"The Daily Show" Is the New New York Times

I am going to admit something REALLY embarrassing here. Ack, I can hardly type the words! Okay, here it goes:

I get 85% of my news from The Daily Show, 10% from my search engine's homepage, 4% from Perez Hilton, and 1% from local TV news. There, I admitted it!

I'm not kidding about this. A good example is this whole Egypt brouhaha. I saw a teaser about it on the 10 p.m. news last night when I was tuning in for the sole purpose of finding out when the next f-in' blizzard is going to come and ruin my day.

Hmm, Egypt...that's a new player in the ongoing international news loop, I thought. Then I saw something else about it on AOL or Google, or wherever. Huh.

Then I went on Facebook (c'mon, you knew it was only a matter of time) and saw that The Daily Show posted a link to a segment they did on the Egypt situation last night. One click, eight minutes of my time, and wham-o!, I was updated on the whole Egypt deal-io.

Okay, not really. Because I'm not an idiot: I realize that protests, political unrest, election controversies, coups, etc., cannot be summed up or adequately understood in an eight-minute news bite. These events are complicated and nuanced, and acquiring a full understanding of what's going on requires extensive reading about history, economics, race relations, politics, and more.

But who has the time and energy for that?

The worst part about all this is that at one time, a long time ago, I was actually passionate and informed about "International Relations" (as "World Politics" was confusingly called back then). I graduated from an excellent university with a minor in I.R. and wrote papers about U.S.-Soviet détente, Sunni-Shiite relations, and Middle East oil. I even applied to (and got rejected by) Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. I Marched on Washington! I was political! I cared!

Now, the most significant politics in my life are the ones I have to deal with while serving on the Board of my kids' preschool.

Tattoo You

I think it's pretty awesome that Gen X turned getting tattooed from a weird and fringe activity into something mainstream. Back in the 90s, millions of post-collegiate 20-somethings got themselves inked. The girls either got something cute (dolphin, butterfly) on their ankle or something abstract on their lower back. (This is often referred to as a "tramp stamp"--a name I hate for something I still think is cool and sexy.)  The guys often chose tribal-looking bands around their biceps or calves.

I myself went with a small sun on my shoulder blade. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision... and no, I wasn't drunk. I went to my friend Jen's apartment one Friday night and we got talking about tattoos. Turns out both of us had wanted one for ages. So the next day, we met up at a tattoo place on Ludlow Street and did the deed. It was a summer Saturday afternoon--I got the sun, she got a butterfly--and afterward we went to The Hat (El Sombrero) for margaritas to celebrate. It was one of those perfect It's-the-summer-and-I'm-young-and-living-in-Manhattan-and-life-is-great days. Ah, bliss.

Fast-forward 15 years...and lots of these got-tattooed-in-their-twenties folks are now parents. Every summer, it cracks me up to see the moms sitting around the edge of the town's baby pool, their wild tattoos on display as they supervise their frolicking babies. I realize not everyone agrees with me here, but I think the moms look cute with their slightly stretched-out roses, fleur-de-lis, and dragonflies. (WARNING: If you plan on ever having kids in the future, please carefully choose the location of your tattoo, e.g. abdomen=bad.)

Occasionally, I come across a person who did more than just dabble in the tattoo arts back in the day. I've seen a couple of dads at the pool with multiple tattoos scattered over their arms, backs, and chests; one guy even has the tattooed sleeve thing going on.

A heavily tattooed mom, however, is a much rarer thing (at least it is in Westchester).

Picture this on her neck.

But today I saw her: Late thirties or early forties, three sons, dirty blonde hair, thin, tired-looking, no makeup...and numerous tats, including an intricate spider web that covers THE ENTIRE FRONT OF HER NECK. She also has three star tats scattered behind each ear, a HUGE filled-in heart covering the nape of her neck, and the requisite lower-back abstract. Who knows what additional ink she's hiding under her clothes.

Whenever I see her--usually at the kids' indoor gym we frequent--I have to stifle a gasp, so shocking is her appearance in our relatively traditional suburban town.

OMG, WHAT IS HER STORY? I wonder every time I see her. Because you know there's a good yarn behind her tats. How'd she end up a stay-at-home mom living in Westchester? Maybe she's a Dominatrix on the side? There's  gotta be something juicy there, and I really want to know.

I wish she seemed more approachable because then I'd try to chat her up. Then after the appropriate interval of time, I'd express admiration for her tattoos and maybe get the inside story. But--surprise!--the chick with the neck tats does not seem approachable at all.

So for now I guess I'll just eyeball her when she's not looking and hope I get to know her one day so I can find out the story behind all her ink. Or better yet, get to know someone who already knows her and her tat tale.

Hmmm...but now that I think about it, one of her sons is named Logan, and when she's ready to leave the play-gym she calls out "LOGEY! Time to go, Logey!" How badass can she be, right?

So very disappointing.

Every Mother's Biggest Nightmare

There's a movie out right now--Rabbit Hole, with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart--about a couple who have lost their child in a car accident. This is a film that I will NEVER, EVER, EVER see. How could you, if you're a parent? Perhaps if you have experienced this most devastating type of loss, seeing this movie could possibly help with recovery or closure or...I don't know. To be honest, I can't imagine that there would be any chance of recovery--or of going on with life at all-- after experiencing such utter horror. I imagine it's the one wound that never heals.

I read a couple of reviews of Rabbit Hole, but even that was difficult. Because my children are still small and somewhat helpless, I feel so, so protective of them. This is the most primal force in my life: to keep my kids safe and happy. So the notion that something horrible could happen to them is what keeps me awake in the middle of the night.

Literally. After reading The New Yorker's review of Rabbit Hole one night, I got into bed and tried to sleep. I couldn't help it, nightmarish visions infected my brain: me driving with the kids in back, the car skidding on ice and crashing, flipping...me regaining consciousness only to find the broken, bloody, lifeless bodies of my two lovelies lying by the side of the road.

No, no, stop! Go away! There is no worse image for a parent.

When these horrible thoughts plague me, I force myself to think about something (anything!) else: how I'm going to decorate the dinosaur cake for my son's birthday party, what I need to pick up at Target, etc. I make myself breathe deeply and slowly until the panic subsides. The toxic visions lurk at the edges of my mind, but I keep pushing them away until I finally fall asleep.

At these times, I'm always reminded of a girl I used to know.

During college, I spent a summer studying in Salamanca, Spain. One weekend, a few of us American girls decided to take the train to Portugal. It was a night train, and if I recall correctly, we had beer, so everyone started opening up and sharing their stories. I think we were talking about divorce, and this one girl was explaining why her parents had split up. I'll never forget her story.

She was six years old, playing in the front yard with her three-year-old brother.

"My mom asked me to keep an eye on him," she said.

But since she was only six, of course her attention wandered. Her father had an errand to run. He got into his pickup truck, backed down the driveway, and ran over his three-year-old son, who was in the driveway and in the truck's blind spot. The boy died.

"I was supposed to be watching him," the girl whispered.

Her parents couldn't deal with the grief--it split them up. And 14 years later, this sweet, pretty 20-year-old was still carrying around an awfully heavy load of guilt. I couldn't even imagine how her parents might still be feeling.

She pops into my mind occasionally--when I read reviews of movies like Rabbit Hole, or when some horrible tragedy is splashed across the newspapers (like the "Tragedy on the Taconic" in 2009)--and I wonder how she's doing.

But mostly I just get scared that it could happen to me.

What I Need's a Little Patience

Here it is, new Year's Eve, and we're home because we flaked on getting a babysitter. But that's okay...because it's not like we had anywhere to go anyway. Do people have NYE parties anymore? Not in our town, apparently. Without an invitation to a local party, our other choices were: go out in White Plains (ugh) or schlep into Manhattan to fight for bar space with all the other amateurs. No thanks. I've always preferred to do my partying on less obvious occasions (St. Patrick's Day is another night I've tended to stay home).

So I'm here at home, going over the past year, thinking about how I'd like the coming year to be  different. My New Year's resolution: What will it be this year? Did I even make one last year? I don't think so...I may have resolved never to make another resolution again. After all, they tend to be given up or forgotten by Groundhog Day anyway, so what's the point?

Or maybe I resolved to be more patient--with my kids, my husband, in general. Impatience is one of my worst flaws, so I often find myself taking deep breaths and trying to cool down. Self-improvement is a good thing; an extra instance of resolving to be a better person certainly can't hurt. But the problem is that I, like everyone else, tend to forget about it and continue with my impatient ways.

When I was younger, however, things were different. I got a rush out of making a New Year's resolution because I truly believed that if a person made one and was serious about it, it would happen--sort of like a birthday wish. Back in those days, I probably resolved to try harder at soccer or practice my clarinet more. Later on, it was always eat less junk food, exercise more, lose ten pounds: superficial stuff.

This year, I suppose I'll try for patience again. Mainly, I'll just be waiting for this nonsense to pass, because it comes down to this: New Year's resolutions mean the gym is going to be really crowded for the next month. And I hate having to wait for a treadmill while some out-of-shape person flails away on it.

To deal with that, I'm going to have to be more patient.

Hillary Clinton for President! (A Girl Can Dream, Can't She?)

I saw a picture of Hillary Clinton in a magazine the other day, and was surprised by the pang of longing I felt. I love Barack Obama (and think he's doing a pretty good job so far) but I was a big Hillary supporter leading up to the 2008 Democratic Primary. I still think she would've made a heckuva president.

I remember being a girl and looking through a big coffee-table book about the presidents that my parents had. I was amused by the weird facial hair (nice muttonchops, Martin Van Buren!) and strange names (Millard? Grover? Woodrow?) and enjoyed learning about American history. The tragic stories (Lincoln, McKinley, Kennedy) brought me back to the book again and again. But every single time I looked through that book, it bummed me out and made me angry that there weren't any women's faces looking back at me. A woman president! Wouldn't that be amazing?

A few years later it was 1984, and suddenly, having a woman as president in the near future seemed much more likely when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate against Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. It was the first time a woman was nominated for that position by a major party.

We all know how that turned out: No female vice president in 1984, and no woman was again nominated for that position by a major party for 24 long years.

Back in 1984, even though the Reagan/Bush ticket prevailed, I was optimistic about the chance of there being a woman V.P. or president in the near future. But election after election left me dejected. So many stuffy white dudes! (Except for Clinton, who's white and a dude but refreshingly unstuffy.) What the heck was going on? Where were the major-party chicas?

(Sure, plenty of ladies have attempted to win the Democratic or Republican presidential nomination over the years--starting with a couple Democratic gals way back in 1920--but none succeeded until Ms. Ferraro in 1984.)

Fast-forward 24 years, and Hillary Clinton had successfully sloughed off her poor-betrayed-wife image to get herself elected to the U.S. Senate. Her new image was as a smart, tough negotiator and problem-solver. I was happy to have her as one of my U.S. senators, but when she threw her hat into the Democratic presidential nominee ring, I was psyched!

Clinton quickly gathered momentum and she seemed destined to win the nomination. I thought: This is going to be our year, ladies! Because with Bush as unpopular as he was, the Democratic nominee was pretty much a shoo-in as president. Hillary's going to win! We're finally going to have our first woman president! It's about time, people!

Then came Obama, seemingly from out of nowhere. The man was on fire...and my dreams and hopes for a woman president were dashed.

I'm so, so proud of our country for electing our first black president, really I am! But I truly thought a woman would come first. I dunno...you hear about how people in the South are still racist, so I didn't think a black candidate could get enough of the non-urban vote to win. But what the 2008 election taught me is that, apparently, more Americans are sexist than racist. And that surprised me. I'm not sure why, but it did.

So now what? Is Sarah Palin all our gender has to offer? Say it ain't so! Hillary, darling, sweetheart...how about making another go at it in 2012? As much as I love Obama, the majority of my fellow Americans don't seem to agree with me. The last thing we want is a <shudder> Republican back in office two short years from now (or Sarah Palin anywhere near Washington D.C.).

Sure, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton" sounds pretty good, but nothing beats "President Hillary Rodham Clinton," right?

Do it for all us former little girls who dreamed that there would, one day, be a female President of the United States of America, but have grown into women voters (some with wide-eyed girls or our own) without yet seeing this dream realized.

We've waited long enough, don't you think?

Too Much Christmas Spirit?

It seems to me that Gen X is the first generation whose members have never completely grown up. As I drive around local neighborhoods during this holiday season, I'm convinced this is why there are so many more ugly Christmas decorations around than when I was a child. Because when it comes to kids and decorations, the more garish the better. So it follows that adults who are still kids at heart will purchase the biggest, tackiest, over-the-top thing they can afford.

Yes, I'm talking about the huge blow-up Santas, Frosties, and Rudolphs. At night, they glow and sway in the breeze, buzzing with the sound of pressurized air being pumped into them. During the day, they are hideous multi-colored puddles on front lawns.

When I was growing up, decorations mainly consisted of pretend candles in house windows, a wreath on the front door, and maybe some lights--usually tasteful white ones--on a few bushes.

It was nice, classy stuff that made our little New England town look like Santa's Village for a few weeks.  (That's another difference: Decorations used to go up the second week of December, not the day after Thanksgiving.) I used to love sitting in the backseat of our station wagon with my brothers as my parents drove us around to look at all the pretty lights. Nighttime was darker back then and the air stiller, so the twinkling lights seemed extra magical.

But now, there's no lovely feeling of calm when we drive around looking at decorations. It's all, "WOW! Look at that house! OH MY GOSH, look at that one!" My kids particularly love the houses where you can't even see any grass because the entire lawn is covered with deer, presents, candy canes, sleighs, etc...as if the North Pole exploded and random pieces fell from the sky and landed in people's yards.

I'm not bah-humbugging it; the decorations amuse me and my kids' excitement is contagious. But I do miss how it used to be, when tasteful and classic ruled. Because now the feeling is less "O Holy Night" and more "All I Want for Christmas Is You."

What a Girl Wants

The other day I was reading an interview with Christina Aguilera in Redbook magazine, in which she was talking about balancing work and motherhood. What she said pissed me off: "I'm not a 9-to-5 woman who has the same kind of lifestyle for years on end. I couldn't do it. I need the spontaneity, that thrill of change."

Well then, it's lucky for you, Ms. Aguilera, that you are a singer and actress who can change it up whenever you want...that you have enough money to pay someone else to provide your son with the consistency he needs while you are following your bliss. Most of us had to make a few compromises after having kids. 

After all, that's exactly what I used to say: I needed a varied life and never wanted it to consist of doing the same thing day in and day out. I wanted spontaneity...to experience the "thrill of change" whenever I desired. I mean, really, didn't we all? 

But here I am now: my life nothing but consistency, repetition and predictability. 

And that's okay, because my lifestyle isn't by accident. I've been led to believe that kids thrive on consistency and routine. And even if I wasn't inclined to follow the advice of "experts" in the field, I can confirm this just from the experiences I've had with my own children. It's true that they like knowing what to expect out of their day, and that too many last-minute changes can wreak havoc (especially true when kids are little).

So, yes, I've somewhat sacrificed my desire for a varied life in order to provide my kids with the stabile routines that help them thrive. Just add it to the list of sacrifices we parents make for our kids. But I'm happy to do it, as are the majority of parents out there.

Then along comes Christina Aguilera spouting off about how she just couldn't bear having the same lifestyle for years on end, how she needs spontaneity--and it riles me up. No, honey, you don't need it, you're just lucky enough to be able to choose it.