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.

IN YOUR FACE (Make That My Face)

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

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

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

Superunzelman!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Week in Review

It was the kind of week that made me buy shampoo by Chaz Bono. Endorsed by Alyssa Milano, of course, because who didn't want to be Samantha Micelli? God knows I did. Of course then I found out that the shampoo is not by Chaz Bono at all, but by some guy named Chaz Dean. This guy:I mean, nice frosted tips and all, but I was banking on this Chaz because for some reason I would believe him if he said he had the cure to dry, lifeless locks:It's kinda' like when you take a sip of your iced tea only you picked up someone else's glass of flat soda instead and there is that moment of a mouthful of huh? Anyway, I just got my shipment of Wen by (the other/wrong) Chaz and I'll let you know how it goes, i.e. I will accept nothing less than this:So that was the beginning of my week. Then I found the most perfectest pair of boots ever only they are in girls' sizes, not women's. So of course I bought a pair for Zoey because hello? Black sparkle high tops with rainbow gems across the toes? For god's sakes, the style is called Twinkle Toes and they make me want to do The Running Man or some ridiculous shit like that. Of course I searched for something similar in my size, but apparently Skechers thinks the adult equivalent of Twinkle Toes is to wear microfiber turds on your feet. They call these kicks Boiling Point. They make me want to fart. So that was it, my first week back at work. Eagle eye that you are might notice I mentioned nothing of actually going to work, Ozzy at daycare, bus rides and breast pumps, blah blah, yes there was all that, too. Another day. For now I will leave you with this bacon wrapped egg video. I am so totally making this on Saturday morning. It's like food porn. And easy. Brown chicken brown cow...I'm just surprised they didn't have a money shot of the yolk breaking.

Happy Friday,
S

Or Is It Sheeeeit?

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

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

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

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

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

What She Will Miss

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

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

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

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

Let Them Eat--

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

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

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


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

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

Consider Me Got (A Marketer's Dream)

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

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

It Starts Off Nice and Sweet-Like

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


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

**Do cows have even have knees?

It Was A Very Good Year

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

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

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

Nothing Like Bob Ross To Help You Start Off Your Week

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

xo,
S

It's Official

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

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

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

Wunderkind Powers Activate! Form Of...

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's On The Other Side

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

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