<p>Astrogirl I hope you had a lovely birthday.</p>
<p>I am bumping this thread up because today is the fashion show and I want you all to have something that, if you have a bad day, you can say to yourself, at least I am not in Alumother’s fashion show wearing hip hop dance pants with a paper bag waist and a skin tight coral jersey:).</p>
<p>Don’t I take care of my friends?</p>
<p>Oh yes! All praise to Alum for taking the embarrassment hit on our behalf!</p>
<p>My skin is less than skin tight. :eek:</p>
<p>Hey Alumother…give us all the details of your latest 15 min of fame on the runway!!!</p>
<p>Is this where the mothers of sons hang out? I just saw a reference in another thread to this thread as the meeting place. I cannot read 500+ pages of posts, so I will just throw my son’s latest idea out there.</p>
<p>He wants to buy 6 or 8 broken Xbox 360s on Ebay. They cost $1 each, plus $20 shipping. He is hoping the shipping will be less if multiple broken Xboxes are ordered.</p>
<p>Why does he want broken Xboxes? He wants to (1) cannibalize them for parts and (2) practice modifying them so that he will not ruin his new Xbox 360 when he modifies it to impress his friends. I should mention that his room looks like a junkyard. He has several old things that he has taken apart (computer, hand mixer, calculator, etc.) and in the past few months he’s moved on to trying to make things from the broken parts and new parts he buys from RadioShack or orders. I guess that’s progress, but his room looks even more like a junkyard.</p>
<p>Yeah most of the sons here seem to be tinkerers or musicians… is yours a silent grunting type or a talker/hugger? We have both :)</p>
<p>Well, it’s past last calls so too late to have a drink on me, but I’ll get in earlier next time. Yea, mom of musician, hugger in person, grunter on the phone. A hybrid variety.</p>
<p>Happy birthday and happy anniversary to proper recipients and to all a good night.</p>
<p>Yes, this bar serves as the offical hideout of MOSs–Mothers of Sons. </p>
<p>My son once tried to construct an airplane out of scrap metal that he collected from a construction site. In my front hall. He was seven at the time.</p>
<p>After a few weeks, I moved the operation out to the garage. When he got home from school, he broke into sobs: “You never support me when I try to create things!”</p>
<p>On the upside, he has turned into a driven entrepreneur and those weird projects did provide wonderful fodder for his very successful college applications.</p>
<p>Cheers, your son and mine are soulmates. Mine has always collected junk - broken toys, hubcaps from the side of the road. He stated very early on that there was no such thing as “junk.” </p>
<p>My older S is more toward the silent grunter end of the spectrum, unless he is arguing a point, when he becomes quite voluble. My younger S is the musician/talker-hugger variety. </p>
<p>I’m glad I found this thread. It’s good to know that I have company as I gaze over the the landscape of my older S’s room, strewn with parts and components, only some of which are identifiable by me.</p>
<p>NYMomof2- I highly recommend reading the 500 pages of this thread, It truly is the funniest thing ever!! and is just the right pick me up when you are loosing your mind from those S’s, and in my case now DD!! (my 3S are still at the deer in the headlight phase):D</p>
<p>There is also some of the most brilliant writing ever.</p>
<p>Just what I need, another time sink! But I’m too tempted not to do it. Maybe I’ll read two pages a day? It will only take me a year to catch up…</p>
<p>Oh, my God, I just read this, post #2, from doddsdad. I am laughing so hard I can hardly see.</p>
<p>Inspirational Mother’s Day Story </p>
<hr>
<p>Since I think this was my idea, Ill go first. Last Saturday, Doddsmom returned in the evening from her weekend class. She entered DDs room (age 13), and noticed that the bed was made, clothes were picked up, and it was clean. With some amazement, DW commented on her neat room to DD. DD responded in her best 8th grade dramatic style, YES I KNOW! I got confused and thought TODAY was Mothers Day. I guess THAT was a waste of my time!</p>
<p>OMG. “You never support me when I try to create something?”</p>
<p>Snorting tea out my nose. Up there with the scurrying Rottweilers.</p>
<p>Some of these gods of mute have quite the gift of gab when they want to, don’t they?</p>
<p>And definitely welcome NYMomof2. You’ve got a tinkerer and a musician. Are either of them rabid sports fans of any sort? That’s another aspect that occasionally registers on the radar…</p>
<p>Fashion show report? Or can you post a link to the Chronicle coverage?</p>
<p>I laughed at the “You never support me …” quote also. It just occurred to me that if I copy everything I find hilarious, the thread will soon be 100 pages long.</p>
<p>No sports fans, my husband is not, except for golf and the Olympics. At least I’m spared that.</p>
<p>Fashion show report.</p>
<p>Ah yes.</p>
<p>Let me just give a little background first. I live in a very wealthy area. When I grew up it was populated by college professors and scientists. The hippie nature of the Bay Area survived the wave of semiconductor wealth as well as the wave of enterprise software wealth. The wave of Internet wealth was, however, if not a death knoll at least a call to stand down all you hippies.</p>
<p>Now there are lots of venture capitalists here. And lawyers. And accountants. There are still scientists, bless their hearts, and still software guys with ponytails, but fewer. Far fewer. And the associated anthropological phenomenon for the female of the species seems to be a lot of women who have as their careers being wives of rich men. And wives of rich men have a lot of time to dress up. And paint various parts of their anatomies various shades of coral. And dangle various shiny items from the parts of their anatomies that have not been painted coral. And paint everything else blonde. Or tan.</p>
<p>So these events, the few I have attended, have always made me really uncomfortable. I feel like a bull in a china shop. I feel like a horse surrounded by birds. I feel navy blue in a world of pink and gold. I feel like I might say f*** inappropriately loudly if I don’t watch out.</p>
<p>This time I didn’t attend. I worked backstage and I walked on the runway for about 3 minutes. Before it all started I went outside and sat on the concrete wall and watched the birds flutter into the large tent. They had to line up to get in - names were checked. I felt like the Little Match Girl goes to the Emmys. When you are dressed up and participating you can’t stare because then you might be perceived as being competitive. Sitting on the concrete wall dressed in sweats, a tshirt, and $25 black parka you bought in China, well, you can stare. You are invisible. I stared. Eliza Doolittle also comes to mind - “Cor luv us, lookit all the purty lighdies…”</p>
<p>It’s much better not to participate. I kind of felt like the help. Which suited me much better - leaving only slight pangs of envy. How do they do that? How do they carry it off? I think I will never know.</p>
<p>The actual walking on the runway part was, as I suppose I really could have predicted, fun. I adore my son, for all the grousing I do. We were in a segment wearing Nike, as I told you. The other people were carrying tennis rackets and golf clubs. As I said, we chose to go propless. My son had a good time, which he hadn’t expected. He was happy. So I was happy. We bumped shoulders when our turn came to walk down the catwalk. At the end of the walk, when you are supposed to “take your moment”, he put his arm around my shoulder and I patted his chest. Big awwwww. </p>
<p>I realize now that it was my old nemesis the Pretty Fairy who made this difficult for me. I have put away the need to shine. In fact, I consciously avoid any display of physical assets. But it’s hard to give up the Pretty Fairy’s other self. Edgy Fairy:). I still think of myself as edgy. Whether I am or not is a moot point. It’s the internal brand I have constructed for myself. I think of myself as youthful. Again, whether I am or not is a moot point. So while I can give up Pretty it’s hard to go all the way to matronly. I could wear the thing that made me look fat and old IF it also had a skull on it to indicate that I can still take a personal or intellectual risk some times.</p>
<p>I did not look edgy in this outfit. Can we say that? It looked like goofy workout gear. The shirt I said was skintight? Well, not really. It was that dryweave long underwear stuff. </p>
<p>And in order to make sure I did not display physical assets inappropriately, I had a last minute emergency. When I tried the shirt on in the store I was wearing a lined bra. When I tried it on backstage, surrounded by teenage girls doing their own “Oh I’m so fat” “No you look fabulous” twittering of course, I tried it with an unlined bra. Big mistake. I am NOT bringing the silhouette of um, the parts that used to nurse children, to a fashion show. So I went off to get a sports bra from home BUT my car was blocked in. So, whether in homage to the Edgy Fairy or in complete rebellion against her I don’t know, I had to go from teenage girl to teenage girl asking to borrow a sports bra. And one was not enough. I had to borrrow TWO of them and wear them together.</p>
<p>I thought of torturing my son by taking the bras home and washing them and putting them into manila envelopes and having him return them to the two girls. Hehe. But I relented.</p>
<p>And, the two bra method worked. My ego suffered from the people who would say to me, “No, really, you look niiiiiice…” in that pitying tone usually reserved for bridesmaids in yellow organza with spring green ruffles around their necks. But walking next to my son, tousling his hair until he said “Mom! Quit!”, having him tell me the next morning with a smile even that it was fun - the Edgy Fairy is no match for mother love. Good thing too.</p>
<p>Great report, Alu. A showstopper. I had been looking forward to it and kept sneaking peeks hoping it was here. And today- it was. Many smiles.</p>
<p>Welcome NYMomof 2 (aka inspiration of the Hybrid Designation For Our Sons - a new wrinkle :p). Mine would be the musician/silent hybrid. Voluble only when… well, never: his “voluble” would be anyone else’s monosyllabic.</p>
<p>If we did any serious business here in Sinner’s Alley - which we do NOT - I think we should start a College Search and Selection process for NYMomof2’s S1, with a focus on programs in Xbox360 Design and Rehabilitation. Perhaps that will be a Self-Designed Major? </p>
<p><em>now, off to read alu’s Fashion Report. Was Peter Gunn there? Heidi Klum?</em></p>
<p>Alu - worth the wait.</p>
<p>Please, jmmom, I’m hoping that S1 will outgrow the Xbox (re)design madness, and move on to something useful. When he was 8, he designed an air-powered car, complete with diagrams. One day materials from the US Patent Office arrived. I had not ordered them - he and a teacher did it. </p>
<p>Now that he’s a socialist he believes that it is immoral to profit from ideas, and he considers patenting one’s inventions immoral. I had to confess to him that I have a patent. I am redeemed in his eyes by the fact that it will not make any money.</p>
<p>Loved the fashion report! What a great place this thread is. How did I miss it for so long? I guess I couldn’t imagine that anything with the word Sinner in the title could have any relevance to me!</p>