Cross posted at Mother of All Trips

Hey all at MT - the blog's live! I'm going to try and write a post most days I'm in Paris.

I wish I could write something intelligent and poignant thanking you for all your help, but it's 11:30 and I've got to crawl up into bed. So I'll just say thanks. Hope you all like it. And remember - if anyone wants to write for it, let me know. Oh, and you'll find the preface of my book there too.

It's Wednesday, and we leave for Paris on Friday night. We're catching the red-eye from Newark at 9 p.m. Unbelievably enough, we are actually flying Air India, which had the cheapest fares by almost half (even if Philadelphia is the more convenient airport.)

Although he died before I was born, I have always felt a connection to Robert Kennedy and considered him one of my heroes. Today is the anniversary of his death, and the New York Times has lovely tributes from some of his eleven children who blend discussion of his best characteristics as a father and as a politician and crusader for social justice. An example from his son Joseph:

He lived by a moral compass that others, less certain of their direction, looked to for guidance. Even if what he asked was hard to hear and heed, he gave others the strength to believe not just in his guidance but in themselves.

The truth is, we all just plain loved him.

We don't spend a lot of time talking about important men like Kennedy, King, and Obama as fathers. But with Father's Day approaching I thought it was fitting that the Times chose to remember him in this way.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

I know we've been having some conversations about religion and children here lately, with concern expressed for how to teach them and what to explain. Well today is a doozy of a day for explaining if you are Christian; it is the day when we acknoweldge and try to wrap their minds and hearts around the idea of the Trinity and give thanks the presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our lives as best we can. The quote above is part of a long reading from Genesis that was read in chruches around the world today. This can be one of the more intellectual, difficult to grasp aspects of Christianity, one that many people wrestle with.

I've been thinking about food lately. Actually, I think about food all the time, since I'm the person in our house who shops for it and prepares it and we're all big eaters.

But what I've been thinking about more is how normal it is for women not to eat, how a woman can be engaging in very bizarre behavior when it comes to food and no one really bats an eye. For example:

1. I work with a woman who is thin to the point where her shoulder bones jut out. I seriously could put my fingers around her ankle - and I don't have big hands. She keeps a big jar of candy in her office and routinely brings in homemade cupcakes for the staff. But she never eats the treats herself, at least not in view of anyone else in the office.

2. Another woman I work with, whom I see only occasionally, gets thinner and thinner and thinner each time, like she is slowly disappearing. This is a bright, dynamic person who is very smart and engaging. But I took her out to lunch at a very nice restaurant and had to sit there while she pretended to eat. I seriously don't think she took more than one bite of her food.

When I got my son's t-ball schedule I winced in pain. Two games a week? Two precious evenings a week given over to a sport? And in May? When we have so much else going on?

"Don't worry," my husband said. "He'll get bored with it. We won't be going to all the games."

But you know what? None of us has gotten bored, least of all my son.

Unlikely as it may sound, the Academy Awards ceremony got me thinking about romance this week. The best song Oscar was from the movie Once, an intensely romantic musical with intensely romantic music and an intensely romantic leading man and woman who are now a real-life couple despite a large difference in their ages (interestingly, in the movie, they don't even kiss).

I saw this movie last summer and the music from it took me back to my days of adolescent angst when I used to spend hours gazing into the eyes of various boyfriends, crying when we fought, and just generally lounging around in my room listening to The Cure or Depeche Mode and thinking - yes you guessed it - intensely romantic thoughts. My relationships were always a mess and usually made me unhappy. Or should I say happily unhappy?

Because I've found myself longing a bit for some of that intensity this week.

"Little boys, little girls, when you're big husbands and wives,
If you want all the days of your lives
To seem sunny as summer weather,
Make sure, when there's housework to do,
That you do it together!"
Carol Channing, "Housework," Free to Be You and Me

A recent thread where we discussed the state of our baseboards and whether or not we care if they are clean has me thinking about housework. Like just about everything else to do with home life these days, it seems a fraught topic. On the one hand, there is the whole anti-germ movement, where the expectation seems to be that all services will be gleaming and disinfected; this also fits with the Pottery Barn-perfect images that those of us who live in the suburbs may feel pressured to maintain in the interior or our domains. Then there’s the whole environmentally-sound cleaning products issue that has some of us paying eight bucks for toilet-bowl cleaner (and still feeling like all surfaces have to gleam, if in an eco-friendly way).

A very quick Google search just revealed a fact to me that is somewhat shocking. According to both the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Psychological Association, women are twice as likely to be depressed as men. There are numerous factors that may contribute to this including biology, poverty, and the way girls are raised in our culture.

I suppose I should find this statistic to be comforting in some way, since I'm one of the women it includes. Maybe I'm not so weird and crazy after all.

So I've been on my own with the two kids since Wednesday and have a little more than two more weeks to go, although since DH has another trip shortly after he comes back, it's three more weekends after this one and so I'm kind of thinking of it as three weeks.

It's actually all going pretty smoothly - I have a reliable babysitter and she has been showing up on time, no one is sick (pause to knock wood here), and I've been braced for this long that I have no expectations that I will really get anything done other than that which I absolutely have to. I have no family in the area, but friends have stepped up and my older son got to go to a hockey game tonight and will have a playdate during the little one's nap tomorrow, which will give me some time to work.

I keep thinking about people who do this all the time. My mother was one of them.

You read my mind, MPG! I don't have a book manuscript, but I have been weepy lately about my career, which I attribute to caring for a young baby and being sleep-deprived and depressed. But you are right: We are all high-achieving moms here and I am certain that we -- and our spouses! -- have felt this way. Thank you for posting this, MPG. It feels good to know I am not alone. -Elisa

I like to write diary posts that I think will have, if not an appeal to everyone at MT, at least some interest to the reading population. So lately I haven’t posted because since the holidays I feel like I’ve been caught in a web of self-pity that, really, no one wants to hear about.  (And if you stop reading here, I won’t blame you! But there is more.)

As we wrap up the year, I've been thinking about what I feel like I'm doing well and what I'd like to do better for next year. Lately I've been doing everything I can to reduce my carbon footprint. I've been surprised that it's not nearly as inconvenient as it may sound.

Of course, I do wonder about the self-indulgence factor here as I read articles about China and how the Arctic ice is going to be one in five years. But as a mother with two little kids, I have to start somewhere.

Great diary, MPG! I actually like school uniforms because purchasing name brand clothes is expensive and school should not be a beauty contest. Also, it erases lines between the haves and have nots as well as the popular kids who dress well and the geeks. Just my two cents. -Elisa

My DS attends a public charter school that requires what it calls a "modified uniform." For boys, this consists of navy or khaki pants or shorts, long and short sleeved polo shirts with a logo in a choice of four colors, and sweaters for the chilly weather. Any close-toed shoe without wheels is acceptable, as are all jackets.

Note please, that we can only buy the clothes from a uniform supplier. The pants are made of fabric that I'm pretty sure would survive a nuclear attack and may very well turn out to contain lead. I feel pretty confident also that sweatshop labor is not of particular concern, (although I'm not sure I could find appropriate pants that passed that bar anyway). Oh, and the uniforms are expensive. For example, each pair of pants costs 27 dollars.

I'm going to say it right here: I hate the uniforms. Passionately.