Category: Uncategorized

meet me at luke’s diner in stars hollow on wednesday

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Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel aka Lorelai and Rory Gilmore in an autumn scene from Gilmore Girls

 

It’s like a TV miracle. One of my all-time favorite shows, Gilmore Girls, which died years ago, has been resurrected! Reborn via streaming services (namely Netflix), the mother-dauther/quirky-small-town dramedy brought in a huge following post mortem and will soon return to a TV near you. I’m giddy with excitement. Another reason to live another day! And to get a taste of what rubbing elbows with Lorelai and Rory, and Luke and Jess is like, small coffeeshops all over America are transforming themselves into Luke’s Diner this Wednesday, offering free java to customers. Can life get any better?

I was a Gilmore fan from the beginning, watching every season on the WB and then the CW, when the rest of the family and the majority of U.S. residents tuned in weekly to see who would become the first American Idol. I never saw a minute of season one of AI, never saw how Kelly Clarkson reigned over her competition, because I was too engrossed in the saga of a bunch of kooks in wacky, fictional Stars Hollow, Connecticut. What I loved about Gilmore Girls was not just its witty banter, and there was a lot of that, but its warmth. It was like checking in on your friends, cozying up to them in their living rooms (or the local diner), and catching up on the latest. I’m a huge fan of small towns and wished I could transport myself to this one, especially when life got tough.

On November 25, 2016, thanks to Netflix, we fans will get to do what fans of TV shows of the past have rarely been  able to do: We will get to see what has become of our favorite characters many years after the show went off the air after seven seasons. In four ninety-minute installments spread over the year and coordinating with the seasons (GG always featured the changing seasons in its episodes, which added a bit of warmth and authenticity to it), Gilmore Girls will revisit the lives of our friends from Stars Hollow and environs–Sookie and Michel, Lane and Mrs. Kim, Dean and Jess, and Emily but sadly no Richard (Edward Herrmann passed away on New Year’s Eve 2014).

As a warmup, this Wednesday I’ll head to the pop-up Luke’s in my hometown, pull up a mismatched chair at a ’50s style table, and order a cup of coffee and a donut, just as Rory and Lorelai used to do. Maybe I’ll rub elbows with the girls themselves, see what job Kirk is working at these days, or check out what’s on special at Doose’s Market next door. Whatever I do I will be filled with some great memories of times past and times to come.

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The cast of Gilmore Girls (in foreground) “Rory,” (second row) “Dean,” “Luke,” “Lorelai,” and “Jess,” (back row) “Lane,” Michel,” “Paris,” “Richard,” “Emily,” “Sookie,” “Kirk,” and “Miss Patty”

october mornings can make you feel this way

fall-leaves

I heard that the simplest prayer is to say “thank you.” I like that.

Walking today on what is a fairly crisp fall morning (by Southern California standards, anyway), I took in long shadows, leaves falling from a sycamore tree, the smell of breakfast sausage wafting from a home or two, and a golden retriever by my side. I thought, “This is pretty nice. This is all I need.” The simple things in life, for sure.

I looked up to see the bare hills that pass for mountains here and a bright sun breaking through a distant marine layer. I said my thank-you prayer before my mind started drifting to things that are challenges in my life: the lack of a steady paycheck, the worries that parents of teens and young adults tend to have even when their kids are the “good” ones,  my deceased friend whose second anniversary of her death is next Sunday, and her teenaged daughters, one of whom turns sixteen the following day. Before I could hit up the rest of the list, like the fact that Donald Trump could possibly become our nation’s president in another month, I stopped myself, took a deep breath, looked into the distance, and said “thank you” again. I have a way of dwelling on the negative so much that the dwelling has turned into a permanent home, with a fierce dog chained in the yard and a “This Property Is Condemned” sign posted on the door.

But today is not for those thoughts. Actually, no day should be. I must look at the positive: I’ve a roof over my head that will be paid for in another so-many payments, I’ve enough money in savings to tide us over in case of emergency, and I’ve a loving family and a gaggle of friends to boost my spirits. I may not have granite countertops or memories of trips to the Bahamas, but I do have all I need.

I must remember that next time my mind wanders to the negative. A thank-you is all it takes.

with a slow workweek, i’m trying to enjoy the beauty of life

 

beach

Having felt as though I wasted my entire day yesterday, yearning for work and clicking on the Refresh button a gazillion times to will something into my inbox, then wasting five hours –yes, five hours!–taking a test I correctly assumed wouldn’t lead to a job, I drove myself to the water today.

So here I sit, facing the glorious Pacific. I watch a couple, possibly honeymooners, approaching the water. Deeper out are surfers, some young, some old, enjoying the moderate-sized waves.

I’ve rolled up my sleeves (having fought off a farmer’s tan all summer, I don’t want to promote one now), and I’m busy doing what? Taking in my surroundings, I guess I’d say, enjoying the bounty of what God’s given us (for it can’t be just science and happenstance that made the deep-blue sea, the soft sand to walk on, and the sun to warm our bodies and souls).

I’m easing into the comfort of the scenery, but I’m still on edge. I don’t do “outside the box” really well. And being at the water on a beautiful day–the many that we have here on the West Coast–instead of being at my desk is, for me, literally outside the box when considering my house is shaped like a cardboard saltine container. I realize I have a lot to learn about living in the moment. With four kids, whose futures I’ve spent more than half my life shaping, I have become a planner and not an enjoyer of the present. I’m better at trying to figure out what lies ahead, who needs to get where, when the next pediatric appointments and tap lessons are, and how to get from one field to the other without leaving a kid waiting for a ride, than appreciating what is in front of me.

The fact that work is slow to nonexistent at the moment, with the promise of a very busy October and November ahead of me, should be a relief and a motivator to linger in the present, but to me, it’s not. I will try very hard, just the same, to make it so and take in what’s here and now and not what may be–or what should be. Yes, I’d love to have work that comes in steadily. I’m a person who likes having a plan. But it’s currently not possible.

I’m not starving. I’m not unclothed or homeless. We have enough to get us by and savings to fill in the gaps. I’m a pro at budgeting when times get tough too. And we will work as long as possible if the money isn’t replenishing quickly enough. I have to remember all this when the stress of not working and, therefore, not earning hits me.

So right now I will put my pen and paper away, continue along the path beneath my feet, and say a little prayer for the truly unemployed (and the underemployed) who don’t have this view of the ocean (and a soundtrack of crashing waves) before them. I may not have a perfect amount of work for my liking and the money coming in will have to stretch a little further than usual, but what I do have before me right here, right now is pretty perfect just the same.

 

how being underemployed can result in a whole lot of wasted time

underemployed_med

 

I am underemployed. If I could just be paid for the time I waste looking for work, I’d have a healthy five-figure salary.

I work freelance, and for the duration of the time I’ve had little ones–and not so little ones–at home, it’s been a great thing. I could be here for the children and also be able to bring in a few extra bucks. Fast-forward twenty-five years, though, and what was once a wonderful thing is now holding me back and keeping me from moving in the right direction.

There are so many jobs I know I could do if just given the opportunity, but picking up crumbs of jobs that require copious amounts of time to do them is all I can find right now. And I’ve been looking.

I applied for a full-time job last week that I felt I was perfect for. I still see the job up on the company website, therefore, the company didn’t see me as a perfect fit. (I think the salary-requirements line tripped me up, not having any idea what real people make out there.) In addition to applying for jobs, I keep working toward getting a certificate to make me more marketable for a government-agency job, but those jobs, after having applied, can take months and months to get called back on. There is no rhyme or reason as to how people are selected for interviews, although the county’s website says that people are phoned alphabetically. Great. I’m in the middle of the alphabet (which makes me want to hyphenate my maiden and last names. I used to be a “B.”)

So today I sat down at my computer and, not having received any work again, looked at the work-at-home job sites. I found one job that looked interesting. It’s with a company that requires candidates to input metadata (whatever that is). I took the test, being that I’m good at tests and am uber proficient in editing and researching, which was part of the test. After two and a half hours of working on this three-hour exam, which partially included identifying pop culture figures and events, I was switching between open tabs in my browser when–oh, lord–I accidentally clicked on the horrible, no-good, very bad X, closing out the tab and losing all the work I had input.

I tried to recover the page, but it had flown into cyberspace for good. So I restarted the test. Having done a lot of the research already, I had half the battle won this second time around. It was a matter of remembering and, if I couldn’t do that, looking back into what I had originally researched. In the meantime, I was supposed to be watching and listening in on a webinar being presented for that certificate I’m going after. I was able to do both, albeit half-heartedly. Still, I managed and was pretty proud to have multitasked those efforts and while picking up a phone call from my husband, to boot.

After the webinar ended, having made good time on the test the second time around, I focused my mind on it and was nearly finished within two hours. I just couldn’t figure out the identities of two of the people who were featured. I tried to research some more but had no luck. So I reread and reworked some of the longer questions that needed my attention.

When I thought I had finished the entire test, I submitted it. Trouble is, I’d forgotten to fill in one of the answers–the name of some pink-bikini clad woman standing on a beach while holding a microphone as some performers were singing on a stage in the background. (Can anyone place that?) Everything else was perfect, trust me. But I knew I was doomed. I knew this was going to be one of those tests graded by a machine, whose first role was to make sure there were no blank answers. And what do you know, within minutes of punching the damned Submit button, I received a ding saying I didn’t get the job. All because of one idiotic semi-celebrity whom I couldn’t ID. No human at this company even bothered to read my answers.

What ticks me off the most is that five hours were wasted. Five hours. I didn’t even walk the dog within that time, which is something I do every morning. I hadn’t even showered. I looked at the clock and it was after 1 p.m. when I got dinged. I realized that I hadn’t gotten up from my chair since 8 in the morning. Five hours wasted because I don’t have a full-time job–or even a regular part-time job–to call my own. If I made twenty bucks an hour, that would have been one hundred dollars I could have earned.

It’s not just the money–or potential loss of it–that is so bothersome, it’s what I could have done with my time. This has been a really slow two weeks for me. Make that three or four weeks, actually. Last week I got some painting done in the house, but this week I was hoping to get some paid work. Only it never came. So after sitting at my desk and feeling like I wasted precious days in the beginning of the week, I promised myself yesterday that I’d get out of the house today. The weather has been stifling hot and my office is the hottest room in the house, and I promised I wouldn’t make myself sit and pine away, clicking through website after website to look for work one more day this week. I told myself I’d get out and get some fresh air.

But when you are at the mercy of others for work, a job can come at the least-expected time. It can pop up when you’re walking the dog or getting some fresh air or sitting in an air-conditioned coffeeshop sipping a pumpkin latte. So I’m sorry to say that I probably have a lot more disappointingly slow, unproductive days in my future as long as I can’t find a regular job. I won’t stop looking for freelance work too, but I sure as heck won’t take another five-hour test to get it. I worked backwards today. And that’s never the right direction.

underemployed waitress.jpg
“I have a B.A. in journalism and 30-plus years of experience.”

is full-time employment in the cards? when working from home may just not cut it

working-woman-1900s

I applied for a full-time, outside-the-home position yesterday, the first full-time job I’ve appied to in about thirty-two years. I’ve been a work-at-home mom all that time, which was a great alternative when the kids were little. It brought in extra income–although at times what I earned was so piddly that it barely paid for the newspaper subscription for the year–but it kept my foot in the water of the working world and my brain from frying from kiddie overload. With four kids spread out over a lot of years, it was so easy to put them first and myself last. And I did that. Had I not had something to call my own–a little bit of employment–I’d have been much worse off.

But my youngest is now a senior in high school. He probably will not play sports this year (a great reason for a parent to have a flexible schedule is being able to drive the kid and attend away games), and he has a license and drives our old car, so I’m not even needed to transport him to and from school anymore. He’s looking for a part-time job to help pay for a phone and his insurance and to have a little spending money without having to hit up the parental unit. A job will take him away from home even more often.

In the meantime, my freelance career is in a lull. I will be madly, deeply busy in October and November, working both day and night, and I have been promised some assignments into December and January even, typically a slow period in publishing, but at present I’m bumbling around, finding stuff to do at home, like laundry and cleaning, and refreshing the home page of one of the web portals where I obtain some of my work. I can do that all day at times and find nothing or maybe one assignment that can take less than an hour. So my precious hours spent “working” from home are not getting me anywhere.

And that is why I applied to a firm that is looking for someone who does exactly what I do. Those jobs are rare to find and because it’s an altruistic nonprofit, I applied. Time will tell whether I hear back for an interview, but I was encouraged to find something so specifically tailored to my career choice.

I have applications in with a couple local government agencies as well, but with them, being placed on the eligible list is in no way a guarantee of being called for an interview. I’ll continue courses for those positions and I’ll get busy with work in the coming months and not even think about looking for something outside the home, but then the doldrums will hit again . . . and again . . . and again.

Am I ready for full-time employment outside the home? With a little adjusting, I think so. It certainly would beat hitting the refresh button and finding nothing for forty hours a week.

 

 

helicopter moms sometimes have to perform covert rescue missions too

heliMy daughter was robbed. Someone broke in and entered her apartment when she was away on the opposite coast Labor Day weekend.

I discovered the break-in on Labor Day morning, when I went over to feed and check on her cat. I had last been over with my teen son Saturday afternoon. We locked up and left. Labor Day morning, I put the key into her security screen door lock and it turned especially easily for an oftentimes sticky lock. I put my hand on the main, wooden door and it opened right up. I had witnessed my son locking that door and jiggling the handle to make sure it was secured on Saturday, but I had not checked it myself, so I figured he may have left it unlocked.

Then I looked and looked and looked for her cat, but I could not find her anywhere. She’s an ultra-aloof cat, even more so than most. If awards were given out for being the most aloof and unfriendly creature, she’d place in the top three and come home with a shiny trophy. So at first I didn’t think it was too unusual that I couldn’t find her, but the deeper I dove around the small one-bedroom apartment, the more concerned I became. I even asked my other daughter if she had come by or if a friend was supposed to check in on the cat, but she told me she had not stopped in and the friend was out of town too.

After about an hour of near panic, I finally got ahold of my son, who had been sleeping in, and he said he’d come by to help look for the cat. I went to the bathroom, gave one last look behind the shower curtain, and that’s when the window above the shower caught my eye. The screen was missing! Someone had entered through the bathroom window and gone out the front door. The security screen I had thought was locked when I came in had not been. I put my key in again to test the lock and still could turn the key another revolution after the deadbolt released, verifying that that morning I had just unlocked an already unlocked door.

I called my husband, who’d just arrived home from a bike ride, and told him my suspicions. I called the police, who arrived even before my son did and he had been walking to his car when my husband told him of my discovery.

With my daughter on the line (she had been traveling home that day and was at her layover city), we figured out some of what had been stolen, one item being her laptop. She called me last night practically in tears. She had just gotten off work at 8 p.m. (she’s a schoolteacher, so that’s a long day), still needed to buy groceries–her cupboards were bare from not having shopped since the week before leaving for her weekend trip, and was in a car wash, trying to remove the smut from her vehicle that had been parked out in front of her apartment all summer (fortunately, she’d had one set of keys with her on her trip and we have the other). She is in grad school and had an assignment due today that she had no computer to work on. Her work computer needed to be left at school for her student teacher to use while she attended a conference today and tomorrow. Even her tablet, a Kindle Fire, had been stolen, so she had nothing on which to do her research and write her paper other than her cellphone, which was of little value.

A couple days ago, I had mentioned helping her buy a computer to have for school, but she had thought she’d be able to use the one from work. Only that didn’t turn out to be the case. So last night, when working on a frustrating assignment while thoroughly tired, I slipped in some research on where I could get an inexpensive laptop that’s a decent brand for which my daughter could pay me back or at least use until she could get her laptop of choice. She needs the computer today.

Between assignments today, having already performed my reconnaissance mission last night, I will slip out under the cloak of darkness (well, there’s a thick marine layer anyway) and do a rescue maneuver for a Windows 10 laptop. I will then drop it into enemy territory (my daughter’s apartment aka the scene of the crime), because that’s what we helicopter moms do. We not only hover over our kids and overprotect them, we also come to their aid when needed.

PS. After three hours of my, my son’s, and my husband’s search efforts, including scouring every bush and blade of grass in the immediate neighborhood, my cat-person younger daughter lured the terrified feline out of hiding within one minute of entering the apartment. Maybe my whirring chopper blades had scared the cat off.

 

 

roomless in seattle: playing hotel roulette sometimes shoots you in the foot

seattleI’ve been trying to find the perfect hotel in Seattle for next weekend. Yes, next weekend. See, I thought I had the perfect hotel picked out for me and my family months ago. In fact, I had two hotels booked in case one proved a better choice than the other. But then my family started weighing in, and the hotel on Lake Union or the one at the very edge of upper downtown/lower Queen Anne proved to be not what they were looking for. My husband is usually OK with whatever I pick, but this time even he said, “If we’re going to be near downtown, why not actually be within walking distance to everything?”

And you know what? He was right. After getting into town exhausted, as I’m sure we will be, why not be amid the action? Why not be able to walk out the door and find a great restaurant and not have to worry about driving back to the hotel and finding parking? Or why not be able to  get up early the next morning and check out the city, the actual city, as it wakens, walking down to the waterfront, sampling coffeeshops or waiting in the long line at the original Starbucks, or, even better, watching the fish throwers at Pike Place?

So off I went, hunting down the perfect hotel, a daunting task because none exists. Either the rooms are too small, the housekeeping staff cleans like a bunch of teenagers, the front desk fails, the check-in is like the line to get into hell, the parking fee could feed a family of four in Malaysia for a month, the noise from the elevator sounds like pigs being dragged to their deaths, or the view is of a brick wall. But let’s be honest, my real problem isn’t finding a perfect hotel. I’m super good at comparing and contrasting numerous places, searching every search engine, and scouring websites for the best deals. I go on Google maps to find the street view and get a feel of what it’s like to walk the streets around the hotel. No, I’m a seasoned hunter and gatherer of hotel rooms. My real problem is trying to please everyone else. Like a lot of women, I am a people pleaser.

Two days ago, when I thought I’d found the “perfect” spot, right in the middle of the Pike Pine retail core, i.e., the shopping mecca of Seattle, just blocks from Pike Place and a shortish walk to the Space Needle, I hesitated, as I’m wont to do, and my perfect hotel filled up. Because the hotel chain is running a “second day at 40 percent off” deal, everyone and her sister is booking the Friday night of the Thursday-Friday-night combo I need. Panicking, I called the hotel (yes, directly to Seattle instead of Mumbai, India, or wherever the 800 number takes you) because when I was in the middle of booking, with my personal info and credit card number input, I got a message saying the dates were unavailable or there was ongoing website maintenance or both. The nice woman at the hotel confirmed that there were no rooms available. She suggested one of the other nearby hotels in the chain, which are more expensive and have exorbitant parking fees (as if “my” hotel’s $57 was a bargain!), I might add, but I booked at one of the others anyway and continued trying to book at the perfect spot. The hotel rep had suggested I keep checking as rooms get cancelled “all the time.” So I tried later that night, but still nothing.

The next morning, I gave it another shot and what a surprise! A suite opened up and it was under $400 a night. Yes, people, that is a good price in the heart of Seattle in the middle of tourist season (if only Washington and Oregon kids started school in August like the rest of America instead of after Labor Day), and one week before my visit. I did the same as the previous day: put in my info, my hotel club number, my credit card number, my third child’s middle name, clicked on the Review button, and once again was told that I was too late.

I ended up booking at a nearby hotel, cancelling the overpriced sister hotel I’d booked the day before. But the hotel I booked at doesn’t have the glowing reviews of the one I wanted, nor does it offer the breakfast I was hoping for, but it did have a room when I needed it–and free wine in the evenings, which I will need as well. But I didn’t stop at booking one room there. I booked a room with two queens and then another room later in the day that’s a suite and will fit all five of us. For $90 more a night (which is a lot, I know, but…), I figure we would each get a bed to sleep in instead of someone having to sleep on the floor. There are a few perks at this hotel, too (did I mention the wine?), although it sounds as if it’s trying to please a younger, hipper crowd than I mingle with on a regular basis. But at least I have a couple young adults with me who will appreciate it, I suppose. The teenager will be left out and middle-aged me and my husband, too, but you know, you can’t please everyone all the time. I hope I can remember that next time I’m booking a hotel.

Now if only I can make it not rain….

 

 

it may be time to bite the bullet and buy new cabinets

I’ve been wanting a nice kitchen for some time, but I am practical, thrifty, and don’t want to be like those people on HGTV who tear out working kitchens just so they can replace them with whatever is now in vogue, like a certain grade of wood cupboard or a farm sink.images cabinet

I have a working kitchen. I cook almost every night–I’d say at least 350 days a year–yet I have a kitchen smaller than the size of most modern homes’ bathrooms or walk-in closets. That’s no exaggeration. And because it’s so small and so used, it’s showing signs of wear and tear. Heck, at forty-two years old, it showed signs of wear and tear long before I moved in over twenty years ago.

I’ve Band-Aided the poor thing over the years, gluing the microwave door handle on when it pulled halfway off, inching the extremely heavy trash compactor out the door when it stomped its last load of trash and wouldn’t open back up, making my own ice using trays when the automatic ice-maker broke (it’s still broken). I finally gave in and bought a new stove the third time it shocked the bejesus out of me while stirring spaghetti. And I did end up getting other appliances (on sale and low-end models anyway) when they were on their last legs, but only then.

Whatever the opposite of a conspicuous consumer is, I’m that. I put off buying until it’s absolutely necessary. I came from a thrifty family on a low income whose patriarch fixed everything whether he was an expert at it or not. My mom put up with battered furniture (as I do) and old, nonfunctioning appliances until they were no longer reparable. And that’s what I do too.

Our fence was falling over this spring, so we contacted our neighbor, who called on his contractor, and had it replaced. It was double what I had thought it would cost, but we were able to afford it after moving money around and scrimping for a while longer. Same thing with our floors last summer. We had a leak in the wall and, well, not right away but five months later, I was on my hands and knees laying down vinyl plank in the dining room, ripping out more sections of carpet, and laying down more planks. It’s not the best-quality flooring, but it looks OK, and, best of all, I was able to lay it myself. A plus too is that when I decide to change out the rest of the carpet, I’ll at least have done half the work.

Next I thought I’d tackle a longtime problem: painting the cabinets in the kitchen. Painting would cost a fraction of having the cabinets replaced, and I’d get the color I want and not have to have workmen in my house. I knew it was a lot of work–I even heard that from a licensed painter who told me he didn’t want to paint them because of what a big job it is. Still, last summer I spent a couple days meticulously painting the backside of the cabinets, the side that faces the family room. I liked how it turned out and thought I’d tackle the big job of all the fronts of the cabinets this summer. But just as I was about to start the project, I found myself waffling, something I do when I fear making the wrong decision with long-term consequences. I waffled about the color (should I stick with the linen, which looks a bit drab, or change it to antique white, a more popular shade?), and I waffled about whether I should keep them unpainted and just apply a deeper color of stain. That’s an easier job, especially if I use gel stain, but I like the cottagy look of painted cabinets much more.

Now I’m questioning the appearance of the painting I did last summer and whether it even looks that good. I’m looking closely at the polyurethane I used, noticing it’s turning yellow. I had thought it looked great last summer but am thinking it may make the cabinets look old and dingy and is that the look I’m going for if it’s going to take so much effort?

Then when my husband asked me last night why one of the cabinets sticks out near the hinges and doesn’t close properly, I realized that the doors and drawers are nowhere near in good enough shape to simply paint. Painting would be yet another Band-Aid effect, like putting lipstick on a pig, and the cabinets might look a bit better but still wouldn’t function so great.  The real solution is new cabinets. I’m guessing nine out of ten people would agree, if not all ten.

I have company coming in another month and before that we are taking a family vacation that even after I use my airline miles will cost a couple thousand dollars. I’d love to get a new kitchen by mid-August so my best friend of forty years doesn’t doubt why she’s friends with such a schmuck as me, but spending that money now on new cabinets is not going to be easy.  Still, for the first time my mind has concluded that the cabinets must go.

Or so I currently am rationalizing. Give me a couple more days with little or no freelance work and I might pick up my paint brush and begin transforming the cupboards and drawers as best I can on my own. Time will only tell whether I stick with my plan to buy new (which adds even more complications like should we bother putting the cabinets where they are or opening up the entire kitchen) or whether I paint. Yes, time will tell.

 

 

post-graduation dreams: to never leave home?

Used to be when kids went off to college they never returned home again because waiting for them on the other side of the commencement dais was a good-paying job,  one that would sustain them until they got married (soon after graduating), had a family, and raised their own kids until they too went off to college, got married, etc., etc.boomerang-kids

But with 55 percent of college students now living at home as opposed to 43 percent in 2010, a lot of those kids don’t leave home to attend school in the first place and then they stay on at home even after getting their diploma. Jobs for college grads are not nearly as plentiful these days, and getting on in the world is too expensive. These kids are no dummies. Why live on a shoestring when you can live in the lap of luxury for little to nothing?

And so it is in our house. My third born, a son, graduated in May but has yet to move out. He’s still working the same hourly job he had throughout college, and even though I send him job postings from the websites I see online (is that the  whirring of helicopter blades I hear?), he’s still not applying in earnest for work in his major. Why? I think he’s got it too good. And I’m partially to blame.

Kids have it harder today in a lot of ways. For one, competition for jobs is fierce. The kid with the decent grade point average who worked throughout school to make some money is going up against the kid who excelled in college, took internships, and went into debt to get a leg up on the competition. Those kids are the ones getting hired after graduating while Mediocre Manny is struggling to keep his head above water in the vast resume pools forming in employers’ inboxes.

Also, kids have it harder today because they have had it easier their whole lives. How so? Their parents, we, did much more for these kids than our parents ever did for us. Their whole lives they heard such things as, “You want to play a sport? Sure, I’ll put my career on hold and drive you to games and pay for all the accoutrements that go with that sport even though I haven’t had a pair of new shoes in six years. Hungry? Here’s a burger and a Coke coming to you through this magical drive-through window. Or better yet, sit down and I’ll whip up your favorite dinner, leaving out the greens that you don’t like. Have nothing to wear? No problem, I’ll throw a load of wash in for you right now and not only that, I’ll fold it and put it in your room. Or if those clothes won’t do because they’re not the latest trend, I’ll run to the Macy’s and get something that will. Oh, Macy’s is not cool enough? Just name the store. You want your license? Well, sure. You don’t have as much as a part-time job flipping burgers to pay for gas, but I’ll not only pay for that gas, I’ll throw in the car and the insurance too.” And so it went. No wonder kids can’t get on on their own.

Now our kids are coming out of college and not knowing where to start to get their lives going because Mom isn’t doing all the stuff she used to do to make it all happen. Call ours the enabling generation. According to a recent Forbes report, close to 60 percent of parents provide financial support of some kind to their adult children. That’s six out of ten of us. What’s wrong with us and, more importantly, what do we do now that Jay and Robin won’t leave the nest?

Parents’ motives are noble: they just want to help out their kids. The same motives people have to provide food, shelter, and clothing for their babies and young children are in play when they allow adult children to live at home. It’s a loving gesture, not maliciousness,  but it can go too far and the new graduate can turn into the adult kid who keeps hanging on and never grows up. I mean, who wouldn’t want a life that’s easy as opposed to one that’s not?

But experts say people need to set boundaries and make those boundaries clear as day, especially if the adult child isn’t contributing enough and the parents prolong retirement or put aside their own needs and wants because they are helping out the kids (and helping out can include paying all the utilities, providing an automobile, buying all the groceries, cooking them, and cleaning up afterward).

I plan to set out a manifesto of sorts and make it not so easy for my son to rely on his parents for help. Hopefully, that will motivate him to move on in life the way his two sisters did. Sure it’s been just a month and a half since college graduation, but I want to set the tone now before I’m driving him around to geriatric appointments and senior day care.

 

 

 

 

 

missing my friend on her fiftieth birthday

I should be out to lunch, raising a glass, giving a toast, and celebrating one of my dearest friends’ fiftieth birthdays today, but she is no longer here. She passed away one year and nine months ago, leaving behind a husband and two darling teenaged daughters.

I miss Anna so much at times that my heart hurts. I’ve lost parents (both of them) and parents-in-law (both of them too), but nothing has wrenched my heart as much as losing my dear, dear friend. Not only do I lament the days I personally didn’t get to spend with her (and her fiftieth birthday would have been a big one, at that), I am saddened for the stuff she is missing, like seeing her daughters ace the SATs or watching them drive off for the first time on their own, brand-new driver’s licenses in their wallets. She’ll never get to see them collect their diplomas or their degrees, or walk them down the aisle for the last time as single ladies. She’ll never meet her grandchildren, call them by name, or see what color their eyes are or who they favor in appearance, their beautiful daughter or the putz she married. She’ll never get to spend her husband’s retirement traveling or doing the things one just can’t do when there’s a full-time worker in the household and he has a schedule to keep to. She’ll never get to age gracefully or die naturally.

I, of course, am especially sad for the girls. They’ll never get to do spa days with their mom or listen to lectures about boys and fast cars and what to not do on grad night. From October 2014 on they’ve been without the one woman they should have been able to rely on for advice, support, and love for the rest of their lives.

And I’m sad for her husband, my friend, who wakes up to an empty bed in the morning and sees the same image when laying down his head every night. He turns fifty tomorrow too, but since that fateful day in 2014, there has not been any celebrating on these two days in June that used to be so joyous.

I know if there is a heaven and if God lets in those good folks who are not card-carrying members, which I hope is the case, Anna’s up there watching her family and friends carrying on. She’s whipping up her magnificent eggrolls for the lord above and planning the day when we can all again sit around the table as she blows out candles.

I miss you and I love you, Anna.