School Uniforms as Equalizers

Bianca starts kindergarten in September at a private school. They require a particular uniform, of course.

I wanted to buy it this month, as the store has ten percent off in June. It's not as easy as it sounds. The store is pretty screwed up--only open on from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and it's located downtown Salt Lake. I kept wanting to go by and never got a chance. Today, a friend of mine from the neighborhood went by and picked up an extra skirt for Bianca.

She stopped by my house on the way home. It's okay. It's a pleated, black-white-red plaid skort. It's $40. I spent $40 on one piece of clothing. I only wanted her to pick up the one.

As I wrote out a check for my friend, I thought about how I was so exited that Bianca would be wearing a uniform to school. How it's an equalizer. No kids are judged by how much money their parents make, based on the clothes they wear. Everyone looks the same.

Then I realized that no way in hell would I ever normally pay $40 for one skirt. Ever. I'm a 75 percent off shopper. I pay $10 for a complete outfit at Dillard's after-season sale for next year. School uniform as an equalizer? Whatever. The thing I'm most realizing that in order to wear an "equalizer" uniform, your parents have to shell out quite a bit of money. Simple as that. I don't think of them as equalizers anymore.

To even things out, I think I'll buy the rest of the uniform--the knee socks, white shirts, and black pants--at Target if I can get away with it.

I'm in a Good Book Club

As I sat across from Bret Lott, on a picnic table littered with blossoms from a nearby tree, he asked me who I was. Not just who I am, but what makes me tick. I don't remember how, but my book club came up.

He asked what we were reading.

I responded, "Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc."

He said, "You're in a good book club."

I smiled. "I know." And it's true. I know.

We've read our share of bad books, but we read good ones too. But that's not really why this book club is good.

I sat down to read in my still house, listening to the hum of the air conditioner and the tick-tock of the clock on my wall, and I smile again. I read aloud. About Joan of Arc. But not just about Joan of Arc. About Joan of Arc in Mark Twain's words. I pause and reread and say the delicious words slowly and enjoy them again, if I choose to.

I know I've got a great book club. As Amber says, we'll still be reading books and meeting when we're old and gray. We'll talk about books and sex and our grandchildren. Every third Thursday. I look at this clock and know it will cease its ticking and die years before this book club does.

Soup, Anyone?

I love my friends. I'm so lucky to have many, many good friends. I'm not even going to mention the ones I talk to all the time (you know who you are). Too many wonderful, maudlin things to say. And I don't want to come off as a sap. But I had lunch today with my old work friends--Debi, Debbie Reynolds (not the actress), and Leslie. We worked together nearly five years ago at Novell Connection magazine. We were like family.

I dropped Bianca off at Eric's work so he could take her to McDonald's, then let her play some web games on the extra computer in his office. She loves going to daddy's work. His office is full of candy and sugary drinks. I stop off there sometimes just to pick up something sweet if I'm running errands in the area.

After I dropped Bianca off, I met my friends at Zuppa's. I love this place. We had a little rain this morning, so soup was the perfect lunch. Especially, the creamy Wisconsin Cauliflower, with a piece of bread and chocolate-covered strawberry on the side. I could eat there every day. Well, in the winter for sure.

There's something amazing about the way you can not see someone for such a long span of time--we usually get together once every three months--and we just connect and talk about everything. But mostly catch up. We remember all those people that we used to talk about in each others office for hours--relatives, good friends, kids. There's so much to talk about. I love these women.

After the magazine we worked for went kaput, we all went our separate ways. Leslie and Debi moved on to Creating Keepsakes; Debi went to Niche (where I worked several months in 2004 as well). But I still feel like we're family. They came to Miranda's funeral and watched me transition into a person they undoubtedly didn't recognize. (They'd known every single idiosyncracy about me, right down to my spending habits.) Grief tends to change a person. Just ask my husband.

It was at a similar lunch at the same Zuppa's in August when they convinced me now would be a perfect time to sit down and write that novel I'd always known I'd write. They encouraged me, and checked in on me about it, and they supported me. I'm not saying that I'm going to be a great novelist someday (although that is my dream), but if I do ever publish something, these women will be near the top of my "thank you" list.

As we were leaving, a worker came to collect our trays. None of my friends had eaten their chocolate-covered strawberry. As he slid the plates over, I gasped. "You're not going to eat your strawberries?" I gleefully grabbed each one and piled them in front of me. Debi smiled, put her arm around me, and said, "Jeana, you're back."

Great Expectations

Marriage is hard. Just ask anyone who's been divorced. It's hard and it's frustrating and it's demanding. And I sometimes wonder what it is that keeps a couple married and tears a couple apart. All my mulling over has brought me to one simple word: expectations.

Wednesday night, I met up with my gorgeous, wonderful book-club friends at the new Megaplex Theatre in South Jordan to see "The Break-Up" with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. The main thought I carried away from the movie is that I could have just started a fight with my husband, and I would have ended up with the same feelings and in the same place as I was in when I left the theatre. I have to admit that I was a little agitated over all the yelling and arguing and fighting. And then I was further disturbed with the fact that my husband and I have said a lot of those exact things to each other. Such as, "Why don't you want to help me around the house" or "You do nothing but nag me" or "You should start working out" or watching my husband playing video games. I'd heard them all before floating around my own house. And I understood Brooke wanting out of that relationship. I've felt the same way before.

But haven't we all? Most of us have said most of these things to our significant others and well, some of us are still together and some of us are not. And I think it all boils down to our expectations: Are you expecting to grow old with this person? Are you willing to fight through the tough times to when life becomes peaceful again? Will we run? I'm not saying that my marriage is perfect. It's not. Of course it's flawed. I work at it every day, as does my husband, and it's a work in progress. Perhaps someday we'll stop fighting, but I doubt it. And sometimes I wonder how it is that I've been married for seven years and I still don't have my husband figured out.

But if I stop and remember back to the two and a half years I dated my husband in college, I know that a lot of our relationship thrived on arguing and debating with each other and challenging each other and making up. We've always had the kind of relationship that actually runs on fighting. In a way, it's an integral part of our marriage. It's part of what makes our marriage, as long as we keep it at a distance, in a place where it doesn't break it.

I still have a lot of learning to do. I am selfish sometimes, so is my husband. But we love each other, and we're working and working and working, and my expectation is that some day, many years down the road, we will be sitting on our front porch, rocking in wicker chairs, and arguing over each others families or that damned pile of clothes at the foot of the bed that he just won't pick up. Yeah, it's a long journey, but it's one I'm willing to fight for.

A Day in the Life of a Stay-at-Home Mom

I try to be a good mom. Sometimes I feel like I'm not so bad, othertimes I feel like I am. A group of moms with pre-school age kids in my neighborhood put together a list of weekly activities to do throughout the summer, such as waterparks, regular parks, the zoo. The first activity of the season was to Red Butte Gardens. I packed a lunch. Carpooled over with my friend Amy. Then spent several hours meandering through flowers and greenery and even heavily wooded areas in the middle of Salt Lake City. We let the kids run through the fountains, feed the fish and the Canadian geese. I was surrounded by a lot of my friends who all still have their babies and were busy changing diapers and running after their kids and it was extremely obvious to me that my hands were idle, my baby always gone. I didn't get home until after four.

The neighbor kids were out playing when we returned home. Bianca wanted to go ride bikes with the kids, so I grabbed my book--The Dive From Clausen's Pier--and sat on a blanket out in the front yard while she rode her bike. I don't know why, but everytime I come outside, I don't get farther then a couple pages in my book. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, the kids flock around me. I really don't get it. I'm not a kid person. To get them off my blanket, I decided to have a quick gymnastics lesson--cartwheels and handstands--which then turned into cheerleading stunts--shoulder sits and shoulder stands. I had every kid in a mile radius on my shoulders yesterday afternoon. Finally, I took my leave. I hadn't done my writing yesterday. I had to go inside. Ambria, the seven-year-old from the house next-door, asked, "Please can I come with you?"

"No, Ambria, it has to be quiet. I need to concentrate."

"I won't make a sound, please. I just want to watch you."

"Watch me what? Typing?"

"Yes."

"Fine. But no talking and no moving."

She sat there on the couch next to me (I got my laptop on Saturday so I'm able to take my writing wherever I go), and she didn't move. She just sat and watched. Surprisingly, it wasn't that distracting. She stayed for about 15 minutes, then was called home to clean her room.

7 a.m. next morning. Bianca was awake already, watching PBS Kids in the family room. I was slipping on my Nikes when she begged, "Please mom, let's go to the park while you 'extracise'." We have a new park behind our house that has a quarter-mile track around it--perfect for letting her play while I run. I wavered. "Okay, but no asking how many more minutes while I'm running."

"I promise. But can I bring Tig?" (Tig is our annoying little chihauhau who barks at anything, including me everytime I run past them on the track, which was approximately 18 times this morning. Finally, I jogged right past him and kicked him and that finally shut him up. I told Bianca we must never, ever kick a dog. She nodded, agreeing, I'd hurt Tig's feelings.)

I realized something as Bianca wasn't sliding down the slides or really playing at the park much--she just sat on the bench with her sidekick Tig and watched me go around and around the track for 40 minutes. I'm adored by my daughter (and possibly even the neighbor kids), and I'm loved, and I guess I'm not such a bad mom after all.

The Price of School These Days

I finished my eight-week writing class last week. I should have known I'd get what I paid for, as it was a local community school district class with $38 tuition fee. Why do I keep thinking I'm going to get more than what I pay for something? Add also the $20 materials fee.

The instructor was a 60-year-old lady, named Tyna (not Tina, that's Tyna, rhymes with vagina) complete with peach hair and polyester shirt, who has never published a book in her life. She has, however, been thanked by several local writers in the Acknowledgement page of their books. She photocopied these acknowledgements, highlighted them, then handed them out--charging us all the while for her pathetic pages in our materials fee. Let's not mention the pyramid scheme advertisements she also handed out, charging us for the photocopying. Unbelievable.

The class began with seven enthusiastic young writers searching for something. I'm still not certain what some of them were looking for. But the class ended with three. I would have dropped out, but I'm too cheap and refuse to pay my $58 without getting something in return. I'd at least make her read my manuscript.

Yes, she looked at my manuscript. She's not a bad copyeditor--could tell me when I had inadvertantly changed tense or had a typo. Maybe this would make it worth the money. But I couldn't stand the sheer stupidity of most of her comments. Is this why I came home irritated each night?

I normally brought a book along, read In Cold Blood or A Fine Balance beneath the stack of photocopies she was continually handing out. Yes, Tyna, I know the difference between affect and effect. I learned that in middle school. At least I had a moment to myself, without having to worry about where my daughter Bianca was, as she was safely scribbling on the dry-erase board in my husband's office eating gummi bears and yanking sodas from his office mini fridge.

I will admit I learned several things, like how to format a manuscript and what a query letter is. I could have just read Writer's Market--or bought three of them for the price of the class.