie wasn’t his fault—it was just the economy. I so wish that man was standing in line with the other 300 applicants that showed up for job interviews at JoAnn Fabrics last week.

I argue that, while the recession is real, the toll it’s taking reaches far beyond our pocketbooks. It’s draining every bit of optimism and hope from the American people who are known for overcoming adversity and reaching for greatness. Terrorists blowing up buildings hurt our spirits less than the constant barrage from the media about our failing economy. Granted, the recession is far reaching, but while we hear about the bad unemployment numbers no one every says, “but hey, 90% of us still have jobs.” They never air a story about how neighborhoods are coming together to help the hardest hit families by providing food, carpooling, and the thing they need most of all—friends who actually care. They never mention how hard those who have jobs are working so that costs are low and their company’s doors can remain open.

Vampires are all the rage these days and I’m not the least bit surprised—we’re all being sucked dry by the constant coverage of bad news day in and day out. We have to stand up for ourselves because I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough. It’s time to lift our heads and do what we American’s have done for centuries, we need to believe in a better day and then work toward it.

Bristol's Wedded Bliss

Bristol Palin just called off her wedding to Levi Johnston, the father of her two-year-old and now (apparently) the father of another woman’s baby. This was their second engagement, and they were so scared to tell her parents that they chose to have a gossip magazine make the announcement for them. They had a right to be scared. Between engagement number one and two Levi had publicly badmouthed his future in-laws, starred in a porn movie, and sired other children. Which makes you wonder why Bristol was so hell-bent on marrying the boy in the second place. Actually, I’m not surprised. The feminist movement may have given women permission to active sex lives, but not all of us are cut out for the heart-stomping that comes with that sexual freedom.


I’m convinced that if you could dissect the spirit of a woman’s heart you’d find that it makes a strong, sometimes irrational, connection to the man we share a bed with. This connection leads to all sorts of funky predicaments, especially if you choose the wrong man. Why else would a girl run away with a boy who has no prospects, no money and no facial hair? Why else would she trust that the nude picture she just sent her boyfriend won’t wind up as wallpaper on every screen in the computer lab? Teenagers aren’t the only ones effected by the brain-sex connection. Women routinely spend years with men who will abuse them or cheat on them. And when Levi put that diamond ring on Bristol’s hand, she believed that she could trust him to never star in another porn film. (He didn’t, he just ran off to star in another film—one that mocked her family.) The heart really is blind, and sometimes downright off its rocker.

Watching Bristol claw her way through a swamp full of Levi’s bad behavior in an effort to marry the father of her child makes you realize that feminism comes with a cost. It’s no longer taboo to have sex before you can drive, cohabitate for years before you get married, and have children out of wedlock but those freedoms come with a high price. Our grandmothers may not have been liberated, but they were uncanny. They knew that, in the words of author Caitlin Flanagan, they “didn’t put out until after they had tossed the bouquet [because] they didn’t want to have to put the kibosh on icky sexual fantasies before they’d established joint checking.” I hope that Bristol finds her happiness and gets the white wedding she so obviously desires, but you have to wonder if it’s even possible at this point in the game.

The Leap Into the Unknown

I fell recently and have a beauty of a bruise running down my arm. Honestly it’s been a long time since I’ve had an injury. There’s something about being an adult that makes you more cautious, lazy or scared—I’m not sure which. I also can’t recall the last time I tried to jump as high as possible or run as fast as the wind. My kids test their skills in these ways regularly, and they always want me to watch them do it. On a recent trip to the lake my eight-year-old jumped off a 35 foot rock into the water below. There was no audience-no peer pressure of any sort. He just did it because he wanted to. As I laid my arm down in a vat of ice I was mad that I didn’t have a cool story to go along with the injury. I lost my footing and slipped. I so wish that I had tried something hard that would somehow justify the injury—like a battle wound, proving my bravery. But now or in the future it’s unlikely that I’ll take a risk because there’s always pain involved. When you’re standing on a cliff, looking at the churning water below and you’re pumping your arms and taking deep breaths and working your way through the fear it’s painful. I watched my son go through it all before he finally decided that he was going to take the plunge. Then he stepped out and dropped into the unknown. The payoff came when he resurfaced and whooped for all he was worth. Victory in its purest form.


I’m not sure when I decided that pain needed to be avoided at all costs. I think life hands you some pretty convincing lessons in avoiding pain. But maybe I misunderstood the lesson because, watching my son’s face it was obvious that the pain of fear and doubt was outweighed entirely by the joy of the jump.

It’s true confession time. I don’t expect a single person to read this blog—ever. I’m not amazingly insightful, a gifted storyteller, or famous so I’m under no illusions here. But I love to write and my biggest fear is that someone will read my writing and tell me that it stinks and that I should never write another sentence as long as I live. So posting my writing online is painful, but I have to get over the fear. Admittedly, an unknown unread blog isn’t much of a leap but after a lifetime of avoiding taking chances, it feels like a leap to me. Maybe knowing this will remind you that taking a chance maybe painful, but if I can do it then so can you. Here’s to the leap. Let me know how it feels when you resurface and you look up to realize that you made it. My bet is that there will be a lot of whooping involved.

Contact Your Network Administrator

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier and in many cases it does. I can not express how much I appreciate not having to wash my family’s piles of clothing on a rock in a stream. I also love not having to build a fire each time I want to cook and I really appreciate the refrigerator—especially after using a drippy, unreliable icebox for the first time. Believe me I am very excited that technology has taken much of the work out of cleaning, cooking and simply getting around town. The problem is that we’ve reached this point where technology is no longer seamless and therefore, no longer simplifies our lives.


The reason why I love my microwave is that, although I have a basic understanding of how it works (vibrating water particles to create heat), I don’t have to actually tell the microwave what frequency to vibrate the particles nor do I have to speak with three separate tech support lines in order to get it working. Kitchen appliances are technology in its best form—seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives without fuss.

My home entertainment system is not seamless. The box said it was seamless and easy to setup—but it’s not. It’s also not a whole house entertainment network, so wonderfully pitched by computer and television companies. I have now spent enough time on tech support lines or crawling into small spaces to fix connections that I could have had my master’s degree completed online—except that, right now, I can’t get the Internet to work. What the pitchmen for entertainment technology do not tell you is that wireless is unreliable, speakers still require wires you have to hide somewhere and no one can really get their entertainment on demand. The dream is a wonderful dream. I think about it all the time. No more flipping channels because the show you want is there when you want it. Want some music to set the mood for dinner? Click a button and it’s yours, along with a new recipe thanks to the new computer built into your countertop. Ah, life would be sweet. The reality isn’t even remotely digestible. Today I can’t get my Internet to run. Three hours of tech support later and I’m told that it must be my wireless router, only they don’t work on wireless routers. No, that requires that you call an entirely different company or that you “contact your network administrator.” This is the new “shove-off” phrase because only companies with hundreds of employees even have network administrators.

Perhaps Thoreau had the right idea when he decided to unplug from society and see just how simply he could live his life. Then again, that would bring me back to washing my clothing in a stream with a rock and I can’t go there. When I complain about the Internet being down, my even less tech-savvy husband steps in to help. He sits at the computer and presses buttons until he calls out to me, “Hon, it just says that we should contact our network administrator.” Yep. Next time the cable company calls about a past due bill I wonder if they’ll know what I mean when I tell them to “contact your network administrator” for payment.

Home

We joined the throngs of people wandering, like dehydrated refugees, through the Las Vegas desert in and out of the most over-the-top dwellings in the world. It’s July and the temperature is 116 degrees in the shade but that hasn’t slowed the flow of people up and down the Las Vegas Strip. So far we have visited Egypt and Paris, New York and The Caribbean. We’ve seen hotel lobbies filled with flowers and waterfalls that make you want to cry. We’ve traveled on Gondolas through the (sort-of) streets of Venice and we’ve sat in reverence as a water danced and glowed. We ate at extreme restaurants on luxurious white couches that make every mother blanch at the thought of allowing ketchup so close.


Every surface is designed to be comfortable and pleasing to the eye. Even the escalators appear to be made of Roman marble. Luxury of this level draws in people of every ethnicity, status, and age. We love the fantasy of a world where everything envelops and stimulates. There’s only one problem—it’s fantasy and a not very good one in my opinion.

There’s something lost when you have to get to the pool before daylight if you hope to snag a decent lounge chair—and those yellow and white striped tents with padded chaises? Forget it. Those are reserved for the rich who probably have matching cabanas in their backyards at home. We booked a mini-suite at a mid-range hotel, our homage to affordable luxury, and crawled into the comfy bed at the end of a very long, hot day of following the masses from one line to another. I was looking forward to sleeping in for the first time since I had children. The dream was not to be—the maids decided to linger outside my paper-thin door at seven in the morning discussing their workload in loud Spanish.

What is it about our drive to find comfort and luxury? We seek it in the most unlikely of places. After two days I drove home and walked into my home. I smiled and fell into my favorite chair in my favorite room and massaged the blisters on my feet. After a few minutes my kids came in to welcome me home and I realized that I already have luxury. I wonder how many of those people that I bumped elbows (and probably a few more embarrassing body parts) with went home and felt the same sort of relief I felt? Relief at the vacation finally being over, relief at being home.

I don’t have very nice furniture—most of it bears battles scars from three children--it’s worn and mismatched, but I love it all. Every piece holds a memory, every room reminds me why I love my family and why I work so hard for us to be together and that we have routines that I miss when we are away. I don’t need to live in a luxury suite and be carried around in a limousine to feel like a rock star. Home is underrated, and that’s a shame because even after Dorothy visited the Emerald City she knew--there’s no place like home.