Deep South Moms

Summer Camp Panic? Why Can't I Plan Ahead?

I'm in high summer camp panic mode! Why can't I plan ahead like all the other moms?

Every year, it's the same: I realize in the middle of May that in a few weeks my children will be home with me all day long---and I totally panic as it hits me that I'm the only mother on the planet Earth who hasn't enrolled kids in summer classes or camp.

 Don't get me wrong, summer is a great break from the routine for the whole family but I have to have some structure built into our family summer schedule or they start telling me that they are "bored" by the end of the first week of vacation.

Constance McMillen, Fake Proms and Shame on Parents Who Know Better!

Constance McMillen, a lesbian teen who successfully sued her Mississippi school for the right to bring her girlfriend to prom was humiliated and was sent to a "fake prom" on Friday. 

Constance McMillen, her date and few other students attended a dance in Fulton, Mississippi while most of her Itawamba Agricultural High School classmates danced at separate prom that McMillen was not invited to.

As mind boggling as it seems, a 'fake' prom was created and set up for just 7 students and all the other students attended the 'real' prom at another location!

Can you imagine the time and energy it took to set up two different proms at two different locations? Simply for the purpose of being cruel and excluding students seven students who are different? 

Birthdays I Wish I Could Celebrate

I have two birthdays I wish I could celebrate.  My heart is heavy every June 24th and October 13th, the days are my mom's and my dad's birthday. I would give anything to spend just one more birthday with them.

My father died in 1992.  Dad had lung cancer.  I'm still not sure which was worse---the treatment to "cure" the disease or the cancer.  I watched my father go from a healthy robust man to an old man who had to wear clothes from the boy's department.  1992 was a long time ago, in terms of treating cancer but I still believe there is much that can be done so that the disease can be cured----without killing the patient.  My father died of pneumonia, and complications from being so weak after this chemo.  In the end, it was the cure that killed him, not the cancer.

My mom died in 2000, after a battle with breast cancer.  After watching my dad suffer, she decided quality of life was more important than curing the cancer at any cost.  My lived for two years, which was about two years longer than the doctors gave her after finding the cancer.

The American Cancer Society is a tremendous organization that has done so much for cancer patients and their families.  Even in this economy, our family gives to ACS, even if we don't do any other donations.  In a world where so many charities and non-profits take more than they give, the American Cancer Society has a stellar reputation for going above and beyond the call of duty to help those afflicted by the awful disease that is cancer.

If you are still celebrating birthdays with your parents, take a minute and go to the American Cancer Society's birthday page.  The ACS is the official sponsor of birthdays, because more birthdays mean less cancer.

My Childhood: Ditch Lillies, Rattlesnakes and More Good Memories

I was raised in a place where there were two kinds of music you could listen to----Country AND Western.  You could also find  LOTS and LOTS of what people call “Ditch Lillies”. I have attached a picture of the ditch lilly that grew everywhere in my hometown.

These are great flowers—-they grow in the 100 degree, burning heat of summer, they don’t need a lot of water and they are virtually impossible to kill. A perfect type of plant for my garden. I like to garden but I am not very good at it.

You cannot find “ditch lillies” in a nursery and you really don’t see them very much at all where I live now—–but these flowers are my favorites AND they remind me of home.

Every summer, I become obsessed about the ditch lilly plants whenever we travel to see grandma or if we are in the country. I can spot a “ditch lilly” a mile away and I always threaten to stop and dig some up. The girls are so used to me ranting about ditch lillies and talking about how I am going to just stop the car on the highway and dig up a few….they ignore me.

However, the other day, to my younger daughter’s complete horror—-I stopped the car, just off a country road and dug up a few “Ditch Lillies” for my yard.

BlogHer 2009: Look for the Good and Make Chicken Salad

Blogher 2009 starts this week and the web is buzzing. I was reading a post from my fellow Deep South Mom, Anissa Mayhew a few days ago, A Newbie Goes to BlogHer, and I thought of my dad.

Anissa's post was entertaining and pretty upbeat----just like Anissa. But there are lots of posts about BlogHer lately that are negative---about the popular girls snubbing people and anxiety about what to wear.  I have my share of stories about the popular girls snubbing me. But I have nothing but positive things to say about BlogHer because the good far outweighs the bad.

After reading several negative posts about BlogHer, I wanted to pass along some great advice from my father, that always helped me out as a kid and continues to guide me, even now.

Slacker Mom's Guide to Summer Enrichment

Call me a slacker mom but I think that summer should be a break for kids, as much as possible.  I know that work and childcare arrangements need to be in place and that it's not always possible to have a free form summer break.  I live here on Planet Earth and I have to pay my mortgage, so I get the fact that kids can't run wild like I did as a child.

But I also know some parents who over-schedule their kids during the summer because everyone else is doing it. Practical reasons aside, I vote for giving the kids more time to do nothing.  I think kids should have fun doing as well as some of the stupid things I did in childhood---instead of keeping up the pace that is required of most kids during the school year.  Here are a few items I think should be required for summer enrichment:

Summer Enrichment List

Denial is a Wonderful Way to Cope!

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, as the saying goes. My denial skills are genetic, given to me at birth from one of the queens of denial, my mother.  I have a natural gift for denial and I've honed my gift over the years both in my career and as a mom.

April is the month my denial skills reach a peak every year because of April 15th, aka Tax Day.  I've found that a good dose of denial is especially helpful during tax season.  For example, instead of trying to find my receipts from my recent business trip, I focus on important topics such as:

Will Simon leave American Idol? How will Mel Gibson live on only $500 million?

I've found that by worrying about Simon and Mel, I can put off thinking about my personal finances until...later.  Read on for some websites to help you can kick your denial into high gear! Don't worry about your checkbook,  just surf over to Craftastrophe where you can find crafts like the pillow in the picture above.

Parenting Teens is Hazardous and My Food Baby

Parenting teen girls is hazardous to your self-esteem. There are books on how to traumatize your children, like his funny book from KnockKnock.

There should be a warning label on every baby girl that indicates how brutally honest she will be at age 12. My daughters are not bad kids---but my girls have really taken a toll on my self-image over the last few months. I thought I was pretty tough...until the food baby incident.

It turns out I have a food baby, also known as belly fat.  My teen informed me last month that I looked like I had a food baby (if you saw the movie Juno, you may be familiar with the word).

Having my spawn tell me I look like I am pregnant was bad. But then my tween daughter NAMED the food baby, his name is Bob.

Can I get a collective groan of humiliation, ladies?

Mother's Intuition: Best Weapon to Keep Our Kids Safe!

The world is a scary place to raise children these days. But mothers have one of the most powerful weapons on protect our kids. The weapon is called Mother's Intuition.

Every mother in nature is well-equipped to protect her offspring from danger. Our brains and bodies are wired for it!  In today's human jungle, we mothers stop listening to our natural instincts.

Mother's intuition isn't valued very much in the world of the human mother. We are told to ignore that nagging feeling we get when something just doesn't seem right.  The high-tech 21st century experts tell us that if it isn't logical, it's not valid.

My brother was in law enforcement for years and he says that most crime victims remember having a weird feeling...just before a crime took place. That weird feeling is intuition and it's a primal response that's a survival instinct.

Trust Your Gut to Keep Your Kids Safe

Fat and Bitchy: Prepare Your Daughters for Success

Attention Moms of Daughters!  Prepare your daughters now for success! Warn them that if they are successful they will be called bitchy and fat.  You want some examples?

If you think I am being dramatic, dig if you will, a few of the many reasons I believe this sad fact:

Pundit Mom wrote a great post in her personal blog about the b-word and the fact so many successful women are called bitches. Our fellow SV Moms Group member, opens a can of whup ass with her post At This Rate, Soon We'll All Be Tracy Flick.

The Top 7 Butter Bodies List was created by Spike TV. It's a list of women celebrities who are beautiful in the face but have butter bodies.  Translation: These women are not concentration camp thin so they are fat.

Fat and bitchy are not okay names for people to call my daughters. We can't change our popular culture in a day but here's what we can do right now.