mothers on the verge

Recently (read: the last 5 years) I've been the main chef in our little household. My idea of dinner before I met The Prince was frozen ravioli, decorated with a dusting of parmesan cheese consumed over the sink. (I still think this counts as dinner. And a milk side? A carton of coffee non-fat frozen yogurt. Mmmm.) But The Prince (likely reacting to other stress in his life) has been actively interested in cooking again. Now, The Prince is not what I would call a gourmet chef. His specialties basically are chili, chili and chili. (REALLY good chili though.) I can cook about 5-6 things very well, and tend to supplement those with a lot of chicken breasts broiled until just this side of rubber. I do however bake very well -- extremely well -- and given how prone I am to complimenting myself (read: never.) I'm telling you, I'm pretty wicked with the butter, chocolate, sugar and flour. (and lemon, eggs..come over one day and I'll whip up some cardamom madeline's that wi...

I'm starting to wonder if this religion thing has gone too far. For those of you new to this blog, both my kids go to Catholic school, in part due to to Alpha having had a satisfying and well-rounded Catholic education and being keen to pass this on to his girls. I, on the other hand, had an entirely secular education (despite being baptised a Catholic) and since then have bumbled along merrily trying to find meaning through a variety of different life-affirming activities (drinking, shopping etc). I have been all for it. After all, the rigour of a Catholic education is less likely to result in the girls sneaking off to drink Alcopops in the local bus shelter at the age of 12 (or maybe I'm deluding myself). But recent events have made me think that maybe there is a happier medium to be found. One worrying new development is a new game the girls have started to play, called 'The Priest'. This involves one of them standing on the top bunk in their room clutching a bible, ...

A confession: I love field trips. Love them almost as much as I did when I was in elementary school and field trips meant no gym, no lunch on the playground, no tests. Just me, a brown bag lunch, freedom from pencils and erasers, and a chance to snooze on the bus after a day outside. That's how I feel about them still — LOVE them. Only now I get to do them with The Rabbit. Because of the freelance nature of my work I'm usually able to go on almost everyone she has. (Which I think makes me look like a neurotic mama, and yes there's some of that...) But usually that also means "pretending" to be in a crowded airport returning work calls that I've forwarded to my cell. So far, it works. Today was the zoo. Too cold for the gorillas, but not for us. There were wild dogs, treats from the cafeteria, racing past the zebras and chasing each other along the paths, a tram ride.... Some gum and cookies on the bus, and gossiping with friends.

Okay - I know. Not the cheeriest thought for the month of March. But before it blows out of here for our rainy days of April, it's worth noting that it's a fairy easy test to see if this is something that needs to be checked.

The Rabbit is frienemies with a little girl in her kindergarten class, Tadpole. How do I know? They are mad at each other. And they love each other. This will manifest itself in notes where Tadpole will tell The Rabbit how much she loves her. And The Rabbit will roll her eyes and exclaim that Tadpole wants to play with her too much. And then I go to pick her up from school and she and Tadpole are giggling and holding hands and chasing each other on the playground. And then. Last night The Rabbit found a note in her bag from Tadpole saying that she thinks she likes another girl more than The Rabbit. Needless to say feelings were hurt causing a return note to be written. When The Prince came home he decided to put an end to this cold war and called Tadpole's mother to let her know about the nature of the original note. And what do we find? The Rabbit, as it turns out, is a prolific little note writer herself including penning one that implied she never wanted to play with Tadpole aga...

Our first paper whites in bloom.. Making cookies with The Rabbit's class today...green icing, pink sprinkles, purple sanding sugar Not needing the winter parka (but keeping it handy just in case) Some rays peeking through the gray showers The yellow buds of forsythia bursting Hurry up please. Mama needs to shake some winter blues.

From HBO's current series, John Adams : On the eve of revolution, the colonies' Continental Congress hesitant to declare war despite the actions of King George against the colonists, sparks this conversation: Abigail Adams: Send a woman to the Congress. She might knock some sense into them. John Adams: This is not a question of men and women Abigail. This is a matter of politics. Abigail: Politics. Politics? John: Mmm. Abigail: And do women not live politics John Adams? When I go to the cupboard and I find no coffee, no sugar, no pins and no meat, am I not living politics?

"Love conquers all things except for poverty and a toothache." Mae West

By some small stroke of fortune, Firstborn and The Small(er) One slumbered peacefully until well past 9am this morning but this state of bliss had a flip-side. As Alpha and I have come to rely on their shrill demands for breakfast as our weekend alarm call, we too slumbered and missed the 10am Mass. Big deal, I hear you say, finger poised on the mouse as you prepare to go a-blogging in a more secular zone. No, I'm not about to confess my sins and bewail my lack of Godliness; my sleeping for longer than a gnat's fart (as is usual) just happened to deliver an entirely new experience. Rocking up at midday Mass, I felt confused as I scanned the crowds. Where were the coiffed heads of the usual genuflecting Euro-contingent? The designer labels? The dizzying array of cashmere? All I could see were ordinary looking people, mostly on their own, getting on with their churchy thing, heads down in serious contemplation. No sidelong glances, no loud hailing of neighbours and school-gate co...

Virginia Wolf said, "A woman must have a room of her own and money if she is to write fiction." What she forgot to add was that a woman must also have time. Herein lies the quandary. I have a room of my own and I have money, but to gain more time I will have to forfeit the filthy lucre. Is it possible to write anything, fiction or otherwise, without money? And without even the promise of money - there's the rub. I really wish life came with a guarantee.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Guardian Changing Media Summit in London this week, a smorgasbord of brainpower applied to all kinds of digital stuff. I won't go into all the detail, suffice it to say that it was bloody brilliant and if you get the chance to attend next year, snap it up. What it has left me with, apart from lots of good ideas on how to smarten up my PR act, is thinking about my own experience online - from when I first signed up to AOL in the early 1990's to today's broadband/ social networking/ YouTube delights - and how different things are, and will continue to be, for my daughters. As Marian Salzman, the personification of cool, said in the closing address, there is a whole generation out there who will never have to sit by the phone to wait for a call. They will also never know a world without 24-hour telly (let alone having to be a slave to the schedule now that we have On Demand and Sky+), never experience the excitement we felt at the birth of ...

Kensington mummies are a strange breed. The first point of note is that the British are in the minority in my neck of the woods, and secondly, working mothers are practically an endangered species. I have still not quite decided if either of these things are positive. Kensington mamas are a varied lot. Where each sub-species of Kensington dad are easily recognisable, the mums like to mix it up a bit so as to confuse onlookers. But there are two things that give them away - their BMI and astoundingly high levels of personal grooming. Kensington mamas can be roughly divided into three main groups; the French mamans, the Italian mamas and the American moms. But for the purpose of today's blog, I will focus on the French maman. The French maman would rather be dead than seen out and about looking fatter than a twig and as for looking scruffy; Mon Dieu! Quelle horreur! There is no excuse for such a lapse. French Mamans are moody 99% of the time, which British men put down to them being ...

Tomorrow is International Women's Day . And I could not write anything more eloquent than what SouleMama did on her blog today, so I will just forward you off to her.

Reasons why I went AWOL for the last few days (in no particular order): 1. Got gobsmacked by a vicious intestinal illness that left me incapacitated, on the couch, watching Mame, and downing gallons of Gatorade. 2. Had to find chemical cleaner that would remove ink from the toilet after a failed attempt by The Rabbit to clean a balloon she'd written on with washable marker. (Yeah, right.) 3. Finished back to back deadlines on stories that I think are pretty d--m good must say. 4. Planted paper white bulbs in any container I could find turning our apartment into a mud zone. 5. Had to venture into Times Square on a weekend and turned (briefly) into one of those tourist-hating Gothamites. 6. Taught a newspaper writing class to The Rabbit's class. (Which meant teaching the difference between facts and stories about fairies!) 7. Cooked a complete Indian feast for some friends that taught me Indian food is best left to Indian restaurants. 8. Made the BEST apple pie ever made in the h...

For anyone on the West Coast, there's still time tonight to catch the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric -- 6:30 pm PST Friday Feb 29th. An amazing portrait of Hillary Clinton. All should watch it. My only problem Ms. Couric — Where have you been for the past few months?