Crouching Tiger, Hidden Psycho

Many of you have probably heard about "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" and author Amy Chua, the uber-competitive mom who says in her Wall Street Journal article, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" that Chinese mothers are superior because they A) don't care about the kid's self-esteem, B) believe their kids owe them everything, and C) Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. This could explain the lack of a "Chinese Mothers" section in the Hallmark Mother's Day card department.

Amy is a law professor at Yale University, and the author of a couple of books, which for ONCE does not impress me. She is seemingly hell-bent on breaking her children and spending one day of the week on the therapist's couch for the rest of her life.  Her newest book, "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" is a diatribe about how horrible "Western" parents are for caring about our children's "happiness", and how the only way to "win the prize" of successful children is to choose their extra-curricular activities and force them to practice instruments for hours on end while withholding water and bathroom breaks if necessary.

Subtitled, "How to Lose Friends and Terrify Minors."

There is also this little gem (and I quote):  "Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight."  Because as we all know, A) daughters totally respond to their parents calling them fatty, and B) there are no fat Chinese kids.

PERSONAL MESSAGE TO AMY CHUA: 
YOU WIN. PLEASE STOP.  I'M PURPOSELY MAKING MY CHILDREN SLACKERS SO YOURS CAN SUCCEED.  I'M BEGGING YOU, STEP DOWN! 

Can I give your girls a hug and take them to Dairy Queen?

Generally, I think it's wrong to judge mothers.  Just because something is right to you doesn't mean it's right for everyone else.  Kids are different, families are different, circumstances are different.  Children of working moms are just as happy (or dysfunctional) as children of at-home moms.  Some sugar is okay, but try not to make the main course of every meal a Ding-Dong.  It's okay if you can't eat off the floor, because who would?  Even though I'm taken aback by Amy's mothering methods, my real problem with her is her total narcissism and smug assertion that she is the best mom in the world and all of the "Western" moms are soft losers whose kids won't be FIRST at everything or suffer the consequences.  So I guess what I want to say to Amy is, "Suck it, bitch."

Photo taken 5 minutes after Amy Chua

removed my left kidney with her

bare hand and ate it.

However, Chua and I have quite a bit in common.

FACT:  One of Amy's daughters was so upset about being essentially tethered to the piano until she learned a piece that she actually chewed on the piano.  After my kids' last piano lesson, they told me their teacher took out a block of sharp cheddar, peeled the wax off, and started gnawing on it during their lesson, and it had teeth marks in it where it had been gnawed before.  Amy's daughter has played Carnegie Hall; my children can play "The First Noel".

FACT:  Amy called her daughter "garbage" after said daughter purportedly disrespected her.  My minivan is full of garbage after we leave McDonalds, where I get my children Happy Meals.  I literally buy their happiness.

FACT:  Amy's children have never been "allowed" to be less than #1 in their class, with the exception of gym and drama.  My children have never been allowed to be #1 in their class in gym, but sadly, they seem to headline the drama department.  How to stomp out that success in a subject not of my choosing!!!!?  No more Hamlet, you theatrical loser!

FACT:  Amy revels in her Chinese heritage, and uses this heritage to intimidate her children.  I am part German, and when stressed, I find nothing more effective than screaming at my children in German, because they know that Hitler was evil and insane.  "Get in the van!  SCHNELL!!! SCHNELL!!"  "Achtung!  Ve are late for dance!" and then when they silently sob in their car seats I yell, "Stoppen sie sobbich, du bitte bratzen!"  (Since they are just children, and therefore stupid and malleable, they don't have to know I don't actually sprechen sie Deutsch, I can just make it up and tell them HOW IT IS, damn it. Strike one for German Mother Superiority!!)

So thank you, Amy.  You have given me the gift that I never thought I would receive. 
You made me feel like a Good Mother. 
Drinks are on the house.

Stay in Minneapolis, Mr. Icicle

Freaking Iowa winters.
I've been all excited because a friend of mine who lives about an hour away by interstate invited my family over for dinner Monday.  I'm leaving work a touch early, snagging the chitlins, and barrelling the swagga wagon/rolling dumpster down I-80 to see said friend and his loverly family and another sweet friend and her loverly family.  However, I'm geeking out about it a bit because a friend of said friend (are you still following me) has been reading the blog for a bit, and he is traveling through this Iowa town for the night with HIS people and stopping at said friend's house, and said friend thought it would be a great opportunity for blog reader to meet blog writer.  It's always fun to meet someone who reads the blog ("oh that one about cutting off your skin tag was fun!" Oh yeah. I wrote about that. And posted it. Yay, me.) but this guy happens to be a writer in LA, and I want to pick his brain apart and eat it with fava beans and a nice chianti.

(CLICK.  That was the sound of him un-following the blog. And possibly contacting the authorities.)

And I also want to see said friend and sweet friend and their respective families.  And eat their pasta.  And guess what?  I just looked up weather.com, and there is an effing ICE STORM coming here tomorrow. 

Of course there is.

When I was 22, I drove from Denver to Ames straight through during a huge blizzard/ice storm wearing cutoff jean shorts and drinking 300 ounces of Mountain Dew and listening to "Radar Love" on the radio and driving my Chevette in the ditch on I-35 to Ames at 3 a.m. and having two college boys from St. Olaf push me out of the ditch so I could drive on to Ames to see Current Husband when he was still Current Boyfriend.  And that was NO BIG DEAL.  Because I was 22, stupid, and in love.

Now I'm 41, a mother, and am experiencing varicose veins, bad circulation, acid reflux, waning eyesight and hearing, and prone to wearing flannel and wool socks and curling into a ball on the couch when an ice storm hits.  I don't even really like to drive more than 2 hours at a time when it's 80 and sunny outside, because like a caterpillar in the cocoon, I am becoming my mother.

But they will have pasta and wine.
Strong motivation, that.

(And the people.  Of course I want to see the people.)

(But I bet the food will be delicious.)

So Mr. White Christmas/Mr. Icicle/Mr. Snow/Mr. 30 Below?  Stay in Minneapolis or Fargo, where you belong.  I got me some pasta to eat and a professional writer to assault.

Taking My Teen to a Sex Den

Last weekend, I took Oldest Daughter to a Sex Den.

Actually, I took her to two of them. They were on fire, red-hot, hunka-burning-love, bulge-in-the-jeans-in-your-face places, and to my great joy, OD was stone cold, like an ice cream cone next to a volcanic fajita pan. Where are these lusty locales? In the mall, just two doors down from each other. We shopped in Hollister and Abercrombie and Fitch.

"Steve leaned against the post and 

watched his children play on the playset 

while planning his and Jenny's 

15-year-anniversary celebration."

Any parent who has walked past either of these stores knows what I'm talking about. They are Temptation personified. They post gargantuan, blown up pictures of washboard abs and bulging jeans, pump their lusty, eat-the-ripened-fruit perfumes out of the doors, and crank their roll-on-the-beach-in-the-sand-with-us-and-hope-you-don't-get-knocked-up tunes at the highest decibels.

They hire people who look like models - anyone with a BMI over 20 or in need of Proactiv need not apply.  There is always a model employee folding and re-folding t-shirts by the front entrance, which looks like a surf shack people sneak into after a few beers to make out, and they greet you.  If you are over 22 and come in alone, they say, "Welcome to Hollister, let me know if I can help you" and they smile at you like "I'm sorry you got old and can't wear our clothes."  If you are under 22 they smile and say, "Hey, what's up?  Welcome to Hollister!  Holla if you need something!" and if you are the cash cow adult accompanying the person under 22 you don't exist until you approach the register.  There, they await your debit card and look at you with a kind expression that says, "You must hate being old and missing all of this fun!"  And then they hand your purchase to you in a bag with naked men on it.

"Beth asked if he took the dresser out 

to the garbage for Bulky Item Day, 

and he said 'Yes, but it kinked my neck' 

and she said 'well we can't afford 

the co-pay this month, 

let me try to adjust it for you'."

A couple of years ago, OD would actually avert her eyes if we were to walk past either of these stores, or Victoria's Secret.  She physically couldn't bring herself to look at them, because they always have the 10-foot-tall black and white artsy photos of naked college kids.  I asked her once, "Why do you put your hand in front of your eyes?" and she said, "Because the pictures are gross and those stores are for older kids", NOT adults, mind you, but as though she somehow wasn't ALLOWED to look at the stores until she reached middle school or had the sex education day films.  I thought "Well this is ridiculous - she's seen Current Husband and I walk around the house half-dressed!" and then realized "OH.  No one looks at us and thinks 'I'd like to tap that'." Because when we are half-dressed, we are usually saying things like, "Mother of Pearl my back hurts, would someone rub it?" or "Is it just me or are my varicose veins actually BIGGER?"

"Would you feel this mole on my back?  

Does it seem cancerous?  My elbow hurts 

when you bend it like that, do you think 

I have arthritis?  I can hear your knees 

cracking.  Put my tank top down, 

you can see my stretch marks! 
And don't even TRY to grab my tits, 
the kids might walk in!"

Now when I take OD into these stores, she can manage to walk in, but she doesn't dwell on the naked pictures.  She doesn't ogle the male model employees...that I notice.  She actually looks at the clothes and tries to figure out which colors will go best with what she already owns.  She looks at prices and only buys a few things that are on sale, as we make her use her own money at these places so she can appreciate how expensive sex advertising can be.  And she doesn't buy into the "wouldn't this t-shirt look great hiked up to your bra?" or "these jeans are meant to be worn down to the coin slot" philosophy.

"Jeremy looked toward the shed and thought, 

'Damn all this rain, this yard is going 

to be impossible to mow' and regretted the 

Scots Turf Builder he had applied only 

the week prior.  'I swear to God the next 

place we buy is a condo'. "

Abercrombie and Hollister are hot for her, but for now?  She's so cold.  We've always said she can't date until high school, and she is starting eighth grade in the fall.  Lately, her popular question has been "Does high school start the summer between eighth and ninth grade, or after ninth grade actually starts?"  I'm hoping Siberia sticks around for a while, but I'm realistic enough to know a thaw is coming. 

It's Resolution Month! Resolution #2

Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship if feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As a friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship if feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
-Billy Shakespeare, "Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind" from As You Like It

Oh Billy, Billy, Billy. I understand that the sting of lost friendship hurts, and is perhaps less preferable to being cold, but DAMN, Bill, it's been zero degrees or less for days and I'm starting to lose feeling in my extremities. Let thy friends break up with me, I want to keep my toes! It must not have been THAT cold in England around 1600 or you would feel me, Bard brother.

I'm used to the cold - this is my 41st Midwestern winter - but it seems like the temperature usually ebbs and flows. Extreme cold one day, a balmy 30 degrees the next. Since around Dec. 20 our weather options are:

• Extreme cold.
• Extreme cold with snow.
• Extreme cold with ice.
• Extreme cold with snow, ice, cold and wind.

It's been so cold, this is how I look (and yes, I've been this bitchy about it):
This is how my superpet George, the dog/horse lounges around:

And Oldest Daughter has been appalled, because these trusty Borns, which were chewed by the dog/horse as a puppy, are my warm and sturdy shoes:

Every morning, if you listen closely, you can hear OD silently praying the van doesn't break down in front of the middle school so I would have to - GASP! - get out of the car in front of a herd of middle schoolers. And then I would break dance. And she knows it. But these shoes are all broken in! And they have the added bonus of being able to get salt and snow on them and I don't care! I can't give them up! I can't! I won't!

By the time March rolls around and it's 35 degrees and rainy it will seem like paradise. But I don't have time to wait for March, so my next resolution is to get the hell out of here.

RESOLUTION #2: Move to a warmer climate.

I'm thinking Finland, Norway, Antarctica, or North Dakota. Anywhere that holds a temp above 32 for sustained periods of time. Where I don't have to wear a bra to bed for fear of cutting holes in the front of my t-shirts. Where a sweater is not considered a "foundation garment". Where my toes stay pink and I can feel them. Where I don't keep drinking coffee, even if I am guppy-puking acid into my mouth, because it is the warmest thing I have. I am going to realtor.com. Right after my computer un-freezes. And then thy friends can visit to thaweth out.

And then Iowa? You will have lost another Heigh-ho.