Carpe Diem

IMG_1417Today I am thinking about how complicated life can be. And short. And confusing.

You think you have all the time in the world to make things right. To tell people how much they meant to you. How much you loved them.

But that’s not how it works and I am reminded once again there’s no time to right all the wrongs and settle all the scores. Giving that big monologue you’ve been composing in your head when you’re awake in the middle of countless nights and you can’t settle your thoughts — you’re spinning back in time to long ago arguments and college and wedding days — just might not pan out. All that waiting for the right moment — when the moon and the planets and the stars align — might have all have been for naught. That window might just snap shut.

Instead, let the people you love know how much they mean to you every day. Tell them. Show them. Bake them a cake.

Life is messy and complicated and it is so easy to take the path of least of resistance. To avoid yucky situations. To tell yourself you’ve got all the time in the world.

Because you don’t.

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That’s What Friends Are For

Little Mommies to the rescue!!

Where would I be without friends like the Little Mommies??

In the end, for as much as I’d thought packing up our house to move would be a team effort – I mean, what’s the point of having four kids if not to use as manual labor – the bulk of boxing 13 years of our lives turned out to be a one-man operation. Or should I say, one-woman?

Sure, the four kids did pack up their own bedrooms, which was interesting as each child employed strategies for moving that reflected his or her personality. The two girls were all business — leaving behind neat stacks of cardboard boxes and empty closets when they returned to school for spring semester — while my oldest son waited until close to moving day and then paid his younger brother to help him pack. And that youngest child, who at 13 still struggles with putting his dirty basketball shorts in the hamper each night, had a closet full of clothes on the day the movers arrived but had also carefully labeled boxes he actually had packed – filled with his stash of wooden swords and golden Mickey Mouse ears in homage of Star Wars’ c3pO – as “Sentimentals” and “Sentimentals 2.”

IMG_0773

Sentimental items rated not one but two boxes for my 13yo.

And I do not wish to neglect mentioning that my oldest daughter drove eight hours home the weekend before the move with her roommate and spent two full days packing the remainder of our kitchen, color coding all boxes with bright duct tape that correlated to the rooms they were to be stored in the new house and creating a master list noting the contents of each box (so I know that Box #43 contains our crockpot and mulling ball, labeled PINK to head to the living room, and Box #5 – with a GREEN piece of tape indicating it was to go to the office – is labeled Holy Box, which contains a crucifix I received as a wedding gift 25 years ago that I don’t quite know what to do with along with a holy water font) . It’s amazing what can happen when two extremely Type A women are handed clipboards. There was no stopping them.

My younger girl got trapped with me one Saturday during the holidays down in our crawlspace as we weeded through a sea of Rubbermaid boxes filled with Halloween decorations – giant rubber hands on spikes and Styrofoam tombstones – and 20-year-old collection of my oldest son’s Brio Thomas the Tank Engine set (why, hello Percy and Henry), trying to determine where all of it was to go. By the end of the day the basement was filled with piles to be sold (an old Target trestle table and oodles of Skylander figures), thrown out (sorry K’NEX) or dragged to the new house for sentimental purposes (my youngest child is not the only sentimental person in the house and so I decided I could not part with the iron beds my daughters slept on when they were young).

So, the kids did do their part but the majority of figuring out what to do with a lifetime of stuff fell on me. And I mean, I guess that just makes sense and honestly, I don’t know if things would have been much different if I was still married. When we moved 13 years earlier, I was seven months pregnant with our fourth child and don’t really remember my then-husband doing much of the packing and unpacking. He was off at work while I weeded through old onesies and a mountain of American Girl merchandise determining what was coming along.

I thought my strategy for this move seemed at first quite brilliant: as we were planning on staying in our old house for a month after we closed on the new house, I reasoned the kids and I could slowly move all the boxes into the new place while they were home over winter break and then I’d hire movers to handle the big furniture. But, as you may have heard, the best laid plans are often shot to shit during the execution of such and, alas, our closing was delayed for weeks and my strong daughters returned to school in January without moving nary a box.

******************

One of the things that held me back for a long time from ending my marriage was the prospect of being alone. I worried I’d never find someone else. That I’d end up by myself surrounded by stacks of books and cats. And for the most part, so far that’s kinda what’s happened. I mean, the books are all in boxes now and I only have one cat, but it’s been about seven years since my ex-husband moved out and I haven’t really found anyone to share my life with. I guess you could say that in a way, my worst fears have been realized.

Yet strangely, I’ve never felt less alone.

Since my divorce, I’ve made some really wonderful friends and deepened friendships that already existed. One reason might be that I have more time for friends. I don’t have to worry about making a partner jealous of time spent with others. But I think what separates my friendships now versus when I was married is that these relationships are much more authentic than before. I am much more honest – whether through my writing or in person – about things in my life being frankly less-than-perfect. There’s a lot less bullshit now.

Had it not been for the strong group of friends who surrounded and supported me during my divorce – who called me on their way to work each morning or ran by my side through the woods along icy trails and listened to me spill out the latest atrocity or let me lie on their couch and cry while feeding me tea and wine – I don’t know if I’d have come out the other end with my wits about me. I don’t know how strong I would have ended up becoming.

“The middle years are the loneliest period of life,” I heard reported the other day on my radio while listening to a story on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” The piece on how essential friendships are in midlife shared that “friends are key to our survival not only emotionally but biologically.”

Amen to that.

The segment continued, “Those with a network of friends live longer, recover faster from cancer and even preserve their memories better than those with few or no friends.”

I’m not so sure about the memory part – because I am lucky I remember to put on underwear lately which I totally attribute to old age – but am certain they should have added divorce to that list of life’s challenges made just a little easier by having a strong network of friends.

**********************************

My movers were scheduled to come on a Thursday in mid-February and at the beginning of that week, an army of mommies arrived on a cold, wet snowy morning to move boxes to my new house. This is the group of friends I have taken to referring to, with great affection, as my “Little Mommies.” They’re the girls whose oldest kids are my youngest child’s age and with whom I sit on the beach in the summer and drink margaritas and watch our boys bob for hours in the ocean atop their boogie boards as we discuss pressing issues like Botox and our periods.

That morning their army of minivans and SUVs pulled up and the Little Moms piled out and started hauling my belongings to the new house. In a couple of hours they’d moved a majority of the boxes that had filled most of the den and deposited them in their color-coded areas in my new place.

“Looks like the cavalry is here,” I overheard one of the electricians working in my new kitchen say to a coworker as he watched about 10 women unloading boxes and lamps from the line of vehicles parked in front of the house.

The Cavalry has arrived.

The Cavalry has arrived.

On Tuesday, my friend Janine came over in the morning and helped me remove swinging lamps from the walls and pack up all the Fios cable boxes and wrapped the cords so efficiently that I tasked her with making all the cords in the house neat and tidy. My friend Dan, the famous Girl Whisperer, came over in the afternoon and he and my oldest son – who’d taken the day off from work to finish packing – hauled some larger items over to the new house in his pickup. He helped find a new home for my big, round table I use for parties and six folding chairs and tried valiantly to help me get a set of wire shelves down the stairs to use in the basement (we failed).

On Wednesday, The Knitters arrived with coffee and donuts instead of needles and yarn and pretty much moved everything else that wasn’t nailed down. That morning, instead of sitting around someone’s kitchen table gabbing and eating yogurt and granola and pretending to knit while talking about life – as we have two Wednesdays a month for the last 6 or 7 years – The Knitters opted to pack table lamps and flat-screen televisions into their cars and carry them into my new house.

Listen, I know it’s kinda trite to say that it takes the proverbial village to do anything nowadays but, man, it really did take a small community of people to help get us out of our old house and into the new one. Friends who just showed up, sometimes unannounced and sometimes bearing donuts, to lend a hand.

And then the movers came on Thursday and I kind of fell apart.

That morning, four very large men arrived at my door that morning and started taking apart beds and wrapping side tables in plastic and every time I resumed packing up my bathroom – all the Band Aids and hair ties and dental floss – I’d hear one of them yell, “Amy!” and suddenly, I felt very alone and overwhelmed by the entire undertaking. Even though I’d had SO MUCH HELP in the days leading up to the move, there were still SO many last minute things that needed to happen to make a clean exit from the place we called home for 13 years. Our stuff just oozed into every corner of the place. There was still a giant, red lacrosse net in the backyard and my bathroom drawers were filled with a decade’s-worth of Laura Mercier products and Q-tips and – just when I thought the kitchen was empty – I discovered the dishwasher was full of dirty dishes.

But it was my youngest child’s room that really did me in. That pushed me over that teary-eyed ledge I’d been teetering on for days into full-sob mode. Ugly cry galore.

Thirteen years earlier I’d moved in and painted the smallest of our four bedrooms yellow to welcome my fourth baby. I’d bought new bumpers for the old white crib used by all of my babies and put the old glider – that I’d gotten as a gift from my husband for my 26th birthday right before the birth of our first child – in a corner of the room. It’s where I spent many nights nursing that baby while the rest of the house slept and rocked him to sleep, feeling the pressure of his tiny head on my shoulder.

That baby, that room, that house. They were everything I’d wanted in my mid-30s. I wanted all of the trimmings of a certain kind of life and thought that those were the ingredients for happiness. I pinned a lot of hopes and dreams on the family that I’d created and moving out of that house was the final nail in the coffin of those dreams. It was time to officially close that chapter of my life.

And that’s when the sob that had been simmering in my chest for days burbled up my throat and came out as a gasp that echoed in the empty room.

“AMY!” yelled one of the men from downstairs, and that’s when I knew I needed help. I couldn’t do it alone. At that moment, I needed someone to hold my hand.

And in no time, two dear friends arrived and started packing up all my shoes and cleaning the crumbs out of the bottom of my toaster oven. They accompanied me to the new house later as the movers began cramming all the big stuff into the rooms already filled with the boxes moved earlier in the week. As many of my best-laid plans began to fall apart – the furniture I was going to use for my youngest son was way too big for his new room and those iron beds I couldn’t part with a few months earlier needed to find a home in my storage-challenged new home – my friends helped me make quick decisions and then move on.

*******************

I’ve learned to do a lot of things by myself since my marriage ended. I’ve had to figure out how to dispose of dead critters in my pool and shovel snow from my driveway. I comfortably navigate gatherings of couples as a single person and even sailed around Greece on my own. And it was just me standing alongside the man I’d married almost 20 years before in front of a judge on a hot day in July when we ended our marriage for good.

It’s good to know you can handle things on your own. To know you are capable of tackling whatever life throws your way. But it’s also good to know that you have a couple of people quietly cheering for you from the sidelines and will be at your side in a flash should the need arise.

I think a lot of my strength has come from knowing I have people in my life who I can count on. Folks who have my back. And probably, that’s what I really needed all along. I didn’t need someone to celebrate Valentine’s Day with or be my de facto plus-one. What I really needed was someone who was on my side.

What I really needed, it turns out, was a friend.

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Take a Peek Inside My New House

IMG_0490When we last spoke, I was telling you about the house I just bought. You know the one, the Not-Too-Big, Not-Too-Small, Just-Right-House? The one with personality to spare?

Anyway, since then I’ve had a bunch of people tell me they’d love to get a virtual tour of the joint, and as all I really think about these days is the house – from paint colors to appliances to exactly where my daughter’s giant, queen-sized Ikea bed is going – I thought this would be an easy thing for me to start to share. Please note that all “before” photos I swiped off Zillow and are courtesy of the former owners and their realtor.

I can't even.

All that ivy and the copper bay window? Sigh. I can’t even.

First of all, the house was built around 1929 by someone – one of my friends joked he had to be Italian – who was freaked out by fire as no wood was employed in its construction. Instead, both the exterior AND INTERIOR walls were built of bricks and cement block and the floors (both first and second ) sit on top of steel, like, girders and a layer of concrete. I mean, it’s nuts and something – I’ve come to learn – you don’t really see in suburban New Jersey houses. Apparently this type of construction is seen more in city brownstones and the few houses in town that this guy built — including the house next door to me — are kinda anomalies.

“It’s tornado-proof,” my builder told me the first time he came to look at the house, and while his head shaking made me a little wary, it also made me feel kinda safe. I mean, even though it will probably prove challenging nailing stuff to its walls, I can rest easy knowing no Big Bad Wolf will ever be able to blow my house down. I am legit bullet proof now.

I’d also like to note that the house was beautifully cared for by its former owners, who made super-smart additions and improvements to it in the almost-40 years that they lived there. I keep discovering all sorts of wonderful features, from lights in closets to beautiful ceiling molding throughout the house that make me appreciate their attention to detail.

One of the things I like most about the house is that, unlike many more modern houses that embrace the “open floor plan,” my house boasts many smaller rooms. Lots of nooks and crannies to go off and, say read a book or write a blog post (or when it comes to my kids, watch Netflix).

When my youngest sister – who’s in her mid-30’s with two little kids – first came to check out the house, she only saw walls she wanted to knock down. “I’d open this whole thing up,” she said, pointing to the wall that separates my living room and sun porch.

See that wall behind the couch in the living room? The one with the giant mirror (it's not a doorway)? That's what separates me from the inmates.

See that wall behind the couch in the living room? The one with the giant mirror (it’s not a doorway)? That’s what separates me from the inmates.

I promptly told her she was crazy.

But when I was her age, that’s exactly what I did to the house we were living in. We knocked the wall down between the dining room and kitchen and widened the doorways of our living room and den, thus opening up the whole first floor.

Here’s what parents of young children – who want to be able to monitor their little ones toddling around while they make dinner and make sure that their 9-year-olds aren’t watching Family Guy – don’t understand: there will come a day when all that togetherness will get kinda old. They’ll want walls – ones made of brick and cement – between them and their increasingly-surly-faced children. While it seems a good idea early on to bring the family-bed concept downstairs to the living area, there comes a time when you just want to watch the evening news without Lester Holt being drowned out by the latest episode of Pretty Little Liars or work on your laptop without someone frying an egg five feet away. Some day Family Guy will be the lest of your concerns, I’d like to tell them.

That wall between my new living room and sunporch will give me space to set up my desk to write in my own private office space and no longer have to squeeze clever thoughts in while sitting at my kitchen table and telling people where to find more milk. I will be blissfully unaware of frying eggs and what Leslie Knope is up to in Season 5 of Parks and Rec.

I'll set my desk and books up in this room, that seems to stay bright at all hours of the day and has enough windows to provide hours of distraction from Facebook.

I’ll set my desk and books up in this room, that seems to stay bright at all hours of the day and has enough windows to provide hours of distraction from Facebook.

 

Window treatments down and ready for painting.

Window treatments down and ready for painting.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the things about the new house that turned me off early on was its small, dated kitchen. But I’m a spoiled brat. We redid our kitchen about 10 years ago with lots of bells and whistles and it still felt new to me. I still loved being greeted by all those creamy cabinets reaching to the ceiling and shiny granite countertops when I came downstairs each morning. And we lived at our island, where we hang out and eat most of our meals. It’s a big part of our day-to-day.

In contrast, the kitchen in the new house was small and had soffits between the cabinets and the ceiling, with limited cabinet space and nowhere to sit and eat your cereal.

I would have loved this kitchen back when I first married with its painted white cabinets and Hunter green counters.

This kitchen would have made me swoon back when I first married with its painted white cabinets and Hunter green counters.

 

There was only one solution: the wall between the kitchen and the dining room had to go.

The kitchen is to the left of the dining room in this photo.

The kitchen is to the left of the dining room in this photo. Check out the parquet wood flooring that runs throughout the house.

Not only would that brighten the kitchen up a bit but would also give us a place to pull up some stools.

So a few days after I bought the house, this happened.

Here's the view from dining room into kitchen. Please enjoy the extremely sturdy walls, cement floor and hapless radiator.

Here’s the view from dining room into kitchen. Please enjoy the extremely sturdy walls, cement floor and hapless radiator.

 

And the view towards the dining room:

The kitchen will now benefit for the two casement windows in the dining room and the deep bay window as a focal point.

The kitchen will now benefit from the two casement windows in the dining room and have the deep bay window as a focal point.

The sink will now be centered under the pretty kitchen window flanked by a dishwasher and pull out trash bin.

The sink will now be centered under the pretty kitchen window flanked by a dishwasher and pull out trash bin, with a peninsula running between the kitchen and eating area with plenty of room for a few stools so I can resume my role as short-order cook.

 

My mom and sister would have liked to see more walls go down or doorways moved to accommodate a better layout and make the kitchen a little less choppy, the way they do in magazines and on HOUZZ. But in the end, because I didn’t really want to spend any more money and was wary of the challenges presented by those brick and cement walls, I decided to work with what I had and consider the choppy new layout part of the house’s many charms. I can live without perfect.

So, with about nine days before all of our belongings are moved into this chaos, some things are moving pretty quickly. Wallpaper has come down from the hallways throughout the first and second floors and the painters are painting every inch of the interior — even closets and ceilings. I’m staying in this house forever so I’m hoping this is one and done in that department.

I also hired someone to refinish the floors throughout the house and replace the white tiles in the kitchen and back hall with the same parquet design in the rest of the house. I am thrilled with the results thus far.

I was very tempted to go with Ebony or Jacobean stains but am glad in the end I went with the slightly lighter Dark Walnut. Anything else would have been too dark in my house.

Darker stains, like Ebony or Jacobean, tempted me but am glad in the end I went with the slightly lighter Dark Walnut. Anything else would have been too dark in my house.

 

So that’s where we are with the downstairs right now. Pretty much, there are a whole lotta dudes traipsing in and out of my sweet house doing unmentionable things in my potty and leaving cigarette butts on my lawn. But it is what it is and I know it will all be worth it in the end.

I’ll share what’s going on upstairs with you soon. And if you have tips — for moving, renovating or surviving said renovation — by all means, share.

I could use all the help I can get.

Never fear! Even though I’m moving you can always find me here! Sign up to get all of my latest posts sent right to your inbox by typing your email into the box below. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

Unattached

DSC_0430Every six weeks or so, a brown stripe appears down the center of my head, which I used to be cool with until those darkened roots became increasingly flecked with grey wires. Now, I scurry to my hair colorist so she can wave her magic wand and return my hair to its make-believe, uniform-blonde state.

I started fooling around with my hair color about 15 years ago to lighten up my mousy brown locks with some highlights but the greyer I got, the more highlights I needed and the blonder I became. So, what was once a beauty treatment I kind of dabbled in – there was never any great sense of urgency – has now become a critical part of my maintenance schedule. It’s right up there with my annual mammogram and getting my teeth cleaned.

But I often tell anyone who will listen that even if I didn’t like how my hair gal has transformed my head, I’d still show up in her chair on a regular basis for the conversation. She’s funny, smart and remembers as much as my therapist does from one session to the next and she’s not even taking notes. Plus, she’s a rock star. Last week she paired kind of Western booties with a long black tulle skirt and I’m telling you, few people could pull off that look. She also converted to Catholicism recently and is very active in her church community, so she’s a bit of an enigma to boot.

I brought her up to date on my life as she dipped a brush into a mound of goop she’d concocted in a plastic bowl to paint my roots and she asked me about my pending real estate transactions. I told her how nerve-wracking the whole process had become and fretted that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted.

“If it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen,” she said, parting another segment of hair to swab her potion. “Then it just wasn’t meant to be.

“You just have to believe that God has something even better planned for you,” she finished. “You can’t have any attachments.”

And you know how sometimes you hear something or read something you’ve heard or read a thousand times before but then it arrives one more time and it’s like you receive it in a whole new way? Where before you were like, “Oh, yeah. Blah. Blah. Blah,” and then all of a sudden you’re like, “Whoa”? Like the heavens open and a chorus of angels begins to sing?

That’s what it was like for me, sitting in that chair with a head full of chemicals waiting for a timer to go off. It was like a light bulb went on over my head instead.


 

The older I’ve gotten the more I’ve come to realize that I spent much of my life trying to manipulate outcomes, often against fairly considerable odds. I had been very attached to how I wanted my life to look.

Shiny.

And it worked, for the most part. In fact, a former neighbor told me well after we’d been living across the street from each other for a while that when my family first moved in, she referred to my husband and me as Ken and Barbie.

In a way, that was just what I wanted.

And that was okay until it wasn’t. Until I realized that what I really wanted out of life was less plastic and more real. Like, old Velveteen Rabit-real.

So I started letting go of things I never thought I’d be able to live without.

And in a curious case of weird timing, last week brought with it three milestones to mark my journey towards letting go.


 

First of all, my baby turned 13 and while on the one hand it seemed to have happened in a flash, on the other hand – with two of his siblings in college and the oldest a recent graduate – it’s been a bit of an eternity. But there was no talking me out of having that fourth child and even though I’ve had kids in the school system for so long that I remember when you sent cupcakes in for birthdays and slathering peanut butter on everything seemed nutritious and not dangerous, I wouldn’t want a life without that kid. Who else would watch “The Pioneer Woman” with me during dinner or open the window for me when I’m having a hot flash? And he’s the perfect example of someone who’s benefitted from me letting go and not trying to filter everything he comes into contact with to create some perfect person. He just is who he is, which ended up being pretty great.

That same day, I sold the house we moved in to right before I gave birth to that fourth child. Another questionable decision you could not have talked me out of at the time. But that four-bedroom colonial in a neighborhood of similar homes represented the lady I wanted to be, no matter the cost – monetarily or otherwise. It was who I thought I was.

Apparently a lot has changed in real estate since I last bought a house 13 years ago because now you no longer need to attend the actual closing. I signed the papers in my kitchen the day before instead so I could go to my son’s basketball game, so it seemed a little surreal when I got the call from my attorney on my way home from the game to tell me the deal was done.

“Congratulations,” he said before we hung up and I could feel the door close on that chapter of my life.

I looked around to commiserate/celebrate with someone nearby but only saw my four children who were definitely not interested in hearing about how conflicted I was about the sale of our home. As far as they were concerned, the whole thing was bullshit.

Instead, I took the kids out for hibachi for the birthday celebration and had a quiet drink later with my pal across the street, who made some delicious old fashioneds to mark the occasion. She, probably more than anyone, knows what a journey selling the house had been.

And finally, last Tuesday would have been my 25th wedding anniversary and instead of celebrating on one of those big trips other couples I know go on to commemorate being able to stay together for so long – like a trip to Paris or the Amalfi Coast – I took a boat into New York City for dinner and drinks with high school friends, one of whom had the honor of wearing the crazy tulle and velvet costume I’d chosen for my bridesmaids all those years ago.

We asked each other a million questions and admired each other’s hair and although not all of us have remained close, there’s a certain comfort and ease being in the company of people who knew you when. Who know the real arc of your story.

That girl they knew in high school was a bit of an unanchored mess who had a lot to learn about life and love. What all of that should REALLY look like, which, it turns out, has nothing to do with the house you live in or – alas – your hair color.


 

My oldest daughter and I went for a walk at the end of the week and as we picked our way down a dirt path through the bare trees, I thought about all of those outcomes I’d been so attached to – marrying that guy and having four children and living in a big house. Ask anyone who knew me back then and they could confirm how overwrought I’d been trying to make all of those things to happen.

And I thought about how I didn’t want to get so worked up again about something so beyond my control. The word “attachment” kind of kept going through my brain as we hiked and I saw the late morning sun gleaming on the water through the trees. During the warmer months, that view is blocked by leaves and you forget that the river is right there, beyond the hills of the park. But there it is, all along. We stopped to admire the view for a bit and my daughter took out her phone to take some pictures because, that’s what you do when you’re 21 nowadays.

I started to tell her all about this revelation of mine, and she listened with her usual skepticism. I usually make good on about 10 percent of the things I talk about. I’m full of big ideas. So I told her all about my desire to just go with the flow and not get hooked on any outcome – I practically started singing “Que Sera, Sera” – and then I asked her if that wasn’t, like, the foundation of Buddhism.

“Maybe,” she answered.

“Then I think I’m a Buddhist,” I told her.

“Congratulations,” my girl responded in a tone that seemed less-than-sincere.

And whether I can sustain this new outlook remains to be seen but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to start practicing Buddhism any time soon. I can, however, guarantee that the one outcome I refuse to disavow myself of is the color of my hair. I am permanently attached to being a blonde.

Never fear! Even though I’m moving you can always find me here! Sign up to get all of my latest posts sent right to your inbox by typing your email into the box below. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

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The Weird Science of Parenting

SWP_TextRemember What to Expect When You’re Expecting? I mean, c’mon. Who am I kidding? Of course you do. If you’re a mommy of a certain age, you knew that book like the back of your still-young hand. Like the recipe you used for your famous seven-layer dip. Like the sound of your own baby’s cry (okay, I knew what my baby sounded like but my lactating breasts usually presumed every cry — like, at the mall — was coming from my hungry baby). Anyway, you get what I mean. That book was the parenting Bible for those of us who gave birth before the Dawn of the Internet. Before you could just go ahead and Google “How to breastfeed” and find a host of videos to aid you in your efforts. Back in the day, we needed to work with diagrams and words to figure shit out.

Books not only taught me how to do things — The Silver Palate taught me how to cook and Martha Stewart taught me to, like, be a crazy housewife — they also helped me gauge just where I was in life. They helped make me feel a little less alone. A little less crazy.

Vicki Iovine’s Girlfriends’ Guides were good for that. She cut through all the “do this” and “do that” of What to Expect and Dr. Spock and was like “Who’d do that?” and “Did you really just do that?” She had chapters like“The Droning Phenomenon”: The inability to discuss anything but your baby for more than thirty seconds (wait, that was bad?) and “Husband? What Husband?”: Taking care of the big baby, as well as the little baby (wait, that was really bad)

My blogger friends Norine and Jessica, the truly evil scientists behind the hilarious Science of Parenthood blog, are about to join the ranks of books that make you shake your head and say “Yes!” with their newly published illustrated book Science of Parenthood: Thoroughly Unscientific Explanations for Utterly Baffling Parenting Situations. Their funny cartoons nail the challenges and minutea of parenting and address everything from annoying play dates to poop. Yes, poop. Unlike What to Expect, Science of Parenthood tells it like it is in the parenting trenches and not how it’s supposed to be.

Although my own children are old enough now to be in charge of their pooping, I was reminded of little kids’ pooping preferences recently when I took my sister’s 4yo son to watch my 12yo son play lacrosse. After about 10 minutes of play, the little kid announced he needed to get to a bathroom and poop. Once there, he needed to take off not just his shoes but also his pants to perform the operation. Then, we sat and he asked me a lot of questions until the deed was done. As I cleaned him up and began explaining for like the 10th time why there was a light on the wall of the bathroom, I was reminded of this very astute scientific discovery.

Someone please remind me of this the next time I take my nephew to watch a game.

Poop happens (and usually when you least expect it).

 

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks the book is pretty funny as Science of Parenthood  just hit number one on Amazon’s hot new parenting humor releases. Impressive for two self-proclaimed fake scientists.

It’s a super fun gift for the holidays, which you can pick up on Amazon or your local bookstore. All I know is that I can’t wait for them to start experimenting with teenagers. I’d be happy to help come up with some equations for that fun age group.

Go ahead and read a little bit more about Jessica (the artist) and Norine (the writer) in a little Q&A they put together for us below.

What’s Science of Parenthood all about?

Science of Parenthood started nearly three years ago as an illustrated humor blog. We use fake math and science to “explain” the stuff that puzzles parents every day. Things like …

Why are broken cookies “ruined?”

Why does it matter what color the sippy cup is?

Why can’t you put the straw in the juice box without your kid having a melt down?

Why will a kid whine-whine-whine for a toy, then lose all interest in that toy once they have it? 

Where the eff is my phone?  

 We’ve come up with some pretty hilarious theories.

Our book, Science of Parenthood: Thoroughly Unscientific Explanations for Utterly Baffling Parenting Situations, is like our blog … but like our blog on STEROIDS! We utilized the blog to road test–perhaps we should say “field test”–material, and now the book contains the kinds of cartoons and writing that fans love to find at Science of Parenthood, along with all new cartoons, infographics, flowcharts pie charts and quizzes that we created just for the book. About 90 percent of the book is brand new material.

Divided into four sections–biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics–the book lives in the chasm that exists between our collective hopes and dreams and expectations of what parenting will be like … and the brutal, slap-you-upside-the-head reality of what parenting actually is. We cover all aspects of pregnancy, birth and the hilarious frustrations that come with early childhood (tantrums, picky eating, diaper blowouts, illness, sleep issues, play dates, toy creep, homework battles and encounters with crazy parents (not you, of course, we mean other parents). And you know what? You don’t even need to be a scientist to “get” it.

Our goal is just to make parents laugh. Because when you’re a parent, you NEED to laugh. Humor is a survival tool. After your tot has gotten the top off a jar of Vaseline and smeared every surface within reach–as happened to our friend Gail–or tried to “help” you paint a room and ended up covered in blue paint–as happened to Norine’s sister Shari–you have to laugh. Or you’ll end up sobbing. Or wearing one of those fancy white jackets that buckles up in the back.

 Is any of the book autobiographical?

Pretty much all of the book reflects through our experiences as parents. Take the piece “Experimental Gastronomy: A Study in Potatoes” from the Chemistry section. It’s written like a scientific paper about an experiment in which a researcher tries to determine if a preschooler who likes French fries will eat mashed potatoes. Raise your hand if you can hypothesize the outcome (see what we did there?) The piece is completely based on Norine’s inability to get her five-year-old, who loves fries, to even taste mashed potatoes. Says Norine: “I tried everything! I even offered him extra chocolate for dessert, and he still refused to take even one tiny nibble.”

 Why science? Are either of you scientists?

Not at all. We’re moms dealing with the same kind of crazy stuff everyone else is. Science just makes a great metaphor for the frustration, exasperation and humiliation that comes with everyday parenting. Think about Einstein and how he explained his theory of relativity: “Sit on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour; sit with a pretty girl with an hour and it feels like a minute. That’s relativity.” Well, that’s parenthood too. One minute you’ve got a newborn covered in goo and then next, you’re watching teary-eyed as they skip into kindergarten without even a backward glance or a kiss goodbye. And yet, when you’re into your third hour of Candy Land on a rainy day, time seems to stand still. (If you haven’t played Candy Land with your toddler yet, trust us on this. The scars never really heal.)

Where did you get the idea for Science of Parenthood?

Our “eureka” moment came when Norine’s son, Fletcher, came home from school talking about one of Newton’s laws of force and motion: An object at rest stays at rest unless acted on by an external force.

Says Norine: “That instantly reminded me of Fletcher with his video games. He’d sit on the couch and play games all day if I didn’t confiscate the iPad. I jotted down, Newton’s First Law of Parenting: A child at rest will remain at rest until you want your iPad back. Later, I posted that on Facebook. It got a good response, so I started posting other parenting observations and giving them a math or science twist, like Sleep Geometry Theorem: A child will always sleep perpendicular to any adult laying next to them. Both of these are fan favorites and two of the very few cartoons we pulled from the blog to include in the book.

“As a writer, I’m always looking for new ways to tell stories. And in that eureka moment, it struck me that math and science make fantastic metaphors for telling the universal stories of parenting. Like scientists, we parents are always fumbling in the dark, searching for answers, wondering if we’re on the right track and second-guessing our methods. And because a picture is still worth a thousand words, I knew that these science-y quips would be a lot more popular on social media if they were illustrated. So I called Jessica and asked if she wanted to illustrate a book of these funny observations.

“Jessica was the one who saw that Science of Parenthood could be much bigger than a single book. She saw the potential for a blog and a social media presence and ancillary products. She quickly secured a domain name for us and created a Facebook page and Twitter feed. She began illustrating the observations I had already banked. Two weeks later, we debuted on Facebook; a week after that we rolled out the blog. Now we’re three years in, and along with Science of Parenthood, the book, we have mugs and magnets and posters featuring our images. Earlier this year we published two collections of humorous parenting tweets—The Big Book of Parenting Tweets and The Bigger Book of Parenting Tweets.  

Where can readers find Science of Parenthood?

You can find the new book on Amazon and in bookstores.

And you can always find Science of Parenthood on Facebook (www.facebook.com/scienceofparenthood), Twitter (www.twitter.com/sciofparenthood), Pinterest (www.pinterest/sciofparenthood) and Instagram (www.Instagram.com/scienceofparenthood).

Here’s a list of tour dates to meet the “scientists” in person: http://scienceofparenthood.com/tour-locations

About The Authors

Norine is the primary writer for Science of Parenthood, the blog, and Science of Parenthood,the book. A longtime freelance magazine writer, Norine’s articles have appeared in just about every women’s magazine you can buy at supermarket checkout as well as on The Huffington Post, Parenting.com, iVillage, Lifescript and Scary Mommy websites. Norine is the co-author of You Know He’s a Keeper…You Know He’s a Loser: Happy Endings and Horror Stories from Real Life Relationships (Perigee), Food Cures (Reader’s Digest) and a contributor to several humor anthologies, including Have Milk, Will Travel: Adventures in Breastfeeding(Demeter Press). She lives with her husband and 9-year-old son in Orlando.

 The daughter of famed New Yorker cartoonist Jack Ziegler, Jessica is Science of Parenthood’s co-creator, illustrator, web designer and contributing writer. In her “off hours,” Jessica is the director of social web design for VestorLogic and the writer/illustrator of StoryTots, a series of customizable children’s books. Her writing and illustration have been published on The Huffington Post, Vegas.com, InThePowderRoom.com and in Las Vegas Life and Las Vegas Weekly. Jessica was named a 2014 Humor Voice of the Year by BlogHer/SheKnows Media. She lives with her husband and 11-year-old son in Denver.

If you would like Norine and Jessica to visit your book group, contact Norine at norine@scienceofparenthood.

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Post-Thanksgiving Thanks

Both of my daughters told me at different times last night, after the Thanksgiving remains had been boxed and bagged on shelves in the frig and every spoon and pot lid had been washed and left to dry, that it had been a better day than they had expected.

“Why was that?” I asked.

“Because you were much calmer than you usually are when we have people over,” said one girl.

“You didn’t act like a freak,” observed the other.

And it’s totally true.

I’d offered to host Thanksgiving for my family this year, willingly and despite the fact that I’m preparing to move in the next month and that I just had the good fortune to return from a trip to Disney World with my 12yo son a few days before. So, I knew what I was getting into and the challenge going into it was how was I going to keep it all in perspective?

Historically, this is how I acted before any event I hosted:

When I was still married, I’d make my husband crazy as I tried to channel Martha Stewart in the linoleum-lined kitchen of our first house, barking orders at him while I baked and broiled and slathered things in tapenades and aioli and actively ignored the needs of any infants or toddlers living under our roof.

Things didn’t really improve after I got divorced as I just transferred all that pre-party rage onto my children. Somehow, at the end of the night after all the guests had gone home, no one ever concurred with my assessment that all the crazy had been worth it. It seemed anyone who’d lived through my entertaining mania would much rather have been locked in solitary confinement or water boarded than forced to withstand my verbal flagellations.

But I am tired of trying to pretend to be perfect and apparently, after reading all the reactions to that zany video I posted on Facebook, I haven’t been the only one trying to make people think that we don’t sit on our sofas or sleep in our beds or generally live in our house. So many women saw themselves in that crazy Gayle character as she raced around her house with a vacuum barking that she wanted to have the place “looking like Disney on Ice in one minute.” We saw how ridiculous we were.

I mean, it was just my family coming to dinner; my mom, a few siblings and their families. Did I really need to impress them with elaborate desserts and centerpieces? Did I really care about finding the perfect sweet potato recipe that would complete their meal?

In the end, I let go of everything. Instead of making every last dish on the table, I delegated much of the cooking. I set the kids’ table up in the den that is now lined with moving boxes filled with the books that used to line the shelves. I ignored the fairly large dust bunny that remained behind the powder room door even after my oldest son vacuumed the entire first floor. And when, just as my brother was preparing to carve the turkey, I discovered I’d forgotten to take the stuffing out of the frig to heat for dinner, I simply threw into the microwave to heat and broiled in the oven to crisp up the top. It wasn’t perfect but it got the job done. Oh, and we didn’t even have sweet potatoes on the menu this year.

As many of you who stop by here know, I super-love the writer Elizabeth Gilbert. I can’t get enough of her thoughts and voice. And I’m reminded this post-Thanksgiving morning of her pronouncement that “done is better than good.” Sometimes we get so snagged by trying to be perfect that we’re prevented from doing anything at all. Or, I’d like to add, we focus on stuffing and dust bunnies and not the stuff that really matters.

Repeat after me.

Repeat after me.

 

Instead, yesterday I enjoyed sneaking my two nieces some shiny chocolate coins I’d set out in my fanciest china bowls on the kids’ table for them to nibble before dinner. I watched as my four children took turns holding their two-month old cousin and then marveled as my oldest son cradled the baby in his arms and cooed and made faces that brought a big, dimple-cheeked smile to the baby’s face. And when the meal was over and I could not shovel one more forkful of mashed potatoes into my face, I sat and enjoyed chatting with my family instead of jumping up and clearing the dishes from the table.

And when two of my siblings, whose appetites I’d taken into consideration when I ordered my giant bird, failed to show up for the meal without a call or a text, I let that go, too. In the end, I’m sorry they missed such a nice afternoon surrounded by our family.

I asked my friend Dan – you know, that Girl-Whisperer guy – what his favorite part of Thanksgiving was as we worked out the other day and instead of the turkey or a certain pie, he told me he was looking forward to the prayer before the meal he would serve at his house. He’s been through a lot this year, like radiation and chemo and kind of dying, and said he had a lot to be thankful for and was going to write something to share before the meal with his family. He wanted them to know how much they meant to him.

I thought about that prayer a lot, too, while getting ready to host my own Thanksgiving feast. I thought about how lucky I was to have all that I do, like my family and my health and the means to afford a heritage turkey that had been hand-fed golden corn kernels and some gourmet gravy to go along with him.

Now I only hope I bring the same zen approach to my upcoming move because the pile of boxes in my garage make my heart race a little bit every time I walk past them to get to my car. I’ll just need to get that done, too.

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That Time I Was On TV

2015_bmw_m5_frontviewA couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend texted and asked if I was around the next day to help out with a project she had going on at work. She’s the marketing guru at a local BMW dealer where they were filming a TV commercial and needed some extras and, since it’s my lifelong dream to be on television, I immediately agreed to stop by and pretend to purchase a luxury vehicle. I mean, why wouldn’t I?

But honestly, I didn’t take it too seriously. I assumed she was hedging her bets and loading up on extra bodies for the shoot just in case. So thankfully, I opted to shower the next day, but didn’t get too gussied up to go out and about glamorous central New Jersey. I had on a sweater and those jeans you buy that already have holes in them. You know, the kinds that workers are probably snickering over at the factory as they rip. “Stupid Americans,” they say as they tear at the fabric and shake their heads.

Around noon, my friend texted to say they were going to start shooting in about an hour and was I able to come by the dealership. I was already out so told her that would be no problem but was it okay that I was wearing ripped jeans.

“NO!” she responded, and I told her I’d go home and change but wondered why they couldn’t just hide my crappy pants behind a desk or something. I just assumed my role would be that of the blonde lady of a certain age in the background talking to a sales guy in a showroom filled with other people.

So when I walked into the dealership — after a frantic search through my closet for something that A: looked like what I’d imagine a lady-of-a-certain-age would wear if she had the means to buy a BMW and B: fit — I wondered where everybody was.

I found my girlfriend who brought me over to meet the advertising guy running the shoot and it quickly became apparent that my role had been significantly upgraded to that of the 5-Series Owner Bringing Her Vehicle In To Be Serviced And Driving Away In A Loaner Car. In other words, there’d be driving involved, along with getting in and out of cars and pretending to chat with the friendly BMW service boy. And I would not be hiding in the background.

About half way through the filming — which was stressful because fancy cars don’t start up with keys or go into reverse by pulling down on gear shift like my six-year-old GMC — I started to laugh at the craziness of the situation.

“Had I known this was going to happen I’d have gotten my hair done or lost 10 pounds at the very least,” I said to my girlfriend.

But we had fun going through the scene a few times and I got to drive two gorgeous vehicles and pretend I was a fancy lady whose kids had flown the coop. Plus, everyone who works at the dealership was super-friendly leading me to believe that were I really bringing my car in to be serviced, the experience would be as pleasant as we acted out that day.

When it was over, I happened to drive by the crew who had moved out to the front of the dealership and I rolled down the window of my mom-car — which has logged almost 100,000 miles driving up and down the East Coast toting children to look at and live in colleges and has magnets adhered to the back door to prove it — and said to them, “Well, back to reality.”

And that’s what happened. I went back to my normal life of counter wiping and sandwich making and forgot about my moment of stardom. My gal pal across the street – the one who lends me miso for recipes and solves my problems and feeds me wine when I need to escape my people – also went over the car dealership that day and played the part of the Fancy Lady Buying a BMW. She called me when she was finished pretending and we both agreed it was a fun and random thing we just did.

And then while texting another mommy this week, she asked is I was in a commercial. She said she and her husband were watching Monday Night Football and the ad came on and he paused it and asked, “Is that Amy?”

I was horrified.

My costar and I had agreed that we never wanted to see the thing and figured we never would since we don’t really watch TV and certainly not Monday Night Football.

But right on cue, our marketing pal emailed us the link to the commercial yesterday and we squealed as we saw ourselves onscreen and started to howl because, really, we’ve started to look alike the way pets start to look like their owners over time. We spend way too much time together and the result is that we both fancy that same blonde-lady look. We’re hoping someone comes up to us when we’re out together and asks if we’re the BMW Twins. That will make my life.

My kids died when they saw the ad. “I can’t believe my mom’s in a commercial,” said my 12yo son. “It’s so weird.”

My older college girl texted after I sent her the link, “Oh my god you’re actually in a commercial,” and my younger college girl texted, “I CANT EVEN BELIEVE THIS,” followed by, “it is so beyond weird.”

As we texted I mentioned I wished I’d gotten my hair done, to which she said, “yeah i was gunna say, your hair needs some help,” and not for the first time I wished she was home so I could pinch her.

So, that’s my brush with fame. It made me appreciate the trickiness of acting – like I can’t even imagine what it would have been like if I actually had to say something because it was hard enough remembering to put the car into park – and was something I never anticipated, as usual.

And while I wasn’t compensated for my efforts monetarily – I mean, my BMW girlfriend was SUPER appreciative and I did have lots of fun – I’m hoping I at least get a date out of it. It is airing locally on Monday Night Football and if the dealership would just scroll my email in the two seconds I’m on screen, I’d consider the whole thing a success.

It’s way cheaper than Match.com.

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Virtual Reality

IMG_0004As the opening scene of the original “Star Wars” movie unfolded on our TV screen Saturday night – the mammoth underbelly of the Imperial Star Destroyer slowly crawling into view – I turned to my 12yo son and said, “Dude, you don’t even know how amazing this was back in the day.”

That is, I would have liked to have said this to my child but instead, I said it to the mound of throw pillows he’d dug himself under to better fool around with the new iPhone we’d bought for me earlier that day. The kid may not know how to get a dirty pair of corduroys into a laundry basket, but man, he knows everything you need to know about the iPhone 6s. He’d already seen “Star Wars” and given the magical machine in his hands that does things we’d never dreamed we could do 38 years ago, he was pretty unimpressed with tractor beams and light sabers. They were so 1977.

That first “Star Wars” movie – you know, if you’re of a certain age it’s not the fourth “Star Wars,” it’s the original, and it’s really the only one worth watching – came out the summer I turned 11 and I probably saw it in the movie theater at least five times. I loved the action and adventure. The feisty princess (projecting). The bad boy Han Solo (foreshadowing). The comedy. It cemented my love of all-things fantasy and is probably the reason one of my favorite books of all-time is The Mists of Avalon and how I became a dedicated “Game of Thrones” fan.

But aside from all the elements of the story, I was wowed by the movie’s special effects. I mean, after growing up on a steady diet of “Lost in Space” and “The Jetsons” that all of us children of the 70s ingested, this take on a futuristic outer space felt so real. This wasn’t just robots cleaning up after us or screaming, “Danger!” We felt like we were there, speeding through space in our rebel ship to save the universe from evil. We could feel the energy level shift when Darth Vader entered a room or when Luke Skywalker removed his fighter helmet to use The Force and blow up the Death Star. We were right there.

***************

My son was off from school on Friday and as we ate breakfast we watched a segment on “CBS This Morning” (thank God Charlie Rose has not succumbed to hashtags and what’s trending) about students using these cool cardboard viewers from Google that brought lessons to life. In the piece, we saw that the kids were learning about the ocean reef and my son and I agreed those magical viewers would be awesome to use in school.

And then one arrived in our driveway the next morning.

As part of its new foray into virtual reality, The New York Times sent its Sunday paper subscribers their very own Google Cardboard headsets to view movies that were created based on content in the paper. You download an app to your smart phone and can become immersed in the story when you look inside.

My 12yo son quickly put the thing together, downloaded the app, velcroed his iPhone inside the box and became engrossed in the little box of cardboard with his headphones plugged into his ears.

I watched him turn his head from side to side and then, with the viewer pressed close to his face, look down towards the ground and wave his hand in front of the viewer. Even he couldn’t believe what was happening. When he was finished, he reported he watched a movie about a French artist in New York City and another about refugee children and described a bit of each movie and encouraged me to watch for myself.

But I wasn’t super gung ho at first. I’d heard, of course, of virtual reality. I’ve seen people on TV wearing headsets to play video games and aren’t there whole movies based on the concept (hello, “The Matrix” series?). I was just kind of skeptical that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. You know, like, the reality part. Plus, I wanted to eat lunch.

And then I put the cardboard box up to my face and my son pressed play.

It. Blew. My. Mind.

I finished watching the first movie – it’s about 10 minutes long – which immerses you in the back story of a recent NYTimes Magazine cover photo. You look up and see the city’s skyscrapers and down to see the city’s sidewalks and all around people are walking or standing and things are happening. And I don’t want to spoil the end but if you are afraid of heights, do not look down.

I pulled the viewer away from my face and said to my two sons standing in the kitchen, “This is a crazy, crazy world.”

I mean, who would have thought? This was probably what it felt like when our grandparents watched a man walk on the moon on their televisions.

While that short movie showed off the tricks of virtual reality, the film that supplemented this Sunday’s magazine cover story, “The Displaced,” turns a spotlight on the plight of the 30 million children around the world driven from their homes and proves why virtual reality is such a compelling new medium for storytelling.

The movie focuses on three children who have been displaced by upheaval in different regions of the world. Twelve-year-old Hana is a Syrian refugee whose days begin at 4:00 a.m. to go pick cucumbers with her family in Lebanon.  We get into the truck with her under the still-dark sky to drive to the field and watch her haul crates of vegetables atop her small shoulders. “In Syria we had lots of toys and things to do,” she says in a voiceover as we watch her and a bunch of other children drive home at the end of the day in the back of a pickup truck. “Now we just have each other.”

Oleg is 11 and lives in the rubble of his Ukranian village that had been decimated when fighting broke out in April 2014. You see him and his buddies picking their way through the debris of a schoolroom as he says that they used to joke about how great it would be if their school was bombed. “I’d never say that now,” he says.

Finally, there’s 9-year-old Choul whose family escaped fighting in his village in South Sudan and is now living in the legit swamp. We go for a virtual ride in the back of his crudely-made canoe as he paddles through the reeds and listen as he says he’s heard that although a death by crocodile — which they’ve spied — would be slow, it would be better than being killed by the fighters.

But the most profound moment for me was a scene that I found myself standing in the middle of a Sudanese field with dozens of refugees — mostly women and children — as sacks of rice were dropped from a plane flying high overhead and watched as the refugees rushed in to claim the heavy bags, hoisting  them over their heads and shoulders. I could only thank God or The Universe or my Lucky Fucking Stars or whatever it was that blessed me so that I did not have to run through a field to claim my food. That there by the grace of God I had been saved from that life.

Because this – along with bombed-out schoolrooms and little girls who are sleeping in tents and waking in the middle of the night to pick cucumbers all day, is a reality for 60 million people, half of them children. And I am so, so very lucky that for me, that reality was virtual. I am so grateful for all that I have been blessed. But I am also grateful – to Google and The New York Times – for letting me experience what that reality was like more powerfully than I ever could have imagined through just words and pictures (and I really love words and pictures).

Being immersed in these three children’s lives – however briefly – was a reminder of our humanity. How, despite where we live and what we worship and the color of our skin – we are all the same. We are parents and children, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, friends, human beings. We are people of the world and it seems to me that what really separates us is dumb luck. It’s just luck that I was born to parents of means in the United States rather than in war-torn Syria, the Ukraine or Sudan.

It is through some stroke of luck my 12yo sleeps at night in peaceful New Jersey on a bottom bunk under a starry comforter surrounded by Pokemon stickers. That he gets up each day and eats a pork roll and egg sandwich before school. That his greatest fear is the zombies he’s seen on TV and being wrestled by his older brother. And he carries a magical machine in his pocket that gives him access to things I would not have thought were possible when I was 12.

And that this is our reality, I am eternally grateful.

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In Which We’ve Lost Our Minds

zzzquil

“Bad news, sister,” my college friend said to me over breakfast a few weeks ago when I went out to spend a weekend at her place on Long Island. “All that Zzzquil could be making us crazy.”

“Oh great,” I thought, “Let’s add this to the ever-growing list of things that keep me up at night.”

Apparently, our sleeping aid of choice – those pretty purple pills she introduced me to a year earlier when our whole college gang convened at her house – has been found to accelerate dementia. Her husband had sent her a link to a study that determined that drugs containing anticholinergic medications – like Benadryl, Tylenol PM and Zzzquil – have been linked to early onset dementia.

“I think that ship has sailed,” I told her, “because I can’t remember a goddamn thing.”

It’s actually kinda scary.

I could cite a million instances of my increasing forgetfulness, if only I could remember them. I mean, some big whoopsies stand out, like this summer when I discovered while standing online at the DMV to renew my driver’s license one Wednesday morning that I was supposed to be at a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway meeting a bus — and my mom and sisters — to go into the city to see a matinee performance of The King and I on Broadway. To my credit, I hauled ass into the city and joined them just as they were ordering lunch and consider the horrendous traffic I encountered trying to exit the city via the Lincoln Tunnel later that day my penance for being such an idiot.

My short-term memory was in serious disrepair last weekend, like on Saturday when I ran home to grab some cash for errands and discovered when I got to the store that I’d forgotten the money (I did, however, manage to use the bathroom, check Facebook and apply a fresh coat of lipgloss). Oh, and then the same day I left my phone at my sister’s house after a visit to see her new baby and didn’t realize for a few hours it was gone. PS: she lives a half hour away (I did, however, get to hold that sweet baby again).

Five minutes ago I found myself walking up my stairs and thought, “That’s weird I’m going up here to use the bathroom. Why aren’t I just using the one next to where I’m writing?” and it was only as I headed back downstairs to write an essay about forgetting things that I realized I had gone upstairs to get a tool to operate on the skin around my thumbnail that’s been driving me crazy (NOTE: another thing I keep forgetting is that I should refrain from working with on myself sharp instruments because it never ends well).

Obviously, this slippery memory of mine could be a product of all the sleeping aids I’ve been gobbling over the last year. I pause every time I raise the pill to my mouth, thinking, “I probably shouldn’t be doing this.” But then I recall the horror of lying awake for hours, unable to fall back asleep after a trip to the bathroom – rehashing my wedding day or some other bit of ancient history — that keeps my brain churning for hours in the dark. Then I quickly pop the pill and crawl into bed to enjoy the beauty of Benadryl-induced sedation.

Or it might just be because I’m getting old.

The subject came up yesterday at knitting – where a handful of women of a certain age gather ever few weeks to pretend to knit – and everyone sitting around the table littered with coffee mugs and skeins of yarn had something to say.

The hostess admitted that she lost not one but two credit cards on a recent trip to Vermont. Another woman said her sons were growing tired of showing up to pick up takeout for dinner only to discover their mom ordered from an entirely different location than where she sent them. That same woman also confessed she’d recently showed up for a mammogram appointment about an hour away from her home and after a lot spelling and respelling of her name for the lady at the front desk, determined that while my friend wanted to have the exam performed at that location, she’d made her appointment at an entirely different facility.

Another of my knitters said she’d found an effective way to keep track of things was to make daily lists in a notebook. “I bought a notebook but then I lost it,” one of the ladies shared.

Conversation eventually drifted to more pressing matters, like the newest season of Homeland and the holy-sexy-as-anything Peter Quinn. “He used to date Keira Knightley,” said my friend who couldn’t remember where she’d ordered tacos or mammograms. “They were engaged or something.”

I turned to look at her and burst out laughing.

“I know, this is what I can remember,” she said as she knit her shawl. “I can’t remember where I made my mammogram appointment but I can tell you who dated Keira Knightley.”

Although it’s fun for me to speculate that the sleep aids or the approaching menopause is wreaking havoc on my memory, I think the truth is that I just don’t pay attention. I’m totally not living in the proverbial moment. I’m thinking, thinking, thinking about what just happened and what’s next. I’m not focused on NOW. This is probably why I have to watch each episode of The Walking Dead twice and can’t remember a thing about any of the books that I’ve read.

And it’s not a new phenomenon. Long before Zzzquil and turning 50 were on my horizon, I was forgetting shit. Like one time I drove past my daughter in the Petco parking lot, forgetting to wait for her to get in the car to go home. And another time I got a call from a fellow mom in town who found my fancy Maclaren stroller stranded on the side of the road in front of the elementary school after pick up one afternoon. Apparently, I remembered to load the baby and other three kids in the car but forgot to fold up the stroller and pop it in the back.

To confirm my chronic forgetfulness, I texted my girls who are away at school to ask them if they thought I had a hard time remembering stuff. “I don’t know what you’ve forgotten!” texted the younger girl. “You forget everything.”

The older girl wrote that I forget little things all the time. “Like what?” I asked.

Seriously.

Seriously.

I’m sorry I asked.

I don’t like thinking that I’m going through life disconnected. I really want to be engaged with the world and the people around me. I don’t want to forget the beauty of the waves crashing on the beach this morning as I drove with great friends for a walk on a perfect October day along the ocean. I want to remember lying in bed with my man-child last night, my 12yo boy who still lets me snuggle him, and the way he cozied right up and wrapped his arms around me (I would, however, like to forget his stinky pits). And for gods sakes I need to get a handle on what’s going on with those zombies the first time around. I’ve got too many things I want to do.

I just don’t know if I can let go of the Zzzquil.

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Friday Faves: Bell, Books & Candles

This candle from Bath & Bodyworks is so my jam right now.

This candle from Bath & Bodyworks is so my jam right now.

I can’t tell you how much I love this time of year. #1: I don’t have to worry about putting on a bathing suit for months. #2: I don’t have to go outdoors and pretend I’m having fun. In other words, I get to release my inner homebody. I love putzing around my house and feeling cozy as the weather starts to dip outside.

It makes me consider becoming a witch, as the headline to this post suggests, and pulling out my cauldron.

Here’s what I love about October:

  • I bought this cool, mercury glass globe at Pottery Barn a couple of years ago and splurged for the twinkly lights to sparkle inside. It sits on the Ballard Design coffee table in my TV room and although one person once commented that it’s like a spooky crystal ball, I like the magical feel it gives glowing from the center of the room.
  • I am all about smelly candles and feel strongly that what works during the summer months don’t quite cut it when it gets cold outside. Here’s what I’m obsessed with, in no particular order:
    • I absolutely adore this Mrs. Meyers candle for fall, however I can only find it online. It’s never for sale at Target or Wegman’s. Unlike some of the other scents in this candle line, the orange clove is potent and one small votive really permeates my entire downstairs.
    • This candle flavor from Williams-Sonoma is also a sesaonal favorite for me. Its scent is warm and spicy and makes me think of Thanksgiving and sitting by the fire.
    • I officially want to take a bath in this scent from Bath & Bodyworks. Not only do I have the candle going on my kitchen counter but one of those cool wallflower doohickeys you plug into an electric outlet. It’s plugged in right by my front door and immediately greets visitor with its yummy, piney scent. In fact, I may be jumping the gun on blanketing our house in this flavor as two of my children have walked in the house recently and said, “It smells like Christmas” (not the worst thing).
    • I was totally obsessed with this Bath & Bodyworks candle last year and plan on stocking up on it again soon to help take the edge off January.
  • Books. And lately I’m not just buying them, I’m actually reading them.
    • I read Liz Gilbert’s inspiring Big Magic in two sittings a few weekends ago. Halfway through I cursed myself that I did not instead download the audio version, simply because I love her voice. Both on the page and her legit speaking voice. She’s so warm and engaging and down-to-earth. She tells it like it is: the only way to nurture your creativity is to do the work. Plain and simple. Hey, don’t just take it from me, read my friend Brooke Leffert’s recent review of the book for the Associated Press.
    • Another one of my writer crushes is Ann Patchett and I happen to enjoy her nonfiction the most and probably because, once again, of her voice. I just finished her memoir Truth and Beauty, which recounts her friendship with the novelist and poet Lucy Grealy. “Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn’t realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker.” Lovely.
    • To round out my girl-crush trifecta, I’ve also just started Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir. Dudes, she is so damn smart and funny. “No one elected me the boss of memoir,” Karr writes. “I speak for no one but myself.” Think this might be another lone I listen to after it’s read. If you haven’t read any of her earlier memoirs, you’ve got a lot to do this weekend.
    • In this vein, I’ve also been poking around in Robert McKee’s Story to figure out how to tell mine on a larger scale than a blog post.
    • I also breezed through the first 100 pages of my friend Michelle Sassa’s fun new novel, Copygirl. It’s a fun take on the Mad Men world of advertising and I like to think of the protagonist Kay as a modern day Peggy Olson, the lone, hard-working woman surrounded by baby men. Fun and I can’t wait to finish this weekend.

What are you reading or doing to stay cozy this weekend?

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