These folks have figured it out: Their site contains a blog and member interaction. They have a Facebook page with (as of this writing) about 36,000 fans. They have how-to videos as useful as anything on television. You can customize your profile. There are newsletters and an RSS feed, and most useful of all, an iPhone application, with more than 30,000 recipes — by meal, by ingredient, by event (Mardi Gras, Super Bowl, you name it).

The app features customer reviews and even generates your own hand-held shopping list. How our mothers ever put a meal on the table sans technology is beyond me.

— By Erika Stutzman

After the rains

I wanted to learn from this moment.

A fabulous beach vacation with my family: On the third day, we rested.

We woke up and it was gray. Then the skies opened up and the rain didn’t stop until long after the invisible sun had set.

I started the day with that vague discomfort I always feel when things are awry. What if it rains for the rest of the trip? What if my disappointment ruins the fun for everyone?

But I had never gone to the beach with little children before. Our small resort room was a castle for the 2-year-old — she’d skip from the couch to the window to watch all the large cruise ships drifting in and out of the cove, like giant ghosts in the mist. A warm bath was as fun as any swimming pool; better, in some ways, because her chubby little feet could touch the bottom.

The 4-year-old glammed it up, putting on the adult-sized plush slippers, and ordering room service just like Eloise at the Plaza.

The next day, and the next, and the next, the sun burned a bright hole through an impeccable blue sky, warming our winter bones and sprinkling freckles across our shoulders and noses.
But even now, weeks later, the 4-year-old talks about our rainy day as if it were part of the itinerary. Ask her about Mexico, and she’ll tell you it has beaches, and the ocean and room service.

I think about happiness a lot for someone who is, generally speaking, happy.

A collection of studies in 2002 concluded that materialism — the desire for more stuff — made people unhappy, whether they were rich or poor. People who looked on the bright side were happiest; but don’t feel bad if you don’t, because 50 percent of that ability is genetic. Grateful people were happy; unforgiving people were unhappy.

A 2004 study of more than 900 Texas women showed that money — as long as people weren’t in poverty — didn’t make a lick of difference, but that lack of sleep did. Sex and socializing made people happy; commuting and housework did not.

A 2009 study by Harvard may be the longest running happiness survey ever, starting in 1937. This one started with male Harvard sophomores. Stable marriages, not smoking and having good relationships made people happy. So did exercise. Alcoholism made people unhappy. (They found that this was not putting the cart before the horse — we assume unhappy people tend to drink more. The study actually found that abusing alcohol was a larger factor in making people unhappy to begin with.)

They all make sense, all these scientists working so hard to tell us whatever it is that we should already know. (Take my happiness survey, please. Ba-da-bum!)

I’ll keep looking for their answers. But I think I’ve seen the secret to happiness, and it looks a lot like warm baths and room service on a wonderful, unanticipated rainy day.  

— By Erika Stutzman
erika@womensmag.com

A good friend of mine is having a baby and confesses that she’s worried that she’s not going to be able to love this baby as much as she loves her first born.

She wants to know if I think there is something wrong with her. She wants to know how on Earth a mother — those primally programmed to be the open-armed kissy love machines since time began — could worry about loving one baby, and not the next?

I tell her I want to know how on Earth she got this far along, with her rounded belly and waddling walk, without realizing that 99.99 percent of women who give birth more than once face the same fear?

Maybe it’s our Heathcliff-and-Cathy, Angel-and-Buffy culture that seems to make us think there is one true love. A beloved pet dies, and almost every pet owner worries about getting another, lest the loss taint their affection for pet No. 2. Some of us get married — yay! true love at last — and fret about what age will do to our marital affection. And then what pets will do to our marital affection, and then what kids will do to our pet affection and our marital affection and I think you see where I’m going with this.

The answer, which we explore in this month’s magazine, is love. More love. And then some more. Heathcliff and Angel neglected to tell us that it truly is an exponential gift.

— Erika
erika@womensmag.com

Broken Neck Baby was once a doll that could blink and cry. The blinking had stopped, leaving it with one open eye and one sealed half-closed. Its little rubber noggin had come to rest for days on the mailing label of my Vanity Fair: It left a permanent tattoo of my name and address on its temple. Its neck was broken, the exposed wires of what used to make it blink and cry made me constantly vigilant to keep the doll away from the baby.

Photo by Ray Tollison, www.pixelpooch.com

But the longing disappointment was real: Days later, a doll’s pacifier is ferreted out of a full toy chest. “Oh,” said a voice trembling with near tears, “this belonged to Broken Neck Baby.”

This is a story every parent knows already: Children will love toys to death, and if you held on to every scrap of the broken possessions, you’d be living in a landfill. Grown-ups have to teach children how to move on from material things. And on a daily basis, we need to teach coping and safety skills as well.

And children teach grownups, too, with their spirited defense of all creatures beautiful and ugly, of dogs both clean and smelly, of things whole and shattered. With their capacity to forgive flawed mothers who throw away beloved things, they remind us on a daily basis about the worthiness of unconditional love.

— By Erika Stutzman

But it’s so much more than that. The online dashboard shows your splits — how fast you’re running over the course of a run — and audio cues tell you how far you’ve gone and your average speed.

You can program your own workouts. You can join a team of fellow runners to inspire you and to compete with. You can manually enter gym workouts, and the GPS will also track your bike rides, your ski runs, your walks.

The extremely passionate users are on Facebook, offering support and tips. Measure your week-to-week progress with a simple bar graph. Want a smaller butt? Want something to inspire you to get out of bed in the morning? Yeah, there’s an app for that.

— By Erika Stutzman

Photo by Geoff Deakin.

I can be just as bad, in my own way. I know the true meaning of the holiday season, and I know the deep, fleeting value in family gatherings. But more than once, I’ve spent the better part of a holiday season obsessing over the perfect “get” for the family gift exchange. I’ve spent the better part of a holiday family dinners trapped in my kitchen, hand-slicing Brussels sprouts into identical paper-thin ribbons or making homemade croutons in a 12-step process that takes as much time as baking and decorating a once-in-a-lifetime wedding cake.

But it’s the unexpected gifts that can help us leave that toy catalogue at home, to go on and leave those Brussels sprouts whole.
I intricately planned a day off from work earlier this season — my to-do list included perhaps 750 little activities — only to have my children’s school close down for the day due to snow. As I mentally scrubbed 750 things from my day, I remembered how much I loved snow days as a kid. There’s a reason: It’s an unanticipated gift. A gift of time, a gift of family togetherness. We baked chocolate cakes and watched princess movies; we went out for lunch at a restaurant and built a sturdy snowman with a carrot nose.

It wasn’t obsessively planned, and it wasn’t intricate or impressive. It was just perfect. That’s what I’m hoping for, for the season. But I’m not planning for it.

— Erika Stutzman
erika@womensmag.com

The study, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, found that parents lie to children, and lie a lot. Some of the lies are white lies — “You did such a good job cleaning your room” when it’s still a mess — and some were definitely not.

Example: “The police are going to get you if you don’t stop crying now.” Some experts said the fibs are no big deal if the overall effect is raising children in a protective environment — one that is safe for them, even if they don’t know the truth about what is outside their parents’ boundaries. Others were aghast at the study, said it could hinder cause-and-effect learning, and wondered what kind of values parents are passing along to their little kiddies.

Because children don’t lie, goes the convention. Rumor has it, children are honest and lying is learned behavior.

Poppycock.

For the record, I don’t lie to my children. (Nor do I share the entire truth: The image of a serial killer stares at us from the morning newspaper. “Who’s that?” she asks. “Oh, it’s a stranger, named Scott,” I say. “I have an uncle named Scott!” she shouts, pirouetting away from me.)

Choosing not to lie to my children isn’t all about my values, though. It’s because it’s too easy to get caught. “You SAID ‘Dora the Explorer’ wasn’t on TV right now. BUT LOOK!!! LOOK!!!”

But in defense of parents who do lie, and the shameful role models they are, where did this reputation for honesty in children begin? Because they’re blunt? “Mommy, you still look like you have a baby in your tummy, and you already had the baby!” Honestly?

Fact is: Kids lie, and lie like rugs. I know a boy in Gunbarrel who claims his favorite dish is monkey soup. They don’t even sell monkey soup in Gunbarrel.

We bought ski passes for the winter, and my wide-eyed, honest daughter tells me tales about last ski season, when instead of learning to ski during ski school, they went up into the clouds. To hang out. Clouds are not cold, or wet, or fluffy. They are warm and gooey.

She tells her teacher all about her five brothers and her cat. Lies, lies. Her favorite sense is the sense of smell (this is actually true.) Her favorite smell: Dragons.

In truth, there will come a time when she’s going to forget about her imaginary brothers and the made-up cat. Years from now, she won’t remember the gooey warmth of clouds, or be able to recall the delicious scent of dragons. I’ll remind her.

Because, and this is the absolute truth, I’m going to miss all of them.

– By Erika Stutzman

So we’ve trotted out the kids’ teeny little mittens and their small winter boots. My running shoes are still out and at the ready — there’s a Turkey Trot this month, after all — but my own ski helmet is no longer in the very back of the closet. It’s graduated to a spot near the front.
Another friend, this one in Florida, shares holiday photos of her family on Thanksgiving and on Easter Sunday, and more often than not, they’re all on surfboards, or in swimsuits, the littlest ones grasping their Easter baskets with little tanned, sandy hands.
Having grown up here, I remember a childhood of wearing Easter bonnets on my head, and either Moon Boots or strappy sandals on my feet, depending on the weather. And you really wouldn’t know until a day or two in advance.
This month is all about being thankful for things, and my list is too long for a magazine of any size. But today, a crisp fall day that started out under a canopy of  gray clouds only to erupt into a glorious big blue sunny sky, I will count the glory of our changing seasons among them. Thanksgiving on a beach may sound dreamy to some people, but we are thankful for the element of surprise.

– Erika Stutzman
erika@womensmag.com

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” DVDs, seasons one through seven. Joss Whedon’s cult classic television show, filled with pop-culture references, teen angst and bloodsuckers, stands up surprisingly well over time.

“Angel” DVDs. A “Buffy” spinoff, this stars David Boreanaz (“Bones”) as the wisecracking, crime-fighting vampire with a soul.

“Interview with a Vampire,” by Anne Rice. The 1976 book, which was later turned into a feature film starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, is still one of the best vampire books around. The sequels are enjoyable enough — they would grow into the “Vampire Chronicles” — but this one is the quintessential Goth tale, starring the forever rock star, Lestat.

“The Lost Boys” DVD. What’s not to love? ’80s music (and hairdos!) plus the “two Coreys,” and Keifer Sutherland before he got all CIA-ish in “24.” The movie’s trailer says it all: “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.”

The little-known film, “Shadow of the Vampire,” made in 2000, stars Willem Dafoe, John Malkovich and Carey Elwes. The premise is the making-of the classic movie “Noseferatu” in 1922 — with one major problem. The actor playing the vampire is actually a vampire. And, as such, takes the role of a lifetime way too seriously.

— By Erika Stutzman

I was thinking about the prep work for an activity that comes naturally when you’re late for the bus, while watching my young toddler run. Her feet are too small for her fat legs; her head is too big for her soft neck and tiny shoulders.

But she will run.

She will run if she sees a hill. She throws her little arms up for balance, hands flapping like canary wings, and she will run right down it. She will run in a straight line — like a rabbit to its warren — when you’re chasing after her for a much-needed bath. Sometimes, just for the joy of it, she will put down her toy or her book, and she will run in little bumblebee-like circles all over the living room.

She will run toward me every morning and at the end of every day. Because the best hugs are the ones you crash right into.

Little kids seem to know how to do all kinds of things we grownups forget. When you watch four-year-olds at the pool or at the park, it’s sort of remarkable how they can just make friends. Sometimes, they just stare at one another. Until they are friends. Sometimes, there’s an invitation — “Hey, watch me!” — followed by some watching, then friendship.

My peers have told me a thousand tales about trying, and failing, to meet people when they move to a new town; the struggles they face when they “start over” in a new school environment or new workplace. They join networking groups — official, grownup events designed so that you can meet like-minded people — and they look for new dates and potential partners online.

It’s great that we have all these tools. No one wants to go it alone. And I want to try new things, like running, for the rest of my life. Who knows? Maybe I’ll take up skateboarding when I’m 60, and I’m sure I’ll be researching it online. Maybe I’ll join a club.

But I want to be reminded by our children that sometimes the easiest way is the best way. When I see a hill, maybe I’ll just run down it. Maybe I’ll just walk up to someone who looks nice to me and say hello, but only because “watch me!” sounds obnoxious.

And there are a lot of things my kids will grow out of — my baby’s aversion to soap-and-water baths, I pray — but retaining the joy of just going for it is a worthy grownup goal.

— By Erika Stutzman
erika@womensmag.com