While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Old School Values

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Old Miakka’s 103-year-old schoolhouse is a vestige of East County’s pioneering past. Two former pupils walk us down that dirt path.

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If you head south on Verna Road, past a yawning canopy of mossy oak trees, past the dead-end of Fruitville, you’ll find yourself at the Old Miakka Schoolhouse.

This white clapboard building with its craggy screened porch, freshly burnished bell and rusty seesaw might stick out in other communities. But nestled among the pines in sleepy Old Miakka it makes perfect sense.

Like the residents of this East Sarasota settlement, the one-room schoolhouse harkens back to Florida’s oft forgotten pioneer days. At 1,700-square-foot, it is the community’s crown jewel, a testament to Old Florida’s southern grit and roots; tranquil and charming down to the wasps living in the eaves.

“When you walk in the ghosts say hey, and you say hey back,” says Becky Ayech, President of the Miakka Community Club. “The fact that it’s still standing, when everything else old in Sarasota County gets torn down exemplifies our community spirit.”

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To chase a career or a kid?

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Before I had Henry I was impatient with the world, critical of myself and sometimes of others.

I thought stay-at-home moms had it easy. Worse yet, I thought they were devoid of interests beyond the confines of motherhood. I pictured them schlepping kids from Gymboree class to play dates, dressed in yoga pants and a pained smile. I pictured them chained to the kitchen, the SUV, the laundry basket and the obligatory spin class. I pictured them dutifully scheduling time for mommy pep rallies that celebrate the pleasantries of breastfeeding, cloth diapering, baby wearing and holistic nutrition. (Dear Earth Mamas: I see nothing wrong with these things. As topics of discussion, however, I find them boring.)

I thought I’d lose my identity as a stay-at-home-mom. I thought I’d compromise my self-worth and freedom. I thought I’d be resentful of my husband and pissed at myself for having failed at being a working mother: the ultimate wonder woman. I thought I’d be considered a disgrace to the radical feminists who came before me and a quitter to the overachieving, have-it-all multitaskers of my generation.

Leaving my job at the newspaper would mean I’d dropped a significant ball in the heroic juggling act that is regularly executed by the modern working mother. I’d be forced to rethink everything I thought I’d do or wouldn’t do as a parent, as if you really know these things before you bring a tiny, demanding, Bambi-eyed being into this world.

I was wrong about working mothers AND stay-at-home mothers. (As an aside, I was right about yoga pants.)

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On 30

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I wanted to write something relevant about turning 30, but I kept coming up short

So I turned to Facebook instead. (Oh c’mon. Mark Twain would have done the same thing.)

I spent the day before my birthday feeling old and sullen, so I asked my typically responsive FB friends what words came to mind when they thought of turning 30.

I was so pleased with what I got I decided to create a video using their words and my photography.

I learned two things while making this project:

1. Age is a state of mind. (Duh.)

2. I’ve got way too many photos of amazing people clogging up my computer. Most of these pics were taken for the newspaper over the course of the last three years. The shelf life of a newspaper photo is short. Unless a story is about you, and thus you’ve stuck it to your fridge (or your ex-wife has pinned it to her dart board) it usually gets lost in the ether of JPEG files on some photographer’s hard drive.

I was happy to give these photos some love before they get deleted or forgotten about.

Regarding getting older — it’s a fact of life. You can either meet it with lightness and a positive attitude, or get tangled up in negativity. Lately, I’ve been falling into the second category for reasons I’m sure I’ll write about some day.

Having said that, I’m not a fan of internalizing shit. When something sucks, I admit it. On a whole, however, I strive to spend my 30s as I spent my 20s: upbeat, inspired and looking  for the next adventure.

Wish me luck. I know it’s not going to be a picnic. (Or maybe it will be. See. I’m actually a cynic.)

Oh, and in four days I’ll have written this blog for four years. I never thought I’d stick it out. Maybe it’s my cynicism that drives me. Now that’s a positive attitude.

A journalist’s liner notes

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Back in December, I interviewed Toby Perlman, the wife of violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman.

It was a phone interview and Henry started whimpering in his crib midway through it. I was having a bad day. I was stressed and sleep deprived. I had dried baby vomit on my shirt. I was swigging cold coffee and biting my nails. The last thing I wanted to talk about was classical music.

Prior to the interview, I received an email from Toby’s publicist encouraging me to read over the materials about her music residency for young gifted string players.

“(It) will help you focus your questions on what is relevant to the interview,” the publicist wrote.

Point taken.

When I got on the phone with Mrs. Perlman, I began with the most obvious and relevant questions. All was going well for the first ten minutes. She was chatty and I was informed.

And then Henry started crying. Although Toby couldn’t hear him, I found myself immediately torn between continuing the interview and tending to my infant.

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Pregnancy Confession No. 8

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[I'm saying no to drugs.]

According to the latest labor statistics,
99 percent of women in the United States
still give birth in a hospital.

This woman, however,
ain't planning to.

I'm the one percent.

ONE PERCENT!

Does this make me crazy?
Brave?
Foolhardy?
Smart?
Adventurous?

Maybe all of the above.

But I'm superstitious
and hesitant to write much about it at this point.

The IT being the fact that Joe and I decided
to have Henry at a birth center.

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Eavesdropping in a Sarasota theater

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Two

The following is an excerpt from a conversation I overheard last week between two old women at a Sarasota theater house:

“You have how many children?”

“Three boys.”

“Boys? I didn’t know you had all boys.”

“All of them boys.”

“I heard boys are easier. Are boys easier?”

“I thought the toughest time was when they were two years old and they made no sense. You had to watch them every second of the day. I couldn’t wait for them to be independent.”

“Well, I adored my girls.”

“I always thought you could get closer to girls. Can you get closer to girls?

“When they’re teenagers, forget it. When Emily was 15, I would have sold her to you for a nickel.”

—

PS. Photo by George Schon.

PPS. Yes, I jotted down this conversation word-for-word. I was covering an event at the theater, so I had my notebook with me. Then again, I always have a notebook with me.

Yakking with Yoko [again]

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I interviewed Yoko Ono two years ago. Perhaps you remember. Some of you guys even gave me question suggestions.

Well, Ms. Ono’s at it again: plugging her late husband’s traveling art exhibit, Imagine: The Artwork of John Lennon.

If you’d have told me when I was a wanna-be journalist kid, that I’d get one crack at interviewing Yoko Ono, much less two, I’d have asked what you were smoking.

My husband thinks this is an exciting claim-to-fame.

Here’s what I think is exciting: I chatted with Yoko Monday afternoon from a Walgreens parking lot in Sarasota. After asking the usual battery of art/Lennon questions, I asked her for advice on motherhood.

To hell with What To Expect When You’re Expecting. I’ve got John Lennon’s widow.

One day I’ll tell my kid this and depending on how cool he is, he’ll respond one of two ways: “Who’s Yoko Ono?” Or, “That’s AWESOME.”

To read my short Q&A with the now 78-year-old Ono, check out The Observer.

—

PS. Photo by Charlotte Muhl and Sean Lennon.

 

A guest post on what else? Writing of course.

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Check out my guest post on Rosey Rebecca: I write, therefore I am.

Rebecca is a healthy living blogger, a journalism student at the University at Albany, and an all-around hard worker with an incredible amount of promise, talent and poise.

Rebecca dropped me an email last December, revealing that she stumbled upon my blog by Googling “boyfriend sleeps past noon.” Turns out her significant other is a Rip Van Winkle too.

That, coupled with the journalism thing, coupled with the SUNY College thing means Rosey Rebecca and I have a lot in common.

She eats way better than me, though.

This chick’s organic dietary habits will drive you to rid your kitchen cupboards of any and all things processed.

When Rebecca asked me write a guest post on writing, I thought, how on earth can I relate this to healthy living?

And then something an artist told me years ago came to mind:

“If I didn’t paint, I wouldn’t feel normal.”

Voila! I WRITE to feel normal. If that ain’t healthy living, I don’t know what is.

Best. Mag. Ever.

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Say hello to Jane.

If you’ve not met, let me properly introduce you:

Jane was the BEST magazine ever. This issue –– the PREMIERE issue –– was (and still is) my favorite issue of any magazine ever.

Jane is why I became a journalist.

Jane and Mark Twain and a couple of other things.

But mostly Jane.

And Sassy.

Jane was the brainchild of Sassy Magazine’s founding editor Jane Pratt.

Jane Pratt was my idol.

The magazine premiered in my favorite month (September) in 1997, with my girl Drew Barrymore on the cover.

I’ve had a girl crush on Drew for a long time. Turns out so did Jane. The two dated in the early 1990s.

This issue has moved with me six times over the course of 13 years. That’s my copy up there. I scanned it. It remains in pristine condition, except for a few pages I foolishly cut up in 1999 to decorate the cork board in my bedroom.

My sophomore year of college, I tore out the best first-person essay ever written from the pages of this premiere issue. It was penned by Powder actor Sean Patrick Flanery and it was a beautiful sun-drenched piece of writing. One of my journalism professors had asked us to bring in a prized possession. I brought in this story, shoved in a manila folder. When my classmates looked at me cross-eyed, like how can your most prized possession be a magazine story? I replied that it wasn’t the ink and paper I was attached to, it was the story that wouldn’t leave my head.

I could have brought in any number of possessions, but this one seemed the most worthy. At the time nothing filled me with more passion than writing. I wasn’t cherishing a trinket. I was cherishing a dream.

I’ve still got the story. It’s stuffed in the same Rubbermaid bin that contains the above issue of Jane.

When Jane ceased publication in August 2007, it’s readership was devastated, but not surprised. By 2006, the magazine was an emaciated version of its former self. Jane Pratt had resigned as editor-in-chief and issues had become increasingly difficult to find.

The magazine business is as much a cutthroat corporate beast as is any creative mass market industry.

I understand why Jane folded. She was too smart for her own good.

She was wicked, misunderstood, goofy, open-minded, cutting when need be and flowery when the topic warranted it. She was snarky before I even knew what snarky meant. She cared about fashion enough to pass as hip, but not so much that she snubbed the joys of thrift store shopping.

I recall Jane stories the way Joe recalls movie lines.

I remember in one issue, the magazine ran a scathingly honest profile of country diva Faith Hill and a back-of-the-book essay on why it’s far more interesting to wear a giant pink rabbit costume for Halloween than it is to dress up as a slutty nurse.

Every so often I come across a Jane writer’s byline in some other magazine and I run to Joe with the book flung open like I’ve just unearthed a diamond from the crusty earth.

It’s no secret that most magazines for women are dumbed down, fluffed-up, prissy, neutered wastes of paper. The puffy, always-glowing celebrity profiles make me gag. The writing is banal and packed with cliches.

If I had an older sister like Jane, we’d start fires with the pages torn from dim-witted women’s magazines.

We’d have a freakin blast.

—

PS. In 2002, Adweek Magazine named Jane Pratt “Editor of the Year.”

Us writers love aviator sunglasses.

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I thought I’d share with you my profile of Sarasota novelist R.S. Praefke.

It’s this week’s A&E cover story in The Observer. As a journalist and wanna-be novelist, you can see why this story was dear to me.

—

Ryan Praefke looks like he’s just returned from a trip. He’s carrying a black case stuffed with books and a draft of the screenplay he’s currently working on but not ready to discuss.

He’s perched at a table inside a crowded Sarasota café, nursing an iced coffee, people-watching and taking mental notes, as writers are wont to do.

Things capture his attention easily: the sound of construction, the stream of eccentric coffee drinkers that spill in from the street, the whir of midday noises that clang and buzz and distract — things that fuel all writers.

In a sense, the 34-year-old author has just returned from a trip of sorts. A year has passed since his first novel, “Eternity’s Missing Children,” was bound into a 263-page paperback with a cover so black and austere you wonder if by reading it you’ll be privy to all of the author’s secrets.

For the rest of the story, visit yourobserver.com.