The King of Pop

I have to say that I am a little shocked over Michael Jackson's death. It isn't that he occupies space in my everyday thoughts, but his early music was really good and really none of us who grew up in the eighties can't say that they didn't own Thriller.

I think it is a sudden loss in a life that became twisted and slightly bizarre, and I hope that his "kids" are able to adjust.

Anyway, I was just thinking how much I liked a lot of his songs and even though his best friend was a monkey doesn't mean we should judge. I feel for Tito, et al.

A Few Random Things

Halo

The Lady is obsessed with "Halo" by Beyonce. I had to download it on the iPod last week, just so she could get her fix.

I should probably buy some kid cd's or something, but she seems to respond well to Billboard's Top 100.

The best part about playing it for her is that she sings the chorus and when Beyonce hits the high notes so does the Lady.

Jon and Kate + 8

I have resisted writing at all about this topic, only because I think I could go on for like 40 pages. However, I will say that although, I am not surprised by their "special announcement" that they are getting divorced, I am really glad that TLC took the somewhat high road and decided to halt production for at least a month.

Hopefully, the hoopla will die down a bit and they can both assess the true "reality" of their situation.

So You Think You Can Dance

Everyone should be watching this program. I repeat. . . everyone. BTW, Katie Holmes is apparently making an appearance on the show. I will be setting the TiVO for that.

All Summer in a Day

Last Friday I made a quick day trip up to the beach house to assess the situation for the summer. The Lady and I are planning on going up there on Monday and my husband will follow sometime mid-to late week for our annual fourth of July celebration.

Note to all readers who may be making an appearance--there will be fireworks this year at OBP on Friday night. We should be able to watch from Park St. if there are any sleeping babes. Plan accordingly.

Anyway, after yet again another cloudy, wet start to the day on Friday, the sun finally came out and C-Bear and I were able to take the two babes to the beach. The Lady is afraid of the water but is reacting well to the sand, the Big Guy on the other hand, will be in the water the entire summer and the Sound my friends, isn't warm.

We got an hour or so of late afternoon sun in and gave the kids a chance to run around a bit. We have been trying to devise a method of giving a time out at the beach--my suggestion is to dig a hole and stick them in there when the sand starts flying, but that is probably not feasible and potentially dangerous.

Oh, my point. . . so later that night my cousin brings up the topic of a movie she remembered from being small, it just so happens that this same movie (but the short story) had been occupying my thoughts as well, due to the very dreary, very depressing Spring we have been having. (The NY/CT area has has rain 19 out of the 24 days so far this June. Yikes!) That story was the Ray Bradbury short "All Summer in a Day."

I am constantly feeling like the girl locked in the closet on the one sunny day of the year. After a quick rain shower this morning it looked like the sun might break through, and it did for about 15 minutes. The Lady and I kicked around her princess ball and I got the great idea to fill up the baby pool. I have never used this pool though and when I tried to actually inflate it with my mouth things got difficult, which is funny because I usually don't have any problem inflating things with my mouth. Anyway, I tried the basketball pump and we got a bit of air in there, but after about 15 minutes of the Lady "helping" me pump, the sun went back behind the clouds, I was hot and sweaty, and the Lady was covered in dirt from the garage.

So now I have a half inflated baby pool sitting on the hood of my car, we are back in the house to escape the grey and I am hoping the Lady forgot I even mentioned the pool. I am feeling trapped by this weather and totally down. It doesn't help that I am gigantic, barely mobile, and unable to turn my own body over at night. This kid better be cute and the sun better come out soon!

The Original Mom's Club

I was so grateful that I was able to meet up with 5 of my college roommates last weekend at LBI. That's right--Jersey baby, Jersey.

This is the 4th year that we have been able to pick a weekend (this process usually starts sometime in January, when we are all in a desperate state to get out of the house), convince our husbands that they can and should stay home with the kid or kids for the entire weekend, while we go to the beach, out to dinner and spend countless hours trying to cram in as much gossip magazine reading as we can. It is never nearly as much time as we need.

We have been lucky that between the births of babies we are still able to step away and decompress with each other. Unlike the online mom's group that I am a part of, or the smaller club that I am hoping to become more active in in the upcoming months. I don't feel judged, or anxious about having to forge a bond with these women, because they are the ones who have already seen me through the carbohydrate-fueled college days, the early years after college when nobody knew what they were doing (oh wait, that was just me), marriage and all the craziness that follows that decision and were there for me, when I finally joined the ranks of the mommyhood. They were and remain my ultimate mom's club.

I will say that since we all have kids, and all of us at this point a toddler or two, a lot of conversation revolved around them. When we did tire of the time-out talk, we moved onto our poor husbands at home, and the balance we hoped they were all striking, the sheer amount of attention given to the whole Jon and Kate + 8 drama, as well as anything that we found of interest in any one of the varying People, US Weekly, or Star Magazines.

We also did find a bit of time to talk about a few other things, which is nice because in about a month we are all getting together again, but this time with all the husbands and kids in tow. When we finally reach that weekend, it is good to know that between all the meal prep, swimming pool time and running around after the kids, that we already had a weekend, just the six of us where were able to catch up about each other because clearly we will have no time to sit down and just chat.

I am lucky that I have a group to lean on, to ask questions of and who know me well enough to give me an honest answer. Now, if we could all move onto the same block or next year stretch the weekend into a week. . .

Happy Birthday Steadman's Army

Happy Birthday to you Steadman and your Army.

Love you. Thanks for reading. Glad to see you are out of the office today.

The Genetics of Cake

There are some traits and habits of mine that I would like to pass down to my children. There are also some things that I hope will pass my children right by, things like adult acne and my lack of assertiveness.

There are days when I look at the Lady and think she is all her dad, and days when I look at her and think that she is nothing but her beautiful little self. I can recognize myself in her of course, mostly it is just a look or an expression, but there are some days that I know that this is the kid I pushed out and that she is 100% part of me.

Me

The Lady (at least I was using a fork!)

Good Intentions

A couple of weeks ago, I watched an episode of Oprah about learning to live with less. Basically, the show followed two families, who were forced to give up all the technology in their lives and spend more time together. They had to surrender all their TVs, cell phones, and access to the computer for a week (and in one case two weeks), and spend some quality time with their family. In addition they were told they had to give away at least ten things a day that they could live without.

I started to think about how I could incorporate some of these same ideas in my own life. My initial thought was to give up watching TV one night a week. My initial plan was to have this happen last Thursday. The reason why I picked last Thursday was because the Yankees had an off night and I was already Tivoing, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). I figured it would be an easy transition.

Another reason I picked Thursday was because my husband and I were already planning on going to a happy hour that his office was hosting. Now, usually any sort of work related thing with my husband isn't too interesting to me, especially since a lot of the people who I know who worked there have moved on to other things, and more importantly I cannot drink. However, after a teary conversation a few nights earlier, which I blamed on being really tired and seven months pregnant, about not spending any time together, I figured that something was better than nothing. Now, I ended up spending about 45 minutes at the Happy Hour, in which time, my husband played a trivia game, and we watched the four TVs that were on in the bar, one with headline news, one with Jeopardy, and two with the women's college softball playoffs. Turning the TV off seemed to be a little harder then expected.

I think that had we gone home and the Lady had been sleeping then maybe we would have whipped out the Scrabble, where we would have sat in fierce competition and I would have pouted my way through it because he has a knack of using like all his letters on a triple-word score and I get stuck with a hundred k's and z's. However, not only was the Lady not sleeping but The Scripps National Spelling Bee was on in prime time.

Have you watched this? A few years ago, I was lucky to watch the early rounds on ESPN one late Spring afternoon and I was sucked in. Since then, I have been an adamant watcher of home schooled kids, in awful outfits, with braces and crazy hair and uni brows. I have had the pleasure of seeing how thirteen year-old boys can look both thin, frail, obviously hairless in the pants, and unsure of their sexual orientation, to full fledged men complete with facial hair. And speaking about facial hair, oh those poor little Indian girls. I mean, I know that at twelve or thirteen you aren't thinking about your eyebrows, but really, just pick up a razor and get the fuzz off the lip. These poor ladies, isn't it bad enough that you are a competitive speller? Don't you take enough flak at school? (If in some cases you actually attend school and aren't taught by your overweight mom in a peasant skirt, or your tyrannical father, who wields flash cards and spelling lists like the world is going to end.) Please ladies see a salon specialist, now I know that the eyebrow wax is painful, but you are national TV for God's sake.

Anyway, there is obviously a market for this event because beyond the sheer awkwardness of each speller with their minor ticks and tricks to spell out the words, this thing is broadcast in prime time. I can't be expected to look away, besides my husband and I sat side by side on the couch, communicating about the flaws and features of prepubescent children, and laughed in glee as each time a word was spelled incorrectly, the bell dinged and another kid ran off to sit on the lap of their parent, tears in their eyes, and the shame of a misspelled word fresh in their minds.

Now, I know I have a ton of clutter here in this house that I can get rid of. I know that if I really made the effort to turn off the TV, even one night a week, then maybe our family would run a little smoother, be a little closer, but had I missed Kavya Shivashankar's spelling Laodicean which is defined as "lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics," I think that I just might have lived a little less.