24/7

Another Easter has come and gone. So has the not-quite-successful Lenten promise that preceded it. On six separate occasions, I failed to light up the Blogger dashboard with my daily reflections. Being, as I am, of the opinion that 34 out of 40 ain't bad, I cannot quite muster up too much disappointment. I blogged a helluva lot more than I would've otherwise. And I did it during the months of February and March, which are perhaps the least inspired pages on my creative calendar. I may not have come through with flying colors, but I came through. I'd like to thank God, The Partner, and whomever invented the Meme. In related news, I am looking for another gimmick to entice me into blogging on a daily, or at least 6-day-a-week, basis. I have no self motivation whatsoever and must rely on outside sources. That's just how it is. I imagine what I'm looking for is something like the bikini that inspires dieters to go through months of deprivation so that they can fit into...

The Diaper Fairy has been dropping by our house monthly since The Boss was born. Our magical nymph takes the form of my lithe, spry and French-accented mother-in-law. She comes, she dotes all day, and she leaves in a flurry of triple kisses, a trail of bulk-packaged diapers in her wake. It never occurred to me to question the diapers we never had to pay for. So, when The Boss woke each morning, covered from head to toe in thick smelling urine courtesy of fleece pajamas with an uncanny synthetic ability to wick moisture from the middle to all points north and south, I tried to grin and bear it. Or grin and swear it, under my breath. Imagine my pleasure when a separate fairy descended on our front porch in the guise of the FedEx man. I tore open the box to reveal a package of Huggies Overnights . The plastic wrapped around the thick size 4s promised "unbeatable leakage protection." I rushed them upstairs to the place of honor under The Boss's changing table before coming b...

If I may: American Idol is no sacred cow. It may moo like one, but it is not. It drinks from the trough in the barnyard of pop-culture entertainment and waits for the farmers to come milk it for all it's worth. I don't for one minute believe the show is a "singing contest." It never was. Any show that relies wholly on unrestricted calls from the viewing public is not going to be an honest evaluation of voice, pitch, phrasing, resonance, or any of the other musical terms me and the most of the United States know nothing about. What we all know is personality. Shock value. Fun. Diversion. Rumor. Intriuge. Good hair. Boobies . Even before campaigns such as Vote For the Worst , which gained popularity when Howard Stern got behind the old farm tractor of subversion, it was a popularity contest. By definition. Votes got tallied and the most popular won. Not the best singer. Not the most gifted showperson. Just the guy or girl with the most supporters in his or her stable. ...

. . .that I'm part Irish and part Polish? Yeah. I get drunk and act stupid. Ba-dum-bum. It's funny 'cause it's true.

I don't know what to do with The Boss. Literally and figuratively. Any which way you look at it, smell it, taste it, hear it or touch it, I do not know what to do. So I improvise. I read to her, a lot. I know I can do that much. We read Dr. Suess after Sesame Street after Happy Baby board book, because books don't cause tantrums. Then we read the "I Love My Daddy" book and my mind wanders to The Partner at work, who's probably right now thinking he has it so tough. Thinking I do nothing at home but shirk laundry duty and post to my blog. Thinking The Boss watches too much TV. Eventually we leave the book case in favor of the open road. I strap her into her car seat and slink in front of the steering wheel. Since making eye contact only serves to rile the beast, I look ahead. I consult the rear view mirror in a traffic assessment, but I dare not even glance at The Boss. I know from experience that her mannerisms will be calm, her gaze all-seeing. Sometimes she fold...

A few weeks ago, The Boss and I sat up watching American Idol. The oldie-but-goodie singing sensation, Lulu , came out to perform "To Sir, With Love," fake breasts hiked up to fake chin. Her presence commanded The Boss's attention. After staring at the screen for several moments, a smile lit my daughter's face. "Boobies!" she squealed. "Boobies! Boobies!" Her glee was evident. I laughed at the clarity with which The Boss expressed herself. Words like "feet," "cat," and "please" are muddled by her lips, but "boobies" comes out with complete artistry. If it was wrong to feel proud, it was even more indelicate of me to consider it the ultimate in flattery when she turned and jammed her pointer finger into my chest amdist a flourish of "boobies, boobies, boobies!" I'm no Lulu, but if my daughter can find similarities in my own flat rack, who am I to correct her?

With the metaphorical microphone passed to me by Mrs. Chicky earlier this week via an Interview Meme, I am carrying on the tradition with a different spin. In addition to interviewing a few bloggers who posted their answers on their own sites , I opened up the line of questioning to interested parties without blogs. Taking advantage of the opportunity was a regular reader named Kate. I am pleased to introduce her to you now. Me: You are in a room full of strangers--different sexes, ages, ethnicities, backgrounds, professions, familial statuses, etc., are all represented. They want to know who you are. How do you identify yourself? Kate: This is a difficult question to answer because I need more context. Why am I in a room full of such a diverse group of strangers? Am I mingling and just introducing myself to individual people along the way, or am I addressing a crowd for some reason as a leader/keynote speaker? Even so, I would need to know the reason everyone is gathered. If I ...

What is wrong with this picture? (Besides the fact that I have no photography skills whatsoever?) Did you get it? Did you? If not, here's a bit more of the scene: No, it was not a freak of nature that caused this. No blustery wind, no driving rain. It was The Boss, the dog and I on the way to the park. Well, actually, it had nothing to do with The Boss, except that she was there and could quite possibly have been killed if the porch ceiling wasn't so capable of remaining suspended practically by its lonesome. I was walking out the front door, helping The Boss down the steps with one hand and holding Roxie's leash in the other. That's when our pit bull saw the cat in the neighbor's yard and bolted toward it. I lurched forward, struggling to hold on as Roxie put all of her 50 pounds, plus the strength of momentum, into the chase. That's when I did the stupid thing for which The Parnter is currently not speaking to me. I grabbed ahold of one of the porch's ric...

Charming Historic Cape w/Commerical Possibilities A taste of old and new. Set on 1 acre; offering 1862 sq.ft. of living wiht beautiful, wide board flooring, soapstone kitchen sink and center chimney with newly lined fireplace in the living room & great garage/workshop! Will somebody tell me what it is about this home that attracts only the rudest, slimiest and most ignorant of prospective buyers? One freak show at my door is not unexpected, but two, three, four...the parade is endless and wholly unproductive. We had one offer that fell through and another that's falling. Our agent held a showing with another gentlemen who spent over an hour on the property before he told her he hated the house, but loved the yard. Then he said he doesn't much like to mow. Where the hell do they come from? How many more of them are out there? We have an open house on Saturday, and I have a feeling I just might find out.

Special correspondent Mrs. Chicky , of Chicky Chicky Baby , is here today with a few hard hitting questions for yours truly. Stay till the end to find out how you can participate in the interviews sweeping the blogosphere. Mrs. Chicky: Where did you meet your husband? Me: Funny you should ask. Funny because it's true. I met The Partner via the Instant Messenger function of AOL v. 3.0. As a college sophomore with nothing better to do than send random IMs while I should've been studying for mid-terms, I typed the keywords "Connecticut" (for my home state) and "78" (for the year of my birth) into the member directory search. When his profile popped up, I saw that this 19 year old male, born and bred in Connecticut, attended the same university as a friend of mine. With nothing more to go on than those three apparent commonalities, I fired up the IM. "Do you know so-and-so?" I typed, using my friend's name as a shot-in-the-dark impetus for conversa...

My friend's daughter is a pre-schooler who likes to write songs. I think she's got what it takes to go far. Don't believe me? You be the judge. "I ask my mom for a chore, She says sure, how ‘bout four. So I do the dishes And she acts suspicious." ~ Bella, age 4 It's a bit unnerving to feel as if I have to move over for the next generation before I've even taken a seat.

I've written before about a local court case with international implications. Coast to coast, sea to shining sea, hopping continents and bouncing off satellites in space. Read about it , because it could happen where you are, too. You might think it can't, but it can happen to you. Here's the meat of the nutshell as I cracked it earlier: "Julie Amero, a substitute teacher, was convicted on four counts of risk of injury to a minor for exposing middle school students to pornography on a school computer. The conviction came after she testified that the sexually explicit material on her computer popped up as a result of adware , not from any prurient searches of her own. She faces up to forty years in prison." She will be sentenced this Thursday. There's someone else around these parts who will not face a day of jail time, however. It's a man who sexually assaulted a three year old girl. Under a plea deal, he will get five years' probation. According to t...

When she really wants something, The Boss calls me by my name . "Bink! Binky! Biiiiiiiiinky!" She sits in her high chair and bangs on the tray as she imitates her father. I mean, that has to be where she got it from. He's the one who says my name on a regular basis in her presence. As it happens, it's usually when he wants something, too. Or when he's annoyed. Or when he finds it hard to believe that something I said actually came out of my mouth. " In a withering tone" is the best way to describe the most common utterance of my identifier around these parts. "Binky!" Today The Boss called me out at the supermarket when I strayed too far from her in search of a plastic bag for the chicken. "Bink. Bink. Binky." She stared at me from her perch in the front of the cart, looking all baby blond and munching on a cookie. "Binky!" she repeated, in between bites. Call me narcissistic, but there is nothing cuter than hearing my daug...

Today's a lazy day. Gray and cold and dreary in typical New England March-ness. I went to my usual list of bloggers in search of easy inspiration. It came to me from Mary-LUE , who tagged a few specific peeps for a meme, and then opened it up to Everyone. Well, I'm one of the "every," so I'm playing. Here goes: 1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your Birthday Month and day only. July 30 2. List 3 Events that occurred that day. 1619 - In Jamestown, Virginia , the first representative assembly in the Americas , the House of Burgesses , convenes for the first time. I like the idea of sharing my birth date with this one. 1954 - Elvis Presley makes his debut as a public performer. Any friend of Johnny Cash is a friend of mine. 1975 - Jimmy Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan , a suburb of Detroit , at about 2:30 p.m. He is never seen or heard from again. The mysterious 7/30. 3. List 2 important Bir...

After racking up almost two years on the job, The Boss is now comfortable in her position. She no longer feels the need to impress The Partner and I with her even-keeled temperament and sense of humor. Confident that we're not going to hit up Monster.com for new opportunities, she has taken to ruling with an iron fist. In fact, she throws herself onto the floor and flails the clenched metal of her hands roughly every five minutes. It's tantrum time in the workplace. I would be better prepared for all this if she hadn't been so darned nice up till now. Consistently pleasant. A joy to be around. As a newborn, she mostly slept and ate. As an infant, she slept, ate, and rolled around a little. Once mobile, she toddled with grace and dignity. Now she is four months removed from the nefarious age of two and suddenly decides she wants a head start on the villiany. And as her subordinate, I have every reason to believe my performance review is going to suffer. It will look someth...

Actually, this post has very little to do with moms and sex. But I am getting addicted to the Statcounter spike I've encountered ever since I employed those two terms in relation to each other a couple days ago in the title of my response to the Real Moms meme . Yesterday this blog experienced the single largest number of unique hits it has ever known. All because of moms having sex. What is it that a famous anthropologist once said? "Never doubt that a small group of moms having sex can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." I mean, if that's not the truth. I'm going to go do my part to change the world.

After many months of secrecy, I can finally release the story of my just-printed book. This past Saturday, I attended the launch party for a new publishing company. Its first line, titled One True Romance , is a series of real life romances about engaged couples. It fits into the wedding planning market alongside photography as videography as a permanent marriage memento. Picture you and your other half on a Harlequin for all your friends and family to read. I wrote the inaugural tome. Yup, I said it. I wrote a book. It is 120 pages of Boston-based reality, outfitted with all the trappings of a traditional romance novel. My name's right on the cover. My words lay prettily throughout. It is the centerpiece for the publishing venture's marketing campaign. How 'bout them apples? The best thing about writing a book is that it proves I can, well...write a book. What was once daunting to the degree of paralysis is now attainable. This particular effort was creative non-fiction, b...

The sale of our home fell through already. To all of you who told me from the beginning to be positive and upbeat about the whole process, and for those who tried to convince me that negativity does not sell houses, I respond with a hearty I told you so . Looks like optimism doesn't cut checks, either. I am just glad I only wasted about two weeks thinking things were actually going well. On the buying side, we actually put an offer in on another house right before our own sale fell through. There was a Hubbard clause on the bid and we are still waiting to hear if the owners will entertain such an uncertain prospect. I have to keep reminding myself that I don't care anymore. Que sera, sera. We have a roof over our heads and solid walls surrounding. Everything else will eventually fall into place around us. But there is something I can be upbeat about. Almost a month into the game, I am still managing to keep a clean house . It's all about momentum--that's what a frien...

Read my VisualDNA ™ Get your own VisualDNA™ I discovered this VisualDNA thing over at Whirlwind 's blog today. I clicked on a picture that most represented me in a bunch of different categories and, voila, there was my personality, deconstructed. According to my VisualDNA, I: ~ Like to think differently, always from another perspective. ~ Have a high sex drive and appetite for "lurve." ~ Love to be in charge of where I'm going--the freedom of choosing my own direction. ~ Like to unwind after a long day--nothing beats relaxing the shoulders, loosening the tongue and letting the day go by. ~ Think of technology when I think of freedom. Ah, technology. The freedom to bore untold numbers of people with my personality. You know you want to do it, too.

Now, I'm no control freak by any means. I'm pretty damn go-with-the-flowy. But the process of selling our house is driving even me crazy. Though we accepted our first offer after the house was on the market for just a week, that by no means indicates a smoothness to the proceedings. I spoke this afternoon to our real estate agent, who informed me that our buyer is having trouble finding financing. As is the case with many home seekers looking in our starter price range, he needs 100% financing. On the heels of recent news in the national media outlets about mortgage lenders going belly up because of so many people defaulting on such loans, it's become more and more difficult to procure them. This buyer has a tiger of a mortgage broker working on his behalf, but it's still extremely uncertain. Combine that with the fact that the buyer has only been at his current job for two weeks, and it becomes even less likely that a loan will come through. And so, we are in limbo. I ...