Bridgewater Soccer Mom's view of the world

My son has to experience 5 hours without electricity. Luckily I don't have to follow the same rules for here I sit, laptop open and typing away while he reads by candlelight. I forgot how tired I feel after just a few hours without electric lights. I'm not sure he learned much from this journey into the past, except how much he LOVES all things electric. What did he miss the most? Light! What did he learn? "That I like electricity and it's no fun without it." No fun??? He and his friend played games all evening, we ate by candlelight and I thought it was kind of an adventure. I thought he would have learned the opposite - that you can still have fun in the dark. Backfired! My daughter had an assembly (again, missing 2 periods of classes) on Columbine. While she is a fairly intelligent girl, she seemed to have missed the main point. What did she take from it? That one of the girls who died had written in her diary that same week that she thought she would die tha

Dear Santa - for Christmas I need those Guatemalan Trouble Dolls.  You know, those dolls you tell your worries to before you go to bed, you put them under your pillow and the dolls worry while you sleep. At least in theory. It's the first Sunday in Advent - and although it's still November, I feel behind before I've even started. It makes me wonder: why all the pressure? No one is forcing it on me - I'm putting it on myself! So, maybe some of it is understandable: my husband is leaving for his home country in 2 days and I haven't finished the gift I knit my sister-in-law (although I bought, wrapped and delivered nearly all of our other Christmas gifts for my in-laws in July). I am making gifts for various other family and nothing is even close to done. I want the sweater I started Tore to be finished (at least the knitting) so my mother-in-law can help me put it together. And I'm knitting a gift from my father-in-law, which I started in July, and that's

Thanksgiving was - as it has been in the past - like something out of a dream. The food was phenomenal - even my contribution was nearly up to par with the hostess' world-class faire - and the conversation nearly sinfully delightful. My cousins know how to get to the heart of the matter. We shared internet tips with one another and my kids are actually (sigh) old enough to play with their son. Who knew "COD" would be something they bond over? Their daughter is a college freshman and spent more time with us old folks than with the kids. I remember Thanksgiving after going off to college a pivotal moment in my own feeling of being an adult. (It was also terribly sad, since my Grandma died that year just a few weeks before Thanksgiving and her loss was palpable.) Hearing about K's classes, I was mesmerized. It was nothing like the 100-level survey courses of my days. The ride home, however, was long for my bulging tummy. I paid for my gluttony. The food was THAT good.

I know we are supposed to say we are grateful for the people in our lives on this Thanksgiving day, and of course I am, but I am would like to give an honorable mention to a house. I'm grateful that my Dad still lives in our house on Pinewoods Circle. That he is 85 and well enough to live here on his own is a blessing, but I am also thrilled to have this museum to my life with this family. Books cover the surfaces in almost every room, and where there aren't books, you enjoy pictures of family, paintings my great-grandfather and other talented people painted and small trinkets collected through the years. Everything has a memory, yet like a person, sometimes things change. I'm writing this on my Dad's new laptop (that my husband helped him buy) on a modern leather chair that I'm not sure my mother would have liked. Somehow the two black chairs and white sofa somehow work perfectly in this room filled with well-worn hardcovers and a very tired Persian rug. I love

Many people who don't have children living with them look at today's stay-at-homers, or even those who work outside the home and think that all this over-parenting is a way to vicariously live through their children's accomplishments. I may have been guilty of such things (as evidenced by years of over the top birthday celebrations), but I assure you this weekend is proof positive that I do not live through my daughter! We were at a cheer competition in Wildwood, NJ and I hated pretty much every minute of it. Here is a Reader's Digest style rundown of the weekends low points. Hotel: so gross that my husband LITERALLY refused to sleep there! He surfed the net all night long. Hotel: was paid for through the competition organization and was a complete rip off! I will NEVER book through them again!!! The hotel was $50 cheaper online, but because the coaches were decorating the girl's doors, I felt like we had to room there. Next year the three signs on our door a

I don't normally delete my posted blogs, but I did today. We should all have a chance to do a rewrite.  I bet there is a certain BRRSD teacher who wishes he could have that opportunity right about now - and I'm sure there is a 15 year old girl here in 08807 who is rethinking her actions as well... I'm very conflicted about the latest news about a teacher sexting a picture of his junk to a student... I think it is awful. But I find myself wondering about the 15 year old girl too. Doesn't she know it's stupid to send pictures of herself to a teacher? Maybe I'm blaming the victim, much as a jury may hear the biased testimony about what a girl was wearing in a rape case... but maybe I'm blaming her parent for not instilling a sense that it is wrong to send pictures of yourself to a teacher. In my original blog I compared a teacher whom I've known for many years, Mr. C with the BRRSD teacher.  Mr. C was fired about 15 years ago for writing poetry to a s

Thirteen years ago I took C home from the hospital. My dear, darling Mom took care of us for the first week. I think it was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me - she stayed up all night with C did all the laundry and did most of the cooking so I could half-sleep. Since that first day when I left the hospital utterly terrified, literally crying, "how am I going to take care of this baby?" I have learned a lot of things and my confidence as a parent has grown exponentially with each passing year. In fact, it is the area of myself where I am most confident. I didn't totally ruin my kids - yet. So here I will share with you 13 things I have learned about motherhood and child rearing. One for each year. 1) Breast is best. For you, for the baby. She literally sucks the fat right out of you. It's easy and nothing makes you feel quite as intimate with another human being. And, even for a long-term breast feeder, it's a short term commitment. 2) How do you

Is simple - if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I have had a very busy week and haven't blogged much. Sometimes it's better to hold your tongue than to blog (or speak!). After incidents on Saturday and Tuesday, I think it is just as well that I took a week's hiatus because I might say something that isn't very nice, even if it's true. Hope you are all well, dear readers. I'll be back in a day or two with another blog.

I went for a walk through the Sourland Mountain Preserve with Diego and MR. It was a perfect day for it. Not chilly, not warm and we almost had the entire place to ourselves. It was a clear day - so clear we could (just barely) see the Empire State Building! I broke the golden rule and let Diego run off-leash for most of the day as there really were neither people nor furry animals anywhere. In fact, MR and I both noticed, that it seems we have more wildlife scurrying through our back yards! I was speaking to MR about a situation with some former colleagues (I'd heard from a third colleague who told me the latest office squabble) and I admitted that while I often say I miss that job and wish I could live closer so I could have kept my old position, I had forgotten how this "issue" had been difficult to maneuver when I worked there. Having stayed home all these years has really made me wonder where I would be now. Seeing that these colleagues are still "fighting&

I know that the Democrats are going to get spanked tomorrow. And I am actually voting for a Republican! (Did you see lightening? Is that the devil in a parka?) Christine Rose, the replacement for our councilman who was elected to a higher office last year, voted AGAINST cutting the BRRSD budget this spring. Since she supported the only issue important enough to get me to a Town Council Meeting last year, I am happy to give her my vote. Otherwise I have a feeling not a single candidate of mine will win. Skeptical? Yes! But I've been in the reddest area of the bluest part of the Northeast to know that while the Dems need every vote, there simply aren't enough of us like-minded lefties to incite change. I'm boycotting the news tomorrow. It just won't be pretty for pinko-liberals like me. Should something BIG, non-election related, happen tomorrow, please drop me a line!