Interview with "Sex @ 11 with Rebecca"

Today seemed to be my own personal Media Day. First I did an interview with CNN about TreeRing.com, the website that my son's school used to create its yearbook. (I was a co-editor, something I volunteered to do in a moment of insanity.) We'll see if any of the footage makes the light of day. Still, it was fun, and if the comments afterwards from the TreeRing.com folks are true, I did an OK job. It was nice to feel that I'm slightly good at something (I haven't been feeling that way so much lately...but that's the subject for another post).

Then, tonight, I did an interview with Rebecca Rosenblat, a.k.a. Dr. Date, for her TV show "Sex @ 11 with Rebecca." We talked about What Women Really Want in Bed and What Men Really Want in Bed, the top 3 sex tips guys need to know--and a few tips for women, too.

It was a fun interview; Rebecca made me feel right at home. But I guess I was a little nervous, because when I started talking about What Women Really Want in Bed, I realized I was talking about the men we surveyed, not the women. Oops. But after that little glitch, things went smoothly...

...until my son burst in the room as I was talking about how men need to pay attention to the clitoris. Yeah, that was a little distracting. My husband, who was supposed to be watching our small human, claimed he had run upstairs before he could catch him, like some sort of pint-sized Olympic sprinter.

Moral of the story: If you're a sex author, look the office door when you're doing an interview.

And how can you listen in? The show only airs in Canada, but the producers are sending me a DVD of it. Which I'll post here.

This Week at Preschool

I live for the almost-daily email reports that we get from my son's preschool teacher. Seriously, it's almost pathetic how excited I get when I see them in my Inbox, and how disappointed I am when she misses a day.

These updates are interesting only to me and a close circle of my relatives (as in, my husband, my mom and my mother-in-law), but I'm still going to post them here.

Tuesday 6/9/09
Our weather man Cameron had fun working with the connector blocks this morning. He made a sun with lots of hot rays coming out from it. He told me that today the sun is hiding in the clouds but that soon it will get too bright and it won't be able to hide there anymore. Then, after a long day of shining on people it will go down and the sky will get dark.

Wednesday 6/10/09
Cameron got out all the Legos and built a long train this morning. There was a lot of detail on his train. The cars were in a pattern: yellow, blue, yellow, blue. He had a seat for the conductor and he even included a smoke stack (because it was a steam engine).

Thursday 6/11/09
In the afternoon we did our Apple sensory investigation. It was so much fun and the children loved trying all the different types of apples….Cameron said his favorite part of the experiment was getting to taste all of the different apples. He told me that he thinks we should eat lots of different kinds of apples everyday for snack.

Friday 6/12/09
Cameron was really interested in puzzles this morning, he spent a lot of time at the table working on them all. He really liked the occupation puzzles and the emergency people puzzles. He would take one all apart and then put all the pieces back before moving on to the next one.

As the Noggin commercial puts it, wouldn't it be great if life were more like preschool?

AFA Event: Martinis and Manicures in SF

Attention all San Francisco Bay Area readers: The American Fertility Association is holding its popular free Martinis and Manicures event on Monday, June 9, at Nova Nail Spa in San Francisco. This your chance to get your questions answered about the reality of your biological clock, the effect of STDs on your fertility, environmental toxins and more fertility-related topics--all in a fun and friendly atmosphere. Here's the 411 from Vivian Rodriguez of the AFA:

What: Manicures & Martinis*, a 90-minute conversation and Q & A with Marcelle Cedars, M.D., UCSF Center for Reproductive Health

Where: Nova Nail Spa, 811 Mission Street, San Francisco, California 94107

When:Tuesday, June 9th, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM

Why: Because wise choices now improve your chances of having a child later.

Who: Women in their 20s and 30s

Cost: Complimentary! A credit card is required to hold your reservation. A fee of $50 will be charged if you no-show.

* Also available: The “Fertilitini”, an organic, alcohol free cocktail!

To make a reservation please contact Vivian Rodriguez at 646-861-3226 or vivian@theafa.org. For more information, please visit www.theafa.org.

And here's some information about the Manicures and Martinis event in Denver.

I'd like to go to the event, although evening events in San Francisco are hard for me these days what with my job and such. But if I go, I'll post a report. And if you go, send me yours!

Win a copy of Secret Seductions...

...although not on this blog (yet). My friend (and Jennifer Connelly lookalike) Rachel Sarah wrote an incredibly nice post about me on her blog, Single Mom Seeking. Thanks, Rachel!

Rachel's also giving away copies of my new book, Secret Seductions, along with two others, one of which I'd had when I was dating: Why He Didn't Call You Back: 1,000 Guys Reveal What They Really Thought About You After Your Date by Rachel Greenwald.

By the way, Rachel says in her blog that she wants to know my "secret." Well, I want to know hers! My admiration for single parents knows no bounds. I don't think you're going to be "seeking" for very long (Lucky Guy sounds like an absolute gem).

Guilt.

This is not going to be a funny post. I'm just warning you.

My book deadline is bearing down on me, while at the same time, my day job is beyond crazy.

I'm kind of screwed. At night, I try to write for at least an hour a night, but then I feel guilty because I'm not doing "work" work. But when I do work, I feel guilty for not writing.

On top of that, I feel like I'm neglecting my husband and son because I'm so tightly wound up by stress. (Thanks to the joys of email and the Blackberry, I was almost in tears by 8:30a.m. this morning.) I've started having sharp stomach pains occasionally after I eat.

Please don't tell me to exercise, meditate or do yoga. I miss doing all those things. But there's not a spare moment in the day. That I could give up without feeling guilty, that is.

How do other writers handle it, this juggling act, this guilt?

A conversation I never thought I'd have (or share).

"Cami, do you want to come here and go potty before your nap?"
"No thank you!"
"I'm going potty, and I'm going poo-poo, too!"
"Good job, mommy!"

Who says we're not reading?

I belong to a group of women writers. Once a month, we meet at someone's house to eat, drink wine, and talk about "the craft." We try not to discuss "the industry," but inevitably, the talk turns to marketing and publishing, and how horrible the situation is. (Then we drink more wine.) This past Sunday, when the talk turned to the supposedly dire state of the publishing industry, someone in the group announced, "No one reads anymore!" Cue chorus of agreement.

But I disagree. While I can understand where my fellow (fella?) writers are coming from, I think people are reading. How else do you explain the popularity of book groups, and conferences like Book Group Expo dedicated specifically to people in book groups? How do you explain the fact that every week, I get an invitation to a new book-related social networking site? I now have my lists on GoodReads and Shelfari, to give a few examples; I've gotten to the point where I can't even keep my virtual bookshelves up to date.

There's something else I wanted to tell my writers' group. From the time our children were blastocysts, almost every mother I know has been inundated with the importance of reading to her child. My niece has belonged to a book-of-the-month club since she was about 3 (she even picked out her own books). I could swear to you that I remember hearing a suggestion that I read to my son while he was in the womb as a way to get him used to the sound. I didn't do that--although I was reading The Apple's Bruise by Lisa Glatt when my water broke--but I did read to him from about the time he was born.

Here he is thumbing through his book collection at 15 months, looking for the good parts:

He's now almost 3, and yes, I was thrilled beyond words when one of his preschool teachers termed him "the class bookworm." He also likes to watch trains on YouTube, but he still loves his books. I have now read Where's the Poop more times than I would like to count.

Granted, I will admit that I'm part of an overly educated demographic. You could call our kids "Generation 529," so concerned are we about getting our kids into (and being able to pay for) good colleges. When I lived in San Francisco, I belonged to a mothers' group where women were frantic about getting on preschool lists before their children were actually born. Every family I know has shelves of children's books in their home. I realize, of course, that many families are not so fortunate.

There seems to be a disconnect between the dire predictions about American education, and the fact that many colleges have to turn away qualified applicants. Stanford received 24,000 applications for its Class of 2011--a record high (but accepted 10.3%--a record low). A "a significant fraction" of those accepted, says President John Hennessy, are "prepared to do Stanford-caliber study." Test scores and GPAs are higher than ever.

How can that be, if no one's reading? I'm curious to know what you think. Like I said, I realize that I'm part of a particular demographic, and that the picture isn't so rosy for a large segment of the population. How can we instill a love of reading in all children, regardless of income? And I don't think the answer is more computers in schools or access to the Internet. But we shouldn't throw up our hands and say "no one is reading," either.

It's not going to stop writers from writing, anyway.

Parenting and sex (and the lack thereof).

Spot-on post today on SFGate.com's "The Poop" blog about parenting and sex. Or the lack thereof. The comments are almost as good as the actual post. I particularly like the M&Ms solution used by one parent.

But what if your problem is not lack of time (say, for example, your son is reliably asleep by 9pm for the rest of the night), but...well...sheer exhaustion?

If after a full day of work, daycare pickup, dinner and bedtime routine, all you want to do is flop on the couch with your TiVo remote? Would it be any wonder if one's libido was MIA?

Not that I'm naming names.

BlogHer '08 in San Francisco

Just signed up for the BlogHer '08 Conference, July 18-20, in San Francisco. I'm pretty psyched. I attended Web 2.0 Expo in April (seems like it was just yesterday), and really enjoyed it, but women were a definite minority.

BlogHer has several breakout sessions devoted to "MommyBlogging": I'm not so sure I'm crazy about the term (I haven't seen many references to "DaddyBlogging"), but I'm very interested in the topics: "Is MommyBlogging Still a Radical Act?", "Public Parenting and Privacy," and "Mirrors: Ours, the Media's, Our Cultures' and Our Kids'."

And there's also a session on infertility: "When the Road To Motherhood Is Anything But Smooth: Infertility, Adoption and Miscarriage Bloggers."

Oh, and there are even birds-of-a-feather sessions on "Sex and Relationships" and for "Entertainment Bloggers." So it looks like I'll have all my bases covered, no pun intended. And you thought I was just indecisive in my choice of blog topics.

If you're going to BlogHer '08, let me know!

Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman on the globalization of surrogacy.

I'm not just a little offended by Ellen Goodman's tone in her April 11 Boston Globe essay, "The globalization of babymaking."

It would have been nice if she had actually talked to some couples who turned to surrogacy. I can assure you that no infertile couple travels halfway around the world, and gives up their dream of biological children, "in search of lower-cost ways to fill the family business."

I can assure that by the time a couple gets to this point, they've probably exhausted all other options. No one chooses voluntarily to "outsource" conception to egg donors and sperm donors.

She say she doesn't "make light of infertility." Then she does exactly that.

Salt on the wound.

When I went to pick up Cami from daycare today, I noticed that one of the other moms was obviously pregnant. Cami's teacher then rattled off the names of all the other moms in his class who are pregnant with #2.

Shoot me. Just shoot me now, I wanted to scream. I have failed as a woman. Instead, I just stood there and smiled, hoping that she didn't notice my moist eyes.

I suppose this kind of thing is inevitable, but did I have to confront it today?

In other news, here's a great article from the New York Times about the discrimination workers face when they have to take care of a sick child or other family member. A subject I'll address more, when I'm not so tired.

Now THAT's a mom.

No self-respecting blog on motherhood would be complete without this testament to a mother's love for her child: a Star Wars birthday cake.

Get the full story, including "making of" pictures, at Great White Snark.

Movie Review: Little Children

Blog theme trifecta: a movie about both sex and motherhood.

Not to mention the suburban horrors of your local playground at 10:30am (hint: it's Mean Girls, fast forwarded 20 years).

I can't say that I enjoyed Little Children while I was watching it (except for the sex scenes, which were way too short, IHMO). But in the days since I saw it, I can't stop thinking about it. I could have done without that voiceover, but that's a quibble.

This is an insightful, disturbing portrayal of infidelity, maturity (or the lack thereof), and the horrors of suburban life.

Why my mind reels this week.

My son Cami is only 19 months old, so it awhile before he heads off to college. But whether I’m dropping him off at daycare or helping him someday unload boxes into his freshman dorm (if he’ll let me) the only way I can wave goodbye to him without completely losing my shit is by trusting that school will be a place of learning for him. Of safety. Not of violence.

Last Monday was every parents’ worst nightmare. It was certainly mine. In the days that followed, I found myself drawn to articles about the shooting, but I couldn’t finish them. I especially couldn’t read the personal details of the victims. Because every time I did, my next thought was “What if that were…” and then I was in one of those classrooms and seeing the face of my son. And I couldn’t read any further.

My husband and I “pulled the goalkeeper”—that is, I went off birth control—in March 2003, when I turned 40. This was before we were even married, before he had even proposed. We turned to fertility treatments in January 2004. They worked, sort of: I got pregnant. And then I miscarried at 8 weeks, after seeing the heartbeat of the fetus we had taken to calling “Peanut.” One month later, I found out I was pregnant again, and then miscarried a few days later. We went through nine more months of infertility treatments before conceiving Cami on New Year’s Day of 2005.

It’s not clear that we’ll have any more children. We’ve been trying to conceive a brother or sister for Cami since he was six months old. On April 5, we learned that our second round of IVF had failed: none of four embryos had kept developing. I know how I felt about those little groupings of cells. I know how I feel about my son. I can’t imagine how the parents of the Virginia Tech victims feel. I can’t imagine how the parents of Cho Seung-Hui feel. I can’t go there. I can’t afford to go there.

I don’t want to be a “helicopter mom,” hovering over Cami for the rest of his life. Intellectually, I know that I can’t protect him from totally random events. (In the area where we live, some people consider getting into the right preschool an act of God.) But if I could drive him to school in an armored vehicle and stand behind him with an Uzi, I would.

The first week I dropped Cami off at daycare, I could hear him crying as I walked to the car. I felt like the world's worst mother. My husband, who was on a business trip at the time, didn't get why I was calling him in tears. Then he came back, and he got drop-off duty. He got it. But things got better. Now when we drop him off, my son waves and points to the door, dismissing us.