Throwback Thursday: That Time I Was A Soccer Player

Me, circa 1988.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

An orange jersey. Shin guards. White cleats.

My dad running up and down the sidelines cheering me on, encouraging me to go get the ball, to get in on the action.

Me, far more interested in whether my braids were straight and in keeping my shoes clean than trying to kick a soccer ball.

Turns out team sports were never my thing.

Plus, orange was never really my color anyway.

When A Family Grows (Again)

Sixteen months ago a family of nine became a family of ten.

Mom, dad, two sisters, two brothers, David, me, and a tiny girl and boy who aren't so tiny anymore.

And yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon Sister L had a baby girl we are all already in love with and ten became eleven.

My baby sister is a mom.

Mazel tov Sister L and R.

Our hearts are full once again and our arms are around you both and that gorgeous babe.

It's Always Been Reading and Writing For Me

My parents came to visit me for 4th of July weekend.

Whenever they come to New York they always come with a car full of stuff, mostly the results of the Costco trip my dad takes for me since I rarely find myself with time for that particular errand. This makes me lucky. I know that for sure.

This time, along with a massive bottle of olive oil, a huge container of strawberries and a 6-pack of hearts of romaine, came four boxes of my stuff that had, until this past weekend, been residing in my parent's basement. The boxes were mostly filled with school books from my various high school, college and law school classes, but there were some gems to be found as well.

Like the shoe-box filled with ticket stubs, letters and various other mementos from my college days. Or the pictures of a much younger me with various grandparents. Or the ketubah from my wedding which is actually not so much a gem as it is a really, really important document that I thought I lost, which would be very, very bad.

And buried among all those things was this book I wrote when I was eleven. I had forgotten all about it, and I still can't remember the exact circumstances under which it was written and bound, but when I dug through the boxes, there it was, wedged between a Constitutional Law textbook and a well worn copy of Huckleberry Finn for tenth grade English.

And in the front cover I wrote an inscription to myself, starting off with the phrase "I love to read!" Which I did. And I do.

I don't often think of myself when I was little, but every time I do, I get a comforting reminder of how the me that I am today was grown from the me that I was back then. It's not an accident that I turned out to be exactly who I am. It's been more than twenty years since I wrote that little book and the inscription on the inside cover, but barely anything has changed. It's still reading and writing for me, and I think, somehow, that it always will be.

Throwback Thursday: What a Difference Five Months Makes

I love a good snowstorm as much as anyone, but honestly...

February 2014

July 2014

February 2014

July 2014

Today Is Somebody's Birthday...

Once upon a time, a little more than seven years ago ago, my younger sister set me up on a blind date. I was in law school, it was finals time, but I went anyway.

We met at a cute little cafe on Broadway and sat at a table outside under the heat lamps that had been set up to ward off the early April chill. He was blond, blue-eyed and incredibly good looking, he told me a story about seeing a man get hit by a bus that made me laugh until I cried, and we shared a 10 block stroll back to my apartment building and a good-bye befitting a really good first date.

Well, a couple years later I married that blond-haired, blue-eyed man. We've been together for seven years - married for almost four - and it's been a lot of things, but mostly? It's been fun. Really fun. 

And today is his birthday.

So, in honor of the auspicious occasion of his birth, and in celebration of the day that this world went from being a place without David Merel to a place with David Merel, I present to you a pictorial history of seven years of fun.

It was spring when we met, summer when we
knew this was something serious. Something big.

We spent that first summer and fall exploring NYC
and eating Friday morning bagels
in the gazebo by the Central Park lake.

We got engaged...

Got married

Took some trips

\

Bought a house

Remodeled a kitchen

Built some robots

Played with some technology 

Built a deck

That once looked like this...

And now looks like this.

Learned to grill

Played dress-up. Superheros, natch.

Watched lots and lots of TV

Turned our house into Star Wars for Halloween

Survived a Polar Vortex

And the snowiest winter of all time

Made a living room outside for summer

Where we sit, even in the pouring rain.

Discovered suburban outdoor, river-side dining

Took some convertible rides, because we're just that cool

Turns out, we're the lucky ones.

But we've always known that.

Happy, happy birthday David, my hilarious, unique and most interesting man. 

Here's to a lifetime more.

A Sort Of Sacred Saturday Night

The birthday boy was a dear friend of my husband who I like quite a lot, but the second I got the invitation to his party I thought of twenty excuses that would save me from actually having to go.

My distaste for the party had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the fact that the party was on a Saturday night. 

Saturday nights are sacred. They are the nights I spend in sweatpants, curled up on the couch with snacks and my DVR, and they are the nights that I most often spend alone, my husband decidedly not sharing my weekend hermit ways.

But this was his closest friend. And while he rarely minds when I skip out on Saturday night plans, this time he just wasn't having any of my carefully constructed excuses.

Which is how I found myself on a Saturday night driving towards Lyndhurst, New Jersey and Medieval Times, where we were all supposed to relive our childhoods while watching knights joust on horses, or some such thing; the problem being, of course, that no portion of my childhood ever included a trip to this auspicious venue, so there really was nothing to relive.

The lobby of the castle was filled with high-backed, comfortable looking velour chairs and I spent a minute wishing I could pass the next couple of hours sitting on one of them, but then the doors opened and we were led into the cavernous room, escorted to our ring-side VIP seats, and then the show began. There were knights and horses, jesters and jousting, and an announcer doing a passable job of nailing the Middle English.

It all started with a faint tickle in my throat. Then my nose started to run, my arms, legs and face started to itch, and the tickle in my throat caused a cough so frequent that the people in the row in front of us started turning around to see what all the commotion was about.

I waved at them that I was fine, but it was about that time that I started wheezing and struggling to take in full breaths. And then I noticed that my itchy arms and legs were actually covered in bright red, angry looking hives.

Something was obviously not right, and as the loudspeaker erupted in an announcement that the "race portion of the evening" was about to begin I realized exactly what it was. The horses. I was allergic to the horses. I knew before that night, of course, that my reaction to horses was frighteningly close to anaphylaxis, but I was sitting far enough away from the actual ring that I figured I wouldn't have to worry.

Clearly, I figured wrong.

I stumbled out of the hall into the deserted lobby. After a few minutes with my eyes closed my breathing seemed better and I felt like I was probably out of the danger zone, but God himself couldn't have forced me back into the show.

So I sank into one of the velour chairs and spent the next ninety minutes alone, grateful for my habit of carrying romance novels in my bag wherever I go.

Not exactly sacred, but not at all bad.