Suburban Kamikaze

Friday Morning Freakout with bonus chill pill

SCENE: Friday morning school commute with the world's most expensive middle schooler and her mother, who is addressing her daughter, and later, talking to herself; a distinction we draw here solely for dramatic context and not because there is any actual difference. 

MOTHER: You have got to be kidding. You took four brand-new blank CDs to use as car wheels on a shoebox car for a school assignment?

Do we not have dozens of scratched, abandoned, unused, forgotten and one-use only CDs floating around the house, gathering dust and taking up space under the beds, between the couch cushions and at the bottom of backpacks? Do you have any idea how much those cost?

When you get home from school today, I want you to take a close look at your surroundings. Pull up a couch cushion or two, peek under the furniture. Write down the number of cash piles you come across. Now write down the number of old CDs.

What conclusions can you draw from this exercise?

Speaking of exercises, what kind of eighth grade school assignment requires you to make a shoebox car anyway? What are they even teaching?

BONUS PARENTING PERSPECTIVE:  Take a breath. Surrender. You are freaking out over one cubic centimeter of chilled air hanging just over the colder air hovering above the space where the tip of the iceberg begins. Chill-ax. 

from the world's most expensive archives: It's not the economy so much as the pull-up bar

Nation's most ambitious teenager plots his summer

I don't know what kind of teenagers you are familiar with, but the 14-17 year-olds who live in my house would need a really long nap before they could even begin to contemplate taking on a task like making a list.

"OMG!" they would say. "How are we supposed to make a list when the paper is nowhere near the couch? Why don't you just ask us to go cut down a tree and make our own paper?  I guess Seasons One through 17 of the Vampire Diaries and/or South Park will just watch themselves?"   

On and on it would go, until every last possible objection that could be made without rising from the couch or changing the channel had been exhausted.     

So when the photographic dispatch below arrived via our Atlanta correspondent, we could not disguise our envy.

How had she managed to inspire the kind of initiative that led her 15-year-old son to create a summer action plan? Pop-Tarts? Cash? Breast milk? Was it French parenting? Tiger parenting? Some combination of French parenting and Pop-Tarts?  

Photo: Atlanta teen's Summer Action Plan.

from the archives of teen ambition: Bonnie and Clyde, PTA members

The Men are from Mars two-week bikini season shape-up

I am at a gathering of the Suburban Women's Wine Drinking Association when I am asked for an advisory opinion in a case of Spousal Stupidity.

It is a straightforward case of Wrong Answer, Douchebag but with a particularly douchey touch.

A woman had complained to her husband of unexplained moodiness. His diagnosis:  "It's because you're fat and the pool is opening next week."

Some of the women are familiar with my eventually bestselling relationship manual, "Men are From Mars but That's No Excuse" and believe the situation calls for a grownup time-out.     

"No sex for two weeks, right?" they ask me. But you can tell by their faces that no one thinks this is really going to drive the point home. And neither do I.

"No," I say. "Two weeks of sex with someone else."

Which, in a happy coincidence, is also a great way to get in shape for bikini season.

You're welcome. And you look marvelous.

-SK

Photo: Men are from Mars, but can be found almost anywhere.

from the marriage archives: The Ring of Truth and other so-called tales of Domestic Bliss

This just in from the middle school fashion desk:

For when you have nothing but time on your hands. 

from the middle school fashion archives: Is that what you're wearing?

A tall drink of Pink

Christian Grey didn't always know exactly what he wanted:

"I’m 22, set to graduate in three weeks and I still haven’t narrowed down a career choice. It was probably a mistake to major in Women’s Studies, but that is troubled water under the bridge to nowhere at this point."

 -Click HERE to read more Fifty Shades of Pink: a parody of submission

To read Part One, go HERE

Occupy the Couch: A Top 10 Complaint List

The teenagers are manning the barricades in our house this week. Can you blame them? So much is wrong in the world. Let's just start with the snack situation and go from there:    

1. There are never enough snacks in the house. And let's be clear about this: "Salad is not a a snack." Ditto for olives.

2. There is Too Much Singing: The 14-year old must be made to stop singing. It is driving her brother crazy.

3. No one should have to stop singing. He can just go to another room.

4. The parenting is incompetent. What kind of a mother can't even make a 14-year-old girl stop singing? Or tells a 14-year-old girl to stop singing? Either way, it is cause for complaint.

5. Shipping and handling should not count as part of an Internet shopping spending limit.

6. We are tired of being blamed for things we don't admit doing.

7. There are never enough clean towels. Even counting the ones from the guest bathroom.

8. We should be allowed to use the towels in the guest bathroom. 

9. Stop blaming us for taking towels from the guest bathroom. We have no idea how they ended up on the floor of our rooms.

10. We are sick and tired of all of the rules we don't even follow.

Photo: A spokeswoman for the group plots her next super-cute dress purchase and chafes under unreasonable spending limits. "Can you just let me live for once?" 

"P" we know is Porter

So there I was, last Christmas, presenting Mr. Kamikaze with the usual pile of thoughtless socks and underwear, when in walks the Executive Suburbanite with only the most amazing and thoughtful gift in the entire world.

It was a first edition of All the President's Men, and Mr. Kamikaze looked at it the way The New York Times national editor must have looked after somebody handed him the Pentagon Papers. Mr. Kamikaze loves that book the way Ben Bradlee loved sticking it to The New York Times.

"Look," I said more than once over the holidays, "these are exactly the kind of socks you wanted." But I knew I'd been upstaged, even accounting for the years of Watergate-themed sex games.

So when I saw an opportunity to poach a little bit of the credit, I went for it. Bob Woodward was scheduled to speak in the Chicago area and I was determined to get him to sign Mr. Kamikaze's book.

It wasn't going to be easy. It was a standing-room only crowd and we only just managed to wedge ourselves in at the back. But I was not going to be denied my Christmas redemption. I left Mr. K in the back and made my way to the front of the room, inch by inch, over the course of two hours.

It is not true, however, that I crawled on my hands and knees or snaked my way through the air vents. 

I caught up with the most famous journalist in America as he was leaving the stage. When I explained to him why it was his fault that I could not afford to send my kids to college, he graciously accepted responsibility for our finances and signed the book.

It was the least he could do.  

Photo: Bob Woodward's left cheek is visible at center. Journalism triumph, maybe, but definitely a photojournalism fail. 

from the archives: Get out your notebook, there's more.

Fifty Shades of Pink: a parody of submission

It's the parody of the book that has everybody "talking."     

Anastasia Steele is the mega-successful CEO who longs to play the wilting damsel to a hard-bodied guy who drinks blood, runs with the wolves, or at the very least harbors a dark and violent secret.

As luck and market capitalization would have it, Anastasia is in a position to get exactly what she wants, in whatever color she wants it.

In the process, 22-year-old college student Christian Grey will discover the limits of what a man can endure for love.

It's an erotic tale of a man's contractual odyssey at the hands of a woman whose fantasies are steeped and brewed in the conventions of popular romance, where the women are as fragile as teacups, the men are brooding and possessive - and everyone has amazing hair.  

Click here to read an excerpt. Do it now, Anastasia.

So then Bossy's daughter was all like...

If you have served any time at all as sidekick to a teenage girl, you will like, totally, relate to this perfectly captured conversational highlight reel from one of my all-time favorite bloggers.

Photo: One of my all-time favorite teen girl conversationalists and creator of the "Never-ending Anecdote" series.

from the girltalk archives: Veruca Salt, Birthday Girl

from the Bossy archives: Bossy: The Whole Thing was a Haldeman Operation

Coming attractions...

A parody of the book that has everybody "talking" 

Fifty Shades of Pink

Anastasia Steele is the mega-successful CEO who longs to play the wilting damsel to a hard-bodied guy who drinks blood, runs with the wolves, or at the very least harbors a dark and violent secret.

As luck and market capitalization would have it, Anastasia is in a position to get exactly what she wants, in whatever color she wants it. 

In the process, 22-year-old college student Christian Grey will discover the limits of what a man can endure for love.

It's an erotic tale of a man's contractual odyssey at the hands of a woman whose fantasies are steeped and brewed in the conventions of popular romance, where the women are as fragile as teacups, the men are brooding and possessive - and everyone has amazing hair.  

Want to read an excerpt before it has been bound, blindfolded and slapped into submission? Beg for it. Or just ask me nicely. Repeatedly. 

When the number of lashes comments plus "likes" reaches - you guessed it - 49, I will untie you post an excerpt.  -SK

99 Reasons to Drink in the Suburbs #19: for the children

I wait until Mother's Day morning to tell the children that Mother's Day was yesterday.  

That way they know they have already disappointed me and we can just move on without all the compulsory vacuuming and fake appreciation. And vice versa. 

Not that we don't appreciate it. 

But it's not really necessary. When you are the mother of two teenagers, every day is like Mother's Day.

Exactly like Mother's Day:  They want money, they complain about the food, they have last minute school assignments that require your assistance.

They tell you to chill-ax.

The only difference is that on Mother's Day you can try to make them feel bad about it.  

Or you can just chill-ax.  Whatever you do, don't send them out to buy you "a bottle."

Unless you have a younger child and a liquor store within bicycle range, that is a job for daddy. Teenagers have terrible taste in liquor and they never bring back the change.

Happy Mother's Day. -SK 

Photo, courtesy of our Atlanta correspondent, Mary.

from the Something about Mary archives: Trash talk from a woman wearing an apron