How to Start a Book Club [Or Don't Bother and Just Join Mine]

Well, folks. It's been a hot minute.

Ok, "folks" might be a stretch. I'm pretty sure my only follower is my mom, and that's because I logged onto her phone to subscribe her. 

So, we survived a global pandemic, a shortage of toilet paper, a housing boom, rising interest rates, inflation, 500,000 egg memes, AI threatening our very existence, and learning an entirely new language courtesy of Gen Z (I'm in my rizz era).

Once the dust settled, you, like me, might have asked yourself what's next? 

Step One: Read Books and Drink Wine

Well, I don't know about your liver, but I drank a lot of wine during the pandemic. And I read a lot of books. Which got me thinking — what if I read books and drank wine with other people?

Genius, I know.

I'd wanted to be part of a book club for years. But work-at-home life was turning me into a bit of a recluse. I had friends at work, sure, but they lived seven states away. I wanted to find several in-person book nerds who also liked wine (or sparkling water! we're inclusive!).

It was a summer day, poolside, when I told my neighbor Dina about a great book I was reading by an author I really liked. She said, "I want to read more, but I need an excuse to read more."

So. I started a book club.

Sure, I still have several half-written novels chillin' on my laptop. But since those don't seem to be getting published any time soon, I figured the next best thing was to sit around with a group of like-minded gal pals, slurp down a glass of wine (or sparking water! you don't have to be an alcoholic to join!), and critique someone else's writing. It's cathartic.

Step Two: Ask Others to Join

After I forced, I mean suggested, that Dina join, we floated the idea by our neighbor Rhianna who was all for it. We started off with our first book and our small little group quickly grew. As soon as I would tell someone about my latest book club meeting I would be met with, "Book club? How do I join?" I mean who doesn't want to read a good book, stuff your face with finger foods for dinner, and hang out with a bunch of awesome women who have varied and insightful opinions?

Step Three: Read, Get Together, and Repeat

Today we have nearly 10 local members plus our social pages and our newly launched website. Wine Drinking Team Book Club started off like most things start off. Small and simple. But once people get to know me, (ok, US) they all want a seat at the table. (Bruh. It's the rizz.)

 

The Seedy Underbelly of Fall

I just saw a social media post asking if it was too early for the “It’s fall, y’all!” hashtags and Insta captions.

Yes. It is too early. It’s still August and it’s 87 degrees in upstate New York. Where is your sense of common decency?

But aside from going the way of retail stores and pushing each holiday on us sooner and sooner, there is another issue with the fall season. Something dark. Something shady. Something no one wants to speak about. There are larger issues at play here. Let’s dig in.

The polarization of America. Dems versus the GOP. Critical Race Theory ($5 goes to anyone who can actually explain this to me). Let’s not even talk about the fact that there is still a mask debate going on. But one important issue has been overlooked for years. And it’s time we spoke up.

Two words people:  Pumpkin. Spice.

When did Pumpkin Spice become the poster child for the fall season? It’s happening – pumpkin spice lattes are out there. Did I mention it’s 87 degrees today? Feels like a hundred? 

But the bigger, more important question is this: What, dare I ask, ever happened to the apple? Remember the apple before it was a tech company? Roughly the size of a baseball, red, shiny, little stem on top. Made Snow White take one heck of a power nap.

It’s time to bring back the apple.

Pumpkins have one, ok, two, good uses. Jack-o-lanterns and pumpkin pie. They already have two holidays, they can’t take over an entire SEASON. That’s just cray, as the kids would say. And disparate. Yes, it’s disparate treatment. I think this is part of critical race theory. Yep, right there on page 92 of the CRT doctrine. Trust me, you don't have to go reading it yourself. It's there.

Let’s take a look back at the history of the pumpkin, and some not so credible facts:

Pumpkins are racist. Oh yes, they may start off as green (I don’t actually know this to be true, but who fact checks anymore?) so they have a delicate truce with the Granny Smith, but red apples are being oppressed at an alarming rate. Orange pumpkins may not be the largest population of, um, vegetable? Or are we talking fruit here? Who cares - point is, the red apple sells for far less per pound than the pumpkin, it's not as prevalent in fall ad campaigns, and let's not even talk about the lack of funding for the red apple soccer team while the pumpkin team has turf instead of shitty grass that never gets cut. The two have been battling for years, represented below in this random clip art of a Dairy Queen flavor war. Clearly the the pumpkins' smear campaign and "alleged" social media propaganda (put in motion by a certain country that I'm too scared to name, yeah, you know the one) affected the outcome:

Why have the pumpkins oppressed the apples all these years, you ask? It's not all their fault, I mean pumpkins were BORN racist. But what has continued to happen over the years is unacceptable. They have oppressed the apple. They have slandered it. I mean, Snow White could have choked on a pumpkin spice latte right? Or, why don’t we stick a pumpkin in a pig’s mouth when we’re about to roast it? And there's that little hole in the wall in Shrek 2, where we find Cinderella's ugly sister bartending at the Poison Apple. Shameful. Are all of these coincidences? I think not.

So, people of the fall. I implore you. Next time you are at the drive thru window, instead of ordering a pumpkin spice latte (with oat milk for us lactose intolerant), speak out and ask, where is the caramel apple latte? Also with oat milk?

We must unite! Bring back the apples! Represent fall the way it should be represented!! Fight the pumpkin dynasty and BRING BACK THE APPLE! Again, the fruit, not the tech company. Although, while we are on the subject, $500 for a watch? Are you effing kidding me?

P.S. I hope my dad, AKA the Pun Master, appreciates the title. 

Can I Sell My Kids for Toilet Paper?

Yeah. I said it. Maybe a nice, cushy roll of Charmin would actually LISTEN to me. Even if the conversation was one-sided, like most of my interactions with my children, the Charmin would at least serve a purpose.

Obviously I love my kids, etc. etc. and blah blah blah, but come one. Being trapped at home with our children comes with collateral damage. One of my friends said she woke up in a chokehold, her three-year old's arm around her jugular, screaming in her ear, "MOMMY! IT'S MORNING! IT'S MORNING! MOM, MOM, MOM, IT'S MORNING!!"

Our children can be downright obnoxious, but before all of this, we at least had an escape route. We had weekend drive-bys at the grandparents, hurtling the kids out of the car and taking off to do our grown-up shit. I have worked from home for the last few years, so I'm used to THAT part, but I have not had other creatures home with me during the day that need to be prompted with a cow prod to still get up, eat, shower, get dressed (no, pajamas are not an option Monday-Friday here), and get to work. And stay working. I sit them down with, I don't know, 3 pages of math problems that would have taken me all of 15 minutes to complete. An hour later each of them has finished one math problem, polished off at least 10 Oreos and is staring off mindlessly into space.

If I counted the number of times I leave my desk to put the kids back on track with their school work, or put on my IT hat to help them navigate their Google classroom environment, well, shit, I'd lose count, that's for damn sure.

I was holding it together until a few days ago, when I realized non-negotiables mentioned above were, to them, mere suggestions. How many times can I tell/demand/ask them to do whatever the hell it is they are SUPPOSED to be doing, only to be ignored?

Apparently my breaking point is 342. Finally, I had enough. I told them, "I quit! You're all so damn smart, make your own dinners. I'm done for the night." And then I promptly locked myself in my office for a couple hours and tried to catch up on work.

Did they notice? Please. They probably though I was doing a skit for YouTube. Maybe if my face was in the shape of an iPad or iPhone I'd have better luck.

I need an antidote to this quarinsanity. Usually that would be vodka, but is 10 a.m. too early?


Feel free to comment below with your daily/weekly struggles! What are you doing to stay sane? Vodka? Please tell me it's vodka.

DISCLAIMER: If you are offended by my idea of selling my children in exchange for a stockpile of Charmin (ultra soft, of course), then please feel free to unfriend me - on Facebook and in life. I won't be offended. Really. My husband tells me all the time I am an alien-robot hybrid with a cold, dark chamber where my heart should be.

Black Holes, Worm Holes and Anti-Aging Secrets

When I was young(er), in my teens and 20s, pre-mommy-hood, there were certain phrases that women in their 40s and 50s would utter that would cause my eyes to roll so far back into my brain that I would become apoplectic. (Yeah, you know who you are.)

For instance, in the break room at work, as I licked pizza grease from my fingers after polishing off my third slice and surreptitiously slurped down a large fountain Pepsi, an aged coworker would munch on her carrot stick, shake her short head of hair and tsk-tsk, saying, "Just wait until you hit thirty. Then you won't be able to eat like that any more!"

Now that I am a well over half way past thirty (I'm hoping to confuse everyone with that long-winded description instead of simply stating my age) I still roll my eyes. I can still inhale three slices of pizza and not resemble a beached whale. My metabolism seems to be hanging in there, as my weight stays the same.

Perhaps I should mention though, my weight is actually 15 to 20 pounds higher than what it was in my 20s and I haven't been able to lose any of it. (And yes, this also coincides with me being more than 30 years of age.) But do I blame that on a slower metabolism? Of course not! Because I'm evolved and mature? Of course not! I blame my children, New York winters, and a pesky thyroid condition. In that order.

For years, the nurses in the doctor's offices would move the tab at the top of the scale over to the 100 slot, and then proceed with the numbers on the bottom portion. (If you're too young to know what kind of scale I'm speaking of and have only ever seen digital scales, then go eff yourself.) A couple of years ago, after I shed some of the weight I had gained during my back-to-back pregnancies, I felt pretty good about myself, only had to reinvent 65 percent of my wardrobe (and 90 percent of THAT was due to the pure hideousness of early 2000s fashion), and accepted the fact my stomach would never reveal any of the rock-hard abs underneath it no matter how many crunches I did.

Then I went to the doctors one day and had to curb the inner Hulk in me when the nurse, without any hesitation whatsoever, flicked the little tab way over to the 150 slot as the starting point. What the ? Could you at least start off at 100 and pretend to be unsure you unfeeling, uncaring, unsympathetic she-witch?

With that ugly little incident behind me, I made some changes. I cleaned our pantry out, eliminated high-fructose corn syrup and many processed foods, I stopped buying soda, I started drinking a lot of water every day, and I integrated a moderate-to-lame workout routine into my weekly schedule all in the hopes I would still be able to eat like a 17-year-old boy and not see my weight skyrocket.

Did it work? Eh. Well, I haven't gained any weight. My doctor didn't ask me IF I'd been working out, he asked WHAT I was doing because I looked more toned and muscular. But that digital scale? It revealed, to my dismay, that my weight had not changed.

Ok. So I'm not 25 anymore. It's not like I want to look like a waif, but would it be so horrible if five pounds went bye-bye? After all, I have mastered the art of stopping time, as evidenced by my wrinkle-free, not over-30 looking face. (In case you want to know, I do not use any expensive facial creams, I just squeeze my eyes shut and will my skin to not age. What? Did you think I had some sort of time-stopping theory worked out that would make Stephen Hawking's head explode? I lasted two days in physics class people!)

Rather than try to figure any of this out, I decided to invest in some more yoga pants, dig out my Spanx, and settle in to a life of not caring what the scale said. So, I guess I'm evolved and mature after all. And you know what happened?

Yep. I lost weight.

Did I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself five pounds lighter?

Nope.

Did I invent a cosmic black-worm hole thingy that magically reversed the aging process while simultaneously speeding up metabolism?

Pffft no, but that would be great if someone who actually took, and passed, physics could invent that. Yeah, that'd be great.

So? What was it? (I know you're dying to know.)

STOMACH FLU!

Yes, thanks to you, you awful, gut-wrenching, stomach churning wave of nausea that has been with me for five days now, my skinny jeans have never been skinnier.

And to those looking for dieting or weight-loss advice, clearly I do not have that, but if you want to borrow my kids for a weekend so you too can harness the power of the stomach flu, well, you just let me know.

Five Marriage Truths

I am, quite literally, on the verge of celebrating five years of wedded bliss. In commemoration of that, I thought it might be apt to share five marriage truths.

Let me be very clear, these are my truths, so they may not be yours, may not resonate with you, and that’s okay.

I Don’t Want to Talk About My Feelings

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t want to sit around and talk about my feelings, or your feelings, or our feelings’ feelings, just for the sake of communication. Communication doesn’t need to happen 24/7. My husband and I are so well tuned to each other, it’s almost like we have a sixth sense. He often starts talking to me in mid-thought, and I know exactly what he means, and vice versa. It’s awesome. If you have mutual trust and respect, you don’t need a gab fest, hair braiding, or pillow fights. When we need to talk about something, we talk about it, and we work through it because we want to, not because we feel compelled to.

Partners in Crime
We don’t have to share every single one of the other person’s interests, but a mutual respect and/or curiosity about those interests is nice. We both like to be outdoors, tackle home improvement projects, landscape, play tennis or golf, watch movies, listen to music etc. But if he’s watching a movie I don’t care for, I flip open a book. Sometimes, we share an interest and the other person says, “Yeah, this is pretty great.” For instance, thanks to my hubby I’ve learned to have a wider appreciation for gangsta rap, and he in turn has recently gotten into the blues. While that may not be an even or remotely fair trade, it sure keeps the spark alive.

A Laughing Matter

My husband laughs at my snide, sarcastic comments, whereas most people would frown, get teary-eyed, question their self-esteem, and call their therapist for an emergency session. The fact that he just throws his head back and laughs is one of the things I love most about him. Oh, yeah, and he’s funny too.

Being Wrong

I’m one of those people that just happens to be right most of the time. Therefore, when my husband disagrees with me, I let him try other methods destined for failure until he gives up and gives my idea a try. And then, I revel in those sweet, sweet words that come next… (WAIT FOR IT, WAIT FOR IT…). “You were right.” Cha-CHING!

Being Open to Whatever Comes Next

Life brings change. Our children come into our world. Kids grow. Jobs change. Locations change. Homes get bought and sold. We gain weight, lose weight, we are active, we hibernate. Through the myriad changes, with each passing day, our love grows deeper, our relationship stronger and we evolve together. I am impatient, sarcastic, and am not always right even though I think I am. He is patient, loving, and is also not always right even though he thinks he is. We balance each other. He balances me. He is sanity to my crazy days. He brings me up when I’m down, challenges me, puts me in my place when needed, and loves me no matter what. And I do the same. I feel the same.

Happy Five Year Anniversary to my best friend, my lobster, my eternal love.

Whadchou Say?

My oldest son is a chip off my block for sure. He is Mr. Independent, and I usually learn about some new found skill he's trying to master the hard way (i.e Gogurt all over the floor, fifteen yards of toilet paper getting flushed, boots on the wrong feet). In fact, he's taken initiative and done a lot on his own, like dressing himself, without my training or prompting, and, in some ways, I guess I've come to expect it.

Today, he wanted to tie his shoes on his own. Being the precocious little boy he is, he said, "I'll do it," rather than asking for my help. After a few failed attempts I asked if I could show him, and we worked on it together.

Fast forward to after dinner when he wanted to go outside and play with the neighbors. I have been telling him he needs to wait for them to invite him, rather than running over to their yard and peeping in their windows, but he took off for their yard seconds after my speech. I stopped him and told him to wait. He complied.

I turned my back for two seconds, and he was off. I called him back and again explained he needed to wait for them to ask, etc. He got very upset. That parlayed into him chasing his younger brother around the yard, taunting him with a stick, until my youngest was shrieking and in tears. The evening quickly fell apart and I had to resort to threats of taking some favorite things away in order to get him inside. 

As things deteriorated, I was amused and frustrated (I took his stick and threw it, which made him cry at the top of his lungs, and his crying triggered my youngest to get mad at me for throwing away the stick, which turned into two screaming, crying boys acting hysterical towards their mother, and all in the front yard, of course.) So when he finally did come inside, I gave him a few minutes and had another talk with him about waiting for an invitation and respecting other people's space. 

I asked him if he understood, and he shook his head. 

And then it hit me.

He would probably be tying his shoes on his own tomorrow, but would he wait for an invite the next time he ran outside? Or would he take off again?

I was taking his independence, and his aptitude to learn quickly, for granted. 

As a parent, I just expect my kids to listen. You hear the sound of my voice, you react. Boom. But, obviously, that doesn't always happen. 

What I didn't really put much thought into, was teaching my kids to listen. I teach them manners, their ABCs, how to count and myriad other pre-school activities, but I have not done any listening exercises. 

Light bulb!

As an experiment, I sat down with my boys and told them to listen. Then I said, "I'm going to say the letter A, when I do, I want you to say B. Do you understand?"

Nodding all around.

"A," I said.

"A," I heard in chorus.

Sigh.

Listen? Oh man!

I tried again. I told them I would say A, then I would point to Jacob, who would say B, and Brennan would say C. Well, then Jacob wanted to say A, so of course Brennan wanted to say B, but eventually we accomplished what I set out to do. Each of them was assigned a letter, and when I pointed, they stated their letter correctly.

Phew!

I'm thankful every day for my children, for all they teach me, remind me of, humble me to. I am a fast learner too, so when I see a glitch in the matrix, I put on my thinking cap and figure out a way to solve it.

Listening. It can be taught. Who knew?

Getting Our Learning On

When I first started doing preschool at home with Jacob, I was dubious. Not about him, but about me. I'm not the most patient person in the world. No, really.

I thought, can I really do this? I used to teach adults the ABCs of home ownership, but can I teach my four-year-old his ABCs? How to write? At least I seem to capture my son's attention most days, whereas some of my adult learners were more interested in their cell phones while I stressed the importance of a home inspection.

I was frustrated at first when he didn't seem to be grasping what we were doing, but he always tried his best, and I maintained consistency. I learned best by repetition and can memorize new information fairly well (or at least I used to before I started getting all old and decrepit).

One day, Jacob was not giving me anything. No energy, no focus, and he was missing easy letters that he'd already proven he'd learned. Part of me said, he's four and he wants to play, so let him. The other part of me said, I know he knows this.

A! B! C!
I told him to put down his pencil and I took out the flash cards for letters A through E, which is all we'd worked on to that point. I would show him a card, and if he didn't know it, I would flip the card down, flip it back up and say the letter each time he looked at the card. If his eyes traveled away, I would remind him to look at the letter, remember the letter. We did this for about five minutes, and yes, I felt like a drill sergeant.

In the fall, it seemed we spent forever on A, B and C. I didn't think we would make it through the alphabet at all. But, as we kept at it, through some trial and error, Jacob is now memorizing letters at a much quicker pace. He knows the alphabet song and recognizes almost all letters on sight, though technically we are just finishing up with J and moving on to K. We now do at least two letters each week.

It's In His Nature
After that day of letters by fire, there was a huge improvement. Jacob got a kick out of the flash cards and he made it a priority to know his letters. I also realize I'm pretty lucky in that Jacob has my inherent drive to succeed, to be the best. That does not mean, however, that I continued with the drill sergeant tactics. It seems I only needed that the one time, to wake him up. I remembered all of the art projects I would take home from the wonderful Ms. Cindy, and my light bulb went on (it's one of those new-fangled ones that takes forever to light up). I needed to do more lesson-oriented arts and crafts instead of simply putting writing worksheets in front of him three days a week.

Balance
Sure, my kids like to color and would do that on their own, but I found their attention was better overall when it came to arts/crafts activities, so I found crafts that aided in learning, and some just for fun. This is, by far, a fan favorite. Who doesn't love construction paper, Elmer's glue and some glitter pens?

Those are dinosaurs. On a stick.

Time After Time

One day, a few months in, it just started clicking. I didn't have to show him how to trace his letters, he was doing it on his own. The visual aids I'd purchased (alphabet boards in manuscript and cursive) were visible all the time and I found myself awed at their capacity to learn on their own. My sons invented their own game where they took the letter magnets from the refrigerator and matched them to the letters on the alphabet boards. My four-year-old was starting to write letters without the tracing pages, can write his name, and is now recognizing some basic sight words. 

There have been some frustrations along the way, but I'm glad I stuck with it. I learned that, just like a teacher, I need to plan ahead and I map out what we do on a weekly basis. I print worksheets or crafts projects and prepare them the day before. I also make sure they are fed, dressed, and ready to go to school, even though we are just going to the dining room table.

To see the progress they make day to day and week to week is amazing. And to think I've had a hand in that is pretty humbling.

Here are some links if you're looking for ways to school your preschooler at home.

Alphabet Worksheets

Dinosaur Coloring Pages

Animal-themed Worksheets, Coloring Pages and Crafts

Counting Pages

Make Your Own Handwriting Practice Pages