Between my mother and father, there are 6 marriages and 5 divorces.  Longevity in the household simply isn’t something I’m familiar with.  I’ve personally stood at three weddings, and wiped the tears from my parent’s eyes during 3 divorces.  Successful marriage just  isn’t something I’m accustomed to.

Justin’s parents have been married for thirty years.  When I first married my husband, they offered us several morsels of wisdom;  One of which is seared into my mind because of how ludicrous it sounded.  “You have to learn how to fight with eachother” they said.  Absurd.  Happily married couples don’t fight. They argue.  I will not be fighting with Justin. The end.

Silly, naive little me.

They were absolutely right.

My style has changed over the years.  Initially I would shout for a minute and then lock myself into my bedroom and cry.  We are fighting! My marriage is doomed.

Over the years, I’ve gotten tougher.  I’m very emotional, sensitive and frequently hormonal despite the tough New Yorker exterior I front.  When it gets ugly, I fight with all of my heart because I’m not fighting for just me any longer, I’m fighting for us.  I want him to understand where I’m coming from so that we can communicate better.  You know, easy peasy, right?  Yell it into his brain and we will communicate better! It’s like science!

Somewhere deep inside, my innate instinct is to bark and holler  loudly and throw things.  I’m not proud of this, but it is what it is when it gets really bad.  I turn into Jenny from the Block, cocking my head and throwing my arms in the air and even speaking in a Bronx accent. It’s quite possible my alter ego-I have no explanation for it.  She’s a rebel with a cause.

My husband, on the other hand, could win at Boiling Point every single time.  He keeps his cool while managing to piss me off with every fiber of my being.  For the first half of the fight, he’ll stand with his arms crossed laughing like a little girl.  It’s completely infuriating.  He says it’s a nervous habit.  When he’s reached his limit- sometimes it takes longer than others-he finds the most hurful, hateful possible words that he can at me. The outcome is always the same.  I end up crying in my bedroom.

We try not to fight in front of the kids.  We live in a very small, two bedroom apartment so that is nearly impossible, as hard as we try. I do believe that arguments are normal and natural and something that the kids should be exposed to, to a certain point.  Marriage is hard and wonderful, beautiful, and totally insane.  I don’t want them growing up to believe that marriage is this  fairy tale that they should expect for their own marriages and personal lives.  The yelling and throwing they could do without, though, and for the most part, as infrequently as it happens they are typically in their room, distracted.  I won’t fool myself into believing that they don’t know what is going on though.  I have my own, very distinct memories from when I was little-children are far more perceptive than anyone gives them credit for.

All we can do is learn and grow and change our behavior.  My husband and I have been together 6 years, 5 of them married, 4 1/2 of those years with babies, 3 of those years without a solid income with Justin being in graduate school.  It hasn’t been a non-stop party, but it’s been incredible.

I have all of the faith in my heart that my own marriage will withstand the peaks and valleys that are abound in most parent unions.  I’m slowly learning what it takes to be a respectful, supportive, loving partner in every situation-even the ones that I disagree with wholeheartedly.  As far as I know, this is a part of being dedicated to one person-the love of my life-for the sake of my family, my children, my husband, and myself.

None of us are perfect, but the best we can do when the the going gets tough is to keep going.  Every single time we argue or fight, something good comes from it.  We understand each other a little more.  I just need to figure out what to do with that pest, Jenny from the Block.

This is one topic that my husband and I argue about every single time it comes up.

My hair is high maintenance, and this is one thing that I am just not willing to compromise on.  I can’t really explain it in words that most men will understand, but a good haircut/style is the the ultimate cure-all.  Ladies, I know you get it.

I’ve had the same hairdresser for the past 12 years. Well, at least until we moved to NYC and I’ve been on the hunt for a new hair guru.  That’s 12 years of splurging close to 4 hours of my day and $300+ out of my pocket for the perfect ‘do.  I’m not one that spends that money frivilously, but I can tell you that I don’t bat an eyelash when it comes to my hair.

My husband spends 20 minutes and ten bucks at our local barber, if he isn’t using the Flowbee at home.

So, explaining the necessity of having my hair done properly- the way I want it done- is a never ending battle. He simply doesn’t understand.

Dear husbands of the world: Hair is not just a style. It’s a feeling, a sense of self, a religion.  I’ve tried to compromise and head over to Supercuts or the local $20 salon.  I was beyond miserable for the week until I spent more money to have that monstrosity repaired.  Lesson learned.  Do it right the first time, and no one gets hurt  (I can tell you that Justin was very, very aware of how unhappy I was with my messed up mop on top).

I, myself, have succumbed to the gods and rules of hair.  I resisted for a while, but the truth is if you find the right stylist, colorist, and products, it will change you. I wish that I was blessed to wake up with the mane of Kyle Richards every single morning, but that simply isn’t the case.  Not to mention- I’m sure she spends close to double what I spend to keep herself looking like a Pantene commercial.

Hair is deceiving in that way.  The more money that is spent, the more natural and effortless it looks.  That is the great issue here because men are very visual.  The gorgeous girl in apartment 7F with the perfectly highlighted, flowing curls that looks like she rolled out of bed? She’s also spending a fortune to look that way, trust me.

Even as I type this, my hair is so dreadfully overdue that I’m fearful of the mirror and my task ahead of making it look decent enough to leave the house.

If only it were so simple to throw in a glob of hair gel and run to work.  At least we have cool names for our hair styles like The Rachel and The Ombre.

Catch me on Tuesday when I’ll be sporting my very own version of the Ombre.

This topic fascinates me.

I’m lucky in this respect to have a husband that is super type A, and a clean freak to boot.  Things everywhere around the house need to be “clean” before he can do anything productive.  Scratch that. Anything at all.

Here’s the interesting part: Clean to him is vastly different than what clean means to me.

During the week, typically I’ll wake up, feed the kids breakfast, pack lunches, get the stroller ready to go and take them to school.

When Justin wakes up, the first thing he does is finish whatever dishes there are left in the sink from the night before. Awesome, right? He’ll remind me that he did just that 3, maybe 4 times that day.

He’ll go off to school for hours upon hours while I’m at home or preschool with the kids, and we split the night time duties down the middle for the most part during the week. Either I have events to go to or he is at school until after the kids are asleep.  Even Steven.  Until he proceeds to remind me that he did just that 3, maybe 4 times a day during the week.

When he comes home from school, the first thing Justin does is vacuum the apartment.  This leaves me feeling inadequate and useless because of all the things I did that day, the first thing he notices is the floors aren’t clean. SUPER.  Never mind the 6 loads of dishes I’ve cleaned, 7 dirty diapers I’ve changed, or 1,763,987 messes I’ve cleaned up All. Day. Long. But I keep that to myself.

When it comes time to clean the apartment, I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing every floor in the place.  I’m slimy, stinky and dirty from the Pledge that I’ve slathered all over our wood surfaces, Windex that I’ve wiped grime and finger prints with, and Clorox from the disgusting floors and toilet in the bathroom.  Yet, I keep it to myself.

He does the pickup.  Toys, cat paraphernalia, candy wrappers at the desk from my midnight working  munchies, loose ends that weren’t exactly top on my priority list.  And he’ll proceed to remind me 3, maybe 4 times a day that he did just that.

My excuse? You can only pick so many things up during the day over and over and over before you eventually just throw in the towel and focus on feeding and bathing.

Let’s be entirely honest here.  I don’t CLEAN as often as I probably should, but the best way to get me to do it is piss me off.   I, as well as Josh’s wife, go into frantic Rosie the Robot mode when I’m angry.  Pick a fight with me, and I’ll have the place sparkling in an hour flat.  Let me remind you, however, that Justin has spent much of his time picking up the place. It’s only my share of the duties, right?

Wrong.

This is where the lines between SAHM and WAHM are distinctly blurred. It is my job to clean, feed and do the majority of the duties around the house and with the children.  It is also my job, however, to run two websites while contributing to four others and maintain some semblance of a professional woman outside of the home.  Which means I need to strive to embody Michelle Obama while feeling like Peg Bundy.

It’s an interesting divide, this husband and wife team.  I’m as curious as Josh how you make it work in your home.

My husband says I should have signed a marriage contract with my iPhone, or I should have at least have put it in ours.

It’s true.  I sleep with my phone, quite literally, under my pillow.  I’m not proud of this.

In the last year and a half, my relationship with social media has gotten to a near Single White Female status.  I stalk the heck out of Twitter, Facebook and my 3 email accounts  from whatever internet I can get my sticky little hands on.

My poor husband could only hope for as much.

His schedule is pretty rigorous as a second year dental student.  If he isn’t at school, he’s studying at home whenever he can fit in an hour around the kids’ waking time. So in the meantime, I’ve built a habit of blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, and FourSquaring.

I’m with the kids all day, every day, and make sure to limit my phone use when they aren’t napping to photo taking and occasionally uploading. When I finally get some time to myself after the kids go down, I’m pretty much glued to the internet.  It’s a habit that I’m trying to wean myself off of because it isn’t good for my marriage, plain and simple  (I don’t use it much during meal times, or date nights, or family outings).

I barely actually use the phone to talk on any more.  I cannot stand talking on the phone; This is either a casualty of PDA’s or a benefit.  My family and friends will argue the former, no doubt.  It’s just so uncomfortable to try to converse while either outdoors dodging sirens and traffic noises, or indoors amongst screams and shrieks of two small children.

It’s almost as though social media has virtually eradicated actual human interaction.  We mostly Google Chat, Skype, email and text each other, and while there are many benefits, there’s something to be said for actual live, person to person interaction.

My kids have started to pick up on my relationship with my phone, unfortunatley.  It’s usually in their face taking photos, but they definitley know when I’m using it.  Again, not proud of this.

The other night at dinner they were being particularly silly, so I took out my iPhone to video a bit. Zoe threatens to eat, throw up and burp on my phone.

IMG_7862

sigh.

It’s true that I’ve developed an inappropriate relationship with social media, specifically my PDA. I’d like to say that it hasn’t interfered with my marriage, but I would probably be lying.  Hypocritically, if my husband was the one with the inappropriate relationship, you can be sure that his iPhone would have met it’s demise ten stories below.

This is my job now though, right?

Do they have 12 step programs for social media addiction?

Spring is peeking in Madison Square

It’s still pretty cold here in New York City.  We’ve been painfully teased with 70 degree weather, and abruptly snow and sleet again.  It is getting to the point where the weather is nearly intolerable… and I confess that I’ve been daydreaming of life back in California.  If you look closely though, green buds can be seen peeking out of the tips of barron trees, daffodils are creeping out of the dry, cold dirt, and the air has the sense of spring amidst the rest of the characteristic city scents.

Weekend Walk to Petco

We are out and about as normal, riding our scooters all around this lovely concrete jungle.  The scenes that once would bother and intimidate me now reflect incredible beauty.  Don’t you love the colors and smiles amidst the trash and decay? City beauty at it’s finest.

We’re defying the cold and grumpy snarls of the 30 degree gusts of wind and taking our new rides out for a spin.  It’s incredible to watch my children on actual bikes.  I remember my first time on a two wheeler vividly.  It was just as joyful as you can see on the faces of my babies.

Riding the bike on his own

A little help from Daddy

So, for now, we’re bundling up and behaving like the beams of the sun are strong enough to penetrate the cold gusts.

I might even see a picnic in Central Park in our very near future.

Fake it ’till you make it, right East Coasters?

Before I had children, I used to manage a high end women’s clothing boutique. I obsessed over the latest trends, consulted the buyer, and even walked in a few of our fashion shows. Those things were fun, but my favorite part of this job was the clientele. I loved being a personal stylist to our regular clients, and assisting the various princesses that came into the boutique with bottomless purses and flawless physiques.

Our best client was a stripper. She also happened to be the mother of an acquaintance of mine, and I never passed judgment. She was gorgeous, funny and seemed genuinely honest. She would come into the store with wads of cash stuffed in crisp envelopes neatly tucked into her Louie Vuitton handbag, and had no problem flaunting it.

One afternoon, she came into the store completely bandaged up. She was wearing what looked to be a full body Ace bandage under a flowing silk maxi dress. A week or so before, she had 4 or 5 areas of her body liposuctioned, and the mummy-like bandage was holding her in place until it recovered. This woman was nearly 40 at the time, had two children and a litany of procedures done (use your imagination). She looked to me to be only about 30 years old.

Part of me was horrified at the entire idea of full body bandages, needles, injections, and enhancements. The larger part of me, however, was curious. After all, I worked and lived in an area full of rich, gorgeous people; This was not uncommon in any respect. Even still, I was pretty confident that I would never entertain the idea of getting plastic surgery.

That was until after I had two children.

My body is entirely different. Where I used to be narrow, I am wide. Where I once possessed glowing porcelain skin now is weathered by the effects of stress and age. I see fine lines creeping up and never leaving, I sag where I once perked. Looking in the mirror I see dull rather than shine.

My feelings about plastic surgery have changed.

Last week, I received a pitch from a medical spa here in NYC. They offered me a free procedure in exchange for a review on my personal blog. Botox or lip injections. At first I thought it was hilarious… and then I realized it was awesome. I tweeted my good fortune and received a litany of mixed reactions. I also mentioned how disapproving my husband is to the idea. He cannot support any plastic surgery unless it’s a boob job. Fascinating, truly. Boggles the mind..

I just want a little smoothing out, a little firming up. I feel better than I have ever felt in my life, and I am disappointed that what I see in the mirror is not reflecting that. I would trade in my looks any day for my beautiful children, but I feel as though it isn’t necessary. I always said that I would embrace my grey hair and wrinkles (how gorgeous is Jaime Lee Curtis?), but I’m just not ready to in my early 30′s.

So what, pray tell, is so wrong with wanting a little help? I’m not talking about full body lipo or a face replacement or even breast augmentation. I just want an eensy weensy, semi-permanent Jane Jetson revamp. For me.

I’m not changing my identity, I’m simply considering going in for a little tune up.

My first experience with social media was a joke. Literally.

I was 20 years old, working in a law firm, and one of my co-workers cornered me in her office to show me an associate attorney’s MySpace page. We were giggling and pointing like the fools we were, and pretty soon we had found a treasure trove of profiles. I had a problem, though. I had to create my own page in order to spy properly. No way was I going to sell out and create an honest portrait of myself on the internet. I had never heard of anything so incredibly hokey in my life.

So, I created a fake MySpace profile. I uploaded a generic photo, and my tagline quote was something of sheer genius, if I do say so myself: “Taut as a snare drum”. Referring to… my rear end? Who knows what I was thinking, but I thought I was the wittiest one in the entire pathetic internet. My profile was less than mind-blowing, as I described myself as though I was Paris Hilton. This was right around the time that her sex tape was “leaked”, so her persona was at its highest peak of douchedom. So, I perched myself and my perfect little jerk mask proudly behind the keyboard and watched as the rest of the world embraced social media. I was no longer a cool kid. Maybe, just maybe there was something to this trendy new forum.

It wasn’t long before I began finding my friends on MySpace. I eventually removed my fake persona and uploaded a real photo of myself. I learned quickly about “html” and spent far too many hours perfecting my atari-esque page. I even met a future boyfriend via this new online forum. Eventually Facebook became the new cool and MySpace was obsolete, at least in my world.

Today I am knee-deep in the internet sensation that is Social Media. I love it like it’s my new forever. Incredibly enough, the space that I once thought was only for the friendless has become the space where I’ve met countless compatriots, many of which I have never met personally but consider very dear. I turn to Twitter in some of my most helpless moments: Sitting alone in the emergency room with my babies, lost and stranded somewhere in Manhattan, and just yesterday watching as our 3 month old kitten-whom we had less than 12 hours-vomited profusely. My twitter army has literally salvaged me from the depths of self-doubt and reassured my instinctive decisions. I no longer feel as though I am alone as I navigate uncharted territory as a mother, a wife, and a new resident in a big crazy city.

Social media has, for me, defined the sense of the word community.

Lesson learned.

The idea for this site was borne from a completely random and organic experience that I shared with Josh on a press trip.  Through my marriage and experience in social media over the last year, I’ve often wondered how the male counterpart to “mommy bloggers” compares.

We started talking about conversations that we had on Twitter and the way our spouses felt about us being glued to our mobile devices constantly.  It’s fascinating to me the way that the two worlds differ-yet are very much the same- though it is equally as such comparing a male to a female. We simply work differently.  I can tell you that I would probably have a different feeling about all of it if my husband was the one actively involved in social media, and not me.

I, however, couldn’t tell you exactly why. This project will be my journey into understanding how the other half lives, without risking a night in the dog house for it.

As the process took root, I began to get really excited. I cannot wait to banter with Josh about everything from important issues to the way we handle our laundry. He is interested in immersing his children with technology, while I’m trying to teach mine to plant an indoor garden. His week consists of leaving his home to work a full time job.  I am a stay at home mother while trying to balance several different projects that I like to call “work”.  Josh lives on the beach in California with his wife and two toddlers, I live in Manhattan with my husband, two toddlers, and now a kitten. He is a “dad blogger” and I am a “mommy blogger”.

We literally live parallel lives, hence the title, “Two Sides, One Story”.

I’m envisioning this site to be the blogger’s equivalent to Regis & Kelly.  I’m sure there’ll be some growing pains initially, but I’m confident and excited about this new adventure, and I truly believe that we are bringing something totally new and fun to this community.  We have big plans for this new space, including but certainly not limited to a weekly internet radio show, helpful product reviews and even some events.

Thank you for taking the time to check us out! I hope you are as interested and excited as we are.

Please Come Back on Monday, March 28th for the official launch of our new site! Please also join us on Twitter and Facebook!

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