Playing House

Verbal Vomit (Valentine's Day)

2012-02-14T12:11:00.001-05:00

Dear Hallmark:

You've fucked it all up, you know.

You've taken the most amazing, messy, beautifully human emotion, romantic love, and forced it into a red, heart-shaped box of candy and attached a cheap card that contains a stranger's words.

Thanks a lot,

Romantics Everywhere

Here's a tip: if you need the calendar to roll over to February 14th in order to express your emotion for someone, or they for you, you're sort of fucked.

Love is for every day.

EVERYDAY.

Because when you're in love, when you are truly oh-my-God-this-man/woman-absolutely-changes-my-whole-outlook-on-the-world in love, you can't shut up about it. You can't STOP. You can't stop kissing, you can't stop touching, you can't stop melting into each other, you can't stop praying that, somehow, you have taken the way you feel inside, the way you see him/her and, through all of that kissing and touching and talking and connecting and melting, found a way to show it to that person. To give it to them. To let them see themselves the way you do: perfect. Amazing. Beautiful.

Any asshole can say the right words. Any two people can put their mouths together and kiss, any two strangers can fuck. They can even hold each other after and fall asleep in each other's arms.

That's just company. That's just the temporary antidote to loneliness.

Because the good stuff, it's not in the cards, it's not in the flowers, it's not in the box of chocolate or the sex or the gifts or the dinner or any of the motions so many people go through.

It's so much simpler than that.

It's in the way someone looks at you. It's a thing that you can't force or fake, a thing that bubbles to the surface in the most honest of moments.

Some need alcohol or the vulnerability found in sex to get there.

Others of us live there constantly, like an exposed nerve. Lucky me, I have no walls to hide behind (no walls to seek protection behind, either).

It's soft and it's vulnerable and it's scary and it's true and it's what this whole crazy life is for.

So today, on Valentine's Day, save your money on the borrowed words of another, on the flowers, on the chocolate, on the dinner.

Just look into your beloved's eyes and say your own words. Look into him. Look into her.

And then, when that person asks you, "How is it you can still make me feel like that?" you can give the only answer you know:

Because I love you.

Up Above The World So High

2012-02-03T14:12:00.000-05:00

The window is so cold against my forehead that it hurts. But that's okay, I've been drawn to things that hurt lately, short little bursts of pain that feel like a quick release, a puncture wound through which some of this thick, black ooze can drain.

That's fucked up.

Yeah, thanks. I know.

But here I am, head pressed against the glass. My breath is warm, it makes a small patch of fog on the window. I draw a line through it. I breathe to fill it in. I draw a heart. Breathe. Fill it in; watch as it disappears.

Gone.

And that's what draws me to the window on this dark, cold night, a search for All Things Gone.

Answers.

They say that all who wander are not lost, so I look up to the night sky for a fixed mark, something familiar to ground me and make me feel that maybe I, too, am fixed upon this earth. Not floating. Not lost. I find the moon, but I know better than to trust the romantic swayings of the moon: "o, swear not by the moon, the inconsistent moon." She's fickle. She'll change her mind and pack her bags and head south for the winter. She'll betray and lie and hurt you again and again. Enough of that.

I look instead to Orion, boldly sitting in the southern sky, and I imagine him guarding over my house, a fierce protector while I sleep.

You know, a shrink would probably have a field day with this shit.

Yeah, thanks. I know.

One night about a week before my father died, I stood at this same window and took in these same stars, this same moon, this same sky. I felt, for just a moment, my own place in the entirety of the universe. It was as if I could grasp everything that had ever come before and everything that was yet to come, stretching out in all directions everywhere, and I felt my very small but definite place among it all. It was one of those ideas that, as soon as you try to make it tangible by assigning the words necessary to describe it, scatters like a shattered thermometer, bleeding drops of mercury that dance and bounce before you but will never again congeal to form one uniform idea.

Gone.

I want that peace, I want that understanding, I want that knowledge I felt in that moment. I can't find it.

Where are you? I whisper at the window, toward the sky because They say that's where Heaven is and that people go there when they're not here anymore. Where are you? How could you leave me here?

Where are you? my heart screams as I lie alone in bed at night, looking over the charred remains of my life. Where are you? How could you leave me here?

Stupid girl, you're not going to get these answers you're looking for.

And you're asking all the wrong questions.

Yeah, thanks.

I know.

Is That A Light Saber In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

2012-01-24T16:45:00.000-05:00

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Dear Diary,

I am in love! His name is Luke Skywalker and he is the cutest, most mature boy I have ever met. Not only is he cute, but he has his own landspeeder!!! The other day I finally got to go for a ride in it when he brought me to the Toshe Station to pick up some power converters. I asked him if he wanted to hang out after, but he had to go pick up some droids or something. Omg, look how cute he is. Here's his Facebook profile pic:

He got ambition, baby, that look in his eyes, this week he's moppin' floors but next week it's the fries.

I love him SOOOOO much. Someday, we're going to have our own farm here on Tatooine and we'll have a million babies and we'll stand in the dunes every night and watch the suns set. I am so happy!!!!

* * * * * *

Dear Diary:

Luke has been acting super strange lately. He's always hanging out with that crazy old guy Ben who lives in the cave. Wtf? That guy's a total creeper. I don't get it.

Maybe I should just break up with him. IDK.

* * * * * *

Dear Diary,

Seriously, I don't know WHAT Luke's deal is. He hasn't returned any of my calls, and all of the sudden he's got pictures of himself on Facebook wearing this stupid stormtrooper uniform, like he's some sort of badass or something:

I'm a stormtrooper, mofos!

Now he's friends with all of these people I've never even HEARD of, including some chick named Leia. Check out her profile pic:

Is that a light saber in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Omg, who puts a picture like that on Facebook??? And she sounds totally lame, she's all "Waaah, the Empire blew up my planet" and "Blah-blah-blah, the Rebellion is so awesome" and "Got tased and stabbed with a giant needle today."

Whatever, we all have problems, bitch.

Nice hair.

I am DEFINITELY breaking up with him.

*    * * *    *    *

Dear Diary:

Still no word from Luke.

Some wookie named Chewbacca keeps poking me on FB. FML.

*    * * *    *     *

Dear Diary:

Luke finally called me last night. I guess the Rebel Alliance blew up the Death Star or something like that, and all the pilots went out drinking. He kept telling me he wasn't drunk, that he just really missed me a lot. I could tell he meant it, I could hear it in his voice. In fact, he was so overwhelmed with emotion that his voice sounded fuzzy and slurred. He kept asking me to send him some naked pictures of myself and I kept telling him no, because I *just* read an article in People last week about how that's, like, a really bad idea. But suddenly he was saying, "You will take naked pictures and send them to me" in this weirdly deep, low voice and...I dunno, I couldn't help myself, before I knew what I was even doing, I sent him the pictures. It was like he got into my head or something. I'm not too worried though, he told me I can trust him and that he loves me and misses me and he promised he wouldn't show them to anyone. I totally trust him.

*    *    *    *    *    *

Dear Diary,

O.M.G. I want to die.

Some little perv named Yoda somehow got a copy of the pictures I sent Luke and TWEETED THEM OUT TO LIKE A GAJILLION PEOPLE. Then he sent me an IM that said: "Hot, you are. DTF, I am."

WTF, WHO EVEN TALKS LIKE THAT???

But...

I think something good might come from all of this. Today I got an email from this guy named Lando. He saw my pictures and said he thought I was really beautiful and that I should be a model. He has a modeling agency called Modeling Agency In The Clouds (seriously, how awesome of a name is that???) He wants to fly me up there for my very own photo shoot.

He said I could be famous!!!! I am so lucky.

Now I'm REALLY breaking up with Luke. I think I could do better.

*    *    *    *    *    *

Dear Diary:

I just logged in to Facebook and saw THIS:


How you like me now, bitches?

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT???

First of all, WHAT IS SHE WEARING??? PUT ON SOME CLOTHES, SKANK!!!

Second of all, he went and changed his relationship status to: "IT'S COMPLICATED." OH MY GOD!!!

And third, I went through the rest of his pictures and this was totally taken here on Tatooine. So he was here, on the SAME PLANET, and he DIDN'T. EVEN. CALL. ME.

That's it, we are SO TOTALLY over.

* * * * * *

Dear Diary,

Luke broke up with me today. He called me from some place called Endor and said that things are really weird for him right now, that he's got all sorts of family drama going on and he just needs some time to figure things out.

I can't believe it. I totally thought that he was The One.

I wonder if his friend Han is single...

Dear Dad

2011-11-28T22:21:00.000-05:00

Dear Dad.

Things are moving fast now. I've been running away, trying to ignore this darkness looming ever closer, even as I hear the footfalls louder behind me. Now I turn around, ready to face it and it's already passing me by, slipping through my fingers faster than I can grab hold. It shouldn't be this fast, all of this life and all of this death. I need a minute to catch my breath, to gather my thoughts, but it's all going too damn fast.

----------

Dear Dad.

Did I ever tell you that my favorite picture of you is one from when you were in the army? You're sitting on the ground, so young, with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth and this cocky look on your face. You look like you know everything. You look like you are sure you're right.

You look like a pain in the ass.

It's my favorite.

----------

Dear Dad.

I will be okay. The fire you say you see in me, it will keep going and I will keep writing and I will stay true to all of these things I believe in. And I will be okay.

----------

Dear Dad.

I remember being very small and sitting in the bathroom with you, watching you shave. I remember the smell of your neck when I would hug you. I remember walking with you into Fenway Park for the very first time. I remember that you can whistle louder than anyone I've ever met. I remember that I couldn't wait to call you after First Born arrived, that it was 3 in the morning in Seattle and 6 in the morning here and I was aching and exhausted and thrilled and I couldn't wait to tell you. I remember the look on your face when you first held him.

I remember.

----------

Dear Dad.

All is right between us. There is no distance, there are no miles, there is no time lost. There is only us now, where we find ourselves now, and that's a damned good place.

I know you would agree.

----------

Dear Dad.

Thank you for ordering me lasagna when I was 5 and making me try it. That's good stuff.

----------

Dear Dad.

I am proud to be your daughter.

----------

Dear Dad.

When I was visiting when I was 15 or so and you let me go out with that boy who lived across the street (the paperboy), I'm pretty sure I lied to you and said that mom let me date. She didn't yet.

Sorry.

----------

Dear Dad.

I want to tell you not to be afraid.

Except that I *am* afraid. So, rather, I will say that I will be there, with you, even if my body is not.

I will be there.

----------

Dear Dad.

Thank you.

----------

Dear Dad.

I love you.

Candygasm

2011-11-02T10:47:00.000-04:00

Today is the day after the day after Halloween. This means I've gained 17 lbs in a day and a half because I've been eating Milky Ways for breakfast.

Also for lunch.

And possibly dinner (which I do in secret so that my kids don't know I'm eating chocolate while they're eating green beans...sometimes being the parent is actually AWESOME.)
As this week goes on, the supply of good candy is going to start to dwindle, and no matter how many times I dig through the Big Bowl O'Sugar, the inferior candy will be all that remains. Who am I talking about?

Does anyone ever choose Junior Mints over other forms of chocolate? Have you ever met a kid who actually LIKED Junior Mints? When my youngest was about 3, he insisted on trying one because he was certain it was an M&M, no matter how vehemently I tried to warn him otherwise. He popped one into his mouth, immediately spit it out, and said to me, "Mama, this M-a-M yucky."

Yes. Yes, it is.

There's an unspoken understanding that exists in our society about candy: that it will taste good. DOTS blatantly disregard that understanding, opting to go with a plasticy-chemically taste rather than any sort of deliciousness. Why do Americans continue to buy DOTS when they so clearly violate the standards of candy decency? We should be ashamed.

Oh, Tootsie Roll. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you're the candy we eat when all other candy options have been exhausted. You're the candy we turn to because it's late and we're craving sugar, but we're too ashamed to admit to our friends that, yeah, I hit the Tootsie Roll last night. We feel dirty and ashamed afterwards because you're never worth the calories, you're never actually a satisfying candy experience, and yet we inevitably find ourselves reaching for you in the middle of a cold, lonely night.

But, chin up, Tootsie Roll, because it could be worse. You could be your unfortunate cousins:

No one eats those ever. They go right in the trash. Feel better, regular Tootsie Roll? Thought so.

A final word on candy, specifically, the misnomer that is 'Fun-Size'.

I ask you this: WHICH OF THESE LOOKS MORE FUN?

Dear Candy Manufactures:

Whoever told you that smaller = more fun has been lying to you.

Hopefully it wasn't your wife.

Sincerely,

Jenn

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

2011-10-11T10:45:00.001-04:00

Last night I sent my 7 year old son to take a shower.

Which he did. For approximately a minute and a half.

That would be roughly 24 minutes less than I spend in the shower. I immediately stuck my head into the bathroom and asked him what was wrong.

He was already out of the shower and wrapped up in a towel, wet hair plastered to his head and dripping all over the bathroom floor.

"I'm done," he said. Duh.

"Done? Already?"

"Uh-huh."

"You washed your hair?"

"Uh-huh."

"And your body?"

"Uh-huh."

"Your whole body?"

"Uh-huh."

"With SOAP?"

This was apparently his breaking point because he yelled, "Yes!" in that tone that says, "Jesus Christ, woman, enough with the inquisition already!" He may or may not have rolled his eyes, which normally would make me crazy but I was too tired to deal and wanted to hurry up to the part of bedtime that actually involves sleep, so we'll say that he did not roll his eyes.

(even though he totally did)

The idea that someone can adequately clean his entire body AND wash his hair in less time than it takes me to decide what I want on my pizza was baffling to me. Until I compared our routines.
Here's how the 7 year old showers:

1)Wash hair with shampoo. Rinse.
2)Wash body with soap. Rinse.

Here's how MY shower goes:

1)Shampoo hair. While shampoo does it's thing, shave one leg.
2)Thoroughly rinse shampoo. Thoroughly rinse leg. Start singing.
3)Shampoo again (this would be the 'repeat' phase of the lather-rinse-repeat cycle). Shave other leg.
4)Thoroughly rinse shampoo. Thoroughly rinse leg. Think about how awesome my voice sounds in my shower.
5)Apply conditioner.***

***I feel it necessary to point out here that one is supposed to leave conditioner on for a bit so that it can properly condition. This is the difference between easily being able to brush out my hair vs. spending twenty minutes trying to extricate said brush from aforementioned hair.

In other words, this block of time is definitely not my fault. IT SAYS SO ON THE BOTTLE.

6)While conditioner is conditioning, wash body with soap. Shave some more (sorry, Paula Cole and Julia Roberts, I don't endorse your hairy-pit tendencies).
7)Rinse conditioner from hair. (This takes a while. You really don't want to do a half-ass job here, or else you're going to need to do this all again in about six hours because your hair will be greasy and gross.) Forget what step I'm on, pick up shampoo, then realize my legs are both smooth, meaning I've already shaved them and therefore shampooed. Congratulate myself on my awesome deductive reasoning skills and consider a career as a detective.
8)Wash body with yummy smelling body wash and poufy thingy. Pretend not to hear sons yelling at each other on other side of bathroom door.
9)Wash face with facial scrub infused with small shards of glass (this is called exfoliation).
10)Rinse hair again to be really, REALLY sure all conditioner is out of hair. Stand under hot water for two more minutes and analyze last night's dream. Turn water off when son starts banging on door. Grab towel quickly.

I should be glad that I have sons instead of daughters. So long as he's clean, I can get behind this whole 2 minute shower business.

Because it leaves me with all the hot water.

Quicksand

2011-09-26T22:34:00.000-04:00

When I was a little girl, I was terrified by the idea of quicksand (too many hours spent playing Pitfall, I suppose). The very idea that one minute the ground would be solid beneath your feet and the next it could give way, crumbling beneath you, sucking you in, and then collapsing over your head, consuming you until the ground sealed back up and there was no evidence that you had ever been there at all...

Scared the shit out of me.

It would seem my fear was warranted.

Only now, as an adult, it's not just the notion of the ground giving way. It's the very foundation of my life.

Marriage. House. Love. Career.

These things crumble beneath my feet with a speed so dizzying that I'm left breathless, jerked below the surface and crushed under the weight before there is even time to look for something to grab on to. There is the whooshing sound of a vacuum I myself turned on, and the sudden disappearance of everything I once held certain. It happens fast, this crumbling.

And I'm left in the dark, with the weight heavy on my chest, desperate for a breath of air, just a quick reprieve for a moment before trying to dig my way out.

Perhaps I should take a moment and apologize to any reader who follows this blog for the funny posts. I promise they will return at some point.

But I began this blog with an interest in putting something genuine out into the world, a real experience in a world where very little feels real, very little feels authentic or like a true connection despite the supposed increased connectivity among us.

Sometimes those experiences are funny.

And sometimes, they have very sharp, pointy edges that you cannot hide from.

So bear with me while I look around for something to dig with. Right now, I've got nothing. But I'm fumbling around the dark for a shovel or a spoon.

And there are always my own bare hands.

(okay, I feel like there should be some sort of grand ending to this. I've got nothing, so I'll steal someone else's grand ending...)

With liberty and justice for all.

or...

A merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

or...

Play ball!

Yeah, any one of those will do.

Reading of the Names

2011-09-11T09:32:00.000-04:00

Names are important.

We spend months choosing just the right ones for our children. We long to hear our own names whispered from those who love us. We look the ones we ourselves love in the eye and speak their names so that they may hear it. These names feel so at home in our mouths, on our tongues, our lips. This is more than saying, "I love you." It is saying, I love YOU. Specifically, you.

Today, more than 3,000 names will be spoken.

Each name will spill forth from a living soul, sent out into the world on a breath of life borrowed from another.

Each name, so much more than a name.

Each name representing a man, a woman, a child, the loved ones left behind, the holes left in hearts and lives.

Each name representing a life.

We say, "Never forget." We say, "I remember where I was..."

Speak the names.

Speak the names of those lost. Speak the names of those you love.

Yell them, spill them out with a laugh, whisper them, call them, cry them.

But don't stop saying their names.

Goodnight Noises Everywhere

2011-09-01T22:55:00.000-04:00

"Get some sleep."

That's what people will tell you. Well-meaning people. But mostly they are people who will climb into a bed next to someone else. Maybe they love that person. Maybe they're just playing a part. Either way, there's a person there, someone whose breathing they can listen to in the dark, someone who warms the cold bed, someone who, if they were to wake suddenly in the night, will sit up and ask, "What's wrong?"

It's not so easy, this getting some sleep.

Instead of sleeping, on these nights when mine is the only soul in the house, I do things like wander. Sometimes into the bathroom, where I sit on the hard, cold floor. Sometimes down to the living room, where I sit in the dark, on the couch. Almost always into my sons' rooms, where, out of habit, I find myself nightly whether they are home or not, ready to shut windows and adjust air conditioners and pull up covers. I sit on their empty beds.

Maybe, someday, there will be something to fill this void on nights such as this, a connection to something or someone that takes the place of this hollow feeling: hollow house, hollow chest, hollow life.

Until then, I will wander. I will climb into bed and pull the sheets up to my nose and lie there, waiting for it.

And I will try to get some sleep.

Mowing The Lawn (And Other Formerly Penilarily Held Jobs)

2011-07-29T09:01:00.000-04:00

Let me start by saying, in order to alleviate any false hopes/fears about the topic of this post, that the mowing of the lawn referenced in the title refers to ACTUAL lawn mowing.

It's NOT a euphemism for anything else (although I'll probably tackle that topic in a future post titled something like, "Holy Fuck In A Truck, I'm Single Again").

(also, making up the word 'penilarily' was way more fun than it probably should be for someone over the age of 17)

But for now, I'm talking about the literal mowing of the lawn. Which is something that, in my thirty-coughcough*ahem*cough years, I've never actually done before.

I'm not sure how it is that I've never had to do this before. Maybe it's because I lived at home (yay, stepdad!), then lived in apartments (yay, landlords!), and then my house (yay, husband!) so it was just always...done.

However, now that I'm separated, it would appear that this job now falls to me.

Because there's all this grass in my yard. And, well...

It keeps growing.

I keep hoping it will stop, or that maybe one morning I'll wake up and it'll just be, I don't know, shorter or dead (seriously, it was like 900 degrees last week, how it's not burned to a Shredded-Wheat crisp is beyond me) or something like that where I won't have to actually DEAL with it.

This is generally my go-to method for coping with such things. I also use this for problems including (but not limited to): That Weird Noise My Car Is Making, That Weird Smell In the Basement, and My Mom.

It pretty much works about as well in those situations as it does with the Grass Growing Dilemma.

Lawn mowing is not the only formerly penilarily held job that now rests in my hands.

*beat*

FOR INSTANCE: I'm now the primary bug killer in the house. I'm okay with this when it comes to things like tiny little ants (I'm talking about a few here. Like, less than 10. Any number higher than that makes me think of scary movies my stepdad used to watch involving thousands and thousands and thousands of bugs or other creepy-crawly things swarming on people's faces in places like the shower.)

Holy crap am I itchy now.

Also, I'm down with spiders of the itsy-bitsy variety.

But anything with a stinger, pincher, biter, more legs than I have dollars in my wallet right now (which would be about TEN, oh ye Muggers and Robbers of the world), or larger than a baby's fingernail, and we've got a problem.

Also.

We get mice.

It's not that my house isn't clean. It's simply that it's older and located outside, and so...

Mice Happen.

Perhaps, if I were a cat or an owl or a snake or anything else but a female human, I would enjoy this whole mouse-hunting business far more than I do. But the whole reason I live in a house as opposed to, say, a wigwam or a Swiss-Family-Robinsonesque Tree House, is to put a little distance between myself and all Creatures That Roam The Earth.

Really, the only mice I want to interact with are the ones who run around making pretty dresses at night singing "Cinderelly".

However, I've yet to wake in the morning to a new dress.

Mouse poop? Yes.

Fitted A-line ball gown? Not so much.

And then, finally there is the tra-

OH SHIT.

I FORGOT TO PUT OUT THE TRASH.

(Author's Note: Twenty bucks says that someone will land on this post because they Googled the words 'mice' and 'fuck'. People are MESSED. UP. YO.)

These Little Earthquakes

2011-07-10T20:51:00.000-04:00

It’s funny, the things you hold on to; the things you save because they remind you of a particular time, a particular place, a particular person.

Or, maybe, a particular version of yourself.

Trinkets. Tickets. Trifles. Things that would be meaningless to anyone else, but that hold so much weight in your own hand, you can barely stand to touch them.

I once had a plain wooden box, chosen specifically to belie the importance of its contents. I filled it with a thousand different words, as much of my soul as I could spill on to paper.

I filled it with things.

Into this box went a dried flower, a tiny key on a blue string, a thin silver key ring, the pink empty shell of what was once a balloon, a seashell, a napkin with quick, hasty words scribbled across it. Things that would look like trash to anyone else.

But to me, they were things to hold on to, to touch, to open up and remove and say, “Remember when?”

Now I am grown.

Now I sit, alone, on the edge of my bed.

In my hand lies a tiny pink heart-shaped box, made for me by my 7 year old for Mother’s Day, with the word MOM written in blue marker.

I run my fingers across the top, skipping along the tiny beads so meticulously glued on.

There is no box large enough to hold what I’m trying to put away this time. There is only the physical evidence we have left behind: this house, these children, this life.

These rings.

I'm surprised by the sound they make, the reality of their weight, as I plunk first one (my hand is stretched out against the steering wheel, the sun bouncing off of this new diamond ring, throwing light in a thousand different directions, a thousand different possibilities for this life we're about to start), and then the other (take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity) into the tiny box. I put the top on quickly, afraid they might jump back out at me, grow teeth, and sink themselves deep into my flesh, cutting so deep as to never stop bleeding, never scar over, never heal.

And then I push the box into the back of my drawer, buried under bathing suits and sports bras.

As if they can be hidden.

As if I will forget that they are there. As if, every time I open that drawer, I won’t feel my heart race just knowing they exist, knowing that I could reach my hand in and pull the box out and open the lid and face the sadness that threatens to swallow me whole, face it straight on.

Look it in the eyes. Stare it down. Break under it. Conquer it.

But I will do none of these things.

Instead, I will leave the box buried beneath the bathing suits and sports bras.

I will walk out of my empty bedroom.

And then, quietly, I will close the door behind me.

Kidsports (omg,shootmenow)

2011-06-07T07:57:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of things my kids say that make me cringe. Things like, "What are those bumps on your chest called again?" or, "I think I'm going to throw up" (which does not, by the way, mean 'perhaps you should direct me to the nearest, most convenient spot to do so'. Rather, it means 'throw up is currently coming out of my mouth and onto the floor, my clothes, my shoes, your shoes, and somehow, thanks to physics, your hair')

Another would be: "Can we go to Kidsports?"

Kidsports is an indoor playground where you can bring your kids on a rainy/cold/snowy day so they can run around and let out some energy. Get some exercise.  Blow off some steam. To those without children, it probably seems like a brilliant idea.

And, as you prepare for your first visit one rainy Saturday in late November, you think so, too.

Of course, so does every other parent of every other child between the ages of 3 and 12 within a 30 mile radius.

The problem with sticking 439 children into a playspace meant to contain 70 children, is that kids in this setting tend to get JUST A LITTLE FUCKING INSANE.  Maybe, perhaps, just a little bit louder/crazier/lethal than they might otherwise.

And that loud/crazy/lethal shit multiplies faster than Gremlins in a hot tub.

Now, because you are a good American, you will have hit the local Dunkin' Donuts on your way and purchased yourself the largest coffee they are legally allowed to sell you, only to open the door to Kidsports and be accosted not only with the overpowering smell of feet, but a front desk attendant who tells you, "Ummm, sorry?  No outside food or drink allowed?  Ummmm? We sell coffee at the snack bar?"

That's right, you must buy their sucky coffee.  Coffee that tastes like it was brewed, burnt, and reheated sometime during the Clinton Administration and that could, quite possibly, even contain ground-up bits of an old Clinton cigar.

It's really bad coffee.

Not to be outdone by the coffee, there is also the prerequisite shitty pizza. I'm pretty sure this is part of the business model: you must have x-number of bathrooms and sprinklers, require a minimum of 8,200 tickets for a 'prize' that was dipped in lead paint while being made in an asbestos factory by 10 year olds in a country 92% of high school seniors can't find on a map, and, oh yeah, you MUST follow our recipe for Shitty Pizza That Kids Will Eat Because They'll Eat Anything That You Call Pizza.

That's the legit name of the recipe.

So why in God's name would a grown, sane, stable woman ever chose to go to such a place?

Because my kids love that shitty pizza. And they come flying down the giant slide laughing so hard they can't catch their breath. And they jump in the bouncy house until they're ready to puke. They leave sweaty and happy.

And tired.

Translation? Easy bedtime.

Which makes it almost worth the really bad coffee.

Almost.

In loving memory of my Grandmother

2011-05-21T17:08:00.001-04:00

When I was a little girl, I remember sleeping over at my grandparent's house. There would be fluffernutter sandwiches, chocolate milk, my grandfather's big bowl of Corn Flakes with a banana in the morning.

One night I slept in the big bed with my grandmother. I was tired; I wanted to snuggle up to her and go to sleep. I asked her to turn out the light.

But she was praying the rosary and she said I needed to be patient. Because this was important. She showed me the beads, she recited the prayers for me, she slipped an arm around me and kept praying as I drifted off to sleep.

I felt as though I belonged in her life. And she belonged in mine.

When I was around 12 or 13, I was in her kitchen for Thanksgiving. This year was different from others; I wasn't running around, bouncing on the beds, playing with my cousins or trying to steal a piece of fudge from the dining room without being caught. This year, I was with the women in the kitchen. My grandmother opened the drawer where she kept her aprons (to the left of the sink), pulled one out, and gave it to me to wear. I slipped it on.

I felt as though I belonged in her life. And she belonged in mine.

When I was 21, nearing the end of college, I lived with one of my aunts while I finished school. My grandparents lived nearby. They suddenly had a much closer view of the person I was becoming within my family.

They did not like what they saw.

And my grandmother told me so. She took pen to paper and wrote me a letter. I wanted to pretend that that letter never existed, that it's words were untrue, that the person my grandmother was disappointed in was someone else. But I knew she was right. I knew there was more to me than what she saw, but that I could not deny the things she said.

I found myself, again, at my grandmother's kitchen table. I was terrified to sit there, before my grandparents, but I was ready to apologize and to hear the things they had to say. I was ashamed and afraid as my grandmother poured me a cup of tea.

The first thing she said to me was that she was proud of me for coming to the table to have this conversation.

And, immediately, I felt as though I belonged in her life. And she belonged in mine.

When my first son was born, my relationship with my grandmother changed. Suddenly, we had a new connection, as mothers. She talked about potty training, she talked about being a stay at home mother, she talked about the resilience of little ones as I worried about everything little thing under the sun (prompting her to finally say, having grown impatient with my never ending list of Things I Felt I Was Doing Wrong, 'You know, you really have to go out of your way to break him'.)

My second son was born. My boys grew.

And then my father, her firstborn, got sick.

He was 3,000 miles away. Neither of us could easily get to him to see him, to know he was alright, to take him in with our own eyes, to hug him the way we wanted to. When he was finally well enough to visit, just 3 short weeks ago, my grandmother and I talked about how relieved we were to see him for ourselves.

"But the goodbye," she said, with tears in her eyes. "It's going to be a very hard goodbye."

"Yes," I agreed. "It is."

I felt as though I belonged in her life. And she belonged in mine.

And my Grandma, who slipped from this world this past Thursday, was so very right.

It's a very hard goodbye.

FMAL

2011-05-17T08:20:00.000-04:00

I don't pretend to know what happens to you after you die.

I'd like to think there's a heaven. And that there is ice-cream there.

But it's much more fun to think about hell.

A hell where everyone's experience is personalized.

For instance, in my hell, it's probably always dinnertime. My husband is working late and I've prepared something healthy that everyone hates (which is all things that are not pasta, pizza, cheeseburgers, or candy.) Dinner conversation goes a little like this:

Me: "First born, what did you guys do in gym class today?" (Translation: I need to know you're capable of talking about things other than farting, poop, and Super Mario Bros.)

First Born: "We practiced dribbling the basketball."

Second Born: "I can already do that."

First Born: "No you can't."

Second Born: "Yes I can."

First Born: "No you can't, I saw you try to do it once and you couldn't even do it one time." (Translation: I know everything. Bow to my superior knowledge, little brother.)

Second Born: "YES I CAN, YOU'RE JUST A LIAR." (Translation: Eff you, I can do everything in the whole wide world because I'm five. And you ARE just a liar.)

First Born: "NO! NO! NO! YOU'RE A LIAR BECAUSE YOU LIE ABOUT EVERY SINGLE THING!" (Translation: I would totally punch you if Mom wasn't sitting right there. You are so dumb, I can't even believe you exist.)

Second Born: "YOU'RE A DUMBY-HEAD!" (Translation: No, YOU'RE dumb.)

First Born: "POOPHEAD!" (Translation: I know you are, but what am I?)

Also, this is the point where you realize there is no wine in hell. FML. Or, FMAL I suppose.

(After life)

Or, perhaps, my hell is IKEA.

On a Saturday.

When it's raining out.

It's thirty degrees warmer than necessary in the store and I'm wearing a sweater. An ITCHY sweater. I've got no fewer than 7 Matchbox cars in my purse, so it's heavy on my shoulder. I'm stuck in the maze of the floor plan. Every person in the state of Massachusetts is there, except for the ones I actually like.

Everyone feels the need to stop and pick up EVERY SINGLE ITEM.

These annoying shoppers are blocking aisles and walkways, pulling curtains out to stretch across the way and saying things like, "Do you think these match the rug? Because I'm not really sure if this shade of green really matches, you know? I mean, this is like a light sage and I feel like the green in the rug is more of a rich, like, more saturated sage, you know? What do you think, Babe?" At which point the guy who is with Sage Lady fingers the material and pulls it out further, looking closely to see if, maybe, it really IS too light a shade of sage? They are totally oblivious to the traffic jam they've caused as they sit there hemming and hawing over a curtain that FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IS *GREEN*, YOU IDIOTS!

OR, hell might be me having any of the following conversations with my mother for all of eternity:

-Soon, you'll be a woman... (omg, I want to die.)
-When a man and a woman love each other very much... (omg, I SERIOUSLY want to die.)
-Should you be on birth control? (omg, totally flattered that you think boys want to do those things with me, mom, but YOU ARE KILLING ME HERE.)
-Let me talk about my current relationship... (Aaaaand, I've dropped dead. Official.)

Yeah, sign me up for heaven, please.

And I'll take a Vienna Mocha Chunk sundae when I get there.

Facebook: I just can't quit you.

2011-05-10T21:42:00.000-04:00

What's so great about Facebook anyway?

Um, besides, EVERYTHING.

(Here's where I admit to having an unhealthy love for Facebook. Whatever, being a stay-at-home mom can be really boring sometimes.  Seriously, do you know how hard it is to lose at Connect Four? And how many pairs of Superman underwear can I fold in a day anyway?)

Here are a few of my favorite things about the Book of Faces:

1) I am ALWAYS up on current events.

Anything major that happens in the world, I know my news feed will light up like a Christmas tree with post after post about it. Did *YOU* know that Osama bin Laden is dead? Oh yeah, he totally is. Not only was I able to rely on my Facebook newsfeed for this information, but I was able to enjoy relevant quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. and Mark Twain, each of whom had the foresight to offer his wisdom on this very event long ago. Now that's some good PR.

2) I NEVER need to watch the weather.

Want to know what the weather's like? Don't sit and wait for weather.com's page to load. CHECK FACEBOOK.  Guaranteed that 17% of your friends are commenting about the weather. It's hot/it's cold/it's windy/it's raining/it's hailing or sleeting (bet your bottom dollar I know the difference), oh my God it's a FUCKING RAINBOW (wait for obligatory comment about finding the pot of gold). This past winter, I rarely watched the weather because I always had Facebook to let me know that IT'S GOING TO SNOW 17 FEET OF SNOW, WAY MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE ANYWHERE WILL EVER UNDERSTAND, AND WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. Thank you, Facebook. Now I can go buy my milk and bread and eggs as required by law.

3) The hearts.

Oh, you know. <3 See, means nothing here. In fact, you probably think I just made some boobies. Facebook takes the boobies and turns them into hearts, just like I prayed would happen when I was 12. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?

4) The STALKING.

Now, maybe dudes are normal and they don't do stuff like this. But girls know that the reason Facebook exists is so you can look up your ex-boyfriends, call your best friend, and tear him to pieces.  EVEN IF HE'S A FRIGGIN' DOCTOR AND HIS WIFE LOOKS LIKE A MODEL.  165 pictures of your honeymoon? Don't mind if I do. Wow, his wife REALLY needs to put on some weight. And, HELLO, if God had meant for our eyebrows to be plucked out and then drawn in with pencils, he would have adorned our hands with tweezers instead of fingers. It's important to note here that you MUST keep your own Facebook page on total and complete lock-down so that no one can ever do this back to you. Besides, you're perfect and wonderful and wasn't it his loss anyway, so what-the-eff-ever.

5) The blatant misuse of the exclamation point.

Confession time: my opinion of you diminishes 10 points for every cluster of exclamation points you post.  I will begrudgingly admit that there are times when A SINGLE EXCLAMATION POINT is warranted. But this: !!!!!!! is just absurd. Let's cut that shit out. And, while we're on it, it's 'are', not 'r'. If typing the two extra letters really wastes that much of your time, you MIGHT want to take some typing lessons.

6) The STATUS UPDATES.

I love me some status updates. I love reading them, I love writing them, I love commenting on them. I. LOVE. THEM. I have learned more about people in high school over two years of status updates than I did sitting next to them in the cafeteria for 4 years. I know who votes democrat, who votes republican, and who couldn't tell you the difference between the two. The very best of the status updates are the uber-dramatic ones. You know, "So-and-so JUST IS." It's the Facebook equivalent of sulking into a room, dropping into a chair, and sighing as loudly as you can. It's passive-aggressiveness at it's very best. AND I LOVE IT.

Now, the OCD side of me is greatly disturbed by the thought of ending a list at six items rather than 10, and I would have more to say, except, well...

I have this totally awesome status update to post...

pst...Check out the doo-hickey on the right to take you to the Playing House Facebook page where you can become a fan and follow my totally awesome status updates.

Words, words, words

2011-04-27T21:21:00.000-04:00

Writers love words. We sit with them, we turn them over in our minds, agonizing over just the right one. Ten minutes spent trying to decide whether the shade of brown is muddy or chocolate. We pull these words apart, analyze them, think about their connotation and what they really mean.

Is this saying what I really mean?

But there are some words we pick at too much. Words that are better left alone to sit and breathe and just BE.

Words like love.

We fucking tear the shit out of that one.

And I don't just mean writers. I mean everyone.

We analyze it: is this love? Is that? How do I even know? Maybe I don't know.

We quantify it: I love you like a friend. I love you so much. You're the Love Of My Life.

We compare it: I love you more today than when we first met. I love him more than I've ever loved anyone else. I choose love for this person over love for that one.

We qualify it: I love you because of this. And that. And also that over there.

We try to stuff it into a box, add a bunch of labels, and maybe stick a cake topper on it. We try to pin it down and understand and be sure.

But it's at it's best when we leave it the hell alone.

When we dive into it, get swept up by it, let it wash over us and carry us away. When we let go and surrender to it. That's where the happiness lies; in the place where you take away all of the logic and all of the reasoning and all of the explanations.

And you just let it be.

Dave Does Easter

2011-04-19T09:35:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't it be funny if the first Easter fell on April 1st?

Jesus would be all like, "Hey, it's me, Jesus. I'm back."

And everyone would stop biting the heads off of their chocolate bunnies and be all like, "OMG! Jesus, you totally rose from the dead! Awesome!"

And then he'd be all like, "April Fools! Hahahaha, I gotcha. Hahahaha, you should see your faces, you TOTALLY thought I was Jesus!"

And the people would be like, "Wait. WAIT. You mean, you're not the Lord our Savior? This isn't a miracle?"

And he'd be all like, "Yeah, no. Sorry, man. I'm Dave. I get the whole 'Did anyone ever tell you you look like Jesus?' thing a lot, so I thought it'd be funny to just...you know..."

And then there would this weird, uncomfortable silence.

And then Dave would be like, "Ummm, yeah. So, I think I'm gonna go."

Then there would be an angry mob and everyone would be PISSED at Dave, so pissed in fact that they would gather all the Easter eggs for the Easter egg hunt and throw them all at Dave.

And then the Easter egg hunt would have to be cancelled and that would NOT be funny at all. So I guess it's good that the first Easter didn't actually fall on April Fool's Day.

GAAAH! Nature!

2011-04-04T08:36:00.000-04:00

I don't do nature.

Wait...

Scratch that.

I do pretty nature. Like sunsets and sunrises and moons and stars and trees and flowers and beaches and oceans and mountains and stuff.

And weather.

I LOVE WEATHER.

I DO NOT, however, do gross, icky nature.

I'm talking dirt, bugs, camping, fungi (I'm looking at you, mushrooms), and, with all due respect to the ones that could eat me (which I believe to be many; like, way, WAY more than other people assume), most animals.

That's right, I said it.

I'm NOT an animal girl.

I was never the little girl with the horse/puppy/kitten folder in her Trapper Keeper. My folders were blue. Or red. Or green. MAYBE with a rainbow here or there.

But no butterflies. No bunnies. No unicorns.

NEVER unicorns.

It's not like I've never TRIED to like animals. I have.

There was my friend Matt's cat, who was pretty okay. Except that Matt would regularly stop our phone conversations to announce that the cat was staring at his neck and was probably plotting to kill him.

And then there was the night the cat brought a mouse into the house and left it at our feet.

ALL SET WITH THE CATS, THANKS.

There was also my friend Sascha's dog, Bert. I kinda dug Bert. He was all big and sweet and tried really hard to be protective. We'd come in and she'd tell him, "Go check the house, Bert!" and Bert would proudly trot from the back door to the front to give us the all-clear.

Bert and I had a sort of understanding. It went like this:

Me: Bert, you're stinky. It's not your fault; it's just because you're a dog and sometimes dogs smell like dogs. No judgement. Please don't eat me.
Bert: We're cool. I will not lick you, or jump on you, or eat you. Now give me a french fry.

In fact, my relationship with Bert reached a really great place. I realized this one night when Sascha and I were leaving her house. Always the gentleman, Bert saw us to the door.

"Bye, Bert," Sascha called to him. "I love ya!"

"Bye, Bert," I said, and then I paused. I felt like I should say something more. But I didn't love Bert, and I couldn't bring myself to lie to him by saying that I did.

"I don't love you, Bert," I admitted. "But I like you a lot."

I like to think that Bert respected my honesty, my refusal to lead him on and let him think I cared for him more than I actually did. He played it cool; he trotted happily away to go do whatever it is dogs do on a Saturday night.

But Bert was the exception to the rule. And that was years ago.

Now I have my own home, free of pet hair. And pet smells. And pet bills.

I have kids. POTTY TRAINED KIDS.

Kids who, thankfully, are happy with fish.

Even if all of our fish are now dead. Flushed back to the ocean. Back to nature.

WHERE THEY BELONG.

A Tale of Two Annas

2011-03-22T14:20:00.000-04:00

Good People of the Internets:

I need your help.

It would appear I've gotten myself in a bit of a situation (not to be confused with THE Situation, which would just be gross and probably require a hefty dose of antibiotics and some sort of antifungal cream).

Here's the problem.

Every week, I go to the grocery store on the same day, at the same time, my super-duper, organized-by-aisle-for-maximum-efficiency list in hand. I play it like a race, trying to be beat my own best time each week. My child-free time is limited and I hate wasting it standing in the produce aisle smelling melons.

SHUT IT.

So a few months ago, I was engaged in my regular race through Stop and Shop when I ran into a woman I know.

Or, at least, I was fairly certain I knew her.

I was about 85% sure she was possibly Anna, one of my Facebook friends, sister of an old, dear friend from high school.

She looked A LOT like Anna, who I haven't seen in person in many years.

At first, it was super casual. Just a smile, a friendly hello.

Then, one day, our relationship escalated to Chit-Chat.  This is really difficult when you're only 85% sure you know the person you're trying to chit-chat with.

I tried to keep the conversation to only safe topics: the weather, the holidays, the snow, the weather. But eventually you run out of ways to talk about the snow, even here in New England. So I went with the next safest thing, thinking I could feel this woman out to see if she was Actually Anna.

"So," I began, "How's your family?"

"Great," was all I got. Shit.

I would come home from the supermarket, log in to Facebook, and head to Anna's profile and look at her pictures.

Did I mention she looked A LOT like Actual Anna? I was still about 75% sure that she *was* Anna. But, to be safe, I started to avoid her in the market. I would see her in one aisle and duck down another. I was out of things to say that wouldn't give away the fact that I wasn't sure I even knew who she was.

This worked great for a few weeks.

Until the day that I hurriedly turned the corner down the chips aisle. There was Possibly Anna, talking to 3 other women. I had no choice but to continue down the aisle; there would be hell to pay if I didn't come home with pretzel sticks and I sure as shit wasn't going to jeopardize my record-breaking time just because of a potentially awkward situation.  As I made my way past them, I smiled at Possibly Anna.

"Oh, hi!" one of her friends said enthusiastically, in a way that meant one of three things: she was really lonely and eager to meet new people, she was on some seriously kick-ass happy pills, or she thought she knew me.

And while my confidence that Possibly Anna was Actual Anna had dropped to 70%, I was 100% sure that I DID. NOT. KNOW. THIS. WOMAN.

So I gave her a confused 'hi' and scurried away.

Things had clearly taken a drastic turn.  It was time to cut the shit and get down to the nitty gritty. But since I couldn't muster the courage to ask her, "Are you ~~a good witch~~ Actual Anna or ~~a bad witch~~ Possibly Anna?", I had to resort to a sneakier tactic.

This week, I sought out Possibly Anna. I watched for her down each aisle, and when I finally found her near the toilet paper, I headed her way and quickly scoped the contents of her cart for my in.

Go-gurt. Bingo.

Four years of preschool pick-ups have left me well-equipped to start any conversation about any child-related topic with any mommy in the whole wide world. I started in.

Me: "Blahblahblah *kids* blahblahblah *crazy* blahblahblah *school*."

Possibly Anna: "I know, right? My daughter's the same way."

Me: "How old is your daughter?"

Possibly Anna: "Second grade."

And it's official.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS.

Actual Anna doesn't have a daughter; she doesn't have a second grader; and she would never give 'SECOND GRADE' as an answer to a question about AGE.

I extricated myself from the conversation as seamlessly as I could, finished my shopping, and left.

That was this past Monday. I know I'm going to see her, this Stranger Anna, next Monday.

OMG, WHAT DO I DO NOW?

It feels a little weird to keep faking it with this Stranger Anna.

But I can't really walk up to her now, after all these weeks, and say, "Excuse me, but WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?"

And, even more troubling, who in God's name does she think *I* am?

So, lay it on me, dear reader. What's an identity-challenged grocery shopper to do?

This is your hometown.

2011-02-28T11:47:00.000-05:00

I drive without purpose, without a destination.

I can lose myself in this town, in it's streets, because I know them all by heart. I open the windows, turn up the radio, turn off my mind, and just drive.

This is my hometown.

There is no street not stained with my youth, my past. The ghost of my younger self lingers around each corner.

I drive by the house I grew up in. The outside looks nothing like the home I knew, but when I close my eyes I'm able to walk through the heavy front door and up the stairs, into my bedroom, which smells like fresh air and perfume and hairspray. My fingertips can mentally trip over things of significance: pictures of friends stuck to the mirror, stacks of tapes and cds next to the radio, the phone on the nightstand, with it's knotted pink cord that I twist late at night, covers pulled up over my head as I whisper into the receiver while outside the night slips into early morning. I can lie on the bed and see the familiar swirls on the ceiling. I can look out the window, watching, waiting for headlights in the driveway.

But I don't live here anymore. So I turn my car around to go.

At the corner of my street stands a girl I know to be 17. It's early morning and she's waiting for the bus. It's cold. She's not wearing a hat or gloves or even socks, because she's too cool for that. She hasn't bothered to zip her coat. She's got her walkman and it's playing November Rain on repeat. She's thin and pale and doesn't sleep much anymore. She's taken to burning bridges. She's about to implode.

But she doesn't know that yet. She only knows that the bus is late.

I want to scream at her to zip up her damn coat. I want to pull her into my warm car and tell her to stay home from school today. But I can see the bus coming up over the hill and I know she needs to get on it.

So I leave her there.

I drive up the main street in town, past the high school. Just up the road is the library, where, if I were to go in, the librarian would greet me by name. She would smile at my sons. But she would not see what I see, a girl out front with long hair wearing a flannel shirt. She's slipping her hand into that of the boy sitting next to her. It's fall; the day is cold and brisk and gray. But she is smiling, singing Van Morrison for him. He's looking at her and she feels warm. These two are sure of everything. They are still in love.

It's a good place to leave them.

The road continues through the center of town. I'm stopped at the light outside of a bridal shop. A young woman comes floating out of the shop, gown in hand, breathlessly gushing to the saleswoman about her impending honeymoon. She cradles that dress like a baby as she guides it into the back of her car. She's rushing, busy hanging up her veil on a small black hook in the back seat before flying off to tie up a thousand lose ends. She is 26 and high on the excitement of everything that's about to unfold. As I watch her I try to remember what mattered to her then, what she thought was important before her sons were born.

Because, for the life of me, I can't remember.

She's in her car now, and she's driving away from me. I'd like to tell her to slow down, to not giggle nervously through her first dance with her husband, chattering away a moment she'll never get back. I'd like to tell her that the day is going to go too fast, but even if I could say these things, she would not listen.

Just as I'm sure, somewhere, there is an older version of me driving these streets, with the windows down and the radio on. She's watching me at 36 stride into a local bar, meeting friends for beer and trivia. Maybe she's yelling to me to be careful, maybe she's whispering to hold on to anything I can while it's still there to be held.

But it doesn't matter, because I've already passed her, taken my seat at the table, and ordered a drink.

I can not hear her.

And so she shakes her head and leaves me there, crossing over the town line as she goes home.

Denial: A Baby Story

2011-02-14T08:45:00.000-05:00

The bathroom was small and I was pretty sure I was never leaving it.

The woman on the other side of the door knocked.

"Are you okay? Don't have the baby in there!" she chirped.

FUCKING BITCH, I thought to myself, why THE HELL does she KEEP SAYING THAT?

"I'll be right out," I finally managed to say, although I was certain by then that it was a lie. Leaving the bathroom was going to involve pulling up my pants AND washing my hands. I couldn't remember how to do either. I could only lean against the wall, close my eyes, and give myself over to the pain.

Clearly, I was very sick.

Which is why I was at the hospital. I was definitely NOT there to have my baby.

Even if it was February 14th.

My due date.

I had been to the Labor and Delivery floor once before, 3 months earlier, with regular contractions that landed me on bed rest. Months went by and the baby stayed put. At my 38 week appointment, my doctor told me, "You've already done the work of early labor; you can't dilate much further without being in active labor.  I'll probably be seeing you within 48 hours."

The next week, she told me the same thing.

At my final appointment, I told her I thought she had my dates wrong and that this boy was probably going to be born sometime in June; he'd be the first baby born at 56 weeks gestation. We scheduled an induction for the following week.

I went home to eat as many Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as possible while I could still blame it on the baby.

So when I found myself waddling up to the woman at the desk outside of the Labor and Delivery floor, I tried to explain my situation to her. No, no, I wasn't there to have my baby. I was there because I had come down with a terrible stomach bug and I was concerned about the baby. I was there to make sure he was okay.

She asked me for my insurance card.

I asked her where the bathroom was.

"Try to breathe through it," was her super-helpful suggestion.

"It's not a contraction," I insisted, breathing deeply and leaning forward in my chair to rest my head on her desk.

"Mmmm-hmmm," she replied, her nails tap-tapping on her keyboard.

"Where is the bathroom?" I asked her again when the pain had eased.

She looked at my husband. "And are you the primary insurance holder?"

BITCHBITCHBITCH, ohmygod, bathroombathroombathroomBITCHISGOINGTOBESOSORRYbathroombathroombathroom.

I stood up. I was an adult. I could find my own damn bathroom. She could keep her PRECIOUS, TOP-SECRET, CLASSIFIED BATHROOM INFORMATION, I didn't need her. If I had to, I would make the 30 minute drive home to use the bathroom. At least there I knew where they were.

"Wait," she called after me as I walked away, "we're not done here!"

And so it was that I found myself in the tiny bathroom, uncertain of how to get myself out and wanting to punch The Bitch in the face as she parked herself outside of the door and waited, pen and form in hand.

She knocked again. "Do you need me to get a nurse?"

FUUUUUCCCCKKKK. I needed her to GO. THE. FUCK. AWAY.

Now, in my memory, what I said was, "No, thank you."

However.

My husband tells me I said no such thing.

In fact, according to him, there were no actual words, just some moaning, groaning, and assorted other noises that I SWORE I was never going to make, back when I naively thought that I would be in a state of mind to control such a thing.

But then, an angel appeared.

She was a nurse. While I had finally found a moment of clarity in which to coordinate the pulling-up of the pants, it didn't last long enough for me figure out the hand washing.  My nurse, however, was an EXPERT hand washer.

I decided I loved her.

When I finally emerged from the bathroom, The Bitch shoved a form in my face. I scribbled my name and bit my tongue to keep from telling her what she could do with her form and her bathroom and her insistence that I was in labor when I was so obviously ill.

I was immediately hooked up to a monitor to see if I was contracting.

"No, no, it's a stomach bug," I told anyone who would listen.

The monitors, however, told a different story. The contractions were piggy-backing; two 90-second surges in a row with a minute of relief before the next set of two began.

Next, they examined me.

"Well," said my new BFF, the nurse. "Your stomach bug has you at 8, almost 9 centimeters. Did you WANT an unmedicated birth?"

Holy shit, I thought.

The Bitch was right.

I am totally having a baby.

I asked for an epidural.

And while I waited for that, I asked for a Tylenol.

I pushed for three hours as Saturday night rolled into Sunday morning.

As I held my 8 lb 13 oz newborn, my nurse hugged me.

"Not a bad way to get rid of a stomach bug," she said.

Indeed.

Five Reasons to Stop Hating on the Snow (No, really.)

2011-02-01T19:07:00.001-05:00

Log in to your Facebook or Twitter account and you'll see that people are talking about one thing: snow.

Also, Egypt.

But mostly snow.

And people are pissed.

But snow's getting an unfair rap. Everyone loves it at Christmas, yet by February we're cursing it out and counting down the days until baseball season starts.

The snow's not ALL bad. Here are five reasons I've found to stop hatin':

5) INCREASED SECURITY With two feet of snow on the ground and another foot expected within the next 24 hours, there is no way in hell that Bad Guys can even GET to my house to steal my stuff. Have you tried walking in thigh-high snow? Even if they could get in, my ice-coated front steps and skating rink of a driveway would keep them from getting away with the loot. I can't even coordinate carrying my son's backpack and the mail without landing flat on my ass. Good luck trying to haul away my TV, Bad Guys!
(Author's Note: This is in no way meant to be seen as a dare, Bad Guys.)

4) CANCELLING MY GYM MEMBERSHIP Why would I keep paying my monthly gym membership when I'm getting a free workout at home? In fact, since the snow started falling (wait, that implies that there was once a time when the snow did not fall; that can't be right...) I've been getting far more exercise than usual. Everyone knows that shovelling counts as both cardio AND weight-training. My upper body is JACKED. Just the look I was going for. Bring on the tank tops, bitches. I'm ready.

3) NOW I HAVE SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT WITH THE CREEPY GUY UP THE STREET So there's this guy. Who lives up the street. And he's kind of creepy. My youngest son and I pass him every day on our walk to pick up my first grader from school. He sits on a chair on his front stoop and pets his really ginormous dog. Each day he waves at us and each day we wave back while I silently pray that his dog won't jump the fence and eat my five year old. Now, we have something to talk about. We roll our eyes and say, "Can you believe this?" Or we laugh and say, "Why do we live here again?" This perk is not limited to Creepy Guys Up The Street; it gives you an opening to make small talk with your mailman, the cashier at the grocery store, or the moms at preschool pickup. Everyone's up for snow talk; it's the Great Unifier.

2) HONING MY SUPER MARIO BROTHERS SKILLS Santa brought us a Wii for Christmas, but the rule is that it's for weekends and No School days only. Needless to say, it's been getting lots of extra use this winter. As such, I can almost beat my seven year old at Super Mario Brothers. Almost. Four or five more snow days and I will totally dominate the next coin battle.

1) FREE BIRTH CONTROL Somewhere in the far, far recesses of my memory, there exists a time and place where being snowbound was something to be excited about. It meant loading up the cabinets with junk food, making a beer run, renting a stack of movies (omg, remember video stores?), and shacking up with your favorite person for the duration of the storm. What else is there to do when you're stuck inside for 48 hours straight? Now, however, a 'long duration snow event' is more than just a polite way of saying 'a really awesome sleepover that falls in the middle of your work week'. Now it means that your kids will never go to school again; they will forever be home (yelling, fighting, and polishing off the Oreos you wanted to eat while watching the red carpet re-cap of the latest awards show and yelling at Claire Danes to EAT A FRICKIN' SANDWICH ALREADY!). Nothing promotes abstinence like a string of snow days. And not only do you NOT need a prescription for it, but you don't even need to hide the box under a copy of In Style magazine at the check-out.

So, while I don't necessarily WELCOME the snow, I'm ready to deal with it with my new-found optimism.

Now, if only I can convince my husband to pick up Oreos on his way home...

Someday, this will be gone.

2011-01-18T20:34:00.001-05:00

They tell you that it will be hard. They tell you that you will be tired in ways you've not yet known. They tell you that you will forever doubt your capacity to love enough, your capacity to give enough, your capacity to BE enough.

And it's all true.

What they don't do is look at you and smile and remind you, softly, that you are about to fall in love again.

It hit me harder the second time around. Maybe it was because I had spent my pregnancy focusing on sleepless nights and breastfeeding issues and the fact that my 19 month old had no idea that his world was about to be turned upside down.

The doctor said, "Reach down and grab your baby."

And so I did.

He was mine immediately; gone was the trepidation and uncertainty that came with the first. I was already a mother.

I was already his mother.

He was far from an easy baby, with his reflux and milk protein allergy and colic. I would pace the floor with him as he cried, his little body balled up tightly, like a fist, on my chest. I would cry along with him, rubbing his back and shaking my head, lamenting to my husband, "I don't know what to do for him."

And then he would do something wonderful; he would smile. Or wrap a fat, dimpled hand around my finger and pull it towards his little gummy mouth. And I would fall harder.

With all of this falling in love came the startling realization that there were a thousand tiny things my first had done that I swore I would never forget. But I had forgotten them. His babyhood had slipped through my fingers far too quickly as I spent my days looking ever forward, anticipating each new milestone, each accomplishment that brought him just a little more independence, made my life just a little bit easier.

The second time around, I knew better. He was still waking in the night as that fall turned into winter. I would gather him up from his crib, with his round diapered bottom, his soft footie pajamas, his busy little legs. As I sat rocking him in the warm glow of the nightlight, breathing him in, his sweet fuzzy head so soft against my cheek, one thought lay heavy on my shoulders, wrapping itself around me.

Someday, this will be gone.

And so it is.

Five times now we've sung Happy Birthday, blown out the candles, opened the presents. Five times now I've smiled through the day, only to find myself with an ache in my chest that night. He'll go to kindergarten next year; this breaks my heart in a hundred different ways. I straddle two worlds, one in which I'm looking ahead to the freedom that will come with having two children in school all day, the time to focus on a career I want so badly. The other is one in which I'm forever reaching backwards, trying desperately to hold on to all that has come before.

He comes to me with a book in his hand and climbs onto my lap.

"Mom, will you read this to me?"

It's a book I've read dozens of times, a book so boring that I cringe at each page, with it's description of hydraulic pumps, chassis, and cabs. There is a cup of coffee growing cold on the kitchen counter. There are unanswered e-mails in my inbox.

Yes, sweet boy, I will read to you.

Because I know.

Someday, this will be gone.

Age of Aquarius

2011-01-14T13:38:00.001-05:00

Taped to the wall next to my desk is a horoscope I cut out of the newspaper last summer for inspiration.

It says: AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You have so many good ideas and, if you implement the ones you think you'd enjoy doing most, you will be in a much better position financially and emotionally. There is money to be made.

Come to find out, IT'S ALL A LIE.

Thanks a lot, SUN.

YOU TOO, EARTH.

In fact, I'm pissed at the whole frickin' UNIVERSE, with it's EVOLUTION and CHANGE.

It's bad enough that I memorized 'My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets' in the 5th grade only to grow up and have Pluto be stripped of it's title of planet. What the hell did Pluto ever do to anyone? Did it send texts of it's junk to other planets? Not once.  Was it indicted on charges of embezzling from one of Neptune's moons? Nope. Was it caught in a seedy hotel room with Uranus, snorting coke off of Jupiter's rings?  Not how Pluto rolls.

However, the heinously unjust treatment of Pluto was minor (like a dwarf-planet, yo) compared to this.

THIS is MY SIGN.

I like being an Aquarius. Aquarians are considered to be creative, witty, intellectual, original, and independent. All good.

Um, also, they may be a bit stubborn.

Now I'm told I'm a Capricorn.  Capricorns are supposed to be disciplined (I'm carrying 20 lbs of baby weight; my baby is FIVE, do I SOUND DISCIPLINED?), ambitious (have I mentioned the novel I've been working on for the last 5 years? See also 'disciplined'.), organized (you DO NOT want to see my closet, something might bite you. I'm not even kidding.), and mature.

Mature. You know the 'beans, beans good for your heart' song? I taught it to my sons last week. Because I'm really so very mature.

Therefore, true to my Aquarian nature, I am metaphorically sticking my fingers in my ears, closing my eyes, and yelling, "LALALALALALA*ICAN'THEARYOU*LALALALALALA" to the astrology world.

Because I'm an Aquarian through-and-through. And if there were any doubt, I ask you this:

Would a Capricorn notice that you only need to change one letter to turn 'mature' into 'manure'?

Didn't think so.

Dear Santa:

2010-12-20T13:45:00.000-05:00

Dear Santa,

Hi there. How are things up at the North Pole? I hope unemployment is down at the Claus Compound and, as such, that this Christmas finds you handing your elves fewer pink slips than last. I imagine it's hard to find work as an elf; those Keebler guys have the cookie market cornered and now, with the popularity of the Elf on a Shelf, there's competition from the doll industry. Tough times.

Before I get to what I want for Christmas, I would like to point out that I have been really good this year. Seriously, I don't know if you've noticed, but today is December 20th and my Christmas cards have been mailed, my wrapping is done, and my tree HASN'T EVEN FALLEN DOWN ONCE.

Well, not yet anyway.

I get my teeth cleaned every six months, get felt up by the OBGYN once a year, and use a moisturizer with SPF 15.  EVERY DAY.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to direct your attention to the following: my driving record (clean), my voting record (active), and my criminal record (non-existent).

Not bad, right?

So I think you'll be happy to know that I only want one thing for Christmas this year.

A wife.

Hear me out on this one, S.C.  This isn't some kind of polygamous fantasy, I don't want a Barb or a Margene, and GOD KNOWS I don't need a Nikki. Besides, I took a quiz in last month's Glamour and it turns out my face is WAY too round to pull off the French-braid-with-the-Bump-Itz-pouf.

Nor is this some kinky sex thing. Although, really Santa, let's get honest for a second here, even if it WAS, you're not really in a position to judge. You spend a good deal of time with small children in your lap while the world turns a blind eye to that whole he-sees-you-when-you're-sleeping-he-knows-when-you're-awake-he-knows-if-you've-been-bad-or-good thing. If you think about it, you're sort of like the MacDaddy of Creepers. And we all know it's just you and Mrs. Claus and all those elves isolated up there in the North Pole, where it stays cold and dark for like DAYS on end. I'm not accusing you of anything, I'm just saying. People talk.  Not me. But people.

Also, The Wife is also not a replacement for The Husband. I would very much like to keep him.

Really, The Wife is just there so that, in my absence, things will get done the way I do them rather than in some other husband-like way which invariably leaves me with more work than I started with. For example, if I go out on a Thursday night, Wife would be here to keep everyone in line. The dishes would be done, bedtime would start and finish on time, the downstairs would be picked up, and no one would have walked around the house eating something seriously crumb-producing, like pretzel rods or crackers, without a bowl or plate or napkin or FOR GOD'S SAKE, SOMETHING! to catch ALL OF THOSE CRUMBS.

Wife will not put up a philosophical argument about the suitability of ice-cream, candy, or potato chips at 8 a.m. She will always have tissues, she'll be aware of the clock so as to avoid giving the boys donuts for a snack 45 minutes before dinner is ready, and she will always know the location of each child's hat, gloves, and shoes.

Now, if she could also clean the bathroom and do laundry , that would be SO awesome, but I realize I'm probably pushing my luck.

Oh, one more thing. I sort of need her to be on the less-attractive side. Unfortunate facial hair, adult-onset acne, goiters: all welcome here.

Because, like I said, I'd like to keep The Husband.

So that's it, Santa. One wife. I'm sure you can fit her in the sleigh.

She'll be the one sitting next to you controlling the radio and telling you YOU NEED TO SLOW DOWN!

Thanks a lot, Santa.

Love, Jenn

Are you there, Oprah? It's me, Jenn.

2010-12-01T14:03:00.001-05:00

I'm not really a big Oprah fan. But a few weeks ago I was home sick in bed and happened to catch her Favorite Things episode. In case you don't worship at the Altar of Oprah, this is the episode where she gives away all kinds of really expensive stuff: cashmere sweaters, diamond earrings, trips, fancy chocolates that cost more than my monthly mortgage payment.

You know, all the essentials for the holiday season.

Oh yeah, and the audience pretty much goes apeshit crazy.

Like, with all forms of crying and screaming and jumping and 'Oh my God'-ing for the camera.

Just in case you haven't yet been beaten over the head with the message that Oprah is a kind and benevolent god, the show's producers cut to these audience freak-outs repeatedly to make sure you REALLY get it:

Hey! You there, at home in your yoga pants that you don't wear out of the house because of the unfortunate seam up the front that makes it look like you have camel toe, even though you totally DO NOT, are you getting just how generous and awesome Oprah is? Because I don't think you are. See that lady in the second row, the one with the applique reindeer on her sweater and JC Penney elastic high-waisted pants who has just fallen to her knees in praise, THAT lady just scored a pair of $375 skinny jeans from Jay-Z's new clothing line. She is seriously psyched and her life is 125% BETTER now because Oprah has touched it. Avert your eyes when Oprah appears before you!

So there I was, in bed burning not just with a strep-throat-induced fever, but also with a raging contempt for Oprah.

What-the-eff-ever, Oprah! With all your fancy crap that regular people can't go out and buy! A $300 cashmere sweater would be on my favorite things list too if I didn't know that I could get like 25 pairs of pants at Target for that much money! Oh my God, I need a Fribble!

There was, however, a time when I didn't feel quite so negatively toward Oprah and her favorite things.

Of course, I was pregnant then.

And, as such, under the influence of some SERIOUS hormones.

Also, I was on bed rest. Which meant that, besides the mail delivery, Oprah had become the high point of my day.

Oh, and did I mention that the audience was filled with teachers?

Wanna guess what I had been doing for work up until the night I went to the hospital for contractions at 26 weeks?

That's right, I was a teacher.

It was like the Perfect Storm of hormonal breakdowns.

There I was, all round and pregnant and happy, with a nice big cup of hot chocolate, ready to sit and enjoy Oprah's Favorite Things episode.

Within the first minute and a half of the show, I was crying.

Oh my God, look at all of those women. They are just SO HAPPY! They are literally jumping for joy and hugging total strangers in their happy little bubble of delirium. This is the most beautiful thing I ever seen in my whole life. I love Oprah and I love all of those happy women.

And then Oprah started the giving-away part of the show. She held up some random item, made sure to let everyone know how much it was worth, and then told the audience, "You're all getting one!" The women then jumped and cheered and screamed. And cried.

And each time they cried, I cried.

Oh my God, Oprah is the nicest person ever; look how happy everyone is that they just got a $500 waffle maker. They all love waffles so much, they are SO happy for waffles, and I am SO happy for them that they can make waffles for their families now. What did they even DO before they had a waffle maker? How did they get their waffles? They didn't, not until Oprah came along and blessed them with their new incredible waffle makers. I love Oprah and waffles and waffle-maker-factory workers and this is the best show ever, I feel myself changing because of this show; I am so totally changed now and I want to give everyone I know a waffle maker RIGHT NOW and then I want to eat a really ridiculous amount of waffles.

This is not even an exaggeration. My friend Erin can attest to all of this, because I e-mailed her repeatedly during the episode to share my joy.

I cried through the entire hour-long show.

It was weeks before I could even TALK about the episode without choking up.

That is, until the day early in January when the recycling truck took away our Christmas tree. I stood in my window and cried; it was a good Christmas tree and I had loved it, even if Santa hadn't left any of Oprah's Favorite Things under it.

And so I honored it.

By eating a really ridiculous amount of waffles.

Hey Baby, Can I Sweep Your Chimney?

2010-11-17T12:51:00.000-05:00

Disney World really is a place where you revert to childhood, even if you are a grown woman visiting with your husband and children.

Case in point? I was there last week and found myself unreasonably excited when Cinderella's Fairy Godmother winked at me during the parade. I was almost teary when the final float came by, adorned with Aurora, Belle, Arielle, Snow White, and the mac daddy of all princesses, Cinderelly herself.

However, the character I was most excited to see standing up there was not actually a princess, but a nanny.

Because I WANT TO BE MARY POPPINS.

Now, I don't want to take on the whole nanny aspect of the Mary Poppins persona. I've got my hands full with my own family, I don't need to be taking care of everyone else's children and dealing with pompous, obnoxious fathers and flighty suffragette mothers. Oh no. In fact, I probably would have punched George Banks in the mouth and then the Constable would have come and dragged me off to jail, the Sister Suffragettes singing along behind me and Bert and his chimney-sweep buddies cheering me along. Good times, but not really a great example for a nanny to set for her charges.

However, there are plenty of other reasons for wanting to be Mary Poppins over some of the Disney princesses.

For starters, look at her mode of transportation: flying umbrella. Think how convenient that whole floating thing could be. Traffic in the town's center going to make me late to pick my son up from preschool? No problem; I've got my trusty umbrella in the back. Pull the car over, open the umbrella, and off I go, waving to the other motorists and yelling out, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, suckers!"

Flying umbrella beats a coach made out of a pumpkin ANY DAY.

Seriously, have you smelled the inside of a pumpkin?

Cinderella must have looked DAMN good in that dress (we're talking Spanx and Miracle bras here...bippity boppity boobs, people) if she still managed to turn Prince Charming's head while smelling like stringy pumpkin goo. Of course, Prince Charming obviously had a major foot fetish and she had those freakishly tiny feet, so it was probably just a matter of time before those two connected through a Craigslist ad.

But I digress.

Take a look at who Mary Poppins hangs with: Bert. Bert is a dude who TRAVELS WITH HIS OWN BAND ON HIS BACK. He is literally a walking good time. He's always happy and you can't really understand what he's saying; clearly he's got a flask of something good hidden under that cap of his. He's not super hard-core on the party scene though; he spends his time on the rooftops of London, so he can't get TOO tipsy. He parties only enough to know how to keep things fun.

I mean, the guy leaps in and out of chalk drawings, for Christ's sake.

Forget all those singing and dancing animals and candelabras; Bert's the kind of sidekick I want .

Of course, there's also this unspoken kind of understanding that SOMETHING went down between the two of them long before they reunited at 17 Cherry Tree Lane.

You just KNOW he's swept her chimney.

And good for them for moving past it and being able to stay friends.

Then there is the bag: Mary Poppins pulls a friggin' LAMP out of her purse.

A LAMP.

I thought I was the master of packing my diaper bag when my kids were younger, but MAN what I could do with a bag that can hold a lamp.

Although I imagine it's a bitch to find your keys in.

But the best reason of all to be Mary Poppins?

OH MY GOD have you seen the woman clean? Mary Poppins snaps her fingers and the clothes fold themselves.

And then? They put themselves away.

Tired of stepping on the never-ending string of Legos that always manage to be strewn through every room in the house? Mary Poppins could snap her fingers and they would all jump together into the form of a rocket and then FLY themselves into the toy box. When you're Mary Poppins, all you do is snap your fingers and sing a happy song. Her song of choice was "A Spoonful of Sugar". I don't know what kind of sugar she's hitting a spoonful of, but I'll take it.

And I'd call it a spoonful of Awesomesauce.

Swallow the shame

2010-10-20T13:06:00.000-04:00

You start off innocently enough.

I’ll just cut back a little, you tell yourself. No big deal. First you cut out snacks. And then you stop eating breakfast. “Just coffee for me today,” you say cheerily, acting as if you are too important to be bothered by something as menial as breakfast. But breakfast is all you can think about. Eggs. Pancakes with syrup. Butter. Bagels heavy with cream cheese. Bacon, sausage, and ham (oh my!). You think about these things and turn them over in your mind again and again and again, weighing the consequence of eating each. In the end, it’s useless. You won’t eat any of them. You can’t. And so it’s just coffee for today.

Soon the scale starts its inevitable slide backward. Four pounds gone. Might as well make it five, and if you can do five then you should just make it an even ten for good measure. You know, just in case. It’s good to have a little wiggle room.

You have been here before. It’s no surprise to you when you come up with the brilliant idea to stop eating lunch. You can go from dinner to dinner, can’t you? Are you so weak that you can’t make it from dinner to dinner?

One day you are that weak. You sin, you eat a sundae. You feel the cool thickness of the ice cream, the sticky heat of the hot fudge; it all goes down so easily. But you aren’t used to eating like this, so your stomach begins to twist and cramp. See, you tell yourself, it hurts to eat. When you eat you get a stomachache. It’s easier not to eat. And so it is that you find yourself with your head in the toilet, watching the swirl of the ice cream as it comes back up. You flush, you clean the wall and the floor and the toilet. And then, as you are washing your hands and face, you feel it. The rush, the dizziness, the push. You let it wash over you for a minute; you’ve forgotten about this part. This is the high. You relish in it for just a moment, and then it is time to press your hands against your chest and will your heart to slow down. You tap a steady rhythm with your fingers and hope your heart will do the same. Eventually it does.

It’s not until you pass out one day in your bedroom that you realize you are there. You have an Eating Disorder. Again. You smile. This is familiar, like an old friend. Hello, grumbling stomach. Welcome, dizzy spells. Nice to see you, shakes.

You are happily on your way to self destruction when the strangest thing happens.

You meet a guy.

You meet a guy who wants to take you to a ballgame and eat hot dogs with you. He wants to come by with a pepperoni pizza and beer. On Sunday mornings he wants to make you the biggest omelet you have ever seen, complete with hash browns and butter-soaked toast. He is normal. He wants you to meet him for drinks and meet his friends and meet his family. He eats three meals a day.

He is normal.

You like this guy. You want to be with him all of the time. You slowly start to realize that you can’t picture yourself without him, that this is Serious.

And you realize, too, that you can not have both of these things at once, this guy and this illness. You’ve tried it before. But you can only bring someone you care about so far down with you before they walk away. When you feel they are fading, you get better. But it’s too late. And you never do seem to stay better.

So you have to decide. You have to make a conscious decision to walk away from one or the other for good. There can be no more looking back.

He is warm and steady and whole.

Your illness leaves you cold and shaky and empty.

And so you eat.

At first eating will make you feel terrible. You will feel bloated and round and weak. But then you will look at him and know that he is worth it. You know that being healthy for yourself should be enough, but it’s not. It may never be. So for now you are healthy for him. Later, you will be healthy for the sons you will have with him. Oddly, you will love the roundness of your pregnant belly.

Now and then you will return to your old habits, revisit that old friend, dabble a bit. Try it on for size.

But you won’t go back, not completely, because now you are a wife and a mother.

And because you are warm. And steady. And whole.

10 Lies All Parents Fall For

2010-10-18T08:36:00.000-04:00

10. PULL-UPS   Every parent has been there; you look at the package and think, "I can totally fool my child into thinking this is underwear AND save myself from doing 27 loads of laundry a day." You even buy the ones that have Lightning McQueen on them and sell them to your child with the notion that "Lighting McQueen doesn't want to get wet and HE WILL DISAPPEAR if you pee on him" with all kinds of mock horror at the very thought, even though you'd like nothing more since you have so much Lightning McQueen paraphernalia that you're pretty sure you personally paid for one of Owen Wilson's stints in rehab. Or at least the blow that got him there. But your child doesn't care that Lighting McQueen will disappear if he pees in his pull-up because he thinks it's fun to pee in his pull-up; it means he doesn't have to leave the train table. Leaving the train table means his brother will steal his train and what's waiting for him in the bathroom? A sticker. TRAIN TRUMPS STICKER. And that's why pull-ups fail.

9. SOCCER   Christ Almighty, enough with the soccer already. Want to get your ass reported to Child Protective Services? Tell another parent at the preschool pickup that your kid isn't enrolled in soccer and watch her face contort as she tries to mask her contempt for your obviously inferior parenting.  Resist the urge to poke her in the eye.

8. EVERY KID NEEDS A DOG   Ummm, yeah. Not my kids. Want to know why? Because they live with me. And as my dad so eloquently put it recently, "You're not really an animal person."  Spot on, Dad. We're fish people. And so far we've only had to flush one.

7. CONTRACTIONS FEEL LIKE REALLY BAD CRAMPS   Okay, I don't know what kind of fucked up, crazy-ass period cramps you people get, but if they are really akin to the feeling of every muscle from just below your boobs all the way down to your knees tightening like a vice grip for a full minute in 90-second intervals as your body ATTEMPTS TO EXPEL A HUMAN, you might want to seek some medical attention and get that shit checked out.

6. HAVING A CHILD WILL BRING YOU CLOSER TO YOUR SPOUSE I don't even remember what my husband looks like. I think he still lives here. Maybe.

5. GOOD MOTHERS DON'T ____________ .   Take your pick: swear, smoke, drink, fuck, work, stay home, circumcise, formula feed, co-sleep, forget to floss, want to run away sometimes. What's your hangup?

4. YOU WILL FORGET THE PAIN OF CHILDBIRTH   *coughcough*BULLSHIT*coughcough*   'Nuff said.

3. BABY TOYS   Want to entertain a baby? Turn on a light. That is fascinating stuff to the 10 month-and-under crowd. Want to really blow their minds? Turn the light off. And then turn it on again. The best thing about this is that babies don't remember much, so tomorrow it will be a whole new amazing experience. Think that's a good time? Wait until summer when you turn on the CEILING FAN. WHOA.

2. MOTHER KNOWS BEST   This one is only a partial lie. Because when it comes to things like picking out clothes that match, singing lullabies, or ensuring that, before we leave the house, we are adequately prepared for any possible calamity that could effect our children ever, I'm definitely the one you want running the show. But there are many times when I have to defer to my husband and his wealth of knowledge of All Things Male Related. This, so far, has included peeing standing up, purchasing a cup for the Little Leaguer (you're welcome, future grandchildren), and basically all things penis or sports related, since my athletic history consists of picking flowers and doing cartwheels in the outfield during kickball. And I don't have a penis. But definitely call me when you need a necklace made out of dandelions.

1. YOUR CHILD NEEDS A SIBLING Oh my god, this is the worst lie of all. Having only one child is viewed as a serious crime against nature in our society. Don't you want your son/daughter to have a brother/sister? A playmate? A best friend? HA. I fell for this one hook, line, and sinker. It's not by accident that my sons are 19 months apart. Why? Because we wanted them to be close. I had visions of them taking off to play together, leaving me to sip my coffee, maybe read a book, putting it down every now and then to go take a look at whatever incredible block structure they had created. What I didn't imagine was the constant bickering, the 'I had it first', the 'he got a longer turn/bigger piece/more', the 'it's mine and even though I haven't played with it in seven months, I was just about to', the 'you know that game you always want to play and I always say no simply because I know how much you love it...I'm going to hide all of the pieces under my bed JUST BECAUSE.' I'm not a mother, I'm a referee. Lucky for me, I happen to love black and white.

These are the people in your neighborhood... (Part 1)

2010-10-13T14:09:00.000-04:00

There is a gorgeous tree across the street, a harsh fiery streak of red amongst a sea of dry, dulling greens and washed out yellowish browns. A narrow strip of sun slices through the early morning shadows to fall directly on the flaming tones.

It's breathtaking.

And I'd totally take a picture to show you, except that between my window and the tree-of-such-beauty-that-ohmygod-it-would-change-your-life, dangle The Bucket People's unmentionables.

I see London, I see France, I see my neighbors' underpants. Right there on the clothesline.

Apparently the men in the house enjoy boxers AND briefs, while Mama Bucket rocks the grannies.

All of which is WAY more information about my neighbors than I ever cared to possess.

I should probably stop referring to them as The Buckets, now that I have two little sets of ears that like to listen to, and then repeat, lots of fun things that I say. But we've been calling them The Bucket People for nine years now, since we moved in and found them dealing buckets from their side yard, complete with a hand painted sign attached to the fence that read, "Buckets: $.50". Their yard was littered with white plastic buckets.

Here a bucket, there a bucket, everywhere a bucket-bucket.

It would seem, however, that the bucket business is not a lucrative one.

Because one day, a big truck came and took all of the buckets away.

Which meant The Bucket People could then fill their yard with even yet still more crap.

Crap such as: non-working snow blowers (4), old lawn mowers (2), tires (oodles), discarded lawn furniture, tarps (which, by the way, don't actually cover anything; they're just random blue tarps tossed here and there), rusty bikes (4), a Little Tykes basketball hoop, and assorted cuts of lumber.

And of course, I can't forget the prerequisite broken down car in the driveway (which my 5 year old thinks is a race car and therefore the most awesome thing EVER).

It's black. It looks a lot like this:

Except it's all rusty and dirty and old.

And with the engine less IN the car and more NEXT TO it.

Also, they have a go-kart. Which doesn't actually go.

So I was super-psyched this summer when The Buckets added a new mode of transportation to their collection of Shit That Is Supposed to Go But Doesn't. The eldest Bucket Boy (a.k.a Carrot, so named by my oldest son who was unable to properly pronounce his actual name, Derek) bought himself a boat.

Guess where it is?

You got it.

Because, really, why put a boat in the water when you have perfectly good yard space available?

Everybody wants to be closer to free.

2010-09-23T11:38:00.000-04:00

He had decided I looked like Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Which I sort of do, in that she has two arms and brown hair and I also have two arms and brown hair.

But really, the resemblance ends there.

I think his name was Mike. Or Ed. He asked for my number and I gave it to him, thinking that I needed to be open to meeting All Kinds Of People. I figured I had nothing to lose. He was nice, he liked to read, and he had a job. Why not?

"Jennifer Laaaaaane. Jennifer Laaaaaaane HEW-IT" was how he greeted me when I met up with him at the bar. Think Rob Schneider on SNL "makin' copies."

And THAT would be why not.

It wasn't that I had anything against Jennifer Love Hewitt. It was her Party of Five character, Sarah, that I couldn't stand.

Because she was TOTALLY unworthy of Bailey Salinger's love.

I, on the other hand, was really very worthy.

Oh, Bailey. Poor, orphaned Bailey. I would have listened to ALL of your whining about your incredibly annoying sisters and hot brother. And that other baby/kid, too. I would have stayed by your side when you battled your alcoholism. I would have Been There For You when Charlie had cancer. I would have ALWAYS had faith in you, Bailey.  *cue a slow jam by The Cranberries*

I would have made you a seriously awesome mix tape, complete with my own (really bad) artwork.  I didn't hand out mix-tapes to any old boy, you know. Not everyone was deemed worthy. I put serious time and effort into the making of a mix tape, each song carefully selected for it's message, the balance of each side weighed out to give it just the right sound and feel. The making of a good mix tape took hours to compile. It would have been my very SOUL in music form, Bailey.

I would have even written you a poem. I was really good at writing really bad poetry.  Once I even wrote my boyfriend a sonnet.

Like with iambic pentameter.

And a RHYMING mothereffing COUPLET, yo.

It was horrible. And, in retrospect, hilarious. And it could have been yours, if it wasn't for the Sarah-loving.

Also, the being pretend thing. But THAT IS SO NOT THE POINT.

I get that Sarah was cute and all that. But honestly, didn't that doe-eyed, wholesome thing get annoying after a while? And what the hell was wrong with the girls in your life, Bailey, that none of them could speak? They would sputter and stammer, but between Julia, Claudia, and Sarah, I don't think you could have made a full sentence between them. I, however, can speak in sentences that include a subject AND a predicate.

I would have been way more fun, Bay. I would have told you dirty jokes and had Star Wars marathons with you.

Star Wars, dude.   WITH TOP GUN FOR DESSERT.

Whatever, Bailey. You missed out. Instead I was left to sit at a bar next to Ed. Or Mike.

Jennifer Laaaaane. Jennifer Laaaane HEW-IT. Drinkin' the beers. And losing Ed's number.

"All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise."

2010-09-21T13:53:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time, a boy was growing inside of me.

This boy did not come to be easily. There were tears, there were questions, there were doubts. There were pills and classes and needles and nurses who held my hand while I shut my eyes tight against the glaring light of a cold, unfeeling room. Life was marked in days: day 3 bloods, day 7 bloods, day 10 bloods and ultrasound, day 12 ultrasound, day 14 bloods and ultrasound, lather, rinse, repeat. There were little pieces of plastic glaring their white blank stares back at me, thrown against the wall and then later dug out of the trash, pulled apart, and held up to the light of the window in a desperate search for some kind of sign.

Please, I offered up from my knees on the bathroom floor.

Please, I whispered while laying on the crinkly white paper of my doctor’s exam table.

Please, I begged silently while planting a soft kiss on the fuzzy head of my friend’s newborn.

Soon I stopped asking for a baby. I started asking, instead, for patience. For grace and acceptance. For forgiveness for whatever sin it was I had committed so heinous as to deny me the one thing I wanted more than anything. I looked to logic and science because emotion and soul were failing me.

And then he was there.

He was a small white flicker of a heartbeat on a grainy screen.

As he grew, I waited for the relief to sweep over me. But it didn’t come. I worried about all that I couldn’t see. Each time I visited the doctor I held my breath anxiously until I heard the reassuring heavy gallop of his heartbeat. I counted kicks. I thought about the umbilical cord and pushed words like knot out of my mind.

Please, I offered up in the middle of the night, rubbing my round belly.

Please, I whispered while standing in his empty, waiting nursery.

Please, I begged silently through three hours of pushing, please, little one. Please.

And then he was there.

As I rest his soft downy cheek against my own tear stained one, I closed my eyes, breathed him in, and offered up the only words I had left.

Thank you.

The Monkey on My Back (Make Mine a 3-pack)

2010-09-08T16:56:00.000-04:00

I can feel the woman in the line next to me staring.

Shut up, lady, I tell her via telepathy. Apparently my telepathy doesn't work in CVS though, because she continues scoping out the contents of my basket.

To show that I know she's looking at me AND MY STUFF, I stare not at her, but at HER stuff.

Batteries, light bulbs, box of hair dye.

Astroglide.

And we have a winner.

She hugs her stuff to her chest and looks away, which begs the question, why, Lube Lady, are you judging me and my items when you've got a big ole tube of Astroglide in your hand? Not that there's anything wrong with that, you know, rock out with your...self...out. But really. I take my things out of the basket and put them on the counter.

Box of 3 pregnancy tests.

Box of tampons.

(This is called hedging your bets, people.)

And finally, a 1-lb bag of M&Ms.

Because either way, I'm going to need some chocolate in order to deal.

"Um, can you not put that in the bag?" I ask the cashier after he scans the pregnancy tests.

He slides them across to me. I slip them into my purse and feel Lube Lady's eyes on me again as I resist the urge to explain to her and the cashier dude and the rest of the people in line at CVS that my husband thinks it's absurd to buy pregnancy tests unless you're, like, really REALLY not sure and not just a little unsure. He's more of the 'If a baby arrives 9 months later, then you're pregnant; otherwise, it's too soon to tell' school of thought.

And any woman who has ever ovulated EVER can tell you that THAT is just ridiculous.

Because, and I know I'm not alone in this, there is something slightly addictive involved in taking a home pregnancy test. Now somewhere in the world I'm sure there are women who give themselves a nice two-week window of lateness before saying, "Gee, hmmmmmm. That's weird. Maybe I'll go and buy ONE pregnancy test, use it, read the results within the clearly defined time limits, and then, when there is not an obvious second line, discard the test, satisfied in my knowledge that I am not, in fact, pregnant."

I'm not one of those women.

Nope, I'm the one who, at a minute and half past the expected time, is standing in line at CVS stuffing a 3-pack of First Response Early Detection into my purse under the watchful eye of Lube Lady, while trying to mentally calculate the possible damage my hypothetical third child may have incurred over the past 14 days: beer, wine, coffee, Advil, tuna, x-rays. Poor kid.

The crazy train, however, doesn't TRULY pull into the station until I get home, at which point I immediately lock myself in the bathroom, rip open the package, take the test, and then shove it under the sink so as to not be tempted to look at it before the three minute mark.

This is really super helpful.

For about 30 seconds.

So I pull the test out to make sure it's working. And then...well...guess what?

I think I see something.

Now this is probably when a normal person might put the test down and WAIT FOR THE REMAINING TWO AND A HALF MINUTES.

But I like to take this opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with my test. I take it to the window to look at it in natural light. I tip it forward. I tip it back towards me. I find a south-facing window for the very best, most accurate light. I squint and peer and make my eyes all fuzzy and then re-focused.

Ohmygod I really think that maybe I might see a very light hint of something.

Around this time my head starts to hurt from all of this squinting and natural light, so I will decide that it's probably nothing and throw it in the trash.

Where I will leave it.

For approximately five minutes.

And then I will not only dig that puppy out, but I will actually TAKE IT APART.

That right there is probably the step that separates me from the casual home-pregnancy-test-taker and puts me in with the SERIOUSLY HARDCORE TESTERS.

In my defense, if it IS a really, really, really super faint, brand-new, only-a-nanosecond-pregnant shadow of pink tinge, then sometimes you have to strip away all that extra plastic and REALLY GET A GOOD LOOK. And this is the hook, the addictive aspect; the maybe, the I-just-don't-know, the I think I see something. I just need to look better, harder, closer...

...at what, after a good 6-12 hours of checking and rechecking, I finally admit is simply a plain white strip with a single pink line.

Which is good.

I guess.

See, I KNEW I'd need those damn M&Ms.

The Absolutely, Completely True Story of A Boy Named Ben Woodcock

2010-08-19T15:00:00.000-04:00

I remember exactly two things about my First Communion.

The first is that the minute I walked into the church with the rest of the second graders, I started giggling and grinning like a fool. I was fairly certain that grinning and giggling weren't appropriate for church, so I tried to hide behind the little cardboard chalice I was carrying, but it did no good. I'm only lucky that I didn't snort.

The second is that I was terrified that Ben Woodcock was going to show up at my house that afternoon.

On his horse.

I was too young then to appreciate Ben Woodcock for his name alone, or to understand that the likelihood of an eight year old riding his horse a mile and a half across a highway overpass and down a busy road to my house was slim to none. All I knew was that I had invited Ben Woodcock to my house, panicked, and then purposely lied about where I lived.

Ben Woodcock had dark hair and dark eyes. Even then, with the exception of preferring Jon to Ponch, I liked boys with dark hair (you can have Bo Duke, I'll take Luke any day). So there was probably a high likelihood that I had a little crush on Ben Woodcock, with his brown corduroys and his long-sleeve orange velour shirt. In the second grade this basically translated into him being the boy I most wanted running after me when we played Boys Chase the Girls.

(The only thing more fun than playing Boys Chase the Girls at recess? Playing Little House on the Prairie, because I always got to be Mary: The Blind Years, and would stay in character after the bell rang, until I stumbled into the classroom and my teacher would say, "Jennifer, your eyes work, please open them." Words of wisdom from Ms. Feeney.)

Apparently Ben Woodcock liked me too, because one day at recess he offered to come to my house (Ben Woodcock was clearly a take-charge kind of guy). Thinking this was never actually going to happen, I said sure. When he told me he would be there at 2, I began to panic. I wasn't ready for this level of intimacy with Ben Woodcock. It was too much too soon. I hadn't even shared my fruit roll-up with him at snack time yet, despite his asking daily for it, and now he wanted to come to my house?

My mother didn't even let me chew gum, so I was fairly certain she wasn't going to be down with Ben Woodcock hanging at our house on a Sunday afternoon.

Then, he spoke the four words that stopped me cold.

"I'll bring my horse."

Shit.

I immediately envisioned Ben Woodcock (brown-corduroyed, orange-velour-shirt-clad Ben Woodcock) high upon a Black Beauty-ish horse, riding regally up my long driveway, and realized with horror that I was in over my head and that my relationship with Ben Woodcock had taken a very serious turn.

So when Ben Woodcock asked me exactly where I lived, I stammered. I had suddenly remembered that my First Communion was also that weekend and that we were having all of our family and friends back to our house after for a party.

How the hell was I going to explain Ben Woodcock And His Horse to all of them?

I began giving Ben Woodcock directions, which, considering the fact that I was eight, probably went something like: 'Turn at the street with the red house, you know that street? The one with the red house? Yeah, that's my street.' He was nodding along as if I was making perfect, complete sense and he knew exactly which street I was talking about.

I had to throw him a curve ball. Even though the thought of Ben Woodcock And His Horse wandering up and down my little 12-house cul-de-sac, his dark eyes searching and wondering, where is she? made me feel terrible, it was not so terrible as the thought of Ben Woodcock And His Horse marching confidently up my driveway, ready to fight for a piece of First Communion cake with a big, fat frosting rose on it.

So I came up with an awesome, clever, fool-proof plan to mislead Ben Woodcock.

My house was number 6.

I told him it was number 4.

Brilliant!

Ben Woodcock And His Horse did not show up at my First Communion party.

That Monday at school he told me that he had come to my house.

"On your horse?" I asked.

"Yes. But you weren't home."

Liar, I thought. I had spent most of my party staring, panic-stricken, up the street to make sure his horse never rounded that corner. That, along with cards full of savings bonds and checks, made it the worst party ever.

"I had to go somewhere with my mom," I lied back.

He nodded. There was an uncomfortable silence.

And so ended my relationship with Ben Woodcock.

Dear God, sorry for giggling, please don't let Ben Woodcock come to my house on a horse today, amen.

The Good Book (of Faces)

2010-08-14T12:56:00.001-04:00

Apparently Jesus has joined Facebook.

This morning as I logged-in to the site for my daily dose of light stalking, I saw "Jesus Christ" come up on my list of Recommended Pages.

This is that section to the right of your newsfeed where Facebook posts super-helpful things like, "People who like Music also like Species" with a picture of a little bird (which, by the way, is a totally legit suggestion that I've received on my page numerous times, leaving me inclined to think that *sigh* my Facebook page really doesn't know me at all) or "7 of your friends like: CSI" (information that I already know because I take my Facebooking pretty seriously).

So there it was, the suggestion that I 'like' Jesus Christ.

Talk about a high pressure situation.

What if I 'like' Jesus and then he spams my newsfeed with posts like, "I can't believe this amazing new diet supplement, I lost 12 lbs in 3 days, hurry and click HERE to get your free sample!!!!!!!!!!!!"?

I don't really want to find myself in a position of needing to unlike Jesus.

And hiding him isn't really an option because, well, he's freakin' JESUS so he'd KNOW.

(Dear Jesus, if you're reading this, sorry about the 'freakin' Jesus' thing. I'm working on the cursing.)

(Also, sorry that I just lied right there. I really enjoy cursing, so I guess I'm a lost cause in that department, but I pinky-swear that I will teach my kids not to...I don't even let them say 'stupid' or 'what the heck'. That's as good as I'm probably going to get in that department).

Even worse than the idea of being spammed by Jesus is the idea that he might write on my wall.

Because Jesus has some dirt on me. And if I piss him off by unliking him or hiding him, who's going to stop him from posting all of my secret stuff?

Jesus Christ Remember the time you lied to your mother about visiting Julie at Stonehill for the weekend? I do...

Being harassed by the SON OF GOD isn't really something I need in my life right now. What would I do then, report him? To whom?

"Dear Facebook Customer Service: Jesus is really being a dick and is trying to SMITE me on my wall. Can you please disable his account?"

Holy potential incurring of wrath, Batman.

Coincidentally, "Wrath of God" is also something I do not need in my life right now.

I'm thinking my best course of action may be to just quietly click the little X in the corner of the page suggestion so that Jesus and his Facebook-page-of-guilt-and-spam will disappear.

Or maybe I'll just send him a message through Facebook's e-mail:

Dear Jesus,

Welcome to Facebook! Be careful, it's addicting. Checked out your page, love your profile pic. You look great! I saw you that already have 730,845 fans. Just so you have a handle on your competition, here's how you stack up against some other pages on the site:

watching TV: 1 million +
Twilight: 11 million +
Lady Gaga: 15 million +
The Hangover: 7 million +
drinking: 956,000 +
Starbucks frappucinno: 1 million +

You've definitely got your work cut out for you, but I suppose that's an occupational hazard when you're a deity. If it makes you feel better, Justin Beiber only has 97,000 people liking him. Always look on the bright side of life, right? (Monty Python's Life of Brian: 99,928 fans.)

Good luck with your page, Jesus.

And stay away from Farmville.

The Boob Fairy giveth, and the Boob Fairy taketh away.

2010-06-27T16:08:00.001-04:00

Pregnant women love getting advice from other mothers.

So I'm fairly certain that my cousin's wife, who is expecting her first child, is going to be super-psyched to read this post.   Because I have managed to keep two small humans alive for the past six years, and because being helpful is my third-favorite hobby (after scrapbooking and drinking), I thought I'd dedicate a post to Jacquie, in which I share some of the really important things about pregnancy and babies that I've picked up along the way.

1. Pregnancy boobs are not yours to keep. This is really depressing, because it's the only good thing about pregnancy (well, besides all the eating and the actual baby). When you're not busy throwing up and napping during the first trimester, it's great to look in the mirror and see that, finally, the Boob Fairy has granted you the boobs you've been praying for since you were 15. Later, as your stomach swells, they provide a nice balance to your figure. Bigger boobs, bigger belly, bigger butt. But then the baby is born (I hope I didn't give anything away there) and your milk comes in. That's when they get really, scarily big and you will cry because now you're going to have to order those ugly, ultra-supportive bras that have 6 clasps in the back, straps an inch wide, and coverage that goes from just under your collar bone down to your belly button. However, before you vow to boycott Victoria's Secret and their refusal to create a line of 44GGs, just wait a few months. They'll get smaller. And then they'll get smaller and smaller. I know many women who were a C-cup before pregnancy who are now the proud owners of 36As. Yay, Mother Nature! Aren't we supposed to be promoting the evolution of the species? Way to help our cause.

2. Competitive farting is totally acceptable when you're pregnant. It might be the only time that you can actually beat your husband at this game. But once that baby is born, it goes back to being gross. Plus, you're a mother now, so you have to set a good example.

3. Not that I ever farted. Ever. But I've heard sometimes that happens. To some people who are not me.

4. Congratulations, it's a boy!  You may have noticed that your newborn son is...how can I put this delicately...disproportionately large in a particular area? Now, before Daddy goes around proudly pointing at his son and declaring to everyone in the delivery room, "That's MY boy!", you should know that there's a swelling factor at play here. In fact, the swelling is from YOUR hormones, which are still coursing through your newborn's body. The lesson? Estrogen gives you big balls. As if we didn't already know that.

5. Here's a math problem for you: if you feed your infant approximately 4 oz. of liquid and he still has 1 oz. of liquid in his stomach from the last feeding, how many ounces will come back up when you go to burp him? (Hint: you need to use the following equation, in which x represents the number of ounces ingested and y represents the contents of the baby's belly: (x+y)3 ). Therefore, the correct answer is 125 oz. Never underestimate how much a baby can spit up. Or just how far spit-up can travel. Your baby might be small, but he can get some serious trajectory.

6. Six weeks after your baby arrives, you will have to visit the OBGYN for your post-partum check up. At this appointment, your formerly wonderful doctor who you just love, the very same one who placed your beautiful newborn in your arms, will reveal him or herself to be a sadist by declaring you fit to resume sexual activity. I don't know who the hell decided that six weeks was green-light time, but I'm thinking whoever it was probably hung out with the guy who came up with the word cunnilingus. Your six week check-up is scary enough as it is (unless you've had a c-section) without your doctor reminding you that, despite not sleeping for more than 3 hours at a time and this appointment being the first time you've shaved your legs in six weeks, it's generally expected that at some point you will have sex again (no, really; just ask your husband).  A little tip for that first post-baby encounter: have a ~~bottle~~ glass of wine beforehand. Remember how half a Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler stolen from your boyfriend's mother's fridge helped take the edge off before the REAL 'first time' way back when? Well, some things never change. And after nine months without a drink, half a wine cooler might be all it takes.

7. You know all of those things you swore you'd never do? Like lift your baby up and smell his bottom to see if he needs a new diaper?  You're going to do most of them.

8. At least once in your baby's first year, you will find yourself standing in line at CVS behind an old woman who is writing a check for cat food and 37 rolls of paper towels. It will probably be the end of the day, because rather than ask your husband to pick up the Infant Tylenol on his way home from work, you will have spotted an excellent opportunity to leave the house ALONE. You'll be so excited to be able to get out of the car without lugging that heavy baby-bucket-infant-carrier-car seat thingy that you won't even care that they haven't put out the newest issue of People magazine yet, because reading about John Travolta's new puppy will not only be fascinating, but will be the closest thing to literature you have encountered over the last few months. As you are standing in line you'll catch sight of your shoulder and realize that, at some point during the day, your baby spit up on your shoulder without your knowing it. (It's a good thing you can't see behind you, because there's a trail of it down your back). Oh, did I mention that you're still wearing maternity clothes? You're definitely not wearing make-up but you're positive that you may have brushed your teeth today. Yesterday, for sure. This is when someone you know will walk into the store. This person will be one of the following: a)the guy from high school who you had a crush on but never actually spoke to because he was way too popular, b)your ex-boyfriend's mother, or c)the woman from your prenatal yoga class who was due six weeks after you and is not only showered, blown-out and made-up, but she is back into her old jeans after only a month! And her baby is sleeping through the night! And she's starting a playgroup! If you want to join! So the babies can socialize! And the mommies can share how special it is to be a mommy!

The moral of the story is this: let your husband pick up the Tylenol on the way home. Then hand him the baby, take one of those really long showers where you use up all of the hot water, shave your legs, and grab a glass of wine.

And remember the MOST IMPORTANT lesson for any new mother:

You totally CAN get pregnant while nursing.

On Cancer

2010-06-10T23:35:00.001-04:00

I see clearly now that I am still a child.

I wear the costume of a grown woman; the clothes, the hair, the make up. I do things like make appointments with the pediatrician and prepare vegetables and write notes excusing my son's absence from school. My mouth discusses things like mortgages and car seat safety and unemployment rates. I process the words of people I love, such as "I have to work late" and "I'm afraid I'll never be pregnant again" and then, heartbreakingly, "I have cancer."

And then I see.

I am going through the motions of an adult, but really there is a little girl lying just underneath the surface. She is five and has uneven bangs and bruises on her legs and she stomps her patten-leather shoe on the ground, balls her fists, screws up her face and yells, "WHAT! THE! FUCK!"

And then, just as quickly as she is five, she is ten. There are new babies in Seattle, such sweet little twin babies, and my dad has nicknames for all of us. I am visiting from Boston. I watch my sister with her blond hair and wonder how it is to live still with your mother and father and these babies all in the same house. I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder what it would be like to live here. And then my eyes burn with quick, hot, shameful tears because I miss my mother and my room and my things. When it is time to leave for the airport my stomach twists like a nervous woman wringing her hands. My dad sits on the couch; I climb on his lap and bury my head into his neck to cry. I breath him in; I take home his sweater. My thirty-five year old self wants to be back there again; I want to climb through the phone wires and be on my dad's lap and bury my face into his neck to cry.

I vacillate from one extreme to the other; I want to be the child, maybe if I climb into bed and close my eyes tight I will wake up and everything will be okay again. I want to be the grown up; I want to hop a plane and sit at a bedside and nod at doctors and get the coffee.

There was a moment, once, when I actually was a grown up. My father gave a very moving eulogy at my grandfather's funeral. He was 3,000 miles from home, burying his father without the comfort of his wife beside him. After his speech, he came back to the pew and sat next to me. I reached over and took his hand in mine. I squeezed.

I am here, with you.

He squeezed it back.

Tonight I am 3,000 miles away and my dad is sick. He's temporarily sick, but sick nonetheless. I feel far. And helpless. I am five and yelling, I am ten and crying, I am grown and squeezing his hand.

I am squeezing his hand.

I am here, with you.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for fellatio.

2010-06-09T12:25:00.000-04:00

Let's talk cunnilingus.

Not, like, actual cunnilingus.

I'm talking about the word.

Cunnilingus is just an ugly word. It sounds like something you'd catch from not wearing flip-flops in the shower at the gym.

Example: "I finally went to the doctor because my feet were SO itchy and red. Turns out I have effing cunnilingus and I have to use this nasty-smelling antifungal cream for like a week."

See? Ewwww.

Or it could be something you cough up when you have a really disgusting chest cold.

Example: "No, I really shouldn't come to work today, I think I have a fever and I keep coughing up all this green cunnilingusy stuff. I'm pretty sick."

It could even pass for one of those really stinky cheeses that no one ever wants to touch or smell but that you're pretty sure the Barefoot Contessa could turn into something totally, amazingly delicious.

Example: "Omg, Barefoot Contessa just made this totally, amazingly delicious looking pastry thing that I'm dying to make, but she used cunnilingus and I don't think they sell that at Stop and Shop."

I think I've made my point.

Nice concept, horrible name.

~~single~~ Guys, on the other hand, get fellatio.

Fellatio sounds like a delicious Italian treat. It sounds like some sort of really expensive, exquisite frozen desert that I want to eat with a teeny-tiny spoon in a small outdoor cafe in Milan.

Example: "You REALLY need to try the chocolate fellatio. It's worth the calories, trust me."

Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

So I'd like to suggest that we do away with the term cunnilingus (ewww) and replace it with a word that will evoke a more positive image. Something more feminine. Maybe even pretty.

I mean, most people I know are fans of it.

So how about we call it...

Ready?

Petalatia.

Seriously, doesn't that sound SO much nicer? Doesn't that make you feel all pretty and breezy and flowery and stuff? It's way sexier than the grungy cunnilingus (obviously a word invented by some dude who hated women). It's a word equal in imagery to fellatio.

Plus, it's a lot easier to spell.

Oh, and Dad, if you're reading this...I have no idea what any of this actually means.

Protons, electrons, and neutrons, oh my!

2010-06-07T11:35:00.001-04:00

Dear Self at 16:

Some day you're going to have sons. They're going to ask you a million questions, 83% of which are science questions, and you are going to wish you had learned a bit more.  It's in your best interest to put down Seventeen magazine, stop doing your math homework in chemistry class, and pay attention.

At least a little.

Oh, and the next time you sit down to write a short story, see what you can do with a sparkly vampire boy and werewolves.

Trust me on this one.

Love,
Your Grown Up Self.

It's not like I don't know anything about science.

I can handle astronomy and meteorology questions; I love that stuff. I am a wealth of useless knowledge about supernovas (lots of imploding and exploding) and tornadoes and occluded weather fronts.

I got A's in biology in both high school and college (plus, I've taken First Aid and have seen every episode of E.R., Grey's Anatomy, and Scrubs, so I'm pretty sure I'm almost a medical professional).

I not only remember some physics, but can identify examples in my everyday life. For instance, if you hold a baby up over your head and he spits up, you're going to need to buy a new shirt. Because of gravity. That's physics right there.

But really, I should never have passed chemistry.

In fact, let me tell you what I remember about chemistry from high school:

1. I sat next to a kid who chewed tobacco and spit into an empty water bottle through out the class. I spent the entire class trying not to throw up.

2. This same kid was also the class clown. He was undeniably hilarious, usually at the expense of someone else. Everyday I prayed he wouldn't notice me. This worked until one day when I wore a seriously awesome outfit, brand new from The Weathervane. It was a red and black plaid skirt with a matching jacket. I had my black tank top and black leggings (the ones with lace at the bottom; because nothing suggests sex appeal like a lace-bottomed-legging).  I also had a matching scrunchy and matching earrings.

Seriously, WHAT is cooler than matching your skirt, jacket, scrunchy, and earrings?

Um, NOTHING. That's what.

(shut up, it was 1992)

I walked in wearing my super-stylish outfit, sat down, and immediately felt him looking at me.

Shit.

I avoided eye contact. I took out my notebook, crossed and uncrossed my legs, chewed my pen, and then tried to look very busy doodling on the desk.

"Hey," he said. "HEY," he said again when I ignored him the first time.

He looked at me with a straight face and asked, "What, no bagpipes?"

I never wore my awesome plaid ensemble again.

3. One day a girl in the class, Gina, laughed so hard she farted. I went to school with this girl for 7 years and I remember nothing about her other than her last name and that she farted at some point during the 1991-1992 school year.

4.   Our teacher was an older guy. He wasn't a mean older guy, he was sweet like a Grandpa. One day he stood up with a piece of paper in each hand and held his arms out to his side. He started scooting across the floor, raising one arm up while lowering the other, again and again.

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

But he sure looked cute doing his little dance.

5. I got an A on the midterm.

6. I sort of cheated on the midterm. I didn't even take the test; a boy who sat diagonal to me took the test, wrote his answers down on a small piece of paper, tucked it into his calculator, and passed the calculator on to me (we were allowed to share calculators; see, I told you our teacher was ~~clueless~~ sweet). When I brought home my report card, my mother looked at my grades, confused.

"I don't understand how you could get C's first and second term and then get an A on the midterm?"

"I know, I studied really hard."

I don't even know how I managed C's the first two terms. Apparently, turning my Scantron sheet on it's side and coloring in dots that formed the letters of the first name of the boy I liked at the time was C-level work. Sweet.

7. Our textbook was red. I think I once saw the term 'covalescent bond' in it.

(I totally just googled 'covalescent bond' to make sure that was even a real thing.)

(It is.)

You'd best study up, Self at 16.

And enough with the AquaNet already.

So You Think You Can Dance? Bitch, please.

2010-05-28T11:11:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty sure that I'm an awesome dancer.

And I'm pretty sure that I've always been an awesome dancer.

When I took dancing back in elementary school, I knew I was the best one in my class. Miss Marilyn knew it too; I could tell by the way she would say, "Great job" when I would step ball-change across the floor. My ball-changes were steppier than anyone else's, my jazz hands jazzier, my chaine turns spinier (that's right, spinier; I can spot like nobody's business). Even though I never moved past the easiest level of classes, I knew it wasn't because I didn't have the raw inner talent. After all, I choreographed and executed some REALLY incredible routines in my room.

And in the shallow end of my pool.

Oh yeah, because I'm also really good at synchronized swimming.

My skills had to be moved to the back-burner however as I moved through middle and high school. No one goes to school dances to dance, unless you count slow dancing with a boy, which is not really dancing, it's more like a rhythmic shifting of weight from your left foot to your right. That's shuffling.

And then I got older and discovered clubs. And cheesy bars with teeny-tiny dance floors (teeny-tiny dance floors are a nightmare for us true dancers).

And alcohol.

As phenomenal a dancer as I am without alcohol, I am even better with a few drinks in me.

So when a friend suggested that we try a zumba class a few months ago, I was in. I knew I'd be awesome at it. Coming from a dance background, I knew I could pick up the steps quickly and would own the class.

Oh. WAIT. I should tell you something before I get to this next part.

I'm white.

And of Irish ancestry.

Do you see where this going?

Also, I may have attended this zumba class wearing an oversized t-shirt and shorts that I bought back in college with my ex-boyfriend's Friends and Family discount when he worked at Reebok back in 1997.

There may have been an obnoxiously high pony tail involved as well.

Turns out, I suck at zumba.

I got the moves down alright, but when the woman I had been hiding behind left to get a drink and I caught a view of myself in the mirror, trying to do that booty-shaking thing that Beyonce is so fond of, a wave of horror washed over me.

Oh. My. God.

That's what I look like?

It wasn't pretty. It wasn't cute. It wasn't even 'has a good personality'.

I have yet to return to zumba.

Thank God I still have synchronized swimming.

Munchkins FTW

2010-05-26T11:27:00.000-04:00

I screw up.

A lot.

And I have no problem with airing my failings because there's nothing I detest more than those women who act like they burp rainbows and poop hearts.

You know the ones I'm talking about.

And you know that you want to punch them in the face every now and then, usually when you haven't had your coffee yet and your 4-year old was up every three hours because he's convinced there are bugs in his room, so convinced in fact that you spend 10 minutes watching for bugs at 2:30 in the morning until he tells you that they only come out when grown ups aren't watching.

Right.

So on those mornings, you just want to punch these women in the face.

The rest of the time, you just sort of look at them and scratch your head. Clearly they got some sort of Mommy handbook at the hospital that you didn't.

Or they have access to some really awesome happy pills.

Either way, that's not me. I try hard, really hard. But I have, on occasion, let my sons watch marathons of Phineas and Ferb so I can play a little game I like to call Bash the Exes with my BFF (much more fun than Chutes and Ladders, btw). I have used M&Ms to bribe my child to use the toilet (which we all know is exactly why M&Ms were invented), used ice-cream to bribe them to be good in the store, and Munchkins to bribe them to do almost anything else (everyone wins where Munchkins are involved; the kids do what I ask, they get their donuts, and I have an excuse to get a coffee).

I may, on occassion, even raise my voice. And yell.

Oops.

Lucky for me, my sons didn't receive a handout at the hospital either (no "What to Expect From Your Parents"). So I still get wet, slobbery kisses at night. When they are afraid or unsure, it's still me that they run to. When they are sick, it's my lap they want to snuggle on.

And when there is a bug in their room in middle of the night, it is me they call to squish it.