Rainy Days and Mondays

Why are clementines ONLY sold in boxes of about six dozen? Is there some sort of Clementine cartel? Try as I may, and I really do, I never manage to eat them all before a layer or two become rotten, the skin separating from ball of citrus meat which then rattles around inside. Who needs a couple dozen clementines at once? Why can’t they sell then like EVERY other and vegetable and fruit (other than berries), in such a manner that let’s you decide how many you need. Every year I look forward to Clementine season and every year I toss out about half of which I buy. When people come over I end up pushing clementines on them…no, really, please take twelve home with you.

I can’t believe that Christmas is around the corner. We don’t even have a tree yet, which is infinitely disappointing since I am the type that puts up a tree on Thanksgiving weekend. But the weekends are just flying by, and all we have done is place a few snowmen around the house. I will consider this holiday season a success if we can get a tree up before Christmas and if I can make it through to January without hearing the damn barking jingle bells song.

In a move that can only be chalked up to denial, I am buying books like a person who has time to read them. Unless I am sentenced to a few months in jail (always a possibility) there is no way I will get through my stack of books. Fiction, nonfiction, how-to guides, cookbooks. I can’t stop buying them and stacking them up on my nightstand. This is akin to my magazine addiction. I have loved magazines since I could read. As a child I was a regular reader of such journalistic wonders as Sticker Magazine, Teen, Seventeen, Young Miss-turned YM, Mad, Crack’d. Nothing made me happier than having a neat little stack in my room, to be read while eating gummi bears. It’s no wonder that I ended up working at magazines as an adult. If you believe the theory (and I do) that you read magazines that represent the you you want to be, then you can tell a lot about me based on my stack: Martha Stewart, Runner’s World, Country Home (a new addition to my list), and the Pottery Barn catalog.

Anyone see that article in Newsweek on fertility and diet? I bought this issue, lured in by the promise of some groundbreaking discovery, like raw potatoes increases fertility by 70 percent or something else bizarre. Instead it was yet another rehashing of eat more fruits and vegetables, eat less carbohydrates, limited fats and oils and go easy on the meat. How is this groundbreaking? That was pretty much my diet anyway and it still took me years to conceive. When will this be moved to the old news file?

A friend of mine said to try to be the parent you want your children to be someday to their own kids. I keep turning this around and around in my head. It’s really great advice and makes me look at my day-to-day life in a different way. But, like all things, great theory; difficult to execute. Today is stretching before me and it is overwhelming. I feel like I overuse that word to the point of diluting its meaning. But it is overwhelming on a day like today, when it is raining so going out with the babies is out of the question. It should be outlawed, rainy days and mondays at the same time. I totally get that Carpenter song now.

Speaking of bad moms…Avery is watching the Today Show while I am sitting here with my computer (Maddie is napping). And a magazine editor who shall remain nameless is on TV defending the theory that there is such a thing as being too clean. A segment on how to shower and takes baths and deodorant soaps. Meredith Viera’s journalist credentials just dipped as she asked “How often should I wash my towels?” This is why I ended up leaving the magazine world, because things like this don’t deserve segments on the morning news.

Here's a fun real estate game, for anyone who is interested in these sorta things. Look at these two places. One is a two bedroom, two bath condo on the Upper West Side here in NYC. Here is a link to the NYC listing The other is a four bedroom, three bath house in Massachusetts with 650 feet of riverfront. Here is that link to the Massachusetts home. For the NYC place, try to scroll down and look at the pics and the floor plan. Skip the middle section where the price is listed. And for the Mass place, the price isn't listed on that site so browse away. I'm curious what you think these places should cost? Which is more expensive? How much would you pay to live in either place?

Above, Maddie and her clementine...it's both food AND fun.