Bad Mom

So, once again, my son has lost his cell phone. I got a call from a lady saying that she had found it, and that the next time I contact him, he should call her. But, how do I contact him?

I tried e-mail, but he rarely checks it. Besides, by the time he gets around to checking it, my e-mail will no doubt be way down the list, and he'll not see it. So, I decided for a while to send an e-mail once day, just to keep it up at the top of the e-mail list in his inbox.

It grew boring. So I decided to put such titles as "Day One: the Missing Cell Phone," "Day Two: The Mystery of Derek's Cell Phone--Revealed!" in the subject header, just to bring some attention to the e-mail. No dice, since when I called, I just got voice mail; I can assume from this that he still hasn't retrieved his cell phone.

I realized then, that I was thinking "old-school." His generation doesn't really think in terms of e-mail. That's for late boomer/gen xers. No, his generation thinks in terms of cell phones and text messages (which of course he can't get, since he's missing his cell) and blogs, like Blogger, MySpace, or Facebook.

He has both a MySpace and Facebook site. Now, I suspect it's not very cool to have one's mom post a comment on your MySpace comments section, especially if you're a guy. It would be embarrassing. However, what is a mother to do, especially if he doesn't look at his e-mail?

Risk embarrassing my son and get his cell phone to him, or have him go without, so that he'll miss phone calls from friends and family, be unable to contact professors, call the doctor (he's been ill recently, so...), and so on?

I thought to myself, I am SO all over that embarrassment route. After all, I've embarrassed him on and off most of his life. I wouldn't be a real parent if I didn't embarrass him at one point or another.

So I posted a comment on his MySpace page: "Your cell phone has been found. Check your e-mail. --Mom."

Such a contrast to the rest of his MySpace page. Indeedy.

He will probably not want to talk to me the rest of this semester if he sees that. Possibly the rest of the year.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I'm a Bad Mom. :-)

Yarn, more yarn

The more I wrangle with my writing, the more I spin yarn. This is actually a good thing. If I didn't spin yarn, I would have writer's block worse than I do already. Spinning yarn is a soothing activity, and keeps the highly critical part of myself subdued, if not silent. Whenever I get stuck, I spin yarn, and within 15 minutes, I know what I need to write or revise.

However. This does mean that I also knit all of the yarn that I make. It builds up. My office is 1/3 desk and writing materials, 1/3 books and research materials, and 1/3 yarn. And filling up rapidly to the point where the yarn is beginning to crowd out the rest of my stuff.

So, I've resorted to selling the yarn. I did begin selling them at eBay, but now I've switched to Etsy, a web site at which artisans, artists, and craftspeople can sell their handmade and homemade goods. It's less of a busy-looking place, and has very fun ways to search through different artists' stores.

As a result, the more yarn (as in, yardage) I have up there to sell, the more snags I've hit in my writing.

(sigh)

Good heavens

The Alien Child is no longer a child today!

Well, he hasn't been legally a child for quite a while, at least since he was 18. But now he's 20! No longer a teenager!

How am I do deal with that? It makes me no longer the mother of a teen, but of a 20-something!

It means I am creeping--no, have definitely stepped--into middle age. Oh, I could fool myself that I was not quite there for a while. I had a teenager, after all, and that meant he was not really, truly adult. But now my offspring is now an adult. What does that make me? I can't deny it any longer...I am truly middle aged.

Well...he isn't out of college yet. That's something. I can still tell myself, "oh, he's not quite there yet. After all, he's in school."

Having a son or daughter in school means you can still maintain some illusion of youthfulness, of not-quite-middle-ageness.

Of course, no matter how old he is, I will still see him as my child. My own mother, after all, still does the same about my brothers and me. I haven't taken a picture of the Alien Child now that he's 20. However, I will, later. For now, I'll post a few of him through the years.