Posted by Amy Byrnes

In my semi-retirement, when I am not eating or thinking about eating or making lists of things I’d like to be eating, I find I am catching up on things I was never able to get around to while I had a job.

Things I just didn’t have the time to do.

So now, when I wake up early in the morning, I reach for my journal before blogging on my laptop, which lets me filter thoughts and feelings a little bit better between my brain and the Internet.

I went snowshoeing not once but twice this past week and felt unhurried, able to take in the stillness and silence of the snowy woods and not have to worry about missing a call or coming up with some piece of content for work.

And I’ve also been reading a lot more during my unemployment. I finished two books I had started in the New Year — Still Writing, by Dani Shapiro and The Goldfinch, by Dona Tartt — and am determined to finish Middlemarch by the end of the month.

If it kills me.

And while I probably should be doing things like updating my LinkedIn profile and finding useful ways to utilize Pinterest for my blog, I found myself playing for a while on Goodreads yesterday instead.

Do you know that site? I am pretty late to the Goodreads party, since there are already about 20 million users who can make lists of books they’d like to read and rate and review books they’ve already read. So after I spent about an hour cruising through categories like “Popular book club books” and “Most read,” adding books I’d read to my shelf and marking the ones on my wish list, I quickly amassed over 100 titles.

It was like taking a walk down memory lane. I got to wave at some of the YA books I’ve been loving lately (The Fault in Our Stars and Eleanor and Park), books from my childhood (Charlotte’s Web) and books my children and I snuggled up to read over and over when they were young and yummy (Where the Sidewalk Ends).

And then I realized that it would be fun to see what was sitting on the shelves of other readers who I know, but was pretty limited as I had but one “friend” on Goodreads — my 19-year-old daughter. Out of 20 million users, that seemed kind of sad (even though she is excellent company).

So I tried to “friend” my real-life friend and voracious reader Susan, and quickly realized after Susan accepted my request and saw what was on her bookshelf, that I had indeed friended the wrong Susan.

My Susan definitely wasn’t currently reading Read Happiness: The Power of Meditation. She’s my Anglophile friend who leans more towards the World War II European experience than crunchy chewy self-help tomes.

So then I thought, why don’t I use my blog to try to make friends on Goodreads?

And so here I am.

I’d love to know what you’re reading (and listening to, too). What’s kept you sitting in your driveway or staying up way past your bedtime?

Let’s be friends. I think you can find me using the email amy@amynameisamy.com.

As for my own quick reviews, I was hesitant to get involved with the new Donna Tartt book, I’d heard mixed things about The Goldfinch, but I ended up loving it and have thought of the characters often since I finished it last week and had discussions about who should play Boris and Theo if it’s ever made into a movie.

And for someone who generally can’t even remember what happened on an episode of “True Detective” or “House of Cards” the minute the credits start to roll, that is impressive.

And I also fell head-over-heels in love with Ann Patchett after reading her collection of essays last month called This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. It’s made me want to read every piece of her fiction (aside from Bel Canto, which I read years ago) and make a pilgrimage to her bookstore in Nashville.

I legit want to stalk her (in a very friendly, non-threatening way).

Anyway, go friend me on Goodreads so I can see what’s on your virtual bookshelf and we can compare notes.

Maybe it will inspire me to crank through Middlemarch and move on.

Happy reading.

Feb

2014

Mrs. X

Posted by Amy Byrnes

Credit: Eviatar Bach

When I was in the end stages of my divorce a few years ago and struggling with whether I should reclaim my maiden name, my college roommate advised against it.

“What are your kids’ friends going to call you?” she asked, and went on to explain how her high school boyfriend’s mom was always Mrs. Whatever, even though she and her husband had been divorced for ages.

“You’ll always be Mrs. X,” she said.

In the end, I decided that that demographic of the population – the friends of my four children – would have to adjust just like everyone else. And for the most part, that’s what happened. In a little over a year, people came to know and refer to me using my maiden name. Everything from my credit card statements to the nameplate that sat in front of me during monthly board of education meetings was adjusted to reflect the change.

And when I sent an email to one of the officials in my town for business and inadvertently used an old email address that had my married name, and the wife of said official told him to look for that name in his inbox, he asked, “Who’s that?”

Mission accomplished.

But three years after the name change, the people who have no idea what to call me remain the kids’ friends and frankly, I don’t know what to tell them. Or their parents.

Nothing sounds right.

For my older kids and their friends, it didn’t really seem too weird to tell them to just keep calling me Mrs. X. That’s how they had known me for most of their lives and it just seemed easier and frankly, do they really care whether or not I am married or actually use that name any more? No.

And while initially, that strategy worked just fine, the further away I get from ever having been Mrs. X, the weirder it’s starting to sound.

I went out to dinner with a slew of parents and children Sunday night – literally, there were like 15 kids sitting down at the far end of the table, my 11-year-old son happily eating his French fries among them.

So needless to say, it was loud, and I was busy chitchatting with the moms at the opposite end of the table, so wasn’t especially tuned in to what the kids were doing.

But then I heard a voice rise above the din and my son, apparently trying to get my attention because he needed my iPhone, was telling the boys around him to call for Mrs. X.

“Interesting,” I thought, that the person who knew me for the least amount of time when I used my married name would still think to refer to me as that.

And I don’t know why it is that calling me Ms. Y seems so weird, too. I’ve seen a lot of parents try to get their kids to refer to me as such. “Say ‘thank you’ to Ms. Y,” they’ll coax their kid after a day playing in my basement. Or, more interestingly, I’ll be referred to as Mrs. Y. Sometimes I’m “Miss Amy.” That’s weird, too, making me sound like some old spinster with cats crawling around my legs.

My decision to change my name was so not a political, feminist or angry statement. In the end, it just felt more authentic to go back to the name I was born with.

So maybe the answer, even though I was always a stickler for having my kids call all grownups “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” is for their friends to just call me “Amy.”

One of my older guy’s friends tried that out at a holiday party I had right before Christmas. Everyone had had a few cocktails and the boys were heading out and my son’s friend was saying good-bye but didn’t quite know how to address me.

“Yeah, Mom,” said my son. “My friends never know what to call you.”

“Just call me ‘Amy,’” I told them.

“Really?” my son’s friend asked. “Well, okay. Good-bye, Amy,” he said before the two of them walked out the door.

I saw that friend maybe a week after that and thought it was interesting that he greeted me with, “Hi, Mrs. X.”

So, I guess it’s going to take more than a few cans of Keystone Light to make that change stick.

Feb

2014

Missing Teeth, Losing Kids and an Ode to the Minivan

Posted by Amy Byrnes

The view during a snow shoe hike with a friend Sunday morning that took the edge off missing teeth and children.

The view during a snow shoe hike with a friend Sunday morning that took the edge off missing teeth and misplaced children.

Usually here on Sundays I do a little Week in Review thing cleverly disguised as just another post.

Really, I consider it a value-added day because not only do I usually tell a little story but I point out other posts I had written throughout the week that you might not have known existed, slipping through the Facebook cracks between suggested posts for Sparkle paper towels and what state people are told by a quiz they should be living in. Or maybe you just never got around to opening the email.

Just looking to help a sister (or brother, as is sometimes the case) out.

But after losing my fucking tooth last night, and really needing to make a very short story quite long, there wasn’t really room to tack on the requisite posts from earlier in the week. I mean, since this blog is written and posted on the Internet, there is actually an infinite amount of space, but I’m already pretty chatty — I use way too many words when writing these things, — and studies show that people reading anything online can deal with about 300-400 words at a sitting and until they click over to somewhere else.

I tend to run a little longer than that.

Anyway, now that I’ve really warmed you up and you’re practically begging for more (or conversely, ready to click over to Facebook), here are some of the very exciting things that have been happening in my life over the last seven days including the humiliating loss of a tooth, a rage against Valentine’s Day and a love story starring a minivan …

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That Time My Tooth Fell Out

I tend to have recurring dreams, with many of the same themes cycling through my brain, night after night.

There’s the one where I’m packing a suitcase or boarding an airplane. I always seem to be taking off and never landing. (READ MORE … )

__________________________________________

Valentine’s Day is Stupid

I am not a festive person. I do not come from festive people.

As such, I do not own colorful sweaters, necklaces that light up like Christmas tree lights or candy cane earrings.

It used to bum my children out that I didn’t want to create a cemetery in our front yard for Halloween or string twinkly lights in the front bushes in December. Isn’t it enough I buy costumes and put up a tree? Can’t they be happy with a wreath?

Seriously. (READ MORE … )

__________________________________________

Putting the Sexy Back in Minivans

You might have read here that I am on a quest to bring the minivan back.

I’ve been rocking my Town & Country rental all week.

Since I started driving my shiny white beautyfollowing a little run-in with a tractor-trailer, I’ve started thinking a lot about – given all the vehicle’s bells and whistles, not to mention roominess – why so many of us parents insist on driving around the suburbs in big rigs. (READ MORE … )

__________________________________________

Am I Stupid?

It happened again this week. For maybe the fifth time in his life, I left my youngest child some place he wasn’t supposed to be.

And he’s getting tired of it and frankly, I can’t say I really blame the kid.

Someone should take away my mom license. (READ MORE … )

___________________________________________

Museum of the Fairly Ordinary Life

There’s a house around the corner from us, set along a busy thoroughfare running through town, which has had stacks of books piled up on an enclosed porch in front for as long as I can remember. The entrance is lined with curtained windows through which passersby can see mountains of books surrounding the room, piled high into the middle of each window. (READ MORE … )

Feb

2014

That Time My Tooth Fell Out

Posted by Amy Byrnes

I tend to have recurring dreams, with many of the same themes cycling through my brain, night after night.

There’s the one where I’m packing a suitcase or boarding an airplane. I always seem to be taking off and never landing.

There’s another one where I’m driving to a city — along loopy highways — or taking a subway or walking along city streets and sometimes going into a building and getting on an elevator. You always know there’s going to be trouble when you step into an elevator in one of my dreams.

And sometimes I’m back in college, and more specifically, about to take a test I forgot to study for.

Often, I’ve had dreams about losing a tooth or two. A few weeks ago I dreamt I was in my bathroom rinsing my mouth out and felt something rattling around inside. I opened my mouth and my teeth fell into my cupped palm, crumbled bits and pieces that were almost sparkly, like diamonds. And I clearly remember the panic I felt having just had teeth literally pour out of my mouth and could actually feel the smoothness of the gum along my jawbone from which they slipped.

It was one of those dreams where I had to remind myself it was just a dream. I even remember becoming conscious enough to poke around inside my mouth with my tongue to ensure all my teeth were still there. And I remember the relief I felt to find them all intact.

So imagine my dismay last night when, after settling in to watching a movie with my daughter and biting into a piece of frozen chocolate, I felt something rattling around inside my mouth and spit a molar into my hand.

And if you think I was in a panic to find myself holding my own tooth, you should have seen the look on my 16 year old’s face when it registered what had just happened on the couch next to her.

“I feel like I should do something,” she shouted after I turned towards her with one hand covering my mouth and the other holding the molar on my outstretched palm. “Are you bleeding? Do you need a towel?”

“Tell me if it looks bad,” I said and then lowered my hand and smiled.

“WHAT???!!!” she shrieked, and fell backwards onto the couch, laughing hysterically at the gap in my smile. “Your legit tooth fell out,” she blurted, her big blue eyes bulging at the sight of her mother’s jack-o-lantern grin.

The joke here is that I had put the chocolate – usually chewy morsels of caramel covered in dark chocolate and sprinkled with bits of sea salt given to me by my daughter for Valentine’s Day – in the freezer in an effort to slow down its consumption. My strategy was that it would take so long to gnaw through one piece – and I’d enjoy it so thoroughly – that a second would not be required.

Proving once again my complete lack of self awareness

My daughter, who’s been sick the last few days, and I had gotten takeout for dinner and were just settling in to spend the snowy Saturday night on our couch watching the totally adorable “About Time” with Rachel McAdams and her time traveling British love, which was possibly even sweeter than the dangerous chocolates I pulled out of the freezer. We each ate one and then I fetched two more and set one down next to each of us. I gave mine exactly 30 seconds to thaw and then gnawed some of the chocolate off the edge with the left side of my mouth.

And it was almost if those magical little bits of sea salt had made their way under a molar and popped the crown off its little nub base and sent it swirling into the abyss of my mouth, like Sandra Bullock spinning out of control in “Gravity,” except (SPOILER ALERT) without the happy ending.

After we got over the horror of what had just happened, my daughter and I proceeded to take pictures of me cackling and the gap in my smile, which we Snapchatted and texted to her siblings.

She even drew a big red circle around the gap and wrote, “Her tooth fell out … ,” which was really funny and I considered sharing the photo here until I realized that I actually do have boundaries when it comes to making myself look bad. This is, after all, the Internet and while I long for one of my blog posts to go viral, wouldn’t it be just my luck that it would be of a photo of me with a missing tooth?

(Cheetah-covered onesies are one thing but looking like I just blew in from my shack in the Ozarks is quite another.)

So I’m planning on lying low until my dentist gets around to calling me back to tell me when he can glue the thing back in. I’m supposed to take my son to a basketball game at a local university with other folks from town but don’t know if my ego will let me go through with it.

I definitely know my ego won’t let me go on the date I’m supposed to go on Monday night. All the personality in the world couldn’t cover up a potential love interest’s missing tooth.

I got into a bit of an online argument with my older daughter yesterday when she got annoyed with the pep talk I was giving her.

“You hold the key to everything,” I wrote in our increasingly snippy Facebook conversation. “It’s all about your attitude.”

“Shhhhh,” she wrote back.

When I Googled “losing tooth dream,” I found this interpretation: “This teeth dream theme is closely related to the idea of things falling apart, both literally and symbolically.”

Dreaming about the loss of teeth mostly symbolizes the loss of some type of control — over people or aging, all that kind of stuff. I think that’s spot on because as much as we try, we just can’t control most things in our lives. Things will break and fall apart – marriages, jobs, cars — and it’s how we respond that really forms the basis for how we live our lives. It’s really all about attitude.

In the meantime, I tried to leverage my tooth loss as a means for getting my daughter to make me breakfast this morning. We were lying on my bed together laughing about the whole tooth thing and I asked if she would go downstairs and make me something to eat.

“You and your ratchet ass missing tooth can go downstairs and make your own breakfast,” she said, trying to feel the gap in my mouth through my cheek with her finger.

And out of all the things in my life, I should know by now that teenagers were the most impossible to control.

Feb

2014

valentine’s day is stupid

Posted by Amy Byrnes

I wrote this post last year and what a difference 12 months can make (or maybe not having a job).

This year, not only had I purchased cards and candy well ahead of Valentine’s Day, I even was organized enough to send bags of candy to the two college kids in Virginia that even GOT THERE EARLY.

I’m never that together.

I also stumbled upon the aisle of boxed Valentine’s cards when I happened to be in Target in January, yes January, and called my fifth grader to tell him what was there and get ahead of the game.

“I’m not doing that,” he almost spat when I suggested he make a selection.

“But they have a million choices!” I told him. “Sponge Bob. Superman. Transformers.”

In the end, he relented to my prodding and picked NBA-themed cards.

I brought them home and they’ve sat on a counter in our kitchen until yesterday.

“Buddy,” I said to him last night. “Don’t you want to start working on your Valentine’s cards?”

“Nah,” he answered. “I’m not going to bring them in.”

So as it seems to happen so often in my life, my timing was once again way off.

So if any of you parents are feeling frantic because you forgot to get your kid cards in time, as you’ll see below that I did last year, you can come on over and grab mine.

I have a whole box.

___________________________________

I am not a festive person. I do not come from festive people.

As such, I do not own colorful sweaters, necklaces that light up like Christmas tree lights or candy cane earrings.

Seriously.

But it’s the make-believe holidays that make me crazy. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Valentine’s Day.

These are the phony holidays created solely to get you to spend money on things that nobody needs, like Barbie Pez and ties.

So, imagine my chagrin when I found myself last night at Target searching for Valentine’s Day goodies for my two kids still living at home.

Nothing says “I’m a horrible procrastinator” like standing in the seasonal aisle at Target at 5:30 the night before Valentine’s Day, huddled with all the other working moms and clueless dads in front of the few remaining pink stuffed animals and Necco Wafers that all the organized parents hadn’t already scooped up last week. It was like landing on the Island of Misfit Toys: Valentine’s Edition.

But there I stood, thinking, “This is stupid,” while one young mom kept telling her preschooler he was a brat and another mom, who had three little kids hanging out of her shopping cart, employing the “f” word to stop the all their bickering. Right there next to the bags of miniature Snickers bars.

This was obviously not a happy time of day to be at Target (and man, I am usually really happy to be at Target).

Of course at this point, there is not one box of Valentine cards to be found for my 10-year-old son to bring to school the next day. No Dora. No Thomas the Tank Engine. Nothing.

I was talking to my younger sister, who is like 14 years younger than me and has one toddler, on the phone while casing the joint and reported my findings.

“Go on Pinterest!” she says, and starts describing excitedly something she saw where I’d take my son’s picture holding out his arms and print it out and tape a lollipop to it. And I’m thinking, “Okay, I can do this,” and grabbed one of the remaining bags of lollipops from a bottom shelf.

I turned the corner and ran into a big display of Fun Dip cards that are pretty much the paper pouches containing the sugary dip and weird candy stick that kids can write classmates’ names on. I reached my hand out and hesitated for about two seconds, remembering then that you pretty much can’t send any food items into school anymore due to allergy restrictions, and then grabbed it anyway.

I’ll take contraband over crafting, all day long.

Feb

2014

Putting the Sexy Back in Minivans

Posted by Amy Byrnes

You might have read here that I am on a quest to bring the minivan back.

I’ve been rocking my Town & Country rental all week.

Since I started driving my shiny white beauty following a little run-in with a tractor-trailer, I’ve started thinking a lot about – given all the vehicle’s bells and whistles, not to mention roominess – why so many of us parents insist on driving around the suburbs in big rigs.

It’s got me wondering why we need to define ourselves by the vehicles that we drive and resist being labeled by who and what we really are – moms and dads who spend a fair amount of time hauling kids to school and soccer and the mall.

It’s fascinating that we need to pretend that we are something that we’re not – like a cowboy, maybe, or a contractor— because that’s who should be driving vehicles with a two-ton tow capacity and four-wheel drive.

Why is the SUV cooler, presumably, than the minivan? And why does it matter?

For years I hauled my guys around in a giant Chevy Suburban and while I really loved it and could parallel park that thing like it was a VW Bug, it was a pain in the ass. It ate gas, you had to hoist baby seats up and in because it was so high off the ground, and the extent of any parental conveniences was maybe five cupholders. My first Suburban even had the back door that swung open off to the side, not even straight up so you had to make sure the coast was clear before you released the hounds, so to speak.

Minivans are just chock-full-of conveniences for parents, with magic sliding doors and a deep well in the way back to hold $200 worth of groceries and prevent anything from falling out when the door is opened. And if yours is full of a few months’ worth of The New York Times neatly bundled, as is mine, you can STILL load all your groceries on top, as I did yesterday.

I think if Cadillac or Audi made a van, they’d fly out the door.

Over the years, I’ve logged a fair amount of time sitting on my therapist’s couch and talking about why I worried about what others thought of me. Why I needed to feel validated by how I thought things looked to the outside world. It was how I measured my self-worth.

It wasn’t until I started worrying about what was going on underneath the shiny exterior that things started to change.

And it lets me sit next to the other mom driving a Land Rover in the next lane, presumably on her way to a safari, at a red light and not feel weirdly less.

I’ve become much more concerned about what I think of me rather than what others think of me and while it’s not totally perfect – I still struggle with my vanity and ego – it’s a work in progress.

I was watching Kelly and Michael this week (I haven’t even mentioned how OBSESSED I am with Kelly Ripa) and heard them talking about a recent survey about what ladies consider the sexiest cars for men to drive and the pickup truck was at the top of the list.

Michael joked that the minivan was probably the least sexy vehicle for a dude to drive.

“I don’t know,” said Kelly, wearing some adorable outfit. “I see those guys driving around a whole bunch of kids and think that they’re obviously sexy to somebody.”

When I was younger, it was the glitter of the outer shell that really caught my attention. “OOOOh, shiny,” I’d think, mesmerized by all the flash.

But now I know better.

Now, I know you need to pop open the hood and make sure everything is running smoothly underneath. I know now that I like things that make my life easier rather than putting up with shortcomings because of how something looks.

I’d rather have solid and dependable — with good highway mpg — than zero to 60 in a heartbeat.

Because sexy is fun but reliability and practicality are better suited for the long haul.

Feb

2014

Am I Stupid?

Posted by Amy Byrnes

It happened again this week. For maybe the fifth time in his life, I left my youngest child some place he wasn’t supposed to be.

And he’s getting tired of it and frankly, I can’t say I really blame the kid.

Someone should take away my mom license.

I dropped him off yesterday afternoon at the elementary school in town about a mile and a half away from our house for what I thought was a 4:00 basketball practice.

I even had a nagging feeling while doing so — because practices are usually on Wednesdays — but I checked my iPhone and, yup, I was in the right place at the right time, according to my calendar.

I waited as he slowly made the walk from my car to the gym door, a sulky trip since he was mad at me because in his mind, I was somehow the reason kids had homework. Yes, that’s right: I’m the culprit. He’s resisting doing his homework lately, which is really out of character, but he’s busy blaming me, his teacher and really just THE MAN for the nightly 30 minutes of work that takes him away from looking at one screen or another or bouncing a Nerf basketball off his bedroom wall.

I returned home to my laptop, which I spent so much time looking at while working for my former employer that now that I’m out of work, find myself automatically opening up and wondering what to do with myself.

About a half hour later, the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find my 11-year-old standing there on the front step, his big blue eyes brimming with tears.

“Did I mess up the time?” I asked, and he burst past me and stomped up the stairs to his room.

By the time I got him to unlock the door for me, I found him sitting on his bed rubbing his legs, which were bright pink from making the long walk home in his basketball shorts with nothing more than a sweatshirt on top.

Did I mention it was about 20 degrees in my part of New Jersey yesterday afternoon?

I held out some cozy sweatpants to cover his freezing legs and brought him downstairs to the den to lie down on the couch in front of the fire and tucked his favorite blanket around him and left him alone.

After he had some time to pretend to fall asleep, I came in with a big mug of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows and a big splash of half and half, just the way he likes it.

“How about you do your homework in here tonight by the fire?” I suggested, and he took a sip of his cocoa and nodded his head.

His body and his mood thawed and eventually, he was happily showing me how good he was solving the evening’s math problems.

I apologized for the hundredth time as he was getting ready for bed later that night.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, but really, it’s not. If his dad kept leaving him the wrong place, I’d be all like, “What’s his problem?”

What the hell is my problem?

So far, I’ve left him alone in the neighbor’s basement when he was about four while we all went out to deliver Thanksgiving dinners (he told me he jumped on their trampoline to keep busy until we got back), and at the wrong baseball practice that left him sitting on the curb until I returned some 90 minutes later. I even bought him a cell phone last year to avoid these mixups.

I’ve also left his older sister off the wrong time for a basketball game and left my oldest son, who was probably around 5 at the time, playing outside on the swing set in the backyard while I drove his two younger sisters to a babysitter for the day.

I remember looking into the back of the minivan through my rearview mirror about 10 minutes into the trip and not seeing his head, told him to sit up in his seat.

“He’s not here,” piped up one of the sisters.

Really, you didn’t think this was important information to share with me?

And I don’t know what to cite as the cause. Certainly, it can’t be because I have too many kids (since half are away at school right now). And it’s certainly not because I’m a working mom (because I am currently unemployed).

It’s not even because I was busy making dinner (since the kids went to their dad’s last night for that).

Methinks perhaps I’m stupid.

Which was confirmed earlier today when I loaded about three months worth of New York Times daily papers, all bundled and tied, into the back of my minivan to drop off at town recycling center on my way to the grocery store first thing this morning.

They’d been tied up and sitting on my mudroom floor for about a week and I just couldn’t look at them one more second.

I had noticed on our town website that there would be no recycling pickup on my usual day this week – Wednesday – because of Lincoln’s Birthday (I mean, what?) and the center would be closed as well.

But I forgot today was Wednesday. I thought it was Tuesday. I’m all mixed up in the head.

So I went not once but twice to the recycling center this morning, sitting in my minivan and staring at the locked gate blocking the entrance while mentally composing the snippy phone call I was going to make to borough hall when I returned home.

And then I realized that it was Wednesday.

I drove home and saw my neighbor Susan had put a bunch of cardboard boxes out for recycling pick up and instead of texting her that there was no pick up today, I went and dragged a giant box out of my garage and added it to her pile.

So, what can I chalk this all up to? Super-early dementia? Dumb-dumbiness? I am alarmed.

However, since I was so encouraged to learn the other day that I wasn’t the only one hoarding baby teeth, I’m hoping maybe you guys can share some of your own not-so-stellar-moments in scheduling. Or parenting, I suppose.

I’d like to feel like less of a dope.

Feb

2014

Museum of the Fairly Ordinary Life

Posted by Amy Byrnes

You couldn’t always see what was going on inside their windows until some trees in their front yard were blown down during Hurricane Sandy, revealing the stacks of books and papers that push aside curtains and seem to take up a lot of the space in the house’s entranceway.

We’ve even affectionately dubbed the people who live there “The Hoarders,” and actively monitored their post-hurricane activity.

“Oh, The Hoarders finally got that tree out of there,” I’d say to the kids, or “Looks like they’ve got a lot of stuff out back in that garage, too,” my daughter observed one day.

The thing is, I don’t feel like I’m judging the people who live in that house and allow things to pile up — other windows in the house belie a propensity to accumulate — because I tend to have a hard time letting go of things as well.

I just do a better job of hiding it.

All of my magazines tend to pile up – Real Simple, Oprah, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, People – spilling out of baskets in bathrooms and scattered all over the kitchen island.

Bills, mail and other paper detritus teeter in a giant bowl on a side counter in my kitchen and it’s so pretty, the bowl, painted black with a colorful rim and flowers along the bottom, which you rarely get to see since it’s always filled with permission slips and Pottery Barn catalogs.

Most surfaces in my bedroom are covered with stacks of self-help books, collections of essays on writing, camera parts and iPhone charger cords.

And the other side of my king-sized bed, when not occupied by a certain 11 year old, is a great place to store a couple of books, reading glasses and usually a dirty tissue or two.

But I don’t really have a problem with getting rid of all the reading material and plowing through the paperwork at least once a month. It’s more of a laziness issue, really, combined with a fairly high tolerance for clutter. But every so often I’ll walk around with a big, black garbage big and fill it with Ballard Design catalogs and Sexiest Man Alive issues of People and pay the lawn service and my gas bill (generally late because who can develop a system out of all those piles?).

But then there are the things that I could never part with, like pretty much every card I’ve received since college, Playbills (Rent!) and my children’s teeth. Oh, and some of mine, too — all four wisdom teeth plus a few incisors. It’s like I’m a character that would fit right into the Silence of the Lambs series, standing alongside Dr. Lechter and maybe stringing necklaces out of his victim’s teeth or something.

Total weirdo.

I’ve been holding onto various souvenirs from the past – old datebooks, postcards and notebooks filled with to-do lists and Easter menus from 2003 – stuffed in bags and boxes throughout my house for years. I recently pulled a couple of them up from the basement and was surprised to find a sheet of photos of me smoking a cigarette that accompanied an op-ed piece I wrote for my college paper circa 1988 about why I loved to smoke (really?) and extra copies of my wedding invitation floating around in a Ziploc bag. I mean that was like 24 years ago.

Like unearthing long-forgotten masterpieces, I found pictures my kids had drawn for me when they were small, potato-shaped figures with stick arms and floating faces with “MOM” painstakingly written beneath, more precious than any Picasso or Manet (can you tell I just finished reading “The Goldfinch”?)

It’s like I’m stockpiling artifacts for a museum dedicated to myself and my fairly ordinary life. Visitors will be able to inspect strips of sonogram photos, baby announcements, entries from my 1998 datebook including that my older daughter had Show and Tell on Sept. 28 and I got my hair done a few days later. Or even more foretelling, a card for my 27^th birthday sent to me by a high school girlfriend, joking about the old ladies on the cover and wondering if we’d be like that “in 60 years,” who never made it past her own 45^th birthday.

Just like the home movies I dug up a few months ago, it’s painful looking through all the memories, but when I can stand it, enlightening too. Looking through all the cards and notes I’m reminded how much my ex-husband and I loved each other and all the hopes and dreams I held not just for myself but for my children, too. And even though things didn’t work out the way that I had planned all those years ago, it wasn’t a waste but an important part of where I am today.

I’m reminded at how full my life has been.

So I’ll gladly give away that Banana Republic shirt that never fit quite right and clear books off my shelves that really don’t stand the test of time (so long, Mitch Albom). In the end those are really just things.

But after I’ve sorted through the giant Rubbermaid containers and assorted dust-covered cardboard boxes that are scattered about my den, I’ll carefully return all the items inside and hoist them back down to my crawlspace until it’s time for another retrospective of a very ordinary life.

Plus lots of teeth.

Feb

2014

Three is a Magic Number

Posted by Amy Byrnes

For those keeping track, I locked the keys inside my shiny, white minivan rental Friday night, bringing the number of not-so-great things that have happened to me this month to a total of three (well, four if you count that whole Kelly Corrigan wild goose chase).

So, as these types of things tend to happen in waves – often, I am told, in three’s – I should be done, right? Happy days are here again, and all that.

I’ve done plenty of stupid stuff over the years – one time I locked the keys inside my old minivan along with two of my young children on one of the hottest days of the year. Luckily the car had been running and the AC on full blast, the kids safely strapped into their car seats, my oldest son sucking happily on his Binky and staring at me through the window until the AAA guy arrived.

Another time I left the car running with the kids strapped inside to drop something off at a girlfriend’s house. In those days we were probably starved for grownup conversation and were having a full-blown discussion on her front stoop until we saw the van begin to back down the driveway. My oldest – probably around three or four at the time – had unbuckled himself from his car seat and toddled up to the steering wheel and put the van into reverse, not only setting the van in motion but also automatically locking all the doors.

This really happened.

Luckily, having locked myself out of this minivan one too many times before (see above), I had placed a spare key in a little magnetic box and attached it above the tire, which somehow as the car with my two young children was backing down my girlfriend’s driveway, I had the wherewithal to reach under and pull the box off the car, rip out the key, fit it into the keyhole on the driver’s side door, get in and stop the car.

Like I was a stuntwoman or something.

Interesting that I had the presence of mind to perform all of those heroics when I was in my 20s but on Thursday couldn’t even remember to get the driver’s license of the guy whose rig hit my car.

So in retrospect, the recent turn of events has been far less dramatic. I enjoyed my first week of unemployment – minus the car accident and all the snow days and delays from school.

And, when I can access its keys, I am having fun tooling around in my minivan and think it’s hilarious how impressed the kids’ friends are when they get in.

“Whoa, this is so cool,” said my young neighbor when I picked him and my son up from school the other day and he watched the side door automatically slide shut.

I think I’m bringing the minivan back (cue Justin Timberlake).

So, if you missed any of this past week’s posts and have no clue what I am talking about (car accident, minivans, what?), you can catch up here:

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File:Viele Einkaufswagen

Weekend Warriors

During the many years that I stayed home to care for my young children, I made it a point to avoid any and all supermarkets/warehouse clubs on Saturdays and Sundays. I could do that because I had the luxury of being able to hunt and forage for pantry staples like Pop Tarts and Tostitos while everyone else was at work during the week. (READ MORE … )

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Just Like Me

I don’t know what I’d do without my friends.

They lift me up when I’m sinking, listen patiently to my many stories mostly about myself, celebrate my victories, teach me to knit (and then tolerate when I show up for knitting with nothing to knit), critique my resume, go speed dating with me, invite me to their homes to write and always, always share their wine. (READ MORE … )

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I Went to See Kelly Corrigan and Had a Nice Beet Salad Instead

You guys, I have never tried to pretend that I am very smart over here. As a matter of fact, I often seem to be attempting to prove quite the opposite.

I’ve told you how I thought an undiagnosed case of scoliosis was the cause for my back fat and have shared pictures of myself on the Internet wearing a cheetah onesie (which I may or may not be wearing right now).

(READ MORE … )

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Choose Happy

When I started to see all those posts this week of everybody’s Facebook movie, I was like, “Really? It’s not enough we need to complain about the weather and post those Throwback Thursday photos, but now we need to set it all to music?”

When will the oversharing end? (READ MORE … )

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Putting Happy to the Test

In theory, this is a funny story.

So, you know how yesterday I was all like “Be happy, bitches”?

Well, the universe – or whoever’s running the universe (clearly having nothing better to do) – must have sensed my cockiness and thought, “This one’s a little too perky. Let’s throw her a real challenge today and shut her up.”

(READ MORE … )

Feb

2014

Putting Happy to the Test

Posted by Amy Byrnes

In theory, this is a funny story.

So, you know how yesterday I was all like “Be happy, bitches”?

So, I finished writing yesterday’s post, got the kids off to school and prepared to head an hour north – and back to Montclair, NJ (a town I should really make an effort to avoid in the future) – for a professional information session and great networking opportunity.

I even made it up there with plenty of time to spare for parking and getting a coffee, which was what I was thinking about when Siri, that bitch, told me out of the blue that I needed to get off the highway at the exit I was just about to pass.

I don’t know what she’s thinking sometimes. Is Siri, like too busy on Facebook to notice what’s going on in my car?

I somehow managed to veer onto the exit from the middle lane safely and as I headed down the ramp, pleased with my maneuvering, a tractor trailer heading in the opposite direction and taking up most of the two lanes as it wound up the ramp, plowed into the side of my car.

I know.

All I can remember is screaming a number of obscenities and laying on my horn and watching in disbelief as the trailer connected with the front of my vehicle and scraped towards me until it came to a stop.

And then any clear thinking I might have been capable of just moments before flew out the window and into the cold morning air.

The driver, who looked as if he could have been one of the animated pirates in Disney’s “Peter Pan” movie – short and bearded, swarthy even, with a little knit cap perched atop his head – was in a rush to get his rig out of there and not very sorry that he hit me.

“You should have stopped,” he said, clearly not realizing that the sight of his giant truck barreling towards me only moments before had stopped my SUV dead in its tracks but to no avail.

He had totally miscalculated the angle he needed to be moving in to get the 18-wheeler up the curved and narrow ramp and onto the highway without taking out oncoming traffic.

And here’s where it all started to move fast, especially my adrenaline, and it was icy, and I was shaking and other cars were starting to honk because we’d essentially shut down the ramp and blocked anyone trying to get on and off the highway. So while I’m trying to call 9-1-1, the driver’s telling me he can’t pull over anywhere and needs to go.

We took pictures with our phones of each other’s insurance information and I shakily wrote down the license plate number from the back of his trailer, and he drove away.

“You didn’t get a picture of his license or registration?” asked the police officer – who finally showed up after a second call to 9-1-1 – as we stood outside my vehicle and I tried to explain to him what had just happened. “What about the license plate number on the front of the truck?”

Apparently with 18-wheelers, that’s the one that matters.

The officer did his best but in the end, couldn’t even write a police report because of my lack of information.

He gave me some suggestions on how to track down the driver and file my own report at the police station – talking about things like summonses and court appearances – and drove off.

Up until this point, I assumed that damage was confined to the exterior of the vehicle. I even thought that maybe I’d be able to live with it if I couldn’t find the truck driver to pick up the bill for repairs.

I then pulled out of the parking lot and discovered that something was very wrong with my car. It felt as if I was driving on a frozen lake. Although the vehicle was moving forward, the steering wheel was askew and the traction control emergency lights indicated that something was amiss down below.

I drove about a quarter mile at super low speed and pulled into a very sketchy Gulf station — like the dive bar of gas stations – where a mechanic pointed out that my front wheels were pointing in different directions.

“It’s bad,” he said.

And that’s when I started to cry.

Because, okay, I can handle a lot of challenges single-handed. Broken cars. Broken appliances. Broken marriages.

Done.

But I draw the line at a car accident on top of a recent job loss. Enough already.

I got back in my car and called my insurance company and explained the situation – that I was in an unfamiliar area about an hour from home —to a very nice woman named Pat and when she asked me for my name, I started crying again.

“A-a-a-my,” I sobbed, and she told me not to worry, she’d help me figure out how to get the car towed closer to home and hook me up with a car rental.

Forty-five minutes later, the tow truck driver arrived — along with a wife or a girlfriend in his rickety truck that had “We’ll take your junk cars,” emblazoned on the back of his cab — and I watched him drive my car up the pitched ramp and the two of them chain it to the bed.

After I handed the key and clicker to the woman through the passenger side window, I fumbled with my phone and took a picture of the EZ2TOW logo and phone number on the side of the door, just in case that was the last I ever saw of those two and my car.

The morning had taught me it was all about gathering information.

I spent another 45 minutes trying to busy myself on my phone and pretend to be invisible to the men huddled inside the gas station discussing the setbacks and variances involved in a planned expansion of the building and it was like being in an episode of “The Sopranos,” minus the mobsters but with just lots of extra Jersey. You know?

My girlfriend arrived and whisked me back down the Garden State Parkway towards home. We had a late lunch and a big glass of wine that helped take the edge off my day and later on, I picked up my car rental and headed to fetch my son from basketball.

He went from being annoyed that I was two minutes late to losing-his-mind-thrilled when he got a load of the souped-up minivan I was driving (2014 white Chrysler Town & County because I have a secret obsession with minivans).

“Can we keep it?” he asked, pushing the overhead buttons that made the side doors open and close automatically and turning up the Justin Timberlake song playing on the satellite radio.

And I thought, “Well, at least someone’s happy.”

I should tell him to keep it to himself.

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Amy Byrnes

life in fits and starts

Author Archives: Amy Byrnes

Are You a Goodreader?

Mrs. X

Missing Teeth, Losing Kids and an Ode to the Minivan

That Time My Tooth Fell Out

valentine’s day is stupid

Putting the Sexy Back in Minivans

Am I Stupid?

Museum of the Fairly Ordinary Life

Three is a Magic Number

Putting Happy to the Test