by Angie Mizzell

My husband is very supportive, but I could tell he was annoyed. Another weekend had seemed to disappear before it ever got started. I can’t remember the last time we spent an afternoon playing tourist in our charming historic city, browsing shops and stopping in a local restaurant for a late lunch and a glass of wine.

Today we have two children, a preschooler and a baby. I’m a stay-at-home/work-at-home mom, who like so many, is struggling and juggling, trying to balance my desire to work with my desire to stay home with my children. When I see a window opportunity to get some uninterrupted work done, I pounce on it. Unfortunately, those opportunities often fall on the weekends, when my husband is home.

My husband happily does his part; he’ll watch the boys so I can disappear anytime I ask. But I wonder if that’s really fair? If we’re passing them back and forth, what will that do to our marriage? My husband sees this as a short term issue. One day our sons will be in school and I’ll have more time to work from home.

On this particular weekend, I wanted to talk about it… to solve it right there in the middle of the den. But I decided to leave the conversation alone. He wasn’t angry, and neither was I. He wants me to have what I want; I don’t want my family to suffer in the process.

And I don’t want to rush this time. In the midst of my questions, I see how beautiful my life really is. When I obsess over doing in perfectly, I waste precious moments.

So I went into our bedroom and worked for a bit, and then I looked outside. The sun what shining. I wondered where everyone was. I found my husband and the boys in a open field across the street from my house. I decided to join them.

There’s an art to living in the moment… it requires trusting my intuition. And at that moment, even though I had plenty of quiet time to work, I decided to close my laptop, and go fly a kite!

Okay, so I’ve come out of the closet about my spending issues. Problem is, I’m still in the house of “I swear I had a $20 in my wallet just yesterday, where did it go?” So for the past few weeks, I popped a check register in my purse and wrote down every single penny to leave my hands.

Want to know the sad truth? 75% of it went toward food. Snacks, pit stops with the kids, a smoothie here, some chicken nuggets there, and oh, God, Starbucks must love me. Maybe if they paid me to be their spokeswoman I could actually afford the coffee. Worse, I actually have one of those amazing Keurig coffee machines at home, but I’m still driving three blocks to pay $3.50 for a cup of the same. Damn. Thing.

So I’m still sitting in this house of splurge, but I’m hanging out in the Honesty Room, too. Nothing like a list of useless purchases to bring home exactly what needs to change. Like, I don’t know, maybe packing a lunch? The worst part to me is that I spend a lot of time making sure our house is stocked with basic healthy snacks and easy-to-make meals.

But last night I ordered Chinese food. Come on, the chicken breasts were still frozen, it would have taken, like, MINUTES to thaw them in the microwave and make dinner.

Enough with the excuses. Since I’m all hell-bent on taking control of my life this year, even in the midst of the potential whirlwinds to come, it’s time to put down the latte and face some unpleasant truths. I go out because I’m bored. It’s winter, the kids can’t spend as much time outside, and cabin fever has us firmly in its grasp. So, we go grab lunch, or play at the mall and pick-up some Orange Julius, just cuz. And since I’m being all honest and truthy, I must admit that kids with their mouths full of drive-thru food are a lot less whiny. At least, for that moment they are.

So my next step? While the last few weeks were for monitoring, the next few weeks will be a bit harder. Plan ahead, pack snacks, and oh horror, get out the art supplies and find things to do BESIDES going out for a “treat.”

Because people, it’s only a treat if it’s every now and then. Four and five times a week? That’s a lifestyle and not the one I want. Time to go pack up some graham crackers and raisins. But Starbucks, if you’re reading this– call me!! I bet we can work something out.

by Beth Smith

Some of you asked after my last newsletter blog that I post some pictures after attending the Food and Winefest at Mohegan Sun Casino Resort, so I thought I would oblige. Let me say right off that bat I think I gained 5 pounds—not kidding. Several thousand very happy people attended the Grand Tasting event on January 30^th-31st, which featured 149 exhibitors.

After several hours of sipping and crowd watching (believe me, all the entertainment you’ll need), my girlfriend and I hit the room to get ready for the Celebrity Chef Dine Around event. What a pleasure to get ready mindfully and in peace (well, except for that little buzz in my head, which actually was quite pleasant and not of the annoying sort).  

What a great time! 24 celebrity chefs created innovative and delicious dishes right before eyes and paired it with a complimentary wine selection. Heaven!

Robert Irvine of Dinner Impossible

Todd English

Did you know they sell necklaces that actually hold your wine glass? Who knew? We were not prepared and had to do some juggling. So girlfriends, what are you waiting for? Since 74% of you that took our last poll admitted to workaholic tendencies, I’d say it’s time to whip off those pearls, replace it with one of these, and go have some fun!

Wine Necklace

 Cheers!

My commute home tonight was unusually long and I had plenty of time to day dream. It was in the monotony of that stop and go traffic that I made a startling realization. It wasn’t an epiphany, but it hurt my heart (and my head for a few minutes because I am slightly mathematically challenged). It went something like this: if Eleanor gets up at 7:30 and I leave for work by 8 and I return by 5:30 and she goes to bed at 7:00 and I work 5 days per week, then I get to see my toddler for a grand total of 10 awake hours during the week. T-E-N. GASP! UGH! WEEP!

As I worked out this story problem in my head, it confirmed what I intuitively know…I need to accelerate my plans to work for myself. Every month that I don’t do it is one full month worth of time I don’t get to spend with my babies. Time I don’t get back, but a second chance at a career is always possible. When I start to have these thoughts, it lights a seriously strong fire in my heart and under my butt. I am smart and tenacious and people want to work with me. Maybe there’s a way that my current organization will hire me as a consultant. But maybe not. The remainder of this month is now dedicated to lining up some serious discussions with potential future clients, dropping hints to a few more people in my network and making my dream a reality. If the response is favorable, I could be working for myself sooner that I thought. My friend, Kelly, reminded me that if I were at liberty to broadcast to everyone freely what I want to do as well as spend my days meeting and networking, I could get business fast. I know she’s right. I’m ready to live the life I’ve always imagined.

For a while, I referred to the fetus as Armbuds. They were the feature that delighted me the most when I peered at his first sonogram photo, in which my son resembles an adorable cocktail shrimp.

My mother, a pushy sort with Upper East Side aspirations, visibly recoiled when I told her we were naming our son Dante. I was surprised and relieved when she didn’t insist upon voicing her displeasure. Little did I know that she would later insist upon calling him “Jack” for the entirety of one of his visits, and introduce him to her doorman as “Dan” on another.

“Dante!” people would say, with that wan, cautious smile you give someone who’s brandishing a firearm while taking off their pants. “I once went to a hairdresser named Dante!”

Had I won this coin toss, I would have named my son after myself. I liked the name Alex for a boy, and it would’ve been a nice opportunity to utilize my androgynous name, a spin on creating a junior. Or I would have named him Jonas, a name rife with all sorts of connotations for me, the name I’d given a fictional character I’d been trying to bring into the world.

As my belly swelled to the size of a basketball, my husband, an English teacher – like myself, an egghead-y sort – broke out a copy of the Paradiso and would read cantos to the shifting sphere that weighted me to the mattress. Though the Paradiso features Beatrice, Dante’s true love, guiding him through Heaven, it’s mostly political allegory. While my husband read, the baby occasionally kicked, surely from boredom, but we made our way through the book through my third trimester, as the bright grayness of the sky gave way to a warm, blue spring.

On the day I gave birth, when I was given a pain pill and hooked up to a beeping machine, my husband sat at the desk by the foot of my bed and excitedly filled out the baby’s social security card form. “Dante Prospero Raphael? Dante Raphael Prospero?” he asked himself.

“Hold up,” I said, incapacitated by wires, probably already slurring my speech from the meds,

“You’re going to throw ‘Jonas’ in there, right?”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” he said, and I had a feeling he wouldn’t.

Prospero was my grand-uncle’s name and my great grandfather’s name. It was a name that had appeared in my family for generations. My husband liked it because of The Tempest.

I rather enjoy the delight my wry, affected grand-uncle can’t hide when he and my son are in the same room, and Dante’s rearranging the pillows, and my grand-uncle suddenly couldn’t care less about the tidiness of his room.

Every now and then I’ll kid around with the boy-child and ask him if he wants to be like mommy and rename himself Alex, but he always responds adamantly. “My name is Daaaahn-tay,” he says in that too-loud, bright little boy voice, and despite any misgivings I may have once had, I can’t imagine it as anything else.

In my ongoing “project” ideas I am planning for Spring I am thinking about what citrus I have room for, how I can build a raised vegetable bed, where I can add more roses…I am always thinking about where I can add more color and fragrance, not to mention edibles!

This is the time (for my climate) to plant bare root roses. They are inexpensive and readily available. I did an entire bed with 11 bare roots I got at Home Depot for $11.00 a piece, with canes that are thick and healthy. I got my 16-year-old son Matthew to clean out the bed and dig the holes for me. I showed him how to make the mound in the center of the hole to support the loose roots. I figured if he is even half way paying attention this is a nice little bit of quirky knowledge for him to take with him. Maybe someday he will plant his own fragrant beautiful rose garden. Wouldn’t it be great to send a renaissance man into the world? I am always talking to him about being a caring mate for the future woman in his life. I have told him “when your woman has cramps from her period, draw her a hot bath and tell her to relax. You’ll take care of the dinner” (house cleaning, laundry and the kids…..Ok maybe that’s too much) Still let’s talk to our boys about being considerate mates!!

Anyway back to my garden. I think on the wall behind the roses I will put espaliade lemon trees. This is where they have been trained to grow flat against a trellis…they are really spectacular! I have just mapped out an old English rose garden and ordered roes from the David Austin catalogue on line www.davidaustinroses.com. My bed is pretty big so I ordered 18. They suggest groupings of 3 to get the maximum impact. I lined the border with 1-gallon boxwoods that I got at Home Depot (giant box store). I ordered everything from rusty colored Benjamin Bratten to Pat Austin, Ambridge to Winchester Cathedral, Queen of Sweden to Braithwait…It should be quite a show of beautiful color and fragrance. It is fun to think and plan now. It kind of shoots you forward to Spring and helps with the winter blues. Not to mention they are less expensive this way and you can find a larger variety.

This weekend I was working my husband to build me a raised vegetable bed from non-treated railroad ties. I need 16 to build two 8’ squares, 2’ high. It’s a bit daunting considering we don’t have a truck and they sound VERY heavy.  So I’m going to figure those logistics out and then move forward.

I encourage you to check out the David Austin site. Even if you are not a big gardener you can add a few of these lovelies to your yard.

Whether you are a seasoned executive or just dipping your toe in the water for a new business approach to social media, I thought it relevant to share the winners of Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs for 2010 by Michael Stelzner. As a regular reader to a good portion of these blogs, I’ve had many a “we should be doing that” moments. To that end, we have a new facebook page with exclusive content designed just for our friends! See you there and hope to ttyl.

1. Chris Brogan: The Elvis of social media and the king of common sense, Chris Brogan is in a league of his own.
2. Social Media Explorer: Social media all-star Jason Falls provides a fresh and interesting take on all things social media.
3. Mashable: The world’s source for social media news, Mashable is the place to go for breaking stories.
4. Convince & Convert: Jay Baer provides rich content for businesses seeking to embrace social media.
5. Altitude: Amber Naslund offers a breadth of fresh air with smart, inspiring and personal social media insight.
6. CopyBlogger: The king of engaging content, Brian Clark and his team help businesses persuade in a 2.0 world.
7. Brand Builder: For businesses looking to dive deep into social media discussion, check out Olivier Blanchard’s rich insights.
8. Diva Marketing: Toby Bloomberg’s blog provides a wide array of social media advice.
9. Kikolani: Looking for great “getting started” social media guidance? Then frequent this blog.
10. Future Buzz: A nice mix of stories and reviews makes Adam Singer’s site one that should be on your radar.

If you have any favorites that are missing from this list, please share in the comment section below!

Have a wonderful and ambitious week,
Beth Smith
Editor-in-Chief

When both kids went off to school five days a week, I was worried. I wondered what I would do with all of that free time I was going to have. Spent hours thinking about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. What was I going to be when I grew up?

Turns out, I filled the time in quite nicely thankyouverymuch, with housekeeping and grocery shopping and writing and working. No, it wasn’t a high-powered career, I wasn’t changing the world…..but I was happy, I felt settled and calm and at peace with my role in the world. I had some time to myself, I volunteered, I started taking yoga classes regularly, I had lunch with a friend from time to time……

And that all came to a screeching halt when we withdrew our 9 year old from 3rd grade last month.

These days, I am never alone. I have a constant companion. A wingman. A sidekick. An assistant and an audience. Which means I no longer have any privacy. At all. No private phone conversations, no free hour for yoga, no lunch with friends. While I am sitting here writing this, my son is talking – constantly and without pause – to me, to the dogs, to the neighbor in his yard, to himself (but out loud, of course).

It is at once wonderful to have this time with him, and Maximum Suckage as my son would say.

It turns out, I am used to having both kids in school for some part of every day – I did not sit around wringing my hands.

But I do now.

When I was home with babies and toddlers, I still felt like I had some privacy and freedom (NAPTIME !) They didn’t ask “Who was that?” every time I got off the phone. They didn’t ask me constantly when I was going to be done with the computer so they could do their math program.

It was different.

This has been a huge lifestyle change for me, and I have to be honest……This is a little too much togetherness. This is a lot of togetherness. We are always together.

Sure, he has taekwondo and playdates. Yes, we get out and do interesting, fun things. And absolutely, he helps carry the groceries in from the car.

But.

We both need more. More guidance with this homeschooling thing, more time away from each other becoming our own unique people. More time with people our own ages. So I signed him up for a 3x a week homeschooling/tutoring program in a neighboring town – sort of takes the “home” out of homeschooling, I know. But I think it will give us a happy medium. Interaction with other kids and one on one instruction for him, and 3 hours to take a yoga class and maybe write something in peace and quiet for me.

We’ll make this homeschooling thing work, one way or the other. And in the meantime, my son is going to help me fold the laundry.

What’s not to love about that?

By Jennifer Rawlings

We have all had THOSE days. There are the perfect days when all the stars are aligned and everything goes right, and then there are those horrible days when it feels like the world is conspiring against us. Nighttime can’t come soon enough and all we want to do is climb into bed in our favorite pj’s, a glass of wine (or two), some popcorn and watch old movies and hope for a better day tomorrow.

I had one of those crappy days yesterday. A magazine article I had sold and was getting ready to start interviews on today was pushed back to a later issue. The upside was that it was going to be a bigger story now and it was moved to allow for more space. The downside was I had to reschedule all the interviews and I had planned my next two weeks around this deadline. Another freelance project I had been hired for…. SUCKED. It had gone in a direction that was contrary to our agreement, I had turned in the work several weeks ago but they were still emailing me with requests. My ex-husband was definitely acting like someone you would want to divorce and one of my son’s English teacher notified me that he had plagiarized an essay. An offense so severe in my eyes I thought about shipping him to Siberia. I settled on making him do a rewrite for no class credit; he didn’t have enough warm clothes for Siberia.

All I wanted to do was sit on my bed and feel sorry for myself, but I still had a dinner meeting to keep. I was exhausted as I applied my lipstick and tried to make myself presentable for public. I searched my closet for a jacket that was “good enough” for my foul mood. I loaded up my handbag and grabbed my “crackberry”. As I scrolled my blackberry for new messages I saw an email from a friend. (I have changed the names of all parties to protect their privacy) The email read

Dear Jennifer,
Spoke to Frank today and he told me Karen had a stroke on Sunday and is in the hospital. He will know more in a few days. If you didn’t know, I wanted to let you know and apologize for the starkness of the message.
I will let you know more as I do.
Jessica

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Karen is way too young to have a stroke. She is the mother of two young kids and is the picture of health. She exercises everyday, eats right, and laughs a lot. I laugh a lot when I am with her. Karen makes me laugh so hard that I cry “ happy tears”. This email couldn’t be correct I thought. I quickly dialed Jessica’s number. My hands were trembling and my voice cracked when she answered the phone.

Jessica confirmed the email. We spoke for a while about how we could help Frank with the girls and going to the hospital for a visit. I spent three months in intensive care several years ago and I know how important visits from friends are to lift your spirits.

When I hung up the phone I said a prayer for Karen and her family. I grabbed my purse and walked down the street for dinner. The news about Karen was weighing heavy on my mind. I was once again reminded of the significance of our actions and how important it is to constantly reach out with love to everyone who crosses our path and savor all of life’s moments.

I felt ashamed for the pity party I was having for myself just minutes earlier. I wasn’t having a bad day. I was having a slice of life, we all have problems and sometimes they pile up like dirty, stinky laundry. But we have to dive into that pile and check them off one by one.

When my alarm went off at 5:45 this morning and I had to start making sack lunches and getting my kids to school. I still had the same list of crap I had yesterday. I also had a new day to create new opportunities for myself as well as others. I had a new sunrise to be grateful for and another day to express love for those I care about.

I’ve come to the realization that, at least for the next few years of my life, laundry, housewife-liness and “mommymommyMOMMY!” are going to take up the majority of my days.

Sometimes this thought is devastating.

Still, there’s something to be said for making lemonade from lemons, or working with what you have, or generally not going gently into this long, dark, sleepless night of spit-up and diapers. As my grandmother would have said whilst stamping her foot, “You just tell ‘em hell, NO!”

So I’ll be in the home-making business. So what? At the very least I can try to do it WELL, right? I’ve found that channeling this idea into all my growing nesting instincts is VERY distracting. I’ve started in with my lists (oh, how I love lists): decorating the girls’ shared room, refreshing the nursery, organizing the garage, finally painting around the house like we’ve been planning to for five years. If I sit down and stare at the situation, there’s just a ton of stuff to do. Good God, I haven’t even come close to finishing Silvia’s baby book. She turns three next week and her book stops at two months old.

All those plans, in turn, lead me towards the idea that, even with all the Big Life Things that are happening this year, it doesn’t mean I can’t at least try to include my own goals into the equation, too. My desk is stacked with a pile of submission guidelines and half-written articles I keep meaning to get through. The cork board is feathered over with 3×5 cards scribbled with random sentences, observations and topic ideas.

I’m having a baby and it’s going to get a lot harder to do, but I don’t actually have to give up writing. It’s funny this thought has only just recently occurred to me, because after all, isn’t that what a hybrid mom does? Finding the time and balance… now that’s where I’ll need help.

Any tips from more experienced moms who’ve made it work? Tied to a newborn’s schedule with two other little kids running around and a household dependent on you for maintenance, how do you make time for your own goals?

(I’ll take suggestions for picking out curtain fabric for a neutral baby’s room, too. We’re not finding out the sex. Are green and yellow really the only color choices I have at my disposal? Don’t you love how my current obsessions are totally opposite each other?)