Whew! Wow, what a month this has been. It flew by. I cannot believe it. I just finished my first course, Media Literacy, for my master’s degree in Internet Marketing and I ABSOLUTELY loved it. I think going back to school  was the best decision I ever made. I am learning so much my brain is bursting with creativity. I made my own website on iWeb, a movie about myself on iMovie, set up an iGoogle page and created an avatar in Second Life. The latter of which was way cool. If you have never been to Second Life I highly recommend it. It is virtual reality at its best.

The greatest part of all of this is that this whole experience has brought Paul and me even closer together. We talk endlessly all day (we work together, remember) and into the night about  how we can work what I am learning into our current and future business plans. I have to create a marketing plan for my master’s thesis on a company of my choice so I am doing mine on our business. Paul tells me he has never seen me so happy, energized and creative. I agree. Going back to school at 48 , with five children has been an amazing experience. Everyone chips in to help out and whatever doesn’t get done I am learning to ignore. My standards of cleanliness have gone lower than ever before but who cares? I am a vessel of knowledge now and nothing is going to stop me.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m getting old. Old as in… when I bend down to pick up something my knees creak and I’m not sure I can get back up. Old as in… I’m getting red moles of the back of my knees like my mother had. And old as in … sometimes I forget where I left my kids. For example, this past weekend Eva had a sleepover at a friend’s house and she was gone Friday night and all day Saturday. With a houseful of all her siblings and their friends, I hardly missed her. Around 5pm on Saturday night she called me on my cell phone and asked me to come pick her up. And I thought to myself, “Pick you up? Where? All this time I thought you were in your room.” Nooooooo. I’m turning into my mother. Help!!! The red moles, the denial that I am losing my hearing, sight, mind… fill in the ___________. And now… I’m losing my kids!!! When they were babies I used to have nightmares that I drove off and left the car seat on roof of the car. Those were only bad dreams. This is my sad reality. In spite of my exhaustion, when they were little I always knew where they were. Now that they are teenagers, not so much.

I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself since my mom was guilty of  misplacing her children too. When we were kids she used to take us to WaWa after church on Sundays. (WaWa is a Northeastern regional convenience store chain similar to 7Eleven. I wish they had them here because they have the greatest milkshakes.) While Mom was at the deli counter we five kids would run wild through the store. My younger sister Jill and I would dip our hands into the pickle barrels, lick the pickles and throw them back in. (Aahh. Those were the days.) One day, Jill must have been in the bathroom when we left the store and drove home without her. I think we were home about a half hour when my mother  realized her “oversight” and shrieked in horror, “WE LEFT JILL IN WAWA!!!!!!!!!!!” We all clamored into the paneled station wagon (which my father had decorated with embarrassing Flower Power stickers) while my mom sped like a maniac back to the store where we found Jill wandering the aisles aimlessly, oblivious to the fact that we had left her in the store and had gone home without her.  My mother covered well when she told my sister, “Come on, Jill. Time to go.” Just as I did when I told Eva, “Sure, I’ll be right over to get you.” And we wonder why some children have abandonment issues.

Baby Jack born Jan. 4th, 9 lbs 8 oz

We have a new baby in the family, my great nephew born on Jan. 4th to my niece Joy and her husband Dale. (Not their real names.) Joy is my sister Nina’s daughter and she and everyone else in our family is ecstatic about the birth of the first baby born in our family in 13 years –my Eva being the youngest grandchild on my side of the family.

Since I live on the opposite coast as most of my family, I have to rely on stories and photos, text messaging and Facebook to hear what is going on. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall the night Joy and Dale brought their new son home from the hospital. I heard he cried in the middle of the night and they looked at each other frantically and exclaimed, “Oh my god, he’s crying. What do we do?”

Been there. I have a very vivid memory of bringing my first born, Sophia, home from the hospital. She was warm and cuddly nestled in her baby snuggy when I put her down in her new crib. And then a few hours later she woke up wailing and would… not…stop. It was at that moment when I couldn’t pawn the kid off onto someone else as in, “Here, your kid’s crying. Take it.” that I realized I was a parent and there was no turning back. I tried to nurse Sophia, but that did not go over well. I rocked her in my brand new glider rocker and that didn’t help either. I was fretful, resentful, and overwhelmingly exhausted. I just wanted this baby to stop crying and go back to sleep so I could too. And then I just gave in. I made peace with the possibility that I would be up all night and I relaxed and miraculously, she did too and fell back to sleep. I learned a very important parenting lesson very early on and that is to stop resisting the demands of my child and to just surrender to her needs, because a need that is fulfilled goes away.

Over the years I adapted to my new time management style of working in fits and starts as I took many breaks to tie a shoe, prepare a snack or wipe away a tear for my children. Some days seemed to drag on forever (like when Sophia had chicken pox and I had to entertain her by dropping a bouncy ball from our second floor balcony down to the first floor landing to distract her from scratching) yet the years still managed to fly by.  I can remember walking Sophia in a her stroller and middle aged strangers stopping to admire her and wistfully telling me, “I remember when my baby was that small. ” I now know how they feel.

So it is with this thought in mind that I would like to impart some advice to my niece Joy and her husband Dale and to all new parents everywhere: Take the time to enjoy your children. You can dust later. If your son wants you to read to him or help him solve a puzzle, leave the dishes in the sink. You’ll get to them eventually.  Savor the little things like a hand picked bouquet of weeds or his “abstract” art that hopefully wasn’t scribbled on the wall.  Don’t resist. Surrender. And always remember this: If you think he’s wearing you out now, wait ’til he’s a teenager. I know.

I didn’t want to announce my plans until they were finalized and yesterday I got word that I was officially accepted into graduate school. I will be getting my MS in Internet Marketing. I start in January. I am very excited about this. I have always regretted that I didn’t go to grad school right away after college, way back when, and have been toying with the idea of getting my master’s degree for years, but could never seem to settle on a concentration. Now that I am so heavily involved in the blogosphere and have always had a natural knack for marketing, publicity and sales, it all seemed like a natural fit. I have already started a marketing consulting business and have one client and possibly more. I am working up proposals for a few others. I would like to work with clients that have businesses that are meaningful to me and make a positive impact in the world. I look forward to promoting authors, (since I love to read) the green sector (I am currently working on getting my LEED AP) and anything having to do with food, health and nutrition since cooking and eating are my two favorite past times. Now that we are down to four kids, (Sam lives with his mom.) three cats, 1 dog, 1 fish and a bird, my life is a little less hectic. Paul and the kids said they will chip in as much as possible to ensure that I have more time to myself. Wish me luck.

This morning while I was cooking breakfast and packing lunches, I  reflected back on my life and thought of all the jobs and skills I have learned over the years that have prepared me for my current role of mom/stepmom to five children. I was once a waitress, a bartender, a cashier, a hotel laundress and a chambermaid. One job I never held was that of a short order cook. BUT I AM  ONE NOW. I’m also a taxi driver (although not so much now that the three oldest are driving), family therapist (lots of territory covered there), event and party planner, tutor, personal shopper and accountant. Oh,  I almost forgot: and cheerleader too. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that I am 48 and approaching the half century mark, I have decided to stop highlighting my hair and to let myself go gray. I am tired of the expense and the time it takes to sit in a chair for two hours and have someone glue foil onto my head. Besides,  I have several friends with beautiful white hair and I figured I would probably look the same since I am very fair and was a blonde when I was little.  I’m about three inches into the root growth and have made the grim discovery that I AM NOT GRAY AFTER ALL, JUST MOUSY BROWN.  So I am hightailing it to the hair salon today for a long overdue touch up because gray is one thing… but mousy brown… never.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake that decimated the South Bay area, including downtown Santa Cruz, where we now live. When most people think  of the quake they don’t realize that the epicenter was in Santa Cruz and not in San Francisco, where most of the media attention was drawn. I read the coverage in the Santa Cruz Sentinel this morning and it was very moving. Reading stories about people who died, people who risked their own lives saving others and the general sense of the community rallying around each other, brought tears to my eyes.

We were not living in Santa Cruz then. Jared, my ex and I had just moved into our apartment in Bayonne, NJ. Our wedding was in a week and a half. We would have been married 20 years this month. Oddly, I always associate the Loma Prieta Earthquake with the year we got married. We had just finished unpacking some boxes when we sat down to a late dinner to watch the San Francisco Giants in the World Series. And then  there was a commotion. The camera started shaking and people were screaming and then the TV screen went black. Local newscasters came on to say that there had been an earthquake.

We had no idea that in three years we would move to the very town that was the epicenter of the quake.  Although we never experienced the quake first hand, we heard lots of stories. Some of which were actually kind of funny, in an ironic sort of way. One friend of mine, a videographer for a local company, had just organized and categorized his collection of videos. It had taken him weeks to complete the task. He had just finished and proudly announced his accomplishment to his co-workers when the walls started shaking and everything came crashing down, videos strewn all over the room. Now that’s funny. And then there were the fateful stories of chance and good fortune.  Like the friend who told me she left work early that day and had she not, she most likely would have been killed because the desk where she sat had been crushed by a chandelier from the ceiling above.

Everyone has a story. Mine is that I was watching the Giant’s game on TV in New Jersey with my then fiance.  Which brings me to the point I am leading up to here which is — this month marks the 20th anniversary of The Loma Prieta quake. It also means that if Jared and I were still married we would be celebrating our 20th anniversary. It would have been a milestone for sure and I wonder how many milestones Paul and I will reach. We’ll probably make it to 20 years together barring any unforseen tragedy or illness. We’re young enough. But will we make it 30? 40? And unless we live to our 90’s, we will not see our golden anniversary, like my parents who were married 53 years. That’s a hard point for me to reconcile sometimes. Paul and I don’t have much of a past together, but we hope for a long future together. But knowing what we both know about the twists and turns life can take us, nothing is certain or forever. Like the stories I read in the paper this morning from people who recalled this day 20 years ago when they were sitting in a coffee shop and 15 seconds later, it was gone. A pile of rubble. Many things in life are temporary, so live in the moment and enjoy life while you can.

Paul and I had a much needed very romantic, relaxing and wonderful weekend. We had both been so stressed between working hard, managing the kids and ruminating over very important decisions  to make regarding our business. We’ve been on overdrive the past few months, usually working on Saturdays, running the kids around and maybe taking a few hours to ourselves on Sunday afternoon, which is not nearly enough time to completely unwind. This past weekend was much different.

On Friday afternoon Paul got a call from his friend Jack who lives in the South Beach section of San Francisco, right near the harbor and the AT&T stadium (formerly PacBell)  where the San Francisco Giants play. He invited us to come up and stay on his boat in the harbor and we impulsively jumped at the chance. We packed an overnight bag (it was a no kid weekend) and by 3PM we were on the road to San Francisco.

The weather was gorgeous. It was the perfect Indian summer evening by the bay. It was just the two of us sitting alone sipping wine on the deck of the boat. We could both feel all of our troubles and worries melting away. We walked around the harbor for a bit, soaking up the atmosphere, smelling the salt air, listening to the sounds of seagulls and boats creaking, and enjoying the beautiful views. We ate dinner at the Acme Chop House, a lovely steak house and pregame hang out. Afterward we walked through Willie Mays Plaza and caught the last three innings of the game. The Giants lost, but we didn’t care.

We slept on the boat, dozing off to its therapeutic rocking and woke early the next morning to beautiful sunshine. Jack and his wife met us for breakfast at a cafe and afterward we drove home.

Saturday afternoon we picked up the kids from  their other parents’ houses and took them to an Oktoberfest we are invited to every year. Friends of ours have a house on a lot of acreage out in the country and they host this giant potluck party every fall. Local bands play and several (I think 13 this year) home beer brewers come to enter the beer tasting contest. The kids all run through the woods and play and when it gets dark they light a huge bonfire and make s’mores. Hundreds of people come to this event. It is really special. Everyone had a great time.

The kids went back to their other parents and Paul and I had Sunday to ourselves. We took a long walk along the ocean and then came home and took a nap. Paul puttered around the yard while I made us a special dinner of leek, bacon and pea risotto. Paul grilled some salmon and I tossed a salad. When I came outside to see what he was doing, I discovered  he had cleaned the outside patio, lit the outdoor fireplace and set up a cafe table in front of it. Candles were lit all around, soft music was playing and  a glass of wine was waiting for me. Perfect.

We reminisced about how we first met 4 1/2 years ago and how we used to spend our kid free weekends like this all the time. Then we got married, remodeled our house, blended our families and started a business and  got sidetracked from focusing on just us and our relationship. At the end of the evening I turned to Paul and said, “I think we got our groove back.” He agreed. We made a vow to each other to have a lot more weekends like this one.

Hallelujah. (Cue the choir.) Jared, her father, and I, took her to the DMV today and waited while she took her test; confident that she would pull it off and SHE ROCKED!!!! Way to go Sophia. It was a right of passage, not only for her, but for us too. I had flashbacks of watching her take her first steps. My baby. My firstborn. Now a “teen driver”. Where did the time go?

Sophia, who is a junior in high school,  is taking trig and precalculus and Eva, who is in 8th grade, is taking 10th grade level geometry. They have  gotten to the point where we can no longer help them with their math homework, which means we are basically useless. Obsolete. At the end of our useful life. So you can imagine my delight when Eva came to me and asked, “What’s a conjunction?”

“Well,” I shrieked with glee in response, “A conjunction joins two parts of a sentence together. But and  and are both examples of a conjunction.”

Eva sighed, rolled her eyes to the top of her head and whined, “I meant a conjuction in math.”

Shot down again. I had no idea math had conjuctions. What do I know?