What to expect when you expect to move,
tips from a veteran movin’ mamma

Before and after a move, there are plenty of rather predictable steps to make things easier. And then there are those other, more elusive things that only veteran moms can share.

After moving 22 times in 23 years of marriage, I’ve adopted several habits when faced with a move to help reduce the risk for melt-downs — and I’m not just referring to the kids here. Moving well takes a lot of composure and having insider knowledge will only help you be a better person (read: less crazy) through the chaos. If you’re lucky, you may even do it gracefully.

So when the ink on your new job contract has dried and the likely move morphs into the category of certainly, it’s like the start of the Indy 500 (yes, I’ve lived in Indianapolis and know what I’m talking about): there’s so much noise and confusion you can hardly hear yourself think. So digest this now, before the drivers start their engines.

Pre-Move

1. Start hoarding boxes, bags and newspaper. As soon as you know for sure that you’ll be moving, immediately start squirreling away random boxes and all types of plastic and paper bags. These items become your best friends as you begin the chore of purging. You’ll be sneaking things out of the kids’ rooms to deposit at Goodwill. You’ll be making hard decisions about consigning something quasi-valuable and sentimental — like maybe the dusty china you received long ago as wedding gifts. (Eeerp, nope, I haven’t done that yet. But maybe you will.) You’ll be transporting bags of hand-me-down clothing to best friends for their kids. You’ll be taking older towels and linens to a nearby shelter. You’ll be carting unwanted books, DVDs and CDs to Half-Price Books. And even if you’re lucky enough to have the company pay for full-moving services, you’ll probably want to pack some personal things yourself. Ziplock bags are great for your bathroom closet. Wine boxes from the grocery are terrific for personal journals and sensitive folders with confidential documents you’d rather pack yourself. Be ready and have these supplies around.

2. Locate every permanent marker in the house. Track down every last Sharpie you already have and then look out for sales so that you have an ample supply. In this case more is better. Go nuts. Permanent markers help save you time later because you’ll be more likely to label those boxes and bags with as much detail as you have the energy for. When you arrive and you’re looking at a neatly folded mattress pad tucked into zipped plastic storage bag, you’re better off knowing if it’s a queen size for the guest bed or two singles for the kids’ beds before you open it up. Don’t even be tempted to think your recall will be helpful. Trust me, your recall won’t show up in time to be remotely helpful. In fact, it may not even make the move.

3. Packing tape: you can’t have too much of it. Packing tape allows you to keep things from getting separated. Sometimes the movers will get it all done perfectly and every little screw or attachment will not only arrive (that’s generally not the problem) but they will be found. Mostly, various bits and bobs will tend to be illogically packed so you’re on a scavenger hunt to make your various household goods whole. And sometimes, things just don’t show up. I screwed up on this latest move to Austin. I should have taped over the newly replaced battery for our daughter’s wall clock to keep it from jiggling loose in the hands of the packers. The clock showed up just fine, minus that damn battery. You get what I mean. This stuff doesn’t rise to the level of major, but it’s amazing how when multiplied, all of these little missing parts can cost you time, money and your beloved sanity, which will already be in short supply.

4. Stash an arsenal of paper plates within reach. And plastic spoons and forks. And paper towels. Your kids are not going to be thinking about how their kitchen messes become a bigger problem as your moving date nears. Take charge and give yourself a break. Restrict use of glassware and go disposable so that you’re not stuck the night before the packers come with some late-night dishwashing party. By this point, your dishwasher should be verboten; hand-washing it will be, a party you’ll wish you could skip. Avoid this scenario by using paper products the week of your move. You may just be a little less crazy because of it, and your kids will think that’s a good thing.

Post-Move

5. Got gardening gloves? Use them. Cardboard is not your friend, moms. When you’re faced with mountains of boxes, you’ll feel like you may just survive the move if you have your garden gloves to protect your poor hands as they handle vast quantities of that hostile material. Also, handling sharp scissors and/or box-cutters when you’re teetering from exhaustion is dangerous. It’s easy to nick a finger and having even a humble pair of gardening gloves will provide a small degree of protection.

6. Bonus tip: Keep Band-Aids handy. No need to ask why. As you unpack, someone will need one. Trust me. And blood, dirty cardboard and newspaper or packing paper don’t mix. Unpacking towels and smearing blood on them isn’t cool. Stop the flow, stop whining and move on…

— Kathryn Streeter

Writer, traveler, mom and wife, Kathryn Streeter writes about people, places and family adventures. She’s highly mobile — Streeter has moved 22 times in 23 married years. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications including elephant journal, Mamalode, The Briar Cliff Review, BLUNTmoms and CSMonitor.

Pillow talk

At three a.m., I heard my husband wake up to go to the bathroom. When he came back to bed, I could feel his usual flipping of the covers, and he sighed deeply. Then I heard him say, “Do you think I should cut my hair?” He was silent for a few minutes. Then another deep sigh. “I am so tired lately. Maybe it’s my thyroid.” Silence… sigh. “I really should join that gym,” he said. Silence, a sigh.

I started to giggle under the covers, and told him to stop.

“Have you noticed that my teeth are getting whiter?” Sigh.

“I only ask that to see if my whitening strips are working,” I protested.

“Why did I eat those potato chips?” he continued. Silence… sigh. “Do you think my legs are getting fatter?”

“Now stop!” I told him. “I really think I’m getting chubby.” Why was I listening to him at 3 a.m. anyway?

“I really have to get my hair cut,” he continued. Silence… sigh.

“So you agree I need a haircut? Maybe I should try a new color, too?”  I asked. This piqued my interest. I am never too tired to talk about my hair.

“My nails are a mess. French manicure or pink and white?” he continued. Silence… sigh. I started to drift off, but then he started again. “Oh, these hormones! Maybe I should stop taking them.” Silence and two big sighs.

Okay, so I do say that one a lot.

“I need a nap.” Silence, he yawned.

I was starting to feel sleepy and yawned, too.

“Maybe I should leave my hair long.” Silence, and a sigh. “Oh, I need more wrinkle cream.” Silence… big sigh.

“Thanks for reminding me,” I told him and smacked him.

“Does my face look old?” Silence… sigh.

I put the pillow over my head.

“Maybe I should do Zumba.” He was silent for a long time… two sighs. “I am just so confused lately!” Silence… loud sigh.

It sounded like he was winding down. By four a.m., he had covered every possible thing I’ve said.

Who knew he was listening?

— Anne Bardsley

Anne Bardsley, of St. Petersburg, Fla., is the author of How I Earned My Wrinkles, a collection of humorous and sentimental stories about marriage, motherhood and menopause. She lives in a menopausal world with a husband who gives her wrinkles. When people ask her age, she sometimes tells them her bra size. “36-C,” she says, “was a wonderful age.”

My new BFF

(©Copyright 2014 Open Road Integrated Media. “My New BFF,” was originally published as a guest blog for the Open Road Media Project with Gloria Steinem, “Reading Our Way to the Revolution.”)

I have always been curious about Margaret Fuller. I knew only enough to think of her as the hippie of 19th-century feminists.

I picked up Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall, eager to get to the hippie part — Brook Farm, the commune she founded in the 1820s with her Transcendentalist friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. That turned out to be a minor moment in the rich and radical life of this journalist, activist, intellectual and social rebel, who was dubbed a “fore-sayer” because of her visionary and mind-blowing ideas.

Reading this lively biography was like discovering a long lost girlfriend. If we sat down over a cup of coffee, I know we would get right down to the kind of wide-ranging and irreverent conversation that I look for in a new friend. In her most influential book Woman in the Nineteenth Century, for example, she addressed a circumstance any woman of any era would recognize. Why, she wondered, do women fall for bad men? “The preference often shown by women for bad men arises,” she wrote, “from a confused idea that they are bold and adventurous, acquainted with regions which women are forbidden to explore.”

She understood that she was too smart for her own good and too outspoken for a woman of her times — “a mind that insisted on utterance” — but was unapologetic about it, and bore the consequences. She had passionate intellectual relationships with like-minded men — including Emerson, who shared endless details about his unhappy marriage, but never considered Margaret more than a pal. She formed what were consciousness-raising groups — called Conversations — among the educated women in her Boston circle. Not surprisingly to my generation of feminists, when the men insisted on being included — to raise the level of discussion — the meetings lost energy.

She became a crusading columnist, a first, and was sent to Rome by the pioneering newspaper editor Horace Greely to cover the revolutions of 1848. As her assignment became more bloody and dangerous, she, in the Hemingway tradition of (male) war correspondents to come, fell in love — with an impoverished and uneducated young Italian marchese. When she became pregnant, she didn’t abandon her post and gave birth to their child in the midst of a bombing raid.

Knowing she had broken every rule in the book, she hesitated to return to America, and when she finally decided to brave the censure and sail for home with her family, all three of them were drowned in a shipwreck off Fire Island in 1850. She was only 40. Yet, as Marshall points out, she had already found heaven — a life “empowering [her] to incessant acts of vigorous beauty.”

— Suzanne Braun Levine

Suzanne Braun Levine is a writer, editor and nationally recognized authority on women, families and media. She was the first editor of Ms. magazine (1972-1988), and the first woman editor of the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review. She reports on the ongoing changes in women’s lives in her books, on television, radio, at lectures and on her website. She’s the author of four books, including You Gotta Have Girlfriends — A Post-Fifty Posse Is Good For Your Health. In 2014, she served on the EBWW faculty.

The ladies who yawn

I have been a member of the male sex my entire life, actually longer, since my masculinity — such as it is — was determined when I first acquired one of those dust bunny-like creatures, the Y chromosome, nine months before I was born.

Despite my lack of a disinterested point of view, I will readily admit that men are the grosser sex.  We don’t smell as good as women, and we tend to scratch ourselves in places where we shouldn’t — even on national TV, in the case of professional athletes. With the exception of maybe Cary Grant, whose gentlemanly manner was as close to perfection as any man ever achieved, it’s hard to understand what women see in men at all.

The exception to this rule — I won’t say it proves it — is yawning. Perhaps because men have so many other faults to make up for, they seem to realize that when they open their mouths involuntarily to public view the polite thing to do is to cover them.  That’s what I was taught by my mother, and apparently somebody told other men — except for the out-and-out louts — to do the same.

I’ve come to believe that there’s a secret women’s handbook of manners floating around somewhere that says “Because we are the more delicate sex, and leave the room when we feel a giant taco burp coming up, we are allowed to yawn uncovered for great lengths of time in public. This is our ‘free space,’ like the middle square in Bingo. Have fun with it!”

It has taken me a long time to formulate my feelings on this point, but after years of control-group testing, surreptitious observation and late-night reveries fueled by red wine, my research points to one inescapable conclusion: women are less likely than men to cover their mouths when they yawn.

This week was something of a tipping point.  I have a walk of several hundred yards from my office to the train station, across a plaza where one can have an unobstructed view of a person walking in the opposite direction for a minute or more.  Yesterday I saw a woman emerge from the subway, start to yawn, and maintain a full, open-mouth position for a count of 14.6 seconds.  This is the etiquette counterpart to football’s “good hang-time,” the ability of a punter to kick a ball high in the air, giving his special team precious extra seconds to run downfield and pummel a speedy kick returner like a pinata at an 8-year-old’s birthday party.

Last week, as I was riding the MBTA’s Green Line, I sat opposite an attractive young woman and her boyfriend/fiance/husband. They were on their way to the airport, apparently at the end of a vacation, looking at the pictures they had taken around Boston. The woman began to yawn at the Boylston Street stop and — I swear — didn’t stop or cover her mouth until the conductor pulled into Park Street, several blocks away.  Park Street and Boylston Stations are the nation’s two oldest subway stations, built at the end of the 19th century when ladies who felt a belch coming on were sequestered in an upstairs bedroom or sent to the seashore until it had passed out of their system.

One of the great breakthroughs of quantum physics, Werner Heisenberg’s “Uncertainly Principle,” teaches us that the act of observation modifies the thing observed, so that absolutely precise measurements are impossible. I suppose it could be the case that women deliberately extend their yawns when they see men watching them, thinking, “Maybe if I show that creep my molars long enough, he’ll stop staring at me.”

The other possibility — actually, it’s more like a certainty — is that the woman you see yawning her head off in public today was kept up the night before by a man snoring like a sawmill at the mouth of roaring river.

That’s our free space, and if you don’t like it, you can take your bingo card and go sleep on the couch.

— Con Chapman

Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer whose works include The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, 10 published plays and two novels, Making Partner and CannaCorn (Joshua Tree Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe and The Christian Science Monitor.

A song in my head, a worm in my ear

Jingle Bell, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way!… 

Sorry. I know the season is over, but that song is lodged in my brain. No doubt you’ve had that experience, when a song pops into your head and won’t go away. Scientists who study such things call these malevolent melodies “earworms.”  In other words, the songs worm their way into your mind. And thanks for that visual, professors. 

“Fundamentally, an earworm is your brain singing,” says British researcher Dr. Victoria Williamson in an interview in Science Friday. Dr. Williamson is an authority on how music affects our minds and behavior. The good doctor asserts that most earworms are either pleasant or neutral and that only 30 percent are annoying. I would dispute those findings. Few of them are pleasant, and 90 percent are irritating. She also claims that earworms tend to last eight seconds. You could have fooled me.

Almost everyone — more than 90 percent of us — has earworms at least once a week. A lucky 25 percent have them more than once a day. That would include me. 

A month ago my brain was bursting with “Jingle Bells” and “It’s Beginning to Look Like Christmas.”  I don’t happen to celebrate Christmas, but with the muzak tracks in every store, restaurant and public space it was hard not to wind up with seasonal songs playing between my ears. There are some very pleasant Christmas songs. In fact, I’m partial to “Do You Hear What I Hear?” Somehow none of the good ones made their way into the cranial wormhole.

I asked my hairdresser and the salesman in the Verizon store if the in-house soundtracks ever got to them. My hairdresser rolled her eyes and sighed. The Verizon guy said, “You have no idea.”

Earworm experts don’t completely understand what triggers them, and it’s hard to track therm. (Unless the early bird catches the earworm.) Study subjects keep diaries; that must be fun. Among the songs which tend to enable earworm larvae are “What Does the Fox Say?” and “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

These intrepid scientists are also looking into the function of a person’s mood in creating earworms. This could lead to a chicken-or-egg conundrum: does the earworm cause a bad mood or does a bad mood lead to an earworm?

The military has caught on to this phenomenon, sometimes employing what has been called music torture. This is the tactic of subjecting prisoners to loud or non-stop music to get them to give up important information. After the U.S. invaded Panama in 1989, the country’s dictator, Manuel Noriega, took refuge in the Vatican embassy. Troops surrounded the embassy and opened aural fire, bludgeoning his brain with hits including, naturally, Van Halen’s “Panama.”

Noriega surrendered within a week. It has been reported that Iraqi prisoners of war were subjected to the theme songs from “Sesame Street” and “Barney.” Some things truly are beyond the pale. The Geneva Convention did not anticipate a purple dinosaur.

Once we’re infected, though, there are ways to deworm our brains. Williamson says the best method is to distract yourself with other music or conversation. Other suggestions, of which I am skeptical, are to listen to the earworm repeatedly or listen to the entire song.

The Science Friday article includes a playlist of 149 songs identified by Facebook and Twitter users as most likely to induce earworms. I was afraid to read the list, lest they all congregate in my gray matter.

It seems that there isn’t much we can do to prevent ear worms, although being judicious in what we listen to might be just the thing to prevent us from opening a can of earworms.

— Ann Green

Ann Green is a freelance writer, editor, PR consultant and tutor.

Seeking a few rock stars

We’re seeking top-notch faculty and session ideas for the 2016 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop.

Deadline for proposals is April 1, 2015, with prospective faculty notified by June 1 if their sessions have been selected. To submit a proposal, click on Call For Faculty Proposals, fill out the form and email it to erma@udayton.edu.

The vast majority of writers surveyed after the 2014 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop told us they loved it, but a number said they’d appreciate more writing exercises in workshops and greater focus on the craft of writing. Some recommended tracks for beginners and more established writers. Others requested tips on how to navigate the myriad ways available to publish and market your writing today.

Among the hundreds of helpful write-in survey comments: “I’d love to hear more about the mechanics of the writing — the butt-in-chair, deadline-aware, professional approach,” one writer said.

Attendees want to learn from high-quality, experienced faculty. “I was amazed at the high caliber of speakers. Keep that! I also liked the accessibility of writing rock stars,” another writer noted.

We are committed to maintaining the workshop’s supportive atmosphere for writers from all levels of experience.

“The feel of the EBWW conference is very much like going to visit family, even though it was my first time and I hadn’t met anyone attending before. I like that it’s relatively small. It feels like a warm hug,” one wrote.

If you’re an established writer and teacher with an enthusiasm for helping others become stronger writers, we’d love to hear from you. The next Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop will be held March 31-April 2, 2016, at the University of Dayton, Erma’s alma mater. It’s the only workshop in the country devoted to the craft of humor and human interest writing.

— Teri Rizvi

Teri Rizvi is the founder and co-director of the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton.

The family pecking order

My husband and I were going through stuff in my closet when he came across our son’s baby book.

He looked through it and said, “Hey, you didn’t finish your sentence.” “What sentence?” I inquired. “The one where you started writing all the hopes and dreams you have for him and you stopped mid sentence.”

I peered over his shoulder to read what I wrote. “Huh, so I did,”

“Well, why didn’t you finish it?” “I meant to, but got busy and forgot.”

“You could finish it now if you want.” “I can’t remember what I wanted to say 23 years ago. My memory’s not that good.”

“Yet you remember everything I’ve ever said that was wrong.” “Oh, shut up.”

“Besides what were you so busy doing you forgot to write in his book?” “Oh, I don’t know, maybe being a mom and having a third kid.”

“Did we get a book for our third and last one?” “Probably not, if we did, I forgot where we put it.”

“So, we have one completed baby book for our firstborn, one half completed book for our middle child and none for our last, the baby.” “You got it.”

Not only did our firstborn get a completed baby book, which documented mundane things such as the first time she blinked, but she also got the undivided attention from young, patient parents. Since she was our one and only, we were on her like white on rice. She was the stereotype of a firstborn and if other siblings didn’t follow, an only child.

A sibling came along four years later. We loved him. We adored him and were grateful for him as his sister now had somebody besides us to play with. He relieved the pressure. With a second born you’re more relaxed and not so, shall I say, “anal.” You don’t freak out and sterilize bottles and pacifiers if they hit the ground. You give it a licking with your tongue and shove it back in their mouth. You don’t worry that at 13 months they’re crawling instead of walking. You make the most of it by securing dust rags to their knees so they can crawl and sweep simultaneously.

But, more relaxed does not mean more time. Two kids mean twice the work, which is why you may forget to write in their baby book. Luckily, I know he won’t mind, because, being true to the middle child stereotype, he is a peace keeper. He’d rather let things go than stir up a fuss. Also, he could console himself with the fact his younger sister didn’t even get a book.

His younger sister, our baby, came along four years later. By the time we had her, we went from being young parents to old parents. The baby of the family is stereotyped as spoiled and pampered. That’s not true. Parents love the baby equally, but the truth is you let them get away with stuff the others didn’t because you’re tired and old. You can fight with them over things or you can opt for peace and quiet. You can fight and make them eat their broccoli or you can sit and rest. You can fight with them about doing chores or you can sit and rest. You’re tired. You choose to sit.

You’re so tired that by the time your baby is 10 and comes up to you holding a six-pack and a carton of cigarettes and asks if it’s ok for him to indulge, you give him thumbs up. You know you should protest, but you don’t have the stamina. You sit in your recliner and rest.

So, it’s not that the baby is intentionally spoiled and pampered. It’s that the parents are old and tired. So, in reality, the baby is the happiest, most neglected kid in the family, except she just doesn’t know it. And if everybody keeps their mouth shut, she won’t know she  didn’t get a baby book.

— Cindy Argiento

Cindy Argiento’s first column appeared in the Greensboro News and Record as a Personal Ads feature on April 30, 2002. Later that year, her first “As I See It” column appeared in the High Point Enterprise, where it would become a regular feature for several years. Her columns also have appeared in the Reidsville Review, Eden Daily News, Gilroy Dispatch, Hollister Freelance, Hopewell News and Foothills Paper. Other essays have appeared in Chicken Soup For the Soul books, Family Matters and Married Life. Three of her pieces were recognized as a finalist, semi-finalist and honorable mention in HumorPress.com “America’s Funniest Humor” writing contest. She blogs at Cindy’s World.

Venus and Mars

Lights out at 7:35 p.m.

No, this is not a description of our Baby Boomer bedtime.

Lights off, TV becalmed, desktop computers no longer sleeping, but shut down. More importantly, the carefully plugged-in emergency light poised between the kitchen and family room did not come on to bathe us in light.

Our family room felt vacuumed, cleared of light and sound. My fright went electric…

While one too many scary scenarios bloomed in my brain — was it terrorists, someone set to slay and/or rob us, a power company prank — my husband immediately slid outdoors. What?! He was leaving me alone?

In a few moments, in the sliding door he emerged, arms raised  in a victory pose, grinning broadly. Our entire neighborhood of approximately 100 hillside and flatland homes was “boom-boom, out go the lights!”

Meanwhile I was wondering why the emergency light didn’t flash on, and where the heck were matches for the candles, since the Bic Flicker wouldn’t light on our last foray with the outdoor barbecue.

Yes, I knew where the candles were. When panicked, it’s good to be organized. I had to grab my phone in case I needed to rapidly dial 9-1-1, but I needed light to reach my office, where it was nestled in my purse.

Different strokes for different folks: a need for light and glee for dark.

I never truly believed it before, but now I am an adherent:

Women are from Venus; men are from Mars.

I do not revel in sudden power outages throughout our neighborhood, a vast swath of land down a hillside and extending a mile to a main street near a university. Murders have occurred in our perfect suburban, wealth-protected sphere. I succumbed to self-protection mode, while my husband sought to know extent of the problem. As a man of size and self-confidence, he immediately felt safe.

He’d never spent hours home alone, as I did for years, while he traveled on business in Elsewhere, USA. He’d never experienced the freaky, sporadic bumps and grinds of a roof with a dozen skylights, aroused by weather with wind.

My husband is an athlete, in command of his body, not a klutz like me. He is brilliant: his scientific knowledge and inquiring mind help him to feel in command of the world. He embraces the wild rumpus of nature and the beyond.

He’d never worked with victims of domestic violence…

Because of our different perspectives — not true planets of origin, because we are mutually humans from/on earth — we each found ease in our own way, complementing each other.

Always and forever. Amen.

P.S. The power came on at midnight, awakening me with lights on throughout our home. I got up to turn out the lights, while my husband snoozed on, perhaps dreaming of Mars.

He is My Favorite Martian.

— PJ Colando

For 25 years, Pat Jackson-Colando had a thriving practice in speech-language pathology. Publicly she introduced herself with the slogan: “If you can say my name, you don’t need to see me.” In a real-life plot twist, she has become a published author, with her debut novel, Stashes. Her flash fiction, short stories and essays have been published in Adelphean, ASHA Leader, IUPUI, The Message and Orange Coast magazines, as well as The Orange County Register newspaper. Her written work has also been anthologized in Open to Interpretation, The Biscuit, She Writes and Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother.