The one where the impossible becomes possible

I am a runner.

It’s taken me a long time to embrace that statement because I wasn’t running more than 2-3 miles at a time. Then, last fall, I did a 10K and last winter started training for a half marathon. Still, I wasn’t a “real” runner because I wasn’t fast.

But I don’t think I can deny that statement anymore.

Last Sunday, I completed the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. – training for a 26.2 mile race, and then actually running it, pretty much officializes (yes, I know that's not a word) you as a runner. There is no more denying it.

I am proud of myself. I’m not saying that to brag, but simply because it’s the truth. Less than six months ago, when completed my half marathon, I told myself I could never, ever, EVER run a full one. Never. No way. Cannot do. Don’t even try it, sister!

And then one night I found myself registering to run the Marine Corps Marathon for the American Cancer Society and mapping out a training plan that had runs of increasing distances (15, 16, 18, 20 miles) and thinking, “Oh my God! What have I done?!?”

But each training run was completed – not always easily and not always quickly – but I did each and every one.

Over the past few weeks and months, I cannot tell you how many people have said to me, “I could never do a marathon.”

Which is funny, because that’s exactly what I said to myself and others only a few short months ago. And today I write to you as a marathoner.

Don’t ever sell yourself short. Don’t ever tell yourself you can’t. Don’t ever give up on something you believe in.

Because whether your goal is to run a marathon or start a business or learn to hang glide, you can do it. And you should. Life it too short to spend it in regret.

A day away

In just over one month, Loaf will be 6.

A few months after that, Peanut turns 8.

Six? Eight?

These ages, especially 8, are starting to resemble big-kid ages. Granted, it was a different world, but at 8 or 9, I was walking home – a full half mile – from the bus stop by myself. I wore a house key around my neck and unlocked the front door by myself and entered a home that would be empty for another two hours.

A very different world, indeed, but still . . . I did that when I was just a year or so older than Peanut.

My daughters are growing up at a remarkable rate. Their ages seem impossible because they were born, like, yesterday and there is just NO WAY they can be (almost) 6 and 8.

Yet they are.

The princess dresses go largely unworn these days, replaced by Harry Potter capes and magic wands. Picture books sit collecting dust in favor of chapter books.

* * *
Recently, a friend sent me a scanned picture of our preschool class – a group of four-year-olds dressed in their Sunday finest captured in black-and-white. I e-mailed it to my mom.

“I remember like yesterday,” she wrote back.

Yesterday.

I wonder if a mother’s yesterday ever gets any farther away. Not the actual yesterday – the one where you got up, made breakfast, went to work, etc., but the yesterday that exists forever in your mind recalling the day when you rocked a tiny child to sleep, stroking her hair and murmuring lullabies in her ear. The day you put your child in her best dress and sent her to school for a class picture.

I hope not, because facing these big-kid ages, followed by the tough middle and high school years, then college and finally, adulthood, seems a lot more palatable knowing I can always close my eyes and bring back the past – recalling those precious baby coos, feeling that soft hair under my fingertips and taking in that sweet baby smell.

Like yesterday.

Diagnosis

I don't want to speak for all parents, so I'll just speak for myself: I spend a fair amount of time Monday-morning quarterbacking my parenting decisions and actions. There's a good deal of analyzing, replaying, retracing, judging and criticizing going on.

The care and nurturing of these tiny beings from infanthood to adulthood is a sticky process fraught with peril. One wrong move (so the adage goes) and our offspring will spend several decades and thousands of dollars propped up in some shrink's office telling him or her how all their woes are mom or dad's fault.

I'm not sure I actually buy in to that. I think every child is different. I know some adults who went through some pretty heavy shit growing up who are just fine (more or less) today. I also know a few who had more or less idyllic childhoods and are totally dysfunctional. So you never know.

But the part I am beating myself up the most about these days is in my role of protector.

They are still so young. And with youth comes a respectable level of fearlessness. I remember it myself. Jumping out of trees, riding bikes top-speed down steep hills (without a helmet, mind you), walking on a frozen pond with no thought whatsoever as to whether the ice was safe or not.

I like to think I do my best to protect them, knowing that they are not always going to do this themselves.

Protection extends beyond the extreme, of course. It's not just about jumping out of trees and steering clear of thin ice. It's also about the basics: Wash your hands before you eat. Don't tip back in your chair at the dinner table. After playing outside, let us check you for ticks.

We live in a rural area. Our yard is surrounded on two sides by woods. We have deer – lots of them – leaping through those woods, along with a host of other wildlife. I know probably a half dozen people here in town who have had Lyme disease, and probably a dozen more from the surrounding area.

When we moved here, we attended a seminar held at the local high school about Lyme disease. Finding the tick early is key, I learned. They need to be attached for at least 24 hours to transmit the disease, so one of the best ways to prevent it is to do regular and thorough checks after being outside.

I know the risks.

And yet, sometime in early June, after a day of playing outside, I stripped off Loaf's clothing, pulled a nightgown over her head and sent her to bed. The next day, I handed clean clothes to her and she dressed herself.

Later than night while preparing her for a bath, I noticed something on her back. A tiny black something. Not much bigger than a freckle. Unsure if it was dirt or lint, I gently brushed it with my finger tip, but it did not budge.

I looked closer.

Six tiny legs wiggled from the engorged body of a tick. A deer tick. A fully embedded one. The head was all the way in her back, meaning it had probably been there a while.

We gently removed it and I plopped it into a plastic bag telling myself it was wise to save it incase it needed to be tested later. (But it won't, right? A relatively small percentage of ticks carry Lyme, so the chances of this ONE being a carrier is small, right?)

A couple of days later we had dinner with our neighbors and he told the story of a recent tick buried in his side that he had tested and that came back positive for Lyme. I told him Loaf's story and he encouraged me to send it off to the lab for testing, just for peace of mind.

Twenty bucks and a few days later, we got the result: THIS TICK IS A POSITIVE CARRIER OF LYME DISEASE. CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN.

So we did, of course, but like many things, we were in a waiting game to see if she developed the rash, or other symptoms. And she was fine. Each day passed without any suspicious symptoms whatsoever.

Until this week when she woke up one morning complaining of leg pain. An examination and blood test confirmed it: Lyme disease.

The good news is, though she will be on antibiotics for most of August, she is expected to be 100%, totally fine. Her prognosis is good.

But my Monday-morning quarterbacking is still in diagnosis mode. And it says: Why didn’t you check her that night? How did you LET this happen?

And I suppose that’s a good thing. This way, hopefully, it won’t happen again.

When is zero not really zero? When it describes your food.

I’m going to just say this: I’m a bit anal when it comes to my food.

I’m not perfect, but I make a real effort to eat healthy. My husband does too. We do it for ourselves but more importantly, we do it for our children.

Mark has a relatively blemish-free family medical history (you may recall that his grandfather lived to be 103.)

Mine however, reads like the warning label on a pack of cigarettes (unfiltered ones at that):
• Cancer
• Diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Heart attack

As a result of my wonderful genetics, I have high cholesterol.

How high is it?

High. 'Nuff said.

It is why I don’t’ “just “ exercise: I do triathlons. It is why I watch what I eat. It is why, most especially, I avoid trans fat like the plague.

You see, trans fat is the worst kind of fat to eat because it:
• Increases “bad” LDL cholesterol
• Decreases “good” HDL cholesterol
• Causes heart disease and stroke
• Contributes to diabetes and obesity

It negatively impacts your health even when eaten in small amounts. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, adding just 4 grams of trans fat to your diet each day—which represents just 2% of your daily calories in a 2,000-calorie diet—increases your risk of heart disease by 23%!

As a result, the American Heart Association recommends that the average person eat less than 2 grams of trans fat each day. However, it goes on to note that there is enough naturally occurring trans fat in some meat and dairy products that most people reach the maximum 2 grams without the additional consumption of the man-made trans fat found in many popular foods.

There’s no question about it: Trans fats are horrible for you. Even if your cholesterol is 78, like my husbands (OK, maybe it isn’t that low, but it is LOW), you still shouldn’t be eating them.

Avoiding trans fat should be easy, right? Just look at the handy-dandy nutrition panel on the packaging of any food product and find the row devoted to trans fats. If it reads “0g” then you’re good to go, right?

WRONG.

A few years ago the FDA, that fantastic government agency put in place to cater to food industry lobbyists protect consumers, established some guidelines for food companies to follow when listing the trans fat content of their food on the nutrition panel.

Are you ready for this?

So long as a food has less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, it can list the trans fat content as ZERO on the nutrition panel.

Huh?

The problem with this is clear:

First, companies identify unreasonably small serving sizes for their products. The serving size for Fruit Loops is one cup, but the average bowl easily holds more than that.

Second, there are tons and tons of foods on the market with ‘trace amounts’ (under 0.5 grams per serving) of trans fats. Just look at these pictures. The nutrition panel on ALL of these foods claim zero trans fat, but they all have trans fat in them*:












So, let’s say you have a bowl of Fruit Loops for breakfast. At lunch, maybe you have a handful of Baked Doritos. Later in the day, you’re hungry, so you grab a Quaker granola bar. After dinner, you have a couple of Whole Wheat Fig Newtons (because hey! Whole wheat is healthy, right?) Later watching TV, you have a couple of crackers (Ritz, Saltines, or maybe even Wheatsworth) with a little Skippy peanut butter slathered on them.

Since all of those products have trans fat, you’ve just EASILY exceeded the 2 daily grams that the AHA recommends. In fact, you’ve probably consumed at least six, and maybe more, grams of trans fat.

And you didn’t even know it.

So how can you tell if a product has trans fat? You have to look beyond the nutrition panel and study the list of ingredients.

If anywhere in the ingredient list you see the words “partially hydrogenated,” “hydrogenated vegetable oil,” and/or “shortening,” then the product has trans fat.



The thing that particularly galls me about this is that many foods print “0g Trans Fat!” right on the front of their packaging in big, bold letters:





And we wonder why American's are 1. so confused about food and 2. so unhealthy.

These labels are there to deceive you by saying, “WOW! Aren’t we just the best? We are so healthy and responsible,” when in reality, they’ve probably tweaked their serving size just enough so it contains under 0.5 grams. It’s sneaky. And it sucks. And our government allows it, probably because enough food industry lobbyists greased the pockets of enough people in the FDA.

But you know who pays the ultimate price? People who eat this garbage, thinking they’re doing the right thing when in reality they are seriously damaging their health.


*This food is not from our pantry. Rather, Mark purchased it to use as a prop for a Toastmasters speech he recently delivered on this very topic. All of it was returned, unopened, to the supermarket following the speech.

Fear and loathing in the local elementary school

Today was kindergarten registration in my town.

Last year at this time, we were debating whether to send Peanut to the pre-K program at her preschool, or send her to kindergarten. We decided on pre-K, and have not regretted it for a second. The program is excellent. She has flourished under it—gaining confidence and social skills, as well as moving her fine-motor skills much closer to where they need to be.

When the big manila envelope from the elementary school arrived two weeks ago, I shrugged it off.

“She’s ready,” I thought. “So ready.”

But there is still a problem.

You see, I am not ready.

Not ready at all.

I sat there today, in the lobby of that school. And at first I felt fine. I chatted with the other moms. I realized Peanut will likely be on the middle- to older-end of her classmates, which is great. I watched her play with a pile of toys and every so often she’d run over to me and say excitedly, “When do we go register, Mom? Is it our turn yet?”

I felt good.

She’s so ready.

Then, suddenly, the hall was filled with students. Class after class walking by us in a line. So many students. Big students. So much bigger. Taller. More mature. Boys in jeans and sports-logo shirts laughing loudly. Girls with braces (braces!!) in low-slung pants and Ugg boots.

I watched them, these children. I watched how they looked at Peanut, my daughter, with an air of superiority that comes with being the Big Fish in the pond. I saw their knowing, smug looks. I saw the way they smirked at her, undoubtedly thinking, “oh look at that little girl there, playing with toys. TOYS!" ::snicker snicker::

And as each passed a vice tightened more and more snuggly around my heart.

Fear.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of sending her out from under my wing. Fear of her being picked on, or afraid. Fear of her having no friends. Of being the odd kid. The one eating at the lunch table alone. Fear of her coming home in tears. Fear of some brute grabbing her backpack away from her and tossing it to his friend. Fear of name-calling and bullying and cliquishness.

Fear, fear.

So much fear.

I wanted to snatch her up—my baby, this child that I birthed, like, yesterday—wrap her in my arms, run from the lobby and never look back.

I sat there, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. I turned my face away from the other mothers so they would not see the tears struggling to leak from my eyes. I pressed a finger to the corner of each eye, swallowing hard, trying to keep it all in.

“Mrs. Gav?” called the woman at the front desk.

Peanut jumped up and grabbed my hand. “It’s our turn, Mommy! It’s our turn. Come on! Come on!”

She is so ready.

The question is, when will I be?

Evidence of growth

Two years ago, I opened an envelope full my daughter's school pictures and was moved to tears.

Last week, I picked up two more envelopes - one for each daughter, and while the tears didn't flow this time around (I think I'm just more prepared for it now), the shock was still the same, especially when it comes to Peanut. She is transforming bit by bit into a bonafide Little Girl, slowly migrating away from her previous labels of "Baby," "Toddler," and "Preschooler."

And then there's Loaf. She is so petite, practically slight, and I can't help still think of her as my baby, but she's obviously growing, changing and maturing all the time. I know someday soon, before I can believe it, I'll open an envelope and there will be a tween looking back at me, followed soon thereafter by a teenager.

I dread it, and not simply because those years are virtually guaranteed to bring about eye-rolling, sighing and backtalking of epic proportions. I main reason I dread it is because I know the midday snuggles on the couch, the bedtime stories, the gigantic bear hugs around my neck, will be gone - found only in memory boxes and the dusty corners of my own brain. And, of course, envelopes of old pictures kept safely tucked away.

Peanut 3s:



Peanut 4s:



Peanut Pre-K:



Loaf 2s:



Loaf 3s:

The naked truth

I am not really very comfortable with public nudity. Mine or other people's.

In the locker room at the gym, I duck into one of the curtained changing areas to slip on my swimsuit and I wrap myself in a huge towel on the way to or from the shower. Other women are not so modest, and that's cool, but when confronted with other's nudity, I can't help but feel really uncomfortable. I look up at the ceiling or down at the floor or I study the really fascinating tile work on the walls and find myself wishing they would all respect my other people's hang ups and use that long wall of private changing areas, thankyouverymuch.

I have been swimming every Wednesday night for 19 weeks and every Wednesday night when I come out of the pool there is an elderly woman there going through some type of strange ritual involving the sauna, the shower and a lot of meandering about. She walks around the locker room slowly, sitting sometimes on the benches but mostly just kind of loitering. Every now and then, she'll duck into the shower or the sauna for a few minutes, but then she emerges again only to wander around with seemingly no real purpose but to make me twitchy.

Why?

Because she is naked as the day is long the entire time.

(Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

But, well, it's kind of - disturbing, at least to an uptight born-and-bred New Englander like myself. And odd. I really want to ask her what the hell she's doing. And why is she doing it nude? And can't she at least throw a towel down on that bench because really . . . ew!

In any event, I've sort of gotten used to her and accepted the fact that she's a bit . . . eccentric. And besides. I only have one more week of Wednesday night swim classes, so I can deal.

Except, I can't. Because she tonight she crossed over from simply strange to complete whack-a-doodle. (A naked whack-a-doodle at that.)

Let me explain: I was standing at the sinks drying my hair. No one else was in the locker room. She came out of the sauna and walked over to one of the other sinks where she proceeded to wash her armpits. Which . . . OK. Maybe she got sweaty in the sauna, but then again, there's a whole room of showers not 10 feet away.

But then, THEN she proceeded to pull one of those single-blade disposable razors out of . . . where? I have no idea. (She was nude, people, so I really don't want to spend too much time thinking about where that puppy was stowed). But in any event, she begins to SHAVE HER ARMPITS. Right there at the sink.

Which is when I went into major defense mode. I bent over and began drying my hair upside down. I did this because 1. I no longer had to look at her and 2. my hair dries faster this way and at this point all I want to do is get the freakin' hell out of there.

Then, she ups the ante AGAIN.

With no warning, she throws one leg up on the counter top (she's apparently quite limber for an old broad) and begins SHAVING HER LEG.

Now, I would like to remind you where my head is at this point. Down. Low. Which means that when her leg hit the counter top with a large thump, I involuntarily glanced in her general direction and out of the corner of my eye I saw WAY TOO MUCH OF THIS WOMAN. WAAAAAAYY TOO MUCH. Like as much as we all saw of Britney Spears when she forgot to wear underwear for a week straight.

(And yes, I am scarred for life and no, I will never be able to burn this sight from my brain.)

For a split second, I actually wondered if I was on some type of bizarre, adult candid camera show. I started looking around for the hidden camera and wondering if Ashton Kutcher or someone was going to pop out of a locker. But of course, that didn't happen and she went right on calmly shaving her leg while my brain - frozen like a deer in the headlights - attempted to process what it was seeing while at the same time desperately trying to forget what it just saw. ::shudders::

This was the straw that broke my proverbial back. I switched off the hairdryer and walked out of there before she could start shaving SOMETHING ELSE and me and my still-wet hair went swiftly into the frozen night. Which was infinitely better than hanging around for the finale to this woman's highly bizarre grooming ritual.

Next week, I think I'll use the girls' locker room. Just to be safe.

An ordinary day like no other

Today I woke up. Made my children breakfast. Drove them to school. Went to the gym. I picked up Loaf at 11:30 and had lunch. I took a shower, then picked up Peanut at 1 p.m. and we all went to the library.

A perfectly ordinary September day.

Except it wasn’t.

The first reminder came when I turned on the radio and the newscaster said in his ordinary voice: “Today is Thursday, September 11, 2008. This is NPR.”

Seven years. Seven.

It hardly seems possible. All day as I went about my chores and errands, fulfilled my responsibilities and duties, I swallowed a lump in my throat and felt tears burning behind my eyes.

I managed to avoid the horrific images most of the day, though much to my chagrin when I was at the gym MSNBC insisted on re-broadcasting its footage and commentary from 2001, complete with the smoking Twin Towers and Pentagon, as if anyone who was alive in 2001 needs to ever see those again. They are images that are unfortunately filed in my permanent memory whether I want them there or not.

I ran on the treadmill not wanting to look, but unable not to. I tried desperately to focus instead on the other networks’ coverage of the Memorial service. But it was no good. My eye kept getting pulled back. The gym was eerily quiet. No one was chatting next to each other on the equipment like usual. Or if they were, I was too wrapped up in my own emotions to notice.

My head spun with the horror of that day: Sitting in the conference room at work watching smoke stream from the first Tower on a fuzzy feed from the local ABC affiliate. The dreaded realization when the second plane hit that we weren’t watching a dreadful accident, but something much, much worse. Something out of a nightmare. The panicked calls to Mark begging him to get out of his building and as far away from New York as he could get NOW. My coworker who sat anxiously by the phone – not even wanting to get up to use the bathroom – trembling with fear and not knowing if her husband, an employee at the WTC, was dead or alive (she finally got the call around 3 p.m. that he was fine, thank God.)

Compounding things was the fact that September 11, 2001 was a day much like today in the New York area: Sunny, clear blue skies, a hint of cooler fall air. It felt like it did that day. It even smelled like it did that day, if that makes sense – the scent of fall blown around on a pleasant breeze.

I don’t think anyone in this country came away from that terrible day unscathed. We were all victims in some way. But it is impossible to live in this area of the world and not think of September 11, 2001 on a regular basis. It is impossible to live here and not know someone who knows someone who died that day, or who ran from the City covered in dust. Someone who has nightmares still about what they saw or heard.

I think of 9/11 every time I drive to work when I come up over a hill and catch a glimpse of the New York City skyline, forever, irrevocably altered. I think of every time I hear a jet screeching overhead, glancing up nervously waiting, waiting for the worst. I think of it every time I walk into the dry cleaner around the corner from my office and see the poster tacked up, “Remember our nephew, Josh, killed 9/11/01,” and see Josh, smiling back at me in a tuxedo looking happy and alive.

Most of all, I think of it each and every time I set foot in New York. I love that City, but I will never feel completely, 100% safe there again. It doesn’t stop me from enjoying everything New York has to offer, but my body always does a full exhale when it hits the western shores of the Hudson once again.

But despite the regular reminders, the anniversary always hits me particularly hard. I go about my day doing ordinary things because I have to. But on this day, more so than usual, my heart aches and weeps for those who were lost on what started out as a perfectly ordinary September day seven years ago.

Learning to let go on the great roller coaster of life

Yesterday was a bad day.

My coworker, my friend, suffered a terrible tragedy. Over the weekend, her sister took her own life.

We are a small office of less than 20 people. We don’t do backstabbing or politics. We like each other and are genuinely friendly both in and out of the office. We know each other’s spouses, parents, children and siblings by name. We met our coworker’s sister. She was a bright, funny woman who loved animals and singing. We are grieving with our coworker. Our friend.

All day I found myself periodically choking back tears imagining the horrible pain she and her family is going through. It is unfathomable to me.

Only two days ago, I wrote about the close bond between sisters, and my coworker certainly shared such a bond with hers. They were roommates. When they weren’t working, they were together.

I think of her parents. The pain. The guilt (undoubtedly there whether deserved or not). The emotional wreckage. The baggage. The second guessing. The hyper-analyzing of words recently said, as well as those those that were not. The horrible void that will never be filled. The tears that will always flow.

I ache for them with every cell. I can imagine nothing worse than losing a child, and even more so in such a senseless, sudden way.

I came home from work last night and wrapped myself around my daughters, trying to fold them into me, make them part of me again so that I can protect them, keep them happy and warm and safe and by my side so that I can watch over them now and always. Thoughts of them growing up and away from me present too many fears and worries to count.

* * *

When I was girl, I loved to ride roller coasters – the old wooden ones were the best. I’d ride them over and over, but could never completely let go – literally. I’d cling to the safety bar in front of me while other riders sat with their arms in the air, waving to friends on the ground below as they plummeted through space, nothing holding them in but a regular old seat belt and that one thin bar. They trusted that they’d still be in those seats when the coaster ascended its trough on the other side. I’m not sure I ever did.

I know someday I’ll have to let go on this crazy ride called motherhood. I’ll have to release my fear and trust that I’ve built a bar strong enough to keep my daughters in their seats even when they fall through space. I’ll have to trust that no matter how dramatic the fall, they’ll come up on the other side, with me standing on the ground below, waving, hoping, praying.

Always.

Thirtysomething . . . at least for now

Today is my 39th birthday.

Insert dramatic pause and/or audible gasp

All week I’ve been trying to muster up some bad feelings or dread about it, but I just can't. I'm completely unfazed. So, I'm wondering, have I finally come to accept aging as an inevitable and acceptable part of life? Have I gained some new wisdom or perspective recently?

Nooooooo.

It comes down to this my friends: I'm just really, really freaking happy that for at least one more year I am still an official "thirtysomething." Next year, it's a whole new ball game. The big four UH-OH. The start of a whole new decade and phase of life. The thirties - the decade in which I became a homeowner, got married and had children - will be in my past.

::gulp::

OK, so maybe I'm not feeling so fine after all?

Dangers real and imagined

I was alone this weekend again.

Mark attended his grandfather’s funeral in Ohio. We decided it was too long in the car (7-hours each way) and too much of a whirlwind (two days) for the girls, so he and his brother road-tripped together.

On Saturday, I met my sister-in-law, who also has two young girls, at a big indoor play area for kids. The girls spent nearly four hours playing in the mock, child-sized grocery store, fluttering around the baby doll nursery and digging in a huge sand pit.

At one point, I had to change Loaf. The facility had women’s and men’s bathrooms, plus a co-ed baby changing room with a toilet and sink. I headed there. The door had a latch lock, but I guess I didn’t push it through all the way because as I was setting up the changing table, a man walked in. But instead of saying, “oh excuse me,” and leaving, as any NORMAL fucking person would do, he just came right in and proceeded to wash his hands. Really. Really. Slowly.

By this time, I had Loaf on the changing table, but there was no way—NO WAY—I was going to take her diaper off her while this guy was there—it was too fishy. And creepy. He was standing at the sink with his back to us, but there was a large mirror over the sink that would give a clear view to my baby girl’s naked lower half. And I just had the feeling he was lingering. It was more than a little disturbing.

My mind was racing. Why did he come in at all?

Part of me wanted to just turn to him and say, “Excuse me dude, but WHAT THE FUCK? We’re in here. Go use the men’s room. Or just go back outside and wait your turn.”

But I didn’t. The polite, timid side of me, the side that doesn’t like to make a scene, the side that doesn’t want to draw attention to myself or look like a bitch, overruled. So I stood there, quietly stewing and waiting for this guy to leave on his own. When he finally did (it seemed like forever), I raced over and pushed the latch lock firmly through to the other side.

When I left the changing room, I looked for him. He was sitting with this family in the doll nursery. He was a very normal looking guy in a navy-blue v-neck sweater with a white t-shirt under it. He had two little girls and his wife—a cute redhead with long curly hair—was pregnant. They looked like picture perfect all-American family. And maybe they were, but I still say his behavior was odd. He is either completely oblivious to social mores, or is a pervert. I’m voting door #2. Sicko.

And yes, I'm completely pissed at myself for not speaking up and saying something. That is exactly the attitude that gets women into trouble. Everything you read tells you that if your instincts tell you something is weird, you should speak up, be direct, yell. But I had no voice in that bathroom and I am completely disappointed in myself because of it.

At home that night, we made grilled cheese and soup for dinner. I was still turning the episode over in my head a bit.

Now you must understand that when I’m alone in the house, I’m a huge wimp with an overactive imagination. I live on a rural, dark street where the homes are quite spread out. On the nights when Mark is out, my imagination has, at times, gotten the best of me.

There was the night, during a windstorm, that a huge tree limb fell on the roof and I called the police because I swore – SWORE – the loud thump on the roof could only be made by a serial killer preparing to drop down the chimney and kill me. Oy.

So there we were, sitting round the kitchen table eating our dinner, when Peanut says, with nothing but sunshine and light in her voice, “Mommy, I see eyes looking in the window.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and every muscle in my body froze. My mind flashed first to the scene in The Amityville Horror when the bright red demonic eyes appear in the little girl’s bedroom and then quickly to the even more famous I see dead people. Or worse, was it the creepy guy from the bathroom? Did he somehow follow us home?

As Peanut sat there smiling, I slowly turned my head toward the window. Of course, there was nothing there but the inky, pitch-black night. I got up and flipped on the outside light. Nothing. The yard was empty. The gate closed.

“Spot still sees eyes, Mommy! Bright pink eyes!”

Spot is Blanket’s pet. An imaginary friend for both Peanut and Blanket who likes to hop along the side of our car when we drive and also apparently gets a rush out of scaring Mommy half to death.

Fantastic.

The never-ending alarm

The night before last, at about 2:15 a.m., our carbon monoxide detector went off.

Its “beep-beep-beep-pause-repeat” woke me before Mark, my eyes flying open and my brain going from “dreamful sleep” to “wide-awake-panic” in about a tenth of a second.

Moments later, Mark jumped out of bed to investigate. Meanwhile, the “beep-beep-beep-pause-repeat” woke Loaf, and I gathered up her up and followed Mark into the living room.

The source of the problem was easy to identify. We started a fire Friday afternoon and mistakenly closed the flue too early. Mark opened doors and windows, started the attic fan and set up a number of fans at the doors to move air around (and of course he reopened the flue).

Within minutes, the detector was registering zero again and it’s “beep-beep-beep-pause-repeat” mercifully ended.

I checked Peanut (sleeping peacefully) and settled Loaf into our bed. A few minutes later, I got into bed next to her. She was already in a deep sleep. I however lay awake for a long time listening to her steady, slow breaths, my head filled with “what ifs.”

What if we didn’t have a carbon monoxide detector in the living room?
What if it hadn’t gone off in time? Peanut sleeps much closer to the fireplace than we do.
What if it had not gone off at all?
What if, what if, what if?

The grim possibilities raced through my head.

I rolled onto my side and draped my arm over Loaf’s tiny body. Feeling safe and happy, she sighed deeply in a state of perfect rest. But the responsibility for her and Peanut’s safety and well being rested on my chest like an anvil. The incident reminded me how important my job is, how much they count on me, and the endless list of things that are beyond my control or ability to prevent.

I glanced over at the clock.

5:23 a.m.

The “beep-beep-beep-pause-repeat” of the carbon monoxide detector had stopped hours ago, but it still rang loud and clear in my head.

I think it always will.

The kindergarten conundrum

Since September, we (well, mostly I) have been wrestling with what to do with Peanut next year.

She is in preschool in the “fours” class, but her late August birthday makes her one of the youngest in her class. Since the beginning of the school year, a slew of her classmates have turned five. Some are nearly a full year older than she.

If she goes off to kindergarten next year, she will one of the youngest in the class, especially since there are many families around here who intentionally keep their children out the first year - even if they have spring birthdays - to give them a leg up in size and maturity later. Thus, it’s very likely she’d enter kindergarten next year with children who are six years and several months old.

So the question is: do we send her, or do we suck it up and pay another year in somewhat hefty tuition to send her to her preschool’s pre-K program?

In addition to being young, she is small. She stands a full foot shorter than some of the girls in her class. And, as I’ve posted before, she struggles a bit socially.

She has a good friend at school.

One. Good. Friend.

Last week, that girl was out sick for three days and it threw her into a tailspin of whining and crying every morning. I’m not foolish enough to think that in a year she’ll be “cured” of her shyness, but I have hope that she’ll be able to relate to more of her peers, be more on par with them socially and size-wise, and thus be more confident.

Of course, nearly everyone else has an opinion about what we should do. Other parents from her school, while not coming right out and saying, “send her to pre-K” nod knowingly and tell me how quiet and small she is.

Others have told me that these differences in maturity don’t often manifest until the children reach high school. Suddenly, you have a 15-year-old with a bunch of 16-year-old friends (who are driving and doing Lord knows what else). This is not to say that every child is influenced by the stupid things their peers do, and everyone knows even older “more mature” kids make stupid choices, but it seems to me to be tempting fate a bit.

Meanwhile, our family and friends who know the Peanut I do – the vivacious, inquisitive, bright girl who can read and spell close to a dozen words and whose vocabulary includes the likes of “enchanting,” and “magnificent” and “complicated,” think I’m crazy for even considering keeping her out of kindergarten next year.

Much to my chagrin, like a lot of parenting issues, there is no clear-cut answer to this. Instead, I have to go with my gut.

I hate having to rely on my gut. I don’t do well trying to rationalize these squishy issues. I much prefer cut-and-dried answers written by “experts” in parenting books or websites. But alas, there is no formula, no “here’s what to do if your child has a late summer birthday” solution, despite my best efforts to find one.

I put Peanut on the list for pre-K months ago to hold her a spot. The program is popular and fills every year. We have to make a decision next month – a deadline that looms ever closer and will be here before we know it.

I think I already know the answer. I think I knew it months ago when I signed her up. Maybe my gut instinct isn’t so poorly honed after all.

When good news is really just mediocre news in disguise

For most of life, my skin and I have been at war.

I recall having blackheads on my chin long before anyone else my age – around 2nd or 3rd grade. By the time I got to high school, I had full-blown acne. I’d get giant, painful cystic pimples that sat under the skin but grew to the size of pennies. Big, red welts covered by jawline almost constantly.

My weapons of choice ranged from everything from over-the-counter Clearasil to tetracycline and Retin A prescribed by my dermatologist. But my most-used and most-loved weapon was the sun.

Every possible sunny moment, I sat outside slathered in suntan lotion with little to no SPF. In the winter months, the tanning booth was my best friend. I visited two to three days a week – just enough to keep my skin a lovely mahogany brown. I don’t believe the sun stopped the breakouts, but it helped conceal them and that was good enough for me.

I kept right on tanning until I was in my mid-20s, never giving much thought to wrinkles, never mind skin cancer. And if I did get skin cancer? So what? Skin cancer wasn’t deadly (so I thought). It was just a funny little mole that had to be taken off and then life went on. I’d had moles taken off and it was no big deal. So I didn’t worry. And I kept right on tanning.

Until one day I saw an article about skin cancer that truly terrified me. It was graphic, showing people with parts of their noses removed or with horrible scars on every part of their body where lesions had been cut out – along with lots of surrounding skin. It talked about types of skin cancer that spread to other organs and become deadly. It scared the crap out of me and ever since I’ve been a religious user of hats, sunglasses and sunscreens with high SPFs.

Soon after, I went for my first full-body skin check by a dermatologist. I held my breath while he gave me the once over, pointing out moles I needed to watch, but in the end giving me the all clear. No cancer.

After the babies came, I did what a lot of new mothers do and neglected by own professional health care for a while. My last skin cancer check was in 2002, many months before I got pregnant with Peanut.

About six weeks ago I stepped out of the shower and began toweling off when I noticed it. On the back of my arm – a funny, irregular shaped mole that I’d never seen before. Standing close to the mirror, I ran my finger over it. It was flat, which was good, but oddly shaped, unevenly colored and kind of big. It sent me into a panic.

The very next day, I was on the phone with my doctor getting a referral to a dermatologist. It was a long wait – over a month just to get in for a check up, but today my appointment finally came.

I’m happy to say, it is nothing.

“Just an age spot,” the doctor said. “It will probably get bigger. Here’s another one starting here on your chest.”

So, PHEW. Good news. Great news, right? Right . . . ?

Sure. If you consider the fact that instead of having cancer, I’m just getting damn old and my skin has found a new way to torment me.

fanfuckingtastic



The age spot that ate New Jersey.

So much to say, so difficult to say it

All week I’ve sat staring at a blank Word document, its flashing cursor mocking my inability to put into words all that it’s in my head.

The tragedy that enveloped the news this week is too horrific, too unimaginable, too heartbreaking to give much thought to. So I’ve sat day after day trying to figure out what I can possibly say that adds any value, anything new, anything comprehensible to such an incomprehensible situation.

And all the while there’ve been other events I could have written about: the hellacious trip to Stride Rite with Peanut to buy new shoes. The lugnut Toys ‘R Us employee who walked away laughing at me when I told him I could lift a 50-pound bag of sand into my car on my own (I can and I did, you big jerk). The funny way Loaf points to the door and commands, “Go Mama!” whenever she wants to do something on her own (as well as when she’s about to do something naughty and she catches on that I’m watching her. Little imp).

But all of it seems so trivial this week in light of so much tragedy and grief. So much potential was wiped off the earth in a matter of minutes, I can’t even begin to really think about it without a tightening in my chest and tears welling up in my eyes.

A tragedy like this is difficult to think about when you don’t have children. When you do, it takes on a whole new element. Something so raw and disturbing, it’s like your whole body turned inside out and all the nerves are on the outside causing every emotion, every sensation to be doubled, even tripled with a force that sometimes leaves you crippled with doubt and fear.

Events like those at VA Tech on Monday bring out that visceral instinct to hold your babies (no matter their age) close, bear your teeth and protect them. But how? How can you ever protect them from someone as blatantly disturbed, which is about the nicest thing I can say about him, as the shooter in this case. (I refuse to even type his name and thus contribute to his twisted immortality).

Like millions of parents across this country, each day I drop my child off at school, give her a peck on the lips and say goodbye, fully expecting to see her again in a couple of hours. Any other thought—even a fleeting—of anything else is unfathomable, too utterly horrific to imagine.

So the thoughts get pushed down—way, way down—into the dark recesses of my soul until something like the VA Tech shootings force them to violently fly back up the top.

I had to turn away from the news this week, because it was starting to keep me up at night, forcing me out of bed to walk down the hall and check each of my precious sleeping girls to make sure they were still there, still safe. Of course they were there in their beds, breathing deeply, completely at peace, which is exactly how it should be.

I know I won’t always be there to protect them and I can only pray that they’ll never cross paths with the likes of Monday’s killer. In the meantime, I’ll just keep pushing down all the bad thoughts and focusing on everything that’s wonderful about life right now, which I’m guessing is what’s going to help all those parents and friends of this week’s victims move forward from this as well.

My thoughts are with all of the victims and survivor’s of Monday’s tragedy. I wish you all peace.