Last seen wearing these shoes....

Hi, Mean Mommy is really, really busy right now so we, the totally inappropriate and impractical, yet totally fabulous, shoes H gave her for Christmas, are stepping in. No pun intended. And yes, those are four inch heels and, no, she can't walk very far wearing us at all, but did manage to hobble around the house in us all night Christmas Eve, and fully intends to do so again on New Year's Eve, as events with no commute whatsoever are really what we're designed for.

In between bouts of being dressed up, MM is spending her days rocking the yoga pants and a mild hangover, since, once you begin the downhill sleigh ride known as the holiday season, which begins with prepping the house and managing the stress involved with your husband cooking seven different types of fish for twenty people on Christmas Eve, followed by the orgy of consumerism that is Christmas Day, complete with associated panic attacks related to where all of these new pieces of plastic crap are going to go since you don't actually enjoy your home looking like a toy store, is there really any reason not to have at least two glasses of wine each and every night?

Sure, most people get a break, and can let their livers and bodies recover, and spend a few days not drinking prosecco, (which conveniently does not keep very well, requiring the entire bottle be consumed) or constantly stuffing sweets into their mouths, but MM's birthday comes hard on the heels of Christmas, requiring more drinking and eating of cake, which she had the foresight to send H out to get before the huge snowstorm hit, ensuring consistent levels of fat, sugar and alcohol in her bloodstream.* So with just three days left until New Year's Eve, there really is no reason, other than feeling exhausted from not having fallen asleep somewhat buzzed for a single night in the last five, only to awake at three in the morning, thirsty and unable to go back to sleep, and feeling constantly revved-up or sluggish from sugar highs and lows, to even bother eating or drinking moderately.

The kids are also home from school, and while distracted by the new toys, so much togetherness without any field trips, ala this summer, results in more than a few skirmishes, no matter how cool the new Zhu Zhu Pet habitrail is. So playdates have been scheduled, as well as trips to see Yogi Bear (what happened to you, Tom Cavanagh?) and to Bounce U that, yes, sounds like something out of a Judd Apatow comedy, in which MM would drag her childless friend to witness the horror that is suburban children set free to wild in an inflatable maze and boxing ring, complete with over-sized gloves, and H winds up getting punched in the nuts.

So forgive her, dear readers, for her long absence. New Year's Day is upon the horizon, as is the return of school, structure, routine, and healthy eating and drinking habits. We are sure one of her resolutions is to write more this year (80 posts in 2010, really?), but then again, did we mention she has to pack the whole family to leave for Disney on January 12th, with H being gone on an business trip the three days prior? Maybe she should just keep drinking.

Happy New Year!

*Oh, and thank you, Snow, for trapping MM in the house with the kids during the day on her birthday, which is usually spent being massaged amid paramedics, or exercising with queens. Instead, the day was spent hauling wet snow clothes in and out of the dryer, trying to shout above the din of LM's new Stinky the Talking Dump Truck.

I've Loved These Days

Shopping, wrapping, blah, blah, blah - we're all busy, I'm sure you don't want to hear my bitching about everything we all do to preparing for Christmas. I too, have spent too much time this week taking care of last minute Oh Shit! gifts, racing between the Hallmark store for money holders and Dunkin Donuts to buy gift cards, for people like the landscaper and others who aren't at the top of your gift-giving list, but whom if you forget, will not continue to collect the Matchbox cars Little Man has left strewn across the lawn, even though you knew Cesar comes every Tuesday, and begin blowing them into the hedges as would be his right.

What is making the holiday Cannonball Run a little easier this year is the fact that Little Man is no longer napping. So instead of sitting in my house, cursing the hours wasted that I could have used to buy a case of prosecco for the ladies at the hair salon*, or picking up cookies for the school secretary, I can now pick LM up from school, and immediately hit the road to buy a Borders gift card for the school crossing guard who so kindly points out that #2 is wandering out of the crosswalk into traffic as she stares at her feet contemplating who invented Velcro. In fact, it's been a few months since LM took his last nap, and while I still insist, during the non-holiday season, that he go in for some "quiet" time (in quotes, since it basically sounds like he is dismantling his bed, piece by piece, the entire time), the days of a consistent three hour nap are officially over. And I am sad.

I didn't really write much about LM's move to a big boy bed, or the fact that he is pretty much potty trained. Although, I don't know how trained you can call him if forgetting to remind him to pee results in his saying he has to pee with a baseball sized wet spot in his pants. Those milestones did not affect me as much. Yes, I was a little teary, putting the crib, that has been in constant use for eight years, into the garage to go to my brother and sister in-law's new baby, but this milestone is dramatically affecting the order and structure of our family.

I can't really remember a time in the last eight years that we have not needed to come home in the middle of the day for one of the kids to take a nap. The girls napped reliably until they were four, and after that, were happy to have quiet time that was, indeed, quiet. While it did require some D-Day quality planning, to get five people up and out of the house in order to do anything before returning to HQ to put one of them in the crib, it gave our days a nice rhythm. After a morning spent on a the playground, or at pre-school, a few hours of stillness was just what the doctor ordered. I knew I had a few hours each day to get dinner started, or fold some laundry, and it gave the kids got an opportunity to recharge their batteries before the afternoon. On our beach vacations, we were out of the hottest of the sun's rays, and happy to be so. Winter weekends at home, H and I could do some home improvement, sticking the other two happily watched a DVD, without the searching hands of LM in the tool box or the paint can - and it was nice to know we could also use that time as an additional window for sex.

Now, there is no excuse to come home in the middle of the day. We can go, go, go right through until dinner time if we want to - and this summer we did. The girls had gotten old enough to be annoyed when we had to leave the pool last summer, for their brother to nap, and we very happy we didn't have to so often this year. But, it's not so much the break I miss these days, but it's the feeling of nap time that I mourn. Getting your little one in comfy clothes, pulling the shades as you kiss a tiny brow, little eyes already droopy, a sense of peace descends upon the house. Everyone quiets down. Crayons and other quiet activities come out, or you lay on your bed to read with the other two. The world continues to go on at its break-neck pace, but your family is in suspended time, a bubble of quiet. Then, with muffled sounds, your little one wakes, greeting the wakeful world rosy-cheeked from slumber, smelling of sleep, with snuggles and sighs. Your other children climb onto the bed to listen to you read Guess How Much I Love You, and you all gather your energy to face the afternoon fueled by cups of milk and bowls of Goldfish.

So I will enjoy this new-found freedom, but at the same time, recognize that this spells the end of a certain era in our family's history. We move, almost completely out of our baby days, and into the non-stop world of having three children, not two children and a baby. And while it's nice to have everyone on the same page, I will always look back fondly on that quiet, warm chapter of our lives. As a farewell, I have included a video of one of my fondest wake-ups in my mothering history.**

*"A case????" asks H. Yes, a case. Every person in the place has either worked on my head, or the kids, or gotten me coffee or water. Keep the hair people happy, keep my hair looking good.
**Sorry LM, just as with the photos, the video history of your life is pretty meager.

Turn left in 500 feet...

Aaaah, I'm sitting on the train, blessedly alone, drinking a Starbucks skim, no whip, extra hot, one pump mocha, two pumps mint, peppermint mocha (if I'm paying four bucks for it I will not be shamedv by my ridiculous requests, but sometimes I think it might just be easier if they'd let behind the counter to make it myself) on my way into the city to meet H for our Date-a-versary (19 years - woot!). Well, that's a lie. I'm actually sitting at the family room computer, transcribing the post I scribbled down on loose leaf paper I stuffed in my purse, since H would freak if I brought the case-less laptop into the city and left it with the bag check guy at the Bryant Park skating rink.

It feels so odd to actually write on paper, like I did pre-college. I have gotten so used to the speed of typing my ideas, I'm sitting here like a frustrated second grade boy, trying to get my ideas down in chicken scratch. This made me think of all the ways technology has changed our lives and the way we operate in our world, and in particular, of my new technological device - the GPS.

You already know I am a bit of a Luddite, balking at H's attempt to introduce any kind of new technology to my life. Unfortunately for him, or fortunately for me, he is usually on the cutting edge of these things, and if I haven't seen or heard of anyone I know using one of these devices, I poo-poo them out of hand. Nine times out of ten, H winds up being right and the technology is quite useful and pretty life-altering. If it weren't for him, I'd still be lugging around five pounds of yellow plastic, listening to my Sony waterproof Walkman while I run*, and still be using my original cell that looks like a World War II field phone, instead of tapping away on my Blackberry. But my relationship with the GPS was not as immediately successful as that with my 'berry. While I have come to find it useful, the GPS has some issues that I am finding difficult to overcome.

First of all, it has to be hooked up to the car's power source. After the dead van debacle of this summer, that we have since surmised was most likely caused by Little Man's flipping on an interior light during the van's cleaning the night before our almost-not departure, I am wary of anything that I might accidentally leave on or connected, leaving me stranded without a vehicle. And while it's true, this situation could be avoided entirely with care on my part, the number of times I have left a door open on the van does not leave me feeling confident.

Second, the display on the screen is quite small and, even when mounted on the windshield, it is distracting me from driving. True, at least my eyes are in the vicinity of the road, rather than focused on my lap, trying to read directions I have scratched onto the back of a Wow Wow Wubbzy coloring page the girls used our last bit of printer ink and last page of printer paper on. And, yes, I know the voice prompt feature would make it less necessary to obsessively check the display, but considering I can not hear my own thoughts above the chatter in the van's main cabin, never mind the ear-splitting volume at which my children request to hear "Feliz Navidad" for the eightieth time, there is no way I am hearing the GPS's tinny, robotic voice.

My biggest issue with this device though, is it is all book smarts and no street smarts. Sure, the Cross Bronx Expressway is the quickest way to the George Washington Bridge when coming from Connecticut, but not when there's a Yankee game. And on my trip to Boston, I wound up in the alley behind the hotel, where two lovely Moroccan parking attendants helped me not wreck the Jetta while turning around. I'm afraid of just blindly following the GPS, thinking of Michael in The Office driving into a lake at his GPS's urging.

So, following blindly is exactly what I do not do and it has actually made the GPS somewhat useful. If I bring my own written directions and use the GPS as back-up, I get the best of both worlds. I get the street smarts of the directions from the Camden Aquarium website, not winding up in a crack ghetto, with the GPS's reassurance that I am on the street listed on those directions, when the crackheads have stolen the sign. True, it's probably not that safe checking directions in my lap, and the GPS display (never mind the dangerous rubber-armed searching for toys and snacks LM has dropped or thrown, forcing me to drive with one arm), but neither is rolling through Shanty Town a la Clark Griswold in Vacation.

So I have made my peace with the bit of technology. Yes, it's not perfect, but it did make my field trips this summer easier and I have to admit it is absolutely fantastic finding local addresses when dropping of Girl Scout uniforms. Locally, is the only time I will follow this thing blindly. I know where all the lakes are around here.

*When H first approached me with an mp3 player eight years ago, I reacted much like Homer Simpson being told pork, bacon and ham all come from the same animal, "Sure, you can listen to music on this magical little device no bigger than my palm."

The Bathroom Song

Happy Monday to you all. I am still recovering from dragging all three kids into the city Saturday to skate at Bryant Park and see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Well, I use the term "skating" liberally, since I spent the first fifteen minutes shuffling along behind #1 and #2 who had their upper bodies draped across the top of the wall and were madly bicycling their legs, as H, who can actually skate well*, was no better off, dragged the full weight of Little Man's body around the rink, as our son did not inherit his father's love of the ice, and decided to go completely jelly-legged. His skates were promptly returned once the tears began, and Hs back almost gave out, and my youngest and I spent a nice hour eating overpriced popcorn and enjoying the view from the concession stand while the girls took turns skating with their father and doing more wall-skating. It didn't get any better for H, as we forgot the stroller and he was forced to cary all thirty-eight pounds of LM through the city streets, including up a broken escalator during an ill-conceived, last-minute jaunt to Macy's Santaland. It wasn't crowded or anything.

So last night we trimmed the tree with the kiddies, and, as usual, had holiday movies on in the background. As I have said before, watching children's entertainment from the perspective of an adult is one of the surprising perks of parenthood, and it was during our viewing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (complete with homophobic, judgmental Santa), that I was inspired to finally write about what my sister, brothers in-law and I identified a constant in children's movies - The Bathroom Song. Obviously, these are not songs about the toilet, but rather, songs that are so long, slow-tempo-ed and boring in their subject matter, that it is the perfect time to pee or grab a soda. In Rudolph for example, Rudolph's love interest, Clarice, sings the nap-inducing "There's Always Tomorrow", when Rudolph is down-hearted after being publicly shunned by the entire male reindeer population of the North Pole. Besides being just a little insensitive, since tomorrow, whistle blowing Coach Dancer is still probably going to want to kick his ass, the music is slow, and the animation of forest creatures scamping about the woods is dull.

And it's not just Rudolph. Those of you lucky enough to have seen the HBO Christmas Classic Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, Ma's interminable "When the River Meets the Sea" is so bad, it actually feels like being in church. An added bonus, on the extended DVD version, she sings it three different times. I can actually watch my chlidren's minds wander. The coup de gras of all the Rankin and Bass classics though, is Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which oddly enough, features the voice of Mickey Rooney as Santa. After you enjoy the cold-war era caricature that is the Burgermeister, you then get to witness some trippy, Summer of Love-esque animation, as the young Mrs. Claus** croons "My World is Starting Today" about her decision to marry Santa. Which, by the way, is gross. Mr. and Mrs. Claus are like your parents, you don't want to imagine them, like, actually having sex or anything. Even Charlie Brown, which is pretty low-key with the music, does not escape this trend, with that sermon from Linus. Um, wait, am I in church again? No, I'm seven and just want to see Snoopy and think about Santa. Enough with all this "Jesus" and "city of Bethlehem" nonsense. When else would my children continue to watch a show that contains the phrase "Christ the Lord"?

So perhaps this is a just a phenomenon from my childhood. Well, that theory was proven wrong during The Polar Express. After the jaunty "Hot Chocolate" number, but before Steven Tyler belts out "Rockin' All Over the World" (who they CG'd into an elf and it kept we awake with night terrors for a week), the little girl character sings that crying-jag-inducing "When Christmas Comes to Town". While I find it moving, my Little Man, enjoying his train movie mightily, is all "Whatever. Where are the dancing chefs?"

When you stop to think about it, all children's movies, even non-holiday ones, have at least one downer moment featuring strange animation, choreography or a montage. Have you seen the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which kicks the new one's ass, sorry, still heart you Johnny Depp)? The "Cheer Up Charlie" song sung by the mother has every kid wondering, "Am I watchign the right movie here?" And Annie is simply lousy with them - "Dumb Dog", "Sandy" and even though it is up-tempo, "Let's Go to the Movies". The only entertaining Bathroom Song I have ever seen is in The Great Muppet Caper, which actually mocks these kind of number s in movies and features a synchronized swimming sequence with a faded corner shot of Charles Grodin singing his heart out to Miss Piggy.

Think back on all your favorite childhood movies, or review your kids' favorites and you'll laugh at how universal The Bathroom Song is. Perhaps their creators designed it this way, with full knowledge of the short attention spans and small bladder size of children. As a child I was bored, as a parent, I guess I should thank them so I can drag Little Man to use the potty.

*Yes, my boyfriend can skate backwards. Can yours?
**Not to judge, but, Mrs. Claus didn't even have kids so her slide into morbid obesity is puzzling, is it not?

"It's a jungle out there!"

I am finally taking a break from obsessively looking for my Christmas shoes online*, to finally, finally write about my annual weekend in Boston with B. We had a great time shopping (Ann Taylor Loft Curvy Skinny jeans are made by the Lord himself), eating and, yes of course, drinking. This year we were much smarter about our choice of venue, although B tried to take me to some romantic tapas bar where they were sure to think we were middle-aged lesbian lovers on date night. We wound up at Towne Stove and Spirits, a new place touting two different dining levels and three bars, one open to the riff-raff not dining there, and two exclusively for diners, which allowed us to act all hoity-toity upon arrival, sweeping up the stairs to drink in style, then clattering drunkenly down said stairs after dinner to people watch, rather than hauling our asses half-way across Beantown and winding up at The World's Saddest Gay Bar.

Another great facet of frequenting a pricier establishment, is it severely limits the number of twenty-three year olds in attendance. Not that I have anything against the young 'uns other than their obsessive checking of digital devices - seriously, I am in the middle of a sentence, you can't wait five minutes to read that text? - but I don't need any additional reminders of how old I am or for anyone in a Red Sox cap to think I'm a cougar** looking for some action. Instead, we were faced with a bit of a lonely hearts situation that was at once validating and depressing. Everywhere we looked we saw women in their late twenties and early thirties, dressed to the nines, hoping for someone, anyone, to notice them.

As an anthrpological study, the bar scene is fascinating, full of nuance and ritual. B and I scored some prime seats and were able to watch some poor bachelor try to infiltrate a table of ladies, of whom the most attractive had strategically placed herself closest to the window, and furthest from the crowd, while his buddy, The World's Worst Wingman***, wearing a French cuff shirt, blech, completely ignored the women and tapped away on his Blackberry. At least there's technology to fall back on when you don't want to get stuck taking a grenade I suppose. We watched scantily clad women (newsflash: shorts and lace tights are JUST A NO after your mid-twenties no matter how great your body) get all the attention, while, adorable, appropriately attired women (read:not dressed like hookers), who would come into their own around age thirty-three, made awkward chit chat with their girlfriends. It was just awful and made me send H a thousand text messages telling him how lucky I am to have him.

How do people survive this every single weekend? I think I might slit my wrists having to doll myself up each Saturday to be judged like a piece of meat. And I know, there are other ways for people to meet, but as a single American under the age of forty, gay or straight, it's pretty much part of the mating ritual to go to a bar on Saturday night looking for love, whether it's going to a dive in Brooklyn, dressed in your finest hoodie, to drink Pabst out of a can, or to Bahama Mama's, in Hoboken, wearing a miniskirt to down a few kamikaze shots. It's the modern equivalent of the watering hole, where the dominant males, and females, search out mates. And then what happens if you hit it off? Do you go home with the guy? Drunkenly make a date for later in the week? It's all so complicated!

B and I wondered if it was just our distance from this situation that made us so uncomfortable for the people living it. Perhaps they were all enjoying themselves, as we were, just happy to be out and having a few drinks. B returned from the restroom with hard evidence to the contrary. While waiting in line****, she ran into a thirty-something woman we had been mercilessly mocking for her bad halter top, calling her Courtney Cox, , and after complimenting B on her top said, "Whew! It's a jungle out there tonight!"

At the late hour of midnight, B and I had had enough and stumbled onto the street, hailed a cab and spent the car ride back to the hotel feeling glad our time in the wild was over. For those of you still out there, you will make it through this, and for all your efforts, probably wind up meeting your husband/wife at CVS in line for saline. Godspeed.

*Note to H: If you really want to be my Mr. Big, you will call Zappos to see when those Blahnik knock-offs are cmonig in. Jeweled, royal blue, satin pumps will not buy themselves.
**PS - I have decided the term cougar was invented solely by young men trying to deal with their own discomfort about wanting to screw a woman who could be their mother. Same with the term "homo".
***We talked to them later in the night and, after learning what my beloved does for a living, D-bag spent the entire conversation tutoring me on H's industry, to the point I had to ask him, "Are you seriously trying to teach me about this?"
****What the hell takes women so long? Tuck and primp once you're out of the stall, damn it!

My mother's table

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! The kids are all busy writing in the Thanksgiving book, so I thought I'd steal some time to write.

Of course, I have so much to be thankful for, and I won't bore you with the details, but one of the things I am most grateful for today is to not be cooking or preparing for guests. Our turn hosting comes in just one short month, when H will have large and exotic sea creatures in our refrigerator in preparation for the Italian night of seven fishes, but today, my mother in-law has that privilege. With my family living far away, and the logistical nightmare that is traveling with three small children, I am usually found at my in-law's most holidays, and on occasion, my own family joins me there. While I am so happy to be surrounded by people I am lucky enough to truly think of as my family, sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder what it would feel like to be returning to my childhood home on a holiday to have a meal cooked by my mother.

It's an odd experience to always be a guest at someone else's table. I took for granted, the experience, when I had it, of someone cooking our family's dishes. I don't say "favorite", because, to be honest, overcooked vegetables, gluey mashed potatoes, and boiled turnips fried in bacon grease, really do not qualify. But it's the tradition of the those foods, along with the strawberry short cakes made with those weird little bowl-like cakes that you find in the produce department, that I miss. And it's not just the food. During the post-meal reminiscences I long to hear "Remember the time Mary..." or "When Kathleen was five...", and the retelling of my childhood stories, straight from the source. I wonder what it would feel like for my chldren to hear my mother tell stories of times I was naughty. (And to answer your question, I don't have a plethora of aunts and uncles ready to tell tales as all but one of my mother's siblings died in quick succession in the years after my mother's passing. In fact, my uncle died of a heart attack while we were all on death watch at my aun't bedside, casuign us to have two wakes and funerals with a week. I shit you not. It's like we're the damn Kennedys.)

This is not to say every holiday is wrought with emotion, and I sit there crying in my turkey. In fact, so much time has passed that, sadly, or blessedly, depending on how you look at it, my mother comes to the front of my mind very little. I suppose part of that is being busy with the kids. But every once in a while though, I wonder "what if?" What if she were here? What would it be like for her to greet my kids at the door in her "cooking clothes" of women's golf shirt and sweat pants and full makeup, forehead sweaty from mashing potatoes? What would it be like to get drunk on white wine with my mother and sister after dinner, one of my chldren sitting in her lap, while my husband and father did the dishes (since I'm sure my father would have been dragged into modern times by this point)? What would it feel like to be home?

So if you are lucky enough to be sitting at your mother's table today, or oyur aunt's or your grandma's, complicated as it may be, take a minute to apprecaite it while it lasts. Sure, your mother may irritate the shit out of you, and I know without at doubt were my mother still alive she and I would be aruging over those disgusting turnips.

The new-fangled kitchen

"Oh God, tell me the pear bowl made it...."

This was my first thought the other morning, when I entered the laundry room at the crack of dawn to pull some workout clothes from the ever-present pile of clean laundry in front of the dryer, and discovered that one end of the shelving unit, that holds most of our special occasion kitchen wares, had come out of the cinder block wall, sending all of our platters and seldom-used kitchen appliances and baking pans sliding down to the concrete floor.

I was not concerned, at first, about the Limoge plates my aunt had given me, the Pottery Barn platter that was sentimental favorite, or the artisan chip and dip that was a wedding gift from a close friend*, I was worried about a sea foam green, ceramic bowl, in the shape of a pear. This bowl had been H's grandmother, Mama's. The bowl has two compartments, one, larger, the bulbous end of the pear, to hold pasta, the other, smaller end, near the stem, to hold sauce. Every time we pass this bowl around the table, someone has to say, "Don't hold it by the stem!", the way Mama and Pop used to, as in family lore. This bowl, in and of itself, is not especially breath taking. I'm sure many people would pass it up if it were ever out on a garage sale table, but because of its history, it is very special to our family. This got me thinking about the modern day kitchen and all it contains.

H and I spend a short time every Sunday morning drinking coffee and looking at catalogues, before the onslaught of requests for a second round of pancakes or for Daddy to play Wii, and the Williams Sonoma catalogue is one of our favorites. We love it not only for the high-quality pots and linens it contains, but for the specialty kitchen items we find truly laughable. It seems there is a specialized tool for every kitchen task. There are mango slicers, avocado slicer/mashers, banana slicers, strawberry slicers, strawberry hullers, peach and cherry pitters. Whatever happened to a good old paring knife? And the counter top devices available astound in their breadth of function - rice cookers, bread makers (which I thought went out of style with carbohydrates in 2000), deep fryers, panini presses, ice cream and yogurt makers (seriously, who is making their own yogurt? You obviously live on a farm and probably have no electricity and, therefore, no use for such an appliance). To be fair, H and I own three of the six counter top items listed above (the deep fryer being purchased as a gift for H, in a fit of pre-Christmas idiocy, as was last year's Bacon of the Month Club membership), and cherries are a total pain in the ass to pit, as are olives, but I wonder, what of all this kitchen technology will hold any sentimental meaning to our children after we are gone? Will they look at the deep fryer and think, "Oh remember the ONE time Daddy used that?", or will they merely curse the laundry room shelves full of nonsense that they now have to get rid of?

There are pots and pans, not of especially good quality, that H and I still have that belonged to Mama. What I love most about them is being able to see the evidence of all the cooking they were used for in scratches, dings and dents. Growing up myself, during the holidays at my aunt's, we used one pot that was so dented on the bottom from all the potatoes that had been mashed in its depths, it was actually convex , and would wobble around precariously on the burner. But I loved that pot. Will the same be said about H's Calphalon stainless? There was a potato peeler of my grandmother's (insert Irish joke here) that was so old and rusty I'm shocked no one wound up with tetanus, but every year, there'd be so many of us in the kitchen peeling, someone would wind up using it and it made the day seem complete. Not sure our OXO peeler will ever show evidence of anyone's having actually used it, so ingenious is its engineering.

I would be remiss if I didn't admit H and I (but mostly H) find a lot of this kitchen technology pretty cool (except the new at-home sous vide, that spells food poisoning to me), but I think we need to be careful of our kitchens morphing from the center of our homes, filled with stories, into laboratories, filled with tools. And if you use a tool so seldom, it never has a chance to become part of a story, it just takes up space in the laundry room and winds up on the floor one day. Perhaps, if used often enough, even the most modern of gadgets can be part of fmaily history. I gave H a Henkel knife for our first anniversary and he claims it is still "the best gift you ever gave me" (notice, it's not three kids, or a well-cared for home). New knives come on the market and he shies away, loving the heft and balance of this particular blade. I think part of it might be though, that the kids call it "Daddy's knife" and know its special place in the butcher block. Maybe some day, despite their own kitchens full of super-refined cutlery, they will argue over who gets to have it, remembering all the wonderful meals their father cooked using it.

* all of which made it, thank God.

Working Girl

I managed to escape the house for a few hours yesterday and go see the new Rachel McAdam's vehicle Morning Glory. I know, I know, total garbage, but sometimes I need to go see something mindless with pretty clothes on the big screen. And while I don't particularly love Rachel McAdams, and did not see her breakout performance in The Notebook, based on the book by Nicholas Sparks, who is to writing what Thomas Kinkade is to painting, because I wasn't either a fourteen year-old girl or a middle-aged woman trapped in a loveless marriage looking for a dose of romance, Morning Glory did have the allure of Harrison Ford, who unfortunately wound up reprising his role as good-looking curmudgeon, of which I am growing tired. Dear Harry, being back the Han Solo smart-assness please. Love, Mean Mommy.

The movie centers around McAdams as a young television producer and her efforts to climb to the top. There was the standard romance component and a lovely cameo by Ty Burrell from Modern Family, and I have new running song courtesy of the soundtrack ("Strip Me" be Natasha Beddingfield the reigning expert of inspirational songs for soccer moms), but what stuck with me after the film ended was just how much I really, really miss working sometimes.

Wait, wait, this is not going to be another why-am-I-at-home-when-I-have-master's-degree rant. My life is so busy now, I think any nanny I tried to hire would walk away laughing if I offered her anything but my entire paltry teacher's salary to deal with all this nonsense. And wathcing H trudge off to work in a bad mood this Monday morning, meetings galore in front of him, I again appreciated my ability to make my own schedule. No, what I miss is all the non-working stuff related to working. In no particular order I miss:

Getting dressed in the morning. This movie was full of cute skirt suits and jazzy heels, smart, long-legged trousers and tailored blouses. I can't remember the last time I wore anything on a weekday that was dry clean only or that was not peanut butter-proof. Getting to dress for style, rather than functionality is something I miss desperately. Oh, nothing beats that feeling of stepping out the door on a sunny day, hair freshly blown out, coffee in hand, wearing a cute outfit, on the way to work. Makes you want to stand on a street corner and throw your kicky beret in the air.

Lunch. What am I in the mood for? Where should I go? Wanna go to lunch? Oh, I miss such questions. To have choices and takeout establishments and restaurants at which to make them seems like a dream, when it used to be my reality five days a week. Instead, most days I find myself forlornly looking into the freezer to see that over the weekend H has eaten the one good Lean Cuisine panini that was left, even though he can have whatever the hell he wants for lunch Monday through Friday (how he thinks he even gets a vote when we have takeout is laughable, but he is so annoyingly picky about it, it's like living with a fifteen year-old girl, and I just relent and let him get what he wants). And never mind having someone to eat with. I either eat with the kids, whose constant requests for more juice, which will then be spilled all over the table, or scarf down my lunch standing at the kitchen counter, after having forgotten to eat all day, moments before picking the kids up. And don't even get me started about being able to get coffee when you need it.

Work friends. As I have said before, I consider a lot of the moms I interact with to be "work friends", enjoying a little witty banter at drop-off and pick-up, but there is a different tenor to these conversations than there was when I was actually speaking to a colleague years ago. Parenting is very personal and we all make different choices, and someone giving you, unwanted, negative feedback on the way you're potty-training your kid can ruin your whole day.

I have also discussed those women and men who move past "work friend" status and become actual friends and you meet without your kids and occasionally with your spouses, and I miss having frequent 9-5 interaction with these few. I also noticed, watching McAdams chat with a fellow producer who was male, that for most of my life I have had a "work husband", having gotten along well platonically with men, especially when I needed some perspective on the emotional chow-chow some women insist on constantly participating in. While I do currently have one (shout out, A), again, we don't get to really hang out all that much.

I miss joking around about nonsense with a colleague, I miss adult conversation that does not involve discussing bowel movements.

Commuting. Oh, to have an hour and a half each day to read, listen to music or to stare blissfully unmolested into space would be heaven. Yeah, yeah, H, I know you do work on the train and you have practically worn the letters off your Blackberry to prove it, but you did manage to watch two seasons of Mad Men and read a couple of books, so I wouldn't beat the Working Commute drum too loudly. Oh, and the fact that commuting means you actually get to levee work, rather than living there, as I do, is a perk I miss considerably.

Yes, I know I am lucky to be home with the kids and, yes, I know working sucks a lot of the time, but everyone has to admit these things are the definite perks of being employed outside of the home. The moments when you don't actively despise working. That and, you know, pay day.

Has it been three years already?

How could I not write today? Happy Blogiversary, dear readers!!!! Can it really be three years have passed since I wrote that first, angst-filled entry in the basement of the old, tiny house, home alone with a five year, three year and ten week old?

A lot has changed since then, but a lot has remained the same. I still can not get everything I need to get done accomplished in one day, I still hate laundry, my kids alternately drive me insane and humble me with their love and beauty, H is still drives me wild, and I still eat too much peanut butter. What also has not changed is the fact that this is my outlet and keeps me sane and I am very grateful to all of you for reading. Seeing how many of you check in on days I have not written, motivates me to keep it up and it is a great feeling that people not obligated by blood or friendship like what I write enough to keep coming back. Many of you have been here since the very beginning, but for those of you who haven't, today's post includes a lot of back links to old posts, as I review all that has transpired since Mean Mommy came to be. So to steal the ending to Bridget Jones' Diary, a recap, in numbers, of the last three years.

Number of children potty-trained: 1.75. Little Man is so close I can feel the shoes I will buy with the monthly diaper budget on my feet as I type. We have even ventured into I-Make-Pee-Pee-Like-Daddy Land and I now have the joy of trying to manage a wild spray of urine every time we go potty. I am also not that wild about touching his junk since he has recently come up with a descriptive for it in it's erect state. "Look, I make it bouncy, Mommy!" Miraculously, #2, who nearly broke me in the effort to train her, no longer has any issues. Unless you count clogging the bowl every night when she sneaks out of bed to poop. We call her The Stealth Bomber.
I look forward to the day I no longer have to travel with the potty in the van.

Number of pictures of feces: 2

Number of pictures of shoes: 4. Hopefully this will increase in the next year, as mentioned above, as H and I have started a new tradition of Christmas Shoes (not at all related to that repellent Christmas song). Last year he bought me a pair of great shoes I had been lusting over and he did so well I decided I'd like to make it an annual thing. His only guideline is that I be able to wear them with a black dress and they not be practical in any way. I also told him finding the gayest sales clerk on the floor would be helpful.

Number of television appearances: 1. Still one of the best days of my life.

Number of home improvement projects completed: 6. Many of these took place in the old house getting it ready for sale. There were major ones, there were minor ones, and there was a lot of painting.

Number of rabbits killed: 1

Number of posts involving Reilly: 4. Most of them involving a crisis of some kind. The irony is lost on me that I had to drag him to the vet at the last minute yesterday with a massive eye infection after what happened two years ago.

Number of houses bought and sold: 2. Days it took: 3.

Number of "celebrity"-related hate-filled comments: 2. I still think it was Bill himself.

Blatant children's book rip-off posts: 2

Weddings attended: 5

Souls saved: 5. If that's what you get from spordic church attendance and half-hearted home-school CCD lessons.

Pieces of writing published: 2. Well, one was a letter to the editor, but beggers can't be choosers.

Thank you, thank you, dear readers, for all the great feedback and laughs you've given me in return for the paltry smattering of writing I throw at you every few days. With Thanksgiving fast approaching, once again this year, this blog is one of the things I am most grateful to have in my life. I wish we could all go out for a drink to celebrate.

Hugs,
MM

B-O-O-T-S...BOOTS!*

Quick post this Tuesday - although I am long overdue for a few long ones - since I will spend, yet another, entire day, traipsing back and forth between home and the elementary school - this time for the book fair - since God forbid I be the only mother who doesn't come for each of my children's half-hour sessions, to wander with them around the cardboard displays of Captain Underpants and Junie B. Jones books. I suppose the bonus is at the end of the day when I don't open two backpacks filled-to-overflowing with Hannah Montana and Phineas and Ferb "books". I mean, can we really call them books when they are poorly transcribed, full-length, television episodes?

Behold, the latest addition to the Mean Mommy shoe collection! I did not have the foresight to have H take a picture with me actually wearing them so you can not see that they are the slightly over-the-knee boots that are in every magazine this season. They are also the slightly-over-the-knee boots that I spent the late summer/early autumn months scoffing at. Am I Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman? I was even wary of them once I was in the shoe department with H, looking for a casual brown boot to wear with my leggings and skinny jeans, since the the cold weather's arrival (who are these women with nerveless ankles who can wear flats in the winter?). Yes, I am lucky enough to be married to a man who willingly accompanies me into the shoe department and without spending the entire time sighing and tapping his foot in an agitated manner. I think I put an end to that during a shopping trip after #1's birth, by telling him my free time had been drastically cut caring for an infant, and unless he wanted me to limit my shoe shopping to self-serve stores, and all the sensible pumps those stores favor, no longer having time to wait for the queen working the floor to search for my size in the back, he'd better get comfortable looking at high-end footwear. Fearing a future with a wife who wears crepe-soled flats, he got with the program.

On this day, it was the fifty year-old non-cougar, trying this exact pair on, and looking really cute, who prompted me into trying them on myself, despite H's calling them "Luke Skywalker boots". Then, when I was trying out the folded-down-top look during my test drive, he asked me where my Merry Men were. I said he comes willingly, I didn't say I he left his acerbic wit in men's wear. But, despite his comments, I was thrilled with these boots to the point I wore them out of the store like Little Man with a new pair of Buzz Lightyear sneakers.

So if any of you out there are contemplating a pair of these boots, I highly recommend them - if you can get your husband to move past his fictional character associations. Wearing them with a green tunic I was Peter Pan, with a parka on, I was Han Solo. With anymore comments, he's going to be missing a testicle.

*Laurie Berkener - Anyone? Anyone?

Wanted: My free time

Last seen being spent cleaning up from a Halloween party for thirty girls, setting up and cleaning up the pre-school fund-raising bazaar, attending Visitation Day at the elementary school - both the morning and afternoon session (since God forbid my daughters understand I have to go see their other sibling in the same session, as I am apparently, the only parent in either of their classes to have reproduced multiple times or in quick succession), attempting to go the mall with the self-decided-no-longer-napping-yet sleep-deprived-crank-pot Little Man to get everyone much needed gloves and hats (even though we were wearing capri pants last week), only to have him fall asleep on the way (trapping me in the van for TWO HOURS hoping allowing him to sleep would transform him from the devil-child he has become), and dragging the kids to the state aquarium, two hours away, and to the movies, as they are off from school for the teacher's convention, while H is away in Arizona for work until Friday night, giving #1 and #2 an actual leg to stand on as to why they can sleep in my bed with me, ensuring I spend every moment of my day with an offspring.

Free time is wily and elusive, but anonymous informant says it may come out of hiding next week. Report any sightings to authorities immediately.

I turned out just fine! (Ignore those tumors)

So I had the pleasure this morning of dragging all three kids to school thirty minutes early to meet with the class moms to plan an upcoming celebration in the classroom. I was already in a great mood, after last night's email exchange with the teacher, during which I asked if my children were welcome to attend since who the hell is babysitting at eight in the morning. After being told they could sit quietly in the hall and read, I promptly asked would she prefer if my three year-old hang from the light fixtures or pry the fire extinguisher off the wall first. He was then, of course, welcomed into the classroom. Again, I was asking, in a much calmer and less public way than I did last year, why do these schools behave as if you have only one child? Regardless, all my offspring were there, safe and accounted for, as I sat through another school meeting.

The focus of this meeting a was the food, as this is a pretty significant holiday celebration. It will be a mutli-course meal that the parents are responsible for supplying, and bringing to the school at 9:00 sharp, so that their children can eat only the bread and dessert. Seeing the variety of items needed, and adding in the fact that all items must be store bought according to New Jersey regulations concerning allergies, the mothers and I decided it might be best if we purchased the items and asked the parents to pay. It's a win-win scenario. No parent has to experience lying in bed, remembering they have to bring forty mini-muffins to school the next day, and rushing out in their pajamas, and we, as the organizers, are not handed three snack-sized bags of blueberry muffins the next morning as a result. So the decision made, I spent an hour at the local grocery pricing out the items at the prepared foods counter and bakery - you all know how I feel about supermarket bakery cake. I thought using their food services, rather than, say a catering company, would keep costs down.

Then I get an email. From a mother who came into the meeting five minutes before it ended. She wants to buy all the stuff at the local organic supermarket to avoid high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and trans fats, and to have as much of the produce be as organic as possible. Sigh. This is just what we need to drive the costs up, of food the kids won't even eat, so the parents can bitch when we ask them to throw us a few bucks, allowing us to do them the favor of planning a hassle-free party for their kids. Those snack bags of muffins were starting to look pretty good.

Now, don't get me wrong. I buy mostly organic produce, and gave the kids only organic milk for quite a while - or until our milk bill was almost as much as our cable bill. I buy Pirate Booty and Annie's macaroni and cheese and Horizon organic chocolate milk boxes. I have drunk the organic-no-trans-fats-or-high-fructose-corn-syrup Kool-Aid. Just not a gallon of it.

I understand there are parents who are extremely dedicated to their children's nutritional habits, and I admire you greatly. If you made you kids' baby food, you are my hero. I also understand that good nutrition is one of the cornerstones to a healthy life, and those habits need to be formed in childhood. What I do not understand, in this particular instance, is the fear that one meal not entirely made of organic ingredients, or dare I say it, loaded with preservatives, is going to give your kid cancer down the road or prevent him from going to Harvard. A bag of Doritos once in a while is not such a bad thing, is it?

Look at our parents generation. Raised on "space aged" foods. The more multi-syllabic words on that label, the better it is. It's made by SCIENCE, Son! TV dinners, Campbell's soup, Twinkies, Jello, it's a miracle they didn't grow two heads. And aren't there, like, a billion baby boomers that are going to suck the life out of Social Security before we can get to it? My own grandmother, who, granted, may have been naturally preserved by years of hard living, is almost one hundred.

So take it easy on yourselves once in a while nutritional Superheroes. You efforts will most likely ensure your kid has higher SAT scores than mine. Just cut yourself some slack and don't make yourself, or the rest of us who are not as tireless and dedicated as you are, crazy two or three times a year. Besides, nothing makes you see how much better eating well makes you feel than making yourself sick on Sno Balls* at the holiday party.

*OK, even I, who love all processed sweets, wouldn't eat these things, since I can feel the preservatives coursing through my veins after the first bite.

And the winner is...

…the shorter hair*.

I know, I know, technically, the winner in terms of votes was the longer hair (19-4), but…I just couldn’t do it.

For a while I had been persuaded that the longer hair was the way to go, with all the votes in favor of it, and after stopping in at the hair salon (MAAAAAAARY!) and getting much positive feedback. Then a reader posted this comment:

"you look older with the wavy hair...like a mom trying to be young and hip..."

And that, in a nutshell, was my underlying fear with the longer hair.

So thank you, Anonymous. I feel like you and I were Lucy Liu and Samantha in the the Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda episode of Sex and the City:

Samantha: “You want truth? Your last Golden Globe dress was a disaster.”
Lucy: “EXACTLY!!! Thank you! I had all these queens* telling me it was fierce.”

It is such a fine line in today’s youth-obsessed culture that it is easy to fall on the wrong side with the best of intentions. So I had to go with the hair that made me feel like me, and not a mom who is desperately hanging onto her youth – leggings and all.

*Sorry, no picture, but I have a big pimple and as today is laundry day, I am wearing a really ill-fitting U2 t-shirt. - which H also happens to think is sexy. So I guess, if you put it together, if he had his way, I’d be look like a Hooters waitress.
**And, I don’t think of any of you as queens (OK, maybe you, Brian)

Cast Your Vote!!!

No, it's not Election Day, but I need your input on some thing equally important as picking the leader of the free world - my hair.

The summer is over, and this, like every summer, I spent the entire three months of June, July and August with my hair in a bun or ponytail. Because of this, I save myself some money and do not cut my hair for twelve weeks. The start of the school year was also particularly hectic and I had no time for a cut, so I have added four more weeks onto that and now...I have some serious friggin' hair. With the change in season, I am now faced with temperatures that allow me to wear my locks down without sweating like Saint Bernard in Vegas, and I am faced with a dilemma. Do I cut it or keep it?

In years past, the choice was obvious, since the straight, That Girl flip I do requires my hair be kept at a certain length, otherwise the flip is less flippy and it looks sort of flat. I have had this hair style in various lengths for quite a while, kind of since Jennifer Aniston brought I back with "The Rachel". But this summer, faced with an event where a pony was not appropriate, at the encouragement of my hairdresser, I tried wearing my hair wavy (pictured above). This involved a piece of equipment I had relegated to the Halls of Hair Regret years ago - the curling iron. I had feared wearing my hair wavy for years, after treading too closely to the Carrot Top 'fro category in college, but being a regular at my local hair salon with my monthly color appointments has its privileges, other than them shouting out, "MARY!!!", a la Norm from Cheers upon my arrival, and my hairdresser lent me her professional-grade, large barrel iron, and gave me a wavy-hair lesson.

I have sported this look a few times, and gotten compliments on it, but my fear is, people are commenting because it is just too much damn hair to ignore, much like if one met Crystal Gayle at a cocktail party. H, is no help at all. He LOVES long hair. But I don't truly feel I can trust his opinion since I kind of get the feeling this length of hair is his idea of porn and he is in favor of it for personal reasons. I would not walk around waering a French maid costume for the same reasons.

So who could I turn to, but you, my dear readers, for an un-biased opinion? What I need from you is to compare my profile picture and the one above and choose your favorite. Voting is open between now and Wednesday night, as I have a color and cut appointment Thursday morning. Now, I'm not saying I will necessarily let my decision be absolutely made by all of you, but I will strongly take your opinions into consideration. And, trust me , I know how ridiculous this sounds, but I thought it might be fun,

There are some rules:

If I see you on a regular basis - family members and locals - you are not allowed to vote, since this would cause awkwardness if you are in favor of the style I do not choose. This includes you - Dad, Big T, Mick, SG, BK, LB and all brothers in-law. K, I'd exclude you, but you fall under the Required Brutal Honesty of Sisterhood clause.

You may not identify yourself.If you choose to comment, Blogger offers you the opyion of anonymity. Please utilize this feature since, again, I don't want you to think my hair is ugly if I'm meeting you for coffee.

Please do not make derogatory comments about the style you so not choose. Accentuate the positive and only comment on what you like. Since I do not want to know you think the style I wind up choosing makes my head look like a helmet.

So let your voice be heard! Cast your vote in the poll created by my nerd, I mean husband. I will post Thursday afternoon about the choice I have made since I know you are all so deeply invested. Not.

*I was home alone when I got htis brainstorm. Please enjoy the picture I took of myself in the bathroom mirror.

The Rachel or the Crystal Gayle?

Cut that mess off!

Keep it, it's not 1996.

or View Results

Create your own poll at Flisti.com

And so it begins...

Tuesday was school picture day, and as I have written before, my children's appearance recieves a level of attention never heard of in my day. This year was no different than the last, with Little Man waking with terrible rooster-head and #2 picking out some weird outfit combo. But the big difference? My oldest and I had our first fight over the issue of appearance. I never thought this would happen.

When I gave birth to the first of my two girls, I started out with all the information I needed to raise a healthy woman courtesy of Free to Be You and Me, Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth and a lot of Wonder Woman. I was never going to let her think her appearance was important. It's what's on the inside that matters. Fast forward eight years and I am standing in the kitchen gesticulating wildly with a hairbrush, telling my oldest there is no way in hell she's wearing her hair down and with a middle part for school pictures. In my defense, she looks really, really awful with her hair parted in the middle. Right now her face is too big for the equally awful, purple, Hannah Montana eyeglasses I let her choose last year, and her teeth are a little too big for her mouth. Save the hate mail, she is still beautiful to me, and I think, to other people who didn't labor for sixteen hours to give birth to her, but she is definitely going through her first awkward phase. So letting her brush her beautiful hair flat against either side of her head, when moving the part just an inch to the left sets off her eyes so nicely and you can see all the highlights still in it from the summer, was not going to help.

And now I sound like a pageant mom.

So what is a mother to do? My own mother and I never argued about hair, or makeup, or fashion. She was not at all confident in that department herself , so she just let me do my own thing, and I have the truly awful school photos as evidence of how well that went*. It's so cliched, thinking about a mother claiming she knows what looks best on her daughter while said offspring rolls her eyes. Not that mine did that. I'd smack them right out of her head.

Two days later, still wondering if I did the right thing, strong-arming her into wearing her hair my way, we went shopping for new glasses to replace the riduculous ones she has now, and I was faced with another such dilemma. After trying on thirty pairs pretty similar to the ones she has, #1 puts on a pair of wireless glasses with tiny flowers on the arm and it was if the light of heaven shone down on her face and there was a halo of bluebirds flying around her head. Even the ophthalmologist said, "Oh my." And what did my eldest do? Shrugged her shoulders and took them off!!! For the next ten minutes, I begged, cajoled and almost bribed her, into selecting those frames. I even had the eye doctor in cahoots, having him tell her the putrid Wizards of Waverly Place glasses she was contemplating were too small for her. Finally, after trying on every other pair in the place she said, "I like those." Whew.

I am worried dear readers. I am worried about a morning a few years down the road when #1 comes downstairs, dressed for school, in some outfit so indescribably awful I think she's joking. While inappropriateness will not be tolerated, what does a mother do about terrible fashion sense? I know, I know. I have to let her do her own thing and make her own mistakes, but having made some major ones myself (stirrup pants come to mind), I die knowing all the trouble I could save her.

But that, I suppose is parenting. You have to hope they have learned enough from you to make good choices (with how seldom she sees my hair down, I think I have shorted her on this lesson), and other than stopping them from when they are truly about to do damage to themselves (she will never wear stirrup pants), let them make their own decisions and let them suffer the consequences. I will take the lessons from this week and bite my tongue until it's practically severed. It's her choice what she wears - even if it looks like she was blind when she put it on.

I draw the line at bad shoes though. I have my standards.

*I'd share with you, but the scanner is broken. 1989? Rugby shirt with popped-collar and hoop earrings. Middle part.

Dear Leggings,

Dear Leggings,

Hi. Hope you're Monday is going well. I think our date went pretty well yesterday. Did you watch mad Men last night? OK, this is going to be awkward no mater how much I sugarcoat it, so just let me say it. I'm writing because I don't want you to get the wrong idea.

The fact that you and I are even in a relationship again is astounding. The last time I saw you in 1991, you were creme colored, I was carrying twenty extra pounds, and CDs were just catching on. Looking back at pictures of those days, it is plain to see you did me wrong. Sure, I wasn't exactly helping you out with coordinating creme flats and not-at-all-ass-obscuring tunic, but your comfort deluded me into thinking I actually looked good. Pfft. So I dumped you and your capri-length flowered incarnation as well, into the Goodwill bin.

Fast-forward eighteen years and we run into each other at Target. I glared at you from my spot in the checkout line, behind the woman buying ten bottles of detergent and a track suit, wondering how you dared show your face in the fashion world again. Hadn't women everywhere learned their lesson? I walked out that day laughing the laugh of the righteous. Until that winter came. Fed up with the daily hunt for white, not creme, tights that did not have a hole in them or weren't tied in eighty-five knots around a pair of jeans in the dryer, and the complaints when a favorite dress could not be worn on gym day since feet ensconced in tights "feel weird" inside sneakers, I hesitantly let you back into my life. My kids loved you and that made it seem like you had changed. After all, it wasn't my thighs you were encasing. Leave that to the children and gazelle-limbed teenagers.

And then...

This fall you were everywhere. Of course in the magazines I am getting too long in the tooth to read, like Glamour, but then you crept your way into the fashion section of O Magazine, which is usually the realm of figure-flattering slacks and cowl-necked sweaters, silencing my cries of "But I'm too old!" My knee-high riding boots, it seems, were to act as your wing man, whispering to me from their cardboard coffin under the bed, that getting back together with you would provide me with another option, other than my skinny jeans, when wearing them, since mercifully boots of their ilk were in again this season. A sartorial menage-a-trois if you will.

So last week we met for a cheap date at Old Navy. I'm sorry we couldn't get together at J Crew, but for what I consider to be a fling, I'm not spending any big cash. And that is exactly my point, Leggings. We are just having a fling, a cold-weather romance. I even thought it would be a one night stand, once I received H's mocking appraisal of my purple tunic and gray leggings ensemble, but his approving looks have bought you some time in the sun. Just don't get used to it. I have yet to try you out other than in the safety of my own home. You're comfy and cute, but can you be taken out in public? I'm not sure yet if you aren't the fashion equivalent of a guy/girl who's good enough to sleep with, but who's too ugly to take out to dinner.

I'm sorry to hurt your feelings, Leggings. I hope this works out well for both of us. You'll get a chance to be walk among the living again and make amends for your past wrongs, rather than living in the annals of unfortunate fashion history, and I'll get a chance to feel somewhat fashion forward. But I swear to God, the minute I feel I'm getting a "she's trying too hard vibe" from even the mailman, you are being kicked right to the curb.

See you Saturday night. I have a thigh-length sweater I want you meet.

Sincerely,
MM

PS - Tell your friend the vest, despite our rekindled romance, she has absolutely NO shot.

This IS my job

"What are you going to do now?"

I can not mention the fact that all three of my children are in school four mornings a week without being asked the question above. It seems the perception of modern stay-at-home mothers, is that we are all like horses at the starting gate, chomping at the bit, waiting for that school bell to ring, in order to get on with our real lives. And, to some degree, that is true. I have written, quite recently even, about the zen-like existence I pictured myself leading once my offspring were not in my care all of their waking hours.

Instead, what has happened, is the various minutiae involved when I now have not one, but two, school-aged children seems to have quadrupled, rather than doubled. My oldest was keenly aware of my new child-free hours and leaped on the opportunity to assail me with requests to be class mother, library volunteer, ice cream and pizza day helper, and like a sucker, I agreed. Number 2 has the dubious distinction of having me as her Girl Scout leader, and while last year I skated by doing crafts and talking about the great outdoors, this year I have to actually, you know, go outdoors - with nineteen six year-olds. This requires emails to nineteen different families, then collecting reams of ass-covering paperwork to protect the Girl Scouts of America from those same parents, some of whom, act like they're doing me a favor, forcing me to hunt them down at school drop-off for their forms, in order to take their Ugg-wearing whiner into the woods for the afternoon,

So the mornings I thought would be spent writing and getting this house decorated and organized, so far, have been spent filling out insurance disclaimers and attending training sessions to learn how to use the library's checkout system (my fantasy of finally being able to wield that rubber date stamp has been shattered), resulting in a very frustrated Mean Mommy. I was thinking to myself, "When do I get to get on with my life?" Then I had a thought.

This IS my life. So why am I pretending it's not?

What I mean by that is, as a stay-at-home mother, it seems you have to have a back-up plan, a What I Really Want to be Doing, in order to not feel like a total loser. There is no cultural support for being a mother "professionally", even though more and more of us are doing just that. The culturally accepted attitude for educated, capable women who are home with their children is one of thinly-veiled disdain for a choice they themselves have made. Books like The Three Martini Playdate, while hilarious, are so popular because it is simply not cool to like, or be fulfilled by, staying at home. It's like what being smart was in high school - privately desirable, but publicly ridiculed.

The idea of having a sideline, like my writing, is good, in theory. It has given me an outlet for my intellectual energy, because no matter how time-consuming parenting is, a brain teaser it is not. I wanted to maintain my reservoir of three syllable words, but it is also an added pressure. There have been many days when I am actively annoyed with my kids because they are keeping me from writing. But guess what? They didn't make the choice for me to be at home, I did. I chose raising them to be my full-time job, and writing is my side gig - not the other way around. I realized I make myself miserable some days ignoring that fact. I cringe writing that, knowing what a throw-back I sound like. And I'm not writing here AT ALL about the choice to stay at home or work. You know I think both are very valid options, but the question I raise is, why do so many of us make this choice then refuse to embrace it? This summer, when I gave myself three months to do just that, was incredible. Now that I'm back to being pulled in a thousand directions, I have that same tight chest, oh-God-I-really-wanted-to-rewrite-the-last-paragraph, feeling when one of the kids asks me to read to them after dinner and that is really kind of messed up.

I in no way intend to give up my writing, or become a helicopter mom, making my life entirely about my kids and their lives and losing my sense of self apart from that. Plus, I curse too much to spend that much time at the school and I do think, giving child-rearing too much thought can create problems for the child and the parent equally. What I do want to pursue is a mental shift. I don't want to beat myself up anymore because I've had exactly one piece published in the three years I've been writing this blog. I don't want to feel like what I spend the majority of my waking hours doing is not a valid choice in the eyes of society. Because I know it is. In short, I want to give myself a break. Do I expect H to work two jobs? Then how do I expect that of myself? When the time is truly right, I will take on more. Maybe that time is not right now, but so what? I want to express pride in what I do and stop qualifying my existence with future plans like a sophomore trying to transfer out of community school.

Yes, it will still sting at the company holiday party when one of the young people H works with asks me what I do and my answer, "I'm at home with my kids" earns me the sound of crickets chirping and poor H will chime in about my writing, which I am loathe to do since I feel it is akin to a guy working at TGIFridays telling you he's "really an actor". But I will enjoy, more than a little, the look of surprise, that a woman who is intelligent and funny and wearing sick shoes chooses to spend her days covered in peanut butter and tempera paint or helping the first graders pick out a library book. Maybe by not qualifying what I do to someone who has no idea what a job it actually is, will help to change that person's perceptions. Perhaps I need to find a new way of saying it.

"I'm a working mother", I think says it all.

No , I didn't forget how to spell

..or use punctuation, or structure a sentence. I love when Little Man just happens to hit a combination of keys that publish a post I'm working on before I can edit it. Apologies to those of you who got a poor preview of the last post.
I knows hw ta spel.

Turn a trick or treat!!!

It's that time of year again. Time for me to repeatedly use the word "inappropriate" as my oldest flips through the myriad of Halloween costume catalogues that are flooding my mailbox. I am tired already and it's the first day of October.

Why, one would ask, do I allow her to look through these catalogues, if it is an exercise in frustration? Well, we have been through the stable of princesses, and last year was Hannah Montana, so unless the almighty Disney gods, create a new character the wins my daughter over in the next three weeks, I have no choice but to try and give her some costume inspiration. Because sitting at the kitchen table saying, "What about a doctor? What about a cowgirl? What about A butterfly?", did nothing but give my youngest, who had chosen her costume in three minutes, more ideas and confuse her. And when she came up with the idea of being a bumble bee, I took one look at her in her glasses, saw her looking like the girl from the Blind Melon video after fat camp, and pictured every parent in my age bracket laughing their asses off. I had to do something to get that idea off the table immediately.

My oldest has reached a weird age in childhood. She is only eight, but she is as tall as a ten year-old, so just as with her clothing, her Halloween costume choices include some with a distinctly sexual vibe. Let's take the "Lacy Witch Child's Costume" pictured left. First of all, witches costume are supposed to be black- OK, maybe black and neon green or orange or red. But black and pink? Where else do you see this combination other than lingerie (OK, and poodle skirts, another costume idea that was rejected)? And with the lacy overlay, one can't help but think this is the kid's Victoria's Secret catalogue. Which I'm sure is coming since if Abercrombie can sell kid-sized thongs, Vicky's going to want in on that action. Adding to the boudoir vibe, is the corset-like bodice and the lace arm thingies. What the hell are those? Arm warmers? They could only be more awful if they extended down the top of the hand and had one loop for the middle finder to go through like those horrid fingerless wedding gloves. I cringe.

I also fail to understand how costume designers continue to create costumes that have no sleeves!!! Halloween costumes are for trick or treating, that, unless you live in Manhattan, usually takes place out of doors, in autumn. Sure, kids in California and Florida are psyched, but there is nothing more depressing as a child on Halloween, than having to wear a coat over your carefully selected disguise. And more to the point, if a little girl is dressed in spaghetti straps, other than in the dead of summer, she looks naked. How about just a cap sleeve? Come on!

Ok, the stockings. The last time I, myself, wore a pair of nylons was back in 1999. If grown women have decided that black hose are tacky, then why the hell is an eight year old wearing them? What's wrong with a nice pair of leg-obscuring, opaque tights? Or leggings? Or a hemline that reaches pass the bottom of your ass cheeks when you have to wear it to run around your neighborhood gathering peanut butter cups for your mother? I can't even begin to discuss the shoes. While I loves me some ridiculously high heels, I think, until you are able to drive yourself wherever you need to go while wearing them, they are verboten. And, again, you won't be getting me my tithe of chocolate any faster clip-clapping down the street on wobbly ankles.

This costume is not the only one of it's kind. This is from a pretty tame catalogue, that made it through my rigorous screening process - anything with slutty Dorothy, or slutty Alice in Wonderland went right in the trash. Why this need to over-sexualize our girls at such a young age? Sure, there are kids who are into this stuff, but let them cobble together their own slutwear. Must we pre-fab it for them and try to infect all the others? Why must sexuality be the only aspect of one's self to be let loose on Halloween? The above mentioned "slutty" costumes are quite the rage for the under thirty women if my younger Facebook friends are a decent sample (PS, no I don't want to be friends with you new babysitter, please keep photos of your tonguing your boyfriend to yourself). Why can't it be strength or our sense of humor?

So the costume pictured right is what we wound up with. Now, hold your horses, I see it has no sleeves, but when she volunteered to wear a t-shirt underneath, I knew how much she loved the fact that the skirt lit up (ridiculous, I know). So her wonderful grandmother will be custom making her a black bolero jacket with some kind of crazy-amazing fringe, like sequins or feathers. And notice the leggings and flat shoes. She will also not be wearing those ridiculous hair extensions, which look like deranged peyos.

My kids, they have no idea how good they have it, complaining about which costumes I allow them to get. I'd be psyched ot have even the worst of these ready-made, fabric costumes, no matter how lame. Nothing will erase the memory of wearing those bad, plastic, drug-store costumes as a child, which were really just giant plastic sacks and a mask that made your face sweat. So while I am sad, not one of my daughters took me up on the suggestion of Wonder Woman, for whom I would have lifted my no-bare-shoulders ban, at least neither of them will look like mini-hookers. And, as my youngest pointed out excitedly, "Mommy!! LOOK! The Wonder Woman costume comes in adult sizes."
Now that's an idea.

I'm a Survivor

Thankfully, the dead time between fantastical summer reality programs (The Bachelorette and Top Chef were amazing) and the new fall line-up is finally over and I have a full-to-bursting DVR right now. There were some glitches while we were away for my sister's wedding, and the season premiers of some shows did not tape, but all was made right when my husband, Phil Dunphy, was able to access them through the interwebs with the help of his new girlfriend, I mean, ipad.

Our favorite show, Survivor, is off to a good start this season, full of goat herders and former NFL coaches, and this time they have split the players into an "older" tribe and a "younger" tribe. Probst, who has not gotten the memo yet that trucker caps are so 2002, divided the group by directing "anyone 30 and over to this side, anyone 30 and under to that side". Apparently, we people in our thirties are too smart or too busy to go into the wilderness for a month without toilet paper. As H's doppelganger, John Stewart, put it, "you have shit to do".*

After the tribe had spoken, H and I had our usual conversation, at the beginning of a new season, about how each of us would do on Survivor. I think H would do spectacularly well, with his intelligence, wit and watch-first-then-get-involved philosophy. Me, on the other hand? Not so much. I think if I managed not to piss my entire tribe off during the first day, making plans for building the shelter and assigning their lazy asses to wood-gathering and water-boiling duty, I'm sure I'd wind up in a fight pretty soon thereafter, when my tolerance for twenty-something angst and knee socks** had been surpassed. But, aside from the fact that I wouldn't even make it to the jury and I would be one of those, "Remember her?" faces during the opening credits, I have a lot of other problems with the show that prevent my sending in a tape.

First of all, clothing. Remember, once upon a time, Survivor contestants were allowed to bring a bag of clothing with them? And I'm not talking about sneakers and a swimsuit. People in the earlier seasons had t-shirts, long pants, anoraks, multiple pairs of socks!!! They were even allowed to bring a luxury item (Colby's Texas flag did prove a useful tarp). The once season-specific gimmick of dropping the tribes off with only the clothes on their backs, has now become derigueur. And considering the outfits a lot of these idiots wind up in, it seems the producers don't tell them what day this will be, tricking them with gatherings for "publicity photos", which is how we find men in suits and women in high heeled shoes on a beach in Fiji. So what would I do? Would I show up for every group event dressed in my cargo pants, Yankee cap and water-proof sneakers, with my full-coverage J Crew bathing suit underneath? Or would my vanity get the best of me and I'd wind up a fool, hobbling along the beach, cursing the ruination of the pony shoes? Probably the latter.

And speaking of vanity, the number one thing that would hold me back from kicking some ass and winning the million bucks has just four little letters. H. A. I. R. Hair. It is a many-faceted issue. First of all, the color. It's in the credits, "THIRTY-NINE DAYS! ONE...SURVIVOR!" Except all I hear is "THIRTY-NINE DAYS! A QUARTER INCH OF ROOT!" Sure, sure, it's all cute to see the dark, new growth of young twenty-somethings when they haven't had access to a Clairol highlighting kit, but what's not cute is a stripe of gray running down my scalp if I miss my monthly appointment with Samantha, like some kind of Irish Cruella Deville. I still claim I color my hair for fun not necessity, I don't need hard physical evidence to the contrary.

And not only is my hair color is a problem, but the texture as well. Pretty much every day, poor H wakes up to a female Shaun White wearing a sleep mask and a Frownie. I'm sure the two days a week that I actually do get to tame my main are barely enough to overcome that daily eye sore. So imagine what my hair would look like after a month in tropical humidity, with no shampoo, brushes, hot styling tools or product. And yes, I could tie it back, but it would have to be let loose to dry out once in a while lest I grow a head fungus - of which I was beginning to fear this summer with my constant sweating and bun-wearing when one day H said, "Your hair smells weird." I just imagine releasing it from the elastic to have it puff up like those instantly-expanding Chinese rice noodles.

Once we move past the hair on my head, it's hair in all the other places I'd worry about. How the hell do these women have hairless bikini lines after a month? The research I did claims they only have access to vital medical supplies like sunscreen, insect repellent (which some of them apparently do not know how to use, so bitten up are their legs), saline and prescription medication. Nowhere on the list is a razor. I guess they all invest in laser hair removal which I would need to do, if not for the nether regions, than for the old lady beard I am starting to grow. Long, white hairs like a damn witch!!! H thinks reciting lines from The Three Little Pigs will get him laughs. It goes like this... "Not by the ha-uuhhh! (gasping for air) Hey! That hurt!!" I can deal with armpit, leg and bikini line hair, but when I have a chance of looking like that woman from Throw Momma from the Train, I'm done.

Of course, there are the general hygiene concerns we all think about when we see shows like these. No showers! No toothbrushes! No toilets! That is the one that gets me. A few seasons back, there was an elderly Asian contestant who became so constipated he was taken off the show for medical purposes. That? Would be me. Crapping in a hole in the woods surrounded by strangers? I think I'm going to need an enema, Probst. And I'm sure that all-rice diet is not like packing your intestines full of cement at all. Can my luxury item be prunes?

We all know the biggest reason I wouldn't wind up on this show though is my big, damn mouth and lack of filter. I can just see myself during some endurance challenge, of which I would be the master, (Hand-eye coordination? Not so much. Stubborn streak? A mile wide.) and Probst would say something like, "Mary, her legs are starting to shake, she might be on her way out..." and I'd growl, "SHUT UP, PROBST!!!" And instead of rolling my eyes behind a tribemates back when they were talking smack at tribal council I'd have to set the record straight, which I'm sure would charm and delight and win me friends. I'd be shouting at the back of the recently voted-off, "See you at the finale - LOSER!".

So while it might make great TV for you guys, I think I'm going to stay right here at home where I can mercilessly judge the people dumb enough to put themselves in this situation. Besides, how different is my life from the show? As it is, I am surrounded by crazy people, I never get to shower, often do not brush my teeth (until I remember later in the day), and have overgrown body hair. But I'm not going to win a million dollars. I don't have chin hairs though.

*Not sure what I'm talking about? Google "million moderate march" immediately. "We're here America! But inly until six...we have a sitter."
**Why do these young chicks think knee high wool socks are the way to go when on a tropical isle? Looking to make a fashion statement? A white, sequined gown is all you need. Just ask Ginger.

My Big, Fat, Gay Wedding

Please excuse the long absence, dear readers, but I am still digging out from my sister's wedding in California last weekend. Having to leave the kids for four days, three days after they began school, with all the emergency-form-signing-which-door-are-they-dismissed-from-the-teacher-needs-another-binder-by-tomorrow that includes, was a bit crazy. But wonderful.

And since I am not completely out of the hole yet (I still have to plan and organize my first Girls Scout meeting of the year, which might be earning their Rub Your Leaders Feet and Bring Her More Wine Badge), I will again distract you from my lack of writing with photos. I promise, this nonsense will stop as of next week when all the laundry has been done, the house has been cleaned or eighteen six year-olds have earned their Clean Your Leader's House Badge.

So for those of my readers who are not close friends and family (I love you the best since you are not obligated to read due to interrogations over the dinner table), here are some snaps
from the weekend.

I am allowing my sister her privacy and not posting any of her and her wife Chrissy, but let my assure you, they were both glowing and looked amazing in their white suits.

The first picture is of The World's Funniest Cake Topper. My sister and her wife actually do look like Marcy and Peppermint Patty, so each and every guest snarfed their wine upon seeing this atop the cake. This is the cake I drunkenly ate four pieces of before Tony carried me out to the car.

The second picture is of me, trying not to have a panic attack, waiting for them to come down the aisle. I look all serene, but really I am thinking, "Don't throw up, don't pass out." The ceremony went smoothly and their recessional - Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" was the bomb.

The third picture I put in purely to show how hot my boyfriend is, since you all know he's not my husband at weddings, but my boyfriend. His dancing was a bit stifled though since he was surrounded by gay fabulousness that almost intimidated me off the dance floor. I don't think there was enough vodka in the world to get him on the dance floor during RuPaul's "Supermodel". And don't we look all grown-up and shit? I remember when going to weddings meant wearing some dress I usually wore to sorority formals and hoping there was a drunk bus to the hotel.

So it will be back to business as usual next week come hell or high water. I am back in work gear, back in my yoga pants and baseball cap, but damn, I think that huge brooch I was wearing goes with any outfit.

*And screw you Blogspot, since I have no idea why the format I see during "Post Preview" looks all normal and upon being published, it looks like I put the text and photos in a blender. Whatever.