Lauren Takes Leave!

I am thrilled to announce that my novel, Lauren Takes Leave, is now available for purchase at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.  Click HERE to go to the book's page on Amazon!

IMPORTANT!  In other news, my blog has been moved to my new website, www.juliegerstenblatt.com.  I will not be updating this On the Verge site after July, 2012.  All new content -- plus the older posts -- can now be found at one convenient cyber-location.  I'd love to have you follow me there!

Summer Cocktails for Moms

We moms have it hard in May and June.  The social calendar that we tend to throughout the year virtually explodes for the spring season, with graduation parties and birthday parties and class parties and final exams and proms and cookies to bake and brownies to bake and teachers to thank and yearbooks to distribute and camp trunks to pack and backpacks to unpack and trip forms to fill out and letters to send to camp and Father’s Day to plan and little league playoffs and final recitals and band concerts and about a million other obligations that keep our heads spinning.  Until now.  Because now, we have reached Nirvana.  We have reached the end of June.

         

Ah.  Say it with me.  The end of June.  Now exhale.

            

At the end of June, and well into July and August, Mommy needs – no, Mommy deserves - a cocktail.

            

Here are some of my personal summer faves.  Continue here.

Relax at Yoga Haven

I recently got the chance to try a class at Yoga Haven 2, located at 91 Montgomery Avenue in Scarsdale.  The studio, owned by Betsy Kase, is the new outpost of the beloved Tuckahoe yoga studio, which Kase first opened 15 years ago.

            

This is not me.

“Back then, Madonna was on the cover of Time magazine doing yoga, and people couldn’t believe that you could look like her from doing only that,” Kase explained.  “Now, people have more understanding of it.”  In the past few years, in addition to growing her studio across the board, she has seen an increased interest from prenatal clients, seniors, men, and even children.

            

“Eleven year olds spend 8 hours a day sitting in a chair in school,” she said.  And then they go to play sports, sports, sports nonstop, without much stretching, “so they are getting tighter and tighter,” which can be rough on the body.  That’s why Yoga Haven offers a variety of classes for kids and teens, including a Monday evening class just for boys.  “We do handstands and hang from ropes, and lots of other fun things,” she explained. 

Now, as you may know from other articles I’ve written, I am into spinning, not stretching.  But after pulling my calf from three consecutive days of fast, repetitive pedaling, I knew that I needed to try something else. Continue here.

Interview with Annabel Monaghan, author of new YA novel, A Girl Named Digit

You know that feeling you get from holding a new book in your hands, excited by the promise of the first few pages?  That’s how I felt when I first read A Girl Named Digit by Annabel Monaghan.  It was a Saturday morning.  My Kindle and I crept downstairs in the dim morning light and hid under a blanket on the far end of the couch in the sunroom, pretending that we were still asleep.  In that way, I disappeared from my family’s radar for the better part of the morning, and by the time they found me and begged for breakfast, I was already hooked on Digit.

            

And that was good news, because before reading her novel, I was already hooked on Annabel Monaghan.

Annabel and I met in a novel writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College in the Fall of 2010.  She was there to workshop a project called Digit, and since her novel was completed and the rest of ours were not, we read her manuscript first.  In person, Annabel is funny and self-deprecating and humble and smart.  She’s the one you want to sit next to in class so that you can pass notes back and forth and give each other meaningful eye rolls, as if a continuing education course at a local college is the same setting as your high school biology lab.  (Which, in a way, it is.) By week two, we had our own little inside jokes. As I sank into my couch, I desperately hoped that her book would live up to the real her. Continue reading here.

Grace's Table: A Restaurant Review in the Gerstenblatt Style

Grilled octopi!

There’s no doubt about it:  Scarsdale village, with eight local eateries featuring outdoor dining options, is the new European capital of Westchester.   Meanwhile, Central Avenue is… still Central Avenue.  That being said, it’s worth leaving the Village proper (and all the chocolate croissants one could want) every now and then for fine dining at a pretty spot called Grace’s Table, located at 324 Central Avenue in White Plains. 

            

Grace’s Table is part of the restaurant and marketplace team led by the Balducci and Doria families, known for the Balducci’s markets, Grace’s Marketplace, and Grace’s Trattoria.  In other words, as soon as I heard the name “Grace Balducci Doria” I made a reservation for dinner.  And you should too.  The restaurant serves upscale American fare for lunch Mon-Fri and dinner nightly.  They also have a private party room in a wine cave on the lower level.

            

Brett and I arrived about 45 minutes early for an 8:30 reservation, checked in with the hostess, and went to have a drink at the bar.  “If you have a table ready any earlier, we’d love to take it.  It’s just that the babysitter arrived and we had to escape while we could,” I explained.

            

“Understood.  If you’d like, I could give you this table right here,” she said.  We did like.  We sat.  (There are several rooms to choose from, so you might want to poke around; we were happy to just sit.)

            

The table next to us happened to be occupied by two couples from Edgemont that I’ve known for years.  We chatted for a while and I told them that Brett and I were here on an official culinary assignment.  Everyone got very excited and started telling me about their tasty selections.

            

Continue reading here.

           

           

The 10:52 Local

A day in free verse poetry

On the Starbucks lanai

dappled sunlight

watching the trains go by

iced grande green tea

sweetened

two dollars and thiry one

cents a day

after spin class

on a warm spring day

I stay hydrated and,

finished chatting,

head to DeCicco’s for

taco meat.

It’s Monday

So that is

dinner always

before piano practice and after

tennis, perhaps a stop at

the candy store

Where I steal a mini

peanut butter cup from Andrew’s

thoughtfully curated bag.

“Hey!” he shouts, but I unwrap

it and, pop, into my mouth it goes.

There are no calories from candy

meant for your kids;

everybody

knows that.

Zoe’s collection is mostly

chewy and bad

for my temporary crown.

I dig through and hand it back.

I could have bought

a Celine bag

with the money spent

on endodontics

but I needed

the new tooth

and the pocketbook

is always only a fantasy

like the beach house

and the movie deal

so I wave

to my reflection

in the storefront window

whenever I drive by.

There are always

nice things, as

my mother would say.

Finished shopping

for camp clothes

all labeled

Andrew’s first time away.

Upon safe return,

will he still let me kiss

him in public?

Do you have time for a mani-pedi?

a friend asks.

I have a book to sell and another

to write

(there’s always something

to write, a text, an email

a pin, a tweet)

but sure, mademoiselle.

Zoe and I will bond in July,

hang out at the town pool

apply sunscreen

and be lazy together.

There’s so much

I don’t know.

An uncertain world,

I manage it

through certain, predictable routines,

and try not to worry

like Brett does

as another train passes.

Digging through the junk,

we find small bits of beauty,

and in that way

life is like the sidewalk sale.

I drink it in.

And that’s my tale.

Looking forward to

summertime in the ‘dale.

My husband the...triathlete?

Artist, yes. Successful businessman, sure. Snarky comment maker, indeed. But here are words I'd never thought I'd utter: I'd like to introduce you to my husband, Brett, the triathlete. When Brett and I met in 1996, he was merely a summertime tennis player, and, when I was not chain-smoking, I occasionally attended a step-aerobics class. In Central Park, we went to Sheep Meadow to hang out instead of going for a run around the reservoir. I thought we were perfectly matched in every way.

When we moved in together in Brooklyn a few years later, we joined a gym and attended spin and yoga classes side by side. Skip ahead 12 years, and you will find that spin and yoga is where I still remain. Brett, however, has moved on. Way on.

My husband now goes to the gym. A lot. He has a trainer. He does something called box jumps. He wears something called a weight vest. When I said I'd marry him in sickness and in health, I didn't know quite how healthy he meant.

Continue reading here...

Juiced!

As a journalista, I often have to go where the hard-hitting story is.  I make sacrifices, sure, in order to deliver the news about shoe trends and hot new books, but it's all worth it in the end when I see the effects my reporting has on the public. 

Which is why I tried a 3-day juice cleanse at Andy’s Pure Food.

I did it for you.

Well, I did it for you and me. I’ve always been curious about what a juice cleanse entails – will it make me sick? Will it make me skinny? Will it make me healthy? All of the above? And when Onur Ozkoc, the general manager of Andy’s in The Golden Horseshoe in Scarsdale offered to let me try it for free, I decided now was the perfect time.

Continue reading here.

Up Close and Not so Personal With 50 Shades of Gray author E.L. James

When I heard that the author of 50 Shades of Gray was going to be speaking at Willow Ridge Country Club in Harrison, NY, I immediately emailed my friend, writer Annabel Monaghan.  “You’ve got to come with me to hear E.L. James,” I begged. 

            

Annabel and I met in a novel writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College about a year and a half ago.  On the first day of class, we went around the table and introduced ourselves.  It was instant kinship.  In the oft-recycled words from the film Jerry Maguire, she had me at “I wrote a YA novel about a math genius that falls in love with the FBI operative hired to protect her from terrorists,” and I had her at “my main character is a teacher and mom who lies to her family and her employer and takes off for a much-needed vacation.”

            

Who else to sit next to at a 50 Shades luncheon than one another?

            

“I’m going to have to think about it,” she wrote back.  “On the one hand I want to attend, and on the other, I fear it might suck out my soul.”

          
Understood.  Continue reading here.

Glee

Congratulations to me: I am now an aunt.  On March 18^th of this year, my brother and sister-in-law had their first child, who they immediately started to mess with by naming Boden Kodiak Medow.

            

In my head, I call him Bodie Kodie.

            

Boden is the new love of my life.  Certain that I will never ever ever want to get pregnant or have babies myself ever ever again, I am delighted that others in my family want to do this for me.  My plan is that they will do all the heavy lifting so that I can do much of the holding.

            

My plan has gone according to plan, because holding Boden is exactly what I did for the better part of a week at the end of April.  I got on a plane to San Francisco and left Brett in charge of our 6 and 10 year olds so that I could change diapers and stay up half the night with my newborn nephew.

            

Except that my sister-in-law, Ursula, had slightly different plans for Boden and me.  She is trying to train Boden to sleep without being held, and to learn to self-soothe in the crib.  I believe in self-soothing, really I do.  The ability to dig deep and find inner peace is a great skill to have when you are fired from a job or when you get a bikini wax.  But it is not something I think a 5-week-old baby needs to master. Don’t get me wrong; I know how desperate new moms are for some peace and quiet, having been one myself.  But since then, I’ve trained two kids to sleep and pee and poop at the right times and in the right places and so I know it all works out fine in about five years. 

            

Which is why I held Boden a lot.  Perhaps even a bit more than his mommy wanted me to.  I held him when Ursula took a shower, and when she did some laundry, and while she mixed his bottles.  I held him through an entire “I Love Lucy” marathon on The Hallmark channel, which reminded me how much Brett and I are like Lucy and Ricky and how much I like holding sleeping babies.  Boden and I also watched a bunch of “Friends” episodes as well as some great “Barefoot Contessa” shows, in which Ina Garten throws small dinner parties for her friends in the Hamptons.

            

What a perfect vacation.  Watching as much television as you want and not feeling guilty about it - while you snuggle with a cooing relative that doesn’t resent you yet for anything - is a lovely escape from the real world.

            

The other great thing about babies is that they love to be sung to, and I love to sing.  It’s the ideal relationship, a natural yin and yang.  Many times, after Boden had his bottle and was burped, I would get down to the serious business of rocking him to sleep with a song or twelve.  At first, I was shy, softly murmuring “Hush Little Baby” and “Leaving On A Jet Plane,” two of my own children’s favorites, while holding him in his bedroom.  But by day three, I got bolder, breaking out the show tunes and moving into the public space of the living room. 

            

You need to know this about me: before I was a teacher and a mom and a writer, I was a musical theater actress.  My love of acting out dramatic renditions of musical numbers began the moment I saw the movie “Grease” at the age of 8.  My mother bought me the record, and I listened to it over and over again until I was Sandy.  At least once a week, I would have a playdate with my friend Lisa who was forced to play Danny Zuko to my Sandy, no taking turns, no backsies.  My reasoning for this was that Lisa was dark haired like Danny and I was light like Sandy.  Plus, she was an alto and I a soprano.  Also, it was my house.

           

Eventually, I grew less bossy, but never less passionate about musical theater.  Due to a wonderful lack of judgment on my mother’s part, I saw “A Chorus Line” on Broadway when I was about nine and had memorized the entire original cast recording of “Hair” by the time I was 10.  She wouldn’t let me see the movie because of the brief nudity, but I was allowed to listen to all the dirty words and sing along with gusto.

            

At Edgemont High School, I enjoyed a career as a musical theater gleek, beginning with, poetically enough, the role of Jan in “Grease” in the 9^th grade. Travelling to and attending competitions with the chorus and the a capella choir are some of my fondest memories of high school.  And on Saturday nights, there was nothing my friends and I liked better than to break into four-part harmony while gathered around a keg in someone’s backyard.  (This sounds a lot uncooler than it was.)

            

Lucky for me, my nephew Boden apparently loves a good show tune, because I am in possession of a lot of them.  When he was particularly fussy, I sang over his cries with jazzy renditions of “It’s a Hard Knock Life,” and “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat.”  Both of these gave me ample opportunity for dramatic stomping and swaying.  I highly recommend them if you are ever in the company of an ill-tempered infant.

            

Oh, we had fun, Boden and I.  We worked our way from Gershwin to Rodgers and Hammerstein and Rodgers and Hart.  We hit Andrew Lloyd Webber hard, got political with Le Miserables (because what child doesn’t find “Castle on a Cloud” performed with a faux-British accent soothing, I ask you), and then moved on to “Rent” and “Wicked.”  Following my mother’s good example, I even sang him a few tunes from “The Book of Mormon.”

            

Thanks to particularly high ceilings and an open floor plan, the acoustics at my brother’s house are fantastic.  As my voice raised and my eyes drooped along with Boden’s, I imagined that we were in Carnegie Hall together, or perhaps in the EHS auditorium.  At the very least, we were in Tamir’s backyard with a case of beer and the entire winning team of late-1980’s Madrigals.

           

“Aunt Julie to the rescue!” Ursula said as I coaxed Boden through the witching hour of 6-7 pm.  What she was probably really thinking was, She’s a little off key.  What day is she going home, again?  And, Boden, calming down finally, was probably thinking, I can feel Jean Valjean’s pain like I feel the wetness in my diaper.

            

I cried when I left, I won’t lie. 

            

On the security line at the airport, I noticed a group of teenage girls….singing.  I detected a high school choir in my midst.  Sure enough, Vocal Color, one of the top 5 all-female, a capella groups in the nation, was on my flight, headed to New York City for a competition.  When we landed safely on the other side of the country, they broke into song.

            

And I sang along.  Because I was grateful to have been welcome in my brother’s and sister-in-law’s home during such a special time in their lives.  And because I hoped Boden’s brain would keep an imprint of me on it, as this crazy singing woman who loves him so much.  And because, whether I’m happy to be an aunt or excited to be returning home to my own children, I am always filled with glee.

Down Under

Last week, an Australian lingerie company emailed me to suggest that I use my platform as a blogger for the Huffington Post to promote their website. They offered to compensate me for subtly selling their products in my posts, and invited me to contact them for further information.

Needless to say, I did not respond. I have journalistic integrity, for starters. But perhaps more interestingly, these people clearly have no idea what kind of underwear I wear. If they did, I seriously doubt they would be asking for my endorsement.

Now, why would an Australian lingerie company reach out to a woman who wears sweatpants most of the time and writes from a room over her garage? Good question, indeed. My mind puzzled through this conundrum as I got dressed for the day in my comfy cotton bikini briefs and a bra I picked up at a two-for-one sale at Kohl's.  Continue reading here.

What We Want for Mother's Day (Hint, Hint)

My friend and I were walking around Pamela Robbins the other day after lunch, wandering aimlessly, touching pretty things, chatting with the sales help and the other customers.  Amy was interested in a ring from the jewelry case and I, not surprisingly, had found another scarf I liked in the window.

            

Amy tried on the ring.  “What do you think?” she asked, extending her arm to arm’s length and moving her head back and forth.  A group huddled around her hand and decided that the ring was fab.  We immediately agreed that she must have it.  Now. 

            

(“We” might be enablers of sorts, but that’s not for today’s article.)

           

“Do you think I can buy it and then have my husband give it to me for Mother’s Day?”  Amy asked.

            

Of course, we all agreed.  Doing that takes the pressure off him and it guarantees that you’ll get a nice little something that you’ll truly enjoy…since you picked it out yourself!

There are people who would disagree with me about this.  Continue reading here.

Plastic is Fantastic!

When I was growing up, my parents did a lot of summer entertaining, before they divorced and ruined all the fun.  Our house in Edgemont had a pretty backyard with a pool.  Since my birthday is on July 3^rd, we often hosted outdoor birthday parties, end-of-the-year school class parties, and elaborate Independence weekend fetes back-to-back for the first part of the summer season. 

In fact, I recall the time between Memorial Day and July 4^th as one big party.

My now long-deceased Bichon Frise, Ellie, would agree, having spent much of that time sipping margaritas from the half-filled cups left next to people’s lounge chairs and then falling asleep in the shade.  

Of note, there was the bat mitzvah outdoor brunch with an omelet station, the Sweet Sixteen party to which I wore a rockin’ white, Oscar de la Renta bathing suit, and a Club Med party, during which my father burned his exposed stomach by grilling without a shirt. 

For my mother, these parties were all about setting the table. Continue reading here....

The Perfect Accessory: a husband or a scarf?

“Brett,” I ask my husband, “What’s the weather like today?”  He has just come in from a brisk run and is panting a bit.

            

“It’s nice,” he says, a slight hesitation to his voice.  He knows what’s coming next.

            

“Nice cool or nice warm?”  I ask.  “Should I wear a jacket?  A sweater?  Just a scarf over my t-shirt?  Or, like, a scarf and a sweater?”

            

Brett ignores my questions and walks past me.  “I’m going to take a shower.”

           

“Maybe my leather jacket?!” I call up the stairs after him, but he does not reply.

            

My husband of 13 years does not reply because he knows me too well.  He knows that I am hardly ever satisfied with my preparations for the weather and that, somehow, this is his fault.  Click here to read the rest on The Huffington Post.

            

100 Years

Last October, I wrote about my mother-in-law, Linda Gerstenblatt, who died of cancer at the age of 63.  When people spoke to me about that article, they offered their condolences and shared in my frustration with the over-pinking and commercialization of breast cancer.   My 99-year-old grandmother, however, who reads all of my writing, responded quite differently to that particular piece.  “If you ever want to write something nice like that about me for the newspaper, I wouldn’t stop you,” she said, looking across her dining room table at me with a sly smile. 

           

I’d like to introduce you to Rose Katz, who I call Nanny. 

Many of you already know her, since she worked as a bookkeeper in Scarsdale village for almost 30 years and because she likes to talk to just about everyone.  Walking around town with my grandmother is like taking a stroll with a cute puppy or a new baby.  Everyone stops to chat with you because of the marvelous companion on your arm.

me and Nanny

Nanny is a unique person, who is as tall on opinions as she is short on height.  She has more viewpoints on a variety of topics than someone half her age.  She’ll tell you if you look good, if you’ve put on weight, and if that lady over there has put on weight.  She likes to compare herself to the second-oldest woman in the room – who is 80, most likely – and tell you that the octogenarian looks much older than she does.  She might mention that a particular child at a birthday party is cute, but the mother?  Feh.

She has a great collection of sayings, my grandmother.  One that I particularly like has to do with women who dress provocatively (or people who call attention to themselves in any way) and then get upset when people notice or react.  “If you don’t want to be saluted, pull in your American flag,” she’ll dismiss.

“A committee put together that person’s face…” she’ll begin, shaking her head sadly.  “And the committee didn’t agree on nothin’!”  Ba-doom, tsz.

What?  She asked me to write about her in the newspaper, did she not?

At the time of this request, Nanny and I were sitting in her apartment in White Plains – where she still lives independently -- drinking coffee that I had brought from Dunkin’ Donuts.  I bring my own coffee when I visit because I don’t trust her Parmalat milk.

“The milk is good for weeks!” Nanny told me once.  “Look at the date stamp.”

“That’s only before it’s opened,” I said, unable to explain why this was the case, but just knowing it to be so.  “After you get air into the container, it’s good for a week just like everyone else’s milk.”

“Well, not mine,” she decided. 

And so I decided to stay away from that milk, even though it seemed to be doing no harm to Nanny.  (Perhaps the active cultures are acting as some sort of life preservative?  Like whatever secrets they uncovered in the movie Cocoon?)

            

The thing is, of course, that we cannot know what secrets keep one person alive and healthy for a full century while others struggle and face a much shorter existence.  In just the past few months, I have seen examples of lives cut way too short.  I have seen families watch a loved one’s health decline over time and I have seen others surprised by the suddenness of death.  As I’m sure you know from whatever your own life has dealt you, we don’t always take the opportunity to speak our hearts while our loved ones are alive and well.  (Even if we end up publicly roasting them a little bit in good fun.) 

            

Sometimes, when my kids are running late in the mornings and the lunches I’ve packed aren’t nutritious and it takes Andrew 6 minutes to tie his sneakers (why? Why?!) and Zoe wants to wear head-to-toe sparkles and hates her new leggings after ripping off the tags (why?  Why?!) and Brett is rolling his eyes at something one of us said or did or didn’t do and THE SCHOOL BUS IS COMING, PEOPLE! it’s hard to stop and smell the roses and appreciate all that’s wonderful.  Once my family is out the door, I just want to cheer my state of sublime aloneness.

            

And then I call my grandmother to vent or get sympathy, and she’s calm, and relaxed, and she can’t hear that well, but still, she offers an ear.  “Whatsamattah, sweetheart?” she asks, probably while toasting a nice Kaiser roll and putting some (definitely expired) milk into her morning coffee.  “You’re such a sweet and precious Mommy,” she tells me.  This comment, which she says often, makes me feel both validated in my choice to stay home with my kids and guilty about sometimes wanting to run away from home. 

Then she’ll launch into a story.

           

“Did I ever tell you about what Pop-Pop and I did when you were born?”

            

Only, like, ten thousand times. “I’m not sure,” I’ll say.  “ Maybe you should tell me again.”

There are few people that I love more than my grandmother, who will turn 100 on November 1^st, and there’s certainly no one older in our family or maybe even yours.  She has not asked for a party to commemorate the occasion so much as what she calls “a celebration of a life.” 

“I don’t want a big funeral,” she has said more than once, even though she’s probably going to get one and there won’t be anything she can do to stop it.  But, I know what she means: why put all that money and planning towards having the Jersey cousins come all the way over the bridge when it’ll be too late for her to hear them complain about the traffic? 

Instead, although Nanny hasn’t used these words, I believe she wants a living funeral, a gathering of people around her -- the same (kvetchy) group that would attend her eventual postmortem funeral, mind you, Jersey cousins and Long Island cousins and maybe even a few strays that we haven’t spoken to since the big blow-up at Roey’s funeral in 1990 – that would come and talk about her to her.  Knowing my grandmother, the main event at this celebration would be her standing at a podium talking about herself to us.  Nanny is a very enthusiastic storyteller. 

She would tell you that I get all my creative writing talents from her.

She would also tell you that she’s singlehandedly responsible for the Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur break enjoyed by all public schoolchildren in the state of New York.  (Long story short: she was the PTA president in Park Slope, Brooklyn in the 1950’s and spoke to someone of influence and from there it gets a bit nebulous.)

And so that is why I have officially kicked off this year’s “celebration of a life” by writing about my Nanny and sharing my love for her in the newspaper, while she’s here to see me do it. 

Because - in this unique case, at least - I can.

To borrow a phrase of my grandmother’s, may we all be so lucky.

About Me

Hi.  I'm Julie.


I write with humor and candor about my life, my friends and family, and the particular demands of motherhood and wifedom in modern-day suburbia. I am obsessed with pop culture, television shows, movies, theater, and books. I consider myself a Renaissance woman who can talk at length about highbrow BBC programming as well as the worst of American reality TV.


For a long time, I was a middle school English teacher.  I loved my students and I loved reading YA literature with them, but I wanted to be a writer reallyreally badly, so I quit my job (right before the economy collapsed...whoops!).  I realized that it was time to leave the classroom when a lengthy stint on jury duty felt like the highlight of my career. I turned this experience into my first novel, Lauren Takes Leave.  You can't buy this book yet, but my grandmother thinks it is very funny, although it has too much cursing, if you ask her. Lauren is based on true-to-life, 30 and 40-something suburban characters who are on the verge, and it is currently looking for a home at a publishing house.  When I pitch it, I say it's like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, only the teacher is the one cutting school with her friends.  And then they go a bit Thelma and Louise.  (Yes, I wrote a book based on two iconic, 1980's movies mashed together to create an off-the-wall midlife crisis novel.)  

Three years ago, I began writing a humorous column for The Scarsdale Inquirer entitled On The Verge.  I then began writing for Scarsdale10583.com, which led me to The Huffington Post, where I also blog.  You can find all of that original material collected here, on this fab website that I didn't hire a teenager to help me build, but probably should have.  

I live in Scarsdale, New York with my husband and two children who I write about frequently. Although I would love to live in the city, suburbia is the inspiration for most of my funny ideas, and so I will remain in Westchester until my neighbors kick me out.

If you'd like to learn more about the cast of real-life characters that I write about in my column, please check out the "About My Family" post under this one.

About My Family

Meet the cast of characters from my column:

Brett: Witty with the one-liners, cynical at times, artistic and creative, and highly efficient and organized.  Brett plays the part of supportive husband and father, except when I've spent too much money, and then he's not very happy with me, neither in print nor in our kitchen.

Andrew: Our almost 10-year-old son, with long hair and dimples. He loves filmmaking and hates thunderstorms.

Zoe: 6-year-old foil to her older brother, Zoe likes to state things as she sees them.  She is often low on patience and high on gummy bears.

Mom:  This would be my mother, Ronnee, who appears in my articles as a beacon of hope (whether taking care of newborn Andrew or helping us when our basement flooded) as well as spoiler of grandchildren and general entertainer (search the term "tap dancing" on my blog and see what comes up). She is married to my step-father, Howard, who appears occasionally in articles about family gatherings, such as trips to Nantucket and the American Girl store.

Dad: Not mentioned as frequently as my mother, much to his disappointment.  My dad is an eye doctor who shares my emailed articles and printed hard copies with the entire staff of Montefiore Medical Center as well as with all of his patients, hopefully before dilating their pupils but after taking out their cataracts.

Friends: I've changed their names, but they know who they are.