Now What Do I Do With My Pizza Crusts?

Callie on the morning we took her to the vet for the last time

A week ago Friday, we made the dreaded last trip to the veterinarian with our beloved black labrador Callie. To say that it was one of the saddest days in my life would be a bit of an understatement. But the days that have followed have been a mix of sadness for the loss of our furry family member and a sadness at the loss of a routine that is well-worn and, in that, comfortable even in its annoyances.

The former is obvious--we miss our dog. The latter is more subtle. Opening up a cookie container or cereal box, I protectively do so far back on the counter, not up in the air where I might spill anything. I still expect Callie to come running. That was her m.o. -- at the sound of a container opening she'd come running so fast that anything in her reach or leap could be in danger of being stolen right from your hands. She still did when she first got sick, but not at the end. (See more about our life and love of Callie at :" First, The Sad and Bad News").

Now, I have to sweep up any morsels I drop and there's no imploring fuzzy black face watching from inches away, hoping I'll drop something. And now I know just how slobby my own kids are as they drop food and there's nobody there to lick it right up. I wonder how long it will be before I stop expecting Callie to run up when I open the cookies. It used to annoy me to no end, and now I wish for it.

Then there were the mornings. Until the last week of her life, she'd be waiting, tail wagging, at the bottom of the stairs for the first human to come down to feed her. Saturday and Sunday mornings, she waited for me, especially. We'd take our long walks, to wherever she wanted, and take our time coming back to the house where chaos was sure to be unfolding as my two kids woke up and demanded to be fed. I find I miss that time nearly as much as I miss Callie.

Then there were the evenings. Especially Friday evenings. I try to pick the kids up a little earlier than usual and we head to the local pizza place where the owner waits on us and my daughter runs across the small restaurant to give her a hug. It's our tradition. But before we could go get our pizza, we'd have to walk Callie.

 This past Friday night, I was halfway home from getting the first kid when I realized we didn't have to go home to walk Callie. So you'd think that I would realize that she wasn't there anymore when, later, I packed up our remaining slices of pizza at the restaurant and threw in the crusts, like always. Nobody in the family likes the crusts, except for my son. But even he saved his crusts for Callie, who liked almost nothing better than pizza crusts or cheese.

When I got home and opened the box, I felt such a real sense of loss, not just for Callie but for the way we do things at my house. "Now what do I do with my pizza crusts," I asked myself out loud, with nobody in particular to hear me.

We've put away Callie's toys and her comfy dog bed and her dog bowls. But as I've learned, you can put stuff away and you can get on with your daily life, but the comforts of routine fade a lot more slowly when any loss is involved. The day after Callie passed away, our neighbor asked my son if we were going to get a new dog. His reply: Not until we stop missing Callie.

I thought of that as I stared at the pizza crusts and started to scold myself for getting upset about something as silly as unwanted dough. We'll probably miss Callie for a long while. Not with the same severity every day, but always there somewhere. And that's okay.

My one regret: Not buying Callie her very own pizza slice before we took her to the vet for the last time... crust, cheese, sauce and all. I hope she's getting all the pizza she wants out there somewhere!

Is Spelling "at" Really All That Challenging?

It was parent-teacher conference day this week. Always fun, especially when your kid is doing really well (ok, except when it comes to practicing self control... you know what they say about the apple and the tree... I take the genetic blame here). So why am I so annoyed?

On the one hand, I am delighted that my son has surpassed grade level in reading (and it's only March!), that the gym teacher thinks my son has "some arm" and is a joy to have around, that the art teacher treasures the fact that he's one of those kids who sees, say, spilled paint bleeding into the next color not as a mistake that needs to be fixed ASAP but as a cool creation...

Spelling test at school

On the other hand, I am fuming a bit because I pay exorbitant school taxes for schools in a high-performing district (with great teachers, many earning 6 figures) and a chunk of the education my son is getting seems to be about as challenging as putting on a shoe with the light off -- maybe a little difficult the first time, but after that, easy.  Not all of the education (the science is pretty darn cool and he loves it, for example, and some things in each subject are a challenge...) and not all of the time, but enough to make me mad for now. Maybe because it's the basics that seem, well, way, way, way too basic and there's mostly lip-service to differentiation -- at least the meaningful kind. NOTE: This post is not about teacher-bashing.

I am not one of those crazies who thinks my first grader should be doing calculus or reading Proust by the time he's in third grade. But I do think it's ridiculous that he gets the highest mark -- a 4 -- for spelling 48 words right when the hardest word is "want" or "would" and the majority of the words include reeeaaaaalllllly challenging stuff like "at," "me," "I," "the." Is this ALL they expect of the kids??? 

The math program is bad enough -- but Cullen could spell those words in the fall in kindergarten (and was required to by his teacher b/c he was in her "high-achiever" group of kids who knew the sight words in five seconds, so she challenged them to spell them). Wondering about that 4? ... Is it an A, is it an A+, is it meaningless in real life? Nobody knows. Standards based report cards offer no grades, but a 4 is "exceeds proficiency standard."

So what happens when you exceed the benchmark and then start to exceed the benchmark for the NEXT GRADE? Hmmm... well, that's not considered in such parameters... read on...

So, on the bright side, my son went from reading level 12 (which is where they expect them to be at this point of the year) in late November to reading level 20 last week when she did the assessments. Guess what the "proficient" (aka, marked a 3 for meeting the standard) is for first grade at the END of the year for a proficient mark? A level 16-18. So, here he is, with three months left, and he's already exceeded that and been marked a 4. At this rate, he'll be at level 30 before he finishes first grade...

Kumon sheet from January

The teacher also handed me some math practice worksheets (a miracle...!) with REAL math. Except that all but one page was too easy for my son, with the hardest problem aside from the last page of problems being 9 minus 6 or something equally not-hard.  I then showed her photos of Cullen's recent Kumon workbook pages (the iPhone is handy for that) that revealed he'd gotten an entire two page review correct on problems addin numbers as high as 10 to numbers as high as 30 and subtracting from 20. While we try to get him to do at least four pages a week -- that's only two lessons -- when he's into it (which isn't every day) he'll sometimes do that in one sitting.

On the negative side, I can already tell he's bored. I see it in his sloppy handwriting, racing through the easy problems and assignments (and therefore sometimes getting them wrong even though I know he knows the answers). His teacher sees it, too, although she also attributes it to his general personality (that's partly true, too). I've seen this movie before... and without projecting too much of my own experience onto my son, I know that it only gets worse if the child isn't challenged academically.

And that's the biggest issue. In general, the school has almost nothing to offer kids like him as far as enrichment or challenge. Yes, he is in the higher-level reading group, and the teacher pushes them to think about the stories and asks them more comprehension questions. That's valuable. But next year? At this rate, he'll be halfway through the second grade benchmarks before he finishes first grade.

The teacher tried some computer games the school offers for math enrichment, but technology and my boy are a bad mix educationally. For him, it is all a game. He'll guess and guess and never learn or absorb the lesson because he's sucked in by reaching the "win." I suspect/hope he will grow out of it, but right now, putting him in front of the computer isn't enriching or educational. For math, that's all she really has at her disposal -- or all she's willing to push since the core math program isn't really math, enriching only involves adding more inane ways to measure an object (don't get me started...).  

Is it wrong that I expect better than this? I just want the level of real differentiation I keep being promised for my son. I am not alone. I know one mom who pulled her child out of kindergarten mid-year and transferred to a private school because promises of challenge were never kept and her son was bored to tears... and many, many others paying big bucks to tutors or after-school enrichment programs. The school system, like many around the country, says it offers differentiation for kids at all levels. There's all sorts of stuff to help the struggling kids. But not much to help the middle kids achieve more and even less for the kids like my son who isn't a child-prodigy but is bright and can and should be doing more... It's the blank-stare-of-death when you ask something like that. Or you get a defensive reaction...

How about an up arrow for challenge?

My son likes school a lot and likes his teacher (she really is a nice lady). But he's that kid who'd like anything that he can do where he can participate, be a part of it all... to raise his hand and answer the questions and hurry up and get to snack time.  He's often ready for the next activity or assignment because he's figured out whatever it is he's doing and he's ready to move on because, umm, it's boring now, so what's next? Even his teacher sees that as part of what's going on. But he's happy when he goes to school every morning and he's usually got something exciting to tell me at the end of the day. Maybe I should accept that and not worry that he's not being challenged about half the time. Maybe I am a little crazy. Maybe I should sit back and wait for the later grades when parents tell me that it does get more challenging.

But that feels wrong. What about the time in between? My son  is an insanely curious child who sees the world in ways a 6yo doesn't usually see the world and to listen to him ask a zillion questions and then draw the most interesting and advanced conclusions is to recognize he's a really bright kid who needs something more to really flex that. When he's challenged, he gets into the work like it's second-nature to take his time and figure it out and absorb it... no hurry up and get to the next thing, no ants in his pants... it's like watching the internal workings of a complex timepiece moving in tandem, intricate mechanisms seeming to go in opposite directions, but really not... you can literally see him processing and thinking.

He's not in a class of 30 and the kids do get art, and a good measure of music, gym and science... that's not what he'd have if we stayed in the city. But I also now have a mortgage and a house and taxes and I still don't know that I have done all that much better by my son educationally (and my daughter, lord help me). I don't know what the answer is. Part of me feels strongly that I need to put him in a private school even though I have long been a proponent of public education and even though it might send us to the brink of bankruptcy. Short of that, I feel like I need to find strong enrichment for him after school, but I'm working FT, my husband works FT... and that's not changing anytime soon.

I know I'll figure it out. But for today, I'm just not sure how yet.

Measure of a Life Oversubscribed: No Makeup, No TV and Gym-less-ness

For weeks, no months, I have needed new makeup. My concealer ran out two weeks ago. The four-colored blush  has dwindled to two colors and hints of a third in the last month. And my beloved MAC Studio Fix was so near-empty that I had to lay down the powder brush and pull out the kind-of-gross spongy pad included in the compact to apply what little was left. Don't even get me started on the mascara.


I just hadn't had time to go replenish. I know, I know, you're thinking, "You have to make time for yourself, what's 15 or 20 minutes replacing makeup going to cost you in a day?" Especially since there is a Sephora across the street from my office... and I had $115 in gift cards from Christmas. But until the prospect of showing up at work both without concealer and without powder... or blush... felt more unpleasant than taking that 20 minutes of spare time to go buy the damn makeup, I just didn't.

Makeup isn't the only thing I seem to have lost time for in the last year or so--and especially in the last six months. I haven't been to the gym or out for a run since... gulp... August. And trust me, it shows in the six extra pounds I've been carrying on my 5'2" frame. That could also  go a long way to explaining why I haven't shopped for clothes in about eight months (sigh... outlet shopping was a favorite escape). I haven't watched any of my favorite shows since the fall of 2010--although, to be honest, I kind of lost interest in must-see-TV when 24 was canceled. An actually, I don't even know if any of my favorite shows are still on (House? Private Practice?).

It's more complicated than just not making time for myself or my needs.

In the 16 months, I've worried, job-hunted, left a job, worried some more, collected unemployment, written a book, found a job, worried sick about schools for my kids, house-hunted, moved, found another new job, waited weeks and weeks for mortgage approvals, worried, bought a house, worried yet again, transitioned two kids and a husband and a dog into life in the suburbs, became alarmed at math, worked my butt off to do well in the new job, make sure the family was settled in, manage the new juggle of commuter trains schedules, daycare hours, fewer home-cooked meals, a new babysitter, bigger bills, property taxes, worrrrrrrrrry, what seems like a zillion half days and days off from school out here in the burbs, caught ConEd-aphobia, and  started a fight for transparency and better math in my new school district, worried, got angry (more than once), refocused, and kept fighting.... all the while trying to be a good mom, good boss, good employee, good spouse, good family accountant and budget-maven, good train-catcher, and good person.

And did I mention I am a bit of a perfectionist, have a low tolerance for mediocrity and that it is my nature--I have tried and failed to control it--to be relentless?

All of this is time-consuming. even for someone who has practically perfected efficiency (at least at the office). And tiring. To do all of this, work a 9-hour day, be a good mom and squeeze in time to fight for what I believe in during the day or at night or on the train ride (those three things, not in that order, being top priority), television began to seem trivial and an utter time-waster. The gym? Well, I mean, I've only gained the six pounds....
The makeup was the last can't ignore holdout of my oversubscribed life.  As each item dwindled to nearly-nothing, I said to myself (out loud.. sorry if I scared any of my fellow train riders), "Seriously, this CANNOT  go on like this!"  On Monday, I crossed the street (I actually left the building for lunch!), stepped into the magical world of makeup.

My life might be oversubscribed, I might worry too much and I am sure I have too little patience. I might get tired -- of the fighting for stuff I believe in, of putting out fires at work and sometimes at home, of my ConEd bills, of racing for the train -- of all of it. But I wouldn't trade it. Ok, that's a lie. I'd trade the fight for better math and transparency and I'd happily offload my property taxes on someone else. But I wouldn't trade the rest of it.

Here's why: Almost every night when I get home (before bedtime, at least three or four nights a week) my two children just wanna hang out on the couch with me, tell me about their days, get and give hugs and all that good stuff. My daughter usually squeals and demands a very long hug before I put anything down.

She sometimes grabs my face and pulls it into hers for a nose kiss. My son usually asks "What did you do today that was fun?"  It makes me stop and think and reminds me to do something fun at work so I have an answer (he spots b.s. a mile away). He used to ask what my favorite part of the day was -- but the answer was always the same, "Right now, being with you guys." For now, the dog still greets me, so happy her whole body wags. I forget that I am tired or hungry or that I had a rough day.

I get a lot of satisfaction from my work, from the things I am working hard on in my spare-time life. I can't figure out what of it to give up, so I don't. But that time between the moment I walk in the door and the moment the bedtime battle begins is why I don't mind being a little chubby, a lot clueless about popular television and concealer-less (for a limited time).

Besides, if I finally found time for makeup, can the gym be far behind?

Peas and Carrots, TERC and How I Became a Mad Math Mom

Most people who know me are well aware that I left the city -- the coveted big, but cheap apartment, the day care we loved, the neighborhood we called home -- for one, big reason: Schools. Isn't that why anyone who has a decent-sized apartment leaves NYC?


My son's well-regarded elementary school had lost its K-2 science teachers the year he started kindergarten. Other resources had been cut, too. He lucked out that a classmate's dad taught science at a charter school and came down to the school once a week to do science with the kids. The more time I spent in the classroom and at the school, the more I caught a case of severe mother-panic. It was that, omigod-I-cannot-send-my-child-back-next-year that drives a person to consider paying for private school or moving to the suburbs.

 In short, my son looking at a 30-child first grade class, a host of discipline tactics that would likely never apply to him but would scare the crap out of him, a hyper-focus on struggling kids and almost no focus on the kids in the middle who could be pushed to high-achievement or to high-achievers. And still no science. I'd missed the deadlines for the lottery schools and if I was going to pay for private school, well, why not move to the suburbs and pay taxes.

And that's what we did. Not for more space. Not to build equity in a house. Not for a guaranteed place to park my car for free. For schools.

So, when my son came home with odd-looking math problems, I thought nothing of it at first. Actually, I mostly thought it was too easy since my son was doing double-digit work at the end of kindergarten and

Real MATH assignment + four more variations of it over 3wks

could subtract basketball and football scores in a matter of seconds. Maybe this program was just slow-paced, I thought. That is, until some new iteration of the same old problem kept coming home week after week and my son kept drawing bizarre pictures and never doing any actual math.

It was peas and carrots. It started off ok enough. A foursquare grid that asked the child to show four different combinations of peas and carrots on a plate to get to 7 (another day it was 9, another I think it was 8, etc.). Only the children were not allowed to use numbers. Or plus signs. Or equal signs. Drawings only, my friends. Or number lines. Or number humps. Why not just write the problems out and then draw to show your work, I asked my son. Oh no, mom, not allowed. WHAT? My son was not supposed to use numbers or algorithms to do, umm, MATH. Peas and carrots is an ENTIRE UNIT in this math program, with weeks spent on ONE problem and a few variations of it.

I spoke the teacher not long after about how my son was adjusting and quickly brought up the math. She agreed it wasn't nearly enough, but I wasn't informed enough yet to ask what she was doing to mitigate all the peas and carrots. (After all, not all kids like veggies.) It would get more challenging soon, she assured. It didn't. And like the crazy research-oriented reporter-type that I am, I scoured the web and all other means of info about this odd math that discouraged kids from using the language of math. I finally told my son -- and his teacher -- that he'd be writing the algorithms because that's what math is. (I'll note that he rarely gets "stars" on his papers with algorithms, while he gets them for the other nonsense.) It's +, -, * and / and all sorts of other related things. Not peas. Not carrots. Not feathers. Not number lines or humps or boxes representing 100 that assure our kids get the problems wrong (this one is seriously disturbing).

The news was not good. No, actually, it was very, very bad. This math, TERC Investigations, was a radical-constructivist math program, the king and queen -- all rolled into one-- of fuzzy math. Districts across the country had abandoned it. Parents fought to have it removed from schools. Math professors around the country spoke out against it. Of the 70 districts touted by the publisher as success stories in 2007, by mid-2009, 60% had dumped Investigations, others used it as a secondary supplement and only 4 still used it as a primary curriculum. The one independent national study out there says Investigations students lag others.

The program doesn't teach multiplication or long division, encourages calculator use as early as kindergarten and by second grade, encourages kids to use calculators to solve hard problems (no need to learn the hard stuff, my friends). It encourages estimating and nearly forbids practice. Let me repeat: TERC Investigations DISCOURAGES use of any algorithms. Because, you know, those won't be useful when you get to algebra

1st grade from Jan, algorithms only b/c I insisted!

and one of the numbers is x and another is y. And those peas and carrots. More than halfway through the year, they're replaced by drawing cookies, or feet or button-sorting. This program never moves from pictorial to concrete and that's a disaster for kids as they get older.

Well, of course, you;d think revealing all of this information to the smart and education-oriented folks in the district would be enough to get them thinking about whether this was the best math we could do for our kids. Au contraire, my friends. You see, I violated the unwritten code of the quiet, high-performing suburbs. I made noise. Making noise makes it clear all is not well behind those manicured lawns and $500,000 starter-houses.

Reasonable people can disagree, but what I faced -- along with other parents who were getting angrier and angrier about this math -- was absolute disdain for anything that questioned the school administration's decisions or choices. And, it turns out, people had been complaining for years -- although less publicly.

Many board meetings and much research later, I became a founding member of the Pelham Math Committee, a group of concerned parents working for high-quality math in our schools. Our website is full of research, data and info that will make your head spin and your anger gene go into overdrive. We have a petition, we hosted a math night with three professors, we've received some local press and we push on to both educate parents (come on, admit it, math is scary and frankly this new picture-drawing, fun-times math seems so much less scary, right?) and get better math in our schools.

Along the way, I've somehow found myself fighting back against a lack of transparency in our school district and so much back-door dealing that it'd make an cub reporter a star to uncover it. The state of journalism today means one reporter at the big paper in the area covers a zillion towns and has better things to do (that's a topic for another post). Here's one tidbit: After a large group of parents in a district on Long Island successfully got rid of TERC Investigations, fighting the pro-fuzzy math superintendent all the way, that superintendent's contract wasn't renewed... and he ended up in a job as the head of a consortium that does curriculum evaluations across NY, NY and CT. And guess what? He personally led the evaluation of our district's elementary math program two years ago (and gave it a thumbs up, not surprisingly). Lovely, eh? And that's merely the tip of the iceberg.

So, here I am. The lady who moved to the suburbs for better schools and found herself fighting a board of education and superintendent on behalf of her own kids and all the others for better math. The lady who increasingly finds herself disappointed that others can so easily dismiss FACTS and who hasn't learned how to reason with people who operate under alternate rules for rational thinking and reasonable behavior. And I sometimes feel I've made the biggest mistake of my life putting all my money into a home (I'm stuck now), believing I was trading for greener grass. It's greener in some spots. But my kid is still getting crappy math, which I backfill with workbooks and will soon be forced to pay a tutor to backfill and I pay high taxes for this bad math. And guess what, this program teaches such bad habits of mind, backfilling isn't usually enough.

Peas and carrots, people. They are for eating. They -- and their cousins, feathers, feet, cookies, pizzas, marbles, buttons and boxes -- are lovely alongside a number sentence, but they should not be the primary means used to teach a child math.

Vacation With Kids. Seriously, Stop Laughing

The phrase "vacation with kids" is the biggest oxymoron I've ever heard in regards to family life. Especially the moron part. Vacations with children are hard. They involve intense planning, remembering 4,000 details at any given moment, and lots and lots of time in close quarters with, umm, children.

Did I mention that we drove to Florida. And back. This was 42 hours of car time, with my driving 38 of the hours. Why didn't anyone stop me? What kind of friends do I have? Please, you should have talked sense into me. Even with dual-DVD players and lots of fun games, coloring books and stops along the way... But even as insane as that was, it was an adventure.

Before I come across as a total Debbie Downer, let me say that I love my kids a ton and realize that moms who aren't working outside the home spend way more time with their kids than I do (you have my undying admiration). And our vacation had some truly wonderful moments, memories I will cherish and always look back on fondly.

Beach day

Like the moment my son was blowing bubbles on a nearly-empty beach on an 82-degree February day while my daughter played happily nearby.

Or the moment when both my kids stared in amazement and then squealed with delight when they saw Shamu up close and got to touch a dolphin at Sea World.

Or the moment my daughter, whose own half-eaten ice cream cone fell on the floor looked over at my dad's cone and stuck her finger right in it to take a big swipe, smiling and laughing the whole time.

Or the fact that I got to spend time with my dad and one of my best childhood friends, who has a giant sandbox in the backyard for her kids, a fancy little chicken coop where we found recently-laid eggs and scared the rooster into crowing not one, but three times, and cows roaming the property (for tax purposes, my friends) and orange trees from which we picked fresh fruit to take home.

Shamu flips

This blog post isn't about those moments. It's about the moments right after. Like when my daughter then grabbed the bottle of bubbles forcibly from my son's hand and dumped it into the sand, sending my son almost to tears. Then he grabbed her arm too hard, she threw sand in his face.

Or my daughter's 20-minute scream-fest (please, hide the thin glass) after the Shamu show ended and it was clear we had to vacate the stadium and move on to something she totally did not want to do, like go to the bathroom.

 Or the tantrum my daughter had after I wouldn't just get her another ice cream cone, right there in the middle of a diner-like restaurant in deep-red bible belt country where most people expected me to pull out a freshly-cut switch and give her a whooping right there (no, seriously, I know that look well--it was right up there with the nasty comment, made loud enough for me to hear, at the Cracker Barrel on our way back to NY when my misbehaving daughter wasn't taken out of the restaurant fast enough for some lady's liking. Hello, lady, it's Cracker Barrel, not Capital Grill). 

Well, Grandpa still has a cone

But these paled in comparison to The Worst Birthday Ever. Those of you know know me know how much I love birthdays -- and not just my own. I LOVE birthdays. I love doing special things for other people on their birthday and I make a big deal. As for my own birthday, I love that too. I used to start counting down on Christmas Eve, but I outgrew that silliness. Ok, so it was only a year ago when I stopped. But whatever, it's a BIRTHDAY! It's the one day of the year where you can celebrate yourself without feeling too sheepish and where you can celebrate another person a little over the top on their day.

The Worst Birthday Ever started out with some foreshadowing I didn't recognize until it was over. I got up. My husband didn't. He was on vacation, after all. So he slept in while I took the kids to the hotel lobby where a breakfast of pre-fab eggs, oddly round sausage patties, and make-your-own waffles awaited. Nobody said happy birthday. Half a plate of eggs on the floor and one spilled milk later I hurried the kids up to the room before management came to shoo us away. My husband was just getting out of bed.

I'll help myself!

I got the kids ready to go to the beach, got all our stuff ready for the day and off we went. I asked the kids to "guess what today is?" My daughter said, "BEACH DAY!" My son remembered and said, "It's mommy's birthday." My daughter, ever the drama queen, said, "No, I want it to be MY birthday. When can it be June?" My husband, who had only himself to get ready, finally says Happy Birthday.

Fast-forward. This was the day of the bubble-dumping affair. I should have known after that moment that trying to go out for dinner would be a mistake. But a girl's gotta dream. Just to be safe, I picked a restaurant we could walk to from the hotel. Good thing I did: I had to leave with my daughter -- who had started putting straws in her nose, sliding out the edge of the chair and darting to other tables and, finally, screeching -- right after the appetizers arrived and before I even finished my fruity, highly-alcoholic drink.

I should note that my daughter is a wonderful little girl, sweet, caring and very, very independent and spirited. She is very clear about what she wants. When she doesn't get her way, everyone knows. Like, everyone in the room, the building, the town. I am sure this will serve her well later in life but right now, it's not serving me so well. My dad says it's payback, but exponential.

A sandbox the size of a small living room!

 Back to the hotel room, I committed a major mommy crime. I told my daughter she had ruined my birthday. And then I put her in the crib -- time out -- and laid on the uncomfortable hotel bed and started to cry. I realize the ridiculous of this. But I felt like I was entitled to a little pity party. It was my birthday. No card, no dinner, no sleeping in, no peace. I wanted... a vacation. And a birthday card.

When I complained about The Worst Birthday Ever after the fact to a friend, she scolded me, "You are a mom, that's all... You don't put all that thought and love into other's special moments to get anything back. You do it for them. The trick is to not feel like the martyr you really are!"

Ok, ok, good friend, you are right. But I still want a do-over. On the vacation and the birthday. I'm done whining now.

First, the Sad and Bad News

Callie as a baby in NYC

Last week we went on vacation (more on that in another post) and our black lab Callie stayed with her usual second-owner, Bart, the dogwalker and friend extraordinaire.

Callie, for those of you who haven't met her, is a less-destructive version of the yellow lab in the book and movie "Marley & Me." She's crazy, mischievous, full of energy, an incessant attention-hog and a food thief like no other doggie food thief you have ever met or will ever meet. Seriously. If you have food, have something that once contained food, have something that could be food, have something that has the word food on it... she goes for it. And she is crafty at getting food, too. She especially loves cheese and pizza crusts. She has always been full of life and love. As recently as a few weeks ago, someone who met her for the first time thought she was still a puppy! But, actually, she's 8.5yo.

And she is dying.

Not the kind of dying that we all eventually experience. She's sick. Really sick. She was her usual Callie self until just over two months ago. that's when she  developed a limp. The doctor thought it was early arthritis or muscle strain from Callie being, well, Callie. She was fine with some anti-inflammatory medication for most of the last two months. But the limp returned about two weeks ago and we made an appointment for x-rays for this week (post-vacation) but Bart and his wife Marsha saw Callie getting much worse the first two days we were away and didn't think the appointment could wait.

 On Tuesday, our beloved Callie was diagnosed with osteosarcoma... It's a pretty aggressive case and our options are limited with trade-offs for aggressive treatment being not much additional life time and probably at a lower quality of life. Amputation of her front leg, where the cancer is currently concentrated, and weeks of chemo might add 6-12 months to her life but we are not convinced it would be a quality life. Usually when this cancer is found, it has already metastasized so amputation alone might add 4 months, at most, before the cancer is found in the lungs and elsewhere. We have decided to treat the pain until it isn't manageable and then let her go. The vet says she has maybe 4 to 8 weeks.

Callie at about 10 or 12 weeks old in NYC

Unfortunately, the kids were in the car (and I was driving) when we got the news. You know it's not good when the Scottsman (Bart) on the other end of the phone is choked up before he even tells you the news is bad. I pulled over in the middle of nowhere Florida and listened, cried, cried more and then cried some more when the vet called with details... and then had to answer my son's questions about our beloved four-legged furry family member. First up: Is Callie going to die?

To understand how much Callie means to me, particularly, you have to go back a few years. I've almost always had a dog throughout my life. There was Ralph, the dachshund who arrived around the same time I did. There was Boo-Boo, a dachshund/chihuahua mix we adopted when she was 3 and who was with us until I was in 9th grade. Then there was Bear, a black lab we got the year after Boo-Boo died. She was killed by a car when I was away my freshman year of college. Nobody told me until I got home for Christmas. And that's when Buddy came along. I went to the shelter and this little bundle of lab and retriever mix was being viewed by another family when he came over and started tugging on my shoelace. It was love.

Callie in 2006

By the time I moved to NYC in May 2000, my dog Buddy had been with me for five years, three years in college and two years post college. He was not a dog who would tolerate the city and I did what I thought was best and gave him to a farmer who was very fond of him. For three long years, I petted every dog I saw on the street, stopped at every mobile adoption event and wished I could have a dog again. Finally, a few months before I got married, my now-husband and I started our dog search. He'd never had a pet and insisted on a purebred lab, not a rescue or shelter mix. He was concerned about temperament. I'm anti-puppy-mill and insisted on a reputable breeder. The thing is, not many of them are keen on giving labradors to people who live in high rise buildings in NYC. Six breeders, five pleading letters and one kick-ass "please give me a puppy" essay later, someone said yes.

Callie was our first child and the real test of whether my husband could care for another creature. One week after we returned from our honeymoon, we rented a car and drove five hours to Ipswich, Massachusetts to fetch our little Callie. She was as precious as her photos and the first thing she did was grab my entire wrist with her little puppy mouth. The breeder, who owned Callie's mom Mac and Callie's grandma Scotch, said "She's mouthy like her mom... good luck with that."

And so our adventures began. In her first year, Callie rode in the Pet Taxi to the vet at least a dozen times... She ate an entire section of the NY Times one day. Apparently the ink in the Arts section doesn't agree with puppy tummies. Then she had all sorts of little sicknesses... until we learned she had allergies, switched her to (expensive) prescription food and she was cured of these vet trips. She owned the walkway along the Hudson River near the Intrepid -- a few blocks from our apartment. She romped in the dog parks and would beg to keep going even walking all the way from 43rd St. to the dog park across from Chelsea Piers. She splayed out when she layed down, like a frog. We called her frog dog, crazy Callie, curious Callie... She had a friend in the building next door named Rio, a 110-lb very large nearly-white labrador who she'd romp around with indoors and out. She had another buddy, Rufus, a giant Newfoundland who lived in the same building and who towered over her but loved her nonetheless.

She hated Florida when we moved there -- not enough dog friends to play with, except at the (for-pay) dog park where she could swim faster to the stick or ball than any other dog, even if that dog had a big head start. She stole food at every turn and not even tabasco sauce on the counter could dissuade her from thieving.

Callie watching the kids trick-or-treat Halloween 2008

Our adventures with Callie continued. She became the constant watcher and loving companion to our son (here's a cute video of them together when our son was 11 months old) and later our daughter. She waited patiently for her slice of what was once the undivided attention she used get pre-kids. She moved back to NYC (and was very happy about that) where she quickly made friends again. She ate rat poison, sliced open her paw when Lila was 10 days old (poor Bart had to bear both of these burdens and the recent diagnosis), she swam in the Hudson River under the George Washington Bridge (where my son wants to spread some of her ashes when she passes since it was a place she loved so much), she was known all over the neighborhood. She stole more food, especially pizza crusts and bread. She always, always seemed smarter than the average dog and always, always was ready to play, fetch a ball, give a kiss, get petted, and behave as if she were a puppy. She never met a person who did not become an instant friend and rarely met a dog who didn't do the same. She is starting to go grey, but people still thought she was a puppy and given her puppy-antics I rarely corrected folks. She is always, always, always happy to see me -- to see all of us.

Callie loved snow. She had already been limping when I took this but the medicine was helping and she was her old self.

Callie has the kind of doggie spirit and lovable eyes that make it so easy to forgive the food-thieving and the jumping up every time you came to the door. She had the look of long life and we expected her to be one of those dogs you hear about who live to be 14 years-old. To know that she will not be a part of our lives very soon is devastating. Lots of tears have been shed and many more will be, I'm sure.

When I emailed the news to a woman who stayed at our apartment several times when we were away -- her daughter lived in our neighborhood and she and her husband watched Callie in exchange for a free place to stay to visit their grandkids -- what she wrote back summed up the impact Callie has on people. This woman was with Callie maybe 20 days over a four-year period.

She wrote: "I am so very, very sad for Callie, your family, Bart, and all of us who love Callie so much.  
She is more than special.  She gathered us ALL together around her.  She is a dear, dear friend of mine."

Life isn't fair. And death isn't either.

How Does One Start (to Blog) Again After SO Long?

I guess by simply logging in and writing. Well, let me take a whirlwind look back. A year ago, on Feb 18, I left my job at WSJ. I was sad because I loved the WSJ, but the last few months in a new role got the best of me and a change was in order. I took seven weeks off, so to speak... if you could define "off" as writing a book, spending time with my kids, doing projects in my son's class, freelancing and job-interviewing. I experienced a bit of mother-panic in those classroom visits, initiating a quick decision that we were decamping for the suburbs.

Oh, yes, I said suburbs.

 (our new house, well, old, but new to us....)

After receiving three job offers (I know, I know, unheard of) I made a really hard decision and turned down (twice) the one that I knew I would love but that would take too much of a toll on my family, turned down the one that would be really interesting but take me too far from journalism, and took the one that did the least harm working for someone I really respected and liked. It was interesting -- and not the right fit for me ultimately. I'd have stayed for a while anyway because I was learning and had a great team of reporters, but out of the blue another company came calling and it was the right time to make a move.

So, we bought a house (the day before a hurricane) at the end of August in a suburb as close to NYC as one could get and the kids started at a new school and day care and I started a new job right after Labor Day.

Now, a year away from this blog for no good reason except I couldn't figure out how to write about leaving WSJ, a place I loved and thought I'd be at for many years, and because I had to write 55,000 words in six weeks, and because I had such a short time to figure life out that I just couldn't write about it.... well, I'm back.

I'm even less of a supermom now than I ever was (and since I wasn't one to start, this is not good news) before. But, I'm still plugging away and I have a lot to write about.

First up: The suburbs have a lot of upside. But they have some downside too -- namely, high taxes, Stepford-like tendencies, marriage to train schedules, lots of driving, and when you buy a house, pricey stuck-ness. As in, you can't exactly decide to move when so easily and you can't call the super to fix a pipe and you have to pay for your own heat. Holy ConEd-aphobia, my friends! Now I know why rents are so high in NYC!

Come back this week for a look at how I became a school board vigilante, mad math mom, vacation-hater and more.