Knowing Where You're Going

It's tough being a 6th former or high school senior, but there's one thing that the American system does better than the English system. Read about it at my latest Expat Focus column.

Expat Mum

How to Embarrass Your Teen

Pop over to Not Supermum and have a read of the fabulous tips on how to embarrass your teen. And add a tip if you have one.
Tee hee.

Expat Mum

Thanks for the memory...

I've started to work, as a volunteer, in a Youth Work charity.

Am I stark, staring mad, you ask?

Probably!

I'm seeking a way through, it seems, and by chance I've found my feet working in the back of house, (so not with the young 'uns) in a concern that's there to keep young people this side of sane; to save them from harm, abuse, drink and drugs, self-harm, relationship problems, to keep them from despair.

I love it!

And of late I've been answering the 'phone, taking referrals, mainly to our small team of fab young counsellors. I love working beside them. Their energy just bounces off the walls.

I'm training as a counsellor myself. I'd like to work with young people. Eventually...

Call me mad. I am after all a proud Mad, Manic Mama!

I feel like I'm giving something back. Something good!

More laters.

OK, Someone Tell Me...

I have an almost 18 year old and a 15 year old amongst others, but it seems I still have a lot to learn. I need advice.

The 15 year old Man-Child is rocking a Mohawk at the moment and it's driving me mad. Not for the reasons you'd think. They have no uniform or dress code at school (within reason, but that's mainly directed at the wannabee-slut girls) so the Mohawk is fine.

I just think it's boring and predictable. He wants to be a punk/goth musician; he's heavily into his guitar (as well as viola); wears black all the time and has started adding a few bits of dangling chains to his jeans. Being 6'3' and rather cute, I think he looks good, if a bit menacing. But the haircut? Please. It's just so obvious isn't it? I mean, teenager trying to rebel = spiked hair.

He likes The Clash, so I keep popping up picures of the late Joe Strummer and saying "Why don't you ask the barber to do that with your hair?", and pointing out cooler hair cuts in magazines. He either rolls his eyes and says nothing, while clicking back to his homework, or bats me away with his gigantic hand.

He's going for a trim tonight after school and I have half a mind to pay off the barber to accidentally give him a different haircut.

After my latest attempt at brain-washing (some dude on American Idol with a great 'do') the Queenager imparted these words of wisdom: "You do realise that the more you say this, the less chance there is of him ever letting the Mohawk go?".

Um. Yes. I knew that.

Expat Mum

Get a grip woman!

It's a double edged sword, parenting, motherhood, you want to keep them close and safe, yet know that the whole point of it all is to let them gently, step by step find their own way out there in th ebig old bad worl. To nurture, feed and clothe them, give them boundaries (I'm crap at that now they are older). Give them space and time, and I do honestly I try very hard not to smother. It's time to take  few more steps back.

This last year since my son and I have lived alone, apart from my husband and my daughter, I have accepted much and discarded what I can do absolutely nothing about, to hold onto it is toxic. I am no longer lost in a mist of an unhealthy relationship and a mist of unhappiness. The kids are seemingly accepting, each facing their own patches of darkness and coming out stronger, hopefully with lessons learned, and new expectations.

I like living as a single woman I find, exploring possibilities, no longer in fear of what lies ahead.

Next Friday at 4am, yes you read that right, no typo, 4 bloody am, I shall walk my son around to his school,to meet the coach that will take him on his latest school trip. Patrick is going away for a 6 day trip to Paris & Brussels with his school friends and the excitement has been growing here steadily since Christmas.

This overlaps coincidentally with my 5 days off on the work rota. So l will either be furiously washing and cleaning the house, or mopping about like a lost soul. Hopefully I will be somewhere in the middle of all that, by studying and perhaps even a bit of time spent drawing or painting. 

Lots of wandering around the flat semi nude, cos l am mostly a few degrees hotter than is comfortable, and just cos I can and it feels good. 

I can play my kinda music as loud as I want, (without overhead groans), listen to my 70's LP's all grainy and non digital on the old record player. 

I don't have to cook cos l need to, just cos I want to, all stuff my son doesn't like, asparagus and blue cheese risotto, creamed spinach, eat brussel sprouts raw yum, smoked haddock, Massaman curry, my own anchovies and olive pizza and spicy chicken casserole...

I'm not sure l'll have the time to miss him or worry. 

He'll be fine and l'll be fine.

Am so very jealous though, I mean belle Paris! I can never tire of that city. To walk and walk and walk, by day and night through the early morning, buying a fresh baguette or croissants at 4am and  relishing each hot mouthful! I think I might treat myself finances allowing, post divorce (please soon) to take my self off for a long weekend there, perhaps with a pal.

Now this sounds like a plan. I shall pick up some brochures tomorrow!

I could even use my french passeport for the first time, enfin!

Saz x

E-mail - Not Cool!

How often have we been told that humo(u)r and sarcasm don't always translate in e-mail. Do we, I mean I, ever learn? I mean, do we?

(True story - on my mother's life.)

Last night I received an e-mail from one of the 15 year old's teachers, inviting parents to some sort of exhibition of their work. (I forget the details. Don't they all merge into one?)  What caught my eye was the enormous font of the body of the e-mail, compared to the surrounding text in my e-mail folders. I kept making the font smaller, but it was still enormous.  And then it dawned on me.

The hilarious e-mail I could send as a reply. Here it is ver batim:

Thanks for the information Mr M.
By the way - we 9th grade parents may generally be in our late 40s and early 50s but we don't need the HUGE font quite yet.!!!!
Thanks,
Toni H (not yet 50 and almost 20/20).

Hilarious, don't you think?

The Man-Child (whose teacher it was) stood by me, loudly denouncing me as a loser and that he would be SO embarrassed he couldn't possibly show up for class, but I knew he didn't really mind otherwise he'd have either pulled the computer plug out of the wall or picked me up and deposited me at the far end of the room.

So I sent it.

The reply? I give up. I realise teachers have to tread warily with parents, but please. Could I really have been serious.

"Sorry about that...I attempted to copy the text from an email I had written on our grading server and there must have been an issue with the formatting.  My apologies on that one... "

Argh! No! You're supposed to think I'm one hilarious, hip-cool mama, not a Type A, politically correct a** hole.

In my own defence, I couldn't resist sending off this one last e-mail in the desperate hope that the teacher would realise I had been hilariously joking all along:

"No problem - it was worth the absolute humiliation that I seem to have put the Queenager and the Man-Child through! ;-)"

Unfortunately, I cannot disagree with the teens that this is just one more teacher who now harbours the suspicison that their mother is indeed, insane.

MMM Public Service announcement

I came across this article today and wanted to share it with everyone. It's common sense but we all lose sight of it sometimes.

Not that I have any experience of this.

At all.

Sigh.

Expat Mum