20 Monday May 2013
Posted in Boston
In a little over a week I will be hitting my mid-thirties. This for some reason scares the bejesus out of me. When I was a kid, I thought by now my friends and I would all have our shit together. We would all have 2.5 children and a white picket fence.
20 Monday May 2013
Posted in Guest Post
Tags
Bringing Up Bebe, French Parenting, having kids, How the French Do It, how to have kids and a life, overparenting, Pamela Druckerman, Parenting
Today’s guest blogger is Carly Lockman, a Board certified holistic health coach, wife and parent living in Chicago. She enjoys impossible vintage apartments and Woody Allen. You can find her and her fantastic insight at www.carlylockman.com.
*** 
I’ve been reading this book on French parenting, Bringing Up Bébé. In it author Pamela Druckerman investigates why French children are impeccably behaved and how French parents manage to be good parents while remaining somewhat uncompromising of adult pleasures. You know, like drinking coffee while it’s still warm. Or having a full conversation with another adult. Continue reading »
14 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Chicago
Tags
guilt and service industry, I'm a liberal asshole, pedicure guilt, race and service industry, white guilt
A few weeks ago, I got a Groupon for $65 full leg wax and pedicure at a downtown spa. I could care less about the pedicure, but full leg wax for $65? I’m about it. I finally got around to making an appointment for last Monday. The spa is of course over the top beautiful and is decorated with lots of wood paneling and stones in bowls, also made of wood, and smells like your college dorm when they’d try to cover up the weed smell with overpowering incense. They also had a live parrot in a wooden cage. I approached the parrot carefully, as I do all animals, both out of respect for its autonomy of being and to avoid getting my damn finger bit off. He or she gave me the eye and pulled away at my approach. The little thing was shaking. I do not like birds kept in cages for our pleasure. But I digress.
So the actual waxing experience could be an entire blog post on its own, as I decided to throw in a Brazilian to the full leg (as long as I’m there, let’s just giterdone). I get Brazilians all the time, but let’s just say that this one was unique, as it had Veronica the esthetician saying several times throughout the experience, “I am sooo sorry. Oh my god. In my five years of doing this I have never had this happen before!” But I’m here now to focus on the pedicure. Continue reading »
13 Monday May 2013
Posted in Boston
A., I, and some friends headed over to the Steampunk Festival in Waltham this past weekend. I am not going to lie, my goal was to gawk. I am pretty open-minded when it comes to people’s preferences, but for some reason the idea of walking around with a bunch of gears attached to your head is a bit bewildering to me.
That being said, I learned some valuable lessons along the way and was happy to see so many people out and about embracing their true selves.
12 Sunday May 2013
Posted in Guest Post, Philadelphia, Random
Happy Mother’s Day to all our mama readers!
Today’s guest post is appropriately mama themed and comes to us from Roxanne Halpine Ward, a Philadelphia-based writer/editor/yogini. You can check out her thoughts on yoga and fitness, writing, and life with her husband and Yoga Baby over at Rox Does Yoga.
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As a new mom, I love breastfeeding my daughter.
But as a working mom, I hate pumping.
First there’s the practical problem of lugging the thing around. It’s too heavy to carry on my 20-minute walk to the train station. I solved this for a while by putting a big basket on my bike, but then it got too cold to ride. Now my husband drops me off at the train, then takes the baby to daycare; at night he picks the baby up first, then me, so if my train runs late (and it does), then I’m inconveniencing the entire family, because I can’t just walk home with the pump. Now one of the straps on my pump bag has broken, making it awkward even to carry it the four blocks from the station to my office. Maybe I should mount wheels and a handle on it, like a piece of luggage, so I can drag it? The milk commute sucks. Continue reading »
09 Thursday May 2013
Posted in Boston
It has been a disheartening week. The news out of Cleveland, the ongoing saga here in Boston of the Tsarnaev brothers and their friends and family and everyone’s role in the bombing, the sexual assault charges brought against the man who’s supposed to be preventing sexual assaults in the Air Force – each of these stories alone is bad, but together they’re overwhelming enough to make you think that humanity is in a terrible place. Clearly we deserve that zombie apocalypse that’s heading right for us. I am only sort of kidding.
So let’s focus on something else instead for a moment. Let’s think about one of the best part of humanity. Let’s talk about Delaware. (That’s not where you thought I was going, was it?) Continue reading »
07 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Chicago
Tags
1950's attitudes and beliefs, 1950s attitude toward drugs, 1950s TV, Dragnet, Dragnet Videos, Jack Webb, Joe Friday, the story you are about to see is true
Now it’s no secret that I love bad TV. Real Housewives of Anywhere, The Kardashians, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, anything that parades people around like buffoons, yet they think it’s a good business decision (which it often ironically is). One of my favorite TV shows has come to be Dragnet. The series aired from 1951-1959 and followed Sergeant Joe Friday and Bill Gannon through the gritty, behind-the-scenes of police work in LA. Jack Webb played Friday, as well as wrote and directed a lot of the episodes. But oh boy, are they bad. Everything from the writing, to the stiff acting, the rushed, back-and-forth delivery of lines to the bizarre body language really makes Dragnet unlike anything you’ll find on TV, before or since. My Dad records old episodes and we’ll watch a bunch of them. “How did this ever air?” is a common utterance. For example:
03 Friday May 2013
Tags
So I participated in my first food swap. I was nervous for weeks before, actually. I love cooking, baking in particular, but I don’t count myself a foodie or skilled chef.
For those of you who’ve never heard of a food swap, it’s sort like a combination of a Whole Foods and a flea market. Each participant has his or her own little area to display his/her food and delicious samples for fellow swappers to try. The principle is simple. Make healthy homemade food in bulk, preferably something that can be stored or frozen for a long period of time, and trade it. You can make as much or as little as you’d like, but your food is your currency; no money allowed. So the more sophisticated the food, and the more of it you have, the more likely you will be to get a good amount of quality food in return. I made pickles and quiche. Continue reading »
02 Thursday May 2013
Posted in Boston
Tags
30s, a writer's life, being an adult, careers, decision making, Enneagram, freelancing, indecision, job, the freelance life, too many options
Have you ever looked at toys with a toddler? I’ve been in the toy aisle of Target with my 4 year old a bunch of times, and it is amazing how long it takes to pick out a simple toy car. We try to stick to Target and avoid an actual toy store for fear that in a space filled only with toys, it would take us a full 24 hours of negotiating the merits of this toy over that one only to have his head explode in the end over the sheer possibilities. Choosing just one from the many options is a marathon event for him. I think it stresses him out.
As impatient as I tend to get during this process, in many ways I’m sure I’m no better at making a decision. Sure, with the small stuff I decide fast – what to have for lunch, what music to listen to at any given moment, what book to get from the library (when it comes to books, I just get everything). But with bigger stuff like jobs, a house, marriage, kids, these things took me ages to decide. Ice ages, in some cases. I don’t like to cut out any options, and obviously making certain decisions means you forgo the opportunity to make certain others. Continue reading »
30 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted in Chicago
Tags
Enneagram, Free Enneagram Test, free personality test, free self-help tools, Nine Types, self-discovery
I don’t place much stock in “personality tests,” but I find Enneagram tests to be really helpful tool to learning about yourself and others.
I believe that every single person just wants two things: To be loved and to be safe (and those two things can be very intertwined). The way every individual goes about getting loved and getting safe can be very different. Some are positive: soul-searching, healthy friendships and finding hobbies. And others are negative: building walls, pushing people away, being an asshole so you’re never the one to get hurt (“Hey, I warned you I was messed up.”) Whatever. We’re all just trying to get ok. An Enneagram test is a tool to help identify your basic desires and basic fears and your communication style. I think this is huge. A lot of times we act without even knowing why. Sometimes it takes years to figure it out. But once we know what it is that we want or that we’re afraid of, we can deal with it. Sometimes identifying it is half the battle. Continue reading »
