I Heart You, Water Monster!

All week I have been thinking a lot about my blog and what it means to me. My Mommy Bites has changed my life and given me a scratchy, hoarse, four-lettered voice that will forever be bellowing out of my being. It has been such a source of joy and solace and comfort for me over the last few years and I have to thank those of you who visit it daily, weekly or monthly. I even want to thank those of you who hate it or refuse to read it because I have a picture of prescription pills on the home page. I too, thank those people who have never even heard of it or hate Led Zeppelin or think I am a potty mouth and a marginal mother. I am in a thankful mood. Just go with it.

The reason I am getting all misty-minded over here is that I came in an electrifying fourth-place (#4) in the Circle of Moms Top 25 Funniest Blog Contest! I never win or place in anything so this is a huge-ass deal and I will dye my roots and wax my nether regions in celebration! Thanks to all the readers and supporters for voting and volumizing the tally. I am in crazy, great company with some super special ladies, The Mad Mom and Shit My Kids Ruined, most notably.

This entire Olympic rant racing got me really thinking about the art of communication and writing and words, in general. I have always loved words, wordplay and anything wordy. I will talk to a brick wall if it will listen and I often got in trouble in high school for never shutting up. In class I would get called out for loud whispers and joke telling and scolded like a child at a Carnegie black tie dinner.

In the hallways my voiced carried like a bullhorn on a lunch break, making most of the teachers edgy and angry when I was nearby. During soccer practice I ran an average of a mile more a day than the other gals due to my motor mouth and my obsession with mocking the coach behind his back.

“Coelho, shut up and do a lap!”

“Really? Like you don’t deserve it, Coach Crunchy? You carry a purse!”

And with these inflated memories of brilliant babbling I always thought I was a great talker and a superb reader, even at an early age. But a few years ago, after Otto’s eighteen-month check-up nightmare where he was refusing to speak, my mother informed me that I never said a word until I was three and chose to fake my ability to read until I was seven. Clearly, I have always had a flare for the dramatic while making incredibly stupid life choices and instilling feral frustration in the ones I love the most.

In second grade my best friend was a girl named Lynn. She was tall, boisterous and belligerent, with long, blond hair like Kim Richards. (The cute, Escape From Witch Mountain Kim, NOT the resident drunk work-boot face, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Kim of today.)

Besides the hair and the attitude, Lynn also had the coolest parent/paramour situation this side of 1977, which gave her mad street cred to me, a child of regular married folks.

Her dad had a funky beard, a convertible forest green Fiat and a gorgeous girlfriend named Chris who was hotter than skinny Stevie Nicks during the coke-fueled Rumors days. Chris was the real life Convertible Beach Barbie and I my skin burned when I stood too close. She was a twenty-three year old Stanford grad student with painted on bell-bottoms and a white on white Pontiac Firebird. Chris, being all things goddess, actually drove me to my very first concert, in that Firebird, gifting me the experience of Andy Gibb live, wearing candy apple red stretch pants and singing, “I Want To Be Your Everything” to me and me alone.

One night Lynn called my house during dinner and asked if I wanted to go with her and her hip dad and gal pal to a movie called Tentacles.  I told her to hold on so I could ask my parents.

I covered the mouthpiece and with the best puppy dog gaze said, “Can I go see a movie with Lynn, Craig and Chris tonight?”

My father, being hardcore about family dinnertime but also a serious movie fanatic suspiciously asked, “What movie?”

 “Testicles!” I screamed with glee and gusto!

My malapropism caused both my parents to burst out laughing, which in turn, made with my father spit a chunk of French bread through his 70’s mustache curtain and across the table, leaving us all in a puddle of guffaws and sour dough spittle.

Before team super cool picked me up that night, my mom and dad had to explain to me the difference between tentacles and testicles. I truly think that was the first time I fell in love with words and the power they had to make people laugh. I know that my long-standing love affair is still going strong thanks to this blog and the readers who read it. There is really nothing else I can say other thank you, thank you and thank you.

By the way, every single time Otto says he wants to go see the octopus at the aquarium it cracks my shit up.

“Of course, you want to see a huge pair of balls in a large tank, honey! Who wouldn’t?”

A Mud Bunny Weekend Recap

Saturday, one of Otto’s BFF’s comes over for a sleepover after Otto and I spend hours at IHop, the park and driving around looking at fantasy public school districts/houses we cannot possibly afford without a lottery win or a debutante’s trust fund. Otto and I have to stay out of the house for five hours because Dave has a major writing deadline and needs the apartment empty and work-friendly. Fuck him. I want to make a grilled cheese sandwich and do some laundry. No dice. I drive on.

When the time comes late in the day, I pick up Otto’s awesome pal, D, who is wearing the cutest back pack filled with sleepover paraphernalia and a wool cap that Oliver Twist would give his grimy, left nut to own. They sing and laugh and make fart noises the whole drive home and I am filled with an excited, anticipation of what is to come.

Fast forward – They both eat a gourmet dinner prepared by my insane, chef-y husband who insists on impressing every guest, even the ones under five. They watch Cars, they make more fart noises, the play racetrack smash up and the laugh their little butts off.

Dinner is over and it is bath time, the best of times in this house. I fill the tub with soapy goodness and put every bath toy Otto has (so many…) as well as a vintage Fisher-Price Floating Marina, the centerpiece of all things Otto bath.

The boys climb into the warm water, they splish-splash, they tell hilarious, imaginative stories about dinosaurs and motorboats and boobs and I hop into the shower to clean off the day. Two minutes later I am out of the shower in my towel, making faces at them and trying my best to be as cool and hip as these vaudevillians. I lean over the tub to grab a floating T-Rex to make it talk and fart because; I too, want to be included in the laugh track of their childhood. I want them to think I am funny and who doesn’t love a hacky, prop comic?

I put my hand in the water, wrap my fingers around the T-Rex and spot something floating next to the rabbinical rubber duck wearing a yarmulke and prayer shawl. I bend down further hoping the dark mystery mound is a tiny plastic boulder from Otto’s medieval Play Mobile set or a soggy Rolo last seen on Halloween weekend in his candy bag.

My heart starts racing, my newly clean pits start sweating and my eyes start widening. Sitting on the bottom of the bathtub between Otto and D, minding its own business like a quaint, little river rock, sits a fresh and fruity turd that is disintegrating faster than a sandcastle in a storm. Yes, my clean, bubbly son and his super spotless, soapy friend are relaxing and reclining in a huge caldron of poop soup pouring shitty shit water all over each other’s heads and faces and mouths.

Without raising alarm or fainting forward into the crud cocktail I say to the boys,

“Hey guys don’t worry. No one is in trouble. I just want to know who pooped in the tub just in case he needs to poop some more and would care to use that white bowl over there, the one I call a toilet, instead of the tub.”

Both beautiful babes look me square in the face with two pairs of blue eyes that could melt a mountain and say, “I didn’t do it,” in unison.

Then they both go back to playing like nothing has happened, like they aren’t sitting in a rectal river or a sewage sea. Neither one rolls the other under the bus or blames the dookie disaster on the man to his left. And honestly, I am oddly impressed with their commitment to the cause of everything BFF. But, before I can get all misty about their solid gold friendship and lovely loyalty, I wake up and smell the coffee-colored water and whimper into my hair towel.

After hearing my faint cries of dirty distress Dave comes running, takes one look at my ashen face and says he’ll take care of everything. He knows that I have some serious fecal phobias and cannot possibly clean this up without a serious psychotic episode. Okay, I could handle it if I had to but, I really, really, really do not want to and Dave saves the day. Besides, he hates puke and cannot take it when our million year-old cat retches up half-digested cat food and hairballs that look like a cheap, 70’s toupee lying in a storm drain. I have no problem with the vomit so I walk out of the bathroom knowing we are even, Steven next time Joey hurls a hefty one.

Just then my oldest and dearest friend stops by with her four daughters to say goodbye, she’s been visiting from out of town, and her dog pees all over our sofa. It has now becomes collective chaos and maddening mayhem. By the time I get the piddling pooch and the cheerleading squad out of my house Dave has de-crapped the boys, bleached the bathtub and put the dudes down without them ever realizing they were both stewing in a septic-tank’s chicken stock.

All’s well that end’s well and we all had a grand, old time. The kids were amazing and cannot wait to do a sleepover again soon, minus the soaking shit sandwich. And for the record, I just had to share this toilet Twinkie tale with someone besides D’s parents and my crazy neighbor who looks like a parakeet in full clown make-up.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go throw my head down on a pillow, tuck myself into a down feather burrito and hope that my dreams are not filled with brown butt nuggets and bun fudge sundaes.

Down to the wire and I need your daily votes

People of the interweb, unite! There are two more days to VOTE everyday! If you like, love or hate what your read please take just  a second to vote a few more times for this bloggette @ 

My Mommy Bites For President Of Needy 
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I am writing this as a pathetic, dirty-haired candy addict who needs one last push to try and stay in the top five (four, three, whatevs) for Circle of Mom's Blog Contest. It may be degrading and it may reflect on my sad sack situation as a girl with the motivation of a sloth and the wardrobe of a Goodwill rejection bin. But, it would make me happier than a frat boy on a Friday. 


Thank you from the bottom of my blackened chicken heart!


Dotty

Wanted...Candy, Career and Calm

Ah, the insomnia has snuck up on me again and I am sitting here in my dining room/office/cat condo/toy storage area/wine bar/newspaper collection bin wearing one of those pink, fluffy fleece robes that make anyone, especially me, look like the insane lady who lives in the ramshackle house on the corner with five cars on the lawn and rusty back-up generator from 1963 propped up on the sagging porch. It is still dark out, I am NOT an early riser by nature but my brain will not shut off and my anxiety is building up again like Mount Vesuvius at a salad bar of virgins.

Seeing that I have spent the last five days in the house with a feverish boy drawing trains, making him snacks, cleaning out closets and watching kids movies I suppose my anxiety is warranted. I have not written a word, I have not lifted a leg and I have not done a push-up or a downward dog, which means I am a bottle of beer after a good shake or three. The boy has been an angel, taking in stride the fact that he missed his birthday, his play dates AND three days of fun-never-stops school. He really is a rock star with a side of super hero and I bow to his badass-ness.

His fever finally broke two nights ago and he will be heading back into the Petri dish today, which means I am back on my treadmill of tail chasing. After the wacko attacko I had a few weeks ago I know I need to change something in my life. I cannot simply internalize all the stress and fear and disappointment of a freelancer’s existence and end up with an ulcer and hysterical blindness at the IN ’n’ OUT drive-thru. How would I eat a Double-Double animal style if I couldn’t find the call box in which to order and had no one to tell that I HATE lemon in my iced tea and to give me some fucking extra napkins so the inside of my car will not look like the pool house powder room at the Playboy Mansion after Hef’s 101^st birthday bash?

With all the terrible shit going on in the world it is more than clear that everyone, especially, Mrs. Roper over here, needs to step back and take stock of the good. And there is a plethora of good, an overflowing of the goody goods from this hand-me-down gift basket I call my life. The goodness is oozing all up in this shit like a Cadbury Egg on a hot, Easter Sunday.  Goody Goody gum drops are dropping from the sky but sometimes they miss the intended target of my mouth and land smack on my head, getting caught in my neglected, dark-rooted mop of hair and finding a magical way to make every strand as sticky and rank as Steven Tyler’s bedside tissue box at the W Hotel.

And it’s those errant sugary treats hiding in my out of control curls that I worry about. The tuition, the union dues, the grocery bills and the future are all twice-sucked gobstoppers that are choking me blue and crushing me into a fine, Pixie Stick powder. I want it all to stop but I know deep inside I am the only one who can make that go away. Will it be as simple as just giving up sugar and pooh-poohing real Mexican Coke and extra thick chocolate shakes? Can the answer be found in never again date-raping a jumbo box of Hot Tamales or forcibly fondling a bar of Valhrona dark chocolate?

No, the answer is in working harder, working better and simply working every angle to start working. Hey universe, if you are listening this bitch needs a fresh start, a new job and a bulk size bucket of Gummy Bears and Red Vines. Baby steps, baby. Baby steps.

I would love your vote so I can feel adequately cool among these great bloggers. Vote for My Mommy Bites every day until March 28th if you're feeling sassy. Click HERE  and thanks a zillion!!!!!!!!

Bumps In The Birthday Road

For Otto’s birthday today, the rain came in buckets and barrels, the marathon ran by, the traffic was jammed and the party was cancelled. The last minute play date was put in the trash, the out-of-town guests were steered away from the door and the party provisions were overflowing with no one to eat them. Otto’s fever spiked, his cough bellowed but the band played on.

We gave Otto a Bat Cave and a Bat Mobile and a Light Saber and a day on the sofa with movies and TV and hugs and kisses and cuddles. Dave picked up the pre- ordered cake and the pre-ordered balloons, making our living room look like the inside of a clown car with no clowns. Otto never complained, he never whined and he smiled throughout his feverishly stormy fourth birthday with nothing but a cheerful attitude and a happy heart.

As the late afternoon wound down and we started the bedtime ritual, he turned to me with a smear of bright, aqua frosting on his upper lip and a smudge of satisfaction on his face and said, “Mommy, this was the best birthday I ever had in the whole world!”

Looks like we all got gifts today. But mine was the best. 

You are the light of my life and the fire at my campsite. 

Happy Birthday, Monkey! 

Wet and Wild In The West

It is Otto's birthday week, a stack of stressful days in which I begin to make lists and unravel my intestines from all the worry of giving him a perfect party. Okay, when I say perfect that does not mean I would be eligible for that creepy reality show that features wacko, ill-fitting, Docker-wearing co-parents spending tens of thousands of dollars on birthday celebrations for their bubble-warped children. Please tell me you have seen Outrageous Kid’s Parties on TLC and please tell me you too, threw a dirty flip-flop at your flat screen when the mother of Little Jaxson Jam Jar turned to the camera and told America that she was spending $50,000 on a pirate-themed bash for her precious six year-old pineapple but had no intention of telling her bewildered and bankrupt husband. Must see TV at it's grossest.

No, my idea of perfection in party planning is supplying my guests with a trough of my homemade pasta salad that may or may not look suspicious to any four-year old but tastes as good as gold to a haggard parent with an appetite and anger issues. Along with that, I buy five pizzas cut into weirdly small slices, scatter the table with annoyingly healthy boxes of raisins, baby carrots and confetti, fill two platters with un-peeled Clementines and mini Fuji apples and buy a white trash cake that is as delicious and satisfying as a virginal bite of a Hostess Ding Dong, a Ring Ding or a Suzy-Q. (Twinkie's have been purposely omitted due to the fact I have ALWAYS felt they tasted like a twice-worn tube sock after a summer storm, toe-jam included.)

This year my list included buying and making items to help in activities that promoted action and adventure, as Otto is turning four and his desire to move, run, dance, propel and punch are par for the course. Granted, the party was to be a very, very small affair, only his male classmates. But, we were on track to do some really cool shit such as Piñata (duh), homemade Superman obstacle course (hello), relay race (boo ya) and gun range (sorry S. Palin, just kidding). 

As the week picked up speed, so did my colon. I made lists and lost sleep and bit nails and my thoughts ricocheted around my skull and I was no closer to feeling prepared than I had last month. Then, a classmate's mother told me that we would be throwing this little event on the same day as the L.A. Marathon, a traffic stopper, cock-blocker of monumental proportions. This little parade of speedy anorexics slices Los Angeles down the middle and chokes her off until both sides of Sunset Boulevard are blue in the face and gasping for putrid, polluted air. 

So, of course I called the train park and explained my situation and the man on the other end told me no other dates were available until May and then he assured me that the marathon was as easy to circumvent as a dead body on a bike path. I believed him and I breathed and I continued on my quest to make sure Otto had a kick-ass birthday, that was, until the next day. (Insert drum roll with screaming mother’s voice in background.)

I happened to catch a local weather report, something that rarely happens, due to my overt disdain for the weathermen in Los Angeles. This subset of G.I. jokes are formaldehyde-infused, over-tanned versions of the dudes who would face rape me in college after playing beer pong with shamrock-colored grain alcohol drinks instead of skunked beer. And, hearing them say things like “wet” and “precipitation” gives me a bad case of the un-fun flashbacks. Not to mention their female counter parts are a group of dense sigh posts whom, if you line them up tit to tit, resemble the Bratz Dolls discount shelf at Big Lots in Culver City.

Anyway, one of these mutated melanomas gave a quick overview of the week’s weather, ending with Sunday, March 20. And after all my planning and all my gnawing I see this map of misery pop up on the screen and tinkle right into my mouth. 

Mostly Cloudy	Mostly Cloudy	Sunny	Partly Cloudy	Rain
--	67°	67°	63°	62°
High	High	High	High	High
52°	51°	48°	47°	48°
Low	Low	Low	Low	Low

Needless to day we had to cancel the party with heavy hearts and a handful of guilt pellets. But, Otto has taken the news like a Bronze Medal winner and has been cheerful and amazing about the entire kerfuffle. Of course, we will make it up to him with a dump truck full of cupcakes, a breakfast burrito/pancake birthday morning, a new racecar, a puzzle and a plethora of birthday play dates in the coming weeks.

Lesson learned is simple. A birthday doesn’t have to be a park full of peanuts running around in circles slathered with electric blue frosting and pee stains. It can be as simple as a day with family, doused in kisses and camaraderie watching the rain outside, wash away the birthday blues.  

Vote Big and Vote Bouncy

Gross, isn't it, me begging over here while wearing dirty yoga pants, three day-old hair and a nursing t-shirt from 2007? Still, I need your love and would love your vote because I was just nominated for Top 25 Funny Mom Blogs at Circle of Moms. Click on the link below and vote for My Mommy Bites and make this biter very happy. And as a sign of my appreciation I give you a photo of the best t-shirt slogan since "Rock Out With Your Cock Out."

My huge thanks!

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once a day until March 28 and your boobs will look like these

Relax, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and then...

My few attempts to write down what my last week felt like has continually ended in a failed pile of random letters with a whiny after taste covered in old ketchup and cheap table salt. So, I did what I never do and just stepped back and waited until the noise stopped and my fingers started. And shit, looking down on these claws I sadly realize they need a manicure and a skin graph. Yet, only when hell freezes into a snow-cone will I get my cuticles pushed back and my nails painted because I refuse to waste money on prettying up my two, meaty farmer’s hands my long dead ancestors bequeathed me in their sturdy and strong ogre-appendaged DNA.

After my last blog (see last blog, complaint department 11 or list of lethargy) I thought things would perk up a bit emotionally. When rejection comes calling in this business of show I usually barf out a boo hoo and carry on. But as I had previously written, I had no carry on left in my carry-on. The tank was empty, the well was dry, and my Charlie had Sheened.

I spent a few days in bed with flu-like phantom pains. I spelled out my bruises in the blog. I brushed off the stubbed toes and went on my way. About four days later, still feeling low on gas but somewhat better, I went hiking in the canyon where I have gone every week for the past thirteen years. Now that Otto is able bodied and fiercely fast I have started taking him along to scale the heights and watch the Red Tail Hawks and ingénues circling their prey and hoping for a good catch and a full stomach. Otto loves this hike and has hoofed it many times with a mixture of awe and awesomeness no one could match.

On this particular day, as we climbed to the top of the first hill, my stomach suddenly felt as if I had beer-bonged a bucket of expired chicken curry. I continued walking, assuming that my over-priced Brie sandwich was the culprit. But before I could convince myself to never again spend ten dollars on a dollar’s worth of food, my chest tightened, my throat constricted and everything began turning white. I made sure we got to a safe landing a few yards away and placed Otto down next to me on a rock and began to see the clouds form into one, big marshmallow fluff sandwich.

For twenty minutes, 20, TWENTY minutes, I sat with my head between my knees trying to catch my breath and not faint. And in those 2O minutes, at least TWENTY people passed me by, not ONE stopping to see if I needed help. I never passed out completely, I never barfed and I never piddled in my Target yoga pants. But people, when you see a woman the color of a newly-poured sidewalk bent over gasping for air and clutching a four year old you stop and say SOMETHING, ANYTHING!!!!

“Hey there, pale face. You okay? Need some Smartwater? Want an M&M? What’s your sign? Are those real? Do you have an agent? Look at my new, completely original tattoo of an ancient Chinese symbol on my lower back just above my ass crack that means, cum what may.”

But no one said shit. I was lucid and I had water and enough food to last a fortnight but still. It was late in the afternoon and I couldn’t get down the mountain with Otto on my own while the world was spinning and my view was all cotton balls and Q-Tips.

Finally, a lovely, young lady and her brother stopped and insisted they were not going anywhere until I felt well enough to walk. They waited for half an hour. They talked to Otto. They reassured me that I was not ruining their hike and they walked us down the mountain, carrying my backpack and telling us all about their hometown of Detroit. That’s right, folks! They were NOT from L.A. but rather the Midwest, a crazy place where people stop and help strangers. I thanked the alien life forms profusely and managed to get back to the car and drive us both home without going back to the unhappy place that looked and felt like the inside of a tampon box.

CUT TO:

Cardiogram, blood tests, abdominal ultrasound, Dave missing a day of work and a suspicion of gallstones = No… Looks like wacko had the mother of all panic attacks.

And as all of you know when the shit hits the fan the fan gets dirty and much slower. The blades keep rotating but generates much less wind velocity while engulfing the room with a powerful odor that no one, not even a healthy, young, poop-eating pup, would want to inhale.

That is when the shit is obvious, like a seriously broken femur or a thrice-cracked patella or a gallstone the size of a matzo ball.  But when the shit is invisible and unidentifiable there is no stench, no waft of gross, no cloud of questionable sneaker treads. There is only an unpleasant and confusing feeling standing in your foyer next to the carpet where the real poop should be. Not being able to define what exactly has crippled you emotionally or bankrupted your buzz is the hardest thing about this hardest thing called life. I could say it was one event or even a handful of half-moments but that would be inaccurate at best.

Dave and I have both pursued this path in show business a long time.  And I have had my ass handed to me so many times in so many formats that I cannot keep track or keep count without an egg timer and an abacus. That is part of this business. I know that. You arrive straight out of college with a Little Debbie snack cake haircut, some crinkled up graduation money stuffed in your baby back-pack and a pair of high-waisted 501s hoping for fame, fortune and a ticket into the On-Your-Knees Olympics. If you’re lucky you will get a gig as the Payless Shoe Source spokes person long enough to buy a car that doesn’t catch on fire at cross-walks and health insurance that covers venereal wart removal, medically necessary nose jobs and questionable, un-Asian acupuncturists.

If you are unlucky enough, as most are in this wasteland of the wanting are, you will only work as often as a solar eclipse while struggling to find meaning in a found penny facing heads up and a shoulder shrug by an wrinkled, restless assistant behind a dirty-lensed audition camera.

Most would say, buck up or shut the fuck up. Shake it till you make it and keep on trucking. Really. How reassuring it is to know that every 70’s iron on t-shirt slogan can so perfectly and completely encapsulate my tangled emotional journey through a handful of hopeful and helpless years? Not very.

What is reassuring, what has gotten me through these last few weeks are the messages and conversations from my old faithful fillies, a handful of beautiful, treasured blog comments, a forever patient husband, who should have punched me in the shin when they said I was simply losing my shit after years of yo-yo, starving- artist living, and a great friend who got down and dirty with her pinch-hitting and ass-kicking by taking Otto for the majority of this past weekend.  Whatta hatta whattttt????

That sticky, chocolate-covered story is coming soon. But for now, I just want to say thanks for reading and speaking and hugging and listening and stopping and asking if I am okay and walking me down the mountain, no matter how slow I go. You all know who you are and what you did. And I am forever in your debt. And if and when any of your children tell you that they want to come to Hollywood and make movies or write movies or be in movies, lock them in their room until they have a Master’s degree and a reliable car.