Tag: postaday2011

Dirty Dishes

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Friday was a long day. Biked to work, worked non-stop, then stopped at my women’s spirituality group, went back uptown for a late work dinner with colleagues.

I was so happy to walk through the front door around 10. Kissed the darlings. Took off my coat. Headed to the kitchen to fix myself some herbal tea.

Disaster. Total freakin’ disaster. The plate that 15 hours earlier I’d served warm cinnamon rolls on was crusted over and piled high with the detritus from dinner — empty pasta box, dirty plates, cups, milk carton. You get the idea.

I was totally exhausted. While Parkinson’s Disease has made my husband less competent at cleaning up after himself and the family, my kids have no good excuse. I told my darlings to turn off the TV and help me. They did (unhappily) but we chatted (happily) as we unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher.

I told them just because women do the majority of the world’s housekeeping, it doesn’t mean we like it. I don’t. I like herbal tea. I like reading the paper. I like writing in my journal.

Today I continued the chat. “Look, Dad’s less able and I’m less willing. We’re working very hard for the family. You’ve got to work hard too. You’ve got to step up to the plate.” (I love using sports metaphors to talk about creating a smooth-running family team!)

They agreed and made promises. And you know the rest — after dinner they got up from the table to watch a TV show. I called them back and pointed out all the kitchen clean-up still to be done — the pots to scrub, the food to put away, the crumbs on the floor. 

It is a thankless job but I am going to ride the kids until they do more housework for the good of the family. If I do everything for them, I am doing them no good. I am simply increasing their dependency and my stress level. I cannot hire more housekeeping help. (I already have A. coming to clean once a week.) The kids have to pitch in.

Wish me luck.

Asking for Help

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Do you ever borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor?

Asking for help — even a half-cup of help — is difficult for most of us. We  like to be the helpers, not the helped.

I have borrowed an egg or sugar from a neighbor. I’ve got several go-to neighbors in our apartment building. I’ve done it more than once.

Honestly, I’ve usually sent the kids to do my borrowing. (The same way I’ve sent them to the subway musician with a dollar to put in an open guitar case.) Kids are good at doing the begging, borrowing and paying out for the parents.

I’ve been thinking about all of this while reading The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids by Madeline Levine. She says:

Women often slide into unhealthy dependency when we turn to our children for the loving connections missing in our adult relationships…The idea of trekking over to a neighbor’s house when the pantry is short an item or two seems almost laughable now. The easy camaraderie that existed among working-class women, a function of both desire and necessity has been lost to take-out food, housekeepers and a fear that revealing our problems, no mater how incidental, will result not in support but in embarrassment.

Hmmmm, yes. To counter the self-reliance I feel imposed on me (by who? my church? my education? my status?) I’ve made my Rule Number One: Pile on the People. While I don’t like asking for help from anyone, I do need it.  A husband with Parkinson’s Disease, three kids, a full-time job and a time-consuming writing habit, I, in fact, need all the help I can get. (Another mantra — draw the circle wide.)

There is a benefit not just for us, the borrowers, but for the friend across the hall, the one whom we borrowed from. In exchange for the egg that she lent (gave) us, she received a handful of warm kid-made peanut butter cookies. I wanted to take a picture of the cookies to post on the blog, but there are only a few crumbs left. 

(I wrote about this book on my other blog, my blog about writing and being connected: http://gettingmyessayspublished.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/a-generation-of-disconnected-kids/)

Getting Confident

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Having to attend to one another emotionally is draining. And we need to energize one another. Those who drain us won’t be part of the team again. That’s why I’m trying to stay confident at work.

Two-way streets are tough for those of us who travel only one way — alone. We have to excel collectively and let go of our perfectionist and insecure tendencies for the good of the team. There’s beauty in teamwork, especially when we have confident players.

How To Lose 5 to 10 Pounds

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I'm totally embarrassed to post this picture...

I want to lose 5 to 10 pounds. It’s not a lot and it’s not a big deal. But I want to be faster and lighter. Being fast is important to me, as an overachieving Type A mother and writer living in New York City.

My weight has crept up. When I first met my husband about 18 years ago I was just under 110 pounds. I’m about 5’6” so yes, that was too thin. Since those happy salad days when I was single and 30, I’ve eked up a pound or two every year.

After my son was born 14 years ago, I was around 135, and then along came my twin daughters and another pound or so every year. You get the idea. A pound a year isn’t much, but if I live to my late 90s, that’s another 50 years and another 50 pounds! And I’ve heard from older women, as we age it’s harder to lose weight.

So I’m posting this goal on this blog, Running Aground. There’s been a kind of magic for me to blogging — it’s turned some things around. This is my goal — by the end of 2011, I’m aiming to lose 5 to 10 pounds and be back under 140 pounds.

Blogging works. I achieved my goal of running a 5K after blogging about it. I”m proud of myself for running a 5K on a rainy, hilly Upper Manhattan race a month ago.

Like my 5K goal, this 5 to 10 pounds weight loss goal is a SMART goal — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Sensitive.

I see two trends I can immediately implement to work towards my goal: more cardio, less carbs.

Since my plantar  fasciitis, I’ve slacked on my cardio, but with the nice weather, I’m going to dust off my bike (or buy a new one) and bike a bit in Central Park and Riverside Park to kick in the endorphins.

I’m doing this to feel good, and, yes, to look good too. And to stay fast.

Not Remembering 9-11

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The 10th Year Anniversary

I don’t want to relive it. I don’t want to see any of it. I’m planning to be away from the city. I’m so glad 9-11 is on a Sunday so I can get the family out of what I expect will be a relentless media frenzy. I don’t want to have a TV on. I want to walk in the woods.

The wound is still very fresh. Some time I may write about it. I may write about the beautiful morning, how I had voted that morning, saw a police officer’s face — her face as if in close up — her worried face as she listened to a report. She was in a squad car, I was crossing Broadway with the kids. I forgot it. Then walking towards Central Park with my friend, J., how I got an urgent messages my sister on my cell phone but I had to call from a pay phone because my cell suddenly didn’t work, how we walked a little ways in Central Park then saw all the business people entering Central Park from 59th Street, how we knew something was deeply wrong, all these people in business attire walking into the park, how I grabbed my daughters from daycare, how I found my son’s pre-K class at the public school – with the principal standing with everyone in the hallway holding hands and praying with the kids — telling them that we love our families, our schools, our country. How we began to walk home, saw a grey cloud in the sky, south. Too close to be the WTC, we figured it was the Empire State Building. As we walked I insisted we avoid Lincoln Center, it could be a target. How we began to see all these people on the promenade in Riverside Park walking from downtown covered in dust, business suits and hair covered in grey, all grey. How we smelled the burning in the middle of the night. How we left the city and still past Albany, I could hear sirens. Chris said there were no sirens. I heard sirens on and off the whole way up to the Adirondacks.

Someday I will write about this. But not now. I dread the 10-year commemoration of 9-11. This year, I refuse to be traumatized again with news replaying images I don’t want to see.

Other years, on the anniversary of 9-11, the city was somber, especially the first couple of years. There was quiet. Especially in the morning. One year, I was walking down my block. A construction worker was sitting on the brownstone steps. It was the time of quiet and of remembrance. Our eyes locked. We looked at each other and we shared some sadness. He nodded at me. He knew. He knew and I knew. We didn’t want to – we didn’t need to – relive the whole thing. We didn’t need to write about it. Talk about it.

This year I might be in the Adirondacks far from a TV. I might go to church or maybe I’ll go to the church of walking in the woods. The Adirondack mountains will look lovely then. A long walk will do me good – seeing the colors of the pine trees, the splotched orange, the red leaves afire. 

I know the day is months away. Here I am the first weekend of April. I don’t want to wish away my spring, summer, fall dreading that September weekend. But it calms me to know I don’t have to be in the city.

At the time I knew that time would heal me from the trauma. I take comfort in the passage of time. I don’t take comfort in anniversaries. Continue reading “Not Remembering 9-11” →

The Sweetest Corner in the City

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On one corner there is Magnolia Bakery. Aross the street one way is BookMarc, a Mark Jacobs bookstore.
Kittycorner is Marc Jacobs store. Always with the trendy windows.
And just because this is my blog and I can post whatever I want. Last weekend in Washington DC, my sister and I went out to breakfast and I ate this waffle. The strawberry was cut like a rose. Yummy.

Mother-Daughter Book Club

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We had our first mother-daughter book club a week or so ago. Four mothers and six daughters sat on the floor and the comfy chairs around a coffee table that held wine glasses, juice boxes, and snacks on paper plates.

I love talking about what I’m reading. I love “comparing and contrasting,” a favorite assignment from my middle school English teachers. I love reading and discussing books so much that I even got my Master’s in literature. I missed it.

When my girls were toddlers, I jumped at the chance to start a book club with fellow mothers of preschoolers. Now our kids are middle schoolers. We’ve been meeting monthly for about eight years. We go on a long weekends together once a year. (Last year we went to Napa Valley and the year before to South Beach. For the trip we read a book set in or about that place.)

For our first mother-daughter book club meeting in March we all read Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. For our next book we were choosing among these books:

Deenie by Judie Blume

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls by Elise Primavera

Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

And the last book won! I can’t wait to read it and discuss it. I can’t wait to be a mother who talks to her kids about important things, like literature.

10 Good Things

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On most nights I tuck my darling daughters into their beds and I whisper 10 good things about each of them. I don’t know where I came up with this random number.

I have a thing for setting random-numbered goals for myself. I always swim 8 laps in any size pool. I clean for 10 minutes. I run for 13 minutes without stopping.

My children’s recent brattiness has laid me low. Why are they mean to me? ME? I am the nicest person/mother/friend in the world! [See my post from a few days ago: http://gettingmyessayspublished.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/when-kids-are-mean-to-mom/ ]

In any case, to overcome this mean-to-mom moment, let me say 10 good things about myself. This is difficult. I feel confident pointing out my failings, but not my strengths. Here goes:

1. I am funny. 2. I am friendly. 3. I am a good writer. 4. I like to work out. 5. I am creative. 6. I listen well. 7. I am tech-savvy. 8.

I have to stop here and admit I am running out of good things to say. I am bored. I am staring out my window at work and looking at Riverside Church blanketed with snow. It’s almost 9 am and I should get to work. Okay, moving on:

8. I am a hard worker. 9. I love my job. 10. I like staring out the window.

That’s it for me. What are 10 good things about you?

Downcast

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This is me. I saw the snow this morning. I was downcast.
I tried to remember that it is Spring.
It was only Sunday. I had seen crocuses in Riverside Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sunday the crocuses were wildly happy to be alive. Today they are downcast.

Foot Pain

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I had major foot pain — on my heel and now on my big toe knuckle.

It hurt so badly that I woke in the night wincing. So a few mornings ago, I went to the podiatrist. Dr. Rottenberg thinks it might be a running injury or the early stages of arthritis. It is also, as I self-diagnosed, plantar fisciitis. She gave me steroid pads and anti-inflammatory pills to take nightly. I’ll go back in a week.

Dr. Rottenberg advised me to stop running or I will have to have surgery within the next two years. So after my huge HUGE success of running a 5K. Yes, a 5K without stopping. I’m being a little sarcastic, but also, yes, I’m proud of myself — I came in 150th in my age group (out of 180). I think I have to find a new sport. I need to do something for cardio.

I ride my bike almost every day in nice weather, but the bike has really failed me. One of the pedal’s fell off and the bike’s just given up on life. (See last year’s post on how my bike fell in love: http://runningaground.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/damn-you-gary-fisher/) I’ll probably get a new bike. That’ll be good.

Swimming might be good. I love the smell of chlorine. (I know, I know, it’s not good.) And I LOVE taking a steam bath after swimming. The steam room’s a great place to pray and think and simply be.

A couple of days a week, there’s also my workplace Pilates and Yoga classes. I love these. But they’re so woven into the fabric of my life that they don’t feel like I’m doing much. But as my gorgeous podiatrist Dr. Rottenberg said, “They’re the best.” Yet they’re not cardio. In college I loved Afro-Caribbean dance. Maybe I’ll go back to that. I love tennis, but that’s probably hard on the feet too.

Oh, one more thing, the doctor advised me to stay off high heels. Easy for her to say. (She got to wear them!) I like a little height. I like a little run. I like feeling healthy and fit.