The Fat Smash Diet

Have you heard of The Fat Smash Diet ? It was invented by Ian K. Smith, MD, the guy who makes former B list stars drop the pounds on Celebrity Fit Club and it consists of a few phases, the first of which involves you eating only steamed, grilled raw vegetables with 1 teaspoon of olive oil daily. Limited quantities of brown rice and egg whites are allowed. Oh, but you can have as much fruit as you want. After reading this, I was not at all surprised to hear, from my local listserv parkslopeparents, that it worked wonders. Nonetheless, I was more or less aghast at the prospect. When it comes to carbs, I’ve got to go all Charlton Heston on you: “From my cold dead hands, will you take this pasta away.”

I think this diet is an OUTSTANDING idea. I just don’t know that I have got the self abnegation in me. If I had tons of time to indulge in other weaknesses, like smokng and manicures and shopping, sure. But right now, it’d be tough. Especally since, did I fail to mention, for the frst phase of ths FSD, you can't drink COFFEE.

Let me repeat. I don't mean you can't drink vanilla lattees or caramel cappuccnos. You CAN NOT DRINK ANY COFFEE. Though you are welcome to drink unlimited quantities of herbal tea.

What good is chamomile tea going to do when my daughter wakes at 5am, like she did this morning?

I could deny myself meat and cheese and even baguettes but coffee? I would perish. And I am only half joking.

When I mentioned the fat smash diet to David, he said

“What kind of a diet is that? Do they just beat you? Smash the fat off of you?”

This is why I love that man.

But I did tell him that this idea of the fat smash idea might very well be more pleasant than the rest diet.

Anyone try it? And if you did, are you also the kind of person who runs marathons and never loses your temper? I just need to know what level of self discipline we’re talking about.

Portrait of a mother as a young woman

Before you become a mother, you could never imagine the pride, the gratitude and the total friggin' joy and jubilation you feel when your child hands you THIS on Mother's Day.


What I love is how a kindergartner's misspelling can make sheer poetry. Instead of "Mother's Day is here," its "Mother's Day is her."

Instead of "you are good," its "you are God."

Best Mother's Day present ever.

Mother's Day

I spend a lot of time sharing what I consider to be embarrassing anecdotes about my grandmother (since she thinks she's always right, she’s not the slightest bit shamed about them) but this Mother’s Day I’d like to share a different side of my grandmother with you. So I won’t talk about the ordeal I’ve gone through this week trying to find a gift or activity for Mother’s Day that she won’t reject (“Its too expensive! I’m gonna return it!” or “This food taste terrible! Mine is much better!”) Instead I give to you:

Top 10 reasons I Love My Grandmother

1. Single best back scratching til you fall asleep, ever. I’ll do it for my kids for max 3 minutes, but Nonnie can seriously go all night.

2. You know Proust’s Madeline? For me, its Nonnie’s melted mozzarella on Italian bread. The smell of that melted cheese is the smell of my happy childhood.

3. Same goes for her pasta sauce, except that it is also the smell of my happy adulthood. Her sauce is so stellar that my high school ex-boyfriend who I’m not really in contact with just emailed me a few weeks ago begging for me to try and explain how to make it – again.

4. Ditto for the riceballs, stuffed artichokes, pizza, gnocchi, manicotti, and basically everything else that comes out of her kitchen. She literally wakes at 4am most days to start cooking homemade delicacies for my kids to eat for dinner every night. And get this -- Primo’s been obsessed with Spanakopita lately so she decided rather than have him eat the frozen ones, she’d make her own. With ricotta added of course. Italian spanakopita.

5. Loyalty. You don’t need a whole mafia when you’ve got Nonnie. She’s always on my side, no matter how wrong I am, and now the same goes for my kids, Once, when I was 13, I got into an Upper East Side elevator altercation with a haggy bitch who insulted my grandmother, and when the woman raised her hand to hit me, my grandmother literally beat her off the elevator with one hand, because the other one was holding a baby. You don’t mess with the Nonnie.

6. She tells dirty jokes.

7. Her favorite word in the English language is “sunofabitch,”

8. When Sec woke up at 5 am earlier this week and wouldn’t go to sleep, I called up Nonnie, who was awake of course, beginning her daily epic food preparation, and she was - I am not exaggerating – DELIGHTED to come pick up her great granddaughter at 5:10am. Kept her til it was time for school. She even made her chicken soup for breakfast.

9. Besides David and I, she is the only one in the world who truly understands how extraordinary our kids are.

10. For as long as I can remember, she’s always been there – for every good and bad occasion, every birthday, wedding, Christmas, every birth of a child -- loving me, and now my kids, like there’s no tomorrow, loving out loud, in living color, with everything she’s got. I can only hope my kids and grandkids and great grandkids will one day feel a fraction of the love and gratitude I feel for her.

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My little debutante

My daughter dresses like a debutante. She wears ball gowns every day. You know the kind of big poofy floor-length dresses people put their kids in to go to weddings and for Christmas and Easter? We have a closet of hand-me-down ones from a bunch of friends and Sec wears them to school, to the playground, to friends' houses. Its like one unending cotillion in our house. But she's not your conventional deb. Her fanciness has many facets.

Masquerade Ball Deb:



Victorian Deb:

Drunk Deb:

Double Hump Day Alert

Today I’ve got an extra hump to contend with. It’s Wednesday and an aunt of mine, by the name of Flo, is visiting me. Flo’s a real pain in the ass. Flo makes me cranky. Flo makes me bloated. I don’t feel much like taking big steps fashion forward when she’s in town. I feel like sitting on the couch in a plaid Snuggie, eating Nutella from a Costco sized vat and yelling insulting comments at the TV.

But that won’t do, now will it? What kind of an example would that show my impressionable children? Also, my husband threatened to stop making me coffee in the morning if I kept it up. So this double hump day, I pull my secret weapon out of the closet.

To find out what it is, read the rest at All Kinds of Pretty.

My House is A Pigsty

One of my mommy friends recently came over for a playdate and told me how refreshing it is to come to our house because I’m not one of those moms who’s worried about keeping up the appearance of having everything neat and tidy and in order.

“My house is a pigsty, you mean?” I said.

“And I think the state of mess in your house works in proportion to how happy you are with your spouse. And you and David are one of the happiest couples I know,” she went on.

“I know you’re not the kind of person who gets offended by that sort of thing,” she added.

I hastened to tell her that she was wrong on two counts: A. That David and I were one of the happiest couples and B. That I’m not the easily-offended type. David and I fight like we’re on Jersey Shore half the time and I, of course, want people to think that I am effortlessly perfect. 

“I don’t want people to think I am a slob, for crying out loud,” I exclaimed.

“You’re not a slob,” she said, “It’s just nice because I go over to other moms’ houses and everything is perfectly in place and it makes you feel bad about the state of your own house.”

The distressing thing was, I didn’t think my house was that messy.

I mean, it wasn’t a day where I swang my front door open with gusto, feeling pride over the fact that my dining room table could actually be used to eat on, rather than rest junk on. It wasn’t a day where my bed was made or where all the stray crayon masterpieces were stowed in their proper place or where I’d done the dishes. It wasn’t THAT kind of day. But it also wasn’t a day where I felt compelled to say, “My house s a total mess,” as I let the guests in.

“If I waited til my house was in order to have people over, we’d never see anyone!” I told her.

“I know,” she said.

“And every spare second I have, I’m working or playing with the kids,” I said, “so when can I clean?”

“I know," she said.

“Plus, as soon as I clean everything up, the kids walk through and instantly re-set it back to maximum mess,” I said.

My friend smiled but said nothing, waiting for the unexpected explosion of defensiveness to blow over. I guess I’d duped her into thinking that I was actually comfortable in my skin and brimming with self-acceptance which of course, I am not. Far from it. Because after my crazy defensive tirade, I proceeded to clean up my house, right in the middle of the playdate. Picking up discarded pajama pants and stray Legos, pairing up shoes and placing them by the door.

And I continued on this over-zealous cleaning jag for about a week, after which point, I found myself spent and relapsed as a slob.

So when my friend Amelia unexpectedly popped over last weekend, she found our house in its standard state of disrepair. What David likes to call Das Messenhaus.

“Your place looks like a tornado hit it,” she said, laughing.

“I know,” I said, “But it is precisely because of this mess that David and I are one of the happiest couples in New York.”

Five. Borough. Bike. Tour.

We spent the weekend at my parents’ place in New Jersey and bright and early on Sunday morning, we made our way back into the city to meet my friend Kim and her family at the Cloisters. I left a message for Kim when we were on the road, gleefully informing her that we were 7 minutes AHEAD of schedule, which is virtually unheard of in the history of our family and that we might, in fact, even be early.

“Don’t ever tell people we might be early,” David admonished, “We are not get-there-early people. Even if it looks like we’re going to be early, trust me, we’re not.”

“But we have THREE hours to take a one hour ride,” I replied, “How could we NOT be early.”

Anyone with any sense knows never to dare the powers that be like that.

Because five minutes later, Kim called me back.

“There’s a problem.” she said, “I just realized today is the day of the five borough bike tour.”

“Ooooh shit,” I moaned, “Crap.”

How can I explain the traffic ramifications of the five-borough bike tour?

They close the BQE and the Gowanus Expressway, they close the Queensboro Bridge and the FDR – they basically close the major thoroughfares of ALL FIVE BOROUGHS. In the middle of the day on Sunday. If you have ever driven in New York City, you can imagine the perfect shitstorm of traffic that results.

And here’s the thing about the five-borough bike tour. It’s never on a Sunday when we’re just hanging around Brooklyn. I’m never just having a lazy day, picnicking at the Park, and, "Oh, look at that, today's the day of the bike tour. Well, no bi deal, we have no place to be.” Every year, it is on a day when we have to get somewhere in Manhattan, somewhere we can’t get out of. The bike tour was the day of my sister’s bridal shower in Chelsea.

The bike tour was on the day of Primo’s birthday party at my parents’ place in midtown. It always screws us, this bike tour.

So not only would Kim and her family not be able to make it in from Brooklyn to meet at the Cloisters, we were, it appeared, never getting home.

I called my parents who were still in New Jersey to give them the heads up. I knew they’d have a coronary.

“Guess what today is?”

“What?” my father asked.

“The Five Borough Bike Race,” I replied.

“Oh SHIIIIIIIIT!” he yelled. Then to my mother, “Today’s the five-borough –“

Pandemonium broke out.

“OH MY GOD!” she shouted, “HOW could I FORGET that it was TODAY!”

Then my dad barked to my sister, “Get on the computer! We need route maps! We need closures! We need the schedule!”

“Get the maps! Get all the maps! WHERE’S THE GPS????”

“Hurry up and get in the car! We can beat it!”

“It’s too LATE! It already started!”

“THE FDR IS ALREADY CLOSED!”

“I gotta go!” said my father. And the phone went dead. They had some major rerouting to plan. They would need to cross-reference their maps. They would need to triangulate. They would need to outsmart the bike tour.

We opted to wait it out. Hit the Cloisters, which wasn’t affected by the closures, then hung around Washington Heights, visited my good friend, took a pilgrimage to the Little Red Lighthouse, and by the time that was all finished it was past 5 and everything was open again. We flew down the FDR. Then, of course, we got caught in some truly nasty Bridge traffic, but hey, that’s to be expected on a Sunday night.

See that, Bike Tour? You can’t keep us down.

My parents, on the other hand, are probably still fighting over what route to take home.