Episode 25: Peri Peri Quite Contrary
Hot Flashes
by Mimi Schmir, one of the writers from "Grey's Anatomy"
So here's the thing about being "peri-menopausal," (or as I like to call it, "PM.") It makes you cranky. (*Note: I was told by my ob-gyn that since I still occasionally get my period, I am not actually in full blown menopause. I ask her what constitutes "full blown" and she tells me that I will know it when I feel it which frankly, makes me even crankier than I am.) Apparently, PM can make you a lot of things (hungry, tired, bored by sex, totally horny) but it can also turn you into a monster. I have seen this in myself and I have seen it in my girlfriends and I have seen it in my neighbor whose husband comes home from work, finds her bawling and screams, "Why can't you just be happy?!" Some of us snap at our children. Many of us rail at our significant others. A few of us yell at our boob-enhanced friends who stood by us when our husbands brought home hookers. That's where I come in.
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There is nothing predictable about being in the middle of your life. I've learned that much, if I've learned anything. (Well, except for flabby upper arms. That, apparently, is pretty standard. And chin hairs made of graphite. Don't forget those.) So when one day your college boyfriend shows up, out of the blue, and says he's never really gotten over you — well, there is no rule book on how to handle that one. You could say, "You're a mixed up son of a bitch," which is what you wanted to say twenty years ago when he scaled the walls of your dorm and hung by your fifteenth story window. You might say, "This Romeo and Juliet act is so... Shakespearean," which is what you tried to spit out when he threw your "diverse backgrounds" in your face (you from Connecticut, him from Westchester — despite an Ivy League pedigree the boy was a moron.) You'd probably say, "That ship has sailed, Popeye," which means more or less nothing unless you understand what it is to be a guy who works out five hours a day and thinks his muscles are God's gift to a just-lost-her-virginity, boy crazy freshman. And yet you say none of these things. Instead, you stutter, "Geez, Danny, you look exactly the same," and stare at him, kind of hungry, like you did when you were twenty and all you could think of was how his ripped-to-the-max swimmers body (Eighties lingo, for you youngsters) would look naked in your dorm room.
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I know I have good boobs. I had good boobs when I was a teenager, when I was in college, when I had a breast reduction (double D's, remember) and I've had them since. They've almost never failed me. My boyfriends always liked them and so did I. Size, shape, the whole nine yards. (Jeffrey was perhaps the exception. This might make one wonder further about our relationship. He always said he wished I'd left them bigger, as if a C-cup wasn't big enough. This is of course metaphoric on a number of levels. I never got a good look at any of his prostitutes except for my Super Fan — she had whoppers — but I'm pretty sure he was getting some gazangas when he hired them.)
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Do you encourage your children to acknowledge their step-mother on Mother's Day?
Posted Friday, April 18, 2008 - 9:42amAdvice for Our Members - Part 2
by Antonio Martinez
Posted to Resource Articles by Editor on Wed, 07/23/2008 - 2:12pm
If this is Tuesday it must be the Cote d'Azure. How should an ex-wife feel when a husband is taking two young children on a grand tour of Europe? A reader asks "Do I have a right to ask for an itinerary, and phone numbers for hotels, when he's dragging them across Europe? The kids are 9 and 10, two boys, and I can't imagine they are going to be very happy."
It's up to the ex-husband to deal with two unhappy boys. As for the rest of the question, about your right to an itinerary:
"Absolutely!" said Susan Reach Winters, an attorney at Budd Larner, P.C., in New Jersey. "You have every right to know where your children are, especially for emergency situations." Moreover, if you feel your ex is taking the children on something dangerous, or something you do not approve of, you may ìneed to go to court," she said.
"Day trips? Not so much. But longer trips, yes," said Jacalyn Barnett, whose law offices are in New York.
"When a parent asks for an itinerary for an extended trip the child is taking with the other parent, it shows the child that the parent loves them enough to want to know their whereabouts," says David Young, a former Circuit Court judge in Miami-Dade County.
It is best, the lawyers say, if guidelines for situations like these are laid down in the divorce and custody agreement. Every divorce is different, but itís important to focus on the needs of the child and not fall victim to revenge.
If you keep your children from speaking to their father, you are making them casualties in your battle with your ex. There are instances where a parent will call too much, and that is also interfering with the other parentís right to have private time with the child.
Either way, the child is hurt.
Family Rules
Posted to Resource Articles by Editor on Wed, 07/23/2008 - 10:54am
Operate a family under written rules? Not possible in your chaotic life? Too much like running a strict boarding school?
In his seminal book “Family Rules,” Dr. Ken Kaye explains why written rules solve most children’s issues, prevent squabbles, shape behavior, and keep parenting even handed. Not only that, but children can learn from watching those rules applied to their siblings.
Dr. Kaye’s book stresses that written rules can be just as useful, maybe even more so, after a divorce. Here are excerpts from “Family Rules” (2005):
The events that create a single-parent family are power forces in shaping a child’s development. A parent’s death, desertion, or divorce leaves emotional wounds in the child just as it does in the remaining parent.
Discipline may be necessary, but it will not be sufficient to heal the wounds. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge, “My child is in pain and needs professional help.”...
When the bitterness between you and the ex-spouse has slacked off a bit, it feels good to exchange a remark or even just a knowing smile with the one other person in the world to whom your children are as special, their development as marvelous, their needs as urgent as they are to you.
But there are dangers on that road. All forces converge to pull the two of you into over-involvement with one another.
The reality is that your family has broken up. You are divorced or you are getting divorced, and if the children are living with you then you have to make the decisions
Keep the co-parenting consultations to the minimum necessary to sustain Dad’s cooperation. But the children’s father should not be the main person you rely on as your sounding board or counselor in setting rules.
Since you cannot afford to be undermined, you will need to respect your children’s father’s feelings, values, and opinions.
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Oh, the joys and pains of being a woman. Sunday morning, I found myself in my temporary New York City digs in need of personal maintenance. You know, those womanly chores we love to hate — or maybe just hate — with a passion.
Being that the prior week was so hectic, I hadnít had time to pay attention to myself, and by the weekend, I was a mess.
I needed a shampoo and a shave like nobody's business. The shampoo was going to be easy, I figured. So I decided to begin with my least favorite chore — shaving, though I decided to use one of those hair-removal-in-a-tube deals.
Ordinarily, I don't subscribe to chemical hair removal, because it's so messy, and because there's just something strange about the process.
But my heightened need for hair removal — summer equals skin exposure — and the fact I get so impatient when I shave, made me take the plunge.
I wish I had checked the water situation in the apartment before smearing the hair remover on.
Thank goodness it was merely a lack of hot water, and not a full-on drought. If that had been the case, I would be going through the remainder of these horrid New York summers hiding vanity-induced chemical burns under long pants.
It's all in the name of beauty, I suppose.
Why in earth do we as women care so much? What's it all for?
Is it really for ourselves?
A “Cry for Help” Answered: You Lose!
Posted to Relevant News by Linda Lee on Tue, 07/22/2008 - 7:24pm
The verdict is in. A judge ruled against a wife who broke new ground, and perhaps established new heights in ego-centrism, by broadcasting her complaints about her husband on YouTube. As Norman Sheresky, a Manhattan divorce lawyer, said in April, “It’s the kind of thing judges frown upon.”
Oh yes. Frown they do.
The six-minute video, posted in April, was called “One More Crazy Day in the Life of a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes.” In it, Tricia Walsh-Smith said her husband, Philip Smith, never had sex with her, but kept a stash of Viagra, condoms, and porn.
One complaint, she said, was that her husband tried to curb her habit of buying $600 pairs of shoes on his credit card.
Wearing raccoon eyes and filmed in her lavish Park Avenue apartment, she was hardly doing herself any favors.
The press had a field day: “Her unblinking zombie eyes seemed to mirror some madness in the soul,” said “New York” magazine.
“A wild-eyed Walsh-Smith looks about as sane as Ozzy Osbourne on a three-day coke binge,” said “Wired” magazine.
The judge skipped the invective, but was no less harsh.
“She has attempted to turn the life of her husband into a soap opera by directing, writing, acting in and producing a melodrama,” Judge Harold Beeler said, calling the videos — there were three of them — “a calculated and callous campaign to embarrass and humiliate her husband.”
Smith, 76, head of the Shubert Organization of Broadway theaters in New York, sued Walsh-Smith, 52, for divorce last year, after eight years of marriage, charging her with cruel and inhuman treatment.
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Feel like you're losing your grip on those financial purse strings? (Especially if you've just heard that credit card companies are charging an extra ten cents a gallon at the pump!) Even cereal is higher at the grocery store, as is milk. Everything for the kids is going up, up, up!
But listen. There are still ways you can go out with friends, shop for groceries, make more money, save money as a family project, and plug your financial leaks.
First, let's deal with eating out.
You need adult time, if for no other reason than to have another grown up to bounce kid questions off of.
And if you're hoping to meet a guy, youíre not going to find him in your closet.
Going out doesn't have to take your budget into the red zone.
Here are five ways to eat out without breaking into the kids' piggy bank.
Share an entrée or make a meal out of appetizers
American food portions are so super-sized that the average entrée could feed at least two, sometimes even three people! But if you're going to split an entrée, find out first if the restaurant charges a fee for that. Appetisers, or small plates (tapas), are usually rich in better restaurants, or gigantic in lower priced restaurants, and thus more filling. An appetizer can make a fine meal, and cost half as much as an entrée.
Be sure to ask how much the specials cost
This a major pet peeve. How many times have you been in a restaurant when the waitperson describes a succulent-sounding, special dish-of-the-day? You go for it, and then sit dumbfounded when you see the bill and find out the price. It's a sign of financial self-confidence to nicely ask "and what do those specials run?" so you can make an informed decision.
Soup, it does a body good
