Weekend Open Thread

On my neighborhood walk with Jackson this morning, I came across this message about two blocks from our place, and I was like, Yeah! Someone slap that on a bumper sticker. There’s really not much else to say beyond that except it’s hot here, my hair is frizzy from the unrelenting humidity, and Monday is the day my parents head back to the states for good, after 24 years in Germany and 40 years overseas. Safe travels to them and happy weekend to all of you. I’m going to go stick my head in the freezer now.

Yesterday, on my Facebook page I posed a question: “Those of you in relationships, what do you miss most about being single?” Of course, I’m very happily married and wouldn’t trade what I have now for anything, but there are times I do miss the convenience and simplicity of being single. Actually, what I really miss when I miss the single life isn’t so much being single — I kind of hated being single, to be honest — but being in a long distance relationship. I mean, yes, eventually being in an LDR sucked donkey balls, but for a while it was sort of like having the best of both worlds: I…

Happy Friday! Is it Spring yet? No? I’m sure I speak for many of us when I say winter is about two months and three weeks too long. But I finally got some Sorel Joan of Arctic snow boots on an end-of-winter (end of winter!!) sale, so I guess it wouldn’t be too terrible if we had a couple more snowy days and I had a chance to try them out. Also! Yesterday would have been Nina Simone’s 80th birthday so what better time to post that clip of her singing “My Way”? It’s one of my favorites of hers. Anyway, before I get lost on a long tangent, I wanted to…

Earlier this week, I wrote a listicle called “10 Tips for Getting Along with Your College Roommate” (did you email it to all the soon-to-be college freshman in your lives and/or share it on Facebook??), which prompted some discussion about roommates in general. Someone suggested we should have a crazy roommate open thread, and, voila!, here it is. I have only had five roommates — well, six if you count the ex-boyfriend I lived with for three years who became more of a roommate that a luvah in the end (the “end” being two years long, but who’s counting?). And since I am friendly with all of them still, I wouldn’t say…

Yesterday was kind of an intense day. There was the whole commute from Germany back to New York with Jackson by myself that probably shed a couple years from my life. In addition to sitting on a plane for almost 11 hours (eight and a half of which were in the air), during which time a teething Jack slept approximately 40 minutes and spent the rest of the time clawing my face and pulling my hair and poking and hitting the guy sitting next to us (who managed to avoid eye contact with us for the whole flight), we also had a two hour drive to the airport from my parents’ place…

In about 12 hours, Drew, Jackson and I will be boarding our flight — at an ungodly hour, but the tickets were cheap — to the Dominican Republic for our first family vacation. It’s been a crazy and exhausting and wonderful and exhausting 13 months since Drew and I last took a vacation (not counting a few weekend trips to see family and friends) — I was hospitalized twice with infections, I went into pre-term labor at 27 weeks pregnant, I gave birth successfully to a healthy, full-term, beautiful baby with no drugs (not by choice!), and we’ve spent the last 7 1/2 months learning to be good parents while still being…

Yesterday Jackson and I saw Maggie Gyllenhaal at our neighborhood coffee shop with her one-month-old baby girl. She was very pretty in person and seemed quite sweet, and there wasn’t an air of pretense about her at all. It was a total opposite experience from the time I saw Kate Hudson, who’s a real see-you-next-Tuesday, in a coffee shop with her son, and she expected everyone to bow at her feet. That was during my three-month, once-a-week-stint as a barista, and I waited on her and she didn’t even leave me a tip on her $20 bill. She also left her garbage all over the place, and she spent the half hour…

TGIF! Jackson’s babysitter, who usually watches him two mornings a week, took the last ten days off and I was reminded how exhausting it is to not get a break from baby-wrangling, even if I spend that break working. Remember how depressed I was back in February? And I thought I had delayed PPD? And then it turned out I just needed a higher dose of thyroid meds and a nap. And a babysitter. Seriously, if there’s one piece of advice I have for new mothers — and let’s face it, I always have more than one piece of advice — it’s not to be ashamed to ask for help. Even if…

By now, I have written ad nauseum about how awesome Drew is and what a great husband and father he is and how much I love him and yada, yada, yada. You’re probably sick of it. So, here’s something: we are not a perfect match. Oh, we’re a good match, for sure. We get along well, have a lot in common, share similar values and longterm lifestyle goals, enjoy the same types of vacations (lots of wine and cheese, please, and super luxe sheets, thanks), and like each other a lot. But there’s one thing on which we are not well-matched and that’s the fact that neither of us is comfortable driving….

Miles got sick again this week. It wasn’t anything like how sick he got back in September when the vet suggested we consider putting him down, but it was still pretty scary. As I write this, he’s not quite out of the woods, but tests show his diabetes is very well-managed, so it seems it’s just a little bug that is (hopefully) on its way out. Seeing him so vulnerable again made us stop and take stock of how lucky we are to still have him around and how we need to make sure he knows every day how much we love him. I’ve been pretty good about carving time for just…