Life Goes On

This morning I went for a run. The thing about running is you can pretty much tell in the first five minutes how it's going to go. On a good day, like one of those great, cool autumn days, I'm as light as a feather. Other days, it's like running in quicksand. My side starts hurting or my knee is giving too much. There is however a third option that I was thinking about this morning. Sometimes, if I just keep running I can move past the aches and pains and get into the zone.

I had a rocky start today. Not just on my run. I popped into the grocery to pick up a couple of things and the only other person there was a mom with a baby. This baby looked just like my son only she was a little girl. Same wild hair, same chubby legs, same pout. I started to well up, fighting back tears. When I was pregnant I didn't want to be and now that I'm not, I'm sentimental. I think this is the fundamental problem we face as human beings - how to be happy with what we have and where we are and not regret what's past or what we can't change.

When I checked email this morning, I had lots of Facebook messages from my ongoing thread. The six of us have been at it now for months. There will be a flurry of activity, then silence, then someone finds a picture from 1982 and we're back at it. As I've said before I really love my thread. I'm getting to know people as adults that I didn't know all that well as kids for the most part. They're all really stellar human beings.

This has been a tough year. Friends have lost jobs and worse. This one woman Shannon is such a hot shit. She's an artist and a golfer, mom to four and recently divorced--just battling back from the depths and still funny as hell.

Today Shannon sent this message to the group:

I have no idea why, but "Bungle in the Jungle" is playing in my head. This morning was my last time in the car pool line after almost 20 years of doing it. Bittersweet. I can't tell you how many times I've sat idling in the high school parking lot picking up or dropping off and have seen all of us in flashbacks. There's always the kid that starts the school year looking like he's ready to join the ROTC and ends the year looking like a rock star. I just have a hard time believing it's been so many years since we were all there.

For Shannon, her kids are moving on. For me, my pregnant days are over. For some of the threaders, it's losing a job and becoming Mr. Mom. But life keeps moving and we'd best do the same.

When I run with my son, he hates it because he hasn't quite made it to that place where you feel like you're flying. To him every step is taking away from something else he'd rather do. To me, I'm grateful to still be taking the steps at all. Just keep running I tell him. It will get easier. He's young. He'll learn.

I saw Dave Matthews interviewed on Sunday Morning. It was a fairly somber piece about the near break-up of the band and the sudden death of their saxophonist. Dave said to the interviewer, "The fact that we're going to die is a pretty good reason to stop complaining."

To watch them grow. To stop complaining. To just keep running. Life goes on.

Toby's New Trick

I find particularly with TV commercials, the stereotypes still out there about women are absolutely infuriating. Because I'm also in the marketing business, I'm even more offended that creative people like myself could come up with these concepts and then sell them to clients without so much as a thought as to how ridiculous women look.

To that end, I'll be pointing out major offenders as I see them. First up, Stanley Steemer and the dog butt scrubbing incident.

First of all, I don't know what they did to that poor dog to make him scrub his butt. Either they had a casting call for dogs with worms or they infected the dog with worms. Either way, just cruel.

Second I think the two women are wearing exactly the same ugly sweater in different colors. (cheap ass production budget)

Third no mother is going to shriek in horror at dog butt scrubbing. Let me tell you Stanley Steemer copywriting team, mothers are bad asses who have seen all manner of horrors. You can't imagine what comes out of a child's body, from their noses to their bums. Absolutely horrifying. Not only that, it often ends up on our clothes and we walk around town wearing it, completely unfazed.

Get a grip. You want to throw a woman a curveball? You'd better come up with something better than worms. Because that's the least of our worries.

Things I Found at My Mother's House

I did not perform my annual refrigerator purge at my mother's house this time. I had the full high-maintenance crew with me and just didn't have the time to get to it. As I explained in an earlier post (Easter Potluck with a Side of e Coli) my mother has old person refrigerator. I'm actually terrified that I'll come back next year and find the half a BLT I left in there. Really good BLT by the way from B&D Burgers on Broughton.

I did find some interesting things in and around the house and started compiling a list as follows:

• 7-10 day old tea in a mug with a coaster on top. I estimated age based on moldy film. I'm no CSI but guessing I'm close on the estimate.
• Lemon pepper expired May 2001. I momentarily considered reviewing the expiration date on all her spices but decided it would take me too long. And as I mentioned, I had plenty of high-maintenance to deal with already.
• Washcloth containing what appeared to be two disintegrated dog pills
• Rocks aka landmines. My mother had her gardener bring a bunch of stones to the house so she could stop the dogs from digging holes in her lawn. He didn't set them in the ground. She just placed them willy nilly creating little obstacles all over her yard. Like a toe stubbing nightmare.
• Scary BBQ sauce
• Why she still likes Sally Miller. Really a story more than a thing but interesting nevertheless since Sally is a serious biatch and I always wondered why my mother continued to deal with her. Now I know.
• A piece of paper towel containing dog fur under the bathroom sink.
• Way too many cashews. I've read several articles about snacking on a handful of nuts everyday including in this month's issue of Fitness Magazine. I cannot keep nuts in the house at all or I will eat them, every one of them until they are gone.

My mother says I enjoy these moments of finding old food or that bottle of rusted shaving cream. I feel like I'm giving her quite a bit of room on this stuff. I did throw out the paper towel with dog fur but I let her have the shaving cream because a gooey green gel still came out of the spout. You never know when you might find yourself in a shaving pinch and think, "Hey this stuff's still good, as long as I don't cut myself on that rusty metal bit there."

Flashback

Today, Good Friday, we had a very good Friday. My son played outside all day. It was like a 1970's day for those who experienced the 1970's. No fear of bad people, no fear of bad drivers, just horsing around all day.

Don't get me wrong the 1970's was rife with danger. We just didn't know it. And that was the beauty of it all. For a 70's Christmas, my parents gave us the Ronco bottle cutter. This was funny on multiple levels. First it was primarily used to cut wine bottles, of which there were plenty, at least in my house. Second, who gives a child a cutting tool? Third, the cuts were not exactly precise so what you were left with was a jagged edge open wine bottle to make, say a votive holder for your memorial service once you developed Hepatitis C.

My parents had that rule, the one everyone had in the 70's. Be home by dark. The idea being how far could you push dark before you were punished. In Arlington, Texas where I grew up, dark meant when the street lights came on and the bats started to circle. Again, bats probably not all that sanitary or safe. But we lived in that bubble where nothing bad ever happened.

Today kids are subject to all sorts of badness and cruelty. It may have been the same then, but we had no idea. As I've said before on this blog, Mystic River scared the crap out of me. I was terrified someone would take off with my son and do terrible things. I'm still worried. Look at the news. A young girl found in a suitcase in a drainage ditch.

But today, we were free from worry. Today was like the old days before media and news and whatever else told us how really scary it is out there. See we live in a fringe neighborhood where people drive too fast, do burnouts and throw their airplane bottles of liquor outside. Today was a good day in the hood.

I Got You a Puppy! April Fool's!

I spoke to my mom this morning and she pretended she'd bought me a puppy. We're going to visit her next week in Savannah. I immediately started thinking how the hell am I going to get a puppy home. Noticing my silence, she said "April Fool's! But I almost bought you this adorable little black poodle." And it went on from there in that non-stop mother talking.

My dog Bailey died two years ago. I had to put her down. It was one of the most difficult experiences of my adult life. I won't go into it because it's too sad. Instead I was reading Jack Gray's blog on AC360, In Dog We Trust, and thought of this very funny story about my dog Bailey.

When I first got Bailey, I used to take her with me from Raleigh where I was living, to my dad's beach house in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. It's a two hour drive from Raleigh to Wrightsville, a long stretch of pretty much nothingness that connects these towns. On this occasion, I stole my stepmother's Mercedes out of the garage. She and my father were out of town so I "borrowed" her car in lieu of driving my crappy VW Golf. My friend Peggy was visiting. We set off in the Mercedes and Bailey was riding in the back.

Shortly after getting on the Interstate 40, Bailey started behaving strangely. This was not unusual for Bailey. Peg took a look in the back seat and noticed there was something all over the seats. It was blood. Bailey was in heat for the first time. "In heat" is an expression I've heard before but it was something theoretical to me, not a reality. Bailey was my first dog after leaving my parents' home so we'd been navigating these tricky waters together.

Basically Bailey was getting her period all over the backseat of my stepmother's Mercedes. Not good.

We stopped in Meadow which is a tiny town, but they do have a gas station with a little store. At a loss as to what to do, one of us bright girls came up with the idea of putting a diaper on Bailey. Diapers being another area where we lacked any real expertise.

We walked confidently in this little store. Peg, a New Yorker, and me, a former New Yorker. "We need diapers," we said. "What size?" said the clerk.

Size? There are sizes? She pointed toward a corner of the store, giving us that look Southerners give Yankees that says I'm being nice because we have to do that here in the South but I'm not really going to help you.

Peg and I walked to the diaper area and finally chose a pair of pull-ups by approximating Bailey's weight. We took the diapers to the car and each opened one of the back doors of the car. Did I mention it was a Mercedes? Not one of those C ones either. More like an E-class. Big Mercedes.

Bailey knew something was up and in no way planned to cooperate. It was like calf roping. I've seen my uncle roping calves but he lived on a farm. Even in Texas I lived in the burbs. No experience with roping anything, particularly a bleeding, hysterical, Boxer-Bulldog-godonlyknows whatelse mix. We got her in those goddamn pullups and she looked ridiculous. We then wiped down the back of the leather seats, and sped off down the road leaving Meadow and all her charms in my rear view mirror.

Liked this bit from Gray's blog:

And thus began a chapter of my life unlike any I had experienced before. All of a sudden I was responsible for this peculiar little creature that liked to climb up onto the top of my head and fart. It was like being roommates with Danny DeVito all over again.

The Santa Killer

Last night my son asked me if Santa Claus was real. He's 10. He's been asking about it for a couple of years now so I told him. No Santa Claus isn't real. It was like the shot heard round the world.

I think 10 is old to still believe but he's an only child so he doesn't have anyone else to break the bad news. My brother and I figured it out when we found a stash of gifts in my parents' walk-in closet. Really not the best hiding place. I think I was 6 and Clay was 4.

Will was very sad about Santa. I could see some part of his innocence washing away in front of my eyes. "So you and dad, are you guys giving me the presents?" "Yes," I said. "We've been giving you the presents." He was heartbroken.

I tried to recover and tell him I believe there is a Santa who brings some of the other gifts of Christmas like people feeling happy, people singing and being cheerful. This is all really a stretch for me because I hate Christmas but that's another story for another cheery blog.

I called for reinforcements - hy husband - who is Mr. Christmas. We both sat there on either side of Will trying to console him.

It's all the Wii's fault. We said Santa got him the Wii and we got him the games. But I could tell he wasn't buying it. How did we know Santa was bringing the Wii? I said Santa emailed me and told me. He cast a sideways glance.

Today he seems okay. He said he thought it was pretty cool that dad and I gave him presents. I can tell he's still upset. What was I thinking?

In the Motherhood is Out

I read yesterday that ABC has already cut their season order of In the Motherhood from thirteen episodes to six. I watched it. I thought they had some funny bits.

When I was at the gym last week I saw Megan Mullaly promoting Motherhood on the Bonnie Hunt Show. As I watched, I had a bad feeling, a premonition. Everybody says shows about women don't fly in Hollywood. Married women or older women, I mean I'm surprised they got on the air at all.

This is particularly upsetting to me since I've spent the last two years of my life writing a film about women. What started as a group of 40 something characters has skewed to women in the early 30's. People also say write what you know. Well I don't know early 30's anymore. I'm trying to remember.

The show started online and they had clever hook of using viewer submitted stories from real moms as plot lines. But somebody up there doesn't want to see moms on TV, unless they're perfect moms like June Cleaver or wild and crazy moms like Peg from Married with Children.

Watching Megan Mullaly and Bonnie Hunt together I thought about how funny both of these women are. Really funny women. Why don't we want to see 40 something's? What's wrong with us?

I rented an HBO comedy called "The Comeback" with Lisa Kudrow. It's a show about an actress in her 40's who had a hit show when she was younger and is on the comeback trail with a new sitcom. Originally she was cast as one of the roommates in the show "Room and Bored". The network decides to go in a different direction and Kudrow takes on a new role as Aunt Sassy, the landlord. The Comeback is one of those shows that makes you uncomfortable it's so realistic. Like the Ricky Gervais version of The Office. Mainly it's about this older actress relegated to wearing a bad track suit and being completely overlooked if not persecuted by the show's writers. She's not a particularly likeable character but I really thought she was wonderfully written. I don't think that show was picked up either.

I had high hopes for In the Motherhood. If they can make it, we can make it. I suppose I should look on the bright side - that the show was produced at all, even though their season was cut short. We're going to finish this damn screenplay if it kills me. And I hope we get a shot at making a film. At least we're trying. That seems to be my mantra for the month of March.

Holed Up: Tales from the Motherhood

I spent this weekend in the City but didn't see the light of day except for a couple of coffee runs. Lou Lou flew in from Denver and Rosey trained in from Long Island and we all met in their mom's apartment on Sutton Place. Sounds pretty swanky, but swanky it ain't.

It's a lovely building in a peaceful, pretty part of town but the apartment was last used by their brother Pat, a former Navy Seal with a penchant for Munch-like art and even darker fiction. I slept on an air mattress and the sisters shared the bed.

We were working on our screenplay that we've been working on for longer than I care to admit. This is the toughest writing project I have ever attempted and it still isn't finished. I think because there are three of us with very different opinions. You add the difficulty of managing time zones and a total of 11 children (mostly Rosey's) and we just can't seem to get it together.

Rosey lives in Huntington, near Syosset home of Apatow and other movie kids. A woman in her local book group has agreed to pass along our screenplay to her c-level exec husband at WE if we can get it into MOW format rather than feature film format. They've promised to read it and that is big.

We've been writing all along what we hoped would be a feature film finally stumbling on Save the Cat to help us with structure. A Movie of the Week (MOW) format is different because you have to allow for commercial breaks roughly every fifteen minutes of film for two hours. Plus in this instance, they want what's called a Bible thinking this might be the next Desperate Housewives. The Bible consists of detailed character descriptions, 13 half-page episode synopses and the script in the event the movie launches a series.

It's like the closer we get, the more hurdles shoot up. This weekend we met with other hurdles. Lou Lou's husband is a long-time stoner who has recently decided to try his hand at more serious combinations of prescription drugs, pot and alcohol. On Saturday night, he pulled some major shenanigans that I think I'll not reveal but let's say it kept us up late that night and seeped into the next day as Lou Lou's family gathered round trying to offer their best advice.

I'd brought in a book for her about Adult Children of Alcoholics. I'm one of those. I have the gene and battle it myself. I do pretty well mainly I think because I'm too tired after working and momming all day to get into much trouble. But I understand the root of it and frankly am pretty sick and tired of dealing.

I tried to keep writing as the sister and a brother were counseling Lou Lou. I know the objective of alcoholics whether intended or not, is disruption. Same with any addict I'm assuming. After 40+ years of it it's really getting old. Same old stuff over and over again. It's very unimaginative.

My friend Lou is a tough bird. She's one of 9 children and they do not mess around when it comes to toughness. I think it comes from their mother who possesses a very black sense of humor for someone in their late 70's. She's also a ruthless tennis player, a very unlikely grandmother to scores and until recently a real estate tycoon in the Hamptons. I think they'll ride out this real estate storm; they will if Betty Ann has anything to say about it.

I feel for my friend Lou Lou. She's in a serious pickle with 3 kids and no work experience in roughly 15 years. She's trying and will no doubt find her way. As the old hand in the addiction department, I feel it my duty to keep us moving on the screenplay. Like I said, the disruptions have worn thin. No more drama as Mary J says. Or Mr. Eliot, "For I have known them all already, known them all."

Looking Good Out There

My new profile picture is actually about 2 years old. My brother took the picture when we were out in Montana visiting my dad's place in Whitefish. We were on Whitefish Lake learning to wakeboard. I got up for about 2 seconds and that was it. My brother Clay rode around for quite a bit and my sister-in-law did well too.

It was a funny day. We thought we were taking a water skiing lesson but our instructors told us no one water skis anymore. Everybody wakeboards now. The water was freezing as it always is there. So every time I fell, I got smacked by water as cold as ice. It felt like I was hitting pavement.

One of our instructors was this guy named Link. He was much older than the kid driving the boat. He was in good shape, probably in his 40's like me. He was a small guy and he had what is probably the worst hair piece or weave or whatever it was that I've ever seen. I was thinking this guy has some nerves wearing that thing into the water. We nicknamed his hair the badger.

He was in the water trying to help me and my sister-in-law stand up on the board. You have to just stand up straight when the boat starts to move so it's an awkward feeling. On my first try I got up for a brief shining moment. And subsequently fell, fell, fell until I hit my forearms so hard on the water I thought I was going to cry.

At that point I gave up. I really should've kept going until I too could ride around the lake on my board. But I was embarrassed and I felt badly that they had to keep circling back to pick me up. Now I look back fondly on getting to meet Link who in spite of his badger hairpiece was a real sweetheart of a guy. He wanted me to succeed more than I did.

I like this picture for a couple of reasons. One, my legs and my arms both look pretty good. You can't even see the back of my arms waving behind me in the wind.

I also like this picture because it's a reminder to me to keep trying new things. It wasn't pretty and I really only saw what it could be like for about 2 seconds. But I tried and that's what counts.

With Friends Like These

I am perpetually on the lookout for moms like me. Deeply flawed but trying.


This weekend my sister-in-law had a friend down from her hometown. This friend is one I covet because she is really funny. I was telling her about my son's various sex questions from my Nag in the House blog. She shared this story with me. Her 9 year-old daughter had a friend over and they were in her room being very secretive. She could hear whispering but wasn't exactly sure what was going on. Then her daughter told her they were writing a book called The Valley of the Vaginas. Bonni called the other girl's mother and said, "I think you'd better get over here. They're writing porn."

I just got off the phone with my friend Lou Lou who lives in Denver. She'd sent me an email last night that her daughter is going deaf in one ear. They're not sure why or if it can be reversed. Her only comment? She said it was weird.

Lou's going through quite a bit right now so I figured she was holding back emotionally because what else is there to do? At some point, it's all just overwhelming. I called Lou today to check on her and she went on to explain that she felt like she had to keep it together so Olivia wouldn't get upset. But she stayed up half the night worrying about what had happened, what she could've done, all the things moms worry about when something is wrong.

She went on to say that on the way home from the hearing specialist, Olivia asked her what she couldn't be if she lost her hearing. "Can I still be a vet?" she asked. Lou Lou said, "Of course you can be a vet. But you probably shouldn't work at a shooting range."

I Am a Shit

My husband didn't get home until 9:15 last night - Friday night. He was just, I don't even know the word, maybe wrecked, defeated? He was texting me from the train like he always does about what's for dinner and the answer was nothing. I left a cupcake for him that my neighbor gave us. My intent was to split it with him but he looked so friggin' bummed out, I told him to eat the whole thing.

I told him I had a good day. I had three unsolicited positive remarks on my blog. One from my stepsister even, who read Adventures in Babysitting and somehow didn't want to kill me for that story about taking care of her son.

He couldn't be consoled my husband. He wanted to talk about what a shitty day he had. I should've just sat there quietly and listened. Instead I laid into him about what the hell are we doing if he hates this job.

I thought he was enjoying it. He seemed cheery enough. Maybe it was just an exquisitely bad day. Seriously though, what are we doing? Will and I never see him during the week. He leaves at 8am and the earliest he'll be back is 9pm. That's everyday, Monday through Friday. And he's working on the weekend. Baseball is starting soon and I can't help Will. I used to have an arm but now I throw like a girl. And no way I can catch Will now, he's throwing way too hard.

So I'm up now at 4am. blogging about this mess. Writing, writing, just keep writing. For what? The only money I make writing has absolutely nothing to do with this blog, which is unfortunately the only writing I really enjoy.

Yesterday on the thread (yes, the same thread, world's longest, will soon have a spot next to world's largest ball of twine), yesterday Jack took a "hafe" day as he put it. Jack is in the process of losing his job as a well-paid lawyer. In light of that situation, he decided to say f - it and he took off to watch his little girl swim.

I keep telling my husband you have more power than you think. Don't let them mess with you because you think you have no power. And in most years, that would be true. But this year, with the way things are going, there could definitely be another 100 guys in line to take his shitty ass job. We won't even have paid health benefits until April so if he quits now, we are screwed

Here's what Jack said on the thread:

Since these f-ers have turned me loose in the worst possible f-ing time, I said f-them today and left at 1:30 - watched my daughter Sarah's swimming lesson at 2:00, then went to the gym, then hung out with my kids (Sam too) and that's how I spent my hafe day, the other hafe.

Things are bleak. Things are grim. There's a feeling out there that the worst could happen at any point. I should've listened to my husband who has apparently been telling me for several weeks now that he's unhappy, but I missed the signs. Now he's downstairs sleeping with Will because he never gets to see him. And I'm up here, blogging in obscurity.

I have to write this thing. I have to keep putting it out there even if no one reads it and nothing ever comes of it. It's like the thread. My blog sustains me during tough times and we are in tough times. My husband is proof of that. I'll tell you one thing, that biatch at work who's giving him so much trouble, better back off. I will come after her. I will write about her and make her life a living hell, if only in my own mind and on this here blog.

Nag in the House

My husband started a new job in January. It's a good job and we're lucky, that's what I keep telling myself. But the hours are a pain in the ass. He works in the City from 10 until 7. You add the additional 4 hours of commute time everyday and that's a long day.

Sorry brief interruption. My son just asked me what is sperm? He's 10. Then he asked me, "What time is it?" That's the fourth time he's asked me what time it is since 8:03. It's 8:10 now.

What's been most difficult about this new job is I'm the only one here most of the time to answer questions like, "What is sperm?" What's a booty call? I got that one last week. What's foreplay? I got that after we went to see Pink Panther 2.

The ironic thing is I'm the last person who should be answering questions about sex from anyone. I didn't have sex until I was in college and that was with my 8th grade boyfriend. It took me 5 years to warm up to the idea and to him.

I'm the only one here with my son. I don't know how single parents do it. It's the monotony of hearing your own voice over and over again. I can't imagine being the recipient of that voice. Like nails on a chalkboard I'm guessing.

Brush your teeth. Put your shoes on. Where's your backpack? You need a coat. What's going on with your hair? Practice guitar. Hurry up. Slow down. Stop watching wrestling. Turn off the computer. Are you reading? On and on until he finally goes to sleep.

It's always nag, nag, nag. And let me tell you nagging makes you feel like a nag. You start to shrink. You don't brush your hair. Your clothes are mismatched. Who has time for these things when there's so much nagging to be done?

We had a schedule that was working out great for me. Now that my husband has this new job, we're totally off schedule and back to nagging. This weekend I'm making a new schedule, something that takes me and my nagging out of the equation.

It's amazing how I'll make something simple like changing a document this huge thing even though not changing it, is causing me and my son so much grief. Yes I'll have to boot up my husband's Mac, and email the file, change the file, save and print.

Is that really such a big deal in exchange for having my freedom back in the morning? No it is not. The nag has left the building.

Cooking Up a Blog

I had an idea for another blog today. This is what happens when you limit red wine, ideas flow. At any rate, I had this great idea for a blog about music but I have to write it while cooking dinner.

Typically when I multitask while cooking, it ends badly. So far into this blog, I've burned my hand on grease (rather seriously I believe) and then I turned off the wrong burner. I am now typing with an ice pack. this is what my vtypy ing woulsd realyy look like.

Using left hand and right middle finger, I shall proceed. My idea was about oldies music and that eventually my music will be oldies music. It is to some degree already, but it's not quite like doo wop and a 57 Chevy. Soon my music will become doo wop and then I don't know what will become of me. Will I sing too loudly to the wrong lyrics like my dad? Will hip young groups be sampling my music? Gwen Stefani sampled Rich Girl but it was the Tevya version, not Hall & Oates.

On my Facebook thread we were discussing bad white man dancing to It Never Rains in Southern California which made me think of other gay songs from the late 70's like You Don't Bring Me Flowers and Escape aka The Pina Colada Song aka super gay. But I loved those songs. Hell even KISS was getting in on that morose action with Beth. But the one song I came up with that I don't think will ever be sampled is The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I loved that song.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee

They don't write'em like that anymore. I mean who else could rhyme Gitche Gumee? I looked it up and Gordon Lightfoot hit the #2 spot on the Billboard countdown in November of 1976 with Edmund Fitzgerald. Some entrepreneurial young rapper could've sampled that song and written the theme to The Perfect Storm.

Will Sweet Home Alabama become the next New York, New York? Will Summer Breeze become the next Summer Wind? Could some poor sap show up at the Carlyle boasting the musical stylings of Todd Rundgren?

Only in Moderation

My friend Christina told me I need to update my blog. Since she is one of 4.5 followers I have, I shall gladly comply.

What to write, what to write. I'm still on my Facebook thread. We're balancing bad joke telling with mocking distant family members. Also our friend from Costa Rica sent some pics from a local surfing competition and once again I'm wondering why I live here in Connecticut.

I had coffee last week with my friend Steven and we were talking about misperceptions surrounding women and technology, namely that we don't get it when in fact, women are on the web, women make most of the household purchasing decisions and women are speaking out about everything from annoying commercials to products we love. Women have had strong opinions all along - now we have a big ass megaphone for airing them.

This morning I've been researching women bloggers. I saw a segment on the Today Show at the gym about Digital Moms. I looked up some of their experts from Heather Armstrong who writes Dooce to Cafe Mom and Blogher. It's so funny to me that I've been plugging away thinking I was the worst mom of all time but well hidden here in the burbs. Then I read Dooce and Baby on Bored and truemomconfessions and am just so grateful there are others like me out there.

My hero for the day is Romi Lassally who actually wrote on Huffpoo about becoming the oldest intern of all time at 43 to get back in the workforce. It's the exact same thing I've been thinking--how to pull out of self-employed world and back into some level of social interaction. She also told a story about one of her kids throwing up in the middle of the night and she left it for the dog to eat. Yes! That's what I'm talking about.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Never trust a perfect mother because it's just not possible. Somewhere there is a chink in the armor. As my friend Kristen says, "I love the chinks." This was right after she invited me to a Pilates class that will "work your ass off" while holding her 4 year-old. Hey I taught my son his first curse word. "Goddammit," I said when I guy cut me off and in almost a whisper from his car seat behind me I heard Will repeat, "Goddammit."

Or as Mrs. Mulderrig said about her pregnancies, all nine of them, "I always had two scotches a night. That was it." Hey at least she quit smoking.

http://dooce.com/
http://babyonbored.blogspot.com/
http://www.truuconfessions.com/channels/Mom

Adventures in Facebook

About a year ago, I joined Facebook. A friend of mine who is a supreme networker convinced me to climb on board. At first I did the minimum, posting a picture and setting up my profile. I was bashful about inviting friends because I really have this deep seated fear that I've been invisible most of my life. We moved frequently when I was a kid and I had this feeling people forgot me after having known me only a short period of time. To my surprise people remembered me. People from 3rd grade remembered me.

I've become a more advanced user lately, again mostly due to this Facebook master friend that I have. She invited me to join a thread with about 5 other people, all from high school. One of the guys is in Costa Rica so I've been asking him about surf schools. I think we're all around the same age give or take.

This thread has been going on for about two weeks now. Someone will post a photo or make a comment and others respond. When I stopped responding for a few days my friends threatened to bounce me. So I had to jump back in. I'm finding I can't keep up. They've all kept their wits about them and mine are in the garage I think.

The thread is hard to describe. We've gone from the profane to the profound. One guy is forbidden to access the thread at work. One of the women got the boot from Facebook. Apparently Facebook, like Google and the FBI and cell phone makers, is watching us. Without giving it all away--because I think there is a code of honor or cone of silence connected to the thread--we've mocked people from their high school yearbook photo, slandered former teachers, tapped into other friends' photo albums to slake them and outed a few people who are not currently out.

Some of the better comments include:

• I think he's featured on the NAMBLA website
• I don't own any applebottom jeans and boots with the fur
• I once called shotgun on a motorcyle but my legs got tired before we crashed

But the thing that's struck me and the reason I'm writing this blog, is that at some point I realized the difference for us forty-somethings on Facebook versus those kids I hear use it. At some point, real life intervenes.

Two of the threaders are brother and sister. The brother sent his kids up to visit his sister. When they went back home, she wrote, "I think they each left with a third of my heart."

Yesterday we had this comment from one of the men working in Hilton Head. "Sorry kids, I can't play today. I have to go lay off a couple of really nice guys. Draconian projections for the resort."

Last night we got another Facebook warning, something about contains content that was removed by Facebook. No doubt we'll go back to obscene photographs, mocking yearbook inscriptions and making fun of old boyfriends and girlfriends. Just like the youngsters on Facebook. But from time to time we're faced with real life, being forty and all that entails.

Adventures in Babysitting

On Monday I babysat my nephew Even who is 10 months old. His mom and dad left while he was still sleeping so when he woke up to find me in place of his beloved parents, there was a moment when I thought this could be a disaster.

But he settled down in a few minutes, turned his binky over to me and got down on the floor to play. I took off my hiking boots so as not to step on the little guy with my tire tread soles. He seized on the boots, in particular the soles and started gnawing. I tried to take the boot away but he didn't look happy. So I thought fine, chew the boot. What's a little dirt going to do? Then I pictured him breaking off a baby tooth and decided I'd have to be firm about the boots. "Sorry Even but you've got to turn those over to me," I said firmly. Actually I just swiped them when he was distracted.

Before leaving, Even's dad told me the dog probably had a bladder infection and would need to go to the bathroom multiple times. He showed me a leash attached to the back porch and told me to put her on the leash if she needed to go outside.

About 30 minutes into our playdate, the dog began whining like she has to go outside. So I attached her to the leash as directed and left her to her own devices. When I came back to check on her I noticed the leash was under the porch. There are two entrances to the porch and she'd gone to the one on the far right when she should've gone back to the left. I pulled on the leash to get her to come back around. I called her name, "Delphi, come over here." Nothing. I thought to myself this is one stupid dog. I checked and Even was still safely behind the baby gate so I walked onto the porch and let the dog off the leash to come inside. She ran away. Like a shot she was in the neighbor's backyard in a matter of seconds. Oh no I thought. This is not good.

Checked Even again. Still behind baby gate. Put on slobbery hiking boots and ran after the dog, yelling back toward the house, "It's okay Even I'll be right back." I ran to the neighbor's yard and as I did, Delphi ran past me toward the street. She had her eye on a fuel delivery truck parked about two houses down the road.

See Delphi is a sweetheart but she's a priss. She's a labradoodle but she's mainly poodle. A large white poodle born and raised in Southern California and now trying to find her way in the marshes and waterfront of Old Saybrook, Connecticut. I don't know if you've ever seen your average fuel delivery guy but they're kind of "rough around the edges' is probably the nice way to put it. I'm imagining Delphi running to greet this guy in her "hey how's it hangin'" California style and the guy bats her away with the back of his glove.

I run back in the house frantically looking for a leash. I ran to pick up Even because at this point he was beginning to notice my absence. I wasn't mom or dad but I was someone to talk to at least.

I put Even in his high chair thinking I could call for the dog from the back porch and Even could see me from his seat in the kitchen. I couldn't figure out the tray. It's one of those newfangled Italian made high chairs. I had the prototype but it's been ten years since I needed a high chair. At a loss and in panic mode, I tied Even into his high chair using the shoulder straps in the chair. Then I took a look out the backdoor to see if I could see the dog. Nope no dog.

I untied shoulder straps and put the baby in the stroller. Again very high tech stroller. Luckily it had a built-in blankie so I zipped him in and wheeled him outside. We ran down the street to capture the dog. And there she was in all her glory giving me that "what did I do" look.

The three of us headed back to the house. The sun was shining and all in all not a bad February day for Connecticut. I thought we could kill some time by taking a walk. We went back to the house, I tied the dog to the leash and put the brake on the stroller. I went inside to find outerwear for Even but I couldn't find anything except a hoodie jacket. I put the hoodie jacket and a pair of booties on him. Not enough head coverage I thought. I went back inside and found a hat and gloves belonging to Even's mom. Kind of a cool Banana Republic Haight Ashbury looking hat. Both ridiculously oversized but they would have to do.

Off we went on our little walk. I didn't want to get lost to further complicate matters so I basically kept going in a big square. Walk to the beach, walk back to the house. Repeat. After he settled in Even seemed quite happy just talking to himself. He'd get aggravated occasionally when the hat would slide down and cover his eyes. But he generally enjoyed himself and got some nice color in his cheeks.

I was thinking as we headed inside that his parents were going to be wondering what exactly went on here. The hat and gloves were out of place. The stroller is in a different position. The dog has sticks in her furr. It's that same feeling I'd get when I came home and my mom had been babysitting or my brother.

I'd get these calls from my mom. "Are you sure he has to be in a car seat?"

"Yes mom. It's a law now. You can't throw garbage out your window either. The 70's are over."

One time I came home and my brother had been watching Will. I couldn't put my finger on it but something was amiss. As it turned out later, during the daylight when I could see down my shotgun hallway, Will took a crayon and drew all over the wall. The entire story is that my brother fell asleep and while he was asleep WIll drew all over the walls and on a lamp that I really loved. Then he toddled over and stuck his fingers into my brother's nostrils to wake him.

At forty-five, I still have visions of having another child but as I learned on Monday, I've moved into grandmother babysitting mode. Can't figure out the high chair? Just use duct tape. Unable to find baby cap? Wrap a scarf around his head and off we go. Even the diaper genie has changed. It's all new and unfamiliar to me. I mean it took me about ten minutes to figure out the release button for the stroller brake. I think my baby days are over. And that makes me sad. But the day was a good one and I did pretty darn well considering my lack of practice.

Do You Have That Hunk of Skin?

I had to use this. It's too good to be true. My friend and neighbor was cleaning her broken blender, because that's what women do. We make use of the tools we have. So she's cleaning blueberry off her broken blender and cuts her finger open at the knuckle. Bleeding profusely, she spies a big piece of skin on the blender. Thinks to herself, "I'm bleeding profusely and there's a big piece of skin on my blender." Puts two and two together and she heads to the local urgent care where the doctor confirms she will need stitches.

The doctor asks her, "Do you have that hunk of skin?" No. No she does not. Like any other sane woman, she cleaned up her blender and disposed of the big honkin' piece of skin before heading out to take care of herself. "Because I could re-attach that skin. If you had it," he says.

And in case you don't believe in signs as much as superstitious old me...the injured finger is her middle one now temporarily raised in a familiar salute.

F you she can tell the world. I don't need no stinkin' skin. And I'm not getting rid of that blender.

Biking in Suburbia

My husband and I were driving into Fairfield center last weekend and I saw one of those weekend biker guys. Not motorcycle biker. Bicycle bikers. You know those forty something guys with the Italian stretchy spandex suits, helmets, rearview mirrors, emergency water packs, spiky shoes, etc. Hey I saw Breaking Away. I know you can ride a bike without all that shit.

I asked my husband, the resident expert on man stuff, "What's up with all that?" He said, "Food and accessories. Men are all about food and accessories." This coming from that one who bought an iPhone when they were $600.

My neighbor and friend Andy is one of these bikers. He suits up and rides out to upstate New York or wherever he goes. One day I was driving by his house and his wife waved at me. She was wondering if I would mind picking him up because his bike had a flat tire. She was pregnant with their second and couldn't find the keys to the truck where the car seat was for her little girl.

I drove up the road looking for her husband and I finally found him. He'd made a lot more progress than I'd anticipated so I almost passed him. The look on his face was one of horror. I threatened to take a picture of him with my phone and distribute it to our other neighbors. See Andy is a nice Midwestern guy and my guess is the fellas in Omaha would frown on all that spandex - yellow I believe it was. Maybe orange. It was bright. Andy lived in the City for several years where you can get away with that sort of thing.

He told me he was fine and he could walk the rest of the way. About a mile and a half would be my guess with bike with flat tire. I told him to get in and I wouldn't say a word. Sorry Andy, I lied.

If not for Andy, I would write these men off. They're going through some kind of crisis. They always wanted to be a fireman and somehow wound up an accountant or advertising exec or insurance agent. So they put on a uniform of another sort and head out into the woods of Connecticut in packs with their other fireman-wannabes.

But Andy is a regular guy. A nice, pretty normal guy. And his wife is a hoot so I always think more of a man strong enough to marry a funny woman.

If men and women are all about food and accessories, maybe we're not so different after all...

Who am I kidding? Let's review this little story. A pregnant woman with a two-year old is searching frantically for the keys to her husband's gigantic, loud pick'em up truck so she can go rescue him and his ridiculously expensive bike rendered useless by a flat tire.

I think this says it all. Men have the TIME to be obsessed with said things. They have the time to squeeze into their stretchy suits, Windex that little rearview mirror on their helmets, put distilled water in a fanny pack along with a quinine tablet and mini fire starter, strap their spiky shoes to a bike and head to Canada for four hours on a Sunday.

Given four hours of free time, I think that's about the last thing a woman would do.

By Noon

Here's what I've been up to today. It's noon:

1. Wake up.
2. Start period 7 days early.
3. Exchange emails with friends re: early period. Consensus is caused by stress.
4. Get dressed in clothes from yesterday.
5. Brush teeth / not hair.
6. Make school lunch.
7. Fill out Scholastic Book Order for stinky chemistry experiments (must've agreed to this after wine).
8. Field anxiety/OCD phone call.
9. Make child's breakfast.
10. Nag child about getting off computer.
11. Nag child about putting on shoes.
12. Get Starbucks.
13. Fold load of laundry on front steps while waiting for bus.
14. Go to gym.
15. 68 minutes on high elliptical = minus 9 points on Weight Watchers.
16. Eat breakfast.
17. Edit / re-write babysitter's son's resume.
18. Come up with biscuit topping ideas for creative director husband. Thank you Pillsbury Grands for not paying me.
19. Check recipe books for additional biscuit topping ideas. Husband giving me the fake "yeah that's a good idea" that I know he won't use.
20. Saved by molasses and brown sugar toppings.
21. Submit 100-word write up to publication for client for upcoming trade show.
22. Insert load of dirty clothes into washer, wet clothes into dryer.
23. Make burger patties for dinner.
24. Cook patties.
25. Bleed radiators.
26. Make the bed.
27. Write blog.

I wrote this down the other day, something my son said to me. He said, "Where does the time go mom?" I said I didn't know. He said, "Probably somewhere that it never comes back."

After reviewing this list, I know where the time goes. I regret that it never comes back.

Letter to Kim

I found this letter when I was cleaning up files on my computer. I wrote it to a friend or cousin I think of my sister-in-law's. She died from cancer. Good reminder to me to be grateful for my life and time with my son.

Dear Kim,

I am a friend of Rebecca Thorpe's. She told me you've been ill and now one of your children is as well. Although I hear you are all doing better. I wanted to find something funny to send to you to cheer you up. If we still lived in North Carolina, I could send you any one of a million postcards depicting the indigenous redneck. But we are living here in Connecticut now, home of the stiff upper lip.

Dragonflies are a symbol of good luck or that is what my mother always said. I decided to look up a description of their symbolism and this is what I found:

Dragonfly symbolism crosses and combines with that of the butterfly and change. The dragonfly symbolizes going past self-created illusions that limit our growing and changing. Dragonflies are a symbol of the sense of self that comes with maturity. Dragonflies are reminders that we are light and can reflect the light in powerful ways if we choose to do so. "Let there be light" is the divine prompting to use the creative imagination as a force within your life. They help you to see through your illusions and allow your own light to shine in a new vision.

I was thinking what it must be like for you as a mom, being sick and probably worried about your kids. I have a 5 year-old boy myself. And I was thinking about the day I became a mom and how truly humbling that experience was. I guess becoming a mom and being one every day is a good example of moving out of a state of illusion and getting right down to the nitty gritty. Carrying a diaper bag and a 20-pound infant around in a car seat while you are lactating is certainly something that changed how I perceived my formerly so-cool self.

And there are many days when I think that I will give up. I'm beaten down. I'm eating Teddy Grahams for lunch and I'm yelling at my kid in a voice that sounds exactly like my mother's and I think this is it. I am no longer the superwoman I was in my 20's. I am so far from Sex and the City it is not even funny.

And then there are days when I know I am stronger because of what I do and have done. And somehow I am a part of making this great kid. Sure my stomach is kind of poochy and I prefer elastic waistbands to buttonfly. But I can hold my head up high because I know that I am finding out who I am when everything is stripped away.

So what I wish for you is health and a long life for you and your kids. And I hope that somehow you see what you have been through as a way of finding your true self while you are still a young woman. Just think how free you would be then. Nothing would really get in your way because you've already done the hard stuff. Then you'd be one of those women who just gleams, because you know the light is within you.

All best wishes,
Becky Risher

The Tooth Fairy

My son lost his tooth last week, this gnarly pre-teen molar looking thing. It was at the end of the day and I realized I didn't have any cash to pull the old switcheroo with the tooth fairy. For a minute, maybe more, I contemplated just telling him."There is no tooth fairy," I would say. Just blurt it out. Get it off my chest.

It was one of those days you have as a mom. I worked most of the day preparing another stack of writing samples. That's one big difference I've noticed now that I'm working for clients in New York. They can't seem to get past literal. You need to have work samples specific to their client or their business, preferably work done for a big name. They can't look at a body of work and say, "Yes I do believe you are a writer." I gotta tell you, I think writing is writing. Either you can or you can't. You have or you haven't. But that doesn't fly in the big City.

Anyway, four hours of gathering and formatting samples to send to a recruiter who won't read them but insists on seeing them. Throw in a few loads of laundry, some light housekeeping, cooking breakfast and dinner, bed making, working out and it's a full day. It was one of those days I have when I close my eyes before opening the dryer, praying there isn't a load of clothes already in there that I'll have to fold.

I thought screw the tooth fairy. Will is going to find out at some point. Why not just tell him?

I couldn't. I mean I've done some shitty things as a parent but I couldn't do that. Here's what I did instead. I borrowed money from him. I borrowed money from him to put under his pillow so he could still believe in the tooth fairy and I was off the hook. I told myself I'd pay back the 5 bucks but I haven't yet.

Frankly he's a money pit, so I rationalized this whole thing to myself by saying I spend at least 5 bucks a day on some kind of junk for him, gum or iTunes that's he's downloading. I've explained several times that every song costs me a dollar. "It's only 99 cents," he says as if that makes it alright. Thanks Apple for making a buck only seem like 99 cents.

It's these little tit for tats we have with our children that feel like bamboo shoots under the nails. I stole 5 bucks from my kid to pay the tooth fairy who paid him. He broke even and I didn't have to destroy his illusions. I'm saving that for later.

Car Trouble

Last night I locked myself out of my car. It's not the first time but it was unique in that the car was still running. I have an excuse. Really.

My car was in the shop all day and I couldn't spring her until 4:00. If you live in the burbs you know how important your car is to daily living. So I was trapped in the house from 7:30 until 4:00. I couldn't return Season 1 of 30Rock. I couldn't get to the gym. I tried starting my scooter but it's just too cold for scootering.

So I finally get my car and start driving. Guzzling gas. My little V8 with a sunroof. I take my son to karate and notice a warning light is on in my car. Liftgate open. This is one of the items I just paid to have fixed, so I'm peeved.

My husband broke my liftgate. The liftgate is that little window that opens on the trunk. He broke it hauling wood from West End Lumber in Bridgeport. Normally I wouldn't really care if my liftgate window won't close all the way but it bothers me because that error message - liftgate open - blocks all other messages like direction and temperature. So I have to turn on AM radio if I want to get the temp for the day.

What's really annoying me other than the fact that a) I paid to have something fixed that is still broken and b) I have to tune in to AM radio is c) my husband's strict policy of "don't touch my stuff". See he doesn't want anyone touching his car, his computer, his guitars, his glasses, his moleskin notebook, his.... you get my drift. The fact that he broke something on my car and seems to think that is okay when clearly it is not, is annoying.

Getting back to how I locked myself out. I had a few minutes to kill waiting for karate to end and I thought I'd try fixing my car. My mechanic showed me how to close the liftgate (supposedly) by using the clicker to lock and unlock. So I was trying that and I guess I left it in lock mode and then turned on the car. When my son came out of karate I pulled on the door handle and it was locked.

The good news is this time my son was outside the car with me. The last time I locked myself out of the car, my son was inside and I was out. He was little at the time, we were still counting his age in months I think. We were living in North Carolina and it was around this same time of year, February, except that in North Carolina that can mean heat.

I panicked and then I came up with a plan. I called my dad who lived down the street and got my stepmother instead. I asked her if she could come down to my office and watch the car while I flew back to my house to get my spare keys. Somewhere along the way she decided to call 911. Now that is probably what I should've done, but I thought I could get to and from my house faster than emergency services could make it to my car.

In the meantime someone from another office in our building is outside talking to me, wants to know if we could join hands and pray or some crap like that. When my stepmother arrives, I take off like a shot, leaving her to pray with the nutter. I made it to my house in about 3 minutes, grabbed the keys and ran.

When I got back to my car the Raleigh fire department was standing around my Volvo, one guy holding an axe-like tool. They were about to break the window when I showed up with the spare keys. I opened the car and retrieved my son. A tearful reunion of mother and child although I don't recall my son being upset. I don't think he really picked up on the emergency unfolding around him.

As the firemen were leaving, one of them pulled me aside and said, "Normally I'd need to write you up for this but I'm going to let it go since you got him out so quickly." I was thinking write me up for what? For being a working mom, tired, overwrought and a bit spacey? Granted not a banner moment as a mom but it's not like I went to work and left my kids in the car for the day. There was a guy in Raleigh who was picked up for leaving his kid in the car while he went into a strip club.

I was just trying to get to and from work, my kid in tow, and I made a mistake. The same thing happened last night. Working, running back and forth to karate and guitar lessons and the grocery and afterschool mutli-sport camp can get a little tiring. Add that something is still broken in my car that I just had fixed and the aggravation I feel knowing Mr. Don't Touch My Stuff caused this problem and some balls are going to get dropped.

Luckily my neighbor, also a working mom, was home and she retrieved my spare keys and brought them to us. As an aside, I received an email that says you can use your cell phone to open your car door by having a person point your spare key clicker into their phone and then you point your cell phone at your car. This is an urban legend. We tried it and it didn't work.

In the meantime my son was practicing his high kicks in the parking lot and found a $20 bill on the ground. Once again unscathed by the emergency, he actually winds up ahead in the deal. I think he might have the "step in shit" gene my brother and father have but I'll have to go into that in another post. Clearly I don't have the step in shit gene and may in fact have the "working man takes it up the pipe" gene.

All's well that ends well. We got in the car and drove home. I can tell you one thing, I'm not putting my car back in the shop. I guess I'll have to assign a button to an AM weather station. I don't really use the direction feature except to feng shui some stuff in my office. One thing I am planning is to touch some of my husband's stuff. As a little joke I like to put fingerprints on his monitor. I might smudge up his iPhone. That will really get him.

NB While I was writing this post, I burned an entire pot of wild rice. This is what I'm talking about people. Being a working mom means having a million jobs, none of which you do very well. The mental state that condition creates is what makes women crazy. Like Britney crazy except with big grandma underwear.

Potty On

My friend sent me an email. I was in a movie so I just saw the subject line in re: pooping breakthrough. I laughed and decided to read it later.

As I've said before, until you go through potty training, you really have no idea. I mean we've all technically been through potty training but it's more of a repressed memory versus something we look back on fondly.

I read the email when I got home and my friend was writing about how proud she is of her son's efforts to go to the potty - that she's pulling for him because he hasn't really taken to it like a fish to water. I think it took my son about a year and a half so I can relate. At any rate, you could tell that she was relieved that he'd made a breakthrough today.

There are milestones in parenting that are really quite scary. There's a lot of anxiety around these milestones like first steps, first words, potty training, etc. The anxiety results from those smug marrieds who have perfect children. I love the movie "Baby Boom", thank you Sam Shepard you beautiful country vet you. Anyway, there's this scene where Diane Keaton is talking with other moms whose children are comparing clouds to a Manet painting. Or is it Cezanne? The other moms are shocked to hear that Diane - J.C. Wiatt - doesn't have her daughter enrolled in any enrichment programs. No french lessons, no art classes, no tennis. Quelle horreur!

"Nothing," she says. "Child can't even hold a cup."

One time I took my son Will in to visit a friend in the City. I got the same grilling from some of the New York daddies that were her co-workers. What no wine tasting? No fencing classes? Nope, nothing. My son just sat there like a lump, sleeping in his stroller, not even a Maclaren at that.

Luckily Will took his first steps early. He was cruising around at 11 months. He spoke early and often and continues to this day. But potty training was a disaster. The first few times he tried to poop he actually went on the floor. I don't even understand how that happens. He would poop in the bathtub. Just pooping willy nilly all over our little bungalow.

We tried to take it easy until we realized they were going to ban him from pre-school if he couldn't go potty in the potty. Luckily this was a Montessori school, picture crunchy not blue blazer set. So the headmistress agreed to let it slide while he figured it out. And he did figure it out. But it was a very sore spot in my marriage and also with friends. "What do you mean he's not potty trained yet?" they would ask in that tone of voice.

My mother was very helpful. She told me my grandma potty trained me and my brother in a weekend by using money to bribe us. Bribing didn't work with my son. He wasn't having any of it.

So I'm sorry to use my friend's life in my blog, again. But what I like about this friend is that even though she could be like those perfect moms, she's not. She tells the truth to me about her marriage and her kids and her life.

It's so refreshing. In fact, I have a pretty strict policy about it now. If your life is perfect, I don't want to know you. First of all you're full of shit. And secondly, all the good stuff, all the funny stuff, is in our imperfections.

While I may waver in my focus, ADD as I am, I am committed to telling the truth about my life in this blog. Mom, wife, writer, woman who could swear she's still 32. I'm totally screwed up but somehow okay with it. Because the real me is far more interesting than anyone I could ever pretend to be.

I've had a breakthrough of my own today. Thanks C & W for the reminder.

My Delicious Deception

My mother gave me Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook for Christmas. Jessica, wife of Jerry and mother of three, came out with this cookbook called Deceptively Delicious. The basic premise is hiding vegetables in the foods children are willing to eat. The idea is a good one but I'd actually had it myself. I started hiding vegetables in my son's tomato sauce about 2 years ago. Because tomato sauce is comprised of tomatoes, a vegetable.....or is it a fruit....At any rate, it resembles a vegetable so I don't know that my idea to hide additional vegetables in the sauce was particularly inspired. I'm thinking I should've thought of it a long time ago.

My son ate vegetables as a baby. He had no choice really but he didn't spit them out or gag on them the way he does now. Now it's like feeding pills to a dog. Nine times out of ten the broccoli winds up on the floor. When I started hiding veggies in his tomato sauce, I also started enforcing a daily multivitamin. I can't take the regurgitation of food.

In Jessica Seinfeld's book, she uses purees that she claims to make herself on Sunday afternoons. She lines up a big pile of veggies from the farmer's market and roasts or steams them to prepare for the food processor. She blends and blends all the live long day. Then she stores them in labeled baggies and puts them in the freezer in more plastic containers.

I have a couple of problems with her book. First I don't believe for a second that she and Jerry are sitting at home on Sundays making purees. Second, I'm guessing she's cracking the whip to get some illegal alien to type out labels on her personal labelmaker machine. Third, she's using twice as much plastic as she needs simply to make things organized. This tells me she has one of those fridges that gets cleaned every week and everything is put in proper rows or stacks.

The coup de grace? Yesterday a woman named Missy Chase Lapine filed a lawsuit against Jessica Seinfeld and her husband Jerry for what she termed copyright and trademark infringement. She's also suing for defamation of character because Jerry took some time on a recent Letterman appearance to call her a wacko. Ms. Lapine published her book, The Sneaky Chef, in April of 2007, six months before Seinfeld's book was issued. Lapine claims the two books are similar in design, structure, cover art and overall look and feel.

Since Lapine and Seinfeld and I all had the same idea, I don't think the premise - hiding veggies in nuggets - is that radical. It is possible for at least two people to express their takes on this single concept. However, the list of similarities between the books sounds extensive and worrisome for Seinfeld. Of course she's a celebrity once removed so worst case scenario she's facing a day of picking up garbage on the Van Wyck.

In good conscience I feel I must return my copy of the book. I mean what if Jerry decides to steal my big idea, the one about getting professional wrestlers to dress up in veggie costumes and appear at elementary school recitals to promote healthy eating. J'accuse Jerry I would say to myself. Next thing I know he's on Leno calling me a piker.

So I'm returning the book. I'll likely not buy The Sneaky Chef either. The thing is I don't really have the energy or the staff it takes to make gobs of puree and inject it into hotdogs. I'll keep up with the tomato sauce and I'm putting a bit of zucchini zest on my son's turkey sandwich. I'm just not one of those moms. I'm beginning to think no one is unless she has a nanny, a gardener, a sex surrogate and a laundress.

My delicious deception? I read the book, took the ideas I liked and now I'm returning it. Yes I am a piker and I don't care what Jerry says about me. Hey Jerry, the Bee Movie sucked. How about them apples?

Woe is Mom

I'm a mom, not that there's anything wrong with it. My husband says I'm a MILF which is sort of redundant if you think about it. Obviously if you are a mom, you've done some F'ing.

I met with a woman about a job this week. She's a really cool woman and also a mom. A Brazilian mom so her MILF factor is high. We were going down a path of talking full-time job. I knew she had a job opening but I hardly thought I'd be in the running. I've worked for myself for 10 years or more. I'm a risk for most employers who already think freelancers are nutters, much less one who's been at it for as long as I have.

So I'm sitting here with my phone turned off because I thankfully managed to call the recruiter back and get his voicemail. I'm panicked about this decision. All sorts of things are running through my brain like how will I find childcare. How will I know this person is good to my son? He's nine so I suppose I could just ask him.

Then there are my own insecurities. I've actually had a pretty impressive life but I can't quite get my arms around myself. I can't embrace the greatness of me, see what other people see. I just see me. Mom. Freelancer.

I'm very superstitious. It's my Scottish grandmother. Also I had a close friend as a child - Allison Millikin if you're out there - who had a Scottish babysitter and she used to scare the crap out of us with Ouija boards and sceances. When I woke up this morning I was thinking just go for it. My Brazilian friend said it when I met with her although she was talking about someone else. "You can always quit," she said.

As for my superstition, this is what happened. Right before calling the recruiter I checked my mail and saw three large white envelopes. This being the holiday season, I figured they were Christmas cards. Wrong. Three new letters from my Granny Inez who has employed the most prolific letter writer of all time to bombard me with guilt from her nursing home in North Carolina. The first two were the usual. She's not quite there, calls my son the baby even though he's in 4th grade now. But the guilt is there. Are you coming for Christmas? No I'm going to Mexico. Then she goes into this whole thing about my forgiving her for anything she did in the past and some god talk. I don't know who's writing this stuff but I'd say they're taking poetic license. "I pray that God's love will surround you, and help heal the wounds of the past." That does not sounds like Inez. She never went to church in her life as far as I know. She has not accepted Christ as her savior. She married a Catholic and managed to lure him away from the church so I just don't see it.

The person I am most like in the world is my Grandma Inez. I took bits and parts from all of them but we two share many qualities. If you read my earlier post, The Fighting Finn, you'd know what I mean. Inez was a workaholic. She retired at 88 only after being forced out of her business. She had one son, I have one son. I have always worked way too hard.

So what is the meaning of this sign? The three letters from my grandma who worked away her entire life, never stopping to smell the roses. Do the letters mean I should take a job? Or am I going to miss out on my son's life? What if I'm missing my own life?

Getting back to the whole mom thing. Sometimes, being a mom is like being a club chair. We're comforting and pretty and we stay in place. You can balance on us, jump on us and we won't break. If you want to be more than a mom, like say a working mom, well there's only so much time to decide that fate. If you want to be a MILF or a hot mom, you're going to need to work hard at it because that's a tough gig.

I know a job will bring change and I love to resist change. But all good things have not come to me waiting. Besides I can always flirt with the mailboy or ponder interoffice romance. Although my husband is working at the same firm so therein lies the rub.

The Fighting Finn

From the time she was a young woman, my grandmother had to work. She worked as a domestic. She operated the Teacups ride for a small carnival, pretty much any low-paying tough job you can imagine, she has been there and done that. Inez Illona Lindqvist married my grandfather, James Arthur Risher, when he was working in a steel mill in Canton, Ohio. He was a hard-drinking, belligerent, bear of a man at 6 feet 6 inches tall. If there is anyone who had it tougher than grandma, it was my grandpa Jim.

Their marriage was reportedly turbulent when they were younger. My grandfather’s partying ways did not sit well with my grandma who must’ve even then had a vision of becoming a businesswoman. At first, she went with him dancing and drinking until the sun came up the next morning. But she fell away from that life while my grandfather was like a moth to a flame. One of her favorite stories is about my grandfather refusing to leave a bar one night. Without saying a word to him, she went down there and let the air out of the tires on his truck.

Grandma Inez loved to tell us stories about her people, the Finns, fighting the Russians for their independence. She said the Finns would dress in white jumpsuits and bury themselves under snow waiting for the charging Russian forces. Then they would ambush the Russian soldiers, jumping out of hiding and killing them using only a knife. I could see the blood red stains on the white snow. Note to self – do not mess with grandma.

My great grandfather was from Helsinki, Finland. He was something like a merchant marine who left home at the age of 14. His wife never learned to speak much English so both my grandmother and my father spoke Finnish in her home. I didn’t really understand the characteristics of the Finnish people until I had an opportunity to live in Europe as a student. Of the Scandinavian people, the Finns are by far the darkest of the lot both in coloring and temperament. Although frequently grouped with the Swedes and Norwegians, Finns are a different breed. The Finns I met were all highly intelligent but definitely morose in their worldview. I’m thinking of a word in German, weltschmertz, defined as a sorrow or sadness over the present or future evils or woes of the world. I tell my husband I am a pessimistic optimist. I hope for the best but am frequently let down. I think this is inherently Finnish.

Some years ago I saw a story on Sixty Minutes about the Finnish cell phone maker Nokia and how that company reflects another Finnish cultural trait. Apparently, the Finns avoid personal contact like the plague, hence, the insanely popular cell phone. Another Finnish pastime, the sauna, would seem an experience that would force intimacy. Sitting naked in a sweatbox would surely lead to conversation. But the Finns don’t choose to use this time opening up to their fellow man. Instead, this popular joke dictates sauna behavior.

One day Pekka and Toivonen meet after a long time apart and they go to a sauna in the woods. They drink vodka for a couple of hours. Pekka asks how Toivonen has been doing. Toivonen says nothing, but continues drinking for a couple of hours. Then, slowly, he replies, 'Did we come here to talk, or did we come here to drink?'

The one subject grandma will discuss at length is politics. She is very much a liberal in her views, typical of a long-standing tradition of Texas Democrats. She’s so liberal, I’m not sure she would even play well with other Democrats. Her father was a Socialist and actually headed up a Socialist group in Ohio when they first moved to the States. She liked to scour the newspaper everyday, looking for evidence of her conspiracy theories. Don’t even mention George Bush to her (father or son). She will launch into a tirade about this or that, usually something along the lines of “the working class gets no respect.” All Republicans are out to help the rich, end of story, no discussion. Sadly, she's lost her sight to macular degeneration and she is unable to read the newspaper. She listens to the news, but I don’t think it has the same appeal. It’s just the buzz of the television going all day long.

The “store” was the furniture store she eventually opened and ran for 55 years, something quite out of the ordinary for a woman in the 1950’s. She was the salesperson and my grandfather delivered the furniture. When we were kids she would let us come to the store with her and “work”. Mainly we would just sit around pretending to write sales receipts. She had one of those prehistoric machines that dispensed the paper in triplicate. You write something on the paper, pull out the receipt and give it a good rip. I’m not sure what our game did to her accounting system because the receipts were all numbered in sequence. She didn’t seem to mind.

Next we would wait for our lunch break, an activity I would liken to a long car ride. We repeatedly asked if it was lunchtime until she caved and took us. We also wanted to avoid my grandpa at all costs. He was a tough guy and any run-ins with grandpa might result in our actually having to do work.

On weekends, many weekends, my grandmother would take us out to Six Flags over Texas. We had a season pass to the coolest thing Arlington, Texas has to offer a young kid. I really never considered her age until I became an adult myself. At 40, a day alone with my five-year old boy would put me out of commission. My grandmother took me and my younger brother out to that theme park all the time, rode all the rides with us, and never even blinked.

I think she was in her 60’s at that point, going with us on tortuous rides like the Spindle Top. I don’t think this type of ride is even legal anymore. Basically, you cram a bunch of people in a huge barrel that spins around faster and faster until the G-force slams your body against the wall. Then the floor drops down and you're suspended in the air, stuck to the wall like a bug. No seatbelts or safety equipment of any kind were there on the Spindle Top. Add some candy and soda to the mix and you are looking at one hell of a long day with two wild kids.

One of her other favorite activities is laundry. It must be genetic because I am also a laundry fanatic. My brother’s friend Pete tells a story about coming home late night after hours of drinking in Boston. My grandma was lying on the floor between the washer and dryer, only her legs sticking out like the witch from Oz trapped under a house. So Pete and my brother run inside the house thinking she has had a stroke or something. She pops her head up and says, “Oh I was just cleaning up some lint under the dryer. You boys want something to eat?” My mother swears she broke every dryer we ever had. They finally began unplugging the dryer or removing the fuse for the dryer and telling her it was broken. Sad, really, considering she probably bought us the dryer in the first place. She just liked clean clothes, the smell of them and folding them with origami-like precision. One time I caught her sewing a hole in her pantyhose. She’d lived through the Depression, probably already poor when that catastrophe hit. She always told us to take care of our clothes. She would iron our jeans if we didn’t stop her. She had a thing about wearing shabby clothes.

She also hates food waste of any kind. My stepmother found her going through the garbage after dinner one night, retrieving pieces of uneaten food that were still “good” in her mind. At this point she’d actually done well in her life. The store was doing a brisk business and she owned several homes that were rental properties. It just bugged her to see that perfectly good food sitting in the garbage. Thus began the ritual of clearing the garbage out of the house after every meal, before she could take a look. My husband and I call her the food pusher. One time I had some friends stay over and we were eating breakfast. My grandma kept urging one of the guys to eat the last piece of bacon. He politely declined several times until she actually took her finger and gently flicked it on to his plate. Food pusher.

At the end of her life, Inez is alone. My grandfather died a few years ago. They’d been married for over 60 years, together every day, at home and at work. At the end, my grandfather seemed more like a schoolboy in love with her. I don’t think she really considered what life without him would become. She had to give up the store. Her purse was stolen right off the desk one day. The floors were hard cement and she was finding it more and more difficult to take the pain in her legs and feet. She couldn’t see to drive the old yellow Cadillac just down the road.

Finally, my father decided to close the place. He found out some relatives were skimming money from her, ordering loads of furniture that could never be sold. Grandma had actually run a cash business all that time. She hated debt. And now she was swimming in it thanks to them.

My grandfather waited his whole life to retire and never did because she would not give up the store. He said no wife of his was going to work everyday while he sat at home doing nothing. I know he cajoled her, tried everything he could to get her to stop. He’d had enough--enough with the customers and the lies about where the check was and hauling Barcaloungers up flights of stairs. But her whole life was tied up in that business. Her friends were long-time customers. She worked with her family. Who’s to say what’s right? What makes a happy life, when you look back at the end of that life? He wanted to go fishing. She just wanted to work.

I came to visit my grandfather in the hospital shortly after a botched hip surgery. He said, “You know, you’re just like her. Watch out.” My guess is he saw what would happen to her, knew her well enough to know that she would never quit until she was dragged out of the store and by that time it would be too late to really enjoy anything else in her life. I guess I am like her in many ways. I am an entrepreneur. I have one son. I’m married and plan to stay that way. I do work a lot, sometimes to the point of illness. I am afraid of relying too heavily on anyone other than myself.

When my son was born, my husband and I were both starting out in our business. At five months, I took my son to daycare and he went everyday all day. I regret that choice. I regret not spending more time with him as a baby. So I am trying to learn from my mistakes and maybe those of my grandmother. Life is not always about work. It’s easy to get caught up in that race, particularly as a woman. Never let your guard down, never stop or someone else will take your place. And oh the perils of being a housewife – of not “working outside the home”.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this story. I just started writing about her late one night when I realized this is the end of her life. She's fallen several times. Her doctor thinks she’s had a minor stroke but he’s not sure if her disorientation is the result of stroke or dementia or maybe even a concussion from one of her falls.

She’s just not the same person anymore. And I wanted to remember some of the things about her before my own memory blurs more than it has. I am trying to understand what I should learn from her. What was my grandfather trying to say? Work less. Let others take care of you. Know when to fold. Who knows?

Before we got married my husband told me he was high maintenance. When you first fall in love you avoid hearing these things because they detract from the pretty picture. Eleven years later, it’s hard to ignore. And I am sure it is equally hard to miss the annoying things about me. Is that what I did? I told him I didn’t want anyone to take care of me. Well guess what? I may have lied about that part. I secretly hoped I would find someone stronger than me, someone who would offer to take care of me although I would probably decline.

Or maybe I should learn to be cared for in the manner it is offered. Is that the lesson? Because my grandmother has no choice now. She must accept care as it is given. And rather than accept that fate, she has decided to sit alone, quietly in her room.

I know this and this makes me sad. In the end, we are alone in this life. Sometimes our beloved spouse dies. Sometimes we live in a world of our own, no longer in the realm of the living. We become a burden to our children. We grow ill and incontinent and messy and difficult. These are not traits welcomed in the highly efficient culture of today.

So I suppose if I have anything to learn from Inez it is to live a life that pleases you, because in the end your thoughts will turn to that life. And the only comfort you may receive will be the knowledge that before you landed in this pseudo-world of assisted living you were once a ferocious warrior -- a businesswoman back in the days of home economics. The person in the wheelchair or the person on the gurney is the shell of what remains. You are still the beautiful young woman in a faded photograph. And no one can take that from you.

Why I Have to Kill My Husband

So it's come to this. I want to kill him. Sure I could divorce him, but where's the satisfaction in that? Murder. That's the stuff of Shakespeare.

He came home early yesterday because we had a parent-teacher conference. It was good to see him but I was in a foul mood because...well I was going to list the reasons but it doesn't really matter. They seem kind of silly now, but at the time I was pissed.

So we raced off to parent-teacher conference, raced home. I grabbed my son to take him to karate, changing in the car, came home and found my husband upstairs playing guitar and blasting Emmylou Harris. In re: my earlier post When George Clooney Comes a Knockin', another one on my husband's list is Emmylou.

I'm staring at my 50th bushel of laundry for the day, two unmade beds and dirty dishes and he's upstairs playing guitar. I haul the laundry upstairs and start making the bed, huffing and puffing to show my anger but he can't hear me of course because he's playing Red Dirt Girl or some other freakin' song for the tenth time. See he's playing guitar along with the song so he has to restart it when he gets off the pace.

I had a conversation with my friend LouLou the other day. She also wants to kill her husband. But we had this conversation about anger and why we're so angry all the time. It's basically the same situation only I think she may have it worse because her husband is actually in a band for cripe's sake. But she said something to me that made me think, so much so that I wrote it down. She said she was talking to a friend of hers and I can't remember exactly the circumstance but her friend was saying Lou should live everyday like it's her last and think about what her obituary would say. And Lou said, "Is that really how I want to be remembered? I kept a clean house?"

Oh I know what it was, her husband had ignored a pile of laundry for about three weeks and LouLou was testing him to see when he would notice. I believe the result of this test was that he never noticed and she ultimately had to fold. Anyway, that's what I wrote down. Is this how I want to be remembered?

Back to my annoying husband. My husband and I frequently argue about house stuff. His answer is always, "Just make me a list and I'll do whatever you want." But see here's the thing, and it is a thing because I saw a very similar scene played out in the movie The Break-Up. Do you remember that whole lemons scene? Baby wanted 12 lemons because they were show lemons. Then they have this big argument about him not doing the dishes and he said you didn't ask me to do the dishes and she says I don't want to ask you, I want you to want to do the dishes.

That is the principle of it. That sums it up for me. I don't want to write a list for my husband. I want him to notice the laundry and the unmade beds and the dirty dishes and take it upon himself to do something about them. Because he loves me. Because he wants to be helpful. Because he thought of it on his own. Not because I made him do it.

Women are looking for signs. Maybe not all women, but many women are looking for signs from their husbands. I tell my husband all the time, it's the little things that women want. Sure a big, fat piece of jewelry is nice every once in awhile but that's not what really does it for women. Women want the door opened for them. We're hoping for flowers, coffee in the morning or breakfast in bed. You don't even have to make the breakfast. You could go buy the breakfast. We're watching you, testing you all the time.

I told my husband about this a long time ago and we've discussed it several times since. So I know he knows this but he doesn't do these things or doesn't do them with any regularity. So I said to him one time, "If you know these things make me happy and you intentionally don't do them, you are making a choice." Then I think he said something about me making a list.

You see your Honor that's why I had to kill him. He didn't make the bed or do any laundry. Cooking? Forget about it. She'll understand. I know she will.

How to Explain an IV to a Six Year-Old

We went to the wrong hospital. There are two near us but we were new to the area and we were confused. The other hospital had a children’s ER. This one was open to all, mainly older people, who sat in their beds moaning. Our 6 year-old, Will, was nervous. The good thing about asthma is you get pushed to the front of the line in the ER. Especially with kids, asthma wipes that blasé look right off their faces. That’s the only good thing about asthma.

They moved Will into another area of the ER so he could have his own room. The doctor turned on Cartoon Network to try to distract him. Ed, Edd and Eddy. It didn’t work. Will was screaming that he couldn’t do this. He knew he was supposed to be calm but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stop crying. I'd never seen him like this, in a complete state of panic. After two days of trying to reverse the course, two trips to the pediatrician, the ER doctor ordered steroids to be delivered intravenously. He was trying to stop asthma from drowning our son.

Asthma is a piece of shit, relic of a disease--an insidious, creeper, sometimes killer of a disease. Despite the research and high-falutin’ talk about maintenance and protocols and other jargon doctors use, asthma remains a mystery to them. No one can say what causes it, what ends it, who will get it, how seriously they’ll be affected. The truth is they just don’t know. And after centuries of studying and treating asthma, nothing much has changed.

To get back to my original question, how do you explain an IV to a six year old? Well the answer is that you don’t. If you tell a little kid he’s about to be held down by three adults including his parents while someone sticks a needle under his skin to begin dumping steroids into his bloodstream, well he is not going to be amenable to that situation. You can reason with him and force him and stroke his forehead, but the fact remains there is something foreign stuck inside his arm and he wants it out now.

Asthma medications are worse than the disease. They all induce nervousness or anxiety, if not outright mania. Even the naturopaths suggest drinking a cup of hot black coffee at the onset of an attack. Still all the medical professionals will tell you it is essential to stay calm. “We can’t help you if you can’t settle down.” The effects are startling even in adults. Hands shaking, nausea, irritability, irrationality, pulse racing, even cardiac arrest. But stay calm. By all means stay calm.

Sometimes as a parent, you realize you will do things that you cannot take back. Sometimes those things are done in the heat of the moment. You can’t take another question while you are trying to work. You’ve asked 367 times if he needs to go to the bathroom, and he swears he does not, until you are staring intently at the latest video selections and suddenly he can’t hold it anymore. You just snap. Every parent has their breaking point and kids are the masters of pouring gasoline on a fire.

That night I gave the ER doctor my consent to run an IV. It’s for his own good, I told myself. They strapped his little arm to a board to stop him from bending his elbow. The steroids were stinging and a red circle was forming around the needle. Will cried the entire time, almost two hours. I looked into his frightened, sobbing eyes and realized I couldn’t take this back.

Kids are really just so little and so easily hurt by the world around them. They actually think people are good, and I could see the very concept of betrayal taking shape as my kid realized I was going to hurt him on purpose. That no matter how you try to sell it, that he needs it, that you are trying to help him, that it will be over soon, it doesn’t matter to him. Because kids haven’t honed their life negotiating skills yet; the barter economy adults navigate as they trade this sadness for that reward. Kids believe you shouldn’t hurt somebody on purpose, no matter what.

This was our 5th visit to the ER. This past summer he knocked his two front teeth out and had to have his face glued together where one of the teeth pierced the skin. Each time, he suffered through it. We’d blow up surgical gloves to make him laugh or one of the nurses would slip him a popsicle. But this time was different. This he could not understand.

He fell right to sleep when we got home. Sleep does not come easily for my boy Will but he was so tired. We were all so tired. When I woke up a few hours later to give him his breathing treatment, I could barely move him to get him propped up on the pillow. He was so out of it, he was unable to help me, just completely limp in my arms. As I turned on the machine, the noise must have triggered a memory for him. He started kicking and moaning, still asleep but aware on some level that a terrible thing happened tonight and he needed to stop something terrible from happening again.

I tried to comfort him. I tried to tell him. “Will, it’s mommy. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” But that would be a lie. And he knew it, even as he slept.

Soup and Coffee

My father's parents had a dining ritual that would drive my dad nuts. Wherever we went, local diner to upscale restaurant, they would order soup and coffee for dinner. He thought they were being cheap. I think they just stopped being hungry. This same thing is happening to me now and it's scaring me. Of course, I'm still young so I eat my way past the feeling. But the truth is I am usually full after eating the starter bread. I'm definitely full if I have an appetizer.

What does this mean? I must be getting older. This can't be, because mentally I'm still in my 20's. Still there are little signs all around me that I may in fact be getting older.

Other signs? A twinge in my knee before it starts to rain. Driving down the highway cranking a freakin' awesome song and then the station identification comes on. "Keep it here on Lite FM. The greatest hits from the 70's, 80's and very early 90's."

Marionette lines. Have you heard of them? They are the lines on the side of your mouth that become more prominent as we age. As I age.

I recently made a big decision about lines and wrinkles. I'm going to stop buying creams and serums and I'm going to start saving for the real deal. Procedures, surgeries, injections. That's where I'm going to put my money from here on out. Because I'm officially waging war against marionette lines starting now.

Still all is not lost. I actually got carded last year. I think I was wearing a cheerleading outfit so a bit deceptive. But it counts. Some misguided soul wasn't sure if I was 21 yet.

There are aspects of getting older that I really enjoy. Caring so little about what other people think. Anonymity. Or on a positive note, I like surprising people when I tell them my age. I love the crinkles men and women get around their eyes. Those lines that come from smiling. And I find it so distressing when people have them removed, Robert Redford you know who you are.

I do understand their decision and I no longer judge them. They are fighting the same battle. You go girl or guy. Nip, tuck, sew, suck. Whatever it takes to make you feel young and beautiful. I'm not ready to go gently into that good night.

In the beginning of this year I wrote down my goals and one of them was to get in Demi Moore shape. At 44, she's older than I am. I later heard from a reliable source, Entertainment Tonight I think, that Demi has had approximately $250,000 in plastic surgery. So I've modified my goal. I want to look as good as Demi did before she went under the knife a multitude of times.

I'm wondering if she orders soup and coffee when dining with Ashton. If she doesn't yet, she soon will. That's just the way it goes.

Steven Seagal Kicked My Ass

My brother called to tell me there was a film crew setting up shop in nearby Stamford and they were looking for help. They'd put up a huge sign in the window of their temporary offices with contact information. I've been writing a screenplay and taking film classes and I'm dying to work on an actual film set.

My brother gave me the phone number and then sent me a link to a classified ad on Craigslist. Results, the ad included an email address so I wouldn't have to make an embarrassing phone call. At 43, I'm guessing I'm not your typical intern / production assistant applicant.

I sent my resume and a cover letter to the email address in the ad. Maybe I shouldn't have used the phrase, "I know this sounds crazy, but I'd love to work on a movie and I'm a huge Steven Seagal fan."

Yes, it's one of my secret shames. I love Steven Seagal movies. I don't know why. They are idiotic and he is really just plain ridiculous, but there's something about him and his never-changing formula that I love. When he shows up wearing a full-length leather car coat or quasi-Asian smoking jacket, I know somebody's going downtown.

The working title of this movie is Marker. When it's released, it will probably be something like Death Marker or Death Comes a Marking.

My brother called me again. "Did you call them?" he asked.

"No. I emailed my resume."

"You have to call them. They're not going to respond to email."

"Fine, I'll call them."

Ring, ring. Someone picks up the phone.

"Hi, my name is Becky and I sent my resume in yesterday. I understand you guys are looking for help on your movie."

"How did you get this number?" she said, sounding very paranoid.

"My brother gave it to me. He sent me a link to your Craigslist ad." Just a thought. If you're trying to keep something a secret, you probably shouldn't hang a big sign out your window and put an ad on Craigslist. "I sent my resume to you yesterday," I said.

"What's your name?"

"Becky Risher," I replied.

"Right, yeah, I remember you," she said, now leaning toward smug.

"Why did I scare you?" I asked. "I mean, I'm not a stalker or anything."

"Right."

"Well do you still need help?"

"Have you ever worked on a movie?" she asked.

"No, but I can do lots of things."

"Like what?", she said. I thought I heard her typing in the background or perhaps whispering something to a co-worker.

"Well I can type. I can make coffee. I'm really good at finding things because I'm a researcher."

"You know, I think we're good for now. But we'll call you if anything comes up."

"What was your name again?" I asked.

"Meriweather."

"Meriweather? Like Lee Meriwether?"

"Who?"

"Lee Meriwether. From Barnaby Jones."

"Who's Barnaby Jones?"

Forget it. I knew I was sunk. I was just thinking how I might've played it differently. I was embarrassed to be blown off by a 20-something smugster named Meriweather.

Still I am compelled to watch Steven Seagal movies. There's something about him. I went to his official website when I started writing this blog to see what he had to say about himself. The home page states that Steven is an accomplished actor, musician, martial artist and philanthropist - a man of many facets. He's also just completed filming Marker and a critically-acclaimed blues album called Mojo Priest.

You're my Mojo Priest Steven. I don't give a damn what Meriweather says.

NB I think if I'd gone on to explain the Lee Meriweather reference, that the show starred Buddy Ebsen during his sexy years before he became Jed Clampett, well I think Meriweather would've peed in her pants laughing. Laugh all you want Meriweather. You'll pee in your pants plenty after you have a baby.

Activia Challenged

I am taking the Activia challenge. Activia is a yogurt enema. I mean that's not what they're saying but the signs are all there. Activia logo? A woman's stomach with a yellow "down" arrow superimposed on her navel. Activia tagline? Bifidus regularis (TM)

Regularis, even in its Latin form, is a word many of us dieters understand. It's code for laxative. Dannon, the makers of Activia, claim it is a bifidobacteria or intestinal microflora. But we know the truth.

See this all started because of a massage I got in Montana. I asked her not to pull my finger, not a joke, because it's swollen. Kim, the masseuse in Montana, told me that sometimes swelling is caused by bacteria in our intestines from the food we eat. Then she proceeded to tell me this disgusting story about eating sushi with her brother the doctor that I won't relay. Trust me, I don't think I'll be ordering yellowtail sashimi for a few months.

Back to the Activia challenge. What caught my eye was this whole idea of balancing the bacteria in your digestive tract. I'd assumed the swelling in my finger was arthritis. Or, and this is also not a joke, it could be gout. My mother thought she had gout in her toe and her symptoms were swelling and pain. One of the things that causes gout is red wine. And let me tell you that if I have to give up red wine, life as I know it will cease to exist.

Bacteria is my salvation. An entirely new way of thinking that would not interfere with my wine drinking AND erase the ugly spectre of arthritis in my early 40's.

So while others are taking the Activia challenge to flush their digestive system or get back to "regular", maybe they're looking for that next weight loss miracle, I'm taking the challenge because I wish to continue drinking red wine until that day when my right index finger falls off and I'll be left with four.

At that point, I think I'll go with a large cocktail ring to distract or kid gloves.

Doodie

My neighbor called me in a panic. "There is a gigantic shit in my Adirondack chair."

"What?"

" I just lifted up the kiddie pool and underneath was a gigantic shit. This is not cat poop. This is a really big poop. I mean what kind of animal could that be?"

"I don't know," I said. "Raccoon? Possum? Turkey?"

"No. There's no way. It has to be something bigger."

"Like what?" I said. "Do you think somebody took a dump on your Adirondack chair?"

We live in sort of a fringe neighborhood. The kind of place that will be super cool about a year after we sell. For now, it's the kind of place where bikes are stolen, where randoms drive through throwing cigarette butts or the occasional beer can. But could someone actually have taken a dump on my friend's Adirondack chair?

"Hold on. I'm going to call Gordon. Maybe he knows what it is. I'll call you right back," she said.

Duh duh duh .... duh duh duh .... duh duh duh....duh. Standard Blackberry ringtone that I can't figure out how to change.

"Hey. What did he say?"

"He said it was Cal." Cal is their youngest.

"What? What do you mean?"

"He said Cal came in the house on Sunday with poop smeared everywhere but he couldn't find the actual dump. It must've been in the chair.....He said he just missed it. He didn't see it."

I'm not sure what the point of this story is other than this. First, men are truly oblivious because even if you didn't see the poop, you probably should've smelled it baking in the sun in your Adirondack chair. Second, you win some you lose some in the potty training biz.

Close Encounter with Bagel Boy

This morning I decided Will should make his own breakfast. Rod, my husband and Will's dad, popped the bagel in the microwave while I wasn't looking. One less thing for Will to do.

I asked Will to take a knife out of the block and cut the bagel in half. "I thought I wasn't supposed to touch the knives," he said. "No you can use the knife," I said. "Finally you're going to treat me like a nine year-old," he said. "Yes I agree it's time."

Then I asked him to take the cream cheese out of the refrigerator. "I can't find it," he said. I foraged in the back of the fridge and found the cream cheese. "Here it is," I said. Still one less thing Will had to do.

He slowly smeared cream cheese across the bagel. Very nice work, I thought to myself. My husband walked out the door to put his backpack in the car, preparing to leave for work.

Will turned to me and said, "You know I'm only doing this because dad is here. Otherwise I would have to kick your butt." Kicking someone's butt is his latest threat now that he's taking karate. The whole nonviolence message hasn't really sunk in with him yet.

It's these special moments that really keep me grounded as a mom. Coming so close to karate blows with my nine year-old.