Never a Dull Moment!

Just got back from another fabulous girl's trip in the mountains. This time of year, Lake Toxaway is pretty deserted...most of the homeowners are away, the club and golf course are closed, the boats are stored away, but it is still beautiful and relaxing and breathtaking.


Seven of us met at the airport for an 8:30 flight to Asheville, then drove over to the Biltmore for the day.


We toured the castle (unbelievable!) and the winery, then I went for a short run on the trails that run all around the property. It's winter and the leaves are down, but it was still so beautiful. I can imagine how incredible it is in the spring and summer. We had dinner at a spanish Tapas restaurant in Asheville, called Zambra, that was phenomenal. That night, at the Biltmore Inn, one of the girls decided to make coffee in the room. When she lifted the lid of the coffee maker, there was a big baggy of pot stuck inside! Someone must have hidden it there and forgotten about it. I can imagine how upset they were when they got home and realized they'd left it. We decided to mess with one of the other girls in the room, and put the bag inside her makeup case. That night, when she went to get ready for dinner, she discovered it inside. At the same time, we grabbed a guy who was walking down the hall and had him go to the door and shout, "Police!"


Even at this advanced age we are easily amused.


Friday we drove up to Lake Toxaway and spent the rest of the weekend at the house. It was so great just to be together with the girls. We're all so busy with work, kids, and life stuff, that when we can really get away like this it's just such a fantastic, inspiring, relaxing time. We built a fire, made vegetable soup and chili, went for a long hike to the Toxaway River falls, and spent the evening drinking wine, telling stories, playing games, and dancing.


Around 1 a.m., the smoke detectors started going off throughout the entire house! We all jumped up and started running around, trying to figure out what was going on. It was probably pretty comical, seven girls running around like crazy, trying to fan the smoke alarm, turning off the house alarm, until we figured out that someone had set a fire in the downstairs fireplace without opening the flue. She thought it was open, I'm sure, but when we figured out what was happening, we couldn't find the damper. My friend, T, who is a little neurotic (but I love her), kept insisting I call the fire department, but since they're all volunteers and it was late I kept saying we didn't need them. This fireplace had never been used, and I think the wood had been in there for a couple of years, so it was old and dry and it was smoking like I've never seen anything smoke! The fire was so hot it was almost leaping out of the fireplace, so I started to panic, and called 911.


Well, those boys must not get called very often. They came roaring up with two huge fire trucks, along with what must have been the chief's pick up truck. The second before they got there, we had finally gotten the damper open, and the alarms had just stopped, so we felt pretty stupid. The head guy told one of the trucks to go back, and came inside to check things out. He was explaining some things to me and his eyes were watering like crazy. I asked if it was from the smoke and he said, "No, I just woke up." We felt terrible for dragging them out of bed, but honestly, they were all grinning, like they were enjoying themselves. They'd probably never had a call from 7 (slightly inebriated) women in their pajamas...I can imagine they'll at least have something to talk about now.



Other than that, it was a perfect weekend with girlfriends. It just doesn't get any better.

Teenage girls, boys, and DRAMA...Part 2

It was bound to happen. Putting 105 girls in one age group together, and no matter how wonderful the setting is, there will be DRAMA.

H is still very glad she made the change to this school. The opportunities for girls, the comraderie, the class participation, class offerings, extracurricular choices, and the abundance of girls to hang out with are all still good. She's been rolling along, staying super busy, meeting a few new girls and gradually getting included in some of the outings, so far so good. But as I mentioned in the previous post, the Winter Formal is coming up, and she is having to step outside of her comfort zone if she wants to have a "date" to the dance.

She got over the initial problem of her friend wanting to invite the same boy. The friend changed her mind and gave her blessing, so all was good there. Then she just had to decide when to invite him. Not too early (looks desperate), and not too late (he might get invited by someone else). Then she had to decide how to invite him (text message, instant message or gasp! an actual phone call?)

So this week, she asked me to sit with her while she called him. (Never mind that I was shocked,amazed and happy that she asked me to witness it). You have to understand, that for her to call a boy was a major step into the unknown. I don't think she has ever actually initiated a text message, much less a phone call. So the call was made, he picked up and she asked him...almost as much in person (in these days of texting) as if they were face to face. He said "Yes", and she got off the phone so fast it was as if it was burning her skin! Whew. The smile of relief on her face said it all.

So, the next day she floated into school, only to enter the den of gossip. Evidently this boy was a popular choice. He went to lower school with a bunch of girls who have been at H's school (together) for four or five years. So you know, those cliques are well established and exclusive. One girl in particular was horrified that H had asked this boy, mainly because she was planning on asking him herself. And she let everyone in close vicinity to her know it. She thought it was "weird" and "wrong" that H had asked him...how dare she? She didn't even know him very well! H wasn't close to this girl, but now the girl won't even look at H in the hallway.

This was very upsetting to H. She'd never been the subject of so much hateful gossip. And it was made even worse by the drama of the "group".

The GROUP is almost as important as the DATE. They never go to the dance as a couple, it's always as a group. And the makeup of the group is very important. The girls all get together at someone's house to get dressed together, then the boys and their parents come over to take pictures. Who is in the pictures is crucial...plus, the boys should know some of the other boys, so they're not uncomfortable.

This didn't seem to be a problem for H at first. Her friends were inviting his friends, so they were all going to be in her group. They just had to decide who else to invite. That whole situation became another point of contention. Someone wanted to be in the group, someone else didn't want them to be, and H was stuck in the middle. She didn't want to exclude anyone, but she didn't want the others to be uncomfortable. All this combined gave H stomachaches, and she just didn't want to even talk about it.

Time makes everything better. The girl who was angry that H had invited the boy was told by one of her friends that she shouldn't be mad, H didn't know she was planning on inviting him, blah, blah, blah...that died down. The group sorted itself out, so as of now, with the dance four weeks away, everything is copacetic.

But you know, four weeks is a long time. I'm sure more drama is coming. And with four years of high school, it won't be over for a long time.

Teenage girls, boys, and DRAMA

When H was in 5th grade, one of the boys in her class "asked her out". Of course, in 5th grade, they don't go anywhere. But you wouldn't know that from listening to them talk.

"Well, Brandi was going out with Billy, but then he broke up with her and started going out with Anne", or "John asked me out, but I really like George, so I said No."

Well, when the boy (who she has known since preschool) "asked her out", she wasn't sure she was "ready". So she explained that to him. He decided he would wait until she was ready. So at every birthday party or play practice for the next few weeks, he would pout in the corner, because he was sad. All H's friends told her she was breaking his heart, so she relented and said "yes".

Suddenly, her buddy, who up until this moment was a friend she was very comfortable around, became her "boyfriend" and they stopped talking. "Everything changed," she said, and wished aloud that she could go back to the way it was before. The straw that broke the camel's back was the day, after the middle school assembly, that he grabbed her hand and held it for the entire 25 foot walk from the auditorium to their classroom. She was embarrassed, uncomfortable, and decided that she needed to break up with him.

A few weeks later, a boy she'd had a crush on since 3rd grade (who had transferred to another school), "asked her out". He actually had the guts to call her on the phone (our house phone, since she didn't have a cell phone yet), and ask her if she would go out. The funny thing was, they didn't speak before that, nor did they speak after that. But she was "going out with him". She found out through a friend a couple of weeks later that he was "breaking up with her". I don't know if she's spoken to him since.

So, with that vast amount of experience under her belt, she decided she was "not going to date boys anymore". She said, "When I date boys, everything changes, so I would rather just be friends."

That worked great for a couple of years. She played basketball, ran track, and hung out with her girlfriends, so she didn't really have time for boys. Then, in 7th and 8th grade, to her dismay, all her girlfriends started getting interested in boys. She kept up her mantra of "not dating", and counseled her friends through their various crushes. I think that if she had not gone to the same school for Kindergarten through 8th grade, boys might have interested her a little bit earlier, but in her mind, the boys at her school were like her brothers, and did not interest her in the slightest.

Fast forward to high school. New school, new faces, and boys are entering the equation. Only one problem (in her mind, not ours!). She's at an all-girl's school, and playing basketball, so she's at school from 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. every day (unless there's a game, which puts her there until 7:30-8:00). Not a lot of time to get out and meet the boys. All fine, except there is a winter formal at her school, and the girls have to find dates.

After school started last fall, they began having freshman "mixers". H would get together with a few girls to get dressed, and go en masse to the party. When I would ask how it went, she always said, "great", but she never mentioned meeting anyone. Until the last party before the holidays. One of the boys she had met at the homecoming dance asked for her phone number. So they began texting. She was toying with the idea of asking him, but had never done anything like that, and didn't really know how she was going to do it, when one of her new friends asked who she was going to invite. She told her she was thinking about this boy, and the friend said, "ooohhhh", and looked disappointed. H asked who she was going to invite and she said she was thinking about the same boy.

So H said, "Oh, no, you go ahead and invite him. Seriously. I don't want a boy to come between our friendship. I'll probably just invite someone from my old school."

And she came home and cried.

She didn't want to invite any of her old friends, she really wanted to invite this boy. Never mind that the dance was three months away.

"Who knows who you'll meet between now and then," I said.

"No one," she said, "it's winter break, and then basketball, so there's NO ONE!"

Enter DRAMA into our lives.

I will say that this issue has been resolved, but I'm going to have to finish writing it tomorrow. It's late, and part of my new Year's Resolution is to get off the computer at a decent hour and spend time with my hubby.

More tomorrow. TTFN!

12 Stepping for Facebook Games

I was just informed that I've been saying it wrong. "Two thousand and nine". It was explained to me that in 1909, they called it "Oh nine", not "Nineteen hundred and nine". Whatever. All I know is, the years are flying by...In another year and some odd months I'll be fifty freaking years old. I don't know how that can be. I feel like I'm in junior high in so many ways. When I walk into H's basketball games, as the mom of a new student, I don't know where to sit. Do I just sit down wherever I feel like it? Do I try to find the other "cool" moms and sit with them? So far, I look for eye contact and a friendly face and gravitate that way. But we don't have the years of shared history that I did with the moms at H's old school, so after the pleasantries of, "So, how were your holidays?" or "How was the weekend?", I usually pretend to be intensely focused on the game. I always thought that when I was a grown-up, I wouldn't have to worry about this kind of thing. I feel like there's a neon light over my head, blinking NEW MOM, NEW MOM, NEW MOM....

I've been thinking about "Oh Nine". I usually avoid New Year's resolutions, because they're so predictable...Getting organized, losing weight, eating better, etc. I made the same resolution for about eight years in a row before I realized it just will never happen...I have boxes and boxes of old photos in the attic that I've been meaning to put in photo albums, but just never do. So I stopped making that resolution. Now I'm spending way too much time scanning them and posting them on facebook.

Speaking of spending way too much time on facebook...I have discovered Scramble and Pathwords-word games on facebook. Now, I'm wasting even more time. Although, in true justification mode, it's improving my crossword puzzle abilities. But it's a problem.

Ever since the holidays I have been dragging...really exhausted, more so than usual. It gets even worse at night, after dinner. I can barely hold my head up and have every intention of going to bed early. The only problem is, the computer is in my office, on the way to my bedroom. So I go in to plug in my phone, check email, and before you know it, three or four hours have passed and I'm still up! Last night, J came by around 10:30 and asked me what I was doing. I felt like an alcoholic, hiding my booze, when I explained why I hadn't gone to bed three hours earlier.

So, this is my resolution. I don't think I can completely cut it out. But I am going to "schedule" my time playing the games...Bridge Baron, Scramble, Pathwords, and whatever else I discover. No more than one hour a day. I knew I was in trouble last night when my girlfriend and I were chatting on facebook, and I went "offline" so that I could play without having to respond to her chat! So, I'm cutting that out. If I'm online, I'm online. No more hiding. I'm informing my husband, so that I have some level of accountability. If I am exhausted at bedtime, no more playing games. And if you're my friend on facebook and you see that I'm online...feel free to ask me what I'm doing. I promise to stop playing and talk to you.