Send me sedatives

I white hot hate, with the intensity of a thousand suns, teaching a teenager to drive. Boy #3, who is now 18, is just learning to drive. This is because I kept grounding him from driving to put off my 19th nervous break-down. But now we're kind of tired of driving him around. Send me sedatives, the instructions have begun. I spent the entire day having "my driver" as I started to call him, driving me from errand to errand.
We bought him pants, stopped at the Scary Asian Dry Cleaning Dudes, got me a mocha, headed off to the WalMarts (I go there once a week to make myself feel smart) it's easy all you have to do is walk in the entrance and walk out the exit, the rest of them can't do it. Really I should get a video of that one day, just prop up a lawn chair and watch the confusion as they try to decide which door to use.
By now I've had enough of the passing of my driving wisdom on to another teenager but he wants to go to the video store.
"The one with the weird parking lot." I ask, "I have trouble in that one and I'm an excellent driver. Police pull me over to tell me what a great job I'm doing on the road."
"I plan to pull into McDonalds next to it."
"This is the last stop. Next to the last stop we still have to get the new propane tank."
We're going on three hours of me pressing an imaginary break and a death grip on the door handle. It's time to go home or time to ground him again, I'm not sure.

Celebrate Mom For Who She Is

You know how when you were a teenager and your mom said to you, “I hope when you have kids they act just like you?” It’s a curse they put on us and it works. I’ve done it myself. I’m not sure how or if it can be undone. But every Mother’s Day I tell my mom how sorry I am for those teenage years, it’s kind of like an annual gift from me to her. She grins at me and I patiently wait to see if the curse will magically be undone. When my boys do something stupid I know it has not been lifted. I haven’t scored enough points with her to undo the drama of my “I know everything” years.

1-800-Flowers.com is running a Celebrate Mom For Who She Is Contest, perhaps I can score some big time points by winning her some prizes, you know bribe her. You have to write a touching story about your mom. I remember in the sixth grade, before I was a teenager, I was trying out for cheer-leading. Try outs got to the part where I had to do a cheer all by myself and I chickened out. My mom was in the parking lot waiting for me and I went running to her crying. She didn’t judge me and she “believed” me the next day when I said I was sick and couldn’t go to school. She let me stay home when I felt humiliated, built up my self esteem for a long weekend and then sent me off to school Monday.

Yep, I definitely need to enter that story and say, “Hey mom! Remember when I was cute?” Maybe I can break the curse and my children will magically make all the right decisions and think I’m right all the time.

I am a Loud-Talker

My mother asked me a couple of months ago why I talk so loud. I had no idea I did talk loud. I talk too loud? After some personal observation I can now blame my loud-talking on my teenagers. Because teenage boys think of two things and two things only the majority of their waking hours, girls and cars in no particular order. Trying to get my voice to penetrate the thick skull of a teenage boy, trying to weave my voice through their constant thoughts of used cars and the opposite sex has turned me into a loud-talker. Have I lead by example? My mind tends to wander when they talk about cars. Most of those conversations they save for their dad, thank goodness. The three of them, the husband, Boy #2 and Boy #3 have found a site called BuyYourCar. They have been studying since the holiday season ended. Yes, I had a rest from car talk during the holiday season. But now we are back at in full force. So BuyYourCar has a section on buying advice, which is a good idea. It has questions you should ask the seller of the used car. This is the section the husband only looks over because Boy #2 and Boy #3 are too busy visioning themselves behind the wheel of a Mustang. I’ve also noticed the husband is a loud-talker too!