I went to a movie with a friend last night and afterward we went to my favorite neighborhood restaurant for dinner.
We sat at the bar and I said to Sam, who is the best bartender ever, “Hey, how are you?”
He said, “Well, Paris is burning, but I’m ok.”
Now, that’s a movie title, so I thought maybe that’s what he was referring to, but then I thought that was sort of weird, so I said,”What?”
He said, “There have been a bunch of terrorist attacks all over Paris.”
Suddenly I didn’t really want my meatballs anymore.
I came home and did what I do when these sorts of things happen, I turn on the tv and flip from news station to news station, I open the computer to the Times, Huffpost, Twitter, Facebook.
I pray.
I don’t understand why people can’t just talk over their disagreements. Go into a big room with a lot of sandwiches and a lot of potato chips and not come out until they can make compromises, peace.
While I have gladly contributed to your campaign, I’m a little worried becasue you seem to spending a lot of time emailing me, instead of going out there and fighting off the likes of The Hair. I mean you’re writing to me two and three times a day, asking me to dinner, your birthday party, even to help you with the debate. So, I think one of us has to be smart, so I am puling the plug on our correspondence. It’s really for your own good.
Dear List-of-friends-whose names were hacked and occassionally send me weight loss tips,
I know your email was stolen from my hacked email, but at the same time, I kind of wonder if you really do think I’m fat. I mean, out of all my email addresses, why yours? We’ve been friends for years, but these emails hit me in the muffin top gut.
Dear Fingerhut,
What even are you? I don’t want to know, just Unsubscribe Me.
Dear AARP,
Please stop sending me snail mail, e-mail and pony express. I may be over 40, but I am not, as you seem to insist, eligible for senior citizen discounts. C’mon. ME?
Dear Walmart,
I have now won thousands and thousands of dollars from you, according to my email. Please feel free to send it directly in a check, money order, or yen, but PLEASE STOP WITH THE EMAILS, ALREADY.
I am in awe of people who can think of creative business ideas and implement them. How many times haave I sat around with friends trying to find the next big thing? Lots. So, here on this Thursday, I got stoked by this little article on new businesses that found a way, and a bunch of money too. How can you not just want to marry innovation?
You were about two month old here. Little cuteness. Look at all that hair!
Ally girl, Lula, Alexandra Louise Christina,
Here we are at eighteen. It was just short of two decades ago that a British nanny in Newton was finding out the verdict of her murder trial (she had shaken a baby to death, who was in her care) while I was in labor. Nobody was really paying attention to me, because all the doctors and nurses were glued to the tv. Can you even? I thought Aunt Joni and Daddy might have to get you outta there.
Damn, you were adorable.
Anyway, I got a good epidural this time (the one I had with Jake didn’t work very well), and at 6:55 PM, out popped a baby with more hair than most two-year olds have. Not even exaggerating, and you know I tend toward that, but I’m not, honesttogod.
You were a full month early, and nobody was concerned because they just thought I’d miscalculated, but I knew I hadn’t, because when you’re infertile you know the moment you are pregnant, and I had not been pregnant the previous month, and knew so because I had taken a pregnancy tests and it was negative. And you didn’t really seem a month early, because at 7.4, you were perfect. A perfect little bundle of adorableness.
Jake came to see you, all big brotherly, and we were still trying to decide on a name. Kaylie, Emmie and Ally were all in contention. Jake was going to be named Ally, so that name had been in our minds the longest, but because of your early arrival, we were still trying to figure it out. When we asked Jake, who when we put you in his arms, said “That’s my baby sister,” he knew immediately what your name was. “Her name is Ally, ” he said, authoritatively. And that was that.
You cried for the first six months of your life. A lot. A lot, lot. It wasn’t that easy. But just like Dr. Yogman predicted, the minute you turned six months old, you stopped and became a charming little thing with dinner roll feet, and thighs I wanted to bite, and cheeks I wanted to pinch. Pretty quickly you wanted to do everything your big brother did.
If I could have one of those days back, to be with you again, I would give up most of my life. I was so tired and stressed out that I wished away more than a few days when you guys were little. I wish I could have had more time to be patient, instead of worried. Maybe you can do that for me when you have kids. Be less freaked out, and more relaxed. I hope I get to see you as a mom, because that will really be a kick. Maybe you will have a little girl JUST LIKE YOU! Ha, payback.
Anyway, little Ally, you have come a long, long way from the day you were born. You’ve turned into a smart and curious yourg woman; funny, analytical, and the life of the party. You’re beautiful, an accomplished and killer soccer player, a hard worker, great friend, and a global citizen. Not to mention you still have the best hair of anybody I’ve ever known and I still want to take a bite out of your thighs.
Look, it’s true, you have literally been playing soccer since you were three months old!
Here at 18 is my advice for maximum happiness. You’ve probably hear it before, but it’s worth committing to memory.
Be kind. When there are two ways to go, snarky, or nice, choose nice. Snarky is funny, but nice can change the world.
Work hard. Whatever you do, give your all. You will get out what you put in. It’s so much easier to slack off, but working hard is one of the key components to feeling fulfilled
Play hard. Have fun. Go out, be with friends, go to games, and concerts, and theatre, and travel the damn world.
Don’t be fearful of love. Love is AMAZING. Sure, it can also break you in two. That’s ok. You will mend. Love freely and openly. Give all of yourself, Ally.
Make friends. Lots of them. Everywhere. Having relationships is everything. EVERYTHING. Nobody wishes they hadn’t spent so damn much time with friends and family when they die. Dogs count here. If you want a really devoted friend, get yourself a dog. Best thing EVER.
Find what you love to do and see if you can get paid for it. Being passionate about your profession means you will spend your life doing something you’d do even if there wasn’t a paycheck involved. If you can pull this off, you’ve got a shot at being the world’s happiest girl.
Be grateful. Well, by now you know how I feel about this topic, but just remember, you will always win when you focus on what you have, instead of what you don’t have.
Be active. Hopefully you’ll play soccer until you’re 97! I don’t really need to stress this point, you know how great being active is already.
Volunteer. Give your time to things you care about. Get involved. Help people. This is stuff that will make you feel so good inside you won’t want to stop.
Always carry with you the love of your family. We’re here for you 24/7. We’ll believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself, carry you when you get too tired, make you laugh when you’re sad. We love you now and we’ll love you forever and ever.
Happy birthday to my girl. The girl I’d choose again and again, on account of you teach me to be better everyday (not that it’s always easy). I love you, adore you, cherish you.
Howdy, partners, here’s a gratitude round-up for today.
Giant cup of coffee, a bit of sunshine on the top of a very red tree, pain medication (that would be for my daughter), Skinny Pop Popcorn (that would be for me, IT’S MOMMY CRACK), the absurd amount of flowers in my house right now (the only good reason to have surgery), the One Day Service dishwasher people we called last Friday are coming today (Don’t ask, but goodbye wrinkly-water hands), my daugher’s last day as a 17 year old, it’s flannel pajama bottom season!!!!!!! (Killing it here on a Monday.)
I am so used to modern conveniences, I have completely forgotten what it was like without them.
Take the dishwasher. I don’t really remember if I ever had an apartment without this time-saving, dirty-dish-hiding miracle of engineering, but I am pretty sure I did not. I think maybe in one of my cheesy college apartmentish dormish domiciles I might have had to tough it out by actually doing the dishes myself, but that was like 200 years ago.
Anyway, as you might have guessed our dishwasher is out of order, and my daughter is also out of order, and she has had a lot of company to keep her company, which equals a lot of dishes, and guess who’s doing those cereal encrusted bowls, guacamole residued plates, and all the stacks of dirty pots and pans? Bingo, you win a dish towel, now please come over and dry.
So, my husband called a company called One Day Service, which seemed like the smartest company to call when your dishwasher is not doing the dishes, right? You will have it fixed by the time you make dinner. BUT, when he called on Friday, One Day Service could not book our appointment until Monday. Um, I’m thinking they might want to change their name.
I will never complain about emptying that damn dishwasher again. All hail to the Miele. I freaking cannot wait to get it back online. I’m going to go buy some paper plates right now.
The kind of disturbing news that nobody wants to hear, nobody wants to KNOW wafted through texts and phone lines and emails last night. A boy from my son’s high school class had been in a horrific car accident and was in a coma, and likely not to make it through the night. A stab wound in your chest, a gun shot to your heart couldn’t feel more painful or shocking than hearing these kinds of words strung together. There it was, life’s fragile nature, and ability to stun in a single bound.
Gratitude for the cool breeze, blue sky and technicolor leaves of this Saturday. Who knows what it is tomorrow will be.
Every once in a while I remind myself that having gratitude might really be the biggest key to having happiness. And Jeesh, who doesn’t want a big piece of the happiness pie (I’ll take mine with whipped cream, please). Taking the time to be grateful is not about rainbows and rose colored glasses. It’s not like working the gratitude game makes you naive, like you’re ignoring stuff you should be paying attention to, because you’re off on Fantasy Island (“Da plane, Da plane”) thinking about how great life is. It’s just about making a shift in your head, as to how you choose to look at things. It’s never about ignoring the bad shit that goes down, it’s about highlighting the good shit. It’s getting high on the light, instead of the dark. You know?
When I used to hear about having gratitude, which was mostly around Thanksgiving, when you should not really ask me to think about anything except the upcoming turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes, (really do not tax my brain with any other anything, when there is turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes on the table), I used to think it was kind of cheesy and lame. I never felt like anybody could explain it to me in a way that didn’t make me feel like I was reading a Hallmark card from the Hallmark card section explicitly for people over 75, who buy the corniest cards with the most cliche sayings EVER. That’s not at all what being a grateful person is, though (with all due respect and gratitude to every aunt and cousin who has ever sent me one of those cards).
It’s much more about just looking for the good things in a way that makes your heart grow, instead of break. It asks you to take a yellow marker to everything that happens in your day from the tiniest moment that feels nice, that could have gone one way, but goes another way (your way). It’s about asking you to notice what’s really happening, instead of being lost in a negative haze of what you EXPECT to happen.
If you go through your life just trying to get through it, that’s what you’ll wind up doing. But if you go through your days, watching out for the slivers of good fortune (they got your name right at Starbucks, and someone else didn’t walk out with your Latte, you brought your umbrella, your husband made dinner, ok, he bought take-out, but whatever) you will begin to live a happier life.
I urge you to try and open up your peepers to the moments you can be grateful for. It won’t suddenly make you Polly Anna, or Glinda the Good Witch, but what it will do, is make you more aware of the goddamned gorgeous things that are all around you, if you just take the time to look out for them.
C’mon, is this the most hysterical flower arrangement ever, or what?
Let’s just say that surgery is a miracle, modern day magic, making possible things that didn’t used to be possible. Let’s also say, it’s fucking painful. Because that’s what it is, folks. FUCKING PAINFUL.
Ally had ACL reconstruction surgery yesterday. They told us she would have a nerve block that would keep her numb for 20 hours, so we were normal-neurotic parent-worried about her getting through surgery, but we were expecting pain to be on vacation in Hawaii when she woke up. A nurse with a concerned face came into the waiting room to tell us she was out of surgery, thrashing, in a lot of pain, and wanted her mom. She usually wants her dad in clutch situations, so right then and there, I knew things weren’t ok.
Ally toughs pain out like a boxer. She is the anti-me, who is acutely sensitive to the smallest hangnail (although I’m really tolerant of pain, even though I hate it like the woud-be spawn of Anne Coulter married to Donald Trump ). When I got into recovery, I could see she was scared and really hurting. The nurses were concerned that the nerve block hadn’t worked and called for an anaesthesia consult. Apparently, there are two kinds of nerve blocks, and because Ally is a soccer player, her surgeon decided on the one that would allow her to use her quad more quickly, but that makes for more pain.
I won’t do a play by play, but it was a bad day. Getting the pain under control was really difficult. There was nausea and dizziness. (And that was just me, haha!) We tried to leave 5 hours after surgery, and Ally almost fainted and had to be rushed back to recovery by a nurse who was sprinting down the hallway like she was in the Olympic mile, and who kept saying, “She’s going.” “Going?” I thought. GOING WHERE? Five nurses swarmed her like things were dire. They put her on a bed and tipped her head to the ground. I felt like i was watching Grey’s Anatomy, wondering what the hell Shonda Rhimes was up to. An anti-nausea patch, and a shot of some sort of souped up medication brought her back to life, and an hour later we were so outta there.
She came home to a hilarious dog made of carnations bouquet, with a band aid on its paw (yes, that happened) sent by very good friends, one of her best friends came with trashy mags, and her boyfriend brought a teddy bear holding her favorite candy, which she cuddled up to right away, with a big smile on her face. My sister and brother-in-law brought dinner and groceries, and made us food. We all had hundreds of texts and emails asking how she was.
Yes, surgery is something to be goddamn grateful for, and I am. Twenty years ago, Ally would not be able to play college soccer after an injury like this. So, there’s that. But pain comes with this territory (especially for helpless parents). She had a very good night, and slept a lot (Peter, on the other hand, who slept feet from where she was, on the couch, slept on a blow-up bed, and was not so fortunate).
But today is going to be a better day. I just know it. We’re going to use our Game Ready ice machine, and our perpetual motion CPM machine that we need to be on for 10-20 hours a day. And we’re going to take a sponge bath, and hopefully, we’re going to sleep a lot. All of us. SAY IT WITH ME, “TEAM ALLY!”
*the gratitude-a-thon 