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Bangkok Bike Tour

24 hours on a plane Thursday, and we flew two days into the future overnight, arriving Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately I picked up a pair of cankles in Hong Kong - the only casualty so far.  Day 1 we opted for the Bangkok Backstreets and Hidden Gems Bike tour , managing to avoid Patpong and Soi Cowboy streets where the flashing neon Pimp Club, Spanky’s and Dollhouse clubs light up the night. We pedaled narrow alleyways and drainage ditches, while averting street vendors, motorbikes and wall pissers in every direction, all while navigating the left side of the road and fist bumping beaming children yelling “HI”, The best kind of Forced Family Fun cultural immersion unplugged in my book. Proving even my 15-year-old can crack a smile in a picture. Besides, who can complain when poverty, garbage, shanty shacks and pungent smells overwhelm, only to be interrupted by swirls of jasmine and sandalwood, while precarious loops of electrical wire are dangling dangerously overhead? Lucky me...
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Thai Christmas Vacation

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You'd think I'd be ecstatic to travel to Thailand this week for Forced Family Fun and to see my daughter, our responsible Fulbright Scholar, teaching English in the north. Temples, tuk tuks, tea gardens, and pedicures. Truth? Two weeks in Thailand and I'm terrified I'm gonna lose someone. Traveling with four adult-ish boys who all agree Die Hard and Gladiator are Christmas movies is like herding cats. Bruh, 6 7. Honestly, I'd rather solo recon than rangle this pack. Serenity now. Matching t-shirts made for easy surveillance when they were shorter than Mom at Disney. Now? We’re doing this in full ’80s Griswold Thai Vacation style, cutting costs and screen time with no international phone plans for navigation, except for my husband and me, because, well…he's my sugar daddy. Next week, I'm either gonna lose my husband in a street market in Bangkok (like Taste of Chicago when we were first married, but with more Typhoid fever and fewer brats) or my 15-year-old t...
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Operation Buzzkill

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My kids messed with the wrong mom. Further proof that their prefrontal cortices are still under construction. I applaud them, however, for testing the boundaries as normal teens do, as well as testing my bona fides as a former trained CIA operative, because now, they've given me a chance to prove my skill set. With more eyes on the prize - empty-nesting in t-minus three years - the stakes have never been higher to prove my children can, and will, achieve their goals, if it's the last thing I guide them to do. Despite my menopausal mania, tradecraft proved effective and Operation Buzzkill a success.  "You get in less trouble if you tell the truth," has always been my mantra.  At times when they were younger, I swore by the old lie-detector test - the one where they'd place their palms down on mine and I'd ask them questions while locking their eyes. Behavior assessment and elicitation, now less effective, probably because their pupils are frozen from too much s...
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I Asked for It

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I asked for it. Afterall, we expected him to secure a job by age 15, to be organized and excel at his studies, and we even piled on home responsibilities like trash, yard work and cleaning his toilet. Then, to top it off, we moved half-way across the country after his high school graduation with our youngest two children, leaving he and his older sister to fend for themselves in college on the west coast. Nevertheless, I was shell-shocked when my son called the last week of his freshman year of college to level the news. "Mom, I want to stay in Oregon this summer," he said. "I never wanted to move to Colorado anyway and I have a job lifeguarding again making over $21/hour, 40 hours a week," he continued, as if it’d been rehearsed. I held my breath, in shock. Or not in shock; I'm not sure what reaction I had other than my sheer will not to overreact. Truth is, my parents did the same thing to me, moving my senior year of high school and then forcing me to come ho...
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We Pressed Delete on Endless Scrolling

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We pressed delete on endless scrolling this summer and now the Surgeon General has our back.  Instagram, Tik Tok, Reddit, YouTube, endlessly scrolling, his head hunched over staring at his Iphone screen, this was not the 'epic' summer I wanted for my 17-year-old son! Having purchased his own Iphone for his 13th birthday during the pandemic, our son was addicted to the dopamine hits his technology promised without fail.  As parents, we had tried to ' wait til 8th ' with our third child as we had our older two, though the pandemic lockdown just before his April birthday softened our stance. We hoped the Iphone would provide a virtual social media lifeline to his friends that his Tracfone flip phone couldn't replicate. Fast forward four years and we had a cell phone junkie with a Pavlovian response when his Iphone lit up.  Averaging 200+ pickups a day, it pained me to see my son reach into his pocket for his Iphone, at the risk of boredom, walking from the car to the b...
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'Twas the Day after Christmas

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'Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house,  not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  Tucked under the covers 'til 10am without spouse,  I had finally woken alone in my house! Six am, my family set off for the slopes, bittersweet.  My recent knee surgery forced me to kick up my feet. Not before I thrift-shopped my legs off Christmas Eve, for ski pants, gloves and coats fit for teens.  My husband begrudgingly purchased the tickets, complaining the effort, was less worth the beans. You see Forced Family Fun is not for the faint of heart.  Though absolutely better when you can take part! The whine of the child who hates skiing, or apply for jobs, or for that matter, reading,  falls on deaf ears to wise 'ole parents of 4 teens. We may look exhausted tho we are resilient,  We insist on life skills and believe less screen time is brilliant. My daughter in tears her boyfriend had parted,  hadn't realized the fun had only just sta...
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Tik Tok Worthy Wasteland

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The past few days have been a whirlwind of teenage Tik-Tok-worthy wasteland. The dog froze his nutz off in Wallowa Lake and we found ourselves bouncing off our booty cheeks rafting down the Boise River yesterday. Rolling through Utah in the back of the bus today, I’m somewhere between seasick and sadness as I continue my pilgrimage towards Park City, Utah, the last resting slope-scape nirvana for my late brother, and I remain grateful my four children have each other.   Wallowa was the turning point for this Force Family Fun experience. Moving Day 3 heading backwards on the Oregon Trail towards Colorado, we nearly reached the breaking point one hairpin u-turn and scorching coffee spill on my hind leg and that of my Schnoodle in the back seat of the minivan, just shy of the quaint town of Joseph. Nevertheless we forged on to the Switzerland of Oregon, where the Schnoodle was baptized in the glacier waters of Wallowa Lake. Apparently everyone, save myself, froze their nutz off i...
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