Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 54

What’s Our Thing?

As our daughters pick up Maturation Momentum and hurtle toward adulthood, I’ve grown increasingly panicky. That’s why I follow my husband around the house every weekend saying, “What’s Our Thing going to be?”

You know, the Thing? The Thing you did together with your partner, before you had kids? That Thing you talked about together when you weren’t at work, maybe planned for, looked forward to together?

We had a lot of Things, back in the day. We went to JazzFest in New Orleans every year. We watched football. We sought out good Chinese food and barbeque. We shopped for really expensive eyeglass frames. All those things were part of our Relationship.

And then we had kids, and our Thing became The Kids. Talking about them, thinking about them, thinking about talking about them. Of course we still have a Relationship that is separate from our kids, but it is squeezed to the margins of the Thing that is The Kids, like a border frame on an Instagram photo.  Marital therapists would probably counsel against having The Kids become The Thing in order to keep The Relationship healthy, but most parents I know have taken the same route, at least temporarily. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. And besides, The Kids are pretty awesome.

Still, they’re leaving home in three and six years respectively. And as I talked about in my last post, they’re getting busy enough in the meantime that we are getting long glimpses into the empty frame that could be all that’s left of The Relationship. Hence, the “What’s Our Thing” game show host routine to which I subject my husband, a line of inquiry which leads him to look like he’d rather be having his gums scraped.

“It could be photography!” I say. “We could take a class together!” Like I’m ever going to use anything besides my iPhone to take pictures from here on out.

“College football could be Our Thing!” I say. “We used to watch it, remember?” Remember how I pretended to like football when we first started dating only because I knew you did? Remember when we watched it as newlyweds because we lived in DC and it was winter and there was so much snow that we couldn’t go outside so we might as well watch it? Remember how I sat down to watch football with you on the last three Saturdays, and I lasted about 32 seconds before I thought of something I wanted to look up on the computer in my office, and how I never came back?

“We could walk the dog together every evening!” I say. Is that enough of a Thing to sustain a marriage? I doubt it. Achilles thinks it could work.

“We could watch The Wire together!” I say. Problem: I can’t stomach graphic tv violence. Bigger problem: my husband downloaded Season 1 to his iPad about a month ago, and is currently consuming the entire series like a starving man who’s just been pointed to a buffet. That Thing has already left the station.

“Travel! Travel will be our thing!” We both agree that travel à deux could be our thing, but there isn’t really time to do it while the children are still living at home. Then, once they leave for college, there won’t be money.  So, put a pin in that one for a while.

So while we’re still looking for Our Thing, I obviously Got My Own Thing (sing it, Liz Phair.) It’s Worrying About Our Thing.

***

But wait! There’s hope! As I was putting the final touches on this post, I was contacted by a company called HowAboutWe…for Couples. The company’s service started off as a dating site but now targets couples, offering all kinds of cool dates tailored for two. From screen printing classes to paddleboard lessons on the Bay to a beer making class at a Brew Lab, the company makes it easy to try some new Things with your partner.

Membership costs $18/month (discounts apply if you sign up for longer memberships) and that gets you one free date a month, plus deals on everything else and access to a concierge who will help you plan something special. As I’m writing this, there are really good date deals on both a Drake show and a Flaming Lips show, and a class on how to use a saber to open a bottle of champagne. THAT would be a cool Thing. “Sorry we can’t come to dinner at your house on Saturday, we’ll be going Zorro all over the champagne bottles at a local wedding reception. We also do bar mitzvahs, here’s our card.”

And one Midlife Mixtape reader is going to win a free year’s membership to HowAboutWe…for Couples, a $140 value! Just leave a comment and let me know your dream date with your partner, and I’ll choose a winner using Random.org next Tuesday, 11/5 at 5 pm PST. (Right now the company operates in NYC, Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco, so you probably want to be in those cities to enter.) In the meantime, if you’re impatient like me, you can get $50 off a membership right away by clicking on this link.

So get commenting! And by the way, no promotional consideration was given for this post. I just wanted to give one of my loyal readers the chance to find a new Thing. While we flail around figuring out ours.

                  Related StoriesHappy Grown-Up AnniversaryPress Release: My Family Deserves a Press Release TooGive It A Rest 

Premature Obsolescence

A weird thing happened during the summer between having 6th/9th graders and having 7th/10th graders. I became prematurely obsolete.

Oh, my two daughters still need me to drive, and pay for things, and sign permission slips. There are still things that only I can do for them – I’m still the one who sees the lip quiver of distress that no one else notices, because I’ve monitored that face since it was one second old, and the one who knows when, in the middle of someone’s crabby tirade, to say, “You seem hungry. Are you maybe hungry?”

But as this school year gains momentum it’s clear to me that my kids’ need for hands-on mothering from me has plummeted since June. They both went to sleepaway camp, which always acts like a rocket booster to human development. A week or two (or three) without your parents does wonders at teaching you to be self-sufficient.

They’re both busy with school and ballet, and now they both babysit in the ‘hood so they’re basically moving between school-homework-ballet-work-sleep on their own timetables, needing me only when distances between one and the next are too long to walk. I’ll say it until One Direction are wrinkled and playing hotel lounges: my husband and I lucked out with these kids. We do not take their self-sufficiency for granted.

I remember dreaming of this time, back when I was nursing a baby and trying to build a Thomas the Train track for a toddler while simultaneously folding a load of laundry. When even four hours of uninterrupted sleep seemed like a gift. When little hands tugged at me and high-pitched voices begged for attention all day, every day. I pictured a time when my kids would be self-sufficient, when I would actually have enough time to myself that there was even a little extra for reading, or writing a letter, or watching a television show.

When your kids are small it feels like they will be with you forever, always greedy for more of you. Time just stretches out to the horizon like a long, long line littered with Polly Pocket shoes and stray Legos.

But now I think that the time with your kids is really more like a penny dropped into one of those big spiral wishing wells you find at science museums that demonstrate centrifugal force (and collect donations for the museum in the process.) Do you know the ones I mean? The penny starts off traveling lazily around the wide lip of the funnel-shape, but it picks up momentum as it rolls, and soon it’s circling, tight and fast, and before you know it the penny has dropped through the whole. Time’s up. Your kid is eighteen, dropped through the hole and gone.

We’re two thirds of the way down the vortex with our youngest kid. I can’t even think about how close we are to the end with our eldest. She came home the other day and asked if we could meet with a college counselor, just to make sure she’s got all her ducks in line for the rest of high school. She talks about the merits of big universities over small colleges, about something she read on the Northwestern University web site, about having me buy her a SAT prep book. She’s pretty much picking out her dorm room bedspread and she still has three years of high school left.

When your kids are small, you can’t imagine the viscous nature of time will thin to a point where it just flows like liquid through your hands.

But it does. And as I sit on a couch with my book, my kids elsewhere in the house doing whatever they do without me, I wish I could gather it all up in a giant wishing well so I could parcel it out, drop by precious drop.

Band of Horses found a little patch of heaven in Jackson Hole, WY, plopped themselves down, and played a concert. I love these guys.

***Are you doing your part to reduce the Pumpkin Biomass we talked about on Tuesday? Click through here for “Top 9 Surprising Other Uses for Pumpkin Puree” at NickMom.com.And if you don’t think you have a Halloween costume yet, Moms, never fear. You’re already wearing one. “Top 9 Inadvertent Halloween Costumes for Mom.”

                  Related StoriesFive Things I Learned at Family CampVideo from Listen To Your Mother 2013A Fathering Attribute I’d Like to Have 

The Pumpkin Industrial Complex

I recently received the October Trader Joe’s print circular, the one that is for some reason illustrated with drawings of Edwardian shoppers telling jokes. The pamphlet’s main purpose is to inform shoppers about all the latest additions to the grocery store’s shelves and as I leafed through, I noticed a new and disturbing trend.

Pumpkin, pumpkin everywhere. In baked goods, yes, but also in ravioli, and yogurt, and in creamed cheese and in moisturizing body butter. There are even pumpkin flavored dog treats.

Do you remember how it was with pumpkin, as recently as five years ago? You would go to the supermarket for that one can of pumpkin puree needed for your contribution to the Thanksgiving dessert buffet. Half the time, they only had the big 28 oz. can, and your recipe only needed a cup of the orange paste, so you’d have leftovers to throw away. Or, since the grocery stores didn’t want to stockpile it either, there would be a 2-for-1 deal on cans of pumpkin puree and you’d end up discovering that second can in the back of the kitchen pantry in July and wonder what else to do with it, besides a few quick bicep curls.

But those days are past. All of a sudden, pumpkin is as ubiquitous as open letters to Miley Cyrus. From the lattes at Starbucks to the Pumpkin Spice Hershey’s Kisses (just threw up in my mouth a little) to the pumpkin pyramid-shaped end caps at Trader Joe’s, Cucurbita pepo is everywhere.

How did this elevation of pumpkin’s status, from lowly cobweb-in-cupboard gatherer to Main Dish, occur? I’m highly suspicious. Maybe it’s because I’m finally reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma right now. It’s gotten me so shook up that I have no choice but to blame the pumpkinization of our culture on the Pumpkin Industrial Complex.

Pollan explains in stomach churning detail how the human relationship with another vegetable, Corn, has evolved with the help of technology, commerce, and science so that, and I’m paraphrasing here, we are now basically Corn’s bitch. We can barely keep up with the agricultural biomass monster we’ve created, so we breed things to eat corn and corn byproducts that normally wouldn’t (cows, pigs, toddlers) just to not get buried by the next year’s harvest. Who wins? Companies like ADM and Cargill, but mostly Corn. Corn stopped reading the Farmer’s Almanac years ago. This arrogant sonafabitch grain knows that if it were to rain grasshoppers and straight hydrochloric acid, America would still find a way to save Corn. Because America needs its high fructose corn syrup and trans fatty acids.

I’m sure some ambitious pumpkins looked across the farm field one moonlit night and thought, stupid Corn. We could do that. We could become pervasive. The big misshapen supersize pumpkins that look like Jabba the Squash, the adorable baby pumpkins that are sent home with first graders on field trips, and all the orange globes in between: they put their gourds together and decided they needed to diversify, and the Pumpkin Lobby was born.

Of course, we made it exceptionally easy for them to proceed with their takeover. How?

Every October, we carve mouths into them. Even Corn was never given the ability to openly communicate the details of its uprising.

So when you hear a spooky whisper on your front porch in the waning days of October, don’t automatically assume it’s a trick-or-treater, or the wind. It could very well be Liam’s pumpkin saying to Emma’s: “So we’re agreed. Next year: we conquer the potato chip flavoring aisle, with a flanking assault on the soda category. And in 2015: pumpkin wine.”

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Go Frida. Get it girl.

                  Related StoriesHappy Grown-Up AnniversaryPress Release: My Family Deserves a Press Release TooKind Giving Circle Today on TueNight 

Happy Grown-Up Anniversary

On October 17, 1992, my husband and I tied the knot in front of family and friends in Rochester, New York. I think you know what this means:

As of today, our marriage is finally 21 years old. A grown up. Old enough to buy itself a stiff drink in a bar.

We were so cute and naïve when we were baby marrieds. We shared a collection of artsy handmade tshirts made by an East Coast artist and we swapped them back and forth, like BFFs. We still wore Birkenstocks sometimes so our little toes could wiggle free. We actually believed in Santa, or else why would we register for super expensive Swedish silver cutlery that no one we knew could afford to give us for a wedding present? All our non-work time, it seemed, was spent eating or in bed. Like babies.

As the marriage hit the school-age years, there was learning involved. Oh, there was learning. Do not believe the other person has psychic powers around your wish for them to offer to cook dinner. Do not let the children get away with dividing and conquering when it comes to clothing decisions. Do not ever assume your spouse has his or her house keys with them, because the day you do is the day they don’t.

The teen years of marriage in particular had their challenges. Don’t they, for everyone? We were under a lot of pressure with work and parenting. Sometimes we got moody and snapped at the people we loved the most. Sometimes we ate giant bags of cheese crisps in our room and listened to garage rock like the Japandroids, just to make a point.

But now, at 21, our marriage is officially what my friend Andrea once read on an Oakland nightclub flyer was its target audience: “Grown Up and Sexy.” Grown up, in that we have worn grooves into our clearly established roles. In the raw materials of Time and Money that go into running a family, I contribute more of the former right now and he contributes more of the latter, and the fruit of our loins prospers. We don’t waste energy arguing about who pays bills or who mows the lawn. We know my job is to keep track of whether we’ve donated money to our alma maters and what day the filter on the air conditioner needs changing. We know his job is to summarize and narrate the violent scenes on TV and in the movies so I don’t actually have to watch them. Further discussion unnecessary.

Sexy, of course, also looks different than it used to. It looks a lot like housework, a lot of the time: me spending a Friday afternoon sweeping up after a wind storm so my husband doesn’t have to spend his whole weekend doing it. Him washing the dishes, unbidden, after dinner. A tight tush and a low-cut shirt compare less and less favorably against the sound of the other person taking the dog out for his morning ministrations, so the listener can stay in bed for five extra minutes.

Following the logic through, there will be a point at which our marriage is old (though hopefully never retired.) It’ll sit on a porch swing sipping lemonade and looking back at all the years that have gone before. And as old as it gets, I hope it never forgets Younger Us.

Happy Grown Up Anniversary, Common Man.

***Want to give us some grown up and sexy anniversary good wishes in person? Join us tomorrow night in San Francisco where I’ll do a reading at Lit Crawl – 8:30 pm, Laszlo’s Bar at 2526 Mission. Be there or miss my story, which includes both imitations of Germans speaking English and the line “It felt like a cross between an early Thigh Master prototype and the worst pony ride ever.” 

                  Related StoriesGive It A RestPress Release: My Family Deserves a Press Release TooKind Giving Circle Today on TueNight 

Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: Book of Love

The Band: Book of Love, October 9 2013. If you ever went to a club in the ‘80s, you’ll remember dancing to their big hits “Boy,” (uh huh, uh huh) or “I Touch Roses.” The synth pop quartet, which drew acclaim for their gender-fluid lyrics, had their biggest hits between ’86 and ’93, reforming briefly in 2001 but mostly being off the scene for the past twenty years.

The Venue: DNA Lounge, San Francisco. I was last there to hear a night of Viking metal and had tagged it as a metal venue. Turns out the DNA Lounge was the perfect spot to have a totally ‘80s night. Between the fog machine and the “Not A Boy” cocktail special (vodka, cranberry, lime) I fully expected Mollie Ringwald and Ducky to walk past me in their Doc Martens and matching eyeliner.

The Company: Fellow Listen To Your Mother cast member and social media maven Stefania of the Clever Girls Collective. I bought two tickets to Book of Love months ago and posted it on Facebook and within 0.8 seconds Stefania had typed back in ALL CAPS THAT SHE WAS GOING WITH ME OH MY GOD SHE LOVED BOOK OF LOVE. When she showed up, her accessories included white pointy go-go boots, black leather fingerless gloves, and—this is obviously the best—her black rubber Madonna bracelets that she has been wearing since ’85. Basically, I’ll never see another ‘80s band without her.

The Crowd: Skewed 40+ for sure, but there was a healthy contingent of youngsters and they even knew all the words. There was a significant Asian component to the crowd and Stefania reminded me that Book of Love was one of very few New Wave bands to have an Asian member, Jade Lee, who did backing vocals (but was not on this tour.) And of course, fitting for a band whose song “Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls” was one of the first written in response to the AIDS epidemic, there were many pretty (older) gay boys and girls in the crowd.

Stefania’s three adjectives for the crowd: “exfoliated, gay, and nostalgic.”

Age Humiliation Factor: Low.


Ok, there was a flurry of texts between Stefania and me over the fact that the doors were at 8, the show started at 9, and oh lord if there’s an opening band that means Book of Love won’t even go on until 10, is it uncool if we leave by 11:15?

But here’s the thing: we’re older, and so is the band. They don’t want to stay up until 2 either. And Book of Love doesn’t have a huge catalog.  At precisely 9:30 they came on. And at precisely 10:15 they were done. Stefania and I did a high five because we’d gone out but could still get home for an early bedtime.

Cool Factor: High

I’m gonna get a little sappy here, but that was a joyous and grateful crowd. Onstage and in the audience, everyone seemed really happy to see each other – like, “hey, you were probably out at the same clubs I was twenty years ago, didn’t we have fun then?” It reminded me that no matter what else, I always leave a show with a huge smile on my face. Go to concerts, you guys. Just go.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? Alice, Everyday.

It was a Super Soaker night of nostalgia, no question. Lead singer Susan Ottaviano (who is not related to keyboardist Ted Ottaviano which is about the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard) looked out over the crowd early on and said, “How we doing? Not so bad, right?” It was the thought in the head of every person on the dance floor who had left the kids at home to come out and relive their glory days: we’re not doing so bad, right?

The synths, the melodica, the big hair…you know what I didn’t realize was cool about keyboards in the ‘80s? The musician can lock in a beat and then go to the back of the stage, towel off, and take a sip of water without impeding the song’s progress. That’s efficiency right there. It has to be said that Lee’s absence was felt with a thinness on backing vocals, but the audience was ready to pick up the slack since they’d sung those songs to their bedroom mirror in high school and college infinity times.

And then the piece de resistance: when the show ended, a DJ started playing ‘80s music, and I’m not talking about the ‘80s music you hear at bar mitzvahs, like Rebel Yell and Melt With You. This was serious dance floor gay ‘80s gold, like Domanitrix Sleeps Tonight by the Starck Club, Oh L’amour by Erasure, Perfect Way by Scritti Politti, Lips Like Sugar by Echo, and the crowd rose to the opportunity for weeknight dancing. People mock Eighties music, maybe because much of it was played on machines that let you walk to the back of the stage for minutes at a time. But these were the songs that glittered like synthetic diamonds in the firmament during that era. And “Boy” and “I Touch Roses” were two of the best.

So instead of leaving early, Stefania and I, along with our new concert friend Kitt who it turned out went to Stefania’s rival high school, kept saying, “Let’s see what the next song is before we leave,” and sticking around for just one more and staying out too long. Just like college. Then as now: totally worth it.

By the time this posts, Book of Love’s mini California reunion tour will be over but you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter and tell them to come your way. Do you still have your black rubber Madonna bracelets? How high was your hair back in the ‘80s? Let me know your thoughts in the comments field – I could talk music with you all day long.

                   
CommentsI hear about the coolest bands from this blog. Thank you for ... by KirYou obviously never went to a dance party at either the Castle ... by Nancy Davis KhoWhen you talked about going, I thought I knew who Book of Love ... by EllenRelated StoriesMidlife Mixtape Concert Review: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, 2013Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: Grouplove and The RubensStill in Rotation: Purple Rain (Prince) 

Still in Rotation: Purple Rain (Prince)

Still in Rotation is a feature that lets talented writers tell Midlife Mixtape readers about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power.

Thank you, Internets, because were it not for the weird way you connect strangers in far flung locations, I would not know Ann Imig of Ann’s Rants, whose writing, wit, and huge heart make an impression on everyone she meets. The Founding Mother of the Listen To Your Mother Show national reading series, Ann graces us today with her thoughts on a fellow dark haired diminutive Midwesterner: Prince.

Bathing in the Purple Rain

For my youth, my friends, and especially on the occasion of dancing—nobody provided a better soundtrack than Prince. Even the wallflowers jumped up and down to Let’s Go Crazy at the Van Hise Middle School dance, and everyone–everyone– implicitly understood that partying like it’s 1999 set the fiesta epic-ness barometer.

In high school, my friend Megan sent us into fits of choking-on-your-own-spit laughter with her combination riding a pony/Pee Wee Herman’s “Tequila” dance to Kiss. Starfish and coffee maple syrup and jam greeted Erin, Maria, and I weekend mornings in our college apartment, as rays of sunshine illuminated our dirty ashtrays and dappled our raspberry berets (even if they were tweed newsboy caps worn backwards). The Sign of the Times messed with our minds, and we loved it.

Even though we had some notion of Prince’s Little Red Corvette, my generation’s liner notes lead back to one place…Purple Rain (1984.) No two words evoke such a combustion of pre-teen angst, hormones, and nostalgia in me as those. After all, who among us doesn’t know the answer to the primal call and response:

“Wendi?… Is the water warm enough?… Shall we begin?”

Yes, Lisa, we knew that something untoward was going on: Two ladies! Bathing together! Just like we knew that Darling Nikki was a sex fiend. These exciting/confusing sentiments were heightened even further by the fact that my mom accompanied my siblings and I to Purple Rain: The Movie, launching the movie-musical sexuality discomfort level to code ITCHY PANTS MAKE IT STOP BECAUSE MOM BUT ALSO WAIT DON’T. Whatever she thought the movie was about, it wasn’t Prince fondling/writhing with Apollonia. That’s about the only scene I remember, thanks to the brain-branding that mortification provides. Regardless, whatever this “grind” move Prince saw little Nikki perform in a hotel lobby with a magazine? Well, we wanted to know about it, because evidently Prince liked his ladies both pretty and talented, and we liked Prince. As more than a friend.

See, Prince was hot. Prince was a  total babe. And not just because he could shop for Esprit splatter-paint overalls with us in the Juniors department if he so desired. Looking back, he probably shared a stylist with Designing Women, but everything went all gender-bendy in the early 80s, and our hormones fell right in line. A super wavy—we’ll call it a body wave—of a line. Have you looked at the boys of Duran Duran lately? Remember the Newsweek cover featuring Boy George and Annie Lennox? Boy George set my heart a-flutter and Annie Lennox looked as feminine to me as The Disney Princesses not-yet-invented. Incidentally, put a pencil-wisp of a mustache on Jasmine from Aladdin, add a ruffle-throat tunic and VOILA, Prince!

Purple Rain was my first 33 rpm record purchase, at West Towne Mall, with my own allowance. I did not get one of the coveted purple vinyl limited-editions, so I drowned my sorrows with TartNTinys and the purchase of a Purple Rain T-shirt from Spencer Gifts. I wore said shirt to Mrs. Selvaag’s fifth grade class to claim my fandom, along with my homemade “I heart Billy Idol” button. Written in crayon. I even choreographed and performed my own version of The Bird  routine in music class; I Pledge Allegiance To The Time! (Hand on heart! Other hand starts at 6 and flares right on up to midnight!)

I spent after school hours with that record jacket in my room, singing along and wishing I could comfort just one poet blouse sleeve’s worth of Prince’s angst. HE ONLY WANTED TO SEE HER BATHING/LAUGHING IN THE PURPLE RAIN. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK? BUT HE NEVER CAN BECAUSE RAIN NEVER EQUALS PURPLE. I WOULD DIE 4 U, PRINCE! ME. BECAUSE I

1999 came and went along with Y2K. Prince became The Insignia formerly known. Instead of dancing in middle school gyms, you’ll see my friends and I going crazy from the driver’s seat of our Little Chrome Station Wagons. We know what it sounds like. When children cry.

That’s when we turn up the doves.

♪♪♪A Stay-At-Home-Humorist, Ann Imig has been inflicting herself upon your internet since 2008. Her writing has been featured on McSweeney’s, College Humor, and as a Top 100 Babble blogger and a BlogHer Voice of the Year. Ann is Founder and National Director of Listen To Your Mother, the live-reading series/social media phenom Giving Mother’s Day A Microphone in 24 cities (and growing), as featured on NBC Nightly News, and The New York Times. Every morning she greets the screen before her family, editing LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER: THE BOOK coming in 2015 from Amy Einhorn Books.Ann’s also offering a free copy of my new eBook, The Family Mix, to one of her readers, so if you’re interested in a chance to win click through here and leave a comment on her blog (bookmark her site for future reference too, you won’t regret it…) 

                   
CommentsMy older sister and I could laugh ourselves into hysteria by ... by Nancy Davis KhoIt is no surprise that you were a trendsetter all the way back ... by Ellen“Prince is the only man who can walk into a party dressed ... by EllenFirst of all, I'm flattered that I've now influenced you so ... by WendiLOVE, LOVE, LOVE Purple Rain. Watched the movie over & over. ... by GrandemochaPlus 5 more...Related StoriesStill in Rotation: Pretzel Logic (Steely Dan)Still in Rotation: Let It Be (The Replacements)Still in Rotation: Ram (Paul McCartney) 

Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, 2013

And now for something completely different: I’ve made a video concert review about my Saturday at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass last weekend. Please let me know what you think in the comments!

Totally dorky? I figured I could give it a try, seeing as the straw cowboy hat was begging to be used for a prop.

And because it can’t be said often enough: Thank you, Warren Hellman, for your generous gift to Bay Area music fans. You’re my kind of billionaire.

                  Related StoriesMidlife Mixtape Concert Review: Grouplove and The RubensStill in Rotation: Pretzel Logic (Steely Dan)It’s My Funeral, and I’ll DJ If I Want To 

Press Release: My Family Deserves a Press Release Too

Mom works in Kentucky, Dad’s job takes him to D.C., their child is virtually-schooled from Alabama – and a total genius.

How many 10 year olds do you know who spend their “free” time volunteering for an NPO (West Coast based) to try and solve neurological disorders? With two full ride college scholarships already to his credit, a 28 on the ACT, an accomplished pianist and cello player, and a black belt in karate, what else is left?

Let me know if you’d like to learn more or schedule a pre-interview with them.

This is the actual pitch I received from an actual PR lady the other day, who wondered if I might want to schedule an interview with this awesome family which, from what I gather, has hired a PR professional simply to spread the word of their awesomeness.

Hey, I didn’t just fall off the PR Turnip Truck. Two awesome families can play that game, I reasoned, only I can handle the PR angle myself, thankyouverymuch.

So here’s a pitch on behalf of my family. Who would YOU rather see featured on the front of a national magazine?

***

Mom works in the basement. Dad’s job takes him on a ninety-minute stop-and-go commute down one of the worst traffic corridors in the nation. Their children are literally schooled and virtually skooled in Oakland, where Rule Number 1 of high school swim class is “Don’t wear your grill in the pool”– total genius.

How many 40-something moms do you know who spend their “free” time compulsively reading concert listings and then realizing all the ones they want to go to conflict with their kids’ ballet class or their new favorite geriatric PBS show, “Last Tango in Halifax”? Or husbands who go to the grocery store with instructions to buy Apple Chex, then come home with a box of Apple Jacks, and insist that there is no such thing as Apple Chex, and then bicker with the Basement Mom about it on and off for the next two days?

With two ballerinas jockeying for the roles they want for the upcoming Nutcracker performance in terms Basement Mom can’t even understand (“I want to be six diagonal in Snow” and “I think they’ll let me be Big Licorice if I can do twelve coffee grinders,”) not to mention huddling over math homework that seems more appropriate for NASA-employed physicists and is far beyond the mental capacity of the parents in the house, what else is left?

I’ll tell you what’s left! Third party interviews! We can make available for interview the plumber who recently stopped in and said, “You know your toilet tank has a crack in it, right? Probably has been dripping onto the bathroom floor for ten years,” which no, this family didn’t know but I bet the dry rot is impressive! He can provide context for how the Basement Mom, in her recent quest to de-clutter the house, threw out the very same two faucet handles he needed in order to do repairs, on the very same day that he arrived, just fifteen minutes after the garbage truck pulled away with the discarded handles!

This family also has info graphics to pep up your article! See below.

Finally, compared to other press-release releasing families (I won’t name names, but Mom works in Kentucky, Dad’s job takes him to D.C., their child is virtually-schooled from Alabama – and a total genius,) this family is much less likely to induce nausea and fits of rage in your readers, which is bound to be a plus.

Let me know if you’d like to learn more or schedule a pre-interview with them!

(Or better yet…tell me in the comments what the highlights of your family’s press release would be, so I don’t feel so inadequate.)

One of the songs off The Family Mix video playlist that’s embedded at the back of my eBook: The Ramones with “We’re a Happy Family”

                  Related StoriesTop Nine Top 9 ListsKind Giving Circle Today on TueNightGive It A Rest 

Giving Circle Today on TueNight

Illustration: Jill McCleary

Last Friday night, over a glass of red wine and some spicy pecans, I learned about my friends’ second grade career aspirations. One of them thought she would grow up to be a pamphleteer, another thought she could get a berth with the Sweathogs, and a third yearned for a split career: professional swimmer/Burger King Waitress. (Think that over. Burger King Waitress.)

Just another memorable icebreaker at Giving Circle.

My Giving Circle—a group of women that gathers four times a year to socialize and pool their funds for various nonprofits—is still going strong, seven years after Hurricane Katrina motivated us to get together the first time and do SOMETHING to make the world around us a tiny bit better. I’m talking about Giving Circle today over at a fresh and hip new website called TueNight, and I hope you’ll click through to read our story.

More than that – if you have any interest in setting up your own Giving Circle with your friends, please feel free to hit me up with questions about how to do it. It has been such a joy to be involved in, and consistently rewards us beyond any monetary donations we make. I feel so lucky to be a part of this very simple yet rewarding endeavor.

***

I had to use this video because of the band and song name, but I make no representations beyond that. Kind of a Mumford Band Meets High School Thespian Alumni vibe.

***

Another list over at NickMom.com today: Top 9 Ways To Save Money On Your Next Move

                  Related StoriesGive It A RestI Need to (Pretend) MoveIt’s My Funeral, and I’ll DJ If I Want To 

Give It A Rest

Every once in a while I see a print ad or a sidebar on the web showing the same shirtless older man with the abs and arms of a 23 year old. He’s wearing glasses and what hair he still has is white, which creates an unsettling juxtaposition against the abdominal twelve pack that glistens in the sun as he leans against a motorcycle, surely meant to imply that this guy’s engine is still revved up. He’s the poster boy for a health regimen called Cenegnics, which I don’t even want to look up on Google for fear that they, and the NSA, will think I want to see this man in my sidebars even more.

Because when I look at him, I don’t think, “Wow, that’s a really buff septuagenarian!” I think, “Wow, seriously? Are we never allowed to relax?”

Then I feel a wave of sympathy for his poor wife, and the pressure she must be under to look as good as her freakish husband when really, she’s probably reached the age where she’s earned some elastic waist pants and a wash n’ wear hairstyle.

I am thrilled that my husband takes care of himself and stays fit through cycling. I am also thrilled that he occasionally eats entire Share Size bags of Vinegar Kettle Chips in one sitting. As healthy as he is, he doesn’t look exactly like he did when I used to stalk him on the Ultimate Frisbee field at grad school, where he would run around shirtless and sweaty and rail thin. (He was such an easy mark: all I had to do was offer to cook for him and he was trapped in my web of three squares a day.) Thanks to his he still looks younger than his age. But just like me, he’s a bit softer and more lined than when we met, and I wouldn’t want him any other way. I know exactly what’s transpired over the past two decades to cause those signs of aging (I’m not going to single out our kids, but, ssshhhhh, it’s our kids.)

Demi Moore and Madonna’s life choices to the contrary, I don’t think most women really want their husbands to look twenty-five years old forever, because that’s a very high standard to live up to. Every time my husband gets a new gray hair or his crows’ feet stretch a millimeter further, it’s a little less pressure on me to wage war against what beauty companies might call The Seven Signs of Aging. I figure as long as we’re going downhill at approximately the same rate, it’s good for the marriage. If neither of us gets disproportionally more or less attractive to our peers, then we avoid introducing any new math to the relationship.

Which brings me back to the Cenegenics guy. One could almost argue that it’s antagonistic to look like that at seventy or whatever he is. He seems like the kind of guy who would buy his wife a barbell and a juicer for their 50th anniversary.

For her sake, whoever Mrs. Cenegenics is, I hope she says, “Good luck with whatever it is you have happening there with your supplements, buddy. As for me, I’m going to use my retirement time the way God intended it.” With her feet propped up on the barbell, drinking a margarita she whipped up in the juicer.

***

The reviews are coming in for The Family Mix: Essays on Family Life from MidlifeMixtape.com and I couldn’t be more grateful: one reader compared me to St. Erma (Bombeck) and another said that I made her snort coffee up her nose when she read it. Hashtag Winning! Hope you’ll continue to tell your friends and post your reviews – it really makes a difference in helping the book get some visibility in a very crowded publishing market! And if you haven’t gotten your copy yet, let me quote another reviewer who said “A total bargain at $2.99.”  Click on the cover below if you’d like to download your own copy!

***Was there a children’s music CD that saved your sanity when your kids were small? I’m talking about mine over at The Rumpus today, so click on through here if you’d like to read. That post inspired today’s vid… 

                   
CommentsYou have to watch out for those cyclists. There's something in ... by Nancy Davis KhoOh how timely this post is! This morning I was running on the ... by LouisaIt must be that California living. Thankfully I have never seen ... by EllenLove this one for so many reasons right now! by DebDeewow. You have no idea how many vain, insane reactions I've ... by LanceRelated StoriesThings I Said After My Husband Suggested We Take a Vacation to ItalyI Need to (Pretend) MoveIt’s My Funeral, and I’ll DJ If I Want To