Parenting quote from The Middle

I have a new favorite T.V. show. It's called The Middle, on ABC, and I finally got around to watching it today. I don't really watch sitcoms anymore and I almost never laugh out loud watching any show these days, but I laughed, OUT LOUD, all through this show. I recorded it because I love Patricia Heaton, though I rarely watched Everybody Loves Raymond when she played the wife. Just not a big sitcom fan.

Maybe it was especially timely considering what I came home to this afternoon. My husband (remember the reference to perpetual motion in my first post? No? Well, he is it) decided to clean the "room" that our 20-year-old lives in. Mark had a short list of things I really needed done, like a sink faucet that randomly sprays me in the face, but this is what he did instead. And he found stuff. Incriminating stuff. I tried to keep my eyes from rolling, I really did, but there were four piles of Nick's clothing in the garage to wash because, though they were technically clean, they stank. Many missing household items were retrieved (thermometer, serving dishes, our socks) and Febreeze was applied liberally.

We will probably not see our rebellious son for a few days. His bedroom is a pre-fab piney shack in the back yard and he goes to work while we will be at church. But it will be an interesting exchange the next time I stay up late to hang with him. Really late, like midnight. I had nothing to do with the ninja room cleaning; I get to be the good guy these days. But because we are living in the same house with two twenty-somethings and two teenagers (the teens are practically angels), The Middle was more than relate-able. It was downright cathartic.

Favorite quote: "Parenting is like being a cop in a bad neighborhood sometimes." If your children are not yet sixteen or seventeen, you will not think that is very funny. But watch the show on Hulu while it is still free! And laugh your head off or just get ready for things to come.

Oh boy, Nick just drove up. His new (first) car sounds like a lawn mower on steroids. Here we go. . . .

My first follower: Wendy

Her name is Wendy Corn and she has a sweet blog www.areyoubreathing.com.

I first spied Wendy the same way I first spotted my hubby, through a 650mm lens I used to take millions of surf photos with back in the day. Not to offend, but I thought she was a guy and that was a high compliment, still is, for a girl surfer. Though I never knew her very well, the Monterey surfing community is a big, dysfunctional family and as their photographer for about a decade, I tended to keep track of the "hot" surfers. Wendy was not only talented and quietly graceful, but her reputation remained dignified in a time when that was a challenge.

Mark can tell me a lot more about Wendy, having surfed Moss Landing and Carmel with her many, many frigidly cold offshore mornings while I was hunkered down, warm and cozy, in whatever little house we were renting in Seaside at the time with our babies and toddlers. Eventually, Wendy met and married Stefan, just as kind and dignified as Miss Wendy, and they produced two adorable boys. They became our neighbors here in Marina at some point. Always a treat visiting on the sidewalk in front of the house as they walked their baby boys.

So, here's to you, Wendy, for continuing to surf long after most moms hang up the wetsuit and for sharing your whimsical life on your blog. Let's get out and ride mt bikes in west Ft. Ord sometime! I think you would do better in relation to my speed and ability there than I would do out in the water with you. You still "surf like a guy."

Why would anyone want to read this?

I think that most everything I have to say is at least mildly interesting if not downright fascinating. But, whether this is true or not, no one is going to be much interested in things that do not pertain to them in some way. Unless I had cured cancer or discovered perpetual motion (well, I have, but that's another post), nobody is going to follow this blog to hear all about my Mom-ly struggles unless I can express a common experience in a winsome, hilarious or outrageous manner. Or talk about YOU specifically, right? That's just how we were made, and my brain begins to explode contemplating the whys of it. It just is.

So here I go in the babble of the blogosphere with alliteration, ambition and a good measure of moxie.