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02/16/12
Five Reasons Mardi Gras Is Great
Everything slows down during Carnival season. New Orleans never moves at a New York City pace – thank God; if we wanted that, we’d live in New York City – but during Carnival, it is entirely acceptable to take three-hour lunches on a weekday and then wander, half-drunk, through the French Quarter. It also becomes acceptable to write bulleted lists like this so that you can hurry out to catch a parade rather than taking the time to write an actual narrative piece with thoughtful transitions.
There are some people I only see during Carnival. In other cities, people come home for Christmas. Here, they come back for Fat Tuesday. And that makes perfect sense to me: Christmas is very much the same everywhere,...
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02/03/12
Earlier this week, I had a great dinner out, followed by a decadent dessert with Italian meringue. But when I got home, although my instinct was to fall asleep for approximately 16 hours, that’s not what I did. Instead I sat up, panicky, for at least 90 minutes frantically Googling “Italian meringue” and “Italian meringue raw eggs” and “Italian meringue raw eggs pregnant” and “Italian meringue raw eggs pregnant damage to fetus???”
Ultimately, I learned that yes, Italian meringue has raw eggs in it and no, I shouldn’t have eaten it – but that I would probably be OK. In any case, the dangers of raw eggs pertain more to me than to the fetus; unlike listeria, which can cause stillbirth, raw eggs would sicken just me,...
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01/26/12
I’ve never been a big bar person. In college, I generally opted to stay in and watch "Good Eats" and "Forensic Files" or bake bread or read Judy Blume novels in lieu of going to The Fieldhouse or Big 12 Bar & Grill. I am not a huge drinker; I don’t particularly enjoy the company of drunk people; and I really, really hate vomit.
During a brief period in grad school, however, Points 1 and 2 did not apply, and I started going regularly to a total dive bar called Snapper’s. In a previous life, Snapper’s had been a restaurant that served only soup – Grumpy’s Soup Kitchen or something like that – and after deciding the soup gimmick wasn’t catching on in Collegetown, USA, the owners apparently gave up and reopened...
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01/20/12
When my daughter was born in 2006, I immediately announced it on Facebook, along with pictures of her just several hours old. In fact, she was a Facebook presence even before her birth after a friend of mine “tagged” her in my midsection in a picture of me when I was visibily pregnant. Within the first week of her life, I changed my profile picture to one of me holding her, and as she grew, updated pictures were posted probably every month or so.
Even though she was born in Missouri, my Facebook friends in New Orleans, Chicago, New York and LA got to witness her christening, her first bites of rice cereal, her first plane ride, her first Halloween costume. Family members from North Carolina to Wisconsin got to see her with cake frosting in her hair on her first...
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01/13/12
Two of my very favorite things in the whole world are etiquette and paper. This is a big part of why I love my job in magazine publishing so much and why – despite the fact that I also love the Internet and actually managed my company’s Web site for some time – I really, really hope paper-and-ink magazines never go away. I can see many benefits to a Kindle or something similar (especially since I’m a fast reader and generally have to pack approximately 50 pounds of books to sustain me over, say, a week-long vacation), but I just don’t think I could ever get the same kind of comfort from a computer screen that I get from the feel and smell of a paper book.
As for etiquette, I think this probably started in high school when my best friend and I became...
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01/06/12
I need advice. I’m getting married today, and I’m not stressed at all about the food or the flowers or the cake or anything like that. We have a whopping guest list of 10 people, almost all of whom are very closely related to us (four parents, two kids), so I figure they’ll forgive any little imperfections or mishaps. Besides, I’m not walking down the aisle or throwing a bouquet, and since I’m pregnant, I won’t be drinking, so with those three factors combined, the potential for me to make an ass out of myself is vastly diminished. What I’m stressing out about right now, though, is my name.
This is the exact opposite of my wedding experience in 2003. When I got married for the first time, I was an absolute wreck about the details. Would...
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12/30/11
What a difference a year makes, right? A year ago, I was recently divorced. I spent the early hours of Christmas morning with my daughter and then sent her off to St. Louis with her dad at 9:30 a.m. The rest of the day, I drove around aimlessly listening to Christmas songs and crying. I capped the night off with takeout Chinese food, cheap wine and endless episodes of Law & Order. It is not my happiest holiday memory, to say the least.
This year, I spent Christmas with Ruby, my mom, my fiancé, his son and my soon-to-be in-laws. Instead of Law & Order alone, I watched Barbie in: A Christmas Carol with Ruby snuggled into the crook of my arm. And perhaps the best part: Instead of cheap wine, I drank seltzer with lime out of a wine glass. Well, no. I love seltzer, but...
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12/23/11
I spent the first eight months of my pregnancy with Ruby convinced that she was going to die at any second. Midway through my final month, with her insistently head-butting me and kicking my bladder (she was breech) ‘round the clock, it finally started to dawn on me that not only was I going to have a baby, but I was going to have a Christmas baby.
And so in the final few weeks before she was born, I took a break from researching Down syndrome (she had several soft markers) and stillbirth statistics (I am insane) and started combing the Internet for ways on how to make a Christmas birthday less crappy.
I’m now five years in, and it seems to be working pretty well. The main things I try to do are:
Give her separate presents for each occasion – no...
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12/16/11
I get a lot of press releases, easily upward of 300 a week. Some of them are for things that generally interest me. Most of them are not. But last week, I got a press release that really hit home. It was for a presentation at my daughter’s school, Morris Jeff, by The Stained Glass Project: Windows That Open Doors.
Because I am a member of the school’s family partnership, I had already heard about the event and had even agreed to make red beans. But after receiving the press release, my journalist’s instinct melded with my maternal instinct, and I decided there was a story here, and I would actually attend the presentation myself. I am so glad I did.
The back story is that last year, high-schoolers from Germantown, Pa., started creating stained-glass windows...
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12/09/11
“Mommy, that looks like fun! What is it called, and can I do it?” Ruby asked me the other day when she saw a commercial that showed someone sky-diving.
I repeated what is fast becoming my mantra: “I can’t stop you once you turn 18.”
Not yet 5, Ruby has a wild streak that is completely foreign to me. I was – and still am – shy, risk-averse, a compulsive rule-follower. When the teacher left the room, I was the one appointed to stand at the front of the room and write the names of misbehavers on the chalkboard – and I did so with great relish, even putting check marks beside the names of repeat offenders, just as the teacher did. “Rules are rules,” I thought piously to myself. In high school, thank God, I mellowed...
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