It's Not You, It's Me

Its Not You, Its Me

By Allison Adams 02-06-11 / Submitted to The Greeneville Sun on 02-07-11

Dear Jan,

We’ve had wonderful relationship for a long, long time. We’ve seen each other regularly for over a decade, and throughout those years you have been my confidant and my trusted advisor.

I can’t think of too many things in my life that I’ve put before you. There have even been times when I neglected some real important things – like a friend’s wedding, or a doctor’s appointment, or my daughter’s piano recital – just so I could be at your disposal.

I’ve even dragged my feverish, pitiful self up and out of my own sickbed because I couldn’t bear to miss our time together.

I realized how just serious I was about our relationship when I voluntarily cut my family’s annual beach vacation short just so I could get back in time to see you.

Our dates together have always been “inked” on my calendar.

Your work phone, cell phone, and home phone numbers have occupied the top three spots on my speed dial list.

I the words of the Supremes: “Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from getting to you, baybay.”

Our relationship is deeply rooted, but the truth is I’ve grown weary … of my regular root touch-ups.

I don’t know how to tell you this except to say that I’ve come to a different place in my life. I’ve changed my mind about something that will affect our future together: I’ve decided to embrace my gray hair.

That’s right - you heard me: I’m not fooling anyone anymore.

I know you’re sensitive enough to have seen this coming. I’ve been dropping some serious hints for about two years, but every time I said something about giving-in to my gray hair, you tried to brush me off.

You said I wasn’t ready.

You said I’d be sorry.

You even went so far as to say that I was your “cash cow” – but I knew you meant it lovingly.

Moo.

Well my mind’s made up - I’m afraid you no longer own my head.

No more secrets, Jan. Now everyone will know what once only my hairdresser knew.

I’m ready to parade around publicly beneath my pale, pigment-less pelt.

Hi-Ho, Silverness!

Oh – I know it’s not going to be nice-n-easy. The months ahead will be extremely awkward for me: Vanity, thy name is Allison.

I'm well aware that people will look at my transitional tresses and wonder why I haven’t bothered to glance into a mirror.

They'll wonder why I’ve obviously missed several critical hair appointments.

They'll even wonder if I’ve totally lost … your telephone number.

But I will not turn back. I have made up my mind.

I just want you to understand that its not you, its me.

You’ve been wonderful, really. I couldn’t possible have asked for more from you. What began as a rescue mission from my self-inflicted over-the-counter hair color debacle back in Y2K, quickly blossomed into a decade of standing appointments so you could carefully, chemically enhance my natural hair color every three and a half weeks – come H-E-Double Hockey Sticks or high water.

And as long you maintained my mane no one knew that beneath that carefully concocted hair color I was naturally “granny gray”.

Until now.

Dear Jan, after you’ve had some time to allow all of this to sink in, I hope you’ll agree that we can still be friends.

After all, we’ve come so far together … and I’ll still need you to cut and style my lackluster locks.

We just can’t go back to the way we were. Those days are gone.

(If you have an opening next Tuesday I could really use a trim.)

Your truly,

Yours Truly

Density

Density

By Allison Adams 09-15-07, Submitted to The Greeneville Sun on 09-18-07

I really try to avoid dabbling in my kids’ homework.

You see – I began to struggle a little once my children passed the point of being required to memorize Dolch sight words, multiplication tables, and state capitals.

Oh, I still ask the usual generic homework questions (Do you have any? Have you finished it?), but my confidence as a competent study partner was shattered once each of my children reached the sixth grade.

I’m pretty sure it was their math homework that shut me up. Their graphing calculators confused me – way too many options.

I’m a plus and minus gal. I don’t do decimals.

My point is this: I know my homework-helping limits. It is very … limited. So, mostly I try to express my genuine concern about my kids’ homework situation without actually becoming directly involved - unless I can use flash cards.

Recently though, during routine questioning, I lost my cool. Then I lost my perspective.

“Have you finished your homework?”

“Uh-huh.”

“All of it?”

“Yep.”

“Are you sure?”

That’s when I got the Look.

“Don’t give me that Look, mister!”

“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to look at you.”

That little remark ignited my mood and before I knew it I was flaming with a false sense of self-confidence.

“Well,” I said, “it sure didn’t take you long to finish.”

“I only had six problems.”

Six problems. Problems? That meant math. Darn! Probably algebra! Please, oh please, let there be flash cards.

“Well, mister – march yourself upstairs and bring me your flash cards.”

“Flash cards? Jeeze, mom. We don’t use flash cards. We use a formula.”

Formula? Problems with a formula? Uh oh. Where was my husband when I needed him? He could solve a math problem while blindfolded, at twenty paces, with one hand tied behind his back.

I kept pushing.

“Let me see your work.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious, mister.”

He flashed me The Look. I get The Look several times a day so it usually didn’t really faze me. I pressed forward.

“I’ll wait here while you get it.”

In a few moments he returned and handed me several worksheets stapled together. I felt him Looking at me as I rifled through the papers.

As I suspected, I found the stuff on the worksheets undecipherable.

“Do you need me to explain it to you, mom?”

Oh. Oh. Oh. How DARE he! I turned around and unleashed The Look.

“Thank you, but no. Just give me a minute to familiarize myself with the way your teacher has presented the problem to you to solve.”

I thought that sounded pretty good, but I was in Deep Doodie and he knew it. With no flash cards to fall back on, I would have to rely on The Bluff.

“Ahhhhh. Here we go.” I said confidently. “Uh huh. I see.”

I continued to stare at the pages.

“Now, son, you know I’m just doing my job – just trying to help you.”

“Right, mom.”

“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t care if you finished anything.”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay then,” I said, trying to slip out of my charade, “This looks fine. I mean – the ones I’ve checked here – uh, you know – they look fine. You may have a little adjustment to do on this one here, uh, thingy. The others, uh – well, I guess your math teacher will just have to check it and deliver the final grade.”

“My math teacher? Mom, that’s science homework.”

Uh-oh.

“See mom - based on the information in those problems, we had to find the given and unknown values so we could determine the volume, mass, and density.”

(Well I know a little something about density.)

If you need me, I’ll be sitting on the stool in the corner … wearing the cone hat.

Medicine Mom

By Allison Adams 01-22-07, Submitted to The Greeneville Sun on 01-23-07

Resubmitted 11-14-10

One look at my son when he walked in the front door from school this afternoon and I knew he was out of kilter.

Like all moms I can correctly diagnose most common childhood ailments after completing a basic exam.

We don’t need a white coat, expensive equipment, or malpractice insurance. We don’t need an antiseptic office either.

We’ve been known to conduct a basic exam in the kitchen, the grocery store, the car, or on the sidelines of the ball field.

“Come close to me so I can get a good look at you.” I ordered.

He complied.

I looked deep into his eyes. As in any case – medical, criminal, or psychological – if something is amiss, the eyes are a dead give away.

His eyes told me he was a sick puppy.

“How do you feel?” I inquired.

“I dunno.”

My patients are not often forthcoming with useful information.

I swept his curly hair away from his forehead and planted my palm there. I left it there momentarily before swiftly moving it to one side of his face – then the other, then to the back of his neck, then back to his forehead.

No fever present.

I placed one hand on the back of his neck and I used the fingers of my free hand to check for lumps and bumps beneath his jaw line and along his neck. As I do this, I always find it helpful if I look up toward the ceiling or down at the floor, as if I might find the results of my examination written there. And if it were, today it would certainly read “lumpy”.

“Does your throat hurt?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

With his chin firmly cradled in the crux of my hand, I took him with me as I set off to seek a bright light source, which happened to be in the kitchen junk drawer where the flashlight lives.

I pulled his chin downward to open his mouth, tipped his forehead back, held the flashlight up, and after a series of repositioning movements I finally got a good look into the back of his throat.

“Stick out your tongue and say ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.” I demanded.

Even though we’ve done this routine a million times I still feel the need to demonstrate so there is no question about what I expect to see and hear. I’m so adept that I can continue to issue directives to during my demonstration.

Its Maternal Multitasking at its finest.

Anyway, I saw red and white stuff way back there and that is capital N-O-T good.

“Do you have a headache?”

“Kinda.”

“Does your tummy hurt?”

“Sorta.”

Next for me was the ultimate sacrifice.

“Okay, son” I directed, “breathe on me.”

I moved my face in close proximity to his, and braced myself for what was coming. Breath that smells like it could peel paint would be the final piece of the diagnostic puzzle.

The test result was positive.

“You have Strep throat.” I declared.

“Oh. Okay. Does this mean you’ll take me to TCBY?”

Now – if I’m in a public place when I conduct a medical exam and there are other moms around, I may solicit a second opinion. I know the value of consultation.

I’ve felt up many an unfamiliar noggin and neck belonging to another mother’s child. It’s a professional courtesy.

This time, however, I didn’t need to confer with another Medicine Mom.

What I needed the expertise of someone with a white coat, expensive equipment, an antiseptic office, and malpractice insurance.

Although its 99 percent accurate, the strep test I administer is not yet recognized as such by the American Medical Association – and I am not trained or licensed to wield The Wicked Q-tip, cook a culture in a Petri dish, and scribble an Rx for an appropriate antibiotic.

Perhaps someday all that stuff will come pre-packaged and be available over-the-counter. Until then I’ll continue to practice my own brand of medicine and offer my findings to the pros in the form of a “strong suspicion”.

It’s a professional courtesy.

"Hello, Larry"

"Hello, Larry."

By Allison Adams 10-18-10 / Submitted to The Greeneville Sun on 10-18-10

“How was your day, honey?”

“Well. If you must know, this morning I broke the handle off a coffee cup as I was unloading it from the dishwasher. Honestly, sometimes I just don’t know my own strength. Anyway, I decided I could fix it, but naturally I couldn’t unscrew the cap off of the tube of glue.

"You know, just once I’d like to have the luxury of being able to use a tube of Krazy Glue for more than a single application.

“Am I alone?”

“Certainly not …”

“I mean, has anyone ever been able to repair something with Krazy Glue, then screw-on the cap, and unscrew it six months later to release another couple of drops of super sticking stuff? What’s the point of the screw-on cap if we’re only meant to use it once?

“Is this a conspiracy?”

“No, I don’t think…”

“Speaking of conspiracy – is it asking too much to be able to go in to a grocery store, march straight to the meat department, and put my hands on a package containing one single, solitary, pound of lean ground beef?”

“Well, I …”

“Not 1.46 or 1.27 or 1.59 or 1.83 – just a package containing 1-point-double-zero pound of lean ground beef. Why is this impossible?”

“I don’t …”

“Clearly the butcher is using a scale, or else there would be no label affixed to the package indicating that it contained 1.32 pounds of lean ground beef. In all my cooking years I’ve never seen a recipe that calls for ‘slightly more than a pound of ground beef’, or ‘almost, but not quite two pounds of ground beef’.

“I hate to admit it, but I guess I’m just not creative enough to know how to prepare the superfluous .32 ounces of meat.”

“Well, of course you’re crea…”

“And speaking of meat – just once I’d like to make my Tuna Delight casserole, and proudly serve it to this family and hear you all go oooooh and ahhhhh! Instead you react as if I intentionally prepared something for supper that would cause you to instantly lose your appetite, and my culinary effort is met with a unanimous ‘Ugh!’”

“Uh oh. What’s for sup…?”

“And speaking of ‘ugh’ – just once I’d like to go into the grocery store, dressed in what our son refers to as my ‘Bag Lady ensemble’, to buy that one thing I forgot to pick up when I was in there just 2 hours earlier, and NOT run into everybody on our Christmas card list.

“Where are all those people when I go into the grocery store on my way home from church and I’m wearing shoes that match, and one of my earrings compliments my outfit?”

“I don’t know where they...”

“Speaking of my outfit – just once I wish I could be properly dressed for an emergency instead of having to say here, hold this dishtowel really tightly around what’s left of your finger while mommy goes upstairs and puts on something decent to wear to the emergency room.”

“Emergency room…?”

“And speaking of an emergency – I’d give anything to be aware of the exact moment when the ‘ping’ sounds, and the pinhead-sized, ‘Low Fuel’ light on my dashboard illuminates.

“I mean, really – when the kids are hollering, and the music is blaring, and the engine is rumbling, and somebody’s honking their horn… how in the world am I supposed to hear a little ‘ping’, and notice one other teeny weenie light on the dashboard?”

“Did you have to call AAA again?”

“Yes I did. And by the way, Larry say’s hello.”

Bulking Up

Bulking Up

By Allison Adams 06-11-07, Submitted to The Greeneville Sun on 06-12-07

I’m sure all you Sam’s fans are happy as clams in a thirty-two ounce can now that the new store has opened.

Now you don’t have quite as far to go to buy yourself a hundred-fifty pound bag of kitty litter and a radically discounted set of steel-belted radial tires.

Now you can score a case of eighty assorted mini-quiches without spending eighty minutes on the road.

Like many of you, my parents are professional Sam’s shoppers. They embraced the cost-per-unit shopping system a long time ago.

They speak the language. For them – a trip to Sam’s is pure entertainment.

For me – shopping at Sam’s is stressful.

Once after a routine visit to their local Sam’s, my parents unloaded a number of bulky buys among which was a box that contained a sixty-pound roll of aluminum foil.

They hovered and cooed over that box like it was a new baby.

They thought it would be fun to see how long it would take them to use up all that aluminum foil, so they wrote the purchase date on the box that contained the roll.

That was October of 1982.

For the next 18 years they moved that box from one new house to the next: Houston to Honolulu, Honolulu to St. Petersburg. It was in St. Petersburg that they finally used the last inch of it.

Daddy called me long distance just to tell me that the roll was empty. It was a banner day! They went out to lunch to celebrate.

I am not making this up.

And then on the way home from their aluminum foil depletion luncheon, they stopped at their local Sam’s to buy a new roll, and the game began again.

That was August of 2000.

They’re still wrapping baked potatoes and covering casseroles.

I don’t want to sound morbid or ungrateful, but I fear I may someday my inheritance may include a partially depleted roll of aluminum foil.

Anyway, surely you see my point about their bulk shopping background. They could write a book on the subject. Frankly, I wish they would because I could surely use some guidance.

I seem to lack whatever’s necessary to make a shopping trip to Sam’s amount to anything other than a waste of an hour during which I have decided we really, really, need a case of breaded veal cutlets, a 6-pack of reading glasses, and a backyard cabana.

Last week the kids and I threw caution to the wind and visited the new Sam’s without the benefit of a guidebook.

Getting your bearings is critical to the success of any mission. Immediately upon entering I noticed the new store had a completely different floor plan from the old one, and I panicked.

My kids took one look at my clueless facial expression and scattered like ball bearings on a marble floor.

I was left to go it alone.

My palms were sweaty, but I took hold of the handle on my behemoth shopping buggy – the size of which could easily accommodate an aircraft carrier, with a deeply discounted price – and forged ahead.

For the next forty-five minutes I wandered all over Sam’s creation without putting so much as one iota inside my shopping-cart-that-ate-Tokyo. With time running out and feeling pressure to proceed to the checkout line with SOMETHING, I retraced my steps determined to redeem myself.

In the end when my kids had eaten their way through the store – one food sample table at a time – I anted up sixty-two dollars and some change for a hundred slices of provolone cheese, a double case of Gatorade, a twin-pack of pool floats, and a four-pound bag of jellybeans.

Yes, you heard me – a four-pound bag of jellybeans.

Which brings me to this: some things just shouldn’t be packaged and sold in bulk. Even my parents discovered this early in their bulk-shopping career when they made the mistake of buying a fifteen-pound drum of Jiff.

There is something very wrong about being armed with a knife and up to your elbow inside a vat of peanut butter.

Anyway … I suppose when my pocketbook and I recover I’ll probably give the new Sam’s another go. Maybe in the meantime you pros can offer me some helpful hints.

And, I’ll let you know when my folks use up their roll of aluminum foil. We’ll have a party.

I’ll bring the jellybeans.

A Poor College Student

A Poor College Student

By Allison Adams 09-30-10 / Submitted to The Greeneville Sun on 10-01-10

It’s been a rather lengthy process, but my daughter has finally adopted an appropriate moniker: Poor College Student.

Her epiphany came on my recent visit to see her, during which I discovered things were completely out of control.

I took her out to lunch at the Broadway Bistro as a special treat, and the maitre’d greeted her by her name and asked if she wanted to be seated at her “regular table”.

“Honey, I want to tell you a little story while we’re waiting for our waiter to bring me my tuna melt special, and bring you ‘your usual’.”

“I hope he gets my order right. The waiter who normally serves me isn’t here today.”

“Honey, I want to tell you about the life of a Poor College Student.”

“OH NO! Who is it? Is it somebody I know?”

“Its you, dear.”

“No, seriously – who is it?”

“Honey, a Poor College Student can’t afford to dine out a couple times a day, seven days a week.”

“Uh-oh.”

“A Poor College Student knows that a California Roll from the Chic Sushi Bar, and twice-daily $5 grande-double-espresso-skinny-mocha-Carmelita-lattes from Starbucks are not staples – they are extravagances.”

“But, I need my lattes.”

“We’ve had this talk before.”

“Then can we please talk about something else?”

“A Poor College Student realizes that even frequent visits to Taco Bell will break her budget. She knows that generic brand peanut butter is her friend.”

“But, choosy mothers choose Jiff!”

“But, you are not a choosy mother. You are a Poor College Student, and a Poor College Student must forage through the aisles of the grocery store, and suffer over the saucepan on the stovetop, just like the rest of us.”

“I don’t know how to cook!”

“It would have been nice if you’d shown a little interest in learning while you were still living at home. I can’t believe I let you go without showing you the basics. No mother should let her little birds leave the nest without making sure they can fry an egg, grill a cheese sandwich, and prepare a box of Hamburger Helper.”

“Hamburger Helper? Really?”

“If you can tackle a term paper, you can surely follow the directions on the back of the Hamburger Helper box.”

“Where is our waiter?”

“There’s more.”

“Please, no …”

“A Poor College Student doesn’t make weekly trips to the mall to purchase the latest fashion trends.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very. Also, a Poor College Student cannot continue to download the latest hits from the iTunes web site. She has to exercise complete control over her computer mouse when it begins to guide the cursor arrow on the screen toward the ‘Buy Now’ button.”

“Its just so convenient...”

“Furthermore, just because a Poor College Student is fortunate enough to have a car at her disposal, she doesn’t need to volunteer to be the chauffer every single time a group of Poor College Students holler ‘Road Trip!’ A Poor College Student understands that a tank of unleaded gasoline is a luxury.”

“I’m losing my appetite.”

“A Poor College Student doesn’t have the money to buy a ticket to every rock concert that hits the town, even though EVERYBODY ELSE bought one, and is going.”

“But, but …”

“Simply put, dear, a Poor College Student must refrain from hitting the fashion runway, hitting the road, hitting the town, or hitting the ‘Buy Now’ button, as long as she’s a Poor College Student.”

“Uuuugggghhhh! All right! I hear you! I’ll reel it in! I’ll refrain! I’ll go to the grocery store. I’ll learn to cook. I’ll make coffee in that, that, THING that sits on my kitchen counter …”

“It’s called a ‘Mr. Coffee’, honey.”

“… I’ll park my car. I’ll play OLDIES on my iPod. I’ll wear… *sigh*… LAST YEAR'S BOOTS!”

“Awwww, there-there now. It’s not the end of the world. These are really small sacrifices to make, for a large gain later in life!”

“I guess you’re right, mom. After all, when I graduate from college, I’ll be … ”

“You’ll be a Poor College Graduate, dear.”

Thar She Blows!

Thar She Blows!

By Allison Adams 09-04-10 / Submitted to The Greeneville Sun on 09-05-10

I am embarrassed to tell you that the other day when I went looking for something in my pantry I eventually found five boxes of pistachio flavored Jell-O pudding mix. You heard me – five.

The last time I made pistachio flavored Jell-O pudding, Jimmy Carter was President.

The Jell-O boxes were scattered in amongst a kaleidoscope of canned goods and bads, like three empty boxes of Pop-Tarts, which were in the same vicinity as a couple of boxes of Moon Pies – also empty.

I found several cereal boxes that contained nothing but their waxed paper bags with just a trace of cereal dust in their bottoms.

None of those decoys were my doing – but mixed them with general pantry dysfunction, and it means I rarely buy what we really need at the grocery store because I think we already have “it” at home on the shelf.

Bottom line: If my pantry had been organized I would never have needed to empty the sucker just to try to find one lousy can of Chicken of the Sea.

But it wasn’t; so I did.

It was high time, really. I mean I love Mexican food as much as the next guy, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to use all 80 flour tortillas we own before they expire on Tuesday.

Out came a broken VCR, my sewing kit, and some other things that probably should never have been placed in the pantry to begin with … and also six cans of creamed corn.

As a matter of fact, I seem to have a penchant for purchasing any food item with the word “cream” on the label, which may explain my need to incorporate an array of elastic waist pants into my wardrobe in recent years.

I had an excessive inventory of cream of chicken soup, cream of mushroom soup, cream of celery soup, creamed corn, Cream of Wheat, cream cheese frosting mix, and cream of tartar.

I don’t even know what cream of tartar is, but if I ever find out at least I won’t have to go and borrow a cup from my neighbor.

Apparently at one time or another there was a big sale on gigantic jars of artichoke hearts because we own four of those.

And I must have had a coupon or else I’m sure I wouldn’t have come home with six cans of Comstock Blueberry pie filling.

It wasn’t until I moved the case of Ramen Noodle Soup (which I meant to send back to college with my financially-strapped daughter) that I finally spotted the object of my desire – the hunt for which precipitated an impromptu pantry makeover: one can of solid white albacore, packed in spring water.

I cannot even speak to the sheer volume of jars of pimentos, salsa, and cans of diced stewed tomatoes that I extracted from my pantry. I remember thinking that it was a good thing that red is one of my favorite colors.

And that’s when it hit me … everything could go back into the pantry according to the color of the item contained in the container!

So now all my red foods are together on one shelf. Cans of green things live on a shelf next to other cans of green things. And canned yellow fruits cohabitate with canned yellow corn, even if the latter happens to be creamed and a vegetable.

And when I’m fishing for a can of tuna, I go straight to the neutral tones section and shout, “Thar she blows!”

Yeah … I know …