I have been thinking about childbirth lately. I have been absolutely besieged by cramps the past three days. My oldest will turn thirteen tomorrow. And I am still trying to figure out this clusterfuck of a story emerging from the west coast. Who is this single mother, fertility clinic worker, who lives with her parents, that gave birth to eight kids to add to her other six at home? I hate her and her selfish, enormous carbon footprint leaving monster uterus.
I can recall the night Carter was born. Many hours of labor. Nine to be exact. Law and Order was playing on the television set positioned in the upper corner of the birthing room. The late Jerry Orbach, (who I much preferred in his role as Lumiere) was cracking a one liner over a mutilated prostitute wearing a tube top and a Member's Only jacket when Carter popped out. I cannot watch the show any longer. I am Clarice and the lambs are still screaming. Painful physical moments with my vagina are not something I am equipped to deal with. Law and Order makes me think of birth. Just the sound of the start of that show makes me break out in a sweat.
My painful memory with my son and his birth was not necessarily the actual birth itself but what happened afterwards. I can remember lying there when they were cleaning up whatever nasty shit the babies leave behind and the doctor told me he was going to have to take a stitch up higher on my "vaginal wall". He could have spray painted Che Guevara's profile in there and I would not have given a rat's ass. But my husband, who did not have the gaping bloody maw between his legs asked him, "Why so high?" The doctor straightened up from the stool he was sitting on and said, "Well for lack of better terms, your son hung on to her when he was coming out. His hand was curled next to his face in his final descent and he grabbed her." The doctor then reached up, curled his hand into the shape of a claw and scratched at the air. Glorious. I was horrified. Problem here was one of the stitches popped a few days later and I was in pain. I had to make an appointment to go see my OB/GYN four days after giving birth. I can remember sitting there on the table waiting for her to come in the room. She came in so cheery and happy. I gave her a welcoming weak smile, and she told me to lie back on the table so she could take a look. I cleared my throat and said quietly, "If you touch me, I will kill you." She promised that she would not touch, she just wanted to look. I can recall staring into her soul when I told her, "He hung on to me, to my skin...inside. With his little hooked fingers. He held it as he was coming out." She saw my madness, took off the gloves and prescribed me some pain killing cream to put on the area.
I love my kids so very much. I just hate how they arrived. My grandmother told me that when she had her kids, she arrived at the hospital and they knocked her out. She woke up and they handed her a baby. I think that sounds heavenly. Like a big happy dream where nobody has claws and Jerry Orbach is still a candle.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Recession Proof
Every time I pick up the newspaper there seems to be a quirky article about the recession and how to save money in these tough economic times. The New York Times Style Section is particularly guilty of trying to cutesy up poverty and the need for most Americans to cut back in style. Instead of buying that new Christian Dior cashmere wrap that costs as much as your nanny’s unpaid yearly health insurance quote, take an old wool blanket, throw it over one shoulder and belt it with a dog leash for fun and furry fashion on a budget. On Martha Stewart’s show yesterday, Martha, the queen of crafts and corruption, tried to convince an audience of sweater set wearing suburbanites that frequenting inexpensive noodles houses in the heart of Manhattan would be a smart economic alternative in these tough times. Just rent a Town Car, put on a cute Thierry Mugler blazer and some off beat Yves Saint Laurent suede boots, cruise to 10th street and Avenue A and save that extra money for when your accountant rapes you like an unarmed prison guard.
I am always looking for corner cutting techniques but I refuse to deny my self the most basic of necessities because the world is falling apart around us, thanks to a large handful of greedy, selfish douche sacks. I can give up the $16 yoga class, the $17 winter pedicure and even the regular hair cut that keeps me from looking like an old mud flap on the back of a pick up truck, as I did this morning. After getting out of the shower today, I realized that my hair is the exact replica of its former self, circa spring of 1989. Living in London and eating my way through bushels of cheese slathered baked potatoes doused with pints of lukewarm ale, my hair was the last thing I was concerned with as I watched my ass morph into that of a pre revolutionary war tree stump in Kensington Gardens.
So what if I am now a mother of a hellion toddler and have reverted back to the lazy, unmanaged curls of youth, complete with the color palette of a college student in the midst of midterms and a crippling depression. My current hair don’t is a grouping of long, wavy strands of neglected indifference. These upstairs tenants might be the first things people see when they approach me but my downstairs neighbors are too unruly to ignore. That sordid tribe of unwanted squatters has to be dealt with regularly and having a large Russian émigré with soft hands and an accent as thick as an oil spill is just the thing for a quick and painful eviction.
For $50 including tip, Zhanna will lie me down on a loud tissue covered table in a room resembling an old gulag interrogation cell and quickly remove any evidence of puberty that might have existed in my very own Bermuda triangle. Between searing applications of molten hot wax and quick, gruesome tugs of the cotton strips, she slowly brings me back to looking like I did when I believed in the tooth fairy, unicorns, and kindness.
I will leave feeling rejuvenated, sticky and as bald as a quail’s egg, more than happy to part with my extra spending money to insure that I do not look like a rabbi doing a handstand. Sure, fifty big ones may seem like a lot to some people but my lower half is Brazilian and I have a duty to keep the South American hedges trimmed and the American husband interested. If I came home looking like a furry centerfold from 1973 my husband might look elsewhere for his carnal knowledge.
Then again, he was a loud and proud, card-carrying member of a group of New Jersey elementary school boys whose first glance at the female Pubic Maximus came from stolen Playboy magazines carefully hidden away in a collection of back yard tree forts up and down route 17. Back when he wore knee high tube socks and a Timex, his idea of sexy was a lovely, long legged lady splayed out on a bearskin rug with a rose in her mouth and a bush the size of a Thanksgiving centerpiece. If that is still his speed and preference and he wants to take a trip down memory lane, I should have enough cash by year’s end to buy that Dior after all.
I am always looking for corner cutting techniques but I refuse to deny my self the most basic of necessities because the world is falling apart around us, thanks to a large handful of greedy, selfish douche sacks. I can give up the $16 yoga class, the $17 winter pedicure and even the regular hair cut that keeps me from looking like an old mud flap on the back of a pick up truck, as I did this morning. After getting out of the shower today, I realized that my hair is the exact replica of its former self, circa spring of 1989. Living in London and eating my way through bushels of cheese slathered baked potatoes doused with pints of lukewarm ale, my hair was the last thing I was concerned with as I watched my ass morph into that of a pre revolutionary war tree stump in Kensington Gardens.
So what if I am now a mother of a hellion toddler and have reverted back to the lazy, unmanaged curls of youth, complete with the color palette of a college student in the midst of midterms and a crippling depression. My current hair don’t is a grouping of long, wavy strands of neglected indifference. These upstairs tenants might be the first things people see when they approach me but my downstairs neighbors are too unruly to ignore. That sordid tribe of unwanted squatters has to be dealt with regularly and having a large Russian émigré with soft hands and an accent as thick as an oil spill is just the thing for a quick and painful eviction.
For $50 including tip, Zhanna will lie me down on a loud tissue covered table in a room resembling an old gulag interrogation cell and quickly remove any evidence of puberty that might have existed in my very own Bermuda triangle. Between searing applications of molten hot wax and quick, gruesome tugs of the cotton strips, she slowly brings me back to looking like I did when I believed in the tooth fairy, unicorns, and kindness.
I will leave feeling rejuvenated, sticky and as bald as a quail’s egg, more than happy to part with my extra spending money to insure that I do not look like a rabbi doing a handstand. Sure, fifty big ones may seem like a lot to some people but my lower half is Brazilian and I have a duty to keep the South American hedges trimmed and the American husband interested. If I came home looking like a furry centerfold from 1973 my husband might look elsewhere for his carnal knowledge.
Then again, he was a loud and proud, card-carrying member of a group of New Jersey elementary school boys whose first glance at the female Pubic Maximus came from stolen Playboy magazines carefully hidden away in a collection of back yard tree forts up and down route 17. Back when he wore knee high tube socks and a Timex, his idea of sexy was a lovely, long legged lady splayed out on a bearskin rug with a rose in her mouth and a bush the size of a Thanksgiving centerpiece. If that is still his speed and preference and he wants to take a trip down memory lane, I should have enough cash by year’s end to buy that Dior after all.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Embarrassed
Today while sitting in a quiet library trying to write anything, a dust particle that could not possibly be seen by the naked eye flew into my throat and made me cough as if I had been a Salem Lights chain smoker since kindergarten. I got up like my pants were on fire and ran out to find some water before a throng of unemployed screenwriters, not a loving bunch, attacked me with stilted conversation and outdated movie dialogue.
Having your body react in embarrassing ways in public has always been the nightmare that anyone with a brain more advanced that a monkey’s often has. The younger one is, the greater the fear, as it could result in lifelong social banishment. As with all terrifyingly embarrassing moments, the longer time passes the more amusing and banal the incident seems to be. It can even be a great anecdote at a party or an icebreaker in a job interview. In this economy, a catastrophically mortifying tale could land you the job at a company that is not hiring but just interviewing people to make themselves look and feel busy. The boss would sit behind the large, rented mahogany desk that H.R. is about to repossess to pay for a new Coke machine in the CEO’s executive bathroom and laugh like a mule when you spill the beans about farting at choir practice while rehearsing for the sophomore spring concert or having a booger in your nose when you asked Travis Sibley to the Sadie Haskin’s dance in 7th grade.
For me, the list is clear, concise and as fresh in my memory as a “loser” loaf of bread hot out of my “Oh my God, that did not just happen” oven. In 5th grade, I was standing in front of Foster’s Freeze drinking a peach shake after playing basketball on the city team when Brian Mueller pulled my shorts down in front of everyone, revealing not only a really lame pair of white UnderRoos but no sign of pubic hair or maturity of any kind. Cue copious amounts of group laughter, cue tears, cut to me running home to mommy and wanting to die a quick, painless death.
Then, in 7th grade, I was waiting on the lunch line in the cafeteria and I impulsively picked up a huge piece of chocolate cake without paying for it and stuck the whole thing in my mouth. Josh Davidson starting laughing at me and yelling to anyone and everyone nearby that I looked disgusting and ugly because all the chocolate crumbs were stuck in my braces. To this day I am obsessed with not getting shit stuck in my teeth. I carry floss everywhere I go and obsessively check my smile in any reflective surface just in case Josh shows up again and ruins my day and the little self-esteem I have left.
But the one that is etched into my mind like a cheap, unattractive, lower back tattoo one would get on spring break, occurred the following year during 8th grade. After taking a quiz on a collection of historical facts that I clearly did not know and most likely did not receive a satisfactory grade on, as was the case whenever I had a subject that required a binder and a small amount of interest, I got up and walked to my teacher’s desk to drop off the collection of wrong answers I had so carefully scrawled in my wispy and whimsical handwriting. Upon my return to my assigned seat, I noticed that the chair had a rust colored stain the size of a donut and resembled an impressionist’s brush stroke gone awry. Instantly, I knew it was not an example of bad modern art but was, in fact, a clear sign that I had just become a woman all over my plastic desk chair in Mrs. Craig’s 6th period Social Studies class. I turned around to see if there was a stain on my backside and was shocked to discover that a mass murder had taken place on the bottom of my yellow and green plaid Bermuda shorts. I choked back tears and a keen desire stab myself in the chest with the American Flag that so patriotically hung over the chalkboard and quickly sat down. I then thanked God that I had recently embraced a preppy lifestyle choice and tied my cashmere, dark blue cardigan sweater around my waist.
With the speed and acumen of a professional pre-teen pick pocket, I formulated a plan to get out of this horrendous scenario, one that could easily end up as an After School Special about a girl with no friends, a facial tick and an unfortunate dependency on adult diapers. The clock told me I had exactly five minutes until the bell would ring, sending in the next wave of students for 7th period. Not only did I need to clean up a crime scene as gruesome as Lizzie Borden’s sitting room, but do it as quickly as possible, so as not to alert the incoming kids, including the three most popular boys in school, one of whom sat directly in my seat the following period. With their blond hair and boldly colored polo shirts, these dudes ruled the school and could ruin any chances I had at normalcy if they discovered I was capable of bleeding out like a Luau pig before the tourists disembarked.
While no one was looking I took the edge of my sweater and began vigorously rubbing the stain with the elbow grease of generations of Chinese launderers. It had already set into the plastic and stared back at me as if to say, “Be My Bloody Valentine”. It was a B- horror movie and I was the girl who gets killed in the first five minutes. Now, without any Ajax or a high-powered cleaning solution used for nuclear waste spills, I was as good as dead.
The bell rang and all the students, including Mrs. Craig, quickly left the room, without a clue as to what had just taken place in the fourth row over, third seat back. I got up and moved my desk all the way to the back of the room where, luckily, some extra desks were kept. Maybe this odd collection of old fifties school furniture was purposely left there for just this kind of emergency. What if Peggy Sue had leaked all over her poodle skirt in homeroom the day Elvis was drafted into the army and the janitors didn’t want to keep carrying heavy furniture up from the basement every time some teeny bopper was visited by her little, monthly friend. Then again, Tommy could have stuck Benny with his pocketknife after fighting over who really won the rumble at the quarry the day before, The Cougars or The Rats.
With sweat dripping down my face and my heart in my throat as if I had swallowed it whole, I pushed the new desk across the room as fast as an angry, overpaid teamster and replaced it with an exact duplicate. The only thing missing were the brilliant musings I had written on the soiled desk over the past school year. “Ozzy Osborne Is God”, “Reagan Sucks” and “Make Sandwiches Not War” were just a few of the wildly intelligent thoughts that I carved into wood to be enjoyed by future generations of middle schoolers for years to come.
Just as cute, cuter and cutest waltzed into the room, I gathered my books, adjusted the protective layer of wool I so desperately hid behind and casually walked toward the door. As was with most days, these boys didn’t give me a second look and I slipped away unnoticed and ran as fast I could to the nurse’s office. If anyone had really looked at me closely they would have noticed that behind the curtain of cardigan was a blood splatter the length of my back. I resembled a troubled teen running from the scene of a car wreck severely injured but alive, afraid of being caught drunk without her learner’s permit.
When I was safely in the bowels of the infirmary, the nurse led me to a small, antiseptic, avocado colored room and handed me a maxi pad the size of a compact rental car. I burst into tears, trying to explain that not only could I not possibly put that couch cushion in my shorts, but that I was covered in copious amounts of blood and it was imperative that I return home before I lose consciousness from blood loss. The tears came so fast and so forcefully that the nurse called my mother and they both agreed I could skip my last class, a lucky break I will never forget.
My mother, whose DNA consists of mix of a fondness for arts and craft projects, a farmer’s work ethic and a crippling fear of failure, insisted the previous school year that I sign up for Shop Class in case my plans of being a Guess model fell flat. The way she saw it, if I couldn’t wear pegged jeans for money, get into college or hold down a job that required a basic ability to spell my name tag correctly, I could always rely on my skills at making a cutting board, soldering together a metal box that might hold knick knacks or winter mittens, or manipulate rod iron into decorative wall art with curly cue ends.
Shop was my last class of the day and there was no way in hell I was going to saunter into that hornets nest of horny prepubescent boys with a king sized mattress between my legs and blood on more than half of my perfectly coordinated and adorable ensemble. The nurse conceded and said that I could go straight home but not without fastening the capsized refugee boat to my underwear. The tears came again but I knew she was right. How would I get to my locker, then to the bike racks and then home without something to stop the flow of womanhood all over the hallways of this junior hell? Surprisingly enough, the pad stayed in place but I had to waddle down the empty hall with sounds of Christmas gifts being aggressively unwrapped coming from my nether regions.
Finally, after the longest and loudest walk of my life, I found my way to my bicycle and rode all the way home, a few inches higher off the seat than I had been that morning. I climbed into a hot bath, finished crying my newly minted, womanly tears and washed away the entire, horrendous experience. I knew that I had averted a social disaster of epic proportions and had almost experienced my most embarrassing moment ever. Almost.
Lying in the hospital bed the day after Otto was born, my doctor came in and told me, in so uncertain terms, that because of my C-Section, I could not be allowed to leave the hospital until I passed gas and/or had a bowel movement. The following morning when he had returned to check up on me, I turned to him and in front of a visiting crowd the size of a hockey team, I said to him, in no uncertain terms, “I just farted. Can I go home now?”
Having your body react in embarrassing ways in public has always been the nightmare that anyone with a brain more advanced that a monkey’s often has. The younger one is, the greater the fear, as it could result in lifelong social banishment. As with all terrifyingly embarrassing moments, the longer time passes the more amusing and banal the incident seems to be. It can even be a great anecdote at a party or an icebreaker in a job interview. In this economy, a catastrophically mortifying tale could land you the job at a company that is not hiring but just interviewing people to make themselves look and feel busy. The boss would sit behind the large, rented mahogany desk that H.R. is about to repossess to pay for a new Coke machine in the CEO’s executive bathroom and laugh like a mule when you spill the beans about farting at choir practice while rehearsing for the sophomore spring concert or having a booger in your nose when you asked Travis Sibley to the Sadie Haskin’s dance in 7th grade.
For me, the list is clear, concise and as fresh in my memory as a “loser” loaf of bread hot out of my “Oh my God, that did not just happen” oven. In 5th grade, I was standing in front of Foster’s Freeze drinking a peach shake after playing basketball on the city team when Brian Mueller pulled my shorts down in front of everyone, revealing not only a really lame pair of white UnderRoos but no sign of pubic hair or maturity of any kind. Cue copious amounts of group laughter, cue tears, cut to me running home to mommy and wanting to die a quick, painless death.
Then, in 7th grade, I was waiting on the lunch line in the cafeteria and I impulsively picked up a huge piece of chocolate cake without paying for it and stuck the whole thing in my mouth. Josh Davidson starting laughing at me and yelling to anyone and everyone nearby that I looked disgusting and ugly because all the chocolate crumbs were stuck in my braces. To this day I am obsessed with not getting shit stuck in my teeth. I carry floss everywhere I go and obsessively check my smile in any reflective surface just in case Josh shows up again and ruins my day and the little self-esteem I have left.
But the one that is etched into my mind like a cheap, unattractive, lower back tattoo one would get on spring break, occurred the following year during 8th grade. After taking a quiz on a collection of historical facts that I clearly did not know and most likely did not receive a satisfactory grade on, as was the case whenever I had a subject that required a binder and a small amount of interest, I got up and walked to my teacher’s desk to drop off the collection of wrong answers I had so carefully scrawled in my wispy and whimsical handwriting. Upon my return to my assigned seat, I noticed that the chair had a rust colored stain the size of a donut and resembled an impressionist’s brush stroke gone awry. Instantly, I knew it was not an example of bad modern art but was, in fact, a clear sign that I had just become a woman all over my plastic desk chair in Mrs. Craig’s 6th period Social Studies class. I turned around to see if there was a stain on my backside and was shocked to discover that a mass murder had taken place on the bottom of my yellow and green plaid Bermuda shorts. I choked back tears and a keen desire stab myself in the chest with the American Flag that so patriotically hung over the chalkboard and quickly sat down. I then thanked God that I had recently embraced a preppy lifestyle choice and tied my cashmere, dark blue cardigan sweater around my waist.
With the speed and acumen of a professional pre-teen pick pocket, I formulated a plan to get out of this horrendous scenario, one that could easily end up as an After School Special about a girl with no friends, a facial tick and an unfortunate dependency on adult diapers. The clock told me I had exactly five minutes until the bell would ring, sending in the next wave of students for 7th period. Not only did I need to clean up a crime scene as gruesome as Lizzie Borden’s sitting room, but do it as quickly as possible, so as not to alert the incoming kids, including the three most popular boys in school, one of whom sat directly in my seat the following period. With their blond hair and boldly colored polo shirts, these dudes ruled the school and could ruin any chances I had at normalcy if they discovered I was capable of bleeding out like a Luau pig before the tourists disembarked.
While no one was looking I took the edge of my sweater and began vigorously rubbing the stain with the elbow grease of generations of Chinese launderers. It had already set into the plastic and stared back at me as if to say, “Be My Bloody Valentine”. It was a B- horror movie and I was the girl who gets killed in the first five minutes. Now, without any Ajax or a high-powered cleaning solution used for nuclear waste spills, I was as good as dead.
The bell rang and all the students, including Mrs. Craig, quickly left the room, without a clue as to what had just taken place in the fourth row over, third seat back. I got up and moved my desk all the way to the back of the room where, luckily, some extra desks were kept. Maybe this odd collection of old fifties school furniture was purposely left there for just this kind of emergency. What if Peggy Sue had leaked all over her poodle skirt in homeroom the day Elvis was drafted into the army and the janitors didn’t want to keep carrying heavy furniture up from the basement every time some teeny bopper was visited by her little, monthly friend. Then again, Tommy could have stuck Benny with his pocketknife after fighting over who really won the rumble at the quarry the day before, The Cougars or The Rats.
With sweat dripping down my face and my heart in my throat as if I had swallowed it whole, I pushed the new desk across the room as fast as an angry, overpaid teamster and replaced it with an exact duplicate. The only thing missing were the brilliant musings I had written on the soiled desk over the past school year. “Ozzy Osborne Is God”, “Reagan Sucks” and “Make Sandwiches Not War” were just a few of the wildly intelligent thoughts that I carved into wood to be enjoyed by future generations of middle schoolers for years to come.
Just as cute, cuter and cutest waltzed into the room, I gathered my books, adjusted the protective layer of wool I so desperately hid behind and casually walked toward the door. As was with most days, these boys didn’t give me a second look and I slipped away unnoticed and ran as fast I could to the nurse’s office. If anyone had really looked at me closely they would have noticed that behind the curtain of cardigan was a blood splatter the length of my back. I resembled a troubled teen running from the scene of a car wreck severely injured but alive, afraid of being caught drunk without her learner’s permit.
When I was safely in the bowels of the infirmary, the nurse led me to a small, antiseptic, avocado colored room and handed me a maxi pad the size of a compact rental car. I burst into tears, trying to explain that not only could I not possibly put that couch cushion in my shorts, but that I was covered in copious amounts of blood and it was imperative that I return home before I lose consciousness from blood loss. The tears came so fast and so forcefully that the nurse called my mother and they both agreed I could skip my last class, a lucky break I will never forget.
My mother, whose DNA consists of mix of a fondness for arts and craft projects, a farmer’s work ethic and a crippling fear of failure, insisted the previous school year that I sign up for Shop Class in case my plans of being a Guess model fell flat. The way she saw it, if I couldn’t wear pegged jeans for money, get into college or hold down a job that required a basic ability to spell my name tag correctly, I could always rely on my skills at making a cutting board, soldering together a metal box that might hold knick knacks or winter mittens, or manipulate rod iron into decorative wall art with curly cue ends.
Shop was my last class of the day and there was no way in hell I was going to saunter into that hornets nest of horny prepubescent boys with a king sized mattress between my legs and blood on more than half of my perfectly coordinated and adorable ensemble. The nurse conceded and said that I could go straight home but not without fastening the capsized refugee boat to my underwear. The tears came again but I knew she was right. How would I get to my locker, then to the bike racks and then home without something to stop the flow of womanhood all over the hallways of this junior hell? Surprisingly enough, the pad stayed in place but I had to waddle down the empty hall with sounds of Christmas gifts being aggressively unwrapped coming from my nether regions.
Finally, after the longest and loudest walk of my life, I found my way to my bicycle and rode all the way home, a few inches higher off the seat than I had been that morning. I climbed into a hot bath, finished crying my newly minted, womanly tears and washed away the entire, horrendous experience. I knew that I had averted a social disaster of epic proportions and had almost experienced my most embarrassing moment ever. Almost.
Lying in the hospital bed the day after Otto was born, my doctor came in and told me, in so uncertain terms, that because of my C-Section, I could not be allowed to leave the hospital until I passed gas and/or had a bowel movement. The following morning when he had returned to check up on me, I turned to him and in front of a visiting crowd the size of a hockey team, I said to him, in no uncertain terms, “I just farted. Can I go home now?”
Monday, January 26, 2009
Silence Is Golden
There gets to a point in a week, a month or a lifetime that you just want to shut up. I mean truly, madly and aggressively say nothing to another living soul. It is as if each word uttered burns 1000 calories and feels like those last weary steps of an Olympic marathon where you enter the stadium, the crowd is going wild and your legs act like wobbly rubber bands instead of the strong, dutiful appendages you so badly rely on. The rubber wins out and you fall flat on your face, as a runner from Ethiopia passes you for the gold, the random Swede flies on by to capture the silver, wearing unbearably small shorts and some middle aged Jamaican limps over the finish line with an impossibly heartwarming back story and the Bronze, that you would have settled for had your body not screwed you over. No, I do not know what it feels like to be in the Olympics but I have imagined it more times than I would care to admit.
I am a talker by nature, a girl who once lost a $20 bet that I could not shut the fuck up for 5 minutes. I could not do it. The words flew out of my pie hole like hundreds of bats at dusk searching for a cow to suck on. A glue addict in an art supply store would have held out longer than I did. I handed over my money shameful yet exhilarated by the rush. My urge to speak and to fill any silence that comes my way is my addiction, my cross to bear, my pile of Coca Cola, my credit card debt.
With motherhood, wifedom and the endless search for a career with meaning, I have moved into a part of my life where I want nothing but silence, especially from myself. The voice in my head is louder than my real voice and sometimes resembles Liza Minnelli after three Manhattan’s, complete with a staccato slur and jazz hands. When Liza passes out or falls off her barstool the voice can turn into Jimmy Durante with a peppering of Amy Winehouse drunk dialing Courtney Love. But if the day is as long as it is hard, a terrific combination of a leaf blower, Miley Cyrus speaking, not singing and experimental jazz-fusion fill my skull until my ears bleed. This must be payback.
When I was a freshman in college, I had just begun dating a boy on the varsity rugby team, a boy whose ability to withstand monumental amounts of pain seemed, at the time, to be a good character trait. That, and his sheer pleasure at having teeth knocked out of his head on a semi-regular basis. I was a girl who loved having a boyfriend. I was in love with love, the kind of love that was most often soaked in cheap beer and false promises. But Rugby Boy* was such a cheese monger that he lured me in on our first date with a rented Betamax copy of 9 1/2 Weeks and a belt’s length of free drink tickets from the local college watering hole. This lovely place, called The Nickel, was a downtown Tucson bar filled with homeless bar flies and entitled college assholes who loved chugging cheap beer on tap and mocking the needy by chatting them up and pretending to be interested in their colorful and tragic stories.
After a few weeks of dating each other, he took me to the Rugby team awards dinner, a splendid affair that took place in a large dining hall in the armpit of the football stadium. It seemed to be a forgotten locker room with banquet tables and a stage, smelling of sweaty testicles and athlete’s foot cream. The food was a collection of mysterious gray matter in three separate piles, a vegetable, a carbohydrate and a deceased rodent of some kind, most likely a skinny chicken who was thrilled to have been put out of its misery but was hoping for something a bit higher class than a D level dinner as its last resting place.
Half way through a mixed green salad, or as I saw it, my own personal plate of freshly mowed lawn, the speeches began. I cannot recall if there were two speeches or ten. All I remember is the head coach getting up on stage and starting to rib some of the players with his bad punning and douche bag voice. He was your typical, type A control freak, alpha male, adrenaline fueled, jock itch, a guy who most likely prided himself on his inability to use an appliance or say the words “I’m sorry.” He told a few uninteresting anecdotes about a certain scrimmage formation or an away game that had turned violent when suddenly, he focused all his attention on my date.
In a matter of seconds, the coach ripped apart my arm candy as if my guy had murdered most if his family and impregnated his special needs daughter. Everyone joined in the laughter and my date, trying his best to take insults like “stupid”, “worthless, “ball dropper”, began to shrink in his seat. When the howls became deafening, I leaned over to Hunky Dumb Dumb and quietly said, in a commiserating way, “What an asshole!” What I didn’t bargain for was that the laughter would subside the moment I began to speak. And being a descendant of a megaphone and a long line of court jesters, my comment was heard by all, bouncing off the concrete walls like a handball at recess.
Everyone in the room including the busboys and the chandeliers condescendingly stared at me with my monolithic shoulder pads and crimson colored face. I looked like a sun burned Pointer Sister from the late 1980’s when they had a string of hits but terrible fashion misses. I quickly turn to the new boyfriend for some kind of reassurance but all I got was a bloated, battered rugby mug glaring at me with enough hatred to fuel a third world war. I was so mortified and cared so much what everyone thought of me that I just sat in my uncomfortable stacking chair drinking cheap white zinfandel by the cup full for the next hour and tried not to urinate on my borrowed skirt.
Eventually, we made it back to his place with only a few dry comments on my social suicide attempt and a nightcap of mediocre college sex and a bottle of Southern Comfort. The relationship surprisingly lasted through my foot in mouth dance. But, within a month he had moved on to my best friend’s roommate, a girl I had stupidly introduced him to thinking that he would love my friends. She seemed to be everything I was not, tall, blond, a heavy pot smoker and a psychotic Depeche Mode fanatic who would constantly sing “Shout” while carrying on a conversation about her new boyfriend and her need to travel the world before settling down with him.
I try and look back on my loudest and proudest moments and tell myself that I need to learn to be quiet inside as well as out. Maybe, if I can turn down my volume, if only by a few notches, than the noises around me will begin to subside. That or I had better practice keeping my mouth shut at pre-school picnics, pep rallies and prom parties. Otto will never forgive me if I accidentally insult his date’s knock off designer prom dress or inadvertently tell his football coach that he sucks dick like the captain of the cheerleading squad on homecoming weekend.
*I refer to the rugby player as Rugby Boy, My Date, Him, Arm Candy or Hunky Dumb Dumb not to be thoughtful and protect his identity but because I cannot, for the life of me, remember his name. I blame time, alcohol and apathy.
I am a talker by nature, a girl who once lost a $20 bet that I could not shut the fuck up for 5 minutes. I could not do it. The words flew out of my pie hole like hundreds of bats at dusk searching for a cow to suck on. A glue addict in an art supply store would have held out longer than I did. I handed over my money shameful yet exhilarated by the rush. My urge to speak and to fill any silence that comes my way is my addiction, my cross to bear, my pile of Coca Cola, my credit card debt.
With motherhood, wifedom and the endless search for a career with meaning, I have moved into a part of my life where I want nothing but silence, especially from myself. The voice in my head is louder than my real voice and sometimes resembles Liza Minnelli after three Manhattan’s, complete with a staccato slur and jazz hands. When Liza passes out or falls off her barstool the voice can turn into Jimmy Durante with a peppering of Amy Winehouse drunk dialing Courtney Love. But if the day is as long as it is hard, a terrific combination of a leaf blower, Miley Cyrus speaking, not singing and experimental jazz-fusion fill my skull until my ears bleed. This must be payback.
When I was a freshman in college, I had just begun dating a boy on the varsity rugby team, a boy whose ability to withstand monumental amounts of pain seemed, at the time, to be a good character trait. That, and his sheer pleasure at having teeth knocked out of his head on a semi-regular basis. I was a girl who loved having a boyfriend. I was in love with love, the kind of love that was most often soaked in cheap beer and false promises. But Rugby Boy* was such a cheese monger that he lured me in on our first date with a rented Betamax copy of 9 1/2 Weeks and a belt’s length of free drink tickets from the local college watering hole. This lovely place, called The Nickel, was a downtown Tucson bar filled with homeless bar flies and entitled college assholes who loved chugging cheap beer on tap and mocking the needy by chatting them up and pretending to be interested in their colorful and tragic stories.
After a few weeks of dating each other, he took me to the Rugby team awards dinner, a splendid affair that took place in a large dining hall in the armpit of the football stadium. It seemed to be a forgotten locker room with banquet tables and a stage, smelling of sweaty testicles and athlete’s foot cream. The food was a collection of mysterious gray matter in three separate piles, a vegetable, a carbohydrate and a deceased rodent of some kind, most likely a skinny chicken who was thrilled to have been put out of its misery but was hoping for something a bit higher class than a D level dinner as its last resting place.
Half way through a mixed green salad, or as I saw it, my own personal plate of freshly mowed lawn, the speeches began. I cannot recall if there were two speeches or ten. All I remember is the head coach getting up on stage and starting to rib some of the players with his bad punning and douche bag voice. He was your typical, type A control freak, alpha male, adrenaline fueled, jock itch, a guy who most likely prided himself on his inability to use an appliance or say the words “I’m sorry.” He told a few uninteresting anecdotes about a certain scrimmage formation or an away game that had turned violent when suddenly, he focused all his attention on my date.
In a matter of seconds, the coach ripped apart my arm candy as if my guy had murdered most if his family and impregnated his special needs daughter. Everyone joined in the laughter and my date, trying his best to take insults like “stupid”, “worthless, “ball dropper”, began to shrink in his seat. When the howls became deafening, I leaned over to Hunky Dumb Dumb and quietly said, in a commiserating way, “What an asshole!” What I didn’t bargain for was that the laughter would subside the moment I began to speak. And being a descendant of a megaphone and a long line of court jesters, my comment was heard by all, bouncing off the concrete walls like a handball at recess.
Everyone in the room including the busboys and the chandeliers condescendingly stared at me with my monolithic shoulder pads and crimson colored face. I looked like a sun burned Pointer Sister from the late 1980’s when they had a string of hits but terrible fashion misses. I quickly turn to the new boyfriend for some kind of reassurance but all I got was a bloated, battered rugby mug glaring at me with enough hatred to fuel a third world war. I was so mortified and cared so much what everyone thought of me that I just sat in my uncomfortable stacking chair drinking cheap white zinfandel by the cup full for the next hour and tried not to urinate on my borrowed skirt.
Eventually, we made it back to his place with only a few dry comments on my social suicide attempt and a nightcap of mediocre college sex and a bottle of Southern Comfort. The relationship surprisingly lasted through my foot in mouth dance. But, within a month he had moved on to my best friend’s roommate, a girl I had stupidly introduced him to thinking that he would love my friends. She seemed to be everything I was not, tall, blond, a heavy pot smoker and a psychotic Depeche Mode fanatic who would constantly sing “Shout” while carrying on a conversation about her new boyfriend and her need to travel the world before settling down with him.
I try and look back on my loudest and proudest moments and tell myself that I need to learn to be quiet inside as well as out. Maybe, if I can turn down my volume, if only by a few notches, than the noises around me will begin to subside. That or I had better practice keeping my mouth shut at pre-school picnics, pep rallies and prom parties. Otto will never forgive me if I accidentally insult his date’s knock off designer prom dress or inadvertently tell his football coach that he sucks dick like the captain of the cheerleading squad on homecoming weekend.
*I refer to the rugby player as Rugby Boy, My Date, Him, Arm Candy or Hunky Dumb Dumb not to be thoughtful and protect his identity but because I cannot, for the life of me, remember his name. I blame time, alcohol and apathy.
Disney II - Yoga pants and old t-shirts.
That is what I wear when I am cleaning. Usually no bra either. Only because I start cleaning in the early am right when I get out of bed. My tig old bitties fighting it out under a stained Life Is Good t-shirt as I sweep the kitchen. Hair pulled back in a claw clip. Are you hot yet? Yeah, Baby. Am I wearing the old turquoise velour sweatpants with the giant bleach stain on the cuff? You know it, Sweetcheeks. Just for you.
We have a service come in every two weeks to do a deep clean. I try to maintain it the best I can in between. I despise cleaning so I force myself to be diligent in the two week period before my angels come in to visit me again. I greet my house cleaners with such fervor that I frighten them. I want to learn Portuguese just so I can tell them how much I love them and their bi-weekly visits.
My mission upon entering a hotel room is to be super-best friends with the housekeeping staff. I have such enormous issues with staying in a hotel that I feel if I make nice with housekeeping they will go above and beyond to clean my room. Eradicate my room of all Strep strains and bleach away the Norovirus with a heavy hand. I silently beg them to use the cleanest of sheets and to scrub my bathroom until their knuckles bleed.
When we arrived at our resort in Disney I was most pleased to find the room in a pristine state upon check-in. I flipped back the sheets to check for evidence of bed bugs in the mattress seams. Yes, I do that. The bathroom was clean and pretty soaps were displayed in a row. I was thrilled. No bad smells, no unidentifiable stains, I was at peace. Now I needed to find housekeeping to make nice and to put a face with Ismelda, who left me the pretty pre-printed note letting me know she had prepared our room that day.
I wandered out into the hall later that afternoon in the hopes of catching them while they were doing turn-down service for that evening. I was thrown off by a woman that was standing a few doors down. She was wearing a full length baby pink dress. A bad peachy baby pink, a color that looks good on infants only. The dress had large puffed sleeves that were looming next to her ears in height. The back of her neck was hidden by a large ruffled white collar. It buttoned all the way down the back. The buttons ended at her waist that was festooned by a large white bow. I could only see her from behind. I stood there trying to figure out what this woman was wearing for a good two minutes. It was such an archaic look. It was when she turned around that I realized she was our maid. Our maid was dressed straight out of a casting call for Mary Poppins. I expected that she would be in a whacked out Disney outfit. This I was not prepared for.
All Disney hotels follow some sort of a theme. We were staying at the Grand Floridian which follows an old fashioned decor reminiscent of Alice and Wonderland before she goes down the rabbit hole. The part of the movie where she is sitting around with her sister in the tree reading books and shooting Heroin. Everyone working at the hotel wears outfits as if they were strolling down Cherry Tree Lane with Dick Van Dyke. I understand that, I get the rabid themeing of Disney. It is what makes Disney so creepily Disney.
But to make a woman who is scrubbing tubs wear a full-length Victorian gown is sick and twisted. This cannot be the dream that Walt had, could it? Mary Pickford hosing down toilets and replacing stolen shampoos? Kinky. I stared at her outfit simply amazed at the complexity of it. The gown was long and sweeping. I tired to picture her maneuvering around the beds. The frilly neck covering collar was making me itch. Have you been to Florida in the dead of summer? It's like Africa down there. The thought of her with Lysol spray in hand wiping down the sink tops in that get-up was so twisted and wrong. Must. finish. before. they. return. Sweat dripping down her back as she straightens out your bratty kids shoes. Horrifiying.
Their regular housekeeping tip was supplemented daily with extra money because I felt genuinely bad for them tripping around in those nutty outfits. I wanted them to save up enough so that they could take a walk over to the Polynesian so that they could clean toilets in a Hula skirt instead.
We have a service come in every two weeks to do a deep clean. I try to maintain it the best I can in between. I despise cleaning so I force myself to be diligent in the two week period before my angels come in to visit me again. I greet my house cleaners with such fervor that I frighten them. I want to learn Portuguese just so I can tell them how much I love them and their bi-weekly visits.
My mission upon entering a hotel room is to be super-best friends with the housekeeping staff. I have such enormous issues with staying in a hotel that I feel if I make nice with housekeeping they will go above and beyond to clean my room. Eradicate my room of all Strep strains and bleach away the Norovirus with a heavy hand. I silently beg them to use the cleanest of sheets and to scrub my bathroom until their knuckles bleed.
When we arrived at our resort in Disney I was most pleased to find the room in a pristine state upon check-in. I flipped back the sheets to check for evidence of bed bugs in the mattress seams. Yes, I do that. The bathroom was clean and pretty soaps were displayed in a row. I was thrilled. No bad smells, no unidentifiable stains, I was at peace. Now I needed to find housekeeping to make nice and to put a face with Ismelda, who left me the pretty pre-printed note letting me know she had prepared our room that day.
I wandered out into the hall later that afternoon in the hopes of catching them while they were doing turn-down service for that evening. I was thrown off by a woman that was standing a few doors down. She was wearing a full length baby pink dress. A bad peachy baby pink, a color that looks good on infants only. The dress had large puffed sleeves that were looming next to her ears in height. The back of her neck was hidden by a large ruffled white collar. It buttoned all the way down the back. The buttons ended at her waist that was festooned by a large white bow. I could only see her from behind. I stood there trying to figure out what this woman was wearing for a good two minutes. It was such an archaic look. It was when she turned around that I realized she was our maid. Our maid was dressed straight out of a casting call for Mary Poppins. I expected that she would be in a whacked out Disney outfit. This I was not prepared for.
All Disney hotels follow some sort of a theme. We were staying at the Grand Floridian which follows an old fashioned decor reminiscent of Alice and Wonderland before she goes down the rabbit hole. The part of the movie where she is sitting around with her sister in the tree reading books and shooting Heroin. Everyone working at the hotel wears outfits as if they were strolling down Cherry Tree Lane with Dick Van Dyke. I understand that, I get the rabid themeing of Disney. It is what makes Disney so creepily Disney.
But to make a woman who is scrubbing tubs wear a full-length Victorian gown is sick and twisted. This cannot be the dream that Walt had, could it? Mary Pickford hosing down toilets and replacing stolen shampoos? Kinky. I stared at her outfit simply amazed at the complexity of it. The gown was long and sweeping. I tired to picture her maneuvering around the beds. The frilly neck covering collar was making me itch. Have you been to Florida in the dead of summer? It's like Africa down there. The thought of her with Lysol spray in hand wiping down the sink tops in that get-up was so twisted and wrong. Must. finish. before. they. return. Sweat dripping down her back as she straightens out your bratty kids shoes. Horrifiying.
Their regular housekeeping tip was supplemented daily with extra money because I felt genuinely bad for them tripping around in those nutty outfits. I wanted them to save up enough so that they could take a walk over to the Polynesian so that they could clean toilets in a Hula skirt instead.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Is it pronounced vās, vāz, or väz ?
A few years ago one of my closest friends said something in the midst of a very stressful time in her life. She said that she felt like she was a glass vase with a million little cracks that were slowly spreading and she was desperately trying to hold herself together before breaking and spilling water all over a very expensive rug and crushing her soul. I am now sitting next to her on a shelf comparing cracks as well as chips. The only difference is that she is most definitely made of exquisite crystal with a Tiffany stamp on her bottom, while I hale from Ikea, the land of under priced Swedish crap, ironically made in China. My only discerning mark is a black and white price tag with a series of uninspired numbers and the name “Flootvegooten” in bold letters. Roughly translated, it means “glass one who is cheap, fragile and mass produced.”
Here at home we have hit 22 months with Otto and it is as rough as staring at Mickey Rourke’s face for longer than a two minute Access Hollywood interview. Otto is trying to communicate as best as he can while testing our limits and patience at every turn. Dave and I are at each other’s throats. Life gets in the way of stuff while stuff gets in the way of life. The few closets we have are over run with junk that we need but have no room for emotionally or literally. I am truly convinced that all the toys are copulating at night and multiplying like virile little rabbits. We spent all our time washing the floor, dishes, clothes, faces, hands and assholes while juggling dog walks, play dates, grocery runs and pathetic attempts at grooming, sleeping and humping.
Not to mention Dave actually has a career that he needs to attend to, including four projects going at once, a partnership as wonderful and symbiotic as Marin and Lewis, the soul financial responsibility for this motley crew and an unfair and mandatory expectation that he will cook every meal. I, on the contrary, have no career, unless you count the handful of commercials I book a year where I put on frumpy mom gear and smirk into a camera. Or the daily blog musings that I am hoping will fester into something more than an infected boil on the ass of the World Wide Web.
I have become addicted to caffeine once again and crave copious amounts of sugar, spaghetti and American Idol, a sure sign of trouble. I cannot remember one thing from the next, climbing the stairs with a task in mind, only to return a moment later as empty handed and confused as a blind street musician. My roots are as wide and noticeable as a handicapped parking space. I wear the same four things every day. My hairdryer thinks it’s something he said. I am reading three books at once, one of which involves teenagers and vampires and is so poorly written that each past participle makes me feel better about myself. I smell shit everywhere I go. I watched Otto roll a large exercise ball in and out of his bedroom chair today and instead of being proud of his strength and commitment, all I could think about was Sisyphus.
Here at home we have hit 22 months with Otto and it is as rough as staring at Mickey Rourke’s face for longer than a two minute Access Hollywood interview. Otto is trying to communicate as best as he can while testing our limits and patience at every turn. Dave and I are at each other’s throats. Life gets in the way of stuff while stuff gets in the way of life. The few closets we have are over run with junk that we need but have no room for emotionally or literally. I am truly convinced that all the toys are copulating at night and multiplying like virile little rabbits. We spent all our time washing the floor, dishes, clothes, faces, hands and assholes while juggling dog walks, play dates, grocery runs and pathetic attempts at grooming, sleeping and humping.
Not to mention Dave actually has a career that he needs to attend to, including four projects going at once, a partnership as wonderful and symbiotic as Marin and Lewis, the soul financial responsibility for this motley crew and an unfair and mandatory expectation that he will cook every meal. I, on the contrary, have no career, unless you count the handful of commercials I book a year where I put on frumpy mom gear and smirk into a camera. Or the daily blog musings that I am hoping will fester into something more than an infected boil on the ass of the World Wide Web.
I have become addicted to caffeine once again and crave copious amounts of sugar, spaghetti and American Idol, a sure sign of trouble. I cannot remember one thing from the next, climbing the stairs with a task in mind, only to return a moment later as empty handed and confused as a blind street musician. My roots are as wide and noticeable as a handicapped parking space. I wear the same four things every day. My hairdryer thinks it’s something he said. I am reading three books at once, one of which involves teenagers and vampires and is so poorly written that each past participle makes me feel better about myself. I smell shit everywhere I go. I watched Otto roll a large exercise ball in and out of his bedroom chair today and instead of being proud of his strength and commitment, all I could think about was Sisyphus.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
What did I do today?
I baked a banana bread especially for Otto, who refused to eat it even though it was made with love and old, nasty bananas that looked like sad, Egyptian mummies that looters left behind. Then I called in to a local L.A. radio show to bitch to our chief of police about the douche bag peeping tom in our neighborhood that the police refuse to arrest every time we catch him with his dick in his hand and a smile on his face.
Oh my God, I have become Mrs. Kravitz, without the form fitting house dress and beehive hairdo. At least she made an effort to look presentable each and every time she peered in Samantha's window and saw Agnes Moorehead casting a spell on a potted plant or a slice of bundt cake. I just look like a creepy lady who lives in a bus depot with my empty bottle collection and public radio satchel from the 1987 pledge drive.
I bet she even owned that fake house with a yard and a walkway and had a savings account she never touched. Oh lord, how I have sunk to a whole new level of pathetic for envying an annoying, fictitious television character from the sixties. I have to go and dunk my head in a bucket of dirty, reality water. Then I'll mop the floor with it and discover that my house has as much filth on its wooden planks as a septic transfer station. My shirt is stained and my hair is as greasy as Danny Zucko's pocket comb. My references are as dated as Roman numerals and Paris Hilton's existence and they didn't even take my call while the peeper has never once glanced my way or masturbated in my general direction. Typical.
Oh my God, I have become Mrs. Kravitz, without the form fitting house dress and beehive hairdo. At least she made an effort to look presentable each and every time she peered in Samantha's window and saw Agnes Moorehead casting a spell on a potted plant or a slice of bundt cake. I just look like a creepy lady who lives in a bus depot with my empty bottle collection and public radio satchel from the 1987 pledge drive.
I bet she even owned that fake house with a yard and a walkway and had a savings account she never touched. Oh lord, how I have sunk to a whole new level of pathetic for envying an annoying, fictitious television character from the sixties. I have to go and dunk my head in a bucket of dirty, reality water. Then I'll mop the floor with it and discover that my house has as much filth on its wooden planks as a septic transfer station. My shirt is stained and my hair is as greasy as Danny Zucko's pocket comb. My references are as dated as Roman numerals and Paris Hilton's existence and they didn't even take my call while the peeper has never once glanced my way or masturbated in my general direction. Typical.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
That's My Boy
This is my nephew, who is really my brother, who is really my first baby, who I adore, who piled into a car with a bunch of buddies from college and drove to Washington D.C. to witness the inauguration heard round the world. I think that was really cool and it makes this aunt very proud. That does not change the fact that he looks oddly like a really young, really cold Unibomber. Eeek!
365 - Day 21
No one tells you that sometimes it is just fucking hard to be a mom and you will cry on the sidewalk in front of your house and your friends will give you a hug and your head will still be throbbing when your little squirt turns to you in the dark and kisses you right on the mouth and then hugs you and then you will melt like a Hershey's Kiss in a hot car as you put him to bed.
Meal Swap! Can I Get An Amen?
Keri and I have introduced meal swap into our lives. We have decided that each week she cooks two of something, and I do the same. Then in a glorious moment on the school yard right before the urchins are released from the confines we hand one another these mysterious treasures. I would not agree to a meal swap with just anyone. I need a proven cook. Someone who knows what the hell they are doing in the kitchen. Keri threw an absolutely kick-ass meal on the table when I was at her house a few months ago. And she did it while we were all completely ripped on various beverages. She was slow dancing with the Captain and I was making out with a mellow Grenache. One moment we were sitting around the table swearing and swigging, and in a whoosh she was up sauteing lemony chicken and a spinach loaf worthy of Popeye. I was in love. I can't cook drunk, I have tried and it always fails miserably. Her meal was fabulous and we were able to maintain our buzz well past dessert. This is a woman I can trust in a culinary realm. So tonight I sat here and wrote this while her calzone baked away in my oven. Cured Italian meats and cheese waft around my kitchen and I did not do a damn thing. There is nothing quite as tasty as some free time to screw around on the laptop.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
365- Day 20 ( Happy 22nd Month, OTTO)
No one tells you that when your child turns 22 month old you will have one of the hardest days of his life as he challenges you, whines at you, defies you, throws things at you and sasses you until you break down crying after he goes to bed and you eat Top Ramen, 1/2 a beer and a glazed doughnut for dinner which, as hard as this is to believe, it sets you straight.
A Good Day
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
An excerpt for the inaugural address of
Barack H. Obama - 44th President of the United States of America
Monday, January 19, 2009
365- Day 19
No one tells you your child will get psychotically jealous when you hold a new born baby, foaming the runway for any potential siblings that might pop up in the future.
Car Chat With Max
Max: "You know, Barack Obama is going to be our first black President."
Dad: "Yes! It is all very exciting. That takes place tomorrow. He will be inaugurated. We can watch it all happen on TV."
Max: "It's very cool."
Dad: "Incredibly cool, and I am glad that you get to be a part of it. It is an important moment in our history."
Max: "Do you want to know something else, Dad?"
Dad: "Yes?"
Max: "Mace Windu was the first black Jedi. That is very important too. Almost as cool, but not really."
Dad: "Yes! It is all very exciting. That takes place tomorrow. He will be inaugurated. We can watch it all happen on TV."
Max: "It's very cool."
Dad: "Incredibly cool, and I am glad that you get to be a part of it. It is an important moment in our history."
Max: "Do you want to know something else, Dad?"
Dad: "Yes?"
Max: "Mace Windu was the first black Jedi. That is very important too. Almost as cool, but not really."
Malibu Barbie and Ken
This past weekend we were lucky enough to have the kind of weather a Bahamian would be jealous of. It was 75 degrees and sunny and we spent the entire time lounging by the pool and on the beach in Malibu. It was heaven and when you are treated so well and pampered so luxuriously you think everything will be perfect the entire time. Then you remember that you have brought your toddler with you and your best friends also have their kids and this magical, musical experience could change at any given moment from perfect to pure chaos. But of course, that’s what makes parenting rewarding, right?
We arrived on Saturday morning with a skip in our step and ready to do nothing. We swam, we ate a beautiful meal, we didn’t have to lift a finger except to wipe Desatin on Otto’s rump and we lounged and played with crazy groups of delicious kids. After a long hike on the beach with the whole gang and lots of rock throwing and sand eating, Otto decided that taking two poops in two minutes with only one diaper would be great fun. We improvised and laughed at our very regular, very bountiful shit machine. When the sun started to set, we all made our way back to the house; fed the kids dinner and I insisted that we have the huge bath party.
My favorite new thing to do is have bath dates with friends and their kids. We have the kids play like crazy until dinner, feed them as much food as they can stuff in their bellies, bath them all together, put them in their P.J.’s and then toss them in the car with a bottle. They pass out cold when their head hit the pillow and you can enjoy your evening with a little booze, American Idol and some lovey, dovey, dirty time with daddy.
So, we had three of the five kids in the bath together at this point, our friend Francois's daughters Charlie, 4 and Roxy 18 months and little Otto Cohen, who was the only boy and super happy about it, as any boy would be. The room Otto was staying in was built especially for children with a small, custom bathtub and two twin beds so it felt child friendly, even though it was attached to our room and was easily nicer than any hotel I have ever stayed at. It is the kind of place that hammers home the fact that you will never, ever make it in life, ever. So just stop trying.
After cleaning up the kids, Francois, took Roxy and Otto out of the tub while I finished bathing Charlie. Dave and Francois were now in the bedroom letting the little kids run around and dry off. As I drained the tub and tried to convince Charlie that yes, her vagina was indeed clean enough after several minutes of hydration and to give me back the shower wand before her hoo-ha turned into a shriveled up prune before its time, I heard shrieks of laughter from the other room.
I ran out to find my husband and Francois laughing as hard as I have ever seen them laugh. Harder than the time we all did Ecstasy in the mountains and ran into a cast member from Kids In The Hall who was a dick to me while I was freaking out and wearing awful orange corduroys. Harder than the time we drank too much tequila and made naked grilled cheese sandwiches. Harder than the time our friend Stan pulled his balls out of his shorts at Jack’s wedding and put them in a cocktail glass next to Francois’s, trying to recreate a double Manhattan. Harder than the time our friend Sam fell down a ravine in Hawaii with fried chicken in his back pack at the same wedding, while Francois was wearing $15 trendy Puma’s while attempting to hike a treacherous mountain and almost dying from hip, fabulous fashion sense.
What made them laugh harder was a photo that Dave had accidentally taken a minute earlier. Dave had been snapping pictures of Otto and Roxy running around the crib chasing each other and laughing. Suddenly and without warning, as is always the case, Roxy took a shit on the rug at the exact moment Dave was shooting. Subsequently, we now have a collection of stills of a small child in pre-poop, mid-poop and post-poop landing on rug that could easily be worth more than everything we collectively own and rent.
As we were all howling at the photos and the fact that the perfect poopy left no mark, Otto was busy a few feet away emptying his bowels onto the floor with a torrent of diarrhea reserved for Ex-Lax addicts and sick cattle. This was his third bowel movement in an hour so the surprise was obvious and stunning. We only noticed Otto’s art project after he began crying because he had stepped in his own crap and was furious that liquid waste was stuck between his cute, little toes. I grabbed him and flew into the bathroom, putting him the tub again and washing away all the evidence.
Unfortunately, his fecal foot caught the edge of the bedspread while I was running and smeared it with the mark of the beast. Dave quickly cleaned up the whole mess but the bedspread was too tough to shout it out. The housekeeper, who was as wonderful and gracious as she could be, assured us that we would not need to sell a kidney to replace the fabric. It had been Scotch Guarded and the stain, the smell and the shame would come out in the wash.
Needless to say, we all looked and felt like we had been hit by a shit-filled dump truck while our small, precious manure Malibu Barbie and Ken were none the wiser. I still cannot get over the mathematically chances of not only having two toddlers lay waste on really expensive surfaces within moments of each other but that Dave accidentally caught on film for us to really, truly enjoy and to torture our children with for years to come.
I should definitely buy a lottery ticket today, not only to help pay for replacing the solid gold bed cover in case the stain does not come out and because I am feeling lucky. Really, really lucky. I mean, seriously. What are the chances?
We arrived on Saturday morning with a skip in our step and ready to do nothing. We swam, we ate a beautiful meal, we didn’t have to lift a finger except to wipe Desatin on Otto’s rump and we lounged and played with crazy groups of delicious kids. After a long hike on the beach with the whole gang and lots of rock throwing and sand eating, Otto decided that taking two poops in two minutes with only one diaper would be great fun. We improvised and laughed at our very regular, very bountiful shit machine. When the sun started to set, we all made our way back to the house; fed the kids dinner and I insisted that we have the huge bath party.
My favorite new thing to do is have bath dates with friends and their kids. We have the kids play like crazy until dinner, feed them as much food as they can stuff in their bellies, bath them all together, put them in their P.J.’s and then toss them in the car with a bottle. They pass out cold when their head hit the pillow and you can enjoy your evening with a little booze, American Idol and some lovey, dovey, dirty time with daddy.
So, we had three of the five kids in the bath together at this point, our friend Francois's daughters Charlie, 4 and Roxy 18 months and little Otto Cohen, who was the only boy and super happy about it, as any boy would be. The room Otto was staying in was built especially for children with a small, custom bathtub and two twin beds so it felt child friendly, even though it was attached to our room and was easily nicer than any hotel I have ever stayed at. It is the kind of place that hammers home the fact that you will never, ever make it in life, ever. So just stop trying.
After cleaning up the kids, Francois, took Roxy and Otto out of the tub while I finished bathing Charlie. Dave and Francois were now in the bedroom letting the little kids run around and dry off. As I drained the tub and tried to convince Charlie that yes, her vagina was indeed clean enough after several minutes of hydration and to give me back the shower wand before her hoo-ha turned into a shriveled up prune before its time, I heard shrieks of laughter from the other room.
I ran out to find my husband and Francois laughing as hard as I have ever seen them laugh. Harder than the time we all did Ecstasy in the mountains and ran into a cast member from Kids In The Hall who was a dick to me while I was freaking out and wearing awful orange corduroys. Harder than the time we drank too much tequila and made naked grilled cheese sandwiches. Harder than the time our friend Stan pulled his balls out of his shorts at Jack’s wedding and put them in a cocktail glass next to Francois’s, trying to recreate a double Manhattan. Harder than the time our friend Sam fell down a ravine in Hawaii with fried chicken in his back pack at the same wedding, while Francois was wearing $15 trendy Puma’s while attempting to hike a treacherous mountain and almost dying from hip, fabulous fashion sense.
What made them laugh harder was a photo that Dave had accidentally taken a minute earlier. Dave had been snapping pictures of Otto and Roxy running around the crib chasing each other and laughing. Suddenly and without warning, as is always the case, Roxy took a shit on the rug at the exact moment Dave was shooting. Subsequently, we now have a collection of stills of a small child in pre-poop, mid-poop and post-poop landing on rug that could easily be worth more than everything we collectively own and rent.
As we were all howling at the photos and the fact that the perfect poopy left no mark, Otto was busy a few feet away emptying his bowels onto the floor with a torrent of diarrhea reserved for Ex-Lax addicts and sick cattle. This was his third bowel movement in an hour so the surprise was obvious and stunning. We only noticed Otto’s art project after he began crying because he had stepped in his own crap and was furious that liquid waste was stuck between his cute, little toes. I grabbed him and flew into the bathroom, putting him the tub again and washing away all the evidence.
Unfortunately, his fecal foot caught the edge of the bedspread while I was running and smeared it with the mark of the beast. Dave quickly cleaned up the whole mess but the bedspread was too tough to shout it out. The housekeeper, who was as wonderful and gracious as she could be, assured us that we would not need to sell a kidney to replace the fabric. It had been Scotch Guarded and the stain, the smell and the shame would come out in the wash.
Needless to say, we all looked and felt like we had been hit by a shit-filled dump truck while our small, precious manure Malibu Barbie and Ken were none the wiser. I still cannot get over the mathematically chances of not only having two toddlers lay waste on really expensive surfaces within moments of each other but that Dave accidentally caught on film for us to really, truly enjoy and to torture our children with for years to come.
I should definitely buy a lottery ticket today, not only to help pay for replacing the solid gold bed cover in case the stain does not come out and because I am feeling lucky. Really, really lucky. I mean, seriously. What are the chances?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
365 - Day 18
No one tells you that after you become a mother you will sometimes have nothing left after a long weekend away except a pile of dirty clothes covered with sand, milk and diarrhea.
Disney I
Guess how much the Internet service is at Disney? $9.95 a day. Before leaving on our vacation I told Dorothea with great bravado how I would blog from the confines of the campus of the Mouse to mock every acid wash jeans wearing mess that I saw. Guess how much a mixed drink costs at Disney? For a mere $14.00 I could dull my pain with some Peter Pan Has No Penis Punch or a large commemorative blinking mug of Bambi's Mom's A Bloody Mary. You do the math. The drinks won.
My awesome rock star of a husband booked us at club level. Basically this means that the hotel staff has to be a bit nicer to you and do whatever menial tasks you ask of them without them giving you a big "f you" smile. Mediocre food was offered in the lounge of our building at various intervals of the day. Yummy Beginnings, Snack, Lunch, Tea, Twilight, and Good Night Goodies. I think that is what they were called, at least something along those lines with a few Disneyesque terms thrown in. Along with the food you got a bar of semi-drinkable wine, shitty champagne and cordials in the evening. The most exotic beer offered was Heineken. Barf. The cordials threw me for a loop, most of the offerings were alcohol that I had only heard of from a Jay Z lyric and tasted like cough syrup. So despite the "free" drinks I found a few occasions that I needed to venture outside the lounge to be a bit more adventurous and escape their offerings. So I chose booze over Internet. Wouldn't you? Jamie had his Blackberry and he was blissfully happy communicating away with clients on that. I was in an Internetless world. But I took notes. Oh yes, there are many. Stay tuned...
My awesome rock star of a husband booked us at club level. Basically this means that the hotel staff has to be a bit nicer to you and do whatever menial tasks you ask of them without them giving you a big "f you" smile. Mediocre food was offered in the lounge of our building at various intervals of the day. Yummy Beginnings, Snack, Lunch, Tea, Twilight, and Good Night Goodies. I think that is what they were called, at least something along those lines with a few Disneyesque terms thrown in. Along with the food you got a bar of semi-drinkable wine, shitty champagne and cordials in the evening. The most exotic beer offered was Heineken. Barf. The cordials threw me for a loop, most of the offerings were alcohol that I had only heard of from a Jay Z lyric and tasted like cough syrup. So despite the "free" drinks I found a few occasions that I needed to venture outside the lounge to be a bit more adventurous and escape their offerings. So I chose booze over Internet. Wouldn't you? Jamie had his Blackberry and he was blissfully happy communicating away with clients on that. I was in an Internetless world. But I took notes. Oh yes, there are many. Stay tuned...
Friday, January 16, 2009
365 - Day 16
No one tells you that over time and many self inflicted falls, scrapes and head thumps onto hard wood flooring, that you, as a mother, will come to the conclusion that your son is not only resilient and strong but he is a total bad ass, much like the center pin in a bowling alley, front, center and standing tall ready to take another hit right in the nut sack.
Mommy Dearest
This week shows us that a sentence turned into an idea turned into a punch line turned into a storyline turned into a book turned into a talk show turned into a movie will be opening at theatres across the country. He’s Just Not That Into You will be the next romantic comedy to help lift this country out of the financial crisis blues it has been singing for months now. Just think, a movie starring both Jennifer Aniston and Drew Barrymore portraying unhappy dopes having trouble with love and life. Do you take Amex?
Seeing that a movie night out runs us close to $120 with a babysitter that costs more than a high end call girl, tickets priced for a Madoff silent auction and food, while tasting more like salted cardboard and grease, still manages to fetch a hefty sum from the slobs, like myself, who think reheated popcorn, hotdogs and stale Hot Tamales are a real treat.
Besides, I don’t need to see this one note masterpiece. I am living this movie every day. A week or so ago Otto decided that daddy was his favorite person in the world and I am just a random employee that exists solely to insure his utmost happiness and fulfillment all day long. I was warned that these parental preference stages would happen. Hell, I even liked it for the first few days, getting out of doing the poopy diaper clean up or changing his pants three times until he was satisfied with his fashion forward look. But now, the “daddy this” and daddy that’s” are getting under my skin and making me want to drink cheap vodka and go clubbing with Orange County teens who wear pantyhose with mini-skirts and backless sequin tops that scream “date rape is better than no rape, girlfrieeeeeeeend!”
I carried this lima bean in my belly for close to ten months, which is the actual gestation period of a human pregnancy but no one seems to know or understand that, except women who have carried these critters and remember the last months of awkward, painful sleeping positions and fear of any sexual contact whatsoever. You would think that Otto would at least choose me first when trying out the bad cop/good cop, who I like better game. I mean, he took my nipples and made them into pulverized Juju Fruits, sucking and pulling until tears ran down my face every fucking morning, mid morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, middle evening, late evening and late night. Oh, and the ever loving middle of the night when I wanted to crawl into our heating vent and die a hot, dusty, dramatic T.V. Movie of the Week death.
And as far as the crying, I do not look and have never looked attractive before, during or after a good cry. When the sniffles come calling, this mommy resembles an overcooked yam, complete with shriveled skin and oozing juices and if competing against one another in a beauty contest, the yam will always win. Maybe Otto remembers all those ugly, weepy times as he suckled my once fabulous breasts and made them his own personal Holstein utters. Maybe he realizes that daddy is a hell of a lot more fun than old stick in the mud mom, who asks him to watch his head when walking under slides or tells him to be careful not to fling himself off the changing table and crack open his skull on the side of his crib while I wipe his cute little anus. His dad throws him in the air like volleyball and allows him to sit on the seat of his uncle Scott’s Ducati and rev the engine. While I am wiping off dirty banana gunk and potentially hazardous bacteria from his tiny, gorgeous little mitts, daddy encourages him to rummage in the dirt pile out front where the neighborhood posse of feral cats deposit turds the size of soup cans.
So what if he closed the bathroom door in my face today as daddy was rinsing off after a shower, making it clear that no girls were allowed. So what if he asks for daddy the moment I walk into his room after his nap or insists on eating only daddy’s food and refuses to eat his hot dog and French fries when seated at his favorite fast food restaurant I take him to as a special treat. And so what if he always say daddy when I hand him a cool, vintage Matchbox car that I bought him. But deep down in my gut, the same one that kept him safe and warm for all those months, the same place that moved and shook and gurgled with joy every time I ate a steak or drank a chocolate shake, the same tummy that kicked and moved every time I told him I couldn’t wait to meet him, I know he loves me and will love me forever. He’s just not that into me, that’s all.
Seeing that a movie night out runs us close to $120 with a babysitter that costs more than a high end call girl, tickets priced for a Madoff silent auction and food, while tasting more like salted cardboard and grease, still manages to fetch a hefty sum from the slobs, like myself, who think reheated popcorn, hotdogs and stale Hot Tamales are a real treat.
Besides, I don’t need to see this one note masterpiece. I am living this movie every day. A week or so ago Otto decided that daddy was his favorite person in the world and I am just a random employee that exists solely to insure his utmost happiness and fulfillment all day long. I was warned that these parental preference stages would happen. Hell, I even liked it for the first few days, getting out of doing the poopy diaper clean up or changing his pants three times until he was satisfied with his fashion forward look. But now, the “daddy this” and daddy that’s” are getting under my skin and making me want to drink cheap vodka and go clubbing with Orange County teens who wear pantyhose with mini-skirts and backless sequin tops that scream “date rape is better than no rape, girlfrieeeeeeeend!”
I carried this lima bean in my belly for close to ten months, which is the actual gestation period of a human pregnancy but no one seems to know or understand that, except women who have carried these critters and remember the last months of awkward, painful sleeping positions and fear of any sexual contact whatsoever. You would think that Otto would at least choose me first when trying out the bad cop/good cop, who I like better game. I mean, he took my nipples and made them into pulverized Juju Fruits, sucking and pulling until tears ran down my face every fucking morning, mid morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, middle evening, late evening and late night. Oh, and the ever loving middle of the night when I wanted to crawl into our heating vent and die a hot, dusty, dramatic T.V. Movie of the Week death.
And as far as the crying, I do not look and have never looked attractive before, during or after a good cry. When the sniffles come calling, this mommy resembles an overcooked yam, complete with shriveled skin and oozing juices and if competing against one another in a beauty contest, the yam will always win. Maybe Otto remembers all those ugly, weepy times as he suckled my once fabulous breasts and made them his own personal Holstein utters. Maybe he realizes that daddy is a hell of a lot more fun than old stick in the mud mom, who asks him to watch his head when walking under slides or tells him to be careful not to fling himself off the changing table and crack open his skull on the side of his crib while I wipe his cute little anus. His dad throws him in the air like volleyball and allows him to sit on the seat of his uncle Scott’s Ducati and rev the engine. While I am wiping off dirty banana gunk and potentially hazardous bacteria from his tiny, gorgeous little mitts, daddy encourages him to rummage in the dirt pile out front where the neighborhood posse of feral cats deposit turds the size of soup cans.
So what if he closed the bathroom door in my face today as daddy was rinsing off after a shower, making it clear that no girls were allowed. So what if he asks for daddy the moment I walk into his room after his nap or insists on eating only daddy’s food and refuses to eat his hot dog and French fries when seated at his favorite fast food restaurant I take him to as a special treat. And so what if he always say daddy when I hand him a cool, vintage Matchbox car that I bought him. But deep down in my gut, the same one that kept him safe and warm for all those months, the same place that moved and shook and gurgled with joy every time I ate a steak or drank a chocolate shake, the same tummy that kicked and moved every time I told him I couldn’t wait to meet him, I know he loves me and will love me forever. He’s just not that into me, that’s all.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Corporate Killed The Radio Star
In the seventeen years I have lived in Los Angeles there have been two radio stations I have loved and listened to with serious commitment and pride. One was Pirate radio that went off the air in the mid nineties, only to be replaced by a heinous country station. Driving in my car one afternoon, wearing oversized Doc Marten’s, black cut off 501’s and an ironic polyester shirt from Goodwill, I went from listening to Jane’s Addiction to Garth Brooks in a matter of minutes, almost careening into a tree from the shock. I knew immediately that Pirate was too unique and independent to survive in the shark pool of commercial radio, especially in a competitive, shit slinging, crap loving market like Los Angeles.
My other true radio love, for the last five years, has been Indie 103.1, a cool, alternative, daring and electrifying collection of disc jockeys and music that have made me forgo both the c.d. player and the IPod in my car. It as made me feel cool, hip, young and in touch as I listened to everything from old school punk and new wave from the 80’s to new, alternative, unsigned bands struggling in the American Idol factory of mediocrity we now live in.
My son Otto will be twenty-two months in five days or almost two, for those who are childless and/or detest the annoying trait of keeping track of a child’s age in increments of 31 days or less. He has known no other carpooling/errand running/road tripping music other than the awesome mix of Indie 103.1 and an occasional Led Zeppelin or Smith’s fix his sentimental mother thrusts upon him. He loves Iggy Pop, The Clash, and Arctic Monkey’s as much as Elmo and his vintage Matchbox car collection. Once, while driving to a play date, I tried to play a c.d. from his music class, quickly discovering that the two of us became wildly cranky, driving no further than a city block before turning off what is best descried as a creepy dude singing about rain boots and rainbows.
I am sorry to say that today, like that fateful day in the 90’s, Indie 103.1 has gone off the air only to be replaced by a commercial, shit hit playing radio conglomerate. The likelihood that I will be lucky enough to hear this new station while getting my molars cleaned or a semi annual Pap smear is rather high. While one of my doctor’s inserts one of his fingers in one of my holes, I might be lucky enough to hear, Nickelback, Taylor Swift, Pink, Rihanna or God help me, The Pussy Cat Dolls, a group of leather clad street walkers who have fooled America into thinking they can carry a tune as well as they can suck a dick.
We are in terrible trouble in this country, with an all time high in unemployment and an even higher percentage of apathy and lowly artistic standards. Of course this small, fiercely independent and unique radio station has been pushed off the airwaves so gaggles of prepubescent teens can hear bands like The Jonas Brothers sing about love, hair products and chastity. Those creepy triplets of lame might say they are saving their ever so small wieners for the lack luster chicks they will eventually marry but we all know the truth. The moment that tool trifecta goes out of fashion with the IPhone generation they will be snorting piles of happy powder with those fat chicks and homeless criminals that used to rock out to their tunes in middle school.
So farewell Indie 103.1. You will be fondly remembered and deeply missed on the FM dial. When Britney screams at me on the 10 freeway or Carrie Underwood causes me to black out on Sunset Boulevard, I know that I can return home to my faithful laptop and listen to you again without going on a shooting rampage through the Barnes and Noble music section.
Please support Indie at their new home on line at www.indie1031.com and experience the cool.
My other true radio love, for the last five years, has been Indie 103.1, a cool, alternative, daring and electrifying collection of disc jockeys and music that have made me forgo both the c.d. player and the IPod in my car. It as made me feel cool, hip, young and in touch as I listened to everything from old school punk and new wave from the 80’s to new, alternative, unsigned bands struggling in the American Idol factory of mediocrity we now live in.
My son Otto will be twenty-two months in five days or almost two, for those who are childless and/or detest the annoying trait of keeping track of a child’s age in increments of 31 days or less. He has known no other carpooling/errand running/road tripping music other than the awesome mix of Indie 103.1 and an occasional Led Zeppelin or Smith’s fix his sentimental mother thrusts upon him. He loves Iggy Pop, The Clash, and Arctic Monkey’s as much as Elmo and his vintage Matchbox car collection. Once, while driving to a play date, I tried to play a c.d. from his music class, quickly discovering that the two of us became wildly cranky, driving no further than a city block before turning off what is best descried as a creepy dude singing about rain boots and rainbows.
I am sorry to say that today, like that fateful day in the 90’s, Indie 103.1 has gone off the air only to be replaced by a commercial, shit hit playing radio conglomerate. The likelihood that I will be lucky enough to hear this new station while getting my molars cleaned or a semi annual Pap smear is rather high. While one of my doctor’s inserts one of his fingers in one of my holes, I might be lucky enough to hear, Nickelback, Taylor Swift, Pink, Rihanna or God help me, The Pussy Cat Dolls, a group of leather clad street walkers who have fooled America into thinking they can carry a tune as well as they can suck a dick.
We are in terrible trouble in this country, with an all time high in unemployment and an even higher percentage of apathy and lowly artistic standards. Of course this small, fiercely independent and unique radio station has been pushed off the airwaves so gaggles of prepubescent teens can hear bands like The Jonas Brothers sing about love, hair products and chastity. Those creepy triplets of lame might say they are saving their ever so small wieners for the lack luster chicks they will eventually marry but we all know the truth. The moment that tool trifecta goes out of fashion with the IPhone generation they will be snorting piles of happy powder with those fat chicks and homeless criminals that used to rock out to their tunes in middle school.
So farewell Indie 103.1. You will be fondly remembered and deeply missed on the FM dial. When Britney screams at me on the 10 freeway or Carrie Underwood causes me to black out on Sunset Boulevard, I know that I can return home to my faithful laptop and listen to you again without going on a shooting rampage through the Barnes and Noble music section.
Please support Indie at their new home on line at www.indie1031.com and experience the cool.
365- Day 15
No one tell you that being a mother also means you will have achy, rough, sandpaper hands from all the washing off of the fecal matter, urine residue, crusty yogurt, phlegmy peanut butter, colossal toddler boogers, outside dirty dirt, dog poop particles, stinky sunscreen/fruit roll up combo and chewed up cookie paste.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Where have all the mean times gone?
Evil Twin Chrissy,
I know, I know, you are on vacation with the fam getting sunburned and overexposed to scary people in day glow colored sportswear and visors that hide lobotomy scars but I am missing your mean!
Heart,
Evil Twin Dotty
365 - Day 14
No one tells you that some days your child will insist that you change his shoes three times before leaving the house and then demand, in a collections of grunts, groans and whines, that he needs professional basketball shoes to to play hoops in the living room like the big boys and you will love every annoying, time consuming, tedious and studly second of it!
I am the most judgmental bitch or that was gross
There was recently a segment on 20/20 about a new movement of women who experience orgasms during childbirth and how they want to let the world know there is an alternative to the painful, scary event that most women view as having a baby. I truly feel that I received a Get Out of Jail Free card with my C-section birth, as Otto was breach and in such a precarious position that the two of us would have expired if it were the same time period as a Jane Austin novel. I would have been wearing linen petticoats and sweating profusely in a plumby accent while handmaidens and midwives circled about, calling for a doctor with metal rimmed spectacles and a grim expression.
The fact that the orgasm is present or desired during birth is not what I have an issue with. It is the fact that the woman on 20/20 was filmed going through her “sexy” birth, eyes rolling and moaning in ecstasy, making out with her husband and climaxing in a birthing tub for all of us to see. What I basically witnessed was a fairly unattractive couple having a creepy threesome with their unborn child who really had no say in the matter, as the child was still trapped in the horny house of horrors known as mommies taco stand.
Then, after having to view this disturbing train wreck of amateur porn, I was lucky enough to see the post interview with mom and dad giggling about their amazing experience, one that has been burned into my memory forever. The dad was fairly average in his cargo shorts and bad golf shirt but mom? She was the picture of crunch, wearing a sad collection of jewelry purchased at her local farmer’s market and a sun dressed that screamed Cost Plus World Market After Christmas Sale.
If I want to see below average shlubs humping in orgiastic glee I can go on line and Google “Middle Aged Grateful Deadhead Sexual Encounters”. I really don’t need to get a eye full of gross when I am looking for a great news story about a botched murder rampage at sea, a two-legged dog who hopped 1800 miles to find his family or a pedophile caught on tape for arranging to have sex with an underage tranny named Mel who prefers Taylor Swift to Miley Cyrus and loves Cool Ranch Dorito’s.
The fact that the orgasm is present or desired during birth is not what I have an issue with. It is the fact that the woman on 20/20 was filmed going through her “sexy” birth, eyes rolling and moaning in ecstasy, making out with her husband and climaxing in a birthing tub for all of us to see. What I basically witnessed was a fairly unattractive couple having a creepy threesome with their unborn child who really had no say in the matter, as the child was still trapped in the horny house of horrors known as mommies taco stand.
Then, after having to view this disturbing train wreck of amateur porn, I was lucky enough to see the post interview with mom and dad giggling about their amazing experience, one that has been burned into my memory forever. The dad was fairly average in his cargo shorts and bad golf shirt but mom? She was the picture of crunch, wearing a sad collection of jewelry purchased at her local farmer’s market and a sun dressed that screamed Cost Plus World Market After Christmas Sale.
If I want to see below average shlubs humping in orgiastic glee I can go on line and Google “Middle Aged Grateful Deadhead Sexual Encounters”. I really don’t need to get a eye full of gross when I am looking for a great news story about a botched murder rampage at sea, a two-legged dog who hopped 1800 miles to find his family or a pedophile caught on tape for arranging to have sex with an underage tranny named Mel who prefers Taylor Swift to Miley Cyrus and loves Cool Ranch Dorito’s.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
365 -Day 13
No one tells you that when your child looks at you with a huge smile and says the word, "mommy" with perfect diction and total conviction, your heart will feel as if a love grenade went off in your chest and a someone hit the back of your head with a chocolate whiffle ball bat.
My Golden Globes Recap
Drew Barrymore - part time actress, full time Pomeranian
Salma Hayek's boobs need their own show
Rumer Willis needs to get a job
And because I love all this nonsense I went to bed too late…
Monday, January 12, 2009
365-Day 12
No one tells you that after you become a mother you will be mistaken for the floor of an ancient Roman vomitorium any time your small child gets a stomach bug.
Here it comes again... La la la la la la la la la la la la
This morning started out like any other morning for me. I wanted to sleep until noon, roll out of bed without a shower, go to a diner and read the New York Sunday Times by myself as I inhaled fluffy French toast and maple syrup and washed it down with a gallon of freshly squeezed O.J. and some black tea. Then I realized it was Monday and I had a child who needs shit from me, and a husband who would appreciate a little help and a responsibility to not embrace a look of homeless fashion. I also remembered that I had an audition for a charcoal commercial to be that “backyard mom” (get your minds out of the gutter) and needed to put my best face forward. Luckily for me, the description of the woman they wanted really aimed for the middle.
Female Friend Caucasian -Real to slight character looking, interesting face - Average, fun-loving woman.
Well, sign me up and call me mediocre. Nothing makes me feel better than being thought of as average. Yeehaw!!!
I showered, shaved my legs, even though that was a pointless act as no one would want or need to see the “middle of the road” lady’s gams for this spot and came downstairs in a towel to find Dave and Otto post puke-a-thon on the living room sofa. Apparently, Otto had vomited all over the sofa and Dave was lucky enough to clean it up while I was washing the old out of my hair. Other than the barf, Otto seemed totally fine, playing with his cars and bouncing around the living room. We gave him some Cheerios and a little juice for breakfast and within 20 minutes he yakked again. Good parenting and great instincts, I’d say. Next time avoid reinserting contents into small, sensitive stomach so as not to have said contents return with a vengeance.
Again, he seemed fine afterward, no fever, no lethargy, no diarrhea, and he played while I got dressed and smeared television make up on my mug. Dave then went upstairs to shower and with a few minutes before I needed to leave, Otto climbed up on my lap to cuddle and chat. Suddenly, a torrent of curdled puke came up out of Otto’s mouth again but this time with a stronger force and a more vicious smell than before, landing in my lap, splattering everything in its wake. I kept my legs glued together and cradled Otto and the bile in my arms as to not get too much on our shag carpet. But, pieces of curds and whey ended up landing on the rug as I ran upstairs and plopped Otto in the tub with a very naked, very surprised daddy. I had 5 minutes to clean up the mess and get dressed in another outfit that on an ordinary day would shame me into seclusion for its bland, ordinary, fashionless-ness. I needed a bright shirt and below average jeans to look like a mid-western house frau in a neighbor’s back yard. I found a pair of pregnancy jeans I bought for my first trimester and a bright, orange shirt I never wear because it makes me look like a tangelo. Perfect! I left Dave with the ugly duty of baby watching and throw up detection/clean up and raced out of the house, secretly thrilled I was off that stinky, nasty clock.
A few blocks away, as I furiously drove from the war zone, I noticed that I smelled like spoiled milk and failure. I thought I had washed every bit of yuck off of me but clearly I had missed a spot. I wiped my arms down with the baby wipes I keep in the car and spayed myself with a natural hand sanitizer that smelled like Pine Sol and hay. By the time I arrived at the audition, I really looked like a back yard Midwestern mom with my messed up hair, frazzled appearance and need for a lukewarm beer in a can. I didn’t change a thing, stood strong and did not apply lip-gloss and went into the room with three other actors and bragged about how my son had just tossed his cookies all over me. Being actors and Los Angeles residents they were uninterested in anything I had to say. The casting guy then rolled camera and we all pretended, in our best television way, to be “Hal’s” friend, a man who had just woken up out of a three month coma/hibernation to realize that it was indeed, barbeque season.
They might have had Shakespeare in the Park on their resumes or 15 years of voice training and monologue workshops. One of them might have just booked a part as the creepy uncle on Gossip Girl or rotten corpse #3 on C.S.I. Miami. Or maybe one of these cats had just attended the Golden Globes as a seat filler and felt that his time was coming to join the big leagues because Tom Cruise asked him where the bathroom was or Angelina Jolie sneezed on his lapel. But I had specks of stinky, chunky vomit on me and I was, for all intents and purposes, a real mother and truly, deeply average. Stick that in your method-acting pipe and smoke it! Oh, and I'll see you on set.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
365 - Day 11
No one tells you that when you become a mother you will get up at the crack of dawn every Sunday, enthusiastically drive to the valley to have your son ride a depressed pony named Oreo while you wave and cheer and then, risking his physical well being, you will happily throw him in a dirty bouncy house to flop around with a handful of germ laden toddlers and hyperactive kindergartners while you take pictures and hope the awkwardly tall kid in the bunch, who has clearly not taken his little blue pill, does not squash your child against the grime covered rubber walls of this children's paradise.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
To Baby Angelo
This is for my great friends Jack and Hilary who are at the hospital at this very moment preparing for the birth of their first child. Hilary, God bless her cervix, has been in labor for 29 hours and has just been informed that they will have to do a C-Section in an hour and a half. This little baguette did not want to come out of that gorgeous oven so they have go in and insist. By 1 a.m. they will have either a boy or a girl (they are those people who have the patience and the calm to NOT find out which sex the baby is, I could never... I am too needy) and will know the full force of a crying, demanding, beautiful baby and all that accompanies this huge milestone. They will be tired, tearful, jovial, cranky and elated for the remainder of the evening and into the next 18 years of their lives. And the vagina will be just like it was the day they met! That, my friends, is the silver lining!
I Love You,
Creamy
365- Day 10
No one tells you that when you become a mother you will actually enjoy going to children's birthday parties as often as possible where your child will play with other kid's toys, mess up someone else's house, eat free food that you do not have to clean up off the floor and come home dead tired, going straight to bed with nothing more than a tiny whimper and a burp.
Friday, January 9, 2009
365 - Day 9
No one tells you that after you become a mother you will lose your appetite in sushi restaurants after your child flings a cup at you, it bounces in your soy sauce bowl, splatters you and the banquet with sticky brown liquid and all the other customers and employees eye with the suspicion of a dangerous and impolite criminal after which you will discover a pile of half chewed rice sitting under his high chair that looks and smells like the dance floor at a frat house after the homecoming weekend kegger blaster date rapist party 0f '89.
P.S. You will then spend all the money you do not have for his private school education on extremely generous and guilt ridden tips.
Vinyl Love
I showered today and shaved my legs, did two loads of laundry and read half of my husband’s new script but that is as far as I got in the accomplishment department. Oh, I cannot forget about the vacuuming. That was a high point as I sucked up all the cookie crumbs and dog hair while Otto watched with glee. The moment I finished with the living room rug, though, he was done with me and off to rummage through his toy chest. Then he did something that I cannot stop thinking about. We are forty, Dave and I, so we grew up with album, not the compact disc. We have a turntable and a collection of records from our teenage years of angst, pot smoking and good, hard rockin’. Yup, I just wrote a word and substituted a “g” for an apostrophe. Kill me now!
Anyhow, as I was hunched over in the dining room sucking up bits of dried egg and puffed wheat, I turned to see Otto sitting in front of the said pile of albums and looking through them like he worked in a record store. His ability to flick the album covers toward him reminded me of times at Tower Records when as a young, clueless music fan I would fan through all the albums by a band that I knew even though I already owned them. I just wanted to look cool and if anyone asked me a question I cold rattle off the names of all the songs and band members without missing a beat.
Otto actually stopped and looked at every cover and took in what he saw as far as I could tell. I just thought it was cute until he stopped on Supertramp’s Breakfast in America and my heart went all soft. That was my first album and I’ll never forget the summer I lived with my grandparents in Wisconsin and listed to the funky and high pitched lead singer sing about his girlfriend and a Vegemite sandwich over and over in their sun room. It was such an intense experience to really fall in love with a song or someone’s voice and know that they could be there anytime you wanted them to.
As Otto continued through the pile I wondered what will be his first album, his first song, his first band that will change his perception of the world forever and make him rock out like his old lady and old man. I just hope it's not Yanni.
For those you care this is the collection of albums Otto was looking through. Not a bad start for a little head banger in training…
The Kinks -The File Series
The Who - Who Are You
The Who – Face Dances
Prince – Purple Rain
Journey – Departure
Sinatra – Trilogy
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced
The Kinks – Misfits
Madonna – Like A Virgin
Queen – The Game
Pink Floyd – Dar Side of the Moon
Billy Joel - 52nd Street
Journey – Journey
Lou Reed – Coney Island Baby
Black Sabbath – We Sold Our Souls For Rock ‘n’Roll
The Doors – LA Woman
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
Eric Clapton – 461 Ocean Boulevard
The Police – Synchronicity
Pink Floyd – Meddle
Lou Reed – Rock N Roll Animal
Jackson Browne – Late For The Sky
The Clash - London Calling
Peter Gabriel – Peter Gabriel
The Who – Odds and Sods
Lou Reed – New Sensations
Zappa – Zoot Allures
Rod Stewart –Never A Dull Moment
Supertramp – Breakfast In America
Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel of Love
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
Donna Summer – Love to Love You Baby
Pete Townsend –Scoop
AC/DC - Highway To Hell
Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking
Steely Dan – Katy Lied
Lou Reed – Live
Country Joe and The Fish – I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die
X – Ain’t Love Grand
Elvis Costello – Elvis Costello
Roxy Music – Manifesto
The Kinks – Preservation Act I
Bruce Springsteen – Greetings From Asbury Park
Led Zeppelin – Presence
Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection
Al Green – Call Me
Neil Young – After the Goldrush
Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Imperial Bedroom
Fleshtones – Roman Gods
Neil Diamond – Rainbow
The Knack – Get The Knack
Aerosmith – Toys in the Attic
Best of Scorpians
The Pretenders – Learning To Crawl
Thursday, January 8, 2009
365-Day 8
No one tells you that after becoming a mom all you'll want t0 eat are bologna sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies because they remind you of your childhood when you had no responsibilities other than playing soccer, undressing your Barbies and laughing at their private parts and not running into the street and being pulverized by a cement truck.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Little Dutch Boy
In my frantic rush to get ready for Florida I need to find time to get my kid's hair cut. I made an appointment for Max. Carter has decided that cutting her hair is not happening anytime in the near future. I told her as long as she agrees to keep it out of her face I was okay with that decision. Secretly I was pleased she had come to this decision. The last time we were at the hairdressers I was sickened to realize that she has officially moved into the $25 category for children's haircuts. That is almost a pedicure. For $3.99 I can get her a pack of ponytail holders and tell everyone she wants headbands for her birthday. Evil, yes. But something has to give and it is not going to be my poor feet.
I was telling Jamie about the bump in the hair category and he was horrified that we would have to pay that much to get her hair trimmed for future cuts. He wondered aloud if one was still able to purchase a Flowbee. I am focused on my need for the Sham-Wow at this point of my life. I have no time to look out for a Flowbee. I just want to scour outdoor marketplaces and home shows for a great Sham-Wow demonstration so I can meet the Sham-Wow guy. I used to want to meet Billy Mays, but he lost me with the burger maker. When I do get my Sham-Wow order I am going to send one of the shams to Dave. You get 4 for $19.95. I will send him one. Surely I don't need more than three. He can use the one I send him to mop up his applause for "Her First Anal Examination".
I was trying to remember how much we paid for haircuts when we were kids. I was having the hardest time trying to picture even walking into a hair salon anytime prior to the age of 14. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I had no memory of it simply because it never happened. My mother would take my sister and I over to my Aunt Ann and she would cut our hair. "Oh, was Ann a hairdresser?" you ask. No. She was a school teacher. Somehow she and my mother orchestrated this facade of hair professionalism that took place in the cramped 1st floor bathroom at my grandmother's house. My sister and I would sit perched on the counter with an old towel clipped around our neck. Ann would take out the tools necessary for our transformation. Scotch tape and scissors. She would stretch the length of tape across our bangs to guide her precise moves. We'd sit as our helmet was created, framing our face in a perfectly square curtain.
I can vividly recall in 1977 when I went to my Grandmother's and announced to Ann that I wanted a very special haircut. The Dorothy Hamil. If you don't know what that haircut is than you should not be reading this blog. Off with you now- go! Grab yourself a Gogurt and go check out Club Penguin.
Ann took the picture I had carefully clipped out and said she would be happy to do this. She ripped off an extra strip of scotch tape and tapped Dorothy to the bathroom mirror to guide her. She snipped away. Fingers flying, scotch tape residue clinging to my cheeks. I was going to pee myself I was so excited. I was convinced I was going to walk out of my Grandmother's and skate the rest of the way home. All I needed was a Fair Isle sweater and a ticket to the Ice Capades. Sadly, the reality did not match the snowflake-filled fantasy. I could not skate, and my hair looked nothing like Ms. Hamil's. It was a botched mess. To further amplify my pain my Mother decided it would be an excellent time to introduce orthotics to my footwear collection. Special shoes and special hair. A Flowbee would have been a Godsend for me in '77. Anything to save me from my bargain cuts by the bathroom sink.
I was telling Jamie about the bump in the hair category and he was horrified that we would have to pay that much to get her hair trimmed for future cuts. He wondered aloud if one was still able to purchase a Flowbee. I am focused on my need for the Sham-Wow at this point of my life. I have no time to look out for a Flowbee. I just want to scour outdoor marketplaces and home shows for a great Sham-Wow demonstration so I can meet the Sham-Wow guy. I used to want to meet Billy Mays, but he lost me with the burger maker. When I do get my Sham-Wow order I am going to send one of the shams to Dave. You get 4 for $19.95. I will send him one. Surely I don't need more than three. He can use the one I send him to mop up his applause for "Her First Anal Examination".
I was trying to remember how much we paid for haircuts when we were kids. I was having the hardest time trying to picture even walking into a hair salon anytime prior to the age of 14. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I had no memory of it simply because it never happened. My mother would take my sister and I over to my Aunt Ann and she would cut our hair. "Oh, was Ann a hairdresser?" you ask. No. She was a school teacher. Somehow she and my mother orchestrated this facade of hair professionalism that took place in the cramped 1st floor bathroom at my grandmother's house. My sister and I would sit perched on the counter with an old towel clipped around our neck. Ann would take out the tools necessary for our transformation. Scotch tape and scissors. She would stretch the length of tape across our bangs to guide her precise moves. We'd sit as our helmet was created, framing our face in a perfectly square curtain.
I can vividly recall in 1977 when I went to my Grandmother's and announced to Ann that I wanted a very special haircut. The Dorothy Hamil. If you don't know what that haircut is than you should not be reading this blog. Off with you now- go! Grab yourself a Gogurt and go check out Club Penguin.
Ann took the picture I had carefully clipped out and said she would be happy to do this. She ripped off an extra strip of scotch tape and tapped Dorothy to the bathroom mirror to guide her. She snipped away. Fingers flying, scotch tape residue clinging to my cheeks. I was going to pee myself I was so excited. I was convinced I was going to walk out of my Grandmother's and skate the rest of the way home. All I needed was a Fair Isle sweater and a ticket to the Ice Capades. Sadly, the reality did not match the snowflake-filled fantasy. I could not skate, and my hair looked nothing like Ms. Hamil's. It was a botched mess. To further amplify my pain my Mother decided it would be an excellent time to introduce orthotics to my footwear collection. Special shoes and special hair. A Flowbee would have been a Godsend for me in '77. Anything to save me from my bargain cuts by the bathroom sink.
No Parking
So many things crowd my annoying list. Dirty feet, public nail clipping, loud cell phone conversations, gardeners of any kind, even in a English film about a woman of society who has a vast country estate, an addiction to brandy and no friends and employs an army of grass cutting men to keep her bush collection trimmed. Adding to that, I despise ignored dog poop left by lazy and selfish dog owners who feel they are exempt from the rule of picking up after their waste producing pooch. But much higher up on my list is a habit that sends my blood flowing faster, redder and meaner than anything else, greedy parking.
When some asshole sidles up to my car in a parking lot and leaves me less than an inch to get into the driver’s side I imagine what Rambo must have felt like when those drunk townies made fun of his hair. Unlike king of the mullets, I do not carry a hunting knife or the skill set to use it to butcher an army of losers to exact my revenge. My muscles, although fairly prominent as of late from carrying a small child the weight of a cord of wood, are not large enough to cause any damage to the cold, hard steel of a late nineties, Ford Fiesta station wagon with California plates and an umbrella collection in the way back. No, I have to carefully crawl into my car, suck in my gut and thank God I didn’t have that last pancake for breakfast and sit in my own furious juices and stew.
Or, I could crawl into the driver’s seat, rummage through the crap in my arm rest, find a pen and some stationary from The Viceroy Hotel (a hot, sexy weekend with husband after having baby and no life), write a note (see note below) to said asshole greedy parker, leave it on the windshield, making sure they do not see me and beat me up, get back in the car and drive away with a feeling of satisfaction and victory not felt since winning the city basketball championships in 5th grade.
You park your car like an asshole, nice and tight!
365- Day 7
No one tells you that after you become a mom your clothes, especially your one pair of really, really expensive jeans will double as a snot rag, a diaper, a napkin and a denim quicker picker upper, thus leaving you covered in a funky crust and sporting the appearance of a street urchin from Oliver!, complete with the permission and commitment to use the word "blimey" in a sentence.
Horse-Face
Dear Ann Coulter-
You do not go well with my morning coffee. Please go back to pretending you were banned from the Today Show. I hate seeing you get exposure of any kind, so I am done talking about you.
Bite Me,
Chrissy
You do not go well with my morning coffee. Please go back to pretending you were banned from the Today Show. I hate seeing you get exposure of any kind, so I am done talking about you.
Bite Me,
Chrissy
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Too much information? And mother, be warned...
A very close dude friend of mine was hilariously complaining to Dave and I the other day about his relationship with his gal pal, saying that the sex was infrequent lately and that she never initiates sex. He said the least she could do was "pull my dick out of my pants once in a while and just suck it without it being my idea." I appropriately did a spit take and begged him to continue. He then told us he had even done an experiment to see just how long it would take for her to come on to him without an iota of coaxing, discovering that the experiment was a monumental failure. "There goes one week, and then another and finally I have to remind her I have a cock."
He then stated that he was relieved that at least he had his computer to keep him company. I stupidly asked what he meant by that and he said that a laptop is a great substitute girlfriend and YouPorn.com was the best site to rub one out with. The conversation then turned into a tutorial in web smut, different categories, tastes and the frequency of self flagellation and I could not believe how casual and frank these two men, one being my husband , were about masturbating, masturbating to porn and masturbating in front of their laptops to porn while I was downstairs doing laundry or out shopping at Target.
I am no Nell From The Country but Internet porn, solo or in a hungry pack of horny wolves, is not, shall we say, in my wheel house. I rarely, if ever, discuss masturbating with girlfriends and would much rather catch up on mundane Hollywood gossip or get advice about must have items for Otto's toy chest. I rather peruse CNN.com or a selection of sarcastic blogs, food websites and BedBathandBeyond.com than watch strangers bone down like bunnies. I could just picture Dave and all his friends (solo, not in groups, ew!) sitting in front of their laptops stoking their own fires as if they were lost in the snowy woods and in fear of freezing to death.
During this illuminating discussion, our friend insisted that youporn.com was the best pornography site. As clever and similar the name was to the largest video site on the Internet, I had to admit I had not heard of it or cared. Yet, as the days have gone by and the shock of discovering that all men seem to tell each other when and how they beat their meat, I felt the need to share these alluring facts as well as this lovely website with anyone who reads this blog. If you go to YouPorn.com you will see the following catchy titles for short videos. Please enjoy!
Black man sees what he wants to eat
Chester and the Jester
Gangbang at the gym
Blonde sexcretary gives good customer
I love myself
Latin Milkshake
Her First Anal Examination
you snooze, you lose
Insert it and maybe i'll have a baby in 9
Redhead with pretty feet
My favorite is, without question -
Pretty girl pees in the forest
365 - Day 6
No one tells you that you will cook a large variety of food, have it thrown at you, offer more food, it will be propelled through the air onto your lap/head/floor/wall, in which case you produce yet another selection of options before your child actually eats something, thus, the child is really no better than a demanding, high maintenance, non-tipping customer at your one man band diner named "Eat!"
Monday, January 5, 2009
365 things no one tells you about having a child, days 1-5
January 1st - Waking up on New Year's day with a massive hangover and a toddler is as close to purgatory as one could get without the fiery backdrop and ill fitting red outfit
January 2nd - Not drinking wine with dinner makes you a sadder mommy at night but a happier mommy in the a.m.
January 3rd - Finding a babysitter for less than $10 an hour is better than sex and chocolate
January 4th - Saturday nights are no longer automatically tequila and titty twister night with your honey - only if you get a babysitter overnight and get a hotel room (very unlikely)
January 5th - Your floor will get so disgusting after every meal your mini me ingests and you will spend 45 minutes a day cleaning up smeared banana, regurgitated peas, half chewed hot dogs, macerated kidney beans and juice puddles galore while the said culprit looks on laughing
to be continued throughout 2009...
Mocked in the virtual world.
Up until a week before Christmas I was a Yoga Master. That is what my Wii Fit told me, Yoga Master. Scoring consistently in the 90th percentile. I was like a lean jungle cat perched on that thing nailing my positions. Meh, maybe more like a chubby house cat that could finally reach past it's stomach to lick itself. I was doing well. The board and I were getting along. Happy greetings, very little scolding. Only every once in awhile I would get a "You're wobbling a bit, try to tighten your stomach muscles". Then the holidays arrived and the Wii Fit board sat alone in a dark corner. Christmas lights dancing off of it's plastic sheen. I knew I was in trouble. It was going to yell at me when I got on it. If you go longer then three days without a work out it makes a little snippy comment. "You get the best results if you make exercise a part of your regular routine. Try to come back every day." Apparently the geniuses at Nintendo forgot about a free pass for holidays. I'd sit sipping my 4th glass of red wine eyeing it with contempt. Knowing it was racking up days on it's helpful little calendar, ticking off my absence. I had not done a body test in weeks. That is when it weighs your fat ass, measures your BMI, and marks it on the handy-dandy calendar. Thanks, asshole!
Today was the day. I needed to make nice with the Wii. I had to get back into the Yoga. My body was painfully out of whack. I need some stretchy goodness to re-awaken my fried food filled soul. I dragged out the board, took a deep breath and hopped on. The little miniature Wii board character that tracks your progress jumped on to the screen. It boomed a hearty hello and welcomed me back. Maybe this was not going to be as bad as I thought? Ha! Then the mocking began. It pretended not to recognize me. I was blown away. I was prepared for some scolding, but to actually fuck with my head? A video game was toying with my emotions and making me defensive with it's sarcastic bullshit. The mini board character jumped up and down, "I know you!" It proclaimed. "I never forget a person no matter how long they have been gone!" "Welcome back, Reese's Max!" That is my son's name on the Wii Fit program. Yes, I see the irony of having a handle that includes a popular candy bar on an exercise game. That is what happens when the 5 year old got to choose his name. I wanted to be Italian Sub Chrissy, but I knew better. It pretended not to recognize me! Friggin' smart ass. It proclaimed my days away with a mighty beep as it marked the #22 on my calendar. "Did I want to take a body test?" It asked me. Hell no! Would you?
I entered the Yoga part of the program and my virtual trainer popped up. He was different. He used to have a skinny ratty ponytail on his finely drawn Yoga body. It was gone. His hair was different, but it was the same guy. I called Jamie in the room because I could not believe what I was seeing. I went on and on about how the board mocked my absence and then to mock me even further measuring my absence by giving my Yoga trainer a haircut. I was swearing and ranting, pointing at the screen. Jamie stood there looking at me. He asked in that quiet Chrissy has lost her shit voice, "Are you sure about his hair, Chris?" Of course I was sure. His ponytail was gone. Jamie did not know what else to say but wisely shuffled out of the progesterone filled room. I went on with my workout snarling and grunting the entire time. I still scored in the 90th percentile, but I wobbled quite a bit. Just in case anyone else is keeping track.
Today was the day. I needed to make nice with the Wii. I had to get back into the Yoga. My body was painfully out of whack. I need some stretchy goodness to re-awaken my fried food filled soul. I dragged out the board, took a deep breath and hopped on. The little miniature Wii board character that tracks your progress jumped on to the screen. It boomed a hearty hello and welcomed me back. Maybe this was not going to be as bad as I thought? Ha! Then the mocking began. It pretended not to recognize me. I was blown away. I was prepared for some scolding, but to actually fuck with my head? A video game was toying with my emotions and making me defensive with it's sarcastic bullshit. The mini board character jumped up and down, "I know you!" It proclaimed. "I never forget a person no matter how long they have been gone!" "Welcome back, Reese's Max!" That is my son's name on the Wii Fit program. Yes, I see the irony of having a handle that includes a popular candy bar on an exercise game. That is what happens when the 5 year old got to choose his name. I wanted to be Italian Sub Chrissy, but I knew better. It pretended not to recognize me! Friggin' smart ass. It proclaimed my days away with a mighty beep as it marked the #22 on my calendar. "Did I want to take a body test?" It asked me. Hell no! Would you?
I entered the Yoga part of the program and my virtual trainer popped up. He was different. He used to have a skinny ratty ponytail on his finely drawn Yoga body. It was gone. His hair was different, but it was the same guy. I called Jamie in the room because I could not believe what I was seeing. I went on and on about how the board mocked my absence and then to mock me even further measuring my absence by giving my Yoga trainer a haircut. I was swearing and ranting, pointing at the screen. Jamie stood there looking at me. He asked in that quiet Chrissy has lost her shit voice, "Are you sure about his hair, Chris?" Of course I was sure. His ponytail was gone. Jamie did not know what else to say but wisely shuffled out of the progesterone filled room. I went on with my workout snarling and grunting the entire time. I still scored in the 90th percentile, but I wobbled quite a bit. Just in case anyone else is keeping track.
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