Meet the family
Back when Joe and I were dating, we went with the kids for a summer trip to spend time with his family.  Until then, our visits with his family had been very short, so it was the first time I had spent any real chunk of time with Joe’s parents (Carol and David), his sister and her husband and son. The first half of the trip was a wonderful stay in a 17th century farmhouse in Ireland. It was fun and mellow, with a great combination of activities and down time.  We spent evenings playing cards and board games with the kids and, later, drinking wine, eating chocolate and chatting.  It was a lovely way of getting to know the people who (I suspected) would become my in-law

The other woman
In the last five years, I have read a lot about being a stepmother.  Much – most – of what I’ve read has been bleak.  Horror stories abound. A constant theme in these books, articles, websites and support groups is The Ex.  The Ex is almost always described as some force of nature who resembles Attila the Hun, in manner, looks and (probably) smell.  The Ex embodies character faults that make the San Andreas look like a wee crack in the sidewalk.  She’s an underhanded, lying, money-grubbing, unstable see-you-next-Tuesday who hates you and will do everything in her power to crush you and make you feel completely inadequate as a woman.  But th

love and Love
In college, I took a class in which we defined Love.  After much back and forth, we landed on the simple, yet elegant, “Best Friend plus Lust.” Another time, a favorite cousin was writing an article about Love.  He asked for input on how peoples’ partners had expressed their Love.  I was in my 20s, and had told myself that I had Loved some of my boyfriends…but my obvious inability to answer his question with any kind of honest response suggested otherwise. Today, I would have no trouble answering that question, and it’s clear that – for me – the most profound expressions of Love are not delivered in words or gifts.  T

The fabric of my life
Yesterday at 9am, my Mom called to ask if I wanted to go to the Jewish grocery store.  It was a very pleasant and utterly average conversation about life’s mundane activities.  At 9pm, she called again.  Some time during the day, sometime after the phone call about buying me a kosher chicken, she and my father had put Ivy to sleep. Ivy on September 22, 2009 Ivy was my parents’ 15 year-old golden retriever.  I went with Mom in the fall of 1994

Emotional Eating
I’ve never understood people who stop eating when they’re stressed.  Me?  Just as all roads lead to Rome, all emotions lead to food.  Stressed?  Eat!  Celebrating?  Eat!  Happy? Sad? Up? Down? Sideways?  Eat, eat, eat.  Hell, they don’t even have to be MY emotions!  Sometimes, I’m infected by third party emotions from reading a book or even watching reality TV.  Unfortunately, when all emotions lead to eating, that means a LOT of paths lead to the fridge. Sometimes the intersection of emotions and logistics provides even more fertile ground for making bad food choices.  This weekend, we put our house on the market.  For those of you