That Girl!

A breakdown, for those who are not familiar with the double negative term, (triple negative if you consider how rarely one actually gets the job) is a listing that is sent out to talent agencies to submit actors for commercials, film and television. In my case, it is only commercials, in which I book a mere smattering of times a year, just enough to insure that the government, as well as my parents, view me as barely employed and hardly employable.

In the good ole days before that new fangled Interwebicom came along, my agents would have to call me on the telephone, that thingy plugged into a weird hole in my wall that mysteriously went nowhere and give me the information on my appointment. I would then write down what they told me in their voices on something called paper using a phallic instrument known as a pencil or a pen. At no time did their information include a physical description of the character, only a time, location and wardrobe choice. Nowadays, I am fortunate enough to be emailed all the information that my agents are given, the entire can of stinky beans, something I would rather not have.

Below is what I received late this afternoon after returning from a call back in which I basically sucked the big one and was led out of the room in emotional handcuffs. Layman’s terms, I did not get the job.

Client:           Dorothea Coelho

Date:             Thursday, April 30, 2009

Time:             2:30 PM

Status:           E-Mail Client

Role:         HUNTS

                 REAL TO CHARACTER LOOKING, INTERESTING FACE. 5TH

GENERATION TOMATO FARMER FROM THE HEARTLAND, SHE'S A COMBINATION MARTINA

NAVRATILOVA AND SARAH PALIN. Rate: SCALE

 

Wardrobe:         MID WEST FARMER ATTIRE.

 

So tomorrow, I will feed Otto his lunch, put him down for his nap, walk into my bedroom, open the big drawer under the built in armoire that holds my ratty old sweatpants and dreadfully unflattering sleepwear, reach all the way back on the right hand side and pull out a large pair of old, Big Mac overalls that used to belong to my grandma Phyllis who often wore them to garden, paint, bake bread and shoot deer. These puppies are vintage working class and were lovingly purchased at a Sears and Roebuck long before Nixon was impeached. They are fucking old school.

They were my wardrobe anchor in 1990 back when I was performing hazardous college theatre and blindly pairing them with Doc Marten’s, a black blazer and a velvet hat I haggled for at a local Cambridge arts and crafts fair, outbidding a woman with a full beard and a soup can collection jingling in a satchel made out of colorful kitchen twine. They made me feel amazingly hip and cool, cool not only because they were as large as an authentic teepee, helping aid in the circulation of air in my private V.I.P. room, but because they were what all the funky, hipsters were wearing and I desperately wanted to be accepted by a large group of people who looked like an original member of Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

I will wear these kitschy coverall’s, these lesbian leggings, these denim dinosaurs out into the sunny afternoon tomorrow knowing that some people will see me as the secret lovechild of the manliest female tennis player of all time and the Republican party’s idea of a poorly written pussy joke. But I will not be happy about it, unless of course, I book the job. Then you can all call me Farmer Dotty and kiss my scary ass!

 

 

Now You Can Comment

After all these months I finally figured out how to change the comment format. Soooooooo, feel free to comment on my blog without having to join Blogger and thanks for the visit. Next time, I'll make sure to have more vodka in the house.

Subject: Hello Dear

I just received this email from my mother and honestly, who could ask for a more supportive, observant and eloquent lady to be reading my trough of gruel? I just love her writing and the way nature affects her. She once pointed out the beauty of the bottom side of random tree leaves glistening in the spring sunlight along route 95 as she drove eighty miles per hour on our way to Freeport, Maine so she could buy herself another L.L. Bean black turtle neck and a hardy, all-weather wind breaker in persimmon. It's a miracle we never crashed into one of those arboreal anomalies.

This is the same woman who, while vacationing at a friend's beach house, photographed a faded, antique rug covered with chewed up Cheerio's under the breakfast table because she liked the leafy pattern. The picture came out as one would expect. And yes, she was in a bird watching club as a youth.

Subject: Hello Dear

Your last few blogs are particularly fine.

* Bathing with a baby -- who knew how terrifying it would be? Why I had my children when I was young and smooth. Lower the lights if you have to do it again. So what if you miss all the dirt on the boy? He'll be cleaner than when he started.

The love letter to Dave is wonderful. The piece is a love song to living at the lower level of survival needs (and a much higher tolerance for uncertainty). Food and shelter were so terrific, however you managed to get them. And a bookshelf, too. Bliss.

* So is the love letter to Bea Arthur. The best kind of fan mail. I always adored her, and still want to have her wardrobe. The best combination of practical and elegant I've ever seen.

* Yeah. Don't go to Mexico. I'm even getting a bit creeped out about going to Wisconsin to meet up with my sister from Texas ... I don't think she's been down on the border for a while, though.

It's 92 out right now. Will be 40 tonight. Yum. I don't think. Typical Spring weather -- what Spring? Fall is delicious and long. Spring weather is purely theoretical. It's late winter/summer/late winter back and forth until summer settles in. That said, all the trees and flowers are doing their best to make you gasp at how lovely they are. Pink and white and screaming chartreuse with all sorts of little blossomy things all over them. Flowers blooming in all the gardens and the grass gone all Irish green with yellow dandelions showing off where they haven't been murdered by Chemlawn.

Stay healthy, all. I'll be flying to MSN on Thursday morning, returning Tuesday afternoon. Will have my trusty cell phone. I love you to bits.

M.

Bad Things Happen In Threes

This week a few sad events occurred as I sat back helpless wondering why the world could be so unfair and out of whack. First, the death of the iconic actress Bea Arthur was headline news across the land. As tragic as Bea’s passing was, it is safe to say that she lived a good, tall life and success never eluded the former star of Maude and Golden Girls, the latter being the single best sitcom to watch when you are a stoned, under achieving college freshman with no direction and a love of the aged and infirmed. On the other hand, her Maude character informs me to this day. I still think of Bea every time I put on an oversized, unflattering sundress or I find a stray, gray hair taunting me in the bathroom mirror or I want to tell a friend to fuck off, but lose the courage that Bea’s Golden Girl had in spades.

Then there is my beloved, delicioso Mexico. The screen saver on my computer features my favorite vacation spot, a tiny Mexican hotel in the Yucatan peninsula called Zamas on the Beach. I look at it every day, pining for the fresh fish and stupendous, homemade margaritas that Pablo would bring to us under our thatched umbrella as Dave and I sat childless, lazily watching the sand fleas collect on the local dogs. Every time I open up my laptop I fantasize about being there at that exact moment, only to hear the screech of a car nearly careening into the only tree in our rented, dilapidated yard or an outdated car alarm beeping because our local homeless guy peed on the hood of a 1998 Honda Accord or a shrill cry from the baby monitor that has kept me on my toes and unstable for over two years.

Now, because of the swine flu pandemic and the panic that is beginning to spread like syphilis at a Beverly Hills sweet sixteen party, I can only picture a vacation on my favorite beach happening in a Hazmat suit. What kind of tan could I really get if I was dressed for a lunar landing? Will wearing a paper surgical mask affect my ability to consume large amounts of cold beer and fruity drinks filled with exotic fruits of someone else’s labor? We were about to look into booking a nice five day stay and now have to resort to the worst fall back plan ever conceived, a week in New Jersey with Dave’s parents, a broken hot water heater and a fridge filled with expired lunch meats.

Lastly, in my obituary section, is the makeover that shocked the world. When Susan Boyle, the singing garden gnome, first came into my life via a Facebook posting of a YouTube video, she was all dump and frump with a caterpillar of facial hair crawling across her forehead only to be challenged to a duel by a wiry mop of hair that had never met a comb it couldn’t break. A voice of an angel and the face of a foot is what the world first saw. But now, after what must have been an army of very gay, very tired make up artists and stylists, Susan Boyle now looks like Billie Jean King after a weekend at Canyon Ranch. A Burberry scarf wearing, leather jacket sporting, eyebrow waxed ankle is still an ankle, just with better shoes on. I miss the simple Scottish terrier I first fell in love with. But, I may still buy her album, if she lets the stubble grow back.

Love In The Time Of Poverty

Dave and I will be celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary in August and our eighteenth year together as a couple. That sounds like such a long time but feels like a fraction of what it should due to years of high pitched laughter, a dramatically funny, Grapes of Wrath like struggle and high grade alcohol consumption. No matter how poor we were, we always drank top shelf booze and ate only the best snack foods money could buy. I can proudly say, not a single Pringle nor a Funion ever passed through these lips.

One anniversary, we were so broke that I gave Dave four bricks and two boards to make himself a bookshelf for his prized collection of Charles Bukowski novels and Dave’s unpublished works of brilliance, which included a low concept screenplay about an art heist (note: no one in Hollywood gives a shit about art) and hundreds of scribbled, angry, poems he was hoping would be bring him dark and tortured fame (note: poems do not a rich man, make). I married an uncompromising writer and damn it, this longhaired, man necklace wearing, Dead loving, dude needed a place to put his library of letters and what better place than on top of old, urine-stained pieced of lumber one finds in an alley?

This same anniversary we decided to have a romantic dinner in the living room and splurge on fancy Chinese take out and champagne, a luxury that was clearly out of our budget. I was working as a personal slave (assistant) to the small screen temptress, Suzanne “Boobs” Somers, buying her obscenely overpriced pantyhose and lemon cakes while being denied health insurance by her surgically enhanced husband and business partner. Dave, meanwhile, was working as a production assistant at one of the studios and suffering from debilitating migraines at work caused by eating too many gift basket baked goods and authentic Louisiana Muffaletta sandwiches flown in from The Big Easy for snack breaks. Between the two of us, we barely saw enough money each week to buy a smattering of scratch off tickets and low-grade shampoo, the kind that smells of cheap fruit punch and leaves behind not only a filmy residue but also a long-standing rash the color of a fire engine.

After digging into the steamed dumplings and egg rolls we so lovingly crammed into our mouths, we both looked up to see all the fish in our fish tank, the one Dave had purchased for me the previous anniversary, floating at the top like buoys at a Cape Cod regatta. Suddenly, the overpriced Kung Pao chicken and Szechwan shredded pork looked less like a gourmet feast and more like a bucket of rejected chum. Most people would ask why we didn’t simply move our celebration of love into the dining room where the sea creature carnage was out of view. But then most people, who would be smart enough to ask that question would also be smart enough to have had a dining room table. We, on the other hand, being of small paycheck and foolish minds felt a table would only be buying into the suburban trap, that living with real furniture that enhanced your life and aided in your digestion would be compromising our entire funky, authentic, artistic existence. That and we were too broke, too cheap and too lazy.

Being the hairy, optimistic, go to guy, Dave jumped into action, grabbing a towel from the bathroom and draping it over the tank to hide the aquarium of death. He refilled my champagne glass, scooped a healthy portion of sugary meat onto a fluffy pile of rice and made me laugh, despite suffering the loss of seven members of our extended family, all of whom shared the named “Fishy”. As we finished the last of the fortune cookies, which were both stale in texture and prose, I looked up and said to Dave, “This is the best anniversary ever.” Nothing, by the way, has ever come close.

End Note: After reading my last post about my aged skin and likeness to a well worn and oiled baseball mitt, a loyal reader and old friend from college, Jodi, wrote me that the thing that she remembers most about me is not my sun spots or my tired skin but how madly in love I was and still am with Dave. I want to thank her for her kind and tear inducing sentiments as well as inspiring this last post. I also want to say that yes, I am still SO in love with Dave that it hurts. It just hurts in different places. That, and I wish we still had that fucking bookcase. I need the storage.

With Age Comes Beauty

Yesterday, doing that strenuous, death defying act of sitting on a sofa waiting for my small child to awake from an Olympic sized nap, I apparently put my feet up on the ottoman and threw my back into a funky Cole Medina. Within two hours, I was popping Advil like Liza Minnelli’s live-in maid and praying that Otto didn’t need a diaper change, a hug or the Heimlich maneuver. By dinnertime, Dave had returned and he too, had a bad back and a hobble in his step from writing too many paragraphs that contained decapitations and nudity. The workplace hazards of being a horror writer are vast and venerable.

I decided that taking a bath with Otto, as opposed to bending over the tub and wrestling with his flailing limbs and dirty franks and beans would be easier on my sacroiliac and my state of mind. I stripped down and hopped in with His Majesty and a plethora of plastic choking hazards disguised and labeled as bath toys, excited to have a few warm, bubbly moments of bath time fun with searing pain.

Little did I realize that taking a bath with a small child who easily passes for a bowl of cake flour is as pleasant and confidence inspiring as having a dermatologist thrust you under a UVA light in order to assess all the sun damage your skin has suffered over the years you have been alive and outside. Compared to Otto’s perfectly smooth, buttery soft, gorgeously pristine epidermis maximus, I looked like Ernest Borgnine’s scrotum resting on George Hamilton’s chin after a pool party. The freckles, the lines, the evidence that I have lived a life of public pool summers and wealthy friend tag along trips to exotic locals were glaringly apparent as Otto tossed tiny rubber basketballs at my breasts and laughed the laugh of a maniacal movie villain from the forties.

I was a raisin to his newly grown grape, a prune to his freshly plucked plum, a used Florsheim lace up to his stylish, display window Gucci slip on. As fast as my craggy hands could manage, I scrubbed, washed and rinsed his alabaster bod and got out of the tub before he could possibly be scarred by the memory of his crippled mother and her dishwater hued skin. With little to no ability to properly bend, twist or lift, Dave came to my rescue, dressed our little white marshmallow and left us to a story and a snuggle. How could I be bent into a pretzel from doing nothing but sitting and look like burnt raisin toast after years of dutiful and religious sunscreen applications? Oh, right. I’m forty-one, and, once again it’s bath time. He can thank me in therapy.

Dive In

After shoveling in a breakfast of a ham and eggs flop Dave lovingly made, Otto and I climbed in the car and went to ToysRUs to buy one thing and one thing only. We did not leave with a new umbrella stroller because a family of rats destroyed ours in the garage and I could not bring myself to spend another $100 dollars on something I already have. We did not purchase piles of Thomas The Trains because our living room already looks like a reenactment of a tragic train derailment in a midwestern city seen on CNN. We did not peruse the book section because Otto’s bookshelf rivals a public library return bin after a holiday weekend. I did not stock up on Elmo videos because TiVO can give me all the Elmo I need for on low cost of nothing and I love nothing.

No, I walked in, asked a kind, golf shirt-wearing sales associate who seemed overworked and ironically uninterested in children, where the item in question would be and he answered with a tired yet knowing nod to his left and a, “They’re in seasonal.” I walked ten steps and turned to my right and there in front of me like a gleaming, plastic Parthenon, sat a pile of yellow and blue, above ground kiddy pools calling out Otto’s short, sweet, palindromic name. ABOVE GROUND POOL, an item on a comprehensive, well thought out list of things I swore I would NEVER own. Such as white pumps, hot rollers, a key chain that attached to my belt loop, a home on wheels and living room furniture with built in cup holders. I grabbed the one on top, shuddered at the feeling of ridged plastic imprinted with fake bubbles and waves and wheeled Otto up to the register as he wept from being buckled into a cart that carried a variety of unpronounceable bacterium.

Once in the parking lot, I realized my good fortune at purchasing something so pliable, so malleable, and so environmentally reprehensible. The pool was too large to fit in the back of my car but I nonetheless, crammed it in, bending into the shape of a taco without it breaking or cracking or yelling “Ole!” Oh, modern man made materials that pollute the planet and cause serious health problems really do make a mother’s life so much easier.

Otto was still upset about 1) the small, broken truck next to the register I refused to buy him, 2) changing his shit filled diaper in a public place, 3) not allowing him to run amok in the isles of what I like to call “Hell” while mommy tries to remember why she came to ToysBUYUs and 4) his incoming molar, a tooth that seems to be as large and painful as blowing a baseball through a nasal cavity. Because of the searing heat, Otto’s ongoing pain and my sudden, enthusiastic acceptance of my new, low rent life, I drove across the parking lot and through the McDonald’s Drive Thru. There, the two of us pleasantly sat in a running car with the air conditioning blowing on our faces and ate French fries and McNuggets while listening to Guns N’ Roses, Appetite For Destruction and sealing our white trash fate.

We drove home covered in salt and grease, with me looking in a rear view mirror that showed me nothing of the road behind me and only of the future in front of me. This future was a small, circular pool, a water collection device, a soon to be Petri dish of dirty, leafy, pee-filled liquid that would be filled not by a pool boy but a hose. And now, it would lovingly sit in our front yard making Otto happier than ever and mommy and daddy thrilled to be able to kill hours at a time sitting under the shade of a tree that protects us from the blinding sun and seething loneliness of a secluded backyard and an Olympic sized pool with misery but no microbes.

Ghosts of Birthdays Past, Starring Mary Jo

• My 23rd birthday, where we both wore cowboy boots and sundresses in my basement apartment in Boston while making out with a group of girls as diverse and crazy as an exquisite cheese plate
• Dave’s 22nd birthday where Dave and M.J. made out while wearing post hippie garb and I was, thank God, not in the picture yet but love telling this story because M.J. is the ONLY girl Dave has ever touched that I have liked or spoken to or not wished serious injury upon. That and M.J. is gorgeous and that is a prerequisite if you are going to mash with my future husband and she has the taste, style, breeding and tolerance for expensive alcohol of one of the many great debutantes in American history
• Her 30th birthday in San Francisco where Dave almost beat up a below average looking lesbian who refused to stop hand raping me
• Emile’s 30th birthday in Big Bear where he saw the devil and M.J. saw her beautiful, Loro Piana scarf be mutilated by a torrent of expensive, wine soaked vomit courtesy of the birthday boy
• Dave’s 40th birthday where we danced and practiced being super models with a real supermodel and rocked with fake rock stars while basking in our solitude of childlessness for that one, drunken, irresponsible night
• On Wyatt’s birth day where she lovingly called me from the hospital and asked me to be the Godmother of her perfect, wonderful new baby boy
• On Otto’s birth day where I called her from the hospital high off drugs that any crack fiend would sell a kidney to experience and begged her to return the favor and be Otto’s second set of eyes, ears, hands and internal organs
• And today, her 40th birthday, where we were all supposed to meet up in Napa and dine at French Laundry but food covered kids, messy lives and the shitty economy stepped in and cock blocked the brilliant plan leaving us a bit sad but resolute knowing that shit will happen soon enough

Happy birthday to a gal I call often and a gal I call friend.


I LOVE YOU!


DOTTY

Oh No, Great Balls Of Crazy!

Last night, if you consider 5:30 night time, Otto and I went out with three other moms and three other kids to a chain restaurant that serves bowls of Italian food masked as troughs of gruel. This is the kind of place where young lovers who wear Axe Body Spray drink Long Island iced teas while canoodling in pleather booths and feed each other twice fried finger foods before humping in a mid-90's sports coup out in the parking lot, a place where a family of twenty-seven might celebrate a relative's 90th birthday simply for the large portions and the wheel chair accessibility, a place where office workers converge after a long eight hour day of photocopying body parts and chug-a-lug brightly colored cocktails that make them feel successful and classy until they barf them up later on, ruining their best Gap chinos.

It is usually the perfect place to bring small creatures known as two year olds. They have crayons, high chairs, sippy cups and an indoor fountain. But, our waiter was so inept he forgot to put the order in for a table full of toddlers, never once checked to see if we needed anything, sat us next to two other tables in an empty restaurant and spent nearly twenty minutes getting us the check.

Below is a copy of the email the friend I brought to this dinner wrote to me after hating on the service and stressing about her son's inevitable bedtime. Before we could get the check from the waiter, whose only work experienced was clearly serving in a soup kitchen, my friend ran from the restaurant like a track star with her child covered in meatballs and marinara, leaving in her wake a massive compost heap of mangled food under his high chair and an unpaid check.


I am so sorry I was massive stress ball freak at dinner!!!
I don't know why i was so weird, awkward, rude, crazy....
I'm sure your friend hates me and that both of you guys were embarrassed.
I wish I had an excuse -- I am just a mess.
My son was totally cool and his mother was a disaster.
How much do I owe you!?!?!?
Can people really leave a restaurant with such a huge mess -- I still feel soooooo guilty.
I'm an asshole.
Sorry. :(

And I love this ball of crazy.

Jungle Love

When I was a baby I was given a pink, silk trimmed blanket that I loved, cuddled and slept with. It was barfed on, pooped smeared, vomit laden and urine soaked on a regular basis and my mother would wash it and return it to its resting place next to me in my white wicker crib that would now be labeled a death trap by modern standards. I still have the blanket sitting in a cedar chest in our apartment, having kept it all these years in case I ever had a girl. Every time I take it out it seems more like a swatch of sandpaper than a sweet memento I refuse to part with. It is itchy, tattered, pilling and pink, a color I abhor as much as discovering a suspicious growth on my body.

Lucky for Otto, he didn’t inherit pinky, itchy blankie. Instead, his first security blanket was a gift of a small, baby blue elephant head attached to a square piece of material the size of a kitchen floor tile. From the moment it landed in Otto’s crib the elephant and Otto became Sundance to his Butch Cassidy. Within a few months of their blossoming courtship we noticed that Otto would suck on the elephant's trunk, covering it with crusted milk and dried spit-up. I could only wash it when he was awake for the duration of wash and dry cycle. If it was not dry by the end of my retrieval mission Otto would not sleep, thrashing around looking for his little pachyderm and I would curse my forgetfulness and eat Advil for lunch.

A back up blanket soon became an absolute necessity but we could not find the company that made it and tried to convince Otto that a lame, generic lion we found at Target would be a perfect substitute for the elephant. He didn’t fall for our ruse and we began to panic that the day would come when the elephant would be lost and we would never sleep again. Eventually, we found the blankets on line and decided to order a back up elephant as well as a cool looking monkey with an attitude, just to change things up.

Otto’s crib soon looked like a bomb had exploded in an animal sanctuary and within days, he had fallen madly in love with the monkey, leaving the elephant to comfort itself in the corner but still insisting it be close by for bedtime and story time. At first, I actually felt bad for the elephant but soon realized that my lack of sleep and keen inability to process information correctly caused this irrational and ridiculous thought. I could barely take care of myself. Why the fuck should I worry about a 9” by 9” square of blue cotton/poly blend fabric assembled in Honduras by a family of under paid weavers who most likely had Sundays off? I just wanted to close my eyes once in a while and not look like a boiled, wool sweater when I left the house each day.

Two years have passed and monkey is Otto’s best pal, confident and wingman whose job is to cuddle and, I am convinced, to cause trouble. Dave and I have always called the animal blankets by their God given names out of practicality, laziness and a keen lack of imagination due to sleep deprivation and resentment. Elephant is elephant, monkey is monkey and cheap, knock-off Target lion is cheap knock-off Target lion. But now that Otto is starting to talk, he has named his monkey, Bundy. I am thrilled that he loves his him so much and has someone else, besides his parents, who consistently wear the same outfit day in and day out. But, why did Otto have to name him after one of the most notorious serial killers in American history? Couldn’t he be just as mediocre as his parents and refer to him simply as, Monkey?

Happy Easter!

Some bad ass bunnies!

Let Your Fingers Do The Walking

The crap, the stuff and the must do’s have been piling up for weeks now. But just when I tell myself that I will indeed tackle an item on my list, it is conveniently tossed aside by my lack of memory. The worst is when someone requests a simple favor that involves nothing more than remembering to put something in your car. Such as the case when Dave and I forgot to bring folding chairs and Otto’s booster seat to the Seder we were invited to on Wednesday night, chairs being a key part of a large dinner celebration where people SIT and eat and discuss the history of an oppressed people who have overcome much worse than chairlessness to prevail and eat kugel, brisket and parsley dipped in salt water. We were dressed in our Passover pretty goods when we set off in the car with our desert, wine and a very handsome Otto.

Having just enough time to get over the hill and to our friend’s house before sunset, I turned to Dave while we were at a stoplight and just said, “chairs”. I then did an illegal U-Turn and our perfect schedule was gone in the ether, drifting away with the dreams I had of maybe one day being a perfect, organized, clean, fabulous robot mother/wife/sex object/writer/girl about town. We made it on time after all but, when we were unloading our entire dining room into their driveway I realized I had not refilled the diaper bag with diapers and Dave had to drive to the closest store to over pay for diapers that, turned out, were barely big enough to collect a urine and fecal sample of an average sized lab rat.

This was the last straw in a series of debacles that had started a waterfall of my tears all week. Thanks to my constant forgetfulness and the fact that I did NOT book a big commercial that I as on avail for and I really wanted and ended up taking it really hard and felt sorry for myself and got sad and stupid about it, I spent the majority of the last few days fantasizing about throwing away everything I own and living in a yurt.

That said, the thought now repulses me as I had another audition today where I got to wear a fancy suit and look like I was employed somewhere that is raping the economy and will soon fold like a Gap sweater. I was back in the game and unwilling to spend my time living in the woods and talking to my inner being. I had make up on. After the audition, I went grocery shopping still dressed like an executive with her own bathroom and a chip on her shoulder who screams at her assistant to get her a non fat mocha latte and some Xanax and there, amongst the whimsically named snack foods and angry, old hippies at Trader Joe’s, I ran into someone who has not seen me clothed in anything other than what would appear to be Whoopi Goldberg hand-me-down’s since 2001.

He commented on how nice I looked and I walked away feeling like things might actually look up. I filled my cart with a collection of quirky foods with named like Critter Crackers and Tasty Tomatoes, spent less than $100 and drove home feeling oddly accomplished. When I returned to our palace of chaos I found the place empty of all boys and I knew I had an hour to do what I have wanted to do by myself for weeks. Now, if I was a man and wrote that sentence you would immediately suspect I was talking about masturbating. But seeing that I have a vagina and a laundry list of shit to do that does not involved my index finger and a Harlequin romance novel, masturbating was not the activity I had in mind. I changed my clothes (still sounds like I am about to have a chit chat with my girlfriend but just bare with me), put away all the groceries and did the dirtiest deed I know. I vacuumed and cleaned out my car. The amount of dried up raisins, sand, dog hair, dried milk chunks, straw wrappers, half eaten power bars, Matchbox cars, Cheerio’s, puffed wheat balls and anger I found under the seats and between the mats would have beaten down the best of women. But with each kernel of grossness my faithful Sears Wind Tunnel canister vacuum sucked up, the more powerful, energized, wonderful and sexy I felt. This was the best vibrator I had ever used!

I found running shoes, a lone flip flop, infant socks, doggies bags, a used diaper (pee pee only), headshots of myself looking rested and very childless, baby blankets, an Etch-A-Sketch, a plastic bag of great CD’s, travel Scrabble, a flashlight, expired but still usable Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons, three pairs of broken sunglasses, a roll of paper towel, two board books, six cars, two pennies (disappointingly low amount of money), two containers of diaper wipes, two satchels filled with miscellaneous clothing, two dog leases, an infant cart liner and a melted lint brush stuck to the inside pocket of one of my rear leather seats.

I sucked and plucked all the detritus away and sprayed and scrubbed the milk stains and the juice splashes and the LA dust and dirt and felt as if every stroke would bring me closer to the meaning of life. Close enough. Standing there in front of my apartment in an old pair of ratty pants and my signature wife beater, I realized every time I got into my car, a car I bought and paid for and have loved from the moment I first sat in it, I would gaze at the remnants of a day at the beach or Otto’s snack fiasco or bags of unwanted clothes I meant to drop off at Goodwill or piles of dog hair that I seemed to be collecting like a Andean knitter and cringe. My spare time never seemed spare enough to drive over to the local carwash and have someone I know nothing about crawl into my car and clean away a weeks worth of disgusting. Instead, I would race form errand to errand never allowing myself that extra thirty minutes and fifteen dollars to calm down and watch as my beautiful, reliable, capable, gas guzzling SUV drove through a myriad of hanging sponges while Otto shrieked with delight.

Instead, I had to wait until the car was unrecognizable; looking more like an old dusty bedroom slipper found under a highway over pass than a fun Jeep Cherokee that screams “I don’t care about the environment. I just care about me!” I had to get in there and do it myself to see just how dirty it was. If I had gone to the car wash and handed over my car, I would not have been able to see the amount of neglect that had piled up in my 18 mpg in the city, 23 mpg on the highway. I would never have realized that in the nooks and crannies of my lovely gunmetal gray beast, I had amassed enough food to rival the cereal aisle at the local Ralph’s. The only difference was my collection of breakfast treats were not in a box but lying on dirty foot mats, stale, broken and mixed with sand and dirt, far the appetizing morsels they once were.

But I did it and oddly enough, enjoyed it, bending over with my head bumping against the seats and my hands being scraped and bruised from my enthusiasm and vigor. I got rid of the months of yuck and gross and stood back and looked at a car that has been nothing but wonderful to me. Knowing it made me feel this good I did what all great masturbators would do and promised to keep up the good work with great skill and great regularity. Now if I could only find the carwash coupons.

Technophobe

Lists are for people to write down things that they do not want to forget. The Post It Note revolutionized the world with a little yellow square that screamed “REMEMBER THIS!” Then the Blackberry came along and allowed you to write notes in the applications section with no need for pen or paper. But if you are driving, let’s say, or walking or suddenly remembering it takes just a few precious seconds longer to use the latest in technological advancements than the old standby, lead and pulp. And what if you do not have a few extra seconds or the light turns green or you come to a crosswalk or a car almost hits you because you are typing on to your PDA with the enthusiasm and verve of a junior varsity cheerleader, the kind that is so over ambitious and must make varsity or her life will end is a fiery explosion of mediocrity?

Then Twitter happens and your free time-me time, time to decompress and contemplate life and the birds chirping and the wind whistling ends in the same kind of fiery crash as the as for mentioned pom-pom parade. Now you cannot go on a simple dog walk or take a bath or sit at on a park bench or wait in traffic or listen to the radio or wait in a waiting room or read the nearly extinct morning paper or drink an overpriced coffee drink or stroll through your neighborhood or read a book in bed without first thinking that maybe you should just check your messages and blog/tweet/email/reply/surf just one more time before calling it a day.

Is this how my grandmother and great-grandmother felt when the world was introduced to the dishwasher, the microwave, the blender, the Cuisinart, the electric stove, the shoe or fire? Do all these amazing leaps in technology and convenience really improve your quality of life to a point that you can get more done and feel more accomplished in a twenty-four period? After having a rough two days of professional grade forgetfulness while being blessed enough to have all the modern must-haves any teenage sloth considers a birth right, I am truly having my doubts. I have forgotten to go to the bank, clean out my car, a virtual trashcan on wheels filled with discarded Cheddar Bunnies and six month old raisins that resemble mice dropping, refill the diaper bags with DIAPERS (very important when small child is floating in a sea of his own urine after eating asparagus the previous evening), side note: I am struggling here to remember what I have forgotten to remember these past few foggy days… case in point.

Oh, start my Tweet account on my Blackberry, call back my friend Tristan because I can only make calls in my car because we get NO service in the house with either a landline or AT&T, send a thank you note to Chrissy for EVERYTHING, dig around in my closet and find my other black flat, buy toilet paper, toothpaste and a toothbrush (both ends of my very important spectrum of hygiene), go to the garage to see if we have baby clothes for Kate’s baby Mac, call regarding Dave’s passive aggressive doctor’s bill, remind Dave to fix the bedroom door, watch American Idol on TiVO to see what douche they voted off this week, call my OB to schedule a very overdue appointment to stop the reproduction, put flea medicine on the animals, wash the cat bed but vacuum it first so not to get too much hair in the washing machine that I am petrified with die a hairy, sad death any day, get a pedicure to avoid having feet like Howard Hughes and…

I miss the good ole days…

But who will play in you in the movie?

So here it is. Between Dave and I, we are a combined age of eighty-one. 8 – 1. Those numbers look so small when separated but so big and ugly with age spots and shaky hands when side by side, like two old crows on a park bench dribbling and cursing the youngsters who ignore them. I bring this up because how, in God’s green land of mundane, can two adults, be so overpowered by a two year old monkey child and emotionally crushed to smithereens like Carolina crushed Michigan State?

Today began with a whimper and ended with a cry, my tears streaming down my face after hours of Otto’s whining and complaining, refusing to eat and not being satisfied with anything from his juice/water combo to his Cheerio snack selection to his train derailment reenactment. I broke, I crumbled, and I melted like unsalted butter and cried like a teenage outcast at the prom. My head began to throb and I fell apart standing in my kitchen looking out of my dirty, slatted windows at a neighbor whose life I usually pity but now seemed as shiny and golden as a George Clooney Tuesday. Standing there in his abhorrent front pleated chinos and gift bag baseball cap, I envied his freedom as he stood alone smoking a menthol cigarette wondering what it would be like if he ever got to see a real, live vagina.

This Otto man of ours took it to the next level today. His perseverance and tenacity was epic with the ehhhhh’s and the eeeeehhhhhhh’s. Give him a fork he wanted a spoon. Put on some pants he wanted some shorts. Hand him a train, he yelled for a car. Offer him tequila he insisted on gin. There was no satisfying this man, this tiny, powerful leader of his small world. He would not stop until two o’clock when I put him down for his nap and silently dabbed my puffy, tear stained face and prayed that he was as tired of the sound of his own voice as both his parents were.

Sure enough, his head hit his monkey pillow and it was quiet at last. Without saying a word I tip toed down the hallway and crawled into my bed, pulling the sheets over my head and falling into an unsteady, nervous sleep. An hour later, after dreaming about Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors, the good years, I awoke to discover that not only was Otto still sound asleep but that Dave had fled to the office to work and I was riddled with guilt. How could I feel so overwhelmed by such a little, lovely thing? Dave and I were together and he still beat us. Two against one and still, we lost. I scurried down to the kitchen where I ate literally, whatever I could find and regained control of my brain and my body.

He slept for another hour and a half, a gift that did not go unappreciated and when he finally awoke I gave him a hug that would have embarrassed him if he were fourteen. Too long, too tight and too needy. I felt better, he felt better, we both napped, both went to our corners to have our trainers rub us down and clean our bloodied faces with buckets of dirty water. We then came back to the center of the ring to await the final judgment. It was, of course, a unanimous decision, with Otto winning hands down but I was still standing and that made me feel that maybe, just maybe I might win one some day. Or maybe I should take up track.

How Am I Doing?

When you forage in your kitchen like a hungry, mangy woodland creature and come out the other side with a belly full of a stale piece of bread with melted cheese on it, a bowl of cold pesto pasta without salt, pepper or any effort, half an over ripened banana and a square of Valrona chocolate that crumbled as you ate it and then melted under your butt on the dining room chair making it appear that you have a) pooped yourself or b) you really are a mangy woodland creature that poops small, dark brown pellets that just stained your favorite (only) pair of fake Juicy sweats you paid little to no money for at H &M, is that considered a success or a failure on the survival scale?

Dotty’s Cure All Spa Weekend

Our weekend was a series of odd occurrences strung together by a sore throat and paranoia. I woke up on Friday morning with that tickle of dread in the back of my throat. This house has been a revolving door of germs for five weeks but it easily feels like a lifetime. Even when we are all feeling our very best, some friend or play date will visit us or meet us for a hang with a runny nose or the plague and one of us will be down for the count, yet again.

Otto started puking Thursday and it turned into a fever over the weekend and a lot of cuddling. He bounces back like a pro but as soon as the throw up fountain stopped I could feel a new strain of gross coming toward me. Dave and I have been lobbing germ balls back and forth for weeks now and I have no patience or time to deal with it. So, Friday afternoon after racing around to auditions all over town and feeling a bit worn down and scratchy throated, Dave went to the farmer’s market and bought up the ingredients for Dotty’s cure all diet and get well regime.

The following is my sure fire, beat the bacteria menu and strict regime.

• Extra thick chocolate shake from you local soda jerk or Haagen-Dazs Chocolate-Chocolate ice creams bars
• Homemade spaghetti Bolognese with fresh Parmesan cheese, sprinkled with Italian Parsley for the new garden your manly caveman just planted
• Ginger Ale
• Seltzer water mixed with fresh orange juice
• Hibiscus-Cranberry cooler
• Brazilian beans and rice with collard greens sautéed in garlic and olive oil
• Whole-wheat toast with strawberry jam and butter

These items can be consumed in any order and in large or small proportions, large being my preference, of course. The rules are as follows:

1. Eat the toast every morning to make your throat feel better and prepare your stomach for the onslaught to come
2. Eat as much of the meat sauce as humanly possible, stuffing your belly to make you look as though you are six months pregnant with twins
3. Do the same with the beans and rice the following evening, making sure your apply sufficient dollops of hot sauce to kill whatever is living in your sinus cavity
4. The chocolate ice cream cannot be substituted for vanilla, as the chocolate has special germ fighting properties such as taste, color and chocolate. Only allow yourself one a day so as not to balloon out by the end of the weekend and begin looking as if the twins may arrive any day
5. Avoid caffeinated sodas, such as Coke or Pepsi, as ginger ale sounds and tastes more natural and healthy, even though it is still filled with high fructose corn syrup or as I like to call it, man made sticky poison
6. Watch the following films from start to finish while eating the chocolate and drinking the hibiscus cooler or seltzer/juice combo:

The Deer Hunter
True Crimes (Spanish time travel thriller)
Tell No One (French thriller)

Or:

Watch at least fifteen minutes of these films while catching snippets of the Final Four:

Fargo
Weekend At Bernie's
In Bruges
Take The Money And Run
Pretty Woman
The Bourne Ultimatum
Any Harrison Ford film accept for 7 Days Of Night and Random Hearts

Side Rules:

1. Beg your child to nap for three to five hours a day
2. Change your clothes every 12 hours
3. Put a new pillowcase on your pillows every night
4. Shower with bleach
5. Soak your toothbrush in hydrogen peroxide
6. Wash your hands as much as Warren Beatty in the 70’s
7. Do not speak to anyone outside of your immediate family for three days straight, no exceptions
8. Drink prescription strength cough medicine at bedtime
9. Decide whether your lunch the next day will be beans or Bolognese leftovers
10. Feel no guilt about consuming such large quantities of sugar and salt
11. Pretend the peeping Tom has NOT returned
12. Lights out at 10:30 p.m.

By Monday you should be happy, healthy and once again, enraged that your small closets are overrun with shit from the mid 1990’s and are choking the life out of you, one bad, grunge blouse at a time. Welcome back to normal.

Sometimes you have to go to leave it up to the prose

The Terrible People by Ogden Nash

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it, And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it. I dont' mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it, But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it. But no, they insist on being stealthy About the pleasures of being wealthy, And the possession of a handsome annuity Makes them think that to say how hard it is to make both ends meet is their bounden duity. You cannot conceive of an occasion Which will find them without some suitable evasion. Yes indeed, with argumetsn they are very fecund; Their first point is that money isn't everything, and that they have no money anyhow is their second. Some people's money is merited, And other people's is inherited, But wherever it comes from, They talk about it as if it were something you got pink gums from. Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing, But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing. The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor. Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won't buy, but it's very funny -- Have you ever tried to buy them without money?

Happy Birthday To Georgia

You have a beautiful, man, a beautiful son, a beautiful house, a beautiful body, a beautiful nose, a beautiful view, beautiful hair, a beautiful heart, a beautiful brain and oh, what was that? You are turning wha? thirty niiiiine? Shit. You can't find beauty in everything. Or can you?

You have beautiful Botox, a beautiful boob job, a beautiful photo facial, a beautiful nip, a beautiful tuck, a beautiful new profile, a beautiful girdle, a beautiful new you.


Happy Birthday Femme Bot!


I Love you!