There's gotta be an app for this

@itselliedunkle it's only 7:15 and my mom has already managed to ruin my day #thanksmom #iknowyourereadingthis

Seriously? Twitter? What’s next, a My Mom Sucks facebook page?

And, the profile picture … an elephant behind bars? Please.

If this is where parenting is headed, give me back stomping up or down the stairs and slamming doors, punctuated by a dramatic, “I hate you!”

I mean, I knew my 15-year-old was mad, but broadcasting to the twitterverse about an alleged parenting fail? This is completely unchartered territory. Ten years ago, all I had to do was close the windows and our spats remained private.

In my defense, she’d been acting like a brat. She didn't deny this, but she did play the teen card as if her behavior was beyond her control and some God-given right of passage.

"I'm a teen-ager Mom," she said, rolling her eyes, which is code for "you're an idiot."

We'd barely moved beyond an episode two weeks ago, when I reinforced the decree that there be no sleepovers the night before an early morning swim practice, she retorted: “I’m 15. I’ll make my own decisions.”

The voice inside my head responded, “Like hell you will.”

My speaking voice, however, stayed silent. I bit my tongue and repeated the calming mantra, "You are the adult." I can’t say with any certainty whether I managed to keep my head from whipping into a 360-degree Exorcist spin.

But, to be sure, the maternal waters have been roiling ever since.

So, last night, as the conversation grew increasingly heated about what I perceived to be a lousy attitude and she believed to be verging on child abuse — I think the exact words were, “You have no right to know about every little detail in my life” — I threw down the grounding card gauntlet.

“That’s it,” I declared. “You’re done. You’re home after school tomorrow. No friends.”

“Whaaaaaaaat?!!!!” she cried. “That’s so not fair!”

Maybe not. But, that wasn’t the point. The point was/is, I am the parent and I decide. Fairness is not part of the equation. We operate on the benevolent dictatorship model, not a democracy. End of discussion. Or, so I thought.

I turned on my phone this morning to discover the offending tweet, which, admittedly, evoked a slightly horrified gasp.

From the Arab Spring to Anthony Weiner, we witness through twitter, texting and facebook, et al, moment-by-moment updates of breaking news events. It never occurred to me after 21 years in the mommy trenches that my parenting would become part of the scrolling update feed.

Thanks to continually evolving technology and new frontiers in social networking, raising children has never been more invasive, immediate and in your face. Even as I write this, I nurse a deep, dreaded fear of what this child may throw back at me.

She’s clever, quick-tongued and can write. She has a phone and computer access. Even if those privileges are revoked, there are too many ways around parental paywalls. As the mother of four, this is not, as the cliche goes, my first rodeo.

I’m wondering where we will go from here, how the parent-child relationship will evolve and if the friction will ease. Already, we’ve shifted from twitter to texting — “Ugh … can i not be grounded Saturday?? Please i wanted to go watch xc” — even though she is in school, where phone use is not allowed.

But, that’s another battle for another day. In the meantime, I'll update my blog password.

The tao of towing

Me: "Hey, I think the van needs to go in. There's this scraping sound. I think there's something wrong with the brakes."
Husband: "Probably the bearings. I'll call and see if we can get it in tomorrow."

The next afternoon
Me: "Did they say what was wrong?"
Husband: "Yeah. We need new brakes."

Two days later
Me: "Do you hear that sound? That wasn't there before they did the brakes."
Husband: "It's probably just a chair bouncing around in the back."

I take out the chair and take the van out for a drive.
Me: "Definitely a new sound."
Husband: "I'll take it in Monday morning."

Monday morning
Husband: "He says it's just a body noise. If it gets worse while I'm gone, just bring it back in. Should be fine."

Late Monday morning on way to airport
Me: "Do you hear that noise? It sounds like a helicopter overhead."
Husband: "It's just the pavement. Wait until you get on another road."

Two minutes later
Me: "OK! Did you hear that? It's a lot louder!"
Husband: "Just bring it in when you get back to town."

30 seconds later
Me: "Omigosh!"
Husband: "Pull over! Pull over!"

An interstate off-ramp appears and I steer off I-29, the van making a horrible grinding sound. We jump out and run around the back. Hot, twisted pieces of metal lay on the ground.
The husband calls AAA for a tow and the service station, which dispatches a car for him to take to the airport. Next, the husband calls the towing service, but the guy hasn't heard from AAA, yet.
So, I call AAA, wondering why the tow service hasn't been called. While I'm on the phone with AAA, I miss a call from another tow service. I hang up and call him back. The husband shakes his head and comments about my impatience, although I will be the one left waiting roadside.

Me: "A+ Towing is coming, not the Aurora guy."
Husband: "No. Dale from Aurora is coming."
Me: "Well, why did Evan from A+ call and say he's on his way?"
Husband (holding his head and looking at me like I'm an idiot): "I talked to Dale. He's got the paperwork. He's the only one coming."

Thirty minutes later
Car arrives for the husband to take to the airport. I wait for the tow service. First one to show? A+ Towing.

Me: "Umm, there's another tow service already on the way. He's from where we live, so I'm going to wait for him."
Tow guy: "I've got the paperwork."
Me: "So does he. I'm going to wait for him."

Five minutes later
Dale of Aurora Towing arrives. He hooks chains to the van, pulls it onto the bed of his truck and picks up more twisted metal from the pavement.
Dale: "Looks like the brake fell off."
Me: "Yeah, we just got new brakes put on, but I told my husband there was a weird noise. We brought it back this morning and they said it was just a body noise, that it would be fine."
Dale: "Always listen to a woman's ear."
Me: "Why's that?"
Dale: "Women hear the smallest details."

Damn right.

Seeking immortality one pizza at a time

Looking across today's landscape of issues and events, I know there are many more worthy topics to comment on making the family dinner.
But, this is what happens when you try to keep growing, active, hungry children fueled and well fed. The crucial step for me was abandoning the cereal and PB & J routine, accepting them as the breakfast and lunch foods that they are, and focusing on the time-tested question of: What's for dinner?
Going with my general life attitude of If Some is Good, More is Better (i.e. four ibuprofin instead of two), I began by doubling and tripling whatever I made, thinking I could get more out of my effort by preparing multiple meals at a time. However, I quickly found that leftovers after the third night don't go over well.
Not that I don't embrace change, I responded first by pleading, then begging and finally insisting that they eat lasagna for an entire week. When all failed, I embraced the mother within and started serious menu planning and have found moderate success in using similar ingredients repackaged into different dinners.
Or, at least, this is my perspective. Questioning my family may yield a completely different picture.
I do think, however, that we could agree on a few issues, one of which would be that my homemade pizzas have evolved into an accepted — and sought after — substitution for both the frozen and fast food variety. That is not to say they wouldn't scarf down a Papa John's pie if placed in front of them.
Still, I like to think that some day they might look back fondly on Mom's pizzas, particularly the meatball and ricotta cheese version I copied from a place in Portsmouth, N.H. and continue to refine and improve.
I also recently made the transition from using a ready-made mix for my pizza dough to an honest and legitimate homemade version, thanks to the daring yeast and flour experiments of Nicole, a faithful attendee of my yoga classes.
Below find her recipe, which is shockingly easy, even if the word "yeast" alerts your fear response.
To make the meatball and ricotta topping:
Brown some garlic in a little olive oil, add in ground beef and sprinkle with thyme and oregano. Let the beef cook up in larger chunks than you would for meat sauce. Top the pizza dough with the beef. Drop random dollops of ricotta cheese. Grate your own mozzarella cheese (the shredded kind contains chemicals to keep it from clumping) and spread across the pizza.
The other key to making homemade pizza is the Pampered Chef Baker's Roller, which my friend Jeannie sells at her site:
https://www.pamperedchef.com/ordering/prod_details.tpc?prodId=363&words=pastry%20roller
Seriously. This tool will change your life.

Nicole's Basic Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups water, lukewarm 105-115 degrees

1 T. yeast

1 tsp. sugar

1 ½ tsp. salt

1 T. olive oil

3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 ¼ cups whole wheat flour

Directions:

Stir water, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl; let stand until the yeast has dissolved, about 5 minutes. Add olive oil to the yeast mixture. Stir in flours until the dough begins to come together.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface (or use a baking mat). Knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

Place the dough in a large bowl that has been coated with cooking spray; lightly spray the dough with cooking spray. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and set aside in a warm, draft-free place* until doubled in size, about 1 hour. Punch down dough and divide on half.

At this point, you can wrap and refrigerate the dough for up to 24 hours, you can wrap it with plastic wrap, put it in a freezer bag, and freeze it (and just thaw it out in the fridge the day you want to make it), or you can roll out each crust into a 12-inch pizza. Add your toppings and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

Individual variation: After kneading, divide the dough into 16 equal balls. Spray lightly with cooking spray and place the balls 3 inches apart on a greased baking sheet. Cover and set aside in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in size, about 1 hour. At this point, you can wrap each portion in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for up to 24 hours, or you can wrap each portion in plastic wrap and put them in freezer bags and freeze (for up to 3 months). Thaw them in the fridge the day you want to make pizza.

Roll each portion into a 6-to-8-inch circle (depending on how big you want your pizza and how thin you want your crust). Prick the crust lightly with a fork (you don’t have to do this, but it will bubble up when you bake it if you don’t, which is nice sometimes), place it on a baking sheet lined with tin foil or parchment paper and prebake it for 5 minutes at 400 degrees; then add my toppings and bake again at 400 for 8-10 minutes or until crust is golden brown and toppings are done.

*For the warm, draft-free environment, preheat my oven to 400 or 425 degrees and clear off the top of my stove; put the dough on the cook top and cover it with a clean flour sack towel.

Heard in the house

Just rediscovered this gem I jotted down from a round of cards during Christmas break. Kind of makes me wish I was 12 again:
Youngest daughter: "Sometimes I just change out cards because I feel sorry for them."
Laughter. Heads shaking.
Son: "I change out cards, but I do it so people won't know what I'm doing. Not for stupid reasons."
Youngest daughter: "I believe everything has feelings."
Husband: "Even a piece of paper?"
Youngest daughter: "Everything."

A change in perspective

Nothing this morning seems quite so important as updates emerge about the devastation of yesterday's earthquake in Haiti. News of the impoverished country enduring yet another round of suffering and hell is almost too painful to read.
Making lunches, dropping kids off at school, drinking the morning coffee and getting ready to teach yoga — the daily routine lacks substance and meaning. Everything I might have cursed yesterday about what is wrong and hard in my life returns today as a mocking reminder.
For an up close and personal view of Haiti, its people and Tuesday's destruction, check out this blog — http://livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/ — written by Tara Livesay, a missionary from Minnesota, living in Haiti with her husband and children.

A work in progress

New year, new you? Not me. Rather than resolutions, I'm more of an evolution type of girl.
It's not that I don't believe in making resolutions. They're great. For other people.
To me, a resolution is too daunting because of the potential for failure. What if I can't do it or if I feel like bailing along the way? The risk vs. the reward just doesn't do it for me.
Instead, I figure if I identify a goal and head in a forward motion in that general direction, then life is good and, possibly, rewarding.
And so, with that philosophy in mind, I'm getting back to the old blog and charting a new course. Not that I'm making any commitment to write any more frequently than I have in the past half a year — although, I think I can do better than once a month. And, it could be that this new venture runs its course in a few weeks or months. Along with not making resolutions, I don't do promises.
So, here's the plan: I'm going to keep with the concept of daily life, but I'm going to add in an element from my yoga classes, where I get to visit with a variety of wonderful women every day; women of all ages, occupations and life paths.
The commonality that we share beyond yoga is a sense of bliss that we take from class and into the world beyond. We don't spend much time with each other beyond the 45-minute class, but we do enjoy passing along thoughts on everything from parenting to recipes and good finds in faraway places.
I also often get asked such questions as how to dress for running outdoors in the winter, what running shoes I like, what I do to stay in shape or where I get my workout clothes.
So today, after exchanging email addresses for recipes and talking about a new restaurant in Minneapolis, the thought occurred to me that lifeontherun could be a place to exchange ideas and information.
With that, I pass along a fabulous recipe for Malaysian Chicken Pizza from Cooking Light magazine:

3/4 c rice vinegar
1/4 c firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 c low-sodium soy sauce
3 tbsp water
1 tbsp minced peeled fresh ginger
2 tbsp chunky peanut butter
1/2 to 3/4 tsp crushed red pepper
4 garlic cloves, minced
cooking spray (I use olive oil)
1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 c (2 oz) shredded reduced fat swiss cheese
1/4 c (1 oz) shredded part-skim mozzarella
1 12-inch pizza crust (make from scratch or use a mix)
1/4 c chopped green onions

1. Preheat oven to 500˚
2. Combine 1st 8 ingredients in a bowl, stir well with whisk.
3. Heat skillet coated with cooking spray. Add chicken and saute for 2 minutes. Remove chicken from pan.
4. Pour rice vinegar mixture into pan and bring to boil over medium heat. Cook mixture 6 minutes or until slightly thickened. Return chicken to pan, cook 1 minute or until chicken is done. (mixture will be consistency of thick syrup)
5. Sprinkle cheeses over prepared crust and top with chicken mixture. Bake at 500˚ for 12 minutes on bottom rack. Sprinkle with green onions. Let stand a few minutes and serve. Yield 6 servings.
(You can also cook on the grill: Brush grill with olive oil, place dough on grill & let cook briefly before flipping over. Put toppings on and cook until done.)

Calories 293 / Fat 7.3 g / Protein 18.2g / Carb 38.3g / Fiber 1.8g

Welcome to my world

My life has been reduced to waging a battle of wits against a 9-year-old, neurotic yellow lab.
For several years, we've been using old baby gates to corral our two dogs. The procedure was nothing more than a mild nuisance. And, until about two months ago, it worked.
Then, the universe shifted and threw our household's canine alignment completely out of whack.
One moment, the dog is merely borderline annoying, yet still endearing. The next, he is full-on paranoid schizophrenic, chased by voices only he can hear.
In this newfound desperation, he (the one in the back) figured out that all he had to do was push the gate until it crashed to the ground, leaving him free to wander the human world.
The problem hasn't been so much that he escapes, but rather what he does when he roams freely throughout the house without any surveillance.
Under our watchful eye, he lulls us into complacency and sticks to the dog bed or the carpet. When we're not around to know better, he skulks through the house, finding comfort on a couch or a pile of clothes in the son's room (which, I would say, is well-deserved since the clothes should either be in the dresser or hamper). In his wake, the dog (not the son) leaves a blanket of dog hair and dog stench.
We responded first by propping chairs up against the gate. It seemed like a reasonable measure.
But we quickly discovered, it was no match for the muzzle. Each night we would awake to the sound of a crashing gate followed by the skitch, skitch, skitch of doggy toenails on the kitchen floor, hightailing it for the great beyond.
Because man is always drawn to a challenge and can always build bigger and better, the husband made a seemingly more sturdy gate from leftover wood flooring. We fortified the new contraption with three chairs and went to bed reasonably assured of our superiority.
The next morning, our household awoke with an air of celebration. The wall stood. The dog was still in the kitchen. Seriously. This was a monumental achievement of epic proportions.
Unfortunately, we wouldn't know it for a few more days, but the jubilant moment was short-lived.
Several more weeks passed. Some nights, he stayed put. Others, he found the super-canine strength and agility to batter down the gate/chairs contraption.
"Maybe he really has thumbs," suggested one daughter.
We stepped back and reassessed the ground floor configuration of our house. Maybe instead of gating the dog into the kitchen, we reasoned, let's just gate off the rest of the house.
One gate blocked the stairs to the basement. Another gate cordoned off the stairs leading upstairs. I threw a third gate on top of the living room couch. The homemade fence protected the tv room.
Once again, we outwitted the dog. A week later, though, he stuck his damn nose between the fence and the woodwork to gain access to the tv room. We reinforced the fence with dining room chairs. He still managed to move the entire contraption with his snout.
Many people might have noticed the pattern, accepted defeat and given into the inevitable. Not me. I refused to wallow in the defeat of dog hair.
It was then that I spied a pair of 35-pound hand weights sitting on the floor. I put one on each chair. Hah! Try moving that!
It took a couple more days, but he did. It's got to be the thumbs.