MacGyver Mom

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There are times in the parenting journey when you feel like you have taken up  a permanent residence in the innards of your child’s disesteem. Lucky for me, in regards to my daughter, I didn’t care – that much. Being a mature woman my teenager’s lack of shock and awe about the greatest that is me was quite frankly her loss. But, a part of me still craved her acknowledging, just the tiniest bit, that I was a-okay in the mom category.

I know I’m not the cool mom or the hot mom or my kid’s very best bestie because none of those roles interest me. I’m just a solid mom with no gushing adjective attached. But then something happened last week to change all that. My daughter had a life crisis and I swooped in and saved the day. I rescued her Apple AirPods.

For the technology, unaware Apple Airpods aren’t the name of a family pet or anything remotely human. The Airpods are miniscule little wireless headphones and if you’re a teenager they come in at number two, right behind the iPhone, as the most cherished thing in their world.

We were out-of-town when the tragedy happened. Like most cataclysmic events this one came out of nowhere. One second we were both exiting the car to go inside our hotel and then before I could say “make sure you throw away that Chipotle bag” an Airpod had vanished. One of the little buds had been swallowed whole by the interior of my car.

Well, to be more exact, as my daughter was disengaging one of the pods from her ear it fell out and got lodged in the no man’s land that is the seat belt thingamabob. In the part where you click in the seatbelt there’s a space that was just the right size to eat the Airpod. It was trapped, ensnared by plastic. We pounded, we went under the seat, over the seat, prodded and plied and yet the headphone remained imprisoned.

My daughter’s despair was at Defcon 1. She pleaded that we take the car to a mechanic and have the seat taken apart to free the headphone. I tried to explain that the labor expense of making that happen would equal the cost of about 10 Airpods. She then latched on to the idea of maybe, must maybe, going to buy new Airpods. This earned her a look that said – never going to happen.

Due to her distraught nature, I suggested she go up to the hotel room and mourn her Airpod in private, maybe start planning its memorial service, while I parked. What she didn’t know was that I was about to go full MacGyver on that car seat. I was getting that headphone out.

The big problem was I didn’t have any tools. So, I took a headband that was a piece of flexible metal covered in fabric and straightened it out. Then I got out a bra that fell out of a bag I had taken to Goodwill a couple of days earlier and using nail clippers cut out the underwire. Next, I attached the underwire to the metal of the headband and started the precision maneuvering needed to snake the wire into the crevice and release the headphone from its plastic grave. I felt like I was doing endoscopic surgey. It took about five minutes and required me hanging out of the backseat in a very unlady like fashion (ass in the air) but finally I freed that headphone!

When I delivered the amazing news of the successful rescue of the Airpod (via Snapchat, of course) there were literal tears of joy.

I, for one brief, shining moment was my teenager’s hero.

Furniture Shopping With My Husband -Perhaps My Worst Idea Ever

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If someone gave me the choice of being stabbed in the cornea with a fondue fork or going furniture shopping with my husband, trust me I’d pick the fondue fork/cornea combination hands down.

I will confess that it was my bright idea to force (really more of a cajole) my husband into going with me to shop for a sectional sofa for our basement. But my intentions were pure. A sofa purchase requires a butts in seat experience and I wanted an extra pair of cheeks to help make the decision.

Granted, asking a man who purchases almost everything on-line to venture inside a furniture super store on a Saturday wasn’t one of my greatest hits, but it had to be done. And all was well until we got to the store and had to park about a mile away.

It appeared that a significant portion of the metro decided to go furniture shopping that day. The parking lot, which was big enough to house a sectional sofa for Godzilla and 1,000 of his closest friends, was at capacity. After we hiked in things got worse.

The store was like a maze. I, being a veteran shopper, decided we should tackle the furniture section in a counter-clockwise motion making concentric circles to ensure we saw everything. It was a masterful plan that seamlessly covered the entire area.

My husband disagreed. He just wanted to race walk through all the furniture in what I would call a very harried fashion with no rhyme or reason. I argued with him that his free form exploration of the furniture department would result in us, perhaps, missing out on seeing the “sectional of our dreams.”

My plaintive pleas made no impact on him because he just took off.  In the two, maybe three seconds I had spent being embarrassed that I actually said out loud, “the sectional of our dreams” he was gone, as in vanished.

I was so put out that I thought, “I’ll show him” and stuck to my genius plan of covering the area in concentric circles. As I perused sectionals I got madder and madder (Where was he and why wasn’t he answering my texts?) until I was distracted by the sight of four young children drinking cans of orange soda on a white couch. Those parents either have the most spill proof kids or like to gamble because just seeing it made me a nervous wreck. The mother in me was about to shout out “Be careful!” but then I spied my husband and I was off.

Where in the heck was he going? He was leaving the furniture department. Sure, it was jam-packed with humanity, but he needed to buck up. We had sectionals to sit on.

I followed him through the second level of the store, down an escalator and then to the very back of the first floor. He seemed very sure of where he was going, almost like he was pulled there by a force field. Then it all made sense. Of course, he has gone to the electronics department, specifically the huge televisions. When I caught up to him I said, “Um, these aren’t sectionals.” He smiled informing me that he decided the size of the sectional should be based on the width of the TV.

“Really,” I asked, “Is that that some sort of dude math?

“If it gets me out of the furniture department it is,” was his quick reply.

Spoiler alert. We didn’t get a sectional, but we are getting a new TV.

Dear Snarky – A DNA Test Ruined Our Family Reunion

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Dear Snarky,

 My family reunion was a huge fiasco. My idiot cousin got one of those DNA tests and discovered that he had half siblings he didn’t know about. It looks like his dad, my uncle, cheated on his mom because one of those half siblings is my cousin’s age. 

He then thought it would a great idea to being his brand new two half siblings, who he had recently found and been in contact with, to the reunion and introduce them to the family. My uncle said he never even knew he had gotten their mother pregnant and was shocked. My aunt, his wife, got hysterical and we had to call 911 because we actually thought she has having a heart attack or seizure or both.

 Now, my cousin is asking for a family apology from everyone at the reunion for making his two newfound brothers feel so unwelcome. I think he’s the one who should apologize for putting everyone, including these new family members, in such a horrible spot.

 Signed, I need a Xanax.

Dear Xanax,

Your cousin needs his ass kicked. Make no mistake he was not motivated by kindness to his new kin. Nope. He used his two new bros as a weapon to shame and humiliate his father for having what amounts to a secret life. Mission accomplished there, but what he also did was put his mother in a horrendous situation and made his two half-brothers feel like they were part of a freak show at a carnival.

 If there’s any apologies to the family, it should be from your cousin. He needs to apologize to his new brothers for using them for his own messed up game and to his mother for humiliating her. As for his dad – the cheater – that’s a marital issue that everyone needs to stay out of. 

If I were those new family members I think I would go into hiding from your cousin because he sounds C-R-A-Z-Y!

If you have a question for Dear Snarky – 21st Century Advice With an Attitude  😉 please email snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com

 

Dear Snarky My Sister Doesn’t Give a Shit

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Dear Snarky,

I’ve got a summer family feud brewing. My sister is doing some ridiculous thing called “free training” her bScreen Shot 2018-06-15 at 1.21.07 PMaby. This is when your baby never wears a diaper and just does his business anywhere. It’s supposed to be a gentler form of potty training. To each his own, but my problem is when my sister’s family stayed at my house over Memorial Day weekend and my “free training” nephew used not only my entire home as his bathroom, but he also pooped in the pool resulting in us having to do a shock treatment and making the pool unusable for most of the long weekend.

All of this made me dis-invite my sister and her family for July 4th. My sister is now furious and is accusing me of not respecting her parenting style.

I need to shut this down now. Any advice?

Signed, What’s Wrong with a Diaper?

Dear Diaper,

The only way to shut this down is to give in to your sister and I strongly suggest you don’t do that. Because here’s the deal – just because someone has a preferred parenting style doesn’t mean they can subject the rest of the world to it.

It is totally your sister’s own business if she doesn’t want to put a diaper on her son and let him view his home and yard as one great big toilet. It’s whole other box of Pampers if she feels it’s okay for her off spring to soil property outside of their home. Beyond the disgusting factor, which is off the charts high, it’s also a public health issue.

The fact that your sister thought it was okay to let her child defecate all over your home makes me think she’s about 10 kinds of crazy. Do not cave on this issue. Just tell her that you respect your home more than her parenting style.

If you have a question for Dear Snarky – 21st Century Parenting Advice With an Attitude – please email snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com

Hair Raising Issues

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I consider myself an assertive person. Give me a family member with an issue and I’m all over it. The two areas, though, where my assertiveness evaporates is any kind of monetary salary negotiations and my hair.

I know this combo is totally non-sequitur. So, let’s first get the whole money thing out of the way. For some reason money, in regards to me getting some, is my kryptonite. I can’t explain why in almost all other arenas of my life I’m a bull-dog, but when comes to asking for a raise I lose all my boldness. It’s freaky.

I have talked about this issue with a friend who has a degree in psychology, but is currently a pharmaceutical rep, and she thinks it’s because I’m insulted that I even have to quantify my worth. It should be a given that I’m fabulous and should be compensated accordingly. Yes, yes and yes, to all of the above.  Another friend, also with a psychology degree, who is now a realtor, told me it could be a result of me being uncomfortable putting a price tag on myself.

This makes perfect sense especially when I think about my childhood. I was raised in a southern home where you didn’t talk about money. It was considered uncouth. So, perhaps that’s the problem – southern manners keep me from self-advocating. Note to self: Work on this issue – asap.

Now onto my hair. My whole adult life I’ve been a coward about telling any stylist that I don’t like what they’ve done to my hair. I will sit in the salon chair and bold face lie after I’ve dropped 100 plus dollars on my mane and say, “Yeah, it looks great. Thanks.”

In reality, it looks horrible. So, horrible, I’m already doing hair math and calculating how many times I have to wash it with Head and Shoulders to get the hideous color out. Yep, that’s right I’ve endured that many bad salon treatments that I have it down to a science how to remove color. Spoiler alert, it’s equal parts dandruff shampoo and baking soda with a vinegar rinse.

The fact that I will pay money to get my hair done and then wuss out infuriates me. Why can’t I share that my desire was, in fact, not to look like the Bride of Frankenstein? Instead of being assertive I’m persuading myself that it’s not that bad. That, it’s only hair. It’s no big deal and maybe I’m just being overly vain.

I’m ecstatic to report that recently I had a breakthrough. I finally got the gumption to stand up for myself and my follicles. During my last hair appointment, I knew things had gone terribly wrong when the stylist removed the towel and my hair looked like the dirty water that’s left over in your shampoo vacuum – murky and of indeterminate shades of ick.

I gave myself the usual pep talk of “Just wait till it’s dry. I’m sure it will be fine,” but then something happened. Something came of my mouth that I had never heard before while sitting with wet hair in a salon. I asserted myself and muttered, “This looks bad, like really bad.”

The stylist assured me all was well as she started blow drying my hair and, of course, it wasn’t. I remained strong and proclaimed, “We’re going to need to fix this because my hair is now making me sad.”

It was liberating. I felt beautiful, minus my hair of course, and I was so proud. I had done it. I had finally asserted myself all over that hair salon. Now, all I need to do is work on that money issue and I’ll be golden which, ironically, is what I was going for with my hair color.

Summer Mysteries

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Summimages-1er is a time of year that you don’t usually associate the word mysterious with. It’s sunny and bright and just way too hot for anything that involves effort filled intrigue. But, there are some summer mysteries lurking under that cloak of perennial sunshine. Mysteries that I’ve tried for years to decipher with zero luck and I’m now thinking as classifying as unsolvable. To be sure my mysteries aren’t on the same level as where the aliens are stored in Area 51, but they are, nevertheless, still baffling.

Mystery Number 1

Why is that the more expensive the summer eye-wear the better chance it means that they will vanish into thin air? Sunglasses and swim goggles disappear at an alarming rate during the summer and if you paid more than the going rate at Target for said items they will become lost in a matter of a days.

Last year, I shelled out some big bucks for premium swim goggles and three days later they were gone. It was like they dematerialized. Meanwhile, the goggles I paid probably five bucks for more than a decade ago have survived two moves across the country (and many vacations) and can always be found in the bottom of the swim bag. These goggles must be telepathic. They always find me. I’ve even, on purpose, left them at the pool multiple times because they fog up horribly and there’s always someone running after me shouting, “Hey, you forgot your goggles.”

The scenario is the same with sunglasses. Some white snazzy sunglasses I got at a party super store for 99 cents as part of a goodie bag for my daughter’s swim party eight years ago I also still own. Meanwhile, the one and only time I upgraded to Ray Ban’s they vanished into thin air before the week was out.

Of course, the moral to the mystery is don’t buy sunglasses or goggles that cost more than $10, but still I crave the knowledge about why this happens. There has to be an explanation.

Mystery Number 2

Why is that no matter how much sunscreen you apply some part of your body always gets burned? I consider myself a sunscreen ambassador. I believe in sunscreen like I believe in the healing properties of chocolate and a “Real Housewives” marathon. Yet, I’m always getting a random burn and to further the mystery it’s always a bizarre shaped patch like I’ve gotten branded with solar blazed hieroglyphics. If I think about it too much it’s like some unseen force is tattooing me. (Maybe it’s those Area 51 aliens?)

 Mystery Number 3 

This is a personal mystery that might not apply to the amazingly coordinated, but why is it so hard to gracefully get on a pool float? One would think you would just plop and drop on a float with nary a moment of embarrassment. Yet, in my reality getting on a pool float is like trying to saddle up a greased pig.

I know the prodigious amounts of sunscreen I use are to partially blame for the slipping and sliding, but there has to be some other explanation for why I, along with millions of other pool float challenged people, have long-term summer self-esteem issues related to conquering a float. One of my children took a video of me trying to get on a raft and to this day it might be the single most embarrassing thing I have ever witnessed. If you play it in fast motion it looks like the raft is trying to kill me. Again, could it be an assassination attempt, by, um-hum, that’s right – aliens?

Binge Cleaning

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There’s na21145a3450f1de069b92a002bf1bb30othing like the smell of Johnson’s paste wax. Is it a yummy smell? Oh, heck no. It’s pungent with a kick of industrial solvent, but when I get a whiff of it I know there’s some serious housecleaning going on.

Paste wax is an olfactory trigger for me. One sniff and I know what I need to do – grab two cotton dish towels reserved solely for the paste wax application process and get to work. This is all because I grew up as a child of a paste wax fiend. My mother didn’t think a house was really clean until all the wood surfaces glistened and you were basically getting high from the fumes.

Last weekend I had what my husband described as an attack of binge cleaning. I don’t like to brag about myself (that much) but I was like Wonder Woman if she was about 30 years older, wore bleach stained leggings and an old t-shirt and instead of a lasso of truth and those silver bracelet things she was finessing a Swiffer Wet Jet, a Dyson vacuum and a can of Johnson Paste Wax.

Nothing could stop me. Not dust bunnies hiding out in chandeliers that required me scaling a six-foot ladder, not crown molding that got the Magic Eraser treatment, not bathroom tile that was slapped around by a bleachy sponge. It was vicious cleaning spree that even extended to my linen closet. I purged that bad boy of about half its contents.

At first it was hard to let go of random pillow cases, fitted sheets that have lost their elastic integrity and towels that were one level above car wash rags, but I did it because I was – yeah, that’s right, Wonder Woman.

I never even asked my family to grab a mop and help out because, to be honest, they aren’t up to the task. This was a job for a mythical warrior not some humans that would haphazardly clean a floor with zero enthusiasm or muscle. Besides their vision, when it comes to seeing dirt, is significantly impaired to the point of being legally blind. (Interesting note – they also suffer from refrigerator blindness. If an item is not the size of a gallon of milk they can’t see it.)

The pinnacle of my cleaning binge euphoria was opening a fresh can of Johnson paste wax. Once you use a kitchen knife to pry the top off the metal container it’s the Defcon 1 of aromatherapy. The no-nonsense scent beckons you to go above and beyond and polish your home with a zeal you didn’t know you had.

I was in the zone until my children came home and started gagging and wheezing over the scent, calling the house “uninhabitable.” I was equal parts outraged, saddened and disappointed. How had I raised children who didn’t appreciate and savor the smell of Johnson paste wax?

In between their coughing both looked up the contents of the paste wax on their phone and in unison told me I was “killing them.”

Now I was really angry. How insulting that they thought I wasn’t well acquainted with the cleaning trifecta of mineral spirits, carnauba and microcrystalline wax.

I told them there was only one thing to do to cure them of their sensitivity. They needed to immerse themselves in the satisfying chore of polishing the dining room table and it’s eight chairs.

As I went to the kitchen to get more dish towels those fiends bolted from the house. My son sent me a text that said “let us know when it doesn’t smell like a chemical plant exploded.”

What a bunch of babies. I guess this means the paste wax legacy might be ending with me. Their loss, I promise you that.

I’ve Packed My Last School Lunch – Forever!

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I have packed my very last school lunch. In fact, I estimate that I have Glad Ziplocked more than 6,916 meals for my kids to take to school. If that number looks high to you please be advised that not once, as in never ever, in both of my children’s K-12 experience did they buy lunch at school.

Of all the parenting journeys, I’ve had I can say with one hundred percent certainty that, nothing was more fraught with peril or open to scrutiny and judgement than what you put in your child’s lunchbox. When my son started school in 2002 the lunch as a bellwether of your parenting style hadn’t yet begun. You could still throw a nacho cheese Lunchable in an insulated Thomas the Tank Engine bag and call it a day.

By the time he started second grade if you sent your kid to school with a Lunchable you might as well have also included a cartoon of unfiltered Marlboro’s and a flask because the reaction from the mom squad would be exactly the same – abject horror, followed by a shunning.

When my son reached fourth grade the Smucker’s Uncrustable was still okay, but just a year later it the white bread PB&J cut into the shape of a circle was a satanic sign that whomever packed the lunch was an evil slacker lacking in education about the demonic nature of bleached flour.

All of this was minor league, a real amateur hour, when compared to my daughter starting school four years later. In second grade her elementary school began a “Lunch Nazi” program. Okay, it wasn’t technically called that, but some really “helpful and caring moms” started a nutrition committee and began volunteering during lunch and writing disparaging notes to parents whose children’s lunchboxes they found lacking in both fresh fruits, vegetables and low sodium choices.

This lasted for about a week until a mom organized a counter attack and left a note on the school marquee that one of the “lunch note” mom’s husbands was having an affair. That was the end of school notes written by non-school personnel for quite a while.

When my youngest hit third grade lunch had become a political statement. (Full disclosure she was attending a school on the West Coast.) If you weren’t packing a fair trade, non-GMO and organic lunch for your child than you were a hater who didn’t care about Mother Earth.

Fast forward to a year later and it’s no longer about the family origin of the carrot sticks in the snack size Ziploc instead lunches had transcended into works of art. Moms were packing “masterpieces” in Bento boxes. Sandwiches that looked like hedgehogs, fruit and cheese that resembled Cinderella’s castle and one kid actually had a mini charcuterie board. It was not a good year for a mom with a picky kid that only liked, yep, Smuckers Uncrustables with a Capri Sun chaser. Let the public flogging begin.

That was also the same year parents began the practice of sending kids on playdates with their own snacks and it wasn’t due to any food allergies. It was because, as one mother explained to me, “fear of food that hadn’t been vetted by the child’s parent.”

By the time middle school rolled around it was no longer about the food, but who packed it. Alerting other parents that your child makes his own lunch became a sign that you were raising a superior kid with, of course, superior parents. So, if anyone reading this was about to send me an email about how your children have been packing their own lunch since their seventh birthday – don’t.

Today I welcome the sweet freedom of being done with packing school lunches. In fact, I think I’ll celebrate with a Nacho Cheese Lunchable. Cheers!

Dear Snarky – Teacher Gift Drama

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Dear Snarky,Screen Shot 2018-05-16 at 10.12.57 AM

It’s time for the end of the year class gift for my son’s fourth grade teacher and the class mom is adamant about not buying the teacher a gift. This mom thinks she is Miss Manners and since the teacher has never acknowledged the birthday present, Christmas or teacher appreciation gifts that the kids gave her we should be quote “officially finished with gifts for this teacher.”

I agree that the fact that the teacher couldn’t even bother to send a mass thank you email to all the parents is kind of lame, but it just seems petty to me to not give her an end of the year present and I kind of think I need to cover my ass because what if my next kid gets this teacher. I don’t want to leave on a bad note. What do you think Snarky?

Signed, Conflicted

Dear Conflicted,

First, let me share that if the only problem you’ve had with this teacher is her lack of thank you note writing acumen than count your blessings. 

That said, there’s an easy fix for this problem. Instead of collecting money for a gift have each child write a thank you note to the teacher that shares what they liked best about her and the school year. Then take those notes, tie a big ribbon around them and present them to the teacher. The teacher will love reading them and bonus – nowhere in any etiquette book do you have to write a thank you note for receiving a thank you note. 

P.S. I also suggest that some of these moms get a life outside of their children’s elementary school. Yes, it’s gauche the teacher never did any kind of thank you for her gifts, but as I’ve said a million times your child’s K-12 journey is a marathon not a sprint. Pace yourself and carefully pick your battles.

If you have a question for Dear Snarky “21st Century Advice with an attitude”;). Email snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com. 

Can You Still Be Considered A Southerner If You Hate Grits?

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Southern-Style-Grits-e017b085-1When your grandmother is the “Grits Queen” not liking “Southern Porridge isn’t an option.

As a Texas girl with a southern mama and grandmother, I was raised with a keen and enthusiastic appreciation of brunch, although we called it Sunday dinner. It was the meal you ate at noon right after you got back from church. In its purest form, it was a salute to carbohydrates. Nothing was safe from being battered or deep-fried. Even bacon got coated in a mix of brown sugar, eggs and flour and then was plunged into a pool of hot, bubbling Crisco.

The final flourish was rolling the bacon, which now resembled a hybrid of chicken tender and fritter, in cinnamon sugar and then dipping it in honey. I’m surprised no one had a cardiac episode at the table while they were eating. But then again, it was the late 70s and my grandpa’s preferred dining style was a forkful of food and then a drag on a Lucky Strike cigarette. Suffice it to say; the health movement had not permeated my grandparent’s house yet.

The one brunch food I had no appetite for was grits. I thought they were horrible — like, pretend to eat it and spit it out in your napkin, horrible. This devastated my grandmother. She had a reputation for being the “Grits Queen,” and she was proud of that moniker. In her mind, every southern woman had to be the master of three things in the kitchen: biscuits, gravy and grits. Not only could I not stand to eat grits, but there was also no way I wanted to learn to make them.

This lead to my grandmother staging what I would today call an intervention. She had the female family members gathered in her kitchen and each one shared with me how my shunning of grits hurt them deeply. (Did I mention I was still in elementary school?) The result of this exercise was me vowing to learn the art of making grits at my grandmother’s side.

It was a cooking lesson I wasn’t looking forward to because, in my opinion, grits were gross. They’re the equivalent of eating raw cornbread batter – tasteless and grainy. Seriously, blech. Even as a child my food theory was that if you have to work that hard to make something edible, then it’s the lord’s way of saying don’t bother. It’s the same reason no one should eat Cream of Wheat — it takes a pound of sugar and butter to even make it palatable. Grits are even worse.

First, hominy grits (the OG in the grits category) are just plain old corn kernels (my grandmother was all about the Boone County White) that have been tortured with some sinister substance like lye. (Do you know what lye is? It’s what our ancestors used for soap. I’m just going to throw it out there that if we moved on to lathering up with Irish Spring, why are we still using lye for food prep?) Once the lye bloats the corn kernels to three times their original size (kind of like my family after eating deep-fried bacon) and they look a little like teeth ripped out of someone’s mouth by a serial killer with a dental fetish, you then haphazardly grind up the teeth (oh sorry, I mean corn). After that, you have to soak the mixture in water and then add half of the stuff in your pantry and refrigerator to make it appear to be something a human should consume.

Based on all of this, was it wrong for me to just want to be left alone to savor the caloric splendor of bacon dipped in a brown sugar batter? Of course not, but I loved my grandmother, so I faked it. I put on an apron and vowed that I could conquer my fear of grits. Ugh, I embraced the creepy corn and went through the motions of grinding, soaking and making a “porridge” that looked like jaundiced papier-Mâché goo that had been left out on the sidewalk in mid-July. That was the easy part. The hard part was sitting down with my grandma to enjoy the “fruits of our labor.”

I took the smallest spoonful I could get away with and realized that, with my grandmother and two great aunts staring at me, I wouldn’t be able to pull the old spit out in the napkin routine. I was going to have to actually eat my grits. Then something magical happened – yuck turned into a very relieved me thinking, “Praise God, I don’t think I’ll die from eating this.” These grits tasted almost decent. My female relatives cheered when I smiled and took another very, very small bite.

I felt euphoric like I had passed some sort of generational test — and I had. I was now part of the sisterhood of grits.