It was sunny last weekend, and I was inspired. Our kitchen window overlooks a patch of brush on the back lawn, and Saturday morning I sipped my coffee and stared at this blight in the yard. I’ll bet I can clean that up in an hour, tops, I thought. It was early, you see, and I hadn’t had enough caffeine yet, two factors that caused me to forget one very important thing: I’m not as young as I used to be.
 
I put on my gardening clothes: a T-shirt from when I weighed about forty pounds more than I do now and really could pass as a nightgown, sweatpants with the ankles tucked into my socks (I don’t care if it looks ridiculous: the ticks are really bad this year, people),  a big floppy hat, and Crocs. In case you were wondering if I have supercool fashion sense, I think this description ought to solidify it for you: I sure do!
 
The first step was clearing the weeds, brush, and dead stuff. I got out the metal rake, realized quickly it was useless against the bittersweet ensnarled on the lawn, and got out the hoe. (Not the regular one: this one has a pointy head like a giant dinosaur tooth. I like to rawr like a T-Rex when I use it.
 
The hoe didn’t do a bad job of chopping up the vines, but I’ll admit, the novelty of pretending to be a dinosaur wore off quickly. My arms hurt. I’d forgotten to bring out water, and the walk back to the house—a good fifteen feet away—seemed too far to make the effort. But it was still beautiful out: if the sun wasn’t ready to quit, well, heck, neither was I.
 
Once the patch was clear, I was ready to plant. Except, of course, I had nothing to plant. I ran to the nursery down the road, found they were running a good deal on marigolds, and bought a flat. As I waited in line to pay, I tugged off my floppy hat to wipe the sweat off my brow. A man walking past to the aisle behind me dropped a couple of coins in my upturned hat.
 
I realized I was still wearing my gardening gear, only now, I was covered in dirt from head to toe, and had a tear in the knee of my sweatpants from where I’d ripped it on a large stone hidden just beneath the topsoil. The floppy hat had left my hair sweaty and unkempt, and I was so dehydrated the marigolds were drooping as my body tried desperately to leach the moisture from their soil by osmosis. The nice man in the gardening store thought I was a homeless beggar.
 
I would’ve been insulted, but his spare change made the marigolds practically free. I thanked him and went back to planting.
 
Four hours later, I had my flowerbed in and watered; the patch mulched, and I could no longer feel my extremities. I was done.
 
Sunday brought another sunny day. At least, it looked sunny from what I could see from my bed, where I stayed all day, groaning in agony every time I breathed. Every nerve, muscle, bone, and skin pore hurt. Turns out doing physical labor all day when you’re over 40 (and not used to doing physical labor, like, ever) is pretty dumb.
 
So the flowers are in. Here’s hoping the mulch keeps the weeds away, because I’m never doing that again.

Living in New England has its challenges. It’s perfectly normal for us to have a snow squall warning on Monday and see the temperatures peak at eighty-eight degrees on Tuesday, which is exactly what happened this week.
Seriously, I saw people wearing snow suits and scarves at the grocery store Monday afternoon. I wasn’t going to judge—I was wearing corduroys and boots, after all. But Tuesday morning, I checked to see if my garden had died from the previous night’s frost, and got smacked in the face by a wall of pollen and heat. It seems we’ve skipped spring and moved right to the dog days of summer here on the East Coast.

The changing weather is not without its challenges. I went out for ice cream Wednesday afternoon, sat down at a picnic bench, and immediately attracted six hornets, two bees, and forty-nine ticks. I’d started the day looking like a professional: neat blouse, dress pants, hair brushed. (Yeah, that is about as professional as I get. Why do you ask?) Throughout the day, as the humidity climbed, I’d shed my blouse for my white-trashy sleeveless undershirt, rolled my pants above my knee, and pulled my once-curly-now-fuzzy hair up and secured it with staples. (It was hot. You do what you have to.)

My friend Melissa showed up for ice cream. “You’ve wilted,” she said.
I took in her flip-flops, T-shirt, and shredded napkin she kept using to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. “Right back atcha.”

We slurped our ice cream cones and chatted, all the while ignoring the tent caterpillars that rained down upon us from the branches of the tree we sat beneath. Occasionally we’d pause to pick off the ticks. It was nice to see my friend, but next time, I’m suggesting an indoor venue. With air conditioning.

When I got home, I started packing up my winter clothes. Thick sweaters, more cords, my wool hat . . . all went into totes to be stored out of sight until October. Sure, I was making the switch to my summer wardrobe a little early this year, but seriously, I couldn’t keep stapling my hair up every day. I needed more sensible options.

Thursday I went out in my light, girly sundress and felt so much better. Until I got to the office. They’d cranked the air conditioner to maintain an even forty-five degrees. I had to staple reams of paper to my arms just to keep warm.

New England: love it or leave it. That’s why I’m looking into North Carolina real estate.

C’mon, now. Mother’s Day is Sunday. You knew I’d write about my mom this week.

When I was a child, I dreaded turning into my mother. She was the one who doled out punishment when I swiped the last Twinkie in the breadbox or painted my sister’s Barbies with nail polish. She did not tolerate temper tantrums or sass. When she threatened to march me right out of the store if I didn’t start behaving, by golly, she meant it—and did it. (Looking back, I may not have been the best-behaved child.) When I was still in the single digits, I thought my mother was kind of mean. Why didn’t she understand that Barbie looked prettier with a bright red nail-polish Batman mask? Was it my fault that I’d flinched when my sister had started yelling, thus causing my hand to slip, trailing a crimson glob of polish and rendering Totally Hair Barbie into Texas Chainsaw Massacre Barbie?

As a teenager, I knew there was no way I’d ever turn into my mother. She was so uncool, with her purse as big as a suitcase and her ridiculously sensible sneakers. She wouldn’t even let my sister or me buy Dr. Scholl’s, which was so unfair because clogs were the hottest shoe of the season. When we wanted her to buy us Duran Duran albums and Pink Floyd cassettes, she’d say completely ludicrous things like “If you want it, you’d better start saving up for it.” Then, to add insult to injury, she’d make us do just that, spending our hard-earned babysitting money on The Dark Side of the Moon instead of our parents just giving it to us. And when we did get gifts at holidays or birthdays, we couldn’t even plunk Seven and the Ragged Tiger on the turntable until the thank-you card was written.

She was unreasonable. A taskmaster. And seriously, her Velcro sneakers were embarrassing.

As a young adult, I fought my natural instincts: I refused to admit I was turning into my mother. I lived on an island, an ocean between Mom and me, and yet she’d somehow taken up residence in my head. I had the opportunity to buy a shiny new pair of Dr. Scholl’s clogs at the Island Clothier and heard my mother, loud and clear: Look at those things. They look heavy and uncomfortable. And I don’t see any sort of arch support. Pssh! They’re not even on clearance!

I didn’t buy the clogs. But—just to spite her, I’m sure—I didn’t buy the Velcro sneakers, either. I would be my own person. A rebel. I’d get sneakers with laces … and proper arch support.

As I approach middle age, I’ve embraced the inevitable. I’ve completely turned into my mother.

It isn’t just when I look in the mirror (though she’s right there: I may have my father’s blond curls, but it is Mom’s nose, cheeks, chin, and smile looking back at me). Mom’s in everything I do, from the moment my alarm goes off. I rarely crack the speed limit on my morning commute, and always wear my seatbelt, and never, ever, use a bad word when a car cuts me off, because my mother’s voice is riding shotgun, advising: What if that driver hears you and pulls out a gun?  (I had a conversation with her this week in which she was talking about her car door handle breaking, to which she added, “Thank goodness I wasn’t submerged in water!” Perhaps you find this nuts. But it was exactly what I was thinking.)

I drink way too much coffee every day, probably as much as Mom, and when I’m reaching for a third cup, I picture Mom shrugging unapologetically and saying There are worse vices to have. I’ll browse through an Oriental Trading catalogue at lunch and shake my head, Mom’s words coming out of my mouth: “Why spend eight dollars on a paper lamp? I have pipe cleaners and tissue paper. I can make that.” This instinct, by the way, is always followed by Mom’s other habit: sure, I can make a paper lantern. But I’ll never get around to it. I have a box in my spare room filled with unused craft supplies, from half-melted glue sticks to unpainted wood frames. If you were to walk into my mother’s house at any given moment, she’d have an identical box in her spare room. I might as well label mine “You’ve turned into Mom.”

Our conversations have changed a bit over the years. Where it used to be Mom offering advice or asking if my new shoes have proper arch support, now we’ll talk about our days and pepper the conversations with things like, “She offered you pie? We don’t like pie!” Our tastes, you see, are so similar, what was once a family joke has now turned into part of our normal speech. We don’t like broccoli, or mushrooms, or olives, or fresh Peeps (we prefer them stale). We rarely eat ice cream unless it’s the good stuff, and prefer to eat frosting but not cake. (Auntie Joanne, Mom’s sister, came up with a brilliant solution to this, a stroke of genius for which I am forever grateful. She’s right: Why not eat frosting right out of the can?) We've shown up at family visits wearing identical sandals, jackets, glasses frames, and watchbands, all bought on solo shopping trips, completely unaware that the other was buying the exact same Mickey Mouse watch. I’ve given up fighting it. Now I appreciate that when Mom tries out a new pair of glasses, I know instantly how they’ll look on me.

Here’s the thing: my mother is a beautiful, smart, sensible woman. She’s passionate about the things she believes in, be it sensible footwear or not paying eight dollars for a cheap paper lamp. I should be so lucky to turn into my mom.

I caught myself at Famous Footwear just last week, looking at a pair of pink suede Altair sneakers. They were cute as heck, with a thick sole that wouldn’t wear through too quickly, and solid arch support. I was sorely tempted to shell out the forty bucks and take them home. But … they had Velcro fasteners instead of laces. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I may be my mother, but there’s still a bit of Stacey in there, too.

If they'd been on clearance, though, I totally would’ve bought them.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

I may have mentioned in the past that I do not like talking on the phone. If I’m going to be honest, “do not like” isn’t exactly how I feel. “Despise it more than paying bills or cleaning out the litter box” is probably more accurate. That’s right: I would rather scoop up cat feces than speak to someone on the phone. But why this splenetic wrath against Ma Bell? (And am I only writing this blog just so I can finally, casually, drop the word “splenetic”? Maybe.)

Picture this: Glastonbury, 1978. In our ranch house overlooking the farm, we have a phone, complete with rotary dial, mounted on the wall. (The phone might be yellow.) And it has a stiff, curly cord that barely reaches from the wall unit to the kitchen table. Now, I was too young to be answering the phone and having lengthy conversations. Kim, too. Dad was always either outside working the farm, or inside, claiming to be too deaf to even hear the phone ring. This left my mother to answer all the calls.

Mom was not an idle woman. She was a stay-at-home parent until Kim and I were in school, and she had to keep track of us, clean the house (and can I reiterate, we lived on a dairy farm? There were flies, tracked-in dirt and manure, silage flying through the air during corn-chopping season ... the cleaning never stopped), plant the garden, tend the garden, pick the ripening vegetables, can her own pickles, jams, and pasta sauce, freeze green beans, corn, and other assorted crops, plus feed everyone three times a day. Mom had a lot going on. She also had a mother-in-law who called two or three times a day.
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Now, my grandma was a saint. A saint, I tell you! Want to fight about it? I’ll win, ’cause Grandma was the saintliest of saint-y women. But she was also a talker. Hoo boy, could she chat. (She’d even talk to me and Kim on the phone, and when you have the patience to indulge a preschooler’s and a kindergartener’s fascinating conversations, which went something like “Hi Gamma! I ate paint!” … you are a saint.) But mostly she’d talk to Mom. And I remember the look on my mother’s face when she had to strain that cord to near pop-out-of-the-wall proportions just to sit at the kitchen table. She’d stare longingly at the coffee pot far, far away on the counter, then down at her empty mug, and I knew what she was thinking: I’m trapped.

My mother had a pretty good relationship with her mother-in-law. She couldn’t very well tell the woman not to call. So she came up with a solution: she found a replacement phone cord, at least six times the length of the old one, on clearance at K-Mart. (Mom’s also a smart shopper.) We all cheered (except Dad, who didn’t see what the big deal was—if you don’t answer the phone to begin with, problem solved, right?) as my mother demonstrated the shiny new cord’s ability to stretch all the way from the wall to the stove. Amazing, right?

We were just waiting for Grandma to call, now that Mom had this newfound freedom. Grandma didn’t disappoint. Brrrrring! “Hi! I swallowed a penny!” I announced proudly, then handed the receiver to Mom.
Mom took the phone and strolled to the refrigerator. Kim and I clapped. She took out a defrosted chicken and walked over to the cutting board. We cheered. She seasoned and prepped the bird, reaching over to the spice cabinet to pull out the rosemary. We did a little dance in celebration. All the while, Mom chatted happily with Grandma.

Then it happened: Mom propped the phone between cheek and shoulder, grabbed the roasting pan, and moved to open the oven. Said appliance was at the far end of the kitchen, to the left of the stove. Mom stopped. Put down the pan. Stretched. Pulled against the cord. Leaned forward like Jane Fonda reaching for the walls in an eighties aerobic workout tape. My sister and I gasped. Could she do it? Mom streeeetched, and reeeeached … and her fingertips barely brushed the oven door handle.

There would be no roasting of the chicken whilst on the phone.

Mom sighed, waved my sister over to open the oven and shove the pan in, and retreated to the kitchen table. At least she had a full cup of coffee in front of her. The miles of cord looped around her ankles as she sat, trapped on the phone for another thirty minutes, unable to check on the chicken.

To add insult to injury, when the call finally ended and Mom went to hang up the phone, she tripped on the new cord and sprained her foot.

So yes. I hate talking on the phone. I have all my life. And by the way, so does my mother.