Advice from the battlefield. With a seriously funny edge.
“Teenagers are like those cool tropical fish you get after you’ve mastered goldfish.
Who am I kidding? No one can master the keeping of goldfish. Or pre-teens. Or teenagers. You graduate only to bigger kids, but with bigger issues and bigger appetites. God help us all. Especially me?…
Keep your head up – here are tips I offer from years of battleground experience.”
My name is Laura and I’ve been called…complicated. I’m obsessive, except when I’m not. I hate making mistakes, I love feeling accomplished, and I’m not above spending an entire day on the couch napping with my dogs. I shop in sprees – long, dry stretches when it’s all food and gasoline before I hit random streaks of oooh, that looks cute and ding the credit card.
I have good intentions, fall on my face, then start all over again.
These are a few of my running tallies.
I’m not talking about CYA, McDonald’s, “contents are hot” sort of warnings (although that kind of real world warning is apparently necessary). I’m talking about the useful sort of heads up that potentially saves a whole lotta grief. And stress. I’m all for cutting out stress. I’m talking about signs like these.
But those are just the tip of the iceberg.
Remember the thrill of moving around Life’s board? Choosing a career, buying a house, getting surprised with twins (or triplets!)…you never knew what surprises lay in wait. For those of you looking for a virtual game of Life, check out this Raquel D’Apice post on whether to have kids.
“Hi, I’m a woman in my late 20’s. I’ve been married for 3 years but we fight a lot and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. I felt like if I got pregnant it might help give our relationship an anchor—something we both love that would bring us closer together?? What should I do?
Solution: EAT A TOBLERONE
Thanks for writing. If you’re really worried about your relationship, a fun thing might be to eat a Toblerone Lady-and-the-Tramp style, each of you starting at one end of the Toblerone while you gaze into each other’s eyes and then later your partner could roll a separate Toblerone toward you with his nose? (Hard though, because Toblerones are triangular and will not roll easily.) Probably do not have a baby though, sorry!”
I know, I know, I’m old as dirt. Over the hill. Practically ancient when it comes to you and your hip ways. Tweens and teens everywhere snicker madly when the old people offer advice because what the hell would we know about actual life.
Bwahahahaha!!!
More than you will ever know, baby. More.than.you.will.ever.know.
1. BrightSide and I watched a fascinating 60 Minutes segment on Sunday about technology. I expected it to be another look at what tech does to the brain, but instead it discussed how companies are using what they’ve learned about the brain to tweak their coding. For instance:
2. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or terrified.
3. I did, however, manage not to tweet about it.
I was raised extremely Catholic. Not so much in a daily mass, weekly confession, don’t-you-want-to-become-a-nun sort of way. More like a church on Sundays, memorize your prayers, receive the sacraments, and show up for holy days sort of extreme.
I guess you’d call it more serious than extreme religion-ing.
At any rate, a major rite of passage for us was first communion, a sacrament we received in third grade. If you know any Catholics then you know this one is a pretty big deal (okay, they all are), but speaking from someone who remembers what it was like to prepare for it at eight years old? It was a big freaking deal.
Before you could receive holy communion, though, you had to receive the sacrament of reconciliation. Most of you have probably heard of this one as confession. As in, face the priest (who, I’ll admit, always made me nervous because they were, like, HOLY), remember the prayers, and confess your sins.
There’s nothing like waiting in line for confession to make an eight-year-old’s mind go completely blank. My visit with the priest would be imminent. I had to go in there and say something. And I had nothing. Nothing. Suddenly I was Mother Teresa, love personified, instead of the girl who hid half her dinner under the bathroom sink and tormented her younger brother by hiding his stuffed bear. Puh-lease.
But when push came to shove my brain would freeze. So I’d find myself with the priest, supposedly examining my conscience, and admitting to things like I didn’t clean my room or I didn’t share my cookies. The lamest sins ever, but still quaking in my proverbial boots because HOLY. Looking back, I can’t begin to imagine how those priests sat through fifteen third graders admitting to sin (lite), without even cracking a smile.
Pretty impressive, when I think about it.
Linda’s Stream of Consciousness prompt is always a fun way to empty your brain onto the screen. This week’s prompt is “admit.”
Ah, the good old U.S. Witness Protection Program. There’s something vaguely reassuring about knowing, if I’m ever in the wrong place at the wrong time and see a hit go down, my government will whisk me off to a safe location and provide me with a brand new identity. Knowing my luck, that identity would be a waitress in Idaho but hey…at least I’d be alive.
It seems my laundry room has instituted its own version of witness protection. Apparently certain articles of clothing in the house felt at risk and have been relocated for their own safety to an undisclosed location. Unfortunately for me, no one thought I needed to be clued in on the transfer.
I blame the dryer sheets.
