She's Got a Column Cooking

There were letters scattered across the screen of the library computer: AAAXREWAPOOUBBBBBBBJJ.

My 4-year-old couldn't have been prouder. "I wrote my column," she told me.

Aha.

Lest you think she isn't paying attention on Sunday afternoons when I sit in my small home office pounding out a missive to get it in to my editor in time, here is my proof.

She has a column bouncing around in that there brain, and if I'd just stop stealing all her ideas, she might it out.

In fact, if her repeated attempts to mash out her thoughts on the keys of the computer at the Jeff library (yes, it was the kid's computer and no, I didn't have to pay for a new one - it survived) are any indication, she has a lot to say.

Hence the repeated requests for Erin and I to raise our Mom butts off the floor despite our aging Mom backs and read her prose to the world.

There were a lot of Js. A favoritism for the B key was apparent. And I learned that I need to teach my child that the caps lock key means you're shouting.

But all in all, this column writing mama has to give it to her. She's got a future . . . in something.
Yes, that's me getting ferklempt. I could almost see the New York Press Association award hanging on her wall - right beside her mother's.

Don't worry, it passed quickly. I don't do helicopter parent well - all that whirring around makes my arms ache; I'm better suited to using them to type.

Alas, the Democrat's smallest reporter has other plans for her future.

Slated for kindergarten next year (condolence cards freely accepted), she is still adamant that she will be a "classroom teacher" when she grows up.

And a librarian.

But a "classroom" teacher first (the distinction between that a regular teacher is not yet apparent - although I'm open to any explanation from the teachers out there) and foremost. At least she'll have summer's off to spend with her dear old Mom and Dad, right?

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Flirting With New York City

I'm sorry Sullivan County, but I have been unfaithful.
I just came back from Valentine's Day weekend in New York City, and I'm still trying to shake loose the relish for something so unlike my day to day.
I love life here in our little corner of the world. But I flirt with life in the big city.
It's easy to forget how close we are to Manhattan when you're just trying to keep up with the day to day.
Monday through Friday - work. Friday night - get a pizza if you're lucky.
Saturday - grocery shop, take the recyclables to the transfer station. Borrow a movie from the library. Plan a playdate.
Sunday - recover from it all.
And then it all starts again.
For a period of four years after my daughter's birth, the two hours between Sullivan County and New York City might as well have been two days.
We were new parents with time only to work to buy diapers, to change diapers, to train her to abandon diapers.
And then the city came calling. Mid last year I was invited into the city to appear on a TV show.
That one call was all it took to break the chains that bound me to weekend after weekend spent in pursuit of nothing more exciting than a new flavor of yogurt on the shelves at Peck's.
It's not an every week thing - not even an every month thing - but after a four-year dry spell, it's put a flavor back into my life that I forgot existed.
I can eat decadent cupcakes and walk them off between subway stops. I can peruse obscure books and up-to-date fashions.
I can indulge in the love of something foreign, if just for two days.
But it's not all bad, Sullivan County.
At the end of the day, I'm still that country girl who prefers dirt under her fingernails to smog in her pores. I escape from the city only to rush home into a hot shower and settle in my jammies on a couch in a living room the size of many apartments (and yet on the small side for a "country home").
This Valentine's Day, I flirted, but I made sure I came home.


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Snowmageddon Ain't Nothing But A Snowstorm

I couldn't tell if the newscasters were having too much fun with superlatives or simply lost their edge.

"It's a snowpocalypse," they were warning on Friday.

"Snowmageddon slams mid-Atlantic," they said Sunday.

Here's a news flash for you - it's February. It snows. Yes, even in the mid-Atlantic states.

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Abba Dabba Save This Kid

If her taste for cheesy music is any indication, my daughter's chances of one day being a twenty-something hipster are already woefully slim.

Somebody help her, she is agog for Abba.

Sitting here in my office tapping out stories for the week, I've been distracted by an over-the-top and way off-key rendering of "Take a Chance on Me."

On a scale of one to 10 - the latter being the utmost in hilarity - it ranks a solid eight. I give her a 10 for her massacre of "Mamma Mia," complete with the phrase "talking to her sister," where the rest of us would sing "how can I resist ya."

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