Turning 40...

Yesterday, I turned 40 and kicked off my yearlong birthday extravaganza by spending a (mostly) quiet day with family. I have concerts, plays, classes, dinners with friends and road trips on the agenda throughout 2011. Today, I marked my second day as a forty-year old by getting my first mammogram. Not surprisingly, they are very uncomfortable, but no more so than a bad dinner party. I've actually only been to one or two bad dinner parties, but it's not an experience I'm anxious to repeat. A mammogram is over in about fifteen minutes and has the potential to save your life. A bad dinner party drags on all night and leaves a bad taste in your mouth, no matter how good the food is. Now that I am older and wiser, I plan to have a mammogram every year and to do my best to never attend a bad dinner party. Life is short enough as it is.

That's one of the great things about getting older, you get a much better sense of what really matters. As the hair grays, and the stomach grows, and the skin wrinkles, the mind begins to shift it's focus. A lot of what should have been obvious becomes so. For example, I am almost always late. I make lists, I wear a watch, I calendar every appointment, but still manage to show up on average 10-15 minutes late. I recently discovered that if I focus on what time I have to leave to get to the appointment, rather than the actual time of the appointment, I am less likely to give in to magical thinking when it comes to my prep and travel time. Sound overly simple, obvious even? It is. Unless you are someone who is chronically late and always looking for some sort of miracle answer to the problem. I'm gonna try this new strategy and let you know what happens.

I don't have all the answers by a long shot, but with each passing year I'm less inclined to worry about it. This might be one of the reasons that, with few exceptions, each year seems better than the last. Less stressing about stupid stuff. So my forties are fixing to be a pretty amazing time. Not that my life is without trials. Believe me, I have had my share of heartache, but on the whole things are good.  I am also happily continuing to work on my writing. I will never get rich from it, but it really does make me happier. And, far from being a solitary pursuit, I have met a lot of great people as a result of my writing. This year I'm going to rev things up and work on a longer piece. (I don't want to jinx it by using the "n" word.) Wish me luck!

Outgrowing the sitter...

After about two years of agonizing,  I have decided that my family no longer needs a regular babysitter. It seems like an unjustified extravagance, so I have decided to let her go after the holidays. Sounds easy, right? Just tell her our needs have changed and we no longer require her services. Give her a couple weeks notice and a few extra bucks and call it a day.

Real life complicates things. Emotions enter the picture.

Our sitter can't drive and doesn't really cook. Two facts which greatly affect her employability. The economy is in the toilet. The classified ads in the local paper have about ten ads for nannies seeking employment each week, and almost never an ad seeking to hire one. Did I mention our nanny moved here from a foreign country and sends money back to her mother who looks after the sitter's two children? Did I mention she's a really nice person, whom I've grown very close to over the last four years? It's hard not to feel responsible.

Am I responsible? How responsible should employers be for their hires? Do CEOs who fire hundreds of people at a time feel personally accountable?

I guess what I really want to know is: what is the most fair and ethical way to fire our sitter? How can I end the relationship and still have us all feeling relatively good about our time together?

Freakishly good morning

Monday was fine, but this morning approached sublime. It is crisp and sunny--a perfect fall day. I was out of bed around 6:30. I wrote. I drank tea. I made the lunches and snacks. I read a few paragraphs of the Debra Winger interview in the NYT magazine I've been saving. Sure this all took place in half an hour, but it was a glorious half hour.

My husband brought the children downstairs dressed. We fed them, loaded up the backpacks, etc. and hubby walked our two oldest to school, while the little guy and I finished breakfast. We actually had enough time to take the dog for a little walk around the neighborhood before leaving for preschool. And we arrived on time. Yes. On time. If you knew me, you would know what a wonderful and unexpected bonus that is. I was chronically late as a child, and even now I always have to try to do one more thing before heading out the door. Today, more than satisfied with the morning's accomplishments, I packed us directly in the van after our walk--not one more thing was necessary. Then I got a blissful 2.25 hours to catch up on emails, read a few blogs (see below), write a little, finish reading the Debra Winger interview, and indulge my wonderfully sickening addiction to diet coke. All of this in peace, with me alone in my own house, quite possible my favorite place on earth.

Now I am off to cardio tennis. One of my favorite mommy extracurriculars. Sounds ideal doesn't it? It surely is. Are you wondering, are all her mornings like this? I can say with certainty--not even f*cking close. Thank God today happened to prove the dream is possible every once in awhile.

Changing the clocks makes me philosophical...

I am surprisingly excited about changing the clocks this weekend. For the past two weeks I have been struggling to get out of bed. Come morning, I feel the cool air in my bedroom and pull the covers to my neck. Then glancing out the little sliver of window that's uncovered by the blind, the dark gray sky makes me want to fall back into my dreams. Today, Sunday, the first day with the clocks back, the day I can safely sleep-in, I was happily up before 7. (Notice I also started a blog today.)

Now I am daydreaming about getting out of bed at the crack of dawn, from this day forward, to shower, dress, write a chapter, make lunches, blog, savor a cup of tea, bake bread, and generally solve all the world's problems before waking the children for school. Fantasy aside, will this actually translate into getting up early on Monday? I have to believe it will help. I have to believe that small changes can make a big impact. We can't all move to India to find ourselves. I barely have time to pick up the phone and talk to faraway people I love.

My life has changed tremendously in the past decade. What once felt like a leisurely country ride on a tandem bike, now feels like a cross-country trek on a steam locomotive. There are more passengers and baggage and it's much harder to turn the vehicle around, but there are few opportunities for wrong turns because the track is already laid out. Life is good, but the sheer weight of it can be overwhelming. The heaviness involved with caring for others and being responsible for people in addition to yourself. Children grow and parents age--until they don't anymore. I have to remind myself that the old folks are right, I will be longing for these crazy moments once they're gone forever. The muddy dog jumping on the couch, the children puking in our bed, the fights to get little people to brush their teeth; these moments will be funny anecdotes. Some of them are already. I should be bounding out of bed everyday, excited to see what the gods have come up with, but my sneaky mattress often tricks me into staying in bed longer than I should, causing everyone to rush and have a miserable morning. But this Monday, thanks to the time change, that sliver of daylight peaking out from around the blinds, just might be enough to make me slide my legs out from under my warm blankie and start solving all the world's problems.