Rethinking Well-proportioned

All women know that the female X chromosome comes with an “I hate the way I look!” gene superglued to its molecular structure?

As a young woman, I was unhappy with what I saw in the mirror. I thought the big things should be smaller and the small things should be much bigger.

Recently, I have changed my mind.

I found an article about some scientific studies that have made a connection between pockets of fat in certain body types and various health conditions. These studies claim that people’s fat zones can predict health issues as they age.

For example: People who are apple-shaped, who carry their big macs and hot fudge sundaes in a tire around their tummies, have an increased likelihood of developing restless legs syndrome.

Nice to know, but it doesn’t really concern me.

The studies also concluded that middle-aged, mental “fog” . . . that cloud that covers women’s thought processes and causes us to forget where we put our car keys, what we named our children and why we married our husbands . . . is more often found in women who are pear-shaped, like me.

This, I consider good news! I don’t have early Alzheimer’s Disease! I just have a few too many chips and pies carbo-padding my hips and thighs.

Hallelujah and pass the chocolate cobbler!

Speaking of thighs, Danish researchers found that the thinner a person’s thighs, the greater the risk for heart disease and premature death.

Again, good for me!

Kinda makes all you chicken-legged, health nuts want to kick off your $200 sneakers and burn your sports’ bras, doesn’t it?

What fat deposit protects a woman from heart disease? According to a study conducted at Oxford University, it is . . . and I quote, “A little junk in the trunk”. That study suggests that the lower-body fat in your thighs, hips, and buttocks traps fatty acids from the foods you eat so they don’t float through your bloodstream and get deposited in organs where they can do harm.

I’d like to throw out a big-bootied “Thank You” to the English dudes. They have empowered my buttocks to sit with renewed strength and to trap those little, fatty acids within the boundaries of my cushioned, reading chair.

And . . . here is my favorite finding. Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Toronto found that the bigger a woman’s chest, the greater her risk for type 2 diabetes later in life.

To all the girls who were well-proportioned in high school, I’d like to say . . .

Ha!

Let me say that again.

Ha!!

Ha ha ha ha haha ha!

It looks like those of us on The Itty Bitty Titty Committee get the last laugh.

First published July 16, 2012

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How to Survive a Son’s Wedding with Mascara Intact

Here is my advice:

1. On the day you decide to have children, hit your knees, lift your voice to heaven and beseech . . . spelled capital B E G, exclamation point, exclamation point . . . the Lord for boys. As the mother of the groom, there is a chance that you will have enough physical, mental and emotional energy to survive the weeks before the wedding without melting into a puddle of pooped poverty.

2. Wait until 20 minutes before the rehearsal dinner to paint your toenails with polish that you borrow from your daughter-in-law because the bottle you brought is 20ish years old. Then, when you slide your not-quite-dry toenails into your sandals, the polish will clump up and scrape off. Every time you look at your toes, your mind will be preoccupied with the cussing that you can’t say in front of your new in-laws and you will barely hear the preparations for the following day . . . the day your son becomes a husband.

3. When shopping for a dress to wear to the wedding, choose one that you consider to be . . . 6 . . . 8 . . . 10 . . . oh, let’s say, even 12 inches too-dang short. Then, when placed on the front row of the church . . . in plain sight of God and a dozen or so people 30 years younger than you, your attention will be focused on keeping your legs together and you will almost miss the tears in your little boy’s eyes as he sees his bride for the first time.

4. Buy your dress intending to drop about 10 pounds before the wedding. But then every time you drop one of those little things, reach down and pick it up again with a BBQed rib rack, or a pile of mashed potatoes fried in Crisco, or, my personal favorite, a king-sized snickers bar dipped in peanut butter. Pull on that dress over all those pounds, suck in reeeaaal hard and then hold your breath until the wedding reception is over. That will stop up your tear ducts . . . guaranteed. One lone tear could crack the emotional dam, explode the lungs, release the diaphragm and bust the seams of your dress all over the wedding cake.

With your stomach sucked up into your throat it will be nearly impossible to tell your son how truly, terribly much you love him.

5. When buying shoes for the wedding, pick a pair that are attractive . . . as in, “Cute as a button” . . . and . . . ”Cost a crapload of pretty pennies that you won’t, under any circumstances, tell your husband about”. . . and make sure they are the most uncomfortable things you have ever put on your feet. The blisters on your heels, the cramps in your arches and the pinching toe pain that throbs through your body to make your teeth hurt will distract you from the ache in your heart as you dance with your son . . . the son who now has a wonderful, new woman in his life.

I can tell you, from experience, that if you do these things, you can make it through your son’s wedding tear-free with mascara intact.

However, if at the end of a wedding that turns out to be lovely and touching and a surprising amount of fun, you go to bed without taking a hot bath or drinking a glass of warm milk or downing a bottle and a half of your kids’ dramamine, all these preparations will be in vain. Because, you will lie in bed as your over-stimulated brain races to review the day.

And your tears will run rivers down your face as you thank God for your son’s new family and pray that they will spend a lot of time at your house.

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Micah Becomes a Man

Tomorrow, my son, Micah, graduates from college and prepares to take on the world as an adult . . . as a man.

Let’s see . . .

Desperate need for attention and affection?

Check.

Primarily views life as a competition and cheats to win?

Check.

Domination instincts have matured enough to cause him to challenge his Alpha Dad for control of the television remote control?

Check.

Can urinate on every bathroom surface in one elimination?

Double check.

Yep, . . . he’s officially a man.

First published May 11, 2012

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Finding Waldo, The Redneck Version

Evidently, my husband’s and my sons’ lawn care plan for the year is to spend the summer mowing around all the crap in our yard. That means that if, please Lord, they were to ever move it, there would be raised-relief images in the grass.

I’m thinking that the angels who are on coffee break in Heaven could relax by the porthole that overlooks our little corner of redneckdom and play “Find the hidden pictures”. The game works like this:

Ten points for the first angel to find the horse trailer that most people would keep behind the house, near the barn; but we . . . and by we, I mean my husband, Greg . . . keep it in the front yard.

Fifteen points for finding each of the dozen or so dog kennels that are scattered through the yard. Twenty-five extra points to the angel that finds the one kennel that isn’t broken.

Twenty points for the tree limbs that have been in the yard since the ice storm of 2009.

Twenty points for the bales of hay that Greg bought to feed the sheep that Greg bought to train the dogs that Greg bought to add to the list of animals that stress my life.

Twenty points for the wood that Greg cut after the goat ate the bark and killed the tree that was planted in my mother’s memory.

Twenty-Five points for the zipline cord that Greg once hung between two trees . . . ignoring the instructions and hanging it much higher and longer than any sane person would consider safe.

(I have got an extra twenty-five points and a big shout-out of thanks to the angel that rode the zipline with my 12 year-old son and kept him alive when he ran into the down-hill tree at “break your back and kill you dead” speed.)

Miscellaneous notes for the angels: Try to ignore the incessant dog barking. Sorry about the odor wafting up from the horse trailer. And, please don’t tell God about the patch of grass that looks like a big, bald man lying dead in the back yard.

First published May 22, 2012.

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Cool Counts

My almost-teen daughter, who used to think that I was the bestest, smartest person in her world, spent some time last week hanging out with three other almost-teens.

Coincidentally, I was much dumber that day . . . and way less cool.

In an effort to raise my adolescent-cool rating for last Tuesday, I’d like to submit the following information.

• I totally remembered to keep my phone with me all day. I butt dialed my doctor’s office and had to fish it out of the toilet at one point, but, by golly, I held onto the thing . . . which was kinda gross and a bit of a health issue after the toilet bowl incident.
• I kept track of time with my cell phone that day . . . cause my watch died. I was teenager-cool. I was also 12 minutes late to everything because the time on my phone is wrong and I don’t know how to fix it. (unteenager-cool)
• I watched an episode of “Say Yes to the Dress” without suggesting to my all-caught-up-in-the-show daughters that the woman who was weeping over the placement of a bow should, in my opinion, get a life and let it go!
• I laid out by the community pool with 3-4 days of leg-hair growth. Leg hair is Tres (french word meaning “very” and pronounced “tray” . . . unless you are from West Kentucky where it is pronounced “ta-ray-e”) European. Everyone finds Tres European to be very cool . . . everyone except, perhaps, my husband.
• I spent the day listening to four pre-teen girls say the word “like” 15 times in every sentence. My eyes glazed over. My stomach tightened. My blood pressure nearly blew my head apart. And yet, I did not jap slap any of them or wash out their mouths with soap for using stupid, four letter words.
• I watched the same girls come home from swimming to shampoo, condition, gel, spritz, style, straighten, curl and angst over their hair in preparation for a night at the drive-in where they would eat burgers on the ground and play in a ditch . . . without devoting a very long and sarcastic blog post to the absurdity of the situation.

Personally, I think that my “cool” rules!

First published July 9, 2012.

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Mirror, Mirror on the Wall . . . Tell Me How to Oust Them All.

I was jerked from sleep on Saturday before dawn revealed her crack by the sound of gagging in my bathroom.

Was one of my children coming to me coughing and unable to breathe?

No.

Did I have a sick child hanging over the commode?

No.

I was awakened early on a Saturday morning by a perfectly healthy teenager brushing his teeth at my sink and humming to himself.

He was not retching on the rugs. He was not spitting gross things on the vanity. And he was not humming off key. So why did I react with frustration and anger? . . .

Because he was not down the hall in his own bathroom where he could brush his teeth with a floor sander, hum along with a bagpipe band and still not wake me up!

Why do all of my kids insist on preening and primping in my bathroom when the one we built for them stands empty at the end of the hall?

Evidently, clothes match better, hair brushes shinier and pimples pop easier in our bathroom mirror. Sunday mornings have seen the family standing there seven deep.

I have burned them with curling irons, smudged them with mascara wands and spattered their hair with toothpaste dribble. Still, those dratted kids won’t leave.

Their desires for communal grooming really confuse me. How is it that the children who won’t acknowledge me in public, won’t leave me alone in the bathroom?

And why in the world do the teenagers who think “good” and “fine” are adequate conversation responses across the dinner table, want to discuss global warming and world hunger through the bathroom door?

I hope to live into old age. When I do, I will visit all my children in their own homes and claim their bathrooms as my own. I’ll leave my teeth on their sinks, tinkle a little on their floors, and fill their mirror space with old lady underwear images.

That’ll teach them to lighten up on the lavatory love.

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Scatterbrainia: Will it Get Me Out of Jury Duty?

I got the letter in the middle of December. THE MIDDLE OF DECEMBER! What government bureaucrat thought it would be a good idea to send an important document . . . a document that summons United States citizens to significant participation in our country’s democratic process . . . to a woman who is low on sleep, high on stress and strung out on Christmas sugar?

I’ll bet the $1.62 that is left on my January credit card limit that it was a man . . . a man who didn’t have to duplicate his dead mother’s recipe for cornbread dressing, find a pair of canine antlers so his husband’s dog could pass for a reindeer or shop at Walmart on the Saturday before Christmas.

I skimmed the letter and put it aside. I had other, more important things to read.

My husband needed me to research the mechanical specifications for a Celestron AstroMaster 90AZ Refractor telescope with a altazimuth mounting. My son needed me to proof read his composition for graduate level study. My grandchildren needed to know what kind of holiday drama was on its way to Llama Llama.

The legal summons to report for jury duty in the Marshall County District Court of the Kentucky Judicial System would just have to wait.

In retrospect, I should have read the thing.

The second week of January, my summons and I reported . . . just a wee bit late . . . to district court.

When I walked into the courtroom, the clerk was already giving instructions to the on-time jurors.

I heard, “Let me say one more time, if any of you failed to mail in your juror questionnaire, please give it to me now.”

Juror questionnaire?

“Ohhhh . . .

Crap.

Crap.

Crap, crap, crap . . .

Crap!”

I looked at the summons and read, for the first time, the papers attached to it.

Yep. There it was in big, black letters. “Juror Questionnaire. Complete and return within five days of receipt.”

My mind whirled. How do I get this thing completed and delivered to the woman at the front of the courtroom without looking like an idiot? How do I get it done in the 45 seconds that are left before the judge enters? And, most importantly, how do I keep my husband, the attorney, from ever, ever, anytime ever, finding out about it?

I sat down on the back row of seats and furiously filled out the questionnaire that was supposed to have been mailed to the clerk a month earlier.

I signed my name, dotted one “i”, crossed two “t”s, smudged the date to make it illegible and . . .

Done!

Before the man in the robe walked in!!

I hid the completed form in my coat as I walked to the front of the courtroom. I surreptitiously handed it to the clerk and returned to my seat as the judge entered and began talking to the jury members.

My mind calmed down and I began to think again. I began to think about the form I had just filled out. I couldn’t remember many of the questions. I couldn’t remember any of my answers.

I was pretty sure I wrote my name correctly. Same for my address.

Did the form ask for my age? Did I give it to them or did I say, “None of your big, fat business”?

Which of my husband’s names did I put on the form? Did I call him Gregory, Greg, Kaybee (which is one of the cute little names I call him) or Stupid Jerkface (which is another name I sometimes call him)?

Am I a U.S. citizen? Did I check yes or no?

Do I have mental problems? Well, of course I do. I reared five kids. But did I admit that to a man with the power to declare me incompetent?

And . . .

Did I remember a question about vomiting up celery?

Comets named Melanie?

Committing a felony?!

Had I just told the Marshall County Court System that I committed a felony?!

What a mess!

It could be that I caused the problem by being inattentive and scatterbrained. But, personally, I blame the bureaucrat.

I had jury duty for the second time last week. I walked into the courtroom with more than a little trepidation. Had the clerk read my questionnaire? Was the man with the badge and the gun waiting for me? Had someone told my husband that he married an imbecile? Or that I think his name is Stupid Jerkface?

As it turned out, things went very well that day.

I was one of six people chosen to serve on the jury.

No one snickered when I walked to the jury box. The judge didn’t question my mental competency before administering the oath.

Someone was declared disabled that day but it wasn’t me.

The evidence would suggest that I escaped unscathed and have lived to do stupid stuff another day.

However . . . I did notice that the Assistant County Attorney, whom I have known for years, had a little twinkle in her eye when she looked at me that day. Either she was glad to see me again or she was thinking that she should change my husband’s name in her Rolodex to The Honorable S. J. Northcutt.

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May, 2011 – My Final School Report

Tessa has nearly completed her first year of middle school and I have yet to bake a cupcake, decorate a bulletin board or shelve a library book.

And, the 2012 science fair has come and gone without a Northcutt entry for the first time in 20 years. I have wanted to pick up a No. 2 pencil, stab the scientific method concept in its hypothetical heart and roast it over a bunsen burner for last two decades.

When Tessa graduated from elementary school last May, I graduated too. After putting in 20 consecutive years at Calvert City Elementary School, and after completing K-5th grade for the sixth time, I turned in this final report titled Ten Things I Learned in Elementary School.

1. It’s a lot harder to send your first child to school than it is to send any of the others.

When I took Ben to the first day of school, I walked him to his desk and hugged him . . . until Mrs. Ford pulled us apart and sent me home to write, “I will not cry in kindergarten class” 500 times. Then I parked my car across the street from the school playground so I could make sure Ben was okay at recess.

On Tessa’s first day of school, I pinned a twenty dollar bill to her shirt, told her dad to drop her off at the front door and spent the day at the mall.

2. You can completely ignore the instructions that say a child must be potty trained before starting school. Kindergarten aides covertly passed me wet panties concealed in a brown paper bag so many times people in the car rider line began to think we were part of a local drug cartel.

3. Television has become a very effective teaching tool. We should monitor it wisely.

If, for instance, your child were to watch an educational, animal-themed movie like “March of the Penguins” or “Gorillas in the Mist” or maybe . . . “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and, as a result, they learned to kick other students in the crotch during recess, you would get called to the principal’s office every time.

4. When I was in school, I had teachers like the three old-maid Edwards sisters. They were as old as Garden of Eden dirt but they could swing a paddle with a wood to butt contact that would make Babe Ruth proud. They could also sneak up behind a student and grab the kid’s straw before he/she could take a breath big enough to shoot a spit wad through it.

Micah discovered in his first week of school that you can get one card pulled every day with no consequences. Then, he set out to drive each of his teachers crazy with his free card-pull.

Many of his teachers stood strong. But some folded quickly under his masterful manipulation. And then, there was the one teacher that he took out completely when he hugged her so hard, he pulled cartilage loose and put her in the hospital.

Teachers aren’t as tough as they used to be.

5. Despite the fact that in the last 20 years, the world has changed on most every front . . . (There used to be nine planets in the solar system. Blackberries and apples used to be fruit. Teenagers used to communicate with their mouths and not their thumbs.) . . . school lunches remain the same.

6. If you kiss The Cat in the Hat when he walks out the door, you have a little red make-up dot on your nose for the rest of the day.

7. The “A” in April stands for, “Ahhhhhh Crap!! It’s time to do another science fair project.”

The “P” in April stands for, “Pray that the school burns down before you have to start your science fair project.”

The “R” in April stands for, “Run over your foot with the lawn mower so you don’t have to help your kid with his science fair project.”

The “I” in April stands for, “Imagine the disaster if you let your kid do his own science fair project.”

The “L” in April stands for, “Let’s see which parents do the best on their fourth grade science fair projects.”

8. If, for some legitimate . . . or slightly less than legitimate reason, a parent were to forget one her children and leave him at school for a short . . . or not so short period of time, she could rest assured that an employee of the school system would wait with that child until the parent remembered to pick him up . . . every time it happened. I’m just sayin’.

9. If you show up at school a few times a week, check the volunteer box when you sign in, hang out in the office for a long time, walk through the building and talk to every teacher you meet in the hall, straighten a few pictures on the wall and look as though you are always busy with parent volunteer duties . . . you can get five kids through elementary school without once serving as a PTO officer. (Victory dance in progress on my side of the computer screen.)

10. It’s a lot easier to let go of your children for seven hours a day and send them to school when you know that they feel loved there. I will always be grateful to the teachers, aides and administration at CCES for making my kids feel special. I think part of their self-confidence and ability to tackle the world was learned there.

And, I’ll give an extra shout-out of thanks to the teachers who dealt with Micah on a daily basis and didn’t pinch off his head.

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Don’t Report Us To Social Services . . . Their File On Us Is Already Full.

I’m pondering today. Could it be that Greg and I have been a little too lackadaisical in some of our parenting responsibilities?

Greg and I are opposites in almost every way. I don’t mean the “potato with a long A” versus the “potato with an Ah” opposite. I’m talking about Mars vs. Venus, action vs. reaction, sensitive drama vs. stupid comedy kind of opposite.

However, one of the few things we have in common is our philosophy about safeguarding our kids. I like to think that we have a relaxed, untroubled approach. Social Services might call it apathetic. Or, they might call it irresponsible with a fair to middlin’ amount of negligence thrown in on bad days.

Statistics say that most kids in the United States live through childhood. We figure ours will. Broken bones mend and scabs heal . . . except the ones that Micah compulsively scratched till they got infected. We convinced him to stop by pouring isopropyl alcohol directly in the wounds. Problem solved.

We’re also pretty laid-back about protecting our kids from weather disturbances. A good tempest doesn’t toss us around too much. During the worst of a wind storm, other parents will scramble to get their children safely to the basement. Our biggest spring for safety will happen when Greg slowly raises his head from the bed that sits on the top floor of the house that sits on the highest hill around and ask, “Did you just feel the house move?”

In most instances, the house hasn’t moved so neither do we.

We don’t tend to hustle our kids to a safe place away from a storm. Why would we make them fight over who gets the most leg room in the tub when they could stand on the front porch with Greg and me and let the wind blow their shirts off, or run barefoot in the rain, or jump on the trampoline in their underwear.

(OK. Maybe letting them play on the trampoline in a thunderstorm could be classified as a middlin’ amount of negligence considering that the last two houses that sat on our hill burned after being struck by lightning. But, you’ve got to admit, a little lightning strike could meld those kids together like no other sibling bond.)

The problem with our philosophy seems to be that our kids have taken lackadaisical and turned it into lunacy. When Murray had a bad storm last year, Micah called to tell us how “awesome” it was.

How did he know? Because he was standing outside in 100 mph winds watching trash cans blow through the air and crack car windshields.

Too laid-back?

Could be.

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The Peter Conundrum

As I prepare to watch Peter play basketball in the regional tournament and as I contemplate the fact that last year, he and his teammates won the regional tournament and went on to play in the state tournament on the Rupp Arena floor, feelings of excitement, delight and pride fill my heart.

Only one thought fills my head, “At which of the 30+ times in Peter’s childhood that Greg and I drove off and left him, did we return and pick up the wrong kid?”

To understand my dilemma, you have to know that Greg and I tend to leave our kids places.

By kids, I mean almost exclusively Peter, age 1-12ish. And by places, I mean anywhere/everywhere in Marshall County, certain regions of western Kentucky and as far east as . . . well . . . Gatlinburg.

(Turns out that forgetting a child and temporarily leaving him in a different state doesn’t constitute a federal offense but it does cost you the Parent of the Year Award every time.)

The switch may have happened early in his life because he was very young when we first noticed that Peter was . . . (whisper voice) different . . . from the rest of the family. He would pass the Sunday newspaper comics to his father and older siblings and snatch up . . . (gasp) the sports section.

He began to sneak away from us during Saturday morning cartoon time to covertly watch a basketball game on a different television. And then, he regularly started to use words that had always been foreign in our home like “lay up” and “power forward”.

Later, when he hit puberty and we saw what physical shape he would take, I was bewildered by him again. I don’t like to make judgments based on the way people look; but frankly, you’ve got to wonder about the skinny butt thing. Line up the rest of the Northcutts and look at us. Where did that gene come from?

Mostly, I’m puzzled by his athletic ability. Where did this kid who may play basketball in Rupp Arena for the second time get so much of it? It definitely wasn’t from Greg or me.

Greg will “Take You Out to the Ballgame” in any key on most every musical instrument; but the only time that he has stood with a group of guys and sung, “We are the Champions” is at a Queen concert.

And my athletic accomplishments consist of a kickball home run in fourth grade and the ability to play jump rope tag without getting spanked by the rope.

I used to be able to walk across the room on the tops of my toes. Unfortunately, Greg says that my odd feat (notice the cool play on words) doesn’t qualify as athletic ability but could get me playing time alongside Carl, the armless violinist and the Hilton sisters, conjoined twins joined at the buttocks.

So, I have concluded as I have watched this boy play basketball, either the Lord reached into a select bag of genes that He keeps on hand for special occasions and formed Peter to his own, unique specifications or I have an uncoordinated, big-butted son still waiting for me to pick him up at church, or at the elementary school, or at the middle school, or at the park, or at the mall, or at . . .

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