I’ve begun the big fall/winter clothes – spring/summer clothes switch at our house.  This means lots of giant Rubbermaid bins, bitching about moths, silly amounts of laundry, bribing children to try on clothes, and more mess than is healthy for one family. 

It’s a zoo around here.

It’s also the approximate temperature of the surface of the sun, and I refuse to turn on air conditioning in April.  Last night when we got home from a dinner out, the temp inside the house was 81 degrees.  The kids had flung themselves onto their beds and, when I went in to kiss them goodnight, their hair was plastered to their cheeks and necks with sweat.  Fortunately, we were so tipsy drunk bombed happy and satisfied from our excellent evening down the street with friends (piece of advice:  try to have friends who make excellent rum drinks who live RIGHT DOWN THE STREET so you can stumble walk home instead of drive) that we, too, flung ourselves on our beds and passed out slept soundly, if a little sweatily.

I promised her highness Princess Twinkletoes a special treat if she would sleep in her own bed for five nights in a row.  She got to choose the treat.  Never mind the fact that I rail about mothers who treat their daughters like 25 year olds and take them shopping at Bergdorfs and let them wear tube tops, I’m taking her to get her nails done this afternoon.  Now that we know that she CAN stay in her own bed all night without doing her sleep ninja routine and cartwheeling down the hallway under cover of darkness, however, the bribery behavior sticker chart is a thing of the past.  Probably.  It’s really nice to sleep without a five year old elbow in your ear and knee in your hip.

The boy has lacrosse today.  He doesn’t like his socks.  He wants different socks.  We can’t find the “right” socks.  His cleats are too small.  His helmet is bothering him.  His cup is hurting him in his “you know.”  Enough said.

There is no food in the house.

Yesterday one of the kids zoomed across the screened porch on a skateboard and put a four foot long rip in the screen.  We thought we were going to get through a weekend without a Home Depot trip.  We were wrong.

Papers to grade.  Lots of them.  Meetings to prepare for. 

My Sunday experience is not much different from that of any harried parent.  And I’m not complaining.  Well, not much anyway.

But that’s why we have rituals, right?  To provide us guidance and comfort and consistency in times of confusion? 

Sunday Pancakes

Sift together (Look.  Everybody hates sifting, but you have to do it.  Suck it up. 1 1/2 cups flour with 1 tsp salt, 3 tablespoons sugar and 1/3/4 teaspoons baking powder.

In a different bowl, combine 1 slightly beaten egg, 1 cup milk, 1/2 sour cream (light is fine), 3 TB melted butter (light is unequivocally NOT fine), and 1 teaspoon lemon extract.  Do not add the eggs directly to the heated melted butter or you’ll have oily scrambled egg bits in your pancakes and that’s just gross.  Same with the sour cream, except Curdle City instead of scrambled egg bits…equally gross.

Mix dry and wet ingredients together quickly and cook on lightly oiled griddle.

If you live in my house and you’ve lost the will to argue, allow your daughter to cover her pancakes in multi-colored sugar bomb sprinkles.  It’s just easier that way.

If I were my dad, later today I’d be forced to utter the words, “I’ll never wash my butt again.’

Fortunately, for everyone, I’m not my dad.

My dad will be sitting in the chair occupied by John McCain (don’t care), Fareed Zakaria (better), Nancy Pelosi (most awkward 15 minutes of my life, can’t imagine what it felt like for her), Calvin Trillin (be still my heart), and most recently BEN AFFLECK.

My dad’s butt will be where Ben Affleck’s butt was. 

Tonight my father will be on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart talking about his new book.  It’s on at 11, and if you are too old to stay up that late, you can catch it again on Friday.  I command you to watch.


I’m going to need an afternoon nap to be able to make it until 11 myself.  Though I claim to be anti-social and even socially awkward, I seem to be spending a lot of time OUT and having a fantastic time.  It is possible that this fact is related to the amount of red wine I’ve consumed at these various gatherings, but never mind. 

This not-a-blog business is good for people like me in that it gives me something to do with my excess energy, it channels my creative impulses in a way that is not, usually, harmful to the general public, and it gives me the illusion of belonging to a community without ever leaving my house. 

A funny thing happened along the way.  The illusion of belonging to a community turned into the reality of belonging to a community.  Sitting around the table at Wednesday Spaghetti (now forever in my mind renamed as Wednesday spaghetti and red wine and cannoli), I found myself in the midst of people who expressed concern about a friend of mine and offered help, people who’d heard about my dad’s appearance tonight on Jon Stewart and were excited on my behalf, people telling a story about me and my romance with Nutmeg to a newcomer, people who encouraged me to travel with them to Chicago this summer, and people with whom I happily (drunkenly) engaged in a debate about who has the worst boobs.   

If you look at what we write and do and look like and where we come from, you might struggle to be able to draw a line connecting our disparate dots.  But our dots do connect.  Emily wrote today about her impressions of the evening, and I’m not going to try to summarize or reiterate, because I would never do it justice.    Here though, is a bit of it, please please please go read the whole thing:

“Last night I attended the second meeting of the Philly Bloggers.  Suffice it to say that it didn’t take long for our polite, I-have-never-met-you conversation to spiral into the pit of TMI which we all embrace on a daily basis.  And just before we left, I do believe there was a smack down as to who had the worst boobs.  Had the adorable little son of our hostess not been in the room, I’m sure shirts would have come off.”

Em went on to say that it was an unusual circumstance for her to be in the same room with people who are so like her and who challenged her sense of her own uniqueness.  I think I’m getting that right, but like I said, go read what she wrote, she’s much better at this than I am.

What I appreciate most about what Em wrote is that I had the same experience, but bizarro style.  What I like least about myself in social situations is the way I suddenly can’t shut up when I’m in them.  My, admittedly limited to begin with, edit function shuts down completely. Add the red wine and oh my stinkin’ heck (yeah, buddy, I said it) I annoy myself to no end.

Being in a room full of people who are all like me in that Jump Right In and Shout it Out and Also Pass that Bottle Over Here is such a relief.  I feel like I’m surrounded by people who get me and that, maybe that night, I won’t be sitting in the car on the way home, smacking myself in the forehead and wondering which of my outrageous utterances or behaviors of the evening I’ll regret most.  And for the record, I would NOT have taken off my shirt even if the totally yummy Jakezilla hadn’t been in the room. 

I wonder all the time why I persist with this not-a-bloggy business.  I’m not getting rich, I’m not getting famous, I’m not jumpstarting a career in writing, and I get a little panicky when I re-read what I’ve written and think, “What kind of egomaniac thinks that anyone wants to hear about her trivial shit?” and then realize that the egomaniac in question is me.  Turns out that this is unnecessary panic.   Why I do this is that it puts me in the heart of a larger community where I am happily, successfully, occasionally crazily able to be just me. 

So, tribe and purveyors of fine food, drink, hospitality, laughs, and good spirit, thanks. 

The Tribe – a partial list

Mothers of Brothers
Gwen Alison Wonderland
Babs Peapod Disco Bubbles
I Am Bossy
Simply Nutmeg
A Child is Born
Yellaphant
MemeGrl
Jakezilla/Wednesday Spaghetti
The New Girl
Keeping My Head Above Water
Lemonade and Kidneys
Domestic Goddess