Even Breast Pumps Bring Back Good Memories

I'm in the airport cleaning up my notes from a most amazing work conference. A baby is crying. I glance up to see a shock of dense dark hair. With a barrette. It's a girl - and she's strapped to her Mom's chest in an Ergo, brown, just like mine was. The mom bounces and sways, to quiet the kid. Neither looks particularly upset. I feel a pang. Nostalgia? For traveling with a baby? WTF?

Yesterday, I saw a different young mom setting down a breast pump on a shelf, in a public bathroom, at a hotel hosting a largish conference. "Ah... That brings back such memories for me." Umm... Not great ones... I'm not sure anyone enjoys milking herself in an unsanitary space and making inconvenient arrangements to cart a cooler full of breast milk across state lines. Still, a pang.

That baby phase is gone, and the toddler one too. Now, the struggles are how to handle reports of tussles on the playground, how to stay present when a little big boy is asserting his independence, how to go with the flow when life feels packed beyond my comfort zone. I can leave for a few days and no one REALLY misses me. I get to sleep all night long. I won't have to race to nurse a hungry baby at the finish line of my 1/2 marathon in two weeks. There's lots more freedom in my life, which I like. And there's still a lot of chaos - more, actually. The "cats" I am herding now can talk. They have things to say. And they run faster.

And, in 4 years from now, I will look at the mom in the airport with two loud, rowdy little men, running in two directions - perhaps punching or elbowing each other - I will long for these days too. You can quote me on that. 

But for now, I'm just gonna try to soak them all in. 

Sometimes It's Dope to Mope

I am not moving to Australia. Because that simply seems like far too much effort. And I'm not going to claim that I had a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." Because it wasn't really. I know this. Everyone is safe. Everyone is healthy. I have a job. I have a home. I have heat (at least I have this warmth while inside the home, or the office, or the car). And plenty of food. But I'm in a super shitty mood.

Maybe it's because I didn't run this morning and didn't unroll my yoga mat this afternoon or evening. Maybe it's because things feel fuzzy and I like solid boundaries. Maybe it's because one kid melted into a mess of tears when I asked the two of them what "superfun" things they wanted to do this weekend while daddy was away. He doesn't want daddy to be away. And he also doesn't want daddy to have a meeting tonight. I take this personally. But I try to hide it, best as I can. And it mostly works to turn the tides. We three play Monopoly and make static, swirling our straight hair on synthetic fabrics. They "swim" in the jet tub while I urge them to wash behind their ears. We read Chapter 3 of Harry Potter. There are snuggles and back scratches. I pass as a more-than-acceptable second fiddle, I'd say.

And then when they go to bed, I get back to feeling sorry for myself. Olin returns home and agrees it's OK to mope about my rut. In the other room—for just a little bit. So that's what I do. And then I get back to creating order out of my emotional mess: making lists, sending emails, outlining ideas for a short story I'm starting on—in my purple Moleskine notebook with a strange syringe-shaped pen I got at some medical conference.

I feel better already.

When We Resist Reality

Yesterday morning, I wrote this "Haiku to a Winter That Just Won't Die"

Today, sweet bird bands

Chirp cheerful songs in mild skies

Tomorrow, I weep.

Yesterday, at lunchtime, I took a great class with Rachel at Yoga Roots. It wasn't entirely pleasant—there were moments where she asked us to hold the asanas a good bit longer than was comfortable—but it was wonderful for me in all sorts of ways and I knew it.

I looked at these tulips a lot today. 

Yesterday, during class, Rachel wisdom something along the lines of this: When you resist your reality, you create suffering. Learn to live skillfully within your reality to eliminate unnecessary struggle.

Today, I needed that advice.

Yesterday, it was 30 degrees and, for most of the day, beautiful and sunny.

Today, school was cancelled because it'd soon be dumping snow. My reality was that I'd be hanging at home with the boys but getting at least a little work done would be necessary. I knew there would be squabbles. And screen time. 

And there was. But it was fine. More than fine. 

I'm not sure my approach to the snow day was particularly skillful but I shared some sweet time with the kids, got some stuff done—and, overall, managed to keep the suffering to a minimum.

Plus, this week's snowstorm should make for some good riding on Saturday and, truth is, this winter will die soon. It will be spring again.

My Husband's Squad

I didn't share a childhood with these people. But we've grown up together.

I married into the most fantastic group of tight-knit, solidly awesome grade-school friends. Who all married the most amazing of women. And then spawned a bunch of pretty special kids.

I wasn't there when these guys played video games in middle school or threw parties in their parents' basements after high-school football games - but I was around for Round 2, in the three-bedroom Queens apartment they rented post-college. The one where John and Dan shared a room with two twin beds. The one where I ended up after an evening at the Irish Cottage, one April night in 1999.

Without this crew's acceptance, no doubt, I wouldn't have lasted long. And when Olin left for Cali, these people kept me company: taking me to cooking classes and on bike rides through Flushing Meadows Park, packing my shit into a U-haul and then navigating it through Manhattan. 

We've danced at each others' weddings and celebrated new starts at celebratory showers; knit gifts for fresh babies and and offered tips for dealing with obstinate kids and tricky situations.

Now, on the rarer times when we're together, we eat and drink (far too much) and pass the time with fun and games -kid-friendly themes by day, irreverent ones by night. We laugh. And we laugh and laugh, realizing all the while how lucky we are to have each other. 

I am Awesome at Picking People.

As someone who works in the field of behavior modification, I know that social support is a major "predictor of success." 

A little help from your friends

...

It takes a village.

.. Cliche-say it however you'd like but I think most people would agree that life feels infinitely easier, and more fun, when you have "a strong social network." And by that I mean things like...

...Your partner doesn't lose his shit (or seem at all surprised, really) when he arrives home 1.5 hours after you do and, despite the fact that the kids have been watching videos since you walked through the door, the van is not packed for your trip. Nothing, really, is packed except the non-perishable food and your glasses and the snowboarding gear, which he stashed in the car the night before. It's not because you are lazy. It's because you're ping-ponging from room to room, over-thinking every item (and periodically pausing to thumb through a pile of pictures). It's because you suck at packing.

This guy.

Also, this guy (and several other awesome peeps) ate that (see below) pasta.

... Your totally selfless friend gives you the jacket off her back to wear so you can sneak in an extra snowboarding lesson after you discover that you left your snowboarding jacket at home for a long weekend of, um, snowboarding.

And then another kind friend lends you her ski coat to wear the next day for your regular lesson. And then a third rockstar friend texts you with a choice of Burton jackets for Sunday—she'll cart whichever one you want up to the mountain for you, along with her own ski stuff, her two small children and their ski stuff.

...Your friend turns up after a few hours out with "twice-price" spice packets from the country store, without your even asking, because you forgot all of the spices for the chili you're making on Friday night. This in spite of the fact that, a day earlier, you subjected all of your friends to a painfully granular list of all the food you'll be bringing so everyone will "know what we will are supposed to have." (PS: You also forgot the bagels.)

A strong social support network is also the one that, when the friend who lent you the first-day jacket discovers three small shards of the Ball jar from which she is spooning her homegrown pesto have broken into the beautiful pasta dish she prepared while tending to an infant, rallies to find the bits of glass and puzzle them together. And when just one tiny piece is left missing, someone runs next door to get hotdogs for the kids, while someone else scrapes off the top layer of pasta and a small group huddles at the table to run through a quick risk analysis, arriving at the measured consensus to play "Noodle Roulette." There are only two rules: 1) savor each bite mindfully and 2) keep the conversation dull enough to delay laughter until the danger of ingesting glass has passed.

Recounting a fantastic weekend, I take this away: I may suck at packing (and driving and controlling my anxiety-induced outbursts and many other things). I may not be good at snowboarding, or even know how to ride a lift—yet.* But I am extraordinarily skilled at surrounding myself with amazingly awesome people. And I kinda think that makes me a winner.

*I can, however, now connect turns and ride the Magic Carpet with the best of the 3-year-olds. 

Perfect is Stupid

It all started with a bit of crooked cutting. His goal was to follow the perfectly framed edge of the catfish photo but his scissored slipped, the edge frayed and he flipped out. "I messed up! I can't do this. Mommy, you do it."

"I can't do your homework, Jules. And it doesn't have to be perfect," I told him calmly, offering the very advice I so often can't seem to accept myself. "Plus, we're making a collage [with Mod Podge - and I could barely contain my excitement]. Sometimes it actually looks cooler if the pictures don't all have straight edges."

That he wasn't buying. Jules is a guy with an affinity for angles, straight lines and squares, just like his dad. Maybe it's those engineer genes. But he calmed down and settled back into striving for straight lines. Which went mostly almost perfectly. Lucky for us.

Then he started writing the words. The task was to capture two facts about electric eels and he was pleased by those he picked: 1) an electric eel is not really an eel—it's a fish, and related to a catfish; and 2) an electric eel can put out enough voltage to light up a Christmas tree. Fascinating really. But that "r" starting off "related" somehow made its way to the paper facing the wrong way, the mirror image of a right-facing R. He screamed and threw the crayon. "It's a stupid R. I hate this." Two short sentences containing two words that are off-limits at our house. (Those who know how I speak in the company of adults might find this amusing but I'm pretty strict on this point.)

I showed him another superb benefit of collages: You can just cut off that part. If you want, you can cut all the words apart and glue them down separately. And sometimes that's just the right art effect you're going for. He bought it. We kept going. To great success. From his determined expression, and the chatter-box commentary that accompanied the sketching of Christmas tree clearly illuminated with lots of eel-powered voltage, I could tell he was  proud. And I felt proud, too: I hadn't intervened with his vision, hadn't reached more than once for the sponge-brush to help him smooth the Mod Podge, hadn't pushed him to paint the white parts of his poster with watercolors as I'd envisioned, hadn't suggested, a second time, that he might want to find one more fact—because Ms. E had assigned them to report on "two or three" things.

Pushing "perfect" (unattainable, of course) might be the number-one thing I want to avoid as a parent. Of course, I want to encourage the boys to reach—within reason. But I also want them to feel that they that they can create, or conceptualize something, and feel confident enough to share it with someone else, or lots of someone elses, before they feel like that something is fully figured out. That's how you learn, that's how you grow. That's how you get awesome. And have fun.

But I struggle with insecurity of sharing semi-shaped stuff. A lot. I spent more than a dozen years in a world where things are supposed to be edited to perfection before they leave your desk. Now, I work in a role where things have to be iterative. It's empowering. It's liberating. History aside, it's the way I actually prefer to work: with creative input from all sorts of smart collaborators. But I often need to be reminded to let go. To route what I've got right now. And, on that front, I appreciate the encouragement, the coaching.

Today, I told this to my boss when he told me not to overthink part of a project. "Often, I totally need that reminder and love that you help me with that," I'd said. "But not this time. You'd be proud of me. I'm really keeping things moving, even if it feels like I'm just throwing shit on the walls." He loved that. Truly. He even stopped by my office later to suggest a "Throw Shit" sign for my wall.

I'm thinking about it.

Lower the Bar, Feel Better

Maybe I've had high standards. Or medium-highish standards that have offered an easy out, an excuse, for accomplishing... nothing. If I couldn't do it "right."

If I couldn't run at least 3 miles, then I might as well not even lace up the shoes. What was the point? 

If I couldn't do runs with my friends, then snowboarding wouldn't be fun. I'll just stay home and make the chili.

If I didn't make a really amazing family calendar then I might as well just let everyone hang the free ones they got from their bank/car dealership/alma mater.  Or just use their iPhones. 

You know what I did in this fancy gear? I remembered, after a 6-year hiatus, that I ride regular, not goofy.

I practiced heelside and toeside turns and perfected hockey stops. On the kids' hill.

And then I had a beer with my riding partner to celebrate our progress. 

But, these days, there's no reaching the bars set where they've been. I can't always find time to run 3+ miles—but I can fit in 2 miles on the treadmill after the boys get off to school, before I shower and leave for work. I'm never going to ride like my past-pro (for real) snowboarding friends—but I can relearn the basics in lessons while my little guys are in their own classes so that I don't dread the family trips to the mountain that inevitably are going to happen for the next decade. 

And my 2014 calendars are going to be filled with the first 12 high-enough-resolution sorta cool photos I can find in the next 24 hours (or two, because then I'm going to bed). I've slacked just the right amount on this one: Shutterfly calendars are 50% off till January 7. 

What I've somehow finally started to learn in the last month or so is this: Lowering the bar is making me happier, healthier and richer. I think I'm becoming wise at 38. 

Ode to The Angry Run

I've written much about the therapeutic effects of a good run. The story usually goes something like this: I'm so anxious I'm about to explode, so I tie on my shoes and run away, music turned loud. I return refreshed, renewed and ready to rejoin the world.

But sometimes—on days when the stars and my brain chemicals clash in the worst of ways—the "run relief" story takes a slightly different shape. It's usually when I'm mopey and teary and snippy and snappy and Jon (bless his heart) basically sweeps the boys up and orders me to run. I don't want to go but I say "ok, 2 miles." Sometimes this compliance takes longer. Today, it took a while. And, today, because it is November and because, today, I hate November, I decided to run on the treadmill. I wanted to run by myself (sorry, Digs), in my dark grey basement. Sorta like listening to Elliot Smith to cheer you up when you're feeling down (ridiculous), it seems now as I write this. But we've haven't set up the treadmill yet and there aren't any outlets where anyone might expect them. Which PISSED ME OFF and made me ask myself, why did we buy this house anyway? I'm prone to overreact. Particularly on days like this.

So then I decided I would not run. I would clean. Until I looked at the piles of papers everywhere and got overwhelmed. I pulled out some yoga pants and the running shirt that makes me look like a speed skater--or a condom, depending on who you ask. I looked for any iDevice that had music and a charge. I snuck out the front door. (Sorry, again, Digs.)

I sprinted up the hill and cursed the neighbor who clearly needs a new invisible fence for her fierce-barking but friendly dog. Then, lungs burning, I slowed to my typical pace. I passed the home we bid on and lost, the perfectly situated house that looks especially fantastic on the outside. I realized I was being a complete ungrateful asshole and just kept at it. I cursed along with lyrics, aloud, until I realized that people were out raking leaves and I looked and sounded like a dangerous crazy person.

At the point where I could make a right turn and tack on another mile or so, I took the path lazily traveled, stubbornly refusing to give in to my body, which was saying, "keep going - you really should do a five-miler, today." I'd said two. And that's what I'd do. On the final stretch, I didn't feel euphoric. I felt itchy (literally), a little guilty for leaving Digs behind and sort of annoyed that I didn't keep going. But, on the bright side, the 20 minutes I'd spent stepping to the beat of Girl Talk had kept me from drinking, eating and saying things that I shouldn't.  And now, writing this, with a glass of lemon water leftover from last night's dinner—a delish tagine made by Olin—I feel grateful. Much better.

How Do You Get Grace?

Tonight, after good many moments of anti-grace, I opened up an Energizing Green Yogi tea packet (it took all I had not to uncork a bottle of wine), and got this guy: "Grace brings contentment."

Teas readings

Awesome. Wise. But how the hell do you get grace? Is it something learned? I bet maybe if you practice really hard you can acquire grace. And I don't seem to have much time for practicing things. (Though I'd better start practicing my  dances - cause rumor has it, I'm spaced front-and-center in two pieces at the Flynn showcase performance next Monday night... and I'm still trying to learn some of the choreography we covered when I was sick. And find a fedora. Anyone? Anyone?)

But actually I've been working hard at keeping calm(er) while carrying on - and I do think it helps. Sure, I may still be showing somewhat subtle signs of freak-outs: biting my lip while reviewing a to-do list ... pretzel-wrapping a kid - who socked me in the arm and refused to sit in time out - in my legs (not one of my proudest moments, for sure), sobbing ... Right: subtle is just sometimes.

...  but when I work hard, the effort of staying calm creates awareness somehow. I notice how others are keeping their shit together. I feel the solidarity and see the silent (or not-so-silent) shows of support of others who've been there, or who are there with me now.

And knowing that we're all in this together... that makes me calm. er. Calmer. And a little more content.

The Power of Red

Swipe on bright-red lipstick.

Paint my fingernails poppy.

Slip on a pair of scarlet cashmere socks (that one's Olin's).

Pour a glass of pinot. 

Apparently my most common strategies for embracing the day with a sense of empowerment—and powering down happily (er... the wine)—center around the color red. 

It's funny how little rituals (of all colors) can boost your confidence, instantly enhance your mood...... like how drinking from my DanmadeNinja monkey mug makes me feel like I know how to pick out awesome things and truly appreciate them... Or how writing with an Ink Joy pen makes me feel organized. 

... like how continuously framing a potentially hive-inducing work project as a  fantastically exhilarating opportunity (and being lucky enough to be working with people who reinforce that idea) keeps excitement from dissolving into anxiety.

... and like how celebrating sparkly new snow with two wide-eyed little boys, I forget about slippery roads and scraping windows and really start to feel what I was trying so hard to sound enthusiastic saying...  "Isn't it beautiful?" 

Because, really, it is.