How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

My oldest just graduated from a giant state university located in the South so you know what that means, right? It’s time to make hotel reservations for his sister’s graduation for next year. Exactly. How’d you guess?

She goes to the same school, which was convenient for her brother’s graduation this year because the kids and I could just crash at her apartment as most of her roommates had gone home for the summer. It was close to campus and cheap and worth the three nights I spent sleeping on a pullout couch and keeping shoes on my feet at all times. But when it’s her turn to don a cap and gown next year we are going to have to ante up and find another place to stay.

I had heard from other parents that booking hotel rooms within a 30-mile radius of the campus was a highly-competitive affair. I knew I’d have to get my game on if I was going to score a place to stay that wouldn’t require 45 minutes of driving and keeping my shoes on my feet at all times (I have a thing about walking barefoot in places that skeeve me out).

But I wasn’t quite sure what I needed to do. I never really developed a solid strategy. I didn’t realize, until it was too late, just how cutthroat I needed to be.

Here’s the thing: I can never really seem to rise to these types of occasions. It’s probably why my blog has yet to become the national sensation that I’d always intended it to be and why I’m still single. I just can’t seal the deal.

So I asked around. Sent some emails. Made some calls. Eventually, I made a list of the top 5 places I’d be willing to stay and noted when each would start taking reservations for May 2016.

And then I waited.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I only wanted to stay at a Hilton property so I could use/earn points, which narrowed my list down to 2 hotels. “No problem,” I thought.

I’d been calling the Hampton Inn every few days and the nice Southern person I would get at the other end of the line would tell me they hadn’t yet started taking reservations for next year’s graduation. “Well, do you know when that’s going to be?” I’d ask, and invariably I’d be told, “No, Ma’am,” and to keep checking back.

It seemed like a pretty laid-back affair and lacked any sense of urgency, which I took to mean it was no big deal. Like they’d be giving rooms away like Chinese babies (please see the movie “Juno” for further explanation).

So when I called the hotel again at the beginning of last week, I was pretty freaked out to discover that rooms had gone on sale the day before and were gone, gone, gone.

I tried to convey my sense of dismay, my complete outrage to the amiable person on the other end of the line but couldn’t really come up with any solid reason why that wasn’t fair, other than to lamely whine, “That’s not fair.”

“Okay, no problem,” I thought to myself. I’ll just be more on top of my game to nab rooms at the swankier Hilton Garden Inn. I knew they were opening reservations on Tuesday beginning at 10 a.m. and made appropriate reminders using all caps on my iPhone.

The appointed hour came that day and I quickly dialed the hotel’s main number and was greeted with a busy signal. And then I tried again. And again. Still busy.

After a few more tries, I dragged the future-graduate out of bed and enlisted her in dialing duties as well. We sat side-by-side at our kitchen table and time-after-time dialed the number, hit the speaker button, and were greeted by the busy signal.

About 10 minutes in, the phone on the other end started to ring. We screamed and I tried to calmly switch off the speaker and put the phone up to my ear and listen. It rang, and rang and rang. After about a minute-and-a-half, the phone went dead and a few seconds later, I heard the unmistakable beeping, indicating a dropped call.

My daughter and I stared at each other in disbelief and then went back to dialing.

Eventually, we began to get a little giddy.

“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” I shouted at the phone after the 20th busy signal using a terrible British accent . “IT IS I, AMY ELIZABETH BYRNES!”

“I WILL DE-TROY YOU!” yelled my daughter, imitating her 3yo cousin’s now-famous line we oft quote in our house sounding like robots.

Every once in a while, the phone would start to ring and we’d excitedly listen as it droned on and on, only to eventually cut off after a minute and 40 seconds.

We started noticing patterns like that.

“PLEASE,” I moaned, slightly hysterical as the phone rang in my ear, “don’t give me the 1:40.”

And then I heard the click on the other end.

We began to take note of how long we’d been furtively dialing our phones. How many attempts we’d made by certain points.

“I’m closing in on 100!” I reported. “I’m feeling good we’re getting in at 100!”

To which the busy signal said, “Fuck you.”

We confidently predicted success at 111 and then 222 but by 333 we were starting to lose a little faith in having a successful outcome.

“I wish I knew more about statistics or math,” I grumbled to my daughter at one point. “Isn’t this, like, a word problem or something? Isn’t this like trying to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a fucking Tootsie Pop?”

We sat at the table in our pajamas and called and called the hotel for well over an hour and we probably were greeted with the endless ringing over a dozen times. We went from making outrageous threats to the hotel staff – like driving down and going all White Walkers on them and shit – until we decided they could somehow hear us and were afraid to answer our calls. We then switched to pleading with the faceless hotel staff, promising to keep our rooms very clean and telling them I have very nice hair (we had pretty much lost our minds by then).

And then, at 11:27 a.m. – 87 minutes after we’d begun, someone picked up on the other end at my 408th attempt.

“HiHiHi!!” I shouted like a lunatic and started fumbling with my words. “I’d like to make a reservation for graduation next year!”

To which the woman at the other end amiably responded in a friendly Southern drawl, “I’m sorry but we just sold our last room for that weekend.”

Reader, I held it together. I used neither expletives nor raised voice to convey my dismay. I told her we’d been trying for an hour and 27 minutes and pictured her sitting at the front desk of some crappy hotel hundreds of miles away rolling her eyes at me. I asked if they had a waiting list or something, ANYTHING, to make me feel better. Hoping she could throw me some kind of bone for my efforts. But she merely suggested I try calling back between now and next May to see if there were any cancellations.

“It’s not fair,” I said meekly as I hung up the phone and faced my daughter in defeat.

In the end, I reserved two rooms at a Quality Inn about 20 minutes from main campus, just off the Interstate, that could also accommodate any pets I might be thinking about bringing with me that weekend. Their TripAdvisor reviews are less than stellar but it beats staying even further away or sleeping in my car.

I guess I’ll check in sporadically over the next 10 months to see if anything opens up and I am on one waiting list at a place I initially turned my nose up at but now am treating it like it’s the Ritz Carlton or something. Getting in will be like winning the lottery.

Once again, I don’t really have a moral for this story. I don’t really know what I would have done better in retrospect. I guess I was reminded that sometimes, life isn’t fucking fair and that sometimes, they forget to put that gooey center inside the Tootsie Pop.

Amy shares way too much about herself at ‘A’ My Name is Amy. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter@AMyNameisAmy.

Good-Bye Pizza. Hello Kale.

trader Joe's watermark

Shhh. Can you hear them calling my name?

Most days for me begin the same: the iPhone next to my head comes to life at 6:05 and I struggle to remember – for the millionth time – what I need to do to make the thing shut the fuck up. Generally, I tap the screen to snooze it and promptly fall back to sleep. This happens another three or four times until I see that it’s almost 7:00 and need to get downstairs to make breakfast for my dear children. If I have snoozed away valuable early-morning minutes, there’s no time to brew a cup of coffee and get back into bed to write in my journal for a spell. I do like to squeeze this activity in a few days a week and take a very Bridget Jones-approach to documenting the amount of alcohol I’ve consumed the day before and my perpetually stagnant love life.

But if I’ve frittered those precious minutes away, I begin the day by first ascertaining like Nicole Kidman in “Before I Go to Sleep” where the hell I am (I don’t know why I must begin each day disoriented) and, once I’ve realized that I am in the same bedroom I’ve been waking up in for the last 12 years, I get up to use the toilet and – most mornings unless I just can’t handle the truth – get on the scale.

This is always done after urinating but before drinking anything and always while wearing the tank top/underwear combo I sleep in. Scientist that I am, I like to keep all the variables not only consistent but also as lightweight as possible. Every ounce counts.

When I am being really good about what I’m eatingsaying “yes” to Greek yogurt and kale and “no” to all the beautiful, salty things sold at Trader Joe’s – I am anxious to see if my weight reflects my culinary sacrifices. I mean, if I am resisting the siren call from the plastic tub of Whole Foods chocolate chip cookies in my pantry, there better be some fucking payoff. If I can’t make love to each and every one of those gorgeous cookies, I need to know my ass somehow just got a little bit smaller.

I am the kind of person who needs to weigh myself daily to help keep me honest. I need something to reign me in when I am standing in front of my pantry and eyeing the open bag of Trader Joe’s honey sesame cashews. When the news on the scale is bad, I am more apt to move away from the pantry and just eat some baby carrots instead. However, when the scale tells me I’m moving in the right direction, I sometimes tell myself that I deserve a reward, like I am a good doggie and just sat on command. Slip me a treat, wouldja?

But mostly, knowing how much I weigh helps me stay on the right track.

But if I’m premenstrual – which I have been for the last two months (if you don’t understand this phenomenon, please discuss with any woman you know in her mid-to-late-40s/early 50s while slowly backing away from her if she’s holding anything remotely sharp) – all bets are off. I not only need those TJoe’s sweet-and-salty nuts but a cookie chaser to wash them down and don’t even think about getting in between me and those snacks or I will press my thumbs into your eye sockets and crush your skull Game-of-Thrones-style.

The other element that usually helps keep me on track that’s been missing lately is the now-famous Girl Whisperer. For a couple of years he sat on my couch and encouraged my girlfriends and I to cut out the sugar and add the protein yadda yadda yadda while we squatted and lunged around the room. He’d arrive on Monday mornings and ask us about our weekends while assessing – subtly, I’ll give him that – our bellies. And then he’d ask us to tell him what we ate. Since I am a terrible liar, I would generally refuse to tell him the extent of my naughtiness. Maybe I’d admit to a cookie after dinner but I’d never let him know about the bag of veggie sticks I ate in bed. I just hated to let him down.

But, as many of you guys know, my friend The Whisperer has been out of commission for months undergoing treatment for cancer and we’ve been left to our own devices for staying in shape. Actually, we’ve been great at maintaining our workouts a couple of times and week but my eating, which I really kept together for a couple of months, fell apart somewhere around March. Going to Hong Kong was kind of the beginning of the end. I still drink yogurt smoothies religiously for breakfast but I ate a sandwich for lunch on Friday and devoured a bowl of chips and guacamole at dinner that night. I never would have eaten any of those things a year ago.

So in a come-to-Jesus-moment, I hopped on the scale Saturday morning in an attempt to get back on track. I got up and peed and stood on the scale while saying a little prayer and when I looked down, I saw a number on my scale that I have not seen since the second trimester of my last pregnancy. Or when I was a sophomore in college.

It was a sad, sad day in Amyville. Just in time for swimsuit season, I am fat as can be and cannot fit into shorts or button down shirts and am currently relegated to wearing stretchy exercise clothing and old skirts from The Gap.

But here’s the good news: The Whisperer is coming back, like Lazarus from the dead (but that’s not my story to tell). Starting tomorrow, he will be back on my couch and talking about the evils of sugar and joy of protein. And egg whites. The dude is always talking about egg whites. But I can’t wait.

In the weeks leading up to his return, I’ve joked with a bunch of the ladies who work out with him about how much we worried about him seeing how we’ve kind of fallen apart in his absence. We’re so worried about him seeing how we look. Of course, given the circumstances, that is ludicrous thinking. Here we are, generally fit and healthy people, fretting about what a guy – who’s just endured months of having his head radiated and body pumped with chemo – thinks about our bloated bellies.

So to celebrate his return, I am heading out this afternoon to meet an old high school chum at a very hip and trendy place that’s known for its outrageously good pizza. They even make one with Nutella. I will say good-bye to carbohydrates the proper way, with a glass of two or wine while eating every bit of crust off my plate.

And when I get on my scale tomorrow, I will know for sure that the only direction those numbers are going from there on in, is down.

It’s the least I can do for my Whisperer.

Amy shares way too much about herself at ‘A’ My Name is Amy. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter@AMyNameisAmy.

 

 

Volunteer Rehab

napkins-stop-me-before-i-volunteer-again-1My little guy and I were talking about something the other night when he turned and asked, “Mom, why don’t you ever volunteer for anything for me?”

“What do you mean, dude?” I asked, knowing full well what he meant. I could smell where this conversation was going.

“You, like, never help out at my school.”

And, since there wasn’t really much more I could say to that very astute observation, I lowered my head and said, “Busted.”

Of course, what I wanted to point out to my littlest boy was the sheer scope and breadth of my volunteering history, beginning when his older siblings were very young. It was as their overactive mommy that I cut my teeth on the ins-and-outs of cupcake making and pumpkin picking while they were still in preschool. By the time my third kid went to nursery school I was helping to produce the monthly school newsletter.

Cupcakes, newsletters, pumpkin picking … those were just the gateway activities to the more heavy-duty volunteering I got mixed up in as the kids got older.

I moved on to some light pumpkin seed counting with the first grade and pouring juice for the various holiday parties. Later, I served countless years as the kids’ class mom and rode in school buses to chaperone field trips to museums and local productions of The Nutcracker. One year, I even helped hot glue ornaments signed by all of the children in the class onto a wire wreath as a Christmas gift to their teacher (I was just the trusty sidekick in that scenario).

I chaired school fundraisers, like luncheons and book fairs, and eventually worked my way up to serve as co-president of the Parent Teacher Organization the year I gave birth to my fourth child. That was also the year my left eye twitched uncontrollably for months.

As the kids got older, my volunteering extended to overnight activities. I spent a few days in the January of each of my three older children’s seventh grade year chaperoning a trip to a state park about an hour away where I went snowshoeing for the first time, learned survival skills and discovered, most importantly, that an American Girl sleeping bag was not intended to be used by a 40-something American girl.

I also went along to Washington, D.C. when my girls were in eighth grade respectively and learned how to herd wily teenagers around our nation’s capitol and watched teachers break up some harmless grinding going down in the back of our bus on the ride home.

Dudes, I was even a Girl Scout leader for, like, five or six years and am proud to say that I not only went camping on more than one occasion, but only lost one scout in all that time. I also misplaced one of my own children during a scouting activity but that’s a story for another day (or until I can send that child to receive the proper therapy he deserves as part of his recovery).

I even had a magnet on my refrigerator — back when I had a refrigerator I could stick magnets to — that read, “Stop me before I volunteer again.”

And to top it all off, I served on our school board for three years, which taught me that being an elected official was much scarier than just regular volunteering as your fellow parents are quick to turn on you when they feel you want to take away one of their fifth grade teachers or something. At least that was back in the day before Facebook groups became a Petri dish for parental outrage.

But then I had that fourth kid. And got divorced. And started working full-time. And instead of saying “yes” all the time, I started to say “no.” Instead of feeling compelled to sign my name up to do something when a sheet went around at a meeting, I’d resist the urge and sheepishly pass it along to my neighbor.

I just had too much on my plate.

Eventually, I stopped feeling guilty about not volunteering to, say, make a dinner or help starving children in Africa. I was no longer convinced that if I didn’t step up, things wouldn’t get done.

And that thinking was fine until it wasn’t.

Until the people around me were raising money to improve the technology at our high school or helping out weekly at our local soup kitchen or bringing books to at risk kids. I started to remember how good it felt to be a part of something. To help organize or raise money or just hot glue something for a cause that was important to me.

A lot has changed in five years. Things are hectic right now with all four kids living back at home for the summer. But when there are only two kids living under my roof who are capable of dressing and feeding themselves and one is old enough to drive, I’m not as overwhelmed as I used to be. I mean, I still forget shit all the time. But I’m starting to think that’s just me.

Probably right when I was having this major epiphany, an email arrived in my inbox trying to get folks to help out with the annual middle school art show and quickly, before I could over think it, I signed up to help.

And then I promptly forgot, that is until I got the reminder email this morning from the art teacher thanking me for volunteering and asking that I show up in the cafeteria around 10:30 to help take the artwork down off the walls.

“Shit,” I thought when I saw it and immediately started coming up with reasons why I couldn’t help.

“What will Facebook do without me?” I worried.

A short time later, I was showered, dressed and engaged in very pleasant conversation while pulling pastel and watercolor masterpieces off the walls lining the school’s tiled hallways. The school was warm and buzzed with end-of-the-year energy as teachers moved up and down the halls during their breaks.

I ran into the music teacher who’d taught all of my kids how to play band instruments over the years while having a whole passel of her own children. I waved “hi” to the school nurse, who let one of my kids spend an inordinate amount of time on her cot when things were pretty rocky here at home. And I exchanged pleasantries with the older kids’ fifth grade and language arts teachers who both spent some time in our kitchen helping to ensure whatever the kids learned the year before didn’t slide out of their ears into the sand over the summer months.

And I was in the school for, like, an hour. Ninety minutes, tops.

But seeing all those familiar faces of all of the teachers my children have had over the years reminded me why I spent all that time pouring juice and selling raffle tickets. Sure, I needed a reason to get dressed and get out of the house back then but it also let me really get to know so many of those wonderful teachers and they, in turn, got to know my children. And in a way, it made me feel a part of the process.

As I was pulling masking tape off the wall, the bell rang and middle schoolers exploded out of their classrooms. They flooded the hallway and hopped over the piles of artwork we’d been setting on the ground. Some particularly sweaty gentlemen came in from their outdoors gym class and I noticed one happened to be my very own 12 year old.

“What are you doing here?” he asked when he saw me frantically waving to him in the hallway.

“I’m VOLUNTEERING,” I shouted.

“Oh,” he said as he began to walk a little quicker past me. “That’s weird.”

And just like that, my baby learned to be careful for what he wished. He might have thought he wanted to have his mom hanging around his school doing stuff, but his older sister – who once watched in horror as her mother did the Macarena while chaperoning a dance – could have told him there was nothing more awkward than having your mom hovering around all the time. She is so not cool. She’s kinda weird even.

I’m thinking I should see if they need anyone to help out at field day. This could be really fun.

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That Time I Missed the Bus (Literally)

keep-calm-and-don-t-miss-the-bus-5I woke up yesterday morning to face a big “to-do” list. We were planning to leave early the next day to drive the seven hours or so south to attend my oldest child’s college graduation and I had shiz that needed to get done.

Did you just read that? My oldest child, my first-born — the one who taught me how hard it was to be a mom and how much I loved it — is about to become a college graduate (god fucking willing).

Where did the time go?

But this is not about that.

I had cookies to make, clothes to pack — especially to ensure that my little guy didn’t show up for the commencement ceremony in his typical sports shorts/soccer jersey combo — and I had to get my ass to the DMV to replace the driver’s license that was stolen out of my walled like a month ago.

There was also the matter of the license plate that recently, and mysteriously, just dropped off the front of the $400 vehicle my teenager drives nowadays and I should probably be happy that that’s the only thing that’s fallen off that beauty.

So I got the kids off to school, did a little solo exercise routine in my family room that included singing and dancing to Prince’s “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” (PS: I killed it) and jumped in the shower.

Following my abbreviated beauty routine, it occurred to me that I might need shit out of my daughter’s car to replace the missing plate — say the vehicle registration or insurance card. Or maybe I’d need the plate that remained screwed to the back of the car. So I drove to the high school and, reluctantly, switched cars and drove to the local DMV using the tips of my right toes to press the accelerator as the power seats have long since stopped working and are permanently frozen in place for a driver with legs significantly longer than my own.

So by the time I got to the dreaded DMV with my Ziploc bagged filled with all the “points” required to prove that I was who I was, it was later than I really had wanted to get there and there was a long line of folks filling out various forms along a counter where I squeezed in to do the same.

I don’t know about you, but when I have any doings at the motor vehicle agency I start acting like I’ve committed a crime or joined the service. I want to answer every question asked to me with, “Sir, yes sir!” and a salute. So I start going into my “We’re in the Army now” routine when the phone in my bag starts to ring. I look down and see it’s my mom and look back up to answer the imposing woman behind the counter asking me questions.

Then the phone starts to ring again.

And again.

And I’m really starting to sweat, wondering if my mom wanted to talk about something more than the graduation or then maybe if there had been an accident.

I had to run outside to check the license plate number and add to one of the numerous forms I needed to fill out and when I came back in, saw my younger sister had texted me, “Hey, are you here?”

“What is Betsy doing at the DMV?” I wondered, but scurried back onto the line to finish my business with the lady behind the counter.

The phone, of course, started to buzz again and instead of ignoring, I press that magic iPhone button that lets you send a quick message that you can’t talk right now.

To which my mother responds, “This can’t wait.”

“She’s usually not so aggressive,” I think, and move over to another line.

And then she texts, “We are headed to NY,” and I have one of those experiences generally reserved for dreams, you know, the kind where you show up for a test naked or that you forgot to study?

I forgot that at that moment I was supposed to be at a rest area along the Garden State Parkway to catch a bus into New York City to see a show that my mother bought tickets for months ago. She even asked me last weekend if I’d found out yet what time I needed to be there to get on the bus and I brushed her off, reminding her it was only Saturday at that point. That I just hadn’t gotten that far yet on my calendar.

I think she knew better. She knew whom she was dealing with.

Needless to say — following a mini heart attack — I finished my business at the DMV and started frantically Googling mass transportation options to get me into the city by 2 p.m. (it was close to 11 a.m. at that point and anyone who has had to journey into New York from the Tri-State area knows you need to give yourself a lot of time to get from here to there).

I was all set to jump on  a bus that would get into the city about 15 minutes before curtain time and figured I would just run from Port Authority to the nearby theater district when I made the horrifying discovery that the show — the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I,” — was playing at Lincoln Center. Fucking Lincoln Center about 20-something blocks north of the bus station.

And then I began to despair. My mother had gone way out of her way to get me that ticket to be a part of that bus trip into the city — along with two of my sisters and some of my mom’s pals — that I couldn’t just not go. Even offering to pay her back didn’t seem right. I had been an asshole, like, how could I have not remembered such a lovely day that awaited me?

So naturally, as I do in these situations, I did the one thing I’ve done quite often over the past few years. I called my gal pal across the street and asked her what she thought I should do. She’s like the Kissenger to my Ford — although much more chic — and always knows just what to do.

“You’ve got a lot on your plate,” she immediately commiserated after I verbally vomited what had happened and my distress. “You’ve got kids moving out and moving home and the long weekend ahead of you. You just forgot,” she consoled.

“You’re going to have to drive,” she instructed. “It shouldn’t be too terrible.”

So that’s what I did. I jumped in my car in my DMV outfit and drove the 90-minute drive into Manhattan’s Upper West Side and easily parked under Lincoln Center with enough time to spare to join the group for a lovely lunch.

And the show was magnificent. I super-love Kelli O’Hara, who plays the role of the intrepid Anna who travels to Siam to be a teacher for the king’s many children. My mom and I had seen her years earlier in the Lincoln Center-revival of “South Pacific,” which was equally wonderful and provided the additional excitement of getting to stand behind Angelica Houston on the ladies room line at intermission.

I sat next to my mom in that darkened theater and kicked myself for even considering for a moment the notion of forfeiting that experience in favor of staying home and walking around Trader Joe’s.

Of course, the ride home sucked. It took a legit hour to get from Lincoln Center to the Lincoln Tunnel entrance. I mean, it’s only about 20 blocks south. And it was rush hour so things didn’t get much better when I hit the New Jersey Turnpike on the other end.

I still don’t know what to blame my absent-mindedness on. Maybe I’ve got a lot on my mind right now or maybe I’m just plain stupid. I’m really open to that. Or maybe I have “brain fog,” one of peri-menopause’s many exciting features that accompany sweating through my underwear and the cute bloat around my midsection.

But whatever the culprit was, I’m glad I didn’t pass on the opportunity to sit next to my mom in a darkened theater under the spell of beautiful music.

You can’t buy that at Trader Joe’s.

Memory Hoarder: How to Let Go

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In a moment of inspiration – or perhaps after watching one too many episodes of Fixer Upper – I decided to start clearing things out of my kitchen cabinets and basement last weekend.

All I can say is: Holy hoarder.

In the span of about 24 hours, I uncovered the following items:

  • A dozen slightly-yellowed cloth dinner napkins – monogrammed of course – which I received as a gift from my college roommate at my bridal shower almost 25 years ago.
  • The portacrib my third child slept in for the first 18 months of her life, set up alongside my bed in which her dad and I would wake to find her standing with her chin on the railing staring at us.
  • The copper mixing bowl my former mother-in-law gave me years ago when I fancied myself a younger, poorer version of Martha Stewart whipping soft peaks of egg whites and cream at a moment’s notice.
  • About a decade’s-worth of children’s costumes – a doggie, a sexy Jasmine, a Pink Lady, Nintendo’s Mario, Cleopatra, Max from Where the Wild Things Are and the cutest little Itsy Bitsy Spider number my baby wore as a toddler.
  • All the Halloween decorations that now have become de rigueur in neighborhoods all over town (which I had resisted for so long until my poor children, desperate for a yard full of horror, wore me down) – giant rubber hands with stakes to appear as if they had erupted from the earth; foam tombstones that read “RIP” and “Izzy Dead” that I could never get to stand up in the grass; bags of cobwebs we’d string along the shrubs at the front of the house and a string of tiny orange lights we hung around the front door to light the way for all those trick-or-treaters.
  • A crib mattress. Can’t remember what happened to the actual crib that all four babies slept in. Some for long after they were babies (#sorrymaddie).
  • The two remaining floral Tiffany plates that were part of a larger set given to me at that long ago bridal shower by my high school friend and former post-college roommate who left this world way too soon. I still can’t believe she is gone and struggle with ousting those pretty plates.
  • Four child-sized ski helmets, passed down, lent out, plastered with stickers from ski trips from long ago and most probably now, many years later, outdated.
  • A few boxes filled with so much of my ex-husband’s warm weather wardrobe – circa 2008 – leaving me to wonder what the man had left to wear the summer after he moved out and left it all behind.
  • Remnants from well-meaning projects, begun with gusto and lots of credit card expenses that never quite saw their way through to completion. Empty bottles from all the limoncello I was going to brew for friends one Christmas. Bolts of fabric for chair covers and pillows that never quite happened. And mason jars. Lots of mason jars. For what, I could not tell you.
  • The innards of a dog bed. Two dogs ago.
  • The floral-covered ottoman that was in the sunroom of our first house. Two houses ago.
  • The well-loved Brio train table I stored in hopes that it would one day be enjoyed by my many, many grandchildren only to discover that some errant graffiti artist drew a nude woman on the front. To the artist’s credit, the octopus woman does resemble something out of Picasso’s Blue Period. Including her breasts.
  • The framed poster of a tomato I brought to hang on my dorm room wall freshman year of college exactly 237 years ago.
  • A cardboard box full of trophies. Baseball. Softball. Tennis. Dance. Mostly to be filed under: Everyone’s a winner. A few standouts. Swim team MVP. Coach’s award. Those I put aside, unable to scrap just yet.
  • Serving trays. Lots of cutlery. Baskets galore. A rug. A nightstand. A metallic puffer coat I bought at Old Navy for $7 and wore once (probably the right call there). Shin guards. Tiny tennis skirts and matching panties. A Rubbermaid box full of jerseys from our town rec teams – baseball, basketball, soccer and later, lacrosse – and more blue and white sports shorts than one family could possibly need. Packages of plate hangers. A dog cage. Crutches just right for Tiny Tim.

I am going ahead and throwing a lot of stuff away — like the crib mattress and broken items. But have a hard time tossing perfectly good items so have tasked my 17yo with organizing a garage sale in a couple of weeks to help ease my conscience. I need to hurry though because last time our garage was really cluttered we found a cat and now she lives in my house and owns a Snuggie (we actually found a garbage bag full of those, too).

I had my girlfriend across the street come over to check out all the crap that had migrated to our garage and thought she was going to go into shock at the sight of it all. She’s a purger. A minimalist. She’s always cleaning something out and has about three items hanging from the rod in her closet. I had enlisted her to help me let go of all that stuff. Things I thought I needed as proof. As if all the memories living in my head and my heart weren’t enough.

She can be brutal.

I pulled a hand-painted glass cake dome out of one of my kitchen cabinets and as I stood atop a stool and admired it – remembering where it had come from and how I treasured it 20-something years ago – she walked over and plucked it out of my hands and set it down on the table along with other items to be weeded out of my house.

“Say good-bye,” she said as she walked away.

And so I did.

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The Best Part

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Om.

In an effort to engage my children in conversation from an early age, I’d often go around the dinner table at night and ask my people what the best part of their day and the worst part of the day were. The “highs” and the “lows,” you might say. Generally, I’d get a lot of shoulder shrugs and eye rolls from my baby dolls, but this never deterred me. I’d press, “What was the best thing that happened to you today, buddy?” and maybe I’d get a, “Playing kickball at recess,” or, “Lunch,” and that was when they were still in grammar school.

Forget high school.

Usually though, the real conversations would come at night, in the dark, maybe after the millionth reading of Tikki Tikki Tembo when my child — softened by a tummy full of chicken nuggets and a long, hot shower — would start to open up and share some of the events of his day. Usually the worsts.

I miss those moments.

Nowadays I’ll get a call when someone has something sad to report and a text to share good news. But it’s just not the same.

I played the “Best Part/Worst Part” game a lot when I visited Hong Kong with my two younger kids last month. But honestly, there were really no “Worst Parts” on that trip. The challenge was sifting through all the cool stuff we did to pick the best “Best Part.”

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We took the tram up to the top of Victoria’s Peak.

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We ate delicious dim sum.

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We pretended we were Buddhists.

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We swam in the pools of a waterfall.

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We had cocktails overlooking the lights of the city.

I think the “Best Part” of the trip for me was that of all the really cool things we did — jumping off a junk boat, riding waves on the South China Sea, swimming in the pools of a waterfall, spinning on a rollercoaster at an amusement park — my 12yo son’s “Best Part” of the trip was our visit to see the Big Buddha on Lantau Island.

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Tian Tan Buddha at the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island, Hong Kong.

It’s actually called Tian Tan Buddha and was built a little over 20 years old. The 200-foot-tall bronze statue sits high atop 268 steps and is part of the Po Lin Monastery. Around 20 percent of Hong Kong people are Buddhists so even though it’s a tourist destination, we got to see the reverence the site inspires among those who practice that religion.

Luckily the day was overcast making the 200+ step-ascent a little less terrible.

Luckily the day was overcast making the 200+ step-ascent a little less terrible.

Approaching the Big Buddha.

Approaching the Big Buddha.

The kids carefully watched monks walking around the grounds and Buddhists lighting incense using long, wooden sticks, placing offerings of fruit at temple altars or kneeling with heads bowed in prayer. As we walked up the long staircase to see the buddha up close, my son had a lot of questions about Buddhism.

Burning the long sticks of incense.

Burning the long sticks of incense.

Offerings in one of the temples.

Offerings in one of the temples.

Feeling it at Big Buddha.

Feeling it at Big Buddha.

“Mom, didn’t you used to be a Buddhist?” he asked.

“Did you say Buddhist or nudist?” I joked, as I’ve been neither and since I really don’t like taking off my clothes, would only consider the former.

I had offered to get each of the kids a souvenir from the trip and while my 17yo daughter chose a midnight blue silk robe festooned with colorful flowers and birds, my son chose a mini Buddha to bring home. Given there was a fair amount of weaponry — wooden swords and daggers — to have selected as his Hong Kong keepsake, I was pleased that my baby chose something so peaceful. It speaks to who the kid is.

Sampling souvenir options.

Sampling souvenir options.

While we were on Lantau Island that day, we had two other adventures. First, we hopped back on the bus — the same buses that took us to the Buddha from the ferry we took from Honk Kong Island — to check out Tai O fishing village. We careened along the windy road across the mountains to the edge of the island to the bustling tourist destination.

It’s pretty much a narrow alleyway you walk through to be assaulted with the sights, sounds and smells — wow, the smells — of a Chinese fishing village. I felt like we were on a movie set. The path was jammed with predominantly Asian tourists and lined on either side with shops and stalls displaying am impressive array of shit you can do with sea life. It hung dried from lines. It swam in colorful plastic buckets. It got formed into a ball and fried. It was beyond fascinating although some people in our party could not get out of there fast enough.

We hopped in taxis to get back to the monastery because we wanted to take a gondola that would head us back to our friends’ flat in Stanley.

As we approached the ticket counter for the gondolas, we saw that the line divided into regular ticket holders and those who upgraded to the “crystal cabin.” The grown ups looked at each other and I was like, “Crystal. Totally.”

I read that to mean “VIP.” I did that once for a ride on the London Eye. In that case, I think some booze might have been included and the upgrade expedited our trip to the front of the line.

In China, the upgrade brought instead a higher level of terror to our journey over the mountains and briefly over the South China Sea as the floor bottom of the gondola was glass. You could see straight down.

The secret to getting through about 25 terrifying minutes is to let go, which is what I did. Instead of imagining the cable snapping and our car plummeting through the treetops far below; or focusing on the fact that this would all be going down in China and isn’t that where lots of crazy things happen; I sat back and took in the breathtaking scenery we were gliding through.

Obviously, we survived.

It’s been about a month since we’ve returned from this life-changing trip and we’re already talking about where we’d like to go next.

My son came home from his first day back at school after Hong Kong and as he dipped his cookie into a glass of milk asked, “Hey Mom, can we go to England for spring break next year?”

And whether we can swing that or not a year from now, I love that that’s how he’s thinking.

Big.

That’s the best part for me.

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My Hong Kong Trip, Part 2

 

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When we last left this blogger, she had staggered off a 16-hour flight, spit out an expletive and proceeded to tour Hong Kong with her expat neighbors along with her two youngest children.

The China trip had always seemed so far away because we booked it so far in advance. I am usually pretty last-minute and willy-nilly about everything in my life so making plane reservations for the vacation six months ahead of time was a completely foreign concept (and really, setting the tone for the entire adventure). But we pulled the trigger in October, bought the tickets, and then started counting the days.

It turns out, I am not a great counter because all of a sudden — somewhere around mid-March — I realized we were scheduled to leave about two weeks hence and had done nothing to plan our itinerary. Zippo. I reached out to my girlfriend, who moved to Hong Kong last summer with her family, to ask her if she had any ideas and she messaged back, “Actually, what do you think about this?”

We were just a little busy.

We were just a little busy.

It was like a dream come true. We literally just had to get our asses over to the other side of the world, and our friends had made plans for the rest. It was like being on a tour or something.

The best part about the trip – well, one of the best parts about the trip – was that we had locals as our very own tour guides. And we were their first visitors, so things were still relatively new for them. It wasn’t like, “Oh, there’s that giant Buddha again (*yawn*).” They were as excited as we were.

Because we were with locals who don’t own a car, we not only got to experience the thrill of riding in a Hong Kong taxi, but we got ourselves some Octopus cards (Hong Kong’s equivalent of NYC’s MetroCard) and rode all sorts of public transportation, like the rollercoaster double-decker buses, the crazy little green minibuses and the MTR (or subway) all over the island. We also took a couple of gondola rides, but that’s another story.

We jammed a lot in during our week there, including breathtaking hikes, yummy dim sum, foot rubs, a twisty-turny rollercoaster ride above the South China Sea, a junk boat tour and a visit to the aforementioned Giant Buddha. And we ate at some outstanding restaurants but did manage to have a brush with some of China’s creepier food choices. Never — I repeat — never order a chicken Caesar salad for your lunch at a Chinese beach snack bar. Shiver.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights:

Hiking the Dragon’s Back

Since our friends moved to Hong Kong, they’ve posted lots of pictures on social media of amazing hikes they’ve taken around the island with their three young sons. I had indicated that we’d love to do some as well during our trip. So when I went to my local Athleta store to buy some fresh new tops for sightseeing and hiking (a goodwill gesture towards the Chinese people so that they would not subjected to seeing me in an item pulled from my old pile of stinky, pit-stained workout tops), I told the very enthusiastic sales woman that I didn’t anticipate any serious exertion. “They’ve got young kids,” I told her, “so we’re really just going to be going for walks and not quote-unquote ‘hiking.'”

So, it turns out that those expat friends of mine are fucking hiking with their kids. Like, strenuous stuff. Our first hike was the famous Dragon’s Back – named for the way the mountains the trail traverses resemble one of those fire-breathing creatures — which is part of the Hong Kong Trail. We climbed eight or nine miles of hills and steps, and it was kinda hot and we were kinda tired from the time change and maybe a tad dehydrated but then we looked around at the drop-dead gorgeous scenery and shut the hell up.

 Hitting the Beach at Big Wave Bay

The Dragon’s Back trail ends with about 1,000 steps down (literally) to Big Wave Bay, which is where we crashed (literally again)  for the rest of the afternoon. Who knew China had beaches, much less boogie boarding? Oh, and shark nets. That’s a thing.

Walking Around SoHo

We spent Easter morning in the SoHo section of Central — the big city on Hong Kong Island — and walked around a little after brunch.

Sailing Around the Island on a Junk Boat 

Later that day we walked down to Stanley Pier, right down the road from our friends’ flat, and boarded our very own junk boat. When my girlfriend told me before we left that they had made reservations on a junk boat, I envisioned we’d be on one of those old-fashioned Chinese-y sailboats with the red sails. You know, one of these deals:

Seen from our junk boat.

What I thought was a junk boat, as seen from our junk boat.

But, no. We boarded a lovely two-level sea vessel replete with beanbag chairs for lounging and a crew to make us dinner and sail us around the island. We stopped for a while off Big Wave Bay — outside the shark nets, I might add — to do a little swimming. Beer totally helped get me past the threat of sharks or the very large, red jellyfish we kept an eye on. As my girlfriend would say — and I began to follow suit — about a thousand times while we were there whenever we encountered something not-very-American, “Welcome to Hong Kong.”

Victoria Harbor Light Show

After dinner and a competitive game of Uno, we headed to the north side of the island to see the famous Symphony of Lights show. Asian countries — admirably, in my opinion — have a thing for lights. Like, the more, the better. This holds true in Hong Kong where all the crazy tall skyscrapers lining the harbor light up as the sun goes down and then at 8:00 each night, laser lights stream from the top and sweep across the harbor for the light show.

This is totally not my video. Thank you, YouTube.

Honestly, we had a hard time — sitting there on our junk boat in the middle of the choppy harbor — gauging just when the show started or stopped. We were a little underwhelmed. But we happened to catch the show a few nights later from a restaurant high above the city, and it seemed a lot better. But who cares? It was a spectacular setting.

Oh, and there was a full moon.

But Wait, There’s More …

I think we’re going to need a Part 3. There’s so much more to show and tell you about. We still haven’t even gotten to the Big Buddha, the insane gondola ride over mountains and the South China Sea or all the smelly fishing village we visited. Not to mention all the toilets I took pictures of. No, we’re going to need to do this again.

Stay tuned.

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My Hong Kong Trip, Part One

The kids and I at the top of Victoria Peak.

The kids and me at the top of Victoria Peak overlooking the harbor.

In the ten days or so since I returned from my spring break trip to Hong Kong, I have experienced the following: searing jet lag; a day-long road trip to visit my father who lives a two-hour drive south; lunch and a visit with my mom who lives much closer; the theft of my purse and wallet while walking at a local park with a friend and subsequent scramble to prevent said thief from making any further purchases beyond the $1,500 spent at Target and Lowe’s or from buying, say, a new car in my name; a visit with college friends in Brooklyn that gave me the impression I’d stumbled into an episode of “Girls” cast 25 years in the future in which I played the schlubby pal from New Jersey; and yet another college tour as the big decision day approaches for my 17yo requiring a total of about eight hours of driving, the consumption of two bacon cheeseburgers in 24 hours and lots of smiling.

I’m tired, and I don’t even have a banana in my house at the moment, much less ingredients to produce something for dinner later this evening.

I’ve also had a Jiminy Cricket of a hard time trying to wrap my arms around my Hong Kong experience to tell you about it. It hasn’t been easy summing it all up in 1,000 words. I think it may need to be done in a couple of posts, so I’ll begin with some overall impressions of the trip along with my thoughts on combining drugs and alcohol for air travel (spoiler alert: I’m a fan).

It seems trite, referring to a vacation as a “trip of a lifetime.” Like, until recently, I couldn’t have really told you what that meant. I mean, aren’t vacations — by their very definition — all memorable?

But now I know, some destinations stand head-and-shoulders above the rest. Like Hong Kong.

As we prepared to board our plane departing out of JFK and had our boarding passes scanned one final time, I actually started getting a little hysterical as the kids and I started down the ramp, toting our backpacks, neck pillows and assorted reading and viewing material.

“We’re going to China,” I cackled and proceeded to laugh uncontrollably as we neared the plane door until my 17yo told me to calm down. “You’re gonna get us arrested or something,” she hissed. Ever the alarmist.

But in the days leading up to our departure, I had begun feeling a little unhinged about flying half way around the world with my two youngest children. It had just seemed so – I don’t know – BIG. I mean, who goes to China for spring break?

Not a lot of people in my neck of the woods.

I know this because the nearby Billabong store was keeping track of where all of its customers were traveling over their various school breaks. The store had propped a piece of poster board behind the register divided into boxes bearing the names of the different destinations, and they used tally marks to keep track of how many customers were headed in each direction. We’d stopped in the store a few times before our own trip – to pick up a bathing suit and some shorts for the 12yo – and had mentioned on the first visit that we were flying to Hong Kong, which the Billabong folks happily included on their getaway chart. It seemed the majority of spring breakers were headed to Florida, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico but there were some other pretty exotic destinations listed on that poster board – like Ireland, Ecuador and Fiji.

As of the day before we departed, there remained only one check mark under Hong Kong.

But we made our way towards the back of the plane and settled in and one Valium and two (or maybe three) free plastic cups of red wine later (pour moi), we were landing in Hong Kong (my strategy for mixing drugs and alcohol to get through the long flight was to keep my intoxication level just under Judy Garland territory, so I refrained from singing).

Upon my return, the Number One Question – other than “How was the food?” – has been “How was the flight?” I’ll be honest, sitting for 16 hours in coach is no picnic, and I’m a lazy person who generally enjoys sitting around and doing nothing. Although I am not a tall person, my legs started freaking out at one point and I had to get up and walk around and perform some light calisthenics while waiting for the lavatory.

But for as kind of shitty as the flight was, I’d do it again in a second just to see our friends’ faces as we made our way out of baggage claim to where the five of them stood anxiously waiting for us.

It was an amazing moment and had I not been so delusional at that point, I might have thought of something more emotional/sentimental to say to them other than the first thing that popped out of my mouth, which was, “We’re in fucking China.”

And that brings us to Hong Kong.

It. Was. So. Worth. It.

(And visiting Asia was never on my bucket list of places to go. Who knew?)

Being cooped up on a plane for 32 hours (look, I’m doing math) is a small price to pay to be able to visit Hong Kong. It’s stunning – lush, green mountains alongside a dazzling skyline and surrounded by the greenish-blue South China Sea. And there is so much to see and do.

For those of you who don’t know — and really, until my friends moved there, I knew not one thing about Hong Kong (other than the whole British relinquishing colonial rule in 1997) — Hong Kong is kinda where East meets West. Everybody speaks a little English (except the Cantonese-speaking taxi drivers). You can find a burger and pizza alongside dim sum and fish balls, sometimes right next door to each other and sometimes on the very same menu. It’s interesting. There’s even a Hong Kong Disneyland.

Here are 10 facts, courtesy of USA Today.

Hong Kong at the bottom of China and is composed of four main territories. My friends live on Hong Kong Island in the southern section near the beach and to the north of the island lies the city and the bustling Victoria Harbor. Across the harbor is the city of Kowloon, which is at the bottom of China’s mainland, but still a part of Hong Kong proper. It’s actually where the tallest building in Hong Kong is located and where you can find markets filled with weird things you never knew people wanted to buy. Or own.

All this shiz is happening at the bottom of China.

All this shiz is happening at the bottom of China. We mostly stayed on the red part, Hong Kong Island.

Traveling to Asia let me experience something so unlike my life here in New Jersey – the sights, the sounds, the smells (and some of you more snarky folks might have thought New Jersey had the ripest odors of all) – that I think made the trip not only a memorable experience but an important one for all of us, especially my kids. I really think the journey will prove to be life changing for them because now they know just how big the world is. And kind of how small it is at the same time.

It was so satisfying seeing my two children — who are in their prime obnoxious teen years — just get it. They totally got how lucky we were and how special it all was.

Over the course of our week-long stay we did lots of amazing things, like jump off a junk boat …

This is how we celebrated Easter, jumping into the South China Sea.

This is how we celebrated Easter, jumping into the South China Sea.

… visit a giant Buddha …

The Big Buddha on Lantau Island.

The Big Buddha on Lantau Island.

… take a terrifying ride in a clear-bottomed gondola …

I shit you not.

“Try not to think you’re in China,” I kept telling myself during the 25-minute ride.

… and walk around a local fishing village.

Fascinating Tai O fishing village.

Fascinating and smelly Tai O fishing village.

I’ll share more pictures and all the details over the next few days.

In the meantime, here’s the bottom line: Do not let fear stand in the way of going to new places and doing new things. There is a whole great big world out there — and things to discover right around the corner, too, not just on the other side of the globe. The experiences and the memories more than make up for any anxiety you may feel bubbling within you.

I know they did for me.

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Make this your motto. Credit: Livelifehappy.com

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A Lot Can Happen in a Year

Calendar Image-1524x975About a year ago, I was standing in my TV room with my two neighbors – good girlfriends – lifting weights over our heads when one of my pals started to cry.

For about a year we’d been gathering at my house two mornings a week to exercise under the ever-watchful eye of our Girl Whisperer. He’d sit on my big, red couch and boss us around, telling us to work a little harder, while monitoring the bloat around our middles and asking what we’d been eating. Because while he’s all about working out – he makes us do endless squats and push ups – he’s a firm believer that it really all comes down to what you put in your mouth. So over the course of the almost-two years I worked out with The Whisperer, I eliminated a lot of the naughty things that were part of my daily food triangle – Doritos, CheezIts, and pizza – and replaced all that yumminess with a lot of protein and vegetables.

Boring, I know, but the bloat did subside a bit. I’ll give him that.

And for as annoying as the Girl Whisperer initially was — harping on protein and how sugar was poison ad nauseum — the guy started to grow on me. Over the course of hours and days and weeks and months, I really got to know the man who was sitting on my couch, wearing all black and telling me what to do. I got to know about how he’d overcome so many struggles and sadnesses in his life and how that shaped his incredibly positive attitude.

I mean, this cat was a legit prison guard in his previous life and tells stories involving shanks and grown men’s feces. A lot of other bad things happened to him before he found fitness but he came through it to become one of the most grounded people I know and someone who can always put life’s challenges in the proper perspective any time I tried to whine to him about something, like my job or my love life.

“A bad day is when you find out you have cancer,” he’d tell us while we complained about how heavy the weights were or how much our legs hurt. “Today is not a bad day,” he’d add.

“Now, eat more egg whites, please.”

So, we were exercising when my girlfriend started to cry, which was weird – she’s pretty stable and not prone to random weeping.

“Michael was offered the job,” she cried and we knew what that meant. For months, her husband had been talking about the possibility of moving to Hong Kong for a job opportunity and his wife had been filling us in. It was all okay while the whole thing was in theory, she was kind of open to the idea then. But the reality of uprooting her three young boys from the really nice life they had built on the Jersey Shore kind of had her freaking the fuck out.

My girlfriend is a Jersey Girl. I mean, a real Jersey Girl, not the kind you see on a reality TV show who is really someone who hails from one of New York’s outer boroughs and wound up living somewhere in the Garden State.

She loved her house – filled with her cat and her dog and all those boys. She and her husband taught them to surf in the summer and snowboard in the winter and there is nobody – literally, nobody – who cheers louder from the sidelines during the boys’ lacrosse games than their mom.

And there’s no place she’s happier than sitting on her beach chair with her painted toes dug into the Jersey Shore sand with a margarita in her hand (preferably one she concocted with Trader Joe’s mango juices and the tequila she infuses with jalapeno in a mason jar in her freezer).

Pretty much, she’s, like, the only woman I knew who was thoroughly content with her life.

So the prospect of pulling up stakes to move to China did not thrill her.

“That’s amazing!” we told her. “What an opportunity for the boys!”

We continued to talk her off the ledge as we lunged and squatted and by the end of the hour, she seemed much calmer about the move.

And it turns out, not even six months later, they had cleared every last Lego out of their house and moved the whole kit-and-caboodle to Hong Kong.

And we were really sad. For ourselves.

All of a sudden our neighborhood, that for years had teemed with boys running abound with lacrosse sticks and making skateboard ramps out of crap they found in their parents’ garages, became really, really quiet.

“We are SO coming to visit you,” we had told them a million times before they left and we totally meant it. But we meant it in that “some day” kind of way. Like, in a year, or something. Some day.

But a few months into their relocation, my girlfriend messaged me to say they really wanted visitors. And not “someday,” but “now.”

So I hemmed and I hawed as I figured out how we could do that and how I could eliminate one of my kids from the equation so I wouldn’t have to buy so many plane tickets. But in the end, my 17yo had to come, too, because – man – when do you get the opportunity to go to the other side of the world?

So one year after my girlfriend cried about uprooting her family from the Jersey Shore and moving to China, they have settled into their new life in Hong Kong and seem really happy. The boys love their new schools and they even get to play lacrosse. And they’ve already taken advantage of being in Asia and have visited Thailand and Vietnam as a family and their oldest boy went to Beijing for a few days on a class trip.

And one year after I told my girlfriend that I’d totally come visit them some day, we are making good on our word and taking off this afternoon to spend about a week with them in Hong Kong.

I know. I’m dying.

But I’m also struck by how much things can change in a few short months. How a life that seemed so firmly planted in one place can – with some effort – be plucked out and replanted on the other side of the world. And how you can end up taking a trip you never imagined you’d be taking so soon in your life.

And that brings us back to the Girl Whisperer. While everyone around here’s been moving and traveling, he’s been on a journey of his own. A few months after our friends moved to China, he found out he had cancer. And it’s not been kind to him, which has surprised so many of us with how someone so strong – both physically and mentally – could be shaken to his core by the disease and ensuing treatments.

Like, he just had a feeding tube removed not long ago.

But he tells me in his sporadic texts that he’s getting better. That he’s going to fight it. And I believe him. He’s overcome so many other challenges; he will eventually show cancer who’s the boss. Just like he showed me.

You just don’t know what life has in store for you. There are so many good and terrible things that await us all. And I think the only answer is to live. Really live and love and make the most of all the time we have here. Together.

So I’m getting on a plane today for 16 hours to see the faces of my neighbors that I’ve missed so much and have an adventure. I am going to really live my life and help my kids really live theirs.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Our New Neighbor

mrgrsI was standing in the kitchen talking to my 17yo daughter this weekend when I noticed her looking over my shoulder. This is nothing unusual. Nobody really pays any attention to what I have to say around here unless it’s what I’m making for dinner or that I don’t have $300 lying around to help fund a spring break trip to the Keys.

Anyway, I was probably saying something like, “Do you think you’re going to college next year?” or “If you don’t clean your pigsty of a room you’re not going out tonight” when she shouted, “Look what’s inside that tree!”

She pointed out the window over our kitchen sink to a giant maple tree in our neighbor’s yard, right on the other side of the chain link fence that separates our properties. Its trunk splits into two like a “V” as it reaches up towards the sky and then each half splits again. About 20 feet up, the whole shebang starts bending towards my house so all the limbs, branches, twigs create a canopy over my narrow back yard. It actually used to have a sister tree about 10 feet to its north, also right at the edge of the fence, and the two of them had been the bane of my existence since I moved into this house over a dozen years ago.

It turns out, maple trees generate a variety of little pieces of crap that they drop throughout the year — you know, those helicopter things we used to call “Pinnochio noses” when we were kids that fall in late summer, and bright green blossoms in the spring. And then there are all the leaves. And all of it — the buds, the leaves, the helicopters and all that ensuing pollen — float right into the swimming pool that takes up about half of my backyard.

I really wanted that pool when we were trying to buy the house. I really thought it was going to be so great to have it for the kids to swim and play and invite their friends over and our friends over. But I have learned after taking care of the 30-year-old thing over the last 12 years that swimming pools should be filed under “Things That Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”

Like getting married at 24.

Ironically, the tree closest to the pool came crashing into our back yard the night Hurricane Sandy blew through, its giant limbs tearing through the dark green pool cover that had just been pulled on top a month earlier. The power had already gone off when the tree fell but the wind and everything going on outside created such a racket, we never even heard it come down. We eventually noticed the branches, which earlier that day were 40 feet above our yard, lying on the steps outside our back door later that night.

Now, the remaining maple tree is not looking in much better condition than the other one did before it keeled over. A pretty big limb fell off a few years ago, leaving it looking a bit like an amputee, and there’s a big hollow in one of the trunks that indicates that the tree might not be in the best of health.

If this one goes down any time soon, it should probably be filed under “Things I Should Have Taken Care Of.”

Like that weird lump on my finger or the sinking concrete deck around the pool.

So I looked out the window at the tree my daughter was pointing to and inside the hollow was a raccoon, just sitting there staring back at us. It looked almost fake, like someone had put a muppet inside the hole, with its pointy snout and little black mask across its eyes.

And we were like, “Awwwwww.”

And now, for the past two days, we have been absolutely obsessed with the thing. We even named it.

I initially felt strongly that it was a girl and suggested we call her “Rhoda” or “Rhianna.” When those ideas were shot down, I began referring to it as “Bandit” or “Badger” but that ultimately pissed my 12yo son off, as he kept insisting we could not call our raccoon “Badger” since that was, like, the name of another kind of animal altogether.

Okay, whatev.

Then my daughter was like, “It’s definitely a guy,” and suggested we call him “Kenneth” and we all agreed that name fit him perfectly. He is such a Kenneth.

Standard raccoon meme.

Standard raccoon meme.

Lately, I spend most of my days at my kitchen table sitting at a chair tucked into a bay window area that looks right out at Kenneth’s tree about 20 feet away. All day yesterday, while I should have been doing other things, I watched him dozing in his hole and occasionally would see the top of his head moving up and down as he groomed himself. Every once in a while, he’d stop and push his face out of the hole a little to enjoy a rush of cold air going by. A few times, he actually stretched his body out of the hole and basked in the afternoon sun, closing his eyes and luxuriating in its warmth, and then he’d go right back to scratching himself. I decided right then and there that more than anything else, I wanted to come back as a raccoon in my next life. I wouldn’t mind spending my days napping and grooming myself and taking a break to feel the sun on my face or the breeze in my fur.

Sounds perfect to me.

(The above is a terrible video that really doesn’t show anything except how sick my daughter was when she went outside to try to film Kenneth this weekend).

There was a bit of debate as to whether Kenneth had always been living in that hole, watching us going on with our lives while he nipped at the bugs on his belly, but we ultimately decided he must have moved there more recently. Our real neighbor, the man who owns the actual property behind us where Kenneth is living, recently had a whole crew of tree dudes in his yard chopping down most of the trees back there (other than the one that’s eventually going to kerplop into my yard).

“Kenneth was probably living in one of those trees,” my daughter deduced, and that seems like the best explanation to me.

She came home from school yesterday and walked over to where I was sitting, my chair angled to get the best view of Kenneth’s activities, and we both sat and watched him for a while. Every time he stopped his grooming and looked up towards us, so we could see his pointy little ears and the mask, we’d stop mid-conversation and say, “Ohhh.”

As the sun went down and we could no longer see the tree through the window, we speculated over dinner as to what Kenneth was up to. We joked that he had made his way up to my daughter’s bedroom and was in her bed (she doesn’t even like me in her bed, much less a hairy wild animal) or that we would come down in the morning and find him sitting at our kitchen table with a mug of coffee.

Alas, when we did come down to start our day this morning, there was no sign of Kenneth anywhere. He’s not in his hole and we’re beginning to get a little concerned.

“GO LOOK FOR HIM,” my daughter texted from school earlier. “DO SOMETHING.”

But I really don’t think there’s much I can do when it comes to looking for a lost raccoon. It’s not like I can call the police or the SPCA. I can’t imagine, even though he’s really cute, that anyone is going to call to report that they found someone’s raccoon. Even one with a proper name like Kenneth.

So, because I couldn’t stare at our raccoon this morning, I took to looking at my son instead. I told him how handsome he looked wearing the same husky Gap corduroys — the kind where you can cinch in and let out the waist as needed — that he wears about four out of five school days during the week and his standard soccer jersey on top. I followed him into the mudroom as he went to grab his sneakers and he finally said, “Okay. You don’t need to watch me put on my shoes.”

Maybe that’s why I liked watching Kenneth so much. I’ve got fewer people who let me stare at them around here. I miss when they were little and I could marvel at how they could speak and move all on their own and their perfect little bodies. Now when I try to admire them for any length of time, I’m told I’m acting like “a creeper.”

Not to fear, though. I’ve been vigilant today, on the lookout for Kenneth, watching to see if maybe he crops up in a new nest or maybe in the next yard over. It seemed like he had such a good set up though. I’m struggling with why he would leave. Maybe all our staring got to him after a while. Maybe it was all a little unsettling.

And I mean, if worse comes to worse, I could always just go and stare at my cat.

She’s just no Kenneth.

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