The Modern Parent

I pose the question to you, what exactly is a "modern parent"? Is this just a made up term?

According to Wikipedia "The Modern Parent" is a comic strip from the British Comic Viz.

Not exactly the definition I was looking for.

When I first became a parent, years ago, my parents defined the term modern parent as those who "failed to reprimand their children and let them get away with murder". 

That's obviously open to interpretation. Or, perhaps just bad parenting. Who knows.

One day Emily came home from school and told me our neighbor down the street, who is 15, was having her boyfriend sleep over this weekend. 

Ex-squeeze me?

A couple of weeks later we were visiting my husbands relatives. Sunday morning we were all excited for an English "fry-up" and we all trotted happily downstairs for breakfast, including the boyfriend of my husbands 17 year old cousin.

Mortified, I asked my hubby's aunt and uncle post fry-up, "what up with b-friend spending the night?"

Their answer: "You have to be realistic about these things. It's going to happen no matter what so either it's here under our roof or in the back of a car in some parking lot."

"If we didn't allow it we would never see her anyway."

Hmmm. As much as I respect their opinion, not sure I agree with it. No, I'm ABSOLUTELY SURE I don't agree with it.

What happened to boundaries, rules and curfews? And come to think of it, plain ol' abstinence?

Are these things not realistic anymore? Is this how I'm supposed to parent my soon to be teenager?

Gone are the days when the biggest parenting  issues I was faced with included, how many minutes to put Emily in a time-out? How many pieces of broccoli were sufficient at dinner? Was a forty five minute bath or shower too long for a little girl? And finally, what was the appropriate age to start sleep overs?

If being a "modern parent" is about giving in rather than teaching than please, call me old fashioned.

What do you think? Do you or will you let your daughters boyfriends spend the night?

Food for Thought

Ok, so now we know, thanks to The Guider (thanks Guider!) that male midwives exist but they are not called midhusbands they are still called midwives.

What about male nurses in the UK? If a female nurse is called a "sister" is a male nurse called a "brother"?

My First Midwife

On Wednesday I had my first appointment with a midwife. This was very exciting to me. I've never met a real life midwife in my 33.8 years.  What would she be like? What would we be doing at the appointment? And most importantly, What did she say her name was again?

I have to admit, I was a bit put off by having a medical appointment at my house. Would she exam me? Nah. 

Right?

11am on Wednesday. As 11 am got closer and closer i became more and more nervous. Consequently, I gave my husband the guilt trip for not attending the appointment. He of course rushed right home to be with me.

11:15 and no midwife. Is she standing me up?

11:30 and the door bell rings. I open the door and a jolly, plump and seasoned woman holding a black briefcase smiles and greets me, "Hullo". 

Rosie the midwife has arrived.

I'm pretty sure Rosie is a friend of Mary Poppins. She was just a bundle of jolliness.

After we made small talk with Rosie, she handed me about 1,000 pages of leaflets about pregnancy to read at my leisure and we got down to business.

I asked Rosie a lot of questions and said quite frequently, "Well in the United States..." to which she finally said, "i think in the United States they are a little more advanced."

 This of course shut me up.

The appointment concluded with Rosie asking me to pee in a cup. 

Ok. Not that big of a deal. I pee in my bathroom all of the time. I've also pee'd on many a sticks in that bathroom. I can do that.

After I handed Rosie the cup, in my living room, she opened it up and dipped a little stick in it. Iw.

Than she handed me the stick to dispose of. 

Iw. 

Than Rosie wanted to draw some blood. In my living room.

Iw. Iw Iw.

Her phone rang. Phew, saved by the ring cause that can't be very sanitary, drawing blood in my living room. What if blood got on my couch? Or the carpet? 

Iw.

Rosie left in a hurry and to my dismay her main means of transport was not a black umbrella. 

After Rosie left I couldn't help but think: are there no male midwives? and if there are, would they be called midhusbands?

Yo, Ja, Moi, Me!

Copied but not plagiarized from jenontheedge (thanks Jen!)

All About Me

1. Political Show- The O'Reilly Factor

2. Picnic food- hmmm....tough since my culinary tastes change HOURLY these days. I'd have to say ginger tea since right now I have morning sickness and the thought of any type of food makes me sick to my stomach.

3. Mixed drink-chocolate martini (still crave those :) )

4. U.S. President-Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, he never received the credit due to him.

5. Kind of student to teach-The little, little, ones, Kinder to second grade age.

6. Hobby you do or wish you still did- play the piano. Mom, why did you let me quit when I was in second grade???

7. Sports Commentator- who? what??

8. Sport to watch on TV-College basketball. Go 'Nova!

9. Animal to have as a pet-I'm against  pets since I'm the one who always ends up taking care of them so none.

10. Halloween costume you have worn-Starsky from Starsky & Hutch. My friend Fabiola was Hutch. Oh no wait, I was Hutch and had a blond wig and she was Starsky!

11. Kind of desert-sticky toffee pudding. Delicious!

12. Comic strip-hmmm....can't say that I have one.

13. Style or make of footwear-Aerosoles. Most comfortable shoes EVER.

14. Ice Cream flavor-NY Superfudge chunk.

15. College or university president-I can't answer this question nor do I want to. RANDOM!

16. Internet news source-Fox News and yes...yahoo!

17. Vacation Spot-The Shangri-la in Oman. It's total and utter relaxation!

18. Wine-Veuve Cliquot which technically is not a wine but still my favorite!

19. Way to waste time instead of working-watching QVC, facebooking, and blogging.

20. Student excuse for late work-We had homework?

21. Reality Show-Reality Shows have contributed to the demise of modern civlization as we know it.

22. Jewelry on a man- none unless it's a wedding band.

23. Pizza topping-sausage

24. Children's Movie-As cheesy as this sounds, High School Musical 2!!!

25. Celebrity you wish would retire- Regis. It's time Reg. You've had a lotta good years but all good things must come to an end. 

Glutein-free ice cream + glutein-free cookies = really bad heartburn!

Radio Ramadan

As I disembarked the long train journey from Truro, Cornwall to civilization  (otherwise known as Bristol, population 500,000) I admired the european architecture of the train station and the Harry Potterisk ambiance. For some strange reason as I exited the station onto the street with my bags in tow, I half expected there to be a mob of people, dressed in dish dashes and aggressively saying "taxi madame" in my face while ignoring my personal space.

To my disappointment what I found was a dark, wet, quiet street where taxi cabs were lined up in an orderly fashion, waiting for their next fare.

As I approached the passenger side window the driver rolled the window down. Startled by the dark man in the drivers seat, I briefly hesitated. When was the last time I saw a non-white person? August 15th, at JFK airport in New York, before moving to Cornwall, that's when.

"The Clifton Hotel?" I said, hesitatingly. 

The driver obviously sensed my hesitation. "yes" he replied.

As I walked to the back of the cab to give the driver my bags, I thought, "what's happening to me? Since when I am startled by non-white people?"

As we left the station the driver turned the radio on. "Radio Ramadan" read on the digital screen. A familiar Arabic tune blared through the car. 

"music to my ears" I thought. It felt so comfortable to hear the music I used to hear almost daily in Oman yet never thought twice about. It's been months since I've heard it, and in a way it made me homesick. I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt like I was home.

Beef Party

Last night I attended a Royal Navy beef party. It was really called, "Trafalgar Night" and was a dinner to commemorate a famous battle against the french and Sir Nelson Somebody or Other. 

It will always go down in history to me as "The Beef Party"  though.

The Beef party was a fancy dress event which meant women had to wear dresses below their knees and navy personnel were in white uniform. The evening consisted of all you can drink  and a full, sit down dinner which lasted about three to three and one half hours. Forty five minutes of those three hours consisted of speeches.

After we bullshat and drank champagne (or orange juice if you were like me and were not drinking)(oh wait, i was the only person not drinking) we were ushered down to the "mess". All of the ladies made a mad dash for the bathroom since you were not allowed to get up during the meal for any reason whatsoever.  This was an extremely difficult concept for me to swallow.

Anyway, down in the mess there where four, long tables  set up. One was horizontally positioned where all of the VIP's sat and faced the rest of us peons. The remaining three tables came out of the VIP table vertically and were parallel to each other. Almost like a big E shape, yet the three tables were bigger than the backbone of the E, if that makes any sense.

Each table seated people on either side and theoretically you were supposed ot be seated with people you worked with, except for us. To our left were two very young officers from Scotland doning very stylish kilts. In front of us was a couple. The female in the couple, obviously a civilian like myself, was taking full advantage of the all you can drink and was drunk before the beef arrived. And to my right was a very nice couple only one month from delivering their second baby. In total, one hundred and eighty people.

anyway, after we had our starter (also known as "appetizer" to us Americans), four very young people entered the room carrying a big piece of beef on their shoulders. they supported the beef on a huge tray and carried it together. 

As they entered the room fell silent. In front of the "beef party" was a very serious woman walking very stiff, much like the nutrcracker. After she painfully marched up to the VIP table she shouted very sternly, "Permission granted for beef party to serve sir?"

That's when I about lost it. BEEF PARTY???? I've had beef, and i've been to many parties, but never in my 33 years have I EVER heard of a BEEF PARTY.

Thankfully, the commander granted permission to the beef party to serve beef and they marched out like 5 stiff nutcrackers from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.

Five minutes later identical looking waiters and waitresses scurried around the room strategically placing plates of beef (what else?) in front of us. Than we had to wait for them to individually serve us our veg (otherwise known as vegetables to Americans) AND THAN the gravy.

AT this point it's 8:15, almost 8:30 and I'm about to eat my hand. How long does a pregnant lady have to wait to eat around here??

Of course we had to wait until all 180 people were served their beef, their veg and their gravy before we could eat.

The beef smelled delicious. I could hardly wait. 

Until the gravy was served. As soon as i put the gravy spoon back in the gravy boat a yeast-like odor hit me like a ton of bricks. This of course made my stomach churn. 

"It smells like yeast" I said to my husband.

"Yeah" he replied, as if to say "duh". "It's marmite gravy".

"WHAT?" I yelled, while simultaneously gagging. "Who the hell puts marmite in gravy?"

For those of you who don't know what marmite is, consider yourselves lucky. But I'll tell you anwyay; it's a spread that is made out of yeast extract and you either love it or hate it. If you have ever smelled yeast you know the stench I am speaking of here.

Logically, I CAN'T STAND IT.

"When in Rome" I thought to myself and scarfed down my beef, considering implementing my nine year old daughters method of holding my nose in order to avoid tasting anything yeast-like.

Before we started eating  the chaplain of course stood up and said a prayer that went something like this: 

"God Save the Queen, something something Amen."

Very touching. NOT.

I've done a lot of prayin' in my day but that was the first time I ever prayed for a queen. 

In the end I did decide not to hold my nose and tasted marmite in every. single. chew.

After I mopped the plate clean the reality of the crime i had committed hit me and my stomach started churning again.

I washed down my marmite beef with two desserts and felt a lot better though. (I made my husband give me his)

After the dessert, and the port, and the coffee, and the speeches (yawn) the night ended with songs that contained lyrics such as, "What will we do with a drunken sailor?" and "Jolly tars are our men" and my personal favorite,

 "Rule, Britannia! Britannia Rule the waves: Britons never never never never never never never never never never will be slaves."

As these lyrics were belted out by all kinds of drunks around the room, many of them banged their fists on the tables, causing whatever remaining port in their glasses to fly onto their shirts. Or, onto their dresses. 

Rule Britannia!