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I read in a book that our children will be the first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. I ran to The Partner in alarm. I squeaked out the news and asked him what he thought. He looked at me funny. “I think it means The Boss won’t live as many years as we do.” I tried to collect myself amidst a series of eye twitches. “I am not asking you to explain the concept to me. I get that . I want to know what we’re going to do about it.” “You’re the one reading the book.” Yes, I’m the one reading the book. In this house, I’m always the one reading the book. I’ve loved words on paper since the day I deciphered my first children’s story. But I’ve never been particularly interested in non-fiction and am even less inclined to accept someone else’s idea of self-help. When I signed on to review Good Kids Bad Habits , by Jennifer Tractenberg, for the Parent Blogger’s Network , I hadn’t tried to read a parenting book in its entirety since I threw down What To Expect When Y

The Partner does not like it when I spout words such as these: " Our house is going to be on the market for a very, very long time" and " All the houses we want to buy will already be sold by the time we get an offer on ours . "He calls it negativity; I call it reality. What he considers optimism is what I look at as lying to oneself. I hate lies. We knew going into this that there are a few significant factors working against our home's place in the real estate market. Its position on a busy road is one of them. Its two bed, one bath status is another. The fact that it is over 200 years old will probably scare away some people who would otherwise be attracted to the reasonable price. For all those reasons, I'm inclined to put off our search for a new home until we have an offer on this place. That way I won't get my heart set on a property that someone else will snatch up while wait for ours to sell. The Partner, on the other hand, believes in the nece

In follow-up to the Great Big Apple Blowout , I give you this photo, taken that evening. It was The Boss's first experience with the clamor of the city and its towering skyline. She was fascinated with "up," only looking street-level when a dog pranced by. Then it was "dog!" and "woof!" My freshly blown-dry hair lifted in the breeze and I admired my daughter's perspective.

It sometimes occurs to me how inane by blog is. The thought crossed my mind today, actually, after I left comments on a couple military blogs upon which I stumbled. The soldiers behind those Blogger templates live out tales of heart and guts every day. They share their perspective in a way that's invaluable in the telling. Each post is layers deep. I came back here after leaving those comments and assessed my last few posts with a more distanced eye. I forced myself to look past my mommyblogging myopia. I tried to find something universal, or at least something that would be even halfway interesting to a person not in possession of two stretch-marked breasts and a blown-out vaginal canal. But I couldn't come up with anyting. I realize certain people attract a certain audience and that no single entity (with the possible exception of Anna Nicole Smith) is going to interest everybody. But when I start looking at my blog as other, more removed, parties must see it, well, then I

It was late in coming, but it's here with a vengeance. The Boss has learned the word "no." The shake of her head and her turned away face has been replaced with a chorus of clear negativity. "No, no, no, no!" She says it in the morning when I pick her up from her crib. It's not that she doesn't want to join the world of the waking, as far as I can tell; it's that she likes the sound of her own defiance. She says it when I hold out a cup of the milk she has already expressed a desire for. She walks away. I leave it on a chair at her level. I turn my back and she comes back to get it. I tell her I'm going to make a phone call. "No!" She bleats. I dial the number anyway. My mother picks up. I ask The Boss if she would like to speak to nana. "No!" she insists as she walks over to me anyway. I put the phone to her ear. The Boss's light breath is the only thing audible on the other end. "Say hi to nana," I suggest. &q

...So, I saw a sign in the window of a mid-town salon. The mid-week, mid-day price seemed like a good one, and I needed a hair cut. The price was ten dollars cheaper than their regular cut and blow dry rate listed next to the door, so I went in. They took me right away. The hairdresser washed my hair in that relaxing, scalp massage kind of way. I closed my eyes with contentment. A little conditioning later, I was seated at her station. The first indication that something was amiss came when she started combing out my hair and applying some sort of product to the roots. I had never gotten a hair cut where they applied product before they applied the scissors. I got nervous. Next thing I know, she had sectioned off the upper layers and was brandishing a blow dryer. She powered it on and went to work on my thin brown locks. Finally, it clicked. I was paying $30 to get my hitherto perfectly serviceable coif re-blown. There was no haircut involved. The special in the window said "Blow

Where I come from, people under the age of 75 do not employ others to wash and blow dry their hair. Cut it, yes. Color it, yes. But shampooing is taken care of in the shower and blow drying is done in front of the bathroom mirror all by one's lonesome. I only bring this up because I was in the City today. The big, red apple of a city. The city that has reduced me to tears on more than one occasion, like the time six years ago when I trekked over the Henry Hudson Parkway and onto the Avenue of the Americas to vie for a spot at Time Magazine. Don't get me wrong--it wasn't the failed interview that made me weep. Oh, no. It was the lunch line at a Blimpie's sandwich shop, which was moving too fast for me to intervene before the lineman squirted oil and vinegar all over my salad. I did not want oil and vinegar. I did not want to be pushed along by the next person's tray into the cash register with a dripping, fatty mass of lettuce. I did not want to pay an exorbitant pri

My status as a lapsed Catholic does not preclude me from milking the Lenten ideals of sacrifice and personal growth for all they're worth. To that end, I will be posting on this blog every day for the next forty. It's sort of a self-imposed NaBloPoMo , only without the prizes that I never win anyway. This time around the incentive is my desire to be a better writer, a more disciplined craftsperson, and a more reflective thinker. Oh, and Peeps . There will be lots of Peeps at the end. Hard Peeps, exposed to the air and solidified into a carnival of stale sugar. See you tomorrow.

This is where our family started almost three years ago, in an old Cape that has been housing beginnings for more than two centuries. We brought our daughter home on a hot July day to a backyard barbecue with friends. In the spare-room-turned-nursery, she had a place of her own (not that she used it for the first four months). The seasons changed, and we stayed warm in the cold. We read books. The house was never clean. Today we put our house on the market. I'm boxing up our old beginnings and putting them in storage until they can merge with the new. Life is tidier in this holding pattern. So we wait.

February does not inspire me. There aren't many pages on the calendar that do, but this miserable mini-month is by far the worst. I bought The Partner socks and corduroys for Valentine's Day. It is just occurring to me now how ridiculous that is. We have known each other for almost ten of these romance-centric holidays and it's come to this. Yet, I'm too lethargic to do anything more than note the absurdity. Last night I retired to the bedroom in hopes of receiving an inaugural rub-down with the massage oil The Partner purchased, much more thoughtfully than I, for the occasion of the day. I sat up in bed while he removed the tags and stickers from his cords as if mired in mid-winter molasses. He threw them away. He bent over to pick up random debris that had escaped the garbage can. He plodded about the room, removing clothing and accessories and putting everything in its God damn rightful place. I thought of spontaneity and urgency. My face fell. I yawned. He lumbere

Warning: If you are married to me, DO NOT LOOK ANY FURTHER! Tear your eyes away from the screen, NOW! Okay, hopefully we're alone, dear Internets. Here is a sneak peek at the Valentine's Day card I created for The Partner. I cannot take credit for the quote, as it is one he coined himself. Click here for the link . Some say the official Valentine's Day holiday is superfluous, and that every relationship should be filled with an entire year's worth of loving celebration. To them, I say " kiss this ."

For the past several months, I've been participating in what's become a happy tradition--the Blog Exchange . It's that time of the month when my regular readers (all four of them) invariably start to wonder what kind of schizophrenic spell has overtaken me and my writing style. The BE is the brainchild of Kristen at Motherhood Uncensored , who describes it as a place "where blog authors can stretch their writing muscles, discuss and debate timely topics, and gain new readers by placing their post on someone else's blog." However, after speaking with a few of my friends-turned-readers, I've discovered that not everyone follows the whole "exchange" concept through to the end. They'll read the entry on my blog, but won't click on the link that brings them to the site where they can find my own guest post. To that end, I have decided to repost my latest BE entry right here on home cyber turf. If you've already read it, please excuse the r

The wind in my house-selling and -hunting sails has been cut by The Partner's declaration that "it doesn't matter how nice of a house we buy--it's still going to look like a slum once you move in." I've mentioned before that I'm not the neatest person. Housekeeping is not in my bag of tricks. I leave dishes in the sink overnight. The laundry turns into a moutainous load. Piles of outgrown clothing litter The Boss's bedroom. But I wouldn't call our house a slum. I would call it a place that takes a few hours to make presentable when we have guests over. Of course, it didn't help my case any when he awoke this morning, after going to sleep mad, to find that he had no fresh boxers to wear. The good thing about selling a house is that the showings will force me to keep our home in a constant state of clean. There will be no piles of used or unused items. There will be nary a dust ball in sight. The vacuum cleaner and Swiffer Wet Mop will get more u

These are the compiled posts about Red, a woman I first wrote about six months back. There are more related posts to come, I'm sure, but for now I'll step back into the archives for a little Red Retrospective. 80s Flashback In Bed The Funeral * And in case anyone is interested in some slightly more up-to-date information, I am happy to report that Red is going to be a grandmother. How time does fly. *Since this one was guest posted on another blog as part of the Blog Exchange , I decided to change names to protect the innocent.

The writers challenge: Write a post in the voice/style of a famous person (actor, singer, author, whatever). It can be a hot topic, current issue, or just a regular old post. The readers challenge: To guess the identity of the famous person, plus an extra gold star on your sticky chart if you can correctly identify all 12 words and/or phrases that are directly linked to this star. _______________________________________ We passed the 6 month mark a few weeks ago and I feel like I am getting into the groove of this parenting malarkey now, and actually feel like a proper mum not just someone pretending to be one. I spent the first few months convinced that someone would out me as an impostor or child abductor as they stood outside the baby changing room in the supermarket listening to the string of expletives coming from under the door as I fumbled with nappy fastenings and knocked the contents of the diaper bag flying everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, this