The Gratitude Challenge

I was nominated for the gratitude challenge trend this week—i.e. challenged to list things I’m grateful for. While I usually like to thank the Universe in private, other moms were throwing down. They listed stuff like “my beautiful children,” “my amazing husband,” or “my thigh gap.”

So it’s on, bitches. Here’s my list:

 1) Two “super push-up” bras for $8.99 on the clearance rack at Joe Fresh. I do not care about a 1-inch gap between the bra and the boob or the overly-ample padding, which resulted in my 6-year-old calling them my “booby pillows.” You can’t beat that price.

2) Weird phobias. My friend has feared fish and buttons for 20 years. My daughter was afraid of ferns and mushrooms until she was eight. These sorts of fears make me feel better about myself. And they also make me laugh and laugh. Every time.

3) My husband doing grocery shopping, even if, in a frenzy of frugality, he bought a month’s supply of discounted diet yogurt and waterlogged, No Name ham.

4) Losing 5 lbs this week, despite not running, drinking wine and eating tortilla chips at night. (Possibly this was due to husband’s grocery haul.)

5) Coffee pods delivered to your door. Whenever I feel down, bored, tired, unsure, insecure, muddled, afraid, resentful, or that disorienting, bottomless feeling that life is a pointless journey toward a black void of nothingness? I just pop in a pod and feel peppy again. I’ve gone through 42 espresso capsules this week. I’m typing 200 words per minute, getting heart palps and my magnesium levels are in the toilet but who cares? I’m just feeling so fucking grateful right now!

Vitamix vs. Vaporizer

At a ladies’ brunch recently, I caught up with a friend. It was 10 a.m. We were knocking back Mimosas and talking green smoothies.

“Guess what I got?” my friend said. “A Vitamix!”

She did a little happy dance.

A Vitamix is where blender meets power tool. It liquefies anything in its path. The toughest, most resilient kale turns into green juice. Beets turn to borscht, carrots to carrot juice and almonds to almond butter at the touch of a button. Some people even use them to mulch food scraps, coffee grounds and eggshells into instant compost. 

Ah, to own one. 

It would bring this pasty, land-locked city mom one step closer to fulfilling my dream of living in a beach hut and becoming a tanned, clear-eyed raw foodist with amazing skin and a squeaky-clean intestinal tract.

On my wish list of ridiculously expensive household appliances, that blender has been sharing the top spot—above a dishwasher—along with that other essential for stressed-out parents everywhere: the vaporizer. They may not scream "take charge of your health" like the name Vitamix. But what the Pax, Magic Flight and Whispr do connote is relaxation.

“Forget the vaporizer,” said my friend. “Get the Vitamix. It’s life-changing!”

“A regular blender can’t be that different,” I said. “Sure, my kale smoothies do have a bit of texture. But I’ve learned to live with it.”

“Do your kids drink them?” 

She had me there. 

First chance I got, I dashed away from the party and went home to revisit my $40 Hamilton Beech. I was going to challenge that sucker. Push its limits. Take it into uncharted territory. With my finger firmly on the “Pulse” button, I knew I could provide the calm-assertive energy it needed to blend up the most tooth-loosening veggies I had in my fridge. 

I tossed in the driest winter carrots, the stringiest parsley stems, beets that had rattled around in my crisper for weeks, ginger root. And of course, kale. 

I added water, and blended. It became a murky sludge I was afraid to taste. I added dates. I blended and blended and blended. I blended for several minutes. When I smelled rubber burning, I stopped.

I poured the smoothie into a glass and forced it down, chewing the mulched, liquid salad. Tried to think of it as a gazpacho of sorts. Sweetened with dates.

“This is really good for me,” I said between gulps. But after my stomach refused another sip, I had to admit I had probably just made myself some really expensive compost.

I had made my decision.

Feeding kale to my kids in liquid form just wasn't that important. 

Maybe that isn’t life-changing. And I still have chunks in my smoothies. But after a hit on my new Whispr? I don’t really care.

How I Became My Kid's Bitch

It was my son’s sixth birthday recently. I picked him up after school and asked him, “Did you have a good day?”

“No.”

“But it's your birthday! What happened?”

“Nobody brought me cupcakes.”

And by that he meant me.

His older sisters chimed in, supporting their brother in a rare moment of cooperation. "Everyone gets cupcakes except us!"

I don’t know which punk-ass mom started this trend, but according to my kids, they are the only children in their school of 400+ students whose mom doesn’t bake or buy them birthday cupcakes to bring to class. I don't mean the cake or cupcakes they get at their birthday party. This is a whole extra batch of cupcakes.

"That can't be right," I said, trying to employ logic where logic didn't matter. I did some quick mental calculations--40 weeks in the school year and about 25-30 kids in a class. 

"Your teachers would be dealing with kids strung out on cupcakes every two weeks. At least."

Stink eye. Stony silence.

I've been a parent for a decade, and know how easy it is to become your kid's bitch. We drive them everywhere, ensure they are supervised every waking moment, feed them organic grapes and free range chicken, obsess over food intolerances and sensitivities, even organize their play dates for them.

By the time my eldest daughter's birthday rolled around, I had learned my lesson. I bought the stuff to bake cupcakes.

While lugging it home, I started to think my way out of actually doing anything: That’s a lot of gluten to feed those kids. And about a kilo of refined sugar. Surely the teacher won't appreciate it. It’s got to be wrong.

 

Then I ran into some moms I know. They were out for their power walk but stopped to chat.

"Oooh, what are you baking?” one of them asked when she saw my grocery bags bursting with flour, butter and cheetah print muffin-tin liners.

“I got roped into birthday cupcakes. For the whole class.”

“Oh yeah," said the other mom, waving away my complaint. "That is a nice way to give back when you don’t invite all the kids to the party. My daughter and I always make them together.”

"I guess I thought I might get off easy this time. You know, just by organizing a party and giving a few gifts."

I went home and set about making the recipe. But halfway through I had a stark realization.

There were 25 students in my daughter’s class, and I had two muffin trays, which meant I could only make 24 cupcakes. 

This was a household crisis of the highest order. You know, the kind where the task is so menial and the solution so obvious that it shuts down your frontal lobe? 

Thankfully I could still use my thumbs to text my sister-in-law: “Should I reserve some batter and make an extra cupcake? Should I make a cake instead? Why can't I figure this out?”

Her orders came down like a gavel. “Bake the 24. There’s always someone who doesn’t want one.”

I knew I had to do as she said, but it was really walking the tightrope. What if all the kids did want one?

 

Then it dawned on me. What's more reliable than an absent kid? A kid with a food intolerance.

And I was making wheat flour cupcakes with buttercream icing. Dairy, sugar, gluten. I had my bases covered. 

I baked the 24 cupcakes. I was really living on the edge. I didn’t even know which kid would be intolerant. Didn’t want to know. Didn't need to.

The little vanilla cakes, iced with blobs of buttercream, went to school with my daughter the next day. 

After school, she couldn’t wait to tell me. 

“Mom, everyone wanted one! They were so good,” she crowed. “My friends were all asking for the recipe!”

My heart swelled, but my stomach sank.

“Isn't there a dairy-free kid in your class?”

“Yeah, he couldn’t have one.”

"Yesss!" I said under my breath, and made a quiet little victory fist.

How to look 10 years older and tank your career in one easy step!

There is a moment when a stay-at-home parent's job title shifts from "homemaker" to "straight-up unemployed."

When that happened to me a few months ago, I considered making a resume.

I thought about how to re-brand myself and sell my new "mom" skill set. But making awesome waffles, tricking my kids into cleaning the toilets, using chia seeds to replace eggs in baking, keeping a quarterly blog, none if it seemed very...skillful.

Then, through the dense fog of motherhood, I had a vague recollection from before kids: I once had a real job. At a real office. Writing for a real magazine. Maybe I could do that again.

Abandoning my crazy resume idea, I called up my journo friends who were still in the biz, bought them drinks and then held out my cap.

They were kind enough to toss me some assignments. I wrote a few small articles and many top ten lists (You know the type: Top Ten Biggest Celebrity Butts, Top Ten Baby Nicknames, Top Ten Nicknames Celebrities Give Their Babies' Butts.)

Really, though, my friends couldn't help me much. They were too busy barely hanging on to their own jobs.

They told me horror stories about top people getting the axe, mass layoffs, biweeklies turning into monthlies, established freelancers clawing each others' eyes out over custom content work (soul-killing, sponsored puff pieces on corporate execs).

Around the same time, I saw a depressing rumination by Eric Reguly, who was covering the winter Olympics from Sochi. The talk at the bar was that--while the sports were fanatstic and everything--he and his fellow hacks were more excited about just being there, given the current state of journalism.

But two weeks ago was the real kick in the pants, when a robot broke a story for the LA Times.

Quakebot is his name. And his story wasn't half-bad, either. Straightforward, all the details were there. I'm pretty sure I've written worse pieces. Certainly nothing that got half as much media coverage.

I realized since I dove head-first into motherhood a decade ago, I didn't know journalism anymore.

It used to be about getting a good story, and telling it well. Now it's about getting any story, and telling it quickly--before a robot scoops you. However you have to do it--barf out stream-of-consciousness tweets, Instagram your cleavage--anything goes, as long as you get eyeballs on it.

The game has changed, and if I'm going to get back into it, I'll need a lesson in how this whole self-promotion thing works. But I'm done with journalism school, and my friends can't help. I don't have any marketable cleavage.

So, who to turn to? Who can give me advice on how to resucitate my career?
 
Maybe I should take Quakebot for a drink. He might have a top ten list for me.