sugar coma

i, for one, am 100 percent with Mayor Bloomberg on his campaign against larger-than-necessary sugary drinks within the confines of New York City. he’s hoping to ban the sale of non-diet sodas and other sweetened beverages 16 ounces or larger at movie theaters, restaurants, delis and sports arenas.

some people are pissed—yet another “right” that Bloomberg is trying to take away. but i think someone has to step in and stop the madness. Americans, by and large (no pun intended), have proven they can’t or won’t take care of themselves. and corporations continue to market “food” containing no discernible natural ingredients and with no apparent nutritional value (Taco Bell’s latest? a taco wrapped in a Dorito shell).

if the obesity rate were on the decline, if cancer diagnoses were slowing down, if heart disease was a thing of the past, i’d think Bloomberg was off his rocker. but none of the above is true. so: someone has to do something.

i know a guy who worked in catering and event planning in New York City in the 1980s and ‘90s. he was not a smoker himself, but being around all the secondhand smoke in the restaurants, catering halls, nightclubs and bars while on the job gave him incurable lung cancer.

imagine if he were just starting his career today. how different his life might have turned out, thanks to Bloomberg’s ban on smoking in those places nearly a decade ago.

two of the mayor’s other controversial initiatives—a ban on trans fats and his requiring restaurants to post their Health Department grades in their windows—have surely saved lives, helped people curb calories and/or prevented countless cases of food poisoning.

(quick aside: a year ago we were set to have Matthew’s post-baptism luncheon at a restaurant in our former Brooklyn neighborhood; we went to put down our deposit and discovered they’d been closed by the Health Department for violations including evidence of rodents and roaches. we were prepared to put down a fair chunk of change for that lunch for more than 50 family members—thank god there’s a system in place to keep eating establishments honest, or at least clean for pete’s sake!)

so, yeah. i think Bloomberg is doing a good thing right now, trying to sway people from indulging in 600 liquid calories mindlessly. put aside the argument about personal rights and consider for a moment—why is it necessary to drink that much Coca-Cola or Sprite or Dr. Pepper? surely 12 ounces of high fructose corn syrup are plenty in one sitting, no? i mean, when will we get it through our thick, sugar-coma’d heads in this country that bigger is not better?

i used to work in a movie theater, back in high school and a few summers in college. most of the time i was behind the concession counter and we were trained to tell customers, who ordered a small or medium soda, “for only a quarter more, you can get a large.” upsell, upsell, upsell! was the rallying cry.  i rarely did, because it just seemed ludicrous to me. who would want a drink that flipping big? and that was back in the mid-1990s—the large soda cups back then are the small ones today.

anyway, props to Bloomie. fifty-eight percent of adults and nearly forty percent of public school students in this city are overweight. how could he be the mayor of New York and ignore those statistics?

mbm

flip-flop

i’m just returning to real life today after five days of fun and relaxation in the Pennsylvania backyard where i spent most of my childhood. there’s something so restorative about doing that.

my Aunt Val was there (along with Uncle Mark, Scott and Henry) part of the time and one morning we got into a discussion about this blog, my recent posts and my philosophies about Facebook, etc. it’s a hot subject, apparently, and the general consensus among the people who claim to love me is that i might have a small point, but mostly i’m full of it.

this could be true.

because i went all weekend without seeing any friends from home (whom i love dearly, but i was really relishing the quality time with my fam and not having to put on any makeup), i logged into my mom’s Facebook account a little while ago to see how everyone was doing. (perhaps i haven’t confessed this prior: i occasionally used her account, with her permission, to see baby pictures, make sure everyone was doing OK, and so on…i’d rather have communicated via e-mail, but not everyone is into that these days. i consider that move only mildly hypocritical.)

anyway, i noticed that my friend Antoinette—ahem, George—had posted a link to this blog on her Facebook wall a few days ago and the comments it generated made me reconsider my position. i’m thinking there’s probably a happy medium.

as much as i’ve been railing against the “fake” socialization Facebook peddles, i got off the site mostly because i found myself using it so mindlessly. i think i was annoyed with myself, which i projected onto the site. then when i got off the site, i realized it sort of is annoying in certain ways, wreaks havoc on certain interpersonal communication and has turned into a full-blown addiction for many people.

(also, in case you haven’t heard, its IPO is in the turlet.)

however, i don’t want to cut off my nose to spite my face. i can use Facebook sparingly, keep in touch with people i can’t seem to keep in touch with otherwise and feel less out of the loop than i have the last few months.

i can also not use it everyday. i can limit the number of friends i “accept” so that i’m not distracted by the crap i used to be distracted by. and i can still write actual letters to people in a (small, probably wildly ineffective) effort to hold onto a little old-fashionedness, that very much soothes my soul.

and for the love of god, i can stop writing about Facebook on this blog and get back to writing about my silly, scattered life for the 24 people who read it most days.

so: sorry for the indecisive drama of late. i said to Michael yesterday, as we sought (relative) relief from the heat in the 85-degree water of my parents’ pool, that being away from our regular life (i.e. work and the city) for even a few days always gives me perspective on what’s really important, what really matters, what really fulfills me.

it doesn’t matter if this blog reaches one person or one hundred people or one million people. i started it as an outlet for all the thoughts and ideas and wishes and stories that fly through my head on a daily basis. if it’s not marketable, if i don’t have a huge following, if there is no book deal in the works—so what? writing fulfills me. writing this blog, writing to my friends, writing in my journal. all of it fulfills me.

so that’s what i’m going to do.

mbm

addendum II

last night on my commute home i thought of a better way to explain my thoughts and concerns about society and technology (apparently for me, commuting inspires deep thoughts).

you know how back in the 1950s they discovered how to mass produce food and make it last with the help of preservatives? this was monumental at the time because it came on the heels of the Depression and food rationing, and it meant more people had access to more food. and it meant the food was free of bacteria and other illness-causing organisms for longer stretches of time.

but then came foods with ingredient lists longer than the “X” section of the dictionary. eventually it came to ‘disinfecting’ meat with ammonia. pink slime in burgers. tertiary butylhydroquinone in chicken nuggets.

it went too far.

now the pendulum is swinging back from whence it came. the “in” thing to do today is to eat whole, natural foods, preferably from a local farm. “organic” is all the rage;  preservatives are the enemy. why? because people are getting fat from the quick, easy-to-come-by, fake food. they're developing diabetes, heart disease, cancer. all of a sudden someone realized, "hey, we're consuming vast amounts of chemicals here. maybe we should stop."

that's how i see social media and all this personal technology or whatever you call it. sure it has its benefits and it seems to be making life easier now, but when you think of the long term effects, can't you imagine a similar collective longing in the future to return to a more natural way of socializing and communicating? instead of becoming fat and ill, we’ll become lonely and withdrawn and someone may say, “hey, what the hell is going on here?”

quick and easy isn’t always the best way. actually, it’s usually not the best way. consider this Emerson quote: “adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”

mbm

addendum

a friend of mine from childhood—whom i respect, admire and love—has taken issue with me for 1) quitting my blog; and 2) railing against Facebook and other technologies that have, in my opinion, made people socially lazy (she disagrees).

this friend (i’ll call her George) is, you could say, an opinionated woman. she posted a bit of a diatribe on this blog’s Facebook wall yesterday and this morning—in response to an e-mail i sent her last night in response to her diatribe—she sent me an impassioned message, which i read before i got on the PATH and then thought about my entire commute. in fact, i had so many thoughts swirling in my head on the matter that i am un-retiring two days after retiring (Brett Favre, i feel ya) just to expel them.

countering my argument that people rely on Facebook too much—to remember birthdays, to remember to say hello to friends, to (ahem) remember to check for blog updates—she basically said, “so what? how is that different from me putting a reminder in my phone?” she also said that years ago people complained about something called e-mail, wondering what happened to old-fashioned letter-writing or picking up the phone. this—Facebook, etc.—is just the next step and helps busy people stay in touch. 

i thought about this on the train. i happen to be reading a chapter in Simplicity Parenting currently about scheduling—or, rather, over-scheduling—and how having too many things to do (sports, dance classes, art classes, karate lessons, swim lessons, piano lessons, cooking lessons, language lessons, etc.) is robbing kids of (among other things) the thrill of anticipation. being so busy is raising their expectation baseline. there’s no time to be bored, no time to rest, no time to look forward to the next thing.

and it’s not just kids, obviously. most adults—at least where i live—have everything going on and the faster it can all come together, the better. the less time they actually have to spend involved in something, whether it be ordering or preparing a meal, communicating with friends and family, watching a show on TV, the better. if they can do any of those things simultaneously, jackpot. living this way seems convenient—even necessary—these days. but why?

i suspect many people (perhaps George included) would answer, “because i have no time! i’m too busy to write a letter or pick up the phone or watch commercials or leave my BlackBerry at home when i take my kid to his baseball practice!”

again i ask: but why? must you be so busy? obviously there are things we all have to do and at certain times in our lives the workload gets even greater. but just as many obligations that feel so important, so integral, could easily be let go in exchange for a little sanity. 


i think of it this way: at the end of your life will you be glad you crammed in eight million things? will you have a true recollection of any of those things, or will it all be a blur? will your life be cut short because you developed a stress-related ulcer or had an anxiety-induced heart attack?

seriously. i know you think i’m being dramatic, but think about it.

why the hell are we all so goddamn busy?

In Simplicity Parenting, Kim John Payne cites a definition of addiction as put forth by one of his colleagues: “an increasing and compulsive tendency to avoid pain or boredom and replace inner development with outer stimulation.”

i floated an idea to Michael the other week. (it seemed like an epiphany to me at the time, though i’m sure it’s far from it.) i realized that most of our technological advances (Facebook included) have been instigated by science whizzes who, i would be willing to bet a large sum of money, are socially awkward or inept. it makes sense that the people who have the most trouble communicating and interacting face-to-face with others would be creating ways to connect that don’t require actually connecting.


right?

look, George had a point this morning when she said that without Facebook, she and i would not have reconnected at this stage of our lives, and i know we both are grateful that we have reconnected. but the most rewarding part of that reconnection has been the time we’ve spent together, in the same space at the same time—in each other’s backyards, at various get-togethers, traipsing around our former grade school while drinking wine….

that is what matters most in life and that’s what i want to keep alive. i’m not denying the role Facebook played in getting George and me to the point where we could be in the same space at the same time, but what worries me is how it seems to be replacing actual, substantive relationships overall.

when you consider how society has changed over the years—people used to know their neighbors, people said hello to each other on the street, co-workers would actually talk to each other in the hall or in the kitchen rather than relying on e-mails or instant messages—it’s not totally insane to imagine that someday, maybe perhaps in my son’s lifetime or his children’s lifetime, human interaction will go the way of the Discman.

these are the things that concern me, that keep me up at night. am i weird? absolutely. but it’s true all the same. and leaving Facebook was one little way i could think of to buck the trend. will it accomplish anything significant? not likely. there are a trillion people with active accounts who don’t worry about the future of humanity. but i felt strongly about quitting the site, so i did.

and i quit my blog in part because i realized my readership went down after i left Facebook. and that pissed me off, quite frankly. a friend apparently posted a link to one of my recent posts on her wall the other day and my page views shot up like you wouldn’t believe. and i thought, see? see?!? if it doesn’t happen on goddamn Facebook, it doesn’t happen at all.

so, yeah. that’s my very personal, not-for-everyone take on it. i don’t begrudge other people their social media or even their technology. (hi, i still own an iPhone.) i’m just more old-fashioned at heart, i guess. i got away from that for a while, as i said in my last post. i fell victim to the i’m-so-busy-i-must-be-extremely-important mindset. but having a kid has put things back in perspective. i really, really want my son to benefit from my presence (both physical and mental) and to grow up believing that life can be lived one moment at a time (not sixteen moments at a time).

and i want, at the end of my life, to know that i lived in a way that felt right and meaningful and memorable to me.

mbm

post #724: the end

so, here’s the thing: i’ve decided to quit my blog.

when i started it almost six years ago, blogs were hardly novel but there weren’t nearly as many as there are now. and most blogs i read these days have a hook—a set perspective, a mission, a theme. (mine has none of the above.) i’ve also noticed on other blogs that readers constantly comment or e-mail the writer or interact somehow. (me? i hear crickets.)

it’s making me wonder if i’m really benefitting anyone or accomplishing anything. do i really need to keep putting my thoughts and opinions and embarrassing moments out there on display? i could easily write all the same things in a personal journal (which i used to do religiously until a couple years ago) when i feel the need to vent or process.

i’ve had a longing over the last few months to keep simplifying my life. getting away from Facebook was one thing—and a big thing, silly as it sounds—but i’ve also found myself turning the TV off more often, going hours without looking at my phone and opening my laptop less and less. my husband thinks i’m going a little loony. i swear i’m not going to move to a shed in the woods and build letter bombs, but i’m really feeling the need to get rid of all the excess stuff, you know?

i’ve been reading a book called “Simplicity Parenting” (sent to me—you’ll find this funny—a few weeks ago by an ex-girlfriend of my husband’s i haven’t seen since we were all in college together who now reads this blog and thought i’d enjoy it…she couldn’t have been more right).

it’s not that this book is so revolutionary (although it might seem so to certain, especially plugged-in types). and i’m not learning any wildly amazing new parenting philosophies or fail-safe tips by reading it. i’m just enjoying it, mostly because it’s validating both my worries and hopes about raising a child in today’s world.

i have felt passionate about Matthew growing up in a calm, predictable, safe-place-to-fall environment. not some fantasyland where nothing remotely negative ever happens and not somewhere that feels antiseptic. just a place free of chaos—both the emotional and physical sort. a place where he can play and build his imagination and feel like he’s listened to and understood and appreciated, even on his crankiest, crabbiest, most difficult days.

i want him to just be a kid. to get dirt under his fingernails and permanent grass stains on his new jeans. i want him to make a sandbox his universe, to explore his world on a bike, to watch the sky as a storm is rolling in, to squeal and shriek as ocean waves chase his feet. i want him to draw and paint and build and read and bake and make messes and splash in puddles and play flashlight tag and climb trees.

i don’t want him to have an iPod or an iPad until he’s old enough to earn the funds to pay for it himself. i don’t want him to know how to use my Macbook before school requires him to. he has the rest of his life to be obsessed with—attached to—grown-up gadgets. he has the rest of his life to stare at a screen.

so maybe this is me wanting to lead by example. maybe i want to live more like i want my kid to live. i used to think there was some kind of warped romance in being crazy-busy, in working late and forgetting to eat and multi-tasking. it used to make me feel productive and important and worthwhile. i wore the ‘overworked’ badge with honor, even as i felt deep-down there was a better way to live.

i found a blog last week called Hand-Free Mama, created by a woman who realized she was missing her girls’ childhoods by being over-scheduled and chronically stressed and too type-A. she started the blog as a way to keep herself accountable, from what i can see, as she began the process of eliminating distractions from her life—both internal and external.

reading her posts, along with “Simplicity Parenting,” has only added fuel to my fire.

the other night i took Matty to the park after work because it was beautiful out— a warm breeze gently blowing, a cloudless sky turning sorbet colors as the sun slid behind the city. we played on the slide for a bit and shoveled some sand. just before it was time to leave, we stopped at the swing set. i slid Matty into one of the swings and started to push him. every time he swung forward, i pretended he kicked me and propelled myself backward, Goofy-style. he laughed and laughed so i kept doing it. a little girl about Matty’s age was in the swing next to us. her dad was there, too, pushing her half-heartedly because he was talking on his cell phone. i noticed her staring at me with big, brown, sad-seeming eyes, so i smiled and waved at her even though my heart was aching.

eventually her dad hung up and started pushing her on the swing in earnest, and i heard her start to laugh, which made me feel better.

“she’s laughing at you,” her dad said to me a minute or two later, as i was pretending to flail backwards again. “she’s watching you.”

i thought of telling him that she’d probably be watching him if he paid a little more attention to her. instead i smiled and zipped my lip.

my point is: i really want to focus now on being a good mama. i want to keep writing, too; i just want to do it more thoughtfully. rather than continue put my irrelevant stories and random thoughts online and pray that someone sees them and offers to pay me for over-sharing, maybe i can funnel all the words swirling in my head every day into something more meaningful.

i’m not really sure yet. but i think, right now, this is the last chapter here. 

onto simpler things…

mbm

my second mother's day

i'm the luckiest. 

i was really, really, really looking forward to Mother’s Day this year. technically it was my second, but i told everyone it felt like my first since Matty was barely a month old last May. “i earned it this year!” i kept saying. since Michael had to work all day, the plan was for Matty and me to go visit my Gram first thing and then to head on to PA, where we’d spend the day with my parents. with gorgeous weather on tap, i was excited to take Matty for a walk around the neighborhood, play catch with him on the lawn and take him for a little swim in the not-too-hot tub. on the dinner menu at Chez Mom’s was surf-and-turf—lobster tails and filet mignon.

we left home only 20 minutes later than i’d originally hoped, which is actually considered ahead of schedule these days. we dropped Michael off at the PATH and headed toward Wayne. the cloudy morning was starting to brighten up, there was no traffic to speak of, Matty was napping peacefully in his car seat and i had decided to swing by the McDonald’s drive-thru across the street from my Gram’s assisted living facility and fetch her a decent breakfast and cup of coffee for a change (yes, compared to what she’s typically served, McDonald’s is a real step up). i was about five minutes away and still contemplating whether an Egg McMuffin or Bacon, Egg and Cheese Biscuit was the way to go when WHAM—a loud noise followed by a thwump-ing sound and a light on the dashboard letting me know i had a flat tire.

i pulled over immediately, climbed out of the car and discovered the rear right tire was kaput. we don’t have AAA (planning to rectify that soon) and i really didn’t want to call any other emergency roadside service (beaucoup bucks), so i called my Uncle Mark, who lives nearby. no answer at his house or at his firehouse. i sent him a text and was in the process of looking up nearby service stations on my iPhone when a siren blipped behind me. an unmarked police car had pulled up and the driver flashed its lights briefly. i walked back and peered into his open passenger side window. "you need some help? he said. “are you Wayne PD?” i asked. he said he was and i told him who my uncle was (he’s a police captain as well as a volunteer firefighter—he really lives to serve). that seemed to open some doors for me. next thing i knew, two on-duty officers—strapping guys who were probably 10 years younger than me—were on the scene.

they changed my busted tired quickly and proficiently—my heroes!—and i had high hopes that my day would continue nearly as planned. “think i can get to PA on that tire?” i asked the guys, eyeing the slightly-more-substantial-than-a-donut spare.

the consensus was: no. they suggested going to the nearest Costco for a replacement. this seemed reasonable—not ideal by any stretch, but hey. this is life, right? gotta roll with the punches. so i drove over to Costco to find…that it was closed. like, empty-and-vacant closed. awesome. luckily, Sears Auto was right there and Matty and i made a beeline for it. we had to wait 10 minutes for it to open, so we ate some yogurt melts and made some phone calls in the meantime. soon as the doors opened, we approached a group of sales associate.

“i need a tire,” i said. “fast.”

a nice guy—i didn’t get his name—walked us back out to the car. “you got four-wheel drive?” he asked.

“uhhmmm…” cars befuddle me, i’m not gonna lie. you might as well speak to me in Mandarin Chinese. “yeah, yeah, four-wheel drive,” i recovered, after spotting “4x4” on one of the three remaining good tires.

“well, with four-wheel drive all the wheels are the same,” the nice associate said. “unfortunately, i don’t have that tire in stock right now. i could order it and have it here by Wednesday…”

as my heart sank, i cleared my throat and explained that i was headed to PA for mother’s day and really needed to get the new tire ASAP. he suggested trying a Honda dealership. “they’ll have them in stock,” he said. “they always do. they’ll charge you more, but they’ll have it.”

i asked him—just in case—if he thought i could make a trip to suburban Philadelphia on the spare tire. he said the officers had put it on very well and it wasn’t a bad tire, but that they don’t recommend traveling more than 80 miles, or going at speeds over 45-50 mph, on a donut.

sighing inwardly, i thanked him for his help and called Michael for assistance. he found the number for a Honda dealership near where i was and called while i was still on the line. the guy who answered was sort of a rude jerk, but i still had faith that he would be the solution to my problem.

“we don’t have that tire in stock currently,” he said, crushing my hopes in 10 words or less. “i could have it for you by Tuesday…”

it was around that point when i believed the universe was conspiring against me. Michael offered to call more dealerships in the area and i agreed, though i was feeling pretty defeated at that point. then i called my dad, who said, “honey, it’s getting late in the day” [it was only 10:30, but i still had a crap tire on the car and no discernible means of replacing it] “and you have Matty to worry about.”

he was one hundred percent correct, but that didn’t stop me from crying over what felt like a ruined Mother’s Day. i called Michael back and mumbled tearfully, “i’m just going home,” and then sniffled most of the drive back to Hoboken.

half of my brain was saying, “pull it together, girlfriend. you’re a mother now, you can’t cry when things don’t go your way.” that only incurred the wrath of the other half of my brain, which—when it caught its breath between self-pitying sobs—answered, “but it’s my first real Mother’s Day! and now i’m spending it alone!”

the rest of the conversation went like this:

rational side: “not alone, dummy. you see that handsome boy in the backseat?”

emotional side: “you know what i meant.”

rational side: “this is what those books call a teaching moment—what would you say to Matty if the roles were reversed right now?”

emotional side: “i would hug him and tell him that sometimes life really stinks and we can’t always control what happens, which is a real bummer, but it’s much better and more fun to shrug it off and make the best of it than to wallow in sadness.”

rational side: “ex-act-ly.”

emotional side [sobbing again]: “but it’s Mother’s Day.”

rational side: “you’re hopeless.”

we’d had a very fun, full and long day on Saturday, so in defense of my emotional side, i was utterly exhausted and reacting in a way far more pathetic than i would have if i was well-rested.

i’d like to say that i turned the day around all on my own, but credit for that goes to my husband, who took advantage of a slow afternoon at work and came back to Hoboken to take Matty and me out to a late brunch.

we sat outside at a low-key, un-crowded restaurant, enjoying the gorgeous day and sipping brunch cocktails. i was still exhausted, but so happy (and grateful) to be with my perfect little family. Matty entertained us with his attempts to flirt with the blonde hostess and the two twentysomething girls at the table next to us. (the kid’s unstoppable.)

after Michael headed back to work, Matty and i spent the late afternoon and early evening playing. i took him down to the courtyard to explore and blow bubbles. he actually walked most of the way himself, behind his Winnie the Pooh walker/ride-on toy.

to see the joy on that kid’s face as he toddled down the hallway without any assistance from mama—i had one of those cliché Hallmark commercial moments where i thought, this is truly what the day is about. just this.

lesson learned.

mbm

why to have a husband

after a really hectic, high-on-anxiety, low-on-sleep kind of week, you arrive home on Friday evening to a little guy who’s really happy to see you (the scampering sound of him crawling from wherever he is the condo to you at the door is one of the best sounds you’ve ever heard) and to your parents, who’ve been watching him since your husband left for work at 3 o’clock. the shades are down in the main living area and this strikes you as odd, but you’re distracted for several minutes by your adorable, exuberant son.

then you catch a glimpse of something green out on the balcony—which, as of this morning, was completely devoid of anything other than a small electric grill and a red-and-white cooler. you catch a better glimpse though a gap in the shade and discover what looks to you like an oasis: a small round table, two yellow-cushioned chairs, potted plants everywhere (including calla lilies! the same color as those in your wedding bouquet!) and even more plants in window boxes attached to the railing… in the span of only a few hours earlier that day, your husband turned a boring, cookie-cutter balcony into an absolutely beautiful place to sit and relax, especially on a warm summer evening. your own little backyard in the sky.

tears prickle your eyes and eventually spill over as you to try not to start full-on sobbing.  yes, you’re tired, but that’s only a small part of the reason you’re feeling so emotional. sometimes you feel like your husband isn’t listening, is too busy and distracted to “get” you, life is just so busy and when is there ever enough time to really connect? and then he does something like this, making you feel like a million-trillion dollars. and so very cherished. 

and “gotten.”

was there a better way to start mother’s day weekend? if there was, you couldn’t think of it. later that night, after Matty’s grandparents went home, you sat out on the balcony for a few minutes and reveled in the feel of it—you still need a new dining set and oh god, all the pictures that still aren’t on the walls, but somehow this makes your home feel complete. like a real home.

but that’s not really true, is it? it’s not the flowers and plants and patio furniture that make it feel real; it’s the thoughtfulness, kindness and love of your husband—a wonderful dad, an unfailing partner and your very best friend—that makes this place, this life, feel like home.

mbm

more than enough

i can’t catch my breath this week. and of course so much is swirling in my head that i really want (need) to write about, but my tired brain (and lack of time) is getting in the way. work has been non-stop and i’m running on fumes big-time, because my sweet Matty Pants has been up every night this week courtesy of his budding molars.

in short, i’m really, really, really happy it’s Friday.

a little while ago, my lovely friend Sarah sent me a link to this, after i was venting about the Time cover story yesterday. i wrote back and told her it was exactly what i wanted to write and would have tried to if i weren’t so exhausted.

anyway, i thought i’d share it here—as a way of saying happy mother’s day to all the beautiful, dedicated, super-hero-strong mamas i know. women who are all, without a doubt, more than mom enough.

mbm

this makes me livid.

partly because i believe breastfeeding—while a very natural, wonderful opportunity for a mother and child—should never be used in a sensational way and should not be put on the cover of a national magazine next to such a horrific headline.

i have absolutely no issues with breastfeeding in public. in fact, i did it quite often with Matthew last year (though i made good use of my Hooter Hider). but a park or restaurant is one thing. a magazine cover? i just don’t understand why this woman would subject her child to this. he’s going to grow up and find the magazine somewhere in their house and likely be embarrassed. probably extremely embarrassed. again, not because he was breastfed at three years old—that’s a decision solely up to his parents to make—but because his mother agreed to put it out there, quite literally, for all to see.

and i find it ironic that this woman believes she’s doing something so wonderful for her son by still breastfeeding and yet is sharing something so personal with the world—without her son’s awareness. he’s three. he can’t possibly understand the implications.

also—the headline. Time magazine editors, are you kidding me? how do you think you are helping the country by posing such a stupid question? but headlines and articles and journalism in general aren't designed to help any longer, are they? they're meant to generate new headlines—headlines about headlines—and buzz and talk show fodder in the hopes of moving some issues off the newsstand. god knows you need all the help you can get, but what a disgraceful way to do it.

again, overall, i feel that decorum is a thing of the past, and i really wish it weren’t. everyone just lets everything hang out, literally and figuratively. no one has any sense of modesty or privacy anymore. truly, nothing is sacred.

and especially where parenting is involved—i wish parents would focus more on what their kids need than on trying to prove to the world that their way of doing things is better than yours.

mbm

road rage

since i became a parent, certain things that bugged me previously now make me absolutely insane.

one: smoking.

two: parents who aren’t nice to or are crass in front of their kids.

three: idiot drivers.

i encounter number three at an alarming rate these days nd the incidents keep getting more dramatic. last week involved a rather angry female driver while i was walking to the PATH. four days ago, i experienced something far more frightening while in my dad’s car on the way home from a Trenton Thunder game.

my dad was driving, i was in the front passenger seat. my mother was in the backseat behind my dad, with Matthew asleep next to her in his car seat. we were on County Line Road in Bucks County, a two-lane road with a 45mph speed limit.

now, i’ll say right now that my dad is not the most patient driver. he is never reckless and he’s not aggressive in the way many drivers seem to be. he does have a complex in which he believes bad drivers single him out with the sole purpose of aggravating him on the road. so when the silver-gray Sentry in front of us at a traffic light didn’t budge when the light turned green, my dad touched his horn briefly.

“he’s not paying attention,” my dad said when my mom protested his honking. “i think he’s fighting with his girlfriend or something.”

about two seconds later, the driver of the Sentry gave my dad the finger and proceeded to drive at about 20 miles per hour. from what i could see, the driver was a kid—late teens or early ‘20s.

“come on,” my dad grumbled. but he didn’t ride the Sentry’s bumper, nor did he honk again. i could tell the driver was taking immense pleasure in being an idiot, which really made me angry. why are people so small-minded and prone to stupidity? why do so many get pleasure out of inconveniencing the lives of others?

a minute or so later, we approached the next intersection, at which there was a left-hand turning lane. my dad pulled into that lane as the light turned yellow, intending to use it to pass the Sentry. immediately the Sentry jerked to the left, attempting to block us and almost hitting my dad’s car.

at this, i wanted to get out and punch the driver in the face. i started to roll down my window, preparing to scream, “there’s a baby in this car, you fucking idiot!” but i stopped myself. my hands were shaking and i said, “that’s it. i’m calling 911.”

while i was dialing, the driver of the Sentry and my dad were exchanging words. i believe the Sentry driver leaned out his window and said something like, “i was going!” with a faux-innocent, truly jack-ass-bully expression on his face.

the light turned green and we continued to follow the idiot along County Line Road—still going at 20 miles, maybe slower now. i got connected with the Bucks County PD via 911 and gave the dispatcher the car’s location, description and license plate, reporting him as a reckless, aggressive driver.

at the next intersection, almost immediately after i hung up, the Sentry suddenly peeled off and made a left onto Lower State Road. i glanced in that direction as we drove on ahead and let me tell you—the idiot was burning rubber.

i don’t know if he saw me in his rearview on the phone and figured out what i was doing or not. i knew even if the cops did come, they’d never find him now. and that pissed me off. was he the most reckless driver i’ve ever seen? hardly. but he was acting like a full-on asshole and—i’ll say it again—people like that have no business being on the road.

mbm

a truly brilliant individual

Maurice Sendak, who passed away yesterday, on e-books:

“I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.”

mbm

ehhhhhhhh

was just walking back from an “off-campus” meeting with my boss and two co-workers. one co-worker and i were engrossed in a conversation when my boss tapped me on the shoulder and said, “did you just see Henry Winkler?”

a non-sequitur if i ever heard one, but then she pointed behind us to a short guy with silver-gray hair ambling up Madison in a trench coat. i could tell right away from the shape of his head that it was, indeed, The Fonz.

“that was such a ‘you’ sighting,” my boss said. “i can’t believe you missed him.”

am still trying to figure out how to take that. am leaning toward thinly-veiled insult/commentary on my lack-of-coolness.

little does she know i was not a “Happy Days” girl growing up. i was much more into “Laverne & Shirley.” i mean, come on now.

mbm 

hell yeah, Hil

"I feel so relieved to be at the stage I'm at in my life right now. Because, you know, if I want to wear my glasses, I'm wearing my glasses. If I want to wear my hair back,  I'm pulling my hair back. You know at some point it's just not something that deserves a lot of time and attention. And if others want to worry about it, I let them do the worrying for a change." 

—Hillary Clinton 

(whom i'll be voting for in 2016 whether she's running or not) 

mbm

"the golden girls" has some of the best one-liners ever, hands down

"i hate jello. if god wanted peaches suspended in mid-air, he would've filled 'em with helium."

—Sophia, season one, episode 20

mbm

read this

not sure if any of you know about Matt Logelin’s blog. can’t recall if i’ve written about it here before. he appeared on Oprah a while back and he wrote a book based on his blog and his experiences. which are, in short: after a tough pregnancy and an emergency C-section, his beloved wife (and high school sweetheart), Liz, died one day after their daughter was born from a pulmonary embolism. 

heartbreaking. 

Matt is an awesome dad now (or seems to be—of course i don’t know him) and has raised a ton of money to help other newly/unexpectedly single parents. he even found love again with a woman who volunteered for the foundation he created. but the heartache continues, because his daughter, Maddy, will never know her mom. Matt does everything he can to keep Liz’s memory alive, but of course it’s not even close to the same.

anyway, Matt doesn’t update his blog nearly as often as he used to a couple years ago, but his posts almost always move me. this one, posted last week, might be my favorite ever. partly because it involves baseball, partly because i think if my husband were in the same position, he’d be exactly like Matt, and partly because i think there are a lot of parents out there who don’t care enough, so i always love reading about those who do.

mbm

great advice

mbm

no.

i’ve had a pretty crappy week all-around. the gray-and-soggy weather in New York the last few days has certainly matched my mood. but what happened last night in Kansas City took my misery to a whole other level.

i actually didn’t realize last night how bad it was for Mariano Rivera. i heard the YES Network reporter say someone from the Royals’ staff was looking at his knee, but i was only half-paying attention and didn’t know then about the incident during BP. i went to bed early (see above: crappy week) and didn’t even listen to the game on the radio before falling asleep, because at that point the Yanks were going on, like, 19 scoreless innings and i'd had enough.

this morning i turned on the local news at quarter after six and the top story was Mo’s torn ACL. one word went through my head, and i’m just being honest here: fuck.

and—also being honest—it wasn't because our already-weak pitching staff was just dealt a mortal blow. it was because i can think of no one who deserves less to go out this way. Mariano is the ideal athlete. i don’t think there’s anyone on the planet who would argue with that. a total class act, in amazing athletic shape even at age 42, a consummate professional. he is the Yankees as much as Derek Jeter is the Yankees. he is—unarguably—the best closer in the history of baseball.

so to be felled by a devastating knee injury on the warning track at Kauffman Stadium during batting practice? no. this isn’t right. do you hear me, Universe? you got this one extremely wrong.

you can’t even say, “well, he should have retired. see? this is what happens when guys push it.” Mo's been pitching great so far this season. and you can’t say, “well, he shouldn’t have been messing around out there, shagging flies.” he does it all the time.

are you forced to say, then, life just utterly sucks sometimes? maybe. maybe. but i like to believe in karma. and you would think that someone with a career like Mo has had, with a heart of gold like Mo has, with the unanimous respect and admiration he has earned and maintained for all these years—there has to be a better ending than this.

laugh at me if you will, but i keep getting a lump in my throat over this. again, not because this may very well keep the Yanks from making the playoffs this year (though even mighty Mo couldn’t do anything about their paltry offense), but because it’s just not fair. it’s not anything close to fair. 

are there far worse things happening in the world right now? obviously. but does anyone ever enjoy seeing good people get horribly bad breaks? hell, even Phillies and Red Sox fans are upset about this. so, yeah. there’s a lump in my throat. i feel an aching sense of loss right now. not for my team’s lights-out closer, but for a man who did everything right—and then some. 

and because i just don't like knowing that things like this can happen—for no damn good reason at all.

mbm