Vacation in Whine Country

by Melissa on June 17, 2013

There’s a sense of loss that sits in a closed-for-the-night airport terminal waiting for travelers returning from vacation after all the departing flights have departed for the day.

It accosted me as I limped off our flight from Los Angeles into the Spartanburg-Greenville Airport at 11:15 Friday night weighed down by electronic entertainment and backpacks overflowing with snacks. I’d been here just eight days before, brightly setting off for a week of family vacation with a sense of adventure and excitement. Now the lighting was dimmed, the Starbucks was shuttered, and the rows of seats were dead empty. It was as if I’d never left, only somehow a week of my summer had disappeared, Twilight-Zone-like, leaving an uneasy sense of having lost something in its wake.

This slightly sick feeling at the end of a vacation is nothing new to me. In fact, it’s pretty much a given. But it seemed grossly misplaced at the end of this particular trip. Because this time, I’d been to Whine Country.

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Kindergarten Graduation

by Melissa on June 4, 2013

Jake graduated from kindergarten yesterday.

When I first received the news that there would be a kindergarten graduation I felt certain I’d be writing about how they’ve got to stop springing these graduations on me—what with having barely recovered from Jake’s pre-K graduation last year and facing Lily’s next year and, apparently, her kindergarten graduation the year after that.  Four years in a row is tough on a mom’s heartstrings. Do I really need to be reminded that my babies are growing up? Can’t I just be left in peace to focus on the now, spend my usual inordinate amount of time marveling over their greatness in the present moment?

But I’m not writing about that.

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Our First Ballet Recital

May 28, 2013

Cute little four-year-old girls in pink tights and pink leotards and the closest approximation of a bun their mothers could manage, pink tutus bouncing as they scurry across the stage in pink ballet slippers. There was a time, not so long ago, when this description would have made me cringe with embarrassment for the kind [...]

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Sometimes You Don’t Get the Memo, Sometimes You Get It But Don’t Read It Very Carefully

May 13, 2013

I was feeling, as the school year draws to an end, like I had done a pretty good job of insinuating myself into my son’s school. Jake’s only in kindergarten, but—and I don’t say this proudly because I know it belies a troubling inability to recognize the meaning of the word “overextended”—I’ve yet to miss [...]

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It’s All Fun and Games Until Your Picture Shows Up on the Website

April 30, 2013

I’ve been spending a lot of time playing lately. I don’t mean this as a boast, because it isn’t. I’m not talking about the kind of play that makes my toes curl in anticipation of ever being able to do that again, maybe when the kids are in their thirties only then I’ll be too old—spending [...]

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Lily Is Not a Morning Person

April 22, 2013

Lily is not a morning person. I fully expect this to be as true twenty years from now as it is at this moment, when she is four years old and apt to act at any random time of the day like someone who has been rudely shaken awake before the sun is up because [...]

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The Magic of Magic

April 17, 2013

I can’t wait for bedtime these days. Not my own, which largely consists of a bleary-eyed attempt to focus on Telegraph Avenue, a book that, so far, I think is pretty good but mostly in my opinion has really, really small print. I’m sure that stack of New Yorkers sitting next to the bed begging to [...]

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Defending the Easter Bunny

April 1, 2013

I knew something was amiss when I saw the frisbee and the toy firetruck sitting on the dining room table Saturday morning. Just the night before, I’d noticed them on the little-used sunporch, tossed amidst the extra linens and the folding table that needs repairing and the boxes we can’t store in the basement because [...]

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Jake’s First Sleepover

March 28, 2013

Jake had his first sleepover last week. It was at the house of his best kindergarten friend and he’d never been to this friend’s house before and neither had I and did I mention he’d never slept over at a friend’s house before? This very proud mom is very happy to report that I did [...]

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Four Years Old and Eyes Wide Open

March 15, 2013

Lily turned four yesterday. This gets me in a way that not every single birthday and, for that matter, passing day of my children’s lives gets me. This gets me because I remember being four.

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Hey, Sharona, Nice to See You Again

February 25, 2013

It was a transcendent moment, and I say that knowing just how sticky and ill-used that word has become. Some time ago (not the transcendent moment, but necessary background for it), I found myself in that positive frame of mind that causes you to send friend requests to people you once kind of knew but [...]

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Careful What You Wish For—It Might Be Pink(eye)

February 19, 2013

Writing a new YMM post is not supposed to be an anxiety producing endeavor. And probably it wouldn’t be if it weren’t competing with Spring Carnival planning meetings and Children’s Art Garden grant writing fears and President’s Day with a closed preschool but not a closed elementary school, which caused great confusion but basically meant [...]

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Freaks, Geeks, and Progress Reports

February 4, 2013

Our DirecTV receiver gave up the ghost on Friday, which meant I filled my Superbowl evening quite contentedly folding laundry in front of a long-neglected DVD of Freaks and Geeks. I bring this up, not to memorialize my loser status in not having been invited to a Superbowl party since, I quite honestly believe, the [...]

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Thank You. I Love You. I’m Sorry. Please Forgive Me.

January 16, 2013

If you’ve been reading my posts regularly, you may have assumed that my long silence has been caused by a whining-three-and-a-half-year-old-induced fit of hysteria. You’d be close. The holidays held their own trials, with disrupted schedules, too much stimulation to sleep, Noah-epic deluges of gifts, and a great deal of Lego assembly. Also, did I [...]

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Happy New Whatever

January 2, 2013

10:21 p.m. That was my bedtime on the final night of 2012. Maybe I should be ashamed of this fact. Maybe I should think twice about sharing my loserdom with every person who has access to a search engine. But I’m not and I haven’t. The fact is, I was tired.

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Santa Pause

December 13, 2012

Yep, I said it. “If you don’t start acting nicer, I’m going to tell Santa not to bring you any presents.” Way to go, Mom.

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Compassion for the Cone

December 5, 2012

For someone who thought her sleepless nights were behind her, I’m sure not getting much sleep these days. Jake’s sixth birthday is around the corner, with Lily’s fourth following close on its heels, so I haven’t had the occasion to brag about those special nights when I get a full six hours of sleep for [...]

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Mommy on a Field Trip

November 21, 2012

I went to the Nature Center yesterday. This is not the first time I’ve been to the Nature Center, perhaps not even the hundred-and-forty-seventh. But it was the first time I’ve been to the Nature Center on a field trip, and that, it turns out, made a big difference.

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The Preschool Feminist Collective

November 13, 2012

A college friend with a newborn daughter just asked me for advice on finding her some feminist-inspired clothing in the apparent hope that he can avoid the princess stage that, as far as I can tell, lasts from age “I can point at that pink tutu” to the moment she shaves her head, dresses entirely [...]

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Sita, Ram, and Post-Election Relationships

November 7, 2012

So a long, long time ago there was this chick, Sita, who opted for a totally forward-thinking way of choosing the guy she’ll marry.  She gets to sets the conditions. And being smart enough to choose the marriage-choice option that gives her a modicum of self-determination (this is, after all, ancient India, so any self-determination [...]

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