Deep Pockets

by Patti


I was cuddling with S on the couch the other day, trying to hug her through that damned Columbia jacket that she has worn so much, I vow to snatch it from her while she sleeps and burn it into obliteration.

Anyway.

So I'm cuddling with the kid when I feel this... lump. "What is that?" I asked her, rubbing my hip.
"My pocket.'
"Your pocket?"
"Yeah, my pocket."

I shoved my hand curiously into her pocket, and fished out a box of Tic Tacs. And a rubber ball. And some change. And chapstick. And some Fun Dip candy. And wadded up gum wrappers.
"Seriously, honey? Don't you think you need to clean out your pocket?"
"Try my other pocket!" She flipped over, delighted.

So I shoved my hand into her other pocket, this time a bit more cautiously, afraid I was going to find our dog in there. Nope, not our dog. But I did find her inhaler, another rubber ball (???), more wadded up paper, her school I.D. card, Kleenex, cough drops, house keys - which, you should know, are secured to a long, wide ribbon, and that ribbon was artfully bunched up so that it fit neatly into her pocket-o-junk....
I was actually impressed by the expertise with which all of the crap that S managed to contain in those pockets of hers was contained. And the pockets? Aren't even that big. Yet, like the magician's sleeve from which he pulls 598,402,542 scarves, I kept pulling stuff out of those pockets.  Worried for her BACK with all that extra weight she was lugging around, I forced her to clean out her pockets, and then continued the cuddlefest.

This weekend M was doing laundry and happened upon that same Columbia jacket. "This feels so heavy. Is there something in the pockets?"
"There was; she emptied the pockets the other day." As we talked, I folded clothes on the pool table/ laundry folding table/place to leave piles of clothes that we are too lazy to put away forget to put away.
I heard a jangly, clankity sound, and looked up to find M shaking out S's jacket over the table. Out tumbled her inhaler, her house keys, some change, four throat lozenges, wadded up Kleenex, a pencil, a pencil sharpener, her school I.D. card, five hair rubber bands, two rings,and a pack of Hubba Bubba.
"She did?"

I swear, S's pockets are like lizard tails: they regenerate. Except for in lieu of a scaly tail, her pockets regenerate the $5 and under aisle at Walgreen's. Maybe it's a good thing her Columbia has small pockets. A different, less annoying jacket might have deeper pockets, and the Universe's things cannot afford to be swallowed up any more whole than they already are by S's pockets.

This is Your Life!

by Patti and Cathy


Have you ever wiled the hours away at a mall by simply sitting in one place, watching people go by? And when you do, have you ever found yourself imagining how long that couple has been dating; why that girl looks sad; why that man is in such a hurry?

We do. All the time.

No person, place or thing is safe from our grand delusions assumptions. And those assumptions, in our minds, are completely and totally the way it is.


Patti
When my brother and I were kids, we used to sit on the ledge of the low brick wall that surrounded the park, and simply watch people all day long. The stories we came up with for each person's life were the stuff only movies were made of, but for us, those stories were real.

As I've grown older, that habit of creating lives for others has never died; instead, those stories have only grown grander and richer. As my life gets more complicated, so do the lives of others. It's not uncommon for me to upset myself into believing that the man with the frown is frowning because his wife is dying of cancer, or that woman with bitter face is only bitter because she can't have a baby.

It's not always gloom and doom, though. That couple looks so happy because they just won the lottery! And they are zipping through Costco with glee because they can now buy that trampoline if they want to!

One day, Cathy and I were driving down a very trafficky street on a hot, sticky day, trying to get to the ballet studio on time to pick up our daughters. A honkin' big pick-up truck suddenly appeared next to us, music blaring from the rolled-down windows, horn blaring at us, as if we had done something wrong. The driver, a woman with flying, scraggly hair, screamed obsenities at us, and then promptly gave us the finger. Then she screeched away, but not before we noticed that she had a gaggle of kids in the truck with her.
"What the HELL?" Cathy yelled.
"I KNOW! And she had KIDS in the car!"
"What was WRONG with her? We didn't even DO anything! SHE is the one who cut us off!"
"What a bitch! She must be really angry at the world," I concluded.
"Yeah. She looked really  upset," Cathy agreed.
"She's probably pissed off because her husband left her."
"I know," Cathy said, "and with so many kids, too."
"Yeah. On top of that, he was hitting her!"
"But she probably still loved him."
"Of COURSE she did. She has no self-esteem! I mean, LOOK at her!"
"Riiight? She stopped taking care of herself."
"Yeah, because her husband made her feel worthless!"
"What an asshole."
"I kind of feel sorry for her.
"Me, too. Especially since she's doing drugs."
"Those poor kids."
"I know."

And then, absolutely convinced that this poor woman was broke, drug-addicted, and abandoned - and that her kids were neglected and sad - we both fell silent, and wished her well.

Cathy
You know how in romantic comedies, the couple goes on a date and sits on a ledge of a beautiful street fountain, sharing an ice cream sundae, watching people go by and making up stories about their life? Then they go off on a story tangent and it becomes so unbelievable, that they crack themselves up, nearly falling back into that fountain?

Yeah, well our version of sizing up people's lives isn't quite so Hollywood-like. We are dead serious with our stories, so much so, that they deeply affect us because we SO believe what we are making up about them. We just know that what we create in our heads, these Mini Mind Movies, just have to be the case with these people. We make them out to be martyrs, desolates, schizophrenics, poverty-stricken, ill, wealthy, celebrities, strippers and every other dramatic scenario we can conjure up to justify what we see.

On occasion, I happen to find out the real truth about those people who I've clearly known just in my head - exactly the way I only know them. Then, I am floored. Because as much as I want to believe that what I've made up in my head about someone is really true, because HOW ELSE could it all flow so well together and make such sense given what I'm given to work with? How could there be any other scenario of what their lives are? Oh, but I am pretty much always wrong. And dare I say, it's disappointing.

Almost always, the truth is not nearly as dramatic as what I've envisioned. It's disheartening to find out how boring these people really are. So you know what? I'd prefer to not know the truth, because obviously, I can't handle the truth. We can't all be Jack Nicholson. So I'll stick to listening to the voices in my head because maybe I'm the schizophrenic one. Because, really? That's so much more fun.

My Mini Me

by Cathy

In writing this blog, it's so easy for me to get caught up in panic mode over my babies growing up. It happens moreso as it pertains to my youngest child, Ari, because with her, the sting of my kids growing up is felt much more sharply since I know she is the last one I will go through all of the major milestones with. And so for me, they are tinged with bittersweetness. Bella's milestones, on the other hand, have more of a happily freeing and wondrous complexity about them, since she is the first.

This weekend, Bella is turning 11. Considering all of the above, I am okay with this. Perhaps it's because I don't view 11 as a defining age. Yes, she's past ten but it's sort of an in-between age. Now 12, I will freak out about since I know this is the road to true Teenagerville, but looking ahead, it's 13 that will really floor me. As I shade my eyes from the glaring reality of that future road and its long, bumpy and winding path, I turn and focus on the road Bella is now on.


After my recent trip to Cabo - which was the first time I had left the girls for a long period of time - I returned to find a different Bella. She seemed more mature...motherly, even. The stories Joe told me of how she stepped up while I was away, confirmed it. Over the course of five days, Bella had really grown into her confidence and her abilities. She took charge of things: she knew where I stored things, she knew how I organized them, she knew how things were done, she read Ari bedtime stories and tucked her into bed, she helped pack both of their school lunches every morning, she kept the house tidy and even did some chores without being asked.

As I watched some of this behavior trickle over into the first few days I was back, I was amazed and SO proud. How come I didn't see this in her before? Was it because I wasn't looking hard enough or because she never had the freedom and the opportunity to showcase her maturity under my foreboding, all-knowing shadow? Was it because I was there doing everything for her and she felt complacent or because she felt she couldn't 'step on my toes and take charge with things while I was there? Have I given her any of these impressions for or against her behavior?

Bella has always been an impressionable child. Things stick with her. She is careful to always do well, to watch my reactions to her actions, and although I never asked this of her, she thinks it important to gain my approval. She pays attention to the way I handle things, she listens to the things I opine on and the random facts I spew out in the moment and may repeat them all-knowingly when the situation calls for it. She loves to read and is diligent about homework and studying when she gets in the zone. She tends to be more reserved - more of a listener...an observer rather than a talker. She is a people-pleaser. She is sensitive and emotional and wears her heart on her sleeve. I always joke that she "has a heart as big as Montana." She loves and has connected with the Greek side of her culture by writing, speaking and understanding the language more dedicatedly than her sister. She takes a practical, logical straightforward thinking approach to resolving conflicts. "But that just doesn't make sense," she tells me in response to someone else's suggested solution. I agree. Because in short? She is me.

As she is coming into her own in these pre-teen years, I notice the slight shifts that normally occur with adolescence. For example, she thankfully doesn't feel the need to seek my approval for many things anymore since she is working on learning to be more decisive on her own accord. I also get a lot of eye-rolling from her at the goofiness of my humor - even though she has a goofy humorous side, it's just weird when your mom does it, I'm sure. And she is now quick to teach me random facts about things she has discovered.

Just as I am focused on taking in every last little milestone with Ari, I am making it a point to take in every change and benchmark in Bella's life -- to be more cognizant of how she is growing; to take a good look at her and really see her, the person she is down, deep inside; to be aware of how her body is changing, becoming more womanly; to really take in the shift in nuances of her personality, her character, her ideas, her likes and dislikes, her thought process and reasoning; to really listen and focus only on her as she tells me things.

Most of all, I want to make it a point to continue having our little pre-bedtime conversations as I tuck her in in their dimly-lit bedroom where Ari is already asleep, where she reveals to me all her secrets, hopes, fears and thoughts.

That, I can only hope, will never change, no matter how old she is.

We are beautiful

by Patti

S was born with a shock of thick, black curly hair.  Her father has black curly hair, and when S was swimming around in utero, I imagined her looking just like him. When S was emerging from the inside world to the outside world, casually hanging out in limbo there between my sprawled out legs, my midwife announced it, "Oh, look! Black curly hair!"  "Just like I pictured..." I thought.

That black curly hair soon transformed into a glorious head of golden curls. By the time S was 3 years old, her hair was so thick, curly and long, it appeared she was wearing a wig. It was odd to see her tiny body crowned with Charro's hair. But there she was, all attitude and curls, and it honestly was not unusual for random strangers to comment on the beauty of it.

S is eleven now, and she hates her hair. "I just wish it was STRAIGHT!" she often laments. For Christmas, she asked for a flat iron. "It's not fair - I'll never be able to have bangs!" she sighs. Her hair's curl has tamed a bit; it is now more thick waves. But the second the weather turns "sticky", or the sun hits that head, her face is instantly framed by tight little curls that have her sobbing into her hands that she looks like a poodle.

I marvel at her discontent. No doubt about it - and I don't just say this because she is my kid - she has gorgeous hair. And I just can't understand how she doesn't see that. And then it hits me: Are we simply hardwired to hate ourselves?

I mean, think about it: What feature of yours did you curse this morning in the mirror? Was it your hips? The slight curve of your nose? Was it the fact that your top lip is thinner than your bottom lip? Was it that your straight hair can't hold a curl? Was it your curly hair that you longed to see sleek and shiny?

I know I've done it. In front of my daughter, even. And what kind of message does that send to her when I am criticizing the very body that brought her into this world?

S is at the threshold of womanhood now. The songs of woe I sing about the little roll of fat around my waist, the hair that won't lay just right, the sheen on my skin that powder won't mute -- they need to be sung very carefully. In fact, I may just have to change my tune altogether. Because S is beautiful, and if I don't believe that I am beautiful, she will never believe she is, either.

Slipping Through My Fingers

by Cathy

Laying in bed the other night trying to fall asleep, my mind rattled off tasks and errands for the next day, skipping haphazardly over the stepping stones of my random thoughts and rather suddenly, into some deep water in the form of a panic attack.

I was thinking about what I have to do to prepare for Bella's upcoming 11th birthday party, then quickly freaked out because she's past the 10-year mark, then quickly comforted that thought with the fact that Ari is still only five. But wait! That means she 's going to be SIX? In three months? No, no no! That's not so little anymore! She will no longer be wearing toddler sizes but size 6X! With one tiny step, she'll be leaving Toddlerland and quickly heading into Teenagerville, where she'll meet up with Bella and conspire to move out within the year. I could see it all now...

So I lay in my bed crying waterfall tears and muffling heavy wails because these thoughts were tailspinning me into a lonely place. Joe was snoring away next to me, blissfully unaware that his girls are all grown up already. I desperately wanted to run into their bedroom and sprinkle desperate kisses all over their foreheads, eyebrows, eyelids, nose, cheeks, lips, chin, ears and hair and then slide under their covers, hold them tight, so they wouldn't dare grow another inch, and watch them sleep. Instead, I chose to not scare the crap out of them and took three deep breaths, calmed myself down and promised to take in every minute of every age - which is something I remind myself of on a daily basis.

..........

Ari has been obsessed with movies ever since she could sit still long enough to see one through. And when she finds a movie she loves, she loves it over and over again until we are all inevitably reciting the words to the whole movie by heart. Her first major obsession (at age three) was Bee Movie. Then it was Madagascar. Then Enchanted. Then Ice Age. Then Despicable Me.  Lately - and by this I mean, the past year - she has been infatuated with Mamma Mia!


That movie has taken up precious space on our DVR for the last year. Just the other day, Joe told me, "Dude, if I hear those Mamma Mia! songs one more time I'm gonna go nuts. What is it about that movie and Ari? Let's just erase it."

"No way!" I defensively responded, protecting my young. "Ari would KILL us if we erased it! Just leave it on. She loves it."

And sure enough, later that same night, she asked me to play it off the DVR for her. See??? Mamma knows best.

There's a wedding prep scene in the movie where the mother of the girl getting married sings "Slipping Through My Fingers" while polishing her daughters' toenails, styling her hair, helping her with her jewelry and all the other motherly moments that should be shared before she lets go of her baby so she can go off and become that special person in someone else's life.

When the first few notes of that song reverberate off our television screen, they travel through the house, grab me by the heart and pull me towards it. By now, Ari waits for me to walk into the living room where she is sitting - usually alone, because we have all seen the movie 3,258 times - and take her into my lap to squeeze her close.

"This song makes you cry, doesn't it mom," she always says. So we sing and hum and rock back and forth together and sure enough when it's over, she turns to search my face. "Let me see your tears," she says in a quasi-cocky tone. And when I don't disappoint her, she bows her head into mine and sits with me.

And then you wonder why I don't want them to grow up? Because I won't get moments like these very often. Because the innocence and sincerity won't be heard in their words anymore. Because they won't hold my hand throughout an entire field trip in a museum in front of all their friends (and boys!) anymore. Because they won't insist on sitting with you, and only you, on the bus ride home from that field trip. Because they won't request to sit on your lap while you're visiting their classroom anymore, either.

So as long as I can get these moments, I will take them, because their wedding day will be here any day now.

.............

Slipping Through My Fingers

by ABBA

Schoolbag in hand
She leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye
With an absent-minded smile
I watch her go
With a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I'm loosing her forever
And without really entering her world
I'm glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes
Her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake
I let precious time go by
Then when she's gone
There's that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt
I can't deny
What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
Well some of that we did
But most we didn't
And why I just don't know

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time
Slipping through my fingers -

Schoolbag in hand
She leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile... 

We, too, are tweens

by Patti

Have you ever noticed that a person's life seems to be broken out in titled stages? Infant, toddler, kindergartener, school-aged, tween, teenager, young adult, child-bearing age, middle-aged, senior citizen.... We are a series of labels.

But there is one "label" that I have recently discovered manages to repeat itself quite sneakily in one's life: tween.  A tween is a kid who is too old to be a child and too young to be a teenager. But what about when you are too old to be young, and too young to be old?

The other day I was at ballet with Cathy, and while our girls leapt through the air on the other side of the viewing window, Cathy asked me if I had ever had the chicken pox. Used to random questions from Cathy such as this, I didn’t think twice when I told her I had. “Oh my GOD, did you know you can get shingles now?”
The mom sitting on the other side of me jerked her head up from her iPhone . “Have you guys seen that commercial?”
YES!” replied Cathy, knowing “that commercial” before the woman even had a chance to get into any detail.
"That firefighter… remember him?” continued the other mom. She lowered her voice in an attempt to sound like that fireman. “I’ve been fighting fires all my life; I’ve entered burning buildings.. but I’ve never felt pain like this!"
"I KNOW!” yelled Cathy. “I’m so scared to get shingles now!"
"My mom had shingles,” I offered, probably not very helpfully. “But she’s… older….”
"She did? What was it like?” asked Cathy, her eyes wide.
"Oh, she had these horrible blisters all over her chest and down her arm. She was in pain for, like, 3 months, or something. And the blisters were uh-gah-ly. She still has scars.”
Cathy and the other mom winced.
I continued. “They actually have shingles shots at Walgreens.”
The other mom leaned in. “But aren’t those for senior citizens? I mean… aren’t we too young to worry about shingles?”
The three of us sat there, pondering.
"I’m gonna ask my doctor about it,” decided Cathy.
"Let me know what he says!” we cried in unison.

And then we laughed. Because this conversation we were having? About shingles? Was most definitely not the conversations we normally have; the ones about the cute shoes we bought on sale, or the cool restaurant we had just discovered, or the movie the other simply had to see. Yet, much like our daughters talk about American Girl dolls and then the cute boy who sits 2 desks over in the same breath, we were having total tween talk. It’s just that ours see-sawed between lip gloss and shingles.

The startling truth? Many of my friends and I are at the stage in our lives where we walk the line between youth and aging; between hip and hip replacement; between cool and cooling gels for our joints. Cosmopolitan magazine is too young; AARP digest is too old. Some might call it middle-aged, but as I pop my calcium pill for the day and chase it down with a Skinny Vanilla Latte, I feel I can safely say that, indeed, we, too, are tweens.

Forever 21

 by Cathy

“Youth is wasted on the young.” – George Bernard Shaw 

Patti’s birthday was this past Sunday.

Although I was keenly aware of it, it quietly went uncelebrated this year – without nary a balloon to be popped, a piece of cake to be relished or a glass of bubbly to be sipped. Why, you ask? How can a friend just let another friend’s birthday slide by with just a facebook wall post and a quick ‘Happy birthday, girl!’ thrown into a hectic phone conversation?

I know, I know. 

I am her other blog half and self-proclaimed female spouse. (As the enlightened Oprah had professed on her show, women need wives.) I should have done something more. However, in my defense, I couldn’t do a hair’s-width more to celebrate my dear friend’s birthday - even if I tried.

Patti’s birthday falls on national tax day – April 15^th. But this year, the looming tax deadline wasn’t the issue (not that it was an issue on any other year, but it's a stressful, deadline-induced hell of a date). This year, her birthday fell on my Easter Sunday. And because of that, although she completely understood the hectic craziness that went along with what that entailed, I didn’t want her to assume that her birthday went unnoticed or worse yet, unrecognized.

We tried in vain to plan a Saturday night out for the celebratory birthday party, but between Easter, bachelorette parties, gigs, dinner plans, errands and everyday obligations, we were now looking at a Saturday night in June. How could it be that we are as booked as Obama? In my book, you don’t officially tack that extra year onto your age until you celebrate it with your friends. Now, it seems as if Patti would remain forever…21. 

And for those of you who know Patti, (and aside from the fact that she does frequent the namesake store on occasion), how truly fitting IS this? She is the quintessential 21-year old but with the maturity and wisdom that girls that age could only hope for. Her humor, style, personality, attitude and zest for life all resonate with the youthful characteristics of a 21-year old. She loves laughing, making people laugh, music, singing, dancing, eating, cocktails just because, and just plain being and having fun. What’s more? All of these mood-boosting traits effortlessly rub off on her friends and even onto fleeting strangers who have the good fortune to cross paths with her. For all these amazing twenty-something characteristics and so many more for me to get into in one, solitary blogpost, I love my forty-something friend.

So…regardless of when we celebrate her birthday, it won’t matter. Because even though her birthday has come and gone, celebrated or not, she will always remain forever 21.

Cheers to you, beeyotch and happy birthday!!

P.S. I love you enough to post this crappy pic of myself, but as usual, you are rockin' it. It's a damn, foolish shame that youth in fact belongs to the young, but it will always belong to the young at heart. Stay forever young, my friend. xoxoxo

Holy Holy Week!

by Cathy

Last week was Holy Week for those of the Orthodox faith. This includes me. It was also the same week my two girls were on spring break and conveniently, but shittily, the same week my husband sprained (nearly broke) his ankle. And what's more? The week rounded itself out with yet ANOTHER bout of the stomach flu for me - caught this time, from Ari.

Our Easter mascot: half-bitten ears and cycloped. So symbolic of Holy Week craziness.

Our Orthodox Holy Week began in a most unorthodox way: a passover seder. Every year we get invited to attend a seder with the kids and this year, it happened to fall the Saturday before Palm Sunday.  We stuffed ourselves with matzo, brisket, potato pancakes, kugel and wine, had coffee around the patio fire pit (scotch and cigars for the men) and called it a night around 10pm since we had to get up bright and early the next morning to get a seat in church for Palm Sunday services.

This officially kicked off Holy Week.

Palm Sunday - the girls and I get to church a bit late, but miraculously end up with one of the final spots in the church lot, and thanks to our koumbaro Nick, who is Ari's godfather, on the parish council and an usher, we landed some rockstar seats in the third pew - one of the last available spots. Once we were there for a while, we knew why. The dude in front of us was completely crazeballs and he kept turning around to talk to me every time we sneezed, coughed, shifted, the girls whispered, whatever. He looked like Jim Carrey on speed, (if that's even possible), his crazed eyes widening with every word through his ginormous black-rimmed glasses. He told me about how he knew Betty Ford, about the JFK assassination, bedbugs and many other random things before I loudly shushed him into silence. The lady next to him, also not altogether there but very nice, kept asking me in Greek throughout the whole service: "What's he saying? What's he saying?!?!" Holy Moly.

Holy Monday - I promised the girls we would make Greek Easter cookies (koulouria). Bella looks forward to this every year since she was three because it's our mommy-daughter tradition. Now Ari has joined in on the anticipation and the process of making these complex sweets. They especially love creating different shapes - usually the first letters of all their friends' names.

What koulouria should look like

My daughters' version of koulouria

Holy Tuesday - the only non-eventful day in our week. There were church services, of course, like there are every day this week, but we opted not to go. It was our day of rest.

Holy Wednesday - I had to leave work early to pick up the girls, amazingly already dressed in their church clothes, for the service of Holy Unction. This is where the recipient is blessed by the priest with a "cleansing of the sins" prayer, while making the sign of the cross with holy oil on your forehead, both cheeks, chin (the sign of the cross on your face) and on both palms and backs of your hand. The girls and I rubbed the holy oil into our skin and let it seep, heal, de-sin and cleanse our souls.

Holy Thursday - this is the day that is designated for egg dyeing. (The only other day we are allowed to dye eggs is on Holy Saturday. Not exactly sure why, but these are the 'rules'.) We Greeks don't pastel up our eggs, or use that PAAS stuff, or mix in liquid food coloring to color eggs. We use the heavy duty blood-red powdered food coloring imported from Greece. Why? Because that's the stuff. The eggs are meant to symbolize the blood that Jesus shed for our salvation, so the eggs, in essence, are stained with his blood. Now of course the kids didn't think this was as fun as PAAS-ing or liquid food coloring up the eggs. So we made two batches. And they had fun.

Ours Greek eggs are red, but I've seen some seriously dark, blood-red eggs.

Holy Friday - well...is Good Friday...a day of mourning. No music is allowed on that day out of respect for the crucified Christ. There are TWO church services this day - one in the afternoon, where Christ is symbolically taken down from the cross and laid into an epitaph, and one in the evening, which is spent singing mournful, beautiful hymns while holding lit candles and walking outside the church in a funeral-like procession. Since it can  be exhausting for the kids to do both, we usually go to the afternoon service. This year, however, the girls wanted to do a morning retreat at the church, where they could decorate the epitaph with countless flowers and pack food for various food pantries in the area. Both activities were amazing experiences for my girls.

Holy Saturday - it's 9am and I'm up and at church again, this time, to receive Holy Communion. I had fasted (Bella referred to it as going vegan) for the past three days to prepare for this. (The girls received it on Palm Sunday).

Once at home after some other activities that day, I prepared for the night service. How? Taking a nap, forcing the girls to nap but to no avail, making some coffee around 6pm and keeping myself up for another 6-8 hours. Holy Saturday midnight mass is the mother of all Easter services. This is one that my girls look forward to every year. We go to church at 11pm, sit in the dimly lit church and listen to the beautiful chanting, and at midnight, sitting reverently in a blacked out church, save for the light coming in from the magnificent stained glass windows, we gloriously, one-by-one light our candles, the lights of which look like the swelling of a wave from the front to the back of the church, and joyously sing that Christ Has Risen!  We make the sign of the cross with our lit candles in the air (the girls hold decorative candles, like most of the children do),  while singing, and it's just all so magical.

What wasn't magical, was what we encountered as we attempted to exit the church. Just as we were about to head out, lit candles in tow, careful to bring the light of the resurrection to our homes as we do every year, thunderstorms, lightening and torrential rains flash flooded the streets. By the time we got into the car, Ari had lost her purse in a puddle one-foot deep, which had to be fished out by me, Bella stepped squarely into that same puddle in her haste to get into the car and I? Looked like I had just taken a dip in a pool. Even my underwear was sopping. Shivering in the car, we hightailed it home, changed in to warm, cozy clothes, waited out the storm and drove to my parents' house at 1a.m. - kids in tow and Joe in crutches.

Then, the feasting began. Nearly every year, my family and my sister's family gathers at my parents' house for a casual meal of lamb, salad and oven roasted potatoes after the midnight Anastasi service. Other Greeks reserve tables at Greek restaurants and do it up even bigger.  Typically, this meal should consist of mageritsa, a mish mash of lamb innards: sweetbreads, lungs, intestines, brain, all in a brothy, soupy concoction. Thank goodness we opted for lamb this year. We ended up going to sleep at about 3:30a.m. and awoke on Easter Sunday around noon, got ready and drove to my uncle's house in Grayslake to feast yet again.

Easter Sunday - The fun part of this day is to hang out in the open garage, watching the lamb roast right outside with its tongue hanging out onto the steel rod that has been shoved up from his ass through his mouth and is rotating on an electrical roasting spit. We grilled some Greek sausage and some more sweetbreads, cracked some of those blood red eggs, listened to Greek music and perhaps spun a dance or two, told some funny stories and practically ate the whole lamb while it was being chopped up on the table, piping hot; the best way to eat lamb, take it from a Greek.

This is how we do it.

The rest of the day and night was filled with more food and stories and then it was time to go home. We were all exhausted. The torrential downpours decided to resume again Sunday night as we were driving back into the city. Mist, hail, buckets of rain, fog, lights were all hitting the car from every direction making it impossible to drive. Ari was asleep in the back seat and Bella was relaxing - we were almost home. Then....BLAGHCKCKH. The all-too familiar sound of vomit. Ari threw up in her seat - the onset of the stomach flu I was bound to get and still have. She not only threw up in the car, but in my bedroom, the girls' bedroom, the bathroom and on her bed. Since Joe is still crutcheting around, I had clean up all those messes AND do two loads of laundry at 9:45pm. Just the perfect "topping" to my sundae of a Week.

Rain and Holy Week and stomach flu, now go away,
Come again when I'm less stressed (and not all at once), Okaaaayyyy???

Crush

by Patti

I had my first crush in fifth grade. His name was Gary, and he had red hair and freckles and made everybody laugh. I remember that feeling so clearly - that tingly, nervous, new feeling that made me excited to go to school every day; that feeling that made me love rust and mustard striped shirts; that feeling that made me stare at the back of a kid's wavy-haired head like it was a work of art. That feeling.

Now, as if fifth grade is the "benchmark", S has that feeling. According to her, he has dark hair, he's funny, they both like the same shows on television, he laughs at her jokes. The other day, I was in the kitchen when S frantically called me from the living room. I ran in to find her standing at our large picture window - the one that looks out onto the park across the street - with binoculars in her hands, her eyes planted into them. "He's there! He's playing basketball! LOOK!" She shoved the binoculars into my hands, guiding them up to my eyes lest I miss this Golden Opportunity. I peered into the binoculars, feeling slightly stalkerish. "He's wearing red shorts, mom!" I immediately saw him - the dark-haired boy in red shorts, his arm blocking his opponents as his other arm maneuvered the ball. I knew it was him, not by his shorts, but by the way he moved. He had a confidence, a command. I knew just why she might like him. I smiled into the binoculars, then took them off my eyes and handed them back to her.
"He's cute!"
"I KNOW, MOM!"

A little later, we were sitting around the dinner table celebrating my in-laws' last night with us, when S excused herself from the table and came back a minute later with the makeup box she uses for her recitals. As we sipped our wine and had "grown-up" talk, S bent into my old M.A.C. compact and rubbed some blush into her cheeks. Then she smoothed some shimmery shadow onto her eyelids, dabbed her lips with gloss, and finally, whipped out the mascara and stroked her ridiculously long lashes into illegal lengths. For the grand finale, she brushed her long, golden curls out and smoothed them down, and when I looked at her, all shimmery and sparkly and glossy, I was afraid at just how lovely she looked.
"Mom? Can I go to the park?" It was obvious just why my daughter, in the middle of dinner, now all made-up, suddenly "needed" to go the park. I looked across the table at M, his eyes boring his disapproval into me.
"Honey, we're eating."
"But mom, IT'S IMPORTANT!"
I bent over and whispered into her ear. "I'm sure he's gone by now, honey."

She spent the rest of dinner getting up to go the window under the ruse of having to "use the bathroom", or "get something from her room", or needing to "stretch." But I knew what was driving her, and I thought of Gary, his baby face sprinkled with freckles, his red waves falling onto his forehead, and I understood.

I also thought of M, the first real love of S's life, and I knew that this new development had to scare the crap out of him. After all, when S was little, all she wanted to do was marry her papi. And now? He has to start letting go, little by little. Because one day, he will no longer be that man in her life. One day, it won't be just a crush; it'll be something important and serious - something that will, indeed, steal away his little girl.  I see that future loss in his eyes, and I understand.

I looked at S and noticed the lip gloss sneaking its way outside the lines of her mouth - and I still saw that little girl; the one who, despite the boy in red shorts outside the window, for now, is right here with us.

Hopalong Cassidy Joe

by Cathy

In the course of one week, my husband had the stomach flu, celebrated his birthday (while he had said flu) and nearly broke his ankle playing basketball.

Late on a Monday night, the back door creaks opens and in hops Joe with the help of two guys he plays basketball with (while I sat lounging in my robe and turban-like towel wrapped around my head, fresh out of the shower). He fell into an armchair, his face distorted with pain. I looked down at his right ankle. From mid-shin down, bulging out from the bandage below it, was a lump the size of a half grapefruit. His foot honestly looked like some kind of Elephant Man deformity. He was wincing in pain and trying to adjust the ghetto bag of ice the guys threw together at the gym: doubled up fruit market bags filled with ice that was now melting and leaking through at a rapid pace.

After a brief rundown of the accident and the tossing around of remedies to help him (apparently this has happened to one of these guys three times) they left. With the closing of the door, Joe's macho guard dropped like a dead weight. He let out a long, screaming moan, which he was obviously stifling since he fell. His ankle looked bright red and I swear it was pulsating. I set him up with a chair and pillows to elevate his foot, refilled the ice into a clean freezer-sized Ziploc bag and let him try to calm down. When the ice had numbed it over, we weighed the options of when to go to the ER and decided to wait until the morning.

A quick visit to the ER the next morning rendered his ankle surprisingly NOT BROKEN but he had a badly pulled outer ligament (high ankle sprain). The doc gave him crutches to get around and ordered him to rest, ice and elevate. He had to lay low and couldn't drive or even play basketball again until he got an okay from the doctor.

This sounded like a prison sentence to Joe, who is a MAN and has gargantuan PRIDE and is fiercely independent and generally doesn't do well when he is sick. His days consist of constant sitting and shifting and elevating and he complains frequently that his ass is constantly hurting and numbing up from all that sitting. The first day it was extremely painful for him to take his foot down from elevating it. I was busy working and going to parent/teacher conferences that day and couldn't get his pain meds filled until 8pm. "I NEED DRUGS!" was how I was greeted when I finally got home that night.

Getting used to the crutches is a whole other ballgame, as he fumbles with the awkwardness of getting it right and turning corners. The first day, while I was at work, he decided to hop around the kitchen on his left foot instead of using the crutches, when his left foot suddenly gave out and he fell, pretty much on his swollen, bruised, wrapped up, jacked up foot. Apparently he let out such a scream that it freaked out Ari and she began crying while Bella was trying to help him up. What a scenario.

I ran a bath for him that night and trying to figure out how to lower him in while still elevating his foot and not getting it wet. That alone was a mission of SWAT team proportions. You see, his foot needs to be not only elevated but iced cold pretty much the whole day, so inserting it into the scalding bath water that Joe prefers to bathe in would probably cause his clubfoot to explode, so it had to remain out - at least for that night.

It's been almost two weeks now and he's gotten the whole hopping/elevating/icing/stairs/crutches/bath routine down pat.  In the meantime, he's getting more frustrated at being cooped up and I've had to stifle numerous one-liners and other comedic references to his situation for two reasons: 1) his annoyance with my unwarranted comedic relief would feed his frustration, and 2) KARMA. I don't want that bitch coming back to hound me down.

Buuuuuuttttt.....the girls and I just can't resist. I've bit my tongue many times but as we hear him rickety-racketing his way down the hallway with the crutches or being greeted by his giant, rainbow colored foot elevated on pillows stacked up to the ceiling every time we enter a room, we can't stop ourselves. The remarks, which tumble out upon inception, have been too varied and too numerous to count - peg leg, clubfoot, old man Joe, Crutchety Kyle, Hopalong Cassidy, Hoppy Papi, My Left Foot, Shrek Foot...

All we're doing is trying to make this bearable for everyone, most of all Joe, right? Laughter is the best medicine, isn't it? I just hope that Karma, that bitch, is laughing right along with us on this one instead of taking notes.


Side note to readers: I would have posted a picture of his foot, but seriously, it's so ugly and so gross and so ugly...I will spare you.

Side note to Karma: The fact that I didn't post any nasty pictures of his foot, chalks up some good, non-Karma points in my favor, no?

Gracias a la Vida

by Patti


Gracias a la vida, que me a dado tanto.
Thank you to life, which has given me so much

One of my favorite songs of all time is sung by the incomparable Mercedes Sosa (may she rest in peace), the Argentina folk singer with a voice like buttah and a delivery that will shoot straight through your heart and up into your brain and down into your feet and back out through your eyes in the form of tears. The song is called "Gracias a la Vida" (Thank You to Life), and if you are so inclined, you can hear the whole thing right here:



It's days like yesterday, the day of my birthday, that this song really hits home for me. I woke up feeling.... blah. A little freaked out at being closer to old for real this time, and a little farther away from youth and its dewy glow and world of promise. This getting old stuff, it ain't for the weak.

There are people like my mom who tell me I'm wasting the precious prime of my life worrying about getting older, or my dear, gorgeous girlfriends who tell me I'm way too obsessed with age, but who are nearly a decade behind me and don't yet get that jittery feeling that comes with the recognition that OHMYGOD it's happening, I'm getting old. But let me tell you, when the truth hits, it's a scary feeling, it truly is.

Even though I felt pouty about GETTING OLD (are you over me yet?), I spent my birthday doing things I wanted to do, like going to the gym and a little shopping, and then spent the evening with my husband, my daughter, my in-laws, and my mom, eating a fun dinner together, polishing off a bottle of Prosecco, and gorging on dessert. I had fun, but there was a hole where my father used to be. It's not the first birthday I've had without him, but somehow, the older I get, the sharper the realization of his death is.

And it was feeling this hole that made me realize it's time for me to cut this crap out. After all, my father? Doesn't get any more birthdays. I'm still here, and, God willing, I still get to wake up and, even though the subtle sagging of my face may send me into the narcissistic doldrums, I still get to decide what to do with my day and how to feel about it. I also get to log onto Facebook and find 100 birthday greetings from friends and family, old and new, near and far; I still get to receive beautiful texts and voicemails, all remembering me on the very day that had me foolishly pitying myself; I still get to eat pizza and drink a bottle of champagne and eat birthday cake; I still get to look around the table and see people that I love, all love me right back; I still get to live.

And in doing so, I have the opportunity every day to say gracias a la vida, que me a dado tanto. Because it's true: Life has given me so much. And for that, I'm thankful.

The Early Bird Catches the Worm

by Patti

For the past two weeks, I have been waking at 5:45 am.

If you know me at all, you know that a 5:45 wake-up time is considered against the law in my own personal Book of Laws, and that the ONLY reason to wake up at 5:45 am is a) to nurse a baby; b) to run from the house screaming because it’s on fire; c) to go the emergency room because you or somebody you love might be dying; d) to catch a flight to somewhere way better than where you currently are.

That’s it. No other reason.  And believe me, in my opinion, some of those reasons are questionable. That’s how anti-getting-up-before-8 AM I am.

So, why am I violating my own personal laws? Because I have to.  I am getting up early for work because my hours have changed.

As the first day of my early rise approached, I actually felt kind of panicky: Would I be able to do it? Would I fall back to sleep? Would I feel sick with exhaustion all day? Would I resent the others in my house who got to sleep another 2 hours while I silently and tiredly blinked my way into the day?  Would I have to set 9 alarm clocks to ensure that I actually wake up?

But the first day happened and surprisingly it wasn’t so bad. Not at all, even. It was kind of nice to hit the road before so many others.  I felt like I was let in on a little secret about seizing the day: SO MUCH CAN HAPPEN WHEN YOU GET OUT OF BED. Who knew? I felt like the other  drivers on the road and I were part of a brotherhood, of sorts; we all kind of nodded at one another at red lights and stop signs, “You, too?” they seemed to ask. “Yes,” I responded with my (bleary) eyes.  We all knew that it had still been dark outside when we got out of bed, and that, despite the darkness, it was still not a bad idea to get out of that bed anyway, because it gave the day ample opportunity to let amazing things happen.

Those of you who have always torn out of bed at 5 AM are probably reading this and thinking me nuts. Well, let me say this: I am nuts, so you’re right there.  You may also be thinking, “DUH.” Because, yeah, DUH, when you get up earlier and do earlier, results happen earlier. It’s common math. But you have to truly know me to know that for me to be okay with this nonsense is, indeed, a miracle.

I’ll admit, I’m tired. My body is still fighting this lifestyle. After all, I grew up in the totally opposite direction, I married a man who also grew up in the totally opposite direction, and I have continued to live my life in the totally opposite direction. It feels slightly inauthentic for me to be breathing in the dawn air when I have, my entire life, breathed in the midnight moon instead. Then again, when it’s 9 AM and you have already ticked 15 things of your “to-do” list, it’s a whole new kind of exhilaration – one that makes waking up before the sun kind of worth it.

We’ll see; I’m still very new at this whole thing, and I may very well just be in the honeymoon stage with the Crack-of-Dawn.  Maybe soon the Crack-of-Dawn will start getting on my nerves – that Crack of Dawn with its not-quite bright sky and its silent birds and its frosty grass.

Or, maybe not.

Either way, life is pretty dynamic, isn’t it?

Clean Weep

by Cathy

My kids are on spring break this week. Since we're not traveling anywhere, I decided to take this time to focus on where we live: our house. Although virtually every closet needs to be overhauled and organized, my main focus, with the girls at home this week, was going to be their room, which by the way, is the master bedroom of our two-bedroom condo. They have so much more stuff than Joe and I so it made perfect sense that three years ago, we trade bedrooms and give them the master with the attached bathroom while Joe and I downgraded to the smaller bedroom. The sacrifices we make for our kids, eh?

The only problem with having more space - and I know this would be the case if we move to a bigger house - is that you automatically accumulate more stuff. You say to yourself, 'I'll just keep this. We have the space. I'll just put it right here.' Luckily, we don't have that scenario playing out where we live because we are four people living in a two bedroom, two bath condo with one storage room allotted to us. So whatever doesn't fit in any of those spaces? Gets tossed or donated. We are forced to weed out crap and stuff we no longer have a use for and I'm perfectly okay with that, otherwise, our stuff would swallow us up whole.

As the days approached for Operation Pink Declutter, I was counting the days, the hours, the minutes. I was about to crawl out of my skin with anticipation for the big cleanup every single time I walked into that Disaster of a Master, stepping on paper, markers, erasers, American Girl dolls, clothes, trinkets, purses, princess wands, books, balls, stuffed animals, blankets, rubber bracelets, scarves, chalk, hats, Barbies, Lego pieces, miniscule Lalaloopsy decor that pokes holes in the bottom of your feet... I couldn't take it one minute longer.

Finally, the big day arrived! Actually, we ended up dividing up the room into sections and conquering it as such:
Day 1 - bookshelves and drawer cleanout
Day 2 - under the beds, cabinets and closet floor (containing games, bins and toys)
Day 3 - closet upper shelves and hanging clothes
Day 4 - Toy chest

Yes, it takes FOUR days to clean up the crap in that room. Day one was a battle in itself while I had to ask the hard questions:

"Can you try this on to see if it still fits?"
"Do you still want this?"
"Will you EVER wear this?"

Whereupon I got one of the following responses:

"Uuuhhhhhhgggggg...I'm too tired."
"I don't like that."
"NO! Don't donate that!! I love it!" (item they haven't touched in years)
"That's mine! Not hers! That goes in my drawer!"
"Why are you taking this to storage??"

Operation Pink Declutter is halfway done at this point with barely any help from my kids. I forget that my five-year old's attention span is that of a fruit fly and my ten-year old gets easily distracted when said fruit fly buzzes continuously around her, tempting her, tackling her, tickling her, asking her to come get her out from her pop-up tent trappings - basically anything to get her attention while I'm on my hands and knees mancaving. As you may have guessed, there was A LOT going on.

Once they did what they could to help, I let the girls go off and play and I quietly tackled what remained  for the day. (This way, I could throw away what they don't know will ever go missing and get rid of the garbage bag before they find it and start snooping around to see what was tossed. I learned that lesson the hard way.)

When I was clearing out Ari's little preschool pants and tops (the same ones that Bella wore), I suddenly and surprisingly was overcome with emotion. I was saddened at the memories these little clothes brought back for me ('Aw, I have a picture of Bella playing school in this top' or 'Aw, this is what Ari was wearing when she...) And what's more? These clothes will never be worn by my kids EVER. AGAIN. That that phase in their little lives is over. That they are all "growed up," like Ari says. I wept as I lovingly folded these little clothes up and carefully placed them in my "KEEP" pile.

No sooner had I composed myself from that unexpected scenario...it happened again. This time, my husband was laying on one of the girls' beds in the room and we were chatting about various things, when I opened up a purple Dora backpack and found that Ari had stuffed it to the hilt with her plastic Disney tea set, which should be stored in the Mrs. Potts tea container.

"Wow, I never realized how much stuff they had," commented my husband.

"Yeah, and the sad thing will be, that one day, Ari won't ask us to play tea set with her anymore." I don't know where this response came from (well, actually I do, and I surprised even myself by blurting it out) but I could feel my tears working their way back up to my eyes. "She asks us now and we do the best we can but half the time we blow her off because we are too busy doing God knows what while our kids are busy growing up." My eyes starting brimming over at this point. Joe tried to soften this large blow of a realization.

"Yeah, but she still plays with her tea set," he said comfortingly.

"Yeah but one day she won't. One day, she'll stop asking if we want to have a tea party with her because she will outgrow that phase and get bored with it and she'll be too old to want to do that, just like Bella, who never plays tea party with her now."

There was a long pause and all that could be heard was the plastic clanking of the tea set pieces going into Mrs. Potts.

"I know, it's all going so fast," was all he said.

Towards the end of the day and long after I had my mini meltdowns, I was picking up the remains of the cleanup off their floor when Ari, who had earlier found her newly put together tea set, came skipping in, jangling Mrs. Potts about.

"Mommy? Can you play tea party with me?"

As if God had felt my motherly pain from earlier, he sent my little angel in to truly help soften that blow and give me another chance to make things up; those were the best-sounding words I could ever hear right at that moment. "OF COURSE I CAN!!"

"Yay!" she squealed as she was rambling on about how she'll go set it up on the blanket sprawled on the living room floor. I literally dropped everything and followed her, passing our bedroom door where my husband was laying. "See? How ironic," he said half smiling.

"I know, riiiiight?" I yelled back happily as I crossed my legs and sat on the teddy bear blanket. "I still have a lot to do but I'm not doing it. I'm playing tea set with her. That's all I'm going to do now."

"I'll join you," said Joe.

Trading Places

by Patti


My husband makes a mean oatmeal. How do I know this? Because S tells me so. "Papi puts bananas in it! And he doesn't use the microwave! He makes it in a pot and stirs it for a long time!"

After nearly 8 years of getting my kid ready for school and dropping her off, I have turned my esteemed position of "get her ready-er" over to M. Let's face it, the kid is 11 years old now; she can do everything a kid needs to do to get ready on her own now. She gets up on her own, she dresses herself, she grooms herself, she makes her own breakfast (even fries her own eggs), she packs her own lunch and snack. Yet, being an only child, she has always liked the companionship in the morning, and I have always provided it.

Recently, there have been some changes at work and I am now working full-time. Part of it was necessity, as M's hands are on their last legs. (Sorry. I couldn't resist.) He has been grooming the heads of Chicago for the past 15 years, and before that, he was grooming the heads of Oregon, and before that, the heads of Argentina. In short: all that grooming has left his hands, arms, shoulders, legs, done-for. And if he has any hope of keeping them useful, he needs to cut it out for a while. (Sorry. I couldn't resist.) Since the opportunity to work full-time and, as a result, have full benefits presented itself conveniently at the same time my husband was falling apart, and the opportunity was something kind of cool, it was an absolute no-freakin'-brainer to grab it.

So I did.

Soon, M is going to reduce his hours at work, and I have already ramped up mine. And the roles we have known so comfortably for the past bajillion years are now going to be reversed. He is now getting her off to school, and as soon as his reduced hours kick in, he will also see her after school for a bit, and once I get home, he will go to work. And during all of her summers and Spring Breaks and holidays, it will be him that takes her to the pool, or to the museum, or to the park.

I thought I might be sad, or even a little jealous, but when I think about it, I'm not. I realize how lucky I am that I got to stay home exclusively with S all through her baby and little kidhood. And even after she started school, I got to try all different kinds of jobs, projects, ideas.... all because I always had a back-up: M. He was working responsibly and steadily and making sure we had health insurance, he was bringing home the fatty bacon, he was cutting hair that never stops growing - all so that I didn't have to take S to a babysitter and sob in my car on the way to work.

And now, I guess it's his turn. His body needs a break, his mind needs a break, and maybe he needs the opportunity to try on a few ideas - just as I had the chance to do. And in the meantime, he will get to spend a lot more time with our daughter. And she with him.

We're a little more than a week into this new "thing", and I asked S if she misses me in the morning. "Papi makes me lunch. AND he makes me breakfast. He made me oatmeal again!"

Guess not. And I couldn't be happier.

Of Errands and Men

by Cathy

Moms tackle a lot and most of it via multitasking or at the very least, getting tasks done in rapid succession. We're juggling work, cleaning, cooking, laundry, school drop off/pick up, activities, playdates, doctor's appointments, homework, school projects just to name a few. Of course, I don't want to undervalue the role that some dads play in all of this - kudos to the ones that do and shame on the ones that don't - you are both in this together and your wife didn't have those kids by herself. (But that's a soapbox for which I will get on for another blog post.)

For the purposes of this post (and what I'm getting at here), is that sometimes these dads, whether they are actively pitching in or not, are forced to at some point, step into unknown territory when it comes to handling some of the tasks that moms usually handle. Such as? Birthday parties and the gift purchase that goes along with it.

Before I left to go on my Mexican work vacay, I reminded Joe that he had to take the kids to a birthday party for one of Ari's kindergarten friends on a Saturday night. Yes, you heard right...a kids party on a Saturday night.  (The family is Polish and they did this thing up Euro/Latin style, i.e. totally right up our alley. It was held at the Park Ridge community center swimming pool and the grandfather of the birthday girl, who owns a Polish restaurant, catered the event with enough delicious food and varieties thereof to feed the whole country of Poland. Bottom line, this was our type of party.)

My family and friends were more than willing to fill me in on the deets of preparing for the party when I got back from my trip. My husband, apparently with a plan in hand, decided to stop in at Target with Ari on the Saturday of the party while Bella was in her ballet class. His intention was purposeful and planned: pick up a gift card and head out the door. But the poor guy, not versed in Target visits with the girls, was taken on a joyride by Ari. She worked her way around the store to the toy aisle where she bombarded him with "OOOH how cute!" and "Can i get this?" Finally she found THE ONE toy she was sure her friend would love. After many unsuccessful, time consuming attempts on my husband's behalf to steer her towards the gift cards, he decided to go with it and subsequently, thought it would be a sweet gesture since the gift came from Ari herself.

So they bought it and left with just enough time to pick up Bella from her lesson. Car screeching to a halt outside the ballet studio, gift tumbling around the backseat, he picked up Bella on time and headed home to wrap the gift and prepare the swimming bag for the party.

After hauling up the Christmas wrapping paper bin from storage, they determined that they couldn't wrap the gift in a candy cane motif or reindeer games wrapping paper, so they dug around and found the only neutral paper that had accidentally made its way into that bin:

My 10-year old's idea of Granny Wrapping Paper

So Bella took charge of wrapping the gift (she prides herself on wrapping gifts and does a professional looking job, thanks to the technique I passed on to her from my many years in retail), but not before interrogating her father on the choice of gift.

"Papi, you do realize that this gift is for 3-36 month olds, right?!?"

"What?" exclaimed my husband, as he stared down the box containing the big clunky, plastic teapot and cups staring him in the face. "Really? I didn't even notice that!"

"Yeah, it says it right on here. See?" she pointed and tapped on the box.

"Oh well. That's what Ari wanted and she wouldn't leave without it. She was crying over getting it."
Bella gave her usual rolling of the eyes and started wrapping that gift in the paper above, which she ultimately summed up as follows:

"We were the only ones there that wrapped a gift meant for a three-month old in 80-year old wrapping paper for a six-year old."

Live and learn and make it your own, I say.

Once at the party, they swam, ate like kings and had a swimmingly good time. No one noticed the oddness of our gift - and if they did, they kept mum about it - just like the other school parents that were visibly horrified at how late this kids birthday party was and seemed at the ready to call the party police about it all. They dutifully left at a reasonable hour.

My husband on the other hand? He got home at 10:30pm with sufficiently satisfied. well-fed, tired kids in tow, and another parental task successfully behind him. Good job, babe.

Non-Weekend

by Patti

week·end/ˈwēkˌend/

Noun:

The period from Friday evening through Sunday evening, esp. regarded as a time for leisure

Long ago, at some point in this life, I had weekends. They consisted of leisurely strolls through book stores, and coffee, and shopping, and sometimes, sometimes? JUST NAPPING AND THAT IS ALL,WHY? IS THERE SOMEPLACE I NEED TO BE? "What are you doing this weekend?" would be the big question at work. "Oh, going to a couple of parties, brunch on Sunday, you know... stuff."

Along the way and somewhere deep into motherhood, my weekends vanished. As the work week comes to  a close now, I know I won't be sleeping in the next day just because it's Saturday. And that is because Saturday will consist of ballet class, harried errands that can't get done during the week because we're too busy with work and school, probably a birthday party or two, and some serious shuffling in-between. Sundays will most definitely include laundry and cleaning and weekend homework and groceries, and maybe, possibly if we're lucky, dinner with friends AND THEIR KIDS. And then, suddenly and just like that, it's Monday again and the whole Groundhog Day of Life begins again. Again. Again. Again. Again.

It's funny - if I find myself driving through the city on a Saturday afternoon, I see the joggers, I see the girls in jeans and oversize sunglasses with shopping bags in one hand and Starbucks in the other, I see the people walking their dogs in a way that I can tell they aren't really going anywhere; they're just walking. And then I remember that I just came from a dance studio stuffed with ten other moms that were also experiencing the same non-weekend I was - the one that found them hurriedly shuttling their kids from activity to activity to activity, the minutes of the weekend ticking away toward Monday.

I wonder how many weekends my parents gave away to us, and then I remember that our weekends were spent climbing trees, playing football in open fields with friends, riding bikes that were thrown carelessly onto each other's lawns as we ran from house to house... We didn't have "lessons", "playdates", "activities"... we just burned daylight from Saturday through Sunday, and my parents were allowed to do the same. We didn't need entertaining and we didn't expect to be entertained. We just... were.

Now, every. single. day is scheduled to within an inch of its life, and those long-ago weekends that often provided such reprieve and separation are now just an extension of every single day. To be fair, it seems that even kids - the very ones we have given our weekends to - are wishing for weekends that they never knew. Just the other day S said, to me, "Mom, I don't feel like doing anything at all. Can we not have any plans?" Without even knowing, she expressed the very thing I was feeling -- can we not have any plans. Can we?

This weekend just passed, and, it being Easter weekend and most things being cancelled or closed, and us being kind of heathen-like in our non-attendance of Easter-related things, did just that -- we had no plans. It will be quite some time before that happens again, before a Saturday calls for sleeping in and coffee in a coffee shop, and a Sunday calls for pancakes, pajamas, naps and a movie -- as all of the upcoming weekends are kind of jam-packed with "stuff".  Because of that, I have decided to stop waiting for the weekend to have a weekend. Instead, I will snatch pieces of time whenever I can and turn moments into that "time for leisure".  It's Tuesday, but it feels like Saturday! Let's rent a movie! Pancakes? Are not just for Sundays! It's Wednesday night - time for breakfast!

Hey! It's Monday. What are you doing tonight?

Full House

by Patti


I live in a 2-bedroom, 2-bath, charming little house. To give you an idea of just how charming, when I was in real estate, those in the industry knew that the word "charming" in any description  meant that the house? Was Ti. Ny. So yes, our house ain't no mansion, but it suits our little family of three just fine.

Fortunately, we have a finished basement, and a family room in addition to a living room, so even though our house is small, the layout makes it seem deceptively big. Until you throw in three grandparents and 11 screaming 11-year olds. Then, suddenly, that charming yet deceptively large little house becomes a clown house, with people spilling out of every nook and cranny while wacky circus music bleats its beats right into your head.

This past weekend was S's birthday party. In true Aries style, it's not enough for her to have a little gathering around a small, candle-lit cake. No, the kid has to have every human she has ever known admire her as she blows out her candles, and if they can all spend the night afterwards to further extend the festivities, the better. I figured, eh, it's her 11th- the big "tween" birthday - so let's let her have her night of horrors fun! This party was planned weeks ago, long before I knew my in-laws would be popping in for a surprise visit from Argentina, so imagine my freak-outedness when they appeared and I had to figure out where the hell to put them. Normally, they sleep in the basement when they come, but this time around, the basement would be teeming with tweens. M suggested we give up our room to them, give the basement to the tweens, and we would sleep in Sofia's loft bed. Her bed is one of those Ikea numbers, where the bottom part is really a fort with a mattress on the ground, and the top part, while suitable for a 50-something pound 10-year old, is a rickety Fear Factor experiment for anybody over 95 lbs. But we knew it'd be for one night only, because as soon as those tweens were gone, S would be back to her bed, and we'd be in the basement for the duration of M's parents' visit.

SO. This was the plan.

The party commenced, and while I ran around like a freak on fire, and M slung pizzas into and out of the oven, and my mom snapped pics, and my in-laws stepped over and around various bodies that were sprawled out all over the place making scrapbooks, the girls had an absolute ball. As luck would have it, it turns out that half of the invited guests had to be somewhere early the next morning, so only five girls ended up spending the night. WHICH WAS JUST FINE BY ME. As soon as the scrapbooking part of the party was over, and the going-home girls went home, the rest of them were relegated to the basement, where they sang karaoke, played board games, danced, and drowned in prepubescent hormones.

The house groaned all night with the weight of people, but it also danced with the laughter of girls experiencing that first delicious taste of freedom -- the kind that makes you feel that the world is yours and everything in it holds possibility. As I wandered around upstairs in the wee hours from couch to bed to couch to bed to, at last and for good, couch, I smiled through my exhaustion. The laughter floated up from the basement through the floor, and I remembered that feeling so sharply - those nights of giggles and late-night games that consisted of sticking the hand of the first girl to fall asleep into a bowl of warm water to make her pee in her sleep, and ghost stories, and whispered gossip about the red-headed, freckled-faced Gary that suddenly got cute, and it was all completely worth it, the sacrificed space and sleep.

My house was full, oh, so full. My heart, more so.

Stomach Bugging

by Cathy

As is probably expected from a trip to Mexico, I came down with some sort of a stomach bug/flu/virus the night I returned from Cabo. Was it Montezuma's Revenge? Was it the water? Was it the stomach flu circulating on the plane? Who knows. All I know is that this mutha was turnin' my stomach out.

Before I went to sleep that night, I felt a little queasy and attributed the symptoms to some 'bad sausage' I ate for dinner, a meal my husband lovingly had prepared for my welcome home. I fell asleep and was awoken at 3 a.m. to some major stomach pains. I got up to use the bathroom and...nothing. I could hear my intestines partying it up - gurgling, twisting and churning the night away - but I could not relieve myself. It was the strangest feeling. I dragged myself back to bed and desperately tried to sleep off the pains. By the next morning, I had a fever and felt like my body was run over by a Mack truck.

My husband continued tackling the daily routine, something he had by now become an expert at: lunches, school and activity shuffling, dishwashing, cooking and everything in between as I quietly napped most of the day and got up to munch on some saltine crackers and wait out this 24-hour bug.

Two days later, ON MY HUSBAND'S BIRTHDAY, he caught the same mutha. He awoke okay enough that day, donned some dressier clothes and set out to renew his drivers license. By the time he came to pick me up from work, kids in the back seat picked up from school, he was shivering so bad he was tearing up.

"Let me drive'" I suggested.
"No. It helps distract me. I'll just drive home," he said in his usual stubborn way.

What ensued after we got home, could only be referred to as a tragic comedy.

He took his shoes off and slid under the comforter in bed fully clothed, teeth chattering, body convulsing with shakes.
"Can you throw some of those wool covers over me? I'm freezing!"
I covered him up to his chin. Five minutes later...
"Can you wrap my feet in that other wool blanket? Just my feet? Yeah...there you go. Thanks."
"Anything else?"
"Can you prop up these pillows for me? I'm not comfortable laying all the way down."
"Aren't you going to try and sleep?"
"No, I can't sleep. Can you prop them up higher?"
Propping takes place.
"No, that's too high. Can you bring them lower?"
Propping takes place. Apparently, said propping wasn't quite right for the Goldilocks of Pillows.
"Can you just...I don't want to be all the way down but not too high." [Insert more propping here.] "OK, that's good."
 "Do you want me to sit here with you?"
"Yeah, for a little if you don't mind."
"Sure."
Pause.
"You know that I still have that life insurance policy in place should anything happen, right?"
"Babe, you have the stomach flu."
"Yeah, I know, I'm just sayin'."
Pause. [Insert silent chuckle from me here.]
"Do you want me to get you some water? You should drink liquids if you have a fever so you don't get dehydrated."
"Yeah, sure....Wait! Can I get a straw with that so I don't spill it?"
"Sure, babe."
"OH and can you get me the Vicks?"
"The Vicks Vapor Rub? For what? You're not congested."
"But I need the fumes. They'll help distract me"
Okaaaaaay. No Vicks was found after a house-wide search; probably swallowed up in the giant pink mess of the girls' bedroom.
"Should I put a hot water bottle near my feet? They're like blocks of ice they're so cold!" he said after whining about not finding the said Vicks.
"Why don't you try to get some sleep?"
"I can't."
"OK, I'm going into the kitchen to cook some dinner. Will you be okay?"
"Yeah. But first can you change me?"
"CHANGE YOU?"
"Yeah, can you help me change out of my clothes and put on my pajamas?"
Okay, this was it.
"Dude, I had this for two whole days and all I did was nap and pad around quietly in my robe. You didn't hear a peep from me. You're a total BABY!"
"OK, never mind, I'LL just do it."

So after laying in bed for some time, getting up to change in to his PJs on his own (evident from the groaning and painful moaning I heard all the way in the kitchen) and getting up to use the toilet frequently, (evident from the scream that would be emitted from the bathroom every time he sat on the cold toilet seat) he announced that he was "STARVING." But before he gobbled up some soup, he asked me for some Aleve because his head was pounding.
"How many, one or two?"
"Ten," he replied.

Some more time passed during which any one of the following comments could be randomly heard:

"I'm so cold!"
"I'm so hot!"
"Do you think I need a cold compress on my head?"
"Where's that thermometer??!" (Again, also lost in the cluttery pinkness of the girls' room.)
"I need to take some Nyquil or something to knock me out." (I explained to him that when I had this, this BUG knocked me out and I took three naps in one day. Why couldn't HE sleep?)

"Can you rub the back of my neck? Where's that rubbing oil? No, not the rubbing alcohol, the massage oil!"

"OH MY GOD, your hands are FREEZING!! Rub nice! Rub them together first, Japanese style so they can warm up!" (After a minute of Mr. Myagi-ing, I told him this wasn't gonna work and he should just rub his own shoulders.)

I left him there and went to take care of Ari, who by now, was in the tub and yelling for me to wash her hair, while helping Bella with her math homework, cook dinner, wash the ceiling-stacked dishes in the sink and the million little things that need tending to around the house, then put off the begging from Ari to play tea party with her and review Bella's homework once again.

Finally, towards the end of the night, I went into the bedroom and saw that Joe was sitting up in bed watching television. It must've been a rough few hours for him because his hair looked like an unstyled, jacked up version of Pauly D.'s hairdo - stiff, sticking straight up but in a curly, longer, messed up mess.

Pauly D's infamous hairdo

"You didn't sleep at all?" I asked.
"No. I couldn't."
"I was completely knocked out by this thing. How are you feeling?"
"My whole body aches." Pause. "Can you please rub me down now?" he added, quietly. "Just rub my calves. They're killing me."

I proceeded to knead his calves, then conveniently, this turned into rubbing his lower back, his upper back, his shoulders, the back of his neck, all while attempting to watch television over the moans, groans, ooohs, aaahs that got higher pitched by the minute. It may have sounded like a fun time to someone listening in, but quite plainly put, it wasn't.

Upon finishing the rubdown, he magically!  instantly! felt better. "My God, what did you DO? It felt like you were rubbing the fever and aches right out of my body! I feel so much better now!" He started chirping away like baby bird that just found his voice. His newfound Chatty Cathy phase led me to believe that I had done my job in helping him get better, and go from baby to man once more. And given that I did get some really good laughs from his miserable ordeal, which made the process of helping him more bearable, I didn't mind taking care of my "baby daddy." That's what we do.

And speaking of babies...

Thought I'd add this, you know, so you can get another view of Pauly D's, um...hair

Zipping to the Extreme

by Cathy

As you may have read in my last post, I was off in Cabo last week on a "business" trip. In the midst of what turned out to be more leisure than business, checking in first at this hotel for two days:

Sheraton Hacienda del Mar Golf & Spa Resort, Los Cabos

 Then at this hotel for the final two days:

The Westin Resort & Spa, Los Cabos

 I did something EXTREME.

Of all the words I can think of to describe me, "extreme" is definitely not one of them. In fact, my middle name should be  "middle-of-the-road" or "medium" or "moderation" or "non-extremist". I don't do anything in extremes - I like being right smack dab in the middle. That's where I feel comfortable; that's who I am.

However, my whole Cabo trip was about stepping outside of my comfort zones - traveling alone; being comfortable alone; exploring new places; meeting new people; trying new things - alone. So wouldn't it be fitting that I did something I would not normally be prone to doing within my comfort zones? Yes, it would. So, I did. And what did I choose to do? Zip Lining. Yes, I willingly signed up for the Costa Azul Xtreme Canopy Tour. (Notice, the word Xtreme.)

The funny thing is that I didn't even realize this was an Xtreme sport until I got there and the instructors rigged us up in our harnesses, secured the clips that would support my weight as I dangled hundreds of feet in the air above cacti, burning desert rock and slithering rattlesnakes -  and ran through the drill. That's when I went into full-on panic mode. You see, since I landed in Cabo, where I was trying so hard to take in the beautiful scenery and revel in the ocean air, the looming zip lining activity kept nagging at my vacation state of mind, not allowing me to truly relax. I was so stressed about how I would handle it, I surveyed everyone in my path about it: the guys sitting next to me on the plane, our tour guide, our host, all 12 of the other folks on our tour, the hotel bar waiter, the unassuming couple from Minnesota baking next to me on the pool deck, swimmers wading past me in the pool...

I took diligent note of all the feedback (all of it reassuring and positive and FUN!) and wrestled back and forth between zip lining or just sticking with good old kayaking (I had done it in the past, albeit it was on a river, not the Pacific Ocean) and it seemed "moderate" enough. After conducting my thorough, unscientific focus group,  I decided to just stick with it. This trip was all about pushing my boundaries after all. 'Just buck up and do it, Cathy, dammit.'

On the morning of, I was surprisingly calm. The decision was made and I was at ease with accepting it. Once we got there, I applied my 30th coat of 50 SPF. (I started applying this the minute I woke up that morning because the thought of being up high in the Mexican hills with the Mexican sun beating on my pasty Chicago ass for three hours straight terrified me. In fact, I almost wore a long sleeve and long pants - a tunic and scapular shy of becoming Cathy, the flying, zip lining nun.) I'm sorry, I've gotten some crazy ass looking sunburns in Mexico - painful, ridiculous looking sunburns that could pass for geographical maps and airport runways. Thus, the fear. Not. Good. So I slathered to the point where I could slip right off that zip line. Also, not. good.

What seemed to calm my nerves somewhat is when I spotted grandmas, grandpas and two children (a nine-year old and an 11-year old) in the crowd. Yes, I did ask them their ages. Okay, if they can do this, I can do this. I took the pulley by the horns, stepped onto the platform on the mountainside, crossed my ankles, lifted my knees to my chest, leaned back in my harness and let the guide push me off the edge into the wide open air. I shut my eyes and screamed like a baby...for about 10 seconds.

This was taken by our tour's "Paparazzi" guy. That' me being Xtreme!

Then I realized that the speed was not as zippy as I thought it would be, so I opened my eyes and and took it all in. I thought about what the instructor said: "This is the closest you'll ever get to flying." I saw the Sea of Cortez off in the distance and the turkey vultures (no joke) tauntingly hovering overhead, waiting for me to plunge to my thorny death on that cacti and do what they do best. But seriously, by the end of that first zip line, I was hooked. Literally and figuratively speaking. I wanted more. I wanted higher. I wanted longer. I wanted faster. There were eight zip lines in total and I took in the sensation and exhilaration to the fullest.

All was great until our instructors said there would be a rappelling portion of the tour. Rapelling? Where you dangle off a platform on a rope that you, yourself are controlling and releasing to drop you - or shoot you - down 150 feet onto the ground below all while bouncing yourself off of a jagged rock wall lest you cut up your knees, a la SWAT team style? Too much to think about but since I was on a high from zip lining, I thought, 'What the heck.' But when I saw those go before me and how they were shaking, and pushed off that ledge and saw one lady come back with a rope burn on her hip, my 'What the heck' turned into 'What the hell??'

I was the first one to unclip myself from that wire holding me on that platform, turn on my heel and say, "I'm out. I did what I came to do. This is a vacation. I don't need the stress." Unbeknownst to me, there were twenty others from our group sitting this one out. And wouldn't you know I started a trend. Three more walked off that platform, one by one, after me, while an over-confident dude checked them off, "Another one bites the dust."

Well, that was my point. I didn't want to literally bite that dust waiting for me at the bottom of that cliff. Too much of this activity was left to my physical abilities and sporty know-how, and I was in no position to be fully left in charge during this Xtreme sport.

Overall, I can view this experience as "I chickened out on rappelling" or "I went beyond my comfort zone to the point where I was so proud of myself and felt content at trying something so out of my league."

In my eyes, I chose to fly.