Single Parenting
School starts for my children and myself in T minus 72 hours. Our county had the luxury of being one of the last to start back, so the boys were able to squeeze out a little more summer before doomsday arrives. My tenth grader’s battle cry for the past two weeks has been “I can’t go to bed this early (11 pm)! It’s still MY summer!!” Did I mention he has a bit of the dramatic to him? Next week, six a.m. is going to be quite the smack in the face for all of us.
Continue reading about Yo, sound the bell suckers, schools back in…
I have two growing boys and my grocery bill usually hovers around the equivalent of my mortgage every month. Thank God I had two brothers growing up or I would have been convinced my children were part of a Discovery Health show called “Help, I Can’t Stop Eating Everything Not Nailed Down”. I remember my mom unloading the grocery bags from the car and my brothers pawing through them like they hadn’t been fed in weeks! She took to hiding extra food in a hall closet to pace them, restocking the pantry after they were asleep (or in a food coma, I couldn’t really tell the difference). The most infuriating thing was that my brothers could eat hourly and not gain a pound. They are both getting close to their forties now, so it will catch up with them soon!
My oldest son is 15 and itching to get his learner’s permit. I am not quite as enthusiastic about this process and really have mixed feelings. After getting up to drive him to two-a-day football practices at 6, it would really be nice to just have him drive himself and get a few more minutes of precious sleep. On the other hand, driving in the Atlanta suburbs is scary for the new drivers as well as their fellow road warriors in a land that doesn’t use turn signals, tailgates like they were drafting in a NASCAR race and thinks 55 is just a silly suggestion for their expensive automobiles.
I spent a couple of leisurely hours at the pool, enjoying the slightly cool water and the warm day with my youngest son. The days are lessening that he will want to hang out with mom as middle school approaches next month. I ran into another mom I see infrequently and we chatted about this and that as we floated about the pool. The discussion turned to a mutual aquaintance, struggling with her boys, who happens to be a single mom like me.
It is really, really hard to be a parent. And not just a parent, but an involved and level headed parent. As my boys get older, the adventures become more complicated and the issues move way beyond giving up a sippy cup or finishing your homework before cartoons. Case in point? My oldest decided it would be a great idea to pierce his ear with a push pin and took an old silver snowman stud out of my jewelry box to highlight his handiwork. Sigh. I kept hoping it would hurt enough to put an end to it quickly, but his ear hasn’t fallen off so far. I comfort myself with the fact that a boy’s reasoning skills do develop eventually, but the latest research puts that at about twenty- eight. That’s thirteen more years of slightly stupid.
I was doing yet another load of endless summer laundry. It would seem that there was a FIFA soccer team living here not just three people if you looked at the pile of clothing in the laundry room, stacked up into a four foot pyramid smelling of sweat, pool chlorine and sun tan lotion. I grumbled under my breath as I stepped over the dog to shove the neatly folded clothes into my teenage son’s armoire. I swung open the door and sighed as I was staring at several empty soda cans and a dish growing something furry and penicillin-like.
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