Stuntman camp. Heavy metal guitar camp. Jedi camp. Now that summer nears a close, Starshine and other parents ask: What the hell were we thinking?
Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
Charting the puzzles and peeves of kid-herding — from Huggies to homework, Pilates to pinatas.
Stuntman camp. Heavy metal guitar camp. Jedi camp. Now that summer nears a close, Starshine and other parents ask: What the hell were we thinking?
She pan-fries with purpose, char-broils with cheer and grills with a Calphalon grin. She’s the merry meal-maker, ever disposed to whip up a hot and hearty supper for her grumbling-tummied groom.
When he’s home for dinner, she’ll toast the bread, salt the beans, trim the steak and chill the salad — because that’s the way he likes it best. She’ll bust out the good napkins and soil every pan in the kitchen just so he can enjoy a “proper” meal. The kind his mommy used to make.
But tomorrow, when he’s working late, she’ll stand at the kitchen counter plucking almonds from the trail mix and polishing off her kids’ leftover yogurt while thumbing through the junk mail.
And she’ll take an impish thrill in doing it.
I owe you all a big apology. Because when I was a kid? Growing up in the San Fernando Valley? We talked in this totally weird way and all? And, like, it spread.
Starshine’s Father’s Day gift: What do you get the Dad who betrays everyone?
Don’t mind her manners: Starshine learns that a trip around the cotillion ballroom is a lesson in balancing party punch and guarding your backside. Your fancy prancy backside.
It’s wedding season again, and that means half of every aisle-trodding couple will be struggling with the decision of whether to take on their spouse’s last name or keep their own. But according to a new trend, it might not be the half you think.
The California Assembly passed a bill last week that, if adopted by the Senate and signed by the governor, will allow newly married men to change their last names as easily as women do. A bride needs only to fill out some forms and notify her credit card companies if she wants to take her husband’s name. But a growing number of grooms — from Mike Davis-turned-Salinger in Seattle to Christopher Sclafani-turned-Rhee in Washington, D.C. — are opting to take their wives’ last names instead, either to honor the women’s heritage, preserve a family name that’s at risk of dying out, upgrade to an easier-to-spell moniker, or simply do their small part to roll back centuries of gender inequity.
We weren’t even in the park yet when the perjury began.
Giddy with the excitement that only a day at the Magic Kingdom can conjure, my friend told Disneyland’s parking attendant that she had given him a $50 bill rather than a $20 — just to watch him squirm.
I apologized to the unfortunately dressed, overweight gentleman and told my friend that she simply couldn’t pull that crap here.
If you lie at Disneyland, I explained, you go straight to hell.
On the highway of life, nothing forces an appreciation of the here and now like the crowded, noisy chaos of family road trip. Starshine explains.
Whiny, drooly and prone to mess themselves just as you’re headed out the door, puppies and newborn babies have a lot in common. But who’s more trouble?
Starshine reveals the bare-bottom truths about spanking.