Duct tape

If you've been reading my blog, you may remember that Brad and I are firm believers in the power of duct tape.  More importantly, duct tape as a car accessory is vastly underrated.  Many years ago, we duct taped a hole in our car for 2 years before we got it fixed.  Well, as luck would have it, we are proudly carrying on that tradition in good 'ole South Carolina.  Two weeks after Brad got a car, he had an accident on the highway by getting sideswiped by an 18-wheeler.  Luckily everyone was okay-just a bit shaken.  He has a huge gash on the driver's side back door.  What did we do?!?!  We duct taped that bad boy....14 layers of duct tape later and he's been driving that car around our town for weeks.

We are going on 5 weeks now and still haven't bothered to figure out the door.  It seems like there is always something far more interesting and exciting to do instead of fixing the door (which Brad is insisting on fixing himself).  We took the kids for pizza yesterday instead of fixing the door.  I even think Brad is ironing right now just to avoid dealing with the car.  We have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we really don't care about cars.  If it were left up to me, I'd drive a car around without a back door just so I wouldn't be bothered to deal with it.  I guess this means that if I ever ask to borrow your car.....you should probably turn me down.

A whole bunch of nothing

It's been a truly busy week.  I just started my new life endeavor....teaching piano and voice lessons.  Week 1 and I had 4 students.  Week 2 and I have 5 students.  So crazy.  In my new year's resolutions, I stated that I wanted to blog once a week-- my thought being that I would take a few days and craft an entry.  But no, Sunday night and I'm sitting down with 5 minutes to spare to write something.

So- it will just be a few snippets of nothing....

Last week, I wrote about the TV show "Girls."  I loved how the show was written, directed and starred in by 26 year old Lena Dunham.  I'm amazed at the powerful voice this 26 year old has and wish I had had this kind of role model when I was in my early 20s.  Last night I watched a movie called "Take This Waltz" written and directed by Sarah Polley who is my age.  Again, an absolute masterpiece created by a woman: beautiful storytelling, beautifully acted and so artistically directed with moments of pure art woven into the story.  I love Mindy Kaling- her TV show is clever and her book "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" was delicious.  Whitney Cummings and her multitude of TV shows wows me and entertains me every single time.  I love Chelsea Handler and Caitlin Moran and Jenny Lawson and Adele and Imogen Heap and an array of other artists that I'm not recalling tonight.  I love all these powerful, thoughtful, articulate, intelligent women creating really amazing art in their chosen medium however they see fit.  These are women I could share a drink with....

I love Maya Angelou but I couldn't share a drink with her.  I wouldn't be able to speak.  I think Tina Fey is beyond talented but she's intimidating and I've heard she's not all that charming in person.  When I was a teen, I was lucky enough to discover Ani Difranco but she is one righteous babe not really cut from the same cloth as the rest of us.  She's easy to admire, to love, to idolize but not as easy to link arms with and chat over coffee.  The riot grrrl movement was big to me when I was a teen-- those ideals are much like mine but the rest of it was too far removed from me....    I just get really excited when I see women in all walks of life accomplishing so much with so little fear or trepidation and am so thankful that my daughter is going to grow up in a world where women are much at the forefront.  Back in my young days, the really powerful women got the press and recognition....now I feel like women with all different points of view and levels of subtlety are embraced and it's so exciting.

Girls

I moved to NYC at 22 years old, single, by myself and didn’t know a soul.  The fairy tale “Sex and the City” was the huge current TV hit.  In my subconscious mind, I had images of women shopping daily and dressing like Sarah Jessica Parker in $2000 outfits to meet friends for coffee or to have a fabulous date with a really rich, handsome man.  The “Sex and the City” women all worked but it was an afterthought and only one episode I can recall talked about money troubles. 

My life looked absolutely nothing like “Sex and the City.”  Nothing.  I had the lovely ‘life’ experiences of living with a roommate who had a severe eating disorder, dealing with a psycho roommate who stiffed me out of 4 months rent by disappearing and eventually living alone in a 300 square foot studio apartment with no kitchen.  I waited tables until my feet hurt and never had the pleasure of shopping casually in Soho.  I was so mentally screwed because I was subconsciously looking for the “Sex and the City” NYC with Manolos and ‘meet cutes’ around every corner yet my reality was living in a shithole, trying to cook on a stove smaller than a hotplate and auditioning for all sorts of terrible theater shows (like the children’s show that spent 15 minutes trying to get me to quack like a duck in a more convincing way-whatever the hell that means).  And don’t get me started on the dates.  Being in your 20s and dating in NYC is not a fairy tale—it’s more like a horror film where you want to scream at the girl in the movie to “Run!!”  I had far too many horrible dates with guys that I would love to hang out with now…..now that they’re out of the closet.  There is nothing worse than getting excited and dressed up for a date….only to realize over the appetizer that you’ve got a wonderful gay man for a companion for the evening.  Kills all the romance.  (I could mention the more outrageous dates….but my dad reads my blog so I’ll just say that sometimes it was a relief to spend a night at home by myself eating pizza from Big Nick’s.)

Which all brings me to my point….”Girls”- the HBO TV show.  I just started watching it.  During the first three episodes, I don’t think I blinked, breathed or moved a muscle.  I didn’t even sip my glass of wine.  I just stared at the screen.  I felt like my early 20s just ran up and smacked me across the face.  Lena Dunham (the 26 year old writer, director and star of the show) is a genius.  She has managed to capture a period of life, a rite of passage, in the most honest way I have ever seen it portrayed.  I had no idea that all the bullshit I went through in my 20s could actually be that interesting or that real or that raw or that unselfconscious or that unapologetic or that worthy of examining.  I’m just floored.  I’m mostly floored by a show written, starred and directed by a 26 year old that hosts a cast of actresses that don’t all look like they were ordered out of a casting catalogue in Hollywood but have real hips and real stomachs that actually jiggle when having terrible 20s sex. 

It’s weird to watch the show as a 34 year-old married mother of two.  I am oddly attached to the story and have flashbacks to similar situations that happened to me and I’m also so far away from that world that it’s almost laughable.  Becoming a wife and a mother tends to wash away the ridiculousness of youth.  Being a wife has made me stand a little taller and laugh a little deeper and fight a little more passionately.  Being a mother has made me discover my true strength—a strength that you don’t get from lifting weights or navigating the streets of NYC alone but the strength you get from knowing that I would actually kill someone with my bare hands who came near my children to harm them.  The strength that says “I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR” and “I’M A MOTHER, I WILL CUT YOU.”

I know I’ve rambled.  I went from Sarah Jessica Parker wearing Manolos to Lena Dunham dancing in her bedroom to being a mom.  It’s just so weird to remember what you thought your 20s would be like, to living the real version of your 20s, to then seeing your 20s reflected back at you through a 30 minute show and ultimately watching all of this through the lens of your current ‘adult’ life.  It’s a wonder any of us survived.  I could never muster the patience to sit through some of those terrible dates ever again or put up with some of the bullshit I put up with years ago.  But- it is really amazing and refreshing to be reminded of the freedom, honesty and rawness of a being a young woman in a big city who had absolutely no idea what she was doing….quacking like a duck and all.