12/30/11

Bonne Année

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...

12/23/11

Christmas Overload

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...

Posted at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments: 5

12/16/11

The Stained Glass Project

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...

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12/09/11

Maybe It Skips a Generation

“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,...

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12/02/11

Home Again, Home Again

I know you were all waiting with bated breath to know how my gumbo-making issue resolved. As it turned out, it was not a problem at all, and here’s why: I had a massive Southern hostess anxiety attack the day before the party and became convinced that I wasn’t making enough food. Consequently, I decided to make red beans, too, which I started the night before the party along with my chicken stock for the gumbo.

Early Sunday morning, I woke up and, still wearing pajamas and drinking coffee, started reheating the beans and chopping up the vegetables for the gumbo. Ruby wandered in in the middle of all of this preparatory work and demanded red beans for breakfast. Because I...

Posted at 04:10 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0