We've Gotta Get Out of This Place

I need a vacation.

Like, seriously need a vacation. Not in an "Gee, my life is so crazy, I could sure use a break, golly!" way, but in a "I am about to claw my own skin off if I don't go somewhere new soon" way.

I know there's some crazy statistic out there that claims most Americans never leave the country, and few even leave their home states, but I am not one of those people. I am a traveler. I like to go places. Mostly for the food, and, in my adult life, for the hooch: I've had reindeer in Finland, vodka in Russia, bignets in New Orleans, pizza in Chicago, oxtail in Spain, microbrew in Colorado, falafel in Israel, ale in England, wine in Italy, and, once in South Africa, some weird homemade moonshine someone brought to a party from, I don't know, Botswana or something, that caused me to black out for a short while.

Before my first son, the Juban Princeling, was born I overheard a man in an elevator tell his friend, "My wife and I just got back from vacation. Our first one in 15 years without the kids."

I vowed then and there to never be that guy. 

Three times my husband and I have tried to get out of town. Three times we have been thwarted by fate's fickle douchiness. 


In 2008 we booked a trip to Paris for a week. OMG did we get into it. I bought a "French for Your Trip" CD, the Lonely Planet guide to Paris, and my friend who had lived there briefly as a model - you know, as you do - inscribed detailed notes on a map for us. The Princeling, who by then would be seven months old, would stay with my parents in Miami while we ate bread and cheese and wine in a French park and slept in a French hotel room not littered with pacifiers, burp clothes, and spit-up stains.

Then we decided to move, from Manhattan to Brooklyn. And moving ain't cheap. And we had just finished paying off the massive credit card debt we had accrued while "nesting" in anticipation of the Princeling's birth. Something had to give, and that something was Paris.


Our next attempt at a child-free vacation happened in February 2010. For my birthday we booked ourselves three nights in a quaint little bed and breakfast upstate, complete with in-room hot tub. My mom would come up the week before and fly back to Miami with the Princeling. For weeks I had visions of spending my birthday sipping champagne in a hot tub while my gorgeous and awesome husband fed me chocolates.

Instead, my mom got stranded here in the Great Blizzard Snowpocalypse of 2010, and by the time she managed to get home, not even the promise of three days with the Princeling all to herself could convince her to take him off our hands. My gorgeous and awesome husband even offered to fly down with the Princeling and then return three days later just to pick him up, but no. My parents had seen the Awful Beast that is February weather in New York, and, like the survivors at the end of a zombie movie, they boarded up and went radio silent for a while.


Most recently, my parents - who clearly felt guilty about their post-Snowpocalypse, end-of-zombie-movie behavior that RUINED MY HOT TUB AND CHAMPAGNE BIRTHDAY (hashtag: firstworldproblems) - booked us on a week long cruise for this past April. I'm not a fan of cruises generally, but I didn't care. By the time they offered I was so desperate to go somewhere I would have taken a trip to Kabul. 


My husband and I booked our on-shore activities. Scuba classes in Cozumel. Horseback riding among Mayan ruins. Ziplining in Costa Rica. And OHMYGOD SEVEN MORNINGS OF WAKING UP WHENEVER THE HELL WE WANT TO WAKE UP. No one whining at us that the hot dog we made that he asked for is "too yucky." No one screaming "Bah!" into our faces when we tell him he can't have a lollipop for breakfast. No one responding with, "You could do it," when tell him to clean up his toys. Just my loverman and me, in places that are not New York or South Florida, places where our parents and child are not. Paradise.


So of course that never happened, because my dad was diagnosed with cancer last February and was scheduled to receive his first chemo treatment the week of our cruise. Just to spite me. We just could not burden my poor mother with both a 60-year old chemo patient AND an energetic 2 1/2-year old. If we had any doubts about this, in March I had to have emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder, and would still be recovering come cruise time in April: no booze, no ziplining.


My point is, it's not for lack of trying that the hubby and I haven't made it beyond New York or South Florida for the past four years. We're not those creepy parents whose lives come to a screeching halt with the arrival of kinderfolk. We are more than happy to dump our offspring on his grandparents so we can bust out our passports and try new foods and alcohols in exotic locales.


Because of my dad's cancer (calm down, he is 100% fine now. He even took a trip to Paris - !!! - and Amsterdam in October.) we made many visits to Miami in 2011, some just me and the Princeling, others all three of us. And now, with the imminent arrival of the Duke of Juban (ETA: March 2012) we feel we've earned the right to a Florida-free year in 2012. Oh, I know. Boo-hoo, we had to go to Florida. But we didn't go to fun Florida. We went to visit our parents, which, even in Florida is pretty much like going to visit your parents anywhere else. A couple of nights we went out to dinner in Miami, and I think we saw some movies. 

Ho-hum.


That's why we are making 2012 the year we finally take a proper vacation. With the kids! I don't even care. The Princeling is a fun guy, let's schlep him along. His baby bro, too. A friend suggested we do a family-friendly all-inclusive resort, and I found one in Barbados that has a nursery for the Duke and a Kid's Club for the Princeling so that from 9am to 5pm every day our kids can be other people's problems while the two of us glue giant frozen margaritas to our hands and go kayaking, possibly both together. AND WE ARE GOING. I don't care if we all die trying. I don't care if five hurricanes block our flight. I don't care if we all have to travel in body casts. I don't care if a giant earthquake rips open a chasm in the east coast and Balrog comes out. Come Hell or high water, we are taking a goddamn vacation this year.


This, I vow.

Real O'Clock: Boys and Body Image

Every now and then here at the Grey Skies World Headquarters, we like to take it down a notch, from our usual wine-guzzling, DWTS-watching, geek con-going ways and get Real. If this were a rock concert, now would be the part where I sit atop a stool, mic in hand, spotlight on, and croon "Every Rose Has A Thorn" while swaying gently, like my depth and emotion are far too sincere to be contained by sitting still.

Get out your lighters (or cell phone screens), because it's about to get Real O'Clock all up in here. I might throw some numbers or statistics at you that I pull off the internets, but that doesn't mean I don't love you.

A couple of years ago I was asked to be the "real mom" on a panel discussing a really excellent book called "Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat?" There, I had the honor of meeting one of the book's authors, the amazing Claire Mysko, who has become a friend and personal hero of mine in the past two years. 

The talk shed light on something women, especially mothers, don't discuss much: body image issues after childbirth. 


I don't want to go into an entire synopsis of the book because that would be doing it a grave injustice. Claire and her co-author, Magali, are quite articulate enough without my ruining their message with a semi-coherent summation. 


Instead, I'd like to talk about a point I was inspired to make after reading the book: a point about boys and body image.


Most of the talk about body image and healthy self-esteem centers around girls, and rightfully so: according to the National Eating Disorder Association, anorexia and bulimia affect females 10 times more than they affect men. Our entire culture is set up to make women and girls feel like they can never "win" some mythical battle with their bodies: either they are too fat or "scary skinny." The media treats female bodies like public property, there to be critiqued, criticized, and publicly consumed. 


Far better writers have discussed that problem, and at great length. I'm not inventing anything new here.


What I want to discuss right now, though, are how boys are also affected by media images of male bodies and a masculine ideal. This is also not new, but I am now the mother of two boys, and this is my blog, and I need to get this out.


There are four main reasons why I think it is necessary to include men and boys in the discussions about body image issues:


1. Societal expectations, cultural norms, and media reflections of manhood and masculinity are as much a part of feminism as those things are for women and girls. 
When my son(s) watch TV and movies and play with toys, they are absorbing what it means to be a man just as much as a little girl absorbs what it means to be a woman. And so as a parent I have a vested interest in making sure the messages surrounding my son are positive ones: that you don't need enormous muscles to be strong, being scrawny is not automatically comical, and physical prowess does not equal being a decent human being. My first son, the Juban Princeling, already seems to take after the boys on my side of the family: tall and skinny. While some of them are athletic, too, none of them have what you'd typically call rippling muscles. They are tall guys, not necessarily big guys. And I want my sons to know that that's fine. Skinny guys do not have to be relegated to the role of nerdy sidekick, or bumbling comic relief; in too many movies and TV shows, the skinny guy is the equivalent of the fat girl - a wise and/or wisecracking best friend, while the more stereotypically attractive girl or boy is the star. 


What does this have to do with feminism? 


When our men feel better about themselves, when boys are not preoccupied with outdated and false ideas of being macho, or being manly, they are more prone to treat women with respect, as equals. A man who does not feel the need to prove his masculinity is a man who does not need to put down women in order to feel better about himself. A man who has healthy self-esteem does not need to stand on top of others in order to feel big.


It's pretty simple, really.


2. Boys and men are not immune from eating disorders.
I found this out while I prepped for the panel discussion: anorexia and bulimia affect about 1 million men and boys in America, or about 10% of the eating disordered population. That's not nothing.

One million! And that's a statistic from the 1990s!


If we treat eating disorders like they are women's problems, or girl diseases, we are doing our sons a grave disservice. While I certainly hope that neither of my sons ever develops an eating disorder, I also believe it is my job as a parent to create a loving, trusting home environment where if they do think they have a problem, or if I do notice something wrong, we can talk about it together. 


Part of raising emotionally healthy boys is setting a good example. Not just their father, but me, too, which brings me to...


3. Having sons is not a free pass to fat-shame myself. 
There's been a lot of talk lately - at least, in my circles there has been - about monitoring what we say, as adults and parents, about our bodies in front of our children. Mostly this is done for the benefit of girls, so they don't grow up listening to Mom complain that she's fat. But I think our boys can benefit from this as well.


As the primary woman in my sons' lives, I have an obligation to model a type of womanhood that I want them to be comfortable with. I want my boys to grow up thinking that strong, outspoken women are what's normal. Part of being strong is being confident in myself, and that means liking and accepting my physical body for what it is. I don't ever want my sons thinking that it's normal or healthy for women to put themselves down regularly, or to diet constantly, or to hate themselves because of a number on a scale or on a clothing tag. I want them to understand that salad is not a meal and ordering dessert is not a crime. I want them to grow up surrounding themselves with women who are comfortable in their own skin, women who are not so wrapped up in losing a few pounds or counting every calorie that they forget how to enjoy life.


And that brings me to my final, and probably most important, point:


4. Teaching our children healthy lifestyles begins with we the parents.
The most important take away I want my sons to absorb from my parenting is that being healthy does not have to be a killjoy. Moderation does not equal deprivation. Enjoyment of food does not equal gluttony. Exercise can be fun. And especially, healthy does not equal skinny. 


When my son sees me do yoga, he sees his mother doing something she loves that makes her feel good. When he runs around with his father he learns that being active is super awesome fun. 


When I get dressed he does not hear me complain about my body - he hears me complain about the clothes. "This doesn't look right on me," vs "This makes me look fat."


My husband and I do not diet. That word is not part of our home. In 2007 when we wanted to lose weight - because we were both overweight and worried about health problems as we got older - we used portion control, healthy substitutions, and exercise to do it. We never once deprived ourselves of sweets, carbs, or anything else we wanted. We just got smarter about them.


And that is the message we want for our sons: that maintaining a healthy lifestyle doesn't have to be hard, and doesn't have to deprive them of happiness or joy. So that as they grow up and go out there into the world they will do so feeling good about themselves on the inside, no matter what they look like on the outside.






*All stats taken from the National Eating Disorder Association: http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/index.php

Ropa Vieja

Last night I made my first ropa vieja, or Cuban pulled steak hash. I have to say - it came out quite delish. For a blancita such as myself, I do cook up some rather tasty Cuban food if I do say so. (And Husband confirms.) We have so many wonderful cookbooks at home, and as we are a family on a budget and trying to be healthy(ish), I don't often take advantage of all the delicious recipes I have laying around. With that in mind, I pulled out my copy of Mary Urrutia Randelman's "Memories of a Cuban Kitchen," and made some ropa last night. I bought the book years ago, back when my Cuban-American Husband was still just my Cuban-American Boyfriend, in order to impress him with my mad Cuban cooking skills, yo.

My first photo of the ropa was taken with the Hipstamatic app for iPhone, which all my friends have been downloading and posting photos all over Facebook with. I wanted to capture that authentic, old-fashioned Cuban feel, as if this was a ropa made during the Revolution. But Husband said the Hipstamtic just made the food look green and gross. So I took another with the regular camera feature on my iPhone.


Soylent Ropa is people...it's people!!!!


Ropa even Jose Marti would love.