Julie Pippert: Using My Words

A while back I conceived of this brilliant plot whereby I would conspire to convince SeaWorld that TheMotherhood.com and I could make fantastic co-hosts for an awesome event at their San Antonio location. Friends, I must talk a really great game because I convinced the brilliant (and occasionally omniscient) Kami Huyse and SeaWorld as well as the amazing Cooper and Emily of TheMotherhood.com that this was a very good idea. The next thing any of us knew (ha! as if it was simply movie magic easy LOL!), we were blowing up air mattresses with some of the most fantastic women in Texas to sleep with extremely cute but a little smelly puffins. I've felt at a cross-roads this year, more so lately, which may or may not have anything to do with a recent birthday. I don't mind getting older or even middle-aged, aside from the minor physical inconveniences (great scott, the plucking!) (the sagging elbows!) (the creaky knees!) (enough!) but the big benefit of aging is supposed to be wisd...

Case in point...Jami Gertz then and now... Bret Easton Ellis' book Less than Zero exploded into our culture in 1986, earning him fame, a movie deal and shining a light on a generation and culture that revealed itself, through Ellis's words, as self-indulgent, pointless and degenerate. Or so the preceding generation presumed. As all preceding generations presume when watching the follies of the youths. The mid-80s brought a crackdown on the party lifestyle, just in time for me to hit the main party age. In 1984, I watched high school seniors vehemently protest two things: making the drug X illegal and enacting The National Minimum Drinking Age Act . Elders may have been impressed to finally see Gen X care about something passionately, but I'm sure they felt it was too bad that the inspiration was drugs and alcohol (very ironically, I am sure, in a fair number of self-righteous cases). Still, thanks to Nancy Reagan we learned to Just Say No and thanks to Tipper Gore we could...

At some point over the last week a terrible knot finally unraveled inside me and I became a woman who could smile, laugh and enjoy life again...and so did the rest of the family: If you can laugh at yourself and have a good time, you can take your kids on a duck tour they'll talk about for the rest of the trip...and even quack along the way. When the weather is fine, you can run alongside a pond racing swans and then stop to admire them...or try to see how it is that they poop and pee (if you're under 6). Everything that goes up is for climbing, especially trees. Oh yes we did, you know it baby! Wicked good cannolis. It was here---at Mike's, sitting crammed next to other tiny tables---that we had a great conversation with another couple, some grandparents, and I realized one of the things I miss so much about MA is how much people there like kids. People aren't rolling their eyes in aggravation, "Oh here comes kids ," like they are a fatal, communicable di...

This is a two part post: the good news and the bad news. I know I ought to do the bad news first so we can end on a good note, but eh, I'm more interested in the good news. This way, you can read the good and skip down to the awesome Hump Day Hmm links if you prefer to opt out of a rant. So here it is: I've got a pretty good thing going right now. Good thing 1: We're going on a trip to MASSACHUSETTS and NEW HAMPSHIRE Museums! Fall! Color! Leaves! Long sleeves! Story Land ! October is a big month for us every year. In fact, we are just one endless party here the entire last quarter of every year. But October is special. It's one of my favorite months (or used to be, before I moved to Hades). It's Jon's birthday. He's turning older (aren't we all?). It's also the month we got married in. Good thing 2: That marriage? Happened 14 years ago. No joke. Married 14 years. In relationship 16 years. Known one another 19 years. Is that some kind of crazy or wh...