Marco! you call from your warm corner of the internet.
Polo! I answer.

 

While X marks my “Here and Now”, if you look behind me, the path here has been circuitous.  From NJ teen to Chicago college student, from teacher to performer, from decidedly single to married mother of three, from sensible Volvo to somehow even more sensible minivan. Always with pen and paper handy.

Marco!
Polo!

Here I am, swirling in my self-proclaimed second adolescence, finding myself, growing up again, returning to the mothership of writing.

Marco!
Polo!

I am a hyphenate. Writer-teacher-actor-director-wife-mother-terrible knitter-baker-suburban PTO mother who…oh, please don’t let your eyes glaze over… You want to talk about children? I can do that! You want to talk politics? Great! You want to help me blow the lid off the “mom” stereotype while we wave our bras in the air for some reason…I’ll be over here unrolling my boobs and emitting a fierce war cry.  Want to talk social issues? Books? Books about social issues? Social theories about why books are the latest political front? Ok, I’m game! Scared, but game! Also, I’ll bring cake.

I have lots of questions and exactly zero answers.  If we are supposed to learn from our mistakes, I long ago surpassed all earthly knowledge. I am a deeply-feeling, self-deprecating, issues-oriented, 40-something smartass who crawled out of the primordial ooze of sarcasm, the 1980s. I still sport the big bangs in homage.

Marco! you call, wandering about the internet with your books tucked under your arm, looking for your glasses (they’re on your head), perhaps with a child or three using you as a combination jungle-gym and Handi-wipe. I hear you tripping, getting tangled up in the Web, checking into the Daily Show, reading multiple blogs and news sites. That’s you honking accidentally in traffic because you’re full-body-jammin’ to the songs of your youth, cringing only a bit because they’re now called “Oldies.”

Polo! I respond, adjusting my Kindle’s brightness setting, squinting because my glasses are in the black hole that is the bottom of my purse, desperately trying to avoid eye contact at the school pick up line so I can squeeze in a line or two of writing about how Minions have for some reason replaced Cathy as the meme of choice for middle aged women. Blaring from my earbuds is a cappella music, providing the soundtrack to my scheming to have a threesome with Ben and Jerry after the children are in bed (using a simple 92 step bedtime routine.)

Marco! you say while wearing yoga pants for every reason but the one for which they are named.

Polo! I answer, sipping on my salted caramel and feel like a vastly superior coffee drinker until I spill it all over my white blouse the only blouse I spill on. It’s also my ony white blouse. All my others are, oddly enough, coffee-colored. I never manage to spill on those.

This blog, and my life, are much like the blog’s namesake, Piccadilly Circus. Fulfilling, hard to navigate sometimes, a little tacky, possibly off-putting to the uninitiated, certainly bright, occasionally host to a political protest or two, and more likely than not to go in circles.

I’m glad you found me! Grab a cup of coffee and stay awhile.  You may want to check out these tourist traps  fun stops here at my own Circus:

3-Year-Olds in Cars Getting Juice Boxes
Designing Women and the Confederate Flag
“I Hate You” is Not a Murmur of Appreciation
An Apology to the 79% of You with Functioning Eyeballs
XOffJane
Rebranding, Are ya Listening, Costco?
Invasion of the Body Snatchers

If you’d like to see if I actually exists outside this blog, you can read my work on Scarymommy.com, and in the upcoming The HerStories Project: So Glad They Told Me (Spring, 2016), Multiples Illuminated (Spring, 2016) and in the upcoming short film Bacon Wrapped Dates (2016).

If you want an amuse for your bouche, you can find me on Twitter here and Facebook here.