The World According to EDW

I have no voice. I have lost my voice. I am voiceless.

In the literal sense, of course, not in some political or socio-economic disenfranchisement. In that sense, I bet a lot of us have lost our voices over the years. But we have plenty of time to bemoan that, what with the non-stop campaign coverage and lack of scripted shows.

The fact is, I have lost use of my real, actual voice, the one I use for daily communication. I answer the phone with the whisper of an elderly agoraphobic. I sound like a shut-in who hasn't spoken to another person in months, or maybe years.

Chi balancing? The dreadlocked white girl at Whole Foods mislead me. I’m sure she had the best of intentions; maybe I waited too long to best the “invading forces” – that’s a direct quote from the bottle of 23 Chinese herbs.

In any case, according to my calculations it’s been months since my last cold, and really this one couldn’t have come at a better time. A full two weeks before Vegas gives me plenty of time to recover nicely, and maybe even find a pair of black shoes more suitable for going out than my slippers, which is currently what I am packing. NJ shoe stores are letting me down. I need a quick flight to the Midwest.

In lieu of that, I am making a pilgrimage to DSW, the very one no one told me about. I hope if I leave an appropriate sacrifice, they shoe gods might favor me. Hmm, what would that be? An old Jimmy Choo? Anyone want to throw me one?

Tonight I am sitting in a class at the local community college. The instructor is a piece of work, and not in the way that my darling child is. He’s absolutely unintentionally hilarious. The best line thus far is “You need professional help” which works on so many levels, right? He has a toupe that is at least four shades darker than his fading sandy-blond hair. He’s full of horror stories, and although I know his job is to scare people away, it’s still hilarious.

Have you ever wanted to own your own business? I haven’t. I like working for the Man, although now it’s true that I have my own small business of my, myself, and I. Still, I'm a traditionalist. Give me a crappy desk and measly 401K match over charting my own course.

So, big plans for the weekend? Regale me.

Quick note. I'm alive. I'm sick - first time since September? Yes, I think so, and it sucks. Suuuuuucks. I'm taking some sort of chi balancing stuff. I have no idea what it is or what it does, but I found it in my tea cabinet, so I must have thought it was a good idea once. Knowing me, I probably had a deep and reflective conversation with the dreadlocked white girl who mans the Whole Foods supplement section. I hope she was right about this stuff, whatever it was she said.

Emily was perfect at her first theater movie, much better than the other kids. I leaned over to my friend Kim and said, "Our kids are better than those kids," gesturing across the aisle. She agreed, and added "Yes, and ours are younger, too." I was all pumped with pride, until I turned back to Kim, it dawning on both of us that the kids across the aisle were clearly developmentally disabled. She said it first, I nodded, and the truth of ourselves came smiling across our faces. Bitches.

Oh, I've got lots more where that came from, trust me.

I was going to write a bit more, but I realized while getting dressed and typing this that my bra is showing through my shirt, and that's not the way to show up for a preschool, kindergarten, rest of Emily's life, open house. Nor is it very professional for clients. So gotta dash and find something less...obvious.

I swear I'll be back when my chi is balanced.

Every now and then I sort of forget I have an online life. It's usually when my head is full with my offline life, but the truth is, I have a pretty substantial online life. I could seriously spend lots and lots of time online, Facebook and MySpace not included. That's what is so great about office jobs - the opportunity to screw around online. And get paid. Whee! Sadly, that's not my life anymore.

So which of the 1,000 things should I start with? How about the weekend? Molly and Chris came down with their nearly-three year old, Madi. Emily and Madi hit it off like...well, like their moms did 17 years ago. Even as a kid, there are some people you like and some you have to warm up to, and some you're never going to be best friends with. But thank God for the ones you know instantly about. I didn't take one picture, but Molly got a great one. My brain sort of went on hiatus, I think.

It's really very enjoyable to have Molly and Chris and Madi around. I wish they would come more often and stay longer. I like them hanging around my kitchen at 7am. Good times.

In other less exciting news, I have a new client that I like working with, always a plus. I have some easy cash work piling up, though, so that's not good. And I am on what seems like a continuous hunt for Vegas clothes. Like Vegas wives, but maybe slightly less trashy and transient. My third (or is it forth?) shopping trip commences this Saturday at 11am, and somehow everyone else seems less concerned than I am about finding nice jeans, slutty tops, and gorgeous shoes that you can walk in. It's work, I try to tell them, but they are awfully blase. Maybe one worrier is enough. You think?

So it's off to the land of Short Hills for me - think the richest, snootiest mall imaginable and then multiply it. Really, it's a mall. What's fancy about a mall in Jersey? Carpeting? Perspective, this is Liz calling. Can you make it to Essex County? We need you.

Truly, the mall is very nice. And it gives me lots of opportunities to play Spot the Plastic Surgery. But, as my friend Lisa pointed out, the sales racks suck because everyone pays full price there. Oh, but it has an Anthropologie (which I also have 5 minutes from my house) so maybe I can buy some clothes that Rob and Nick will make fun of me for. I believe the phrase was "earth mother" clothes and some remarks were made pursuant to personal hygiene. Charmers, our boys.

So that's my upcoming weekend. And you wonder why I don't blog more?

The two other big things going down are Emily's first movie in a movie theater and picking her 4 year old program, which thus picks her kindergarten, which leads into grades 1 to 8. No pressure or anything. We are officially not returning to the nicest, sweetest, richest preschool I could find. She is adrift, an unregistered child for next year, dependent on her mother's capricious whims concerning which one of the two Catholic schools she will enroll in and spend the next 10 years being educated. Unless we run out of money, in which case hopefully she'll make it through preschool and kindergarten.

I have been working my charm non-stop with the secretaries from each school, since we all know they make all the decisions, and I want them to take my check and my kid. And be my friend! Because I'm nice! I even found myself chatting up a shoe store owner who has the most fantastic little shop in town, full of gorgeous women's shoes and a full line of the coolest kids' shoes I've ever seen. She also has great taste in interior design, an unbelievably elegant and family friendly store, and her kids go to one of the schools. She praised it up and down the block, for all the right reasons, like how they treat your kid and how non-crazy the other parents are. Not that it helped, it just made me more conflicted.

Tomorrow I have engineered a date to the movies, 5 kids and 3 moms going to see the new Veggie Tales flick. Emily is wholly unaware of both the Veggie Tales and the theater experience, so this should be fun. It was my idea; I'm not sure why. Maybe my offline life was getting a bit dull; maybe I like a challenge. Maybe I use the semi-colon too much.

I'm sure I'll report back on everything in detail, not to worry there. I leave you with this close: go see Juno. It's beautifully done.

Thank you all for being so freaking nice about my last few days. Really, I appreciate your understanding - even if you don't get it, you know it's a big deal to me.

So Thursday was pretty good. I cleaned the house and put away Christmas, after assuring Molly that I wasn't going to do either thing. Things look nice and that makes me feel better. Deep breath. Moving on....

Today is a busy day, but a fun one. In the morning it's errands and the usual Friday stuff. Then, Eileen is coming down to take some of this baby stuff off our hands, some toys Emily is too old for but that I hate to have sit in the basement for some possible future child when a child already on this earth could use them. By the way, if someone needs baby stuff, I've got it. I'll ship!

I hope to be able to take Eileen shopping for a little bit, in preparation for our big Vegas trip with the girls in February. We'll see how that goes; we both have our kids and I haven't even discussed it with her...although this is an excellent way to find out if she's reading my blog. Oh, I crack myself up.

The very last but not the least thing to happen today is the arrival of Molly, Chris, and Madi. They are coming to spend the night and Saturday morning we head down to Philly for a Drexel game with the rest of the college friends. I'm so excited. I haven't seen Chris is forever, and Madi in just as long. Of course I'm happy to see Molly, too, but we did get to spend more time together in the last year so I don't feel like it's been centuries since we saw each other.

A good start to a a good weekend. And please, God, no more drama.

The rumors have been circling for days. Like a family huddled in the hospital waiting room, we have cried, joked, bickered, and made up, waiting for word from beyond the swinging double doors. We have discussed what-ifs, prayed, hoped, and given up hope only to have someone else take it up. Some of us went out for coffee and didn't come back for a while; some of us were afraid to leave for one second.

The message, when it came, was short and not-so-sweet.

"Due to personal issues within the band, Marah have made the difficult decision to postpone their January and February US tour dates. They hope to reschedule the tour for later in the year and will make sure to keep their fans posted."

I've written about how this band makes me feel many times before. Others have written about it, too. The strange thing is, we all share this indescribable feeling. And now we all feel grief at the knowledge that half the band may be gone for good.

Many of us knew Marah before this incarnation, and we will know them in whatever form they take after the dust settles. But we fell in love with this combination of people playing with their whole hearts and souls. And now it feels like a break-up.

I hope that somehow, somewhere, there is hope for reconciliation and that we'll be able to see Kirk's smile, Adam's joy, and Dave P.'s passion on stage with Marah again. But if not, we will grieve their loss.

There's a lot of other, serious stuff going on in my life that regular readers can probably recite. My last year was a tough one. But this feeling of loss is no less real. Nothing in my life makes me feel like I do when I am standing in front of the stage listening to Marah. Other things make me feel amazing in other ways, but nothing makes me feel like this. To lose that forever would be losing a bit of my soul.

What makes me smile through the lump in my throat is this from Richelle, although it could have been from any one of my friends in this with me: "Oh, you feel the same way I do. Thank God."

Thank God, indeed. Lump in my throat be damned.

If you haven't seen this, you must. Preferably whilst eating some candy.

"I hate everyone and everything seems stupid to me."
-Randal Graves, Clerks 2

Today kind of sucks. I'm tired, I'm crabby, I don't like any of the food in my house. I'm listening to a Marah album I love, but which is mostly about leaving shit behind, and it sure seems like that's what they're doing.

Personally, I'll be okay by tomorrow. I'm going to pick up the kids, aka Carol and Andrew, which I haven't done in ages, because they make me feel better. They're kind of like (and please don't take this wrong) Rob and Richelle, perfectly content to listen to lots of music and tell stories. And then I'll start laughing and it will feel better.

Emily is out for a few hours with her grandfather, aunt, and uncle. By the time she comes home I'll be rocking out and that always makes me a better mom. And I'll invite myself to Jackie's for dinner and vent to her about the shit I can't write about on this blog.

However, unless some sort of miracle happens I'm still going to be sad about the fucking mess that is my favorite band right now. Yeah, yeah, it will all work out somehow, but still. When something special ends, you mourn. So, grief.

Marah on Conan O'Brien:

Nothing lasts forever.

I'm not sure if life is cyclical or linear. I think it's probably both. As a woman, I know cycles. That's part of my life. As an observer of human beings, I see how some people get themselves into cycles. Partying and rehab, happiness and depression, love and breakups. I don't think life has to be this way. I think you can have traditions and observances and still keep moving forward, not repeating the same shit every year. Tell this to any member of a particularly challenging family and they may disagree, but I think that maybe one of the tragedies of life is that it appears to be cyclical, but isn't. When something is over, it's over.

When you think something is ending, what do you do? Do you mourn its passing before it passes? Do you hold out hope? Do you hedge your bets or fold with grace? In the Catholic tradition, much attention is payed to death and the passing of life. A funeral would take precedence in the street over a wedding. In the Jewish tradition, when a wedding and a funeral meet and one needs to yield to the other one, the wedding goes first.

The wedding goes first because life is for the living, and the dead have had their time.

We may look back and see this as the wake, or we may look back and see people who choose to live in cycles. In the end, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we'll be standing together, looking back. And we will be, my family.

"Someday someday
We're gonna look down
Upon this strip of cold concrete
And remember, remember, remember the sound
Of broken bottles beneath our feet."
-Marah

Nothing lasts forever. But this is still our time.

You know what I love? Two thousand and eight. I love two thousand and eight.

So apparently I'm independently wealthy. Yep, that's me. Want to see the credit card bills that go with it? You know what I think when I hear that "Live Like You Were Dying" song? Well, first I think, how the hell did this get on my radio? Then I think, oh, right, my Dad likes country and then I think, hell, this is just another reason to use your credit card because if we all really lived like we were dying, what would be the point of saving money?

Maybe I shouldn't listen to country.

Jodi had never been to Disney World, and she was planning on going with me, Nick, Emily, and my mom and dad. Now, be honest. Does this sound like a trip you want to tag along on? Nope, didn't think so. So we went. Just the two of us. And it was one of the best vacations of my life.



We walked a lot. It felt great. We ate a lot, all yummy food. We played. We drank, for free, I might add. We sang songs out loud (at a piano bar, but if you know me, you know I sang as I walked through the parks, too.) We got really hungover and had cheeseburgers. We survived two rides that tried to kill us. We made friends with everyone who slowed down enough to make friends with us. We crashed a private party. We shopped like it was going out of style. We laughed. We played "do you know what I love?" We hugged characters, who apparently bestow protective charms when you hug them.



This vacation worked out perfectly, in a way I haven't experienced in years. It was charmed. 95% of our decisions were absolutely brilliant, barring the one to wear our Tevas to Animal Kingdom and the one Jodi made to keep drinking beer, resulting in a cleansing of her system. But other than those two, we were brilliant!



There is so much more I could tell you - so many stories. But isn't it enough to say we had four absolutely brilliant days? I think so. I think that's pretty special. I think those characters and Tinkerbell were beside the point. Out of all the people in my life, Jodi may be the one who most brings home for me that I choose my happiness. And I also choose my friends. And I get what I deserve, good or bad. That's pretty amazing to have around on a day to day basis.



So it follows that our friendship is both a choice and a gift. I feel lucky, on a daily basis, to know her. She awes me with what she's accomplished in her life, with her spirit and her resilience and the way she doesn't get caught up in the sad shit but keeps pushing past to get to the good stuff and her absolute generosity of heart. I love her and I know that she loves me - if matching tshirts don't prove that, what does?



We went on this trip like we go through our life - at each other's sides. She humors me on the cheesy things I love. With a deep breath, she goes on the scary stuff with me, because she's not going to let me go alone. We survive those twists and turns, like we always do, and we celebrate with a nice glass of champagne. We almost never stop talking and we never stop laughing. We are blessed or charmed or both, yes, but we also make our own fun and our own luck. Even the car ride home from the airport was fun, blasting Kenny Rogers and signing loudly. When you can enjoy a car ride on the NJ Turnpike, that's when you know you've got something special.

I'm tired, I'm getting sick, and I have so much stuff to write about and pictures to upload but yet I find myself pondering these questions. Weigh in. Let the sick girl with her tea and sweatpants get a read on your opinions. Be loud!

When you're flipping radio stations and Boston's "More Than a Feeling" comes on, do you keep it on and sing along or change it?

Do you look at the cute kids or the cute dogs you pass on the street?

What do you think of Uncle Kracker's version of "Drift Away"?

What song do you wish you didn't know the words to?

When children peer at you over a restaurant booth, do you smile or want to drop-kick them?

Do you make fun of families with matching carry-on and check-through luggage or are you secretly envious of them?

Who do you sympathize with in Kenny Rogers' song "Lucille"? The wife, the husband, or the storyteller?

What do you think about people who are hesitant to give their opinions?

What's the worst song your favorite band has ever recorded?

Thanks for playing along!

When I was 14, I had a Very Important friend named Tara. She was not my first friend to be a kindred spirit, but she was the first one I referred to as that, the first friendship I really saw how cool it was that we "got" each other.

I celebrated my 15th birthday by going to A Fine Young Cannibals concert with a group of my girlfriends, and everyone stayed overnight. I think some readers of this blog were there; at least in my warm and fuzzy memory of the night their spirit and friendship are there. In any case, the next day Tara moved to Massachusetts. We stayed up all night talking, that last night. We talked all night because we knew it was going to change.

And it did.

I have written and spoken before about the lesson of Tara's friendship. I learned, in short, that you can't take away the problems of other people. All you can do is love them through it. That's a hard lesson. I also learned that it's never a waste to love someone with your whole heart, even if it's not forever. I've doubted myself many times on that one, but what I knew to be true at 15 is still true today.

I like to think that without Tara I might not have known those amazing kindred spirits that came after her. I might have passed them by, because for all the ways we are alike, we're still different. I might have let those differences be the deciding factor. I certainly wouldn't have known the joy of finding a friend who knows you, despite obstacles. I might have let obstacles stand in my way. But I don't let differences or obstacles rule the day. No one in my life has ever been harder to love than Tara was. But many people after her have been worth it.

Today it's the second day of 2008 and I am happy for it. 2007 sucked for me in many ways, all of which I could enumerate, but I don't need to. If you know me through this blog, you've already been through those times with me.

So this isn't a wrap up of why I wasn't entranced by 2007, or a a list of my ongoing struggles. This is, instead, a gentle toast to a difficult year and the kindred spirits who held my hand through it. And, glass held high, to 2008. And of course, to Tara. And to you, too. Happy New Year.

The title lyrics are, of course, from "Don't Look Back" by Fine Young Cannibals.