Downtown Abbey

Imagine our surprise when we were watching The New Normal last week and one of the characters referred to it as"Downtown Abbey." That's what we call it! Has Ryan Murphy been spying on us?

Anyway, so now that everyone knows that Matthew and Sybil have joined the choir eternal (you didn't know?  Sorry! Spoiler Alert!), I figured I might as well delve a little into the Masterpiece Theater sensation, Downton Abbey.

When it first aired in the US, a couple of years ago, The Working Dad and I were all a'twitter. It was right up our street: Edwardian British costume drama. And the fact that it was written and produced by Julian Fellowes -- author of perhaps my favorite movie ever, Gosford Park -- was even more reason to tune in. And Maggie Smith! Professor McGonagall has never looked better.

So, of course we did tune in, and it did not immediately disappoint. It starts with the loss of the last male heir to Lord Grantham, squire of Downton, on the Titanic. Oh dear!

But in those days of entailed estates, it was a serious matter. So, here, Lord Grantham found himself with a distant cousin, a lawyer, son of a doctor, as his next male relative. A major part of the storyline deals with the ersatz romance of Mary, the Earl's eldest daughter, and Matthew, the new heir. (And I should say at the outset that this pairing has never captivated me, nor have I found it believable. Mary is a cold fish and Matthew should have gone for Lady Edith instead and left the haughty Mary a spinster.)

Still, there were things to keep my interest: the Bates/Anna romance was sweet (if not somewhat weird and uncomfortable), and Lady Sybil's political interests and her kindness to Gwen the housemaid who wanted to be a secretary are stand-outs for me.  Also, Thomas and O'Brien's machinations were classic moustache twirling soapy fodder. Somewhere in there, we learn that Thomas is gay and has had a dalliance with one of Mary's potential suitors. Oh and Mrs. Patmore's cataract surgery.....

But then: Oh, Julian, you nearly lost me!  Mr. Pamuk and Mary.

Really? We were really supposed to believe that such a vibrant, randy young man would just collapse and die whilst taking Mary's maidenhead?  (Or even that she would give it up to a virtual stranger, however hot, so easily?)  But, however improbable, it was certainly possible, so I went along with it. And I mean, look at those lovely dresses! So Season One ended with The Working Dad and me mostly still on board and more-or-less looking forward to Season Two.

So Season Two begins with World War I.  Matthew, having been spurned by Mary, gets engaged to Lavinia Swire and goes off to war.  Thomas, the evil footman, and William, a lesser footman also join Matthew in France, somehow all conveniently assigned to the same regiment. Thomas gets himself intentionally injured, so he can return home. William and Matthew are also injured, William fatally, but in a slow way so that he can return home to be a source of anguished guilt for Daisy, the kitchen maid, who likes him but doesn't like-him-like-him and who eventually marries him on his deathbed for pity (or friendship or both).

During the war, Downton Abbey is turned into a hospital/convalescent home for wounded soldiers, and Matthew, Thomas, and William are returned there.  There's some vague power struggle between Matthew's mom, the former nurse whose name escapes me, and Cora, Lady Grantham.  (A potentially interesting character:  she's one of those American heiresses known as Buccaneers, who were spirited off by title-rich-cash-poor young English noblemen in crass efforts to save the family manse with an infusion of American capital via their wives' fat dowries.)

Lady Sybil becomes a nurse and Lady Edith generally hangs out with the injured officers playing book-reader and secretary, while Mary pines unconvincingly for Matthew.  (Also Sybil falls in love with and eventually elopes with the chauffeur, the brooding Irishman Tom Branson, but more on them later.)

But what of poor Matthew? Lest you forget that this is a soap opera, Matthew sustains a back injury that has left him paralyzed from the waist down. This worries all concerned for, if Matthew cannot reproduce, Downton lacks an heir and the estate is doomed . . . again.  Matthew attempts to release Lavinia from the engagement, but she stands by him, like a good plot device and soon enough, with the help of a little physical therapy, and the sang froid sort of love that only Mary can provide, Matthew walks again!

But that's not the only heir excitement that our aristos experience at Downton Hospital. A mysterious Canadian officer, face covered in bandages, claims to be the true heir, presumed drowned on the Titanic!  Yes!, he has no British accent, but somehow, Lady Edith is convinced it must be he.  Alas, he hoofs it when people start to question his veracity.  So Downton is safe for Matthew and Lavinia!

Yes, Matthew and Lavinia.  For even as he recognizes his love for Mary, and even as she covets what she cannot have (e.g., Matthew and the Downton estate that comes with it), Matthew is going to stand by Lavinia as she stood by him.  He will marry where he does not love because, after all, it's the right thing to do.

Good thing for him that the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 takes Lavinia out quickly and with very little fuss.

Hooray!  Matthew's free to marry Mary (I guess).  So after some hand-wringing on his part and a lovely Christmas episode, he proposes to Mary and she accept him.

I've got to tell you that the bandaged-faced heir nearly lost The Working Dad and me.  Actually, it did lose The Working Dad.  Combine it with the miracle cure of Matthew Crawley, and the framing (or not) of Mr. Bates for the murder of his estranged and charactaturely evil wife, and it's starting to feel a bit like One Life to Live, but in really fancy dress.  We swore we'd not watch Season Three.  It was getting to be too ridiculous.

But then . . . Season Three rolled around and, well, there wasn't much else on, even with Bunheads returning for a second season, so we set the DVR and started watching again.  In this season, I fear, Mr. Fellowes, you may have lost us for good.

Not because you killed off Matthew (thank you, by the way) and Lady Sybil (a shame, she was nice), but because your lovely program has wandered so far down Soap Opera Avenue as to become an unintentional parody.

First, the best thing about Season Three:  The episode in which Lady Sybil dies in childbirth of eclampsia.  It was affecting and gripping.  It was a great episode with excellent acting, but particularly by the man who plays Tom Branson.  Well done.

But one episode cannot make a season, but a lot of silly can ruin it.

For instance, it appears that the overarching theme of Season Three is "Lord Grantham is a puddin'-headed douche."  Don't believe me?  Here's a general run-down, of his increasingly stupid and/or destructive moves:

• Loses Cora's fat dowry in an improvident railway investment in Canada.
• Forbids his middle daughter from marrying/seeing the only guy who has ever given her a bit of attention (except for Bandages in Season Two), and succeeds in running him off in such a way that she is jilted at the alter.
• Having ensured Edith's spinsterhood, scorns Edith's efforts to be useful by becoming a journalist.
• Insists that a doctor even more toffee-nosed and douchey than himself treat Sybil during her labor, thus ensuring that she would receive inadequate treatment for her pre-eclampsia and ensuring her untimely death.
• Insists that Tom Branson not name Sybil's child after her departed mother and further insists that Baby Sybil be Christened Anglican and not Catholic like her father.  (Thankfully, Lord Destruction loses this battle.)
• Throws a hissy fit when Matthew points out that he might not be a good manager of money, and suggests investing with a guy named Ponzi.

I suppose that Fellowes was trying to illustrate that Lord Grantham was watching himself become a relic in his own lifetime and was not coping well with the rapid changes in his world, or his loss of power.  But did he really have to suggest investing with Charles Ponzi in one of the later episodes?

Other silliness in Season Three:

• Ethel, the former-housemaid-former-prostitute-turned-cook, is too proud not to put "prostitute" on her resume.
• The suicide by pie-crust by the late Mrs. Bates.
• The convenient inheritance by Matthew of Lavinia's father's money to save Downton, again, and then Matthew's even more convenient death at the end of the season leaving the run of the estate to completely and totally inept Lord Grantham.

I could go on, but you get my drift.  The series has steadily spiraled into "evil twin" territory.

Julian Fellowes says that he had to kill off Matthew Crawley and Sybil Branson when their actors did not renew for a fourth season because it was the only thing that made sense.  (Which I dispute . . . I think it was spite that killed the characters, but that's for another day.)  However, I wonder . . . could it be that he's setting up a Jazz Age resurrection plot for Season Five, should one of them wish to return?  I mean, why not at this rate?  Surely, it can be explained by the discovery of some forgotten identical twin cousin or something, like on The Patty Duke Show.

But before I leave it, I want to make clear:  Sure, it's all good fun, I guess.  But this series could have been so much more.  The Tom and Sybil relationship could have be so interesting in Ireland, had we been allowed to watch it there.  It would have been even more fascinating to see Tom hanging out with Patrick Pearse or, I don't know, William Butler Yeats and Maud Gonne.  It could have been so interesting.

But I suppose stories of political intrigue in Ireland during the fight for home rule aren't really the sort of upstairs/downstairs affair that Fellowes was looking to generate.

Anyway, I was disappointed at the end of Season Three, not because of Matthew's death.  (That came as a welcome relief.  At least we won't be tortured further by the literally unbelievable romance of Matthew and Mary.)  I was disappointed that the series seems to drift ever-more-cartoonish.

Will we watch Season Four?  Oh, probably, if there's nothing better on . . . but we won't like it.  Maybe we could make a drinking game:  every time Lord Grantham makes a ridiculous pronouncement, take a shot.  Every time Mary gives someone a withering look take two shots.  Every time a fellow gives Edith attention and then leaves take three.  Hate watching can be fun.

I reject your definition of feminism and substitute my own.

I wrote a little about Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In movement yesterday. Marisa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo, formerly of Google, who famously foreshortened her maternity leave to return to the struggling Yahoo, is another powerful Silicon Valley lady who, like Sandberg, doesn't really want to be labeled a feminist.

I get that. These ladies are around my age. And to women in their early 40s, and younger, the image of feminism can be a sort of self-serious, angry, bra-burning, placard carrying woman in a pantsuit and sensible shoes wearing very little make-up.

What a buzzkill, right? Who wants to be that angry bitchy lady?

Not I! Not Sheryl and Marisa either.

But what ladies like me and Sheryl and Marisa have to understand is that we needed that be-pants-suited lady to be a bit unpleasant in 1979 so that we, in 2013, can sit in our chairs formerly reserved for men and comfortably reject the discordant notes and angry refrains of feminism past.

But that doesn't make us not feminists. Feminists, at their core, believe in the equality of and equal advancement of female persons. Surely, that's me and that's Sheryl and that's Marisa. We know that's them because that's the way they talk. Sheryl's starting a whole marketing campaign, I mean, movement, premised on helping other women advance professionally.

That's not feminist???

Here's the problem with ladies like me and Sheryl and Marisa who either do, or have in the past (because I have, in the past), reject the word feminism as a label for our general state of opinion that women should get all the same breaks and shakes that men get.

In rejecting feminism as a descriptor of some dour, placard-waving harpy, we have adopted the image of feminism set up by feminism's opponents. Feminists are angry. Feminists hate men. Feminists hate children. Feminists don't like to look pretty. Feminists are humorless scolds. Feminists whine.

I'm not saying some feminists along the way weren't those things. I'm not even saying that some feminists today aren't those things.

But if we accept that grim definition of feminism, we're ceding ground to feminism's opponents, aren't we? We're letting them define us? And when we adopt their definition of feminism and then claim not to be feminists, what we're saying is, "Geez, you're right. Feminism is a drag, but I'm cool and you guys can totally like me.  It's all those other sour ladies over there that are the problem.  But you can hire me because I'm cool."

See the problem there?

Instead, may I suggest an alternate definition of feminist: Feminists love families. Feminists love their kids. Feminists love and respect their husbands and are loved and respected back. Feminists are intelligent and competent. Feminists want everyone to be treated equally, even men. Feminists want you to succeed.

Nice, huh? Feminism without the frowny face.

So it's okay, Sheryl and Marisa, smile, you're feminists, just like me.

Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg always thought she'd lead a movement. She more or less leads Facebook, instead, but that's still not enough for Sheryl.

In the year of the 50th anniversary of The Feminine Mystique, Ms. Sandberg is publishing a book called Lean In on March 11th.  She means it to be a modern-day manifesto on the new feminist plight:  not the problem that has no name of the intelligent, educated housewife of the 1960s, but of working ladies and how we can achieve professional success while still having a satisfying home and family life.

Along with the book, Sandberg (and publisher) are trying to start these mentoring groups where, as I understand it, top of the ladder ladies will mentor lower rung ladies about career advancement.  It's totally crass and to my eye -- and a lot of other eyes too -- just serves to sell Sandberg's book.  (And who has time for another pointless meeting jaw-boning with careerists when there are cars to play with and food to get on the table of an evening?  I can barely stand to attend the once-a-month lawyer association meeting.)

But let's not let Sandberg's self-created movement-come-marketing-ploy distract us.

Here's the gist if Ms. Sandberg's argument:  that we women hold ourselves back in big and small ways at the office by, essentially, not being confident or agressive or volunteering for interesting, challenging work.  Essentially, she argues that we are ceding ground to men by giving up too easily.  So we need to "lean in" and push back.  We need to throw ourselves into it, rather than self-select our way out of advancement and promotion.

And here, she is at odds with Ann Marie Slaughter, who, after taking a job in the Obama State Department, wrote an article last year entitled Why Women Still Can't Have it All.  I wrote a blog post about it back in July.  Ms. Slaughter argues that men and women react differently to their children and that, because of this different sort of emotional or psychological wiring, women tend to choose "softer" career paths.  Sandberg disagrees, or at least she advocates that there ought to be a fair amount of self-evaluation among women who have chosen easier roads and who have these different reactions to their children.

Fair point, Sheryl.  We should examine why we do what we do and not just reflexively do it.

But let me make another point, one that I have made before in my post in response to Slaughter's piece.  People like Sheryl Sandberg who reach the pinnacle of success -- or strive for it -- do not have "it all."  Sheryl Sandberg does not have it all.  She has a powerful job.  She has a husband.  She has a family.  She also has a lot of help whom she pays to ensure that her house gets cleaned, her yard gets mowed, her family gets fed, her kids get cared for, etc.  Despite what she may think, Sandberg is no more the model for my life, as a working parent who really does wish to have "it all," than the Night Creature that I referred to in my post back in July.

If you want to have success like Sheryl Sandberg and the Night Creature, yes, you have to "lean in" at the office.  You have to sacrifice and you have to volunteer to work when you'd rather not to or do work that you'd rather not do, in order to step up another rung in the ladder.  And one day, you will be a powerful person at the office who depends on a whole lot of less powerful people at home or in your service who are doing all of the things that you are not doing while you're leaning in at the office.  In order to "lean in" at the office, you absolutely have to "lean on" other people to cover some of your bases at home.

I resent Sandberg's suggestion that it is a lack of self-confidence that holds women like me back.  I invite you, Ms. Sandberg, to come to my next trial and tell me that I lack confidence after you see me work.  Oh yes, I may not be trying an issue for a billion dollar company like someone at a white shoe law firm might, but my work is important and I am confident in my ability to do it.  I do not shy away from difficult work at my office, but I did choose a job that allows me to leave at 4:30, no questions asked.  It is not lack of confidence that drove me from my corporate law firm job in 2004, it was sheer and utter exhaustion and a desire to see someplace other than my office on evenings and weekends.  See, Sheryl, I did lean in, it just wasn't that I leaned into that job.  I had the confidence to know that I could make a good life in someplace other than that law firm.

And I did.

Self-reflection is important, sure, but a recognition that the culture that we function in right now will not permit someone like me -- who wants to be home with her family every night before the sun goes down and every morning before school too -- to run Facebook.  "Leaning in" will not change the culture.  The culture is to "lean in" to work to the exclusion of everything else.  In doing that, you merely perpetuate the status quo.

P.S.  Thank you to my wonderful Sophomore English teacher who suggested -- in response to a Facebook post, no less, Ms. Sandberg -- that I do this post.

5.5!

Pounds!

Yes! Less than 5 pounds until my first reward pedi.

I haven't been so great about keeping to my exercise and non-diet plan. No excuses, just haven't been doing what I need to be doing as often as I need to be doing it. (Remember how Richard Simmons used to call it a "live-it?")

Anyway, it's enough to renew my resolve and keep me from, say, having a hamburger for lunch today. So...hooray!

My skin is loose.

My skin is looser than it used to be. It slides under my palm when I rest my cheek on my hand. My son pulls the skin on the back of my hand up to make a high point and then releases it to watch it slowly ooze back down to cover my bones.

This loose skin will soon lead to wrinkles and sagging. It already has begun to do so.

And I'm really okay with that. I mean, I'm okay with it partly because I am, by luck of the genetic draw, blessed with a relatively youthful appearance.

Still, I have learned that you have to approach make-up and skin care differently at middle age.

You've got these wrinkled that you'd like to minimize, which would have been make up's job in the past. But too much make up only accentuates the problem because it settles into the lines. Ditto that for some lipsticks on some mouths.

So what do you do? There's always expression-stealing Botox, but I would never do that. I'm not a cosmetic surgery/procedure kind of gal. I won't even sign up for the laser treatments that my dermatologist recommended for the slight discoloration at my hairline, a lasting reminder of how many hormones I had to shoot up to get The Boy. (A dab of concealer does just fine.)

So, I don't know what you do, but for me, I've gone minimalist: a good all purpose moisturizer twice a day, sunscreen in the summer, only-just-enough make up, and the realization that no matter what I do, my skin will get looser the longer I wear it. I hope I live so long as to crease the hell out of it.

The Three Year Itch

So, a little over three years ago, when I was leaving my last job, a good friend and colleague joked that it was about time for me to be moving along anyway, since I'd been at that job about three years. He was joking, but the reality is that it's true. Here's a rough sketch of my résumé post law school:

First Federal Clerkship - 2 years

Law Firm - 3 years 5 months

First Federal Agency - 2 years 6 months

Second Federal Clerkship - 3 years 3 months

Second Federal Agency - 3 years 5 months and counting

So, you see, I'm in immediate peril of exceeding my longest stint of legal employment. And I will admit to feeling antsy.

A rolling stone gathers no moss, after all.

I do wonder why I am not able to commit to a job long term. I had no problem committing to The Working Dad. (But he's perfect . . . for me, anyway.)

Maybe I've not found the perfect job yet. But in an environment when legal jobs are scarce, maybe I don't need perfect. No, I definitely don't. I need a good job that's flexible enough for a mom of a toddler.

And I've got that.

But that doesn't mean I'm completely satisfied.

And, there are lots of things I like about my job -- the people are nice, there are intellectual challenges, no billable hours or expected overtime, it's pretty secure (but for possible sequestration) -- but not everything.

It is also a highly stressful and demanding job. Often, things happen at the last minute on an "emergency" (to someone else) basis. There are more deadlines than a person should reasonably be expected to keep track of, and they're all short. Opposing counsel can be difficult. And the judges can too.

Essentially, these are the problems with every job in my particular practice area. So I know that getting another law job --short of going in-house (which has its own problems) -- would not solve those problems.

So, essentially, I don't love being a lawyer. I like it okay, but it's not my dream job or life's true calling (despite the fact that, when I was 12, I said I wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice like Sandra Day O'Connor). There are too-many-to-count lawyers like me, who like it okay, but feel like they sort of missed the mark on personal fulfillment in the job department.

What's a 42 year old wife and mother to do, then? I can't chuck the career, nearly 15 years in. I mean, I could, if it were just me, but it's not just me. My husband depends on me, and my son's college fund and general way of life also depend on my income.

Still, I do think a lot about people who set off on a different path. My dance teacher who left a big accounting firm to open a dance studio . . . A sorority sister who opened her own cupcake bakery . . . A law school friend who started his own test prep business . . . And several of my colleagues who have started their own solo practices.

They all struck out on their own, without a net, and did something. But I need the safety net that my job provides right now. I'm afraid of the high wire. And I couldn't do that to The Working Dad, take a leap and make him be the safety net.

Anyway, I don't know what I would leap into. Other than writing, I'm not sure I am good at much else in a marketable way. And I'm not even sure my writing is all that marketable. Fine for a blog, but professional diarist? The idea of joining the droves of memoirists these days sort of leaves me cold. (And as an aside, didn't it used to be the case that only old, famous people did memoirs? Now, it seems like every hipster is writing her own me-novel about her not-so-unique journey to age twenty-five.)

And fiction? Well, maybe, but it's a whole different voice and style.... I've never liked the short story form. And who has the time for a novel, a baby, and a demanding full-time job?

If I did change careers, I think doing something in ornithology would be fun.  (Bird Nerd.)  But the outlay of time and money reasonably required to become an ornithologist at age 42 is prohibitive for all of the above reasons.

So I guess, for now, I just press on past 3 years 5 months and beat my professional life longevity record. It's not so bad.  I'm just restless.  And, in four years, I will achieve Federal employee annual-leave-nirvana when I start earning eight hours of leave a pay period.

I'm even cognizant that this -- we'll call it professional ambivalance -- may spring from the fact that I haven't had an actual vacation since August 2009. (And, no, I don't consider the eleven weeks of maternity leave in 2011 to have been "vacation."  Ditto that regarding the marathon that is the holiday season . . . .) I have not been able to build back leave in the two years since The Boy was born (because of illness mainly, and other parenting reasons). So no leave equals, no vacation, equals a very worn out worker. That could be it, but I know it's not only it.

Anyway, I'm not getting my résumé together this time. I have at least learned that changing jobs isn't going to fix the fundamental problem. I'm as happy as I could be in any law job, I think. But there's got to be a way to be professionally satisfied, less restless. I wish I could figure it out.

Meanwhile, this rolling stone will, um, you know, get her nose back to the grindstone and . . . ugh, the metaphors!  Maybe just a glass of wine, dinner and pulpy TV, and I'll be like Scarlet O'Hara and think about it tomorrow.

So...The Re-Ferbered Weekend....

This was the real test of the re-Ferberized weekend. Would The Boy take a nap without it being a battle royale?

Things The Working Dad and I were supposed to do:

1. Stick close to home. No big trips that would keep us from being home by lunchtime.

2. Feed The Boy lunch by no later than 11:30.

3. Be in The Boy's room by noon so he can wind down for nap at 12:30.

The 12:30 nap is not our idea, but is his schedule at school. We have tried in the past not to deviate too much from the school schedule so he can have an easy transition back to school on Monday morning.

So.

What actually happened on Saturday was a little different.

We had to take my car for an oil change, so we dropped it off around 9, then went to breakfast (or as we say to The Boy, to get bacon and jelly) near the dealership, then we went to the nearby mall to let The Boy run off some energy.

At 10:30, the car still wasn't ready, so we headed home. The Boy fell asleep in the car right around 11 o'clock. We let him. We carried him up to his room asleep and he napped until about 1:45. He was cheerful and ready for lunch when he woke up. Happy day!

Sure, we didn't really obey the Ferber rules, but we got a serious nap out of him with no fuss. And the rest of the day was pretty darned pleasant. Except for a little fussing at the park (he didn't want to leave the "duuuuuckkkkiiiieeeesssss!"), it was a pleasant day with a well rested boy.

One thing The Working Dad and I observed is that his nap came about 5 hours after he woke up for the day. With him waking up just before 2 from his nap and an 8 o'clock bedtime, his nap fell pretty much right in the midpoint of his day.

We have noticed that The Boy starts to look and act tired by late morning. In the past, we've tried to keep him up (even if he started to nod off) so that we could make it to the 12:30 nap time on the weekends. I think this may have been a mistake. I think that in striving to keep him on the school nap schedule we were making an over-tired boy who then had trouble getting to sleep at the appointed hour.

I haven't figured out how the school manages to keep him up that long and not have a cranky, over-tired boy at 12:30. Maybe the peer pressure of other awake kids keeps The Boy going. At any rate, I think we are resolved to be a little more relaxed about naps and let him get his nap on the weekend when he gets drowsy. If that's 11 a.m., that's okay. We're just going to watch his cues and not be so hidebound by the school schedule.

On Sunday, I heard the words "Mommy eat!" come through the baby monitor at 5:33 a.m., but then he was quiet until 6:15 a.m., when I heard those words again plus the word "up." So, you know, we were up. I would have liked to get another couple of hours of sleep, but that okay. The Working Dad and I have learned that staying up late is a thing of the past as long as we've got an early riser of a boy and so, well, we don't do that anymore. So breakfast for everybody!

We went to the grocery store (where The Boy likes to drive the race car grocery cart), then we came home and unloaded groceries. The Working Dad and The Boy played while I did prep for the week's dinners, started bean soup for tonight's dinner, and got lunch going. (Yes, Wonder-Woman-level of multi-tasking.)

The Boy had dark circles developing under his eyes, so he had lunch early (brunch, really) and by 11:15, we were up in his room. We played some and then he sat in an armchair and read books to us. At noon, we put him to bed, he yelled a little (for less than five minutes), but went to sleep pretty fast. He really does need an earlier nap, but that's just not going to happen during the week at school, but we can work to provide that on the weekends.

He slept until 2:45, got up cheerful, had a snack, and then we met our friends at the park. Dinner time, potty time, bath time and bedtime were all nice and peaceful. It's good to be back on track with sleep. And it's even better that it wasn't that difficult to get back on track.

House of Cards

Apparently, Kevin Spacey is in a new show produced exclusively through Netflix called "House of Cards." I don't know a thing about it I think it's supposed to be a political drama thing, but who knows. What I want to talk about is a snip of an interview I heard with Kevin Spacey on the radio this week.

His character, again, apparently, because I know nothing of the show.... His character apparently engages in a camera/audience Ferris-Beuller-style dialogue, like he's talking to a friend. And Spacey referred to this as (I paraphrase) "kind of like saying something to your best friend, not something that you would say to your wife."

What?

I can't think of a thing I'd say to or share with someone else that I wouldn't say to or share with The Working Dad. Honestly, I feel like, if there are things you would tell your buddy, but not your spouse, there's a problem. Your could, in fact, be living in, please pardon the obvious reference, a house of cards.

Maybe this is why Hollywood marriages fail so often. They're hung up on this division of life into romance and non-romance. But good ol' real life has those things all squashed up together. Friendship, sex, love, affinity...all those things get swished together into this wonderful sauce called marriage. Thankfully.....