Occupy My Head or 10 Things That This Noise In My Head Could Be (Circle no more than 10)

1)   The youngest Kardashian just got her horns

2)   The last good bra in my underwear draw just gave up on the elastic of it all

3)   The 99% is having a case of the Thursdays while the 1% tries to find fulfillment

4)   Bitter tastes better than butter but I like butter better

5)   Public versus private and the jackass is winning by an ear hair

6)   Application should apply to become a four-letter word

7)   The things I wished I’d said in that deflated girl-tionship

8)   Courtney Stodden’s Baby Alive laugh

9)   Hip, hip hurray!

10)  The quiet keyboard

Fort Dicks

There are certain times in one’s life that either force reflection or inspire it. A minor car accident, a random toe injury, a bout of junk food poisoning, a bird shitting on one’s new Rodart bullfighter jacket or an entire weekend of reorganizing and reconfiguring an apartment that has seen more personality changes than Sybil’s slower sister.

Otto turned a very pointy corner this past week that of a little boy graduating from a toddler bed to a big boy bed.  After a few too many nights this fall trying my best to read him a book in a spine crushing, pretzel-like fetal position we decided it was time. It had nothing to do with the fact that when we’d check on him late at night his legs would be melting off the side like a soggy Dali sketch of a rubber boy and his gummy bear appendages. No, it was really about his parents and how there legs felt.

We had been looking for months for a twin bed that would not only satisfy our needs for coolness and modernism but also storage and a certain bargaine-esque quality. Some friends insisted on Pottery Barn Kids but my taste for Cape Cod wainscoting, Nantucket Red bedding and thousand-dollar Amex charges deterred me instantly. Some chimed in with having a bed built to order but again, the cost was prohibitive as was the amount of energy it would take for me to form a sentence over the phone to a random carpenter I didn’t even want to meet.

At one point I fantasized about skipping off to one of the local flea markets that have always brought us great funk and serious junk as well as grade-A people watching and freak-following.  You arrive early, buy a mediocre breakfast burrito and a lemonade and watch as hoards of rich, Japanese hipster buy pounds of dead people’s dusty, vintage clothes and worn down, middle-aged former groupies haggle over Southwestern belt buckles and decorative Indian saris that they plan to sew into throw pillows and bed skirts in order to lure in the last of the washed up rock stars into their newly decorated tantric sex one-room apartment after meeting them at a Brentwood garden party to benefit the Limp and Lisp Foundation, a group who helps bring awareness to children who replace the "S" sound with the "TH" sound simply because one leg is shorter than the other. 

But the thought of spending half the day searching and bargaining for the right bed, and then strapping it to the top of my car in the searing heat, only to return home to spend two hours cleaning it with non-toxic, Clementine Method spray cleaner and an old INXS t-shirt stopped me before I even got on that bus of crazy. I knew that I was a turn-bed kind of lady and my only answer was IKEA.

Because we are cool, yet lazy and cheap parents, we decided on the full size pine bunk bed that can accommodate a sleepover, a tired parent, a massive menagerie of stuffed animals and become a fort anytime Otto wants to be alone with his thoughts. This way we do not have to return to the scene of the Swedish crime, a monolith of merchandizing that no doubt was the true inspiration for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy and buy him another bed made out of brittle baby trees and Nordic design sweat until he reaches pre-puberty, which at that time he will insist on a California King waterbed and a separate entrance.

The bed is amazing, Otto’s reaction was priceless and our place looks like Apartment Therapy 101. But because of that Goddamn wooden sleeping porch that now towers over Otto and his critter kingdom, we spent three days digging in, cleaning out and cursing quietly. But I have to admit it inspired me to tackle all the design issues I had with our place and forced me to face the linen closet and the corner of our bedroom that housed forty scripts and a bowl, yes I said BOWL, of baseballs hats that have caused me months of agitation and aggravation. I know that all boys love forts and bunk beds that turn into cotton caves but do they all have to love baseball hats? Can’t we please bring back the headband? They take up so much less room and soak up sweat as well as sexy looks. I still want to bone Bjorn Borg. Love that 40.

Rocky Mountain Horror

My pal, my confidant and my sounding board Kris went and got all married this past weekend and my family was lucky enough to be invited to the very small, very awesome wedding.  Dave spent two days making his balls to the basket homemade meat lasagna for the wedding dinner, which is second on the list of favorite things I love to put in my mouth.

24 hours passed and that sauce cooked down into a paste of perfection while I watched Dave make his own pasta dough and roll out sheets on our hand-me-down dining room table built for too bad. Our place smelled like a Russian bathhouse that served Sloppy Joes and hang jobs and that alone made my smile a few yards wider.

On Friday afternoon we over-packed the car and drove up into the mountains to our favorite little town where Kris and Sven’s wedding was to take place. This gem of cabin craziness is a place we have vacation many, many times with our friends Francois and Kate, two love lumps that introduced us to this paradise more than ten years ago.

After a crazy four hours in horrendous traffic we arrived at the rehearsal dinner at the local Mexican joint and toasted the bride and groom and giggled over bottled beer and old photos of the groom as the front man for Rammstein’s taller cousin.

We then drove out to the rental house where we were staying and where the ceremony would take place the next day. As Dave put Otto to bed a few of us helped            set the table and hide the rental owner’s knick-knack collection that one might find at a funeral home fire sale. Why do people who own rental vacation homes feel the need to boldly decorate using only dusty, plastic flower arrangements and gold leaf candle holders found at the bottom of the blow out sale bin at Tuesday Morning? Riddle me that, homeowner!

By midnight everyone was done for the night and we crawled into the lower bunk bed while Otto slept above us. At two a.m. Dave and I awoke to a sound no human should ever make or hear. It was as if Harvey Fierstein ate Brenda Vaccaro and then farted out Tara Reid while trying to tune a sitar made out of chalkboard fragments and fingernails clippings.

My usually beautiful sounding Otto coughed and cried and cackled as we both jumped up and held him while checking his vitals and his breathing and praying to the gods of OH SHIT that we knew where the closest hospital was. As Dave listened to Otto’s chest and checked to see if he had any blockages I Googled local hospitals only to find the nearest one forty-five minutes down the mountain in the middle of meth country. While GOOGLE gave us exact directions YELP gave us a low down on what the hospital was like.

“DO NOT GO TO THIS HOSITAL AT ALL COSTS!”

“FILTHY CONDITIONS, IGNORED FOR 13 HOURS. ALMOST DIED.”

“THEY LET ME PASS A GALLSTONE WITHOUT PAIN MEDICATION. BLACKED OUT NAKED.”

“HELP, I’M STILL TRAPPED UNDER A GUERNEY WEARING NOTHING BUT A DIRTY BACKLESS HOSPITAL GOWN AND THE GLUE I HUFFED FOR BREAKFAST!”

"GREAT CHINESE/ARMENIAN TACO STAND NEXT DOOR!"

Knowing that the area in question was home to more meth labs, dog-fighters and spray paint sniffers than most areas of California we wanted to avoid the local emergency room at all costs. Since Otto seemed to do better sitting up and didn’t have a fever we knew that he didn’t need an ambulance. But my motherly gut, the one filled with enchilada sauce and a ball of scared told me we needed to get him down the mountain and close to help if anything changed.

In less than five minutes we had the car packed and were racing down the mountain like fugitives fleeing from those dirty pigs. I drove the car because I get motion sickness in a broken hot tub and every other moving vehicle and I was as sober as a saint and fueled on fear. As I tried not to think of the worst-case scenario Otto continued to cough like a seal, weep like a willow and break my heart. Suddenly on the fifteenth, hairpin turn he began barfing into a CVS bag Dave found under the seat and continued until all manner of Mexican was out of his system. Then, as if on cue, he fell fast asleep peaceful and calm and exhausted.

Every few minutes I asked Dave to feel his chest until finally we were half way into our two and half hour drive and all seemed all right. Dave fell asleep holding Otto’s hand while I did my best to stay awake by slapping myself in the face, swigging lukewarm iced tea and listening to upbeat 80’s music that I knew had been written by a handful of one-hit wonders while on badly dressed cocaine binges.

It was the longest drive of my life. Every signpost seemed to say the same thing and solidify the fact that I was driving like mad but getting nowhere. All along the freeway towns sat up asleep in my eye line and mini-malls refused to admit defeat. With all the lights that dotted our path I knew we were back in uncivilized civilization and hospitals were near if necessary.

By 4:30 a.m. the landmarks were starting to sing a familiar song and my heart relaxed a bit knowing we were minutes from everything we knew. In a panic I took the wrong exit off the freeway but wound my way down side streets into the home stretch, a term I never saw as endearing or calming until then. I pulled the car up, unloaded the bags, ran upstairs and made up the sofa bed in Otto’s room and took a real breath for the first time in five hours. He was still asleep when Dave laid him down in his bed and I fell down next to him. His breathing was better, his cough had quieted a bit and we all collapsed into quiet.

(He would be diagnosed with The Croup the next morning and be healthy by Tuesday but how was I to know that in the dead of night on the top of Mount Far Away?)

Lying on that old, ripped pullout bed we cannot seem to get rid of I was sad that we would miss the wedding and bummed that Otto would miss out on his ring bearer duties. But I knew we had done the right thing for Otto as well as Kris. Who wants a barfing, coughing sicko and a frantic mother at their destination AWESOME wedding? And who wants to make the wrong decision in case the worst happened?

I was still awake staring at Otto’s chest going up and down when suddenly someone seemed to give me permission to think about something other than Otto’s well being and my paralyzing fear. I began to drift into a foggy sleep smelling like old Jack in the Box wrappers and terror and as exhaustion enveloped my withered brain I wondered why we still lived in the same apartment where Dave proposed all those years ago. Is it sentimentality? Is it mental-molasses? Is it laziness or is it just habit?

And then I remembered that six blocks away stands one of the best hospitals in the country, the same hospital where celebrities overdose, Boob Jobs R’ Us has its own wing and where little, wonderful Otto was born.

I think we’ll stick around this hood until he’s eighteen. Then I can move to the mountains and not worry so much.

To My Friends

Just thinking of Boston and my summer and my friends and well, I love you, Steph, Chrissy, Heather and the east. And how cool are The Faces and Ronnie Lane and that guitar? Ladies, please!!!!

Get Your Money For Nothing And Your Chicks For Free

I was minding my own business, Googling and gathering information about kindergarten applications and being organized and on top of it when my eyes spotted this little factoid on one of the websites for what is considered one of the BETTER schools in the L.A. area. 


"Here at the BLANKITY BLANK SCHOOL FOR THE BLANK the elementary school tuition is $26,120."


THIS IS FOR KINDERGARTEN, for Christ's sake!!!!!!!!!


Now that hurricane-like gust of wind in my sails has now diminished to a silent but deadly toddler fart and my enthusiasm and focus is at an all-time low I will drink a cup of green tea, eat a twice-rejected stick of string cheese and cry in the shower. 

The Voice In My Head

There is a voice that creeps in more often than not and I like it as much as curdled milk shakes and Kardashian nuptials news coverage. The inside cranial shrieking started long before motherhood and always came in the form of mini-tantrums and lack of patience pity parties. Note: I am a blast at an endless red light as well as in the back of a long, winding public bathroom line at Target and the DMV on a Tuesday morn.

The voice becomes louder and sweatier when I cannot find something I need. CUE 1983 ad of sound blowing hair back and picture me but less hip and more angry. For instance, if something is in a “safe place” which is a place I stupidly frequent often, and I need it immediately but cannot find it I will become unglued and half-cracked. My brain always tells me that I will remember the location of said item but when the fateful moment comes I have a better chance of finding a four-leaf clover AND a pot of gold inside the asshole of the littlest Keibler elf than unearthing the item in question. Be it the torn vinyl checkbook or my cheap, lucky silver ring or the twice-washed garage door opener or my overbearing and loud car keys, I am batting in the low 100’s.

Yet the real singing telegram in my cabeza grande occurs when I simply forget to do something simple yet important. Did I sign Otto up for school lunches? Did I pay that overdue medical bill that is chipping away at my mental stability? Did I put a tampon in and if so, did I put two in by mistake? Did I return that email to that person whose name escapes me and who always gives me shit as if they have a memory like an elephant and never make mistakes? Did I book all the school tours for kindergarten next fall? Where is my school list binder notebook filled with EVERY urgent tidbit of information that a good mother needs on her at all times during this very cutthroat application season for the snotty Kindergarten rat race? Am I a good mother or have I melted into the bad column because I cannot find the fucking notebook anywhere? Why do I think I am on top of it and then keep setting off the new alarm at friend’s house instead of putting in the code and not brain-farting a basic command? Why do I now question my house envy? Why have I gone all the way to the other side of the Jones’ keeping up scale by thinking that I want to live in a yurt and subsist on Table Water crackers and tap water instead of constantly searching for the next meal and bottled water and a fancy side dish that was just featured in Bon Appetite and provides roughage as well as Vitamin D? Is kale really food? Are my undies really clean or only half-clean? Where are my fucking ear buds? Where am I?