Up Hill Both Ways

I remember being soooo excited when the tooth fairy left me a quarter under my pillow back in the olden days. Man, I feel like a chump now!

Case in point #1: my daughter Aimee’s letter to the tooth fairy after she lost her first baby tooth on Wednesday. Hilariously funny in its honesty and directness, but also a little eyebrow-raising because of how she can so casually ask for $5 for a baby tooth.

It's kinda sad that the small things that used to thrill my friends and me to the point of hysteria when we were kids (“Oh my gosh! I found a quarter!” “Hey, we get to go to McDonald’s for dinner!!”) are now met with an eye roll by our own kids – “Is that all you got?”

A friend has a relative who gives her kids $75 for each lost tooth. That is not a typo. Seventy-five dollars. Holy carp. (Also not a typo.) Talk about setting unrealistic expectations! Another friend said her daughter got all bent out of shape because the tooth fairy only left her a dollar while her BFF got $5. OH, THE HUMANITY!

(Seriously, shouldn’t there be some sort of salary cap on tooth fairy visits? Who can I lobby about this?!)

Now, I should have no room to talk about this because (a) I was the youngest of three girls, so I was spoiled by default (...and by the fact that my parents were so exhausted by the time I came along that they had pretty much given up teaching anything but the most rudimentary of civilizing behaviors), and (b) I don’t practice what I preach with my own kids.

Case in point #2: my other daughter Katie’s 11th birthday. She’s getting a new cell phone and two tickets to “Wicked,” plus a pretty amazing birthday party with 18 of her nearest and dearest friends. And yet I’m worried that I’m not doing enough.

I think I had ONE birthday party when I was little; the rest were spent with family. My girls? They’ve had big birthday bashes since their first birthdays. The only exception was the year that Aimee got strep throat and we cancelled the party, but we still ended up at Chuck E. Cheese, which NEVER happened when I was a kid!!

It’s a competitive parenting jungle out there, y’all. You can talk all you want about teaching your kids the value of a dollar or not falling victim to rampant consumerism, but really – if you had the chance to throw your kids a total blowout for their birthdays, wouldn’t the kid in you jump at the chance to do it?

I will now go hang my head in shame!!

Fat Free Milk and the Secret of Love

This morning at 6:00 a.m., I opened up the refrigerator to grab some yogurt. There, sitting on the bottom shelf, was a gallon of fat free milk. I almost melted with love right there on the spot. Why? Because my husband hates fat free milk. He says it doesn’t have any taste and we might as well be pouring water on our cereal. And yet he bought it for me anyway.

Yesterday he called me from Walgreen’s to ask if we needed anything besides 2% milk. I asked him to grab me a quart of fat free milk, too. Evidently he couldn’t find a small container, so he went ahead and got a gallon of the fat free, even though he and the girls don’t like it.

Love can be expressed in grand gestures like sky writing and sunset hot air balloon rides (who DOES that, by the way?), or it can be shown in subtle ways like taking a moment to glance at your wife’s tires before she leaves for work to make sure that she’s not driving on her rims (again), or a casual brushing of your fingers across his back as you walk past. And in the rush of day-to-day living, sometimes we don’t take the time to notice these little acts of love, because that’s what they are. L-O-V-E, shown in its most elemental form.

Love can be about sacrifice, whether it’s throwing yourself in front of a train to save your kids, or choosing fat free milk because you know your wife is struggling with making healthy food choices. Little sacrifices, little acts of thoughtfulness...these things add up to an ongoing love affair with my husband that still makes me weak in the knees.

Choice Cuts

I faced a horrible choice today. Horrible. Celebrity Cafe, noon, Dallas. Special of the day: meatloaf and potatoes au gratin for $7.99. The dilemma: inhale a delicious, fat- and calorie-laden meal of comfort food goodness, or get something healthy.

The little devil on my shoulder whispered, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Come to Mama!" The little angel on my other shoulder (who sounds suspiciously like my boot camp instructor) hollered, "No, no, no! It'll settle straight on your *ss!" So I did the big-girl thing and made the "good" choice...a low-carb chicken wrap with a side of fruit. (But because I am human, I scarfed up a fun-sized package of M&M's to reward myself on the drive home.)

Would it be considered pretentious to walk around with my own “applause” button for when I make a good choice? Heaven knows I need some sort of acknowledgement when I forego temptation and go with a good-for-me choice!

We are all living real-life versions of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. (Remember those?) Choose the meatloaf and cheesy, cheesy potatoes? Turn to page 152 and expand your butt by two sizes, wallow in guilt, and lie to your boot camp instructor that you've been living on bean sprouts and spring water all week. Choose the chicken wrap? Turn to page 71 and be proud of yourself for doing the right thing for the right reason. (This is where the aforementioned applause button would come in handy – I live for positive feedback!!!)

I tell my two daughters this little nugget of wisdom all the time: life is full of choices, and the choices you make determine the person you are. So explain to me why the "right" choice is usually the harder one. Not fair, but then again, where is it written that life is fair? As the Man in Black said to Princess Buttercup, "Anyone who says differently is selling something."

(Hmm…if they’re selling that applause button, I might have to buy one. That idea keeps sounding better and better…!)