Moms in the City - Beyond the Real Housewives of New Jersey

[This Moms in the City column was published in the Portsmouth Herald. The archive of past columns can be found here.]

When I began this column in July of 2008, I wrote about going away for the weekend. It was the first time in ages, maybe even since the girls were born, that I had actually left for days to be with friends. I came to the realization that I needed to fuse together who I was before motherhood and the woman I was becoming after the rush of toddlerhood. I knew I was putting myself back together differently than I was before — I had realistic expectations — there was no turning back into who I used to be.

I wanted to make sure I retained the essence of myself that I felt I had lost in the early years of baby raising. I felt so much more desperate then — desperate for time, space to myself, desperate to put the pieces of myself back.

At the time I first wrote the column, my girls were barely 3 and 5 and I was still potty training Katie. Sophie was just ending preschool, Katie, was just about to start. At the start of this column I had yet to shed my post-partum baby weight. This summer, I proudly rocked a bikini for the first time in years. And the truth is — it does not feel like yesterday. It does feel like two years have gone by. Think of all the mundane heaps of laundry, dishes and trips to the grocery store in two years.

Add onto that all of the triumphs and disappointments with children, a marriage, friends, family and everything in-between. A great deal happens in two years.

The good thing is — many things remain the same. Cliff and I are still the main planets that Sophie and Katie revolve around. We haven't moved or changed jobs — these are constants that I am grateful for.

I love being able to reflect on who I was struggling to be, while I was still in the throes of full-time stay-at-home parenting. It is great perspective to realize that the struggles that seemed so monumental at the time — like potty training or negotiating a Mommy and Me group are a distant memory. Maybe those early baby years were like being in high school — intense and brief where it is difficult to grasp the idea that one day soon they will be over. I don't glorify high school or taking care of babies. I wouldn't want to go back to either time in my life.

At 8 and 6, Sophie and Katie are real live people. They are smart and funny and amazingly they have the same personalities as when they were 3 and 5. Some days when I slow down I am awestruck that I have elementary school children with after-school activities, homework, and their own path of negotiating friends. It all feels so very grown-up. I go to PTA meetings , which is something my 20-something self never imagined doing. Two years later, getting away for a night out or a weekend with friends is much easier. I am back to working outside of the house for the first time in seven years, and happily I realize that I write more now than I did when I was that 20-something who couldn't imagine herself as a mother of two. Let's see what the next two years bring.

Inspiration Monday - AHS

When Lost was over last year, there was a gaping void in my television viewing landscape. I was  devoted to Lost – Cliff and I would spend hours discussing the episodes each week and I faithfully read this blog, Long Live Locke, which provided thought provoking, insightful and witty analysis of each episode  So, I have been a little down and nothing seemed to fill the space left by Sawyer, Kate and John Locke. And Desmond.  Mmmmm, Desmond… I believed in those characters - I respect the writing on Lost – it seemed as though the writers took the position that the audience was smart, and that we cared about what was happening. 

To fill the hole left by the smoke monster, Cliff and I took up watching, True Blood.   Perfectly entertaining.   I’ll keep watching it, but I am not obsessed or inspired. And then I came across…

American Horror Story.   Or more specifically, Jessica Lange as Constance on American Horror Story.   My, oh my.

I am hooked on this show – it has elements that I love in smart, escapism T.V. like great actors and dead, creepy twins, but I wait each episode just to see Jessica Lange.  She is the most brilliant, sadistic and sexy southern belle I have ever had the pleasure of watching.   I have loved her since Tootsie, but I sadly wrote her off years ago after viewing her new face in the movie, Big Fish.  I do judge great actresses when they get such obviously bad plastic surgery.  I assume that all actresses have some work done - but her face made me sad.  It was Bruce Jenner too much.   But now, with American Horror story – wow.  All is forgiven. 

Whoever writes for her is from the twisted school of Tennessee Williams meets Stephen King.  I am in love with every line that she delivers.  She steals the show – and that is saying a great deal when she is competing with the juicy likes of Dylan McDermott’s bare ass.  Have you seen?

Bless this Mess

I know I run the risk that it is pathetic and potentially boring to post about the overwhelming mess that is my house.  Maybe even sadder is the fact that this domestic havoc is in the forefront of my brain and I cannot see anything else.  I feel like a domestic nincompoop because of my inadequacies in taming the papers that have mushroomed on every available surface and the grit that is pebbled all over my floors.  Everywhere I look I see visual chaos - stacks of books, clothes that need to be folded and put away, drawers that need to be emptied out and organized and pictures that need to be artfully hung.

I fear that I am one pile away from being a guest star on Hoarders.

I may be slightly exaggerating - It really isn’t that bad.  There aren’t vermin making habitrails out of piles of O magazine.  I am not clutching to cracked Christmas ornaments and baby clothes crying that someday my daughters will want that shit-stained onesie for her own child.

The party of summer is over, the mêlée of the girls successive birthdays in August and September is complete (except for Katie’s thank you notes – Arrrgh!) and the groove of school is upon us. My house is a mess.  A time-consuming, fixable mess that I resent having to clean.

I'll get to it later.

Inspiration Monday - Feelin' Fosse

Today is the debut of a weekly post for my blog - Inspiration Monday.  It will feature whatever is getting my juices flowing, or makes me dance or feel like myself.  It could be music, a book I am reading or maybe a pair of boots that make me feel like I can kick some ass.   I am inspired by the challenge of searching out and cultivating what inspires me.  Too often grown-up life can be filled with drudgery and an endless list of have-to-do's.  We all need to feel giddy and - inspired.

 Being my birthday, it is a time that I look back at where I've been and look forward to where I am going.    I have two pieces of music and performance that represent those feelings. 

The looking back is a clip of Liza Minnelli in the movie Cabaret.  There was a time that I was obsessed with all things Liza, Cabaret and anything by Bob Fosse.  Watching with song, I realized that this is still the case.  I love her dance, the song, and truth be told, I would wear that outfit everyday if I could.  We all have our comfort zone - and Liza's outfit hits it for me.  I get a zing watching it too, because I am still the girl who first discovered the magic of Liza and Fosse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxmz3RcNNBE

The second one comes from my friend Deb - she introduced me to this video and I cannot stop watching it.  I don't really know any other music by Bat for Lashes, but I cannot get enough of the song and the sinister vibe of this video.

http://youtu.be/EICkZWEzFGE

What inspires you this week?

I had some time to think without the televsion to distract me

Inspired by the recent snowfall and power outage, coupled with my impending birthday, I have become a bit reflective.   I now realize a few crucial points about the person I am – in the cold weather…

I may love watching Little House on the Prairie - but I do not in any way want to live like Laura Ingalls in the 21^st Century.  I like my heat cranked up, television, Pandora music and light switches. 

Most of my parenting life is ruled by having to change at a moment’s notice.  There are many daily situations that I am very go with the flow – except when it comes to losing power.   I lose all sense of…sense.  I hate waiting on the unknown of, “When the frick am I going to be able to take a hot shower??!!”   I hate losing power in my home.  It makes my home cold, and uncertain and lonely and a place I don’t want to be.  This then makes me sad because I love my home, so I feel betrayed.  And cold and edgy.  And then I am at the mercy of some repair person and I have to wait God knows how long for my gosh-darn heat to come back.    And then I yell at the girls, making me feel guilty and like a bad mother.  A cold, shivering, edgy, guilty, bad mother.

I don’t really care for the smell of a fireplace in my house.  To me, a fireplace is a dirty, smoky, pain in the ass.  There, I said it.   I’d give you my fireplace if I could.    I know this goes against the hallmarks of living in New England, and all of the seasonal, “Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but inside it’s so delightful.”  And when the weather gets blustery, people up here just love putting another log on the fire and getting cozy.  Not me.  I’ll just turn up the heat, thank you very much.   I enjoy a fire enough if I am at someone else’s house or in some ye olde rustic setting, but not in the living room of my ranch house.   When I was growing up in New York the local television station, WPIX,  would show a loop of the Yule Log burning away on Christmas Eve.    That’s my idea of a fireplace in my home.

I am not a hardy New Englander.  So in the colder months I will continue to remember the advice that a friend who is Swedish said to me, and I hold it dear in my New York heart – “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.”

Excuse me while I go buy some more silk long underwear and furry outerwear that I will keep on until May.

It ended up

Cliff sends me a text this afternoon.  It says this, “Free flu vaccine today at the high school.  Can you take the girls.”  I did my normal, which is think for about a second and I answered quickly with my first reaction.  “I’m gonna see if there is another free one coming up.  I don’t want to deal with a crying kid today.” 

            Cliff gets his flu shot every year, as do the girls.  I skipped my shot last year and I came down with the bona-fide flu. The girls still talk about how sick I was, “Remember mommy, how you couldn’t get out of bed for two days?  Remember throwing up?”  Oh yes, I do remember and with these girls around, I will never forget every sweaty detail. 

 I know that the shot is no guarantee that I will remain unscathed by the flu and copious amounts of hand washing does a lot of the heavy lifting of the staying healthy process throughout the snotty winter.  I have no moral objections to the flu shots, so I line up every year to get them for the girls.  I just didn’t want to get the shots today.

It’s raw and rainy outside and the girls had no after school activities.  I had sweet and simple plans to make chocolate chip cookies, do homework, give them a bath and go shopping downstairs.  (When we are doing the seasonal clothing switch to see what they have grown out of I try to make this tedious process fun, by calling it - going shopping downstairs.)   It takes a chunk of time and stamina because the girls have to try on bins of clothes that we have stored in the basement.   For some reason, Sophie and Katie have embraced this ‘going shopping downstairs’ song and dance, by pretending to go in a dressing room and shaking their butts around to prove that something fits or not.  At some point there are piles of clothes on the floor that Katie dives into, rolling around pretending to be a cat and Sophie gets all mushy and nostalgic seeing clothes that no longer fit her long, muscular body.

I wanted to be a fun, easy mommy today, making cookies, cuddling and watching Dancing with the Stars.  I didn’t want to be the mommy who picks them up from school with the declaration, “Guess what we’re going to do today?  Flu shots!  Yeah!” 

So when I picked up the girls, I had it in my mind that I was going ahead with my easy mommy plan.   We come home for the traditional afterschool snack/feeding frenzy and I decide to drop a casual, “Hey girls, we could get flu shots today at the high school.  But I think we should go another day.” 

Do you know what Sophie chirps?  “I wanna go!  Mommy!  Ooooooh – let’s go today!  I love the high school!”  Then Katie, who I thought the word “shot” would reduce her to quivering mush, chimes in, “Let's go – and get it over and done with!  Come on.  Will you hold my hand?” 

Who are these people, excited to get flu shots?   Their father’s daughters apparently.

 We went to the high school and I got a flu shot too.  We all held hands.  The day ended watching  Dancing with the Stars – and somehow, I came out as easy mommy.

I think I need to buy some dark chocolate

Some days are just, meh. The past few have been like that.  Why have I been a little low you ask?  Well, there are always the ongoing energy draggers, like child-herding and meltdowns in the Payless shoe store and the ever-present, constant have-to-do’s of daily adult existence.  (Did I just call myself an adult – that really is enough for a girl to feel down.)

But what is currently weighing on my mind is the hugeness of the task in front of me -of trying to get this blog and writing life some wings.  

I have moments like right now, when I am reading other writer’s fantastic blogs.    I am amazed at the discipline of posting multiple times a week.   I see that they have hundreds (thousands!) of people liking them on facebook, advertising all over many of their blogs, twitter feeds, plus the regular jobs and daily loads of laundry that they must do and I wonder, how do they accomplish all of this?  I know the answer can be simple, hard work, decent writing and a cleaning person once a week.  And I have two out of the three.  But this is when I do a dangerous loop-de-loop and I spiral down with self-doubt and I wonder, does the world really need another blogger?  Where do I begin?  How late do these people stay up every night if they post four times a week?  Am I PMS-ing?

I am not trying to have a public pity party on the woe is me express, nor am I fishing for empty compliments like the annoying skinny girl asking her friends at the sleepover party, “Is my butt fat?”.  Just having a moment.   You know how that is.   

I write to connect - I have stories to share.   I write to be heard and to be myself - I have never wanted to write anonymously.   I admit, my creative life inspires visions of grandeur and dreams of travelling the country on a book tour.   I imagine Tina Fey and me going over last minute changes to a script at Silvercup Studios in Queens where she will be as inspired by me as I am by her.   For the moment though, I am grateful for each person that reads my words.  I do jumpy claps when ever another person likes me.   If I keep on writing it, more will come – with a dedicated effort every day, some more social media savvy and a big dose of self-confidence thrown in there for good measure. 

And someday soon, a cleaning person once a week.