Yet another tally in the “lousy mom” column

They say you have to be the change you want to see in the world.  I fully agree with this concept, and most times, I try to model it for the kids.  I have always said “please” and “thank you” to people, including them, because I expect them to do it as well.  I tip well, I smile, I hold the door for others, all things of basic manners that I fully expect my teenagers to exhibit.  It makes them “odd” to startled adults who don’t expect it, but it also makes them good people.

But there is definitely one lesson in which I fail miiiisssseeerrrably to be the good example.  And that, my friends, is in sun protection.  I know that pale skin is healthy skin, and that any bit of tan is damaging.  I’ve heard it all before.  And perhaps this is contradictory to my nature, but I am absolutely, 100% against the fake-n-bake tan.  the sun’s rays, while damaging, are also natural enough to have some benefit to them.  The vitamin D is essential, and for people with S.A.D., it can be a life saver.  (And yes, for those people, the use of light boxes is, of course, warranted.)  But in general, I am very against tanning beds.

That said, when I hit the beach, I apply sunblock enough so that I do not burn, and then I settle in and let the sunlight seep into my body.  The heat infuses my joints with gentle waves, and makes my skin a nice golden brown.  Now, I have burned; don’t get me wrong.  And when I do?  I am the first person to label myself with the moniker of “Dumbass.”  But honestly, if I do burn, it’s generally that I swiped the sunblock over my skin and missed a spot, or reapplied, but not in time.  It’s rare that I burn badly or all over.  (Although, in the case of my burn from Isla Saona this April, it was faulty sunblock because we both slathered repeatedly and both got roasted!)  I do admit to finding tan lines kinda sexy, and for me personally, I especially love the ones on my feet.  Those flip-flop lines tend to stay there through the winter, reminding me that flip-flop weather has promised to return to me.

When the kids were little, I slathered them from head to toe in spf50, dressed them in spf50 rash guard shirts, plopped hats on their little heads, and hoped for the best.  I didn’t keep them inside in bubble wrap, but I definitely practiced due diligence in protecting their skin.  Sunburn when they were little?  Not on my watch.   As they got older, they slacked a few times, and The Artist especially, got fried.  Poor girl, she can walk to the mailbox for the morning post and get sunburned, while her brother can go without sunblock for a day at the pool and barely have a tinge of pink on his shoulders.  He is my Coppertone baby for sure.  The Professor is in the middle.  She tans, but she also goes over the line pretty easily.

Now that they’re older, they have started to make their own health decisions, and in turn, deal with the ramifications of those decisions.  The Ambassador, for example, actively “works” on his summer tan to attract more girls.  (Can you see my eyes rolling at this one?)  He has blond hair and blue eyes, so the golden tan just makes him look like a California surfer dude.

La Professora is pretty good about sunblock, especially with her masto going crazy lately.  Sunlight and masto don’t get along very well, so she’ll get splotchy if she gets too much.  But this past weekend, she used the spf 15 and got a light tan, while keeping the dreaded pink skin at bay.

We definitely keep high spf around for the Artist, but even she decided to try her hand at tanning and “only” used spf 15 this weekend.  She did pretty well; no burn at all.  Of course, her desire for a lack of tan lines on her back makes the guys who go by trip over themselves, but we’re trying to adjust to that one, too.  (More eyerolling from Mom inserted here.)

I know I should make sure they wear their rashguards and spf 472 any time they walk out the door.  I do understand the risks of melanoma, and the fact that any sun exposure is touted in the media as deadly.  But really, with all of the other perils they will face in their lives, and the risks that they will take as they navigate their way through college, work, society, dating, I just decided that the occasional times at the beach would be low stress, without Mom bugging them every four seconds to put on more sunblock.  So chalk this one up to being a lousy mom, but it looks like my kids just might be sporting a tan for now.

Um, I planned it that way, really…

Yeah, ok, not so much.  I mentioned last week about effing up the Vienna Teng tickets for when Minna was here.  We got tickets for the Norfolk show instead (a bit more expensive, but it’s a bigger venue), and changed gears, but I still felt pretty bad.  It meant that my sister would have to scramble a little with work, since she said she’d work Sunday and not Saturday after planning on the Oriental Show.  Vienna’s manager was fantastic; she emailed me and said that she and the venue reps would try to help if we couldn’t make Norfolk, but it wound up that we could.  When we got there, not only did Vienna talk to us from the stage (asking us if we had made it and then where we drove from, thanking us for coming, etc), but Alex mentioned that the airline lost half of his instruments the day before such that the Oriental show wasn’t nearly as good because he was without a lot of his stuff.  Well cool!

End result — the concert was phenomenal, all 5 of us had a blast, we all got pics with Vienna and some of us with Alex too, we bought Paper Raincoat’s CD, had Chinese take-out at 11:30 at night, and generally laughed ourselves silly all weekend. I’m sad for Vienna Teng’s fans that she is semi-retiring, but thrilled for her that she got into her grad school program of Eco-Business at the University of Michigan. She sets a really, really good example for young people *cough*my kids*cough* that even though you can achieve a dream, it doesn’t mean the journey is over. It just means that there are more dreams to be chased. So best of luck, Vienna, from your loyal fans in NC.

Hanging out with Minna was so much fun. She fit right in with our wild, weird, non-traditional family seamlessly, without hesitation. It was very cool. We did a lot of hanging out and talking, which was good for both of us, and she got to see the Ambassador play soccer, something that he was just ecstatic to have happen. They lost the game, but we still had a good time, and he loved the fact that she was there. The Scientist had been gone on an annual geocaching trip, but he got home on Sunday and got meet the famous Minna as well. All in all, a really fun weekend.

I’ve been seriously messed up lately, and I’m not entire sure of the origin. My first thought is the obvious — a lack of solitude. I’ve had almost no time alone lately, and that takes its toll on me very quickly, but man, my tolerance for drama and emotional shenanigans (I love that word) has just been non-existent. It isn’t one specific person, or any one incident, per se, it’s just a general sense of, “Grow up and stop acting like a fucktard or leave me the hell alone.” I know, not very conducive to bonding with anyone, right? I’ll get a snippet of time alone next week when I have to travel for work. I have a 3-hour drive each way, which will be good for me, and an overnight in a hotel. Unfortunately, my time constraints on either side do not allow for any leisure time, despite the fact that I have lived here for 14 years and never spent time in this phenomenal city. But I’ll get back there; no doubt. It’ll be added to the list of Places to Go for my short jaunts with Alejandro. So far on this year’s as-yet-unplanned-list, we have Charleston, Asheville, and quite possibly a return trip to Assateague. That last one’s a little long for a weekend, but the idea of sitting on the beach while wild horses wander by, content to let me photograph them, may well be too much for me to resist.

Only problem with that list is that I have already agreed to make Charleston a trip that’s got people with me, and after hearing about Assateague and seeing my previous pics, I’m not sure I’d get up there again without the Scientist and the kids stowing away in the car. And really, it isn’t that I don’t enjoy their company. I just crave solitude more and more as the world around me gets more chaotic and stressful. I had planned a therapy session in the kayak this weekend (the doc cleared me so long as I follow a few simple rules, which I do!), but the weather looks to be cruddy so it may get scrapped.

Saw the cardiologist again the other day; my blood pressure is down enough that if this new drug works, he’ll leave me alone for a year.  That would be ideal, of course, so I’m giving the new drug the requisite two weeks to settle the blood pressure and the upped dose of the old one to settle the arrhythmia and we’ll go from there.  He said he’d see me as often as I felt I needed to come in, and then laughed and said that he didn’t know why he even said that.  He also said that while he rechecks the blood pressure of 99.9% of his patients at the end of the appointment, he wasn’t even going to try with me.  I cracked up and agreed that it was most likely pointless.

I’m still toying with the idea of staying on with the shrink for a bit, even after the Scientist and I quit going for the “us” thing.  A traditional marriage is a tough thing to make work; a non-traditional one can sometimes be even harder.  On the one hand, there are different expectations, and sometimes fewer, but on the other hand, sometimes it’s hard to define the parameters that confine either or both of our thought processes.  Handling some situations can be confusing, and it’s hard to see where the blurred boundaries are when we’re both trying to see the same issue from different perspectives.  Again, I realize that some of that comes through in a traditional marriage as well, but I think that sometimes the “givens” that are in a traditional marriage can almost create a feeling of safety that non-trads don’t have.  That probably makes no sense whatsoever, but it kinda works in my head.  Suffice it to say that I have a lot of stress in my life, and I still spend a lot of time inside my own head.  Travel keeps my sanity when I fear I’m losing it, but I’m not entirely sure if I’ve dealt with some of the past issues with Golden Boy or my father in the “correct way” if there is such a thing.

Interesting little tidbit from the strange labyrinth of my head – I’ve never made a secret that I have a huge crush on Ty Greenstein from Girlyman.  I recently read a fantastic article in Slate magazine about the band, and while I was a smidgen peeved because the author of it had emailed me asking permission to use my photos of the band and then wound up not using them, I learned stuff about them that I never knew.  One thing was that Ty has, in fact, been in a relationship with the band’s manager, Genevieve, for 14 years and next year, they are planning to have a child.  Now, this information made me so happy for her/them!  What a wonderful celebration of love and committment!  But for some reason, while I felt joy for them both, it almost instantly erased my crush on her.  Not like it killed it in a “ew” way, it made it vanish like it was never there in the first place.  I still find her beautiful, and I still love her voice and her music, but that “crush” is no longer there.

Not that I would ever have a chance with her, or even have the inclination to do something about it if I did, really.  My decade is nowhere near up, and while that came from a flippant conversation with Minna one night, I’m kind of happy to let it stand for now.  We both refused to let the other one say “forever” and that was fair.  But these days, my heart is so content to just be an entity unto herself, without the weight of someone else’s issues, that the “decade” actually seems like a viable option.  Maybe not, who knows?  But for now, it wouldn’t be fair of me to inflict my heart on someone else anyhow.  =)

I need some new music to add to my Zune…anyone have recommendations for me?

Protected: A heart attack before age 40?

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