A Woman in her Thirties Thinks Positive

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to be more positive. I have a tendency to think of the glass as half empty, particularly when it comes to myself, and I have realized that no one likes a woman in her thirties who's always waiting for the next shoe to drop. It's been hard, especially lately, but I'm working on it. Here goes:

Instead of: I missed my baby so much last weekend when I was away with the girls that I thought my heart was going to implode inside my chest
I'll say: Daddy did a great job, and sent me pictures like this to keep me company:
Instead of: The service at the place we stayed was so painfully slow I was tempted to give the staff an impromptu course on basic customer service
I'll say: My prenatal massage was amazing, the food was incredible, and time spent on the balcony with a glass of 'wine' and a book is always perfect
Instead of: My flight back to Pleasantville through Chicago was delayed due to weather and I spent the majority of Sunday trying to figure out how to get home.
I'll say: United was kind enough to switch my ticket to Delta so I could fly through LA and get home to my Bubbie.

Instead of: I missed that flight because Delta couldn't see the ticket issued to me, and United assured me that it had in fact been issued.
I'll say: NOTHING. I HATE ALL OF YOU INVOLVED IN THAT NIGHTMARE, FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN.

Instead of: I cried my face off when my next flight through Phoenix was delayed, and I spent the next several hours wondering when--if ever-- I was going to get back to P-Ville.
I'll say: I have an amazing mother-in-law who assured me she'd stay with AB as long as it took me to get home.

Instead of: I had one minute to run 30 gates to make my connecting flight in Phoenix. My blood pressure has never been higher.
I'll say: You know those guys who drive golf carts around the airport? If I hadn't been picked up in one I'd still be in Phoenix, a sobbing mess on the terminal floor. I made my flight with-- literally-- seconds to spare.

Instead of: I'm never traveling again. Ever.
I'll say: It's always worth it to spend time with my girls. Always. But it sure was great to finally get home to this beautiful face:

A Woman in her Thirties Gets Away

There was a time in the not-so-distant past, when preparing for a trip took a total of twenty minutes. Weekend in Hong Kong? Meet you at the airport. Impromptu trip to Tahoe? I'll drive. The majority of the time I devoted to trip-planning was spent grumbling about my lack of things to wear while I did the laundry.

Now, things are different. I'm getting ready for a MUCH anticipated girls' weekend in California, and the last three days have consisted of meal planning:

Schedule making:And rice-cooker instruction-leaving:Now before anyone gets all judge-y, keep in mind that I consider L a perfectly capable and wonderful father. What he is not, always, is in the same country and AB and me. And a happy weekend for L, means a happy weekend for me.

Because that's what this weekend is all about, right? A happy weekend...

Then can someone please tell me why I keep welling up with tears when I think about leaving this face:
Oh, and did I mention this face:How about this face:A woman in her thirties gets away, because she needs to. I've just never had this much cuteness to leave behind.

A Woman in her Thirties is... Oh Boy

Last time, I had a feeling. And that feeling was wrong.

This time I also had a feeling, but a woman in her thirties learns from her previous mistakes and keeps those feelings to herself. But today, there was confirmation.

Meet Yoda, my sweet little baby boy:

So excited to meet you, we are.

A Woman in her Thirties Goes Blue

L, his entire immediate family, and 99% (slight exaggeration) of his extended family went to the University of Michigan.

For the past nine years, it's been a source of amusement for me to watch the C family devote their lives to the U of M sports. I'm not just talking about a few Saturday afternoon games-- L's parents went to Hawaii this Thanksgiving just to watch the Wolverines play basketball. Apparently, the beaches and perfect weather were just an ancillary benefit.

It's not that I don't appreciate this devotion to one's alma mater, it's just that I don't understand it. I chose my college(s) based on lots of things, but the ability to sell out a football stadium was not one of them. Did the Hornets have a football team? A woman in her thirties should know that, I guess. What I do remember about college mostly revolves around Woodlake, Stingers, and polar bears.

When we went to Ann Arbor over the holiday for L's cousin's wedding, I had myself an educational experience. Ann Arbor is a true college town-- much like Chico without the hillbillies (sorry). The school colors are MAIZE and blue, not yellow and blue. And this theater is where L's parents went on their first date, to see Alfred Hitchock's "The Birds". Romantic? Mais oui.


It's hard for me to walk down the street of a college town and not wish I'd done some things differently in my own college days. A woman in her thirties can fall into that trap a lot-- the 'what if' rabbit hole. But then it occurred to me that all my choices, some good and some really, really stoopid, led me here, to this moment. Where I am truly happy. So the most important thing I came to understand is that while I might have my own ideas about where I want my baby to go to college (Stanford. Full ride.), and L's family might have theirs, at the end of the day, it will be up to Anna to make the experience what she wants it to be.

But a little maize and blue can't hurt.

A Woman in her Thirties Dreams of a Brown Christmas

A sadness descended upon Pleasantville this Christmas. People around here walked around confused and unsure of what to do. Normally, Christmas looks like this:But this year, Christmas looked like this:Notice the difference? NOTICE THE INCREDIBLE DIFFERENCE??

Now don't get me wrong. I love it here. I really do. There are a lot of wonderful things about living in Pleasantville, things that I value even more now that I'm a woman in her thirties who is a wife and mother.

The winter, however, is not one of them.

Not having a white Christmas in Minnesota is like not having sunshine in California in the summer. You would think that the people here had been told there was no Santa, that's how depressed the weather people were all week when they had to report that there would be no snow before the holidays. It was like people had forgotten we had 17 inches of snow by this time last year, AND P.S. I HAD A NEWBORN AND THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO LOSE MY MIND.

So it wasn't just Anna who made out like a bandit this Christmas:
Mom was pretty happy about the way things turned out, too. A woman in her thirties takes her blessings where she can get them, and this year they came in the form of books, boots, and a brown, merry Christmas.

Oops. A Woman in her Thirties Does it Again

I don't like surprises. I can say that after having a lot of experience with them. I like being able to compose myself before any given situation; I like to feel like I have the slightest bit of control. Surprise me, and you're likely to find me a heaping mess of emotion on the floor. (It's true-- just ask my girls who threw me a surprise party before moving to China. I'm still recovering.)

It was this past Halloween and my period was late. The thought did not occur to me to take a pregnancy test (including the miscarriage, it took more than a year to get pregnant with Anna), but I figured I had better since our neighborhood block party was promising beer, and a woman in her thirties should always be sure. But there is no way, I thought to myself.

Way.

And here we are, at week twelve. Over the all day sickness (Seriously- who thought of the term 'morning sickness'? Must have been a dude.) But still not over the shock. And then, yesterday, a waving arm; a beating heart:

And a little bit of something that may or may not be an actual something:
And now-- finally-- the shock is starting to wear off. I'm happy, I'm scared, I'm excited, I'm completely overwhelmed, but mostly I'm finally feeling thankful. A woman in her thirties can't control everything. And sometimes, in those times when she can't, the most miraculous of surprises can appear.

A Woman in her Thirties Doesn't Judge

Oh, I'm mad. I'm pissed. And when a woman in her thirties is angry, she fumes.

I just got back from a certain place that sells the world's best Peppermint Bark. I'll call it Billiams Aroma. I go there every Christmas to buy FOUR boxes of the stuff-- three for our neighbors, and one for us. It's kinda tradition.

If you've ever been to one of these places during the holidays, you know that you can smell the samples wafting through the corridors of the mall long before you approach. But every time you try to get one, they're always gone. Am I right or am I right?

By some miracle, there was a whole tray of samples on display when Anna and I walked in this afternoon. Brownies, topped with peppermint bark. A woman in her thirties might be a little iffy about taking samples from any store, but look. It's rainy and cold here. I'm hungry. And it's a rare occurrence that this woman in her thirties refuses a brownie.

Anyway, I picked up one of the samples, about the size of a short, fat baby carrot. I put a tiny piece on my finger and gave it to Anna, who promptly said, 'mmmMMM!' and smiled, and then I shoved the rest in my mouth, like the dainty woman in her thirties that I am.

'She must be your second,' the woman behind the cash register said. I didn't know I was being watched.

'No,' I said. 'She's my first.'

'Ooooh,' she said, her eyes filled with the judgement of the self-righteous. Then she turned to Anna and said, all condescendingly, 'Well most first time mommies wouldn't give their little babies chocolate at such a young age!'

The way she said it, you would think she just watched me sit my baby down to a dinner of pork rinds, nacho cheese, and Diet Coke. You would think that by virtue of this one miniscule bite of chocolate, I was setting her up for a lifetime of obesity and heart disease. You would think I was the worst, most terrible mother that ever walked into WILLIAMS SONOMA.

I was thinking (seething) on the way home about all the judgement a woman in her thirties faces. Nothing is ever right enough. Everyone else's way is the better way. We observe each other from these ridiculous glass houses, where we know we don't have it all figured out, but it makes us feel better to point out the ways the people around us don't have it figured out even worse.

And then it hit me that I'm just as guilty of it. Hadn't my first instinct been to think about how her kids were probably in day care, playing video games and feeling completely neglected? Hadn't it calmed me down slightly to think that my life was superior to hers?

This is a hard one, ladies. A woman in her thirties shouldn't judge... but she does. She doesn't realize it until she's judged herself. It sucks. But maybe it was a good wake-up call for me, to think about the ways that I could be better at this. Maybe I should go back to the store with a peace offering of peppermint bark for the cashier.

She can lick it off my middle finger.