suburban kamikaze

99 Reasons to Drink in the Suburbs #31: Back to School Contraband

There is something about back to school that makes even the looming prospect of death by refrigeration seem a small price to pay for the end of summer.

As much as we miss the small nation of teenagers who overran the house from June to August, it is hard not to enjoy the Chipotle-free feeling that settles over the furniture when they have mostly returned to their dorm rooms.

There is no such thing as endless summer, no matter what the posters say. It's just an expression used by surfers and parents to convey completely different sentiments.  Like "surf's up" and "cowabunga."

It's uncanny how much overlapping jargon there is between parenting and surfing. I realized this the other day as I came across yet another stockpile of cocktail ingredients while cleaning out the teenager-occupied areas of the house.

"Cowabunga!" I said to myself. "These kids are making an awful lot of artisanal cocktails under their beds."

They're not old enough to be making artisanal cocktails, of course - there was not a single garnish among the supplies I found stuffed into backpacks with their teen-a-palooza ticket stubs - and they know nothing about simple syrup - so I found myself confiscating a lot of artifically flavored rum and vodka and some very questionable beer-type products. Maybe one of them was planning a shrimp boil?

We have some very strict rules about alcohol in our house - the most obvious being that liquor is consumed by permission only, is not stored under the bed and is never, ever shared with non-family members under the legal drinking age, which I believe is 35.

I have been very busy the past few months, but my sense is that some of these rules may have been broken. Along with many smaller rules governing things like good taste.

From blueberry vodka to cinnamon whisky, my liquor cabinet now bulges with big-flavored contraband. This year's back to school cocktails have a little bit of a Willy Wonka feel to them. Serve with fast-food burritos and anything else you can eat from a bag. Cheers!

Smells like (Blueberry) Teen Spit

1 and 1/2 ounce blueberry vodka found in basement and likely consumed straight from bottle

club soda 

lime

Pour contraband vodka over ice into highball glass. Add club soda and garnish with lime, because you're not a teenager anymore. 

Candy From a Baby

1 ounce Sazerac Fireball cinnamon whisky found under teenager's bed and also likely consumed straight from the bottle 

Pour into official university glasswear of your choice and sip slowly while looking at baby pictures.

Photo: Sazerac Fireball cinnamon whisky - which I actually enjoyed. It was like a little mouthful of red hot candy.

 

From the back to school archives: One Post-it away from a three-ring breakdown

This week in Happiness, brought to you by crying teenage girls

Nothing brings a teenage girl so much happiness, as far as I can tell, as the opportunity to weep over tragedy in the lives of attractive fictional teenagers. Cupcakes, maybe. But it's a close call.

When the opening of the latest weepy teenage romance movie, If I Stay, coincides with back to school week, the teenage girls who hang out in my kitchen could not be happier/weepier. They beg for ticket money, for the car, for the opportunity to cry all over again with the movie version of the book they have already cried through twice.  They have watched the movie trailer literally, like a million times.   

How can I say no? They're going to pay me back, probably. They've finished their homework. Possibly.

A day later they do it all over again.

Now the soundtrack is everywhere I go. It's playing in my car, on my office computer, on the girl's iPad. Today is the greatest day I've never known, Can't wait for tomorrow,  I might not have that long...

My own teenage girl could not be happier/sadder. She's making plans to cry through it again before the week is out. She's trying to talk me into going with her and her friends. "Oh god," I say. "You know I don't like sad movies."

She gives me the same look she gives me when I say I don't really like cupcakes. It's a mix of pity and resolve.    

It is useless to resist a 16-year-old girl in the grip of happiness/sadness. When it comes to feeling, teenage girls are all in. Outpourings of emotion are meant to be stoked, provoked, amped, prodded, tweeted - but most importantly - shared. It does not matter how much I protest about my schedule, my preference for funny movies, my boring, old-person sense of been there, done that, know the ending. I'm pretty sure I will be going to see this movie.  

The remake of the Smashing Pumpkins song, "Today," already has me feeling a little happy/sad. It is entirely possible, that someday, looking back, the greatest day I've ever known will have a teenage girl in it.

It will be really expensive and I won't have any say about the food or the music or anything else, but still.

Teenager's pet campaign goes exactly as planned

In hindsight, it is easy to see how we were led down the bunny trail. 

At 16, the girl is an impeccable strategist, capable of exploiting every shift of mood and circumstance. She has a long history of successful campaigns, going as far back as the toddler years when she would appear next to my bed in the wee hours holding teeny-tiny toddler footwear in her hands and insisting that it was time to seize the day.

"Shoes?" she would say, raising her teeny-tiny eyebrows at me in an expression that said, "I can't believe you are still in bed at 3:45 a.m., you slacker, but I have things to do and I need your help with my Cinderella shoes."

When she decided to launch Operation Get a Pet, the outcome was never really in question.

Her father and I were 100 percent opposed for a lot of good - but ultimately irrelevant - reasons. He works 100 hours a week and I have 100 part-time jobs. We live in a house that contains about 100 acres of laundry-covered floors and is overrun with teenagers. We recently discovered that a family of mice had moved in as well, living under conditions that almost certainly outranked the teenager-occupied areas of the house for cleanliness.

Operation Pet was a no go.

But where we saw an impenetrable, unshakeable, resolutely anti-pet Household Position, the girl saw only opportunity. Among other things in her favor, her brother's return from college for the summer was the perfect showcase for her to star in a limited engagement of The Good Teenager.

While he demanded to use the car, she offered to pick up my dry cleaning. Where he left half-eaten burritos on the furniture, she made crepes for dinner. He drank all the beer in the guest refrigerator; she greeted me at the door with a glass of wine.

At work, she text-bombed me with photos of kittens. We are not getting a cat, I told her. But she already knew that. The cat was a red herring.

Recently, I came home to find her cat-sitting. The cat must go, I said firmly. She sighed, gave the cat a sad hug and complied. That is the kind of teenager she is.The kind who doesn't argue. Which as our parents could have told us, but didn't, is the kind you should fear most.  

The cooperation continued unabated, while at every turn, her brother continued in his role as The Teenager Who Makes the Other Teenager Seem Reasonable. How was he supposed to know I needed my car to get to work? The keys were just sitting there.

Last week, Operation Not a Cat went from planning to execution. She googled pet shops and rabbit rescue centers. She made phone calls. She made lists. In between running our errands, she ran reconnaissance. She began talking about her new pet as if it was a bunny accompli. There was some last minute psychological warfare: she'd probably have to decline a lot of invitations to hang out with boys in order to spend more time with her new bunny.  

Then she picked me up from the train station one evening and drove me straight to the pet store. Just to look around. Earlier that day she had done the grocery shopping, texting me to ask: What is Dad's favorite dinner? It wasn't even skullduggery at that point. 

When we passed the first two pet stores and the girl was still driving, it occurred to me that we seemed to be heading to a particular pet store, but what did that mean? She had done the grocery shopping! She was so cheerful! She was singing to the radio! She was adorable. She was practically throwing off light.

We were headed for a pet store where a small black and white rabbit waited in a glass enclosure. Something told me this was not a coincidence. And that something was a sign with her name on it. 

We took him home. We named him Napoleon. What else could we do?

from the bunny archives: A rabbit runs through it

Maybe you should just chill-ax: a teenager's guide

Should you? Should you just chill-ax? How can you be sure? Chill-ax. The teenagers are here to help with this simple guide to stress management:  

 

Out of gas at 7 a.m. and you need to get to work.

Chill-ax. There's plenty of time. Probably.

 

Out of gas at 7 a.m., you need to get to work, AND you discover the same person who left your car on empty in the driveway left a pile of fast food wrappers on the passenger seat.

Chill-ax. They were going to clean it up. Or else it wasn't them.

 

Out of gas at 7 a.m., you need to get to work AND the same person who left the car on empty and the passenger seat covered in fast food wrappers, ALSO forgot to return your debit card and "borrowed" the last of your cash.

Chill-ax. Why do you always have to make such a big deal out of everything?

 

 

Out of milk at 2 a.m. and you really want cereal.

 OMG. Seriously? Do. Not. Chill-Ax. What is the POINT of even buying cereal if you're just going to RUN OUT OF MILK? Literally, this happens every single time. How hard is it to keep enough milk in the house for ONE BOWL OF CEREAL??

Entrepreneur Barbie first-quarter action plan

With the release of the 2014 Career of the Year doll, Mattel has added a new entry to Barbie's resume (which has been reconfigured in a slightly smaller font and runs just under 4o pages.) Entrepreneur Barbie will be courting investors this summer in hot pink career wear and sensible shoes. Just kidding! She wouldn't be caught dead in sensible shoes. But she does have a smartphone, a tablet and a little black briefcase full of hopes and dreams. Also, we imagine, lipstick, Starbucks receipts and a hot pink action plan:         

          

1. Capital Raise: Wow investors in hot pink business suit and kick-ass plastic heels.

2. Get rid of under-performing Ken unit.

3. Market Research: Google "How to Start Your Dream Business on nothing but a Dream and $11 billion in market capitalization.

4. Leverage Harvard Business School contacts for face time with chairman prospects. Oprah? Hillary?

5. Exceed Quarterly Objectives in high style and kick-ass plastic heels.

Bird story

There is more to the story, of course. There is a very tall ladder involved, a climb to the second floor of the vacant house next door, some damage to a window, and possibly, an opening into the house through which other birds may now gain access, along with a squirrel or two. Maybe some rain. Probably nothing more troublesome than that.

But I think it's fair to sum it up by saying two desperately trapped baby birds were rescued and a frantic mother bird can now go back to reading the Book Review on the back deck, or whatever the bird equivalent is of that. That is the take-away here. 

The women in our family have a history of bird rescue, against long odds, and even when ridiculous efforts must be made and 40-foot ladders moved to the side of other people's houses. If you don't remember, go back and re-read the inspiring story of Tweety and the Fourth Graders.      

Mr. K. is out of town during the rescue, so naturally his first concern is for my safety. "Did anyone see you vandalize the neighbor's house?" he asks. Then he wants to know what I am wearing.

When he gets home he expresses his irritation at the fact that I was motivated enough to move a 40-foot ladder to the side of the neighbor's house but not motivated enough to move it back. Which is not the same thing as expressing his gratitude on behalf of the planet, or at least the birds. But it's close enough for me.

Chipotle Summer

Someday, possibly, I will look back at the summer of 2014 as the Summer of Tranquility.

I know this because the teenagers are constantly telling me to "relax."

Also, The Summer I Worked 5 Jobs While the Teenagers Fought Over Everything, Ate Fast Food and Destroyed the House is way too long.      

"Relaxation" is a dominant theme in our fractious, two-teenager household. The girl, 16, is a newly licensed driver and veteran party planner. "Relax," she tells me. "I have been driving for months." The boy, 19, is home for the summer after his first year of college, where he joined a fraternity and learned everything there is to know in the world except how to operate a single kitchen appliance. "Are you going to clean up that mess?" I ask him. "Don't worry about it," he says. "Chill."

Throw in a couple of vanilla-scented candles and it would be like a spa around here, except that the candle holders have all been broken and there are no clean towels. Plus, it smells like burritos. 

The things about which I am encouraged to relax include the fact that the basement is covered in half-eaten food and Chipotle wrappers, our expenses are out of control and no one but me ever seems to know what day the garbage goes out. I wake almost every morning to find I have been left with a mess, an empty gas tank or an empty wallet. Sometimes all three. 

Still, I am expected to chill-ax.  Because you know, it's no big deal. And they're right, really.

In the big picture list of Things to Stress Over While Living With Teenagers, Chipotle cleanup comes in no higher than 7 or 8. 

On the other hand, their list of things that qualify as Genuinely Big Deals includes:

1. We have cereal but no milk.

2. We have milk but no cereal.

3. There is nothing to eat in the house except cereal.

4. One of them suspects the other of having touched his or her stuff.

5. One of them believes the other is monopolizing the basement.

6. One of them believes the other is monopolizing the car.

7. Both of them believe I am monopolizing my own car. 

8. Why don't we have more cars?

There are never enough cars around here. And our grocery stocking system is so haphazard it can barely be called a system at all. No one is keeping track of how many times the girl has overrun the basement with her too-many-girls, overnight texting-and manicure parties. There is very little enforcement of the rules, except when there is too much enforcement of the stupid rules. It's a mess really. My point is, everyone should just relax.

from the Lessons Learned archives: A day spent forcibly undergoing spa treatments at the hands of two tween girls is no day at the spa. 

Summertime, and the living is cozy

Summer has come at last to the Greater Chicago area. The last of the snow has melted, the river is covered in tourists, and the suburbs are full of people doing yardwork and knitting lamppost covers.       

Photos: Boatloads of tourists in Chicago, lamppost cozies in the suburbs.

The Teenager's Guide to Making Pancakes

Boy, Esq., who at 19 is essentially a fully-grown human, has zero interest in learning to make pancakes. His interest in pancakes stops and starts with the process of eating them.

So when he appears on the back deck Sunday morning and says "do you want to teach me to make pancakes?" I am immediately suspicious. And not just because he is wearing basketball shorts - and, more significantly, carrying a basketball. What's his game, exactly?

Steps 1-5: Get your mom to do it.

I look up from the Book Review, where I am making a mental list of books I believe I will actually read and stockpiling inspiration unrelated to pancake making. Experience has taught me a few things about this scenario:

1. It will end in pancakes.

2. The pancakes will be made by me. 

Of all the cruel jokes biology has to play upon those of us born with the double-batch pancake-making gene, the inclination to feed our offspring is the most insidious.

While such an instinct plays a necessary role in the survival of the species, it also makes us susceptible to cons as obvious as fully-grown men pretending culinary curiosity while holding a basketball. 

I give my son a look that says, "Please. I see through your crass manipulation of my maternal instincts." Then I start assembling pancake ingredients in the kitchen.

Manipulator or not, he's still my first-born. And he's here for only a few months before he will fly out of the nest again and back to the University of All You Can Eat. As hard as he is to live with, it's harder to live without him.

But first I will make him suffer a little. I walk out to the edge of the driveway where he is shooting freethrows. "Step One," I say. "Sift the dry ingredients."  I demonstrate with my big, pink mixing bowl - the one I bought in what I believed at the time was an ironic gesture. Who buys pink mixing bowls? But that's the thing about irony. It has a funny way of turning around on you.  

I continue my narration. It is a recipe I know by heart. I've made Craig Claiborne's Basic Pancakes so many times, my New York Times Cook Book falls open to the page by itself. I've made them with blueberries; I've made them with chocolate chips. I've made them in letters to spell out their names. The page is butter spattered and annotated where one of my BFFs did the math for a triple batch. It's never enough. 

"Then I add the milk and eggs and stir," I call out to the driveway. "Not too much or they will be tough." 

Boy, Esq. acknowledges each step with a level of interest slightly below the threshold of actual, measurable interest. He does not return to the kitchen until the pancakes are ready to eat. Then he complains that I made too many with blueberrries and mocks the fact that none of the pancakes are actually round. "How hard is it to make a circle?" he says. He leaves a trail of syrup across the counter.

It's adorable and I make a mental note to look for some little molds. Before he leaves for college again I will make pancakes shaped like hearts and zoo animals. Balloons maybe. It will be an ironic gesture, but still.   

Step 6: Eat them all before your sister wakes up. Click on the photo for the recipe.

This week in Delusional Thinking: Pre-winter dystopian trilogies under blue skies

Though it is impossible in this part of the world to rule out snowfall at any point in the calendar, an undeniably summery feeling has settled over our house.  

The boy is home from his first year at Bankruptcy U. in Southern California, the girl is preparing for final exams and yesterday I used sunscreen for the first time in, as the teenagers say, literally forever.

I pour some fancy-ish European beer into a glass and read teen dystopian fiction on the back deck, under a literally blue sky. It feels dangerously summer-esque, as if - dare I say it out loud? winter has actually ended. No one really believes that, but still.

At a backyard - the backyard! - cookout on the South Side a day earlier, someone remarks that next winter is only a few months off and we all laugh nervously as if that is even funny. Then we stuff our faces with tacos al carbon and scan overhead for snow clouds.

It is hard not to succumb to the sense of possibility a little bit of UV radiation can provoke, even if you know it's delusional and even if things are going badly for the intrepid young heroine facing down the tyrannical leaders of the future-century Chicago in your book.

My summer reading list is largely assigned by the girl, who inherited a family tendency to become a little pushy about books we like, which, in combination with her generally pushy disposition, makes it a waste of time to argue about anything she wants you to experience. 

"You have to read this," she tells me. Once I agree - a foregone conclusion -  she monitors my progress relentlessly. "What is happening now?" she asks. "Have you reached the part where ---"

The concept of a "spoiler alert" is not something a 16-year-old girl takes seriously.

But it does not matter on the back deck, in the sun, with the fancy-ish beer. I have the entire summer to read Tibetan Peach Pie. First I have to finish Chi-vergent, and possibly the rest of the trilogy. Then I have to read the weepy cancer novel she has assigned me next. But after that, I can read anything I want. 

Everything seems possible when the sun is shining and the children are all sleeping under my roof again. We could take a family vacation! We could get a dog! We could clear out the mountain of Chipotle wrappers covering the basement counter!

Okay, maybe not the wrappers. And definitely not the dog. Family vacation is a terrible idea. But the rest of it? It could happen.

99 Reasons to Drink in the Suburbs #30: Budgeting

If you've ever wondered whether you could shovel U.S. currency into an open fire faster than a teenager can burn through all the money you will ever have, the answer is probably yes. But you'd have to work fast and stick to large bills. 

Cash Flow Management ("CFM") throughout the teenage years is a tricky proposition on almost any income. For families working in the Communication-Education-Humor sector, it is largely an exercise in delusional budgeting practices.  Like buying Pop-Tarts in bulk.  

Still, any budget, even one as fanciful as one that attempts to put a price on the teenage years, is something you can laugh at later when you are spending your retirement in a cardboard box underneath the overpass.  And you can't really put a price on that.

In the meantime, perspective is everything. Go in expecting Total Financial Ruin ("TFR") and a couple of broken iPhones start to seem like "Small Change." It's the data charges where they really get you. 

In a related development, we recently welcomed Boy, Esq. home from the University of All Our Money & Then Some, where a last-minute switch in his housing plan will cost us less than $900 in non-refundable deposits. We really got off easy there!  

Thank god for frequent flyer miles, which very nearly saved us the cost of his flight home, until he realized at the last minute that he actually needed to leave campus two entire days earlier. Oop$! The important thing is that we ALMOST managed to reduce our costs.

And that is the sort of financial savvy that very nearly keeps this family afloat.

Periodic Table of Cupcakes

 

 

 

If there is a better way to earn chemistry extra credit than baking 118 cupcakes decorated with such appetizing flourishes as the symbols for "arsenic," "mercury," and "lead," the two 16-year-old girls destroying my kitchen do not want to hear about it.

Bon appe-technetium.

A little bedazzling goes a long way

Which is a good thing, because it's been a while since anyone made me a jeweled Mother's Day Card.

Note to Boy Esq: Your sister picked out a card from Jewel, however. Also, flowers. She wrote a very sweet note. Later today, she will probably vacuum. Not that it's a competition. Because if it were a competition, she'd be winning. But again, I want to stress that it is definitely not a competition.

I still get compliments on the seashell necklace you made me 15 years ago.

Love, Mom

How you have disappointed me: a pie chart

A) Boost your Test Score. B) Get the Girl.

It turns out that my expertise on the subject of romance may be limited to a relatively narrow demographic. In my defense, there is very little call for it on the ACT.

"Give her space," I tell the all-sport, high school Romeo whose girlfriend has recently benched him. "No big gestures."

He had gone from apologizing, to begging for forgiveness, to contemplating a campaign to win her back. As his college entrance exam tutor and a woman barely 30 years out of high school, I knew he was making a mistake.

"You're overthinking this," I said. "It looks like chemistry, but it's really just a logic question."

It was just as true in romance as it was on the ACT science test. I was sure of it. Plus, I had the answer sheet right in front of me.

When it comes to getting the girl back, less is more. "More" telegraphs weakness, whereas "less" is the stuff that makes people want "more." Also, there are so many ways the grand gesture can go wrong. I didn't have time to enumerate all of them and bring his ACT score up.   

But later, as I recount my sage advice to Girl Kamikaze, whose credentials include actually being a teenage girl, I get back the look she uses to signal that I have just said something so mind-bogglingly stupid it isn't even worth tweeting.

The correct answer, apparently, would have been this: Take your biggest idea, then multiply it by a factor of too much. 

According to the girl, whose instincts have been honed in a graduate degree's worth of Zac Effron movie deconstruction seminars and "literally" millions of YouTube prom proposals, the only way the Big Romantic Gesture can go wrong is by not being big enough.  Assuming it has been vetted by a committee of her 200 closest friends.

It seems so obvi to me now; I can't believe I missed it.

There are limits of course, to what an ACT tutor can do for you, even one whose command of pronouns is as solid as myself. But I really should have subcontracted this one right from the beginning. I know that now.