Remember the Alamo

I have a very noticeable and alarming problem with remembering my life. I’m very serious about this. I cannot remember really important things, like where Marc and I went on our first date or the way my children sounded before they could say their “r’s.” I can’t remember the names of friends with whom I shared a gazillion hours on choir trips in college, even when I see photos in my albums and we’re all flashing smiles that say to the camera, “We will always know each other and would definitely donate internal organs to save each other’s lives!” Don’t remember the organ donors.

I do, however, remember completely unimportant things. I can sing, on demand, the only hit Julian Lennon ever had. I can tell you all the phases of the moon, information that has lingered with me since Mr. Ives’s fifth grade science class. While we’re there, I remember that Mr. Ives was a straight-ticket Republican who named his eldest daughter, Reagan, when NO ONE was naming little girls anything Reagan, unless you meant Nancy.



My friend Kristen is invaluable to me for several reasons but one of them is that she remembers my life. She tells me such great stories about my kids! They are so witty and endearing, my children, but I just can’t remember anything they have said or done. So Kristen reminds me of these things by saying things like, “Remember when Mitch won that award from the Pulitzer committee and gave such a great acceptance speech?” I don’t, of course, remember that, but I chuckle/sigh like I do, ask a few discreet questions and she tells me the whole story!

Everyone needs a friend like Kristen.

I’d love to introduce you to her but I can’t remember your name.



N.B. This is not Mitchell accepting his Pulitzer but isn't it amazing what one can find on the Internet?

Back At It

After a summer hiatus, I am revving back into our real lives. For those of you who follow this blog, and by that I mean Mom, thanks for your patience. I love you and will get you a really awesome Christmas present.

Isn’t summer lovely? I did not miss the schedules, the running, the grabbing of almost-nutritious snacks as we rush out the door. And I most certainly did not miss making lunches.

I really do not enjoy making lunches. I feel entirely uncreative by week three. How much can one vary on the turkey sandwich theme? Carrots, hummus if we’re feeling it, chips, fruit, and a cookie if I’ve made them, a few pathetic M & Ms if I have not. Seriously. I’m nearly asleep just thinking about this again.

My daughter will not eat ham, roast beef, or peanut butter and jelly, so that wipes out most of the bagged lunch pyramid. She’s generally an adventurous eater. Her favorite food for years was octopus and I’m not kidding. (Incidentally, it is difficult to find fresh octopus in Iowa, so she’s only had it once. This did not diminish her loyalty.) But octopus eaters tire of sack lunches and so do octopus-eating mothers.



The alternative to sack lunch, as you might recall from yesteryear, is the beloved and questionably edible school lunch. Chicken patty on a bun, anyone? Mystery Mondays? Fishsticks on Friday? I allow for some school lunch here and there. All right, sometimes I beg her to eat it so I don’t have to make one more turkey sandwich. But she is not altogether enthusiastic, and who can blame her? I remember having to read the laminated menu in order to verify what, exactly, was on the lower right square of that tray.



(Um, why is that tray lavender? Adding a little pretty to the miserable? Isn't that kind of depressing? And what's with the white glob? Whipped cream? Mashed potatoes? Ice cream? I need the laminated menu to be sure...)

Inspire me, please. What can I include? Please don’t say rice cakes or I will have to cry. Ditto on anything involving carob. Other than those items, what are you people sending to school these days?

Please write soon. School starts this week and I’m all out of octopus.