It's the little things, ya'll

I hosted for Thanksgiving. Which is why I am just getting a chance to write this.

I am fortunate enough that the big things that I'm thankful for have become mainstays: great husband, wonderful family, good health, happy kids, etc.

So it's the little things that I'm thankful for:
1. The free Starlight peppermints that are at the front desk at the gym. I like that after I brutalize myself with spin class or body pump that I can have a free piece of candy.
2. NickJr. When I need a minute (or an hour, or a day) I know the kids are counting and learning commercial-free.
3. First cup of coffee each day.
4. First glass of wine after the kids' bedtimes.
5. Top Chef. I can be productive for the two hours between the kids' bedtimes and Top Chef. Once Top Chef comes on at 10pm I can then feel very justified drinking wine and eating cheese for the next hour.
6. That I learned two Parks family recipes: crab soup and oyster stuffing. I know them and Jeremy and his sisters don't so I can sell the information to them later in life.

I know there are way more than six but I need to go break up a Pokemon fight between the kiddos that is getting a little violent.

Serenity in the city

I go to a downtown gym three days week and do a combination of running, spinning, weights and socializing.  I have never been athletically inclined and until my mid-20s was really, really thin.  Fast forward fifteen years and the only running I was doing was down the block to the wine store for more Cabernet Sauvingnon.   

Yesterday I took a yoga class for the first time in more than eight years.  I quickly remembered why I gave it up.  First, I hate to look at lots of bare feet—it freaks me out.  They eyes are not the gateway to the soul; the feet are.  You can tell a lot about a person by their feet.  A plain looking person will sometimes have very elegant, well-cared for feet which leads me to believe they have unsuspected depth.  Conversely, if a great-looking person has ugly feet, it’s nature’s way of balancing shit out.   The woman next to me yesterday had especially heinous feet—very natural, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word, sans pedicure or even a bi-monthly buffing down of the heels.  Plus people touch their feet then touch the communal mats and other stuff which is pretty hard for a self-confessed germaphobe to handle.  And someone smelled like garlic.  Not an everything-bagel-for-breakfast sort of smell, but a huge-helping-of-garlicky pasta-for-dinner sort of smell, where it’s spilling out of one’s pores.  Trapped in a small, dimly-lit room with the feet and unidentifiable Garlic Girl, I was miserable.  At least it was only a 45 minute class, I thought. 

The teacher is the sort of being who insists on declaring the names of all the poses ALL THE TIME so it was Tadasana down into Chaturanga then into Trikonasana so I feel as if I am taking a class in Bombay and not Baltimore, despite the presence of Under Armour apparel surrounding me.  I’m sure she means well, but I have a degree in International Studies, not Sanskrit and have little yearn to learn it.  In fact, there’s so little that I like about yoga.  Devotees are all about The Breathing, the inhalation and the exhalation, so the room is full of people that sound like they’re having sex.  There’s jargon I just don’t get—how exactly to open one’s pelvis?  How does one breathe through one’s belly button?  Or when bent in half, pull said belly button back to the thighs?  Most of the time I’m just hanging there, faking it.  The teacher is clearly living The Yoga Life which I can only presume does not include wolfing down marshmellows dipped in Nutella upon returning home from class like I did.  I just can’t identify with someone that is so clearly, well, whole.  I hope she has some sort of vice, like Jack Daniels or prosciutto eaten on buttered bread, but I doubt it.  She probably eats ten almonds instead of eight when she wants to get crazy.  I know I’m being judgmental, but this is my blog, dammit.

My goal for this class is to loosen up all the joints that have locked up from a decade hunched over a laptop.  I’m not looking for Clarity or Serenity, and with my bad attitude I’ll never find that at the gym anyway.  A wine bar, maybe.  In class we did this move where, sitting with legs straight out, we were all supposed to grab our big toe (again with the feet!) and pull the leg back as if it were a hunter’s bow.  Riiiiiiight.  Not my cuppa tea, but my back does feel looser (all that breathing that my shoulders were doing, apparently) and so I admit, I’ll be back next week.  With a package of antibacterial wipes.       

Halloween - the highest of holy days

As Claire so aptly puts it, Halloween is the highest of holy days for me.

To know and love me is to understand my deep love of sugar. I think it stems from having sugar limited as a kid. Lesson learned, Mom; so I allow my kids to eat a ton, that won't backfire on me, right? As a result, all Sarah does is ask for treats ALL THE TIME. Yes, Mom, karma is a bitch.

I also love Halloween because there are no gifts to buy and if you're a slacker when it comes to costumes like I am, very little prep needed. We make a big pot of soup, buy an assload of beer and I stay up most of the night posting pictures and crushing the kids' Halloween score. I consider eating their candy my payback from the teething years. I have to protect those teeth and gums I heavily medicated with Advil, right?

So yes, I am that Mom who tells the kid what piece of candy to pick. Happy Halloween!

The Big C and a dress from 1987

“I’m in remission!” my friend Trevor yells into his cell phone as he picks his way along a busy street in New York on a recent Thursday evening, ‘and I’ve bought you a cocktail dress!”

This first piece of new is great.  Battling lung cancer at the age of 36 while in the prime of gay singlehood is not a picnic.  Being forced to move back into one’s childhood home in the Midwest after leaving a high-rise condo, a convertible BMW, a full social life and a founding partnership in an interior design business was a soul-crushing event for him.   

The second piece of news is off-putting.  I live in Baltimore—where the hell am I going that I need a cocktail dress—at school pickup?  Sitting on our front stoop on a weeknight with a beer in hand?  Hardly.  I’m a mom.  And I work from home as a freelancer.  My wardrobe consists mainly of assorted t-shirts from the Gap.  By assorted I mean white and gray, long sleeve and short.    

Our friend Colin came by one evening to drop off said dress after meeting Trevor in New York where he’s interviewing for fabulous post-cancer jobs with Ralph Lauren, GQ magazine and Louis Vuitton (I’m pulling for LV in hopes of scoring some free luggage).  I opened the bag and took out the dress.  It was super short, strapless, multi-tiered in a black and while geometric pattern, and …wait for it…in possession of a peek-a-boo cut out between where the boobs go.  More specifically, my 40 year old boobs.  In actuality, it looks a tad like what Madonna wore in her ‘Lucky Star’ phase and what I would have worn to prom if my mother had let me.  And strapless—a tough feat to carry off after 30, what with the whole arm flab thing.  Where the fuck was I going to wear this? 

Trevor used to live next door to me.  We spent countless hours together while he was recovering from treatments at Johns Hopkins and I was putting off my work and in dire need of adult conversation during the day when my toddler was wasn’t pulling her weight in conversation.  I would take him squash soup, and he would talk to me without needing anything the way everyone else in my house did.  For the year he and Colin rented next door I saw them almost daily. 

I wondered exactly what made him think that this gift was me.  But maybe that is how he sees me—sexy, flirty, young—and maybe I should trust him, since after all, he’s a gay man, and who knows more about what looks good on a woman??  So maybe, just maybe, I will wear it out one of these nights.  But with jeans underneath.  And perhaps a cardigan.