Category: She Said To No One In Particular

I love to watch the ABC television show “What Would You Do?” with John Quinones. He and a team of actors and hidden-camera operators stage situations and then watch to see the reactions of everyday people like you and me.

The actors usually play out emotionally charged scenes in nice restaurants or upscale retail stores. The real people who happen to be in those locations witness everything from rude behavior to racism, and either step in to try to help or diffuse the situation, or walk away.

What I’ve learned from watching this show is that our population is generally moral, ethical, and compassionate. The other thing I’ve learned from watching this show is that our population needs to take a closer look at its wardrobe.

Pardon my snark, but you never know when or where John Quinones is going to show up to take your moral temperature, so before you go out in public, look in a mirror.

I don’t mean to get all Joan Rivers Fashion Police on you, but if you knew there was even the slightest chance you’d end up on television in ill-fitting, mismatched clothing, and hair the color of nothing found in nature wouldn’t you take more than 24 seconds to choose what you were going to wear?

We’ve all done it. I do it all the time and promise myself I won’t ever do it again because I might run into my mother, of all people, whose first question has always been, “Where’s your lipstick and earrings”?

I know John creeps up on unsuspecting people in the middle of highly charged situations, but we should take a good look at ourselves– and our pride.

I propose a spin-off of “What Would You Do”? This show would feature the every-day people who appeared on-camera in those trendy restaurants and designer-carrying department stores looking like they got dressed during a power outage and ask, “What Were You Thinking”?

My son is excited to be leaving for college in a few weeks. Me? Not so much. Yes, I’m excited for him; I’m just not that excited for me.

It really doesn’t help when people tell me, “You’ve done a good job! He’s ready to go to school! You should be happy for him! This is how it’s supposed to be”.

Yes, but I didn’t expect to lose my job.

I know I’m not technically losing my job, but after spending the past 24 years either being pregnant or caring for my children, it’s hard for me not to feel as if I’ve been fired.

Technically, I’ve never been fired from a job, so I don’t really know what that feels like, but I can pretty much imagine based on the way I’ve been feeling lately, which is a combination of sad, lonely, and nauseated.

The nausea is like “the bookends of being a mother” because I spent both pregnancies nauseated, and here I am again, feeling my stomach lurch its contents toward my throat all day every day.

I know he’ll come home. Even though he says he’ll see me in November, I know he’ll be home before then. But that doesn’t make me feel better about this because soon he won’t be here every day. As it is, I hardly see him at all because he lives in the basement (by choice), and we tend to come and go at different hours. But at least I know he’s here.

I know because I occasionally see his shoes by the back door, usually with Miles’, Kush’s, or any number of his friends’ shoes. I know because the Gummy Bears are all gone, and scribbled on the grocery list in his handwriting is, “Lucky Charms”, “Cinnamon Toast Crunch”, and “Powerade Zero”.

I try cooking his favorite things so that maybe he’ll be home more often for dinner, but I’m such a lousy cook that I can’t blame him for going to a different friend’s house almost every night.

I will learn to cook while he learns about life as a college student. I will be working on my new website and trying to navigate social media while he works to get good grades and navigate a new social life.

I’ve done this before. My daughter went away to school. I handled that transition by openly sobbing as I walked aimlessly through the aisles of Target. Now she lives at home, which is good because I’ll still have one of them here, at least for a little while. But this is the last time I’ll be doing this. Unless my dogs get accepted to a university, I’m out of kids to send away.

Richard walks around the house squealing, “I can’t wait to be an empty-nester” for all to hear, which bugs the crap out of me. I’m not ready, yet, and even if I were, I don’t think it’s appropriate to burst out into song and dance about it in front of the kids.

I am a little surprised by my reaction to the upcoming unpleasantries (for me) because it’s not like I was a helicopter-y stay-at-home mom who did everything for her kids. My kids have been washing, drying, and putting away their own laundry for years, mostly because I tend to turn things pink, but the point is they are fairly independent.

I had a fabulously fun job at the local park district teaching kindergartners whatever I was asked to teach them for the past nine years. I wasn’t always home when the kids came home from school, and sometimes worked special events in the evenings and on weekends.

My kids can cook, drive themselves where they need to be, and make their own doctor appointments. They share a car and are pretty good about making arrangements with each other without parental involvement when it comes to who needs the car for work and when.

They regularly load and unload the dishwasher, and even take care of the dogs if we are out of town — And both dogs take medication twice a day! Maybe those things don’t sound all that impressive, but I’m proud of them for being able to take care of basic things like that.

I guess I have done my job well. I’m just not ready to stop doing it.

Note: If you leave a comment calling me a big baby, I promise you I won’t approve it.

I just called a local acting company to sign up for a class. I thought it would be fun to take improv with my father, Norman. Because my dad needs to use a walker I wanted to see if the venue was handicap accessible. I spoke to someone and explained my dad’s needs which were a ramp to get into and out of  the place, and a chair to sit on during class.

The person I spoke with told me that the venue was handicap accessible but that  improv class is very interactive and that my dad might be better off in a standup comedy class. I thought he was kidding. I started to laugh and said, “Did you just say that my father who uses a walker and needs to sit in a chair would be better off in a standup class”? The guy didn’t laugh. The guy didn’t get it. The guy can’t take a joke.

I think I’ll call a different acting company.

I am so excited to have been contacted by author Alethea Eason. She asked to interview me for her blog and here is her post about it. She’s an amazing author. Please follow her on Facebook, on her blog, and buy her books! I interviewed her as well and will post it as soon as it’s finished.

Wow!

http://theheronspath.com/2013/06/07/interview-with-leslie-jo-korengold-the-wild-boomba/