Single Moms Playlist: Songs for moving on, mamas

In this scene of my life, there is music. Good music. Music I dance to, sing along with and listen to while I work and make pancakes and drink my seventh cup of coffee and drive to preschool and wiggle into lacy new bras and take long bubble baths.

As a part of reclaiming nearly the whole CD collection (except for some key guitar riff-driven reminders I do not need coming through the speakers....yes, that's a big, smiling buh-bye to you, Rusted Root!), I also listen to music while I do all the things I haven't done in years or ever -- while I am dutifully paying bills on time, strategizing how to get a month's worth of grocery shopping done in the twenty minutes I have left before the boy is dropped off and talking to my grrrlfriends late into the night. 

I've dug back into boxes and pulled out CDs and mix tapes I haven't heard since long before I met the Almost-Ex. Those songs seem to call to me as I remember who I was before that love scene became several long acts.

Now, words and direction are appearing on pages that were once blank. Now, there is also new music playing in the background. For months, I've wanted to write down what plays at certain times, to create some kind of soundtrack for all of this. And now, it is time.

This first playlist is an easy pick: Songs for moving on. It's where we're starting because it's where it all starts. Simple (and complicated) as that.

Whether you are a single parent entering or exiting stage left or are leaving a job or need some new music in your own speakers, I hope you enjoy.

And for the record, my iPod is about as functional as the oversized, soy butter and fishy cracker caked extra remote control we have floating around here for some reason. For that reason, we're kicking it YouTube style this set, my friends.

If this music isn't your style or I've left out a critical song, make some suggestions. Some days I'm just happy not to hear the theme song to Caillou or Lazy Town again, for God's sake, so I won't be offended if I'm not exactly on top of things over here. And not to worry, we are so going to get to the songs of bitterness, raunchiness, cussing and Justin Timberlake. All in good time, mamas. All in good time.

Click and cook or coffee or clear your mind or pack your own CDs up (after the jump, of course). Cheers to you and whatever plays out in your next scene.

Click to read more ...

Hoochy or Hawt: Can Jessica Simpson shoes ever say "class act"?

Every shoe whore worth her weight in peep toes has pondered whether she can negotiate a pull to Jessica Simpson shoes with the push of...well, we've all seen that Dukes of Hazard video at some unfortunate point or another.

Now's my time. While do think Jessica's (full staff of anonymous designers) have some adorable flats, I can't be bothered with flats. I want to be interested in flats (really, I do) but my eyes, credit card and mouse just will not let me veer away from the hussified section of heels.

It is what it is. I will inevitably be wearing 4-inch platforms to walk from my kitchen to the desk in my living room to work, then to teeter from the grocery-getter car into preschool to pick up the kid all swathed in a get-up of his own.

On to the shoes. Oh, the shoes. I'm not animal-print crazy but these shoes are my favorite height and right in my color palate of black and white and more black.  Could they be cute with a lightweight fall sweater and denim trousers? Or would I just be tripping into some horrible John Mayer/Tony Romo mismatch fashion-inspired terror in these things?

You tell me: Jessica Simpson zebra thighs smacked on a wedge heel, hoochy or hawt?
                                                                                                                                                                               

P.S. Just as a point of comparison: Yes, loves, these are in fact hoochy. And yes, these are pretty hot.

Click to read more ...

On a dark and rainy night 32 years ago

I was 4-1/2 years old, just a few months older than my son is today. It was dark and raining and I was in the gold and white Dodge van with my parents.

Because it was the Seventies, the back seat was latched in sideways to make extra room for Christmas trees and for kids to play on the floor during long road trips from our Lincoln Park apartment to the "farm" we shared with four other families in Indiana. Because it was that decade, we didn't wear seatbelts and I sat in the passenger seat on my mother's lap.

Rather, I sat on my mother's knees. Her pregnant belly took up the rest of her lap and soon that space would be occupied by a baby. She held me as close as she could as we drove downtown to my aunt's Gold Coast apartment.

My mother was in labor and I was going to spend the night in a big bed full of luxurious pillows and white sheets to wait out the arrival of a new baby brother or sister. We pulled up and through the sheets of rain, I could see my aunt waiting to take me by the hand, from the van and up to her place above the city.

My parents drove on to the suburbs where my brother came into the world many hours later. The story goes that my aunt took me to FAO Schwartz to buy him a gift and I pleaded with her to just buy something for me. It worked (sort of) and we chose a little something for him and (I'm sure) a sparkly something for me.

I wasn't even a kindergartner and I was already resistant. As time went on, there was naturally a lot more of that resistance. You know, sometimes, as every sister knows, it's hard to give up that space on the lap or knees or as the recipient of all things wrapped and shiny. It can even be hard when it's also fun to have another person to slide around with seatbelt-free in the back of the van.

But really, the gift -- the one of having a brother, not of whatever sparkly thing I got from FAO Schwartz (with the exception of when he held my bouquet on the altar as my Maid of Honor, he's never been very sparkly) -- has only grown greater and more valuable with each year.

We've been through a lot in our own lives and we've been through a lot together. And whether we're talking about those times over a coffee or in a hospital or airport or on the phone, I am always grateful for the person given to my life that rainy night in September 1976.

Happy Birthday to my brother, the good man who was once a baby on the way, who has brought a lot of crazy sunshine into the dark and rainy ever since.

Click to read more ...