Up for Air

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!

Now Mom to Two

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.

Got Milk?

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

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?

One Sign Your Child Is Spoiled

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?".

I Want My MTV

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.

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

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.

Potty Training Report 1: Its not looking good

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.

Saying Goodbye to Strandings and Strange Engine Noises

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.

Dont mind me, I'm insane

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.

A Flash of Brilliance

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.

Photo Finish

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

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

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.

The Divorce House

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

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.