I love Ikea. For those of you who don’t have an Ikea nearby, it’s basically a Swedish-based home furnishings and decor store (with a few
cinnamon rolls thrown in) that gives you the ability to have very modern design at very affordable prices (we’re talking lower than a K-Mart blue light special). It’s a leader in
environmentally-friendly business practices and has been named one of the top 100 companies to work for by Fortune. Our huge area store feels like it’s having a grand opening all
the time even though it’s been open for six years– still filled with customers, still long lines to check out. But in spite of all its sleek, inexpensive stuff, don’t the
Swedish titles for everything sometimes bug you? I mean, at Ikea, it’s not a laundry hamper, it’s “Peva”.A measuring cup is “Fläckig”; bathroom mirrors, …
Category: Humor
Uncool and Biblical
On our recent family trip to Iowa we took a tour of an Amish community– rode in a van with a tour guide through rolling farmland and saw
homestead after homestead of Old Order Amish families, working in gardens, driving wagons down the highway, running through the fields barefoot… there are 2,000 Amish living near Kalona, Iowa
(almost 200,000 in the U.S.) and according to our guide, the community is growing, thanks to their large average family size. It was fascinating, like something straight out of the
movie, Witness, but Emmie thought it was just plain stupid that anyone would want to live like that. No electricity (the Amish stores we visited used only skylights for lighting),
no in-home phones, schooling only through the 8th grade, long pants and dresses all the time, even in the hot summertime… They subscribe to this type …
The Unexpected Cheerleader: When Your Kids Support Your Blog
It’s tough trying to blog while on vacation. But bloggers need to post regularly or they risk losing visitors as
their blog goes “stale” (in my first year, I learned the hard way after being sick and waiting more than a week to post—the numbers drop was dramatic and took months to regain) and so it’s good to
write some posts in advance that are “waiting in the wings” as finished drafts, so if you are “out of pocket”, all you have to do is hit “publish” when you need content and go on with your
vacation (or illness, or whatever). Only for me, it was hard to stock up during busy May (remember, next to December, May is the busiest month of the year for parents of school-age kids with
all the “end of year” activities happening all at once). So I found myself at Grandma’s house last week with no stockpile of posts, trying to write …
Double Feature Creature Show
My family may live in a suburban neighborhood, with brick houses that look eerily alike, a superhighway nearby and a
Starbucks at every major intersection, but it’s often more like Wild Kingdom around here, especially at night. Medium-sized turtles and small frogs sitting motionless on
the sidewalk, probably pondering how to find their way back to the nearby creek…possums ambling across the alley, trying to get out of the glare of headlights…coyotes preying on neighborhood
cats and howling right outside my home office window (can you say, Makes the Hair Stand Up On the Back Of Your Neck Like Nothing Ever Did Before?) Sometimes we even get
thrills and chills during the day, like the time a gorgeous red-winged hawk walked around my neighbor’s front yard for 20 minutes, or the time Luke cornered a black garden snake in the living
…
Some Brief Thoughts About Charlie Sheen
In the midst of all the Charlie Sheen craziness—doesn’t your heart go
out to his family? How painful it must be to see your son, father, brother say such embarrassing things in such a public way. Every time he opens his mouth, it just keeps getting worse. John
Stamos summed it up nicely the other day after it was rumored that he was replacing Sheen on Two and a Half Men: “I am not replacing Charlie Sheen on Two And A Half Men. However, Martin Sheen
has asked me to be his son…”
I know, I know—Charlie’s an adult and it’s not anyone’s fault but his own, but I’m sure his family is still wondering where they went wrong…and they’ve probably been wondering for a long time, long
before his cars were driven off cliffs and long before he called his boss a “worm”. Does anyone remember that …
Bieber Fever Has Hit My House– Should We Be Quarantined?
Not too long ago, as some of you will recall, I wrote about the phenomenon of teen idols, and how my older daughter,
like me, snubbed teen idols in the preteen and junior high years. I wrote that if she was truly like me, she was due to fall for one “at any minute”, since I had my first teen idol crush in high
school. But I really wasn’t taking my prediction too seriously. If I were a betting mom, I would have bet that Allison would never crush on any of the
faces gracing the current or future covers of “Bop” magazine. I would have bet that this strong-willed child would want to be different, and purposely hold her ground so as not
be a rabid fan of anyone that she’s told by the media that she needs to like. And I would have already lost that bet. Because, …
Dude is the new Yes
News Flash to all Uncool Parents (and those on the verge): When you say something to your teen and they answer back with
“Dude!”, don’t get upset—get excited. It means—and don’t faint—that they are AGREEING with you! No kidding! And it’s becoming widespread, so no doubt Webster’s will be putting it right up there
with “bromance” and “frenemy” in the very near future.
I’ve noticed it in Allison’s speech over the last couple of months but …
Trick or Treat, Smell My…After Shave?
Ah, the topic of age and trick-or-treating has been in my life a lot these days. First, I heard the story on
the radio last week about Mark Eckert, the mayor of Belleville, IL, who has banned teenage trick-or-treating in his town (as some other cities have done). Although Belleville rarely
issues the fine for this, it’s $100 if anyone over 12 is caught trick-or-treating. I didn’t give the story much attention. Like the newscasters, I thought, ‘Hah—that would be a
…
At Least I Buy Fresh Fruit…
I’ve never thought of myself as a domestic diva, but I think I’m at least a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, between
“Barely Knows How To Boil Water” and “While Homemade Bread is Baking In Perfectly Cleaned Oven, She Hand-Paints Her Own Gift Wrap And Coordinating Tags On A Table She’s Refinished All By
Herself.” I mean I did major in journalism and Home Economics. I was in 4-H for six years as a teenager, sewing and cooking …
Form Fatigue
Are other parents with school-aged kids feeling the crush of back-to-school paperwork this year, or is it just
me? That was the question on my mind last Thursday afternoon when I got an email asking me to fill out what seemed like the 50th (or was it the 60th) “form” I’ve had to
fill out since the start of school. I put the question to Barb, a mother of two, ages 10 and 13, who was at the elementary school that …