They Laughed At Me For Being A Health Food Freak

Separated At Birth

This cracked me right the heck up. Shrek and..an American Idol contestant. One of my pals, Miss Cellania, writes for them.

Cheerleader

So, anyway, how are y'all doing? I'm fine, mumble, mumble, zzzzzzzzzzzzz......I can't keep my eyes open long enough to complete a sentence let alone a coherent entry. Thank you Benadryl. I'm either awake and streaming snot, and yes, I know that's TMI.... or asleep with a smile on my lips.

I resurrected this ancient picture of me at a tender young age to illustrate my post because it deals with (reverent hush) cheerleading.

I attended a huge, wealthy suburban high school in the days when cheerleaders were elected by the student body. It hardly needs to be said that I aspired to be one only in the dim, hopeless way that I aspired to be David Cassidy's bride. That is, I figured I had a better chance of getting hit by a meteorite.

I also resigned myself at a young age to the fact that any flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, would also face a similar destiny. And that I'd feel sad about it.

However, cheerleading has undergone a striking transformation since Ancient Days and now cheerleaders are chosen based on athletic ability. Now I'm not saying that I was good at sports. No, I'm saying that I was REALLY FRIGGING AWFUL at sports. But I might have had a fighting chance if every other girl in the school died of cholera or something AND if I had started gym at the age of 18 months AND practiced maybe 6-7 hours a day.

My daughter Madeleine, not flesh of my flesh, not bone of my bone born in my heart yada yada has the dainty, wispy build of a natural born cheerleader. The one who would be tossed up in the air and placed at the top of the pyramid. Let me pause for a second and contemplete the irony of life, the hilarious and maddening irony of this great big old kooky world.

ABC NEWS.....April 2, 2007 — As high school and college cheerleaders face increased pressure to perform gravity-defying leaps and flips, they are becoming vulnerable to permanent injury — even death.
Cheerleading is one of the fastest growing high school sports in America, getting more than 4 million young women jumping, flipping and cheering every single year, but of all the serious injuries to female high school and college athletes, more than half were from cheerleading.
Jessica Smith, an 18-year-old cheerleader at Sacramento City College, broke her neck in two places as she performed a complicated cheerleading flip during practice last October — ending her dream of becoming a professional cheerleader.
"When I landed on the ground, I heard a crack and I started screaming," Smith said.
"Our lives have changed dramatically," Jessica's mother Christine Smith said. "Knowing that Jessica is not sleeping through the night breaks my heart. She's got a long road ahead of her."
With higher pyramids and moves like the "basket," a backflip in the air requiring a minimum of two spotters, cheerleading accidents are increasing and the results can be devastating.
More than half of all catastrophic injuries to female athletes are attributed to cheerleading.
"Ten, 15 years ago they were basically standing leading cheers on the sidelines. They weren't throwing each other up in the air. They weren't forming tall pyramids, and the injuries that can result are severe if they fall from a high height," said Brenda Shields, coordinator of the Injury Research Center at Columbus Children's Hospital.
The number of cheerleaders being treated in emergency rooms increased 100 percent between 1990 and 2002.

Why, if somebody had told me that one day I'd forbid my daughter from being a cheerleader, instead of secretly wringing my hands when she joined the Debate Team and Chess Club, I would have asked them for another hit off the bong.

Life is filled with the irony, yes?

Rant Rant Rant Rant

Hello from South Carolina, where I am staggering around in a Benadryl-induced coma, stopping to jam a few more pink pills in my mouth and stagger off, huffing and sniffling, back to a prone position. It's pollen season, and little tiny yellow bits of pollen are covering everything.

You guys have made the Young Author above very happy with your comments. She has "created" another "work" (her words) and is after me to post it on the blog. Get yer own blawg kid. Actually she has one already and I'll post her future "works" over there with a note when they go up.

Yesterday upon arriving home from school her first words to me were, "Mom, do I have any new comments?"

Today however I have to write about something that has taken possession of me, tormenting my nights and days. A vision of my children (or, even worse, ME) in the middle of this scenario on a school sponsored field trip...

A literate friend, who graciously allowed me to quote (steal from) her, writes:

So we went out of town this weekend to see family. It turns out the hotel was almost full of boys/chaperones who were there for some sort of baseball tournament. The boys were probably 13-14.

We tried to swim in the early morning and then again at night but at night it was almost impossible because of the behavior of the baseball kids. The pool was 4'9" deep at the deepest part. The kids were diving, which was against pool rules. One night, the three adults responsible for 20 or so kids at the pool were doing shots of tequila. And the next night they were consuming large amounts of beer. Glass bottles everywhere. Kids running. Kids throwing stuff in the pool. Open containers of beer and liquor left sitting everywhere in the public spaces in the hotel. The hotel didn't sell alcohol so these people shipped it in. At one point I saw one of the coaches wheeling in a cart with five large cases of beer on it. There weren't that many adults even in the group so I had to wonder about whether the kids were getting any of it. It seemed like a lot of alcohol for the adults we saw to be consuming. I don't drink at all, ever, so I have no perspective on how much is a lot. But it sure seemed like a lot of alcohol to me. The women doing the shots of tequila were petite and it seemed like for their size they were consuming a lot. They were pretty giggly and wobbly when they tried to leave. And they were the ones in charge of the kids.

We had kids running in the halls all night. No apparent curfew. They were playing some sort of dodgeball game in the parking lot with a basketball and no adult present. Throwing balls at parked cars. We couldn't get on the computer in the business center because the boys were in there trying to find porn sites that weren't blocked.

We complained about all of this to the hotel staff but they said it wasn't their problem and there was nothing they could do about any of it. I'm going to take all of this up with the hotel's corporate office today.

But....meanwhile....my question for the group is, how representative do you think this group was for a typical chaperoned trip with 13-14-year-old kids. We saw numerous behaviors where someone could have been seriously hurt including the diving, all the glass bottles at the pool, and the kids playing in more poorly lit parts of the parking lot. I wondered if this was what the parents of the kids expected when they let them come on this trip -- that the kids would have almost no supervision and would run around terrorizing the hotel while the adults got drunk in the lobby.

Well.

Pardon me while I fall to my knees and thank God that *I* wasn't the one suffering all this.

Pardon me while I fall to my knees and thank God that no kids were seriously injured.

Where to begin? Do I really have to say anything? Is there anything that I can add to this? Well, yes.

First of all, while I have no problem with a congenial glass of wine over a playdate, what could have possessed these adults to treat this as an opportunity to party hardy?

"Reminds me of the college kids who used to chaperone us at the beach," says Roger. Yes, the summer after his freshman year in high school Roger was allowed to trek off to Myrtle Beach in the company of several inebriated college students as chaperones. (Need I even mention the likelihood of our children being allowed similar indulgences? This from the man who is making plans to accompany his children on their honeymoons?)

I can scarcely add anything to this tale except to resolve, firmly, to myself in that secret little place in my heart where fairy tales can come true, it could happen to you-- RESOLVE: my children will never go on a trip like this without being in the company of trusted adults who refrain from multiple shots of tequila or many bottles of beer while the life of my children is in their keeping.

Approved beverages are lemonade, Diet Coke, coffee, unsweetened tea, and holy water.

Why Suffer?

I want to talk about shots.

Not the fun type.

Shots that hurt. Shots that make your precious children cry big wobbly tears. Why I remember one time that Madeleine was about 18 months old and got a shot at the doctors and managed to wiggle around me, the doctor, and the nurse and run screaming down the hall, naked and bleeding. Good times.

"How about using some Emla cream?" I asked. I had read that Emla cream numbed the skin so shots don't hurt.

"Oh, they don't need it."

Of course they don't need it. Americans don't need pain pills! Why our ancestors survived having a leg amputated with just a rawhide strap to chew on, a hefty shot of whiskey, and a good pair of lungs to scream themselves hoarse.

Why suffer? And why must we rely on doctors to prescribe a simple cream that eases the pain of shots?

One day (today, if you must know) it occurred to me that maybe other countries weren't so bloody stiff upper lipped about this stuff. I've been ordering some extra estrogen patches from a place in England. You need a prescription to get these here in the Nanny State, but not in England. And look what I found! You can order Emla cream without a prescription from Canada. Thank you, Canada!!!

I'm ordering some right now.

A Young Stephen King

This is Madeleine's original story with her original grammar and spelling.

Warning: the following contains story elements that are, in the author's own words, "Not happy or peppy." i.e. containing material of a violent and disturbing nature. People with weak hearts should proceed with caution.

Once there was a haunted castle called "LOST." Nobody ever went in the castle, but if anyone did they never came back out, ever, again. One time there was a girl and a boy. The boy said to the girl "let's go inside that castle just up that hill" as he pointed to the haunted castle. The girl said "I don't think we should go in." "Nonsense" said the boy as he pulled at the girl's arm. "But" "someone might be in there" said the girl. "Nobody is in there" said the boy. "Okay" said the girl.

When they got to the castle on the hill there was a sign that said "BEWARE"!" another one said "KEEP OUT!" The boy and girl were frightened but that didn't stop them from coming in. The boy opened the door slowly, then he lit a lantern and they went in. Then the door slammed by itself. The boy was scared, the girl was frightened, But that didn't stop them.

The boy heard a scream coming from behind him. Quickly, he turned around to find nobody there. But in the place of her was a pile of ashes. The boy yelled for the girl and then he waited for a answer. Then he heard something. It sounded like somebody was moaning so the boy followed the sound to see who was making the moaning sounds. Then he opened a door and saw the girl but the girl wasn't solid, You could see through her she was transparent. Then she moaned and the boy was terrified. Then the girl came toward the boy.

The boy screamed in horror. Then the boy tried to get away, but the girl was to fast. So the boy got eaten.

Anthropomorphizing

an·thro·po·mor·phize
transitive verb : to attribute human form or personality to intransitive verb : to attribute human form or personality to things not human

Ok, I had to look that word up in the dictionary to make sure I spelled it right because even a Geek Soopreme such as yours truly has never used the word before.

Do you name your cars? My family always did. I was brought home from the hospital in "Jezebel", a 1958 station wagon. We grew up with "Hugo" the VW and "Carl" the 1962 Buick and "Squeaky Susan" the 1968 Ford station wagon. My Daddy always recorded every gas purchase in a little book and we still have the book entitled "The Saga Of Squeaky Susan."

I have a 1992 Nissan Sentra with 232,436 miles on it. I finally caved and bought a 2006 Nissan Sentra last year. My first car was a 1985 Nissan Sentra. You may see a pattern here. Anyway, I'm extremely attached to my elderly vehicle. It still runs perfectly. I just decided to get a new one so I'd already be used to making car payments if the old car decided to go to the Rainbow Bridge Car Lot one day.

I named the new one "Car Noelle" not to be confused with "Shark Noelle" who is part of a large family of imaginary sharks that live with us. Well, the old car's name is "Tessie" and unfortunately "Tessie" got broken into the other day. We park Tessie on the street unlocked, since I figured that if someone wanted to break in at least they wouldn't break the windows. Somebody broke in and stole everything in the glove compartment except for the registration (now isn't that nice? Reminds me of the time one of my friends got mugged in NYC and he asked for subway fare and the mugger thoughtfully handed him $2.00 back). Also the thief thoughtfully left three keys marked "Mom's House" that I had forgotten were in the glove box (Sis, if you tell Mom I will have to kill you in a particularly painful fashion). The thief also didn't bother to close the door, leaving the inside light on, so the battery ran out.

I hope they enjoyed the 1992 Nissan Sentra Owner's Manual. Because they certainly didn't find a plastic bag of cocaine or a gun or a couple of hundred dollar bills stashed between the receipts for new tires and oil changes and insurance information in the glove box (weary sigh) I guess some people in SC actually do carry guns in their glove box. Me, I'd pull a Barney Fife and shoot myself in the foot if I ever tried to fire a weapon.

I don't what insane impulse prompted me to explain to the kids why we had to take Tessie in for a new battery! But Tessie is now parked in the driveway, blocking the other cars that we use daily, because "Tessie would be scared all alone in the street."

Maybe I should quit naming cars.

drrrr

Of course it didn't take long for the next Scholastic book order form to arrive. I read it carefully and here is the deal....It's divided into two parts. One part is the book/toy order form and the other part is where you give your name and address. You only fill out your address IF you plan to join one of the many "clubs" that are offered. Otherwise, you simply give your book order back to the teacher with your name and the books are delivered to your classroom (Figlet, I had forgotten about the thrill of watching the teacher open the box of books and distribute them!)

I had already decided that Madeleine would be placed on a diet of ONE book/toy order per month. Sister Carrie had a great idea about limiting the orders to books only, but...she had already picked out a Spy Watch and I didn't have the heart to say no, BUT we compromised that for each toy she orders, she must order a book and READ it. And there will be a pop quiz.

She picked out "Ribsy" by Beverly Cleary and seemed absolutely amazed that I had actually read it when I was a child, even though I left out the part where I read it after it had been inscribed on a scroll by monks using a quill pen.

I plan to reread many juvenile books alongside my daughters. Today, we made a trip to the library and I reread All-Of-A-Kind Family, All-Of-A-Kind Family Uptown, and Ella of All-Of-A-Kind Family. Since I love juvenile literature, this is not a terrible hardship for me.

The girls and I now go back to my bed after homework is finished and we all lie around reading our respective books together until bedtime. I must say, this is much more fun than reading Go Dog Go! for the seventy eleventh billion time outloud.