The Evils of Spell Check

Marlo and I were IMing this evening from two different rooms (beats yelling across the house).

I admit to her that I don't know a function on my computer.

She writes, "Your dumb."

I retort, "At least I know the contraction to "you are" is "you're."

It's almost as good as when we were doing some college applications for her this afternoon and she tried to convince me that gospel is spelled gosspil.

Good grief! Spell check has destroyed the spelling capacity of an entire generation.

Senior Night

On Friday instead of celebrating Halloween by opening my door every two minutes for trick-or-treaters, I went to "Senior Night" at the football game at Marlo's school. The seniors on the cheer squad and football team were escorted through an honor guard of athletes as their names were called.

Marlo was escorted by her Grandma Lydia and her Grandpa John, accompanied by a dozen pink roses and a balloon bouquet that I bought for her.

I think she was really happy to have had such a nice fuss made over her, which she deserves.

Advancing towards adulthood.

As Marlo has grown up, there have been things I wished she could appreciate as I do. These items particularly include really good British drama along the lines of films shown in PBS's Masterpiece Theater, and really good tea - not Lipton.

For those of you who think I'm crazy, aside from responding, "What took you so long to figure that out?" - just consider my wishes akin to that of a father wanting his son to learn how to shoot his favorite rifle or do 360s in a sports car.

Over the past few years, Marlo has grown to enjoy the same films as I do - Pride & Prejudice (the A&E version, not the ridiculously Americanized version with Keira Knightly), Sense & Sensibility, Wives & Daughters, etc. - but she's less fastidious about them than I, probably because she hasn't read the novels.

I'm also a bit fastidious about tea. I make it the proper way: Pre-heat the teapot with hot water. Put cold, fresh water in the kettle and bring it to a boil. Right when it hits a rolling boil, pour over the tea. (The one place where I'm not a purist is that I will use tea bags instead of loose tea.) Steep 3-7 minutes depending on the tea blend. Add milk to cup and then the tea. Nummy!

Yesterday, we passed another milestone. Marlo called me and said, "Go by the store and get some cream on your way home. I made Tetley and it is really good."

Hallelujah!

I picked up some sweetened condensed milk on my way home (mixing "cream" and sugar together). Marlo put it in her tea and came to sit on my bed so I could read some blog posts to her. She then informed me, "I need you to pick up some normal cream because I like honey in my tea."

I didn't have the heart to explain it to her that it is "honey and lemon" or "cream and sugar" not "cream and honey." I just have to keep remembering that I am getting what I want, even if it doesn't look exactly as I would like it to.

Oh (say can you see) Canada!

This weekend, I attended a cheer competition to watch Marlo's squad participate. Before the event began, two high school students sung both the Canadian and the American national anthems. Hearing the two songs sung back-to-back, I make the following observations:

First, I begin with one of the small consolations I have as a parent these days: telling an amusing story that will embarrass my child. When Marlo was ten years old, her school was having try-outs for a school musical centered on the colonies and the revolutionary war. Marlo’s audition piece was “Oh Canada,” which she had learned from going to the sprint car races at Skagit Speedway. I think in her mind there was no distinction between the two nations, just one great big world filled with people.

Now that I have satisfied that need, I will move on to my observations from the cheer competition. Both girls did a fantastic job singing. However, the U.S. national anthem was accompanied by various whoops and hollers from the crowd whenever the girl hit the high notes or embellished the tune with various pop-style warbles. Overall, I was struck by how sing-able the Canadian national anthem is and how one is focused on the words of the song. When listening to our own national anthem, I believe the crowd focused more on whether the girl could successfully sing it than the meaning of the song.

Aside from the obvious downside to having a national anthem where people cheer more for the singer than the song at the end, I doubt you could find ten random Americans who even know what a rampart is. In addition, in my opinion, catcalls, whoops and whistles have no business accompanying the national anthem. If Congress in 1931 could have foreseen this future, they might have re-thought their resolution to adopt the “Star Spangled Banner” as our anthem.

Rantings of a 39-year-old, 2L, single mother of a teenager.

This weekend I had one of those arguments one has with teenagers. The kind where at the end, you have no idea why you were arguing. The kind that leaves you pondering at what age logical reasoning develops in human beings. These arguments are routine enough that they probably should not warrant a journal entry. However, during this argument, my daughter managed to find the proper button to push to upset me.

She called me “selfish.”

Why? Because, among other things, what I am going to be doing at any particular moment in time depends on the amount of schoolwork I have to do or if it is finals week. Having my daughter call me “selfish” really got me thinking about the amount of things I have given up or sacrificed in order to get my law degree and wondering if it really will be worth it in the end.

Before law school, I knew myself as competent adult. I had a successful career and was at the top of my field. My pay was not enough to be called “good money” as a single income earner, but was at the high end of the pay scale for the work I did. People relied on me. Now, I worry about turning in anything before at least two friends of mine read it, lest I have a typographical error that will reveal the depths of my stupidity.

In addition to my job, before law school, I owned two properties: a condominium in Kirkland and a duplex in Des Moines. Now, I sleep on a hide-a-bed sofa in the “living room” of a one-bedroom mother-in-law apartment that I share with my teenager. Every night, I unfold my bed and every morning, I fold it back up. Sleep is uncomfortable at best. Privacy is non-existent.

On the other hand, lack of a comfortable bed is probably a good thing because it makes it easier to climb out of bed at 6:30 a.m. to drive Marlo to cheer practice on Saturday mornings or at 8:00 a.m. on Sundays to drive her to her job. This, of course, would be the situation with or without law school. However, it does make me wonder how she has the gall to call me “selfish.”

Of course, in Marlo’s view, if I would let her get her drivers’ license, she could drive herself to cheer and work. However, her getting her license is just about the last bargaining tool I have as a parent. You see, Marlo consistently gets A’s and B+’s in all but one class, which she will be failing. This is because she has figured out that it is the one thing simultaneously makes me crazy and will get my attention away from my own studies.

I came to law school, in all honesty, for three reasons: to be able to do human rights work; to be able to live a comfortable life without scraping by; and to be able to pay for Marlo’s college education.

At this point, with Marlo’s grade point average hovering around a 3.0, with my profits from the sale of my properties long spent to subsidize living on a single-student financial aid budget with a teenager, and the possibility of doing human rights work supplanted by $130,000 in debt, I wonder if it will be worth it in the end.

The one thing I thought I’d at least have out of this experience was a daughter who was proud of me. And I do not even have that.

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

A while back, there was a movie titled, "A Christmas Story." In the film, this little kid was warned by adults over and over again, "You'll shoot your eye out" as he wanted to try different things. It was one of the recurring humorous bits in the movie.

Of course, the reason it was funny is that we were all warned by our parents about the dire consequences of various actions, all of which never really came to pass. An example: "Stop it or your face will freeze like that."

As a teenager, one of the more frustrating admonitions was constantly being told, "Turn down the music or you'll go deaf."

Today, Marlo and I are both working on homework (I'll be returning to mine as soon as I'm done writing this post.) She's in her room and I'm in the living room. We're both listening to music on our computers. Mine, of course, is really low. So, we have the following conversation:

Me: "Marlo, is that your music or from upstairs?"

Marlo: "It's mine."

Me: "Turn it down; it's too loud.

(Pause)

Me: "Turn it down."

Marlo: "I did!"

Me: "Turn it down more."

(Pause)

Me: "More, please!"

(Pause)

Me: "Turn it down more, or you'll damage your hearing."

Sigh. With only one year to go, I've officially entered the ranks of a parent of a teen.

Oh Mommy - feeling a little E-MOTION-AL?

I'm one of those people who not only cries at sad or touching movies but also commercials. That's right, you can get me crying in 30 seconds over something really inspirational. Marlo, ever since she was little, would look over at me and sneer, "Oh Mommy - feeling a little E-MOTION-AL?" to tease me.

Today, we are sitting on the couch and alternating flipping between "Oprah" and "Real Life Stories of the ER." At the same time, I'm reading the news on my laptop and not really paying attention to either show. Then, an unusal noise distracts me and I look over.

It is my nearly 17 year old child sitting next to me on the couch, tears flowing down both cheeks, because someone got put on life support. I'm just so glad I'm no longer alone in this.

"Oh Marlo - feeling a little E-MOTION-AL?"

Be still my heart.

Despite my best efforts to put off this moment as long as possible, Marlo is learning how to drive. This makes me batty for several different reasons:

First of all, in my former career as a PI paralegal, I cannot tell you how many accidents I have seen caused by teenaged drivers (admittedly of the male sex) or how many teenage passengers our firm represented after their driver crashed. Even if teenagers are not being intentionally reckless, their ability to avoid accidents is necessarily limited by lack of experience and over-correcting. I'm trying to avoid the time where my heart will race everytime I see an unfamiliar number calling.

Secondly, there is the required evil of being the supervising adult while a teenager with a learners permit drives. Who thought up the timeframe for this? Take a hormonally-driven, irrational creature, at the height of the time in their life where they do not listen to their parents, and put them in a situation where their parents are trying to convey information. Can you think of a situation more likely to induce stress and frustration in both parties?

Anyway, I figured I'd give the warning to stay off the roads on Saturday & Sunday mornings between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m. because I've been letting Marlo drive herself to work (not on the freeway though). The only way I've found to cope with the stress of it all, at least that early in the morning, is to not really pay attention to every single thing that Marlo is doing or not doing while driving.

Plus, as my family will agree, I'm a sucky driver and really shouldn't be giving her advice anyway. I'll leave that to Grandpa John, Aunt Kelly and Uncle George.

Someone wake me when this is over.