I think one of the most challenging things we’re facing as a not-so-new business is keeping things new and relevant. There’s one thing to be said about reaping the benefits from notching a few years of experience under your belt: systems start falling into place and production for the most part, runs fairly smoothly (geez, I talk as if we’re a big operation. It’s still just Mark in the kitchen though). The press and the public, however, are always on the lookout for the next new thing. Summers can also be a slower season for bakers when the weather warms up and people are turning to frozen treats and ice cream (I don’t blame them) so we decided to do a little experiment.

Maybe you’ll remember that the only thing that I feel wistful about regarding our decision not to open a store is the fact that Mark can’t make his ice cream. It’s his favorite kind of dessert to make and he was just about ready to ditch the baked goods if the ice cream took off. We can’t really handle ice cream production right now, so Mark made a version that doesn’t need machinery and isn’t whipped (it comes out much denser). He tested out 3 flavors and we both immediately liked the curry milk chocolate, so he brought them in little 4oz cups to the Flea last Saturday…except they didn’t really sell all that well. Granted, it was last minute, we didn’t publicize it except for a single tweet and a Facebook post (also, I am horrible at promoting our own stuff), and maybe the world wasn’t ready to try a curry milk chocolate combo, who knows. We also made the mistake, I think, of calling it frozen custard which it technically is, but it didn’t really help. Mark was kind of a sad panda that day. But hey, we’re strong! We’re resilient! And we can accept when an idea doesn’t work. It isn’t the first time we came up with something that failed.

BUT, we’re not giving up so fast this time because we really like them and our kids like them and if Claudine, who is the pickiest eater ever, thinks this is “MMMMM” and can’t stop talking about how the spices made a funny tingle in her throat, then maybe other people will like it too. So Mark’s bringing them back to the Flea this Saturday (this week we’re at Smorgasburg in Williamsburg) and here’s the one time you’ll read an obnoxiously shameless plug right here on the blog:

(Start Shameless Plug)
This Saturday at the Smorg! Curry Milk Chocolate Ice Cream in a Cup! Packed densely in small 4oz cups so you don’t need to worry about breaking that diet! Made with high quality chocolate and Mark’s own blend of curry spices! A mere $3.50 buys you a flavor explosion in your mouth! Limited supply, so get yours early!
(End Shameless Plug)

whew, ok, that wasn’t so bad. By the way, I heard that The Flea is celebrating National Ice Cream Month by bringing in extra ice cream vendors this Saturday who don’t normally sell at the Flea so there’s like a million more ice cream options than usual. Face plant.

I never thought there would be this kind of response to the “breadwinner” post, but it’s gotten the most comments of any other post on the blog so far (aside from the ones where we’re giving away free cookies) and I’ve enjoyed reading through them all. Your comments and emails have also helped me to sort through some tough rollercoaster feelings I’ve been having as I float through this summer with a lighter work schedule, though Mark reminded me yesterday that I am still working all the time because I still have to tend to matters of our W&S business on a daily basis (I don’t often think of that as “working”, why is that?). As I’ve mentioned before, my schedule this summer is partly by choice and partly because some projects have fallen through. It isn’t easy for me to stay calm and just enjoy some time off though. I have to fight every day to keep from being consumed by worry, depression and guilt that I’m not earning money right now for my family. As freelancers, we often can’t help but measure our self esteem and worth according to how busy we are. I’m trying to break out of that way of thinking.

So what does it say that so many have responded to that post? Many of you feel same way. It’s not easy admitting something that seems so selfish, so petty, but I wanted to validate those feelings because they’re real, even if we do feel guilty for having them. But what I’m also hearing from you and others is that even as breadwinners we often find ourselves taking on more than our fair share of parenting and household duties, just because we’re women.

I need to tell you that I never aspired to be a “supermom”. I may have been called that by others, but I wouldn’t use that term to refer to myself. I fully acknowledge that I can’t do it all, but I don’t have to because Mark and I are equals as parents. I know some women who are real supermoms though. My mom was a supermom. She worked as a nurse full time while finishing her college degree at night, shutting herself in a tiny bedroom in the attic, writing papers in a language that wasn’t her first. Then she switched careers and started making real money, but she did all of this while doing the cooking, the dish washing, the grocery shopping, the cleaning, the bill paying, the financial planning, the laundry and the child rearing. All of it, by herself. She wasn’t a single mom, no, but all of the household and parenting duties fell on her because that’s what our culture dictated. It was her “job”.

I’m not sure how much of our childhood perceptions of our parents comes into play as we become adults and parents ourselves, but perhaps I saw how much my mom struggled as soon as I was old enough to understand and subconsciously wanted something different for myself. I remember feeling annoyed as well, that my brother was never expected to do any chores around the house because he was a boy, while I was expected to wash the dishes and help my mother out in the kitchen because I was a girl. This would even happen, as adults, when my brother would come visit from out of town. We would just fall into those stereotypical gender roles because in our culture, the boys were doted on. Maybe Mark saw something in his childhood too, a kid coming from divorced parents, which made him a lot more open to naturally sharing equal duties (if not more) of parenting and household chores because he sensed something missing in his life. I don’t know if any of that is true, but I would think that it’s impossible to ignore how our childhood factors into our views on marriage and parenting.

I’m becoming more and more aware that we are building these impressions on our young daughters. I believe it’s our responsibility to teach and lead them by example so that their generation can continue closing the gender gap in the workplace, even if they do decide to become stay-ay-home moms. But I also believe that it’s our responsibility to raise sons who become equals in the household so that if they do find themselves as stay-at-home dads either part time or full time, they do so without shame, feeling emasculated or secretly (or not so secretly) looked down upon by their spouses or other parents at the playground (this happens!). Gender equality is complicated because emotions can get involved and it’s so steeped in tradition, history, social, legal and economic systems. It’s also complicated because as mothers, we naturally feel the pull to stay at home with our kids and that’s where the internal struggle begins. I read that in this country, our women are among the most educated in the world, but we’re not as successful in keeping our women in the workforce when they become mothers presumably because our current work culture doesn’t give the support that women need in order to keep working. What do I say when Mia keeps asking me why there hasn’t been a woman president yet? I don’t know how to answer that question myself.

If my girls decide to become stay-at-home moms because it made them happy I would fully support it, but only if it made them happy and not because they felt like they didn’t have a choice. Being a breadwinner or a primary care giver shouldn’t be so stuck in gender stereotypes, but it takes a long time to change those perceptions. I hope my girls have more choices in the future. I hope all parents, both men and women have more choices.

The white house. Mia says she wants to live there. Maybe some day.

We had a reunion of sorts last week. Some old friends of ours who moved away to Australia 4 years ago finally came back to Brooklyn for a visit. The younger siblings were just babies when our friends moved away, but Mia and her old friend could not have been more excited to see each other after all those years. Quite honestly, we’re all sort of surprised at how much the girls remember. They were only 3 when they parted, but they still often refer to each other as best friends. I don’t think any of us really knew what to expect as each girl had built up the moment so much as the week of their visit drew near, but after an initial awkward moment of frozen faces and long, silent stares, the girls got on as if 4 years never passed and had the best time all week.

Mia and her friend have known each other since they were just a few weeks old (her mom was my first “mom” friend) and the girls spent a lot of time together in those early years. As a new parent, there are a lot of “firsts” that are significant and these 2 shared many “firsts”. At age 2, they were both starting to string together words into sentences, but I’ll never forget overhearing them engaging in what would become their first real conversation over snacks, sitting down across from each other at the table:

“I like your bib.”
“Thanks. It has cows on it.”

So I wonder, do you ever forget your childhood best friend? Because I never forgot. I remember. Her name was Lana and she lived next door, only our friendship didn’t consist of just playdates at each others’ houses – it was more unusual than that. We lived high up on the 14th floor of a tall apartment building in Queens and we shared a balcony that was separated by a green rippled plastic divider. I don’t remember exactly how I met Lana, but she must have been playing out on her balcony when I was doing the same and I think one day we started talking to each other after our curiosities got the best of us. I must have been 5 or so. Our friendship began on that balcony, each of us staying on our respective sides, laying on our tummies on the astroturfed floor and talking to each other through the narrow crack between floor and divider. It came to be where we’d call on each other daily after school and on weekends, calling out the other’s name if we were the first one out on the balcony. “Lana!”, “Lana!”, I remember yelling, my face either peered around the edge of the divider so I can see her side of the balcony on my tippy-toes, or with my face pressed to the floor to look under that crack. If she were home she’d come rushing out of her apartment, but there were days when I would call for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and I’d finally give up, sadly going back inside. Eventually, the plastic divider that separated our balconies would crack near the bottom edge from the both of us tugging at it so much, and one day we were able to pull it apart from the frame like a trap door, slipping through to the other side to play.

I do remember going to her house for playdates and she coming over to mine. We must have as I can’t imagine that we did this when the weather got super cold (though I do remember calling her name to see if she were home all bundled up in a coat). Our friendship, however, consisted largely of our balcony playdates. It was like our own secret passageway. I don’t know when Lana moved, but she did. I remember peering into the next door balcony often after she moved away, hoping that I’d see my best friend, but I never saw her again.

I’d be curious to see if Mia and her friendship with her first best friend grows. Since they were so young when she moved away, I wonder if they both created memories of each other based on photos and hearing old stories rather than from real memories. Now that they are seven, their connection to each other will become that much more solid and real. One thing is clear. There was always a special bond between these two and I doubt that they’ll ever forget each other, regardless of what happens.

I thought I would be making that call to the vet on Monday. He didn’t eat at all on Saturday and didn’t even have a glimmer of interest in his favorite dried squid treat. Just one sniff and he would walk away. He sort of sat down at the water bowl and would take the tiniest little lap with his tongue and then just stare out into space. He had that distant look that so many of you wrote about (thank you, btw, for all your comments and stories) and didn’t really want to sit with us. The evening was hard. My brother, who is a vet and the one who got us Tobi as a kitten back in 1997, told us that if he didn’t eat through the weekend, then it might be time. He had put his own cat to sleep himself earlier this year and euthanized our family dog 6 or 7 years ago as well (probably one of the worst things we went through as a family). I wasn’t sure what I’d find in the morning, but when I woke up I didn’t have to wonder. He had jumped up on our bed and wanted to be petted, rubbing his cheeks against our hand, peering into our faces. We laid like that in bed, petting him for the longest time. “Oh, maybe he is saying goodbye”, I thought.

We got up and saw that his food remained untouched and gave him fresh food which he refused. We left early in the morning for the day, but when we came back later in the afternoon we saw that the food was eaten. All of it. We gave him more and he ate that too. He seemed a bit like his old self, plopping himself smack in the middle of the girls’ train track village while they played, standing on his hind legs to sniff at the stalks of lemongrass on the table that Mark had bought in Chinatown that day.

I don’t know what it means. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe we take it day by day. All I know is, I won’t be making that call to the vet tomorrow. Not yet.

Our 14 year old cat, Tobi, was diagnosed with cancer in his liver and intestines today. He is home now from the vet and seems comfortable, though he is not eating much. He used to be a large, fat orange tabby but has lost 35% of his body weight. He is nearly skin and bones now. We have decided not to do any more tests or treat his cancer. He is acting fairly “normal” – that is to say, he doesn’t act like he’s in pain, but my question is this: how much time do we have with him? Anybody out there with similar experiences who can share?

Can’t tell you how many times I hear this word in a day. I usually reply with a few suggestions (that usually get shot down), but sometimes when I feel really exasperated I might say, “only boring people get bored” (god, wouldn’t you hate it if your mom kept saying that to you?). The girls have been out of school for almost 2 weeks now and while we’ve managed to schedule a lot of outings and activities since then, I can’t do it everyday. I just can’t. I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a homebody at heart, but this is hard to be when you have kids. I need quiet and alone time for my sanity and sometimes I just need to stay home for awhile. Sounds selfish as a parent, but trust me, it’s not. It’s really hard to be “on” all the time. I’m not Julie, the Cruise Director, not even close. While I do believe that kids need activity and stimulation, I don’t believe that it needs to be constant. I think my generation of parents feel like they need to schedule activities for their kids everyday, but where does this come from? When we were kids growing up, we didn’t really do much. We sometimes went to camp and we watched a lot of TV. I’m not even sure who babysat us during the day in the summers after my grandmother moved out because I don’t remember. Different times.

My girls are pretty good at entertaining themselves by reading and playing and they aren’t the type of kids who bounce off the walls and need to be outdoors all day, but when I hear the word “bored” not even 10 minutes since the last time they complained they were bored, I just have to remember that I was once a kid too. A kid who at times felt bored during summer vacations because the days felt impossibly long. A kid who draped herself listlessly on the couch because there was “nothing” else to do. I guess times really aren’t that different.

(btw, that isn’t our house, in case you were wondering. You can get bored in other places too, apparently).

We had a special birthday party this year at the lakehouse. A party that required lots of pink. I felt pretty honored to be there to help celebrate such a big occasion.

Did I mention that there is no electricity or running water at Sara’s lakehouse? That means a lot of reading on the porch and early bedtimes, 2 things I don’t really do anymore. It also means the first night is spent staring at the darkness at 4am in the morning because no matter what time I go to sleep, I just wake up 5 or 6 hours later. The outhouse is also a bit of a (short) walk away from the house, which means that I usually choose to hold it in even though I need to go pretty badly because really, who wants to get up in complete darkness in the middle of the night and fumble toward an outhouse with a flashlight? It sort of reminds me of when I used to go camping. The days are ruled by the hours of daylight since there isn’t any electricity, and so you sleep and rise with the sun. When you wake in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep, waiting for those first glimmers of morning light can seem like forever. Miraculously, I slept through the 2nd night and woke up to the gentle sound of rain.

You might recall that last year we met Sara Jensen at her family lakehouse, a house that her great grandfather built in 1906, located 1 hour north of NYC. Sara and I had never met before up until that weekend, having only just chatted over the internet, and I guess she decided that we were not scary strangers or anything because she invited us back again this year. It’s funny what kids remember or don’t remember from the past, but the girls have fond memories of spending the weekend at the house last year and couldn’t stop talking about it the week or so leading up to the 4th. Now, it just feels like a part of summer to us.

(oh, and shhhh…don’t tell anyone we were roasting store-bought marshmallows. totally forgot to bring our own this year).

I’m back to being at peace with my light summer schedule again. The other stuff will fall into place. Besides, we’re enjoying the most delicious stretch of summer weather here in NYC, it’s hard to think about much else. Now that summer vacation is officially here and things have slowed down a bit, I’m pretty excited about summer – for all the good friends that we’ll see, for all the places that we’ll travel, for the luxury of time that we’ll steal before the busy Fall season hits in 2 short months. And thank you again for all the emails and comments. Your stories are filled with courage, and you guys also give me the courage to write.

ps. this photo totally has my heart, in ways I can’t even express, for once.

pps. Mark says I need to credit him with the photos of me (jokingly), but he’s right. He pretty much takes any photos that you’ll see of me (with a lot of help sometimes from Photoshop) And hey, these might be the first to actually be in focus, so there’s that.