Mothers of Reinvention and Connection

The last few weeks have been intense, but in a positive way. After May, and the schpilkes it tends to bring (Google it – it’s a good Yiddish word to know), June has felt sunny and busy and productive and present tense. Not just a time to get through, but a time to be IN. How are you, people asked, like today at my younger one’s field day, and my answer is  “CONNECTED.” I feel, and I hesitate to even write this down for fear of the evil eye, that at the moment, all areas of my life are overlapping in a very affirming Venn Diagram kind of way.  

I was interviewed last week for the “Spawned” podcast with Liz Gumbinner and Kristen Chase from Cool Mom Picks.  I’ve long admired their site, blog, and podcast, and not just because Liz and Kristen are funny and excellent talkers who you feel like you’ve known forever, but also because they offer practical and useful advice about what to read, what to try, what to cook, and what’s happening in the world of parenting. They cut through the noise – whether it’s a tech issue, a parenting fail or win, or a great idea for teacher’s gifts, they are an excellent resource and always seem to know what’s up. I had a terrific time being interviewed, and it’s instructive for me to hear what seasoned pros bring to a medium (podcasting) I’m working on myself. 

The episode is called Mothers of Reinvention, and it was really cool to talk about the ways we've shaped our careers around our families. In talking about my "reinventions," from book publishing to voiceover work to children’s book writing to podcasting, I realized that so many of the MILKs I’ve been attracted to are authors because of that initial book publicist living inside me. Just this month, there are two MILKs with new hardcover titles out, and two with paperbacks. I know how much work it takes to write a book, and though their subject matter is all very different (Essays on marriage, juicy contemporary fiction, middle grade fiction and essays about women and ambition), I am so happy for all of these friends.

My interview on Spawned also helped me realize that years of hanging around actors, musicians, audio people and other creative hustlers really opened me up to questions about how people get from point A to point B, gave me confidence to try things that were non-linear, like podcasting, and how the people I've met in my work travels are all a part of this journey.

So it made sense, last week, that I was invited to attend a women’s collective through two other MILKs, Amanda Harding and Alessandra Olanow. We gathered at Alex’s beautiful home to pool resources, with the idea that what one awesome creative woman can bring to the table, another might need and so on.  It was inspiring and freeing to admit that many of us, working alone on projects and businesses, need community too. As Amanda, a wonderful person who works so hard as a teacher to create a community that gives back, always says, making connections is what it's all about. And Alessandra is such a talented illustrator – check out her work here.

Books by MILKs Ada Calhoun, Julia Fiero, Lisa Greenwald, Liz Wallace & Hana Schank

On the mommy side, last week was my little one's 8th birthday, which then brings me back to MILK, and to this week’s episode with Journalist Angela Garbes. Angela is a journalist based in Seattle, and her wonderful book is called “Like A Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy.” I hadn’t read about or thought much about pregnancy and new motherhood in a very long while, as most of my MILKs have been more mature moms, but her book is fascinating, super well researched and feminist AF. I was grateful for the opportunity to talk to Angela about how different paths bring us to the same powerful, and vulnerable spaces as mothers, and how we can truly listen and support each other’s stories and choices.

Angela’s interview came at an interesting moment personally, as things tend to do these days. I loved having the opportunity to reflect on my son's birth story, and reconnect with that side of myself – remembering what my body is capable of and celebrating not just his life, but also my life as his and his sister’s mother. Motherhood, as commonplace as it is, is truly miraculous, and it is worth pausing to remind ourselves of this simple fact. 

So it’s full circle with the MILK connections right now, and it all feels lovely.  Happy summer!

May Day

May and June are major months for parents of the school-age. There are class trips and gifts for everyone, dads, grads, end of year concerts and performances for every damn activity. As the mom (usually), you gotta show up, be celebratory, organized and sociable. It’s all so intense and condensed that you actually have to laugh at the absurdity à la Kimberly Harrington. (Her book is amazing and you should get it).

Since I lost my mom, the period between Mother’s Day, her birthday (May 24), her deathiversary, (June 6), my son’s birthday (June 8), Father’s Day (June 15), and the end of school (June 20 something), shines a light on how surreal grief can be, about rituals and niceties versus how you, me, (everyone!) really feel. The seasonal calendar just does its thing -- flowers bloom and the sun finally shines after a seven month winter, and all I can remember is the anxiety, this time 5 years ago, of knowing that she was at the end.

And as we are often reminded, grief is not linear, and it is not clearly demarcated as to when it will flare. I’ve been good lately, trying to focus on my own family, to be more honest and explicit about my needs, less angry and more positive. I feel like I’m getting somewhere with my personal and professional goals. I’ve been trying to contribute and to not be devastated by the direction our country is taking.   

Still, I was anticipating this would be a tough Mother’s Day. I’m deep in the mommy content biz now because of MILK, and on May 1st it was like a Mom Bomb went off: MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER. Not quite in the same way I believe I have been exploring the nuances of motherhood through art, kvetching, honesty, and the comedy of it, but rather through any product or company that can corral the concept of birthing children into an excuse to buy this thing. Mother’s Day (and motherhood) always comes with a side of marketing, but especially now that I’m tuned in to those channels, those books, those movies, and especially those emails about how to make Mother’s Day perfect if you just buy that thing, contribute to this charity, read this book. Dude.

But, I made it. I am a mother and I don’t have a mother but I’m here today, at my desk. I feel relief that I am back to a normal day with no pressure on it to be anything, except Monday. It’s all just a little much, right?

Speaking of moms, (yeah I know) I read The NY Times Styles reporter Katie Rosman’s memoir-ish about her mom, “If You Knew Suzy,” maybe a year ago, after I tried to get Katie interested in writing about my children’s book, ELLA for the paper. I realized she had also lost her young, healthy mother to cancer, and had written an investigation into her mother’s life, to try and gain some peace about her untimely death. I relate so much to the desire to uncover the how of someone’s life, there are no good answers to the why. Her book is wonderful, and I was so excited to have her in the studio. Her episode will be posted next week.

Reading Katie’s book inspired the current MILK episode interview with Roslyn (Roz) Neiman. I’ve talked to Roz and my mother’s other dear friends many times about Judi, my mom, in person when I go to Pittsburgh, on the phone, and on Facebook, but the formality of having Roz in the podcast studio felt like a new frame, to go back and try to fill in certain gaps about my mom’s life the way Katie did with her reporting.

I love this episode with Roz, because it is my childhood. I get to re-hear a lot of the stories I know, and then hear for the first time some things I did not know about my mom as a friend, a support, an adult person and not just a mother I took for granted. Roz reminds me in the interview, how, at 14 years old, I was dumb enough to wear my mom’s brand new, super 1980’s mother of pearl hoop earrings (that she told me not to touch) into the store she owned at the time. She wrestled me to the ground to take them off of my ears. What an ass I was, but how funny that my mom pulled a professional wrestling move on me!

To paraphrase Katie, “you need to embody and remember the life, not only the circumstances of the death.” That’s what Roz’s interview feels like to me – an opportunity to embody and celebrate the life of my mom. It prepped me for that sad, incomplete feeling of Mother’s Day,  but connected me to the mom figures I still have, like Roz and my cousin Phyllis, and others from their community. It helped me focus and not be too sad, to think about Judi’s terrific life, how many Mother’s Days we had together, or random, regular days when I could call her and bullshit with her about things my kids did and think nothing of it.

Also, I bought a dress and some sunglasses for myself on Mother’s Day, which is shallow and right in the pocket of the marketing that told me I’m worth spending money on. But I think Judi would have approved, as would Roz. I’ll wear them to the last day of Hebrew school event or the karate belt test or the class trip to Coney Island, which I need to put in my calendar ASAP before I forget.   

Evaluation

My son has “stuff.” Stuff that allows him to be in a special program in an (awesome) public school. Stuff that creates exceptional behaviors and skills in some areas, like intelligence, memory, reading and writing, and deficiencies in others, like processing language and understanding social cues. Some stuff I worry about, and some stuff I don’t.

Today and yesterday from 9:30 am – 3:30 pm, I sat in a room while a brilliant woman tested him and made conclusions about how his brain works. It was fascinating and exhausting, definitely for me, and most likely also for Miles. The neuropsychologist, who I’m obsessed with, was excited and animated. She clearly relishes her intense job of detailing and understanding children’s complex, beautiful brains. She knows A LOT. I think I might love her. 

My son has it much better than so many. First of all, he has me, and I am a stone cold killer when it comes to protecting him and his sister. I believe in him with all of my Mallory-ness, and I’m obsessive about getting him what he needs to learn and to be safe and happy. I won’t be able to always arrange things for him in this way, and right now it is seductive to think that I can.

Then there’s the fact that he is a kind, soulful and hilarious guy. He doesn’t always know that he’s being hilarious, but he is seriously interesting, and all that know him agree that he is a deep dude with a lot of panache. 

And the fact that he has this stuff: this language processing stuff, this executive functioning stuff, this attention stuff, this social cues stuff, well, it has just been super eye opening for me as a parent and as a person living in this world, just how many people have stuff. How many kids I grew up with had stuff.

I truly don’t know what is normal anymore. I don’t think I even like normal. 

For a while now I have been struggling with the language to write about my son’s stuff. I have been trying so hard to articulate this stuff, because it’s important for me to be to be able to understand him. Certainly, I will continue to struggle with my own stuff in order to communicate on his behalf, as he gets better at communicating and advocating for himself.

I don’t know about you but I’m feeling 42

Summer is dwindling and my birthday is nigh. It seems that a bit of reflection is in order.

So who the hell is 42? What’s her freaking deal?

Ahem.

42 is surprised at how young her doctors and lawyers and kids’ teachers and people in charge of things are.

42 is paying bills for more kinds of insurance than any one person or family should need.

42 is in the mirror, lines etched on her face and strands of “ashy blonde” at her hairline.

42 is overwhelmed by nostalgia when she hears Ace of Base in H & M. 42 is confused by fashion trends like high waisted acid washed jean shorts.

42 is disbelief that 20 years have passed since she came to NYC and started her big girl life. That small people rely on her to wipe their asses and pack their lunches.

42 is glazing over when Minecraft is being explained.

42 is a relief and a settling into something. There’s a relaxation that is new. Turns out 42 is OK at this Mallory thing.

Anger, sadness, spaciousness, joy, anxiety, irritation: a flavorful soup of emotions I keep in my mental fridge. I add to and it nourishes me. I feel it all and that ain’t changing. But 42 knows boundaries. She has the ability to let in the insecurity and the annoyances and the fears and sit with them and feel them, and then try to let them go.

42 can still party, though she’s hurting the next day. Also, 42 gets really red in the face when she jogs, and could give a shit.

42 lives deep in the bones of her memories and her old friends and conversations and jokes they made. 42 needs her loves – to laugh and to cry with. To try and be there for them like they have been there for her. A certain laughter or cadence of a conversation can take 42 right back to the good times at camp or Israel or Vermont or childhood in Pittsburgh.

42 knows a good one when she sees one.

42, I love you man.

seven

My daughter’s recent birthday has ignited my memory of being her age. Her intonations, tics and tricks are so familiar to me. The pouting, the scary emotions that overpower her sometimes, her otherwise infectious enthusiasm and mostly good nature that result from a happy home and mostly good natured parents who try their best. I remember trying all on all of those moods and attitudes I see her working through myself, like outfits, or hats.

Besides being my daughter, Zoe is this dimension of my own childhood self, just as I, as a mother, am a dimension of my mom’s mothering self.

I have my baby book that my mom made. The title on the cover is “Your Baby Age 0 – 7.” I look at it a lot lately, in sadness and in wonder, because the idea of the book is such a contradiction to what I thought was her lack of sentimentality in later years. It’s filled with details about my lost teeth, my doctor’s visits, my first words, and upbeat descriptions about each of my birthday parties. I was glancing through it yesterday, looking at a photograph of my mom at 26 holding me in the front seat of the car coming home from the hospital, searching her eyes for clues about what it felt like to be her, holding me in her arms. Ready for the adventure and not knowing what the future would bring.

And today, as I look through pictures of myself bringing Zoe home from the hospital on my computer, with my hopeful and much less worried looking eyes, I simply can’t believe Zoe is the age I was when I was no longer my mom’s baby. This loop of life, moving through it sometimes seems truly miraculous.

Seven was also the age I turned when my youngest sister was born. I remember what our house on Linden Lane felt like physically, the light in the downstairs hall and the smell of concrete and Tide in the basement and how the house was changing. Rules, once rigid, were becoming less so. I imagine my mom was tired, maybe overwhelmed? Sugar cereal, once outlawed, began creeping in.

The office with the yellow, brown and green wallpaper was peeled down and painted, yellow I think it was. Or pink? There was a gilder. A slide. A changing table. We were intrigued, but after a bit, bored and ready for the next thing. Nine months seemed an interminable amount of time to wait.

I remember going to the hospital at the end of the summer to meet her, and it all seeming unreal to me, how tiny my sister was, and like, where the hell did she even come from? I remember we got to go to Sea World with my dad the week right after she came. I know it happened because there’s a picture of Lanie and I on my dad’s lap holding twin Shamus, pink faced and white-blonde haired. And I remember too that it was my birthday five days after Lex was born, and I was extremely pre-occupied with what I would get when we returned from Sea World. Because that’s seven.

lice lice lady

There are certain things you don’t know about. Until you do. And then, if you’re like me, you’ll suddenly know way too much about said subject. You’ll seek out info, talk to everyone, see all the sides of the thing, and really just sink those teeth of yours into the meat of the issue. You’ll go there.

This week, that thing was lice. Totally, awesomely, sexy-ass lice.

Apparently, lice is the dirty (not so) secret of the school aged kid. And because young kids are mostly grubby little scumbags who never have any idea what’s happening to them, it’s clearly a much bigger deal and rite of passage for their parents.

They found it in school last Friday, where people from a lice checking company are contracted to come and pick thru the kids’ heads four times a year. Z didn’t even get sent home, because it was “just an egg.” It’s a Department of Health/Department of Education rule that teachers don’t have to send kids home with the eggs – just the live lice. Seriously, that is a stupid fucked up rule. Those eggs hatch into lice! I know I was only a B – student in biology but come on now.

But here’s the fun news – in New York City you can just call someone on the phone like you’re calling the deli for OJ and tampons and within hours, someone will come to your house, apply shampoo and special conditioners and comb the lice out of your kid’s hair. I was laughing with a friend about how our contemporaries used to call people’s pagers (remember life before cel phones?) to get pot delivery people to come over, and now we’re calling lice ladies. Business idea I would have appreciated in this particular instance: “Hits and Nits.”

Turns out, most of the women who do this for a living are observant Jews, so getting lice on Shabbos eve was not a great situation. I was freaking. I had already thrown everything in the washing machine and began my ten hour laundry marathon for the night and was convinced we were all infested. But Brenda, this nice Jewish lady who owns the company and sounded like one of my mom’s friends, talked me down and told me she could have somewhere there in about an hour and a half. A lice lady pimp.

I had heard from other moms I know about this one famous woman named Abigail, an Orthodox woman in Boro Park Brooklyn who is such the maven of lice ladies that she had a New Yorker profile written about her. Honestly, you cannot make this stuff up.

I was sad to miss the opportunity to meet any person who had been profiled in the New Yorker, but I needed action that night, and as I mentioned, it was Shabbos.

So Brenda sent us the lovely Svetlana, a tired, middle-aged, Russian bleached blonde who made her way over around 8:30 PM with her rollie suitcase full of magnifier lamps, combs, shampoos, lotions and oils. She had been working since 8:30 AM that morning, when she helped diagnose the many cases at my daughter’s school. Since then she had been to three people’s homes and combed out several heads. That woman needed a glass of wine, which I gave her after she checked us all, treated and combed Z’s hair section by section, and told us how to proceed with treatment over the next week. She even gave Z a little present – a compact mirror with a winking lady on it.

None of us had gotten lice, or eggs, besides Z, which meant we caught it early and were pretty lucky. Svetlana was awesomely Russian and blase and I totally love her. I tipped her ass off. She drained her wine, told us she’d be back Sunday morning at 8 am, rollie suitcased out the door, and went home in a car service to get a well deserved good night’s sleep. Because the next day she had to go to work “in the salon.” That’s where she works when she’s not combing lice out of school children.

So one thing to take away here is that you never really know what people are doing on the side. And its probably best that way.

we are all the same

The other day we were all at this kiddie enrichment place. Z takes ballet there and they have free “open play” in their beautiful gym facility, which we try and take advantage of in order to justify the silly money we pay for classes there. That means getting online weeks in advance to reserve spots for the two of them, and then getting up there by 9ish on a Saturday morning, something we are not fabulous at doing. I always swear I’ll get the diaper bag ready the night before. The same with getting Z ready for school during the week – packing her lunch and laying our her outfit before she goes to bed. Say I’m gonna. Don’t do.

I’m frenzied on these Saturday mornings — grabbing 4 different satchels and cramming snacks, Ziploc bagged sippy cups and ballet clothes into to each one of them, not eating or drinking a thing besides 3 cups of coffee, and feeling like a complete freak for not being able to get my act together by 9:00 am – given that I’ve been awake for hours. This whole ritual kind of sucks, and I would say 7 out 10 mornings E and I end up fighting about who is winning the most annoying spouse contest. But once we get to the place and the 80’s hits are pumping, the kids start frolicking and E goes out and gets coffees and bagels, all the hustle is worth it. Both kids get an activity before noon when we have to get back for M to lunch and nap, and then it’s the reward of chill time for the rest of us.

This Kiddie Club is a funny scene. It’s a posh crowd, and many of the kids have names that for some reason irk me, which I won’t name here in case you have also named your kid Schmoopie or Schmoopae, but let’s just say on a morning that I’m feeling cranky, the names and inevitable tantrums, plus the sing-songing voices of the parents can wear on a gal.

Which is what happened the other day. My irritation did not stay at home with the breakfast dishes, strewn about clothes and plastic toy chaos, but travelled with me to kiddie enrichment place. I truthfully don’t know exactly why E and I were publicly hissing at each other about who got to eat their bagel sandwich, getting napkins wet with coffee cups that still had coffee in them, and who was or wasn’t chasing M into the toilets over and over, but there we were. Certainly not our finest moment.

Seething, I sat down to eat my cold bagel sandwich, and a woman I had seen carrying a wild haired toddler while trying to corral a second child in and out of a coat, stroller, leotard, etc, came running up to me breathlessly, plunked a business card down on the table and said: “We have to hang out. We have the exact same life.”

Now this is certainly something I have fantasized about doing. Seeing another mom who looks or seems or sounds a certain way, it is tempting to want to be pals with this person. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances and people to talk to from all facets of my life – some parents and some not, but for me there is the lure of this person out there in the universe who is your momfriend soulmate, who is cool and honest and not weird and competitive, you have no baggage with and perhaps your kids are exactly the same age and on the same schedules?

We don’t like to think so, because it dilutes our coolness or our specialness, but we are all just archetypes acting out rituals that parents have been doing forever. Maybe we vary in socio-economic status and the modern trappings that go along with having families, but here in our Brooklyn village we do appear to have similar lives. We have struggles and victories that matter, that are not trite or surface. But we also have the same annoying conversations about where to eat lunch and who is going to take the boots to the shoemaker, and worry about how much time we let our toddlers play with our phones. Of course some of us have deeper problems and secrets, but on a Saturday morning at 10:10 am, we are mostly just trying to get though the day without losing our minds.

What had this woman seen or heard that gave her the chutzpah to want to connect with me in this way? I actually love that she noticed that we were probably being ridiculous, and that the whole idea of a kiddie enrichment place is kind of ridiculous, and that by laughing and noticing and reaching out, she was making her morning a little better.

My interest is piqued. I think I’ll call.

s.w.a.k.

My whole life I’ve been prone to emotional triggers brought on by songs, smells, textures, and tastes, so it’s no surprise I’ve folded these tendencies into my relationship with my kids and my own memories of childhood.

I’ve written some about the overwhelming nostalgia bath I’ve been taking since Zoe started kindergarden this fall. It’s been amazing. Today, when I was at her school for lunch duty, I took her and another little girl to the bathroom. They took me “the secret way,” from the basement level cafeteria to the girl’s room on the first floor. Through their chatter with each other, their expressions and in their excited two steps at a time climbing, I could viscerally recall my own elementary school and the journey from the lunchroom to the bathroom — the exact way the cafeteria smelled, the smooth concrete banisters against my hand as I ran up the linoleum stairs to the steamy heat of the girl’s (and the mystery glimpse of the unfathomable urinal through a door crack in the boy’s).

The lead up to Valentine’s Day today was epic, and Zoe has been vibrating with excitement. She was thrilled with her outfit of dark pink tights, light pink skirt with hearts, and white shirt with hot pink flowers. She spent the past five evenings under my tutelage, making valentines for every kid in the class – and really caring about how each kid would react to the size and sparkle of the stickers and the different colors of heart shaped balloons and flowers she was customizing for each one. I just loved it. Having recently discovered my inner scrapbooking soccer mom nerd (or, how fun it is to shop at Michael’s Craft store – a formerly suburban pleasure paradise now available to us New York City residents), we just sat there at her little table, cutting and coloring and sticking stickers, listening to Fiona Apple and discussing Eli’s favorite color versus Lina’s. Here was something I always loved doing when I was younger, something relaxing and creative and fulfilling we could finally do together. It totally rocked.

I used to feel a constant pull toward eras I never lived in, careers I’d never have, places I’d never live. I feel less that way now. Part of that must be finding my way, hopefully, or else realizing aspiration is never ending. Maybe that’s why memories are flooding in now – because I’ve accepted that now my real job to make things as sparkly and pink as I can for my kids, just as my own parents at roughly my age sacrificed a lot of their own middle years to make things exciting and textured and full of joy for me and my sisters.

Its funny to feel like now I’m the grownup comes up with the ideas and the adventures, and also the one who says the things like: “I’m turning that television/IPad off right this minute if you keep ignoring me when I ask you to bring your dish to the sink!” Some days it’s so much damn work to make all the decisions and keep the momentum going, but when I think about how much it means to Zoe to sit down and color with the set of 140 markers I picked up – and how much of a charge it gave me when my own mom bought me a similar set, I’m really feeling that sparkly Valentine’s love.

happy + sappy = saphappy

Last week something unexpected occurred. I woke up every morning in a perfectly calibrated emotional state: energized, calm, grateful, and content. The realization of which led to something I’d describe as elation.

WTF is that about?

It took me by surprise. My go-to mindset since having Miles 19 months ago has been one of desperate tiredness and constant overwhelmdoom. Of course I’ve had laughing jags and felt pride and joy and love for my family and friends during that time, but mostly I’ve been blindsided by the exponential difficulty of upping the family ante from one to two children. It took a good long while to feel like I wasn’t freaking out ALL the TIME, and I certainly haven’t felt “relaxed” or “content” in a while. We’re talking like 18.5 months.

Last week Evan kept saying, “I can’t believe how pleasant you’re being,” which of course made me feel awful about what a Crabby Crabstein I must have been for the last bit.

Mostly, I credit this new excellent mind state to a good few weeks of getting enough sleep. It’s so ridiculously simple how much this can help a parent’s sanity that it’s trite and boring just to write that sentence. I mean obviously, humans need to sleep without getting woken up every few fucking hours for months on end. I was starting to get pissy at everyone in my path as the sleeplessness folded into itself night after night – bleeding into day after day. Because how could I be angry at sweet little Miles for torturing me at night for this long? It was easier to be irritated with Evan for breathing, my daughter for stomping her feet in all of her five year old-ness, my babysitter for being unclear, work for being slow, myself for not eating well, drinking more than one glass of wine at night and not going to sleep early.

Through the tiredness, I’d been working on the concepts of being grateful and present and feeling blessed for as long as I can remember – trying to calm myself and not stoking my own anxiety and ramping up the internal drama. I knew theoretically how lucky I was to have this family and this good life but somehow knowing wasn’t enough. I wasn’t feeling it, and trying to feel and believe it has been work for sure. Wrestling, trying, chewy, workity work. And then, something (nothing?) clicked into place last week and it was like all the therapy and the yoga and the analyzing were finally working. WORKING!

The same week, something else major was peaking. My friend David is enjoying massive career success right now, and last week the television show he made aired on MTV. The lead up to it has made me insanely proud and excited for him. I believe my people call it “kvelling.”

A few years ago, Dave decided to switch careers from advertising to writing. Not an easy thing to do, especially because he was already successful in advertising – he had made many hilarious commercials and was highly regarded as a writer and creative director. But he went for it – he sat down, wrote a funny book about finding yourself in your twenties, and then worked like crazy to have it optioned into a television show. I wouldn’t say he made it look easy exactly – there were lots of ups and downs throughout the process of the book being made into a TV show now on MTV (called “I Just Want My Pants Back”). But I never doubted that it would happen. He’s just that kind of person with that type of drive and talent. Smart, funny and lucky, with an amazingly supportive wife and people around him who wished him well, because he’s a good, menschy funny person who can find the absurdities of life and distill them down to good jokes in like two seconds. It’s just so cool that this is happening to him and his family. I am just seriously jacked up about this.

So on top of feeling good finally personally inside my brain and body, even if it's just about being well rested enough to appreciate it, and even if it's temporary, having such a pure kind of happiness for my friend on top of it really feels fantastic.

Sometimes it’s easy to be happy. Hopefully, it won’t make me tedious.

sh*t brooklyn moms say

http://www.mallorykasdan.com/2011/audio/sbms.mp3

something i wrote and produced based on the silly sh*t i hear.