~One Day At a Time~

Alive & Kicking

2011-11-08T12:08:00.001-05:00

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Annual Christmas Novella 2008

2009-01-04T21:37:00.002-05:00

It amazes me how tangible the coming of Christmas feels. Whether it’s collective consciousness moving towards a time of giving, cherished traditions, and family, or something else, there is some undeniable magic to it all. A few weeks ago, I was leaving a store carrying my 17-month-old Alec in my arms when the cold night sky suddenly turned to motion as the season’s first snowflakes appeared from the inky blackness. I watched Alec as he looked with amazement at the snow. He began to chuckle with delight as they kissed his nose and softly blanketed the ground. His little hand reached out to the sky as if in greeting, and his eyes twinkled, bewitched. Watching his joy, I paused mid-thought about what on Earth I was thinking by giving him a Nutragrain bar in the store when I didn’t have any wet wipes. I forgot my ill-advised corner-cutting hours earlier when I decided carrying 36lb baby to a couple stores was easier than getting his stroller out of the trunk. I even forgot that in my frenzy to grab bags of returns, purses etc., I didn’t take note of where I parked and if pressed, such as now standing in the snowy parking lot, could only narrow it down to within a square mile. All that drifted away as I watched Christmas-time arrive on the wings of Alec laugh.

Speaking of cherished traditions, I apparently still wait to the last second to do my Christmas cards. When the first card arrived in November this year, I was inspired, and wondered how the sender managed this; are they stuffing the turkey with one hand, and the Christmas card envelopes with the other? Outliers! Over-achievers! But as the days pass, and cards pile up, the thump-thump of my holiday version of Poe’s tell tale heart, beats louder, and I’m ultimately forced to admit that Christmas is next week.

So 2008…what a year, right?! Last year, thanks to my editor at Disney requiring that I write constantly about my life, I was able to provide an orderly review. If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s if I don’t write it down I will never remember it. I recently went back and read some of Jack’s baby book updates and it was all a complete surprise. I can’t wait to read more and find out how year 2 turned out. This year, I’m back to winging it and so you might find the update a little biased towards what happened in the last week or so. My sleep-deprived mind (20 -months now of interrupted sleep) can only recall so much. That said, I wouldn’t get your hopes up that this is going to be a short letter. That doesn’t correlate as much as you might think J

Let’s start with the good stuff. Our kids! Jack and Alec are the light of our lives. Jack is our so-smart 4 (almost 5) year old. Everyone quickly points out that he is way smarter than Brian and I…put together. We are both flattered and offended. Jack is in his second year of preschool, and has ruined every class surprise this year because his teacher keeps forgetting he can read. He is still fascinated with all things mechanical. Most everything in our house that is longer-than-it-is-wide in has been scotched-taped into a gate and we are lucky we all have our eyesight with the number of gates he carries around whacking us in the head. Naturally it prompts us to yell at him, which we later wish we didn’t because Jack’s has a near-photographic memory and we will hear our comments played back verbatim at inopportune times months later. Garage doors, automatic doors, traffic signs, all still center stage in Jack-land. Jack loves to open ALL doors and strangers often remark that he is the most adorable little gentlemen or they are almost knocked over by a blur racing to trigger the automatic door eye before they do. If you live in the area, you’ve been warned!

Jack is at actually a really fun age because he is such a mix of maturity. On one hand, Jack tried to ban me from singing Christmas carols in the car because he only likes Classic Rock. The same sensitive child that covers his ears and cries when his preschool class sings ‘London Bridge’ because its “too much noise”, plays The Beatles so loud at home that the windows vibrate. I’ve tried to explain to him that when he hits the natural state of teenage rebellion, he will have left himself no choice but to develop an affinity for preschool nursery songs. But he is still annexing Brian and my CD collection. On the other hand, Jack asks approximately 100 million questions a day, some of which reveal his actual age like, “Mommy, have you ever been to the center of the Earth on a rocket ship?” or “When I get my dog when I am 10, can I also have a reindeer?”. You can also tell that he watches TV occasionally, as Jack has become Madison Avenue’s dream-child. Typical exchanges: Me: “Here’s your band-aid, Jack.”. Him (suspicious): “Wait. Is that Band-Aid Brand?” Or Me: “Jack, is that a spot on your shirt?”. Him: “Yes! Do we need Oxy Clean Laundry Stain Fighter?”

Alec meanwhile is such a sweetheart, that at times of great insanity; I want to have 20 more. Alec is our social butterfly and navigates the world with his dimples, curls, and smile. I almost never go anywhere with him without strangers remarking on him. In addition to his affectionate, mild nature, Alec is one tough cookie; he endures all sorts of rough and tumbling, and never protests as long as he is still near Jack, his idol. He is also pretty sporty. A late walker (at 14 mos.), his first week walking he saw Jack play soccer and when we got home, Alec started kicking and trapping the ball like a professional …or at least like someone who wasn’t crawling last week. In some ways he is just like Jack (love of garage doors appears genetic) and other ways, he is really different. Regardless of this, I have this strange obsession with dressing them as if they were identical twins. I don’t know what compels me to do this, if I dress one in a shirt that they both have, when I get to the other one’s closet, my mind pleads- “Don’t do it! Don’t pick the blue checked one!” But I do. Every time.

In other news, In April we went to the Dominican Republic. We went with our friend from college who fatefully introduced Brian and me. Or, at least he and his family appear in pictures of that trip- to be honest, it was mostly a blur. Alec, a poor sleeper at home, on the road falls into more the non-sleeper category. Since the slightest noise would awaken him, I would threaten the entire family before bed (at 9pm- how fun!), warning them against talking, coughing, anything. But sooner or later, someone would get careless and rustle their blanket or breathe a little too loudly, and I’d be back up with a crying Alec wondering if the airport was open for flights back to DC. Up for the day at 5am, the highlight of this vacation was the stolen moments alone at the buffet at mealtime. Naturally this trip should have put me off travel forever, but it did not and we went with friends to a beach-house in August where we repeated the whole thing.

Once we got home, we tried the Ferber method with Alec. This form of "cry it out" was torture for me, but within 3 days had the predicted success of an almost-night’s sleep! This is supposed to solve your sleep problems. Unfortunately, on day 5, Alec started crying again. We conferred with the book. Was there some sort of epilogue? There was not. Over and over, same result- Alec is a serial rebound-Feberizer. Every time Brian says he wants another baby, I remind him that we already have one! He can relive the newborn experience any night he wants to! No 9 months wait required! Though it’s nice to know that after 16 years Brian still has the ability to surprise me, since I seriously believe he is going to get up every night as he sincerely promises, when usually he sleeps right though the screaming (both Alec’s and mine). I figure worse case, I can marry Alec off in 20 years and this can be his wife’s problem. T-20, baby!

Of course many people were affected by the financial crisis this year as we were no exception. Mostly, we are majorly disappointed we didn’t spend more frivolously over the years considering how our saving-based plan worked out. At least we would have had some expensive shoes or ill-conceived tattoos to show for our efforts! Instead, Brian and I will be able to tell our future grandkids the fascinating story about how at one time, long ago, we thought we would retire someday. Ah well, C'est la vie. I also for the first time in my life paid attention to gas prices since I drive a Tahoe and had to take out an equity line at every fill up. Fortunately at least the fuel crisis is over so I can stop being the boring person opening up all conversations with some variation of “hey, what are you paying for gas around there?” and go back to gobbling up natural resources with impunity. Ha! Kidding! (sort of).

As for my wonderful husband Brian, he is working at XYZ where his days are spent in a mix of finance and triathlon training. I’m not saying which, where. His races are going well, he competes in the Clydesdale class, which always reminds me that I should buy some Klondike bars. Is that just me? I called Brian at the office the other day, and it seemed like he was whispering whereas he is usually bellowing at me via speakerphone. I asked him what was going on and he said that this neighbor had asked if he could speak a little more softly. This was late vindication as I had long wondered why no one stole his speakerphone under the cover of night. I was amazed to read in his first grade report card that his teacher was very concerned about Brian being shy and not being able to hear him when he talked. All I can say is “most effective intervention, ever.” . So of course it’s ironic to hear Brian admonish Jack, “geez Jack, talk softer!”. That’s for those of you who wonder about that whether the universe really balances out!

Brian’s dream of adding more dirt to the backyard also finally came true this year in a project rivaling the size of The New Deal. An in-ground sprinkling system also mysteriously made its way into our yard but I didn’t fight it because I am sick of looking at dead flowers from June on. When we moved into our house it was owned by the president of the garden club. We let natural selection take its course but it seems that all plants like water at some point. And that has been a real inconvenience.

As for me, I am still the Senior Director at XYG. I am still working a reduced work-week/flex schedule and I love it. I also have piles of books I’m reading and ideas I’m dreaming up, but the kids take up all of my time so mostly I’m lucky if I can get through a tivoed episode of Oprah in less than a week . Clearly sensing this, a friend recently invited us over for dinner and asked if we wouldn’t mind being on her team to help raise $100,000 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this Spring during a 10-week fundraiser. My mind raced for excuses I hadn’t already tried when she earlier emailed me about needing “a favor”, but as she spoke, I couldn’t help but picture the children and families who were praying for miracles this season; and knew we had to help. If any of you are feeling blessed this Christmas and support this very deserving cause (or would like to), we’d really appreciate any (tax-deductable) donations to our drive, of any amount. Brian is the team Treasurer and checks (made out to L&LS and post-dated to April 15th!) can be sent to our home address. As for my friend’s taste in teammates…well, I think that she was already really impressed by my (sole) suggestion to sell candy bars from our desks.

Another big event for us this year was the loss of our wonderful nanny, Maria, who had been with us since Jack was born. I was devastated when she told me at age 70, the time had come for her to retire. Talk about stress! But I will pause and reference an ancient Chinese story of a farmer who used an old horse to till his fields. “ One day, the horse escaped into the hills and when the farmer's neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?" A week later, the horse returned with a herd of horses from the hills and this time the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, "Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?" Then, when the farmer's son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?" Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer's son with his broken leg, they let him off. Now was that good luck or bad luck? Who knows?” The older and wiser I get, the more I see this to be a universal truth. Life is full of “bad breaks” which in retrospect, created the space in life for new growth and richer experiences. Like the daffodils that are hacked apart and subdivided, returning the next year, bigger, more beautiful, more vibrant than ever. Such is life. In this case, our new nanny Lilly, a grandmother of 2 boys, has been an absolute delight. We couldn’t have imagined to dream for a someone so perfect for us. We are very grateful.

Anyway, even the smallest font eventually gets you to the end, and so here we are. We wish all of our friends and family a wonderful Christmas and hope that any breaks in your plans spring forth with multitudes of flowers. May each of you be graced with peace, love and light in the New Year. With love, Amy, Brian, Jack and Alec.

On Faith.

2008-07-23T20:49:00.007-04:00

Hello again, dear blog. You are like a neglected houseplant to me, and every time I catch sight of your yellowing curling leaves I think of the lush tropical flowers that might have been. Just what I needed, another source of guilt to feed my relentless do-it-all machine! Awesome!

Anyway, I’ve been busy with life, kids, work- practicing living in the “now”, which is so popular but sometimes I feel like- “Ok, I’m here (in the now)…hmph, this is a little dull. where’s the party?” Maybe I need to finish my Tolle books. But I have been distracted on a memoir craze that started out with Kelly Corrigan’s The Middle Place. Super book, loved it. Then I went on to others including Schyler’s Monster (enjoyable read but not earth shattering), Swimming in a Sea of Death (wow- that’s an atheist? I am definitely not one of them no matter how undecided I feel sometimes! Despite that rant, the book was well written), and, yes, ok, Storitelling, which I actually enjoyed, then on to Waiting for Birdy by Catherine Newman, which I loved, loved, loved even if it did constantly freak me out with déjà vu and wondering if Catherine really had kids of her own or just watched mine from afar with a telephoto lens, jotting notes furiously.

Anyway, all this led to my looking at Kelly Corrigan’s website where she was researching a new book on faith and asked readers for their perspective. And this is what I am up with. So Kelly- this is for you. (for you blog-here are a year’s worth of words for you to munch on during the lean times).

(Unedited/Uncondensed/Probably Unreadable) Essay on Faith:

As for faith, I think I can rule out atheism. While reading a memoir recently from someone who was an atheist, it felt very wrong on spiritual, religious and heck, even cellular level to me. Which is interesting because every now and then I take a highly scientific view of life and its origins and think that maybe there is “nothing more”. When I am in such a “we die, are gone, it’s the end” mood I recognize my emotional state to be similar to that wild petulant teenager yelling at my parents who won’t let me go to a party or some other grave offense- “I hate you! You are ruining my life!” In this case, angry at the lack of answers to my millions of questions. While I have definitely considered the idea that life is a science and random evolution, I have always struggled with the intricacies- that perhaps it all sprung from one cell eons ago but from whence came that cell? An iota a matter must have come from somewhere? And what would be the purpose of humans to know of their own certain death if not to give them an opportunity to live with great purpose because this life meant something. Otherwise, it’s quite cruel is it not? To allow a species to evolve to a point where they see the certainly of their own extinction for no other purpose than the species got a little too smart, evolved a little too far. I wish I could say that isn’t possible, and it doesn’t feel like the truth to me but who am I to rule anything out?

So I mull. The truth is, if I’m not actively engaged in spreadsheets or fixing boo-boos or laughing at my baby’s giggle, I usually come back to the same place. Contemplating what this all means, where it is going, and will this be enough when I die. Very much in the present- is this IT? Is this what I am supposed to be doing? I spend so much time wondering, reflecting, surmising, I have to conclude it’s actually become a deep weave in my fabric of life, one that is silent, and invisible to those around me. Unless I bring up an Oprah show or they see yet another meaning-of-life book on my nightstand, they would never think to guess how much a part of me it really is.

And so I wonder, am I the only one worrying about this stuff? Because it creeps into my thoughts and builds into hours worth each day Are other people really thinking about whether their team will win the playoffs this weekend or if the black shoes at Barneys will be going on sale soon, or other less philosophical things? If I were in a culture that had worry stones for existential fretting I imagine I’d have a perfectly smooth stone that gleamed in the sun. As it is, as an American, I instead make due with a roll of tums and an evening cocktail.

About the time I turned 30, or maybe when I became a mother…at age 30, I felt myself cleave from conventional life. My life to that point had been building-focused. Build the friends, build my independence, build my life with my boyfriend-then-husband, build the career, succeed at work, excel, get there, go faster, achieve more, get more, win. Then slowly, something began to change, and I couldn’t even tell you when or how but it began to dawn on me, that it seemed so much of this was transient. That none of this was going with me, that it really more of a diversion. The truth was, time was short, and it was all too easy to make it meaningless. To easy to get wrapped up in the daily minutiae- jobs, cars, vacuuming, shopping, planning and completely miss the point. In my early 30’s it became real to me for the first time that I may not have the life that I envisioned for myself as a mega tycoon with a life of luxury. I blame my parents but they always made me feel special. Ordinary was out of the question- of course I would achieve all of this! But somehow it hit me, like a dart right between my eyes- I could die tomorrow, nothing is guaranteed, and all this stuff you have envisioned? Not worth a damn really. Not worth much at all.

So, as an avid reader, I turned to books, seeking an answer. When you think of it, people spend a lifetime learning things then writing a book on it. Sure seems like a solid way to save time- to learn from what others have spent years working to condense to a few pages. One I started with was Man’s Search for Meaning. A great title, but of little substance, at least for what I was searching for. Miracles in the Andes. I went on to read some Krishnamurti, some Ian Stevenson, Michael Brown (all I liked). I read a lot, but it didn’t solve my problem.

And so this search for meaning quickly ran into the question of faith. It was unavoidable. I struggled with the thought of if we all know we are soon to die, how is it we have not all dedicated our lives to answering the question that looms so large? We are going to die- will we cease to be? Is there another life or world beyond this? Do we choose which one we go to? Will we ever see our family again? I viewed with both longing and exasperation the faith of the strongly religious. Logically, I felt, if you are going to believe completely in an organized religion, you must admit in any event, that you can’t possibly know- we can’t possibly know- if your religions take on the ever-after is accurate. As someone once said about faith- all we can ever really know is that we aren’t sure. By definition, faith implies you cannot prove it to be so. But how comforting it looks from afar. The sureness, the simplicity. At the same time, it makes me crazy. I believe that most people’s faith is about as random as nationality. Organized religion is (mostly) inherited. You are an American (or substitute a religion here) and think America is best because you were born an American. That’s natural, but shouldn’t it be acknowledged that people want what they are and are born into to be the best and so we logically organize events and opinions to support that? It doesn’t really mean that Denmark (other religion) isn’t really a better home-country. Maybe Denmark rocks, I have no idea. I like being able to call myself a Catholic, because like everyone, it's nice to be part of a team, even though I'm pretty far from a "good" Catholic. Regardless, I guess what I am saying is- It’s ok to love your faith/religion. Admit you cannot be sure you are right. Leave room for others. Why doesn’t it seem to work out that way?

My parents, having spent many years in Catholic religious orders/work, sort of left things up in the air once they ditched religious life and started raising me. They no longer really bought into organized religion. They felt they saw “behind the curtain” so to speak and felt that the answer was not there. So no surprise, neither did I. I was raised in a mix of Catholicism, new age philosophy, and eastern religions. No wonder I am confused! Ultimately I found I could try to live by the rules of a faith via organized religion that make me feel like I am wearing someone else’s pants, or I could cobble together elements of faith, spirituality and religion that resonate with the inner me- my intuition if you will, which feels most like “me”. After several years of thought, I had cobbled together a framework of belief, it had a lot of holes like my grandmothers crocheted blankets, ripping out lines of stitches as I figured new things out, and inwardly cursing that the blanket was never done when everyone else seemed to be buying pre-made blankets at Walmart. Unfinished as it was, it was something to cling to when the cold set in. And it is, in short:

I think we slide into the world on a strand of light as eternal beings, build the light, grow learn enjoy, and then slide back out on our strand of light. I think the strands of lights of those you love intertwine with your own so you are forever linked. I think there might be something magical in the depths of meditation-glimpses to levels of consciousness unattainable in normal states. I have started to feel myself pulled down the rabbit hole in my early attempts, with last minute thoughts bringing me back before I knew where it was going. I have started to believe in laws of attraction. That you don’t have to make things happen. Things come to you once you are aware of this. Or maybe I have just been lucky, but I’m come to learn the less I struggle/fight/force it, the smoother the ride. In retrospect, I have always gotten what I wanted and needed, just not always immediately or without setbacks or challenges- but eventually things I really valued, appeared/happened. It seems from my view that the universe is inherently good. I’ve learned to look at the world and nature as if I have never seen it before in everyday life- driving to work, taking a walk, and in doing do, have found unspeakable beauty that makes me wonder what more a heaven could offer. In those moments, I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz- "heaven" was here all along. That sounds new-agey and crazy, but literally I was walking one day recently and suddenly looked up from semi-meditation and was astounded by the world. What seconds before had been a typical street in typical suburbia, suddenly the colors were impossibly deep and rich, the sky was the most gorgeous piece of art. What seconds before had been bad edging and crabgrass was a creative beautiful organic nature wonderland. Houses became cozy nests created by the creatures of the world. I didnt want for anything, I expected nothing and needed nothing. I was like a child who had never seen the world before. I was totally at peace, suspended in goodness. Which only makes me realize how much background noise and angst are usually present in everyday life. Anyway, at times like that, I realize we dont see the miracles that surround us all the time. We dont see what is right in front of us. Like sleepwalking-we think we are awake and aware, but we are not.

On faith in general, I dont think a human mind could ever understand it all, and we shouldnt spend all our time trying, but I still try quite a bit (I'm a total hyprocrit). But other things I can’t explain- like suffering and pain, other than perhaps it’s a way to teach those not suffering about compassion and those in pain about transcendence. But I worry that seems trite. And despite my beliefs and glimpses of that surreal peace, there are moments that I still feel seized with panic. That life is moving along quickly and I will soon lose my parents and elders, that dangers lurk in every shadow for those I love, that I will one day wake up and find myself at the end of life wondering how it all went by so quickly. And I want to grab hold of time and stop it- the peace and surety of assurance of eternal life and a benevolent universe eluding me. Sort of that feeling when all the sudden you find yourself going way to fast and your heart leaps into your throat and says, oh my god, this isnt fun anymore. Someone stop this thing.

Anyway, I felt ok about my Chinese menu of faith, until reading the Oprah magazine where Kelly made a comment about how American it is to think that you can pick and choose the tenants of your faith like reading from, well, a Chinese menu. That made me feel very predictable and silly-American- you mean this developing my own spirituality is grouped into the same sort of behavior that causes us to buy gas guzzling cars and build McMansions on every block? Me me me-ism? Maybe that’s true, but right now, it’s all I have. My final thoughts on organized religion? A hundred versions of the truth. Mostly inspired by greatly spiritual beings, whose words and insights have been to varying degrees contorted or twisted over the centuries based on the whims of man, or the known dangers of the game of “operator”. “He said what? It’s all about the duck?? Ohhh, it’s all about LUCK (strike 3000 years of duck-worship)”.

And because faith and meaning for me are intertwined, I will touch on my search for meaning. I think the idea of leaving a “legacy” as giving life meaning is a little overrated. For most of us, the Earth will not miss us when we are gone. The idea that we keep people alive by talking about the person or in our memories, is great until you go down one generation and that is the end of that. How often do you reflect on the life and values of your great grandparents or beyond? I reflect on them to pay them silent homage though I have no idea who they were or what they stood for. Still, I carry their DNA in my cell somewhere, so in case it matters, I think of them in tribute every so often in case it matter. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to cover your bases. So my focus is on happiness in this world which is a tall order. Happiness to me is comprised of several components:

1. It means having a faith- otherwise, you’re unlikely to be dripping in happiness if you really think this life is a random one time thing that you cease to exist after it- not much holiday cheer in that worldview. So you have to have faith to understand where this all fits, where it’s going, and the comfort that the connections to both yourself and others will not be lost and are not in vain.

2. Then there are let’s say “pleasures of the flesh”, this is where we spend much of our time, probably too much- pursuing – because some of these can be bought with cold hard cash. Things like the intrigue of travel, buying expensive good shoes instead of ones on sale that dig into my feet and leave little red welts, having massages, not having to cook with an oven that burns brownies on the left while the right side remains a gooey mess, a steam shower shaped like a snail, and let’s face it, just living a life of extreme beauty and comfort. I cant lie, I havent transcended these goals. Even as relatively short-term as I recognize them to be, god help me, I want it all.

3. Then there are the elements of happiness built on love- the beauty of your child’s laugh, the refuge and companionship of your spouse, the comfort that only your parents could give, the gift of friends you enjoy passing the days with.

4. Finally, I’d say the last major element of happiness is vocation- because humans thrive on achievement and creation. We can call it growing or learning or whatever, but the thrill of facing a challenge and meeting it- it’s this that causes people to keep going even when they reach their goals. They set new ones, continue on, otherwise, it’s like the idea of reaching the end of the internet- what do you do then? So what is it we do with our lives. Do we hone our organizational skills helping the homeless or find personal engineering genius building atom bombs? Does it matter? I wish I knew.

So if I’ve thought through it enough to be able to organize it into a nice neat essay on faith- do I feel as safe and secure as those who wrap themselves in the blanket of organized religion, saying "I believe what he said" while pointing to a ancient text? While we probably don’t know as much about others as we think we do- the answer is “I doubt it”. Absent the blind faith that says; "live your life, pay your taxes, help old ladies across the street, be good and in the end you will be rewarded in ways you can only dream of", I still sit outside with my faced pressed against the windowpane, my hot breath fogging the glass. In the end, I hope that God, whatever it is, recognizes that I really tried. Maybe I missed some rituals, maybe I wasn’t always sure…but I always hoped and I always struggled to explore heart and mind and spirit and make it one. If nothing else, I sought you out God, and frankly, your response wasn’t unequivitable. Given that, I did the best I could, so I hope that you are there, and, if I did it wrong, I hope that you forgive.

Well, Jack, sleepy eyes blinking against the light of the afternoon, hair tousled and damp, just came into the room and announced “My Nap was Great!”. With trademark 4-year old gusto, certain this news is both critical and likely to make me proud. He is so darn cute. Its one of those rare moments when I don't question anything, I just bask in the joy, soaking it in.

The Full Body Smile

2008-06-24T22:05:00.000-04:00

This morning, you cried at a quarter to seven. I shuffled into your room before my brain had even registered that I was no longer in bed, as I do several times a night. I lifted your squirming body from the crib, settling into the rocking chair as you rooted in the semi-dark, blackout shades drawn against the early morning light, to latch on, searching for more warm milk. Even at almost a year old, we repeat this most nights, many times- too many times.

As you drank, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes- one of my tricks to convey to you that “we are still sleeping around here! It’s not morning!”. At some point I carefully opened my eyes to look down at you and see if you were drifting back to sleep. You weren’t. Curled up around me, your mouth suckling like a starfish, your eyes were wide open. You catch me looking at you and paused in your nursing to give me a smile and then quickly latched back on.

I love when you are curled up like this, your warm soft baby body melting into me. Your arm draped possessively across me, or, less satisfyingly, your sticky fingers exploring my face, scratching me with your nails I am forever cutting at bad angles or trying to fish hook my mouth. When Jack was a baby he would often fall asleep on my chest. I felt like I always had a sleeping baby on top of me and I would say to your father “could you take him?” pointing to the slumbering baby and gesturing towards the swing. Or sometimes if he awoke early, I would steal him back to my bed and he would fall back asleep on top of me, while I went into a semi-sleep, worried he might fall, but too tired to actually get up.

But not you. You twist and turn, always on the move. You’re all smiles, but only a real good cuddler when you are nursing. After you finish, you start squirming around and I fashion my arms like a soft cage to prevent you from falling off my lap. I used to think you wanted to get down, and that if I put you on the floor you would scamper away on some urgent mission. But the two times I tried, you looked up at me with a shocked and hurt expression and started to cry. So I hold you like a bundle of energy performing acrobatics on my lap. Often times, I will tire of this and stick you back in your crib to go back to sleep. And often times, you will cry. But today I thought, “oh well” and I opened my eyes and let you sit up on my lap.

And your entire face formed into a smile as you realized that I was going to interact. “Good morning!!!!” your grin said “I can’t believe you are letting me sit up and look at you! This is so exciting!”. I soaked in your smile, as you happily bounce in place for a few minutes, and rose to open the shades. At this point, you went into your full body smile. Trembling with excitement, you, with amazing strength, bound up and down in my arms, and wiggle every arm and leg with excitement at seeing the morning sun. I have to tighten my grip so you don’t fall to the floor. Because you know. This is it. I won’t put you back in your crib now. You make little noises of happiness, soft shrieks or hiccupy-laughter that are hard to describe. How does a smile sound? That is the noise.

And a new day is born.

Stupid Newfangled Internet

2008-06-18T22:28:00.008-04:00

I have often considered with a sort of detached sadness-tinged-with-annoyance the fumblings of the older generation when it came to computers. My father, for example, who is exceedingly bright, can become so obtuse when it has to do with his laptop that I want to reach across the phone lines and shake him. Hard.

"Dad, I cannot tell you why that pop up thing that according to your recollection says 'cancel now, but you were successful' is doing that nor can I assess if that is why you can no longer view your Seinfeld DVDs on your computer if that is all you remember." According to my Dad, software randomly disappears and appears on his laptop, possibly by divine intervention.

Not that I am one of those snazzy new kids who grew up with the internet. The internet didnt even crop up until I was in college. COLLEGE for heavens sake. For our high school homework we used the card catalog at the library and the set of Britanica's that I won in a first grade art contest. Back then, they didnt even give grammar school children homework. We went home and roamed the neighborhood with our friends like wild children after school until our parents bellowed out the back door for us to come in for "supper".

As I type this I am hearing my grandparents voice echo in my head "coal delivery...woolen bathing suits...ice box". Oh god, it happening.

For a while there, I was sort of hanging with the technology crowd. When I randomly started this blog I was ranked like 3,000 on technorati with a 540 authority. Why not, it was my emerging generation that launched the internet! We were the pioneers!

My new technorati rating? 3.2M. What the..???

I saw it coming. First, I saw all these new icons pop up everywhere- DIGG, RSS, Track Back-add it to this or that or whatever and I sort of knew what it all was, sort of. Honestly I felt it was getting a little cluttered and annoying.

Just like I find Facebook and My Space annoying and hideously designed. I am suprised more people dont fall over with spontaneous seizures from all the insanely flashing text and ADHD-inspired layouts. I have accounts on some of these sites becuase I had to find out what the fuss was about. I kept them up as a social experiment in "no one over the age of 16 is seriously going to use this are they?" Then I get the occasional email notifying me that "friends" have been on my site, and I go out there and find that previously sane people I know, often with advanced degrees, have given me a piece of "flair" or a mock buttons for my page. Seriously guys. Flair?

Its all just further testament to my emerging cluelessness as the technology outstrips my attention span or available time. My dinosaur scales are showing and my kids, one of which learned to read "Google" before "Run Dick Run", are going to give me a run for my money as I lamely try to put filters on their computers in a few years. They will probably have them fully disabled before I complete the reboot to complete the installation.

But I have to tell you, it's no fun being behind the curve. My legendary fall from technorati grace, and in less than 18 months, smarts. Harsh technorati! Harsh.

Alec's Hair

2008-06-18T22:17:00.002-04:00

I recently entered Alec in a Disney Family.com contest for Crazy Baby Hair. How cute is he?

http://family.go.com/contests/crazy-baby-hair-photo/cute-baby-boys-2/100--all-natural--alec-s-morningtime-14797/

I went through elaborate steps to conceal my identity as a former blogger so they would not feel guilty awarding Alec the grand prize. That, and I couldnt remember my password to my original account and didnt want to wait for my old one to be reset via email. How insanely impatient am I? I entered the contest on the last day and took a picture of Alec 10 minutes before posting it. So yes, this is really his regular hairstyle.

As it happens, inexplictably we did not win (unless I have overlooked 3 emails and a certified letter arriving by June 16th).

Still, I think the picture is so cute so despite our defeat, I'm posting the link.

2008-01-08T21:09:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from 2007 Annual Christmas Letter:

Once again, the wonderful holiday season is upon us. A time for gifts, giving, and of course, Christmas newsletters. Ours is a special milestone this year as it represents the 10th annual Christmas letter! When you are done celebrating, you can read on to our year in review.

January marked the beginning of my second trimester of pregnancy. Unlike with Jack, I had very little morning sickness and briefly (wrongly) considered that we might be having a girl. What I did not consider is that not feeling sick would eventually lead to triple the weight gain of my first pregnancy, but more on that later.

Speaking of Jack, he began the year as a freshly minted three-years-old, but still much a toddler, until one day he and Brian left to run errands. Jack breezed back in several hours later, excitedly telling me about his adventures with his father, using far more sophisticated language, attention to detail, and imagery than I ever realized he possessed. I stared at him unable to process the change as he chattered away. Just like that, he was a little boy.

Jack still loves garage doors and elevators but has really mixed things up this year by adding gates, signs and automatic doors to his obsessions. Getting around the house can be a little tricky since everything from a shoelace to a broken measuring stick becomes a “gate” and Jack prefers we punch in our access code to open the gate before letting us by.

In February, I was promoted to xxx, at xxx, where I remain on my flexible 4-days a week schedule. In addition to my regular job, xxx also had me xxx for an international industry consortium. And you know how various world cultures love to merge into one perceived-American-driven standard! Like butter on hot toast! Also, because I appeared to be some sort of job-magnet, Disney contacted me and asked me to be a writer on their new website, Family.com. I really am not sure how it happened, but one of their producers came across my writing and made me an offer, which I almost turned down because writing artistes like me really don’t like deadlines. Ultimately I accepted, writing an hour or two every weekend, because having an actual editor was too cool to forego. So this just goes to show, Christmas letters will usually lead to great fame.

As for Brian, he continued his work as an xxx at xxx, which he really enjoys, or finds really stressful, depending on the hour. His colleagues have great senses of humor and Brian has become well-known at the company as his quiet conversational tone really compliments his speakerphone habit. At home, Brian is still perfecting his dishwasher loading methodology, and we aren’t committing, but think that by the end of next year he may have found a way to engineer an extra fork into the configuration. Brian insists he still loves me but has banned me from executing the loading sequence.

In April, Jack entered the “asking why” phase. And although I always vowed I would not brush off my children when they asked why, and would instead give complete and scientifically correct answers, I was not fully aware of the incessant and circular nature of said questions and within 24 hours I was responding to everything with “Because I said so.”

By May, I was into the final months of pregnancy and was large enough that we feared I might throw the Earth off it’s rotational axis. The early “glow” dissipated into general irritability and Brian decided this was an excellent time to begin exercising several hours a day, suddenly inspired to start competing in triathlons. He finished his first triathlon three days before I had the baby, finishing in just over three hours.

In June I was able to hand off my international job and also wrap up writing for Disney. The timing worked out perfectly because a few days later I got another new job at home- a mother of two!

On June 27th we welcomed our second beautiful son, Alec Orion, to the world. Alec is the personification of joy. With dark curly hair and a soulful, twinkling gaze, he spends his days laughing, cooing and smiling at whoever happens to look in his direction. My Dad insists that he can feel Alec watching him even when he is in his bouncy seat facing the other direction (Alec, not my Dad), just waiting to catch his eye and smile. The name Orion means “light of Heaven” and he certainly has been.

To show his humility by not being perfect, Alec is not such a great sleeper and rarely naps. Like his brother, Alec is a big boy. He weighed in at 18+lbs at eight weeks and was wearing 24-month sized clothing by the time he was four months old. While we are charmed by the boys’ resemblance to Brian in this respect, carrying our infant is not entirely dissimilar to toting around a cement block, albeit one with a good personality. This can be a challenge when chasing after Jack, or really, doing anything.

Jack, who was not particularly interested in obtaining a sibling, has done pretty well with the competition. We suspect he is occasionally envious of the attention the baby gets because we are very astute parents and also because he says, “I’m jealous. Put the baby down and hug my belly.” While Jack declines to hold the baby, he has not been totally immune to his charms and is relishing his power to make Alec, who adores Jack, laugh. In fact, Jack recently announced that he would like “100 baby brothers” (though I suspect it has more than a little to do with him getting additional access to the automatic revolving doors at the hospital). I told Jack unfortunately his chances for that many siblings are pretty low.

I’ve found that going from one to two children is similar to going from zero to one. It occurs to me that we had a lot more time before, but with the added work are added rewards. We are also extremely lucky to have the help of our wonderful live-in nanny, who we couldn’t survive without. I’ve noted that with the second child we are pretty much over the practice of sterilizing dropped toys, or cutting cheerios in half to prevent choking. I smile when I think that I still had the baby monitor in Jack’s room before Alec arrived. These days, I’m a lot more likely to install soundproofing in their bedrooms and issue stern warnings about what’s going to happen to the next kid that wakes mommy up.

The rest of the Summer was spent with me trying to recover from the delivery by caesarean. A virulent infection led to other complications that I am still dealing with- all around not my best time physically. However, Alec was born safely and without complications so I am grateful.

On to a busy September! Brian competed in his second triathlon, finishing in less than three hours. He is currently training for 2008 races and is a constant reminder of how I am not a triathlete despite walking over 200 miles in loops around our neighborhood to drop the baby weight (as any of you with a phone know since I pass the time by making calls). Brian and I also celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary (15 years together!) in September. Brian surprised me with a romantic evening out in a limo and a 10-year marriage blessing at xxx. It’s been a wonderful life together and we are very thankful.

Jack also started preschool in September. I was worried about the transition, and although he had a slight adjustment to make when he realized he wouldn’t be actually running the school, he has since thrived and loves it. His preschool is in a charming old fashioned schoolhouse on a historic working farm, so they visit the animals often and have lots of fun. I love picking him up and hearing about his day, especially discovering what his three-year-old mind perceives as a highlight. Jack is very bright and is able to do simple reading, spelling and math. He is very strong in spatial temporal reasoning, which he obviously didn’t inherit from me. He also loves Spanish, so we are now all bilingual, as long as the word is related to something that might appear in a Dora episode.

Of course fun isn’t the only thing that Jack gets at school- he has also become our personal link to the greater community of preschool maladies and, as I write this with a sore throat after getting a goodnight kiss from Jack, it occurs to me I should really start teaching him to wave (“Wave night, night to mommy, baby!”) Just until preschoolers decide to be more fastidious. As for size, Jack hasn’t gained much weight this year, attributed to the fact that he subsisted largely on highly diluted apple juice until we figured out so much water was affecting his appetite. In spite of his parents being a bit clueless, Jack has still managed to grow upwards. I’m not sure of his exact height but you look at the closest 4-year-old and tack on an extra head, that’s about how tall he is.

In October and November we settled into our routine as a family of four, with my returning to work and all of us sleeping a little less than we’d like to, for now. And while this year has brought us great gifts, we have also lost family and friends, some of whom are not a lot older than us. This poignant reminder of how precious and short life is has reinforced our deep sense of gratitude for all that makes life beautiful, including our many wonderful family and friends. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we’ve come to see we have everything we ever truly desired, and it’s been ours all along.

All of which brings us to today. Jack is on the cusp of turning four, at which point he swears he will begin eating vegetables and Alec a happy and round five month old with a single little tooth he isn’t afraid to use. Christmas is a time for miracles and we hope you all have yours. As always, we wish you great peace, love & light in the New Year.

Merry Christmas!

My semi annual post

2007-12-21T19:11:00.001-05:00

I'm so bad at this blogging stuff. I have two really good excuses though. Arent they cute?

Yes, I know some of you have 4 or more kids and blog all the time. I can't explain how you do it. Unreal.

Alec is 5 months and Jack is 3.

This years Christmas letter, the only writing I have done lately, will be posted soon.

Merry Christmas!

Eat Pray Love...then what?

2007-10-07T16:42:00.000-04:00

Well, it was bound to happen. Oprah had Elizabeth Gilbert on her show and now the book is big-time famous. My review of Eat Pray Love is by far, the most accessed blog entry. It dramatically surpasses all the blog entries I meant to write but never got around to. We will just have to all imagine how entertaining and poignant those would have been.

I wrote the original review in April 2006 in the midst of a spiritual pilgrimage- or maybe just an early mid life crises- and it's amazing how has and has not changed in that time. For one, at that time I was beginning to fear that I would never be able have a second child. The barren months stretching endlessly. And today, I type one-handed, a nursing baby curled against me. A living, breathing blessing, if you believe in such things. Sometimes its hard not to.

And then other times....

Since reading Eat Pray Love, I've had my share of fortune and trials. I've continued my search for the eternal "meaning of life" and slowly added to my knowledge, carefully adding each fact or plausible theory to the overall equation like a little mad scientist. Then I ran into some health issues and completely lost my faith for a period of time. I believed that there was no one "looking out" for us. It was a stupid idea anyhow. Like some God in the sky was micromanaging our lives, giving me this condition and letting children starve in Sudan. It was maddening, because clearly it seemed, we were alone. Very alone. I felt like a small child. A cosmic orphan.

And yet, I looked at my earlier experiments with attraction theory- being explicit about what you wanted and waiting for the universe to make it so. It wasn't entirely a failure, that experiment. In fact, it was a little eerie. Strange enough for me to quietly send out copies of the little book (It Works) on the subject to friends in distress like a closet evangelist.

And then I started looking at healing through hypnosis, and concerned about falling into the hands of a crackpot, tried self-hypnosis and found it also sort of works. The hypnosis also helped with the onset of anxiety brought about by this condition I developed. I wasn't depressed per say, and was quite happy with life, but would be seized by bouts of anxiety where I got dizzy and wanted to jump out of my skin. Maddening. My husband was great, and in a way, it renewed my love for him- him being such a rock and safe harbor. That was a type of gift- to have such a renewed gratitude for my amazing family. In the past, having heard people say similar things "the tragedy brought us together" I thought- geez, some consolation, but now I think I understand that more.

Then I read the book "Miracle in the Andes". Which is part of the whole Alive story about the plane crash in the Andes. I don't know why I read it, I knew the story. But I'm glad I did, because I really identified with the author, one of the survivors, having gone through a transformation as a result of his experience. A transformation that I really understood in light of my own challenges, which thankfully did not include me having to watch my friends die and eat their bodies (cheap shot but you know you're all thinking it). To understand my current state, I will quote from that book, which I really related to. It's long and it's not my words, but for now, there are a lot of parallels to where I am.

"I have lived a happy life since the disaster. I have no guilt or resentments. I look forward to tomorrow and I always expect the future to be good.

“But how is that possible?” they often ask. “How can you be at peace with life after what you suffered?” I tell them I am not at peace in spite of what I suffered, but because of it. The Andes took so much from me, I explain, but they able gave me the simple insight that has liberated me and illuminated my life: Death is real, and death is very near.

In the mountains, there was never a minute that I did not feel death at my side, but the moment I stood on the summit of the mountain and saw nothing but towering peaks as far as the eye could see, was the moment all my doubts were swept away and the certainty of my own death became viscerally real. The realness of death stole my breath away, but at the same time I burned more brightly with life than I ever had before, and in the face of total hopelessness I felt a burst of joy The realness of death was so clear and so potent that for a moment it burned away everything temporary and false. Death had shown its face, dark, predatory, invincible and for a split second it seemed that beneath the fragile illusions of life, death was all there is. But then I saw that there was something in the world that not death, something just as awesome and enduring and profound. There was love, the love in my heart, and for incredible moment, as I felt this love swell- love for my father, my future, for the simple wonder of being alive- death lost its power. In that moment, I stopped running from death. Instead, I made every step a step toward love, and that saved me. I have never stopped moving toward love. Life has blessed me with material success. I like fast cars, good wine, fine food. I love to travel. I have a beautiful house in Monetvideo, and other one at the beach. I believe life should be enjoyed, but my experiences have taught me that without the love of my family and my friends, all the trappings of worldly success would ring hollow. I also know that I would be a happy man if all those trappings were taken from me, as long as I am close to the people I love.

I expect most people would like to think of themselves in this way, but I know that if I had not suffered as I did, and not been forced to stare death in the face, I would not treasure the simple precious pleasures of my life as richly as I do. There are so many perfect moments in a day and I don’t want to miss a single one- the smiles of my daughters, my wife’s embrace, a slobbering welcome from my puppy, the company of an old friend, the feel of beach sand beneath my feet, and the warm Uruguayan sun on my face. These moments bring time to a stop for me. I savor them and let each one become a miniature eternity and by living these small moments of my life so fully, I defy the shadow of death that hovers over all of us, I reaffirm my love and gratitude for all the fits I’ve been given, and I fill myself and more and more deeply with life.

In the years since the disaster, I often think of my friend Arturo Nogueira, and the conversation we had in the mountains about God. Many of my fellow survivors say they felt the personal presence of God in the Mountains. He mercifully allowed us to survive, they believe, in answer to our prayers, and they are certain it was His hand that led us home. I deeply respect the faith of my friends, but to be honest, as hard as I prayed for a miracle in the Andes, I never felt the personal presence of God. At least, I did not feel God as most people see Him. I did feel something larger than myself, something in the mountains and the glaciers and the glowing sky that, in rare moments, reassured me, and made me feel that the world was orderly and loving and good. If this was god, it was not God as a being or a spirit or some omnipotent, superhuman mind. It was not a God who would choose to save us or abandon us, or change in any way. It was simply a silence, a wholeness, an awe-inspiring simplicity. It seemed to reach me through my own feels of love, and I have often thought that when we feel what we call love, we are really feeling our connection to this awesome presence. I feel this presence when my mind quiets and I really pay attention. I don’t pretend to understand what it is or what it wants from me. I don’t want to understand these things. I have no interest in any God who can be understood, who speaks to us in one holy book or another, and who tinkers with our lives according to some divine plan, as if we were characters in a play. How can I make sense of a God who sets on religion above the rest, who answers one prayer and ignores another, who sends sixteen young men home and leaves twenty nine others dead on a mountain?

There was a time when I wanted to know that God, but I realize now that what I really wanted was the comfort of certainty, the knowledge that my God was the true God and that in the end He would reward me for my faithfulness. Now I understand that to be certain-about God, about anything- is impossible. I have lost my need to know. In those unforgettable conversations I have Artuuro as he lay dying, he told me the best way to find faith was by having the courage to doubt. I remember those words every day and I doubt, and I hope, and in this crude way I try to grope my way toward truth. I still pray the prayers I learned as a child- Hail Mary’s, Our Fathers- but I don’t imagine a wise, heavenly father listening patiently on the other end of the line. Instead, I imagine love, an ocean of love, the very source of love, and I imagine myself merging with it. I open myself to it. I try to direct that tide of love towards the people who are close to me, hoping to protect them and bind them to me forever and connect us all to whatever there is in the world that is eternal. This is a very private thing for me and I don’t try to analyze what it means. I simply like the way it makes me feel. When I pray this way, I fell as if I am connected to something good and whole and powerful. In the mountains, it was love that kept me connected to the world of the living. Courage or cleverness wouldn’t have saved me. I had no expertise to draw on so I relied upon the trust I felt in my love for my father and my future, and that trust led me home. Now I am convinced that if there is something divine in the universe, the only way I will find it is through the love I feel for my family and my friends and through the simple wonder of being alive. I don’t need any other wisdom or philosophy than this: My duty is to fill my time on Earth with as much life as possible, to become a little more human every day, and to understand that we only become human when we love. I have tired to love my friends with a loyal and generous heart. I have loved my children with all my strength. And I have loved one woman with a love that has filled my life with meaning and joy. I have suffered great losses and been blessed with great consolations, but whatever life may give me or take away, this is the simple wisdom that will always light my life: I have loved, passionately, fearlessly, with all my heart and all my soul, and I have been loved in return. For me, this is enough."

I still love the book Eat Pray Love and I'm delighted it's such a success. Though I sometimes feel like it's an old friend who went to Hollywood and became a movie star; I want to yell- hey I knew you when...!

Or at least I think that is how I would feel, given that Hollywood is not filled with people from my hometown. Or even with people who may have accidentally driven though my hometown, as far as I know.

Up for Air

2007-08-29T23:30:00.000-04:00

Well thank heavens I stopped writing for Disney's http://www.family.com/ a week before the birth of my second son. Otherwise they'd be suing me about now for default. Why do I perpetually overestimate maternity leave? I never have the action packed, trip filled, super productive leave of my dreams.

I was mussing over this recently and I said to a friend, "next time, I'm truly going to have a good leave". They said, "You keep telling yourself that Amy. I can see you with 3, 4, 5 kids- I bet you'll eventually get that perfect maternity leave." Sigh.

The C-section infection didn't help. Nothing like an open abdominal wound for 7 weeks to take the spring out of your step and damper your summer fun! Now that its finally (thank you God) closed, I'm back on my feet. Which is useless, because even with up to 2 hours a day of walking, I haven't lost any weight since week two. Breastfeeding appetite, that scourge! Hey preggos out there, don't go gaining 42 pounds thinking you'll drop it during maternity leave. I still have 20 stubborn pounds that refuse to vacate. Which means I have to take them back to work with me in 3 weeks. Which means I need ALL NEW CLOTHES because I threw my "fat" clothes out in a fit of fitness two years ago. Egads.

So that is the bad stuff, the good stuff is I have another sweetheart. I'm smitten and in love with baby Alec, which is super since we are BFF. He eats every two hours around the clock, unless he gets hungry and steps it up to hourly. He is 9 weeks today and is almost 17lbs. Bigger than Jack was, who is projected to be around 6'10", maybe 7" as an adult. Wow. Makes me look smaller in pictures with them anyway!

I find that I love Alec and Jack differently. Jack is a little boy at age 3 who is famously for asking me 30 times a day "do you know how much I love you?" and telling me I am his best friend, and Alec, who just learned to smile (which I am crazy for and do anything to elicit from him), so you know, it's different.

In any event, I've been keeping a running mental list of things that I need to teach my kids. Things I wish I had been taught (or taught earlier), so keep your eyes open for that series forthcoming. In these last few weeks of my highly unproductive, and mostly bedridden, maternity leave.

I've done a little reading. Read Miles Levin's blog http://www.carepages.com/ServeCarePage?cpn=levinstory&uniq=812298&extrefid=tlcupdate and felt shallow but grateful. Read The Power of Now and felt confused, reading the accompanying Meditations book and felt deep. Read The Emperors Children and thought, when does this get good? Read Final Exam, virtually by accident, and through a single long night of breastfeeding. Felt maybe my lack of medical career (doctor!) wasn't a total mistake, dont think I could have survived anatomy lab!

Book Review: The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

2007-07-24T14:04:00.000-04:00

As the mother of 3 YEAR old and 3 WEEK old sons, you know a book has to be pretty good to get me blogging on it rather than using my downtime to research tube-tying surgery.

It's been some time since I have been truly inspired by an author (perhaps since Elizabeth Gilbert) and I am delighted to have discovered J.R. Moehringer. I know I said I was going to review some other books first but I got sleepy. So here are the other mini-reviews:

A Life in Smoke: A Memoir by Julia Hansen (4 stars, as a former smoker, really enjoyed it.)

Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen (2.5 stars. It was OK, but only because I have nothing else to read, otherwise a bit boring)

Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra (3 stars. A little disappointing, slightly boring)

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron (3.5 stars, A little shallow, mildly humorous)

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (4 stars, love those WWII genre books, true life all the better, still, not the best book Ive read from that era, but interesting)

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls (4.5 stars, great memoir, really unique story)

Ok, so back to The Tender Bar...

First, I wasn't so sure about this book because the name was a little off-putting. I didn't know what it meant. I have this idea that women do most of the leisure reading, is that wrong and sexist? Maybe, but I doubt it. So, given that, the title of "bar" and the write up that it was about some guy growing up near a bar, though I love to knock some back when the opportunity arises, didn't inspire me. It sounded like a book for guys. Still, I was in a book lull, so I gave it a shot.

Well I will pull out the oldest cliche for JR- you know some people can play the notes, while others make beautiful music. JR is a writer in the truest and most elegant sense. Words must follow him around like the pied piper in endless admiration. He has "the Gift". It makes me never want to write anything again, which is how I typically react to other peoples good fortune and talents.

And yes, it is about him growing up near a bar, sort of, but it's really more about relationships and an incredibly funny/witty/wry guy and his perspective on life. He has amazing self clarity and it was a joy to read his prose. I'm sounding like a lunatic I sense, but while his story wasn't inspiring the way Eat Pray and Love was, his writing is so captivating, I'd gladly read about him taking out garbage.

Like most of my lazy reviews, I didn't summarize his book or plot, but suffice it to say, this guy deserves to be at the top of the Best Sellers list and he needs to write more- if he can. Sometimes, I think, telling ones own story has a charm that cannot be replicated in other stories, but still, JR should give it a shot because he is so funny and well, yes, I demand it.

I also wonder how people can write memoirs that include other people where the writers assessment of them lays them so bare. Are they friendless outcasts after publication? I get yelled at for even relaying a story under a fake name in my never-read blog, I cant imagine how some people feel about showing up in a best seller.

That random diatribe aside, this is a 5 star book because his writing is so charming and funny- he is truly in the class of great writers.

Buy the book!

Now Mom to Two

2007-07-18T20:06:00.000-04:00

True, it's been a while since I last blogged. I plead "newborn". That said, Alec is really a good baby, but even the best babies have a pesky habit of keeping mommys up at night. Especially when they are coupled with every husband's most prized invention- breastfeeding.

Ugh, it's killing me this time around. Despite nursing my first son for 13 months and mostly enjoying it, I already feel a little worn out with this one. Plus I'm tired of lugging around the "equipment" which I had forgotten will keep me out of all my normal clothes until I wean. Speaking of normal clothes, I am in no man's land here with about two pairs of running shorts that fit and a few big t-shirts. I forgot how depressing postpartum body deflation is. Scary really. You look so much worse not pregnant that pregnant in these early days- just all doughy and eew, I can't go on. I'm feeling hideous if you can't tell.

What I do have though, is a live in nanny. Honestly I don't know how you gals who have your second or more child and are alone all day with a toddler or preschooler, do it. I would be in a crumbled heap on the floor if I couldn't hand off my darling children for 3 hours every morning to the nanny while I go collapse in bed, slowly chomping on a percoset as I drift off to dreamland.

Oh yes, I appear to have a budding narcotic problem. Compliments of my lovely c-section, which has kept me leveled for weeks. Now it was necessary for the health of the baby, which I cherish and place above all else, but still, I'm irritable over this long long recovery. I am still not driving (3 weeks later) and just feel weak. Not liking it! So I have to keep calling for more pain meds for my nerve pain at the incision site and I think there is a BIG post it note on my file now with the words "DRUG SEEKER!" or close to it. I can't help it, when I get 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night, the last thing I feel like doing is "toughing out" the pain.

On the other hand, my firstborn 3 year old kingpin son Jack is doing FANTASTIC with the new baby. Even though it's true you don't love your first child any less with the arrival of a second, let's face it, it's not the same. Jack used to be our total focus and now he isn't. I even let him run around in mismatched clothes. I just can't keep the same level of dedication to him with another child. Still, he is doing so well, helping with diapers and coming to get me when the baby cries, its really sweet. Considering I was worried he would try to arrange for Fed Ex to pick the baby up and take him away. He wont hold him, but he will "pet" him as he says, stroking his hair. So that is a major success in these parts.

So that's where we are these days. Some minutes I marvel at how much I love my two beautiful boys and other minutes I swear if one of them wakes me up again I'm moving into a hotel, but we're getting by. I know these early days go by in a flash, so I'm trying to really treasure the best parts.

Welcome Baby Alec

2007-07-04T14:02:00.000-04:00

I forgot how much I love babies...I could stay in these moments forever.

Alec arrived 6/27/07 via scheduled c-section (my first) at 38 weeks. He was 7lbs, 11ozs. Can't say the c-section is the easiest way to go, but he was born healthy and problem-free, so it's all worth it.

He has thick, almost-black, hair and is perfect in every way. His skin is as soft as the most supple suede and his coo's are the sweetest baby sounds. He almost never cries and is just my sweet cuddle baby. It's good we are getting along so famously since he nurses 50 times a day (so it seems).

Big Brother Jack stepped up and potty trained himself the same week (I think I am safe calling this a success, we are almost at 2 weeks now without day time pull ups). He doesnt seem to mind the baby, telling him he loves him, helping me change his diapers, just so long as he "doesnt have to hug him".

I'm definately having more of these.

Some Funny, Some Not

2007-06-25T20:38:00.001-04:00

Funny story...

One of my best friends from high school visited with her family overnight on her way to a beach vacation. Another one of our "group" also lives in town so we spent the precious few hours together catching up and mostly, laughing.

This friend was the first of us to have kids and now has three boys. She said, you know when Michael was small, I thought he was the most beautiful baby in the world. I thought to myself "I honestly should get him into commericals, think of the money I could make for his college! Now. Looking back at those pictures, I think 'oh, um, hmmm...."

Us girls dissolved into laughter. Who among us had not been convinced that their child is gorgeous at every age only to look upon the same pictures years later and think, "hmm, sort of awkward here isnt he?"

Not so funny story...

Same friend called 12 hours after leaving.

"I'm really sorry. I don't know what this means for you. Michael has the chicken pox."

So, after some frantic searching and hotline calls, I think I had them and think the baby and I will be fine. We'll find out about young Jack on Wednesday when the incubation period ends. Which is also the day his baby brother is coming. Wednesday is shaping up to be a busy day!

So, by the way, the chicken pox vaccine isn't 100% effective.

To C or Not to C, That is the Question

2007-06-21T22:38:00.000-04:00

Luckily, just as I was growing bored with the debate between “working” and stay-at-home moms, I was able to find that the caesarean section (c-section) debate is red hot. And I’m center stage.

In six days I will be going under the knife to deliver my second son at 38 weeks gestation.

Or not.

Technically I have the surgery scheduled, but I am mentally still debating it. My first son was born the old fashioned way at 37.5 weeks. Before he was born, I was virtually certain I would die from labor pain and sort of hoped my doctor would insist on a c-section so I wouldn’t have to face it (she didn’t).

Turns out labor was painless (thanks to God’s real miracle, the epidural). The day of his birth was like a low key party where you are in a jovial mood but anxious for the person of honor to arrive. Inheriting my flair for the dramatics, my son got stuck just before his grand entrance; went into distress and things went from calm to crazy in a hurry. Operating rooms were prepped, vacuums and forceps were used, pitocin drips administered, cuts made, I even had someone practically jumping on my abdomen to try to force him out that way. They got him out, barely, and with a huge audience of people gearing up in scrubs for emergency surgery. We both had fevers and dehydration; he had a double cord around his neck and was sent to the NICU and then, days later, readmitted for jaundice from the bruising. It wasn’t *exactly* how I had pictured the moment. Being wheeled into a NICU and seeing your son for the first time, hours after his birth, is surreal, I wasn’t sure which one he was. All this, and he was less than seven pounds.

This isn’t the type of delivery where you jump up the next day and go out jogging, but strangely enough, I don’t really remember the pain or long recovery. I remember it intellectually, but it doesn’t really register. My primary emotional memory of that day and the days following was of complete joy and wonder at the birth of my son. Funny how that works.

So this time around, they said: “Let’s have another small baby, don’t gain a lot of weight”. I promptly put on 40lbs.

In the ultrasounds, this baby is showing to be above the 90th percentile for gestational age, or about 8lbs already. I don’t believe these ultrasounds since they thought my first son was also over 8lbs, but let’s say an official Big Baby diagnosis has made my OB “skittish”. To the point that she “highly recommended” a c-section, advising me that she would allow a trial labor, but that she believes we will end up in surgery either way. She reminded me that my last delivery was extremely precarious and we were lucky he had no long term effects. My high-risk OB also says, all things considered, do the surgery. My husband, who was more conscious than I of the urgent concern in the room during the last delivery, wants the surgery.

I, however, do not want the surgery. But I do want a healthy and safe baby. I scheduled surgery, thinking I could always cancel.

Or, as turns out, I could entertain a plethora of comments from friends and acquaintances about the proliferation of “elective or scheduled c-sections”. I have been advised to challenge my doctors with specific risk percentages of various birth injuries if I elected a natural labor, been told stories of women who couldn’t deliver a 6lb first baby but delivered their second 9lb baby in 23 minutes flat with no tearing, and been told to expect a long and painful recovery in exchange for “not even trying”. I even had a man today explain to me in great detail the pain of abdominal surgery and how you are never the same.

The worst part, of course, is they may be right. Certainly there are stories out there about difficult first labors being followed by quick and easy second deliveries. There are stories out there about horrible c-sections. And the reality is, I have no idea how easy or hard a second labor would be. The problem is, by the time I know whether it’s going to be a problem, I will have a problem.

I would love to have an uncomplicated (heavily medicated) birth and have the baby in my arms minutes later, but chances are just as good that I’d be peering into a NICU isolette hours later. There is no way to know. So I think I have to choose the middle route. The delivery that I don’t prefer but one with a more predictable outcome. It’s what the doctors recommend. So why can’t I just accept it?

I will probably still be in denial in post op.

Happy Birthday to Me

2007-06-21T18:19:00.000-04:00

Today’s my birthday. I keep forgetting since I am gearing up for the next baby and trying to tie things up at work, but I thought, at least I will prep my son for my big day.

I’ve been telling him for days, “Thursday is Mommy’s Birthday or tomorrow is Mommy’s Birthday!”. He responds each time with a hopeful, “And we will have cake?”

“Sure, sure”, I say, because if this helps him remember, so be it. So this morning, the first thing I said to him was “Jack! What is today?!”

Jack: “Playgroup?”

Lesson: don’t count on your three year old for birthday affirmation.

Disney Makes The Most Difficult Decision Ever

2007-06-12T21:59:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately I must announce that the Mouse & I broke up. It was amicable, we're still friends, I didn't come home and crush my Cinderella DVD in a rage or anything. However, apparently things are not going as well as hoped over at Disney's Family.com and they can no longer afford high-priced talent such as myself.

It was a difficult decision I was assured. I think it came down to me, or animating their next feature film. Word is, they seriously considered filming a manual flip-book of sketchs in order to divert funds to the soon to be defunct blog, Just Amy, but at the last minute decided to go the other way, something about not disappointing the children, or maybe they said stockholders.

I do think Disney should consider making friends with my buddy, Google, so that someone other than the bloggers might actually happen upon the site at some point.

As for me, I am coping as well as can be expected. Though I sort of liked being incentivized to write regularly, I also eyed that new-found hour or so per week with a sort of giddiness. What sort of leisure should I now undertake to fill this time?!

Then I remembered I was 37 weeks pregnant, so I guess that will take care of itself soon enough.

I do wish Disney well though; being a "professional writer" was a brief illustrious moment of glory in my writing career, which to this point had consisted mostly of Christmas Letters. They have a nice start to a site, hopefully they will be able to add some things and zing and pull it off in the end.

But worry not, rest assured you can find me here at ~One Day At A Time~ writing as erratically as ever, so in that sense, it's reassuring that some things will never ever change.

Working Mom's Heartbreak

2007-06-08T15:00:00.000-04:00

In general, I think I have a pretty good balance as a working mother. I have an growing career, but I only go into the office three days a week. It's been a great balance from my perspective, but every so often, Jack reminds me that he has a slightly different view.

Yesterday, before work, I went into Jack’s room. He was just waking up and hadn’t yet sat up in bed, so I climbed next to him for a quick cuddle. Then we had the following exchange:

Me: “Are you ready to get up?”
Jack: “I have to go to work.”
Me: “You do!?”
Jack: “Yes, I have a meeting.”
Me: “Oh, I see! Who is this meeting with?” (slight pause)
Jack: “Mommy & Daddy.”
Me: “Oh good, so Mommy can go with you.”
Jack: “No. You cannot. You must stay home and cry for me.”

Book Review: The Scent of God

2007-06-06T17:48:00.000-04:00

My poor forlorn blog has been so neglected as I continue to write for my Disney's Family.com blog Just Amy.

Still, I'm way behind in my book reviews, so I figured I've give a quick update. First, I can't remember most of the books I have read recently. I'm almost 9 months pregnant and the brain is working overtime with critical complex issues such as remembering that the salt is white and the pepper is black. I also found my car keys in the refrigerator recently. Can't explain that.

However, a couple of books that do stand out include:

The Scent of God: A Memoir by Beryl Singleton Bissell

Wow, this was a great book. As many of you know, I have an ongoing existential crises and this fit that MO perfectly. This book is about a cloistered nun, which I had always regarded with a horrid fascination. Cloistered nuns are locked away from society to live a solitary contemplative life, even their families may never see their faces again. Talk about shock value. Anyway, I had always assumed these women were out of their minds, insane perhaps, but after reading this book, I actually remarked to my mother, "you know, I think if my life had gone differently, I could have become a contemplative nun."

My mother howled at this one- both of my parents were involved in Catholic religious orders for many years and obviously knows me quite well, and so could appreciate the ridiculousness of the statement from a special perspective. However, while maybe that was a stretch, there IS a part of me that finds most of life and society so superficial, I do often wonder why we dont all dedicate our lives to the search for eternal truth, I can't believe I actually spend most of my time doing things like overseeing the development of software products or picking out shingle colors for my house.

I spoke to my father about this also. My Dad spent 17 years in as a Catholic brother, which is similar to the priesthood. He experience reminded me a lot of the cloistered nun in the book, which is that even in dedicating your life to religion and seeking God, you often become no closer than anyone else. My father told me that someone once said "you find God not by looking in the clouds (as many religions would have you focus), but in the people and world around you." And this seemed very real to me as well- sometimes I look at my son and see such divine beauty in his innocence or the light in his eyes or the richness of his laugh that I am certain God could not challenge in it's purity and truth. Or in the embrace of my husband, or the comfort of my parents, or the shared joys of friendship or the filtering of sunlight through the clouds on a beautiful day. If you look, you can find this "divinity" in many places. Not all the time, but snippets here and there, enough to sustain faith. But it too, is easy enough to miss if you forget to look.

Anyway, enough of that, I have to get back to my busy day filled with things that ultimately will have no meaning (haha) but I do highly recommend this book, it was well written and quite captivating.

I hope to return soon, where I will also provide my thoughts on books such as:

A Life in Smoke: A Memoir by Julia Hansen
Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen
Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Again, a sadly incomplete list of recent reading, but the library protects my privacy even from myself so I can't tell what else I might have checked out recently.

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

2007-04-16T22:13:00.000-04:00

My thoughts about the Virginia Tech massacre posted earlier today on Family.com.

As I sit watching CNN, I'm a little weirded out by the interviews. The students they are interviewing almost seem like they are recounting a movie they watched earlier. Some of them are almost giddy at being on TV. They say things like "it was definitely a strange day". One said "I think this is almost bigger than the (isolated shooting on campus last August)". You think? 30 kids dead? Can someone say desensitization?

2007-04-15T16:52:00.000-04:00

Sunday's a popular blog carnival day, so I thought I'd run my own.

Obviously, this says a lot about me, and the probability of whether I'd install bronze statues of my likeness in unlikely event I am ever elected dictator of a country. However, since I blog "blind" on Disney's Family.com (egads, no metrics, I can't see who or why, or frankly if, anyone finds that blog) I thought I'd run a brief synopsis of the fascinating stories you might be missing.

Jack is progressing on potty training. Hail be, its a miracle! Is he off diapers? Check it out to find out! (spoiler: not a chance).

I'm a product review extraordinaire. My insightful reviews on things such as Britax Marathon car seats, Baby Crib Tents, Toy Laptops, and even Craigslist can be found on my Family.com blog, Just Amy.

Are you wondering just how fat and ungainly I have gotten with my latest pregnancy? You can find out here, or here, or heck, here. And by the way, the gender results are in- I'm having a (click to find out)!

Also I gave a riveting foreign-correspondent-like report of our trip to the Cheeca Lodge in Florida. Perhaps it's not a Middle East war zone, but it's has some very exciting accounts of automatic doors.

I've also decided not to join the FBI, learned the hard way to keep jewelry on a lower deductible than your homeowners insurance, and finally reclaimed the affections of Jack from my husband, who had an impressive two year run.

I'm still hoping to get some original content out on this blog, but I'm juggling two jobs at work, plus Jack, plus constantly eating in the hopes of becoming the most huge pregnant woman ever, so my writing notes keep stacking up, but my actual writing, well, not so much. But do come and check out my posts at Family.com! I'm sure once I have two kids my time will totally free up. :-)

The Mouse and I Ran Off Together

2007-03-18T15:30:00.000-04:00

I know it’s been some long, hard and suspenseful weeks since I stopped posting here. No doubt you were beside yourselves trying to make sense of my last cryptic "I've been abducted by the professional blog world" post. Perhaps I overdid the drama on that in exchange for a few weeks off, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit, I'm so like that.

Anyway, I'm finally free to announce that my new blog is part of Disney's new Family.com website which was beta launched several days ago. Family.com is a parent-focused site that allows moms (or dads) direct communications between members and covers a variety of topics from parenting, to education to food and shopping, etc. You can read more information on it here. The site is actually beautifully designed; I was surprised when I saw it myself a few weeks before general release. When I was originally contacted for it, I figured they must be crazy or low budget, but it's one of the slickest looking parenting sites out there, so I can only imagine my One Day at a Time blog design served as inspiration that somehow helped them rise to the occasion.

Now what pivotal role do I play in this revolutionary new site? Well, if you are VERY persistent, you might be able to dig around enough to finally locate my new, let's call it my 'sister blog' "Just Amy" which will cover more of the fascinating parenting topics I cover in this blog, such as Jack's Potty Training Status. I knew it was only a matter of time before mainstream America came begging me for more information on that! You can find the rest of the Family.com bloggers here.

I will still continue to post on this blog from time to time, but my more frequent updates are likely to be on Disney's Family.com (spelled c-o-n-t-r-a-c-t) for a while until I get accustomed to the new publishing schedule and find that my blog wisdom knows no bounds and can fill HUNDREDS of blogs with new and interesting content every week.

I look forward to seeing you on Family.com and also back here on the home site. Ciao!

Temporarily Offline to Watch the Pigs Fly

2007-01-19T15:37:00.000-05:00

I realize that even for me, I've been gone a while. Things have been busy at work and home, and in the midst, through some strange cosmic accident, I was recruited by a major company to become a contracted blogger for a new family-related website/portal launching in early Spring.

I can hear the sounds of jaws dropping from here, as others mutter at their computers: "what?! her? she never even writes anything!" Well, what can I say, I guess the company is a risk taker. And for those of you seeking advice and asking how this came to be, I can only offer you this: I have no idea.

Anyway, I will probably be pretty quiet until my new blog is live, Im like a chipmunk storing up nuts as the company is requesting that I be clever and witty on more than a semi-annual basis.

I'll be back with additional details as the launch date draws nearer!

Got Milk?

2006-12-26T23:26:00.000-05:00

As many know, I am expecting our second child this summer. I can say expecting "our" second child, but that's about as far as I can go. I will not say "we" are pregnant. I hate that. The guys who say that always have this kind of loopy grin on their face and say "We're pregnant!" as they possessively rub their wives belly and throw back another vodka on the rocks. I read an article recently that said that all of men's need to be the alpha is because of their fundamental anguish that they are unaware to bear children as women can. Are you laughing yet? I mean, I sort of get it, having had children, I understand there is no greater miracle, but still, I laughed.

Anyway, I decided early on to talk to Jack about the new baby, as I had a sense he is going to need the entire 9-month runway to prepare. I was a little worried about broaching the topic with him. I thought; how am I going to explain this complex biology to a 2 year old?! That there was conception from two tiny cells and now there is a baby in mommy’s belly and it will grow up and get big and eventually come out and live with us? I figured he’d find the notion is absurd or worse, be terrified. I braced myself, found a calm and opportune time, and gave him the news. He seemed a little bored and said, “okay”. What I now realize is that a two year olds life is 99% absurdity as they try to figure out the world, so hey, people growing in people? Babies showing up out of the blue? Yeah, seems to fit. Can I go play now?

He seems to have really taken to the invisible baby so far. When getting his snack, he asked if the baby would like some apple juice (his favorite). I told him that when the baby comes out, it will only drink milk. I wasn’t sure if he was paying any attention, but later on when he started coming up to my abdomen and asking loudly “Baby! Do you want some milk?” I got my answer. Of course, like all firstborns being raised as if he were nobility, he doesn’t have any idea of what a second baby will truly mean for his world (as probably neither do his parents!) but we are hopeful that he will be old enough to happily welcome the baby…and maybe do some night feedings. jk.

An Early Visit from the Tooth Fairy

2006-12-26T23:20:00.000-05:00

We had our first semi-emergency with Jack earlier this month. He was climbing on and over my husband, Brian, on the floor, who was trying to fix our lifeblood, Tivo, and fell into the coffee table. Knowing it was going to be bad, I ran to him and in this millisecond, thought: Do not blame Brian even though he was playing with him at time…it could happen to anyone…it’s an accident. With this in mind, looking through the blood I heard Brian say- “his front tooth is gone”. I tore up the room looking for the tooth, determined to transplant it myself if need be like I saw once a Discovery Health channel show. When I couldn’t find the tooth, I despondently called a pediatric dentist at home at 9pm at night (isn’t the internet great!), and reported the tooth swallowed and unrecoverable.

In the middle of our emergency, a roofing contractor came by to give a quote (ever notice contractors are ever-present when it’s less than ideal but otherwise impossible to locate?). Brian disappeared for a few minutes with the contractor, who apparently has two boys who knocked their teeth out when they were three. Brian came back announcing “Baby, it’s not a big deal, all boys knock out their front teeth!” I stared at him.

“All boys? What 2 year olds do you know that don’t have front teeth?!”. I was not buying these boys-will-be-boys-and-don’t have-teeth and was already calculating the cost of baby teeth veneers and implants. Amazing enough, after a sleepless night, the dentist located the missing tooth jammed up in Jack's gums and in a stunning turn of good news, said it will probably come back down on its own! So we survived our first medical emergency and as I was congratulating myself on my non-judgmental calm in crises, I overheard Brian on the phone: “so then, she totally freaked out on me…” Argh, what must I do to be recognized as a saint in medical crises!? I think after 15 years, he cheats by reading my mind.

I know all the more seasoned parents are reading this and rolling their eyes;
"A missing tooth? Give me break. Give me a call when he saws off an appendage or sets the neighbors barn on fire" but it's a trauma with training wheels, enough to start out with. I hope I will still be telling this story when he's 22 as the most major of our mishaps. What are my odds?

Almost Brilliant

2006-11-20T17:01:00.000-05:00

In the last couple of months Jack has started trying to sound out words and read labels or signs. Sometimes during his bath, I will write words on the wall in bath crayons and have him practice reading Last night I was giving Jack a bath, and we had a bunch of words written on the wall. Jack decided it was time to switch gears to play-cleaning, so he started to wipe down all the walls with a washcloth. Then he stopped suddenly, realizing he was erasing his words, and said “heeeyyyyy, where is my J-A-C-K spells Mama?!”

A Brush with Infertility Scared my Ovaries Into Action

2006-11-17T16:26:00.000-05:00

I've been gnawing on this secret for three weeks and my defenses are wearing thin. I'm happy to announce that I am pregnant with baby #2! This joyful news has turned me into a hermit as I have tried to balance caution with the fact that pregnancy tends to turn me into a one-track-mind kind of gal. When friends call and say "What's New?", I'll stammer "uh, um, nothing..." (lie!lie!lie!). So I've dropped off the face of the planet and havn't been calling friends or returning their calls. I tell them via email I'm *really* busy right now. A few friends have actually demanded I honor our pre-existing dinners or engagements and they have found out within 30 seconds that I'm knocked up when I tried to causally say "oh, nothing for me, I'm not drinking tonight". "Oh my god, you re pregnant!" they exclaim. Why did I have to be such a lush? It has given me no cover whatsoever.

And this has been an epic pregnancy in the making. Good lord, all that money wasted on birth control pills in my 20's, when I should have been saving for my reproductive endocrinologist fees. After 9 months of trying without too much stress, I went to my OB for a little help, due to my "advancing age" (33). They naturally filled me to the brim with Clomid for 5 months, which increased the stress level of trying a bit and never landed me a successful pregnancy. Off to the reproductive endocrinologist (RE) for more help.

I don't know what I THOUGHT infertility treatments were like, and honestly I didn't give it much consideration beyond chatting with some unlucky friends, because *I* would never have to go that route, of course. And usually I think everything bad can happen to me, I'm not a "it wont be me" kind of person, so I don't know why I wasn't worried about infertility YEARS ago. I could have gotten a really good head start on my panic.

After one month of infertility diagnostic tests, which included lot of pain, time, money, more pain, annoyance and frustration, they found nothing wrong. I however, by this point, had absolutely convinced myself I would never conceive again. Surely not even IVF would work for a case as bad as mine. Cursed! Why did I wait so long?!

Then I wrecked the schedule for the next months of tests and had to sit it out. And I kept sitting, and sitting, and sitting. I thought: this has been a really long month. And just like that, I was pregnant. 16 months later.

I had my 6.5 week ultrasound earlier this week and the baby was there (good), heartbeat was there (good), more than one baby not there (devastating to my husband, who thinks twins would be "fun"). I have another ultrasound next week, after which I might emerge from seclusion if it still looks good. I don't know why I'm hiding this from friends except I know the minute I tell one, it will make it around the world like a flash fire in some Crisco. We just love our gossip!

So that's my news. It's interesting that this pregnancy is so different from my first, but more on that later.

Shopping Mania

2006-11-08T11:44:00.000-05:00

I went to the shopping mall recently with a friend to buy a new dress for a wedding she was attending. She's the type that you really have no choice but to drop everything and accompany, because a true crime against humanity could occur if she was left to her own devices. You would no sooner let this friend pick out her own dress than you would allow your two year old vacation at Disney World unattended, it's just not done.

In any event, as I was doing this selfless act of charity, I had a lot of time on my hands, mostly spent standing outside dressing room doors. I was able to observe some truly suprising sociological trends. Clearly there are some very different philosophies on shopping out there. I couldn’t believe the number of women in "outfits" and stilettos at the mall. I guess I never noticed this before. Why are women dressing up to go to a mall? To impress the other chicks? To catch the eye of the Mall Walking Seniors brigade?

In my mind, shopping is an athletic event. It calls for easy on, easy off clothing (ok yes, specifically a velour sweat suit), and tennis shoes. And it calls for Focus. As in, going shopping should never be construed as code for "let's eat". I've never been a big eating/shopping combo type girl, but since I have had a child, the mere logistics of getting out the door Without Said Child calls for the event to be carefully planned and time, absolutely maximized. No matter how many weekend bachelor parties my husband goes away for or how many months his nighttime intramural league runs, he seemingly has no recollection of all my single parenting whenever I tell him I want to go shopping with the girls (maybe three time a year). It turns into An Ordeal, where he finally gives in saying "Fine! Go Go" and actually, I believe, pouts.

So I finally escape into the car with my girlfriend(s) after all of the drama to leave the house, visions of racks of clothes I can speed walk through sensing the fabric and fit with the tips of my fingertips, planning to cover 10 maybe 15 stores, when inevitably one of them turns to me and says "are you hungry?". It never fails, which is why I've developed somewhat of a reputation for being anti-hunger-friendly. If I have 3 hours to do 4 months of shopping, I do not want to spend it dawdling in a bistro. Dawdling in a Bistro is a perfectly legitimate activity if that is what you set out to do. But not if you set out to buy new leather boots because yours have holes in the bottom and your socks are constantly wet.

I will hesitate before responding, my teeth grinding audibly, and the friend will usually start to back off realizing their mistake. They will say things like "oh ok, well let's just go through Taco Bell, then huh? Ok?" And I will, with the warmth of an Ice Queen, say "Fine.", still internally calculating the diversions cost in time. And they will say, "What do you want?" And if I am starving to death I will say, "Nothing.". Because it’s the principal really.

Speaking of shopping, I had this incredible idea recently to do all my Christmas shopping in November this year. This would replace my pathetic arguments to my relatives and friends in mid December where, after realizing that I, who refuses to stand in long check out lines, have no hope of getting gifts out in time, argues that Christmas is out of control and we shouldn’t exchange gifts this year. Yes, I know it makes sense for adults, but even I, who propagates this argument, have to admit its pretty lame not to get my young nieces and nephews anything. Or my son for that matter.

Imagine my surprise when I ventured out in November to find the stores packed! I felt violated in a way. Sort of like the time I came up with the idea of a device that you could attach to pets or children that would sound an alarm if they fell into a pool, and which I did nothing about, and 6 years later it came out in stores. So, pretty much like my idea was stolen! So much for early shopping. It looks like I will have to shop the internet, which for some reason makes me obsessive about price as I comparison shop across 10 sites and spend a half hour searching online for promo codes for a $20 item. I wonder how long it will take me to get frustrated with that...maybe I should just begin writing...

"Dear Friends and Family,

I've been thinking..."

My Triumphant Return to the Blogosphere

2006-10-19T23:19:00.001-04:00

Well since it's been almost a month since I posted, you might imagine I have a large cache of stories to relay. Gosh, are you always so off? I really worry about your judgement.

Or perhaps you assumed that, thanks to my blog, I had become the newest Google Adsense Millionaire and was off spending my fortune on expensive face creams and weekend babysitters. I myself suspected I was building up quite an Adsense pot and you can only imagine my surprise when after showing remarkable restraint, I finally went and checked my Adsense account, only to discover I had earned a total of $.08. Yes, folks, that's 8 cents. I'm sure every penny counts, but it wasn’t enough motivation for me to figure out how to put the ads back on the blog when they were lost in my Blogger Beta upgrade. Take that Google!

The truth is less glamorous I'm afraid. I've just been busy and my son has been sick a lot. A few days ago I was up all night with him throwing up repeatedly (him, not me, though it crossed my mind). The next morning he was completely fine and chipper while I felt like I had been to an all night rave. I asked him if he was sick last night and he looked at me with a serious expression and said "I spit out my tounge. I made a mess." You can say that again.

So while I try to get back into the blogging mindset, I end with the winner for funniest IM today from a friend who told me about his trip to join a special tour for a NASA exhibition:

Mark (10:49:23 AM): So I printed out a map to get the the facility. It took me into this huge residential area instead of to the commercial district

Amy (10:49:28 AM): it sounds like my car's GPS system, you can be in the middle of a 5 lane highway not near and exit and it says "you have reached your destination"

Mark (10:49:42 AM): and i was like "this has got to be the oddest place ever for a govt bldg"

Mark (10:49:52 AM): so i called Nasa

Mark (10:50:06 AM): and they were like "oh, you must have used mapquest - this hapns all the time"

Mark (10:51:00 AM): kind of funny that the only agency on earth tasked with tracking devices traveling interplanetary and beyond, has wrong mapquest directions to its facility, and hasn't lobbied for that to be fixed

Amy (10:51:16 AM): that is funny

Mark (10:51:29 AM): so the receptionist is like:

Mark (10:52:29 AM): "i have no idea how to get you out of that neighborhood, but start heading for the mountains, and hopefully you hit a freeway - when you do, go north for about 10 mins and take exit whatever- you're totally fine - we don't start the tour for at least five more minutes"

Book Review: Jump At The Sun by Kim McLarin

2006-09-26T12:55:00.000-04:00

For some time now, authors have made it very difficult for me to follow through on my intention to review the books that I read, by writing books that left not a lot to say about them. Or only negative things to say which makes me look catty. Whenever I read another predictable boring book, I think “I can’t believe that got published! I could write a book if this is the standard!”. Then I remember that I can’t even commit to getting a paragraph out on my blog more than once a week. If that.

Anyway, finally I read a book that was intriguing enough to mention. The book is called Jump At The Sun by Kim McLarin. I’m not getting paid to summarize the plot for you (for that, you can go read all the budding book critics over on Amazon.com who fall all over themselves trying to outdo one another in plot summaries) but to set the framework, the story is about this professional and accomplished married woman with two young children who is struggling to find contentment in her life, who apparently yearns to be free to focus on her work, or at least do as she wishes. In addition to this story line, there is a parallel story line of her ancestors who were slaves, and some of those relatives also seemed to have the anti-settle down gene.

I have a love hate relationship with dual story lines in that it’s kind of a free second story, but it’s also one more thing to keep track of. Given that I usually have to read these in stops and starts, sometimes I can’t remember who is who with just one story, never mind two. And so it is with this book, there are a lot of characters to keep track of and it can get a little muddled. Especially in the historical story line.

This book has a unique story line, which makes it worth reading. It’s clearly not the 500th remake of Bridget Jones Diary, which a lot of authors apparently aspire to (note to them: It’s been done. Please stop.). However, as a warning, this book can be a little harsh for doting parents out there, like me. The woman in the story says she loves her kids, but clearly the less glamorous, tiring, frustrating things about parenting weight more heavily in her mind. It’s a little shocking to read about a mother who is not endlessly devoted or charmed by their children. However, in its darkness, I did find some things I identified with. She is an expert in the frustrations of raising children and she is very proficient in articulating the moments when you think your head is going to explode if your child repeats himself one more time (you know what I mean if this sounds familiar: “I want yogurt. I want yogurt. I want yogurt. Mommy, I want yogurt. I want yogurt...”).

She writes about how as parents, you will be surprised at your behavior occasionally when it comes to children. I suppose she is right that you would never screech like a manic and come within inches of spanking the behind of someone who was NOT your child, but then again, speaking from experience, young children are not regular adult people. Regular adult people don’t laugh when you stub your toe, or pitch a fit when you are trying to drag in heavy groceries from the car, during a hailstorm, while 8 months pregnant, after a full day at work, because they want a purple popsicle RIGHT NOW. For me personally, there are days when I wish I had a camera on me in the house to show off my endless patience, my careful teaching and purposeful interaction, and other days I stick my screaming or misbehaving kid in his crib in the middle of the day and close the door for 5 minutes to avoid having a serious meltdown of my own. At those moments, I know why I have not been signed up to star in my own reality TV series about successful parenting.

For me, it was hard not to project from the woman in the story to the author herself, however unfair that might be. I knew from her writing she had children. “Research” I’m sure is a great tool, but there are some things you can only know by having been there, and I see it in this writing. There are also thoughts in there that I definitely have never had and you can’t help but worry about how someone would even know they existed enough to write them. This is a terrible explanation, but you will know what I mean if you read it. As I was reading, I couldn’t help but feel bad that this person (author or character?) had the dutiful love, but was also consumed with the resentment and frustration. I can’t imagine life without my child, however hard it may sometimes be. Despite the inherent sacrifices of having children, it is by far the best thing I have done. If I think back to the happy highlights of life, my wedding or falling or love or the feeling as a teenage girl heading off with all my friends for a big night out or anything where you get the sense of happiness and optimism about life at that moment, having a child has brought those moments to me sometimes 100 times a day in short bursts. The most random things will bring them out- the way their hair glints in sun, the way they wrinkle their nose when they are thinking hard, or the funny thing they say at dinnertime. Whatever it is, they bring these bursts of happiness that are like a drug. They get you through the hard work of children and they are completely addictive. The love is overwhelming and it changes you forever. Except, I guess, it’s maybe not like that for everyone.

All in all, I found it to be a well written book, with unique content and an interesting, if not dark, perspective. I’ll give it 4 out of 5 stars.

One Sign Your Child Is Spoiled

2006-09-18T15:22:00.001-04:00

Ever wonder if you are the parent you think you are? I dont have to wonder so much anymore. Turns out I have some work to do.

Our nanny, Maria, lives with us, in the basement "au pair suite". Which is basically a decked out brand new top of the line pad complete with mutiple rooms, a full kitchen, granite counters and travertine floors. Meanwhile "my" kitchen is 1988's finest, including oak cabinets and laminate counters. But I digress, I can be jealous of the nanny later. Anyway, one of the nice things about my nanny being a live in is that she is a clean freak. So it's sort of a two-in-one, nanny and housekeeper. She is constantly straightening and washing and waxing and all sorts of clean-frenzy activities. I can carefully observe her full range of skills as I lounge on the couch reading the newspaper. Ah, I know, I sound like a "rhymes with witch" but she loves cleaning we couldnt stop her if we tried. Not that we did.

My son loves the nanny. But will drop her like yesterdays news at the first sign of mommy or daddy. He is close to her, but doesnt ask for her when we are around. It's a good sign. He still likes us best.

Occassionally our nanny leaves to go stay with friends over the weekend, as she did this weekend. On Sunday, my son was wrecking havoc in the family room and toys were strewn everywhere as if there had been a massive toy box explosion (or, as in this case, a two year old boy on the loose). As it got closer to bath time, I looked at the mayhem and sighed, it never gets quite this bad with the nanny around. Maybe Jack is neater on weekdays. Then I thought of my friend recently saying how their children put away all their toys every night before bed. So I said (in a stern parental I-aint-kidding manner), "Jack, I want you to clean up this mess and put all the toys away before your bath".

Jack paused and his eyes swept the length of the playroom. He too seemed concerned with the level of destruction and the fact that it was now between him and his bath. He looked at me, and straining for a casual innocence, said "Where's Maria?".

Out of the mouths of babes

2006-09-08T11:23:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I was blowing up balloons that Jack found in a drawer. I would let them go without tying them and they would race around the room deflating. He found it very funny so I did it 100 times. The balloons were Halloween themed and some were orange with faces on them so they would look like pumpkins when inflated. One of my nicknames for Jack is "pumpkin" so as I blew up one of the balloons I said to Jack:

"Look Jack, it's a pumpkin balloon! What is Mommy's nickname for YOU sometimes?"

And he looked at me as he thought about it, wrinkling his nose in concentration, and said:

"Be Patient?"

I Want My MTV

2006-09-03T22:57:00.001-04:00

Could anyone pinpoint the last time MTV actually played music? I heard recently that MTV celebrated their 25th anniversary. You have to wonder how slow of a news day it must have been for this to make the cut.

However, this news did remind me that I was part of the original MTV generation. My parents didn’t have cable (an inconceivable luxury) and weren’t crazy about the questionable morale value of MTV, so after school I would race across the street to friends’ houses where we would enter a trance-like state watching MTV and waiting for Michael Jackson’s Thriller video to run again. It’s probably similar to today’s teen rebellion where youngsters sneaking around and pop Ecstasy and meet up with strangers they met on My Space.

Now I don’t remember a lot about what we were watching, but I do distinctly recall that it was musical. Flash forward 20 years and my two year old likes to listen to music on TV before going to bed. The preschool channels apparently assume that responsible parents put their young children to bed before 10pm, and therefore are running “Laguna Beach” reruns at that hour and not singing animated toasters. Well, he can watch some MTV I thought, I can’t shelter him forever.

So I finally located MTV like a needle in a satellite-TV-1000-channel-haystack, and it was showing “Cribs” or something where apparently the obscenely wealthy take you through their house and slowly grind away all your self respect until you are weeping at what a loser you are because you don’t have solid gold light switch plates or wall paper made from endangered lizards skin. This isn’t music, I thought.

So I flipped to MTV 2. A second MTV! My goodness, so many videos to run they had to make two channels!? Except this one wasn’t playing music either. Instead they had some sort of show where 16 year olds throw lavish parties costing hundreds of thousands of dollars while their insipid parents, who are apparently unaware of how shallow and manipulated they look, and who presumably signed off on allowing this footage to air, permit themselves to be berated by their snotty teens because they didn’t book the right famous-name band for their big day. But haha, don’t worry, they actually DID book the right famous-name band, they just wanted their sweet pea (now tear-stained and spewing venom) to be surprised! A sad commentary on the life of the entitled. But again, not music.

I flipped to VH1, VH2, BET, Country Music Channel. None played music. Son no longer trusts that mommy really knows where to find music as confidentially expressed 20 minutes ago.

I repeated this survey of the music channels several times over the last couple of weeks. And no kidding, never once was any of them playing music videos. I guess times really have changed.

Fall Fashion Dont's

2006-08-31T14:55:00.000-04:00

I am rapidly coming to the realization that I am going to have to sit out the fall fashion season. Have you all been out there? It’s horrifying.

I don’t know what has gotten into the so-called designers, but I see the makings of a national economic emergency when fall clothing funds are unable to be spent because there is nothing to buy. Mere weeks after I made a joke about how the 80’s cannot possibly come back in style, they filled the racks with “skinny” jeans (a façade we all know, its PEG LEG again, no “pegging” required), spandex legging’s and cotton knit sweaters with huge v-necks and horizontal stripes. I haven’t found a sweater yet that wouldn’t require some sort of tank top underneath to make it decent. I do not believe it’s possible to make this whole tank top layered with big v neck sweater to look good. It’s going to look sloppy and you will never find a tank top that really matches. There is something about buying a sweater that you cannot wear by itself that irritates me. It’s like buying a new pair of jeans and they come with a little card that says “find some cute rivets to hold these pants together before wearing”.

Fortunately for me, I constantly fear I will regret getting rid of clothes, so I still have some leggings from the 80’s buried in the back of a drawer. I hope the ones with the little foot strap don’t come back because those I did discard. But I remember when those were the hot item and they really only fit 5% of the population well. The rest either had them sagging around their ankles from their too short legs, or for the taller girls, they had to keep a grip on their waistband to keep them from being pulled down to their knees when they walked.

Well, I thought, I will get some shirts. How wrong can those be? Pretty wrong, as it turns out. The blouses are all equipped with purposely “wrinkled” material and/or ruffles. If you didn’t appear to be in need of liposuction before, plastic surgeons will be handing you their card if you wear one of these shirts in public. And ruffles on grown women?! What good could possible come from this? Ruffles should be outlawed if you are over the age of 7. Period.

It’s possible that I am shopping at the wrong stores. You won’t find me in Neiman Marcus or Saks and for all I know; they are hoarding all the good outfits. But I’m not shopping there. I have a psychological block to paying more for an outfit than I paid for my first car. And I’m not even talking about couture (my first car wasn’t very nice), I’m talking about that simple short sleeve shirt, a less refined person could even refer to it as a “fancy t shirt”, that dangles a price tag of $220.00. While I yearn to be on of those impeccably dressed women, who reek of quality and you know instantly that every outfit she wears could pay for a year of college, I can’t bring myself to surrender my wallet for it. Primarily because no one would notice if I did. A technology company in Washington is not the same as some hip advertising firm in Manhattan. I could wear a paper bag to work here and no one would notice. And as for my husband, he still hasn’t noticed that I dyed my hair a dramatic dark brunette last month, so I highly doubt he would clue in on the fine stitching and quality fabric of a $600 dollar skirt.

I am simply suffering from clothes-in-my-closet boredom, and if I have to be medicated this fall to alleviate this fashion depression, I’m sending the bill to the design houses.

Ontario rated #1 in blog sensibilities

2006-08-25T15:32:00.000-04:00

Like all good bloggers, I often check site meter to see if anyone is coming to my blog. My blog is like having a Chia Pet, if you remember those. I would check that silly thing with great anticipation every day to see how much more the sprouts sprouted. Somehow I don’t see Chia Pets taking hold in the market today where the average attention span is about 3 seconds. In any event, according to site meter, you could say I have had 688 visitors to date, or as I prefer to say, I have had 0.000000688 billion visitors. Site meter, being the blabbermouth it is, also tells me that I get a lot of visitors from Ontario.

Curious about what makes these people from Ontario to have such excellent taste in blogs, I set out to learn more about this city. One of the things I learned is I should have paid more attention in geography, because apparently it is a huge providence and not a city at all. I also read that Ontario has 12,634,018 people. I can vouch for this because I grew up in a lakeside city in Pennsylvania where I personally witnessed them all arrive at our mall to buy our tax-free clothes. It always amazed me to see the lines of buses at the mall- I would think "who would get on a tour bus to come to Erie"? But a little tax relief I guess will get a lot of people to brave the diesel bus fumes for two hours. I guess the Canadians should have thrown the tea into the harbor with the Americans.

Anyway, I imagine that those days of global consumer commerce between US and Canada are ticking down. In December, a new law takes effect that requires a passport to cross the border. Americans in general are not good advance planners and getting a passport is something that requires a lot of paperwork and weeks of advance planning. If you are in the 10% of people who's original copies of their key life documents such as marriage certificates, birth certificates, etc., aren’t LOST by the US Passport Agency (don’t worry, if its like mine, it will inexplicably show up in your mailbox 19 months later. At which point, you must resubmit), then you still have to deal with the passport photo lottery. In most cases, the passport photo will make you looks like you escaped from a freak show or circus side show, and thus the passport must be "lost" and you must apply (try, try) again.

As a result, Americans will be forced to sit glumly on the decrepit US side of Niagara Falls listening to the cacophony of bricks falling off vacant buildings, while the Canadians whoop it up on the glitzy Canadian, we-allow-gambling-and-underage-drinking, side. It's going to be bad.

At least you will not need a passport to continue to read my riveting blog (at least I don’t think Bush has introduced that legislation yet), so for that at least, we can all breathe a big sigh of relief.

The Language of Husbands and Wives

2006-08-15T10:18:00.000-04:00

I've noticed that, over time, the conversations between husbands and wives can morph into a new language of sorts. You hear about this phenomena among twins, but I haven’t given much thought to it's relevance to those who have been elbowing for room at the bathroom sink for over 10 years. I can't imagine 9 months in utero would have anything on them.

If you had been surreptitiously following us over the past week, you may have overheard, and been perplexed by conversations such as these:

Situation 1: Driving in the car, running errands

Him: "I've decided you are never getting a new car. Ever."
Me: "What ever happened to you keeping me in the manner in which I was planning to become accustomed to?"
Him: "You mean in which you were accustomed?"
Me: "No."

What you don’t know: We have fallen into a stupid habit of making up things while driving and the other seamlessly responds as if it were true. For example, when driving by a new office building under construction, my husband might say: "See that building? I just bought it." and I will respond with thoughts on decorating it, or strategies for leasing it, or advising him that it has been condemned to preserve the historic foundation of a 1820 farmhouse it was built on top of.

Situation 2: Getting Ready for Work with TV Blaring

Him: "…Powerball…(garbled)…Wisconsin…(garbled)…Tell (nanny)."
Me: "What?! The winning Powerball ticket was sold on Wisconsin Avenue???" (becoming agitated and devastated that a winning $250M lottery ticket was sold so close to me, even though the last time I bought a Powerball ticket in DC was over two years ago)
Him: "No, I said we have to tell (nanny) that a Volcano erupted in her homeland."
Me: (impatiently brushing him off) "But what about the PowerBall on Wisconsin Avenue???"
Him: "Do you hear yourself? Anyway, I said the ticket was sold IN WISCONSIN."
Me: "Oh. I thought you said Wisconsin Avenue."

What you don’t know: I have no excuse on this one.

Crosby Stills Nash & Young (CSNY) Concert

2006-08-14T16:43:00.000-04:00

We went to a Crosby Still Nash and Young (CSNY) concert over the weekend. We've seen CSN before but never with Neil Young, so we were excited. Apparently, I'm what you call, The Minority, given that we only got one friend to join us. I mentioned the concert at work expecting a few people to thank me for alerting them and rushing out to buy tickets. Instead one person responded "CSN? I thought they were dead?..." and the other said simply, "Hippie". After that, I didn't tell anyone else.

It wasn't the world's greatest concert (a little too much new material), but there is something about being outside on a summer night, with a sky full of stars, lounging on the grass and drinking $8 dollar cups of domestic beer, that makes you happy. I got to thinking about how the majority of my perferred music is from the 1970's- at the latest, and apparently I am now ridiculed for it. The Beatles, CSR, CSNY, Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, The Stones, The Doors…the list of greats goes on. I am racking my brain trying to figure out what people my age are listening to if not them. Kelly Clarkson? Is that possible?

Even with my love of 1960s or 1970s music, I felt a little robbed, since truthfully, while I was alive (partly), I wasn’t exactly old enough to consider myself an "original" follower. Somehow I got stuck coming of age in the 1980's. Virtually every decade has had a resurgence and become cool again except for the 1980s. It’s the one decade we simply cannot overcome our embarrassment of and bring it back in vogue as "vintage". I feel a little ripped off in that respect. Parachute pants, break-dancing, "zipper jackets" like Michael Jackson, big hair. Ugh, the list of humiliation has no end. I would have rather had the groove of the 70's or the grunge of the 90's than the tackiness of the 80's.

Anyway, CSNY rocked out in the second set. The music transported us back 10, 15 years, and we jammed out to the tunes that were part of the anthem of our youth. For a little while, at least, we were all young again. All in all, not a bad way to spend a beautiful summer night.

Escalators, Trash Cans and Garage Doors, Oh My!

2006-08-10T17:48:00.000-04:00

My 2 year old son's favorite things are Dada, Mama, trash cans, elevators, escalators, and garage doors. Not necessarily in that order. I lay awake nights worrying what these obsessions mean for his future. Some days I attempt to introduce NEW obsessions, like 'practicing medicine', mathematics and physics, or NFL-worthy catching of the ball. However, his favorites stand firm.

As a result, we spend most of our carefully planned events to zoos, parks and swimming pools huddled around the trash cans. "There's one!" he will exclaim at every single one, as if he has finally, and just now, found his long sought treasure. Taking him to the mall usually involves 9 minutes of frenzied shopping and an hour and a half of going up and down the escalators like escalator test-dummy-robots. On our nightly walk, we discuss the relative open and closed status of every garage door we pass (about 6 million of them) and then when we gets home, he likes to have me set up the laptop so he can surf the internet for pictures of garage doors.

Last night, I was cuddling him before bed. I like to prep him for the day ahead the night before, when he is calm and sleepy. Last night, I was trying to work in the concept of him wearing his new sneakers since his old ones were worn and "broken". I told him if he wore his new shoes without crying, he could pick out a treat. Sensing opportunity, he said, "Mama, I get escalator in my room?".

At least the kid dreams big.

Why I Wish I Wasnt Too Lazy to Clean My Own House

2006-08-02T21:28:00.000-04:00

My maids are walking on thin ice. One would never guess that when we let strangers in our home, to rummage (or "clean", whatever) without supervision that things might go wrong.

Anyway, I was out with the girls the other night, another night where things like "what we like/dislike about our vacuum cleaners" topped the conversation list, as we all silently wondered when we stopped being cool and started being suburban moms.

To make matters worse, shortly after we sat down and ordered drinks, half the county police department showed up and sat down 10 yards from us. Apparently the restaurant is close to a police station and is a known Smokie hang out. We never would have made this kind of error back when we were hip to the scene, I can tell you that much. Not that we were planning on drinking excessively, but it would have been nice to have the option. The cops kept throwing glances over at our table and we debated whether they thought we were hot or if they were trying to make sure they arrested the right women later. We’re hot, we decided.

Figuring the night was shot anyway, I brought up my maid issues. First of all, I said, "they took the Tupperware out of Jack's bathtub that I use to rinse his hair. I have no idea where they put it! Probably back in the kitchen, god forbid, but why move it at all? And I never remember to bring a new one up so every night I curse under my breath as I try to rinse his hair with a little purple stacking cup that holds a thimbles worth of water." Half the moms, who also have maids, nodded knowing, murmuring support. The other half, those who do not have maids, gave me a look that basically said "F--- Off!!", and didn’t elevate their verbal response a whole lot higher. Ok fine, if you don’t have a maid then maybe you are just DYING for some stranger to come in and remove critical rinsing utensils as long as it means they are also washing the floors while they are there, but still, its uncalled for.

Then, this week, they topped themselves. I often suffer from buyers remorse, so I keep bags and receipts around so I can take back whatever junk I bought in a "moment" of whatever. Specifically I had some hair color I decided against as well as a flat iron I decided against. Why I ever decided FOR these items, I cant really say. Especially the flat iron. All my features are large and they look freakishly so with hair plastered against my head. Anyway, I was going to take it all back. Except when I got home and discovered that the maids had unpacked this stuff from its bags, thrown away the receipts and used one of the bags as a garbage can liner.

I don’t know if I was more upset that my maids now feel they can unpack merchandise at their leisure or that they didn’t use a real garbage bag in the trash can. Is a real trash bag in the trash can too much to ask? Do I really have to recycle everything to death including looping shopping bag handles around the handles of my trash can?

I can tell you I would FIRE THESE MAIDS IN A SECOND, if it didn’t also raise my risk of having to clean my house myself.

My Lance Bass Fan Website

2006-07-28T15:13:00.000-04:00

Google is out of control. They clearly have way too much time and money on their hands. Have you checked out their "lab" page recently? They have developed tools and programs for everything conceivable. It sick is what it is. From web searches for the blind to Googlized maps of mars to a tool to plan public transportation trips in Portland (and only Portland), Google has developed it. I love Google Suggest which apparently will offer you real time suggestions on better key words than the ones you are currently typing. Ever get annoyed by Microsoft Office trying to force words on you as you type? Yeah, its like that, for the web.

The one feature they don’t have is the one I was looking for. Naturally. After reading an article in today's paper about these 20 year old girls who were making $100,000 a month in Ad Sense revenue from their website which offers free MySpace templates, I decided to immediately jump on that rickety, overcrowded bandwagon (probably along with the Washington Post's 6 million other subscribers). But first, I needed to know what the hot search terms were so I could create a webpage that would lure them in like hungry minnows.

Except Google refuses to tell me. Unless I am to believe that "Lance Bass" is truly the top search term.

I asked my friend: "Do You think it's possible that Lance Bass is the top search term right now?"

She said: "Who is Lance Bass?"

I said: "You know, that gay singer from N synch that just came out of the closet?"

She said: "I'm so out of that scene"

I said: "look, trust me, Im no n-synch fan, but this was on CNN!"

She said: "I havent had the TV on today"

I said: "It was a couple days ago. Are you living in a cave with Osama?"

THEN she changed the subject. Very suspicious, no?

Well, I guess I should get to work on my "Lance Bass" Ad-Filled Website.

The Benefits of Shunning Diversity

2006-07-28T10:26:00.000-04:00

Working in a male dominated company is a mixed bag. While my inner feminist weeps, I have to admit it has some benefits. For example, there is the fun of watching your boss squirm and nervously fidget in extreme discomfort as you calmly explain why you are requesting a private office to express your breastmilk because otherwise you intend to do it in your open cube (note only middle management gets the benefit of "immersion with staff to promote openness". Senior management is locked away in a separate wing with full offices). Lets face it, for a mother returning to work bleary-eyed after maternity leave, and after nursing an infant 52 times a day at all hours of the day and night, your squeamishness on openly discussing breastfeeding fades. In these types of male dominated environments, lactation rooms are not real high on the priority list, though we proudly offer foos ball tables, slurpie machines, and streaming media of sporting events. You have to essentially freak out the men enough to the point at which they say- fine! Take it! Just stop talking about female body parts! (now if you want to *show* me some, that’s a different story). So as long as you can say "engorgement" without flinching, the world can be your oyster.

Another benefit is that there are less people in the ladies room. While two men chatting their way into the men's room is a common sight, there is a less common, awkward pause as a man realizes he has "caught you in the hallway" on your way to the ladies room and you aren’t intending to abandon your trip to chat with him. They tend to freeze with a look of confusion about 5 feet away from the door, as if they have been zapped by a canine invisible fence. This always makes me smile as I sail through the door, unaccompanied. As far as I am concerned, the less people in the bathroom, the better. I can't understand those people that want to make small talk in the bathroom. If I had my way, all bathroom stalls would have those full floor to ceiling walls and doors. Substantial enough that the post office would probably deliver your mail there if you slapped a number on it. Stuck with our flimsy metal dividers, I want to get out of there as soon as possible. I will only talk to people in the bathroom in extreme circumstances, like if I am with friends and I don’t want them to know that I’m neurotic. Otherwise, shut up.

Potty Training Report 1: Its not looking good

2006-07-20T14:12:00.000-04:00

Now that Jack is 2 and a half, I'm beginning to get concerned that he hasn’t yet woken up one day and decided to potty train himself by dinner time. Which has pretty much been my potty training plan to date. Mission: Wait for Toddler Inspiration.

At Playgroup yesterday, the subject came up, as I'm sure it does in every 2-3 year old playgroup on the planet. One woman said she was amazed at how easy it was. That she made a little chart and the child got stickers for going and the stickers added up to a reward. Within a week, he was trained.

"What kind of reward?" I asked, evaluating just how much funding this reward system approach would take. V-smile systems? High end tricycles?

"Oh, you know, like 5 M&Ms or being allowed to watch a video", she said

Hmmm. I'm trying to imagine Jack waiting for 5 stickers to pile up to earn those rewards. Based on that list, Jack gets rewarded all the time. Like when Mommy wants to read the newspaper. Or when Mommy wants him to stop crying for M&Ms.

Please snip and send any extra diaper coupons you may have, it appears that I will be needing them for a long long time to come.

No Comment

2006-07-13T21:56:00.000-04:00

Hey You! Yes, I’m talking to you. Who are you, how on earth did you end up here, and why aren’t you commenting with witty retorts?

I started this blog 3 months ago on a whim, despite never having read a blog myself and knowing I was unfashionably late to the blog party. I was also pretty sure no one would ever find my blog. I’m an internet addict (I sat in the dark for 5 hours last week because the power went off and I was unable to look up the Power Company’s number online to report the outage… I forgot about the Phone Book), and I don’t recall ever stumbling onto a blog. I sure as heck wasn’t going to tell my friends about it, lest they actually come and read it thus ruining my opportunity to use them and their private lives as subject matter. Anyway, It seemed clear that bloggers banded together and went looking for each other and that was that. Blogging was the “back alley” of the WWW if you will.

Somehow, that all naiveté evolved into me reading blogs every day (that www.dooce.com, she’s so funny. Every time I read her I want to go back and burn my blog.) and actually continuing to post on my own occasionally. While these are both surprising, I’m actually the most in shock over the fact that, according to my sitemeter reader, I have had over 400 visitors. Now granted, 80% of those were probably me, but still that means that at least (argh, math) 80 or so people-who-are-not-me have come to my site.

And of those vistors, according to sitemeter, the average visit duration is “0 seconds”. At first, this got me fairly hot under the collar. What the heck, I thought. Does my site give off some sort of Ebola vibes that causes people to immediately yank their computer power cord out of the wall? Then, in my increasing blog savvyness, I realized that it had to do with page views or something like that which has not yet interested me enough to get me to read the entire explanation. I think am partially afraid it will say at the end, “…unless this is in reference to One Day At a Time, in which case your average visit is truly zero seconds. Sorry”.

And I learned something else through sitemeter- the internet actually tells the pages what you typed into a search engine to get to their page and it will go so far as to pinpoint it was someone in your city typing in “unnatural sex acts, biscuits”. Holy cow. For heavens sake, I don’t want to be anyway affiliated with some of my “queries of boredom” as I’ll call them, even within a 100 mile radius. And trust me, some of you should feel the same way, especially visitor number 256 who somehow found my blog by googling “time of sucker management is done in pineapple”.

In any event, I see many of you are men and women of few words. That’s ok (no its not!). Just because I want to ramble on doesn’t mean you have to (you really should). Really, its reward enough to know that I have connected with so many of you (and mostly me) for those precious 0 seconds.

Saying Goodbye to Strandings and Strange Engine Noises

2006-07-09T14:49:00.000-04:00

It is the end of an era. My husband and I bit the bullet, took the plunge and pulled out all the stops. Yep, we finally got a new car. It was not outside the realm of possibility to think that this may never happen. We are not what you call rapid decision makers. It took us 3 years to buy a house, 5 years to decide on a dining room set and 6 years to have a child. The cars, well at both 11 years old, they seemed a lot of like permanent fixtures. My husband is met-tic-u-lous when it comes to car care, so they still looked like new, even as engine parts fly off and hit traffic behind us. Aside from the obvious benefit of having forgotten what a car payment was, we weren’t really the type to worry too much about what we drove, despite constant jokes from our friends about our antique classics. My husband, an accountant, was very clear on the concept of "depreciating assets" so we just drove and drove and drove on some more.

However, for his car, we have found over the last year that it’s safest to keep it within a two mile radius of home, unless you are up for an "adventure" that you won’t easily be able to walk home from. His lemonmobile was a 95 Chevy Blazer with 170,000 miles, which was probably technically still considered a new car since every element had been replaced at least once. This car was a disaster from the start, yet my husband continued to insist that it "runs good, its smooth don’t you think"? At least we got great gas mileage since the car was usually in the shop.

Well somehow in the space of a week, we went from "keeping the car to at least 200,000 miles!" to my husband finding a great deal on a 2007 Tahoe LTZ at which point the Blazer "probably wont make it until the end of the month, baby". Although suspicious of this rapid change in attitude (I prefer attitudes to shift gradually over the course of a decade or so), I said, "sure, whatever" to the purchase of a new car. Because I’m hip and I can roll with the punches (other than my two hour lecture on the perils of buying another Chevy beginning with: "are you insane?")

So we have to head up North 6 hours to get the new car, because that’s where the super-duper deal is. Again, though the Blazer had previously been slated to go into the mileage hall of fame, my husband insisted now it was barely scotched taped together and wouldn’t go faster than 60mph. Our son kept yelling "Fast! Fast!" from the baby seat, since my husband usually drives in such a manner as to leave me digging my nails in the leather seats and reflexively punching my feet onto the floor in search of a passenger side brake. The kid didn’t know what we were doing in the right lane being passed by bicyclists.

So as not to entice me by this new safe driving, my husband also came up with a rule that I couldn’t turn on the air conditioning, despite it being literally 95 degrees out. I sat melting into the seat, the open windows created a vortex within so that anything not nailed down was sucked out of the vehicle. My son was draped listlessly in his car seat, hair plastered to his face, eyes squinting from the wind. I said, "what happened to this car being so smooth? Are you trying to ensure my support of this new car by making me as miserable as humanly possible?" Finally, my husband relented and turned on the air conditioning. On bilevel low. Whatever.

At the car dealership, we parked next to the new Tahoe and piled out of the Blazer feeling a little nostalgic. We walked around the Tahoe to inspect and admire, and by the time we got back around, the Blazer was gone. These dealers clearly are taking no chances that you may change your mind. I looked everywhere on the lot and it was nowhere to be found. It probably had already been crushed into a little green can.

In any event, the ride back, after a week of visiting family, was smooth and comfortable. Well, as comfortable as you can get when your two year old refuses to nap and kicks the back of your seat the entire time. Still, it's strange not to see the old car leaking oil on the driveway anymore, I keep thinking my husband has gone to the store, until I step into my garage and have to turn sideways to slither by the behemoth that now occupies it. Ah well, onward and upward, as they say.

Telecommuting

2006-06-27T14:39:00.000-04:00

My company has been forced to accept certain degrees of telecommuting over the years. You'd think we were based in Sibera with all the trouble we have finding qualified candidates. To mitigate this, we have hired people from other states to work remotely or retained people after they have moved away for whatever reason.

One of my peers decided to move to California in search of better weather (better than DC with our standard 92 degrees with 98% humidity? What a dreamer.). He's an interesting guy. He's married yet I've had extensive discussions with him about sewing curtains, keeping petunias safe from backyard bunnies, and the saturated fat content of olive oil. I think its called being a metrosexual now. Anyway. He wasn’t online today, which around here means you have been abducted by aliens or are possibly dead. We are all online, all the time. I sent him an email to probe.

I said: "Where are you? You're not online."

He said: "I'm either:
1) Moving again.
2) Having my toes done.
3) Watching American Movie Classics all day.
4) Drifting in and out of consciousness in my chair."

I'm totally unsure which one to pick.

PiMPing it up

2006-06-22T15:59:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I became a PiMP. Technically, my certification is "Project Management Professional (PMP)" but everyone I mentioned this to said, "what's a pimp?". Can you believe this is the best name they could come up with? Not only is the acronym bad, but the full title is a little dorky too. Why not "certified project manager" or something? I suggest we charter a project to clean up this mess.

It’s hard to believe that the PMP is the new "hot credential" and is what the CPA is to Accounting for Project Management; except the CPA exam is about 10 times harder. Everyone is trying to get their PMP. I will give it to the Project Management Institute (PMI); they have managed to transform themselves from a somewhat obscure association to a highly sought after credentialing body. Back when I was doing full time project management, this certification didn’t exist or at least was never ever discussed. Having been in management for a while now, I've seen a huge upswing in this credential over the last couple years and when the remaining few project managers on my staff decided to get certified, I decided to go along for the ride. I figured I should probably have this credential if my staff did, and I assumed I could breeze through it with my over 10 years of complex project management experience.

So I signed up and then I looked at the materials. To my absolute horror, the materials didn’t relate to "the real world". They were obscure, academic, and focused on a single process methodology, not widely adopted. I think people who had never managed a project would probably have an advantage on this exam since they would lack any context. I sought in vain for a way to back out of this. I definitely had not anticipated having to "study" for this stupid test and was hugely annoyed that I had gotten myself into this situation, voluntarily no less. Having found no way to exit left, I sucked it up, studied the materials and took the exam. At first I thought I had the wrong exam. The exam didn’t reflect the study materials and it didn’t reflect real-life either. I couldn’t believe I was conned into memorizing all of PMI’s processes and nuances and then the test didn’t even cover most of them. Instead, I was stuck in some sort of PMI parallel universe designed to torture people with strange, "out of the blue" questions. But I passed. Maybe strange becomes me.

My parents couldn’t wait to tell everyone that I had become a Pimp. They conveniently leave out that it was a legitimate credential and abruptly stop the conversation after saying that I'm a pimp in Virginia and doing well. Gotta go!

Dont mind me, I'm insane

2006-06-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

You know those women who freak out when they realize they are beginning to sound like their mothers? I should only be so lucky. The things I say in response to my two year old’s antics make me sound like a lunatic.

My son has this ride on truck that he loves. The seat flips up and he stores all his treasured possessions in there. His match box cars, his cheese its, a sippy cup of juice, rocks he found. If it’s important, it’s in the truck.

Earlier today, he had a little baggie of graham crackers I prepared for our walk. He took his sippy cup of juice/water and was trying to shove it into the baggie and obviously it wouldn’t fit. He was getting frustrated. I was also getting frustrated because he was holding up things. I said, exasperated, “Jack, stop trying to put your juice in that bag and put it in your truck where it belongs!”.

Then I stopped, thinking “In the truck where it belongs?” Oh yeah sister, get a grip, you are just barely hanging on here.

I have also recently found myself advising on why we should not put parmesan cheese on ice cream, what mr. peepee diaper had to say, and that if there was another single can of mushrooms stacked on the kitchen table, he was going to the naughty step, mister.

Book Review: And You Know You Should Be Glad by Bob Greene

2006-06-13T22:03:00.001-04:00

The last two days I read “And You Know You Should Be Glad” by Bob Greene. I saw it reviewed in the paper and I guess the fact that it was about Bob’s best friend from Kindergarten hit home since my husband is unnaturally attached to his best friend he met in First grade. They talk almost every day. I am a huge supporter of this relationship; having such a close friendship is rare for men, and his friend lives out of town, so it’s no skin off my back.

Anyway, Bob’s books is good, but here’s the deal- a lot of it is walking down memory lane, which for me, never having been a little boy in the 1950’s, wasn’t such a thrill ride. You would be tempted to skip over these parts entirely, except Bob would occasionally come back with some, if not profound, searingly accurate observations. For example, Bob writes:

“It was the first time we had experienced something like that. Later, in the adult world of business and gnawing ambition, we- all of us, everyone who is thrust into that larger and colder world- would go through it time and time again; seeing someone move ahead of us, seeing someone achieve something or be given something that the rest of us can only yearn for. You feel it in your stomach, you feel the sands shifting. Someone has moved beyond you and you are witness. Someone has become something different- something better- than what he or you had been before. And all you can do is watch it happen.”

Ouch. That one hurt a little. I think I’d been chalking some of that up to the Old Boys Club or whatever else. But still, I like recognizing real life in books, so it prompted me to mostly read the entire book. I seem to be getting lazy in my old age, this is the second book I publicly have admitted to skipping parts of.

Anyway, as for the present day story, it’s a tear jerker. I was crying for the last two pages and I don’t even know these guys. Sigh. I always feel so stupid when that happens; completely unsure of how I would explain what exactly I was doing (and why) if someone walked in. Then again, I challenge you *not* to cry, lets see how tough *you* are.

I wish I could find more happy books. These sad stories are like car accidents you can’t not look at. True, it was a story of a beautiful friendship and it made me think about how much I treasure my friends. But it also made me think of all of them dying. Not such a pretty picture. It was a good book. I wish I hadn’t read it.

Book Review: The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

2006-06-13T21:57:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, I read The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult. I’ve read Picoult’s other books, I think I liked them, they are similar to all others in that genre. I started reading the book on a Sunday morning and after sneaking pages in all day in between running after Jack, I was still reading it at 1:00am Monday morning. It was suspenseful and I was reading it like it was crack. I knew I would really regret this in the morning when I had to get up for work, but I couldn’t go to sleep without finishing it. While, despite skimming through a late story line at the end, I did. It was a bit of a “quick finish” where an author tries to tie up 30 loose strings in five pages, but it was done. I went to sleep satisfied.

The next day, I remembered my pledge to start contributing to those forums I visit a lot, like Amazon.com ratings or Allrecipes.com. Damn. Why did I have to pledge to be so consciousnesses? Anyway, feeling guilty, I did go and write a review, giving the book a good review based on how compelling I found it that I read it all in one day.

The next day, I woke up with a major “book hangover”. The more I thought about The Tenth Circle, the more I felt like I had been wearing beer goggles and hooked up with an ugly guy, who had temporarily appeared cute. In retrospect, I don’t think I actually know what the result of the main story line was. What kind of person writes a book where you get to the end and still don’t know what happened? Argh! And geez, that thing on the bridge towards the end, what was THAT about? How unrealistic can you get?!

So I think I have changed my mind. The Tenth Circle is like Chinese food- you’ll be hungry one the soy sauce high wears off. That said, I’m always impressed that anyone has the focus to sit down and write a book from beginning to end, so good for you Jodi. At least you wrote it so armchair critics like me could have something to complain about!

Women are Frigid (and not just if you forget your anniversary)

2006-06-06T12:15:00.000-04:00

It is sweltering out. The temperature is in the high 90's. You can see the humidity in the air, lurking; waiting to envelope you as soon as you venture outside. It will jump into your hair molecules to make them stick out in every direction like tiny electrical wires, while ironically, at the same time infusing lackluster limpness. The streets in the distance shimmer with the heat like a mirage. The sun sears the clouds, until there is nothing left but an expanse of empty blue sky. There will be no reprieve from the sun today.

I am wearing a fuzzy white turtleneck sweater. With thick socks and boots. I am almost certain to stroke out from heat exhaustion before reaching my car. Why am I dressed so inappropriately? Simple: I'm going to work. Where no matter the month or the temperature, rain or shine, it's always Antarctica.

I really hate being cold. There is something just very wrong with wearing a sweater in June and still having your arms turn into gooseflesh as soon as you walk through the door. I regularly complain to HR about this "hostile environment" where my nose runs all day and I get back aches from contorting around my space heater trying to starve off frostnip. They insist the thermostat reads 68 degrees for my office. It feels more like 48 degrees.

"Why don’t you get one of those ratty office sweaters like Sally over in Operations?" one of my direct reports suggested. Um yeah. I'm desperate but not crazy. Leave it to a man to suggest such a thing. Men are never cold. Every time I ask my male staff members to come to my office they complain that they become immediately incapacitated by their eyes drying out from my space heater.

Meanwhile, my only female direct report has an identical space heater in her office. I was offsite a few weeks ago for the entire week and she sent me an email: "I took your space heater while you’re gone, I hope you don’t mind. Two is SO much better than one".

At lunch, I race out to my car's black leather interior, which has been super-heated to 800 degrees from the sun. I jump in and shut the door, trapping all the heat as I try to coax my core body temperature to return to at least 90 degrees. Unfortunately, the nirvana point doesn’t last long and once the chill has been chased away, my turtleneck starts to feel a little thick. Then I have to throw operations into full reverse and open the windows and blast the A/C.

Thankfully I only go into the office 3 days a week. If I had to be there everyday, I might seriously consider one of those ratty office sweaters.

A Flash of Brilliance

2006-06-05T15:55:00.000-04:00

I am a mostly theoretical inventor. My countless product ideas seeming to hit a snag sometime during execution that prevents them from reaching completion (AKA: “what am I supposed to do next with this thing?”) thus they are all still “theoretical”. Until which time someone else brings them to market 5 years later and I seethe and complain bitterly to my husband about people stealing “my ideas”.

Inspiration usually isn’t my problem; sometimes I wish I could make it through the day without thinking of 15 new lines of business. However, I am always interested in another viewpoint, so I eagerly anticipated my son, Jack, beginning to talk. Based on the clever quips I have read in the back of Parenting Magazine, Children say the darndest things. I had a theory that out of their lack of preconceived notions, and in their precious innocence, they would unknowingly toss out a great product idea. And I fully expected to catch that toss and retire on it.

So after much prodding, my son finally began to talk. The first 6 months were pretty much a waste (I think “turtle” has been done), but finally at 2 he began to string sentences together. I went on high alert, waiting for that flash of brilliance, willing it, vowing that whatever it was, I would do it. I had faith in my boy.

Around this same time, Jack picked up a habit of wanting to relate everything in books or songs, etc. to real objects. If we are reading a book about cars, he races over and dumps all his cars in my lap. If the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” comes on, he runs to get his plastic spider. You get the idea. (and beware of reading those “First Words” books during these phases, you end up buried alive under a heap of representative objects).

So the other day, Jack was watching ESPN (how did that get on?) and some golf show started. I wasn’t really paying attention, but suddenly Jack was running around yelling “Egg! Egg!“. He ran over to the kitchen and came back with an egg from the refrigerator (recall, he is already around 11 feet tall), and kept repeating “Egg!”. I thought, “What the heck is he talking about?” Then I turned around and saw it. Jack was holding an Egg up to the TV where, against the dark green grass, little golf balls looked strikingly similar to, well, yes, eggs.

He looked at me, his angelic face looking for his usual confirmation, “Yes Jack, that is a ____ just like in the book/picture/song/etc”. Except this time Jack thinks that you play golf with Eggs. Then I realized the moment had arrived. Playing golf with eggs is definitely a new product. Sunny Side Golf Course. Add 10% for hard-boiled play. I’d have to buy some chickens…

Then again, I'm not really an early bird, nor do I have a background in livestock. I might need to give this one some more thought. Maybe this was a warm-up idea.

"Don't Like It"

2006-05-31T11:46:00.000-04:00

I thought I had dodged the bullet. I've read countless articles where parents lamented that their two year old who's favorite word was "NO!" or they would grab everything in sight and say "Mine!". And yet, my son didn’t. I marveled at his emotional maturity and good nature. Then it struck.

Me: "Jack, eat your toast."
Jack: "Don’t like it."
Me: (confusion setting in, where did he learn this phrase...) "What?"
Jack: "Don't. Like. It."..."No Like It"

Great. Now he was dumbing down his English since it appeared his mother wasn’t "getting" it.

I knew immediately this was bad news. Kids don’t go learning full phrases without a comprehensive plan for incorporating them into constant use. Sure enough, over the next few days, most of our exchanges went like this:

Me: "Jack, time for your bath."
Jack: "Don’t like it."
Me: "Jack, let's read Dick and Jane."
Jack: "Don’t like it."
Me: "Jack, do you want to play with your sidewalk chalk?"
Jack: "Don’t like it."
Me: (substitute anything I might have said to my son)
Jack: "Don't like it."

Maybe the world wasn’t ending, but it was definitely tettering on the brink as far as I was concerned. I was getting pretty fed up with Mr. Contrary, my son. He wasn't eatting his meals or picking up his toys and was basically fighting me every step of the way (Im thinking: stand aside kid, I'm an "original" on control issues. You're out of your league). So I picked up one of my parenting books, and against all odds, it was the "SuperNanny" book. Yes, as in the TV show lady. It was enough I pulled it off the shelves at the library with other parenting psychology books, but the fact that I was referencing it, well, maybe the world really was ending this time. And yes, and you know what is coming next, I created a Naughty Step at our house. I've only watched the SupperNanny show a few times, but I've seen enough to know that the Naughty Step is central. It shows up every time to cure everything from back talk to hyperactivity to leprosy (I think).

We had a slight glitch in the plan when Jack found the Naughty Step to be a hoot. He loved it. When engaging in his "Don’t Like It" defiance, I would give the prescribed warning; "Jack, if you persist in this behavior I will put you on the Naughty Step". And he would say happily "Naughty Step! Naughty Step!" and run to it giggling and sit down. Not exactly the axis of fear the SuppeNanny described.

Maybe the problem was that I was giving into my son's request for make-up hugs too early ("Hugs? Hugs?"). Lets face it, I'm a sucker for that sweet baby voice and those pudgy arms. After getting really strict and making him wait for a minute on the step, he'd fake wail a bit, get his hug, and…do what I told him. Bet you didn’t expect that! Yeah, me neither. But gosh darn it, the Naughty Step, even when employed incorrectly, seemed to work!

That was the good news. The bad news is that now I have to bear the humiliation of using parenting techniques from a childless British woman who races around in a Plymouth Cruiser saying "I'm on my way!". Sigh.

The Surreal Life

2006-05-30T14:30:00.003-04:00

After reading another article on the DC Sniper trials recently, I was thinking about surreal events I've been involved with. It's the strangest sensation; you almost feel that you are on the outside looking on as a spectator. Some of the biggest surreal experiences for me include: being in an armed robbery (they call them "home invasions" now) at age nine with my brother and cousins while our parents were at our grandfather's wake. Several cracked-out, ski-masked, and armed men broke in and terrorized us while ransacking the house. We were so naïve we hid in a closet after we saw them chopping down the back door and it took them all of 15 seconds to find us. I was pretty sure I was going to die, and as a result, everything seemed to go in slow and fast motion all at once. Very surreal.

Another big one is of course September 11th. Living outside of DC, having fighter jets thunder over your house, and knowing you were sitting in a global bulls eye was pretty surreal. Just the day before I had finished with an engagement that had me flying back and forth from Dulles to LA every week, which was one of the routes that was hijacked. It was the most beautiful day, am amazing blue sky with the late summer crispness to the air, it all seemed so impossible. My husband was stuck on his "2-day" Northern CA business trip for almost two weeks and I had the radio and CNN on day and night for probably three days straight.

A little over a year later, we were treated to a rousing rendition of “what it's like to live in an unstable war torn country” when the DC Snipers showed up. You haven’t lived until you found yourself writing a will before taking the dog on a walk. Talk about group paranoia. Two guys in an area of 5 million had us diving into our cars and hiding behind concrete pillars on the rare occasion we were forced to leave our house. It seems surreal thinking about it now, but I actually would run in a zigzag pattern back to my car if I had to leave the house. You would have thought I would have felt silly doing this, but trust me, no one noticed since everyone else was either zigzagging or crossing the parking lot in infantry-style guerrilla crawls. You simply had no idea where they would strike next. No where was considered safe. My husband, as is his nature, managed to find the silver lining of the situation and was delighted when the credit card bill showed up and was the lowest it had been in 13 years. Trust me, I’m a dedicated spender, but “final sale” has a whole new meaning, when going out might in fact make it your final sale. I managed to go for an entire month without going to a gas station (My 3-mile commute work commute paid off again!) and when my husband had to go fill up mid-crisis, we had a phone line support system rigged to notify concerned individuals about the successful 98-octane mission.

So what dredged up these memories? In a word, Maryland. Maryland is retrying the Sniper's years after Virginia found them guilty of about a billion crimes against humanity as well as several counts of murder and sentenced them to death and life in prison, respectively (they are also still considering revoking their concealed weapon permits). I don’t want to draw attention to delicate family matters, but Maryland doesn’t seem to trust Virginia, so they would *also* like to sentence them to death. Ironically, Virginia executes a *lot* more prisoners than Maryland, who I believe turned their electric chair into a garden planter in 1999 after seeing a similar project in Martha Stewart Living's April issue. I suppose Maryland might be concerned about Virginia's decision making abilities and may consider the commonwealth's lack of taste to be a warning sign of instability, I can only guess as a result of our State Welcome Sign.

Haven’t given much thought to your state's Welcome Sign lately? Well, we have! Apparently someone pointed out that our sign was "dated" and I believe one quote was (paraphrasing) "it looks like something my grandma knitted and hung in her kitchen in 1950". So Virginia immediately took action and created five other horribly dated alternatives to choose from and put it to a public vote. I first saw the options printed in the Washington Post and again, felt that touch of surrealism. The first thing that leapt to mind was "What? Are these the right pictures?". It’s as if Virginia couldn’t come up with the money for any new clip art software and decided to reuse the Atari-era graphics and fonts they had on file. Furthermore, the only new slogan they could come up with was "Virginia Welcomes You", which wow, bam, talk about impact. What fools we were with the old slogan; "Welcome to Virginia". You can hardly blame Maryland for being wary, I suppose.

Libya-US Relations Normalized

2006-05-24T16:42:00.000-04:00

Thank God we are restoring ties to Libya. I can finally schedule my long-awaited vacation there, and think of all the Libyaneese products that we can finally get our hands on with the end of the trade embargo. Wow!

Actually the kiss-and-make up with Libya is notable to me, and probably many others raised in the 1970’s simply because they were the “original” terrorists. I don’t know what it is about childhood, but everything seemed more authentic then. Who could forget the white VW van filled with Libyan terrorists tearing through the mall parking lot as Michael J Fox raced to get his time machine car working in “Back to the Future”? That’s real drama baby, the kind that sticks with you and forever defines terrorism.

And it wasn’t just defining the bad guys (or waiting for the Soviet’s nuclear missile to arrive and fry us all) but everything back then seemed more real. As I grew up, things became more of an intellectual curiosity. I’m not sure I ever accepted another President after Carter or Reagan, the rest seemed to be on a trial run, like take your daughter to work day. The years seemed to move impossibly fast after 1980 and the world has become a blur. How was it that the wait for a birthday or Christmas appeared to be several eons long when I was age 10, and now I find myself pulling the Christmas decorations out about three weeks after I finally finished mailing out the “belated” gifts from the year before?

I think the sensory experience of childhood is amazing. The tangibleness of long summers where you weren’t hermetically sealed in air conditioned buildings. How sweet the ice cream was on a hot summer day when you had to beg your parents for a quarter instead of throwing it in your cart at the grocery store. The thrill of Saturday morning cartoons long before you realized that the only reasonable thing to do at 6am on Saturday’s was sleep.

It’s the purity of these experiences that lead people (such as myself) to assume that we had an idealized existence and make sweeping declarations that indicate that their path was naturally the best one. I say stupid things all the time like “I never went to preschool (implication: and look at how well I turned out)” or “When I was a kid, we sometimes could only afford hotdogs for dinner (implication: and look at how well I turned out)”.

Still, it’s good to know we have finally made some progress on Libya. President Carter must be really excited.

Photo Finish

2006-05-24T13:37:00.000-04:00

Once you have kids, things change. Naptime marks the mad dash to get everything done in two hours that you used to spread over an entire day, traveling requires a pHD in logistics and coordination (a spare prescription of Lithium also helps), and Saturday mornings are booked indefinitely for the never ending parade of other people’s kid’s birthday parties.

Frankly, I’m not even sure who some of these children are or how their cartoon character invitations make it onto my fridge, but like dutiful parents everywhere I drag my progeny to the party anyways, where he will promptly dissolve in a puddle of tears once he realizes the presents aren’t for him and that he is expected to follow a carefully choreographed schedule of fun. Actually, it’s not the birthday parties themselves that I mind so much. Let’s face it, its not as if they were interrupting a long lazy morning in bed reading the paper and eating croissants, but what I truly dread is the inevitable after party photos, which are usually emailed out to half the world, mere seconds after you leave the premises.

Another batch of birthday party photos appeared in my inbox today and as feared, I flipped through and confirmed that I had been had again. An unspeakably horrid photograph of me, now on display for the entire Internet world. One cannot look at this photo without shuttering. I immediately sent off an Instant Message to my friend who hosted the party:

Me: “Thanks a lot for leaving the hideous photo of me in the album”
Her: “lol”
Me: “I’m serious, if it was you, I would have edited that one out.”
Her: “lol”

Now, you may have to know my willowy tall blonde friend, but may not be immediately apparent is that she knows exactly what she did. And she is a good enough friend not to try to deny it. She didn’t say “What bad photo?”. No, She knew. And she also knew by virtue of including it, the photographs of her looked all the more stunning in comparison. It does not help me that some of my friends are strikingly photogenic. Particularly the one I happened to be standing next to when this specific shot was taken. You can take pictures of this friend immediately after 27 hours of hard labor and think, “my she is lovely”. Or the time I took a picture of her heaving after a night of too much drinking and yet one could not help but look at the picture and admire her fine bone structure. It’s absurd that I should have to put up with this.

See, the truth is, I’m not photogenic. In fact, it may not be a stretch to say that I am the least photogenic person on the planet. Of course, you would never know this from looking around my home, where the casual observer might believe that I am a supermodel. What they don’t know is that these pictures represent only a tiny fraction of all pictures ever taken of me. They have been carefully culled to include only the most flattering pictures, often benefiting by overexposure, to the extent that they usually only have the slightest resemblance to me in real life.

I’m sorry to say that my dedication to showcasing only flattering photos of myself is so strong, that others often get run over in the process. For example, of the many pictures taken at my son’s baptism, one was particularly attractive of me, I’m turned slightly to the side to hide my post pregnancy figure so I almost looked thin, and the lighting made my features soft and glowing. Now, unfortunately, it wasn’t the best shot of my son. Lacking any real neck control, his head wasn’t fully supported and appears to be attached to his shoulders by a wet noodle. Aside from the odd angle, his face is mostly obscured. Still, it was damn good picture of me, so I framed it and put it on a shelf. Being unphotogentic can really bring out the worst in people.

There was some improvement with the advent of digital photography, specifically, the ability to edit oneself out of shots. I recall the days of picking of traditional film based prints from the drugstore. Going through these, I imagine I felt the same as homicide detectives reviewing crime scene photos. Each was usually worse than the last. I would gasp in horror, quickly look away, and wonder who *was* this poor incredibly unphotogetic woman in these shots. Could this really be me? I have a mental image of myself that doesn’t seem to reliably match up with real life evidence of my appearance, and never less so than when photographed. The pictures usually ended up buried in the bottom of a box. I should have thrown them away really but I somehow inherited some sort of depression-era quirk where I have a hard time throwing things away.

Now with digital photos, I can quickly review the pictures and crop myself out when I don’t look good. This, combined with the fact that I virtually never appear to be in photos anymore, works out to be a reliable system. I’m sure generations down the line will assume Jack was raised by a single father, since I always seem to be on the other end of the camera. It’s interesting that when we didn’t have kids, we would be quick to flag down an unsuspecting passerby to take a picture of the two of us, because, really, how lame would a shot of only one of us be? But with a child, as long as there is one of us in the frame, well it’s good enough.

At least I have six more whole, blissfully unphotographed, days before the next party. I’ll take what I can get.

It's All Relative

2006-05-12T15:33:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I attended the Virginia Gold Cup with my husband. For those not familiar with Gold Cup, it’s a sort of Virginia based Kentucky Derby where the upper crust flocks to an idyllic pasture in Virginia Horse Country to watch horse races on a beautifully manicured course. They wear fancy dresses, elaborate hats and drink heavily as their $400 stilettos sink deep into the rail-side mud. Naturally, being high-class myself, I also attended, albeit wearing wedges.

This wasn’t our first time to Gold Cup and we’ve learned through experience that it’s certainly more fun to attend on someone else’s dime. This time, we arrived with my husband’s cousin at the tent of one of his company’s vendors. That’s how this works: the corporation pays big bucks for the tent and invites their big spending clients to attend with the intention of leaving them forever indebted so they will spend even more money next year. The downside is every so often you have to shake off a few pesky salesmen who keep getting in between you and the guy who set up the informal (and possibly illegal) pony betting pool or the bar. Worse still, it’s usually the same salesman cheerfully introducing himself for the 4th time in an hour since he started drinking while they were setting up the tent six hours ago.

The downside of going under corporate sponsorship is you don’t know anyone else except the people you came with, and standing like a loser in a small huddle for 5 hours can be a drag and ruin the Gold Cup experience. For some, this quick-make-friends requirement would present an insurmountable social challenge, but for my husband, it’s child’s play. I definitely consider myself an extrovert and I’ve even been called bossy, assertive and aggressive at times (don’t get me started…these are standard terms (of endearment Im sure) for women in management where the rest of management are men), but the point is, I’m no wall-flower. However, if my husband is anywhere in the vicinity, the rest of “extroverts” might as well go take a seat, because extrovertness can be relative and he redefines the very concept. The man is big (size) and huge (personality) and massive (voice). And people love him. He draws them in like a magnet. Store clerks, mailmen, customer service reps, health care workers, strangers in line, you name it- they are likely to be in a full-on animated conversation with my husband within moments of brushing by him and swapping business cards 20 minutes later so they can stay in touch. Universally they think he is in Sales (he in corporate finance, chief bean counter, which is an irony that people often cannot recover from.).

In any event, my super-extroverted husband can present a problem for me. Primarily that in purely in comparison I look quiet and dull. This makes me want to scream: “I’m not an introvert! I’m witty, I’m engaging, I’m…” Ah, but why bother, they aren’t paying any attention to me at all, I’m sort of the silent sidekick of my husband. So we’re at Gold Cup and we’ve secured a pub-style table to set our plates on. Now normally, I’d just assume eat in peace and scope out the potential temporary-friends situation afterwards, but my husband is already waving in everyone he sees walk by balancing a plate with their drink and minutes later, it’s so crowded at our table that my purse in on the grass at my feet, and the centerpiece has been pushed over and is now dropping petals onto my sliced pineapple. He’s even managed to land a couple salesmen at our table, which meant we had to pretend to be interested in their business for a few long minutes.

As usual, there are several people who cannot tear themselves away from my husband incessant chatting and are really warming up. A few times, I try to inject, but it’s difficult, since there is never any dead space and you actually can appear quite rude by forcefully interrupting only to say “yeah, I think so too!” or “I remember that!”. So I typically just put this semi-bemused smile on my face and nod. So this woman says to my husband, “You must be in Sales!” Hahaha. No no. He’s not. And she says, “with your personality, I just assumed” and then she looks at me and says (trying to be kind) “And I think you probably have a spark in you too, you take a while to warm up, but I bet it’s in there”. Ugh, condescending! No offense to shy people, but it makes me feel retarded when people assume I can’t function socially out of the gate. Now to my husband’s credit, he raves about me to most people he meets. I don’t know where this enthralled and infatuated man is when we’re at home arguing about whose turn it is to do dishes, but around most strangers, he has me sainted. I’m beautiful, brilliant, stunning in every way. Then he forces these strangers to agree with him. “Isn't she?! Isn’t she?!!” “oh yes, uh huh!” they agree vigorously, because they are under the spell of my husband by this point, and also lets face it, who wants to tick off a big guy?

Well the downside of 15 happy years with someone is you know the stories. You were either actually there when it happened or after hearing about it so many times, you feel like you were. Mostly, you can’t recall which it was anymore, but that doesn’t matter either. The point is, you cannot help to hear a story begin and think “oh boy, here we go again”. At Gold Cup, the first such incident was when my husband started telling a story about our former dog. Now this dog was the biggest doggie-nightmare there ever was. We are talking about a 110lb, barking, drooling, aggressive, non-house trained, epileptic, ball of fur that costs us many, many thousands of dollars and who we loved completely (but had to ditch in favor of our son). The stories from this dog alone, could easily involve an extended weekend stay.

It was clear my husband intended to use an assortment of dog stories on these people, which isn’t in and of itself unusual, but I admit that even I became concerned when he began going into great detail about how we missed the exit on our trip to get the dog from the breeder who lived three hours away (dramatic glance to me as he noted that his navigator dropped the ball and missed the exit). The specifics of this missed exit were beginning to hit the eight minute storytelling mark (‘and so we had to drive to the NEXT exit, which was Route 88, which I think if you took it South would take you all the way to Tennessee and at the off-ramp…”). Now it takes real courage to attempt to entertain people with stories of a missed exit, I mean, when is the last time you missed an exit and thought to yourself “I cant wait to tell people about this one!” But that is what is amazing about my husband- they were riveted, like he was revealing the location of the Holy Grail and giving tomorrow night’s lotto numbers.

Friends often joke that my husband can turn any mundane event into a lively story just by telling it in his booming voice, with his I-appear-to-be-on-amphetamines enthusiasm. But I let them have their jokes; after all, they are the ones who get to hear the endless stories with subjects like taking the garbage, reloading the dishwasher after his wife’s sub-optimal configuration or getting a monthly bank statement.

Naturally my mind was wandering as the dog stories progressed (are my arms getting sunburned evenly? I wonder what I should make for dinner…), until I hear a woman say in a conspiracial whisper, “you should really talk to that woman over there. She had a friend with a big white dog and it bit her arm off”. Whoa. I perked up. “It bit her arm or bit it off?” I asked. “Off. Gone. Right here” She says motioning to her mid forearm. Well, this has never happened before. I’m now getting all excited wanting to talk to this woman about her friends crazy dog, but just then, the announcements for the next race come on so we all rush off to find the “bookie” and place our bets, and I lose sight of the woman in the crowd.

After the horses run by (for the second time in a row my horse wasn’t even there by the time they passed our tent- what the heck is happening to my horses? I’m getting ripped off!), I decide I just cannot take my allergies for another second. The itching is leading to an overwhelming desire to claw at my eyes (which isn’t exactly a couture look), so I asked my husband to hold my drink and I begin to dig in my purse for my allergies medicine. Finding my little miracle blister pack of pills, I raise my head to reclaim my drink, but my husband is gone- my fault for taking my eyes off of him for 30 seconds. Not in the mood to try to gag down a dry pill, I set off in search of him and my drink. I find him towards the back laughing hysterically with an older blond woman I’ve never seen before. As I approach, I see him absentmindedly drop my drink in a nearby trash can. Argh, I’m going to kill him. After a quick detour to the bar, I head over to meet my husband’s newest best friend. He can’t remember her name as usual and the poor woman will have to tell him 15 times in the next 20 minutes until it sinks it, but what the heck. She finds me as cute as a button and thinks she and I look exactly alike. I’m assuming she means other than the 20 years separating us, but I can’t be sure. I excuse myself to go check if I’m suddenly getting crow’s feet.

Fast forward a couple hours and it’s time to leave. I’m beginning to feel guilty about leaving my son with the nanny for so long and after 90 minutes of priming my husband to leave (“5 minutes baby”, “let me just finish this drink baby”, “one more smoke since I don’t smoke anymore baby”), we actually begin walking away from the tent, cousins in tow. The cousins are not used to my husband’s and my rapid walking pace and every 5 minutes, we have to stop for 5 minutes and wait for them to catch up. We finally make it to the car and I’m designated as driver since I was seen drinking a Diet Coke at some point during the afternoon making me most likely to be sober. Actually I suspected this would happen so I did lay off on the booze in anticipation.

We eventually make it home, after a brief stop at the cousins to switch cars and for my husband to have “one quick drink”. We even manage to take our son for his nightly trip to the playground. I can’t say my husband was pushing the stroller in a perfectly straight line, but he did manage to vow that he was giving up the smoking and drinking and now would just do the drinking. He stopped, realizing his vow wasn’t quite the pledge of abstinence it initially appear to be, and we cracked up.

So in the end we survived another year at Gold Cup. Hope to see you there next year (especially if you are the lady with the one-armed friend, I’ve GOT to hear that one).

Amazing Weight Loss Secrets

2006-05-10T15:21:00.000-04:00

Routine bloodwork results are back and my cholesterol level is… (drum roll, please) 176. Not to rub it in, but that is one-seven-six. And this, despite my forgetting to fast before the test. According to my research, below 200 is normal and below 180 is “optimal”. Now, braggarts are annoying, I know, but the last couple of years my cholesterol has been 205. Not sky-high but high enough to get my doctor’s office to mail me photocopied pamphlets on “eating right” and “exercise” with my number of shame penciled in on a “Your Count Is:” line. Naturally I blamed genetics (despite not knowing a single relative’s cholesterol count), but now that I am one of the chosen “optimal” ones, I have reexamined my position (and mounted my high horse).

The truth is, a few extra pounds creeped on since college and a few more creeped on (and stayed on) during pregnancy. But once the baby learned to walk, all bets were off, and I essentially lost 30 pounds chasing after him. I think doctors are surprised at patients being in the normal weight range now- sometimes when contemplating my ailment, they muss, “well I don’t think you’re necessarily underweight”. Um yeah, not officially and not unofficially. I’m not even close to underweight but you know I was so flattered to be considered.

Friends are often fascinated by my weight loss; they ask how I did it or to give them my “secret”. And the diet industry is a quatrillion dollar deal with books and websites and videos- you name it. People are so desperate for the answer to be anything but what everyone knows the answer to be. I know this from experience, but the collective denial is staggering. Is there anyone who truly doesn’t know that if you eat more calories than you expend you will gain weight? (barring unusual medical or emptional issues of course, I dont want a bunch of underactive thyroiders whose houses burned down the day after their divorces finalized flaming me! I'm speaking to average gal who piled on few pounds that now refuse to vacate) It’s the simplest formula yet people act like the magic is elusive. Now, granted you may rev up your metabolism to burn a few extra calories by not eating carbohydrates, or you may find eating fruit gives you the sense of fullness, or that not eating after 8pm is a golden rule, but that doesn’t materially change the bottom line. Calories – exercise = the size of your ass. Now if I could just add some filler around that equation I could publish myself a revolutionary diet book!

If you are or were overweight, what you find out once you lose it, is that you eat a heck of a lot less- if you are like me, less than you probably thought was required to sustain life. I used to think eating a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and maybe a yogurt or a package of crackers was a “balanced lunch”. Well, its not, it’s a one train to fat city. There is a period of adjustment but once you start eating less you find out that you fill up quickly and just aren’t as hungry. And if you can rid yourself of the desperate inhaling of food, its easier to push the plate away when you are full because you’re done, its not really filling any void (hunger or otherwise) to continue. I often just eat an apple for lunch and I’m full. Or just a sandwich. And breakfast cereal every day (and not necessarily the “healthy kind”- dependant on mood). Dinner is not low fat, it’s whatever I make (and most everything I make is 9/10th butter) but I eat until I’m not hungry anymore and then I stop. And because my stomach is smaller, it’s not that much really. I have a sweet tooth so I always have chocolate or cookies at night, but all in all I probably eat 1200-1500 calories a day. I probably used to eat more like 2500-3000 and felt a lot hungrier doing that.

I will admit here, that my ability to cut back on food had a trigger other than my stellar willpower (haha, if you knew my willpower you'd laugh too). For me, going on allergy medicine one Spring seemed to kill my appetite. I don’t know why, and heaven knows my telling my friends this probably led to a huge profit jump in the manufacturer’s product (note: no one was able to duplicate my reaction), but for me, it just did. Once I went off the medicine, I found my smaller stomach kept up the effect, so I suspect once you get through the 4-5 day shrinking (drug induced or not), the effect kicks in.

So the second part of my “amazing secret” is I walk at least 2 miles a day, every day, to take my son to the playground. Now I always walked a lot, but not this much, and I do a lot less sitting around in general since having a child. Activities are important to kids- doing things, going places, exploring- and I cater to that. Like the rest of the world, I still collapse in front of the TV at 9pm (when he goes to bed), but up to that point, I’m usually on the move.

So there you have it. A free preview my “amazing weight loss secret” so that you too can drop your membership in the “help, my arteries are solidifying but I cant put down this HoHo” club. Unless of course you’re one of those “naturally thin” people (grr), in which case you know not of our struggles.

2 is the new...2

2006-05-08T15:24:00.001-04:00

I’ve been hearing more and more lately that 45 is the new 35, or 40 is the new 30, or 75 is the new 60- pick your poison. If that’s the case, I’m still in my 20's so I'm feeling pretty good - rock on. Yet it occurred to me, you don’t hear much in regards to the evolving maturity of 2 year olds. It would seem, 2 is 2 is 2. Isn’t it comforting to know we can count on our insane little creatures to uphold tradition even if no one else will?

Forgive me Father, it’s been almost a month since my last blog. Where does the time go? It’s hard to write when you have a two-year old running around sticking lollipops in your hair and incessantly advising you that the letter “B says Bah!”? Ah well, my son is a delightful baby, although I get a lot of feedback when I refer to him as a “baby”. He’s a big boy and I barely get the tags off of clothes before he immediately outgrows them. I experimented in wrapping him in sheets of lycra as an infant as an alternative to packing away clothes that I just bought last week, but I was getting a lot of inquiries on our families "interesting religious garb" so I gave it up and went back to burning money on the alter of the clothing gods. He wears a size 6 at 27 months and his feet are a size 12. The big shoes he has to wear as a result leave him clomping around the house like an elephant with boards strapped to its feet. Poor baby. On the bright side, I’m in pretty good shape from carrying around a 42lb toddler. Sure I have my rough days, but a couple bottles of Advil, a few days in traction and I’m as good as new.

My son, Jack, is actually a hard thing for me to write about because once I start I’m not sure I can stop. I write him a monthly letter for his baby book that captures his life and accomplishments in detail but I will try to stick to the highlights in my blog that no one reads (except for my one "fan" who accidentally stumbled upon this site- yea!!!! At least my personal quota has been met.). Jack is a wonderful child. Especially when he is napping. Haha. Just kidding. He has a sunny disposition and my husband and I, the most unobjective and biased people in his life, find him amazing clever, adorable and smart. He loves the alphabet, knows all the letters and sounds, knows shapes, colors, animal, counts to 100 and even puts away his own laundry. I’m trying to teach him to read but he is pretending it is too advanced for him. If you think I’m pushing him, you haven’t spent time recently as the parent to one toddler. It’s a full time job keeping him entertained. I’m cheating by entertaining him with things he will need to know on his SAT, but kids this age just seem to love learning anything. Its no wonder firstborns have the reputation as demanding and self centered. Seeing the attention we give Jack, I want to go back and be a firstborn myself! I can't believe I'm a middle child. What a total rip off.

However, as much as it pains me to say it, Jack is somewhat of a daddy’s boy. The other night he was playing on our bed and I was trying to entice him to start his bedtime routine by asking him if he wanted to read. “No” he said, definitively. “I see, Jack, what is it you want to do?” I asked. He flopped back on the pile of pillows like a little sultan, a gleam in his eye, and said "remote!”. Curious, I gave it him the remote. He turned on the TV (and it too me how long to figure out this remote myself? My 2 year old can turn on the 11 components as if he was an in utero electronics champion) and I asked “What do you want to watch?”. He said “Footballlllll”. And he was not kidding. Since then I have found myself fighting for control of the remote from my two-year-old who wants to watch ESPN. It’s my worst nightmare. And what with the "hoops" (as my son calls it) championship underway now, I'm about to concede defeat.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Jack shares my husband’s penchant for keeping things orderly. He no sooner drops a grain of rice on the floor than he runs over and gets the broom and starts sweeping furiously. Laundry goes in the hamper almost before you are even finished taking it off, and open doors are most definitely not allowed, they must be closed. (don’t get me started on what goes on with the light switches around here- lets just say I’m often both figuratively and literally in the dark) One of his first words as a 18 month old was “Mess!”. I question how much of my DNA he absorbed at times.

Book Review - "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert

2006-04-09T16:14:00.000-04:00

As an avid reader, I've come across some good books (and, of course, lots of losers). I'm not genre-specific, from mystery to "women's literature" to autobiographies to historical, I've read them all. This one, however, stunned me.

As a 30-something raised by former religious-order (Catholic) parents who ended up embracing eastern philosophy, I spent my formative years visiting ashrams, meeting mediums and gurus, meditating- all sorts of non-traditional exposure. My parents had us do the Catholic sacraments and training too. Just in case.

I married a traditional Catholic and honestly wasn't sure what I believed. I admired the complete faith of other Catholics, but I didn't feel it. In my darkest moments, I began to question whether this wasn't all random and maybe in the same way we think a dead bug is just dead, maybe that too was our fate. Gone forever- faith being just a brain-process to protect us from the truth. I sadly thought that maybe I was burdened by being one of the smart ones who was able to see this and I felt cursed that I had the intellect for it.

In recent years, I began to truly feel that existential weight- that I needed to know what this was all for. Time seemed to be slipping by so quickly it began to alarm me. I read all sorts of books from Victor Frankel to Ian Stevenson. I thought I was starting to find a path back to believing in something greater, but it seemed like "information gathering" for me vs an emotional breakthrough.

Then I read a review of this book and tacked it onto my to-read list with a bunch of others. It seemed like a chick-lit type book and those are great every now and again, like eating chocolate chip cookies for breakfast- good but best you don’t make a habit of it . When I finally got it, I checked reviews again and ALMOST DECIDED TO RETURN IT. The review I read said something along the line of: obviously a book written only as an excuse to travel around the world. That sounded dull to me but I started to read it anyway, just to see.

Well, wow. What can I say? Someone commended the author for having the courage to publish such a brutally honest and intensely personal journey of discovery. At times, that's an understatement. This book can be so forthcoming, I almost think I would edit some of the content, even contemplating only in my own mind. However, there is something so stirring and so vividly true about her story, and her humor among the gravity of seeking such divine wisdom. It felt so real. And for me, given my background, I found myself actually shedding tears several times in the book (out of seemingly nowhere)- I recognized things the author wrote that my conscious mind had forgotten. This book has put into words things that I have struggled to define. Over and over again. Its remarkable.

Beyond the deeply moving spiritual and philosophical discoveries in the book, Elizabeth is just a really really good writer. Very funny, very clever, very articulate. It made me insanely jealous of her talent. You could read this book on a "regular" level without the spiritual overtones and still find it funny.

Obviously this book wasn't intended as a religious text, but in some ways it became one to me. I will actually reread this book, which I almost never do, because in her observations I think there is profoundly deep meaning and I don't know if I could have absorbed it all the first time. The best part is that this is someone who I actually saw a lot of myself in and my friends in, not some wacky "new ager" that makes you want to roll your eyes as you find a way to extract yourself from listening to their stories.

And whoever wrote the review on Amazon about this all being about not wanting to have kids? What kind of craziness is that? The author makes brief commentary on being unsure about having kids- which 90% of us go through/went through, but she also has the wisdom to note that most parents seem to find them a metaphysical experience. And I can attest, I think my young son is a lot of the reason I began "seeking" truth because despite the endless sacrifice, there are the moments when I know I am, without question, in the presence of something that is the closest I may ever come to God in this lifetime. The radiant innocence and beauty of a child- it that doesn't break your heart open and set it free, I'm not sure what can.

What a remarkable book, and a remarkable person.

My Epilogue: Eat Pray Love...then what?

The Divorce House

2006-04-07T10:56:00.000-04:00

Every street has one, doesn’t it? The house where, for practical purposes, should install a department-store style revolving door- (they can be an extreme sport for the coordination challenged, no?). The For Sale sign went up a few days ago, errected, best I can tell in the early dawn hours. The "Scarlet A" of suburban neighborhoods. Given that we havent been shown glossy brochures of the neighborhor's new house, this means one thing- the Big D---again. Again for the house anyway. A few years back the first neighbors also sold the house amid a divorce. That couple had some pizazz though. Despite being casual wave-as-you-drive-by neighbors, we were awoken one night around 3am with the door bell being run repeatedly and a pounding on our front door. 3am has got to be the worst time for this sort of thing- its so much in the dead zone, that it's impossible to leap from bed and take organized action. Even after I got up, I was sure I was in a vivid dream. My husband, who is 6'7" and 250lbs, grabbed my Victoria Secret robe (full size on me, mini-dress robe on him) in his semi-stupor and raced downstairs. Not far behind him, I looked down the staircase to see him at the front door and mistaking my robe for an old fashioned male nightshirt, thought I was having a dream where he had become Eboneizer Scrooge from A Christmas Story.

Then I saw the bodies roll by the front door in a tumbled mass as the wife and husband tussled over a manilla folder of financial documents. Apparently the wife's late night reconissance mission was discovered and she fled the house with the husband in hot pursuit. Why she decided to seek refuge with us, we have no idea, except my husband is the type who can and will strike up a conversation with anyone and so while I know the neighbors mostly by the dogs they walk, my husband has found himself many times the most unlikely of confidants. He spends a lot of time doing yard work and often I look out the window and see him leaning on his rake, nodding sympathically, while some neighbor is engaged in some sort of passionate story. So anyway, be warned, this is where all that friendliness leads to: 3am referree sessions. Who says all the excitement happens in the ghetto?

Anyway, if you hadnt guessed that couple didn’t make it and divorced splitting the house and 4 kids down the middle, each moving to another smaller house in the neighborhood, which also seems to be part of our neighborhoods divorce manual.

Then, the new neighbors moved in- highly educated, married 20 years, two kids. Two years later, the sign went up. I feel some concern for the families I've seen come to look during the Open House- should I warn them? Then again, I've conflicted. I don’t want to scare off the best prospects- getting a new neighbor is kind of like waiting for your blind date to show up. Will they be the cool couple who hold BBQs and can be seen casually drinking a beer on a hot summer day? Will they be the ethnic family with 27 cars who tear out the front bushes and don’t plant anything in the dirt left behind? Will they be the doctors, highly stressed with the $80,000 cars who seem constantly exasperated with their kids who will probably never measure up?

Pending Discovery

2006-04-07T10:54:00.000-04:00

I cant help but notice I don’t have a fan base yet. That’s disappointing. I guess "eccentric 80 year old" wasn’t a big search term on Google yesterday. Maybe I should find something more popular-society to discuss. Then again, the only thing I know about popular society these days are from reality shows. I don’t want to admit that I watch those (or that they are almost all I watch). Of course people at work know I do, it's pretty humiliating, since I'm supposed to be smart. But who needs reality shows anyway- real truth is stranger than than reality shows.

Today at work, a vendor who is majorly behind on a critical project which is costing us bazillions and is over a year late said that they were knocking off for the week because they were tired. Then they got on a plane and went home. Things were no better at home where a secret-nanny playdate was nearly discovered by another nanny after an unannounced drop by. Cell phones were abuzz with warnings to take evasive action. I don’t know how this one turned out to be honest- have to get the download later tonight.