Socal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills

Blog Book Tour: "The Only True Genius in the Family"

There's a new meme going around: a list of 100 essential books compiled by the BBC. You are supposed to check off and count how many you've read.

The BBC claims that the average person will only read six of the 100 books on the list. I am embarrassed to admit that I've only read 19... and most of those before I turned 20.

I might have done better if all the books in the Harry Potter series didn't count as one... as well as the COMPLETE works of William Shakespeare (however, several Dickens titles are there by themselves. Then again, those are LONG books!)

At any rate, it's a reminder that I don't read that much any longer -- at least, not fiction. (I actually spend most of my day reading news, email, blog posts, magazines, etc. When I'm not trying to keep up on my own writing). And it's a shame, because curling up and getting lost in a good book used to be one of my favorite pastimes.

That is one of the reasons why I agreed to review Jennie Nash's new novel, "The Only True Genius in the Family." That, and the fact that the author contacted me herself to ask if I wanted to participate in a blog book tour. I love the way the Internet makes old barriers fuzzy. I especially loved that Jennie is bypassing the usual publicists and set up the blog tour herself. It was an offer I could not refuse -- especially since she gave me a whopping THREE MONTHS to read her book and write a post about it.

But as much as I liked the idea of participating in this blog book tour, I had trouble making the time to get out the book and READ it... so, in typical fashion, I waited until the VERY LAST MINUTE.

Yeah. I read it yesterday.

I should probably tell you that when I DO take the time to sit down and read a good book, I tend to stay with it until the end. I read each of the Harry Potter books in one day (and some of them were over 500 pages long) -- so I don't think I shortchanged Jennie by going through it one swoop... especially since I kind of couldn't help myself. Once I got into it, I was INTO it.

You see, the protagonist - Claire - is a woman who is a lot like me: early 50's, creative... with unresolved issues with her parents. Claire is a successful commercial photographer with a life that most people would envy: a good marriage, good income, a beautiful house on the beach, and a beautiful daughter on the verge of becoming a success in her own right.

But Claire can't enjoy all those good things - especially her own professional success, because her father is also a photographer; a famous one. While Claire earns a good living making food look beautiful for Bon Appetit and Martha Stewart, her dad's work hangs in museums around the world. Claire discounts her success because it isn't ART... and she suspects her father doesn't approve. These feelings become even more intense when her dad dies; a death that turned out to be carefully planned.

This is a book about relationships: between fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives... but most importantly, about the relationship between the creative urge and self-esteem. Jennie Nash wrote non-fiction before she published her first novel -- she writes knowingly about art and artists, but covers issues that are universal to the creative spirit.

I found myself nodding sympathetically as Claire fumbles her way into problems of her own making. I understand how one can find success in the world, yet feel like a failure. Like Claire, I have a tendency to discount a dozen positive reviews -- but remember one negative comment forever.

In the end, Claire learns the truth about herself, her family and her troubled relationship with her dad, and she finds some peace -- at least, as much as a creative person can (because, let's face it: conflict is the fuel that keeps an artist's fire burning -- I don't see her feeling tranquil for long).

And I think I learned a little too, from being in Claire's world.

More White Trash Mom

I have an addendum to that last post, which was written over the course of two days and was interrupted several times by -- well, I can't tell you what the interruptions were about... yet... but there's some excitement afoot here at Chez SoCalMom, and I'm afraid it's interfering with my ability to focus.

If you look at that post carefully, you can probably tell when I started getting the phone calls that have made my brain go all fuzzy. And those who know how I work (cramming as much as I can while my kid is at school) will recognize what happens when I hit my deadline (time to pick her up). Tonight is her Open House, which means that today was a minimum day (pick up moved up from 3:00 p.m. to 12:30).

So I may have left you with the impression that the White Trash Mom Handbook is a serious tome, like when I mentioned Michelle's practical advice, without offering you a sample of what I meant.

So here's one I could relate to:

White Trash Mom Household vs. a "Normal" Household

When my daughters visit the neighbors, they do normal things:

• Make fudge
• Play board games or PlayStation 2
• Watch DVDs
• Do art projects

Conversely, when they come to our house, the activities are a little different:

• Make video where the dolls get beheaded and... taken away by aliens
• Dress the pug dogs up in bikinis and parade around the neighborhood
• See if they can get the dogs to "pee" in the toilet
• Make a fort out of an inflatable swimming pool and Slip 'n' Slide that are still outside from last summer even though it's February.

Do you see? While my kid and her friends do their share of playing video games and watching DVD's, most playdates at our house devolve into the same activities Michelle describes as "White Trash." The only thing my daughter doesn't do is dress the dog, but only because we don't have one. Instead, she and her friends will subject the cats to all kinds of cute torture (fortunately, one of them is part Maine coon and actually enjoys jumping into the bathtub while the water is running).

And there is no way in hell I'm going to get up from my computer and help the kids bake cookies or something. For one thing, the reason I agreed to the playdate is so that I can sit at the computer and work without constant interruptions. And for another thing, I'm not about to ruin my diet by allowing the smell of home baked cookies to permeate the house. And for another thing (Yes! Another one!) who do you think gets to clean up the mess from all that baking? No, I'd much rather let them behead the Barbie doll or torment the cat.

Michelle says that's fine - but warns to take care when your kids are visiting others (i.e., leave the beheaded doll at home).

She also points out that in parenting, possessing a good sense of humor is essential - which is kind of the point of her book. And I'm afraid THAT's the part I left out in my previous post... and hope to have made clear here.

A White Trash Mom Gets the Last Laugh

I think 2008 may be the Year of the Mommy Blogger.

There may be plenty of people who turn their noses down on us (which is nothing new), but these days, I think the disrespect is mixed with envy. Political and tech bloggers may get booked on TV talk shows, but the moms get free STUFF. Corporations have always known that women hold the pursestrings in most families, and they've glommed onto word-of-mouth marketing through blogs in a big way.

I saw the complaints on game boards when Nintendo launched its marketing campaign for the Wii by selecting moms in major cities to host fabulous catered parties. (Disclosure: I was one of the lucky moms selected for this a year ago and have been enjoying a relationship with them since.) I've seen grumbles that Sony didn't invite any men to a fabulous beach resort to sample electronics, or that major car companies were lavishing female bloggers with free loaners on their new vehicles. (Disclosure: I have not been invited for these programs but would be happy to participate!)

Maybe we moms are overly sensitive. I know I am. I dread going to my husband's work-related events and that inevitable moment when someone asks me, "And what do YOU do?" The only thing worse than telling them I'm a stay-at-home mom (and noting their complete disinterest) is telling them that I spend my time BLOGGING about being a stay-at-home mom. I've learned to describe BlogHer as an "annual women's WRITERS' conference." And since I've started branching out in the blogosphere, I've been emphasizing my posts for the MOMocrats over what I've been doing here for nearly five years.

So I have been thrilled this spring to see that some of my favorite mom bloggers are out there promoting BOOKS. THEIR books. After all, getting published is the standard most people use to rate your success as a writer. (Sure, you could earn $1 million for a screenplay, but nobody remembers your name. But having your photo on a book jacket from a real honest-to-God publishing house... THAT's something!)

This spring, we've seen Heather Armstrong ("dooce") on Nightline and The Today Show (impressive, even with  the controversy over her encounter with Kathie Lee Gifford), promoting her new book, "Things I Learned About My Dad (in Therapy)." And later this year, BlogHer editor Rita Arens (Surrender, Dorothy) debuts her labor of love, "Sleep Is For the Weak," which consists of essays by some of my favorite mom bloggers (including several whom I count as friends).

I am delighted for these women -- and jealous as hell. Even if I were to get over my congenital insecurity (which I've now accepted as a permanent condition) and begin BELIEVING in my own worth a a writer, I would still have to deal with the attitudes of those around me: my family, who seem to think what I do is worthwhile only when someone is PAYING me to do it...

...and the rest of the unplugged-in, non-technical world, who do not buy the historic value of this movement of ordinary folks who are documenting their lives in the troubled early years of the 21st century. The problem with the Internet is that its virtual nature. Most people need to be able to touch something to believe in it; something tangible... like a book.

Still, it is nice that publishers are taking note of what is going on here in the blogosphere and giving good writers the opportunity to create that tangible product. Even Newsweek is noticing (although of course, they are not paying attention to our little mommy blogging niche, and seem snarkily amused that so many blog-to-book projects have not become best-sellers.

That is why I plan to support my blogging sistahs and buy their books, which I fully expect to find inspirational -- but probably not all that practical. For that, I'm going to refer to another book written by another of my blogging friends: The White Trash Mom Handbook by Michelle Lamar, who blogs at (of course!) White Trash Mom.

Some clarification is due here: Michelle is being ironic when she uses the term "White Trash," as in "My house doesn't look like the pages of Martha Stewart's Living -- I guess we're White Trash." Or "We were in a hurry, so the kids had a drive-thru lunch today -- I guess I'm White Trash."

In other words, if you are looking for decorating tips for your double-wide trailer, this book is not for you. But if you'd like some real advice on juggling motherhood and work, navigating the hierarchy of your kids' schools or how to deal with the PTA, you will enjoy Michelle's book. And as it's written in the same style as Michelle's very funny blog, you will probably even have a good laugh.

I'll tell you something: I wish I'd had a book like this when I first enrolled my daughter in kindergarten. I would have relaxed a lot more around the moms who claimed their kids were already reading, or at the playdates at homes that were so pristine that I was afraid to enter, lest I mess things up. (Did I ever tell you about the little girl who had two sets of toys so she wouldn't ever have to share when her friends came to play? Actually, her mom is now one of my closest friends, but at the time, I was pretty intimidated by stuff like that.)

Michelle's book is not out yet, but is available for pre-order at Amazon and Target, and I'm told she will be autographing copies at BlogHer and handing out some White Trash bling. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

You Make Me Feel Like a Natural SUPERWoman...

One of my "non-resolutions" each year is to do a lot more reading. I'm not talking about blogs, newspapers and magazines (although I seem to be reading more and more of those, too). I mean REAL reading, of books, the kind I used to do when I didn't have all those distractions (um, loving family members) living with me. So when Marjorie and Melissa of MotherTalk put out the call for review bloggers, I signed up. Thus, the year began with an invitation to be part of a blog tour for the book you see below. This is my contribution.

I've been getting serious about my health. Last summer, when a good friend (who is my age) suffered a stroke, I realized that I couldn't continue lying to myself that I was still young, even though I still feel as I did when I was 25.

The problem is, 25 was 27 years ago.

And if I were to be truly honest with myself, I DON'T feel EXACTLY as I did in the days when I could share a pitcher of margaritas with my boss at lunch, go back to work, and sip screwdrivers on the job -- before quitting for the evening and meeting friends at a club for more drinks and dancing. (I worked at a radio station, and vodka and orange juice were the only items in our department fridge. It was a looser time. And I was 25. If I'd tried to keep that up, I don't think I'd be here today to reminisce about it.)

Today, I have other symptoms of aging (besides an inability to consume mass quantities of alcohol). My first inkling that I was getting older occurred in my mid-30's, when I decided I was finally ready to start a family. That's when I got a big fat lesson in the frustration of infertillity.

Around the same time, my metabolism started to slow down. Without changing my diet, I gradually started packing on pounds -- a process that accelerated when I did finally become pregnant and gave birth (just before turning 40).

And don't get me started on the other symptoms of perimenopause! Take the hair that keeps showing up in places it doesn't belong on a woman, or the thinning hair on the top of my head. I've got the makings of a bald spot that gets bigger each year, convincing me that I may soon have to invest in a good piece -- or a wardrobe of hats. There are the menstrual periods that used to arrive like clockwork and now -- well, let's just call them an ever-changing surprise, because there is no longer any predictability to them at all.

Getting old sucks. But chronic illness sucks more. I'm not too crazy about the idea of dying at this time in my life, either. So when I read the blurb on The Natural Superwoman, I was intrigued:

The Scientifically Backed Program for Feeling Great, Looking Younger, and Enjoying Amazing Energy at Any Age.

When I read the name of the authors, I knew I HAD to read this book. You see, Dr. Uzzi Reiss was my OB/Gyn for 15 years. He was the man who treated me for my infertility, and he delivered my daughter.

I loved this gentle, caring, tiny man, who always made me feel confident, secure and safe.

Ironically, the very baby we worked so hard to create and deliver was in part responsible for my parting ways with Dr. Reiss. For two years after her birth, I continued to work full-time outside the home, at a very demanding, high pressure job. I couldn't handle the stress, and the minute it was financially viable to do so, I quit and became a stay-at-home mom.

I lost a good income. More important, I lost a really good health insurance plan. We could no longer afford the services of a "successful, high-profile medical practice that attracts celebrity clients from the worlds of film, television, high fashion and politics" (described on the book jacket).

It was with a heavy heart that I decided to trust my health to my husband's company's HMO. I so disliked the HMO doctors that I eventually stopped seeing them altogether, and went about five years without getting a gynecological exam -- which is pretty risky for a woman my age. (I did finally find a PPO doctor I like, and am now getting regular checkups. But he's not Uzzi Reiss, and I still mourn the circumstances that caused my decision to leave him.)

I knew that this book would probably advocate treatments that the medical establishment might find radical. Dr. Reiss was always unorthodox. He treated women for PMS at a time when premenstrual syndrome wasn't accepted as something that was REAL. In fact, that was my reason to see him in the first place. I was truly suffering from it, to the point where it was hurting me on the job (no one wants an employee who gets on a crying jag and CANNOT STOP). A co-worker slipped me his number. "This man really helped me," she said. He helped me, too, with vitamin therapy (also less accepted back then than it is now).

"Your doctor is a quack," my sister opined after I got pregnant. This was in response to Dr. Reiss' instructions to stay away from tap water during my pregnancy, an instruction she found ridiculous, because her own ob/gyn never told her to drink bottled during her three pregnancies. A couple of years later, I read an item in the paper linking L.A.'s water to a higher incidence of miscarriages.

After the baby was born and I was faced with trying to lose all that weight, Dr. Reiss mapped out a diet plan: No bread. No rice. Little or no grains (whole or otherwise). No sugar.

To me, it sounded a lot like the Atkins diet, which I'd done the first time it was popular, back in the late '70's. After that, the idea of eating low-carb, high-protein had been discredited.

It didn't sound good to me. Besides, it sounded hard. I gave it a half-hearted try, but gave up after about a week.

A few years later, low-carb diets (including Atkins) enjoyed a resurgence of popularity, as people discovered that they WORK (and studies proved that if done right, they are just as healthy as a balanced, low-calorie diet that includes carbohydrates).

In 2005, I thought of Dr. Reiss when I dropped twenty pounds doing South Beach (which is also low-carb). I had discovered what the doctor had already known: my middle-aged body can't process carbohydrates the way it used to.

That lesson was reinforced when I went off South Beach, gained back the weight -- and then some -- and this year, I went on a hard-core diet through a medical weight loss clinic. Low calorie, low fat AND low carb. I've learned that my body has a tougher time with carbs than I'd ever thought possible.

Once again, Dr. Reiss espoused a radical medical idea and turned out to be right.

In The Natural Superwoman, he advocates hormone replacement therapy.

All right. Wasn't that practice discredited? Wasn't it proven that giving women hormones can cause them to die of heart disease? Isn't that dangerous?

If this was coming from anyone else, I'd be the first in line to yell "Quack."

But my history with Dr. Reiss forced me to read his book with an open mind, and he makes a very good case. He explains why the Women's Health Initiative study got the results it did, and why the regimen he advocates would improve a woman's health, not harm it.

Find out why doctors are wrong to conclude that all HRT is dangerous for women, plus Dr. Reiss' advice on preventing breast cancer in part 2 of this review, at SoCalStuff.

Little Miracles

A new Harry Potter book is a cause for celebration in my sister's family, and they had been hotly anticipating the last one in the series. So, as is their tradition, Linda took her 12-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son to a local bookstore at midnight Saturday and purchased a copy for each of them (plus, I presume, one for her eldest, who is in Rome right now). My youngest niece stayed up all night, reading.

I don't have the energy to shop at midnight these days, so I followed my own Harry Potter tradition of pre-ordering the book on Amazon and allowing it to appear on my doorstep sometime before noon on Saturday. So I didn't get started on the thing until after lunch. I don't make a lot of time for book reading these days, but on those rare occasions when I do sit down for a good read, I tend to stick with it until it's over. So I went to bed at 4:00 a.m. (I would have finished a lot earlier if my family hadn't expected me to interact with them a little. I ended up taking a 4-hour break for dinner and stuff.)

I loved the book. I loved the way it ended. I admire J.K. Rowling immensely, for her imagination and gifts as a story teller. The magical world she has created and sustained through seven hefty tomes is rich and dense with detail, and after spending another weekendwith it (through the books and the movie, which I had to see a second time on Sunday), I find myself looking for magic in my own mundane life.

Which is why I am convinced that is the only explanation for the mysterious object in the corner of my bedroom: my laundry hamper, which must surely enchanted. How else do you explain the fact that it is never empty? I can spend an entire day doing loads of laundry, and when I return to the bedroom, it's full again.

It's magic, I tell you.

It's a Girl

Did I really say that my next several posts would be a continuation of my travelblog about our weekend jaunt in New York?

That's what I was thinking when I crawled out of bed yesterday and saw that I only had one hour to wrap it up before getting to school -- and realized I would need more. It's what I was thinking about when I got to my desk there and turned on my computer and reacquainted myself with the piles of paperwork that need to be ploughed through before the end of the semester. And it's what I was thinking about when I decided to check my Socalmom email account and found this message from Andrea J. Buchanan:

GIRL Blog Book Tour - You're Up!

Just a reminder that you're up on the tour today! Today is the last day of the blog tour -- but if you can't get to it today, I don't mind a few stragglers towards the end of the week.

You know exactly what I was thinking then, right?

** DOH!**

I knew May 30 was my day to write about this wonderful book, the third in the series of essay collections by women writers edited by Andi. I remember being relieved that my turn came at the end of the tour -- AFTER our NY trip. And I remember thinking that, since we were flying out on May 26th, I would have a couple of days to write it up. I even toyed with the idea of taking the book with me on the plane and writing my post out in longhand on the flight over (but abandoned that idea because my family would never allow me to do something that requires focus while I'm seated between them for five hours).

Do you think I should have looked at a calendar? And written it down?

Because when I walked into school yesterday morning, my head full of pithy observations about Manhattan, its sights, the food and that New York attitude... I had no idea that yesterday was May 30. I thought it was still the 28th. Or something else with a 2 in front.

But I'm afraid something else is going on here. While I couldn't wait to write down my observations about the last two books, It's a Boy and Literary Mama, I think I've been avoiding this one. Ironic, as this was the book I was most looking forward to reading. After all, I'm the mother of a girl, and when Andi announced she was looking for submissions for these books, I briefly considered writing one. But even though I can blather on and on about topics that can charitably be described as trivial, when it comes to the important things in life: like how I feel about the most profound relationship I've ever had -- the one with my daughter -- I draw a blank. It's there... but frustratingly, I cannot put it into more than a few words.

The women featured in this book don't have that problem. Andi has collected essays from some real powerhouses, including name writers like Joyce Maynard and Jennifer Lauck. As with the previous books, the writing is strong, sometimes funny and often thoughtful. This book is everything I expected it to be...

...and yet, I had a hard time reading it. Well, not reading it, because it's actually a very quick read. But I didn't LOVE it -- not the way I did with "It's a Boy." And that's weird because, as somone pointed out when I was reading the first book, I don't have a boy.

Maybe it was because I received this book at a point when my time was extremely limited. Or maybe it was simply my mood. An anthology should be read in little spurts, when there is time -- not in one big swoop as one does when trying to crank out a review on deadline. In that way, these are perfect books for a mother's lifestyle, as it is difficult to finish any project that requires more than 30 minutes of focus.

Or maybe it goes back to Andi's raison d'etre for creating these books. After giving birth to a girl and becoming pregnant a second time with a baby that turned out to be a boy, she was surprised at the things people would say to her: "Countless people told me how easy boys are; how loving, how sweet, how special, how different from girls -- often, and appallingly, right in front of my three-year-old daughter." I remember when my own sister became pregnant for the third time, after becoming mother to both a boy and a girl -- and that she was a tiny bit disappointed when baby #3 was not a boy. I wondered if she knew something I did not.

While I was reading the essays in this book, it struck me that the tone was somewhat less joyful than the pages of "It's a Boy." And maybe that's why I couldn't relate -- because my relationship with my daughter has been nothing if not joyful. Andi offers a possible explanation for this in her introduction: "But the concerns of writers in It's a Boy were about the otherness of the male gender: What the heck do you do with a boy? It's a Girl writers ask the same question about their daughters, but what prompts it is not the fear of the unknown, but fear of what they know all too well."

She concludes: "Mothering a girl, according to these writers, makes a woman face herself anew, reliving her own experiences growing up as a girl. The mother of a girl must plumb the depths of the girlhood she'd thought she had safely escaped - but this time through the eyes of her daughter, whose experience is necessarily different. The pain and joy of this reliving, the merging of mother and daughter experience, and the bittersweet, inevitable separation between the two, is at the core of mothering a girl -- and at the heart of the essays that make up this book."

So that's the answer: It's not that the women are less joyful. It's just that it's complicated.

That's something I do get. There's a section devoted to the pressure society puts on us to be beautiful and how we navigate that with our daughters. The writers here show pride and ambivalence; In The Most Beautiful Baby - Take Two, Maynard recounts how, when her daughter was a baby, she wrote a tongue-in-cheek article about her being the most beautiful in the world... and how she grew up. Jenny Block confesses to multiple plastic surgeries, which helped her own self-esteem -- and her fear of the example she's set to her own daughter. And there's lots of lament about weight issues. I definitely get that.

I laughed out loud at the contrast between Miriam Peskowitz's feminist upbringing and her daughter's desire to be a Cheerleader: "'And mom, you know, cheering teaches us to spell,' Samira pointed out. 'That makes it good! We can spell Philadelphia - no f's.'"

As with the previous two collections, there are entries here that were very touching. Girl Talk, Suzanne Kamata's tale of raising a deaf daughter in Japan comes to mind. Communication is hard enough when you speak the same language, but Kamata had to learn sign language to help her girl through school -- Japanese sign language. After this and her haunting contribution to "Literary Mama," I am fast becoming a fan of Kamata.

Time is of the essence. I got up at 5:00 a.m. to write this piece. At 6:30, I had to awaken Megan (who needed to finish her homework from last night). I made her breakfast, washed dishes, folded laundry, fed the cats, cleaned their boxes... and then showered and dressed for my own day at school. I've lost my train of thought here -- and at 7:40, must get my daughter and self out the door.

I just reread Passing It On, the concluding essay by Lesley Leyland Field, a beautifully written account of womanhood and motherhood and helping your daughter find her place in the world. I take it back. I felt the joy... and the pride. And I'm looking forward to reading it again, properly, in bits and pieces, so I can take it all in the way I should.

Best Laid Plans

I was surprised and delighted to receive a copy of Literary Mama a couple of months ago, the latest anthology edited by "mommy blogging" powerhouse Andrea Buchanan and Amy Hudock. After all, I'd felt I'd let Andi down on the last "blog book tour" by posting my review of "It's a Boy" days after it was due. Not only that, but I'd read the first book rather quickly, didn't take notes, and promptly lent it to a friend - which meant I could not refer to it again when it was time to write my little review.

I was determined not to disappoint her this time. But it took me a while to get into the book, which is not just a simple collection of essays, but SERIOUS writing culled from Andrea and Amy's monthly online literary journal. It also included short stories, "creative non-fiction" and [ugh!] poetry.

I freely admit that I am NOT an intellectual. I've never really gotten poetry. I respect it, and the care and artistry of the poets who create it -- but it bores me. And when I come across it in an otherwise interesting publication, I usually just skip it. I mean, I was a Broadcasting major with a minor in Journalism -- careful analysis of symbols and metaphors is not one of my strong skills. I was afraid this book would be too much like stuff I was forced to read in high school English. Or worse - that I would try to read it and end up feeling stupid.

But a promise is a promise. It wasn't a quick read, but that was OK with me, because the entries in this collection required a bit of thought, and in the end I wanted -- needed -- to savor them... because in a way, I found them nourishing. Even the poetry. And I was actually looking forward to writing about it.

But, as usual, life gets in the way of literary pursuits -- and once again, I found myself with a deadline and nothing ventured yet.

So yesterday - February 20 - my post was due, and it was the Monday of a three-day weekend; a particularly social one, at that. The only time I had to be alone to write would be late yesterday afternoon, between 4 and 7:30, when Megan was safely occupied at gymnastics and I could slip away to a nearby Starbucks where I was confident I would be able to hammer out my post.

But that was not to be. At 3:30, as Megan and I headed out to the gym, she suddenly remembered a deadline of her own, for a school project that she was supposed to have worked on over the weekend -- due today. So I swung into Plan B, which meant writing my post while Megan finished her homework. Not preferred, because I'd be less able to focus -- but do-able all the same.

So instead of the gym, we headed out to a couple of stores to buy paint and brushes (the first store did not have the colors she wanted) -- and then to the supermarket to buy her a potato (for printing) and something I could cook up for dinner. I put away groceries while my Darling Daughter was laying newspaper down on the dining room table so she could complete her art project... and then I heard her cry:

"ANTS!"

Ants are a chronic problem in this house. I can count on finding them somewhere inside whenever the weather gets too hot, too dry, too wet, or -- as in the case of the last few days -- too cold. On Saturday and Sunday they were showing up in my new dishwasher. I must have won my battle against them yesterday morning, because now they were crawling all over our coffee table (where Megan had placed her materials while setting the project up in the dining room).

To make a long story somewhat shorter, it took me about an hour to get rid of the ant trail that stretched from behind our fireplace to the middle of the living room. The dark wood floors we put in last fall make it a bit more complicated -- I can't see the little suckers without using a flashlight and then I have to do a good job of mopping and vacuuming so I don't mess up its finish. I finally sat down to plug my computer in when the phone rang. He Who Shall Not Be Named (and unfortunately, did not get a three-day weekend) was done for the day and on his way home.

"I'm not going to be good company tonight," I told him. "After dinner, I have to write a book review AND a post for DotMoms." Oh yes. THAT was due a couple of days ago. I used to be so reliable. Nowadays, I'm a flake. I don't like it, but I have not conquered the art of managing my time now that I'm buffeted with the ever-changing schedules of my little family. I've discovered that flexibility is the key to my survival, and that is usually at the expense of the things that I want to do.

It doesn't help that DD and HWSNBN are both rather high maintenance. They demand my complete attention and compete with each other to get it. This makes writing when they are both home a near impossibility.

But I was going to give Plan C a try. Until the phone rang again. This time, it was our friends Maggie and Junior, who had just finished celebrating their Valentine's Day wedding anniversary by spending the three-day weekend in Death Valley. They were on their way home and would be passing right by our house. We don't get to see them as often as we'd like.

"Why don't you guys come over for dinner?" I blurted out, as if on auto-pilot.

Plan D was just accepting the fact that I was going to be late with my post and would have to write it early this morning before school. This is what I tried to do, but I wasn't doing justice to the book.

So I formulated Plan E: I called the school and told them I would be late for work because I had to wait for an exterminator to come and get the ants out of my dishwasher (which were back in there last night. AARGH.) So now, here I am. I actually couldn't get an appointment today, so now he's coming in on my usual day off, which is Friday. Tuesdays are short days at school and they owe me some hours, so I shouldn't feel guilty about not coming in at all. (Repeat: I shouldn't feel guilty. I shouldn't feel guilty...)

So I think you can understand why I responded so strongly to an incident related in the book's Introduction:

"A woman who is a mother and a professional writer sits down to write, rushing to meet a deadline. She takes a moment to reflect on where she left off and then quickly jumps back into the story. As she writes, creating an alternate world, her real world intevenes: The children demand food, the husband wonders where his good pants are, the baby swallows a button, a delivery arrives, the husband wants her attention and insists that she stop her 'scribbling,' one of the kids destroys the first page of her manuscript. She perseveres, writing through the distractions for as long as she can, and then finally surrenders to the domestic chaos, telling her husband to just hand her the baby already and wondering aloud why she bothers trying to balance a writing career and motherhood."

Here's the surprise: The woman described in the paragraph above "is a fictional character in a story written by Fanny Fern and published in 1853." There is another example here, of a woman who has to fight to get a local bookstore to host a reading of her latest novel.

"Separated by 150 years, these two writers share many of the same dilemmas: how to balance creativity and motherhood, and how to be taken seriously as a writer. The question is, why is the modern mother-writer fighting the same battles her literary mother fought nearly two centuries ago?"

(You can read the entire introduction here. I hope you do -- it's well worth it!)

I continued to recognize pieces of myself in much of the book, especially the beginning chapters, which deal with Creative Acts, Mothers Raising Women, and Mothers Raising Men.

In "Evolution of a Muse," author Joanne Hartman notes that motherhood is a beginning (not an end!) to creativity. She recounts her the very arrival of her first baby inspired her to record her feelings, much as I did in Megan's baby book... and I continue to do today, with this blog. "I write for me, to remember my journey," she says.

I laughed out loud at the image of her jotting notes on the only paper available: a disposable diaper. I nodded knowingly when she wrote of the urge to write it ALL down, and the fear of forgetting any precious moment. She notes the similarities of the "writing life" and the "mothering life," that they are both "unpredictable, isolating and...pay poorly." Also, the challenge of being both "creative and confident...[because] these are two professions where critics abound."

In "Not So Perfect," Jennifer Lauck (no, not my friend Jenny of Mommy Bloggers, but another Jennifer Lauck!) writes about a different creative outlet (playing the piano) and a different sort of critic: her children. Her three-year-old screams when she sits down to practice, proclaiming it as "JUST NOISE!" And her seven-year-old points out how she keeps making mistakes.

I am struck by how so many of the wonderful writers who contributed to this book admit to being self-critical... very much like me.

The middle sections of the book deal with "Sex, Fertility and the Body" and "Mothers, Fathers and Parents." I loved "the Naughty Mommy's" essay on weaning her daughter -- and reclaiming her body for herself.  And I was haunted by "The Dogs of Sayulita," a short story by Jennifer D. Munro. It's the tale of a couple who is dealing with the heartbreak of infertility -- and its effect on their marriage:

"But she stuffs the grief down, showing up on time for work and smiling whenever someone asks her, 'Why don't you just adopt?' instead of smashing their teeth in. She despises herself for such pathetic weakness, a twenty-first century woman defining herself by her womb's failure. But she can not be rational about her all-consuming desire to be a mother. She can't fight with reason the hormonal hard-wiring of biology's millennia of procreation programming."

If only I had the ability to use language the way these writers do, to be able to dive into my darkest thoughts and create something with the beauty of Suzanne Kamata's Kan, a fictional account of caring for an in-law with cancer... or Meagan Francis' memoir of an alcoholic parent, "Blueberries for Mom":

"I have moments with my own children that scare me -- moments of disproportionate rage, violent urges that come and go so quickly and sharply they leave me breathless. Sometimes my own (sober) voice seems to morph into the scary tone of drinking Mom -- shaming, irrational, cruel, the sound that can make my children wither before my eyes. Other times, I hear the gentle, low humor of Mom on her good days: clever, quick-witted, fun. I'm not sure which I find more unsettling."

The final two sections -- Surviving Illness and Loss and Healing the Past to Live in the Present -- were the most difficult ones to get through, and not because they made me feel stupid - but that the subject matter was so harrowing, and sad.  Like "Gan," Suzanne Kamata's short story about caring for an in-law with cancer... and Heidi Raykiel's creative nonfiction remembrance of "Johnny," her first child, who died a short time after his birth:

"I've heard about parents with sick babies who never come to visit, who can't bear to see their children like that, who just can't let themselves love something so fragile. For us, from the minute we met him, it was always Johnny leading the way. How could we not smile around him? How could we not beam with pride and dream and hope while holding him? We were addicted to him from day one...Even knowing that we were never going to take him home, not ever, that he would never see the perfect nursery, never say 'night-night' to his cow curtains, never meet the dog or use the stroller or wear his perfect little sneakers. Even knowing that, the minute the nurse laid him in my arms, I was filled up with him. I was content."

I am starting to cry again just re-reading that passage -- which is what happened to me the first time around. This is why it took me a full week to get through this piece.

But my favorite reading in Literary Mama was "Out of the Woods," an essay by Lizbeth Finn-Arnold. Lizbeth is one of those "How does she do it?" kind of women. A mom who is also an accomplished writer and filmmaker, she's what I'd like to be when I grow up -- except that she's a good 15 years or so younger than I, which I find really depressing.

Lizbeth writes of her love of Thoreau (who I've never read - remember what I said about not being intellectual?) and the day she took her children with her on a pilgrimage to Walden Pond.

I was reassured to read that she struggles with many of the same issues as I - that after becoming a mom, she "quickly discovered that motherhood is not conducive to the solitary life of a writer." She writes of making your "own path in the mommy woods" -- and that it's OK to do so. And she recounts how taking time off for herself has really paid off, which reminded me of the burst of creativity I experienced after I attended last summer's BlogHer conference (and why I need to get off my duff and register for BlogHer '06).

Lizbeth writes about blogging and how connecting with other mothers who write have reminded her that "the challenges of motherhood [are] not mundane or insignificant." Her visit to Walden with her kids led to another revelation: "There is no greater beauty in this universe than that of my children." They are her very own Walden Pond.

I'm inspired to go to the source and catch up on Thoreau. I hope I've inspired others to read Literary Mama. You may even enjoy the poetry!

What if I'd Had a Son Instead?

As I've mentioned here before, Megan is a competitive gymnast who works out some 16 hours a week.

And I've mentioned before that I spend a lot of that time just sitting in the gym watching her.

Yes, I know I could find better uses for that time, and on occasion, I have. But Megan likes to have me there as an audience, and I have seen enough girls get injured on the equipment to be afraid. (No, I really don't think my presence prevents Megan from getting hurt, but how awful would it be to get the phone call and have to drive 30 minutes to get to your kid who's broken some bones after falling off that nasty balance beam? Yes, I also know that I am neurotic.) Add to that the gym's inconvenient location, the dreadful traffic that time of day -- and my own fatigue factor -- and you've built a pretty good case for having a little quiet time on the sidelines.

One of the ways I've justified this indulgence is that it finally affords me a little time to read. I used to be a voracious reader -- until I met my high-maintenance husband, who wants me to be actively listening to him at all times and thinks there is something wrong if I'm feeling a bit introspective. I don't get a lot of reading done when he's around.

Motherhood to an equally demanding little person has only compounded the situation, which is one of the reasons why I look forward to those hours in the gym. I go there each day with the stacks of magazines that come to our home each month -- which used to just sit gathering dust until the piles got too big (which resulted in me tossing them out to make room for new piles). I now leave the gym feeling contentedly up-to-date after devouring Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly and Vanity Fair, happy with the knowledge that I've made time to learn about the world outside of school and PTA.

Last month, I did something truly daring: I brought an actual book to the gym. OK, so it wasn't A Brief History of Time... but it was a book all the same; a beautiful, sensitive, funny anthology of essays written by mothers about the loves of their lives: their sons.

It's a Boy is the latest brainchild of author Andrea J. Buchanan, whose previous book (Mother Shock) so perfectly articulated the wonders -- and terrors -- that accompany the transition from young adult to young mom. Andi is something of a mommy blogging powerhouse (and I use that term with admiration!). She is also the creator of Literary Mama, an online magazine that champions other writers who happen to be mothers.

"Why are YOU reading that?" asked the other gym moms who I chat with each afternoon. They all know that I have just one child, and that one's the girl who could be seen flipping and flopping across the blue mat.

I told them how Andi was an online friend, and that I'd volunteered to read an advance copy of her latest book and write about it here. That's when their eyes glazed over and they went back to cheering on their daughters, allowing me to continue my book fix.

As Andi states in her introduction, the essays within are divided into four broad themes:

"It's a Boy," which features tales of ambivalence, love, and newborn babies; "Will Boys Be Boys?," which explores bullying, violence, and redemption, the otherness and the potential of boys; "The Velvet Underground," which examines gender roles and what we expect from our sons; and "Shapeshifter," which tackles the ever-changing nature of boyness and a mother's role as her son grows.

I related to them all. I remembered when I was pregnant, how I repeated the cliche that I didn't care about my baby's gender, I just wanted it born healthy (while secretly hoping for a girl). I was surprised (and a little relieved) to read essays by women who had felt the same way, and now could not imagine their lives without their boys.

I have no doubt that I would have been just as delighted if we'd had a Mike instead of a Megan - but that it would be different. That was confirmed in the next section, which had me nodding in recognition of all the little boys I know -- including my four nephews, whose energy is a force of nature. I was especially touched by the final section, which reminded me of my oldest nephew in particular, who has grown from a mischievous blond imp who was always scamming us for candy into a strapping 6-foot 17-year-old... who still cannot resist sweets.

What struck me the most about all the essays is how well these writers convey how it feels to raise these exotic creatures. It left me feeling envious, for no matter how hard I try to explain how profound it is to be Megan's mother, I get all tongue-tied and banal. These women can write. I love them and hate them. Most have published novels, which I shall have to start exploring. This book definitely left me wanting more.

"What are you reading?" asked yet another mom. This one has three sons in addition to her gymnast daughter, with ages ranging from 17 on down to 3. I showed her the book, which I had just finished. "You would love this!" I told her, and lent her my copy. Looking back, I realize that was kind of stupid, as now that I am writing this I'm unable to refer to the essays I enjoyed most. Then again, picking just two or three to mention here would be nearly impossible, and there's a lot to be said for brevity online.

Suffice it to say that I'm buying copies as Christmas gifts for my other friends with sons, and am looking forward to the spring 2006 publication of the book's companion piece, It's a Girl.

It will make nice reading at the gym.