Saved By Her Bell

The candle has been burning on three ends in this here casa and we are fragile and frayed but creatively on fire. Dave was just hired and wrote an entire script in two weeks. For those of you who are not script familiar, that is like climbing Mt. Everest wearing polyester gym shorts and Payless Shoe Source stilettos without pantyhose or Dr. Scholl’s inserts. He is amazing. He is epic and he keeps this here roof intact and these here bellies full and for that I am eternally grateful and in awe of my super human hubby.

I, on the unpaid end, have been buried with volunteer duties at Otto’s school and a writing project that is a race to the finish line of frantic. My writing partner is leaving on a trip, which makes the clock tick louder and the workdays longer. But the super doozy, the biggest nut in this nut sack of life is that Dave’s back is still in a bad way and he is pain and still has to write. Which means he is taking special pain- -go-bye-bye pills which make him snore which means I am now sleeping on an Aerobed on the living room floor like a failing college freshman without a dorm assignment or a major. We are both dead ringers for dirty street pigeons who live on the edge and that is not on the sexy list of life.

There have been many posts about what I am like when I do not sleep and about my general state of mind when sleep deprivation creeps into this house and cuddles next to me at three a.m. Talking to me when exhaustion has landed on my lap is like trying to have a rational conversation with the Bride of Frankenstein after she’s lost her engagement ring and her white wedding dress has been set on fire by some daring and dumb local villagers.

Needless to say, five days on the living room floor with my mind a jumble, wretched lumpy dreams and my heart in my throat does not a happy lady make. Last night after writing all day and wrangling Otto on his day off of school and wondering if Dave could stand upright and how the hell we were going to swing the monthly nut, my mother called just as I Otto was sitting down to dinner. Without a word, Dave took over and I crawled upstairs and wept uncontrollably into the phone to the woman who has always made the boo-boos go away and kept the boogeyman at bay. 

She listened and lamented and encouraged and enchanted me with her stories of struggling as a young mother and of feeling overwhelmed and under paid and still making it all work. She talked about her mother Phyllis, a woman who always managed to feed five kids and fight the good fight with a grin and a song rumbling off her lips. My mother allowed me let my hair down without judgment and yell and bitch and say the things that no one else lets me say. She told me she wished she was here to hold me and tell me that everything would be alright and that a few nights of no sleep would make anyone a bundle of bruises and a sack of sad.

And after all the tears and all the moans and all the "me, me, me’s" she hugged me long distance and kissed me cross-country and suddenly I felt as calm as an ocean and as rich as a Rockefeller.

I am so lucky to know that even when life kicks me in the shins and takes my lunch money my mom will be there at the bus stop to pick me up, dust me off and embrace me until all the bad just trickles down the street and into the sewer drain. And if that ain’t a wad of wealth in any wallet, then what is?

How long have you had a weak back? Ohh, about a week back.

Today sucked like a Hoover in a hooker’s hall closet.  Sitting in my car talking to Liza, planning a trip and laughing like a hyena I look over my shoulder when I hear the car door open only to see my husband barely breathing and leaning against the passenger door like a crumpled up question mark after the alphabet has pooped it out of the line-up.

Apparently, after walking Otto into school Dave leaned down to kiss Otto goodbye and heard a pop or a snap or a crackle and immediately realized that his back was quitting his bitch and taking a vacation on a Carnival Cruise to Barbados. Instead of begging one of the teachers for help he slowly limped back to the car carrying a slab of pride as thick as a Christmas cheese log and no phone in which to text me and beg for assistance.

When I finally spotted him he was the color of a cotton ball and I was sure he as having a heart attack and a stroke simultaneously. I jumped up and begged him to stop eating cheddar cheese and cooking with back fat and then I gently put him in the car like a baby in a bassinet. When he assured me that he had only curdled into a broth because of a mammoth muscle spasm and a potential slipped disk I felt relief that I could continue to purchase extra sharp Irish cheddar and suck on bacon when I was feeling blue.

After a long day of lying flat on the rug, taking mini strolls up and down our three foot long hallway and a doctor’s appointment where he was forced to allow me to put on and take off his various man clothes while I mocked his hairy thighs and threatened to tickle his baked beans, we were told by the doctor that the disks were fine but his muscles were furious.

Lots of rest, lots of medicine, lots of ice and lots of sympathy does a healed man make. At least I hope so because nothing sucks more than an injured back, accept maybe being pantsed at recess or breastfeeding a bear.

An since I have spent my day delirious with worry and exhausted from volunteering duties and deadlines I wrote a song for Dave to speed up his recovery and annoy him into a deep sleep.

When you bend over to hug and you land on the rug, that’s amore!

When the poop hits the fan and you’re a new crippled man, that’s amore!

Leaning down with a hop and you hear a big pop

Grabbing the wall so you don’t trip and fall

Hobbling across the schoolyard and then collapsing so hard

That’s a bad back!

That’s a bad back!

That’s a bad back!

That’s amore!

Blog Love and Other Drugs

Since the beginning of January I have barely written in the blog land of My Mommy Bites. What started as a goal of everyday quickly turned into lucky if I got one in a week. A few months back that would have curled my toes and punched me into a sad sack. This blog has been my lifeline and my party pal and the intimidating cool chick I nervously pass notes to in Social Studies. She is the girl who will accept my notes but who hasn’t yet invited me to the super sonic sleep over after the school dance. Maybe this year it will happen if my notes are funny enough.

The reason I bring this up is that I am fine with the small amount of blogging I am doing because I am finally busy with writing other things. That feels great and fulfilling and honestly, okay. When I started this blog it was all I had emotionally and creatively that did not involve a diaper or a pureed meal plan or a Kleenex filled with my tears. I was home with a napping toddler. I did not have an Aaron Spelling-flavored nanny or crystal-incrusted cleaning lady or a Pina Colada-pushing pool boy or a resourceful relative close by to lean on and weep on. I was desperate to scrape out a few minutes here and there to myself where I could barf up some craziness to write about all the while struggling to lose the baby weight and gain back an identity.

I know sometimes the word blog is a punch line or saying you are a blogger is greeted with an eye roll at a dinner party or a smug smile at a ladies lunch. There are articles praising it and pouncing on it and there are opinions far and wide. But unless you have started one or followed one you can’t really understand what they mean to those who write them or those who read them.

This little hobby, this odd entity has gotten me through some of the most difficult times in my life and has now given me a voice with which to yell, scream, laugh or yodel. I have met, on-line and in person, some of the hippest Helen’s in the blogger community, women who are ferocious fighters and savvy survivors and most of all, wonderful writers. I have been lucky enough to feel supported by strangers as well as hugged by the certain friends who have actually taken the time to read my ramblings.

I feel a bit guilty for not updating more often and I feel a tad wistful about not being able to sit down every day and scribble for hours about my Target runs and my tasteless tantrums. But because of this world of beautiful babbling and boasting and bitching buffoonery I have gotten up the nerve up to take those words and put them on another page instead of having them trapped in my trough and stuffed in my sock. And for that, my dear blog band, I am eternally grateful.

Will that be Kardashian or charge?

Oh, I'll pay with plastic, thanks.

Ho Ho Ho And A Bucket of B.S.

Okay, this should have been posted last week but after the craziness of no school for the monkey, the chest infections R'Us factory outlet in our living room and the pile of dishes that gurgled at me, I forgot. Forgive me for the late arrival but what a great way to look back on the Christmas holiday of 2010.

I feel the above photo truly reflects my relationship with Christmas and the emotional sleigh ride I have been on since childhood. Yes, once upon a time I did believe in old St. Nick until well into second grade, And yes, the very same year my older, charcoal-hearted sister tinkled on my beliefs and pooped on my dreams by telling me that Santa Claus was a big, fat, frosted fake.

She also told me that the tooth fairy was a crock, the Easter Bunny was a bust and that being a virgin was an organized religion and then asked me point blank if I was a virgin. Coming from a borderline agnostic set of parental salt and pepper shakers, two religion-questioning, over-read academics, I insisted that I was NOT a virgin. This, in turn, made my sister, my DNA doppelganger, collapse into a puddle of finger-pointing and cruel cackling which, in turn, made me want to morph into an only child and a mall Christmas Santa to make up for my devastation.

Oh well. I know the truth and I survived. Now, how and when will Otto discover that Santa, Mrs. Claus and all the creepy helper elves are as fictional as Sarah Palin's brain stem.

Let The Stormy Clouds Chase Everyone From The Place

For the past three months someone in my house has had a cough that sounds like the raspy ruminations that stumble from a young ingénue’s lips during the second half of a tear-jerky, 19^th century, Masterpiece Theatre, eight-hour, costume drama. When the hacking begins and the music swells everyone run for cover because little Clarissa Dunn Bobblingbrook is about to let loose her last loogie and float up to the heavens above her eighty-seven room mansion and leave us weeping and wanting.

Here at Casa de Cohen we simply went on with our holidays as if nothing could stop us from being the inherently lazy, lie-about slugs that we are and embraced our barrel-full of get well goodies. With a nebulizer, a bottle of antibiotics, a handful of Musinex, a Benadryl drip, two dozen chocolate chips cookies, bowls of garlic-riddled pasta, a case of sparkling water, and a pile of DVD’s worthy of a Blockbuster sale bin we groped the end of December like a co-ed in a convertible.

One of the few perks of being a hardscrabble screenwriter like my husband is the awesome health insurance and the free nominated films that arrive in your mailbox the first week in December. So while we were feverish, sweaty, tired and snotty I got a free head-to-toe physical and we saw The Black Swan, True Grit, The Kids Are Alright, The Fighter, Winter’s Bone, Shutter Island, Inception, Somewhere, The King’s Speech, City Island, I Love You Phillip Morris, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, The Company Men, Solitary Man and football, lots and lots of football.

I could complain about how our Christmas was short on gifts and high on hacking or how New Year’s Eve was mellow and in bed by 12:36 a.m. or that we were stuck in the house during a two-week rainstorm and viral infection tornado and suffered insurmountable damages from cabin fever and claustrophobia. But I will not. Because, although most people would have gone ape shit in an hour, our holiday, our seventeen days together stacked one a top another, was glorious and gratitude-filled. Sure, there were things I wanted to buy or do or ignore but in the long run I got just what I wished for all year, a two-week vacation from the world surrounded by my two, beautiful boys and the boob tube burping up brilliance!

P.S. Just for the record, Somewhere was one of the WORST films I have ever seen and I must start 2011 knowing I will never get those two hours back. EVER! Damn you, Sophia Coppola! Damn you!

Happy New Year

This monkey wishes good health, happiness and laughter to all in 2011!

This monkey wishes for deep conditioner and more naps, just like me...