Suburban Kamikaze

Math homework cleanup = more than the sum of its parts

from the kids in the kitchen archives: How to ruin a perfectly good bag of caramels

Garbage pickup fails to disturb teenager's sleep

more from the breaking news desk: Family's cereal collecton eligible for its own zip code 

The Dozen Habits of Highly Effective Kindergartners

Half an hour at the spa seems a little rushed and there is no way I am vacuuming at 8:15 in the morning, but otherwise, I feel like this could be a significant improvement over the schedule we are currently using in the Kamikaze household.

Our system would look just like this if you took all the strips of paper out, scattered half of them around the room and lined up the rest horizontally so they were all scheduled at exactly the same time, but with each activity taking twice as long as planned.   

Photo courtesy of our Palm Beach area correspondent

Friday Morning Freakout with bonus chill pill

SCENE: Friday morning school commute with the world's most expensive middle schooler and her mother, who is addressing her daughter, and later, talking to herself; a distinction we draw here solely for dramatic context and not because there is any actual difference. 

MOTHER: You have got to be kidding. You took four brand-new blank CDs to use as car wheels on a shoebox car for a school assignment?

Do we not have dozens of scratched, abandoned, unused, forgotten and one-use only CDs floating around the house, gathering dust and taking up space under the beds, between the couch cushions and at the bottom of backpacks? Do you have any idea how much those cost?

When you get home from school today, I want you to take a close look at your surroundings. Pull up a couch cushion or two, peek under the furniture. Write down the number of cash piles you come across. Now write down the number of old CDs.

What conclusions can you draw from this exercise?

Speaking of exercises, what kind of eighth grade school assignment requires you to make a shoebox car anyway? What are they even teaching?

BONUS PARENTING PERSPECTIVE:  Take a breath. Surrender. You are freaking out over one cubic centimeter of chilled air hanging just over the colder air hovering above the space where the tip of the iceberg begins. Chill-ax. 

from the world's most expensive archives: It's not the economy so much as the pull-up bar

Nation's most ambitious teenager plots his summer

I don't know what kind of teenagers you are familiar with, but the 14-17 year-olds who live in my house would need a really long nap before they could even begin to contemplate taking on a task like making a list.

"OMG!" they would say. "How are we supposed to make a list when the paper is nowhere near the couch? Why don't you just ask us to go cut down a tree and make our own paper?  I guess Seasons One through 17 of the Vampire Diaries and/or South Park will just watch themselves?"   

On and on it would go, until every last possible objection that could be made without rising from the couch or changing the channel had been exhausted.     

So when the photographic dispatch below arrived via our Atlanta correspondent, we could not disguise our envy.

How had she managed to inspire the kind of initiative that led her 15-year-old son to create a summer action plan? Pop-Tarts? Cash? Breast milk? Was it French parenting? Tiger parenting? Some combination of French parenting and Pop-Tarts?  

Photo: Atlanta teen's Summer Action Plan.

from the archives of teen ambition: Bonnie and Clyde, PTA members

The Men are from Mars two-week bikini season shape-up

I am at a gathering of the Suburban Women's Wine Drinking Association when I am asked for an advisory opinion in a case of Spousal Stupidity.

It is a straightforward case of Wrong Answer, Douchebag but with a particularly douchey touch.

A woman had complained to her husband of unexplained moodiness. His diagnosis:  "It's because you're fat and the pool is opening next week."

Some of the women are familiar with my eventually bestselling relationship manual, "Men are From Mars but That's No Excuse" and believe the situation calls for a grownup time-out.     

"No sex for two weeks, right?" they ask me. But you can tell by their faces that no one thinks this is really going to drive the point home. And neither do I.

"No," I say. "Two weeks of sex with someone else."

Which, in a happy coincidence, is also a great way to get in shape for bikini season.

You're welcome. And you look marvelous.

-SK

Photo: Men are from Mars, but can be found almost anywhere.

from the marriage archives: The Ring of Truth and other so-called tales of Domestic Bliss

This just in from the middle school fashion desk:

For when you have nothing but time on your hands. 

from the middle school fashion archives: Is that what you're wearing?

A tall drink of Pink

Christian Grey didn't always know exactly what he wanted:

"I’m 22, set to graduate in three weeks and I still haven’t narrowed down a career choice. It was probably a mistake to major in Women’s Studies, but that is troubled water under the bridge to nowhere at this point."

 -Click HERE to read more Fifty Shades of Pink: a parody of submission

To read Part One, go HERE

Occupy the Couch: A Top 10 Complaint List

The teenagers are manning the barricades in our house this week. Can you blame them? So much is wrong in the world. Let's just start with the snack situation and go from there:    

1. There are never enough snacks in the house. And let's be clear about this: "Salad is not a a snack." Ditto for olives.

2. There is Too Much Singing: The 14-year old must be made to stop singing. It is driving her brother crazy.

3. No one should have to stop singing. He can just go to another room.

4. The parenting is incompetent. What kind of a mother can't even make a 14-year-old girl stop singing? Or tells a 14-year-old girl to stop singing? Either way, it is cause for complaint.

5. Shipping and handling should not count as part of an Internet shopping spending limit.

6. We are tired of being blamed for things we don't admit doing.

7. There are never enough clean towels. Even counting the ones from the guest bathroom.

8. We should be allowed to use the towels in the guest bathroom. 

9. Stop blaming us for taking towels from the guest bathroom. We have no idea how they ended up on the floor of our rooms.

10. We are sick and tired of all of the rules we don't even follow.

Photo: A spokeswoman for the group plots her next super-cute dress purchase and chafes under unreasonable spending limits. "Can you just let me live for once?" 

in related news: A critique of household rules by its teenage members

"P" we know is Porter

So there I was, last Christmas, presenting Mr. Kamikaze with the usual pile of thoughtless socks and underwear, when in walks the Executive Suburbanite with only the most amazing and thoughtful gift in the entire world.

It was a first edition of All the President's Men, and Mr. Kamikaze looked at it the way The New York Times national editor must have looked after somebody handed him the Pentagon Papers. Mr. Kamikaze loves that book the way Ben Bradlee loved sticking it to The New York Times.

"Look," I said more than once over the holidays, "these are exactly the kind of socks you wanted." But I knew I'd been upstaged, even accounting for the years of Watergate-themed sex games.

So when I saw an opportunity to poach a little bit of the credit, I went for it. Bob Woodward was scheduled to speak in the Chicago area and I was determined to get him to sign Mr. Kamikaze's book.

It wasn't going to be easy. It was a standing-room only crowd and we only just managed to wedge ourselves in at the back. But I was not going to be denied my Christmas redemption. I left Mr. K in the back and made my way to the front of the room, inch by inch, over the course of two hours.

It is not true, however, that I crawled on my hands and knees or snaked my way through the air vents. 

I caught up with the most famous journalist in America as he was leaving the stage. When I explained to him why it was his fault that I could not afford to send my kids to college, he graciously accepted responsibility for our finances and signed the book.

It was the least he could do.  

Photo: Bob Woodward's left cheek is visible at center. Journalism triumph, maybe, but definitely a photojournalism fail. 

from the archives: Get out your notebook, there's more.