Finding the Courage to Sell My House

This week I posted the following on Facebook:

Making the leap.

Making the leap.

It’s been a move months in the making. Actually, compared to the other three major real estate transactions I’ve participated in, this go round was not a knee-jerk reaction precipitated by a pregnancy and raging hormones. I seemed to have made many big decisions in my 20s and 30s based on my heart and not on my head. I jumped right in and hoped for the best.

But this time, I wanted to take a more logical approach to buying and selling a home. I didn’t want my heart to get anywhere near the situation. Selling my current home is somewhat financial — I mean, two college tuitions suck — but mostly just a practical move. My kids are getting older and I don’t require all the space we needed so desperately a dozen years ago.

My parents separated the summer I turned 12 and the following year my mom got remarried and we pulled up stakes and moved an hour away. It was like the rug had been pulled out from under me and I never wanted my children to feel the same way. When I first got divorced it was critical to me that the kids’ lives weren’t turned upside down any more than was necessary. It was bad enough that their parents had to split up, I didn’t want them to have to move on top of that.

And that’s pretty much how I operated until a few months ago when I said something about moving to one of the kids and she was like, “What took you so long?”

As I mentioned in the Facebook post, I’ll miss a lot of the amenities around here, specifically my kitchen that still brings me great joy. I still come down to it every morning and can’t believe it’s mine. It makes all that counter wiping and taco cooking that I do a little less terrible.

Of course it would be easier just to stay put and hope for the best. But I’ve been down that road before and learned that as painful as change can be, it’s where you find the place you need to be rather than where you thought you were supposed to be.

Does that make sense?

But it took me a little bit to finally make the leap and put the sign up front. It seems sometimes, in the absence of hormones or an impending newborn, I have a hard time figuring out what to do. I’m afraid to dive off that ledge and do something that scares me.

But this week I did. I took a deep breath and jumped.

You can sign up to get all my latest posts sent right to your inbox lickety-split by typing your email into the “Never Miss a Post” box. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

[wysija_form id=”1″]

 

 

I Went to a Nicki Minaj Concert. Legit.

Screen Shot 2015-07-27 at 7.55.09 AMRecently, I’ve met up with two friends-of-friends on separate occasions who read my blog and both have remarked over the course of conversation that it was weird that they knew so much about me. One of them asked me if I also thought it was weird and I’ve gotta admit that I am pretty okay with relative strangers knowing about my divorce and my cat and the time my top almost came off at the beach.

One of the benefits of writing about my life and sharing it in a super-public forum is that it helps people put me in some context when we meet. I’ve already done the groundwork of telling you what I think you need to know about me and it then frees me up to ask a lot of questions. Having a public, one-sided conversation about myself also really jibes well with my raging megalomania. It also helps cut down on having to fill people in on what I’ve been up to. Whenever I get together with my college pals and we invariably go around the table to get the update on everyone’s kids and lives, they get to skip right over me. I start to tell them a story about something and they’re like, “Yup. Read about it. Next.”

Another interesting byproduct of this blog is that as the result of something I’ve written, I have been invited to attend a bunch of concerts. In fact, I’ve been invited to see four shows so far, two of which were dates (I sometimes joke that my blog also doubles as a low-cost dating site). But by the third round of hearing Stevie Nicks sing “Landslide,” I started to wonder whether there really is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

I really need to start aiming higher and writing about my dream to return to Paris or Rome. Or own a Cartier bracelet.

When I wrote recently about how I briefly thought about channeling Nicki Minaj and parlaying one of her songs into my theme song — a la Ally McBeal — a woman I knew reached out and asked if I wanted to go with her to Nicki’s upcoming concert at a nearby arts center.

“What the hell?” I thought and happily accepted after I ran it past my 18yo who had bought tickets months earlier for the show and had secured a ride home from her college four hours away to attend.

Here were her thoughts (I’m the one in the blue bubble):

Screen Shot 2015-07-27 at 7.56.15 AM

No really, tell me how you really feel.

I assured her I would not be trying to hang out with her and her gang and really wanted to know very little about whatever shenanigans they had planned. All I knew was that my friend was bringing her 15yo daughter and a pal who would go off to their spots on the lawn and we would have legit seats inside the amphitheater.

I saw Rihanna a couple of years ago with about 10 other women in Atlantic City. We made a whole night of it and booked a few rooms at the now-defunct Revel and by the time she came on the stage at about 10 p.m., we had hit the perfect level of sobriety with which a mob of suburban moms should see RiRi which is to say we were all pretty bombed.

I had really expected a show on the level of what I’d read a Beyonce or Pink show would be, with elaborate sets and dance routines to accompany the singing. But I was sober enough to realize that Rihanna’s show consisted mostly of a lot of backup singers and dancers running around in sparkly costumes and grabbing their crotches. But I was surprised at how many songs of hers I actually knew and had forgotten how many of her tunes were hits I’d heard over and over on the radio. And because I have a teenage daughter, later I would come to love a lot of the songs from the album that Rihanna tour was promoting, which we’ve listened to a lot driving to and from various college campuses. I mean, “What Now” and “Get It Over With” are great songs.

So I went into Nicki Minaj with similar expectations. I figured I’d know a bunch of her songs from the radio and with a little bit of wine, the rest would be fun to listen to. At this stage of the game, I’ve let go of the anxiety I felt when my children were younger and I insisted we listen to Radio Disney-version of popular songs that helped weed out naughty lyrics and notions pushed on Top 40 stations like touching yourself and “S&M.” Nowadays I drive around in a car with the kids and request my daughter play Missy Elliott’s “Pass That Dutch” and we “hooty-hoo” and sing along.

Honestly, I don’t know a lot about Nicki Minaj. Like, she was cute in her role as Cameron Diaz’s secretary in “The Other Woman” and I saw on Facebook that she just had a fight on Twitter with Taylor Swift. And she has that number called “Boss Ass Bitch,” which was kind of the genesis of an essay I wrote and was inspired by until I listened to it and discovered it’s just a lot of rapping with insanely bad language and ideas (lots of p**** this and n***** that). Like, yikes.

And you guys know I like my curse words.

It turns out, Nicki Minaj’s ENTIRE lexicon consists of this type of song. I don’t even know if you can call them “songs” per se. It’s really just a lot of bad words strung together. But interestingly enough, even though I had no idea what these songs were, every other person in the entire arena did and rapped along with her. It was fascinating. I guess it’s like knowing all the words to “Thunder Road” or “Paradise By the Dashboard Light.”

Here’s a not-very-good clip courtesy of my 18yo:

A few other observations: Probably the biggest was that my friend and I were the oldest people in the stadium by about three decades. Legit. I noticed a handful of audience members sitting nearby who were obviously parents and not just really old Nicki Minaj fans. And much like Rihanna’s show, the choreography was fairly lackluster and consisted of a lot of gyrating and crotch grabbing. An attempt at sexy dancing that came off instead as some second-rate soft porn. I couldn’t really tell because my eyesight’s not what it used to be but by squinting at the giant video monitors it seemed that the backup dancers’ shiny gold outfits they wore to writhe around on the floor during “Anaconda” included zippers along their crotch seams. Talk about sexy.

So here’s what I worry about: What is Nicki Minaj modeling for my children? Is all her filthy-talk and see-through costumes (she does have an impressive backside) misogynistic or empowering? Here is a sample of lyrics from “Boss Ass Bitch”:

I said, rule #1 to be a boss ass bitch:

Never let a clown n**** try to play you

If he play you, then rule #2:

F*** his best friends, then make ’em yes-men

Or have I joined generations of parents who have fretted over the music their kids were listening to and declaring it the downfall of civilization? The Beatles and Elvis Presley seem positively quaint compared to the stuff on the radio today. The friend who so generously invited me to the show thought Nicki was amazing and had no issues with the content. So maybe I’m just becoming a fuddy-duddy in my old age, but my inner feminist struggles with whether or not she and her fans have been sold a bill of goods. I do, however, support her intentions:

If nothing else, the evening provided an interesting glimpse into what my kids are listening to when they’ve got their headphones on in the car. And it ain’t Radio Disney.

You can sign up to get all my latest posts sent right to your inbox lickety-split by typing your email into the “Never Miss a Post” box. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

 [wysija_form id=”1″]

 

10 Things I Learned at Blogher ’15

Add a little bit of body text (1)

Carpool Candy, Moi, One Funny Motha, Chew Nibble Nosh and Smiles and Duct Tape at Eataly Friday night. Heaven.

I got home yesterday from the whirlwind that is Blogher, the annual ginormous conference where bloggers from all over the country gather to learn, network and eat and drink for three action-packed days. This year it was held in New York City, which made going for me a no-brainer. It was fun to meet writers in person whom you immediately recognize from their websites. And it was especially great to reconnect with writers from Bloghers gone by. Here are some of the highlights:

  1. S-T-R-E-T-C-H: Blogher ’15 was chock-full-of-speakers, addressing everything from Internet trolls to maternal health challenges and featured an A-list lineup including “Selma” director Ava DuVernay, “Every Mother Counts” founder Christy Turlington Burns and the Goop-y Gwyneth Paltrow. But the story that resonated most with me was told by Teneshia Jackson Warner, a multicultural marketing expert, who spoke about those defining moments we all have in life. She told the Blogher audience about leaving a good job that left her wanting more and having the tenacity to land her dream job with hip hop mogul Russell Simmons. “When you have a moment before you, be willing to stretch into it,” she told us, and I knew just what she was talking about. I knew that to get what I want, I’d need to do some stretching of my own.
  2. Take what you want: “Selma” director Ava DuVernay is a badass. She’s really the very definition of a boss ass bitch. She closed the conference on Saturday with a great discussion about the dearth of women – especially those of color – in Hollywood and really gave the impression that she was kind of over putting up with bullshit. “Women have been trained to ask for what we want instead of taking it,” she told us. “We’ve been indoctrinated in a culture of permission.” I’m gonna stop asking and start taking, too.
  3. Divorced parents need to get over themselves: I lunched with Gwyneth Paltrow on Friday. Well, there were probably about 1,000 of us there, listening to her speak while we ate our turkey sandwiches and faro salads. Say what you will about Ms. Goop, I kinda like Gwynnie and think she gets slammed a lot by trying to be forthcoming about her personal life. Anyway, I was especially impressed by this portion of her conversation:

  1. Conferences are more fun when you’re part of a posse: Dudes, I went to my first Blogher in Chicago two years ago and knew ZERO PEOPLE. Like, not a one. Of the four blogger/writer friends I made that year, I mostly stayed connected with two — Carpool Candy and Em-i-lis — and both were there this weekend and it was, in a word, a lovefest. I’m really getting good at surrounding myself with solid people and we added a few more to our crew (Chew. Nibble. Nosh. and Smiles and Duct Tape) and it was lovely having a posse to pose with  the weirdAquafresh guy and share a lovely plate ofburrata.

    11760213_10206972709303568_9207813757417371638_n

    Hanging with Captain Aquafresh at Blogher’s Expo was a little weird but I did walk away with a year’s worth of toothpaste. So that was something.

  2. Blogher makes me ballsy: In my regular life, I don’t like taking risks. I always feel like I’m bothering someone or acting needy. But for some reason, being at Blogher makes me nervy. I ask editors to meet for coffee. I go out to dinner with bloggers I think are funny. I tell writers I admire how much I like their work. And I’m not even drunk.
  3. Trust your instincts: I initially planned on staying in my room solo until I noticed a blogger I’d met online and chatted a bunch with put out on Facebook that she was looking for a roomie for the conference. It took about two seconds for me to decide that A: I could use someone to help split the hotel bill and B: She seemed like a great girl. At any rate, she seemed like someone who wouldn’t put a pillow over my face while I slept. And she’s also from New Jersey and likes cats, so how bad could she be? Err … But it turned out, Stacey Gill of One Funny Motha is not only funny but a pretty great all-around girl. She was friendly and inclusive and is a lovely addition to my growing blogger posse.

    Can you say swag? Staples back-to-school breakfast with One Funny Motha.

    Can you say swag? Staples back-to-school breakfast with One Funny Motha.

  4. Network like it’s your last day on earth: I got into Manhattan on Thursday afternoon and by late Friday night I was seriously tired of talking and I still had another 24 hours to go. Thanks to Stacey, I met a bunch of people I maybe wouldn’t have met at the conference and I had the great good fortune to shamelessly hand out my new super-gorgeous biz cards, compliments of Solari Creative and Moo.
  5. It’s all about the writing: Sometimes, I get distracted by all the bullshit. All the noise like networking and social media and forget what the whole point is: my writing. I was inspired this weekend to spend more time working on that writing and developing a larger project to start shopping around. I’m not getting any younger, for fuck’s sake.
  6. There will be bread: I went into the conference thinking I could just stick to my regular no carb/no sugar (or really the almost-no carb/almost-no sugar) diet. But that proved impossible. I mean, nothing is impossible but I’m just not a great committer and between all the sandwiches the hotel put out for our lunches and the loaf of very delicious bread I ate at our 10:30 p.m. dinner on the rooftop of Eataly Friday night after a super long day, I came home feeling less than skinny.
  7. Girls named Amy rock: What is it about girls named Amy? Why do I love them so much and feel such an affinity towards each and every one of them? They’re usually super awesome (although tread softly around ones that are amazing) in many respects. This weekend I connected with a great writer who blogs at The Amy Situation. You should check her out. I feel like this isn’t the last we’ve seen of each other.

I came home Sunday afternoon and ate a big bowl of kale at my favorite new eating spot to counteract all the bread and spent the rest of the lying on my bed to escape the heat and read the paper. I feel motivated and excited by my fellow bloggers and buoyed by all the support.

Time to stretch.

Sign up below to get all my latest posts delivered straight to your inbox. You can also follow me on Facebook and The Twitter (that is a joke that approximately four people will get). 

[wysija_form id=”1″]

 

Read Me in the August Issue of Family Circle !

cir-1438412400-225x300Last Friday, I was getting ready to leave my house for a midday meeting when a text popped up on my phone.

“Your famous,” it read and was accompanied by a picture of the cover of Family Circle magazine and another of an article with the headline in big, red lettering “PHOTO FINISH.”

I was so caught off guard that I responded, “I don’t think it’s this month is it?”

My brain could not compute anything I was looking at.

I had known for some time that it was coming but I didn’t expect to see it for another month.

Last August I submitted a piece, almost as an afterthought, to Scary Mommy. I was getting ready to ship my oldest two kids off to college and it occurred to me that other moms and dads might be getting ready to do the same thing, and was reminded that I had actually written about that experience a couple of years earlier on my blog. I heard right back from Samantha from Scary Mommy and the piece was put up on the site pretty quickly because of the timing and it was called “The College Good-Bye.”

And it got great feedback from the SM community. Lots of nice comments. Shares. Tweets. All that good social media stuff. I was pretty content with the process.

And then it happened.

I don’t really check my blog email account like I do my regular Amy Byrnes Gmail account. I just don’t get a ton of messages other than new posts of all the blogs I follow. So a few days after I posted the Scary Mommy piece, I clicked on my blog’s inbox while standing at my kitchen island thinking about what to cook for dinner.

A name that I’d never seen before popped up with “The College Good-Bye” in the subject line and when I clicked and started reading the message I had to stop and step away from my laptop before I could finish the message.

And then I started to scream.

The note was from the articles editor at Family Circle magazine who said complimentary things about the essay she read on Scary Mommy and wondered whether I would consider selling it to the magazine.

Are you fucking kidding?

The kids and I hooted and hollered and ran around the kitchen before I could settle down and very calmly respond to the email and say, “Why of course, I’d be happy to have my writing featured in a national magazine.” I mean, they sell that thing at Target.

The downside was that because print publications have such a long lead time, usually a few months, Family Circle was interested in publishing my essay the following summer. Like, a year later. For someone like me, who seeks immediate gratification in most things, this was a serious test in not only patience but also in keeping my mouth shut. I really didn’t want to curse it.

So I waited and waited. I tried to stay in touch with my contact, just so she wouldn’t forget who I was. The holidays came and went and communication tapered off. She had a lot going on in her life and what sounded like a demanding job and probably didn’t have time for hand holding. So I just quietly wrung my own hands at home in New Jersey and stared at my laptop and waited.

And then that voice inside my head, you know that asshole who’s always telling me what a loser I am, started to speak. “They found someone better,” it hissed. “Did you really think it would happen?”

That bitch kept on whispering terrible things up until the point that I really started to believe her. I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that Family Circle had come to its senses. I made my way through all five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining and depression and just when I had made my peace with the loss through acceptance, I got an email from my Family Circle contact telling me to expect a contract in my mailbox.

And then things moved quickly. I signed documents and mailed them back. I looked at some cuts and edits that had been made to my story and noted in my approval that the changes only made the story stronger. And then one day, a check for real money for my writing appeared in my mailbox.

And then it was time to wait some more.

Because even though I had received payment and cashed the check and everything, it still didn’t seem very real. I still didn’t want to jinx it.

I sat quietly and waited for the essay to appear in what I thought would be the September issue, which would hit newsstands in August. I grew up devoted to Seventeen magazine’s annual September issue, a giant tome featuring tall girls in perfectly feathered hair wearing courduroy pants with vests and ties that I longed to own even though I wore a Catholic school uniform every day. So to me, back-to-school is naturally in the September issue of a magazine.

And then the text from my girlfriend who stumbled upon the piece in the August issue of Family Circle while on vacation with her family in Cape Cod came and I realized it was really happening.

But I still needed to see the actual magazine with my own eyes. I needed proof.

I raced around town before that meeting last Friday trying to track it down. My daughter and I spread out and hit four different supermarkets and pharmacies and nobody had the issue out yet. I went to the meeting and on the way home, stopped at a local market to pick up some burgers and corn on the cob for dinner and on the way to the register, I stopped to scan the magazine rack and there it was. And it’s a beauty, too, that August cover.

I tore one open to its Table of Contents and easily found what I was looking for. I thumbed to the middle of the magazine and there it was, my work, my writing, just hanging out on Page 88. It was a beautiful thing.

Behold. Page 88.

Behold. Page 88.

I pulled four issues into my basket and headed to the checkout and started chatting with the gal ringing me up. She got to the pile of magazines and asked, “What, are you in it or something?” And I couldn’t get the giant grin off my face as I nodded my head. She seemed interested so I gave her some background on what had happened and quickly opened to Page 88 to show her my name in big blue print at the top of the page. She oohed and aahed along with the young checkout gal next to her who, it turns out, is an English major in college and would like to someday write.

“Ack,” I said to her, “it’s a tough road. It’s a lot of hard work. Don’t expect to make a lot of money.”

I gave her my business card and told her to email me if she ever had questions or needed advice and headed home with my corn and pile of magazines. But I won’t lie, every time I see my name in the magazine, I can’t help but smile. It is incredibly satisfying to see the result of five years of really hard work.

I can’t wait to see what happens in the next five years.

You can sign up to get all my latest posts sent right to your inbox lickety-split by typing your email into the “Never Miss a Post” box. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

 [wysija_form id=”1″]

In Which I Am a Boss Ass Bitch

Me reading "Boss Ass Bitch" as part of the North Jersey 2015 Listen to Your Mother show on May 9.

Me reading “Boss Ass Bitch” as part of the North Jersey 2015 Listen to Your Mother show on May 9.

This winter, I wrote a story about jumping off a cliff and getting a divorce, with a little emoji on the side, and got to read it live on stage in front of an audience who paid money to watch.

It was called Listen to Your Mother and our North Jersey show was one of 39 productions held all over the country Mother’s Day weekend.

I was one of 13 women who told stories that were sad and funny, poignant and bittersweet takes on motherhood, from post partum depression to adoption to one mom’s confession that she loves when her kids leave for summer camp.

The experience rocked on a zillion levels. I got to mix with strong women who shared little bits of their souls by telling their powerful stories. I felt so loved and supported by all the friends and family who made the trek to watch me tell my own story that day. And I am super proud of that story. I worked hard on it and loved the final product, which may or may not be because I called it “Boss Ass Bitch.”

The national LTYM just released the videos from all of the 2015 shows and it’s been fun to relive the experience and everyone’s stories. I am so honored my story was chosen and to have shared a stage with our insanely talented cast and encourage you to watch each and every one of their stories. I dare you not to be blown away.

Postscript: I learned after I wrote the story and was picked for LTYM that “Boss Ass Bitch” was a Nicki Minaj song.

“Awesome,” I told my 18yo — who had also penned the Valentine’s Day card that inspired my story — “it can be, like, my theme song.”

I then started imagining myself walking out on stage while Nicki sang something about what badasses we were. I would be like Rihanna or, oh just imagine, Beyonce.

I was going to be Beyonce.

“Um,” my daughter said, placing her computer on my lap and inching towards the door, “maybe not.”

She pressed play and closed the door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBY38tgQmzs

You can sign up to get all my latest posts sent right to your inbox lickety-split by typing your email into the “Never Miss a Post” box. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

[wysija_form id=”1″]

 

Friday Faves: Two River Edition

il_570xN.576667552_jpde

Here’s the thing about me: when I like something, I generally tend to really like it. Whether you’re the person who colors my hair, a turkey and avocado sandwich or my boyfriend, chances are I’m going to try to keep you around. I mean, I’ve been going to the same hair lady for almost 20 years and come to think of it, was married around that long, too. I’m pretty loyal and monogamous. And that sandwich? Man, I ate that thing for lunch every day for years. I mean, not the same one but you get what I mean.

The downside of this dedication to things I really like is that there’s often not a lot of fluctuation in the types of goods and services I seek out. I usually just go for the same old things. But recently, it has come to my attention that I have been branching out a bit. In some instances, new needs emerged in my life and in others, I took a chance on something new (WHAT?) and the result was kind of great. Go ahead, live a little. See what I’m talking about.

  • I take my hair very seriously. Sometimes more seriously than what’s inside my actual head. As mentioned, I already have the pesky coloring part down and even though the race to keep all my gray hair covered is a never-ending one, I look forward to my every five or six week trek to have Lorraine wave her magic wand and make it all better. I am committed to her and hope she realizes that I won’t ever let her retire until I’m ready to give up this whole charade and allow my hair to turn the silvery-gray god would really like it to be. But getting my hair cut has been trickier. I don’t like to plan cuts too far in advance, which rules out some hairstylists I have liked. And I haven’t really had a haircut that I’ve LOVED in a long time. Until now. I was part of a blogger crawl and admired the hair of one of the fabulous women in our group. She sent me to Yanni Erbeli Salon in Red Bank and I couldn’t be more thrilled. First of all, Yanni is a nice and chatty guy. That’s an important quality for me in the people I need to provide me my various services. I really need to like you. Well, then you have to be good at what you do, too. And Yanni is amazing. I told him what I wanted and he totally listened and gave me just that. He didn’t just do whatever he wanted. And, here’s the magical part, somehow he’s cut it so that I just wash it and spray some product on it and it dries into a cute, wavy, summery bob. Good-bye blow dryer. Now if only he could help me get out of other annoying tasks that fill up my day, like making dinner for my children.
  • I’d been trying to meet up with a girlfriend for breakfast and she asked if I tried the new Seed to Sprout that opened in Fair Haven. We set a date to meet there two days later and then I turned to another pal who was working alongside me on her laptop (we’d run away from our children to get work done at our town’s library) and asked her if she wanted to go check it out for lunch. Reader, I’ve gone every day since and I am not like some super-healthy-vegan-organic-crunchy-chewy person. I just like food that tastes really good. I’ve even started studying the menu online. I tried the various bowls for lunch — like, I never knew kale could be so good — and had some magical avocado sandwich yesterday for breakfast. And, the portions are so big I ended up bringing half of my meal home to eat later (much to my children’s chagrin). Maybe I’ll see you there because obviously I’m heading back again today.
  • There comes a time in every girl’s life when she needs to start thinking about money. And not in the what-can-I-buy-at-Target kind of way but more like the how-shall-I-pay-the-bills way. The stinky way, in other words. If you find yourself in need of someone to help you sort it all out — what’s coming in and what’s going out and what, if anything, is left over — do I have the wizard for you. She’s Liz Gearon at Ship Shape Financial and she while she may make you come to Jesus a little — oh, it can be a reckoning — Liz is kind, supportive and not the least bit judgemental. She didn’t even make me feel bad about all that money I spend on my hair. Oh, and you don’t even have to be a girl to use her services. Boys, apparently, use her, too. She’s also a QuickBooks guru and assists small to medium businesses with financial statements, budgets, cash projections and general ledger analysis. In other words, she does things I barely understand. You can email her at liz@shipshapenj.com as the first step to putting your financial house in order. Just like me.
  • There may also come a time in a girl’s life when her cat of five years begins to freak the fuck out. For no reason. When the animal whom was rescued from the wilds of suburban New Jersey and drinks from a water bowl that reads “Princess,” begins urinating daily on your couch. When it gets to the point that it starts to seem normal that all the upholstered furniture in your house is covered in plastic drop cloths you bought at Home Depot, like your house is one big Dexter-style kill room, you need to call in The Contented Cat. Sally came to our house and cooed at our naughty kitty and came up with a game plan for directing her urine into the proper receptacle and — in what now seems like no time — our girl was back on track. Sally is truly a cat whisperer and provides all sorts of other services like reiki and adoption counseling. Along the way, I also learned a lot about the care and keeping of kitty cats, something I never really knew anything about, and found a friend in our cat lady as well.

Wishing you all enough money to afford fabulous haircuts, big bowls of kale and cats who don’t pee on your couch. Happy Friday!

You can sign up to get all my latest posts sent right to your inbox lickety-split by typing your email into the “Never Miss a Post” box. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

 

When Can I Quit Cooking Dinner Every Night?

so-glad-i-don-t-have-to-keep-calm-anymoreLast night, my son – the oldest, who’s 22 – emerged from his camp down in the basement to ask me if I was making dinner.

“I grabbed lunch out so am eating the leftovers for dinner,” I told him, which was met with plenty of foot stomping, cabinet banging and muttering.

When the kids were young, my role here as official stay-at-home-mom was pretty well defined. I did everything.

I bathed them and dressed them. I took them to the park and pushed them on the swing. I tucked them into bed at night and read them stories.

And I fed them.

I soft-boiled eggs and buttered toast and carefully cut the crusts off their grilled cheese sandwiches and their hot dogs into tiny, non-chokable bits. I tried to plan healthy meals, too, taking into consideration the many and ill-founded self-imposed dietary restrictions of my diners. I stuck to poultry. Avoided cheese. Didn’t add too many peppers. We went from Hamburger Helper and Manwiches to quinoa and Thai Curry Chicken with enough bags of snacks in our pantry and frozen items in the freezer to feed a Ugandan village for a month.

All of this does not take into account the combined two years of breastfeeding I devoted to my four children, a task I at once loved and resented the shit out as I watched QVC for the zillionth time around 3 a.m.

The point of all this is to say, “I’ve done my time.”

I have planned and shopped and cooked and tried to keep everyone alive and healthy almost every single day for the last two decades.

This week, I’m back down to two children living at home. As previously reported, my little girl has shipped off for an early start to college for the summer and my baby is away for the week at sleep away camp. That leaves the two oldest kids – a recent college grad and soon-to-be grad — under my roof. In other words, two legit adults.

While I was approaching this week as an opportunity to get some solid uninterrupted work done, without worrying about keeping a 12yo occupied or time-consuming trips to the supermarket, my oldest son just thought things would be business-as-usual. He’s pissed that for the last few nights he’s been forced to fend for himself and cook some frozen Trader Joe’s product for his nightly meal.

I can tell he’s resenting me just as much as I’m starting to resent him and his reluctance to see me as more than his live-in cook.

I’m torn. Am I being selfish, not wanting to chop or stirfry anything this week? Or is it okay to let grown up children fend for themselves sometimes?

Coming up with an answer to “what’s for dinner?” has been my problem for over 20 years. Can’t I take a week off?

You can sign up to get all my latest posts sent right to your inbox lickety-split by typing your email into the “Never Miss a Post” box. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

 

 

When Sharks Aren’t the Only Scary Things at the Beach

Dun. Dun.

Dun. Dun.

This is what happens when one of your worst fears is realized, which – come to think of it – seems to happen to me a lot.

I got down to the beach late Sunday morning to spend the final day of the long holiday weekend with my toes dug in the sand and talking with friends. I arrived to find a fair number of beachgoers standing along the shoreline looking out at the ocean and was informed by a pal that swimmers had been cleared from the water because a fin had been spotted. If you’ve been watching the news, you know of the recent attacks off the North Carolina coast and alleged sightings up and down the coastline so here at the Jersey Shore, we are on high alert for anything triangular popping up out of the water.

Fo me, the ocean hasn’t been the same since the midnight screening of “Jaws” I went to the summer I turned 9 in 1975. I was shocked my mom said “yes” not only to something so late but so scary. What I mostly remember is being simultaneously scared out of my mind by that giant rubber shark gobbling up that little kid on the raft while finding Richard Dreyfuss strangely adorable. I should have realized then that smart and funny would always trump good looks for me.

Sharks have also figured into a lot of my recurring dream topics – which include riding on a subway, losing my teeth and rushing through an airport trying to catch a flight – so I am extra attuned to them. I know those fuckers are out there.

So I had to muster a lot of courage a number of years ago when I signed up to compete in a sprint triathlon and participated in weekly ocean swims as part of the training leading up to the September race. In this instance, I am using the word “swim,” at least for me, loosely because the method I used to get through the quarter-mile course was less freestyle and more doggie paddle. There was no fucking way I was putting my face in the cold, dark water. As other swimmers crawled through the salty Atlantic alongside me, their rubber-clad heads rhythmically turning up for air, I propelled myself forward using the “pick a cherry, put in the basket” sidestroke, my head high above the water and eyes darting around for signs of menacing fins. I figured if an attack was imminent, I wanted to see it coming.

As it so happens, I never did see a fish, much less a shark, and those 7 a.m. ocean swims have now become treasured memories. I loved pedaling away from my house in the early morning light and arriving on the sand to find the ocean and sky stretched out before me. I loved the camaraderie of the 20 or 30 women standing around adjusting suits and goggles and encouraging each other for the swim ahead. And while I never really loved the swims themselves, there are few better feelings for a mother with young children than biking down a road on an early July morning with nothing but your towel and goggles in a backpack, the salt water prickling your skin as it dried and knowing what you just did. There is a lot to be said for doing things that scare the shit out of you and it was a lesson that prepared me for much more challenging obstacles not that far down the road.

So I joined the rest of the onlookers standing along the surf yesterday and watched two lifeguards in kayaks bobbing along the ocean swells as a fin occasionally popped up not far from them. At one point, one of the guards used his oar to seemingly shoo the creature away.

“What the fuck is he doing?” I asked my pal standing and staring with me. “Are we all going to stand here and watch that idiot lose an arm?”

It wasn’t long before one of the kayakers returned to shore and news traveled down the beach that the fin in question belonged not to a shark but a giant sunfish flopping around the waves and all of us gawkers slowly dispersed.

“I knew it,” I said to my pal after we’d returned to our towels. I ran my hand along my back and discovered as we were talking that the hook to my bathing suit top seemed dangerously askew.

“Holy shit,” I said as my girlfriend adjusted the metal clip, “talk about a sighting.

“That would have been more terrifying than a shark,” I said and we laughed and continued making jokes about my top flying open on the beach and the horror that would ensue.

And here’s where things get really scary.

Not much later, I got up out of my beach chair to grab something from my beach bag and as I bent over, felt the clasp on my top give way and my girls start to break free.

One of my other recurring dreams is being out in public and discovering that I have somehow forgotten to put on my pants. Or that I’m topless. Whether it’s the top or the bottom that’s missing, I am horrified at finding myself so exposed in front of others.

Luckily, as my top exploded open, I had the good sense to immediately put my hands to my chest and hit the sand as if I’d been shot. Unfortunately, I screamed – or somehow indicated my extreme alarm – because one of the dads sitting in our circle, thinking I was being attacked by a bee, gallantly got up to offer his assistance. I can’t imagine what went through his head as he jumped up to help and saw me scurry past and land in front of one of the moms in our group and start yelling for help. What he must have thought when he saw my back, and hopefully not much more, exposed and our friend holding the ends of my suit in her hands.

Eventually, we got me put back together. The men in our group drifted casually off to look at the ocean and I got my top back on, which was no easy feat as the liner was coming out of the top and my girls, who breastfed four babies and really took it for the family team, needed some help getting settled back in.

Later, after my girlfriend ensured that the clasp was secure, I took off my cover up but refused to get up out of my chair to walk around. I wasn’t taking any chances. I even got someone to hand me snacks out of my bag so I wouldn’t risk a repeat of my earlier performance.

There was a time where I would have had a really hard time getting over something like this. I would have repeated it over and over in my head and felt increasingly bad about myself. The shame. What people must have thought. I’ve always had a good sense of humor about a lot of things but not always about myself.

But by the end of yesterday, we were all laughing about my exploding top and I probably laughed most of all. In the end, the incident did not attract a crowd of pointing onlookers and no one tried swatting me away with an oar.

The great thing about getting older is that you really get a lot of opportunities to face your fears, whether it’s of sharks or being alone or flashing your boobs on a crowded beach.

You find out that you can survive just about anything.

I still cringe thinking about what that dad really saw before I hit the sand but figure it at least made up for the sunfish.

You can sign up to get all my latest posts sent right to your inbox lickety-split by typing your email into the “Never Miss a Post” box. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Price of Freedom

fireworks

Celebrating a different kind of freedom.

I don’t really love the 4th of July. I feel like it’s the summer version of New Years Eve. There’s like some weird pressure to have come up with fabulous plans to celebrate our nation’s independence, when all I really want to do is power wash my pool deck and read a book.

There’s also a cloud that hangs over all the barbecues and fireworks for me, kind of the way the new movie “Inside Out” shows how happy core memories can be colored by sadness. 

I found out my parents were getting a divorce on July 5, 1978, a month shy of my 12th birthday, and it marked the beginning of a long period of feeling like the rug had been pulled out from under me. It took a long time for me to find solid ground. 

And then about 30 years later, this happened (originally posted here last year).

My ex-husband and I finally and completely called it quits on our marriage on July 4, 2009. Afterwards, even though he was the one who pushed me off the steep cliff of indecision, he sent me a text wishing me a “Happy Independence Day.” And while that was kind of snarky thing to write, it was also kind of true.

I was finally free.

We had initially separated about seven months earlier and then agreed we would go to counseling together and try to find a way to make things work. But honestly, I don’t think I ever really thought that was going to happen. Neither of us ever got what we needed from the other.

And I keep going back to the notion of things we want versus things that we need. Because even though I initially wanted to stay married and keep our family intact at all costs, a divorce was the one thing I really needed.

I remember standing in the foyer of our house after he’d rushed over early that July 4 morning to confront me about something that had happened the night before. Something pretty stupid and not something you’d end your almost 18-year marriage over. But we were at the end stage where you didn’t really need much to snuff out whatever life was left in the relationship. It was like the bad fall that beats cancer to the punch.

As we stood there by the front door and he asked me if I was sure I wanted to end things, I remember thinking about how good his arms looked. He was wearing a sleeveless grey workout top and his biceps looked pretty great after months of living on his own during our separation and working out twice a day. It was hot out and he was kind of worked up from the heat and the situation and his tanned arms kind of glistened from the exertion of it all and I stood and admired how good he looked and thought how much I’d miss those biceps.

And then I looked into those beautiful blue eyes of his – the ones I looked into that rainy day all those years ago when we said “I do” and the ones I kissed, between and over his perfect brows countless times – and told him that, yes, our marriage was over.

And he walked out the door.

At the time, I didn’t even shed a tear. I was more terrified than sad about the rapid turn of events. It would take at least another year and countless hours on my therapist’s couch to really start feeling the sadness of what happened. To start burrowing a tunnel through the fortress I had built around my heart.

But over time, I’ve learned that the takeaway from my marriage is that being a part of a relationship shouldn’t cost you anything. Sure, you might have to barter and trade for certain things – you need to be willing to compromise – but you shouldn’t have to pony up, like, your dignity or self-respect just to be a part of a couple. That is a steep price to pay just so that you don’t have to be alone.

This revelation came in handy recently when I found myself seeing somebody who just couldn’t give me what I needed and my options were to go along with it but feel yucky about myself, or cut bait.

And because I can no longer compromise what I need out of a relationship or the way I have to be treated, I had to cool things off. We didn’t totally close the door, but we’re taking a break.

But I’m just not willing to sacrifice the freedom I’ve tasted to be a part of a couple. I’ve worked too hard trying to be true to who I am for that shizz.

I still miss the barbecues and fireworks we shared as a family and of course, those really nice biceps, but not how much it all cost me. I really want to be in a relationship – I know that now – but not at any price.

Freedom is too expensive to waste.

 

Ben & Jen Are Getting a Divorce. WTH?

This is me after I heard the news.

This is me after I heard the news.

The kids had dinner at their dad’s last night and I have to say, that’s one of the few upsides of divorce. I love that at least one night a week I don’t have to come up with an answer to “What’s for dinner?”

It’s also the one night a week I don’t have to struggle with not eating something, like the pasta I’m serving with the chicken meatballs or the udon noodles that go with the stir fry. I make something just for me.

So I opted for my usual single lady dinner – poached egg, faro and arugula – along with a glass of crisp Sancerre and sat down to eat at my island and thumb through a magazine while an NBC Nightly News story about Misty Copeland played in the background.

I must not have been paying attention because all of a sudden I heard the aggressive intro to Extra — you know, that daily TV show that celebrates all things Bieber and Kardashian — and was stopped in my tracks as I got up to switch the channel.

There was a time I watched Extra, along with its identical sister show Access Hollywood (which immediately follows), almost every night. I’d forget to turn on Jeopardy, which makes me feel less bad about having the TV on in the kitchen, and instead get sucked into celebrity gossip.

Don’t get me wrong: I love celebrity news as much as the next guy – I’ve subscribed to People and Entertainment Weekly for years. But I’m starting to feel bad about it. It’s bad karma feeding off famous people’s problems. And sometimes I worry that I know way more about Caitlyn Jenner than ISIS.

So I’m turning around to get up and switch on Jeopardy when I hear Mario Lopez break the news: Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck are getting a divorce.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOOO.”

I actually screamed that alone in my kitchen.

And I mean, I don’t know those guys or anything about their marriage but they at least appeared to have it all together. Of course, I know that that’s total bullshit. Some of us try very hard to make everything at least appear all bright and shiny on the outside. You never really knows what’s going on in anyone’s marriage.

I think what’s so disheartening is that if those two – who conceivably have access to all the babysitting help and marriage professionals and everything that might help keep a couple together – can’t figure out a way to make it work, then the rest of us are fucked.

I was so riled up I actually tweeted Mario Lopez regarding my distress.

I really want to believe in marriage but am starting to think maybe it’s impossible to spend decades with the same person. Or maybe it’s just that men and women are wired completely different. Maybe we should just stick to our own kind.

Coincidentally, the topic of marriage came up while I was sitting with a couple of girlfriends on the beach yesterday while our sons rode wave after wave on their boogie boards in the cold June ocean.

I was telling my friends – who are all a couple of years younger than me with younger children, to boot – that they were in such difficult places in their marriages. They’ve been with their husbands for almost two decades, have kids in or near their teenaged years, and it’s like their relationships are big ticking time bombs.

“You’ve just gotta get through it,” I counseled.

Then my very funny friend, who can get pretty sassy sometimes, says, “And then what?”

And there I paused. She stared.

“And then maybe everything will be okay?” I answered, giving my shoulders a shrug.

“It better fucking be,” she roared, “or I’m gonna have to write about it on that little blog of yours.”

We laughed for a while and then started talking about our kids or whatever else it is that a bunch of 40-something-year-old women talk about when sitting in a circle on the sand on a lovely summer afternoon.

But I don’t envy them. For as much as I write about not being a part of a couple, I know it’s a lot of fucking work. It requires a lot of energy to sustain a relationship. Maybe there’s something to be said for doing whatever the hell I want – I mean, within reason – and not having to answer to anyone.

The good news is that I woke up this morning to discover that Mario, too, shares in my sorrow over Jen and Ben’s split.

And my tweet got 68 favorites which impressed even my never-impressed 22yo son.

And my tweet got 68 favorites which impressed even my never-impressed 22yo son.

And I never thought I’d say this, but now I am TOTALLY rooting for Brad and Angie. #whoknew