Lobster Reality Bites

Christopher and I have a new motto for 2006: Lowering the Bar. Our four kids and our four jobs and school and schedules have literally made us sick (which isn't so convenient on our awesome health plan). Writing this, I'm realizing I'm breaking one of my cardinal pet peeves which is complaining about how busy you are, but I don't care. We've decided to lower our standards so why shouldn't I start here? Anyway, who checks the closets to make sure the sheets are nicely folded, or cares is the toy-boxes are categorized by color or subject, or checks your grades from your Doctorate classes? Other than Robert Valentine, no one will know.

There's a great scene in the movie Love Actually where a stay-at-home mum, (played by Emma Thompson), whose brother is Prime Minister (played by Hugh Grant) laments that although she's incredibly satisfied with her chosen life, having such a famous and powerful brother puts her life into stark reality. Have I already written about this? She says something like "Today my brother ruled a country and I made a paper mache lobster head." That's kind of how I feel about having a famous brother, successful in the entertainment industry. A couple of days ago, I think to myself, James won his second Grammy, performed in front of millions, and I was feeling preeety good about getting the car vacuumed. But I stand by that clean car and all that goes with it. I've been riding on that for days (no pun intended, but I'll leave it, thank you)!

Don't I come from Generation X, anyway? I think that somewhere down the line I forgot my roots, where I came from. In the early 90's we didn't care about what those dumb Yuppies did. We had our music and our Doc Martins and our chokers (Melrose Place IS a really good show). We were flyin' the flannel and bein' awesome. Remember bein' awesome? These Gen Y-ers, or whatever these kids today are calling themselves (am I suddenly 70?), are all overachievers and they're boring! Christopher always complains about how grade greedy and uninteresting his students are at a certain university. They're so FO-cused that they're. . . FUN-less (that was bad, but I'll work on it later: I'm too busy BEING AWESOME!)

Join me in turning up FROM OHIO or Fishbone, dusting off those green Doc's and worn out flannel shirt, pulling out your Real Raisin, putting down that Jane Austen, picking up some Vonnegut or Kerouac, and lowering that bar. Seriously you guys, I'm not even going to fold the laundry when it's hot out of the dryer--I'm just going to let it sit there for a while: CRAZY!!!