That night at the Herdic House my best friend from high school, Marlene, and her husband joined us for the evening. She was visiting family in Williamsport, too, and she is the perfect Buffer. My girl Marlene can talk to anyone. She could talk to a Frankenstein about neck bolts. She could talk to your great-aunt Joyce about the tumors of a person she has never met. She could exchange e-mail addresses with a wreath. Nick and Mariah wish they had a Buffer this good. They probably wanted to kill each other after three days of wearing matching ski outfits and never skiing. WILLIAMSPORT FOR THE WIN!

This Christmas I'll be riding my metaphorical donkey all the way across 80W again. But I'm insisting that we're back in New York City for New Year's Eve, where we do more of an Ahab-and-Jezebel thing.

Juggle This

My daughter recently checked out a book from the preschool library called My Working Mom. It had a cartoon witch on the cover. "Did you pick this book out all by yourself?" I asked her, trying to be nonchalant. Yes. We read the book and the witch mother was very busy and sometimes reprimanded her daughter for messing things up near her cauldron. She had to fly away to a lot of meetings, and the witch's child said something like, "It's hard having a working mom, especially when she enjoys her work." In the heartwarming conclusion, the witch mother makes it to the child's school play at the last second, and the witch's child says she doesn't like having a working mom but she can't picture her mom any other way. I didn't love it. I'm sure the TWO MEN who wrote this book had the absolute best intentions, but this leads me to my point. The topic of working moms is a tap-dance recital in a minefield.

It is less dangerous to draw a cartoon of Allah French-kissing Uncle Sam-which let me make it very clear I HAVE NOT DONE-than it is to speak honestly about this topic.

I will start by saying that I have once or twice been offered a "mother of the year" award by working-mom groups or a mommy magazine, and I always decline. How could they possibly know if I'm a good mother? How can any of us know until the kid is about thirty-three and all the personality dust has really settled? But working moms want to validate that it's okay to work, especially if they work at magazines where they can then package that validation and sell it to stay-at-home moms who are craving news from the outside world.

What is the rudest question you can ask a woman? "How old are you?" "What do you weigh?""When you and your twin sister are alone with Mr. Hefner, do you have to pretend to be lesbians?" No, the worst question is "How do you juggle it all?"

"How do you juggle it all?" people constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes."You're f.u.c.king it all up, aren't you?" their eyes say. My standard answer is that I have the same struggles as any working parent but with the good fortune to be working at my dream job.

The long version of the answer is more complicated.

When my daughter was about two, I was convinced that our babysitter was cutting her fingernails too short. They looked red sometimes, and she was going below the white part; it was all wrong, in my opinion. I know you're thinking that the obvious thing to do would be to point this out to the babysitter. Hear me out.

I can tell twenty comedy writers what to do; I can argue with a cabdriver about 10th Avenue versus the West Side Highway; I will happily tell a joke about Osama bin Laden or the Ku Klux Klan on live television; but I could not talk to the babysitter about the fingernail clipping. I'll bet you Margaret Thatcher would say the same thing if she were alive today.*

Here's the truth: I couldn't tell the woman who so lovingly and devotedly watches my kid every day that I didn't like how she did this one thing. I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

And here's the next layer of truth: As someone who grew up middle-cla.s.s with no nannies or housekeepers of any kind, I didn't know how to handle it. I was not just a first-time mother, I was a first-time cross-cultural nanny-communicator and I was broken. Maybe that's what I should tell the roving reporter from s...o...b..z Hollywood the next time she asks me, "Is it weird for you being the boss of all these people?" "Who? These actors and teamsters and camera guys? These dummies don't scare me.Now, can you call my house and tell the babysitter I'm gonna be forty minutes late? Pweeeeze?"

But here's the deep truth: I didn't want to spend MY PRECIOUS TIME AT HOME having an awkward conversation with the babysitter. I JUST WANT TO BE WITH MY KID. That's what it comes down to, really. The best days are the ones where you pa.s.s the babysitter* in the elevator, all smiles, and your apartment contains no one but your family when you walk in the door. I think my babysitter would agree. But I'm scared to ask her.

I would think of Midge's little fingers in the middle of a busy workday. I would tell myself, "Once I have the baby full-time to myself, everything will be easier." And then it hit me; that day was not coming. This "work" thing was not going away. There was no prolonged stretch of time in sight when it would just be the baby and me. And then I sobbed in my office for ten minutes. The same ten minutes that magazines urge me to use for sit-ups and triceps dips, I used for sobbing. Of course I'm not supposed to admit that there is triannual torrential sobbing in my office, because it's bad for the feminist cause. It makes it harder for women to be taken seriously in the workplace. It makes it harder for other working moms to justify their choice. But I have friends who stay home with their kids and they also have a triannual sob, so I think we should call it even. I think we should be kind to one another about it. I think we should agree to blame the children. Also, my crying three times a year doesn't distract me from my job any more than my male coworkers get distracted watching March Madness or shooting one another with Nerf guns, or (to stop generalizing) spending twenty minutes on the phone booking a doggy hotel for their pit bull before a trip to Italy with their same-s.e.x partners.

After sobbing, I always fantasize about quitting my job. "We don't need a lot of money!" I tell myself. "We don't live extravagantly; we just live in an expensive city. If we moved to a little house in the middle of Pennsylvania we could live like kings for much less! And we'd all be together all day and we'll make cupcakes and plant a garden! And I would be taller! Yes, somehow I would be taller." My reverie is inevitably interrupted by someone who needs me to get back to work. There are almost two hundred people who work on this TV show with me. A lot of them have kids that they miss all day just like me; they keep the same terrible hours as I do; but unlike me, they are not working at their dream job. They need this job to pay their bills, and if I flaked out and quit, their jobs would disappear.

Also, there are many moments of my work that are deeply satisfying and fun. And almost as many moments of full-time motherhood that stink like Axe body spray on a brick of bleu cheese.*

So what did I do about the kid's nails? I hope you don't think I let my little one walk around with sore fingers.

I did the logical thing, or at least what counts as logical in the fancy life I have made for myself.First thing in the morning while my daughter was on the potty I would cut her nails before I left for work.At first she didn't want to (understandably, since she was used to it hurting a little), but I convinced her by cutting the nails almost all the way left to right and then letting her have the honor of pulling the clipping the rest of the way off. The process was preposterously slow, but we were huddled together and we told stories as we went. This is one of the weird things about motherhood. You can't predict that some of your best moments will happen around the toilet at six A.M. while you're holding a pile of fingernail clippings like a Santeria priestess.

It's three years later now, so I'd like to believe the household communication has gotten easier.For example, I can whisper to my now five-year-old kid, "Tell Jessie not to cut your nails so short. Bye!"and run away. My daughter and I can have real conversations now. I told her that I didn't like it that the mommy in the book was a witch. That it hurt my feelings. And she looked at me matter-of-factly and said, "Mommy. I can't read. I thought it was a Halloween book."

The Mother's Prayer for Its Daughter

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it's the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach's eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered,

May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half

And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her

When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called "h.e.l.l Drop," "Tower of Torture," or "The Death Spiral Rock 'N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith," and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance.

Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I'm asking You, because if I knew, I'd be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen.

Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For Childhood is short-a Tiger Flower blooming

Magenta for one day-

And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in Cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever,

That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a b.i.t.c.h in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that s.h.i.t. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose p.o.o.p is leaking up its back.

"My mother did this for me once," she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby's neck. "My mother did this for me." And the delayed grat.i.tude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget.

But I'll know, because I peeped it with Your G.o.d eyes.

Amen

What Turning Forty Means to Me

I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn't used to have to do that. But now I do.