Live and Let Di

Thursday Thirteen (Vol. 36)

Thirteen Things That Have Made Me Smile Since I Arrived in NC

We got here last Friday at noon and these are thirteen things that have made me smile:

1. Within 5 minutes of being in town, we were dropping my daughter off at a birthday party sleepover.

2. My dog, Toby, has worn himself out running around a much bigger yard than he is used to playing with the same toy over and over again.

3. We could have tied for first place in Couples Golf on Friday night if my husband had listened to my strategy on the 18th hole instead of insisting that since we were only two under par, we wouldn't be in the money anyway.

4. With very little effort, we pulled together a barbecue for about 20 people (after hijacking my friend Karen's house) and concurrent birthday celebration for my daughter...seemed effortless.

5. My husband got to play Couples Golf on Friday, golf with his regular golfing buddies on Saturday and a tournament with me and two other guys on Sunday when he's lucky if he gets out once every two months in Florida.

6. Sitting at the bar Sunday night, a friend to whom I promised anonymity sat there with a Camel cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other and announced that we girls had to make a pact to have full body scans for skin cancer because a friend of ours had just had several spots removed.

7. For the Queen and her Court Tournament, two women showed up riding like beauty queens on the back of a convertible wearing tiaras and pink feather boas and waving their scepters with their men sporting matching pink polo shirts. What an entrance!

8. My friend Tracy got a birdie on the 3rd hole!

9. Dinner with Tim & Emma, parents of my kids' best friends, at Applebees where we seated the children three tables away from us. As well-behaved as our children were, I think the elderly couple dining at the next table might not have enjoyed their evening quite as much as we did!

10. Seeing my daughter push through the pain, swimming several events at the swim meet even though she hasn't even been at a practice. The events she swam in may have made the difference between winning and losing the meet. And what made me smile even more was the positive reinforcement, thanks and hugs she got from the coach after the meet.

11. Going to Wal-Mart twice in five days...once with my friend Stef and once with my 2 children plus 3 other neighbor kids...and actually enjoying it!

12. Sitting with Laura, who was my first friend when I moved here, and finding that despite our crazy schedules and inability to connect by phone or e-mail for months, it was like we never skipped a beat. It was just like I was living here and we were seeing each other several times a week.

13. Watching the swim meet, seeing how the kids I remember from their "6 and under" days are taller than me, noticing that now I know all the older kids but none of the younger kids, but realizing that the one thing that never changes are the cheers they shout and the enthusiasm for every swimmer on the team.

Di

WWBD

This morning I woke up, looked at the clock and it said 7:20. And instead of jumping up and into the immediate panic mode of, "OMG....I have to get my kid up and we have to leave to take him to school in 10 minutes." I rolled back over and went to sleep until about 8:20. I love summer!

There are certain times in life when questions come up that stymie me. It's usually not something like "What was the name of the one-hit wonder band that sang Tainted Love?" (Soft Cell, BTW - although thanks to iTunes I now know that there is also an "explicit" version by Marilyn Manson...not sure I needed to know that), the names of insignificant people I met for 5 minutes 20 years ago or how to calculate the surface area of a cylinder (thanks to repeating 5th grade this year and Ms. Root's re-explaining of this concept over and over, I'll never forget it)...it's the serious life questions. It's at times like this that I think, "WWBD?" (What Would Blogreaders Do)

So my dear Blogreaders, even those who don't usually comment...please help me:

I am staying in our "summer place" - please don't envision those mansions in Newport where the Vanderbilts had their "summer places"...it's more like, um, a crappy little house in a lovely, bucolic little town in North Carolina. Anyway, between summer and the occasional week or weekend during the year, we may spend a total of 3 months a year here. While here, it's mostly cereal, sandwiches, quickie dinners or engineering dinner invitations at friends' houses. My dishwasher here isn't cleaning. It runs, but the stuff in it ends up with nasty looking brown stuff all over it. So, what to do? Call plumber because maybe the water supply is bad? Call handyman who will tell me dishwashers and plumbing aren't really his thing? Call appliance people to look at 20 year old dishwasher and tell me it's time to get a new one? Get a new one and if IT doesn't work, THEN call plumber? Forget about having a dishwasher and make insolent 14-year old wash dishes (which will come out only slightly cleaner than the nasty ones from the dishwasher?

Vote by comment dear Blogreaders...and I promise I will go with the majority...since it's summer and the biggest decision I want to make is whether to golf or go to the pool today.

My Daughter - at 168 months

Haley turned 168 months this past Saturday...how do people know when to stop communicating their children's ages in months? I know that we go to the "and a half" phase, then just the year eventually to decades...like I might answer, "I'm in my 40's". For those too lazy to do the math, Haley is 14.

We have celebrated Haley's birthdays over the years in some interesting ways. On her 6th birthday we moved from Florida to North Carolina. On her 12th birthday we moved from North Carolina to Florida. This year we had just arrived in NC and with a little (actually it was a LOT) help from my friends we were able to cobble together a birthday celebration that included Haley's friends and culminated in a sleepover at which little sleeping actually took place. The last time I checked on them, it was 5 a.m. and they were still giggling and watching TV.

"Is this heaven? No, it's Fuquay Varina."
(Missy, Haley, Ana Mari, Abby & Montana)

These girls (and various and sundry others) have been sharing birthday parties and untold numbers of sleepovers for about 6 years. I think Haley's first one was Abby's 6th birthday party where Abby's mom Laura had the kids paint clay pots and then make muffins in them and the clay pot was the party favor to take home. I thought, OMG, this is Martha Stewart personified! Then I got to know her and we became great friends and I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out this was a complete anomaly and clever crafts were not de rigeur at Fuquay Varina birthday parties!

Back then they all had little girl faces and cute hair bows. Now they are all legs and pony tails and growing up too fast to keep up with. Ana Mari is actually taller than me! When is the time going to come when the birthday parties become "uncool" and mass sleepovers are just not the thing anymore? It could be next summer. So we have to cherish these "girls of summer" now, before they drift away and the long shadows of evening find them going on dates instead of making a human pyramid, wearing a mask of cool instead of making silly faces for the camera.

Seriously...when was the last time YOU were part of a human pyramid?


Next time you find yourself telling your kids not to make silly faces in a picture, remember Missy (far left) and enjoy every face they make. Because one day they will be my age and will be more worried about only allowing photos from the shoulders up!


Cheers and happy summer from Fuquay Varina!

Di

What Nana will do for a Carton of Free Smokes

I am back in NC, where tobacco is king (I think cotton used to be king but then what we used to sneeringly refer to as Polyester and what we now snootily refer to as Microfiber came into being and cotton became a low-level courtier that doesn't even get to see the king much). There are none of those silly laws here precluding people from practicing their god-given right to puff on a Marlboro in enclosed buildings. Heck, as Stacy incredulously pointed out during her sojourn in Fuquay, you can smoke at the Waffle House!

I have personally golfed in the annual "Tobacco Tournament"...but I did decline the free chewing tobacco (sorry tobacco companies, "smokeless tobacco") generously offered to the golfers. Just about everyone I know here has horror stories of working on their grandaddy's tobacco farm...apparently it's hard work, hard on your hands and nothing you would want to take on as a career. Grandaddy may have bred smoking descendents, but was personally responsible for them going on to higher education and finding themselves careers so the NEVER HAVE TO WORK IN A TOBACCO FIELD AGAIN.

As anyone who knows me knows...I am not usually one to forward or recommend videos. I have sudden onset deafness when I hear the kids say, "Mom, you HAVE to come look at this on YouTube..." But this blogger really made me laugh, so I can't help but share it. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Miss B Havens  and her smokin' Nana!

Thursday Thirteen (Vol. 35)

I have a theory that most blog readers are blog writers themselves...that is except for my mom, sister and friends who learn more about me from my blogs than from my intermittent and oft-interrupted phone calls. If you are NOT a blog writer, there are some things you need to know: 1) Bloggers live for comments; if you haven't commented we don't know you are reading and we may just give up and go back to writing lyrical grocery lists to get our literary kicks; and 2) Bloggers LOVE to know how you found us.

As to the latter, fortunately TypePad gives me stats where I can actually see what Google or Yahoo search brought someone (not a specific someone...it's not that Big Brother-ish...or at least I don't know how to get that info...I'm pretty sure someone does) to my blog. [OMG, those Book Bitches are going to be all over me for doing a two paragraph preamble to my Thursday Thirteen...get on with it already!] {Oh...and since I haven't used these cute little parenthetical things yet, I must disclose that the topic for this TT was shamelessly plagiarized from Karen at verbatim!}

13 Google Searches That Have Brought Readers to My Blog

1. mom bribes dog (from the U.K.)
   Not nearly as much as I bribe children. Dog is much easier to bribe. He goes in his crate for hours for a Milk Bone. Children are whining within the hour (of getting THEIR Milk Bone...or its expensive electronic equivalent) about how deprived they are.
2. 2007 guest book list of all farmers (from Cote d’Ivoire!)
   Whoever this was has about as much idea as I have as to how this search string got him/her to me. But I just think it's cool that someone from Cote d'Ivoire found me!
3. oster Fusion blog; osterfusion reviews; what stores carry the oster fusion
   As an official consumer tester of the Oster fusion and proud friend of Vicky (AKA the appliance fairy), I am pleased that someone found me this way as I am a big fan of the Oster Fusion (see TT#14 - Favorite Kitchen Appliances) Vicky will be happy to see this, but maybe not so happy to see this...
4. vicky little boobs
   
   Really...not true. I know you can't really see this picture, probably because I pirated it from her photographer's web site...but I love that it's me and Vicky laughing together at her wedding. And as you can see from the picture...they aren't little. "They're real...and they're fabulous!"
5. olivia o'lovely videos
   
   Vicky was the member of the erstwhile Caffeine Club who came up with the moniker "Olivia O'lovely" for Laura's cute-as-a-button toddler (a Caffeine Club regular who was more likely drinking decaf whole milk in a sippy cup). How disappointed this Googler must have been when he found my blog...because apparently Olivia O'Lovely is a porn star!!! I have not seen pictures of the x-rated Ms. O'Lovely...but my guess is she can't hold a candle to "the original".
6. 5th graders wear the same outfit every show  are you smarter than a 5th grader
   
   Yes...they probably do...I don't watch the show because I had my own 5th grader who reminded me every day that I was not, in fact, smarter than him. And who the hell cares what the surface area of a cylinder is anyway? But I would say that the average 5th grade boy, without maternal intervention, would wear the same outfit every day including underwear, socks and yesterday's peanut butter sandwich remnants on his teeth!
7. girl blender dresses
   
   This is either something very kinky or another Oster Fusion thing.
8. boobs+movie+blog (from Italy, kudos for using those "advanced" search options like "+"); giggle boobs movies; "karma good" big boob (another advanced option user); extraordinary boobs movies (from Sweden)
   
   I must say that Googlers looking for "boobs" are decidedly good with their advanced search options. knew that my Cafe Martarano blog entitled Boobs, Movies and Food would bring me some hits from highly disappointed Googlers. Sorry!
9. cafe martarano sucks
   
   No, it really doesn't (see above). Unless you have an aversion to classic gangster movies, unparalleled food (you MUST get the lobster...it's pretty close to heavenly), the occasional nude scene in previously mentioned movies and/or great music...Cafe Martarano really doesn't suck. I guess I can only speak for the one in Ft. Lauderdale. But in the video that played of the one in Las Vegas...Tom Jones did an impromptu song from his dinner table. Tom Jones! I almost felt compelled to toss my panties at the screen! ("Eeeeeuuuuwwww", says my daughter Haley as she is reading this.) The only thing that might suck is the wait...but it's part of the scene. It's like Joe's Stone Crab. If you walked in and were seated immediately and you were NOT with Jennifer Lopez or Gloria Estefan, you would feel like you missed part of the experience. Have a glass of wine and deal with the wait. It's worth it!
10. boca bitches hang out
    
    Yes...we/they do...some at Starbucks, some at Nieman Marcus, some at restaurants so cool that I've never heard of them. My exceptionally brilliant friend Andrea (whose brilliance is only superseded by the brilliance of her son Max...just ask him) pointed out that we all point fingers at Boca Bitches, but no one actually admits to being one. So maybe it's time we all embrace our inner Boca Bitch..."My name is Diane...it's been 6 months since I became a Boca Bitch..."
11. cheeky sexual healing (from Canada)
    
    Another reference to Cafe Martarano and how Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing took everyone back to that place in the early '80's when that song was SO appropriate to whatever relationship we were in. But cheeky? Ali? Haley-O? Can one of you Toronto Urban Moms explain???
12. disney chic sweatshirt that ashley tisdale wore
    
    Feel free to correct me (and apologies to Sonia, my friend who works for Disney), but wouldn't "disney" "chic" and "ashley tisdale" be kind of a triple oxymoron?
13. "html code problem" blogspot (Turkey)
    
    Finding my blog must have resulted in one very disappointed Turk. Because all I know about html code is how to copy someone else's and paste it into my blog and how to ask my friend Mister Linky when I have a problem with it.

Happy Thursday...thirteen or otherwise!

Di

Quote of the Day

I love my iGoogle homepage. In addition to my Google reader which kindly lets me know exactly when Ali updates her blog and when Nicholas has something intellectual and pithy to say, I have silly things like "Word of the Day", "Quote of the Day", "This Day in History" (which, as I write this, tells me that on June 17, 1939 was the last public execution in France...by guillotine! Private guillotine executions were held until 1977!!!) and of course, the People Top News of the Day.

The quote that captured my attention today is from Steven Weinberg who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. Surely you remember it. The press was amazed that he edged out favorite Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson tried to trip poor Dr. Weinberg as he went through the crowd getting high fives on his way to the stage where Goldie Hawn (a closet physics geek herself!) and her glorious decolletage were waiting to hand him his trophy. Joan and Melissa pointed out that Weinberg's Armani suit was handmade by captive Physics students in China. I digress...and onto the quote:

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

Wow...look at the date...1999. I'm pretty sure I wasn't discussing this topic with any fervor before 9/11/01. Just something to think about...discuss among yourselves. Leave a comment if you feel like it!

Di

Little Children - the movie

Several months ago I read and reviewed Little Children by Tom Perotta. The movie got a very limited release that somehow missed Boca, but earned Kate Winslet and Jackie Earle Haley well-deserved Oscar Nominations. The latter was mostly remembered as Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears, so his surprising turn as Ronnie, the child molester and neighborhood pariah, was a compelling performance.

Kate Winslet, who is one of the most beautiful actresses around, somehow pulled off the character of Sarah, the intellectual, plain mom who just doesn't fit in with the pulled-together, judgmental toddler park moms. She is drawn to enigmatic "Prom King" Brad, the stay-at-home Dad whose gorgeous wife works making documentaries. Their affair is both trite and unique, physically passionate and emotionally charged.

This is one of the few times you will hear me say that the movie was as good as the book. The use of the documentary-ish narrator somehow works with the story and does not seem to be contrived or a short-cut around dramatic exposition.

One of my favorite scenes was when Sarah goes with her older friend to a book group meeting where Madame Bovary was discussed. Self-conscious about going, Sarah is further tested when she sees that another invitee is none other than Mary Ann, one of the perfect, self-righteous toddler park moms. Everyone knows a Mary Ann...life is black and white. Earlier in the movie she suggested to the other moms scheduling sex as a weekly date, emphasized the importance of keeping her child on a schedule and stomped away in a snit when Sarah and Todd impetuously kissed upon their first meeting (a meeting egged on by the moms who offered Sarah $10 to get the "Prom King's" phone number.) During the book discussion, she stridently asserts that Emma Bovary is nothing but a slut. Sarah who holds a masters in English Literature, reflecting on her own complicated relationship with Todd, talks about the complexities of Emma Bovary, her choices and her feminism. It is a powerful scene in Sarah's development.

Jackie Earle Haley's performance as Ronnie moves from creepy to sympathetic to disgusting to pitiful. The movie, like the book, manages to show the complexity of all the characters, most notably finding redeeming qualities in a convicted sex offender.

Little Children does not wrap the ending up in a feel-good resolution, but leaves you confused, uncertain and a little sad. A beautifully done adaptation of an excellent book!

QUESTION FOR READERS OR VIEWERS (I KNOW VICKY IS GOING TO KNOW THIS): I CAN'T REMEMBER FROM THE BOOK AND IT WASN'T CLEAR FROM THE MOVIE - When Sarah returned after leaving Lucy for the night with her friend (the older woman she walked with and from the book group, the woman left quickly and in kind of a snit. What happened?

Di

Without a Map

Without a Map by Meredith Hall, like most recommendations from the staff at Quail Ridge Books, not only didn't disappoint...it left me speechless and touched on a deep emotional level. Ms. Hall's memoir begins in 1965 with her shunning by her small community when she committed the unspeakable sin of getting pregnant. She grew up in this community, attended school with the same kids for years, assumed she would be wearing a cap and gown with them in a couple of years. In a small town in 1965, there was no such thing as choice, there was just shame and blame. When her condition became evident, she was expelled from school without the opportunity to complete her studies or graduate. Her mother banished her to live with her father where she was not allowed to leave the house for fear that someone would see her condition. She was given no choice but to put the baby up for adoption.

The title, Without a Map, refers both to her extensive travels over the next years as she struggles to define herself in the volatile world of the 1960's as well as the alienation that she felt having experienced something she didn't expect and about which she couldn't even talk to anyone. The title also lets you in on the nature of the storytelling...moving from her pre-pregnancy life with her mother to her later travels in Europe and the Middle East to her literal "confinement" during her pregnancy, to her later life with her children. The transitions feel right, feel fluid and don't leave the reader wondering what comes next. It makes you feel akin to the author, traveling along with her without a map, learning how her experience shaped her life, feeling her anger, feeling her disillusionment, feeling her unfathomable love for the very people who banished her.

It is shocking to me that a mere 40 years ago a teen pregnancy would be handled as Meredith Hall's was, the adoption done privately and possibly a little unethically....my opinion. She was treated with derision by every adult she encountered, including her doctor. Her life is reduced to a cautionary tale of what happens to "bad girls" who succumb to "scared sex on a foggy Labor Day night."

With no teen mother role models and no comforting support groups, Meredith makes her way, unapologetically doing whatever she can to give her life a sense of meaning despite the fact that the loss of her baby never made sense to her and was never her choice. Some of her choices surprise you and some make you want to put a blanket around her shoulders and hug her close to you.

I don't know if I have ever read a book that so beautifully intertwines the emotion, the narrative and the style to envelope you in the world in which it takes place. I found my eyes filling with tears as emotions welled up inside me because she crept into my soul. But this is not a sentimental or martyrish tear-jerker. In the end, it is a woman playing with the hand she is dealt and building a life that she can live with. Wonderful!

Di

South of the Border

Here in Boca, we are a mere 40 miles from the border of Miami Dade County...but for all we venture there, it might as well be Venezuela...and in some parts it is! But this week cars full of loved ones have been making the trek on a daily basis because of this girl, Casey (aka KC, Casela, BasketCase) who is in the hospital in Miami. She would be the first to tell you in detail about the details of her surgery...it's the first of two surgeries to remove her colon and reattach something to something else (I never advanced beyond middle school biology). I don't know if anyone besides the insurance company has actually counted, but I would venture a guess that she has spent at least 40 days in the hospital since January. She's on a first-name basis with body parts most of us don't even know we have. She knows what ALL of the abbreviations on Grey's Anatomy and House mean. Her mother can make a nurse jump out of her white rubber shoes with the addition of "STAT" to any sentence. Her grandmother has located every possible mall, Target and kosher deli in a five mile radius of two different hospitals. And her friends have been nothing short of AMAZING!!! At the tender age of 11, not only has Casey endured an illness (ulcerative colitis) that is literally a pain in the A** (Casey would approve of this description!) but she has single-handedly educated her fellow 5th graders about the details of her illness, diagnostic testing and surgery. And they bop into her room full of respect but lacking any fear. Casey is still Casey...she's just attached to an IV pole.

I've told you about her siblings, Zach and Lindsay. And it goes without saying that Casey is a pretty heroic pre-teen. But it's her mom, Stacy, whose dedication, determination and stamina are legendary! She's been sleeping at the hospital, learning the lingo, interfacing with doctors, nurses, child life specialists (whose sole purpose seemed to Stacy to be to bring Casey DVD's) and of course treating them daily with donuts, bagels, etc. I was lucky enough to be at the hospital the other night with my daughter who is Casey's friend when Stacy was able to make a couple hour escape from her full-time medical profession. And being that we were in Miami, she felt Cuban food and a Mojito calling her name. When in Rome...

I called my Cuban friend for a recommendation and with that, my somewhat confusing new navigation system and my cursory memory of the streets of Miami, we found ourselves at Havana Miami. The first good sign was that no one in the entire place was speaking English! This is kind of like going into an Italian restaurant and seeing Tony and Carm sitting there.

We did our best to decipher the menu and not sound too stupid when we were ordering. Mojito, of course, is the same in every language. I talked Stacy out of ordering a pitcher, promising that she could get as many refills as she wanted and she was satisfied (although somehow I think she had visions of just her, a pitcher and a straw).

The food was excellent and the prices extremely reasonable. When was the last time you had dinner for two with drinks for less than $40? I don't think we could get out of Chili's for less than that!

After dinner we walked into the bar to have another drink before going back to the hospital. The lilting Cuban accents surrounded us and our utterly Anglo selves attracted a few stares. We noticed a patio so once we got our drinks we headed that way, seeing a table of elderly Cuban men (and inexplicably, one young, well-built black man) playing Domino's. With the enthusiasm and humor borne of a Mojito and a half, Stacy squealed, "Oh look! They're playing Mah Jongg!!!" Yes, we fit right in.

We sat out on the patio enjoying the tropical night air, the clicking of the dominoes, the indecipherable (to us) conversations and the wafting cigar smoke. After a few minutes, an older gentleman sitting nearby turned to us and said, "I hope this is OK to ask, but what are a couple of gringas like you doing in a place like this?" Stacy, nearing the bottom of Mojito #2, didn't skip a beat and said, "We were looking for Boca and got lost!" The people at our table chatted with us a bit and for a couple hours Stacy got to be the red-haired gringa amongst the Cubans instead the "stat"-spouting hospital mom she's been lately.

If you are ever in Miami, don't be intimidated if you don't speak the prevalent language...you will be greeted with open arms and accepted into the world of Cuban-Americans that is such a huge part of Miami's ambience. And, since I can't resist being a little political, I can't help but think that with Castro's eventual demise, perhaps we will have the chance to meet and engage with even more Cubans and maybe even be able to visit their beautiful country and reach out a hand of friendship and support.

Casey is recovering well and looking forward to going home in the next day or two. I'm researching how the hell to make a Mojito so I can make them for Stacy. It looked to me like a bagged salad topped with vodka...but she tells me it's rum and maybe the green stuff isn't just Romaine lettuce!

Di

Surrogacy

After our whirlwind of travel the last couple of weeks, this week has been a welcome respite from packing, unpacking and printing boarding passes. My friend Stacy's daughter Casey who is friends with both of my children is in the hospital...this time for surgery that is going to end the suffering she has experienced having ulcerative colitis and being unresponsive to medication.

I try to be somewhat useful and since I couldn't actually DO the surgery myself or have it done to me so she wouldn't have to go through it, I settled for driving carpool from day camp for Casey's twin 8-year old brother and sister. Now this is something that either REALLY was helpful to the family or something that answered the question, "What can we have her do that will make her feel needed and that she can't F*** up too bad?"

The twins and I have spent a lot of time together over the past several months, and to me it's a treat...taking me back to the days before my children had perfected the eyeroll, when they could show delight at something as simple as making a cake and when their big innocent eyes could melt my heart (they still can, but it's more rare...as they approach adolescence, their eyes become a bit more guarded with little roman shades covering those windows to their souls.) It's almost a peek into one's future as a grandparent...not having to do the daily grind of getting them to clean their rooms, brush their teeth, etc. but getting these amazing hugs. And when they are feeling particularly manipulative...like when I take them to do something their Mom wouldn't (like painting pottery) and there's a chance that there's ice cream in their futures...they look up at me with those big eyes and say, "Can we call you Mom? You are like our second mother!"

Well, actually I'm like the second mother who is actually trying to be more like their first mother who is a much more nurturing soul than I. So, we learn from each other. But tell me, if this little Lindsay in Wonderland asked you for another piece of cake, wouldn't you find it just a little hard to say no?

And as for the Zach in the Hat, I'd probably let him keep the fish and the bowl and go play with the kids and Things 1 and 2 while I cleaned up the mess...because look at that punim (how was that Stacy? good use of Yiddish?)

Several months back I read and reviewed a book called I Hate Other People's Kids. And I came to the conclusion that yes, I do hate other people's kids. But now I have been exposed as the sham I am (as opposed to Sam I Am if we are carrying on the Dr. Seuss reference). I am, in fact, a sucker for other people's kids...especially these two who have been tough little troupers despite the upheaval in their family due to their sister's illness. They've gone with the flow. They've rolled with the changes. They've cried for missing their Mommy ALMOST as much as she has cried for missing them. As they grow up, they will be stronger for having experienced Casey's illness and there will be lots of great karma waiting for them around every turn.

They are the unsung heroes...and I just wanted to sing about them for a minute. I love you Lindsay & Zach!

Temp-Mom Di