How to learn Greek in five minutes or less...Guaranteed!

I just found out about a week ago that my husband and I are going to Crete in two weeks. Now I'm stressed.

I have never been good at learning languages. I took two years of French in high school, and the only thing I remember is "Merci Beaucoup," which I think means "Thank you." It's either that, or "I surrender."

I'm sure my inability to learn French was due mainly to the extreme dislike I had for my French teacher. She'd sit in front of the class, eating bonbons and commenting derisively at our pronounciation. Of course, our pronounciation wasn't helped by the fact that this was 1986, and we were all in full valley-girl mode, adding the word "like" six times into every sentence and generally sounding like imbiciles. I knew that if I ever did find myself in France, I would be the hapless tourist who inadvertently starts an international incident because instead of saying "Pardon me, where could I find a public restroom which I don't have to pay to use," I would have accidentally threatened to assasinate the Prime Minister. Or President. Just what is the guy who surrenders called in France, anyway?

So, I gave up on languages. Well, I gave up until I went to Italy and found myself actually needing to speak the language. I gained newfound confidence. I was rather good at it. I started interpreting for my husband. And, I didn't start any international incidents while trying to order a cappuccino, which is my benchmark for learning languages.

So, this time I would actually like to try and learn a little Greek before I get on the plane. I could try to learn it on the plane, using one of those language programs that I can load on my iPod. However, I'm a little afraid of being subjected to a body cavity search by airport security because someone turned me in due to the fact that I was muttering to myself for 25 hours. No, I think I'd like to learn Greek in the privacy of my home, or possibly my car. People already think I'm crazy because I sing at the top of my lungs while driving, or yell at the radio when I hear something on talk radio that really makes me mad. Muttering Greek to myself while driving wouldn't be a big stretch.

My main problem is that my kids are in the car with me, and they are not exactly helpful when it comes to maintaining peace and relative quiet so I can devote my mind to learning. If I try to learn Greek while in the car, the only phrases I'll be able to retain will be "don't make me pull this car over," (unhelpful, since I don't plan on driving in Crete) "stop looking at your sister," (again, unhelpful) and, "I'll give you something to cry about," (guaranteed to result in arrest).

So, I plan on listening to my Greek language lessons at night, while trying to go to sleep. That will ensure two things. First, I will have at least five minutes of uninterrupted study time before my children start asking for water or a de-monstering of their rooms, and second, that every time I try to say "Hello" in Greek, I'll become inexplicably drowsy. I won't even be able to order food without passing out cold on the table at the taverna.

Maybe I should just forget the Greek and speak really loudly in English instead. That usually works.

Earth Girls are Easy

I don't know if I have what it takes to raise a son.

I have three kids. Two girls, and "The Boy." My girls are easy. We understand each other. When my 9 year old falls in a hormone-induced inconsolable heap because her pants "make her look funny," I can sympathize with her and help her get through it. When my 3 year old decides to wear 7 pieces of clothing all in varying shades of pink and doesn't want my help choosing them anymore, I can step back and let her express herself through her appearance. (Of course, I live in mortal embarrassment and fear that government workers will come take her away because I clearly can't take care of children if they're dressed like that.)

But The Boy, now, he's another thing altogether.

I originally noticed this when the first thing he ever did was pee on me. That pretty much established our relationship. The girls never peed on me. I never had to wear protective rain gear to change their diapers. Of course, in keeping with all that male bonding stuff I've read about, his father was pleased as punch. "Way to go, Boy!" he said.

I've lived through obsessions with dinosaurs, superheros, dinosaurs and Legos. And dinosaurs. The Boy is like a dinosaur encyclopedia. He can rattle off dinosaur names like "pachycephalosaurus" without blinking an unfairly long eyelash. He cannot, however, tie his own shoes. Nor does he show any signs of wanting to learn how. I'm trying to convince him that chicks like a guy who can tie his own shoes, but he's not biting.

He also has a listening problem. I know it's not a hearing problem because my friend and I conducted an experiment one day after I talked with her about how I can literally stand in the same room with him and shout his name and he doesn't hear me. I was really starting to think I needed to get his hearing tested. Instead, we tried saying words he was interested in. It went like this:

Me: Luke, what did you learn in school today?
Luke: (chirping crickets)

Me: Look Luke, a DINOSAUR!
Luke: Huh?

Me: Luke, do you want milk or water?
Luke: (wind whistling through the trees)

Me: SPIDERMAN!
Luke: Could I have some water?

If only I could figure out how to apply this valuable knowledge to my husband, who clearly suffers from the same listening problem as The Boy, only he's more selective. He, for instance, only doesn't hear me when I ask him to take out the trash, or do the dishes.

Finally, The Boy is becoming a real challenge as far as telling the truth. He has a very active imagination. Apparently, this has allowed him to live in his own world. A world in which, when I ask him "what did you learn in school today," an acceptable answer can actually contain the words "dinosaurs", "crocodiles" or "Legos". He spins elaborate yarns about how his teacher hatched a real dinosaur egg, or how she wrestled a crocodile, or that they finished all their books and his teacher told him he didn't have to do any reading tonight or go back to school. Ever.
The Boy is also convinced that he will soon go live with his Uncle John on the USS Starship Enterprise where Uncle John will be the Captain, but he, The Boy, will get to push all the buttons. There will also be a fair amount of shooting aliens involved, and they will eat pizza all the time.

I suppose it should make me feel better when my husband's parents often laugh at us when we tell them stories about The Boy. Yes, they laugh AT us. It's as if they're telling us that they remember my husband doing the exact same thing, and that it serves us right. My problem with this is that my husband is clearly the intended target of this reproductive Karma and I don't know what I did to deserve the fallout.

After all, I was just sugar and spice and everything nice. Just like all girls. Right?

Time Warp

I have defined myself with a lot of things over the course of my life. Singer, college student, law student, wife, mother, artist, traveller, chef wannabe. But I think the thing that I have always fallen back on is music. I love music. I listen to music all the time, and I delight in finding something new that I love, even if others don't love it as much as I do. Music is the background upon which all the other ways I describe my life have unfolded.

My husband got me a new iPod for Christmas to hold my burgeoning music collection. And, I have several playlists that I probably won't share with other people, mainly because they expose my utter geekdom. (No, really, that's not Air Supply. I promise)

I read about a playlist life quiz, and decided to try to find it. It sounded like fun. And, thanks to the miracle of Google, I found it in about 10 seconds. So, I took the quiz using my brand spankin' new iPod. I put my iPod on random and wrote down the name of the song that came up for each question, in order:

Life Playlist Survey

When I'm drunk I say: Something the Boy Said - Sting
How will you die? Honey Honey - Feist
At my wedding they'll play: Rest Stop – Matchbox Twenty
What makes me happy is: Faithfully - Journey
My theme song: Just a Girl – No Doubt
My ultimate song for dancing is: Black Velveteen - Lenny Kravitz
My family is described by the song: American Pie – Don McLean
If I reached the top of Mount Everest, what I would scream: Knock me Down - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Behind my back, my friends think I'm: Devil with a Blue Dress on – Mitch Ryder
The story of my life is: Always on Your Side - Sheryl Crow
My make-out song is: Hey Jealousy – Gin Blossoms
My innermost desire is: Don’t Stop – Fleetwood Mac
My alter-ego is: Memphis Time - Gin Blossoms
This song will be playing when I meet the love of my life: Peace of Me – Natasha Bedingfield
My favorite thing to do is: Bottles and Flowers - Juliana Hatfield
Happiness is: Be Good to Yourself - Journey
Will I ever have kids: Watch’a Wanna Do – The Jungle Book Soundtrack
When I'm in the shower, I sing: I’ve been Everywhere – Johnny Cash
My best friend is like: If it Makes you Happy – Sheryl Crow
At my funeral they'll play: Landslide – Fleetwood Mac
If I got lost on a desert island, I would yell: I Alone - Live
My message to the world has always been: Under Pressure - Queen/David Bowie
My day will be like: Rush - Big Audio Dynamite
What I did did last night was: Found Out about You – Gin Blossoms
My birth was like: Every little Thing she does is Magic – the Police
The best thing about me is: Keep it to Myself - Crash Vegas
My deepest secret is: Perfect Kiss – New Order

I'm really not sure what this says about me. I guess it just confirms what I always thought: that music is a large part of my life, and really tells a lot about me. I think it shows that I'm stuck in the 90's for some reason, for example. Or, that I have a strange love for the Gin Blossoms. Or, that I have kids (otherwise, why would I have the Jungle Book soundtrack on there?)

There are many voids that my playlists fill. I haven't had (or made, I guess) time to sing in a group or a show. I miss that. But, singing showtunes along with my iPod while I'm folding the laundry gets me through. I want to take piano lessons, but I can't seem to find the time to do it without letting something else go. So, I listen to piano music and dream about the day I can learn to play like that. I don't get to go out dancing very often (if at all) so I dance in my living room with my kids and they laugh at me because I sing along at the top of my lungs and act silly and embarass them immensely. I can take the soundtrack of my life along with me wherever I go.

And without my iPod, it would be a very quiet life, indeed.

Temporary Insanity

I love holidays. There's nothing like a holiday to bring out the crazy in a person.

Take Halloween for instance. You either love it or you hate it. There's really no in-between. I love to wear costumes, I love to see the kids in their costumes, and I love to carve pumpkins, decorate my house, and watch "The Great Pumpkin" re-runs on TV while eating caramel apples. Holidays allow us to act like kids again, if only for one night.

So, this year for Halloween I'm dressing up as a prom queen. I'm wearing my own Senior Prom dress from 1989. Again, I have to ask myself what it is about Halloween that would prompt me to dress up in a ridiculous outfit that I have spent the last almost 20 years of my life trying to block from my memory. It's that holiday-induced madness that I succumb to every year. I was practically giddy as I spent an hour looking for blue mascara, blue eyeshadow and bubblegum pink lipstick. I bought a wig since I have non-80's hair that just won't work with the costume. I even made a sash for myself with "Prom Queen 1989" on it in large letters. I am beside myself with excitement.

Halloween can be taken a bit too far, though. Decorations, for example. I recently went out and spent perfectly good money on fake cobwebs with little spiders attached. My kids and I happily roamed around the house, putting up cobwebs and spiders. I spread mine out to look like actual cobwebs. Luke, my five year old son, stuck his up in large clumps, as if his spiders were only able to produce cotton balls rather than webs. Maggie eyed everything critically and told me that her cobweb placement was far superior to her brother's. Ella thought the cobwebs were actually cotton candy and tried to eat them.

I suddenly realized that I currently have actual cobwebs in my house that are far better looking than the fake ones I purchased. Every few days I look at these real cobwebs derisively, and mutter under my breath about getting out the vacuum to take care of them. It never happens. I'm afraid of them, mainly because we have actual spiders, too. Not little spiders that scurry under the furniture when you approach; we have large spiders whose apparent goal is to snag one of the cats in the massive web that they have constructed just inside our mudroom door. I'm sure the real spiders would escape the pull of my vacuum and gather to plot some sort of revenge against me involving lurking in my shoes.

I have also purchased those pumpkin carving kits. You know, the ones with the special saws and patterns and such. What ever happened to hacking into the pumpkin with a large knife like I did when I was a kid? Granted, these days I'd have my children taken from me if I snapped a picture of Luke wielding a 12 inch chef's knife in his hand. Yet, there are pictures of me doing that very thing when I was a kid.

My pumpkin design was always dictated by the size of the knife blade, which was the main reason that my jack-o-lantern faces mainly consisted of triangles and zigzag mouths. That was the only way I could get the knife to work. Now, each year my children pick out some elaborate paper pattern of a witch on a broom and begin hacking into their pumpkins with their little saws, before giving up and making a jack-o-lantern with triangle eyes and zigzag mouth. I guess all those extra holes in the pumpkin can be used for ventilation.

Anyway, the holiday madness will only increase the closer we get to Christmas. I am a true Christmas junkie. I love to decorate. I always decorate the day after Thanksgiving. I get out the Christmas music, make myself an eggnog (heavy on the nog) and get to work. I drag out box after box of decorations, and reminisce about where I got them and how long I've had them. I sing along with the Christmas carols. I drink more eggnog. I deck the halls and trim the tree and generally adorn everything that doesn't move with some sort of bow or something. I draw the line at my pets, though. I haven't gotten far enough along in my insanity to put antlers on my dogs.

Are we there yet?

Sometimes, we can learn a lot from children.

Well, maybe not about things like physics, whether the stock market will continue it's amusement park-like ride, or how to find a good mechanic. If you want to know how to irritate your sister without actually touching her, or even being close enough to touch her, but still causing the sister to yell, "MOM! HE'S ALMOST TOUCHING ME," they can teach you a thing or two.

One of the things that kids are really good at is asking questions. A lot of questions. Generally, the same question over and over again. As we were driving to town this morning (actually, we were still on our driveway) my son asked, "are we there yet?" Granted, we have a long driveway. But really, it is evident from the extremely wildlife-intensive surroundings that we are nowhere near town, nor are we going to be in the near future. "NO," I said.

And, I got to thinking. After visiting a dear friend of mine in "the big city" this weekend, I had been pondering whether I really am "there" yet. Am I where I thought I would be? Ten years after graduating from law school, had I even begun to achieve what I thought I would? I suppose the answer is no. If you asked me ten years ago if I would be living in a small town with three kids, two dogs, two cats, a mortgage, minivan and various poultry (don't ask), I would have taken the first tentative steps toward a full-fledged drinking problem.

Oh, pardon me. I was drinking my wine.

So, ARE we there yet? I always knew I wanted kids. I love my kids. They make me smile and have the ability to irritate me at the same time. I understand my mother more now. I have developed a very similar strained smile that tells the world I love my children, even though one of them is distracting me while the other two are currently committing minor acts of vandalism and theft in the checkout line at the Wal-Mart Super Center.

Oh, dear God.

I am living a very good life. I have a wonderful husband whom I love and am very proud of. I have three beautiful children who I would give up my life for. I have a big, new house and lots of land and I have pets. I could give up the pets, really. But, on the whole, my life is very good. It's just not the life I imagined.

I thought I would be a prosecutor for a large county. I figured I would run for judge someday, or at least District Attorney. I thought I would have a nice suburban lawn for my kids to frolic in, a street outside they could ride their bikes on, and neighborhood barbeques. I was supposed to have a nice car with fewer crumbs permanently attached to the upholstery, and a house with toys neatly organized in bins and a guest bedroom with 400 thread-count sheets just waiting for someone to come and watch me be fabulous.

I have some of those sheets somewhere. I believe they are being used to make a fort.

But, you know, I think about all those things, and when I look at my life now, I realize that even though it is different than the one I thought I would have, I still love it. I love (well, not really, but it's a small point) my minivan, and I love my husband, and my house, and my job (usually)and all the other things that surround me every day. I don't love the poultry. If that damn rooster crows one more time in the middle of the night I'm going to take the final steps toward becoming a real-life frontier woman. I have a hatchet and a great recipe for fried chicken.

I think my biggest challenge is to actually take the time to enjoy all of the things I have.

Am I where I thought I'd be? No.

But I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Nothin' But a Good Time...

We just wanted to re-live our youth.

That's why seven women (and one male "superfan") loaded into a red mini-van and a Ford Focus and drove for an hour to see POISON in concert at the Douglas County Fair. If a van full of thirty-something women with kids and pets and mortgages are not what Brett Michaels and his band were expecting when they decided to form a rock band 20 some years ago, then they should have given it a little more thought.

I drove the "party van." I won't elaborate much, except to say there were some mildly illegal activities going on in the back seat, and despite all knowledge and experience to the contrary, people actually took pictures of themselves engaging in said activities. I mean, come on. Don't you people watch the evening news????

So, we got to the concert, and I was struck immediately by the fact that each and every one of us had to run to the bathroom. This was no coincidence. I remember when I was young, and had the bladder elasticity of a 16 year old. Not anymore. We all made a beeline for the restrooms, and continued to do so for the rest of the night. I don't remember one time when we were all together unless it was in the bathroom line.

And then, the band came out. And we were all transported back to a time when big hair, makeup and skin-tight clothes were not just worn by the female fans of the band, but by the band members as well. Brett Michaels still knows how to shake it. The band can still crank out the party songs like it was yesterday. But I did have that feeling that they probably headed back to the tour bus to pop some Tylenol PM and get Ben-Gay rubdowns by the Rock of Love girls.

I made one purchase that night. The t-shirts were too expensive, and I don't wear t-shirts anyway. So, I went for the POISON g-string. At $20, it was the most expensive piece of elastic I have ever purchased.

Thanks for the memories, POISON. I'll be a fan forever. Not just because of the way your music makes me feel like a teenager again, but because it also got 7 thirty-something women (and one "superfan") with kids and mortgages and bladder control issues to get in a van, and pretend they were kids again, for one night at least.

Seoul Survivor

I just returned from a wonderful trip to Seoul, Korea. This was the first time I had ever really travelled on my own. My husband and I had to take separate flights, he was working the whole time, and I ventured out of my comfort zone in a major way. I had a great time.

Living in a small town as I do, it's easy to get overwhelmed when you suddenly find yourself in a city of over 13 million people. It's huge, hot, crowded and definitely a culture shock. This is only the second foreign country I have ever been to, unless you count Baja, Mexico, which I suppose I would, if I could remember any of it. My friends tell me I had a GREAT time. Oh, and Canada. I've been to Canada. I don't remember much of that either, but for entirely different reasons.

At any rate, I found myself on the streets of Seoul, wandering through huge shopping districts, finding deals on clothes and bags and all sorts of things. I was in shopping heaven. Everything but shoes, that is, since my size 10s were not well represented in the stores. I wandered into a shoe store, and this little woman took one look at my feet and said, "you go back of store...BACK OF STORE," while she waved me through. The largest shoes they had were still at least a size too small.

I also was intrigued by Korean cuisine. I am a very adventurous eater. I have no problem trying anything once, as long as it isn't illegal or won't kill you. After this experience, I was rather unimpressed. I never had anything to eat that I immediately wanted to find the recipe for. Koreans eat kimchi with every meal, and kimchi is rather...pungent. It is cabbage mixed with lots of chilis and spices and is then fermented for a while. Need I say more? Most of downtown Seoul smelled like kimchi. Well, that, and other things that weren't nearly so appealing. I also verified my belief that many Korean foods were actually started as bar dares after drinking too much Jinro. LIVE BABY OCTOPUS????? I mean, really.

The Korean people in general were very nice. I am fairly certain they spent a lot of time talking about me behind my back, however. I was alone, which seemed unusual, and I am very tall, so I had no chance of blending. Every time I would leave a store, the chattering would increase to breakneck speeds as the owners leaned out of their doors to watch me and my big feet leave.

I went to the DMZ for a sobering experience. And the tour I took of two palaces was truly breathtaking.

Did I mention the shopping?

I had a great time, and I was really proud of myself for branching out and not being too nervous to leave the hotel room.

And did I mention the shopping?