Two Tips On a Summer Weekend

Tip #1: Balsamic vinegar on ice cream. Oh, I know this sounds disgusting. What I don't know is why I ever deigned to try it, but good god! I am so glad I did. How to: drizzle balsamic vinegar over something very sweet like dulce de leche or simple vanilla. Eat. Thank me later. (Next up: sea salt and olive oil over ice cream. Will report back.)

Tip #2: Walk to ice cream shop with a three year old who begs to wear her new bathing suit despite the fog. Watch said three year old choose ice cream based on color rather than flavor. (Could well be ass flavored chip so long as it's pink ass flavored chip.) How to: admire the sense of self it takes to devour ice cream while wearing a bathing suit. Love. Eat her up with a spoon (after you have finished your own ice cream, of course). Happy Friday, friends.
xo,
Susannah

Time Capsule

Dear Zoey,

I have been thinking a lot about time lately. Always. Now and Then. This is who I am, your mother who trips out on the tick tick tock. I don't know why, and one day, this might annoy you. See what I mean? One day? Isn't that strange? Silly, a thought from today, when gas costs $2.96/gallon?

I am a month away from turning 37, and I feel it. The mid to late 30's. I buy moisturizers and face masks, pick at my skin with a mirror magnified 10x. My pores, they are huge. Zoey, this is what I look like a month before I turn 37: I look tired. And dry. This, too, is funny, because one day you might read this and think but I look so young! You won't remember me when I was a month away from turning 37. I will be older, dryer, shortersmallerslower, a month away from ten years+ maybe, who knows? This is the youngest I will ever be, the oldest I have ever been, and I would hate to spend it thinking I am old when years from now we will both look back and marvel at my youth. Is am are was were be being been: we are all just a string of verbs of being juggling the weight of helping verbs: have has had, do does did, shall will should would, can could and ought. I have Mrs. Hudson to thank for that, my 7th grade English teacher who wore her long gray hair in a small little bun. One time I got my period all over my chair in her class and I left it there for somebody to clean up. She is probably dead now, Mrs. Hudson. QED, although that was geometry and something I never once understood much less bled for.

Headlines for July 30, 2009: New Poll Finds Growing Unease with Obama's Health Plan. Iranian Police Use Force Against Graveside Rally. The Dow Jones is up 164pts, Jackson's Mom to Keep Kids, Rowe Gets Visitation, Pregnant Women at Front of Line for Swine Flu Vaccine and Now? Now the Dow Jones is up 167pts.

We are all of us 6 minutes older than when I started this post.

Zoey, today you are at daycare, and I miss you. We have started this thing we do at night; I am hoping to make it a nightly ritual. Together we lay in your bed and we each say something we loved about the day. So far you have talked about your new bathing suit, swinging at the park, pink bubble bath with hearts that smells like flowers, throwing rocks into the stream (never the same stream twice!).

When I was in the 5th grade my school buried a time capsule under the playground. I don't remember what I put inside and I don't know that it was ever unearthed. It could still be there beneath the monkey bars, more than 20 years of kids swinging over a box of 1983.

I wonder, wherever you are, whenever this will be read, what was something you loved about today? And the funny thing is, funnier than iphones and $128 Hudson jeans, funnier than the median home price in Marin being $800k, than an $11 movie ticket, than a half gallon of milk costing $1.49, funnier than today's top Billboard song I Got a Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas, funnier than the fact that I am 45 maybe and you are 12, or maybe I am 52 and you are 19, what is funny but not funny ha ha or even funny strange is that wherever you are reading this, whatever the time, whenever, whyever, evermore, that without a doubt something I loved about the day forever is you. Thinking of you, smiling at you, remembering you, arguing with you: you. You are my favorite moment of all time.

With love from your Mother a month from 37,
Me
p.s. Here's a snippet of what life was like Once Upon a Time Called The Other Night For No Reason. May you always bounch back from the crap thrown at you, laughing and stopping not only to smell the roses but to inspect possible deer poop.

Things That Make Me Happy: Wednesday Easy Edition

While cleaning my files yesterday (which makes me scarily happy), I came across this gif gem from the VH1 Rock of Love Bus blog. I don't know just what I was saving it for, but I do think today is the proverbial rainy day for a little reminder of Miss DJ Lady Tribe:(I have never posted a gif before, so if it doesn't work and she is not falling over, then I am no longer happy. The End.)

Next up is this wish you were here moment. The pic is good in and of itself, but what makes me giddy is that I secretly turned this into the screensaver on Bryan's computer and honestly can hardly wait for him to discover it. Small pleasures people! Small pleasures!
Alas I am not all base humor on this Wednesday. Still simple but a wee bit more erudite is this video titled The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog which really speaks to the word nerd inside of me.

Of course I would be REALLY impressed had the fox and the hound been able to recreate lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, pharetra autem nulla arcu, but today is Wednesday, and one ought not expect much from a Day called Hump.
Have a good one my friends.
xo,
S

UPDATED TO ADD: DJ Lady Tribe is not falling over, the gif is not working. ¿Qué pasa? I am going back to bed.

Fact: The Adult Heart is the Size of Two Clenched Fists

Fact: The muscles in the human heart have the strength to shoot blood ten meters into the air.
Fact(ish): I am that mom. The scary one in the movies with the blood streaked face, Mama Bear, the mother who lifts a car to save her child; the car is not a Yugo but more of a 1956 Cadillac Sedan de Ville, and I am not so much a superhero as just a mother trailing a phantom cord out of her vagina and onto the dirt below.

The system of blood vessels - arteries, veins and capillaries - is over 60,000 miles long. Long enough to go around the world more than twice. Long enough to choke on.

I hate playgrounds. The sharp pieces of tanbark that get stuck in my sandals, the chain link pinches and newfangled plastic slides that charge kids full of static electricity. Snap! But most of all I hate the other kids, the mothers. I hate the play. The ground made of recycled tires. I am that mother, the one giving your kid a very slighly dirty look even though I know that is wrong. I cannot help myself. Not because I am necessarily a bad person, but because maybe your kid grabbed the shovel my girl was playing with, or he told her she could not climb the ladder, that the ship was full with four boys, no girls allowed and the curly slide was too steep for her to slide down. At the playground I am on high alert, hot and mean, my chest expanding with excuse me? Because playgrounds bring out the worst in me as a mother with an Immaculate(ish) Heart. The heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood each day, roughly one million barrels of blood during an average lifetime. (Enough to fill more than three super tankers.)

And then there are the play dates. The friends with the kids who pull my daughter's hair, the conversation between two mothers interrupted by share and no and wait your turn. The patchwork of a friendship now pricked with this new dynamic, the two of us sitting on benches as we watch, what we tell our husbands later when we get home. (And no, I'm not talking about your kid. Not You, not Her, not Him. I swear.)

Fact: I am no longer allowed to simply be nice. That is not enough and your child who jumps over the duck at The Muzzy Marsh is taller than the height limit, her shoes made of rubber pink but hard. I do not want to be that mother, this mother, sometimes a mother at all, but I am. I am her mother.

(Ish): Blood is made up of 78% water. The other 22% a mystery.

And Then It Was Monday--AGAIN (I Know!)

I woke up this morning feeling very much like this.

In this scenario Bryan is asleep in the tent, no pup, and I am the bear. I have three angry pimples covered in pink Mario Badescu Drying Lotion flaking off the left side of my snarling maw. I am a vision in aw fuck no.

Then there is this:

And me being me I thought that if one donut would make me happy then surely three would make me freaking ecstatic? But no, one maple and two glazed later and I am here to tell you that a breakfast of Krispy Kremes just makes you feel like a pastry bag filled with lard, a profiterole of extruded choux, a middle aged woman with zits highlighted pink and a raging case of PMS, i.e. a friggin' Cathy cartoon come to life.

Jesus Christ me, WTF? My apologies for shitting all over your Monday. Here, watch this, smile (then run. Run, I tell you! Hopefully I will be back to normal{ish} tomorrow, and that this zit cream works like it says it does).



p.s.. Get this for Debbie Downer: That first pic? Is by renowned nature photographer Michio Hoshino. Known for his pictures of bears and other wildlife, he was mauled to death by a brown bear on the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia. He was in his mid-40's and lived in Fairbanks, Alaska. This was his last picture.
DUHN duhn duuuhnnnnnnn! (Happy Monday. Did I say that yet?)

There is a (Petunia Faced) Girl Inside

Am I a part of you? Zoey asked me the other day as we were driving home, and I very nearly swerved off the road. I have no idea where she got that from, or why she asked the question. But I said yes and held my breath as I ran the tail end of a yellow light slow. She is part of me, and I her, both of us girls wearing clackety clack shoes on an uneven driveway giggling cheeks and teeth and eyes. And I know that one day years from now I will wonder how I have a teenager when I am still one myself, a twenty year old, a forty year old, forever a girl raising a girl with breasts and just one coarse gray hair. That one day I will be very lucky to notice, irritated, how she sees me step through doorways and over curbs, how she watches me out of the corner of her eye as if I cannot see for myself that the floor slopes down. The whole of us the sum of eachother's parts, uncertain as to exact proportion and time and again.

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

--Lucille Clifton

Happy Friday to all, and to all a good weekend.

xo,

Susannah

Milky Crystal Reflections on a Foggy Thursday Morning

I grew up in a house with windows fringed in faceted crystals. In the afternoon light the avocado green of the linoleum kitchen floor would be fairly cut with rainbows and I would stand by the fridge to bathe my toes indigo. When my brother left for college my mother really got into crystals--she bought a quartz singing bowl and would run the suede stick around the inside edge to produce low vibrating sounds that I could feel in my throat. (This accompanied by the poodle she got should have warned me that my parents were about to get divorced, but that's another story for another time on a day that we are not discussing rose quartz.)

Cue the Zamfir.

In the past when I have written about my new house I have received comments with lots of exclamation points and CAPS telling me to shut it with the woe is me and to volunteer. I don't so much feel those in my throat as I feel them in my butt. They suck. But you see I am from Marin, not so much the new Marin of Range Rovers but the old Marin of hot tubs and bead freaks. Not to get all Sequoia NaNa on you, but here we take our hippie shit veeery seriously, and the other day while gardening I found a large milky chunk of rose quartz crystal in my front yard.

Here I have taken a photo of it with my garden Buddha and Zoey's My Pretty Ponicorn. It seemed appropriate at the time.

I looked up rose quartz online and in the wise words of a gal named Whitehorse Woman: Rose quartz soothes negative influences and allows you to know your true self through opening up your 4th chakra. I'm not really sure what that means but I like the sound of it and will listen to anyone named Whitehorse Woman, (although WhitePonicorn Woman would have really gotten my attention).

So that's that. My house has been blessed by pink crystals. Zoey likes to hold it in her hand and say Namaste, mostly because it makes me laugh.

And in slightly unrelated news: The other day on the phone, in a fit of missing her granddaughter, my mom told Zoey that anytime she looked in the mirror that she, Grandma Glitter, would be staring back at her. And now Zoey is afraid to look in the mirror. Which is pretty much how I feel all the time because now I kinda' want a singing bowl. But not a poodle, and totally not a divorce.

The End.

I Do Believe I Have Found My Boogie Body

Meet my new Guru.

Get loose for Heaven's sake! Don't you know how to get loose by now? I should think you wooouuuld! Ah, truer words were never spoken. Find it! Feel it! Do it! And then when the other two stall out? Takes my breath away, I tell you. Take it up, take it up, take it down, take it down! I could go on and on and on, this lady is wisdom wearing white stirrup tights, I love her that much.

Hot Dog!
Happy Hump Day,
Susannah

Plastic is the New Beach Glass and Other Tales of Domestic Bliss

My husband is obsessed with plastic. And I'm not talking about a retro Graduate type of obsession, or even a more modern take on silicone breasts. No, I'm talking about a very unsexy petroleum-based mix of monomers that become polymers, to which additional chemicals are added for suppleness which might sound sexy, but believe me, it's not.

It's his new car porn, although I suppose I should be happy it's not a '68 Dodge Dart with a slant six engine because we've already had one of those and they do not have the LATCH system, can you believe it? No, these days Bryan spends an inordinate amount of time on the computer researching alternatives to plastic and looking at spread-eagle pics of Plastic Island, a floating slick of garbage twice the size of Texas located somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. As a surfer and sailor, Bryan has suddenly become keenly aware of the problems of our world reliance on plastic.

Anyway, all this to say that today I dedicate the beach blog I write over at Uptake to my husband. Because I love him and want desperately for him to just sit down with me tonight to watch NYC Prep, an entirely different kind of plastic. Which he totally won't, but oh well. So head on over to Uptake if you want to hear me sound kinda' sorta' serious.

Back tomorrow with more snark. Or love. Depending on my mood.

xo,

S

¿You Likey?

Ladies and Gentlemen of the www! Mama's got a brand new look!
I got a makeover, and now everything's all swank and glossy. I wish I could say I've been hard at work, but that would be an outright lie. I do not know html, can't seem to fudge my way through all of those cryptic quotes and div's and carots. Or are they carats? Carrots? These: <<<>>> I am a veritable whiz when it comes to the abacus what with those pretty colored beads and all that sliding to and fro, but no, I had little to do with the blog redesign. Instead I have Ellie from Rainy Day Templates to thank for my perky new boobs. (Bet you've never been thanked for a new rack, have you, Ellie?)

So yes, if you've got a blog and are ripe for a new look, even if you are just thinking of a redesign or simply had a dream the other night about eating a peach and watching Bret Michaels perform Debbie Gibson tunes, then please, do yourself a favor and visit Rainy Day Templates. Ellie is a bit of a genius not only with design, but also apparently with holding the hands of Luddite customers through the entire process, myself included. She rocks.

Off to stare at my new blog look in the mirror!
xo,
Susannah

Croc'ed

As if it's not enough that I told you I have a weak bladder. Or that I once pooped my pants in fear. I have told you about my panic attacks, zits, my social ineptitude, the fact that I watch 90210, the new one, (the original 90210 being slightly more understandable for a woman d'un certain âge). This morning I went to the dermatologist for a flaky area near my mouth that I thought for sure was skin cancer leading, undoubtedly, to a horribly courageous year left to live. Instead I was told I have dandruff of the face. *&6%@!^??? Is it even possible to be courageous about facial dandruff? I mean, who even gets facial dandruff, let alone tells you about it? The girl with incontinence and a blog, that's who has facial dandruff. I swear writing this is like a truth serum. Or perhaps there is a new technological Tourette's, one in which the seeming animosity of the internet makes one feel free to express one's innermost secrets, except of course EVERYONE WHO KNOWS ME READS MY BLOG; THUS THEY ALL NOW KNOW I NEED TO DO MY KEGELS. squeeze, hold, TOP O' THE MORNING, DAD!

Seriously, though, this time I need help. I think Crocs are cute. There, I said it. Because these?

Are kinda' cute, right? Yes? No? Should I shut up right now, me with the Selsun Blue face mask? Okay then, what about these, surely these?
Have I totally fucking lost it? Seriously--I need to know. Because for all I know I could be considering something along the lines of these monstrosities, all in the name of comfort and sensibility, i.e. bunions and corns:

Not my hairy legs. Not my veiny feet. Not my crime of fashion. Yet.

Dearest Reader, I don't ask you for much. I mean, other than asking you to read about my physiological maladies, innermost neuroses and sick sense of humor, all quite possibly related. So please, be honest: have I lost it? Or are those red Crocs actually pretty cute?

The Story of That Time

Did I ever tell you about the time I thought Zoey had cancer? No? Are you sure? 'Cause I think you might remember if I had. It was the time I shit my pants quite literally at the hospital and stayed the night there just like that because what did it matter if I had shit smeared along the back of my jeans when my child might be dying.

I'm not even kidding here even though the bit about the shit might make it comical. Even I see that. It happened when Zoey was 5 months old. I had just gone back to work and felt horribly tragically terrible about leaving her in daycare. Then one day her daycare called and said she had a strange rash, a bruised looking thing all over her legs and arms. And it was my fault, I knew, for leaving her somehow. It was my fault and I drove to her daycare and saw the rash and it was strange and my fault, I knew that. I called the advice nurse who asked if the markings blanched when I pushed on them, so I sat there pushing my finger into the butter of Zoey's legs as if I were frantically making a phone call. No one answered and the rash did not blanch so the nurse told me to come in right away.

Maybe I told you about how I drove across the bridge at 75mph? About how Zoey's eyes were drooping heavy with sleep and sick there in her car seat so I kept screaming a high-pitched terrified scream because I was afraid of her falling asleep? No? Then did I tell you about how later the doctor said they were going to admit her into the hospital and run some bloodwork to look at her white cell count. And me being me--I knew just enough about medical matters to ask if, I don't know, god, I mean, what? It's not like she has cancer. Right? And the doctor, he said I don't know, but that's what we want to rule out, as if this were a perfectly acceptable answer in a perfectly practical situation, as if all of it made sense when nothing did and the air was suddenly devoid of oxygen.
But I did just tell you how I shit my pants. Surely you did not forget that detail. Because when the doctor said those words and the nurse looked at me like that, somehow both sorry and detached at the very same time, when all of this happened and the world shifted I somehow knew that down the street a stranger had the gall to order a foot long MeatLover's sandwich from Subway as if nothing had happened and yet I could not feel my hands; I could not breathe. There was Zoey grumpy on the crinkly exam table and I ran to the bathroom, fight or flight. I shit so I could fight, that's what a mother does, right? Has terrible diarrhea in the hospital restroom knowing then that it's not all her fault, that she has nothing to do with this anyway? That please and god and I promise and no mean nothing to white blood cells?
When I called Bryan I asked him to bring me a change of clothes but of course he forgot, going at his own 75mph to get to our new world of ruling out. And then the nurses came in to insert an IV into Zoey's hand, first one then another, soon the whole nurses station gathered around because no one could get the fucking needle into my baby's vein and she was screaming crying confused and scared while three adults held her down. I smelled like shit and held on to that--it was real, I stank and nothing else was.

Of course you know the ending to this story, even if I never told you before. You read this blog so you know: Zoey was fine, is fine. At 4am a nurse came in to tell us that Zoey's bloodwork had come back fine, that the bruises that would not blanch was just one of those things! One of life's mysteries, like why the ocean is blue or what happens to all those missing socks! And we were released to the joy of the hospital staff who probably didn't want to smell me any longer. A week later I craved Subway and got a 6 inch Veggie; now this is just a story of that time I thought Zoey had cancer and shit my pants. I'm surprised I hadn't told you before.

But the thing that gets me, really truly makes me feel that same void of oxygen, is that this is not the ending for so many families. That maybe another mother did that same 75mph drive to the hospital, maybe she also shit her pants when the nurse looked at her both with sympathy and detachment, but because of what came next hers is not a story to laugh at. Hers is a story to avoid. To read or to hear and then to shake off with a shiver. To retell and discuss not knowing the words. god. can you imagine? ...sentences that drop off, big sighs and, i mean, just god, right? jesus.

I don't know why we were so lucky, why we continue to be so. Much like the parents of those not so lucky don't know why they have no control, either. The ocean is blue because of the absorption of wavelengths; because it reflects the sky. Who gets cancer and who doesn't: that is the big mystery. And children's cancer? That's a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a fuck. Who cares what happens to missing socks?

Last week an anonymous commenter heckled me about philanthropy: volunteering, etc. And let me just be clear: I still think that anonymous commenter is a bully jackass buttfart. But the whole thing made me think about what is important to me outside of my family. And what I can do about it. Already I donate money when I can to the Children's Cancer Association, and it is my hope that if you can you will think about donating, too. Or any of the various organizations that support research and help families who are dealing with childhood cancers. Anonymous--if you are reading--you are more than welcome to donate money in my name :)

Happy Friday my friends,

xo,

Susannah

Non-Official Friday Post

So fine, maybe you didn't like this proposal, and in hindsight it was incredibly creepy in an oh no my fiance is gay and likes musicals kind of way, but what about this one?

Because who doesn't like a man with an impressive collection of undies, early 90's Bono hair and large flat nipples?

My Bladder for a Baby

Meanwhile, over in Japan where my Asian doppelganger apparently prefers blue cardigans and pumps...
One thing nobody prepared me for was the weak bladder. I mean, sure, I knew that pregnant women have to go pee a lot, but here I am 3+ years later, no longer pregnant but still having to pee. A lot. You, too, right? I mean, is this just me? Anybody read this in What to Expect When You're No Longer Expecting But Expect You Might Have to Pee Because You Recklessly Took a Small Ladylike Sip Of Iced Tea?

Okay, so I haven't lifted my skirt to pee in a crosswalk. Yet. But I cannot tell you how many times I have thought of the animals--the animals!--and gotten jealous that they can just go wherever they want. And here I am wearing button fly jeans on a street with no toilets. Or large trees. Restrooms for Restaurant Patrons Only, and so I put on my blithe face, the one that I secretly hope looks a little like Gwyneth Paltrow because that is her middle name, and I walk through the restaurant as if I have just finished my meal and left a very large tip.

I don't mean to scare any pregnant readers out there, but there are simply things that you don't get back. Boobs, Schmoobs, Hot Dog Down a Hallway, Schmot Schog Schown a Schallway. My boobs are fine and my vagina intact, that is not what I am talking about at all. It's my bladder, and the fact that my three year old daughter wearing Hello Kitty undies seems to have better control than I do. This is the beginning of it all, I'm afraid. Me passing the torch of womanhood down to her. It begins with the bladder, my sexy young bladder, here! I say, and she grabs it and runs. But what is next? My breasts, my belly, my legs, my what? My bladder for a baby, and you just know she doesn't appreciate it.

Picture This

Goddamn if this photo isn't one of the sexiest things I've ever seen.
The raw want in her eyes...
Then again I also think this photo is sexy (although it would be better if he had a gag-ball in his mouth):
So perhaps you ought not listen to me.
Happy Hump Day people!
xo,
S

I Am a Mom Who Will Fight for Your Honor

My baby grrrl is a bad ass mofo. Fuck! she says, and I try very very very very very hard not to smile.
It started in Costa Rica, a country rich with vine and undergrowth. We were driving somewhere, our second to last day; the car was on empty. Vacíe. Sin gasolina, or something like that, and the next town was not for approximately one bajillion kilometers. Perhaps the story has been exaggerated with time, but outside the car the air was 150 degrees and hungry jaguars paced at the edge of the jungle. Inside the car we listened to Peter Cetera not so much because we had thought to pack our Best of Peter Cetera tape but because the only radio station we could get seemed to favor the Glory of Love. Fuck, Bryan said, watching the needle, no doubt imagining having to hoof it to the next town. Fuck fuck fuck. And perhaps I should have shushed him but there I was worrying if it would be better for Zoey and I to walk with him in the 150 degree heat for who knows how long or if we should remain by the car with the jaguars. And crocodiles. Venomous pitvipers. Fuck.

Short story, long post, anticlimactic save for the fuck: we got to the next town on fumes and a prayer, quite possibly having done it all for the glory of love. Later that night we splurged on a nice hotel and the concierge let Zoey pick out a DVD to watch in our room. She choose Beauty and the Beast; when we got back to the room she held it to her chest with a huge smile on her face and exhaled fuck like a sigh.

Now there are many things of which I am supremely proud: the fact that Zoey says please and thank you, more often than not as one super-word of politesse: pleasethankyouexcusemeyou'rewelcome. My chest bursts with pride at night when we lay in bed together, Bryan, Zoey, then me: each of us reading our own book to ourselves. This is bliss, I know, the bed zig-zagged with our toes. But I am also proud that Zoey somehow figured out the nuance of fuck, that the word can be used in all its explosive fricative as an angry sound fuck! But could also be said softly in happiness. Fuck yeah, the vowel drawn out with a smile. I did not teach her this; it appears that she is a savant with the swearing.

Since then she has picked up shit. Only now we have had the talk, the one in which I read from the BabyCenter script on how to discourage my child from swearing. So she whispers it: shit. Almost a sit, faint hint of sh. S(sh)it. Under her breath and I try very very very hard not to smile. For all of my swearing on this here blog I am not a huge pottymouth in real life. But I love words and language and respect these words as I respect critter. And buzz. Thistle, god how I do love the word thistle. Come to think of it, that's kinda' how Zoey says shit, like a thistle. Thistle shit. Just try and say shit like a thistle without smiling. Now imagine that word as a 3 year old whisper, a sly smile on her face, the joy of being the slightest bit bad on a road with no jaguars.

This is one of those posts that doesn't really have a pat ending, no loop the loop with meaning or fun. No, this is really for me, for Zoey--so that one day when she is older and knows about motherfucker tittysucker two-balled bitch she can read this and know that once upon a time she said fuck with a sigh and shit with a smile. And that even though I told her no, that we don't use those words, that they are bad, that really? Honestly? I was proud.

Moving On. (Monday.) You Made of Everything.

You live in time, too fast in the hot flutter of daylight. Stand still! I say as I braid your hair. But you won't and the camera, it flattens your face and there is always something that I cannot reach. (Stand still. My words thin in your air, like shouting into an ocean the sounds fall back on me, full of joy and regret like a photograph.) I like to hold your face, look deep into your ears, open your mouth to see your molars, turn you this way and that; you move away, or maybe it is me who is receding.

I watch my words from where I sit on the couch, hairbrush in hand, strands of you caught between my fingers. You laugh and twist away so I braid what I have of you with what I have of me, plaits of a necklace twisted chain of daisies meant one day for your throat, smooth as corn tassel, my girl of wheat warm and sweet, of seaweed and starfish, exclamation point of fog.

At night I watch you sleep with a hunger that slices my breasts into slabs.

Done.

Happy Friday.
xo,
S

Bonus Cute!

Just you try and watch this proposal without a smile on your face:

I just had to post this.

xo,

S

La Petite Poorgeoisie

Italian terracotta Great Dane decoys. Price upon request.

I used to think I would make an excellent rich person. Because it would seem that so many very rich people suck at having money. They buy horribly ugly things: ticky tacky ceramic dogs and lucite panthers. They coat their lives with Swavorski crystals seemingly because they can.

Bright "Escape" jumpsuit (quotation marks not mine). $1950.00.

Very often the very rich dress like shit. Victims of either L.L. Bean or Paris, their eyes are obscured by rare gold coins and their wallets are housed in $24,000 handbags. I find this ridonkulous, perhaps because I am jealous, who knows? But the very rich often seem sad, too, alcoholic-y, lost, and I've always thought that if I were very rich I would be happy, found, massaged. Especially if I had the good sense not to spend $2k on a tie-dyed cotton fugly jumpsuit...

Swavorski crystal marlin. No worries if orange is not in your color scheme as it is also available in pink and yellow! $5000.00.

But what I am finding lately is that I am exceptionally good at being poor. Ish. Not poor, because I'm not; it's a relative poor and I'm poor compared to what I used to be. So I am good at being poorish. A member of the post-economic meltdown Petite Poorgeoisie, I am good at making do with leftovers, creating cute outfits out of what is already in my closet. I am good at garnishing dinner with the basil that I grew, watering down juice, I am good at poorifying my life. A step above the new poorletariat, but I am only so-so at making puns out of poor. Leaded crystal Baccarat Leaping Panther otherwise known as a big fat WHY? $1500.00.

Sure I still want to be rich. I want facials and organic everything, a Mercedes Benz station wagon, Mallorca, I want these. But I also want what I already have which is not a lot and everything, and that, is all I need.

So what would you want if you were very very rich? Assuming you are not already. And what are you good at as a member of La Petite Poorgeoisie?

A New Low

Achtung! This post contains the words vagina and my, only the my is before the word vagina, hence one of the vaginas in question might belong to me. So if you are not prepared to read about my vagina please stop now and visit this url instead: www.susannahhasnovagina.com. No greasy aftereffect! Click on pic to enlarge.

Well fuck me. And I mean that in the most please don't really fuck me sense of the word. Because my vagina hurts just reading the latest news. And apparently it is dirty because I have never not once safeguarded my dainty allure with Lysol disinfectant. Or anything really. No, my dainty allure is au-natural. And quite frankly, unless I plan on swimming that day, my dainty allure would be right at home in the original 1972 edition of The Joy of Sex, so lax am I with hair removal.
Sue was furious at Tom for the way he'd been treating her! But she was really to blame! Click on the pic to enlarge and see how Sue shot benzalkonium chloride into her cooch to go from domestic crisis to marital bliss!

And now I hear this news: as if my vagina wasn't feeling inadequate enough what with nary a Lysol to dis the infectant, all hairy and happy and post-pubescent, post-pregnancy, post-me caring, now my vagina feels lazy, too. Because guess what? My vagina could probably only bench press 8lbs, and only then if my daughter was screaming crying trapped under that 8lbs and for some reason I had no arms and no legs, not even a chin to nudge her out, just my apparently germy, hirsute vagina to save the day. Come to think of it, my vagina probably couldn't even do that. When Zoey was born she weighed just 5lb., 15oz., and I still had to have a c-section, so no, my vagina can't even lift 6lbs. I'm telling you--my vagina is one Pringle-eatin' couch potato; when we go to the beach my vagina gets sand kicked in its face.

Those damn Russians with their little matryoshka dolls all nestled inside each other just so. So there's this lady. And she's all over the internet. She says she holds the record for The World's Strongest Vagina because apparently such contests exist and nobody told me. She lifted 14 kilograms worth of weights--almost 31lbs, which would be the equivalent of me picking up Zoey with my pocketbook. I only say pocketbook because I am tired of writing vagina. Vaginavaginavagina. In Russian the word is киску which totally looks stronger so she had that advantage going in.

Kozhevnikova of Novosibirsk, 42, has been exercising her intimate muscles for fifteen years, and says, “After I had a child, my intimate muscles got unbelievably weak. I read books on Dao and learned that ancient women used to deal with this problem using wooden balls,” she said. “I looked around, saw a Murano glass ball and inserted it in my vagina. It took me ages to get it out!”

This. Dis. Turbs. Me. A Murano glass ball? Intimate muscles? Dainty allure pumping iron (or glass balls, wood balls any ball at all?) Listen--I know about kegels. Someone once told me to do them whenever I am waiting for a red light to change. So I do. Or did. Until I saw a kitten crossing the street or a balloon floating in the sky, until I had a thought in my head and then I forgot about my vagina sitting there in the car all clenched and grunting in its World's Gym tank top made just for vaginas, and I stopped. And I sure as hell haven't inserted any Murano glass balls in there.

It would seem that my vagina is an under-achiever. My vagina won't be setting any Guiness Records. There is no need for me to douche with Lysol and then apply self-tanner and iodine in order to highlight its muscles. Because my vagina is a pussy.

Just De-Lovely and Delicious

My new house smells like honey. Seriously. At night so thick I can taste it, during the day a little lighter but still there, an amber-colored smell of something so sweet that I do not know its name, so I call it honey, like a man might call his lady friend after a long night. Deep breath in, deep breath in, what is that? Sometimes I forget to exhale. It smells so good I say to Bryan, and without fail he replies with it's because I farted. He's been saying that since I've known him, and I don't know which surprises me more: how many times I seem to remark on how good things smell or how unfailingly he attributes night blooming jasmine or garlic in a skillet to the stench of his own flatulence. I swear to god he could cheat on me then murder my family, I could get re-married eleven times and vow to forget him, but for the rest of my life I would never be able to say something smells good without anticipating his reply, it's because I farted. So yes, there's that: my new house smelling like honey. Any ideas what it is? And then there's this: a historical church in England renovated and converted into somebody's home. Something tells me this house might smell like bread and wine, perhaps the dank of stone and the warmth of church pews, but I still think I'd live there, tombstone garden and all.

Although it would be very hard not to feel as if you were living out some kinky sacrificial sexy role play here, on display for the congregation. Would you just be able to have procreational sex? Missionary, close your eyes and think of England?

And after we finish the mutton, we will adjourn to the apse for the rectory, the unholiest of communions... Can I help it if all religious words sound slightly dirty? I'm going to Hell, aren't I? Do you think these people put up a tree at Christmas?

But check out the bathtub: divine, and I'm not even saying that in a pretentious way. It truly is divine.

I wonder, though, if the church had to be deconsecrated before the couple moved in? Is there such a thing as deconsecrating? Or is that simply desecrating? And why am I now thinking of defecating and that 90's band Deee-lite? (God how I used to boogie to Groove is in the Heart.)

Of course the real desecration here is the collection of denim sofas. I'm just sayin'--a little piece of Land's End in God's House? De-No.

Granted my house is no church, and clearly I am no lady of the cloth. But there are Buddhas in my garden, a Greek Mati at my door, a portrait of the Virgin Mary on my fridge and at her feet sits Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth. I planted lavender for good luck, tree ferns because they make me happy, and now my house smells like honey and is the best home I have ever made. And that I hold sacred.

I Hate Mondays

I used to hate Garfield, and when I say hate I mean HATE as only a 4th grade girl can hate. Which is a lot. Or alot, one word, because 4th graders can't really spell but fuckin'-A can they hate.I must have been a fairly astute 9 year old because I found Jon to be a pervy pencil neck. I did not like Odie. But what really got me was Garfield and how he hated Mondays. I would spend ten minutes staring at a cartoon of Garfield in his cat box with the sheet pulled over his head, reading and re-reading the caption: I Hate Mondays. Why? Why Garfield do you hate Mondays? And why am I supposed to find that funny? (In related news: I had some book, I don't even remember which one, and I had dog-eared a page because there was a sentence that read: "Her mom doted on her." I would take out this book every night and stare at that sentence because I thought surely it was a typo. Her mom dotted on her? But that didn't make sense either. So in hindsight perhaps I was a little obsessive when it came to things I did not understand, my 9 year old self-esteem so intact that the errors of the world compelled me to, to... I don't know. To stand in my room and stare at them. Which is kind of why I'm a walking symbol of what is wrong with this country, but that is for another post, one which probably won't include videos of city councilmen farting.)

I still hate Garfield, only now I hate him because I realize that all these years he was right, fat cranky puss with the sheet pulled over his head. Mondays suck. Unless of course you have slowly leaned back into unemployment as have I and now see Mondays as an extension of please pass the platter of government cheese, and pardon me but might you have a cracker? No? Am I the only one? Anyhoo, for the handful of you that might actually still have a job I give you this: 3 Things to Cheer You Up On This Monday After a 3 Day Weekend:
This guy. This photo. This makes me laugh and when I say laugh I mean to say it makes me fall on my knees grateful that this is not me. Thankyouthankyouthankyougodorwhoeveriloveyouandiwillbeagoodgirlforeveramen. So this is for you, people at work. Be grateful that you have very little chance of this happening to you today unless of course your job title just so happens to be Chief Jogger in Black Dolphin Shorts and you stopped at IHOP this morning for a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Frooty. In which case I suggest you clench and keep running, run like the wind! Oh, and p.s., don't come to me looking for a wet wipe, my daughter is potty trained and I don't know you.

And then there's this:

As the pretentious hacks at my old job used to say, how brill is that? Slices of peanut butter! Gives whole new meaning to a fruit roll up! The web site boasts that it "makes peanut butter easier to eat." Which is awesome because it was just so difficult before, what with the jar and the spoon, and the jar. And the spoon. As one enthusiastic customer commented: "Great. Because I hardly ever indulge because it's so hard to eat. I mean, like my hand gets stuck in the jar. And then I can't get it out. And I can't open the door to my house because I have a pb jar on my hand. And I'm stuck in the house for weeks. Thank god for this product." Happy Monday!

But wait! There's more. This. This makes me sublimely happy, like TGIM happy.

So there. Sure, the 3 day weekend is over and it's back to the grind, no real holidays until Labor Day and yet here I sit in my bathrobe watering my ferns and eating blueberry toaster waffles, one eye on DJ Lance Rock and the Super Music Friends Show. Sure you could be bitter and jealous and hate me more than just a little bit, but why? Why when I give you diarrhea and slices of peanut butter and city councilmen farting? Why when the State of California is handing out IOU's and my unemployment check might bounce, The Terminator is my governor and the cheese is pimento? Spicy pimento at that? Fuck it. I hate Mondays, too. But not you. I love you. I dote on you.

xoxo,

S

Random(ish) Thoughts on This Friday, the 3rd of July

You know what really pisses me off? My wisdom teeth. Okay, yes, fine, this was years ago, but I still find myself thinking about them. When I had my wisdom teeth removed I asked the surgeon dentist guy if I could have them afterward. He said yes. I counted backwards from ten, vaguely remember leaning out my car window to wave to people on the Golden Gate Bridge and the next thing I knew I was on my couch. Delicious drugs and done. At the follow-up appointment I asked the surgeon for my teeth and he said he forgot and threw them away. WTF Mr. Surgeon Guy??? Those were MY TEETH. I had big plans for those things. Spotlights on my mantel, a gold chain around my neck. Depending on how big they were I was going to make one into the gear shift knob on my car or maybe fashion one into the doorbell button at my house. Now they exist in some medical waste facility, no spotlights at all, and I still think about them sometimes. Okay, often. I think about my wisdom teeth often.

You know what else I think about more often than I should? Lady Gaga.

And String Theory. Surely they are somehow related because I don't get either one and here's the other coincidence: I DON'T CARE. There. I said it. Put on some pants and wash your face. You look stupid. You, too, String Theory.

Also? The lady at the party I went to a few weekends ago. It was nightfall and there was a fire pit outside. Someone brought out a bag of marshmallows and we pulled twigs off a tree to make s'mores. I ate one. Then another. Do you have any idea how good roasted marshmallows are? Why don't I make those every freaking night, I ask you. On the third one this pinched woman I did not know said, "you know the limit is two. Two marshmallows per person." The fire lit up her face from beneath, not a good angle on the prettiest among us, and I swear to fucking god I wanted to poke my twig through her head, stick it in the fire and shake it a little until her head fell off into the orange burning coals with the rest of the gloppy burnt hot dog butts and bottle caps.

But then there's this. These. This guy. A graphic designer artist funny guy who I like a lot even though I do not know him.

He makes me happy the way a man with a pen only can, and sometimes that's all it takes is a Dot with the word Bitch inside.

And this. This makes me happiest of all.

Watching 4th of July fireworks with my Petunia Faced Girl. She lets me have all the marshmallows I want and maybe one day, if I'm a really good mommy, she'll give me her wisdom teeth. Or she'll want to keep them for herself which will make me oh-so-proud.
Happy 4th, my friends. Be safe!
xoxo,
S

Guimauve

At three Zoey has already surpassed me in coolness. She has better clothes than I do, her shoes are glittierererer, she is a way better dancer what with the way she hops and twirls as if no one is looking, and now she has better hair.
The ladies at her daycare like to play with her hair, and sometimes when I pick her up she looks like this and I feel like maybe we should make some grand elaborate plans on account of her hair looking so pretty--go to a party or a club, get a drink somewhere for Happy Hour. Instead we stop at the grocery store to buy some milk and I find myself looking random strangers in the eye in the hopes that they will say how adorable she is, my daughter. As I said, I am not very cool and have been known to will people to do things. Say my daughter is pretty, she is perfect, check out that hair, c'mon, you know you want to, oh wait, excuse me, can you please hand me one of those things of half and half?...

But that is not enough, never enough, and so I take Zoey out to the garden with my camera and promise her marshmallows if she'll let me take just one picture of her not making that face, the one where she scrunches up her nose and sticks out her tongue, her hands clawing at the air in front of her. Just one more! C'mon Zo! I hear myself pleading with her and I know I should stop, that this is not good, it is not cool, me bribing my daughter with fluff so I can admire her celluloid beauty, fluff for fluff. Tit for tat. One day she might hate me for this, might pierce her eyebrows, her lip, insert one of those quarter-sized tribal discs into her ear to stretch it wide gaping open like a sore. Meanwhile, she will not listen to me still offering marshmallows, proffering sweets if she'd smile just so.

But that is a maybe, the eyebrow piercing, the blase attitude toward fluff in the future; now all I have is this. This sweet sweet girl, the coolest in the world, and the ladies at the daycare that I have been silently and secretly willing to have ask me if they can play with my hair, too.