We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!

I discovered my kinship for gay men when I was at Emerson College.  Emerson was dedicated to the arts.  It was a place where performance ruled and people got to re-invent themselves and some magic happened.  From my point of view, it was a safe place where people could discover and explore being gay.  I befriended many of these guys and we danced the night away, watched and studied every move Liza Minnelli made in Cabaret.  We went to parties, trying to out do and out funny each other at every turn.  They sharpened my funny bone and helped make it what it is today. 

After my brief, but wondrous stint at Emerson I moved back to New York City, where, you guessed it, my love for all boys gay continued.  They were everywhere and I couldn't have been happier.  The guys I meet were creative, scathingly funny and loved to go out and have fun - traits that I admired and thrived on.  My jobs seemed to draw them to me.  I worked one summer as a bar-tender at private parties on Fire Island.    Another job I had was the office girl for a small PR firm owned and operated by gay men.  One Halloween my husband and I dressed up as Axl and Slash from Guns-n-Roses.  I was Axl, and I wore a flannel shirt, bandanna in my hair and a pair of white, skin tight bike shorts. To give the costume that final touch of authenticity,  I stuffed my shorts to re-create Axl's sweet and prominent bulge.  We went to a wild gay Halloween party that night -  I got felt up by gay boys all night long.

Ahhhh, those were my gay salad days.  I miss those days so very much.

I don't know what happened.  I moved out of the city stopped working in restaurants, had a couple of kids and here I am now, without a single gay friend in my town. 

I'd like to think for a married woman with two kids, I have a happening and solid social life.  But, I am missing my gays.  There is nothing in the world like a gay friend - and I need one -one that lives in the same town as me.  I have been on the search lately - I feel as though I am looking to pick some gay men up for fun and friendship.  But either my gaydar is sorely out of practice or there just aren't many rotating in my circle.  I have come across a few gays, but either they live too far away or the timing wasn't right.

Then at the supermarket last week, I spotted a gay couple - with a kid!  I tried to pace our food shopping together, but that didn't work because I didn't want to look like a stalker.  I kept trying to find a reason to talk to them, "Oh, I love the peaches they have in store right now, so tender!"  But everything seemed forced.  I even considered walking up to them and just laying my cards out on the table, "Hi!  I'm Stephanie!  I love Elizabeth Taylor and Rufus Wainwright and I really would love to be your friend."  I wasn't feeling it.  By checkout time, our paths never crossed and I wistfully watched my chance at gay love drive away.

 These guys could be militant right-wing Republicans for all I know but I haven't stopped thinking about how I am going to talk to them next time I see them.  It is not that big of a town.  Everyone has to eat, they will be at the supermarket again.

The big "O"

  Our neighbor's daughter was selling magazines as a fundraiser and she never comes to hit us up for anything, so I felt compelled to buy.   I broke down and I bought "O" the Oprah magazine.  The magazine choices were slim and I despise any sort of parenting magazine for many reasons. I am convinced that their purpose is to make you a paranoid freak about your child's health and give you an inferiority complex that you are never a good enough mother.   My primary distaste for parenting magazines comes from the abundance of recipes that make food into an object.  It isn't enough to just feed your children healthy and daily.  These magazines pressure mothers into thinking we are supposed to entertain our children with each meal.  My hackles are raised at the sight of  'pine cone treats' which is some cracker, cheese, almond concoction to represent a pine cone, "spooky fingers", with red nails made from fruit leather or any sandwich made into animals or smiley faces.

 It depresses me to know that there are writers (ahem!) who have been trying to get their work published in a national magazine, so they can get paid, and the editorial board at Conde Nast is deciding, "Hmmm.... we could run this funny and poignant piece about women being supportive of each other at the playground or we can do a story about Halloween and make grapes into eyeballs!  Eyeball grapes it is!"

 I open the latest "O" and one of the feature stories is about the women behind the scenes at the Oprah show.  I start looking at their makeover outfits and doing the traditional scoffing at the price of the dresses (because really, who pays $620 dollars for a dress?! Not even my wedding dress cost that much). 

Then I start reading their job titles and ages of the women featured in the article.  Senior Supervising Producer - 43, Production Designer - 45, Senior Booking -39.  As I read on I started on the dangerous and unproductive downgrade of questioning and comparing myself to these women.   Before I knew it I had begun the traditional questioning of,  "what the heck am I doing with my life?" and ending with "why don't I have a Very Important Job like them -  and we are the same age!?"

I don't know why I make that wrong turn into the valley of comparing my life's journey against another.  It is one thing to be inspired by accomplishments and set goals for myself.  That sounds healthy and productive.  It is not productive to keep going over in my head stewing that I am not a senior producer for the Oprah show, and how come I am not going to a television studio everyday working on some seemingly glamorous job.  The thing is, it's not like I ever had dreams pursuing a career as a television producer - so I am not sure where this jealousy is coming from. 

Or maybe I do know where it is coming from.  I have gotten into the bad habit of comparing myself to others and telling myself the untruth that 'they' are better than I am.  That she is more successful and better.  Maybe it started when I became a mother and all of the bravado and cocky self confidence I had in my 20's was crushed.   I was so unsure of myself as a new mother.  My brain was filled with a constant internal voice of self doubt.  I was convinced that every other woman out there was giving birth with less tearing, breast feeding better, skinnier than me, their houses were cleaner and generally happier and more joyful about mothering than I was.  I resented any mommy blogger or writer out there who said she wrote with their baby perched happily on her lap or grabbed what ever time they could write while their baby napped.  My first child napped in about the time it took for me to take a crap and when she was on my lap, I couldn't write if you held a gun to my head.

 I don't think I wrote a sentence for two years or said a kind word to myself either.

Years later, that droning self-doubt in my parenting abilities has slowly evaporated.  I am feeling that confidence again - it is like a muscle that I have to work at every day - and boy was it flabby!  I kick-ass and I remind myself of this fact on a daily basis.   I laugh and do that old Saturday Night Live sketch with Stewart Smalley, where I say, "I'm good enough.  I'm smart enough.  And gosh darnnit, people like me!"  But I do have to work on that demon of comparing myself to others.

Mundane Monday

When Sophie was an itty bitty and Katie was a twinkle in my eye, we all took a trip to visit friends who had two children.  Their kids were potty trained, going to school kinda kids.

 I love staying at a friend's home, because you spend some good meaty time together.  You are like roommates on good behavior for a few days, negotiating eating, cooking and bathrooms.  I enjoy being a guest (and having them in my home) because I snag a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a family. I can see what they have in their fridge, how they discipline (or don't) and a new aspect that I discovered on that visit - how laundry was handled.

At some point I had to put some clothes in the drier that got wet from the pool.  Simple enough.  I entered the laundry area, and I was floored by the huge, overflowing piles of clothes that spilled everywhere, from the tops of the washing machines, to the floor and out of various hampers.  Surveying the area it wasn't clear what was clean, dirty or a sedimentary layer from the Paleozoic area.  I tossed my damp clothes into the drier and stole one more look at the mayhem. I stood in the hallway viewing the carnage, mentally wagging the finger of  judgement at my friend's laundry room.

I talked about this wreck of a laundry room for weeks after the visit.  I made sweeping pronouncements to my husband that we would never, ever let our laundry situation get that far our of hand.  "I mean, we have a washer and dryer right in the house!  It couldn't be more accessible than that!  Walk three feet, toss some soap and clothes in - boom - we're done!" 

It is easy to be judgemental.   I did it more when the girls were little and I was unsure of my own strength.  I hadn't built up the self-confident parenting muscles that I have today.  I still judge though - it is a bad habit and I am cutting down.   Really.

But back then,  I was so clueless.  I had no idea the shit storm of dirty clothes that would follow with two kids.  At the time of laundry judgement Sophie was a baby.  There were barely three of us in the house. We hardly made a mess.

Cut to -  my day today and the large slice of humble pie I ate and the hulking giant of laundry that needed to be slayed.   I spent three hours this afternoon sorting, folding and washing clothes.   A small dent was made before I had to stop and pick up the girls at school.  I just came back from round two.  One more hour and I have destroyed the laundry beast.  At least this time I had a glass of wine to drink to ease the pain of the calluses that formed on my fingers from all of the folding.

 Now we have the problem that since every single piece of clothing in the house is clean - we don't have enough drawer space to fit it all.

So to my friends whose laundry room I judged - I am sorry. If you guess it is your home that I am writing about - I owe you a few rounds of drinks - and the free reign make fun of me the entire time.

As the days go by

A good friend called me this morning.  We have known each other since we were single and untethered  and luckily we embarked on this parenting journey at the same time.  We live a parallel existence, miles apart.   We talk often - we are a life raft for one another in this often overwhelming storm of mothering. 
"Give me some inspiration Stephanie!" she said.    I laughed.  I snorted.  I picked up the 409 and got to cleaning the crumbs and smears of peanut butter on my kitchen counters.  I usually clean while we talk, because I hate the drudgery of cleaning.  I talk on the phone while I clean so I can be distracted by the soul-suck of daily housework .

"Give me inspiration - Wow!"  I said, "Right now, I don't think I have any.  I am knee deep in just regular living.  We have yard work to do.  Laundry to fold.  Kid birthday parties to attend.  Everything is so...regular.  Normal.   I am not inspiring.  Not right now." 

It got me thinking about that great Talking Heads song, Once in a lifetime, that I have found myself often singing since I became a mother.  When the girls were barely two and a newborn, and I was in the endless custodial world of diapers and onsies and healing from birth I would find myself bleary eyed staggering through the house singing , "This is not my beautiful house!  This is not my beautiful wife?!"  The song got me through some low times.  I find myself turning to it again, but a new line keeps playing on repeat in my head, "You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?"

When did this normal existence happen?  How did I get here?

 As much as I fool myself into thinking that I am still this subversive, city dwelling twenty something, I am most certainly not.   I am a married woman with two children.  My husband and I have been together for 15 years.  We have a mortgage.  I drive a Subaru station wagon.  I belong to the frickin' PTA!  I cannot get more regular and normal than that.

 It is a mind-trick, this normal adult existence.  I carry around with the me the dorky, awkward eighth grader that I was and other times I am the girl in her 20's who rents an apartment and waitresses and I have all the time in the world to figure out who I want to be when I grow up.  Maybe I am starting to experience that time quickening phenomenon.  The cliche is true -  life speeds up.   And since forty is a reality, I know that sooner than I realize, fifty will be here.  And that is a whole other world of adulthood - there is no denying your age at that point.   I still have a threadbare safety net of youth left.  My kids are in elementary school, I can pass for thirty-nine.  But not for much longer. 

My questioning should not be confused with being unappreciative.  I am deeply grateful for our health and home and the butterflies and the financial fact that we can afford to buy organic foods and shoes when we need.  I love that the girls and I ride our bikes in the morning to school.  I love the ritual of afterschool snacks and dinners together.  And even though I could do without the housework, I love our home that Cliff and I and the girls are creating together. I have no desire to pack us all up and live off the grid in Canada.  I am happy with where I am. 

 I am simply dumbstruck with the feeling that this normal life seems to have snuck up on me.

Yes!

Last week the girls and I took our annual tri-state area spring break road trip. For the past three years, I pack up the car and visit my parents in Connecticut and then fan out to various friends in the New York tri-state area.  I have close, generous friends who open up their homes to the three ring circus of the Lazenby girls. I try to be a good house guest, bringing food and wine and my own bedding. I love this trip and I want to be asked back by my friends.

 Part of my purpose of the trip - besides trying to fill a week off from school - is to expose my girls to my homeland and the people that I come from.   This corner of the Northeast is not multi-cultural  - it is very white.   I feel that it is important for the girls to get into a city and hear some noise, see people in different colors and hear forgein languages being spoken. It is a good lesson for myself too, in how to handle questions on the subway asked in a loud kid voice of - "Mommy, everyone in here has darker skin than us - do you see?" I see.  And it is true. 

 I started this trip years ago because I needed to prove to myself that I could still get a glimmer of that person I was before I had children.  I did it to prove to myself that I could be independent. Even though I was with them every moment of the day, taking a trip like this was the great duality - I was in a place where I remembered the free, childless person I was, yet, I was very responsible for these little people that were my children. 

It takes balls and planning and patience to road trip for a week with young children. Most day I have two out of the three.  We don't have video screens in the car, so we do it without movies or downloaded television shows.  The girls pack books and pencils and notebooks and with the advent of Pandora we can sing Katy Perry and Madonna for miles and miles.  I may love my dirty rock & roll, but having this girls has allowed me to indulge in my love of sugar pop music. 

This trip is important because it gives me a break from being a daily task master.  A barking sargent, hoisting them (and myself) out of bed and getting ready for school.  I feel as though I say "No" too much as a mother.  No to junky snacks, no to play dates because it is a school night, no to television.  As a mother, I am constantly monitoring, the girls and myself.  I am monitoring their manners, how much organic fruit they eat, how much sleep they get.   On these trips it is good reminder to myself that saying "YES!"  is fun for the girls - and myself.  

 Sophie shared with me her journal that she kept for our road trip.  Do you know the moments that stuck out to her for our week away?  The fact that at the aquarium she and Katie got Doritos and popcorn from the vending machine!  She thought staying up late with me and our friends to watch American Idol was "so cool!"  That although he was "wicked bummed" that she had hiccups at the Museum of Natural History it was "way awesome" that they got ice cream with sprinkles from a street vendor and they could sit on a bench and watch the people go by. 

"Yes" is a great word.  This trip really was a great reminder to use it more often in my daily life as a mother.

Oven Lovin'

For the past few years I have been cooking with an oven that works intermittently at best. My range has only two working burners. It started three Christmases ago, while I was roasting some sort of huge hunk of meat, and my oven began beeping with an ominous repeating display of F-5.

What F-5 meant was my oven just stopped working and I had eight people at my house to feed and the roast beast was medium raw at best.

Over the years I have learned how to adapt to my stove's incompetence. I know that once I turn my oven on, I may have to keep it on for hours at a time, because once I turn it off, it is done for the rest of the day. I have kept my oven on for eight hours at a stretch. I have been cooking on a daily basis, for my growing and always hungry family of four with only two burners. It has been a frustrating experience, because I really do enjoy cooking and feeding my family and friends. Some people out there that hate cooking. I am not one of them. (My hatred for CLEANING however will be another post!)

When owning a home, there is a never ending list of working parts to purchase and maintain just to keep the house treading water - such as a furnace (a luxury in New England) and washing machine. Unfortunately, the stove worked it's way down the list. We knew we needed a new one, but I kept muddling through, crossing my fingers while cooking our traditional Thanksgiving lasagna that F-5 didn't appear and shut the entire operation down.

Until the last six months. That frickin oven has taken a nose dive. The remaining two burners began to do what I called, "The Big Finish". I would turn the burner off, there would be a pause, and then, there would be a final poof! of blue gas flames. Safe. Very safe. And then the oven. I could not use it if I had the burners on - it was one or the other. And then when it was on, it would be inconsistent at best. Sometimes it stayed on long enough to roast a full chicken dinner. And then sometimes it would stop after 15 minutes, leaving me to slow roast brownies for hours using only the residual heat to complete the task.

I could not take it any longer. I meet Cliff at the door one Friday night like a crazy lady, screeching to the tune of "we're not going to eat dinner until 11o'clock tonight and if we don't get a frickin oven pronto! We're going to be eating take-out until it happens!"

And now, after much research and haggling on my part with salespeople (I love the haggle!) we just had a gorgeous, shiny, black stove delivered first thing Thursday morning.

I have to admit, it is taking some getting used to. The power and precision of the four burners. The oven turns on and off. And on again! I find myself a little clumsy when cooking. My rythym is off. It is like having a new lover. We need to get used to each other. It keeps catching me in the corner of my eye. I giggle when I walk by - I have even caught myself saying, "Oh, hi. Well, lookit you here. All new and wanting to be touched. I'll be right over." Excuse me for a moment. I have some cooking to do.

Because I'm worth it

I began playing with my hair color at thirteen by dousing it with Sun-In, hoping to get those blond highlights so coveted by most American white girls. By high school I was making the cool girl pilgrimage to Astor Street haircuts in The Village in New York City, trying out oh so 80’s asymmetrical cuts and painting my hair with uneven blond peroxide chunks.

My best friend is a hair stylist and when I first meet her in 1991, she often needed a hair model. That means whatever technique she was learning at the time, she had to try it out on a real person, not just a mannequin head. In turn that model received a free cut or color. Since I had little money, and she was -and still is - fantastic company, I would ride my bike up to where she worked at Vidal Sassoon’s on 5th Ave and 59th street. I found it very NYC exciting, locking my bike across the street from the Plaza Hotel and walking into a busy, uptown salon dressed in my grunge uniform of baby doll dress and bike shorts and Doc Martins. An assistant would bring me a coke to drink and my girlfriend and I would laugh and cackle as she worked on my hair. My hair was very short for a few years, and a range of colors.

My hair has grown longer since then, but I have remained a (drum roll for pun) die hard hair colorist - red being my preferred shade. I have been happily coloring my hair for twenty years. It is a fun part of dressing up and being a girl, in the same way that I wear lipstick and jewelry every day. But one new color has crept in that I want no part of – grey. I am late in the game of getting those first grays. Only because of genetics have I been able to put off the inevitable this long. But, they have started to creep in, through the swirl of my cowlicks at my temples, sticking up at the top of my head, like a grey middle finger.

My body is playing a new trick on me, this aging thing. This in your face grey hair thing. I don’t like it. Not one stinking bit.

I have been through the major body re-shifting after having two kids. I’ve experienced massive weight gain and weight loss and the various flabby body parts that I have tried to tone and keigel over the past few years. I’ve come to a place of acceptance and pride at the magic that my body has performed. I try to be aware of being positive in how I talk about my body, especially having daughters. They will never hear me call myself that awful, ugly word – fat.

I am at peace with these changes that having a baby has done to my body. I am not surprised at most aspects of getting older. Body signs like the classic small crinkles around the eyes. I learned from reading newsstand tabloids that as Demi Moore ages, her knees sagged (she had a lifting procedure to correct this abnormality) so I was prepared for this knee, skin drooping thing to happen. And of course, I know that humans get grey hair as they age, so it is no great surprise that I too will join the ranks and have graying hair.

However, I find grey hair to be the most unsettling part of this growing up process. I think that I can gracefully handle when the sweet crinkles become lines – I don’t see spending money on Botox or silicone fillers. But I will be very happy to color my hair for as long as I can. I have yet to be an all-over, shimmering, golden blond.