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We’ve come to the end of Season 4 of Big Love and Netflix doesn’t have Season 5 available yet on DVD. Deep breath.

I guess it is fitting that this drama was written by gay writers and perhaps, Will Scheffer and Mark Olsen, had their tongue in their cheek many a time during the character and plot development. A polygamist family and all of the problems that come up as a result of a plural marriage, that is illegal, that is not really harmful to anyone except the majority of people who don’t cotton to it.

So goes gay marriage, so goes many things. Anyone who watched The Kids Are All Right know that gay couples and families go through the same thing that straight couples go through and now we know that polygamist suffer the same. Alrighty then – we’re all cliches is all I have to say.

Every time I think I have a unique problem only known to Rachel, I find out that 90% of the other baby boomers re going through a similar thing. It’s like we are all Borg or something.

Boring! I can’t even have a unique problem.

I am so obviously part of the sweeping group of babies that were born to over think, over spend, over desire, over compensate, over indulge. But why would I want to be part of any group that would have me?

Well now, all the BBs out there are growing weary of home ownership, of corporate greed, of politics, and of the status quo in general. We want something different! We actually demand something different – whether it be spirituality (read: cliche) or a simpler life (again: cliche) or entrepreneurship (oh please, again, cliche), wah wah wah, boo frickin hoo.

So while we are waiting for Season 5 to finally flow through Netflix’s DVD business that was going to change but now isn’t going to change, we can start to contemplate another form of entertainment around the LaLa – back to movies, in cue are two Abby Lincoln films – For the Love of Ivy and Nothing But A Man. It will be nice to slow down the breakneck pace of Big Love where the summary at the beginning of each episode reads like a complete narrative for a full length novel. I’m usually exhausted after the hour is up.

Why is it in life there is time for breakfast, work, a bit of exercise, reading to your child, watching one show and then sleep and that is pretty much it? Oh, right this is one of those Baby Boomer life questions.

The good news my friends is that the youth we had no faith in has been tearing it up in New York City with Occupy Wall Street and now they are spreading through to other cities. Ben and Jerry’s just came out in strong support for the movement – it took a stand as a corporation – you gotta love Ben & Jerry’s (and hey, they are baby boomers!).

Typical of a Monday there was a long list of things to do but the entire morning got derailed before it started. The good news is I was able to get the dogs out early and take a nice walk through City Park, something that always at least sets a good tone for the rest of the day. I ran into a woman who last year was in such distress over her job she lost and (I swear it was a completely different woman) she just celebrated a milestone birthday and now wants to buy a second home in the Southwest. My, how things change.

Tin’s fall break continued today so we let him sleep in but then he got up feeling peaked and he wanted to be held. Between you, me and the doorpost, getting a two and a half year old to want to be held is like asking for the sun not to shine in the morning so despite the fact that these moments are about him being sick, I took advantage and clung to his little body until he fell back asleep, loving every minute of it.

Then the To Do list started unraveling when I arrived at my desk – all of the items I had set aside to do this morning were then postponed as the morning took on a life of its own and enlarged and diverted the to do list to other areas.

Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick, Jack Jumped Over the Monday Stick.

Yom Kippur is the 24 hour period where you atone for your sins. You are supposed to enter this time by forgiving all of those who have trespassed against you and asking forgiveness from all of those you have trespassed against. It’s a tall order and I can assure you few people are able to come clean on both sides. I woke up and went upstairs before Tin was up, so that I could fast and meditate and center myself in a full cycle of completion – another year around the sun.

Instead of having any profound thoughts or an epiphany about what had gone before or what was coming up, I came to the slow conclusion that I am in a transition period where emotions run the gamut of incredible highs and darkly lows, and honestly, I had the luxury of spending the morning surrounded by old photographs that depicted other lives I’ve lived – Steve had sent me a couple of manilla envelopes filled with old photos that accidentally wound up in one of his boxes. There is a photo of me on the ferry to Ship Island, hanging out with my gay waiters when I was a hostess at Arnaud’s, then one of me with my first love, Ken, who was 16 years older than me and almost looks as if he might be my father in those photos, then ones of me at my high school dance with my first boyfriend Billy Filmore, the one in front of a Christmas tree (a rare occasion in my life), and other photos of lives that I lived long ago. I went through each photograph with no form of melancholy or sentimentality other than huh.

I sat cross-legged on the bed that is now in my office, soon to be our bedroom/office, years of trying to separate my living from my working life has now got me moving towards a world with no distinction between work and personal. I was not trying but inevitably looking into my future and inevitably I kept getting pulled back into my past – it might have been the photographs that were scattered on the bed.

All this work on my spiritual self to overcome years of bad habits is starting to pay off. My mind kept pulling me into extremes – thinking about the past and who I was in that past, thinking about the future and what might become of me, us, the world. And I remembered to pull back from those edges, because they are meaningless – the past can easily be constructed to fit any narrative you choose, the future is yet unwritten so again choose a narrative. But aligning the self is about the here and now and taking for granted that you can’t know the future, the past doesn’t matter anymore, and so it’s just me and my photographs in my soon to be bedroom/office.

I ran into an old friend and told him about the photographs and he later left a message saying he thinks about what it was like to be young, to be 28 years old, to be carefree and unknowing, not with regret, more like just thoughts about then and now. Who would want to give up being 50 something for being 20 something? I don’t think anyone. 20 something was so full of tomorrow and 50 something is so full of right now.

When it was time to come downstairs, I felt like I had atoned for all those lives I lived before, the ones where I might have hurt someone, or more likely hurt myself, and I atoned for the future where I might be called to answer for myself. I atoned for not having taken more time to simply be, for not having appreciated the people I love more, for not having allowed myself to bask in the many splendid moments that have come my way. Coming and going, coming and going, coming and going, and always too soon.

In just a little bit Jews all over the world will take their last bite before starting a 24 hour fasting period. During this period god will open the book of life and so it will be written. Atone now, the street corner guy says with a megaphone. Or they blow a ram’s horn to signal the beginning of the high Holy Days.

Here at the LaLa, the common Jew will start her fasting when she lays her head down for sleep tonight. She’ll rise for a half day’s fast and a reflection over the past year and her inner health. She’ll jot down a few notes that when read at a later time will seem like they’ve been said a million times over in her mind, everything happens twice, once on the inside and once on the outside. For me, it happens over and over on the inside before it gives birth in the external.

October 1998 – “To know how to be centered and relaxed. To live comfortably and to be in nature more often.”

October 2003 – “The habit of art has become increasing more difficult with the workload I’m carrying at my company. How to find time to center myself for my own discovery and work?”

September 2009 – “My worst fear that my mother would get sick and start dying over a protracted period is in play.”

September 2010 – “Step outside my comfort zone. Be present.”

The discord that is in the air, on the air, being aired is growing wearisome, wouldn’t you say? It seems to be that no one is taking joy in the ordinary anymore and now everything is burdensome.

Oh and Steve Jobs had to go and die – the only designer of gadgets who could save us from our endless ennui.

There are a lot of people standing on the streets of Wall Street calling for a Spring whether it be corporate, CEO, or Wall Street itself, but no one wants to talk about it.

Houses are no longer the American Dream, they are our crosses to bear.

Being thin is in or not? Accept your size, don’t allow yourself to be your size, whose size is it anyway?

There are no new ideas.

Today’s Tatjana’s birthday and on a whim I scheduled a gondola ride in City Park for lunch. Well, you could not have picked a more beautiful day to be in City Park and on this gorgeous, elegant gondola that was hand made in Venice, and especially when the pelicans, egrets, ducks, geese, swans, turtles all asked for you. We skimmed through the lagoons and under the bridge into the Sculpture Garden and ate sushi and drank Japanese beers that were ice cold. Lovely day and lovely way to turn 45 (because we all know it’s down hill after the big 45 …)

Okay, I get to Mommy blog now and again, and this is Tin’s first unofficial report card home:

Ms. Karla: I would also like to commend you on Tin’s manners.  He is such a great kid! He talks about you all the time and at the end of the day when it is time to put their shoes on he gets really excited.  He is such a joy!

Reminds me of Miracle Baby’s report card when she was young, “Lexi is a friend to all.”

I remember growing up and standing on the stoop outside my aunt’s house in Brooklyn when the first astronaut landed on the moon. I remember being in our house on Louisiana Avenue when JFK was shot. When MLK was shot. I remember when Bobby Kennedy was shot. I remember living through all of these mile marker events and I also remember sitting in the grass driveway forcing crepe myrtle blooms to decorate my mudpie.

Yesterday evening, Tin was so hungry for dinner that he had his whine on big time and we were both trying to ignore it. Finally Tatjana snapped and said, “We don’t hear whining in this house!” To which our two and a half year old son responded, “We don’t hear yelling in this house.” She had to walk away to keep from cracking up. When he went on to whine and went on to ignore him, he finally asked, “Could you come talk to me?” inviting us to join him at the dinner table.

Houston, we have a problem is all that ran through my mind.

Waldorf is in the seasonal mode of fall and Tin came home singing the Farmer in the Dell and sang all through the morning his version of this song, and I tried to correct his lyrics but he told me, “Don’t sing Mommy,” and sadly Steve Jobs died yesterday, and curiously I got caught up in Archbishop Hannan’s funeral procession and thought it was a parade, and it’s Tatjana’s birthday today and Tin sang her happy birthday and sretan rodendan and then asked if he could have cake and ice cream.

When Tin is older what will he remember about these early times of non-memory – he will hear about his adoption, he will hear about my mother and how she guided us to him after she became an angel, he will know the Saints won their first Superbowl against his birth-home team the first year he was in New Orleans, he might remember his caretakers, he’ll certainly remember his neighborhood friends, but will he remember that Steve Jobs died while the body of Archbishop Hannan was paraded down Carrollton Avenue and one of his mothers turned 45?

Hard to say.