The Lipstick Chronicles

Hot Sex and Bad Mothers: It Must be Ayelet Waldman

An introduction, by Sarah:

Ayelet Waldman is the New York Times bestselling author of BAD MOTHER: A CHRONICLE OF MATERNAL CRIMES, MINOR CALAMITIES AND OCCASIONAL MOMENTS OF GRACE, a collection of essays exploring what it means to be a "bad mother" in today's society.

In addition, a film adaptation of her wildly successful novel, LOVE AND OTHER IMPOSSIBLE PURSUITS about a young wife who's dealing with a fresh tragedy along with a new husband whom she wed after breaking up his first marriage, is slated to premier at the Toronto Film Festival September 16th. It stars Natalie Portman and hot damn if we aren't green with envy.

But perhaps Ayelet, despite her talents and writing skills, is most famous for public comments she's made regarding the intense relationship with her husband, Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon. A mother of four, Ayelet nevertheless has declared that it is her husband for whom she yearns more than her children, that while she could survive if one of her children died before her, she questions her ability to do the same should it be Michael to pass on. If you think that's nuts, just wait to hear what she has to say about being bipolar. 

It's never a dull moment when Ayelet's around. This woman has managed to turn motherhood, marriage and mental illness askew asking that we at least reconsider our entrenched notions of right and wrong before we judge. Also, she's been on Oprah. 'Nuff said.

What follows is a Q&A I did with Ayelet following the publication of BAD MOTHER. You might disagree with her, even prickle at some of her comments, but there's no getting around it: Ayelet Waldman makes great copy.

TLC: Why, especially when it comes to mothering, are women more critical of other women than men? What happened to sisterhood solidarity and all that jazz? Is this just another example of us being too catty to get along? Or are we simply really good mothers who know better than everyone else? :)

 

AYELELT: If I only knew the answer to that!! My husband can see a father behaving badly and perhaps even comment on it (to me, never to that dad), but that other father's behavior makes zero impression on him, on how he sees himself. I, on the other hand, see a woman doing something I'd never do (like, say, feeding her child Doritoes. Oh wait, I did that last week.) and even my condemnation is experienced through the lens of my own experience. I don't just say, "Look at that loser." I say "Look at that Bad Mother. I'd never do that." I think we condemn other mothers because we're so desperately insecure about our own mothering. We're so worried we've made mistakes, that we're doing it wrong, that our children will grow up to be serial killers or never get into Harvard (and which, by the way, is worse?), that we desperately seek out this iconic Bad Mother symbols to make ourselves feel better. 

Plus, we're catty and bitchy. Which, frankly, I think is fine, as long as we do it behind one another's backs. I mean, when did flame wars become acceptable means of discourse for normal people?

TLC: Who's the better mother: An organized, if reserved and slightly cold, woman who attends all her children's sports events, never swears, puts dinner on the table promptly at 6:30 complete with low fat/high protein/rich in fruits and vegetables dinners and role models perfect behavior OR....The warm loving soul who maybe drinks a bit, has a few too many boyfriends stay on overnights, forgets that it's the day of the school concert and therefore her children do not have the requisite black pants/white shirt and tends to talk like a sailor?

Need you ask? But honestly, I'd love it if we could just back away entirely from the comparison and competition. Embracing the Bad Mother identity serves a purpose -- it relaxes us, it amuses us. But really we're still caught in the same dichotomy, we're still using the same toxic language. 

TLC: Marriage. Yours, apparently, is fantastic and sex has never been better. But it seems like the only people dying to get married these days are gay. If marriage is so awesome, how come women are growing increasingly cool to the idea?

AYELET: Is this really true? I didn't know that...  Maybe it's because they figure that if they're going to have to take care of the kids and the house and work for a living ANYWAY, they might as well cut down on the number of individuals they need to be taking care of? I don't know.   

TLC: Did you really mean what you said about enjoying bipolarity? And just how much can you get done in a manic phase?

AYELET: I once wrote 3 novels in 7 months, how's that for awesome. I don't enjoy mania. I enjoy HYPOmania.  Two very different things. Mania means you buy the entire contents of the Bloomingdale's petite section and then stop off at Hold Everything to drop 5 grand on storage boxes for your new clothes. Hypomania means you allow yourself the indulgence of a pair of YSL Tribute Sandals even though you can't afford it. Mania means you wear a tinfoil hat and draft a 3000 page document detailing your persecution at the hands of the Somali Volunteer Coastguard. Hypomania means that you finish your novel in two weeks at the MacDowell Colony. 

I love hypomania. I've never been manic...I'm lucky. But I loath the irritability. I loath how scary it is for my kids that I can be so volatile. On balance, I'd rather NOT be bipolar, but no one is offering me that option. (Pfizer? You listening?). 

TLC: Finally, you're a bestselling author, you're married to Michael Chabon and you two do it like seventeen times a day, live in a cool Berkeley community and are on a first-name basis with Barack Obama with whom you went to Harvard Law. Give me three good reasons why I shouldn't loathe you with every envious bone in my body.

AYELET: 

1. I have this huge flap of skin that droops from hipbone to hipbone that I would love to have hacked off, but I'm afraid of going down in history as the mother so blindingly self-absorbed and vain that she left 4 motherless waifs in her quest to be thin.

2. I'm crazy. Seriously. The bipolar thing is no picnic.

3. My mysteries are fast going out of print, and yours, my dear, are selling like hotcakes. 

Guess what: I'll trade a diminishing backlist for the New York Times thingy. Deal?

So what do you think? Is Ayelet nuts for declaring the virtues of mental illness? Is it wrong to love your husband more than your children? Are women REALLY harder on other women for their mothering and, if so, what happened to the notion of sisterhood? And, finally, just what the hell do I have to do to get on Oprah, anyway.

Sarah

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Ahhh, Marijuana Season

Ahhh, Marijuana Season....

By Sarah

As you read this, I'll probably be driving down to Pennsylvania to take our daughter to college. Finally. 

This, I believe, is a miracle in itself since I was not too sure she was going to make it through the summer alive, what with various parties and a boyfriend and non-stop driving. But here we are - knock on wood - in tact.

Wish I could say the same for my houseplants.

Why is it that some people can surround themselves wish lush greenery, sucking in the benefits of newly manufactured oxygen, enjoying the karmic benefits of living among nature while the rest of us - me, particularly - are every house ivy's nightmare? All my life I've tried to cultivated plants only to end up, months later, dropping them by the curb brown and shriveled.

I water them, honest. I even showered with a plant that required ridiculous amounts of humidity. The bonsai tree Charlie got me I meticulously kept moist - no matter what HE claims. Despite my most ardent attention it, too, has browned and died. This is so unfair. I am cursed!

Take, for example, the potted ivy I got for Anna and Sam's bathroom. It was doing just fine and I was quite pleased until I noticed a strange webbing extending from its leaves. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny spiders. Eeeek! I couldn't throw it out of the house fast enough.

I feel this is some failing on my part, destroying living things. As if I've been so suburbanized I cannot cultivate even the simplest plants. The rogosa roses I planted in the front of the house - guaranteed to thrive! - are long and spindly as they search for sun often blocked out by the top of the hill. Day lilies, weeds, really, are overtaken by bishop's weed or goutweed. That, by the way, is something I can grow. Goutweed. Tons of it.

Once, in a golden age, I had a slope thriving with all sorts of wonderful things - bee balm, bachelor buttons, oregano, two types of sage, thyme, some bulbous purple thing and even English lavender. But my  contractor took care of that in one scoop and, frankly, I haven't had the time or interest to start all over again - especially since our front yard post construction looks like something out of a horror movie.

In contrast, my neighbor who has successfully beaten back an aggressive cousin of ovarian cancer has a thriving garden - and she's doing pretty well, too. (Those prayers help, no matter what the atheists say.) I think this is significant. That she's got everything blooming from a billion different types of roses to exotic crazy purple and pink stuff in a soil that's both rocky and, for nine months out of the year, frozen, tells me this woman oozes life. Me? I can't even remember the names of the stuff. It took three years of conscious thought to be able to come up with the word "hydrangea" and not confuse it with "mum." This does not bode well for my physical future.

Of course, if I were dripping rich this wouldn't be a problem. I could just hire someone to grade the yard and plug in the plants, design the whole thing for me. Possibly said gardener could extract the goutweed. But as I'm not rich, the only upside I can see to my disability, if you will, is that the police won't be knocking on my door anytime soon suspecting me of growing pot in my basement, a quaint Vermont tradition.

This form of agriculture is sorely disrespected in my opinion. When I was a reporter here, I was astonished  and impressed by the green thumbs of enterprising teenagers who sowed their marijuana seeds among the farmers' corn only to reap an emerald harvest in late August and early September. State police have to conduct fly overs to spot the plants in the mile after mile of ripe corn which is why kids, like forgetful squirrels, often end up leaving their booty for others to gather. 

Or how about the time a local judge, complaining about some wild animals in her back yard, called Fish and Wildlife who dutifully trotted out and found no rabid fox, but plenty of Columbian Gold growing right there in plain sight. To the judge's credit, she did not throw a hand to her chest and claim ignorance. Indeed! She argued it was for her personal use - all 36 or so plants. 

Better yet... the Vermont State's Attorney in her county dropped the charges. Some might argue that was because Judge Davis knew the prosecutor, but that's not the reason. The real reason is that the prosecutor has long been arguing that busting responsible citizens for growing marijuana in their backyards and possessing enough for their own consumption is just stupid. What do you think?

I happen to know this prosecutor, Bobby Sand. He's married to a friend of mine, Andrea, who used to be a reporter with me at the paper. They're pretty upstanding straight people who live a pretty righteous and sober life. That said, I suspect they have terrific gardens.

If only......

Sarah

So Much for Woodstock

So Much for Woodstock

By Sarah

So I was watching HGTV (I have a redecorating monkey on my back) when up popped this Walmart ad about a mother and daughter redecorating the daughter's dorm room in purple. And pink. The voice over  is something about a mother not being able to sit on her daughter's bed each night and talk about the day. I know I should have cried, seeing as how I've got a daughter going to Bryn Mawr next week, but all I could do was laugh.

 I don't know who writes these ads, but by the time you're sending your daughter off to college, chances are she's not in bed by the time you are. As for sitting on it, try mincing your way across a room littered with everything from laptops to cigars. And don't get me even started on the pink fluffy whatever that is - storage box? seat? kitty-litter cover? If my mother had color coordinated my college room in pink and purple, I would have been laughed off campus.

Silly me. For just the other day, my daughter who's been employed all summer and has cash to burn, apparently, announced that she was going to Bed, Bath & Beyond for matching dinner plates. Preferably in pink. Or lime green. For college. Turns out her friend's mother had outfitted her own daughter top to bottom in coordinating sheets/towels/lamps/decorations for school

Barf.

Just when did this color-coordinating business begin? Last I saw anything like this was second grade when the Spice Girls were as big as beaded curtains. Why, when we went to college we had two  essentials: a mini fridge and an all-in-one Pioneer stereo with speakers. Perhaps a hot pot and a poster of Peter Frampton. And that was it! My blanket was from my bed back home, so was my bedspread. Everything else was in milk cartons. Some roommates brought bongs. Others, more creative, made their own. A laminating machine to forge IDs was always welcomed.

But I guess the problem is my own. I was so eager to leave Bethlehem, PA, so desperate to be out from under my parents rule that the last thing on my mind was whether my 8th grade flowered bedspread would clash with my poster of Janis Ian. As tired and worn out as my parents were by the time I was headed to Tufts, they still represented the oppressors. Not so much now.

A Pew Research Study released last week in honor of Woodstock, the moment that forever drove a  wedge between responsible, industrious hardworking WWII vets and their hitchhiking, dirty, pot smoking kids, reveals that, lo and behold, the generation gap is....gone! In fact, kids and their parents are closer than ever bonding along social values and music. That Steve Jobs, an ex hippie himself, did more than make music portable when he created the iPod. He changed the fabric of our culture.

Possibly. But my question is whether this is a good thing. I rode a lot of energy busting out of my childhood home, a total rush. And while it was a wave that sometimes dunked me to the point of drowning, it also swept me right into adulthood. The last thing I wanted to do after college was go home. I made sure I had a job and an apartment lined up right away. The day after I attended my own college graduation, I was covering Rutgers' for the Home News in New Jersey. Yes, it was Jersey, but it was MY Jersey.

My husband sees it differently. His parents, not WWII vets, tend to get along just fine with their four adult children and their spouses. They were younger than mine, more understanding about sex, even drugs. Also, they're from Ohio and as everyone in Ohio knows as long as there's curry rice salad (yum!) and corn on the cob all is well in the universe. 

From Charlie's point of view, the generation gap was a fluke. Until the 1960s parents and their kids coexisted happily. There was no rebellion, no mistrust of anyone over 30. It was the rare shifting of the plates that occurred in that decade, the spread of rock 'n roll, the pill, recreational illegal drug use, the  Vietnam War and Richard Nixon, that split apart the generations. In our post Woodstock culture, families tend to be either pro-choice or not, for Obama or not so much. Policy planks don't necessarily divide between ages as they do between geographical boundaries.

Or maybe teenagers have just become, well, boring. I mean, if they're hugging their mothers over pink shag hampers and squealing over purple and pink bedspreads, will they be protesting in the streets and demanding equal pay for equal work by their senior year?

One can only hope.

Sarah

Most of All, You've Got to Hide it From the Kids

Most of All, You've Got to Hide it from the Kids

By Sarah

I'm on Cape Cod with some of my family for vacation. We try to ht the Cape every year and when we do, I usually bring along a mystery to read. This time, along with Still Life by Louise Penny (excellent!), I'm reading everything I can about the death of Diane Schuler - and the seven other people she killed while driving the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway July 26 as she guzzled vodka and smoked dope.

Those facts alone wouldn't be enough to spark an obsession that has possessed not only me but also  thousands of avid news junkies on the East Coast. Drinking and driving, even with kids in the car, is, unfortunately, old hat. As for going the wrong way? Well, just the other day a bozo was busted for driving IN REVERSE down (or up?) I-89, the main interstate leading to my town of Montpelier. Yup. He tested for three times the legal limit of drunkness.

No, what drives us nuts about the Diane Schuler case is that up until that fateful Sunday afternoon when she drove 1.7 miles in the wrong direction down the Taconic with five young children in a Ford Windstar, no one, including her husband, supposedly, was aware she drank. Period. Ditto for her brother who lost all three of his young daughters in the accident and who'd lent her his van to begin with. Never would he have entrusted his beloved girls to his sister if he thought for a minute she was a drunk.

And no one did.

This is what makes the case so...odd. Consider the facts: that on the Sunday of the accident, Diane and her husband, Daniel, packed up their belongings at an upstate New York family campground where they frequently spent weekends. Diane, 36, was an executive at Cablevision living on Long Island in a $340,000 house. Her husband worked in semi law enforcement for Nassau County providing nighttime security. Typical nice family. When their coffee was over, around 9:30, they put the five kids in the van: their two-year-old daughter, five-year-old son and three nieces ages eight, seven and five. Her husband drove off in the family pickup truck with his dog. Diane headed to her brother's.

Sometime around 10:40, Diane stopped off at a McDonald's with a play area. The kids had breakfast and off they went. At 11:30, she called her brother, Warren Hance, to say they'd arrive on schedule.

And here's where things get whacky.

At 12:58, Emma Hance, Warren's eight-year-old daughter, called her father on Diane's cell to say that "something was wrong with Aunt Diane." She was having trouble seeing and she was talking funny - seeing. The call was dropped after three minutes. Warren Hance called back at 1:01 p.m. for a call that lasted nine minutes. Earlier reports stated he told his sister to pull over after she got through the Tappan Zee and he would come get them. But Diane didn't and her cell was found nearby, as if tossed out the window.

That's when the nightmare began. Heading toward the Taconic, Diane apparently tailgated cars, drove in the breakdown lane, flashed her lights and straddled lanes with such aggression that motorists called 911. At the Taconic, she entered the exit to the northbound lane on the twisting, turning road. Cars dodged to get out of her way but the S.U.V. driven by Guy Bastardi, 49, wasn't so lucky. He, along with his father, Michael, 81, and family friend, Daniel Longo, 74, met Diane head on. The crash was so incendiary that when the fire was put out, the red minivan had turned gray. Only Diane's five year old son survived.

There were tons of theories at first since the cops stated alcohol was not a factor in the crash, that Diane was a diabetic, that she'd had a stroke, a brain aneurysm. But the coroner ruled that out. What he found instead was that Diane's blood alcohol level as .19, more than twice the legal limit. Her THC levels were so high that she must have smoked marijuana that day and there were six grams of undigested alcohol in her stomach indicating that she drank right up until the crash. As for diabetes, when they tested the fluid in her eyeballs for elevated sugar, what they found was booze. Around the same time, police revealed that when they went through the charred remains of the van, they found a broken bottle of Absolut vodka.

The family went into further shock. Diane's husband, Daniel, denied that his wife was a drunk and claimed they took the same bottle back and forth to camp. Her driving record was spotless. The campground owner, the people at McDonald's, all swore she was stone cold sober that morning.

So what gives?

What would prompt a mother carrying such precious cargo to start swilling vodka while driving on a Sunday morning? Where did a suburban Cablevision executive get pot? Was it a suicide? Did she go nuts? 

Or, alternatively, was Diane Schuler a closet drinker who hid her addiction from her husband, a security guard whose schedule gave her every night free?

These questions can be answered, I think, in the "missing hour and a half" between the time Diane left McDonald's at 10:40 and arrived at the Tappan Zee around 1 p.m., a trip that normally should have taken - especially on a Sunday morning - a little over an hour. In that intervening time, Diane went somewhere, did some thing, smoked some pot and opened a bottle.

And eight lives and several families were ruined forever.

Sarah 

Read My Rear

Read My Rear

By Sarah

As I was wiping off the ample rear end of my Honda Pilot this weekend to apply a "READING IS SEXY"  bumper sticker, I stood back to admire my superb pasting abilities and realized, "I have become one of those women." You know the kind, bumper stickers everywhere.

Obama/Biden. I Heart Mr. Darcy (Thanks, Ramona!) Knit Local and now this, a sticker of a mud-flap siren  with a cup of tea holding a book. Apparently, so many customers of Bear Pond Books here in Montpelier were offended by the image that the independent bookstore had to remove its bags with the logo. Free wheeling Key West Vermont ain't.

Maybe this is a New England thing. My mother, who grew up in Boston, was the only one in our neighborhood to have a car loaded with stickers: A Woman's Place is in the House....And the Senate! Live Long Enough to Be a Problem to Your Children. That kind of thing. Every year as we made our annual pilgrimage from Pennsylvania to Cape Cod, she would eagerly point to the increase of rear end attitude the way we kids pointed to sand by the side of the road.

My sister in law just mentioned that this is the only thing she misses about the Bush Administration: the great bumper stickers. Of course, we were blessed with a name like "Bush" to play with. That was fun, though the bumper sticker on my refrigerator was not: Impeach Bush/Torture Cheney. A bit too out there, we decided, for the car.

For some reason, the most popular bumper sticker around here is: Eat More Kale. ???

That's not to say we're all whacked out liberals. The other day I waited in my car to see who would claim the huge Hummer with cammo decals and a bumper sticker that read: "If I'm Not Driving, Then I Must Be  Cleaning My Guns." Sure enough, a pale, weak-chinned balding man in glasses took the steering wheel. Guess when you look like that you have to surround yourself in armor and thinly veiled threats.

Also, what's with the No Fear? Can anyone explain that to me. Or, why people slap CHEVY across the back of their truck as if they're driving a PORSCHE.

I have very little patience with commands: Buy American. Support the Troops.  And I really don't care if anyone's kid is an honor student. I'm pretty sure FREE TIBET! is not having an impact. Then again, I'm a hypocrite because I also have KNIT LOCAL.

I've never been persuaded to change my political feelings with a bumper sticker, have you? So why are  there so many? I suppose this is a unity thing. "Hey Buddy behind me," a bumper sticker says. "We're driving down this crazy road of life together. You're not alone."

Unless you're the elderly couple at the end of our road. She's liberal, he's conservative. So the driver's side of his bumper is loaded with Bush/Cheney and Stop Abortion! While the other side is loaded with her opinions, Save Family Farms and Bernie! (For Bernie Sanders.)

They've been married more than 50 years.

So, how about you? What does your rear end say?

Sarah

What I Learned From 17 Hours of Talk Radio

What I Learned from 17 Hours of Talk Radio

By Sarah

I have just returned from driving back and forth across Canada. Not the whole country, but a good chunk. A total of 17 hours driven in two days with the prize of retrieving our son, Sam, from Algonquin Park where he went to camp. Seventeen hours of talk radio and my brain is still reeling.

My husband's car has XM radio, which is great considering half the trip was in Quebec, a province so fiercely French that they refuse to post English translations for their highway signs. (Unlike English speaking Ontario where they graciously include the French - much as adults might indulge spoiled children.) This all French all the time takes some getting used to, especially in construction zones where one is expected to know to merge left or right or avoid congestion on the TWC in a different language, but that's okay. The great thing about Quebecois is they drive really, really fast so you can get behind and draft them. Let the Ontario Provincial Police pull them over instead of you.

But back to what I learned. I learned that my tolerance for listening to Rush Limbaugh was nil. While I used to be able to laugh at his rants and raves, now it's stomach churning. Better to flip around the 500 channels risking accidents than start yelling at the steering wheel.

I learned that tobacco is the most illegally legal drug in that various foreign countries - formerly aided by the US tobacco companies - along with many Indian reservations, buy cigarettes cheap and resell them underground to avoid the huge taxes levied by states. (New York, for example, adds close t o a whopping $5 per pack in taxes alone. North Carolina, not surprisingly, does not.) China exports "jing ling" cigarettes that show a "goat" instead of a camel. Their only purpose is to be smuggled. In fact, smuggled cigarettes are  an international problem that even extends military conflicts. To read more, click here.

I learned that if you slice a grape almost in half and put it in the microwave it will create lightning. Don't believe me? Look at this. Also, metal in the microwave might send off sparks, but it won't create fires. It's the metal covered paper wrappers in the microwave that are really dangerous. Pop-Tarts in their original wrapping are especially bad.

I learned that the 65 year olds and older are voting against the Obama health plan in droves because they already have universal care - Medicare. And that Republicans intentionally use words like "takeover" to describe what a government controlled health care system would be like, as a scare tactic.

Also, of the top 100 "must have" records on Classic Vinyl most were really really boring. This is particularly true for the drug songs. The Who, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young and, yes, Jimi Hendrix went on way too long. They cried for editing. I know because I listened to the top 100 countdown driving up and driving back. Timeless music - not.

Judd Apatow, director and cowriter of such classics as Superbad, Knocked UP and 40 Year Old Virgin, apparently thinks he's subliminally instructing young men to "do the right thing" via his movies. He also had no problem having sex with his wife after watching her give birth, contrary to popular male myth. Good to know since his wife's a babe.

I learned that, like cats, chickens will crawl under the hoods of cars in winter to get warm. FYI to all the farmers out there.

I learned that CNN was desperate to keep the Henry Louis Gates vs. The Cambridge Police Department controversy going as long as possible, even, at last, doing stories asking listeners and viewers to email comments for a story about whether they were giving the story artificial legs. That was exhausting and took way too much air time for the trip. If I had to listen to one more person spout off on that topic I was about ready to drive the car off the road.

I learned that in Canada the skies are so beautiful they are blessed by God. Unfortunately, God tends to send down his wrath in heavy, merciless rain that floods the roads in a second and renders your  windshield wipers useless but that, nevertheless, an eager vacationer will still pass you doing 65 mph in a 70 kilometer zone on twisting two-lane roads. I learned that my knuckles really can go white.

But mostly I learned that I really missed my son, though my house has never been more clean or organized than in his absence. He made me laugh for at least two hours after I picked him up. Then he went back to doing his thing and I went back to listening to Rush Limbaugh and hating him. And then turning to the top 100 classic vinyl.....And so the cycle began.

Got any long car trip stories to share? Cause me? I'm all out.

It's great to be home......

Sarah

Crazy Babysitters and the Moon Walk

Crazy Babysitters and the Moon Walk

By Sarah

To say we're in the slow end of the summer news cycle would be understating the obvious. The most exciting aspect of Sonia Sotomayor's hearings was making fun of newscasters trying to outdo each other  in pronouncing her last name in a Puerto Rican accent, as if this veteran judge, summa cum laude Princeton graduate, Yale-educated lawyer was nothing more than a single woman who could fry up a mean plantain. 

You know it's bad when it takes icons like Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite at least a week to die afer they're dead. Ditto for the anniversary of the 1969 moon walk.

Now, don't get me wrong. I, too, get sentimental looking back through the avocado green haze to my suburban childhood. There was no better time, it seems, than the era of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Beatles saying goodbye in Hey Jude, Creedence, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Nixon. Okay, maybe not so much with the Nixon. 

My hippie brother was seventeen with an okay draft number. The brother behind him would not be so lucky. But for the moment they were the only people with me when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon  because my parents, as they were want to do, were on vacation without us. Oh, and there was Mrs. Wolf. Crazy, crazy Mrs. Wolf.

Why my mother felt it was A-okay to leave me, age six, with a woman who doubted the existence of gravity but it was not okay to leave me with my teenage brothers who did not, is a mystery that will never be answered. Mrs. Wolf was about 5'4" and filled with Pennsylvania Dutch superstitions. I liked her, however, because she let me watch as much TV as I wanted and also allowed me to sleep with her in my parents bed. (God only knows what happened there.) That's where we watched the moon walk.

I was enthralled. My memory is blurry, but I remember it as being a daylong event culminating at a nighttime moonwalk. (In checking BBC, I see that Armstrong hit the surface at about 10:30 p.m. DST.) As I lay there next to Mrs. Wolf, my oldest brother walked in and watched it with us, remarking on the miracle.

"Ah," Mrs. Wolf snorted, "I don't believe it."

Indeed, it was unbelievable, but not in the way the rest of us thought. It was unbelievable because Mrs. Wolf in 1969 was thoroughly, utterly convinced the world was flat. And there was no talking her out of it, either. Her argument was that we were on one big plane (think pre-Columbus) and there was an edge to the Earth that was unreachable. The moon thing was merely a mirage. Oh, and another minor point. WE were at the center of the universe, not the sun.

We tried to explain that the Earth was a sphere, that gravity kept us all grounded and that the astronauts had shot beyond our orbit to the moon's lighter pull. But that didn't make any sense to Mrs. Wolf because if we lived on one big ball - then we would fall off. Logic, right?

The most visual image I have of that night is of my brother holding a hinged photo frame to show that when he undid the clasp, the bottom of the frame fell down. Gravity.

"No," Mrs. Wolf said. "It fell down because it fell down."

This would have freaked me out if I didn't encounter people everyday in my hometown of Bethlehem who were set in their ideas about certain physical properties. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Sheetz, instructed us that sleeping curled in any fashion would result in curled spines. As a result, all over town little seven-year-olds (or, in my case, six - I would enter 2nd grade right after Mrs. Wolf's summer of enlightenment) were ramrod straight in their beds. Crossing eyes kept them that way. And failing to say "Oy" while crossing your index fingers after someone hexed you was just plain foolish.

Try explaining to these people that their president, the one who scowled at us from every classroom wall,  had violated the Constitution. Try explaining what the Constitution really was. I mean, besides the right to bear arms.

So, I'm wondering. Was I the only person around crazy people as a kid? Or did you, too, happen upon the occasional nutter. Because reading these articles about people disbelieving a moon walk ever existed does not come as a surprise to me, though it might to Mrs. Wolf who no doubt is on the heavenly plane with God looking down at us like we're in the center ring at Cirque du Soleil.

Perhaps the joke's on me.....

Sarah

Help! My Husband is a Sex God.

Help! My Husband is a Sex God

By Sarah

So I was doing an interview yesterday with MSNBC.COM and the very nice reporter (a mother at home  with two young kids) asked me if there'd been any reader reaction to my frugality tips in THE PENNY PINCHERS CLUB, which as you may know (because I've told you a thousand times) is my latest book out that I need everyone to buy by the case.

I thought back to the comments I'd received via email and from other reporters and I realized that few had been impressed by the book's coupons vs. generic groceries debate. Aside from a Publishers Weekly note that the tips at the end were "spot on," most people were more interested in how the book's financially strapped married couple in other ways managed to, if you will, make ends meet.

This included a local journalist who got right to the heart of the matter by asking me if the "love scenes"  were inspired by my own sex life.

"Is that what Charlie's REALLY like?" she asked. 

OMG! I mean, okay, I do live in a small town (though it is the state capital) and this journalist, the editor of a local paper, is also the mother of a boy my daughter has been in school with since Kindergarten. And, certainly, when I was writing Bubbles and her main squeeze Stiletto, I heard comments about Charlie since, like Stiletto, Charlie, too, has dark wavy hair. Or should it be Stiletto is like Charlie? Anyway, the point is it didn't really matter back then because back then my husband, aka, Charlie Merriman, wasn't running for Vermont Secretary of State. As he is now.

"I think the voters of Vermont need to know this as we consider who to vote for for Secretary of State," a person very active in the Vermont school library system noted on my Facebook page after I tweeted about the above interview.

Suddenly, I have a new problem. For years I've been thoughtlessly mining my own personal life for professional fodder without a worry. Remember the "100 day pledge" to have sex every day for, well, 100 days? Charlie and I made it pretty far despite all sorts of obstacles including the Romance Writers of America conference. The biggest concern I had then was that my teenage daughter would read the posts.

Then there was the blog wayyy back in the beginning when I wrote about how I "tricked" my husband into marriage through the old fashioned promise of certain sexual favors in perpetuity. I'd say men are "such suckers" for falling for that old shtick, but that'd be the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn't it? 

All of this is out there floating in cyberspace. None of it is the fault of my husband except that he had the audacity to be a good sport. And I can't take back one single word.

Fortunately, this IS Vermont, a small state of 600,000. There have been more people at a Rod Stewart concert. And we're pretty tolerant in our politics and acceptances of lifestyles. Won't find many politicians beating the drum for Conservative family values around here, at least not in the race for Secretary of State where I think the "hot button issue" - not to pun, again - is increasing voter registration.

What I have to do, I've decided, is think like a marketeer. How can I turn my red face into a "blue" win for him? (He's running as a Democrat, you see, hence the blue. God, why can't I be this clever in my real life.) After all, the current Secretary of State, a perfectly nice woman who's probably going to run for governor, has not, to my knowledge, ever blogged about her sex life nor, ipso facto, had her sex life blogged about by others. Her thing is making sure kids understand how bills become law and access to government and all that kind of boring wholesome stuff.

So I'm thinking of a radical new "adult" approach.  How about these bumper stickers?

"Put Sex back in Public Office Where it Belongs: Elect Charlie Merriman Secretary of State"

Or, how about.....

"Merriman for Se(x)retary of State."

 

Or....

"Charlie Merriman: He Hikes the Appalachian Trail Every Night So You Don't Have to."

Maybe....

"He Can't File. 

He Can't Type. 

But With That Ass, Who Cares?

Vote Merriman for Secretary of State."

I dunno. Help me out here.....I think my marriage might depend on it.

Sarah

Then again....maybe it won't be the sex that'll get him in trouble. It'll be scenes like this:

Stand By Your Man...Or Not

Stand By Your Man...Or Not

By Sarah

I thought I'd heard it all with the saga of Mark Sanford, the hopeless romantic governor of South Carolina whose "walk" on the Appalachian Trail took him to Argentina and into the arms of a heavy browed TV  personality. I was patient even when he tearfully professed his love, referencing The Thornbirds and looking misty eyed aloft as he recalled the great sacrifice of breaking with his Latin lover. Granted, I was getting a bit tired after he began cataloging women with whom he came close but did not cross over the line, since in so doing he crossed the line into becoming an eighth grade girl scribbling in her diary.

But I could not take it when his ex Wall Street wife, Jenny, proclaimed that their marriage could still be saved. My first thought was...you patsy.

Yes, I know what you're going to say. I'm a bitch. (Whoa! There's a new one.) I'm one of those women who's harder on other women than on men. I'm a catty shrew. All of which would be correct, though I was  the above long before Jenny Sanford professed her marital fidelity.

Also, I do realize they have four boys, but what kids would want to have anything to do with a father who so publicly humiliated their mother? Kids aren't ignorant. There are other kids to fill them in and YouTube to show them the clips. They know their dad's an ass.

I'm just plain fed up with these wives sticking by their men. Jenny Sanford AT LEAST had the good grace not to literally "stand by" him as Mark publicly confessed his sins and declared his love. (Though one can't help but wonder if we would have been spared his water works if she had.) 

But it's been a long line of wronged women legitimizing their husbands' callous disregard for their dignity and feelings - Silda Spitzer, Elizabeth Edwards, Suzanne Craig (wife of bathroom gigolo, Larry Craig), Dina McGreevey (though she later divorced and sued) and last, but certainly not least, Hillary Clinton. Strong smart women - all saps.

What's wrong with these chicks?

How can Jenny Sanford face her husband across the breakfast table - never mind in the marital bed - after he proclaimed this other woman to be his soul mate? How did Hillary Clinton ever muster a smidgeon of respect for a man who inserted a cigar in an intern and then proclaimed it "tasty"? How does Elizabeth Edwards look herself in the mirror as evidence mounts that Rielle Hunter's baby is the daughter of her husband? (And kudos for you, John, for not lovingly welcoming your latest child. Nice.)

Are they on drugs? They must be.

Of course, the argument is one never knows what goes on in a marriage. That's true. I've had more than one friend reunite with her philandering husband for the sake of all sorts of things. But not one of those husbands held a press conference about it. Nor was a child born out of wedlock. Nor did he claim the other woman was his soulmate. Those guys who did feel that way got divorced and their ex wives, my friends, went on with their lives. Most have found other men and are very happy.

What I suspect is that the women who stay by their (in)famous husbands do so because they, too, like the limelight. Jenny Sanford must enjoy being a governor's wife. (She certainly worked hard enough on his campaign.) And because they feel some ownership of their husbands' success, they are not so willing to let it go - especially to another woman.

Did their husbands know that? Did John Edwards cheat on his cancer striken wife because he knew  there would be no repercussions at home? (On the campaign trail is another matter. I would say it is forever blocked.) I'm not suggesting that their errant ways are their wives' fault, but I am suggesting that a bubble of confidence, of immunity, might have prompted them to act in ways other husbands wouldn't have dared.

Whatever their reasoning, it's a bummer. For once I'd like to see an Elizabeth Edwards or Hillary Clinton stand up and say, "You bastard! Get out of my house and take the damn cat with you." Preferably to the sounds of some country music. Tammy Wynette - but not.

I want to see tail between the legs. I want to hear recorded late night phone calls from the likes of Mark Sanford begging forgiveness and then being taken by the ear to the microphone to apologize not only to his wife, but to all the truly faithful, committed gay couples whom - in his warped view - do not deserve the protections of the institution of marriage. I want to see Larry Craig in an apron and rubber gloves scouring the toilet in penance. (Though, that might very well be one of his fantasies.) I want John Edwards to be on call, 24/7, to draw his wife a bath and massage her feet.

And I want it all on YouTube.

Is that too much to ask for the mishandled cigar, the quick trip to South America?

Hardly.

Sarah

Just a reminder - THE PENNY PINCHERS CLUB - went on sale last week. This is the BIG week for sales, the one publishers care about (hint, hint.) BTW - The New York Daily News picked it as one of its "Great Summer Beach Reads." Quoth the Daily News: Penny Pinchers is "sweet and entertaining." Me. Sweet. Shows what they know.

ALSO!! If you're in the Montpelier, Vermont, area tonight, come on down to Bear Pond Books where I'll be reading and signing and blabbing away.

(F)lame Twitter

TART NOTE: Thank you! to all who ordered THE PENNY PINCHERS CLUB. Like most authors, I treasure each reader and, trust me, I do not take your purchase for granted. Hope you find it worthwhile...

Sarah

(F)lame Twitter

By Sarah

Late to the internet party, most New York publishers now heartily embrace the era of digital communication. It started with webpages - we authors were encouraged to get them - and then the much touted, and over pixilated, "E-cards" inviting readers to come to signings or buy new books. Then came blogs - hello and welcome to TLC - and from there the speed picked up. Myspace. Live Journal. Facebook. Twitter. Suddenly, there were a million ways to connect with readers, filling in the gaps between books as fast as we possibly could.

For some of us natural procrastinators, twiddling around with the World Wide Web suited our distracted brains just fine. I started a "Bubblesheads" listserve back when you had to type in inordinately long addresses just to log on and recently my Cinderella Pact moved off the Yahoo! groups to Facebook where we found, lo and behold, a Cinderella Pact group already in existence.

I could happily chat all day with readers, many of whom have become friends, about news events or recipes or how to remove mold from the shower. (See a hint below on that one.) Hanging around the water cooler was never my problem; sitting down and concentrating was.

For other authors, however, the web continues to pose something of a dilemma. Perhaps because they've been holed up in a garrett writing or reading books four hours a day as Stephen King suggests, they still have not quite grasped the electric quickness of something like Twitter. With dire results.

Take the case of renowned bestseller Alice Hoffman who, in a fit over what she considered to be a lame review by Roberta Silman for the Boston Globe, made the unfortunate decision to not only lambaste the reviewer on Twitter, but also to publish Silman's phone and address urging loyal readers to register their outrage personally.

According to the Christian Science Monitor who got it from Gawker, Hoffman also published the following ""tweets."

• “Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron. How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.”

• “Now any idiot can be a critic. Writers used to review writers. My second novel was reviewed by Ann Tyler. So who is Roberta Silman?”

• “Girls are taught to be gracious and keep their mouths shut. We don’t have to.”

• “My single bad review in my hometown. This is a town where a barking dog is the second top story on the news.”

• “No wonder there is no book section in the Globe anymore – they don’t care about their readers, why should we care about them.”

Now, far be it from me to scoff at Hoffman. In my naivete long, long ago, I excoriated a former newspaper editor of mine for a pretty harsh review of my first book - Bubbles Unbound. It was the book whose advance allowed me to quit said newspaper and I was certain that the review was meant as retribution, as a take down of one of their own. Probably was. But I was wrong in calling him up. Would have been much better to ignore it and move on, as I have with other bad reviews. The way I look at it, a review is a review. It's my name in the paper and for that I'm on my knees in gratitude.

Moreover, once on this very blog, I tossed off a careless remark about being disappointed that a certain individual in the bookselling business greeted one of my books coolly. This, too, revealed the same ignorance about the internet as Hoffman showed when she hopped on Twitter. She was not sending a nasty note to her friend across a classroom. She was telling several hundred people. (Hard to know since she cancelled her account.) They then told a thousand who then told a thousand times that and now I'm telling you.

Whoops!

And I can understand her peeve about the plot - that's my complaint with a number of customer reviews on Amazon. I was reading Nantucket Nights by Elin Hildebrand, went to Amazon to read what other customers thought, and all the plot twists were revealed with a review that posted no spoilers alert. I filed a complaint with Amazon, but have heard nothing since. 

But I never demanded to know "who" a reviewer was. As it turns out, Roberta Silman is a74-year-old award-winning writer and novelist. Perhaps this is why other reviewers are furious and why unpublished authors, especially, rage in resentment. Hoffman is a talent. No one can dispute that. So one might have expected a little less arrogance.

Underlying this whole hoo-ha is the delicious realization that even with a massive audience and Oprah holding her coat, a bad review stings. Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts shrug and go on - or so they say - and because of that they seem, to me, like goddesses. I imagine them slipping another sheet of paper into the typewriter and plugging on as their bank accounts fill to bursting, as their readers beg for more.

Since then she's apologized, sort of. But like a lot of public apologies these days, the damage has been done.

Why does she even read her reviews? If I were she, I simply wouldn't care.

Entertainment Weekly, by the way, had a great footnote to this story. Turns out author Richard Ford once shot a book - I mean, literally, shot it with a gun - written by someone who panned one of his own books. The shot-down author? Alice Hoffman.

Talk about Karma.

One thing's for sure - that's going to be the best read review this week in the Boston Globe. Read it and see what you think. Was Alice right? Did Roberta Silman give away huge chunks of the plot? Was Hoffman right to take action? Or do authors - or anyone who puts him or herself in the public eye - need to suck it up and move on?

Sarah

P.S. THE PENNY PINCHERS CLUB, a story about a shopaholic who has to save up for a divorce,  comes out Thursday. Now don't make me come to your house and knock on the door begging, people. This book may not be of Hoffman's caliber, but it does have fun characters, sex, tension and even money-saving tips. Also great reviews. Though I promise here and now that when the bad reviews come in - as they will - I will keep my hands off the keyboard.

PPS - The household tip. Nearly forgot - spray hydrogen peroxide onto mildew. Kills the mold and breaks down quickly into hydrogen and oxygen so it's not bad for the environment. Bleach, people tell me, simply turns mildew white. (Though, I'm not quite sure that's a bad thing.)