That Time My Tooth Fell Out

photo-6I 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.

 

valentine’s day is stupid

IMG_3118I 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.

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IMG_3123I 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.

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.

 

Am I Stupid?

IMG_3742It 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.

 

 

Museum of the Fairly Ordinary Life

photo-4There’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.

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 27th 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 45th 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.

 

 

Three is a Magic Number

photo(71)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

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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photoJust 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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photo-3I 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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995268_10152146986632173_491263369_nChoose 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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IMG_3729 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 … )

That Time I Got Laid Off

IMG_3716The final story I worked on before I was laid off on Wednesday was an obituary and I don’t know what could have been more ironic since I’d been sitting Shiva for that job for about the last six months.

It was similar to the end of my marriage, when I could see the writing on the wall — I knew I needed to jump ship – but couldn’t muster the courage or the energy to make the leap. There was something that kept me sitting in my deck chair long after the lifeboats had sailed.

I had survived a round of layoffs last summer, and had often imagined what it would be like to be let go out of the blue. I knew things weren’t great at my company and realized some bad news might be coming at some point. I just didn’t expect it to be Wednesday.

But apparently I have lifelong issues with reading signs in general. I recently watched the video we made when I gave birth to my third child (minus all the gory details). There I was, sitting up in the hospital bed still out of breath from the ordeal of getting the baby out of me, and while everyone else in the room was bustling about – suctioning the newborn and cutting the cord – I could be heard saying over and over, “Can you believe it?”

I guess at the time I was still bowled over by the whole miracle of life thing, but watching myself almost 17 years later so surprised to have ended up with a baby that day, I can only wonder what everyone else in the room had been thinking.

So imagine my surprise on Wednesday, which started somewhat off schedule as the kids had a delayed opening because of some overnight snow but then quickly got back on course with my regular 9:45 workout – to find out it was also my last day of work.

“Your roles are not part of the go-forward plan,” I was told on a quickly-scheduled conference call with a few hundred of my colleagues. “Today is your last day of work.”

Cue the chopping sound.

And while I’d always imagined that hearing those words would cause me to freak out about the imminent loss of income and health insurance – not to mention the nice laptop and iPhone that had come with the job – that wasn’t my immediate reaction.

I mostly just felt relief.

It had been a long three years as a full-time working and newly-single mother of four, exhausting and overwhelming at many points.

It was also one of the most satisfying challenges I’d ever taken on and I’m proud of how much of myself I put into the job. Other than being a mom, I’d never worked harder at anything in my life and my coworkers were much nicer to me than my teenagers.

And while I could feel miffed by the turn of events, I am left feeling grateful for the experience.

The job – although highly demanding and at points leaving us working 60-hour weeks – gave me so much: A reentry to the work-force after an 18-year absence; an opportunity to hone my writing and reporting skills, not to mention opening the door to mastering 21st Century online media knowledge – I learned everything from how to shoot and edit a video to crafting SEO-friendly headlines.

(Don’t try to tell this to my teenagers because they invariably view me as a struggling Luddite and can’t stand to even watch me text. “It’s painful,” my 16-year-old daughter said recently as she watched me type a message with my right thumb.)

But the job left my life in much the same way it had entered it: out of the blue. I hadn’t been looking for a job three years ago when a friend and fellow journalist told me about a new company that was hiring for a job that seemed to be almost too good to be true, since it would allow me to do what I loved to do AND work from home AND offered things like dental plans and 401Ks.

And it was a great ride and I met so many wonderful people along the way and most importantly of all, the job gave me the self-respect and confidence I so badly needed. I rediscovered that girl I was long before I became a wife, a mom, a dinner-maker, laundry-folder, cupcake-baker and counter-wiper.

Now I know I can be all of those things and more.

So I’ve decided that for now, I am just going to breathe. I think I might concentrate on this blog and bother all of you a little bit more each week and build some momentum on a writing project that had been nagging at me but I lacked the time and the energy to nurture.

I will also have more time now to do things like check to see if my 11-year-old did his homework and ask my high school junior even more annoying questions about where she wants to go to college.

Won’t they be thrilled?

In the meantime, when I wasn’t getting fired this week or frantically trying to transfer three-years worth of photos and music onto another laptop, I blogged about this stuff:

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photo(104)Guilty as Charged

I don’t know if it’s the Catholic in me, the mother in me, the daughter in me or just the woman in me, but I spend a fair percentage of each day feeling guilty about one thing or another.

Whether it’s my reluctance to buy into purchasing organic products, the poison I pay a service to put on my lawn to keep it green that is probably leaching into my children’s drinking water, or that I am morally and ethically opposed to wet cat food although it would probably make her a lot less fat, I feel bad about a lot of stuff. (READ MORE … )

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photo(102)Snow Kidding

My cell phone, positioned on the nightstand next to my bed and about three inches from my head, rang at 4:40 this morning and because I have this deep-​​seeded aversion to answering any calls coming in from 1–800 numbers, I let it go to voicemail.

I figured it was The Gap calling to tell me my payment this month is like, three days late. I could understand if I was three months delinquent in paying something. By all means, give me a heads up and maybe a little attitude. But The Gap gets snippy when you forget to pay within the allotted pay cycle and starts suspending your card and calling to strong-​​arm you and shit. (READ MORE … )

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The Divorce Diet

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Credit: Duncan Hines

Looking for a sure-fire way to drop 5 to 10 pounds fast?

Forget what you read in all the magazines or the ads you see on TV.

My advice is to get a divorce.

You’re never hungry, could care less about food and find yourself fitting into pants that haven’t felt right since you gave birth to your second child.

When I was in the thick of ending my 18-year marriage, I looked great because I lost about 10 pounds in a week and saw a number on my scale I hadn’t seen since 1994.

Like, even my running pants were hanging off me.

The secret is that you become anxious and jittery about things like whether you have to give your ex the TV out of your bedroom or the backyard dining set (issues that seem ludicrous a few years later) and not where your next meal is coming from. And that was weird for me because I am like a Golden Retriever and pretty focused on what and when I’m going to eat next.

So for a few months, I was able to subsist on Kendall Jackson Chardonnay and a handful of baby carrots each day.

But then it started to snow.

For some reason, it seemed to snow more in the year or two after my husband — and default shoveler — moved out of the house than during the course of my entire marriage.

And like a bear needing to bulk up for its hibernation period, I would head to the supermarket every time Al Roker announced another storm was on its way and stock up on pretty much everything I loved to eat: Whole Foods guacamole, a baguette and cheese (preferably the Fromage D’Affinois from Wegman’s), and maybe some peanut M&Ms.

I’d stock up on ingredients to make meals requiring a crockpot, like chili or pot roast, and of course we’d whip up some brownies or chocolate chip cookies to help take the edge off all that shoveling.

And then, I blame the Internet — or maybe my mother who finds and sends me all the good things from the Internet — for what happened. I came across a recipe from a food blog for a coffee cake that has a box of yellow cake mix as its foundation, and the photos of this thing were so compelling I had to try it. I needed to bite into that crumb/cake/icing combo.

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Wait. Shhhh. I think it’s talking to me.

And it was good.

Then I shared the recipe with my neighbor, Susan, and she thought it was pretty good, too.

So the Winter of 2011 was spent sending coffee cakes back and forth to each other every time it snowed. Whenever I heard a storm was in the forecast, I’d go out and buy a box of yellow cake mix. It got to the point where I just always had some Duncan Hines on hand, like it was ketchup or something.

And all this coffee cake making and eating proved detrimental to my waistline. I expanded quickly back to Old, Normal Amy size and spending most days in yoga pants and leggings.

So, when I started hearing about the big, coastal storm coming to New Jersey this week, I started to think about that coffee cake recipe. But nowadays, I work out with a guy who’s all: Don’t eat sugar. Sugar is the devil. Blah. Blah. And I don’t have the energy to fight with him and tell him why I need to eat coffee cake.

So I thought I’d blog about it instead.

I texted Susan and asked her if she had the recipe, which she dug up and sent over, and then I asked her if she ever took any pictures of cakes she made a few years ago.

“No,” she answered, “But I’m making one later or tomorrow.”

My little guy trudged through the foot-high snow last night to sleep over her house but she handed him something at the door to run back to me.

An entire coffee cake.

“Just helping your blog with a good visual,” she texted.

She-devil.

Cinnamon Roll Cake (Adapted from 3B’s: Baseball, Baking and Books)
Box of Yellow Cake Mix
4 eggs
¾ cup oil
1 cup sour cream
Mix by hand and pour in 13 x 9 greased baking pan.
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
Mix and pour over cake batter. Swirl into batter with knife.
Bake @ 325 for 39-40 minutes. Let cake cool 10 – 15 minutes before icing.
Icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
4 tbsp milk (You can use heavy cream for a thicker consistency.)
Pour over warm cake.

Pass out from sheer bliss.

The Polar Vortex Has Frozen My Sense of Style

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Brrrrr. The handy thermometer outside my kitchen window read about 2 degrees early Tuesday morning.

By now, we are all well-versed on the potential hazards posed by the record-breaking temperatures that have plunged the country into a deep freeze.

Just turn on the TV for a couple of minutes and you’ll be immediately terrified by the mighty wrath of the polar vortex.

There’s hypothermia and frostbite to combat and slipping and falling on icy surfaces to be avoided.

Power lines are falling and cars, trains and even airplanes are zigzagging all over the place.

Just this morning, I watched a clip on Good Morning America of cars skidding across highways and one video of a vehicle careening off an overpass and crashing onto a frozen pond below.

But perhaps the most critical issue that has been impacted by the subzero temperatures here in the Northeast is my sense of style.

It seems to have frozen.

I have gone from trying to look cute (well, most days) to trying to stay warm and cozy and I am here to report that those two criteria do not go hand-in-hand.

Case in point: I returned home from picking my little guy up from school yesterday afternoon and tried briefly to sit and work in the jeans and turtleneck sweater I was wearing. That lasted about 10 minutes.

I could not deal with the button, the zipper, the funnel gripping my neck or even my bra.

It’s like it’s so cold outside that I just want swath myself in fleece and eat pot roast.

So that’s what I did.

Since about 3:00 yesterday afternoon, I have been wearing this:

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My glamorous cheetah suit even has a handy pouch in front, perfect for holding dirty tissues and your cell phone.

I ate soup in it, did some work in it, wasted time on Facebook in it and watched yet another episode of “The Americans” (which everyone needs to watch) in it and drank wine in it.

I took it off to sleep and put it back on this morning. I suppose I’ll have to change out of it again to exercise later because that would be weird.

When I received the classy Forever 21 jumpsuit as a gift this Christmas, I wore it for a day and then hung it up, considering it more of a gag than a critical new piece to add to my daily wardrobe.

But now I’m thinking that if the weather this winter stays as cold and snowy as it’s already been, it could just become a fashion staple. My go-to work-from-home ensemble.

My older children were a little more skeptical when they saw their mother emerge from her room wearing essentially a onesie.

“You’re a grown woman,” observed my 21 year old.

There could be some downsides, like, I almost had a heart attack when the doorbell rang yesterday afternoon (thankfully just the UPS guy who drops and goes). And then I was slightly mortified when some of the items I was grabbing out of the mailbox slipped and fell to the ground. I had been trying to just reach my arm out the front door so as to not have to expose my neighbors to the horror of the cheetah suit and then found myself dashing down the front steps and diving through shrubbery to grab the errant mail.

Is this what things have come to? If this is what cold weather does to me, I can’t imagine what I’ll be wearing during the Zombie Apocalypse.

Michonne will have nothing on me.

Back in the day, I would be slightly concerned about what I wore to drive the kids to school each morning. What if I got into an accident or was stopped by the police? Forget clean underwear. At the very least, I always made sure I was wearing a bra. Or a very big coat.

But had something gone awry during this morning’s early and icy ride to the local high school, the paramedics would have had to have sliced through this getup:

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And it makes me wonder, as I pass all the other parents carting their kids to school, am I the only one who has foregone style, and a bra for that matter, for comfort?

Has style taken a backseat to staying warm for you this winter?

Because God knows, my former sense of style is sitting in the third row today. Wearing headphones.

 

 

A Very Gosling Christmas

IMG_0005Even though my days of getting fancy gifts are on hold right now – there were no diamond studs under the tree this year – I still got some pretty amazing presents for Christmas.

And because, according to my therapist, I am to view all challenges, hardships and difficult people in my life as gifts – here to help me learn about myself and grow – receiving less-expensive items has taught me a lot.

First, the people in my life know me really well and give me amazing presents. And second, great gifts don’t need to cost a lot of money (first witnessed last year with the amazing deck of cards my daughter made me).

Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t say “No” to a Cartier watch. But for now, I’m happy to settle for opening amazingly-thoughtful things.

There were definitely some themes to the gifts I was given: Of course, it was a Very Gosling Christmas this year and I got not only the probably-soon-to-be-best-selling book 100 Reasons to Love Ryan Gosling (I am partial to #29: He can do the Dirty Dancing body lift and #99: It is biologically impossible not to love Ryan Gosling) from my daughter, but a pair of earrings from my BFF featuring the young actor’s scruffy face and giving new meaning to the term “stud earrings.”

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Only on Etsy can you find such treasures.

Who thinks to make these things?

I got lots of stuff with my name or ‘A’s on them, like notecards and pillows, a makeup bag and not one but two cool bracelets.

And speaking of makeup bags, this one from my gal pal was pretty funny:

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My kids totally nailed their gifts to me.

I got the Walking Dead version of Monopoly from my older daughter that I’ve already played twice and a sticker of the cover illustration from The Giving Tree to put on the back of my laptop and makes it look like the boy is plucking the apple from the tree.

My oldest son gave me a stuffed zombie that you can pull apart and see its guts. Sweet.

My little guy gave me a pair of silver heart earrings, which I was told he hand-selected and I am tempted to make a joke about what a stud he is, but think that might come off as really creepy.

And my younger daughter gave me a fleece cheetah-print onesie so that I could now work from home without the annoyance of pesky yoga pants waistbands digging into my muffintop. I spent about 36 hours wearing it after Christmas and can attest to its comfort but am concerned that it seemed to raise my body temperature 10 degrees, leaving in a bit of a perpetual sweat during its wearing.

I liked pairing the outfit with a scrunchie atop my head and am concerned that if I started eating Cheez-Its in bed with the suit on and drinking wine, I just might be single forever.

So for now, it’s hanging on the back on my bathroom door. (I thought about posting a picture of me wearing the suit, but decided that no one, especially potential love-interests, need to see that selfie).

But I loved how thoughtful my gifts were and how much the people I love really “got” me.

And that is really the greatest gift of all (besides the Cartier watch). Right?

When I wasn’t opening presents or running around in my onesie this week, I was busy blogging about my fondness for dudes and that sometimes the Elf on the Shelf inspires kids to remember the true meaning of Christmas.

Check it out ..

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I ♥ Dudes

Dear Men of the World,

I learned an interesting thing about how it seems I am perceived by you fellas – as a divorced lady – when I hosted a party the other night. (READ MORE … )

 

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photo(86)Sometimes, Elves are Okay

I went to my annual cookie exchange the other night and as we sat around the hostess’s kitchen island eating the salad she prepared to balance out the fondue and Trader Joe’s wontons we’d been feasting on earlier, someone pointed to the elf perched high atop the cabinets.

“That’s Steve,” out hostess said brightly and picked up her iPad. “Wait, you’ve got to see this.” (READ MORE … )

 

 

 

 

 

Twas 6 Days Before Christmas: An Ode to Stress

photo(84)Twas six days before Christmas and all through my house,

I’ve got so much shit to do I almost wished I had a spouse.

The stockings are stuffed in my mudroom without care

In hopes that come Christmas Eve they get pulled out of there.

The children will be sleeping until noon in their beds

While visions of PS4, iPhones and spring break trips dance in their heads.

 And Mama in her scrunchie, with piles of lists on her lap,

Is hiding in bed, sipping a nightcap.

And so, my friends, that’s all the cleverness I can muster because I’ve got to get to the outlets, yo, for some last-minute gifts. And the grocery store. The liquor store. The post office. Dry cleaner.

Oh, and work. I’ve got that job.

Any attempt to blog this week has been sidelined by the Internet, ironically. I’ll quickly pop over to Firefox to, in theory, check my emails and all of a sudden I’m ordering something on Amazon and admiring folks Christmas trees and cats on Facebook.

But whilst trolling Facebook, I did come across the following ad from Apple and, as the mother of a reformed teen age boy who has been known to have his nose in his smartphone, it just resonated with me.

It’s not easy being a teenager, or the mom of a teenager, and I think we probably have no idea what those darling creatures are thinking most of the time. And while none of my kids have ever produced such a clever and moving video, they have endured many a family gathering over the years and sometimes even smiled.

Get out your tissues and some wrapping paper while you’re at it so at least you’re doing something about getting ready for next week while surfing the web.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImlmVqH_5HM