Bethesda Rookie

My House is Perfect for Gwyneth

Don't ask me why, but I know that Gwyneth Paltrow would love my Woodstock house. I've had it on the market for a few months, but it needs a particular kind of buyer. Someone with the resources to put into it, the patience and vision to invest in it, and the energy to harvest a diamond in the rough instead buying a $2 million weekend home. I think that person is Gwyneth Paltrow.

 

450 Nights

So my daughter went to sleep on her own for the first time last night. The first time in her own crib, in her own room, without somebody with her. That means that for the last 474 nights she has been rocked, walked, sung, soothed or otherwise parented to sleep. Subtract the nights that her father or babysitter was with her and we're probably left with about 450 nights of sitting in a dark room in a rocker or next to a crib for anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes.

A child's bedtime routing already places significant demands on parents. You make dinner earlier than you have in years, you buy and cook foods for dinner that you wouldn't normally buy or cook or eat, and frequently find yourself snacking on these foods off the plate, table or floor. You spend 15-20 minutes by the side of the tub when you yourself may or may not have showered in the last couple, three, four days yourself. You read the same three or four books every night for a year or more. And, if you're me, you spend on average 20 minutes a night sitting in the glow of a nightlight on the floor of your daughter's room, rubbing her feet, her back, humming, singing, whispering, playing, lulling lulling lulling the girl you haven't seen all day away from you and into sleep, secretly looking forward to giving her a bottle on the couch in 5 hours.

But I don't mean to be backward looking, not when this bears so much on the future. Because K- putting herself to sleep is monumental. It is a harbinger of a mother's return to self. Putting K- to bed and walking out of the room doesn't simply amount to an extra 2.3 hours a week to rest, watch TV, write, pluck, paint, preen, wash, fold, cook, read or exercise. Those twenty minutes haven't been simply lost opportunities. Those minutes actively drain from you every last ounce of energy and patience you've shored up during the day. Those minutes echo with the beat of how little your life belongs to you, and how much your life belongs to another. Certainly by choice. No doubt. And certainly rewarding (so pipe down, okay?). But the magnitude of of it is astounding nonetheless. Particularly if you come to it late in life, after a couple of decades of complete and utter independence.

And so, for K- to lay down in her crib, watch me walk out of her room and put herself to sleep is nothing short of a door swinging open. I may not write a novel or even read one, but now it's nobody's fault but my own.

Green Clean

Green Clean offers "a professional cleaning service utilizing products that are non-toxic, bio-degradable, and environmentally friendly." Sounds great, right? Get you house cleaned and save the earth?

The problem is, Green Clean doesn't clean very well. True, they bring all of their own products, and a team of three shows up—occasionally on time, and sometimes the same folks as the week before—and burns through the job in less than two hours. That's six hours of cleaning that would take me at least ten, and that's assuming I could get off my ass to begin with. So for that alone I was willing to pay $130 every other week.

But ultimately we got sick of Green Clean, and the anxiety of waiting to see what was left undone or disrupted after every visit. We found speakers unplugged, Q-tips left out on the counter far from their container, furniture out of place, throw rugs draped over chairs, floors left unclean, countless knick knacks and pictures in unfamiliar configurations and, lastly, a broken Riedel wine glass. (And we're not Riedel folks, btw, it was one of a pair that I bought for M- last Valentine's Day.)

So ultimately we canceled. And we certainly won't be the third testimonial on their site. And I'll be resorting to DC Urban Moms (and Dads) for our next cleaning service. I kind of missed the clean-house smell anyway.

Kimberly Severn, CNM, MSN

I get extreme anxiety when I’m looking for a doctor. I always assume this one might be a genius and that one might be a quack. Their having to get through college and medical school doesn’t impress me; we all went to school with an idiot or two.

One of the reasons it’s so scary is that you rely on a doctor to tell you about things you don’t normally know much about. If a doctor tells you that you need surgery on your hand, you probably want to get a second opinion, but you also want to be reasonably comfortable that this doctor—and the next one—is giving you sound and informed advice.

Kimberly Severn turned out to be the doctor I’m always afraid I’ll pick. Actually, she’s not a doctor at all, but a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM), which is what I was looking for. Midwives are known to see pregnancies and births as natural states and processes as opposed to medical conditions and procedures, and they are generally assumed to be more edifying and patient than medical doctors, willing to take more time and explain more than your typical Ob-Gyn. Of course, on some level you have to assume that there are as many terse midwives as there are saintly Ob-Gyns. And until you have more than one baby and use more than one medical provider, you have only generalizations to go on. But you do have to start somewhere. So I started with Kimberly Severn, who was a) covered by my insurance and b) listed in “DC Baby.”

Now I know that there are probably hundreds of women who have worked with Kim Severn and loved her. In all honesty, I was fairly happy to have found her. But there were signs even from the beginning that she wasn’t for me. First of all, she was medically aggressive. On my first visit, she gave me a transvaginal ultrasound and took my blood and sent me off with a prescription for some hormone in case it wasn’t high enough when she looked at my blood-work. Second, she seemed more interested in telling me about her own experiences than in finding out about me. And third, she was extremely negative, preparing me at that first visit for the possibility that my pregnancy might not be viable.

At this point I should mention Ms. Severn turned out to be right. She declared the following week that my pregnancy wasn’t viable. Kudos to her, I suppose, for her good instincts, but it felt more like belief than knowledge; dates can be wrong, and pregnancies can develop differently. But there was another problem: One thing I expected from a midwife was for her to remember that while this may be her 1,234th patient, it’s my very first pregnancy. And when she told me she could schedule a D&C for that afternoon, I felt more like a medical condition than a woman trying to have a baby.

So I went to another doctor. She wasn’t particularly warm or compassionate, but she did tell me that it was too soon to be certain that the pregnancy wasn’t viable. I didn’t by any means enjoy dragging things out, but I was a lot more comfortable getting a D&C once I knew without a doubt that the pregnancy was a dud, and once I had some time to think over whether I wanted to have the procedure or let my body take care of things itself. I can see how Ms. Severn, in trying to “get it over with,” was acting in my best interest, but her methods didn’t take my inexperience or my emotional grief into account.

Three weeks and as many ultrasounds later, M- and I went through with the D&C. We were 100% sure we wanted to, and we were as ready as we could be. We talked about it with doctors and each other and we understood what was going on. And I’m extraordinarily relieved that we escaped the doubt that may have haunted us had we done it sooner.

Mosaic Total Body Salon

Location, location, location is nothing without talent, and as nice as they are, Mosaic is lacking in talent. Entrepreneurs are an odd breed, with varying degrees and combinations of vision, discipline, ambition, insanity and, in most cases, skill, but Mosaic seems to have been born simply of a good idea, and not of an irrepressible, palpable and/or measurable passion.

As usual, my selection of Mosaic was driven greatly by its proximity to me. I drive by it every time I head out to Wisconsin Avenue, and I walk by it every time I go into Citibank. There's parking, they're friendly, they have coffee, mango tea, water, pretzels, little cookies, Biolage, Textureline, manicures, pedicures, massage—everything, if not more, that you would expect from a local salon, except... right, talent.

I actually got two haircuts from them. The first was with their young, new talent. She cut my hair tentatively, tiny strand by tiny strand, as though it might cut back, or just get angry. Then she took the same painstaking time to dry it, tiny strand by tiny strand. Afterwards, my dissastisfaction obvious, we fussed over it for a few minutes, but when she asked me what we should do about it I decided to cut my losses (no pun(s) intended).

After a few days I just couldn't stand the stodgy shapelessness, and I called Mosaic to see what they could do about it. Seriously, they're incredibly nice, and they apologetically scheduled an appointment for me with their Senior Talent. When I saw her, she agreed that the cut didn't work and she quickly and adroitly set to work with her scissors (without any apparent trepidation). They didn't charge me a dime, save the voluntary and once-declined tip, and I did feel better when I left, but the fact is my second haircut, while undeniable better, was still unremarkable.

In my opinion, being less than 10 miles away from one of America's five most influential cities (per my own estimation), and being in one of the countries most affluent communities (per the Washington Post), it should be very easy to get a stylish and flattering haircut that has some flair and doesn't make you look prematurely, well, mature. And as much as I like Georgetown, it shouldn't take a trip to Georgetown to get it.

And so my search for a sexy urban 'do' continues. Daily Candy has made a few recommendations over the months, one of which looks very promising. I'll keep you posted.

Mosaic Total Body Salon • 8001 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda • 301.986.9151

Dissenting opinions on DowntownBethesda.com; Likewise on Backfence

Bethesda Pool

Montgomery County runs four indoor pools year-round. They also run seven outdoor pools during the summer, one of them being the Bethesda Pool on Little Falls Parkway. (It's nice to get away from the thundering echoes of the natatorium for a few months.)

The facilities include a large pool with a diving well, a tot pool, a 6-lane 25-meter lap pool, and a junior pool that I've yet to see open. There are also two diving boards and a short water slide (nothing like the one at Montgomery Aquatic). Pool hours vary over the summer, but they are open afternoons only, generally from around noon to 6:00 or 8:00 pm. Check schedules each year, as they open for weekend swimming a little before (and after) they open for their full weekday summer hours.

Even at it's most crowded, there's plenty of room to sit and/or swim, including the lap pool. Best of all, there's shade over half of the tot pool, so you don't have to fry as your toddler gets accustomed to chlorine fumes. They have a snack bar open with hot dogs, pizza, ice cream, etc. And they have outdoor showers to rinse off after your swim. The biggest challenge, at times, is the parking. But they're right by the Capital Crescent Trail, so you could always ride over.

One other thing: On the hottest days of the summer, they waived the admission fee from 6:00 to 8:00. It's not all day, or even peak heat, but it's still pretty damn nice of them.

Bethesda Pool • Little Falls Parkway & Hillandale Road, Chevy Chase • 301.652.1598