I am old and I’m losing my edge. No, no — stop saying that I’m still super cool and edgy. Seriously, stop! It’s embarrassing me how you are going on and on about how I’ve “still got it” and I’m the mayor of Funkytown. In the absolute best case scenario I maybe maintain an air of former coolness, like someone you’d see in an Eileen Fisher ad.

Here are some examples of how I know I’ve lost  it: first, I have started doing that thing where I hold restaurant menus out as far as my arm can reach so I can read them (this is with my glasses on), and that is not sexy; second, I recently contemplated buying some decorative, painted buoys to hang from my fence — the young, cool me would have been like, “Buoys?! Seriously?”; and third, you know how I said that thing about Eileen Fisher? Well, I’ve realized that I totally like those clothes. I will be wearing a pre-washed linen caftan in a muted tone any day now. I know, it’s not a good situation but I’m just being honest.

But the main change I’ve noticed is that I just can’t take it. I know that is a weird sentence because I didn’t define what “it” is, but the truth is that “it” changes by the day. “It” is whatever is in the news. “It” is gun control legislation, Benghazi, Guantanamo, drone strikes, Montsanto, sea level rise…all of it. I’m struggling.

Have you seen those links on Facebook to “33 Dogs Who Just Cannot Take It Right Now?” And then there’s a bunch of photos of dogs looking 100% insane with their eyes bugged out and the captions will say things like, “This dog just can’t handle life right now. He cannot.” I am all of those dogs. I cannot.

I used to be able to read and listen to news without internalizing all of it, but then I also used to be able to watch American Idol without crying during the montages of the contestants visiting their hometowns. I used to laugh at the violence in Quentin Tarantino movies and walk between moving subway cars and sleep on someone’s couch who I barely knew and eat at filthy restaurants in the East Village. I almost never considered my own mortality. I knew about current events but they seemed so separate from me — although, as an aside, I was ready to protest anything when I was in college. Seriously, if there was a march happening, I wasn’t leaving until justice was served! “Hey-hey, ho-ho, [INSERT INJUSTICE HERE] has got to go!”

But it didn’t hurt like it does now.

Those days were pre-Internet, of course, and now we are all inundated with articles and petitions and photos every single time we go to check the weather. And everything I read seems to cut to the quick for me. I still think about the parents of the kids who were killed in Newtown, CT, and how they must have one fraction of a second of normalcy when they wake up each morning, before the realization kicks in. I think of all the people killed in the factory in Bangladesh who were making cheap crap for us to wear. And don’t get me going on Gitmo, where people are being force fed against their wishes, many of whom were cleared for release years ago. It makes me sick.

Oh my. That was dark. Do you see how I just can’t?

I’ve said this before but, the older I get, the more I understand why people would decide to go all Doomsday Preppers, completely off the grid; I have actually wondered if it’s realistic to start a commune of sorts with like-minded individuals. I know that things like the defeat of the recent gun control legislation is supposed to get me all fired up to do more and try harder, the truth is it just really, really bummed me out and made me sad for the US. I’ll be honest: I’ve even thought that I should move my family to another country, where people don’t accidentally or purposefully shoot each other with guns every single f$$king week.

On the other hand, I don’t want to turn into just another blissfully uninformed American. And if every intelligent citizen like me decided that they just cannot, who would fight the good fight for those who, truly, can not? For me the solution has been to take things to a more local level and to try to do the best I can for my family and community, while also realizing that if I buy a shirt at Wal-Mart and it costs $2.99, that it was not made by a happy, tiny garment fairy.

I’m curious to see if others feel the same way and, if so, how do you balance the wanting to be informed so you can make good decisions with the wanting to stay sane? And one other question: should I order this linen caftan in moon pebble or sandstone?

PS If the dog photos didn’t make you laugh because you’re more of a cat person, check out the Sad Cat Diary on YouTube. I don’t even like cats and it cracked me up.

On those too-rare evenings when I meet up with friends, there is usually some initial chit-chat about how difficult it is to get out of the house if you have young children. Last night, I mentioned that my kids’ dinners had been a total Parental Failure: at one point I was boiling two pots of water side-by-side, one for mac-n-cheese and one for plain pasta. And since I’d gotten a late start with my pathetic boiling of water(s), one kid was eating a peeled and cut-up apple and the other was eating applesauce.

Yep, that was dinner. All white stuff. And, in each case, two different versions of the same thing. I could pretend that it’s because I was running late, but the truth is that pasta, chicken nuggets, random Trader Joe’s items, fruit, All Things Dairy, and the occasional meatball, is what my kids eat. Oh, and smoothies. (That’s where I hide some spinach and protein powder, so we cannot forget the smoothies — a lot is riding on those damn things.)

It turns out that both of the others moms I was with (who shall remain anonymous) also have picky eaters. We started telling some stories —  I think my favorite was of a child who will only eat cut-up pieces of hot dog off of a chair while he walks around the kitchen.

Why is it so liberating to discover that yours is not the only home in which the pirates have taken over the ship? I think it’s because we assume that everyone else is doing a better job of parenting than we are.

Once when my daughter, CJ, was chatting with a little friend over the fence, the friend’s mom said it was time to come in for dinner.

“What’re you having for dinner?” CJ asked her friend.

“Mom, what’re we having?” the friend turned and asked her mother, who, like me, was puttering around nearby and could hear their conversation easily.

“We’re having salmon and Israeli cous-cous,” the mom said. CJ looked scared, like she thought that this crazy “coo-coo” stuff was going to come out of their house and get her.

“What’re you having?” the friend asked.

“Spaghettios!” CJ replied, without even bothering to ask me. She looked happy again.

“They’re Joe’s O’s!” I found myself practically yelling over the fence, Joe’s O’s being the Trader Joe’s organic version of the old classic (the mysterious apostrophe after the O is their issue, not mine). I even considered saying something not entirely true, like, “We have ‘choose your own dinner’ night once a month and it’s tonight!” but I knew that CJ wasn’t old enough to get the whole “sometimes moms totally lie to look better in front of other moms” thing. So we left them to their salmon and went in to open a can.

It’s hard for me to explain how I got to this point. Wait, no it isn’t. It went something like this: I had an idea of how I wanted things to be, and then they were not that way. Like many other parents, I had planned to have children who loved grilled lamb with mint chutney and Brussels sprouts at age two, and begged to get sushi on the way home from preschool. Similarly, I also dreamt that my children would only want to play with hand-carved wooden toys from the MoMA shop, and to watch old black-and-white Shirley Temple movies.

Whoops.

The irony here is that I love food. I barely finish one meal before I start thinking about what to eat next. Before kids, I was that person who would drive an hour because I was pretty sure that someone had mentioned a great taco joint in some random town. Over the years I have become a decent cook of simple but sometimes delicious meals, using lots of fresh ingredients from local farms. Last Christmas, as my extended family and I were enjoying a delectable tenderloin roast, sweet potato puree, and spinach salad with dried cherries and spicy walnuts, CJ ate a grilled cheese and some apple slices. At Easter brunch there were three kinds of quiche, roasted root vegetables, and two salads. CJ had a bagel with butter and some pineapple.

I could lay out for you the whole perfect storm of tricky family schedules, their control issues, and my lack of resolve, bla bla bla. Our pediatrician even said to CJ: “Here’s the deal. Your mom is going to make ONE DINNER from now on, and you are going to try that dinner. If you don’t find one single thing in that dinner that you can eat? Then you’ll wait for the next meal.” CJ gave me a panicked look, and the very second we got in the car, she started in with, “Do I really have to–” And I interrupted: “Nope. You don’t.” Because at 5pm, when my kids need to eat, there is no “adult meal” waiting for them to reject!

The truth is, after torturing myself over this issue for years, I’ve made a decision to let it go. I am 100 percent confident that they will not be picky eaters their whole lives. It’s not that my daughter truly doesn’t know or like all the other foods — the kid could pick a rutabaga out of a vegetable line-up — but she simply refuses to try them. Can you say “control?”

When I was little, my parents took the “You’re not leaving the table ‘til that plate is clean!” approach. An hour later I’d be crying and gagging as I tried to swallow one cold carrot. You know what I love today? Carrots. And beets, squash, and about 90 percent of the other things that are edible. My kids will get there, too; I just don’t have it in me to take the old school route.

So if you are reading this and feeling kinda jazzy because your kids eat funky-looking mushrooms and stinky cheeses, that is actually fine with me! Seriously — I’m happy for you. The way I see it, there’s always someone who is doing a better job than you, and always someone who’s doing worse. I’m just thankful for that kid who eats hot dogs off a chair.

PS Despite my attempted bravado in coming clean on this issue I now feel compelled to say that the chicken nuggets, apples, and applesauce are all organic. Organic, I say! And don’t forget the smoothies! Sob.

[Note: The opening of this essay was edited on 4.6.13.]

I’ve never re-written a blog post after it had been live for days but I’m going to call this one a mea culpa. I think I had some extra snark in my coffee that day and it’s been bothering me ever since. I had not yet read Lean In  (yes, I have read most of it now and I found it to be well-written, interesting, and something I would recommend to others — that still doesn’t change any of my thoughts, below) and I should have been more careful to frame my post as my personal story and not just a reaction to any one person or idea.

The irony here is that what I really think is that all women, those who work and those who stay home, should have each others’ backs. I’m at home full-time now, but I have been a working mother and I will be again some day and I have the utmost respect for whichever one of these difficult choices women have made. Having said that…

I think we can all agree that Sandberg is a the real deal. She’s the COO of Facebook because of her expertise, intelligence, and hard work — and her decision to aggressively pursue her work through pregnancies and motherhood. She also seems to be well-liked and not a total ass-hat. I enjoyed her interview on The Daily Show. I admire her.

And I have no desire to get involved in anything that involves the words “mommy wars”; truly, if there is a more demeaning to women phrase, I don’t know what it is.

It took me a while to figure out what was bothering me about the whole concept of leaning in, and thus I was so relieved this morning when I read (yes, another — I can’t stop) article on the topic, this one on WBUR’s Cognoscenti web site , an article that finally and simply stated why I wasn’t feeling all “rah rah” and “lean-y in-y” this whole time. As written by WBUR’s Carey Goldberg:

[Sandberg’s] push for women to work full-time in high-powered jobs, even through motherhood, seems to willfully ignore this fact: A great many of us don’t want to, not when our children are young.

I would say that 80-90% of the time I truly love what I do. And even if my husband and I both had both managed to find high-powered jobs that were flexible enough for us to share housework and childcare equally  (kind of like saying “even if we found a magic unicorn that lived in our yard and pooped money”), there would still be no time left over for many things, both monumental and more mundane but important — things which, together,  have become my job over the past several years. To name a few:

• We would not have adopted our amazing son, as the paperwork and logistics of the event were at least a part-time job for me for the better part of a year.
• There is no way I would have been able to assist my dad in the care of my mother in the years leading up to her death from early-onset Alzheimer’s.
• On a smaller scale, I would not currently be co-leading a Brownies troop, an activity that my daughter adores.

It’s easy to look at my trajectory and see when decisions were made that took me off that track. I completely understand why I have not been recruited by Facebook or, frankly, anyone. But with the exception of closing my retail business a few years back, which was a tough blow, none of these decisions seemed like failures at the time, nor do they in retrospect.

Do I sometimes wonder what might have been, if I had stayed in New York and become a movie producer or writer? Sure, I wonder. But I don’t wish it were so. Do I feel like I am less fulfilled as result of not have a high-powered career? On some day, yes! Just like I’m guessing the women who chose to work full time sometimes  have days where they yearn to be at home! But overall, no.

I may trip myself up from time to time, on those days when the mundane housework looms large, but it’s almost always an easy fix — a good book, my writing or book groups, or a new blog post keep me active in the brain department. Frankly, I have read more and am generally better informed in the past few years than I’ve been since college, because I have the luxury of listening to audiobooks while I walk my dog or reading some of the many articles that my smarty friends post on — where else? — Facebook.

I’ll tell you what I do wish, though. First, that corporate culture would accommodate part-time workers, and not in the, “Sure, if you want to come here part-time and be paid for part-time you can, but we’re still going to give you a full-time work load that’ll have you chained to your computer after your kids go to bed!” way. It’s too soon for me now, because I have a one-and-a-half-year-old, but at some point not too far down the road I would be interested in a part-time or project-based job and, although my resume does not show it, I believe I would be an asset to the right team.

Which brings me to my second wish: that businesses would not only consider, but actively recruit, women who have been home with kids for years. We may not be as out-of-it as they think — skills like keeping a family budget, planning and executing school events and fundraisers, researching and blogging about kids with food allergies or parenting in general, being the president of your CSA or food co-op, and organizing a whole family’s schedule of activities actually CAN translate into high-level job skills. And I think we get social media pretty well, huh?!

In the end, smart companies will hire the smart people, regardless of whether they’ve been tirelessly working their way up the ladder or home with kids, and I hope that women like Sandberg and others like her will help nurture this idea. As for me, I simply do not believe that my career has ended; I hope that it will continue to evolve and morph into something new. But first I want to keep doing this mama thing.

It’s hard to piece together exactly what happened in the moments after we arrived at Logan airport in the wee hours of a freezing cold, sleeting December morning, only to be told that our JetBlue flight to Fort Meyers, Florida, had been canceled. I blame my own bizarre behavior on the Lorazepam I’d taken in anticipation of a flight. My husband, David, has no excuse, as far as I’m concerned. But after determining that we could not get another flight where we’d be guaranteed seats together (a necessity when you’re travelling with a seven-year-old and a toddler) for possibly another two days, we looked around at the miserable people pulling tired, pasty children through zig-zagging lines and debated postponing the whole trip.

“But I really want to go!” I said. And then, desperately: “We could drive!”

That was the Lorazepam talking. And this is where the temporary insanity part kicks in on David’s part. Because what he should have said was, “Woman! Are you crazy?! We are not driving to Florida with two kids!” But what he did say, while nodding slowly, was, “Huh. We could rent a minivan…it could be an adventure…we should do it!”

Wait — what!? Who were we? We are not road trip people. We’re not minivan people, either! I’m Type A, a planner, some would even say uptight — I don’t throw stuff into a minivan and take off (and yes, I do realize that any coolness I am trying to convey in our breezy “Let’s do it!” decision is totally negated by the presence of a minivan).

My seven-year-old, CJ, took some convincing. Like many kids she is not great with a sudden change of plans and had immediately started crying when we were told about the flight, but once I told her that road trips are when you get to eat things like Cheetos and Cool Ranch Doritos, she was fully on board. That kid will do anything for a chemically-coated chip.

So off we drove, on what I would describe as three days and two nights of 85 percent fun — and who doesn’t want to have 85 percent fun? In retrospect, the thought of listening to Gangnam Style and that Phillip Phillips song back-to-back for hours (we also told CJ she could be in charge of music) while trying to keep the seventeen-month-old entertained in a car seat sounds really, really bad. “Are you a masochist?” one friend asked me on Facebook. So I’m not sure exactly what conspired to make it work, but I know that part of it was the self-adopted spirit of adventure — turns out there’s something to that whole “power of positive thinking” thing. Oh, and “The journey is the destination,” and all that jazz.

The other part of the equation was that I really needed to get out of town. In fact, once we were in the freezing cold car on the way to the airport earlier that morning, with our bags all packed, there was no way I was going back home. On top of a truly wonderful but exhausting Christmas with the kids, I had just helped empty out the house my parents had lived in for over twenty years. We finally had buyers for the place and my dad had flown back from Florida to empty the place with our help.

It happened to be exactly two years after my mother’s death from complications due to early-onset Alzheimer’s. My mom had adored this house and filled it with a mish-mash of Oriental rugs and contemporary art and antique bed frames and unexpected paint colors and colorful outdoor gardens with small cement creatures peeking out from under bushes — it had all, somehow, completely worked. Now it was all faded and chipped and peeling, and hauling it all away to our basements and charities and, ultimately, a giant dumpster, was depressing. For all of us, I believe, the house was a little piece of my mother that we still had with us and, although we were ready to sell the albatross and move on, it felt like we were letting her go all over again.

After that, I needed to hit the road. I was desperate for the clarity of mind and levity that comes with a change of scenery. I wanted sun and warmth and fun, goddammit.

I quickly noted that when you’re driving, as David was, you can’t check your email constantly; and when you’re a passenger who is prone to motion sickness, as I am, you can’t be updating Facebook constantly, either. So we mostly talked or sang, or CJ played on my phone and we remained quiet or used headphones when Hugh was sleeping. We commented on the scenery. Nothing deep happened. I could have listened to an audiobook but I didn’t. We could have discussed New Year’s resolutions or David’s business plans but we didn’t. There was no NPR, no fiscal cliff, and no stupid comments from the NRA in our minivan. We learned all the words to the Phillip Phillips song and also, weirdly, most of the words to Gangnam Style. We took off our coats and shoes and we tried to spot the White House from the highway (not possible) and we named some state capitals.

And of course, there were times when we couldn’t stand each other. I was less than thrilled when David drove completely over a median on the highway in New Jersey, and then there was that occasional screaming baby situation. I think it was around Virginia when Hugh was getting antsy and I realized how much further we had to go; I suddenly got claustrophobic in the minivan and I thought I might freak out if I heard the Phillip Phillips song one more time. I said something to David like, “Thank god we’re flying home,” which CJ overheard and in a truly distraught voice yelled from the back seat, “We’re FLYING HOME?!? But I want to drive home!” The fact that she was having fun cracked me up and got me back in the zone.

Frankly, if you had told us in advance that we were going to be stuck in a car together for three days we probably all would have said some version of, “Please just tell me what I need to do to not have that happen.” We are not the “together all the time” family, due to both scheduling issues and, also, being the kind of people who need some personal space.  And although the makers of the Kia Sedona would surely argue to the contrary, there’s no personal space in a minivan.

But in a way I think that was the point. Even on a typical vacation everyone is checking email and sending texts and checking in with the office. For better or worse (and there was some of both) we had the more old fashioned, shared experience. And we lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but by the time we got to our vacation destination the actual planned vacation seemed like a bonus, an extra.

Some random observations and thoughts:

–There are some really cool looking neighborhoods in downtown Baltimore, where we made a pit stop in a Whole Foods. David pointed out the docks, and said, “That would mean something to you if you watched The Wire.” But I don’t, so it didn’t. Still, I’d like to go back to DC and Baltimore sometime.

–Wow, you have to drive really, really FAR for weather that could be considered even somewhat mild, nevermind actually warm. We wore our winter jackets until we got to Georgia.

–Speaking of Georgia, we stayed in a fabulous hotel there on New Year’s Eve, right off the highway. It’s funny how, for about $139 a night, you can get a room that’s a step above a jail cell, or a really great place like this one. Glad we landed in this gem to ring in the new year (at 10pm, with Ryan Seacrest on the TV and CJ wearing some crazy glasses we purchased at a Dollar Store where we stopped when Hugh was freaking out).

–And if you ever decide to do such a trip, add about 8-10 hours to your estimate of driving time. Because there’s almost always someone who needs to use the bathroom or eat or have their diaper changed. (Also, we had visions of driving for hours at night while the kids were asleep but that did not happen. Turns out they are not car sleepers and could never get comfortable enough for a deep sleep, so after 7pm it got ugly.)

–JetBlue can suck it and Hotwire can double-suck it. Those are stories for another day, though.

–Minivans are awesome. They are huge inside! I wish I would get over my stupid “I’ll never drive a minivan” self and get one. But I’m not going to.

What’s that? Would I do the roadtrip again? That’s a good question. I’m gonna go with no — I think the spontaneity was a big part of the fun. Although, in some ways the long drive was easier than the three-hour flight home (tragically, the TVs were not working on our flight). There were times when things got very sloppy in that minivan, but at least is was our own, private, shared sloppy. And that was only about 15 percent of the time.

9:37am: For the first time in weeks, I am sitting (okay, standing) in front of my computer with the intent of writing a new blog post. CJ is at a summer art camp for the day, and Hugh is asleep upstairs and I am determined, right now, to write. I am making a choice to ignore the unfolded laundry, and I’m passing up the opportunity to shower and get myself ready while Hugh sleeps.

I am going to make this happen!

I just need to reply to this one email that just came in, and brew a quick coffee and then it is me and this computer, together at last. I hope CJ is having fun at camp. She was a little nervous.

Ooh, I just had a really good idea for a burger I want to make.

9:42am: And…I’m back. I’m just trying to remember what it is I was going to write. It was something about being a beginner runner — I had this nice bit about running down High Street and passing “real” runners and getting the runner’s wave from them and feeling like I was masquerading as a runner but then realizing that, actually, if I am running down the street and wearing sneakers and sweating and listening to my tunes and doing the runner’s wave, that I may, in fact, actually be a runner! Despite my three-mile max. (Or 5K. I like to say 5K because five is more than three so it sounds better).

Hey, cool — I just tried that thing where you type without looking at the keyboard at all and I’m pretty good! Although, now that I think about it, I’m not sure why that matters at all. I need to get back to writing because the clock is ticking, but I just want to take the almond butter out of the fridge — I like it to get soft and gooey before I mix it with berries and bananas.

9:51am: Back to writing. But I don’t think that running essay has enough meat to it. I had this other idea about how Nora Ephron’s untimely death has me thinking about my old life as a personal assistant in New York — I was working for Martin Scorsese, and he was working on a script (it was, ultimately, the movie “Casino”) with the writer Nick Pileggi, who was married to Nora Ephron and –

Okay, I seriously need to sit down. Who the hell types this much while standing? No wonder I’m all out of whack; everything I do is 100% ergonomically incorrect. And then there’s that giant baby I carry around all the time. The baby who will be waking up soon. Very soon. Must get back to writing. I think I’m just distracted because I’m so hungry. I’m going to throw this fruit thing together really quickly.

9:58am: Man, I nailed this fruit and almond butter jammie-jam. I should seriously take a photo of this and get it up on Instagram asap because people are going to want to see this. Grabbing my iPhone… Oh, look — my sister’s on the gmail chat. Just need to ask her something, real quick-like.

10:04am: Must focus! So, I was saying that I used to be a personal assistant to Martin Scorsese, back in the mid-nineties. This would probably make an entertaining blog post, because I could write about how I purchased and decorated his Christmas tree by myself, and went shopping with his daughter in Soho while a car with a driver waited for us, and how he yelled at me when his electric toothbrush wouldn’t turn off, and how I had to go find a collar made of rhinestones for his dog when he was heading to Vegas to shoot Casino, and how he hated flying so much that I used to have to call Al Roker to get personal weather updates, which were exactly the same as what was on the news, but the fact that I had called Al Roker made them somehow more legit.

I guess that’s the one to write; there’s so much good material. On the other hand, what is my point? You have to kind of bring it home at the end of a blog post, ya know? And really, what does it have to do with Nora Ephron? I mean, seriously, she answered the door a few times when I was delivering stuff to her husband and she was lovely, but what am I saying, that I wish I’d stayed in New York and pursued a career in film and been like Nora Ephron? That would make for a nice, wistful twist at the end. The only problem is, I don’t really wish that.

IKEA plates must all be BPA-free, right? Must google that… Man, my dog stinks.

10:30am: Why do I have so many tabs open in my browser!? What is all this crap? Let’s see: Rolling Stone article on Rachel Maddow, which I actually do want to read; oh, right: Girls Scouts, which I told CJ I’d look into; Paleo banana muffins, going to make those today; writing contest I’m going to enter (not with this essay!); the Twitter, Facebook, and email trifecta; and a New York Times article that David sent me. I’m closing this one tab with the New York magazine article about all the germs and bacteria they found in the back of taxi cabs — it’s just way too revolting. I need all the other ones, though. Maybe “need” is not the right word.

By the way, Hugh is awake.

I’m just going to let him babble for a few minutes. Man, that guy is cute. Maybe I should write about how, sometimes, my kids drive me nuts but then, when they are asleep, I miss them. Sometimes I look at photos of them when they’re upstairs, sleeping. True story.

10:35am: You will never believe this but I just now remembered that I woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn’t get back to sleep and I was thinking about a blog post and I had this really solid and captivating idea for writing about my love/hate relationship with summer. I had the whole thing mapped out and it was actually sounding pretty good. I have this gray hair thing at the end that you’re going to like. So I’ll probably go with that. I’m going to start it right now.

10:36am: The cute baby babble has turned to demands to be removed from the crib. I guess I need to go up there. I’m just trying to quickly ascertain whether anything was accomplished here. I’m not sure.

Oh! I did have that really tasty brekkie! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of it so it’s almost like it never happened.

6:53pm Wait, I never posted this?!

* I’m being tongue-in-cheek with the title. Remind me to tell you how much I can’t stand the word “mommy,” and how I cringe at anything marketed toward “mommies.” That could be a blog post, actually. I’ll write that one next.

At a recent farmers’ market, I ran into someone I hadn’t seen for years. We were never actual friends, just acquaintances — but I did once visit her at her home to talk about her experience in adopting her daughter. My husband and I were considering adoption but we had no idea where to start; we were still in the discussion stage when we found out that I was pregnant with our now seven-year-old daughter, and the adoption idea was shelved.

When I saw my acquaintance this time, I was carrying the new addition to our family, my ten-month-old son. I remarked to her that we had come full circle, back to adoption, almost ten years after I’d sat down with her. She smiled and said how happy she was for us. I asked about her adopted daughter, and also her other, biological child, and she said they were well. Then she said, “It’s just the same, isn’t it? You love them just the same.”

It struck me, momentarily, as an odd comment to make in casual conversation. But, actually, I applaud her for answering the question that must be considered by most pre-adoptive parents who already have a biological child: Will I love the adopted child as much as the one who is my flesh and blood?

Adoption is a leap of faith in so many ways; you must simply believe that there is a child out there in the world who is meant to be yours, and you must continue to believe that even after (in our case) your first birth mother goes MIA two weeks before her due date, as your suitcase is packed with newborn diapers and pink layette sets for the trip south. For months, there was a baby growing in a woman’s belly and it was to be our baby — we had clothing for her; and her own room, in our home; and a big sister who asked about her every day; and a name, Louisa. We could barely wait for her arrival.

Then, suddenly, the baby was gone. And as much as I completely respect the right of every birth mother to change her mind, I just wish she had been able to say the words: “I changed my mind,” or, “I can’t do this.” It was the disappearing that got me. Of course, she had no idea that my mother would die just days later, nor did she know that this idea of the “circle of life” was my life jacket during the weeks leading up to my mother’s death.

And that was only the beginning of the drama as we started all over again with a new birth mother. After more months of waiting and phone calls and a trip to Cincinnati for a lunch meeting with our birth mother, she was finally in labor — at the exact same time that our moving truck arrived at our house in Amesbury. I quickly said goodbye to my husband and daughter, who would have to spend the first weeks in our new house in Newburyport without me. My neighbor drove me to the bus station in Newburyport so I could get to Logan for a flight. I cried the whole way — it was too chaotic and I felt like I was leaving my husband and daughter when they needed me most.

Then, as I sat waiting for the bus to the airport, I got the call that the labor had been very quick and the baby was already born. The baby was healthy, but the lawyer in Cincinnati said that there was some unexpected news. No one wants to hear those words in relation to a newborn baby. The news in this case was that our baby, Georgia, whose clothing was folded neatly in the suitcase next to me and whose big sister could not wait to meet her, was a boy.

I know that it shouldn’t matter at all, and that what we all really wish for is a healthy and happy child. But on that moving day, when we’d been packing for weeks and dealing with buying and selling houses, and I was exhausted already and stressed beyond belief and just beginning to really grieve for my mother, it did matter. I am a list-maker, a planner, and I was sick and tired of my plans all falling through — and besides, I didn’t know anything about boys! I flew to Cincinnati in a bad state of mind, feeling like I was still taking a leap, but without the faith. Doubt took over: was this really our baby?

The plane landed. I hopped in a rental car and nervously followed directions to an unfamiliar hospital, where a social worker met me in the lobby and escorted me to the maternity ward. And that’s when I first saw him. It’s the only time in married life when you are allowed to fall in love with another (tiny) man, which is what I did with my son, in the hospital and then in the hotel we stayed in for ten days, waiting to get the green light to come home. And once we got home and we were a family again it became immediately apparent how absolutely, awesomely lucky we were, and are, to have this amazing, joyful soul in our lives. We’ve never looked back.

So, when my acquaintance made the comment about how “You love them just the same,” I immediately replied, “Yes! Yes, you do.” Because I know exactly what she meant — that we love them just as much, and did from Day One. But I’m not sure it is the same. We plan to be very open with our son about his adoption; someday not too far down the road, I can hear myself telling my kids the story of how “You (my daughter) grew inside my belly for months and months and I could feel you kicking every day and I couldn’t wait to meet you! And you, my little man? We searched all over the land to find the baby that was meant to be with us and when I met you when you were just a few hours old, I knew for sure that it was you.”

(Warning: spicy language coming soon.) Having recently dipped my toe into the ocean of interior design, I loved a friend’s link, on Facebook, to a site called F**k Your Noguchi Coffee Table. (You can even buy a limited edition print of that sentiment, at fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.com). The site openly mocks every hot trend in decor, from wall-mounted antlers to Moroccan poufs to chalkboard walls and garlands. I was simultaneously laughing and stealing design ideas.

The “frame cluster” is, apparently, so ubiquitous that it has a whole day devoted to its mocking: Frame Cluster Friday. It is with that in mind that I wrote the following:

In our new house there is a vast expanse of wall in the second-floor hallway; I knew as soon as I saw it that my dream of having a frame cluster of family photos would finally be realized. It was the first decorating project I undertook when we moved it and in my excitement I skipped over all the planning steps — like, if you’re from the Martha Stewart school, tracing all the frames and then taping your traced, paper frames to the wall until you get the perfect layout.

I’m not from that school, so I got a hammer and started bashing nails into the brand new sheetrock as much husband looked on and cringed. Fortunately — although this is not always the case — my enthusiasm paid off: the hallway of photos is now my favorite part of the house. Every single day I look closely at at least a few of the photos; each one is a window into a story or memory from long ago or just recently. Some days I walk down the hall holding Hugh and show him photos of family members who, sadly, he will never meet.

“This is JJ,” I say, pointing to a photo of my mom before she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She looks so young and happy at my brother’s college graduation; it seems impossible that I can’t pick up the phone and call her right now to see what she’s doing.

“This is Grandma Cecilia,” I say, as I point to an old black-and-white photo of David’s mother when she was a teenager in Ecuador, her hair long and in a side-braid. In another photo, Cecilia looks so happy to be holding my daughter when CJ was a baby. Cecilia was a talented seamstress and we assumed she would be making adorable dresses for CJ for years to come.

David and I both lost our mothers unexpectedly, when they were only in their early sixties, and it’s easy to feel angry and robbed of memories. But I more frequently smile when I walk by the wall of photos. The happy photos of my mom and David’s are constant reminders of all the fun we had before life took unexpected turns.

CJ loves the wall, too — she loves to see herself as a baby and to hear stories (of course, she is six, so her requests are usually along the lines of “Tell me about the time I pooped in the bathtub!”). She also likes to point out Daddo’s evolution from hair to no hair, and my ever-changing hair color: much-too-bright red when I was married, way-too-light blond for years after, and now brown in the most recent photos, taken at my brother’s wedding last summer to the lovely Briana.

Of course, when I look at that recent group wedding photo I cannot help but notice that my husband and I are a collective 35 pounds heavier in the photo than we are now. I think about jokingly telling my brother and sister-in-law that we need to get everyone together again, on the golf course overlooking the ocean way up in Maine, in their same outfits, to just really quickly snap a new photo! But the bride and groom look amazing, and that is what counts.

I could take the photo down and replace it with one where we look great — but where’s the fun in that? These photos are memories of real life — sometimes we’re chubby and sometimes we have bad haircuts! If you want to look at a wall of perfectly coiffed heads, go to the nearest bank or country club and check out the Board of Directors wall.

If, on the other hand, you want to see an authentic 70’s-style photo of my brother and I, clearly sporting home ‘dos and looking seriously rough around the edges, come on over. You can find us in between the black-and-white photo of Lucy, my beloved English bulldog (RIP), and the photo of CJ wearing her Big Sister t-shirt and holding tiny Hugh right after he came home.

“Look at his little chicken legs!” she says every time we look at the photo. Good thing we have that photo — just eight months later, Hugh is sporting some serious chub on those same legs. I must remember to get a photo of that, too.

So it is with gratitude that I say these four words: F**k my frame cluster. And now I must bid you farewell. This terrarium in a vintage cake stand isn’t going to assemble itself.

I want to say it was the summer of 1991 when my friend Beth and I had our mishap on the J/Z train to Marcy Ave in Brooklyn. So many of my memories from those days have a song attached to them; in this case it is Heavy D’s “Now That We Found Love,” in case you want to hum along. (Of course, Beth may read this and say that is was 1992 or 1993; eh, memories don’t always have to be 100% factually accurate.)

I know this for sure: Beth and I were headed to Domsey’s, a huge vintage clothing warehouse in a section of Brooklyn that was considered seriously sketchy at the time but is probably now filled with hipster parents pushing those strollers that look like a hollowed out egg with a baby perched inside. Other than going to Domsey’s there was never an occasion to ride on these unfamiliar trains that stopped at places like Cypress Hills and ultimately, JFK airport. It was a relatively short ride but it felt like we were traveling to a faraway place, totally unlike Manhattan. That was, of course, part of the fun.

As usual, Beth and I were chattin’ it up — we liked to dissect situations and people and say to each other what we wished we’d said to others but hadn’t thought of at the time. We talked about guys, music, fashion, friends, movies, who was there and who wasn’t there, who slept with whom, our lack of cash and what we could do about it, and who was having the next party or who could put us on a list somewhere. We were young and cute and confident.

Beth and I were amusing each other with our stories to such an extent that we realized with surprise that not only was the train stopped in the tunnel (this was not unusual in the least), but we appeared to be the only ones on the train (this was odd). How we could have failed to notice that every single other person had exited the train is beyond me. We stood up and each walked to one end of the car, to see if the doors were open. Both were locked. There was no one in either of the other cars that we could see, or beyond that.

It was clear, then: this train was not just stopped at a signal, it was stopped. As in, not going to move. I had poked fun at my roommate, our friend Clare, for getting so into her New Yorker article while riding the subway home from work that she ended up at Coney Island on more than one occasion. Now I understood. Beth and I sat back down on the bench and looked at each other.

As I write this now, in my kitchen in 2012, I can feel myself becoming physically uncomfortable. Even twenty years later, the thought of being trapped in one subway car of a seemingly empty train makes me feel claustrophobic and anxious. My neck muscles are tightening.

I believe this one event has stuck with me for so long is because it foreshadows the intense, debilitating claustrophobia that I was to develop a few years later, when I would not have agreed to even take the train to Domsey’s, or anywhere else that was not 100% essential, like work and home. Even these trips could take me hours, as I would take each train for just one stop, and then get off and wait for the next — if you have eight or ten stops to go, this quickly becomes an untenable way to travel. I became ritualistic, sitting only in certain seats and waiting for the next train if “my seat” was occupied when the train doors opened at my stop.

So you would think that maybe I had a nervous breakdown on that one summer day in 1991 with Beth. I can almost picture myself banging on the doors, screaming for someone to come, and then sitting on the floor and hyperventilating. But what we did that day was nothing along those lines. What we did, without giving it any thought, was this: We started laughing. Uncontrollably. In between our hysterical laughter we gasped things like, “Holy shit!” and “What the hell do we do?” And then more laughter.

After who knows how long — it could have been three minutes or thirty — a conductor opened the door to the car and stopped short when he saw us.

“LADIES!” he barked at us. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” We laughed as we tried to answer him.

“This train is out of commission! You didn’t hear ANY OF THE MESSAGES?” We laughed as we shook our heads. He very angrily used his walkie-talkie to call someone else. “We got a couple girls on the train back here. We need to pull into the station.”

He walked us through the empty and eerily quiet cars, unlocking the doors as we went, until we were in the first car of the train, which had pulled only a few feet into the station, just enough for us to get out. He shook his head in annoyance as he walked away.

As for us, we waited for the next train and continued on to Domsey’s, undeterred. In fact, I think I bought my cream-colored leather jacket that day. I wore it constantly, until it was stolen from a club one night when I was having too much fun to really care.

Beyond work, your family and any pressing needs, what do you think about when you’re stuck in traffic, or watching your kid’s karate lesson, or taking a shower? That one thing — your passion — which is always just there, lurking (but in a good way) just behind your conscious thoughts? Is it bike racing, knitting, local politics, golf?

In my case it is, and has been for much of my life, writing.

If I could find a way to write for even one eighth of the time that I think about writing — even one sixteenth! — I would be prolific. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of updating my blog. (And yet, the most recent post is dated January 21.) And then there are the personal essays and the memoir, all of which have been “in progress” for years now.

I know, I know, I have a baby — how can you write a book when you have a baby?! Trust me, I do regularly use Hugh as an excuse for why I can’t do many things! (A very cute, chunky monkey of an excuse.) But come on — when CJ was a baby I ran a business; I should be able to write 500 words every now and then.

With these thoughts in mind, today I sat outside at Panera, trying to make good on my promise that on the days that Hugh is with a sitter for a few hours, I will do one of two things: write or exercise. (In addition to the other crap I need to do.)

As for why I sat on the patio at Panera, next to unscenic and loud Route 113, instead of at a hipper coffee shop where I could stare out at the ocean, that’s easy: BECAUSE THEN I WOULD STARE AT THE OCEAN. It felt safer cheesy, chain-y Panera. Or at least so I thought.

At this point we can cue that loud noise of a needle scratching over a record.  About ten minutes into my writing, a pleasant-seeming man with a healthy Boston accent opened his new tablet and asked if I could possibly show him how to get to his gmail account. It all seemed so simple.

I quickly got him to gmail.com and sent him back to his table to enter his email address. After a few minutes I heard him sighing and angrily pressing buttons with his pointer finger and I knew we were headed down a bad path.

“Having some trouble?” I said.

He gave me his name (as part of the email account we were trying to reach) and I immediately recognized that he is the Newbuyport Building Inspector — small town living at its finest. I told him as much, and he asked if I lived in town. I knew that he would know my house, which we purchased from a builder just seven months ago; the house was taken down to the foundation and studs and rebuilt, so I know there were lots of permits involved.

As we’ve heard from our neighbors, the B.I. confirmed that our house, pre-renovation, was 100% Crazy Town. Hoarders owned the place and were sleeping in the kitchen and using propane for heat. Scaffolding had been up on the front of the house for the better part of a decade. The yard was infested with skunks. It took three months just to clear everything out, and at one point the B.I. thought the whole house was going to cave in.

It’s a pretty nice place now, so we had a laugh. He told me who to go see in City Hall, a man who might have some photos of the house “before.” I’ll probably do it; it would be fun to see.

We never did get him online at Panera. By the time our chat was finished and he headed out, I realized that I wasn’t going to get any real writing done today. But sometimes it’s the exercise more than the final product, the journey rather than the destination.

And that brings me to this moment, when I am finishing up my iced coffee and trying to resist the urge to do a weird chair dance to this horrible, cheesy jazz-lite music that truly can’t be what anyone would choose to hear. I feel for the people who work here; they must at least consider jamming a plastic fork into their ear drums after this mix has looped a few times.

It’s almost time to go home and let the sitter go, then walk to school to get CJ. It’s a gorgeous day so we’ll probably loiter in the playground. Then it’s the most hectic time of the day: dinner, baths, and bedtime routines. After that, I’ll check Ye Olde Facebook, play some Words with Friends, chat with David, and perhaps have a glass of red. (“Perhaps.” Hahaha. I crack myself up.) And then, suddenly, I will be overcome with fatigue and crawl into bed to read a few pages of The Forgotten Garden before falling asleep.

But at least for some of that time, I will be thinking about writing. As for actual writing, realistically, that will be on Thursday at the earliest. And that is okay. It has to be.

Over a year ago, I gave away all my CDs to friends; I had already copied the music to my computer and didn’t want the physical objects taking up space and collecting dust anymore. So did I listen to music less frequently after that? Nope. Way more, in fact, and more often, via Pandora and Rdio on Sonos. (Right now I’m listening to my Smiths station: “Sixteen, clumsy and shy, I went to London and I…” Anyone?)

Somehow, though, I felt differently about giving away my books. I’d donate the new fiction that I’d been lured into buying, but nothing from The Shelves, which housed the books that had survived the purges and the re-locations of the past twenty-plus years.

But, this time, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to get rid of all of my books. I realize that for some people this is like saying that I’m pretty sure I’m going to leave my kids in an Arby’s parking lot. But I just don’t think I need the physical objects anymore (the books, that is, not the kids. I’m going to hang on to the kids for a while). The chances of me sitting down to page through The Autobiography of Malcolm X at this point in my life are, uh, slim. But I still remember the story and the impact it had on me.

The books that have survived this long have (cheese alert) become a part of me. And now I can send them out into the world to, hopefully, impact someone else. Bye-bye, books! (I’m now picturing each book carrying a little hobo-style stick with a bandana at the end. Why do I do stuff like that?)

But first, if you’ll bear with me, a few goodbyes.

Goodbye, Don DeLillo’s White Noise. I read you on the subway in New York and laughed out loud and didn’t care at all (no one else cared, either — yay, New York!). I made Clare Bundy Haygood read you  – or was it the other way around? — and then we referred to the “airborne toxic event” and “the point of Babette” in daily conversation, cracking ourselves up.

Goodbye, Leviathan, The Music of Chance, and all the other Paul Auster books I read during my Postmodern Existential Phase. I seriously could not have been postmodern or existential without you. Oh, those were heady days!

Goodbye, Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. You came at exactly the right time, when I wanted to leave postmodern behind and enter gritty realism, you know? I read you all in one day and night, sitting in my big armchair on my apartment on West 95th Street, after which I sat, stunned.

Goodbye, Of Woman Born, by Adrienne Rich. Dog-eared and yellowed, you survived so many book purges. You are a symbol of my life at Vassar College all those years ago. Having transferred from a more conservative, Southern school, I could hardly believe the co-ed bathrooms, lesbian clubs, and woman power you showed me. (It wasn’t all about that stuff — we also drank tons of beer and danced to Soul II Soul and edited movies on real film and drove to New York to eat Indian food and talked and talked and talked… I loved every minute of it.)

Goodbye, Casino, by Nicholas Pileggi. The book on which Martin Scorsese’s film was based is not a favorite of mine per se, but it has survived the years due to the personal inscription to me from Nick Pileggi: “To Lise, who always remembered the cards at the Drake.” Explanation: This was when I worked for Marty and he and Nick needed a space where they could transform the story to movie scenes, via index cards (Marty is super old school) so I rented a room at the Drake Hotel, across from our office in midtown. I was responsible for the cards, which by the end, wound around the room like a long Candyland path. So, if you liked that movie, you’re welcome; I could have really messed that shit up.

Goodbye, Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt. Man, you were a freakin’ downer, I gotta be honest. Yowsa. But you spurred my interest (and the world’s) in memoir, and that love has stayed with me since then. (I am, in fact, trying to write a memoir, which I suspect is something I’ll be saying for the next twenty years.)

Goodbye, Of Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett. Goodbye, What Is the What?, by Dave Eggers. Goodbye, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. You made me think about war in terms of the individual people involved. I don’t think I had done that before.

Goodbye, American Films of the 1970s, by Peter Lev. You provided inspiration for the class of the same name that I taught at Suffolk University in Boston. We watched Easy Rider, Badlands, Chinatown — ahhh! So good! Must watch one soon.

And, finally, goodbye, Raising Your Spirited Child, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. Actually, maybe I’ll keep that one. A-hem.

The books are packed now, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not just a little sad. I think I’ll hold on to the boxes for a couple of days. It’s not that I think I will change my mind. I’m just thinking that one of you might call and ask if you can pick them up.