lawmummy

It’s my birthday, too, yeah.

So, as per bloggers everywhere, here’s my list of things you might not know about me, one for every year that I’ve been alive.  And I tried not to mention anything from last year.

1. I joined Netflix this month because I have a terrible habit of renting movies and never returning them.
2. The first movie that I took out from Netflix was Steven Spielberg’s "Munich".  I have not yet watched it and will likely not return it for weeks. 
3. I have a similar problem with library books.  The longest I ever kept a library book was 12 years.  Yes, years.
4. I’ve had a library card since I was ten years old, when my tiny little town built a library.  I went almost every week, even though it was miles away from my home.
5. I registered to vote at that same library before I was legally able to vote (you can do it so long as you’ll be legal by the election).  I was that excited about voting. 
6. When I registered, I registered as a Republican.  My Democratic relatives were devastated.  My Republican father was pleased.
7. I switched my voter registration to Democrat for the Clinton/Gore election after attending a rally for Earth Day.
8. I also became a vegetarian on Earth Day.  It lasted about two years.
9. Despite being a vegetarian while in the UK, I have been banned from giving blood by the Red Cross because of the threat of Mad Cow Disease.
10. Even though I wasn’t eating them, I did come into contact with cows while in the UK.  I got lost in a cow field.  I was following instructions in a book of walks and I couldn’t figure out what a stone stile was. 
11. Getting lost was not a new experience for me.  I am terrible with directions.  I once drove to Sesame Place (Langhorne, PA) while trying to get to Atlantic City, NJ - from Philadelphia, PA.  If you don’t know the area, that’s really tough to do.
12. I drove my 1984 Buick Regal (200,000 miles +) on that trip.  I loved that car, and named it Bessie.
13. My younger brother drove Bessie while I was in the UK and blew out the speakers.  And the radiator.  And killed my A/C.
14. I did not own a new car until I was 30 years old.  It was a Saturn sedan.  It got excellent mileage and I loved it.  I couldn’t drive it well because it was a manual transmission.
15. I hadn’t driven a manual transmission since college and that was when I was the designated driver (many, many times).
16. In college, I drove my roommate and my friend, Lara, to Boone, NC (approx 8 hours away), in the middle of the night one night because my roommate wanted to see her boyfriend, Pete.  I hated her boyfriend, but I loved my roommate.  He talked to her for about an hour and played video games for the rest of the visit.  I hated him.
17. Pete wasn’t the worst of my friend’s boyfriends while in college.  My friend’s fiance, Thom, was the worst.  He was arrested for drug issues when I was a freshman.  My friend and I broke into his apartment and removed his electronics so that we could pawn them for bail money.
18. While at the police station to get Thom out, a hooker asked me for a cigarette.  I was horrified because I think she thought I was a hooker, too.
19. I have never been arrested for anything.  I did get three speeding tickets, though.
20. One of my speeding tickets was written by my brother’s friend’s father.  He didn’t recognize me until he had already called my car in.  I was hysterical crying and he felt pretty bad.  But I was going 79 mph in a 65 mph zone so I was totally in the wrong.  I had just said out loud to my friend, Anne, "I wonder how fast you’d have to be going to have a police car turn around for you."  Apparently, the answer to that is 79 mph in a 65 mph zone.
21. My father was livid about my speeding ticket.  He asked me what was going through my head when I was getting pulled over.  I said, "You honestly want to know?"  When he said yes, I told him that I had been thinking that if I had been going a little bit faster, I would have made my exit.  He thought that was pretty funny and I didn’t get into trouble.
22. I also used humor to get out of trouble when I crashed Bessie into the deck at our house.  I swerved to avoid hitting my cat and smashed through the deck.  But I told my dad that an airplane was flying low (a common occurrence near our house) and someone yelled "Hit the deck!" so I did.
23. I avoided hitting my cat that time, which claimed yet another of his lives.  That cat had way more than nine lives.  He died of feline AIDS after more than 21 years at our house.  I loved that cat and I cried so hard when he died that the vet called our house to make sure we were okay - and they sent my dad a sympathy card.
24. I was a cat person until I met Chris.  He is allergic to cats so we got a dog (he’s allergic to dogs, too). 
25. I was violently ill in 1998 and thought I was actually dying.  After a number of nasty, invasive tests, we found out that I had food allergies.  I am highly allergic to shellfish, iodine and cashew nuts.
26. Chris confirmed my allergies while we were on a cruise in the Caribbean.  We ate at La Mallorquina, and I ordered shrimp with yellow rice.  I immediately started vomiting and had hives.  Chris decided that the doctor who advised me that adults don’t get food allergies was wrong and suggested I get some tests when I got back to the States.
27. It was weird to have allergies to shellfish because I grew up in coastal North Carolina and used to spend my summers crabbing and oystering.  I was great at catching crabs but I couldn’t bear to put the fish heads on the strings because the eyes freaked me out.
28. We used to store the crabs in an old orange cooler while we finished crabbing.  My brother knew that I had a terrible aversion to styrofoam squeaking, so he used to make the crabs fight inside the cooler to freak me out.  I still can’t stand the sound of styrofoam touching anything.
29. I used to eat crab all of the time but had never had lobster until I went on a cruise when I was 28 years old.  Crab tastes better than lobster.
30. I am writing a book right now (my second) that takes place in coastal Maine and involves lobsterpeople (is that the neutral plural of lobsterman?).  I have not yet sold my first book.
31. I always wanted to be a writer but my parents told me that I should do something more practical.  I became a lawyer.  Last year, my mom wrote me a note that said that she always thought I would be a good writer.  What’s up with that?
32. After reading Ellen Foster, I wrote a really good paper about my life for my Honors English class.  It freaked out my professor, so I told her that I made it up.  I didn’t show anyone anything personal that I wrote for years after that.
33. My parents don’t know that I have a blog (I am not sure that Mom knows what a blog is).  Actually, I don’t know which of my friends and family read my blog, so I never know whether the things I say offend anyone I know.  If so, sorry.  Well, maybe.  There’s a couple of you that deserve it.
34. I am sure that my grandmother doesn’t read my blog.  She hasn’t communicated with me since I got married six years ago - she got into an argument with my dad, refused to come to my wedding and never corresponded with me since.  My older brother didn’t come to my wedding either.  My younger brother came and brought his horrible girlfriend (not his current wife, who I do like).  My mom cried, I cried and my dad spent most of the time in the bathroom at the hotel.  It was still one of the best weddings that I ever attended.  That either means it was still a pretty good wedding or that my friends have crap weddings.  On that note, I’ll let you decide…

Weighing in at 35 pounds, is the rough and tumble Katie Banana!

Sigh.  Katie was involved in a skirmish at school.  It had to do with who was going to sit on the swing, apparently.  There were three kids involved and they all sat in the "work it out" chairs and well, worked it out.  I don’t know who started it or what the details were.  I don’t need to know.

I did have a talk with Katie about sharing and cooperation.  She wasn’t all that interested, informing me that she had already "worked it out."  Good to hear. 

But it reminded me that one of the most difficult lines to walk as a parent of really young children is teaching them to get along with other children.  On the one hand, I want to teach my kids to stand up for themselves.  I remember watching a bigger kid toss Katie off of the slide (from the top step) at the Please Touch Museum and not saying anything.  A few minutes later, another kid took all of her toys.  I said something to the kid at that point since the parent was oblivious or didn’t care. 

I don’t want my children to be bullied.  On the other hand, I don’t want to teach my children to become bullies.  It seems like such a fine line.  How do you teach your children to protect themselves, to stand up for themselves, and yet still be kind and share?

I am not at all surprised that this happened. 

My kids are so far ahead of me technologically, it’s amazing.  I didn’t see a PC until I was in the 4th grade - it was in the library and our school had exactly one.  No one was allowed to touch it unless you were a grown-up or a library assistant.  So, of course, I became a library assistant.

I didn’t see the internet in action until I was in law school.  Chris used his CompuServe account to look up the times for the first movie that we ever saw together (bet he doesn’t remember it!).  Yea, really, that was it.  I had a VAX account (remember those?) at NCSSM, where I went to high school.  But I didn’t email or anything in college.  Yes, kids, there was a time when email was an anomaly - and we didn’t know what text messaging was (horrors!).

I bought a cell phone when I started working in NJ as a safety measure since I was taking the train to and from work at pretty late hours.  My parents thought I must be loaded.  I remember calling them in the afternoon one day from my cell and my mother said, "It must be nice to be rich and be able to call whenever you want."  That was when long distance was fairly pricey mid-day.

We didn’t have a DVD player until… jeez…  2000, I think.  That was about 16 years after we bought our VCR at the house, a major thing for my dad.  The first video I remember us getting was "Top Gun" which was such a huge deal because it had a Pepsi commercial at the beginning which allowed them to retail it for something like $30 instead of $50.  I remember the commercial pretty clearly - the two MiGs were flying, one was upside down and they were drinking Diet Pepsi.  I thought it was very cool (still drank Coke, though, ad people, figure that one out).

I love my computer.  I have a bizarre attachment to my video iPod - I carry movies and photos of the kids on it so that I can share them with my friends (I don’t order movies or TV shows, I find that weird).  I am addicted to iTunes, in fact, I am listening to one Backstreet Boys song now.  Nobody needs to own more than one Backstreet Boys song; that’s why iTunes is so cool.  I am a huge fan of the digital camera and my big plug for Apple (as I type this on my flatscreen G5), iPhoto rocks.  You can create books, cards, you name it.  And let’s not forget iSight (webcam) and iChat (instant messaging), which is ideal for communicating with Chris when he’s at the office or traveling.

I’m not sold on all technology, though.  I bought a PDA in 2001.  Hated it.  Would never buy another one.  I replaced my cell phone with a camera phone a few years back and found it to be more trouble than it was worth.  I reverted back to my fairly trusty Samsung with internet capabilities - but I never check email on it.  Unlike Chris, who is addicted to his "crackberry", I don’t need to be that connected. 

Ironically, I still don’t wear a watch and I cannot program my VCR.  It’s so incongrous to me that I can write some simple java scripts and HTML code on the computer but I can’t tape "The Amazing Race" (yes, it’s my favorite show, I can’t help it).  And no, I don’t have Tivo (I know, I know).

So, it blows me away that my girls request to listen to my iPod, talk to my parents on my cell phone and surf the web as if it’s nothing.  Yes, I realize it’s all relative and that is really is nothing to them.  But it still makes me giggle when Katie logs into her own account and surfs over to pbskids.org.

And lest you think I set everything up and they just play, let me set you straight.  Katie knows the difference (in appearance) between Firefox and Safari.  She knows which ID is hers and she has a password.  She can navigate with a mouse at lightning speed.  And Amy?  She regularly calls Andi and Armana (the first two folks in my address book), which makes sense, but also manages to call Madeline and the office.  Figure that one out.

And nothing makes it so clear that my kids have figured out how to use technology than the phone call that I received from Madeline while we were in Germany.  Madeline asked me if Katie had called the office.  I told her absolutely not.  And Madeline replied, "That’s funny because someone called and sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Amy star" on the voice mail."  Okay, so maybe she did call.  From Germany.  On my cell phone.  And navigated her way through the voice mail.  She was 2-1/2 years old, making international calls on my cell phone.

But at least she didn’t buy a car on eBay.

No, this isn’t a post about last night’s phenomenal fleecing of Michael Vick and the Atlanta Falcons by the New Orleans Saints in the renovated SuperDome.  It’s about high school football.  And winning.  And what that really means.

There is more to Louisiana, and more to the story of Hurricane Katrina, than New Orleans.  There are tiny little towns all over Louisiana and Mississippi that are still dealing with the aftermath of the disaster.  And by disaster, I mean our response to Katrina.

One of those little towns is Bastrop, Louisiana.  Before Katrina, Bastrop had a total population of less than 13,000 people.  To put that into perspective, it’s about twice the student population of Louisiana’s own Tulane University.  The median income in Bastrop is around $20,000 and the median home value is less than $40,000, both far below the national averages.  It seems that the folks in Bastrop don’t have a lot.  But they do have football.  Or, at least they used to have football.

You see, in 2005, Bastrop won the Class 4A state football championship.  And last month, they lost it.

Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, assistant football coaches assisted five football players from Port Sulphur, Louisiana, who were evacuees and in need of a place to stay, food to eat, a school to attend… and yes, you guessed, somewhere to play football.  Those football players were recruited to Bastrop.

Normally strict rules governing player eligibility for students were relaxed in September 2005 following Katrina.  The rule change allowed
displaced students immediate athletic eligibility at any school in the
area where they live.

But something didn’t sound right to Bastrop’s competitors.  Another school filed a complaint against Bastrop, alleging that the coaches illegally recruited and
falsified documents in order to allow the players to play football at the school.
After a second investigation (the school was cleared in the first), the allegations were proved true.  The investigators ruled that Bastrop assistant coach D’Carlos Holmes made contact
with the football players and arranged transportation for them, a violation of school policy which states:  "It shall be a violation of the LHSAA’s Recruiting Rule for
anyone connected with a member school to contact one of these students
in an attempt to persuade the student to attend that school for any
reason." 

As a result, Bastrop lost its 2005 Class 4A state football championship and
the program was fined $14,000, just over a year’s salary for many residents of Bastrop.  Additionally, all-state quarterback Randall Mackey, and running backs Jamal Recasner and James Brown were ruled
ineligible to play high school football this year.  Two of the three players still attend Bastrop.

And what happened to Holmes, who made contact with the players?  He was placed on probation and ordered, along with head coach Brad Bradshaw (yes, that’s his real name) to attend the
Lousiana High School Athletic Association’s Coaches Education and Certification Program.  Holmes cannot coach at
any football games this season. 

A few days after the ruling, the LHSAA amended its
decision after an appeal from the Superintendent of the Morehead Parish school system.  The one year suspension for the players was reduced to a two-game suspension and the school’s fine was reduced to $9,000.  Both coaches and two players were ordered to issue public apologies.  The other
sanctions against the program remain.

The uproar over the students’ eligibility and the coaches actions has been analyzed and overanalyzed.  Did the coaches cross a moral line?  Were they maybe trying to do something good?  We’ll never really know the answer.  But what we do know is this:  A year ago, a terrible tragedy happened.  Lives will never be the same.  Some people lost almost everything that they had.  And I think in times like that, it’s important to find something to hold onto, something to make you forget the really bad stuff, something to give you a reason to get up in the morning.  And for these kids, maybe that was playing football.  And for that school and that community, maybe it was winning a championship.  I couldn’t help but think, while watching the Saints/Falcons game last night, that sometimes it’s the simple things that can bring a community together.  Sometimes, you need something to cheer about.  I’m not quite sure why it was so important for another community to take that away from Bastrop.

I saw a couple of leaves turning color in the park.  So, in honor of fall, here are the top ten things that I love about autumn:

1.  It’s so pretty.  The hues of autumn are amazing.  When you live near the park like we do, you have the added bonus of seeing lots of beautiful trees without having to rake any of them.
2.  The weather.  Sweater weather.  The best weather all year.
3.  Bugs are dying.  I love that Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin is excited that bugs are dying by the wagon loads.  It makes me happy, too.  Sorry if you’re an entomologist.  I’m not a fan of bugs.
4.  The sun starts to go down at a normal time.  9:00pm is not normal.
5.  School starts.  Katie is glad to be there.  I am glad to send her.
6.  Football season is in full swing.  Chili.  Beer.  Cheering.  And the Eagles are on top of their division (take that, APL!).
7.  All the cool holidays are in autumn:  Halloween, Thanksgiving, my birthday (!) and my anniversary.  And Columbus Day (no, I don’t really celebrate, but some people get the day off)!
8.  It’s not weird to people that I drink coffee mid-day in autumn.  People look at me in an odd fashion when I drink coffee mid-day in summer.  Now they’ll have to find some other reason.
9.  Traffic is better.  If you live near the shore, you know what I mean.
10. Pumpkin pie.  Pumpkin pie can make a bad day good.  Especially with whipped cream.  Mmm.

Don’t, don’t, don’t you…  (Okay, clearly I am a child of the eighties.)

I managed to kill another computer this weekend.  Well, computer keyboard (a LOT cheaper).  And not really me.  It was an accident involving Charlie’s feet and a large cup of water.

My children are not kind to computers.  Katie and Amy have managed to water my laptop, stand on Chris’ laptop (egads), dump a number of substances on a number of keyboards, put dinosaur stickers on Armana’s computer, do who-knows-what to Madeline’s computer and keyboards.  Thousands of dollars.  Apple should be paying us at this point.

So, in between my wacky schedule and a lack of a keyboard, I’ve been out of commission.  I’ll get back to business soon.  I swear.

Today, I’m out filming again (it’s three days at the coffee shop, then a day at my house).  So, in the interim, here’s a little multimedia entertainment that Chris put together last night (though the footage is about six months old, note the heavy jacket).

Pay for female attorneys is stagnate over a period of fifteen years.  Fifteen.  At least in Allegheny County (for those of you outside of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh is located in Allegheny County).  The Allegheny Bar Association is looking into it.

These statistics are pretty much in keeping with national trends.

How telling are the stats?  In Allegheny County, one in five male
attorneys (20%) made at least $250,000 last year, while only one in 20 women (5%)
made that much. 

That math sucks.

I am sitting in front of the computer listening to Alan Jackson’s "It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere" and wishing pretty hard for a margarita.  In reality, Chris has run to the Dairyland to get me a milkshake, not quite the same, and arguably much worse for me, but more in line with what makes sense on a Monday night.

I miss happy hour.  We used to have a fairly regular happy hour routine going on Friday evenings.  It was so regular that neighbors and friends knew that they could dependably drop in on us and have a drink and a conversation. 

After Katie was born, we slowed down a bit but kept the tradition somewhat.  After Amy came along, happy hour was reduced to once every month-ish in summer.  And with Charlie?  Nary a happy hour all summer.

With much nicer weather headed our way, I am hoping to reinstitute some form of our happy hour.  It was a really nice way to chat with neighbors and friends and wind down from a busy week.  What was especially nice is that we managed to keep our happy hours extremely family friendly.

Yes, we drink in front of our children.  We are never drunk in front of our children; these are two separate issues.  It seems that, in this country, we don’t know how to reconcile children and alcohol.  We spend a great deal of time keeping children completely away from alcohol altogether and teaching them that alcohol is "bad" while all the while they are exposed to Coors Light twins-type ads that preach that alcohol = fun.  It’s confusing for young minds, don’t you think?   

Chris and I talk about this a great deal, this choice to drink in front of your children.   And we talk about the consequences.

My parents did not drink in front of us.  My mother never, ever drinks - I saw her take a sip of champagne once on New Year’s and that was it.  She says it’s because her father used to drink heavily (funny, I never saw him drink, ever, I guess he had sworn it off before we came along).   It may also be her religious background - she was, after all, Pentecostal Holiness before converting to a more moderate Southern Baptist.  Whatever the reason, she did not drink and my father did not drink in front of me (though Dad now has the occasional glass of wine).

Chris’ parents do the happy hour thing on a regular basis and drink during dinner.  They have for as long as Chris can remember.

Who knows what effect these respective choices had on our collective psyches, but I do know this:  my parents did not drink and my brothers and I each went through a fairly heavy drinking phase.  At one point in my life, I could drink many men under the table.  I had a lot going on in my life and let’s face it, drinking is fun.  Too much drinking?  Yeah, there were mornings when I would wake up and not remember how I got home.  More than one.

And Chris and his brother?  Apparently Jason used to drink some beer out in the woods, but as an adult, he does not drink (he’s Muslim now, and that has a great deal to do with it).  Chris really enjoys his beer, good beer, a taste he developed in Germany and the Czech Republic.  However, of all of the drinkers that I know, I would consider him one of the most responsible.  He has never been a "drink to get drunk" kind of guy.

Yeah, yeah, I know that the consequences are not always so convenient and neat as that.  You can’t say that having parents that drink responsibly in front of you will always result in responsible children.  But you have to wonder if there’s not some correllation. 

In the US, we won’t let children near alcohol legally until they are 21.  In fact, we won’t even let children in many bars.  In July, we were booted out of an empty, smoke-free bar in State College called Zeno’s when we sat down to watch the World Cup one afternoon:  children are not allowed.   

This total ban creates this mystery around alcohol that reaches practically mythic proportions.  Turning 21 becomes such a big, big deal because you can then drink legally.  And boy, do we drink.  I have watched many a friend drink to oblivion on his or her 21st birthday "just because."

It’s different in other parts of the world.  In Germany, for example, children at an earlier age and their parents drink in front of them fairly regularly.  The Germans seem to have less of a problem with underage drinking and the resulting problems .  Alcohol isn’t elevated to some magic potion; it’s simply a part of life.  In that regard, losing some of its "specialness" seems to work in favor of temperance.

And thus, in contrast to being kicked out of Zeno’s, we were allowed to remain in Ludwig’s Garten, a German bar in Philadelphia, to watch the World Cup.   Chris and I each ordered a nice German beer and watched the game with little Charlie in tow.  It’s a lifestyle that we enjoy.  I hope that we are teaching our children, by example, that you can drink responsibly and still have a good time, that alcohol isn’t necessarily bad under the right circumstances, that you can drink because you enjoy the taste of the beverage and not "just to get drunk." 

We even make winery and brewery tours part of our vacations, when we can.  Wineries are actually pretty cool places for kids - lots of outdoor space to run around in and many have little "art centers" for kids to color and drink grape juice while the adults enjoy a tasting.  Breweries can be family-friendly, too.  The picture above was taken at the Atlantic Brewing Company in Bar Harbor, Maine.  In their restaurant, you can grab a beer while the kids play with toys, courtesy of the company.  They also have a tour which is interesting for grown-ups and kids.

At the end of the day, we won’t know what kind of impact this has made on our children until they get older.  I hope, though, that by watching their parents drink responsibly, they are on their way to learning to be responsible themselves.  Maybe watching me have an occasional glass of wine at home says to Katie and to Amy that drinking can be enjoyable and safe, and doesn’t always have to result in a "Girls Gone Wild" moment.  And when Charlie watches his father drink a beer - out of a glass, Chris always insists on a glass - maybe he’ll understand that you can actually enjoy a beer without crushing the container that it came in on your forehead. 

For more perspective on this issue, this interesting article on the BBC about "teaching" children how to drink is worth a peek.

When putting together your nomination for me as "Mother of the Year", you can recall this little gem:

Over the weekend, Chris and I were sitting on the porch while the girls played by the side of the house.  The girls almost always play by the side of the house.  We have maybe ten feet (?) between our house and the neighbor’s house and in between are two sidewalks leading to our respective backyards.  There is a retaining wall at the back of our yards and fencing to the sides, so there is no "exit".

So, what usually happens is that the girls play in the wagon on the side of the house, or ride bikes up and down the sidewalk or play in their ice cream truck playhouse.  Or more often than not, since Katie seems to have inherited my gardening bug, she and Ames take their little spades and buckets and dig and collect rocks.

I hear them arguing about who is going to water the plants.  And it dawns on me:  There is no water.  This means one of two things is happening:  One, they’re pretending to water the plants or Two, they have found some non-water substance with which to water the plants.  If you chose the latter, you’re a winner!

And what, pray tell, would a two year old and a four year old actually choose as "water" for plants?  Why, the gasoline for the lawnmower, of course!  Yeah.

On the plus side, I’ve learned lots about the properties of gasoline:  It stinks.  It does not wash out of clothes.  It transfers its stinkiness to other clothes.  It ruins shoes.

Girls are fine.  Plants are fine.  Their shoes, a towel and some miscellaneous clothing have new homes in the garbage.

Note to self:  Buy storage shed for gasoline can.