Uh-oh, it's magic.

The glasses and scarf came in the mail Thursday afternoon, in the nick of time for "storybook character dress-up day." He tried them on with his corduroy jacket, and checked himself out in the mirror.

"All I need now," he said, "is to have black hair, and grow taller."

And looked at me as if I were the person who could make it happen.

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all in green went my love riding

My father used to recite that line of e.e. cummings whenever I wore his favorite color. I thought of it this morning as I kissed young Baggins goodbye.





all in green went my love riding by e.e. cummings

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Totally Beast

While in New York, I learned from my publicists that the new "cool" is "beast." As in, "this publicity meeting is totally BEAST.*"** I tell you, I bore that information back home with me and presented it to my sixth grader as proudly as if I had brought him the giant floor piano from FAO Schwarz for a souvenir.

"That's not new," he said.

Well, if he doesn't want it, I'm keeping it.

One of the beautiful, paradoxical things about social media is how it both broadens and shrinks the offline world. Within about fifteen minutes of letting it drop on Facebook and Twitter that I was Big Apple bound, I had more enticing invitations for coffee, drinks, lunch, etc. than I could possibly hope to accept. It's hard for a people pleaser and an extrovert like myself to turn any offer down, but with my days full of meetings, I had to beg for a lot of rain checks.

Rather than try to spread myself too thin, I went deep, and wound up having a few really special and memorable evenings. Like introducing one of my dearest "internet" friends to one of my earliest childhood friends over prosecco at Buddhakan and eating our weight in pasta at L'Artusi, before going on to a speakeasy in the Village and having my tarot cards read.

Like going with Isabel to the Cool Mom Tech launch and getting to finally chat face to face with Liz - two women who are both smart, kind and funny enough for me to try to work past the fact that they are both gorgeous as well. Like seeing Alice and Doug again, and meeting Pierre and Christina.

And especially seeing My Morning Jacket play at Terminal 5, with Monica, who had come from Houston to see all five shows, and had an extra ticket with my name on it. I only knew MMJ for their last album, which I played on endless loop two summers ago, and from a cameo appearance by the lead singer in the Bob Dylan biopic, "I'm Not There." But I was informed by several people that my attendance at the Terminal 5 event raises my "cool" factor considerably. Which is good, because frankly, it could only go up.

The venue itself was fantastic. I love concert halls. You couldn't get me to go an arena for the second coming of Jesus, backed up by the Beatles. I like to be able to see the performers' faces, and not on a giant screen. Monica had staked us out a spot close to the stage, and I will say that My Morning Jacket fans are a gentle, geeky-hipster folk who don't push or shove. Here's a few snapshots:







*They did not actually say that. I was just trying it on for proper usage. But it was totally beast.

**Also,"my publicists" looks incredibly douche-y. Just so you know I know. But "the publicity team assigned to me by my publisher" isn't much better. Sorry about that. It's still the same old me. :-)

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Be a Part of It

I was in New York City last week for a breathless round of wine and pasta meetings. It was my fourth visit there, and I felt like I'd arrived at a new level of familiarity with the city. I walked the streets at breakneck pace, ploughing my way through crowds, hailing taxis left and right, just to show I that I could. In my black trench coat, you'd have taken me for a native New Yorker, right up until I'd come to a crosswalk with a blinking hand, and stop short, like a good Canadian, to the great irritation of the surge of jaywalkers behind me. Sorry about that, New York. I'm just not going to follow you blindly into traffic. How do I know what kind of day you're having?

My schedule left hardly any time at all for sightseeing (or as New Yorkers call it, standing in the goddam way). Or shopping, which was just as well, since I'd converted all my spending money to carbohydrates my first night there. It wasn't until my last day that I realized I'd be without any photographic evidence whatsoever of my trip, and got busy snapping. I give you the highlights:

Central Park

Museum of Modern Art

The Empire State Building

F.A.O. Schwarz

Thanks to my friends at Cool Mom Tech, there is corroborating documentation that it wasn't all a dream. It's also thanks to them and their sponsors that the kids weren't the only ones who got cool souvenirs from my trip. Patrick, Ultra-Dad in my absence, got some very nifty tech gadgets.

Me, I suppose I'll always have these three extra pounds to remind me of a very exciting, whirlwind time.

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Disclosure

I'm not sure if this declaration is intended to be contrite or territorial. Either way, I appreciate the honesty.

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First Time in the Rodeo

So my book got listed on Amazon some time last week, and that was pretty exciting:



When I went back to look at it on Friday night, I scrolled down and saw that it was ranked #66 in Parenting Humor books. Ahead of books that were already published, by famous people, with actual cover designs, and everything. Crazy, I know.

I checked several hours later, and it had gone up to #55. At this rate, I would be in the top 20 by Saturday morning. I woke up, and raced to the computer, eager to accept my new status as "beloved family humorist." Roll over, Erma Bombeck.

(Who probably did, God rest her soul.)

I scrolled down to the Product Details, and alas, it was all over. A rating in the hundreds of thousands for popularity overall, and not even ranked in Parenting Humor titles. I clicked backwards through the listings, wondering how far into obscurity I had fallen. Far enough to soon get tired of clicking past my betters. Dang.

I had flown too close to the sun.

Then this morning, it was back up, to #55 in its category, and was in the top 60,000 of all books on Amazon. By lunch, it was down again, out of the top 100,000 and ranked #79 for Parenting Humor.



What I've decided is that the Amazon rankings are twitchier than a polygraph and nowhere near as truthy. And however high or low the numbers on the bottom of the page may get, what's most thrilling to me are three little words up top.

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The Scrooge of School Picture Day

Today is school picture day. I hate school picture day. Those of you who follow me on twitter might have caught me grumbling this morning that school portraiture is to photography as school lunches are to cuisine. I'm a rank amateur with a cheap point 'n' shoot, but I can take a photograph of my kids that's a hundred times better. Why on earth would I shell out a minimum of $12 (the lowest priced package this year) for a couple of wallet size photos from a turnstile operation with all the technical skill and artistic merit of a coin-operated photo booth? As a matter of fact, I like photo booth pictures much more. It's a racket, in my opinion. And don't even get me started on the recently adopted tactic of taking pictures again in the spring. I'm going to write in my own package code on that form when it comes home in the backpacks: NFW.

I explain my objections to my children, and they nod and act like they understand, but then I worry that, deep down, what they hear is, "Mommy doesn't love you enough to want your school pictures," and I always cave in. One of these days, I'll arrange them all in an album in chronological order, I tell myself. But the prints come back, and are soon buried under mail and homework papers, eventually getting tossed in a box or drawer, still in the envelope.

Next year, I swear--every year--I'm going to stand firm.

But then I remember these, and how glad I am to have them, as dated as they are. Pull-down painted backdrops and all.

First school photo at two years old.
My teacher Mom brought me in for picture day.

First Grade.

Second Grade.

That's the thing about cheese, I guess. It gets better with time.

What's your stance on school pictures?

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Working on a Building

Someone scolded me the other day for not posting much lately. I don't mind; it's nice to be missed. But I don't feel guilty about it either, since the things I'm working on behind this scene are going to more than make up for the downtime. I'm busy planning the new website, and it's as much fun as when we moved into our new house (well, fun for ME, since in both cases I get to just point to Patrick and say "Move this! No, wait! Move it back!").

And just as I did with that move, I'm taking time to really think about what each space is for, and who spends time in it, and what they enjoy.

With that in mind, I have question for all of you, who come and go from this space. If I were preparing a cozy guest room for you, and set out a welcome basket on the bedside table, name one blog and one book I could tuck in it that would make you feel at home.

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