Lisa Smith Molinari

Archive for the ‘family’ Category

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Carry a Big Chopstick

In family, Humor, modern culture, parenting on August 23, 2011 at 1:58 pm

Last week, I spent $290.87 on school supplies at a local “supercenter” that shall remain unnamed. Suffice it to say that the “rollback” in prices still wasn’t enough to put a “smiley” on my face.

I lugged the bags from my car into the house, and dumped the lot out onto the living room floor. I stared at the pile of pencils, paper, folders, notebooks, highlighters, binders, rulers, index cards, and two $88 graphing calculators and thought to myself:

Good Lord, almost three hundred dollars for this stuff. Whose idea was it to have three kids anyway? [The unnamed supercenter] must be making a killing, well, along with the manufacturers I guess . . . hu? Wait! Let me see here . . . oh no! Made in China? What have I done?!

With our economy in peril and so many Americans out of work, how could I have so carelessly handed hundreds of dollars over to China? I contemplated returning all the supplies to [the unnamed supercenter] and telling the kids to just use the free bank pens, hotel note pads, and the crayon nubs left over from last year.

Knowing I did not have the courage to return the school supplies I had just spent the last three hours procuring, I slumped down next to the pile of foreign manufactured goods and hung my head in shame.

A minute or two later, a Chinese lantern blinked on in my head.

Hey, wait a minute, I thought, the Chinese have been making the stuff Americans buy for decades, right? Well, why don’t we do exactly the same thing?

US citizens make up about 4.5% of the world’s population, but China accounts for almost 20%. They figured out long ago that they could manufacture products that Americans want and sell them to us at a hefty profit. Why don’t we make the products the Chinese can’t live without and sell them to China – a market four times larger than the US?

My mind raced with the endless possibilities of my brilliant scheme.

Rice. Rice is the staple food and most important ingredient in Chinese cooking. Why not flood the banks of the Mississippi and Lake Superior to cultivate some rice paddies?  

Chopsticks. With the US furniture industry losing market share to Asian imports for the last few decades, why not put our laid off furniture makers to work manufacturing chopsticks?  China uses 63 billion disposable chopsticks a year, or 25 million full grown trees annually, and the US has both the lumber and workers to fill the Chinese need for their beloved wooden utensils.

But I can’t take credit for this idea. A company called Georgia Chopsticks is currently churning out 2 million pairs of sweet gum and poplar chopsticks a day, selling them to supermarket chains in China. That’s what I’m talking about.

After we tackle the basics, why not open up a soy sauce plant in South Dakota? A Peking duck farm in Delaware? Woks in Wisconsin? Pea pods in Pennsylvania? Mandarin oranges in Mississippi?

 And, there’s no need to stop at the dinner table. Let’s ask the various yard ornament manufacturers in the United States to stop making gnomes, pink flamingoes, and gazing balls, and start churning out Budda statues? And I’m sure Parker Brothers would be willing to put Monopoly production on hold long enough to produce a few million Chinese Checkers and Mahjongg sets.

Hollywood has been particularly fond of superhero movies such as Captain America, Batman and the Green Hornet. What about a Chinese Superhero? Let’s commission Hanna-Barbera to get cracking on a cutting edge remake of Hong Kong Phooey and market it to Chinese movie goers. I could totally see Jackie Chan in the part of Penry, with sultry little Rosemary played by Angelina Jolie and Tommy Lee Jones as Sergeant Flint. Can’t you just see the lines at the box office?

Imagine, with the US exporting goods to 1.3 billion Chinese consumers a year, we’ll be rolling in the wonton wrappers before you know it. Put that in your fortune cookie and eat it.

My faith in living the American Dream restored, I sorted through the little mountain of foreign made school supplies without guilt and tried to think of what to cook for dinner. All the thoughts of China had left me with a hankering for Asian cuisine, so I hopped on the phone to Hop Shings for some egg rolls, kung pao chicken, and chow mein.

All made in America, of course.

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Middle School Disorientation

In family, Humor, military, parenting, self-image, social scene on August 17, 2011 at 5:49 pm

My daughters and I nervously passed between two huge concrete lions flanking the entrance, and a door opened magically before us.

“Welcome to Julia Landon College Preparatory!” said the eighth grader holding the door, smartly clad in khaki shorts, a navy blue polo emblazoned with the school logo, and a full set of shining braces.

It was middle school orientation day, and having  just moved to Jacksonville, Florida, we had no clue how to negotiate the vast halls and complex social hierarchy of this new institution.

With every move, our military family has adapted to new surroundings, but this time we were a bit anxious. The girls had been accepted into a top notch magnet school, and while I was grateful for this stroke of dumb luck, I was also a bit worried that I might meet up with some pretentious personalities.

Being from humble roots, I don’t deal well with snooty people.

Besides, middle school parents are a separate and distinct breed. Unlike elementary school children who are a blank canvas, and high school kids whose personalities are pretty much set, middle school children are still forming their individual aptitudes and character traits. Middle school parents still believe that, with their guidance, their children will be neurosurgeons and professional athletes.

At this stage in the game, middle school parents are still living the dream, and they carry themselves as if their children are the cream of the crop.

I had a sneaking suspicion that the parents at Julia Landon College Preparatory Middle School might have cornered the market on elitist attitudes, so I decided to beat them at their own game.

I knew I needed to walk into that school wearing something that would convey the message, “Yea, I’m new, intelligent, interesting, and I have no time for you.”

So, I strategically paired a trendy shirt dress and sandals with a silver pendant necklace on a leather cord. I carried one of those huge tote bags with the name of a European city stamped all over it. Mine read “Stuttgart.”

I envisioned another mom asking, “Ooo, cool necklace . . . where’d you get it?” and I’d have to tell how I bought the pendant from a street market in Rome after a delicious lunch of risotto and fried artichokes in a Trastevere café. I’d have that far-away look in my eye that says, “I’ve got more culture in my upturned pinkie than you’ll get from a case of Yoplait.”

Then someone else might notice my Stuttgart bag and inquire as to whether I have “visited”Germany. I’d have to hide my smirk as I explain, “Why, no, actually we lived in Stuttgart for the last three years.” Again, with that far-away look in my eyes.

That’ll show ‘em, I thought, as we crossed the threshold into the school.

We were greeted by more khaki clad kids, each one more polite and helpful than the last, “yes ma’am” rolling off their tongues without the slightest effort.

I grumbled under my breath at their superiority. I had been trying to get my own children to use that simple phrase for years, but even under extreme duress, I had only been able to elicit a reluctant muttering that sounded more like “S’pam.” Apparently, my kids would rather shove Popsicle sticks under their toenails than subordinate themselves in such a humiliating way. Preferring to not be referred to as repulsive canned meat product, I gave up the fight and accepted the garden variety “Yes, Mom,” usually accompanied by plenty of eye rolling.

We followed the sea of people headed to several stations set up for getting locker assignments, student ID photos, PTA memberships, textbooks, and PE uniforms. The crowd looked like a giant preppy wave of madras plaid, nautical stripes, tanned limbs, sun bleached hair and white teeth. Parents seemed to recognize each other, chatting as the tide swept forward.

In a pathetic ploy for attention, I would announce at each station that “We are new here,” but no one seemed to care all that much. They were just as pleasant as eating a slice of summer peach pie on a porch swing. But I wasn’t about to let these sweet-tea swilling snobs get the best of me.

In a last ditch effort to get the upper hand, I announced to the silver-haired guidance counselor, “Well, we are new because WE JUST MOVED HERE AFTER LIVING IN EUROPE,” hoping the surrounding hoard would overhear and drop to their knees to beg for my friendship. But no one batted an eye.

In her slow-cooked southern drawl, the guidance counselor responded, “Well, I do declare, you have come a long way! Welcome, we are so happy to have you here. Now, how may I help you?”

Contritely, I handed the sweet woman my daughters’ health records and thanked her for her assistance. I couldn’t deny it any more. The people at this new school weren’t snooty nor elitist. I didn’t need to beat them at their own game because they weren’t playing one. This was simply a good school with good people in it. With a sigh of relief, I finally let down my guard and resolved to just be real.

As I walked back out the door and between the concrete lions, I remembered the advice I had given my own girls that very morning: “Don’t be afraid, just be yourself. In time, you will make lots of new friends and you’ll fit right in.”

Point taken.

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Corny American Pride

In family, Humor, Memories, military, modern culture, parenting, travel on August 1, 2011 at 7:24 pm

I’ve been thinking lately about the things I’ve taken for granted. After living three years abroad, our military family finally appreciates what we have as Americans.

I’m not talking about ethereal concepts like democracy and freedom. I’m talking about the really important things that make a tangible difference in our every day lives as Americans.

I’m talking about Corn on the Cob.

Yes, that sweet vegetarian delicacy indigenous to this great land of ours. Native Americans cultivated “maize” for thousands of years before Europeans discovered the “New World” and the usefulness of corn as a grain, but it was only a couple centuries ago that Iroquois shared with settlers the sweet variety of corn eaten off the cob. Unlike the settlers, Europeans never really took to eating corn straight off the cob. In fact, they are of the general opinion that corn on the cob is hog feed.

So for three long years, we went without.  

It wasn’t easy, because, as far as vegetables go, corn on the cob has always been kinda special to us. Despite the fact that my father was raised at the boardwalk in New Jersey, he was always a wannabe country boy, which is why we had a garden about eight times too big for a family of four, along with a tractor, six chickens, two goats, a cat, and at least two hunting dogs.

As such, my brother and I had chores that were uncharacteristic of suburban children. We were picking green beans, tending goats, and driving a tractor when our friends were getting jobs at the mall. Also, I had the unenviable task of selling the excess eggs, puppies, and vegetables at the end of our road. Corn on the cob was my best seller, and my first real source of income.

Nearly two decades later, my husband-to-be first laid eyes on me when I was sitting rather unlady like on the deck of a beach house, shucking corn. Unfortunately, I was covered in sand and my wet bangs had fallen into an unflattering middle part. Worse yet, the four thick rolls of my belly protruded between the top and bottom of my bathing suit.

It took a shower and considerable work with my curling iron, but I was able to win him over at dinner that evening, not without help from a heaping plate of delicious Silver Queen corn on the cob.

Even my children have fallen under the sweet corn spell. Our middle child, Anna, has always been a worrier. One night when she was about five years old, I tucked her into bed, placing her tiny hands together under mine to say our prayers.

“Now I lay me . . .” I began.

“Mommy?” Anna interrupted. “Yes, Honey?”

“What happens when you die?” she said, her big eyes staring up into mine.

“Uh,” my mind raced, unprepared. “Well, you go to Heaven, Sweetie. Now where were we?”

“Yea, but, what will happen to my body,” she specified.

As I looked into the worried eyes of my precious little girl, I could not reveal the reality of death and bodily decomposition. Panicked, I began to ramble.

“Well, Honey, when someone dies, his soul leaves his body and floats up to Heaven.”

“But . . .” I knew I had to say something, anything, that would quickly distract her from thoughts of dead bodies being buried in deep, dark graves, where they are left to rot into the dirt.

“Heaven is beautiful!” I said, but her eyes still looked worried, “And you can have anything you want,” her brows were still furrowed, “and, and, you can have wings and YOU CAN FLY!”  

“Can I have purple wings, Mommy?”

“Yes! Yes! You can have purple wings!” I blurted, relieved to at long last please my relentless little interrogator. Her eyes fluttered with visions of purple feathers as we finished our prayers.

“Can I really have anything I want in Heaven?” Anna asked as I kissed her forehead.

“Yep, anything,” I replied, and turned to leave the room. As I flipped the light switch, I heard Anna whisper one last question: “Mommy, can I have corn on the cob in Heaven?”

“Yes, Sweetie,” I answered with a smile, “you can have all the corn on the cob you want.”

To this day, our family still yearns for the yellow sweetness of this heavenly vegetable; in fact, we have consumed no less than four dozen ears since moving back to the States a few weeks ago.

We can’t get enough of freshly boiled cobs rolled in butter, sprinkled with a pinch of salt and cracked black pepper. My husband haphazardly chomps at the cob, leaving tufts of missed kernels. I munch methodically from right to left like an old typewriter, occasionally stopping to chew and swallow sweet mouthfuls. Due to expensive orthodontics, Anna gnaws at the youngest kernels on the ends and trims the rest off with a knife. Lilly takes spiral bites around the cob like an apple peeler. Hayden, who despises all vegetables, seems disgusted by our shameless display of gluttony.

When every cob has been stripped of its golden pearls, we sit swollen, with buttered cheeks, giggling about the stuff stuck between our teeth.

We, the People of this great Nation, possess the unalienable right to enjoy distinctly American Corn on the Cob, a liberty which one should never take for granted. Give me hot buttered ears or give me death, I say! Let freedom and the dinner bell ring!

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Coffee, Tea or Turbulence?

In family, Humor, military, parenting, travel on July 8, 2011 at 8:33 pm

“Coffee? Tea?” the lanky flight attendant mouthed from above my seat. I pulled my complimentary headphones off to tell her “No thanks,” but regretted the decision a half hour later when I started feeling like I was in a fruit dehydrator and the flight attendant was way up in first class, most likely serving some businessman his second glass of champagne.

My three kids and I were halfway into a nine hour flight, on our way back to the United States after a military tour in Germany. My husband was already at our new duty station in Florida, and was planning to pick us up at the Jacksonville Airport later that evening.

The military travel agency neglected to arrange for us to be seated together, and Luftansa merely smirked when I asked to change our seat assignments. From my isle seat in 29B, I could only see the kids if I stood up on my tray table and used binoculars, and even then I could only see the tops of their heads. Lilly, age 10 was at 39D, surrounded on either side by college kids. Anna, age 13 was behind Lilly at 40D, and my 16-year-old, Hayden, was against a window at 43A.

With four hours down, and five to go, I said a little prayer that there were enough movies and snacks to keep them entertained all the way home.

From my isle seat against the bulkhead, I was just a few feet from the only restrooms in economy class. Not only did I see just about every passenger on my side of the plane pull when they should have pushed the bathroom doors, I heard scores of those characteristic sucking flushes that makes one wonder where it all goes. A line started building up past my seat (it was about 45 minutes after the coffee service after all,) requiring me to sit facing forward for fear that if I turned my head, the tip of my nose might brush against someone’s hip.

A little while later I heard the clank of the lunch cart, and started getting excited. No, I wasn’t hungry. I’m never hungry during airline travel, perhaps because my intestines sense that I will be sitting for hours on end, and go completely dormant. So every peanut, pretzel, stale roll with butter pat, mushy noodle, and fruit gelatin square I consume lays in my stomach for the entire flight, completely undigested.

The back up of undigested material actually makes the flight even more physically uncomfortable, if that is possible, yet I get eagerly accept the lousy morsels offered out of sheer boredom.

“Would you like the Asian chicken or vegetarian pasta?” the voice from above asked. I chose the former, envisioning something similar to the Szechuan dish I like to order from King’s Palace when I’m feeling hormonal. A tiny rectangular tray is placed before me with a roll, butter, cheese wedge, a square dish with a gelatinous fruit dessert, and a foil covered container.

Peeling back the foil, I discovered that the “Asian chicken” looked nothing like my beloved Szechuan dish. I ate it anyway, savoring every mediocre bite, just for the entertainment value.

As I hunched over the sections of my little rectangular tray, I wondered how the airline chefs sleep at night.

The Indian businessman beside me was also hunched over his vegetarian pasta. His elbows were tucked compactly at his sides, his hands hovered over his tray while his fingers tore at the little packages, shoving tiny bits into his mouth while his eyes darted. It occurred to me that just about everyone in economy class ate in this manner. It was as if we were all a bunch of squirrels nibbling at our acorns.

After the trays had been taken away, I went back to find the kids happily engrossed in their seat back televisions. I decided to use the opportunity to take a little catnap.

I always envision myself cradled comfortably against my travel pillow’s C-shaped contour, but I inevitably awaken with my head fallen forward so I look half dead, or worse, cocked back with my mouth wide open. No matter which way my head falls, my spine is always compressed into temporary scoliosis and my rear end goes completely numb. I can feel new spider veins bursting forth on my thighs.

For the next two hours, I dozed uncomfortably, contorting my body into every imaginable position, every one seemingly more painful than the next.

I finally gave up on rest, just when the snack cart appeared. This time I chose the vegetarian pizza, which was a rectangular slab of dough upon which was smeared some kind of cheeseless orange sauce, and embedded with tiny fragments of vegetable material, to include a German pizza topping favorite – corn.

Soon after snack service, the airplane began its gradual descent and we hit turbulence. It felt like the corn, Asian Chicken and fruit gelatin were playing lawn darts in my stomach. I closed my eyes and reached for the armrests, awkwardly caressing the Indian businessman’s hand which had beat me to it.

I heard a commotion and opened my eyes to see the flight attendant grabbing paper towels out of the restroom. My brain quickly calculated probabilities and reasonable inferences, coming to the surefire conclusion that my daughter Lilly must’ve thrown up.

I craned to look back to her seat, and saw a college girl pinching her nose shut. Everyone was looking into Lilly’s row with a grimace. I waved to the flight attendant and pointed at myself as if to say, “Hi! Remember me? I’m the one who asked to be seated with my kids and was refused!”

It all worked out in the end. The college boy who was seated right next to Lilly and who got hit by “friendly fire” was quite understanding. We were able to get Lilly some fresh clothes after retrieving our luggage. And, best of all, Daddy was there waiting at the Jacksonville Airport as promised. Our family is finally on solid ground again.

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The Call That Launched a Thousand Tears

In family, Humor, marriage, military, parenting on June 23, 2011 at 9:01 pm

So, I called my husband the other day.

“Hi Hon, so what’s up?” I asked.

Now, before I go any further with this story, I need to set the scene:

My husband, bless his heart, has been at Naval Station Mayport on the sunny Atlantic shores of northFlorida, for almost three months. He went ahead of the rest of our family to start his new job there, and to live in the oceanfront base hotel, with daily maid service.

I, on the other hand, stayed in our stairwell apartment on Patch Barracks in chilly Germany with the kids so they could finish school. Our seemingly fool-proof plan included me arranging and managing our household goods move, the shipment of our dog “Dinghy,” meaningful travel with the kids at spring break, inspection and shipment of our minivan, checking out of military quarters, arranging hotel and airport shuttle, and other tasks associated with moving a family across the world.

As a military spouse, I am used to handling things while my husband is away, so I thought this little three-month separation would not be much different from the rest.

I was wrong.

When I made that fateful phone call to my husband, I had endured a grueling week of shocking school progress reports, driving around base for two hours in search of my teenage son who had failed to turn in his final Biology project, a malfunctioning oven and resulting visit from the grumpy German Fire Department, a broken dryer and resulting shameless display of underclothes hanging on radiators and windowsills, and lots and lots of overwhelming move details. I was out of patience, energy and dignity.

“Well, I rented a movie last night,” my husband responded, “it was no good, but I got another great pizza from Sal’s.”

“Oh, that sounds nice,” I offered weakly, wondering if the kids would be OK eating cereal again for dinner.

“Today, Dinghy and I needed a little change of scenery from our daily beach walks,” he continued, “so we hopped in the car and went to the Riverwalk area for a nice long run and lunch at an outdoor café.”

I had fallen silent, but my husband didn’t notice.

“The folks at the café were so nice and gave Dinghy three bowls of water to drink since it has been so hot and sunny here.”

I stared out my window at the dark clouds that hadn’t lifted in days.

“And after that we headed back here to the homestead for a quick swim and to watch some boob tube. . . .So what’s been going on there?”

I began, slowly at first, to relate the details of my agonizingly stressful week. My rant picked up speed, leading to some crucial information about our move I needed to go over with him.

“Ooo, hey Hon, can I call you back in like five minutes?” he said.

“Uh, sure,” I agreed, believing the delay to be due to some minor urgent matter relating to our dog. Our 110 pound labradoodle was prone to gulping water and then spontaneously vomiting it all back up on a whim. I wondered if that was the problem.

Five minutes later, I answered on the first ring.

“Hey, so what happened? Is Dinghy OK?” I asked.

“Oh, heck yea, he’s fine. I just had to run down to the beach real quick. Right before you called I had come up from the beach to grab another beer. I left my beach chair and book down near the water, and wanted to go grab it before the tide started coming in.”

That was all it took. The floodgates opened and a veritable tsunami sprang from my tear ducts. Within 10 seconds, I was a wailing, blubbering, snotty mess.

Stunned, my husband had nothing much to say, offering only, “Hang in there, Hon, you’re doing a great job.”

My husband and I learned a dual lesson that day. I learned that long-term military separations are so much easier for the spouse to handle when the service person is somewhere icky like on an aircraft carrier floating out in the Pacific, or living in a tent in some God-forsaken dusty hot climate, or at least behind a big metal desk working day and night to support the family.

My husband learned that, next time his wife asks him, “What’s up?” he should definitely respond, “Oh, not much, what’s up with you?”

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The Lame Duck in the Chicken Coop

In family, Humor, military, social scene on June 10, 2011 at 9:28 pm

For the last three years, I have been living in conditions that could be described as very similar to that of a chicken coop.

I reside on the 4th floor of a stairwell base housing unit on a US Army barracks in Germany. Our building looks almost identical to about 40 other housing units on this base, each one lined up neatly on patriotically named streets, within walking distance to the schools, commissary, and mail room, and all surrounded by a humongous fence.

However, it is not the appearance of this base that makes living here like living in a coop (truth be told, the fence and sterile buildings make this place more reminiscent of an asylum.) Nobody is throwing feed corn at us. No one has laid an egg as far as I know. But it is the pecking order that renders this place like an enormous cage full of clucking hens, strutting roosters and peeping chicks running wild.

When I moved here three years ago, I quickly became cognizant of this unique social order. As a new arrival, I took some time to nest, but after my rooster flew the coop for work and the chicks went off to school, boredom and loneliness set in.

I wandered the range in search of a flock to huddle with, but none could be found. Sure, there were hens everywhere (and a few stay-at-home roosters, I wouldn’t want to be sexist,) but I soon realized that I was at the bottom of the pecking order and would have to scratch and claw my way to roost with the others.

Careful not to count my chickens before they were hatched, I eventually laid the foundation for my social acceptance into the flock. By my second year, I was already familiar with most of the gaggle and was huddling with them, clucking away as we walked the chicks to school together, hatching plans for shopping trips, complaining about our wattles and chicken fat, and cackling on our shared patios.

I was securely perched at a comfortable elevation in the social pecking order, and life was generally good. As new chickens entered the coop, we chuckled from our high roost, fully aware of the work that they would need to do to find their places in our flock. Frankly, we got downright cocky.

Now, at the end of my third year of this tour, I must fly south and find a new flock in Florida. Thoughts of moving are leaving me a little wistful and reflective. I find myself pondering weighty ideas such as, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and “Who came first, the chicken or the egg?”

This melancholy state has brought about a need for the comfort and companionship of the other hens in my coop, but alas, I have discovered that, as an outbound hen, I have been dumped back to the bottom of the pecking order! With only two weeks left in the coop, I find myself scratching for social scraps! How did this happen? Did I do something fowl?

After some thought in my pea-sized brain, I realized that I have become a lame duck in this chicken coop. I am no longer a contender in the social order simply because I am about to leave. As such, there is no reason for the other hens to invest valuable time in further incubating our friendship in this particular coop.

It’s not personal, there’s no reason to get my feathers ruffled, the sky isn’t falling. It’s just the way things work around here.

So as I prepare to take wing, I will thank my fine friends for their companionship, offer each a peck on the cheek, bid them a final cock-a-doodle-doo, and fly, fly away.

 
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Confectionary Comforts

In family, Humor, Middle-Age, military on May 23, 2011 at 10:40 am

Running my fingertip along the wrinkled peak of thin, gold foil, I find an edge. I insert a nail under the delicate lip and lift the sheet, hearing it crinkle as it expands like an accordion. I pause a moment, just long enough to pinch the end of the tiny paper strip, and tug it free from its host.

Satisfied that the sheath has been removed intact, I crumple the shiny square of foil and paper strip into a ball, and discard it. Popping the freed morsel into my mouth, I let it sit on my tongue for a few seconds, and feel my body’s heat react with the sugary drop. As it melts, a fragment of almond is revealed. In a sudden movement of tongue and teeth, I swipe the nut between my molars and feel it crack under pressure.

As I swallow the delicious mixture, my fingers search the bag for my next Hershey Kiss with Almonds. . . .

More than I should, I find myself reaching for chocolate. One might think the rich texture and undeniably delicious flavor of this popular confection tempts me, but I have a different motivation for eating chocolate.

Like a baby, I crave something soothing and repetitive when I’m stressed, tired or bored. Since Gerber doesn’t make pacifiers for 44-year-olds, and my husband isn’t inclined to rock me in a rocking chair, I opt for sweet treats.

I’m not talking about gorging on devil’s food cake, or slurping up Hot Fudge Brownie Delights. While I have been known to indulge in those delicacies from time to time, I find more comfort in chocolate treats that lend themselves to a prolonged ritualistic enjoyment of the process of eating chocolate.

We’re about to uproot our lives here on this US Army base in Stuttgart, Germany, and move back across the Atlantic to Mayport Naval Station in Florida.

Stressing over the logistics of this particularly complicated move has caused a flare up in my need for comfort, and as such, I’ve been hitting the chocolate pretty hard. Hershey Kisses with Almonds have been my recent remedy of choice, mostly because eating each tiny morsel involves several repetitive steps that I find quite soothing.

When I can’t get my hands on those, I turn to other chocolaty treats for my therapy. Most recently, I have eased my stress with Girl Scout’s Thin Mints Cookies. Regardless of the nutrition label, an entire sleeve of these delectable disks is really needed to calm the nerves.

Extracting a cookie from the top of the stack, I place it on my tongue and allow it to steep. The chocolate coating slowly melts, and then my saliva soaks into the crisp center, dissolving it into a mouthful of minty mush. I chew any remaining crunchy bits and swallow, as I lift another disk from the sleeve. 

Usually, one sleeve will do the trick, but on particularly stressful nights, I’ve been tempted to take the second sleeve from the box. I resist this urge, knowing that the guilt of eating so many Girl Scout Cookies will only add to my stress and thereby increase my need for confectionary comforts.

Even as a child, I remember ritualizing my consumption of treats. I never understood a kid who could take a bag of M&Ms, tear open the top, and pour the whole thing into his upturned mouth. What a waste!

I, on the other hand, would maximize my enjoyment, spreading the contents of each bag out, and separating the candies out into their colors (which were, back then, orange, green, yellow, dark brown and light brown.) I would then analyze each pile, eating only the most flawed morsels. Those that were misshapen or had an imperfect “M” were goners. I continued this process until I had whittled the lot down to one of each color. Those five, the Chosen Ones, would be scooped up together and ceremoniously sacrificed in one final chomp.

This may all sound nuts, but in times of stress, everyone turns to something for relief, and I figure that three-quarters of a bag of Hershey Kisses with Almonds is measurably better for one’s mental and physical health than three packs of Camels and a pint of Jose Quervo.

So why not dissect a dozen peanut butter cups, nibble the chocolate off the nougat center of a Three Musketeers Bar, or methodically pick apart a pair of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls? It tastes good, it feels good, and stress melts away as fast as a chocolate Kiss on your tongue.

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Taken for a Ride

In family, Memories, parenting on May 11, 2011 at 1:44 pm

As I nervously watched my daughters reeling down our street in an abandoned shopping cart, memories of my own childhood misadventures rushed into my head.

Any kid who could get his hands on certain common household items like shopping carts and refrigerator boxes, was golden.

On spring in the 1970’s, my brother Tray scored two large inner tubes. He called his friend, Tracy, to come over to help him figure out what to do with them. Tray and his friends were in Junior High School and wanted nothing to do with little sisters like me. They were mischievous, parted their hair in the center, listened to Foreigner and Supertramp, and said things like, “That’s decent.”

After lunch, Tracy and Tray disappeared to hatch their plan while I trotted up the hill to the neighbor’s house to find my two friends.

We had recently moved from town into a rural neighborhood on the side of a hill with only five houses. Our house was at the bottom of the hill on the road, and my two girlfriends lived at the top of the hill near the woods. 

Starting from the tree line, our hill sloped steadily downward, flattening out a bit at the neighbor’s property, but then taking a steep drop toward a barrier of blue spruces, my friends’ grandma’s house, and the road beyond. In winter, we rode sleds down the long hill and in summer we rolled down the hill and played in the tall grass.

As I trudged barefooted up the hill to find my friends, I picked a handful of newly sprouted dandelions along the way.

About an hour later, there was a knock at my neighbors’ playhouse door.

“Hey, Lisa! C’meer! Wanna do something fun with me and Tracy?!”

Completely gullible, I threw the baby doll I was nurturing into the spider-webbed corner and ran out the door. “Whaddya wanna do?!” I yelled excitedly.

Tracy and Tray lead me to the side of the neighbors’ house where I saw the inner tubes lashed together, side by side, with twine. Glancing sideways at each other and down at me, my brother said, “Lisa, if you climb inside the tubes, we’ll roll you down the hill and it’ll be really fun!”

I couldn’t see the red flags or hear the alarm bells going off. All I knew is that my big brother finally wanted to play with me.

I crouched down and climbed into the center hole, gripping the metal valves like handles just as they instructed. With my chin on my chest and my legs criss-crossed, I fit snuggly into the tiny space.

Assuring me that the ride would be better than the Scrambler at the County Fair, they carefully shoved me off down the hill.

As the tubes took their first few rotations, I squealed with excitement. But then, I reached the sharp drop off at the front of the neighbors’ property, and the tubes spun wildly with the sudden acceleration.

The undulations in the grass sent the tubes airborne, causing them to change shape as they hit the ground. The circle distorted into an elongated oval with the impact, and my teeth clacked.

As the contraption flew down the hill toward the border of blue spruces, my initial squeals of delight turned into breathy screams of terror, and then into the silence of survival mode.

From my cramped vantage point, I could see flashes of blue sky, the approaching spruces, grass, and Tray and Tracy screaming down the hill after me.

I knew I had to save myself from certain disaster, so as I slammed into the ground after a particularly high bounce, I allowed a foot to pop out of the ring. My toes immediately caught the grass, flipping the tubes like a quarter in a coin toss.

My wheel of terror teetered to a stop just before the spruces, and I instinctively burst out of the confining hole onto the grass. The entire universe spun around me.

I could hear faint yelling coming closer, until Tracy’s silhouette appeared against the blue sky above me.

“Lisa! Lisa! Are you OK?!” Tracy panted as a drop of spit began to ooze from his gaping mouth. Just before the elongated globule could detach itself, Tracy slurped and swallowed.

What an idiot I was to trust my brother. He had baited me into many a judo flip, locked closet and harebrained scheme, so why did I think that moment would be any different?

Anyone with an older sibling knows the answer to that question. No matter how much my brother acted annoyed by me, no matter how many times he gave me a charlie horse-producing punch, no matter how many times he called me “Chunky Dinners,” no matter how many of my Barbis he maimed, I would drop anything if he showed me the slightest amount of attention.

And now, as I watch my daughters careening down the street in a shopping cart, I say a little prayer that no one breaks an arm, I accept the natural order of things, and understand that some things never change.

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Spring Break Odyssey: Relay for Relief

In family, parenting, travel on May 1, 2011 at 12:30 pm

Good times before the seasickness set in.

We awoke to a glorious Italian sun. This was the day we were to board our cruise ship in Venice, and we were all excited.

Lilly had fully recovered from the stomach virus that nearly got us thrown out of our last hotel, I purchased a map after our GPS sent us through the Italian Alps, and we managed to find a nearby vacancy when a hotel in Venice did not acknowledge our reservation. We survived all that, and felt that the worst was finally behind us.

There was only one little pesky lingering problem. An embarrassing personal issue that seems to plague me any time I travel. My digestive system was on total lockdown, so I decided that I’d better hit a pharmacy for some “products” before we boarded the ship.

Just down the street from our hotel, I saw the characteristic blinking green cross, the symbol for pharmacies all over Europe. Taking a deep breath, I walked up to the pharmacist and his assistant behind the counter.

You see, European pharmacies are nothing like CVS, Rite Aid, or Walgreens. You can’t peruse the aisles in relative privacy and sneak embarrassing items up to the cash register. Here, you must tell the pharmacist your problem, within earshot of everyone else in the store, so he can find the right medication for you. He then hands it to you, and loudly instructs you on how to take it.

“You-a take-a one-a tablet-a, and-a in-a twelve-a hours-a, you-a will-a, uh, uh . . .” the pharmacist looks to his assistant, who shrugs. “Yea, yea, I get it, just put it in the bag,” I responded, humiliated.

We all took a Dramamine in the passenger terminal parking lot before boarding the ship, and I snuck one of the little pharmacy tablets with my bottled water.

It looked so fun from the pier....

 Boarding the ship, the kids could not wait to find the four pools, the waterslide, the kids’ center and the arcade. After going over some safety precautions, I turned them loose.

The first of many 7 Euro Shirley Temples.

Meeting up later for dinner, the whining started.

“The arcade games all cost money,” Hayden reported. “The water slide is closed,” Lilly moped. “The pools are all too cold to swim in, and there are big hairy men in all the hot tubs,” Anna sighed.

“Don’t worry, everyone! I am sure there are fun things to do in the kids’ center, and look! You can eat as much pizza as you want!” I countered.

We joined the buffet line and fought to grab plastic plates. As we surged forth in the line, none of us could find anything that looked appetizing. Gelatin with fruit, some kind of seafood salad with octopus suckers in it, a large cylinder of pressed meat with a big glass bowl of translucent gravy. Ew.

Finally at the end of the line, we spied the pizza! Before we could grab a slice, some pushy Europeans emptied the pan. We waited for the next pie, elbowing the other patrons circling around us.

Finding all the inside tables filled, we sat at a chilly patio table on the empty pool deck. Hayden grabbed his first slice, which looked kind of stiff. Taking a bite, it crunched like a cracker, and the wind blew tiny fragments of crust dust around our table. The pizza was as hard as a sea biscuit.

Subscribing to the theory that all pizza is good, we ate it anyway.

Sea biscuit pizza.

 Later at the kids’ center, we learned that, other than some coloring activities, there really wasn’t anything for Lilly to do. The teenage activities for Anna and Hayden were posted on a flier that read, “Meet Lorenzo in Dante’s Disco for Speed Dating at 8 o’clock!”

There was no way my timid kids were going to subject themselves to forced mingling with foreign teenagers, so we hit the hay early and hoped for a good port visit in the morning.  The rocking of the boat lulled us to sleep like babies in a cradle.

Just as the Italian pharmacist had predicted, the little tablet took exactly twelve hours to work its magic. Stumbling through the dark cabin, I found the bathroom door. Locked!

With teeth clenched, I impatiently awaited my turn. Finally, the door opened, and Anna appeared, looking pale in the dim moonlight.

“Mom, I threw up,” she said weakly. “Yeah, that’s great, Honey, now could you just step aside and we can talk about this later?” I said as I shoved my way into the bathroom.

The proverbial floodgates opened, and I felt relieved. (Little did I know, there was plenty more to come.) I turned my attention to Anna, who I found right outside the bathroom door.

“Oh Mom! I feel sick again!” she said, pushing me to the side.

This bathroom relay went on into the wee hours of the morning. Poor Anna had caught the stomach virus Lilly had, and I was battling a combination of seasickness and Italian laxatives. Even Lilly, also seasick, came down from her bunk to compete with us for time in the head.

The toilet paper ran out at about 4 am. It was a rough night, to say the least.

Over the next few days, we aimlessly wandered each port like seasick zombies. Back on the ship, we grimaced at the buffet, nibbled at our food, and resolved to go to bed early.

On solid ground in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

 Finally, the ship pulled back into Venice’s harbor. After paying the tab for taxes, hidden fees, service charges and overpriced drinks, we made a beeline for our beloved dirty white minivan.

This time, I kept my GPS in the glove box and followed a map. As my minivan whizzed along the toll road on its way back to Patch Barracks, I realized that the girl in the ruby red slippers had it right when she said, “There’s no place like home.”

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Spring Break Odyssey: How I got punked by my GPS

In family, parenting, travel on April 24, 2011 at 9:05 pm

Four hours of hairpin turns in the Dolomites.

The minivan came to a screeching halt. Lilly leapt out the side door and ran toward a patch of grass. Carsick, again. Unable to produce the boiling contents of her weak stomach, she stumbled back into the van.

“Mom, how much longer?” she whined. “I hope not long, I just don’t know why the GPS can’t find our hotel.”

We had been lost on winding country roads in the foothills of the Italian Alps for more than an hour, searching for a small hotel where we were to spend the first night of our Spring Break journey to Venice, Italy to take a cruise.

This was our last family trip before we move back to the United States. As always, I anticipated happy family moments absorbing breathtaking scenery, with lots of laughter and frolicking. But for my three kids, the thrill is over, and they are often heard saying, “No! Not another castle/cathedral/snow-capped mountain!? Can’t we just stay home and watch re-runs of King of Queens?!”

As the minivan squealed around another hairpin turn, we spotted a sign to our tiny hotel. “There it is!” I yelped with relief.

The owner showed us to two rooms at the opposite end of a hall in the old Tyrolean guest house. Before settling in for the night, we gathered in one of the rooms to eat the dinner that I’d packed for us.

An hour later, we were snug in our beds. The girls were excited to sleep in their huge bed, which looked like a giant coconut crème pie mounded with feather pillows and crisp white linens.

I drifted off to sleep thinking of the fun we would have on the days to come.

“Mom, Lilly threw up in our bed!” Anna gasped, standing over me in the darkness. “What?” I mumbled, and stumbled down the hall to their room.

Opening their door and stepping over the threshold, I saw what can only be described as complete carnage. The marshmallow white bed had turned into a veritable crime scene, akin to the horsehead scene in The Godfather. The half-digested concoction of turkey sub and sour cream and onion Sun Chips was tinged brown with the chocolate of too many M&Ms, and was pooled in the center of the king-sized bed.

Trying to mitigate the damages, Lilly dabbed the mess with a bath towel, managing to slop it on herself, the carpet, the bathroom floor, and two light switches.

I stood for a moment, unable to contemplate any solution to the problem. Obviously, Lilly was more than just carsick. She had some kind of stomach virus. Why didn’t I buy that travel insurance!

Somehow, my mothering instinct, which had been somewhat dormant lately, kicked in. For two hours I scrubbed, scraped, rinsed, dipped, and squeezed until I had cleaned up the horrific mess. (Aside: a bidet makes a very nice wash basin for soiled linens.) I found more sheets in a hallway closet and put my poor sick child back to bed.

After a long night of more retching, I told the hotel owner about the situation, and despite his graciousness, I left an apology note and some extra cash over the stain on the mattress.

I set the GPS to take us the “fast route” straight to our next hotel, apparently only 3.5 hours away in Venice.

For some unknown reason, our GPS instructed us to drive past the onramp to the highway and onto a two-lane road that paralleled the freeway for more than 45 minutes. I thought our GPS knew something I didn’t, so I warily followed her instructions.

At some point, our GPS demanded that we head east. The road ascended into the mountains, higher and higher, winding toward snowy peaks. I thought perhaps she was taking us on a diversion to a nice straight highway to Venice. So I did exactly as she instructed.

An hour later, there was snow on either side of the road, and we passed a sign indicating that we were more than 2,000 meters above sea level. Without a map, I felt trapped. Peeking in the rear view mirror, I could see that Lilly had fallen into a fitful sleep, her head wobbling left and right with every hairpin turn.

Another hour later, the road was blocked with police tape, and an arrow directed me to drive my minivan onto a dirt path. As we bumped our way over the rocks, I saw the reason for the detour: an avalanche had covered the road!

I began to giggle at our predicament and wondered whether our GPS was playing some sick joke.

The Alpine road lead directly into the Dolomites, and our minivan continued to wind its way past snowy ski slopes and tiny mountain chalets. The scenery was spectacular, but impossible to enjoy with a sick kid in the backseat, a virus threatening to infect us all, and a rocking boat awaiting our arrival!

Good times at 2K meters above sea level with a stomach virus and motion sickness!

Finally, after four hours of zigzagging at 2000 meters, our GPS relented and released us onto a straight toll road toward Venice. Having driven no more than 30 miles per hour all day, I snatched the ticket from the toll booth and gunned the engine.

Out of pure vengeance, I raced our dirty white minivan at illegal speeds. Every time our smug GPS warned, “Beware!” and flashed the speed limit, I gritted my teeth and pressed the gas pedal down harder.

I arrived at our hotel, frazzled, but somewhat satisfied that I’d taken two full minutes off of her estimated time of arrival. Take that!

Lilly seemed to be feeling better, and I hoped that our fiasco was over. We unloaded our bags, and I slid my travel agent’s confirmation e-mail across the desk to the hotel clerk. As I waited for him to find our reservation, I made a mental note to buy a map for the trip home.

“I’m-a sorry-a ma’am-a, but-a we-a have-a no-a rooms-a,” he said, with a shrug. I wondered if he knew my GPS.

[To be continued in “Spring Break Odyssey: Relay for Relief.”]

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