Rick’s 50th birthday is today.

For weeks, I’ve been mulling over what I should to do for him.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard about the party that he had on his 40th birthday. That was PC — pre-Cindy — so I had nothing to do with it. And, although, I’m a relatively secure person, I still have to consciously clench my teeth when things that are PC are discussed too glowingly.

(Sorry, just being honest.)

I so want this particular BIG birthday to be special that I have had a complete mental block over what to do.

After contemplating about 15 different party/gift/fabulous birthday surprises — each one to be nixed for one reason or another — I’ve finally come up with a plan.

But, I can’t just TELL him what the plan is. That’s way too boring. So, I’ve written a poem to give him clues.

Feel free to try to solve the riddle and I’ll post the answer next week for anyone that’s curious. Knowing my husband, he will know the answer after reading the first line.

Rick’s Birthday Riddle

My favorite gift to give, you know
Is often tickets to a show.
This time around, my gift to you
Is something old but something New.

Country Roads, we will drive
To a place where climbers thrive.
Two adventures wait us there.
One by sea and one by air.

A canopy, but not a bed
On the floor, we will not tread.
Under an arch that’s made of steel,
Hopefully, on even keel.

Trips are planned two months this summer.
To leave June out would be a bummer
So pack a bag and off we’ll go
To celebrate your BIG 5 – 0!

Happy Birthday, Rick!

As a parent, I am accustomed to having to be in two or more places at one time. But, when your kids start to have that problem, you know you have arrived in the land of the over-scheduled children.

It all started last night when Gracie informed me that the eighth grade “Evening of Excellence” is scheduled for Wednesday night at 7. That is in direct conflict with her high school cheerleading clinics.

For those of you that don’t know, cheerleading clinics are held the two or three days leading up to the actual cheerleading tryouts. Outgoing cheerleaders teach the wannabes a dance and a chant that they perform during the tryouts.

Attending every minute of the clinics is absolutely essential to the ultimate “making of” cheerleading. (Or so I’ve been told.) Last year, Caryn had a meltdown when I suggested that she play in a soccer game that took place AFTER one night of the clinics. Why? Well, she needed to go home and practice, of course. That soccer game would obviously cause her to forget every cheerleading move she’d ever known. (Silly, non-cheerleader me!)

On the other hand, the Evening of Excellence is an awards ceremony for the “graduating” eighth graders. They are acknowledged for various achievements. The school administrators give the typical rah rah smart kid awards, recognize the scholar athletes and pat the perfect attendance achievers on the head. The biggest award goes to those students who have managed to maintain a 4.0 GPA for all three years of their middle school career.

As a sixth grader, Gracie attended the Evening of Excellence and made it her goal (or did I make it mine?) to walk across the stage and receive the top honors.

THREE YEARS of late nights of homework, three years of running from extracurricular event to event, three years of tears over projects and tests and assignments, three years of straight As … in every subject!

And we have to miss it … because of cheerleading clinics!

The secretary at the school was completely unsympathetic to our time management dilemma. She’s either never had a daughter or never been teenage girl. “Well, that has been scheduled for a year,” she tells me. Right! That’s why the announcement was made yesterday!

The cheerleading coach was almost as helpful. “Well, she will just have to learn whatever she misses from her friends.” Hmmm… has this coach ever met a teenage girl? A teenage girl that is trying out for cheerleading? And she actually believes that they are going to HELP each other?

Far be it from me to encourage Grace to leave the clinics half an hour early. If, God forbid, she doesn’t make cheerleading, I would never be forgiven. I will have potentially ruined her entire high school career.

And so it is… we will skip the awards presentation and move on to the next big challenge. No sense in resting on our laurels now. Besides, it’s probably a good life lesson.

Marty and Rick and I will have to do our own pat-on-the-back awards ceremony. Because, the truth is, the proud parents are the ones who are missing out the most.

This past weekend had its ups and downs.

The one “up” of the weekend was the Race for the Cure. Even Caryn and Gracie, who were exhausted from their 8th grade trip to Washington DC last week, were happy to get up early and be a part of the excitement, camaraderie and fellowship that swirl around this event.

Susan didn’t participate this year because, on Friday, we found out that her hurt knee actually is hurt. I was hoping that it was just the hypochondriac in her that was causing her to hobble around after her last track practice. No such luck this time. She has a torn meniscus, a stretched ACL and a bruised tibia. Six weeks on crutches and physical therapy. So much for her getting a summer job!

Much to her relief, she also got out of doing yard work on Saturday. According to her, yard work makes her “want to kill (herself).”

So I drug Jack and Grace outside with me and we spent the afternoon trying to clear out the jungle that doubles as our back yard. No fun animals back there, just lots of weeds. Although Jack suggested that we get a panda to help us with the rampant bamboo that some ill-advised gardener planted years ago.

I do think a panda would have been about as much help as Jack was. His weed pulling method includes sitting on the ground amongst the weeds and pulling one approximately every ten minutes. He then gets to his feet, trudges to the yard waste bag and throws away his one uprooted plant. Then he plops back down in the dirt and plays with the trowel for another ten minutes.

He was probably wishing that he was the one that had the pole vaulting accident. Either that or for death.

Unfortunately, a few hours later, he really was wishing for death … right after he broke my iPhone.

I actually cried. So did he…probably because he’s not quite sure who I love more: him or my phone. (I’m going to keep him guessing. Maybe he’ll be more careful with my phone next time.)

Sunday morning I wakened to find telltale signs of my yard work: not a neatly manicured backyard, but poison ivy blisters all over my body. I don’t remember doing naked weed whipping but somehow I managed to get poison ivy on my breasts.

The truth is, my itchy bosom has caused me to do a little soul searching. The day-to-day crises of being a mom (broken phones, teenage angst, minor childhood injuries, the harried life that I lead) are all trivial in comparison to the hardships that the survivors at the Race for the Cure have had to conquer.

I think I’ll take the calamine lotion in my bra. It reminds me how lucky I really am.

As I touched on last week, Jack was not unhappy that his dad and I left him with his grandparents for a full week.

It seems that his grandparents’ views on childrearing are similar to those on fattening a calf for slaughter: Allow them … in fact, encourage them … to eat as much as often as humanly possible. Preferably, have them eat foods that are high in calories and fat and exercise should only consist of making one’s way from the couch to the pantry to grab another bag of chips and a juice box.

That fits right into Jack’s food obsession and his general lack of self-control in the diet department so he was happy as a pig in mud… or, more appropriately, as happy as a pig at the food trough.

I felt my blood pressure rise as he went on and on about the “good, hot breakfasts” that Grandma served him each day: pancakes, sausage and eggs, cinnamon rolls. I guess the yogurt, cereal, wheat toast, and fruit that us mere mortal moms provide are somehow less healthy.

I have a serious dilemma with Jack and his weight problem. How do I, as a mother, cut Jack’s food intake and get him to exercise without damaging his self-esteem? And how do I get the rest of the family on board so that I am not always the bad guy?

I’ve danced around the issue in a thousand different ways. I’ve told Jack that we need to develop some healthier eating and exercise habits. It seems that WE means ME because I’m the only one that is skipping dessert and working out every day.

I made a bet with him about which of us could lose ten pounds the fastest. Of course, my own weight is not going to budge, but I thought that he might get a kick out of the competition. Candy bar and computer games vs. a chance to beat mommy and a pat on the back. Chocolate and virtual bloodbaths win every time.

I tried to get him motivated to run in a 5K with me. He thinks that some of my own race medals are really cool. But it’s hard to train to run 3.1 miles if you only do it every other week when Tyrannarunning Mom is barking “encouragement” at you. And during the off week, you are welcomed with ice cream sandwiches and Family Guy marathons on television.

(I know… I know… an eleven year old should not be watching Family Guy… another blog for another day.)

And finally, I’ve broken down and told Jack that he’s too heavy. But I never use the “F” word.

What do you say when your baby is crying about having man boobs? And how do you get the rest of the family to see that he does have man boobs and he needs our help to fix the problem?

My answer? Force him to exercise more… and do it away from the refrigerator.

Today, I’m going to register Jack for three different football camps and summer swim team. Lucky boy will be at the pool swimming laps almost every summer morning from 7:45 until 9:30. Other days he’ll be doing drills on the football field. And on some days, he’ll get to go to both!

Now, if I can just keep him away from Grandma’s brownies, we might have a plan.

Mother’s Day has never been one of my favorite holidays.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my mother and I have great respect for her and all that she has done for my three siblings and me. But, as a daughter, I’ve always struggled with what to do on Mother’s Day.

My mom just isn’t the warm, touchy feely type. The mushy cards just don’t fit her personality and the funny cards aren’t particularly funny. She has never been to a spa in her life — has never even had her hair done in a salon — and wouldn’t be caught dead in one. Flowers? In her mind, that would be wasteful.

Mother’s Day is one of the most commercially successful occasions in the US. It is the most popular day of the year to dine out and we will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers and $68 million dollars on greeting cards. That’s a lot of money to blow on flowers that will die in a few days and gushy cards that will, at best, get stuck in a box in the basement to be thrown away when we die.

Even Anna Jarvis, the creator of Mother’s Day in the United States, became an opponent of the holiday a few years after its inception. She was arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace while protesting the “Hallmark Holiday” that Mother’s Day had become. (I’ll bet her mother would have been proud.)

And why are 80.5 million people, 81% of the women my age, being honored with such open wallets? Simply because we happen to have the plumbing to do the job?

There are plenty of women out there who shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves a mother, but they will be wearing the “respect me, buy me something, treat me like I’m special” Mother’s Day orchid. In fact, I think those are the ones that wave the Mother’s Day flag most fervently.

What about all of the lovely, giving women who don’t have children, but who make giant social contributions? Where’s their holiday?

I wonder if Mother Teresa felt awkward when her waiter asked if she was a mother and didn’t give her a flower because she wasn’t.

As for me (as a mother), I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. I get a special day? Just for doing my job? That I signed up for?

Cool.

Maybe I’m so cynical about Mother’s Day because the kids are past the age when they made me cute cards and ceramic “knife holders.” (I still use the one Jack gave me five years ago.) The “I love you Mommy” scrawled in their first-grader penmanship on a piece of construction paper really meant something. The flowery (in words and in pictures) $5 Hallmark card that their dad picked up for them when he bought one for his own mother doesn’t tug on my heart strings in quite the same way.

Nonetheless, this afternoon I will be out to a fancy brunch buffet with Rick and the kids. I’ll let them dote on me for that couple of hours because tomorrow it’s back to the laundry and the cleaning and the cooking and the chauffeuring duties.

Happy Mother’s Day to all! You really do deserve it!

One of the only luxuries of having an ex-husband and shared custody is being able to go out of town with no — okay, less — guilt.

But a month ago when I told the kids’ dad Marty that I was going out of town for a week, he told me that he had a business trip planned for the same week.

Normally we are able to cover one another for out of town trips. But I was going to a conference and his travel dates were also inflexible. So we were stuck.

I have long had a love-hate relationship with my ex-in-laws…as anyone with ex-in-laws (or, for that matter, current in-laws) is sure to understand. And I truly have a problem asking for favors from anyone, especially an ex-anyone. But, we had no choice.

I justified it by reminding myself that in my previous normal nuclear family life, Marty’s parents had often taken care of the kids for us. This was a business trip, after all and couldn’t be avoided. What do I have to feel guilty about? They are the grandparents and would LOVE to spend some time with Jack and Grace!

And so it was, Jack and Grace with their grandparents for nearly a full week.

For Grace, I couldn’t have gotten home fast enough.

Grandparents who raised one son don’t quite get the whole teenage girl thing and teenage girls don’t quite get grandparents. The combination can be volatile, especially when you throw an annoying and favored younger brother into the mix.

(Annoying to his sister and favored by his grandparents because… well…he’s nicer and easier to get along with…for now.)

Perhaps I should have included some “how to cope” guidelines along with the two page schedule/emergency contact list that I left for them.

It would have gone something like this:

1. Do not attempt to give advice on hair, makeup or clothing choices. You do not know what you are talking about. They will roll their eyes at you.
2. Do not attempt to discuss drugs or alcohol. They have had these lectures since before they knew that drugs and alcohol existed. They will roll their eyes at you.
3. Do not comment on their music or television programs. You obviously have no taste. They will roll their eyes at you.
4. If you would like them to help around the house, leave them a note on the counter and RUN. They will eventually do the chores (because, believe it or not, they are good kids) and you won’t have to hear them whine.
5. Do not answer your phone after you’ve left the job list. They will manipulate a way out of the chores.
6. Understand that the jobs you give them will not be done the way YOU would have done them. Make them do them again if it bothers you.
7. If you want them to do their homework, turn off the television and take away their cell phones. They will roll their eyes at you but that’s the only way they will get it done before midnight.
8. Do not ever begin a request with “why don’t you” or “do you want to” if you actually expect them to DO what you are asking.
9. Never assume that you are getting the essential details about social plans. You must ask specific, pointed questions… repeatedly… in five different ways before you discover that it’s a boy/girl party and no parents are going to be there.
10. And, finally, do not EVER try to discuss boys and sex with them. They will not roll their eyes at you. They will run screaming from the room and you might not see them for the duration of your babysitting shift.

Fortunately, Grace and her grandparents lived through the week without my stellar advice. As far as Jack is concerned, he was sorry to see me come home. More on that in my next blog.

The last few weeks have been a blur of soccer games, track meets and running, running, running. This time, I mean literally running — not the usual mom-chauffeur running. Well, I did that TOO, but I also actually ran well over 100 miles.

I crammed a 10 week half marathon training program into the last five weeks (not something I recommend doing), leaving me stiff and sore during most of my waking moments — all for a t-shirt and the right to leave the pink 13.1 on the back of my car.

Last week, when I was supposed to be “tapering” (runner’s speak for “slough off and be lazy for a week before race day”), I was at a conference in Dallas. I had no problem with the running less portion of the program, but I forgot that I was also supposed to be careful to not injure myself in some other way.

Hey, 27 seconds on a mechanical bull! The strained hamstring muscle was worth it. I can always run another race. When am I going to ride a bull again?!

The big day was Saturday, my second Capital City Half Marathon, my third half marathon.

It wasn’t pretty, but I made it. The strained muscles, bunions and healing stress fracture were all forgotten with race day adrenaline. 13.1 miles in 2:04:31, a 9:31 pace. It was a far cry from my October 8:38 pace, but I did it.

As for Rick, I think I’ve created a monster. He completed the race in 1:46:24, an 8:08 pace. Not bad for a guy that’s about to turn 50 later this month!

Now that it’s over, I’m kind of wishing the rest of my life would “taper” for a week or so. But I’m a mom, so tapering is not an option. There are soccer games and track meets and doctor appointments. And after a week away from the kids, I realize I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I remember standing awkwardly at the head of the high school lunch room… me, with my bad Dorothy Hamill haircut, thick dark rimmed glasses and high water pants…holding my tray, scanning the room for an open chair… any chair at any table other than the teacher’s table.

And then, a lone cheerleader with her long satin hair and cute uniform breezed past me, giggling and waving to a table that was completely packed. The fourteen people that were sitting there stumbled over themselves to make room her.

It was right then and there that I vowed, if I ever had a daughter, I would make sure… absolutely certain…that she was a cheerleader.

I now have three of them. Be careful what you wish for.

I started prepping Grace almost from birth. I dressed her in OSU cheerleading uniforms on every football Saturday from the time she was three months old until about age 6. As soon as she could walk, I enrolled her in dance and cheerleading classes. I was bound and determined to give her every opportunity to be the popular girl that I wasn’t.

As the years went by separating me more and more from high school, I began to waiver in my steadfast resolve. Gracie went through a bit of a pudgy stage where she looked more like the typical softball player than a cheerleader. The cheerleader moms began to look frighteningly like pageant moms. But most importantly, the cheerleader stereotype was really not what I wanted to hold up as a role model for my daughter.

The damage had already been done. I had trained Gracie well. She grew out of the chubby stage, taught herself to do a back handspring, and managed to make the squad in the seventh grade.

I was surprised, relieved and secretly delighted.

In the eighth grade, she broke her hand a few weeks before tryouts and she was due to have her cast removed the morning of tryouts. Knowing that she couldn’t do the tumbling portion on her weakened hand and not wanting her to lose the points, I postponed the appointment until a week later… just so she could tryout WITH the cast. (I’m not a pageant mom or anything.)

But here we are on the cusp of high school with some difficult choices to be made. Running cross country during football season and cheering for basketball only (like she did in middle school) seems to be an unlikely option.

The cross country coaches, who have been “courting” her, have a fabulous reputation not only for their strong team, but also for teaching some important life lessons in nutrition, exercise and character.

I listened yesterday as one cheer coach told the group of hopeful cheerleaders, “Cheerleading has been my life for a long, long time.” And another described watching her senior cheerleading DVD weekly and crying her entire first year of college. And they wonder why the airhead stereotype persists?

But to Gracie, there is no decision to be made. Because, in a teenagers mind, being a cheerleader is the ticket – a free pass to friends, parties to attend on the weekends, and a seat at the popular kids’ lunch table.

I can’t say that I blame her, but I wish I had told Grace that she was going to be a marathon running nuclear physicist from the time she was born.

Can’t there be a popular marathon running nuclear physicists’ table in the high school lunch room?

I came into the office this morning and opened my email to find this from the office manager:

Subject: Canned soda doesn’t keep well in freezer.

Body: Please don’t put canned sodas in the freezer. For obvious reasons.

Fortunately, the email was not addressed to me only… but it probably should have been. I think I’m the one that did it.

I’m not SURE it was me that left the diet coke in the ice cube holder, but being a mom with experience in the “wasn’t me” syndrome, I immediately set to work cleaning the freezer. It’s now cleaner than it was before the mess. I just wish there would be a brown fizzy explosion in the rest of the fridge so someone would feel obligated to clean that up too.

Of course, even if I wasn’t the one that did it, I would be the only one that would feel that sort of responsibility. No one else feels the need to replace the empty diet coke boxes in the fridge or pick up the paper towels that fell out of the trash can in the bathroom.

Hmmmm…EXACTLY like it is at home.

This weekend, Susan’s chore was to clean the downstairs bathroom. (Note, I said “chore.” That’s singular, not plural. They each only had to do ONE THING all weekend long, so don’t let them tell you how abused they are.) Since the first time that chores were ever assigned, part of cleaning that bathroom was to replace the kitty litter in the cat’s box and to vacuum the area around litter box.

Although she’s done that job about 100 times, somehow, Susan “didn’t know” that cleaning the litter box was part of her job. She grudgingly drug herself away from her texting and her iPod to complete her task, all the while whining about how she didn’t make the mess, why on earth was it her job to take care of it, and how she hated the cat anyway.

Having read the parenting manual, my immediate reply was, “Well, sometimes I don’t really like you very much either, but I still take care of you.”

Of course, since she’s a teenager, she had an answer for that too. Something about how I “chose” to marry her dad and to have children but she didn’t “choose” to have the cat.

I wanted to say, “Well, I’m about to ‘choose’ to ground you for life,” but instead, I laughed at her and told her to take the litter box outside to empty it. (Like she “didn’t know” that too.) Sometimes it’s just better to let things go.

It seems that everyone in the house (not just Susan) seems to believe that the regular, everyday housekeeping chores are someone ELSE’s job. I wonder at what age people begin to take ownership and say to themselves, “Oh, I missed the trash can with that apple core. Maybe *I* should pick it up.”

Unfortunately, based upon the looks of the kitchen at my office, the answer is “NEVER”… not until their mom comes to do it for them.

One of the biggest challenges as a parent is setting rules and enforcing them: not just for a week or two, but over the long haul.

There are the little annoying rules that get broken like: make your bed before you leave for school in the morning. What are you supposed to do when they break that rule? It doesn’t seem like such a serious infraction that it would warrant actual punishment. Besides, I’m not sure when the last time was that I made my own bed.

But then there are the bigger rules (the if-this-then-that rules) that we occasionally set and, unfortunately, have to see through to the end.

Two years ago, Rick and I established a hard fast wanna-get-your-license guideline: no driver’s permit until the report card or interim grades are ALL Bs or above. That doesn’t mean a few As and a few Cs that average out to a 3.0 grade point. That means, no Cs or below at all.

We think this is perfectly acceptable and achievable for all of our kids, regardless of how ridiculously rigid they (and their friends) think it is.

Our rule was established for multiple reasons: A – to encourage Susan to keep her grades up; B – to keep her eligible for a good student discount on our car insurance; and C – to make the clear point that if you aren’t responsible enough to keep your grades up, you’re not responsible enough to drive a car.

I don’t think Susan took us very seriously in the year leading up to her coming of age date (15 ½ last August 27). It probably seemed like it was such a long way off that she didn’t really need to worry about it. Or she might have thought that we would conveniently forget our rule like happens sometimes when you have too many kids and too many rules.

But we didn’t forget and she didn’t get her permit last summer. Nor did she get it in the fall… nor did she get it in the winter. By that time, her friends had all theirs. Worse yet, her friends were getting their licenses.

Her 16th birthday came and went in February. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have to eventually reevaluate our firm stance for fear that she would NEVER drive. I was picturing me driving her to college classes, to her office job downtown, and to buy groceries for her husband and three children.

Caryn who is two years younger began to speculate that perhaps she would be getting her permit before Susan was eligible to get hers.

I think that fear was the catalyst that finally lit a fire under Susan. Last week on the oft-dreaded grade card day, she texted me gleefully exclaiming: “You guys are gonna loveeeeee meeeeeeee!” I texted her back that she had better hurry and get her permit before interims came out.

So she did… the very next day.

And what did I do? What else do moms do? I made a new unreasonable rule! The cell phone is never ever ever to be in the front seat nor can it be in the back seat. The cell phone will only be in the trunk.

She might not like it, but the rest of the drivers on the road will. But I do wonder how I’m going to enforce this one.