Quote of the Day

Something new to Read a photo by Violet Kashi on Flickr.

Jonathan Franzen on one of his character's emigration:

"He became another data point in the American experiment of self- government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others."

Brilliantly stated; that quote identifies a significant root of today's culture and makes it easier to understand from where many of today's unfortunate core values stem...

Stylish Send Off

Today we got another peek at what's to come,

and it finally hit me that winter won't last forever.

Spring will spring - it's inevitable - but that's been

really hard to believe these last icy months.

I'm ready for winter to end before I completely 

turn against all things cold and snow; as it is 

now, I'm hanging on to what little appreciation

I've spent years mustering up for it by a thread.

I'm definitely a warm weather gal but I've 

always enjoyed the first snowfall - felt it was

magical - but I've come to despise winter this year

for obvious reasons and I don't want that hatred

to become permanent since I'm not moving

south anytime soon.  Now that I've seen the sun

and felt a bit of warmth, now that I've smelled

a bit of spring in the air, I think I'll make it through.

So to celebrate winter and its end, today I decided

 to dress The Cheeks in the cutest of all winter 

outfits and as you can see below, in turn I found

one positive thing about winter: my daughter

is one damn cute Nordic snow bunny!

That's right, girl - here's to the end of winter; 

it's totally worth celebrating with a double fist pump!

Happy Birthday, Eliza Skye!

I can't believe that two months have

 passed since my abdomen was sliced 

open and this little lump was pulled out!

Little Miss Eliza Skye spent her two 

month birthday lounging in her bouncy

chair, sucking down bottles of formula,

and sleeping on her tummy in her crib;

according to her happy disposition, it 

was time well spent.  At this stage, she is 

smiling a lot, gurgling, and yes, bapping 

like crazy while doing leg lifts at night.

I'm pleased that we have managed to keep 

her alive and kicking; we will find out 

tomorrow just how good of a job we've 

done when the doctor tells us how much

 she has grown in the past month. 

Happy Birthday, Cheeks!  

Public Service Announcement

In between moments spent loving and caring for little Eliza, I will be spending today attempting to catch up on correspondence: emails, thank you notes, FB message and comment returns, voicemails, etc.

If there's time, I may even have a blog in me...

Unplanned Hiatus

On Monday afternoon, my bff from high school called and asked if I was interested in road tripping back home to PA with her.  This is something the two of us have done since I moved to NJ a decade ago: if one of us is heading west, we invite the other along to lighten the misery of Route 80. 

However this trip was to be a first. It wasn't going to be just the two of us this time, or the two of us and one or two of her kids... no, this trip was the real deal: two adults, a nine year old, a six year old, a five year old, a five month old, and of course, my eight week old darling of the blogosphere!

Yep - Tuesday morning, after pumping our newborns full of formula in hopes that they would sleep the ride away, we installed my car seat base next to hers and the seven of us piled into the minivan to begin the trek.

Now, driving from her house in Basking Ridge to our hometown in PA can take anywhere from 2.5 hours if you ignore all posted speed limits to 7 hours if you get stuck in miserable Poconos traffic and there's construction on 80; one never knows what's in store, which is why we don't come home more often.  Needless to say, we both began the journey with a slight stomach ache and crossed fingers.

The Cheeks usually sleeps during car trips; I have a cloth cover for her car seat that turns it from a room with a view to a sensory deprivation chamber and when we travel, I opt for the latter.  Since she cried halfway from Hoboken to Basking Ridge (note to self: NEVER take the Pulaski Highway after 9 am on a weekday), I was pretty sure she would be good to go for the long haul and she was: she slept the entire trip to PA, even through the Wendy's burger run!

Jen's kids were awesome, as always.  The three older ones sat in the back row of the van like three little ducks and happily wiled the time away watching movies and playing Angry Birds on our iPhones (Lillian, age 6, got me through the level I've been stuck on for weeks!).  Spence, Jen's five month old, bapped happily from his car seat and only needed me to wrench my body around and feed him a bit of a bottle once.  Jen and I gossiped about everything from our Facebook friend request queues to tougher stuff, like the reason she had to make the trip home.

I'll admit that I was scared to make the trip at first.  Going out of my comfort zone with E hasn't been as easy as I had thought it would be before she was born; the anticipation of road trips and crying fits does paralyze me a bit however I knew I had to make this trip because it gave me the perfect opportunity to surprise my mom with a visit with the light of her life.  You see, my mom had been in Arizona visiting my aunt and was returning late Wednesday night.  What better thrill than to find me waiting for her at the Williamsport airport instead of my dad?  The trip from my aunt's home, door to door, is about 17 hours but you wouldn't have known how exhausted she was because after one look at me, it registered that where there's daughter, there's granddaughter and her face lit up like an electric light orchestra.

So that's what I've been up to; I didn't want to blog or Facebook until my mom was home and had had her big surprise.  My parents laptop is usually in use by my Ebay addicted dad, and since I didn't bring my Mac home and I hate blogging via iPhone, I've been MIA in my online life.

We head back to Hoboken tomorrow morning and I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing my Matty and so is Eliza... she'll remember him, right? hee hee.

Lunch Club

The Cheeks before heading out to lunch,

 dressed in her velour NJ Housewife track suit 

that Aunt Alina bought her. It has bell sleeves 

and is utterly adorable, just like her expression.

Wednesday lunches with my new friends (who just so happen to have babies) have become my weeks' highlight.  It not only forces me to get out of the house with The Cheeks, but I've also tried three new restaurants, six new wines, and a grapefruitini (which, I'm sad to report, did not meet my expectations).

Best of all, of course, are the friendships I'm forming with like minded souls... ones who also enjoy a drink at lunch! hee hee...

Seriously though, when I was pregnant, I snubbed my nose at "mommy groups": the idea of getting together with a bunch of strangers to talk about our "feelings" made me want to vomit pacifiers. More than once during my pregnancy, I climbed up on my soapbox and delivered the following rant:

"I mean, like, come on - I have, like, so many friends as it is and, like, most of them are moms.  If I need a "mommy friend", hell, I'll call one of them.  Seriously, (insert Matt or Laura's name here), you're not going to find me at one of those, like, "Mommy and Me" bullshit support groups. No way.  I'll be, like, way too busy bustling the baby into the MOMA on my own, or, like, driving to Philly to see Jen and Mose, or flying off to London to spend the weekend with the girls - you know, I'll be too busy spending time with my REAL friends!"

I know, I can be awful, right?  Well, I really thought that was how it would be... ha! We all know how that turned out, considering I spent weeks one and two crying on the phone to Erica and the Jens, texting morose paragraphs to everyone I knew, and blogging the real deal.  Thank god for my friend Michelle up in The Heights (who is, by far, one of the most positive, inspirational people I have in my life and a freakin' terrific friend).  She sent me cheery, supportive texts encouraging me to check out the Hoboken Hospital support group.  Texts that were written in just the right tone, one that intrigued instead of putting me off.

Don't get me wrong - as I wrote here, that meeting was not my cup of tea and I haven't gone back but that's because I met these girls that first day.  It served its purpose and served it well; if I hadn't met these gals, I absolutely would have gone back with the sole purpose of stalking the room for others.  

Today, two of the girls each invited a friend to join our Wednesday lunch club.  Each of those girls has a little girl, so now the count is even: three girls, three boys.  It also means that The Cheeks now has adorable competition because they are beautiful baby girls, were dressed to the nines, and have fabulous names: Addison and Beatrice... this means I need to step up Eliza's game since I'm used to her being the prettiest, best dressed, and best named girly).

I mean, does it get cuter than this?  Maybe baby

Evelyn, but come on! She's 7 weeks and practically

holding the teddy that her daddy got her for Valentines!

Ever read The Alchemist? It's a simple fable that delivers a strong message I believe and have passed on to others (the most interesting being a cute gypsy boy from the South of England who played the tambourine).  Coelho writes that if you want something, all the universe will conspire to make it happen, that it's a small world, and blah blah blah.

But it's true: after I had my baby, all I wanted was to feel like me again.  I spoke of wanting her not to cry, of wanting my swelling to go down, of wanting time to spend with my husband, of wanting to be closer to my family but what I really wanted was to recognize myself once more.

It's been a long road, traveled over a little under two months, but I've managed to make my way back toward myself.  Not completely, but I'm almost there and this group of girls has been instrumental along the way.

And here's the Coelho kicker:  one of the new girls is from Lewisburg, which is my college town (that is 8 miles from my hometown).  That's in itself is crazy, but what really blew my mind is that her stepmother is from W-town AND is the mother of one of my high school friends*!  How's that for it's a small world?  Just when I was feeling so far from home, home presented itself in the form of a brown eyed girl with a girl of her own! Woo hoo! Another townie in town!

Some people collect pottery, some wine corks.  I suppose I collect friendships.

I got lucky - what makes this group of "mommy friends" work is that they feel like friends, not like "mommies". These girls are my type of girls; each is unique in her own way and whereas we share many qualities, we are worlds apart in other aspects.  As a group, however, we complement one another and the dynamic works. 

But most importantly, when I'm with them, surrounded by a sea of strollers, burp cloths, diaper bags, and breast feeding cover-ups, I don't feel like a mom: I just feel like me.

*For my hometown readers, I'll give you a few hints: this girl graduated in 1990, played field hockey, and was the only one in school who called her boyfriend Mike, "Miicchhaaeell".  She also has an older brother that most of us girls had a crush on at one time or another.

Motivation

I need to get my act together and finish writing my novel instead of spending my time watching foreign films, doing laundry, and thinking about finishing my novel.  To be honest, whenever I sit down to work on it, instead of writing toward its end, I spend hours re-reading and editing the 189 pages I've completed.

Which is an exercise in futility.

I need to stop obsessing over sentence structure, grammar and mechanics and focus on getting the words on the page.  I know where it's going, I know where it's been so why do I keep starting at the Prologue? I shouldn't line edit until it's finished - as a writer and as an English teacher, I know that.  I preach that to my own creative writing students but I fail to follow my own advice.

Let's face it - when I finally finish it, it's probably going to need heavy editing regardless if I spend hours line editing it as I go.  When I pass it on to friends for their first beginning-to-end read, because most of my friends are English teachers, they will no doubt take editing notes.  Those notes will feel like brutal attacks the first time I read them but will make the work better in the end - I know this.  And if the work ever makes it past the slush pile, a professional editor will make even more brutal edits; this is a fact.

So why am I wasting my time editing now?  Am I procrastinating?  Is it part of my obsessive compulsiveness?  Is it the curse of an English teacher who has spent the past 16 years editing student work for grammar and mechanics?

Who am I kidding - it's all of the above and therefore it's clear that I need a new approach.  And a  simple one, at that: from now on, when I sit down to work, I'm not going to open any documents labeled with its title.  Instead, I'm going to pick up right where I left off in the story and continue moving forward until I reach the end.

Sounds pretty easy, right?

Ha! It's been so long since I've written any new material, I'm not even sure where I left off.

Which means that I need to break my newly created rule and go back into my files to figure out where to begin again... but I promise to stay away from the Prologue! I'll just re-read Chapter 11 and I won't change a word!

Well, maybe one or two...