College Reunion

My College Reunion is taking place this weekend. Hard to believe I've been out of college---not high school---for nearly 30 years!

I had planned to attend, however, Ohio University was unwilling to pay for my travel expenses to come speak as a representative of the school of Journalism. I guess if my name had been Matt Lauer, there wouldn't have been an issue. Oh, but wait a minute---Matt didn't even graduate and I DID. So what's wrong with that picture? I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Bragging Rights of a Baby Boomer Diva Grandma

When my daughter was younger, I used to love to show off her advanced learning skills. She was walking at eight months, speaking coherently at a year and a half and writing her first and last name at the age of three (and I have the picture to prove it).

Now I have a grandson and, just as I did with my daughter, I take great pride in showing off his advanced skills. At seven months, he started taking steps. As a matter of fact, he started trying to walk before he was crawling. Now, he’s trying to walk all over the place and is into EVERYTHING! No, he’s not speaking yet but I’m convinced he knows the five vowels and shortly he’ll be able to count to ten in Spanish thanks to the TV show Handy Mandy.

My “public” bragging moment came yesterday when I took my grandson with me to Harris Teeter. We were the checkout line when he apparently caught the attention of another little baby and her mom. June, I learned, was seven months old. She just seemed to be in awe of my little man. Maybe because he was dressed to kill in his Duke Blue Devils outfit complete with matching hat. Anyway, June’s mom brought her over to our line to interact with my grandson whose attention was elsewhere. Eventually, their eyes met and he let out a great big smile which revealed his two bottom teeth. He also waved at her and she tried to wave back. June’s mom could not get over the fact that my grandson knew how to wave correctly.

Now let me explain this. When you see babies wave, they tend to wave backwards. What I mean by that is the palm of their hand faces them instead of the other way around. Why? Because when parents are trying to teach them to wave “bye-bye”, their palm of their hand is facing the baby’s eye and that’s what they see. So what I did was turn my hand around so that the back of my hand faced him as I repeatedly said “bye-bye.” He processed what I was doing and got it right!

OK…this may seem like a small deal to you but if my grandson is going to be a future president, he might as well get that wave thing down early! Next week I'll be teaching him about the Law of Attraction.

A Baby Boomer Diva's Guide to Shopping for Mother's Day

As long as I can remember, Mother's Day has always been the second Sunday in May. It's one of those holidays where the DATE might change but the time of the month NEVER does. Since this is a well known fact, why is it that people choose to wait until "D" day to go out and buy Mother's Day gifts and cards?

I was one of those people. I went to Wal-Mart today to try to find a nice little gift for my mother-in-law. I didn't want to get her anything too fancy because she would just end up hiding it---never to be found again (she has Alzheimer's). I thought flowers would be a nice touch. It would brighten up her bedroom and maybe trigger some memories back to the time when she used to care for the flowers in her own garden. Well, that was a bad idea. Everybody in the world was obviously thinking the SAME thing. The flower buckets were nearly wiped out. I had to be creative and try to mix and match flowers---without getting caught.

Then I went over to the card section. You would think Wal-Mart was having some kind of special on cards. The racks were empty. The only few cards I saw were some that had June Clever on the front and that just wasn't going to work for my mother-in-law. She may have had a June Clever like image back in the day---but the card company could've at least had the decency to make another June Clever image look more "soulful."

I figured I might have better luck at the dollar store down the street from my house so I went there. It was also JAM PACKED with people purchasing Mother's Day items. It was CRAZY! While I was in the store I had to play mom to someone else's children because they were getting out of line.

So what did I learn today?

1) If you have to wait until the last minute, don't shop. Give the gift after the fact. It'll mean more.

2) Buy silk flowers instead---even if the price is jacked up. They last forever.

3) Shop around for cards that fit the "image" you're looking for. June Clever ain't it and neither is "Florida" from Good Times.

4) A mother is a 24/7 job--no matter whose children they are!