This wasn’t an easy decision to make. I had been living in New York City for 14 years, Daddy-O for 16. We didn’t own a car, or a washer and dryer, or many tools. We used to say, when something needed fixing around the apartment, “We have a butter knife and a super.”

Daddy-O’s career is demanding. He works long hours and travels all over the place. Other times he works from home, heading into the city for meetings. We never plan anything more than a week in advance, because we never know what his schedule will be.

After our first baby, Pumpkin, was born, I stopped working to devote myself full time to her care, and to the management of our household and our lives, so Daddy-O can fully devote himself to doing what it is he does.

How totally retro! And some might even say, how dangerous! But it works for us. We’re happy with the arrangement, I feel like I’m living my true calling as a mom, I thank God every day I get to be with my kids so much, and I totally trust Daddy-O. If you knew him, you would, too. This nice Midwestern boy isn’t going to abscond with our savings and run off with a 23-year-old redhead. I have faith.

A friend of mine, a mother of four, told me she knows her husband will never leave her because she told him she’ll “suck him dry” if he even tries. Yikes! I suppose fear can be a great motivator, though I prefer the method of keeping things as pleasant and warm and even “hot” as possible at home – a challenge with three kids, but I’d say we give it our best shot.

We had been looking at towns and at houses for two years. Neither of us grew up anywhere near New York (I’m from California & Texas) and we have no family nearby, so the region was a blank slate. We wanted what everyone wants: a charming home in a nice town and most importantly, a good school district. The proverbial needle in a haystack, again – I’m beginning to see a theme (see first post).

We started looking in New Jersey, because that’s where the houses are with the porches and shutters and mature trees, the homes we refer to as “TV commercial houses.”

Daddy-O and I assumed that, because we we were fortunate enough to be selling a Manhattan co-op, we would be trading in our poker chip for the perfect John Hughes shuttered colonial, like Ferris Bueller’s house.

Ha!

More on that rude awakening later.

On the East Coast, most homes are made out of wood, as opposed to in the south, where they use bricks, or out west, where they use a lot of stucco. The most popular home style in the east is the colonial, a two-story with a basement. Colonials have gotten bigger and bigger over the years, becoming the East’s version of McMansions, often with rounded cupolas and stone work. There are some ranches, or one-stories, but not as many, and in the 1960s they built a lot of split-levels, where you enter the house and go either upstairs or downstairs, which for resale are not as popular. A farmhouse with a porch that is not on a busy road is gold in my opinion, and nearly impossible to find in a suburban town.

New Jersey’s neighborhoods are, to use a cliche, Rockwell-esque. They have sidewalks and tidy yards and schools made out of bricks. We liked New Jersey. One day we were driving around the picturesque town of Montclair and we asked the real estate agent, “What do people do for recreation out here?” And she said, “Well, they go to the park, or they go to the mall.”

We like parks just fine, but we’re not mall people, and we both love the ocean. I used to surf the Pacific Ocean, and Daddy-O grew up sailing on Lake Erie, which I scoffed at until I actually saw Lake Erie and realized you can’t see across it so it kind of is like the ocean. Who knew?

We decided we didn’t want to raise our family too far from the ocean. So New Jersey was out.

Long Island was never a consideration because the commute is lousy. Sorry, Long Islanders.

We looked a little bit in Rockland County, specifically the town of Nyack. That’s a pretty area, but again, lousy commute. And, while driving down the main drag with that brilliant real estate agent, she looked out the window and said, “Uggh. There goes my daughter with her drug-dealing boyfriend again.”

Next!

We looked all over Westchester County, which is the other place Manhattanites flee to when they decide not to pay private school tuition. We walked around just about every main street, with Pumpkin sitting in her stroller and me interviewing teenagers at Starbucks, asking them questions like, “What book is that you’re reading?” and “Do you like living here?” One time I asked some girls in Rye, New York, what the kids were like in nearby Larchmont. “Oh, they are so spoiled,” said the girls. “Their parents buy them whatever they want!” In Larchmont I asked a girl what the kids are like in Rye. “Spoiled,” she said.

Daddy-O and I began to figure it out: Anyone who lives in a nice town with a good school district near the ocean within commuting distance of Manhattan is spoiled. Including, possibly, us, and our kids. So no, I’m not buying them ipods, or whatever the tweens will be into when my girls are tweens. No. I gotta practice saying that now.

As I said before, we were fortunate to be looking in these towns at all, but also taken aback by what our money would actually buy. To anyone who doesn’t live in this area, the houses look like they are worth about one-third of what you actually pay for them. It’s nuts all over this country, I know.

Often our rounds were met with comedy. One home was what’s called in real estate parlance a “divorce house,” and the husband had put floor-to-ceiling locked gates on all the doorways leading to “his” rooms, so we peered through the slats to see half of the house.

Another home’s teeny backyard had no fence and led right into a graveyard. “”Quiet neighbors,” the realtor chirped.

The market was so strong that some sellers didn’t bother to clean their houses before we arrived, leaving dirty dishes in sinks and towels on bathroom floors.

We saw what’s called “grandma houses” that hadn’t been updated since grandma moved in sixty years ago. We were also humbled to discover that grandma and grandpa had raised five kids in a house we considered cramped for two kids. My how things have changed.

One older couple sat watching television, him in an undershirt and boxers, smoking a cigarette, while we traipsed through their living room. We learned that split levels could be advertised as colonials simply by adding pillars to the entrance, and “two floors” might only mean there’s one step leading down to the family room, and “mint condition” meant absolutely nothing.

We also couldn’t figure out why the real estate agent in Scarsdale told us we might prefer living in nearby Edgemont. Why wouldn’t we want to live in Scarsdale? Scarsdale seems really nice!

Zabar's. The best for bagels, lox, coffee, cheeses, olives, housewares. 80th Street and Broadway

One night we went up to Scarsdale to have dinner and investigate further. It was mid-December, and as we drove the winding streets in our rental car, we appreciated the quiet elegance of the neighborhoods. Looking at the map, I directed Daddy-O to make a turn into what would become Edgemont.

Lo and behold, every single house was lit up like a Holiday on Ice spectacular. Like a Holiday on Ice Christmas spectacular, as opposed to around the corner in Scarsdale, where, come to think of it, there wasn’t a single red or green light, not one waving Santa or shiny reindeer. Ah, now we got it.

Though we were Upper West Siders and like all Upper West Siders worshiped at the altar of Zabar’s, the Scarsdale real estate agent assumed we wouldn’t want to be the only non-Jewish family in town. And the folks in Edgemont were proclaiming, “We are the gentiles! Merry Christmas!”

We settled not in Scarsdale, nor in Edgemont or Rye or Larchmont or any other town in Westchester. We settled, temporarily as it turned out, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Talk about your Christmas lights!

And here’s how that happened: On Super Bowl Sunday we drove up once again, this time to check out the town of Bedford and parts nearby. Daddy-O had secured a rental from the outfit where he often rented cars for use during film shoots. They gave him great rates and the cars were decent. Not as schnazzy as, say, a Hertz white Taurus, but they got us where we wanted to go.

On this particular day they must’ve given him a car they had found abandoned on the side of the road. It was a beat-up lowrider with missing hubcaps, a crack in the windshield and cigarette burns in the vinyl upholstery. The muffler was shot, and the interior reeked so bad of nicotine we had to drive with the windows down, even though it was freezing. Poor Pumpkin was strapped in a car seat inhaling the noxious smell, but then again her only frame of reference was the subway and an occasional taxicab, so she didn’t seem to mind.

After chugging and spewing exhaust around the crisp woodsy streets, Daddy-O, with the map on his lap, said, “Why don’t we drive just a little further and see what Greenwich looks like?” We had no idea.

Wow!

Beaches, trees, stately homes, a Whole Foods! We like this place, we said! Let’s go into this real estate office here and see what the prices are like! No one was working that day save for one newly minted agent, and when we told her our price range, she looked at us with pity and said, “I’m so sorry, but there is never anything in Greenwich available at that price.” We tucked our tails between our legs,

Greenwich is known for its huge estates like this one, but lots of people there live in regular houses. They can feel like paupers but it's still a pretty place to live

climbed into the lowrider, and after several attempts to get it started in the sub-zero cold, finally rattled out of the parking lot, past the Tiffany jewelry store and down Greenwich Avenue.

Turns out the realtor was wrong, however, because a few months later, while chatting with an agent on the phone, I learned there was one house not yet on the market that we could afford, in Greenwich, on a cul-de-sac, with three bedrooms and a little yard and everything. It sounded perfect. The agent, whom I had never met and had called randomly from a phone number on a website, told me I must get on a train right away and she would pick me up at the station, because once there was an Open House, “our” house was sure to sell within minutes.

Remember 2004? The height of the market! I called a babysitter for Pumpkin and sped down to Grand Central Station. After the real estate agent met me in Greenwich and we drove up to the house, two other luxury sedans pulled up behind us. Real estate agents climbed out of those cars with their clients, women who looked exactly like me – same shoes, same handbags, same haircuts – clearly Upper West Siders with the same hopes and reams of school system research that I had.

I was taken into the house first, while the other buyers cooled their heels on the front lawn. If they were shills it worked like a charm because I was a bundle of nerves the whole time. It was perfect. A gen-u-ine colonial, built in 1935. Completely renovated. Not spacious, but cute and charming. The nicest house we had ever seen near the ocean in a good school district within commuting distance of the city. I made an offer on the spot, the owner was phoned, it was accepted, and we sewed things up right there in the empty kitchen.

I called Daddy-O from the train on the way home and told him the news. He didn’t mind that he hadn’t even seen the house and understood how insane the market was (those were the days …). The first time he laid eyes on it he said, “Nice job, honey, but it’s a lot smaller than I expected … ” I had really hyped it up.

We were a mess. We hated to leave the city. But our apartment would be crowded with two kids, and we only had one bathroom, and nowhere to do laundry, and Pumpkin was about to start pre-school, and I had resisted that whole scene and now we had nowhere to send her.

When Pumpkin was two years old, she and I attended a twice-weekly mommy-and-me program called “Poppyseed.” It was adorable, and all of us mommies became good friends. Throughout that year, I listened as the mommies discussed their pre-school tours, their pre-school interviews, the tuition fees, the application processes, the acceptances and rejections. One mother even paid a consultant to help her determine which pre-schools she should consider applying to. The money to be made in the Manhattan pre-school market … what a racket!

The mommies came to Poppyseed distraught after their interviews. When little Joey was asked, “What does an owl say?” he answered, “Moo.” Now he won’t get in to the Montessori!

I couldn’t bring myself to join that process, nor could I rationalize spending upwards of $16,000 a year for nursery school.

Some people can deal with this stuff. I could not.

Still, before we signed the contract to buy the house, we panicked. Did we really want to live in Greenwich? Headquarters of the Mercedes traveling moms, in Tiffany jewelry and kitten heels?

I fired up the internet and searched for the phone numbers of families who lived on the cul-de-sac, then I called them at random, to get a sense of what they might be like. It warmed my heart when I introduced myself to one neighbor and she was on her front lawn talking to the other neighbors, so they all got on the phone. They must’ve thought I was the biggest loony tunes city slicker ever, but they were also very nice. There was a police officer, a plumber, a teacher, an emergency room doctor. Regular folks.

Though I don’t drink much coffee, I was accustomed to walking everywhere, and wondered if anyone walked in the suburbs, so I asked, “Is there a place to walk to and say, get a coffee, near the neighborhood?” The doctor was on the other line. He sounded puzzled. “Coffee?” he said, “Um, well, we make our coffee at home.”

And just to take our neuroses one step further, the day before the signed contract was due, we took the subway to Park Slope, in Brooklyn, and looked at apartments there. We walked by the public school and chatted with the parents, we sat in a cafe with Pumpkin and ate an organic lunch and felt all hip and righteous. The atmosphere was the polar opposite of the Burberry Sea we’d observed in the Greenwich grocery store. We compared the prices of two-bedroom apartments in Brooklyn versus our possible house, and property taxes, and the fact we would need cars in the suburbs, and figured out it would be cheaper to live in Brooklyn.

But at the end of the day, Daddy-O took my hand as we sat with mugs of hot chocolate and said, “Let’s just try living in Greenwich. If we hate the suburbs, we’ll come back and live in Brooklyn. We’ll always be able to move to Brooklyn, but if we don’t try the suburbs now, we’ll never know if we would’ve liked it or not.”

Our Manhattan apartment sold in two hours. We sold it ourselves, without a broker. God was telling us something (that we priced it too low?).

We didn’t have a car and needed to buy one. Neither of us had owned a car in over 15 years and we had no idea where to start. Our new home was only a block from the train station, so Daddy-O could walk, and we could manage with one car for a while at least. I had my heart set on a Volvo Cross-Country station wagon, because I knew Volvo’s were safe and I was petrified of the giant Suburbans and Hummers careening around the ‘burbs. Daddy-O was skeptical. We were spending a lot of money on the house, and Volvo’s aren’t cheap. How about a Passat, or a Subaru? They’re nice, too.

God smiled on us once again, because it just so happened at that very moment, Jim Mazzolla, one of Daddy-O’s regular prop guys, was completing work on a film called “Hide and Seek,” starring Robert De Niro. (A not-so-great film, in my humble opinion, but it was great for us.) In the movie, De Niro’s character, David Callaway, drives a blue Volvo Cross-Country station wagon. Jim had acquired the car for the shoot, and he knew Daddy-O and I needed a car, so why not give it to us? Well, he didn’t exactly give it to us, but we got it for a very good price. It was brand new and totally tricked out, and De Niro even left his coffee cup underneath the seat! Kind of like Jon Voight’s teeth marks on a pencil in George Costanza’s Le Baron convertible! If you ever see “Hide and Seek,” you’ll see the car, briefly, sitting outside Callaway’s house in the rain.

As it turned out, in Greenwich, my Volvo was considered a “nanny car.” I didn’t care. It drives like a tank.

The night before the big move we got a baby sitter and went on a date downtown, in our old West Village neighborhood, one last time as locals. It was a stunning June evening, the moon was full and we could see stars, unusual in the city. After dinner we sat on a stoop on one of the loveliest brownstone blocks, Perry Street, and I looked up at the sky and bawled uncontrollably. New York had been so good to me for so many years, I couldn’t believe I was actually going to ditch her.

There is a book of essays called “Leaving New York” on my shelf. Leaving New York can be so traumatic that countless people have written essays about it. If you haven’t lived there, this will confirm your belief that New Yorkers are weirdly obsessive when it comes to their lifestyle. Probably my favorite essay on the topic is written by Nora Ephron in her book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck.” In it she says that once you leave New York, it’s as though they build a giant wall around the city and you have to pole-vault over it to make your way back in.

So that is how we left the city, kicking and screaming. That was four years ago and I couldn’t imagine living there now, not even in Brooklyn. Peanut was born in Greenwich, as was Cupcake, and we lived in that sweet colonial for two years. Pumpkin’s nursery school application process went like this: I called the nursery school in July, they said “sure, sign her up,” and they met her on the first day of school in September.

We don’t live in Greenwich anymore. We made wonderful friends there, but Greenwich was a baby step toward an even bigger move that happened later.

Find out why, and read some funny Greenwich stories, in the next installment titled, “You Might Have to Drive a Minivan.”

The Painted Pony Championship Rodeo, oldest weekly rodeo in America

Daddy-O and I took the kids to Lake George, in the Adirondack mountains, for a week. We stayed at O’Connor’s Resort and Cottages, in a two-bedroom cottage on the lake.

Jim and Betty O’Connor built the resort 40 years ago, and not much has changed there since then. They’ve been married 63 years and are now in their late eighties. Jim cruises around the property in his golf cart until close to midnight, regaling guests with a play-by-play of his experience in the Battle of Guadalcanal. Betty was a young dancer on the 1930s Vaudeville circuit.

It’s wonderful to spend time with older people. They’re the only folks who can share firsthand what it was like to live this history.

Bucking bull and buckaroos

We had a great ride on the nine-mile bike trail from Lake George to Glens Falls. I rode with Peanut, age 3, on the back of my bike. Pumpkin, age 7, pedaled her Malibu swinger, and Cupcake, age 2, chilled in a jog stroller powered by Daddy-O and his roller blades. We also managed a hike near the town of Hague, and spent an afternoon drawing pictures of owls with the talented children’s book author/illustrator Bruce Hiscock.

The highlight of our vacation was our two nights at the Painted Pony Championship Rodeo, in nearby Lake Luzerne. The Painted Pony is the oldest weekly rodeo in the country. It’s now run by Shawn and Shana Graham, two lifelong rodeo kids who sure know how to put on a show. Shawn was once a saddle bronc rider, until he got thrown from a horse and broke his neck. Shana is a barrel racer.

One thing you gotta understand about my background – I’ve lived several incarnations so far in my life – beach bum surfer girl, New York City gal, L.A. wannabe, and now, suburban mom. But one stage that sits close to my heart is that of being a young girl growing up in Texas, surveying the flat land atop the wheel well in the back of my dads “pick-em-up,” and also being a teenager in Paso Robles, California. My dad’s from Pecos, in West Texas, and his name is Bill, Pecos Bill.

Good thing he's wearing a helmet and not a cowboy hat! This crazy Connecticut cowboy got stomped by this bull moments after the photo was taken.

The day after mom married him (I was five years old, he’s actually my step-dad) he packed us all up – mom, my sister, and me – in a green Pontiac and drove us from San Diego to Texas to start our new life as a family. We lived in Texas for eight years, and goin’ to the rodeo was a favorite pastime.

Mom hated living in Texas. She had never lived anywhere but Southern California, and every day for eight years she cried and begged Daddy to move us back to California. When I was 13 he finally relented, but only after they discovered the California ranching town of Paso Robles, formally known as “El Paso de Robles,” or, “The Pass of the Oaks.”

Paso is situated pretty much in the middle of nowhere – 400 miles north of Los Angeles, 400 miles south of San Francisco. When we lived there, the population was around 9,000. Now it’s over 30,000. Paso is also home to the annual California Mid-State Fair and to the Country Championship Rodeo. Most of my

The bulls have badass names like "Black Betty" and "The Undertaker," but this bull reminded us more of Disney's Ferdinand the Bull.

Paso friends were in 4-H and FFA (Future Farmers of America). We lived in a ranch house in town, but I grew up riding my friends’ horses and helping with their lambs and heifers and other livestock. My high school boyfriend was a cowboy and worked on one of the town’s many big ranches. We were surrounded by rolling hills, vineyards, and wide open spaces. Real horse country.

Which is why the Painted Pony Rodeo was such a treat. It brought me back to a part of my roots, and our daughters loved it. We were glad they don’t sell alcohol in the grandstands and instead keep the booze at the saloon across the parking lot, because the place had a real family atmosphere. We had such a good time we returned for a second night to put our hands over our hearts and shout along to country songs about God and the U-S-of-A.

The earliest recorded rodeo took place in 1864 between a group of vaqueros, Mexican cowboys, and Western wranglers learning their way of work. The competitions were started as a way to show off and blow off steam after a long day’s work. Cowgirls have been competing in rodeos since the 1890s.

Pumpkin was especially enthralled by the diminutive cowgirl Autumn Walker, a five-year-old

Five-year-old barrel racer Autumn Walker

who rides her full-size thoroughbred, I believe, in the barrel racing event. According to the rodeo announcer, Autumn’s parents are confident her horse will take care of her. This is evident each time Autumn races among the barrels. She’s urging that horse to move faster, faster, but the horse will only trot as fast as it deems safe for its pint-size passenger.

Besides the barrel racing, we also liked watching the bucking broncos, the calf roping, steer wrestling, and bull riding events. Not sure how PETA feels about some of these events, and we were concerned about the wellbeing of the animals, but I gotta say, we sat in the front row both nights, and when you see the the faces of these animals, they actually look like they “get it” and are having as much fun as the people. And the bulls, they look dumb and sweet, when they’re not bucking. Like Ferdinand the Bull.

Our cowgirl, in sneakers

We began both nights by eating at the Painted Pony’s authentic Texas-style BBQ, featuring mouthwatering chicken and ribs that had been slowly smoked all day long, just the way they do it in Texas. I’ve lived on the East Coast for 18 years and, though I’ve searched far and wide, I’ve never sampled barbecue out here as authentic as that at the Painted Pony. It was some GOOD STUFF!

On the second night of the bull riding go-round, Pumpkin was eager to see who would win the event. Bull riding buckaroos attempt to stay on top of a bucking bull for eight seconds and are scored by judges according to how difficult a ride the bull gives them, how they move atop the bull, all sorts of things. If they don’t stay on for eight seconds, they don’t get a score or a paycheck. A separate judge also scores the bulls so they can be rated according to how challenging a ride they put out.

One of the cowboys, who hailed from Connecticut, came storming out the bucking shoot looking pretty good but then got thrown off the back of the bull seconds after one of these photos was taken. Its hind foot, and 1500 pounds of snorting toro, slammed down on the cowboy’s chest. The rodeo clowns distracted the bull away from the cowboy, who lay still on the ground while the paramedics tended to him. The crowd in the grandstands was silent. People were praying. The cowboys’ wives were sitting right behind us, hands over their faces. Thankfully, Peanut and Cupcake weren’t aware of what was going on.

I kept telling Pumpkin the cowboy would be alright and that he just hurt his arm or something, and, thank goodness, he finally, somehow, stood up and waved to the crowd as he limped out of the arena. Daddy-O and I surmised that the cowboy didn’t want to scare the kids so he walked to the ambulance himself. All I could think about was 25-year-old champion bull rider Lane Frost, subject of the film, “8 seconds,” who was thrown from a bull and killed when one of its horns gored him in the back.

More bull riding followed the Connecticut cowboy’s exit, and Pumpkin was horrified. “Mommy, I will NEVER ride a bull!” She exclaimed.

I told her most people will never ride a bull, and that the men riding these bulls think it’s fun. They’re playing a game with the bull to see how long they can stay on top without getting thrown off, and the bull gets a “kick” out of it, too. I didn’t tell her that bull riding is considered the most dangerous eight seconds in sports.

“They think it’s fun to get stomped on by a bull?” Pumpkin was incredulous. “Those boys are crazy, mommy!”

Daddy-O said he enjoyed getting a peek into what cowboy and rodeo life is like. His only

In the arena with Peanut

experience with rodeo was hearing a story from one of his colleagues, who worked on the movie, “Borat.” In the movie, there’s a scene where Borat the Kazakhstani appears in the center of a rodeo arena, butchers the U.S. national anthem, makes fun of George Dubya, and proclaims that he supports America’s “war of terror,” among other things. The scene was shot at the Imperial Rodeo in Salem, Virginia, and according to Daddy-O’s friend, the film crew, and especially Sacha Baron Cohen, barely escaped that shoot location with their lives. The restless, booing crowd nearly erupted into a riot, and Cohen and his crew were advised to get the heck out of there as fast as they could. They quickly and haphazardly threw their equipment into their trucks and screeched away before they could be roped up and beaten with cattle prods.

Those crazy cowboys are a mighty proud lot. Best not to mess with ‘em.

The beach at O’Connor’s Resort Cottages on Lake George

We went on vacation this past week – more on that later – and I finally had the chance to read that runaway bestseller, “The Secret.”

I must be the millionth blogger to comment on this book, but wow! Have you read it yet?

If this stuff is true, why didn’t I know about it 30 years ago? Think of all the money I’d have in the bank! I’d own a mansion and a yacht! I’d be able to do crow pose without falling flat on my face!

Apparently, the course of your life is controlled entirely by your thoughts, so if you think you’re fat, for instance, the Universe hears you thinking, “I’m fat” and answers, “Your wish is my command.” And you’ll continue to be fat.

If you want a million bucks, you just focus really really hard on having a million bucks and Presto! You’re rich!

I love this!

Hey, my corny visualization journal “attracted” Daddy-O to me, just the way I drew him, right? Well, that and a whole lotta prayer.

I do believe there is power in positive thinking and in visualization. If you knew my background, growing up the child of an engineer and businesswoman in Texas and California, it was totally implausible that I’d end up a writer in New York City, but ever since I was a little girl magazine junkie poring over photos of famous New Yorkers, that’s where I assumed I’d end up.

Perhaps that was God’s plan for me all along and I visualized it after. Quick – which came first, God’s plan or your visualization?

At least this explains why I was never too successful as a writer. I doubted I would be anyway. Or really it’s because I never liked spending so many hours alone doing the hard work of writing. I much preferred being with people, and you can’t get much work done when you spend all your time chit-chatting.

A highlight of the book is this quote by Henry Ford: “If you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you’re right.” I like it.

So far my mantra of “I can eat whatever I want and never gain an ounce,” as recommended by “The Secret,” has not panned out. I gained four pounds during the vacation. I must have let “doubt” cloud my thoughts, because it couldn’t be due to all those mint chocolate chip ice cream cones.

I’ll keep focusing and keep eating, and let you know how things turn out.

This blog will be wildly successful! I and my family will be rich and prosperous! Everyone who reads this will enjoy a lifetime of good health and happiness! (What the heck, I’m game …)

Off this goes, into the Universe. Hocus, Pocus!

Well I may not be Perez Hilton but I figure it’s high time to get on the bloggin’ bandwagon.

If you’re wondering about the goofy blog title, google the lyrics to the 1970′s song of the same name by the Philadelphia band, the Stylistics. No one in music has ever possessed a falsetto like Russell Thomkins, Junior’s.

Prince did a real groovy cover of the song for his 1996 album, “Emancipation,” and I also like Aaron Neville’s version. The song means a lot to me because it was performed A cappella by my dear friend, Gordon Davies, at my 2001 wedding.

Some bloggers, when referring to husbands, use the term “DH,” which I’m guessing means, “dear husband,” but I’m going to call my guy “Daddy-O,” because that’s what we call him around the house.

Our wedding ceremony took place at the First Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue and 12th Street in New York City, and the reception was to be held in the roof garden of our Upper West Side apartment building. Daddy-O works in film production and had set up the roof with tents and food stations, kind of like a film set but with a bar. There was even a crew catering truck parked outside our building on 81st Street, and the catering staff ran the food and dishes ten floors up and down the elevator, to the roof and back again.

It was July, and in the early evening a storm blew through Manhattan with hurricane force. It came on suddenly, and the wedding guests grabbed stereo speakers, chairs, food and drinks, and ran everything down to our new apartment on the third floor. We had moved into the building just weeks before and didn’t know our neighbors, but some of them joined in the party. The caterers set up in the building’s hallway and along the stairwell, and 80 or so people crammed into the apartment, which was barely furnished. Garry Novikoff (“Gazzer”) set up his keyboard and began playing and singing, “Fly Me to the Moon” while we all danced, soaking wet, around the crowded living room.

We cut our wedding cake, a chocolate layer cake with buttercream frosting from the Cupcake Cafe, and because I was eight months pregnant, our guests began singing, at first,

“The bride feeds the groom, the bride feeds the groom,” then,

“The groom feeds the bride, the groom feeds the bride,” and finally,

“The groom feeds the baby, the groom feeds the baby …”

After which Gordy launched into this lovely song while everyone sat silently listening to him, the wind howling outside and heavy rain thumping against the windowpanes:

“Betcha By Golly Wow, you’re the one that I’ve been waiting for, forever. And ever will my love for you, keep growin’ strong, keep growin’ strong.”

The song has brought us great luck. And those who knew me well teared up, because it did indeed seem like I’d been waiting forever for Daddy-O to appear. For years I wasn’t sure I would ever find him.

I once wrote my mother an email saying I was holding out for a man who was kind and creative and appreciated music and movies, but still had a solid head on his shoulders and the smarts to manage life effectively, and he should be fit and athletic, too. I wanted him to be able to hike up a mountain and camp outdoors and build a fire with flint and sticks like I learned how to do in Girl Scouts. I also wanted him to dress up in a tuxedo like my old Ken doll and look like he was totally comfortable. Not much had changed since I was eight years old. I wanted Everyman, I suppose, because I’m a bit of a chameleon myself, with a French manicure and hiking boots.

“You’ll never find him in New York!” My mother screamed over America Online. “That kind of man is a needle in a haystack!”

“You gotta stop dating all those freaky players,” said my childhood friend Minsky. “You need a nice Midwestern boy with glasses. Someone normal and trustworthy you can have babies with.”

My friend Rick was more blunt. “You should’ve never left the Mormon church,” he said. “You would’ve been living in Utah with one of the Marriott boys and six kids by now. You missed your calling.”

All along I prayed, and wrote paragraphs about this man in my visualization journal, long before “The Secret” ever came out, and I even drew a picture of a tall (because I’m 5’10), thin guy with glasses and chunky shoes and comments written all over the page with arrows pointing to parts of his scribbled body, words like, “dimples” and “honest” and “good quality belt.”

Desperate? Neurotic? You betcha! I was 33 years old, blindsided by a divorce a few years earlier, and felt like I’d dated just about every eligible male in the city. Like Charlotte York wailed in the coffee shop, “I’m exhausted! Where is he??”

On the first night of September, 1999, I spontaneously decided to join hundreds of rollerbladers I’d seen gathered in Union Square Park, part of a group called “Blade Night Manhattan,” on a roll around the city. We skated from 14th Street up the West Side to the Central Park band shell, dodging taxis and messenger bikes along the way, and the police arrived and turned on their siren lights and blasted music, creating a roller disco for us. We boogied on our blades around the band shell for awhile until it was time to skate back down the East Side to Union Square.

Ladies, if you are looking to meet a man, here’s a tip: Go rollerblading alone. Of the hundreds of skaters that night, I think I was the only female not skating with a guy. I felt like the belle of the ball! My dance card was being checked by the airline pilot, the rock-and-roller, the firefighter and a long-haired dude I call “Snapple guy.”

Snapple guy started talking to me back at the band shell, and when we approached Union Square Park he asked if I wanted a Snapple. “Sure, I’ll have a Snapple,” I said, and off he skated to the nearest deli.

Meanwhile, the way Daddy-O tells it, he himself was halfway home to his apartment on Bleecker Street when he thought, “I should really turn around and go talk to that girl (love that I was a girl and not a ‘woman.’) Otherwise I might never see her again.” So he skated back, and when Snapple guy headed out, Daddy-O made his move.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked.

As we talked, Snapple guy returned and skated behind Daddy-O in circles, waving my pink Snapple in the air, but thankfully he didn’t interrupt us until after Daddy-O had taken down my phone number.

Daddy-O called the next day, and on 9/9/99 we met for our first date, a casual dinner at the Grey Dog’s Coffee on Carmine Street. To be honest, I had no idea what he looked like until that first date, because when I met him, he was wearing a helmet and pads and it was kind of dark and we were all sweaty. When this tall, thin guy with glasses showed up, my first thought was,

“Oh. my. gosh. It’s the guy from my picture!”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“The Midwest. Ohio.” He smiled.

We sat talking at the Grey Dog for over three hours. Then we talked some more, at the neighboring Daddy-O pub, until the middle of the night.

Nine years later I still find his dimples irresistible.

And after two years of hiking, camping, kayaking, going to movies and concerts, building fires in the woods, and conceiving our first baby, there we stood: Me, very pregnant, looking like a giant marshmallow in my white chiffon wedding dress. Him, in his tuxedo, looking entirely comfortable.

And Gordy pulled off an excellent falsetto, almost as good as Russell Thomkins, Junior’s.

I didn’t show Daddy-O the picture I had drawn of the tall guy with glasses and a good quality belt until years later, after the ink on the marriage certificate was good and dry. Imagine how that would’ve freaked him out?

So, I guess that’s as good a start as any, and it is where my new life began. Let’s see what happens next.