Ask Moxie

60-Day Challenge Check-In Day 55

In the home stretch...

Passover realization

I went to my first Passover seder on Saturday night (thanks, Num-Num!). It was a very reform seder (we skipped some longer chunks) but annotated extremely well for the gentiles in the group. I was impressed both with how similar so many of the prayers are to the prayers I know from my Christian background, and how different the flow and pacing was from the Christian ceremonies I've been to that involve so much intense prayer.

Anyway, I want to apologize to those of you who have little kids who go to long, formal seders each year. I'd heard/read the complaints about how to deal with kids at seder before, but hadn't understood the full implication of that. I'd thought it was just like a longer, religious Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, no. Starting a 2-6-hour serious religious ceremony at sundown in a recipe for meltdown, so my heart goes out to those of you who are judged by family and friends for having cranky kids at seder.

If anyone wants to share ideas for making seder easier on kids and parents, please post them here.

Saturday morning unfortunate incident

I lost a favorite lip balm in the port-a-potty at Little League T-Ball on Saturday morning. It fell out of my pocket into disgusting oblivion.

60-Day Challenge Check-In Day 54

60-Day Challenge Check-In Day 52

Zessen Pesach!

I just want to be on record as having thought of it on Monday

Remember when they dug up the Red Sox shirt from under the new Yankees Stadium? And it turned out to be David Ortiz's shirt?

I was *this close* to calling Mike & The Maddog to tell them my theory, which is that the curse was reversed, and burying Ortiz's shirt is what made him go into a hitting slump, and unburying it would bring back his hitting powers. ("Hi Mike and Chris! This is Moxie from Manhattan. First and long.")

And now who's hitting better? Big Papi. I think I have powers.

The worst thing is, I don't even care about baseball.

Mother's Day gift ideas

Mothers' Day is coming up for those of us in North America (May 10th and 11th) and a bunch of other countries. I think  it's a Hallmark holiday*, personally, but like to do something nice for my mom and grandmas. I've done the tote bags, brag books, hand prints, etc. Spew forth all your ideas for the ultimate in grandmother fulfillment, please.

Also, if there's something you wish someone would give *you* for Mother's Day, feel free to post it here. I would like these shoes in green (size 7 1/2).

* Of course I'll change my tune when my boys are old enough to really take responsibility for doing something nice for me on the day. But in general I think public celebration of it is pointless, and only makes women who haven't had children feel less than. I might change it to "Buy a Lady a Drink Day."

60-Day Challenge Check-In Day 51

Help managing Saturday sports activities?

Arrrgghhh! Little League T-Ball has started, and while my older son loves it (the cool uniform jersey, pants, and matching hat sent him into ecstasy), the amount of time it sucks on Saturday mornings, along with trying to fit it around the little one's swim lesson (which he loves, too) is throwing off my entire week. It's making laundry strange (remember we don't have our own machine, and the one on our floor sucks, and our elevator's out for another 8 weeks still, so everything has to be hauled up and down four flights of stairs) and that throws things off even more.

Any tips for sequencing better? You guys will get halfway decent Ask Moxie posts during the week once I get out from under the pile of laundry and hauling kids to not-that-close sports fields.

(As an aside, at the opening ceremony following the opening parade for the Little League season, a priest from the local Catholic school gave a blessing. Which I thought was a strange and inappropriate conflation of church and open-league sports, but whatever. Anyway, part of the opening prayer was to "help the parents keep things in perspective." Which made me guffaw.)

Sick Day

I went home from work yesterday with body aches, chills, and nausea. So no post for today.

[I did watch the finale of The Biggest Loser, though, and am happy for Ali. Kelly looked great and seemed so much happier than she was at the beginning of the show. I hope she can have a baby now, after three miscarriages and two ectopics.

I can't really believe the viewers voted Roger in to the finale, since I was so sick of that whole 1-2-3-pride! routine and thought everyone else would be, too. But I guess people were just more sick of Mark crying.

Very happy Bernie won, although I was rooting for Curtis. I'm just happy it wasn't Dan.]

Now I'm going to work to catch up on everything I missed yesterday.

Oh, here's a topic: You know you're a mother/father when...

I'll start:

You know you're a mother when you change the paper towel roll in the kitchen at work, and save the empty roll because "someone might want to play with it."