I don’t like babies.

I mean, they’re okay. They’re cute and soft and smell fantastic, but beyond that I don’t think they have much to offer. They can’t engage in interesting conversation. They have no sense of irony. And don’t even get me started on their lack of independence.

I’ve pretty much always been this way. I’ve never been someone who melted when a baby was ferried into a room, with its toothless grin and doe eyes. In college I was a part-time nanny for a little girl from when she was six months old to a year-and-a-half. I remember when I told my parents I’d gotten a nanny job, they both asked, bewildered, “Why?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve never, ever expressed any interest in children,” my dad said.

He had a point. I’m not sure why I took the job either. Part of it was because it fit my hours and was decent money, but I think it was more of an experiment than anything. Something I just wanted to try out of curiousity—kind of like the time I took the job as a nude model for a sculptor…but that’s another blog post. (Sidebar: my parents didn’t ask, “Why?” in a bewildered voice when I told them about the nude modeling job. It probably made all the sense in the world to them. I think they were just relieved it was for a sculptor and not “this guy who makes really artful videos that are widely distributed in Canada.”)

I actually really enjoyed my nanny job. I fell in love with the little girl and missed her terribly when the family moved. And, yes, I loved my own babies. But, to be honest, if there were a way to skip the first three years of parenting, I don’t think I would have missed it very much. (And, yes, I know by definition the baby phase lasts a matter of months, not years—but in my mind, kids don’t really stop being babies until they’re solidly in their third year.)

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think my dislike of babies stems from what I’ve come to describe as my emotional claustrophobia. Simply put, I don’t handle neediness well. Throughout my life, in my friendships and romantic relationships, if someone became too dependent on me, I would run. I didn’t want the responsibility.

Then I had a baby. One of my own, whom I didn’t get to leave at five o’clock every afternoon like I did the little girl I nannied for. And talk about needy. I had never realized before I had a child just how much time and attention a baby requires—which I know sounds incredibly naïve, but I’m not sure anyone really knows. Is there anyway to truly understand the demands of parenting until you’re thrust into that role yourself? I don’t think so.

And Noah’s neediness (and 16 months later, Gwyneth’s) made me want to run faster and farther than probably anything else in my life. I knew it wasn’t fair. They were babies. They were helpless. What did I expect…to come home from the hospital and have them heating up a Pizza Pocket in the microwave? But still, the fact that these little people came into my life and demanded my full attention every waking (and sleeping) moment felt like a noose around my neck.

I don’t want to imply that I hated every minute of it. I didn’t. There were moments—many moments—of happiness and wonder…Noah’s infectious giggles; Gwyneth’s shrieks of joy when I would walk into the room; the warmth of their newborn bodies sleeping on my chest. But I would be lying if I said that those moments outweighed the burdens: The sleepless nights. The crying. The need to constantly be in arms before they walked and crawled and, after they mastered both of those, the need to constantly be watched for fear that they would hurt themselves. The eternal vigilance required to set limits and teach manners in those early years (between the ages of 12 months and four years, I swear not a day went by that I didn’t say at least 50 times, “I can’t understand you when you whine. Use your words.”). The pain of every transition—potty training, moving from a crib to a bed, giving up a bottle, giving up a pacifier.

Just writing about it gives me the equivalent of PTSD flashbacks. I was telling Dave the other day that when baby pictures of the kids pop up on my screen saver, I have a moment where I feel the “aw-they-were-so-cute” twinge, but mostly I feel only dread…much like I feel when I see pictures of myself in middle school.

I remember shortly after Noah was born, I was reading some parenting book that was trying to talk me out of abandoning my baby (at least that’s how I remember it) and it had a little chart of the average person’s lifespan of 80 years. It divided it up into four sections: babyhood, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It showed how the baby years are only a fraction of a person’s life, so those years of crying and needing to be held and disrupting parents’ sleep were actually very small. I think this is what’s called “perspective.” But I couldn’t imagine how this was supposed to help me. The fact that Noah was going to spend the majority of his life as an independent man who could cook his own food and use the toilet didn’t make the fact that I was yet again nursing this baby and changing yet another dirty diaper any easier to handle.

A friend of mine who suffered through a very difficult first pregnancy and was debating whether to have a second baby was telling me how frustrated she got at hearing people in the have-another camp tell her, “Well, it’s only nine months!”

“Since when is nine months a short amount of time?” she would ask rhetorically.

She was right. And I wanted to ask the same of the parenting book, “Since when is three years a short amount of time?”

I know there are women who really love the early years. They cry when they finally sell the crib and the high chair and the little booties. They ask to hold their friends’ babies and get choked up when they talk about their decision not to have any more kids. I always marvel at these women—much the way I would marvel at alien life forms that I encountered after an intergalactic journey. I don’t understand it. It’s not that I think they’re wrong or deluded, I just literally can’t fathom how they could miss having another person so completely dependent on them for such a long period of time.

A few weeks ago I took Noah to lunch on a Saturday after his Tae Kwon Do class, just the two of us. The restaurant is in a hip part of town and crowded with two sets of people: the 20-something set who have just rolled out of bed after a Friday night bender; and the late 30- to 40-something crowd there with their young children who have been awake since 6 a.m.

I watched a mother chasing her 18-month-old son around the restaurant and knew at a glance what was going on: She was no doubt there with some friends—who probably didn’t have kids yet (otherwise she would have been buddied up with one of the moms who would be chasing her child around the restaurant, too)—and she and her husband were taking turns keeping the kid entertained because lunch was lasting longer than five minutes, which is about as long as children that age can sit in a high chair before they go nuclear. The little boy went toddling up to a stranger’s table and lunged for the person’s plate. At that, the mom swept in and scooped him up, burying her face in his neck, like she was the monster gobbling him up, sending him into fits of laughter.

It was very cute, and I could see the longing looks of some of the 20-something women in the restaurant watching them. I could read their minds, “I can’t wait until that’s me someday.” And then they gazed across the table at their boyfriends and asked themselves, perhaps for the hundredth time, if they should mention marriage and kids yet.

And I thought of how wrong they got it. Because I guarantee, as much as that mother loved her son, she would have given everything at that moment to be sitting at the table with her adult friends, having an adult conversation that wasn’t interrupted by a piece of pancake being hurled at her face.

I turned to Noah, who was craning his neck to see the football game that was playing on the TV above the bar. “I’m so glad you’re older,” I said to him.

“Huh?” he asked, his eyes never moving off the screen.

“I said I’m so glad you’re older.”

“Holy cow! Mom! Did you just see that pass? They intercepted the ball!”

I smiled. He didn’t need me there. I could’ve just as well been sitting at another table. Noah never would’ve missed me. And I was so grateful for it.

At dinner the other night, I was telling my friends Derrick and Lee Ann about the new dawn simulator I had just purchased.

Lee Ann did a double take. “What did you say?” she asked.

“I bought a dawn simulator.”

“Oooohhhhhh,” she said, looking a little relieved. “I thought you said ‘dong simulator.’”

“I already have one of those.”

Ba-da-bum.

So, yes, I’ve bought a dawn simulator. If you don’t know what this is, think alarm clock with a bunch of LED lights stacked on top of it. I set the alarm for whatever time I want to wake up and then pick a sunrise length of either 15 or 30 minutes. So, for instance, if I want to wake up at 6 a.m. and have picked a 15-minute sunrise, the lights start turning on at 5:45 and are full bright by six.

I bought this for a few reasons. First of all, after years of suspecting that I had seasonal affective disorder (SAD), I finally took the plunge and got an expert medical opinion—by way of a self-diagnosing tool on the Internet. There I learned that SAD is kick started by the shorter days of winter and characterized by depression, difficulty waking, fatigue, and carbohydrate craving.

Okay, to be honest, aside from the depression, I pretty much have these symptoms year-round. I love to sleep. No, really. I.love.it. I’m one of those people who can sleep ten hours at night and still take a two-hour nap. And I have never, ever in my life been a morning person. It almost always takes an act of Congress, a marching band, and a 21-gun salute to wake me in the morning, and even then I trudge through the first two hours of my day as if it’s the Bataan death march.

As for craving carbs…suffice it to say that I could live happily on a diet of pasta, pizza, doughnuts, cookie batter, mashed potatoes, and Wonder bread. As a kid, when I heard that prisoners got only bread and water to eat (and I actually believed that for way longer than I care to admit), I was mostly just really jealous.

All of this is compounded during the winter months, especially on the east coast, where light disappears behind a featureless gray sky for days at a time. Beginning in October, I want to take my loaf of Wonder bread and crawl under the covers until spring or the Apocalypse, whichever comes first.

As I read about SAD, I also read about the treatment: light therapy (my knowledge of which stemmed exclusively from an episode of Northern Exposure I saw about a dozen years ago). Supposedly, sitting in front of really bright lights for 30 to 60 minutes each morning fools your brain into thinking the days are longer and the hibernation period has ended.

Here’s a confession: I have a very western approach to medicine. I like pills. And chemicals. And stamps that say “FDA approved.” And studies with charts and numbers and pie graphs showing me that what I’m taking has actually been proven to work.

I’m highly skeptical of any medical treatment that doesn’t have these things. This is the reason I don’t take vitamins or do acupuncture or drink herbal tea. The most unconventional medicinal thing I do is go to a chiropractor, who, I must admit, has worked miracles on my back.

Most of my friends are into alternative medicine and I believe them when they tell me about the amazing results they’ve had. But I just can’t bring myself to try them. Not that I never will…I just haven’t yet.

So when I read about light therapy it sounded like something a witch doctor deep in the sub-Saharan bush would prescribe. I mean, really? You want me to sit in front of a lamp for a half hour a day and all my problems will be solved? My suspicions were heightened when I looked into ordering one of these lights and saw that the prices ranged from $60 to $300. I thought of all the poor saps who forked over their money for one, basking in its artificial glow, waiting for some miracle. These are the same people who buy ShamWows.

But the fact was, the days were getting shorter and I was having a harder time getting up in the morning (often dragging myself out of bed at 8:30—just a half hour before the kids had to leave for school) and feeling more and more lethargic and depressed. So I asked my doctor about light therapy, expecting her to roll her eyes and say, “Sure. And after you buy one I have some real estate investment opportunities in Florida I’d like to talk to you about.” But to my surprise, she didn’t. She told me that, yes, light therapy had been proven to be effective for most people who suffered from SAD, and the results were almost immediate.

I bought a dawn simulator that same afternoon.

I’ve been using it for two weeks now and I have to say: I’m a believer. Since waking up with the dawn simulator, I’ve been getting out of bed no later than 6:30 each morning and writing for two hours before the kids wake up. I feel more creative and more productive and more in control of my day. In a word, I feel more awake.

I’m willing to admit that some of this could be the placebo effect. I’m very prone to suggestion. Several years ago I was at the dentist to have a cavity filled. I asked for nitrous oxide because I hate getting my teeth drilled so I figured why not use it as an excuse to party. The dentist placed the mask over my nose and said, “You’ll start to feel the effects of this pretty quickly.”

I nodded my head. “Yeah,” I said a little dreamily. “I already am.”

He paused and looked at me. “I haven’t turned it on yet.”

Yes, ladies and gentleman, this is the embarrassment I call my life. I’m probably one of those people who wouldn’t need anesthesia for open heart surgery. Just put a mask over my face and pump in oxygen and give me an injection of saline, and I’ll be good to go.

So it’s possible that this dawn simulator is nothing more than an over-priced nightlight. But I don’t think so. Not when we’re talking about something so dear to me…sleep. I might be able to talk myself into not feeling the pain of an invasive medical procedure, but I really don’t think I can talk myself into being a morning person.

And so what if I am just fooling myself? Does that really matter? The reality is I’m feeling less depressed and more in control of my life. If it took a $150 alarm clock to make that happen, so be it. I want to shout from the rooftops: “I, Laura Ann Mullane, am a convert!” Just you watch. Pretty soon I’ll be drinking herbal tea, going in for acupuncture, and ordering a ShamWow. But not just yet. First I’m going to order my dong simulator.

I hesitate to tell you this only because once again it involves my hair. But like so many things in life, it’s rarely just about the hair. So here we go: Last night I took cost-cutting to a whole new extreme. In an effort to save a few dollars, I decided to cut my own hair. Not just the bangs (which I’ve done often and almost never successfully) but the actual hair. This involves layering.

Let me back up a little bit and explain what would possess me …

So, in case you haven’t heard, the economy sucks. As a result, my contract writing work (annual reports, web sites, speechwriting, etc…read: the stuff that pays the bills) has all but dried up. I’ve been doing contract writing for more than a decade, and at any given time I would be juggling anywhere from three to six projects. No longer. In the last year, my clients (most of whom are nonprofit associations or foundations) have been telling me kindly that, sorry, they just don’t have the money to spend on contractors right now. I’ve still managed to get the occasional contract here and there, but not enough of them, and none of them long-term. I had lunch the other day with my contact at what has been my biggest client since I began freelancing, who told me, “The second we get a big wad of cash, I’ll call you. But it’s just not there right now.”

This has caused no end of handwringing on my part. I know I’m not alone. Every other freelancer (writer, photographer, graphic designer) I know is in the same boat. We’ve all seen our work take a nosedive. (And I also know there are other people—many, many others—who are seriously struggling to keep their homes and feed their families. I don’t for a minute want to pretend that I have it bad.)

I’ve been in tough financial spots before. The nature of freelance work is that it’s cyclical. Feast or famine. Working hard or hardly working. And in the past, when I would go through these dry spells, I would panic. And just when I thought I was going to have to call it curtains and become a Subway sandwich artist, something would come along that would whisk me to safety. So I keep telling myself that will happen again. Just be patient. It will all work out.

But what if it doesn’t? asks that accountant in my head, who looks like George Clooney, only taller. What are you going to do? Then he starts rubbing my back because he knows how tense this whole thing makes me…

[insert time lapse of 3-5 minutes]

So I recognize that things might get worse before they better. As a result, Dave and I are doing some belt tightening: I’m trying to find someone to half-lease my horse (any takers???). We’re putting off some big purchases we had planned to make. We’re not eating out as much…although, okay, we did go to our favorite French restaurant Saturday night, but we had free babysitting from Dave’s dad and we only got one entree and a half carafe of house wine. (I’m imaging the profile they’ll inevitably do of us on the Nightly News “Tough Times, Tough Choices” segment: “This couple had to drink house wine instead of ordering one of the expensive bottles. And…” the reporter pauses, choking back tears, “—and she has to find someone to half-lease her horse! When will the suffering end?”) But suffice it to say we’re taking measures to save more and spend less.

And the fact is, my hair is expensive. To have it cut and colored (to cover the gray that has infiltrated my head like an invading army) costs about $150. And I have to do it monthly. Long before the economy went south, I decided this was a luxury I couldn’t afford and started coloring my hair myself most months. I would go to the salon only about three or four times a year and fork over the cash to have it done professionally.

But now I just don’t think that’s even an option. So after I took a shower last night, I was noticing how frayed my ends were and decided, hell, why not? I cut my daughter’s hair. I could cut my own. Besides, I wasn’t talking about completely making over my look. Just a trim. What could be so hard about that?

I dug the scissors out of my bathroom drawer, combed my wet hair out, pulled the back around my shoulder to the front and…snip. I thought that would be it. Just the ends, Laura, my inner George Clooney advised me (he’s not only my accountant, but my beauty consultant, too).  But then I realized I couldn’t just do the ends. Because my hair is layered, when I cut the ends, it made them even with my longer layers, which made me look like Alice from the Dilbert comic strip:

So I had to trim the layers, too. This took a little more doing. Since I can’t really see the back of my head, the margin for error was much smaller. So I combed the back of my hair up, held it above my head and…snip. Then again. And again. Snip. Snip. Snip. I couldn’t stop myself. Each time I would make one cut, it forced the need to make another. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. I felt like Edward Scissorhands.

By the time I was done, I had a sink full of hair, and a haircut that is probably an inch shorter. And I have layers. Very, very obvious layers. Layers that are less “cascading” (as my stylist would call them) and more akin to blunt-force trauma. But, I have to say, by and large, it looks pretty good. The dead ends are gone and my hair looks bouncier. And I saved $150.

This has inspired me to think of other creative ways to save money. Hanging the clothes to dry? Yard sales? Homemade toothpaste? Do-it-yourself veterinary care? If I can cut my own hair, I’m pretty sure I can do anything. Watch out.

So last night, my “friend” (and I put that in quotes because, to be honest, we’ve never met—although she is a good friend of a good friend and I have no doubt we would be friends-without-the-quotes if we did meet) went on a mommy forum called youbemom.com and suggested to the other mothers that they read my blog.

Big mistake.

Turns out the other mommies thought my friend (you know her as YFNCS) was really me, spamming my blog. So around 11 o’clock last night, I got a message in my inbox that someone who goes by the name of “seriously” has commented on my most recent post.

Oh, yay! I thought, because I never get comments from people I don’t know. So I scroll down and look at the comment, which says, “your blog is really awful please stop spamming it on youbemom.com, nobody cares!” (Please make note of her shitty punctuation.) At this point, I had no idea what she was referring to. I had never heard of the site youbemom.com, and decided, ironically, that she was actually spamming me and my readers. So I deleted her comment and blacklisted her email and IP address. About 15 minutes later I get an email from YFNCS explaining to me what had happened. Ok, no worries.

Then this morning I sat at my desk and decided to go to youbemom.com to find the conversation about my blog.

I really wish I hadn’t.

What followed was a nasty indictment of my blog—calling it, among other things,  boring, poorly written, grammatically incorrect (again, please note “seriously’s” punctuation above), and way too much yappity yap. YFNCS, god bless her, defended me tooth and nail (despite the fact that the participants continued to think she was me—even repeatedly referring to her as “Laura”), and a few others piped in saying they liked it. But by and large, the response was vitriolic.

I’d like to say I shrugged my shoulders and went about my day as if nothing had happened, but I didn’t. It bothered me. It didn’t crush me, but it definitely made me stop and think. But what it made me think about was not whether these moms were right about my writing being crap (as I snottily replied to YFNCS: when they are able to find an agent, have a book published by one of the country’s largest publishers, and get paid to write for national publications, I’ll take what they said to heart…and yes, I know that was way conceited, but come on). Instead, what I immediately thought was: I don’t want these people reading about my kids and my life—which I realize is antithetical to the whole point of writing a blog about…my kids and my life.

But as I wrote in an email to my friends “Trish” and “Lee Ann”: How much do I want to put myself out there? Do I really want strangers reading about (and potentially judging) me and my family?

I’m not sure. When I read the comments on the forum thread this morning, part of me wanted to take down the blog right away (and part of me still does). Not to appease the haters, but because it literally gives me the creeps to think about their eyeballs (and the eyeballs of people like them—who have nothing better to do than tear other people apart) reading about my life.

But if I decide against putting myself out there, it would mean more than saying goodbye to the blog. It would also mean abandoning the book I’ve been writing about motherhood and leaving the career track of memoirist, which I’ve been slowly traveling the last ten years.

I need to decide what’s harder: to stay and endure the occasional vilification; or leave and take up something safer (like fiction…or needlepoint).

Part of me wants to stick it out if, for no other reason, to give the finger to the mommies on this forum. I remember when Tina Fey accepted her Emmy this year, she used her speech to blast a blogger who had spent all of her screen space tearing Tina (as I’m sure she’d want me to call her) and “30 Rock” to shreds. I thought at the time that she could probably give two shits about what this no-name blogger thinks about her work. She was just trying to give a speech that was funnier than the usual, “and-I-want-to-thank-my-producer” drivel.

But this experience today changed my perspective. I bet Tina relished the opportunity to slam the biatch into the ground—even if it meant giving the blogger more free publicity than she could ever dream of having. Because taking the high road can be so unsatisfying. Sometimes, the low road just feels right. Given that, I’d like to politely invite all those moms on youbemom.com to suck it.

I was walking Gwyneth home from school the other day and asked her how her day was. Fine, she told me, but then added—in her typical five-year-old non sequitur way—that she doesn’t enjoy being with the other students all the time.

“Why not?” I asked.

“I like to be alone,” she said.

This didn’t surprise me. Gwyneth spends a lot of time by herself. Ever since she was a baby, she’s had the unique ability to entertain herself. This is no doubt attributable to the fact that she was the second child and only 16 months behind her brother…which means she spent the first six months of her life in a bouncy seat. Prisoners in solitary confinement got more attention than my daughter did. So Gwyneth figured out at a very young age that she had better learn how to entertain herself, because there wasn’t a chance in hell anyone else was going to.

She continued, “You know when I most feel like myself, Mommy?”

“When?”

“When I’m in my room dancing and singing alone.”

I couldn’t help but smile. It reminded me of myself as a kid. I, too, spent a lot of time alone, lost in a very complex fantasy world (seriously, you wouldn’t get it, but suffice it to say it included a horse, a recording studio in the country with a remote control gate at the top of the driveway, and Shaun Cassidy) and I would spend hours singing and dancing in front of the mirror. When I was in first grade, my parents bought me a portable cassette player—you remember, they looked like this:

.…and I spent all of my time either (a) playing my Shaun Cassidy and Olivia Newton-John tapes and singing along, or (b) recording myself singing or, more often, talking. I would pretend I was an ant newscaster and report on the death toll after my dad sprayed the ant hills in our yard with poison. Or I would make up stories about hot-air balloons ascending into the sky, only to plummet into the ocean, killing all passengers. Or I would tell a story about a tragic accident on the highway that left 20 people dead.

So, yeah, I was kind of fixated on death.

But that’s beside the point. What fascinates me about this is how little I’ve changed. I still love singing and dancing (although you’d think all those hours I logged as a kid doing both would have resulted in more talent in my adult years—not so much, it turns out). I still love horses. I might not be a big Shaun Cassidy or Olivia Newton-John fan anymore, but I still like men in a white baseball hat tilted jauntily just so:

And who can’t love ONJ’s “Jolene”?

I’m also still obsessed with death. (I regularly revise my funeral playlist…yes, music I’d like played at my funeral. First track? AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”) As for recording myself? Helloooooooooooo. The other day I counted and I have done EIGHTEEN (18) vlogs on Facebook. Nineteen if you count the one I posted here.

I am still six years old, just with better technology.

I was talking to my friend Trish the other day and she was telling me that a friend of hers (who is a good mom and actually reads books about childhood development) told her about a report that basically said who we are as individuals is cemented by the time we’re age nine. “I mean, is that possible?” Trish asked. “Don’t we grow and change after that?”

No doubt Trish asked me because she values my opinion. Because I’m so smart. (Don’t roll your eyes.)

So we got in this conversation about whether and how much we change as we grow up. Certainly we mature (don’t roll your eyes). And we develop better table manners. And we learn useful skills like the precise angle at which the beer bong tube needs to be in relation to the vertical height from which the beer is poured, and how to lie to telemarketers (“I’m sorry. Laura died three years ago. The funeral was beautiful. Let me tell you what songs were on the playlist…”). But beyond that, are we really that different than we were as kids?

I know for me, the answer is a firm no. I am almost exactly the same as I was back then. And it got me wondering: are the ways in which we change in our teen and adult years mere attempts to make ourselves into the person we think we should be? If you spend the first eight or nine years of your life wanting nothing more than to be an artist, yet by the time you’re in high school, you’ve decided you want to be a mechanical engineer, is it really because you fell in love with engineering? Or is it because you told yourself (or your parents told you, or teachers, or friends) that being an artist was unrealistic and you should look into engineering instead?

It’s not that I don’t think we can change our minds (particularly when it comes to college majors and jobs—and practicality comes into play on both counts) or develop different interests as we age. But I wonder if the essence of who we are doesn’t always orbit around the same sun—whether it be art or music or science or history or literature (or a combination)—and when we diverge from those interests, it’s more out of a sense of obligation than what we truly want?

When I look at my kids, I can already see them beginning to develop the individuality that will follow them throughout their lives. And although I would never hazard a guess about what they’ll declare as their college majors or choose as their careers, I can imagine that in 30 years, Gwyneth will still love to sing and dance, and Noah will still be a storyteller who is fascinated by how things work.

I hope they continue to orbit those suns—even after distant moons call them away for a while. I hope they return to the gravitational pull of the brightest star in their universe and bask in its glow—because, inevitably, that’s where they’ll most feel like themselves.

I’m sitting on the couch with Dave and “The American President” is on HBO, so we’re watching it, because it reminds us of when we lived in DC 14 years ago and they filmed parts of the movie down the street from our friend Kelly’s apartment. And, ok, I like it, so there. Anyway, I was reminded while watching it that I LOVED Annette Bening’s haircut. In case you don’t remember it, here’s a look:

Let’s keep in mind: I was 24 years old when this movie was released. Why was I hell bent on looking 40?

And, fyi, I’ve decided to keep my hair in its longish, perpetually frizzy state for the time being. I already did my time looking 40ish when I was in my 20s. Now I’m going to spend some time looking solidly in my late 30s.

(If you didn’t read my original post about my hair quandry, you can find it here.)

My friend Colleen posted this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson in response to “The Parenting Olympics”:

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.  This is to have succeeded.”

I’ve always loved this quote and was glad to read it again in its entirety. But, it’s funny, as I read it, part of me thought, “Well, sure, easy for him to say. He was a success.”

Oh boy. I can already tell you this post will be filed solidly in the “neuroses” category.

Because here’s my dirty little secret: I, who deplore how we push our children to material success, totally have my panties in a wad when it comes to my own success. I agonize on pretty much an hourly basis about whether I will ever achieve all I want to achieve as a writer.

This was hammered home last night, as I read The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs. It chronicles a year in the author’s life when he, a devout agnostic, tries to follow the Bible as literally as possible—including not wearing mixed fibers, stoning adulterers, and playing a ten-string harp. In it, he talks about the commandment not to covet your neighbor’s house, nor his wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything else. (And, yes, I laughed a little when I wrote “nor his ass.”) And the author talks very candidly about how difficult this is and all the things he covets—including the success of other authors.

This got me thinking about my own jealousies and everything I covet. Here’s a brief list:

1. I’m jealous of A. J. Jacobs for writing this book. It’s funny and interesting and a really brilliant idea.
2. I’m jealous of Jhumpa Lahiri, whose second book of short stories I recently read and was literally slack-jawed in amazement at her talent.
3. If I list all the writers I’m jealous of, we’ll be here a while, so let me just sum it up this way: I’m jealous of pretty much every successful writer. And I define “successful” as anyone who is widely read and admired.
4. I’m jealous of Jill and Kevin’s wedding entrance—not because it was viewed on YouTube by about a billion people, but because I didn’t think of it first.
5. I’m jealous of all of riders (equestrian) who are better than me.
6. I’m jealous of everyone who lives in the mountain west.
7. I’m jealous of visual artists because I really wish I had their sensibility and view of the world.
8. I’m jealous of people who eat healthily and shop at farmer’s markets. I’m too lazy to do either.
9. I’m jealous of people who live a nomadic life—who travel the world taking odd jobs here and there (or who write about it or photograph it), but can move from one place to the next with little more than a backpack and a passport.
10. I’m jealous of anyone who dances and/or sings really well.
11. I’m jealous of mothers who seem to parent effortlessly.

I’m going to stop there. Not because it’s the end of my list. Not by a long shot. I could fill pages. But I think you get the idea.

When I read that list, I’m a little ashamed. Jealousy is such a petty emotion. Just the other day I gave my kids a big lecture on the futility of coveting. “There will always be people who have more than you and people who have less,” I told them. “There will always be someone smarter and better looking and funnier than you are. But there will also always be people who have less of those things than you do.” At this point, Noah’s and Gwyneth’s eyes had glazed over, but I was on a roll. “The trick is not to compare yourself to other people. Do what you want to do as well as you can. Don’t worry about what other people are doing.” Then I go on to tell them that life is not a pie (by now the kids have probably left the room, but I’m still talking). “When someone else gets something you want, that doesn’t mean there’s less happiness for you. Another person’s accomplishments don’t diminish your own.”

Someday my kids will have the wherewithal to say, “Oh, really, Mom? Is this how you live your life?”

In truth, I do. Or I try to. I’m genuinely happy for my friends and family when they find success in anything—even the things I really, really wish I found success in, too. I really believe that life isn’t a pie. And the most miserable people I know live as if it were…convinced that anyone else’s achievement means a big hunk of life’s potential happiness has been carved out and is gone forever—to be enjoyed only by the person whose plate is full.

And I also have seen enough to know that material success (and I don’t just mean money—but prestige, awards, recognition) does not equate to happiness. Those who have achieved much always want to achieve more. And those rare few who really have achieved everything they can—who are the undisputed “best” in their sport or career or academic discipline—usually languish, wandering around in a sort of fog wondering, “What next?” It’s why Lance Armstrong returned to cycling, and why Michael Jordan took up baseball.

But despite the fact that I know all this, I can’t live my life as if I do. A big part of me still lives according to the “if only” principle: “If only I could write a bestselling book, then I’d be happy.” “If only I won the Pulitzer Prize, then I’d stop striving.” “If only Oprah would have me on her show, all my problems would be solved.”

I come by this honestly. My dad was an astronaut and I heard this same lament my entire life. “If only I get to fly in space, then I’ll be happy.” “If only I get to fly in space again…” “…and again.” Then, after he retired, he began public speaking and writing—two things he’s done very successfully—yet still he’s plagued by “if onlys.”

And I look at him and say, “Dad, stop running. You’re fine just where you are.” But he’s not, because that’s not who he is. It’s not who I am either, as much as I desperately want to be. And I doubt it’s who my kids are. Already I’m seeing the signs of over-achievers-in-the-making: Noah disappointed when he got a “G” on his report card for “good” instead of an “O” for “outstanding; Gwyneth asking me to sign her up for a ballet class with older kids because the younger girls in her class distract her and “don’t take it seriously.”

Maybe that’s okay. Maybe this is who we are, at our core, and trying to change it will meet with as much success as Glenn Beck trying to develop a conscience. Because I realize, as I write this, my life has been dictated by another “if only”: “If only I would stop thinking ‘if only,’ I’d be happy.”

Maybe it’s time for be fine just where I am. I think Ralph Waldo Emerson would agree.

It’s a vlog, people. It’s a vlog.

At Gwyneth’s ballet class Saturday morning, as the girls were waiting to file into the room in all of their pink and purple leotarded glory, one of the girls read aloud a sign on the door that said, “No gum.” Her mom replied very loudly, “Yes! That’s right, Dylan! It says, ‘No gum!’ That’s exactly what it says! Good job!”

(Insert my not-so-subtle eye roll here.)

And then she said, just as loudly, “But do we ever chew gum, Dylan?” (after Thomas or Bob, I wonder? Who am I kidding? This is the suburbs of Washington, DC. Of course it’s after Dylan Thomas—because it’s much more sophisticated to name your daughter after a Welsh poet who literally drank himself to death than to name her after a 1960s folk singer who, surprisingly, didn’t drink himself to death.)

Dylan shakes her head no. No, Dylan and family do not chew gum.

“Of COURSE not! We don’t chew gum do we, Dylan? Yuck.”

(Insert me blowing a bubble here.)

Gwyneth had asked me on the drive to class if she could have a piece of gum. I told her no, but after class she could. I was planning to give it to her in the car, but after I heard this, I decided to hand it to her right when she walked out of class, in front of the other mother, and then say (loudly), “Good girl! When we get home let’s eat all of your Halloween candy and watch the Playboy channel!”

For the record: I have no problem with people who don’t let their children chew gum. What annoyed the crap out of me was that she had to make the point of stating it loudly, for everyone to hear, so there would be no question of what a Good And Conscientious Mother she is.

Thus goes another day in the Parenting Olympics, where moms and dads compete daily to demonstrate their prowess in sports such as “Whose Household is More Organic,” and “My Child Wins More Stuff than Your Child,” and “We Only Use ‘I’ Statements,” and “We Never Buy Toys from China.”

Whenever these games commence, I promise myself I won’t participate. I’ll just stand on the sidelines and watch, because it’s a game I will lose. Every single time. Yet I’m constantly surprised how hard it is not to get sucked into playing. Before I know it, I’m walking in opening ceremonies parade, carrying a Hanna Anderson catalog and eating an organic muffin.

I’m not alone. Today I had a long conversation with my friend, we’ll call her “Trish,” about how, even if we have the awareness not to actively compete with the other parents, we find ourselves second-guessing our own parenting based on their self-congratulatory proclamations. When I hear other parents brag about their children’s athletic achievements, part of me wonders if I shouldn’t sign my kids up for more sports. When they brag about their academic success, part of me wonders if I should spend more time with my kids on their homework. And as much as I hate to admit it, even hearing the obnoxious woman at ballet class made me wonder if I shouldn’t let my kids chew gum. Several of my friends don’t allow it either. Am I doing something wrong?

Of course, intellectually, I know all of this is bullshit. I’m a firm believer in letting children be who they are. I don’t push them into sports they don’t want to play and I don’t push them academically. The other day Noah finished his homework and handed it to me to review. I told him some of his letters were written backwards and if he wanted help correcting them, I would help him. “But it’s up to you,” I told him. “It’s your homework. If you’re happy with it the way it is, then that’s fine.”

But I found myself holding my breath a little when I said it. Would the answer be “of course I want to fix it”—which is what I secretly hoped it would be? As someone who always liked school and worked hard to make good grades, I would have trouble understanding my children if they didn’t want to succeed academically. But it’s my responsibility to be willing to try. Because, I think, in the end, academic success amounts to very little.

This summer, I went back to my hometown for my high school reunion. The day I arrived, I drove to my high school and wandered through the halls alone. On one of them was a plaque that listed all the National Merit Scholars from every year of the school’s existence. I found my graduating class and looked at the names. And you know what I realized? Of all the people I knew on the list, none were any more successful than the rest of us. None had exceptionally interesting or unique careers. None, from what I could tell, were happier or better adjusted.

I don’t mean to diminish their accomplishment. Obviously, these are very bright people who worked extremely hard to achieve what they did, and they have every right to be proud of that—then and now. But it’s a reminder that outward signs of success are rarely synonymous with personal fulfillment. As I looked at the National Merit Scholars list, I thought of those parents who put so much stock in what their children achieve—how important it is to them and how much they push their children—but for what? Does any of it really matter?

I would even take this a step further and ask what defines success? Is it money? Prestige? Children who go to Ivy Leagues?

I doubt anyone reading this would answer “yes” to those questions. Yet many of us (myself included) can still find ourselves tangled up in the Parenting Olympics that tell us our kids must be stars—academically or athletically or artistically or all of the above. It’s a shame. A terrible shame. Because the real losers in the Parenting Olympics are our children. The second parents start competing with each other, we’re telling our kids that what matters the most is not who they are—whether they’re kind or interesting or funny or resilient—but what they do. We’re telling them, however subtly, “I love you if…” when the only thing anyone should ever hear is, “I love you because…”

I just got back from an overnight trip with the kids. Yesterday and today were teacher workdays at their school, so I decided to take advantage of being self-employed in a bad economy (read: barely employed) and drive them to Luray Caverns, about an hour-and-a-half west of Washington.

I should say right here that I’m not a trip planner. That task falls to Dave. But Dave couldn’t join us because of work, so I was flying solo—which meant I had to do the planning. Poor kids. The extent of my planning was as follows:

(1) Look up Luray Caverns on the web.

(2) Book a hotel room at the at the “historic Luray Caverns inn” because it was cheap and the only hotel listed on their web site.

(3) Write down directions (this was done at the last minute after I had loaded everything and everyone into the car only to realize I had no idea where I was going)

I probably should have done more than this. But it was for one night. We’d find plenty to do to fill the time.

So we arrived at Luray, Virginia, in the picturesque Shenandoah Valley around 3:30 in the afternoon and checked into our hotel. Immediately I could tell they had taken some major liberties with their marketing materials. “Historic”? Well, I suppose 1960s cinderblock construction could be considered historic if the town had been carpet-bombed during a heretofore unknown battle in the 1950s, thus making it one of the oldest structures in town. “Inn”? I’m not sure what constitutes an “inn,” but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t include a parking spot directly in front of the door of your room and a vending machine in the breezeway.

As we pulled up, Noah said, “Wow, that looks like a really depressing hotel.”

“Well, that’s where we’re staying,” I replied.

“We are?”

“Yep.”

I heard a small groan from the back seat.

We went into the office decorated completely in white and gray and void of anything uniquely identifiable. It had all the charm of a hospital waiting room. But the man behind the desk was friendly and I appreciated that he pulled my reservation card from a box, as opposed to a computer. And I had to fill out all that information about my car that hotels always ask for and that I’ve never understood why. Then he gave me a key to “Room 1,” walked me outside and pointed to where it was.

As he was pointing, the kids, who had disappeared around the corner, called out, “Mommy!  A pool!”

“Uh, sorry,” the man said. “The pool’s closed for the season.”

Another groan.

The kids and I rolled our respective suitcases up the small set of stairs and into our room.

“What?!” Gwyneth exclaimed as soon as we walked in. “This is where we go to the bathroom?!” Unlike pretty much every other hotel I’ve ever been in in my entire life, that find it’s more welcoming to have a small foyer inside the front door, this one decided to put the bathroom there instead. So when you opened the front door you were standing on tile next to the sink and toilet. “And it has a window?!” Yes, indeed. The whole side wall of the bathroom was frosted glass that faced the parking lot/walkway. Luckily, the toilet and shower were behind a solid wall, but any other time spent in the bathroom, you would be silhouetted for all passersby to see.

Luckily it was the off season (as indicated by the closed pool and empty parking lot) so I didn’t think anyone would be watching.

The room did have a balcony. Granted, instead of being rimmed with hand-hewn wood, it was enclosed by a lattice metal grate. But still, it was a balcony. And the view was breathtaking:

I sat on the bed and proceeded to leaf through the small collection of flyers the kids had picked up in the office. The caverns were right across the street, but that was a two-hour excursion, max. What were we going to do the rest of the time? The first flyer: canoeing down the Shenandoah! Perfect. I’d been wanting to take the kids canoeing for a while now. The colors were past their peak, but it was still beautiful and the weather was perfect. I looked on the flyer for a phone number and then saw, “Open every day, April 1 through October 31.” Seems I’d missed it by two days.

Next.

Horseback riding. Perfect again. The kids had done a nose-to-tail trail ride in Colorado last summer and loved it. And I’m always happy to sit on a horse, even if I inwardly cringe at paying for the privilege when I already spend a small fortune every year to keep my own. So I called the number on the flyer. “Yes, ma’am. We’ve got hour-and-a-half rides going out at 10, noon, and 2 o’clock tomorrow.”

“Great. I have a five-year-old and six-year-old—“

“Uh, I’m sorry. Minimum age is eight.”

I hung up the phone and broke the news to the kids.

Groans all the way around.

Next: Dinosaur Land. From what I gathered from the brochure, Dinosaur Land is where people who have finally given up on even the remote possibility that they will ever do anything fun again after they have kids go to die. I tossed that one to the side.

I glanced out the window, and soaked in the view again. And then I turned to watch the kids. Noah was setting up an army base with his toys:

Gwyneth was chatting on the unplugged hotel phone to Gabriella (from High School Musical):

Couldn’t they do this at home? I wondered. We had to get out of here. “Okay, kids, let’s go check things out.” I clapped my hands together like an army sergeant, trying to pretend as if endless possibilities still lay before us.

Like the singing tower! A bell tower erected in the 1930s by some dude and his daughter in memory of his wife/her mother. The kids ran around the base of it. “Why aren’t the bells ringing, Mommy?”

“I don’t know.”

“When do they ring the bells?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did they build it?”

“To honor this woman who died.” Finally, I had an answer.

“Why? Did she like bells?”

“I don’t know.”

On to the Garden Maze! The largest on the east coast! “Get lost for hours!” was the tagline. Oops, closed at four o’clock…fifteen minutes ago.

On to the caverns! The main event! The reason we came! “Well, you can do the tour now, but you have to be out by five o’clock—that’s only 45 minutes from now.”

Okay, scratch that. We’ll do that tomorrow. We’ll have more time tomorrow. Besides, the entire student body from what looked to be an exceedingly conservative religious girls’ school (long dresses, black tights, black shoes, no make up) were filing into the visitor’s center. I wasn’t really relishing the idea of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them a few hundred feet underground in a damp, dark cave. If things went wrong and the cave collapsed, I knew God would do everything He could to save them and off me in a heartbeat.

“Hey, kids, the gift shop!”

At this, Noah and Gwyneth lit up. What’s not to love about a gift shop? We spent the next thirty minutes browsing an array of fool’s gold nuggets and crystals and toy guns and t-shirts and glass figurines and jewelry. I looked at my watch. It was now almost five. By the time we got back to the hotel room, had a little down time (“down” from what, I wasn’t so sure), and got cleaned up, it would be time for dinner. After that, we’d go back to the room and watch a movie. Then bed. We were in the homestretch.

Homestretch? I thought. Since when did vacations become about “the homestretch”? Am I really here just killing time? Trying to get through it anyway I can?

No, I could answer honestly. The circumstances of this trip just lent themselves to that feeling. We arrived at an odd time of day. At that moment, I was killing time because there was literally nothing else to do. The last two hours were not representative of the other twenty-two hours we would spend together in Luray.  Still, the fact that I was on a getaway adventure with my kids, and counting the seconds, was the proverbial cold water in the face. Enjoy the moment, I reminded myself.

And I did…for a while. The next morning we awoke to a brilliant sunrise. We went to the caverns right after breakfast, when practically no one else was there. We wandered down the paths almost entirely alone. I got to watch the kids stare up in wonder at the rock formations draped like curtains across the cave’s ceiling. It was totally worth it. I felt like I had finally slowed down and was enjoying just being with my kids and all their youthful exuberance and innocence and awe.

But then I was reminded that, in the end, I’m me. As such, “living in the moment” will always be fleeting at best. After the caverns, we went to the Garden Maze. As we wandered around, trying to find our way out, meeting dead-end after dead-end, I kept reminding myself of what a great counterbalance to everyday life this was: In a world where we’re constantly measuring how far and how fast we go, we were getting lost on purpose. For fun.

And I know I should have loved that. I know it should have made me go all Zen-like and feel at one with the moment and like I was zipping along some time-space continuum in a rotating orb. But it didn’t. It drove me fucking crazy. It drove the kids crazy, too. I was seriously thinking of using the little tomahawk Noah had bought at the gift shop to tunnel out of the thing. It took us 45 minutes to find our way out. I had never felt so claustrophobic in my life. When we finally reached the end, Noah shouted in relief, “I’m NEVER doing that again!”

“Me neither,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” And we did.