I went to New York recently with lots of things to do and lots places to be. One day, I covered the new health care law, interviewing experts for several hours in order to understand the Affordable Care Act well enough to explain it to CafeMom readers. (And that, incidentally, is why I wrote nothing here last week. There’s something about trying to decipher 2,000 pages of health care law that effectively kills my creative side.) The next day, I joined the Parents for Occupy Wall Street for a playgroup in Greenwich Village.

Finding my way around town was psychologically exhausting, and there was nothing more enticing than the prospect of returning to my hotel room at the end of the day and collapsing in my big, soft, pillow-strewn bed.

It is, after all, supposed to be the small reward for any mom who travels regularly on business—A bed of one’s own!! Along with an alarm clock that doesn’t sound like a four-year-old, and never goes off before you want it to!!

Heaven.

The problem is that these fantasies I entertain each time I check into a hotel never quite work out the way I expected.

In Manhattan, I stayed in a cozy boutique hotel in Gramercy Park. It was comfortable and convenient, but there was one small problem- a problem that was magnified in the early hours in the morning.

My room was beside the elevator.

Because of this, every single time the elevator was in use (which was often- the hotel had eight floors), it caused a loud rattling inside the wall. I got used to the sound during the day, but at night, the room would be silent for 15, 20, 45 minutes at a time and then…

RATTLE, RATTLE, RATTLE. KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

By 5 a.m., the knocking was happening every five or ten minutes. By six, without fail, I was wide awake. Six a.m. in New York, by the way, is FIVE A.M. my time.

And did I mention I’m not a morning person?

The truth of the matter, though, is that I never sleep well in hotel rooms, no matter where they are in relation to the elevator, and I don’t know why I always forget this each time I travel. I need to come to terms with the fact that pretty much every hotel on the planet is likely to have some or all of the following:

DRUNK A!#HOLES

Drunk a#*holes are a mainstay of the hotel experience. They’re in Des Moines/ New Orleans/ Peoria to have a good time, dammit, and they’re going to shut that Applebees DOWN. Minutes after you’ve finally drifted off into dreamland, they tumble out of the elevator onto your floor, whooping, back slapping, and laughing raucously.

Thanks, a!#holes.

TEENAGERS

Teenagers are fine when they’re traveling with their parents, but on a trip with chaperones, they’re the absolute worst. For one thing, they don’t go out at night, so if they’re on your floor, prepare for plenty of screaming, laughing, crying, hallway drama, and ice machine runs.

And forget about a good night’s sleep.

THE COUGHER

He doesn’t want to disturb his wife’s rest, so The Cougher (generally a retired cigarette smoker recovering from bronchitis) emerges from his hotel room at one in the morning to cough and hack and wake you the hell up.

EARLY RISERS

I’m not talking about solo business travelers with a red-eye to catch. They’re inevitably bleary-eyed and quiet. I’m talking about the couple that’s up at 5:30 am and raring to tour the area! They emerge from their rooms talking loudly and excitedly about their plans as they wait for the elevator. Hey, that’s great that you’re going to watch the sun rise from the top of the Empire State Building.

Now shut up.

THE DOOR SLAMMER

The door slammer stayed across the hall from me a few weeks ago, when I was in Des Moines. He was around ten years old, and was always ready to leave long before his parents had managed to gather their things together. While he waited, he stood in the doorway opening the door and letting it slam shut, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

HOUSEKEEPING

I’ve written about my housekeeping woes before. Every so often, I end up in a hotel that sends out its housekeepers at some ungodly hour of the morning, so that they can knock on my door every 15 minutes until I’m effectively forced out of the room. Even if I’ve remembered to put out my Do Not Disturb sign, it doesn’t really matter – they simply pound on the doors next to mine, scream “HOUSEKEEPING!” a few times, and I’m awake.

Mission accomplished.

OUTSIDE NOISE

Even if your hotel floor is mercifully devoid of guests, you’ll generally still have outside noise to contend with. From honking horns to sirens to drunken singalongs to downtown drag racing (HELLO, DES MOINES), I can’t count the number of nights I’ve lain awake in a strange hotel, staring at the ceiling, willing the car alarm right outside my hotel window to STOP.

No matter who or what’s responsible for my sleepless nights, by the end of my stay, I can’t check out fast enough.

And I can’t stop thinking as I travel home of my own wonderfully ragtag bed, with the soft, worn-in sheets and the man beside me who snores in the most endearing way, and the seven-year-old who clambers into the space between us at three in the morning and proceeds to kick me in the kidneys for the rest of the night, and of course, the trusty 4-year-old “alarm clock,” who goes off in my ear at precisely 6:30 a.m. with loud requests for milk and cereal and cartoons RIGHT NOW.

I wake to all of these things on the mornings after I arrive home, and I have to admit it…

I’ve never slept better.

Susan was a reader of this blog almost from the beginning. She always left kind, thoughtful, intelligent comments, and over the years, she became someone whose friendship I trusted as much as anyone in real life. She was a devoted mother to her boys, but she also was devoted to her career as an astrophysicist, and continued working on contract to NASA, speaking at science conferences, and contributing to the blog “Women in Planetary Science,” right to the end. I always admired that she was able to find ways to feed her passions for family, career, and friendship, all while valiantly fighting cancer.

A part of Susan was always painfully aware that her cancer would, in all likelihood, kill her. She knew when she was diagnosed with IBC that her prognosis was grim — many with the diagnosis die within two years. Because of this, she made every moment she had as a mother count. Even when she was too sick to play with her boys, she cuddled and napped and watched television with them. Her deep appreciation for every minute she had as a mom has had a profound impact on me.

Without a doubt, I am a better mother because of Susan.

Thanks to her, I have paused so many times throughout my (seemingly mundane) days with my kids, and been so very thankful for every moment we have together.  For that alone, I am so grateful to her. She taught me, quite simply, that time is a gift.

It also was meaningful to me that Susan had a deep belief in God. She was devoted to her church and often wove reflections on her faith into her posts. Before Susan, I believed that those who studied space and planets were pretty much destined to be atheists, simply because their search for concrete answers left little room for the mysteries of the afterlife. But Susan looked out at the stars and saw evidence of the divine. I don’t know about you, but when a NASA scientist sees God, more than ever I WANT TO BELIEVE.

And yet, despite all this, Susan was so real. Yes, she believed in an afterlife, but that didn’t make her any less desperate to cling to the life she had here on earth. She was honest with us about the unrelenting pain she experienced at the end, and about her fear of dying and leaving her boys motherless. And she was always, always hopeful for more time, right to her last blog entry, when hospice was on its way to her home. “I am not blogging goodbyes,” she wrote, just a few days ago. “I am not saying goodbye to you yet. I won’t.”

Even at the very end, when it was obvious to even the casual reader that Susan’s days were numbered, she told us that hospice would only be coming “for a time.” Even at the very end, she promised that she would write more tomorrow.

That was our Susan. She never gave up. Never.

The bulk of my relationship with Susan took place online, through e-mails and comments left on her posts and mine. But a few years ago, I was waiting at the elevators at a BlogHer conference when a woman shyly approached me and introduced herself.

“Hi Lindsay, it’s me, Susan,” she said quietly. “WhyMommy.” And then she smiled.

Susan’s smile, as anyone who has met her knows, was pure sunshine. It had the power to make a person feel warm all the way down to her toes, and it stopped me in my tracks on that busy day at BlogHer. It is Susan’s smile, and the big hug that followed, that I hold now in my heart.

I know you’re smiling right now, Susan.

But my God, we’ll miss you.

If you’d like to contribute to the fight against IBC, Kristen Hammond has written a very moving post on just how to go about it.

We have a winner! Congratulations, Katherine!

I’m just going to straight out cut to the chase: I’m GIVING AWAY a brand spanking new $500 Oreck Magnesium vacuum cleaner, and a Oreck Ultimate Handheld Vacuum Cleaner to go with it!

Why?

BECAUSE I LOVE Y’ALL.

(And because I love my new Oreck Magnesium Vacuum Cleaner, too.)

You can find out all about how to enter to win this vacuum at the end of this post, but first, the back story.

As the luckless cleaner-of-my-own-house, I am somewhat obsessed with housekeeping. It’s important to me to keep things clean and neat, but cleaning does not come naturally to me. I’m not good at it. And so I’ve struggled over the years to find products that work and make my life as a housekeeper a little easier.

A big part of this, obviously, is the vacuum cleaner. I’ve had a vacuum cleaner that many of my friends swoon over for a few years. I’ve had two of them, actually. Both worked GREAT out of the box. But after a year or so, both of them broke in the very same way. When I took one in to be fixed at the best vacuum cleaner repair shop in town, the owner told me to never buy that brand again. Oreck was the best brand, he told me.

So you can imagine my GLEE when Oreck contacted me and asked me to try out its new Oreck Magnesium Vacuum Cleaner and Oreck Ultimate Handheld Vacuum Cleaner, free of charge!

I’ve had my Oreck for two weeks now and I use it almost every day. My favorite thing about it is that it weighs just seven pounds, yet it cleans with the same intensity as my older, MUCH heavier vacuums. The weight of the Oreck Magnesium alone makes cleaning seem so much easier- No more lugging a heavy vacuum up and down the stairs! YAY.

Even my teeny, tiny seven-year-old daughter can carry it around! This is important for one simple reason ….

Now I have vacuuming help!

The Oreck Magnesium uses bags that are easy to put in and remove. Some prefer bagless vacuums, but I love having vacuum bags– They keep the vacuum much cleaner than my prior bagless vacuum, and reduce the amount of dust and grime that I normally have to deal with.

Other than the fact that it’s lightweight and has powerful suction, there’s another factor that makes this vacuum cleaner well worth the $499.99 it costs: That price includes a 7-year warranty and THREE vacuum cleaner tune-ups a year.

People, I paid $150 to have my last vacuum cleaner repaired and cleaned out ONCE … and no parts were replaced! I am beyond thrilled that I can take my Oreck in three times a year and have it tuned up, for free! This alone makes it a far better bargain than the $399 vacuum I’ve been using. It basically guarantees that I’ll have a perfectly-running vacuum for at least the next seven years.

And that will be a first.

The Oreck Magnesium also lays virtually flat, so it goes underneath most of my furniture, which is very helpful.

The ONLY drawback of this vacuum is that it has no attachments. Oreck obviously realized that I’d want something that could address cobwebs and corners, so it also sent this $149.99 Ultimate Handheld Vacuum Cleaner, which has an extension wand, as well as every attachment I could possibly desire…

This is a nifty little vacuum that also has a powerful suction — It’s designed to be worn over your shoulder and is so lightweight that even a four-year-old can wear it.

And you’d better believe that fact wasn’t lost on me!

So… have I convinced you yet that you simply MUST have an Oreck Magnesium Vacuum Cleaner and Oreck Ultimate Handheld Vacuum Cleaner? Well, one of you is going to win them both!

To enter, visit Oreck.com and then leave a comment between now and Monday, February 13th, telling me one thing you learned about the Magnesium.

Doing each of the following things will earn you one additional entry:

o   Following @oreck on Twitter

o   Liking Oreck on Facebook.

o   Signing up for Oreck’s email list by clicking on “Sign up for Email” in the top navigation bar and entering your email address.

o   Tweeting about the giveaway, mentioning @suburbanturmoil and @oreck with a link to this post.

Please note that the giveaway winner must be a resident of the U.S. 48 contiguous states.

Oreck Corporation provided the prize for the sweepstakes but is not the sponsor of the sweepstakes.

Good luck, everyone!

This particular dare was another one of my favorites — I wore a wine glass necklace at local hotspot Urban Flats on a Friday night, and while I was worried that I’d be scorned by the hipster clientele, everyone had a lot of fun with it.

Check it out:

There’s a good back story to this episode, which I shared on The Stir:

if you’re sort of wondering what the hell I was thinking CRIMPING my hair for this episode, you should know that I took this dare immediately after taking the Ke$ha dare.We had a tight production schedule in order to get these delivered in time for CafeMom Studios’ first season, so I went into the ladies’ room of this trendy bar, changed out of my Ke$ha clothes, combed out the rats’ nest that was my Ke$ha hair, and completely redid my makeup.

I did all of this while a bunch of uber-hip women filed in and out of the restroom and stared at me, appalled, because they had no idea who I was, or what I was doing, or why I had all of my makeup spread on the counter beside the sinks, or why I had glitter paint over one eye. One woman asked what was going on and I told her I had just done a circus performance. It seemed easier, somehow, than explaining the whole story behind “I’ll Take That Dare.”

But it wasn’t easier.

“The circus?” she asked. “Wow! Where was the performance?”

“….Vanderbilt,” I said. Vanderbilt University was about 15 minutes away, and it was, I realized too late, a highly unlikely venue for a “circus performance.”

“Oh,” said the woman uncertainly. “What exactly do you do in the circus?”

“I’m a contortionist,” I said, wanting to be anywhere at that moment except in that restroom. I had lied my way into that situation and it was getting worse and worse.

“Oh,” she said quietly, and left. I guess I’m not a very convincing contortionist.

Awk. Ward.

You can see a preview of the next dare at the end of this episode, and I think it’s probably my most shocking!

In the meantime, though, would you wear a wine glass necklace?

Both teachers had the kind of apprehensive look on their faces that generally precedes an overly detailed explanation of how Bruiser skinned his knee on the playground and would-I-please-sign-this-accident-report, or how he made the unfortunate choice of using his hands instead of his words after a kid spit on him. I sighed and braced myself for pint-sized drama.

“We had an incident this morning,” the teacher whispered to me as she approached.

“Did he start it or was he defending himself?” I asked quickly. She looked at me, confused.

“We’ve discovered that one of the children in this classroom has lice,” she said.

She went on about a nurse inspecting all the other children’s heads, and the dress-up clothes and stuffed animals being bagged up and sent out for washing, and blah blah I have no idea what… because all I really heard her say was lice.

LICE.

I’ve never had lice, nor have my kids or anyone else in my family. But I know of women who practically had to check themselves into a mental hospital after dealing with the nasty little bugs. To hear them speak, you’d think they were tiny harbingers of the Apocalypse. Oh, yes. I knew allllll about lice. And I wanted to keep that knowledge SECOND-HAND.

With an abrupt “‘Bye now!” to the teachers, I hustled Bruiser out of his preschool and immediately checked his head in the bright sunlight of the parking lot. Mercifully, his scalp was lice– and nit— free. I said a quick prayer of thanksgiving, strapped him into his seat, and headed to his sister’s school to pick her up. And as we waited in the car rider pick-up line, my own scalp began itching. Uncontrollably.

I was about to become very well-acquainted with GHOST LICE.

(Don’t even pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

In fact, ghost lice haunted my household all that weekend. Each time one of my kids so much as touched their heads, I was rushing them off to a window, peering through their thick strands of hair for evidence of tiny bugs. Meanwhile, I lay awake at night, scratching my head and imagining that my scalp was host to thousands of six-legged parasites.

Ewwwwwwww.

After several days of checking scalps and hair spraying heads each morning before school, I was satisfied that even our ghost lice had departed. But then I got some disturbing new information.

ANOTHER kid in Bruiser’s class had lice.

“Some of our other preschool classrooms have been affected, too,” the teacher admitted, a little shamefully. She lowered her voice. “It’s all because of the public school,” she stage whispered. “So many of our children here have older siblings in the public school.” She said the words ‘public school’ in the same way one might say ‘vomit-encrusted urinal.’

I guess she forgot that Bruiser’s sister attends that vomit-encrusted urinal.

And I guess that she didn’t know that I would put my daughter’s public vomit-encrusted urinal up against any of the … private urinals… in this town. Also? I’ve now had three children attend elementary school at the vomit-encrusted urinal she was referring to and NOT ONCE have I heard of anyone there getting head lice.

….I’m starting to regret this analogy now.

Anyway, I thought of many ways to respond to that preschool teacher. For example: “What are you saying, exactly? Are you saying that head lice can’t afford private school?”

Instead, I just smiled and said, “Bless your heart.”

“Public schools,” I muttered under my breath as Bruiser and I left the building. “What the heck.” And then I scratched my head, reflexively. The ghost lice were back. “Dammit,” I said through clenched teeth.

“What you said, Mommy?” Bruiser asked beside me.

“I said ‘Can it!’” I told him. “That’s what we can do with any extra fruit we pick this summer! CAN IT!”

After this second lice-spotting in Bruiser’s classroom, I debated taking him out of school for a few days in order to avoid what was clearly a lice infestation at his private school. Caving to the temptation of having a few child-free hours to myself each week, though, I continued sending him in, checking his hair each day until a few weeks had passed and I was satisfied that the worst was over.

A few days ago, my lice-free son and I headed over to the vomit-encrusted urinal to have lunch with my daughter. As I was signing in at the front desk, I stopped short when I saw one of the secretaries behind the desk bent over while another one carefully pieced through her hair. The realization of what they were doing hit me. My scalp started itching again.

“You’re okay,” the secretary told the woman as she stood up again. She looked over at me. “But you’ll probably want to put your hair in a ponytail before you go to lunch. We’re telling everyone to do it today.” She threw up her hands. “Suddenly, we have a lice problem.”

“And I know exactly where it came from,” I told them.

“You do?”

“Cumberland Valley Preschool,” I told them, smirking. “Totally infested.”

“Eww,” the secretary said.

“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “Those private preschools are lice havens.”

Image via Eran Finkle/Flickr

We get to go to lots of kids shows here in Nashville, but the circus last year was one of my children’s absolute favorite events of the year — and my husband and I loved it, too. There really is something for everyone.

Here’s the synopsis of this year’s show, called ‘Fully Charged:’

The most electrifying edition ever of Ringling Bros.^® celebrates ‘performance power’ that boosts circus-goers’ excitement. The amazing acts, which can be seen only at The Greatest Show On Earth^®, include Tabayara, a dynamic animal trainer whose rare ability to communicate with animals allows him to ride rearing stallions at a fully charged gallop and orchestrate majestic 4-ton Asian elephants in a symphony of dance. The fearless Fernandez Brothers dial up the thrills as they perform daring feats of athleticism on the Twin Turbines of Steel, including extreme jumps and twists inside the moving wheels! The Human Fuse, Brian Miser, sets the arena sky ablaze as he rockets through the air from his self-made human crossbow. The hilarious hoopla continues to flow as the clowns from the world-famous Ringling Bros.^® Clown Alley charge up the audiences’ funny bones with hysterical silly antics and clownish comedy. The action at Fully Charged begins an hour before show time at the All Access Pre-show – FREE to all ticket holders. Get to know the world’s greatest performers, meet some of our amazing animals in person, and work to become CircusFit, all before the show starts! The All Access Pre-show is the only place where you can register for a chance to win a pachyderm painting created by one of Ringling Bros.’ artistic Asian elephants right before audiences’ eyes.

The Nashville schedule:

Thursday, Jan. 26, 7 p.m.

Friday, Jan. 27, 10:30 a.m., 7 p.m.

Saturday, Jan. 28, 11 a.m., 3 p.m., 7 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 29, 1 p.m., 5 p.m.

If you’d like to win a 4-pack of tickets, just leave a comment in this post between now and Wednesday, January 25th at 12pm CTL. Watch your e-mail if you’ve entered, because I will be contacting you immediately after the giveaway closes if you’ve won. Winners will have vouchers waiting for them at Bridgestone Arena’s Will Call desk, which they can exchange for four tickets to any Nashville show.

Good luck!

First, I headed to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to moderate a CafeMom Coffee Break with (now former!) presidential candidate Rick Perry.

He was, as you would expect looking at this photo, a very nice, affable guy. He also seemed tired. And down. And a little shaky. He alluded to dropping out of the race a few times during our interview, and I wasn’t at all surprised when he did just that a few days later.

After that, I moderated another forum with this guy…

You’d better believe I was getting a photo with the world’s most famous sweater vest! I’m not a style blogger for nothing!

I don’t think I’d surprise anyone when I say that Rick Santorum’s views are a little (okay, a LOT) extreme for me. But I will say this — I met his wife and four of his seven children, and as far as his family goes, the guy is doing something right. The kids were poised, well-spoken and clearly part of a tight-knit family. That is always a cool thing to see, no matter where the man stands politically.

Just because I could, I interviewed the two oldest Santorum daughters after the event…

See what I mean? So cute!

Both of our forums were broadcast live on C-Span and then rebroadcast several times after that. Since returning to Nashville, I’ve been shocked by how many people came up to me and said, “OMG, I totally watched you on C-Span!!”

Really? People ACTUALLY WATCH C-SPAN?!

Who knew?!

Anyway, on Friday, this came out– the latest episode of I’ll Take That Dare! Check it out…

Meow.

But while things were undeniably busy and exciting and all out fun (did I mention that I got to stay in a beach-front suite in Myrtle Beach? OFF SEASON, I LOVE YOU!), the most exciting and important part of my week was yet to come…

Look what happened on Sunday:

Punky was baptized.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be prouder of this girl than I was at that moment.

Afterward, I dried her hair and helped her put on the outfit she had selected herself for the occasion.

The dress is a few sizes too big on her, but it’s one my grandmother made for me when I was a girl, and she clearly thought it was appropriate for the occasion. Also, I’m pretty sure she was the only person wearing a crown after her baptism, but you know what? It worked! After all, it’s not every day that you get appetized, as 4-year-old Bruiser put it.

So that was my week…

How was yours?

In it, I wear a Forever Lazy out in one of Nashville’s upscale shopping districts, with hilarious results. Check it out…

Some behind-the-scenes information on this one…

• This was the first dare (of 12!) that we shot, so I was really nervous about whether I could pull it off. Luckily, it was much easier to humiliate myself in public than I had expected.

• One of my rock-bottom moments (of all the dares) came when I lay down on the park bench and pretended to sleep. I lay there for about 5 minutes with my eyes closed while people walked by (the camera was hidden). The entire time, I was thinking, “Is THIS what my life has come to? Really?” I had to REACH DEEP for that one!

• The guitar player was on a road trip through the US, and lives in New Zealand. He was sitting in the park with some friends and I asked him to write a song containing the words “Forever Lazy” and “back hatch.” He performed an entire song, and I wish so much that they’d left the line after the one in the video, because he sang something about the backhatch being perfect for when you “go places and something unexpected happens.” I nearly lost it at that point when I was listening to it.

• Also on the cutting room floor for this episode– a showdown between me and a girl in a Snuggie. Sad face. I’m going to lobby hard for a special outtakes episode at the end of this season!

• If you like this episode, will you pretty please go to the YouTube page and hit the ‘subscribe’ button at the top of the video? That’s how YouTube measures whether its new CafeMom Studios channel is a success… and we all want more mom programming, right?

So, what do you think? Would YOU wear a Forever Lazy in public?

Clearly, the kid knows how to push my buttons.

I’m leaving for a few days again at the end of this week, and Punky for the first time has been fretting aloud about how often I’m traveling, but I reminded her that it’s really only a few days a month, and that even with those days included, she sees me far more than most kids see their parents. That seemed to make her feel better. The fact is, I’m thinking that going away for a few days each month may make them appreciate me a little more when I’m around.

Dennis has been fantastic, and is helping out every way he can. The only thing that really seems to be suffering is that I don’t cook as often as I used to– but we’ve been on a healthy living kick, so we’re dealing. Some nights he cooks, some nights I cook and some nights, he brings food home. We’ve also discovered the joys of the Harris Teeter salad bar- YUM.

And after several weeks watching cable news networks around the clock, reading a dozen newspapers a day, and haunting political websites, I’m feeling up to speed on all that I’m covering as an election correspondent. It’s fascinating to me, but I have to admit that the debates are getting old. I watched two over the weekend and found it was hard to pay attention. “I know exactly what they’re going to say before they even say it,” I told Hubs. “I feel like I could answer these questions for them!” Seriously. SO MANY DEBATES. And even more to come! Bizarre.

But I’m happy. I’m having fun. I’m really enjoying traveling a few days a month, visiting new cities, and being in the epicenter of news coverage, jockeying for position with some of the journalism heroes of my childhood. I love the adrenaline rush of interviewing the candidates on camera. I love meeting moms from all over the country, and listening to what they have to say. And I love that I can come home the next day and be a normal mom, picking up my kids from school, mopping the kitchen floor, and watching ‘The Bachelor’ on DVR.

Yes, our schedule’s a little more hectic these days, but even my 4-year-old is making it work… A few days ago, I was getting ready to take him to preschool and then head on to three other errands. I had his backpack, his lunchbag, my purse, my phone, and an umbrella in my arms, and as he came out the front door, I closed it behind him and started to lock it.

“Hey!” Bruiser shouted with alarm. “You got for-bout my jacket!” (‘Got forbout’ is Bruiser-speak for ‘forgot about.’)

“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!” I said. “I have so much going on today!” I opened the door, grabbed his jacket from off the hook and helped him into it. “There we go!” I said. “All set!”

“You got for-bout anything else?” Bruiser asked with tender concern as we made our way down the front steps.

“I don’t think so,” I told him.

“You got your keys?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You got your wall-it?”

“Yes.”

“You got your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he said, satisfied. “We ready to go.”

Keys. Wallet. Phone.  Three things a person should never leave without. My kid’s four and already, he’s mastered a life lesson some of us STILL have trouble with.

Yep. I’d say things are going just fine…

Image via Starpause Kid/Flickr

My parents kept calling.

This was before cell phones, so the fact that I was never around to take their calls became an issue. A MAJOR issue. After a few months of never catching me in my room, they actually began calling the coffee shops I frequented, and there was nothing more humiliating at 18 than being handed a latte by the cute indie rocker behind the counter and informed with a smirk that my mom had called, and wanted me to call her back.

GAHHHH.

When that didn’t work, my parents actually drove on a secret mission to Athens in order to scope out the places where they knew I was hanging out. The next time I talked to them, my mother broke down in tears. “We went to Jittery Joe’s, Lindsay,” she wept accusingly, before going in for the kill:

“There were weird people there!”

I am not even kidding you. THIS HAPPENED.

Today, I look back on that time and see things both my parents and I could have, and should have, done differently. I had done well in high school, and I was making good grades in college and participating in a wide range of extracurriculars, so my parents should have trusted that I was making good decisions on my own… even if the people in the coffee shop looked weird.

As for me? I can admit this now. I should have called my parents back.

But as you probably remember, the thing about living “on your own” in college is that in your deluded mind, it means that you are an adult. The fact that your parents are paying for everything (or almost everything) has nothing to do with it. YOU ARE AN ADULT, dammit, and you’ll call them back when it’s convenient.

Which, as it turns out, is never.

Today, I can unequivocally state that I was certainly not an adult at 18. I was not an adult because I was still dependent on my parents, both financially and emotionally. I didn’t become an adult for a few more years, and, as I was to learn, that was a very different experience from being an “adult” in college.

And now I find myself in the unenviable position of trying to explain this to my 21-year-old stepdaughter, who has moved back in with us and is relying on us to provide virtually all of her needs, but who feels that she should no longer have to abide by our rules, because, as she puts it, she is an adult.

Sunrise, sunset, y’all.

As you can imagine, we are going through some not-so-fun “growing pains” in this house, but at the same time I realize that variations on this theme occur in homes across America, and now is as good a time as any to write about it. With that in mind, now that I am twice as old as I was at 18 (OMG!!!!), here’s what I’ve learned about true adulthood…

For most of us, becoming an adult is not a magic age. It’s a process, and it happens early for some and late for others. Some of us do became adults at 18, some at 21, some at 25, and a few of us still haven’t gotten there. Becoming an adult is about learning to be self-sufficient, in every way– and about learning to appreciate those who choose to help us muddle through.

Looking back, I think I really became an adult when, at 21, I got a full-time job, moved into my own apartment in a city where I knew no one, and began paying my own bills.

I became an adult when I learned to set a budget and live within it. Thank God my parents taught me that credit card debt was every bit as embarrassing and morally questionable as, oh I don’t know, getting an STD– Today I’m proud to say I’ve never had the clap and I’ve never spent money I didn’t have. Of course, this also means that I’ve never tried the swingers lifestyle and I currently drive a ’97 Ford. I’LL LIVE WITH IT.

I became an adult when I realized that my parents were actually right about some things. This was a tough one.

I became an adult when I learned to apologize, even when it was embarrassing and even when I wasn’t the only one in the wrong, and even when I knew I’d never get an apology in return.

I became an adult when I realized I needed to ditch the boyfriend I’d been dating for so long, because he was just that– a boy. I became an adult when I looked for– and found– a man… a man who shared my financial outlook, my faith, and my beliefs in how to raise a family. And because I made a very adult decision in choosing the man I’d spend the rest of my life with, we have in fact lived happily ever after… IN A VERY ADULT WAY.

I became an adult when I realized that life was about so much more than pursuing my own happiness and fulfillment. I became an adult when I began devoting time and resources to helping others, and realized the true joy that comes out of that.

There are so many more ways that I’ve become an adult… and there are also areas in which I’m still possibly a tiny bit immature. (See this for reference.) The point is, I knew exactly none of these things when I was in college. Back then, I thought (along with everything else around me) that I would sail out of school, find a fabulous job, and live the high life… FOREVAHHH.

I had no idea.

It’s hard telling my 21-year-old that these next few years will probably suck, that they are supposed to suck, and that she will learn a lot from the suckage. In fact, I haven’t told her these things, because I don’t think she’d believe me anyway.

But she will learn, as we all did, that out of the hardship of our first few post-college years comes adulthood. True adulthood. And, I think you’ll agree, it is a beautiful thing. I can’t wait for her to experience it for herself.

When did you become an adult?