The Ninja Princess and The SuperBaby

Right here--this is why people have kids:

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

This is it. This. This. This--

I Fully Intended For This To Be My Hand

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

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

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

Boo,

Susannah

Happy Hump Day Q With No A

Today I emailed the following to my co-workers :

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

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

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

3. What is Kim Richards on??

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

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

Answers appreciated, questions welcomed.
Happy Hump Day,
S

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

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

Happy Hump Day,
S

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

Post Travel Stress Disorder

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

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

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

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

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

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

xo,
S

Off to See About Some Leaves

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

xo,

S

On Paper

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

Let me back up.

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

Hello.

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

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

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

But Those Eyes!

I mean...RIGHT??

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

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

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