The Jennifer Blogs

Let this be a warning to any teenage girls reading my blog. Boys suck. Especially teenage boys. Don't let them fool you with their sweet-talking. Teenage boys leave their underwear on the floor at home. They are lazy. They don't make their beds. They sass back to their mommas. They wear the same thing days in a row without washing it. They are mean to their sisters. They are lazy. They hate school. They don't pick up after themselves. They lie. They are soooooo lazy. They are selfish. They don't wear deodorant unless you make them. They hate to get their hair cut. And did I mention they are LAZY?



Oh. My. Gosh. Being a mom is tough. Being mother to a teenage son is near impossible.



Here's just one small example. I am homeschooling my son over the summer to help him catch up where he has fallen behind. He will be able to catch up an entire grade by doing this. It only requires about two hours of work per day, five days a week. In other words, it doesn't interfere with your life if you get up a couple of hours early and get it done. Ya know, that's what a girl would do anyway.



But not my son. He still sleeps til noon. Then when he gets around to the schoolwork he notices he has WAY more than two hours worth of work ahead of him. Why? Because a good hour of it is correcting errors from the previous day's work. Things like "Capitalize the word *Spain,*" for instance. No matter how many times we go over capitalization and punctuation, he still insists on doing it the lazy way. "It takes too long to hit the shift key." WHAT?!? You're freakin' kidding me!?! 


I wonder if we had raised our kids milking cows and plowing fields if the boy would be less lazy? Or is it just a boy thing? Are all boys this lazy? Too lazy to hit the shift key? Too lazy to capitalize proper nouns? Too lazy to put periods at the ends of sentences? And how does he not realize he is creating more work for himself? Of course, it's more work for me too since I have to go over all the work. That makes me a very unhappy mum.



So to all my friends in Lakeland who are spawning off female children -- GOOD FOR YOU! YOU WILL LOVE LIFE! For Beth in Tokyo, I'm sorry to tell you that boys are lazy. Tell Naomi to get used to having to do *everything,* as D'Ette puts it. (She's used to re-doing all her brother's housework.)

And for you men who read this -- you *used* to be a boy -- what made you stop being so lazy? Or are you still lazy? If you are, you probably will be too lazy to leave a comment anyway.

One week from today is April Fool’s Day. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.



When I was a kid, my little brother and I used to love to play tricks on each other. I have to admit -- he got me every time! He was a far better jokester than I was. When we were about 8 or 9 he came to the door screaming as I walked in from playing with the neighbor across the street,
"Jen! Jen! You’ll never guess who won the Lottery!"

"Who? Not Mom?"

"No...guess again." (I assume he felt it would be too much of a stretch to tell me our mother won the Lottery. And he always made me, "guess again.")
I never did guess it, so he just out and told me, "Veda!" (My mom’s best friend)

I was flipping out...imagining that Veda was going to spread the wealth and I could buy that Barbie Dream House (or whatever I was wishing for at that particular moment in time).
Then he brought me back to reality.
"APRIL FOOLS!!!"



Another year he taped the handle on the sink hose so that when I turned the faucet on I got doused!



I only pulled two really good April Fools Pranks my entire life. I was doing mornings for a radio station in Huntsville, AL and two years in a row, I played a joke on my listeners. The whole morning show was in on it, but I was the one who dreamed up the ideas.



The first year we told people that there were several traffic lights in the city that had new signal sensors. You had to blow your horn to get the light to change. We even had a cop call us who told us that he was off duty, but that we got him hook, line and sinker. It was all fun and no one got hurt.



But the next year I really pissed people off. I told them, "remember -- thanks to Bill 105A (or whatever we named it), you have to have your taxes turned in by midnight tonight, or file an extension. In my mind, the worst that would happen is people would get their taxes done two weeks early.



Oh noooo ... some people actually turned around and headed back home, called in sick (or late) to work, and proceeded to do their taxes. My boss got serious complaints and someone even wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper about how careless the radio station was to allow that kind of joke on the air. The general manager was SO mad at us -- me specifically. So anyway ... remember when you turn your radio on one week from today -- April 1st -- not to believe everything you hear. Don’t believe everything your friends tell you. And be careful when walking around the corner at the office. You never know ...

Ever since I moved to Tokyo I've been looking for bloggable moments. I've even got the kids trained. They will say something funny and I'll laugh...laugh...laugh. One of them will ask me, "Is this going in the blog?" They used to ask me, "Are you going to talk about this on the radio?" Now it's the blogs that worry them.



Like the other day I was telling Jean-Luc that he will have to shave soon. He's getting some fur on his upper lip. My little boy is becoming a man. Look out world! I don't know how old most guys are when they start shaving. I was oblivious to the fact that my brothers shaved when I was growing up. I had my own problems to deal with. Boys. Pimples. My period. All that fun stuff. So guy shaving wasn't even on my radar. But I know that at age 14, Jean-Luc will have to start shaving soon.



When I told him that he'd be shaving, Jean-Luc was adamant that he will NOT be shaving his lip. I told him that he would too be shaving. We went back and forth - "Will not." "Will too." "Will not." "Will too." (We're really mature around my house.) Until finally I called him a name. I said, "Listen here Paco McHairy Lip, you WILL too be shaving."

D'Ette liked my Spanish name for Jean-Luc, but she did me one better. She said, "We can call him Jalapeno!"



Before she could even ask I told her, "Yes. It's going in the blog."

If I had known as a girl the things I know today about boys, I would probably have entered a convent. Well, first I'd have had to convert to Catholicism. But that's beside the point.



Raising a teenage boy has shed so much light onto things. Every day I ask Jean-Luc, "Did you put deodorant on?" The answer is always the same, "No." Every day I have to remind him to comb his hair, wash his face, brush his teeth. All that wouldn't be such a big deal except that he's 14. He should have this hygiene thing figured out by now.



So tonight I asked him to brush his teeth before he went to bed. Exasperated I said, "Please brush your teeth at least ONCE this week." He shot back at me, "This isn't the first time I've brushed my teeth this week." So I said, "Okay, so brush them for the second time." His response? "I've brushed my teeth three times this week!" And he seemed so proud. Three times this week. And it's only Friday night. I guess I should be happy.