Sassafrass

When just relaxing requires a major renovation

After a few days of blerghy-dramatic dizziness and migraines, I took the weekend to do what I am always telling other people to do (sigh, why is that so challenging, to be as bossy to myself as I am to my grrrlfriends?). I relaxed.

This time, relaxing didn't include unpacking eighteen boxes or stopping at three grocery stores and Target in an effort to cram as much into my down time as possible. This time, relaxing included sleeping in the middle of the day, eating take-out, camping out on the floor to watch a movie, sleeping in and then topping it off with actually taking a nap while Lil E slept.

This weekend, I tried to listen to what my body was telling me: Too little sleep, too little food, too little time away from the laptop, too little fresh air, too little transition time between work and everything else is not good.

My body, as I have learned the hard way over the years and much more experience with blerghy-dramatic dizziness and migraines, screams out at me when it needs my attention.

Clearly, when my body's that worn, my spirit and mind are exhausted as well. In that place, the relaxing is not a luxury, it is a necessary repair. While thinking of my being as plumbing or ducts or some kind of dilapidated kitchen constructed in the (previous) avocado era isn't exactly pleasing or in line with that whole temple connotation, the sad truth is that I have been more likely to give my attention and energy to a spouting sink or blinking fluorescent light long before I would take a breather in the middle of my day or trash the to-do list for a weekend.

I know this isn't anything radical and that many mamas out there have the same struggles with self-care. How do we not only lose the time and inclination to take good care of ourselves, but the understanding of where to even start?

This weekend, I started with the basics. And this week, I am going to make those basics more of a habit.

You tell me: What do you do when your body is screaming for more self-care? How do take the time to tend to all that needs to be repaired in your being?

Remember Project: Life Change? Have any of those small changes made a big difference in how you are caring for yourself these days?

 

   

Postcards from the past few days

We're taking this weekend to settle in. While Lil E plays at "Daddy's park," I'll be hitting the blocks-long garage sales in the new neighborhood, making a Target run and spending time with people who don't (normally) engage in bathroom talk 80% of the conversation. Here are a few photos to catch you up on a wonderful and very full week of transition and adventures.

The potted flowering plant Lil E was so thrilled to give me bright and early on Mother's Day morning. He picked it out, he said, because it is "our favorite color!" You've got to adore a boy who can embrace pink so vivaciously.

Walking with Grandma and Grandma Alice through the halls of her nursing home to check in on some baby chicks who hatched a few weeks ago. Grandma Alice will be 100 this summer and although Lil E has never known the feisty, smart lady she is under the veil of Alzheimer's, they have always had an unspeakable, powerful, instinctual connection. You can feel it emanating between them as they hold hands, sing and smile at each other. 

(More pics after the jump)

Grocery or Gabbana?: More shoes I found on Facebook

I can't help it. I'm apparently a social network advertiser's afternoon delight. I see the shoe ads over and over and over and get pissed because they're there all customized-like and taunting me. Then four minutes later, I'm clicking like I have a J-lo shoe budget and a Kimora closet to hold them all.

Now that you've weighed in on whether these gold numbers are Hoochy or Hawt, play along with another gold pair that desperately need your attention.  Or at least your judgment. Feel free to be harsh. These aren't people or ethical decisions, kittens. They're freaking shoes. Gold shoes. They need your stern eye and sense of style-entitlement.

Today's game is called (cue the band):

                    Are these shoes
                    good for the grocery store
                    or should they be saved for
                    a Saturday celeb brunch
                    with Debra Messing and Demi Moore?

                    (see these babies after the jump)

Hoochy or Hawt: What do you think of these shoes I crave?

Remember how this is not a shoe blog? Well, it's still not. Just humor me, kittens. Humor me and play along in the game.

You know...the game where I finally give in to effing Facebook and click the customized ad for Betsy Johnson and other adorable and completely compellingly clickable shoes and find twelve pairs of $350 heels I feel are imperative to my quality of life. Particularly, post-marriage quality of life.

While I am too committed to (gulp) financial freedom at this point (look at me, all Suze Orman and what-not) to buy all of the shoes I lust after (or rather, any $350 pairs), a grrrl can dream. And strategize. And call on all the fabulous women she knows to answer:

Are These Shoes Hoochy or Hawt?
(you can see them shine after the jump) 

I can't believe I'm saying this, but: Thank you, Jenna Bush

No, not because you chose to have an "intimate" and "casual" wedding that Papa Bush said was a "spectacular" event anyway. And not because you had a limestone cross custom-made and erected as your altar. And not because you chose fourteen attendants dressed in wildflower-inspired colors or that a parade was held in your honor while you sipped mimosas with the Barbaras and Mama Bush while Bobbi Brown or similar did your au naturale marital make-up and coif on good old Texas soil.

But thank you for all the people who've searched "Jenna Bush wedding" in the last week to find photos and details and inspiration to tuck into their own bridal binders (not that I am anywhere near to judging the bridal binder...hell, I am nearly divorced and still covet mine like...well, like a limestone cross altar) and have found lil ol' Sassafrass. All because of this post, thrown up in a moment of sheer, embarrassing obsession with all those dress designs.

Thank you, Jenna, for getting married and throwing so many searches my way. That was the best darn wedding favor I've ever left with, especially from a "spectacular" event I didn't even attend.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to thank Jillian Michaels, all of her fans who believe they are leaving comments directly to her on this post where I talk about not being Jillian Michaels but rather, her mere mortal interviewer.

Finally, I'd like to thank all the people who faithfully search "vulva shots" and land upon this little riff on our old pal Crazeh Commando Brit.

Let's also not forget the people in the balcony, God and motorcycle helmet law opposers who leap on every opportunity they can get to scream supposedly patriotic sentiments and defend everyone else's "right" to traumatic brain injuries (but it's cool...freedom of speech and all that).

To all of us here on this little comfy couch stashed in this little corner of the internets: This traffic trophy's for all of you!

(OK, it's for me. But I will totally share the Costco sheet cake at the after party).

How he spent the first day in our new place

There are new creaks and noises to get used to and many things to learn about our new place (note to self: do not run the dishwasher a) at night and #2) immediately before entering the shower). But the good news is, we woke up here in (relatively) good spirits after a (short but) good night's sleep.

Lil E is on the fence about whether this place is better than Grandma and Grandpa's house. OK, who am I kidding? He flat-out said, "Grandma and Grandpa's house is just so. much. more. fun." This was after asking how long we have to live here. And he was so deadpan, I knew he was as serious as naptime. Preschoolers -- they're a tough crowd, man. And the only response is laughter. It is seriously the only consistent thing that gets us through.

Lil E must think Grandma and Grandpa's house is a big party because there, he does a lot of cable TV watching and elbow pinching (shhht, it's his quirky thing) while sitting in the big leather armchair. Here, he apparently thinks he's living in some sort of sweatshop work camp. God help me if the underage permit people come around before all these boxes are unpacked.

It was like there was a list in his ever-cranking brain of things that must be done. I am pretty sure it was scrawled out in his mind like this:

(Lil E's list after the jump)

This is where we live now. And this is how we got here

And so, we have made the leap.

Seven months ago, I left my therapist's office, picked up Lil E from co-op, took him home for a nap and packed a big bag of clothes while he slept.

I'm not sure what was in that bag. Basics, I suppose. Undies, Pull-Ups, toothbrushes, jeans, sneakers, long-sleeved t-shirts, his favorite jammies, his babies. I packed a few things of my own, more random things like bras and yoga pants and hair clips. I focused on the boy but couldn't center when it came to myself.

My mom came by with her car and support and brave smile over her own heartache and worry and anger. When Lil E woke up we put on even happier faces and went to a birthday party. We tossed our overnight bags in and presents on top. We talked up the party and how his good friend would be so excited to be three too, so thrilled to see him there.

And then we never went home.

A new word in the boy's vocabulary: Commando

As if all this and this talk wasn't enough, this weekend I introduced Lil E to a very important component of, if not healthy, then happy living.

Yes, it was about the joys of being undie-free. Of course, he is a kid and a boy and he has long known the joys of running through the house nakey, waving some parts and jiggling others and planting others on my parents' leather couch. Of course.

And of course, I've pulled off a sweaty overnight Pull-Up and replaced jammies bottoms or comfy pants without Lightning McQueen or Elmo or blue dinosaurs or red cement trucks plastered across the cotton plastered across his nether-regions.

But this weekend, as I slid the purple fleece pants over his little nakey bum before breakfast and morning shows and making soy butter and jelly sandwiches, I whispered a secret of undie-defiance to him.

"Do you know what it's called when you don't wear underwear?" I asked quietly.

Someone give me a vanilla topic to blog about and cancel my business card re-order

The other night I was having a very fun, very casual conversation with a few moms I know well (but not too well) and the topic of my blog came up. Ohhh yes.

It's not that I brought it up. I've learned. Believe me, I've learned.

It's not that I hide what I do, but I'm not exactly wearing the "I'm blogging this" t-shirt and reciting my URL every time someone asks if I'm SAHM, WAHM or what. Apparently, the culprit this time was the kid. Apparently, he brought it up to the husband of one of the moms that I was "probably at home buhhh-logging." This was likely said with an eye-roll that my astoundingly adept three-year old can produce with high drama and on cue all too well and the dad found it funny enough to share with his wife. Fast forward to the conversation, my job as a blogger, blah blah.

And it ended up after some nice questions and lovely interest in my career (who doesn't love that, right? -- especially after spending so many days answering questions only about why the Dragon Tales dragons talk and are made in such awkard color combinations or where eye boogs come from), that I gave her my card.

Ohhh, my card. With that blasted URL. Perhaps, perhaps she is like most of us (me, but maybe no one else) and will shove the card in her purse and never give it a second thought until she has to use it in a moment of desperation to wipe her child's incessantly runny nose (great...I just referred to two varietals of mucus within sentences...that is just freaking phenomenal).

Regardless, what do I do in response? I get right up the next morning and write  a post about phone sex and vibrators.

As the (ahem) gracious and (oh no) talented Jessica Simpson is so fond of saying: Oh. Mah. Gaw.

What was I thinking? What in the hell was I thinking?

You see? This is why I don't give out my URL. This is why I force two or three of you to Google me to find out what goss I am spreading. Seriously. I may have some kind of problem.

So yeah, that's nice, right? A sweet, smart mom (any one of them whom I would love to be better friends with) hops on and finds all that goodness a-waiting her.

Not that I take it back. No no no. I do a check in before every publish and I usually do hit that button with gusto. But I feel a little like I am a sixteen-year old who has just been told by her Gap manager to please go back to stocking v-necks (crew necks, scoop necks, ballet necks) in the back and to kindly please STOP SCARING THE CUSTOMERS.

There it is. Clearly, there it all is.

Grrrlfriends, raunch and delicious dilemmas: Just another Thursday morn

Just got a call from Lulu, my dear friend from the days of Women Studies graduate school yore. My friend who was forever on a miso soup and scotch detox diet and had this crazy/strangely compelling idea of (this is the point when all relatives must look away, at least until the third paragraph) fashioning a vibrator to a suction cup and then attaching it to a pedal-operated trash can to really...ummm...well, you get the picture (and I know you have a picture). How could I not love her?

Why I keep coming back

You know how in 12-step programs, everyone claps at the end of meetings and says, "Keep coming back, man!" Well, maybe you don't know but you've heard. From a friend. Or a roommate or whatever.

The point is that you may struggle but when in doubt, just keep coming back to meetings, one at a time. I've heard before (from a friend or roommate or whatever) that coming back in those iffy moments is what holds a recovery together.

Before I get any deeper into this metaphor which cannot be a sane or valid metaphor to make, let me get to my point (oh my God, if I was in a 12-step meeting, I've just realized I'd be the rambly grrrl who everyone claps for and says "Keep coming back, sister!" before she is actually done talking...sigh).

The reason I am coming back (to the old blog -- see? bad metaphor) is this here best bloggy thing ever.

Oh. Hell. Naw.

Or rather:  Oh. Hello Kittification. Naw.

Not only does this blog banner alone make me laugh, the whole post had me rolling. Oh, and considering how I might look with some sarcastic Hello Kitty arm-piece when I'm blogging at 92.

How can you not come back to post when you read something like, "...common decency is suspended and the sacrilege event of mixing Hello Kitty with other pop culture icons –which should not happen in the worst of nightmares — is common place" ?

Who would I tell? My preschooler (who thinks anything with the words poop and face in the same sentence are pure hilarity)? My parents (who also as retired folk think many things about poop are far too funny)? I get enough courtesy laughs in my offline life, my friends. I had to come back just to get a real, virtual chuckle along with me. It wasn't even a choice anymore. I had to post to share this with you, oh internets. To share my blogcovery with you.

Consider me standing and clapping my friends. Standing and clapping.

So this is what it looks like when you're off the grid

It has been quite a week. Scratch that -- quite a month. Make that -- quite a year. I suppose it was inevitable that, at some point, something I was clinging inside my clenched fist would fall out.

This is not a shoe blog: Kuh-logs

Kittens, a little slice of loveliness has fallen upon my feet. And for a mama who nearly always has soy butter or the inside stuff from cheesey crackers somewhere on her person, this is heaven.

Heaven in the form of silver (yes, silver) clogs.

They were a birthday gift from a friend who paged back through these lil ol' archives and found my favorite shoe posts and ordered up the shiniest of them as a surprise. Ohhhh, they are making me (and my Russian Navy-painted tootsies very, very happy).

As if they aren't framing my mommy uniform well enough, the very best part is the kuh-lunk kuh-lunk kuh-lunk as my clogs meet the hardwood in the long corridor of our new place.

It's still empty, only a few boxes and framed posters and new beds fill the big open space, and I like the echo of me and my shoes moving from room to room.

When I'm still, leaning against the kitchen counter or sitting in the windowsills and looking out across the rooms, I map out where my furniture will go, plan where to put all the pretty things I am busy packing up in another apartment and at my parents' house.

In that silence, I like what I'm seeing. I'm envisioning our new home, yes. But I'm also envisioning the new life we're moving into. It won't be perfect and it won't be without it's stretches. But in it, there will be lots of sun coming in through the windows -- sun that makes patterns on the floor, floods the color on the walls and reflects on the texture of my new shoes.

There will be corners for each of us, where little metal cars can spin their wheels and pennies can pile up and plastic tools can be put to work. Where scrapbooking supplies might actually be taken out of storage boxes and novels that have been lovingly dog-eared and read and debated sit in stacks. Where photos remind of us of where we came from and moments we're making.

And there will be a long table where our friends can come over for playdates and parties and spontaneous Tuesday night dinners (especially friends who bring shoes...or at least beer...aw hell, juice boxes make us perfectly happy). There will be a rocking chair to cuddle in and a big couch to cozy up in and a welcoming kitchen to laugh and make quesadillas and coffee and quinoa and chocolate cake in.

Here, there will be times to be silent and still, to look out over it all and make plans, rearrange, think inside and beyond the red walls. There will quiet steps and late night padding from room to room to make sure all is calm and safe. And there will be a hallway where there is room enough to take long, confident strides.

Kah-lunking all the way.

You know it's a good night out with the grrrls when...

*  Two days before your big day, you throw out the idea of meeting up for a birthday celebration to the women who hold work/family/social schedules that rival Hillary Clinton (minus the sensible suits and matching scarves but with just as much of the "What colorist gave you those killer highlights, mama, and can I snag her card?!" talk I imagine Hill to have with her grrrls) or at least Lindsay Lohan, but without all the drugs and rehab and stringy hair and leather leggings (OK, maybe one Halloween there were leather leggings, but that's long been forgiven and archived with the photos of bi-level haircuts).  And this time, taking into account seventh grade baseball season openers and  breastfed babies and boyfriends and commutes to the waaaaay south side, it works and all the grrrls are there in one circular naugahide booth together.

*  When we get to the heart of the matter, bullshitless, no dance around the big matters with idle chit chat or courtesy smiles. When we ask outright about honeymoon babies and engagements and why in the world one of my grrrls won't let her man-friend keep so much as a toothbrush at her place...after dating for years, where in the world to find a bra like that one that keeps those other grrrls up prominently and in place.

*  When the discussion goes to having such a raging and naughty appetite while pregnant that, even when you can't see around your belly and frankly don't even care who is under there, you are still going for it with vigor only weeks before the baby is born.

* When the conversation then turns to a complete and total disinterest in being touched by whomever that was underbelly once the baby's born, being breastfed and claiming every bit of energy you have to offer.  And gentle reminders that those feelings do end. Not for a long time, but they do indeed end.

*  When a table circled with sassy, sophisticated, savvy women is hysterical while one grrrl admits she has a no-poop rule with her sisters -- her beautiful, professional, equally sassafrass sisters -- at her sleek new condo. Why? Because they have reputations of being (ahem) regular toilet cloggers and she will have none of that, thank you very much. And you know what? You all get the rule completely. Totally get it. You think it is hilarious, but you do get it.b (And yes, this is the stuff that makes my grrrlfriends wrestle the bloggy notepad from my purse while I'm ordering another Newcastle. They know who they are, and they know they don't hate me, just understand the need to monitor me. Closely).

*  When you all know there are gimlet get-togethers and those evenings when you all had your nails did and martinis are in order, but that this night, most of these nights are clearly about the beer. Nothing too fancy, nothing that you can't pronounce, simply good beer. Oh, and not the giant cans of PBR the hipsters in the corner are drinking and who you can't stop staring down for being so striped knee-high, Arcade Fire-loving, thrift-store-looking but really $48 t-shirt-wearing, girls-in-skinny-jeans, boys-in-skinnier-jeans ridic.

* When one of your grrrls picks you up, one drops you off and they all get you gifts you would have picked out for yourself but probably not bucked up to buy. When they know you -- maybe not always the everyday details -- but in the same way they did when you were dancing on platforms at Medusa's, sneaking Malboro Lites and crushing on boys you all still squeal with disbelief because they are gay gay gay.   

*  When they still get you -- even though you've changed and evolved and grown up, sometimes together and often quite separately in your own parts of the city, the country and your very different lives -- and remind you of it with winks and inside jokes that are going more than twenty years later and with the kind of prodding and support only those kinds of grrrlfriends can offer after so much time of seeing each other through.

*  When you all intersect, even after being in such different places, by being mothers and stepmothers, married and separated and single, working and staying home and somewhere in between.   You may not huddle together in a bathroom stall to wait for the results of pregnancy tests, scribble notes to boys or whisper over who is on the pill or who has your Girbaud jeans, bitch about after-school jobs as lifeguards and babysitters and telemarketers, talk honestly about sex in cars and seven-hour hair braids and blossoming boobs. But you meet anyway, or when and how you can. The words are different and the conversation is strikingly the same.

*  When you can all get on the dance floor and work a Depeche Mode song like it is 1989 and you are on fire and afraid and all shaking it, singing it, sharing it together.

Three. Six.

Today, as my friends on Facebook know due to the strange genius and assumed intimacies of auto-alerts and as my so-not-accepting applications real friends know because they are my real friends who have stuck around and stood beside me through many years or even just these last transforming months, it is my birthday.

I'm like a six-year old when it comes to my birthday. I want balloons and cakes and of course, tiaras. I want a party, even if it is a drink or two at a bar with my grrrls, and I want to spend the day lounging and singing and doing whatever I want to do just because it's my birthday.

I clearly remember feeling this way when I turned six, leaping from my bed in an excited re-enactment of the cartoon girl on Sesame Street I'd wistfully seen a thousand times, singing, "I'm six! I'm six! I'm six years old today!" I was so happy it was finally my turn to sing that song.  Silly and sweet as it was, every year I think of that, feel that birthday bliss, and every year I find myself singing it in a quiet whisper to myself or through smiles with my mom who also remembers, no matter what number my age actually registers.

This year, I am thirty years beyond that bed-leaping morning. I am officially on the other side of mid-thirties and am not, as I have not for several years now, happy about the number I see before me. But here I am.

We've been talking about this number around the house a lot lately, not just because I am giddy at the celebration part of the day but because my boy is too. Last night, he said I was lucky because I'd get to spend my day playing with balloons and he couldn't wait to wake up early to start celebrating with me. I sighed at the sweetness and simplicity of it all. Homemade cake and candles and embracing that number like it's...well, six.

He asked me how old I was, or rather, what my number is and I threw the question back at him like all mommies say they will not but eventually do to avoid the age answer.

"88?" he asked seriously, looking into my eyes from only inches away.
   

Wedding Weekend: Smitten

The wedding was eons ago. Or at least, last last weekend. It feels like forever. And yet, not long enough for the truly madly deeply that is a ring bearer-flower grrrl preschooler love to fade.

Note the attempt to impress. Note that at least it worked on me.

Oh how Lil E fell for the flower grrrl, Claire. And how could he not? The first time I met her, she fluffed her wavy blond bob and ask me if she could show me how she poses when she vacuums for her mommy. I adored her immediately. 

Where I show up just in time for dinner with a full basket of dirty laundry and ask for twenty bucks, please

It has been one long week since I visited and I feel a bit like a college student who is weary from killer finals and post-killer finals keggers at the frat barn who has returned home for a break that she swears will be packed full of working for some family friend or another and spending QT with the fam but will really be spent sleeping in late and hoping her mother does her laundry.

Except, without all the overly foamy Milwaukee's Best (forgive me for this, but I am totally conditioned by attending a highly-competitive state school in Missouri to follow that brand mention with horned fingers in the air and yelling, "Bring on The Beeeeaaaaast").  Oh, and without the sleep.

We've been busy. I've been working a lot of hours (this is a good thing...right?) and squeezing in an exhaustive apartment search, games of Candy Land, co-op and daycare, energy-burner laps around the block and praying for spring to arrive for real this week into any and every free moment. 

Thankfully like the whole college spring break (well, my college spring breaks which never involved bikinis or clubs in Florida filled with foam and jello shots), my parents have been very involved. My mom took on this wonderful, wired-up role as apartment finder and with my dad, did drive-bys and internet research and Google map consulting for weeks and weeks.

My dad patiently finished and folded all the laundry I neglectfully left in the washing machine for days on end and did his crossword with Lil E snuggled in beside him in the big chair while I sat in front of my laptop for seemingly endless hours, scouted out more apartments and did and re-did and re-did my monthly budget.

And just like seeing that A arrive in mail in rubbed-off type on a tissue paper report card, there are shining moments when staying up studying and cramming and flexing the brain until 3 a.m. in boxers and t-shirts from said frat barn keggers all seems worth it.

We got an apartment. An apartment (feel free to say that as shrill as needed...I do)! A lovely place that I could immediately picture us in. It is bright and safe and feels happy, even without our things inside. It is close to the apartment where we used to live, even closer to my parents and closer still to a big park that I've always loved. We will not be far from our old friends and we will be in a new place where I know there will be new neighbors to meet.

We have a lot of work to do before we settle in to our new home. There will be more late nights, more stress, more juggling of childcare and schedules and expectations. But once the books are closed, the lights are out and we are tucked into our own beds in our own home, I think there will be that sigh of relief that only comes when you've accomplished something big.

Sometimes, I guess, those accomplishments are academic, sometimes professional and often familial. They are always emotional, though, aren't they? And almost always solved by just getting home.

Wedding Weekend: The ring bearer bares it all

This weekend, Molls got married. It was one of those weddings that you leave happy -- teary from the grace and bliss of it all, exhausted from singing into thumb microphones with your grrrlfriends and dancing with your boy to Motown all night and so full of hope that there is love like that and it can last. Happy.

I was a bridesmaid, Lil E was a ring bearer and we proudly stood beside Molls, one of our favorite people in the world and one of the strongest people in  our now very definitive circle of loved ones. Lil E was ecstatic in his tiny tux and told Molls earlier in the week, "I know you will look amazing!"  And she did.

Rewinding a bit before that, though, to the rehearsal dinner and the toasts and giggles and all the pretend pomp and circumstance, Lil E was far more serious. He took his little bow to Baby Jesus that the Catholics like you to take as you greet the priest, and he stood silent and with eyebrows knit in concentration as the bride and groom lit an imaginary unity candle and exchanged air rings and mouthed their vows.

He explained the complexities of Lightning McQueen to adult members of the bridal party at dinner and raised his juice box to toast the happy couple. He was a good boy, a sweet boy and he seemed to soak up all the loving energy in the room. I held him tightly against me as he grew tired and requested his paci and babydoll Tiger and time crept far beyond his bedtime.

He was asleep by the time we got home and I carried his limp body inside, peeled off his coat and hat and shoes and dress shirt. He woke up then and smiled up at me wearily.

"Mommy, is the rehearsal over?" he asked.

I nodded. "Shhhh. Close your eyes."

And I laid him back down on the bed, ran a finger down his nose and went to find a Pull-Up and clean pajamas.

When I turned back to put them on, though, he was still reclining but with his arms back, hands behind his head, bare chest thrust out. He looked, dare I say, playboy-in-practice-ish.

"What are you doing?!" I laughed quietly and he answered me like it was completely obvious.

"Pushing out my boobies!"

"What?!" I laughed, this time louder. And then we got to the heart of the matter.

"Mommy, what are boobies?"

It was a good question, I guess, but it threw me off since the kid spent a good 18 months so attached to them. I pointed to my chest.

"These," I said matter-of-factly.

"Ohhhh."

"You don't really have boobies," I clarified. And honestly, yes, I would normally say breasts but nearly two hours after regular night time, in the nightlight-lit room of your parents' house where you are transitioning from marriage into single momdom, these formalities cease to hold such importance.

"But I like boobies," he said completely convincingly, "So why can't I have them?!"

I smiled and slid his camouflage pajama top over his head, but I was thinking as I undressed and redressed him, covering the boobies he wished he could thrust forward into the world, or at least the quiet safety of his room, that he'd tiredly tapped into a question of the ages.

Or at least of much of mankind.  Ahhh yes, small boy, if you only knew how many grown men still wonder why, if they love boobies so much, they can't have access to them all the time. And so another lesson is learned for this 3-year-old, I suppose: Sometimes we thrust out what we don't have just because we so wish we had it. Sometimes, that's adorable and optimistic and full of hope.

And other times, it's just a reality check of who we really are, what time it is and that we need some sleep before a big day of putting forward who we really are.

What S-T-O-and P really spells

The whole world halted yesterday afternoon.

This, in the midst of a crazy work schedule and preparations for Molls' wedding and a to-do list that rattles in the back of my thoughts constantly and all good intentions to recount every adorable detail of Easter egg hunting in the snow.

None of that mattered when the late sun was settling in through the half-closed living room blinds and Lil E and my mom and I were stretched out on the floor setting up Candy Land. They'd just returned from daycare pick-up and some time in the cold wind at the park by our old apartment. Lil E referred to it as "the playground by daddy's house" and it was this peaceful acknowledgment of these months and more changes. They buzzed proudly about how much more he can do there now that he is bigger and taller and more confident and agile-- swing from the handlebars, climb the tall ladders, breeze through the swinging bridges.

And then my mom gasped.

January in March

What do you do when it snows like crazy so close to April? If you're a mama, you brave the inches piling up outside the front door and head to Target for Easter basket toys and other goodies. You wander around until you think the traffic madness has died down and until the aisles of adorable flip-flops aren't enticing at all, just seasonally depressing.

When you do make it back home, you fire up the laptop to the sound of the sleet hitting the windows and the microwave reheating giant mug of coffee after giant mug of coffee, not for caffeine as much as for warmth. You blog a little, bitch a lot and put a sweatshirt on over your sweater and pull the space heater in a little closer. It's pathetic, yes. But it's also the last few days of miserable March.

Finally, you raise your hands to the blessed sky -- Why? Why? Whhhhhyyyyy? -- and ask the goddesses, beg the goddesses, plead and offer up all the Peeps and chocolate bunnies you plan to pilfer from the kid's basket after he passes out in a sugar and plastic grass coma, to please cease the snow and bring on the rain, mud and humidity.

[Brilliantly unseasonal winterscape photos credit: Jessica Ashley]

Linkety Dinkety Doo: Oh, dang

Oh, Madge. False alarm. It's all good. You can still come to my finalizing fete.

Oh, Dooce. I knew you were listening in between doggie pics and antique pilfering. I just had a feeling you've been reading my little itty bitty baby blog. And I suspected we had similar tastes in crap TV.

Oh, honey. O, honey. It's just fine with me if you have a little air of superiority about your gold stars.  As long as the gold stars keep on coming (yes, those gold stars), who really cares how they (ahem) fall into your lap?

Oh, hell naw. See? I told you living with retired folk can be crazy. Thank the goddesses of small domesticated creatures my parents didn't read this article when poor little Corky kicked it last summer. Seriously, people. There's animal-loving and then there's that point when you may need to stop thinking about heirloom preservation fur crafts and start considering adding a few more hours to your Home Depot greeter schedule. (Thanks for building the dog hair awareness, Jenn.)

Serenade in the sunroom

Taken this morning while Lil E jammed acoustic-like, keeping the beat to the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of my mom working out on the exercise bike. Note the increasing intensity and coordinated (and clearly necessary) construction worker safety goggles.

What can I say? The kid's already the master of the schtick. Prepare yourselves, people of Austin, Texas and faithful viewers of American Idol outtakes. No, really, I am sure he is incredibly talented. If a three-year old can rock an impromptu Lightning McQueen song so passionately to an audience of one workout grandma, he is clearly well on his way to musical greatness.

Photos (irritatingly but enticingly) after the jump.

Madonna and I finally have something in common

I mean, other than these rockin' bodies and countless hit singles. Of course, Madonna, being the apparent planner and PR-machine that she is, is planning her divorce (get this) a year-and-a-half in advance.

A year-and-a-half!? Seriously? I hope she writes some a song explaining all this shit, like she did when all that went down with Sean Penn and the world was like, "WHAT THE --??!!" and then heard her song and was like, "Ohhhhh, now we get it.  Now we feel you, friend." You know people will be pointing the finger at their complicated adoption of baby David, which is exactly what I am completely uninterested in hearing. I mean, do we really need the agony of another marriage gone down the drains because a kid was brought into the picture story (not that I'm bitter)? Anyway, I vote for Madonna to give us some sort of poppy, rhymey perspective on the end of her marriage instead.

Let's hope for that. And then let's hope the explanation doesn't come in the form of a children's book or with a half-assed British accent. If she has 18 months to finalize the paperwork, she clearly has plenty of opportunity to sit down at the keyboard with a yellow steno pad and hammer out a few verses, right?

I know she does all kinds of charitable work and has to choreograph the next big tour no one will talk about but, a year-and-a-half?! I cannot get over that.

Suddenly, standing nakey on a street corner to pose for a coffee table book and ending it with Warren Beatty isn't looking so crazy. Unless she's got this all worked out as a way to tighten the screws on her Guy. If that's the case, I happen to have memorized the number of another (ahem) person's certain almost-ex that she is welcome to strategize slow-dripping dissolution techniques on when she gets bored of torturing her own hubs.

Maybe this is a sign for me that I need to take up Pilates and Kaballah. Or record the dance remix of a flagging mid-90s hit that will appeal to all the adorable Project Runway-committed boys just now coming up in the clubs. Or maybe it is just the universe telling me that I should go a little blonder the next time I spend four days and a gajillion dollars getting my hair did by Silvia at the salon.

Whatever it is, I hear you, Madge. For the first time since Justify My Love, I am really, really hearing you.

When you live with retired folk, this is the kind of shit you have to listen to

I work from home. Rather, I work from my parents' home. My parents are retired and so they have adorable weekly outings to breakfast at the local pancake and club salad place, then head off to Costco and the grocery store and if my mom is feeling saucy, the dollar store. Sometimes, they get a baked chicken wrap and 35-cent Diet Coke at Costco. Every week, though, they are home in time to see Jeopardy and finish reading the paper.

Did I mention they like to stop in wherever I am working and offer up little tidbits of news or brainstorms or show me the thousands of listings of apartments they download for me? They do.

Does that sound ungrateful? I don't mean it that way. They have also been incredibly supportive, have stepped up generously to help me raise Lil E these last six months and have opened their home to us with no pressure to stay or leave (despite what those listings might tell you). Truly, it has been a blessing.

A blessing for 24 hours minus mayyyyybe one or two interrupting moments. Today, after my dad and I laughed once, twice, maybe three times over this effed up news item, I heard them laughing about it together in the living room several more times and then calling my brother to laugh with him about it. He was doing field work out of town, but they called to yuk it up over the potty lady. I told you: retirement is good times, y'all.

Then my mom popped in politely on me while I worked. I was posting intently, she was full of fifth-grade grrrl giggles. They'd been reading about the prostitute employed by Governer Spitzer. And, no shocker, they'd been giggling about it, probably over leftover chicken bakes. Nothing's more fun that talking hookin' over a late lunch.

"Jess, I have a question about this hooker girl," my mom barely got out over her giggles.

"Yes?" I was suspicious.

"Apparently, she is an aspiring musician with a MySpace page?"

This already captured my attention because my mom barely let call waiting into the house a few years ago and still refuses to believe people need to text message, let alone Facebook or MySpace or mystery shop.

"Yes?" Again with the suspicion.

"Aspiring musician is a good goal for a hooker, right?"

Suspicions and sarcasm confirmed. I waited for the punchline. I got it in...3...2...1...

"My guess is she plays the pipes?!"

Yes, she was, in fact, laughing at her own joke as soon as it flew from her mouth. Not long after, she was laughing at my dad's contribution. She continued.

"But your dad says it's more likely the organ."

Pause. Pause. Near-impossible restraint. And then, yes, full-flown laughter.  Ohhh.

I admit, this one was funny. And sure, they do make me laugh. Sometimes. OK, lots of times. Of course, most of that is over stuff Lil E says but this time...this time, they got me.

Ohhh, the pipes. Ohhh, the organ.

Well-played, you sassy, snarky, news-pondering chicken-bakey retired parents you.

Well-played.

H-E-double hockey sticks-P

I have a hard time asking for help.

And if you know me (even a little bit), this is not news. If you know me really well (or even more than that), this has made you roll your eyes many, many times -- at Thanksgiving dinners with a child sweaty and sound asleep in a sling on my chest when I couldn't scoop my own mashed potatoes but tried desperately to do it myself thanks very much anyway, and in college when I sobbed into the echoey stall because I couldn't wash my own hair with a cast on my broken arm until my roommate forced her way into the shower with me and told me to breathe while she shampooed and conditioned and later blow-dried and brushed my hair for me, and when I've sputtered into paralyzing panic attacks over mice in the (shiver) apartment and into humor-masked rages over jackass men and when the little unattended girl in the restaurant where I waited tables in grad school jumped up and under the tray I was holding full of Mother's Day mimosas and champagne and Old Fashioneds and sodas and hit the tray, spilling the drinks all over me and the tables around me and thank the goddesses, shards of glass narrowly missing her but not the concrete floor and I just needed someone to smile at my customers for a moment while I gasped after I cleaned it all up and before I returned to my tables soaked through with orange juice and bubbly and red wine. So yes, you all are aware. I am fiercely independent.

It has served me well often. It has moved me through and helped me rise above. It has helped me survive, persevere, buck up, pack up, walk away, come home. As often as it has helped, however, it has also hurt.

Independence doesn't have to, but often does, I've have learned through many dollars in therapy co-pays, precluded reaching out for help. Knowing when to ask for help, especially when it is hardest, is as important for me as knowing when I really can go it alone.

Slowly, surely, with practice and some wincing, I am trying to reach out. I am trying to tune in to what I do need and when it is OK to ask for it. When my friends and family say they want to be there, I am really trying to say OK rather than nod politely and note-to-self that I will never take them up on their generous offers.

So today -- and this is small and significant, which is how I like my lessons these days -- I asked a friend who loves music like I love music to please send me a mellowish and nice song. A feel-good song. A song that would speak to where I am today. A song that would help me move into tomorrow peacefully, calmly after some real turbulence in the days behind me. I asked for a Song of the Day, please, in the spirit of a little help from my friends.

And this is the song I got. How did I miss this song on the Oscars? It is so lovely, so perfect for right now, it is speaking so much to me, that I have had it on repeat for almost an hour.

And considering my last post, I love the congruity of the image of the boat. That wasn't planned. Just a little bit of that daily divinity I so adore, so appreciate and so welcome. The best part is, it came my way when I asked for a little help.

I am learning. Slowly. And tonight, I am listening.  Serenely.

Ohhhhh, you're supposed to update these things?

It has been a long and winding week. I am happy to have a lot of work that makes me happy. And I had a settlement meeting that means my divorce is actually moving forward. Then there is the exhausting daily blessing of bedtime and stories and Candyland and wiping a runny nose and doing half-ballet/half-stumble moves to navigate over plastic cars and tools and bracelets I thought had disappeared completely as I step out of the shower. Don't forget the phone calls that never get returned and the emails I keep reading and marking as unread so I remember to respond to them and then keep not responding to anyway. Add the thousands of Post-It to-do lists and the packed-full and scratched out and doodled on calendar. Oh, and the facial. Remember how I promised myself a facial months ago?

I know, I know. Get over myself. We're all here on this crowded, mildewy-smelling, over-scheduled boat. All I'm saying is, here are a few things that made me stop worrying about all the rocking back and forth and just enjoy the loveliness on the horizon and all around me, if only for a moment (or post) or two.

This made me teary. And it made me so grateful I know so many women who are so gifted and brilliant and amazing and inspiring.

This made me laugh out loud. And wonder what ever happened to my Miss Piggy lunchbox.

This made me grab my credit card.  At a bridal shower where we made our own custom 1154 Lill bags (shut up if you think you had to be a Trixie in 2001 to have one of these...they are still as killer as ever, baby), I was so entranced by the fabrics I almost couldn't (gasp) design my own bag. Alas, it was these three sumptuous don't-even-think-of-putting-your-preschooler-soy-butter-hands -on-this-masterpiece fabrics that won my heart on a sweet little reversible bag that I swear I will love always. Or at least until my next purse party. The pics don't do the swatches justice...just gorg.

This keeps me up at night. I kid you not. Sure, this show is on MTV and is like watching the goofy guys in the back of your Human Sexuality class in college doodle on the pictures in the textbook. But just like back then, I cannot help myself. I dare you to watch and a) not laugh out loud, b) not wish for a large black man sidekick who calls you "son" and 3) wonder if it would be weird for you to wear one of the Big Black over-sized tees and caps to playgroup. Watch. You'll see.