New Blog Name - Same Great Content

So after renewing my commitment to blog writing, I decided that I needed a new blog title. Not because the title 30-Something with Something to Say wasn't fabulous. But because it was no longer true.

I mean, I still have PLENTY to say. But I crossed the 40 threshold about 18 months ago, so now, I'm in the 40-something demographic. I'm still not sure how that happened but it did.

So welcome to Momentum Begins with Mom. Because that really is truth in advertising, and that title will never age out. If you want something done, ask a mom. If you want to know where something is, ask a mom. If you want to just talk about something, ask a mom.

So today, I wanted to talk about the most momly of mom duties -- housework. I started off today around 4 in the morning (thanks, insomnia) with a facebook post asking if anyone cleaned their houses from top to bottom before vacation, because that is exactly what I have been doing the past two days in preparation for our Wildwood, NJ vacation. As of 4pm that afternoon, I had 20 likes and another 12 moms who responded in the affirmative that they, like me, scoured their houses before vacation. What a typical mom move, right? Cleaning the house for when no one will be there. I even went so far in my status thread to admit that I have actually scrubbed hotel room tubs before taking a bath when I was on vacation. I mean, how could I let Calgon truly "take me away" with the thought of microbes and someone else's hair floating all around me. YUCK!!!!

Last weekend, we had a new babysitter at the house. Now I've known the babysitter for well over a year. She's a great college student -- really civics minded and whip-smart. I spent Friday night and most of Saturday cleaning the downstairs and our sons' rooms so that she wouldn't think she landed a babysitting gig on an episode of "Hoarders." Yup -- you read that right. A weekend day spent cleaning the house to impress a 22-year-old girl for three hours.

I wish I could understand what drives me, and other moms like me (and the occasional dad) to invest so much time in something that will only need to be done again, and again, and again until I either give up or hire a cleaning service. Although I suspect that even if I hired a cleaning service, I would probably still go over all their work to make sure that they dusted in all the corners, wiped the window wells, and.....well, you get the picture.

"Parenthood", Adoption, and Working Moms

Last fall, I decided to start watching the NBC show "Parenthood." Told by several friends that one of the families was adopting a non-infant child from foster care, I was curious to see how well it depicted what my life has been like for the past three years. I've seen adoption portrayed on a number of shows, from "Glee" (completely unrealistic) to "Modern Family" (fairly realistic, but much funnier than real life).

I've been catching up with old episodes and purging them from what seems to always be our "94% maximum capacity attained" DVR. During the first few episodes of the season, I was pleased to admit that it was pretty spot-on. Like us, the family in the TV show has an adopted son, Victor, who is slowly adjusting to his new life. Things like going to a new school, having a set bedtime, joining the baseball team, and meshing into a nearly all-white family (he's Latino) are just some of Victor's challenges.

Victor's parents, Julia and Joel, work hard to welcome him to their family. They are eager for those precious moments of connection with their new child, waiting, as Julia says "to fall in love with our son." Watching these scenes makes me confident that there must be at least on person on the "Parenthood" writing staff who has adopted a child from foster care and knows the continuous roller coaster that it can be. That push and pull of wanting to give love and have acceptance one minute, and being completely exasperated and ready to throw in the towel the next.

The family also has a young daughter, Sydney, who is starting to question her parents' loyalty to her, in the face of her new older brother. She is also beginning to show signs of resentment that Victor doesn't always have to follow the same rules that she does.

All of these behaviors ring true to me. Nearly three years into our son's adoption through foster care, we are still working through many of these same topics: setting rules, trying to undo the previous foster family's poor parenting, making time for real connections, and questioning what, if anything, we are doing "right". Adding to the challenge is that we're not doing this with an infant or toddler, but a fully expressive six-year-old, who is often torn between wanting to please his new family, wanting to test our commitment to him, and wondering why he's not with his old family, which was clearly a no-rules, no-consequences environment that is radically different from our home life.

But back to the show. One episode focused on Julia and the impact that motherhood has had on her full-time job as an attorney. Again, the writers on the show seemed to handle this deftly. At the start of the episode, Julia has to miss Sydney's dance recital because she is stranded at work. Julia is exasperated, and in need of her daughter's forgiveness, but Sydney is pissed and is in no mood to make it easy for her mother. Later in the episode, Julia needs to leave Victor's first baseball game when her law partners summon her to the office for the kind of conversation that you know is not going to be good.

Interrogated by the partners about her recent lackluster performance, Julia weakly defends herself, and then promptly announces her resignation. Not a "I need time to pull it together" request for some sort of legal sabbatical -- but full-on "See ya! I'm outta here."

What??? Having only watched a handful of episodes of this show, it seems unlikely that the type A, competitive Julia would just roll over and quit. While she may no longer aspire to be on "partner track" at the firm, surely the writers could have come up with a solution that would allow her to keep her job or at least keep the story line in the realm of the real world, where people just don't leave six-figure-salary jobs while crossing their fingers that their stay-at-home spouse can magically reactivate the career he or she left a few years back to raise the children.

Which makes me question where the writers are going with this. Of all the women on the show, Julia is the only female character with any serious career aspirations and education to back it up. How disappointing then, that the one character who has a real opportunity to model the challenges and triumphs of balancing a demanding career and family life made more chaotic by the dynamics of adoption has now seemingly capitulated because it's too hard.

As a full-time working mom, most days I get up tired, plow through work, come home, and work into the wee hours of the morning to make sure that lunches are made, bills are paid, uniforms are ironed, bathrooms are cleaned, school projects are complete, and my facebook status is updated. And I know I am not alone -- most of my working mom friends live that exact same life, day in and day out. But that type of exhaustion is rarely shown on TV (maybe with the exception of Patricia Heaton's "The Middle" or Martha Plimpton's "Raising Hope"). Instead, everyone looks well rested, has time to make it to the gym, kicks ass at the office, has great hair, skin and nails, and a  fancy car with a killer wardrobe to boot.

I'm hoping that as I finish this season of "Parenthood", I will see a return to the competitive Julia who really wants to (or needs to, like most of us in the real world) find a way to balance the challenging life of the real  working mom. Then, I will be satisfied that "Parenthood" has truly gotten it right.

Hurricane Sandy = HUGE SAVINGS to online shoppers

Twenty-four hours after the Atlantic Ocean flooded beach towns up and down the coast of New Jersey, those of us with electricity and a dry checkbook have reason to rejoice: Gary Barbera is extending their Cadillac Madness sale thanks to the hurricane!

Yes, you heard that right. While watching tonight's 11 o'clock Action News, which focused almost exclusively on the devastation of the unprecedented damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, Philadelphia-based car salesman/slickster Gary Barbera thought it would be a great opportunity to let the greater Delaware Valley know that their Cadillac sale is being extended. And doing it with cheesy stock footage of windswept trees in a driving rain to accompany the sales pitch.

Horrified, I took to facebook, only to see that a friend of mine had posted a similar story about another car dealership in the area (this one in New Jersey) that promised $1000 off the cost of a certain type of car for every inch of rain that Hurricane Sandy brought to the region.

Tacky and insensitive doesn't even begin to describe this type of marketing.

I tried in vain to find the Barbera commercial online, so I could include it here, but it has proven surprisingly elusive. However, a quick Google search of the terms "Hurricane Sandy sale" revealed that car dealerships aren't the only ones promoting Hurricane Sandy as a reason to shop. Retailers like American Apparel, Urban Outfitters, and The Gap are all (or at least were, until the press and bloggers got wind of it) offering great deals for people who are in the mood to expand their wardrobe while their neighbors across town sit bundled in darkness, in a shelter, wearing the same sweatshirt and jeans they've had on since they abandoned their houses two days ago.

American Outfitters promises free shipping during Hurricane Sandy.
Now, you just have to hope the mailman can find your house after the storm.

I realize that our country is one enormous capitalist machine, but at what point do we draw the line? Since when is devastation a cause for people to rejoice that they can open their wallets and buy another pair of skinny jeans, boots, or push-up bras? How is it ever acceptable for a company to think that using the term "SandySale" is an appropriate discount code for online shoppers? These are the questions I will be posting to each of these company's facebook pages this evening.

All I know is that Christmas shopping season starts really soon, and you can bet that none of the companies offering any kind of Sandy Sale will be getting any of my money this holiday season.

WHAT IS "ACADEMIC REALIGNMENT" AND WHY IS IT WRONG FOR UPPER DARBY

If you've been watching the news during the past few weeks, you may have noticed that the Upper Darby School District (home to yours truly) has an enormous education crisis on its hands. Due to state budget cuts, the Upper Darby School Board has proposed that starting with the 2012-2013 school year, all ARTS, MUSIC, LIBRARY, and GYM classes will be removed from the elementary schools. In the middle schools, FOREIGN LANGUAGE and TECHNOLOGY classes will also be eliminated. Sixty teachers will lose their jobs, and those who remain have the daunting task of integrating all of these "cut" classes into the existing curriculum.

This "academic realignment proposal" (the school board's term, not mine) has parents, teachers, students, and taxpayers shaking their heads. On my block, the average school tax taps out at around $8000/year. How is that not enough to keep at least some of these six classes in the curriculum? The school board claims that this proposal will help Upper Darby students "succeed as citizens in the new global economy." But no one on the school board can adequately explain how graduates of Upper Darby schools will be able to compete in the global economy if they lack foundations in foreign languages and technology, the two cornerstones of the global economy.

On Tuesday, May 8th, the school board held a meeting to discuss their proposal. The Performing Arts Center at the Upper Darby High School (not too ironic, right?) was packed with parents, children, teachers, and taxpayers eager to address the board. When the floor was opened for public comment at 8:45pm, at least 70 speakers got up and waited patiently to give their time-allotted three-minute speeches extolling the virtues of the arts and offering alternative solutions to these painful cuts. Although some school board members listened, others found it perfectly acceptable to read and reply to text messages and excuse themselves to answer what I can only assume were phone calls from people who DON'T pay their salaries. One man, who I understand will be transferring into the Radnor school district next year (you've been warned, Main Liners), sat as far back in his chair as the springs would allow, with his head resting on one of his hands, with a body language that could only be described as disinterested and disgusted.

The meeting stretched until 2am, at which point the proposed curriculum was tentatively passed by the board, with a 5-3 vote. They followed that up with an even gutsier 7-1 vote to approve a 3% tax increase. The board voted hastily and couldn't even be bothered to politely excuse themselves and pretend to deliberate for a few moments behind closed doors. Their vote clearly conveyed that the majority of the board has no interest in exploring any alternatives to this proposal.

But I, like many of the parents, children, teachers, and taxpayers in Upper Darby, refuse to consider this a done deal. The final vote to approve the budget is due in June, which means that there are still a few weeks left for people to raise their voices and demand that the school board and our elected officials FIND ANOTHER WAY.

Are you ready to help? If so, my neighbors in Upper Darby (and myself, of course) would be grateful if you could do the following:

(1) Log on to http://www.saveudarts.org/;

(2) Click "Sign the Petition", read and sign the petition that requests funding for these programs be restored; and

(3) Send the link to family or friends who are 18 years or age or older, support the arts, and live in Pennsylvania. Anyone in Pennsylvania (even if they don't live in Upper Darby or don't have kids in public school) can sign this petition.

The Upper Darby school district is the ninth largest school district in Pennsylvania, with a creative and performing arts program that has a long-standing tradition of nationwide excellence. If the state doesn't think twice about coming after a school district as large and diverse as Upper Darby, it is only a matter of time before smaller districts with less established arts programs will be sacrificed as well.

Kids in the district are making signs of support, starting lemonade stands, and sending their allowance to teachers and principals. Adults are writing letters, making calls, and preparing to march on Harrisburg to tell Governor " Tom "slash and burn" Corbett that his cuts are destroying the creative integrity of a generation of children.

Please join with your neighbors who are fighting valiantly to educate the next generation of leaders, performers, and visionaries.

I welcome your support at http://www.saveudarts.org/.

Welcome to 40 - Just Sharing the Wisdom

It's been 20 days since my 30s came to an end, and I'm doing surprisingly well. While there have been ups and downs, overall it's not too bad (aside from the stray grey hairs that are popping up in my dark brown eyebrow arch above my left eye, making it look like I've had some sort of tweezing accident). But hey, I'll take stray grey eyebrows over grey head hair any day, so I'll just shut up.

Here's the top 10 things I've learned since turning 40:

1) Celebrations for milestone birthdays (like 40, 50, 60, etc) that result in gifts like candles from CVS purchased minutes before gift-giving do NOT go over well. I mean, even though Molly Ringwald got no gifts in "16 Candles," she ended up with Jake Ryan and that awesome dining room table kiss.

2) Kind friends and family (and contrite spouses) will make enormous efforts to amend disappointing birthday celebrations, particularly if you have a spectacular meltdown in your bedroom.

3) Although it may be necessary to stand on your concert seat to get a better view of the stage, it's not worth getting into a fight with a posse of younger, skinnier bitches in the row behind you at a Kelly Clarkson concert, even if your husband has your back. I'm just sayin'.

4) Sometimes, jumping in the car and going to Reading, PA on a whim, to watch "professional" wrestling can be a great way to spend a Saturday night.

5) The office douchebag who tries to rationalize why he can't perform basic office maintenance tasks (ie, "you should be responsible for changing the toner in the copier, Maria, since your stuff was the last stuff that printed") should be ignored. That is, until you openly mock his arrogance to female coworkers behind his back.

6) Too much AXE cologne really, no REALLY, hurts the nasal passages and basically torpedoes your chance of hooking up (do people still call it "hooking up?") with others.

7) People who say "anyhoo" or (even worse, use it as part of a facebook status) should be immediately defriended without explanation.

8) Husbands who offer to make their kids' lunches are viewed as exponentially more sexy to tired working moms than those men who couch on the sofa watching repeats of "Storage Wars."

9) You're never to old to snuggle with your kids, although they will definitely be too old one day to want to snuggle with you.

10) Trying to beat the computer in two consecutive games of Scrabble is in an exercise in futility, especially at 2 in the morning. Also, note to some, when playing on the Kindle, the computer takes the name AI (as in artificial intelligence), not Al (as in short for Alfred). It took me about three weeks of playing before I realized that.

More wisdom later...

Memories of Christmas Past (or, Why Modern Technology Has Taken the "Special" out of the "Christmas Special")

I got home today from work, excited that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was airing tonight. No matter how many times I've see them, all those holiday shows like "Rudolph," "Frosty," and "The Grinch" have that same transportive power -- they all take me back to the mid- to late-70s, popping (or, most likely, burning) the shake it 'til you break your arm Jiffy Pop popcorn, sitting on the plaid sofa with my brother and parents under the multicolor yarn-scrap afghan knitted by my Cioci Elizabeth, waiting for that super-cool CBS SPECIAL bumper to introduce each show.

You know the one, that starts with this acid-trip graphic:









That turns into this:










In the Pownall house, countdowns always need to happen before something actually happens. So at 7pm, I told the boys that we would be going up for showers at 7:30, so we could watch Charlie Brown at 8. All was running smoothly until I told our older son, Jake, that we'd all be watching TV together until the show was over at 9, and then it would be bed time.

To which he responded, "But mom, I really wanted to get on the computer tonight. Can't we DVR Charlie Brown and watch it another night? What if I just watch the first half? Can I go on the computer at 8:30?"

Watch HALF of Charlie Brown? But you'll miss seeing the kids dancing those silly dances during rehearsal. Miss hearing Linus's speech about the real meaning of Christmas. Miss Charlie Brown smiling as the Peanuts gang sings "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" over the end credits? Is all of THIS worth missing for round 4,301 of Angry Birds? Isn't family time more important than gaming? Isn't tonight the very definition of special?? AREN'T WE MAKING MEMORIES FOR A LIFETIME, GODDAMN IT??

And what I realized is that, sadly, Charlie Brown isn't special to my son's generation. Neither is Frosty, Rudolph, or any of those other "classics" of the season. And it's not their fault. When I was growing up, these cartoons only came on once a year. If you were being punished that night or (God forbid!) your school was so unfortunate as to have scheduled their annual Christmas pageant (back when you could call it a Christmas pageant) on the same night, you were out of luck for another 365 days.

It makes me wonder what will be the "Christmas classics" of my sons' generation, when you can watch Hoopes and YoYo Save Christmas or Christmas in Bikini Bottom hundreds of times each season if you wanted to.

Given today's overreliance on instant electronic gratification, kids can't understand that there was a time (not that long ago) when destination television was exactly that -- you caught it when it was on, or you were SOL for another year. These days, a show can re-air multiple times throughout the Christmas season (considering it now runs from November 1st until January 1st). And even if you miss these reruns, you can always hulu it, youtube it, upload it, buy it on Blu-Ray at Target for $12.99, or get a bootleg copy for $7 on a folding table at 41st and Market.

And so the war waged in my head tonight: do I kick tradition to the curb and keep the peace in my house by letting my son play on the computer, or do I dig in and force him to enjoy my holiday traditions.

I'm happy to report that we all dug in. Not only did we make it through A Charlie Brown Christmas, but we also watched the newer Peanuts Christmas shorts that came afterwards. And everyone had a smile on the face, at least most of the time, anyway.

Charlie Brown: 1; Angry Birds: 0

Way to go, old Chuck!!

C is for Cookie...And That's Really F---ing Annoying!

Yesterday, I went out at lunch with a coworker. We decided to treat ourselves to something yummy at DiBruno Bros on Chestnut Street (or is it Walnut Street? I can never tell them apart unless I'm driving).

I approach the pastry case, I immediately eye up the cranberry gingerbread bar with cream cheese frosting. I am a sucker for these at Starbucks during the Christmas season, and although there are two Starbucks, each one block away from where I work, I hardly ever indulge at work (mostly because I am always running late for work and I hate waiting in the long Starbucks lines downtown).

I decide to give the DiBruno Bros. version a try, confident that theirs will be yummier, fresher, and more satisfying than whatever has been mass-produced in the Starbucks case two blocks down the street. The only thing separating me from immediate powdered sugar and cream cheese euphoria --- the well-coifed Rittenhouse Square wife ahead of me in line.


In the pastry case, there are six classic holiday options: a gingerbread man, an ice skate, a mitten, a wreath, a snowflake, and some undefinable shape with white frosting and red and green squiggly lines on it. I'm thinking that I probably have about 2 minutes until sugar satisfaction.


Wifey starts her order. It goes something like this:

"I'll have one skate, one wreath. Hmmm...I guess...I guess one snowflake."

{Pause, as she scans the case}

"And one gingerbread man."

"A blue mitten." (Perhaps worth noting that blue is the only color that the mittens come in)

"How much does that weigh?"

The guy behind the counter takes the box to the scale. "A little less than a pound, miss. You can probably get one more cookie in there."

I snarkily think to myself that this woman hasn't chronologically been a "miss" in about a decade, but whatever. I HATE being called "m'am", and I'm pretty sure that the young DiBruno Bros. workers are instructed to ALWAYS refer to women of a certain age by "miss," just to keep the clientele happy.

Back at the cookie case, she scans the trays again and asks the guy, "Can you show me what that white frosted one looks like outside the case?"

Outside the case? The case is clear glass, so I'm not sure how different it's going to look outside the case as opposed to inside it. The counter guy obliges and lifts the cookie off the tray and into the air for her approval. He doesn't appear to be phased by this request, so I assume that this type of interaction with high-maintenance, overprivliged women (whose husbands work 80-hours a week, and who pay someone to clean their house and nanny their children so "mommy" can get some well deserved "me time"), is standard operating procedure in the Rittenhouse Square area.

"Well, I don't know what that is, but I guess I'll take that one, too."

Depending on how fast you read, it probably seems like this interaction took all of about two minutes. But trust me when I tell you that it went on for five minutes.

With the addition of the unidentifiable cookie shape, her order is complete. Heavenly cream cheese goodness can't be long now.

"I think I'll get another box. A pound this time."

My heart sinks. And the cycle repeats:

"One mitten."

"One, no make that two, skates. I guess a gingerbread man."

"A white thing. And one wreath."

That's six cookies. Five minutes ago, six cookies equaled a half-pound, so we're halfway there.

"Can you weigh that, please?"

The counter guy obliges. Hey, at least she said "please."

"Almost a half-pound."

At this rate, I'm thinking that the math is kinda like a word problem that most third graders could probably figure out:

QUESTION: A woman goes into a bakery. If there are six cookies in a half-pound, how many cookies does the lady need to order to equal a full pound?

Seemingly perplexed, the woman scans the case again. You can tell by her careful deliberation that these types of ornamental decisions are the only ones that this woman ever makes.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Two more wreaths and a gingerbread man. How many is that?"

"Nine, miss. You can probably get about four more."

"A skate, and a mitten."

"And two snowflakes. Can you weigh it again?"

"A little over a pound, miss. Is that OK?" I detect a slight air of desperation from the counter guy.

At this point, I'm thinking, "Please God, don't let her ask to do something like snap the blade off the skate to bring the weight to an even pound." I know most people would never ask something like that, but with this woman, anything (And I mean ANYTHING) is possible.

"That's fine."

Amen!! A true Christmas miracle! After almost ten minutes in line, I can order my dessert. After I pay, I find my coworker, who apparently sampled a fine array of gourmet cheeses from around the world while I was in line. So jealous! And so exasperated that I couldn't even eat my cranberry bar, so great was my need to vent to her immediately on our walk back to the office.

Meanwhile, back at the office, I had my cranberry gingerbread bar. And, damn it if it didn't taste anywhere near as yummy as Starbucks'.