Alabaster Mom

The Boy has been given his pink slip. Apparently my daughter cut him loose right after the school year ended. She is not allowed to have a boyfriend, of course. She is only 12. However, it is normal and natural for her to show interest in boys so I don't have a problem with her interacting with them. Whole relationships are carried out via text message these days. It seems pretty harmless for the most part. I check her phone periodically just to make sure the texts aren't actually coming from some 50-year-old pervert from Albuquerque. This is the third boy who has been sent packing since September. I can only imagine how her love life will play out when she gets to high school.  The halls will be littered with broken-heart emojis.  Speaking of which, the most recent boy was listed in her phone with his given name plus some gooey emojis (hearts, etc.) Now, his name is just his name. He's probably lucky that she let him keep that. The first boy (from back in September) fe

My daughter and I participated in a local cycling event for charity today. Participants could choose from multiple distances ranging from 15K to 100 miles. We chose the short, family-friendly one. Last year, we finished the event but she complained relentlessly the whole time because her bike didn't have gears. She couldn't adjust the resistance on hills and such. I fixed this issue by buying her a brand new bicycle for Christmas. The new bike has 18 speeds. That's about 17 more than she had before. I figured we'd be all set for this year's bike tour.  I warned her to practice ahead of time since the gear-shifting bit was new to her. This morning, I hauled her out of bed at 6:30 so that we could be out of the house at 7:30.  I loaded the bikes onto my bike rack and we drove to the starting point for the bike tour. As we prepared to set off, everything seemed fine. We applied sunblock and checked in with the organizers. We mounted our bikes and started the route.

I finally did it! No, not the murders I'm always threatening to commit. I got my first pedicure. I have mentioned my reluctance to get a pedicure in the past. I always just felt very weird about it.  I had planned to get my (finger) nails done on Tuesday afternoon so I decided that maybe I should go ahead and get my toes done, too. It's summertime so my toes are spending more time on public view, as it were. I normally keep blue or black nail polish on my toes.  I do this in direct protest of all the times my mother said, "Blue fingernails?  You look like you're in heart failure!" when I was a teenager. I decided I'd better take the polish off before going to the nail place. I had a hard time getting all of the blue stuff off so I still ended up looking like I, um, have heart disease. You win, Mom. The nail place wasn't too busy so I ended up in the pedicure chair right away. I was assigned to a nice motherly lady who spoke very little English. She

I stood in the aisle near the girls' clothing section at Old Navy, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. An upbeat song was playing through the store's speaker system. I picked up the pace a bit and added a little bounce, bending my knees as I moved back and forth. My purse swung from my shoulder. A look of horror appeared on my daughter's face. "Oh, Mom! No!" she hissed. Unable to resist, I added a head bob for good measure. Before I had time to add any snaps or claps, my daughter flung her arms around me in an attempt to restrict my movement. "I love you - please stop!" she said, her her check pressed against my tee shirt-clad shoulder. She was desperate now. "Okay," I replied. I was afraid she might have a seizure out of pure embarrassment. Here's the thing, though. There was no one around. We basically had Old Navy to ourselves. If a tree falls in a forest and no 12-year-old girls are around to hear it, is it still embarr