50-something Moms Blog

Alcohol, Pot and Our Kids: How Much Have They learned from Us?

Recent studies found that drinking and smoking pot is on the rise again among teenagers after a decline of nearly a decade. The annual survey conducted by The Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that the number of teens from grade 9 to grade 12 who reported using alcohol in the previous month had risen 11% to a total of 39% of teens or 6.5 million, and 25% of teens admitted to marijuana use, up from 19% in 2008. 

The study also discovered that the use of Ecstasy had risen from 4% to 6%.

Perhaps many adults will not find this alarming. I don't know how many friends, family and acquaintances I have who personally recount fondly their own drinking and pot smoking youths - though out of earshot of their teens. I don't buy into the theory of "gateway" drugs, the idea that alcohol and pot smoking will inevitably lead to experimentation and/or addiction to substances like cocaine or heroin, but I am fairly certain that the idea of "getting high" as an innocuous teen rite of passage isn't one of the better parenting theories out there.

And, I am also of the belief that our children learn about mood altering substances from us - their parents - well before that friend inevitably shows up with a joint or a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry wine.

The Right to Motherhood by Any Means Necessary

Infertility specialists in the U.S. are lobbying for inclusion of assisted reproduction benefits in the health care reform play. They point to the fact that even multiple rounds of invitro fertilization (IVF) cost less than caring for premature infants that arise from cash-strapped couples engaging in dangerous practices to achieve pregnancy to save money.  Three rounds of IVF at $10,000 each is a bargain when the care of one premature infant runs approximately $200,000 from delivery to homecoming.

In Canada, the province of Quebec already covers all assisted reproduction, including IVF for all women up to age 42. Ontario is now being lobbied to include infertility treatments on the grounds that parenthood is the right of every person.

We have the right to motherhood, even it threatens to bankrupt healthcare for all.

I don't agree.

Losing a Child

My best friend called and left me a tearful, distraught and extremely cryptic message the other day. 

"There's been a tragedy. You need to know. Call me. I'm working from home today," she said.

Remarkably, I felt calm, but perhaps that isn't so remarkable. The unexpected usually plunges me into crystal clear zen mode. Panic is not my middle name, and I lived in the eye of the hurricane for a long time, so I don't spook like I did when I was a younger woman.

Methodically, I ran over the short list of family and acquaintances I left behind in my old stomping ground when I emigrated to Canada nearly three years ago. Then I eliminated those who my friend really doesn't know and those whose tragedies wouldn't drive her to tears. The only people she would call me about is a shorter list. My late husband's mother still lives in the area, but she is not endearing to me and less so to my family and friends. It couldn't be her, I thought. That left my late husband's best friend, Wally and his family.

"What's wrong?" I asked when I heard her voice on the line.

"Wally's youngest son died early this morning," she choked out.

The Feminine Mystique of Shaved Legs

Do you shave your legs? I don't. Not during the winter anyway - too itchy - and shaving is a hit or miss affair during the warmer months as well. It's not a feminist statement. I just have really long legs. Shaving them takes time, and my time is worth something, in my opinion. 

And I find shaving hazardous, even with the "proper" equipment and advanced preparation, because I have very bony ankles and knees, nicks that bled like major arteries had been sliced wide open were not uncommon for me.

Hairlessness is costly in terms of money as well as time. Oh, I suppose a person could opt for the cheap twin blades, but he/she is taking their skin into his/her own hands in terms of loss of derma and bodily fluid. But by the time razors, creams and after-shaving skin care products are purchased, a tidy sum is more often spent than not. Smooth skin becomes even more expensive if a person chooses to have it removed for him/her, and I don't even want to get into depilatories. Seriously? Chemicals that force hair to abandon follicles cannot be a good thing in terms of one's physical health.

Tragic shaving accidents aside, the removal of hair by yanking it out at the root as though one's legs were a weedy front yard calls to mind a willing insanity. What good reason can there be for applying hot wax to tender skin in an effort to make it even more sensitive?

No, my legs are a boreal forest a goodly part of the time, but they are not a feminist statement.

Education Reform: What Parents Should Know

About ten years ago, the middle school where I taught began to transform itself into a traditional magnet school with a focus on Character Counts curriculum and collaborative teaching using the latest information on brain development research. The staff felt at the time that we were losing too many students and that these changes could mean the difference between our students going onto and graduating from high school or not.

The reform process was slow. It was difficult to get our parents to come to informational meetings to explain to them the benefits for their children. We were determined to make them partners in the process, but they didn't make it easy. Over the course of several years, change was slowly implemented with parents and students part of each step. We could not succeed without them. Top down reform seldom produces the desired results.

Today that middle school is thriving.

In his 2009 State of the Union address, President Obama stated that preparing American students for post-secondary education was one of his administration’s priorities. He pledged to increase the number of Americans with college degrees by the year 2020. It was an ambitious goal given the current state of stagnation where American students are concerned. For the last two decades, test scores of American kids have fallen steadily in comparison with those of children in other industrialized countries. The goal, however, is a worthy one considering the current labor trend that favors skilled workers over their unskilled countrymen.

I Don't Want to be a TSA Pin-up Girl

I've lived in Canada for going on three years now and, over time, coming back to the U.S. to visit family has become less and less appealing and not because of my family. It's the border crossing. Specifically the ever cumbersome security measures that are steadily ratcheting up the fear level while probably not increasing anyone's safety all that much.

The last time we flew to Iowa, we had the drill down to a science. Passports and boarding passes ready. No jackets, no shoes, computers in separate bins and shoes on the conveyor, please, not in the plastic bins. We hit the staging area in ready mode. We were cleared, shod, and in the terminal long before the befuddled couple in front of us had figured out that the TSA agents were only there to observe and that they wouldn't be offering any assistance with the repacking. We were so efficient that we elicited a smile and compliment from one of the TSA agents at the end of the conveyor,

"Finally, people who know what to do."

Or was that a compliment? I am not sure that I want to be particularly complicit in the erosion of my own civil liberties or that teaching my daughter to mindlessly obey is a good thing in any circumstance.

Shoes: On or Off?

It's winter for real up here in the Great White (and frigid - they leave that part out) North and leaving one's footwear at the door is pretty much a given. There are few exceptions to the rule, but no one seems to give it a second thought because mopping up slush, sand and the grit of de-icers is something everyone prefers to keep to a minimum. Few things will earn a person the hairy eyeball stare of death faster than ignoring the pile of boots and flouncing into a footwear free zone in boots dripping with winter road sludge.

I am a shoe free person myself. I don't wear them unless I have to. I blame shoes actually for my aching arches and gnarly looking toes. But back in Iowa, where I lived for most of my life, shoes never came off. Iowans believed in doormats, vacuums and brooms. The idea that leaving dirty shoes at the door keeps common areas cleaner was laughable and made no sense to anyone at all even in homes where babies and young children spent most of the day playing on the floor. 

My father rolled his eyes when I began doffing my shoes and insisting that others do so when I first became a home-owner, but I was the odd child, being shoeless-ly out of step was in character for me. I followed protocol in the homes of others when there wasn't a choice, but I figured that others could extend the same courtesy to me.

So, imagine my delight then when I moved up to Canada and discovered people just like me - shoeless without shame.

When Daddy Nearly Shot Santa Claus

Just about everyone we knew as kids celebrated St. Nicholas day but us. The leaving of small toys or treats in children's shoes was not a tradition my dad had any interest in. If he or Mom were St. Nick recipients as wee ones, I can't recall a single tale. Mom came from a fairly well-off background by comparison, but her father was a skinflint, who I highly doubt participated in the consuming side of Christmas any more than he was forced to.

Dad's family was dirt poor. Great-Grandaddy Christie lost the family farm in the bank crash after the first world war, and Grandaddy and Gran were essentially the poor relations, who tenant farmed for years before winding up farming Gran's family farm for first her father and then her sister. One Christmas, Dad and his four siblings got a single pair of skis which they took turns with until Uncle Leo ran into a pig and broke them. More than once I can recall Dad and his second oldest sister discussing how they each got an orange apiece in their stocking and that this was a rare treat. So, St. Nick? Not so much.

Another Step Toward Being the Best Me

Recently I got my first paid writing job. Huffington Post here I come! Well, maybe. But I am also realistic and know that freelance writing is not going to pay a whole lot of bills and even the best writers sometimes need “day jobs”. Having not much interest in returning to the classroom where I spent twenty years teaching English to teenagers, I needed an alternative.

My first thought was to buy a used book store in my little town, but the reality of owning a shop and the hours that went along with it, threw a drippy wet blanket on that idea, and also caused me to rethink my fallback idea of opening a coffee shop. Running a small business would take time from my writing as well as my family, and when I was honest with myself, I had to admit that waiting on people was not my forté. In fact, I really hate the whole service industry thing. I've only held two such jobs in my life. One I got fired from and the other I left before they could fire me.

But then a new yoga studio opened up in town. It occupied a small space above the bookstore I’d toyed with buying. Run by the most Zen-like woman I have ever met, I was inspired. Perhaps yoga, which I love almost as much as writing, was meant to be my day job path?

It's all very interesting. Three years ago I was a high school teacher in a drop out prevention program. I was making respectable money and had benefits for which many people would trade healthy limbs. And I left it all behind to be an immigrant internet bride and take a chance on a writing talent that I'd always taken for granted. If I had been asked about the likelihood of my trading a secure financial future in a known career for the iffy world of a freelancer who needed to pick up grocery money with a day job, I'd have been stricken too dumb to reply. I am a second wave feminist. I came of age in the early 80's when women were being told in no uncertain terms to take care of ourselves because we couldn't count on anyone to do it for us anymore. Not that anyone was offering, but that was the mantra when I entered college and later made my way into the adult world.

A Happy Marriage

Writer Elizabeth Weil is writing a memoir about a marriage improvement project she and her husband of eleven years embarked upon called No Cheating, No Dying because ...

I read ten pages worth of it courtesy of the New York Times and I really never understood her reasoning behind her need to improve something that was good, though I totally get wanting to write about it later. 

But a lot of other people - and by people I mean women - read the same piece and came to so many off-base characterizations, conclusions about the state of matrimony (an unsurprising number of single women are against it) and just blatantly self-serving opinionated and vaguely high school mean girl nonsense, that I felt compelled to give my own - not an expert here by any stretch of the imagination - opinion.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.