Fun With Adult Children

As many of you moms of teens know, exasperating your kids is one of the easiest and most fun activities around. It takes very little to get a 16-year-old girl to roll her eyes and sigh in the most entertaining fashion. Trust me when I tell you I have enjoyed this activity countless times. Now that my own teen girl has grown up, gotten married, had children, and turned 30 these opportunities are much rarer, but when they arise, I take full advantage of them.

Moms of teens, let me assure you that getting under your adult child's skin is just as much fun, although it takes a little more work.

Case in point: As many of you know, my daughter (the aforementioned 30-year-old married mother) is the author of the blog Near Normalcy. Okay, all 9 of my readers know this, but my future readers (how optimistic of me) might not, okay? Anyway, this very blog which you are reading was inspired by the enjoyment that Alyssa (the aforementioned author of Near Normalcy --you are reading her blog aren't you?) has derived from writing her blog (Near Normalcy , you're welcome, Alyssa). Therefore I consider her my blogging guru....as well as a source of seemingly endless fun.

Update: That's us. She loves me!

Last night the following text conversation took place. Notice how quickly, skillfully, and unobtrusively I worked my way under her skin.

Me: Where did you buy your domain name? And why?

Alyssa: Godaddy. Because grownups own their domains.

Me: Hmmm.

Me: Why do grownups own their domains?

Alyssa: Because no serious professional famous writer blogs from a blogspot address. Do you even read my blog? I covered this.

Me. I'm old and forgetful.

Me-50 minutes later: I'm just sitting here reading through all your old blog posts so as not to be accused of child neglect. On 7/27 you talked about your stats and said you had one page view from Germany. Well, that's just weird because I have had one page view from Germany too. What's up with that?

For some reason, Alyssa chose not to reply.

Me-45 minutes later: Several of the blogs you follow don't own their own domains.

Alyssa: You don't have to buy your domain if you don't want to! I wanted mine. That's really all there is to it.

Me: I know I don't have to. I'm just trying to understand. I'm up to August on your blog. You just sat on the birthday saddle.

Alyssa: Well, now you're just stalking me. Weirdo.


Me: No, I'm studying you because you're my blogging role model.

Alyssa: I mean, do you not see how much better "www.nearnormalcy.com" looks vs "www.nearnormalcy.blogspot.com"??

Me: I'm not sure I see the betterness there. But it is shorter.

Alyssa: I don't understand how you can not see the betterness. A ".com" is the real deal. Any yahoo can have a blogspot.  ".com" is a WEBSITE.

Me: But I have a ".com". It just has a blogspot before it.

Alyssa: Sigh.

I could see the eyeroll and hear the exasperated sigh from 30 miles away. Score!

And because that was so much fun, I sent this text this morning.  "Ok. After some thought it occurs to me that one should own one's domain because if one needs to leave one's blog host, one's readers would still be able to find one's blog."

Alyssa: Yeah. Ok.

See, moms of teens! The fun never has to end!