Derek Jeter, One More Time

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

My son came into the kitchen yesterday afternoon and took a look at the small TV on the counter, tucked into the corner between my toaster oven and colorful collection of knives, and asked, kind of surprised, “You’re still watching this?”

He and I had turned on the Yankees game an hour earlier to catch Derek Jeter’s last turn at bat Sunday at Fenway Park and while the 11-year-old lost interest and drifted off to play outside, I kept watching.

Now, if you’ve spent any time reading my blog and gotten a general sense about the type of girl I am, you know that it would be much more likely to find me watching the Food Network or Oprah’s channel rather than a major league baseball game. In fact, I had a hard time finding the game on Verizon Fios (who knew the Yankees had their own network?) and couldn’t tell you where ESPN channels fall in my extensive selection of cable channels.

But I discovered Jeter literally in the bottom of the ninth of his career while watching a Gatorade commercial and have been kind of enamored with him since. And I don’t think I’m alone. When I wrote about my new obsession last week I got more traffic than usual to my site and noticed my guy friends, who normally don’t “like” my blog stuff on Facebook, showing their approval for the subject matter. This could possibly be the incentive I’ve needed to start paying more attention to sports in general.

So I watched Jeter get up for his second turn at bat Sunday and get that infield single while I baked treats for my son to bring to his cross-country pasta party the next day but then kept on watching even after The Captain bowed out of the game. I watched as the Yankees drove in run after run while breading chicken cutlets for dinner and then kept the TV on to watch Jeter’s post-game press conference.

“Why are we still watching this?” moaned my teenaged daughter as we ate our chicken and sweet potatoes while Jeter talked about what it was like to take the pinstripes off after his final game in the majors and how he always tried to treat people the way he wanted to be treated.

As far as my kids were concerned, it was like they were trapped in a really weird scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers because my behavior lately has been far from normal. I wouldn’t be surprised to find them poking around in the crawl space searching for my pod. Apparently, it’s disconcerting for them to see their zombie-loving, bookworm of a mom acting like a sports fan. It’s out of character.

I sat on my bed Thursday night after I got home from a wake to watch the last few innings of Jeter’s now-famous final game in New York and grinned from ear-to-ear when he drove in the winning run. I had called my daughter into my room as he came up to bat and — softy that she is — she started to cry when his ninth inning walk off single won the game and his teammates rushed onto the field.

I’ve combed the Internet to read everything I could find about Jeter and am now a walking encyclopedia of Derek Jeter miscellany including what’s up with that glittery necklace he wears under his uniform and the name of his personal masseuse. And on Saturday night, when one of the girlfriends I was hanging out with suggested we watch the movie “Moneyball” – and even though I’d already seen it once and was in a more of a “Crazy, Stupid Love”-y kind of mood – I said, “Great idea.” It put the whole 2001 “Flip” into perspective.

I even raced over to my local book store one day last week when they got another shipment of Jeter’s new book for kids called “The Contract” – “inspired by” Jeter’s childhood and the contract he signed with his parents that included things like “Be a role model” and “Respect yourself” — for my little guy. I will read it out loud to him if necessary.

I grew up watching baseball and spent many a warm summer night outside playing running bases with my three brothers. In fact, it’s really the only sport that I totally understand I think because I actually played it (or softball, rather, and not very well) as a kid. I have more than a basic grasp of the rules, which is more than I can say about offsides in soccer and whatever is considered a foul in basketball.

So the game makes me slightly nostalgic and I get it when a few times during “Moneyball” Brad Pitt’s character asks,” “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

And I am, deep down, a hopeless romantic.

I want happy endings and for true love to conquer all. I want to believe that most people are inherently good and that everything will work out in the end. I am optimistic to a fault.

So the whole Derek Jeter thing – the entire arc of his story from his dreams as a kid of growing up to play for the Yankees to the storybook ending Thursday night – jibes with everything I want to believe in. And even better, he’s the one thing — in the face of Middle East air strikes and troubling news out of the NFL — everyone seems to be able to agree upon. It’s like those first few days after the Sept. 11 attacks, when — even though everything was beyond terrible — we all banded together as Americans. I love that we can all get behind Jeter, that he can unite us like that.

I know, I’m really romanticizing him.

But, I mean, Red Sox fans cheered for him yesterday and chanted his name. Even Justin Timberlake, whose wife is counted among Jeter’s notable list of famous ex-girlfriends, tweeted The Captain his support:

Screen Shot 2014-09-29 at 12.51.15 PM

JT just might be my other favorite class act.

“He was what we want baseball to be, and sports to be,” writes Mike Lupica today in the Daily News of Jeter and I think that sums it up best for me. He gave us all hope.

So who knows if I’ll show any interest in the race towards the World Series or whether I’ll tune into the YES Network next season (if I can still remember where it is). But I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for Derek Jeter.

I look forward to watching whatever he does next.

My Top 5 Days of the Year

They’re the days that I look forward to. The ones that make slogging through the other 360 kind of worth it. And today was one of them.

  1. My Birthday: Even though I am now closer to 50 than 45 and some people I know are shocked by my alleged ability to reproduce, I still totally love my birthday. I love the attention, that my kids are generally on their best behavior and that presents are involved. I am all about the swag.
  2. Christmas Day: I grumble throughout the season, complaining about the decorating, the holiday cards, the cost of the whole shebang. But on Christmas morning I wake up as excited as I did when I was a kid although now I love watching the kids open all the gifts I spent so much time shopping for and picking out and wrapping. I don’t even care any more about what I get, which is good because I think last year or the year before I got garbage pails. Legit. Two new garbage pails with bows. But I needed them and they were bought with an incredible amount of love and I think of that every time I drop a big bag of cat poop into one.
  3. December 26: It’s the one day of the year I don’t feel guilty about sitting in my pajamas all day and doing nothing. I am also all about doing nothing. Okay, maybe I eat a lot of stuff like this.
  4. Thanksgiving: I am obsessed with the parade and get goosebumps every time Al Roker cuts the ribbon at the start. Cheesy, I know. But the best part of the day is working for hours with my daughters as we peel the potatoes, slice the apples and wrestle the giant turkey into the pan. We are an amazing team. The second best part? Leftovers.
  5. The Day My Pool is Closed for the Season: Really, the reason for this whole post. It happened this morning, when a pool guy named Steve showed up with a handful of ninjas and had the sucker shut down and covered in about an hour. I love looking out the window every chance I get and seeing the big green cover stretched across the gaping money hole called a pool. “Didn’t you enjoy it this year?” asked The Girl Whisperer as I was celebrating the closing between push ups and I did have to pause and remember some of the good times we had in the thing this summer. The times we all sat in the hot tub and sipped wine and a certain night not too long ago when the girls and I stripped off our clothes and jumped into the deep end and screamed at how cold the water felt on our bare skin. And then how the girls screamed when I got out to jump in again. The horror.
  6. photo 2-3
    ‘Tis a beautiful site.

Good-Bye Derek Jeter

Flickr: Derek Jeter

Flickr: Derek Jeter

This is how much I loved my ex-husband back in the early days, when — even though I grew up in a family of lifelong Yankees fans and, like every other girl in the seventh grade circa 1979 I was totally in love with Bucky Dent — I turned my back on the pinstripes and became a Mets fan.

That is how crazy love can make you.

I’ll admit though that back then rooting for the Mets wasn’t as much of a stretch as it might be seen as today. The team had just come off of its big 1986 World Series win and Darryl Strawberry was best known for hitting home runs and not his future struggles with substance abuse. Even Jerry Seinfeld made it kind of cool to be a Mets fan when he featured Keith Hernandez in two episodes in 1992 as a potential love interest for Elaine. And also, a possible spitter.

Everyone I knew growing up across the river from the Bronx in northern New Jersey in the 1970s was either Irish or Italian. But everyone was Catholic and everyone was a Yankees fan. I mean, I knew Mets fans existed – kind of like Jewish people—but I just never met any of either until I was older.

But by the time I was in college I’d become estranged from my father and his family and pretty ambivalent about sports in general. Like, I religiously tailgated before every football game during my four years at a big state school but never once, not even one time, did I attend an actual football game. Other than playing running bases and throwing rocks at each outside during lively games of War growing up, my siblings and I weren’t encouraged to play sports of the organized variety. I lettered in smoking and drinking and general jackassery in high school.

But my future ex-husband was a huge sports guy in general and Mets fan in particular and I was so besotted with him in those early years out of college that I’d sit on the couch and watch games with him on TV. We even went to a doubleheader one super-hot July afternoon pre-children – and it was Banner Day which consisted of an endless stream of rabid fans parading their banners around the stadium — and I don’t even think I complained once. I’m sure big plastic cups filled with foamy beer helped.

Once we got divorced, I thought, “Well at least now I can go back to being a Yankees fan,” but it turns out that ship had sailed. It’s not like changing your last name. I just don’t have the same allegiance to the team that I did growing up when my aunts, uncles, dad and brothers cheered for the Yankees. That’s probably what I liked the best then anyway, the legacy of being a fan. Of being a part of a great Yankees tradition.

So I was surprised by my reaction when I saw the new Gatorade commercial featuring Derek Jeter. I get teary-eyed every time I watch it – the way the crowd swarms around him as he walks through the Bronx, the reactions on faces young and old and then the roar of the fans as he enters the stadium with Frank Sinatra singing, “I did it my way” in the background. It’s pretty epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfgS1lvqX8I

Initially, I thought it was just me. That I was easily mesmerized by the whole Jeter farewell tour and the legend he seems to have become. But as my 17-year-old daughter and I were on the final hour of our long drive home from visiting her siblings this weekend and our audiobook (Jennifer Weiner’s “All Fall Down” loved it) finished leaving us time to kill with her bad music and chitchat, I asked her if she’d seen the Jeter commercial.

She indicated she had not and I go on to describe it in detail and I noticed her working on her iPhone and accused her of not listening to me and she’s like, “Mother, I’m just going to watch it on YouTube.”

Mark my words, in a decade there will no longer be any point in actually talking to each other. Conversation will be as outdated as dial-up Internet service and audio cassettes.

And then I hear Ol’ Blue Eyes start to sing and see out of the corner of my eye the flags fluttering atop the Brooklyn Bridge at the start of the black-and-white video and all the excited chatter as fans realize Jeter is standing in their midst. I pulled off the Parkway and paid my final toll as I heard the music swell and the crowd cheering in the final seconds I turned to my daughter to ask what she thought and she looked up from her iPhone at me and I saw her big blue eyes filled with tears.

“Oh my god, that was amazing,” she cried, wiping at her eyes. That was quite an endorsement, coming from someone who is probably even more ambivalent about baseball, the Yankees and Derek Jeter than I am.

On Thursday night, my 11-year-old son will travel to the Bronx with his dad to see Jeter play his last home game. I’m excited for him – for them — to get to witness something what will go down in baseball history.

I now get why my ex – a dedicated Mets fan — would have gotten those tickets months ago. I understand how Jeter’s career kind of transcends your allegiance to a team and whether you even really care about baseball or the Yankees.

Jeter is as iconic as the Yankees, or Sinatra or the city of New York. He’s a true sports hero at a time when they seem fewer and farther between. A feature story in this week’s New York Magazine quotes former Yankees Manager Joe Torre crediting Jeter’s parents for keeping him grounded.

“He felt comfortable in his own skin,” says Torre. “Other players need to be validated. Derek doesn’t need the attention.”

And even though I have a DVR full of shows to catch up on (“Outlander” wedding episode and Scandal Season 3, y’all), I might have to tune in Thursday night and watch The Captain’s last turn at bat.

And if that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insulting Things Said to Me Over Dinner

IMG_2661“Hey Mom, quick question,” said my 11-year old son last night as we were sitting down to a late dinner, “but, can you still have babies?”

I paused shoveling the forkful of quinoa-stuffed pepper into my mouth, looked at him and said, “Uh, yes.”

“WHAT?????!!!!!” he responded, apparently amazed that such a miracle could occur to someone so old, causing his 17-year-old sister to convulse in laughter and bang the table.

She even repeated the whole conversation over breakfast this morning while Joe and Mika debated the whole Ray Rice/NFL thing for the millionth time. The insult was way more entertaining to her.

So I think it’s interesting that, from a youngster’s point of view, the idea of me getting pregnant — and I will point out to anyone who wasn’t paying attention the first five times I’ve mentioned this fun fact here but I am but one day older than Halle Berry, who just had her own baby — is a shocking/nauseating revelation.

While the only thing I think Halle Berry and I have in common are ovaries, I like to think that my body could still muster the energy if necessary to make a baby. Maybe one with three arms, but still.

And I might not be good at a lot of things, but I was amazing at getting pregnant. Like, a real pro.

It’s funny I’d even be offended by this exchange, given my baby factory’s been shut down for years due to the economic downturn. I was supplying more than was in demand. And really, I don’t even want a houseplant much less another person around here to deal with. Especially if it’s going to grow up to start insulting me over dinner.

Obviously, the only logical next step was to make that creep of a kid pay for his insulting behavior.

“Do you have any of those ultra-sized tampons in your bathroom?” I casually asked his sister later in the meal.

“DO YOU MIND?” my son yelled. “THAT’S DISGUSTING.”

Hehehe.

Remembering Gratitude When You’re Not Really Feeling Too Grateful

photo(72)Someone nominated me to take part in that Gratitude Challenge that’s been going around on Facebook over the past week or so and my initial response was, “Fuck you.”

When I first saw the notification from Facebook pop up on my iPhone screen that I’d been tagged in something, I was coming off of a weekend spent by myself and feeling – I’ll be honest – kind of down-in-the-dumps. Which makes no sense because I had a really fun weekend, for the most part.

But I spent most of Sunday, which at least here in New Jersey was a pretty stellar day weather-wise, inside, emerging only for a quick trip to Trader Joe’s. I then started guzzling wine promptly at 5 p.m. and watched Netflix until the kids got home later that night from their dad’s.

And I don’t know if it’s my plummeting estrogen levels at this time of the month, my unemployment status or an as-of-yet undiagnosed case of ADD, but I feel incredibly unmoored and unfocused about what I am doing with my life. And having to fill up my weekend with activities to help me forget that the family that I worked so hard to create is fractured is exhausting.

I’m cranky, y’all.

So I stomped around on Monday gritting my teeth and muttering a lot but woke up Tuesday with a much smaller chip on my shoulder. I started to remember just how good my life really is.

It’s ridiculous, my woe-is-me attitude, really, because in theory I have absolutely everything: my health, four healthy children, a (pretty nice) roof over my head, a brain in my head, thin ankles. I need to stop acting like such a little bitch, moping around and feeling sorry for myself and give thanks.

And so, herewith, the Top 10 Things in Absolutely No Order For Which I’m Thankful:

  1. Call the Midwife: Mom, I know you’ve been telling me to watch the British series for a couple of years but I resisted. But as with many things in life – like that time you told me to pack a rain jacket to go camping with my Girl Scout troop and I resisted and then spent the weekend cold and wet – you are often right.
  2. The Girl Whisperer: The man stands in my family room twice a week and makes me and my girlfriends do more squats and push ups (real ones, like, on our feet) than I could ever have thought possible two years ago. He’s freed me from jumping jacks and running and my back and knees have never felt happier and my legs have never looked better. But more importantly, in the 18 months I’ve been working with him, I’ve never eaten better. I now eat stuff like quinoa and smoothies with egg whites in them as opposed to CheezIts and Doritos. What’s even better is that the healthier eating has trickled down to how I feed my kids, too. I can’t remember the last time I grilled a hot dog, and we should all be grateful for that.
  3. Checking the School Calendar by Chance: Had I not just done that, I would have missed Back to School Night at our middle school tonight.
  4. Turning Off the AC: I am as thankful for and dependent upon air conditioning as the next person but was glad to turn it off Sunday and let the cool air in from outside. I like hearing the birds tweeting and the neighbor’s kids riding their Big Wheels around the neighborhood. It makes me feel connected to the rest of the world without the Internet’s help.
  5. My Trip South Next Weekend: Okay, they might think I complain about them here incessantly, but I had a really nice summer with my two college kids and really miss them. So I’m looking forward to seeing them next weekend and drinking Jungle Juice before a football game. Good times.
  6. My Journals: While some people may dispute the accuracy of some of the stories I tell here, I do have a safe-full of journals in which I’ve been taking notes for the last decade. Sure, there are a lot of holes in some events that have occurred, but I can totally tell you how much I weighed on March 21, 2012 and how many glasses of wine I drank the night before. The journals have also come in handy recently as I’ve tried to tackle some bigger subjects in my writing and unearthed descriptive nuggets like the broken television trapped behind plexiglass at our hospital psych ward and lying on a boat in the Aegean and hearing the sounds of rooster crowing at dawn.
  7. Fortunate Timing: I went paddle boarding on the river Saturday afternoon and even though I had heard on the news that there were storm warnings and my two friends and I heard the thunder while digging through the choppy water, we kept on going. Finally, one of the girls was like, “I think I’m turning around, y’all,” and as we changed direction, we noticed the giant black clouds quickly moving towards us. Luckily, it was only as we were hoisting the big boards out of the water that the gusts of wind really kicked in and white caps formed along the river where we were just paddling frantically moments before. We took comfort in the house margaritas at a nearby bar where we told anyone who would listen about our adventure for hours afterwards. And yes, we totally learned a valuable lesson about the force of Mother Nature. You do not fuck with her.
  8. My Cat: She made me write that.
  9. My Blog Readers: I went for a walk in a nearby park yesterday and ran into a woman I know who immediately started telling me how much she could relate to something I had just written about here. And I’ve gotta tell you, that happens at least once a day, running into someone at the market or at a local restaurant who tells me they read my blog. And if you’re a writer you know that it never gets old. Your ego would never let that happen. I love hearing that people can relate to the things I write about that are going on in my life and that sometimes I even make them laugh. It helps me know that I’m moving in the right direction in my life.
  10. Friends With Benefits: I am blessed with being able to call a ton of people “friend.” They sit on the beach with me and are happy to share their limes and Coronitas. They invite me to their place in Florida and put up with me after one too many Hendricks cocktails. They invite me to their gorgeous beach house – like, on the beach beach house – and feed me things like Halibut Oreganata with Pesto and Peach Macaroon Crisp and then take the time to email all the recipes, just in case. And they nominate me on Facebook to remember all that I have to be grateful for and then graciously remain silent when I act like a bitch about it.

Oh, there’s one more thing! I’m always super grateful when you guys sign up to get my posts delivered right to your inbox. I love knowing I’ve made your life a little easier! What are you grateful for?

When Nothing is Fair at the Fair

Credit: David Hand

Credit: David Hand

It happened around 7:35 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 26 this year. That’s the moment when my youngest child – a boy who still kisses me full on the lips and likes to sleep in my bed – looked at me in horror when I suggested we go on a ride together at the annual firemen’s fair in the next town.

“Hey,” I said to him as I handed over the $25 worth of tickets I had just stood in line to buy, “let’s go on the Rainbow together.”

The Rainbow is that platform with two rows of seats that swings out sideways, back and forth, and eventually starts going all the way around in one direction and then switches to the other direction — thus really mixing up whatever’s been sitting in your stomach since dinner.

“I’m not going on the Rainbow with you,” he snarled, recoiling from me as if I’d just suggested we clean toilets together.

“What are you talking about?” I said, looking down at his little face twisted in revulsion. “Everyone wants to go on the Rainbow with me.”

Credit: arlnow.com

Credit: arlnow.com

And it’s true. My daughters always loved going on rides with me when they were younger and we’d make our annual pilgrimage to the fair. They would happily sit next to me as the Rainbow would lift us up and over the fairgrounds or join me strapped in the death cage called the Zipper that spun us inside, outside and upside down while I shouted the “f” word at the top of my lungs. They got a kick out of seeing their mom convinced she was about to die.

I think I am one of the few grown ups who actually likes going on those rickety fair rides. I enjoy spinning around while worrying about the last time the ride had passed a safety inspection or whether the operator was addicted to prescription meds. It’s fun. And I really love doing it with my kids. Near death experiences are always excellent bonding opportunities.

So when my girlfriend and I decided to take our sons and a few other boys to the fair that night, I was looking forward to drinking a beer, eating an ice cream cone and going on at least one ride with my kid. Sounded like the perfect night.

My 11-year-old, however, had a different vision for how our evening would transpire, which mostly involved him roaming around the fair with his posse while I paid for the whole experience and then waited around to drive him home.

And that’s pretty much what happened. I handed him the ride tickets and forked over another $15 for games and ice cream, and he and his dudes disappeared for the night. They had to check in every half hour with the moms by the mini golf course but then they were free to roam around the fair.

But after one such check in, my girlfriend and her husband decided they were going to go on the Ferris wheel with their daughter and I A.) Didn’t want to be the third wheel in such a little car and B.) Am terrified of the Ferris wheel and try to avoid whenever possible. Then I overheard the little dudes say that they were headed to the Rainbow, and I was like, “Hold on, I’m coming.”

I mean, what else was I supposed to do?

We stood on the long line and slowly made our way towards the ride entrance and the boys pretty much ignored my presence. Our turn finally came to climb onto the ride’s platform and we handed over our tickets to the dude and my son led the way to the back row where we filed into our seats and he made sure to place his three friends in between the two of us.

“C’mon,” I said to him as the rest of the row settled in. “Switch seats.”

But my son, the same child who just earlier that day was curled up next to me on a beach towel and would later come home and insist on sleeping in my bed, refused to budge. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.

So there I was, pretty much on the Rainbow by myself and only thankful that the sadness of the event was shielded from most bystanders by the row in front of me. And while I loved being lifted over and around and seeing the lights of the fair below, there is something kind of sad about a 48-year-old woman having that experience solo.

But I guess it’s just the natural order of things. Unless it’s drinking alcohol together (preferably booze that I’ve purchased), none of my kids really want to do things with me any more. They’d rather go off with their friends.

I just didn’t expect my little guy to shun me right there, at, like, 7:30 on a Wednesday night. I thought I’d have more time to prepare for that final rejection.

But I found consolation later in my ice cream cone. I don’t even like ice cream that much but I love the soft serve cones they serve at the fair, which swirl the chocolate and the vanilla together and then get dipped in a bucket of chocolate sprinkles to make a nice, crunchy outer layer.

I sat on a bench and licked the sprinkles dripping down the sides and noticed that I didn’t even know anyone at the fair any more. When my three older kids were younger, it seemed like I’d at least recognize most of the other parents pushing strollers through the dirt and chasing little ones toward the fun house. But now half my kids are in college and the other half is apparently too cool to be seen at the fair with me and I don’t know a soul. It seems after almost 20 years, we’ve aged out of the Rainbow and Zipper.

I popped the last of the cone into my mouth – the best bite in my estimation – and stood up to meet the boys and go home and wondered if there were any more trips to the fair in my future. Maybe next year I’d be relegated to just picking up and dropping off.

I’ll miss the plastic cups full of beer, commiserating with the other parents and of course — that meltingly-soft ice cream cone. But mostly, I’ll miss spinning high overhead under the lights of the fair pressed close to one of my children on a hot August night.

Sweeter than ice cream.

 

 

 

10 Books That Shaped Me

I generally try to avoid all of those email and Facebook chain letters. I’m always flattered when someone includes me in a group of friends whom she thinks would be inspired or uplifted by the message  but try to dodge them all the same. I feel bad, but what can I do?

But now I’ve been asked by two girlfriends the Top 10 books that have inspired me over the many years I’ve roamed this planet — like the dinosaur that I am — and I am having a hard time resisting the urge to share. I mean, what narcissist who reads a lot wouldn’t want to bore you with the books that have made her tick?

So, Denise Swanzey and Staci Seltzer, thanks for letting me remember the books that have helped shape the weird person, weirder mom and navel-gazing writer that I’ve become.

AreYouThereGod

 

1. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.: Judy Blume

Boobs, periods, boys: They were mysteries back when I first read the book in fifth grade and they continue to stump me almost 40 years later. Perhaps it’s time for a re-reading.

 

 

 

 

 

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2. To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee

The only good thing that came from leaving my tiny Catholic grammar school after my parents’ divorce and moving an hour south was getting to read this book in the public school I attended in 8th grade. Up to that point, the only stuff I’d read for school came out of a box on a giant glossy card (ugh that discouraging SRA Reading Program). I couldn’t believe my good fortune that I got to read an actual novel for English class (because it was English and not Language Arts back then).

 

 

 

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3. Childhood is Hell: Matt Groening

Long before The Simpsons debuted on The Tracey Ullman Show, I adored Groening’s subversive “Life is Hell” cartoons in The Village Voice and stumbled across this collection while browsing a midtown Manhattan bookstore during my lunch hour from my low-level job as a glorified secretary at a women’s magazine. I spent the afternoon doubled over in my cubicle covertly reading about the “16 Types of Dads” (Fun Dad, Fear Dad, Lord Dad) and “Your Pal the TV Set” (“Is TV the coolest invention ever? Well, DUH.”). It’s now become one of my 11-year-old’s faves and that makes me feel like I’ve succeeded as a parent.

 

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4. Bossypants: Tina Fey

I’ve read it twice and listened to it countless times during car trips up and down the Eastern Seaboard. My teenaged daughters adore it and I even let my little guy listen to it and am convinced the strong feminist ideas mixed with Fey’s deadpan humor totally override her liberal use of the “f” word. I think he’ll be a better man for it and will know how to use the term “motherfucker” in the right context. Score.

 

 

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5. The Middle Place: Kelly Corrigan

My college girlfriend Honeypot — aka The Senator — sent me a copy of Corrigan’s first book long before I knew I wanted to be Corrigan. Her memoir about the place we find ourselves in mid-life between our parents and our children, with a little cancer thrown in, showed me that there was a place for people who wrote like I did.

 

 

 

 

Twilightbook

 

6. The Twilight Series:

I gobbled up the first three books in about a week and mostly during a trip I took out west with my three sisters. I even had to stop at a bookstore near my sister’s home in Marin County to pick up book #2 and found myself often referencing vampires and their proclivities throughout the trip. And somehow, the series in a weird way made me want to end my marriage and find a dude that would take care of me like Edward. I am still accepting applications for that position.

 

 

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7. The Honeymoon’s Over: True Stories of Love, Marriage and Divorce: Original essays by 21 writers

I read and re-read this collection of essays during the turbulent final years of my marriage and they helped me feel a little less alone. The writers showed me that there could be life on the other side, and you could even write about it.

 

 

 

 

 

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8. I Feel Bad About My Neck: Nora Ephron

Funny. Self-deprecating. Shrewd.

Shards of brilliance: “Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” 

And: When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”

I mean, what’s not to love?

 

 

 

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9. Wild: Cheryl Strayed

I read Strayed’s memoir about going off and finding herself while I was sailing around the Greek islands and, well, finding myself. Enough said.

 

 

 

 

 

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10. Eat, Pray, Love: Elizabeth Gilbert

Okay, obviously I’ve got a thing for chicks going off and finding themselves. But, as chronicled in detail here, listening to Gilbert read her memoir for a few weeks this spring really helped set the stage for a lot that happened in the heart department this summer. I highly recommend it.

5 Things I Feel Kind of Sorry About (In No Particular Order)

Seriously.

I try not to live a life of regret. I try to frame the maybe-not-so-positive events that go down in my world as life lessons. This way of thinking makes my therapist very happy and I’m a pleaser so there you go.

However, sometimes I do find myself second guessing decisions I’ve made. Wondering what the fuck I was thinking about in certain instances.

And because it’s the end of August and absolutely nothing is happening in my life – at least that I can write about – I thought I’d share the Top 5 things I’m fretting about right now.

I know, you’re welcome.

  1. Sex With Strangers

I was paying my AmEx bill last Friday afternoon and noticed a charge for theater tickets and was like, “What the hell?” A quick search in my inbox turned up an email confirming tickets my girlfriend and I had bought a few weeks ago, kind of spur-of-the-moment, for an Off-Broadway play that got a great review in The New York Times called “Sex With Strangers.” The two-person show stars Anna Gunn – Skyler White from “Breaking Bad” – and some super-hot, sexy young dude named Billy Magnussen and the review said it explored real vs. social media personas and the struggle for writers to find commercial success while staying true to their artistic sensibilities. So up my alley. “HOLY FUCK,” I texted my gal pal, “We have tickets to see that show tonight!” Usually, if I need to get into the city from New Jersey, I need a game plan because it can be a real pain, especially on a Friday afternoon. But we got our acts together and took a ferry into Manhattan and even had time to spare for a glass of wine and big bowl of mussels at a restaurant bar before the show. And here’s where the trouble started. Here’s where, maybe because of the wine or the pretty sexy show, I got a bee in my bonnet about an itch that I needed to scratch. It had been brewing for a while but the show kind of set the wheels in motion for something that happened later in the weekend. And whether it’s a relief to have scratched at that itch or, like poison ivy, I should have just left it alone, remains to be seen. Well, everything is copy, as a certain hero of mine has said. But the show is at the Second Stage until the end of the month and as long as you don’t harbor a secret hankering for a much-younger man, I highly suggest you get tickets and see it. Maybe just leave your cell phone at home.

  1. Hermit Crabs

Haven’t I made myself clear? Haven’t I told my kids, time and again, I was not interested in bringing anything else into this house that needs to be kept alive? Like, I don’t even own a houseplant. But my third child gets teary-eyed when she thinks of all the pets I’ve allowed her older sister to own/kill over the years. The frog. The mice. The poor guinea pig that slowly fossilized in our basement. It pisses the younger sister off that she never had the same opportunity to torture small creatures. So, now I see – via some videos she’s sent me on Snapchat – that she has righted those childhood wrongs and bought herself two hermit crabs while spending the week away with friends down the shore. I’ve already watched them skitter across the floor of the beach house where she’s staying. I am not thrilled and wonder how long it will take for those things to shrivel up inside their shells the way the hermit crabs we had, like, 15 years ago for the two older kids did. I give them two weeks and they better not fucking smell while they’re at it.

  1. My Raging Narcissism

There was a time when I really knew what was going on in the world. When I’d wake up early each day and read the paper cover-to-cover. But lately, I get up and grab a cup of coffee and immediately start writing about myself in my journal – documenting my weight and daily alcohol intake – while tragedies unfold in St. Louis and Iraq and I still can’t tell you the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite, much less what ISIS stands for. I can, however, report that I’ve lost almost 10 oz. since yesterday.

  1. The Fantasy of the Only Child 

Don’t tell my three older kids, but for some time now I’ve fantasized about what it will be like when they’re all off in college or starting their grown up lives and it’s just me and their little brother left at home. I’d imagine how clean our kitchen would be and all the cool things my little guys and I would be able to do together in the older kids’ wake. But, just like the reality of how things like being a grown up or marriage never quite stack up to how we imagined they’d be, having an only child is far from perfect. In fact, it’s kind of boring. Sure, my house is a little cleaner and he’s happy eating taquitos night after night, but I kind of miss the chaos of all those other personalities. Turns out, I really like having them around.

  1. The Summer of Amy

You’ve heard it here before, how my 10 Days of Fun somehow stretched into my Summer of Amy. How a lot has transpired over the course of the last three months. I have danced and I have kissed and pretty much made up for all those nights home, cooking for kids and working, over the last five years. And although I normally can’t wait for summer to come to an end, am almost pushing my kids out the door for the first day of school, this year is somehow different. I’ve loved having time off from work to screw around on my blog, sit on the beach with my kids and focus on my love life (such as it is). And I know in no time, I’ll be back at work and rushing to make dinners and go grocery shopping and it will all be a distant – fabulous – memory. So, who in the world would ever think they’d hear me say this: I am really sorry to see the summer end.

What, pray, are you sorry about, nowadays? I’m an equal-opportunity venter and would love to hear what’s bringing you down. Misery does love company, you know. 

How to Waste Time on the Internet

We breaded our cat. Thanks, Internet.

We breaded our cat. Thanks, Internet.

If I was good at keeping track of things, which we’ve already determined is not the case, I would probably find that I spend more time trolling Facebook each day than I do actually parenting any of my four children. I fall down so many Internet rabbit holes — clicking on headlines like, “15 Things No One Wants to Hear Men Complain About,” or “9 Excuses to Eat More Chocolate” — that sometimes I forget why I even went on Facebook in the first place (usually it’s to see if anyone has “liked” or commented on something I’ve posted).

So, in an effort to help you make better use of your own valuable time, I’ve done the leg work for you and culled what I think are the top 5 must-see links to help ease you into the weekend.

Don’t expect to be any smarter by the end of it, just slightly amused. Like me.

1. I can’t decide if this Hot/Crazy Matrix video is insanely misogynistic or just plain funny. Whatever it is, it makes me laugh my ass off. And in case you’re wondering, I am totally a unicorn. 

2. The kids and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last week and it wasn’t until the end that I realized that Chris Pratt was the same chubby dude from Parks and Rec (“Duh, Mom,” says disgusted children). Officially love him and his version of the ubiquitous ice bucket challenge:

3. And because I have been very snarky about all that pouring of ice over heads, much to my children’s disgust, these Ice Bucket Challenge screw ups really made me laugh.

4. To be filed under “WTF”: A woman goes to the doctor complaining of stomach cramps and they find a 38-year-old baby skeleton inside of her. 

5. I am a sucker for videos with babies and puppies so this made me dream that I had a baby and bought it two kittens. Because that’s just what I need in my life right now, babies and kittens. My mind has officially become as vacuous as the Internet.

Who’s a Scary Mommy?

The other night, I clicked on the Scary Mommy website and was greeted with this:

Look who's at the top of Scary Mommy.

Look who’s at the top of Scary Mommy.

Yup, that weeping woman clinging to her child is yours truly.

If you’re not in-the-know, Scary Mommy is an insanely popular mom blog that’s become a community for parents to celebrate imperfect parenting. So obviously, as my parenting over the last 21 years has been sketchy at best — I mean, I have been known to do ice luge shots with my older children — I totally belonged there.

So there I was at the top of this site that gets 10-15 million unique pageviews a month (according to Scary Mommy) with my mug in full-on ugly cry mode as I said good-bye to my oldest child when we left him at college for his freshman year three years ago. Luckily, I have no qualms with any of you seeing me not looking my best, as evidenced here (cheetah suit alert).

It was actually the second piece I had appear on Scary Mommy in less than a week. I had submitted one essay last month and got the good news that it was going to be featured on the site, but not until four weeks later. “Wow,” I thought, “who knew all that scariness was being planned so far in advance?”

So I sat and patiently waited until I got the good news that the post was live and was amazed at the kind of traffic it generated and was like, “Holy crow, I need to do that again, stat.”

So I rattled my brain to come up with something good and submitted a piece I had written about my son going off to college and, due to its timeliness, it was posted on Scary Mommy the next day.

Anyway, if you are a parent, do I even need to tell you that the timing could not have been worse as the piece went live in the midst of an emotional crisis going downright next to me on our big red couch. I was like, “I hear you’re really sad,” while watching out of the corner of my eye as a big teardrop rolled down the child’s face, “but do you mind if I just jump on Facebook for a minute?”

Like, can you just hold that thought while I promote myself on social media?

Obviously, no one in the room witnessing the meltdown thought that that was good parenting. I think someone might have even mentioned my insensitivity was slightly scary. “Typical, Mom,” she said.

Ultimately, disaster was averted — thanks to clear thinking and perhaps a little wine — and I did get to enjoy, virtually, the magic of being featured on a big site that garnered me over 150 new Facebook likes, 15.8K Facebook shares, 457 Tweets, a great traffic day for my site while discovering cool new bloggers (if you guys like me, you’ll love The Happy Hausfrau).

So, for all of you sending your babies off to college for the first time — and for the many it seems with 5-year-olds who are already freaking out about that moment — this one’s for you.

Oh, and there’s nothing scary about it.