Work brings Phil to New York for the next two weeks. He left yesterday, so today was day one as single mom. I’m happy to report that I avoided both wine and drugs—aside from the hormones I’m taking that make me want to yank people to the ground and kick them in the labia. It’s actually, and I’ve felt this before, liberating. I feel slightly guilty for having these giddy feelings, enjoying so much not having to compromise. I feel free. I don’t think this is how I’m supposed to feel, relieved. That can’t be good. But it feels like pudding time.

First thing I did when Phil left was sat the beans down for a chat about rules. With Papa gone for two weeks, things are going to change. Mama has her own way of doing things, and one of those things involves “no TV.” I was wholly surprised that I was met with no resistance. I’ve placed all the remotes in a high cupboard and it’s understood that we as a family won’t be watching television. They in no way feel it’s a punishment. In fact, I think they’re excited. Instead of their nightly “just one quick show?” it’s become “you mean I get to choose whichever book I want, no matter how long it is for a bedtime story?” And I love it. I feel like I’m nourishing their souls. It just feels right. It’s night two, mind you. I might want to drop-kick them on night thirteen.

After breakfast, I scrubbed floors and cleaned toilets. Very chic. Wiped noses, packed lunches, wiped an ass, washed hands. Did a French braid twice. Other accomplishments today: I researched kids lunches because they need more variety. Unsuccessfully shopped for jicama (really Whole Foods? Get it together). Fruit skewers. Bento buddies. Laptop lunchboxes. I’m giving Lucas an ice cream cone with a scoop of peanut butter, swirled with fresh sliced strawberries. He asks for peanut butter on everything; he’d eat it off a napkin. Tomorrow, they’ve chosen “Breakfast for lunch,” so we packed their lunches together. Granola, Greek yogurt, strawberries, waffles and the faintest trace of syrup, just enough for them to think they have a “side” of maple syrup instead of what it is: a single lick. Tomorrow night’s breakfast? Omelets and bacon. Dinner? Spaghetti tacos. Also up tomorrow: L&A begin gymnastics classes at Twisters after school. We’re all really looking forward to it. The place is truly kid (and parent, given their weekend drop-off hours) paradise.

I reorganized the fridge. It might not sound like a thrill ride, but I can tell you this much: it had me yodeling. Well, no. But I was likely singing show tunes as I rearranged, not needing to justify why I hauled all the fruits out of their bin, so they could be in plain sight for me (because I always forget shit is in there). With everything in it’s Stephanie-appointed place, I feel like I can breathe. Order, odd bits tucked away. It feels peaceful, and here’s this word again, freeing. No cluttered night table (I moved all of Phil’s stuff off his bedside table, so I don’t need to look at stacks of mail and work papers). It feels restful.

Without him here, I realize that I sometimes take Ambien because I resent always being the last person to fall asleep. What a strange thing to realize about yourself. I get irritated that he can fall asleep so easily, and that I toss and turn, with a day running through my head, thoughts pinging. And maybe I just want to avoid the TV/computer/iPad existence we’ve co-created. There was a time in my life when slipping into bed meant music and talking and sweetness, but maybe that’s just the beginning of things. Because all relationships start that way. Then eventually you’ve already heard their stories and fears and thoughts, or you don’t want to ask about them because they involve you and why they’re frustrated. This sounds sad, feels mean, feeling this. But without Phil here, bedtime feels delicious. I can slip under the covers, burn a candle and read a book. No fcuking sitcoms or channel surfing or basketball game in the background. If I’d like, and I do, I can fall asleep, as I used to do so long ago, to one of my favorite chick films, the ones I watch over and again, to the point where I don’t need to look up to know what’s happening on the screen. I’ve memorized every gesture and eyebrow. And I hope he’s enjoying not having to compromise, that he’s relishing his “Phil only” time.

I composed a kale, swiss chard, white bean chicken chili with curls of Parmesan. And Abigail devoured it without a single complaint of too many greens. Lucas didn’t want dinner−sweet boy has a cold, and he opted for bed, early. He is such a love, just sugar. After reading him his choice of bedtime story—and he did manage to find the longest book we own—he slipped beneath his covers and sighed. Abigail crouched beside him and pet his head before giving him a good night kiss. Then I sighed. Then Lucas said, “Your turn Mama because I could use more kisses.” Swoon.

Then I assembled the trash, yanking up garbage bags, at the ready for tomorrow’s AM collection. And then, quite catastrophically, the garbage disposal crapped out on me, stuffed and swampy, with floating strawberry greens and general nastiness. So I phoned Phil to complain, which no doubt made him sigh, if only to feel needed or useful from even far away. Though, he might say “There’s always something; why must you involve me? Can’t you just take care of it?” Or his favorite line, “Why when I have to do something, I do it, but when you have to do something, Stephanie and Phil have to do it?”  But he said none of these things. He texted me the handyman’s contact information, and that was that. Just shows that my “intuitive knowing”—those back and forth conversations I play at in my head—have to add to the shackled dynamic, the one I feel (mostly) free of when I’m alone. We all play a part, even when we pull double duty and play both of them.

FROM A READER: “It sounds like your hormones are definitely up the wop at the moment. However, FSH levels are not reliable as they can vary. A better indicator of fertility these days is the AMH (Anti-Mullerian Hormone)test.Look that up. Maybe you could get that done. But I would be worried about high estrogen levels – due to the association with breast cancer and would try to lower it if I could. Maybe you could look into ways of balancing hormones naturally etc – i.e evening primrose, agnus castus etc. Try not to have any alcohol for a while or too much caffeine.”

This comment NEARLY gave me hives. I realize that wasn’t your intent, of course, but you’ve just focused my attention to yet another concern. First I had to google “up the wop,” fearing it was a technical medical slang. I still don’t know what it means, but I figure it’s polite for “you’re fcuked.” So then I look up “how to lower estrogen levels,” because I won’t be affronted by a list of possible diseases I likely have (the only result of medical searches), and in only two days time since my appointment, I feel like my life is going to become unrecognizable… cutting out dairy (I can’t imagine. I live off Greek yogurt for its protein. Adore frozen yogurt as a special treat. I could learn to live without meat, I could, but to live without meat *and* sugar *and* cheese? All three? To live a life of chicken and almond milk and no soy? THAT calls for Drama and whining. I just can’t imagine. Mostly the sugar thing, especially when asked to limit my fruit intake. Limiting anything, actually, makes me lunge for it immediately. Whereas, if you tell me I can have all that I want of something, there will undoubtedly be an initial spike (read: binge), but then there’s a leveling. But if you get all “off limits” on me, I’ll climb barbed wire to milk a cow, then have one.

I realize people have health scares for a reason, to redirect them, to wake them up, rattle them into important. I have been unable to sleep. Now *need* to take Ambien. Thankfully I’ve been “off” caffeine for a year now, so that’s not an issue. And I don’t drink all that regularly, a few times a week, a glass or so, sometimes none. But now? With all this news of HIGH estrogen levels and menopausal range hormone levels, never even mind this “common potato” PCOS (which is likely the least of it), all I want to do is have a glass of wine or five to get myself to sleep. I am very disturbed.

I realize, of course!, that this isn’t anything as close to as serious as Phil’s heart issues or what Lucas has dealt with, given his brain surgery. Of course. But it’s the very first time in my life where my mortality is even something that’s bubbled to the top. I realize this happens, and that I’m lucky not to have worried about my health up until this point, at thirty-six, but it is alarming to me. The change of it all, the changes that have to happen with diet and exercise (consistent) were always a luxury, a vanity, never a necessity. And it does, it scares the shit out of me. Though not literally because I haven’t been able to stop eating since receiving this phone call from my doctor. I’ll leave that comment alone, actually.

All that aired, I’d still rather have well-meaning concern than be in it alone, so thank you. All of you. And if you know of any friends in Florida with a “friend” visiting, I can take all the bleeding friends I can get. A girl can only hope to have such a profound influence on a friend, right? Let’s right this wrong together.

Oh, and in case my tone is all over the place, then I’ve done my job. Because *I* am all over the place, high and low, serious, scoffing, this is nothing relax, this is something, what are you waiting for? I’m here there and everywhere.

I’m also bored by The Bachelor this season. And, I miss Lost.

I went to the gynecologist yesterday for an annual exam. I’m 36 years old. I know my period has been fucked up for over a year now, coming infrequently. I assumed it was because of the weight loss and stress of moving. The nurse asked me what I used for birth control, and I answered honestly. “Marriage.” I thought it sounded better than, “abstinence.”

Yesterday they took blood and also did an ultrasound of my ovaries. The doctor believed I had poly-cystic ovaries (my whole life, I’ve never heard this) which results in fewer periods, but a technician looked at my ovaries with a giant wand up the crotch and saw two cysts on one ovary and one cyst on the other, all smaller than 1-inch. With poly-cystic, he said, people have like six to eight cysts. He said he thought I was ovulating right now, consistent with my silky thin discharge (normal), and TMI, I know. He said I should take Provera for 10 days to bring on a period, and then he wants to start me on birth control, to regulate my period, so it comes more often than THREE times a year (which is how often I had it last year).

This morning, 8:27am, I get a message from him.

“Hi, Stephanie, this is Dr. Silfen. I got the results of your blood work. You’re not pregnant, as we expected. Your thyroid is normal, your prolactin level is normal. You’re estrogen level is high. And your FSH is in the menopausal range, which does not make sense. Your LH is very high, consistent to what I spoke about yesterday, PCO, poly-cystic ovaries, so what I’m going to recommend is that you take the Provera for ten days. I think you’re going to get a period, but if you don’t get a period, give me a call and we’ll decide what to do. But first let’s just take the medication and go we’ll go from there. Bye.”

So, now, I’m my father’s daughter. A wreck. I walk around the grocery store looking at people. Fat, thin, old. People buying ingredients, fondling fruit, living their lives. I feel removed from it, from the everyday, seeing daily events as motions. Medical news can shift things in your life, especially your perspective. Literally.

Lord love a duck! Here’s hoping that I soon, very soon, see spot run. Period.

I‘m feeling anti-social lately, and I think it might have to do with holiday “nesting.” While there’s no baby on the way (I’m eating as if there were), I still feel a strong pull to home, to snuggle with my sugarplums, making snowflakes and melting our own chocolate for cocoa. Usually, I’d take a bottle of wine with friends over glitter and craft glue—though ideally, who am I kidding, they’d be two in the same. But, here I am searching for “experience gifts for kids” instead of pulling clothes for a night out.

Tonight I’ve RSVP’d “yes,” to a “New to Boca” dinner, but I feel like staying home instead. Or, like stealing away to the movies. I think socializing, especially when jeans are involved, can take too much effort. Putting on makeup, particularly now, feels like a chore. I’m almost always happy that I go, and I’ve grown quite fond of some of the women individually, so I’m not sure what my problem is.

Maybe it’s this particular group of women. I never feel like I truly connect on these girl nights, probably because there are too many of us, too many different conversations at the table, dipping in and out. Yet the other night, with a different set of six women in pajamas, we had the best chemistry, each of us confiding and growing closer. I guess the difference is that these “New to Boca” nights feel like gloss. There’s no real texture, and we’re in a setting that doesn’t cultivate intimacy. I’m learning that I value intimacy and wisdom over “fun.” And I’m a fun fcuking person. Though, I imagine everyone thinks they’re fun. Maybe I’m no fun at all. I really don’t give five shits.

Pirate’s Cove, Patch Reef Park, Boca Raton, FL

What I do care about, though, are experiences, making new memories. And you don’t go about making new memories by staying home on the computer. You say yes, even if you’re tired and don’t feel like getting dressed. You say yes because anything can happen. It’s why this holiday season, most of all, I want to give our children gifts of experience, for them to unwrap a box full of pirate costumes, with a wooden plank inviting them to a special Family Pirate Picnic at Pirate’s Cove Park (just a public park near our home with a pirate ship playground). It costs nothing but it means everything. I’m on the hunt for more treasures, for under the tree and otherwise.

This morning I was invited to Lucas’s school for “Torah Time,” an intimate meeting with rabbis, where together with our children, we learn the significance of the Torah. At one point, the parents and caregivers of nineteen children were welcomed onto the bima (the stage/platform), and forming a semicircle, facing the Ark (basically a cupboard for the Torah scrolls), we each had a chance to hold the Torah. We were asked to introduce ourselves to the group, to share if we’d ever held a Torah, if so when, and to talk about how it feels to hold it.

I didn’t want to be there. That is, yesterday, upon learning that this event was taking place, I replied to Lucas’s teacher that we weren’t religious people and that I wasn’t exactly sure what this event even was, aside from a push into religious schooling. So, I met with her yesterday, and she encouraged me to come, explaining that Lucas could, if we wanted, spend time in another preK classroom, or he could join us. “It’s really a parent child experience.”

Listening to the other parents share their stories, however short, felt like an opportunity that doesn’t happen enough as adults. That opportunity to watch people open up, even if it’s in a small way, to talk about their childhoods, to think back, to see body language open, to watch a room warm up. I love that everyone has a story, that a nanny with broken English, many parents raised Catholic, converted Jews, girls given the choice to Bat Mitzvah in the face of brothers who were all required, all opened to the experience.

Most remarkable to me was a moment when a rabbi talked about needing to remember how sacred the Torah is. She wasn’t speaking at us, but was sharing herself, her own need as someone who handles the Torah as often as she does, to remind herself of the history, the hands—and lives—in history who’ve touched these same scrolls before her. Just then, as she mouthed the words, I felt myself nodding. What a wonderful reminder, to hear from people who’ve maybe never held one, to listen to them tell you that holding a Torah feels like a hug, a child, a comfort, a part of something bigger.

In that moment, I thought of my writing. I’ve been circling this idea for the past two weeks, that since fourth grade I knew I wanted to be a writer, to spend the rest of my life “doing just this,” and then “it happened,” I was published, and that strong longing to be validated as a writer, that hunger to prove something, that eagerness to write, it stopped—just as a film ends the moment the central question is answered (Who will she choose, the good boy or the bad boy?). The hunger abated but the instinct to write, that natural reaction, is still there.

I know it because the other night, as I shared a cozy night among new friends, women sharing their stories of heartache, marital strife, and ex-wife woes, I kept thinking, “This would make a great premise,” or “I love your meet cute! I’m totally stealing that.” I wasn’t putting pressure on myself; it’s just my instinct, what I’m naturally drawn to do. That next morning, I awoke with a flood of ideas, beginnings of something.

And then today, as I heard the rabbi speak of that inclination to be desensitized, to take things for granted, it just clicked. That’s what I’ve been doing with my talent. I haven’t been valuing it, haven’t nurtured it, respected it. I believed that maybe there was something else I should be doing. And maybe that’s true. Nothing is keeping me from doing whatever it is I’m drawn to do, but I’ve been keeping me from fully valuing and appreciating my innate talents. I’ve taken my own strengths for granted.

I’m blessed today for having paid attention to my surroundings, for grabbing this meaning from a semicircle of preschool parents. And I’m sharing it with you to bring it top of mind for you, that you were born with distinct strengths, and it’s your responsibility to continue to discover and develop them. Maybe it will even help if you “play” along… what’s one strength you remember having as a child?

Chocolate caramel tart with sea salt; it’s what I was going for. A new friend—mind you all my friends in Florida are “new,” though all aren’t “friends,” but we’ll scratch that surface later—invited me to a new tradition at her home: It’s A Wonderful Life Night. Her movie theater room will soon be flooded with sweet friends, salty confections, and booze. She’s invited us for a cozy showing of the holiday classic, with only one mandate: the dress code, much to her husband’s chagrin, is PJ’s, the fuzzy kind, not the “Hopeful Ho” variety.

After shopping for fuzzy pajamas—because no, I didn’t own any—I decided to confront my stack of cookbooks, and leafed my way to the Chocolate Caramel Tart with Sea Salt from The Perfect Finish: Special Desserts for Every Occasion because I could make babies with salt. In truth, I was deciding between this and the Walnut Layer Cake with Apple-Caramel Filling and Calvados Cream Cheese Frosting (I know, right? The best recipes in this book!). Then my mother offered to drop off some meyer lemons from my aunt’s tree, and I considered making my all-star all-time favorite lemon cake (email me for the recipe, if you’re a tart freak). Ultimately, I chose the chocolate caramel tart with sea salt because I judge books by their covers. That, and I left my spring-form pan (needed for the other two recipes) in Texas.

While contemplating how I’ll work Zuzu’s petals onto the dessert plate, I’m here to tell you this. If you over-whip a fragile homemade mayonnaise, it breaks into pools of oil and water, and yolk by yolk, you must coax it back to health (relative health; it is mayo). Overworked mascarpone mixed with heavy cream meant to construct a creamy tiramisu can instead create a curdled dump, rescued only by patience and another container of mascarpone.You can’t unscramble an egg, and there’s no, I realized tonight, rescuing bitter caramel. It’s good for flan, but it doesn’t suit much else.

Friendship can work the same way. You can see it progressing, thickening in a pot, then without explanation, like an overworked emulsion or an unattended sauce, it can turn into something unrecognizable.

I have been blown away by the high school crisis of friendship in Boca Raton. It takes more real estate than a single post to cover the damages. It takes a book, or at least a chapter or five. Chapters I’m now writing, or, more pointedly, chapters they’re writing for me. Because you can’t make this up any more than you can turn shit into shine-ola.

While we’re on the bitter, my burnt caramel has been painted onto buttered crusts, each an individual tart. Tomorrow I plan to flood each tart with an eggnog custard that makes flan faint and brûlée boil. Island rum whipped cream. Because all in all, life really is wonderful. Even the mess of it, the Potters and burnt pots, it’s really nothing in the face of family, in the face of friends who come as they are, and who act as they appear, jammies and all.