My Struggle to be a Cool Wife

August 21st, 2008

I have always considered it imperative to be a cool wife. When I was in my twenties, I had a lot of guy friends. This was because I did a lot of stuff that other girls didn’t really like to do, and because I just liked hanging out with guys. Many times these guy friends had girlfriends and wives that weren’t so thrilled about me being in the picture. A couple of them even demanded that her man cut all contact with me. I didn’t understand this at all. I thought that each one of these women was a jealous, insecure, neurotic bitch and couldn’t begin to fathom how such a cool guy could tolerate, much less like or even love this person. By the time I met my now-husband, we were of the age where a lot of our friends were married, so I had a lot of time to hang out with actual married couples. I would hear a friend use the term “She won’t let me…” and it blew me away. I would always think, “How can a person not let another person do anything? Who would stand for that? Where are his balls?” But the most offensive uncool wife qualities, to me, were nagging and martyrism. Good god I would never be that. If I ever became a wife, I was going to be a cool wife, easy, confident, always fun and certainly not jealous.

Well, life (and 5 years of marriage and a 100-year old house and two young kids) has a way of changing things. Sometimes I find it hard to be a cool wife. My husband is a super laid-back guy and might not consider it a state of emergency if the screen door stays off-track all summer. I am a type-A freak who considers everything a state of emergency; I want anything that breaks fixed right now. My husband is fashion-challenged. I consider it my job (and sort of my privilege) to rid him of his albatross of a wardrobe and dress him like the hottie that he is. However, he absolutely will not part with any of it and still wears one of his many pairs of pleated, heavy cotton, faded Dockers to work about two days per week, while the silk blend Kenneth Cole flat fronts that I bought him just hang there. I find myself harping on him about this, because damn it, he is wasting all of that hotness, and I think it just makes him more resolute. I am horrified to find myself angry that he chose to go on a boys’ weekend over a family weekend. That is a very uncool wife quality. Oh, and jealousy, as it turns out, I am the jealous type. I would not be very happy at all if he developed the kind of friendship with a female that involved talking on the phone and meeting for lunch. How hypocritical is that?

Here’s the problem with the before-mentioned nagging and martyrism; they don’t go hand in hand. If they did you could resolve to never be either one. Either you nag to get what you want or need done, or, if you don’t nag and it doesn’t get done, you have resentment, and possibly, martyrism. I grew up Catholic, so I was exposed to plenty of martyrism and would rather shoot myself than be a martyr, (Think: “I wanted to go to dinner with Angela but I had to stay home and caulk the windows because they’re not going to caulk themselves” with a dramatic sigh). No, no, no. So that leaves nagging or resentment unless you are super laid-back, which, again, I am not. I usually go the route of resentment because I’ve always felt sorry for husbands with nagging wives. But resentment is so unhealthy, and, really, pretty uncool. In Oprah magazine this month there is an article about this exact thing—women not saying anything when they are unhappy because they don’t want to come across as a bitch. The author concludes that you must say something and I think that she’s right. But that’s scary because it requires both a behavior and attitude change. It seems that whichever way I go there’s no way to be as much of a cool wife as I always thought I’d be. Lucky for me he loves me anyway and he says that he will still think I’m cool if I step into the shallow water of speaking up—otherwise known as nagging.

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I’ve Still Got (Some of) It

July 24th, 2008

Over time, I have gradually lost my ability, or nerve, to do most of the adventurous or thrill-seeking things that I used to do. I stopped wanting to party all night and drink 10 beers around age 28. I haven’t wanted to sky dive or bungee jump since my early twenties. I would repel or rock-climb any day of the week, but that takes access to rock and someone far more skilled than me to set up. I sold my motorcycle when I was 30 because I hadn’t ridden in years after seeing a motorcyclist lying in the interstate with his guts torn open. I can’t even run, which used to give me a rush every time, because of various joint issues.

The one thing in life that always gave me unparalleled thrill was barefoot waterskiing. To me, there is nothing in the world to like skiing on my feet at 38 mph. The last time that I had skied barefoot was before I got pregnant with my daughter 5 years ago. I have since had 2 C-sections, in which my abdominal muscle was cut, and was honestly unsure if I would ever barefoot again, as the challenge of barefooting is riding on your butt until the boat gets up to speed, and that utilizes nothing but abs.

Last Friday night I was at Lake Cumberland and the water was glass, so I suited up in my dry-rotting barefoot suit and gave it a shot. Guess what? It was like nothing had changed—I got up on the very first try and it was FANTASTIC! I went until my feet hurt too much, and then got up again on the next try. My husband had never seen me do it and I scored big points with him, though I’m pretty sure that I ended up annoying him with my jubilation (think: fists in the air triumphantly shouting “I am the King of the World!” and howling at the moon). It’s been almost a week and, as my butt no longer hurts to the touch, I’m ready to go again. I’m not feeling quite as bad about being 39 right now.

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I Don’t Know How to Text

July 8th, 2008

I don’t know how to text. My husband doesn’t know how to text either. I’m not even sure that I can text as I had my phone’s internet access cut off because my kids kept connecting me. I tried a couple of times; my brother refused to call me for a while, only to text, in an attempt to force me into the 21st century. It took me an inordinate amount of time to type a simple message because I kept skipping past the letters I needed. I never figured out how to put in punctuation so I’d have to use 3 or 4 spaces between sentences.

Since I left a formal work environment, three years ago, I’ve missed out on a lot. I didn’t know that you can’t send personal email at work anymore, and I just found out about flash drives, quite a relief as I can’t figure out how to format a DVD on my computer and had still been backing everything up on CD’s. Maybe if I had a boss, she’d have been texting me about meetings all of this time and requiring me to respond. Or maybe there would have been a required technology training on how to text.

Of course, if I had teenagers, I would have to know how to text. My friends with teenagers all know how to text. I have always considered them to be technologically enlightened, but, come to think of it, it’s probably just communication survival for them.

I like the idea of texting. It would be fun to send sexy messages to my husband throughout the day. It would be neat to use those acronyms like LOL (I saw this on my forum and googled it—it means “laugh out loud”). I could just text someone when I need to contact them but am not in the mood to actually talk to them. Plus it would just be cool to say, “Text me”.

Maybe I’ll go to the AT&T store and get those guys to show me how to do it. I can walk there and I annoy them all the time with simple cell phone questions anyway. Maybe I’ll even get them to show me how to send a picture.

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Man, I’m Glad that I’m Not a Celebrity

June 26th, 2008

It would suck to be a celebrity. I came to this conclusion the other night when I went to Walgreens in my junkiest around-the-house shorts, flip flops, unshowered, no makeup and my hair in a ponytail. Nobody knew me and nobody cared. In fact, most of them looked just as disheveled as me. That would never work if I was a celebrity. Being rich would be cool, but everything that goes with it would offset the coolness for me. Here are some of the reasons that it would suck to be a celebrity:

1) You could never, ever leave your house without being photographed, which means that you could never even go outside to sit on your porch without makeup, designer clothes, and professional hair. Even if you had a 12-foot high fence, there’d be some guy with a camera harnessed to your neighbor’s tree shooting pictures of you in your pajamas and bunny slippers.

2) You could never go anywhere and have privacy. In addition to being photographed, people would stare, point, scream your name and beg for your autograph. In order to go to Starbucks and sit outside and enjoy a latte, you would have to have a full disguise. The wig would be too itchy and it would be way too much trouble.

3) You would have to get divorced. That is because celebrities can only date celebrities (everyone knows this), and eventually that celebrity would cheat on you with another celebrity, or you would cheat on them. All celebrities eventually get divorced.

4) You would never know if people really liked you or if they just wanted to get something from you or be seen with you. If you plan on being a celebrity, do not ditch your friends back in Des Moines; they might not be rich or hot or famous, but they will be the only people who still like you when you become a B-lister.

5) You could never eat again. Seriously. I have 3 words for you: Jennifer Love-Hewitt. Maybe that’s 2 words. Whatever.

6) In addition to never eating again, you would have two options to stay that thin: 4 hours every day at the gym or take drugs. Smoking to stay thin isn’t an option for celebrities over the age of 25, as it ages the skin at an exponential rate.

7) Speaking of skin, even if you’d never smoked, you would have to start getting Botox at about age 28, even if you were a male celebrity. By 35 it would be nips and tucks, and by 48, plan on a full face-lift.

8) You would have to live in Los Angeles or New York City. Not that there’s anything wrong with New York City.

___________________ _____________________

Please visit www.iusedtobecool.com for a bunch of cool stuff that you can buy for yourself and your non-celebrity friends. You can buy it if you’re a celebrity too – in fact, if you’re a celebrity, make sure that you get photographed in it!

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Kids at a wedding reception—are you kidding me?

June 17th, 2008

We were recently invited to a night wedding. When I opened the invitation, I was overjoyed; a night wedding! I love night weddings; they are about the only opportunities that I have now to wear my hottest dresses, a great excuse to get my hair and nails done, in general to have a night to feel great. Then there is the dancing. And the (free) drinking. Everyone is happy and nice. It’s summer, so there’s the whole warm weather thing going on. And, most importantly, time with my husband without the kids. Night weddings mean a cab and an overnight babysitter, or, even better, the kids spending the night with grandma. An invitation to a night wedding is about the best thing that I can imagine finding in my mailbox.

So you can imagine my dismay when the invitation read, “Children welcome”. Noooooooo. No, no, no, no, NO! Why? Why children at a night wedding? Don’t get me wrong; I love kids, I have kids, I chose both of my careers so that I could work with kids. But a night wedding is for adults; for Pete’s sake, children need to be sleeping at night. I am not taking my children to a night wedding. But other people are. And that’s going to mess up my time. Because the whole atmosphere of a wedding reception is determined by the presence of children (or lack of). Think about the wedding receptions that you’ve been to that have been adult only: everybody is having fun, it’s all romantic and magical. Everyone is dancing, lots of slow dances. You know that everyone is going to go home and get it on after it’s over. Now let’s think about wedding receptions involving kids: the kids take over the dance floor—every time. C’mon, really think about it, have you ever been to a wedding reception where the kids haven’t taken over the dance floor? No, the answer is no. There has never been a wedding in the history of, well, history, that children haven’t taken over the dance floor when present. Kids jacked up on sugar mainlined into their bloodstream from 6 cokes and 3 pieces of cake running in circles and doing the funky chicken. Kids screaming and falling down and rolling around and definitely not cute to anyone except for their parents and grandparents. With said parents and grandparents standing around the dance floor exclaiming, “Isn’t she/he adorable?” The bride and groom don’t even get to get to have the spotlight because the kids will never leave the dance floor, and when they do timidly venture out there, some kid invariably runs underneath the bride’s dress. Not funny, not cute. In my opinion, it is very uncool to bring your kid to a wedding reception, no matter what the invitation says.

Wedding invitations are tricky. As resolutely as I feel about kid-free weddings, some people feel equally strong about taking their kids everywhere. It is still not considered PC to put “adults only” on your wedding invitation, but I did it. So did my sister and my cousin. Because some people choose to read selectively, I went with the fourfecta: “Adults only” on the actual invitation, the envelope addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith” and a response card titled, “John and Ann”, requiring them to fill in the number of attendees so that I could catch potential infractions early. And, yes, it pissed some people off. “Who does she think that she is?” “If my children are not welcome, then I’ll be damned if I’m going to go.” “Does she think that we are made of money? I’m not getting a gift and a babysitter! Screw her, I’m not going” (Good!) A couple of people just blatantly ignored the invitation and brought their kid anyway. And one that I know of did it out of spite. That really pissed me off. Because it was my wedding. Just like this is their wedding and they can invite kids if they want to. But I bet they don’t want to, I bet their parents are making them because nobody wants to deal with Aunt Jane still bitching about it at the Christmas party four years from now.

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The Difference that Ten Years Makes – Part 2

June 11th, 2008

Again, I am reflecting on change, specifically my change from a tough chick to a wimp. This past weekend I went to visit my best friend in St. Louis. I drove at $4 per gallon because I took my daughter and she is too old to fly free, plus the airport is 45 minutes from my friend’s house, which would be a major hassle for her. I talked it up as a “girls” weekend and my daughter and I were both really excited.

As it got closer to Thursday, however, I started to get nervous. When I get anxious about something, my stomach starts to hurt before I am even aware that something is bothering me. It was difficult for me to admit it to myself, but I was nervous about driving 5 hours alone. You might be thinking that that’s a rational thing to be anxious about, so what’s the big deal? Here it is: I used to pride myself on my independence, part of which included driving long distances all alone and loving it; truly loving getting out on the open road in my Sentra, listening to the Counting Crows or Bush or whoever on my tape deck, no cell phone or GPS. I loved stopping at rest areas and talking to people I would never meet again. I loved watching the sunset as I drove, beautiful whether over a corn field in Iowa or the rocks of Moab. Night driving? What a great idea- not wasting precious daylight hours. My dad honestly thought that I should be an over-the-road trucker; he brought it up regularly for years. When I lived in Dallas I’d drive the 13 hours home (to Kentucky) in one day—leave at 7am, get home at 8pm, plenty of time to go out. The nine hours to Branson? Easy one. I even drove to and from Colorado-20 hours-alone, though I would stop for the night on that one. For gosh sake I used to ride a motorcycle on I-95 in Florida. Yes, I really did that, and I am somehow still alive. Five measly hours to St. Louis? Laughable, a piece of cake.

Well, I’ve gotten lazy over the years; my husband does all or most of the distance driving. I haven’t driven more than an hour and a half alone in eight years, since the summer of 2000, when I drove home from Denver for the last time. Pathetic.

The drive turned out to be okay, even though I couldn’t listen to music because my daughter was watching “Stuart Little 3″ over and over and won’t wear headphones. There was one tense hour of pitch blackness on a stretch of unlit road in Illinois and a few construction slowdowns, but we made it there and back just fine. And I feel marginally less lame.

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The Difference that Ten Years Makes

June 2nd, 2008

Ten years ago I was living in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Ten years ago today I went for a long hike in the Cloud Forest during the day, and went to a drum circle party at night. I know this to be true because I consulted my journal from 1998 (I keep this to remind myself that I did, once, have a life). At some point that day, I probably lay in my hammock, perhaps to take a nap after the hike, perhaps to read a chapter or two before the night’s festivities. It was probably 77 perfect degrees, because it is 77 degrees almost everyday in the dry season there. It would have been silent except for the distant howl of a monkey or the song of an exotic bird. Vivid blue monarch butterflies would have been fluttering about. One thing for sure is that I wouldn’t have had a care in the world. At some point, while lying in my hammock, I may have absentmindedly wondered what I would be doing ten years from that very day.

Well, today I cleaned my potty-training son’s pee off of the toilet seat exactly 8 times. I spent two hours playing Pocahontas (again) with my kids, who insist that I be Pocahontas’s father, and I answered a business call “Chief Powhatan here” in a politically incorrect Native American accent. I took my daughter to see her cousin in a recital where I sat for 90 agonizing minutes watching little girls wearing lipstick dance. My husband and I finished our day, as all parents do, with a bathing, tooth brushing, book reading, procrastination session that should take about 30 minutes, but always ends up taking 3 times that long.

Now all of that I could not have imagined. Not that I didn’t want a husband and kids; that was always my intention, in a very abstract, thank-god-that’s-a-long-time-from-now kind of way. But that is what I did today. And if you gave me the chance, right now, to go back to being 29, back to my utterly carefree existence in Costa Rica, I would turn you down, because, despite everything, I love this life. All of my hours spent lying in hammocks, sitting around fires with friends, and watching the sun rise over the ocean- - 90 miles away but visible in the clean air of Monteverde – all of those hours couldn’t come close to the few minutes of bliss, of overwhelming, crushing love that I have each night as I watch my children sleeping. As for my husband, well, I love him more than I had ever imagined, ten years ago, that I could love anyone. He is an absolutely amazing husband and father. If he took us to live in a row house in Detroit I would be happy to go just to get to spend a few hours with him at the end of each day.

No, even if you guaranteed that I would have this life later on, I would not go back to the peace and tranquility and freedom and youth that I had 10 years ago today. I’d be afraid that you would renege on your promise. But I sure do miss it.

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Is that Teenager Laughing at ME?

May 17th, 2008

Today I went to Holiday World with my kids and my husband in our minivan.

Yes, Holiday World, a kiddie amusement park. A place that I always swore that I would never, ever, ever go in my whole life. Funny how having kids changes your perspective on things. I never understood how parents did crazy things like use precious vacation days and pay $110 to get into a tiny amusement park and be happy to do it, just because it makes their kids happy. But now I understand.

The weather was fantastic. It was not crowded because schools haven’t let out yet–only a handful of parents with young kids and a bunch of teenagers on their 8th grade graduation trip. It was freaky clean so I didn’t have to worry (as much) about my kids getting a vile disease from the grip bar on the Scrambler. It was fun, it really was. Our kids were ecstatic and we decided that maybe we are amusement park people after all. I was having a great day.

At one point, I was walking along with my friend Laura, and she said, “God, can you believe that we are 39? All of these teenagers are laughing at us.” WHAT??? Laughing at us? Laughing at ME? Then I realized how I must look to them with my bent-up straw cowboy hat, my “I’m still cool” t-shirt (yeah, right), my capris that, according to Adam Glassman in Oprah magazine, are exactly the wrong length for me, and my tennis shoes and crew socks. Pushing an empty stroller strewn with sippy cups, SPF 50 sunscreen and wet wipes.

Then it hit me: Karma had come and bitten me right in the butt. I had a sudden flashback of being on Spring Break in New Orleans with my roommate and getting into a verbal altercation with a woman at a bar. When we left, we stood outside the plate glass window and taunted her with hand motions that said, “Me 22, You 44” over and over again. Yes, big exaggerated movements where I would point to myself and put up 2 fingers on each of my hands and then point to her and put up 4 fingers on each of my hands. Over and over. Yes, I really did that. I am not proud. And I feel soooo bad for that woman now. What if she was really only 38 or 40 at the time? What if she was on a date with a man that she was trying to impress? What if she was already having a really hard time coming to grips with getting older? The fact that I had consumed 4 Hurricanes doesn’t alleviate my guilt. What if some young girl did that to me?

I realized that hypothetically being laughed at by teenagers isn’t the worst thing that could happen to me and enjoyed the rest of the day with my family and friends being a happy, uncool 39-year-old mom with snot on my shirt at an amusement park.

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A Mom’s Coolness Level as Determined by the Vehicle She Drives

May 11th, 2008

For Mother’s Day I thought I’d reflect on cool moms vs. uncool moms, the catalyst in this comparison being the vehicle that they drive. Plus, I’m just on a minivan kick.

There’s a whole spectrum of coolness in vehicles for moms to haul their kids and their kids’ junk around in. The minivan is, of course, the least cool vehicle that I can imagine. Sedans fall in the middle, Subaru wagons and most SUV’s are up there near the top. I am guessing that most people would consider the Cadillac Escalade and Volvo SUV to be among the most cool vehicles for a mom to drive. (The Chevy Silverado 1500 extended cab is the most cool vehicle that I can imagine a mom driving, but I doubt that many other people would agree with that). For the sake of comparison, I’m going with the Cadillac Escalade and the minivan (any minivan).

Legend:
CEM = Cadillac Escalade Mom
MM = Minivan Mom

Favorite Clothing Store:
CEM: Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Forever 21 for a fun, flirty occasion
MM: Consignment, Target for a splurge

Everyday Shoes:
CEM: Nine West ballet flats
MM: flip-flops

Shampoo:
CEM: Whatever Gwynneth Paltrow’s using
MM: Suave

Weekday hair:
CEM: Blowout—I get up an hour earlier than everyone else in my house to wash it and blow dry it straight—like Gwynneth’s
MM: ponytail

Salon/Spa:
CEM: The new place in town with the hot stone massage/acupuncture/mani-pedi combo package
MM: The couch with a bottle of Sally Hansen after the kids have gone to bed

Skin Care product (face):
CEM: Whatever Gwynneth’s using
MM: The St. Ives line

Gym:
CEM: I have a personal trainer who comes to my home
MM: My sister comes over on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we walk around the neighborhood

Outfit for volunteering at my child’s school:
CEM: tennis skirt
MM: sweats

Favorite Restaurant:
CEM: Sushi or Mediterranean
MM: Applebee’s

Favorite TV Show:
CEM: America’s Next Top Model, CSI
MM: Survivor, CSI

Favorite band/musician:
CEM: Celine Dion
MM: Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Rascal Flatts

Song:
CEM: Whatever that cool, edgy, new age–y song that is on the Saturn commercial–Mental note: must Google it and download it before the next dinner party.
MM: Hannah Montana is always playing at my house, so I don’t know any new music. Gotta go with “You give love a bad name” by Bon Jovi

What I’m reading right now:
CEM: Love in the Time of Cholera—It’s on Oprah’s list and my reading group will be discussing it next Tuesday.
MM: The Horse Whisperer

Hobbies/Interests:
CEM: Hosting dinner parties, Tennis, Shopping
MM: Scrapbooking, Bunco

Ideal Girls’ Weekend:
CEM: Shopping on Michigan Avenue
MM: Scrapbooking marathon

Ideal Weekend with the Husband:
CEM: West Palm Beach
MM: Can you guarantee continuous childcare for at least 38 hours? We’ll do anything.

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One Woman’s Journey from Cool Chick to Minivan Mama:
It’s hard to be cool in a minivan

May 3rd, 2008

The other day I came across a song that pretty much sums it all up: “It’s Hard to be Cool in a Minivan” by the Oakridge Boys. In retrospect, it’s pretty amazing that no one has told me about this song, as it came out in 2006 and all my friends know about my minivan hang-ups. Here is the first stanza and chorus:

Sittin’ at a red light, down around Sunset
A girl pulled up beside me in a candy-apple red Corvette
She pulled down her shades, gave me a wink
I gave her a little smile back
Then she laughed as she hit the gas
I remembered where I was at

Chorus
(‘Cause) It’s hard to be cool when you’re behind the wheel
Of an eight passenger automobile
In a big bubble, cruisin’ down the street
With Barney blarin’ and a baby seat
Hey it can be done, but I’m tellin’ you man
It’s hard to be cool in a minivan.

I couldn’t begin to count how many times I said, “I will never drive a minivan” back when I was hip and cool (or imagined that I was). Of course it was said with absolute contempt for anyone who actually did. And I really really believed that I never would. When my friend Tara traded in her Ford Explorer for a Windstar I couldn’t believe it; I was so disappointed. Then her extremely hip mother did it too, and I was just beside myself.

Two years later, I had a ten-month-old and was 4 months pregnant. I was driving my husband’s Silverado extended cab (I had an F-150 single cab) and was having a hard time getting my daughter or myself into the truck. So it was time to shop vehicles. We didn’t even think to consider a minivan; we were looking for used SUV’s and they were all just too hard to get into, hard to reach back to our daughter, more money than we had to spend. One freezing day in January we were standing in the lot at Carmax holding the baby carrier and shivering to death, and the salesman said, “I have a Windstar all heated up and running if you want to try that.” We rolled our eyes at each other but we did, mostly because we were so cold. We took a 20-minute ride and got out and got back in the truck, both too ashamed to say what we were thinking: “That was GREAT!” Captain’s seats with armrests up front, seating for 5 more; when my daughter started crying I just got up and walked back there and sat next to her. Then there was the automatic sliding door, I had never experienced anything like that. And these are the features on an old minivan—imagine a new one—all 3 of the back doors open automatically, DVD systems with LCD’s in the second and third rows, stow-and-go seating. Once we admitted our shame we started looking for a minivan, and ended up with our 1999 Toyota Sienna. My friends gave me so much crap that I had an “I used to be cool” bumper sticker made up for it, which made me feel slightly better; at least people were laughing at the sticker and not me. Well, they were probably laughing at me too.

That was 3 years ago and our van is now 9 years old and it has been pretty darn fantastic—no maintenance (knock on wood) at 114K. It’s fun to configure the seats around in different ways. Here is the very best part: when I walk out of my house, I click ‘unlock’ and then I click ‘open door’ and my kids run into the van and are sitting in their car seats by the time I get there, loaded down with diaper bags and all of their other junk.

So you might be thinking that this should be titled, “Ode to the minivan”. Not true. I have a love/hate relationship with my van. The hate part is pretty much summed up by the song. The second that you buy that van, your coolness just washes away, potentially gone forever, because by the time that you get rid of it you’re probably going to be too old or worn out to be cool anymore anyway. I can promise you this: you will never feel sexy in that van, no matter how sexy you might feel prior to getting in. Driving the van to the party (or wherever you’re going) puts a hex on your whole night, so drive the other vehicle if you can. Also, nobody will ever look at you or flirt with you in your van. Well, maybe except for some “MILF”s from teenage boys at stoplights, and you don’t feel that good about that anyway because you know that they are probably laughing about it as they blow past you. (And, really, is MILF something to feel good about in the first place?)

So, as far as I can tell, you have two options if you do choose to go the minivan route: 1) You just accept your fate and put on the soccer sticker and get some Lee jeans and a bunch of sweatshirts or 2) You try like hell to refuse to accept the stereotype, like Liz Weslander in “The Minivan. Grocery Getter or Sex Machine?” (http://www.imperfectparent.com/lifestyle/articles89_1.php)

I am claiming, with a straight face, that minivan is really the sexiest ride around. First of all, if you need a minivan, you’ve been getting busy on a regular basis in the past few years and you have the goods to prove it. Secondly, anybody who has taken a ride in the recent crop of minivans cannot tell me these vehicles don’t offer a smooth ride. If a smooth ride brought Prince to a falsetto in Little Red Corvette, the minivan can do the same for fathers in their 30s and 40s. Finally, all that space I’ve been talking about? I have a friend, a mother of three, (I am not making this up) who insists that the biggest advantage of her minivan is the ample space it has for her and her husband to get down to business while the kids are at piano lessons.

Personally, I’ll take disillusionment over Lee jeans any day.

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