Roxy’s Desperate Housewives on Today.com

Rex and I are still wishing people a Happy New Year, but I’d say there aren’t too many more days we can get away with that, and we’d better get our last handful of New Year’s cards out in the mail on Tuesday, along with a Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day greeting for sending them out so late… the ones that slip are the people who have moved and changed their address, or new friends who haven’t been on our mailing list in previous years.

Just to prove to all of you that I’m not the only one who’s a little bit behind, the 4-H Prep New Year’s Party was rescheduled for tonight due to last weekend’s snow, so Rex, London, Maddie and I are off to wish all of our 4-H friends a Happy New Year.

Maddie came home from her weekly gymnastics lesson at Randolph Gymnastics in Randolph, New Jersey, beaming with pride.  “Maddie’s got news!”  her sister, London, called out.  “I’ll tell you all about it at dinner,” Maddie said secretively.

Turns out that after training for a couple of years in Novice I, Maddie is ready to move on to Novice II with her older sister for the next session.  Just when I had started to fear that Maddie had inherited my can’t-do-a-cartwheel gene, she proves me wrong and moves ahead.  Congratulations, Maddie… way to go!

I woke up this morning and realized that I was supposed to be this week’s “Mystery Reader” in London’s second grade class at Mendham Township Elementary School, and that 1) I had neglected to send in any of the daily clues and 2) although I have worked from home on every single Friday for the past five years, on this particular Friday, Rex and I have a very important business meeting in New York City that conflicts with my Mystery Reader slot on Friday afternoon.  At this point, I feel like the worst mom in the world to have let my daughter down.

It’s funny, this morning I was just reading an article in Cookie Magazine about Brooke Shields and how being a mom makes her feel normal, possibly for the first time in her life.  Brooke goes on about how her daughters will always remember how she did things in their classrooms, but they won’t even notice that she was exhausted at the time, so she gets to the school for her commitments on little to no sleep, tired or not.

Because I’m in the midst of planning a spectacular eighth birthday party for London at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), I know she’ll forgive me for the Mystery Reader disappointment.  However, it still stings.

Late Saturday night, January 3rd.  It sure feels like the holidays are winding down, and I’m grateful that our family has had an incredibly relaxing vacation…hanging out at home, doing jigsaw puzzles, crafts and other family projects.  I’ve been working out on the elliptical trainer in our basement, while London and Maddie bang out a rhythm on the new set of bright red drums Santa delivered for their girl band, the Butter Bites.  Rex and I are ready to launch in to the New Year 2009 in earnest with a focus on our investment banking practice, and London and Maddie are ready to get back to school.  I ran into a post about Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” over on Whatever Ebay , with a link to a free PDF of the book.  An on again, off again rich boyfriend (known as Johnny Moneybags on my Roxiticus Desperate Housewives blog) gave me the book back in 1991 and it has changed my life.

Over on my Roxiticus Desperate Housewives blog, I just posted an old photo of Maddie at Yankee Stadium in 2002.  She was about 3 months old and just cute as a button.  Tonight, almost six years later, Maddie and her sister, London, were cuddled up in my bed for bedtime stories.  I know it’s a cliche, but I was truly taken aback by how time flies and things change.  When our family lived in Manhattan’s West Village, we made it to at least two and sometimes as many as eight Yankee games each season, with the little ones in tow.  Then we moved out to the Roxiticus Valley (Mendham, New Jersey) and our priorities have changed.  This year (well, last year now that we’re 2 days into 2009), the Yankees played their last game at Yankee Stadium, and we didn’t make it to a single game.  I guess it started to feel like more of a hassle to trek out to the Bronx for a ballgame when we could be playing in our backyard instead.  Maybe we’ll get back to it once the girls are a few years older, playing softball in the backyard and imagining themselves pitching a no hitter for the Yankees in the World Series.  Or maybe that was just their mom’s childhood dream.