Fussy

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Really Grateful It Didn't Kill You

2008-07-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

The people who read posts in the Community Keynote event kicked 10,000 pounds of ass last night. If you were there, thank you. If you weren't, when the podcast goes up I will put a giant blinking link up that says CLICK HERE TO BE RIVETED FOR 90 MINUTES in giant red letters.

I want to thank all the people who read, again. Some of them I only met for the first time as I introduced them, so, Hi, that kind of sucked of me and if the last time I saw you you were coming off stage in tears, or heaving a giant sigh of relief, I want you to know how utterly happy I was that you did what you did up there.

Here are all the links to the pieces we heard last night in the order they were read.

Best Rant

Sarah Brown, "Attention: I have some things to say about Goldfish snack crackers."

Danielle Wiley, "I am indeed a full-time mother, and yes, my daughter does watch Hannah Montana"

Megan Smith, "Michelle Obama Enjoys "The View:" A Recap"

Mr. Lady, "It�s not the fall that kills you, it�s the sudden stop."

Heather Barmore, "Guess who wants Typepad for Mother�s Day"

Blogging About Blogging

Liz Gumbinner, "I'm official! Hooray!"

Suebob Davis, "Blogging makes you lose your mind"

Stephanie Bergman, "Has Twitter Ruined Blogging?"

Zan, "Note to Self in the Age of the Internet: A Necessary Reminder"

Parenting

Casey, "The one about the overdose."

Doug, "Five going on fifteen"

Polly Pagenhart, "Thanks giving"

Lindsay Ferrier, "Every Mom Needs a Little Wiggle Room"

Letter to My Body

Yvonne, "Life Changing Words"

Schmutzie, "#744: I Nudged Him Hard, Saying: "Come, Gloopy Bastard, As Thou Art""

Jen Zug, "He should really teach all young men everywhere how to extract the truth from tired, chubby, stay at home moms"

Laurie White, "Letter to My Body, Letter to My Face"

Humor

Antonia Cornwell, "Christmas Poem"

Jenny Lawson, "High"

Evany Thomas, "Say my name!"

Deb, "Too much of a good thing?"

Angela, "The albatross and the whales, they are my brothers."

Perkity Perks

2008-07-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

It's getting better than free caulk around here. Giant Conglomerate sent me a new camera to get my thoughts on it. My tech-free ruminations, several snapshots, and a video of my dogs panting are now up on my (ad-free) Reviews page.

I'd also like to draw your attention to the post I put up on Wonderland last week for a vacationing Alice. It's almost completely controversy-free, as long as you're one of those people who thinks it a-okay to decorate a child's room with a television set.

I Have a Diplomatic Rising Sign

2008-07-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

The job ended up being a pleasant sort of nightmare, whittling down almost 200 submissions for 20 or so spots on the dais at BlogHer next week. (The final list of readers is now here.)

"Nightmare" because of the juggling involved. I know so many people who write very well but who couldn't be included for one reason or another having to do with fairness and balance and other things the community-minded conference mistresses value, and rightly so.

"Pleasant" because even though it was excruciating to lop good writers off the list, I'm delighted about the ones who remain, and I was thrilled that through this process I discovered some bloggers I'd never read before, which it turns out is the whole bloody point of this event, introducing the audience to voices they may not have heard. Who knew!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go figure out which skirt I'm going to wear for the reading, the colorful, stiff, peasant-y one or the tweedy pink pencil number. Or both! And five pairs of shoes, dangling from every appendage! To overcompensate for saying no to so many people, I will now shout yes to everything in my closet.

I can't make shit like this up folks, I'm not that clever.

2008-07-04T14:50:00.001-07:00

So, what does this look like to you.

Because to me it looks like, over the course of several weeks, my dog, Peewee, has burned the word oui into the grass outside our condo. Peewee peed a "oui." Or, in other words: Pee? Oui!

I'll be sure to let you know when I find the Virgin Mary burned into my french toast.

OTC Drugs R Us

2008-07-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

I just threw out the unused portion of a sample pack of Celebrex. I'd seen the stuff advertised on TV but I guess I thought it was allergy medicine, so when I had some tight back muscles a couple of weeks ago and was laying on the floor with a tennis ball wedged into my spine (which gave me the heavenly sensation of having someone's fist pushed directly into the muscle knot using somewhere in the neighborhood of exactly the right amount of pressure to make tears spring from my eyes), I was surprised when Jack showed up with a fancy prescription NSAID. He got it off a friend who wouldn't be caught dead without a full pharmacy at his fingertips. I would say that this friend's family doctor must be a real pushover, but after my experience of going to the walk-in clinic, asking for a drug that I may not have necessarily needed, and then getting it, I have come to realize that for years I've been mistakenly operating by the notion that doctors aren't allowed to just wing it. Or put another way, it was news to me that some doctors will hand out whatever a reasonably intelligent-looking patient asks for. When I was a student in the U.K. way back before the Morrissey-Marr alliance was severed, I went through a fairly severe emotional crisis at one point and the only place I could think of to go for help was the student clinic. There I described my plight to a surly bitch in a white lab coat who wanted to know why I'd been so stupid as to waste her time with a non-physical complaint. Disgusted by the tears wetting her floor, she grudgingly handed me a tissue and then handed me off to a younger and more sympathetic colleague. When I screwed up the courage to ask doctor #2 for something to help me calm down and sleep, shook her head and kindly told me that this wasn't America, doctors didn't just hand out sleeping pills willy nilly in that green and sceptered land. Apparently the British fall asleep merely by pulling up their bootstraps and going down the pub for a pint or seven. That's what I did, anyway.

So anyway, it was a couple of weeks ago, my back was sore, I took the Celebrex, I had sex with my husband, and then I made some eggs for lunch. It didn't take long for me to start feeling sort of ill, but I didn't connect the queasiness to the medication right away. I was sad to realize that it had finally come to this: sex makes me sick. No, actually I wondered if maybe the eggs had been off. I dizzily took to my bed for the next fourteen hours, interrupted only for a couple of late night barfing expeditions to the land of cool tile and regrettably unscrubbed porcelain.

It turned out that the sore back muscles were a precursor to a mild viral infection that left me with a dry cough for the next few days, and despite the fact that I know, I know, I know to avoid extra-strength everything, I was too lazy to go up to my acupuncturist for a bottle of Wise Judge (you can laugh, but that shit works) to loosen the grip of my cough, so I started swigging NyQuil at bedtime instead. Seriously, I just came out of the NyQuil coma to write this.

Piece of Cake

2008-06-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

Jackson's birthday party went pretty well. We took four seven-year-old boys to the 11:00 a.m. showing of Wall-E in Ventura. Two parents, four kids, military precision.

Me: "Four kids' popcorns, please."

Little boy #1: "I don't like popcorn."

Me: "Here's your popcorn."

Little boy #2: "Can I just get some candy instead?"

Me: [steely gaze]

Little boy #2: "Popcorn is fine."

And I wondered why none of them wanted to sit next to me. Jack, of course, is the king of making little boys think he's funny while at the same time making sure they're just scared enough of him to behave. When we got back home for the swimming and cake portion of the afternoon, one kid started getting out of line and teasing Jackson -- why does the littlest kid always have the biggest mouth? -- sending Jackson flying into my chest and tearfully telling me the kid was ruining his day and he wanted to send him home. I tried a few different lines of reasoning: "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission" was a little too subtle, I guess; I considered saying, "It's your party and you can cry if you want to but why not make him cry instead?" but thought the better of it. I think Jack laying it flat out and saying "If he doesn't knock it off we'll call his mom and tell her to come pick him up" really did the trick. And then looking the kid in the eye and telling him to chill his shit the fuck out.

Now if we could get that look of Jack's to make Peewee quit quietly chewing up beloved toys, shoes, pillows, and underpants, maybe Jackson would quit asking if we could sell him on eBay.

Happy Day Before Jackson's Seventh Birthday!

2008-06-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

One day last week we were killing some time in the children's section at Borders, me and Jackson. Jackson has enough books to choke a television executive, thanks to an incredibly generous sales rep friend at HarperCollins, so we veered away from the stacks to check out a rack of Beanie Babies. I got sort of attached to a little beaver in a satin top hat and bow tie, and when I read his tag I was excited to learn that it was actually Punxsutawny Phil, the half-price groundhog whose selling window shuts pretty quickly every year on February 3. Jackson was trying to talk me into whatever, a stuffed fish or something, and this is where I admit that when we're in a toy-buying situation I will only loosen up the $5 rule when Jackson chooses a toy that I like. So, I won't buy him the $13 spy kit he's begging me for that I tell him is full of breakable, loseable little pieces that he'll be bored with after fifteen minutes, but I will buy him the $16 whirly light-up doohicky because I want to take it home and play with it myself. And since Phil was reduced to $2.99, well. We brought Phil out to the bench where Jack was waiting for us with a smoothie. I showed him Phil. "A stuffed rodent, fantastic," he said. "No, it's Punxsutawny Phil!" I said. "He was half price!" I waved Phil's little paw at Jack, who, predictably, once I reminded him of Phil's inspirational purpose, smirked. "They saw you coming," he said. However, not one to let cynicism spoil my groundhog joy, Jackson said, "When we get home, can we watch that movie where the guy lives the same day over and over again?"

I love being a parent most days, but extra much during a Groundhog Day/Ghostbusters II double feature in bed (with popcorn) on a Tuesday afternoon.

Phil says Hi!!

Insomnia Busters Part XVIII

2008-06-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

If you've read this blog once or forty-seven times, you might recall that occasionally I've engaged in battle with the insomnia. Well, now I think I've got it beaten, or beaten back, at least. Would you like to hear my cure? Results may vary, consult your doctor to find out if stuff you read on the Internet is right for you.

Right. So a couple of months ago we all got some sort of awful bug. I think Jack got it first, and it was bad. I knew it was bad because Jack can power through almost anything and this had him staggering. He immediately went to the urgent care walk-in place and demanded antibiotics. Naturally I was all, "La la la, if it's viral antibiotics won't work, you just have to let it run its course," to which Jack responded with a steely glare and retired to the bedroom to shiver and sweat all over the sheets. That's when I started sleeping on the couch.

We have an L-shaped couch, so Jackson joined me: I took the leg part of the L and he took the foot and we had sleepover parties for a week because Jackson soon came down with the plague, too, and when Jackson's sick I like to keep him with me so I can keep an eye on him. (Of course then, when he's well, he doesn't want to go back to sleeping in his own bed, but that's another story for another day.)

So Jackson was sick now, and Jack was actually getting worse, so he went back to the clinic and demanded better drugs. The doctor, no doubt intimidated by Jack's sweaty black look, gave him the next level of antibiotic, this stuff called Avalox. I remember the name still because it reminded me of that song "Avalon" that Natalie Cole did, when she did that album of duets with her dead dad, remember that? So every time Jack took his pill I'd sing, "So I think I'll travel on . . . to Av-a-lon!" But only in my head. Because I didn't want Jack to punch me.

Inevitably, just as Jack and Jackson were getting better, I got sick. Jack wasted no time in badgering me into going to the clinic and getting the Avalox. I didn't even have the strength to argue, I went in and sat down in the waiting room and nearly passed out. Then I farted. When I started sweating and moaning a nurse came and made me put on one of those masks you see on bicycle riders in China, so they don't have to breathe the exhaust fumes. Except this in this case the mask was meant to contain the horror that was emanating from me.

I laid down on the exam table and didn't even bother sitting up when the doctor came in. I asked him if he remembered Jack. He did. I told him that Jack said I should get the same drugs that he got, the Avalox. The doctor thought about that for a minute. He said, "Avalox is usually the second line of defense, we don't normally prescribe it first unless it's clear that pneumonia is present blah blah . . ." I looked at him with a sweaty, steely gaze. "Okay, I'll give it to you," he said, "because I don't want your husband to come in here and punch me."

The thing about extra-strength drugs and me is that I don't normally react very well to them. I'm honestly good with the weaker, lower-dose, first-line-of-defense drugs. But I'd been frightened into the Avalox, so by god, Avalox it was. The first night was fine, and I immediately began to feel better, but by the third night I was having a horrible time with that thing where the only thing I can think of to call it is Restless Leg Syndrome.

It was awful. I'd be just about asleep when I'd feel this overwhelming urge to stretch my legs out as far as I could and squeeze the muscles. I'd have to do this every minute or so. Fortunately, I remembered once researching some of the snake oil that was on the market to allegedly combat restless leg and I remembered that one thing that could genuinely help was calcium. So I got up and went to the kitchen and opened up a bottle of supplements I have where the ratio of calcium to magnesium is like 1:2, which is supped to be good for muscles and which I take after yoga. I also took a couple of expired potassiums for good measure. Then I went back to bed and slept like a drunk, exhausted baby.

I woke up feeling GREAT. The next night, more calcium/magnesium. Same thing, slept beautifully. Got through all the Avalox, kept taking the calcium/magnesium, kept sleeping better than ever. Felt good enough to start drinking again: stopped sleeping so well. Ah ha. Cut back to one glass of wine or less with dinner, then cal/mag at bedtime: slept perfectly.

So that's my insomnia cure: little or no alcohol before bed, 1,000 mgs of calcium, 2,000 mags of magnesium, a little lavender on the feet = achieve deeper, more prosperous sleep. (I should add: no caffeine after 1:00 p.m., that's my sort of arbitrary cut-off time. If you're going to be really strict about it, no chocolate either.) The added benefit of all this vigilance being that I'm also getting by on less sleep, like seven hours or so, I guess because I'm sleeping more deeply? Theoretically.

Be sure to join us next time on Fussy for Grandma Eden's cure for constipation and the joys of NyQuil!

2008-06-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

I had uncharacteristically agreed to write a review of a sample of caulk I'd been sent and submit the review to the sponsor in order to earn a chance to win a $1,000 Visa gift card. Because hey! A thousand dollars? Yes, please. Unfortunately, I didn't like the product much. I assumed they'd only choose a positive review to win the money, but I decided to write the review anyway. I'd been neglecting my "Reading" page -- I'd started it to keep track of what I thought of the books I'd been reading, but lately I've been thinking I might get interested in updating it again if I expanded it to cover other weird stuff that crosses my path, including samples of caulk.

People are always asking me if they can send me stuff to write about on my web site and I get irritated and decline, so I'm thinking I'll take a few of them up on it, but they'll have to deal with what really happens when I do.

More Reasons Why You Don't Want to Be Married to Me

2008-06-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

Somewhere down deep inside a grain of an atom buried deep in one of my less-vital organs -- my gallbladder, perhaps, or my heart -- I have buried the knowledge of the fact that when Jack and I moved in together I was the one who had to give up my vacuum cleaner, the one my mother bought me. Even though his was newer and better. As were his pots and pans. Better than the ones my mother had bought me.

His silverware, though! It was from a previous relationship and I found it kind of prissy, frankly, so I kept all my ugly, rusted sporks and put them in a red ceramic jar above the sink for those times we ran out of butter knives or whatever and just needed an extra utensil that wasn't a finger or the spoon I once used to clean out the litter box.

So when we moved into this place three years ago, Jack's mom gave us a housewarming gift of a whole bunch of money. Since we'd already replaced the dishes he bought with his ex, it was now the silverware's turn.

Since Jack had made pretty much every aesthetic decision during the renovation, he told me to pick the new silverware. Oh, joy. I chose this stuff, which astute readers will note is shown having been hastily jammed into a box in which it does not belong.

No, that's because

*DEEP BREATH*

that's because half the teaspoons disappeared into the mouth of hell itself, for all I know, and could not be replaced with the same pattern because Pottery Barn Is An Ass. So Jack, who loves fixing problems INSTANTLY and WITHOUT FUSS with his infinite online shopping wisdom, ordered a whole new set of flatware (with extra teaspoons!!) for $99 from Crate and Barrel.

"What are we going to do with the old silverware? We can't throw it out!" I wailed.

"We'll use it for camping," said Jack calmly.

"CAMPING?!"

"Fine, why don't you save it to use after the divorce."

"I will. I'm going to start a divorce hope chest."

I'm sure this sounds pretty goddamn shallow when the rest of the world is caving in on itself, but I really liked that silverware. It was the only thing I felt really reflected me in the entire goddamn house; it was weird and impossible to keep from getting tarnished and it was mismatched and heavy and fun. If you understood that silverware, you understood me. I had never even used three of the larger spoons. Look at that patina!

New flatware:

Functional, simple, clean, dishwasher safe. You can't tarnish this stuff with anything short of a blowtorch.

So I moped around for a week feeling as though my aesthetic was completely unwanted, and that thereby the very qualities that made me me were considered frivolous and unsound by the man I'm supposed to have married for love.

Yes, I briefly equated the replacement of my silverware with wholesale rejection of my self.

I suppose if I were younger and less resilient I'd be looking for a new place to live right now. Instead, I busted out the red enamel jar I had originally used to hold my superfluous sporks when we first met, thereby reusing the original solution for a new but similar problem:

Thus we have come full circle. So fuck that new silverware!

Except the teaspoons, those I like.

Notice!

2008-06-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

I really need to mention here that Friday evening during the BlogHer conference in San Francisco, California on July 18, 2008 there will be a READING. It's an event I've been hoping to get on the schedule there for a couple of years, and now it's HAPPENING. So what I need you to do is (1) come to BlogHer! and (2) submit one or five of your favorite posts so we can put together an hour of laughter, tears, and educational programming. The rules are here. You have one week to get your act together, the deadline is next Friday, June 13, baby! Get on it!

Storm Troopin'

2008-06-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

Jenijen, who knows how I love to cause action figures to enjoy new contexts, sent me a link to this Flickr set this morning and it made my day. If you think you would enjoy photos of Storm Troopers helping to decorate Christmas cookies, then why are you still here?

"Ted Nugent isn't going to show up anytime soon, is he?"

P.S. But don't forget to come back later, I might actually find the strength to lift my head out of the puddle of drool that's collected next to my laptop and post something this week.

Oh! I Have a Blog! Right!

2008-05-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

Jackson and I had a couple of uncanny like-mother-like-son moments the other day. The first one happened at dinnertime when I asked him to scoop some kibble into the dogs' bowls. He opened the closet, scooped the food from the bin, walked into the kitchen, opened the garbage, and started to dump the kibble into the trash.

Fortunately, I asked him what the hell he was doing and he stopped. He was all, Oh my god, I totally forgot what I was doing in the middle of doing it.

It gets better because later, as I was helping him get dried off after his shower, I unwrapped the towel from around his shoulders and went, "Say AHHH." He opened his mouth and said AHHH. But what I really meant for him to do was lift up his arms so I could dry his ribcage and underneath his arms. It's like I wanted his armpits to say AHHH. He laughed at me for ten minutes after I got it all straightened out. Dog food absentmindedly into the garbage, armpits that say AHH. What could possibly be next?

Oh, I know! It's that our local florist seems to want us poor and dead. I can see no other reason for her having stuffed the front half of her store with Webkinz and then given us two out of what looked like a hundred praying mantis babies that had hatched from the store's praying mantis kit.

Our little predators now live in separate mason jars so they don't eat each other, and they stay on our kitchen counter where we can keep an eye on them. I'm not sure why we haven't named them yet, maybe because they're so small we can't see their vicious little compound eyes.

We're supposed to feed them fruit flies or ants. Yet praying mantis prey seems to be nearly impossible for us to find. Apparently, despite my slack housekeeping, we live a bug-free existence. To counteract the unconscionable lack of grime in our lives Jack left a rotten banana in a jar on the balcony. No fruit flies. He put the jar on the ground by the front steps. No ants.

Can't I just toss a tortilla chip in there? Everyone likes tortilla chips.

Decidedly More Aesthetic Bits of Crap

2008-05-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Grandma Susan was here to visit last week so we did what any self-respecting hosts who live a mile from the beach would do. We drove thirty miles to Costco! Susan had forgotten to bring her camera so she thought she'd buy a new one, download the pictures when she got back home, and then send the new, redundant camera to me as an early Christmas present.

Unfortunately, our Costco was not selling the exact same model of camera that Connecticut Costco sells. Astonishingly, our Costcos are ever so slightly misaligned in their otherwise-exact-sameness. So then we thought, "What the hell, as long as we're here let's just have a little walk around!" And soon our arms were loaded with loaves of bread and jugs of wine and thou. We ended up spending eleventy-million dollars on, I don't know what, beef jerky. Dried blueberries. Salsa-flavored rice chips.

Only then did we feel we'd bought enough crap to earn the right to shrug off the heavy wet cloak of food-based consumerism, and so we took to the beach to comb for some decidedly more aesthetic bits of crap.

Behold, a mere portion of our bounty! Sea glass, sea pottery, and the rare and underappreciated sea brick. Tomorrow I'm going to throw my Costco membership card into the ocean and see if in a couple years' time it washes back up in some unexpectedly useful and/or decorative condition. One can only hope.

Peewee appears to be allergic to whatever the hell is blooming around here, it could be anything, we are up to our necks in flora. I have three colors of sweetpea jammed into a vase next to me and they smell better than -- I don't know what. Mike Nichols' toupee? A Rose Bowl queen? Five hundred bucks? To be honest, the smell reminds me of my mother's flowerbed when I was nine years old and it was my job to keep the petunias and snapdragons and the lily of the valley watered. Despite my recent record of killing nearly every plant I get my hands on, I did a pretty good job as a kid. I think I was more focused then.

Aw, Peewee!

2008-05-17T08:20:00.000-07:00

Poor little 'Wee! They shaved his legs and took away his balls.

It was supposed to happen two weeks ago but the vet called in sick that day so we had to reschedule the appointment. Once the drugs wore off Peewee was literally leaping into the air. We had to stop him because it's ugly if those stitches pop. Jack used to work for a vet and he always talks about how dogs would go through major operations, an animal could lose an entire leg and the next morning it'd be hopping up and down in its kennel going, "Can we go for a walk now? Canwegoforawalk?!"

Some people seem to be confused by the fact that we are taking away the puppy-making capabilities of both our dogs. Isn't it enough if you just do one? they ask. It would be if I had a magic crystal ball that assured me that I'll never get hit by a bus or lost at sea or crushed by rubble in an earthquake or go into foreclosure and have to move into an apartment that doesn't take dogs, or that no one will ever steal my friendly dogs out of my car in the grocery store parking lot, that Cookie will never end up stray and bloated with progeny or Peewee part of an ignorant backyard breeder's puppy mill. If you can be absolutely sure that your dog will forever and ever amen be by your side and never dishonor the family name by having puppies out of wedlock and those puppies won't end up in the wrong home, badly trained and uncontrollable and eventually, tragically euthanized, then by all means, don't bother, save your money and let nature take its crazy course. Or you know what you should really do if you're committed to keeping your dog intact because you just can't stop anthropomorphizing the manliness of his testicles and spending your afternoons enviously watching him lick his balls? Invent some doggie birth control! Little dog condoms and adorable little canine IUDs.

Seriously, though, get a grip. Spay and neuter. Animal shelters have free or discounted programs for the financially broke. In communities where spaying and neutering is mandatory, euthenasia has gone down 75%.

Apparently I'm sort of angry about this.

Cookie, you're next.

Summer Plans

2008-05-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

I thought I should mention that I plan on going to the BlogHer conference in San Francisco this July. It's on the same weekend as the yoga workshop I really wanted to go to again, but since I bailed on the conference last year I felt like I should maybe start alternating -- one year I'll spend that weekend being a limber, hiking vegan, and the next year I'll spend it shopping, chatting, and eating my weight in dim sum.

So, barring another death in the family, I will be there. I'm trying to organize a reading night where people can get up and read their favorite posts and then have lots of cocktails to help them calm down. It's not on the schedule yet but we're working that out and when we do we'll have an open call for submissions.

Lastly, I put another image and link in my sidebar, it's for Rita Arens's anthology "Sleep is for the Weak," which you can order from giant online retailers (here and here), or from local independent booksellers (here). It features lots of bloggers who are also parents, including me. The cover art is adorable! I'm told it makes an excellent baby shower gift. There will be a launch party for the book at BlogHer, and lots of events all over the country and at some point in September I will be at a book event down in L.A. with some of the other folks in the book so stay tuned. I know I've said I feel comfortable speaking in public but the idea of doing a book signing is making me hyperventilate four months in advance. What's the difference? The difference is that one thing doesn't scare the shit out of me and the other one does. /sales pitch.

Dear Over-muscled Twentysomething Who Tried to Chat Me Up in the Bulk Oatmeal Section at Tri-County Produce

2008-05-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

Seriously, standing behind me and humming a little tune like that is how my six-year-old tries to get my attention and it doesn't work for him either. Snapping your head around to check out my ass is a chump move, too. This will definitely be the last time I go shopping wearing sweaty yoga clothes, the power of my endorphins clearly attracts the wrong sort of chimpanzee. It was sort of hilarious that at the split second I turned my back on you to flee toward the fresh fruit you called after me, "Does anybody actually eat this stuff?" Oh, sonny, let me learn you something. If you're looking for recipes then yes, chat up someone old enough to be your mother. If you're looking to hook up, the ignorant, helpless routine is only going to attract people who want to mother you. It's a lose-lose.

It's that goddamned cougar thing, isn't it? Lard help us all.

Whoever coined the term "cougar" deserves:

more at twiigs.com...

Evolve, buddy.

Yours in low cholesterol,

Mrs. Kennedy

Go Ahead, Judge Me

2008-05-09T10:24:00.000-07:00

It's interesting, coming on the heels of all the blogular insecurity I felt this week, that what's helped me get over it is, 1. posting about it and getting some good, supportive comments, and 2. pushing my opinion out there without worrying who was going to call it bullshit.

Lovely Alice took the week off so I wrote her Wonderland column for her. If I'm ready to embrace parenting commenters, surely some of the most opinionated human beings ever to set fingers to keyboard, I must be getting back on my feet again.

The other thing I did was publish a post over at MamaPop that did not criticize a Hollywood actress for taking off her clothes in a magazine photoshoot! The apocalypse is surely at hand if I didn't self-consciously try to play both sides of the issue and come out looking like I agree with everybody.

Yell It Out, Bitches

2008-05-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know if anyone's really noticed but I've had a terrible time finding the nerve to post much lately. I've been trying to figure it out -- is it burnout? Is this the end of Rico? -- and I honestly think it boils down to some sudden insecurity that hit me while reading about the Democratic campaign. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I felt like it's impossible for anyone, anywhere to ever be Right, capital R, Platonic ideal, absolutely correct about anything. I just started feeling wrong, whatever I said, spoiled and entitled and stupid and boring and white and incapable of understanding anything outside of my suffocating sub-suburban bubble.

Whee!

Jack and I had a giant fight the other night, a real "Fuck you!" "Fuck me? NO, FUCK YOU!" extravaganza. It certainly made Jackson stand up a little straighter. He was in the shower for the worst of it, actually, and when it was over and I was cuddled up in bed reading a book with him, Jack walked in -- you could tell he still had his back up but was wholly reasonable once again -- and said, "Jackson, do you know why I yelled at Mommy like that? Because I love her." I laughed, and later Jackson and I were able to have a good talk about how you can fight with someone and still be friends.

"But why didn't you cry?" he asked me. This was an astonishing echo from my past, as my Grandmother Marriott asked my mom the exact same thing. Generations of Marriott men have been yellers, evidently -- my grandma married one and so did my mom - and my grandmother always used to burst into tears to make it stop. But my mom never did, she just silently sat there and waited for my dad to yell himself out so she could go on with her business until he cooled down and apologized.

"I grew up with a dad who yelled a lot," I told Jackson. "When I was little, I'd hide in the closet. It took me a long time but it doesn't scare me anymore. Plus, I love Daddy and I know Daddy loves me. I know he wouldn't hit me, or leave, or make me leave, so it was okay to see him get angry and to yell back at him."

I found this clip on YouTube yesterday, it's Craig Ferguson, whose show I've never watched, talking about why he can no longer make fun of Britney Spears. It's about twelve minutes long so I forgive you if you don't have the time to invest in it, but if you do it's absolutely worth it, he's amazing and I'm a fan forever now because of this.

The Usual Half-assed Animal Husbandry

2008-04-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

So NATURALLY Cookie went into another heat cycle, because apparently I don't own a calendar, or any anticipatory consciousness whatsoever. Well, that's not true. Last month I'd gotten her in for a heart scan to make sure she'd be okay going under anaesthesia -- most vets worry about putting bulldogs under due to their mashed-up snouts and, in Cookie's particular case, a little click her heart was making that no one could figure out. And they still can't, but it wasn't something that would prevent her from being spayed, for which an appointment was helpfully scheduled, by me, to coincide with yet another biannual bleed.

Now, I wasn't all that worried about Cookie getting knocked up accidentally because Peewee's only, what, seven months old? Yeah, well, it turns out I have a Googling deficiency as well because seven dog months isn't the same as seven people months. Seven-month-old human boys have barely discovered their own ball sacks, whereas seven-month-old puppies have fully-matured sperm that would really like to meet any available fertile eggs you might be willing to introduce them to.

Except that Peewee, comically, doesn't have a fucking clue how to get 'em up in there.

I was loading the dishwasher this morning when behind me I heard an ominous thump! thump! thump! thunp! and I turned around and found Peewee trying to hump Cookie's head while it banged into the refrigerator. If he's not trying to hump Cookie's face -- hell, half the time we find her trying to hump him -- he's got his face buried in her coochie while she stands there quivering. If it goes on too long she just flops down and goes to sleep.

"Hey, she's just like you," says Jack. Ha ha.

Anyway, now Peewee's taking Cookie's neutering appointment, and by this time tomorrow his fuzzy little balls will be floating in a keepsake Mason jar on my desk. Oh, I thought about getting him some prosthetic balls, but they'd be for me, not for him, he's too stubby to get his nose down there for a peek, much less a lick.

So farewell, Peewee's balls! Although the vet says you'll still have sperm for up to another month and we need to keep you and Cookie separated, just say the word and I will carefully duct tape a bag of frozen peas to your affected area until the swelling goes down.

A Little Gift

2008-04-29T07:04:00.001-07:00

Here, I made this for you.

Well, we've been sick, that's for sure

2008-04-22T00:13:00.000-07:00

After watching Jack buckle under a horrible bronchial infection and flu last week it only served me right that after several days of sort of thinking he must exaggerating how bad it was (Really, an icepick? In your eardrum? Huh.), I would get it. That's some ancient Greek payback, right there. And a little extra for making him drive himself to the doctor. Granted, Jack's one of the tougher models of human being, he didn't even ask me to take him, he just walked out the door with his truck keys in his hand and a grim look on his face, but still.

The second time he went to the doctor (the first round of antibiotics was too WEAK) I was actually bundled up on the couch with Jackson, who'd come down with a fever, but I'm pretty sure at that point Jack got in his truck armed with nothing but a broken aspirin bottle and a steely gaze and the truck drove itself to Urgent Care.

Anyway, I shouldn't have been surprised when I woke up on the couch at 3:00 in the morning (Jackson gets super clingy when he's sick so I'd been sleeping on the couch with him and letting Jack bundle up and sweat it out in our bed) my first thought was, "Gee, I haven't felt this bad since I was in labor."

You need no more detail than that, gentle reader. I'm coming through it pretty quickly, which leads me to believe that I just got a half dose while Jack must have felt like someone had catapulted a hippo at him, and which led me to apologize (hoarsely, in a sweaty bath robe, with matted hair) for not having been as nice to him when he was sick as he was being to me. Sometimes I get so self-involved I want to shoot myself. Which, ironically, would only make matters worse.

When I was little my mom would put menthol rub on my chest when I was sick but without telling me exactly how that was going to help. (I think my constant childhood frustration with bad information is what turned me into such a relentless explainer.) Then a month ago Jackson's friend Sophie spent the night and I found that her mom, the brilliant Jennifer, had sent along a jar of vapor rub in Sophie's bag. She asked me to rub it on Sophie's feet and then put some socks on her before she went to sleep and that would keep her from coughing all night.

"You've got to be kidding me," I said, suspecting that with the act of anointing her daughter's feet with camphor and eucalyptus, Jennifer was secretly initiating me into her coven of Kentucky goblin witchcraft. "Her feet? This works?"

"I shit you not," said Jennifer.

So I risked my eternal soul and did her nefarious bidding, and it did work. Sophie didn't make a peep all night. A child sleeping through the night without being drowned in Triaminic? What madness this was!

No, I'd figured out a while back that rubbing that stuff on Jackson's chest was way easier than waking him up (how can sleeping children cough and yet also sleep?) and forcing a dose of candy-flavored syrup down his throat. But I liked the feet thing because it GAVE ME IDEAS.

I remembered I had a tube of lavender hand cream in my night stand left over from a birthday basket of l'Occitane samples my sister-in-law had sent me a couple of years ago. Instantly, the hamster that powers my cerebral cortex jumped on her little wheel and whiizzz! I had a plan. I put the lotion on its feet! Understand that I'm probably placeborifically sensitive to the calming effects of lavender, but what the hell, I thought, as my feet slowly turned into cloven hooves, maybe it will help me sleep? And it did. That shit works. I put it on my bony appendages every night now and I've had no insomnia ever since. Or rather, I should say that if I do wake up, it's really easy to drift back off to sleep. Unfortunately, once I ran out of my sample I discovered that l'Occitane likes to charge about $20 for a 2.6 oz tube of sweet dreams, but hell, it lasts longer than a bottle of Hornitos, though it's not nearly as delicious with chips and guacamole.

Sweet Dreams!

2008-04-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

Normally at bedtime Jackson wants me to read him books with lots of pictures and not a whole lot of text. Lately, though, I've really felt the need to push him out of that comfort zone -- god forbid he should have a seamless and neurosis-free childhood -- and say, "Hey! You can read! Why don't you read Pete's a Pizza to me for a change?" Then I cough a little to show him that my vocal chords are dry with the strain of entertaining him with the sort of classic children's literature that I myself never enjoyed as a girl, because why not throw a little guilt on the fire as well. He is always adamant in his refusal to switch roles with me, though, and taking a page from my Great Big Book of How to Fake Shit to Get Sympathy, he limply and whinily exaggerates the exhaustion that reading out loud will inevitably exact on his delicate brainular mechanisms.

I play the game, I heave a giant sigh and the status quo remains unbroken. Wasn't it Erma Bombeck who said that her needs came after her husband's, and children's, and the dog's? So Jackson snuggles up against my arm and stealthily follows along as I do all the laborious speaking and page turning. It's my theory that he's afraid that if he actually shows me how well he can read I'll go, "Great! That means I don't have to do it anymore!" and abandon him with a copy of Harold and the Purple Crayon and a flashlight. In actuality, I still can't get over the fact he can walk upright and flush a toilet, and that this formerly walnut-sized chunk of cells and cartilage can now parse a whole strip of Calvin and Hobbes and the boxed set of Little Bear. Seriously, though, I get a little teary. Put "crying about my son's achievements" on the list of Things I Never Thought I'd Do, right after "get married" and "make a serious effort to get my foot behind my head."

Anyway, whatever it is, by last week I'd had enough of it -- not the doing all the reading, just the elementary storylines we were always strapped with -- so I very cruelly suggested that we set aside whatever Caldecott winner was at the top of the pile and move on to Charlotte's Web. Which very cruelly has not many pictures, just several heartbreaking Garth Williams illustration of a small pig bawling his eyes out.

I withstood the usual fit of floppy protestations, and I prevailed with the steely will of my German ancestresses. It doesn't hurt that the story starts out with a bang:

"Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

"Out to the hoghouse," replied Mrs. Arable. "Some pigs were born last night."

"I don't see why he needs an ax," continued Fern, who was only eight.

"Well," said her mother,"one of the pigs is a runt. It's very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it."

"Do away with it?" shrieked Fern. "You mean kill it?"

And that was all it took. You forget what bloodthirsty little heathens kids really are, but all that Grimm stuff? They really do want to hear about other children facing the horrors of life and death. At least my kid does.

So with that in mind, once I found that he could stand to follow a more complex story, I started reading him bits of my bedtime reading, Bill Bryson's wonderful A Short History of Nearly Everything. This is the most educational book I've read since Diary of Indignities and that's saying something. For instance, there's an enormous, live "supervolcano" underneath Yellowstone Park, did you know that? Those geysers aren't just there to keep the tourists entertained, they're heated by a reservoir of molten rock, a magma chamber forty-five miles across and eight miles thick. Guess how often the volcano beneath Yellowstone blows? About once every 600,000 years. Guess when was the last time Yellowstone blew? About 630,000 years ago. How far are you from Yellowstone right now? You better hope it's far enough.

This isn't the sort of information that seeds sweet dreams, however, so I moved on to a racy bit in the chapter about oceans, where a father and son team were experimenting with the effects of extreme pressure on the human body.

In the days of diving suits--the sort that were connected to the surface by long hoses--divers sometimes experienced a dreaded phenomenon known as "the squeeze." This occurred when the surface pumps failed, leading to a catastrophic loss of pressure in the suit. The air would leave the suit with such violence that the hapless diver would be, all too literally, sucked up into the helmet and hosepipe. When hauled to the surface, "all that is left in the suit are his bones and some rags of flesh," the biologist J. B. S. Haldane wrote in 1947, adding for the benefit of doubters, "This has happened."

Still not something you want your six-year-old to be meditating on as he drifts off, probably. So let's end with a nice little fact about crustaceans. You know all that carbon we release into the atmosphere? It falls into the oceans and little, tiny marine organisms use it to make their little, tiny shells. DID YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT? WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME? I find this absolutely incredible.

By locking the carbon up in their shells, they keep it from being reevaporated into the atmosphere, where it would build up dangerously as a greenhouse gas. Eventually all the tiny foraminiferans and coccoliths and so on die and fall to the bottom of the sea, where they are compressed into limestone. It is remarkable, when you behold an extraordinary natural feature like the White Cliffs of Dover in England, to reflect that it is made up of nothing but tiny deceased marine organisms, but even more remarkable when you realize how much carbon they cumulatively sequester.

And the limestone ends up feeding . . . volcanoes! And Disney has the nerve to sell us a bunch of stuffed animals and call it the circle of life. Despite the fact that we're now dumping far more carbon into the atmosphere than the tiny sea creatures can keep up with, nature is marvelous at rebalancing itself, even if it takes a few million years to do it. I recall about fifteen years ago, in the middle of a family dinner at my then-boyfriend's house, realizing loudly and fun-dampeningly that, hearty as our planet appears to be, it will do whatever it has to do to save itself, even if that means killing us off.

But I haven't told Jackson that yet.

I Pledget Unto Thee

2008-04-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

I'm back! And I spent a portion of last weekend trying to take a nice picture of Peewee's tail. Want to see?

It's adorable, I know. And its health is, for the moment, attributable to tireless applications of Malaseb Pledgets. But guess who quickly found a way to utterly misuse veterinary antiseptic wipes? Me, that's who!

Sunday night Jackson was all, My butt itches! And he bent over and gave me the full goatse, thank you very much, Google it if you can't imagine what I'm talking about from the context. So I said, Hm! I have an idea! And I ran to the kitchen! Because why wouldn't you wipe your kid's ass with the same thing you use on your dog? I don't know. I mean, now I do, but I didn't at the time, I thought Pledgets were the veterinary equivalent of soothing Tucks medicated pads.

You don't know how many mistakes you have left as a parent until you witlessly apply something that you think will be healing to a very tender part of your child's anatomy, only to have said child run away screaming "IT BURNS! IT BURNS!"

Me: "I'm so sorry, Jackson, I would never had touched you with that if I'd known it would hurt you."

Jackson: "THE BURNING!"

Me: "I didn't think it would hurt, Peewee never cries when I clean him with one."

Jackson: "That's because he's a DOG! DOGS CAN'T SPEAK, MOM!"

It's actually kind of important to apologize to your child once in awhile, though I don't go out of my way looking for ways to maim him just so we can have make-up snuggle time. Anyway, it took some persuasion but he finally allowed me to come close enough to spread a little bit of Boudreaux's Butt Cream on the affected area and the burning soon stopped. But it will probably take a few months for his Protective Posterior Suspicion Level to fall back within normal limits.

Here are a few photos from the last few weeks that had been languishing in my camera.

Peanut butter cookies I made at my mom's house before I left. There's nothing I really want from her house when she's gone except those Bake King cookie sheets.

First day of spring break. We had some grand plans to go down to the tar pits and to the Getty, but instead we went to Borders and bowling. It's never too late to start lowering your child's expectations.

We went to the beach once, though.

Last time we went the sand kind of freaked Peewee out.

But he found his groove this time.

Hey, and I finally finished Jack's pirate hat! In Raiders' colors, naturally.

Uh, let's see. Then the sun came out and our neighbors threw a party! You never know what you're going to get when you hand your camera to a six-year-old.

It was a lovely party but I have limited personal strength for prolonged socialization without alcohol, so I went inside for a little restorative nonverbal communication.

This is where Peewee had an epiphany.

Here's where I found Peanut this morning.

Did I tell you that Jack and I went up to the Chumash ~~ashtray~~ casino to see Chris Rock a few weeks ago? Jack bought himself this souvenir sweatshirt and he bought me a t-shirt that says, "If you haven't contemplated murder, you ain't been in love." I think that sums up our relationship quite nicely.