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.

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.

           

           

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.

            

American Road Trip

What I’m about to say may be considered blasphemy, especially coming from a former teacher: I love watching television with my 10-year-old son, Andrew.  After the rush out the door every morning, followed by the activities buffet of the afternoon and the dinner-and-homework sessions of the early evening, he and I have a standing date each night, a time for the two of us to re-group and reconnect.  We head into the sunroom, grab some blankets, and sink into the comfy couch.  Sometimes we make popcorn. Occasionally, we grab a handful of Hershey’s chocolate kisses.   And then we always grab the remote.

            

Andrew and I are really into reality television.  I know some other television-bonding families that connect via American Idol, The Voice, or Dancing with the Stars.  Andrew and I dabbled in The Sing-Off for a few seasons, mostly because I used to sing a capella in high school and am an original Gleek.  And, before that, I used to make him watch Divine Design with Candace Olsen until he finally protested, and rightly so.  That was cruel and unusual punishment.

            

We now have two very manly reality favorites.  The first is American Pickers on the History Channel.  The second is Diners, Drive-ins and Dives with host Guy Fieri.

            

My father-in-law, Steve, is a bit of a history buff (and a bit of a hoarder who thinks his stuff is worth something) and he’s the one who got us hooked on American Pickers.  This show follows the conquests of Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, owners of Antique Archeology, a store that features finds from their “picking” forays across America.  What is “picking”?  Well, Andrew knows all about it.  I’m not sure that this year’s New York State English Language Arts test is going to ask about picking, but if by chance Andrew needs to write an essay about collecting memorabilia by looking through other people’s junk, then he’ll pass with flying colors.

            

Pickers Mike and Frank like to say that they are “uncovering the history of America, one piece at a time,” as they dig through people’s overgrown yards and barns filled with collections of miscellanea.  They are looking for “rusty gold,” anything they can make some money from.  These guys are knowledgeable about all kinds of Americana, but specifically they are passionate about bicycles, motorcycles, cars and anything else that fits into what they call “petroliana,” items relating to gas, motors, and gas stations, like big signs or cans with logos.  Mike is a fun character, who say things like, “If you’ve gotta crawl through dead chickens, raccoon poop and goat urine to get something cool….do it! What a honey hole!” And Frank is the master “bundler,” working deals by bundling items together and saying, “So, how about $120 for all three of these?”

            

Andrew and I enjoy watching the guys make a great discovery and we like learning the history about specific items, like a Model A car or an engine for an early Harley-Davidson Knucklehead.  We also like meeting the characters that own all this stuff, people with names like Hippie Tom and Dollar Dick.

But our favorite part of the show is when the guys buy something, but aren’t exactly sure of the value.  Will it be appraised at a high enough price for them to turn a profit?  As we speed through the commercials to find out, the tension is nailbiting.

“Andrew, time for bed,” Brett will call down from upstairs.

“Just a minute!” We’ll call back.

           

Before you get all politically correct on me, telling me that television warps one’s brain waves and that, further, reality television really warps the brain (think The Jersey Shore), give me a moment to explain.  Because Guy Fieri has really enhanced my relationship with my son.

           

Watching Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives (or Triple D, as us insiders affectionately call it) has made Andrew want to do two things of note: try new foods and travel.  Night after night, he and I sit on our couch with our feet intertwined on the ottoman, and “roll out” with Guy, traveling across America in a vintage red Camaro convertible.  From the Deep South to the Midwest all in one half-hour episode, Guy has sampled the best of “real deal barbeque” taking us from Texas to Chicago and Kansas City.  In general, Guy’s a really big fan of pigs, taking us viewers to smokehouses, shacks and holes in the wall, showing us “how it’s done.” 

Guy will hold up a giant sandwich that’s got layers of beef and pork and cheese and sauces between two slices of homemade ciabatta bread and then he’ll get ready to eat it by doing “the hunch.”  The hunch involves rolling up one’s sleeves (Guy always wears short sleeves, so that’s not a problem) and leaning over so as not to drip any grease on oneself.  Then you take a big-ass bite.  “Now that’s how it’s done,” he’ll say, fist bumping the chef, a huge grin on his face.  “It’s porktastic.”

“I’m so hungry!”  Andrew will say.  “I want to go there!”

“That’s just disgusting,” my husband, Brett will say, leaving the room.  “Who eats like that?”

“We do!” We say, even though, in real reality, we don’t.  However, Andrew does have a favorite sandwich at a local diner in town that he swears requires the hunch.  Other favorites, like a burger from The Shake Shack, also require the hunch.  (The hunch adds fun and danger to a meal.  You should try it.)

What’s really fun about Triple D is the road trips it has inspired.  When Guy featured a diner in Providence, Rhode Island called Louie’s, Andrew and I turned to each other and yelled out, “Providence, Rhode Island!”  Brett’s whole family lives outside Providence.  “Can we go?”  Andrew asked.

“Are you kidding me?  Of course!” I said. An enthusiastic high-five followed, and our first Triple D road trip was planned. (Andrew had the bacon, egg and cheese and did the hunch.  I had the homemade granola pancakes and did not need to hunch.  Brett’s dad had the famed homemade corned beef hash. I can’t recall if he hunched or not.) Once we got there, we discovered that all the places Guy has visited have a special stamp or seal hidden somewhere in the restaurant.  We also found a framed picture of him over the grill.  The items featured on the show are highlighted on the menu for easy reference.

Since then, we have hit another Rhode Island diner on Guy’s list, as well as one place on the Jersey Shore and two in Manhattan.  Gazala’s Place, right behind the Museum of Natural History, proved to be a nice respite from dinosaurs and serves authentic, child-friendly Middle Eastern fare.  The Redhead, in the East Village, has the most delicious fried chicken, mac n’ cheese, and homemade, New York street-style soft pretzels.  Plus, it’s up the street from The Strand bookstore and Momofuku Milk Bar, so we added those destinations to our tour.

Any time we visit a city in the future, we will be sure to look up one of the Triple D hot spots and incorporate it into our travels.  America never tasted so good.  With our bellies full, we might even come across some rusty gold, now that we know what to look for.

           

I have this friend who bans television for her children during the week.  I think I’m supposed to admire her, but instead, I just pity her.  Oh, well.  She doesn’t know what she’s missing.

The Chocolate Wars

Let’s agree to agree: chocolate is delicious, and it’s also good for you.  But, like all great love stories, this one has a twist: in order to reap any health benefits, the chocolate you eat should be dark, dark, dark.  

            

Here are some Real Facts paired with some Julie Facts about dark chocolate.  Continue reading article on the Huffington Post.

How to Get a Book Deal: Tiger Mom, Diet Mom, and Me

Amy Chua, also known as The Tiger Mother, received a high six-figure advance for her 2011 memoir.  In this book, she recounts in great detail the ways in which she uses traditional Chinese parenting methods to drive her daughters towards perfection in the arts.  This is old news, of course.  But now there’s Dara-Lynn Weiss, aka the Diet Mom.  In the April issue of Vogue magazine, Dara writes honestly and openly about the strict parenting methods she employed to help her overweight seven-year-old daughter slim down.  Within a few weeks, she, too, had a book deal.

            

What do these women have in common?  The publishing world would say that Chua and Weiss are both exemplars of the new “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” parenting genre.  If you push your kid too hard, you get called out.  If you act too lax, you are scrutinized for not demanding more.  Either way, if you are willing to throw your daughters under the bus, there’s always something to write about.

            

It’s not so much about the children in these scenarios as it is about the mother.  The secret to securing a book deal these days is to expose one’s inner bitch to the world. Go to The Huffington Post to continue reading...

The Sandal Revolution

The box arrived from Bloomingdale’s just as my husband, Brett, was walking out the door to attend a neighborhood meeting one evening.  That’s bad timing, when the UPS guy comes face-to-face with one’s husband.  The uniformed man stands at your doorstep, a guilty look on his face, as he hands over the goods.  He knows the rules.  He knows he’s supposed to drop the package when your husband is either a) at work, b) at the gym, or c) has left the house precisely eight minutes ago, but sometimes he screws up and gets caught.  The husband looks at the return address on the box, sees the name of a clothing store like Bloomies, or an e-tailer like Gilt, or a supermegavirtualworld like Amazon, and shakes his head sadly at the UPS man.  Dude, he thinks, You’re complicit in her schemes.  I’m so disappointed in you. Read the rest of the article on the Huffington Post Stylist here....

Mommy 2.0

In 6th grade, I had to write my first big research paper. This paper was so enormous that it took the entire second half of the school year to complete. A serious assignment in all its complex aspects, it brought one of my best friends to tears during outlining. In retrospect, not only was this paper our introduction to real research, it was probably a rite of passage for scholastic stress.

First, we had to peruse books on famous people, and then we had to hand in a list of three individuals of merit who we were interested in studying. Then the teacher assigned us one of these notable figures.

I was psyched to get my first choice: Eleanor Roosevelt!

Like the good girl I was, I went right to work that evening, beginning with a stack of note cards in a new plastic box specifically designed for said note cards. New supplies like this were so exciting. I got a highlighter. My first.

Before any word could be written on a regular sized piece of paper, the teacher emphasized, we had to fill out 100 note cards. No more, no less. 100 on the dot. Furthermore, our note cards would be graded. A good grade on the note cards was the key to a good grade on the term paper.

I was really into these note cards.

I headed into the basement to find my parents’ set of World Book encyclopedias. Dusting off some spines, I found the one I was looking for, removed it from the shelf, and brought it upstairs to the kitchen table. I always did my schoolwork at the kitchen table, even though my parents had recently re-done my bedroom to include an awesome, white formica, built-in desk. (That desk never got any play, which is why I might not ever give my kids desks in their rooms. They can study all they want in our new basement.)

I found the entry on Mrs. Roosevelt and read through it, excited at what I found. “Mom,” I said, calling out to her while she was making dinner. “Guess what?”

“What?” she must have said.

“Most people in our class are studying people who have died, but I get to write about a living person!”

“Eleanor Roosevelt?” She asked. “Alive?” At this point, my mom stopped what she was doing and thought long and hard. She considered the ceiling. She looked out the window. She might have even counted on her fingers and toes before telling me that this was just not possible.

She did lots of things to try and convince me that the information from our encyclopedia was outdated.

But what she couldn’t do was Google it instantaneously or research it on Wikipedia.

After all, the year was 1982.

And in 1982, a mother and daughter didn’t have the answers to life and death questions at dinnertime in their kitchen.

My mother doubted that a woman born in 1884 was still alive in 1982. However, she couldn’t actually prove it to me. All she could tell me was that our set of encyclopedias hailed from before 1960 and that it was probably time to throw them away, since surely by now, man had walked on the moon and the wife of our 32nd president was deceased.

Zoom ahead to now.

On the day that Michael Jackson died, my children asked me who he was. Within about 9 seconds, I had positioned the laptop in front of them at the kitchen island and had started streaming the Thriller video on Youtube.

“That’s Michael,” I said.

Only the 1982 version wasn’t quite the same Michael as the 2009 version, so then I quickly found some more recent images that the kids recognized as their MJ. “Oh, yeah. We know him,” Andrew said.

And then, for my own nostalgia’s sake, I found other videos to show them.

“Who’s that?” Andrew asked. Boy George was singing Karma Chameleon from the front of a paddleboat on a river. He had ribbons in his braids and was sporting that iconic porkpie hat and fingerless black gloves.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Zoe wondered.

“Yes.” I said.

“Why does he have so much make-up on?”

“Because it was the 80’s.” I shrugged. Then I showed them some Madonna videos. Zoe and I decided that “Material Girl” was our favorite. Andrew decided that the 80’s were weird.

A few months ago, while listening to the car radio, my kids wanted to know who Mick Jagger was and why Adam Levine of Maroon 5 had moves like him.

Upon returning to the house, the laptop and I got to work immediately, pulling up videos and creating an informational, 4-minute Youtube mini-lesson in How to Dance Like a Rolling Stone.

Pretty soon, we all had moves like Jagger.

I’d like to introduce myself. I am Mommy 2.0.

I know everything.

What happens if Andrew needs to figure out the phase of the moon on a night that the actual moon is hidden behind clouds? Mommy 2.0 finds the virtual moon online and calls it gibbous. Science homework saved!

What happens when Zoe has to learn to read using not only books but also an interactive computer program with quizzes and prizes? Thanks to Mommy 2.0, Zoe can learn to read online as well as off, thereby quickening not just her reading ability, but also her ability to read on a Kindle.

And when Andrew has to study major monuments of Russia, Mommy tells him that she thinks the one with all the pretty colorful spires on top is the Kremlin. But then Mommy remembers that she knows nothing about Russia and, thus, should not be trusted. Using your own knowledge is a classic Mommy 1.0 mistake. A quick check on the Internet confirms this and the homework answer is changed to reflect the correct information: St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Eventually, a newer, sleeker, thinner model will replace me like a Hoover with a Dyson. Mommy 8.0 will probably have all the info implanted behind her ear with a microchip and she’ll be able to give herself liposuction. But for the meantime, I’m happy with my iPod and iPad and iPhone, doing the light research and fancy footwork that my job as Mommy 2.0 requires. No microfiche to contend with in musty library basements, no dead presidents’ wives to wonder about. If only there were a way to help mitigate all that stress that still comes with our children’s education, what with the note cards, and research papers, and outlining, and test scores and report cards and tears and deadlines and procrastinating and Mommy threats, like, ironically, taking away computer time until all the work is done.

Could someone out there create an app to help me with that?

(PS -- Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962. And I got an A on my term paper.)

Fake Academy Awards 2012

Last year, my husband and I created a matrix in order to determine how to win an Oscar in 14 easy steps. You can view it here on the Huffington Post.

So, without further ado, from our imaginations to your computer screen, here are the top Oscars that no one in Hollywood will be receiving this year.

Best picture set in France in which all the actors speak with British accents:
Hugo

Best picture set in Sweden in which all the actors speak with slightly different, untraceable, can’t-quite-put-your-finger-on-where-they’re-from accents:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best period mustache. And the nominees are:
Jean Dujardin for The Artist
Sacha Baron Cohen for Hugo
Glenn Close for Albert Nobbs

Best dramatic actor on 4 legs. And the nominees are:
Joey the horse from War Horse
Rosie the elephant from Water for Elephants
Maximilian (Blackie the Doberman) from Hugo

Best comedic actor on 4 legs. And the nominees are:
Dolce (Palmer the Pomeranian) from Young Adult
The dog (Uggie the Jack Russell) in The Artist

(I’d like to make a prediction here. Uggie is the clear frontrunner, having won this year’s Palm Dog award at Cannes and having already played a dog in Water for Elephants. Palmer the Pomeranian has no prior experience in films and was hard to work with, according to co-star Charlize Theron.)

Best Acceptance Speech:
The Artist

Best Brad Pitt film. And the nominees are:
Oh, you know what they are, right? In case you don’t stalk him like I do, it’s Moneyball and The Tree of Life. The odds are, that when you take Brad Pitt and put him in a baseball film based on a book about sabermetrics, there is a 37.5% chance of a win, based on prior statistics in which he was nominated for 5 Golden Globes but only won 1, most recently losing to George Clooney for best actor. Now, if you also account for the 4 Oscar nods Pitt’s received over his career, plus the 4 BAFTA nominations, and if you multiply that by the number of children he has, both biological and adopted, you will discover absolutely nothing about The Tree of Life.

Best dramatic, sad-as-heck movie that was marketed as a comedy:
The Descendants

Best movie that I can’t make fun of in any way, shape or form because of the 9/11 subject matter:
Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close

Best Julia-Child-as-Margaret-Thatcher Award:
Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady

Actress you hope wins so that she doesn’t act out afterwards in anger and retribution:
Rooney Mara for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best movie in which the director realizes he’s aged out of playing the fumbling, bumbling romantic lead:
Midnight in Paris

Best movie based on a novel that took forever to get published, thus giving hope to frustrated novelists, like myself, and the hopeful mothers of these novelists, like my mother, who brag about their offspring at dinner parties despite the fact that their creative, brilliant children haven’t sold a manuscript. Otherwise known as The But Look What Happened to Katherine Stockett Award:
The Help

Think of others? Feel free to add them below. Let’s watch the fake awards pile up, at least until the real ones do this Sunday, February 26th on ABC.

Lessons from Downton Abbey: A Jewish American Princess studies the Dowager Countess

I admire the British for so many reasons. They have a rich history of beheading enemies of the monarchy without ever compromising afternoon tea. They colonized half the globe and yet managed to ensure that no other colony’s accent would sound exactly like theirs. In particular, I idolize the Brits for their fictional characters. If shipwrecked on a deserted island and in need of reading materials to last a lifetime, I’d much rather have aristocratic and feisty Emma Woodhouse and her charming Mr. Knightly with me than Puritanical Hester Prynne and her pastor, Arthur (yawn) Dimmsdale. Give me Heathcliff and Catherine! Bring me my Bridget Jones! Oh, heck, just give me any book that was later turned into a movie starring Hugh Grant and/or Colin Firth! And, now, thanks to Downton Abbey, make sure that I always have the BBC on my telly. (Yes, even on that deserted island.)

Turns out, there’s a lot a Jewish girl from New York can learn from the fictional, Victorian-Era Crawleys and their estate in North Yorkshire. In honor of the upcoming finale of Downton Abbey’s second season, I’d like to share some of these delicious bits of knowledge.

1. Marry your cousin.
Clock ticking? Desperate for a mate? Tired of being set up by your mom’s gay hairdresser? Sick of having half of your grandmother’s mahjong group insist they have the perfect guy for a “mature” woman like yourself? Dear Jewess, don’t fret. The next time your dad worries about who will take over his condo in Boca once he passes on, ensure him that you’ve got his back. Promptly fall in love with your cousin and gain an immediate heir to the estate. Now, don’t go screwing things up by, let’s say, screwing a Turk who then dies in your bed or by pretending you don’t love your cousin when you really, really do. Don’t let the cousin go off to war on Wall Street without telling him how you feel. Worry later about the genetic complications this might prompt, including blood-clotting disorders; for now, stay focused on Boca.

2. Just shut up already.
When people ask me how I am doing, I actually tell them. Sometimes, I go on for several minutes, blabbing and spewing and confiding, analyzing and hypothesizing and then circling back to the original point with some sort of diarrhea of the mouth. What can I say? This is nearly unavoidable when the double helix of your DNA looks like Fran Drescher and Woody Allen snake dancing. An English Lady would never behave like that. She would hold her tongue and smile in mixed company, only divulging her true feelings to her maid. Even if she were bleeding internally during cocktails, I like to think she’d keep concerns about her spleen to herself. Perhaps if I wore a corset, I’d feel less like talking, and therefore, become all the more charming. I’d certainly look better. It’s worth a shot.

3. Use your father’s influence for your own gain.
Oh, wait. We Jewish American Princesses have already got this one down. Check it off the list!

Interestingly, gossip about season 3 of Downton Abbey has some suspecting that Cora Crawley, wife of the Earl of Grantham and daughter of American dry goods multimillionaire Isidore Levinson is actually…gasp…Jewish. With a name like Levinson, it’s certainly possible. And it would help to explain the overlapping behaviors between Jewesses and Countesses, at least in this instance.

(Read the full piece on Tablet here.)

4. When and if that doesn’t work, sneak around behind Papa’s back.
This is really fun. There is no telling what can be done once dear old Papa is out of the loop. This is how most of my shopping at Bergdorf Goodman was done when I was in high school. Afterwards, I would hide the packages so my dad couldn’t document the trouble my mom and I got into with his Amex. But now I see that this was nothing. When done with the English flair of a Crawley, you can achieve true greatness behind your father’s back. You can fall for your politically-minded chauffer and still have time to dress wounds back at the makeshift convalescent hospital set up in your family’s dining room. You can, with help from your mother and her maid, remove the dead Turk from your bedroom and place him back in his own bedchamber. You can then work a romantic deal with a well-known publisher, exchanging your heart for the safety of your public reputation. Shhh. As long as Papa doesn’t know, then you are not a whore, or a slut, or in fear of being disinherited, disowned, or dishonored. There shall be no dissing whatsoever without Daddy’s knowledge. (Easier by far just to go on a shopping spree, if you ask me.)

5. In a tiered society, it’s best to be at the tippy top or the briny bottom.Honestly, the servants and the Dowager Countess seem to have the most fun in and around Downton. There is much to scheme about when you spend all day mending fancy people’s socks and cleaning their underclothes, which explains why O’Brien and Thomas are so delightfully awful. Same with Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess, the most influential of the upstairs bunch. Once she properly positions an off-kilter, feathered and flowered hat atop her curls, she’s got nothing to do all day but gossip and connive and dream up the next sharp barb. And that’s the way life should be as the top 1%. It’s not as much fun being stuck somewhere in the middle, like me, and like dear Bates. He’s got some money, but he’s also got a limp and had a wife who was a bitch. No one wants to be him. And then there’s Isobel Crawley, who has so little power next to Lady Grantham that she had to retreat to France for a while. She’s no fun at all.

When all is said and done, in my next life, I’d like to come back as a British Dutchess or Countess or Heiress. Any ess will do. I’d like to have someone dress me for dinner and I’d want to learn how to ride a horse in the countryside without having to worry about my hay fever.

Oh, and one last thing. I’d like to be able to celebrate Christmas, even if it is fictional and during wartime. Lucky for me, that’s exactly what the Crawleys will be doing this Sunday, February 19th. Now, raise your heirloom quality, cut-glass crystal goblet and follow my lead. Cheers, everyone.

Swedish Meatballs, a Storm, and My Basement

The title sounds like the set-up for a joke, where a man walks into a bar with a duck on his right shoulder and a cat on his left. But, really, it’s about my family, Hurricane Irene, and Ikea. As you can imagine, it’s a tragic-comic tale.

My family and I were on Nantucket when Hurricane Irene hit last August. It was a change over weekend for us, during which time my mom and step-father, Howard, traditionally leave the rental house we all share on the island so that my dad and his girlfriend can come and eat their leftovers. Only, in the days leading up to Irene, the forecast predicted that my mom would not be able to get off the island and my dad would not be able to arrive. In order to decide what to do, my mom and Howard spend the better part of two straight days watching every news report delivered by every wind-and-rain-battered weatherman up and down the Eastern seaboard. Then they went down to the docks to check the ferries and then they came back to the house to worry. When they weren’t doing that, they were calling the Steamship Authority to check on the status of their waitlist placement.

Meanwhile, back on the beach, my 9-year-old son, Andrew, was pacing. Andrew has a keen sensitivity to bad weather, creating in him some sort of internal barometer that works like a panic button in a home security system. All this talk about Hurricane Irene and our small shelter on an island 30 miles out to sea had him on the verge, ready to detonate. He noticed the swelling Atlantic surf and the dark, hovering clouds. Would we be okay? Would Nana and Howard, now 212th on the waitlist of cars needing to be ferried back to Hyannis, ever make it home? Would the lights go out? Would a tree fall on our house? How would Poppy and Lisa arrive?

I had questions too. Mine were more along the lines of, what happens if my mom can’t get home but my dad’s plane arrives? For how long can a grown woman live under the same roof with her children, spouse, parents and their significant others without power, eating from rationed cans of Stop and Shop tuna fish?

I mentally prepared for Survivor: Extreme Nantucket Family Vacation.

Alas, the storm came and went without much fanfare, as did my mom and Howard. We hugged them goodbye and then prepared for my dad’s arrival.

My mom called me later that night to say that she and Howard had checked on our house as promised on their way back to the city.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” She asked.

Our basement had flooded. This actually turned out to be the good news. The bad news was that, because no one had been home, water had been soaking into the carpeting, couch, and walls for over 48 hours. “I knew it the minute I opened your front door,” she said. The smell of wet, moldy carpet had penetrated the whole house.

Brett immediately went into action, calling our insurance agent from the patio at a local restaurant. Three out of the four of us had a nice dinner, as Brett kept excusing himself from the table to make and take calls. That became the theme of the week, Brett clinging desperately to his last few days of vacation, determined not to fly home to deal with this. He became like that “Can you hear me now?” guy, calling carpet removal companies and contractors from every dune on Nantucket. Hunched over slightly to block the sound of wind, one hand clutching a cell phone as he roamed the beach for a signal: this is how I remember that week with my husband.

Our thinking was simple. Why fly home to deal with the mess when my mother was already there to handle the clean up? Because when it comes to cleaning up (or packing, moving, organizing, filing, or tap-dancing), there is no one better for the task.

(I flatter her now publically in order to thank her once again for dealing with the mess and providing us with peace of mind. Although, I’m not sure how reassuring her calls of “Wow, this really is a disaster!” and “It still smells kind of bad, even with the fans” really were, come to think of it.)

A week later, we arrived home, assessed the damage, and went about renovating. New walls, new carpeting, new paint. Next step: a trip to Ikea for furnishings. We wanted to convey Tween Chic.

Comedian Amy Poehler once said in an interview that ‘Ikea’ is the Swedish word for ‘argument.’ Brett and I heartily agree. The first argument we had was about which Ikea to go to. Brett said no to New Jersey, and I said no to New Haven. We settled on Brooklyn. The next argument was with our children, who wanted to know why we insisted they eat Swedish meatballs at a furniture store and for how much longer we planned on torturing them with sitting on couches in make-believe living rooms. “Do you guys like this one? Or this one?” I asked.

“WE DON’T CARE ANYMORE!” Andrew explained, lying listlessly on the Karlstad.

We had so many decisions to make that we needed a return trip, sans children. A week later, for what reasons I’m not sure, Brett and I headed to New Haven. The argument this time was with a salesperson in the TV storage area, who explained that she was not allowed to help us pick the doors, hinges, legs, handle pulls or inner shelves for our Besta unit. For those of you who are not familiar with the Besta storage unit, there are approximately 427 individual choices one must make in order to build this cabinet, creating over 11,000 combinations on what is essentially just a receptacle for DVDs. The fact that no one helps you with this process, and that the unit comes in a zillion pieces, explains the $400 price tag and my escalating migraine.

But, in the end, it was all worth it. Thanks to Brett’s design sense and my love of shopping, we have achieved a really groovy looking subterranean hangout, if I must say so myself. For the record, others say it too.

“I love this!” My friend Jamie oohed, walking around the room for the first time. “And you said it’s all from Ikea?”

“Yup.”

“But where did you get the couch?”

“Ikea.”

“And this desk?” She caressed its smooth, sleek surface.

“Ikea. Everything is from Ikea.”

“But…this chair…?” Jamie said, sinking into a copy of a mid-century Jacobson piece.

“Eye – Key – A!” I said, starting to laugh. “Everything!”

(Well, except from the decorative pillows and cashmere throw and glass knickknacks from ABC Carpet and Home. A girl has to live.)

“It’s perfect!” She declared.

And it is. It’s cozy and hip and it has lots of seating and a mad awesome flat screen on which I can watch Downton Abbey in peace.

My basement is now a perfect place to weather the next storm.

Sexy Grammar for Dummies: “The Bachelor”

The lights are low. I have a glass of white wine in my left hand and a pen in my right. My high definition TV is flickering in front of me like a fire in a faux log cabin on a one-on-one date in Park City, Utah. It’s Monday night, my kids are asleep, my husband is at the gym, and I’m alone at last. Alone with the grammatically incorrect Bachelor, Ben Flajnik, and his sixteen beautiful, grammatically incorrect sister-wives.

Tonight, I plan on getting serious with them. Tonight, I am writing down all of their infractions and giving a metaphorical rose to the worst offender.

It’s hard to rock a bikini and lounge all evening in a hot tub while simultaneously keeping hair and make-up in place. Everyone knows that. So imagine how nearly impossible it must be to do so while also confusing subject and object pronouns.

This is certainly not the first time that The Bachelor (or ette) has featured hotties that lack critical pronoun usage skills. Just to set the record straight: “I” is not automatically proper, no matter what your grandmother told you or how white your teeth are. In recent years, Bachelors Jake Pavelka and Brad Womack unrelentingly and unapologetically pummeled the English language week after week in their search for true love.

So, when Ben declared in the second episode of this season that it was “Time for Emily and I to explore our relationship,” I knew he was ready to find his perfect match, too.

Many fans of the show already recognize and accept the grammatical limitations of the participants, but we suffer through the rape of Strunk and White anyway, just for another glimpse of Fiji from a helicopter. But, what fans fail to realize is that they key to who (whom?) is chosen lies within sentence structures, not between the sheets.

Consider this. After just a few weeks in, I can predict who the finalists from season 16 should be. By cross-referencing the women’s speech patters with Ben’s, I have narrowed the search down considerably. My bachelor matchmaking skills aren’t 100%, but I can probably garner healthier results than the participants, who are wrong 15 1/2 out of every 16 times. I don’t usually brag, but it’s like my very own JDate for Dummies.

The front-runners include:

Courtney
We viewers don’t really like her, but Ben does. And ABC loves her for being the bitch that brings in the ratings. In sizing up the competition, Courtney said, “I think her and I are complete opposites.”

Rachel
She doesn’t say much, that one. But she did say, “I have to stay focused on Ben and I.”

Jennifer
“Clay Walker is a superstar. And he’s having a concert for Ben and I.”

Emily
Alas, even the pretty Ph. D. candidate makes mistakes. “I’m worried that, because Ben has such a strong connection with her, any animosity between Courtney and I could result in Ben thinking negatively towards me.” Oh, Emily, your speech is so wrong, but what you say is so right. Stay out of it, and keep your eyes on the prize.

Here’s what I’d like to see in an upcoming episode. Forget skiing down a hill in San Francisco or repelling illegally into a crater. Take all of the remaining women - wearing cute jean shorts and sundresses, of course - on a group date with Ben to the UCLA campus. There they will bypass the skateboarders and Frisbee throwers and enter the Humanities building, where they will have to strip down to their string bikinis and sharpen their Number 2 pencils. At the start of a bell, they will take the verbal portion of the SATs in a classroom with full-on central air conditioning. The last one to start crying gets a rose from Ben, who, shirtless, hugs her tight while uttering that well-worn Bachelor adage, “If we can make it through this, then there’s nothing we can’t do together.”

Now that’s some sexy television right there.