Socal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills

The Doggie in the Window

I am on vacation. This post originally appeared on Los Angeles Moms Blog.

"I want a dog," my daughter announced for the umpteenth time. I reflexively replied with my usual answer:

"That's nice. But what about the cats?"

I wasn't always a cat person. That's something that developed over time, when I was a single gal living in an apartment complex that didn't allow dogs - but tolerated pets of the feline persuasion. I adopted my first kitten by accident, when a co-worker tired of the pet he acquired just a few weeks earlier -- and told me he was going to take her to the animal shelter.

I was so clueless, I didn't even know I needed some kind of carrier to take the kitten home. She pooped in my car.

I began to think that taking her on was a big mistake.

We were wary of each other at first, and it took me some time to get used to her ways... like her penchant for perching atop my tallest bookcase, only to pounce on my head when I passed by. Closed doors made her crazy; if I shut her out of the bedroom, she would claw at the door and the carpet until I let her in. She wasn't anything like a dog. She didn't come when called, and tended to ignore me... until I spread out the Sunday paper, which was her cue to sit right on top of whatever I was reading.

But when I came home late after a long day at work, she greeted me with a big meow and a head bump. I'd been living alone for a while by then, and it was nice to have someone who was happy to see me (even if only because she wanted to be fed).

And eventually, I got used to having her around. More than that: I loved her.

By the time I met the man who would become my husband, my household included a second cat. We married, moved into another apartment (no dogs allowed), had a child, bought a house... and brought the cats with us. He would have preferred to own a dog, but we weren't ready to add one to our little family. Besides, we traveled a lot and the cats were fairly low-maintenance. Better to wait until the baby got older.

She's 13 now and while she adores the pets we have, she wants more. Specifically, one she can put on a leash and walk. A dog; maybe a poodle or a corgi.

For nearly a year, she's been surfing pet adoption sites; printing out the profiles of likely suspects. Her dad has been cheering her on.

Me? I've been occupied with a home renovation that has disrupted the lives of every member of our family - including the aforementioned cats, who have largely been relegated to being locked up in a bedroom while an army of contractors paraded through the house. We all agreed that this was not a good time to bring another pet into the house.

The renovation began as emergency repairs, so it was not something we planned to do. It was stressful, and as it dragged on, I found it depressing.

I window-shopped to combat the stress, and found myself spending lots of times at the mall pet store. I have heard all the arguments against buying puppies at the mall...but the little guys in the store were so cute they made me forget that my home was a torn up mess.

There were a couple of times when I thought I'd just forget about being responsible and surprise my husband and daughter with a dog. But those moments were fleeting, and for a while, I kept my puppy obsession a secret.

I realized then that we were ready. We would soon get a dog.

The first phase of the renovation was completed just before Christmas. The holidays have come and gone and my daughter is browsing the pet adoption sites again.I've told her to go ahead and call the rescue organizations holding the ones she thinks she'd like.

I watch our two cats, sleeping peacefully on my bed. The poor little guys don't know what's about to hit them. They may be in for a rough couple of weeks, but they will adjust.

And so will I.

The Stranger

I am on vacation. This post originally appeared on 50-Something Moms Blog.

My home town - Los Angeles - does not have a reputation for friendliness.

I think this has more to do with geography than anything else. Our city came of age with the automobile. Yes, we have public transportation, but it is more trouble than it's worth in my far flung suburban neighborhood... and so we rely on our cars to get where we have to be.

That's one reason why we don't have a lot of pedestrian traffic -- and consequently, there are few opportunities for folks to interact in public. We are self-contained in our own little automobile pods and tend to socialize only with the people we already know.

My teenage daughter was a baby when we moved into our home, so we've lived on our street for a long, long time. You would think I'd know my neighbors.

You would be wrong. 

I do have a cordial relationship with the older couple living to the left of us, and the nice widow who lives to our right. But I've never met any of the families who live beyond our immediate next door neighbors. How could I? The only times I see them are when I drive past their homes... and notice that they're either getting in or out of their cars, too.

And that's pretty much when our neighbors see us, too.

This situation is starting to change -- ever since last month, when we acquired a dog.

Mac loves going on walks through the neighborhood, and  I'm finding that it forces me to get some much-needed exercise. Even better, I am getting to know some of the people who reside on our block. That's what I was doing at 6:30 in the morning, when I first met the stranger.

This in itself was odd; I don't usually run into other people that early -- unless they are dashing into their cars so they can hit the 405 before the traffic gets really bad.

The other odd thing was that this man wasn't moving. He was just standing on the sidewalk, straddling a bicycle and fiddling with a backpack.

When I encounter a pedestrian on these walks, I usually stop so the other guy can pass us. You never know when someone you meet will have a fear of dogs. But since this man was stationary and I was almost home, I needed to go past him.

The dog lunged, and the man looked scared.

"It's OK," I told him. "He's friendly."

I was immediately sorry I told him that, but I concluded he would have figured it out, anyway. Mac is just a big furry marshmallow.

We passed the stranger and now he was following us. Something about that was creeping me out, and even though I was only a couple of doors away from my own house, I decided to cross the street and continue the dog's walk around the next block.

As Mac merrily forged ahead, I glanced back at the other side of the street. The stranger seemed to be tracking us. When the dog stopped to sniff some ground or lift his leg, the man stopped, too. When we continued, he continued.

 As I turned the corner down the next street, I saw the man peek into one of the blue recycling bins lining the street that morning and I breathed a little easier. I concluded he was merely looking for bottles and cans, and probably harmless. By the time I looped back to our place, I figured he'd be well past our address and near the middle school up the road.

But on my return, I was dismayed to discover that he was still standing on a lawn two doors from our house. It was now past 7:00 AM and I needed to get inside and wake up my daughter. (I knew she was still in bed because I had been calling the house throughout the unscheduled portion of our walk and she never got up to answer.)

As I crossed the street back to our house, the man started towards us. I tried not to look afraid, but I was. I unlocked the door as quickly as I could and entered the house. Thirty minutes later, as we backed out of our driveway to go to school, he walked into the middle of the street and stared at us.

At that point, my daughter was feeling a bit creeped out by him, too.

Later that morning, the man and his bicycle were still parked outside my neighbor's house.

"You should call the police," my husband said. The previous week, a local radio station had reported the presence of a serial rapist who had attacked women in a zip code nearby.

I understood his concern, but I was reluctant to make the call. The man was African-American, as is the family who owns the house he was hanging out at. I knew he didn't live there - but what if he was a family member or house guest? What if I was the West Coast version of the neighbor who called the cops on Henry Louis Gates for breaking into his own home? 

I would be embarrassed beyond belief if he turned out to be a member of that family, here for a visit. What an awful, unfriendly neighborhood, he would tell them. How would I be able to look my neighbors in the eye after that?

But if he didn't belong there, they would want someone to come and check the situation out -- wouldn't they?

I felt like I was getting a preview of the old woman I'll someday be, and I didn't like it. You know, the one who clings to her handbag the minute she gets on an elevator with a person of color. The one who is afraid to go out at night. The woman with bars on her windows because she's terrified of being robbed.

The vision of myself as a helpless, defenseless, older female was even more frightening than the (I presumed) homeless, harmless (I hoped) man who had just taken off his shirt in my neighbor's yard.

I called the police and was relieved to find out that they would take my report anonymously. They said they would send a car to the house to investigate. I don't know if they did; I never saw one. The man remained outside the house for the rest of the day. The next morning, he was gone.

I haven't seen him again - but the glimpse into my future haunts me every day.

Separation Anxiety

I am on vacation. This post originally appeared at Los Angeles Moms Blog.

I remember my daughter's first day of preschool as if it was yesterday. The moment I tried to leave the classroom, she clung onto me and started to cry.

"Don't worry. It's just separation anxiety," her teacher reassured me. And in a very short time, those weepy, clingy episodes came to an end...

...until now. Ten years have passed and the urge to cling is back.

Only this time, I'm the one who can't let go.

My baby girl is embarking on an eighth grade field trip this month to Washington, DC. She'll be boarding a plane and traveling 2,685 miles without me. And she can't wait.

We were told this excursion was going to happen back when she selected her middle school, three years ago. I didn't think the time would come so quickly. I've had something of a mental block about it; never actually entering the dates in my calendar, as if I could prevent it by simply refusing to acknowledge it.

I can tell you now that this kind of tactic doesn't work. Last week, we found ourselves in the school library with my daughter's teachers and 80 other anxious parents to go over their itinerary and I was forced to admit that this was actually going to happen.

We will soon be driving her to LAX at 4:00 AM (!!) for a six o'clock flight to Dulles Airport, where her seatmates will likely be strangers. She will be bused to a hotel where she will share a room with three other girls, and over the next week will visit landmarks, museums and national monuments like the White House, Lincoln Memorial and Smithsonian Institution.

I have to admit that some of what I'm feeling is jealousy. Just as Ellen Page says in those technology commercials, when I was a kid we just went to the farm. I've never been to Washington and have wanted to visit every site on the list. I should be happy that my kid gets to do this, and I am. But I'm also worried.

I need to trust that she can handle herself, but how can I, when she doesn't have the sense to wear a jacket when the weather forecast predicts rain? 

Of course, these budding little adolescents will not be unsupervised. The teachers who are chaperoning the group have been organizing these trips for 15 years. I have met most of them and like them, and they've done all they can to reassure all the nervous parents.

Deep down, I have faith that it will all go well and that my daughter will grow from this experience.

That's a good thing, because next year, she starts high school. And the big class field trip there is a journey to China.

Stop Me Before I Text Again

I am on vacation. This post originally appeared at Los Angeles Moms Blog.

In the news: One in three teenagers sends over 100 text messages per day; half send and receive over 50 texts daily -- and teenage girls do it the most (80 texts per day versus boys, who average 30).

My response to that headline was a resounding "D-UH."

My teenage daughter and I are forty years apart, and nothing marks the differences between our generations like today's technology.

When I was a young teen, it was a rite of passage to get your own phone line. Now that I think about it, my parents probably had ours installed out of self-defense, as my sister  and I tied up the family line the minute we got home from school until were pried off of it for dinner.

And these were the days before the invention of call waiting, caller ID, voicemail and all those other innovations that have changed the way we communicate.

So I don't feel any nostalgia for the "good old days." It was my idea to get Megan her own phone when she was in 4th grade, because she was spending four hours a day after school training in competitive gymnastics, and it made ME feel better, knowing that we could directly connect if we needed to.

The fact that the phone enabled her to communicate with all of her friends was just icing on the cake.

It took about one billing cycle for me to realize we needed to add unlimited texting to our plan. The surprise is that I was racking up even more of a bill than she was.

As the Pew spokeswoman in the CNN article said, "Texting is so functional and efficient." Who among us hasn't had the need to get a message to someone while we're in the audience of a presentation or meeting? Sending a quick text is silent and unobtrusive... and can give you peace of mind.

I've been known to text my husband a short grocery list when I know he's on his way from work. I text my sister just to say hi. My friends text me to ask if I can get their kids for school pick up.

And before I got my Blackberry, I was texting up a storm on Twitter.

My daughter's middle school allows the students to carry their cell phones, as long as they are turned off. Most of the kids just keep them on silent, which explains all the texts I get from my daughter, with messages that range from "I forgot my lunch" to "I'm staying late for geometry tutoring" to "Can I go to Maggie's after school?"

And it goes both ways. There are times when I'm running late for school pick up, and I can stop breaking the speeding laws once I've sent my daughter a short text. (Yes, I pull over before I do this! I don't text and drive.)

I'm curious to know if Pew has statistics on texting by adult women of teenage kids. I'd be willing to bet we're right up there with our daughters.

Women's Health Care, Victorious Women and Barbecue

I am on vacation. This post originally appeared at Los Angeles Moms blog.

The month of May is coming to an end, and so we bid goodbye to Women's Health Care Month, as well as Family Wellness and Heal the Children Month.

I suppose those encompass Allergies and Asthma, Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Healthy Vision, Hepatitis, Huntington's Disease, Melanoma and Skin Cancer, Mental Health, Osteoporosis, Strokes, and Teen Self-Esteem, as May was the month for all of those, too.

Diseases were not the only topics honored during May. This was also the month of Bicycles, Civility, Good Car-Keeping (as well as Eco-Driving), Freedom Shrines (whatever those are!), Meditation, Motorcycle Safety, Smiles (that's nice), the Military, Victorious Women and Leaders of Tomorrow.

Heritage was big in May, if you are an American of Asian/Pacific, Haitian, or Jewish descent. It was also Latino Books Month.

Who declares all these themes for a given month -- and why?

I understand how February was proclaimed American Heart Month. With all the Valentine's Day hoopla, the imagery is already everywhere. But why would May be designated Business Image Improvement Month? It's not as if someone could have predicted the British Petroleum oil disaster. I wonder if the folks at BP know it was also Creative Beginnings Month.

Lots of different foods were honored in May: Eggs, Hamburgers, Salads, Salsa, Vinegar and sweet Vidalia onions all got their 31 days in the sun. A lot of these got double-duty as May was also the month for Gifts from the Garden... and Barbecue. 

I'm not sure who first designated an entire month to honor an entire class of animal, vegetable or mineral - but I think the practice has grown out of control. This list does explain all the weird emails I got over the last four weeks selling me skin care products, eyeglasses and grill tools.

All in all, Chase's Calendar lists a total of 56 different categories that were honored in May, plus two that spilled over into June. That translates into a lot of press releases.

So with the month finally ending, I will likely go another year before I receive a letter promoting Older Americans Month, which I took rather personally as I celebrated another birthday in May.

In a few days, we begin National Bathroom Reading Month. I can't wait to read the press release on that one.