24/7

The boys had names like Woody, Zeke, Ron and Mark, in the fifties. Their moms stayed home with so many brothers and sisters, or they worked child-friendly schedules as crossing guards or cafeteria ladies. Dads came home late. The boys wore tee shirts and dungarees. There were four seasons, one after another and then all over again. But somehow it was always hot or cold. The houses and apartments they lived in were small; the boys stayed outside. Some days they would hop the truck that took them to fields where they picked shade grown tobacco all day long. On another day they might float down the Connecticut River in barrels, or sit on a front stoop playing the knife game as they splayed out their hands on a table, stabbing the space between each finger with increasing speed and, hopefully, sustained accuracy. In the sixties, life was Marlboro Reds, by the carton, by the day. It was police academies and rifle tournaments in faraway places, like Alabama during the Wallace era. It was wom

Today I saw a woman walking up Main Street in her brassiere. As I rubbernecked my way through the small street lined with shops that were each one rental payment away from being crushed by WalMart, sweat pooled in the small of my back and dripped down into places I probably shouldn't mention if I'd like to reserve any right whatsoever to comment on the classiness of this situation. The point is, it was hot. The woman in her underwear was clutching an infant to her chest. In one hand, a yellow tee shirt hung in limp disuse. Her gait was slow. She and a companion trudged heavily past the Army/Navy store. The baby appeared tiny, sucked up as it was by her cavernous folds. I leaned forward against the steering wheel to tug my own soggy tank top away from my body, all the while staring across one lane and onto the sidewalk, as I began to question my own rush to judgement. First of all, the woman had a newborn. That, right there, proved she was crazy. If she wasn't a little loopy

This is not your mother's blog. Unless, of course, your mother couldn't cook, iron, remember to let the dog out, or bring herself to attack the pile of laundry festering as high as the ceiling in a corner of the bedroom. I am a new kind of mom--the kind that makes modern husbands yearn for reruns of Leave It To Beaver so that they can salivate over June Cleaver's pointy bra cups, the steak on the table, and her single minded devotion to making her men happy. Yesterday I attempted to iron a white dress shirt for a meeting that my husband--who will, from this point on, be referred to as The Partner --scheduled for this afternoon. Plucked cleanly from the dryer, the shirt was not so much wrinkled as it was unsmooth. By the end of my wrestling match with collar, sleeves and--dare I say it?--pleats, the shirt was very much wrinkled. The shoulders were slumped over a plastic hanger as I handed the shirt back to The Partner. "You'd better button your suit jacket all the

The proof of my changed life is in the salad dressing. It's the same Thousand Island Lite I've been dropping in a single, neat tablespoonful onto a bed of romaine for over a year now. It's the bottled mayonnaise product that my husband wouldn't dream of eating, not after growing up on oil and vinegar that falls fresh from two glass containers into the same salad bowl, repellant for the first time. It's the dressing that I glanced at last night, only to realize it had expired in September 2005. Before my daughter--who will, from this point on, be referred to as The Boss --was born, a year was a very long time. Food that was old, seemed old. The digital reading on the bottom right hand corner of my office computer went so slowly from 9:06 to 9:07 that it seemed not to change at all. One season of the Sopranos was separated from the next by eternity. The idea of shopping July sales for gifts to give at Christmas was absurd. At least I knew I wouldn't live forever,