David’s dad’s funeral was just a week ago. Today we went to the beach club, our local pool, it was packed with kids and parents and slurpees and hot as hell. I got there at 9 am with the boys to make sure we got a good table for our dinner with friends tonight. Everyone came with their cooler and chips and we drank super sour vodka tonics and went swimming and then during dinner I started talking with friends about how strange it is that a week ago I was at a funeral and how our lives are now forever changed by Tony’s death and there is no traditional ritual beyond last weekend that lets other people, friends and strangers know that we have experienced a deep loss. I wish we could hang a funeral drape over our door. Or that I was regulated to a black wardrobe like Queen Victoria or I’d have to strap on an armband of a certain color and design that said, it was my father in law who has died, and my life has changed in that way where I’m grieving for others even more than myself.

But there is nothing that precedes our sadness and in some ways its easier to not be wearing it literally on my sleeve but by not saying anything and by not wearing anything different feels disingenuous because everything in our lives has be drained of its color. I sat at the beach club in a blue and white lattice printed tankini, but my life is not nearly as ship shape as the pattern suggests. And I want everyone to know, without me having to tell them, that we are no longer the same. We are hurting and broken and sad I cannot figure out if we need taco sauce or salsa in the supermarket.  I’m seriously scattered. Field trip dates are scrambled. I think I forgot to take Dash to a playdate Friday. Even today, I was signaling to go into the beach club and maybe, probably, I was going a little slow. The car behind me was annoyed and  honked right up my tail and all I wanted to do was get out of the car and tell that driver,  don’t honk at me today–I’m lucky to have packed the cooler with the fruit salad and beer and pork loin and pokemon cards. Don’t honk at me you asshole, you have no idea why I need to go slow.

I came across these photos of Elizabeth Taylor at weight loss spa on Vanity Fair. Here are my faves.

The piece says she lost 22 pounds, she did a lot of driving around in golf carts (she didn’t have running shoes) and swapped liquor for cranberry juice. I’m inspired!

This Spring, I spent many evenings on the phone with my mom or texting David’s mom while making dinner and drinking in the kitchen. Some nights I’d move on to a chocolate covered pretzels, Girl Scout cookies or handpacked ice cream. As a result, I’m nowhere ready to wear a tankini or even a coverup and our pool, the Montclair Beach Club, opens next week. Every year I try to whip myself into shape knowing I’ll have to spend the next three months socializing in swimwear. But it was hard winter and even harder spring—my dad had heart surgery and my family lost two very important people. David’s father, Tony, and Joyce, my mother’s best friend, surrogate mother to me, both lost their battles with cancer.

I’m thinking of writing “Joyce Copelan, RIP, March 11^th” down one thigh; “Tony Moore, RIP, May 17^th” down the other, and “Bill Castagnoli  ICU Spring 2011” across my ass to make it clear that I needed easier comforts this winter than salad and squats and to seek out forgiveness, mostly my own, for not being prepared for the inevitable.

David and I are very close with my next door neighbors Molly and Sean and our kids are equally close with their kids Logan and Stella. Every morning Molly opens her kitchen and I let the dogs out and we chat through her kitchen window. And every evening at 5:00 my kids or her kids come knocking and everyone plays on the lawns and shares bikes, swords and guns. Sugar, shovels, wine, babysitting is all shared between our two houses.

So I wasn’t really thinking about anything the other day when they were away for Easter and I needed forsythia for my centerpiece. I have two bushes that are okay, bright but not stellar.  Molly has about five huge forsythia bushes, that I happen to know she hates because when she was a kid her mom made her weed Saturday mornings so she has a general disdain for gardening (except that she loves tulips). As I said I wasn’t really thinking much of anything when I went next door with a scissors and started to snip snip and snip away at her bright bountiful flowers. I had a sizable bushel in my arm when all of a sudden Sean, her husband pulls up on his bike and sees me red–or in this case–yellow handed with a large and guilty bouquet of forsythia.

Sean looked at me half-joking half-incredulous and said, “So this is what you do when you think we are not home?” Despite all the love, I wanted to die. He exacted the perfect punishment: he pulled out his phone and shot me with scissors and stolen flowers in hand.

His text read: I pull in and see our neighbor stealing from us….

All I could do was admit my crime and send her the photo of my haul. It was so pretty, even she admitted it was worth getting caught.

While researching the Happiest Kid book for Parenting this fall, I attended a workshop at Teacher’s College that included a class on how to use the world as the classroom. We talked a lot about family field trips and when it comes to museums, I learned, that I was doing it all wrong.  I am notorious for pushing my family to see one painting, sculpture garden or installation too many that causes my children collapse into tears and husband to give me the “I told you so” hairy eyeball. You would not believe the acoustics at the Met. Some of those galleries really know how to amplify a temper tantrum.

Since that workshop we’ve had two extremely successful trips at museums this year (see the pics).  You may already do all this, but it changed our visits so much I had to share.

Pick an exhibit on a topic they learning about right now: Timeliness is key. Museums are places to reinforce what a child already knows, it’s not a place to learn about something brand new. There is too much competing for their attention and they just get tired—fast. Conrad had finished a pop art unit in his art class where he created his own Wahrol-like drawing, so on Sunday we took the boys to see the new modern expressionism show at MoMA. As soon as he saw the soup cans he said, “See it’s an ordinary thing, painted lots of times.” For a moment it felt like I was in that scene from BabyBoom where a precocious toddler compares the sky to Cezanne, but Con is 8 and I was so proud, I didn’t care.

Limit what you see: The more specific you can be about what you are going to see the more interested your kids will be. I learned that short, strategic trips are much more fun than my wandering tiring ones. Dashy is currently fascinated with knights so we made a trip to see Arms and Armor at the Met. It took about an hour and everyone was happy and interested the whole time.

Reduce the gift shop splurge to a postcard: In previous years, after making my kids walk through all those galleries, I felt they had earned a tube of plastic Dinosaurs or a paint set from the gift shop. But those toys only made them remember the gift shop, not the actual museum. Now that our visits are more efficient, the trip becomes their gift and they get to pick out one post card as a souvenir of what they liked most. We have quite a zany collection going and it’s much more meaningful to all of us.

Invite cool friends you don’t get to see often: The trip has a aura of glam if you can meet up with friends you haven’t seen in a while. We did MoMA with old friends Tiffany and Brian who the boys think are pretty much the most famous, funniest and awesome people on earth (us too).  So that helps.

PS: And let them take pictures

Just in time for the Superbowl ad buzz comes an spot for Volkswagon that my kids love almost as much as Star Wars itself.

Watch the ad here.

They haven’t asked for a Volkswagon yet, but if they do, its okay, I like the ad enough to live with the request.

On Friday, a girl in Conrad’s class brought in cupcakes for her birthday. On the girls cupcakes were cute little plastic purses, on the boys cupcakes were little plastic football helmets and on Conrad’s cupcake was a… martini glass?!

He told me as soon as he got off the bus and tried to act like he was upset because apparently everyone laughed when he got it. I’m sure it felt like a booby prize of a cupcake but I was laughing so hard that I probably didn’t offer much comfort. As you can see he came around and started to ham it up. I want to meet the birthday girl’s mom, I mean clearly she and I could hang out, perhaps even bake together.

Recently I realized I’m no longer a mom, I’m a  MOMMO. It’s a term I’ve made up for Mothers of Massively Multiplayer Online gamers. It’s a play on MMO, an acronym for massively multiplayer games, like World of Warcraft. In our house the MMO is Lego Universe. I could be glib and say we decided to get Conrad addicted to video games early in life by giving him a subscription to the game for Christmas. But after three weeks on Lego Universe, overseen with a lot of parental involvement (David) and rules about when and how long he can play (Me and David), he has become obsessed with the game.  When he wakes up the first thing he says is “Oh and Mom did you know that you can get someone to build something for you if you don’t have enough imagination points.” I nod, even though I’m unclear on what he is really talking about and I try to ask him questions to help me understand what happens in this other world.  His chatty obsession doesn’t bother me. Boys love to hoard trivia about a topic whether its Baseball or Star Wars or Lego Universe, knowing the minutae is a way of telling their friends “I’ve been there, I’ve done that.”

What is upsetting me is the way he acts in anticipation of the playing the game. Things like eating, playing with his brother, talking to me, and doing homework (ok no big surprise there) are rushed just so he can get to the game. I know I sound like I’m being a little picky here. I get it, he’s excited. But he is also extremely anxious and he gets mean—fast. If anything unexpected happens, for instance a neighbor drops by to say hello, his grandmother calls, a drink spills he becomes panicked that he’ll have  even less time to play the game and is nasty to everyone. His intensity annoys and scares me. Conrad clearly does not want to be here in this house, in this family, heck in this Universe and I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic here. He really wants to be in this other world. I imagine this must be what its like for parents with a teenager who just got his learners permit. You let him take the car and then he forgets to call you or answer his phone. Its a mixture of worry and anger–you let him go and now he may really be gone.  And just like a real teenager, even when I tell him he can play in a hour once his homework is done, he’s read a book and cleaned up the play room he still cops an attitude.

My issue is that Conrad is only 8. I didn’t think I’d have to be dealing with his exasperation at having to sit through dinner so soon. The game has put us in that cliched power struggle of me wanting to talk to him and find out how his day was and all he wants to do is ask to be excused so that he can run upstairs and log onto a world he prefers more than his real one.

I know why the game is so satisfying. Each moment he plays there are challenges he knows he can face and as soon as does he is rewarded with points and coins and status. The real world is a lot less reassuring and harder to control. If Conrad picks up a book he may find that some words are hard and he doesn’t understand them. When he plays with his brother or that neighbor who dropped in he has to negotiate and deal with consequences of playing fair. And when he wants to spend time with me things don’t always go the way he had hoped—he wants to play a game when I have to make dinner or I’m on the phone or I misunderstand what he’s trying to tell me.

Sometimes it is easier to let him just go play the game. When I do, in that moment I’m the best mom ever and he loves me so much he tells me so and gives me a kiss on the lips. I see the relief in his eyes, his whole body changes, he’s confident as he runs up the stairs to my office, his shoulders are relaxed and he’s got a bounce in his step. He feels released and I feel like an enabler.

Okay so what’s with all the copper gutters in Montclair? The other day I almost had a car accident because I was practically blinded by a house outfitted with iridescent piping. I love patina too. But these gutters are so bright and peachy that I can’t imagine having the patience to wait for them to oxidize. The owners of this house must have the same feeling a new mother does when she’s handed a wrinkly newborn. Friends may only an ugly pink face, but they can see the future and know their baby will turn into a swan.

Apparently, there are two other patient home-owners in town because very recently I stumbled on these houses also outfitted with copper though both used a more considered approach.

I know its hard to see because I took the picture with my phone but you can make out a pinkish gleam under the roof. It’s as if the house is wearing a simple necklace. Say what you will about the scroll ornamentation above the door but when the copper oxidizes over those curves its going to streak and drip creating a spectacular patina. According to copper.org it can take 20-25 years for it to turn into that ivy league pale green but it will be fun to watch in the meantime.

Here copper laid above the windows on the and the arch above the doorway (again the my phone doesn’t do it justice). Apparently, copper that’s laid horizontally will oxidize faster that copper that’s laid vertically because it’s exposed to elements more so these folks won’t have to wait very long for it to pay off. The rust-color is already there and it will turn green in five years.

I was surprised to get a text from the Montclair school district at 10pm Tuesday night saying school would be closed today.  I  felt like they were calling it too soon. Going to bed knowing that we didn’t have school made the whole thing feel anticlimatic, as if the next day was my birthday but I knew what all my presents were already.

The boys however woke up psyched and the snow day routine was taking shape. What I’ve noticed about snow days out here is that they allow us suburbanites to indulge in a bit of time travel. Even though we can still get our work email and text each other when the trains service is delayed or canceled we realize that we are marooned out here on snowbank that is our little town and  Montclair becomes our childhood of 1979 or that of our parents of 1950. The pattern goes like this:

8am: Husbands are up already. Despite wanting to sleep in, they need to check trains and should probably get shoveling.

8:30 mothers and children wake up. Mothers explain no school today does not mean there will be no school tomorrow. Very young children and older children going through a know-it-all phase will try to argue this point. Mothers offer to do some shoveling and luckily us just as we go to put our boots on our neighbor comes by with his snowblower and does the front walk and sidewalk for us. Dads insist on doing the rest because he has a certain way he wants to snow to be piled.

8:45 Quiet streets are now buzzing with snowblowers. It’s so noisy you can’t call out to your neighbor who just snowblowed your walk to ask him if he’d like coffee.

11:30: Kids are bonkers from playing video games/cartoons/DS. Husbands decide they can make the 11:30 train. They text friends to see who also needs ride. Kids are left with one neighbors to play in snow. The wife with the biggest car races to the station with four grown men in her minivan.

12:30 the kids have snow down their backs, clumped in their hair and someone is crying because they lost a glove.

12:45: Lunch: mac n’cheese and hot chocolate.

2:00 Sledding! Text friends, choose a hill meet everyone there. Kids are ambivalent, the idea of going out in the cold seems crazy compared to staying inside and wearing pajamas all day. Mothers know they have to get thier kids outside or else it the afternoon will get ugly—fast. Everyone piles into the car with complaints but once they see the hill they can’t wait.

Today we had at least fifteen kids between us, it was beautiful, sunny and the hill was perfectly packed. We made trains by wrapping our legs around each others discs, we rode flimsy plastic “magic carpets” down on our stomachs and I realized I can’t do a lot of things tummy first anymore. We fit three grown women in a toboggan and did a 360. Kids jumped on sleds and went down the hill backwards with their arms in the air. Kids went down the staircases on their knees laughing the whole way down. Kids wiped out without crying. Kids got tired from walking up the hill and burst into tears when it was time to go at 4:30 and the sun was setting.

5:00 Pizza. Friendlys. Crap food all around to feul us back up from sledding, a deceptive and awesome workout.

7:30 Husbands need to be picked up at train. Mothers and kids are really tired and really cranky and no one would know from the mean things kids are saying to their moms: You NEVER play with me! or the mom’s are saying to their kids: “Move your slowpoke booty! Your father is going to freeze to death!” That it really was the best day ever. There is a light dinner for the husband, pizza or chili from a friend who made too much, like I said, we went back to 1979 not 1950.

9:00 Fall asleep in front of a movie and hope tomorrow is 50 and sunny so we can come back to 2011.