Ask. Listen. Call it out.

I've shed a lot of tears lately.

Mostly for the moms.

For the moms of beautiful black boys who have been lost; killed for reasons that can never be fully explained or understood.

For other moms; moms who are my friends, who worry about their own children, but especially their sons, in ways that are quite different than the ways I worry about my children. I worry about my girls' happiness, their friendships, the influence of drugs and alcohol. So do my friends, but they have other worries. They know that their babies will be subjected to scrutiny and judgments that they have not brought upon themselves by any action of their own, but simply because of who they are. Because of how they look. Because of the assumptions and fears of other people. People who don't even know them.

It has never occurred to me to teach my daughters how to act if they are accused of shoplifting or what to do if they are stopped by the police. Other moms do teach their children these things and it leaves me with a sick feeling in my stomach and an ache in my heart. I know their children: smart, funny, kind and sometimes a little sassy, just like my own children. But not blonde-haired and blue-eyed. So, in addition to teaching their children the things all parents must: rules and values, games and academics, they have to teach them how to defend against the indefensible.  While I can safely assume that if my children are accused of a crime, they will be treated fairly, my friends cannot. In the United States of America in 2014, they cannot assume that their children will be treated fairly by law enforcement if they are suspected of a crime, because they are black.  And that is what I must teach my children.

I've cried in frustration and horror because I can't imagine why men who swear oaths to serve and protect reach for their guns first, instead of their tasers or batons; why men who are heavily armed are so afraid and so filled with fury that one shot won't do - it must be six. How are police officer applicants screened? How were they trained? How are they held accountable? How did it come to this - that shooting an unarmed kid was the best choice among the range of possible actions? What is being done to ensure that this does not happen again?

I know that the officer from Ferguson who shot Michael Brown has his own story and a right to due process. I just can't get past the idea that there must have been another choice available to him besides executing a kid who had no weapon.

I have struggled with how to articulate my anger and sadness about the shooting of Michael Brown and the continuing turmoil in Ferguson. I know my feelings pale in comparison to the thoughts and feelings of people who are more directly affected in their daily lives by racism. And then I realized that I am directly affected by racism because its poison corrodes us all.  It tears apart our whole community. It makes us suspicious and distrustful of each other and of law enforcement. It undermines the entire premise of our country: that we are all equal and have equal voices and opportunities. Without that, what are we as a nation and a people?

It's very tempting to remain silent for fear of offending someone or of starting an argument. It is, after all, an unpleasant topic, injustice. We'd like to think we are past all that; we'd like to think that if it exists, it's only in isolated little pockets. It is only by talking about it that we can learn what is really happening on a daily basis to the people around us. And it is happening, make no mistake.

So what can we do?

Ask. Listen. Call it out when you see it.

Don't wait until another mom's child is lying dead in the street.

All Good

It's all good.

The purging, the cleaning, the sorting, the selling, the packing, the moving.

The renovating: not as good, but improving.

In May we were slightly crazy, as often we are. We bought a house before we had listed ours for sale. We did this having watched friends weather the real estate crash and lose everything. We did this with a scary health issue looming (No worries; it turned out to be nothing.) We did this despite all conventional wisdom to the contrary because it felt like the right thing to do.

Hombre and I came from totally different places to the same conclusion with breathtaking speed. It seems that he had been thinking of selling the house and moving for quite some time. He had made comments to that effect, but I was resistant. I didn't think he was serious. I wanted so badly to make our house work for us, but once I opened my mind to his logic, I quickly became convinced that he was right. Once my mind is made up, the deed is done.

Over the course of one week, we read The Not So Big House and its various related books. We analyzed our needs and desires for a different space. We spent hours on the internet looking at real estate listings. We had our parameters, the biggest that we remain in the same school district. We took off on a Sunday afternoon to look at houses.

Hombre really liked the first one. I did not. We both hated the second one. We called realtors to inquire about several that looked promising, only to be told that they were "under contract" or in foreclosure proceedings and over-liened. Many drive-bys resulted in options scratched from the list.

The third house we saw that first Sunday in May was a surprise. I had pooh-poohed it after looking at pictures online. Because of it's perfect location, abutting the school campus, I agreed to have a look.

There were signs right away that it was a fit: the hand-painted flowers on the mailbox; the tire swing; the certified wildlife habitat designation; the open, sunny back yard, and the spectacular trees. I could see right away where my clothesline would go, where I would plant gardens and build a grape arbor.  It reminded me of a cottage in the woods, the way the hand-laid flagstone walk wove through the foliage to the front porch.

The house itself was significantly smaller than our current house. We quickly assessed the spaces against our needs: bedrooms, bathrooms, homework and office areas. We walked outside to find a very private deck and pool. We walked through the woods at the back of the property.

I looked at Hombre and said, "I think I could live here."

"I'm so glad you said that! I could, too."

"So what do we do now?"

"Let's talk about it."

We called the kids and told them we'd be home later. We went to a restaurant with our iPads and papers and had a glass of wine. We were flying solo this time. No realtor to suggest a price nor negotiate for us. We used Zillow and Trulia to research comparable sales and market value. Our plan was to go back and see it one more time, Monday evening, and then to make an offer, which we did. Our big surprise was that the sellers accepted that very first offer.

"Holy shit. We are really doing this. I guess we had better tell the girls."

We had debated bringing the girls to see it first, but we were not sure they would be on board with our plan. They knew we were looking for a house and that we would be moving, but we had only just explained that to them and they were still digesting the idea. Their current dynamic seems to be automatically disagreeing with each other out of principle.  Our best guess about their reactions was that one would like it, one wouldn't and we already knew we planned to put an offer in. The decision was ultimately ours to make and we decided that we would rather have both girls upset with us in the short term than to have one feeling like her wishes were disregarded and the other "winning."

When we told them, they were angry. Incredulous. Outraged, even.

I could live with that.

We took them with us to see the house on the day of the inspections. In just a few days, lilacs had begun blooming all around the house. They were oblivious. To our surprise, neither one took to it. B couldn't stay inside for long, because of the overwhelming dander from the owners' three cats and from the copious bunny fur floating from the cage in the kitchen. I sent them both outside to explore the trails that led to their school. That helped, along with the prospect of a pool in the back yard.

As soon as the inspection was done, we headed home to start purging our belongings. The neighborhood garage sale, always a big event, was on the calendar in six days. We had much excess to get rid of. We were giving up around 1,000 square feet of living space and halving the size of our lower level/basement as well. Good bye, formal dining room. Good bye, formal living room. Good bye, guest room. Good bye, sleeper-sofa sectional. Good bye, ugly hand-me-down furniture.

All this streamlining was exhausting and yet oddly exhilarating. Hombre was antsy to get our house listed. I did not want to list it until we had cleaned and staged it. On Sunday night, beaten down by his urging and pooped from the weekend sales, I succumbed.

"Fine. List it as, 'For Sale by Owner' on Zillow. See what happens. If we don't get any action in a couple of weeks, we'll have an open house and then list it with a realtor."

We posted the same pictures that had been online when we bought the house three years ago.

12 hours later we had a request to see the house. We put them off as delicately as possible until later that week. We did the best we could with the cleaning and staging on such short notice, but it did not look like I wanted it to look. Hombre met the couple at the house. He said they weren't there long. He was not very optimistic.

The next day, the husband called with a couple of questions, which I answered, and then he said,

"We'd like to put an offer on the house, but I'm not sure how to go about it because we don't have a realtor."

"Usually, the buyer provides the contract, but I am a lawyer and I have a form contract here, if that works. I'll email it to you to have a look. Let me know what you think and we'll work from there."

(Holy shit. We are really doing this.)

I put together a contract and emailed it over. The next day, it was emailed back, completed. The offer was low, but enough that we did not lose any money. We had no commissions to pay; no financing contingency; a couple of drippy faucets and an attic fan to repair. We accepted, changing only the closing date to give us time to do work on the new house before moving.

Did this really just happen?

The kids were out of school at the end of that week.

Swim team started.

We closed on the new place and promptly went camping for four days around Father's Day.

We decided to gut the kitchen and open up the wall between the kitchen and dining room, so we spent lots of time meeting with designers and looking at cabinets and countertops. I wrote lots of big checks.

We sent both girls away to Girl Scout camp the first week of July. I packed like a mad woman, while checking in on the painters, who were hard at work. So many friends gave up precious summer days to help us pack.

We picked the girls up from camp on Friday, did laundry and re-packed to leave for Unitarian Universalist family camp on Sunday. We had booked it shortly before the moving bug bit. We had talked about going for years. The timing couldn't have been worse. We would return on the following Saturday and the movers were scheduled for 8 a.m. on that Monday. What were we thinking?

Somehow, we had an awesome time. So much tie-dye and lefty, liberal love. It was bliss.

While we were gone, the carpets had been torn out and the wood floors installed. In order to do this properly, the kitchen demo had also been done.

This meant that we were moving into a house with no functioning kitchen. Not even a sink. We did keep the fridge and the old stove for the time being. We had no washer and dryer yet. We planned to move the washer and dryer from their previous location, just inside the back door, to the basement. Both a plumber and an electrician were needed to do the hook-ups. More checks were written.

It was kind of like camping, only with beds and flush toilets. And no clean house to come home to.

Less than a week after we moved in, B was headed to a youth leadership conference in western New York state. I drove her and four other teens to Canandaigua, because, you know, I didn't have much else to do.

Since we would be tantalizingly close to Seneca Falls, NY, I decided to take A on a little "Mama and Me" road trip! We went to the Women's Rights National Historical Park, which was very cool. We walked around the town and made friends with a local gardener and then headed off to Ithaca, home of the Moosewood Restaurant.

It was a whirlwind couple of days with my favorite 11 year old. She is the best traveling companion. The scenery was beautiful, we ate good food and talked up a storm. She discovered a love for steel drums at a funky drum shop and we made lamp work glass pendants together at the Corning Glass Museum.

B arrived home a few days later, completely exhausted and filled to the brim with good ju-ju and a renewed sense of herself.

Two short weeks later, school started.

We still don't have a kitchen, but it's on its way. The house feels like "ours" and we are settling in.

It's all good.

Crazy, chaotic, exhausting and challenging, but good.

Call Me Crazy

I can be a bit of a contrarian. But in a good way. I root for the underdog, play devil's advocate and try to assume good motives on the part of others. Sometimes, though, I'm just plain weird.

Take, for example, our house. We bought it nearly three years ago. It's lovely. High ceilings, lots of windows, gorgeous landscaping. It seemed to be a big step "up" from our old house - both in square footage and prestige. It is in a "high-demand" subdivision, where homes often sell within days of listing. The thing is, we weren't really in need of more square footage and prestige is not something that matters to us.

So, you may ask, why did we move?

We moved for different schools, because we didn't feel the school system we were in was serving our children well. Private schools didn't appeal to us because the thought of paying tuition on top of the very high property taxes in our community seemed ludicrous. We felt (and still feel) that supporting local public schools is the right thing to do for us. (No judgment here for those who make other choices; every family is different!)

We moved for green space and a less urban atmosphere. I love to garden and in our tiny urban back yard I had thriving blackberries, raspberries and blueberries, and three 16 square-foot raised beds. We had installed rain barrels and a clothes line. I anticipated even more of the same at our new house.

We moved for more privacy. At our old house, we had neighbors so close on one side that we could smell their cigarette smoke and hear them arguing in Serbian, even in the winter time. From the other side, we could hear the high-pitched yaps of a lonely lap dog through two sets of closed windows all day long.

We knew we were giving up walkability and some truly wonderful neighbors. We knew we would miss the eclectic personality of our neighborhood.

We were enchanted by the woods behind the house, the koi pond with the waterfall, the pool in the neighborhood. The house was so spacious, so new, so grand.

We didn't know that we would be one of a very small number of folks without lawn services to manicure each edge and bed. Or that we would be one of the few to eschew pesticides and herbicides on our lawn, so that our friendly yellow dandelions would stick out like hillbillies at a society cotillion.  Or that we would plant the only Obama sign on the street. Or that clotheslines are prohibited by the HOA. Or that our entire backyard, lovely as it is, is entirely shaded and gardens are prohibited in front yards by the HOA.

We never guessed that our house would feel too big; be just too much - too much to decorate, to accessorize, to furnish, to clean and maintain. As we made plans to update and decorate, we realized that this just isn't the right place for us.  We will never be able to live the life we really want to live in this house. It doesn't feel like "us". It's weighing us down. We want to simplify and own less stuff so that we can have more experiences with our girls before they are all grown up and gone.

And so we are on the move again. This time to a smaller house with fewer rules. Less stuff, more fun. Call me crazy.

My Life in Sandwiches

We were a Miracle Whip-Town House home. We never, ever, veered toward Ritz or Hellmans, even when there was a sale on them at Kinney's Market. Even with a coupon. Miracle Whip flavored nearly every sandwich I ate growing up and I ate a lot of them.

Lunch always centered on the sandwich. I brown-bagged it every single day until high school, when occasionally we escaped from the gloom of our church basement lunchroom to the bright lights of Burger King. There were kids who went home for lunch, but I lived too far away. Instead, I'd unpack my folded-over baggies and see what the day held. There was always a fruit tucked in there. If I could talk Mom into it, there might be a Hunt's snack pack pudding. If there happened to be cookies in the house, there would be 2; only 2. No chips. I'd pull out the sandwich last. Would it be tuna salad? Peanut butter and mystery jam? Did she give me Jenny's peanut butter and mustard (gag) by mistake? No pickle loaf for us. Sometimes it might be baloney; sometimes egg salad. Ham salad made at home with the manual grinder that attached to the countertop? Braunschweiger? Mmmmm. Braunschweiger and Miracle Whip on white bread! A personal favorite of mine.

What is Braunschweiger, you ask? (Note: please pronounce it as I do, in the same German accent used by the  Gestapo-loving Austrian officials in The Sound of Music: "Braun-ShVIE-Gah"; it tastes better that way.) Braunschweiger is a soft liver sausage, with a dense and earthy taste. It is usually sold in chunks, in yellow casing, approximately the diameter of a soda can. I don't think I have eaten it since I graduated from high school. Out of curiosity, I looked for it at the grocery store last week, just to see if it was still available and it was! Not that I'd care to ingest any nowadays; now that I know what it is made of and what it would do to my cholesterol level.

None of my friends brought Braunschweiger; in fact, they thought it was pretty gross. They got things like ham sandwiches and Little Debbie's and bags of chips or Fritos. Usually both. Not us; not in my family. We weren't allowed much in the way of what was then known as "junk."

I ponder these things as I pack lunches for my girls. Although their schools offer hot lunch (mine didn't; too small), they prefer to pack. It's harder now to pack lunches, now that we know about trans-fats and preservatives and Red Dye #40. We have to pull out our Venn Diagrams to find the overlap among competing factors: Locally grown? Non-GMO? Nothing artificial? Healthy? No high fructose corn syrup? Whole grain? Low sugar? Oh, yeah, will they actually eat it?

And the bar keeps rising. We can't just pack it in throwaway plastic bags; it has to be sustainable: reusable containers and cloth napkins! Oh, and it should be visually appealing - like the bento-box lunches on Pinterest with the hard boiled eggs molded into the shape of a fish or a heart. Because, you know, that's all I do all day. Plan for tomorrow's school lunches. Honestly. 

These poor kids only have about 15 minutes to eat. I should just throw it all in a blender and send it in a thermos with a straw! Stainless steel, of course. With a cooler pack. Always a cooler pack. The school actually sent home guidelines for healthy lunches and REQUIRES cooler packs. My Braunschweiger sandwiches survived half a day in a locker in nothing more than a baggie, so why are cooler packs so important nowadays? Maybe it's because we don't use as much Miracle Whip.

The Summer of Fun

I have declared 2012 to be the Summer of Fun. It's also the summer of "make it up to your kids who have been put on the back burner a lot for the past year." And the summer of "actually follow through on plans instead of canceling at the last minute." The summer of whimsy, of fairies, of saying, "yes" and "sure, why not?" The Summer of Fun.

We started out by dyeing our hair.

"Mom, Riley's hair looks so cool! Can I dye mine purple, too?"

"If she's dyeing hers purple, then I want mine BLUE!"

"Sure! Why not?"

We camped. We camped again.

"Mom, can we put glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls of our rooms?"

"Sure!"

"Mom, will you help me rearrange my furniture?"

"Yes, I'll help."

"Mom, can I rearrange my room again? I don't like it this way."

"Of course you can."

"Mom, can I make cookies?"

"Yes, as long as you clean up your mess."

"Mom, can we go to the pool?

"Sure."

We got a trampoline AND a hammock.

Mama and her fairy friends took Rooby the camper on her first all-estrogen road trip to Lily Dale, New York and Mama drove it all the way there and back!

While there, we channeled our inner goddesses, wore fairy wreaths on our heads, watched the Tibetan monks make an intricate mandala and soaked up the good ju-ju.

Oh, and then there was the no-kids-allowed '80's party. I was desperately seeking Susan.



And now for the most fun of all: we take off in a few days for our three week "Out West Extravaganza" camping trip.

Our itinerary includes Mackinaw Island, Sault St.Marie, Pictured Rocks National Lake Shore, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore and the Badlands.

How much fun can this family handle?