Um, dude? "We trounced your asses" ? Are you f**king kidding me?

Some days are like that. This is one of them. Got up in the middle of the night (ok, 5:30 am, but it was dark) in order to make it on time to a breakfast meeting for a business group with which I have an affiliation.  As I am especially morning challenged I  did the sniff test on clothes at the top of the pile,  threw on some random items, and decided I was doing great when I left the house only 10 minutes later than planned. 

But it was raining, and dark, and my old van's headlights are so dim, and my night vision so poor,  I could barely find the road.  My semi-rural area is winding and hilly, streetlights are scarce and deer are plentiful.   I did 35mph for a few miles in a 50mph zone...... stayed on the road,  hit no deer and surely pissed off the guy behind me.   Then I noticed my fuel warning light was on- aw shit- I tried calculating how many miles I'd gone since it read "empty", and pulled into the only gas station for miles- an Exxon.  I have not bought gas at Exxon since the Valdez.  Ah, well.  Just this once.  I had no money and had to get $3.00 worth of gas- on a credit card.   But I made it to the meeting, more or less on time.
And it was ok.  Good, if fact.  Meetings aren't really my thing, but this one involves food, and ketchup, and coffee, and that surely helps.  There were some fun moments, some educational moments, some necessary housekeeping type moments and a manageable amount of socializing (for an introvert).

Until the end.  When, for reasons I'm not quite sure I  understand (though it may have something to do with my hamper-clothing),  I found myself cornered by someone who decided it was somehow important to let me know that "we trounced your asses" (in the recent mid-term election).
What?
Dude.
Really?
I don't even know how to respond to that.  "We trounced your asses" is not  a part of my vocabulary. 
I can't even watch high school football games because I find the language of the folks in the stands to be unnecessarily violent and appalling.
To me this person's phrase was rude, unfriendly,  mean-spirited and uncalled for (and did I mention it was morning?).
In essence I was being told in an offensive, gloating, insulting way that this person believed I was a loser.  Because S/he "trounced" my "ass".  It was supposedly about politics- a subject in which I am well-informed- yet this person spoke in a way that most would reserve for a game of team beer-pong.  I suppose this person may have played some violent sport in high school and retained the unfortunate vocabulary. And I find it sad that bully language is so often used by politicians and celebrity political wannabes, but I was caught by surprise here because this group affiliation is made up of professionals and business owners, whom, presumably, are there to represent the service they provide and put their best foot forward.
 I may wear hamper clothes, but I conduct myself in an appropriate manner and  behave respectfully toward others. 
One thing I have learned- you can dress in expensive clothes, have all the "right" credentials and initials after your name- and still behave like an ass.
I am perfectly willing to concede that yes, one party received more votes than the other this time around.  The meaning of that and the reasons and the implications are far too complex to be summed up in a few paragraphs however, and certainly a gloating "We trounced your asses" trivializes the entire process and brings nothing useful to the discussion.
 I ended up leaving the meeting feeling badly, wondering if this was acceptable behavior and something I was expected to endure. 
The rain, the gas, the bully.

I suppose we will always have  bullies, even those dressed up in suits and ties, or wearing dresses and scarves.  But I personally have always preferred co-operative, rather than competitive, games.  So please, if you can't play nice, kindly pack up your marbles and go home.

The mess I make

First, a warning. This post lacks wisdom and is quite literally about the mess I make. I'm working on honesty here, and honestly, my house is a mess. The truth is I don't usually care.
Except that two things happened. One, someone came over (that never happens).  Two, I've been reading more blogs and find that- astonishingly- people frequently post pics of their homes.  From the inside.
And they look like pictures in a magazine.
Who lives like that?

Apparently lots of people.
So between having the inside of my home accidentally observed, and a nagging case of blog pic envy,  I was moved to clean. I got as far as my bedroom closet. Here it is after I'd been working on it for 3 hours.

I thought I'd clean the other rooms too, but I only got as far as picture taking.  I'm posting the pics here in hopes that I'll be shamed into actual cleaning, though I suspect my lack of housekeeping skills may win out .
 
The chalkboard-painted area in my kitchen says "Happy Birthday Mommy". My birthday was in June. The upper cabinets are missing the hardware because I took it off to prime and paint... 9 years ago. The colorful tile backsplash is not tile, it's paint.  A "temporary" fix for the ugly white paperboard that was there when we bought the house.

Below is the dining room. The piano is no longer in use. I was planning on having a "piano-on-the-lawn-sledgehammer-demolition-day" until someone warned me that the strings could snap and take out an eye. Too bad; I think it would have been a fun time.

Below is the living room, which we don't actually use because, well, because it's a mess. We hang out downstairs in the family room, which is a bigger, more comfortable mess, but not pictured here.

  
I should admit that I haven't actually cleaned anything besides daily dishes since the last of the kids left in August. I think in spite of the abundance of kid clutter the house was actually neater when they were all here, and smaller. These days I find I'm too busy running, hiking, reading, thinking, sewing, painting or gluing something to worry about cleaning the house. And since there's no one here but Jim and me to see it...

And anyway February is such a good month for cleaning, why waste a nice October?


P.S. If you are one of the house-beautiful people, and appalled, I apologize for the distress my pics must have caused.  On the other hand, if you are one of the house-messy people, please let me know.  I fear I am alone.

And now for something completely different...

I promise you I will never win any Mother of the Year awards.  Some of you already know that my post of October 1st went wildly, unexpectedly viral, and generated hundreds of comments plus phone calls, emails and facebook messages. Many of the messages complimented my parenting skills. It's all very flattering, but... 

My gang.

The post, if you haven't seen it yet, was actually a letter to my 19 year old daughter in college.  It began as a quick email, sent because I missed her but also because there were a couple of things I wanted to tell her.  Shortly after I sent it off I posted it in my blog, thinking it would be read by the 15 or 20 friends and family members that had been following since I started blogging in July.

Then the post went viral.  As of  today (10/09/2010), it has been seen by more than 250,000 readers, and continues to spread through the U.S., Canada,  Asia, South America, the Middle East, Australia, Europe,  and Africa. I promise you, if I had known, I would have cleaned it up a bit.  I reread it now and cringe at a few of the more awkward sentences.  I might have clarified a couple of points in more detail.  But who knew?

And how do you follow that?
With something completely different.

Because I am really not Ms. Mommy Wisdom, and truthfully a little uncomfortable in the role.  My children (2 boys, 1 girl, & one son's gf) have told me that they think I'm a great mom.  That makes me happy, and I believe it is true in the way that all loving moms are great moms.  But I need to keep it real here.  I'm as flawed as anyone, and if I had to choose a mommy hero it wouldn't be the lady with her act together and 5 great kids, it would be someone more like Anne Lamott, former alcoholic, single mom, and refreshingly honest writer.  Lamott is not a cupcake-making kind of mom, and is unapologetic about it.  Because I have sometimes felt cornered into metaphorical cupcake-making- I feel like she's my Norma Rae.  We less-than-perfect Moms need someone to hold up the UNION sign, only it let it say HUMAN instead.

I want to tell you about a couple of her essays, which I recount here from memory because I'm too lazy to trudge upstairs and find the books.  In one essay Lamott recounts the Christian story of Mary and Joseph, their extended family and fellow villagers making the long trek back home from Jerusalem when Jesus is about 12 years old.  They'd been traveling 3 days when they realize Jesus is missing.  In the large traveling crowd Mary and Joseph assumed he'd been hanging out with his cousins and the other young people. So they are worried and not too happy to have to trek back 3 days to find him.  And when they do, he's gets smart mouthy with them the way boys that age can.  And Mary?  First, relief. Then, in Lamotts wonderful vision, she starts fingering some rocks in her pocket...


In another essay Lamott relays a personal story about a time when she and her young son are traveling, and her car stalls and blocks an intersection. As she tried to start it up again she became flustered by all the horn honking and angry words of nearby drivers.  So she asked her son to take a minute and pray with her.  But it's noisy, so trying to be helpful, he rolled down his window and yelled to the honking drivers "Would you shut the fuck up? We're trying to pray here!"

  If Anne Lamott is my mommy-hero, it is because she is heart-breakingly real, and has the courage to be brutally honest about her experience of life and of parenthood.  Most of us just cannot go all the way there.  Yet here is someone who has met her shadow, befriended it, brought it into light, and survived.  Her gift to the rest of us is to say- look, what you are thinking, what you are feeling,- it's normal, it's human.  You can love your child to pieces- you could be Mary,  and still have moments you want to throw rocks at him, or worse.

Her memoir of the first year of her son's life, "Operating Instructions", should be required reading for all pregnant women and their partners.  Let us all step off the pedestal, please.


Unlike Lamott, I'm not ready to go all out honest. It takes too much courage and energy, and I'm just not there yet.  But I can confess one small thing.  I lied about the cookies. Often. 


 I've included a musical video for those of you who'd like to listen to the sound I'll always associate with a change of form......

 

Letter to my daughter (with an update 9/16/13)

Hello my girl,
I  wanted to say hi and tell you how much I miss you and that I hope your classes are going well and that you are having fun too.
But I also have to have a mommy moment-  bear with me here.  I won't take long, and I won't be saying anything I haven't already said in one form or another,  but it is important.

You may or may not have heard about the NJ college student who killed himself last week because his room-mate had posted videotape of him having sex with another guy.  A terrible, senseless tragedy.

My mommy job requires that I remind you of two essential things:
One:
Nothing ruins your life forever. NOTHING.
Two:
Nothing ruins your life forever. NOTHING.

If that young man had only waited a couple of weeks nobody would have cared- he'd have gotten past it.  People have short memories- life would have gotten better, much better.  His parents and friends? They loved him prior to the tape- they would have loved him afterward too.  A few awkward moments and then life goes on.

But when you are young you don't know that even the awkward moments are fleeting.  On this,  you just have to trust the old people.  Remember when you were really small and cried and cried over something?  Well,  it didn't last.  That's kind of what it's like- awful things happen, you feel like there's a rock in the pit of your stomach, somehow time goes by and it gets better.  I promise you, it ALWAYS gets better.

The students, a girl and boy, who were involved in the taping and posting-- they are being charged with bias crime, invasion of privacy and possibly other things.  Their college life is over.  They will have to live with this death the rest of their lives-- and their families are devastated.  What they did was so wrong- but also so kid-stupid.  Not to mention mean. And so their lives will be different forever- but even so- their families will love them and they will have time enough to hopefully live in such a way as to make meaning from their mistake.

So, my beautiful girl,  never, ever think something is unfixable.  NOTHING you do will ever keep us from loving you.  NOTHING you do could be so awful you can't get past it.

And if someone is mean to you, and it isn't something you can ignore-- seek out people to talk to about it.  Surround yourself with people who are supportive.  If you ever need help and don't know how to ask- try writing a letter instead.  And right now- before you might need such help- think about who you would talk to if needed.  In the midst of turmoil sometimes we don't always think as clearly- having a plan makes it easier to find help in crisis.  And remember there are always alternatives. Always.

Finally, don't be mean.  Don't let other people be mean.
Stand up for the underdog, protect those who aren't as smart or confident or easygoing as yourself.
Treat people's feelings like fragile little puppies- if you play with them- be gentle.

I love you so much and I know you really don't need me to tell you this stuff.... but it's my job.
Love and hugs,
Mommy


Addendum 9/16/13

It's been nearly 3 years since this letter was published, went viral, reached a global audience, and ended up permanently linked from multiple websites including Ellen Degenere's.  Some wonderful students even made it into an anti-bullying video.  (I've included links below).

I am humbled and grateful to all those who reached out to tell me what my letter meant to them-- thank you.  I am so glad that the letter continues to reach a wide audience.

There has been some positive news- teen pregnancy is down, gay marriage approval is increased and there are more successful anti-bully programs then ever.  New Jersey passed new statewide rules which prohibit public school athletes, coaches and even fans from using  language against the gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or disability of an athlete.  When I was young it was common in sports to hear words like "pussy", "faggot", and "retard".  Today it will get you kicked out of the game or out of the stands.  So there is progress.

Unfortunately a quick look at some statistics indicates a disturbing increase in suicide rates among young people this year (2013). I leave it to the experts to speculate on the causes, but clearly there is still work to be done so that our children can grow up feeling hopeful and supported.

On a lighter note, I am delighted to report that the original reader of this letter, my daughter, graduated last June and is currently happily employed in the field of her choosing. She and her siblings are all out of the nest and doing well, for which I am very, very grateful.

http://www.ellentv.com/2010/10/14/a-touching-letter-to-a-daughter/

http://youtu.be/zs8f-bPdya

Paddle with your left to go right

On labor day Monday, I conquered the Delaware. Well, first my brother Joe from Pa invited Jim and I to come up and go kayaking. It would be us, he said, and Marybeth (my sister-in-law), and a friend of theirs.
Now Jim has gone kayaking a number of times with our daughter, Addie, and they've always enjoyed it. In fact, last summer Jim was pleased and honored when Addie had wanted to spend her last weekend before college with him, kayaking on the Delaware.
But me? I have never gone, and I have never been tempted. A little plastic boat? Paddles? Um, no thanks. Except. This is my 50th year, and I made a vow to do new things in honor of that milestone. I'm making an effort to move out of my comfort zone, attempt things I've never done, say yes more often than no. I want to do 50 new things, and I'm a little behind. So, I took a deep breath and said "Sure, Joe, we'd love to go kayaking". Ugh.
2 hours later we're at the Delaware river, somewhere in Matamoras (I think). We've each got our kayaks, paddles, life-jackets, water, and whatever other gear we think necessary (for Jim, trail mix, for me, my cell). Then come the instructions:
Keep it straight- you don't want to go into the rapids sideways.
okay, makes sense.
Paddle with your left to go right.
what?
Paddle with your right to go left.
what?
Keep the water-shieldy things on the outside of your hands.
okay, what was that about left and right?
If you get stuck on a rock, push off slowly.
right, what?
just stay with us, and stay right under the bridge, then left.
left, right. your side, or my side? wait, which left? what?
There I am with everyone telling me what to do and all I could think was "oh jeez I'm gonna be going in circles". Let me say this- I am not afraid of the river. I am not afraid of water. I have a healthy respect for it, having grown up around the ocean, but I am not afraid of it. I had my life jacket on, and I wasn't worried about getting hurt.
So here is my secret:
I am afraid, horribly horribly scared- of making a fool of myself. I am self-conscious gone viral. I am hopelessly mired up in how I might look to others. So when I'm thinking "Oh jeez I'm gonna be going in circles" I'm not worried about being stuck in one place. I'm worried that people will laugh at me. That I will be the only one who can't figure out how to make the damn boat move.
And this is why my daughter has so often been my hero and always an inspiration- because she does not have one single self-conscious bone in her body. She just does stuff, and who cares how it looks. And she dives into life fully and courageously and with buckets full of joy.
So. I did my best to channel my brave adventurous unselfconscious daughter and go. Just go.


Then I went. And it was fun. I didn't go in circles. In fact, it only took a minute to feel comfortable, competitive even. And I managed to keep my kayak straight through the rapids without much trouble.
Floating slowly could be a little boring, but then the rapids appear and those were lots of fun. I got splashed and the weather was wonderful and the day turned out to be a perfect goodbye to summer. We even had a small bit of kayak-losing, shoe-floating, never-happened-before-drama among our party (not me) which added some flavor to the day.
Here is what I learned:
When you tell me to go left or right I will just look at you completely stupid while I try to translate that idea to my muscles, which, given the further confusion of the paddles working in opposite directions, what would you expect? However- when you tell me to keep the kayak straight with the waves knocking it this way and that- well- I just do it, with no problem at all, because my muscles get it.
Am I glad I went?
Absolutely. And I would do it again, and I would prefer the rapids be bigger even.
It was a very wonderful day, a new adventure, a new memory, and one fewer thing I have to do this year..... because

I am fifty years old, and I have conquered the Delaware.

Alice, Harriet, and Fried Green Tomatoes

Some of you know that Jim and I have a newly emptied nest, with our youngest at school in California, our middle guy off starting his life in Washington, DC, and our eldest having been on his own for some years now, living and working elsewhere in NJ.
So what do you do with an empty nest?
You fill it.
With birds.
Meet Alice and Harriet, more formally known as Alice and Harriet II. The original Alice and Harriet were our daughter's pets when she was 7 or 8 years old, named for Alice-in-Wonderland and Harriet-the-Spy. In hindsight we guess they were not particularly healthy, as they died just a few weeks after we brought them home. We had a proper funeral, which Addie, our daughter, remembers. It was raining and dreary and one of her brothers played taps on his trumpet as we laid the birds to rest in a corner of our garden.

We are pleased to say that the new Alice and Harriet appear to be healthy and full of personality and very much serving the purpose of adding life and noise into our little home.
Alice, blue, is the curious one (fancy that) but Harriet, green, is the more brave.

And I nearly killed them today.

I'd stopped at a farm stand for locally grown fruit and vegetables, and decided I would finally try making some fried green tomatoes- which I've been talking about doing ever since reading the book "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe" by Fannie Flagg many years ago. (You may remember the movie, made in 1991, called simply "Fried Green Tomatoes", starring 4 excellent actresses- Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates, Mary-Louise Parker, and Mary Stuart Masterson. If you haven't seen it, invite some friends and indulge. It's a wonderful movie filled with great performances.)

So, as this is my 50th year and I am working hard to actually do things rather than merely talk about doing them, it was time to try frying green tomatoes.

I found a recipe online which was pretty simple- cut the tomato into thick, 1/2 inch slices, season with salt and pepper, dip in milk, then flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, and fry in olive oil for 4 to 6 minutes on each side.
I sliced and they looked delicious already.
I coated and I was getting hungry.
I fried- 4 minutes- and burned. Scorched. Blackened. Crisped.
Ugh.
And then....... the smoke.
Dense thick smoke filled the whole floor and all I could think was "Respiratory systems! Birds have teeny little respiratory systems! They can't breathe; they're gonna dieee!"
And I ran and opened every window and door and yelled for Jim to bring me a fan, then grabbed the smoking pan and took it outside, where it continued cooking for a few minutes while I wondered if the neighbors were watching and if I was a bird murderer and how would I break the news to Addie.

Well- the jury is out. The smoke has cleared, the birds appear to be ok, but if they die in the next day or two we'll all know the quilty party. Fortunately, as Jim pointed out, they are under warrenty for another 13 days. And if we do have to get another pair, I'll be soliciting some new name ideas.

As for the fried green tomatoes? I can't believe I hadn't tried them sooner. Burned as they were, they were delicious. I will surely make them again, but with the heat set a bit lower, and a fan in the room at the ready.

Menopause cured my bug phobia

I have been phobic about bugs all my life. I can remember wearing my mother's high heels around the house because I wanted to be as far off the floor as possible just in case something was crawling. I wore long sleeves, long pants, and a hat one hot summer so nothing would land on my skin. When I had my first apartment I made my Dad drive across town to kill a spider in my shower. I once spent a day on my porch because there was a dead moth on a wall and no one around to get rid of it. I kept bug spray with me in the house at all times, two cans- one that sprayed wide in the air and one that shot a targeted stream. Jim (my husband) joked that he was going to make me a holster. I once made a painting of a cicada as a kind of self-therapy, though it helped a little the effects lasted only about as long as it took to paint. I screamed and shook and panicked if something crawled on me. Twice I had to go to the emergency room because the panic was so intense. And it seemed that no matter where I was, I could always spot a bug when no one else could see it. My shrink said it was because I was in the habit of "scanning the environment for danger". This was no- "ew, a bug" phobia- this was the real thing. But no more. I began noticing about a year or so ago that my panic seemed to have gone from a roar to a rumble. I became increasingly calm. I watched, in awe and wonder, as a spider walked across my dining room ceiling during dinner one night, and I had no desire to flee, or to even stop eating. My wonder was at my physical response, or lack of one. This, I remember thinking, is how normal people respond to a spider on the ceiling. Lately I find myself ignoring the crawly creatures when I can, or removing them without so much as a shudder. And the only thing to which I can attribute this relatively sudden and complete 360 is the hormonal changes of a post menopausal body. I cannot explain it otherwise- which to my mind confirms my long-held belief that we are much more influenced by and at the mercy of our physicality than many of us would like to think. We humans go to great lengths to convince ourselves that we are in control; that if we have "lost it" we are mentally weak or lazy and simply need to "get a grip". But science has again and again confirmed my suspicion that, unnerving as it is, much of who we are is simply beyond conscious control, impervious to mindful manipulation. Ultimately, we really are what we eat. And what we secrete. And the unique and particular combination of organic materials with which we are born.