Moxie: Things I am starting to accept (a running list)

Highly Recommended

Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
Reading this book explained a whole lot of things about why so many families I know are struggling financially, even though we don't spend extravagantly. Simultaneously enlightening and nauseating.
Elizabeth Warren: All Your Worth : The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan
If other personal finance books have frustrated you because they assume you have money to invest and you don't even have enough money to buy a large coffee, this is the personal finance book for you. Reading this book showed me that it's not that I waste money on stupid things--it's that our basic expenses are too high to begin with. Reading this book is the end of financial guilt and the beginning of getting out of the hole.
Adele Faber: Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
Lots of great ideas to think about and put into practice about not assigning your kids roles and how to approach fights. Also goes over some of the stuff from the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen book about making kids feel understood. Because, really, that's all anyone wants--to be understood. And kids are people, too.
Anne Lamott: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Just perfect. A beautiful, funny, sad, accurate account of what the first days, weeks, and months with a baby are like. This is exactly what your journal would be, if you could write as well as she does.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Random Family : Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
LeBlanc's writing and pacing makes you want to keep reading despite the tragic story. Think you have an informed opinion about welfare reform and how to strengthen families in this country? Not until you've read this book.
John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
This is the red pill. Don't read it if you want to stay comfortable with the American school system. Gatto goes into why government-owned schools were created and the things they actually teach us.
Ellis Avery: The Smoke Week: September 11-21, 2001
If you have any curiosity about what it was like for New Yorkers during the World Trade Center attacks, this is the book to read. A brilliant, crystalline, spot-on memoir of the week or so after the attacks, this book is an ode to New Yorkers. Realistic, clean, and completely un-maudlin, it's just the story of what it was like for us. This is what should go into a time capsule to represent September 2001.

Things I am starting to accept (a running list)

1. I am probably in NYC for the long haul. And that's OK. The question now is whether to stay in Manhattan, move to Brooklyn, LIC, Astoria, or someplace else.

2. I am eventually going to have to get a dog. I don't love dogs, and really don't want to have to walk one, and already have the cats, but my younger son is so into them that it's just a matter of time at this point.

3. There is not a damn thing I can do about the election on Tuesday. I'm just going to bring my kids along to vote and suck as many teachable moments out of the whole thing as possible, and then bite my nails (and, OK, drink through the election results) until the dust settles and I know whether I can be ecstatic until my guy pisses me off the first time, or utterly heartsick.

November 02, 2008 | Permalink

Comments

I vote BKLYN!!!

Posted by: jenny | November 03, 2008 at 06:39 AM

I don't know how I'm going to get through tomorrow night. I'm scared, Moxie, I'm really scared. But I voted, and I'm driving around my Florida town with my "I voted" sticker stuck on my Obama-Biden bumper sticker.

Maybe I should drive my be-stickered car to the liquor store for some Hypnotiq or other blue beverage to quaff as I stare helplessly at PBS....

Posted by: Summer | November 03, 2008 at 09:19 AM

Hey, Moxie! I have no opinion on boroughs or dogs. But on kids in the voting booth, just be aware that the BIG GREEN VOTE BUTTON is at toddler-eye-level. La Segunda pushed the vote button for me last time. I've decided to leave her AND La Prima home this time, just in case.

A cautionary tale.

Posted by: Sally Big Woods | November 03, 2008 at 09:58 AM

Sally, yikes! Fortunately, in NYC we still have the super-old-school voting machines with that big lever you pull. Ca-chunk! It's very satisfying. Especially for toddlers.

Summer, Hypnotiq! Hahahahaha. Although I've never tried it so I shouldn't laugh, but it just sounds like it should be for a party featuring a DJ, not election results.

Posted by: Moxie | November 03, 2008 at 01:35 PM