Sometimes Beyonce is better than Motherhood, but maybe a Backyard Shed would change all that

Well, I'm glad that's over.  Nothing left but the endless presents with no place to go, the extra five pounds, and the trails of glitter left by Maggie's fabulous new shoes. Christmas, for me, was sort of a drag.  Too much obligation and wrapping.  Too many runny noses and schlepping from here to there. I like my regular old over-scheduled life better. 

As I write this my kids are using their new Christmas scissors (favorite presents: Elmer's glue and scissors) to chop up the New York Times Style section.  Before I was ignoring them to write my blog, I was ignoring them to read said section.  Not ignoring them totally.  I would look up occasionally and comment in the saccharine-laced voice of disinterested parents everywhere on their stellar Mr. Potato heading and marvelous tea party preparations. But really, I was hidden behind an article about style makeovers for 2009.  

And here's what I wonder.  Am I the only one?  Is it possible that I am the only mother around who is sometimes just straight up bored with playing with her kids (although not to level of this woman, tut, tut!)?  There must be others like me, other grown women with little tolerance for the endless making of make-believe cookies and Playdough snakes.  

I once had a friend who sniffed with disdain at those mothers who listened to their ipods while jogging with their strollered infants. "I mean, what better music could there be than the cooing of your own baby?" she asked with great scorn.  Of course, this was back before either of us had kids.  But even then I suspected she was off, that as delightful and wonderful as they are, kids would get a little tedious.  Even their musical cooing would not always trump a great novel, or an episode of The Wire, or even the new single by Beyonce.  

A thing I like

The Mister gave me Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways for Christmas (here's the Shed Style website).  What would you do with a backyard shed of your own?  I'd like to say I'd finish my novel and learn to read music, but really I'd probably nap and stare out the window. All I know is that as lovely as a nice George Clooney fantasy can be, it doesn't hold a candle to a good shed-of-one's-own fantasy.  I want one of these from Modern Cabana.

Happy Everything & A Gratitude List (if you can stand it)

May the season be filled with love,

a few happy surprises, and at least one GIANT hot fudge sundae

Five things I'm grateful for right now, in no particular order:

1. My job.  It's good work.  It's 3 days a week.  There is often free food and wine.  What more could I want?

2. The Mister's work.  Yes, retail is shaky, but he owns a bookstore.  A bookstore!  How cool is that?

3. My kids.  To be honest I vacillate wildly between an awe-struck feeling of luck at being their mother, and the distinct impression that motherhood is best reserved for people without my personality.  But when I think about how they almost never came to be, I can't bear it. I literally can't bear the thought.  

4. Creative people.  Despite my fits of ungenerous jealousy, I am so often inspired by the amazing minds of others: writers, seamstresses, poets, singers, people doing weird things with glue guns and yarn.  You people make a world full of Dress Barns and Bratz dolls and The Bachelor worth living in.  

5. Perspective.  Every time I get some I realize that I am a lucky, lucky girl.  Stressed, a little zaftig, famous in very few places, and definitely not rich.  But lucky just the same. 

Merry, merry, happy, happy everything

Kids Don't Really Like Santa, They Just Like his Loot

My kids will not sit on Santa's lap.  They love to talk a big game about everything they want to say to him, but the minute we come near him, they clam up, hide their faces, and start whimpering. But here's what they would ask him for, if they could muster the courage:

MAGGIE: Lollipops and cookies.

OLLIE: Lollipops and cookies and black toys and orange toys and candy.

Here' the excellent part.  I can make that happen.  Someday they will ask for ponies or trips to Europe and I will fall so terribly short.  But lollipops and a couple black toys?  I can totally swing that.

A thing I like

I saw these coolio retro-brooches by Elefante, e a vida on the fabulous Mighty Girl.  They are like something my grandmother would have worn on one of her many second-hand cloth coats if she had been a little less small, moody, and Jewish.  I love them, or as we like to say in my family,  I lerve them. I'd say you should buy one here, but it seems they are sold out.  But just you wait, she'll make more. 

Sometimes Being a Mom Doesn't Look so Hot or Alone at the California Academy of Sciences with Two Toddlers

 I guess there are some moms who somehow manage to be well-coiffed and kind and calm all the time.  You see them occasionally chatting up their toddlers, their lips glistening with perfectly applied gloss, their shiny, freshly washed locks pulled into stylish ponytails.  Even their strollers are sleek and crumb-free.  Their kids enjoy sushi and clam sauce and 60 Minutes.  

And then there's me today at the California Academy of Sciences, belly pouching uncomfortably over my too-tight jeans, my sticky-faced children arching and thrashing and screaming.  I was the one trying to balance that tray of food in the crowded cafeteria while pushing a double-stroller into the ankles of my fellow diners.  That was me crawling on the floor under the table in an effort to retrieve a runaway water bottle.  And yes, that woman pleading with her two-year-old to try to hold her pee pee while she stuffed an egg roll in her mouth and used her napkin to wipe guacamole off  the other twin's quesadilla?  That was also me.  

And I just want that young, hot guy who rolled his eyes and made that irritated little puff sound when I accidentally cut him off at the napkin dispenser to know that although I look like a nightmare, like every cliched, harried mom that you never, ever wanted to be married to, I am really a pretty nice person. I know I don't make it look easy. But that's only because it's not.

A thing I like 

This would be a very boring video narrated by a balding  geologist with a ponytail if it weren't for the awesomeness of nature.  Watch the whole thing.  It's worth it for the octopus at the end.  

The Dark Night and the Awful Secret

I am dead tired.  Like fall-asleep-and-get-in-a-car-crash tired.  The culprit is insomnia.  The other night I was up for three hours with the darkest, most awful thoughts about my children getting hurt.

The problem is our upcoming (well, not for a month, but it's never too early to start stewing) trip to Mexico to visit my mom.  Her house teeters high on a hill with nothing but a low wall separating my monkey-twins from the abyss.  In the dark of night all I can imagine is them climbing up and over.  And I won't even write what comes to mind next because it is too awful to repeat.

Adding to it all is the damn Secret, which urges you to believe that you can think things into being (everything from new cars, to illness).  And while I think it is absolute self-centered drivel designed to keep people from actually doing anything productive to help others, change the world, or improve their situations, it has somehow wormed its way into my consciousness.  So now, while my worst and darkest mind its doing its whole baroque melodrama, I am not only lying awake praying for sleep, I am bargaining with the Universe not to take my unruly thoughts too seriously.  It's exhausting.

A thing I like

Bargain gift alert: I just ordered the cutest vintage barrettes from Kitchen Table Studios.  $7! You still have time, but hurry!  She enclosed a free pair of earrings as a thank you.  When was the last time Target did that?

Morning sky over the Sunset

This is the view from my roof in the morning

A thing I like

I am a big fan of the radio show This American Life, and doing a story for them is one of my go-to fantasies.  My dear friends Chris Markus and Steve McFeely, who are big-wig Hollywood screenwriters, are now working with host Ira Glass on screenplays based on stories from the radio show.  That's just one degree of separation, people.

But enough about me.  What I really want to tell you about is this particular story by the always-hilarious and consistently brilliant Starlee Kine about trying to write a breakup song.  There is just so much to love here I don't know where to start.  Listen for yourself.

Santa's real identity

This is last Christmas

MY DAD:What do you call grandma? (his very ex-wife)

OLIVER & MAGGIE:  Old grandma!

ME: But what's grandma's real name?

OLIVER & MAGGIE: Caroline!

MY DAD: And what's my name?

MAGGIE: Cowboy!

OLIVER: Santa!

Note: It's actually Wayne, but the kids call him Yeh Yeh.  And Cowboy.  And Santa.

A thing I like

This recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara is really so delicious and it's by my friend Molly Watson of The Dinner Files and other things.  I add kale and use whole wheat pasta.  Try it, you'll like it. Be generous with the parm.