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

 

 

 

100 Down: Celebrating a Year of Blogging

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My trusty notebook is filled with lots of crazy quotes my kids say and ideas for future blog posts. In other words, it’s a gold mine of content.

For many years while my children were going through our local elementary school, the highlight of the long winter months would be the celebration of the 100th day of school.

To commemorate that special day, inevitably the kids would need to bring in 100 of an item to be counted or added or divided or something math-related. Over time, I got pretty good at hot gluing things like pennies and buttons onto old baseball caps or poster board without burning my fingers or dripping globs of the sticky stuff onto the kitchen table.

So when I noticed last week that I was nearing the 100th post on my blog, I really wanted to break out the gun and start gluing stuff to celebrate.

When the blog was just something I talked about (rather than did anything about), I worried that I would run out of things to write about. But luckily, kids and ex-husbands make for excellent blog fodder. They’re an endless source of content.

And while I still struggle with how much is too much information to share with the general public, here I am at Post #100 with a notebook full of ideas for future posts and life constantly providing other items of interest to blog about.

So instead of gluing things together – and really, we probably have enough boxes full of things our kids have stuck together – I thought I’d reshare the top 10 most viewed posts of 2013, as this also coincides with the almost one-year anniversary of the blog’s launch.

I have to say, it’s really exciting to have created something from scratch and watched it grow. A blog is like a child you have total control over. I can tell it what to say, not to talk with its mouth full and to go to bed at bedtime and, damn, the blog always does what I say.

But most importantly, blogging about my life has given me great comfort learning that I am not alone. We all are trying our best — balancing the good with the bad — and want to know that our voice has been heard.

I love hearing from all of you and am thankful for your support. Thank you for listening to me.

Looking forward to the next 100.

4065e460375c6ba54b4882434096429610. The College Good-Bye

There’s a picture pinned to the bulletin board in my kitchen, half hidden by silly greeting cards and bumper stickers that I fancy, which is our iconic family back-to-school photo. In it, my oldest two children stand on the front step of our old house, a basket of late-summer impatiens drooping behind them, on the occasion of the eldest’s first day of preschool, just shy of his fourth birthday. (READ MORE … )

9. This is How I Miss Him

In the almost four years since my ex-​​husband moved out, there have been a few times that I really wished the guy was still around. Like when it snows. Say what you will, but that man could shovel like a motherfucker. (READ MORE … )

374973_10201077380878194_436086746_n8. Divorce 101

I’ve always been ahead of the curve when it comes to major life events.

I was in a huge rush to get married and had the ring on my finger by the time I was 23 and two years later, I was pregnant with my first child. I am familiar with being the one to provide all the firsts as the oldest sibling in my family and oldest grandchild on both sides of my family. But I also stood alone in my close circle of girlfriends in thinking that getting hitched and knocked up so young were especially good ideas, so became the first among us to sail into those unchartered – and as it turned out – stormy waters. (READ MORE … )

7. Young Amy: A Cautionary Tale

Over the course of the, like, bazillion hours my college girlfriends and I sat around talking during a girls’ weekend earlier this month, the topic of how much you should let your children know about your past antics came up. (READ MORE … )

enhanced-buzz-9179-1375125450-06. Mismatch.com

I went on a date last night with an amazing guy.

Really, we were totally on the same page and I thoroughly enjoyed his company. I liked chatting with him and watching how he talked with his hands. And he was really cute, too, with beautiful blue eyes. (READ MORE … )

 

5. On Being Catholic: The Mystery of Faith

My 10-​​year-​​old son had a play date after school the other day and when the friend’s mom came to pick him up, she asked if we were in a rush to get my guy to CCD.

“A lot of kids seem to go on Tuesdays,” she said.

“Um, we’re taking a break from being Catholic right now,” I told her, and she laughed at my joke, but I still feel really guilty about the whole thing.

It must be the Catholic in me. (READ MORE … )

photo(57)4. Old School (Or That Time I Drank Jungle Juice)

I drank something called jungle juice this weekend and as I lifted the Solo cup brimming with the icy yellow liquid to my mouth, I realized that I needed to retract a statement I made recently – that you couldn’t go home again – because dudes, sometimes it’s like you never left.

Let me explain. (READ MORE … )

3. November 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 … )

IMG_76582. The Girls

Between us, we have 19 kids, 9 weddings, 3 ex-​​husbands, 2 boyfriends, over 25 years of memories and a lot of opinions.

Since we met as students at the University of Delaware in the mid-​​80s, our gang of 8 friends has come a long way from our days of sitting around dorm rooms and sorority dens in oversized Forenza sweaters and big Jersey hairdos, telling each other what to do. (READ MORE … )

1. Cheez-​​Its: A Love Story

It wasn’t until my ex-​​husband moved out more than four years ago that my late night nibbling began.

Until then, we’d finish dinner and maybe I’d have a bowl of ice cream with the kids (I was younger then and could get away with those kinds of things) and we would have eating wrapped up by 6:30 most nights. (READ MORE … )

 

 

 

Top 5 Things Bloggers Are Thankful For

IMG_0290‘Tis the season for giving thanks, and all that, and for my first Thanksgiving as an official blogger, I’d like to share what’s brought me joy this year:

  1. Sweatpants: For the five years he lived in the house I live in now, my ex-husband shared a walk-in closet with me. He had one side and I had the other and everything seemed to fit inside it perfectly. But once he moved out, and took all his jackets and ties with him, my belongings seemed to multiply exponentially. Now, the closet is jam-packed with more blouses, skirts and scarves than you could shake a stick at. But if you stopped by my house on any given day, you’d find me perched at my kitchen island in front of my laptop sporting some type of loungewear. What better way to accommodate an insanely sedentary lifestyle than with elastic? Things have taken a downhill turn though lately, and I find myself  just staying in my pajamas until midday, which is embarrassing when, like, the neighbor’s dad stops by to get her housekey or the FedEx guy wants you to sign for something. No one wants to see a grown woman in red flannel PJs covered in some Asian-inspired print involving tigers after noon. It’s upsetting.
  2. When kids say the darndest things: Since I’ve started blogging, I’ve come to subscribe to Nora Ephron’s edict that “Everything is copy.” Now, whenever a jewel comes out of one of my kids’ mouth – like when my 10 year old told me I was being a “perv” or that I should follow Jennifer Aniston’s “tips” – I quickly write it down on whatever Post-It Note or envelope is lying around. I even carry a notebook around in my purse in case someone utters something blog-worthy on the go. I’ve gotten so good at recording their bon mots that the kids have started to get a little suspicious when I ask them the most innocuous of questions. Yesterday, I asked my oldest guy what his favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal was and he went to answer, and then stopped, and said, “Mom, I feel like I’m on a reality show.” Look out, Kardashians.
  3. Shoutouts from big sites: Let’s face it: We bloggers are a dime a dozen. There are countless women sitting in their kitchens right now – banging away on their laptops –oversharing snippets of coversations with their children or adventures on the speed-dating scene. So to rise out of obscurity, you really need to hustle and sometimes, that just seems like a lot of work. All that tweeting and hashtagging. Who’s got the time, what with all the laundry and dishes lying around here. So it’s practically a blogging miracle when a major parenting blog posts a link to your blog out of the clear blue sky. It brings with it a nice boost in traffic and readers from outside the small town (population: 6,000) that you live in. People in like, Nevada and Texas and even dudes. Who would have thunk it?
  4. Other Bloggers: Even though there are a million of us, bloggers are a supportive community and are generous with sharing ideas and readers. Since I launched at the beginning of the year, I’ve gotten to know a couple of bloggers live and in person (holla Miss Emily at Em-i-lis and Brooke at Carpool Candy) and a few I’ve connected with in the virtual sense (Connie at I Suck as a Parent, Lisa at The Canadian Chronicles and Dorothy at Crazy for Crust).  I am excited to return to the big Blogher conference this summer as an experienced blogger, rather than the wet-behind-the-ears newbie, and meet all the great writers I’ve discovered online this year. It’s like a giant, virtual sorority.
  5. Our Readers: Let’s face it, just like the proverbial tree falling in the woods, bloggers would be silent without their readers. I love running into people around town who tell me they connected with my struggle with the Catholic Church or found hope in my tales of being a single mom. It’s so good to know that we’re not alone. That we’re not crazy. And that another mom somewhere is plowing through a box of Cheez-Its in bed. There’s safety in numbers. So I’m wishing all of my readers a safe and happy Thanksgiving filled with lots of stuffing, gravy and family on its best behavior (but bring your notebook, just in case).

 

 

 

 

Young Amy: A Cautionary Tale

IMG_3256Over the course of the, like, bazillion hours my college girlfriends and I sat around talking during a girls’ weekend earlier this month, the topic of how much you should let your children know about your past antics came up.

One of the girls said that she had an acquaintance who’s like an expert in adolescent psychology, or something, and that professional advised that parents keep their younger misdeeds under wraps.

“You really need to live the lie,” our friend said. “But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you girls that.”

And as the rest of the group nodded along, all I could think was, “Oh dear.”

Because, as you might imagine — what with this blog and all — my children know a little bit about their mother’s far-from-stellar past.

And while I try to spare them the gory details — sometimes a lie really does need to be lived — I have made it pretty clear to my kids that I was a dope when I was younger.

I like to think that I’ve offered myself up to them as a cautionary tale.

Like, they know that I was an enthusiastic smoker until I started having babies. They know I am comfortable making my way around a fraternity tailgate and am open to drinking beverages concocted in sketchy coolers. Clearly, my decision-making skills were questionable.

And while I’ve been honest about these pieces of my history, I’m also pretty sure I have not promoted these activities as recommended habits of highly successful individuals.

Clearly, they are not: I am the single mother of four kids holding down a low-paying, entry-level job.

And I have a tattoo.

But I think that what I have done is presented myself to my children as a very real person, flawed and full of mistakes, and sometimes regret. They’ve seen me act like a bitch, cry, celebrate their accomplishments, dance like a weirdo and sing a song about my cat.

I am all that and a bag of chips.

I’ve told them that I wish I concentrated more on academics than partying in high school and college. I wish I had figured out what I was good at and followed that career path. And I wish I hadn’t been in such a rush to get married and have babies.

But I couldn’t have done any of these things because I simply had no idea who I was, deep down inside, all those years ago.

And I also think that’s why I’ve come so late to writing in earnest. As Ann Lamott wrote, “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.” And people, I was unconscious for many years.

But, as my therapist would tell you (because she tells me all the time), that’s all just been a part of my journey and it’s helped put me where I am today and for that, I would trade nothing.

Being a mother forced me to wake up.

And while I am not gunning to be the Dina to their collective Lindsay — I already have lots of friends, thanks — I do want them to know that I am a human who makes mistakes and tries to learn from them.

Of course, that’s not to say that I haven’t been called a “hypocrite” for grounding a certain someone who stashed an empty bottle of liquor (swiped from my own booze collection) under a bed. And when feeling defensive, other kids have questioned what I got on my SATs and mocked my math skills (which would probably never be great, no matter how self-aware I was as a kid).

They also have mentioned that they think my tattoo is ridiculous (for the record: so do I).

But I think deep down, they know I’m working really hard to make up for lost time.

Last Christmas, my older daughter – who was seriously broke at the time – ended up pulling out the showstopper of a homemade gift and shared what all this has meant to her.

She handed me a deck of cards and at first, I had to admit, I wasn’t impressed. Like, I don’t really know any card games.

But I pulled the deck out and saw this:

52 Things I Love About You

52 Things I Love About You

 

And this:

And then this:

 

IMG_3251

Wait, what?

And in that one moment, I knew that I must be doing something right.

My daughter knows so much that there is to know about me – my love of wine and Ryan Gosling, my “weirdness” and even my “goofy dancing” – and despite it all, she still loves me.

It’s not perfect, but it’s okay.

Honest.

 

 

Amy’s Week in Review (Nov. 11-17)

CBS-Sunday-Morning-590x442I love Sunday. It’s my favorite day of the week.

Before I worked full-time and the kids were still small and I was married and all that, I felt quite the opposite.

The weekends were an annoying and disruptive break in the somewhat peaceful kingdom I managed the other five days of the week. Schedules were thrown off, there were all these people underfoot and I just couldn’t wait for Monday to come and get everyone back to work and school and out of my hair.

But now that I’ve got some place to be on Mondays as well (well, virtually) and everyone’s a little older (not to mention far fewer living here all the time), Sunday is literally my day of rest. If I can, I try to cram all the food shopping and annoying weekend errands into Saturday so that Sunday can be completely indulgent.

I’m all about that.

I usually wake up around 7 a.m. to start the day. Which, apparently, is really weird because when I was away with my college girlfriends last weekend, the alarm that I set for weekends went off on my phone at 7 one morning and my friends were like, “WTF?”

But I want to make the most of those days off from work and the usual spin of things. Especially on Sunday. I want to squeeze every minute that I can out of the usually schedule-free day.

And it’s not like I’m curing cancer or anything over here. I mostly lie in bed and read the paper and peruse whatever other reading material has been piling up next to my bed over the week. And coffee is always involved.

Now that I have the blog, I’ve added a new wrinkle to my Sunday routine with the need to post this review of things. It’s like my weekly public service announcement. Sure, I could write it in advance but sadly, I am a born procrastinator and just couldn’t imagine doing something like that.

So here I am.

My favorite TV shows bookend the day as an added bonus — with CBS Sunday Morning to start and The Walking Dead at the end. I am all about Charles Osgood and zombies.

In between, I’ll slowly start to prepare for the week ahead. Probably in a week or two, as the holiday drumbeat starts to thrum a little louder, the ease of my Sundays will be replaced by shopping and checklists.

God help us.

But let’s not go there yet. Let’s enjoy one of the last quiet Sundays of 2013 and if you, like me, find yourself with some free time today, let me tempt you with some posts you may have missed in all the hustle and bustle of your week:

———————————————-

In case you hadn’t heard, last weekend was quite the busy one for me as I reconnected with my college chums to eat and drink our way through the East End of Long Island (with a brief pit stop in Brooklyn for good measure). We laughed a lot and remembered what drew us together all those years ago. I also learned something about myself along the way:

IMG_7658The Girls

Between us, we have 19 kids, 9 weddings, 3 ex-​​husbands, 2 boyfriends, over 25 years of memories and a lot of opinions.

Since we met as students at the University of Delaware in the mid-​​80s, our gang of 8 friends has come a long way from our days of sitting around dorm rooms and sorority dens in oversized Forenza sweaters and big Jersey hairdos, telling each other what to do. (READ MORE … )

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One thing I learned over the long weekend with my college girls is that I am a fucking bore.

photo(73)3 Hazards of Becoming an Over Sharing Blogger

I am learning, in the almost-​​year that I’ve been doing this, that being a blogger is kind of weird. Like, you need to be okay with people knowing your business. I mean, you have to be really comfortable with the idea that a few of the people you’re standing in line with at the deli counter know you like to drink wine in bed at night or that your son’s teacher has read that your child sometimes has impulse control issues. It’s probably not great that she knows you’re drinking in bed either.

Luckily, I am totally cool with all of this. (READ MORE … )

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Finally, I want to thank all of the good people that “liked” me on Facebook last week and pushed the page over the 400 mark. It’s really fun watching the audience grow in pockets as friends of my friends start to follow along. It’s totally the Fabrege shampoo commercial (and so on, and so on).

And don’t forget boys and girls, you can sign up to get new posts emailed straight to your inbox. You don’t even have to find me through Facebook.

Just fill your email address in the “Subscribe to blog via email” box, which is to the right of this post if you’re on your laptop or if you scroll way to the bottom if you’re reading this on your phone. Just keep scrolling, it’s there. Fill in your email address and then go to your inbox where an email will be waiting that you need to open to confirm your subscription.

Is that easy or what? (winky face)

 

 

3 Hazards of Becoming an Over-Sharing Blogger

photo(73)I am learning, in the almost-year that I’ve been doing this, that being a blogger is kind of weird. Like, you need to be okay with people knowing your business. I mean, you have to be really comfortable with the idea that a few of the people you’re standing in line with at the deli counter know you like to drink wine in bed at night or that your son’s teacher has read that your child sometimes has impulse control issues. It’s probably not great that she knows you’re drinking in bed either.

Luckily, I am totally cool with all of this.

But as more people start to read the blog, I find that I am running into a few of the same situations whenever I manage to tear myself away from my laptop and enter the real world. Forthwith, the hazards of blogging:

  1. You Have Nothing to Say at Gatherings: Because you are constantly writing about what’s going on in your life – what you’re thinking, doing, hoping, dreading, eating, drinking, watching, daydreaming – people pretty much know everything about you. I probably started about 10 stories when I went away with my college girlfriends last weekend, only to be either stopped mid-sentence with an, “Oh yeah, I read that.” I definitely need to develop some ancillary material that does not make it into the blog, just so I won’t be so boring at parties.
  2. Friends Start to Use Terms Like ‘Off the Record’: Not everyone is as comfortable as a blogger is with spilling it all to the world. And let’s be honest: I don’t share everything that’s going on around here. I get to pick and choose how I present myself to you people. Those around me aren’t always so lucky. Just ask my ex.
  3. People Want You to Write About Them: Unlike your children or ex-husband, who have already experienced the pleasure of being written about in your blog, girlfriends are always looking to get a shout out. My surrogate teenage daughter across the street is also looking for a mention (PS girl: Boom, there it is). But it’s weird who and what gets written about, the stories that I choose to focus on. Like, I write about my two sons a lot, but I think that’s because they’re the oldest and the youngest of my brood and tend to be the measuring sticks for my parenting experience. I also find I frequently reference my therapist, who I see maybe once a month, but have never written about the guy who my friends and I work out with a few times a week who dispenses lots of advice while torturing us with squats and lunges (we call him The Girl Whisperer).

In the end, these are not life threatening work place hazards. I’m no coal miner dealing with black lung or police officer battling thugs. The scariest things I deal with are angry teenagers.

I just need to work on some new material or I’m never going to be invited to parties.

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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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Ciao!

5 Habits of Highly Ineffective Bloggers

522591_379600385471432_307731171_nPeople ask me all the time, “Amy, how do you manage to get absolutely nothing done, day in and day out?”

I mean, think about it: I wake up at the crack of dawn most days, with hours of potential productivity stretched ahead of me. But other than checking off my list the things that HAVE to be done each day  – feeding the cat, interacting with the children, getting dressed (and this last one is debatable, like, are yoga pants and long cardigan considered an actual outfit?) – I can never get around to moving forward in my life.

I’m really good at talking about doing stuff – like writing something other than blog posts and fixing the power steering on my SUV that sometimes just inexplicably doesn’t feel like working – but it’s all talk.

It reminds me of something my therapist would say to me from time to time during our early sessions, when I would bemoan the course my life had taken. “Do you know what the definition of insanity is?” she’d ask. “It’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

So if you, too, would like to experience life similar to Bill Murray in “Groundhog’s Day,” you might want to start following Amy’s Rules for Getting Nowhere:

  1. Check Facebook every 10 minutes. It’s mesmerizing, all those … (NOTE: It is here that I quickly jumped over to FB to find great examples of  just what it was that I couldn’t get enough of, like one of those snarky mom-memes or people wishing happy birthday to their 4-year-olds, when a headline about who’s been cast as the new Christian Grey (meh) caught my eye, leading me down a whole Huffington Post rabbit hole of crap about Kim Kardashian’s engagement ring and why Denmark is the happiest country. It took a huge burst of effort to get myself back to here.
  2. Refresh your site stats constantly. I just can’t get enough of knowing how many people have clicked on my latest post at any given moment. This activity is only rivaled by checking Facebook Insights and gleaning tidbits about my followers like what country they hail from and other demographic tidbits (shout out to the guys who make up 9 percent of my followers!).
  3. Schedule beauty appointments throughout the day. A girl needs to look good, n’est ce pas? Accordingly, time needs to be set aside daily for the brows and ‘stache, bikini upkeep, hair cut and color, manis, pedis and exercise a few times a week to keep it all together. It probably requires a few hours weekly to keep me all glued and taped together.
  4. Order up Netflix and cram 30 one-hour episodes of “Scandal” into a week of your life. Not interested in getting on board with the fabulous Olivia Pope, she of the white hat and gladiator ways? No problem. Try “Breaking Bad” or “Game of Thrones” or “Walking Dead” or “Mad Men” or “Orange is the New Black” or “Homeland” or “House of Cards.” Like me. (This activity pairs nicely with #5.)
  5. Drink wine every day. This, by far, is probably the biggest secret to my lack of success. It makes me sleepy and lazy and just want to watch TV (see #4).

Maybe this is what I’ll write my book about. I’ll cobble together a guide for other would-be authors on how to just not do it. On how to wish your life away.

I just need to check if I’ve gotten any new likes on Facebook first.

 

 

 

 

Amy’s Week in Review (Oct. 14-20)

bullseyeWell, it’s been a quiet week in Lake — wait, I don’t live in Minnesota. But my own little corner of New Jersey has been calm and that’s more than alright with me.

One interesting and unexpected thing that happened this week was that my 10-year-old son called me a “perv.”

First, let me begin by saying that I actually used to be a reader of books. Literature, even. Like during the darkest days of my divorce, I read “War and Peace.” I’ve read Cheever and Updike, Franzen and Chabon. I even read the Count of goddamn Monte Cristo, not so long ago.

Now, I’m lucky if I get through the latest issue of “People.”

But one thing I never miss reading is the back page of “Entertainment Weekly,” which features a fun roundup of what’s hot in the entertainment industry each week called “The Bullseye.” Like last week’s issue featured  a picture of Jessica Lange’s new witchy “American Horror Story” character at its center and says, “To paraphrase Barbara Bush: Rhymes with bitch.”

Then there are assorted pics radiating throughout the dartboard indicating what celebs/movies/tv shows, etc. hit the target and what missed the mark, including Ed Harris (“Most welcome cameo in ‘Gravity'”) and Hank Williams Jr. (“Least welcome cameo in ‘Gravity'”).

So I was standing in the kitchen looking at this week’s issue yesterday and noticed at the bottom a blurb about Charlie Hunnam pulling out of “Fifty Shades of Grey” last minute (“Something Christian Grey would never do,” according to EW.).

“OMG you guys,” I said to my two kids sitting in the kitchen with me when I remembered this next very important bit of information. “Guess who I just heard is going to be the new Christian Grey?” (As if my 10 year old had any idea what I was talking about.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: I may having a hard time getting through “Middlemarch” right now but had no problem reading the entire 50 Shades canon over the course of one weekend.

“OMG who,” responded the 16-year-old daughter in the least-excited voice possible. She is like the Ben Stein of teenaged girls.

“Someone just texted me and said she heard it’s going to be,” I stopped, pausing for dramatic effect, imagining my audience actually cared about my news.

“Eric the Vampire!” I yelled, because I knew they at least knew that I was crazy for that insanely hot “True Blood” character. He’s really the only reason why I’ve watched that show for so long.

“I’m like taking off my clothes right now,” I told them, and that’s where I jumped the shark, as they say, as far as my audience was concerned.

“That’s disgusting,” observed the 16-year-old in a voice so flat you’d think she was one of the undead.

“Yeah, Mom,” said my son, “You’re a perv.”

“Oh come on, guys,” I said. “I’m kidding. It’s a joke.”

“It’s still pervy,” he said over his shoulder as he and his sister walked away in disgust.

And that’s the perfect segue for me to share a few of the other things that happened this week, including a post I wrote indicating that I’m apparently, according to a certain subset, pervy about another dude as well:

IMG_3113The Gos and Me

I don’t know when it started, but as with so many things these days, I’m guessing it was on Facebook.

Maybe I mentioned in a post that I had just watched “Crazy Stupid Love.” For, like, the umpteenth time.

Or it’s quite likely that I then went a bit further and described how my heart skipped a beat when he took his shirt off before the Dirty Dancing scene. (READ MORE … )

And in a rare moment of seriousness, I pondered my faith and my decision to not send my youngest to CCD unlike his three older siblings:

DSC_0037On Being Catholic: The Mystery of Faith

My 10-year-old son had a play date after school the other day and when the friend’s mom came to pick him up, she asked if we were in a rush to get my guy to CCD.

“A lot of kids seem to go on Tuesdays,” she said.

“Um, we’re taking a break from being Catholic right now,” I told her, and she laughed at my joke, but I still feel really guilty about the whole thing.

It must be the Catholic in me. (READ MORE …)

And finally, a couple of things floating around the Internet caught my eye and I shared on Facebook. (Dude, I so want to get my cat drunk and make her tell me why she is so mean to me.)

Never Drink Alone Again Because Now There’s Wine for Cats (Time)

Is Music the Key to Success? (NYTimes)

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