Grocery bills

Have you ever seen a movie where the dad puts too much detergent in the washer (or dishwasher) and then a few minutes later, the room is full of suds? That's what my shower looks like every time my 13-year-old goes in there. I don't know what she's doing in there, but it requires a lot of time and product and produces a lot of suds.

Yes, I'm sure she would be mortified by this, but I need to make it public to prove a point. Teenage girls consume just as much as teenage boys. They just consume differently.

I don't have any sons, but judging from the number of times the moms of teenage boys do a
Facebook check-in at the grocery store each week, it is safe to say that most of that food shopping is being done to satisfy the ravenous male teens and their friends. I've got to say, as fun as it must be to have those kids hanging out at your house all the time, there have to be days when you want to just lie and say "the carpets are being cleaned" or "we're fumigating for termites" so all of them have to go to someone else's house and raid their fridge.

I may be wrong, but one good thing about boys' appetites is that they are not too picky. Sure, they have their likes and dislikes but I bet, if they are really hungry, they will eat just about anything and much of it requires little more than opening a package or 3 minutes in the microwave. So you don't have to slave over the stove for them or pick out the most expensive snacks in the store.

This is where the difference comes in. What girls consume is usually more expensive and requires much more time to pick out. Beauty products. I'm not kidding when I tell you that my kids use more product in a month than I use in a year. Of course, I use soap and shampoo and moisturizer, but that's pretty much where it ends. I don't need four kinds of face wash and special water and wipes that remove makeup. I don't need foams, creams, gels, pomades or sprays. Seriously, just soap. And fewer than five minutes in the shower. How long does it take? What are you doing in there? And why do you need so much?

I think when I was a kid, my mom bought shampoo (the cheap kind), soap (not body wash) and deodorant (again, the cheap kind) like every other month. If I asked her to spend $12.99 on face wash or get bath fizzies and body wash in a specialty store, she probably would have just told me to put it on my Christmas list and hoped I forgot about it. Her biggest splurge was Nivea.

Maybe it's because I grew up in an apartment building where there were five other families that also needed hot water. I just think you go in, wash, and get out. My kids think it's time to listen to a new playlist and produce so much steam you would think there was a sauna in operation.

My favorite is when they use all the shampoo and don't bother to tell me. I love that. I think moms of boys experience that regularly when they reach for the milk for their morning coffee and find half a drop left in the almost empty container. And you can't put water in and shake up the milk to get the last bit out like you can with shampoo!

So, here's to all us grocery shoppers - living the life as we fill up our carts and put dents in our wallets and stock our shelves. May we always have enough to satisfy the teen hunger.

The wonders of technology

I think that you can easily say technology is a blessing and a curse. Yesterday, my oldest daughter was traveling home from a school trip to New York City and, thanks to an app, I could see exactly where that bus was and time my departure from work so I would pick her up at exactly the right time. It was a good feeling of safety and security. Had I been tracking her doing something else, someone may say it's more like stalking.
Do you track your kids online and know where they are 24/7? Is that intrusive? I mean, they are your kids. They live under your roof and may be a driving a car that you pay for so is it really an invasion of privacy or more like you checking up on them to see that they are doing okay. I'd like to equate it to old-school neighborhoods. If you were out on the street chasing a cat and your mom wasn't there to see it but your neighbor was, you could be darn sure the neighbor would yell at you. So, if I'm not there to watch my kids, I don't mind that app being the neighbor who smacks my kid in the back of the head when she is screwing up.
I have eased up on monitoring my children's use of technology because I don't want them to think I'm too strict and then hide things from me and be deceitful. But, I've noticed that my easing up has allowed them to feel freedom that I'm not really willing to give them. To me, that freedom seems to come with some stupidity.
Teenagers, of course, know everything. They think they don't need to be told what is right or what is wrong. Unfortunately, that "wisdom" doesn't always include them making the best decisions in life or saying the smartest things in the world. Kids say and do stupid stuff all the time. But now they do that stupid stuff while their friends record it. And then their friends post it online. And all of a sudden, something really stupid is now something that is really stupid forever.
Even if a kid knows they are being recorded, I'm sure they don't think about the consequences of it. They don't think that the fight they had in the middle school locker room might affect a college application or job interview.
So, the blessing and the curse. And I have to say this - I am SO glad I am the age I am. I did all my stupid stuff before the Internet and my mother could never track me with GPS.