Ever heard the saying “looking at life through rose-colored glasses”? Then you know it refers to someone who looks at life with a rosy optimism. I wish I was guilty of that. I’ve always envied people who manage to be endlessly upbeat and full of optimism and hope. You know them, they’re the ones who make lemonade when handed lemons. When I get handed lemons I suck on them and make a sour face.  Anyway, Melanie in “Gone With The Wind” was one of those lemonade-making characters. No matter that the Civil War stripped her of everything, no matter that she was starving, no matter that Scarlet was so mean to her and secretly on the prowl to steal her husband Ashley – although heaven knows why she wanted that man pansy when she had Clark Gable  – that Melanie, she could find the good in everything and everyone. I hated envied her.

But that’s not the point of this post. The point is that I’m guilty at looking at life THRU something all right.  But it isn’t rose-colored glasses.

I’m guilty of looking at life through a Canon digital camera viewfinder. And as I only recently came to realize, there’s nothing rosy about it.

I was at the Hollywood Bowl a couple of weekends back. It was the first trip for my daughter Julia (who is eight) and we took her to the Bugs Bunny show where the L.A. Philharmonic plays along to the cartoons projected on big screens. And as I was videotaping the fireworks finale at one point I turned the camera toward my daughter, you know, to capture her expression. I could see her there, in profile, her wide eyes lit by the flashing fireworks in the sky, her face filled with awe and the joy of the moment. I paused for a moment, sort of taken aback by the utter rapture  she seemed to be experiencing. I mean, what we were doing was cool, but was it truly that amazing? 

At first I attributed it to the fact that she was only 8 and at 8 one is experiencing so many things for the first time. And as we all know, the first time is the most exciting. After all, it had been that way when we took her to Disneyland for the first time. So thrilled was she by the sights, the sounds, the magic of it all that it even rubbed off on jaded old me who had been to Disneyland too many times to count – for whom the magic had completely worn off.

But when I put down the camera that night at the Bowl and I looked at what she was looking at, I mean REALLY looked at it, through my very own eyes, not the viewfinder of my camera – I realized, her feeling of awe had nothing to do with being 8. I looked up at the fireworks in the sky, big and beautiful and sparkly, shattering light over the dome of the Bowl. At the crescent moon that hung in the distance on that crystal clear summer night. At the 18,000 upturned faces all experiencing this moment together. And you know what? To my amazement, it truly WAS amazing!

And I realized, I hadn’t been seeing it. I mean, I was  seeing it on the tiny video display but I wasn’t seeing  it seeing it.

And in that instant, it also occured to me that this has been the case for the last 8 1/2 years of my life! Why 8 1/2 years exactly? Because that’s how long my daughter’s been in the picture – figuratively and literally.

Since she was born and I got my first high quality digital camera, I have chronicled every move, burp, smile, gurgle, and later dance recital, talent show, piano recital, etc.  It’s the reason  Randy the perfekt husband gave me the nickname MAMMARAZI. And while I have recorded all these moments in her life for posterity, I never really experienced them first hand because I was separated from these events  as they were happening – by the camera!  So busy was I  making sure the images were centered, that no one was walking across the frame, that the focus was right, that there was enough head room – that I never truly got to enjoy them. Because I was never, not once,  in the actual moment – watching my little girl sing joyfully at the top of her lungs, tap dance to the perfect rhythm of a song, or even smile shyly as she was handed an award for being an exceptional student.

And suddenly I was very sad. Suddenly, the loss of the last 8 1/2 years hit me like a ton of bricks.

And I realized we have become photo obsessed, we parents these days.  That’s right. It’s not just me. There isn’t a single birthday party or school event I go to that doesn’t feature dozens of parents jockeying for position to get the perfect picture or video of their kid.  It’s such chaos and madness you’d think Brangelina was on the red carpet announcing another adoption! One MAMMAKAZE joked about the fact that whenever her one year old heard the word SMILE, he immediately struck a pose, even if there wasn’t a camera around! This is how conditioned our kids have become to having a camera in their faces.

I mean, my stepdad was a professional photographer and he never took as many pictures of the four of us kids the whole time we were growing up as I have taken of my one, single, only child in the past 8 years!  

I don’t know if it’s the ease and cheapness of taking pictures now – the fact that we can immediately see what we’ve taken and delete what’s bad without having to wait a week and pay a fortune for images that feature closed eyes, a partial thumb over the lens or some wise-acre sticking two fingers up behind someone’s head.

Whatever it is, we’ve created a whole generation of parents that will have a lifetime of memories of taking pictures of their kids , but not of the moments themselves. Very sad.

So I have VOWED that next time Julia gets an award or does a performance or blows out a birthday candle I will sit back, relax and take it in, burning it forever on that brilliant little hard drive known as the cerebral cortex.  Well, I mean, as long as Randy is taking the pictures with the Canon. Oh. And my brother John is doing video on that amazing Nikon he has with the super long lens. That thing captures images like nobody’s business!

In the continuing horror show of bad parenting that is the TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras, here is a video clip featuring a 10 Year-Old Girl who is being forced by her mom to get her eyebrows waxed so that she can be “beautiful” for her pageants.

First of all, the girl is blonde (albeit probably not naturally as the guy who is doing her eyebrows confesses to “doing” her hair for 7 years) . My point is, who is going to see a stray eyebrow hair all the way up on stage? Are the judges examining these girls under a magnified mirror?

Second of all, she’s a kid! A little kid.  I didn’t even start plucking my eyebrows until I was in high school and I’m half Italian and had a unibrow! I still don’t wax them.  Although I should – but I’m such a wimp when it comes to owies.

I mean, I know we females pick and pluck and shave all in the name of some idealized version of beauty, but it shouldn’t start while there are still American Girl dolls carefully arranged on the Laura Ashley bedding draped across a twin-sized  canopy bed in a Limoge pink bedroom. And, yes, I know there are some grown women who actually have bedrooms like this, but they’re a whole other subset of psychological issues best saved for a different post.

As you can see, the girl is  going along, but it’s obvious she doesn’t want to do this.  I really feel for her. But mostly I feel like I would love to wax the hair off her mother’s head and see how she likes it.

SAD. SAD. SAD. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

You know, it’s not enough that plenty of perfectly good marriages are being ruined by lack of sleep, the demands of parenthood and juggling jobs and family life – but now vampires , emo chicks and werewolves are at it too?!

Yeah, it’s true. Know how I know? I read it in an article online and that makes it true, right? The article  said that there are thousands of women who were so obsessed with the TWILIGHT movies that they were neglecting their marriages and even their kids! They spend hours online obsessing about the characters, the production of the movies, even the actors and what they’re doing every minute of their lives.

And you thought Twilight was a story aimed at 14 year-old girls who recently acquired their breasts. I thought so too when I read the first book and saw the first movie, which I’ll admit, is as far as I got.  I mean, wow.  Having read the poetry that is Interview With The Vampire this was NOT my cup of blood.  

But I got it. It wasn’t meant to be great literature. It was clear to me that the appeal of these stories was the whole “forbidden sex” thing. The “danger of sex” thing. The first book was a long – and I mean very long – series of, well,  longing scenes, one after another after another. In fact, I kept wondering, “When is something going to happen?!” And then I realized, when you’re a teenage girl on the verge of her sexual awakening, nothing’s SUPPOSED to happen. Not if your parents and school counselors can help it. Sex is a scary thing, a dangerous thing. Especially in this day and age when it can actually kill you. Also, according to your friends, it hurts really, really badly the first time.

And while Stephenie Meyer may not know story structure if it impaled her through the heart, she knows that young girls have eternally been attracted to the bad boy and forbidden love.

Apparently, however, they aren’t the only ones. Because then I heard some of my mommy friends going on about these books. We’re talking women in their 30s and 40s. Women with husbands who, as evidenced by the existence of children, had already lost their virginity.  And lo and behold, they too had gotten wrapped up in the phenom that is Twilight. They talked about Team Edward vs.  Team Jacob. They giggled about Robert Pattinson’s brooding hotness. They marveled at the pecs of an underage Taylor Lautner. And somehow, I think they identified with the disaffected Bella who, if you ask me, seems like a closet cutter.

But at least none of my mommy friends have reached the frenzied point of the TwiHards who are neglecting their marriages and their children. But here’s what one such woman had to say in an L.A. Times article on the subject:

“My husband finally came to me and said, ‘I think you love Twilight more than you love me,’” says Johnson, who had become especially attached to the community she’d found online. “I ended up moving out of the house and fought for my marriage for six weeks. I had to take a step back and detox myself from Twilight. I was really angry that I had allowed it to suck me in.”

That’s what vampires do, right? Suck. Especially the ones in these books. But then, that’s my opinion. And clearly I am in the minority here.

Still, I’ve got to wonder if these women weren’t already having problems in their marriage. Maybe they are just  finding something in these stories that is fulfilling some need that isn’t getting met at home. And really, is this obsession any different than, say, the one that sucks in so many men during fantasy football season?

The bottom line is, all our marriages would be better served if we spent more time tending them instead of sitting in front of a computer screen obsessing about the lives of other people.

Uh, on that note…. Signing off to call Randy the perfekt husband who is on his daily long commute to his job so that Julia can grow up in a nice house on a clean street filled with loads of kids in the suburbs. I love you, honey. Yes, more than my computer.

I gotta hand it to Walmart. Despite all the bad press they get for doing things like forcing their employees to work through their breaks and making them vote for candidates the company supports, they DO take their ROLLBACKS seriously.

Case in point, just the other day a couple of WOMEN SHOPPERS at a Walmart in Salinas, California were offered a 6 month old baby for $25 dollars! Yeah, you read that right. And I know what you’re thinking. WHAT A BARGAIN, right?  I mean, adopting a baby nowadays costs at least $25,000 –  $45,000 if you buy it on the black market.

Get this. The women turned the baby down!  I KNOW! Crazy, huh? I mean $25 dollars for a perfectly good baby – WITHOUT the hassle of stretchmarks, labor pains or plugged ducts?!

But they were honorable women and knew that there was something wrong with the scenario given that the baby was just too cheap and that the seller said he was its father. Yeah, that’s right. The baby’s FATHER!

Why would a father sell his baby and how on earth did he arrive at this amount? If you guessed that is was EXACTLY the going rate for enough low grade meth to provide a quick but dirty high, you’d be right.

The women called police and the police went to the guy’s house where they arrested him and the BABY’S MAMMA (pictured right). Yes, you can tell by her lovely complexion that she, too, likes her some crystal meth.  And guess what, she gave her baby a taste for it too, because she was breastfeeding while she was high. Lovely.  The baby is in protective custody. 

Okay. Technically Walmart can’t be blamed or take the credit for this amazing baby discount. Because technically, it happened OUTSIDE the Walmart. And the salesperson wasn’t an AARP member wearing a blue vest. But you gotta admit, it’s further proof that  Walmart’s the place to go if you want the absolute cheapest prices on ANYTHING!  

Know what else it’s further proof of? That most some people SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO HAVE CHILDREN!

I sincerely hope that baby gets the chance it deserves. Although the deck is pretty stacked against it. Sigh.

Okay that’s all I have to say. I’ll spare you my RANT on forced sterilization because, you know, it’s not PC. And I can’t deal with hate emails today.  Today, not a good day.

Just love your children. They’re a gift. Enjoy every moment you have with them because it goes by so quickly.

I LOVE YOU JULIA! With all my heart.

I was going to do a post today about the hidden horrors of orthodontia…to the parent. However, my attention has been drawn to yet another horrific example that has popped up this week of bad parenting.

I don’t know if you’ve seen this video that’s going around of the 2 year-old INDONESIAN BOY with a 2 pack a day smoking habit, but if you haven’t you should take a gander.

WHAT THE WHAT THE?!!!!!

I mean, did you see that kid? The leather jacket, the way he flicks that cigarette around. What is he? The reincarnation of Charles Bukowski or something? The last time I’ve seen that kind of behavior  it was 50ish and sitting next to me at a blackjack table in Vegas.

And the toddler lights his own cigarettes. Julia’s 8 and I still won’t let her handle fire! I’m pretty sure Child Protective Services would be against it too. Apparently they don’t have that agency where this kid lives.

And his dad thinks he’s healthy?! Is he kidding? If the lung cancer doesn’t get the kid, the obesity will. And the whole thing about the dad not being able to take the cigarettes from him because he’s pitches a terrible tantrum. Well, I DO remember the nightmare it was taking the bottle away from Julia. Yikes! Toddlers CAN be terrifying. BUT YOU’RE THE PARENT! TAKE SOME FREAKING RESPONSIBILITY!

Then again, maybe the cigarette smoking is the least of the kid’s problems. Because if you look closely at the end of the video when he’s settling down for his afternoon nap with his ba-ba after a long morning of chain smoking – I’m pretty sure that’s a GUN that other little kid is waving around his head.

What a tragedy. What idiot parents.

Well, next time you’re being eaten away by rot-gut guilt over the fact that your kid didn’t eat a green veggie all day, or that you’re two weeks behind on their annual well child checkup, remember that at least you’re not spending their college education on cigarettes … for them! And at least that  checkup won’t have to include a chest X-ray screening for lung cancer.

First let me say that I’m glad this ended well. And by well I mean a rescue mission that cost somebody (probably me and you) millions of dollars instead of a recovery mission that cost somebody (probably me and you) millions of dollars AND ended up with the loss of a young girl’s life.

If you haven’t been following the news, Southern California teen Abby Sunderland (16) was on a solo trip to sail around the world (i.e., break the world’s record which her brother held until some foreign chick took it away from him thus ticking her parents off). And well, she went missing when she lost radio contact in a really bad storm on the Indian Ocean four hundred miles from the nearest land.

ARE YOU FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME?! My kid Julia’s going to be lucky if I let her drive down to the 7-Eleven to grab a Slushee by herself let alone go out on the open ocean for months alone in a boat. In fact, I can guarantee she will definitely not be allowed to get the  slushee. That thing’s nothing but sugar and crap.

But a kid, on a boat, in the middle of an ocean. I just want to say SHAME ON HER PARENTS.

Sure I’m like the next proud parent.  I want my kid to excel and succeed and stand out in the crowd. But you know what’s more important? Seeing them live into adulthood and realize their full potential as human beings and, yes, give me grandkids I can spoil with those ice cream bars with chocolate and nuts on them (provided they don’t have nut allergies which, who knows these days).

I mean seriously, it is a parent’s job to JUST SAY NO! At least until a kid is of legal (and hopefully mature) age to make decisions about their own life.

You cannot tell me that Abby at 16 has the maturity to decide to risk her life on such an endeavor. I mean, think about it. When you were 16 how in touch with the realities of the world were you? Didn’t you feel immortal, invincible, like you were gonna live forever? Yes, I’m saying she did not have the proper (and healthy) amount of fear and caution to weigh the risks. Therefore, it was her parents’ job to do it for her.

But NOOOOOO. They wanted to let their kid ” go for her dream”. And whose dream really was it? And where did she get that dream? I mean, apparently they let her take this trip during the worst weather time of the year on the Indian Ocean (winter storm season). Know why? Because if she didn’t, she would have turned 17 in a couple of months and not broken the record.

THAT IS  INSANITY! I’m sorry. Actually, I’m not sorry. I’m MAD! Because parents need to treasure and protect their children. And if that means hiring a prom bus to make sure they don’t get into any hanky panky or dangerous situations on prom night, YOU DO IT! Actually the prom bus was an idea that came to Randy the perfekt husband in a dream just after Julia was born. And, much to her one-day dismay, he’s sticking to it.

I’m really hoping that Abby and more importantly, her parents, have learned a lesson from this.  But why do I have this nagging feeling that we haven’t seen the last of Abby’s Adventures on the High Seas.

Where’s Child Protective Services when you need them?