Suburban Kamikaze

Please accept this adorable kitten as a token of my regret

The sixth-grader and her friend sneak up on me just as I am putting the finishing touches on an e-mail reply that goes like this:

Expletive deleted.

I wasn't going to send it. Or maybe I was. I hadn't decided.

An area writers' group had sent out an invitation to meet for coffee. The children's book author couldn't make it.

"Thanks for the offer," the author wrote, "but I am much too busy for my own good!! I'm trying to meet a deadline on my third book!! Can you believe it? It's crazy how successful I am!  Have fun at your little coffee gathering and I hope you all inspire one another!!" 

Okay, so I have added the exclamation marks. Also the stuff in italics. This is what is known in writers' circles as literary license. Or, informally, as being a bitch. For which bitterness, inspired by having my resumé ignored by editors young enough to have kittens on their Facebook pages, deserves much of the credit.  Not that there is anything wrong with kittens!!! OMG they're so CUTE!!

Anyway, my point is, being a bitch is not the kind of thing you are supposed to pass on to your children. Especially when they have so much more to teach us. The girls decide they will write their own reply. "I didn't care for any of your other books," it begins.

"Girls," I say, astonished at how unkittenlike they are. "I was only joking. The point of a writers' group is to celebrate each other's success. The correct response is "congratulations!!!"  Perhaps with a photo of a kitten attached.

Study: 30 percent of fall leaves end up in house

Pop-Tart label to be serialized under new HarperCollins imprint

Tinkerbelle is so last week

They grow up so fast. One day you are hitting the "buy now" icon for a $29.99 Tinkerbelle costume and the next thing you know, they would not be caught dead in a Tinkerbelle costume at any price.

It seems like only yesterday, but in fact it was almost three weeks ago.

She gave me the news on Halloween morning. No one was dressing up this year.  Not even the sixth graders who insisted on matching shoes and hair accessories.

She's on to us

We're going to need a new secret handshake.  All new passwords. 

The little ones? They're getting suspicious.

I tuck the girl into bed a little earlier than usual. "You're getting sick," I tell her. "You need extra sleep."

Her eyes are glazed, her cheeks are pink and she manages to stop coughing only long enough to hiss her accusation: "You lie," she says. "That's just what grown-ups say when they want to be left alone."

Was it too much C-SPAN or was she on to us?

"You're right," I say. "Sleep is the last thing you need. You should be outside picking up leaves."  My sarcasm doesn't fool her. She watches me closely as I leave the room. I can't risk my usual bedtime dance outside the door.  

The next morning brings fever, headache, an unsettled stomach. She throws up, falls back asleep, wakes up hungry. I give her toast, 7-Up, oatmeal. She wants chocolate chip cookies and milk. "No," I say. "You can't have chocolate or milk when you have a sick stomach."

"You lie," she says again. "You just don't want me to have any cookies."

Later, as I eat the last of the cookies that will bolster my immune system and guarantee me a lifetime of superior health, I begin to worry. 

We've been lying to the children for so long, about so many things. Pretty much everything, really. Had we gotten careless somewhere along the line? Or was it just the ibuprofen talking?

How much does she know?

Two roads diverged in a wood but only one of them had color-coded trail markers. Shouldn't that have made all the difference?

We have walked for miles through the yellow wood following a trail we expect to loop back to its starting point but which deposits us beside a highway instead.

This does not surprise me. This is the sort of thing that comes of venturing into the forest without a plan, a map, a first-aid kit or a 20-pound bag of rice.

Considering the list of all possible outcomes, having to retrace our hike to get back to the car is about the best we could hope for.

I do not say I told you so.  Out loud.

Our scoutmaster does not put much stock in things like "plans," "maps" or bags of rice. He relies on manly intuition and his sense that things rarely go wrong, and when they do, are rarely fatal.

This is known as the I haven't killed anyone yet school of risk assessment.   

And so we set out for a day of exploring the woods with little more than the scoutmaster's assumptions about where the trail will lead. We are accompanied by two sixth grade girls who alternate between running too far ahead and lagging too far behind. They laugh, they hide, they send text messages back to civilization.

The trail winds through thick woods in autumn colors and is crisscrossed by horse paths. A couple of deer amble past. It is a nice walk. But after a few miles we pick up our pace, eager to reach a Starbucks what we believe is the end of our hike. Except it's a highway. A forest preserve worker at the nature center across the road gives us a map and tells us to head back the way we came.

We head back the way we came. I'll be honest; it's not as pretty on the way back.  There are an awful lot of dead leaves. Where did all this horse poop come from? I make a prediction: "At some point, the scoutmaster is going to announce that he has discovered a shortcut," I tell the girls. "We must not, under any circumstances, take the shortcut."

The girls look at me but all they hear is shortcut. 

"Yay!" they say. "A shorcut!"

We are not even 20 minutes back into the wild when the scoutmaster pulls out the map and brings us to a halt at a fork in the trail.  An unmarked path branches to our left.

"I think this will take us back to the parking lot," he says. "We won't have to go all the way around."

"Yay!" sing the girls. "A shortcut!"

"No," I say. "There are no trail markers." But no one can hear me. They are already skipping down the unmarked path.

There is nothing to do but follow. I know how this is going to end. "It is going to be a long walk back," I say. The scoutmaster knows too. "Trust me," he says. Again? I think. 

But we are both wrong about what we will find at the end of the trail. Because the right answer, as it turns out, is a bride on a Harley.  Also, the parking lot.  

Ad hoc like an Egyptian

Only one week left till Halloween

And we're ready to head out in fairy green

We bought accessories at Claire's (oh way oh)

Wings, toe polish, even fairy hair...

It's not like us to be prepared so early.  But the sixth-grader settled on her costume early this year, abandoning the Goth trend for the shimmering green optimism of a storybook fairy. 

We buy a costume online, find shiny green shoes to match and head to Claire's for glitter-covered accessories.  The 14-year-old will panhandle for candy as himself.  No purchase required.

Buy candy. Carve pumpkins. Pour the wine.  Done.

I unpack the skeleton hand goblets and offer a toast to my perfectly-organized self.

This is what is known as tempting the Fates.

The Fates, as anyone familiar with Greek mythology knows, are the social studies, language arts and science teachers whose creative whims control the lives of mortal parents from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Next Thursday, the Fates have decreed, will be  "Dress Like an Egyptian Day."

Lucky for us, the Egyptian god Ak-tut-something is pretty much a ringer for Tinkerbelle.

Okay, that is not true and the girl knows it. We have absolutely nothing useful for depicting anything remotely Egyptian.  

We are back at the costume store to check out our options. 

Don't know exactly what we're looking for -

But we've only got a few days more (oh way oh)

Shop like an Egyptian...

We reject Cleopatra. Too expensive, I say. Too obvious, says the girl. Duh.

As a recovering Goth, she likes the look of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead.  We are not going to find Anubis here.  But a $4.99 Batman mask seems like a good start. 

Like the ancient Egyptians, we are resourceful.

All we have to do is build a cardboard snout, lengthen the ears, add the side flaps, papier maché the entire thing and paint it black and gold. Then we will fashion a tunic from an old bed sheet. We will fashion Egyptian looking accessories from beads and strips of cardboard. 

Then we dance.

Photos: Top right, Anubis mask from fantasyguilde, $275; bottom right, we are halfway there...

It's not the economy so much as the the pull-up bar

You'd be amazed at what a body can accomplish on a diet of pizza and frappuccinos.

The 14-year-old, whose workout regimen until recently was fours hours a day of texting and television, is suddenly sporting six-pack abs and serious looking biceps. Overnight, practically, our skinny little boy has grown a man's body.

Which is useful for carrying in groceries and hauling up boxes of Halloween decorations from the basement.

But it is, I fear, the beginning of the end for another Halloween tradition in our family: the October mortgage payment. 

Since they were no bigger than pumpkins themselves, we have always allowed them to bring home the biggest pumpkin they could lift. It was adorable, watching them as toddlers, straining under the weight of an affordable seasonal squash.

When they got a little bigger, we changed the rules to require that they also be able to carry it off the patch. Kindergartners are stronger than they look. It was getting expensive.

Still. You could budget for it.

We never imagined they would beginning training for it. 

Earlier this year, the boy, whose previous interest in sports amounted to a couple of seasons of Little League and a high-scoring streak of iPod bowling, joined the swim team. His interest in food grew to include more than mashed potatoes. Next came the pull-up bar in his room.  Now we are in serious trouble. Even the girl has been doing push-ups. 

But I will treasure the receipts forever

It seems like only yesterday he was learning to tie a tie for the very first time.   

But in fact, it was about three months ago and that tie? So last week.  So boys department. This time we are headed to menswear. The grown up stuff. At grown up prices.

But it's got to be perfect. This isn't some middle school orchestra event we are preparing for. This is the high school homecoming dance.  You only do this once right?  Or at least no more than once a year for the next four years. Not counting college.

He's got a date. I've got a credit card and all the fashion know-how my Esquire subscription can impart. Boy, Esquire is almost friendly as we prowl the aisles, trying on sport coats, pairing ties with dress shirts.  He favors a black jacket, red shirt combination.  Gangsterish, I tell him. "Cool," he says, reaching for a fedora to complete the look. "No," I say. "Not cool."

We settle on a burgundy shirt and a dotted tie. He has black pants at home, so the bill comes to only about a week's groceries.  When we get home, we discover last year's pants don't fit and his date will be wearing pink. The burgundy shirt and tie combination is suddenly all wrong, we are back in menswear and we realize we need a belt as well. I have enough receipts in my purse to kindle a reasonably-sized fire. But the memories - priceless.

I mean, just look at him:

 

Okay, this is actually someone else's son. When I told my son I wanted to take a picture, he reacted as if I had asked him to save me a dance. Which killed me, because he looked so handsome and grown up in the grocery money clothes. 

At least I imagine he did. He snuck out to a friend's house where they were all meeting up before the dance to take pictures.  For their Facebook pages. 

Here is the picture I got:

They've obviously added some new features since my cell phone came out

One third of Chicago residents prefer their cell phones to sex

Sadly, nobody thought to ask them which cell phones they were using.