Honesty is the best policy or is it?

We are taught right from the being of our existence that honesty is the best policy. But as adults we know that is not always the case, sometimes a little finesse is needed when dealing with certain situations.

Recently a young man I have know since birth found himself in one of these situations. He chose honesty and paid the price but because of his honesty it wasn't as severe as it could have been.

He is currently a junior in high school. Evidently he swiped some passes off one of his teachers' desk. A couple of days later he found himself in a position where another teacher needed some passes because she was out of them. Being the helpful young man that he was raised to be, he offered the teacher his passes. (I know what was he thinking.)

The teacher took the passes and told him he needed to be reported to the administration office. This could be handled one of two ways: 1) he could go now and discuss it with administration or 2) he could be written up and called down to office in a day or two.

Again being the honest person he is, he opted for choice #1. He waited 2 hours sitting in the front office waiting to be called in to see the Assistant Principal, who is responsible for discipline.

She discussed the situation with him, explaining that taking the passes was considered theft. The penalty for theft is five days out of school suspension. (yahoo vacation time to most kids) But because he was honest about his involvement and came to the office of his own accord his punishment would be three days of in school suspension (which means sitting in classroom with a monitor for several hours doing work with no talking or socializing involved).

As parents given these situations we are forced to deal with them. His parents were flabbergasted by this dilemma. On the one hand they thought it was incredibly stupid, why didn't he say he found them on the floor in the hallway and on other hand they were glad that he was honest but not too thrilled with him missing three days of classes. Or for that matter, why would he even think to offer that teacher the passes in the first place.

Whose Your Dawgy?!

I'm participating in a blog chain this month. The topic is pets, mostly dogs.
Some talk about how their animals own them while one even enjoys being a pet to her husband.

After giving it some thought, I decided to write about how in my next life I want to come back as one of these pets. Don't get me wrong, some pets have terrible lives, living at the mercy of their owners. I'm talking about the type of pampered pets mentioned in the previous blog chain posts.

I look at my three dogs and think "Who has it better than you?!"

Here's how I see it.

Wake up stretching and scratching what needs attention. My humans tell me how happy they are to see me, tousle my hair and open the door so I can take care of business. They immediately come when I scratch at the door.

I spend the next hour exploring the house, nosing through the wastepaper baskets, leaving bits of whatever here and there. I move on to check on everyone, picking up a sock or scarf in one room and leaving it in another. My humans get annoyed but pick it all up for me. As the humans start getting ready for their day, I get some exercise running around sniffing for breakfast leftovers, supervising the making of lunches and trying to pull the bag of bread off the counter. Then there's the shoe races. I take a shoe and make my human chase me. By now my humans leave one by one to go where ever they go.

Thank goodness because I'm ready for a morning nap in a sunny location, preferably on a nice comfy chair. For the next several hours I get up occasionally to investigate a noise, bark at the birds and squirrels in the backyard, and adjust my napping spot to the position of the sun. Several hours later the humans start to return.

I am always happy when my humans return. It means "me time" begins. I go out and take care of business. I get treats (several but don't tell anyone). Everyone pets and loves on me telling me how I am the cutest, sweetest doggy there is. My dinner is prepared, served and cleaned up after I am done.

I spend my evenings curled up with one of my humans. Usually they spend time rubbing my belly or scratching my ears. Oh, how I love that. Overall I think I've done a fine job of training them so far.

Then there is Spa Day. Once every three weeks, I get to ride in the car. I go to another human's. She gives me a bath, conditioning my coat til it's so soft and smells wonderful. She brushes my coat while drying it, trimming any scraggly hairs as needed. My nails are filed and my ears are cleaned. I socialize with some of the other spa attendees, enjoying a relaxing day.

Yeah, whose got it better than me.

Here are some of the blogs in this month's blog chain. Check them out:

Secret Government EGGO Project
Fantastical Imagination
For the First Time
Virtual Wordsmith
Polyspace
Polenth's Quill
Food History
Spontaneous Derivation
Spittin' (out words) Like a Llama
Fresh Hell
SLAKE
Forbidden Snowflake
Virginia Lee's Vagaries
awchain

Once Upon A Time

take a back seat


not a car metaphor, this was originally a parliamentary expression derived from the relative low influence of persons and issues from the back benches (the bench-seats where members sit in the House of Commons), as opposed to the front benches, where the leaders of the government and opposition sit.


happily ever after (atleast til 2008)...


have little or only observational involvement in something

To brighten up even your darkest nights...

Sometimes in life, you find a special friend;
Someone who changes your life just by being part of it.
Someone who makes you laugh until you can't stop;
Someone who makes you believe that there really is good in the world.
Someone who convinces you that there really is an unlocked door just waiting for you to open it.


The above was sent to me as an email this weekend. It made me reflect upon the girlfriends I have. I tell my kids "If you can count your "closest" friends on one hand you are very lucky." Through my life I've not only been lucky but I've been blessed by the influence and experience these women brought to my life.

Their diversity amazes me.

Some are older, some are younger;

a few been around for 40+ yrs, a few been around a couple of yrs;

some mentored me, some I mentored;

quite a few are related (for this I will always be grateful),

but all of them are family.


For I am a better person for sharing this journey with each of them.

Once Upon A Time.....

Baker's dozen

In times when bakers incurred a heavy fine for giving short weight they used to add an extra loaf to avoid the risk.

Happily ever after....(atleast til 2008)

Thirteen

Fickle, Fickle Heart

You couldn't pay me to go back to my teen years.

I complain about living with teenagers, but I am not so old that I don't remember how emotionally challenging it was.


I fell in love easily. Going steady with a boy for a summer was like a lifetime. Looking back I see how careless it was, I was my own worse enemy.

PITA2 (middle daughter) recently met a boy at the mall. Both were with a friend who also seemed to hit it off. This budding relationship was a little over a week old when I found out about it. After asking the questions most parents ask, it was determined this young man was inappropriate for my daughter. Simply put; too old.

To my amazement, with very little fanfare, some tears, she ran up stairs to tell him she couldn't see him anymore. Over the next few days, I heard very little if anything about this young man.

One week later, about 9:30AM, PITA2 calls me at work from school. She is incoherent, crying and barely able to talk, requesting to have me excuse her from school. After several minutes I'm able to piece together - today she found out young man had replaced her and her friend had set them up. Remember this young man was in her life for a second.

Not known for my tact, I told her to go to the Ladies Room, get herself under control and head back to class. After school she could go home, lay on her bed and cry her eyes out if she wished but I could not condone getting out of school for such reason.

4PM I receive another call from PITA2 sounding quite chipper. She announces "I am over him. He is a jerk anyway."

I don't know if another caught her eye or she is becoming wiser where men are concerned.
I know she has a fickle heart.

Can We Talk?!

I would like this to be a recurring segment posing a question or two that open up a discussion in the comments section.

On the subject of teen dating:

Age to start; type of dating allowed; appropriate age differences; and curfew restrictions?

Does gender play a role in your answers?

Which way did he go, Joe....

What is the deal with men and directions?

Not just driving direction, but how-to directions too.

My husband and I can't do household projects together.

It ends up in an argument everytime.

First thing he does is put the directions to the side (without looking at them). Next he takes out the parts as he thinks they should go together, while I would have taken all the parts out, laid them out in front of me, grabbed the directions and followed them step by step.

After much grumbling and cussing, he has a finished product along with a little pile of leftover parts. I comment on the pile and he tells me they are spare parts.

I don't know about you, but I have rarely heard of any manufacturer giving spare parts with their products. I know those parts go somewhere.

Later if the items starts to fall apart, his excuse is either it is a piece of junk, what do I expect?! or he didn't have the right tools to do it in the first place.

Once Upon A Time...

'Bottoms Up'

The expression origins are from the British historical press-ganging of unwary drinkers in dockside pubs into the armed services (mainly the navy) in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Men who 'took the King's shilling' were deemed to have contracted to serve in the armed forces, and this practice of offering the shilling inducement led to the use of the technique in rather less honest ways, notably by the navy press-gangs who would prey on drunks and unsuspecting drinkers close to port. Unscrupulous press-gangers would drop a shilling into a drinker's pint of ale, (which was then in a pewter or similar non-transparent vessel), and if the coin was undetected until the ale was consumed the press-gangers would claim that the payment had been accepted, whereupon the poor victim would be dragged away to spend years at sea. Pubs and drinkers became aware of this practice and the custom of drinking from glass-bottom tankards began. The 'bottoms up' expression then naturally referred to checking for the King's shilling at the bottom of the tankard. (Ack J Burbedge)

Happily ever after (atleast til 2008)...

A drinking expression, rather like cheers, good health, or skol

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Your guess is as good as mine.

I always tried to make dinner a family affair. It became the one time of the day that we all sat down together. The conversation wasn't always intellectual yet we rarely argued at the table (bad for the digestive tract and all). Even with sports and other activity schedules we managed to eat together. We might eat really early or really late yet for 16 years I managed to accomplish this feat.

Many a time I felt I ran, no that's not right, worked at a restaurant, no that's not right, a cafeteria. Yes, yes, much better, barring the hairnet and orthopedic shoes. The menu went something like Mon - beef, Tues - pasta, Wed - chicken, etc... What dish depended on the season, what was on sale that week, and a ziploc bag (not a box) of recipes.

When the PITAs were little dinner was easy. The rule was if they didn't clean their plate, they didn't get dessert. Dessert's great motivation. But over time it lost it's power over them. The last few years the table as grown larger while those sitting around it grew fewer. There are many different reasons for the decline in attendance: part-time jobs, social events, and of course

"I don't eat that!"

Did I mention I don't like to cook? Never did. But as a wife and mother I was expected to have the cooking gene. Well my mother didn't have it, her mother didn't have it so I don't have it. It, evidently, being a dormant gene in our family DNA. Still I fried, marinated, tossed, baked, grilled, boiled, broiled, sauteed, etc... more meals than I care to remember. Most were good, some superb and a few inedible. God forbid I hit upon a recipe everyone liked. I cooked it til they never wanted to eat it again.

The last several months I slowly realized that the challenge now becomes how to down-size my cooking. After all these years of cooking for a family of 5 which is like cooking for 7 or 8 it's difficult to condense recipes, atleast for me. I am not a pinch of this and a pat of that cook, I need to be told exactly how much, when to add, and how long to cook it.

Even that didn't solve the problem, I never know who's going to be home for dinner, except DH and myself. So I still cooked for 5 and set leftovers warming for those coming in at whatever time. More and more nobody wanted the leftovers because they grabbed something while out. I in turn threw out more and more food each week. Yet if someone didn't grab a bite to eat and there were no leftovers available they felt slighted.

What's a mom to do?

This mom decreed that everyone knows when dinner is, what their schedule is and if they are going to be joining us for dinner or not. I cook depending on this schedule and if their plans change then they make due with whatever is available because...

This is not a cafeteria or a restaurant.

Once Upon A Time...

Once upon a time ... will be a weekly feature of this blog.

I love cliches. I use them all the time (I know - bad habit). I find their origins interesting. The evolution of these phrases is usually fascinating. Today's version seldom resembles much of the original useage yet one can see how it evolved into it's modern definition.

Once Upon A Time...

A Rule of Thumb

In the 1400s a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb.

Happily ever after (atleast til 2008)...

A good rule to live by, a good general principle.

One Ringy Dingy, Two Ringy Dingy

Customer service help lines are the bane of the consumer's existence. Designed to make routine tasks convenient yet evolving into a quagmire pulling one further and further in. What should be a five minute phone call becomes a test in endurance and patience.

All you want is a simple answer to a simple question:

First you dial a toll free number,

Second you sit through several options (none of which help you),

Third you finally have a chance to talk to a "live" voice and explain your question, only to find yourself on hold and transferred to start all over again.

And that is a good call.

Today my mother wanted to pay her internet carrier online.

She logged into the site but encounters problems paying her bill. An error message kept appearing when she tried to submit payment that led her to believe there was a problem with the system. She decided to call and verify that there was a problem with the system and not her computer.

She dialed the general help line, got through all the options, and connected to a "live" cs rep. He told her she needed tech support and transferred her. Next a woman answered the call, after explaining her problem, the woman said she was the wrong dept and she needed the help line (which is where she started). The woman transferred her into dial tone space, disconnecting the call.

My mother immediately called back. While waiting to get through the menu a second time she decides to check her computer again. This time the carrier site is asking for a telephone number with area code to be entered. She does this, while still waiting to get through the automated menu. Error message pops up that the area code is unknown. She does this a couple more times with the same result each time. Gives up and logs off.

Meanwhile, she finally reaches another cs rep. Explains her problem, he asks if he can put her on hold. She says yes, waits 10 minutes, thinking the rep is seeing to her problem.

Noooooo, a woman picks up the line and asks if she can help her.

Dumbfounded, my mother explains her problem again after expressing her displeasure in the events that have transpired over the last 30 minutes of her time. The cs rep apologizes, explains they have been experiencing technical difficulties with the online system.

Finally answering my mother's question.

Punchline:

She'd happily take my mother's payment over the phone for a $15.00 fee.

PITA: Not just bread

A family moved into the neighborhood years ago. They had three children, 2 girls and 1 boy. I knew their names were Jan, Fran and Dan because I heard their mother calling them. But every time their father called it was PITA1, PITA2, etc or PITAs.

It was said affectionately and I always thought it was sweet. One day at a neighborhood BarBQ, I casually asked him what it meant. I had always been struck by the endearment and how no one else called them by their

dad's pet name.

He started to laugh while his wife rolled her eyes and responded,
"Well, PITA stands for Pain In The A$$ and I assign a number by birth order."

I was appalled at the time but as the years went by and my own children became older the name seemed more appropriate.

I started to call them PITA1, PITA2 & PITA3.

For the sake of anonymity

when I post about my 3 lovely children I will refer to them as

PITA1, PITA2, & PITA3.

Curious about the origin of the word "PITA" I looked it up. It's centuries old and usually always referred to a flat round bread (actually pizza is a type of pita) but I found another version - "Pita bread or Basilo pita is like a cake or tart, with a single layer of sponge cake or bread that is typically circular and flat."

Interesting - my PITAs definitely have spongelike qualities.

They absorb my money, my food, my gas and my energy.

Yet, when asked to reciprocate, they are dried out.

Size Doesn’t Matter

Spring/Summer fashions have arrived.
What’s a girl to do?

$HOP!!!

I love to shop, but I don’t have time to spend hours perusing the racks. I grab a lunch hour here and there, a Saturday every once in a while. I used to spend a few moments looking over a rack, if I saw something I liked I would grab my size and move on, eventually finding my way to the dressing room. Sometimes I bought items I liked and didn’t have time to try on, sure my size would fit. Those items seldom went back due to size.

Not anymore.

Sizing for womens’ clothing has changed significantly over the last few years. Universal sizing is no longer dependable. Designers have their own size charts. Now a trip to the dressing room means bringing at least three of everything I want to try on; my size (or what I guess is my size) along with the next size smaller and larger. For awhile I could even count on a couple of my favorite labels/collections to be consistent. That, too, has changed.

Even shoes have been affected by this trend. Not only do lengths vary but widths also. It is very hard to find a decent selection of narrow or wide women shoes.

I look around and see more women wearing sizes and styles that are not flattering to their body types. Feet crammed into shoes that don’t fit properly. Yet a day shopping at the local mall proves that sizes and styles are limited. It seems clothing is designed for a perceived generic body type that a small percentage of women have.

Buying without trying,
No longer an option.

Straddling the Gap

I’m straddling the generation gap. How did I get here? When did I get here? It started several years ago as a crack widening until it became a gap.

I should have seen it coming when my husband gave me a mug with the caption

“It's official I've become my mother.”

Nothing against MY mother, she’s great. It’s more about becoming “YOUR PARENTS”. As children, we swear we will not grow up to be our parents, who are sooo uncool.

I live with 3 teenagers, one is 20, so technically 2 teenagers and 1 young adult. Anyone who has dealt with teenagers knows they would rather eat glass then be seen in public with their parents. I can live with it because I know, as my parents before me, that one day they, too, will look in the mirror and wonder who's that old person staring back at them.

As I reflect, I think it started with the car. One child, I’m still driving a cool car. Second child, I’m driving a station wagon. Third child, I’m driving the dreaded minivan. Next, the clothes and accessories go from funky and hip to something more age appropriate, covering more and flashing less. My hairstyles became sedate also. Balancing the tightrope of current fashion and age appropriate style can be challenging.

Music was the most obvious sign. But did I notice, not until recently. I like a lot of different music genres. As the years go by the new stuff is sounding more and more like noise and I find myself saying things like “Turn that off, I can’t listen to that.” or “That’s not music. I can’t even understand what they are saying.”

The most telling though is my advice. I give advice that makes my kids roll their eyes and tell me “Maybe that’s how it was in the olden days, things are different today.” Bam that’s when it hit me. “Olden days” Huh? Or I say something my mother would have said and gasp “Did those words just come out of my mouth?” The truth be told,

It's official I've become my mother.

So are you straddling the gap? Do you even see the crack under your feet or have you managed to find the balance to keep the gap from spreading? Or like me, did it sneak up on you before you realized it?

To Blog or Not to Blog

To Blog or Not to Blog, that is the “?”

If everyone jumps off the bridge,
would you?

Seems so, here I am – blogging.

40-something woman, 20+ years wife, mother of 3, owned by 3 dogs and devoted member of a support group of my dearest friends.

Like most women I wear many hats – cook, housekeeper, ATM, maid, chauffer, medic, ATM, disciplinarian, last resort listener, gopher, bail bondsman (not literally), ATM, answering machine, champion, etc… (sounds like a personal ad)

Who is M. T. Nester?

Mother of 3 teenagers - 15 yr old son, 17 yr & 20 yr old daughters; mix in hot flashes, mood swings, bloating, typical aches & pains of middle age and I’m a walking advertisement for Prozac – mid-life crisis not withstanding.

My goal the last couple of years has been to stay sane until the kids leave the nest so DH and I can have a life where we come first, the house is clean, there is food in the pantry and fridge, money in the bank and gas in the car.

I just don’t get the whole empty nest thing. I love my children but as I see it my job is to raise well-adjusted, independent individuals to go out into the world as productive adults. I imagine if they moved ½ way around the world I would be sad and worried but barring that I imagine(daily)helping them move their stuff and get settled in their own space; preferably not in my basement or garage.

"Teen" is the hardest stage of parenting. This stage is mentally and emotionally exhausting; always trying to stay one step ahead while looking for the repeat button on the house, dating, school, and driving rules.

“Easy” you say,

“No problem” you snicker,

then you either don’t have teenagers or you can look back and laugh about it now.

Am I alone in my thinking? Are you ready for your chicks to fly the nest or do you want them to feather it abit longer?