momsecrets

What no one tells the bride is that 17 years in, Duke and I are trying to get to know each other. He's sending me adorable, "How are you today?" and "How about now, how are you?" texts throughout the day.

There was a hullabaloo a few weeks ago. He called a friend of mine who I no longer talk to, because this is the kind of guy he is--amiable, outgoing, someone who always finds time for a call just to catch up. I'm certain that was part of my rage, the fact that he finds a moment just to check in with my friends, when I never find leisure enough for this.

In any case, I pounced. Like a possessed, grumpy Lorax, except with a less noble cause. In the course of pouncing, or maybe in the midst of the argument, and certainly in the clearing afterwards, I realized I never got around to telling him that I no longer keep up with this friend. I stopped confiding in him about this kind of stuff.

There are a host of reasons, I tell myself. I hardly have a moment these days to name, shelve or categorize intimate detours, the fact that this friend no longer seems good for me. Most of life has become a shorthand, a Morse code. Friendship lost. Stop. No more overtures. Stop. No looking back with regret. Stop. Prefer to move on. Stop.

And these kind of friendship intimacies were never Duke's strong suit. His friends are his friends are his friends. They get together every couple years. They send each other massive email chained jokes. They check in with each other. He never seems to get caught up, as I do, in these intense-for-a-time relationships. These incredibly passionate friendships that for a time, feel like a beacon for my life, and then flame out, like a tired, leaky glow stick.

Of course Duke knew of the tensions, he lived them, he said the pat, right things to reassure me in the midst of them. And I never really allowed myself to be comforted by them.

I was on the phone with my friend Elizabeth recently when she complained that she was out of sorts because her husband was out of town and not around to say the things to her that would settle her. And I was aghast, amazed. Dale, like Duke, is a rock of Gibraltar type, the type who always says the same comforting things, who just by the nature of their unchanging stand in the room, can give you an anchor. I was aghast of course, because Elizabeth had found a way to be comforted by this. To allow him to settle her persnickety soul.

John Gottman, the love guru, says that in marriage, the little ways that you turn away from each other everyday are hugely important and predictive of whether your marriage will succeed. Everyday it's a choice really, a million little choices, to turn toward or turn away. And in WHAT NO ONE TELLS THE BRIDE, as a young bride, I knew that sometimes you have to turn towards, even when you're not feeling it, in an "as if" kind of pose.

So Duke is trying to peer into my grumpy, hormonal Lorax soul with his "How are you?" check in's. In his midday texts, he's asking to get to know me again. "Who are you today?" is really what he's asking. Are you the mother consumed with her kids' schedules? Consumed with your job? Could you be, for a few moments, the wife with whom I am trying to connect?

Little kindnesses. Little check-in's. And I have a choice. To close off and grieve my little griefs and nurture little resentments that people disappoint and that the light fades. Or I can feed my marriage. My contentment with a man who tries, and tries, and tries to know me better. My lifelong friendship with the man who takes time to check in.

I am loving this new University of Phoenix "I am a Phoneix" advertising campaign, which by the way is EVERYWHERE. Wow, this organization must be the only one in this economy that can do a roll-out the way it ought to be done. I mean, massive billboards, bus-stop posters, TV advertisements, print ads. Heartening to me to see that the tried and true "real person photo and testimonial" approach can be done in such a wowing way. And I can only imagine the poor copy writers muttering, "What am I going to do with a "phoenix"?" How do I make a mythological firebird fly in a 2009 ad campaign? (Though Harry Potter and Dumbledore did bring it into modern consciousness...)

Well, it totally works, the calligraphy flourish on the font, the photos of these interesting looking people, including the Asian guy who's wearing the big headphones. There's something so diminutive about him in the crowd of people he's standing in and the two toned jacket, that each time I pass the billboard on the freeway, I think he's a jockey. But they get me to look twice at it. He's not a jockey, he's a PHOENIX.

Secondly, I'm really glad they didn't trash Michele Obama on her one-shouldered bedspread inaugural gown. She looked tired and self-conscious and the dress was ill fitting and it just was a big mess. Thankfully, she looked so fabulous most of the day in the gorgeous sunshiney (ahem, my blog colors) coat-cardigan-suit outfit. Don't even get me started on those girls...I kept watching CNN for that one shot from below that they had of Obama during the swearing in in which I got to see Sasha's tights and those adorable orange shoes...yep, you know I dallied with the idea of the vasectomy reversal so I could get me some girls...

Why was Rachel Maddow so deferential to Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews during MSNBC's inaugural coverage? I kindof remember thinking the same thing during the election night coverage, mainly, when are those other buffoons going to shut up and give Rachel some air time? Chris Matthews went on and on the other night about his fall-flat story of Muhummad Ali winking at him in an elevator, and I really just wanted him to shut up so Rachel could be smart and cutting and beautiful.

Last but not least, the sex expert Dr. Laura Berman said on Oprah's new Best Life webcasts last week that women in their 20's and 30's, when they feel happiest, and most sexual in their lives, ought to go into their doctors and have a hormone panel done to establish the levels. Later, when they have children and their hormones wax and wane as they age, and libido problems and depression eeek in, doctors can use those "got my groove on" blood levels as the goal for treatment. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Girls, get thee to the hormone doctor!

Most of you know that my parents were active--and continue active--in the civil rights movement, so I hope you'll indulge me a few thoughts before the enormous historic moment tomorrow in which Barrack Obama will be sworn in as President. My sister and I gave fleeting thought of finding a way to get my parents to the inaugural tomorrow. But I assure you the emotions of the day will be enormous enough, from the armchairs of our living rooms in Kansas City, Santa Fe and San Diego.

The history for my family is quite different than those of African Americans who will stand on the Mall tomorrow, the descendents of slaves who laid the stone foundation for the Capitol. Indeed, my father is a descendent of a family that owned slaves in Tennessee. The sterling I put out on holidays dates back to that plantation. Even so, even with those beginnings, my dad became a liberator.In his teens Bill went out late at night to rescue a black friend who had arrived in St. Louis and couldn't find lodging. He did so, even if it raised eyebrows when he brought his friend home.

I don't know where my mom got her chutzpah either, since her father was intent on crushing her spirit. But when a local black clergyman's wife came looking for a dress at the department store in Cape Girardeau where my mom was a clerk, Joyce flaunted the store rules and snuck the pastor's wife into the white-women-only dressing room.

Together of course, Joyce and Bill were twice as much trouble. They funneled money to the share-cropping families that my dad's plantation-owning relatives evicted. After my dad finished seminary in Chicago, they worked with inner city youth and revived downtown churches there and in Indianapolis. Mom manned the strollers and the runny noses and the diapers for the countless hours that dad was at organizing meetings, protests, and once when he was jailed for civil disobedience. She watched the news when dad took the buses to Selma and Washington to march with Martin Luther King.

They created for my sister and me, and for so many people who worshipped with us at my dad's church, a special world in which the color of your skin didn't matter, nor the price of the dress you wore, not any other dividing line. Having lived in a mixed race neighborhood and gone to mixed race schools, my sister and I learned the code words people use to discriminate against others. So that when I was applying to Dartmouth for college, and the stodgy white alum who was interviewing me disparaged my 70 percent black high school, I knew exactly what he was disparaging and told him so. And after I was mugged by a black man when I lived in Boston, I filed a complaint about the white cops who, in handling my case, suggested that "the blacks have gotten out-of-control since the Malcolm X movie came out."

With this legacy, I'm so glad my parents--and the activist parents of so many friends--get to see tomorrow come. For me it's strangely akin to the aged Red Sox fans who finally got to see a glory day, after so many years of passion and disappointment, though this is of course a trifling compared to the civil rights struggle. I remember the night Reagan won, the tears my parents shed. I remember vividly my mother's threat, during my rebellious years as a young Republican, that she would never speak to me if I went to work for the first Bush administration as a speech writer. I remember at the beginning of this race, when I was still pulling for Hillary and for women, and my mom said America would never elect Obama. She had seen too many disappointments, too much pulling apart, to believe it was possible.

And yet, change has come. There was momentum rising, even as I was singing "We Shall Overcome" to Patrick and Liam as a lullaby and telling them what Nana and Papa did when I was my children's age. We can hope that the momentum for change will continue, since my parents are now, in their "retirement years," fighting for veterans' rights and gay rights.

I'm so glad that tomorrow, the crowd will walk where my dad marched, and feel all the great hope my mom did, watching on TV and cheering him on. We're going to be back by the box tomorrow--my parents, my sister, our children, and me. Except tomorrow this monumental moment will no longer be in black and white.

Thanks for letting me share with you.
With love to you all, and in tribute to all those who worked towards history being made,
Marg

Wow. It's been more than a year since I've blogged. It's no wonder when I read the entries from this time last year, and consider where we've been. It was a year and a two months ago that our Liam was hospitalized for an adverse effect to an antidepressant, placed on a three-day hold and kept apart from us for medical observation for an agonizing separation. He had his seventh birthday the final day of the hospitalization, the day we took him home and held him, and held him, and held him.

I only now have a voice to say that the way we treat children's behavioral health is unconscionable, that there is so little that doctors know, and too many risks being taken. It's only now that Liam and I are ready to wean ourselves, to allow a grown-up-boy bedtime rotuine to return instead of a traumatized mom and boy holding fast to each other, never to trust an outside opinion again.

We have, over the course of the year, found a treatment that works for Liam. We've moved back into our home, after two years of construction and overhaul, and have been engulfed by its calm, its beauty, its space for everything and then some. Life has not gotten back to normal, because the anxiety, agitation and anger Liam experienced for several years leading up to this, kept any semblance of normalcy away. But we are having an incredible summer, a do-nothing, stay-home-and-watch-movies-and-play-cards kind of summer, in which we rarely rush to go anywhere or do anything. I cannot even put into words how soothing that is. If you felt the breeze coming in my window right now, the sixth perfect 70's and sunny day in a row, you'd know. We are being filled up again.

I've of course struggled over the last year to imagine what I could write about our life. Liam wasn't self-conscious about telling his classmates he went to the hospital because he had anger issues, though of course it was far more complicated than that. I was too tired in the midst of all of it to write about the medicines, herbs, acupuncture treatments and homeopathic remedies. About diagnoses and IEPs and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit in which all sorts of people pretend they know what's wrong. I only know that there is a freckle-faced boy who adores his big brother, loves to play football, is an ace at Swiffering and vaccuuming the house, but who just hates school, abrupt transitions, the dark and being alone.

We have come a long way. So the gorgeous house we can't believe we live in, and the peaceful hours we bask in now, and a few words you can piece together without crying, are everything, everything a heart could want.

I've recently been collecting childhood horror stories. Not traumas, mind you, that parents have inflicted on children but the opposite. These are stories in which kids -- let's face it, boys -- have put their parents' hearts through a grinder, causing outrageous havoc, crime, what have you. Yet, like the TV show "House," all the plots I have compiled have happy endings -- endings in which parents emerge the triumphant diagnosticians, and children emerge...well, alive...and uncannily, successful in adulthood.

Of course I am collecting these stories because the emperor's clothes, Lucky brand jeans and Lily Pulitzer-like colors, have been wrest from Duke and me in ways that are too painful to enumerate in recent weeks. No matter how many doctor shows I watch, I'm no better informed to heal my family and the genetic dispositions and behaviorial mysteries that beset us. But it reassures me somehow to collect these post-mortems, these stories of kids who went to a better place -- namely, adulthood.

There's one particular sermon my father gave when I was an adolescent that sticks with me more than all the others. It was a meditation on how to help people in distress, and how truly un-helpful it is to try to cheer people up by comparing their situation to that of a quadrapalegic or some other catastophe. Because when friends are in pain, their pain is palpable, consuming and very real to them. Minimizing it, with the hope of brushing their little boo boo under the rug, does them little good.

To the contrary, I'm strangely cheered by my Little Shop of Mommy Horror Stories. So far, I've unearthed...
--a boy who set a fire in the bathroom trash can at middle school
--a boy suspended from school for calling another child a fag
--a boy whose "Ritalin rebound" in the afternoons shook the walls of the house
--a boy whose college fund was emptied to pay for his mishaps -- car accidents, vandalism, etc.
--a child who ran away from home for three days (all the above are from school teachers and administrators, god love 'em, who felt oh so inept at raising their own kids)
--a girl who shoplifted (now a successful well adjusted adult)
--a boy who accidentally killed the family pet (now a veterinarian)
--a boy who stole cars, got into repeated fights (now a mensche of a guy, married, kids, job, the whole nine yards)
--a boy who turned over chairs in his second grade classroom who is now happy, well adjusted, and not the school bully
--a boy so mean he hit other kids with sticks throughout childhood (this guy is a paramedic now, saving lives every night of the week)
--a boy who sold drugs and was arrested (now a surgeon who flies all over to third world countries on medical missions)
--a boy diagnosed as bipolar who gave his parents no ends of fits and who is now functioning beautifully in graduate school
--a boy who had a suicide plan as a young child who has just graduated from the Air Force Academy, and who didn't benefit from pharmaceutical drugs

Wonderfilly, most of these stories make my kids' meltdowns feel like misdemeanors. I'm not diminishing the seriousness of what they've done or of the pain it's caused us. Dr House does not have enough painkillers in his stash to numb the pain we feel, trying to get at "Why?"

But after you've spent hours on the parent forums on the internet, after you've read the thousandth parenting book and taken the tenth parenting class, looking for the gold ticket that will transform your child's life, the tale of the "bad kid gone good" is a wonder tonic. After all, these are stories from other parents who CSI'ed their family lives and who shopped homeopaths and acupressure tappers and all the fringe practitioners to avoid drugging their kids. These are survivors of the tower of terror called "growing up" in which gravity feels like the only predictable quality of life.

Funny enough, this little shop of horrors is where veteran parents pedal a drug, a fix that I'll seek out in any grimy back alley and abandoned building. There, amid a pile of burned matches, soiled clothes, and lost sneakers, is a flicker called hope.

An article for a local paper....

Back To School Realities Hit Moms Hard:
An Assignment-Filled Syllabus for Parents
By Marg Stark

The first day of school used to give me goose bumps. I cherished the sight of fathers hand-in-hand with kindergarteners and mothers choked up at classroom thresholds. I imagined tender first meetings with teachers, and harked back to childhood shopping for school supplies at the dime store.
Now the mother of two school-age boys, my back-to-school reality is more Red Bull than rosy cheeks. More Floyd Landis than it is Norman Rockwell. By late August, I’ve endured my own Tour de Summer – a marathon of pick-ups and drop-offs at far flung day camps; epic battles over sunscreen and wet suits left on hardwood floors; and the even rockier terrain of sibling squabbles and Play Station limit-setting.
My sportsmanship falters, too, when I blaze around the corner at Wal-Mart, my cart a blur of new thermoses and sneakers, only to find 10 shoppers ahead of me in the check-out line. So that by 6 AM the first morning of school, I’ll resort to Ritalin, bribes, Lunchables – anything! — to get the kids out of their beach sand-strewn beds and off to classes again.
Trouble is, I barely have time to stir my celebratory mojito before the demands of a new school year set in. For those of you moms and dads who have yet to read the syllabus, get out your Big Chief tablets. Because with the following school year assignments, parents have to make the grade, too:
I. Wash Dishes or Sell Your Firstborn to Pay for His Education.
Here’s a fun exercise for parents: Count how many days it takes for the first notice of a school fundraiser to come home in Johnny’s backpack. Whether it’s cookie dough or car washes, gift wrap or book drives, schools are so desperate for funds, the school and its organizations would prefer to sell you something before your progeny is even registered.
Pretty soon, I expect strapped schools will go the way of the struggling airlines. Chalkboard-facing seats in classrooms will come at a premium. Teachers will charge for Kleenex and broken crayons. And tiny nuggets of brain food will be parceled out, and be expected to last all semester.
After moving to Spring Valley in the sixties, my husband’s father dropped him at school the first day, expecting the second grader to get himself enrolled and ensconced in the education system. Today, parents are expected to dig much deeper – into time-banks and bank books.
Never mind the $200 million the United States spends per day on the Iraq war, you might as well sell your firstborn -- and then stock up on cookie dough and gift wrap -- to pay for his education. Even if you pay private school tuition, volunteering is still expected. It’s like paying the restaurant tab and then donning an apron to wash patrons’ dishes.
II. Let the Diagnoses Begin.
When I was growing up, kids fell into two broad categories: normal or weird. But this fall, with the exception of students at the brand new local school -- Normal Heights Elementary -- no normal child will be left behind -- that is, in the rush to diagnose, label and medicate.
Newbie parents, you probably thought it was a standard developmental phase for a kindergartener to shove another kindergartener. But on a zero-tolerance playground, expect zero Duck, Duck Goose and dozens of school counselor referrals instead. Have a boy, and you’ll have no deficit of attention-deficit, hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) verdicts. Got a girl? Then she’s inevitably got GAD, or generalized anxiety disorder.
All the more reason to pucker up to the new power player: the school nurse. With 2.5 million children in the United States medicated for asthma and another 2.5 million medicated for ADHD, the nurse wields a mighty clipboard. This is the gal who asks your verging-on-obese child to step on the scale, and the one who knows precisely whose kid started the lice epidemic. She polices peanut allergies and bee hives, drops the dime to Child Protective Services and harangues you if you bring cupcakes instead of jicama sticks to class on your kids’ birthdays.
Indeed, you don’t want to cross the school R.N., unless you’re bringing her an apple.
III. Guilt Begins at Your Home-School Bus Stop.
Starting in September, San Diego City School buses no longer afford parents the luxury of stopping a few streets over from their homes or day cares. Now, buses only pick-up and drop-off students in front of their “home school.”
In other words, parents who worked the system to bypass a school in their neighborhood and chose to bus their children elsewhere as many of us in mid-town do, get to hang out now at the school they abandoned. Yes, abandoned begins with an “A,” the scarlet letter I’ll be wearing when more than 30 of us white, affluent Kensington parents cluster at the bus stop in front of Franklin Elementary, the predominately low- and middle-income Hispanic school in our neighborhood. Everyday, we’ll put our pasty-faced, Lands’ End-clad children on the bus, overlooking a poorer performing school we might have chosen to help populate, empower and perhaps transform.
It’s enough to drive a liberal mom to home-school. Still, I’m going to save a lot of Starbucks dollars at the new bus stop. Because who needs a Venti Latte when you start each day with a jolt of white guilt?
IV. Moms Get All the Dull Nicknames, and All the Gut Work.
Here’s the most sobering lesson of all. If you’re a mother, you’ll get as many loaded nicknames as you’ll have jobs. Carpool mom, working mom, room mom, soccer mom, PTA mom, helicopter mom, single mom, all these shorthand societal titles land on women with children.
Of course, marketing people give us these pigeonhole nicknames to better sell products to us, or gain our votes. But the back-to-school reality is, we hover over our kids like helicopters or spend the better parts of our days in minivans, because we’re expected to raise perfect children, and to do so largely on our own backs. With 75 percent of moms in the workplace, we still contribute 80 percent of child care, and perform 10-15 more hours of housework every week than dads do. And moms are the first ones blamed if Chloe, Pedro, and Latisha aren’t buckled in, helmeted up, value-guided, play date and sleepover-scheduled, athletic minded, culturally exposed, scrap-booked, birthday partied, and test-prepped.
Sure, there are dads who do their share and single dads who rise to the occasion. And research tells us that for temporary spates, Mister Moms will pitch in full-time. But there’s a reason moms cackle these days with a half-masked pitbull sarcasm. Relentless demands lead to nasal-toned maternal whining and by day’s end, random shouting and nonexistent libidos.
So yes, I still get wistful about the start of school, the opening of books, a fresh roster, and the gleam in a devoted teacher’s eyes. But then, I get extraordinarily busy – raising money and volunteering, processing my guilt, helping with homework and bolstering my kids. It’s back-to-school all over for me.

Hi all,
Though I'm afraid some of these places will be a hike from north of the 8, these are my favorite discount haunts. I save a ton of money shopping at them regularly and I've detailed below what I tend to buy at each place. Also, with the links, some will send you coupon or newsletters.

I know it seems like a time consuming quest but I have managed to build some of these places into my regular routes and by stopping in and buying things when I don't necessarily need things, I keep a regular stock of cheap buys in my house. Enjoy!
Marg

http://99only.com/sd_county.htm In my book, the only 99 cent stores worth going into-- clean, well lit, well stocked and roomy aisles. I hit the refrigerated and fresh sections first -- believe it or not, I buy frozen salmon fillets for 99 cents each, chicken burgers, Canadian bacon, 3 pack breakfast burritos, pints of raspberries and strawberries, string cheese packets, Yoplait yogurts (3 for 99), bags of pears, bananas, lemons, peppers, etc. Risa, get your energy drinks here -- 2 for 99 cents. Bottled water is 6 for 99, brand t.p., paper towels much cheaper! Also, big brands seem to introduce products here, perhaps as a way to test them so you'll see some South Beach diet entrees, and other newbies for very cheap.

GTM Wholesale Liquidators: Okay, so it's a schlep to Santee or Lemon Grove but this is the outlet store for Costco, Whole Foods, and others. Anything ever so slightly dented or damaged from Costco ends up here so there are tons of clothes, electronics, jewelry, furniture, toys, otc medications, and nonperishable groceries. I got Ugg boots for Duke here for $35, a teak dining table for 12 for $350, etc. It's a crapshoot but I always come home with something...

GTM Discount Store
7663 Broadway (And there's a 99 only and a $5 store nearby)
Lemon Grove, CA 91945-1607
(619) 460-2990

GTM Discount General Store.
8967 Carlton Hills Blvd.
Santee, CA 92071. 619-449-4953

http://www.biglots.com/ Never buy a birthday present for full price again! Get your picture frames, your wrapping paper, any holiday decor, wine (used to be dubious but now they are carrying some passable table wine), kids' lunch fillers, juice boxes, bottled water, school supplies, candles, birthday favors, etc. I used to get diapers and wipes here, too. This year, they had incredibly expensive Brown Jordan lawn furniture marked down to a pittance....

DSO (Department Store Outlet) 1.866.SHOP-DSO for locations: Last but not least, I occasionally get to DSO, most of which are in El Cajon and the south bay. DSO is the step down for Macy's, Bloomingdales, Robinson's May, Sears, etc. They have some amazing clothes, nothing over $15. The catch is you can try nothing on. You have to buy on faith but you can exchange things that don't work. All name brands like Liz Claiborne, Ralph Lauren, INC, etc. My friends have found dresses for special occasions there for really cheap. Unfortunately no shoes but men's and kids clothes are there.

$5 stores: University and 62nd not far from Kroc Center, and on Broadway in Lemon Grove next to 99 only: For the truly should-be-committed, discount shopper, I bought $5 tea and cookie sets from Neiman Marcus here for teacher gifts one year! Harry Potter action figures, Gap clothes for the kids galore. It's hit or miss of course but I've scored lots of basic tanks, tshirts, towels here.

Happy bargain hunting!
Love,
Marg

Well, a mum in the UK has fired a shot heard round the playground world...

Here's the link to Helen Kirwin-Taylor's provocative article from London's The Daily Mail. In a nutshell, she's said what all of us feel -- that the way we do motherhood today, maniacally concerned that every eyelash on our kids' heads is in place, is wretched and boring. This journalist mom has opted out altogether -- of going to her kids' cricket matches or birthday parties, of playing Legos with the kids or taking them to museums on school breaks. She's said what most of us today feel -- that she'd rather be at work because work is less taxing and more fun than taking care of her kids.

Kirwin-Taylor is outlandish though, which got her published and made her article the lightning rod it's become in the UK and soon the Western mommy world. But she does take things a tad too far. After all, what mom doesn't like taking the kids to a museum? We prefer the art gallery anyday to a trip to Chuck E. Cheese or worse yet, an afternoon at home of when-will-it-be-naptime already playdough and peek a boo.

Sure, I'd rather be having drinks with girlfriends at a cafe, or getting my nails done. But I don't write off my kids entirely. I just figure out a balance that enables me to sustain myself during ho-hum children's movies, get my husband more engaged in the activities I can't take, and suck up the rest. I take a weekend to myself now and then, telling the kids, "You know how much you all like to play video games? That's how much Mommy likes to write, so that's why I need a writer's weekend sometimes."

Kirwin Taylor is so right to say that being at your kids' cricket match shouldn't be the be all, end all. I don't want my kids involved in extra curricular activities all year round; we have opted out of that "norm" because we need time together to do nothing, to hang out at home, to take walks or do chores, to eat dinner together, and to ignore one another entirely if we'd rather read a book or watch a baseball game on TV. I also despise the arch parents do at the end of soccer and baseball games, in which we seem to worship our little athletes. The game and the time we spend there is enough, why do we have to hail the conquering heroes for doing what kids ought to do -- getting exercise, learning team work, having fun?

One mom who commented on the Daily Mail article had it so right, saying that while she enjoys every minute with her kids, she applauds Kirwin Taylor for her honesty about seeing it differently. That ought to be the goal really -- letting moms pick different paths to making motherhood enjoyable and meaningful, whether that's a mix of child care and work, a mix of Candyland by day and manicures by night. Forcing moms to put up and shut up means that more of us will be drinking heavily and passing out, rather than playing Candyland. Or more of us will be depressed and zoning out, rather than engaging our kids in pithy educational chats.

I've found moms with whom I can confide my tales of woe, and who support my patchwork attempt at getting through days with young children. So good-oh to Kirwin Taylor for saying the forbidden thing, for giving bored moms a primal published scream. Now we can sit back and listen to the salvos fired back and forth, and laugh at the silly outlandish claims moms will make against one another. Meanwhile at home, we'll be engaged in the private everyday battles we call the balancing act.





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=397672&in_page_id=1879&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=FEMAIL&ct=5

I've had it all wrong. In the months I've been writing -- or more accurately, not regularly writing -- my blog, I've skipped many days of entries because I didn't have anything of consequence to say. Sure there were daily insights I might have captured had I had a dictophone in the minivan on my way the boys'swim lessons or in the grocery aisle at Vons. But often I kaboshed ideas before they ever materialized on the blog because they just didn't merit the effort.

The whole point of blogging, however, is of course to say a lot of little things, most of very little consequence. That's not to say I don't like the medium, or the idea of giving voices to everyone, despite the weight of their message or their adeptness at delivering it. But I've decided to loosen up a bit and blog like the real bloggers do, with less forethought and more verbage.

I think it is the preacher's daughter in me that wanted to treat blogging like little sermon vignettes. Instead, I need to draw my inspiration from being part of the Seinfeld generation, a groupie of sitcoms that are based on, well, nothing, or close to nothing. Because minutiae when well told, can be pretty darn hilarious.

So here it is. Let's march out into the forest of my life, pick a random tree, stick a tap in it and see what goo comes out that might eventually be boiled down to something sticky.

First of all, Soil Love is the new love of my life. I have been going through life buying a lot of t-shirts at Marshalls that were pristine all of four minutes before they got stains on them. I disguised the stains under belts or scarves or some days just wore them and felt self conscious. No more. Because I finally bought Stain Love in the green bottle at the 99 cent store and just rescued three shirts that had succumbed to salad dressing or lip gloss or chocolate.

What else has rocked my small world? Legumes. I've lost 10 pounds, with Weight Watchers and exercise, and more to come. But the key to my feeling full everyday has been vegetarian chili, chock full of fiber and protein because it has pinto beans in it and some kind of soy flour they form into little nuggets that look like hamburger. Who knew the kids would like navy beans? They had previously turned up their noses at black beans, which I thought were the perfect entry item into the world of legumes, and the fat free refried beans had been refused out of hand. My guys are begging for edamame, for pork and beans, for white beans, it's uncannily healthy stuff to pour out of a can and into a saucepan.

Last but not least, buy your middleaged husband or the one who prematurely thinks of himself as middleaged, a really nice guitar. Because every father of two, who works a nine to five job and tries to be a good husband and an attentive father and a good citizen, needs an escape fantasy. Duke's escape fantasy is, around these parts, known as the Japan Plan. He's read about aging and washed up rockers from the States who continue to have lucrative careers and faithful followings in Japan. So he and his Stratocaster have decided to skip the preliminaries -- the success in the States -- and go straight to Japan for the spoils afforded bush league rock and rollers. Japan is, evidently, the Branson of his dreams, and meanwhile, the kids and I have a happier, calmer man around the house, who sits on the porch strumming his electric guitar. Escape fantasies, legumes and Soil Love: now that's a blog!

Like most moms, I didn’t expect the arrival of children to cause the utter upheaval of life as I knew it. I expected to throw my adaptable offspring into a backpack or stroller and go on with the full and exciting life I’d previously pursued. Instead, my beloved but colicky newborn Patrick held court from his crib. Though just a few weeks old, he dictated when I’d sleep or be permitted a phone call. He demanded my full attention and mocked any attempt I made to have a coherent conversation, career or moment of composure.
Like most of the 100 plebe mothers I interviewed for my book WHAT NO ONE TELLS THE MOM (Perigee, 2005), I fought little Patrick’s hold on me. As much as I adored him, as kissable as his checks proved to be, I kept trying to shore up a life of my own. I took on work assignments during my maternity leave. I planned ambitious weekend trips for our exhausted little family. Throughout his first year of life, I continued to entertain friends with lavish dinners despite the stress we’d endure to prepare them.
Eventually though, a kind friend and mentor in motherhood told me it was okay to say “uncle.” At the time, it was unthinkable for me to throttle back. I’d just published my first book, my young marriage thrived on travel and adventure, and cooking and entertaining felt central to my personality. Even now, eight years into my motherhood odyssey with Patrick now a third grader, I feel the sting of having had to “let go.”
Nevertheless, saying “uncle” was the single most important key to my happiness and to my family’s wellbeing. I discovered that apart from getting published or being able to say I traveled somewhere exotic in my Christmas card, I became defined by the value of hard work and the sense of adventure I pass on to my kids. Though my marriage once enjoyed great restaurants and spontaneous jaunts, it now thrives on TIVO and going places for which we have coupons.
At first, admitting you can’t keep up, and agreeing to a simpler life feels threatening. But like the rose gardener who each winter cuts a plant drastically to enable it to bloom in the spring, you must trust that this is a process and that it assures your long-term sanity and health.
“Uncle,” too, is a light-hearted admission of defeat. Having walked away from one thumb wrestling match, you allow yourself to think more freely about how you will approach your next test of your endurance. As in progressive companies, nimble families test-pilot solutions and stay flexible. After all, the child care that worked beautifully for one sibling may be intolerable for the other. The Bunko and girltalk night that once made you feel human may now drain precious energy. The Saturday night sex may need to give way to Sunday morning, if the Sandman inhibits romantic follow-through.

What No One Tells the Mom includes loads of ideas about enjoying motherhood more, and feeling less deprived by the sacrifices you make for your kids. Mostly though, pruning starts with small steps. Let your Travel & Leisure subscription expire. Go to work with undone nails. Let the little darling take an occasional Lunchable to school, or watch a six-hour span of TV one Saturday while you sleep. Bark at the relatives who insist you host Easter dinner. In other words, find ways you can cut back on being sensational so that you have a little humor, patience and kindness left for those you truly cherish.