iMessage Loud and Clear

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I’ll admit it; I caved.  My eleven-year old son Bodie has been angling for an iPhone for the better part of two years.  He repeatedly recites the list of friends who, by the age of nine, had been given cell phones of their own, then caps off his performance with a soulful rendition of that tearful ballad “I’m The ONLY One Who Doesn’t Have One”.  While I don’t want to hold my son back, I never enrolled him in the Junior Executive Program, so I didn’t see the point in giving him a phone back then.

But last month he started walking to and from school on his own, exposing a little known philosophy I held deep within me:  Offspring cannot be out of eyeshot, even for the twelve-minute walk to school, without access to parental supervision.  Ok, I’ll OWN it!  I feel better knowing I can reach him, or moreover, he can reach me, if needs be.  After all, it’s not the same world we grew up in (yup, I just officially became my mother.) Read more

C’est WHAT?

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Wait For It

Last Friday I woke up in Paris.  Oh, not literally.  And sadly, not to the café latte and sinful croissant I should have been offered, given the circumstances.  At 6:55 a.m. my nine-year-old daughter Delia burst into our room and sounded this verbal alarm:

“MAMA!”  Bang… consciousness.  “You did remember this is the day I have to hand in my Paris project, right?!”

WHAA…?  Dislodging the second earplug from its canal, I tried to piece together the vast lapses in memory that had brought me to this frenzied start to my day. Read more

Mother Knows Dressed

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Every spring, as I put away my drab, colourless winter wardrobe and pull out my drab, colourless short sleeved one, I look to my children’s closets to give me that fashionista-fix that, apparently as a woman, I’m hardwired to need.  Truth be told, I’ve never enjoyed shopping for clothes for myself, particularly after having had babies.  Of course, my littlest bundle is almost 483 weeks, so I’m sure those extra 15lbs should fall off any day now. Read more

50 Shades of Grey… Hair

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50 Shades of Grey Hair

Summer 2013 is barreling down on me fast.  Beyond the usual “How in God’s name am I going to fill TWO WHOLE MONTHS with my kids?”, I’m consumed this year by a far greater lament.  On July 30th, I will turn fifty years old.  F-I-F-T-Y years old.

I’m not sure who coined the phrase “fifty is the new thirty”, but chances are they were pretty hopped up on Botox when they said it.  Believe me, I’m happy to have reached this milestone in one piece, but my chassis could sure use an oil n’ lube at this point.

When I look back on my mother at this age, she was squeezing herself into a latex girdle and shellacking her beige hair into a carbon fiber dome every morning, so I guess by comparison, I’m keepin’ it real.  Of course, I have been known to use a little hairspray from time to time… Read more