My Real Life

“You’ll see.”

Two of my least favorite words in the English language

It used to drive me nuts, as a kid, when my parents would say that.

And now, my kids say it to each other all the time.

I find these words to be mental torture.

“Oh,” starts Monkey Girl.  “I want to show you something on my iTouch!”

“What is it?” says Baby Monkey.

“You’ll see,” she says.

“I reached an awesome level this morning on the xBox game!” says Monkey in the Middle.

“Ooh, tell me about it,” says Monkey Girl.

“I’m doing something else right now,” he replies.  “You’ll see later.”

They tease each other with little bits of information and then hold off on the reveal.

It drives me INSANE and I already know what it is that they are hiding.

I guess it’s a power play.

A way of saying “Na, na, na, na, na, na,” without doing the sing-song.

Even without siblings of my own, I know that this will pass.

But right now, it makes me nuts.

1.  Les Miserables

In a way I cannot even put into words, I am beyond excited for the release of Les Miserables.

I read the book in 8th grade English and was mesmerized by the story.

I have seen the Broadway show 6 times, and have sobbed my way through every single time.

And now, this, which brings so much more emotion to the story.

My friend, Tara, and I were talking about this the other day and she was saying that she’s loved the Broadway show, but she’s always wanted to see their faces up close while they acted and sang and I thought that hit the nail on the head perfectly.

I watched this extended trailer and cried and cried and then watched it again and cried some more.

It’s the story and the music put together, and this time, the raw emotion that you can see as they bring it all to life.

I simply cannot wait.

2.  V/H/S

I’m hopeful that this could be the scary movie of the season for me.

Someone passed out when they screened it at Sundance.

That bodes well.

Or says bad things about Sundance, but still.

Fingers crossed.

3.  Thanksgiving

We alternate holidays between the in-laws and this is our year with my parents.

We usually do Thanksgiving with my parents at their house.

However, our dining room table was delivered this week and now I can’t wait for Thanksgiving.

I just love the idea of a big family gathering here, in our space.

And, you know, it’s nice to have the leftovers in our fridge.

Cold turkey.

Nothing better.

4.  Halloween episodes of tv shows.

Since I was a kid, I loved the Halloween episodes even better than the winter holiday specials.

They aren’t necessarily scary, but they are fun to watch.

Especially when I’m watching with Monkey Girl, who is also a big fan of the Halloween episodes.

Fun.

5.  The next great book I read.

I’m in the market for a great book.

A really great book.

I spent the summer reading Nora Roberts books, and they were entertaining and had really good stories, but let’s be honest…they weren’t great literature.

I’m up for something great.

As I said in a previous post, I recently finished “Shadow of Night” and thoroughly enjoyed it, but now it’s over.

My book club (and I use the term “my” lightly as I’m dying to actually get to one of the meetings, but haven’t been able to make it work with our family schedule yet) is reading “Life of Pi” for the next meeting, and I have to be honest, I have no desire to read it.

I will, but I don’t wanna.

So, when I’m done, I need something great, because there is nothing like losing yourself in a book.

6.  October 27th

It’s when I walk in the Step Out: Walk to Stop Diabetes.

I’m excited to be around so many people working toward the same goal.

I’m excited to be part of something that can make a difference.

I met my original goal of $500 and am now working toward $750!

I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you, if you haven’t yet read my story, please visit my Walk Page and read it and consider a donation.

And if a donation isn’t in your future, please just keep the date in mind and send good thoughts our way that day!

It is 2:58 am and I’m wide awake.

Real Man and I tried, valiantly, to watch Revolution tonight, but neither of us lasted past 9:55.

I hit the ground running at 5:45 am and literally don’t stop until I collapse into bed at 9:00.

So, why am I up, when I could barely keep my eyes open through dinner?

Tiny woke up around 2 and I went and rocked him and put him back in his crib and covered him up in all of his blankets and came back to bed.

And lay here, eyes wide open.

Once I’m up, I’m up.

There’s no going back, for me.

This lack of even an iota of downtime means that my mind doesn’t have time to do the usual thinking and dreaming and worrying and planning that it needs to do during the day, and so it’s grabbing the chance.

“Body finally still?” It asks.

“Excellent…now it’s MY time to run.”

And so it does.

So, what do I do?

After setting it free for about thirty minutes, I try to harness it here. Try to guide my thoughts into a coherent, less frantic state of being. Try to force some order and sense into my mind.

So that when I put down the iPad again, all is quiet in my head and I can grab a bit more sleep.

Because, if I fall asleep right NOW I’ll be able to get at least two and a half hours of sleep.

Two hours twenty five minutes.

Two hours twenty.

Darn.

1.  Last summer, Real Man bought a Jeep.

Suddenly, he noticed people were waving to him when he was driving.

All the time.

At first we thought that maybe people just liked the Jeep, and then we noticed that all of the people who were waving were also driving Jeeps.

We started to think that, maybe, it was a “thing.”

So, we did what everyone does when they don’t know something.

We googled it.

And it is, in fact, a “thing.”

There are forums dedicated to the “Jeep Wave.”

Who knew?

2.  I spent all day Saturday and Saturday night in the city with Kim, Erin and Michaela.

We had a fantastic time together and I just love those girls.

Kim did a Mark Wahlberg impression that had me almost snorting my boneless pork ribs out of my nose.

(BTW…Buddakan has the most delicious boneless pork ribs I have ever, ever eaten.  They made them special for us because they cook a lot of their food in oyster sauce which would have had me stabbing myself in the thigh with an Epi-Pen, but I’m sure they were just as good in the oyster sauce!)

We slept in Kim’s apartment which was absolutely dead silent while we slept.

And yet…

6:48 am, guess who was wide awake?

Yep.  Me.

Hate that.

3.  How much do I love the fact that the entire adult cast of Modern Family was nominated for Best Actor or Best Actresses, and that two of them won.

That show makes me laugh out loud every single week.

Congrats.

4.  Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

Stayed away for a very long time.

Caught one episode.

Sat like a zombie with my mouth open in complete disbelief of what I was seeing.

Can’t. Look. Away.

However, the one thing I will say is that they all seem very, very happy in their lives, and that’s gotta count for something.

5.  I wonder…if I ever won an Emmy award if I would remember to thank everyone I wanted to thank, or if I’d be in such shock that I’d thank the guys at the food service truck and completely forget Real Man and the kids.

I like to think that I’d be able to keep my wits about me, but I wouldn’t put money on it.

6.  I just finished the book “Shadow of Night” by Deborah Harkness.

It’s the second in a trilogy, and I read the first book last year: “The Discovery of Witches.”

So good.

So very good.

However, I had to wait a year for the second one to come out and now I have to wait a year for the third one to come out.

Grrrr…

Finding a trilogy after they’ve all been written = fun.

Finding a trilogy at the beginning of the trilogy = an exercise in extreme patience.

7.  The monkeys are interested in doing another video blog for you, however, we need questions!

So, if you have any questions for the monkeys, please drop them in the comments below!

Have a great week!

Today I thought I might post things as they happen.

I’m heading into the city today to spend the day and night with the girls in a little rest and relaxation centered bachelorette-type deal for Kim.

Nothing crazy…lunch, dinner, chilling with the girls.

Perfect.

So, throughout the day (providing my phone cooperates) I’ll be posting what I’m doing in real time.

Which means the blog won’t be finished until the end of the day, but seeing a work in progress is always fun, too!

7:24

Getting some last minute snuggles.

9:29 am
On my way!

11:00
Reunited!

11:56 am
SOHO street fair

12:17 pm
Bobo for lunch!

1:57 pm
Le Petite Puppy

2:31 pm
Shopping break

4:14 pm
A little shoe shopping

5:12 pm
The bride bought US all slippers for our slumber party!

5:49 pm
Snacks at Kim’s place
The best cheese ever

6:31 pm
Ready to go to dinner
Me and the bride 🙂

7:12 pm
Buddakan for dinner

10:30 pm
Back to Kim’s for our slumber party!

When I was in middle school, I was a latchkey kid.

I was a latchkey kid before middle school, but my story takes place in middle school.

When I was in middle school, I was a latchkey kid.

When I was in middle school, we got HBO.

It was awesome.

Anyone remember HBO in the early days?

The camera going down the streets in the fake city while the HBO theme music played?

“Da da daaa, da daaa, da da da da…da da daa, (dadadumdadadum) da da daa (dadadumdadadum)…”

Anyway…

I watched a lot of movies on HBO after school while “doing my homework.”

One of them has always stuck with me.

Maybe because for a two month period, it was on at 3:00 every single day so I watched it a gajillion times.

Maybe it was because, even as a seventh grader, the movie moved me to big, enormous sobbing tears.

The movie was “Six Weeks” with Mary Tyler Moore and Dudley Moore.

MTM had a daughter who was a ballet dancer, and is diagnosed with leukemia.

Somewhere along the way, they meet Dudley and the adults fall in love.

The night before the daughter gets her dream of performing in the Nutcracker she performs a pretend wedding for her mother and Mr. Moore.

The vows always make me cry.

“…for now…for there isn’t any always…”

Ugh.  Because she knows she’s dying and for now is all there is.

Get it?

Awful.

Then, she dances in the show and dies in her mothers arms on the subway.

Oh, sorry…spoiler alert.

I’m tearing up just thinking about it.

I may need to see if Netflix has it.

If I watched it now, I might find it horrifyingly cheesy, but I doubt it.

It was my first real tearjerker.

Not my last.

Kim can tell you.

We saw Steel Magnolias together.

“I could jog all the way to Texas and back…but my daughter can’t!”

We also saw My Girl together.

“Where are his glasses?  He can’t see!  Where are his glasses?”

Surprised we didn’t flood the town with our tears.

I saw Marley and Me a few years ago.

I had specifically not watched that film because I knew it would make me cry.

Then, one day while on maternity leave, it was on.

Why not? I figured.

Why not, indeed.

Poor Real Man got a call that went something like this:

“What’s the matter with you?  Why would you leave me home alone to watch a movie like Marley and Me?  Do you know about this movie?  Do you know what happens?  The dog…that sweet, sweet dog!  It’s awful!  Awful!  Why would you let me watch this?  You have to monitor what I watch…you know I can’t watch sad movies like this!  This is all your fault!”

All of the above said through heaving sobs and sniffles full of snot that could not be contained as the tears ran down my cheeks.

Poor guy.

Anyway, I’ve been feeling kinda sappy lately, and I keep thinking about Six Weeks.

Do you have a go-to sad movie?

One that you watch when you just want to wallow for awhile?

I’d be interested to hear.

Because I’m always up for a good cry.

We had no school on Monday due to the Jewish holiday.

Happy New Year to my friends who celebrate!

I’ve been missing my kids like I’ve lost a limb since school started (although passing Monkey Girl in the hallway every day certainly helps) so I decided to make the best of the day.

We started with me making pancakes and the kids stuffing themselves full of them.

Then, we hit the park in a neighboring town.

It’s a park we frequent often, however, we didn’t go throughout the summer because parks + heat make us all grumpy.

We’re fall park people.

Which means, Tiny was in a stroller or carseat when last we hit this park.

He had a blast.

They all did.

We spent a good few hours there and then met Real Man for lunch.

Came home, did some laundry, Monkey Girl baked some cookies, big boys played with cars and Tiny took a nap.

Then, we drove Monkey Girl to voice lessons, and the boys and I hit another park.

No time for pictures there, as Tiny had figured out how parks are done and he was on the move.

We’re fortunate to live in an area that has so many amazing places for kids to play.

Side note: I’m typing this post on Monday night after the kids have already fallen asleep.

Baby just came in to tell me he had a bad dream.

What about?

A tornado.

I’ve always said this kid had a sixth sense.

(If you are confused right now, go back a few posts and find the one about all the dreams I’ve been having about tornadoes lately.  And, no…I did not discuss this with the kids.)