You guys, I finally understand why Dorothy Parker and gin went so well together. Last night, after a very bad no-good day that I first tried to forget by swimming half a mile at the pool and then made the more effective decision to use gin and tonics instead (just two! Over dinner!), I found myself writing the wittiest, most scathing-yet-hilarious blog post in my head about the mommy wars and how I sort of understand why they continue. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nestwent neglected, as did the pile of magazines I had been looking forward to leafing through, as I wrote this mean but so funny! piece. In my head. Sometimes I really wish I could find a gig where I get paid to blog. I really enjoy it.

At any rate, fatigue and possibly common sense kept me from reaching for the keyboard and in the cliched light of day I am glad I didn’t put that post out into the world although I did delete another I was working on, a mushy,over the top piece about parenting Grace. There must be a way, I think, to talk about different parenting styles without being cruel, judgmental or self-righteous. I believe spending time with people who parent differently than I do is important for me, as a mother, and for Grace. Ian and I are the only ones out of our siblings who have a child and many of our peers are remaining childless – we need to learn from other parents.

That said, my daughter now expects baggies full of snacks to magically appear from my purse or her diaper bag, and it is entirely my best friend’s fault.

Before I go any further, let me first say this: Leah and I have been best friends since the fifth grade. I love her as much as I love anyone in this world, including my husband, daughter and parents. I would give her a kidney, part of my liver – I would take a bullet for her or carry her baby if she asked. But holy hell, does she ever need to cool it with the snacks.

Leah brought her two-year old, Paul, to visit last weekend. We had so much fun catching up, talking about everything from bra fittings to child rearing. We have committed to quarterly visits with one another for as long as we live near enough to do so, and it is one of the better decisions we have ever made. It makes me so happy to see Grace trust someone who isn’t a parent or teacher, to ask Leah for help or for a hug. It made me less happy when I realized Leah is the kind of mom who brings snacks with her everywhere she goes, as well as water bottles, juice boxes and perfectly organized kits – a kit to hold baby sunglasses, sunscreen, and a sunhat, a kit to hold bandaids and neosporin…you get the idea.

I am hoping that I can write this in a way that doesn’t make me come across as the world’sbiggest flibbertygibbit, and Leah like some sort of helicopter mom, because neither is the case. It is a pet peeve of mine right now among moms who blog about parenting when they cast themselves as total ditz-balls unable to hold a job or follow a recipe because they are creative and prone to distraction. So please keep in mind that I hold a steady job and regularly get dinner on the table before I state the following:

I rarely carry water, and never carry snacks, for Grace. She doesn’t own a pair of toddler sunglasses, and I haven’t replaced last year’s sunhat yet. Leah, as I noted above, is the Opposite of Me and over the course of walks, bus rides, parks and other outdoor play managed to produce (and keep in mind, she was visiting me) a wide variety of snacks in pastic baggies that made Grace’s mind boggle. Grace wanted it all, from dried cherries to goldfish to raisins, and, since they left, has regularly claimed she “needs” a snack, parlance she picked up from our friends. I am not necessarily adverse to snacks, perse, but they aren’t part of our regularl life rhythm so negotiating this has been tricky.

In the midst of Leah’s rigorous adherence of sun-screen application, water-bottle offering and snack supplying, I had a momentary mean thought. It’s because Paul stays at home with his parents, I thought. That’s why all of this intense parenting is happening. I have rarely, if ever, had a negative thought directed toward Leah – I love her the way Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation loves Anne – and so I know there was more happening, emotionally-speaking, for me than actually believing Paul is hyper-parented.

Paul’s parents do work, but they are university instructors who work opposite schedules so Paul never has to attend daycare. Right now Ian and I are mired in the corporate world and while it comes with great benefits, like paid sick time, health benefits and vacation, it certainly has it’s drawbacks as well. Like most working moms, I shoulder my fair share of guilt on the situation and I guess I found it difficult, in the moment, to witness how organized and together Leah seemed. She was meeting Paul’s needs before he even knew he had them, and I was not equipped to do the same.

Of course, it all worked out. Paul hated his sunglasses and sunhat and proptly gave them to Grace, who wore them with all the panache of Audrey Hepburn. They both enjoyed the snacks, Grace rejected all water offered until she got home, and everyone mostly ate well, slept somewhat and were happy.

It’s easy to see how quickly mommy wars can spiral out of control. In my heart of hearts, I trust that Leah knows her son, and knows what he needs to be a happy, functioning kid. After all, we just recently talked here about how toddlers are nothing short of psychopathic. Sure, part of me perceived Leah to ever-so-slightly be hyper-parenting, but I’ve been told by many people that I veer too far in the opposite direction. It’s hard to watch someone parent so totally different than you and not take it personally – I kept thinking maybe Leah would scale back the snack bags at some point in deference to my obviously brilliant decision to NOT have any snacks around.

Not so much.

I have to keep in mind as I move through this world as a parent that for the most part, we are all just trying to do our very best. Some of us are going have perfectly organized snacks and supplies, and some of us are going to be great leaders of baby yoga sessions (something at which I excel). Our love for our children is what matters and we can’t let different approaches divide us. It takes a certain amount of confidence to have faith in the parenting decisions we make…it’s a confidence I’m developing slowly. For now, Grace will just have to get used to the idea that craisins and pretzels don’t live in my purse or her diaper bag, but sometimes other mom’s have those things and she should totally suck up to them when they do, because she’s not going to eat goldfish any other way.

I recently spent four days with my brother at my parents’ place near St. Pete Beach in Florida. Initially I hadn’t been looking forward to leaving Ian and Grace for that length of time, but the trip was to celebrate my father’s 70th birthday and I couldn’t really get out of it. Of course, I also knew that once I arrived, the sun, sand and endless stretch of beach bars would help obliterate any guilt or reluctance I had to travel without my immediate family. At any rate, we spent a fantastic four days together, and every afternoon around four my brother and I would head back to the beach for three hours of boogey boarding and swimming before cocktail hour and dinner with my parents. At one point I looked at him as we were both bobbing over the water, the sun glinting off the waves, casting a silver shimmer across the horizon, and said, somewhat cheesily, “Aw, we’re making a memory.”

“Yes we are,” Ryan said. “Yes, we are.”

Sometimes I think people who live on the ocean have life completely figured out. I would rather be on the water than almost anywhere else and remain convinced to this day that if I had grown up around it I would be an expert surfer. Why, I wondered idly, floating over waves, staring up at the endless azure sky, do I even bother living in the northern part of our country at all?

After several days in Florida, though, I am always reminded that a little bit of it goes a long way – I have minimal self control when it comes to rum, sun, salt water and ice cream and never manage to leave anything less than a freckled, bleary mess, albeit a well-rested one.

There is the possibility, I know, that Ian and I might move somewhere south eventually. He suffers from some autoimmune issues that cause him quite a bit of pain, much of which is alleviated in warmer climates. I’ve grown accustomed to this idea, and have had to force myself to not mourn the changing of the seasons prematurely. After all, we aren’t moving in the foreseable future.

I love living in an area where the seasons change. I grew up in northern Michigan and, with the exception of a couple of years in North Carolina, have always lived in northern climates. Yes, I am one of those wackadoos who even loves winter. I embrace the rhythm and pacing the changing seasons bring, the way food, clothing, exercise and even hobbies change with the weather – it would feel like a sacrifice to give that up.

More and more, though, I wonder if winter is even going to be around as I grow older. Will I be able to take Grace cross-country skiing, like my dad did with me, the snow fast beneath our feet, our noses and cheeks covered with frost while our bodies work up a sweat beneath slate gray skies? In twenty-five years, will seasons even change disernably…will spring distinguish itself from summer, the way it is this year, all early blooms, cool evenings and greening mountains in the distance?

Reports like this one from Saturday’s New York Times make me feel especially hopeless. This article is pretty heavy on data and parts per million of carbon dioxide so you should just go read it but the upshot of it is that the earth is getting hotter faster than anyone could have predicted and we’ve probably passed the point of no return when it comes to reversing the damage climate change is causing.

I do not want to live in a crazy hot world.

I’m tired, though, of reports like this one coming out without being accompanied by a recommended action plan. Okay, so – we are living in dangerous climate times. What in the world are we supposed to do about this? On an individual level I already recyle, watch my meat consumption, grow my own vegetables (well, many of them), never drive more than two miles a day and mostly, don’t drive at all, and yet all of this action is completely obliterated whenever I fly on a plane. The U.S. has finally reigned in some of its over-the-top contributions to this particular problem, and China and India are now in the lead, but we CERTAINLY are still contributing.

Climate change news coverage makes it feel like disaster is just around the corner, and inevitable, but unless some sort of action plan is recommended I’m coming pretty close to throwing my hands up in the air and moving on with my life without worrying too much about it. If any sort of action plan ever accompanied these reports, like “Okay, Americans, we can stave off or fix this problem if all of you commit to the following: only 2 plane trips a year for recreational purposes, meat consumption only twice a week, and drive no more than 150 miles a week” I would be SO ON BOARD and I actually think a lot of other people would be as well. Okay, maybe not the hard-core capitalists and creationists, but still, a lot of people – enough maybe to make a difference. We know the situation is dire, but we can’t all be scientists or policy makers! Help us do what we can, and we’ll do that while you try and stop people from blowing the fucking tops off mountains and burning piles of coal in third world countries!

A-hem.

This isn’t a problem people set out to create during the Industrial Revolution, and it didn’t enter into our consciousness, I am sure, when cars were first invented. Now, we know it’s a problem. There are large numbers of us willing to help fix it, but we need guidance. Recommendations. Scientific explanations about what we should do, and why, and not just some hand-waving and groaning over the disappearing bee population or melting Arctic. I mean, if I’m willing to make some pretty significant sacrifices, and there isn’t much I love more than big steaks and for no-reason car rides, then my more tree-hugging, yogurt-making counterparts certainly are as well.

Help us know what to do before it is too late, and we are all living in the equivalent of Mississippi, except probably without water or sustainable crops.

Also, while I’m at it, if you same scienc-y types could explain whether or not the Mississippi River is still suffering from drought after epic rains, I would appreciate that as well.

On my previous blog, I occasionally hosted Monday postings entitled “Marriage Monday,” where either I or another blogger would write about a specific idea or issue cropping up in our marriage, with discussion continued in the comments section. I was never able to successfully manage posting every Monday but we did have several interesting and engaging conversations. Since it is Monday and I have a few free minutes to blog, I thought I would write a Marriage Monday post. If you ever feel like submitting an idea or writing a guest post, let me know in the comment section or via email!

And, as always, thesesandwichdays believes any couple who wants to be married, should be – we are equal opportunity around here!

So.

Lately, Ian has been working longer, more intense hours. His job poses hourly challenges, especially when it comes to managing his 20+ employees and hitting the quarterly numbers his team needs to hit. He and I handle work stress quite differently – when faced with stressful situations I fall headlong into hideous bouts of insomnia that are only cured by swimming as many laps as possible a day. Ian? Well, he goes to sleep. He gets in bed early and sleeps as late as the day dictates, finding a good 7-9 hours of sleep the most restorative thing he can do. When periods of time like this hit, without guilt or remorse he will let the majority of chores and “to dos” slide, and that is why I found myself last Wednesday hauling our garbage and recylcing to the curb. I believe – staunchly – that taking out the garbage falls into Ian’s chore “territory” whenever he is in town. I felt extroardinarily grumbly about this at the time, internally cataloguing his chore list against my own and finding him sorely lacking. When he looked out the back door a half an hour or so later, he looked at me with a kind of amazement and asked, “Did you take out the trash?”

“Yes, I did,” I said, keeping my complaints to myself for the moment. I was feeling stoic.

“I almost want to cry,” he said. “Thank you so much – seriously, thank you so much. This is the nicest thing you have ever done for me.”

It was hard, at that exact moment, to keep my mouth shut and simply say “You’re welcome.” I mean, come on – the nicest thing I’ve ever done for him? Seriously? Readers, I have done many MUCH nicer things for him, including always doing all the gift shopping for his family members for holidays, birthdays and similar occasions. In that moment, though, I realized he felt like taking out the garbage was one of the nicest things I had ever done, and instead of sniping about having to do it in the first place or pointing out the many other things I do, I actually kept my trap shut and instead offered to make him a bowl of grape nuts.

We are coming up on our thirteenth wedding anniversary sand I really feel like it’s only been in the last couple of years that Ian and I have truly learned to care for one another well. Part of this, I have no doubt, is due to how young we were when we married. Barely out of college and poorer than dirt-poor, he found my attempts to cook healthy dinners or take care of him when he was sick smothering, like his mother – I found his attempts to care for me either paternalistic or substantially lacking. There were times we both just wanted to move back in with our parents. In the years since we have made strides – both in accepting help when we needed it and providing it when necessary. There are times during a marriage when one person is going to have to carry a heavier load than the other and it certainly tests our grace, compassion, and even the promised unconditional love when this happens.

I have seen and supported Ian through bouts of depression and flare-ups of his painful autoimmune disorder – he has seen me through bouts of anxiety, a scare with my pregnancy and various sprained and broken ankles and feet. When these periods occur we slow down and take things day by day and even with that sometimes things felt like too much to bear but every time we see a difficult period through we’ve come out happier, stronger, with a deeper sense of joy and love than we had before.

I feel sad when I hear of marriage endings after three or five or even seven years (unless, of course, they end because of infidelity, financial lies or verbal or physical abuse) – while I realize that some people end up marrying the wrong person or find themselves deeply unhappy in their marriages, I do feel so many hiccups and issues are surmountable. It takes time to learn how to love someone the way they need to be loved, and to receive that love in return – and illnesses, financial troubles and mid-life crises are going to occur.

I love whenI get to spend time with couples that have been married for decades – couples who have seen each other through career changes, raising children, deaths in the family, unexpected illnesses. Maybe he is a little rough around the edges from a lifetime of too much sun and red meat – maybe her middle-age spread spread a little bit further than she ever intended – they might have five children, or none at all – traveled extensively or rarely left the town they live in – probably they’ve each lost someone close to them and more than likely at least one of them has faced a chronic illness of some sort – and they still like spending time together. She still worries if he doesn’t eat breakfast – he makes sure she takes an extra sweater to the airport because it’s always cold there, summer or winter. I find the affection between couples like these almost palpable, and I’m almost always driven to say something to Ian like “I really really really hope we get to grow old together!”

He always says, calmly, “Of course we will.” Sometimes his quiet confidence is all the assurance I need – others, it’s all I can do not to say something like “As long as you don’t fall in love with some else, or pass away from a deadly disease or something!”

I don’t fully remember why I cast my lot with Ian so many years ago. I have no doubt a large part of it was the fact that I knew I wanted to stay with him, and staying with him meant moving to North Carolina so he could go to grad school at Duke, and in order to do that without being disowned by my parents meant an engagement – I never would have been brave enough, at twenty-one, to make such a move otherwise. I also recall surveying the young men I was graduating college with and seeing little but a lifetime centered around Lions football games on Sundays and endless, endless rounds of golf, but I’m old enough now to know that would have had its own kind of beauty and security. And, of course, I loved him! Truthfully, I loved Ian since I met him at summercamp when we were teenagers, I loved him even more once we began dating and I love him even more than that, now, thirteen years into our marriage.

But I wouldn’t say I learned to care for him – nor did he know how to let me do so – until just recently.

The other day I was having a conversation with the wife of a colleague, and I was gently teasing her about all the food she prepares for him every time she left town. This is something I would never do for Ian, nor would he want me to – he likes to indugle in the foods he loves that I don’t when I’m away. There is a pretty significant age gap between this woman and my colleague (thirteen years) and she said to me, with all sincerity, “If I don’t make bolognese, then he’ll order pizza. I take care of him – it’s what I do.” Part of me was slightly taken aback by her sincerity, but mostly I thought she was onto something – something that took both me and Ian years to learn.

What about you? Are you and your partner good at taking care of each other, physically and emotionally? Or is it something you had to grow into, learn how to do?

Well, I think we can all agree. Last week sucked.

In the midst of our national horrors, from the Boston bombings and subsequent manhunt to the gruesome explosion at a Texas fertilizer plan, Ian and I witnessed a much quieter, and to his family, no less tortuous drama – a colleague lost his wife in a dramatic, inexplicable and hearbreaking fashion. I actually knew the wife a bit better than her husband, having worked with her several times in the past six months. From her initial collapse early in the week, to life support until her family could all say goodbye, to her obituary which ran yesterday, her death in many ways overrode the national tragedies occuring, at least in our household.

I’m not sure if I’m qualified to say what a mother’s worst fear is, although I would have to guess losing your child is probably it. Perhaps second is passing away before your child reaches adulthood – passing away unexpectedly and quickly, with no chance to say goodbye, which is what happened to our friends. She left behind a six-year old daughter, and I can’t imagine the wrenching conversation that took place when her father told her her mother had passed away.

My father runs marathons and cross country skis competitively, and like Martin Richard, I have waited at countless finish lines in my life, cheering and rooting for him. Those finish lines always felt inherently safe, surrounded as I was by family and friends and a multitude of other supporters. That sense of safety was ripped away from thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people last week and in its place comes a renewed vulnerability in open and public places.

What is safe? WHERE is safe? How can we continue to put one foot in front of the other when so much awfulness occurs, well, everywhere? We live in a world where people willingly kill one another for twisted, ideological beliefs, where we sacrifice the health of our earth for marginal profits, where too many people seem willing to further their own agenda in lieu of taking care of one another.

I felt shattered last week, and at the same time, so guiltyfor feeling shattered. After all, no one in my own family had died suddenly – I wasn’t in Boston or Texas during either tragedy. There is a danger in internalizing things too much, and I don’t want to become paralyzed the way I was immediately post-9/11, when wave after wave of panic overtook me for nearly a year and, from then on, every few months for almost a decade.

I don’t have much advice to offer, if you are like me and easily lost and, well, shattered, when Bad Things happen, but I can say this: it helps to show up. After 9/11, which, in retrospect, came on the heels of several terrible losses in my family, I failed at showing up, big-time. Barely in my second year of marriage, I was living in rural West Virginia with no friends or nearby family. I was unemployed and using food and cigarettes to assuage my depression. It was easy – too easy – to fall into the cable news cycle and in many ways I’ve been dealing with the effects of that one bad year ever since -conquering my addiction to cigarettes, struggling off and on with my weight ( which had never been an issue for me before), facing panic attacks instead of letting them overcome me.

So last week – Ian and I, we showed up. Ian went to the hospital whenever he could. We went to church. I checked in on those I know who have friends and family in Boston. With the exception of listening to some of the manhunt on Friday, I caught up on the latest news each morning – I didn’t drown myself in it. I went to yoga, swam laps at the pool, played for long hours with chalk in front of our house with Grace. Ian and I showed up for each other, for those who love us and for ourselves the best way we knew how, and it certainly worked better than cigarettes, beer, pizza, cable news and solitude, I can tell you that much.

I struggle when I hear bad news. I can’t even wrap my head around how someone can be here one minute and gone the next, especially when it’s from something as startling as cardiac arrest. The kind of death and destruction that comes from acts of terrorism I’m at least somewhat sort of able to wrap my head around, even though I’ll never make sense of it completely. What I do believe now in is the importance of creating a life one can be proud of – a life I can be happy living even if today were my last day on earth. Against all common sense that life, for us, is happening in Pittsburgh, in a 100-year old house that needs constant love, and it’s a smaller life than I imagined back in my bound-for-broadway teenage dreams. It includes an occasional cocktail before dinner, signing up for the church potluck, going to work and coming home and making dinner every.single.day – it includes watching a bit of television with Ian each week and working a ton on our house, and lots of reading and writing and friends. It’s a blessed life – a beautiful life – one that makes showing up for others an easier choice than throwing up my arms and giving in.

This has been a hard post to write -I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because the myriad thoughts swirling around in my head aren’t organized enough for the written word, or maybe it’s because certain emotions should be left unexpressed, at least on the internet. I toyed around with writing a marriage Monday post on scorekeeping – I deleted another post about fashion that didn’t feel quite right, either. This is what I ended up writing when I showed up to write, so I am going to let it stand.

Some of the writers I admire the most are former journalists who turn to writing fiction. Dennis LeHane is a great example of journalist-turned-fiction-writer, and Geraldine Brooks is another. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all of that, I sort of wish this is the career example I had followed, but I watched my mom struggle as a small-town journalist for decades and, more importantly, got to know many of the young journalists we rented part of our house to growing up, and readily realized no matter how great a journalism school I attended, more likely than not I’d end up in some similar backwater town covering the status of strawberry crops and bovine tuberculosis. Also, lest we forget, I mostly wanted to be a Broadway actress until I was 24 or so (nobody appreciates revisionist history).

Still, though.

Oh my God you guys, I am tired. Grace has been waking up in the middle of the night several times a week recently. I think it’s a combination of the stress of potty training and what it inherently means and her two-year molars which are taking FOREVER to come in. This is partially why it took me a month – a month! – to finish Geraldine Brooks’ marvelous, beautiful People of the Book. I like this reason much better than another, less justifiable one – that this book brought to light tremendously lacking areas of history on my part and I had to educate myself as I read. The blame rests with Brooks for the final reason – she created such an intricate, complicated, compelling and yet gorgeously written narrative that I found myself really taking time with the book in an attempt to both understand and savor it.

People of the Book is anchored by the narration of Hannah Heath, an Australian rare book expert hired to analyze and conserve the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serbian shelling during the Bosnian War. The book is one of the earliest Jewish works to contain images, and has survived sine 1350. Hannah discovers various items in the haggadah as she conducts her work, including a white hair and wine and salt stains. These items set the structure of the book, with each item serving as a piece of the book’s story. In between these stories, Hannah tells her own story as the preserverer of this piece of art.

This book illuminiated so much lacking in my educational background when it comes to religion and history that it is embarrassing. For instance, conceptually I understand that Jews have been persecuted for centuries. In reality, anything that occurred prior to the Inquisition I am pretty blurry, if not downright uninformed, about. And while I’m familiar with parts of the Bosnian War, a war that occured during my teenage years, I still found huge pieces of information just shocking, particularly the close proximity of the warring factions which yes, I know, is a ridiculous thing not to have realized but again, as a teenager I was more into the lyrics of “Miss Saigon” than, say, maps. I had to take my time reading this book, looking terms and timelines up on occasion and refreshing my knowledge of Jewish culture. The stories of the caretakers of the Haggadah are stories I will always remember, and they are so wonderfully told that I think they will be shaping my reading for the coming year, if not longer.

I thought Hannah was a strong narrator – she was certainly a character who stuck in my mind, and I cared very much what happened to her. I have a few quibbles with her storyline (and I guess this is where I say SPOILER ALERT) – for instance, the dischord between Hannah and her mother felt slightly – just slightly – overdone, and I didn’t necessarily need Hannah’s ancestry to out of nowhere suddenly be Jewish – it was sort of hammering home the point just a little too much – but even as I thought these things I realized I didn’t really mind, because the brilliance of the rest of the book triumphs over these minor quibbles.

Brooks is an astounding writer and I am excited to tackle March sometime this year. I’ve never been as over the moon for Louisa May Alcott as other readers are but I never considered myself terribly interested in the plague or Bosnia and she’s managed to prove me wrong on both of those accounts. Reading writing by Geraldine Brooks makes me happy to be alive – I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

This past Saturday, in the middle of some rambunctious play, Grace ran up to me and bit me in the leg. Shocked, and aware I had to discipline her immediately, I picked her up, repeating “No biting!” loudly and forcefully, and put her down in the middle of her room. “You stay there for one minute,” I said. “You need to calm down.” I retreated to the doorway between our bedrooms and stood there, hands on my hips, looking stern.

Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes grew all teary. And then she let out the wail of the abused, the tortured, the misunderstood – the wail of the toddler who wants to do exactly what she wants, when she wants to, without regard for anybody or anything else.

“I should go hug her,” I said to Ian, who by all accounts is the firmer disciplinarian in the family.

“It hasn’t been a minute, yet,” he said, thumbing through a magazine. “You need to do this. She bit you in the groin, and that is not okay.”

Okay, yes – here, it is important to note – my daughter did not bite me on the leg – she bit me in the groin. I just find groin a sort of a vulgar word to begin a blog post.

I managed to wait out the minute despite wanting nothing more than to comfort Grace, to assure her she and I were totally okay, and go on our merry way. By the time the minute was up, however, my daughter had decided she had quite enough of me thankyouverymuch and marched over to Ian for comfort. Glaring at me from the safety of her father’s lap, she said “Grace is fussy with you, mommy.”

Disciplining Grace is not my forte. As it turns out, I sometimes have to be physically withheld from spoiling her rotten. My good friends and even family members are more strict with Grace than I am, and I can tell the gentle way they prod me, that I am leaning toward becoming a much too indulgent mother. For instance, recently she stole another child’s “lovey” from school and ran away from him. This wasn’t a big deal to the teachers, or even the other child – Grace’s behavior was corrected and she hasn’t taken anything from another child since. My first reaction, though, was to berate myself for not giving her enough stuffed animals to hug.

“Not enough stuffed animals to hug? Are you insane?” Ian asked. “This is how she’s going to end up over-indulged, dropping out of school and ending up on some reality television show, not knowing how to read maps for the challenges!”

It’s true. My initial insticts, in mothering Grace and in my own life, run toward the passive. I don’t like confrontation, and I struggle to stand up for myself in the work place. I desperately want to protect Grace from any sort of hurt or lack of kindness – I want her to always know I am delighted to see her, delighted to know her. It’s sort of hard to keep that attitude up, though, when you’ve been bitten in the groin.

I’ve been momentarily surprised, and then instantly grateful, when other people have been more stern with Grace than I am – from my girlfriends to my mother to her teachers, but I also recognize discipline is part of my role. As we move forward I will have to become less of a friend and more of, well, a mother. My best friend thinks I might be overcorrecting because my own mother was so terribly strict with me, and our relationship was often fraught but I think it’s more a personality thing more than anything else. I don’t feel mad, very often – nor do I ever really feel strict. Want to strip your clothes off and finger paint, but with your entire body? I’m cool. Angry for no reason I can understand, and need to throw your drink? I’ve been there, girlfriend. Temper tantrum in the middle of the grocery store? I’ll wait it out because no WAY am I going to sacrifice all the shopping I’ve done and leave right now.

But as far as I can tell, two-year olds aren’t much more than mini-psychopaths – adorable, smoochable, hilarious ones who try to put high heels on the dog but still, mini-psychopaths. I need to teach her how to behave in this world, how to move through it with gumption and grace. I don’t mind, so much, that other people seem to think I’m spoiling my daughter, as long as I know it’s not true, but lately even I can recognize my acts of overindulgence could eventually be harmful.

Short time-outs and stern (albeit brief) discussions aren’t something Grace is used to from me – they aren’t things I’m used to giving. I guess I finally understand what it means for a parent to say “this hurts me more than it hurts you.”

As a wanna-be writer, I am not sure there is anything more frustrating for me than seeing ideas that I have come to life in print via somebody else’s pen (or rather, keyboard). For a while after having Grace I seriously debated whether or not to continue writing. After all, I have a successful career, a home to rehabilitate, family, friends, a daughter whose energy knows no limits…why write? I decided to continue when I realized that I am always writing in my head – plays, half-crafted essays, the occasional novel (but never, ever a short story – go figure). At this point in my life I write because I haveto, because I’m doing it anyway, and because my overall happiness is not tied up in making a living as a writer – it is tied up in writing for the sake of it.

I have lists and lists of ideas for essays, blog posts and plays – writing these ideas down is the only way for me to purge my overactive brain and have any measure of peace throughout the day. It is particularly upsetting to me when I see one of these ideas in print, penned by someone else and, let’s face it – written much more beautifully than I ever could. Okay, okay, perhaps that’s a bit of false modesty – but writing is a craft and I do not have time to perfect and hone the craft as I would like to so my writing simply isn’t where I would like it to be.

A couple of weeks ago, for instance, New York Times critic Mike Hale wrote this fantastic piece about “Bunheads,” beautifully making the point that I had tried and failed to make here that “Bunheads,” more than any other show, exempliflies what performance means in the lives of its characters. His piece ran just a day or so after mine did and it was totally like that time I wrote a whole piece on the Pioneer Woman only to have the New Yorker do an in-depth profile on her a few months later.

I love creative nonfiction writing because it allows writers to explore all sorts of quirky subject matter. I do not long for a different kind of life, but if I did it would most certainly be one flexible and self-sufficient enough to allow for this kind of a writing life. (Or broadway acting, of course). Since that is not the kind of life I have, and instead am quietly, slowly, oh-so-slowly working on a play and a few essays, here are some writing ideas I either want to write or think other people will be writing in the near future (they aren’t always one in the same).

An in-depth profile on Glennon Melton – the author of Momastery.com – I have a love/hate relationship with this blog but the balance almost always comes out on the love side. I’ll definitely be reading her book at some point. In certain instances her blog posts have arrived at just the right moment for me, acting much in the way a prayer or piece of scripture would. I wouldn’t want to write this profile myself – I would have some biases going in, but I expect to see a pretty significant profile of her within the year. While we are talking about bloggers, however, I would love to personally write a profile on the author of –

The Queen of Spain – a blog authored by Erin West, a writer and activist whose life was put on pause when she was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of lupus. I find the chronicling of her life with lupus to be raw, honest and even painful to read at times – and incredibly important work.

I’d love to write a piece exploring the creation of Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake’s History (ies) of Rap…why these segments appeal, how they go about creating and rehearsing them, how the original idea came out in the first place…

And then of course there is the television show Duck Dynasty, which I only just learned about from my college roommate but, as it turns out, everyone I know is actually watching. I’m interested in watching a couple of episodes to see if I get the appeal but regardless, since this is something it turns out even Ian is aware of and watches, how did I miss this? Why do people like it? And do the Duck Dynesty people know the McIlhenny’s of Tobasco fame, and do they all hang out on an island together?

And does anybody else want to sit in on a day in the life of Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer?

Oh, I could go on and on. There is so much in the world to write about and so little time to tackle it all – and the items I list above are just the most superfluous things – not representative at all of the time I spend thinking about God, the existence of black holes, and North Korea. I guess I’m just lucky to have a way to express myself in my downtime. I’ve said it before and I’ll say again, I desperately hope Grace finds an art form to love just for the sake of it – theater or music or ballet or pottery or whatnot. It’s so wonderful to have a way to help make sense of the world, even if you aren’t very good at it, all of the time, and it fits in only around the edges of your life.

I’ve been fighting some sinus issues for a while now, and this morning it feels like I have so much congestion it is literally coming out of my eyeballs. My parents have been visiting for the last five days, and I desperately need to go grocery shopping and catch up on laundry. Grace is going through some sort of awful two-year old regression where she only wants ME, all of the time – no grandma or grandpa or daddy will substitute. I haven’t peed or showered alone at home in recent memory. I am – so tired – and as I stuffed my feet into some high heels and adjusted my panty hose this morning, I looked longingly into my living room and wished I could work from home today – on my couch, in my sweats, with coffee from my coffee maker and my laptop on my lap.

This is something my workplace allows occasionally – the opportunity to work from home. If we are expecting contractors or the cable guy or if we are sick with minor colds, no director in our department begrudges us the chance to work from home. It is not, however, business as usual for our organization.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Marissa Mayer’s decision to have the entirety of the Yahoo staff return to the office, even those workers who had telecommuting worked into their contracts. Mostly, I think it is entirely within her right to decide that this is how she wants her company to run. She is very well aware that she will probably lose some talented, dedicated individuals this way, but the rewards will outweigh the risk. There is certainly truth to idea that when people work side by side in the office, collaboration and creativity can be fostered. Say what you will about skype, gomeeting.com, conference calls and all the rest – working relationships are forged when you can grab a quick lunch and discuss a specific problem, or spend time in your boss’s office with white boards and your team. Of course, cliques and emotional politics also arise when workers are together all day, every day, and nothing bonds co-workers together quite like a common enemy, so I imagine there will be plenty of “Can you even believe her” kinds of conversations happening surreptitiously in Yahoo’s hallways in June.

So, yes. Requiring your work force to work from actual offices is certainly within a CEO’s purview, but I wonder how much damage Mayer has done to the morale of her company in making this decision? In my own life, the ability to occasionally work from home because we need to have the roof repaired or the ceiling replastered has been absolutely invaluable, and on days when a head cold wouldn’t be enough for me to take time off, the rest I received working from our dining room table was sanity-saving. The flexibility and understanding of my employer on this issue is a huge perk when I consider looking for another job – it’s a perk I certainly don’t expect the vast majority of other companies to offer. And I do not rely on this flexibility to maintain my work/life balance – so I can’t imagine what a heartwrenching issue this must be for people who accepted a job at yahoo under the condition they work from home. I am probably overly, and some people would say stupidly, loyal to my organization because of the compassion and understanding it has shown to me as a new mother, as a daughter of aging parents, and as a wife. In exchange for the kind of family/life support I’ve received from my employer, I willingly (okay, mostly willingly) check my blackberry on evenings and weekends, work Saturdays when required, and accept that I have to incorporate work into my “life,” and “life” into my work.

I was speaking with my old boss from Detroit a while back – she’s now a vice-president of a prominent heath care organization in Michigan. Like me, she’s a fast-talking, extroverted public relations type. We are not the kinds of people who need to recover from being around other people (something I’ve read about from introverts).When I asked her how things were going, she was almost exultant.

“Who is in the office anymore? Who is at home? Who knows! I care for my dad in the afternoon, take Gavin to school in the mornings, have conference calls in my car, meet with editorial teams for long lunches – it’s a new working world, and it’s fabulous.” (Yes, I swear, she really talks like this. She LOVES working).

This was, pretty much, her approach with her staff when I worked for her and she really defined how I work today. If I need to make a call about my mother-in-law’s spine trouble during working hours, I do it from my office, and if I need to meet a reporter’s deadline after working hours, I do so from my dining room. I do take pains to avoid working much while Grace is awake, but it’s not always possible to avoid and I don’t at all mind setting an example to my daughter that women work, and it isn’t always done away from the home. I’ve mostly been rewarded for this level of flexibility on my part, and the weekend hours and travel I put in previously have afforded me the luxury to be pickier about the travel and weekend assignments I do take now. Admittedly, if work is like a jungle gym, like Sheryl Sandberg states, then I am down a rung or two now, but I know I’ll be climbing right back up.

It seems to me it is this kind of flexibity that Mayer is removing from her workforce. I don’t know what kind of time-off yahoo employees receive…if it’s substantially generous time off then this may be a whole different story. But if standard doctor’s appointments and waiting-for-the-cable guy kind of working “off-site” time is no longer an option, then I think she is elevating office “face time” to a level of importance that really doesn’t exist, and she will end up pitting the employees who have the luxury of a partner at home to manage everyday small, domestic crises against those who don’t – and I can’t imagine that is going to be great for yahoo morale.

I have seen some arguments claiming that Mayer made a move against feminism when she decided to call her employees back to the office, but I don’t think that is the case at all. I think she made a thoughtful, tough decision about where her work values, and for Mayer, showing up is hugely important. I imagine her expectations will only snowball from here…those who work later hours and come in earlier will be more likely to advance than those who don’t – clockwatchers will not be tolerated. Ultimately most of us won’t really know what goes on inside the yahoo offices…whether a tremendous backlash against Mayer will occur and ultimately, possibly lead to her exit, or whether she is a good enough leader to make this policy shift work in her favor. I hope, while taking away telecommuting, Mayer is able to show faith and confidence in her staff in other ways – if her desire REALLY is to have “one yahoo,” and not reign in employees she, or those who directly report to her, feel are “shirking” or otherwise not keeping their end of the bargain, then her leadership will show that yahoo could very well become a place we all want to work.

Among my peer group, if one is going to watch any television at all, on an actual television, nonetheless, and not viewed on an ipad or tablet via hulu or a netflix streaming subscription with our parents login information, then it seems acceptable to view only the following programs: “Girls,” “Community,” “The Jon Stewart Show,” “Parks and Rec” and “Game of Throwns.” It’s deemed acceptable to be excited for the netflix premiere/reintroduction of “Arrested Development” but decidedly not coolto watch “Modern Family.”

Ian and I are sort of old-school when it comes to our television-viewing. We have one flat screen tv in our living room which is used mostly for sports and movies, and a teeny-tiny television we received from my family at our engagement party that rests in one of the spare rooms on the second floor. I primarily use this television, occasionally grabbing an hour here or there of “Nashville” or “The Middle.” I love tv, but I also love yoga and reading and working around our house and playing with our dog, so I average about three hours a week of regular viewing.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have a LOT to say about it.

Right now, it seems like I read about “Girls” more than any other series. I haven’t watched it yet but I’ve read enough articles and blog posts about it to place it pretty high on my radar. It sounds gritty and real and feminist and fun, but as a daughter of the Sex in the City generation, I also don’t have a huge desire to watch it, even though I am pretty confident I’ll like it once I start. I do, however, have a group of girls I’m currently watching, and they can be found on ABC Family’s “Bunheads,” which, if you are a fan of Amy Sherman-Palladino and her previous series, “Gilmore Girls,” you are probably watching as well.

“Gilmore Girls” explored the relationship between Lorelai Gilmore and the daughter she had when she was sixteen, Rory. There is a WHOLE LOT MORE to the seven year show, of course, from the way the fictional town they live in, Stars Hollow, functions as a character in and of itself, to the flawed relationship between Lorelai and her wealthy parents, to romantic conflict. It was a fast-paced, pop-culture filled, lovelyshow, appealing to a wide variety of people (okay, mostly women). If you wanted a television show with heart, GG had it. If you wanted excellent characters AND character development, GG had it. You could feel super smart watching it (hey! I get that Grey Garden reference!) or totally zone out. One of the aspects I found most impressive about the show is how much, as a viewer, I wanted Lorelai and her parents to work through their differences – I desperately wanted to see Lorelei cut her parents some slack and vice-versa. I yearned for the Gilmore family to become more honest with one another, to love one another the way television families SHOULD. The writers and producers never gave us that emotional satisfaction and while it could be frustrating, the show also felt, despite the picturesque home town and quaint storylines, terribly real.

Sherman-Palladino repackages this approach for “Bunheads,” placing her characters literally in Paradise – or at least a town bordering the Pacific ocean named Paradise. She stocks this town with quirky, compassionate characters (many played by actors from GG) and then throws messed-up with a heart of gold dancer Michelle into the mix, a classically trained ballet dancer who lost her way in Vegas. How she ends up in Paradise isn’t nearly as important as the fact that she does so, and ends up teaching at the local ballet studio run by her former husband’s mother-in-law.

By using actors from her previous series, and by creating a west-coast version of Stars Hollow, Sherman-Palladino essentially forces comparisons between GG and Bunheads. Fast-talking, neurotic Michelle = fast-talking, fun-loving Lorelei…the four dancers the story centers around = Rory.

“It’s like Gilmore Girls except with FOUR Rorys,” my friend Mary claimed, joyous over the debut of season two of “Bunheads.”

And it is, it is…except Sherman-Palladino blows it all up. With GG, you knew fundamentally that the characters had support structures to “fall back on” – no matter how dire the situation grew for Lorelai, in the back of your mind you knew there was enough love in her family that ultimately she could rely on her parents. The love and stability Lorelai provided for her daughter, Rory, allowed Rory the luxury of rebellion when she felt like it, which wasn’t very often. At the heart of GG you generally knew the characters were going to be okay.

In Paradise, things are a bit more dire. The four dancers the series focuses on – Sasha, Jenny, Boo and Melanie – have relatively troubled lives at home. Sasha’s parents essentially abandon her to live on her own because they are too caught up in their own personal lives to make room for her, Jenny’s mom falls apart after her ex-husband remarries, Boo comes from a home with too many children and a mother unable to be present in her life because of that and Melanie has rage issues that need to be addressed. What ties the friends together is their love of dance, and when Michelle enters the picture as their new instructor, she is friend, mentor and teacher rolled into one.

What’s fantastic about Michelle’s character is, while she seems to enjoy teaching and gets along well with the girls, she still longs for to perform. Even when her life in Paradise seems to be going splendidly, she is easily emotionally derailed by the success of fellow actresses. In many ways she has “aged out” of her dreams and recognizes the smart thing to do is to make a life as a teacher in Paradise, but being a bit older doesn’t make her dreams any less real.

When I think about what I want for Grace as she grows up, I often return to the idea that she has some sort of art to love, whether that art is theater or pottery or (please, not) an instrument or (most preferably) dancing. An art form can be there for you when others fail you, much in the same way reading can. Ballet, and other forms of dance, but mostly ballet, provide a safety net for the girls of Paradise, and one for Michelle, as well. The redempitve powers of dance come through beautifully in this series.

I actually think this show could be really good for teen girls with their mothers – issues of body confidence, peer pressure, sex, and lots of to thine own self be trueth crop up. Why I’m watching I really don’t know. I guess because when it comes to emotional wreckage set in a place of stunning beauty, with a whole lot of heart and smart, smart writing, Sherman-Palladino can’t be beat.

First things first:
(1.) Holy typos in my last post – my apologies! I accidently uploaded the un-edited version of that particular post and then had trouble going back to edit. I am terribly embarrassed – I’ll try not to let it happen again.

(2.) Thanks to all of you good, goodpeople who noticed I had my husband’s real name in the blog at one point. The only reason I am using pseudonyms is to keep the blog relatively unsearchable by internet standards. I greatly appreciate the heads up!

So, WOW, y’all. Voices, in print and online, are LOUD lately, have you noticed? All week I’d been planning on writing a response to this article – Why Gender Equality Stalled, by Stephanie Coontz, but as the week went on I noticed more and more hollering, particularly when it comes to women, women working, women having babies, women having babies AND working, women working and choosing NOT to have babies, all (sort of) culminating in the New York Time’s preview of Sheryl Sandberg’s upcoming “Lean In,” her book/manifesto on women in the workplace. Over the course of the week, from across the not-all-that-diverse spectrum of Slate, Huffington, Salon, the Times and USA Today, I’ve read that women aren’t having enough babies and it’s going to hurt the American economy, but then again women who do have babies are choosing to stay home, setting the women’s movement back by about a billion steps, except for those of us who choose to work but that’s basically a mistake because we can’t be fully present in our jobs, and our lives also suck because we live in the suburbs while our non-child-bearing counterparts live in the heart of cities, enjoying things like live theater and artichoke risotto. Women! We should be thinking about leading companies! But also, breastfeeding for at least a year. We should go back to work, even if the quality of our lives suffer tremendously for it. And of course, none of this speaks to the rest of our lives – loving our partners, caring for our aging parents, remembering to run the goddamn dishwasher once in a while.

And just forget about it should you like animals and have a pet.

I’ve really been struggling to understand where I fit in this conversation. On the one hand, part of my undergraduate degree is in women’s literature, and I currently work as a public relations advocate for women’s health in my community. I consider myself a follower of Hillary Clinton and I truly believe that women need to find ways to break through the proverbial glass ceilings, in politics and the work force.

On the other, in my mind I always add the caveat, that is, they should break through the proverbial glass ceilings if they want to. Through a series of choices that I made, some alone and some in conjunction with my husband, I have ended up in a career of sorts – one that often requires suits and lipstick and the confidence to speak my mind in the workplace. For the most part I actually look forward to going into work each day and while I can’t say I LOVE what I do, I can admit to liking it a whole hell of a lot and even claim passion for the subject matter I handle. It is not, however, what I had hoped to do with my life – I had hoped to be an actress. And if not an actress, then a freelance writer. I actively and passionately pursued these careers but ultimately they were not enough to assist in sustaining my family and I place a lot of importance on the ability to care, financially and emotionally, for my family. Part of the argument that keeps coming up in the conversations put forth is the idea of “having it all” – but the definition of “having it all” seems to be defined quite narrowly – marriage, children and a corporate or political career. For me, “having it all” actually means the ability to support my family through art but let’s make one thing clear – I am a talented individual. I was not talented enough to be be able to make all of my dreams come true.

And I am perfectly okay with that. So what about the actresses and writers, photographers and dancers, yoga instructors and journalists, painters and landscape designers who don’t necessarily adhere to the traditional corporate structure and the popular 8:30 – 5 work schedule? Whole entire worlds of people are being left out of the kinds of conversation people like Sandberg and Ann-Marie Slaughter are having.

I made a conscious decision a few years ago to cultivate a goodlife – one I could say I’m proud I led if an asteroid hits us today, or if I live to be one hundred years old, rocking away on a porch somewhere, spinning yarns to anyone who will listen. To me, this means doing good – volunteering when I can, not littering, giving money to those who have less than I do, and it means being good – a good friend, a good wife, a good mother and good to myself, and it means feeling good, which includes exercise and eating well and caring for myself. It means wine at night with my husband, and date nights with him as well – it means caring for plants. I am striving to put together a lifetime – a good lifetime – for myself and those around me. I often return to a line from Brandi Carlile’s song “That Wasn’t Me” when I think I might be losing my way – do I make myself a blessing, to everyone I meet - this line – it feels like something to strive for, doesn’t it?

I do not think I am necessarily the target audience for discussions like Coontz and Sandberg are conducting.

This, however, does not make the conversations unimportant.

Off and on over the coming weeks I am going to try and unpack some of these conversations. Just because the 50th anniversary of The Feminine Mystique is over doesn’t mean we should stop having them. To begin, I’ll put forth two thoughts I plan on discussing in detail, as well as a blog I plan to write entitled “Consider the Morning.” First of all, I don’t believe much in the way of women’s rights in the workplace can be rectified until we have one-year of paid maternity leave when we have a baby. The skimpy 12 weeks only some of us are lucky to be currently provided is barely enough time to establish good breast feeding patterns, and when we return to work we are without vacation or any time off. Secondly, I think the current conversations we are having completely ignores women who are living in poverty in this country, to say nothing of women living in other countries throughout the world. Am I concerned about equal pay for equal work, and ensuring I am as valued as my male counterparts? Certainly. But I am equally concerned, and infinitely more horrified, by the rape culture in India? Again, yes.

All of this is much too much to discuss in one blog post – it might be too much for ten or fifty blog posts – but I’m going to try over the course of the year anyway. If you have an area you’d like to see addressed more than others, don’t hesitate to let me know. And if you would like to guest post on any of these topics, let me know that as well.