New Jersey Moms Blog

The Up Side of Being Sick

I've been on a roll since January. I hit the post-vacation ground running - busy with work projects, busy with my dreams. I really felt like I had hit my stride with work, and even crossed some long-term things off my to do list. Heck, I was even shopping around for a new accountant to do our taxes - In JANUARY! I was also looking forward to a business trip to California and just registered for my first ever Blogher conference.

When anyone asked me how I was, I said the same thing: Great. Busy with work. So grateful to HAVE work, good engaging work. Sure, my family was having a bit of a rough time getting back in the work-school-swing of things, but I was fine.

But there was another side to the story. I was so busy I had stopped going to yoga, which is like church and the gym for me, rolled into one. By mid January a chronic problem with my hip was so bad I couldn't even hobble to a yoga class. My NYC writers group, which I had run for about a year, collapsed. My weight has been climbing higher. I still haven't been to the dentist or taken the cat to the vet. And, oh yeah, after I got some bad family news right before Christmas resorted to my oldest, nastiest habit - secretly smoking.

Haiti (and Kindergarten) on my Mind

Last week I mentioned to a colleague that I was freaking out about the school situation for my daughter. She lives in another state, but she felt my pain. There are few options for working families -- in lots of places -- who don't want to send their kids to failing public schools.

She sent me a link to a book that raises some important questions, like what happens when families like mine abandon the public school system. When more affluent families avoid local public schools by turning to private institutions, or by simply moving to a better district, "we’re reproducing class inequality for the next generation." I put the book on my Amazon wish list and then, through the twisty-turny world that is the Internet followed a bunch of links off the original search that took me to -- orphanages in Haiti and a network of people in the U.S. who have adopted Haitian children.

This was a week BEFORE the earthquake hit.

Academic Panic Mode

It's a New Year, filled with bright promise but practically all my mommy friends are angst-ridden stress cases right now. We are all in a state of nervous anticipation. I am talking nail-biting, hair pulling, life-and lifestyle questioning time.

No, we aren't thinking about having to do our taxes or getting the kids back on schedule next week - it's because we live in a part of New Jersey where the schools are failing. So if you want to have your children flourish in a positive, progressive academic environment here you need to hustle, and maybe get a second mortgage. Or leave. You see, it's school application season here in Jersey City. And the stakes are high.

It's a Wonderful Female Life

There is a sign in my kitchen that I look at every morning. It says "Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal." My mom put it in my husband's Christmas stocking one year and I appropriated it. (The one she got me said "No Whining." Gee, thanks mom.)

Actually, my husband didn't need either of these messages. He's a very "live in the moment" kind of guy and rarely whines. But the holiday season has me thinking about the messages we get in December. You know, how It's a Wonderful Life, and all that. Why is it that all of these tales involve men realizing that the life they have (or could have) is really pretty great? That money and power is not, actually, what it's all about. I can't think of any movies like this that involve women.

Mammogram Sham?

I'm a busy woman. (Last night I held my face over a steaming bowl of pasta I was making for dinner and wondered if that could count as a "getting a facial.")

Busy I may be, but there is one thing I make sure to schedule time for: my annual mammogram. Now I'm flabbergasted and pissed about the new guidelines coming out about mammograms. I knew the news was out there that some doctors are recommending changes to the way women are screened in the U.S., but I didn't focus on it.

After all, I had just gone for my annual mammogram. Ironically, while I was in the waiting room thumbing through the glossy magazines, I came across an article about this. I read it, then took off my gown and got my mammogram. You would too if you'd watched your cousin die from cancer.

What's for Dinner? How about a nice dish of exasperation.

Not another post about meal planning. That's probably what you're saying to yourself, isn't it?

Well, personally I am fed up with the whole thing. (Ha, ha, ha.)

I feel like I am at the grocery store every other day! In reality, I have been trying to stick to a system; Sunday night I I make a rough meal plan and a shopping list, and try to get to the grocery store at the beginning of the week.

Today we needed orange juice, not a full shop. But I thought, if I am going in for orange juice I might as well shop, right? I consulted the meal plan and saw that after tonight I had nothing sketched out for dinner and not that much in the fridge (or not that much I wanted to cook or eat, since we are trying to cut down on red meat. That canceled out the tacos I could have thrown together.) Also there is the continued need to come up with good lunches for the kiddo. Also I am trying to watch my weight and avoid the Halloween leftover candy bag o' loot (please, send help), which means I need a lot of fat-free snacks around. Also, I should make a soup, right, because the kiddo has the sniffles? I looked at the rotating shopping list on the side of the fridge and it said "bread, onions."

Giving the Film Industry the Finger - Now in 3D!

This post is going to make me sound like a cranky old lady, but I don't care. Add this to the list of things that really irk me: the sudden increase in the number of 3D films for kids..

You know what? I don't want every movie I take my little girl to see to be in 3D. First of all, they charge WAY too much for the extra "delights" of  3D. Guess what people - little kids don't need to see meatballs zooming out of the screen at them at 60 miles an hour! Adding insult to injury - they charge an arm and a leg just to get a pair of the cheap disposable glasses most kids don't keep on. You can't opt out, because then the film looks blurry if you don't keep your spectacles in place. Of course, if they made the glasses CHILD SIZED my daughter might keep them on for more than 5 minutes. And you can't save them and bring them back and get a discount. Isn't that wasteful? Some adults have even complained that the 3-D glasses are too cheap.

Don't get me wrong. There is a time and a place for 3D and I had fun going to see Coraline (without my 4 year old of course - that was way too scary for her!). We adults had a good time at the theater. But when we were kids, 3D was an occasional, special treat. Now? It's everywhere and every day. My daughter did see Up this year, with her uncle, and it sounded great. That's cool.

With Mornings Like These, Who Needs Reality TV?

I don't really get the whole reality television thing. I mean, I like a little Hell's Kitchen here and there and I have watched one episode of Project Runway (at least I think that's what it was). But sometimes I think the television producers should just film real moms going about their day. I don't mean nanny-to-the-rescue shows, and I sure as hell don't mean John and Kate + child exploitation.

I mean this: It is 9 am on  a Sunday morning (Sunday, people!) and I am sitting cross-legged on the floor of my daughter's bedroom. I'm wearing mismatched pajamas (grey bottoms, pink top), a string of green mardi gras beads and a green, blue and white scarf from the dress-up drawer, babushka style, tied over my head. I mean - who could change the channel with that ensemble to gaze upon, right? Talk about What Not to Wear.

Why, viewers might want to know, am I dressed like this?  Well, my daughter said this was what I had to wear in order to take part in this morning's very serious task of building a BIG monster trap. It involves, apparently, a red metal cash box, many magnets, a binder clip, a shoelace, some marbles and a frisbee. I am smart enough not to wonder what sort of monster we are trapping, but suspect it may be a mutant Ultimate Frisbee-player monster (I had a cousin like that once.)

Before the monster trap building, what were we doing? Oh, did I mention she was up at 7 a.m. ? I grabbed a few more minutes rest while she ate some cereal and juice. Then, with a cup of tea in hand, we went downstairs so my husband could sleep. I was desperate for the tea, getting over a cold and still asleep. So I threw a new pack of stickers at the kid so I could wake up for a few minutes. They were coveted princess stickers, so that bought me some time. (We don't allow TV first thing in the morning, a rule that often seems stupid at 7 a.m.). Fishing around on the coffee table, I started reading Hiroshima, which apparently my husband had been reading the night before. A nice, light way to start the day if I do say so.

Welcome to Feverland - Now with Spots!

There are seven words you just don't want to hear when you've been stuck in the house all week with a sick kid: "Mom, I'm giving the cat a haircut!"

Thank goodness those kiddie scissors have blunt edges, that's all I can say.

It all started - of course - as soon as my daughter finished up her little pre-school summer camp. That meant I had about six weeks ahead of me to juggle work, family vacations, and keeping the kid happy and busy. But I had it all planned out.

We'd go swimming, visit all the great museums and parks in our area, clean the house, strategically pack for our upcoming road trip to Maine, and while she was napping I'd keep on top of work!

Of course, I know that was totally unrealistic, but what I didn't count on was a really weird virus swooping down on the daughter. It brought with it diarrhea, fevers that appeared and disappeared, a cranky, droopy kid who was tired but wouldn't nap, a trip to the emergency room, a trip to the pediatrician, and just when I thought it was getting better - the appearance of spots all over her body!

The Class is Always Greener

Last week I went to a cocktail party hosted by a PR firm my husband sometimes works with. There, in the rarefied atmosphere of a penthouse with spectacular views of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, we sipped white wine and networked.

The place was packed with software executives bragging about their sales figures and their sailboats. A lot of people where there from out of town, from Pennsylvania and Connecticut in fact. I was having a good time until one executive who commutes from Connecticut told me he and his wife left the city when they started having babies. "We live in southern Connecticut," he said with a smile, "you know - where there's grass."

I know New Jersey has some issues, but come on people, we do have grass here! This kind of snotty, classist comment just pisses me off.