Lorenzo is heading over to the cottage tomorrow. He's going to level the floor and begin installing the hardwood. I've packed his food and drinks along with homemade cookies...I feel rather sorry for him, he's so tired right now. And that's all there is to say about the cottage!

He was sitting at the kitchen counter tonight while I was making the cookies and I said, "What's wrong?" He said, "I feel overwhelmed." When asked to elaborate, he started listing all the things around the house that need to be done. You see, our kid's bathroom upstairs has sprung a leak. Small, faint water rings have suddenly appeared on the living room ceiling. You look up at them and you just feel dread. We told them they have to shower in the other bathrooms until further notice. So there's that. And what does that mean...investigating, opening up the wall, mess, disruption...  Then there's the damaged drywall around the house - a chunk here, a chunk there - our once pristine walls marred by careless teenagers wielding a broom or a vacuum pole and ...oops! The hinges on our kitchen cupboards need to be replaced; they just don't close properly anymore. What else? Painting, gutters to be cleaned..it never ends, does it? 

This has been a really tiring few weeks - I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the weather. In the spirit of improving our health, I decided to buy a blender. I've been reading books about green smoothies, and the health claims made by incorporating huge amounts of greens into your diet ring true to me. There are blenders out there that cost a fortune - five hundred dollars for a Vitamix, for example. I picked up a Ninja blender at Canadian Tire for $99.

What can I say? It blends. It's like a garburator, this thing. I've been making Lorenzo green smoothies to take to work, and I'm forcing my kids to drink two big glasses everyday. Today I made a full gallon - my kitchen looked like a farm. I used: bananas, blueberries, strawberries, peaches, pineapple, kale, watercress, Swiss chard, spinach, carrots, cucumber, celery, parsley, flax seeds, and coconut oil. Did you know that parsley has three times the calcium as spinach? I'm learning so much. Anyway, the final product looks a bit like green sludge, but it tastes great (to me) and I feel really good about knowing my kids are drinking the equivalent of about 6 giant bowls of salad every day. I have always made salads, but I knew the kids weren't eating enough and often I'd have to issue threats to finish it, and it just got so tiring..

I feel more energetic since I've been drinking them - in fact, if I drink one at night I won't be able to sleep. My youngest son had insomnia the other night because he drank a big glassful before bed. That says a lot. 


I was going to buy a juicer, but I read that you can't live on juice but you can pretty much live on smoothies. And I didn't like the idea of discarding all of the pulp and fibre that gets trapped in a juicer. It's a terrible waste to me, and fibre is crucial to your health. Also, smoothies fill you up  - it's like a meal. So the plan is to drop 15 pounds: I'm working out again and drinking my smoothies. It's an exciting life, I tell ya. But think how much your body would benefit from drinking a few litres of this everyday... You'd have to chew your way through a gigantic heaping mound of salad just to get the goodness out of one nutritious smoothie. Just turn this:

Into this!

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My kids came home with their report cards today and I'm really ticked off. My youngest son is a very serious musician.  His drum teacher came second in Canada in a national drum contest recently. He said to us, "If your son played hockey as well as he plays drums, the NHL would be scouting him right now. He's that good."  So how did he end up with a "C" in band class? By what criteria? The teacher wrote, "Often off-task." Last term he wrote, "Easily distracted." This is the feedback you get after an entire semester - a few snarky words that are ultimately meaningless. My son is the most focused musician - he may be a dingbat or a slacker when it comes to other things, but not music. 

When I was in teacher training, we were reminded that you cannot grade a student on their behaviour. You are to grade them on their mastery - or lack thereof - of the academic content being presented. It should reflect their ability to meet the "prescribed learning outcomes" set forth by the Ministry.  So I typed up a long email to his teacher but I haven't sent it. Tomorrow, I'll read it again and perhaps adjust my tone. 

I just know he is grading my son on his conduct because if he were grading musicianship he'd be skipped ahead three grades. So unfair. I talked it over with him and he says he's bored out of his skull. He lives, breathes, and eats music all day long. And while the other kids struggle on their recorders, he's left sitting there watching, and what does he do? He starts tapping quietly on the snare...tap tap tap...I can just see him.

I don't blame the teacher for not knowing how to utilize my son's talent, but don't grade him for being bored. That's just bullshit. I think he needs to form a band and start rehearsing in the basement...it wouldn't bother me at all. His drumming is just a part of the soundtrack to our lives at this point...

I really feel kind of sorry for this generation of kids. I think we had the last normal childhood. Lorenzo sent me an email the other day with the caption "tuned-out teenagers." Check this out:

This is what it's come to. This is youth in the modern era - staring at their screens, oblivious to the present moment. 

Do these kids look like they're having fun? Are they doubled-over in laughter, cracking jokes? Sad...they might as well be alone, because in a sense they are. It's like communal loneliness.

My kids were laughing the other day while looking at pictures of their parents in their youth. They can criticize the clothes we wore, or our hair styles, but they can't say anything about our music. And that makes us cool in their eyes. I never thought my parent's music was cool, except for the Irish stuff. I remember a few road trips, trapped in the cigarette smoke-filled car with my Dad's 8-track cassette of Marty Robbins..."out in the west Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girrrrrrl" (twang!)  Lame. Compare that to, "Hey, Joe...where you goin with that gun in your hand...?"  Heavy. Timeless. Perhaps a tad before my time, but not by much. 

My kids have hundreds of songs on their i-pods, and they don't realize how crappy compressed files sound. And they don't listen to entire records the way we did. It's a smorgasbord of disjointed songs, none of which comprise a cohesive musical listening experience. There aren't any albums anymore, no cover art to examine, no liner-notes to read...we used to memorize the producers, all the band member's  names, who wrote which song, which session player sat-in on a particular number, etc. They meant so much to us in the age before Facebook and Twitter and endless texting of oh-so-erudite and pithy remarks such as "LOL" and "OMG" and "WTF."

Kids don't talk on the phone, they punch in meaningless codes and letters, and they're constantly taking pictures of themselves. Their concept of privacy is non-existent.  And all of this makes for a disturbingly silent household which really irks me. I want noise! I want to hear my kids talking to their friends! It's all just so weird to me, and I wonder if other parents feel as I do.

I rue the day we ever agreed to all this, but we held out as long as we could. Ours were the last kids on the block to get "connected." They convinced us that life was passing them by, leaving them stranded at the station in a cloud of misery, if they remained "stuck in the seventies." 

Ciao for now.