Category Archives: Parenting

Worry

Posted on March 3, 2013 | 29 comments

I was worried. About vaginas? Well, no, actually. I haven’t worried about vaginas in ages. Not since Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues told me in the late 90’s that they come in every shape and size and color. Participating in V-Day for years has helped me to believe that someday we will live in a world that is not so rife with violence against women and girls. So, I wasn’t really worried, not about vaginas. Not yesterday.

I had plans to see UNC’s production of The Vagina Monologues with some friends. It was Natalie’s birthday. She had sent out an email to a bunch of girls “Let’s go see The Vagina Monologues for my birthday!” I cautiously suggested we see the matinee. Groups of girls don’t go out for drinks and birthday shenanigans at 2:30. But… I have this baby, see? I know, I know, she is more than 13 months old. But… bedtime. I can’t, I won’t be out at bedtime. I just… can’t. And they said “Sure.”

I had more than a month to think about it. I was excited.

The Vagina Monologues changed me. My first year in the OBX production I wore a black pants suit and a bra, no shirt, I was the Woman Who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy, the Moaner. I drank wine after the show and laughed with my new girlfriends. I hadn’t ever been a part of a big group of women. I have been lucky in life to have always had a best friend, a sidekick, a confidante. But a tribe of women? I’d never felt that way before. And it was fabulous.

In the years to come I would have different parts, I would wear pigtails and slouchy gaucho pants to mask my newly postpartum body. I would sport electric blue hair to distract you from my sunken eyes from lack of sleep. I would skip out on the wine because I feared the things I might say. I would mumble to no one really in the middle of a rehearsal “I don’t think I want to be married anymore.”

The Vagina Monologues, these stories of women, they inspired me. They moved me. They taught me that women are all the same. I had always felt like an odd duck. I was “one of the boys.” Standing on stage with a group of women I’d only known a short while I was one of a group. I was part of a tribe.

And then I had a baby. And I got stronger every day. A little over a year after Em was born I was in a rehearsal for The Vagina Monologues when I said out loud for the first time that I would be leaving my husband because it wasn’t working. No one pitied me. No one made the “I’m so sorry” face. One woman said “Good for you. There’s happiness out there for you” and I believed her. It was ten months before I moved out but I started getting ready to go that day.

She was right. Happiness. It was out there. I am Happy. Most of the time. Unless I am trying to get dressed. Unless I am leaving the house all alone without my kids for three hours. And then those old feelings of being the odd duck creep back in. And I am in tears in my closet, surrounded by clothes that don’t fit right. I was planning to meet my girlfriends to celebrate being a woman and I was sobbing because I am thirteen months post-partum and I still feel like I live in someone else’s body. We would be heading to UNC’s campus to surround ourselves with 20-somethings spreading a positive message and I was crying because my jeans are still too tight. I could see the irony. I just didn’t find it all that amusing.

I changed my jeans. I swore. I put on make-up and then washed it all off. I picked a zit, I picked a fight. I cried some more. I said I wasn’t going. I said I had to leave right now. And then I got in the car and I went. It was important.

I would paste my Pretty Kelly smile on my face and I would say “Happy Birthday, Natalie” and it would be fine. I would introduce myself to someone I didn’t know and I would try not to talk about my kids at all. I would just be me.

I opened Nat’s front door and steeled myself. Game face. I don’t know who I was expecting to see. But I know I wasn’t expecting to only see people that I knew. I made it exactly four steps in the front door before I burst in to tears. “I was afraid one of you would ask me why I was crying and I would have to be that crazy woman in front of someone I just met and say ‘Oh, because I get mad anxiety every time I leave my THIRTEEN MONTH old baby and I can’t get dressed and…'”

There they were. Four women. A friend I have known since high school, a friend with two small children, a friend who has seen me at my lowest and a newer friend that understands more than her fair share about body image bullshit. I spilled my big, bad ugly “I have my period and everyone hates me” guts and in moments it was over. We laughed about how I was afraid to be “that crazy woman” in front of strangers, you know, strangers not on the Internet.

The longer I stay at home the harder it is for me to go out. What will I say? Where will I park? What will I wear? What if someone asks me what I do? What if I start crying? Or I have a glass and a half of wine and am plastered because that’s all it takes?

I feel like if you prick me with a pin I will explode.

Eve Ensler taught me that there are 8,000 nerve endings in the clitoris. Sadly, it isn’t any of those that are making me weep with confusion and joy and fear and excitement lately. I am not sure where exactly the nerve endings are that make you lose your shit in your closet while you get dressed. Or panic because you don’t know where you are supposed to park when you get where you are going. But I think I have at least 8,000 of those, too.

I will keep going, out of my house, away from my kids. I will go even when and especially when I don’t want to and think that I will not possibly survive the torture. Every time I leave the house there’s a good chance I will stand in front of a woman that has felt exactly like me, at least once. Because we are all the same, all of us, at least sometimes.

29 Comments

Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Nonsense, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged hormones, motherhood, opinion, Post partum, Pregnancy, tanturm, V-Day, Vagina Monologues, women

No jokes about whether or not I am of “sound mind”

Posted on March 1, 2013 | 10 comments

And to my oldest daughter I leave my shoe collection.

Day 92 suggests you go ahead and write a will right there on the pages of the book. It is silly, listing your prized possessions, your CD collection, your tupperware, your debt, your secrets…

Once again this ridiculous book is synced up with my “real life” in a way that I was not prepared to think about. Sometimes I move through a day and I consciously choose not to think about it, not to write about it, not to process it. This is still a step ahead from the Ignore This Necessary Part of Life Altogether method of my youth.

A few weeks ago we sat down at the kitchen table and we filled in the blanks. What will happen to our kids if something happens to us? Our life insurance policy would cover our house, right? None of this is fun. None of it is “best case scenario.” None of it is “happily ever after.”

I still don’t want to write about it. It took me two weeks to open the legal envelope from the lawyer’s office and review the final draft. I did it this morning. With a princess pencil. It didn’t make it any easier.

10 Comments

Posted in Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged challenges, death, Life, This Book Will Change Your Life, will

Keep it simple, stupid.

Posted on February 28, 2013 | 6 comments

I have a knack for making things more difficult than they need to be. I imagine conversations that will probably never take place. When I drive I am thinking about what I will say when I arrive if I am late (even though I will be toting along the finest excuse for running late there ever was, a 20 pound machine that ejects bodily fluids at random intervals.) When I nurse my baby in public I prepare clever responses to judgey looks, even though I am one of few women that has actually never been on the receiving end of one.

Lately, as I keep putting one foot in front of the other aimlessly, I am mentally preparing some kind of justification. Lucy is 13 months old. Emily would rather be with her pals than with me after school. But what I am doing here, at home, is important. It is maybe even more special to me to be home with the girls now as they get older than it was in the early days. And I like being available to volunteer at school. I have the time to shop sales for the things we need. And we save a lot of money on groceries with me being home, cooking every day. And and and … I could go on. But no one ever asks me “So, when are you going back to work? Why are you still home?’

Probably more important than the nameless, faceless strangers that I imagine asking me that question is that my husband, the one person who has an opinion that counts, he isn’t pushing me. I shot him a line the other day “Don’t forget I have that committee meeting tonight.” It was his second day at his brand new job. And I was nagging him about when he would be home. His reply was short and sweet. But it has eclipsed all of the imaginary nay-sayers in my mind. “No problem. I am glad you’re doing these things.”

I don’t know what I am going to do in the next few years. I am still running in place. Two miles today. And a 1600 yard swim. I’m not even all that anxious about the fact that I don’t know where I am going. Because when I get to the finish line MQD will be there.

I can’t see the path but the finish line is crystal clear. With tears in my eyes I’ll say “I did it!” and with his signature smirk, that one that drives me nuts in every sense of the word he’ll say “Of course, you did.”

~~~~

Today’s challenge – Invent a new way to peel a potato. I am a red bliss potato, leave the skins on kind of girl. But when I have to peel them I have a gadget, of course. I am a lover of the kitchen gadget. This obsession is fed by my mother-in-law, another lover of the kitchen gadget. A peeler that slips over your finger. And like all great deals in the kitchen store, you can’t just have one, you need two. One of them is serrated, for my serrated peeling needs.

Last night I peeled potatoes. (And then I spent quite some time trying to take a picture of mashed potatoes that looked appetizing.) I didn’t invent a new way. But I didn’t use my kitchen gadget, either. I just grabbed a paring knife and peeled those bad boys. You know, it was really simple. Making things more complicated than necessary might be one of those things I used to do when I was young if I keep this up. I could get used to it.

So, day 91 – I am not going to reinvent potato peeling, motherhood or marriage. I am just going to keep doing what I am doing. Because it’s working.

6 Comments

Posted in Bad Mood, Exercise, Family, Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged cooking, food, Life, motherhood, running in place, simple, This Book Will Change Your Life

Because I said I would…

Posted on February 27, 2013 | 17 comments

The act of making a plan is sometimes all it takes to get shit done. Put it on the calendar. Say it out loud. Commit. It makes following through that much easier.

I said I’d keep on keeping on with This Book Will Change Your Life. Dammit all, only three days in and it is the kind of challenge that makes me roll my eyes and wanna skip it altogether. Day 90: Help Collapse a Currency…. The Bangladeshi Taka. The book suggests that everyone reading the book invest in the taka and then sell them on December 31 for a fraction of what they are worth (which is only one penny according to Google.) For every clever challenge – discretely giving people the finger all day, or be on the lookout for the paranormal, or my all time favorite How symmetrical is your face? – there is a challenge that shits the bed. Collapse a currency? Pffft. Not happening.

I am left feeling like I need to do all the other things I told myself I would do today instead. So, I ate breakfast. But only because I prepared it last night. Overnight oatmeal with homemade almond milk and chia seeds. And two Hershey’s kisses, but who is counting?

And I am heading to the gym. Because my calendar says I need to ride the stationary bike for 40 minutes. And because I can take a shower all alone while I am there. Well, not totally alone. I will be in the company of a dozen senior citizens fresh out of water aerobics class but none of those women will cry if I don’t hold them. If I don’t screw around and spend too much time washing my face I could even blow my hair dry in the hand dryer.

It’s a glamorous life, y’all. A glamorous life.

This post was brought to you by Guilt. I said I was gonna write every day for a while just to keep the quiet at bay. Here’s hoping tomorrow will be more interesting than oatmeal.

17 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Nonsense, Parenting, This Book Will Change Your Life

Tagged chia seeds, fitness, health, This Book Will Change Your Life

Day 89: Primal Scream

Posted on February 26, 2013 | 10 comments

Day 89: Primal Scream – Get it out if your system. Go on. Let loose.

The way I understand things the primal scream is part of Arthur Janov’s primal therapy. The theory states that neurosis is a product of repressed pain from childhood. Releasing the primal scream greases the gears to eventually free the pain we have repressed, thereby processing it and integrating these painful childhood experiences into our adult selves.

Fundamental to Janov’s theory is the idea that we have three levels to our conscious and unconscious mind. We have our survival mind. We have our feeling mind. And lastly we have our thinking mind.

I don’t think I would be a good candidate for Primal Therapy. To begin with, I do not think there is any division between my feeling and thinking mind. And second – I am just not big on screaming anymore. Years ago I struggled with this. Emily tried my patience. I read Unconditional Parenting and I worked my ass off to stay committed to a path of gentle discipline. But toddlers are wicked little creatures. And I had so much anger in me. So, I yelled.

Don’t let the sweet face fool you. She was maddening.

I did not yell all of the time. But I yelled more than I wanted to. As my life straightened out and I let go of the anger that had been holding me back, I stopped yelling. It didn’t hurt that Emily grew up a little and left the incendiary behavior of toddlerhood behind.

Today I let out a few screams for the sake of the challenge.

I guess it remains to be seen if I can blame all of my yelling on misplaced aggression and pain or if it was really just the torturous toddler years taking their toll on me. As great as it may have felt today to let my primal self holler – it feels better to keep a lid on my volume. I have every reason to believe that Lucy will drive me bonkers, too, over the next couple of years. And if I survive her toddlerhood without going apeshit I will have a teenager right around the corner. Here’s hoping my screaming ship has sailed. Breathe in. Breathe out.

10 Comments

Posted in Bad Mood, Parenting

Tagged anger, Benrik, motherhood, Parenting, psychology, screaming, stay at home mom, This Book Will Change Your Life

Transition

Posted on February 24, 2013 | 22 comments

The final stage of active labor is transition. It is the most painful. I wept and moaned and cried during labor. But during transition? In transition I got quiet. I was scared. Scared and excited about what was surely going to happen next.

Transition is hard. Even when I am not preparing my body to deliver a baby I have been known to get quiet as I move my mind and body in to a new stage of life.

I have been quiet. And reflective. I think I am in transition.

I have been reading about the idea that we all reinvent ourselves every seven years. According to a lot of medical research all of the cells in your body are replaced every seven years. Granted, you do not wake up to a brand new body overnight. One cell at a time your body rejuvenates itself. And who I am today may actually be a different physical person than I was seven years ago. It stands to reason that I would feel different emotionally, spiritually.

Seven years ago I felt it happening. I was a new mother. My marriage was dissolving. I didn’t know what my future would look like but I could see small stretches of the path to get there. There were tears and glasses of wine and friendships forged and promises made. I moved my body hundreds of miles from my home. I got a new job. I made new friends. The change was slow and painful. I fought against it even though I knew my smile would be brighter when it was over. I held on to bitter moments because I thought they defined me. And perhaps because I wasn’t sure who I was going to be if I let them go.

It’s happening again. The quiet. The quiet that precipitates evolution.

Change is hard when you aren’t running from anything.

And so I run in place. Or around and around my neighborhood. But I still don’t know where I am going.

I have been home with the kids for a year. I don’t want to leave them.

I have been married for three years in April. I am still over the moon for my man.

I am putting down roots in my community. I don’t want to move.

I have been writing here for almost four years. I don’t want to stop.

I have a dozen drafts in my files. Half-written essays abut the girls and motherhood and fitness and my velour sweatsuits. But none of it speaks to me. If it doesn’t hold my attention it won’t hold yours.

Change is paralyzing. Odd that growth makes me feel so frozen solid. As my mind races and my cells replace themselves I can’t seem to make a complete thought.

My big girl is reading chapter books and Tiger Beat magazine and painting her nails with her friends. My baby girl is eating a sandwich and chasing the dog in a itty bitty track suit. They are growing so fast. Days are moving so quickly and I can’t hold on tight enough. I am running short on the time needed to sit at the keyboard and write it all down. As soon as I sit down to finish a thought I no longer really feel that way anymore.

My girls are growing fast all of a sudden. And so am I.

I don’t know what will become of my girls. But I know that no matter who they turn out to be they will be fine. Because they are loved. And I know that someday we will look back at pictures of their childhood and laugh and say “Of course! They couldn’t have become anyone else!”

And I know that days, weeks, months from now – when my transition is over – I will laugh and say “Of course, this is the path I have always been on.” But today? Today I am not really sure where I am going. But I know I will be fine. Because I am loved.

22 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged evolution, Fear, growth, Life, motherhood, Parenting, SAHM, transition

The Truth

Posted on February 6, 2013 | 45 comments

Believe it or not, I have secrets. Well. A secret. Maybe.

I was pregnant with Emily before I farted in front of my ex-husband. We had been together for almost nine years. I don’t suppose it changed how he felt about me. Were it not for the day after Emily was born when I ran up the stairs with my arms over my head like Rocky Balboa crying out “Yes!!!! I did it and I did not bust my stitches!!” he might still believe that I do not, in fact, poop, at all.

Somehow even as “take me as I am” as I was in my twenties it was still important to me to be a girl that does not poop. You’re thinking that isn’t really something to be proud of? I guess it’s not.

But I can tell you what is. I have been pregnant for 81 weeks. Two vaginal births. I have gained and lost a total of more than 70 pounds. I have two beautiful children one of whom was just shy of ten pounds at birth. And I have never ever had a hemorrhoid. Never.

In my thirties I have been more relaxed. I poop with the door open. My husband and I have no secrets. He would argue that he has no privacy but I prefer to think of it as no secrets.

But now? Now I think we might have a secret. But I’m not sure.

I might not be the woman he married anymore. I might not even be the woman I was just a few days ago. I might have a secret. I might have a hemorrhoid.

Do I find a support group? Am I forever a changed woman? Is something wrong with me that I am more upset about losing my title as The Woman That Never Had a Hemorrhoid than I am about actually maybe possibly having one?

This morning as I kissed my sweet husband good morning I could stand it no longer. “I have to tell you something. This weekend I pooped a football and now I think I have a hemorrhoid.”

He knew I was embarrassed. He didn’t laugh at me. “Ok. Did you buy Preparation H?”

I nodded.

“Are you using it?” Dammit, he knows me too well.

I shook my head. “I’m in denial.”

“Use the cream and you never have to bring it up again.” Sweet man. He was giving me an out. He was going to let this be our secret.

“I might tell the Internet.”

“Ok.”

I don’t know what I want you to do with this information. I just can’t live a lie. I am not the woman I used to be. I don’t think. I mean, I’m not really sure. You didn’t think I was going to check, did you? Sheesh.

Look. I am distracting you with a Wedding Dress Cartwheel. Let’s never speak of this again, ok?

45 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged health, hemorrhoid, mental-health, motherhood, Parenting

Inside a Paper Bag

Posted on February 5, 2013 | 26 comments

As a teenager I looked through the big box of family photographs often. Pictures from the late 1970s were in albums. They had rounded corners and a vintage feel. As time went by the pictures never made it in to an album. They were in Kodak envelopes, labelled “Rehoboth Beach, 1982.”

Whether the pictures were in books or sorted in to piles there was one thing in common year after year. There were pictures of us sleeping, a tiny Kelly with a Snoopy in a rainbow bedroom, my brother in his Smurf sweatsuit curled up in my dad’s chair. As a teenager I didn’t understand why there were so many of these pictures. We were just sleeping.

My dad used to joke us when we were little, “You’re good kids, when you’re asleep.” As a parent I can certainly agree. There is little more wonderful than a sleeping child, the frenetic energy of the afternoon exchanged for the slow and steady breath of night.

I spent a lot of time the last few days sitting on the edge of my bed just watching them – my girls, snuggled up asleep. We’ve had five days of Ladies’ Nights. We have had quick dinners and eaten dessert on a blanket in the living room. We watched Footloose and Project Runway and we painted our nails. These little sleeping beauties, they are my good kids – “when [they’re] asleep.”

I look at them and I wonder if they will have a childhood like I did. They will ride their bikes, they will play in the creek. They will have birthday parties in our back yard. We will have pizza at the pool. I will take pictures of them while they sleep. It will be the same.

They won’t have a TV Guide to circle their Saturday morning cartoon choices. They won’t tie an index card with their name and address to a balloon and set it free, hoping against hope for a reply in the mail some day. They will not likely ever have a teacher that calls their handouts “dittos.” And unless I print some of these images their teenage selves might not roll their eyes at the numerous pictures of them sleeping. Many things will be different.

When I was a little girl and I was waiting for the bus to come in the morning I would watch the sky. There is a moment when the sky goes from pink to tan right before the sun comes up, right before the school bus comes. I used to pretend that my whole neighborhood was inside a paper shopping bag. This morning while Emily was putting her shoes on and Lucy was still asleep I stepped outside on to the deck and looked at the sky. There was a paper bag all around me.

The sky turned from tan to sunlit before Em finished tying her shoes. I need to remember to show my girls the paper bag that surrounds us. I need to do it quickly while they still remember what a paper shopping bag looks like. A few more years from now you might not ever see one at the store. The only paper bag left will be the one that surrounds my neighborhood early in the morning. Their childhood is different. But it is the same.

26 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged childhood, Honest, Kids, Life, nature, Parenting, winter

Sweat & Smoke

Posted on January 30, 2013 | 34 comments

“Have you been swimming?”
It’s an innocent enough question. In defense of the woman that asked me, I was standing in front of the locker room, the locker room that connects to the pool at the gym.

“Umm. No. I just sweat like a beast.”

I am really good at making casual conversations come to an awkward finish. I tried to rescue the conversation, I did. To be honest, my sweating isn’t something that even embarrasses me. I will never be accused of just posturing at the gym. I look like I have been working out and working out hard just a few minutes after I step on to a treadmill. Sadly, the same holds true when I step out of an air-conditioned car bound for an outdoor wedding in August.

I know I left you hanging this weekend. Did I go to Zumba? Did I “join the party?” Am I still there?

I went. I sweat. I will go back. I actually snorted and laughed loud enough to attract the attention of a friend the first time there was any shaking of the ta-tas. I cannot see a woman shake her shoulders and not hear Penny from Dirty Dancing shouting “God wouldn’t have given you maracas if He didn’t want you to shake ’em!”

I didn’t love it enough to turn my back on running and the dreaded elliptical machine. I have finally admitted to myself that I can not run every day of the week. If I do not take a break I hurt myself. I just do. I was not built to be a runner. I am… top heavy. I am not light on my feet. I read Born to Run. I watch Danny Dreyer’s Chi Running videos, I visualize. And I run, every other day. In between I do whatever I can to keep the mojo and keep moving because one day off becomes three becomes a week becomes a month. So, I will run. And on my off days perhaps I will Zumba. I laughed. And I sweat.

I sweat. Because it feels good. Because it clears my head.

Because it makes me feel like I am taking time for me and that I am important. I feel healthy. I make better choices, choices about what I eat, what I do.

But not all of those choices are easy.

There is a man at the gym. He is an older fella, in his grey sneakers and his dress pants. He wears a plaid shirt and he keeps it neatly tucked in. He walks on a treadmill and he gabs with everyone. He is friendly but if you point at your earbuds and smile he doesn’t chat you up anymore. He is pleasant. But that is not my favorite thing about him.

He reeks. And not because he sweats. He reeks of cigarettes. Reeks. I pass him on the stairs sometimes and I wonder if I smell like smoke when I walk past someone later. It doesn’t just hang on him, it follows him like Pigpen’s swirl of dust and dirt.

And I love it. I love the smell of smoke.

Not all of the time. When I am with my kids at a park and I smell smoke I whip my head around and give the stink-eye to the teenagers that are sitting on a picnic table. When I am in line at the grocery store and I can smell the checker, they have just come back from a smoke break, I don’t breathe deeply. It doesn’t smell good. It is out of place.

But at the gym, during my hour, the hour that Kelly is just Kelly not Mom, I’ll be damned if that cigarette does not smell delicious. Running alongside him today at the gym I got to giggling. Ludacris was singing in my ear “I wanna, li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes” and I imagined myself letting those words escape my mouth.

I am not a Smoker. Not anymore. But I am not a Non-Smoker, either. I prefer to think of myself as a non-practicing Smoker.

I would spend some more time trying to reconcile this, my desire to be healthy and fit combined with my love of the smell of a Marlboro, but it isn’t new. Ten years ago I celebrated my 26th birthday with friends. We were talking about our newfound love of Les Mills’ Body Pump. I had a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other.

DSCN2311

These days I don’t have a cigarette in my hand. And I still love the gym. Some things change and some things stay the same.

I still wear overalls more often than I should. But I don’t perm my hair anymore. I am going to put fitness, quitting smoking and not perming my hair in the “Good Things I Need to Keep Doing” column. Sniffing old dudes that reek of smoke at the gym – I am putting that in the “Quite Possibly Creepy But It Won’t Kill Me” column. Feel free to debate me on this.

34 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Parenting

Tagged Exercise, habits, Humor, Life, running, smoker, smoking

Hey you guys!!!

Posted on January 26, 2013 | 32 comments

It’s not my best look. I call it “just rolled out of bed not even wearing my cute glasses wearing my favorite sweater and only two sips in to a cup of coffee” chic.

I just wanted to sit down this morning and say Hey you guys! Yesterday afternoon yours truly was Freshly Pressed and with that comes scads (gobs? hordes? what shall I call you?) of new readers that deserve a little shout out.

It didn’t seem right to get all fancied up and try and be something I am not and dazzle you. So. Here I am. This is where I usually am. In my chair with the kiddo on the boob. This morning is cold so I am enjoying one of the four (four!) cowl neck scarves I have recently crocheted. Yeah. I am a woman that crochets, guys. I don’t know how it happened. Sometime this winter when I realized I had watched everything on my DVR and every single series on Hulu I decided I needed to find something else to do while Lucy slept in my lap. So, yeah, I crochet. And I am impatient. Cowl neck scarf – the four hour project – we are pals. Stick around and maybe I will send you one if your neck looks particularly cold.

I wish I had more time this morning but I am trying to get out the door.

You know when you do something that you kind of think is awesome but you aren’t sure if it is totally absurd. You’re not embarrassed exactly, but you’re not sure if people that know you would think “Oh, that is strange. You don’t really do that, do you?” When I was fourteen I bought a hot pink swing dress and purple polka-dotted tights to wear to my boyfriend’s graduation. (It was 1991, it was a hot look.) Previously I had been seen in my overalls. Pretty much every day. I thought the dress was cute. I thought it was kind of adorably Molly Ringwald-ish, actually. But I wondered if it was “me.”

I don’t work hard to stay in my “me” box. But I think we all have a type. Not long ago I was horrified when I realized I had Mom-hair but I owned it. In fact, I declared myself to be the Samue L. Jackson of Motherhood and decided that in spite of my hair I was a bad motherfucker.

So, I am yammering on because I am not sure I can admit this. I like to work out. It keeps me from being totally mental. I run. I actually love p90x. I am not afraid of the weight room and I don’t really wear “cute outfits” to the gym. I like to get sweaty. But this morning I am going to do something I have been talking about doing forever. And I might get hysterical and get kicked out but I am going for it. I am going to Zumba, guys. Zumba bills itself as a sexy Jazzercise. Take a minute to chew on that. Sexy. Jazzercise. I hope they serve margaritas. I am going to need one. Or four.

So, a big fat “hello” and “happy to meet you” and “what took you so long let’s be best friends!” to the new readers. I gotta jet. Get my sweat on. Oh, and shake my moneymaker. Because apparently when I am not busy being a bad motherfucker or crocheting I go to Zumba. Sigh. The latter half of my third decade is going to be weird. I can feel it.