the woman – Page 9 – the chelsea chronicles

pet peeves

It seems like a good time of the year (or maybe just a good time of the month) to delve into some of my worst all-around pet peeves. Some of these have been said or written before but bear repeating. I know I am mostly preaching to the choir and that none of my dear readers are guilty of or responsible for any of these complaints of mine. Feel free to share yours back. It seem like a good day to have a rant-fest.

1. Tourists take note: on the metro, we stand on the right, walk on the left. If you happen to be standing on the left and I say, “excuse me” (in a very polite voice, of course) don’t mouth off about how “everyone in Washington is always in such a hurry.” Yes, we are in a hurry. Guess what? We have a country to run. So kindly step out of the way and let me pass.

2. The metal clicking noise made by a pump that needs the heel tip replaced is worse for me than hearing nails scratch down a chalkboard. This shoe foul is particularly bad if said click is made when the offender is walking on a marble floor, and worse if that marble floor is in the Capitol where there is a cobbler conveniently located. (As in, there are no excuses for not getting it fixed.)

3. Restaurants that use white linen napkins. Are you really telling me that there is no such thing as a lint-free napkin? And instead of just having black napkins upon request, how about you default to the use black napkins and keep the white ones on hand for the random person wearing white? This practice would make sense especially in cities where the majority of folks dine in their professional attire, which more often than not (in DC anyway) comes in varying shades of black, navy and charcoal. Even a lint-roller couldn’t help me the other day after a run-in with a particularly linty napkin.

4. It hurts my eyes to look at women wearing pants with floating hems. You know what I’m talking about. Their pants have been altered to be worn with flats or a kitten heel, but then they wear them with a higher heel and the edge of the pant leg dangles awkwardly somewhere between the ankle and the ground. It’s the equivalent of men wearing high water pants. I know it sucks, but you have to have certain pants you are committed to wearing only with heels and some you are committed to wearing only with flats, and get the lengths tailored accordingly.

5. I beg of you, wear seasonally (and weather) appropriate footwear. While I do admit that before my physical therapist banned me from wearing flip flops for anything but a walk to the beach, I had been known to push the envelop on how long into the season I could wear them for my (short) walk to the metro. But then investing in a good pair of weather-hearty boots for winter was the best decision I ever made. Similarly, UGGs anytime, but particularly UGGs in the summer (with shorts!) totally gross me out. UGGs in the rain, I just don’t get.

There you have it. I apologize if I offend anyone but luckily it is National Champagne Day, so go out tonight and raise a toast to this sparkling elixir of the gods. Just make sure your napkin doesn’t throw up lint all over your pants, whether they are hemmed to the right length or not.

farewell to running

Post Run Breakfast — At breakfast after the last race I ran: the Capitol Hill Classic 2010.

Today is the day of one of my favorite races, the Army Ten-Miler. It is also the day of the Chicago Marathon, a race I had planned to run as my qualifier for the Boston Marathon. It’s a beautiful day in DC, perfect fall running weather, and I’m imagining the same for Chicago, where my friends Corry and Jeff are running their annual marathon. This morning, I didn’t get up at the crack of dawn to make my way to the start line at the Pentagon like I have in years past. Instead, I slept in. Then I took a walk. An hour walk over the streets (read: hills) of Cheverly that I used to run every morning. An hour into the ATM, I would have been just over two-thirds of the way done (if I count by the time I set the last two times I ran it, when I clocked the exact same time for each race). But that was before my back betrayed me. That was before I had this conversation with the doctor on Thursday.

Me: So essentially what you are saying is that I can never run again?

Doctor: You can do whatever the fuck you want, but I highly recommend you never run again.

It’s true that I had been nursing this fantasy that one day he would say, “take a short run, Chelsea. See how it feels.” And I wouldn’t care how slow I felt or how hard the 5-mile course I used to practically do in my sleep seemed after a ten-month hiatus. But I’ll never again organize my day to the beat of my feet hitting the sidewalk. I’ll never again take aggression out on [fill in the blank] by charging up a particularly steep hill. I will never again be able to judge the outcome of a day by whether or not I managed to not step on any sidewalk cracks on my final sprint home. I will never be able to rely on a week of 5-mile runs to ensure that my favorite jeans will fit just right before the weekend arrives.

Well, I could do these things, but for a price. I assume it was accidental (and not some cruel calculation the doctor made to give me a preview of what I look forward to if I don’t take his advice) but joining me in the waiting room the other day were two people in wheelchairs and one man with two canes who sat in his chair moaning in agony until he was ushered into an examination room. My steady pain-level of three, while annoying and throbbing and limiting at times, seemed nothing compared to how these people felt.

I know there are other sports and activities, but I need time to mourn running. I was never a team sport person (unless you count cheerleading, which I know you don’t unless you were once a cheerleader too) and my horrible hand-eye coordination makes options like tennis and golf not impossible but a challenge (I have thought I could get really good at tennis though if I had a hot instructor). But those aren’t sports you jump out of bed at 5:45 and do for 45 minutes and come home ready to face the day.

So I accept my doctor’s advice, though not without tears and not without envy at all those runners setting PRs or just enjoying the camaraderie of a race. After all, the end of our conversation could have been worse.

Doctor: Your shoe choices don’t help your back any, but I know better than to tell you not to wear heels.

I don’t have running, but at least I get to keep shoes.

the sweat equity challenge

It all started with a hurricane and peeling textured ceiling paint in the guest room.

The textured ceiling paint was not peeling as a result of Hurricane Irene; no, it was gratis the previous harry homeowner, or maybe two harry homeowners ago. who made a number of sloppy sweat equity decisions back in his ownership days. When my brother Nathan (a professional) was here refinishing my downstairs bathroom, he checked out the peeling ceiling for me, reported that it was the result of the person who applied said textured paint without sanding or priming ahead of time.

“Even you can remove it easily,” he assured me.

Since I mostly keep the guest bedroom door closed though, it was really out of sight, out of mind. But then we were stranded in the house without power, and I needed something to do that didn’t involve electricity. Since I love to peel, be it sunburns, beer bottle labels or old wallpaper, a little light bulb went off in my brain. Surely textured ceiling paint would provide the same satisfaction.

Six hours later, I was barely a third of the way done and it was getting dark. A few more hours the next day did not yield much more progress. I have found oddly that letting the ceiling “rest” helps loosen some of the tougher spots. I’m not done yet, but I am determined to finish it soon. By next weekend. Or next month. At least by the next time I have guests.

All this Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor work got me to thinking, why not take on one project a weekend, no matter how small, between now and Thanksgiving. It isn’t like there’s a shortage of work to be done around my old house. This weekend I was ambitious; the ceiling continues to be peeled during my “breaks” from other activities, namely applying a fresh coat of paint (or three) on the backside of the kitchen door and stairwell that leads to the basement. Other jobs on my personal honey do list: painting the exterior backdoor; replacing some ceiling tiles in the basement; converting the playroom into an office-homework station; power-washing the side of the house; and well, I will stop there or my friends will be scared to come over lest I put them to work.

I could hire someone. But let’s be honest, there is plenty of work on that list too. (I don’t do electrical. Or pipes. Or floors.) So why not test my homeowner skills on this easier set of tasks and realize some immediate progress? After all, I at least can meet my own cost estimates and I guarantee myself I will get the job done in the time I have available.

Break’s over. Back to the ceiling.

ten lessons I have learned in my first ten years of being a mother

Let me get one thing straight: I have learned more than ten parenting lessons. But on today, the day that marks ten years of my being a mother, a day when my friend Angie is likely to give birth to her first child (I hope I didn’t just jinx the pace of your labor, Angie) I offer these lessons as a good cross-section of those things that the books don’t teach you.

In no particular order:

1. Band-aids are required for booboos that do not necessarily involve bleeding. As a parent, you just have to accept that you’re going to blow through a box of band-aids in a week, whereas when I was single the same box would linger in my medicine cabinet for over a year. A bruise, a bump, it doesn’t matter. Band-aids are accessories.

2. Sleep begets sleep. Early on as a parent, you may think to yourself one night, “we are having fun, drinking good wine, having conversation. Let’s let the kids stay up later, then they will sleep later and we can sleep in.” It doesn’t work that way. Kids who stay up later wake up at the same time in the morning, but are sleep-deprived, or in other words, cranky. But by some miracle, kids who go to bed early (and/or have a good nap) will sleep until their usual wake up time — or sometimes later.

3. On a related note… no amount of fun the night before is worth the pain the next morning. Now that my kids are of an age that they don’t wake me up in the morning, it doesn’t matter quite as much, but back when they were younger, I would have loved to hire someone for the morning after even more than being able to have the evening out.

4. If your child gets him or herself dressed, you look the other way if it doesn’t match. For several months, Jack’s “go to” outfit was a pair of bright red athletic pants and a kelly green tee-shirt. It hurt my eyes to look at him. But as long as that outfit was clean, I didn’t have to pick out his clothes or get him dressed. Then one morning, he was in said outfit at the table having breakfast, looked down at himself, and exclaimed, “I look like Christmas! I have to change.” In other words, he eventually figured it out.

5. Kids tell the same jokes and play the same annoying games we did as kids. You have to pretend you haven’t heard the banana/orange knock-knock joke a gazillion times. You suddenly understand why your parents wanted to leave you at a roadside stop after two hours of you and your sibling playing the copying game where they say what the other just said. Where they say what the other just said. Mom, he’s copying me. Mom, he’s copying me.

6. If there is anything worth crying over, it’s spilled milk. I forgot about this one until the other day when Nancy’s daughter spilled a whole pint of strawberry milk in her car. Neither of my boys really drink milk anymore, but back in the day, a cup of spilled milk seemed like it took longer to clean up than the oil spill in the Gulf. In other words, it’s no laughing matter.

7. Kids always know how much money they have in their wallets. So if you have to borrow some (like when you have to call the emergency locksmith because you grabbed the wrong set of keys while simultaneously closing the locked door behind you and you don’t have the required cash to get him to then leave your house once he has broken you back in) you must replace their money immediately (before you forget) and in the same denominations you took. You should also try to crinkle the bills up like they have been in the grasp of a sweaty hand.

8. Reverse psychology was invented to be used on kids. You want them to do something? Pretend you think it’s too dangerous or complicated or that they aren’t old enough, and before you know it they will be fighting over who gets to do it.

9. Kids cannot keep secrets. Ever. Not even small ones like, “don’t tell your brother I let you ride shotgun (watch TV, lick the bowl, stay up late).” And the bigger deal you make of the secret, the faster they will reveal it.

10. When you are having a bad day, your kids will inevitably make it worse. After a long day, coming home to cook a dinner that they won’t eat (even if it’s their favorite) and argue with them about bathing (“but I’m clean!”), teeth-brushing (“why?”), reading (“one more chapter?”) and bedtime (“I’m not tired!”), just when you are at your wits end, one will say something to make the day better. My favorite is this:

Child: “Mommy?”

Me: “Yes?”

Child: “I love you.”

And suddenly all the drama is worth it.

weathering the storm

welcoming the storm — photo by jim@grahamstudios.com

There are some among us who believe that I control the weather. What else can explain that when I convert my closet from lightweight summer staples to wooly fall splendor, the temperatures climb back up into the 90s? Or how breaking out a pair of flip flops in the early spring can cause it to snow? While I did take credit for the earthquake that hit the mid-Atlantic earlier this week (after all, I was in the middle of an angry recounting of how it was the first week of school and my younger son’s class inexplicably was still without a teacher) please do not blame Hurricane Irene on me. Even though I am wholly unprepared for her to unleash her wrath on D.C.

Maybe it’s because I cannot imagine a situation worse than Snowmaggedon, when I was one of four houses on my block without power, which is not exactly the type of outage that sends Pepco immediately to the rescue. (Except Pepco did come sooner than expected thanks to a phone call to my friend Nathan, an arborist for the utility who came to my house during his “break” between 18-hour shifts to identify the problem and call-in a downed (live) wire.) Maybe it’s because the last two “hurricanes” I prepared for (Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and Hurricane Gloria in 1985) were severely downgraded by the time they hit my region. Maybe it’s my well-stocked wine “cellar.” Whatever the reason, I cannot succumb to the pre-storm hype.

I do have a seven-year old who is deathly afraid of this impending storm. So afraid that he had nightmares last night and has asked me approximately every seven minutes whether Hurricane Irene is here yet. He’s envisioning a flooded basement, a river running down our street, and felled trees. He collected every flashlight in the house and set about replacing the batteries of the ones that needed fresh juice. He asked me to bake chocolate chip cookies to make him feel better on this rainy day. And he is milking me for as much TV as possible before the power goes out.

I didn’t buy any bottled water, though I did get the kids their favorite snacks and bought some candles. I didn’t pick up any sand bags at RFK, but did buy fresh eggs at the farmer’s market this morning, even though I already had a dozen in my refrigerator (omelets tomorrow?). I don’t have an evacuation plan or a full tank of gas, but I’m not sure if it comes to that I would get far in my Prius with two kids and three cats.

Now that I have spelled it all out, I have a twinge of regret I am not better prepared, but there’s really nothing to do at this point but sit back, stay calm, hope for the best for our friends in the path of the brunt of the storm, and uncork some wine. Chardonnay and/or sparkling first and reds after the power has gone out.

And hopefully by Monday all the hurricane songs will be purged from my head.

summer vacation

4th fire truck — a scene from summer vacation

What did you do (or not do) on your summer vacation? I (in case you hadn’t noticed) barely blogged. I had assumed summer nights would be blissfully free to commit my thoughts to electronic paper, but at the end of most days, I could barely muster the energy to send a text let alone write a post.

At the end of the school year in June, I was ready to collapse under the weight of the kids’ collective schedules, and I couldn’t wait until the pressures of the school year were gone and vacation would begin. But summer vacations of today are not the summer vacations of my youth. First of all, I still have to work. As Jack puts it, “it isn’t fair, Mommy, that you don’t get to take the summer off too.” Second of all, as I remembered by the third day of summer camp, preparing kids for camp is harder than preparing kids for school.

It seems like a small thing, but you have to remember to pack a bathing suit and towel. Every day. Even though the kids are given designated swim days, camp advises sending their gear each day just in case they get an extra window to swim. And swimming means applying vats of sunscreen to your kids each morning before they head out the door. While I make a lunch for my kids most days when they go to school, it’s nice to know you have a back up option (even if they mostly detest school lunch) on a morning when you overslept and/or forgot to buy peanut butter and/or the bread miraculously went green overnight. At camp, there is no such luxury. You need to pack a lunch everyday or your kid doesn’t eat. And lunches need to be bigger, complete with snacks and extra drinks for hot code orange and red days. Exhausting.

Even the kids asked, “when do we get a summer where we can take a break from school and camp?”

That’s a good question. When I was Jack’s age, I was already watching my brother Nathan in the summers. We’d walk to the neighborhood pool in the morning, have our swim lessons, come home for lunch, then walk back to the pool to swim the remainder of the day. Implementing a similar routine with Jack and Colin would probably result in someone turning me in to social services.

That isn’t to say the boys and I didn’t get any breaks this summer. A ten-day tour of New England to visit with close friends and family got us out of town and gave us a breather from our usual grind. Five days last week in Chicago and Michigan gave me a needed respite from work, camp, mommy duties and stifling DC humidity. But school starts next week, which means fall is around the corner and with it (aside from tall boots, cashmere sweaters, scarves and all the other goodies I am dreaming of) comes soccer season.

Is it winter break yet?

hard as nails

When the going gets tough in this city, well, often, the tough get a manicure. I know it seems like a shallow thing to think, do and write about in these dark and sweaty times. The world economy is on the brink of collapse due in total part to the partisan posturing of political leaders in DC. This weekend, bombs rocked Norway, the home of the Nobel Peace Prize. And in case you hadn’t noticed, a massive heat dome has been sitting menacingly over our country.

Sometimes you just need to get away, even for 45 minutes.

Those who see me on a regular basis probably have not missed that I like dark nail polish. I can’t quite go as far as the black shade that my friend Kara carries off so well, but I usually wear polish as dark as I can get that isn’t black. This obsession started nearly 20 years ago. I was recently out of college and read in some fashion magazine about Chanel nail polish in Vamp. Oh, how I coveted Vamp. But my post-college budget did not have room for a $25 nail polish. So I admired from afar. Then a friend of my dad’s heard me mention Vamp and surprised me with my very own bottle.

Even today, equivalent shades at a better price point like Essie’s Wicked or OPI’s Lincoln Park After Dark are my go-to when I am having my nails done. But in the summer, sometimes I feel pressured to at least try to embrace a brightness of color. Sometimes that color is coral. Sometimes red. But usually after a few “happy color” manicures, I revert back to my old ways. After all, I am a self-professed creature of habit.

I had just that kind of manicure a few weeks ago. I loved the bright purple in the salon. It looked great on my toes with sandals. (I am one of those people who wears the same nail color on toes and hands.) But after about two days, I was done with it. I was sitting in a meeting, distracted by my own nails, wishing I had taken the polish off that morning. As if to torment me more, I then ran across a post announcing Chanel’s new limited edition fall nail color line-up. I became singularly focused on wanting the greenish color pictured in the middle. Peridot. I’m no more a green nail polish wearer than I am watermelon, but I had to have it.

After about three days of thinking such, I gave in and on a whim, drove out to Nordstrom to buy Peridot. I didn’t even try the sample on in the store (was still wearing the hated purple). I contemplated a manicure on my way home, but it was getting late and I wanted to get home and cook dinner. I was slicing a baguette to toast into croutons when the great slip of 2011 occurred. Let’s just say multi-tasking with a serrated knife is not smart. That knife cut right through my thumbnail, about half way down the bed of my thumb. It took days to stanch the bleeding, and even now, two weeks later, despite all my yogurt eating, my nail is not yet in a manicure-able state.

So Peridot, along with tall boots and sweaters, will have to wait a little while longer. Let’s hope in the meantime for a deal on the debt ceiling and a break in these sweltering temperatures.

glorious pasta

I have been slightly obsessed of late with the idea of making fresh pasta. I’m sure that those who know I like to cook are surprised to learn that I do not regularly crank out my own fresh noodles. I have to admit to having been slightly scarred by my first attempt, more than 15 years ago, when my roommate Cathy and I decided to make fresh pasta for her boyfriend-now-husband and my boyfriend-of-the-month. Did I jinx our attempt by buying fresh pasta as backup? Or maybe we relied too much on the fact that Cathy (née Licata) is Italian-American. Aren’t Italians born with the ability to effortlessly make pasta? Okay, her pasta maker didn’t come with directions. We could figure it out, right?

Wrong.

Fast forward to the present day. For the better part of six months, I have been watching the pasta making class schedule at Hill’s Kitchen, but every time a class was offered, I either had the kids or a can’t-get-out-of work event. It turns out my friend Adrienne bought spaces in the class for her boyfriend for Valentine’s Day (too cute, I know) and after taking the class themselves, they very graciously offered to impart their new found knowledge on me. All I had to do was bring the wine.

I don’t think I have ever been so intimated by a bowl of flour, salt and eggs. I have kneaded many a loaf of bread in my day, and I always make my own pizza dough. But I admit to being intimated by these simple ingredients and what I was expected to produce out of them. Luckily, Adrienne was a patient teacher, so I followed her lead with my own well of flour and eggs. After we let our pasta dough rest (during which time we moved on from sparkling wine to chardonnay) on came the part that I most dreaded: turning the dough into long strands of edible glory.

By the time I had watched Adrienne’s tutorial with the pasta maker and took my first turn running the dough through it, I was hooked. Then I tasted the fruit of our labor (served simply with olive oil, freshly grated parmesan and fresh basil) and I knew what my next kitchen toy would be.

This morning, on a whim, a craigslist search yielded what I thought I might find: a couple looking to off-load their pasta maker, new in the box, a duplicate wedding gift they never got around to exchanging. It now sits in my kitchen, next to my already dogeared copy of “The Glorious Pasta of Italy” by local food writer Domenica Marchetti, whom I had the pleasure to meet in person at a recent book signing of said book.

As for dinner tonight, Adrienne was kind enough to send me home with extra pasta. My only struggle is what sauce to make.

I’m officially reunited with my kitchen.

Cheverly Valley PTA

In my weakened state of mind this week (see previous post) my friend Kate made an appeal to me: would I run for secretary of the PTA.

Now, Jack finished 3rd grade this week and has been at Hoyer Montessori for five years and do you know how many PTA meetings I have attended? A sum total of one. And that one meeting had an agenda item that I had fought with some other parents to have included. In fact, This said group of parents came over to my house afterwards for drinks. I have consistently been a member of our PTA, just not a particularly active one. Not that I haven’t wanted to be. If I recall correctly, the last school year, I was traveling a lot for work, and it seemed my trips always coincided on the days the monthly PTA meetings were held. This year, the PTA just wasn’t on my radar.

But next year, I am all in. And not just because I know it’s going to irritate our condescending principal who doesn’t know how to deal little boys, in particular when little boys do little boy things like talk loudly or sing potty songs. Come to think of it, she doesn’t know how to deal with parents either, in particular ones who do parental things like question what sort of disciplinary action she is going to take against the school bully. She isn’t great at relating to the teachers either. Or students. But I am not doing this just to be a thorn in her side.

And I am not just doing it because my friend Rachel is running for VP and being on the board with her will give us a chance to spend some quality time discussing (read: mocking) the things that amuse us. Nor did I agree to put my name on the ballot because I have nursed any long-time desire to seek (or tweet from) elected office.

I agreed to get engaged because I am fortunate enough that my kids are thriving in a public Montessori school, located one block from our house. In an otherwise over-subscribed school district, they were each in classes this year with 18 other students. In our small school community, the parents know the teachers. We know each other. I laugh when I get the pre-recorded phone call from PGCPS to alert me to the fact that one of my sons missed school on a day he was home sick with me. If Jack or Colin ever took it upon themselves to skip school, I’m sure I would hear it from a live voice long before I heard it from a recording.

As secretary of the PTA, I will keep diligent and accurate minutes of each meeting. I will help steer the agenda in a direction that I think will benefit the school. I will certainly still invite parents to my house over for drinks after a tough meeting. Or a successful meeting. I don’t otherwise have a platform or a motive unless you count the two super-smart little boys who call me mommy.

unwind me

Chris Meck Photography — wine makes everything better

I know, I know… I have been MIA. But really, the truth of the matter is that the last six weeks or so finally caught up with me. What have I been doing with all my so-called “free” (from the blog) time? Well, to name a few activities, I have been busy being a little league mom, a stage mom, and a new kitten mom, all on top of my usual post as working mom. In the house, we have had strep throat (a recurring case), broken glasses, a cavity to fill, and my own weekly physical therapy appointments. In addition to the memos to write, the meetings to run, the conference calls to prepare for, and the never-ending strategizing that goes on in my working world, I had to spend an hour at my son’s school in the principal’s office because he sang a potty song. Yes, my seven-year old son got written up for singing a potty song. Does our principal not know the minds of little boys? (If you live in my town, you know the answer to my question.)

In short, I ended each day since my last post in a heap on my bed, unable to put a single witty (or fashionable) thought together. My back hurts. And none of my clothes fit.

But then, slowly but surely the fog has cleared, even if in an uneven, the-universe-is-messing-with-me sort of way. Memories of wine tasting in Healdsburg, California over the weekend quickly faded into the recesses of my mind during a two-hour hellish cab ride home (with an hour-long conference call in the middle) from Dulles on Tuesday. Hill meetings galore and a no-damage fender-bender sealed the deal for me this week that some greater force was out to get me. But then I realized that maybe I am out to get myself. After all, when was the last time I took a real vacation? And by real, I mean one that lasts for more than a long weekend, is not merely extra days tacked onto a work trip and doesn’t involve family. (Sorry family.)

Having this epiphany (and a homemade bacon and peanut-butter pop tart this morning) has turned my frame of mind around. While no plans have been made (I haven’t even had real time to think about what it is I want to do) just knowing that I am going to make the time for myself to do something has improved my outlook.

That, and I bought some really delicious Pinot Noirs over the weekend.