...I Asked Her For Some Happy News

Sometimes all the nefarious aspects of the Universe conspire to throw you a 300mph curve ball, just to see what you're made out of.

The answer is: Jell-o. I'm made of Jell-o right now.

Or, more aptly, some crappy generic store-brand gelatin--the kind that sits in the back of the dessert display in the school cafeteria lunch line under a dollop of chalky artificial dessert topping, feeling helpless and unloved and unable to change its destiny.

And so while I wallow in it, please forgive me for not making the blog rounds as of late. I'm worried that at best, I have nothing of value to add to any conversations. At worst, I am in just that kind of mood in which I could write something bitchy and rude and totally inappropriate. Like geez Liz, MamaOfFive just posted that her husband didn't do the dishes one time. You didn't have to call him a whoring, cheating rat bastard!

So I'm abstaining for now.

If I may ask (in exchange for the absolutely nothing that I'm giving you in return), if you can point me towards anything funny, I would very much appreciate it. A bad joke, a great You Tube video...anything that made you smile this week. Otherwise, I'm back to playing solitaire on Yahoo games.

Westward, Oy. I Mean, Ho.

In 1992 I left my beloved hometown for a career-making opportunity. In Providence, Rhode Island.

I asked a college acquaintance, the only person I knew in the entire city, how much a studio would cost.

"A studio for what?" she said.

"A studio apartment? One room?"

"Why would you want to live in one room?" she asked in absolute earnest. Which made sense considering the price of real estate in Providence I would be able to both live--and eat! And not just the free hors d'oeuvres at happy hour buffets catering to the struggling 20-somethings like me.

I found a charming two-bedroom apartment just a couple miles from work. It was the entire first floor of a house, with closets bigger than any allowed within Manhattan borough limits. Tulips sprayed across the front yard, stained glass dappled my dining room with golds and reds, but it was the working fireplace in the living room that sold me. I had a huge front porch on which I imagined lazing with the crossword puzzle on Sunday mornings, resting my coffee milk--the offical cold beverage of the State of Rhode Island--on the rail as I waved to passing neighbors.

The apartment even came with parking. Free parking--a term foreign to the New Yorker's vocabulary. I didn't even have to walk six blocks to get to my cah; it was right in my driveway.

And then there was the cute older (thirty!) coworker who offered to help me "get settled" anytime. I was going to do just fine. Just fine.

I never could have expected that the twenty months I lived in Providence would put me in therapy for six years.

There were plenty of reasons for it. The crappy on again-off again office relationship was probably at the top of the list; with the new boss who fired me for, among other things, "being just a little too New York" somewhere just below it. In fact he had a good sixty or so other reasons that he unfurled the day I found myself unemployed in Providence, including the fact that my headlines were too long and I "cared too much about advertising strategy" for a copywriter. Yeah, that was a fun meeting. But hey, at least it all ended with him ushering me out a back door during a company meeting and telling me I could come back for my stuff on a Sunday. You know, to spare me the embarrassment.

Further down the list was the fact that in Providence, I was asked whether Hannukah and CHannukah were the same holiday. There's also that little bit of insanity in which more than one person assumed that when I said I was originally from the City, that I meant Fall River, Massachusetts. And then there was the neighbor situation.

I remember telling my stepmother that a gay couple lived above me. "Ooh, how exciting," my stepmother fawned. "They'll take such good care of you! Isn't that what every single woman wants, a gay couple for neighbors?"

Yes, I agreed. Absolutely. Until several months later when I came home at lunchtime to find a dozen police cars in my driveway and our shared back door battered and off its hinges. Apparently dealing drugs to nearby high school students, then having sex with them in spite of your HIV-positive status isn't too highly regarded in Providence. Score one for the normally bumbling local police department.

Then again, I think they lost that point when I asked them about getting that door back, um, on the doorway. Their response was We don't know when we'll get you a new one. Can't you just stay somewhere else for a while?

I felt so safe and warm that week.

I was delighted to learn that once the second floor apartment was cleared out and its evil tainted contents auctioned off, that a family would be moving in. A family. With children. How great! Little did I know that family was code for white trash mutants from hell who threatened to kill me ("We know people") if I reported their stained undershirt-wearing selves to the landlord for any number of illegal, unethical, or otherwise disgusting activities including flicking hundreds of cigarette butts on our lawn (and sometimes in my window), and beating the crap out of their mentally-challenged teenage son.

Good times, Providence. Good times.

Perhaps the worst aspect of Providence, however, was the fact that the city was way beyond a fashion don't. More like a fashion Dear God, are you trying to kill someone with that shellacked spike of big hair left over from 1983? And so I drove home 180 miles to New York every six weeks to get my hair cut, that fearful was I of the competence of the local stylists. Perhaps it my visit to a pedicurist who didn't realize that nailpolish was just for the nails and not the entire foot that gave me the impression that Providence aestheticians were somewhat lacking in aesthetic abilitiy. Or maybe I just had a hunch.

Now let me be clear, dear Rhode Island readers, before you start sending me hate mail, that not every resident of The Pothole State...er, The Ocean State is fashion-backwards, insular, incompetent, and/or criminal. It's just that everyone from your state fitting this description somehow managed to come in direct contact with me while I lived there. Let me say for the record that you have very nice beaches and I did get a kick out of the dancing traffic cop.

Needless to say, after I hightailed it back to NYC for a job with an appealing enough 10017 zip code, I embraced the city (no, not Fall River) and all of its comforts. I clung desperately to my family here, to my friends, to the skyline, the parks, the nightlife, the cafes. To the smells from the street fairs, the endless commotion out my office window. Even the comforting sounds of car alarms at night and insomniac drag queens screaming WHOOOOO at 3 AM.

I was home.

For years, I convinced myself that I was happy because of New York. That New York was my life. That I was New York and it was so inextricably a part of me, that to remove myself from the city would be to wither. Or to go crazy. But even if I did go crazy, at least if I stayed in New York I'd have plenty of company. That's the thing about New York - whoever you are, there's a place for you here.

It's a strange thing that New Yorkers do; we see ourselves as New Yorkers, often before we see ourselves as women. Or Jews. Or artists. Or liberals. I'm not sure that there's another place in the world that natives and transplants alike so tie to their identities (with the exception maybe of Texas). In what other locale would a native wear a garment proudly proclaiming his own city's name? San Francisco shirts are strictly for the tourists. Boston shirts you can leave to the students. But a Brooklyn shirt? An E train shirt? A New York City shirt? Hey, it was good enough for Lennon.

And so this New Yorker swore never to leave my city again. Not when the going got tough, not when the psychos flew the planes into the World Trade Center. I would stay here forever, surrounded by an entire city of people who would never think to say that I was a little too New York.

Only there's one thing I didn't count on: Falling in love with a man who didn't want to stay here forever. Committing to him. Having a kid with him. And that changes the game entirely.

We've decided to move to LA, God help us.

There are any number of reasons we've decided to head to the left coast early next Spring- my career opportunities, Nate's sitcom-writing aspirations, his boredom, my love for him, the always perfect weather, the Pacific Ocean, the year-round ripe tomatoes.

I won't have to be away from my daughter for two weeks or more in a stretch when production season rolls around--a series of separations that nearly killed me earlier this year. I won't have to work West coast hours from the East coast any more, a situation which has me fielding phone calls from the office well past midnight some nights. (And you thought I was just up late reading blogs.) It was one thing when I was single and energetic and...well, energetic. But these days, I'm just not in love with approving copy changes on a commercial script over the phone, just as Conan O'Brien is signing off for the night.

In L.A. we can have a bbq grill. A grill! I hear it's the law there - every resident is entitled to a grill and who am I to break the law? Maybe we'll even have a yard. And while New Yorkers are supposed to disdain yards and all things yard-related (we have the Park thank you very much) there's something to be said for opening the back door, and letting the kid run around while you fire up the burgers.

That's hamburgers, by the way. We may be moving to LA but we're not doing the veggie-vegan-soy nut-crunchy thing quite so fast.

Of course there are any number of reasons that, when I think about living in L.A., make me want to run shrieking from the room, with these bizarre things called my natural boobs flapping in the wind. But I'm trying not to dwell on those (or the flappy boobs) right now. Because as Nate says, I can talk myself into anything, and I can talk myself out of anything. I damn near talked myself out of him, that's for sure.

In making this decision, I am trying to hard to do what I believe (and a very trustworthy couples therapist agrees) is right for my relationship. I'm trying to choose my family over my city. My future over my past. My child, and her need to have two happy, united parents, over my own parents who are none too thrilled about my departure.

That last part is quite possibly the hardest decision I've made in my life to date.

But the way I see it, nothing is irreversible. I came back from Providence and survived. I can come back from LA too if I can't handle one more conversation about celebrity dog trainers and feng shui gurus and the unproven medicinal benefits of Kaballah water.

Or maybe--just maybe--we'll go there and we'll be happy. I'll see my daughter more. Nate will find his career path. New opportunities that we hadn't even considered will come our way and life will be rosie and gay.

But whatever happens, wherever we live, I'll tell you this much: I'll always be a New Yorker at heart.

Also, I'm keeping my nose.

Coming Around. Although Not Entirely.

Where did the cynical media bitch go--that inner snarkmeister who insisted, pre-child, that Barney is the devil and will never set one blubbery purple foot in my living room or anywhere near it should I eventually procreate.

(This is not to be confused with my cat, by the way, who is indeed The Devil. Barney is just a devil. Perhaps one of Desi's minions, here to do her bidding on earth.)

Um, no. He does not rock. In no world-- this or any other--could anyone make a decent case for Barney "rocking." And it's not just the tambourine.

This morning, barely more than one year after giving birth I found myself doing the previously unthinkable: I tuned into Barney.

I went right to the kids on-demand channel, scanned past Bob the Builder, Teletubbies, and even (gasp) Sesame Street, and clicked on Barney.

Now it's not as if I've come to love Barney; bite your tongue! The kids on that show tuck their shirts into their jeans in that way that's sure to get you beat up behind the tire swings during lunchtime. The black kids look like they were cast from the Bryant Gumbel school of ethnic diversity, ready to break out into Tie a Yellow Ribbon any minute. Not one song has a modicum of soul to it, and the rhyming schemes surely have Mr. Geisel rolling over in his grave. The dance moves (Jazz hands, everyone! Jazz hands!) make me want to kick the choreographer in the face with his own 80s-era Capezios, and the dinosaur's voice - my God, if there is one voice on this planet that could inspire spontaneous seizures it is most certainly not Mary Hart's.

But you know what I've learned about being a parent? That walking around town with maple syrup on my pants is not the worst thing in the world. Also: It's not all about me anymore.

And so this morning I put on Barney. Voluntarily. Of my own free will. For my daughter, who seems to like the bloated beast, bless her undiscerning little 15 month-old heart. I even sang along with the songs for her.

The things we do for love.

Guess What Day It Is! (Nope, Guess Again. Nope...Nope, That's Not it Either...)

In July I ordered some new bras.

(Yes, I know. Always a great sentence to start a blog post. Come one, come all, and read the very exciting post about that always high-interest category, brassieres!)

I ordered them from Fresh Pair, which, despite the double entendre of the name, intended or not, is a pretty decent site. (And no, freaky anti-capitalist conspiracy theorists, this is not surreptitious product placement in my blog.)

I have excellent taste in bras. When you are a 34DD, the boobies demand nothing less than perfection. And so, due to a backorder stemming from the wild popularity of the Wacoal French Garden Something-or-Other Contour Bra, my harnesses were delayed until August. Then late August. Then September.

Now October.

Which, on principle, compelled me to cancel the order altogether. I mean, October? By then the girls could be another size entirely. Stranger things have been known to happen.

I called customer service yesterday and was greeted with:

Hi and thank you for calling Fresh Pair. Founder of National Underwear Day.

National Underwear Day! Am I the only one who did not know of such a thing? That there is indeed a day--a federally sanctioned day--to recognize and honor our undergarments?

I know there are all sorts of weird national holidays. We list them on the Cool Mom Picks monthly newsletter as humorous excuses to shop. (A newsletter, by the way, that you all will enjoy to the degree that you will thank me profusely for suggesting you subscribe. Here, I'll make it easy: Click here.) Each month Kristen emails me this weird list of possible holidays and we laugh and narrow them to something like National Eat A Raw Onion Day and Rick Springfield's birthday. Because who does not want to shop in honor of Rick Springfield's birthday? Only crazy people, that's who.

This month alone there's Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept 19), Elephant Appreciation Day (Sept 22), and Fish Amnesty Day (Sept 23) in which all fish are given...amnesty? So I should not have been surprised by National Underwear Day.

I'm sad that I missed it this year; it took place back on August 9th. And so I truly hope that next year we can all celebrate together.

Come to think of it, how does one celebrate National Underwear Day? Wearing our underwear outside our clothes, per the insane dictator in Bananas? Hoisting the skivvies up the flagpole?

Let's hear how you'd celebrate the day. It will give me some time to plan.

Next Thing You Know, I'll Be Moving to a Nice Condo in Boca

Some days you just feel old. Like when a coworker says, "Blondie? Wasn't she like the Tiffany of her generation?"

Old. I'm old old old old old.

The Politics of Giftwrap

For a brief time I was a band geek.

Say it isn't so, Mom101! Say it isn't so!

I loved the performing (a chance to be up on stage! In front of people!) but I hated the practicing. If they had allowed me to do freestyle interpretive dance in front of the stage, while the band played the theme from Star Wars, I would have been just as happy as I was sitting there in the fourth flute seat with my ankles crossed.

But still, I was in the band. Which meant that once a year, I was asked to perform the humiliating act of selling jumbo chocolate bars to help pay for our annual band trip, so that we might have the very important educational experience of seeing a Broadway matinee of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat from the twofer seats in the balcony.

The entire charge was led by this creepy marketing guy - I still remember his lanky sillhouette, his pointy goatee and his enormous square glasses - who showed up at band practice once a year to give us a big rah rah speech about how exciting it is to sell chocolate bars! and how the students who sold the most would get...I don't even know what. Something great. Something really really great that I would never have. Because that privilege was reserved for the Irish kids with a built-in network of buyers in their nine older siblings. Or for Michael Ochs who was a musical prodigy and had some sort of kidney problem that swelled his cheeks and made it impossible to say no to him.

Me? I didn't stand a chance. Of course I wanted the prizes, but I just dreaded ringing my neighbors' doorbells. I wasn't cut out to stand on someone's doorstep like a dork and give them a big spiel, then collect their money and organize the money and account for the money and turn in the money. Sales was not my forte.

So instead, I ate all the candy bars myself.

Of course the day of reckoning arrived when we had to turn in all our checks to the creepy goateed guy who I just imagined would announce each of our sales totals aloud for the entire band to hear.

Karen raises...one hundred and twenty dollars! Michael raises...three hundred and ninety-Seven dollars! Liz raises...um, is this right? Liz? Why, you've somehow managed to raise negative thirty-two dollars.

I would have to beg my father for the money to cover my indiscretion, which of course he would give me after an appropriately stern lecture about responsibility and accountability.

The whole traumatic episode flooded back to me when I read Badgermama's amazing post yesterday about how now, school systems are using their children to sell--well, crap--not as a way to subsidize an extra-curricular trip, but to subsidize the school.

To subsidize the school!

Not having school-aged kids yet myself, I had not considered that the sweet neighbor kids who knock on my door each November asking me to buy ugly wrapping paper and a gift box of peanut butter meltaways, are doing so as a form of forced child labor by an economically stressed school district.

One of Badgermama's assertions is that while her school gives no awards for academic achievement (another example of sensitivity gone wild that drives me batty - God forbid our children learn that yes, some children do better in school, or life, than others), they reward children for selling the most crap. As well the school has to.

They need the dough.

Argh.

She makes an excellent point about the socioeconomic inequities of such a scheme:

These fundraising sales schemes give the message that it's okay to lean on people's class privilege -- because being able to sell a buttload of wrapping paper depends on class privilege -- and that it's okay to give prizes for that, and guilt the children into guilting their parents. You'll get a prize if your mom takes you around your neighborhood to sell stuff, or if she takes your sales catalogue to work and gets her co-workers to buy the stuff out of their regard for her and desire to be nice to her.

This kind of fundraising also further supports the class differences in our school district. How much money do you think the school in the hills will raise, vs. the school across the train tracks?

I immediately forwarded the post to my mother for a progressive educational consultant's take on the matter and with minor edits, I've posted her response below:

As you probably could have guessed, I agree with her in principle. Personally, I was a horrible seller. I hated the fact that we were forced to sell stuff, to face rejection, to ask for money. I used to make [my mother] buy all of the seed packets I had to sell as a third grader so I wouldn't have to go door to door. And we didn't even have a garden. Fortunately, I was never a Brownie or a Girl Scout or would have weighed 200 pounds!

(Who knew! What's that about the acorn and the tree?)

Our education system-hell, our whole social system- is predicated on the conservative's belief that if you're not rich you somehow did something or didn't do something right to deserve it. If you only tried harder, sold more, had access to rich friends and neighbors, you could become more like us. Therefore, they wholeheartedly endorse the idea of rich schools getting richer any way they can (when California voted for Prop 13 and thereby ruined the California school system forever, Beverly Hills HS began marketing clothing with their logo as a way to make gobs of money).

The richest side of the mountains in Vermont, where the people are lucky enough to live in tax-rich ski country, care little for their poor neighbors in the eastern part of state who have nothing in their schools. When the Vermont courts mandated that the rich find an equitable way to make sure all schools got the same amount, the rich began litigation that is still pending. The prevailing belief about schools is that somehow poor districts deserve it; they brought it on themselves ("Not all poor people are criminals," our president famously said several months ago)

So....I think that as long as PTAs and 'School Foundations' have found the loophole that allows schools to disregard child labor laws by having kids sell products that support the companies' profit margins, we will never have to face the real problem:We finance our public schools in a disgraceful and patently unfair way.

You tell me where a kid lives, and I'll tell you how well she'll do on any test. And I'll tell you what technology equipment she has, how big her classes are, how many books are in her library. Do I sound angry enough?

I love Badgermama's passion and her commitment to a cause. She'll have to be strong, though, because whenever we live our principles, we're bound to be told that we're boorish, or denying kids or Communist.

Believe me: I should know.

I keep telling my mom she needs her own blog.

All of this scares me because as Thalia gets closer to school-age, I'm going to have to make some serious decisions about where to send her to school.

I'm lucky. I'm a person of relative privilege and while it would require sacrifices, I could probably manage send Thalia to a private institution where she wouldn't be forced to compensate for our government's inattention to its schools. But then, I'm a big proponent of the public school system; I'm a product of it myself. And knowing that a school is often as good as the committment and involvement of the parents, I think it's somewhat wrong for parents like me to cut and run, leaving the rest of the community to its own devices.

But then, I also don't intend to choose idealism over what may be best for my daughter either.

This parenting stuff is hard.

That Missing Million Dollars of Mine I've Been Looking For? I Think I Just Found It.

I've read a few blog posts recently about the commercialization of the blogosphere and various other meta-issues which I usually try to avoid here. The posts I have linked are thoughtful and well-considered. I loves me some socratic discourse about issues like ads on blogs and blogging motivation and blogging for the sake of "popularity" and whether that ranks up there on the scale of human indecency along with beastiality and voting for Rick Santorum.

(Funny how when I think of beastiality my mind automatically goes to Rick Santorum. Now why is that?)

But then there have been some posts (and comments) on this topic from what sound to be crazy, ranting nutbars, who feel that anyone considering advertising on their blogs should be drawn and quartered, then publically stoned while being forced to listen to William Shatner sing-speak Stairway to Heaven for six consecutive days. I don't care to link to them.

Interestingly, there's one consistent phrase that I've seen in both kinds of discussions, either by the author or the commenter. And that's the idea that those who disdain blog ads, do so in part because they make me buy products I don't need.

Making them buy products they don't need! I love it! Especially since I, in my ad agency day job am those people with this magic ability to make you do such a thing! And pssst... so's Girl Con Queso. Don't tell anyone.

Now personally, I would loooove to know which blog ad--the majority of which are poorly designed, and show a complete lack of understanding of the blog audience in both content and style--has that ability. Because if I knew it, I would be rich. Rich beyond my wildest dreams. So rich that I could buy you each ponies, and then ponies for the ponies, because hell, even ponies must dream of having their own ponies. And then we'd ride off together on our ponies (these are very sturdy ponies), with our ponies' ponies in tow, headed right for Canyon Ranch, where the Bali Spice Body Mask and Hot Stone Massages are on me.

I've been writing ads for a lot of years. Some people even consider me pretty good at it. And yet I know of no advertising technique with the the veritable power of waving a hand grenade menacingly in the direction of your bookshelf and insisting that you BUY! BUY IMMEDIATELY OR THE FIRST EDITION HARRY POTTER BOOK GETS IT.

Geez folks, any decent arguments against blog ads (and indeed there are some) get lost with hyperbole about people making you--an adult with, one can only hope, free will and common sense and a certain degree of media savvy--buy things you don't need.

Or maybe I'm wrong.

Is there a product you've been forced (forced!) to buy that you absolutely didn't need? Is there a man out there who just found himself mysteriously drawn to the new lighter, thinner maxipads with dri-weave protection? A 20-something couple with an inexplicably itchy dialing finger after watching the AARP infomercials? An Muslim who just couldn't resist having all of the greatest Christian power anthems on one double CD?

Inquiring (and manipulative) ad minds want to know.

Hooray!

The first steps! The first steps! We got it on video tape and everything.

Which makes me absurdly happy that we broke down and got a new video camera last month. The first one we had wasn't compatible with our macs, meaning there was no way to download any of the film. So essentially, every clip taken of the first year of Thalia's life is no more than 5 seconds long and ends with Nate whining, Liii-iiiiiz, shut it off already!

Now string twenty or so of those segments together and you've got the entire video record of Thalia's first year of life. Sigh.

But now, the girl walks. We have the footage to prove it.

Mamas, lock your medicine cabinets. She's coming for your laxatives.

Just so you know, don't expect me to do it again. I like this hand-holding business way too much.

Friends Without Modifiers

Catherine, better known 'round these parts as Her Bad Mother (a moniker which I would like to contest, by the way) has just returned to Toronto after a lovely visit here, where Nate and I made her as comfortable as one can be, what with sleeping on the couch amidst pounds of bulldog hair and random filth. Nothing like a spray bottle of Urine Gone! on the kitchen counter and a fresh cat poo stain on the carpet to make a stellar first impression. I am not ashamed to admit that I am not a candidate for the Housekeeping Hall of Fame.

Catherine was the perfect partner in crime with whom to attend the Greenstone Media launch Tuesday night. I can't think of anyone else who, in the company of so many boldfaced names, would decide that Dee Snider is who she really wanted a picture with.

Actually overheard as he introduced himself to Susan Ness: Hi, Dee Snider. I was in this band...oh forget it. It was an 80's thing. So anyway...

So let's cut to the chase: Who did we love talking to? Gloria Steinem, of course. Susan Ness. Erin the photographer. Rolanda Watts. Emme. My new favorite funny person, Mo Gaffney, and her also funny cohost Shana Wride. Lisa Birnbach, who offered to autograph my dog-eared copy of The Preppy Handbook. Many cool blogging women.

Who did we not love talking to?

Oh, no you don't. I'd have to be good and liquored up to spill that one.

Hey, the side of Jane Fonda's head!

Okay, I'll give you one. Just one.

When we first arrived at the party, we sort of hovered around the cubes o' cheese table looking rather forlorn, waiting to see who of interest we could stalk. We were approached by another nobody, although a rather self-important nobody, with her dragon nails and big shellacked hair and too taut sixty-something face which trumpeted a litany of plastic surgery triumphs to the world.

She announced that she was here from LONDON and came ALL THE WAY FROM LONDON and who were all these people at this party since she just CAME IN FROM LONDON and didn't know them all.

"So who are you here with?" I asked, avoiding the question she really wanted me to ask.

"Myself," she said casually. "I'm here from LONDON. I just got in. So...what do you two do?"

"We're bloggers," we said, followed by a brief (and necessary) explanation of what that meant.

"So you just basically write about what you did that day?"

"Well sure," I said. "If I want to bore my readers to death."

Behold, the snark! I don't know where it came from, I swear. I usually manage to hold my tongue better, but I think the olifactory insult stemming from her overuse of Eau de Aren't I Fancy was making me cranky.

"I just hate the word blog," she opined through clenched teeth, as she looked over our shoulders for more important people to talk to. "It's such an ugly word, isn't it?"

"So's Botox," Catherine whispered to me afterwards, forever earning her rightful title as Ideal Mommyblogger Date For a Big Time Media Event Where You Might Get Stuck Talking to Weirdos.

Plus, I will always be grateful that Catherine didn't laugh too hard when I looked right at a woman I could have sworn I knew and exclaimed, "Leigh!" Especially considering that woman was Deborah Norville.

Me 'n Mo. I'm the not funny one on the left.

It was fun to have someone with whom to be catty (just a little), to gush, to fawn, to think, to schmooze, to talk about politics, to cheer the inspirational speeches, to guffaw at Mo Gaffney, to eat more than our fair share of mini quiches. And of course, to get a few precious uninterrupted minutes with Ms. Steinem, who was more excited to ask us questions than perhaps even we were of her. That's why she's still relevant, my mother said when I recapped the evening for her. Because she has never stopped asking questions.

Gloria Steinem, as photographed by a stupid blogger who went to a big media event

without having learned how to use the indoor function on her new camera.

Sigh. Good enough.

The event was one of the most memorable of my life, surely, and yet, I found it in some ways overshadowed by the 48 hours spent really getting to know Catherine. Beyond blogging. Beyond the few paragraphs we get onto the page several days a week. Beyond dialogue that's often no more than a quip responding to a posted comment responding to a blog entry. Beyond motherhood.

This morning, I walked her out into the rain toward her waiting cab, and apologized for a bout of gastrointestinal blechiness that kept me from taking on the city with her last night. Instead, we camped out on the couch with Nate and my bulldog (who loves Catherine way more than me); eating real NY pizza and gawping at back-to-back episodes of the train wreck known as My Super Sweet 16.

"I'm so sorry," I said, "for not being able to show you the town on your final night here. I feel so bad."

"Are you kidding?" Catherine answered. "We got to sit around, talk, hang out, watch tv. Which is exactly what friends do."

And I stood there in the rain and beamed because I realized she was no longer my blogging friend. She was my friend.

---

If you're interested in hearing last week's conference call between Gloria and the bloggers, you can download the mp3 here. Disclaimer: Each of us think that we sound like dorks.

If you're interested in pictures of the party, go here. No, they're not mine. Or there'd have been far more pictures of Catherine posing with celebrities.

D.O.B. 9/11

Hello. Today is my birthday.

Which means your knee-jerk response is probably something like, oh, Happy birthday, Liz! But as I've come to learn, a few seconds later, a certain realization will strike and you'll add: Oh wait, today? Oh. Ohhhhhhhh....wow. Wow. Okay. Wow.

I've had five years to get used to it and I'm still not used to it. I don't know if I ever will be.

When you have a 9/11 birthday, especially in New York City, there is no chance of escaping discussion about The Day and what you were doing on The Day and how it feels to have a birthday on The Day.

Those born on the other 364 days a year (with perhaps a few exceptions) take for granted that they can offhandedly spout off their dates of birth with little discussion. You can tell the Bank of America rep confirming your identity, you can tell the Hertz counter agent, you can tell the ultrasound technician--when asked-- that you were born on February 10th or October 19th with little ado. Me? I need an aside.

September 11th. Crazy, right?

September 11th. Yeah, I know.

September 11th. Bet you'll never forget THAT one, huh.

September 11th...oh, you don't say? Your boss' sister-in-law too? What are the chances?

Of course losing "my day" is wholly insignificant in comparison with what other people lost on that day. To complain about it seems selfish. Trivial. Stupid. But I can't help but reflect on my own feelings about it.

I always looked forward to my birthdays, even as an adult when it no longer meant pancakes for dinner or trips to Rye Playland. I never dreaded aging, never mourned passage of another year. And so, I celebrated September 11 with gusto--days off from work; personal spa days; six long restaurant tables pushed together to accommodate too many drunken friends. And a cake. Always a cake. With no fruit in it, just the way I like it.

I groused that I was in possession of an American Airlines ticket, JFK to LAX, on my birthday five years ago. I didn't want to fly across the coast for a meeting, despite the promise of celebratory cocktails with coworkers on the other side. Didn't my clients know it was MY day? Shouldn't I be excused from work on MY day?

The answer was a resounding no.

And so, I packed my bag that morning, received a few birthday phone calls from family, and dashed out for a last minute bagel to eat on the plane, all while gazing up at that glorious, perfect, cloudless blue sky.

Then the world fell apart.

The small terrace off my tenth floor Greenwich Village apartment until that day had been my happy place. It opened from my bedroom with two exquisite if unfortunately painted French doors, and if at my urging you dared to lean far enough over the Christopher Street side railing, I would joke, "look! River view!" The perimeter was uneven and jagged, with odd patches of matted astroturf poking out from the blacktop, and a drain hole that clogged with potting soil and the discarded Camels of an inconsiderate neighbor with the next terrace up. Once, I gathered a dozen of those cigarette butts in a baggie, and marched them up to his apartment. I sprinkled that pile of disgusting, moldy, yellowed butts across his welcome mat alongside a handwritten note: I think you left these at my place.

Laughably narrow, my terrace could host myself and one friend comfortably, two if we all turned sideways in our chairs, perhaps four if we gave up our chairs altogether and leaned along the rusted, rickety railing. It was on that balcony I planted indigo Lobelia in early Spring, watching it crisp from sun and inattention by July. It was there I sunbathed alone with the Times crossword on Sunday mornings, enjoying the rare weekend off from work. It was there I toasted sunsets with friends, made out with The Wrong Men, read and wrote and dreamed and fabricated stories about the people living behind the brownstone windows below.

Then in 2001 the terrace became the place where I watched black smoke billow from the jagged gashes in those towers I had loved. Where I fielded phone calls from friends and family who must have hit redial a hundred times each to get a line through to New York. Where I stupidly set up a telescope to watch "the rescue mission," only to instead find shadowy figures waving frantically from behind windows they'd never see the other side of. And where, finally, I saw those towers crumble to the ground. Just crumble. With no advance warning from a newscaster, no heads up, no hey Liz, you might want to sort of close your eyes because here comes the scary part.

My only reaction was to scream, same as everyone, then to repeat unbelievingly into the phone to my friend Caroline, Oh my God it's gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's not there. It's gone. It's just gone. It's just gone. It's not there. It's gone.

Shut the doors, she told me. Get off the terrace and shut the doors and put a rolled up wet towel under the doors, NOW. You don't know what's in that smoke.

And that's when I lost it.

There's more I could write about, about the days that ensued--the warzone my neighborhood became, the random people sobbing in the street, the haze of acrid holocaust smoke that hovered in the air for months, the bomb threats, the subway evacuations, the way we all slept with our sneakers on and a bag packed next to the bed on so we could escape at a moment's notice. But it's depressing me. And I'm supposed to be happy. Remember, my birthday? Happy birthday to me. Yippee.

My father offered to make his way down from midtown to my apartment on foot to celebrate my birthday that night. Of course I refused; his offer alone was gift enough.

2002 was too soon to do anything too celebratory. It seemed disrespectful. Like dancing on someone's grave.

But in 2003 I tried to follow the advice of friends: It's time. Don't watch the news. Don't look at the paper. Just try to enjoy the day and enjoy your birthday again.

And so I tried.

I had invited a dozen friends to dinner at a local restaurant. They all seemed genuinely happy to be there, away from the television, away from the makeshift memorials on the sidewalks outside. But while my guests downed bottles of Pinot Noir, I was getting familiar with the grooves of the bathroom floor tiles that punched into my knees, as I hunched, sweaty and shaking, over a toilet and dry heaved all the food I never ate that day. When finally I made my way back into the dining room, I managed a weak grin in the direction of the table of gay men next to us who cheered, you go girl! You take back that birthday! Whoo! But deep down, I just couldn't. I regretted the plans, my optimism, my desire to host and smile and entertain and open gifts and pretend like everything was just hunky-dory. It felt wrong.

And that's when I stopped celebrating. At least in any way that bore resemblance to years past.

I make work appointments now. I schedule phone calls. I try not to think in advance about the fact that it's my birthday. The anxiety provoked by the possibility of having anxiety about it stops me. A small dinner with family is as much as I can handle--no one to have to apologize profusely to on the chance that the shakiness comes back and I cancel en route to the restaurant.

But each year I get just a little stronger. Just a little more able to face the day. And each year--gratuitious ratings-grabbing tv "news" tributes not withstanding--things get more normal too.

The dozens of cards and calls and emails I received a few years back have whittled back down to a number closer to the pre-2001 days. The people who would "never forget that birthday again" have, indeed, forgotten. And I find absolute joy in that. It seems to me that as people resume their lives, they no longer need to send me birthday wishes as a way to inject a small bit of happiness into their days. The happiness is there on its own. In fact, one of the things I most look forward to is a friend who to this day wishes me happy birthday on the 12th. She has done so ever since she met me, and she still does so now. And the best part is, it's absolutely unintentional. She just can't remember 9/11.

God, I love that.

So tonight, it's the low key dinner with Nate and my dad at the best little old school Italian restaurant in midtown. It's the kind frequented by less by hipsters and more by bluehaired Ladies Who Lunch, the ones who still remember the days that they used to see Jackie O there sipping Perrier after a morning plundering Bloomingdale's. It's also the home of the best fettucini alfredo this side of the Colliseum and lord, if you can't eat that stuff on your birthday, when can you?

With every 6,000 calorie forkful not even counting the grated parmagiano-reggiano on top (Keep going. Keep going. Keep going...yeah, thaaaaaat's it...) I will be happy. Surrounded by a few people who love me and expect nothing of me except to act surprised when the cake comes out with a candle on top, I will be happy.

Knowing there's no fruit in that cake, I will be happy.

Hey, I'm Published!

I wrote an essay for the Huffington Post about fearlessness (if there is such a thing) as part of their promotional tour for Ariana Huffington's book, On Becoming Fearless. And whaddya know...they published it.

Here it is! With a fancy picture and bio and everything!

And, as long as we're on the subject, here are some more exclamation points!!!

And a few more!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!

Gee-El-Oh-Are-Eye-Ayyyyyyyyy

There are few events for which I'd interrupt this week's self-imposed blogging hiatus. One of them is scooping the mainstream media with a juicy tidbit on the strange spontaneous combustion incident of the entire Republican congress.

The other is an interview with Gloria Steinem.

As in me. Interviewing her. Yesterday.

I have to write about it this very minute because I've been bursting at the seams for the last 36 hours, dying to stop every single woman I've passed on the street, grab her, shake her and scream YOU CANNOT GUESS WHO I JUST TALKED TO! But they already think I'm a little strange up here, what with the black clothing and all. So that brings me back here to Mom-101.

When, back in mid-July I made an off-handed reference to her in a blog post title, it never crossed my mind that it would somehow lead to her "people" right to me. And yet it did. Greenstone Media (which I wrote about last week) was gracious to include me in a group of ten prolific women bloggers yesterday to hear firsthand what Ms. Steinem has to say about her new radio network for women. Then we were each allowed to ask her a question. About anything.

Pinching myself. Pinching myself.

Here's the thing: In fifth grade, when we each were assigned to report on a different Time Man of the Year, I chose 1975's "American Women," culminating in my thesis that, um, maybe they shouldn't call it Man of the Year anymore? By the end of that year, I was devouring my mother's Ms. magazines, falling asleep with them open on my chest, the way other fifth graders did with Teen Beat.

Yes, Gloria Steinem was my Sean Cassidy.

For those of you not-so-political moms who might be a little scared of what you think Gloria might stand for or all that scary militant F-word business, here's an anecdote you might appreciate: My mom attended a talk of hers back in the early 90s. Right in the middle of the speech, a baby started crying in the back of the large hall. The mother of the baby stood up, surely a bit embarrassed, and started to hustle her infant quietly out of the room.

Right then Gloria stopped her speech midsentence, looked at the mother and insisted, "don't you go anywhere. That is the most beautiful sound in the world."

Walking the walk. Walking the walk.

How do I ask one of womankind's greatest assets a single question? A hundred questions, no problem. But just one?

So what I asked (in my trademark rambly, get-to-the-point-already and stop gushing kind of way) was how she perseveres. How--after this administration has created such a hostile environment towards women and the issues we care about, seemingly reversing years of the progress she has made--she keeps on keeping on day after day. Or rather, how I can keep on keeping on.

I asked this because I used to be far more political than I am today. This blog is not nearly the liberal soapbox it might have been in 2004, when I thought there was a chance of reclaiming the country away from the dark forces. Back then I read TPM and Daily Kos with more frequency than I read personal blogs today. If such a thing is possible. I hosted political fundraisers. I shook hands with candidates. I wrote many checks. The world seemed primed for positive change.

Nate and I were thrilled at the notion of bringing a child into the world during more prosperous, peaceful times and so we conceived Thalia in October of '04. We were not alone. In fact, so many like-minded friends conceived children at the same time that we thought of it as a liberal baby boom. We still refer to these kids as The Pre-Election Optimism Babies.

Thalia was our little optimism baby. Our beacon of hope.

And then we lost. The country lost. The world lost. And I became despondent.

I threw all of my passion into the pregnancy, into Thalia, into researching crib mattresses and fragrance-free detergents. My default tv channel switched from CNN to the Food Network. I started skimming most of my moveon.org emails, and deleting others entirely. I stopped signing every petition that entered my in-box, stopped calling my Senators, stopped emailing my Congressional representatives.

But lately I've started to feel that putting my finger in my ears and singing LALALALA is not really something I'm comfortable with over the long-term. I've always been a marcher, a protester, a boycotter, a person of action. And so I was hoping that Gloria Steinem, The Gloria Steinem could personally tell me how to dust myself off and keep going. For my head. For my daughter.

Her words (and here I paraphrase) were that we should look at the facts, look at the public opinion polls and then we will know know that we are not alone, not fighting against all odds. That the vast majority of the country supports us on the issues we care about. And that the political defeats are not because our country as a whole is sliding in the wrong direction, but because of a failure to get out the votes needed to avoid the painfully narrow margins. To go further, she claims to be not disheartened by the last election, but inspired by it; because it is the first time in recent memory that people were not just voting--they were fighting to vote.

Then she summed up by saying that to keep our spirits up, we should simply look at where our spirts are. Not where they aren't.

In other words: This woman who has been called every name in the book, who has been spit at and threatened and attacked and seen certainly a darker side of humanity than any of us ever will,

she is an optimist.

An optimist.

And the truth is, so am I. I'm so grateful to have been reminded of it yesterday.

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If you'd like to read other accounts of the phone call, check in with the other impressive bloggers who asked many of the questions I wish I could have: Her Bad Mother, Motherhood Uncensored, Mommy Needs Coffee, Leah Peah, Escape from Cubicle Nation, Ingrid from Three NY Women, Almost Literary, Que Sera Sera, and Brazen Careerist. I'm honored to have been included among them yesterday.

Also check out Greenstone Media if you haven't yet. I'm attending the network's launch party on Tuesday (still pinching myself!) and I can't wait to find out more about it.

------

Ok, one more thing (the reward for sticking around to the end here) - I have just received word that I can ask Gloria Steinem one more question by email. And she will answer. And so I am handing the microphone over to you, the most thoughtful, smart, wonderful commenters in the entire blogosphere, who deserve the opportunity every bit as much as I do. And so...here you have it.

What would you ask of her? Anything. Any topic. Post it in the comments and I'll send one off to her, with the answer forthcoming.

Now back to my regularly scheduled vacation.

So Long, Farewell, BlahBlahSomethinginGerman Adieu...

I'm off.

To many restful days in a cabin in Maine, where I'll be blissfully free from the pressures of work, miles from the 120-degree Chambers Street subway platform, but not so far from civilization that I can't get a good decaf latte and the Sunday Times.

I will not be blogging this week. Or, rather, I will do my best not to blog. Or read blogs. Or comment on blogs. Which I think is something like Tara Reid saying I will do my best not to get drunk and be photographed by the paparazzzi with my skirt hiked up into my underwear and mascara running down my face--but I can try.

In the meanwhile, I have a proposal. Those of you who would come here daily anyway? Come here still and I will try make it worth your while.

Each day, you can scroll down and find a different site to visit in lieu of mine. I promise not to disappoint. However I don't want to tell you much about each one. The best advice I ever heard about fixing someone up on a blind date - don't describe. Don't overpromise. Don't promise at all. Just let them discover. So that's what I'll do here.

These are posts that made me laugh, or made me think, or made me think I should be reading this blogger more. And hopefully they're people you're not all that familiar with yet.

Today I'd be thrilled if you started with my vote for August's Perfect Post Awards, Bub and Pie's Am I Bored. In fact, so many of her posts are perfect that it was hard to narrow it down to this one. But it was the one that spoke to me on a personal level, honestly answering the question whether motherhood is boring. And as always, you can find the other Perfect Post winners at Petroville and at Suburban Turmoil.



Then, moving on...

Saturday: Problem Child Bride - Midnight in the Kitchen of Good and Evil.
(And because weekends are slow, then go and read her post How I Came to the USA Part 1)

Sunday: Jonathon's Closet - Bits and Pieces of a Journey (warning: heartbreaking)

Monday: Cocktails with Kevin - Dove Foundation Seeks to Eradicate Quality Soft-Core Porn

Tuesday: Virtual Sprite - Balancing Act

Wednesday: Mom/Ma'am/Me - Even More Fun With Word Validation

Thursday: GingaJoy - And Then I Realized...It Was My Own Daughter

Friday: Pupptoes - Dalai Bobo's Thought of the Week

Saturday: Binkytown - Free to Fly

Have a great week blogosphere. I'll eat a lobstah for ya.