Amy’s Week in Review (Nov. 4-10)

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Check out more of artist Sandra Lippmann’s work, which she graciously let me use here, on Instagram #100circles.

It was quite the week, as many of you already know, over here in the Land of Amy.

If you have been able to dodge my relentless social media crowing, you might have missed that my blog had a brief little, tiny kind of mention on The New York Times’s parenting blog “Motherlode.”

I know, right?

I like wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and remember it and am just so happy.

So, anyway, as of this writing, I am frantically trying to cross things off my to-do list so I can get on a ferry this afternoon and join my college friends for a long weekend of fun.

I will try to take copious notes and photos and share details upon my return and warn that some editing might be required to protect the innocent.

I lived through college in the 80s with these people. I know what they are capable of.

While your waiting for me to dish on that, perhaps I can interest you in perusing some of the other things that have been on my mind over the last week.

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Early in the week, I bemoaned how little time my kids would spend in school this month.

DSC04220November is the Cruelest Month for Moms

Anyone who agrees with T.S. Eliot’s assessment that “April is the cruelest month” has obviously never spent time trying to be a mom in New Jersey during November.

This week alone, my fifth grader has three days off. Three days. I didn’t even know about one of them until this weekend. (READ MORE … )

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Later in the week, I had the whole NYTimes thing and hallucinated. One having nothing to do with the other.

Screen Shot 2013-11-06 at 8.43.00 AMThat Time I Got Mentioned by the New York Times

Yesterday was one of those days that showed just how far your emotions could swing over the course of a 24-hour period, aided and abetted by hallucinatory gases.

I shall explain. (READ MORE … )

 

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At the end of the week, I got a bee in my bonnet and cut off my hair. Again. Kind of like another girl I know.

IMG_1960Jen and I Get a Haircut

By now we all know that I am no Jennifer Aniston. This important piece of information came courtesy of my 10-year-old-son recently who, upon learning that Jen was just a couple of years younger than his withering mother, suggested I consider following her “tips.”

Thanks for pointing that out, guy. It’s not like I don’t own a mirror or anything. (READ MORE … )

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Jen and I Get a Haircut

DSC_0005By now we all know that I am no Jennifer Aniston. This important piece of information came courtesy of my 10-year-old-son recently who, upon learning that Jen was just a couple of years younger than his withering mother, suggested I consider following her “tips.”

Thanks for pointing that out, guy. It’s not like I don’t own a mirror or anything.

And that’s okay, usually I’m pretty good with just being Amy.

Sure, I’d like Jen’s legs, abs and income to buy some of the cute stuff she wears, but I’ve come to terms with having to work with what the good lord gave me and a bank account limited by the care and keeping of four children.

So while I inherited a short torso, healthy thighs and problematic skin (or, as my girlfriend likes to call it, “Cheap Irish Skin”), I did walk away from the genetic melting pot with thin ankles and good hair.

And this is where I could give Jen a run for her money.

For a number of years, I sported very long, layered hair in varying degrees of blonde (eg: I just keep getting blonder), similar to Jen’s.  I really liked it a lot and dedicated a significant amount of time, money and energy to its care and keeping.

But then, one day early this year, I chopped it all off.

I just woke up one morning and was grossed out by all that hair.

I walked into the place where I get my hair cut like two or three times a year armed with a couple of photos and told the owner what I wanted.

Okay, we need to back up right here because I really need to set the stage for this.

I only get my hair cut a couple of times a year because it’s outrageously expensive. And while I’m happy to share with you most things about me, I am too embarrassed to tell you how much I spend per cut. It’s shocking.

It’s especially shocking because, if you didn’t know any better, you’d assume the salon was just another Korean nail place tucked into a New Jersey strip mall. It’s flanked by a Dunkin’ Donuts and dry cleaner and inside it’s pretty nondescript.

The owner is a tiny Korean woman who could best be described as an anime character crossed with maybe one of the sexy locals one of the officers would fall in love with from time to time on M*A*S*H. She’s got her long hair piled up on the top of her head and I’ve seen her wear a skirt made of fur in like February and teeter around in impossibly high heels.

But she’s also all business and is literally a one-woman operation. She usually has an assistant on hand to do the hair washing and combing, but the owner does all of the cutting and blow drying and moves women through as if on an assembly line.

It’s not unusual to walk in on a Saturday afternoon and find the waiting area filled and a line of women sitting in a queue with wet hair wrapped in towels, waiting to get combed out and moved towards the main chair.

Henry Ford had nothing on this woman.

It’s a very strange experience, really something out of Seinfeld, and you’d never imagine you’d fork over $50 for this service – much less lots, lots more – until she performs her magic on your hair. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to her cutting method but she zips the scissors here and there and pulls out her big, double-barrelled hairdryer and blows your hair dry like no one ever has before. It’s bouncy and chic and you could never replicate it at home. It’s just sexy.

IMG_1960So when I went in that day to lop off like eight-inches of hair, the normally non-plussed owner was like, “Whoa.” She even had to walk away down the hall and come back. And by then, she had a plan.

It was the first time I ever got a drastic hair cut that I didn’t regret. I must have been really just ready for it.

Of course, the first people I see after are my kids who were basically like, “What the fuck did you do to yourself.”

Confidence boosters, they.

Naturally, I would see pictures of Jen from time to time in People and admire all her hair. But I had moved on.

And now, so it seems, has she.

Huffington Post

Huffington Post

Seems like Jen might be trying to be Amy, because last week she chopped all her hair off. It’s chin length and looked pretty chic in the blurry photos I saw of it online.

And just like that, I decided I needed to lop off whatever length I’ve started to grow over the last few months since my last cut (my ponytail was finally moving past the super-stubby stage).

And I love it. It’s short and chic and fits where I am right now.

Of course, after I am inspired by Jen and get all mine cut off, I read on HuffPo that her new do was the result of a Brazilian straightening gone wrong and she was kind of regretting it.

But I stand in solidarity with my hair sister. Because while I will never be Jennifer Ansiton in many respects, it seems hair could be the great equalizer. As long as no one looks down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That Time I Got Mentioned by the New York Times

Screen Shot 2013-11-06 at 8.43.00 AMYesterday was one of those days that showed just how far your emotions could swing over the course of a 24-hour period, aided and abetted by hallucinatory gases.

I shall explain.

The first thing you need to know is that I try to get up every day around 5 a.m. to write. “Try” is the operative word here because sometimes, my only response to the piano sound trilling from my iPhone next to my head is to hit snooze. Like 10 times.

Once I’ve lumbered out of bed I need coffee. STAT. And then I get back under the covers with my laptop and get to work.

But not so fast. Before I can get to the writing – the real work – I’ve got to fritter away precious early-morning minutes checking Facebook, emails, Twitter and the daily statistics for the blog.

The stats don’t really dive too deep, but I can see things like how many page views I get each day and where some of the traffic is coming from – like did you get here through Facebook or Google. (It still cracks me up that at least once a day, some poor unwitting soul winds up here after Googling “Cheez-Its.”)

So yesterday, I check the site stats and notice #1, traffic was already pretty brisk for the start of the day and #2, most of it was coming from The New York Times.

Wait, what?

So I click on the link and am taken to the Times’s parenting blog, called “Motherlode,” which of course, I love because it’s smart and current and everything you’d think a parenting blog associated with The Grey Lady would and should be.

I scour the various articles and comments and don’t see any links to my blog, nothing indicating how people were ending up from there to here.

I repeated this fruitless effort throughout the day as I noticed more and more clicks on my site coming from “Motherlode,” but still couldn’t get a handle on why.

In the meantime, I had a conversation later that morning that reminded me that people do not change. Not really. Ever.

And it made me cry so hard and so long, I began to suspect that hormones were helping to enhance the melodrama of the event. Perimenopausal madness at its finest.

But it was one of those cries that leaves you exhausted. Emotionally spent. And with a blotchy face.

At lunchtime, I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned, which I look forward to because it’s an opportunity to get completely stoned in the middle of the day under the supervision of medical experts. My teeth are so sensitive that I need the laughing gas even for a cleaning. To put it in perspective, I gave birth to two of my kids naturally. Not a problem. But don’t even try to come near my teeth without some type of sedative.

I might bite you.

Now, I don’t know how nitrous oxide works, if the technician turns a dial to a specific setting depending on how anxious you are or the dosage is based on your size. Maybe it’s just an “On” and “Off” button.

I also don’t know if that sweet, sweet air is affected by your emotional state. But I was really hallucinating as she scraped the plaque from my lower teeth and rattled on about the holidays.

Usually I can stay pretty connected to what’s going on in the room. Can follow the one-sided conversation coming from somewhere above my face.

But yesterday, all I could think about was how my whole body was vibrating, sitting there in the chair, and that the noise of a motor was filling my head and drowning out the chatter and the whir of the brush as it polished my teeth.

And then I’m confused because it’s no longer the hygienist who’s been cleaning my teeth for years but some random mom I know in town sitting there, shining my pearly whites.

“What is she doing here?” I wonder.

Then, in an instant, I’m being instructed to breathe through my nose. “It’s oxygen,” the hygienist tells me. And before I know it, she’s removing the mask, straightening my chair and telling me to have a nice day.

And I’m slightly concerned because just moments before, I couldn’t feel my face.

I am able to make my way home and once again, need to go through the whole check in routine – it’s obviously a compulsion – and continue to be confounded by that NYTimes traffic.

“Why am I not understanding how the Internet works?” I wonder.

I click over to “Motherlode” one more time, and whether it was because I really believed I’d actually find a clue this time or the magical powers of nitrous oxide unlocked a portion of my brain previously closed, I noticed a box on the site I hadn’t paid attention to earlier in the day.

And that’s when I saw it.

 

Screen Shot 2013-11-05 at 2.43.52 PM

Do you see me? I’m there with The Atlantic and CBS.

 

At first, I thought, “Well, maybe it’s some kind of ad or something. Like, it’s just coming up on my computer.” Sort of like that pair of Frye boots I looked at once on Zappos that now seem to follow me around the Internet.

But then my 16 year old walked in from school and was like, “What are you, stupid? Mom, it’s really there.”

And I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it was just a quick little mention. A link to a recent post and my blog name. The blog editor tagged a question to it, trying to generate some conversation.

Even so, it was beautiful.

Once I determined it was legit, I took to Facebook to share the great news.

And it was there that I found that validation that I was looking for earlier in the day.

It was there I felt the love.

So many people chimed in to say “Mazel Tov” in one way or another, it washed away the hurt from that morning.

My college son sent me a text laden with heart-filled emoticons – just what I love – and told me he was proud and happy for me. One good girlfriend called to say woohoo and another BFF came over to have a celebratory cocktail later in the day.

(Really, we’re always just looking for a good excuse to have a cocktail.)

And it was all just nice – to have everyone from my kids to high school friends to folks I’ve met through my work as a local reporter –psyched for my success, no matter how really minor it was.

And I know, it’s just Facebook and we could make a whole case that the site just provides an alternate and slightly misleading universe for many users.

But just give me this. Today. I really wanted the petting and kind words and maybe that’s why I do what I do. I’m needy.

But in the end, it was a good reminder that sometimes, you need to find a new well to drink from when the first one comes up dry.

Because that water tastes just as good.

 

 

 

 

November is the Cruelest Month for Moms

DSC04220Anyone who agrees with T.S. Eliot’s assessment that “April is the cruelest month” has obviously never spent time trying to be a mom in New Jersey during November.

This week alone, my fifth grader has three days off. Three days. I didn’t even know about one of them until this weekend.

Out of the possible 20 full days of school this month, in our district the kids have five of them off and there will be early dismissals for another four of those days to accommodate conferences at the end of the month.

What am I doing with my 10-year-old all those hours when he should be sitting at a desk in a classroom learning about ancient civilizations or fractions or something?

As a former school board member, I understand the challenges of scheduling all those things that need to be squeezed in throughout the year, like professional development for teachers and holidays, and still end up with the mandatory 180 school days. It’s like squeezing Jello into a tube and having it ooze out the other end.

For the first time since I can remember, the kids have off Tuesday for Election Day.  In our town, residents use the two schools as polling places. In the old days, that used to coexist with the school day, with voters filing into the schools’ libraries to cast their votes. But now, no one wants folks to be able to just wander in off the streets into the schools in the wake of Newtown.

I get that.

Then at the end of this week, school is closed Thursday and Friday for the annual NJEA Convention, something I’ve had to attend in Atlantic City for mandatory board member training but have never really heard of any teachers I know attending. That used to make me crazy when the kids were younger, probably because I just wanted them out of my hair and to stop asking me what’s for dinner. But now with just two kids at home, I’m feeling kinder and gentler about the whole thing. It’s really just an excuse for the good people of New Jersey to take their kids to Orlando for a long weekend.

Then we have half days for conferences beginning the Friday before Thanksgiving and leading up to Turkey Day and Black Friday. That is what we call it now, isn’t it? It’s its own weird holiday celebrating consumerism.

Blerg.

If I was to stop trying to be funny for a second, I’d admit that I don’t mind having the kids around. Really. Not usually.

But I’ve got this day job that helps pay a portion of two college tuitions and the off-the-charts taxes I need to fork over to Uncle Sam quarterly.

I just don’t have the time to police the TV watching/XBOX playing/YouTube searching that some people I know like to spend as much of their free time as possible pursuing.

As fate would have it, I’m heading out of town for the long weekend to meet up with college friends and party like it’s 1988. Well, minus the beer bongs, cigarettes and fraternity boys. Pretty much we’ll sit around drinking wine and howling about the old days. I’ll come home with a sore jaw from laughing so much.

And this is a good thing, because even though I’m agitated about the November school calendar for my younger children, I have yet to come to terms with the full week off the college kids have for Thanksgiving.

Ah. Let the holidays begin.

 

 

 

 

Amy’s Week in Review (Oct. 28-Nov. 3)

IMG_3126I was all over the place last week. Literally.

Last Friday, I drove with my favorite girl crush into the city to see “Betrayal,” the new Mike Nichols play starring Daniel Craig. It was worth sitting in two hours of traffic just to see James Bond up close for 90 minutes. Seriously sexy.

On Saturday, my best girlfriend and I went to Brooklyn for a failed attempt to see Junot Diaz at the Brooklyn Public Library. Take note that the security guard there does not care how far you drove or how much you love an author. When she says there’s no room, there’s no room. And I think she was carrying a pistol.

So, we made the best of things, eating and drinking our way through Park Slope. The drinking paved the way for me spending $38 on a knit cap when we stopped to do some shopping. It’s not cheap being a hipster.

Two days later, my single gal pal and I drove back into Brooklyn to, well, I’ll remind you about that in a minute.

Anyway, my posts last week were also all over the place.

The one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy reminded my how much I love hot coffee first thing in the morning, a light on when I use the bathroom and heat. I really love heat.

IMG_0961My Hurricane Sandy Story

The PTSD kicked in earlier this month, when the weather around here started to cool down but not enough to warrant switching the heat on in the house.

On a few of those days, sitting in my chilly kitchen mid-morning working – before the afternoon sun warmed up the front of the house – I’d flash back to those few weeks last year when the sun was the only thing we had to rely on to heat the house. (READ MORE … )

So, as I started to say, last Monday I drove to Brooklyn to see a taping of NPR’s “Ask Me Another,” which reminded me of what a geek I’ve become. And it’s okay.

It’s Hip to be SquareIt’s Hip to be Square

I spent the first half of my life trying to be cool so it’s kind of interesting that I’ve become such a geek in mid-life.

And while I think my affinity for show tunes, talk radio, Hobbits and comic books had been ingrained at an early age, I spent a lot of time back in the day trying to temper such nerdy impulses with cigarettes and attitude.

But now I am too old and busy fighting about curfews and telling certain people to put on a sweatshirt to keep those appetites in check. (READ MORE … )

Finally, if my calculations are correct — and I’m an English major so it’s a long shot — there are 52 days until Christmas (sorry). That means that between now and December 25, there is a lot of holiday terrain to navigate. And whether you’re dealing with difficult family members, growing children, the loss of a loved one or a change in marital status, traditions evolve. It’s inevitable.

Here’s how I’ve been dealing with it:

photo(66)Traditions: Old and New

I was agitated earlier this week when I got a text from my ex-husband announcing it was his year to spend Thanksgiving with our four children.

I had already committed to hosting the holiday at my house for my side of the family and was looking forward to the planning and execution of the dinner alongside my girls. We’ve had fun over the years peeling potatoes and baking turkey cakes side by side in our kitchen. I love how well we work together, how one of the girls slices the apples while another prepares the filling and then I sprinkle the sugary crumble on top. (READ MORE … )

I also got distracted by a bunch of things online last week, as I am wont to do, which I shared on Facebook (and I’m too lazy to rewrite the links so apologies for the SCREAMING HEADLINES):

Wine with Halloween candy? Oh yea! (Patch.com)

Listeners Respond: Your Favorite Scary Halloween Stories (The Takeaway)

The Food Writer and Her Picky Eater (Motherlode/NYTimes)

Here Are Kerry Washington’s Adorable SNL Promos! (About That…) (Jezebel)

‘Homelamb’ Is The ‘Sesame Street’ Parody Of ‘Homeland’ You’ve Been Waiting For (HuffPo Comedy)

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Traditions: Old and New

photo(66)

The Devil wears Hanna Andersson. And Barney is just a gift. Circa 1994.

I was agitated earlier this week when I got a text from my ex-husband announcing it was his year to spend Thanksgiving with our four children.

I had already committed to hosting the holiday at my house for my side of the family and was looking forward to the planning and execution of the dinner alongside my girls. We’ve had fun over the years peeling potatoes and baking turkey cakes side by side in our kitchen. I love how well we work together, how one of the girls slices the apples while another prepares the filling and then I sprinkle the sugary crumble on top.

It’s the ultimate team-building exercise.

But one of the things about divorce is that you wind up with a script of how things should go down henceforth. Somewhere in a drawer in my room there is a document that details who gets the kids when, in alternating odd and even years.

But in the five years since we’ve been apart, I haven’t really had to consult our divorce agreement for holiday issues. Things always just seem to work out around Easter and we pretty much stick to the Christmas script we always followed.

And Thanksgiving hadn’t been controversial because he’s been spending it with his girlfriend’s family. But apparently he wants to loop the kids into that this year.

At first I thought, “Well that sucks. Why would the kids want to go there?”

But after a couple of things that happened this week, I’ve decided it’s not really a big deal. It’s just one day. One meal.

I went to join my knitting group for a spell on Wednesday — and I use the term “knitting” very loosely because while we used to actually work with yarn and needles, now we mostly just really like each other and show up sans equipment to catch up over coffee for an hour or so.

We got to talking about Thanksgiving plans, as women of a certain age invariably do. Who’s hosting, who’s coming. How many.

My one friend, who’s about 10 or so years ahead of me in the mom game, announced that she and her husband were going to travel to Boston to spend the holiday with their son and his wife.

This is not the first time in recent years that they have traveled to spend a holiday with one of their three children. Last year they drove to the Hudson River Valley to eat Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant where one of their sons works and this Christmas, they’re heading to Vermont with another son.

But it’s not what she expected, she said, all those years ago when the kids were small and they would gather with extended family in their home. It was their tradition.

“I always thought it would be that way,” she said to us gathered around the kitchen table littered with coffee cups and cell phones.

“But then, once you spend a holiday without all of your kids, you realize that you can get through it,” she said. “That it’s not the worst thing.”

And that really stuck with me.

When you get divorced, of course one of the things you focus on is the possibility that at some point, you might be spending a holiday without your children. You freak that all those traditions you carefully cultivated over the years won’t continue.

And sometimes it’s true and sometimes it’s not.

I’ve spent a few Easters without the kids and that was rough. I flew to California to spend the holiday with one sister and her family and remember just how sad I was to be without the kids that day. How sad it was to not be stuffing millions of jellybeans and pieces of chocolate into plastic eggs or finding the perfect hiding spot for a basket.

But the kids were off on some beach vacation with their dad and how could I begrudge them that? There should be some upside to having divorced parents and if that’s a trip to the Bahamas, so be it.

Yesterday was the first Halloween in my like 18-or-so years of trick-or-treating with kids that I didn’t have to actually hit the pavement. I was prepared to follow my 10 year old down the darkened streets of our little town while he and his posse ran from house to house filling their pillowcases with treats. But it never happened.

He had hooked up with kids in another neighborhood and by the time I got over there, the dads had been dispatched to oversee the kids while the moms were busy inside a nearby house setting out the fancy pigs in a blanket and Capri Sun pouches to distract the kids from candy upon their return.

I stood around the kitchen and drank a spicy blood orange margarita and chatted with the other moms until the kids started to trickle back in. They compared hauls and then ran around outside, playing manhunt in the soft October night air.

I finally pried my son away from the fun, gathering his yellow nylon costume off the pile of other discarded superhero suits on the floor, and on the drive home, he told me, “That was the best Halloween ever.”

photo(67)

Twin princesses wearing sensible turtlenecks.

And I thought of all the Halloweens of years past, holding little hands walking up to neighbors’ doors and encouraging my little Buzz or Woody to say “Trick or treat” and thank you upon receipt of said treat. Of being part of the stroller brigade later, when the older kids could zip independently from door to door while we moms waited in the darkness by the curb with the younger siblings in tow.

And later still, when everyone wanted to walk around with their own set of friends, I’d be off in a million different directions, trying to keep tabs on who was with whom and where.

It’s evolving, this parenting thing. One minute you’re shouting at your little Tinkerbell to keep up with the group of trick or treaters and not run in the street and the next, she’s getting on a train to the city to see the Halloween parade and eat Indian food.

And whether you get to that point slowly over time or a divorce or other catastrophic life event helps accelerate the process, at some point, we all get there.

Traditions are broken or need to be changed. But that’s just how it goes.

I think the key is flexibility, and remembering what’s important. What really counts.

Because while those big holidays are great and go down in the photo albums and memory books for the ages, it’s the slow slog over all the days and weeks and years that really matters. Being there for the kids on a Tuesday afternoon in September when one is feeling the pain of a failed romance or a Friday morning in December when another thinks she can’t go on one more day.

That’s the tradition I hope I’ve created for my children that neither divorce nor growing older will ever break.

It’s Hip to be Square

icon_510299I spent the first half of my life trying to be cool so it’s kind of interesting that I’ve become such a geek in mid-life.

And while I think my affinity for show tunes, talk radio, Hobbits and comic books had been ingrained at an early age, I spent a lot of time back in the day trying to temper such nerdy impulses with cigarettes and attitude.

But now I am too old and busy fighting about curfews and telling certain people to put on a sweatshirt to keep those appetites in check.

So when a friend asked me last week if I wanted to go with her to see a recording of the NPR game show “Ask Me Another” in Brooklyn, I was like, “Duh!”

Because that show, my friends, is the perfect storm of geekdom. It combines the amazingness of public radio – and shows like “This American Life,” “Fresh Air” and “Prairie Home Companion” – with the thrill of game shows.

It’s smart and funny, qualities I admire beyond compare.

Game shows were staples of my childhood, squeezed throughout the day on TV in between “Captain Kangaroo,” reruns of “Here’s Lucy” and “The Edge of Night.” I loved seeing all the crazy stuff women would pull out of their purses on “Let’s Make a Deal,” how handsome Chuck Woolery was on “Wheel of Fortune,” how sophisticated the celebs on “Password” seemed and the bawdiness of “Match Game” (Charles Nelson Reilly!).

For some reason, the game shows on TV today don’t seem to match the unpredictability or smartness of the old school shows. For that, you need to turn on the radio.

Which is something I do quite often, especially on the weekends when I can catch the latest episodes of “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” and “Ask Me Another.” The former is an hour-long show featuring a revolving panel of semi-celebrity comedians (Paula Poundstone or Mo Rocca), regular-people contestants and a bigger celebrity du jour (last week was Steve Martin) to answer questions based on what was in the news that week and is taped before a live audience.

“Ask Me Another” brings in contestants for a fun series of word games, sometimes accompanied by song. There is a regular hostess and two side-kicks and all are seriously quick-witted and seem to be having lots of fun.

We made the weirdly-easy ride to the Bell House in Brooklyn Monday night to see this week’s show and cheer on my friend’s nephew who was a contestant. The venue was a pretty dive-ish, hipster spot a stone’s throw from the Gowanus Expressway and as the rest of the audience began to file in, I started to realize just how young the show’s demographic was.

That was confirmed later as we were seated in our aluminum folding chairs, enjoying a plastic cup of fancy ale, and the women seated in front of us got all jazzed when the celebrity for that night’s special Halloween show, author R.L. Stine, was introduced.

R.L. Stine playing along with Ofira Eisenberg on NPR's "Ask Me Another."

R.L. Stine playing along with Ofira Eisenberg on NPR’s “Ask Me Another.”

Stine, who goes by “Bob,” seemed like a very affable man and quite unlike whom you might imagine conjures books for children like “Say Cheese and Die,” and “The Haunted Mask.” That series of Goosebump books – and their frightening covers in particular – terrified my oldest when he started reading in the late 1990s and had to be banished from his room.

But the girls sitting in front of us, probably in their mid- to late-20s, were apparently huge fans and whispered ferociously among themselves and nodded every time a new book was mentioned.

We were a big room full of dorks, young and old, playing along with the contestants and enjoying a good double entendre and funny song lyrics.

But it’s hip to be a square now, all the cool kids are geeks. Isn’t that the cornerstone of, like, Brooklyn culture?

And I’m happy to have passed down my dork gene to my kids and enjoy when they choose to wave their weirdo flags. I love that one of them worked seriously with Legos well into high school and never says “no” to a round of Boggle. That another daughter reads everything she can get her hands on and can be heard at all hours howling at “Who’s Line is it Anyway?”. That same girl also crammed like who-know-how-may-years’ worth of “Dr. Who” episodes into her senior year of high school and is now the proud owner of a home-made TARDIS that actually lights up. And I loved that my oldest son read for pleasure for many years until he became, well, too cool not to. They’ve all played instruments — with varying degrees of success — and the boys in particular took to the saxophone.

They’re activities that foster creativity and intellectual curiosity, something we could all use more of.

Because in the end, being a nerd is much smarter, and healthier, than smoking cigarettes and much less expensive, too.

I just wish it didn’t take me so long to figure that out.

My Hurricane Sandy Story

IMG_4059The PTSD kicked in earlier this month, when the weather around here started to cool down but not enough to warrant switching the heat on in the house.

On a few of those days, sitting in my chilly kitchen mid-morning working – before the afternoon sun warmed up the front of the house – I’d flash back to those few weeks last year when the sun was the only thing we had to rely on to heat the house.

Or brighten it, for that matter.

When Hurricane Sandy blew threw this part of the Jersey Shore one scary night a year ago tomorrow, she took a lot things with her like heat and electricity, and all those modern conveniences I had come to rely on like morning coffee, the Internet and hot showers.

She also took with her my sense that I didn’t need anyone. That I could handle anything thrown my way.

And while I fared so much better than many people in my small town – families whose homes were ravaged by floodwater that surged through their bedrooms and kitchens, destroying every last slipper, cookbook and photo album – the storm was still traumatizing.

For the second time since my old husband moved out of our house five years ago, I felt incredibly alone. It quickly became clear that no one would be checking in on how the kids and I were doing, no one would be offering us a place to stay and get warm.

It was every man for himself, so to speak.

We had a giant maple tree slice through our back yard as the storm really started to kick in that terrifying night. The tree, which had stood just on the other side of the chainlink fence in my neighbor’s yard, had been a source of irritation, dropping some piece of detrius or another into my yard – and the nearby pool in particular – for years. So it was fitting, really, that the one tree to come crashing down would be that annoying one, and while it missed the corner of my house by about one or two feet, it did manage to slash through the pool cover and crush everything in its path.

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So on top of caring for the two children I had at home at the time and working 24/7 as a reporter covering the storm and its aftermath locally, I also had to contend with getting that thing out of my backyard and figuring out who was going to pay for it.

And it was cold. Motherfucker, it was cold. And dark.

I’d be okay in the earlier parts of the day but when the sun would start to set in late afternoon, and shadows would fall in the bathrooms and kitchen, I’d freak out knowing it was only a matter of time that the kids and I would be left, sitting in the dark surrounded by our hodgepodge assortment of candles and flashlights.

And there is only so much Yahtzee one can play.

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We’d trudge upstairs by 9 those nights and retire separately to our bedrooms, slipping under piles of blankets wearing layers of socks and sweatpants to keep warm.

We even had a generator, briefly. A friend in town had a truckload shipped up from somewhere down south to distribute gratis to those in need, but it was old and needed to be revved up to start like a lawn mower. It was the only time in my life I wished I had experience mowing a lawn so I would have understood the motion required to get that thing going – and how to operate the choke, for that matter. Instead, the two kids and I stood outside trying to get it to start and when our neighbor came over to lend a hand and got it started for us, its noise and fumes filled our garage even though it stood on the walkway outside. I wasn’t in the mood for CO2 poisoning on top of everything else.

While later, I would hear stories of how some neighborhoods banded together and made lemonade out of the situation, pooling resources and commiserating together over bottles of wine, it was pretty lonely over in my neck of the woods.

The only person who seemed pretty happy during those first few days was my then-9 year old who spent the time running relatively unchecked through the neighborhood with his friends, released from the bonds of school and homework. As the fourth child, he’s used to fending for himself – over the years he’s taught himself not only how to tie his own shoes buy how to ride a bike. He came inside one day to rest for a moment and I really got a good look at him, how he’d added a warmer layer to his go-to soccer ensemble and sported a knit cap on his head. As he sat on the couch pouring over some newly-discovered catalog, I noticed how his knees were covered with cuts, scrapes and dirt.

I understood then I was witnessing a Lord of the Flies transformation firsthand. It was only a matter of time before he’d be carrying around a conch shell and mounting a head on a stake.

So needless to say, when I heard that my mom got her heat and power back about six days into the ordeal, I immediately invited myself to stay there. I packed the kids off to their dad’s – who had also gotten his heat and power back – and relocated about a half hour south.

And from there, it got pretty good. Once I was under her roof, my mom took pretty good care of me, serving some type of hot cereal each morning and even halving my blueberries and setting it all out in pretty cups and bowls.  She was good company and once her cable was restored, we liked to sit and watch Nashville together.

I’d make the drive north each day to check out what was going on around town for work and make sure my cat hadn’t frozen into a block of ice. And when it seemed the kitty – who had survived near-starvation, some kind of burning that singed the whiskers off her face, and who know what else before we found her – had had enough, my favorite cat-lady friend came over and stuffed her in a carrier and I boarded her at the local vet.

And that’s my hurricane story. I stayed at my mom’s for about a week until my own power was restored and the kids and I could move back in. I’ve slowly had repairs made to my deck and replaced the gas grill smashed by the tree. But there’s still a portion of crushed fencing that needs to be replaced and I just haven’t had the extra time, money or energy to get that job done.

And I know firsthand how fortunate I am. That it’s just fencing and a pool cover that needed to be replaced. As a reporter, I’ve had the opportunity to witness just how devastating the aftermath of the storm could be. I’ve spoken with homeowners who weren’t just uprooted for a week or two, but remain, one year later, out of their homes. And I’ve seen what it’s like when some have stayed in their homes, that look as if they’re living in a war-torn Eastern European country and not a middle-class suburb of New Jersey. They have to deal with insurance companies and and flood maps and the government and that is truly traumatic.

What I mostly learned about myself during those two weeks after Hurricane Sandy struck was that being alone is not always so great. That it would have been nice to have someone else help shoulder the burden the storm brought. Someone to help empty out the bags of thawed Lean Cuisine boxes, ice cream containers and chicken nuggets from the freezer. Someone to sit with by the fire each night and warm up next to under all those blankets at the end of each cold, dark day.

Because being independent is one thing but being alone, I learned, is something very different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amy’s Week in Review (Oct. 21-27)

WwosGrowing up in the early 70s, I remember long stretches of weekend afternoons stuck at home with my dad while my mom was out food shopping or doing whatever else it was she couldn’t do during the week with six kids in tow. I was never one of the chosen ones, the child lucky enough to get to accompany her on these outings, and was instead relegated to spending the long day with the rest of my rejected siblings rolling around the small room that served as our TV room back then.

Those were the days when families owned exactly one television set, that played exactly seven channels (including PBS), and if you were stuck at home with your dad all day during the weekend, that meant you were stuck watching sports.

And if anything could have made not being selected as my mom’s shopping companion any more painful, it was being forced to watch four hours of sports programming on a Saturday afternoon.

Talk about the agony of defeat.

And if you know anything about 1970s sports programming, you know you’d be facing a few hours of auto racing or golf or, if you were lucky, Mexican cliff diving courtesy of ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

None of it would ever interest me. I don’t even remember what I’d do to keep busy – maybe I read a book or pestered one of my three brothers – while our dad dozed on the couch watching whatever sporting events were on that day.

But I’d always perk up for the intro. I mean, how could you not find it compelling – the skier tumbling off a jump or the victorious driver spraying a shaken bottle of champagne, host Jim McKay celebrating “the human drama of athletic competition”? And of course, the iconic “thrill of victory and agony of defeat”?

It was grand and global and the exact opposite of being trapped in a small house in New Jersey watching sports on a boring Saturday afternoon.

I pondered the highs and lows of life this week in a couple of posts that were neither grand nor global. But it turns out, that’s how life rolls.

I shared tips for getting nothing done each day except checking a lot of Facebook statuses and enjoying the significant improvement in 21st Century television offerings here:

522591_379600385471432_307731171_n5 Habits of Highly Ineffective Bloggers

People ask me all the time, “Amy, how do you manage to get absolutely nothing done, day in and day out?” (READ MORE … )

 

 

And then, in a stoke of organizational genius, I scored a personal victory the following day, which I shared here:

photo(61)The Thrill of Victory

Although I’ve confessed to you all that I am a hopeless procrastinator and not-doer of things, I did experience a triumph in organization and planning yesterday that was really too good not to share. (READ MORE … )

 

 

And finally, I wrote about not wanting my 10-year-old son to masquerade as a murderer for Halloween, an feeling kind of bad about it, here:

photo(58)The Thwarted Ninja

The kids and I crossed a lot of things off our to-do list this weekend. We stocked up on milk and Greek yogurt at Costco, cleaned out about seven contractor bags worth of outgrown clothing, old magazines and Nerf guns from our closets and finally got around to buying the 10 year old’s Halloween costume. That last one was the biggie. (READ MORE … )

 

And here are some links I shared on Facebook for one reason or another last week:

Now We Are Five, By David Sedaris (The New Yorker)

50 Years of Girls Names (The Atlantic)

What American Accent Do You Have? (GoToQuiz.com)

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The Thrill of Victory

DSC04212Although I’ve confessed to you all that I am a hopeless procrastinator and not-doer of things, I did experience a triumph in organization and planning yesterday that was really too good not to share.

To begin with, while wearing pants with zippers and activating my new ATM card have not exactly been priorities lately, coming up with some type of healthy, homemade meal is something I try to pull off most nights.

And I don’t know if it’s because I’ve got less mouths to feed on a daily basis or that my day job has become more 9-5 or if I’ve really just started to get the hang of thisbeing a mom thing (I’m a late bloomer), but most days I have an answer to really the most annoying question on earth: “What’s for dinner?”

I had a work meeting yesterday about an hour’s drive away also snuck in a get together with fellow Jersey blogger and someone I wished I could have coffee with every week, Brooke at Carpool Candy (read her, she’s fun and smart and knows a thing or two, it seems, about swingers).

So, knowing I’d be on the go most of the day and not want to come home and have to chop, sauté or boil anything for dinner, I pulled out my shiny new slowcooker, threw in precisely four ingredients, and got it cooking before I left.

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I literally plopped in 5 boneless/skinless chicken breasts, a small container of fresh salsa from our local gourmet market, a can of diced tomatoes and chiles and a packet of taco seasoning. Legit, that’s it. Cooked the whole thing for 5 hours on low.

Had I more time, I would have cooked up some bulgur or brown rice to go with it (the former has tons of protein, too). But alas, I just had time to squash up 2 avocadoes I had lying around with some chopped plum tomato and lemon juice (no limes on hand) and plopped it on top of the seasoned chicken.

My daughter and I were pleased with our meal and quickly cleaned our bowls.

My 10 year old walked through the door from soccer and said, “It smells delicious,” but then was crestfallen to see my “taco chicken” lacked tortillas, cheese or anything that qualifies a taco as a taco.

“You really need to clarify what you’re making,” he told me, looking up from his bowl of shredded chicken and avocado a little teary-eyed.

But instead of umbrage, reminding him of all the starving children in Africa or how lucky he was to have a mommy making such nice dinners for him, I just let it go. He’s stuck living with women who prefer brussel sprouts to mac and cheese and turkey to beef, so he’s already got stuff to sort through.

And besides, I wanted to savor the sweetness of my organizational victory for a little bit longer.