Our latest book "Rantings of a Bitter Childless Woman" has just arrived from the printer and will be going out in the mail over the next few days. So what can readers expect from this book by Jeanne Bellezzo? It's better to show than to tell. Here's an excerpt...
Remember when we took long car trips as kids and amused ourselves for hours on end by playing The Alphabet Game? You know, where you had to point out an object starting with each consecutive letter of the alphabet before your bratty sister could? And if you both spotted the same object simultaneously, you fought about it, thus passing another 15 to 20 minutes of the trip until your dad finally warned you not to make him stop this car and turn around right now?
Life was so simple then.
Now, kids on long car trips (defined as 10 minutes or more) have a plethora of entertainment options we couldn’t even imagine. DVD players. Cell phones. Nintendo DS. Online shopping. Mobile investing. Personally, I think it would have been the coolest thing in the world to have movies in the back of our old Wrangler and then fight with my sister about what to watch.
But apparently, it isn’t enough for today’s short-attention-span generation. Barely an hour into an 8-hour family roadtrip to Arizona, my friend’s six-year-old son turned off the DVD player, tossed his DS impatiently into his pile of books, and announced, “I’m bored.”
A few months ago, my boyfriend and I volunteered to watch his twin niece and nephew while mom and dad went to a baseball game with friends from out of town. They dropped the kids off early on Sunday morning. (For us, any time before 8 a.m. on Sunday is early. Thank God for coffee.)
We spent the next few hours playing games with them (side note: if you’re ever having issues waking up, a few games of Jenga will resolve them immediately). We watched cartoons. They chased the cats around. We took them to lunch (the kids, not the cats). We took them to a movie, stopping first to get something to drink at the grocery store, and while we were there we bought them each a doughnut. Yes, they just had lunch, but as the fun aunt and uncle we are required by law to overdose them on sugar. And they’re both thin little Energizer bunnies, so we weren’t particularly concerned about childhood obesity.
As they wolfed down their fried sugary goodness, one mentioned that it was the second doughnut she’d had. I asked, “Today?” She replied, “No, ever. Mom doesn’t let us have doughnuts.” Awesome. This will be our little secret, right?
So after games, cartoons, lunch, clandestine doughnuts, and a movie, we returned home and made a beeline for the couch, exhausted. (Ok, the adults were exhausted. Seriously parents, how do you do it?)
At which point one of the twins asked, “Can we do something fun now?”
Yes. Go outside and play The Alphabet Game. Twice.
