by Jen Logan | Aug 7, 2019 | Life, Parenting
We cut our cable a few years ago and haven’t really missed it. Well, the adults in the household haven’t missed it. Our 8 year old thinks we are torturing her by depriving her of 30 channels of cartoons. Nevermind that we have a hard drive connected to our television so she can watch one of 500 movies and television shows at any time. The only time the cable ban really becomes an issue is when a new movie is released on the Disney channel, which is exactly what happened last week.
When I picture myself in prison (thanks to Orange is the New Black) it’s usually for murder or drug smuggling, not pirating movies on the internet or stealing cable. Needless to say, last weekend we figured out a legal way to watch the movie mini-me wanted to see without the FBI showing up on our porch. We spent Friday night at my parents’ lake house and watched the movie there. They, of course, keep the cable on at the house they spend less than 40 days a year at. This is one of the many reasons we love going there. We lounge, eat junk food and stay up late watching all of the television shows we have missed since 2016. Plus, it’s a lake house, so the views out the window next to the TV are pretty spectacular too.
My parents decided that they would watch the movie with us, so instead of it being just the three of us lounging in our pajamas, five of us lounged and stuffed ourselves with popcorn and candy. Every get together is an event for my mom and a family movie is not an exception. Her coffee table looked like the candy counter at MJR complete with little buckets of popcorn. I am still working off the 40 lbs. of raisinets I consumed and picking the popcorn out of my teeth the water pick didn’t wash away. Disney does their best to capitalize on a new movie so they played in back to back to back that night – just in case any seven year olds were ready to watch it at midnight. Our little one fell asleep halfway through the second viewing after a massive swedish fish induced sugar crash.
In the morning my parents came back out to do some work around the yard. The joy of owning two houses is getting to work all day every day on one of the houses. Did I mention my parents are insane? Every week my dad goes down to the beach and rakes up the seaweed. He and my husband were also going to till the beach to make the sand nice and soft. As my dad was walking back to get a rake he said to my daughter “come help us rake up the seaweed.” As she lounged in her giant swing she looked at him with her big doe eyes and said “I didn’t come out here to work. I came out her to watch a movie!” She was clearly offended that he would ask her to work.
My husband was standing by the hammock I was lounging in so I shooed him down to the beach telling my kiddo to go help him. I mean come on, I didn’t come out there to work. I came out there to lounge around in a hammock reading a book! I was hoping my daughter would acquire my husband’s work ethic, but alas, she is not cut out for manual labor. At least the hammock fits two people comfortably and we had a great view to supervise the workers on the beach.
by Jen Logan | Jul 16, 2019 | Life, Screwing Things Up
My mother doesn’t throw away anything. I know this is a common theme with moms – saving memorabilia from life events, family vacations, and preschool art projects, but my mom takes it to a whole new level. If I am ever in need of an unusual object, I ask my mom if she has it before running to Target. My husband used to be surprised by this, but over the years he has come to appreciate it. I remember going to a Hawaiian themed party years ago and telling him to call my mom to see if she had grass skirts and leis. He thought I was crazy until he made the call and discovered that she had both items, and in fact had a grass skirt small enough for our then two year old daughter. Not only does she have everything, she usually has multiples.
Unfortunately, her aversion to throwing things out also carries over to the contents of her pantry and refrigerator. This has been an ongoing theme for my family since I can remember. I have always checked the expiration dates knowing that salad dressings found in my parents’ refrigerator could be up to five years old. It takes years to get through a bottle since there are about twenty seven varieties available at all times. I recall helping my dad move their previous fridge out to the garage and finding a bottle of bleu cheese dressing from the 90s as well as a thirty year old bottle of peppermint schnapps in the door. I think we ended up throwing out half of the contents of the refrigerator that day after discovering condiments that somehow migrated from the previous appliance from the 80s. My mom was out of town during this event or I’m sure half of the items purged would have somehow found their way to the new refrigerator.
My mom’s aversion to discarding anything is most evident at their lake house. This second home has become the dumping ground for everything she can’t bear to part with, but can no longer keep at their main home without appearing crazy. I have to admit, I have taken advantage of this storage space myself when I discovered that I was unable to discard things like my daughter’s first doll house, the one she played with a total of three hours in her life. I have since moved a handful of toys to the “playroom” at the lake house where no children ever play. I would have put all of this stuff in the basement, but that part of the house is packed with enough Christmas decorations to light up the block. There may also be a unicycle rolling around down there.
I always think of the lake house refrigerator as a relatively safe place since the house was purchased just eight years ago and isn’t used all that frequently. My thought is that perishables are purchased in smaller sizes and used quicker. This apparently is not the case. We sat down to dinner last week, and my husband, as he has become accustomed to doing, flipped over the bottle of mustard to check the date before opening it. He announced that the mustard had expired the previous year. My mom immediately ran to the refrigerator, declaring she had another bottle. Of course she had multiple bottles – there are close to thirty bottles of salad dressing in her other refrigerator. As she handed him the new yellow bottle, he flipped it over to reveal an expiration date in 2017. She didn’t give up, but returned with yet another bottle. He looked at the bottom of the third bottle to find another two year old expiration date. As my mom stood racking her brain for the last time she bought condiments I delved into the refrigerator to see what other toppings I could find for the burgers. I discovered mayo that expired in 2018 and miracle whip that expired in 2017. Apparently my mom stocked up on the condiments in 2015 and 2016 but hasn’t done so since. It makes sense, when you can’t fit any more plastic bottles of goo in your fridge doors, you stop buying.
In the end, the burgers were so good they didn’t even need toppings. My mom smeared some dill dip on her bun, my daughter and husband had plain ketchup and I ate mine with nothing at all. Who knows if my dad even noticed. He probably used the expired mustard or some twelve year old steak sauce. He is immune to expired food at this point. My mom has been pumping him full of month old lunch meat and eight year old salad dressing for years.
**I wrote this piece while listening to music as old as the salad dressing in my parents’refrigerator – Milo Goes to College
by Jen Logan | Jun 15, 2019 | Life, Parenting
A few months ago, my daughter was playing catch with her Dad when she accidentally nailed him in between the legs with the ball. Apparently she throws like her mother. She immediately said “Daddy, I’m sorry I hit you in the privates!” As he bent over in pain she continued talking rapidly. “Last week one of the boys in the fourth grade got hit in his privates. He bent over too. Then one of the girls said her Dad calls his privates the wall of gems. Or maybe it was the dangling jewel. Or the family dangler. No, no, it was the family jewels. Why would he call it that?”
I had no words. This rarely happens to me, but I was truly speechless. Part of it was that I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t have answered if I tried, but I also had no answer to this question. It’s not that I hadn’t heard the term before, I just never gave much thought to where it originated from. I also had a strange image in my head of a giant wall of penises since the term “wall of gems” came out of her mouth. My brain was slowly melting.
Before I became a mother I knew there would be many, many questions tossed my way from my child that I would be ill equipped to answer. This was not even in the same zip code as that list of questions. I expected to google “types of clouds”, “books about poop” and “new math” but never did I expect to perform an online search for the origins of slang for penis. And let me tell you, it’s a search I never want to perform again. It was similar to the time I searched “Tinkerbell” only to find it was an incredibly popular name for women in the adult entertainment industry.
By now everyone knows that there are certain things you shouldn’t talk about in front of your children. Don’t talk about what a cranky old man the neighbor is if you don’t want him to know you think he’s a cranky old man. Don’t drop an F-bomb unless you want your kid doing it loudly in the middle of Target. And don’t talk about your poor self-image if you want your kids to grow up feeling confident about themselves. I would like to add to this list, please, do not use old man slang in front of your kids. They don’t know what these strange terms from the 1940s mean and they are definitely going to ask for clarification.
Fortunately my daughter only used the term “family jewels” for about a week. Unfortunately, a few weeks after giving up the phrase she received a ball to the crotch and was so distraught that she screamed “Ouch! My penis!” It only took her a minute to realize what she said and laugh but I think she might have my tendency to scream inappropriate things while in distress. It’s like a form of stress induced Tourettes. I’m expecting the next time she is injured I will hear a thundering “wall of gems!!”
by Jen Logan | Jun 9, 2019 | Chick Stuff, Life
Life would be easier if everyone would just do what I tell them to. When my family and friends are acting exactly as I want them to, things run smoothly. It’s when my cast goes off script that the wheels come off the wagon.
I am a recovering control freak. It’s a condition I have been afflicted with my entire life. I think everyone is born with it. I mean babies are the biggest control freaks on the planet. They want what they want, when they want it and they are going to scream and cry until they get it. Some of us just never outgrow that phase of life I guess. I am one of those people. Although now I don’t scream and cry to get my way – I usually just give a stern look or manipulate the crap out of the situation. I can also argue my point for hours and wear my opponent down if need be.
I didn’t even realize what a control freak I was until a few years ago. People just always kind of did what I asked of them for most of my life. I think this is the way with a lot of control freaks. I knew I was a pain in the ass, I just wasn’t sure why. Now that I know I have an issue, I try to step away from the controls. The problem is it’s like having your hands on a marionette and then expecting the strings to move by themselves when you let go.
My first family vacation in control freak recovery was a tough one. Instead of getting prime seats by the pool, we sat a few rows back. We ended up eating lunch at a restaurant that I didn’t have the menu memorized so I had no idea what to order and a storm blew through while we were still outside. I blamed that storm on my letting go of the wheel – like I could control nature! Things just didn’t move as quickly because everyone was standing around waiting for me to bark orders. If the rest of my family had known I was trying to step away from the wheel, it would have been fine.
Things have become easier now that my family knows I am trying to let go a little. Sure my kid goes grocery shopping in a costume and we show up late to almost everything, but nobody has lost a limb yet and I haven’t given myself high blood pressure. I do still pick the restaurants most of the time, organize events and do most of the driving – even other people’s cars. But believe me when I say I am A LOT better than I used to be. What can I say, I’m a work in progress.
by Jen Logan | May 22, 2019 | Life, Parenting
My daughter loves cooking. She also loves eating and has a pretty refined palate for a child. Tonight, she took one bite of the fish my husband had prepared for dinner and went directly to the refrigerator. She pulled out a jar of capers and half a lemon that had been sitting on the counter and returned to the table to top off her fish. I have to say I loved watching this, mostly because my husband has added extra spice, toppings or ingredients to pretty much every dinner I have ever cooked. I am a three ingredient kind of cook whereas he is a believer in layers of flavor. Apparently his cod didn’t have quite enough layers for our little lass though. As I was smirking at her going to town on her plate like Cat Cora she turned to me and said “What? You know I have to have capers on my fish!” Precocious does not even begin to explain this child some days.
by Jen Logan | May 17, 2019 | Life, Parenting
My daughter had her first communion last week. But first, she had to complete her first reconciliation. She had been talking about this event all year and, of course, I had a few questions for her about the process. Namely, when she needed to confess and what atrocities she had to confess.
I recall going to confession as a child and debating about what to tell the priest and what to keep to myself. It wasn’t necessarily that I was such a bad kid at the age of eight that I thought my sins were unforgivable, I just didn’t want to admit I was wrong about anything. Telling the school priest that I had been mean to my mom or lied to a friend seemed like a not so smart thing to do. I was always a skeptical child, so I was pretty sure the priest was going to blab all of my dirt to my teachers. I pictured them sitting around the lunch table gossiping about what the kids said to their moms and each other. I didn’t want anyone to have any dirt they could hold over my head.
A month ago when my mini-me and I were talking about confession she asked what kind of things I had talked to the priest about when I was her age. I told her it was mostly me being sassy with my mom or not being as nice as I could be to friends. “What do you do if you don’t have anything to confess?” she asked with a straight face. I told her I could give her a list if she needed one. She sounded just like my Dad who jokes that he has nothing to repent for. Unfortunately, she wasn’t joking. In her mind it was a totally valid question.
The day before her first communion was spent preparing for the big day. The kids practiced the readings, found their places in the chapel where they would sit with their families and tasted the wine. I had learned earlier that they give all of the kids a sip of the wine the day before so nobody spits it out on their dress at the main event. My daughter had a rather lengthy discussion with a saleswoman at the shoe store about this as we picked out a pair of white heels. She talked animatedly about how disrespectful it would be to God to have some kid spit out the blood of his son all over the floor. She had already talked to me repeatedly about the church wine. She was scared to drink it because she thought it would taste bad. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she was obsessed, but the wine was on her mind much more than her weekly spelling words or current lego project. I was happy to know it would be put to bed after her retreat.
When she came home from school that day she had two things to share. The first was that she did make a confession and it was that she made me crazy in the morning (which is true). She was not given penance with the rosary, but was instead told to cut it out. She of course shared this information with her grandparents, but did not want to divulge the conversation to me. Smart kid. The second piece of information she shared with her dad (again, not with me). She walked in and promptly told him “Dad, I loved the wine. It tasted so good!” He immediately texted me to let me know that fear was coursing through his veins. Well, that seems about right – my kid worried about the wine for a month and we will now worry about it for the next twenty or more years.
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