Dream a Little Dream: Paris and Other Places

Two weeks ago tonight, Jason and I were fresh off a long flight home and mere hours into our abrupt return to normal after two weeks jaunting around Europe together. Both going there and coming home were their own little culture shocks, of course, and these past two weeks at home have been nothing - NOTHING - like the two weeks that preceded them.

Obviously.

They've been so much the opposite of a European vacation that I haven't been able to find the time to write about the European vacation. But I also, crazily, haven't wanted to put our trip into words because, in some sort of magical thinking, I felt as though, if I wrote about it, it'd really be over. (Note to self: it is over.) And I think I was avoiding writing about it for another reason, too: namely, who leaves their kids and takes a two-week trip to Europe for no real reason in their mid-thirties? Isn't that what you do when you're retired empty-nesters who join a bus tour of the Netherlands?

So I'm disoriented and nostalgic and a little sheepish, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But even though I kept a little journal while we were gone (where we ate, what we saw, what we did, etc.), I want to collect a few memories here, too.

Here's the thing: back in January of 2011, I published a fun Life List on this blog, as a culmination of some of the ideas and goals I'd been toying with as I thought about which direction I wanted my life to take. Maybe this is a normal thing to do in your mid-thirties, maybe not, but somewhere along the line, I had the realization that there was not going to be an infinite amount of time. There might be a lot of years, sure, but there might not, and I became far more aware of how I used my time and far more intentional about going to those places and doing those things that had always been hazy "someday" dreams. (I've since accomplished a bunch of things on that list, some of which I crossed off and some of which I still need to cross off, and I actually hadn't looked at it in quite a while and may want to change it. For example, the six-minute mile is possibly no longer in reach. Which is fine. It's MY list. I can change it.)

One of those dreams( though it's not exactly on the list) was to return to Vienna, Austria with Jason. We'd both gone during a college summer program, though not the same summer, and on one long road trip to Baltimore when I was pregnant with Annie, we talked about how, someday, we'd establish a scholarship fund for the Vienna Summer School program and we'd go back together. A couple years ago, we started the fund, and last summer we started planning this trip. We hoped to go back while the same dear professor was still running the program, and we weren't sure how much longer he'd be doing it. We met him for dinner. We started reading travel blogs. We checked out books from the library. We talked to grandparents about child care. We hoarded credit card points for flights. Jason spent an inordinate amount of time on Google Earth. And I started dreaming about Paris, not because I'd taken French, or had friends tell me I had to go, or seen a specific movie, but just because I have always sort of felt like I'd be sad if I didn't go to Paris with Jason at some point in my life. Seize the day, and all that.

Well, we seized it. My Life List should be proud. There was spontaneous stopping to smell the roses in a beautiful garden in Vienna. There was a run through Luxembourg Gardens in the rain in Paris. There was a picnic in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. There was a hike through cows wearing cowbells and fields of wildflowers up to snow-capped mountain peaks (we snuck in a few days in Switzerland between the two cities). There were absurd meals followed by more absurd meals. There was ice cream and croissants and curried prawns and homemade pasta and fondue and gelato and veal and foie gras and croquettes and wine and lobster and cafe creme and cheese and olives and chocolate mousse and duck and champagne and pate and olive oil and truffle salt and caramels. (What I am saying is that we did not lose weight on this trip, despite the hiking and biking and walking miles every day through the cobblestone streets.)

We had so many wonderful moments, so many unforgettable experiences. We rode bikes along the Danube in the 90-degree heat and sunshine, then finally collapsed at a little Italian cafe and drank all the beverages. We hiked up and down gorgeous mountain paths, then drank Swiss beer on a balcony overlooking a waterfall. We celebrated our fourteenth anniversary with a meal just steps from our hotel, looking out at the garden where the salad lettuce had just been picked and watching the moon rise above the mountains. We spent a night with our old professor and this year's group of Vienna Summer School students, sat in on a fascinating lecture, and toasted the group with schnapps on a picnic table in the Austrian Alps. We got on a train in Vienna, went to sleep, and woke up the next morning in Switzerland. We had dinner at the same outdoor biergarten where Jason loved to go almost twenty years ago. We took the Metro to Montmarte and tried French microbrews at a tiny bar with a bartender named Francois. We saw the Mona Lisa, the Thinker, and so many Van Goghs and Monets and Renoirs and Cezannes that we could hardly keep track. We ate three meals at restaurants where you sat down and ate whatever they brought you (ahem, razor clams, pork rilette . . .), and one meal of incredible Spanish tapas at a standing-room-only zinc bar where the chef stood just a few feet away. We watched the sun set along the Seine.

We had two weeks to get up every morning, get out the map, and wander around a gorgeous city together - eating, drinking, talking, getting a little lost, being in awe of the architecture or the natural beauty, depending. We had two weeks to miss the girls fiercely and talk about how soon we could bring them back with us. We had two weeks to be outsiders, with Jason's poor French and our train schedules and indecipherable menus and streets that change names every few blocks.

We took over a thousand pictures. We took a nap almost every day. We took trains and wore backpacks. We took home striped shirts and baby gifts, chocolates and scarves. We took one last look at Paris as our plane rose high in the sky, and I knew that the planning, saving, worrying, and spending had been worth it. It was a literally a dream come true.

It's like a distant memory now, of course. After two weeks crammed into tiny train compartments and petite hotel rooms, our house felt huge. The girls welcomed us home with cake, hugs, and much smelling of faces and stroking of arms. We piled into our bed together, opened gifts, and read books in a pre-bedtime tangle of arms and legs that night two weeks ago, and it's been non-stop togetherness ever since. The quiet conversations at cafes and the leisurely 9:00 p.m. dinners are a thing of the past, and now it's piano practice and "Mom, look!" and settling arguments and chasing fireflies and bathing suits. Which is good, too, in its own way, but also louder. Less charming. More "real."

Tucked away, though, I'll always have this trip. This absurd, impractical, romantic, magical, dreamy trip. And I'm so very glad.

The Glamour Continues

After I wrote yesterday, I made exciting journeys to Bed Bath & Beyond (a new kitchen trash can! Also: a shower curtain liner and curtain rods!! The excitement was palpable) and Target (birthday supplies for Annie, a new rug for outside our back door). Then I came home and cleaned the office while I waited for the plumber to come roto-root our sewer main, a fun yearly situation that causes us to not be able to use the water for a day or so until the tree roots get ripped out of the pipe and get rid of the clog.

When I went to get the girls from school, it was hot, and they were hot, and the walk home was long and hot and tedious, owing to Annie's broken flip-flop and Jemma's backpack being too heavy. Have I mentioned I was unshowered from my humid morning run (sewer/water situation) and very . . . hot? Annie had some sketchy moments, personality-wise, when we first got home, but she was much happier after some time alone with a book. She reports that her first day was "good," that she "played chase with the boys" at recess (oh, my), that she got to use the laptop computers, and that she starts switching classes for social studies and science to the other third-grade teachers on Thursday, something that makes her feel "like a middle-schooler."

Jemma came out of school wearing a newly-made First Day of School hat, reported the day was "awesome," and collapsed into bed before 7:30 last night. She was significantly less enthusiastic about getting out of bed and ready for school this morning; yesterday was fun and all, she said at breakfast, but "too long," and she'd prefer to stay home today. Nevertheless, off she went in her sweet blue dress and with pigtails in her hair.

My glamourous lifestyle continues. Today featured another super-sweaty, super-humid run; going to the farmers' market and the grocery store; unloading the dishwasher; more laundry; cleaning out the refrigerator; scrubbing tile grout with a toothbrush; scheduling carpools and filling out paperwork for extracurriculars; and purchasing more birthday gifts for a certain couple of family members.

I was talking with a friend yesterday, and we decided that this new schedule mostly means we'll just keep doing all the same things we were doing before, only without a person attached to/following us. And that's basically true. So far, no soap-opera-watching, bon-bon-eating, afternoon napping. I can't complain, though. I shower alone, work out without feeling guilty, and sometimes even sit down to eat my lunch or drink a LaCroix while listening to Pandora and unloading the dishwasher. I miss those little girls of mine, but they're off, doing what little girls should be doing: playing, learning, exploring the wide world. I'm here, enjoying the quiet but also waiting for them to get home.

Unbroken

The girls are at school.

I woke up this morning at 5:20 a.m. thanks to a loud clap of thunder, so I got up, made the coffee, and sat drinking it in the dark. I thought about how, eight years ago, I was exactly one week away from giving birth to Annie. It's the day that feels like the beginning of my experience as a mother, and this day feels like an end. Not THE end, just AN end - to being at home with my girls, to being needed that way, to knowing that my primary job is raising them, feeding them, playing with them, keeping them safe. I could have cried a little this morning, sitting there in the dark, but I didn't, because I knew that if I started it'd be hard to stop, and because I didn't want to let them see me sad on their big first days.

I got them up, fed them breakfast, helped them pack their lunches into their backpacks and put headbands in their hair, took their pictures on the front step, and walked them to school in the rain. Annie was uncertain, a little excited and a little nervous. Jemma was ready, confident, happy. I hugged and kissed Annie when she turned to walk to her 3rd grade line, took Jemma to her door for a final kiss and hug, and then I walked home by myself, swinging my umbrella because the rain had stopped.

Now I am here. It's what I've thought I wanted for years. Time to myself, a little peace and quiet (or "a piece of quiet," as I used to call it when I was small), space to write and think and organize. And I DO want it. It's just a little scary. A little abrupt. Two weeks ago, our family was on a ten-day vacation, every day packed with sunshine and swimming and hiking and constant togetherness. Today, it's silent but for the hum of the dryer and the clicking of my keyboard.

What will I do? Oh, I have a list. There are projects I've been putting off all summer (organizing Jemma's old bedroom into a bona fide office, cleaning out closets, getting back to a regular yoga practice) and projects I've been putting off for eight years (acquiring and filling a fireproof safe, painting the walls in the stairway that have been scuffed since the day we moved in, writing something cohesive and meaningful).

What will I do? Maybe I'll rejoin Netflix just so I can watch the entirety of Friday Night Lights. Maybe I'll read a book a day, run every morning, take a post-lunch nap every afternoon. Maybe I'll get a job. (I almost got one last winter, though I didn't write about it here.) I hope I figure out how to fill every day with a mix of meaningful activities, figure out how to keep doing things that matter, figure out how to stretch myself and try new, hard things.

*****

I read the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand earlier this year and, later, was discussing it with a family member who had also read it.

"What did you think?" I asked.

"I thought it really showed how much evil there is in the world, how evil people can be to one another," he said. "What did you think?"

"I thought it was about how incredibly resilient the human spirit can be in spite of unthinkable difficulty," I said.

Hmm.

I still like my answer, but I want to change it. Unbroken was about potential. It was about how every person possesses the potential to act for good or for evil. Both the hero in that story and the villain had one life on this earth, and their stories were a sum of their choices.

I think that's what this time in my life is about, too. Potential. Wide open. One choice at a time.

The One About Justin Bieber

Where to begin?

Exactly a week ago this very minute, I was standing in the middle of Times Square with Sarah and Meg. We took photos and did the 360-degree turn in place, our necks craned up to see the lit signs in every direction. We had arrived that day, checked into our lovely hotel on the Upper West Side, eaten dinner and split a bottle of wine at Bin 71, and taken a cab to the West Village for dessert and (more) drinks at Sweet Revenge. We laughed almost every minute of the time we were together, from the moment that we saw our driver (we had a driver!) holding the sign with Sarah's name on it to the moment when Sarah drew the curtains in the hotel room, looked out at the view of the city, and said, "All because I made fun of Target."

We left Times Square eventually, stopping to pet several adorable dogs and - oops! - have one last, pricey glass of wine on a sidewalk cafe. We walked back to the hotel happily, navigating down side streets and being about 1/100th as intimidated by the city as I thought I would be. People were, to a person, nice. The waitress, for example, who took the time to quiz us when we asked for dessert recommendations: "You want chocolate?" Affirmative. "F&$@ yeah, you want chocolate!" she said, and proceeded to rattle off three or four places where we could get it. The stranger on the street who, when Meg asked him, "Is this Carrie Bradshaw's street?" smiled and said, "Sure. Yes," and did not roll his eyes at the tourists from Michigan. Justin Bieber's grandpa, who hung out with us for half an hour in the hallway and talked about garage sales in Canada before Sarah did a live, 90-second stand-up comedy routine on The View.

There were so many absurd things about the scenario that I can't even list them all. But, here:

• Getting ready in the morning and finally having the phone ring: "Ms. Cavanaugh? This is ABC. There is a white Escalade waiting out front to take you to the studio."
• The super-nice, super-kind makeup artist who "did" Sarah before her show casually revealing that he was also a drag queen.
• The video Meg made of Sarah demonstrating how close (5 feet) Justin Bieber's dressing room was from "equally as popular" Sarah Cavanaugh's dressing room.
• Running into Whoopi Goldberg in the bathroom, watching Barbara Walters walk down the hall from makeup to her dressing room with a towel over her head, talking Target dollar bins with Elizabeth Hasselbeck, photo ops with Joy Behar in the green room, and chatting Michigan winter weather with Mario Cantone in the elevator.
• Justin Bieber himself waltzing into our dressing room and singing, Broadway-style: "Does anybody have a full-length miiiiiiirooooor?" (We said, "No, Justin we do not. But would you like to sign memorabilia with your own face on it for our children?" He did not.)
• Hearing Sarah peek out of our dressing room to say, "Hey! I know you! You're Justin's swagger coach!" (She may or may not have watched Never Say Never a few too many times with her kids . . .)
• Sitting in the front row of the studio with just the producers and the sound guys as Justin Bieber and his dancers rehearsed not 20 feet in front of us.
• Sitting on a couch in the green room and watching as my friend walked right out on stage and rocked her routine to rave reviews without even seeming nervous.

Absurd, I say again. Also exiting, fun, surreal, hilarious, exhausting, and once-in-a-lifetime, I'm sure. I got the tiniest taste of NYC - enough to immediately want to go back with Jason for a long weekend to eat and drink our way through the neighborhoods, picnic in Central Park, and catch a Broadway show. But for this one time, it was enough - more than enough - to go along for the ride as my brave, funny friend chased her dream and gave the stand-up performance of a lifetime. Turns out she didn't win the contest (though the producer tells her it was oh-so-close), but I remain in awe of a person who can have that much fun in the face of that much pressure. I mean, she practically shared a stage with Justin Bieber! I think that makes her a winner, period. I think big things are still ahead, too.

Halfway . . .

 . . . to having the rock-hard arms of Madonna and the zen mind of Ghandi.

Wait. Was that not the promise?

Regardless, I have reached the halfway point in the 30-day yoga challenge, and I remain committed. I actually had to miss class yesterday (thanks, pinkeye!) and go to two classes today to make up for that. It did not kill me, so I assume it made me stronger?

Speaking of cliches (as though a 30-something upper-middle-class housewife rambling on about yoga wasn't enough), I have decided that the prize I will be giving myself when I finish this month o'yoga is an item of Lululemon clothing, which I have so far avoided buying because I'm afraid that what they say is true: this particular brand of $95 yoga pants really is the Best! Thing! Ever!

The Gamble(r)

Tonight as we were all riding bikes back from Wilcox Park (where we'd done enough swinging and merry-go-rounding for one night), Jason yelled back to me, "Hey! Guess what today is the anniversary of?" It took me a minute, I admit, as I was watching Annie's scrawny legs pump herself up a hill, but then I knew: fourteen years ago right around that time, Jason was asking me to marry him. (Awwww.)

Now that I'm in my mid-thirties, life seems to be presenting a few new situations: having zits and wrinkles at the same time, hand-wringing over work/family balance (or returning to said career after a hiatus), watching our metabolism crap out on us and leave us with five constantly-extra pounds, and watching acquaintances and neighbors go through divorce. I've had two (freshly divorced) people lament to me recently that they should never have gotten married so young. I nodded and smiled and did not for a second consider confessing that I got engaged when I was NINETEEN.

Who knows, really, why we're going on almost thirteen happy years together and those people aren't. All I know is that we probably had no business getting married so young, and yet this morning I stood in my kitchen and bawled while I watched Fun. sing "The Gambler" on YouTube, and yet tonight we biked around town with our little family and thought for one moment about a lucky night fourteen years ago.

Three Simple Questions

I've nerded out before about my 2012 Happiness Project calendar, I know. But I particularly liked yesterday's page. With no editorializing, the page simply asked, bullet-pointed:

• List five things you do for fun. In the last six months, how much time have you spent doing those activities?
• Is there a quotation, a book, or a scene from a movie that makes you particularly happy?
• What three subjects fascinate you?

I love these questions. LOVE them. They're such good prompts to get me thinking about concrete ways to sneak more joy, more wonder, more fun into my everyday life. So here are my answers, and I'd love to see yours.

• Write, read, walk or run outside, cook and eat with my family, laugh with friends. I think it is safe to say that I do at least one of these every day, and I now realize that "a good day" is usually achieved when I have done all five.
• Oh, I am a sucker for quotations! One of my favorites is from Brian Andreas: "Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life." The book Dandelion Wine never fails to make me happy; neither do the movies "When Harry Met Sally" or "Love Actually," particularly the scene where Hugh Grant dances down the staircase.
• I have long been fascinated by the 1960's (I used to get actually angry with my mom, who graduated high school in '68 and was in college at the height of the war protest/free love movement, for not at all participating in the era) as well as anything to do with World War II, and I'm currently interested in the intersection of parenting and religion.

“Instructions for living a life. 
Pay attention. 
Be astonished. 
Tell about it.” 

-Mary Oliver

Giving Up The Internettes

For Lent this year, I am giving up The Internet.

I realize it's ironic that I am writing about giving up The Internet on the internet. (It's also ironic that I'm giving anything up for Lent, annoyed as I am with the Catholic Church right now, but that is a story for another day.) Here are the ground rules, set by myself, for myself:

1. I can log into this blog every day and write here. I have, however, deleted my blogroll, just so I won't be tempted to clickety-click around and see what other people have written. I realize I'm going to miss some great writing in the next six weeks. Such is life. (If you write something on your blog that you really, really want me to read, email me a link to that specific post, and I'll read that.)

2. I'll still check email every day. If I didn't, I'd miss things like quotes from our contractor, piano lesson reminders, messages from friends trying to make plans, and every single piece of news from Annie's school ever.

3. I'll use The Internet in a very limited fashion for things I can't do another way, like make a reservation for myself at a yoga class, find directions on my iPhone, check the bank balance, or check the weather forecast for a specific purpose. I'll also still probably keep track of the books I'm reading on Goodreads.

4. Things I won't do: Facebook, Pinterest, read news online, read blogs, waste an hour perusing real estate listings in my dream vacation spots, get sucked into the wormhole that happens when I open the laptop in bed at 8:00 p.m. and look up to realize it's 10:30 with nothing to show for it.

I've been feeling pretty blue lately, and I think part of the problem is that I don't feel like I'm working creatively towards something every day. I hope this might be a way to get me to waste less time doing things that don't really contribute to my happiness while also forcing me to write here more frequently. I'm thinking that, when Lent is over, I'll see which things I actually miss and want to consciously put back into my life and which things haven't been enriching my days after all. I'm thinking that this is going to be hard, but isn't anything worth doing usually hard?

"Deny yourself something. An important factor in happiness is adaptability. Because we adapt quickly to any improvement, we soon take it for granted, and a luxury ceases to be a luxury when we experience it often. One unenjoyable cure for this "hedonic treadmill" is deprivation. Deny yourself something for a while - your usual mid afternoon cookie, watching TV - and you'll enjoy it much more when you experience it again." - Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project calendar quote from Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Three Portraits in February

1. Saturday night wedding.

Happy because we got to sneak a visit to Bell's between the ceremony and the reception, because (for once) Lisa and I out-danced and out-lasted the boys at a family event, because the DJ played Footloose and Nate danced to it a la Kevin Bacon, because pizza was delivered to the reception and nothing is better than pizza after a long night of drinking and dancing, because Jason and Colin did a ridiculous Kid N Play breakdance routine, because my hair looked pretty cute if I do say so myself.


2. Monday morning.

It was the usual Monday morning chaos, Jason already gone when the rest of us woke up, me packing lunches and walking Annie to school and doing Jemma's pre-school drop-off. I caught a glimpse of myself as I went into the grocery store: no make-up, messy ponytail covered with an old hat, holes in my running capris from that time I fell, a too-big fleece I bought in Canada in 2001. This is a new low, I thought, then came home to take a picture.


3. Friday night.

Jason's in Chicago and it's just me and the girls. I spent the morning running errands with Jemma (her voice in the backseat: "Mommy, can you find this song on the radio? (Sings) 'I don't want to lose your love, toooo-niiiiiight'.") I pulled Jemma and her friend O. to school pick-up in the sled and watched the girls be gleeful at the new piles of snow. We came home and read books in my bed, then took early baths, ordered take-out for dinner, and watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - the old version, thankyouverymuch - while I put the girls' damp hair in sponge rollers. Then I tucked them in, and it was just me, a pint of cherry stout, and a fresh book in my bed while the snow kept falling outside.

Confessions, Unrelated

Sometimes when I'm at yoga and the instructor seems to be paying the tiniest bit more attention to me than average - standing in front of me a few times, adjusting me just a little bit, maybe smiling at me - I play out an elaborate fantasy in my mind whereby the instructor, after class, stops me as I'm rolling up my mat and says something like, "How long have you been practicing? You are really above average at this. Have you ever considered teaching?" This, in spite of the fact that I am, truly, approximately exactly average at this series of poses, and also in spite of the fact that yoga attempts to cultivate a mindset of non-comparison, non-competitiveness, and non-judgement. I know this, and yet the fantasy? It continues.

*****

One of the things I am (sadly) most looking forward to about our potential house renovation is that we hope to create a new back entry/mudroom with main floor laundry. (This is what you get excited about in your mid-thirties?) This is the third house Jason and I have lived in where the laundry situation has been less-than-ideal (read: oldest models of appliances known to man plunked down in the middle of a creepy, unfinished cement basement), and I envision the laundry positively doing itself with me just popping into my Pinterest-inspired space to press a button or two here and there. If nothing else, it will at least change the fact that the girls somehow KNOW when I am downstairs changing the laundry, and they always need to talk to me or ask me something while I'm down there. Always, as in every single time. So not only am I probably getting wet socks from having to walk on the melted snow on the back steps and hanging out with the cobwebs in the freezing basement, but I am also having to carry on an increasingly difficult conversation with my children, who are definitely sticking their whole heads into the laundry chute and yelling down at me. At least in the future, we'll all be on the same floor, though probably still yelling.

*****

Annie's recent assessment of her favorite show, Wild Kratts, went as follows: "Mom, Wild Kratts is a great show for two reasons. One, it teaches kids some really cool things about animals that they didn't know before. And two, it keeps kids from pestering their mom when she's trying to cook diner and do other things." (She actually used the word "pestering.") I heartily agreed with her, and then I felt guilty.

*****

Connie and I met at Anthropologie on Saturday morning. We had been on the phone, simultaneously realized that neither of us were responsible for solo kid duty, and promptly ditched our husbands for shopping and met up at the mothership. The sale rack did not disappoint, much to Jason's dismay.

*****

I took the girls to their well-child annual appointments today, and the pediatrician asked them each what their favorite vegetables were. "Pickles!" Annie said. "Oh, I love pickles, too," said our great doctor, "but what other vegetables do you like to eat with dinner?" Annie looked sad. "Just pickles," she said, and it was then that I confessed that Jemma eats no vegetables at all. Not even pickles. (And yet . . . in spite of their non-eating and general runtiness, they are, at 32 and 40 pounds, respectively, both solidly in the 20th percentile for weight for their ages! It's the highest percentile they've ever been!)

2011 Year in Review: Yoga, Jamaica, and Balance

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

Saw U2, Mega 80's, and Sara Barielles in concert. Took the girls to Great 
Wolf Lodge and Chicago overnight, the Nutcracker, and Jamaica.
Learned to make homemade marshmallows and dinner rolls. Published
two poems. Celebrated my dad's 65th birthday, our twelfth wedding
anniversary, the tenth girls' weekend, Annie's 7th birthday and Jemma's
5th birthday. Ran the Grand Rapids half marathon and became obsessed
with hot yoga. Sold a house. WatchedAnnie get her ears pierced. Spent
a weekend on Mackinac Island. Wore my wedding dress to
a party that was not my own wedding. Started getting allergy shots, 
and started some new Christmas traditions with our family.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?


Here's what I resolved a year ago:

1.  Kick the year off with a January detox - no alcohol, no red meat, very little "white" anything, lots of water and fresh fruits and vegetables for one month.  Did it! Loved it! Going to do it again this year!

2.  Find a meaningful way to "give back" and start doing it. Sadly, nope.

3.  Establish good systems to organize the things in my life that consistently 
overwhelm me:  photos, recipes, books, and kids' art.  Mostly yes: I started using Goodreads to track my books, have been much better about uploading and printing photos, and took a weekend to organize my recipes and make bins for the best kids' art.

4.  Complete and make public my Life List.  Check.

For 2012, I'm personally resolving to write daily, and possibly 
to work on a larger and more ambitious project than 
this blog. Our family is resolving to find some type of 
community service we can do together.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?


My friend Andrea had a new babe, and Chris and Sarah added a 
fourth child to their family, but I am having a hard time remembering
 many other birth announcements on our fridge this year.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Sadly, Jason's uncle John.

5. What countries did you visit?

Jamaica!

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

I'm wishing lately for more clarity about what the next stage of my life 
is going to look like and I'm always wishing for more time to write.
I'd like more patience every year.
As far as material possessions, though? I'm crazy lucky.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

I just wrote a few of them down here.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?


For the first time since I've been doing this year-end review, I really 
feel like 2011 was the year where I found a good and healthy balance
between self, family, friends, work, play, and all the elements that
make up my life. 

9. What was your biggest failure?

I lost my temper with the kids more that I'd like to admit, and while 
there are days and moments when I feel great about the way I'm raising
my kids, there are also days and
moments when I feel sure I'm making one mistake after another. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing major, thankfully.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

New fancy eye cream and lipgloss, a cool Eames walnut stool, piano 
lessons for Annie. the book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, babysitting,
a week in paradise.

12. Where did most of your money go?

All the usual places, plus some extra to sell the old house, refinance 
this one, and pay off both cars.

13. What did you get really excited about?

I excitedly anticipated my annual girls' weekend, all the live music events 
we got to see this year, and a more meaningful and low-key holiday
season. I fell in love with yoga even more this year but still appreciate a 
good, hard run. I loved Tina Fey's book, Bossypants, and got sucked 
into Mad Men, too. It's embarrassing to admit, but I was awfully excited
about the new Anthropologie store opening just minutes from our house.
Going there with a cup of coffee feels like a little getaway.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?

Well, 2011 was the year our family got sucked into the Bieber Fever, 
but if I have to choose a specific song, it'd probably be Dog Days Are 
Over by Florence + The Machine, simply because I heard it performed
live the first time I encountered this strange and lovely artist
and because we've since danced to it in the kitchen many a time.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:


– happier or sadder? You know, I think I'm a little happier.
– thinner or fatter? Same, same - but I can do more push-ups!
– richer or poorer? Richer.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?


More silly play with my kids while they still want to do it with me, more
 writing, more generous reactions to difficult situations.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?


Less yelling, less procrastinating, less getting worked up about things 
that aren't really important.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

We went up north to celebrate with Jason's family the weekend before, 
had a cozy Christmas Eve just the four of us, and went to my parents'
house in the afternoon on Christmas Day.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

Still loving Modern Family, and I'll note that the girls would probably 
say Wild Kratts.

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

Bossypants, Room, State of Wonder, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, 
Olive Kitteridge, Let the Great World Spin, The History of Love, 
The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, The Price of Motherhood, The Art of 
Fielding, Bittersweet, Salvage the Bones.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?


A friend made me a fun CD that brought me up to speed a little, full 
of Mumford and Sons, The Decemberists, and other assorted current
goodness.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

I really liked Crazy, Stupid, Love. I . . . barely can remember any other 
movies I saw this year.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 34, Annie turned 7, and we went to brunch at Rose's after church.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Ahhh, if I'm really reaching, perhaps children who listen on the first try?

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Trying to pull it together just the tiniest bit more than in years past.

26. What kept you sane?

These answers seem to be the same every year: friends, running, yoga, 
Jason, coffee, alcohol, writing, reading, an hour or so a day not speaking
to anyone. 

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.


I'm not feeling particularly wise right now, but I do think I got better
 about having honest (if difficult) conversations rather than avoiding
confrontations, and the honest approach turns out better every time.

The Seven-Year Itch

Seven years ago, I had a one-month old.  I was simultaneously in that state of foggy bliss where every squeak from my child made my heart sing, and feeling like my life had been run over by a freight truck.  It was the beginning of my insomnia; even when the baby slept, I couldn't sleep, so turned-upside-down was my world, which revolved around nursing, cleaning spit-up off of myself, changing blow-out diapers, and holding a baby while she slept.  Annie would not, initially, sleep without being held, and so my days were a circle between the kitchen, the nursery, the bathroom, and the couch, where I watched every single episode of Dawson's Creek in syndication on TBS and Oprah every afternoon.  I'd go out for short walks with the stroller whenever possible and meet the one friend I had made in South Haven at the coffee shop or the tiny indoor pool.  I cried with happiness; I cried because I thought I'd never get my life back.

I was right.  The days after we added Jemma to our family were all the more chaotic:  she was colicky; Annie, despite my guilty encouragement, never wanted to watch television and so would sneak around the house doing who-knows-what while I nursed the baby; there was always a pile of dishes on the kitchen counter and a pile of laundry in every basket; and I went a whole year without really watching a single thing on television, so highly did I prioritize getting to sleep at the earliest moment possible.  Eventually I carved out time for running and began to blog about our life and sneak in time for dates and friends here and there, but other than that, the bulk of my life has been all kids, all the time.

Those frantic days have tapered off, much to my surprise.  I think I thought they would never end.  These days, I can do things like meet a friend for a spontaneous lunch on a Tuesday afternoon, roam Target and get stuck in the throw pillow aisle for half an hour, work out AND shower (both!) before going to school pick-up.  These days, everywhere I go - book club, the gym, the school playground, running, talking on the phone - it's the same conversation between those of us who have been nothing else but somebody's mommy for several years in a row:  What will we do now?

The littlest ones are not napping anymore or wearing diapers or needing us quite so much; they're spending large chunks of the day at school or friends' or some type of sporting event.  There is still plenty of mothering to be done, for sure:  keeping up with the constant influx of papers from school; managing the increasingly-busy calendar; cooking dinner and doing laundry and helping with homework and shuttling from place to place.  That work is not going to end for a long time.

But what has shifted is the fact that it's starting to feel like 99% of my energy goes into support work.  It's the work that nobody notices because they've come to expect it.  The lunch will be packed and inside the backpack, the birthday present will be purchased and wrapped with a card to be signed, the meal will be made and ready to eat in the exact 20-minute segment we have available for dinner, the clothes will be clean and in drawers, the calendar will be full of events, the tickets will have been purchased, the tap shoes will be in the bag with the snack and the water bottle . . . the work is never-ending, and it's sort of thankless, too.  The only time somebody really notices is on those rare occasions when - God forbid - the work didn't get done.  "Mom!" they say indignantly.  "You forgot my ________!" or "Mom!  Where is my ________??!"  The work is invisible, except when you're being noticed for not doing it.

Sometimes I think they notice.  I got Annie her Halloween costume this week and put it on her bed for her to find when she came home from school.  She lit up when she saw it, immediately put it on, and cried, "You're the best mom ever!"  And I know that it's not important that they notice, that it's my job - my lucky, lucky job - to do small things with great love, to build our family's memories, to tell our story, to make our house a home.  But sometimes I see myself as if from outside of my own body, looking down and watching like a ghost:  There I am, getting out the peanut butter.  There I am, settling yet another squabble about tape.  There I am, running a stained shirt under cold water.


Seven years into full-time, at-home parenting, the gig is almost up.  It hasn't been a perfect fit.  I've said before and I'll say again, I'm always jealous of the person who just knows that a certain mode of parenting is right for them.  Some women are made to be at home with their kids, some are always certain that their families are better served by their working outside the home, and some families don't have the luxury of that choice and are making the best of whatever situation they're in.  I've always been uneasy about my decision to be at home, and now I'm equally uneasy thinking about what comes next.

I don't have any illusions that my role as mom is ending.  If anything, I think the next ten years are going to be even more challenging than the last seven have been, and I know there won't be easy answers.  But as more time opens up in my day-to-day and the other people in my family forge their own new paths into bright adventures, I don't think it is wrong of me to want more than to be left behind doing the work of a glorified personal assistant.  I don't think it is wrong to want to do more than get out the peanut butter.

"The future stretches out in front of me.  I see myself making more mistakes, not fewer.  Holding on when I should be letting go.  Letting go when I should be holding on.  The first nine years were the easy ones - when I could, for the most part, protect him from everything; when I was always in the next room when he took a shower, ready to run in and rinse the soap out of his eyes." - Melanie Gideon

The Tenth One

We were gathered around the kitchen island, each of our six hands holding a glass of red wine, ready to toast to our annual girls' weekend.

"To the weekend!" I said.  "How many is this?  Eight?  Nine?"

"TEN!" said the group, and I literally could not believe it, though the notes we've jotted down don't lie, and they tell a story of a group of six college friends who gathered in Kentucky in the fall of 2001 to drink Bloody Marys at the horse races, sit in the hot tub, eat chess pie, and stay up way too late at night talking and laughing.  The last one of us had just been married and we'd realized that, with no more weddings in our future, we'd have to travel to see each other for the sole purpose of being together.

Since then, we've stayed up way too late at night annually in lots of cities and states.  We've white-water rafted in West Virginia, shopped in Chicago, spent the day at the beach, hiked in the mountains and the dunes, gone to the spa, eaten fabulous meals out and cooked giant meals in, eaten our weight in addictive cereal mixes, and told a million and one stories.  We're about to welcome the sixteenth child of this group into the world (Annie was the first) and have spent hours talking about baby names, nursing, discipline, laundry, childbirth, time-outs, sleep deprivation, pregnancy, and raising kids.  (I think it's fair to say a good portion of our weekends are currently spent talking about The Children:  How Cute and Hilarious They Are, and The Children:  How They Are Trying to Kill Us.)  And then, because the point of the weekend is partially about escaping the family-focused world we live in every day, we talk about work, exercise, food, wine, make-up, fashion trends, design, books, television, travel, Target, marriage, memories, magazines, how to keep our hair from looking gray, how to get dinner on the table, how to make the big decisions in life.

This year, we kept it pretty low-key.  We stayed at Connie's cottage, took a long walk down the beach on Saturday morning, shopped in Pentwater for the afternoon, and ate a big, late dinner on Saturday night.  There was goat cheese and cherry ice cream, pumpkin butter cake, dill havarti, marcona almonds, bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin, salad, guacamole, wine, lambic, coffee, tarts, focaccia, granola, olives, apples, and - of course - the addictive cereal mix that is a requirement every year.  There was one particularly good story told by Gina, one baby name to be discussed, one round of talking about people we used to know in college and Facebook-stalking them.  There was lunch at Brewery Vivant and bookstore browsing and pedicures before heading up north, and there were hugs and promises before going our separate ways yesterday.

There was one spectacular sunset.

There were a lot of fruit flies trying to swim in our wine.

There was a candlelit table with six chairs around it.

And there are six people going about their days today - driving carpool, making phone calls, cooking dinner, seeing patients, kissing children, writing checks - who are just a bit better for the time they spent at this, the tenth weekend.

It's! Almost! Fall! Mode

We have now reached the point in the summer where there are no more scheduled events for the girls - no camps, no sleepovers, no tennis lessons - except for Annie's thirty-minute-a-week piano lesson.  The weather's been cool lately, and we've been sleeping with the windows gloriously open, and I heard a goose honking overhead the minute I woke up yesterday morning.

All this to say that I've gone fully into my It's! Almost! Fall! mode, which annually involves:

1.  Me, getting all seize-the-day about taking the girls to the beach, or on a spontaneous outing, or doing a million picnics, or making it to just one more park concert, or letting them get ice cream almost any time they ask.

2.  Me, getting all inspired to cook and bake up a storm with the last of summer's goodness and the early tastes of fall.

Related to item the first, I am planning to take the girls on a mystery trip tomorrow to pick peaches at Crane's and then on to play at the South Haven beach, where they love the play equipment almost as much as the beach itself.  I might sneak in a stop at Salt of the Earth just for their seedy salt bread, too.

Related to item the second, I made chicken stew and biscuits for dinner last night, and right this minute I have blueberry muffins in the oven with five minutes to go.  Last night, Jason nicely took the girls to the park while I made dinner and drank a Founder's porter in peace, but the blueberry muffins, I made this morning with absolutely zero interruptions from my children.  They have been playing/setting up a tea party/having and feeding babies/cleaning up Jemma's room/getting each other dressed/brushing their teeth this whole time.

It still sort of shocks me when this happens, when I am able to accomplish something like a normal person without an infant around my neck or a toddler running in to attach to my leg every seven seconds.  Yesterday, I was noticing that when the three of us run an errand and go to get back in the car, everyone just goes to their own separate door, opens it, gets in, shuts the door, and buckles themselves in.  I remember so clearly when it was "Go to Annie's side while lugging the infant car seat and holding Annie's hand, open her door, get her into her seat, shut the door, go to Jemma's side, put the infant carrier in its base, shut the door, go back around to Annie's door, open it, buckle her in, shut her door, get in the car and heft the diaper bag into the passenger seat."  Sometimes I am still surprised at what my life looks like right now.

Also related to item the second, am I the only one who finds herself at the grocery store or the farmers' market, tossing things in the cart, all inspired and full of plans for specific meals and getting certain items specifically for those meals, and then gets home and makes maybe one of those meals the very same day and maybe one more the next day, and then finds herself looking at, say, a carton of buttermilk or a bunch of parsley and thinking, what is this for?  And crapping out on the meals for the rest of the week and just ordering Rose's Express pizza family meal?

Maybe this is just my problem.  I attempted to combat it yesterday.  When I got in the car in the grocery store parking lot after paying for my $87 worth of groceries, I wrote out all my meal ideas for said groceries on the back of the shopping list I had just taken into the store.  Smart, right?

Then I came home, unloaded the groceries, and threw the list away, forgetting only fifteen minutes later that I had written on the back of it.  So!  At least there was chicken stew with biscuits!

Unearthed

Jason and I spent part of Saturday afternoon going through an inordinate amount of junk in the basement in preparation for our upcoming garage sale.  Because Jason has pack-rat tendencies and I have the procrastinator's philosophy of "Don't do it at all until you can do it right," and because both sets of our own parents dumped boxes of our childhood things on us soon after we settled into this home, there was a lot to go through.

A small sampling of interesting things I found:

• My batons (yes, there were two) from my days of middle-school band-nerd baton-twirliness, which I had to immediately demo for the girls, finger-twirling and fancy throwing and all.
• The yearbook from my senior year in high school, containing much photo evidence that I was still rocking much-curled and much-Aqua-Netted bangs even in 1995.  (Too late, Stephanie.  Far too late.)
• An old journal I kept from 1992, in which I apparently decided that it would be cool to begin each entry with "Dear Ashleigh," instead of just "Dear Diary." (I hope it is clear here that I did not actually KNOW anyone named Ashely, or "Ashleigh.")
• One of my dog's teeth.
• A jewelry box full of giant, geometric, gold earrings.
• The saddest, ugliest, most stretched-out collection of maternity underwear and nursing bras ever.
• A box containing all my folders and notes from college, including the twenty-page Worldview Paper called "Finding Satisfaction in Everydayness" I wrote at the end of my Senior Seminar, which I read through and which I still mostly agree with.
• A box containing some of my folders and notes from high school, most notably papers I wrote in AP Biology and Chemistry with titles like "Characteristics of Epinephrine and Norepinephrine," dissection notes from my fetal pig, a study guide I made myself before a Pre-Calculus exam that had equations on it approximately like "(n+1) (n-1)! = 2n(n)," and other indecipherable bullshit that I literally don't even remember my own brain knowing.
• My cassette tape collection, which involved a lot of Debbie Gibson, Salt N Pepa, En Vogue, Whitney Houston, Garth Brooks, Wham!, Michael W. Smith, and mix-tapes that I made straight off the radio with a little bit of Casey Kasem's voice at the beginning of each song.
• The notecards with the written text of the speech I gave at my high school graduation.

Jason and I took our time paging through stuff, laughing, remembering, and then we threw almost all of it away.  It felt good to recycle boxes and boxes of things that we don't truly need or use, and the basement looks bigger and brighter without all that junk.  I'm not sad to see it go, because I have the important memories tucked away.  But I am a little sad to think about all the things I used to know and be and do that are completely lost.  I used to know the periodic table!  I used to speak in front of stadiums full of people!  I used to write properly-annotated twenty-page papers!  I used to play the piano and clarinet in Solo & Ensemble competitions and march, twirling my baton, in the band as it moved down Main Street.  I used to wear sorority letters, then nursing bras.  I used to teach kids to read and coach girls' track!  And none of those skills or roles are a part of my life any more.

It's an awkward time in my life, right now.  The girls are growing more independent each day.  "One, two, skip a few, ninety-nine, a hundred!" Annie sings from the bathtub, and I remember singing that same song and feeling oh-so-clever about it years ago.  I see how this is all going to go by faster and faster, how already their need for me is less urgent or frequent than it was even a year ago.  Next year, Jemma will be at school four mornings a week, then in kindergarten the year after that, and then both girls will be gone from 8:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. every day.  There is time, now, where there didn't used to be time, and I am not sure how to fill it.

So I stand in the basement, lazily twirling the old silver baton with the white rubber star-shaped ends, surrounded by the artifacts from the person I used to be ten or fifteen years ago, and I wonder who I am going to be next.  One, two, skip a few, ninety-nine, a hundred.

How To . . .

I'm feeling moderately bossy today, so following is a list of some of the life "rules" that make life at this particular stage work for me.  I stink at the normal amount of things (volleyball, confrontation, estimating volume), but I think I have a few things figured out.

How to Make Great Hamburgers on the Grill:  Mix a little Ranch dressing in with the ground beef before grilling.

How to Keep the Weight Off:  Don't bring the junk into the house.

How to Keep From Bringing the Junk into the House:  Do your grocery shopping while imagining that you are about to run into someone (ex-boyfriend, healthiest person you know, mother, boss) who would critically survey the contents of your cart.  Bonus tip:  Live in a small enough town that this does often happen!

How to Cook Dinner Most Every Night:  Sit down on Sunday evening and plan out the week's meals, jotting down needed ingredients on your grocery list as you go.  Shop on Monday morning, then return to the grocery store every other day or so because you forgot something or because the plan has changed.  Occasionally abandon the plan and eat waffles and scrambled eggs with cheese.

How to Stick to an Exercise Routine:  Find something you truly enjoy doing and build time into your life so you can do it regularly.  Run, walk, swim, yoga, Zumba, cross-country ski, mountain bike, jump rope . . . it doesn't matter what it is, but it has to be something you love, not something you dread.  Bonus tip:  Find another person or two whose company you enjoy and plan to work out with them.  Your affinity for them will prevent you from slacking even if you want to.

How to Manage Laundry:  Keep the laundry segregated.  Give each person in the household a basket, and when their basket is full, throw it all in on cold.  This way, when it comes out of the dryer, you dump the whole (clean) basket on their bed, fold, and put it away right in one room.  No sorting.  Yay!

How to Make Your Husband Happy:  Learn his Love Language and speak it.  The five Love Languages are Physical Touch, Words of Affection, Gift-giving, Acts of Service, and Quality Time.  Most people have one or two major languages that they use to express love to others.  Figure out what your husband's language is by noticing how he shows his love to others around him; this is the way to his heart.

How to Get Your Husband to Make You Happy:  Don't be afraid to identify your own love language(s) and inform your husband.  There is no way he's going to read the book, so go ahead and tell him.  (Ahem.  Gift-giving-and-quality-time.)

How to Teach Your Children Well:  Consistency.  Set up routines that work for you and follow them EVERY SINGLE TIME.  Breakfast must be eaten, teeth must be brushed, clothes must be on, bed must be made every single school morning before there is time for playing.  No exceptions.  We read every night of the week right before bed.  When the girls ask me a question, I think about it, give an answer, and NEVER CHANGE THE ANSWER.  It might turn out badly, the answer might be a mistake, and we will eventually talk about that, and I might give a different answer the next time they ask, but once I have decreed that something is so, IT WILL BE SO.  When you follow things 100% of the time, people stop questioning because they know it is futile.  If you follow something even 98% of the time, your kids will know that there's a 2% chance of you caving in and they will beg you incessantly to see if they can get it to happen.

How to Keep Your House Clean:  Hire a cleaning service.  In between the times they come, ignore the mess.

How to Maintain Your Friendships:  Show up.  Call.  Write.  Laugh.  Ask.  Make dinner reservations.

How to Read a Ton of Books Every Year:  Only turn on the TV for the shows that you actually enjoy and intentionally plan to watch.  Be an anxious person who must read for at least an hour to silence the worry before going to sleep each night.  Bonus tip:  Be an insomniac!

How to End Up with Enough Money Eventually:  See what you make, and save a minimum 10% to invest conservatively.  Leave it alone.  Period.

How to Remember Things:  Write them down.


Leave your bossy life rules in the comments!