Dear Keanu,

I spotted your secret signal to me in last week's Wall Street Journal, and I knew that you wanted to meet:



I'm sorry that I blew you off, but I've been thinking about us a lot lately. Especially because this Friday is my and Manager Dad's ninth anniversary. It seems like this "starter marriage" of mine might actually stick.

And so, because of my love for MD and our Spawn, I think that it's time that you and I FINALLY put an end to our relationship.

I remember when we first met; we were so young, and dumb, and carefree.



I always appreciated the fact that you supported my career choices.

I'll miss the wild times we've had together, but it's getting hard for me to keep up with your Hollywood lifestyle.



But our affair wasn't ALWAYS about partying and fetishwear; some of my favorite times were the quiet, simple things that we did together.


I want to reiterate that I'm doing this for Manager Dad. This has absolutely nothing to do with my recent tweets about wanting to bear children for either of these fine young gentlemen:



So that's it. Our twenty years together have been lovely, but all good things must come to an end.

But I hope you take comfort in knowing that I'll always carry a little reminder of you in my heart, and my home:



I will love you desperately forever and am being forced to do this against my will

Fondly,

Manager Mom

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Time To Get Over Myself

I think I have writer's block.

I feel pretentious even THINKING that, since my "writing" consists of using Powerpoint and Capture Express to paste pictures of my head on other people's bodies, or making up idiotic captions for pictures I take with my cellphone in order to illustrate the random neuroses that plague me on a daily basis.

So recently, when I had someone ask what my writing process was, it made me snort. It sounds WAY too fancypants for a hack blogger such as myself to attribute something that's driven by stupidity, emotional retardation and/or blood alcohol levels to an official "technique."

But when I thought more about it, I realized that "process" is practically my maiden name. I mean, HELLO, I work for a gigantic Fortune 100 company. I can't pick my nose during a regular workday without getting advance approval from fifteen different executive committees. I EAT your BUREAUCRACY for BREAKFAST. And crap it out in a the form of a crisply written interoffice memo.

So in the corporate spirit of "Just Because It's Unimportant Doesn't Mean It Doesn't Deserve A Two-Hour Meeting And A Fifty Page Presentation," I have summarized my process for the enjoyment of anyone that has not yet passed out from utter boredom:

Step 1. I do something stupid like teach the Spawn a rhyme about farting, which reinforces YET AGAIN how incompetent I am in the parenting department.

AND/OR:

Step 2. I'm wearing a light-colored, dry-clean only outfit and running late for work when I either smear blood all over myself, or one of the Spawn spontaneously barfs.

FOLLOWED BY:

Step 3. For several hours, I stew over the event in question. I also occasionally witness something while I'm doing worky type stuff that causes me to space out and scribble things like "Google Kum & Go to see if this really a gas station, or just a discount porn shop" in the margins of highly sensitive financial documents.

AND FINALLY:

Step 4. When Spawn are down for the count at night, I spend the next few hours ignoring my husband to hunch over a keyboard and rant about whatever middle-class problem has so heinously wronged me on that particular day.

This process has worked for me so far because I am a high-strung, compulsive, A+ person in a Type A world. Unfortunately, I am also starting to realize that another reason that it works for me is because I am an ungrateful bitch who finds irritation in things that just aren't really that big of a deal.

So when I am faced with a REAL issue, my usual smash-and-crab approach doesn't work too well.

And therein lies the blockage. I just found out that someone that I love got themselves in a really shitty situation, with no easy solutions. They are destined to feel the fallout for YEARS to come, and it just seems ungrateful to piss and moan about things like The Boy wearing the same t-shirt for five days in a row when people I care about are in so much pain, and there's nothing that I can do except bombard them with phone calls and emails.

I feel like I have somehow lucked into an undeservedly good life. I have Manager Dad, who has proven able to survive Hurricane Me; The Boy and The Girl, who love me as if they don't know any better, and my parents, each who have each come through catastrophic health events without winding up much crazier than they were to begin with.

I'm no Buddhist, but I am feeling like I need to take a moment to lay off the bitching and show some gratitude, or the universe is REALLY going to deliver me a five-alarm smackdown.

So, thanks, universe. And thanks to you for listening.

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To My No Longer A First Grader

You've probably noticed that the stuff I write usually tends to include some cursing, a fair amount of sarcasm, and often the ejection of bodily fluids. (Be forewarned - this post does not, and furthermore, it's laden with sentimental cliches. If you're looking for the usual, read this one instead). Because of all of the travel and work craziness I've had lately, my posts have definitely veered more toward the “manager” and less towards the “mom.”

When I got home late AGAIN the other night, The Boy shouted, “Thank you for stopping by, Mommy!” And it made me realize that when I go through these periods where the work goes out of whack and starts taking over my life, I feel like I have to create some emotional distance in my head, if I am going to survive all of the missed dinners and bedtime cell phone tuck-ins.

But that all evaporated when I dropped The Girl off at school the other day, her second-to-last day as a first grader.

We drove up to the building and I got out of the car to help her collect her things and so I could kiss her goodbye. I settled her backpack on her shoulders. It was heavy with keychains and notebooks and pencil cases and yarn for the friendship bracelets she likes to make, and the weight of it made her clothes go all cockeyed, pushing her pink cotton shorts low on one hip.

She received her kiss and skittered off on her flamingo legs. Before she went inside, she turned to wave at me, and in that moment I looked at her face and saw the baby that she once was and the woman that she will become, and it sort of took my breath away.

After that she turned and skipped into school without any inkling of how completely she had just laid waste to my emotions. And I thought to myself, I wouldn't trade a hundred rides on the corporate jet for this moment, standing here in the sunshine, next to the minivan. Watching my oldest child, who I will always hold as a little girl in my heart, off to start a day fraught with excitement and hope and happiness.

If that weren’t enough, this came home in her backpack. Her teachers had saved it from her FIRST day of school:


And it made me cry, for the first time in as long as I can remember.

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