Birthday Blog 2013

Yes, I am no longer 40..I am now 43.  I cannot change the name of my blog because, quite honestly, I have no idea how to do that.  There, now you know.

I have been having a wonderful birthday.  What I have learned about birthdays is that you think people don't think about you the way you might think about them, but then they surprise you. Yes, I am not saying something negative.  Maybe 43 is the start of something new. Maybe the fact that we only lost power for 15 minutes instead of 7 days has changed the karma of my being.  I got wonderful gifts, including a coconut lime cake that was a totally incredible gesture of kindness(and to make sure that I stay a good 50 pounds more than the person who baked it).  But my day began with a miracle. My day began with husband #1 waking the boys up for school, the boys giving me cards and then going downstairs to a kitchen decorated with a birthday banner, balloons(which included a very large princess balloon, because "you are a very large princess"..at least for today-tomorrow, I will just be very large..and that's ok)..and, I FINALLY got the corn muffin that i have been waiting for since Mother's Day.  So what if took 6 months.  It was a muffin, it was fresh and I ate it with a big smile on my face.

We won't go into the hair coloring fiasco because that would be negative...and I am no longer a negative person. At least not today.

Thanks for all of your birthday wishes and may all of your karma be good!

Happy Friday

Holy Jewsus!!!!!

As a member of the press, I was put on assignment on a very delicate matter...the matter of Jews and Food at Kosherfest 2013.  I have never attended one of these before, because no one has ever invited me, but when I was given the chance to go, through a total act of fate on facebook, my time had come. And I was ready.  As I pulled into the parking lot and witnessed the hundreds of black hatted and sheiteled women I began to wonder if. perhaps, wearing jeans was not the smartest move.  But it was fine, no one was going to notice the separation of my legs when they were giving out free donuts. And Coffee.  And Sausage. And Ice Cream. And Danish. You get the point. I walked into the press room, got my press pass and I was ready.

I have been to hotels for pesach when duck has been on the menu and families all around us would order 10 servings of duck (for 2 people) to bring up to their room. Is duck better room temperature? I don't know, but those duck lovers have got nothing on what was going on at kosherfest.  I witnessed women bring out tupperware containers and fill them with cold cuts and pareve cheese and rolls(dinner for the family?)  Other women had stashes of ziploc bags for cookies and donuts and other desserts...really? with a 2000 dollar sheital and cartier watch ya can't afford to go to the bakery? Ok, maybe the watch was fake...I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Then there were the displays of various food products that would have a sign "please do not touch, these are not samples." Clearly they should have written those signs in yiddish because no one seemed to understand the sign in english...We are an interesting people.  We are a hungry people, as it appeared today at kosherfest.

I am not going to lie, I did pretty well myself at this event. Though mostly because the vendors wanted me to write a good review of their products.  I actually threatened the kleins ice cream guy with a bad review if he wouldn't start given out his samples of ice cream bars, I am not proud I did this, but I really wanted to try the pink grapefruit ice bar...and it was totally worth it....

Hope your day was just as eventful, but perhaps not so highly cholesterol inducing..

Happy Wednesday and a Happy Birthday to my favorite sister tomorrow...

Please Blog Safely, mom!!

I came home from an engagement party with all sorts of funny thoughts running through my head to blog about.  I really love the couple, though I don't know them that well because I am old enough to be their parents. I really love the girl's parents (no offense to the boys parents, I do not know who they are, but they must be great because their son is great.)  So I had all of these ideas and before I went to write it, son #2 said, "stop mom, please blog safely, because you know what happens when you don't..."  ahh, wise words from the 15 year old eating on my couch with no napkin.  But he is right.  I have unintentionally insulted people before and that is not what I want to do...but here are my thoughts.  The boy is 20.  Son #1 is 17.  I cannot imaging son #1 being engaged in 3 years.  I cannot imagine son #1 getting on a plane and leaving his mommy for a year to "learn" in Israel(though he keeps telling me 2 years and he keeps telling my that he likes his father better..but that's for a different blog).

I walked into this engagement party feeling like I was 100 years old.  All these kids flocking to each other, doing the "OH MY GOD YOU LOOK AMAZING!!!" scream to one another.  Was I ever like that? Young? Carefree?  Happy to see other people? The screaming, I am sure I did..the other stuff, not so much.  But it was nice to see the young couples in love...they bring out the best in each other..smiles, laughter, whispers followed by blushing. It is sweet and adorable.  I could go down the cynical route and bring up the cattle prods and kneecap breaking, but why ruin the fairy tale. At this time, at this place, all was magical. And that is the way it should be in the beginning...and it would be nice if it was like that in the middle..and all throughout their lives.  So I stuck a lollypop with the picture of the bride and groom in my pocket, with their faces sticking out, so I could bring smiles to those who saw my accessory (or people just thought "wow, big girl wearing food, there's a funny sight.")  And I wish the happy couple and their families only good health and happiness, a tension free wedding and a life just like a fairy tale.

today I am a man...not a bar mitzvah blog...

Yes, you all know that i live in a house with all boys. you all know that i go on baseball trips, you all know that I complain a lot. blah blah blah. Well, yesterday, September 9, 2013, it finally happened.  I grew testicles. "what??"  you are asking yourselves?  "She needed liposuction, not testicles...what's going on?"  Let me explain..

After 7 years, the toilet seat in my bathroom broke off the hinges. It was inevitable that either husband #1 or I were going to knock it off and end up in the bowl...so, I decided to be proactive. I googled "how to change a toilet seat" and to my surprise, was able to watch a 1 minute and 35 second video on, well, how to change a toilet seat.  After finding the appropriate tools, I removed the old toilet seat.  I took the seat to home depot. I purchased a new seat. I brought the seat home. I installed the seat. And then, much to my surprise, I grew a pair...

So now, on my list of life accomplishments , which include still being married, not having spent a night in jail and staying under 200 pounds, I can proudly say I can change a toilet seat.

And on that note, I would like to wish all of you a happy and healthy new year. Please forgive me if I have offended you(that goes to husband #1 as well.) and may we all be granted with a wonderful year.

Happy Tuesday!

Happy Freakin Anniversary..a love story..

This week husband #1 and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary.  Well, "celebrated" is a bit of a stretch. At 9:30 am he called me to wish me a happy anniversary and I had forgotten all about it.  Truth be told, my parents made me a beautiful wedding. They spared no expense. Little did I know it was because they were selling me into white slavery.  For the past 18 years, husband #1 has never done laundry, cooked a meal(for me, or himself, or his kids) and has never washed a pot, pan, dish or piece of silverware.(Lately, he has been loading and unloading the dishwasher, but that is only because I leave all the stuff out to annoy him.)  This is all my fault. I was so madly in love when I married him, I just wanted to do everything for him(minds out of the gutter, please.) I wanted his mother to be so happy that her son married superwoman(who became supermom after the birth of three super kids...) Basically, the whole thing backfired and now I am just a super-cranky super-bitch. (this line has been edited for the purpose of my husband's sanity...sorry if you missed the original..)

Husband #1 has a friend, we will call him Heshy, who always tells me that I should write nice things about husband #1. So here it goes...Husband #1 is very good and kind. He goes out of his way for all of his carpool friends and tries to make things as easy for them as possible. Husband #1 is a very good father. He instills good values in his boys.  Husband #1 does not complain when he gets leftovers for four nights in a row. Truth is,he can't complain because since he doesn't know how to cook, if he doesn't eat what I leave him, he has nothing for dinner(oh wait, that wasn't nice of me...but I did try.)

So a toast to husband #1...here is hoping the next 18 years are filled with only good health and happiness, enjoying the next stage of our three sons adventures. and not ending up as a story line for Law & Order..

Happy Thursday

Visiting Day..aka..the Happiest Day on Earth..

I realize i have not blogged in a while so before I lose momentum, after a very stressful weekend, here we go.  Visiting day-I have decided it is like the Israel Day Parade on steriods. One might think the opposite is true because there are so many more people at the parade, but I will disprove this theory.  When you have children that go to Camp Morasha(since that is the only camp I can speak for) and you decide to walk from boys campus to the main office(to yell at the staff for confiscating your child's powerade, while handing them a check for many dollars to pay for camp)  You run into a large amount of people that you haven't seen in a long time..and you feel the need to talk to all of them(especially on a day like today, when it isn't raining and, aside from the gray, your hair has not begun to frizz yet) Visiting day is a parade unto itself because the way the road is laid out, it lends it self to greeting family after family...no escaping, no running down a side street to avoid someone..there they are, right before you. All you can do is give a big smile, say hello and hope you remember their names(and each year, that gets harder and harder).

Oh wait, visiting day, I'm here to see my kids, not see how much weight the person I hated in college gained, I almost forgot. I'm here to see my adorable boys.  And adorable they were. A little taller, a little browner, but still adorable.  I love seeing their friends year after year and watching the toll that puberty takes on these boys(girls, I can't do this to because, I don't have any).  Some have grown feet and are taller than I am, some are still inching their way up the growth chart.  It makes me so happy that they are all together, and they all seem to really like each other and Morasha helps nuture that(again, Morasha is all I know, I am sure that other camps do the same...I will not make an inappropriate comment about Dora Golding. Though I also heard today that they have bed bugs..but that's another story.)  Though, kids being nice to each other is not always the case.  While at Como Pizza, another one of the biggest scams around(less cheese every year, higher price...but you are paying for the ambiance...and the comfy plastic chairs..). A friend of mine was telling me how some girls were being mean to her daughter. Without going into specifics, they were really really cruel. Mother switched kid into another bunk, and now everything is better. Point being, girls can be really mean..at age 6..at age 16 and even at age 60 (I am woman hear me roar, and hear me talk about you behind your back.) I probably would've handled the situation differently, but that is because I am a mean, scary person...the mom of this child is not, though, she was wearing very high heels to walk around camp in. No judgement. I was wearing toms with therapeutic orthotic inserts. We got to do what we got to do.

Back to visiting day.  There aren't many days in the calendar year when our day is half driving and half seeing our children...almost down to the minute.  Husband #1 loves to take the "back roads"....what is a back road? it is a never ending journey that keeps pissing of our GPS lady (we've named her Greta, after Greta VanSustren and because she sounds just a little bit German...) Greta desperately wanted us back on route 17 and Husband #1 was not having any of that!  So I just sit in the car and drink my tab even though I already drank three previous cans of soda and a bottle of water and haven't gone to the bathroom all day because those camp bathrooms are just bad.  All of them. Even the nice ones. God bless those female staff members..I would rather hold it in for 3 hours(Excuse me, the back roads only took 2 hours and 55 minutes..a world's record) instead of using those bathrooms....but in the end, it was a great day.  The kids were both happy to see us and not sad to see us go.  I only forgot to bring two thing, but thankfully remembered the fish food for the fish that is going to boil in is own water..poor thing...

Hope you all had a wonderful day.
Wishing you all happy and healthy Sunday and week ahead....

little house on the prairie..a modern day version

It's been a while since i have blogged, so i might be a little rusty. But what a weekend. First of all, I want to give a shout out to Yosef, bar mitzvah boy extraordinaire.  I have had the joy of attending your mom's bat mitzvah, your parents wedding, your other siblings simchas, and seeing your mom and dad almost every visiting day at the morasha canteen so we can reminisce about how they met there oh-so-many years ago(well, they reminisce, I am probably eating something...) In any event, I always enjoy spending time on the Island of long with the many skinny-minis. Though, I have to admit, and husband #1 warned me not to, it seems that the upside of hurricane sandy was that some of the skinny minis  are not as skinny as they were pre-hurricane. Though, some of them could just be pregnant, which could also be a result of the excessive power loss due to the storm, and with no power, well, there are children reading this so enough said.

One of the many highlights of my weekend was staying with my dear friends and inventors of the coconut perl(1 can pineapple juice, a lot of ice and coconut rum, please drink responsibly) But, we were not the only guests. We were joined by a very pregnant escapee from manhattan along with her husband and adorable son, whose hair color i will try to imitate when i start coloring my gray mess.  Now this adorable pregnant person is really pregnant. Like, keep the ob on speed dial and where is the boiling water and clean towels pregnant. I felt like Doc on little house on the prairie. I was ready to use all of my obstetrics knowledge(courtesy of my father) to deliver this baby, if need be, in the beautiful marble bathtub in the master bedroom....I kept asking her how far apart her contractions were(there weren't any) if her water broke(it didn't) if the fetus was head down(it was) if she was dialeted(2 centimeters-woohoo! 8 to go!!!) needless to say i was being more annoying than usual and I was waiting for her to get the first train back into the city to escape my insaneness(not sure if that is a word).  But I was determined to deliver this baby because THAT would have been a story "fat chick from new jersey delivers baby in woodsburgh, story at 11" "Hatzolah's got nothing on visiting daughter of an ob/gyn"  That would've been awesome.  But in the end, the adorable pregnant person survived shabbos without incident and I did not get to deliver a baby...but, my friend the real doctor got to take care of son #3's feet, so it wasn't a total loss..

Mazal tov to all of my friends celebrating wonderful occasions this weekend! and only ONE MORE WEEK til Benjy and Rebecca's wedding!!!! can't wait!!!

happy sunday