Big Brother

I have a confession to make. I stalk my children. I stalk my husband, too. I don’t know why I do it, actually. It’s a sickness, I guess—an unhealthy obsession with knowing exactly where my loved ones are at practically every moment of every day. Thanks to the fine people at Apple and my friend, Drew, some time ago I downloaded the Find My Friends app on my iPhone and immediately began tracking the whereabouts of the aforementioned people.

The trouble is, they’re not particularly fond of it. Translation: They despise it.

“Mom, quit stalking us. It’s creepy.”

Creepy or not, however, apparently I get some peace of mind out of knowing what my kids are up to 24/7. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. The same goes for my husband, except that it’s more about convenience to know where he is at a given time. That way, for instance, I can “see” that he’s in the grocery store and know that it makes perfect sense to call him and tell him that we’re out of Cheetos. I don’t like to be out of Cheetos, ergo I feel compelled to inform him of such a dire situation.

The conversation goes something like this:

Me: “What aisle are you in? We need Cheetos.”

My husband: “What? How’d you know I’m in a store? Oh, that’s right; you have that blasted thing on your phone and you’re watching me like Big Brother. Remind me to SHUT IT OFF so you can’t monitor my every move.”

Me: “Wait. What? No. I like being able to see where you are, then I can call and give you helpful information that you might need—like the fact that WE’RE OUT OF CHEETOS. How would you know otherwise? You’re welcome.”

The conversations we have while he’s in the liquor store are strikingly similar except that they usually involve a dwindling supply of wine.

At any rate, I find the app to be remarkable in that I can even tell in which part of a particular building my kids happen to be situated at any given moment. Rest assured, if they’re supposed to be in chemistry class and they’re in chemistry class, my heart is happy.

Me: “So I noticed you went to Denny’s during the break between finals today. Was it fun? What did you order?”

Child: “Mom, that absolutely weirds me out. Why do you do that? It’s just not normal.”

Me: “I don’t know. I guess I like to see what you’re doing throughout your day and it gives me more stuff to talk about with you.”

Child: “Why not just ask me where I went and I’ll tell you?”

Me: “Yeah, but isn’t it more impressive that I already know where you went and we can skip ahead to other parts of the discussion?”

Child: “No. Not really. It’s just creepy and you should stop doing it.”

Unfortunately, I can’t stop doing it. At this late stage in the game, I have become hopelessly addicted to tracking my people and there is no turning back. There is something strangely comforting about looking at that tiny screen and seeing those familiar icons pop up, reassuring me that the people I care about are where they’re supposed to be—even if they’re worlds away for weeks at a time.

In an instant, I can gather a wealth of information—like which door to pick up someone at school and whether or not my progenies are still on the marching band bus, coming home from a late night competition or football game. Almost instantaneously, I can verify that all is right in my little corner of the world.

Strangely enough, looking at the map and those smiling faces within the teensy, tiny circles on my phone warms my heart—no matter how far apart they happen to be. It’s like holding my family in real time in the palm of my hand.

Of course, they would likely beg to differ, suggesting that they’re all under my thumb. Literally.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live, probably poring over my Find My Friends app. Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

Copyright 2018 Melinda L. Wentzel

A Sacrilege of Sorts

Seems like just yesterday I was reading aloud to my kids…

There are but two kinds of people in this world—those who brazenly read the endings of books before the endings are actually reached and those who would never dream of a crime so heinous. I myself fall with the masses into the latter category, always mindful of the tenets we must uphold: Thou shalt not spoil the endings of good books no matter how dire the circumstance or how great the temptation.

Of course I’ve been so bold as to glance at the last page while contemplating a purchase in the aisle of a bookstore, allowing my eyes to sweep across the fuzziness of passages, to graze but not actually rest on hallowed words, erasing all hope of ever being rewarded for my ability to resist said allure. If nothing else, I can be proud of that.

However it wasn’t until I was deeply immersed in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Chapter Seven of this scrumptious read-aloud, more specifically) that I became painfully aware of a terrible truth: my children would (and, in fact, had) flipped ahead 20 chapters in said prized piece of literature, to the very last page (gasp!) “…because I wanted to know what would happen to Edward, Mom. I was worried about him. He lives, you know.”

Of course, I was horrified. And profoundly disappointed. I had higher hopes for my progenies—hopes that they would grow to become upstanding citizens, embodying all-that-is-righteous-and-good. Principled people who knew better than to commit sacrilege. Instead, it appears, my wayward bunch has embraced the dark side of life. Even my oldest daughter has admitted to that which is a sheer disgrace—she reads the very last sentence of every novel—as a rule. Needless to say, such a divulgence rendered me dumbfounded.

“Why?! Why would you do such a thing?!” I had to ask finally, eyes fixed upon the creature I thought I knew.

“I don’t know. To pique my interest I guess.”

“To pique your interest?!” I shrieked, shaking my head in disbelief. “Good grief! Where’s the mystery in that?! Where’s the long-awaited pleasure that a grand culmination promises?! The delicious sense of satisfaction derived from having journeyed far and wide across the vast and uncertain terrain of a narrative gem?!” I demanded to know.

She shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “What’s the big deal, Mom? It’s just a book.”

Of course, this was wrong on so many levels that I couldn’t begin to wrap my mind around the unspeakable atrociousness of which it reeked. Nor could I forgive the other two ratfinks for having stolen my joy. I wanted to discover for myself Edward Tulane’s fate—to continue devouring the book, page after succulent page, and eventually, to drink in the magnificence of the grand finale that surely awaited me.

But it was not to be. Those unmerciful beasts continued to fill my ears with details of the story, doling out bite sized blurbages just to watch me writhe in pain. “No! NO! Don’t tell me a syllable more!” I pleaded, wondering from whence this penchant had come. I don’t remember anyone bursting at the seams to tell me about Goldilocks or Little Red Riding Hood. Back then it was a non-issue. The end was something that would be revealed in due time upon turning the last page. As it should be.

I’d almost rather my heathens wantonly fling caterpillars across the living room and stuff them inside their backpacks (oh wait, they’ve done that!), saturate thirsty bath rugs at will (done that, too!), or festoon the dog with lipstick “…because we wanted to give him purple-ish lips, Mom!” than to rob themselves of the parting gift of a fine book.

Sadly, this represents yet one more area of life I cannot control. I must come to grips with the fact that my children will choose friends, careers and eventually mates—almost entirely devoid of my (infinitely sagacious) input. And ultimately they will decide whether to continue as card-carrying members of the Flip-Ahead-to-the-Last-Page Club. Oy.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live (beside myself with indignation). Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom. The content of this article, as it appears here, was previously published in the Khaleej Times.

Copyright 2012 Melinda L. Wentzel

Season’s Greetings

Sending out Christmas cards is an exercise in futility for me—mostly because I’m a poor tool. When it comes to choosing a family picture to include on one of those trendy postcards created online with favorite snapshots and heartfelt messages, I fall down on the job every time. Never mind that I’m the mom and supposed to have my shit together. Clearly, I don’t. Each year it seems to be a supreme challenge to find a recent photo in which everyone is smiling appropriately, having a good hair day and happens to be facing the camera. And since my husband is notorious for blinking in practically every picture we take, the struggle is undeniably real.

“Open your eyes!” I shout after the eleventy-seventh failed attempt to capture the moment.

“My eyes are open!” my husband invariably defends.

Then, of course, I’m forced to thrust my iPhone beneath his nose in order to prove that his eyes were indeed shut. The four of us then rearrange ourselves to fit within the frame of the camera once more and repeat the insanity until the kids flatly refuse to humor me by posing at all. They’re teenagers, so that goes with the territory, I suppose. But they’re also uniquely gifted in the selfie department. Me, not so much. So when they max out on the exasperation scale and thereby abandon the cause, the opportunity for preserving a treasured Kodak Moment dies yet again.

Thanks to Tish O’Connor and her incredible photographic talents, however, I was able to include some beautiful senior pictures of our daughters on our Christmas card. There were literally hundreds to choose from. I somehow managed to take a decent snapshot of our dog and included that, too. But, of course, I was reminded of my shortcomings, having forgotten to add our cat to the mix. A cardinal sin.

“How could you forget Binx, Mom?! He’s family.”

I honestly have no clue how I could have possibly forgotten the cat, given that he’s constantly underfoot or demanding that I share my Cheetos with him. Go figure.

And because the universe apparently hates me, only half my head shows in the photo I decided to use of our family this year. Confession: I did it last year, too. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to edit the stupid thing to perfectly fit within the constraints of the aforementioned trendy online greeting card company. I had one job—to adjust our photo appropriately so that each individual would be entirely contained within an eight sq. inch rectangle. Needless to say, I was unsuccessful. What’s more, I failed to recognize that envelopes weren’t included in my order. So in a desperate attempt to remedy the situation and make it look as though I knew what I was doing all along, I purchased NINE boxes of holiday cards—ones that will house the photo card in question (with any luck).

No one ever said I was gifted, just crafty.

On the bright side, Elton John is pictured photobombing us. Well, he’s not actually photobombing us. His picture was plastered on the side of a truck that we happened to be standing in front of while attending one of his concerts this past fall. A good time was had by all so I felt it necessary to gather the whole crew together for a family snapshot to commemorate the event.

I’m not sure how Elton would feel about being on our holiday greeting card, but I’m guessing he’d be pleased—especially since I didn’t cut his head off with my pitiful editing skills.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live, probably addressing Christmas cards. Visit me there at www.Facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

Copyright 2018 Melinda L. Wentzel

Refrigerator Art: The Sequel

Well the inevitable has happened. I’ve gone to the dark side of home décor once more and I can’t begin to express my deep regret over my failings. In sum, I’ve sullied the surface of my newish refrigerator with more pictures than I can reliably count and made it a veritable shrine to my favorite people and pets in the world. Granted, it’s taken me five long years to amass such an assortment and I’ve only added said pictures to one side of the fridge, but some would estimate that because of my actions, I am roughly six magnets short of reversing the polarity of the earth.

Truth be told, I can’t help myself. The urge to display inspiring quotes and adorable photos (especially of my new granddaughter) upon the aforementioned surface is simply too powerful. It’s more of a compulsion actually, a sickness for which there is no remedy—except maybe to add more pictures and magnets to the spaces where there are none.

I’m sure my family thought I was fairly deranged when I promised to remove every solitary photo as well as my kids’ fledgling artwork from our old fridge and put them into permanent storage as soon as we remodeled our kitchen and replaced that fridge with a sexier, stainless steel model—one that resists scratches and hides fingerprints. They knew how I loved what could only be described as a glorious 28 cubic foot canvas—a 3-D masterpiece that was undeniably the focal point of our kitchen for years. I remember when visitors stood in front of it in awe, marveling at our artistic flair—or maybe they were perfectly horrified. I can’t be sure.

At any rate, it was a sight to behold and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t proud of what I had created, one memorable image at a time. Each time I walked into our kitchen, I was reminded of favorite vacations, beloved pets and people—ordinary moments frozen in time. Of course, there was also a giant calendar, photo booth zaniness, a handful of words that my kids had spelled with magnetic letters when they were preschoolers and pictures that depicted important milestones, tangibly marking the passage of time. In every sense of the phrase, it was a snapshot of our journey as a family.

Somehow I wanted to hold onto the special moments, if only until the images faded and curled at the edges. I liked looking back at my children cruising around the house in nothing but diapers, the early days of kindergarten, making snowballs with Grandma in the backyard, carving pumpkins on the deck, sitting on a swing with their big sister. In that way, I suppose I could relive history. Almost.

Not surprisingly, before I removed everything, I took several pictures of the old fridge in all its glory to preserve the memory for posterity’s sake. I then prominently displayed one of those photos on the new fridge, perhaps in an effort to tether the old to the new, bridging the gap between what was then and what is now. Some might say I have issues with letting go. When it comes to pictures, I suppose that’s true. I‘ve got a garage full of family photos to prove it—generations worth.

Maybe we should invest in more refrigerators so I have someplace to put them.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live, probably admiring my fridge. Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

Copyright 2018 Melinda L. Wentzel

Wild Thing

My dog has a problem and, by extension, I have a problem. Basically he’s too high-strung and could probably benefit from psychotherapy of some sort. Don’t laugh; our vet suggested that could be arranged. I realize that small, yappy dogs are characteristically excitable and, at times, unpredictable, but Jack is ridiculously so. Anyone who has met him knows the awful truth—he’s either Jekyll or Hyde. There is no in-between. Granted, he is loveable to us not to mention adorable—especially after he’s been groomed, his hair cottony soft and white as snow. Although he is a mere 14-pound ball of fluff our family has adored (and even spooned) for more than a decade, he has another side—one that is decidedly unhinged.

The trouble is, we never know which side of him will manifest when he meets someone out and about—thereby making me beyond the point of anxious when we go for walks. Naturally when he starts growling, barking and clawing at the pavement like a fool, I reel him in as if he were an oversized marlin, apologizing profusely to the passerby. Of course, he or she can’t possibly hear my apology over the incessant barking, snarling and gagging. So I just smile with embarrassment and attempt to drag the beast away as quickly as possible, knowing full well that we will encounter this very same person and have the very same experience in roughly three minutes when we meet on the other side of the neighborhood circle. Some days I simply don’t have the strength or patience to deal with his foolishness, so we skip our walk altogether which saddens me greatly.

It doesn’t seem to matter if my stupid dog encounters someone walking, jogging or whizzing by on a bike or scooter. Even baby strollers freak him out to some extent. Other dogs, too—except the ones he is fond of. He nuzzles those and in no time our leashes end up a tangled mess, which I’m sure he thinks is terrific because he gets to spend even more quality time with those dogs and the people attached to them—usually the ones bearing treats. Against all logic and understanding, there are certain people (with or without dogs) for whom he will immediately drop to the ground and roll over, demanding a belly rub. And I am astonished EVERY SINGLE TIME this happens.

I suspect part of my dog’s neurotic behavior may stem from being overly protective or perhaps territorial. By those standards, I suppose he is an overachiever, making perfectly composed dogs look like slackers. Even indoors he goes berserk, barking like a madman whenever someone knocks at the door or steps inside. Oddly enough, people who visit must pass some kind of strange muster. He sniffs them and looks them over as if determining whether they are “dog people,” thereby worthy of his admiration and affection. Once they have met with his approval, they are free to move about the house. If not, I have to scoop him up and carry him under my arm like a large and unwieldy purse—because the universe hates me.

Not surprisingly, he even acts insane when he gets a glimpse of people through a window—people who have the audacity to walk on HIS STREET—the one he must defend to the death. Needless to say, the barking makes my head throb, and I sometimes worry that he’ll topple off the back of the couch during one of his frenzied barking sessions.

I really wonder what goes on inside that pea brain of his. Clearly he is delusional in that he thinks he weighs 200 pounds and could eat a Rottweiler for lunch. But I suspect that down deep he may suffer from an inferiority complex—if a dog could, in fact, suffer from such a thing. It’s not as if we haven’t praised him for appropriate behavior. Lord knows I talk to him as if he were a tiny person, reassuring him that whatever happens to be freaking him out at the moment won’t result in the Apocalypse.

Who knows—maybe we just need to spoon more often.

Planet Mom: It’s where I live, with a tiny, furry beast. Visit me there at www.facebook.com/NotesfromPlanetMom.

Copyright 2018 Melinda L. Wentzel