NYC Moms

My Kids Are Leaving Me: Sleepaway, Far Away

In less than two weeks my kids are leaving for sleepaway camp.  They aren't nervous at all.  They are thrilled, excited, anxious to begin. I, on the other hand, am an emotional mess.

Suddenly, everything they do is for "the last time for a long time."  Like, the last time they'll take the bus to school, or order in Chinese for dinner, or whine about how there's no good Chinese food on the Upper West Side anymore. It all makes me misty eyed, or worse.  Yesterday, I burst into tears when someone asked me what the kids were doing this summer. And this morning, I woke up at 5am and went into the living room to look at their baby pictures.

I'm pathetic.

I went to sleepaway camp when I was their age - and loved it.  I went back year after year for ages. I still have camp friends that I treasure and adore. I know that my children will love camp as much as I did. They are going to make lifelong friends, enjoy the mountains, and a lake, and the camaraderie that's practically exclusive to being at camp. They'll make macrame bracelets, and pottery, and learn to waterski. They'll get ravaged by mosquitoes and  filthy beyond belief. They'll eat awful food. They'll love it.

Sex in the City 2: Fabulosity Tests the Limits

The crazy blind dates. The long curly hair. The constant wondering when (and if) I would find Mr. Right. The cosmos. Other than the shoes and the rampantly indiscriminate sex, I could relate to Carrie's life in the HBO hit series Sex in the City.

Of course by the time the show aired I was already married, and by the time it ended I already had two kids, but still, her life was close enough to what my reality had been - the glamorous, better dressed version of my reality -  that even with its excesses, the show rang true.

But here we are, on the cusp of a new Sex and the City movie, and I can't help but wonder....why is it that my life now centers around organizing my synagogue's High Holy Days, cleaning up after the dog, and packing up the kids for sleepaway camp, while Carrie and the gang  still have lives that include gallivanting across the desert in designer duds?

To be fair, I've read that in the new movie, Samantha, is facing menopause.  Yet she is going to one of the hottest places on earth (hot flashes, anyone) and is taking no pause from men. Also, I've heard (in a seeming endless loop of omnipresent commercials) that Carrie is trying to find the "sparkle" in her marriage. Her marriage to a fantastically handsome, super wealthy, perfect man, that is.

Yeah, yeah yeah.

I Hate Birthdays: So I Went Pole Dancing on Mine

I hate birthdays.  Especially my own.  I always have.  The day before my 13th birthday I remember being upset because I didn't want to become a teenager. On the day before my twentieth, I was upset that I wouldn't be a teenager anymore.  And don't even get me started on my 30th. Oy.

The real demise, however, started on my 40th birthday.   The day after my fortieth, I noticed my first age spot. The day after my forty-first: two little creases between my brows.  Forty second? Wrinkly knees. Every year, the day after my birthday, I notice a new physical flaw.

This year was (gulp) 45. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. So I planned ahead: a facial, a party, and a pole dancing lesson.  Yeah. Pole dancing.

First was my facial at the Dermalogica store in Soho. (Full Disclosure: It was a free blogger event. I received a free treatment and a bag of sample sized products for attending.)  Dermalogica offered us bloggers a free microzone treatment (like a mini facial), a tour, and the promise of a little pre-mothers day pampering.  In the hopes of staving off the arrival of another age-related physical flaw, I said yes.

Just Say No to Negativity

Sarcasm. Pessimism. Negativity. I think this city needs an attitudinal makeover.

Perhaps the most depressing sign of just how far pessimism has gone is the sign on the scaffolding of the nearly-finished luxury residential building in my neighborhood: “Twenty-First Century Pre-War Residences” it reads.  It's even the headline when you go to the building's website.

Really?  Last time I checked this was the twenty first century, and we were already at war. Two wars, to be more precise.  Do the developers of the building not know we are at war?  Or maybe they decided that these wars don’t really count.  You know, seeing as George W. Bush declared victory seven years ago. Scarily, maybe they think another, bigger, war is yet to come. Or maybe they know something….spooky.

Help Save Sex Ed in NYC Public Schools

Last week I let my daughter watch the Lindsey Lohan movie Mean Girls. 

Yikes.

First, my daughter asked why the girls looked in the mirror and said bad things about themselves. Then she asked what a "bee-yotch" was.  Then she asked what a condom was. I told her.

"It something men put on their penises so that their ingredients won't mix with a woman's ingredients when they have sex, and they won't get a baby."

"Well then," she said "what's the point?  If you're not gonna have a baby why do it?"

Would that her innocence would last forever. Alas (for me, if not for her) it won't.

The Stuff we Save

Not too long ago, I went on a cleaning binge.  One of the things I threw out was a poster-sized blow up of a picture of me from my wedding.  My husband had blown up pictures from several different stages of my life to decorate the room in which he threw me a surprise 40th birthday party.  The party now being mymble-farrumph years ago, it seemed time to toss the giant blow up of my face.

The porter in our building, however, didn't see it that way.  He could not throw it away.  First, he brought it back to our door. "You must have thrown this out by mistake,' he said, handing it back to me. I assured him that, no, I just didn't really want a giant blown up picture of myself.  Still, he couldn't throw it away.  It just seemed wrong to him, he said. It was my wedding picture.  He kept it in the building's staff room for months until one of the other doormen finally got tired of looking at me, and threw it away himself.

And now, as my parents contemplate selling their country home, and I go about cleaning out the rooms in which my children have spent every summer since they were born, (and my family has spent every summer for the past 25 years) I know just how he felt.  I don't really WANT  four hundred and ninety-seven scribbles drawings from my twins' second summer at the house, but somehow, it seems wrong to throw them away.

The Kids vs. The Dog

 I remember the olden days when my children would cry and carry on when I left the house to go out. "Don't go Mommy! Don't go!" And when they would rejoice at my return, running to the door to smother me with kisses....even if I had only gone downstairs to get the mail.

But alas, they are only memories.  Now, when I leave, I'm lucky if they look up from their book, or - let's be honest here - one of their many screens.  Instead of "Don't go Mommy." I get something that's a cross between a grunt and a goodbye.  Kind of a good-grunt. When I return, I wander around the apartment until I find someone. "Um, hello?" I say. Instead of kisses I get...well, I get nothin'.

That's what dogs are for.

What's Up with NY Politicians?

I am an Upper West Sider.  That basically means that I am a liberal democrat. And liberal I am, but even I have my limits. And David Patterson has exceeded them.

What is going on in this state?

It wasn't bad enough we had a governor (Elliot Spitzer) who got caught with his pants down with a prostitute (though he did inspire an excellent TV show. The Good Wife. Go Julianna Margulies!), or that we had a convicted girlfriend beater, Hiram Monserrate, in the NY State Senate.  No that wasn't enough for the past few years.

What we really needed was for the guy that replaced our scandal ridden governor to be in the middle of his own scandal. It seems (though so far he has denied everything) that Governor Patterson, the first African American Governor of New York, when he learned that one of his advisers had been accused of domestic abuse, used his power and influence to try to "make it go away."

Does anyone see a pattern here?

Officially a Housewife

I am officially a housewife.  Know how I know?  Because much of my time over the past month has been spent talking about, worrying about, arguing about, and bemoaning the loss of -- my dryer.

Anyone with kids (and lets face it, a husband) knows: there is no end to the laundry.  I sometimes feel as if the washing machine in my apartment is going seven days a week. But I'm one of the lucky ones - I have a washer/dryer in my apartment.  Or I did. Until last month.

Last month, my dryer heated up, but didn't spin, which basically meant I got a big lump of wet, hot, clothing at the end of a cycle. Not good.  Needless to say, the warranty had expired thirty seconds before my dryer broke, so I needed a repair.

I called Sears.  BIG mistake.

Sears, evidently, is not staffed by humans.  It is staffed by automated voice answering systems that ask for your prompts.  "Welcome to the Sears Service Center  completely useless automated customer service system. Please say or press one to continue this infuriating process."

Gentrification, I think I Love you...maybe

Costco. BJ's Warehouse. Home Depot. Best Buy. Bobs Discount Furniture.

What do all of these stores have in common?  Until recently, none of them was in New York City. Times have changed.

BJ's opened in Flushing this past weekend. Costco opened this fall on the Upper East Side.  Home Depot has already been in Chelsea for years And I'm not quite sure what to think about it.

When I was in High School, walking in the West 80's along Broadway was a exercise in dodging hookers and bums. (This was in the olden days, before the PC moniker "Homeless People" was invented.)Today, walking on Broadway's Upper West Side is an exercise in dodging baby strollers and fresh produce carts on the corner.

Gentrification, I love you.