42-year old mom

I'm thinking about that 42-year old mom comment I made last night, and having second thoughts about it. When I say 42-year old mom, I am picturing an imaginary mom who comes home from work, goes jogging and cooks dinner for her kids. Maybe later she watches American Idol with her husband before putting the kids to bed and then falling asleep to go another round in the morning. Shops at Pottery Barn and clips recipes from O Magazine.

Nobody I know who is a mom actually lives like that [edit: Or if they do, it isn't as dull as I've made it sound]. The moms I know fall into two categories: college friends and immigrants. My college friends that are moms would probably laugh at my saying this, but I don't see their lifestyles as totally different from my own. Granted, they have an entire extra life to care for and keep alive. But I get the sense that, just like me, they are simply trying to navigate adult life and learn the ropes as best they can. Theirs just happen to include a huge extra set of responsibilities. My immigrant friends, most of whom are in their early thirties with kids ranging from infants to teenagers, are basically my idols. I look up to them, because they manage to raise houses full of respectful, interesting, bicultural kids, while also learning to get around in a foreign country, holding down jobs and remaining actively engaged in their communities.

When I talk about the 42-year old mom, what I am really doing is experimenting with the imagination of my own future. And, as is often the case, I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

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For J, here is that list I was telling you about:
Celebrity Babies
TMZ (yes, TMZ)
Celebritology
On Balance / On Parenting
Savage Love
Slate
Yahoo! Answers
My Monthly Cycle
Google News

Peanut butter to the rescue

Maybe T is right. Maybe I have turned into a grown-up. He made that comment after finding a stack of O (as in Oprah) magazines scattered across the coffee table.

"Why did you take out all your old magazines?" he asked me.

"I was looking for recipes," I said. A perfectly normal answer... for a 42-year old mom.

I'm kind of joking. I think I'm secure enough about myself not to get too worked up about the sometimes middle-agey things I do; the things that I never thought I'd be doing myself. Still, it can be disconcerting, especially when called out by someone else, to realize that I am living out an adult life.

Anyway, I was looking for recipes because my dumb (and by dumb, I mean really awesome) doctor told me that he would recommend the South Beach diet and exercise if I wanted to kick-start my, um, system into working properly again. This because of the double digit weight gain I've put on over the last year and a half or so. Lest you think I am divulging too much personal information, keep in mind: I'm telling everyone I know.

Here's the thing about the South Beach diet, and I'm not going to devote this post to its intricacies or why I decided to actually take the challenge my doctor posed to me: it's really hard. I have to spend two weeks eating no starches, no sugars, no fruit, basically none of the things I count on to make eating fun. No rice for my beans, no taco shell for my ground beef, no pasta for my cheese and no bread or jelly for my peanut butter. And no brownies. Or alcohol.

That leaves pretty much four categories of food: (some) veggies, (low-fat) cheese, (fake) meat and eggs. Plus nuts and spices and stuff. I'm on day five and generally pissed about it.

But not tonight. Tonight I tried a recipe that I discovered while surfing for ideas on my lunch hour. And I want to share it with all lovers of peanut butter, because, for anyone who has ever longed for cookies whilst being too lazy to actually bake them, this one is worth trying out. Contrary to my expectations, though possibly because I haven't eaten a single simple carbohydrate in nearly a week, they turned out delicious!

South Beach Peanut Butter Cookies (supposedly good for all phases)

Ingredients

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup Splenda granular (sugar substitute)

1 egg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degres. Mix the three ingredients thoroughly. Drop by spoonfuls on a cookie sheet. Dip a fork in Splenda and press gently on top of cookie.
2. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from pan carefully after cooling slightly. Enjoy!