Welcome!
I’m glad you stopped by…
Feb. 2008: Who am I? My name is Tina and I’m the forty-something mom of three young adults, all in various stages of not moving out. My husband is making noises about retirement. I am ignoring him. We’re preparing to relocate to the beach. Our house is on the market and lots of our stuff - including our winter clothes - is in storage because we naively thought we’d have moved by now. We are a family in flux, and we are chilly.
I’ve been a freelance writer for years and have had more than 400 pieces published in both hard copy publications and online media. I also work as a corporate relocation consultant and am a former real estate agent, corporate travel manager, airline agent, rodeo clown, princess, and supermodel.
Why am I here? My purpose in creating this blog is to have some fun, to connect with others, and to bitch about document my experiences as a parent of adult kids. And to share other stuff that may randomly occur to me.
Adult kid - an oxymoron? Not really. Adult kids are like us in some ways (for instance, they’ve reached their adult height) but they’re still wet behind the ears. They’re human and funny and still becoming and they screw up. So do we, but the crucial difference is that we have greater resources and hopefully, greater wisdom and maturity. What do they have? Eighteen or so years of by-the-seat-of-our-pants parenting, a burning desire for independence, our unconditional love and no qualms about using it against us, and our addresses and phone numbers. Egad.
To summarize, it came down to a choice between blogging and heavy drinking. Heavy drinking is, for now, my fall back plan.
The Kids:
Daughter: We’ll call her “Daughter”. She’s 23, just graduated with her B.A. (Bad Ass) in English Lit. last May. Very smart, artistic and ambitious, a great kid. A lot like me only better. And nicer. With longer legs, longer hair, and a longer attention span. Wants to get her doctorate and teach at the college level. Next time we buy a refrigerator we’re going to save the box for her so she will have somewhere she can afford to live on her teacher’s salary. Currently living at home awaiting grad school acceptances for this fall when she can resume her life away from us.
Son One: The Christmas Letter Version reads like this - “Son One is 21 now and has spent his time this year helping us with home repairs and sprucing up, not to mention packing and transporting boxes of stuff to storage to make our home presentable for potential buyers!” All true, but the reality is that Son One has been unemployed, living in our basement, and not aggressively looking for work. Son One spent a semester at a community college after graduation from high school. Turns out college wasn’t for him, but the bills for the loan he took out to pay for the classes he rarely attended certainly are. He has, however, learned a lot about arranging deferments. He talks about going back to school, but we don’t know if he’s serious. We hope he is because he’s smart and too charming for his own good. If I had to predict whether this boy will enjoy a successful sales career or end up doing time for some kind of white collar crime, well truthfully, right now it’s a toss up. Appearances in the police blotter: 1, for underage drinking at Ozzfest. It was in a different county, so I didn’t have access to the newspaper. It’s just as well. He was over 18 at the time and they probably published his name. Our neighbors are still in the dark. Downside: No clipping for his baby book.
Son Two: 19 year old Metalhead, talented photographer, recent high school graduate, smart as hell but, thanks to our public school system, not seriously considering further education at this point. Works at a convenience store. He does not want to move with us (the beach? are you kidding me? there’s, like, NOTHING there!), so is planning to move in with my sister for the time being. Hobbies? Yes, but not stamp collecting unfortunately. Son Two is an urban explorer. Safe? No. Legal? Rarely. Fun? Scads, evidently. Appearances in the police blotter: 1, but he was a minor and has since matured, thank God. Record expunged, clipping tucked in baby book.
The Husband: We’ll call him Yes,Dear. We’ve been married for nearly 25 years and he’s actually pretty well trained at this point. Yes,Dear is sixty something. I was his mid-life crisis, his trophy wife. I don’t think he realized when he married me that the trophy was actually The Breeders’ Cup, but he’s a good sport and a good dad.
Contact: thebiggertheyget@gmail.com
The inspiration for the name of this blog comes from an incident years ago when my kids were toddlers and we all went to the grocery store together one day. The kids obviously didn’t want to be there and conspired, with great fanfare and lots of noise, crying, and throwing themselves in front of the shopping cart, to show me what a horrible, awful, very bad idea it was to bring them with me.
I don’t think I’d had time to shower, my leg hair was brushing the tops of my shoes, I’d had “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” alternating in a constant loop through my head for weeks. I was exhausted. Feeling very unfriendly towards the whole world. I could have eaten newborn puppies for lunch, let out a satisfied belch, then picked my teeth with their bones and not felt bad about it.
Suddenly, there was someone beside me chirping, “Oh, dear, they’re precious! Enjoy them while they’re little…you know, the bigger they get, the bigger the problems.” I turned and saw a little old lady clutching a basket of cat food and tapioca. She had the loveliest, sweetest, Helen Hayes face set in a soft cloud of blue-white curls.
I so wanted to mess up that face.
I’ve never forgotten that little old lady, probably at first because I couldn’t imagine anyone being so supremely clueless and later because it became increasingly clear that she was right. If I ran into her today, I’m not sure whether I’d hug her or kick her walker out from under her but, either way, I’ll always remember her.
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