You only think of the best comeback when you leave. -Jimmy Fallon
1. Flappin’ Around Town… Something about this image really speaks to me. I saw it for the first time a few days ago, and it’s been on my desktop ever since. It’s old school glamour meets everlasting beauty. I love it. Maybe I’m just at a weird spot in my cycle or something, but it makes me want to slip into something silky and knee-length so I can be charmed by a handsome man in a tuxedo (dear Boyfriend, you can take that as a hint to wear more tuxedos to our casual dinners).
2. It’s All Relative, Really. I went to my friend Melody’s baby shower over the weekend in a NYC suburb that I’ve been to about a million times before. Great Neck, for those of you that live outside the New York area, is a quaint town with 19th century homes, small streets, and high real estate values. It’s a great place to raise a family- especially if you’re from the corner of the world that my family is from. My family in particular doesn’t call Great Neck home, but lots of other well-tanned Jewish families from obscure sandy countries do. It’s interesting because I always seem to forget that part of my heritage in my day-to-day life in Manhattan. Life here is fast, progressive, leftist, and the social borders are all sort of blurred. The only reminders I get that the world is a very different place are when I meet up with the friends I went to high school with, cousins, or travel to places like Great Neck. You see, in Great Neck, it’s the social norm to be married by 25 (no questions asked), be on your 2nd or 3rd kid by 28, and do it all with a smile because it’s what’s expected of you. Here, in the city, people look at me like an alien for having a 2 year old at 26, thinking I must either be royally screwed up or part of some seriously religious clan. And, sadly, I’ve started to believe somewhere in my head that I’ve lived some bizarro life that’s completely far off the norm.
I totally forgot (or somehow misplaced the mental imagery) that the rest of the country, if not world, starts breeding in their early twenties shortly after the general coupling experience. It’s only in major cities that breeding is prolonged, stretched-out, and often frozen till 39 or beyond. It just goes to show you how narrow-minded people can become (here’s pointing at me) in even the most liberal and open-minded places the Earth has to offer. I spent the entire day on Sunday surrounded by beautiful, smiling women in their 20’s that embraced motherhood with excitement and smiles that you’d be hard-pressed to find within the confines of the Upper East Side, Chelsea, SoHo, or some other Manhattan neighborhood.
3. Speaking of beautiful… It was a total pleasure to hear my 8-months-pregnant friend gushing about her husband even as her feet were swollen from a day of greeting friends, relatives, and strangers. This girl is totally, and completely in love with her husband. Every time I’m with them they’re basically making out screaming out “I love you!” to each other. It’s the kind of love that everyone should strive for. I’m not really sure how Melody managed to find and maintain such a healthy relationship, but I’m going to ask her to write out her bullet points so we can all learn a thing or two. I suspect her first bullet point will be “make out with your husband as much as possible… ignore onlookers.”
4. And speaking of babies… here’s my one bit of motherhood advice to Melody and any other pregnant women out there: breastfeed as long as possible, and then keep pumping. I know it sounds kind of sick, but you burn hundreds of extra calories each day and your boobs stay huge, perky, and generally fabulous. I breastfed my son for the first year of his life, and then just let my boobs shrink off into the sunset. If I had known that I’d have to stop eating as many brownies and that I’d be down two cup sizes I would’ve just pumped… FOREVER.
