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.

Toy Mountain

I did my Christmas shopping online this year. While perusing retailers' web sites, I had a strange feeling that toy makers were playing some horrible joke on parents.

You know the one: create a desire and then offer really expensive crap to fill it? It's an old one but we fall for it every time.

Lego, for example, is getting ridiculous.

It's long stopped being an awesome, generic building toy. Now you're strongarmed into choosing a themed, branded set, like Hobbit, or Chima, or Friends. They all have these teensy-tiny specialized pieces that are impossible for any person of any age to actually hold and build with, so instead they fall off, frustrate your kids and get lost until they stab you in the heel when you inevitably step on them.

And Nerf. Remember the Nerf from days gone by? When the point of the Nerf toy was to throw a ball indoors without hurting babies or old people, or breaking stuff?

Not anymore. The Nerf Elite Mega Centurion Blaster looks like it could be used in a drive-by. But not one that hurts babies or old people.

And who thought of calling a toy Cuddles My Giggly Monkey Pet? Don't know what it is, but I'm keeping my kids the hell away from it.

I tried to find toys that are “educational,”  but I even wonder about most of them. My kids received a “chemistry set” last year that contained packets of colored, flavored sugar to teach them about solutions. I wouldn't call overpriced Kool-Aid educational. Okay, maybe educationish.

Done shopping for a lot of crap that will disappoint them hours after opening it, I closed my laptop and took my kids to the park.

It was a cold, windy day and the playground was looking a little forlorn. Kids being kids, they didn't care.

"Ice!" they yelled, and ran to a group of puddles, breaking the frozen crusts under their boots.

A woman walking her dog stopped to watch the kids playing with ice chunks, fallen leaves and mud—a few precious bits of nature in a small oasis in the city.

She looked over at me, smiled and said, “Who needs toys?”

Talking To Your Kids About Crack

Say what you will about Rob Ford—and it's pretty much all been said already—but his recent admission to smoking crack while in a drunken stupor has provided parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, godparents, teachers, family friends and leaders of children everywhere with a wonderful opportunity.

We can finally have that awkward discussion with our kids—and I don't mean teenagers, I mean kids. Little kids. Let's get it out in the open, way before they're hiding under the school bleachers and smoking it.

No, not weed, I mean rock. Badrock. 24-7. Crumbs, cloud, candy, Devil drug, Electric Kool-Aid.

You know what I'm talking about.

Let's talk to our kids about crack.

With Rob Ford's apology all over the news today—it was only once, when he was so shitfaced he can't remember it and he'll never, ever do it again, honest, he pinky-swears—children across Toronto were asking, “Mom, Dad? What's crack cocaine?”

My kids asked, after we got home from school just in time to watch Ford's afternoon press conference.

Of course I said, "Don't do crack. It's a ghetto drug.” I have been waiting and waiting and waiting to say that to a child since I saw the mockumentary Bob Roberts in 1994.

But my kids had a bunch of other questions. The middle child asked if we should feel bad for Ford. The 5-year-old asked, “What does the government do?” My eldest asked if I thought Ford's head was shaped more like a squash or a potato.

I hushed them because I wanted to hear our mayor's incredible statements. He tossed his own accountability to the wind and said, “The past is the past. I can't change it," and, “God bless the people of Toronto.” (Translation: “Whatever, okay?”)

By the end of the press conference, I had at least one answer for my kids: “Mashed potatoes, honey. He looks like a pile of mashed potatoes.”

Hallowe'en on a Budget

For years, I have resisted buying decorations for Hallowe'en. I have tried hard to stick to a one jack-o-lantern rule.

I blame my ancestors. Half came from the shtetls of Ukraine and Poland. The other half were just Scottish. (Four generations ago, yes, but it still counts at our kids' school multicultural night.)

Forget a dollar, my forefathers knew the value of a penny. Of a rag. Of spent matches, even.

But there is no excuse for such frugality these days. With a Dollarama on every corner, anyone can adorn their porch with a fake devil or two.

So every year, recession or not, Hallowe'en decorations festoon front yards all over the city.

Except ours.

This year, our next-door neighbors got an inflatable spider for their front yard. Our kids looked on enviously as the good parents plugged in the spider and its googly eyes lit up.

Even I had to admit it was awesome. Definitely would have been a hit in the shtetl.

Our 9-year-old stared at it sullenly for a while, like she just knew that would never be her reality. Then she turned to the neighbor's kids.

“Can you help us decorate?” she said. “Because our yard is kind of lame.”

I tried to tell our daughter that our creaking door and lack of renovations made our house genuinely creepy.

But, no, she wanted fake creepy.

That was it. I had to ignore my instinct to keep my money in my wallet, and I headed out to buy fake spider webs, Monster Mix sprinkles, fake tombstones and a second, totally ostentatious jack-o-lantern.

I came home $40 poorer, and I swear I heard my ancestors rolling in their graves.

The Place Beyond the Lilacs

We used to have the coolest backyard.

We share a property line with the neighbors to the north of us. There is no alley or road dividing the two yards. So, six years ago, when me moved in, the effect was that we shared one giant lawn with our back neighbors.

There was no fence, but there was a natural partition—a row of lilac trees that yielded a fragrant, white froth of blooms each spring.

The occupants of the other house were one very elderly lady and her cat. We didn't know her well; she hardly ever went outside except to sit on a wooden bench she had under the lilacs.

Our kids sometimes wandered around on her property to talk to her or play with her cat. She didn't mind.

This communal paradise yard went on for a while.

Then one winter, three years ago, the lady died.

Her house was sold, and stayed empty for a while.

Then suddenly, one Monday morning as I was getting the kids ready for school, there was a work crew in that yard. Backhoes and chainsaws and diggers and mini-bulldozers. Whatever small excavating machinery they could fit in there.

Out went the grass, the bench and the bluebells.

Our children watched from our back yard in tears as a worker took a chainsaw to the lilacs and felled them in a few short minutes. It was a Watership Down moment.

It was clear our new neighbors were building a fence. I saw a family there, and went over to introduce myself. There wasn't much we could do about it. The fence was on their property line. The lilacs were technically in their yard.

They built the highest fence allowed under the building code.

And the kids, though they occasionally peeked through the fence at each other, never met.

Until recently.

It was a blustery but warm and sunny fall afternoon, my kids were just home from school and went to play in the back yard.

The neighbors' kids were out in their yard with their nanny watching over them.

“Hi,” my 5-year-old son called out.

No response.

“Hi!” he bellowed. "Hi! Hi! Hello-o!"

He's third born, and is used to being ignored.

Finally one of the neighbor's children answered him back.

“Hi!” said the little boy. He had glasses and looked a bit shy.

 “I want to come play with you,” hollered my son. “But your fence is too high to climb!”

At that point, he and his two sisters ran out back together.

They tried to scramble up the fence, but couldn't get a foothold. It was a fortress wall.

My daughters tried to boost up my son and help him climb the fence, but instead they made a type of tottering pyramid. The other kids' nanny, probably sensing this meant trouble in some way, ushered her charges inside and slammed shut the sliding glass door.

We haven't seen them since.

It is a good fence. Well-constructed, anyway. But I'm not sure it has made us good neighbors.

Getting to know your neighbors

One quiet Sunday morning this past August, it hit me: our daughter was about to turn seven and still didn't know how to ride a bike. I took her out to teach her.

Out on the sidewalk, E. got on her pink, surfer-girl themed ride, pushed the pedals, and wobbled down the street.

She was oblivious to the fact that her seat and handlebars needed adjusting (she got the bike when she was four). This made her hunch over and her knees stick out, like a circus clown on a tiny tricycle. 

She didn't care. She quickly figured out how to balance and then raced down the sidewalk at full speed. She stopped and looked back at me, eyes gleaming with excitement.

I went to congratulate her, but as I approached, I saw that someone else was already doing so.

An elderly man, a neighbor, was sitting in his easy chair on his covered porch, clapping enthusiastically, sharing in my daughter's triumph.

I didn't know this neighbor. I mean, I knew of him, but I had always steered clear, a little afraid. He was very old, and had highly arched eyebrows that gave him a cold, judgmental look. He often sat in his chair and contemplated the neighborhood, aloof and silent.

But today he was smiling. He got out of his chair. He came down the stairs of his porch gingerly, gripping the handrail, walking on badly swollen ankles that were clearly painful.

“I remember,” he was saying to my daughter, “When I was about your age, my father taught me to ride. He took me to a grassy hill, so it wouldn't hurt if I fell. He let go of my seat and I just, pshhh---” 

He made a motion with his hand like he was taking off. His eyes were alive with the memory.

“That was a long time ago,” he said.

My daughter got back on her bike and started riding again, the world of adults and reminiscence must have paled in comparison to the feeling of the wind in her hair.

“It's something you never forget, isn't it?” I said. “The first time you ride a bike.” I was trying to make small talk.

He began to talk about his childhood, and I detected an accent.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked. It's a question we often ask each other here in Toronto, where everyone is from somewhere else.

“Germany,” he said, his face darkening. Now he knew I would register: very old guy, German...World War II! 

He launched into an explanation. “I was in the army. Not in Hitler Youth or the SS or anything. I was stationed in Russia.”

Right, nothing bad happened there, I thought cynically. Half my family is Jewish and came from Russia, Poland and Ukraine. My grandmother lost 26 relatives in the Holocaust.

Now the joy of the previous moment was gone, awkwardly replaced by the atrocities of the Eastern Front.

"When did you come to Canada?" I asked.

“1950. The first thing they asked me in immigration was, 'How many Jews did you kill?' Then they found me work in a Jewish deli. I could speak Yiddish. We all got along. The owner never asked me about my past. But you should have seen how my children were teased in school,” he continued. “They were called Nazis.”

It struck me that he had quite possibly spent a large part of his life explaining himself to people. As a German soldier in World War II, he was in his own way a victim of war. Then again, maybe he was a war criminal.

My daughter stopped her bike in front of his yard.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Ninety-four,” he said, as if the fact were unbelievable, even to him.

It was getting toward lunch, time to go home. We said our goodbyes.

“He's nice,” my daughter said, as we walked her bike home together. “He's really old. Is he going to die soon?”

“I hope not,” I said.

“He's almost a hundred!” said my daughter.

A few weeks later, an ambulance was parked at his house. He was being taken out on a stretcher and put into the back. For days after that, I didn't see him. His car wasn't in the driveway. The fall weather was warm and balmy; he should have been out on his porch. Every day when I walked by on my way to pick up the kids from their bus stop, I anxiously scanned his chair, but it was empty.

Finally, a few days ago, I saw him. I found I was relieved, overjoyed even.

“The old guy lives!” I texted my husband. My heart was pounding, happy he was still in the world. He was taking out the garbage, remembering the past, just like the rest of us.

Lost Phone Part 2: Date Night

As the week-without-a-phone got underway, not having one seemed like it should be a good thing. I couldn't text every little thought that entered my head anymore, which made me more attentive--but with strong undercurrents of loneliness and misery.

A good friend of mine had recently complained on Facebook about a mother he saw on the street who was texting instead of answering her child's questions.

“But kids have a LOT of questions,” I replied, and felt a little smug in my cleverness. But then later I realized it could have been me he saw. Had I become that inattentive mom in the street? Of course I had! This break from texting was just what I needed. A break from my own impulsiveness. A detox.

Trouble is, I had started another type of detox that week, the Clean program, which purports to help your body rid itself of “toxins.” Like all cleanses, you give up caffeine and alcohol. Yes, both. At the same time. More misery, but if it makes me look less horrifying in a bikini during spring break, it was worth it.

So, just to recap: I was now detoxing from caffeine, alcohol, and texting.

It wasn't working for me, people! Maybe I was overdoing it on the kale/hemp seed/flax oil/almond-butter smoothies, or maybe it was the stress of missing appointments and never knowing what time it was that was stressing me out and therefore adding to my belly fat.

I was gaining weight, while constantly hungry for some sugar and coffee.

“Eat some food,” said my husband. “Food that's not chia seeds and kale.” But I told myself it was important for the “toxins” to leave my body.

Then my husband did something—rather, didn't do something. I had been counting on him for it, and when he didn't come through I was angry. We talked about it over email, and he apologized.

But I was still mad, and stoking the embers of the injustice that was done to me.

I couldn't text him that I was still mad. As far as he knew, everything was fine, and that was killing me.

We just had that one little efficient conversation. There was no prolonged texting drama where he would let me vent while he did something else and then answered with a few more apologies later, when he had a moment.

Until I had a phone again, I realized, I couldn't nag. Now that was going to be a problem.

When I saw my husband later that day, he apologized again. After the kids went to bed, he started getting rather...affectionate.

But I wasn't having it. I was caught up in what felt like a cloud of free-floating anger, where it constantly rained giant teardrops of gloom. I couldn't stop crying over the dumbest things.

It went on for days.

“I don't feel like myself!” I sobbed to him on the third night he tried, and failed, to get romantic. “I think I'm possessed! This could be spirit possession!”

Because he's a tactful guy, my husband covered his mouth before he burst out laughing. “I think we might have a few more options before we get to spirit possession,” he said. “Maybe you miss your phone?”

“It's just a phone!” I said. “There's no way a phone would make me this upset." 

He had a point, though. It wasn't just a phone. I had lost a few good photos of the kids, my favorite books (no e-reader), my watch, my alarm clock, my agenda, my to-do list, some music, and what I have come to understand is a major tool of my own co-dependence.

“You'd be amazed,” said my husband, trying to make me feel less freakishly materialistic. “I was just reading about how over the past few years, people have become really attached to their phones.”

It helped a little. I came a bit closer to him and allowed him to put his arm around me. He had his phone sitting in front of us, along with another brand-new smartphone he had just got through work.

His arm around me; me looking wistfully at his smartphone. It was a bit of a love triangle. He made his move.

“Why don't you take my phone?” he said. “I have two.”

"The new one?" I said.

He nodded.

It was date night, baby. Apparently I am that shallow.