I can look at football, but I can't see it. I may seem to be staring at the flatscreen high-def TV, but ask me anything about the game – the score, a huge play that just happened, which team is which – and I'm a total blank.  However, I can talk about the Super Bowl's naked M&M commercial, the unflattering way football players' butts are packed into shiny tights, my aversion to concussion-seeking sports, how Madonna miraculously blasted back into the innards of the stage or shattered into anti-matter or worm-holed herself into another dimension in the name of World Peace or whatever the …

  Old dog, new tricks. Such was the subject of a recent Brian Lehrer show, with guest Gary Marcus, author of Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning, about his journey to learn to play guitar at the ripe old age of 40-something. I have one friend who has dedicated her life to education — she is studying for her PhD and seems to have been doing this to avoid the working world ever since she graduated from college many years ago. Then there are the rest of us, who happily stop learning when they hand out the diplomas.  Not to say we don't read, listen, try new things, take a …

  It was the phrase of the day, yesterday. "I have a dream." I've been thinking a lot about dreams. The night ones, mostly, which may not have been what Dr. King had in mind when he gave the speech that still resonates (and goosebumps) so much. But sleeping dreams, I would argue, are as important as, if not more important than, the awake ones. I had assumed children don't really start dreaming until preschool-aged, familar instead with what's commonly referred to as "night terrors" that rock their sleep. But now I'm learning that they are in there, those magical dreamworlds, but the …

  Earlier this week, I put out challenge to readers to be nicer online. The plan was to showcase the comments this week that best demonstrated the ideals of Smart, Respectful, Insightful, Constructive. So here we are. Perhaps it's easier to point out the comments that weren't these things -- some snarky suggestions for "gun shops" come to mind in the latest Vacant Spaces column -- but we will lay down our arms...and remain positive.  * Here's reader Lauren Johnson, responding to my brainstorming call for 40 Main Street as well as to those other more negative commenters: I would love to see a …

  If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, goes the ol' mom wisdom.  The outlaw law of the wild Web is quite different: speak your mind, however awful, and watch the comments flow like water (brown water).  Of course we're pleased as spiked punch that Patch readers have gotten cozy here; the comments following a story often take on a life of their own, becoming a story in their own right. There's no denying that this biz is about the clicks. But as many of you have noticed, many times the comments go too far. Myself or some fairy godmother has to come along and keep …

Used to be cool to write resolutions as a kid, then it was cool around college-age to declare you would never make resolutions. Self-improvement, blah. Then you hit an age when it's nice to lose (or gain) weight, exercise, and rise to new spiritual heights.  In my late 30s and with two young kids still hanging on me, I'm back at a resolving age, I suppose, but not necessarily at New Year's. I make lists daily of all I want to be and achieve, and buy at the grocery store. The desk is a mess of scattered lists, which is a direct reflection of my brain. I recall what the head of the Community …

Serenity now! It's funny how certain Seinfield phrases from the '90s can still enter my everyday consciousness. Kramer said this. Or was it George? No, it was George's dad. It hardly matters when it's the serenity I'm after.  We are not much for magnets with sayings on them in our household, but my husband found a Whimsies one that seemed essential to our survival. This came in my stocking: Peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. it means to be in the midst of these things and still be calm in your heart. - unknown My kitchen is often less the …

If you can’t go to Texas for Christmas, the Lone Star State will come to you. My husband as a pre-teen left cold, cold Buffalo, New York (which might as well be Canada) for deep-in-the-heart of Texas where the temperature is always…air conditioned. Christmas was never white again. For as long as I’ve known him, and many years before that, Jeff’s gone home to his parents in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the holidays. It had become our annual tradition to pack up the presents and the kiddies and make our way through the gates of hell (meaning cab rides, security checks, flight transfers, …

If you want to sound like a cool mom columnist, it’s probably best not to name-drop Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame. But, I have to admit, I clock in a lot of hours with NPR as my kitchen radio dial is set to it and I spend a lot of hours in that darn kitchen. On Saturday at some point in my dinner preparations, there’s always Keillor's pleasant voice, and though I never seem to laugh when his audience laughs at his odd little Guy Noir skits, I am often at least bemused by the sweetness of the whole endeavor. But I’m a not a lake girl, I’m a river rat. I’m a sucker for all-things-Hudson…

Our oldest daughter is three which means this is the first Christmas that the realization of Santa, in all of his fat and jolly glory, is really taking hold. Last year, she wouldn’t sit on his lap at the Warner Library – who is that strange man with a beard? But this last weekend, Kaia had no trouble climbing up on not one but two laps at both the Warner Library and the Historical Society to tell each red-suited man that she wanted a Pink Scooter. Now that Santa is firmly ensconced in her growing little consciousness, the uncurable gimmees are sure to come. I think of all those letters to …

I remember telling my mother I didn’t feel well one morning over my bowl of oatmeal. She told me to eat my breakfast. I ate it. Moments after the yellow bus dropped me off at school (second grade?), the school nurse called my mother to come pick me back up. I had thrown up that oatmeal. The other day, my three-year-old ate her oatmeal, happily enough as always, but the walk up lower Main Street to the YMCA nursery was treacherous. At one point, she just sat down on the sidewalk. I gave her a time-out for being so uncooperative. By the time we entered the building, she was having a coughing …

In my unmarried and childless days, I would head off to my brother’s restaurant-style (two stoves, two refrigerators, tall counters, every appliance and utensil one could wish for) kitchen for the holidays – any holiday really – and cook my heart out for days on end. For New Year’s 2000, also his 30th birthday and the end of his decade-long home construction, I made so much food that nobody could even begin to try it all. I remember ringing in the New Year by pulling out a tray of Asian barbecue wings and spilling hot grease all over my long festive skirt. Things are simpler now – simpler by …

First, I have to apologize for my first-ever lapse in this weekly column since I started mom-columning (molumning?) over two years ago. Last week didn’t find me powerless technically (for that I am grateful), but I was powerless to do my job when faced with no Internet connection. There I was, guest editing for the Patch, with nary a WWW in reach. What’s an intrepid editor/mom columnist to do? Well the mom column was the first thing to go when so many downed tree limbs needed to be counted, when a poor boy hiking the nation needed a home and a few tickets to Halloween events that ended up …

I had a friend who once shellacked a pancake, wrote a note on it, addressed it, stamped it, and mailed it to a homesick friend. Two comforts combined: pancakes and real mail. “Real" mail – handwritten, special – is so very rare as it is, with or without the pancake (which I don't think would pass postal muster these days). My poor mailmen and women (they seem to change daily), make the rounds on foot through rain, snow, wind, storm every day but Sunday to bring me junk, often addressed to a different family on Hudson Terrace (we live on Hudson Street). After the effort and expense it took to …

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, for starters, is a misnomer. (The movie was alternately called The Head that Wouldn’t Die but that’s wrong too.) Not far into this film, the viewer realizes it should more accurately be called The brain/head that actually really wants to die, so much so that it gets angry at the person keeping it alive and seeks bodiless revenge. Or something like that. Ah, these innocently evil movies from the ‘60s, gotta love ‘em. Imagine my delight when I realized in compiling my list of Movies Made Here, that this so-bad-it’s-good horror debacle that lives in dollar store DVD …

When my family moved here two years ago, I saw a lady with purple hair walking down Main Street. I nearly stalked her I was so excited to see this “funky element” in an otherwise pretty staid town; now I know her to be the puppeteer Jill Liflander and she still stands out as a rare creative and multi-colored bird, and, I might add, a great mom. Of course we moved here, as opposed to some other inland town in Westchester (no offense to Scarsdale), because of this Rivertown reputation for being more boho. Granted, we’re immigrating from the gritty fringes of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, home of the …

A three-hour tour, as those marooned on Gilligan’s Island would attest, can be disastrous. But here we were, happily launching my husband on his birthday kayak trip from Kinnally Cove in Hastings-on-Hudson (care of Mountain Valley Guides), and we were the ones stranded. While Jeff would be crossing the still-muddy waters of the Hudson, exploring little pockets of Palisades waterfronts in about a four-mile radius, my two daughters and I would be landlocked. It wasn’t as if we were on an island with nowhere to go and no means to get there, but I decided I didn’t want to mess with our good …

The long box arrived via overnight Fed-Ex on Friday.  Twenty-foot aluminum flagpole. I knew a flag was arriving for my husband’s birthday gift from Texas Dad, but I pictured a regular one angled off our house, not a Horan’s Landing-worthy ship mast. Jeff arrived home and read the writing on the shock-box. His dad had mentioned to me he paid a pretty penny to get the gift here on time for 9/11 so we imagined it would take a good portion of our Saturday to dig down four feet and secure it in cement and rebar, when really we had been looking forward to the Swim for Life and street fair. We live …

Tugboats have groupies. When the baby “Bronx” showed up at the Great North River Tugboat Race and Competition on Sunday, its fans cheered from the decks of the Circle-Line spectator boat. The Bronx was by far the smallest boat to join in on the fun, and seemed more interested in mugging for the photos. On board this restored boat from 1949 were the salty crew members and a dog in a sailor hat named Salty. The North River, we learned from our Circle-Line guide, is industry-speak for the Hudson. He said the Hudson is tidal all the way up to Albany, further than I thought. Salt mixed with fresh …

Flanked by an earthquake on one end and pre-hurricane anxiety on the other, this week marked a non-weather-related milestone in my family. My daughter went to camp. At the Y, the “camp” program is really just glorified daycare, but I purchased my one-week of super-long days, 8 am to 6 pm, anticipating glory: a staycation for this weary mom and nonstop stimulation for my restless toddler. What happened instead: this weary mom is wearier than ever and so is the kid. Kaia, used to the Tot Drop and just occasional two-hour stints with someone other than her momma, was overstimulated by this …