Or I could get around to shaving my legs

Next new episode of Queer Eye is February 17th???. What will I do Tuesday nights until then? Maybe this quiz to see which of the Fab 5 is my type. Results for me: Hottie
Kyan: Grooming Guru


Which Member from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is your type?
brought to you by Quizilla

I ♥ blogs

I have said it before - I love the way blogs let you get inside someone else's skin. I'm a Mom of 2 in California; today I made peanut butter sandwiches, changed 7 diapers and did a Princess jigsaw puzzle. But now I know what it's like to be an armored guard meeting the dumbest person in North Carolina.

Everybody's a comedian

I love Google's ads and "related searches" box above, that changes depending on whichever blog entry it has just spidered. Last week at bedtime, as I was about to go off to carb-starved sleep, I noticed the Box suggesting that those reading my blog might enjoy related searches for "pancakes" and "macaroni and cheese".
Et tu, Google?
Today, as I sit here in my $22 Old Navy jeans and $9.99 clearance Gap Favorite T, the Box suggests I might like to check out some Juicy Couture. $172 cashmere scarf, anyone?

The hardest part

We are still waiting for news about my mother. She finally got biopsy and blood test results back last week, and ... they were negative, which would indicate no disease. Good news? Well, maybe, if it could possibly be true. Given her symptoms, and circumstances surrounding the lab procedures, the doctors are not hopeful that the results are accurate. She goes back for more testing this week.
After I first got The Call from my Dad telling me about Mom's illness, though she had not been out of my mind for a second, I did not call her for a few days. I didn't know what to say. My husband and I were careful not to talk about it in front of my daughter, but when I said to my husband one night that I wanted to call my Mom but didn't know what to say, my daughter volunteered, "Mommy, you just say "Hello!"
So I called her. Said hello. Talked about eBay and the kids and the movie we watched last night. About being afraid and life being uncertain. I'm glad I called.

Fragments of my childhood

I have this obsession with remembering my childhood room. I have these spotty, dreamlike memories of it, the room I had from the time I was 4 until we moved when I was 9. Spring green wall-to-wall carpet, spring green walls. Pressed-wood dresser with avocado green drawers. Taller, mismatched chest of drawers, with my Cher doll on top, together with a carved egret with a broken beak that I bought at a flea market. The instructions that came with Cher said that her hair would sometimes get caught in her eyelashes, and to carefully unwind them. Goldfish bowl, sometimes with Goldfish of the Month, sometimes empty. That really stinky flaky fish food, yellow with a brown lid. Kids' record player, blue and red plastic. Really played 45s, with that yellow insert thing in the middle. I had "Band on the Run", "Dancing Queen" and "Aristocats". "Band on the Run" really intrigued me. That distant echoey sound, like they were singing the song in a cave. A cave while they were on the run, of course. "Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash as we fell into the sun/and the first one said to the second one there, "I hope you're having fun"./Band on the run/band on the run/and the jailer man and sailor sam were searching for everyone" Avon Pink & Pretty kitty cologne, the kitty's blue skirt held the cologne and the top was her waist and head. I found one on eBay recently and am thinking of buying it just to smell it again. Wooden fish with glued-on googly eye, a gift from someone forgotten. Think I still have it somewhere, along with the broken egret. The child's desk and chair, the heavy lamp I still have. Lots of stuffed animals, though I can't remember many in particular, except the red bear won at Skee Ball in Santa Cruz, smelled like baby powder and leaked styrofoam balls. Some sort of cartoonish animal print my mom got as a mail-away, had something to do with a coffee can. Will have to ask her, that one has escaped me.

Fun is all relative

It doesn't snow where I live. Ever. But one of the joys of California is that you are never very far from the snow, the beach, camping, or quality aromatherapy products. Today we drove a few hours up to the nearest Sno-Park ™ so my kids could see the snow for the first time. As we packed the snow saucers, I had visions of my husband and myself laughing as we glided down powdery hills, each holding a child squealing in delight. As we packed cozy mittens and tiny boots, I imagined the snowman we would build together. As I tucked my little girls' curls beneath her warm cap, I envisioned the snow angels she would make.
We arrived at the park around 10 a.m. In the parking lot, we dressed the children in turtlenecks and pants, socks and boots, snowbibs and hoodies, parkas and earmuffs, sunglasses and gloves. My son was particularly enchanting in his sister's hand-me-down powder blue snowpants and pink cherry-dappled boots. Forty five minutes later, we hiked to the snow play area in the glaring sun, shedding parkas and earmuffs, and stuffing our pockets with discarded sunglasses and unwanted gloves. When we arrived at the play area, my son was wearing only one boot. My husband backtracked, finding the bubble-gum hued boot immediately outside our car door. He caught up with us again, and found my daughter and I standing huddled together on the icy, extremely steep slopes, trying to avoid being hit by out-of-control saucers and sleds.
My husband and daughter scouted out a gentle slope amid the chaos, and plopping on their $6.99 blue saucer, immediately careened out of control down a pockmarked icy ravine, nearly missing a teenage girl. (OK, I am embellishing a little. They didn't miss her entirely. But she was ok.) At the same time, however, I looked up the steeper slope, keeping one hand on my son's parka hood to keep him in check. A woman on a sled came skidding down the hill at breakneck speed and I watched in horror as she neatly clipped the ankles of a woman in a gray sweater who stood with her back to the slope. Cartoon-like, the sled and rider slipped completely beneath the gray-sweatered woman as she fell, almost in slow motion, before falling flat on her back on the packed snow with a sickening "whump". She lay there a long while with people looking on and comforting her. When she finally rose, unsteadily and with the help of her husband and the apologetic sled rider, I noticed her rounded belly for the first time. She had to be 7 or 8 months pregnant. I am not the world's most religious person, but I prayed that she and her baby would be ok.
We regrouped as a family, and nervously eyeing the children whizzing past from every angle, decided that sledding was not for us. We found a clearing to build our snowman, or, at my daughter's insistence, a snow bear. After chipping at the ice first with our gloves and then with our bare hands, we finally managed to kick out a lump that looked somewhat bearlike, if you happen to be 3 years old. My daughter declared she was hungry. After less than half an hour in the snow, we headed home.
Tonight, with all the sincerity a 3-year-old can muster, my daughter told us what a great time she had today, sliding and building the bear, and seeing all the pretty snow. As I unpacked muddy mittens and damp parkas, I realized, that is all that matters.

Jenerations

When I started this blog, and named it "Jenerations", I was thinking, as you might infer from the logo, of being a mother, and of being a daughter; of being sandwiched between the generation of my children and that of my parents. Particularly, I was thinking of the female side of things, of being my mother's daughter, of being my daughter's mother. And also of being myself caught between childhood and old age.
I found out Thursday night that my Mom has been diagnosed with a serious, rare, and potentially fatal autoimmune disease. I would name it, but she, at 60, is internet savvy and in doing a search to find out what the future holds for her, would likely stumble upon my blog. It doesn't look good for her, or for all of us who love her. It is a progressive disease, and the treatment seems to cause more discomfort than the disease. She is scared and depressed. I hate thinking of her being scared. I hate thinking of her crying. I think of all the childhood tears of mine she dried, of all the monsters in the closet she chased away, and I am here helpless against this thing that is paining her.
I also think, morbidly perhaps, of all I don't know about her, of all the many talents of hers I have yet to acquire. There always seemed to be time to learn.
Last night, my son had trouble sleeping, and so between 3 and 4 a.m. I could be found holding him in the rocking chair in his room. It's actually a good time to think, 3 a.m. The house is quiet save the creaking of the rocking chair, and even if I wanted to get up and fold a load of laundry, call a friend I haven't spoken to in a while, or channel surf, my job is to hold the baby, to quietly rock and quietly think. I wondered what my Mom was doing at that moment. Sleeping, I hoped. But more likely, awake and fretting in the darkness of her room, wondering about her future. I closed my eyes, and as sleep started to overcome me, saw the baby in my arms not as my son but as my mother, and I rocked her, rocked her, rocked her.

Housebound

The kids aren't napping today, and I'm sitting here watching them jump on the 3-year-old's bed like a couple of maniacs. The screaming is so loud the windows are shaking. I wonder what will happen when the kids start screaming, too.
Good thing I found this hilarious blog to cheer myself up. Fart and bodily fluid jokes abound. Having spent the day with persons under 3 feet tall, it is just what I was in the mood for.

867-5309

jennifer
n. a collective or quantitative noun for friends.
"Kelly, that's a whole jennifer of friends!"
(Source:The Infinite Teen Slang Dictionary)

So my name's Jen. You might have guessed that, or maybe you just figured spelling wasn't my strong point. Born in 1969, and, unlike the scads of just-younger Jennifers named after the heroine of Love Story, was named after Jennifer Grant, the daughter of Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon.
At different times in my life, I've gone by Jenny, Jennifer, Jen, and even Ginger. Met a lot of Jens along the way. In college, I lived in a 3 bedroom apartment with 5 other roommates - 3 of us named Jen.

Phone rings. "Hello?"
"Hello, may I speak with Jen?"
Sigh.

I've been reading a number of blogs lately, and noticing several good ones written by Jens. I even found a Jenblog webring. I've added a short list of the favorites I've stumbled on lately, I'll continue to add to it. We live all across the country, and beyond. We're moms, we're daughters, wives and girlfriends. We're conservative and liberal, straight and gay. We're sassy, we're shy; we're having midlife crises, we are full of teen angst. We are joined together by the white wave - we are Jen.

Self-indulgent cute kid post

Last night my 3-year-old daughter and I were doing a jigsaw puzzle in her room before bed. Perhaps impressed with my skills at putting Caillou's face and shirt together in a matter of minutes, she stopped her work, looked at me, and said "Mommy, I want to be you when I grow up." I said "Thanks, Honey," and then, perhaps privately congratulating myself on my decision to trade my career for motherhood, I said "I want to be a Mommy when I grow up." She again stopped her puzzling. "But Mama - you're already up!"

Foiled again

Too much aluminum foil, and too much time on your hands? This guy came home to find his houseguests had aluminum-foiled his entire apartment. With friends like this ...

Jenerations

A little over a week ago, we were invited to join some friends on the last day of Hannukah for a cocktail party and candle lighting. It was a fun, loud, festive event, attended by lots of famlies with small children and infants. I really enjoyed seeing the holiday first-hand, and was honored to have been invited. The hostess actually helped us decorate our Christmas tree last year, so I suppose it was partially return for the show-and-tell.
We got home late, for us anyway, past the wee hour of 8:00 p.m., and the kids were wired from being up past their bedtime. My husband and I both went upstairs to team-change the baby for bed, as he can be the Screaming Child With 900 Flailing Arms and Legs when he is overtired. Midway through the change, we heard my daughter crying downstairs, really wailing, which is unlike her. My husband ran down and found her bleeding from her lip. She had been jumping off her sugar-cookie-past-bedtime high on the sofa and hit the window sill. She is 3 years old. I think this was the third time I have seen her bleed.
We did fairly well, my husband and I, getting her calmed down and sucking on an ice cube in a cloth. I ventured to look at it - eeeyew. I am not big on blood. Fortunately for me, my mom was a nurse, and is used to calls like this from me:
"Hello?"
"Mom. She fell and hit her lip and it's really bleeding and I don't know whether to take her to the emergency room and there's all this blood and she's crying and - "
"How long ago?"
"Two minutes."
Seemingly interminable pause. "Is she crying now?"
I listen. "No."
"Is it still bleeding?"
I look. "No."
"Is the lip hanging in two pieces?"
"No."
"Then she doesn't need stitches, don't take her to the emergency room, she will only pick up something there and get sick for real."


"Thanks Mom."


She was right, the lip was fine. My mom is always right. When will my daughter's mom always be right?

Phase 1, Day 1 ... again

I put on a few pounds over the holidays, really less than 2, but certainly threw my South-Beach pure blood out of whack with candy, cookies and - yesterday, as a sort of Mardi Gras last gasp - a short stack of buttermilk pancakes with syrup at iHop. Today, it is V-8, eggs and vegetarian "ham" for breakfast. In a few short hours I will indulge on a stick of string cheese, then chicken on romaine for lunch with sugar-free Jello. Afternoon snack is celery with Laughing Cow, a soft spreadable cheese. Dinner will be Grilled Rosemary Salmon and cauliflower whipped into "South Beach Surprise Mashed Potatoes". Mouth watering yet? Mine neither. But it works.