You know what’s even better than writing? NOT writing, and just yakking away with your friends. Especially when those friends are super bloggers Beccarama, selfishmom, and C2CMom. Together, we’re The Blogging Angels, and our first podcast is up right now!
It’s all about Blogher10. The swag, the people, the breakout sessions, the parties.
Get the scoop. Relive the madness. Or find out what you missed.
Click here to listen. And while you’re there, leave a comment, and let us know what you think!
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Lots of college students spend a year abroad. I spent two years as a broad. In Paris, in my twenties. And lately, I’ve been reminiscing all about it. See, I’m planning a trip to Paris next spring with my mother and my daughter. And it’s been so long since I’ve been there. And I SO didn’t have a husband or children when I lived there. It was a lifetime ago.
A time when I was still Hip – hey I was living in Paris and working as a singer. (OK, A Bar Mitzvah Band singer….but still.) A time when men under the age of 70 – hell, under the age of 30 – routinely checked me out and asked me out.
Yeah, like I said, that was a long, long time ago.
And it wasn’t because I was all that attractive, either. I was just…other. Just as we New Yorkers think that Parisian women are sophisticated and exciting, so did the French find it glamorous that I came from “zee beeg Apple.” And just as American men find the French accent sexy…well, need I say more?
Back the, the French still LIKED us. They acted like they didn’t sometimes. The ugly American idea was around. But overall, they thought we were cool. (again: long time ago) Back then, they learned much of their American culture through movies, and were convinced that New York was full of thieves, rapists, and drug fiends, but that the rest of Americans lived like characters out of 90210. My friends were constantly asking me if I’d seen this movie star or that, and if it were true we only drank white wine. They wanted to know if I’d seen cowboys, and were the refrigerators really that big. Did I surf, they asked. And once, someone even asked if it were true about the alligators in the sewer system.
The French seemed to think that I should know everything about every state in the Union. When I tried to explain that being a New Yorker is not the same as being a Nebraskan or South Carolinian — and least of all a Californian, they looked at me in a dazed way and asked if I’d ever been to Miami.
It’s funny to me, that I was so “exotic” back then. Because now, well, not so much. I’m a mom, a blogging mom, kind of a cliche, in a way. (Although Beccarama recently had a great post that I’d like to subtitle “Power to the Mommy Bloggers”) Laundry, school buses, playdates, Gymnastics. Not exotic. Not at all.
That’s why sometimes I do crazy things, like Pole Dance, or Trapeze. Because even though I love my husband, I love my kids, and I love New York…I sometimes miss being that exotic creature: The American who Spoke Fluent French.
I miss Paris. I’ve tried to keep part of it with me: I shop in small food boutiques. I wander into Agnes B. now and then. I eat my salad after my entree. But the truth is, New York is where I belong. With my family is where I belong.
I’m looking forward to showing my daughter Paris. To introducing her to my French friends. But even when I was there, I was still a New Yorker. Case in point: one time on the metro, some man tried to stick his hand into my purse. “Move your hand, or lose your hand,” I said in French. You can take the New York woman out of New York. But you can’t take the New York out of the New York woman.
Posted in Aging, Family, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged A year abroad, living in Paris, unior Year abroad in Paris | 1 Comment »
The day before yesterday I left my parents’ country house and drove into the city where the first thing I did, as usual, was weigh myself. Way to ruin my day.
At least it’s blog fodder, I thought. I can write about how everyone always talks about how easy it is to lose weight in the summer – but I gain. I can talk about how everyone says living in the city is unhealthy, but the second I get to the country I stop exercising and get my very own suburban sprawl.
And then I paused – because something about it rang a bell. I felt like I’d written it before. You know why? I had. Twice, as a matter of fact.
Yes, it’s true. This is the third year in a row that I’ve been out in the country for the summer and gained weight. And it’s the third year in a row that I’m shocked, I tell you. Simply shocked! That such a thing could happen.
In a post called “My XL Problem with Suburban Sprawl,” I wrote about how much time I spent that summer sitting on my every-growing ass. In another post,(and another year) I wrote about how my parents meal-time extravaganzas had taken their toll.
And here I am, year three. Still surprised that it’s happening all over again.
What’s really shocking is my stunning inability to recognize the reality that driving everywhere whilst sitting on my ass + eating big meals + not owning a decent scale = Love handles and a lovely double chin.
Oh. And back fat. Gotta love the back fat.
You know the funny thing? I went shopping yesterday and bought a pair of pants…in a size eight. Size eight? ONE of my ass cheeks is a size eight right now. Vanity sizing is NOT helping me. It is just deluding me into believing that I am still – 7.5 pounds later – a size eight.
Ha.
Maybe I should put on a bathing suit and look in the mirror.
That should be a reality check.
And if I faint from the reality – don’t wake me up. Maybe I’ll lose a few pounds if I stay unconscious through a meal or two.
Posted in Beauty, Exercise, Weight | Tagged gaining weight in the summer, those extra ten pounds | 2 Comments »
Not too long ago, I went on a cleaning binge. One of the things I threw out was a poster-sized blow up of a picture of me from my wedding. My husband had blown up pictures from several different stages of my life to decorate the room in which he threw me a surprise 40th birthday party. The party now being mymble-farrumph years ago, it seemed time to toss the giant blow up of my face.
The porter in our building, however, didn’t see it that way. He could not throw it away. First, he brought it back to our door. “You must have thrown this out by mistake,’ he said, handing it back to me. I assured him that, no, I just didn’t really want a giant blown up picture of myself. Still, he couldn’t throw it away. It just seemed wrong to him, he said. It was my wedding picture. He kept it in the building’s staff room for months until one of the other doormen finally got tired of looking at me, and threw it away himself.
And now, as my parents contemplate selling their country home, and I go about cleaning out the rooms in which my children have spent every summer since they were born, (and my family has spent every summer for the past 25 years) I know just how he felt. I don’t really WANT four hundred and ninety-seven scribbles drawings from my twins’ second summer at the house, but somehow, it seems wrong to throw them away.
Let me first say, I am not a hoarder. And not: I am not a hoarder in the creepy “yes I really am a hoarder I’m just so far gone that I don’t know it” way that the real hoarders on that A&E show mean it. I’m really not.
Two or three times a year, I have my kids go through their toys and saved school work, and together, we do “keep or throw.” We’ve gotten rid of LOTS of things that way. And given away a lot, too. “Throw,” more often than not mean “give away.” My wardrobe is in constant overhaul mode. Anything I haven’t worn in two years is OUT. I regularly go through the medicine cabinet and toss anything that’s out of date. Getting rid of things is not the problem.
It’s just getting rid of these things.
There’s the pink bathing suit and coverup set my daughter wore the summer she was two. I’ll never forget her strolling onto the patio with it on and then carefully taking off the robe, thinking for a moment, then taking off the bathing suit, and finaly heading into the bow-up kiddie pool.
I know I’ll always have the memory. But I kinda want to have the suit, too.
Or what about the endless paintings my kids did in their summer at the Parrish Museum Art Camp. This being The Hamptons, my then five year olds didn’t just paint, oh no, they went to visit Jackson Pollack’s house, and then went back to camp and made paintings inspired by his work. Seriously.
I can’t throw those away.
There are the “Welcome Home Daddy” signs they made, and then took to the train station, where they stood on the platform, he in his pirate costume, she in her tutu,(that’s them in the picture) waiting for Daddy to come out to country after working all week in the city.
There are finger paintings, and birdhouses, and bath toys, and doll strollers.
And it all brings back so much that I can’t bring myself to give it away.
Of course I know it’s ridiculous. I know I can’t hold on to their babyhood forever. But maybe, just maybe, I can hold on to the physical evidence of their babyhood just a little bit longer. And maybe then, if I’m really lucky, they’ll stay my babies a little bit longer too.
Original Post to NYC Moms Blog.
Nancy Friedman write about momming, aging, and her 20 year quest to lose same ten pounds, at From Hip to Housewife.
Posted in Aging, Family, Kids, Neurosis, Parenting | Tagged memories, hoarding, throwing things away, decluttering | 2 Comments »
A few weeks ago my fellow blogger and Blogging Angel, Rebecca Levey from 
Beccarama.com, took me to see A Little Night Music on Broadway.
Catherine Zeta Jones starred in the cast of this revival when it opened. And after seeing her inexplicably Tony winning, bird-trapped-in-a-plastic-bag body language performance of Send in the Clowns on the Tony broadcast, I decided to wait until the new cast – headed by the inimitable Bernadette Peters – took over.
Boy am I glad I did.
The highlight of the show – perhaps of the Broadway season, is hearing Peter’s sing that signature song. Remember when you used to hear Send in the Clowns as a kid? I was always thinking “Clowns? Huh? wha? Are they going to the circus?”
Ah. The innocence of youth.
Now, as a forty something it takes on new resonance. And Peter’s does it justice, seeming to age on the stage, when she realizes her youthful love was too long ago to salvage. Watch her perform and witness a Broadway legend seal her place in history.
Luckily, Peters is sitting just about center stage when she sings the song, otherwise, I may not have seen her at all, since the woman in front of me clearly stopped at the store and bought a Bozo the Clown wig to wear to the theatre that night.
This was not just a head of hair in front of me. It was a triangulated, bright read, dense mass of curly hair hithertoo unseen except in the nether regions of Ronald McDonald’s long lost sister.
Had the woman never seen a ponytail holder? Continue Reading »
Posted in Humor, Laughs, Rants, Reviews, Travel | Tagged Bernadette Peters, Broadway Show etiquette, Night Music on Broadway, what to do at a Broadway show | 58 Comments »
Yesterday I set the stage: glamorous women, men in plaid pants, fur stoles in August! Yes, it was the 52nd annual Southampton Hospital Benefit, called “Some Enchanted Evening.”
Today, I’m continuing the saga as we enter The Dinner Hour!! (cue scary music)
The Southampton Hospital Benefit is so huge, so gigantic, that it can only be held in a tent. Nine hundred people were at this benefit. And not one of them knew or cared who I was. Typical day in the life.
After the hors d’oevres free cocktail hour, we entered the dinner tent. Our table, #79, or as I like to call it, The Jewish Table, (why the Jewish table? I’m guessing that our dinner companions, the Kaplans, the Fienbergs, and the Goldsteins were Jewish. Just a guess.) Continue Reading »
Posted in Fashion, Humor, Husbands, Laughs, Rants, Travel | Tagged Bentley, Hamptons Parties, society parties, southampton hospital benefit | 3 Comments »
It’s the party where fabulous gowns, gobs of jewelry, and men in pink plaid shorts and knee socks collide. It’s the Southampton Hospital annual benefit evening. And I was there.
Southampton, for those without access to movies, TV, newspapers, magazines, or other sentient beings, is one of the towns in the swanky NY resort area known as The Hamptons.
After a lifetime in the Hamptons, I’d heard all about the big parties and the glamorous people. I just wasn’t one of them. Unless bad hair and stained 20 year old t-shirts are glam, that is. I never went to the benefit because I was never part of Southampton “society.” Why? Read on.
1. Have you checked out my last name, people? Rabinowitz-Friedman? Uh – Jew. Actually, double Jew. Southampton is not exactly a bastion of diversity. Founded in 1640, the town didn’t get a synagogue until the 1990’s. But at least they welcome my people kindly- with a lawsuit trying to stop the synagogue from existing at all.
2. I own neither a Lily Pulitzer dress, nor a pair of loafers with a cute little crest on them. Also, I have ankles.
3. I’d rather eat than drink at a party.
4. I don’t hang out on the veranda with my boarding school chums Kathy and Preston. Mostly because I don’t have a veranda and I went to Public School with kids named Amy and David.
So this foray into the bowels heart of SH society, well, it was too much to pass up. I considered wearing a sheitel – but decided that what with my fabulous new(ish) haircut I wouldn’t want to cover it up with a schmata on my head. (And if you know what I mean by this – you wouldn’t be part of SH society either!)
We arrived at the party and the first thing I see is a woman of a certain age wearing a white fur stole. It was 90 degrees people. I knew I was in for a weird night.
We wandered through the somewhat older crowd hoping for a familiar face. Quickly, I realized that even if someone’s face had been familiar once, that had been several surgeries ago, so I wouldn’t recognize them anyway. Kinda like on a Soap Opera where the person disappears and comes back unrecognizable because of plastic surgery performed by a world renowned evil doctor in a faraway county . Oh, and because they hired a new actress.
I haven’t seen so many Beauty Parlor, made-to-last-for-a-week hairdos since the last time I watched Mad Men. The hair spray fumes were suffocating. I fervently wished no one would light a match.
No one did. Nor did anyone speak to us or even give us the eye contact that might be necessary for us to speak to them. This was not a warm and welcoming crowd. Also, for people who are supposedly part of society – well, let’s just say there were a lot of women of a certain age dressed like they were certainly a whole lot younger. Tip to women around the world: when your breast hover somewhere around your navel, it’s not a good idea to go braless in a skimpy dress.
It was a weird mix of truly gorgeous society women, and truly tacky false-eyelash wearing, bad plastic surgery sporting wannabes. Look! Over there! A jewel encrusted emerald green silk strapless shift. And look! over there! a silver lame skin tight gown that wouldn’t be out of place on Snookie from the Jersey Shore. And I don’t even think you’re allowed to say the words “Jersey Shore” when you’re in the Hamptons. On pain of having to wear lip liner without lipstick. Oh the horror.
True to the cliché that Jews like food and gentiles like drink at their parties (see #3, above) cocktail hour passed with nary an hors d’oevres in sight. Then, just before I keeled over from the combination of alcohol, hairspray fumes and the crisp smell of cold hard cashthey herded us, cowlike (bejeweled cows – but still) into dinner, But to hear about that, you’ll have to check in tomorrow for part two: The Dinner. Wherein a blond bimbo with big lips announces that she’s in the market for a man worth $50 million or more, and my husband baffles party goers by mentioning bungalow colonies in the Catskills.
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Posted in Fashion, Humor, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged Hamptons Society parties, southampton hospital benefit | 3 Comments »
The swag is put away (mostly), the business cards gone through (totally), the laryngitis fading (sorry, hubby, I can talk endlessly again). Yes, it was my first year at Blogher, and now it’s time for a little post mortem. Just how was it?
I went into BlogHer thinking that how I felt about BlogHer would pretty much determine whether or not I continued blogging at all. I had kinda lost my groove after the unexpected demise of SVMoms, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to feel groovy again. You know, what with the requisite fringe vests and all.
I’m still not quite sure how I feel. So I’m going to make a list of pros and cons, bests and worsts, and see what wins.
Pro: The conference was in NY. For me, that meant no travel or lodging costs (I live here). For many, it meant a first trip to the Big Apple.
Pro: It was nice to be in a community of women who speak blog-ese. Most of my IRL friends have no idea what I’m talking about half the time. And they certainly wouldn’t wait in a restroom to have an audience with The Bloggess. Not that I begrudge The Bloggess her little corner of fame. She’s truly funny and she’s worked for it. But the bathroom? Really?
Con: The conference was ginormous! 2400 women (mostly, anyway). Which made it feel less like a community and more like a bunch of cows being herded into over-air conditioned pens.
Posted in Reviews, Working Mom, Writing | Tagged Avery office products, blogher, foxy blunt, Got Milk, oscillococcinum | 11 Comments »
So sleepaway camp was supposed to be for four weeks.
Four weeks of no tooth brushing, rare showering, mediocre (at best) food, and fun fun fun. For them. I’m talking about them.
For me, those four weeks went almost exactly the way a friend of mine told me they would:
week 1 – I was tearing up every time I walked past their picture
week 2 – still sad, but feeling better
week 3 – starting to enjoy my freedom
week 4 – Whoo hoo! Party! And the end is in sight! My babies are coming home!
Only they didn’t. Come home, that is. They begged and begged almost from the first day they got to camp to stay the full season: seven weeks. And I said no and no and no and no. I want them with me. I want to have a summer vacation with my kids. I want to watch their tennis improve – not just hear about it. I want to serve them mediocre food.
And then I noticed something. All of my reasons for not wanting them to stay started with “I.” And camp isn’t about me, it’s about them. Plus, my husband was perfectly OK with them staying.
So I said yes. And we drove up there for visiting day and got to see them. It was great. Only now I have to start all over again…
Week One…..
Posted in Family, Kids, Parenting | 4 Comments »
A Psychopath left a Comment on my Blog!
August 18, 2010 by nancyjrab
The comment came from a guy named Ed. And this was his opening line.
So you ended up being just a mother.
Just another mother, like a chimp, a cow, an elephant, a whale, just another mother, like an insect, or an octopus, or a worm. Just another sad mother.
The guy had me laughing already. What a jokester he must be. And quite a laugh at family gatherings.
He went on to give his insightful commentary on how others must feel about my motherhood.
Your kids will not thank you, your husband will not like you, your own mother will pity you for making her own same mistake.
Just another mother.
Somehow, I don’t think he and his mom have the best relationship. I’m very intuitive. That’s how I know.
Next, the lovely Ed waxes poetic about “parental-brain-atrophy-syndrome” (ooh! ten dollar words! can my mom-brain take it?!) I won’t bore you with his entire oeuvre, just a summary. I’ve biologically dumbed down my brain. My life is “dirt and feces.” Blah blah blah. Again, just guessing here, but do you think that our friend Ed may have some slight socialization problems?
Motherhood, according to Eddie-poo, has doomed me to “a life of dandruff and diseases, vaccine and lice, high school and drool.” Poor Ed. Sounds like his High School years were pretty tough. What with the drooling and all. Kind of makes it hard to get a date. I can imagine the phone call:
“Hi, Susie? This is Ed? You know, from your science class?….What? Yeah, that’s me. The one with the bib.”
When you’re in High School, you hate your mother, and you have a drooling problem, chances are, you didn’t get a prom date. Which may explain this next choice tidbit from my friend Ed’s comment.
You lost your dignity through your open legs, first inwards and then outwards, first-in-first-out, garbage-in-garbage-out, a boomerang of boredom.
Wow. I don’t believe I have ever heard a man describe sex in quite that way. Especially the penis as garbage analogy. Most men I know think of the penis as the pinnacle of perfection, the private part of pleasure, the….well, perhaps I’m getting carried away. But the comment does make me wonder if Ed’s lack of a prom-date problem may have led to him missing out on sex all together. Which would explain a lot.
After a bit more poetic rambling about my “loss” and how I’ve chosen “prison voluntarily” (guess his Mommy dearest kept him locked in his room most of the time. Thanks, Mom, for keeping away from the rest of us as long as you did!), he devolves into crazy Virgin Mary inexplicabilities.
“…Virgin Mary you are not, because Mary was not a Virgin, and you are not a Mary.“
Huh?
This last line really bummed me out. For while he may be a psychopath, Ed is no dummy. His psychotic ramblings up to this point were positively literary! Also, how crazy do you have to be to find MARITAL sex sinful? Poor Ed. Destined to a life of unrequited love for an inflatable girl.
In fairness to Ed (though why I think he deserves fairness is beyond me), his comment ended up in Spam – which means he didn’t necessarily direct it at me – just at any blog having anything at all to do with motherhood. Though I guess I’m not really helping Ed out here. This means that he sent this psychotic crap out to a number of women.
Yikes.
And some of them might not have found him quite as amusing as I.
Ed winds down with this serial-killer-esque gem:
You were manipulated into just another life wasted on the heap of trash of a lost humanity dedicated to popular procreation and proletarian proliferation, to please the leaders of a domain of plebeians.
Hey! Ed knows all about alliteration. What a positively perfect position for a psychopath who preaches to parents!
Although this whole last passage makes me wonder if Ed even knows where babies come from. “Popular Procreation? Well, yeah. Of course it’s popular. It’s sex. And here’s a newsflash for you, Ed: most people come from the procreative act. Except of course, you, Ed. (now now – we don’t want to upset to upset the crazy man!)
Ed ends with this little gem.
Good bye, sad mothers, good bye, old cows, with dried-out utters and distorted hips, good bye, and so alone you all will die.
Good bye to you, too, Ed. Goodbye to what’s left of your sanity. And hello crazy-hood! You’re finally where you belong.
I just hope there aren’t any other people wherever that is. Because, you know, they might all have…..MOTHERS!
Posted in Humor, Laughs, Rants, Working Mom, Writing | Tagged crazy bloggers, crazy comments on your blog, what to do about mean comments | 7 Comments »