Veronica Mixon's Blog - Posts Tagged "kids"
There's Cool and Then There's Circus Cool
My husband and I live squarely in the world of blended families. He had four sons when we married, and we have a daughter. Add in eleven grandkids and when our gang gets together we have twenty-one unique personalities in the same house. And we're an animal-loving group, so we also have the nine dogs, a couple of cats and one rabbit, each with their own sweet little ADD and OCD personalities. Oh, yeah, that’s fun!
But we have a lot of “cool” in our family. Each family member has some level of cool, something exceptional and unique, something beyond their DNA that makes him or her spectacular.
But most people would say the highest-ranking cool member in our gang of twenty-one is our Brooklyn son. I mean just living in Brooklyn is cool, right? And Brooklyn has the whole Johnny-Depp-bad-boy-vibe-thing going on.
He works hard to give the impression he’s oblivious to the level of cool that swirls around him like Zorro’s cape. But I’m not buying it.
Once, he and I were standing in line at an airport Starbucks behind an attractive middle-aged woman. She casually turned, took one look at Brooklyn with his shoulder-length black hair, riveting dark eyes, and reared back. The blood drained from the poor woman’s face, and a second later her eyes morphed into hungry-predator. She licked her lips and whispered, “Oh, my God.” Yeah, that happened.
Even though Brooklyn is six-foot-two, lean and muscular, I wanted to throw my one-hundred-thirty-pound flabby self in front of him and use my body as a human shield against the hussy-cougar. But instead, Brooklyn flashed his box-office Oscar-worthy smile, and the pouncing cougar turned tomato red and went mute. I took pity on her, laughed, and said, “He is pretty, isn’t he.”
I used to refer to Brooklyn as my little vagabond because he loved to ramble. And just so you know, you’re not a true vagabond if you stoop so low as to make a hotel reservation, use a map, or heck, even have a rough idea of where you’ll be three days from now.
Brooklyn is one of those guys who’ll decide to go clubbing at midnight and end up dancing the night away with Gwen Stefani. Yes, that also happened. He’s just that cool.
Our therapist daughter and Brooklyn not only love each other, they like each other, and they often go out when she visits him in NYC.
She complains that clubbing with her brother Brooklyn is exhausting. Evidently, all the single females in the club experience the pouncing-Tigger-syndrome and vie to become her bestie. But The Therapist isn’t fooled.
What these women really want is to make eye contact with Brooklyn. They want an introduction, they want a phone number, they want to fall in love and have his baby. The Therapist says it’s worse if the club has a decent band because Brooklyn-boy can dance.
Next on the list of the coolest family members is our granddaughter, Dancing-Beauty, who dreams of flying in the circus. In my opinion, circus cool ranks at the very top of the family cool meter. I mean really who doesn’t love the idea of walking a tightrope, or swinging on one of those trapeze bars in those cute little outfits?
Our little Dancing-Beauty is content to navigate the lanes of life on her own, and frankly, you're not invited on her trip. After all, she knows where she’s headed and if you don’t see it, well, that’s your short-sightedness. As a three-year-old, she walked into my kitchen after sleeping until eleven o’clock one morning announcing she was aware the early bird captured the worm, but, she asked, who likes worms anyway? Yep, she views our universe with a different set of rose-colored glasses. Her lens is more of a kaleidoscope.
And our Dancing-Beauty not only dreams of being in the circus, she works her butt off training. She’s in her last year of college, and I have no doubt next year I’ll be in Vegas, popping Xanax, watching her fly, swing, and balance on razor-thin bars thousands of feet in the air.
But we have a lot of “cool” in our family. Each family member has some level of cool, something exceptional and unique, something beyond their DNA that makes him or her spectacular.
But most people would say the highest-ranking cool member in our gang of twenty-one is our Brooklyn son. I mean just living in Brooklyn is cool, right? And Brooklyn has the whole Johnny-Depp-bad-boy-vibe-thing going on.
He works hard to give the impression he’s oblivious to the level of cool that swirls around him like Zorro’s cape. But I’m not buying it.
Once, he and I were standing in line at an airport Starbucks behind an attractive middle-aged woman. She casually turned, took one look at Brooklyn with his shoulder-length black hair, riveting dark eyes, and reared back. The blood drained from the poor woman’s face, and a second later her eyes morphed into hungry-predator. She licked her lips and whispered, “Oh, my God.” Yeah, that happened.
Even though Brooklyn is six-foot-two, lean and muscular, I wanted to throw my one-hundred-thirty-pound flabby self in front of him and use my body as a human shield against the hussy-cougar. But instead, Brooklyn flashed his box-office Oscar-worthy smile, and the pouncing cougar turned tomato red and went mute. I took pity on her, laughed, and said, “He is pretty, isn’t he.”
I used to refer to Brooklyn as my little vagabond because he loved to ramble. And just so you know, you’re not a true vagabond if you stoop so low as to make a hotel reservation, use a map, or heck, even have a rough idea of where you’ll be three days from now.
Brooklyn is one of those guys who’ll decide to go clubbing at midnight and end up dancing the night away with Gwen Stefani. Yes, that also happened. He’s just that cool.
Our therapist daughter and Brooklyn not only love each other, they like each other, and they often go out when she visits him in NYC.
She complains that clubbing with her brother Brooklyn is exhausting. Evidently, all the single females in the club experience the pouncing-Tigger-syndrome and vie to become her bestie. But The Therapist isn’t fooled.
What these women really want is to make eye contact with Brooklyn. They want an introduction, they want a phone number, they want to fall in love and have his baby. The Therapist says it’s worse if the club has a decent band because Brooklyn-boy can dance.
Next on the list of the coolest family members is our granddaughter, Dancing-Beauty, who dreams of flying in the circus. In my opinion, circus cool ranks at the very top of the family cool meter. I mean really who doesn’t love the idea of walking a tightrope, or swinging on one of those trapeze bars in those cute little outfits?
Our little Dancing-Beauty is content to navigate the lanes of life on her own, and frankly, you're not invited on her trip. After all, she knows where she’s headed and if you don’t see it, well, that’s your short-sightedness. As a three-year-old, she walked into my kitchen after sleeping until eleven o’clock one morning announcing she was aware the early bird captured the worm, but, she asked, who likes worms anyway? Yep, she views our universe with a different set of rose-colored glasses. Her lens is more of a kaleidoscope.
And our Dancing-Beauty not only dreams of being in the circus, she works her butt off training. She’s in her last year of college, and I have no doubt next year I’ll be in Vegas, popping Xanax, watching her fly, swing, and balance on razor-thin bars thousands of feet in the air.
Cool vs. Engineer
The other day I was thinking about our family, the differences, and the similarities. We have our cool family members, and then we have the engineers. The engineer members might not be professional engineers, but they could be. They share the same personality traits. Even some of the grandchildren still in grade school fall into that camp.
Once I asked my oldest grandson his favorite color. “Black,” he said.
I laughed. “Okay, what’s your second favorite color?”
“White.”
His major might be Business Finance, but that child falls squarely in the engineering camp.
But here's the thing about the engineer types-- they’re smart enough to snag cool wives or girlfriends. All the sons, except for Brooklyn reside in the engineer-world. All the wives hang-out in the super-cool camp.
Our engineer types take Boy-Scout-preparedness to the tenth power. I'll give you a couple of examples. My husband is an engineer by profession. He focuses on a problem, looks at the obstacle from every possible angle, and then looks at it one more time. Then he takes one more pass at his dilemma, you know, just to make sure he hasn't missed ANYTHING! When he makes a decision, he’s rarely wrong or caught by surprise.
That sounds great, but it’s freaking exhausting. If you don’t believe me, tag along when he buys his next car. That’s a two or three-month process by the way, so take a sabbatical from work and pack a few lunches.
My daughter came home for a visit the other day, and I casually mentioned that the previous week, her father and I had a home fire drill and the week before that we’d practiced what we’d do if our security alarm went off in the middle of the night. I should probably mention, my daughter’s a marriage and family therapist, so she’s trained to stare at you without emotion, even when she’s in the LMAO mode.
“So,” she deadpanned. “How often do you and dad practice these routines?”
“Oh, about once a month.”
"That’s interesting.” Which is code for, ‘I can’t wait to get back to work and tell this to all my therapist friends.’
“It’s a good idea to be prepared,” I said for no good reason. And because I’m a mother and have a college degree in Guilt Management, I added, “When’s the last time you thought about what you’d do in case of a fire?”
She pursed her lips as if she were seriously considering my question. “Second grade.”
I haven’t checked, but I’m pretty sure three out of five of our children conduct regular home fire drills—guess which ones don't.
I never read the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, but I’m thinking of buying a few copies and handing them out at our next family function.
Once I asked my oldest grandson his favorite color. “Black,” he said.
I laughed. “Okay, what’s your second favorite color?”
“White.”
His major might be Business Finance, but that child falls squarely in the engineering camp.
But here's the thing about the engineer types-- they’re smart enough to snag cool wives or girlfriends. All the sons, except for Brooklyn reside in the engineer-world. All the wives hang-out in the super-cool camp.
Our engineer types take Boy-Scout-preparedness to the tenth power. I'll give you a couple of examples. My husband is an engineer by profession. He focuses on a problem, looks at the obstacle from every possible angle, and then looks at it one more time. Then he takes one more pass at his dilemma, you know, just to make sure he hasn't missed ANYTHING! When he makes a decision, he’s rarely wrong or caught by surprise.
That sounds great, but it’s freaking exhausting. If you don’t believe me, tag along when he buys his next car. That’s a two or three-month process by the way, so take a sabbatical from work and pack a few lunches.
My daughter came home for a visit the other day, and I casually mentioned that the previous week, her father and I had a home fire drill and the week before that we’d practiced what we’d do if our security alarm went off in the middle of the night. I should probably mention, my daughter’s a marriage and family therapist, so she’s trained to stare at you without emotion, even when she’s in the LMAO mode.
“So,” she deadpanned. “How often do you and dad practice these routines?”
“Oh, about once a month.”
"That’s interesting.” Which is code for, ‘I can’t wait to get back to work and tell this to all my therapist friends.’
“It’s a good idea to be prepared,” I said for no good reason. And because I’m a mother and have a college degree in Guilt Management, I added, “When’s the last time you thought about what you’d do in case of a fire?”
She pursed her lips as if she were seriously considering my question. “Second grade.”
I haven’t checked, but I’m pretty sure three out of five of our children conduct regular home fire drills—guess which ones don't.
I never read the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, but I’m thinking of buying a few copies and handing them out at our next family function.
