No one wants to explore Uranus. Stop asking.

Just a warning - if you can't handle discussions of gross bodily functions, this one isn't for the faint of heart.  

Are you still reading?  YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

********

The start of spring means cleaning up the back yard so we can eat out there or play out there or just sit with a book and enjoy the sunshine.  Yesterday the kids and I hung out outside raking leaves and pulling weeds and sweeping the patio.  After a while they got bored with doing actual work, so they asked if they could play in the hot tub, which I keep lukewarm during spring and summer so it's essentially just a small pool for them to splash around in.

I told them they could, so they stripped off their clothes and hopped in.

Now, I cannot emphasize enough how much of a 7-year-old boy my son is.  Meaning that not only is every other word out of his mouth something to do with butts, farts, poop, penises or vaginas, but he is constantly either touching or showing off the parts of his body relevant to those functions.  He will walk into my room to ask me a question, but will do so completely naked and absent-mindedly playing with his penis.  Or I'll walk into his room while he's getting dressed and he'll turn around and wiggle his butt at me.

On more than one occasion, I have said to him, "could you PLEASE put some underwear on?  I am so tired of looking at your anus."

Then I'll have to explain what "anus" means, while he laughs uproariously.

Though I assumed he would grow out of it by now, he still spends much of his time in the house pantsless, if not fully naked.  I will walk out of a room in which he and Josie are sitting watching TV, fully clothed, and I will return 10 minutes later and find them still watching TV, but with pants and underwear on the floor.

"Why did you take off your pants?" I'll ask.

"We didn't feel like wearing pants," they'll respond, as if my question is a totally unreasonable one.

So, back to yesterday in the hot tub.

They were playing and splashing and giggling.  They turned the jets on and they turned them off.   Giggle giggle.  Then they turned them on again.  Giggle.

Suddenly Zeke got out of the water and headed to the house.

"I need to go potty," he said.

"Go ahead," I responded.

About 7 minutes later, he came back outside.

"Mama, I have a problem."

I looked over at him.  He was naked and wet, but had rivers of brown running down his legs.

"Zeke, is that ... poop?"

He nodded, chagrined.

"What happened??"

He shrugged and said, "I think I have diarrhea."

I took a deep breath.

"Honey, what happened when you were in the hot tub?"

He answered me.  Turns out, he gave himself an enema with the hot tub jets.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said.  "I thought it would be funny."

I sighed heavily.  "OK.  Don't move."

I went inside to get towels.  I was not at all surprised to find that he had tracked mud and shit through the house.  I spent the next 15 minutes cleaning shit off the floor, the toilet, and Zeke himself, and then I ran him a bath and insisted that he scrub all of his parts with soap.  I explained that not only was what he did incredibly gross, but also incredibly dangerous, because he could have perforated his colon and given himself a horrible infection (or worse).  I played up the death angle.

"Sweetie, you cannot EVER do that again.  You could get a horrible infection and die!"

He was solemn and contrite, and promised never to do it again.

Meanwhile, Josie played happily in the hot tub.  When I went back outside, she said, "Mama, I didn't do anything wrong.  I'm a good girl!"

Well, she's a girl, at least, so I've got that going for me.  Because I don't think I could have handled another boy.

Ugh.

I'm not quite ready for The Talk.

We're at a kids' jumping place after school to hang out with friends and get some exercise before bed.  It's a place that's meant for younger kids, around 7 and under, so I have to admonish Zeke to not get too crazy and to watch out for the little kids.  Because when he's jumping, he gets a little crazy.

There are a couple of kids there who are way too old (like, 9 and 10 years old).  They're in the big bouncy castle with Zeke and one girl gets in Zeke's face and pushes him around a little and tells him to "get the hell out."  So I calmly tell her that she needs to get out of the bouncy castle because she's was too big to be in there.  She sneers at me, but complies.

On the way home in the car, we talk about it.

"That girl wasn't very nice, Mama," Zeke says.

"No, she wasn't."

"She's a sexy baby!" Josie says.  She pronounces it in an ooh-la-la type of voice, so it sounds like "sex-eh BAY-beh."  She keeps repeating it.  "Sexy baby!  She's a sexy baby!"

"Josie, why do you keep saying that?" I ask.

"Yeah," Zeke pipes up. "You don't even know what that means."

"Yes I do!" she responds.  "It means that someone is beautiful."

                 Hmm.  

She keeps going on about sexy babies.

I say, "you know, Jos, I don't really like you using that expression."

"But it just means that someone is pretty!"

"Well, not really.  It's a grown-up word."

"Why?"

                 Ugh.  Why did I start down this road?

"Because it's a word grown-ups use when they find each other attractive.  It's not an appropriate word to describe a child.  Children shouldn't be described as 'sexy.'"

               Dodged a bullet, maybe?

"Because it has to do with sex?"  Zeke asks.

"Well ... yes."

                Fuck.  Here it comes.

"What's sex?"

               *sigh*

"It's when people make love, or make a baby."

"But how do they do that?"

"I'll tell you when we get home."

"Why can't you tell me now?"

"You're right.  I'll tell you now.  You know how boys have penises and girls have vaginas?"

"Yes."  They start tittering in the back seat.

"Well, sex is when the man puts his penis in the woman's vagina."

"Eeeeewwww!"  Josie reacts.

Zeke is silent, thinking about this.

"But it's not something that children do.  It's for adults."

"Richard* did it,"  says Zeke.

"Who's Richard?"

"A kid in my class."

               WTF??

"No he didn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know.  Who did he say he did it with?"

"Rita.** A girl in my class."

"No way," I said.  "There's no way that two seven-year-olds had sex.  If he said he did, he either doesn't know what it means or he's lying."

Then I launch into a lecture about how it's not something that children do and not something that they should do until they're older and don't let anyone touch your privates unless it's me giving you a bath or the doctor making sure you're healthy or you but if you're going to touch your privates do it in private and if anyone ever tries to touch you in a way that makes you uncomfortable tell them no and tell me about it so I can protect you and ARE WE HOME YET SO I CAN CHANGE THE FUCKING SUBJECT???

We do get home and they do change the subject and don't dwell on it or ask about it again for the rest of the night.

Or, with any luck, a few more years.

I need a drink.

________________________________________________________________
*not his real name
** not her real name

You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan, and the next five years trying to be with your friends again.

Lately, there has been quite a bit of news and media attention about the Greek system in American colleges and universities, all of it negative.  Campus rapes.  Hazing.  Racism.  Under the articles about these incidents, I frequently see comments from people who question whether the time has come for fraternities and sororities to be abolished.  And even though I was in a sorority in college, I understand their points.

Being in a sorority involves going through a grueling weeks-long rush process. I didn't even understand how brutal it was until I was on the other side and participating in all-night sessions in which the social fate of some poor girl, and whether we would deign to include her in our group, was put to a vote, based on notes that we all made after talking to her for 5 minutes ("Blue skirt with bird-shaped pin - seemed awkward and uncomf., too much makeup, kind of boring - loser" "Red dress, blond, from Seattle - funny story abt summ. camp. Cute, smart - YES").

Every year there were tears and fights over who was invited back and who wasn't.  Every year we gained weight from midnight pizza and sub runs to make up for the fact that during 3 hours of parties, we had only eaten popcorn.  Every year I got bronchitis. It was fucking miserable, and it made me feel mean and awful and occasionally ashamed to be part of such a judge-y, superficial endeavor.

And yet.

And yet, I made incredible friends.  Friends with whom I am still extremely close, with whom I communicate almost every day.  Friends who I always make time to see when I am in their hometown, and vice-versa.  Friends here in the Denver/Boulder area.

Incredibly, there are six of us who were all at UVA together at the same time, from the classes of '91, '92 and '93.  We meet up for dinner as often as we can, but not as often as we'd like, because everyone is busy with jobs or kids or husbands or just the general business of being grown-ups.  My friend Stacy does Beachbody stuff with me.  My friend Christin and I ski and climb mountains together.  My friend Karen comes over for Passover seder.

Karen and Cathy co-own a cabin up in Winter Park, right by the Winter Park ski resort.  This past weekend, five of us were able to spend Friday night up there and then ski together all day Saturday. We hung out watching basketball, eating dinner, getting caught up on each other's lives, and enjoying the company of old friends.  And then the next day, we had one of the most glorious days of skiing I've ever had.

The weather was beyond perfect.  Bright blue, cloudless sky without a hint of breeze, with a high of about 40.  Even up at the very top of the mountain, above the tree line (about 11,000 feet), I was so warm that I skied in just a turtleneck sweater and a down vest, and most of the day I skied without my gloves.  We are all at different levels of proficiency, but we mostly skied together and cheered each other on and chatted endlessly on the chair lift.  I felt so grateful to have these wonderful women in my life.

We talked about how young and unformed we were when we met, at an age when we were still figuring out who we were and what we wanted out of life.  But even as silly, naive 18-year-olds, it turns out we had amazing taste in friends.  As Christin put it, "I have retrospective faith in our 18-year-old selves." So however skeptically I look back on the sorority experience as a whole, or in the abstract, I cannot deny that it brought me some of the best people I've ever met.

The Fraser Valley and surrounding mountains, as seen from the top of Winter Park.  I feel sorry for people who will never see this view in person.

We skied until the lifts shut down, happy and tired and with quads pleasantly sore.  I know I gush about how great it is to live here, but I can't really say it enough.  To have such terrific experiences with good friends, being outside in the sunshine and fresh air, exercising and feeling healthy, in some of the most beautiful mountains on earth -- it's pretty hard to beat.

These experiences are what matter.  This is what we relish even as we look back and wonder where the time went and how could we possibly be in our mid-forties with kids and careers and mortgages and husbands (or in my case, a divorce).  I feel this at my India and Israel reunions as well- that sense of recapturing youth by maintaining these lifelong friendships.

We're already planning on doing it again next year.

Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains

If you're a skier and you have kids, the early years are rough.*  Hitting the slopes either means trading days on the mountain with your spouse so that one can ski while the other watches the kids, or paying exorbitant amounts of money for on-mountain daycare or ski school.  Seriously, a day of ski school can cost about half the amount of an annual season pass, so unless you're rolling in cash (which I am decidedly not), it can be prohibitively expensive to do it more than a few times a season.  You dream of the day when both kids can ski and you can all head out together.

When that day comes, it is glorious.

Zeke has been able to ski with me since last season.  He's can't go on some of the super-steep runs that I like, and he's not as fast as I am, but we can go out together and have a great time.  He's hilarious - he skis down the hill singing to himself and shaking his butt in a little ski dance, or hooting and hollering with glee because he's having so much fun.

Zeke sings to himself as he skis down a run at Keystone.

This is Josie's first season skiing.  We put her in ski school for 3 days in December, and then took her out on green runs with us.  Her very first non-ski-school day she was plowed over by a snowboarder who was going way too fast in a slow, crowded area, and we had to go home after one run because she was totally freaked out.

This was heart-breaking for a number of reasons.  Of course we were bummed for her, because she was so scared and unhappy.  But getting to that first run is the product of about four hours worth of preparation, including getting up at 5 to pack the car, then getting the kids up and dressed and into the car, then driving up through mountain passes and ski traffic, then parking and unloading the car and lugging all of the gear from the car to the lodge and getting everyone into their boots and making sure jackets are zipped and thumbs are properly situated in mittens and does everyone have their pass? and then shuffling over to the lift.  So when you got through all of that and you only get one run in, a little part of you dies.

Since then, she has had a few more days on the mountain, but the kids basically missed the entire month of January because of their trip to Australia, plus in January and February we got a bunch of big winter storms that all seemed to fall on the weekends, and doing the drive when the weather is like that is not something I'm crazy about.  So she hasn't had many days to work on her skills and get more comfortable.

Until the stars aligned this past weekend.

I had the kids for the weekend, and the weather report said that it was going to be sunny and in the high-30s/low 40s.  Perfect spring skiing conditions.  I decided to get a hotel room up in the mountains so that we could do two days without having to drive home at night.  We decided to go to Breckenridge because it's got a great section that's perfect for beginners, which is what we needed for Josie.

And man, she killed it.  On Saturday, she was a little bit tentative because it had been awhile, but we stayed on the easy stuff and on every run, I had her follow me down and ski in my tracks so that she would make big wide turns and control her speed.  On Sunday, she was feeling like a pro, venturing down steeper runs, following Zeke as he skied through the trees, and figuring out how to get on and off the chair lift by herself.  She even did some ski dancing, just like her brother.

What topped it all off was the extraordinary weather.  Brilliant blue skies, comfortable temperatures - Josie and I both skied without gloves on Sunday, and if I had had a convenient place to stash my jacket, I would have taken it off - perfect conditions.  Days like that make it hard to imagine living anywhere else.  Colorado is so beautiful.

Even the drive up is gorgeous.

View from the chairlift.  The sky is so intensely blue it almost doesn't look real.

The hotel was extremely basic, but it did have a pool for the kids to splash around in.

The obligatory selfie on the chairlift.

We skied with our arms out and pretended to be airplanes.  We went through a "haunted forest," an area through the trees that had spooky sounds and giant spiders and snakes to ski through - it helps kids learn how to make solid turns and control their speed, plus it's silly and fun.  I would turn on the music on my phone while we rode the lifts, and we would chair-dance to Katy Perry and Bruno Mars's Uptown Funk.

When we got home last night, we were talking about how much fun we had skiing together.  It really was amazing to be able to enjoy a day like that with the kids, knowing that they were having a great time.

"Mama, that was the best. weekend. ever.  BEST. WEEKEND. EVER!"

I don't know if it's the best weekend ever - they're young, so I don't want to sell their future short. But certainly up there in the top 5.


*I fully recognize that this is "rough" only in the "first-world-problems" sense of the word.  

On that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.

I'm not sure if it's because of how many divorce and family law attorneys I know, or the friends and coworkers I've talked to who have had horrible experiences, but I'm kind of blown away by how easy this divorce is turning out to be.

I mean, I had no reason to think that it wouldn't be.  J and I separated almost 8 months ago, including divvying up the stuff and working out a custody arrangement and schedule that is working fine.  We don't fight about anything, we do stuff together with the kids from time to time (like ski or go to the movies), and it's all good.  It's all done already - the only thing that needed to happen was to file papers and make it official.

Even so.  Making things official often gives rise to unanticipated conflict, so it ain't over til it's over.

But so far, so good.  We filed the petition at the beginning of February, exchanged financial information today, and had a status conference with the court.  We have two more documents we have to file (both of which are already drafted and agreed upon, so it's just a matter of finalizing them and getting them signed and filed) and we have to do a four hour class on parenting after divorce (which they make everyone do if there are minor children involved - no biggie), then we have a final hearing on May 11 and it'll be over.

I feel like we've been in limbo so long - it's kind of exciting but also a bit weird to know that the wheels are in quick motion and that soon I'll be officially single again.

Whatever that entails.

A couple of my friends were talking about me recently (they told me about it afterwards) and decided that a) I need to get laid, and b) they were surprised that it hadn't happened already.

To which I responded, a) tell me about it, and b) where would I have found a hook-up, given that I only encounter women at work, and the rest of my time is spent taking care of children and household?

Seriously, I want to know.

Because I don't feel like I am finished with romantic love.  I've seen The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  I know that it's never too late.

But I don't know how to go about it anymore.

Now don't you ever change, just promise me you're always gonna be as sweet as you are

One of my friends and I were messaging each other and having a bitch session, and in response to some complaint or other of mine, she said, "well, but at least your children are delightful."

I think about that quite a bit, because lately - and for a while now - my children are delightful.

We seem to have hit a sweet spot, temperamentally, behaviorally, intellectually and otherwise.  They are both very smart and doing well in school.  They are energetic and interested in going out and doing new things and seeing the world.  We go skiing and hiking and swimming and to museums and the zoo.  We watch movies and do puzzles and read books and color.  They are funny and fun.  They are affectionate and considerate and kind.

The other night I felt this incredible surge of love as I sat on the couch while Josie stood behind me and brushed my hair.

"I'm giving you your hair style, Mama.  I'm really good at it."  She poked a couple of bobby pins into my head and threw in a random ponytail.

When she was done, she lay down on the couch and started sucking her fingers, a sign that she was tired.  I picked her up to take her upstairs to go to bed, and she rested her head on my shoulder.  I squeezed her to me.

"You need to stop growing," I whispered.  "I need you to stay five forever.  You're so wonderful right now.  So no more growing, OK?  Can you do that?  Can you stay five?"

She patted my face and nodded.  It's a running joke that we have.

Sometimes I worry about the rigidity of their day at school, especially for Zeke.  It's a lot of seat time and constant testing, with only about 20 minutes a day for recess.  They have a color-coded behavioral system (green is good, purple is a warning, yellow is redirection, blah blah), and he gets in trouble because he'll be singing to himself or cracking jokes when they're supposed to be sitting quietly.

In other words, he's an energetic seven-year-old boy, and sometimes it's hard to sit still or pay attention.

I showed him how to do yoga-ish deep breathing exercises as a way of calming himself down. Sometimes it works, sometimes he forgets.  Sometimes the urge to make fart noises with his hands or to crack a silly joke about toilets is too powerful.

For a while, I was tying certain privileges at home, like using the computer or watching TV, to what color he was on at school.  It was starting to stress him out, and he was obsessed with it.  Even at home, he'd say, "Mama, am I on green?  Am I being good?"

And you know what?  He is good.  He's a good person, and I don't want him constantly worrying that he's not.

So I've decided, fuck it.

He always tells me if he gets in trouble, and we always talk about it and think about how he can act or react differently.  But honestly, when he's getting in trouble because he's restless or feeling silly, I'm not going to pile on.  I don't want him spending his days stressed out about what freaking color he's on, when he's not doing anything really bad.  He never engages in behaviors that I worry about - he's not a bully.  He doesn't get in fights.  He's not violent or destructive.  He's actually incredibly kind and sweet and generous.  So the punishment at school is enough for me.  He'll start with a clean slate at home.

Yesterday I said, "honey, don't worry about what color you're on.  Do your best to listen and pay attention, try to stay on green or purple.  But just relax.  You're a great kid, and if you get in trouble every once in a while for being silly, it's OK.  And if you feel the need to make poop jokes, maybe try to wait until you get home, because I think poop jokes are funny."

He seemed incredibly relieved.  He crawled into my lap and put his arms around me and hugged me tight.  I hugged him back, burying my face in his neck and breathing in that little boy smell that's a combination of soap and clean sweat and a little bit of fresh dirt.

And we stayed that way even after we started giggling because he had tooted right on my leg.

Timing is everything

It's been a weird month.

I've been battling a pervasive bout of depression for a couple of months.  I keep waiting for it to abate.  Like if I say, "OK, on Monday, things are going to be better, and I'm going to feel better and energized."  And by saying it, I can make it so.

But it's still hard.

My aunt, who is a psychologist - and also in the line of relatives from whom I inherited the crazy - suggested I ask my doctor about trying a different type of anti-depressant.  It's not an SSRI - which kind of work for me but also make me feel kind of numb - but rather something that works differently, chemically speaking.  It is usually used to treat seizure disorders, but also can be prescribed for people with bipolar disorder (which I do not have) or as a mood stabilizer for people with less severe forms of depression.

So I went to a doctor who prescribed it for me, and gave me the starter pack - it's the kind of drug that you have gradually build up in your blood stream, so I'm still in the process of ramping up the dosage.  I haven't felt huge effects yet, but for the past couple of nights, for the first time in I don't know how long, I slept soundly without lying awake from 2:30 until 4:30 in the morning.

In the meantime, my mother took me to Canyon Ranch, in Tucson, Arizona, for my birthday.

Desert gardens, with mountains in the background

For those who don't know, Canyon Ranch is considered one of the premier luxury spa resorts in the world.  A four day trip there, with one of my favorite people in the world, is seriously the nicest, most generous gifts anyone has ever given me.  It is extraordinarily beautiful, set in the desert hills behind Tuscon, full of saguaro cacti and desert flowers and javelinas rustling in the bushes.

A water feature designed to allow people to sit and reflect quietly, surrounded by beauty.

We spent our days going for walks and taking exercise classes and getting massages and facials and pedicures.  We talked and read books and enjoyed each others' company.  We ate incredible, healthy, beautifully prepared food.  We played bingo one night and I won a $140 gift certificate for spa services (which doesn't cover the cost of a single spa service, except maybe a pedicure).

The saguaro cacti are amazing looking.

Flowering prickly pear cactus

Desert musicians 

Fountains at dusk.

Barrel cactus.

Enjoying an early morning walk.

Absolutely everything about the place is top-of-the-line.  It's totally luxurious, but in an unostentatious way.

For example, no one goes around in resort wear or fancy clothes.  People wear workout clothes or jeans and flip flops, even to dinner.  There was only one lady who acted like a snobby bitch - this woman from DC who, when we were chatting in the massage waiting area and my mom said she was from "Washington D.C." but clarified it to "McLean, Virginia" when asked for specifics, said, "oh, well, that's not really D.C., but my husband is in real estate, so I know McLean is lovely - at least it's not Rockville!"  From then on, we referred to her as "the DC Madam," and anytime we were talking about different places, we would say, "but at least it's not Rockville!"  But everyone else we met or talked to was really friendly and down-to-earth.

At times it made me uncomfortable.  For example, on Sunday, after enjoying a delicious gourmet breakfast, I went to an exercise class, then had a facial, then a massage.  At one point during the facial, I was lying there as a Russian lady extolled the virtues of the hundreds of dollars worth of exfoliants and creams she was rubbing on my face ("vee only use Sisley products - they are most expensive in vorld"), and I started feeling like a spoiled asshole.  I had an overwhelming urge to go out and do charity work or volunteer in a homeless shelter.  It all felt like too much.

Part of the problem is that, particularly since the separation and being a part-time single parent, I don't have a lot of money to spare.  So the extent of the pampering - and the amount of money it cost - made me a little uncomfortable.

Another part of the problem is that I was enjoying all of this luxury in the middle of a period of reading about people suffering from injustices and deprivation in places like Russia and North Korea, and the juxtaposition of what I was reading and what I was experiencing was a bit jarring.

I came home feeling refreshed and relaxed and lean.  But also a little guilty.

So, long story short - go to Canyon Ranch, if you have the opportunity.  It's an incredible place.  But read something mindless and frothy while you're there.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your earmuffs

I had a lovely reunion with the children on Friday afternoon, followed by a weekend full of snuggles and kisses and "I love you, Mamas."  They had a fantastic time in Australia, which makes me so happy.  They got to meet a jillion cousins and hang out with grandparents and aunts and uncles.  They petted koalas and fed kangaroos and emus and marmosets.  They swam in rock pools.  They went to a wedding and danced.  They were admired for their intelligence and dispositions and beauty.

I talked to J almost every day they were gone, and received pictures and little videos of their activities.  A few times, Zeke was willing to get on the phone to talk to me.  Josie never was, except when she finally cracked two days before the end of the trip - she was tired and missed mama and called me crying.

I think being away from me was harder for her than she let on, and not talking to me was a way of dealing with that. Which I totally get.  I am the queen of compartmentalizing, so I'm glad that she has inherited that coping mechanism and is able to recognize what she can and can't handle in a given moment.

But since she has been back, she has been on me.  Sitting on my lap. Reaching for my hand and patting it. Crawling onto me, putting her cheek against my cheek, and then stroking my other cheek with her hand.  Given me impromptu hugs.

And all of that emotionality, combined with recovering from jet lag, coagulated this morning into a bout of insanity as we were leaving to go to school.

Unlike the East Coast, Denver is not experiencing any harsh winter weather this week.  To the contrary, it has been positively spring-like, with sunny skies and temperatures in the high 60s (and with the dry heat and altitude, you can generally add 10 degrees to come up with a "real feel" temperature when it's sunny).

So imagine my surprise when I was getting the kids ready to go, putting them in light fleece jackets to deal with the slight morning chill that will burn off within an hour, when Josie suddenly starts to cry.

"Honey, what's wrong?" I ask.

"You never buy me ear thingies!"  she wails.

I am utterly confused.

"Ear things?  I don't understand what you're saying.  Do you want to put on a hat that covers your ears?"

"EAR THINGS!  THAT JUST GO ON YOUR EARS!"

I think she is talking about headphones, and that she is complaining that for her long plane trip, I got her Frozen earphones that cover your ears, rather than the little ear buds that go inside your ears. Which don't fit her anyway, because her ears and ear holes are so tiny.

"Do you want smaller headphones that go in your ears?"

"NO!  I don't want headphones!  EAR COVERS! THINGS THAT GO ON YOUR EARS WHEN IT'S COLD!!"

"Earmuffs?  The fuzzy ones?"

"Yes!  I WANT EARMUFFS! You never buy me earmuffs!"  She is crying incredibly hard.

"Josie, you've never asked for earmuffs.  I didn't buy earmuffs because I didn't know you wanted them. And it's not cold out, anyway."

"Earmuffs!  I don't have earmuffs!"

The only true source of happiness in life.

In a tone of voice I usually reserved for people having a psychotic break, I say, "o-KAY, kids, let's go," and I usher them out the door.  She's still inconsolable about the fucking earmuffs.  Which she has never asked for.  Which no one in our family wears or has ever worn, so it's not an item of outerwear that she has ever discussed or that I even knew was on her radar.  Plus it's almost 50 degrees out when we leave the house, so it is decidedly not earmuff weather.

This completely ridiculous (to me) argument continues all the way to school.  She insists I am the world's worst mother because I am not clairvoyant and did not to buy her earmuffs to wear on a day when it will be 70 degrees and sunny.  I say I'm sorry she's unhappy, but continue to express befuddlement at the entire ordeal.  Zeke gives her funny looks, but wisely stays out of the fray.  She finally calms down when she goes into her classroom and sees her teacher.  I walk back to my car feeling like I have entered the Twilight Zone.

I guess it's just my periodic reminder that for all of her intelligence and general good-natured-ness, she is only 5 years old.  And 5 year olds are, basically, lunatics.

Come to Mama

On Saturday afternoon, I drove J and the kids to the airport and said goodbye to all of them for two weeks.  J's sister is getting married, so they all went for two weeks to go to the wedding and hang out with family.  With the exception of J's mom and brother, none of them have ever met Josie, and haven't seen Zeke since he was about 8 months old.

And it's a big adventure, getting to go to Australia.  They're excited to go to the beach and see koalas and kangaroos.  They have little journals in which they will be drawing pictures and writing about what they're doing every day.

But damn, two weeks is a long time.  I miss them so much.  The first day was the hardest - on the Sunday after they left, I went to the grocery store for about 30 minutes and then didn't leave the house for the rest of the day.  I watched football and napped and moped around feeling sorry for myself.

J has called every day, so I know they're having a great time and that all is well.  They've been to the beach and hung out with their cousins and Josie was treated to a facial (and passed right out - I guess the jet lag hit her hard when she was all comfy and being pampered) and they're excited to go to the wedding and dance.

But today when they called, J told me that Josie has an ear infection, and when she spoke to me for a few minutes, she sounded tired.  Then Zeke got on the phone and promptly started to cry because he missed me, and then I started to cry, and it was all very weepy and pathetic.

In an effort to cheer myself up, I decided to list the good things about the 2 week break that I'm getting:

• My morning routine is a cinch.  I can exercise and be ready for work and out the door without having to wake them up (which they hate), get them dressed (which they hate), and then rush around trying to get them into socks and shoes and hats and coats and mittens without being late for school (which I hate).    
• I can make dinner plans with friends and stay out as late as I want.
• I can go to New York to visit my brother and sister-in-law.
• I don't have to clean up anybody else's mess.
• Nobody complains if I sing along to the radio.
• Nobody is arguing about wanting to sleep in my bed.
• The toilet is always flushed, so I'm not encountering rogue giant turds when I got to the bathroom.
• Nobody is leaving legos on the floor for me to maim my feet on when I step on them.
• I haven't watched Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse once.

I live in quiet and order, doing what I want.  

So many people have been all, "ooooh, you're so lucky to have time to yourself, take advantage of it!" 

And I am.  But one of the great joys of divorce/sharing custody is that I already get regular breaks when I can take time for myself.  I don't feel like I'm lacking in that department.

Bottom line, I miss my monkeys and can't wait for them to come home and fill my house up with mess, noise and love again.

Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.

Happy New Year.

I am determined to make it so.

2014 was such a horrible year.  Truly the worst year of my life.  The death of a marriage, the death of a niece, the death of that special, rarified familial happiness we enjoyed.  Mental fog and depression, physical lethargy.  I gained 10 pounds, I was sad, I cried all the time, I felt like shit.

And then it all ended with a period of time that I dread and despise every year -- the winter holidays and break from school.  School lets out, but I still have to work, so I send the kids to Denver Public Schools' day camp that they run on dismissal days, but they don't run it on ALL the dismissal days, just some of them, so some days I have coverage and some days I don't, so I end up working 2 or 3 days per week for 2 1/2 weeks and everything is disjointed and I don't get anything done and it drives me bonkers.

Christmas isn't even my holiday, and J had the kids on New Year's Eve, so I spent both of those days and nights alone, reading and watching movies.  Which is OK, but felt kind of lonely because I had nowhere to go and no one else to spend time with.

I needed the year to be over.  Once 2014 was over and 2015 started, then in my mind, I could take definitive steps to put it all behind me.  I could start exercising and eating well again. I could come out of my depressive funk.  I could raise my inner Scarlett O'Hara: I won't think about the bad stuff.  I'll put it behind me.  Tomorrow is another day.  Scarlett may have been an asshole, but she knew how to deal with her shit and get on with her life.  I always respected her for that.

It seems so arbitrary and stupid when I think about it, this obsession with the actual date. It's a date on a calendar.  Why couldn't I just start a health program in December?  Why couldn't I mentally and emotionally try to feel better earlier?  Why does flipping the calendar page from December to January make a difference?

It just does, at least for me.  2014 felt like a monster's claws to me, holding me in a cold, awful grip. And with the turning of the clock and the calendar, there is a releasing of that grip in my mind.  It's a way of compartmentalizing and saying, OK, I got my time to wallow and be sad and unproductive, but life goes on and it's time to get busy living.

So I am.  I'm back on the fitness and health train, and am already feeling so much better.  J and I are filing divorce papers this week.  I am making an effort every day to think about something that I am grateful for in my life.  I'm still walking to work and taking pictures.

I still miss Emma, and I am still heartbroken by her death.  That will never change.  I can, however, choose to remember her in a way that doesn't utterly devastate me.

The other day when I was walking to work, I saw this older couple walking in front of me.  They looked to be in their late 70s, at least.  The lady had the kind of hair-do that one only achieves by going to the hairdresser to have it "set."  They were walking hand in hand, and it made me smile.

I don't have any particular desire to be in a romantic relationship again, or to remarry.  But it would be nice to have someone to hold hands with on a walk, or to kiss at midnight on New Year's Eve.

Here's hoping for a joyous 2015.

Felt the earth beneath my feet, sat by the river and it made me complete

These days my respite is the outdoors.

When I am inside, whether at work or at home or elsewhere, I feel caged in and agitated.  I remember when I was first diagnosed with depression, the description provided by the psychologist or whoever was of a general, "free floating" anxiety.  Like I have this aura of grayness that hovers over me, full of malignant atoms whose electrons aren't arranged correctly, or something like that.

I have no motivation to exercise, to cook, to eat anything healthy.  I need to lose at least 10 pounds, but I can't seem to stick with an exercise program, and despite my resolute declarations of "today will be the day I'm good," I give in to temptation because it fills an emotional void.

I am irked by the holiday season, not because I begrudge anyone their time celebrating whatever they want to celebrate, but because it means I have to find coverage for the kids on days that they don't have school because of vacation, and buy gifts when I already feel like my kids have so much fucking *stuff* in their lives that the idea of adding to the stuff in my house makes me want to tear my hair out.

I read books, which provides some distraction. Right now, I'm pleasantly amazed by Michael Lewis's ability to turn an account of the collapse of global financial markets in 2008 and beyond into a gripping page-turner (at least for me).  But the distraction is temporary.

Mostly I want to be outside, not thinking.

My walk to work is the best part of my day.  On the days that I can't do it, because of early meetings or whatever, I'm out of sorts and jumpy.

But even on the days that I can do it, it's too short.  I'm bummed out when I get to work, because instead of walking 2 1/2 miles, I want to keep going.  10 miles might feel like enough.  Or even more.

One of my routes to work takes me through this park.  Sometimes the urge to turn south and keep walking until I reach the top of Pikes Peak is overwhelming.

Anything to stay out of my own head.

I blink, as if at pain

We were on the train taking us from the terminal back to baggage claim, part of the post-Thanksgiving returning throngs clinging exhaustedly to subway straps and poles, the travel-induced blank faces, bodies jiggling back and forth like jello.

I looked out the window and caught my reflection, and was, as ever, surprised and dismayed by how tired and haggard and old I look.

Not just look.  Am.

I tried to give myself a break.  It's a reflection in a train window.  It's shitty flourescent light.  You've been traveling all day.  You aren't wearing make-up.  It was a rough week.

It was a rough week.

I knew it would be.  And I guess it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  But it was hard.  Emma's absence was an enormous presence that we all felt.

We tip-toed around it at first.  Not in the sense that we didn't talk about her, but we definitely skirted the fact that it was The First Major Holiday Without Her.

We did the things we normally do.  The house buzzed with decisions about which sides to make for dinner on Thursday.

Dad doesn't really like sweet potatoes - maybe instead of mashing them we could do roasted wedges? 

Trust me, you may not like Brussels sprouts, but these are sauteed with bacon - you're going to love them.

They're not powdered potatoes - they make them fresh at the store!  But it's one less thing to worry about.

Why don't my pie crusts ever look like yours?  No matter what I do, they don't roll out properly.

The kids had a great time playing with their cousins.  Zeke took to rolling down the big hill in my parents' front yard, and was constantly covered with mud.  We went to the park.

We did our annual Thanksgiving run in downtown D.C. benefiting So Others Might Eat.

And it was all lovely.  But there was this unshakable underlying tension.  Sadness permeated the week, as much as we love each other.  The air felt full of tiny shards of glass that cut our insides when we breathed.  The force of gravity felt stronger, pulling us down and making us feel heavier.

We dressed for dinner on Thursday afternoon, and sat down at the beautifully set table, laden with a gorgeous turkey and creamed spinach and my mom's awesome cranberry jello mold and rolls and stuffing and gravy and potatoes and wine.

Then we collectively looked around the table, took a deep breath, and burst into tears.

We were thankful to be together.  Thankful to be alive.  But it's been such a hard year.  We miss her so much.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I was relieved to be going home and away from my family.  Back in Colorado, I can get some distance.  I can compartmentalize.  I can let the day-to-day chaos of my own life - work, kids, house, appointments, friends -- shield me from that sadness and those tiny shards of glass.

But it still shows in my face in that train window reflection.

My soon to be 45-year-old face, which looks saggy and old and ugly to me.  My soon-to-be 45-year-old body, which looks saggy and old and ugly to me.

I was telling a friend of mine recently that I'm so much more attractive in my head - it's always jarring to me when I see my aging self in the mirror.

People pooh-pooh it whenever I say it out loud (so I rarely say it out loud), but it's how I feel.  It matters to me.  It affects my confidence and self-image.

I want my old self back.  I want the self that had discipline and will-power when it came to diet and exercise.  But when the sadness and stress moved in, the discipline and will-power moved out.

I'm trying so hard to get it back.  Because maybe if I get that back, I can figure out how to be young again.

I know not what the future holds, but I know who holds the future

I've been all wrapped up in the bombshell that Rolling Stone dropped this week about rape and rape culture at the University of Virginia.  Letters of outrage and Change.org petitions and laments about what the fuck is going on at our school.

My letter to the University president and other members of the administration can be found over at my friend Theresa Pileggi-Proud's site, You Are Here.  One of the things I talk about is the prospect of sending my own daughter to UVa. when she decides to go to college.  If she were going today, I wouldn't send her there.

But knowing what a problem campus rape is at many schools around the country, I don't know where I would want to send her.

And it's not just the issue of sexual assault.  I look back on my time at college, and while I loved it, socially, the mores were so fucked up and antiquated, particularly within the Greek system.  My best friends from UVa. are my sorority sisters - I am still in contact and very close friends with a significant number of them.  I love them and they are incredibly important to me. But when I look back on the Rush process - with its snap judgments and all night voting sessions that were breeding grounds for cattiness, tears, and fractured friendships - not to mention bronchitis, which I got every single year during Rush - it turns my stomach.  It is exactly the opposite of how I would encourage Josie to approach her friendships and interactions with other human beings.

Then once you're in, there's so much focus on landing a cute guy and being accepted by the right group and having a date to the football game and getting invitations from the "good" fraternities to have mixers.

Ugh.  It's fucking nauseating to think about.  And from what I can tell, not much there has changed.

And who knows.  More and more, I wonder about the value of college at all.  The world is changing so much.  In 13 years, when Josie is 18, the model for preparing yourself for the working world and beyond might have evolved to the point that apprenticeships or similar work/study arrangements are the key to success and upward mobility.  An expensive four-year college education, as the experience currently exists, might be obsolete.

It blows my mind that Zeke will be in high school in eight years, and Josie in nine.  If we stay in the same house, they might attend East High School, which is about 4 blocks from where we live.  I pass it on my way to work sometimes (depending on my route).  It's a beautiful, majestic building.

I just hope by the time they get there, I've imparted enough wisdom on how to be self-confident and tough, yet also kind and empathetic, that they can navigate the social hell that is high school (and beyond) with aplomb.

In the meantime, I'm signing Josie up for martial arts lessons.

Color me happy, and why it's good that painting doesn't involve sharp objects

As part of my "dealing with the utter shittiness that has been 2014" campaign, I've been painting the interior of my house (I'll do the exterior next summer).  When we bought it, we painted the hallway and the dining room because we reconfigured the walls, and we painted the bathrooms when we renovated them, but everything else has stayed the way it was when we bought it.  I decided to repaint the walls, one room at a time, on the weekends that I don't have the kids.

The colors upstairs - or lack thereof - were particularly depressing.  My bedroom was the palest, most barely noticeable shade of light light blue-ish grey ever, which meant that the room simply looked like someone painted it white a million years ago and left it to get dingy and dusty.  Plus there were spots where the plaster walls had cracked (or had lost chunks), so I had filled them in with spackling plaster.  It was seriously fugly.

So I started with my room.  I chose a beautiful turqoise-y blue called "Cloudless," because it looked like the color of Emma's room.  I wanted something that reminded me of her, but in a cheerful way.

The difference was astounding, and made me astoundingly happy.

See what I mean about how it wants to be white, but just looks dirty?

Ahhhh... so much better.

I adore the way it looks now.  It gives me feels.  I wake up and look around and am instantly in a good mood.

But of course, it's like getting a tattoo.  Once you start, all you want to do is paint more more more.

My room has an adjoining smaller room/alcove.  I had a chaise longue in there and a painted chest that my mom got me in Romania, but I never used it (the room, not the chest).  So this past weekend, I decided to turn it into an office.

I picked out a beautiful yellowy green color called Citron that I thought would look amazing against the blue.  I moved everything out of the alcove, put some college football on the TV to listen to while I worked, and started painting.  It was freezing and snowy out, so it was the perfect day to stay in and warm up the walls of my house.

Feh.

Love.  The color doesn't actually look that neon-y in the light of day - the overhead light is causing that effect.

The view from my bed in the light of day.

It's so, so beautiful to me.  It feels happy and cheery and home-y.

But wait...

Yes?

What's that spot on the floor near the door?

Oh, you mean the spot on the carpet that is the same color as the walls?

Yeah, that.

Oh, right.  Funny story, that.

When I painted the main part of the bedroom, after I had done the entire room, I waited a couple of hours and then went over the walls looking for spots where the coverage wasn't great, maybe because I had missed a spot with my brush or didn't press down hard enough with the roller or whatever. There were a couple of spots above the entrance to the alcove that needed some touching up, so I put a little bit of paint on the underside of the lid of the paint can and went up the ladder with my brush.

Of course, at this point, I had mostly cleaned up, including putting away the drop cloth.  The paint can was resting near the base of the ladder.

As I came back down, I wobbled a little bit and put my foot back abruptly to catch myself...

and ended up stepping backwards into the can of paint.  While wearing socks.

It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what had happened.  Why did my foot feel gooey?

Then it was a flurry of me pulling my paint-soaked foot out of the can, sloshing paint on the carpet, pulling off the sock and throwing it in a panic into a big cardboard box that I was using for trash, and then sitting on the bed trying to figure out what the fuck to do about the fact that there was bright blue paint all over the floor.

The answer, of course, was "nothing that would make a damned bit of difference."  I scrubbed and scrubbed, but it's unsalvageable.

But the truth is, it's shitty carpet and I've wanted to replace it anyway, so now I have an excuse.

Right after I finish painting the other rooms upstairs.

When it's cold outside there's no need to worry cuz I'm so warm inside

The problem with this ridiculous cold snap, featuring temperatures that we don't generally see until January or February - and even then for no more than a week or so - is that it caught me totally unprepared from a sartorial perspective.

Usually, Colfax Avenue is bustling in the morning.  Today it felt like a ghost town, with almost no one else sharing the sidewalk with me.

 I have a bag or box or something that contains all of our ski pants and super-warm hats and all of that, but I have no fucking idea where it is.  This weekend I will have to excavate our cupboard under the stairs where I suspect it is all buried under a pile of other stuff I haven't looked at or thought about in dog years, but for now, I'm scrambling.

So I'm spending my lunch break shopping for mittens and hats and scarves.

But another issue is that the kids don't get to spend much time outside - they keep them inside at school when it's like this, and it's really too cold to go to the playground or anything like that.

They need an outlet to burn off their considerable energy.  So last night, I put in a workout DVD to get some exercise, and they both joined me.  I turned off the sound on the disc and put in some fun music and we all danced and jumped around with Shaun T.

We are in a good place right now.  The kids are both happy and healthy and behaving (for the most part).  We had an amazing weekend, going to the zoo and the park and the pool.  Having movie night with popcorn.  On the nights that they are with me, they draw me pictures and we play and read books and watch the Neil DeGrasse Tyson series "Cosmos" (their latest obsession).

They chose animals next to each other so they could hold hands while they rode.

I'm very grateful for my life right now.

Big fat fluffy flakes

On Monday morning, it was about 60 degrees and sunny.  But because of the altitude, when it's sunny in Denver it usually feels about 10 degrees warmer than it actually is.

By the time I went home from work, it was 24 degrees and snowing.  It hasn't stopped since.  When I took the kids to school this morning, it was dumping snow and 0 degrees (Fahrenheit, so about -18C).

At this point, we are generally unfazed by this weather, except to admire it for its beauty.  We've got parkas and scarves and gaiters and mittens and snow boots.  When the kids look outside in the morning and see snow on the ground, they get all excited.  Their only lament this morning is that with the temperature so low, it will likely be an "inside day" at school (anything over 20F and they get to play outside).

I walked most of the way to work, until my thighs were so cold and numb that I caught the bus for the last half mile or so (strangely, the rest of me was comfortable - given that my parka goes down to my knees, I'm confused by this).

I love the way the snow makes the city look.  The snow makes everything glow, and insulates the sound a bit so it feels quiet and peaceful.

Plus I'm totally geeking out about how the ski resorts must look right now.  Josie has decided that this is the year she wants to learn to ski, so in a couple of weeks we'll go get the kids' season ski rentals, and hit the slopes after we get back from Thanksgiving.  Josie is a bit of a daredevil, so I'm curious to see how she does.

Cheesman Park

Walking up the steps to my office building

I need a miracle every day

On my walk today, I listened to Spotify radio based on the Yonder Mountain String Band, a Colorado-based bluegrass group.  A bunch of Grateful Dead songs came on, and it took me back to being in college and going to Dead shows with my sorority sisters.

I wasn't one to follow the Dead around or camp out for tickets or anything like that.  You would never catch me twirling around during Drums and Space in a dingy prairie dress and moccasins and employing leather string as jewelry.  But I enjoyed the music and the experience of going to a show. I remember dancing in a warm summer rain at RFK Stadium as the band played Box of Rain, and feeling totally blissed out.

I thought about that night as I walked this morning past a group of people camping out for tickets in front of the Fillmore Auditorium.  I don't go to listen to live music much anymore (thought I would really like to, especially after the amazing time I had in Charlottesville two weeks ago), and certainly am beyond the point in my life when I would consider camping out on the sidewalk for tickets (or anything, really).  But I smiled as I passed them, admiring their dedication, particularly in the 10 degree weather, and feeling slightly envious of their youth.

Cause Baby I'm a Star

This morning was a total shit-show.

I was taking the kids to school when I remembered there isn't any school today, and that they were supposed to be going to day camp (for which, thankfully, I had remembered to sign them up).  So I drove them up to the school where camp is being held, and discovered once I got there that I was supposed to have packed them lunch.  My money was still at home, so I had to drive back home, get all of my stuff together, drive to the grocery store, pick up some lame prepared kids' deli lunches (enjoy your Doritos, kids!), drop the lunches at camp, and then drive to work, for which I was already late.

Meaning I missed my daily walk to work.  The best I could do was to park in a lot that's about six blocks from my office, and get some walking in that way.

I love the dark blue sky (no filter on this baby), and the juxtaposition of the red in the parking signs against the grays and blacks of the buildings in the background.  And I needed to capture the beauty and relative warmth of the morning, because we're getting a wicked cold front this afternoon that is going to push the temperatures below freezing by tonight.

Amazon Prime would ship it free, right?

I like this guy's face.  There's something gentle and hopeful in his expression.

Also, now I want lion statues in front of my house.

At ease, boys.

Vintage gas pumps as urban art, displayed at the side of an apartment building's parking area.  They reminded me of young soldiers, standing at attention.