Yesterday afternoon, the younger boy came home from school and as I was performing my daily inquiry into how his day went, he was moving away from me slowly, getting himself towards the stairs that lead up to our bedrooms. He faced me the entire time, and after a moment I realized he was doing his best to politely get away. I thought he had to use the bathroom, since he just got home. He said, “Hang on, I’ll be right back!” I heard him trying to locate something in his room before running back downstairs, a printed piece of paper shaped like a big bookmark held tightly in his…
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Some Activities Are Higher On The Priority List Than Others
This past weekend, Jim, the younger boy and I took a quick trip to Tennessee to hang with the in-laws. As a group, we didn’t have any set plans to speak of. (My individual dance card, however, was full: I had plans to lunch with my favorite Dad-of-triplets on Friday as well as a visit with Kate, Bean, and Squeaks on Saturday.) Overall, it was going to be one of those great, lazy weekends during which we wouldn’t do much except hang out. Pretty exciting stuff, because having no firm plans is a once-in-a-blue-moon thing for us. About eight hours into the ten-hour drive, the younger boy leaned forward from…
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Special Delivery…Elsewhere
I’m over at The Chicago Moms today, for the first time in a while. (oops) Please take a walk (technologically speaking, of course) over there and check out my new post. Hint: I think you’ll enjoy it. ©2010 Suburban Scrawl
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An Open Letter To Customer Service Representatives
Dear Customer Service Representatives (specifically those of you who manage customer calls for your company’s 800 number), I understand that you field all kinds of calls from all kinds of people in all different kinds of moods every day, and I know that you have a tough job. However, when I have to explain my problem five times in order for you to get to a place where you stop interrupting me to offer solutions that have nothing to do with my needs because you didn’t let me finish, it’s annoying. It’s also annoying (to say the least) when, in response to one of my complaints about some of your…
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What Comfort Zone?
Even outside of this blog, I am a writer. You know that. I have a specialty, though. Did you know that? I write non-fiction. I believe I am good at it. I can write the heck out of an informational magazine article or a business letter*. Even the book I wrote, though it reads a little like fiction, is a true story. The idea of writing works of fiction terrifies me. That’s why I said, “Sure!” when Tara asked me, a few months ago, to be one of the contributors to a tag-team blog on which we collectively write a novelette. (Uh yeah, that’s fiction.) Actually, I said, “Sure!” because…
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Blue.
First, some mood music: When we moved into this house, it was December of 2000 and the boys were eight and five. They were a great age for giving us input on how they wanted their rooms decorated. The younger boy? Well, he wanted his walls white. Weird, I know, but that’s what he got on three of them. The fourth wall had wallpaper on it–pink hearts–that the previous owners said they put up because the wallpaper under THAT just would not come off. So we wallpapered over the pink hearts with a nice vertical stripe pattern of blue, white, and brick red. The older boy more than made up…
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In Other News…
…my camera is dying. It’s dying a slow, sad death. It still works, but last week I couldn’t get it to turn off at all, and it sucked all of the battery power right out. Miraculously, the next day when I put the recharged battery back in, it worked, and it turned off when it was supposed to. It whines when I open up the front to expose the lens. I don’t know how long it’s got to live, but I know it’s fighting. Unfortunately, I don’t think that duct tape will fix it. ©2010 Suburban Scrawl
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The Golden Rule Seems Broken.
I’ve been wondering about something I hope you can shed some light on for me. At what point in the last, say, forty or fifty years, did it become the norm for Americans to stop giving others the benefit of the doubt or even the simple courtesy of not jumping to conclusions in everyday situations? The Golden Rule seems broken to me. Let me try to explain where I’m coming from. Two weeks ago, I went to IKEA with the older boy, to get one more thing for his dorm room. One thing. Literally. And so we went to the self-checkout registers.** There were three registers open and in use,…
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You Scratch My Back, and I’ll Scratch Yours.
When you’re done here, scoot on over to my review blog to read about my attempts to incorporate natural sweeteners (instead of artificial!) into my diet: you can enter to win a $100 Visa gift card and get the scoop on winning $1000 from BlogHer and Crystal Light Pure Fitness! Jim, the older boy, Julesie and I saw “Inception” on Friday night (It. Was. Awesome.) while the younger boy was still at scout camp. Practically immediately after the credits started to roll, the older boy was trying to figure out when he could go back and see it again, and with whom. His plan? To see it with one of…
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Taking A Break!
NO, it’s not what you think. You can’t get rid of me that easily. The last two weeks have been the busiest two weeks I can remember in my recent life history, from what I can remember, anyway. The stress has impaired my memory, as clearly evidenced by the fact that I have forgotten my purse at the salon (where I work part time) NO LESS than three times during this time period, and each time I only realized it upon my arrival at home, fifteen to twenty minutes later. Yeah, the paranoid commutes back were really fun. Not. Also, I’m a list-maker, and I have made NO LESS than…