Turns out not where but who you're with that really matters

After an utterly mediocre date, it was nice to come home to realize that I still had time to catch the end of my street's annual block party.  I reconnected with some friends who I hadn't talked to in ages, and met some new friends, and was reminded that there is nothing like the simple pleasure of just hanging out on a balmy evening on a front porch, drinking a beer and shooting the shit with cool people.

It's a feeling that always makes me intensely happy.  There are few things that fill my soul more than spending time in the physical presence of people who are warm and smart and funny and engaging. When the vibe is right and the conversation flows and we're laughing or sharing interesting stories or offering different perspectives on life, it's a wonderful thing.

It's such an essential part of how I like to interact with people, and the reason that I love reunions so much. To be with people who I love and admire, who I appreciate and accept for all that they are, just as they love and accept me for all that I am - it's the best thing.  So you have the buildup of anticipation waiting for the big event, and then the event itself is this explosion of joy and dancing and  drinking and laughing hysterically and hugging and talking and staying up until all hours, until it's over and the love hangover sets in and you realize that it'll be a long time before you'll again get to experience these people in this way.

And I'm fortunate that, between college and the various overseas schools I went to, there are enough reunions that I never have to go more than a couple or three years between big events.

But what about the time in between?

I have friends all over the country and the world, and because of the magic of social media, I am in regular - often daily - contact with my closest friends from Israel, India, McLean, UVa, law school, Atlanta, etc. My online exercise group has people posting daily from Canada, all over the U.S., the Netherlands, and Switzerland.  (There are also plenty of people who are Facebook "friends" but who I don't keep up with at all, and I don't consider lurking on someone's Facebook wall to be actual friendship, so they don't really count.)

But cultivating and maintaining real life, day-to-day friendships, especially in a place where I don't have family and where I didn't grow up, is harder.  It requires more effort because you have to step away from your phone or the computer and actually try to talk to new people and schedule a time to get off your ass and go do something.

I have definitely done that to a certain extent.  I have my crew of UVA sorority sisters who live here, and we do make an effort to get together, though it's never as often as we'd like.  Same with the small India crew that's here.

I also live in an incredible neighborhood with tree-lined streets and sidewalks and parks and neighbors who hang out and visit on the porch.  The elementary school is down the street, and the kids there are neighborhood kids.  We go to the pool that's 3 blocks from my house and as soon as we walk in my children are in the pool playing with 10 friends that they know from school and I can hang out with the parents.  There's a wonderful sense of community, and among the many great things about having children is the opportunity to meet the parents of their friends. It's a natural ice-breaker.

But there's a difference between knowing someone to say hi to them at drop-off before school starts, or chatting with them when we're both at the pool at the same time, and picking up the phone to call them and say, "hey, I'm kid-less this weekend, do you want to go to dinner?"

That kind of friendship takes work.  You have to actually and deliberately seek someone out and say, "hey, I'd like to hang out with you and be your friend."  Plus it can make you feel vulnerable, because what if they don't really want to hang out with you?  Then you'd feel like an idiot. Nobody wants to be rejected.

So even though whenever I run into parents or neighbors we always say, "we should really get together," it doesn't happen very often because ... well, because it takes effort and time and daily life gets in the way.

The effort is worth it, though.  This past weekend, after running into Kim, the mom of one of Josie's friends, we were talking about getting the girls together during the summer and I said, "and you know, it would be fun to get together to go have a drink or go to a movie."  So we did. We went to dinner the next night and that turned into hanging out on a restaurant patio gabbing until late, talking about life and marriage and raising kids and politics.  It was great.

Later in the weekend, after the aforementioned mediocre date with a guy who didn't pass what Kim termed the "can you imagine this guy naked on top of you" test, she was the one I debriefed with afterwards. And then I went home and went to the block party, where some of the neighbors who like to get together to play music invited me to bring my banjo to join them at some of their regular jam sessions.  A couple of the women and I even jumped in the bouncy castle, after laughing about the fact that the only reason it was safe was because none of us had to pee (you women with children know what I'm talking about).

In a few days I'm heading to Virginia for another college reunion. I have plans to meet up with so many friends, and I know it's going to be a weekend of sensory overload - joy and dancing and drinking and laughing hysterically and hugging and talking and staying up until all hours. I am beyond excited.

But I am also excited about the upcoming summer, forging new friendships and strengthening old ones with the people around me.

#neverChesterCheetahImpersonator**

I've rarely weighed in on politics here - other people write about it far better than I could, plus arguing about politics on the internet strikes me as the ultimate exercise in futility.  But the fact that Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee is horrifying to me.  He has to be the most spectacularly unqualified presidential candidate ever - makes me long for the good ol' days of George W. fucking Bush.

The kids are scared as well.

Zeke asked me yesterday, "Mama, is Donald Trump going to be president after Obama?"

He has a particular affinity for Obama, who has been president for pretty much his entire life. They were both born in the same hospital in Hawaii, a fun fact that Zeke is super proud of and that he likes to share whenever it comes up.

"No," I responded.

"How do you know?"

"Because he's awful and enough people know that he's awful that they won't vote for him.  He's getting a lot of attention right now, but he's not going to win."

"Why is he awful?"

"He's a racist, for one thing. And a bully. And stupid."

"What's a racist?"

"It's someone who thinks that people should be treated differently because of their skin color, like for example thinking that people who have light skin are better than people with dark skin."

His eyes got really wide.  "Oh, no! We can't let that happen, not again!"

I'm assuming he was referring to slavery - I didn't want to burst his bubble by pointing out that racism remains alive and well.  But still, I was gratified by his reaction.

"If he did get elected president, would you still be my mom?"

"Of course. What do you mean by that?"

"Jerry [his friend from school] said that if Trump gets to be president, our moms won't be our moms anymore."

"No, that's not true. I'll always be your mom."

"I also heard that he doesn't like girls."

"Trump? No, he doesn't.  He treats girls - women - horribly.  He's a terrible person."

"If he got elected, would kids have to sit in the front seat of a car?"

Where are they getting this stuff??

"No, that's not something presidents do."

"If he became the president, would we leave and move somewhere else?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Because this is where we live. This is our home. I would hate it if he were president, but it wouldn't make me leave."

"Well, I hope he doesn't win."

"Me too, baby.  And I truly don't believe he will.  It would be a disaster if he did.  But he won't."

From my lips to God's ears.

________________________________________

**For a comprehensive list of the different monikers Jezebel has bestowed on Trump, click here.  there are some wonderful doozies.

The case for anonymity

I started writing this blog ten years ago as a way to keep family and friends apprised of my impending move to Hawaii.  It was originally conceived as a chronicle - a record of what was going on - because I was getting ready to be on the other side of the world (almost) from the people I loved, and it seemed like a good way to maintain some contact on a bigger scale than email or the telephone could provide. Remember, this was before the days of social media.

Over the years, the blog has taken more of an intensely personal tone.  I feel like I developed a voice as a writer, and became a better writer, by making the essays more thematic - even when they were expository in nature - and by tackling subjects that were harder and more emotionally based than simply "here's a funny story" or "here's something crazy or sad or awful that happened."  In the process, I've developed a (modest) readership and have had people tell me that they were touched or moved or amused by something I had written, or that I had given a voice to something that they were feeling, particularly when it dealt with depression or grief.  And I am so, so humbled and gratified that anything I have written is valued - the internet is a huge place, and there are millions of reading options to choose from.  Particularly for readers who have stumbled on the blog and don't know me personally, the notion that anyone other than my mother would be take time out of their day to read and be interested in my ramblings is amazing to me.

But many readers do know me personally, and therein lies the rub.  As the blog has become more personal, my relationship with it has changed.  It's not just a place to record my life - although I love being able to go back and remember and relive things that I would have otherwise lost.  It's become a place to bare my soul, or to vent - it's become a form of therapy.  I write to work out feelings, to force myself to articulate what's in my head and my heart, and in doing so, to deal with it more effectively. Often I'll be thinking about something, and the urge to write about it in order to clarify how I feel about it or how I need to handle it is overwhelming.  And when the essay is written, it's cathartic.  I feel better - lighter and unburdened.

Much of that personal stuff I obviously don't mind sharing. But sometimes what I want to write about implicates someone else in a way that doesn't need to be made public, even if I make an effort to be as opaque as possible (which itself makes the writing feel contrived and fussy to me).  Sometimes I need to be careful not to betray someone else's confidence. Sometimes I can't say something because I'm legally bound not to. Or sometimes I just want to write about shit that my friends and family don't need to know about.

And when I'm not able to write because I feel obligated to self-censor, I've lost an important outlet for my own self-expression.

That is the case lately. I've got stuff swirling around in my head, and I can't write about it here, and not writing about it is giving me agita. I feel stifled.

So I've set up a separate, completely anonymous blog.**  It has no reference to who I am or where I live or what I do - just a place to be completely open and honest and raw as I want to be.  I'll still blog here sometimes, but many times I won't.


**I could keep a written journal, but I don't write as well that way, plus what if I die in a car crash and someone finds it in my house?  No fucking way.

It's all about the benjamins, baby

Having visited and lived in Third World countries growing up - particularly India - I'm well cognizant of how extravagantly I hit the jackpot in being born who I am.  American, solidly middle- to upper-middle class, with parents who were loving and supportive, who provided me with an amazing education, and who lived a life that allowed me to travel and experience the world in a way most people never get to. I was always well-housed, well-clothed, well-fed.  I've never had to worry about poverty or homelessness or deprivation.  I was praised for being smart and pretty and athletic, and made to feel like I could do anything I set my mind to.  I had every advantage.

I try to impart to my children how fortunate they are, but it's hard. When we lived in Venezuela, our house was down the street from a barrio.  Everywhere I went in India I encountered wretched slums, extreme poverty, and children begging in the streets.  But my children are rarely, if ever, face-to-face with children (or anyone, really) whose socio-economic status varies from theirs in any significant way.  Their biggest source of frustration is when I set the parental controls on their Kindles to only allow them an hour of screen time a day.

So even though yesterday's events were a little jarring, they also provided a valuable lesson.

I bought Josie a new bike on Saturday, so we spent the weekend riding around.  Yesterday we decided to ride along the South Platte River trail, which starts at the REI in part of downtown Denver.  It's a wide, smoothly paved path, perfect for tooling around with kids, and perfect for Josie to get the hang of her new wheels.  The trail takes you past Elitch Gardens, where we marveled at the scary looking rollercoasters, and past Mile High Stadium, where we marveled at the statue of the horse and talked about how great it was that the Broncos won the Superbowl.

After that, the scenery gets a little rougher.  Factories.  Power plants.  Industrial areas.

Then suddenly, about 2 miles down, we rounded a curve and saw an amazing playground.  The kids asked if we could stop and play, so we did.

When we took our bikes up, I realized we were smack in the middle of the housing projects (in fact, the headquarters for the Denver Housing Authority was right next to the playground).  But whatever - the playground was nice and it seemed safe enough, so I sat at one of the picnic tables while the kids climbed and jumped and had fun.

After a couple of minutes, a group of four kids came over and started playing as well.  They ranged in age from 2 to about 9.  There was no adult with them. The toddler had a full diaper.  The older kids were eating burritos out of tupperware containers.  They were all very sweet, and fell in comfortably with my kids.

Then a little girl came over and started causing trouble.  One of the other kids said she was 7, but she looked older.  Josie will be 7 in a few months and this girl outweighed her by at least 10 pounds.  She was at least as tall as Zeke, and looked strong and muscle-y.  I looked at her and thought, "in 15 years, she will look exactly the same, only taller and with worse skin." Dirty, stringy blonde hair, wearing fuzzy pajama pants out in public, with a shitty, mean look on her face.

She went over to one of the girls who looked to be about 7 or 8, and tried to snatch her food from her.  The girl backed off, but the mean girl followed and started throwing wood chips (from the playground), and then started hitting and kicking.

I ran over to break up the fight.  Mean Girl wouldn't stop trying to attack, so I stepped between her and the other girl and said, "you need to stop that nasty behavior right now.  Leave these kids alone and get away from here!"  She gave me a look that reminded me of a snake about to strike - cold, emotionless, and menacing.  But she backed off.

I went to comfort the little girl who had been attacked - she was crying and upset.  I put my arm around her and was trying to soothe her when Mean Girl returned, this time threatening one of the other kids.  I approached her again and told her to leave, and she backed off.

After that, she circled around the edges of the playground area like a shark, looking for any opening, any opportunity.  So I kept myself between her and the kids, and would step towards her and send her away when she started to approach one of the children.  Zeke and Josie were simultaneously freaked and in protective mode - they would put their arms around the other kids and yell at the girl to leave them alone.  But at no point did they say, "Mama, we're scared, let's get out of here."  I was kind of proud.

The kids were mesmerized by Zeke's and Josie's bikes, so we let them ride around the playground.  Mean Girl was continuing to roam in the background, but for the most part she kept her distance.  When she didn't, I would direct the kids to get behind me and order her to leave them alone.

I thought about taking my kids and riding off, but I also didn't want to leave the other children there unprotected.  Apparently their mom was off doing laundry, so I thought I'd wait a little while in the hopes that she came back.

Things came to a head when Zeke was letting the toddler sit on the seat of his bike while he pushed it around, giving the baby a little ride.  He was being incredibly sweet.  But he got about 15 feet away from me, and when he did, Mean Girl walked over to him and started kicking at him.  Because he was holding up the bike with the baby on it, he was powerless to respond.

I lost my shit.  I broke into a full sprint and screamed at her, "GET AWAY FROM MY SON!!" She started to run and I chased her until she had run behind one of the buildings about 200 feet away.

She never came back.  The other kids went home when they saw their mom coming back from the laundry.  And we climbed on our bikes and rode back to REI to get some lemonade at the Starbucks there, dragging our privileged white asses back to the safe, easy world we live in.

Later in the car, Josie said, "that girl was really mean.  She shouldn't act like that."

"I know, honey, you're right.  But the truth is, she's probably just behaving the way people in her home behave.  I bet she sees a lot of fighting and anger.  Her life is hard."

We talked about how lucky they are.  I explained that even though I knew it wasn't easy for them to deal with the fact that Daddy and I had split up, they now have two nice homes to live in, lots of people who love them and take care of them, nice friends, and plenty of food and toys and clothes and new bikes and books.

"You both live very fortunate lives compared to lots of other kids.  So you should try to be understanding.  Even though what that girl did wasn't OK, we should try to remember that her life isn't nearly as nice and easy as yours is."

After a minute, Zeke asked, "what if you or Daddy died?  Where would we go?"

"If Daddy died, you would live with me.  If I died, you would live with Daddy."

"What if you died and Daddy was already dead?  Could I go live with Jackson [his friend from across the street]?"

"No, in that case, you would probably go live with Josh or Sam, or Mimi and Papa.  I don't really know - I should really talk to them about it - but you would be with family and they would take care of you."

Josie said, "living with Josh would be fun.  He has a pool!"

Zeke was quiet for a while, deep in thought.

Then he piped up, "if we live with Sam, could I bring my Xbox?"

It's the important things we need to worry about, right?

Hey Nineteen

Dear Emma,

Today is your nineteenth birthday.  It's been over a year and a half since you left us, though it feels like a million years.  We are through the Year of Firsts, so this birthday doesn't feel quite as agonizingly raw as last year's.  It's more of a settled-in sadness.  Grief that sits in your bones, emerging like the pain of arthritis on a gloomy, rainy day.  Making you say, "oh, right.  There it is again."

I was thinking about what I was doing when I turned 19. My parents were stationed in El Salvador at the time.  Sam was there with them while your dad finished high school at a boarding school in New England, because the high school in Salvador wasn't any good.

I was in my second year at Virginia.  I had just pledged a sorority, was trying to figure out whether I wanted to major in something, and if so, what.  Exploring romances and adventures, going on road trips, staying out too late, having crushes, acting like a stupid teenager.

Where would you be now?  What would you be doing?  At the Naval Academy?  Studying engineering?  Having silly teenage adventures of your own, figuring out who you are in the world?

Thinking about that is the hardest part for me.  Of course I miss you - I miss talking to you and hearing about what you're up to.  I miss seeing you at Thanksgiving and at the beach.  But I didn't live with you or see you every day, so your absence feels different to me than it must for your dad and your sisters and your friends.  As much as anything else, I mourn the loss of the life you didn't get to live - the lessons and the heartbreaks and the adventures and triumphs that you would have experienced.  I mourn that loss for my brother and my nieces and my parents as well - knowing how hard it must be for them to not be with you.

We all loved you so much.  We still love you.

I was looking through old pictures and found this series of shots that I took when I was up visiting you when you were about four.  You had a little guitar and some sunglasses that Melba gave you and you were rocking out, singing and playing.  All sass and sunshine.

It was a joy to know you.  I will never stop loving you or thinking about you.

All my love,

Wendy

Yes, and...

I read Tina Fey's book Bossypants a few years ago, and one of the things that really struck me about it was how she bases her philosophy on life in general on the rules of improv.  And if you've ever taken a class in improv, you know that the very first rule is that you always have to say, "yes, and..."  In other words, accept what your scene partner has presented, and add to it.  Saying "no" kills the scene.

So if your partner starts with, "hands in the air, I have a gun, this is a stick-up," you wouldn't say something like, "that's not a gun," you would "yes-and" it by saying something like, "don't shoot! And hey, that's my mother's gun, how did you get it?"

Applying this to life in general, the goal is to say yes to opportunities.  Take risks.  Have adventures. Seek out the new and the interesting.  Don't make decisions based on fear of bad things that might happen, but rather on hope for the good things that might happen.

I've applied this philosophy to my own life, with mixed results.  I yes-and-ed a marriage to someone entirely different from and not well suited to me, and we all know how that went.  I yes-and-ed a move to Hawaii, which I mostly hated.  But all of those choices led me to where I am now, in a place I love with a job I really enjoy and beautiful children whom I adore.  That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger, right?

A couple of weeks ago my friend (and coworker) Lisa and I went to New Orleans for a legal conference.  The conference itself I found to be of limited utility - the statute that I work with hasn't been reauthorized in so long that at this point, there really isn't anything new under the sun and I feel like I could have given most of the presentations in my sleep.

But man, did I fall in love with New Orleans.  The music, the voodoo, murder, vampires and ghosts, hauntings, disaster, disease, heat, food - it's a place that feels viscerally full of all that life can offer.  We "yes-and-ed" the shit out of that place.

Jazz trio in the French Quarter.  Amazing musicians were playing all over the place.

We said yes to having our tarot cards and palms read, even though that stuff kind of scares me.  The tarot reading was at once crazily specific at points and meaninglessly generic at others:

• The cards show that I have been through an extremely emotionally turbulent year and a half, which, duh.  I will continue to feel emotionally pushed and pulled all over the place for another 6 to 8 months, at which point things will settle down for me.  
• A young man between the ages of 22 and 35, tall, with dark hair and dark eyes, is in my life, seeking money or some kind of financial assistance or guidance from me.  I found this bewildering, until after we came back to Denver, I interviewed a bunch of candidates for a position on my team.  The one I want to hire is a young man of 23, tall, with dark hair and dark eyes.  Does that fit?
• In a few months, I will meet an older woman (described by the tarot reader as "over 35" - pffft) who will become important to me, and I will remain close to her for the rest of my life.  Ok. We'll see where this one goes.
• I will continue to have turbulent dreams and difficulty sleeping.  No surprise there.
• The answer to my secret question is "yes."

We said yes to having our palms read.  My palm shows that I am intelligent and stubborn, have no tolerance for being lied to or feeling like someone is bullshitting me, that I am very much rooted in "this world" - I don't have my head in the clouds.  My palm shows 2 healthy pregnancies (yep), a long lifeline (she said I'd live to be 102, which is the age my great-grandfather lived to), and no sign of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or strokes.  Cool.  She also said my palm shows a strong, 50-60 year marriage or love relationship.  If I were to have a 60 year marriage, I'd pretty much need to get married 6 years ago, but I'll take a prediction of a long, strong love that fits within the timeline I've got left.

We said yes to a ghost and vampire tour.  I now want to go back to New Orleans and stay in the Andrew Jackson Hotel in the French Quarter (I joked that it would be changing its name to the Harriet Tubman Hotel - that got a few chuckles), so that I can experience a hotel haunted by the ghosts of mischievous little boys who run around the halls making noise and use guests' cameras to take photos of them while they're sleeping.  

We also saw the LaLaurie Mansion, which has a particularly gruesome, terrifying past. It was owned by a socialite couple who used part of the house to torture and conduct medical experiments on slaves.  The house continues to be haunted by the screams and apparitions of the tortured slaves.  Our tour guide is so creeped out by the house that she won't stand next to it - we viewed it from across the street.  The following evening, Lisa and I were wandering around the French Quarter when all of a sudden we realized where we were - walking right by the LaLaurie house under the balconies.  It freaked us out.  We apologized to the ghosts and scurried away.

Ursuline Street.  Home to three residences, all in a row, where over the course of a century women were murdered and dismembered by their husbands or lovers.

After wandering around, we said yes to foot massages at a random reflexology place we passed on the street.  Why not, right?  Who knows if the people had any actual training in reflexology, but it felt great.

Hurricanes and planter's punch was consumed.  Lisa won a bunch of money playing blackjack at a casino.  

Late that night, my friend sent me a text, asking about the trip.  I told him that I needed to come back to New Orleans, not on business, and walk through one of the the above-ground cemeteries and listen to music and learn about voodoo and eat spicy food and just generally cavort.  He responded, "yes, we do."

Get with the gravy, Davy, everybody eats when they come to my house

Since getting home from work yesterday, and with slight detours to make the kids dinner, put them to bed, and then get them up and off to school this morning, I have spent approximately eleventy billion hours organizing and cleaning and putting things away in the new kitchen, and also reassembling the dining room.  And sweeping and vacuuming and dusting and sweeping some more and vacuuming again and wiping away dust and dust and more dust.

Good lord, the dust.  That fine, silky grey construction dust that feels like it regenerates itself the minute you pass a cloth over a surface.

A part of me wouldn't have been at all surprised if Dorothea Lange had shown up with her camera to capture it all for posterity.

But it's mostly put together.  I'm still thinking about where I might move this thing or that category of stuff to make everything more functional, but for the most part, it's done.

And even though living through the construction was kind of a drag, I have absolutely no complaints about my contractor or the guys who did the installation.  Every morning they showed up at 8 and worked all day and every evening I came home from work and progress had been made.  They said it would take three weeks, and it took three weeks. It cost what they quoted me.  They were meticulous about making sure everything was the way I wanted it and they cleaned up their messes and they were polite and friendly.

I love it so much.  The old kitchen was dingy and felt dark and cramped and cluttered and ugly.  The new kitchen is so bright and spacious and functional.

Out with the old and fug:

Northwest corner/north wall

West wall

Southwest corner

South wall

East wall

In with the new and beautiful:

Northwest corner/north wall

West wall

Southwest corner/south wall

Southeast corner/ East wall

North wall, view into the living room

View of the breakfast bar from the living room (I'm getting bar stools this weekend)

Those of you who spent time in my house in Atlanta will recognize the orange on the walls.  The color is called Colorado Dawn - I couldn't resist using it again.

The new space makes me want to read through cookbooks and come up with interesting menus and plan parties. I have visions of bustling around, drinking wine and chatting with friends while I make saffron chicken & rice or a Passover brisket or cherry-apple pie.  Or of making pancakes for the kids' breakfast while dancing around listening to music.

So when's everyone coming to dinner?

I see London, I see France...

Here's something I never thought I would do:  today I posted, on a Facebook page, mirror selfies of myself in my underwear.

The page is a private fitness motivation and accountability group that I've been running for a few years, originally about 10 members strong, but now comprised of about 40 people - 39 women and 1 man (the husband of one of my good friends from high school in India). It grew out of my Beachbody coaching business, which I tried to build as a business until two things happened:

1) I finally accepted the fact that I fucking hate network marketing.  Not overall as a concept, but I hate it for myself.  I never enjoyed the business building part of it at all. God knows I wish I did - I know a number of people who are great at it and are now making in the high six-figures (or more) after a few years of focusing on building a coaching business.  But I suck at it and never enjoyed it and it never felt like me.

2) The shitty events of the last couple of years sucked any motivation to build that kind of business right out of me, even assuming I could have been any good at it.  

But I always liked and was good at the actual coaching part - the part where I get to help people get in shape.  That part of it is really fun and rewarding.  

So I put together a private online group for people who were trying to lose weight and get fit, and who wanted some support from others who were in the same boat.  My rules are pretty simple - nobody has to buy anything from me (though they can if they want to), no negativity, just kindness and support.  A totally safe space where we can all cheer each other on, celebrate each others' successes, vent when we need to, ask questions, seek motivation, and basically treat each other the way human beings should treat each other.  

Much of it is about fitness, posting about our daily workouts, lamenting the number of Reese's cups and Cadbury creme eggs inhaled over easter, wondering why it's so hard to increase weight beyond a certain point when doing biceps curls, celebrating the fact that someone can do push-ups on their toes rather than their knees.  If you ask for help, you get it.

And as we all interact on a daily basis and are truly good friends, much of it is about life.  A number of us have been dealing with the untimely deaths of friends and family.  Others are faced with the "sandwich generation" task of raising children while also caring for ailing parents.  There are difficult relationships with parents and siblings (which make me realize, for the billionth time, that I hit the fucking jackpot when I was born into my family).  We talk about coming to terms with aging, both for ourselves and for our significant others, and the struggles with getting some of our loved ones to get off their asses and lose some weight.

It's deep, personal stuff, and yet we don't hesitate to bare our souls and be vulnerable, and in return, we are rewarded with unwavering acceptance and support.  Causing Jessica to share this post today:

Let's all move forward on this glorious #MotivationMonday 🙌 Tag a Smart Girl sitting next to you! (📝: @rupikaur_ )

A photo posted by Amy Poehler's Smart Girls (@amypoehlersmartgirls) on Apr 4, 2016 at 11:57am PDT

Other discussions are far more prosaic, like the frustrations associated with assembling IKEA furniture:  

F&$*%ng IKEA where's a f&$*%ng Allen wrench when you need one gaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhggggg.

Prompting this response:

And the instructions inexplicably require two fat men with no pants.  

And of course, because my close friends and I talk about everything and have no filter, nothing is off limits.  We discuss, in great detail, boobs (both the pregnancy and non-pregnancy variety), menstruation (including the term "shark week" to describe it, which is beyond awesome), the relative merits of pole dancing, sex and relationships, and poop.

Have you ever taken such a huge poop that you were dying to show it to someone?

This question has consumed us today for HOURS.  In the process, I have learned the following:

• one time a guy who Nicole had just met showed her a picture of his poop, which blows my mind;
• there is a Dutch word for a particular type of cinnamon bun that literally translates as "Hague Turd";
• Bas went to school with a guy who did "figure pooping" as opposed to "figure skating," i.e., he made shapes...;
• a girl who lived on Karen's hall during her first year at UVA got so drunk one night that she took an epic shit in the middle of the hallway;
• the term "poop shy" is a thing; and
• Koreans are somewhat obsessed with analyzing their poop, and there's even a poop-themed cafe in South Korea where they serve lattes in toilet mugs.

Plus, we're all now addicted to Bitmoji, so of course I couldn't resist posting this:

We're a close and uninhibited group, is what I'm saying. 

So I posted pictures of myself in my underwear.  My 25 year college reunion is in 10 weeks, and while I'm generally happy with how I look, I've put on a few pounds of winter fluff that I'd like to get rid of before I see all of my old classmates (and hookups) again, so I'm starting a 10 week program that will get me there.  And there had been an earlier discussion among the group about the benefits of tracking your fitness progress and staying motivated by taking before and after pictures.  I thought it would help me stay focused, and putting on a bikini when I woke up this morning seemed like an unnecessary pain in the ass, so I just took the pictures in my undies because that's what I was wearing.

Mind you, fully half of the people in the group are people I have never met in real life (including my classmate's husband).  But I posted the pictures without any hesitation or self-consciousness.  I knew that sharing the pictures would add a level of accountability and incentive to my efforts over the next 10 weeks, and that I would receive no judgment, only support.  It was a no-brainer.

I mean, once you've talked about that feeling of intense lightness that comes after an enormous poop, there are really no more barriers to intimacy.

Or maybe we're all just crazy.

Me and my head high, and my tears dry, get on without my guy

"Maybe you don't really want to be with someone."

I was talking to a friend of mine about my recent dating foibles, and this was her observation.

I was both surprised and not at all surprised.

The past couple of months have felt jarring and left me with a sense of disjointedness.  I had a birthday I wasn't thrilled about (although I'm as healthy as I've ever been and, as ever, it's better than the alternative), and then a week later Lori died, and then construction started on the kitchen, and now the kids have been gone for a week on spring break.

I feel emotionally pushed and pulled.  The past six years (and particularly the last two) have involved so much trauma, death, and heartache - it's hard to deal with it all while at the same time being a present and productive mother, daughter, sister, friend, and functioning member of society.  I keep thinking I'm old and washed up and nearing the end of my shelf life.  I don't know what I want.

She was so sweet and bubbly.  And I miss those South Park pajama bottoms.

I keep thinking about Emma and bursting into tears.  When I was in New Hampshire for Lori's funeral, someone gave me a picture of two-year-old Emma sitting on my lap on the porch of our beach house at the Outer Banks.  We are deep in conversation and she is telling me something interesting and I'm gazing at her like I can't stand how gorgeous or cute she is.  I love this picture, but it fills me with sadness.

And my physical surroundings do nothing to provide a sense of calm or stability.  The downstairs of my house is virtually uninhabitable.  The kitchen is almost done, but it'll be another four days or so before I can start putting things in cupboards and drawers, and before I can actually use it.  So everything is dusty and there are still boxes and appliances and plastic sheeting everywhere.  I have no idea where anything is.  The only place I can really hang out is in my room, which after a while gets depressing.

So I have almost compulsively kept myself busy and out of the house.

It's been relatively easy to keep my dance card full.  I thought, given that most of my relationships have made me miserable, why not just date for the sake of dating?  Keep it casual.  Be noncommittal. Have fun. And outside of one dinner with a guy who I found repulsive on every level, it hasn't been unpleasant.  They're all very nice and enthusiastic.  We have dinner and drinks and tell our stories.

But every time, I feel them start to get too interested and attached and anxious, and I reflexively pull away. This one has mannerisms that annoy me.  That one isn't dynamic enough.  The other isn't smart enough, though smart enough for what, I don't know.  It's my own intellectual snobbery at play.

At first it was fun to be so busy all the time.  But now I'm bored and I just want them to leave me alone.

I fucking hate that I do this.  Even just reading over what I've just written, it sounds obnoxious and awful.  My friend remarked that I should give one of them a chance.  But I don't want to.  When it comes to men, it turns out that casual and noncommittal is not in my DNA. As much as I crave both the emotional and physical connections, as much as I so enjoy the experience of hanging out with someone I respect and am attracted to, I can't fake it or force it when it's not there.  I wish I could just love the one I'm with.

But the truth is, I'd rather be alone.  I'd rather read and listen to Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album.  I'd rather get caught up on movies I've been meaning to see.  It feels less lonely than being out with someone I don't really want to be with.

This is a strange discovery to make at this point in my life.  But there you have it.

Rescue me

After all of the sadness and gloom, let's talk about something happy, shall we?

My house is a shit show.

Two Czech guys named Mirko and Andrej are in my kitchen making lots of banging noises.  Neither of them is wild and crazy; rather, they are polite and workmanlike and efficient.  There's nothing worse about construction than coming home and having everything look the same day after day, without any sign of progress - that's what happened with my Atlanta kitchen.  But every day, I come home and it's different.

The night before. Everything is cleared out.

The cabinets get delivered.  They sit in the front parlor.

Everything that was in the kitchen is now in the dining room. I'm living out of a mini-fridge and cooking via toaster, microwave, and electric skillet.  Which means I eat out a lot, because if I cook at home I'm washing dishes in the tiny sink in the bathroom.

Day 1. Demo.

Day 3.  Running the gas line to the other side of the room.

Day 5. Assembling the cabinets.

Day 7. Prepping the walls to hang the cabinets.

So everything is proceeding apace. There's no reason to assume that it won't be completed on time, in another two weeks.   

But in the meantime, I'm living in what feels like squalor.  The one room downstairs that was relatively habitable was the living room, but once the guys used the front parlor to assemble the cabinets, all the furniture in there was moved to the living room, so it's totally crazy now.  I am not a particularly neat person (I've gotten much better as I've gotten older, but it just doesn't come naturally to me the way it does to some people), but even I have my limits, and I passed them a week ago. T

To keep myself from going completely insane, I have kept as busy as possible.  Want to grab a drink? Dinner? Movie? Sure.  Want to come over and watch basketball? Most definitely. Will you come babysit? Yep. 

 Seriously, I'll fold your laundry or vacuum your car or walk your dog. Anything to be out of the house.

The final straw

So many cards were stacked against her.

Depression ran in her family, and it affected her.  While she was bubbly and funny and interesting on her best days, other days were a struggle.

I have been lucky in my battle against depression.  It took me a long time to understand the symptoms and to know how to deal with them, but I've gotten there.  Between that, regular exercise, and medication, it's managed. Now when I'm sad, it's because I have something to be sad about. But I don't get that amorphous, free-floating sense of anxiety for which I am unable to pin-point a cause.  I don't remember the last time I had that feeling of a heavy, cold metal ball lodged in my chest when it wasn't tied to an actual event.

She wasn't so fortunate.

And then tragedy struck.  First her daughter was in a terrible accident that almost killed her. And she - the mother - suffered tremendously.  She was traumatized and haunted by the accident, which she witnessed.  Day to day life was difficult.

And then, a few years later, at the point when she and the rest of her family finally felt like they could put the accident behind them - when they could finally relax and exhale and feel like they weren't constantly in the clutches of fear and anxiety of something bad happening - tragedy struck again.  Her daughter - the same daughter who had been in the awful accident - was killed in a car crash.

She never recovered.  She was incapacitated by grief, and her physical health suffered as well.

As an added twist, she was abandoned by her own mother.

Her father lived with his new family 6 hours away, and they were rarely in contact.  And her mother, also depressed but one whose disease manifested itself in an incomprehensible cruelty, turned on her.  When her mother wasn't ignoring her, she was accusing her of causing the daughter's accident and then her death.  And the accusations weren't oblique or simply implied - they were expressed and deliberate.

"It's your fault."  "She's dead because of you." "You must have done something to the car she was driving."

These are actual words her mother said.

I can't imagine anything more callous, hateful, or cold-blooded. To be treated that way by one of my parents would wreck me.

Rightfully so, her husband barred her mother from their house and their family.

In the end, the weight of all of the tragedy, trauma, and parental neglect crushed her.  In the end, the thing she needed as much as anything else - the thing that could have helped her deal with everything - was the love and support of her parents. And when she couldn't get it, it sealed her fate.

In the weeks after her funeral, her mother reached out to her husband.

"Can you forgive me?"

I guess that the feelings that would be familiar to most decent human beings started to nag at her. She felt guilty.  As well she should have.

But it was too late.  The answer was "no."

Adventures in Online Dating: the student becomes the teacher edition

I think my daughter is better at this shit than I am.

The other night I was in the bathroom with her while she took a shower.  She and I were talking as I handed her shampoo and conditioner, and she was talking about Adam, the kid in her class with whom she has an off and on relationship.  Apparently, after Nick was her boyfriend for a little while, Adam became her boyfriend again.

"Well, he was my boyfriend, but then he broke up with me."

"He broke up with you?  What do you mean?"

"I mean he's not my boyfriend anymore," she huffed, exasperated that I wasn't keeping up.

"Why did he break up with you?  How do 6-year-olds break up?"

"He broke up with me because he said I was disgusting," she explained.

Girl, wut??

"What are you talking about?  Why would he say something like that??" I demanded.

"He said I was disgusting because I suck on my fingers," she responded.  "But I can't help it! I suck on my fingers because I need to chew on something.  I need a chew toy.  Will you get me a chew toy?  Something I can wear around my neck or something?"

"Sure, I'll get you one of those rubber stretchy coils that you can wear as a bracelet or something. And you're not disgusting. I can't believe he would say that to you."

She shrugged, unbothered by it.

I clearly need to learn how to adopt this kind of DGAF attitude.  If someone I liked told me they thought I was disgusting, I would be devastated.  Fortunately, the men I go out with are far more tactful than your average 6-year-old, so it's unlikely to happen to me, but still.  I wish I were that cool.

And she is learning to juggle better than I do.

In addition to handling the scheduling issues that come with trying to date a few different people while also having 50% custody of the kids, I've never been one to date a bunch of guys at a time.  It's nice to have full dance card, but my nature is to fall for and want to be with one at a time.  I'm not going to have the red hots for more than one person at a time.  At heart, I'm a romantic and I believe in being a one-man-woman.

But Josie is unburdened by such concerns.

Turns out, she and Adam are back together.  He told her that he likes her again.  During center time when they're working on iPads, they draw love hearts for each other.

"Yeah, Mama, so Adam is my boyfriend, and Trina is Mark's boyfriend. And Trina kind of likes Adam, but I told her she can't be his girlfriend because I am.  But Carl wants me to be his girlfriend too."

"But you're not his girlfriend because you're Adam's girlfriend, right?" I need to keep it all straight.

"Weelllll, I kind of like both of them.  I kind of want to have both of them as my boyfriend."

This girl is my role model in so many ways.

Reality bites

The process feels so familiar that it's almost seamless, like stepping back into a room that I only just left a few minutes before.  I walk into the house and it's filled with the same people who were there last time.  They all know me and they hug me tight and whisper, "I'm so sorry."  I hug them back and we say some words about how awful it is, and maybe crack lame jokes about how "we've got to stop meeting like this."

It's surreal.

There's food and beer, and we sit around and tell stories, some of them relevant to the situation, others more random and organic, as if we all just got together on a Wednesday night to hang out. Politics.  Gossip.  What the kids are up to.

But then it's the day of the funeral, and as the time grows closer and we're dressed and heading to the funeral home, that's when the walls really start to close in.  I look over at my brother and see that the strength that he's been projecting up to now is starting to crack.  He's such a rock, but he's hurting.

In the room where the service is, there's a slideshow of pictures, playing in a loop.  Pictures of Lori from all different points of her life, looking vibrant and happy, her bright blue eyes shining.  It's so fucking sad.

But what's even more heartbreaking are the pictures of her and Emma.  Emma as a baby, as a toddler, as a teenager.  Seeing them together is a punch in the gut.

Josh has kept it together so well, but when it comes time to eulogize his wife, whom he loved with his whole heart, that's when the pain he feels becomes so obvious.  That's when everything shifts from surreal to utterly fucking real.  He cries and tries to speak, but has to stop to compose himself, until finally his older daughter joins him at the podium and reads the words that he can't bring himself to read on his own.  It's an extraordinarily moving moment, actually.

He lost his daughter and then his wife in the span of a year and a half.  His daughters lost their sister and then their mother in the span of a year and a half.  Plus a few weeks ago, one of their dogs died when she was hit by a train.

It's beyond tragic.  If someone were writing a fictional story with these facts, an editor would be all, "ehhh, it's too much. Too melodramatic.  Not believable."

Later, back at the house, everyone gathers again for beer and deli and coffee cake and condolences. And eventually, the youngest daughter, my niece who is Zeke's age - who has been remarkably composed in a way that's hard to fathom - finally falls apart.  And I find myself sitting in the bathroom with her on my lap as she sobs uncontrollably on my shoulder.

I hold her as she cries and cries.  I can't say anything except, "go ahead and cry as much and as long as you need to, honey.  We can sit here as long as you need to."  I rub her back and stroke her head and hug her to me.

"I want my mom," she wails.  "I want my sister back, I want my mom back, I want my dog back."

I bury my face in her hair and start to cry as well.  The depth of her loss and her grief is overwhelming.  How is an 8-year-old child supposed to deal with something like this?  How is her sister, a 13-year-old child, supposed to deal with something like this?

What I do know is that if anyone can guide them through, it's my brother Joshua.  His strength, his decency, his integrity, his commitment to doing right by his girls - all of that will be their saving grace.  He will lead them and protect them.  And his family and his friends and his community have his back - being here and seeing the extent of the support he has, the amount of love and respect he has among his friends and family, is awe-inspiring.  He's such an amazing guy, and everybody sees it and loves him for it.  It makes me proud to be his sister.

But damn, the road ahead will be long and bumpy.

I am weary, let me rest

Bad luck, I guess. It floats around. It's got to land on somebody. It was my turn, that's all. I was in the path of the tornado. I just didn't expect the storm would last as long as it has.

- Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

At this point, all that keeps running through my head is a question.  "When is it enough? At what point does the universe recognize that one person has shouldered enough of his share of tragedy, trauma, heartbreak, loss?  How much does one person get saddled with before the fates decide, 'yep, we've tormented him enough, let's move on?'"

That's all I can think of today, ever since I learned that my sister-in-law Lori - my brother Josh's wife, Emma's mother - went to sleep last night and never woke up again.

She had been battling demons for a long time.  Emma's accident, and then her death, devastated Lori beyond imagining.  But I spoke to her a few days ago and she sounded good.  There was a lightness and clarity to her voice that I hadn't heard in a long time.

But when I asked Josh what happened, he said that she died of a broken heart.  A part of her could never conceive of continuing to live in a world without Emma in it.  And now she doesn't have to. 

I can't make any sense of it. It is beyond the capacity of my brain to accept or justify, under any concept of the cosmic forces of fairness or justice or decency that might exist.

But of course, the problem is, there are no cosmic forces of fairness or justice or decency.  It's all bullshit.  There is no god, no inherent benevolence or goodness at work. It's all random and arbitrary and unfair, whether for good or for ill.  Horrible things happen to good people, and great things happen to horrible people, and that's just the way it is.  So fucking get over it.  Be happy or don't.  Hug your kids closer today or don't.  It doesn't make a goddamned bit of difference.

Because otherwise, what could possibly explain or justify my brother Josh being the one to suffer this kind of tragedy, again? After everything he's already been through? How can my nieces lose their beloved sister and then their mother, in the span of less than two years?

When Emma died, the power of the shock, in addition to the power of the grief, was overwhelming. It was unfathomable.  How could this happen to her, after everything that had already happened?  I felt like my heart was bursting with every imaginable facet of grief, but also with every imaginable facet of love as well - love from family, love from friends, love sent from well-wishers from across the globe.

And now?  Now I am numb. I am furious. I cast a narrowed, jaundiced eye upon the world and think, "et tu?" at everything I see or encounter.  

There are little things that keep popping into my head.

Like the particular tone in my father's voice that is now instantly recognizable as Barry's Vocal Inflection for Announcing Death and Destruction.  "Wendy, Emma was hit by a car..."  "Wendy, Emma was killed in a car accident..."

Today I answered the phone just as the kids and I were heading into the car wash.  "Wendy, Lori died last night..."

I love my father, but I am weary of that endless loop of his voice that I hear in my head, announcing the various tragedies that befall my brother.

Then there's the fact that this kind of horrible thing always seems to happen when my mom and dad are apart.  When my grandma Ruth died, my father was white-water rafting in Idaho and was totally incommunicado - he didn't even know about it until days later.  When Leo died, my dad was in Denver.

When Emma died, my mother was in Brazil on business.  When she found out from the embassy duty officer that my father was trying to reach her because of a death in the family, she thought to herself, "it must be one of the kids or grandkids, because the old people are all dead." She spent the long flight home crying on the shoulder of her coworker.

And this morning, my mother had just arrived in South Africa on another business trip.  She got the news, talked to my dad and then to me on the phone, and got on another plane to come back.

What do these patterns mean?  Nothing, undoubtedly.  None of it means anything.

Once again, we will head to New Hampshire and circle the family wagons. We will try to provide each other with comfort, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to fathom the unfathomable.

We've gotten depressingly good at it.

#TBT: I get a peaceful easy feeling, and I know you won't let me down

My dad was always big on photographing the family - my parents have dozens of photo albums at their house, chronicling their (and our) entire lives, from the time they themselves were children.  One of the Thanksgiving traditions that my brothers and I have is to go through old albums and remember all of the wonderful and interesting experiences we were fortunate enough to have growing up.

And as the first-born, I had a dedicated baby album, complete with the pink and blue cover that said "Baby."  

But the album is old and and the pictures are getting brittle and faded.  So a few years ago, as a gift to my parents, I took the album, scanned all the pictures, and created a photo book that exactly duplicated the pictures and the layout of the original. 

This picture above is from that album.  That's me, probably around 6 months old, give or take. We're at Kyrenia Harbor in Cyprus, where I was born (Cyprus, I mean - I wasn't born in Kyrenia Harbor). The shirtless dude in the picture was named Costakis. He worked at the harbor, maybe as a fisherman or something. I don't know how my parents knew him - maybe my nanny Christina (the one who had me baptized in the Greek Orthodox church - it never hurts to cover your bases) knew him. And what am I doing there with him? Is he babysitting me?

In any event, this is one of my favorite pictures.  There's a lovely peacefulness about it - the scene feels carefree and full of joy.  Costakis seems to be such a gentle, sweet guy with a way with babies. I feel comfortable with him. It's a beautiful sunny day by the water. Life is good.

Plus I love the relaxed (and very dated) casualness towards baby safety - that rickety baby seat perched on a tiny, rickety table -- near water, no less! -- would not fly in the helicopter parenting world we live in, with hyper-emphasis on how car seats must be constructed and how and where they may sit (not on a tiny table, that's for damned sure).  And there's a full ashtray on the table next to me. If this were a recent picture posted on Facebook or similar, the hysterical mamas with nothing to do but lecture other people on their shortcomings would be commenting furiously about how my parents or caregivers should be reported to CPS because I'm clearly in danger.  

But I'm obviously fine. I'm happy. I am surrounded by people who love and care for me. I'm safe.

I have no idea where Costakis is now. But I would love to be able to send him this photo and let him know how much I love it.

Peanuts! Popcorn! Get your red hots here!

We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!

- Ronnie Cammareri, Moonstruck

We are doing the "ask a bunch of questions" thing, but not in a way that feels forced or awkward. More like fun questions that I like asking because it's way more interesting than, "so, do you have any brothers and sisters? where do they live?"

"Have you ever been arrested?"  "What kind of recurring anxiety dreams to you have?"  "If you wanted to run for public office, are there any incriminating photos or videos that would stand in your way?"  "How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

I love questions like that.  We chat in that vein for a while.

Then he asks, "so what are you looking for?"

Ah.

What do I want?  Which should really be, who do I want?  Who should I want?

It's the question that keeps me in a perpetual war with myself.

Because sometimes I wonder if the who is less important to me than the what.

The what being that particular feeling that is so rare.  The chemistry. The butterflies, the tingles, the charge in the air, the excitement, the sense that when you're together, you're in on a secret that no one else is in on. What my eloquent friend Lisa refers to as the "red hots."  It doesn't happen with many people, but when it does, oof.

And so I find that I will endure quite a lot for the what.  Sometimes the who attached to the what - those elusive red hots - is, on an objective level, not the who you might have put yourself with, all things being equal.  The who might be a pain in the ass, or be persnickety in ways that annoy you, or be self-absorbed and infuriating.  Most of the time, it might feel like he's utterly wrong for you.

Except when it doesn't.  And when it doesn't, the feeling is intoxicating, and so hard to let go of.  He might make you miserable, but you can't get him out of your head.

Is it worth it?  Is the euphoria worth the pain?  At some point, do you need to give up the yearning for the red hots in order to achieve some emotional stability?

"What are you looking for?" he asks again.

I put on my best Mona Lisa smile and shrug.

"Let's just see what happens."

But deep down, I know.  I can't live without the red hots.  And it's always been my downfall.

Adventures in Online Dating: Good artists copy, great artists steal?

After a short period of wallowing, I have jumped back into the world of online dating.  I have a number of single friends who do it but hate it, but I actually kind of love it.  It's certainly flattering.  I get a lot of messages - most women on those sites do, way more than men generally get.  And while the majority of them are from men I'm not going to go out with, a decent number are from guys who have some potential.  So I've decided that my approach will be to play the numbers game - if a guy asks me to meet him for a drink and he seems smart, funny, nice, attractive enough and age appropriate, I'll say yes.

And really, why not?  My attitude is, most of them will only be first dates, but maybe a few will lead to second dates, and who knows?  I keep my expectations low.  At worst, I'll spend an hour having a drink and chatting with a nice enough guy who I never have to see again, and at best, I'll meet someone really cool.  There's really no downside.

The result is that my dance card is filling up to the point that I'm having to schedule dates two and three weeks out.  It's fun.

And I won't lie - my ego enjoys the feeling of being complimented and pursued.

Plus, even the ones I don't go out with provide some entertainment.  There are messages from those I call the Young Guns - guys who are a solid 15 years (or more) younger than my target market, but whose brashness and enthusiasm I find sort of charming.  Who knew that 25 year old guys would be interested in a 45-year-old divorced mother of two?  I even got a message from a guy who is 19.  If I had been remotely interested in going out with him, we couldn't have gone to a bar.

Then there's the international crew.  I have been written to by men from Israel, Canada, England, Ireland, France, and a couple of other places.  And that's not counting the ones scattered around the United States, even though I have no interest in dating someone outside of Denver (even the suburbs would feel like a long-distance relationship to me).

Another category I haven't come up with a name for, but it's characterized by guys whose profile pictures include them shirtless, or a bathroom mirror selfie, or posing in front of their car or motorcycle (or even a picture of just the car).  Dude, I don't need to see your nipples before I meet you.  And I'm not impressed that you drive a Beamer.  Move along.

But tonight I hit upon something that really blew me away.

One of the things about how my brain works is that I have crazy recall for certain things that I read and hear - conversations, dialogue, movie quotes, text message exchanges, that sort of thing.  My brother Sam has similar abilities - he and I can hear something that reminds us of a line, and one of us will say it, and the other one will immediately get it while everyone else is wondering what the hell we're blathering on about.  What sometimes triggers it for me is distinctive or unique uses of language - a way of expressing something that strikes me as interesting, a particularly descriptive or powerful statement, a statement that seems incongruous or inconsistent with what I know about the speaker.

Anyway.  Tonight I was dicking around on my computer while the kids were playing, and I got an email that someone was interested, so I went online and checked his profile out.  And when I read it, I  immediately had a sense of deja vu - there were two sentences in there that I knew I had seen before.  So I looked back at another guy's profile that I had read about a week and a half ago, and he had used the exact same sentences.  Verbatim.  Word for word.  (And it's a distinctive couple of sentences - absolutely no way was it just a coincidence.)

That made me curious.  So I took the sentences and googled them.  My head exploded when the search resulted in at least 40 hits, all linking to dating profiles on a number of different sites, all by men using the exact same language.

I dug a little more, and that led me to an article advising men on how to write a compelling online dating profile.  The article included a number of sample profiles and talked about what was good or bad about them and what kind of message and attitude they conveyed.  And one of the sample profiles, which was at least 4 paragraphs long, was one that I had read in the last day or so - the guy had literally cut-and-pasted the entire thing into his profile, without changing a word.  There were other samples in the article that I hadn't seen duplicated in their entirety in any one guy's profile, but which had certain elements or phrases that I recognized from different profiles I had read.  I checked back at the profile of a guy I had actually gone out with once, and it was an amalgamation of different sentences and paragraphs taken from the different samples in the article.  There was not a single thing in his profile that was original.

I find the whole thing fascinating, almost like a peek into the male psyche.  I get that many people are not natural writers, and that it's hard to write about yourself.  I get doing some research on some of the dos and don'ts.  But that level of rank plagiarism seems crazy to me, if for no other reason than it's so easily exposed.

In any event, I'm not sure what to do with this discovery, but it's very amusing nonetheless.

We're boss at denial but best at forget

Yesterday I got a text message from the kids' dad, telling me that they had been on their way to the mountains to ski, but that in the bad weather bearing down on Colorado right now, the car they were in (a friend's truck) lost traction and slid off the road into a big pile of snow.  He wanted to let me know that it had happened, but also to let me know that everyone was fine.  Apparently Zeke's remark was, "that was scary but kinda fun."

I feel like I should have been more freaked out.  But the truth is, I wasn't remotely fazed or worried by the news.  Partly because I trust their dad to keep them safe, and I know he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize their safety - and hell, I've had my car slide around on those snowy mountain roads.  It happens.  But more fundamentally, because I am convinced that the forces of the Universe - forces that I don't know that I actually believe in, mind you - would not allow something as awful as the death of another grandchild to happen to my family again. That after losing Emma, it can't happen to us again.  It can't happen to my parents, to me, to my brothers, to any of us. It simply cannot happen.

It is the worst kind of magical thinking.  There is no logic to it whatsoever, especially because I am deeply, deeply ambivalent about the existence of a god or higher power or anything like that.  Plus, that kind of faith in some level of universal fairness didn't apply to Emma in any event, given that she was killed in a car crash four years after almost being killed in a car crash.  So I already know that it's bullshit.  The Universe doesn't give a fuck about fairness or justice.  My own experience makes my magical thinking more absurd than it already is, and I know it.

But nonetheless, every time I have been in the slightest bit of perceived danger, whether from icy roads, wicked turbulence, whatever, I'll have a moment of fear and then think, "no, it can't happen.  Everything will be fine."  "This plane won't crash if the children and I are on it.  Because it can't happen to my family."

Not that it shouldn't, or that it would be sad or unfair.  It can't.  It's an impossibility.

This insanity doesn't actually affect my behavior, which is the important thing.  I still put my kids in booster seats and make them buckle their seatbelts.  I drive carefully.  I make them wear helmets when they ski. I protect them as much as I should.

But I don't worry as much because in my mind, nothing bad can ever happen to them.  Which I guess isn't so terrible.  Whatever gets you through the night.