Petunia Face

Sunday Night

2012-01-29T19:12:00.001-08:00

I could write a bunch of pretty words here to distract you from the fact that really I just want to post a few pics of my kids like oh! Shiny thing! Insert pithy observation here, something vaguely smart-sounding here. Or I could just say this: check out how much my kids look like each other. (And how freaking delicious they are.)
Above is a photo of Zoey at 7 months. Below is a photo of Ozzy this past weekend. Like a boy/girl bookend, n'est ce pas?This weekend also saw Zoey's continued obsession with Wednesday from The Addams Family. On Saturday I told her to get dressed because she had a play date at a friend's house. When she came out of her room, this is what she was wearing, complete with a paper cut-out collar taped to her dress. Since then she has hijacked this Tibetan wooden carving of hands that I have and is calling it Thing and taking it everywhere.Needless to say, this is the napkin I drew to put in her lunchbox tomorrow...So that's that. Let's pretend I have something to say here that wraps this whole thing up with one of those bows with the curly-cue ends. Yeah, like that.

WTF Wednesday: Increasing Mass One Post At A Time

2012-01-25T08:56:00.001-08:00

I have had Nervous Tummy for a week now, the kind that makes me pause and think is it this? That? No, it must be the Other. Everything ok with the kids, Bryan, Nacho’s fur growing back nicely. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something’s not quite right, and so I scan reports on the Solar Storm and radiation, planes being re-routed and Aurora Borealis, even though I live on the ground at Latitude 38. I can’t help but hope that the charged particles from the giant coronal mass ejection are what’s to blame, patchouli oil hoo-ha flakiness be damned.

I also read the other day that eReaders actually grow heavier the more books you download, the data stored by trapping electrons. While the number of electrons doesn’t change, it takes more energy to hold them in place than to let them free. Microjoules and attograms magical like fireflies, and this thought makes me feel funny inside.

If this is true—and it is because the internet says so—then what about our brains? What is the weight of thought?

I totally get that this is like whoa, heavy, man, too much of a fucking Fiona Apple song circa 1996 shut up already, so there is also this Kate Spade dress that I really, really want but cannot afford if you want to buy it for me. Who knows? One of these days some stranger might say sure, yeah, just let me know what size and where to send it, and I will give a twirl in my shiny new dress in this silly new planet spinning, spinning, spinning.

What's a 5 Letter Word That Starts With an E?

2012-01-22T19:24:00.000-08:00

We're totally that couple in the restaurant that doesn't talk. You know, the ones who sit across from each other and look down at their plates silently as they eat. And when I say we, I mean you and me.

I have nothing to say to you right now. We've all been there, right? Forced to look up and across, public silence somehow a strain, to ask when's the last time you changed the oil in your car? Because that is all you can think of.

When you're the other couple--the one that laughs and kisses and feeds each other forkfuls of egg--you feel pretty smug when you see us, but I know better. I know that to sit across from someone silently while eating eggs means you love them comfortably. Even pasta. Definitely a burrito. I'm about to have an It's-It myself. And comfortable love is the best kind of all.

It's been almost 10,000 miles since my last oil change. I know, I know. Don't nag. I need to organize my closet. And then there's this, too.
Ozzy has surrendered to his crib. And the mere fact that I just blogged about it, even if it wasn't braggy at all, means that tonight he will wake up and scream until we bring him into our bed. That's just the way the universe works. I'm pretty sure that's what Carl Sagan was always going on about.

So yeah. No biggie. Go back to your crossword puzzle.
love,
S

Unsigned

2012-01-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

The Guilt of (this) Working Mom takes shape in many forms. In the nutella with bread Zoey gets each morning despite the fact that it's not part of a balanced breakfast no matter what the commercial says. In the way I practically make out with Ozzy the minute I walk through the door, holding him while I shuffle around the house because my lower back has seized up. In the little dance I do in front of my house each morning; Zoey watching through the picture window as I blow kisses, then hugs, then I love you in American Sign Language which always makes me feel a little like I'm listening to Metallica, the difference only in the inclusion of a thumb. Three times mommy! Do it three times today! And so I do it while cars drive past, mwah, mmmhug, a flash of fingers, mwah, mmmhug, a flash of fingers, mwah, mmmhug, a flash of fingers. As if I am going off to war and not just walking to the bus stop.

Long ago I made the mistake of drawing on the napkin that I put in Zoey's lunch box, a princess or something, I don't know. The next day she asked for a pirate, and then a spider, a bat, castle, mountains, fish, stars, rainbows. Before I knew it I could not not draw a picture on her napkin, each night thinking what should I draw for tomorrow? 10 o'clock tired and realizing shit, I forgot to draw something, pulling out a pen and sketching a skeleton in October, turkeys in November, Santa and snowflakes, my favorite: elves having a snowball fight. And then last week I found a zippered compartment in Zoey's lunch box that I didn't know was there. I opened it and found a stash of old napkins.Those are my favorites, Zoey said when I asked why they were there. I can't throw those away because you're famous, she said.
I'm not famous, I told her, but she insisted I was. Said that all her friends loved my napkins, that at the beginning of lunch they crowded around her to see what it would be that day, that I was a famous drawer and a famous mommy, and you know where this is going, right?
I am not the best artist. Not the best writer or the best person, not the smartest, most beautiful, not even the worst or the ugliest, dumbest or sluttiest. Not the estiest of anything, really. But in that moment I was super-superlative more than most and then some. Because every day while I am in a meeting maybe, or eating a tasteless sandwich dropping crumbs on my keyboard, every day while I am on the 21st floor of a building my daughter is nine miles away at noon thinking I am a famous mommy, and that right there is everything.
So yes, it seems I will be drawing on napkins every weeknight until Zoey, and then Ozzy is out of school. Bunnies and cats, maps, mice, people with very big eyes and cupcakes. I will draw on napkins until they tell me to stop, beg me, mom, you have got to stop sending napkins to my dorm, to my work, to my husband, to my wife. And I will smile the smile of someone who knows she is good at what she does. Because I am their mommy, and they made me famous.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a napkin to go draw. (I'm thinking raccoon.)

Couldn't Drag Me Away

2012-01-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

Be forewarned: I am a quivering mass of exposed tissue tonight, nerves lifting slightly in the salt air. Zoey is having a slumber party at her Grandma DD's, our house now much too quiet. I cannot help but think of 13 years from now when she might leave to live somewhere else. True, I have PMS. Truer still, I have eaten 4 Cadbury Cream Eggs today. Still. 13 years ago I was in grad school. I wrote short stories and wore red clogs hand-painted with flowers. I still have those clogs and just the other day was thinking I should wear them again in the spring. With jeans?
13 years is a very short time.

So I will tell you this: Wild Horses is one of our Tickle Back Songs, sometimes by The Sundays, though I do prefer The Stones. This video is real and raw and lovely, even if the nodding is not so much of sleep but smack, I suspect.

Then there is this: tomorrow is the night we have set for Ozzy to sleep in his crib. A modified Cry It Out with me right there patting his back and sshhh-ing. I have had nervous tummy for the last week in anticipation, only now realizing that this may be the last night he sleeps in our bed. Because this is also True: the night full of syntactical colons and dramatic statements. The Last Night. I don't know if I can do any of this.

Remember this? Zoey was talking in her sleep the other night--she does that a lot. Mumbo jumbo nujka trah pa? And then as clear as day: I farted on mommy's face. The next morning I asked her if she remembered her dream and she said she couldn't tell me, that it would make me sad. Would it make me sad because you farted on my face? I asked, but she said no, no it wasn't that, and still hasn't told me.

But I remember. And this. A video from 3 years ago. Because 3 years is the same as 13 in that you cannot hold on to either one.

Sometimes it seems there aren't enough Cadbury Cream Eggs to go around.
xo,
S

Where's Winona?

2012-01-11T06:26:00.000-08:00

What if Angie Everhart and Kate Mara had a baby with someone really smart and funny who sits in her office chair like a pretzel? (Seriously--torques her leg all the way around.) I mean, aside from problems with the space/time continuum and actual science-y stuff, you’d get my friend slash colleague, Abbey. Wanna meet her? ‘Cause she just launched a blog and it’s rad. Whereswinona.com. Totally different and fun and pink, a fabulous read, if I do say so myself. In her own words:

Action, intrigue, hot dudes with rippling abs. What more do you want?

I’ve got huge news—I’ve finally launched my blovel! A blovel (in case I haven’t blabbed your ear off about it yet) is a novel that’s posted on a blog, which means:

A) It’s free.

B) You can read it at work and pretend like you’re working.

C) It has pictures. Woohoo!

Think of it as an interactive ebook. There are pics, audio, and the whole thing happens in real time. Every blog post is written by the main character. Readers can make comments to her in the comment section, and other characters in the story will be also commenting there so you’ll get their side of the story as well. You’ve never read anything like this before. It’s going to be off the hook!

Speaking of the hook…

This particular blovel is the heartwarming story of a teenage girl named Agnes who is forced into searching for a missing popstar named Winona Darling in order to win the heart of the boy she loves. That is the whole reason she has started this blog. The problem is the boy is kind of douchey and Winona, it turns out, might have been murdered. On top of that Agnes also has some serious competition—former-child-star-turned-celebrity-blogger Tyler Dash. Yes, he’s good-looking if you’re into tan, Venice Beach types with abs like metal siding. But Agnes is not. She’s looking for a Harvard man, and if the only thing that stands between her and summering in Hamptons is a rat-bastard-celebrity-blogger then that dirty hippy is going to go down—hard.

Did I mention, there are also pictures?

If you know of anyone else who enjoys young adult fiction, mystery fiction, humorous fiction, vampire fiction,* gay BFFs in fiction, pug fiction, reality shows, Angela Lansbury, discussing food allergies at length, cheesecake, or publishing, then please forward their way.

I’ll be posting daily Monday through Friday. If you don’t get to it right away just go to whereswinona.com, click the Start button star in the left hand corner and it’ll take you right to the beginning.

Abbey

*Okay so there’s no vampires per se but it does take place in Hollywood, which is filled with bloodsuckers so in that way it qualifies.

Did I not tell you she’s rad?

So what are you doing still reading this? I've got nothing of my own to say today. Check out whereswinona.com. You can thank me later.

xo,

With Love in Her Eyes and Flowers in Her Hair

2012-01-06T05:26:00.000-08:00

It’s my favorite moment of the day, I think, when she is in bed and we listen to what we call the Tickle Back Song. It’s not just one song but many, and for weeks we will obsess together over a certain one, play it each night, sometimes twice, cuddled together in her bed as I lazily scratch her back and sometimes sing. Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems…lately we’ve been getting the Led out, listening to “Going to California” by Zeppelin, and there is something so wistful about Robert Plant’s voice that speaks to me as I lay with my girl who is growing up so fast, her body long and lean and leaving me slowly. I like to think that one day maybe twenty years from now she will absentmindedly hear these songs and remember what it felt like to have her mom lightly trace daisy petals across her shoulder blades each night.

I think maybe on Fridays I might post some of our Tickle Back Songs, if that’s ok with you. I want to remember everything about everything, and this is the only way I know how.

Nigh-Night.

xo,

And Just Like That! It Was January.

2012-01-03T20:21:00.000-08:00

Do you care that I resolve to drink more water in 2012? Be more affectionate with my husband? Save money, get Ozzy to sleep in his crib, sail? Cause I hardly do and I'm me.

I do not much care for January. A cold month known more for what it is not--the holidays, spring, awesome--than for what it is. Incidentally, I think of the word "socks" whenever I hear the phrase "it is what it is" because I once thought the phrase in Spanish "es lo si que es" was pronounced as one would spell out the word "socks," s, o, c, k, s, until my Colombian friend told me it was actually pronounced "sahla-esquilalah-sexy," or something that sounded nothing like what I thought it did. I also think I've told you that story before which is apropos of January, a month made of stories you realize you've already told halfway through the telling. Socks, I say.

But I know I've not told you this: tonight on the bus I had the indescribable urge to pinch the woman sitting next to me. Hard. She sat down while talking on her phone, saying loudly that she was getting sick, had a sore throat, hack hack, fuck, sniffle, jabber jabber, phlegm, blah. So I squeezed my eyes shut and tried very hard not to breathe her in for 9 miles, thinking that surely closing my eyes accounted for something seeing as how they're mucous membranes and all. Also? When you think to yourself do not touch your face, whatever you do, just don't touch your face, suddenly your nose will itch and your lips will actually kind of quiver.

I am not good at public transportation. Or January. Or speaking Spanish.
28 days until February.

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

xo,
Camus & Susannah

Tradition: Year 4

2011-12-23T21:59:00.000-08:00

Tonight I forced Zoey to put her hair in ponytails.
2011
Even though she hated it, said it itched and made her look like a baby, I parted her hair in the middle and pulled the two divided sections into elastic bands.
2010
Two minutes! I said, and then we can take it out.
2008 (not pictured: 2009)
It's tradition, I told her, and then explained what that meant.
2007
So when I'm a teenager you'll do this? she asked, when I am a grown up? When you are dead and a skeleton, you'll make me wear my hair in ponytails for a picture in front of the Christmas tree?

Yes, I said. Yes, yes and yes.
(Although I'm still undecided if Ozzy's hair will also be in ponytails for this pic once he gets hair.)

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

xo,
S

The Poo that Broke the Camel's Back (The Lesser Known Dromedary Tale)

2011-12-21T21:16:00.000-08:00

If you haven't noticed the www is chock full o' sparkle right now. Sequins, sprinkles, mistletoe and merry, fa la la la la la fuck me. Yesterday I woke up in a literal pile of shit. I'm not talking Rachel Zoe every-other-word literal which is not even literal but laughable, no--actual real literal human excrement. Stay with me here. Because Ozzy still sleeps with us, and around 4am Zoey shifted in her sleep--wait--did I also mention Zoey crawls into bed with us every night around 2am? Yes. For the most part Ozzy, Zoey, Bryan and I sleep (or rather just kind of line up in a row overnight) in one bed. So Zoey shifts in her sleep and up wafts this stench of gah, but I was trying super hard to stay asleep so I just incorporated the smell into my dream in denial of the diarrhea. For the next two hours every time someone so much as moved a toe it smelled like ass death but I was so goddamn tired I pretended it wasn't happening. When the alarm finally went off I looked down at Ozzy who looked back at me with an--again with the literal--literal shit-eating grin on his face and I finally saw that he was caked in poo. It was so bad that I had to cut off his pajamas like a paramedic so I wouldn't fling yet more shit everywhere. I'm running out of words for shit here.

Which leads me to this: HELP.

This is the first and last time Ozzy ever slept in his crib. Circa September? It lasted maybe an hour.

People of the internet, this is what I want for Christmas: tell me how to get Ozzy out of my bed. Zoey is easier. I can handle Zoey. But Ozzy?

Ozzy must sleep with a nipple in his mouth. And it must be my nipple. He won't take a pacifier so night after night I torque my body to poke a boob into his mouth even though my milk dried up months ago. Needless to say my back is killing me and I have actual porn-y thoughts of sleeping alone with my knees drawn up to my chest. Oh yeah baby, I'm sleeping hard. I haven't reached REM sleep in almost 7 months.

I'm willing to slather his crib sheet with banana-flavored YoBaby if that'll keep him in there. What I'm not willing to do is hardcore Cry It Out.

So please. Pretty please flocked with fake snow and frosting to make this (literal!) shitty post fit in with the rest of the seasonal bloglandia cheer--please tell me how I can get Ozzy to sleep in his crib without any tears.

Fitfully, Shitfully, Titfully Yours,
Susannah

Wake Up and Smell the Routine

2011-12-14T19:46:00.000-08:00

This is how my day was: wake up at 4am because Ozzy won't sleep. My bus is late. On Market Street a homeless man yells UGLY, and although there are maybe 12 other people standing by and the sidewalk itself is covered in loogies, I feel certain he is calling me ugly. Forget my lunch. Eat handfuls of butter cookies and peppermint bark from gift baskets sitting in the office. Feel sick. Go to the bathroom and get my period, breaking a year and a half pregnancy-induced proverbial dry spell. Zoey's school calls--she has a fever. Bryan picks her up. Feel like a bad mom. Have one of those moments in a group conversation when you start to talk but realize nobody is listening so you awkwardly look around and then trail off your sentence? Start again, but still no one is listening. Stop. Start again. Stop. On the way home the bus driver yells at me when my phone rings.
My day sucked. This is also how my day was: wake up at 4am because Ozzy wants to chat. We stare at each other and smile for 10 minutes straight, and I realize it is maybe the most intimate thing I have ever done. Zoey wakes up and we cuddle on the couch to watch Babar. The bus is warm. The barista at Starbucks remembers my name and is genuine. At work I catch a typo. Free peppermint bark. On a whim I type "Last Christmas" by Wham! into Pandora and spend the afternoon listening to wonderfully terrible holiday music. At home Zoey's eyes are two glazed donuts, her temperature 101 degrees. I kiss the hot palms of each hand and she goes to sleep at 6. Because he left work early to pick up Zoey, Bryan has to go back to his office, so I eat a dinner of five Pfeffernüsse alone in the kitchen with Ozzy. Five Pfeffernüsse, five Pfeffernüsse. I say it out loud a few times and the powdered sugar puffs a bit like a dragon. Ozzy thinks this is hysterical. He eats sweet potato and peas.
My day was awesome.

Both of these are true, the cognitive dissonance of my day. Of every day, really. What happened and what I choose to tell. Neither of them the wrong answer but both of them right. How was my day? What will I say? I believe in the value of both.
How was your day?

Xox, The Lastnameheres

2011-12-11T19:47:00.000-08:00

One boxed set of 50 with a glaring typo, a corrupted spreadsheet of addresses and later a painfully burnt palm right before having to address the final set, and I freaking did it. I sent out our 2011 holiday cards:
That's it people: my year in a snapshot. You better believe this one's getting framed.
From mine to yours,
Peace

My Madeline

2011-12-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

I was thinking today of jelly beans, of a certain creek a few streets from where I grew up. I was thinking of Reagan and how he liked jelly beans, how I thought it mandatory for a president to endorse a food group. Carter with his peanuts and Reagan with jelly beans, each of those an actual food group to me at 10, how I knew then that I could never be president because I did not have a signature food much less a group or a political party. I'm guessing I was 10, because it was a year of rainbows and alligator shoelaces, the year of jelly beans. For my birthday my mom had bought necklaces as party favors, gold chains with a row of plastic jelly beans that hung down, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, in a rainbow like that. I don't remember anything about the party or what I got, just those cheap plastic jelly bean necklaces and how much I loved mine, how the jelly beans felt in my mouth when I pulled the necklace into my lips, the dull tink of plastic and teeth. How one day walking home from somewhere I stopped at the chainlink fence over the creek to see how far the water had risen and when I got home it was gone.Later, or maybe it was before, a neighbor said that her brother had found a dead teenage girl in that creek. She had slit her wrists, and though I did not see the girl's body I saw slick leaves stuck to white skin. The romance of something horrible that was far enough away that I only thought of my necklace whenever I passed the creek, how for years I peered over the railing to see if I could spot the rainbow I had lost.

Incidentally, in high school I kissed a boy who ate Very Cherry Jelly Bellies and then blew them out his nose on demand. He had pretty green eyes despite his soft palate being too closely connected, so once after he gave me a ride home we kissed not because we liked each other because we didn't, but because we were two teenagers in a car and I was getting out.

I wish I still had that rainbow jelly bean necklace, and somewhere somebody wishes that dead teenage girl were still alive.

6 months

2011-11-30T20:59:00.000-08:00

Dearest Ozzy,

Bubba. Buddy. Mister. Love. It is 9pm, which means there are 3 hours left in your 6 month birthday. I like to quantify things, which you probably already know about me. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I love you? 10 being squishing a mouse in my pocket-love? 417,000 to the power of you. I have also never been good at math. You smell like the color of cream, of warm sheets, wet gums, of things multiplied and growing.

I look at this photo and can't help but think that one day this will be the direct gaze staring at me from a graduation pic, a wedding photo, from the corner of a business card should you become a real estate agent, I don't know. Just this: there you are. My boy. All boy. I don't know how much is me putting gender on your everything, but you are: such a boy. The way you laugh when your sister makes a loud noise, your stance before you even know how to stand.

At night you sleep in our bed. You fuss and grunt, babble, call out until I push my boob into your mouth, and then you breathe deeply, sigh, sleep. There is no other way to put it, this dance, nothing poetic about poking my nipple around in the dark across your face until I feel your wet mouth open. I'm sorry to embarrass you already but it's funny to think of the first time you encounter a "real" girl's boob, how I think you will push yourself into it greedily and then fall instantly asleep once you make contact.

Sorry.

Moving on. You like airplanes and cats, carrots, the window down when we drive. You are big. 91st percentile, and lately you have started to do this backstroke thing across the floor, opting not to crawl quite yet but to push yourself laying down on your back like a fish. Oooo. You sound like an owl, my backward fish-owl boy who smells of cream of wheat and soft.

183 days, give or take, like I said: I suck at math. A lifetime is what it is, these last 6 months, yours. Because I am just that: yours.

Love,
Mommy

Thank You.

2011-11-22T20:30:00.000-08:00

Truth: I used to not like Thanksgiving. What with all the family dynamics, dysfunction, all those dishes to wash. I did not particularly like turkey, the stuffing heavy with slivered mushrooms ground, impossible to pick out. Pumpkin pie is only good the first few fork-fulls, you know, pecan pie tasty if it weren't for the actual pecans. No, I did not like any of it until now. This second. Today, with a kindergartener. Hands traced into toms, feathers glued to gourds. This hat made from bunched up paper bags so that it looks as if she has two turkey legs on top of her head. And that freaking smile.

I guess finally I get it. The gratitude. The giving, the on-my-knees, no way, why me, how did I get here, how am I so lucky? The kiss their cheeks by the fire, a quick inhalation of laughter, the actual taste of thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

As an Aside (And as a Title), I Would Love to Surprise My Dad With His 1972 International Scout But I'm Thinking It's a Goner

2011-11-21T20:49:00.000-08:00

Bryan does this annoying thing when we watch movies. That is, if there is so much as the slightest possibility of someone dying, like maybe the mother starts to cough a little and it's obvious that in the next 90 minutes she is going to die of lung cancer because duh, people don't cough in movies unless death is imminent, then Bryan sits up and looks back at me. To see if I'm crying. He looks at me with this smirk on his face that says you are such an emotional fish, except of course when I push him away he says what? You are cute! It's because you're so cute. Consequently I have not been able to cry during a movie in quite some time and feel totally constipated.

So last night I showed him this 5 minute flick and watched his eyes get seriously shiny.

Back in the day when I used to wear men's vests to school, also known as 1990, Bryan had a `75 Chevy Caprice (which istotallyalmostthesamething as an Impala if you so much as bring up the difference to him). He spray painted a fishbone across the hood and God help me if Zoey is anything like me, but for some reason I found that fishbone-painted Caprice sexy, even if it did start with a screwdriver. So there's that.

And before you get all jaded consumer--believe me, I went there, too--apparently the brothers started the quest to find their father's Impala and only contacted Chevy to see if they wanted to film the reaction. Their father was indeed miked, but told that they were filming a piece about three family generations when his car pulled up.

So let your eyes shine on.
xo,
S

Gimme Gimme

2011-11-15T21:15:00.000-08:00

I think I may have given up. That is: once upon a time I yearned for high heels. Strappy numbers in gold. Now I want these sensible shoes, something I can really rock the shit out of at the grocery store:Clean up on aisle pretty please. Size 8. Black. Just sayin'. Actually, you know what? Forget it. I can't wait for someone to buy these for me for Christmas. Purchasing...now.

Then there's this beanie. Don't even. I know it has a pom pom, I SEE the pom pom. It is yellow, yes, the pom pom is yellow which makes it a yellow pom pom and still I want it.
Also? This flannel nightshirt from Little Larry Bean. Size large, monogrammed, traditional 3 letter style with last initial in the middle: SMC. Let's see: Uggs, a pom pom beanie and large monogrammed flannel L.L.Bean pj's...I'm painting quite the sexy picture of myself aren't I?Yeah baby. Well then, let's kick this up a notch. Because I also want these Super Skinny Sparkle Jeans (take it from me--the pic doesn't do the sparkle justice). They're only $36.95, but the problem is they're from the kids section at Gap. Yeah. I bought them for Zoey and feel downright covetous whenever she wears them. So here's my question: I'm a fairly medium-thin (albeit flabby thin) woman. Think I can fit into a girl's size 16? 18? Truth: on a scale from one to fucking pathetic, how bad would it be for me to wear sparkley black jeans from the kids section at Gap? Really fucking sad? Well what if I wore them with a yellow pom pom beanie? Oh stop.
Also at the top of my Xmas list is a Kindle Fire. Like seriously at the top. I want it like the pre-2008 me wanted stuff. Get it? Because pre-2008 me didn't know that the economy could/would crash and that materials goods meant nothing. I wanted shit more then, like I thought it all mattered. That's how much I want the Kindle Fire. I think it matters even though I know it doesn't which makes no sense but neither does the fact that The Gap doesn't sell those goddamn Super Skinny Sparkle Jeans in grown woman sizes.

So that's what I want for Christmas. In case you were wondering. What I want now on a Tuesday night wearing my ratty flannel nightshirt with the monogrammed initials SJC, that's how old it is. My maiden name, and I got married 6 years ago. Gimme Gimme please. And you?

WTF Wednesday: The Answers Edition

2011-11-09T20:00:00.000-08:00

No real questions today with the exception of this photo:
Instead, in a total word-vom of wha'the-fah-ness, here's a list of strange facts that will make you the most popular girl at the cocktail party (unless of course there's some other girl giving out hand jobs in the loo, in which case knowing that beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts and worms like fried bacon isn't going to do a thing for you).

1. There's a spider in Brazil whose bite causes an erection that lasts for hours.
2. Jackie Chan was in the womb for 12 months.
3. A banana is a berry but a strawberry isn't.
4. The total weight of all the ants on the earth is roughly equal to that of all the people on the earth.
5. Hitler was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
6. You will create enough saliva to fill two average-sized swimming pools in your lifetime.
7. There is enough fuel in the tank of a jumbo jet to drive the average car around the world four times.
8. A portion of the water you drink has already been drunk by someone else, maybe several times over.
9. You are taller in the morning.
10. I cannot stop at nine facts so I am just typing here. For the record, I also want to say that #6 and #8 make me nauseated. According to Br'er Rabbit I shouldn't say this to anyone, but I hate spit more than anything else. Seriously. I'd rather eat a spoonful of someone else's poop than drink a glass of someone else's spit. And I don't say that lightly. For some reason I have thought about this conundrum at length which is probably why I don't have a retirement plan in place or know what is going on with the presidential candidates. I am too busy choosing between poop and spit. What about you? Which would you choose, and/or who is Ron Paul?

That's it people of the wwwtf.
xo,
S

Standard Time

2011-11-07T20:53:00.000-08:00

I think I've got me a case of the sads.
Or a mild case of the mehs, I don't know. The end of Daylight Savings Time, sure. It's stupid how every year we all turn to each other at 4pm and say it feels like it should be 8! When duh, it happens every year, how are we still surprised? But yeah. It feels like it should be 8.

On the bus home tonight I read the news. Something about how the cost of climate change is expected to be enormous and then that bit about Penn State. Fuck--what is wrong with people? With all of us? It makes me want to spend an hour plucking my eyebrows in a magnifying mirror. (Which is what I did just now before starting this post so if you see me tomorrow don't look too closely at the outside of my left eyebrow because it's kinda' not there anymore.) (Oh, also? I have always wanted to be able to raise one eyebrow in bemused skepticism, but when I try it just looks like I'm trying to hide the fact that I farted while having a stroke, and now I certainly can't raise one eyebrow seeing as how one is a shadow of its former self.)

Or it could just be the Mulling Spices I bought this weekend at Trader Joe's. How I have ruined one pot simmering them to make my home smell safe and warm and right. How I think that if I pay my bills and balance my checkbook that everything will be ok, the world tepid, ten year old boys untouched. How I tell myself that at least it is 8 o'clock twice a day, I mean that's good, right? So I put on my chenille sleep socks and pad around the house softly once everyone is in bed, putting things away where they belong, smelling of orange peels, allspice and cloves.

WTF Wednesdays: Mathalete Edition!

2011-11-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

So because I really do hate the word hump, I think I'm going to call this recurring Wednesday doohicky WTF Wednesdays, as in the slow slide into Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (WTF) with a side order of good ol' fashioned What The Fuck (WTF). Yes?

This week's WTF Wednesday Edition is for the mathalete in all of us (stay with me here, I need you)...

1. If you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance that your answer will be correct?

a. 25%

b. 50%

c. 60%

d. 25%

WTF.

2. Did you know that the last two digits of your birth year + your age = 111. For example, I was born in 1972, so 72 + 39 = 111. Try it. This is true for EVERYONE this year. (Next year it will be 112 if we make it past the Mayan calendar.) WTF.

3. If this dress on the left is $188 at Anthropologie and I have a $100 gift card, should I buy it for $88 or wait to see if ever goes on sale risking the chance it will sell out? (If instead of answering the question you all go out and buy the dress in a size 6, I will cut a bitch.) WTF.

In the classroom of life I am totally trying to cheat off of you. Seriously--can you move your shoulder a bit? I can't see your paper. I hate math, but questions one and two are freaking me the eff out. How the Huh? And question #3 just needs some rationalization.

Happy WTF.

The Ninja Princess and The SuperBaby

2011-10-31T21:48:00.000-07:00

Right here--this is why people have kids:

Because ohmygod, the cuteness! And the candy! And the cuteness! The way that he opens his mouth when I kiss him, how it smells sweet with the absence of teeth. How sometimes, in the middle of doing something else entirely, she turns my wrist over to slowly trace the letters of her name. And the candy!

This is it. This. This. This--

I Fully Intended For This To Be My Hand

2011-10-31T05:54:00.000-07:00

But it's not. And I don't even remember where I found the image. Still--let's pretend this is my hand and these bloody fingers are typing this post which would also require us to also pretend that I did not watch Soul Surfer with Zoey last night (when I had planned to paint my nails) and then spent hours convincing her that sharks do not bite the arms off of people (even though they totally do) and then trying not to laugh as she spent the remainder of the evening pretending she had just one arm and answering only to Bethany. Spoiler alert: Zoey/Bethany slept with mommy and daddy last night.

While we're at it, let's also pretend that was not a terrible run-on sentence.

Bitch, I don't know your life, but there's a chance you still have time to pull off this bloody manicure, so get to it.

Boo,

Susannah

Happy Hump Day Q With No A

2011-10-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today I emailed the following to my co-workers :

Hi kids,
Sometimes, when things get crazy busy in a world where PROVACATIVE gets published on the site under my watch I like to put the Universe (capital U) in perspective with some unanswerable questions…

1. What is wrong with Courtney Stodden and why is she married to someone 34 years older than she is?

2. Just how does the internet work? Like, how did these thoughts from my head get transmitted over invisibleness and into your computer screen where you are now reading thoughts from my head???!

3. What is Kim Richards on??

4. What is after Outer Space? Is there an ending? If not, how can there be no ending?

5. No, seriously—what the eff is Kim Richards on?

Answers appreciated, questions welcomed.
Happy Hump Day,
S

Needless to say I love my job and truly adore my co-workers even if no one had any answers for me. However, one of them did suggest I post these questions on my blog, so here we are.

Remember when I used to post every day and on Wednesdays published a Happy Hump Day photo? No? Well then. Awkward.
I did, and am going to again. Not the post every day bit, but the Wednesday Happy Hump Day post. Maybe a pic, some musings, whatevs. I'll start. See above. As I said: answers appreciated, questions welcomed.

Happy Hump Day,
S

p.s. Please know that I abhor the word "hump" almost as much as I hate the word "abhor."

Post Travel Stress Disorder

2011-10-23T20:56:00.001-07:00

Dude. It's been a week--more than that, I know. What can I say? I have PTSD (Post Travel Stress Disorder), and lately? If I so much as hear the click of a high heel? I get this little tic in my eye, and I am right back in that airplane, buckled in with a snap. Click! 6+ hours flying with a baby who cries unless my nipple is crammed inside his mouth, and so it is. My shirt wide open, my dad sitting across the aisle paying superveryscrutinizinglyclose attention to his book because we wordlessly decided long ago that I have no nipples or boobs or other, my body instead composed of elbows and cracked heels, things that cannot be sexualized. 6+ hours of Ozzy latching on and pulling away because it is fun and he is bored, his mouth smelling like sweet wet bread, the guy in front of me fully reclined, Zoey beside me whining, Bryan playing Angry Birds pretending he is anywhere else and my dad, reading.
And then this: 4 hours in and Ozzy with a codpiece of a diaper. Soaked through and full of poop. But the airplane has no changing tables so the flight attendant tells me to change him on my seat. A poopy diaper in a metal tube flying 30,000 feet above. And so I do, surrounded by strangers drinking Sprite, and as I'm changing him he starts to poop some more, his body rolling into the sloped joint of the seat, a Play-Doh Fun Factory cranking out poop and more loose poop, Ozzy crying because I have not yet found a way to change his diaper with my nipple in his mouth.

Tic, you guys, do you see it? My eye?

Then later, after we land, a 4 hour drive to Vermont. Only it is raining and dark and we are from California. We drive and we drive, the bitchy bitchface voice of the rental car's GPS saying recalculating over and over all judge-y, the roads going from paved to dirt to whatthefuck? Midnight, Ozzy screaming and we pull over so I can stick my nipple in his mouth again and my dad, already covered in nicotine patches, gets out to smoke a cigarette when out of the woods comes a man with no shirt on, and I cannot help but think of Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find.

This is where it starts to get fuzzy. The man was nice--drunk but nice--we were lost and he could not help, some 15 year old policeboys randomly showed up and could not figure out how to turn off their sirens, misunderstood where we were trying to go and told us we were hours and hours away, that we needed to go to the Canadian border, blah blah, sirens blaring, my dad smoking, Ozzy screaming, Zoey scared, Bryan wound tight and my nipple wet and smelling like bread. So we gave up, got a hotel room and in the morning this is what we saw:
Of all the artwork for the hotel room to have it was a stylized map with a pin showing where we were. Concord, New Hampshire. Wrong state entirely. We laughed and ate a complimentary continental breakfast.

And then tried again and made it to my cousin's wedding. It was beautiful, she was stunning, the leaves really are spectacular, stone and brick, the smell of real apple cider, not just a candle bought at Anthroplogie. Here is a photo of my East Coast children...
Note the pissy look on Ozzy's face, i.e. my nipple is at least three feet away.

So yes, I am home now, the trip back the same in reverse. It has been a week and my eye twitch is slowly getting better. Today we went to the beach, the start of our Northern California indian summer and the air was perfect with salt.
I read somewhere that scientists believe that a person is never more than 3 feet away from a spider at any given time. Not sure what this has to do with my story but it is interesting nonetheless.

xo,
S

Off to See About Some Leaves

2011-10-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

And a wedding in Vermont. Lots of family. Love. Back next week with photos of my kids with said leaves. Crunch.

xo,

On Paper

2011-10-06T21:17:00.001-07:00

A curious thing happened on the bus this evening. The woman next to me was reading my blog on her phone. And then my head exploded.

Let me back up.

I am in love with my bus driver. He is large and mean, does not appear to have a neck and is mean. Yes, that mean. He yells at people who take too long to swipe their commuter card, doesn't allow talking, honks at cars and gets me home super fast. Normally I sit in the first seat behind him, and lately I've noticed that he unfolds a commuter schedule and tapes it upside down onto the plexiglass behind his head. I imagine this is so I cannot count the folds where the base of his head meets his shoulders. He was gone for a few days this week and I worried that he had been fired. I've heard rumblings from other commuters that they were going to complain about him to the transit authority, but today he was back and I was happy. I don't know why I love him, really. It's not like I have a thing for mean people or anything against necks for that matter. It's just--he's so unapologetic, so very large and so him. Anyway, at one point tonight he laid on the horn at a well-meaning Prius making me snap my head up startled and there it was. The woman next to me reading this blog.

Hello.

For a minute I thought I was looking at my own phone. And then maybe I was looking at myself, out of body, but no, there she was and there I was, two strange women prattling down Post Street in the seated position and I wondered if maybe I should say something. Point to the picture: that's me? But then I remembered that there is still a strep face scab under my nose and how someone at work had just discreetly told me I had something there? With a little finger motion to my nose because she thought it was a booger so I didn't say anything because who wants their blogger to have what looks like a booger but is really a scab. Not me, that's who.

Years ago a good friend told me that a girl that we both used to work with read my blog and loved it. She is so funny! this girl said. I wish I had known. I would have liked to have been friends with her. Which is nice except I had worked with her for maybe 5 years and she did know me but apparently did not want to be friends with the not-blog me.

You're hard to get to know, my good friend said, a fact I know to be true.
So I sat next to the lady while she read my blog without even knowing that I was sitting right next to her and I thought about how celebrities always have disproportionately large heads in real life and about how I have a scab under my nose that won't heal and love a fat bus driver despite the fact or because he's mean.

But Those Eyes!

2011-10-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

I mean...RIGHT??

p.s. Santa might have to bring Zoey a real Blythe doll for Christmas because ohmygodIlovethem, I mean, Zoey thinks they are the bee's knees. This one? Please. And yes I realize they are pricey if not plain ol' overpriced.

...For now we will have to settle for the cheap-o version. And maybe a book.

p.p.s. Fuck it if I'm not 39 years old and fronting my daughter to cover for my sudden and pathetic desire for a doll.

IN YOUR FACE (Make That My Face)

2011-09-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

On Friday I had what felt like a teeny piece of glass in my cheek. See that? I asked anybody who would look. But nope, nobody saw anything. On Saturday something happened, then there was Sunday, and on Monday that teeny piece of glass had become a patch of fiery pissed off-edness on my cheek, eye and beneath my nose. See that? I asked, and people averted their eyes. Here is a photo of me* today wearing my best lift-my-spirits tropical bandana:The doctor says I have Erysipelas, also called Holy Fire. I much prefer the name Holy Fire because HOLY FUCK THIS HURTS. Basically it's an acute streptococcus bacterial infection of the deep epidermis with lymphatic spread, i.e. instead of strep throat I have STREP FACE. Let's let that sink in. Strep. In my face, yo. See also: fever, chills, fatigue and the worst migraine in the history of people hitting you in the face with a metal bat that's somehow also on fire.

I console myself with the fact that Erysipelas was the disease to get (and then die of) in Medieval times which makes me something of a novelty in 2011. I have also been consoling myself with Vicodin and some heavy duty antibiotics. Good times.

*Like I would really take and then post a photo of my own face on fire.

Superunzelman!

2011-09-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

He was feeling all good about himself, wearing his kick ass Superman onesie while hanging out with the big girls during a playdate at our house, a fresh smear of Eucarin on his butt. You know how it is.
So I left him there for one second, that fateful one second that all mothers know. And when I returned this is what I found.

One day, and one day soon, Zoey will pay for this, I am sure. In the meantime, let's all point and laugh because ohmygodOzzyisthecutestlittleSuperRapunzelbabynomnomIlovehimso.

Princesses, Poop and The Justice League: If I Had Somewhere To Go This Halloween This Is What I'd Be

2011-09-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

I'd like to think that Wonder Woman and I would totally be friends. Like we would borrow each other's gold cuffs and I'd give her a ride in my Toyota and on the weekends she'd fly me around in her invisible plane. If nothing else we could talk about poop because I really do love me some poop talk and seeing as how Lynda Carter is a national spokewoman for Irritiable Bowel Syndrome, well, you gotta' assume the lady can talk some shit.

Anypoop, I have probably watched this video 17 times in a row now (um, heeled boots at 20 second mark, flat after that anyone?) and vow to practice spinning in circles, throwing down my skateboard as if it were a skim board, and then pushing with my front foot. God, how I want to be her. *sigh*

p.s. Did you know that Wonder Woman was an Amazon princess whose mission was to bring the Amazonian ideals of love, peace and sexual equality to a world torn apart by the hatred of men?

p.p.s. Don't make me use my Lasso of Truth here. Surely I'm not the only one who likes a good poopversation, right?

Quelqu'un Ma Dit (Que Je Suis Une Total Butthole)

2011-09-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

I think I owe my daughter an apology. I was not my best mom this weekend. She whined. I yelled. She whined some more. I sent her to her room.
(refrain)
It's just that there is so much change going on, I think, all of it good, most of it. No, all. We are tired.
(chorus)
Which means that tomorrow morning she gets waffles while tonight I creep into her room to kiss her cheek. I am sorry.

This is the song I have been singing at bedtime, my french loose like a chignon apres a nap. Something about how our lives aren't worth much, that they pass in an instant like wilting roses, but that someone told her he still loves her so how could that be true? Ozzy on my boob while I tickle Zoey's back. We think this might be the most beautifulest song ever and tonight, after they are in bed? I promise I will be better. Serait-ce possible alors?

p.s. Bonus groovy points because mais bien sur France would have a first lady who could sing like this.

The Week in Review

2011-09-15T20:57:00.002-07:00

It was the kind of week that made me buy shampoo by Chaz Bono. Endorsed by Alyssa Milano, of course, because who didn't want to be Samantha Micelli? God knows I did. Of course then I found out that the shampoo is not by Chaz Bono at all, but by some guy named Chaz Dean. This guy:I mean, nice frosted tips and all, but I was banking on this Chaz because for some reason I would believe him if he said he had the cure to dry, lifeless locks:It's kinda' like when you take a sip of your iced tea only you picked up someone else's glass of flat soda instead and there is that moment of a mouthful of huh? Anyway, I just got my shipment of Wen by (the other/wrong) Chaz and I'll let you know how it goes, i.e. I will accept nothing less than this:

So that was the beginning of my week. Then I found the most perfectest pair of boots ever only they are in girls' sizes, not women's. So of course I bought a pair for Zoey because hello? Black sparkle high tops with rainbow gems across the toes? For god's sakes, the style is called Twinkle Toes and they make me want to do The Running Man or some ridiculous shit like that. Of course I searched for something similar in my size, but apparently Skechers thinks the adult equivalent of Twinkle Toes is to wear microfiber turds on your feet. They call these kicks Boiling Point. They make me want to fart. So that was it, my first week back at work. Eagle eye that you are might notice I mentioned nothing of actually going to work, Ozzy at daycare, bus rides and breast pumps, blah blah, yes there was all that, too. Another day. For now I will leave you with this bacon wrapped egg video. I am so totally making this on Saturday morning. It's like food porn. And easy. Brown chicken brown cow...I'm just surprised they didn't have a money shot of the yolk breaking.

Happy Friday,
S

Or Is It Sheeeeit?

2011-09-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

If all I really need to know is to be learned in kindergarten I might be fucked.
Yesterday one of the other kindergarten moms introduced herself to me--a perfectly normal social interaction, yes?--and for some reason I responded in a southern accent. Now what kind of fried green tomato shit is that, I ask?? When I waited tables in college sometimes I fell into a southern accent, but I blamed that on growing up with Flo saying kiss mah grits, plus it was good for tips so no harm. But this? I must have looked a little special confused as soon as the words left my mouth because, huh? And then I couldn't just stop cold turkey so I stammered through the rest of the conversation with very short answers trying to, I don't know, sort of taper off the south? It reminds me of this story that my step-dad, Allen once told me. Apparently he used to run into this guy a lot, a loose acquaintance, and even though the guy always called him 'Bob' my step-dad never corrected him because it was a little uncomfortable and he figured why should he? Years went by until one day the acquaintance moved in two doors down from Allen, suddenly always there. So my step-dad had to tell him that he'd legally changed his name. You know--from Bob...to Allen.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my southern accent.

Then tonight Zoey was busy drawing pictures to give to her kindergarten teacher who she adores. Finally I peeked over her head to witness the cuteness only to see that she was using my stack of Post-It notes that say Shit across the top.
Oh dear, I said, and then had to explain what they said and why it was not appropriate to bring to class. Kinda' like the time my mom caught me going to school wearing her feathered alligator roach clip for a barrette only probably not as funny because I'm not stoned.

Zoey took that shit well, though, and cut off the offending word from each of her drawings and then stuck them to all the windows in the house so that is all I see when I look out. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I am pretty sure it sounds the same with a southern accent.

What She Will Miss

2011-09-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

This has nothing to do with everything. Or everything to do with nothing. (I speak in zen koans when I don't know what to think.) On Monday my maternity leave is over. Gleeptum, glopton, glooptum, I think Frank Zappa said it best when he sang broken hearts are for assholes. There is no need to go into the Mommy Wars and the ubiquitous joke re: having it all. Freedom is the absence of choice, my dad likes to remind me, and Janice Joplin sang about nothing left to lose, Mercedes Benz and some guy named Bobby McGee. I am neither here nor there, instead a few days from going back to a job that I love but leaving the children that I love more. There's that which makes me feel numb with something, like I want to punch it or fuck it or eat it up whole.

Instead I volunteered for lice check at Zoey's school. Spent the morning poking through children's hair with something called giggle sticks which just looked to me like sharp wooden things, I don't know. The other moms all pony-tailed blonde hair which has even less to do with anything so I forced myself to swallow it, the fact that I volunteered for lice check because after next week I will not be available for the Bookmobile.

There is this woman that I know-ish, not really, but this: she has a daughter Ozzy's age, 3 months, and she just got deployed to Korea for a year. Why can't your family go with you? people ask, but the military base has no family housing and the area is too dangerous anyway, she says. For a year. While I am on the bus commuting home at 5 o'clock.

Ozzy watches my mouth when I speak. Oooo! he says. Ooooo! He's got this little sharp top lip like a bird sometimes. Ooo! And so I say it back to him, oooo, like when your brain is backed into a corner and you cannot think of the word, the edges of everything blurred from moving too fast. I was disappointed that we didn't find any nits, although just the thought makes me feel itchy. Still. All that poking? For nothing? And the children's faces--every one of them so goddamn serious while they sat with my fingers sifting through their hair.

Let Them Eat--

2011-09-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

I knew I was in trouble when I crept into her room the night before to take pictures of her sleeping.
It's just...the last night of a preschooler, you know? All loose lipped and round. Because when she woke up the next morning she was suddenly this, Miss Sassypants Giggleonia posing in front of the door on her way to kindergarten.

Sweet Jesus, people. I knew parenthood would be hard. The sleepless nights, temper tantrums, getting puked on, peed on, pooped on, (and on and on). But this is the hardest. The relentless march of time and feeling like such a sad sack sucker of a cliche because it's true, how fast it goes. My head a rush of just yesterday and not yet! Tomorrow she goes to college. Fuck. It's all I can do not to feed her coffee for breakfast--black--because I heard somewhere that it stunts your growth.

Instead I made her a cake. A First Day of Kindergarten Cake, and the first cake I ever made from scratch, frosting and all.

This photo was taken before anyone even touched it. And I'm not being all cute-bloggy self-deprecating when I say it was the ugliest cake I have ever seen. Something about maybe forgetting to grease the pan before it went in the oven so it came out in pieces, me in the kitchen trying to press hot cake parts together, cream cheese frosting as caulk. I am not known for my culinary prowess.

Still, Zoey came in and gasped. Thank you mommy! I love it! And I love her, Ozzy, being a mother and feeling my heart fall apart a little every day. Because that cake was delicious, of course, the best I ever tasted.

Consider Me Got (A Marketer's Dream)

2011-08-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

Through the years (cue Kenny Rogers). And yes, I have been feeling super nostalgic lately...

No idea what is happening in East London on September 13, but this video is rad all the same.

It Starts Off Nice and Sweet-Like

2011-08-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to tell you, didn't I?*We went on vacation.
A wee road trip down south, past miles of cows standing knee deep in their own shit**, over freeways and through towns, across beaches and over 108°F. Not much to report except this:Tomorrow I turn un certain âge. Thursday Zoey starts kindergarten. In 2 weeks my maternity leave is over. I spent the whole week pressing my toes down hard on an imaginary brake pedal in the passenger seat and now I have a cramp in the ball of my foot.

*Neither here nor there but everywhere, do you kinda' hate when bloggers write directly to you? Like that whole Ferris Bueller breaking-the-fourth-wall schtick, asking questions and then proceeding as if you've answered, all cutesy "I know you" wink wink, calling you love, darling, insert pet name here? Cause lately I do. I don't know, it just seems condescending. Insincere. And I know that I do it sometimes, too. Still. Also? I hate when bloggers tell stories about their kids that sound like some Dawson's (shit) Creek dialogue that you just know didn't happen. Or when the writing almost becomes a caricature of itself. Just sayin.' See also: I'm totally a bitch but it's almost my birthday which may or may not have something to do with it because what do you get for the girl who just bought a glass house?

**Do cows have even have knees?

It Was A Very Good Year

2011-08-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Forever it was Crazy Love, the song that Zoey and I sang at bedtime. I'd tickle her back and we'd whisper the words to each other, smooshing our faces together for the part that goes kiss and hug her, kiss and hug her tight. Truth be told, this is still my favorite nigh-night song, though Zoey has moved on. Now she wants to hear Frank every night, so I turn it on, the song that softens her eyes into the faraway nostalgia of a 5 year old girl who still has to ask if 5 minutes is a short time or a long time (and won't settle for my answer that it depends).

Oh, it has not escaped me that the song starts at 17, which was apparently a very good year for small town girls on the village green, then goes to 21 with city girls who lived up the stairs, and then 35 with blue-blooded girls of independent means (my favorite), only to end there, the good years. Because after 35? It's all short days and vintage wine according to ol' blue eyes, the autumn of the years, which does not bode well for my birthday in a few weeks which has me turning twenty-nineteen or twenty-five-fourteen, because, you know, it depends.

Though I was thinking tonight, while singing the song, that it has been a very good year, when I was 38, for pregnant girls and soft children's cheeks, we counted down the weeks, and bought some real estate, when I was 38. (Lacking the soul of Sinatra, yes, but it was a very, very good year.)

Nothing Like Bob Ross To Help You Start Off Your Week

2011-08-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

Bob Ross + a lil' Dub Step, throw in some motherfuckin' paint and carry the one = Happy Monday to you.

xo,
S

It's Official

2011-08-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

As if the c-section scar wasn't proof enough...
I put him on my other wrist.

And now, when I wrap my arms around myself, the names of my children hug me.

With time the letters will fatten and bleed, bleached from the sun, and the words will fall from my mouth as light as an everyday truth--that's right, yes, my children.

Wunderkind Powers Activate! Form Of...

2011-08-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

Quick! Name a job that requires one to roll over. (No, not that one you sick f.) Because it turns out Ozzy is a genius, like a roll-over child prodigy. Since he was 7 weeks old he's been performing at the level of a highly trained adult in the demanding field of rolling from tummy to back, which I didn't realize was noteworthy until his pediatrician expressed great surprise. Totally the face of an advanced cerebral cortex...

Apparently most babies don't roll over until 4 or 5 months of age. Of course I'm wondering what this holds for his future. I mean, Mozart had music, John von Neumann had math, Saul Kripke philosophy. I'm thinking that with his whiz kid mad rolling skillz that Ozzy will one day be a genius...sniper? Really good at dousing fire should he ever be engulfed in flames? What other use could the world glean from this obvious gift?

Meanwhile, Zoey has been spending her mornings at ballet class and her afternoons at Tae Kwon Do. With maybe just a little bit of trouble adjusting her body language between each class...
She is the only girl in ballet who wears a black tutu in a sea of pink and purple, and the only girl in Tae Kwon Do who wears a bow in her hair while she strikes k'ihap.

Be still my beating heart. Wunderkind powers activate. Form of: My Everything.

p.s. If you Google "my child is a..." with the intent to search "genius," Google finishes your sentence with the following: bully, brat, sociopath, monkey, psychopath.

p.p.s. Sometimes I wonder if all these photos everyone's taking these days with iphone app Instagram/Hipstomatic/Camera Bag filters will look dated someday. Like how one day in 2003 I looked around my living room at all the faux distressed cream colored furniture and realized I had somehow become Rachel Ashwell's bitch without my knowing it. Thoughts?

What's On The Other Side

2011-08-01T20:08:00.000-07:00

Zoey and I had our first annual girlie day this weekend (and by annual I mean more like monthly only "monthly girlie day" sounds too much like menses and I have always hated the word menses). We left the boys at home to think about boobs while we went to get pedicures.
I walked in thinking I would get a pretty purple color, maybe something in the rose family, but Zoey was dead-set on rainbow colored toes and after I saw just how happy her feet looked, I couldn't resist. I do believe I've found my new go-to for summer toes.

I'm telling you--that girl? She is what keeps me stargazing.
xo,
S

First. (Well, First That Was Caught On Film. Baby Smiles Are Like Yetis In That They're Tough To Photograph And Look Stupid Creepy When Photoshopped.)

2011-07-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

And just like that, we decided to keep him...
p.s. I have a new theory: the time it takes for your brain to forget the sharp-edged horror of pregnancy and childbirth perfectly coincides with the time it takes for your baby to decide to smile at you. Coinky-dink? I think not. That there is a Darwinian smile.

p.p.s. I mean, just look at that gummy smile! If this were one of those annoying singing Hallmark cards it would coo when you opened it up. And maybe sing Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta, I don't know.

p.p.p.s. But I am not having another baby. Ever.

I Can Write About Couches Next Week

2011-07-21T21:01:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time I wrote a short story about how everybody loves a good tragedy. That rubber-necked pull toward thankgodit'snotme, at once both plain ol' human nature, because in a way we are all in this together, married with sensationalism because, well, didja hear about--?

I wasn't going to write about this because it's not my tragedy. I was afraid writing about it verged more on the side of sensationalism since I hardly know the girl. I mean, I went to high school with her, but she was a year younger, I think, which of course in high school is a chasm of other. So while I have been following her story with horror, it has admittedly been horror from afar, from other people's Facebook posts and the local newspaper, the kind of detached horror that compelled me to donate but that's it because I hardly knew the girl, right?

So why am I writing about it now? I don't know. As far as tragedies go it's pretty fucking up there: With a brand new baby, Tika Hick and her contractor husband had to declare bankruptcy and lost their home that he had built. Then she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. So they went to Maui to gather strength before she was to undergo a double mastectomy, and while there, her husband was swept into a blow hole by a rogue wave. His body has not been found.

I guess I am writing about it now because while you might think my neck is made of plasticine I know my heart is made of something warmer. We are all in this together. And while part of me wanted to write about how I really want a new couch I also knew that I had to get off my ass and write about something more. I have readers from all over the globe-albeit a little farther away from knowing a girl from high school that was a year younger at that--but I'm asking you to please hear her story. If you're a blogger, please reblog. Better yet, donate. This girl who you don't know and who I hardly knew? She and her son need us.

Donate here.
The chasm of other is a mirage at best.

xo,
S

Because I Am a Lover of Words. But Mostly Because Inside I Am a 12 Year Old Boy.

2011-07-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

Granted I am no epicurean (and wasn't even epicurious in college), but really? Chingalingas? Are you trying to make me say the word cunnilingus while out to dinner with my in-laws?

This is what I do know: Chinga basically translates to fuck in Spanish. When you squish that together with lingas which is a derivation of the Latin word for tongue you get tongue fucker. Come on people! Tell me you don't get tongue fucker!

p.s. I opted for the flautas.
p.p.s. This is probably why I don't get invited out to dinner more often.

July 5

2011-07-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

You never quite got the ruckus made of the 4th, choosing instead to celebrate July 5th, or August 4th. March 20th, why not? The way your daughter gives you rocks that she finds in the driveway, brown pebbled things that were probably dirty chunks of pavement once slick with motor oil. You drop them into the only vase you own, the weight of throwing them away full of something you don't want to play with or even think about. Swim class @ 2:10 circled on the calendar, July 5th, and you find yourself promising to always be the mother you are once she finally falls asleep each night, how you stand over her forgetting the sharp no's of the day repeated, the 1, 2, 3...without either of you fully understanding the portent of 3. This is what you celebrate, this day, fireworks for nothing, and how tomorrow you will be better.

Do the Hustle!

2011-06-29T21:38:00.000-07:00

It's hard to blog when you've got a small human being attached to your boob (evidenced by tiny hand on right side of the photo), a 5 year old daughter who wants to help (read: squeezes the side of said boob which actually does help, thankyouverymuch), plus a neurotic abyssinian cat who just wants in on the action.So yes, there's that, plus packing up our house to move this weekend (!) and the very small job of keeping not one but two children alive. I'm telling you, it's enough to make a girl feel downright accomplished, even if she hasn't showered in days...

'Course the good news aside from my new and improved kick ass family (now with more balls!) is that I am fitting into my pre-pregnancy jeans again. Which makes me feel a little bit like this, although this could also be from lack of sleep.

Doing the hustle from my living room couch,
xo,
S

Fun with the Fisheye Lens

2011-06-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

Little did you know I gave birth to Wilford Brimley. During the day he stands in the doorway grumbling for those damn kids to get off his lawn. At night he squawks about heartburn. In reality, he is quiet. (Too quiet! says the hand-wringer inside of me.) He makes these little squeezy noises instead of cries, loves car rides and holding hands. (We haven't tried yet, but I am sure he also likes long walks on the beach.) Somewhere between slathering Zoey's butt with Desitin and discussing the merits of Captain Jack Sparrow with her (we both agree that he's an exceptionally goodlooking man), I forgot that it takes time to get to know your baby. To stop seeing character actors in his face and attributing a grumpy old man's words in his sighs. It's slow-going, but we have all the time in the world. In the meantime, he's in his La-Z-Boy Recliner right now (the one that vibrates and chirps lullabies), muttering something about what is with kids wearing their pants so damn low these days...

Publica Breastaefeedaphobia

2011-06-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

It has been 2 weeks and 1 day since glitter spilled from my vagina in the form of baby Ozzy. (Which is kind of a lie since he was born via c section, but the mere mention of the word vagina lends the idea a bit more gravitas, no? Vagina, vagina, vagina, BAM! Just add glitter and what you get is pure magic. Ask anyone.)
The most part of these 2 weeks and 1 day I have spent crammed like so many worn tissues into the folds of my couch, one pillow propped under the right arm, another beneath the left, boobs out, back aching, wondering how they make it look so easy, though I have no idea who "they" really are. Despite the presence of nipples, here there is no glitter. Just me and my nipples, Luck be a Lady de la Leche, and at night when I use the breast pump the wheezing in and out of the machine sounds as if it's talking to me. Make more, make more, make more... (Or what a bore, what a bore, what a bore, milky whore, milky whore, milky whore...)

Me thinks that when your breast pump starts talking to you it's time to get out of the house, no?

So this weekend I decided to take this show on the road. Armed with two of my oldest and bestest, I went to the park with Ozzy, my boobs and an artfully draped cloth festooned with little cars for diversion. And at first it was easy. We were the only people there, and for a second I felt a little like Bill Murray in "What About Bob" tied to the mast, I'm Sailing! I'm Sailing! That is, until a toddler and his overly-Spandexed, Vibram-footed father spotted us. It was almost like I had cotton candy stuffed in my bra, or dollar bills--the kid would not leave me alone. He pulled and yanked at my artfully draped cloth, pushing his face beneath, even with me saying no, no honey! The baby's eating! And his father was no help, either. Guess my son's a boob man! he said, talking a little too close to my friend. It was weird. He was weird. The kid was weird. They. Would. Not. Leave. And so it would seem that my first pass at public breastfeeding was a bust, no pun intended.

And lest you think I'm being hyperbolic, yesterday I decided to get right back on the hooter horse and set up camp on my front porch. (Baby steps, people. Who knew "What About Bob" would be so apropos?) So there I was breastfeeding Ozzy while Zoey played in the garden, the sun shining the hazy yellow of a memory of a movie, when suddenly my neighbor's Chihuahua came bounding over to excitedly press his nose into my nipple. Which of course made his owner, a 50 year old man I've met maybe once, come over to see what his dog had found. Again with the the possibility of cotton candy hidden inside my bra, or maybe it was a piece of rawhide, more dollar bills, something, because the dog Would. Not. Leave. And eventually his owner had to reach down into my artfully draped cloth to retrieve him, my cover blown for the second time.

Oh, how I wish I were one of those women who whipped out her boob all so what and yeah, so? Daring you to look or not caring at all, without two fucks to rub together because she really doesn't give a flying one. But I'm not. Instead I'm a WASPY girl of a woman who thrills at the mention of vagina and glitter together, a fumbling mom with Publica Breastaefeedaphobia, a condition that does not even exist in the world of WikiGoogleWebMD so I had to make it up myself, all faux Latin-ate and official. Because the truth is I don't even sail. I get sea sick.

But How Do You Really Feel?

2011-06-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

I have to warn you guys: my skin is like vellum right now, tissue thin and see-through. I cry at Dr. Phil which means of course that I watch Dr. Phil, an event that in and of itself signifies that something is not quite right. Of course nothing is quite wrong, either. Simply hormones stabilizing, so I stand at least once a day buck naked in front of the mirror to see if my uterus has shrunk down any farther because that is something that I can actually see, measure, wait for. (Oh, how you would have loved me as a teenager, all sighs and sads and nobody understands. I am just thankful there were no blogs back then.)

So you can imagine what the discovery of this website did to me, written by a woman who spent years taking care of patients who had gone home to die. When she talked to these people about any regrets they had, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the top 5:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Now that's something to cry about, n'est ce pas? And a reminder for those of us that have some time. So here's what's on my To Do list today: wash the dishes, take a shower, express my breast milk along with some feelings, let myself be happy.

What's on yours?

xo,
S

I Must, I Must, I Must Increase My...

2011-06-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Are you there WWW? It's me, Margaret. Behold a real life Before and After. Now, I was not able to breastfeed Zoey for a few different reasons that are now 5 years old. But this time? My milk came in and shit got real. Real to the tune of an E sized bra that is all kinds of ugly. Please tell me that this, too, shall pass. The hormones, yes, the sleepless nights, the fact that I am now chained to the couch with my nipples hanging out of humongously horrible E-sized boobs.

And if it isn't going to pass? Then lie to me.
with love from the living room,
S

Woosh

2011-06-06T04:58:00.000-07:00

Guess who turns one week old today? This guy, that's who:
Introducing Ozzy Allston M. (I wish I could tell you our whole last name 'cause it sounds super kick ass all together.) Born May 30th, 7lbs. 13oz. This is what I know of him so far: his head smells like warm cotton, his eyes are the prettiest slate blue, particularly when he wears his blue onesie, he squeaks instead of cries and when he poops he scrunches his face up just like Renee Zellweger. Although I have never seen Renee Zellweger poop.

Here's a pic of Zoey meeting her brother for the first time. If I had told her that there was no Santa and that Unicorns simply do not exist, she still would've been smiling like this, so stoked was she to hold her brother.

Here she is being a bossy big sister, telling my mom how to properly diaper Ozzy.

As you can imagine, we are all a wee bit sleep deprived and some of us (me) have had their abdominal muscles sliced open and then stapled shut, but still--I'm going to try to post more often now. Although I should also mention that we bought a house and move in 3 weeks, so there is that. Too.

Told you. Woosh.

love,

My Pregnancy As Told By Prince's Face

2011-05-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

You wanna’ know the real reason I haven’t been blogging? Aside from hemorrhoids and varicose veins.

Exactly. I mean, that’s it. That face. Lately that is how I feel about everything. Nutella on toast, clean sheets, successfully finding videos of that gay-for-pay kid on the latest Real World.

Bitch, please. The new Calypso collection at Target?

Totally. Then there’s the fact that our lease is up next month but we don’t want to sign another year lease because we are looking to buy a house again but our landlord won’t let us go month-to-month because I have no idea why. FYI? I have a c-section scheduled for June 2. We have to be out by end of June.

Plus one of these brought to you by the good people at The Hormones Responsible for the Nesting Instinct-ute.

Yesterday was the first ultra sunny happy summer day so we went to the beach just like the family behind us and on either side of us sitting too close, families everywhere with coolers and sand, sandy kids that were not at all cool. Then the family right in front of us pitched a tent, an actual real live tent with sticks and everything and I was all,

And Bryan was all,

And Zoey was all,

I mean, why go to the beach if you’re just going to sit inside of a nylon tent all day eating potato chips?

Of course about 20 minutes later I was hot, too hot, the 8 inches of dank skin hidden now beneath my humongous boobs all sweaty and sandy and I told Bryan I was going to buy a beach tent online as soon as we got home. And I did.

What?

I would die 4 U (but I would nevah evah B anyone’s surrogate, just so we're clear),

The Artist Formerly Known as Petunia Face

Light the Corners of My Mind

2011-04-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

Remember when I used to blog? Like everyday, and I had something to say? And even when I didn't I pretended and you believed and read, commented, my inbox full of emails that weren't about sales and deals, viagra, Nigerian money scams or free sandwiches?

Me, too. I miss those days, you. Us.

Somebody once said that the way to become somebody's god is to disappear. And while that notion has stuck with me for its sheer dude that's so poetically beautiful it has to be true-ness, I'm afraid it's not. Because I am a master disappear-er, never saying goodbye at parties but choosing instead to slip out the door, driving away. And here, these last few weeks or months, I have slipped away and into dimensional life wearing 2-D glasses. Quietly, no kiss-kiss. Just this. Not that I want to be anybody’s god anyway, somebody somewhere always calling your name in vain and otherwise, like in bed, in the moment--how uncomfortable would that be? I just want to be me again.

Remember when I used to think thoughts other than I can’t breathe, my nose is so stuffed up, 31 weeks and ohmygodmyvaginabonehurts?

I don’t know what this photo has to do with anything here but it reminds me of something, you know?

Me, too.

Truer Words Were Never Sung. Sang. Suck It.

2011-04-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

Way better than that ear-worm "Friday" song, this is my new anthem for, well--Friday or any day of the week really.

Outstanding questions: I tried to do a little recon on this little ditty to answer my own resounding WTF, but only came up with this info on The Kelly Family. So what gives? Is the lead singer here a boy or a girl? And is there something wrong with him/her, or only something so so right?

Happy Friday.

xo,

A Beach on the Other Side of Mykonos (My Special Place)

2011-03-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

I am on a beach on an island in a world with a strange woman whose nipples are white. We’re talking white white, the kind of white that made me think, at first, that maybe she had slathered them with zinc oxide or that they had been badly burned and then peeled, whiter than real. That white. Of course this is not the point of my special place, but it is worth noting: the rest of her skin was tan and she lay down with all the nonchalance of a not-American at a topless beach, bending, skin folding, as if she were not her body, white nipples and all. Close by Bryan and I sat on our towels eating figs, playing gin rummy and staring. To this day we still talk about those nipples. Remember? How white they were? That white.

But that is not where I go when I get my blood pressure taken. No, I close my eyes and go somewhere maybe 5 minutes later. Take a deep breath in and walk to the water, Bryan and the girl and the playing cards behind me. Exhale and dive into the gentle waves, bright turquoise like the sound of a plane high in the sky. I smile, my eyes open and I can see everything; it’s hard but entirely possible to laugh underwater. Did you know? At night now I cannot breathe. My nose stuffed, the baby sits somewhere full inside my torso and my throat is warm with the pasta I ate days ago. I cannot breathe and so my chest tightens, grasps, 140/90 and rising. When I blow my nose my nipples leak, the way they are supposed to but still I feel somehow broken.

Which reminds me—of Avent bottles and watery eyes—that one time in grad school I wrote a paper about Philoctetes, the Greek warrior who is bitten on the foot by a snake during the Trojan War. Although he is an expert bowman, the wound festers, suppurates, emitting a smell so horrible that he is left alone on the island of Lemnos to die. The story is ok, I suppose, if you like Greek tales, but what I remember is that my professor wrote in red pen large on my paper: SUPPURATES IS NOT A WORD and I felt defeated. But it is. Was then and still is. Suppurates: to fester, draw, to ooze. Once again back on an island in Greece where I close my eyes and dive in as if I, too, am not my body oozing from nipples not white but there. Just go to my special place, go to my special place, two more months and then some I hold my breath that I cannot breathe and smile.

Hello.

2011-03-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

I wrote an ode to my ankle bone. That’s where I’ve been. And then I decorated the page with drawings of tears and eyes, tears coming out of eyes and lots of Egyptian Ankhs. Here is a snippet, just for you:

No, no! Go not to Lethe, ankle bone delicate and proud

Like a bobbi pin for fine hair, *sigh*

Wolf’s bane, droop-headed edema shroud

Bidding adieu, Truth in Beauty, Beauty that must die.

And then I decorated my room with posters of my boobs lined in heavy black eyeliner.

Which means, of course, that in reality I went to Anthropologie and fell in love with this dress.

Knowing that it would be for after the baby. Like a few weeks after, right? I took it to the dressing room just to see how the shoulders would fit, ignored the confusion of the girl as I handed her a size 6 and squeezed past her into the doorway. If you need anything, my name is um, Arden. Um—mkay? And then she shut the door and I could not get the dress on. Like even half of it. My large breast that has become one mottled brown areola like some well-intentioned Doctors Without Borders, only it’s Nipples Without Borders—it would not even fit through the head opening with the side zip opened. So I sat there on the little reclaimed wooden stool in the dressing room with one boob caught in the vise grip neckhole of a seaworthy box-twill horizons dress said to represent pale sand, verdant ground and cool water, and felt very, very sorry for myself, Robert Smith and all.

When I said that I am not a very good pregnant person I did not mean that I am not very good at being a person who is pregnant. Apparently I am very good at that. My body knows just what to do, pops and blows, poofs, poots, bam and pow! Pregnant. I guess what I mean is that I’m not very good at being pregnant and a person. I think how back in the day pregnant women were not really seen out in public. How before Lucille Ball there had been no pregnant women on television. And I think maybe I should have been pregnant back then. Just shuttled away to a room somewhere with soothing wallpaper, left with water and chocolate and a stack of magazines to gestate. Percolate. Emerge months later with faint circles beneath my eyes that only made me look more tragically romantic, my ankle bones once again sharp.

So that’s where I’ve been. And while I cannot promise I won’t disappear again—the wallpaper! It is so pretty!—I can say that I will be back. Someone once told me to never cut your hair while you are pregnant, and I’m guessing the same goes for your blog. I won’t make any rash decisions while this hormonal and not-me, and although I may write secret bad poetry about the lost love of delicate bones and comb my hair forward, I will not cut my hair, myself, or my blog. 28 weeks and counting…

Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio? (Plus Ponch and One Blasphemous Rumour)

2011-03-03T06:01:00.000-08:00

Coo, coo, ca-choo, my friends, though no nation turns it’s lonely eyes to me. This is where I’ve been: taking a glucose tolerance test (which I think I failed), talking to my doc about birthing options, i.e. cut me open and git it out, and reading on Babycenter that Little Lorem Ipsum is now the size of an English hothouse cucumber which would make total sense to me if I were baking a Shephard’s Pie but seeing as how I’m not I have no idea how big my baby might be. Is an English hothouse cucumber bigger than a bread box?

With Zoey I crafted a Birth Plan, typed it up and printed out multiple copies to hand out at the hospital. Included in my Birth Plan: preferred ambiance, push positions, people allowed in the room, pain relief options and props. Yes—props. I had a ball, you know? One of those yoga balls I planned on bouncing on? And Tootsie Pops in case I got dry mouth. I think I thought birth would like going to the circus. But when we left for the hospital at 4am I forgot to bring the ball and when Bryan handed me a Tootsie Pop I threw it down which was around the same time the doctor announced the need for an emergency c-section. You ever heard the one about how to make God laugh? Tell him your plan. Last year when we went to Mexico I unzipped the side pocket of my luggage and found four copies of that 2006 birth plan which never even made it out of the bag.

In 1978 I was 6 and didn’t quite understand why I felt not exactly funny ha ha or funny strange but more of a funny oh watching Erik Estrada in that tight highway patrol uniform. And then came the episode in which Ponch and Jon deliver a baby at the disco and it clicked—this was the mysterious doing it, so I decided then and there that I would do it with Erick Estrada on a disco floor lit with colored lights while everyone politely turned their backs and clapped their hands.

Granted I was a little confused with the logistics of it all, but I still am, so? I think this is my new birth plan. And please tell me you saw this episode because I searched for days trying to find the clip to no avail. All I could find is this riveting number of Ponch grooving it up not moments before he delivers the baby. Totally worth watching if for nothing else than the look of longing on Jon’s face 1:22 seconds in, plus the guy in the back with the white pants is packing it at 2:07. There is a brief moment when you see the pregnant lady dancing at the 0:30sec mark. Do you remember? How she goes into labor and everyone forms one of those solid gold circles around her with their backs turned? How they still kinda’ swing side to side clapping? At 6 I was not quite sure what went on inside of that circle, but at 38 I’m thinking this is my new birth plan. (I might as well make God laugh with something that is actually almost funny.)

And that, my friends, is what you’ve been waiting for. I probably should’ve opened up with Depeche Mode.

xo,

Kitten Bouquet for the Littlest Bee!

2011-02-22T06:59:00.000-08:00

Also? Today I'm over at The Lil Bee wishing her and the newest bundle the randomest of congratulations. Stop by and give her a Happy New Mama Smooch--her newest Blake is freaking adorable.

xo,

Technicolor Sunrise on Saturday Morning

2011-02-22T06:32:00.000-08:00

Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in morning, sailor's take warning.Must have been a low pressure system this weekend because Bryan went sailing all day, came home, said he would play with Zoey to give me a break and then fell fast asleep on the living room floor.

This is what happens when you fall fast asleep on the floor after promising your wife (who just so happens to work at a cosmetics company) some time to herself.

Foxy tummy, if a little hirsute.

Happy Monday.

xo,

(dolorem = pain, grief, misery, suffering; ipsum = itself)

2011-02-18T05:42:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I imagine you sitting at your computer there, right leg crossed over your left like mine. Hi. How are you doing? Fine, you say, okay, good, because you’re polite like that, and then you ask me back and I tell you that lately? (Because I am not polite like that.) Lately? I’ve had the pain of a dull knife inserted under my ribs on the right side, and you crinkle your eyes in concern. Oh no, I say too fast, don’t worry. Apparently it’s just my muscle separating from my rib to make room for my shifting organs because of Lorem Ipsum, which is what I call the baby even though I think we have a name. Maybe you shift in your chair not knowing quite what to say. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. I let the sentence sit there as a placeholder for something that has not yet happened, and you smile, I smile, and we watch this video because it’s Friday.

Hearts and Kittens! XOXO

2011-02-14T05:36:00.000-08:00

Honestly what I like most about Valentine's Day is that it marks the official start of Cadbury Cream Egg season. Although watching Zoey sign 32 class Valentine's cards with a backwards Z is kinda' rad, too.

Kittens and Hearts on a Monday, no less.
Love,
S

To Spite My Face

2011-02-09T05:48:00.000-08:00

Nose watch 2011 has begun. That is: I’m sick. And last time I was sick and pregnant my nose never quite unstuffed; I became addicted to Afrin,* snorting it covertly in bathrooms both public and private, watching as my nose grew red with spider veins and spread slowly across my face. So last night I did what any self-respecting and highly hormonal woman would do and fashioned MacGyver style nose calipers out of a rusty wrench and a ruler to measure the width of my nose: 3.4cm. I made Bryan take a photo of me doing this but later realized that it’s honest enough I’m telling you of such a thing and really, I don’t need to lose all sense of privacy or pride. Which is also why I’m not going to tell you what is happening to my nether-region, i.e. that it’s made up of the same type of tissue as the nasal passage.

Yeah.

Instead! Let’s look at pictures of models falling. Because I think I’m getting a varicose vein in my right calf and the straps on my bra are now thicker than, well—my nose. So let’s look at pictures of models falling because I said so.

*Yes, I now know not to use Afrin while pregnant. Or ever, really. That stuff is nose crack for anybody whose heart races with the gripping claustrophobia of a stuffed up nose, i.e. me.

**I wish I had taken a base measurement when I first found out I was pg, but will have to make do with this one at 23 weeks. 3.4cm. I swear I can feel it growing.

Candy & Iron

2011-02-04T05:49:00.000-08:00

Six years ago today was also super sunny, the air thin, the first cherry blossoms on branches. We took a cab down to city hall where beneath the 5^th largest Beaux-Arts dome in the world a judge told us that nothing he said would marry us, that it was what we said to each other that truly sealed the deal.

Then there was the other night as I leaned forward to eat my dinner you reached your hand out to talk to the baby and there was an awkward moment, wasn’t there? As you rubbed my ginormous boob thinking it was my tummy. Six years later and I want to keep on talking to you, laughing with you, saying the right things and doing the wrong things, the other way around and then some until the day you rub my breast thinking that you are patting me on the knee.

Happy anniversary love.

February 1

2011-02-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

I have this memory of February. I am 12 and at a friend’s house. She has a pool and we are in one-piece bathing suits standing with our toes over the edge of the deep end. Remember this, I told myself, remember this forever because this is when Spring starts, and we laughed, screamed, jumped in.

I thought of that this morning on the bus to work and I wanted to hug my 12 year old self, I love her so. (12 and long straight up and down, my body growing into a vertical axis these days.) It was foggy this morning, and on the bridge you could barely make out the blinking yellow lights of a bridge patrol car stopped mid-span. As the bus drove slowly past it I noticed that all of our heads turned heavy and knew that we were all thinking the same thing though no one said a word simply because the morning bus is supposed to be silent. And then the heads turned back to their laps and their phones, necks wrapped in wool, the market watch section of the paper lengthwise in the proper commuter fold.

I love February, I tell people, because February is when Spring starts, and people laugh at me. Are you kidding? They say, but I’m not and I know. I wanted to tell those people on the bus this morning that it’s true, it’s possible—sometimes you can jump into a pool in February. I remember. Do you?
Apropos of not much but a 7th grade memory of those impossibly scratchy Mexican hoodies that I loved so much back then, I want this ridiculously overpriced Tory Burch hoodie to wear with cutoffs and flip flops. This is when it starts.

Happy Spring,
S

The Green Flash

2011-01-26T05:28:00.000-08:00

There exists an optical phenomenon known as The Green Flash. Ever seen it? Pas moi, but I’ve been told it occurs right before sunrise or sunset, a momentary refraction of light that moves slower in the lower, denser air than in the thinner air above, enhanced by mirage and probably myth. Tssssss. (I’ve also heard the flash is accompanied by a hiss as the sun hits the water, but honestly I think I got this info from The Blue Lagoon and do not always trust the science of Christopher Atkins.)

What is not so widely known is that there exists another, lesser known Green Flash, a moment of pregnant phenomenon when I raise my head from the nausea and actually look cute. Oh, it’s brief, this moment, a flash of glow before I sink into the bloat of latter pregnancy, my eyes suddenly smaller, my breathing almost an embarrassment. I so wanted to catch this elusive Green Flash but I must have blinked, because the other day I looked down and noticed the tell-tale swell of an ankle. Quick! I turned to Bryan—take a picture of me! But it was too late, so I leave you with this: the sight of a pregnant lady sinking into her 21^st week (if you really concentrate you can hear the hiss).

More than halfway there, people.

xo,
S

No Harm in Asking

2011-01-24T05:30:00.000-08:00

I can't decide if I hate this guy or if maybe I'm a little bit in love with him.

It's kind of unbelievable, really, but it's on the internet so I just know it's true. What do you think? Is it real or fake? Funny, fortuitous or flat-out disgusting? And if you are of the funny/fortuitous club and have the finances, I would like just $100,000. I mean, I'll take a cool $mil if that's what you want, but really I just need $100,000. So you should probably give me $200,000 seeing as how I'd have to pay 50% in taxes. Baby needs a new pair of shoes. And a house. Donate button's pretty rusty there in the right-hand column. Give to charity. Or don't. Go buy $200,000 worth of Cool Ranch Doritos, whatever, it's your money. I'm just saying I'll take it if you want to give it. (I just happen to suck at asking.)

Happy Monday,

Shoes I Used to Wear (A Post On the Literal Shoes I Used to Wear)

2011-01-19T05:50:00.000-08:00

I used to wear shoes so high I could see a light layer of dust on top of the fridge.
I took these red shoes backpacking through Europe, crammed them in the bottom of my bag one winter in Paris. I wore them on New Year's Eve as Bryan and I tried to find a bar, a club, a restaurant we could afford, finally settling for gyros on the street corner with me in these red, red shoes. At a few minutes to midnight we were on the metro, so we got off at the next stop not knowing where we were and ran up the stairs to the street just in time for the countdown. Trois, deux, une...we kissed on a street corner in Paris amid a crowd of French people making out, my life momentarily a Robert Doisneau poster taped to a dorm room wall, and to this day that night in those red shoes stands as one of my most romantic.
I eyed these gold glitter shoes for months at a transvestite store on Haight Street until they were the last pair and went on sale seeing as how most men's feet are larger than mine. When I wasn't wearing them I kept them on my desk as inspiration for something.
I bought these for my birthday one year--can't remember which though I'm fairly certain it started with a 2. (I have always loved a well-placed rainbow.) The night I wore these a man told me I walked like a cocktail waitress, and though I'm not sure how he meant it, I hold that still as one of the best compliments I've ever received.

These shoes are vintage, from the 20's, the fabric inside the sole worn metallic threads. Of all my shoes I loved these the most, wore them to bars and parties, sometimes during the day. With jeans? That was the joke back then, everything held up to have its cute-quotient questioned. Yes? With jeans? Because everything looked cute with jeans. When I wore them I imagined all the fun the shoes had had in the past 80+ years, what sort of evenings, the stories they might tell, and I was just so happy to be a part of it.

Then there are these: another vintage pair of hand-beaded shoes, the wooden heels carved with palm fronds and fruit, a score at a flea market one Sunday morning. One of the heels on these is stained dark brown, and so I always thought it was blood, because, well, why not? A woman dancing in a nightclub in Cuba for so long that her heels bled, yes? You just know her name was Lucia.

And then there are these. Ugly flat mom shoes I bought while still on maternity leave. I don't know what I was thinking other than I guess this is my life: hairy toes and sensible shoes for pushing a stroller, my fingers smelling of peanut butter. I had to bribe Zoey to try these on which I think is a pretty good barometer for moxie. Would a 4 year old want to wear it? If the answer is a quick no, then no. Just no. On these I blame hormones and me trying to find my new normal when life was anything but.
These days I wear ballet flats, boots with no heel, Havianas when it's warm. I don't know when it was that I lost the ability to wear heels, but I am certain I no longer walk like a cocktail waitress, the dust on the top of the fridge now thick, though who cares if I can't even see it?

A Deep Blue Period

2011-01-13T05:34:00.000-08:00

Know how much I’m craving spring? This much—here is an actual train of thought I had the other morning as I walked to work: the city is too gray. Gray buildings, gray sky, gray sidewalks and streets. If I were Mayor Queen Master of Something I would pass an ordinance that each building be painted a different color. Pink and green, turquoise, orange…then the city would look more like the Caribbean and people would surely smile more. Right? Note to self: pick up some fresh fruit on the way home today.

Then I saw this amazing art installation and immediately felt quenched. Like if a soul could be quenched, mine was. Check out artist (and diver) Jason deCaires Taylor. He creates these immense ingots and anchors them to the seabed. He chooses material conducive to marine life, so that new coral reefs adhere and grow like children. The result is hauntingly beautiful.

Did you know? Over the past few decades we’ve lost over 40% of our natural coral reefs. Scientists predict a current demise of 80% by 2050. I’ll shut up now and just post some of the delicious photos.

It'salmostspring, it'salmostspring, it'salmostspring...sounds vaguely like inspiring.

xo,

Grainy Photos of Double Double Helixes, Animal Style

2011-01-11T05:23:00.000-08:00

I forgot to show you what Zoey got me for Christmas...
She replicated a photo of me when I was her age, right down to the pearls*. I'd be lying if I said this didn't make me a little teary.** I'd also be lying if I didn't say I felt some sick sense of BOW DOWN BEFORE MY AWESOMELY STRONG DNA.

*With the help of her Grandma DD.
**Then again, I also got teary the other day when Jamba Juice told me they were out of Peanut Butter Moo'd.

Honestly I Just Want Pajamas, Hold the Jeans

2011-01-07T05:33:00.000-08:00

I was all set to make fun of this infomercial until I realized that I have a few pairs of the Official Pajama Jean stacked in my closet only they are called jeggings, cost more and don't seem to feature any sort of Smooth Butt Lifting Technology. Then I felt like a real asshole.

Still I refuse to order anything from an infomercial featuring softcore porn music because that would make me feel worse about my pregnant self than I do when I order oatmeal at Starbucks because it's healthy, but can I have extra brown sugar? And no nuts? Just two packets of brown sugar, please. Make that three. Thanks.

xo,

First Post of the Year (And It's a Winner)

2011-01-04T05:28:00.000-08:00

This is a total C U Next Tuesday kind of post. Except it’s not next Tuesday but this Tuesday, i.e. it’s a bitch and—oh! Happy New Year!

See, something’s fallen flat in the land of Petunia and it sure as hell ‘aint my stomach. I am 18 weeks pregnant and uninspired. Tired. For days now I have paused over a post centered around this video about dent removal.

And while it is kinda’ super awesome and I am for sure buying some canned air just for Bryan’s truck it begs the question: really? Dent Removal? Because that’s all I got these days. Which is how I imagine men must feel when they can’t get it up. Soft and sleepy, a little bit defensive. So? If only there were a little blue pill for writers needing inspiration, canned air for those that can no longer breathe.

Because then I read this article about how blogs are dead. And maybe it came to my attention too close to the news of thousands of birds dropping dead from the sky (not to mention the fish), but I started to wonder if it wasn’t true. Is blogging dead, dying, falling from the www heavy with too many characters? Tell me the truth now: do you read as many blogs as you used to?

To close out this peppy first post of the year I will tell you that the other day I saw the newspaper headline The Year We Stopped Talking. Which seemed like a lovely title to a book that needs to be written about something that has been written a thousand times before, because that’s all we humans ever do is talk and then stop. The Year We What? Is it an omen, the end of days with fish falling from the sky and birds beaching themselves on shore? Or is this the ramblings of hormones gone amok, the same ones that have turned the palms of my hands into roadmaps, visible blue veins going somewhere off the beaten track?

Puppy Dog Tails

2010-12-29T06:19:00.000-08:00

Stinky feet and guns made of sticks, straws, toilet paper rolls, nose picking and the go go go thrum of kinetic energy. This is what I’m afraid of in having a boy, the compulsion to have one hand down his pants at all times and random photos like this that I see on the internet:

But then I see this last night, how my husband who was once so afraid of having a daughter now sits still for a makeover by a girl wearing too-small skeleton pajamas and a cat mask.

And I think how this guy...

This surfer, sailor, beer-drinking, burrito-loving architect of a man has really stepped it up…

Which means, of course, that I need to step it up, too. Sharpen my sword, stick my hand down my pants, cock my finger and suck it up. I am going to be the mother of a boy. I am the mother of a boy.

Here--pull my finger.

xo,
S

In 2006 She Hardly Had Hair and Couldn't Stand; I Have No Idea What Happened to 2009

2010-12-24T06:55:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2007.

Christmas 2008.
Christmas 2010.
Sometimes I think everything is magic. The way the sun rises, sets, the postal system, how incredibly cruel we can all be to each other, how kind, universes contained in something as sick as spit. (Other times I don't think like this at all since it would be too time consuming and The Real Housewives keeps my mind occupied just so.) But this time of year? At Christmas? It's all pure magic. The presents and pasts, pajamas. I remember creeping into my brother's room on Christmas morning, how we would wait as long as we could together, the two of us in his bed while down the hallway the two of them who knew the truth just wanted to sleep. This year Zoey is getting a zsu zsu pet, a Rapunzel doll, art supplies and a microphone, but she is also getting someone to wait with, a brother, the most magical thing of them all.
(Yesterday I took Zoey with me to get my blood drawn, two of a thousand vials they take when you are pregnant. As they inserted the needle Zoey asked me why I wasn't laying down, shouldn't I lay down? No, I said, I can just sit here, and her eyes got wide. When it was over and I put on my coat to leave, Zoey asked why we were leaving without the baby and I realized that she thought we were going to the hospital to have the baby. Seems I have some 'splaining to do.)
Merry merry everyone. May it be magical.
xo,
S

Whiskers On Kittens

2010-12-17T05:56:00.000-08:00

If I ever open up a store I think I will name it Whiskers On Kittens. Or Frock, I’m not sure, it depends on if I’m selling cute clothes or disassembled cat parts, I guess.

The weatherman says there are six large storms stacked up from here to Japan and this makes me all sorts of fuzzy seeing as how it’s Friday and my bathrobe is clean. Other things that make me happy? This Nutella Snack Pack I just discovered. Honestly the only way you could make this more me is if there were a fourth compartment with insalata caprese smashed inside. Looking for something to gift me this holiday season? You can buy it here.

Also on the list of things that are me me me is this bitchin’ rainbow turbo bike. Truthfully, though, it would be totally me if it were somehow battery or electric powered as I am not known for my exercise regime.

And then this. Fuck the whiskers on kittens—I want to spend this rainy weekend making out with these happy paws. I imagine they smell faintly of corn chips.

Cuddles,

I'll Tell You What's In A Name

2010-12-15T05:47:00.000-08:00

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

See, now I call poo poo on Shakespeare with this one. Because if someone came up to me with a rose and said hey, check out this new rose variety called Diarrhea Coffee-Breath Fart Locker Delight—take a sniff! I probably wouldn’t register the same sweet smell as I would had it been called Lady Delight Pink Vintage Tea Rose. Am I right?

So you can imagine my dismay over the fact that Bryan and I cannot seem to agree on a name for the little lemon-sized baby in mah belly. (Somehow I don’t think I can call it Mister Man forever.) And if you don’t help me with this and suggest some rockstar names STAT, Bryan is going to keep pushing Conrad and Allistair. Or Texas. TEXAS. We have never been to Texas, have no affiliation with Texas, don’t even particularly like Tex-Mex, so I don’t know where this name is coming from. Next thing you know the name Randy will be in the running and I absolutely refuse to yell Conrad Allistair Texas Randy across a playground.

So here are the rules: there aren’t any, really. I like unconventional names, but classic is good, too. You might already know the worst-kept secret in the blogisphere, aka what our last name is, but if not it starts with an M and is two syllables. Stay away from names like Ethan because Ethan has whispy pube facial hair and everyone knows Laird takes photos of his bowel movements and emails them to his friends. Help me name this baby. Go!

Road Rage

2010-12-10T05:08:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year when everything is bigger, brighter, at once both faster and slower. There is a line to wait in line and if you look closely at the shadows, they are darker.

On my way home every night there is an intersection. That sentence seems full of portent, but no—it’s just an intersection full of cars full of people full of themselves. Glass half full kind of girl, you know? And in this intersection every night I wait. Through one red light, then two; my record is six red lights. Because the traffic in the other direction never fails to block the intersection, darkened cars stacked together like hyphens, each of us so sure that we are more important than everyone else, (myself included). Because dammit I am pregnant and have to pee. Prius, don’t you know?

I have been wishing for Spring, when on the drive home I will be able to see inside car windows. I have a feeling people will be less likely to block the intersection when their faces are still visible. Then this morning as she ate the waxy chocolate from Day 10 of her advent calendar, Zoey told me that rain is her favorite season, her voice like an ellipses. So I wait.

Truckin'

2010-12-07T05:51:00.000-08:00

What in the world ever happened to sweet jane?

Well, let me tell you. Because sometimes life hands you a story that truly is stranger than fiction. And you don’t know where to begin, although disclaimers are always nice. DISCLAIMER: This story is only funny now, after she is clearly alright, healthy, unharmed. Please know that we immediately contacted medical professionals (plural), who told us she would be okay, that it just needed to work through her system. (Insert sense of foreboding here.)

Friday morning. Zoey and I woke up at my brother’s house at 7:00am. Everyone else is still asleep. At 7:30 my dad comes into the living room and says I can go back to sleep for a bit if I want, that he would watch Zoey. I want. I sleep. Apparently at 8:00 Zoey asks for Jello, having the razor-sharp memory of a child tracking the last place she had such a treat. Being a grandpa, my dad says yes, Jello is a fine meal to start the day, but cannot find it in the fridge. But stashed behind the acidopholus and vitamins he finds some chocolate macaroons and gives that to her instead. First one, then two, then three pieces. 8:15am. My brother wakes up and sees the chocolate wrappers on the coffee table. He storms into the kitchen yelling WHO ATE THAT CHOCOLATE? WHO?! My dad and Zoey are sitting at the table scarfing down bagels and dry Cheerios straight out of the box. Because of course on the wrapper in very fine print it lists the ingredients as shredded coconut, sugar, egg whites, bittersweet chocolate, cream, and the medical equivalent of 2.24 grams of dried cannabis sativa. You know, my brother has a bad back, insomnia or some such malady. 9:30am. I wake up.

This part of the story is boring. Me freaking out, pissed, scared, my brother stammering that he is so so sorry, that he called his doctor, a pharmacist, repeated assurances that Zoey would be fine, my dad giggling out apologies and referencing Hunter S. Thompson, then retiring to his room to take a nap. What is not boring but flat out wide-eyed funny strange (and funny ha ha only after she is okay) is a 4 year old stoned out of her mind. I took a video but after much soul-searching decided I do not want my daughter to be the new David After Dentist because the video would most certainly go viral. In it, she is cramming Cheerios into her mouth and laughing, laughing, waving one arm over her head and trying to talk. This went on all day. So instead of going to Disneyland on Friday we listened to Bob Marley, ate an entire box of dry Cheerios, a dozen bagels and watched cartoons. It is rare that the scariest thing that has ever happened in your life is also the funniest thing that has ever happened.

The next day we went to Disneyland. And as people ooohed and aaahhhhed over how cute the little Rapunzel girl was, we whispered to each other that if only they knew how high she had been not 24 hours before at the real happiest place on earth… She does not remember much of that day—her lost day—but has asked why we keep making such a big deal out of the chocolate.

And here is where I owe my mom an apology. I was so afraid that she’d be the one to misbehave. Little did I know that it would be my own father, the man with 19 years sobriety who would get my daughter high. And possibly himself since I’ve never seen him turn down a sweet, though he has denied, denied, denied.

Sometimes the lights all shinin on me;

Other times I can barely see.

Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it’s been.

*LAST DISCLAIMER: I do not smoke pot, eat pot, get high on anything, really. I don't even drink. There is no marijuana in our home. Zoey is safe. It was just the perfect storm of highly accidental events featuring someone else's house, very fine print and a grandfather without his reading glasses which then led to a very scary incident that is only funny in hindsight.

It's a...

2010-12-06T06:07:00.000-08:00

Yep. I got the results of my CVS test and all is healthy and "normal," and it's a BOY. We are, of course, so so happy and wow'ed and excited, although I admit to having eyed all the naughty little boys in line at Disneyland with the slight metallic tang of fear in my mouth. A boy. (!!!)

I'll be back tomorrow with stories of the weekend. One in particular. I have to figure out how best to word it to minimize legal ramifications. (No hyperbole needed.) Plus, I'm getting more than a little joy in having my family sweat it out. The waiting is the hardest part...

Down the Rabbit Hole

2010-12-02T06:43:00.001-08:00

There is a very real chance I am in jail right now. Actually no, that’s not true because our plane doesn’t leave until tonight. But there is a very real chance I will be in jail tonight because I am traveling with my mother who does not believe rules apply to her. No, she carries 4 oz. of liquid in her carry-on because, well, why not? It’s not like her carry-on would ever fit in the overhead bin anyway. Her purse overflows with tweezers, lighters, prescription pills rattling loose in unmarked containers—so help me god, if she makes one joke about the explosive properties of a crushed Xanax mixed with two parts mouthwash I am going to pretend I am not with her and stand next to the nearest 65 year old woman who looks like she makes a mean casserole. (The TSA pat down should be interesting, though.)

And if I am not in jail tonight then I will most certainly be in jail tomorrow, because tomorrow we go to Disneyland, and my mother has never been to Disneyland. Which is where that silly rules thing might come up again since she pays no mind to designated smoking areas. (At least it should be the happiest jail on earth.)

So yes, this weekend Zoey, my mom and I are going to visit my brother and his wife where my dad will also meet us, and time will fold over onto itself, a synchronicity of a family in front of the Princess’ Castle where we will have our picture taken as if The Great Divorce of 1992 never happened, a Portrait of a Family as What If. God grant me the serenity…

Back on Monday no doubt with stories.
Xo,
S

What Kind of Girl Are You?

2010-11-30T05:55:00.000-08:00

Zoey has two boyfriends. She plays with them every day, even on the days they call her Toot Girl. She says she is going to marry them, both of them, mainly because they don’t have booger noses. I do not know their intentions. (Zoey has girlfriends, too, but somehow they don’t merit as much conversation at the dinner table. For instance, I have no idea of the state of their snot. And she is not planning on marrying any of them. Which makes me wonder if she is going to grow up more of a guys’ girl, you know the kind? Because me? I’ve always been more of a girls’ girl. That kind.)

Men may be from Mars and women may be from Venus, but both are still planets about which I know little. (I’m thinking in this silly interplanetary metaphor we are each of us our own sun). Much has been made of figuring out the opposite sex, but what of figuring out your own? Sometimes I think that is more important, Venus a “sister planet” due to similar size, gravity and bulk composition yet completely unlivable due to hostile conditions.

I have been the girl who hates the other girl for sleeping with her boyfriend. Fucking bitch whore slut with scant mention made to the boy who made it all possible. And I have been the other girl, too. I have had girl crushes and been crushed on, felt as if I were the prettiest girl in the room only to feel the very next day as if I am the toadiest, awfulest, most boringest girl ever. I have forged friendships and fed them grapes, let some hang like yellow leaves, lazily let others fall when I never meant it. I have broken up with friends, and looking back those were more painful than breakups with boys, a misunderstanding between girls such a deep betrayal of similar size, gravity and dense composition of carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Honestly, somewhere along the way I bet some boy has called me Toot Girl, though of course I don’t remember it. But I can still recite the letter that a girl handed me when I was 15 and had made out with her boyfriend the weekend before, how she and her friends came into the TCBY where I worked and ordered an extra large swirl only to smear it across the table and onto the walls as I watched from behind the counter. I guess I want Zoey to know as much about girls as she does about boys, though what I can teach her is not much. We have sent rovers to Mars and found water, gotten so excited about the possibility of life not to mention the countless nights spent analyzing boys, whatwherewhy, the apparent magnitude of the red planet measuring -3.0, a brightness surpassed only by Venus, your girlfriends, and then the sun.

Nothing To See Here (But a Woman in Her Jammies Past Noon)

2010-11-26T12:10:00.000-08:00

I owe you an apology Patti-atti, and you and you and you. I can't very well go talking about what my entrails have to do with toilet paper and then commence radio silence for days on end. I'm sorry.
I guess I've just been sort of nestling inward, curling and warm, my belly full of egg salad and red vines, peanut brittle, string beans and baby. Yes, baby--all is well with baby.

So may your Friday be Black and your digestion swift. A day late but I am always grateful for all of you.

xo,
S

What Is the Opposite of Stoic?

2010-11-23T14:10:00.000-08:00

Crumbly, I think, imaginative, emotional, susceptible. (Me.)
The opposite of stoic is waking up to pee at 1am and seeing the red of blood dark in the moonlight because everyone knows that blood between the hours of midnight and 5am is automatically multiplied and then squared by the mind of a pregnant woman who wipes once and then twice. Because really? Was that really? And then she wipes again hoping to see white nothing and sleep but there is more and she is awake and cannot feel her hands. No. No, no, no, no. I'm bleeding, she says, and like anything said in the middle of the night the words are too loud.

(Me.) I called the 24 hour ob/gyn line only to get a nurse who thought I was saying I had been to CVS the pharmacy that day--what other CVS is there? No, I said, it's a procedure, a test, and now I'm bleeding, bright red blood, to which she told me that spotting is normal throughout pregnancy. I wanted to kill her, I did, and it was only later today, at 1pm actually, that I spoke to my mother who told me that my grandfather who was an ob/gyn used to ask his patients if the blood could fill a shoe. And now I miss my grandfather who told stories that were too long and had a boat named the Sea-Section because the blood could not fill a shoe, would have probably only slicked the surface of a flip flop really, and now it is brown, light and I am sleepy.

I am okay for now. We are okay. Which is the opposite of stoic, I think, the automatic addition of for now.

Horror ceramics found here.

Just a Pinch

2010-11-22T07:12:00.000-08:00

I wrote this post in my head last night and it seemed funny. Of course I might have been dreaming. Because today there is nothing funny about this post. Today I am having a CVS test.
Which means that in two weeks I will know the gender of the baby.
And if there are any genetic abnormalities.
The test carries a 1 in 400 chance of miscarriage.
And is conducted with a cartoonishly large needle.
I prefer my needles small and non-animated. Preferably piercing cloth and not the tissue of my uterus.
Not funny at all, is it?
Positive thoughts and stories of CVS tests gone swimmingly will be gobbled up in the comments.

xo,
S

Adventures in Public Restrooms, Part III of an Illustrious Series*

2010-11-19T06:41:00.000-08:00

The other day I was in a restroom BECAUSE THAT IS ALL I DO ANYMORE--PEE when the woman in the stall next to me used the last toilet seat cover. Now this was the type of toilet seat cover doohickey that is mounted to the partition between stalls, so as she pulled it out there suddenly appeared an open slot between us perfectly at eye level. So I did what any strange woman named Susannah would do and said, "Forgive me Sister, for I have sinned." I mean--It's not as if I pushed my face into the hole and screeched I see you! But she did not laugh. Or even sigh. I thought maybe she didn't get the joke so then I said, "It's been 2 weeks since my last confession." Still nothing. Which means, I suppose, that she had either never seen The Godfather or was trying to go poo, but either way would not be assigning me any Acts of Contrition. I was so ashamed that I sat in my stall until she flushed, washed, and finally left. Which is why I'm a still a sinner, pregnant, and have to go pee again.**

In other news, I would very much like to live in this house.

*For Parts I and II of Adventures in Public Restrooms, go here and here.

**I realized later that had it been a men's bathroom the open space would have been a glory hole, i.e. even though I am pregnant and constantly burping up the taste of eggs I am happy not to be a boy.

High/Low--It's All Culture

2010-11-18T05:22:00.000-08:00

First, the High.

Zoey loves Shakespeare. That's what she tells me each time she asks to read The Book (much like The Bible or The Koran, she says it with all the Gravity befitting a bedside table drawer at Howard Johnson's).It is certainly a pretty book, printed in 1941. Zoey asks why the pages are stained a bit brown but does not accept my explanation of age. She says it is blood; I'm pretty sure this is part of the reason she loves The Book. I tell her who Shakespeare was, recite the 3 sonnets I memorized my senior year of high school, then she sits quietly while I read a few other poems aloud, though mostly she just likes to sit alone with The Book. She whispers as she reads it, she makes it up each time, and more than anything I wish I could hear what story she is telling.

The Low.

Last night I watched 16 and Pregnant because I am the mother of a 4 year old girl who reads Shakespeare. The episode centered around a teenager with crispy permed hair and a terrible cliche of an accent. She was 22 months pregnant with twins, and smaller than I am at 11 weeks pregnant with one baby. I'm thinking of picking up a can of Aqua Net because in the grand scheme of things, these things matter. Everything matters.

xo,
S

And For a Hundred Visions and Revisions

2010-11-15T19:37:00.000-08:00

I count time now between Thursdays, the seven day stretch a one-Mississippi bringing me a week closer to having this baby. This Thursday will be 11; the days before and after do not count. My life measured out in what-to-eat-next. (Tonight I served scrambled eggs and muffins with a side of pickles and then felt sad when nobody wanted to eat but me.) I swing back and forth between ravenously hungry, disgustingly full, nauseated at both, then so tired I no longer care about any of it. There is something very real about the fetal position.
. . . . .
I am happy, I am happy, please don't mistake this for anything but the hormonal ramblings of a girl who used to read poetry aloud in bed simply for the sound of the words. Which is why I give you this, one of my faves which I had forgotten about until I ran across this photo here. (Pinky swear that next time I post I will have stopped listening to The Cure.)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Two Things I Won't Be Doing This Weekend

2010-11-12T05:12:00.000-08:00

First off, I will not be following this supposed trend, though apparently I was way ahead of my time in the 8th grade. (Next thing you know they'll be showing Yale sweatshirts on the catwalk paired over a turtleneck folded down.)

Honestly, people? You're kind of making me feel like an asshole here.

Speaking of which, I also will not be attending the Cuddle Mob this Saturday at Dolores Park, mainly because I already have plans but also because I would rather peel off my own skin with a pair of blunt tweezers than take part in the largest group hug, even if it is to support the Marine Mammal Center. This is where I make no apologies for my wide WASP-swath of personal space issues. Air kisses for Greyhound Rescue? I'm totally there.

No, instead I think I'll make an online donation to the Marine Mammal Center, and then stare at this cuddle mob, the only kind in which I would ever participate.
(But only if nobody has milk breath.)

Enjoy,
S

Too Much Woman (Alt Title: Don't Read This Dad)

2010-11-10T05:28:00.000-08:00

Once upon a 1991 in a faraway land called Right Off the 405 I was offered the chance to do a test shoot for Playboy. There are many things that should have tipped me off that this was not a good idea: the run-down office park location, the two modeling agents who said I was a shoo-in while glancing at each other, the fact that on my headshot my lipgloss was visibly applied over my natural lipline. But I was 18 and stupid so none of this deterred me. I said no only after calculating the time it took for the magazine to go to print and the thought that most likely both my brother and father would still be alive when my naked body hit newsstands. (This is also the story of How I Did Not End Up Dead in a Ditch off Miramar Road, though sometimes I admit to rewriting a draft and calling it When I Was Young and Hot, conveniently forgetting the subtitle: Don't Be Flattered When Scudsy Quote/Un-Quote Modeling Agents slash Opportunistic Pervs Want to See You Naked.)

Luckily for you, me and my boobs my brother and dad are still alive to this day, so it is not likely I will be posing for Playboy anytime soon, though surely that is the only thing stopping me. That and the fact that I am 38, love nutella, think Vitamin Water is healthy, don't exercise and will be 10 weeks pregnant tomorrow. My boobs are heavy, a roadmap of blue veins, my tummy a poooch with 3 oh's; I am the Venus of Willendorf had she been carved of gluten and not stone.

Redundant?

There was a moment in my last pregnancy that I stood naked in front of my full length mirror looking at what I had become. It was not in shock or even awe, and then Bryan passed by and said something like Wow--I'm pretty sure there are fetish websites out there that would love a picture of you right now. I think he was trying to say I was sexy (missing by a mile), but he was right. A pregnant woman is almost too much woman, all exaggerated breasts and stomach, overblown nipples and vagina--yes, vagina. There is even a name for this fetish, maiesiophilia, though it cannot be that common because as you type in "pregnant women fet..." Google finishes it off as "pregnant women feta cheese."

So that's where I am today, the heroine of a Once Upon a Time in a Land Called Suburbia, pop. +1. Nobody wants to see me naked except Zoey, who thinks the blue veins look like lace, the tale of a pregnant playmate who can eat feta cheese, so long as it's been pasteurized.

Thoughts on a Monday (Can You Tell It Rained Yesterday?)

2010-11-08T05:13:00.000-08:00

I like to think that had I been a woman in 1970something I would have been this woman, all flaunt and heel with the bitchin'est car I ever did see. That in the 20's I would have been a flapper, in the 30's a member of The Lost Generation, that in the 50's I would've been first in line to buy Howl, obscene or not, the coolest chick smack dab in the middle of whatever time, an iconoclastic poster child of something avant and slightly scary. But of course I am not that woman, not then and not now, me in my sensible flats and dependable Toyota.

For most of the twentieth century, doctors routinely operated on babies without anesthesia, believing them exempt from pain. I wonder, sometimes, what modern day norm will seem horrific to us in the future. Remember when we actually ate preservatives while pregnant? we might say to one another in the old folk's home, or for that matter remember when we used to put people in old folk's homes? Shaking our heads, how could anyone have possibly denied two people in love the right to marry, a 5-point harness the lap belt of can you believe, our children admonishing us for not putting them in helmets every time we turned the ignition.

What am I doing right this very second that will one day seem at best cutely antiquated, at worst ghastly and inhumane? What is going on to which I am not privvy? A movement, a scene? A way of thinking like an optical illusion, after which you can never not see the old lady?

But the car, yes--the car is freaking beautiful.

Did Someone Say Blog Fodder?

2010-11-05T05:10:00.000-07:00

Here we go. I'm pregnant. 9 weeks, due June 9th, 2011. I am ecstatic, it's a miracle, Bryan is happy, Nacho perplexed and Zoey is thrilled. But enough about that.

Because I suck at being pregnant. Which is okay, I think, because I'm a good mom, but the truth is it's quite possible to suck ass at being pregnant, and I do. Of course before Zoey I totally thought I'd be one of those moms on the cover of Pregnancy magazine, glowing like a goddamned cliche, thin fingers resting on some sort of strap-on styrofoam belly. But I was not and am not. Pretty much from the minute Bryan rolled over I looked up and snapped WTF? I am tired and cranky, emotional, nauseated, spacey, sick, hungry and much too full. I throw up when I brush my teeth. It's beautiful, really. Wish you were here.

The difference between this pregnancy and my first is that this time I know what to expect, and it's not pretty. Because with Zoey I got pregnant face, which I didn't even know existed until months after I gave birth and saw a picture of myself still pregnant. Fat face, wide nose, flushed skin, double chin--when I smiled my face felt wrong and I could not breathe at all. Of course nobody told me then that I looked as if I had eaten Anne Geddes' darkroom but we all laughed about it later which was funny because it was over and I was normal again. Now of course I am staring down the barrel of bloat and the room has gotten suspiciously silent. It's like when you have a blowout fight with your boyfriend and all your friends trash him to make you feel better, but then you get back together and no one knows what to say. What? You think you have something to say? Really? Here--see for yourself:
Previously unseen to anyone because good god lady, this photo was taken 2 weeks before I gave birth to Zoey. Compare and contrast with my profile picture, i.e. what happened to my face? Yeah, good times ahead.

To summarize: I am totally over the moon happy that I am pregnant, my fetus the size of a grape, happy that leggings are on trend and overly grateful for steamed milk with vanilla syrup. But. That is all. But.

Oh! One More Thing!

2010-11-03T06:28:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to tell you about the other thing I did on my Blogcation...

Yup. You're looking at something I peed on.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation...in October

2010-11-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

I did not visit my grandmother. Or go to camp. I did not get you a shirt that said "My Blog Friend Went On A Break And All I Got Was This Lousy Shirt," though I would have had I thought of it before now because for some reason I always coveted *those shirts when I was ten. No, this Summer Vacation...in October I did not kiss a boy, catch a fish or work evenings at the DQ, though I did start a new job. A kick ass happy new job, which is all that needs to be said about that. A job that makes me happy.

I also ruined my hair on my Summer Vacation...in October. One fine morning I flat ironed my hair, as I have been doing since I was 15 and slid the crimping plates off my Conair Hair Styler to try out the flat plates. It was a revolution, let me tell you, and now all these years later I am still ironing out the cowlicks and the frizz. In a fugue state, it would seem, as that fateful morning it took me a few thick sections to register the dead body stench of burnt hair. To make a long story short, my faithful 4th generation flat iron (now with tourmaline!) had gone on the fritz and singed half my head into a Brillo pad of aw fuck, no. 4 hours and don't tell Bryan how much $$ later, I have much shorter, darker hair that is still brittle and iffy and, no, I am not happy.

Of course there was also the traditional Halloween festivites that occur each Summer Vacation. Zoey was Medusa.

A stunningly cute Medusa, if I do say so myself, though she did turn me to stone when she suddenly wanted to pull the snakes from her hair. I had a bit of a Toddlers & Tiaras moment when I yanked her into another room to hiss at her that she had to wear the snakes, you are not Medusa without snakes, no one will give you candy when you trick or treat if they can't tell you are Medusa. Because apparently Medusa's mother was the suburban Gorgon Susannakaplolis, a split-tongued sea monster who waits off the Isle of Hormonos to feast on the flesh of little girls who just want to look pretty.

Baby steps, people. Tomorrow I will be back with something better, I promise. Big. GER. And better...

*Also? Inexplicabley those Go Climb a Rock shirts. I have not climbed many rocks in my time, nor have I harbored a secret desire to do so, but those shirts always seemed so freaking cool to me.

xo,
S

p.s. I missed you.

We Need to Talk (Dun Dun DUUUNNNNNN...)

2010-10-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

Pinky swear, I am totally not breaking up with you. True Love Forever, I have practiced writing my name with your last name all over my Pee-Chee folder, remember? (BTW, it is one long-ass hyphenated last name.)

I just...I need a break.

Sidetrack with me: 'member these posters from The Book Mobile? God, how I loved me the order forms, circling everything I wanted and handing it to my mom, the day the packages arrived.

Anyway, it's not you, it's me. And I know that a break is usually the precursor to the irreparably broken, but I swear this is not the case here. Just give me a few weeks and I'll be back better than ever.

Day of the Dead? You know how I like things a little macabre. Let's make a date for Day of the Dead. Meet you back here November 2, mkay? In the meantime, I will try not to look at my sitemeter to see how you're not coming around anymore, i.e. surely seeing other blogs. I understand.

Hang in there. (We'll come out of this stronger.)
xo,
S

Jules, Come On Down!

2010-10-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

Your comment #9 was chosen by random.org as the winner of the Tea Giveaway!
Send me your address so that we can get you your $100 gift certificate.

And behind door #2? I was featured on 5 Star Friday. Check me out here to see some great reads of the week. Thanks Schmutzie!

Happy Friday all.
xo,
S

Koo Koo Ka Choo Corey Hart

2010-10-14T06:57:00.000-07:00

Let's lighten things up 'round here, shall we? In News of Things That Don't Matter At All: I finally bought a leopard coat!
No, I am not nudey beneath said coat, and yes, I am wearing sunglasses even though it's clearly dark outside. It was 11pm and I had already washed my face and gotten in my nightie when I thought to post this bit of drivel so I asked Bryan to snap a pic since I knew he had to leave early this morning. I thought the sunglasses hid the I'm-going-to-bed-ness of it all.

Anyway, longtime readers will know that I have been coveting a leopard coat forever and ever, amen. (Now if only the temps would dip below 90 degrees so I could wear it before 11pm.)

Operation Benign Blog Post: Out.

My Dot

2010-10-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

Lately it seems I can hardly speak as my mouth is full of Barbie shoes (like those dreams you have in which your teeth fall out, how they rattle loose and useless). Wedged sharp in my throat sits a toy car that we got in a Kinder-Surprise, and yes, it required assembly; at night I brush my hair with a doll's brush, the plastic points bending rather than actually going through my hair. It smoothes.
Once when Zoey was a teeny tiny baby I sat with some other mothers that I did not know very well, (back when I was ashamed to mix formula in public). One of the other women had an older child--a boy, maybe 5--and as we sat there she swatted at him to stop crawling on her, to get off of her, to stop it! I did not understand since all I wanted to do was take my breast out like the rest of them, me with my pre-measured packets of Similac stashed. Why would you ever swat your child away?
At dinner now Zoey eats two bites of whatever is palest on her plate and then slides off her chair to hang on the rungs of mine. Zoey, I say, get down, sit in your own chair. Instead she pinches the skin on the back of my hand as she has done since birth, though she really favors my neck. The food falls off my fork. 1, 2, 3... I say, the deep foreboding of numbers a strange parental tradition for a girl that thinks thirty-thirteen is forty-three, though in a way I guess it is. I know that I am lucky, that my life is a snow globe shaken gently, diffused yellow light floating with motes of dust suspended on sunbeams full of kings and peasants, every saint and sinner, of every couple in love, that I am no different than you or Carl Sagan. But when I cannot speak for the plastic Barbie shoes in my throat it helps to sometimes say it, to voice the folly of my conceits. Right now, I do not want to be touched. These photographs of albatross chicks were made in September, 2009, on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent. --Chris Jordan, photographer

*For Little Citizens of the World: GIVEAWAY!

2010-10-11T06:06:00.000-07:00

When I was 4 my mom dressed me in the trends of 1976: lots of corduroy, ponchos, turtlenecks, culottes. Sometimes I pined for something ticky-tacky and primary-colored that screamed kid, but for the most part I knew I was au courant. As does Zoey.
At 4 Zoey is very opiniated about what she wears. And so I was a little worried when approached by Tea Collection. They offered to send me something to review to be followed up with a giveaway, and I thought: what if Zoey doesn't want to wear it? After all, her closet is full of cute kurtas she refuses to wear (but that I bought anyway because I wished they were my size). As soon as I opened the package from Tea, however, I found I had nothing to worry about because Zoey loved the outfit. We're talking insisting-on-holding-it-to-sleep loved it, wearing-it-three-days-in-a-row-until-I-told-her-we-had-to-wash-it loved it, a super soft plaid flannel dress (that she mysteriously calls her karate dress because apparently karate is big in Hungary) and a pair of pointelle leggings. Oh yes, she rocked this look and attitude all weekend long...

Now it's your turn. Visit the Tea website (check out their blog, too! So cute!) and then leave a comment here for your chance to win a $100 gift certificate to be used on their collection of baby clothes, girls clothing or boys clothing. (Super secret gimme gimme tip: they also have a women's collection should you take seriously the idea that "every day is Mother's Day." Just sayin.') I'll announce the lucky winner this Friday, October 15th.

Because even though my mother saved some of my clothes from when I was little something tells me Zoey would not wear patchwork bell-bottomed overalls. But she would wear anything and everything in the Tea Collection, as would I. Happy shopping!

*Yes, this is a sponsored post, but I think we can agree--cutest tagline EVER.

Upside Down

2010-10-07T06:01:00.000-07:00

We took Zoey to see her first concert last night--Jack Johnson at the Greek Theater. (No matter that my first concert was Stray Cats so before they were cool that it wasn't cool or that I don't think I had a professional pedicure until I was 24.)
She really felt the opening bands. Though, to be honest, it could have been a contact high from the freedom that is felt in an open-air venue in a college town that is known for being über-liberal and prone to nudity.

My own little Janis Joplin sans the demons. Unfortunately, by the time Jack Johnson strolled onstage she was done. As in I want to go hoo-o-oome! done, antsy, picky, thirsty, I-have-to-go-pee-even-though-the-line-is-1,000-people-deep done, nose to the ground, toes to the nose, bear butt done.

Totally been there. Still, I'm glad we got to stay through a few songs including Upside Down because I remember this song from when we first brought Zoey home from the hospital. I think it was Bryan's first day back at work, my first day alone with my new life. I had already spent the morning crying over a Nick Lachey video and feeling as if the world was raw, crumbling and stupid when I put this song on and held Zoey and danced. Our first dance.

Who's to say
I can't do everything
Well I can try

And everything felt so SO. So much more and expanding, so we twirled and I sang to her and slipped upside down, happy, scared, both of us new. Knew. That this is how it was supposed to be. Still is, so we left early last night, stepping over people carefully in the dark to go home.

Me on a Mauve Carpet

2010-10-05T06:25:00.000-07:00

When we first got Nacho we lived in the city so he was an indoor cat with pretty ears. One day I bought him a leash and took him for a drag through the iceplant at the beach. He was not happy. Then we moved to the suburbs where he became an indoor/outdoor cat with serrated ears and burrs in his tail. Now he is a very happy roast beast. The End.

You heard that right--today I am writing about my cat on a leash because this is how I feel, me on a mauve carpet. So what? A little bit prickly today, if you must know. Question (total non-sequitur at that): so many of my go-to reads are closing up shop these days so I need some new blogs to peruse. Any suggestions? Also, I've noticed that more and more blogs do not feature their fave reads and I have to ask: why? I thought blogging was about supporting one another, the blogosphere and all that. Any idea why people aren't listing so-called blog logs anymore?

Like I said: prickly. Off to go pee behind the ficus.