Did I Miss Something?

I have a hair appointment after work tonight.  This means that while I'm relaxing with a glass of wine and chatting tv shows and movies with the ladies of Vanity Chic, my children will be systematically destroying my house.  Seriously.  It's a given.  I'll get home around 7:30, and while the children will be fed, clean, happy, and about ready for bed.  But my house will be 2600 square feet of chaos and disaster.

It's not their fault.  Not really.  They're 2 and 5. I'm trying to instill that we clean up after ourselves, but it's hard to keep A motivated to pick up her stuff when the second that her Magic Clip Princesses are in the box her brother dumps them out.  And in the interest of fairness (something I'm big on, but that's another story) I don't really feel right about asking A to clean up after her brother.

So what will happen is after bedtime, I'll make the rounds through the house and clean up.  It's going to suck. I'm going to be tired and cranky, but I'll tell myself that it's the price I pay for two hours of peace and quiet and it'll be over soon.  Which it will.  In a half hour I can have pretty much everything where it belongs and I'll feel better about everything.  I don't function well in chaos.

And that's kind of why I'm confused about why it's suddenly become the thing among parents, mainly moms, to share what a clusterf*ck state your house and sometimes yourself, are in.  Seriously.  I follow or used to follow a lot of the more popular mom blogs. But honestly, I got really sick of hearing about how you haven't had time to shower in three days and your house is a disaster and here is a pic of the laundry that is taller than your child. Look, I get it. Kids are not neat and clean.  They have no respect for organizational systems and they'll eat floor Cheerios before they'll eat a dinner that you spent all afternoon putting together. But why are you almost bragging about what a wreck you are? What happened to having pride in yourself and your home?

When it comes to the domestic front I'm pretty much on my own.   Whether I go to work or not, I get a shower.  Every day. Sometimes I get up painfully early to do it. Before I go to bed at night, my house is cleaned up. It's not photo ready, but you better believe that I'm not letting milk solidify on the counter and leaving a sinkful of dishes. I do have a once a month housekeeper that does the deep cleaning stuff. But she doesn't do my laundry or pick up toys or organize my mail.

I'm not necessarily saying that we should go back to the 1950s and there are probably feminists reading this that are ready to tear my head off.  I just don't get why we are spending hours on Pinterest and Facebook and Instagramming our filthy homes instead of taking care of them.  Did I miss something? Did it become cool and fashionable to be what people nowadays call "a hot mess"?  And if you are going to be a hot mess, why are you bragging about it? Do you want the world to cheer you on in solidarity?

My mother and grandmother maintained pristine homes, all while raising children and getting minimal help from spouses. And being dressed every day.  If messy homes and unshowered moms are the new normal today, what's going to be normal for my kids? Gross.

Rant over.

Now stop reading this and go put your laundry away :)

Is Honesty Really Best? (Or, Just Another Solo Sunday)

I do a lot of solo parenting.  I mean A LOT. And not the kind where I’m home alone with the kids until dinnertime, when my husband comes home to take over.  I don’t have the luxury of retiring to my room to take painkillers and watch Netflix at 5pm when I get a migraine.  I can’t often hand off bathtime on a day that I JUST CAN’T anymore.  At minimum, it’s 24 straight hours. Lots of times it’s more.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew that going in.  It’s a choice I made, as I am sure someone is thinking right now.   (Because that’s totally how falling in love works. Make sure he works a 9-5 and makes enough money so I can stay home. Priorities.)  I chose to assume this role in parenting the kids, and keep my career going, etc.  But the choice I struggle with all too often is how much of the day to day stress I should share with my husband.

Yesterday was rough. A decided that the only suitable activity for her was to launch herself off the couch in the playroom onto a pile of blankets. (Thanks, Clover, for teaching my child the concept of a “soft landing”.) Liam is a toddler terror, made worse by the fact that he is huge for his age and smart way beyond his almost two years.  He wanted a still undetermined item from a cabinet above my desk, and was prepared to stand there and scream until I retrieved said item.  A chose that moment to start bouncing off of the living room furniture, which is strictly forbidden. And then the phone started going off with work stuff.  So I did what any solo parent would do.  I pretty much lost it. Spun out.

I’ve had worse days.  I mean, there was the day that Liam stole a full used coffee filter from the trash can and took off into the living room. And the time that he got a full container of cocoa powder out of the pantry.  And the time that A found a lip gloss and went nuts in her room.  Oh, and don’t forget the time she found the purple marker, but no paper, and thought the walls were a suitable substitute.  But in the context of the moment, yesterday was pretty bad.  I had plans for it to be a screen time free day, filled with art and activities and stories and such.  Turns out I made it until 10:30.

So then when Bill texted me around 11 to see how the day was going, I had to make a decision.  Do I tell him that I am literally a step away from the edge? That would make him feel helpless, because there was nothing he could do. And maybe guilty, because he wasn’t there to back me up. It’s his job, it’s what he does. But I know he’d rather be home with us on any given day. Is he having a bad day? Hearing that things are falling apart on the homefront might make it worse.  What if he’s having an awesome day? Do I want to bring him down?

But if I don’t want to tell him about the struggles of the day, isn’t that like lying? Do I want to lie, and tell him that the day is just great, and we’ve having so much fun?  Isn’t it best to be honest, and tell him that things are out of control? He has bad days with the kids too, when he’s home. 

Fortunately after nap time, things seemed to calm down.  Liam was excited to play Expedition, where we set up Base Camp in the playroom, then a series of other camps throughout the house until summiting the “mountain” in my room. We watched some movies, had some dinner, and everyone made it to bed at a reasonable time.  But still, even now, I’m not sure how much of yesterday’s drama I need to share.  I’ll probably do what I’ve been doing, which is downplay it a bit.

Until the next time A and Liam decide to make potions with the baby shampoo and bubble bath again.  There’s no holding me back on that one.

Liam poses at Camps 2 and 3. 

Peace Out, JCC: Lessons From Jewish Preschool

Today is kind of bittersweet.  It’s Amelia’s last day at the JCC.  We had planned on letting her ride out this school year until the end of May, but for a lot of reasons that I won’t go into, it was time to make the change now.  For the first two years, it was a really great fit for us. And I credit her teachers from the first two years for teaching her so much.  I was expecting to be emotional this week, but seeing as how two different strangers have been watching her class when I’ve done pickup this week, that hasn’t happened. Not to mention the revolving door of teachers that she has had since October.

But there are some really, really great things that I’m taking with us today.  I’m not Jewish as everyone knows, but there are certain Jewish traditions that I have learned over the last two years.  And some of them are really fantastic.  A mommy blogger that I love, Ilana Wiles, described her youngest daughter as “a big fat Jewish sponge”. Meaning that even though they weren’t ultimately that religious, her daughter picked up a lot at Jewish preschool that she brought home.  They have started implementing more and more of what she learns in school, and it’s been really great for their family.

So, I present to you, a few Jewish things that this Catholic girl is taking away with her today.

• ·         First and foremost, the Shabbat dinner.  The Jewish Sabbath starts at sundown on Friday and lasts until nightfall on Saturday.  Not everyone celebrates with the same level of severity. (Very much like Catholics and Lent.) But I’ve found that I really, really like the idea of having one dinner at home per week that is kind of special.  Traditionally, you use good plates, tablecloths, the works. I know most of us aspire to have family dinner every night. For most people it’s just not possible.  But one meal? I think I can handle that.  So if we’re friends, plan on being invited for a Shabbat dinner.  Besides, Challah is freaking amazing.
• 
  
• ·         With the exception of the High Holy Days (the Jewish New Year) most Jewish holidays feel a lot less stressful. I’m sure a lot of it varies from family to family, but I have yet to meet a Jewish family that gets as crazy over Hanukkah as we non Jewish families get over Christmas and Easter.  Most Jewish families that I know take holidays way more in stride. It’s not a constant flow of bake this, cook this, take 16 days off for various celebrations, decorate the house from top to bottom… Hanukkah lasts for 8 crazy nights, but life goes on during those 8 nights.  In fact, lots of Jewish families celebrate the holidays by going somewhere tropical and I am so down with that!
• 
  
• ·         Challah is amazing (yes, I know that I have said this already.) Try it.
• 
  
• ·         Mitzvot.  I hope I spelled that right. That’s when you do something nice for someone.  It probably has a super deep meaning and I am probably oversimplifying it, but my own interpretation is that it’s like paying it forward.
• 
  
• ·         And last but not least, I can say Grace in Hebrew.  Top that.

There are a lot of other cool things that I got to experience by sending A to Jewish preschool. I’m glad that she got the diversity of being around a lot of kids who are growing up in a different culture and faith than her own.   I’m excited for her to start this new chapter in her life, and I’m super excited that I am not going to have to make a twice daily drive down 18 from 77 to Medina.  I might still cry when I pick her up today and drive out of that parking lot for the last time…But I’m taking a lot of memories and lessons along with me. 

How HGTV is Driving Home Sellers to Drink

House Hunters. Love It or List It. Curb Appeal. Flip or Flop. Clearly all pretty popular shows on HGTV.  HGTV, in case you actually have a life and don't watch as much TV as I do, is the home improvement channel. It's insanely popular, particularly among those looking to buy or sell a home. These shows teach you how to update and stage your home.  They are also causing me to chase my emergency anxiety pill with a half bottle of Voga every time someone comes to see our house. Now there is a survey out there somewhere that rates moving up there with marriage and divorce as being among the most stressful life events. And in my highly professional opinion, HGTV has done more to up the stress level of buying/selling a home than the 2008 crash ever could.

When my parents sold their first house in 1983, showing your house was easy.  You made sure the beds were made, the dishes were done, and that the lawn was mowed.  If you had kids the toys went in the toy box.  No big deal.  Since there was no internet or centralized showing service, you were lucky if you got a phone call ten minutes before a broker arrived with a client.  And guess what? Houses sold.

Today the expectations for the home seller is out of control.  First of all, you must pack up at least half of your belongings, if not more. You must remove all of your family photographs. You must box up all of your knicknacks. You must remove all of your kitchen items from the kitchen counter. And don't even think about putting these boxes in your basement or garage, because buyers will be looking at these! Your oven, microwave, and refrigerator must be spotless because buyers will look in these!  You must hide your hampers and dirty laundry but don't even think of putting them in closets, because prospective buyers will open those!

Basically HGTV has trained homebuyers to want to see houses that do not look lived in. Buyers today expect perfectly staged homes, completely spotless and neutral. Now don't get me wrong, I always prefer to see a house that is not lived in.  To me it's just uncomfortable to walk through someone's house, with all of their things there to see. (And even worse if the buyer hangs around!) But that's just house hunting. Cost of doing business, so to speak. People sometimes have to sell houses while they still live in them.  Deal with it and look past it and look at what is really important.

Now, there are four people still currently living in my home.  50% of them are under the age of 4. Trust me, I do absolutely everything I can to make sure that my house is clean and neat and in great shape for showings.  But to leave negative feedback on my house because I have a shelf full of board games in the basement storage room and tools in the garage is just absurd. I have stuff.  And I am not going to pay for a storage unit for my stuff so that my storage space in my house is empty.

I'm selling a house with two brand new bathrooms and a new kitchen.  It has a new roof, furnace and AC, and hot water tank.  It has new carpet and a new retaining wall. For Christ's sake people, look past the boxes of books and excess kitchen stuff that is neatly arranged on shelves in the basement. It seems like the people buying houses today would rather see empty open space than have the knowledge that they are going to be ten or twenty years away from making any significant repairs. And I blame that on Sabrina Soto!

People, these are houses.  And sometimes real people live in them. Don't make an already stressful situation worse. HGTV needs to stop encouraging the bar to be set so high. There is no reason that you should pack up your entire life just to sell your house.  There's a difference between having your house "show ready"  and "tv show ready."   This is reality, not reality tv.

For Better Living...

0 empty calories/processed foods
1 hour of exercise/reading
2 liters of water
3 cups of green tea/green juice
4 mental and stretch breaks
5 things you are grateful for 
6 am meditation
7 minutes of laughter
8 hours of sleep
9 thousand steps daily

I came across this countdown on Instagram the other day.  With a little bit of research, I traced it back to Brenda Strong, who is a yoga teacher, fertility expert, and actress, best known for portraying Mary Alice Young on Desperate Housewives.  It's a little self-help ish and a little New Agey, and I don't usually have much tolerance for such things. But this list, for some reason, kind of stood out to me and made me think.  It's been a stressful few weeks and it doesn't look like life is going to get much less stressful.  The main contributing factor is my stress is how so many things are out of my control right now.  I can't control certain things going on at work and I can't control how fast my house sells. But I can control me, and it seems like lately other things are controlling me, as opposed to me controlling me. This countdown (count up?) seems like a way that I can take back some control, and maybe make myself feel better in the process.

0 empty calories/processed foods 

I swear, I have the best of intentions with food.  I do.  I know what is good for me and what is not.  I also know that at 7:00 at night after a full day of work and an evening of taking care of my kids, food takes a backseat. It's way too easy to just eat a bowl of cereal or frozen french bread pizza.  Definitely something that I can plan better and work on this summer.

1 hour of exercise/reading

Easy.  I'm almost always on the treadmill first thing, and I love reading.  Just have to keep it up.

2 liters of water

I'm really good at drinking water at work.  Not so much when I get home and my 6:00 Diet Coke just sounds soooooooo good. Something else that needs improvement.

3 cups green tea/green juice

In an effort to get myself to stop drinking a pot of coffee every day, I had already started drinking green tea.  I'm not crazy, I still have my two cups of black coffee first thing, but I switched to tea after that.  Green juice is harder because this is Ohio and the only place I can find it is on Chagrin Boulevard and I refuse to go there. But I will look into it a little more and see if I can find a way to make it work.

4 mental and stretch breaks

Easy to do, hard to remember to do. Thankfully it is summer and if it ever stops raining I can grab a friend to take a lap around the parking lot a few times a day.

5 things you are grateful for

My family, my friends, the fact that I have a job, the fact that I have a house to sell, the fact that I have the means to purchase another one, and the weekly Farmers Market where I can buy non-processed healthy ish cookies.  Look, I found 6 things!

6am meditation

I was quite the yoga person for a long time and I will admit that I have never gotten the hang of meditation.  If I sat quietly on the floor with my eyes closed at 6 am I would fall asleep.  Couple that with the fact that I tend to get lost inside my own head if things are too quiet for too long.  However, I have a commute to and from work everyday, and that is time that I can use to kind of think and straighten myself out, or just listen to music and not think about anything.  I'm going to read up on meditation though, it might be something I just need to figure out.

7 minutes of laughter

That's why God invented Youtube.

8 hours of sleep

Um, I have children.  But I guess there are ways I can do better.  I can go to sleep earlier, I can keep working on the whole sleep training thing with the little guy.  Progress, not perfection right?

9 thousand steps daily

Time to fire up the FitBit.  I wonder if this is in addition to my hour of exercise.  I'm guilty of sometimes being really lazy for the rest of the day if I have a good morning workout. But I have children to chase and a house to take care of and co workers who are always up for a quick walk, so maybe it is just a matter of putting forth a little more effort into moving around.

It looked like there was a #10, but it was cut off from the image and Google has not helped me find it, so I guess this is where I leave you.  Like I said, this is a little self help ish.  But maybe I need a little bit of that now, more than I would like to admit. I'm glad I found this and it's nice to have a list to work from in order to work on myself a little bit.  And maybe I can help someone else find some inspiration too :)

Decision 2016

Now here is my disclaimer.  The following is my opinion based on my own personal knowledge and experiences. If you disagree with me, that's fine.  Everyone has to do what they feel is right for their own family, and I am in no way judging anyone for what they did/plan to do.

I attended a birthday party with Amelia on Saturday. It was the first time I have ever gone to one with her.  Between the baby and being sick, Bill has been the one on the birthday party circuit. I don't know the parents of the kids in her class and I hadn't met most of them before. Despite my original dread of having to go to one of those bouncy places, it actually wasn't so bad.  I had prepared myself for all kinds of drama and mayhem, but thankfully nothing happened.

What I had not prepared myself for was every parent asking me when A's birthday was, and what I was planning to do about kindergarten. I didn't give it much thought at first, and actually I thought what they meant was "Are you sending her somewhere else, or are you keeping her at Lippman?". Since we are planning on moving but I have no clue where, I just responded that we weren't sure, since we were shortly selling our house and there was quite a bit up in the air.

I did not realize, until maybe the fourth person had asked me, the real question.  The real question was would I be sending her off to kindergarten after the next year of preschool.  I was stumped.  Now, I am not an educator, I know almost nothing about the education system or how things work, and Amelia is my oldest child.  I thought that things still worked the way they did when I was a kid. You went to preschool when you were 3 and 4, and after you turned 5 you went to kindergarten. If you were too close to some cutoff line, which I thought I remembered as being in September, you had to wait.  Case closed.

Oh how wrong I am.  I can sent A to "Transitional Kindergarten".  This is a class sort of in limbo between preschool and kindergarten.  I can send her to kindergarten at Lippman for a year, then I can send her somewhere else for a year of kindergarten.  Yup, two years of kindergarten.  Or I can just keep her home for a year, getting bored out of her mind while Bill and I, who are utterly unqualified to do so, try to homeschool her in some sort of way.  I'm sure there are other options too, but this is just what I picked up from the parents that I talked to on Saturday.

Again, I am no educator. I am no expert in early childhood education or child development. But these kids are just starting to turn 4. Kids change a lot in a month, let alone a year.  How can  you make a decision like that so far in advance? Why should you have to? A kid who is a little behind today can catch up in a heartbeat.  I shall use my own child as an example. My daughter was probably the last person in her class to be potty trained.  It was a nightmare. Nothing we tried worked. I was convinced that she was behind developmentally and was considering bringing in the experts.  Until one day she just decided she was going to do it, and that was that.  Period. Done.  I think ultimately it was a combination of her just deciding she was ready, and peer pressure.

So what do I plan on doing? Honestly, I'm going to let her ride out her last year of preschool. I'm going to have her take the kindergarten readiness test, and talk to her teachers, and if they say she is ready for kindergarten I am sending the kid to kindergarten.  She is smart, she likes school, she likes being around other kids. She can count, she knows her letters, she recognizes certain words. She listens to directions and sits still when she is told to sit still. Where remains to be seen, but unless a professional advises me otherwise, at that time, I'm not holding her back.  But the real answer is, she's not even 4.  There is plenty of time for me to decide that. I have a lot of things to stress out about right now, and my kid's kindergarten plans are not among them.

It's A Small World After All. Or The House That Built Me. Or The Houses That Didn't.

We're getting ready to put our house on the market.  A little new carpet, a little new paint, and a horrifyingly expensive retaining wall are all that stand between us being able to sell the old homestead and look for something better.  Much thanks is owed to our good friend and realtor, Jess, who has been a help in so many ways.  She's really gone above and beyond, and we aren't even listed yet.  I was very happy to be able to help her a little bit last week, and like so many other random things, the experience got me thinking.

A week or so ago, Jess came by to take a good look at the house, make some staging suggestions, and discuss the pricing and listing.  We got to talking, and she mentioned a listing that she is going to have shortly in Seven Hills.  Naturally, since I grew up there, I asked her where the house was in Seven Hills.  And naturally, when she told me Pleasant Valley Road, I asked her to be more specific.  And when she told me, I realized that it was a house I was very familiar with! The previous owners' daughter had gone to grade school and high school with me, and I had been to the house many, many times.  Jess asked me if I knew anything about the house, which is a really neat turn of the century farmhouse. Unfortunately all that I could tell her was that the house and grounds were really cool, which was not particularly helpful.  It had been a few years since I had talked to her, but I offered to try and get in touch with my old friend and see what she could tell us about the house.

The email address that I had didn't seem to get through, but I asked around among our mutual grade school and high school friends and I was able to get in touch. It was really great to reconnect.   She could not have been more excited to share the extensive history of her childhood home, as well as all of the renovations that her parents had done to house.  She also told me how much she loved that house, how much the house meant to her, and asked if it would be possible to bring her husband and children to see it.

That gave me what my sister would call "the warm fuzzies." I'm not particularly attached to the house we live in right now.  The neighborhood maybe, but not the house.  We didn't pick it out together and though we renovated it top to bottom, it was a stressful, expensive process that caused a lot of arguing and a lot of very quiet nights. It ran way over budget and way over the timeline. And a lot of stupid things went wrong that weren't even in our renovation plans. (Though the buyer of the house is going to be blessed with a lovely new hot water tank, furnace, and air conditioner.) The finished product is beautiful, but to me it's still just a house and I'm not sad to part with it.

I'm not attached to any house that I've lived in.  My last few years of living in my first Akron home were painful and traumatic and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I still own it (thanks 2008) but I can't bear to be inside it.  I never cared for my childhood home in Seven Hills. That's nothing against my family, but the house itself just wasn't my style.  We moved to Seven Hills just before I started the first grade and I never really felt like I fit in there. Plus, it's been redone so many times that even though my parents still live there, it doesn't feel like the house I grew up in.  And I guess I was just too young to be attached to the house we lived in before that.

It's something to think about as we start seriously looking for our next house.  Do houses help shape who we are?  Is there something about them that is intangible, that can make a difference? Should I be looking at more than kitchens and dining rooms and whether or not there is wallpaper that I have to tear down? Do people build houses, or do houses, as Miranda Lambert says, build us?

Feel

I'm not a very openly emotional person.  I don't burst into tears when I fight with my husband.  I don't cry at movies and most of the time I don't even cry at funerals. Despite my tendency towards nostalgia, which many people would say indicates that  I am an emotional person, I tend to disagree.  When an intense emotional situation presents itself, I tend to think more along the lines of "What can I do here?" Most times, the answer is nothing.  And if there is nothing I can do, I move on.

That's not to say that I don't feel or get upset.  What I have always done in most emotionally intense circumstances is tell myself "Kate, you can be upset.  For one day." (Or hour or week, depending on the situation.)  A good example of this is a work conflict I had with someone a couple years back.  It escalated to the point that no matter what, there was nothing I could do to change the situation.  I could only change how I reacted to that situation. Basically what I did was I allowed myself that weekend to be angry, to hurt, to sort of let it all fester.  Monday morning I shut it off, blocked it out, and went out into the world like nothing happened.  I've done this kind of thing a lot throughout my life. But something happened yesterday that made me think that maybe this isn't the best way to handle the situation.

Another "emotional flaw" of mine (along with getting the giggles in serious situations and crying hysterically when I am angry at someone) is that on the rare occasion that the emotional floodgates open, it all comes out.  Kind of like on The Walking Dead, when the fence got weak at the prison and the zombies all pushed and pushed and knocked it over, flooding the yard.  On the rare day that it rains, it pours.

That happened yesterday.

I had a fantastic weekend in Orlando, which most of you know is my most favorite city in the world.  Through some bad planning, I was the last of our group to leave.  As the day wore on, I started to feel the letdown that happens whenever I leave Orlando.  I was on my way to Target with Tera (who lives there) and Dianna (who was staying the week, and had her family flying in just before I flew out.) Dianna glanced at me from the driver's seat and commented that I hadn't been this quiet in my whole life.  She asked if I was okay.  To which I replied, "Always am."  I started remembering all the times I had flown back to Ohio, leaving my sister behind.  As we unpacked groceries in her rented condo I was thinking how sad it was that we were all kind of trickling out of Orlando.  A bummer, but okay.

Then we drove to the airport, where I maintained my silence thinking about other things.  Before you all get appalled that I wasn't excited to get home to my kids, let me share that they weren't even going to be there.  They were snowed in at my sister in law's in Columbus.  So not only am I being separated from my favorite city, and leaving behind some of my favorite people, my own family isn't even going to be there when I get home.  Cue the tears, but I held them back.

When we got to the airport, I checked my bag and went with Tera and Dianna to meet her family.  Now, with the exception of my own family and a small handful of you Columbkille kids, no one has known me longer than Dianna and her family.  It was a happy reunion of hugs.  I was sad, but I was good. After they got their bags the goodbyes started, and I was okay until my 9 year old godson hugged me and asked, confused, "Where are you going?"Dianna jumped in and explained, freeing me to rush off to my gate in tears.

Thankfully Maureen was delayed getting out to Dulles, so she was able to more or less sort me out before she left. By this point all I want to do is get to my gate, get on the plane, and get home.  But that would have been too easy.  I had to fight my way through a pack of soccer hooligans and go through security a second time.  I forced myself to eat something so I wouldn't be starving when I got home and sat at my gate.  Remember what I said about my emotional floodgates? Here is where is really all went crazy.  I'm alone in the Orlando airport, appropriately upset, but then things that have absolutely nothing to do with the current situation start popping into my head and making things worse.

It's Lent.  During Lent in 1996, my grandmother died. A few days before I was going to show her my prom dress.  During Lent in 2005, my grandfather died, a few days before I was going to bring him pictures of my dog.  During Lent of 2007 my uncle died, before reading a very important letter from his daughter.  There were a few other things that popped into my head that are a little too personal to even write here, but they were losses and situations that tore me up inside. Think back to the beginning of this painfully long blog.  Are these things that still upset me because I only allowed myself to hurt from them for a few days? Is it impossible for the heart to heal from things like this if you put a time constraint on it?

Thankfully I got on the plane, and between my peanut M&Ms and my perky, Bible reading seatmate, I was able to pull it together.  I dug out my car, got myself home and swam through the snow into the house.  I fell into an exhausted sleep.

I'm not a mess right now, even after flooding my bathroom this morning. I feel pretty stable, compared to the hot mess I was yesterday, but as I was sitting in traffic this morning I decided that maybe the next time something happens that really hurts, breaks my heart or makes me really sad, I'm going to try feeling it all the way through.  Because if I don't lock it in a box after a weekend, maybe I don't ever have to worry about it breaking out and  ambushing me at Gate 110 of the Orlando airport.

Random Thoughts for a Friday

I was scrolling though Facebook this morning and came across a post that tagged a friend of mine.  I don't know the person that wrote the post and I don't know what his relationship is to my friend exactly, but it struck me as personal.  Deeply personal. Like "why the hell is he saying this on Facebook for the entire world to see?" personal. I'm surprised she allowed it, being one of the more quiet, private people that I know.  I don't get the feeling that he posted it with the intention of upsetting her, and I definitely think that he meant well, but damn.  If there was any question what he was feeling, we all have the answer now.

Controversy over what people post on Facebook is nothing new, it's been around as long as Facebook has existed.  My mom doesn't understand why my sister and I share pictures and my sister doesn't understand why I share my struggles with my children. (But believe me, someday she is going to be happy that there is a Lynette and a Dana and a Nicole and a Cheri and a Kelly to say, "Yeah, I totally get that!") What one person thinks is an intimate detail of their life might be common knowledge to someone else.  If you don't like someone's post, you always have the option of "hiding" it and if it truly offends you then you can report it. Post away, who am I to judge.

Facebook, when it's all said and done, is stupid.  I mean, it's fun a lot of the time.  I like pictures of kids being funny and seeing my friends on vacation and hearing about what is going on in their lives. It's neat to see what my grade school friends have grown up to become and to reconnect with my old roommates.   But when you stand back and look at it, it's silly.

But maybe some of the sharing isn't.  While I thought it was a little "TMI" to see the post that triggered this entire rambling, maybe the actual act of sharing isn't.  I hate not knowing things and if someone felt strongly about me, I would want to hear it from them.  Whether they thought I was an amazing friend, the most beautiful woman in the world, or a gigantic asshole, I would want to know.  Even though maybe we shouldn't be saying these things on Facebook for the entire world to hear,we should make sure that we tell people how we feel about them.

A few weeks back, somebody told me that they really enjoyed my Facebook posts.  That I made them smile at least twice a day.  I don't really try to make people laugh and I don't think that I am really that funny, but it made me feel good to hear that.  I felt appreciated.

We all know life is short, and nobody is guaranteed tomorrow.  I don't think very many people have ever wished that they hadn't told someone that they loved them.  Don't ever assume that someone knows what you think or how you feel. Whether you shout it from the mountaintops, send a PM, or call in an anonymous tip, let the important people in your life know that they matter to you.

Why Yes, You Can Do Jello Shots In a Bank

A chapter from my unpublished first book.  Enjoy :)

“What are you doing New Year’s…..Neeeewww Yeeeaarrss Eevvee…”  It was Friday morning, December 31.  That stupid old song had been playing in rotation on the Muzak since right after Thanksgiving.  Normally that would have put me in somewhat of a cranky mood.  My mood on this particular New Year’s Eve however, could not have been better.  The day had finally come, that our entire branch had been waiting for with bated breaths.

Yes, today was the day that our fearless leader, after 36 years, was finally retiring from Cardinal National Bank.  Lauren, as I mentioned earlier, was not exactly one of my most favorite people. And most of our office, while we did respect her, we did not particularly like her and were only too happy to see her off to a happy retirement in Naples, Florida.

It was a good day for other reasons too.  I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s.  Most New Year’s events in our area were prohibitively expensive once you figured in cover charges, hotels, and transportation.  Add to that the fact that I had no significant other, or even a non significant other whom I wished to kiss at midnight.  This year was going to be fun regardless however.  Newly married Avery and Max were throwing a party at their house and were expecting near 50 people.  The two of them, with the help of her contractor father, had taken their 1950s bungalow and retrofitted it to be a pretty amazing party house.  The finished basement had a complete bar that was fully stocked.  They had ample guest bedrooms, so driving home was not an issue.  And I had helped Avery put together a menu that ensured nobody was going to go hungry.  I was actually looking forward to the dreaded New Year’s Eve, and only had to get through a ten hour day at the bank before I could get there.

I’m not sure if it was something specific to the area, something in the water in Unionville that day, or if it was just a fluke, but that was the busiest morning I had ever seen in a bank branch.  I thought I had my schedule planned so that I would have more than enough coverage in the branch.  But even with me running a teller window, customers were lined up to the door.  I frantically cashed checks, ran deposits, and made payments alongside my teller staff all morning, while my “desk staff” chatted with each other, served Lauren’s retirement cake to customers, and basically sat back and enjoyed the confusion.  Adding to the crowd in the lobby were people who did not necessarily have business in the bank, but stopped by to wish Lauren the best in her retirement.  I thrive on chaos and enjoy being busy at work, but this was nuts.  It felt at times like there was money flying everywhere.

Fridays behind the teller line traditionally were myself, Dawn, and Audrey all day, and Lindsay and Christie for part of the day, alternating Fridays.  I got to the point that I was watching the clock, waiting for Christie to get there just to give us some relief. (And that’s saying something.  She was a sweet person, but the world’s slowest bank teller.)  When Christie finally arrived at 1 and got set up in her window, it was like someone locked the doors.  We had gone from the busiest day in the history of banking to the slowest day in the history of banking.  I started the rotation of lunch breaks, baled down all the teller drawers (a fascinating OCD project where you remove all excess cash from teller drawers and stash it in the main vault) and finally had my piece of retirement party cake.  Visitors for Lauren ambled in and out, but for the most part, the bank branch was dead.

You’d think someone who had worked for a company for 36 years would be somewhat emotional about leaving it.  But around 4:00 Lauren’s husband showed up with small buckets of homemade jello shots for everyone. (Apparently at one point in her career Lauren was fun.  She and her husband had thrown a Christmas party some years back, and a handful of my seasoned staff remembered Lauren’s skill at making jello shots).   He and Lauren distributed what she called her “parting gifts”, did one last sweep of her office for her personal stuff, and then she was gone.  And I was in charge.

Being in charge was something I was evidently not very good at.  Call it excitement for the holiday or excitement at being manager-less, but I decided it was time to live a little.  I cracked open my bucket of jello shots, pulled out a red one, and just went for it.

My staff looked on in what can only be described as awe.  We stood there in silence for a moment, in an empty-of-customers bank branch.  And I kind of decided what the hell.  I pulled a green shot out of my jello bucket, and downed that one as well.  At that point Christie spoke up.  “Does that mean I can bring out the champagne?”

“Excuse me?” I replied.  Christie struck me as the type that wouldn’t even drink champagne at her daughter’s wedding, let alone at work.  “There’s champagne??”

“I got some.  It’s a special occasion right? New Years, new start, no more Lauren….” she trailed off.

I paused a moment and took stock.  The branch was supposed to be open for another two hours.  We hadn’t had a customer walk in for almost 23 minutes. I had a ridiculous number of staff who had, for the most part, had a hell of a day, not to mention a hell of a year.  I made an executive decision.

“Christie, pour out the champagne, we are going to do a toast.  Then I am going to start sending everyone home.  We are going to lose one teller and one desk person every fifteen minutes til closing, by seniority,” I announced.

Again, I got somewhat blank looks from the staff. “You’re serious?” Dawn asked.

I smiled.

“Really?” asked Julie, already making her way towards her desk.

“Yes,” I replied. “This is dumb. There is no reason for everyone to just be standing around.  You guys have worked so hard and put up with so much.  We’re going to close this year out right.”

And that was exactly what we did.  Christie poured out glasses of cheap champagne, and we all toasted to the end of an era, the end of a year, and the turning over of a new leaf.  I started sending home the staff by seniority.  The occasional random customer filtered in, mainly through the drive up, to cash a check or make a quick deposit, but for the most part the branch was silent.  Finally it was a mere twenty minutes to closing, and the branch was deserted save me and Evan.  He sat in the lobby waiting area, flipping through this week’s Time magazine, while I sat on the customer service counter texting various random friends to see who was going to be coming to Avery’s party.

“Ev, go ahead and get out of here,” I said.  “If anyone comes in here in the next twenty minutes I doubt it’s going to be to refinance their mortgage.  You should go home.”

Evan looked up from his magazine.  “Yeah, I don’t think so,” he replied.

“Seriously.  No one is going to know.  The cops are going to drive by at 6:15 anyway just to make sure we all closed up okay.  Go home,” I insisted.  It’s actually a huge violation of bank policy to have a single employee alone in a branch at any time, let alone closing.  But this was Unionville.  The town only has two traffic lights. “I’m sure you have something awesome to do tonight that you can get a head start on.”

“Not really.  I’m just going to hang out with my girlfriend.  Maybe go to a hotel or something,” Evan replied, unintentionally reminding me that he still lived in his parents’ basement and his girlfriend still lived like she was in college, in a crumbling duplex with four roommates just off campus.

“Evan, really.  You don’t have to stay here.  I’m probably going to shut it down in ten minutes anyways.”

“Then you can shut it down with me here,” he shot back.  And then, he looked at me.  I mean really looked at me.  Straight into my eyes with those huge blue eyes of his.

And right then, that very second, something changed.  I don’t know what and I don’t know how.  Maybe something in the stars or the cosmos or something like that.  Jupiter in line with Saturn, blah blah.  That split second, that moment…The course of events forever changed that New Year’s Eve.

Or maybe it didn’t.  Maybe I was tired. Maybe I'm making excuses.  Maybe it was my imagination.  Maybe it was boredom.  We closed up the bank that Friday night and went to our respective homes.  I don’t know what he did after that.  I went to my best friend’s house.  I drank too much raspberry Stoli and ate too much pizza.  I toasted the New Year with cheap champagne and the guys that worked at the Coke plant.  I spent the night in Avery’s tastefully decorated guest room.  But something nagged at me that night, in the back of my mind where only I could hear, where only I could understand.   Something had changed inside of me that day, underneath my Juicy Couture hoodie and overpriced designer jeans.  At least for me, something was different.

And that’s all I have to say about New Year’s Eve 2004. 

My Bubble

I’ve done a lot of stuff.  I’ve been to New York City to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’ve been backstage at EPCOT.  I’ve been on the Warner Brothers movie lot.  (Not on the regular tour, mind you.  I had credentials and ate in the commissary and got to stand in the soundstage where they filmed the pirate ship scene in Goonies, just sayin’.) But today I am going to share one thing that I have never done.

I (pause for dramatic effect) have never been high.

That’s right kids. I have never smoked pot.  I have never done a line of cocaine.  I’ve never taken Ecstasy.  I’ve never even taken too many pain pills and gotten a buzz.

I’d never given much thought to it until the other day, when I saw a Dateline rerun about drugs running rampant through college campuses. I remembered the first time that I saw that particular episode. It was in a hotel room in Pittsburgh.  A friend, whom I shall call Suzette, and I had driven in the night before to attend a concert and spent the night after at the Marriott downtown.  We were getting dressed and ready to leave and head home. (Okay, we were going to IKEA.  But focus.) Because she and I must always have background noise, we had the TV on and were listening to Chris Hansen give his special report about hard drugs being everywhere on college campuses.  Suzette put down her mascara wand, looked at me, and said “Why weren't we offered any?”

She said it sarcastically, but it apparently stuck in my head somewhere underneath Net Present Value and The War of 1812.  I thought of Suzette’s words the other night and thought to myself, “Yeah.  Why weren't we?”

Because the fact that I have never been high is not the result of triumphantly and defiantly “Just Saying No.” Not only have I never been high, I have never found myself in a situation where doing illegal drugs was even an option.  I have never stood up for myself and walked out of a party due to my principles. I've never had to.  And truthfully I don’t know that I would have done that.  I’m destructive when I’m bored and I have an addictive personality.  And I love, really love, to have a good time.

But now I’m wondering, is my situation that unique?  According to Dateline, it is.  How did I manage this?

One could make the argument that the opportunity just never presented itself. The neighborhood I grew up in was nice, but bad things happen in nice neighborhoods all the time.  Did my neighborhood just not have troublemakers for me to be influenced by? I didn't like high school and I didn't have a lot of friends there, so was it just my exposure to a very small, limited group of people that prevented me from ever finding myself in a bad situation?

Maybe, but fast forward to college.  I knew how to have a good time.  I went out. I drank, both underage and once I was of age. I went to fraternity parties. During breaks I went out in Cleveland, first in the Flats and then later to the Warehouse District. My weekends started on Wednesday night and a lot of times didn't end until Chapter on Sunday night.  Still no drugs.

Fast forward a few years more, and now I’m a banker. According to Wolf of Wall Street and Margin Call, the financial industry is full of drugs. If that is in fact true, I never saw any of it. My early to middle 20’s were just like college.  The fact that my liver survived my time at Bank One is shocking. Weekends started on Wednesday and ended after Desperate Housewives on Sunday night.   There was a lot of shady stuff in the banking industry back then, but none of it involved drugs.

Life settled down for me a bit after 30. But I’m still a social butterfly. I jump at almost any opportunity to go out and do something fun.  And I know a lot of people and I've made a lot of new friends over the years. I've traveled a lot and seen a lot of places. Party at Tao Las Vegas?  Bottle service and bachelors, but no drugs. Hollywood Boulevard? Things you can't un-see, but still no drugs.

It makes me wonder then. I've been in so many situations where I should have come across drugs, and I didn't.  I can’t explain to you why. I can only say that it has been a really good thing.  I have some social anxiety issues and mediocre confidence, the kind of thing that is quickly remedied by a glass of wine. I don’t want to think about what could have happened if I had access to something stronger. Has it been luck? Always being surrounded by good people, even if I’m not in the best places? Some kind of divine intervention? Regardless of the reason, I've been fortunate enough to be shielded from something that destroys so many lives.

And for that, I’ll be grateful.

Sometimes You Can't Go Back

"I think there is a twinge of Nostalgia to be felt when places are visited even if they do not have  a link to someone who has died.  I have been contemplating if Nostalgia is a bitch.  Maybe she’s not.  Maybe she’s just doing her job, re-connecting us to places that meant something….or mean something.  I think we’ll hang out some more.  Can’t help but not."

Possibly my favorite quote.  It comes from my cousin Laura, who spent this past summer on a "vision quest" of sorts, in memory of her late father.  In a nutshell, she spent a month kayaking the Lake Erie Islands, revisiting places that she had visited with him.  The intent of the trip was to basically to make peace, and find herself some closure. 

I found myself wondering last night, "What happens if you can't do that?"

The Parma Theater was torn down yesterday.  For anyone who might not know, it was an old, freestanding movie theater in an older part of Parma (which, for my out of state friends, is a suburb of Cleveland.) For as long as I can remember it ran second run movies.  It wasn't really in my end of town and I'm not sure that I was ever there more than a half dozen times, even growing up with my movie-obsessed mother.  However, my best friend's grandparents lived a few blocks over, and from the age of 14 on she lived even closer. On top of multiple trips with her mother and grandmother as a child she went almost every day during her teenage summers.  It was a place that meant a lot to her, for family reasons, and possibly other reasons that I won't speculate about here.  She's such a dear friend, and as Rob Thomas says in his song "Diamonds", if she feels bad then I do too.  She'll never spend another summer afternoon there just to get away. She'll never get to take her daughter.

There are places about which I feel similar.  Geauga Lake, for example. I went to that small (by comparison) amusement park multiple times during my childhood summers, along with trips to Sea World across the lake. With my grandparents, my parents, my sister, and the above mentioned cousin. When I was older I went with my friends. Granted I never gave much thought to it at the time, but it never crossed my mind that I would not be able to take my own children. I wasn't in the area when it closed and the memories of my last trip are not so great, but during the 5 years that my work commute took me past the sorry remains of that park my heart just ached.   There's a hot debate right now over what to do with what's left of the property, but I honestly would be happy with anything as long as it meant I did not have to see it the way it is today.  Much like the Parma Theater, I'll never spend another summer afternoon waiting in line for the Big Dipper or show my daughter my first roller coaster. (The Double Loop, if you care.)

Sometimes it's not just a place that's special, but the people that experience it with you.  I posted to Facebook one morning that I had calmed a fussy child by singing the theme song to "The Beverly Hillbillies" and blamed sixth grade.  I had a sixth grade teacher whose version of music class was teaching us theme songs from old TV shows and commercials.  That Facebook post lead to about 50 comments from my classmates, sharing our memories of that class (seriously, how did he get away with some of that stuff?), the teacher, and other things we remembered from grade school.  That might not seem like much, but when work is giving you anxiety attacks, your kids aren't cooperating, and your spouse is gone for the third night in a row, a day spent sharing memories on Facebook can be just what you need.

Sadly though, sometimes the people are gone too.  I spent my summer weekends (and a lot of time in between) up at the lake. I have tons of great memories with my sister and cousins and aunt and uncle. But the last four or five summers are what I remember the most.  I met a guy up there who was a couple years older than I was, but we became fast friends nonetheless. We'd hang out my the pool, he'd take me to the beach, we'd sit on my parents' boat after dark and drink beer. Sometimes he'd have other friends with him too, and it was really some of the most fun ever. Now to clarify, he was at Ohio State already by the time we became friends. I was 15.  As a parent today I am not sure I'd be down with my 15 year old daughter hanging out with a college guy all summer, but my parents had no problem with it.  And they had absolutely no reason to, because over all that time, he never once behaved even slightly inappropriately. (And no, he wasn't gay.) 

There are certain things in life that you don't appreciate until you are older. And this guy was exactly that. You really don't appreciate a good guy until you get out there and see a lot of bad ones. It really wasn't until my late 20's, when I had had the misfortune of several affairs and relationships with some truly horrible people that I realized what gem my lake friend really was. Twenty one year old Kate had no idea that with men he was the exception, not the rule. (I'm not saying the only exception by any means, but an exception nonetheless.) I've never been able to tell him this, unfortunately. My parents sold the lake place in 1999, and I moved, and we lost touch.  Despite modern technology, and social media, and google, I've not been able to track him down. (Add an overly common name to the mix and there is really no hope.) I'm not saying that I wish we had ridden off into the sunset. But I would love to be able to tell him what a great person he is, and that with what I know now it means a lot that he never tried to take advantage of the situation.

I've rambled on, and I'm not sure ultimately how to end this. Maybe it is that we should really take the time to appreciate what we have and the people in our lives. (Though we all know this.) Maybe it's that when life kicks you in the head and you're about to jump off a cliff we should take the time to remember, to share those memories, and that doing that will help move us back into a better place.  Maybe it's that these connections to places and things are a part of what it's all about, what makes life worth living. Maybe a little bit of everything.  Sometimes you just can't go back. But maybe sometimes the memories are enough. 

Reality Check

This may not be a popular post.  I'm well aware of that. But I have to vent and it's my blog, so here goes.

I am sick to death of all the high and mighty mommy bloggers out there publishing articles in the Huffington Post about how they "love their children too much" to let them use the iPad. They write poignant letters to their children, explaining how the "quality time" they spend in the doctor's office waiting room will serve to shape their entire future, or some BS like that.  These are probably the same moms that enforce the "30 Minutes or Less" of TV rule, and would rather let their child trash a booth at a restaurant instead of letting them watch an episode of Peppa Pig.

I think this is absurd.

Maybe this works if you have one of those peaceful children who is perfectly content to draw for an hour on the same placemat with three crayons.  Or is happy to thumb through board books. But I am willing to bet most people don't have that child.  I sure don't.  And I don't think it is fair to expect preschoolers to sit quietly at the doctor's office/restaurant/in an airplane with nothing to entertain them.  Have you seen the attention span of a four year old?

My daughter is an iPad addict. She loves YouTube, Minnie's Bowmaker, and Elmo's ABCs. If you let her, she will sit and play with it for hours. She doesn't, because I don't let her.  When she is at home, she has piles of toys and books and random non toy objects (like boxes from Amazon) to keep herself entertained.  She can run through my dining room and crawl through her tent. However, there are times, usually when she is tired, that her own stuff just isn't cutting it. Have you seen a severely bored preschooler? Especially in a part of the country where the weather is bad almost more than it is nice?

My child is important, but she is not my only responsibility. She has a sibling, and I am home alone a lot. When I have exhausted all other options and it is only 3:00 on a rainy Saturday, and I have ten loads of laundry to fold, it's time for a marathon of Chip and Dale.   (Go ahead and chime in and tell me that laundry can wait, my children will not be small forever.  I will then ask you to go to Target and get me a new crib sheet, because all my crib sheets are covered in baby spitup and if you put a baby to sleep on any surface other than a crib mattress with a snug fitting crib sheet you are an  irresponsible parent..)

 When we go out for dinner with friends I refuse to be that parent who lets their kid run like crazy through the restaurant disrupting our dinner and everyone else's.  My daughter sits quietly watching a video clip or playing a game, usually with the children of the friends we are with. And people have the nerve to judge? These are probably the same people who make snide comments at the parents of vocal toddlers.

Someone is chiming in right now that the children should learn to "interact" and "talk".  News flash.  When I go out to eat, I am not going out to talk to my child. I can talk to my child at home in my yoga pants.  Babysitters are hard to find and expensive.  When I go out to dinner, I am going out to socialize with other adults. I'm willing to do what it takes to keep my child occupied so I can have an hour of adult conversation to save my sanity.

If I am not being judged by uppity moms who believe that electronics will destroy their child's life, I am being judged by people of my parents' generation.  They love to remind me that THEY went out to dinner with kids and didn't stick them in front of the iPad, because, you know, such things didn't exist.  You know what else didn't exist back when you were raising kids?? Power windows.  Hand sanitizer.  Cable. I'm pretty sure we didn't have car seats. (or at least car seats that you had to put kids in until they were 21. But that's another post.)   I'm sure you see where I am going here. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests limiting television and electronic devices to 30 minutes a day.  I would like to know what time to expect the representative from the American Academy of Pediatrics who will watch my child while I feed her infant sibling. Or make dinner. Even my pediatrician herself calls BS on this advice.

I don't give my daughter the iPad or turn on the TV so that I can drink wine and play on Pinterest. I give her the iPad so I can have an hour to spend talking to adults over a burger, or care for my other child, or lay on the couch recovering from a migraine headache. Why you are letting them use it is far more important than how long.

My daughter is bright.  She is happy. She goes to preschool, gets along well with her friends, and is learning new things every day. She interacts well with adults. She loves to play outside on the swings and in her sandbox.  She is always excited to go visiting friends. She is also allowed to use the iPad.

So back off.

Exploring an Obsession

It's pretty well known that I have an addiction to Youtube. It's probably my number one time waster. Music videos, holiday specials, Wings (all seasons are available) gag reels..You name it, I will waste time watching it on YouTube. Earlier this week, I spent some time searching for a Today show segment that I had seen while I was home on maternity leave. While I was looking for the demonstration of how to make crab carbonara, I stumbled across something infinitely more interesting.

If you do a search of The Today Show on Youtube, you will find, in ten minute pieces, most of the broadcast from September 11, 2001. The beginning of the show (discussing Michael Jordan), the shots of people assembled on the Plaza, and the interview that Matt Lauer was doing at 8:46, and the interruption of that interview at 8:51 when he first mentions a problem downtown. (In case you are wondering, he's interviewing some guy who wrote a book on Howard Hughes) I spent the majority of my child's afternoon nap watching video after video from that day. Having been working three stories below Cascade Plaza in a currency vault when the incidents actually occurred, I had never seen any of this before. Documentary after documentary sure, but never the actual coverage as it happened.

I'm moderately obsessed with 9/11, particularly the World Trade Center. I've watched all the documentaries and every year read every article that runs in the New York Post. To be frank, this obsession bothers me. I'm a normal, well adjusted person, I should not be so interested in one of the biggest tragedies our country has ever seen. So after spending an entire afternoon watching "live" coverage of the day from New York, I had to stop and wonder what might be wrong with me.

My conclusion is nothing. I think the reason I am so interested is that the majority of the people who died that day were doing the same things I do every day. They commuted from a suburb and paused downstairs for coffee. They went to their desks and checked the futures on CNBC. They answered emails and returned phone calls. When the first plane hit, was a MetLife staffer on hold trying to find accumulated cash values of a VUL policy? Was a Cantor Fitz associate trying to track down a missing trade blotter? I don't think I am so much obsessed with these unfortunate people as that I identify with them. Safety forces around the country cried at the loss of their firefighter and police brethren, it is only normal that I feel the same towards my trader/ broker/administrator brethren.

I feel better now that I have sorted this out. And will feel much better if someone manages to get into my Youtube account!

Vegetables

I'm not a foodie. My tastes are simple, and if I am feeding just myself, I'm way more likely to hit West Point Market or have a bowl of cereal for dinner rather than cook. Single Kate...well, let's just say my dinners were not something I would ever admit to..

Then I got married. My husband, though a firefighter by trade, has a true passion with food and cooking. He takes notes watching the Food channel and has stacks and stacks of cookbooks. Half the kitchen stuff on our wedding registry I couldn't even identify. When my sister in law walked into my baby shower with three big boxes wrapped in Williams-Sonoma paper (it was a baby food maker by the way) my cousin turned to me and whispered "That's the kind of paper that Bill's stuff comes in...."

Food can be a battle in our house. I do not see the point in making tortillas from scratch when you can buy them at Acme. I don't think salad needs red onions to be appealing and I do not like my meat to be oozing blood when I cut into it. The biggest struggle in our house, however, has been the vegetables.

Food in my house growing up was not a battle at all. My parents are the type to pick their battles. If we got good grades, behaved in church, were polite to adults, and were home on time, they really didn't care what we ate. Since my sister and I were as healthy as they come, the fact that we skipped any vegetable besides corn was easily overlooked by mom and dad.

Eventually my husband kind of gave up and ignored the fact that I wouldn't touch his brussel sprouts with hollandaise. My friends nodded knowingly every New Year's Eve when I would resolve to eat more vegetables. But my hate-hate relationship with vegetables was about to come to a sudden halt.

My sister in law, God love her, is the poster child for healthy eating. If I could eat like she does, I would never have to spend another minute on a treadmill or worry about whether or not my pants fit. One evening at dinner, I found myself in front of a bowl of fresh steamed green beans. (haricots verts to you foodies.) And suddenly something inside me switched on. Almost without thinking about it, I helped myself to the green beans and to the utter amazement of my spouse (who kindly did not make a thing about it) I ate them.

And I enjoyed them. Those green beans were the gateway to vegetable harmony. Broccoli followed, as did cauliflower (yum with curry) peas ( I honestly think they taste just like corn) spinach (fab with a vinegarette) asparagus (amazing with olive oil and garlic)....the list goes on. I was shocked by my new liking of veggies in almost any shape and form, even the dreaded brussels sprouts!

Which leads me to wonder why I ever had this problem to begin with. I have thought about it at length and have traced it back to the early 1980's. Think with me, friends, to the dinners of our childhoods. The chicken made with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, the boxed Au Gratin potatoes, and the green beans. The green beans that went "slluurrpppp" out of a can into a saucepan on the stove, and then were served soggy and mushy and room temperature. Now, I am certainly not blaming my mom or any of the women of the 1980s who fell victim to mass marketing and convenience. After all, these women had to cook and provide a dinner around 4 different schedules. But compare the canned green beans of 1980 to the fresh, crisp steamed beans of 2010. Which, knowing my sister in law, were probably purchased no more than a day or so earlier at one of the local Farmer's Markets. Can you blame me, or any person of a certain age, for not wanting to eat their vegetables?

Not convinced? Think of the aforementioned chicken dish (if you are a child of the 80's, I know your mother made it...) If there were additional mushrooms added besides the ones in the can of condensed soup, they were probably slimy and from a can that might have been in a pantry for months. Now I am certainly not suggesting you go out in the woods and pick your own mushrooms, but fresh (even fresh ish) mushrooms from the local grocery store would be more appealing than the mushrooms of your childhood.

I can go on... Carrots? Cooked carrots that made from a can or thawed from a bag are smelly and squishy. Cooked carrots bought raw and steamed stovetop? More than tolerable. Frozen broccoli? Blah. Sauteed broccolini? Amazing.

So I ask you, fellow children of the 1970s and 1980s.... As my husband's idol Alton Brown says "Give peas a chance.." (haha) I'm by no means a perfect vegetable eater. I still run screaming from peppers and onions and my beet experience still gives me nightmares. But if you are a 30 something who still won't eat your vegetables, find someone who eats enough for all of us and have some of what she's having. You might be glad you did. They aren't what you remember, I promise. :)

Death to Food Day

It’s rapidly becoming one of the most dreaded office events in America, right alongside school band candy sales and sexual harassment awareness training. It takes up our free time. It smells up the building and destroys diets. It aggravates a huge number of people, yet no one ever wants to be the one to stand up and put a stop to it.

Yes, it’s the Office Food Day. Now, I am not referring to the bagels brought in by a grateful client or the cake brought in for birthdays. Office Food Day is way more complicated than that. Near as I can tell, Office Food Day originated in the early 80’s, when potluck dinners were all the rage. More wives and mothers were transitioning to the workplace, and in order to ease that transition, brought the concept of bringing covered dishes and baked goods away from the block party and into the office. I mean, look at the days portrayed in the TV show “Mad Men.” Back in the 50’s and 60’s, you didn’t see men in suits and unmarried secretaries saying “Hey, it’s Barb’s last day. Let’s all bring in baked beans and taco dip to see her off.” That kind of thing was reserved strictly for family gatherings like birthday parties and graduations.

As time went on and more women went back to work in the 70’s and 80’s, the habit of potluck hit offices full steam. The smallest occasion was cause for one of these events, whether they were in back rooms of bank branches or the lunch rooms of corporate offices. And I get it, I really do. It was what women of this time knew, so it’s what they brought with them. I don’t blame them for hauling the crock pot into work in order to share their secret family recipe or taking up precious office fridge space for homemade pasta salad. What I don’t understand is how and why this tradition has been able to continue through the 90’s and the millennium. But in order to analyze this more closely, we need to take a closer look at the modern Office Food Day. There are several fundamentals that Office Food Days have in common.

1. The Organizer – This is almost always a woman in her mid to late 40’s or early 50’s. She is usually an administrative person (management having no time for this sort of thing) and is generally someone who stayed home with her kids until they went to school. Said kids are often out of the house and on their own, or at the very least coming to the end of their high school careers. This explains The Organizer’s conditioned need to plan some sort of event, and the free time to do so.

2. The Event – Pretty much anything will do if The Organizer sets her mind to it. Someone’s last day, a promotion, a merger, a Wednesday..Any event, or no event, can be turned into an Office Food Day.

3. The Contributors – These are the people who are drinking The Organizer’s Kool Aid. They will assemble a dish and be absolutely elated at trying everyone else’s recipes. Contributors are generally in the same age bracket and demographic as the Organizer, but lack the initiative to start a Food Day themselves. You have to keep an eye on Contributors as they have the potential to turn into Organizers.

4. The Followers – The 20 and 30 somethings who don’t get what all the fuss is about. Followers are thoroughly annoyed by the whole thing, but don’t let anyone except fellow Followers onto that fact. Followers will pick up a giant cookie from the grocery store or volunteer to bring in plates and disappear 20 minutes into the event, choosing instead to update their Facebook statuses or read People.com at their desks.

5. The Location – This depends on the type of office in question. Preferably, Office Food Day takes place in a lunchroom. This is a problem, because anyone choosing not to participate must then adjust their schedules so as not to need coffee or the microwave during the event. However, the alternative is to reserve a conference room for the event (if available). This is even worse, particularly for anyone who needs the conference room in the near future, as Food Day causes a range of aromas that circulate through the entire floor, yet are most concentrated at the point of origin. Also, someone must be in charge of cleaning up after Food Day, as office cleaning staff is generally incapable of doing anything more labor intensive than vacuuming the carpets and taking out the trash. And for some reason, The Organizer suddenly becomes swamped with work as soon as the event is over, rendering her incapable of handling cleanup.

6. The Sign Up Sheet - This begins circulating a week or so before the event. The point is to ensure that you do not have four taco dips and no chips. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. There are pros and cons to the sign up sheet. Pro, ideally it guarantees a variety of fascinating dishes for everyone to share. Con, you are committed to making/bringing whatever it is that you indicate on the sign up sheet. Heaven help you if you sign up to make brownies and end up bringing chip dip. There is no flexibility with the sign up sheet, so one must think hard and choose wisely when committing to a dish.

Once these components are present, you have the makings of your traditional Office Food Day. The day begins with the influx of crock pots, Pyrex dishes in insulated carrying cases, and Tupperware. Setup begins for The Organizer around 11, who has been excused for lunch an hour early. This is also when the complex intermingling smells start coming from The Location. Usually it’s a mix of Mexican from the always present taco dip and some type of salad dressing that was spilled during the preparation. The smell that permeates throughout the office will linger for the rest of the week.

Office Food Day begins at noon. The crowds filter in and the spread is examined. Now comes the challenging task of making a meal out of salads, dips, and desserts. Nothing present is ever even remotely healthy. The closest that might pass as healthy food is a veggie tray, the freshness of which is questionable and is always accompanied by a ranch dip concoction. Chances are, the only edible food is the least healthy and will leave staff groggy and in a food coma for the rest of the day. The Organizer and Contributors will sit together and talk about their recipes and tell everyone how wonderful everyone’s food is, regardless of whether or not they actually like it. The Followers will mingle briefly before disappearing back to their offices or ditching Food Day for the Winking Lizard.

So why, you might ask, is Office Food Day so annoying? Well, I can only speak for myself. I probably fall into the Follower category. That being the case, you might wonder why. The first thing that bothers me about Food Day is that I don’t cook. I can, but I don’t like to. If it’s my night to make dinner, my family is getting Shake n Bake chicken and baked potatoes. So having to actually prepare something for Food Day is torture. Going along with this is the fact that it takes up time. When I get home from work at night, my time is mine and my family’s. I do not want to have to use precious quality time making food to be enjoyed by a lot of people I only halfway like. If I am going to spend a tremendous amount of time cooking, I want it to be for my closest friends and family. And my fellow Followers pretty much feel that same way. Food Day takes up time at work as well. I would much rather take a shorter lunch, or work through lunch altogether, and call it a day earlier. Food Day turns a standard lunch into an event lasting several hours, and that is aggravating as well.

Food Day is also a pain because of the food itself. Quite frankly, most of it is nasty. A good lunch for me is light and healthy and keeps me full until dinner. It is NOT empty calories, high carb and responsible for sending me into a food coma. You can call me a picky eater, but I would much rather have my standard turkey sandwich and pretzels over any of the standard Food Day dishes. For anyone who is watching their weight or just doesn’t care for junk food, Food Day is nothing less than sabotage.

Finally, Food Day disrupts a routine. I don’t like to be distracted at work. I like to get in, do my job, and leave. I don’t really consider myself to be antisocial, but I really believe that work is for work and that is all there is too it. My job does not define me, so I like to get through it as quickly and seamlessly as possibly every day. And as anyone who has ever attended Office Food Day will tell you, everyone is essentially useless afterwards.

So why not just not participate? If it bothers me so much, why do I still go? Well, it becomes a case of not wanting to be the only one against it. Also, being seen as being against Food Day can be seen as being against The Organizer and The Contributors. And you have to feel bad for them if they are so excited by something like this. It’s the high point of their day, of their week, of their month. Food Day Organizers and Contributors usually don’t feel needed outside of work, so allowing them to plan these types of events makes them feel a sense of purpose. Nobody really wants to feel responsible for taking this away from them.

The only answer then, it seems, is to just suck it up and deal with it. Eventually, the Food Day fans will retire. The newer generation of office employees is far more likely to be composed of Followers than Contributors and Organizers. It will only be a matter of time until Office Food Day is a thing of the past. No longer will we be subjected to Crock Pots and bad dip and crackers and cole slaw. At least we can hope……

Youtube, Christmas, and Me

There are a lot of people that tell me that I am a nostalgic person. I don't necessarily see it. And I don't see myself as someone who necessarily wanted to hold on to her childhood. I was always eager to grow up. Its one of my fatal flaws actually. I tend to focus on the destination a lot more than the journey itself. I spent grade school planning for high school, high school planning for college, college planning for life... I sadly was never much of one for living in the moment and appreciating it.

I've slowed myself down some and I find, especially at certain times of the year, reflecting more and more on the past. I find myself thinking about grade school art projects and how completely inept I was at them. I can remember, on a cold evening like yesterday, the smell and feel of the cold coming through the window in my fifth grade classroom. Despite the fact that we have a tree filled with ornaments from my grown up travels and our grown up moments together, I refuse to let Bill throw away the box of old, falling apart Christmas tree ornaments that were on my childhood Christmas tree. I shy away from church at St. Hilary's, which prides itself on a vibrant, modern Catholic service, in favor of St. Sebastian's, an older church that still uses the hymns that I learned in the first grade.

But my most sentimental moments come from holiday specials. And thanks to Youtube, I get to relive some of the most simple yet most important memories of high school. There is not a single holiday special from the 70's and 80's that cannot be found on Youtube if you look hard enough. I know that by watching them I am probably contributing to delinquency in some way. I mean, you are not supposed to publish copyrighted material, and I am pretty sure that Frosty the Snowman and the Grinch fall into that category. I have gone so far as to make myself a holiday playlist of every special I can find, even the more hard to find shows, like Yogi's First Christmas and Twas the Night Before Christmas. (Remember the victorian mouse that destroyed the clock?) Everyone stop to watch Rudolph if they happen to catch it on TV. But I am positively obsessed with these. I actually listen to them during the day at work!

What is it that makes these holiday classics so special to me? I can't really explain it. Maybe its how when we were growing up, and you didn't have a DVR to record Charlie Brown while you watched Family Ties. The evening stopped, and you dropped whatever you were doing to watch Charlie Brown direct the Christmas play. It was a really big deal! We made popcorn and a fire in the fireplace, and every year were sure never to miss a single special. Maybe it reminds me of a simpler time, when my biggest concern was one of those pop quizzes that we used to have in Reading or whether or not I was getting a grip on long division. Maybe it wasn't just that my life was simpler, but that the world was simpler as well. Not that I don't love the conveniences of today, but I never tore the house apart looking for our telephone (it was on the wall in the kitchen) or my iPod (the music player was the size of a mini fridge and you couldn't miss it.)

If my obsession with holiday tv makes me nostalgic, then I guess I am. I can't definitively explain why I watch these shows over and over again. I just know that they are still as much a part of holidays today as they were twenty years ago. And I think they still will be in twenty more years. Thanks to Youtube, I can listen to my holiday favorites any time I want, whether I am analyzing a portfolio (can't work without background noise you know!) , working on my book, or knitting in front of the Christmas tree. I can indulge my holiday craving for Muppets singing around the fireplace whenever I want. And I can remember the Christmases of days gone by, of the safety and security of childhood, and the carefree feeling of being a kid.