This Made My Day

Now I want a snowmobile for Christmas and some bigger balls.

Let Go of My Lego

On the weekends at our house we like to be lazy and sloth-like and watch videos and dream of floating in space. Today, I share with you a movie version of how Saturday always feels around here. And it feels oh so good.

SHIT I LIKE @ Stuff Crush

SHIT I LIKE

This is shit I like. You may think I am paid to advertise these products. Nope. You may think I am a gross, over-consumer Sometimes but mostly no. You also may think all this shit blows. Maybe. But each item is something I have been given or purchased recently that hides my exhaustion or cleans up my dirty life trail or bubbles my bonnet or helps me bake my balls off. And maybe you may like some of this shit after all.

No more pig eyes, ladies@!

tiny bubbles, huge smiles

Dyson DC 25... sucks so good!

The greasy, 80's yellow of my youth

read it and wipe

Oh, I Love You Suzanne

For those of you who know me well, you will understand why I love this video with the passion of a tween in Twitter. Having been intimate with the ThighMaster and its Master back in the early 90's I can only say, Hurray! And not to rub it in but I am a proud owner of a signed copy this book of poetry and that warms every part of my little, black heart and my big-ass bookcase. Enjoy my hero Kristen Wiig reading from the poet laureate of the side pony tail.

Good Grief

In the beginning of the week I felt like we were back into a normal rhythm of cranky carpools and dirty hands when, BOOM, the events over the holiday break finally hit me.  After running into a mom at school who offered her condolences for our losses, my eyes filled with tears and I choked up as if I had taken a large bite of a ham sandwich on stale bread and my arms were too short to reach for a cold, Mexican Coke to wash it down. At first I thought I was hacking on the exhaust fumes farting out from a $120,000 white Mercedes monolith at the carpool, a sparkly, imposing vehicle that looked like a shiny, Kardashian Maxi-Pad on mag wheels.

But as the ferocious feminine product drove away in a cloud of environmental irresponsibility my tears were still there and I realized that I was simply sad and bluesy, not because someone would actually purchase a vehicle that needed to be washed three times a week by a pit crew of cleaning ladies but because I was as despondent as a hung-over jazz singer the morning after a rainy gig at a taco stand.

Having lost my father-in-law and my grandfather in a matter of days made for a very intense crawl through the Christmas break. It was sad, exhausting, surreal and stupefying, much like taking brown acid at a Christian rock concert. Holed up in New Jersey, Dave, Otto and I held my mother-in-law’s hand as people came to the house and ate piles of pastrami, Edible Arrangement fruit balls and Shop Rite cookies shaped like Christmas trees and Hanukah menorahs. The cocktails flowed, the stories giggled and the days were hazy and as happy as could be under the circumstances.

I have tried to write down the details and the feelings and draw a few pictures of the stops along this journey of death but every time I start my heart gets tight and I feel like I just swallowed some bad shrimp at a Sizzler salad bar. While I was front and center for my father-in-law’s last moments, my grandfather was two thousand miles away and nowhere in my emotional view. I posted obituaries on Facebook and read the wonderful comments and supportive quips but somehow I cannot seem to write the stories that I really need to write about two men I knew so well.

This week my dreams were filled with images of these two majestic men and the image of my parent’s slow decline. This macabre admission leads me to believe that I am starting to absorb all that happened in real time and real color. Death is as clear as Saran Wrap and as real as rain and now, for the first time in my life, I know what it looks like and feels like and smells like. It is not a C.S.I. Miami close-up of a hooker’s high heel and a jailed john after a bad night and it is most certainly not a staged car wreck with well-dressed detectives drinking coffee and eyeballing evidence.

It is a real someone you love who finally stops fighting for breath and stops being in pain. It is years of a colorful life and crazy experiences and complicated friendships and ferociously funny family gone in a single moment of exhalation. It is a tragic and heartbreaking and beautiful and blessed snapshot all wrapped in starched hospital bedding that will be rewashed and reused for someone else you will never meet. It is life’s laundry pile on the delicate cycle and as it washes and spins and finally stops you realize that now, it all has to be tumble-dried and folded and put away for another day.

Circles and Squares

Do I start from the beginning and go into crazy detail about the last month of our lives over here or do I skip over it and get straight to the Beyonce bashing? Do people want to know why I have not written a word or spit up a syllable for nearly four weeks or should I simply rattle on about the immediate concerns of my day?

I will skip to concern #1.

Concern #1 - Why would anyone name their baby after a rare protruding varicose vein-like condition mainly found in pregnant senior citizens, unwed mothers of triplets and blind circus performers?

Exhibit A: What exactly is Blue Ivy Miller?  Me thinks it a cheap, blueberry-flavored beer that will be introduced by Miller High Life at this year’s Super Bowl half time show starring Madonna, Madonna’s new baby boyfriend back-up dancer and Beyonce’s baby daddy’s new microbrewer manager named Clyde. Why can’t celebu-freaks just give birth to a baby and name it a baby-like name instead of birthing an industry inside a baby covered in a terrible moniker slathered in product placement juice?

Concern #2 – Who will put away our Christmas decorations this year? It is nearly February on my emotional calendar and I have no intention of acknowledging the fact that we missed Christmas this year and never got to sit around with cocoa and stare longingly at our artificial tree from CVS that smells like a freshly opened package of Krazy Straws and Lysol.

Concern #3 – Should I worry that I don’t give a hairy rats rump that we missed a moment of the holiday and that I am frighteningly grateful to have been able to get on a plane in a moment’s notice and get to Dave’s father before the end? Where has my Cringle gone and why do I feel oddly blessed?

Concern #4 - Since I just spent two hours at my child’s school listening to a presentation on how to avoid pedophiles and their up-the-sleeve tricks, will I sleep well tonight or any other night from now until the day Otto races off to college on a full sports scholarship and leave me in a puddle to suspect every one of his coaches, teachers, neighbors, friends, uncles and stuffed animals of being a pervy, creepy, No Way, Jose kinds of dudes?

Concern #5 – Is No Way, Jose a racist statement and if so, what will replace it in my velveteen vernacular? Oh, I think it’s okay to say that since I have a brother named Jose who drives a cab.

Concern #6 – Oops.