Well, I never did find those Yankees tickets, though in future I’ll post my personal problems a day or two in advance because those were some swell suggestions I got for retrieving lost things. I particularly liked the prayer-to-St. Anthony comment, as I always forget to beseech a higher power in times of STUPENDOUS FUCKING STUPIDITY.

Anyway, to make a long, embarrassing story short, Jack used his considerable manliness to rustle up some new tickets, because his heart was set on taking Jackson see the team of his forefathers despite my subconscious efforts to thwart him. Unfortunately, at four years of age, I think the highlight of the game for Jackson wasn’t seeing squinty little Derek Jeter in person, or hearing the crowd moan when A-Rod hit a dinger, or marveling at Randy Johnson’s utter lack of ass meat:

No, for Jackson it was all about the snacks! Witness what may actually have been his first ever stick of cotton candy:

He doesn’t even have it open yet and he’s looking around to see what someone’s going to chuck at him next. A bag of peanuts? An ice cream sandwich? Yes, and yes, and don’t forget the . . .

. . . nasty-ass ballpark hot dog. Am I the only parent in the world who lets her kid eat things that she, herself, wouldn’t touch for a hundred bucks? Seriously, that barely qualifies as food, and yet not only am I not stopping him from putting it in his mouth, I’m photographing the event for posterity. Or what’s the line flea uses? I’m providing the evidence he’ll need when he wants to sue me for emancipation.

The one thing I didn’t get a picture of is the twentysomething girl with the long dyed-black hair and stupendous ass crack sitting in front of us, who Jackson spent three innings begging me to talk to. Why? So he could meet her. Seriously, the boy is always trying to use me to score chicks. I kept telling him, just tap her on the shoulder and say hi! So he kept grabbing my hand and trying to whack the poor girl with it. I think she knew what was going on but chose to benignly ignore us. Finally, in the fourth inning, Jackson tapped her on the shoulder with his own hand, and when she turned around in mock surprise he said Hi! and pulled his hat down over his face. She smiled, but she was an Angels fan and wasn’t about to start encouraging an uppity little Yankees fan’s affections, which only served to inflame him further. “Tell her I want to marry her,” he whispered to me. “Tell Daddy I want to buy a house with her.” And Jack was all, “What, you want me to come up with the downpayment? Get a job.” I guess it all seemed pretty hopeless after that, because at the end of the fifth inning he asked me to take him back to the hotel so we could watch cartoons.

The next day was Disneyland.

As you may recall, Jackson’s first trip to the happiest place on earth was chock-a-block with princesses, but this time he took the he-man approach:

Buzz Lightyear has a strangely aggressive facial expression, and he’s always walking around with his fists on his hips like Rik Mayall in Blackadder, so I’m going to assume Buzz’s hobbies, like Lord Flashheart’s, include “fighting, snogging, shagging, punching Baldrick in the face, flying, sailing and, for some reason, wearing dresses.”

The weather was hot, but not excruciatingly so, and coming from a foggy little town 200 miles to the north, it was nice to not have to wear a sweater in the middle of July. Due to the weather, and the state of our culture in general, the park was positively brimming with tattooed flesh:

The woman in green, with what could be an Art Nouveau spinal column tattooed down her back, was with a man who not only sported some elaborate sleeves but was carrying a baby under his arm as though it were a tiny, behatted sack of potatoes. I saw an amazing variety of body shapes, and everyone seemed to be doing a good job of exposing themselves to their best advantage. I don’t know if I’m projecting my own growing acceptance of my body on other people, but I was mighty impressed at the way so many people seemed so at ease with bodies our culture deems unworthy of exposure. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, baby! That was my motto this weekend. Jack’s motto, on the other hand, was a less kind but more amusing, “Disneyland 2005: Butts and Guts.”

My second favorite tattooed group of people were the teen Goth types, tagging along with their white Midwestern famiies, who didn’t care how hot the sun was blazing, they were going to wear black from head to toe, so fuck you, Mom. And not only with the black t-shirts and the black jeans and Chucks and the drugstore-dye asymmetrical haircuts, but one girl went so far as to eschew shade altogether, she just plopped herself down to suffer on the blazing hot concrete and dared everyone to take a good hard look at her neck tattoos.

My third favorite group was the grim, ropy guys with neck beards and black shades who were pushing bright pink strollers covered with Barbie logos. Honestly, it was very nearly heartwarming to see men who probably spent their whole lives developing a fine edge to their threatening machismo only to end up at the whim of a little girl demanding he take her to Toontown for a slushy. God love every last one of them.

Finally, I got to see my very favorite tattoo at the pool of the Disneyland Hotel. It was a four-headed hydra with each of the heads being a different member of the band Kiss. The guy wearing it also had on these Jack-Nicholson-in-Terms-of-Endearment sunglasses (which I can’t find an online picture of), and a black Jack Daniels baseball hat, and was keeping, as per the norm, a small girl in a pink bathing suit happily afloat while Jack was flinging Jackson up in the air repeatedly, comme ca:

I took Jackson back to the park that night for more rides, and he claimed his favorite was the teacups, although here he is showing his displeasure at being made to get on a spinny ride before (i.e., not after) cotton candy:

They have these fake paper lanterns hanging over the teacup ride which make it look pretty at night. (In case you’re curious, fake paper lanterns are made out of plastic.)

On our last morning there we came out of our room to find the hallway filled with firefighters and police and crying teenagers. Apparently the kids were in one room and the adult(s) was/were in the room next door, and the adult/parent/guardian died. As in, why isn’t grandpa opening the door or answering the phone? It was doubly strange because on our first day there I’d come down the elevator with a bunch of crying twelve-year-olds who kept sobbing to each other, “I think she had a heart attack!” And of course Jack and I immediately started with the bleak asides so Jackson wouldn’t hear.

“Death stalks the halls of Disneyland,” I whispered.

“It’s the happiest place on earth!” said Jack.

And then we came home and ate one of our souvenirs:

And now I’m off again! I’m going to spend this weekend at BlogHer making out with Alice and Melissa and jenB. Oh, the hijinks to come! Think of it!

We’re going out of town for a few days. We’re going to Anaheim! Because what could be more refreshing than July in Anaheim? A few days in Hell, perhaps, where I’ve just been, because guess what I did? Guess! I lost the Yankees/Angels tickets that we bought in March. I lost them in the move! I’ve opened every single box and looked at every single goddamned piece of paper in this accursed place, and I have no idea where they went. Three hundred dollars out the window! Yay!

As you may know, I’m always interested in expanding my vocabulary, so when I hear a new word, or an old word used in a new context, it tends to get stuck in my head. And like a crummy pop song, the only way to get it out of my head is to put it into yours. You’ve read Billy Bob’s sex advice, right? Now I want you to go out and use “swarthy” in a sentence five times today, but here’s the trick: try not to use it as a tired-ass racist cliche, okay?

Good luck.

I thought I should tell you a little bit about the town we moved to. Because we don’t live in Santa Barbara any more! We were hell bent on buying something, but Santa Barbara was absolutely unaffordable for the amount of space we wanted; it would be affordable if we were content to crouch under the bandshell below City College and eat our meals standing in the parking lot of 7-11, but we decided not to do that. Because we are effluent and have choices. Ha ha! See what it’s come to, me making little intentional malapropisms. What a dork.

So this town we now live in, it’s agricultural, in a smallish-acreage-fruit-and-flower-farms- marketed-heavily-to-West Coast-farmers’-markets sort of way. And the downtown, oh my lord. We took a stroll down the main drag the other day and it took about ten minutes to see everything. And Jack’s all, “We’ve moved to Mayberry.” Actually, he said, “We’ve moved to fucking Mayberry,” but heavens, Aunt Bea! Those two words together made my downy Midwestern ears wither just a little.

This is the display in the window of the health food store. I don’t know how long it’s been up, but surely those bottles of Omega-3 have reached their expiration date. I’m not even sure those dolls are Barbies, I think they might be knock-offs from the 99-cent store.

Here’s Jackson desperately trying to get into the darkened candy store. This place would be sure to turn him into a drooling squall of sugar panic if we could ever actually get inside, if it were ever open past 6:00 p.m. Nothing is open past 6:00 p.m. except a bar and two of six restaurants. And the best Vons grocery store on earth, “best” because the people who work there are so fucking awesome. The weekend manager has a tan so deep — it’s George Hamilton deep, it’s like she’s creating her own ethnicity. And the bag boys all seem to be happy, happy surf rats, with funny haircuts and pretty smiles. One of them asked me if I needed help getting to my car carrying a bottle of ketchup and a six-pack. “No, I’m pretty sure I can handle it,” I said with a little I’m not a granny quite yet, whippersnapper hot sauce in my voice, and the bagger, this kid, who has black hair cut like a bowl that’s sliding off his head over one ear, he smiled so apologetically I thought his tail would start wagging next. I just wanted to tuck him into my pocket! Well, I do have a thing about boys who bag groceries, it’s the Mrs. Robinson in me. Rrowr.

So, yes, hungover carnies at the church fair! Once again, I have overestimated my actual photographic evidence of said fair workers, but this gives me the opportunity to indulge in some heavily-larded-with-hyphenate-adjectives blogging-style action.

Our first ride: flying bumble bees!

Here you see me clutching Jackson and grinning stupidly because I know that when Jack pushes the shutter I will have a palm tree just barely poking out from behind my head so that it will look like my hair is sticking up in back. Hooray! Jackson was really worried about this ride and I couldn’t blame him, some of those bees looked like they’d overturned after a head-on doing seventy down Blood Alley. The woman who buckled us into our Bee of Death was so haggard I was totally prepared to go get her some Alka Seltzer, but she took one look at Jackson’s worried face and said to me, “Let me know if he gets scared and I’ll stop the ride right away.” Woman at the bee ride, you appeared to be in mortal pain, and yet you maintained your sympathy for a small child hurtling around in a dented Bombus terrestris. There are special places in both insect and regular heaven reserved just for you.

The second ride: bumpy orcas!

Here’s Jack trying to convince Jackson to wave goodbye to me forever.

He got over it pretty quick, though you can see the orca g-forces have given him the appearance of suffering a mild stroke. In the background Jack is talking to some people we know, who agreed to take Jackson with them into the next adventure: the Fun House!

Within minutes they were calling down to tell me that Jackson wouldn’t come out, I had to come in and get him. This is where we encountered our first photographic evidence of an incredibly hungover fair worker.

See him there in the shadow, nodding out peacefully?

And I thought, I don’t want to bother this poor bastard, but I have to get in to save me boy! So I said, Excuse me, but my son is freaking out inside, can I go in and get him? This guy was obviously a genius at hangover management, he kind of stuck out his right hand and gestured toward a hidden staircase, told me quite forcefully to go up and then take a left, and then sunk back down into his meditative, beta-wave state. I got to the top and found that what Jackson was scared of was this long twisty slide you had to take to get down to the ground again. He wanted to sit on my lap going down. Anything to make my child happy, even when it involves spiraling around until I can taste my breakfast in the back of my throat.

So Jack got the next ride: the giant slide!

I so desperately wanted to take a picture of the man taking tickets for the giant slide, but he was just too hungover and sausage-fingered and purple-faced for me to even try to sneak one, much less ask permission. So you will have to be content with just a sliver of his shadow and my assurance that he was really, really hungover. Lucky for him he had an umbrella for shade and a low-maintenance ride to run: Point at burlap sack; point up stairs; three fingers means three tickets; if you can’t figure out the sign language then you’re too stupid to get on this ride.

Then it was time for games of chance! With firearms!

Jackson won a fake Pooh-bear by aiming a stream of water into a clown-mouth-shaped hole. Yes, this is what the church is teaching our children.

Jack was so happy to see this t-shirt, he had to ask the guy where he got it. “Pomona swap meet” was the answer, if memory serves. Now we all know what to get Jack for Christmas.

After a hot dog and a beer and a couple of snowcones it was time to go. But not before getting a balloon hat from some crazed clowns.

I can’t really say that they were actually crazed or hungover, but the relentless cheer of the female clown was more than made up for by the surly demeanor of her counterpart:

He wasn’t mean or anything, but I wasn’t about to ask him to twist me up a dog or anything. And what’s with the gray balloons? Gray?? ??? !! Oh, who wants a gray balloon! I do! I do! I can’t wait to take it back to the U-boat and show off to the rest of the crew.

Happy Bastille Day, by the way.

I seem to be taking a break from posting. I feel like holding everything close. And then there’s that dream of the man in the watch-plaid socks that I just can’t seem to shake, the way he looked at me. So it’s probably a good time to send you off the worship the flying spaghetti monster, a sweet link I copped from styro. I’ll probably be back in a couple of days, though; who else am I going to share my pictures of hungover carnies from last weekend’s church fair with?

Maybe you’re thinking: You let a dog that ugly sleep in your bed? Internet, if your big brown eyes were that deep I would let you sleep in my bed, because I’d dig that horrendous underbite and your tongue so long it fell out your mouth half the time. I would feed you the best kibble, baby. And even though I’d make you spend most of the night in your cage because you’re still a puppy and I don’t want to roll out of bed and put my foot in a steaming pile of dog poo, in the morning I’d let you jump into bed with me. Well, not with me, but with my son.

I think I’m going to have to hand in my mommy blogger crime fighting badge and secret decoder ring: Jackson’s fourth birthday passed last week without a post about it. Does that mean his babyhood is over and I can have my mind back now?

Jackson’s made a lot of friends in our new neighborhood. We live in a cul de sac, near a grassy playground that we can see from our windows, so he just runs down the stairs and shouts I’ll be in by eleven! and I can keep an eye on his ass and read blogs at the same time. Or else he’ll drag all the kids in here and start handing out weapons. I always say yes. I want him to know our house is always open to his friends. Except when they’re covered in paint. Then they have to take it outside.

Can you see that I’ve let him go out in his pajama top, what appear to be green leggings, and clogs?

I’ve been experiencing kind of a letdown after all this change. For the last couple of weeks I’ve just been kind of sad for no real reason, and touchy, and bored, and I don’t feel like posting photos of the places where the new carpet is curling up. I can’t squeeze any entertainment out of our need for additional dryer vents. What interests me right now is hanging family photos on the wall and finding something to read.

All my books are packed up in boxes in the garage, and every time I open a box I tell myself I’m going to read whatever I find on top, but inevitably it’s something odd like an illustrated history of ancient medicine or a coverless paperback about Richard Nixon. And I still owe you a post about our closet doors, because that’s been a real adventure! A post about the fact that Jack has so many more clothes and shoes than I do that I finally just let him take over the whole master bedroom closet.

Just to refresh your memory, when we bought the place it had two mirrored doors, right?

And then California Closets came and put in lots of shelves.

And then the new closet doors arrived. Jack ordered three smaller sliding doors instead of two large sliding doors, because, well, I don’t know why — because his aesthetic demanded it, by god.

But guess what? With three sliding doors, the drawers in the closet couldn’t open! So we had to eat the doors, basically, in a manner of speaking which I’m sure you understand, Internet, and order two new big-old-size closet doors from the wonderful, wonderful Glendale Mills (you know what? They’re really wonderful), and one Sunday afternoon while Jack was in Belgium a big, strong, friendly man delivered two massive closet doors that had been fabricated out of four smaller doors that were originally destined for a bomb shelter. Seriously, these doors must have lead cores, they weigh about 900 pounds each. Lance came over and tried to slide them open and he was all, Has the World’s Strongest Man contest heard about these? Because they should add opening your closet as an event next year. As I do own a television and have been known to be interested in watching men pull freight cars with their teeth, I quickly grasped this turn in the conversation. So, yes, if you want to train for being able to carry a Volkswagen fifty feet, running, you can warm up by trying to open Jack’s closet.

Here’s another picture of the dog.

Can you see where the eye on the left has black eyelashes, and the one on the right (your right) has white eyelashes? That’s all I’ve got left today, Internet, mismatched dog eyelashes.