Sassafrass

Looking for love: while floored

"Mommy! Mommy!" He was yelling it out in that loud voice that teeters between excitement and alarm. I rushed out with my towel barely covering me and water pooling at each footsteps.

I thought something was the matter. I found him standing tall, alert, with his finger pointed down definitively.

"LOOK AT THAT!" He kept yelling. Was that a smile? Or was he scared?

"At what? At what?" I asked it twice, confused. What was he pointing to.

"That right there," he shook his hand at the floor. "THERE! LOOK!"

I bent down, pulling my towel tighter to my body. I had no idea what he was directing me to. I shook my head back at him to let him know.

And then Lil E fell to the hardwood floor, stretched his body out, put his face as close as he could to the boards and traced his finger along the grain until he found what he wanted me to see.

"Right there," his voice nearly became a whisper. I moved in closer, lowering to my knees. My drenched hair fell in front of his face and he pushed it away patiently. I squinted. "A heart."

I saw it, a speck worked into the wood we walk upon hundreds (?) of times a day. The place where Lil E calls spontaneous dance parties to avoid housework. Right next to the spot where he drops his book bag, Tae Kwon Do gear, backpack for his daddy's house and I step, step, step all that evidence of his first-grade life. There was a heart.

"You're right, it is." I got in as close as I could and then Lil E nudged me aside so he could examine it even closer.

"I don't know how I saw it," he said. "I just did. I just looked down and there it was all the time! And I had to show you."

I'm sure his vision is sharpened by all those hours of hunting eighth-of-an-inch Lego pieces and seeing clues in Pokemon cards I will never understand the meaning of (and neither will he, probably). Still, it's the tiniest little thing, that heart.

It's wearing at part of our foundation, eating at our structure, but that heart belongs there. Maybe not for all eyes, but he was open and clear-sighted and he saw it for both of us.

 

 

Think you've lost love? Not to worry. We're heart detectives and we've spied it:

In clutter.

In salad.

And our favorite place, in the ocean.

Slipping into a dress I wore in 8th grade

I have vowed to turn 40 fabulously this year. I will be wearing heels that make my chiropracter cringe and insisting upon skinny jeans and slathering on entirely too much glitter eyeliner. Sure, underneath all that will be heaps of heel pads, Spanx and moisturizer, but the outside will look fucking phenomenal.

Over the weekend, one of those miracle age-defying images came to life in my mother's living room.

"There's a beautiful pink dress for you!" Lil E squealed when I walked in the door. My mom had placed it, still wrapped in dry-cleaner plastic, lovingly on a floral-upholstered chair for me.

"Is it from a wedding you were in? Prom? WHAT?!" My mother was shouting that from the kitchen. She was at the stove, stirring something, surely.

I couldn't imagine where it was from. A pink dress?

But when I unwrapped it and saw that it was tucked in with my eighth-grade graduation robe, also a strange mauve color, I knew exactly where that mystery poof of satin came from.

I wore it in a quinceanera when I was fourteen. It was royal blue back then and the measurements appeard to be in the single digits. The gowns had been stored in the attic next to a crocheted dress of my mother's from the late 60s. Sun and dust and shame of the 80s had faded them. Once upon a time in the years of Sears training bras and size-zero stirrup pants, I wore these gowns. My arms slid into the Barbie-bicep holes and the pleats flared out from my boyish waist. My hair was the biggest thing in the picture of me doing some choreographed dance with thirteen other girls in my class in honor of one of my friends.

"I bet you will look beautiful in that dress!" Lil E said. Damn, he's good.

I didn't tell him it was half the size I am now. Maybe less.

"Try it on," he added sweetly.

And so I carefully tugged on the zipper, still royal blue and perfectly in tact, and held my breath as I stepped into it. I would have done it properly - over the head - but I was afraid Wham and a whole bucket of rubber bracelets might fall out, maybe my red Sally Jesse Raphael glasses. That, and I might never loose myself and have to live out this decade swathed in a dress that now looks like a Golden Girls' comforter.

Inhaaaaaale and slide up annnnnnd....then something miraculous!

I might be almost 40, but dammit, I can still fit in that dress. A smidge squeezy, but come on! It covers all the right places (and then some).

"It IS beautiful! It DOES fit!" Lil E let out and naturally, I nodded and smiled.

I smoothed that satin across my chest and waist and stood taller: That's right! I grew boobs! And a fetus! And something on my thighs clearly derived from Doritos and French Vanilla Creamer in the early 2000s! But that dress fits me like a glove.

A child's hand-me-down communion glove, but a glove just the same.

If you're going to judge by the way I work that grammar-school formal attire, then 40 is going to be just fine.

 

I might just have to buy myself a Cuarentanera dress, which I am thinking would be slightly more Rainbow than the lovely Traveling Red Dress Project. Not that the one from the quinceanera isn't divine and figure-flattering. It's just that these might better reflect where I am at this stage of my life now.But it's just so hard to choose!

 

Friday Shoegasm: The hunt for the perfect black boots

Say it with me, shoe whores: I have plenty of boots. I have plenty of boots. I have plenty of boots.

Oh, goodness, I want these boots.

I've been on the hunt for the perfect black high boots since the mid-80s. I had them. I had several pairs of them. And they were glorious -- buttery leather, not too squeezy on the calf, the perfect shape for pairing with pencil skirts and not too dressy for jeans. Of course, I wore those boots into the ground, literally took inches off the heel I wore them with such conviction. I haven't been able to replace them.

I was close. Last winter, I scored some suede-ish over the knee numbers with a ridiculously high heel and platform that was just this side of mid-70s North Avenue/Clybourn hooker. I felt so damn smart for snagging those black boots for $35 and they felt like everything I'd dreamed. Until I put them on a few weeks ago for the first time this winter, turned to face the mirror and felt a heel snap completely off.  It was like a moment out of "Moonlighting" except I wasn't chasing a bad guy not-so covertly with Bruce Willis across the roof of a skyscraper.

Repairing those "perfect" boots will cost more than I paid for them, so...you know, I'll just keep them in memorium under my bed with my prom heels for the next decade or two.

Back to the search for the perfect black boots:

* 4-5" heels, preferably chunky wood heels or wedges because people at first-grade pick-up can only take so much Harper Valley PTA.

* A shaft that will fit without requiring calf-Spanx, not that I have ginormous lower legs but that makers-of-boots seem to base their mold measurements on Heidi Klum or the average calf size of fourth-grade girls.

* Leather, suede, something not-fake so I can think "suck it, PETA" with every step I take.

* Same aforementioned pencil skirt/jeans styling.

* Less than a thousand dollars. OK, $400. Can I get $350? Who's in for $109? I'm a bargain shoppper, friends. No need to cover that up. I want designer boots for a garage sale price. I'm not kidding.

* Pretty.

Obviously this is a tall boot order (also a tall-boot order). After combing Zappos, iDeeli, RueLaLa, Gilt, Piperlime and many other searches and sites, I've found very few I really want. Or that my budget will allow.

And then today, I saw these. Lovely, lovely these. And I can't stop thinking about them. How they'd look with the sweater dresses I adore or the skinny cords I want to wear every single day all winter long. How they'd dress up the sexless, sleeping-bag down coat I will be in until July.

They are made by Frye -- I love Frye boots. My motorcycle boots are by Frye and look and feel amazing, even a few winters later.OH! And the name -- Harmony Tall Harness. Rrrrrr! So determined!

They are waxed suede, no kind-of-soft stuff that will fall off in chunks once they are exposed to a couple of grains of de-icing salt. And the buckles...I just love those little details on my feet.

Perfect, right? Nope. These babies are $388. As much as I love myself, there is just no way I can invest that much in one of nine pairs of boots in my possession.

I guess that means I'll carry on. Hobbling on that one broken heel.

 

Do you have a perfect pair of shoes that has eluded you?

 

 

 

Keep hunting here:

• Dear internets: I am so sorry about my shoes
• Jesus wanted me to have these boots
• Real boys wear heels

Clean floormats have to count for something

I purchased my brand-new car  to salvage my dignity and on behalf of the credit union I bank at five days ago. The new-car smell is oozing from her pores. There's nary a goldfish cracker crumb in the seams. She's shiny and pristine and parked a safe four feet on all sides from any other vehicle.

So how in the world did she attract this card? HOW DARE that little mustached teenager earning less than minimum wage violate her virgin exterior with this offer to haul her away whether she starts or not. WHETHER SHE STARTS? There's 112 miles on her, not 100,000!

Why the insults? Why the blame? Why blatantly call her a JUNK CAR when she's only been hanging out on the curb for a few days. Sure she was just a few yards away from lots of other dilapidated modes of transport, including one Big Red who was sent by her worn-out mother to a place where she can hobble along and clank and let her engine grind on and on half-heartedly with other cars just like her.

(It's OK, she's happier there. She took two ice scrapers and a Lego guy missing a head with her as memento of our adventures together. She can roam the used car lot freely with the other cars with seatbelts that never retract. We promised to keep memories alive of that time my dad got frostbite helping me change a flat tire in below-zero temps in January and how we will get that kid who stole the GPS from the console...one day!)

Big Red was so close to junk, but she definitely wasn't trash. And this car (Darth Vader? Death Star? The Black Pearl? She hasn't been christened yet) is far from all of that. She shall hold her remote-entry fob high and let her headlights dim automatically, slowly -- a stare-down to the metal scrappers who dare to question the rev of her engine, the trunk untouched by Trader Joe's recycled brown bags, the power seats with lumbar support.

You can leave your taunting advertisements, you junk-car dogs. This lady's calling card hasn't even been unwrapped from the plastic yet.

Today, I celebrate my mother

It's my mother's birthday -- one of those milestone years that we share being exactly 25 years apart in age. It hasn't been an easy one for my mom to embrace, and I understand that given my own mixed-bag feelings about impending 40. It's also been a year full of loss and ache for her friends and mine, for people we both love. The place where my mom and I meet, even in our big gulp in facing a big birthday, is being here. Right here. On the phone. Five blocks away. In the kitchen together.

 

So today, I put aside the numbers and spotlight the woman who brought me into this world.

Teacher.

Writer.

Artist.

Calligrapher.

Naughty joke teller.

Fancy lady.

Reader.

Thinker.

Thank-you note writer.

Wife.

Math whiz.

Late-night reality show watcher.

Diet Coke devotee.

Mother.

 

Happy birthday, mama. You make this world a brighter place.

 

Looking for love: in the clutter

There's a big pile of bills and receipts and expired Christmas coupons and catalogs stacked neatly at one of my couch. Before that, it was stacked neatly on my desk, tucked between my laptops, the perfect resting place for giant gravity-defying coffee mugs. I moved it a few days ago (OK, a week) to ensure that I'd sort through it all, patiently pay the bills, file the paperwork, sort the faded receipts. Instead, I just try not to look to the right while I'm watching some terrible reality show I really should be distracted from (why, "Project All-Stars, why?). I want nothing to do with that pile. At least for another day or two.

I don't want to deal with any of it except for one little slip of paper that flitted out as I pushed it into the snug corner of chenille cushions (alright, dropped).

It was a page torn from some tiny notebook, likely stamped with the  logo of a company I don't support with my dollars or taste buds or status updates that was procured as swag from a blog event.

The paper is so thin it's see-through, and it fell through the air gracefully, slowly, landing right at my thigh.

I could see only that there was a pencil mark on it. And since I save those little notebooks for my boy to draw on when he's bored in restaurants or on airplanes, I knew it had to be a message from him.

What I expected was a zombie with X-eyes or some character named Underwear Man or similar. But there were no brains oozing or tiny boxer briefs or disgusting references.

There was just a heart. Off-center at the bottom of the page. Folds creased just at the edges of each irregular arc.

I vaguely remembered it but haven't yet placed where it came from or when he drew it for me. As a farewell note before I left for a trip? To match the notes I place in his lunch every day? As a tiny surprise one morning while we rushed out the door? I'm not sure. But this heart, in all it's flimsy folds and lopsidedness reached me just at the right time.

This reminder that, even buried in the things we are not yet ready to face, our obligations and our discontent, there is love to be seen and caught might just be the very best reason to never get too organized.

 

 

Join me in my quest to see love in small places! Where have you found your heart?

I've spied it in the ocean.

On my plate.

In my cereal.

In the shadows on a run.

 

This is the day my hairdresser asked me if I am 30

Behold, ladies of certain ages, let us rejoice! Let us clank our glasses and toll the bells merrily on high! For this is the day a relative stranger mistook me for ten years younger than I am.

OK, nine. Possibly seven.

Whatever. It is a major age difference. It is the span of Jay-Z to Beyonce. It is one-and-a-half Suri Cruises. It is more than the time I was married. It is a lot.

[This photo was taken specifically to text to Mommyfriend, pre-haircut, who asked what a good hair day for elderly folk look like. No no no, of course not. She just wanted to know how jungle-wild I let my bangs get before I have someone tell me I am pretty and then let them take a machete to them.]

At least it is when the calendar officially reads that this is the year that you (which means me) will turn 40.

For.Ty. I know! I can barely believe it myself. Although my young son is doing all he can to make it as real as possible. I mentioned the name of a friend the other day and he casually asked how old that person is.

"Oh, she is my age," I said back, not even noticing the barbed wire and hanging net and claw-tooth rusty metal contraption I was walking into.

"So she's 40?" He said it smoothly but quickly, with a smirk resting confidently at the left side of his mouth.

Sneaky little one-digiter! His day will come! That's what I thought vengefully about my offspring in the moment. And in the next moment realized that when he does get his 40-decade comeuppance, I will be 72.

Seven.Ty.Two. That made 40 seem very spring-chickeny. Maybe even chick-like. For a second anyway.

I distinctly remember the year my own mother turned 40. I thought she was ancient. Of course, I was 15 and had a hundred-thousand opinions about who and what my mother was. Now when I see pictures of her from that birthday, I'm taken aback by her gorgeous, glowing skin and thick, curly blond-streaked hair cropped around her face.

I also remember when her best friend turned 40 a few years later. I was astonished that they could overcome the chasm that is three or four years age difference to be close and I wondered if it depressed my mom that she was so much older than 40 by the time her friend reached that pinnacle. All those feelings are framed by a little song my mom made up for her friend, who she often wrote parodies with for teacher work functions and parties and on random Thursday nights, and the theme of the whole event, which was, "Lordy, Lordy, Linda's 40."

In the years since, my brother and I have sung that little line nearly every time my mom has mentioned Linda in front of us. We've texted it to each other and telepathically communicated that bit of our childhood across brainwaves and restaurants at the very hint of this friend or those times.

Now, of course, he's turned the phrase on me. All I can hear in my head when my own kid tortures me about my age is, "Lordy, Lordy, Jessie's 40." It doesn't seem right.

Or, it didn't until I went a newish hairdresser over the weekend. She's a lovely woman who cannotpossiblybebutprobablyis almost 50. She's a single mama who has built up a beautiful salon in the heart of the city, who has gorgeous red curls that fall down her back and a slight figure wrapped in pretty metallic tops and huggy little sweaters. I think she is fabulous. She's also very understanding that I'd need a stand-in stylist while I wait out the three months it took me to book an appointment with my regular hair maven and has taken me on as a winter client.

On my first visit, she asked me all about my situation with Lil E's dad, nodded compassionately, offered kind words of advice. She told me all about her boyfriend who lives in Alaska part-time and teenage daughter who is full of angst while she matched up shades of hair dye and trimmed my bangs.

"Are you 30?!," she blurted out this time as I sat in her chair. She was combing through my hair, trying to decide what exact shade my roots should be colored. "Or 32 -- tops, right?"

I stared back at her, waiting for the punchline.

She looked at me in the mirror with a kind look that really said, "WELL?!"

"You're 30 years old then?" She reiterated it.

I laughed.

"You're kidding, right?" I said at our reflection.

"NO! You are not older than 32." She was serious. I couldn't believe it. She was really serious.

I told her my age. She dropped her comb. I'm not kidding! The nice lady who examines heads for a living, the one with the scissors in hand, was stunned. She repeated "no way" at least seven times (OK, three).

And then she started to giggle a muffled little knowing laugh.

"I was going to say..." she paused here to prep me, "that for 30 years old, you sure do have a lot of silver hair."

I will pause here for you to process. Because that's when my radiant, youthful beauty went completely down the drain with the apparent bucket-loads of chemicals it takes to make me appear somewhat presentable to people in my age-bracket.

SILVER. She said silver, friends.

I am a 39-year-old woman with silver hair. And before you feed me any of this bullshit about how fabulous women with silver hair look, let me say once again that I AM ONLY 39. My grandmother was one of those ladies with beautiful silver hair. BUT SHE WAS 103. I am 0.37th that age.

I knew that under all this I was gray. I found my first gray hair when I was 26. I see the roots that look like cloud formations around my forehead. I am aware of why my mother got blond streaks well before she was 40 herself. Gray, I get. Gray, I can live with. Gray, I can cover. But silver? Oh, goodness, silver.

That amazing compliment about my agelessness was shot to hell by one single silver bullet, right there in the salon. I should have just slumped over in the chair and met my maker with the plastic poncho billoowing around me.

I still have a few months to come to terms with it all. Until then, my child's mouth is taped shut and the word "Lordy" is banned for a 30-foot perimeter around me. For these last precious days, I will just have to be a 39-year-old lady, who is a decade younger on the outside and 64 years older at the roots.

 

The last one

I don't love doing dishes. I really do not like standing in front of this corner sink, where I inevitably am doused by the faucet right at the belly when I load and unload water bottles and plastic plates and coffee cups into the dishwasher. I'm not a fan of the smell of this pine-scented holiday-edition dishsoap I got in a big, goopy, beat-up package of cleaning products to review.

But every evening when I stand right there to tidy up the kitchen, every morning when I fill up the filter with eight scoops of coffee, every time I rinse a dish, I smile.

It's because of that round, red scrubber right there among the brushes and sponges. I smile because of that few yards of red netting knotted and worked into a tightly bound circle meant to scrub pots and vegetables and stains and even the bottoms of shoes.

My grandmother made them. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. She crotcheted them until her hands were red and raw. She made big shopping bags full of them even after her arthritic fingers popped out of the joint when she held the needles too long. She made them even though the netting wore at her beautifully kept, long nails until they cracked.

My grandmother made these scrubbers mostly for the winter bazaar at her church, where they were bundled into groups of five, tied with a ribbon, labeled with her name and sold to raise funds for the women's group. But she also tenderly offered them as gifts, laced them into packages for people who requested them, and was sure to choose colors that she knew would match your kitchen or were your very favorite shades.

When I got married, she made every member of the bridal party scrubbers in my wedding colors. She gave me black and white scrubbers just for the newlyweds. I tucked those scrubbers into the beaded clutch purse I bought for her to match the velvet dress she wore that evening. Those are more of a keepsake to me from that day than nearly anything else. They were turned and tied and tucked into my shower gift with such love.

When my grandmother died, my mother passed out much of the scrubber stash she had left at the memorial service. I got a few that my mother picked from the pile that she knew matched my kitchen.

That red one right there? It's the last one left, save the bride and groom scrubbers packed away. I use it -- it's the best way to get the baked on stuff out and the stubborn stuff up. But I don't put the elbow grease into it that I know my grandmother would have and would have nodded at me in expectation if she was standing next to me while I washed those pans in my sink. I just don't want that scrubber to be all used up yet. It's a small thing -- a thing meant to be worn out -- but it's a thing full of so much.

I have other objects and heirlooms from my grandmother meant to be cuddled up to and hung up and use to bake pies and angel food cakes, and I cherish all those ways I feel and see her in my home. That last scrubber, though, works at me like it does on a skillet, getting under all the tough stuff to the shiny part where I can see my grandmother's hands clearly, doing her own daily tasks, standing at the sink next to me, handing me soapy dishes to rinse and dry.

That scrubber -- it's so her. And I love it sitting right there, reminding me that the work is also the love, that the pain of making something simple is worth it, that what we do with our hands lasts so much longer than we ever know.

 

Hot wheels and epiphanies: How to celebrate your divorce-iversary

The wonderful way the universe works is this: The day that my divorce was finalized falls over Epiphany.

The word itself defines that time in my life three years ago: A sudden realization of great truth.

The Christian feast day goes deeper: The arrival of the Magi to the infant Jesus, bearing gifts and beholding the revelation of this child as the son of God.

In some countries, it is recognized in concrete terms: The Holy Day of Obligation.

Others mark the time with what they hold was seen: The physical manifestation of belief.

I ponder this all in my heart with each passing year and take it as my own: Divorce-iversary.

Pardon me if that speaks sacrilege to you. Honestly, the shift from being married to being not took me to great spiritual depths. I love that the day my divorce was manifested on a stamped booklet of papers before a judge, 18 long and emotional months after a sudden realization of great truth, releasing all obligation, an unfolding of the hope I held tight, happened over Epiphany. What a gift.

So I celebrate.

There was a party and pedicures and cocktails. There was a quiet moment with the people I love most. This year, there is a car. A brand new, beautiful car.

This is me telling the car how beautiful she is.

This is me totally wigging out when she told me how pretty I am back. Alright, this is really me having a caniption that I wouldn't have to tow Big Red into the dealership by a rope and that I'd have free XM radio for a whole month AND locks that work without violating child labor laws.

Deciding I needed to bring glad tidings of new transportation was not a sudden realization. I've known it was time for over a year. But I decided to drive that mother into the ground to save some money and push back any chance of a spontaneous purchase that once nearly led me to buy a PT Cruiser. Vanilla white. Used.

Har, har. People, this is one of the funniest you can find if you search on "funny divorce bumper stickers." The second place one is up at the top of the post. Please, someone, make this change.

The car I was driving -- we took to calling her Big Red -- was not meant to be mine. My parents loaned it to me for "a while", which became a year, before I finally handed over the cash just to own it. I never loved it like it was my ride to freedom. I never even liked it. I just drove it, grateful to have a relatively easy solution to school pick-ups and drop-offs and little escapes out of town.

Big Red had been in fender benders, gotten scraped up, and survived a couple of real bruiser accidents. For some reason, snow snuck inside the car and the windows froze up on the inside every time the temperature dropped. Then the locks shorted out and Lil E became responsible for locking and unlocking my car door from the inside to spare me the embarrassment of leaning over the seats in front of the school kids and PTA and God every morning. It still had a cassette player. The steering wheel was strangely covered in a make-up -like film that could not be scrubbed away. Then came the clanking. It was something about a u-joint, maybe? I just know it only settled down between the speeds of 37 and 40, making it too easy for me to speed in my unlocked, mix-taped, icebox of a car.

I scrambled at the end of the year to make the car purchase happen, but schedules and holidays stepped in the way. The next free day to visit the dealership just happened to be that one day. It seemed right, it seemed good, it seemed like the time to move on.

And so after a lengthy journey through the hills and strip-mall-lined frontage roads of the suburbs, after negotiations and numbers dealt by fast-talking and cigarette-waving salesman,after conferring with my dad, I found just what I was looking for, tucked in the corner of a paved lot as the sun set over rows and rows of shiny compact sports utility vehicles.

There it was, black as the night sky with inviting leather seats bearing the sassiest red-threaded stitching. I'd been seeking Graphite Blue swathed in gray leather, even had a vision of a charcoal-colored car. But there was the one I was meant to find, on the night it seemed right to make an offering for it.

I said goodbye to Big Red, one of the very last representations of that time, of these years I have made my way toward a new life. It had taken me far -- many more than miles. I climbed into my new car -- sleek and shiny and fully-loaded -- ready to hit the road again.

Where will I go in this baby? I don't know yet. Maybe the thought will come to me suddenly one day. Or maybe I will just cruise along this year, taking my time and enjoying every bit of this gift.Especially the heated seats.

Yes, this side of divorce definitely deserves heated seats.

 

 

Look back:

• Finally, it's final
• The divorce-ibration
• One day I'll forget this day. Until then, I'll celebrate
• A funny thing happened on the way to the wedding website

Friday Shoegasm: Dear Internets, I am so sorry about this

I've spent a lot of time and space on my screen and conversations using language even a shameless shoe whore like me cringes at to describe my hatred of the Ugg over the years. And honestly, it sickens me that it has been years. That's a lot of cussing I could have spent more wisely on the wireless printer I spent $400 and six hours of phone calls with HP but could never get to work, or about Gwyneth Paltrow, or at Bravo for choosing to air "The Notebook" all weekend instead of "Real Housewives" reruns.

But, no, I've put so much hatred into those horrid non-waterproof boots that I stopped seeing their real brand-name and convinced myself they are really labeled Ugghs. And that was fine with me, even when they came from Kohl's and Target and in lavender with crystal-studded skulls embellishing the faux suede sides just below the faux sheerling cuff.

I would rather, I reasoned aloud on many occasion with girlfriends who may have tried to justify the Uggh Boot to me in my five-inch hidden-platform cowboy boots, have on four layers of wool socks and some kind of electric blanket rigged up inside my jeggings than wear those god-awful boots out in the world!

And I meant it.

Until December 1st.

Postcards from the Past: The second New Year's of his life

He was a year and some change, and it was the first holiday season he was aware anything other than bright lights and nap interruptions were happening in his life. He stared into Christmas lights, fascinated. He laughed at the dancing Frosty the Snowman in my parents' living room, pushing the button to make it wiggle and sing over and over and over again. The four meager toys Santa brought were a bounty. And then came the New Year.

My brother was in town. He was still a bachelor and those were the days when we all convened at my parents' in our pajamas for brunches and card games and to watch movies. Lil E fit in snuggly. His legs seemed to stretch out endlessly in his fleece zip-up onesies. His hair was everywhere. His gap-tooth grin and big brown eyes made him so him. He was talking up a storm at that point, and had just started taking his first assured steps. He was so much fun.

We spent New Year's camped out with my brother, playing games and order pizza and ribs and putting the baby down long before midnight. My parents were out at a party and so we had more room than usual to be silly and put together somewhat of a celebration. Before Lil E fell asleep to the sounds of fireworks already being set off hours too early at the park across the street, we took these photos to say goodbye to 2005.

My brother and I are signing the year with our hands. Lil E is perched atop my shoulders, paci popped in, hands laced through my hair. My as-yet-undyed hair. I may look very recognizably me there, but I look at these photos from my days as a part of a family of three -- as a stay-at-home mom in yoga pants and a little lip gloss, who is convinced she will never be able to move out of a cave of an apartment and tries desperately to fix it up each holiday on a budget of only a few dollars, who has no idea that her first blogging job and the beginnings of Sassafrass are waiting only months ahead -- and I think I look so very different.

And then I see this photo, taken a few days later the first time I shoveled our walk with Lil E toddling behind me, and I see the spark and the sense of adventure and the way I am squeezing E tight to me, and I think, "Ahhh, she's been here all along. Different clothes, different hair, different life. Same woman."

Was this lady ready for all that was ahead? Probably not. Perhaps. Of course she was.

Mithing: one tooth

For more than a year, Lil E and I have been having a conversation about when in the world the baby teeth were going to fall out of his head. His dentist smiled sweetly and whispered that it'd be at least another six months to a year, and that was long after his friends were spitting out of the gaping holes framed by gums and more wiggly whites.

"Just think!" I said like I was waving pom pons and doing high kicks. "Everyone is going to be SO BORED of losing teeth and you will be waiting patiently until...PA-DOW! You lose a bunch and remind them how incredibly awesome it is! Their tooth fairy money will be long spent but you will have yours. It's going to be great."

He bought it. Sort of. Or at least until this fall when kids in his class were losing teeth as fast as Nickelodeon re-runs today's episode of "iCarly."

It's only Wednesday and I'm already embarrassing myself

My reel is gone. Or mostly gone. My many, many clips of appearances on local and national television shows has been wiped off the Internet somehow just when I was so ready to finally collect them all into one pretty little pink package for all of the world to enjoy in three-minute segments for all time. I'm left scraping up morning-drive radio clips where I called in to discuss five ways to avoid the swine flu and some MP3s from a Christian XM station where the nice, conservative announcer man always addressed me as "Mrs. Ashley."

It will be OK. No, really, I am sure it will be just fine. If the grad school thesis -- a one-hour documentary that took three years and countless sobbing hours in an edit bay to complete can sit ignorantly and blissfully on twelve VHS tapes packed into the back of my basement storage space -- has somehow survived time and technology, then surely this will all work out.

Or else you will find me in my bathroom with a small child dressed up as an aging anchor in pleated dockers and stain-resistant button-down, trying desperately to recreate a two-minute hot-topic piece on what sleep positions say about your personality.

Yeah, it should be fine.

While I trove for those gems out there in the land of erased reels and neglected thesises (thesi?), I thought maybe you'd enjoy this one clip I did dig up while doing some investigative Googling of myself. It's Flip Cam review I did of Yummie Tummy shapewear at a BlogHer conference a few years ago. It's brilliant work, you've got to see it.

It is such an in-depth analysis of slurper-inner tank tops that you probably won't notice the gray roots waving at you from my red hair(ohmahgaw was totally 2008). You won't judge me for my sleep-deprived, martini-nurtured eye puffs or spackled-on concealer or the god-awful lighting in the crazy-huge conference hall. What you will notice is that my boobs are not flattened out (I kind of make it impossible with hand gestures and blatant discussion of the uplifted ladies for you to look away at all) and that I got not one but two degrees in communication.

When the world and Diane Sawyer warned us all that whatever we put online WILL LIVE THEIR FOREVER, I really thought that would include the post I wrote about feeling a certain kinship with Kate Gosselin and status updates that wax nostaglic about $1.19-bottles of Boone's Farm Kountry Kwencher "wine" from the Kum 'N Go convenience store in college. I really did not believe in my heart of hearts it would be a clip about sucking in my pooch of pooches.

But here it is. And right now, it's exemplary of my fine journalistic skills. So enjoy. And please, let me know if you'd like me to introduce you to my agent. Or my shapewear dealer. Either is good.

 

 

One or 255 words of thanks

• Merci. Charlene and the crew of super-savvy ladies over at GalTime really know how to take a grrrl and whip her into a presentable package. Look at the wonders they worked on my post about gifts for kids of divorce! So grateful for the love (and pretty little spruce-up) you gave me.

• Do jeh. Mommyfriend finally admitted (out loud and not just on a barrage of texts to me in the middle of the afternoon) that she's been nursing a little girl crush on me. It's all sixth-grade and whatnot with us, because I totally have been crushing back and just was waiting for the right moment to tell Amy and hope that she might whisper it over to Sarah who will just get up the nerve to tell Katie because...well, damn, we all know Katie makes things happen. More updates as soon as the note with thirteen crease-folds and lots of tiny boxes to check off on the inside comes back.

• Grazie. The people of America, or at least of Shine, reminded me that the XXL polyester yoga pants my ex-husband once got me for Christmas are not the worst gift on the planet. Oh, no. A can opener is the worst gift on the planet. And so is a Chucky doll. Also? Wind chimes, pot, a teddy bear intended for an ex-girlfriend and a creepy doll lifted from a grandmother's collection all rank really high for present-giving suckage.

Can you top those, kittens? What are you grateful for this week?

 

This? This is wonderful

At first, I wanted to put my giant, wonderfully clunky pink suede platform wedge heels right up on my desk somewhere in between the seven notebooks of to-do lists, three half-empty cups of coffee with puddles of sugar and cream at the bottom, and very disorganized-looking pile of thumb drives with a meticulous catalogued system of saving random things on them. I wanted to lean back and close my eyes for just a minute too long and then just stare back at my computer screen and nod knowingly. Yup, yup. That's what I'd be thinking.

Or I wanted to force out a few tears and thank God, my manager and all my mother's friends in the audience who read my blog.

Best gifts for kids after a divorce

Oh, how a parent, particularly one who is going through or has just been through a divorce, wants the holidays to be magical, restorative, everything for their kids. And there's just too much that can interrupt the sweetness and snow.

I've been through a few of these holidays. I've passed by windows decorated with Harry Potter and Santa with his miles-long nice list in department stores that smell like Chanel perfume and faux fur on my way to the courtroom. I've yelled back at my ex on the porch on Christmas Day while my mother distracted my little boy inside. I've sobbed into my dad's chest after sending my son off with his father only hours after Santa visited. Those moments were tough. But the days, the actual holidays themselves, were also wrapped up in a lot of hope and calm. Maybe because, after all of that, I needed them to be, we needed them to be.

Things are better now. Mostly. What I've learned is to hold on to the time with my son that I do have. And to put thought, rather than just money, into the holidays we share together. It's easy to throw a debit card at a holiday to make it feel BIG! WONDERFUL! PERFECT!, especially when the child will head off in a Honda CR-V to his dad's house where there it will surely be BIGGER! MORE WONDERFUL! EVEN MORE PERFECT! It's easy to make the gift-giving a game, with your kid in the middle (again).

I do buy gifts. Maybe more than I should (I'm working on that). Aside from the ridiculous Lego sets with 8,000 pieces and 400th stuffed animal and play kitchen kitchen that took five hours to assemble, I've learned that the gift that really means something has always been the one that I've put my whole, throbbing, sometimes-terribly-broken, often-gushing heart into for my son. It's the gift that says, "This isn't what it used to be. And I see that means for you. I love you and I get it." 

It's the gift I make or buy that puts away a joint parenting agreement, an irrational text message, even an hour or two alone next to the Christmas tree to validate what the small child is experiencing. Of course, it's not the only time he (or your child, I am quite sure) has been the focus of love and attention during a divorce -- many of us leave our relationship with the kids' other parent because we want their lives to be better. Still, it's the opportunity to pad what can be time that's full of heartache and hope for everyone in every house.

Do you have a child you'd like to give something more than a LeapPad Explorer or American Girl armoire of outfits? Here are the gifts you can give a kid you love whose family is in the midst of a separation, divorce or big change that will tell them (and remind you) that it's all going to be OK.

Seedling DIY Family Kit ($40) - Your child's family (and many children's families) probably aren't made up of the standard dollhouse foursome anymore. This kit is an artistic, empowering, lovely way of acknowledging that's perfectly fine. You and your child can decorate the wooden people to make up the  people in your family that feel most familiar. 

Where you hang your hat

When the Not Boyfriend comes to see me, he travels light and he always carries a hat. His leather duffle is never at maximum capacity. His camo National Guard backpack safeguards only  a few items - a book, his laptop, earbuds, a small notebook where he keeps track of to-dos and ideas. Somewhere in there or upon his head, sits a chapeau. Usually a fedora.

I love his hats, not just because they are classic and dapper in a way most Docker-clad, worn-brimmed baseball-capped men don't care to be (save the hipsters...thank God the hipsters are keeping this whole granny thing a-goin', one pair of Harry Caray ginormous plastic glasses and salvaged Don Draper hat at a time). I also love that it is so him -- attentive to details, like a little wink across the room or just the right flavor of half-and-half in the fridge.

[keep reading after the jump]

Sassy Single Single Mom Style: Do not ever dress like a dinosaur

Ladyfriends, beware of this High Neck Poncho by Gracia. I was nearly lured into its nest by the super-low special happy hour price of $29.99 on iDeeli. That is, until I actually looked at the dress (or poncho...without pants...whatever) and realized that it is not really outerwear at all.

In fact, it is a size-2  Triceratops.

 

Amirite? The yolking, the pleats, the "please don't find out I taped that episode of 'I'm Secretly Pregnant' while I wore this dress-poncho to the Piggly Wiggly last week" design. All of it screams Cretaceous Style.

The good thing? There's plenty of room to hide your baby triceratops eggs. Or to pull your pretty parts up over your head so the T-rex may not see you there in the middle of the untouched field.

Nina Garrrthia would probably go on and freaking on about the pintucks and whatnot. But that does not mean shit when the off-the-rack reptilia among us don't have our giant thigh and hoof-like thingies concealed a bit more.

 

Seriously, does it come in this print?  This print is totally hot pre-Paleogene extinction event.

 

And clearly, this piece will not hold up well over time and infrequent washings. Do I spy pilling right around the saggy-knee/cankle area?

I do not care if this "designer" is hot on the club scene (ohmygoodness, that was almost an historically incorrect caveman reference) or you cannot pass up an under-$30 deal, no woman -- whether on a date or in court or at work or trying to outrun a pack of little bastard Diplodocus (doci?) -- ever, ever wants to emphasize her giant bony frill.

 

 

Now that we've covered the dresscho, someone please tell me why this Gracia creation isn't also extinct.

 

More Sassy Single Mom Style:

• Perfect DIY date-night nails
• Jesus wanted me to have these boots
• One pair I keep wearing

Grateful: for our family's thriving self-image

Thank God the names are on these place cards. How else would we know who they belong to?

You won't find mine here. My hands were too greasy from wrestling my mother for the turkey wing. Rest assured, my turkey was totally descked out with a sparkly waddle, huge silver earrings and long lashes. My boy knows me. Too well.

My mom. Also fancy.

My brother. He's an engineer, so that's probably one of those wacky calculators with a hundred buttons those nerds use.

Grateful: for a nephew who knows my name

How do we know that my nephew J belongs in our family? Because he thinks he is the funniest person in the room. And he is probably right.

He's not yet two and is all full belly and slim hips, a fire plug of a boy who looks startlingly like my brother. His hair has come in, fair and feathery curls, and he has decided Lil E's name is Seesee (or CeCe? J's not so hot at writing these things out) and that, my friends, is that. SeeSee is his name. Really, it's a pretty appropriate nickname, because everything my boy did, that littler boy noted and followed. Monkey SeeSee, other monkey do.

We couldn't get enough of this toddler and his definitive "NO!"s that family members are allowed to laugh at even if it totally ticks off the parents to hear. All Thanksgiving weekend, we mocked his adorable baby-steps gait when he ran at the park and around and around the kitchen island. We egged him on to say his favorite line.

"I'm cute."

No smile, no wince. Just a statement of fact.

It was heaven holding this boy. For the twenty-two seconds he stayed there. And it was even more divine to hear him call out insistently, "AUNT JESSIE!" I was at his beck and call.