It’s About Time

So this week’s column got me all existentially-thinking about time and whether or not it really exists and what to do with what you have and list making and so on and so on.

I guess the powers that be at the local news didn’t like it as much as I did. (But you know how I eat up existentialism…it’s like raw chocolate chip cookie dough for me.)

Since they didn’t post it in today’s online version of the news (picture me with my bottom lip out), I’m posting it here in it’s entirety:

Where Did that Extra Hour Go?

By Local Columnist, Amy Gesenhues

All weekend, I was looking forward to the extra hour we were getting compliments of daylight savings time. Come Sunday, we would set our clocks back and I’d get an entire sixty minutes all to myself. I spent my Saturday morning making a list of things to do with my extra hour. (I love making lists—it’s kind of a hobby, or OCD symptom. You say to-MAY-toe, I say to-MOT-toe.)

What would I do with a whole hour? I could write. Do my nails. Clean out my refrigerator (that one got nixed as quickly as it got listed). Nap. Read. Work on the Sunday crossword puzzle. Organize photos. Make more lists.

The possibilities were endless.

I Get Shit DONE!

I’m just saying, if I get another tattoo…that’s what it’s going to read.

Maybe I could get it in Mandarin script or Latin so it would look a bit more tasteful. (Was it a bit too much having a curse word in the title? It’s still PG, right?)  Actually, I get shit done in Latin would work too. It’s aggressive and blunt, but with an old school, Catholic mass kind of slant. Like a nun who goes around smacking left-handers with a big thick wooden ruler.

I’m pretty sure that I did more this morning than I did the entire year I was 24.

Wake kiddos, fix breakfast, fix hair (mine and my daughters), find snack, check work email, get one kiddo to school, get the other kiddo to daycare, come back to first kiddo’s school and read stories while taking questions from five and six-year olds. BREATH. Check voicemail, remember that I completely forgot to check first kiddos school folder last night and hope she did not have homework. Arrive at coffee shop and work on newsletter while answering emails from CEO…it’s not even 11:00 a.m. yet.

Go Go Go Go Go

My husband is giving me a breather right now and picking up the kids before we go–as a family–to Kroger. Talk about a mess. Grocery shopping with all the kids is like being in some low-rate, no-budget TV game show where the objective is to get only what you need and get out before you spend double what you should and have a crying baby to calm through the last two aisles.

When I look back on this time, I know I’m going to think–how the hell did I do all that with two kids? And by all that I mean hold down a full-time career, keep up a regular weekly column, and write my first novel that led to my life of leisurely luxuries and wild success.

My Daughter is a Tattletale

I’ve been wondering about how using my kids for material will come back and bite me in the behind…but it hasn’t stopped me.

Here’s last week’s column where I totally call out my daughter for being a tattletale…so uncool for both of us. She being the tattler and me being the tattletale mom.

Tales from a Tattler

Published in the October 28, 2009 issue of The Tribune.

My daughter is a tattletale. We knew this going into kindergarten, but were unaware of her full capacity to tattle. Like her mom, if she enjoys something, she doesn’t do it halfway; she’s a really, really good tattletale.

Is that Rupaul?

Actual conversation, verbatim, that just happened between me and my husband:

Him: “Is that Rupaul?”

Me: “No, it’s Wendy Williams.”

Him: “Is it a real woman?”

Me: “Yes.”

 

Another Reason Why I Love My Aunts

I am no stranger to writing about how fantastic my aunts are; but, tonight I am especially enamored with two of them.

Right about now, two of my dad’s sisters are driving through Arizona on their way to the Grand Canyon. They have covered miles and miles during the last eight days in their eggplant-colored minivan.

One of my cousin’s built a platform for a mattress that he then installed in the back of their vehicle (they’ve been camping as they go, sleeping in the van). Over-sized Longerberger baskets stocked full of bread, peanutbutter, homemade jelly, Philadelphia cream cheese and coolers of diet coke are keeping them well fed, while, I am sure, a stack of New York Times crossword puzzles are keeping them entertained as one drives and the other recites the clues.

I’d give anything to watch an instant streaming video of the two driving along, laughing, bitching, smiling. Can you imagine the road-trip back and forth between two sisters who have been sisters for more than 50 years? (Not that either of them look a day over 30!) These women have lived through the thick of it…catholic school, teenage daughters, countless family dinners. They are both mothers of amazingly gifted and talented children. They both worked outside the home while keeping the inside of their household running at full tilt.

I love them and hope one day when I’m able and my sisters are able that I remember what these two aunts did so that I do the same.

Shoes Like This Can Change Your Life

As part of my therapy (long story that doesn’t fit here) I’ve been trying to indulge certain areas of my psyche that got left out in the cold for awhile.

Today, something I ordered just for this neglected part of my soul showed up in the mail. I made sure they were delivered to my work address so that I could see them as soon as they arrived. They were as beautiful and stunning and breath-taking in real life as they were in the tiny thumbnail eBay photo where I first fell in love with them.

What has me in such a twitter?

They are 4″ zebra print faux fur heels from Michael Kors with a double black buckle across the toe. If you love shoes like I do, then you know what I’m talking about. These are shoes that can change your life.

They are shoes that you plan an outfit around…they are shoes that you plan an entire evening around. They are the shoes that turn you into a woman who dares to wear 4″ heels.

I love them.

My Column for the Week

Warning: Kids in the Limelight May Be Soured

Published in the October 21 issue of The Tribune.

The Gap has a sign in their window that reads, “Your Kid Could Be Our Next Star.” “Ugh,” I thought when I saw it on my way in to shop for jeans. Is that even a selling point?

It should have said, “Your kid could be our next star with their very own chance to be exploited, eaten up, and then spit-out as soon as they are determined less than profitable by the very industry that gave them a pass. Don’t forget, they will be sure to receive everything from unfavorable criticism to downright nasty ridicule by the media, bloggers, comedians, and fans, along with cruel judgments from people who have never even met them. As a parent, you’ll get the added bonus of a fast buck, likely divorce, and your very own opportunistic opportunity to cry on the set of ‘The View’ with Joy Behar sitting beside you (or worse, confessing into Billy Bush’s mic on ‘Entertainment Tonight’). If all goes as planned, you’ll eventually be totally estranged from the very child that you wanted to make into a star.”

I guess there wasn’t enough room on the window for my truth in advertising soliloquy, but I thought about it the entire time I was trying on jeans.

There’s a lot of talk about how we value children, but it kind of feels hollow when you watch television. “Our kids come first,” comments sound like when I say that I want to go to the gym. I really want to do what’s right and work-out every day, but often times I flake and order carry-out on my way home instead. I talk a good game, but there is not a lot of substance. In the same way, we may say we value children, but there are still a whole lot of open casting calls awaiting the next Lindsey Lohan-kid or Gosselin-family.

Dropping Teeth Like a Poet Dropping Rhymes

My girl is losing her teeth, fast.

Tonight will be the second night in less than five days that the tooth fairy will have to make a stop at our humble abode. And the third time this month. I’m pretty sure we may be bankrupting our gracious tooth collector (hard times for are falling on everyone, even winged-ones with fairy dust and bags-o-teeth).

My daughter won’t have to worry about Halloween candy rotting her teeth this year as she hardly has any left.

Tomorrow morning will go much better than Monday morning when at first it had appeared the tooth fairy took the tooth but left no monies. My daughter woke up, checked under her pillow, and then immediately lost her crackers. You would have thought we had woke her up wearing a ski mask and carry a machete (not that she would have gotten the Mike Meyers reference, but a ski mask and a machete are inherently scary).

“The tooth fairy took my tooth and didn’t leave me anything,” she sobbed while my husband carried her into the living room. He was a bit in shock and handed her over to me.

“Sweetie, I think you may have just missed where the tooth fairy left your dollar. Did you look everywhere? Did you look inside your pillowcase?”

Her sniffles started to cease as we headed back to her room to re-search the premises for the missing dollar.

“Surely the tooth fairy wouldn’t stiff you,” I said.

“What’s stiff me mean?” she asked.

We flipped the pillow and found the dollar and the morning was saved, as was the tooth fairy’s reputation.  It was a close call though; if that dollar hadn’t showed, we were going to have to call my cousin to prosecute that freaking fairy flit. I still don’t trust her all the way…I mean, who hides the dollar inside the pillowcase?

Tonight, I’m going to make sure we don’t have a replay of Monday morning and go do the deed as soon as I’m done typing this. In fact, this post was my way of not forgetting tooth fairy duties (like i did on Sunday night).

Stories to Tell

We all have stories. Some of us are better at telling them than others. Some of us are better at writing them down than others.

Our stories are sad. They are funny. They are meaningful. They can be everything all at once. The one thing all stories have in common is that they belong fully and wholly to their beholders.

My family, by all extensions, has many stories…and I’m sure that they would each be told differently according to the person telling the story.

For example, when I was a teenager, I kicked a hole in the wall in our hallway. It was a good sized hole (approximately a size eight in womens shoes).  I could tell you the entire story here, what I was doing before I kicked the wall, what happened to make me kick the wall, and what happened afterward. I could tell it from my point of view now and it would be funny. I could tell it from my point of view then and it would be full of anger and…mostly anger, maybe some sorrow.

When I write a story–a column, a post, an email, whatever–I believe my best writing happens when I can include my own life experiences. My goal is to be honest and authentic…to share my experiences so that they resonate with the reader.

I believe the power of our stories can move mountains. They can make people laugh and cry all at once. They can open doors and hearts. Readers can be saved by the power of a story in the same way that writers can be saved by letting their stories be free to roam.

Tonight I had dinner (actually it was a table full of appetizers, much better than dinner) with two of my favorite friends. We only get to see each once every four to five weeks if we’re lucky; but, when we do, the stories go wild. Tonight we talked about a mind-blowing trip to Costa Rica, a mindful week spent at a writing conference, and a mind that’s been working overtime to move through crap that’s been lingering for years. Because our time is limited, we get straight to it. We move from person to person, asking directed and pointed questions. We want the thick of it, there is no time for small talk.

The thing about our stories is that we never know what they are going to be, but they all of their own way of helping out the other people at the table.

But that’s what stories are supposed to do. Help.

Today’s Tribune Article

Advice from My Dad

Published in the October 14, 2009 issue of The Tribune.

My dad drowned when I was 3 years old, leaving me very few personal memories of his overall demeanor. I can’t recall how he fixed his hair, what his voice sounded like, how he walked, or what his face looked like when he smiled. These details are missed, but they are not the whole kit-and-kaboodle.

There are many things he did leave me that have proven more valuable than knowing which side he parted his hair. He has left me tiny clues throughout my life to help see things from his point of view and reconsider or reengage whatever is calling for my attention. I have come around to understanding that this is our conversation, that these clues are merely a way for us to continue our father-daughter talks even if the discussion is taking place on different planes.

Our latest talk happened tonight.