Wake Up and Smell the Routine

This is how my day was: wake up at 4am because Ozzy won't sleep. My bus is late. On Market Street a homeless man yells UGLY, and although there are maybe 12 other people standing by and the sidewalk itself is covered in loogies, I feel certain he is calling me ugly. Forget my lunch. Eat handfuls of butter cookies and peppermint bark from gift baskets sitting in the office. Feel sick. Go to the bathroom and get my period, breaking a year and a half pregnancy-induced proverbial dry spell. Zoey's school calls--she has a fever. Bryan picks her up. Feel like a bad mom. Have one of those moments in a group conversation when you start to talk but realize nobody is listening so you awkwardly look around and then trail off your sentence? Start again, but still no one is listening. Stop. Start again. Stop. On the way home the bus driver yells at me when my phone rings.
My day sucked. This is also how my day was: wake up at 4am because Ozzy wants to chat. We stare at each other and smile for 10 minutes straight, and I realize it is maybe the most intimate thing I have ever done. Zoey wakes up and we cuddle on the couch to watch Babar. The bus is warm. The barista at Starbucks remembers my name and is genuine. At work I catch a typo. Free peppermint bark. On a whim I type "Last Christmas" by Wham! into Pandora and spend the afternoon listening to wonderfully terrible holiday music. At home Zoey's eyes are two glazed donuts, her temperature 101 degrees. I kiss the hot palms of each hand and she goes to sleep at 6. Because he left work early to pick up Zoey, Bryan has to go back to his office, so I eat a dinner of five Pfeffernüsse alone in the kitchen with Ozzy. Five Pfeffernüsse, five Pfeffernüsse. I say it out loud a few times and the powdered sugar puffs a bit like a dragon. Ozzy thinks this is hysterical. He eats sweet potato and peas.
My day was awesome.

Both of these are true, the cognitive dissonance of my day. Of every day, really. What happened and what I choose to tell. Neither of them the wrong answer but both of them right. How was my day? What will I say? I believe in the value of both.
How was your day?

Xox, The Lastnameheres

One boxed set of 50 with a glaring typo, a corrupted spreadsheet of addresses and later a painfully burnt palm right before having to address the final set, and I freaking did it. I sent out our 2011 holiday cards:
That's it people: my year in a snapshot. You better believe this one's getting framed.
From mine to yours,
Peace

My Madeline

I was thinking today of jelly beans, of a certain creek a few streets from where I grew up. I was thinking of Reagan and how he liked jelly beans, how I thought it mandatory for a president to endorse a food group. Carter with his peanuts and Reagan with jelly beans, each of those an actual food group to me at 10, how I knew then that I could never be president because I did not have a signature food much less a group or a political party. I'm guessing I was 10, because it was a year of rainbows and alligator shoelaces, the year of jelly beans. For my birthday my mom had bought necklaces as party favors, gold chains with a row of plastic jelly beans that hung down, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, in a rainbow like that. I don't remember anything about the party or what I got, just those cheap plastic jelly bean necklaces and how much I loved mine, how the jelly beans felt in my mouth when I pulled the necklace into my lips, the dull tink of plastic and teeth. How one day walking home from somewhere I stopped at the chainlink fence over the creek to see how far the water had risen and when I got home it was gone.Later, or maybe it was before, a neighbor said that her brother had found a dead teenage girl in that creek. She had slit her wrists, and though I did not see the girl's body I saw slick leaves stuck to white skin. The romance of something horrible that was far enough away that I only thought of my necklace whenever I passed the creek, how for years I peered over the railing to see if I could spot the rainbow I had lost.

Incidentally, in high school I kissed a boy who ate Very Cherry Jelly Bellies and then blew them out his nose on demand. He had pretty green eyes despite his soft palate being too closely connected, so once after he gave me a ride home we kissed not because we liked each other because we didn't, but because we were two teenagers in a car and I was getting out.

I wish I still had that rainbow jelly bean necklace, and somewhere somebody wishes that dead teenage girl were still alive.

6 months

Dearest Ozzy,

Bubba. Buddy. Mister. Love. It is 9pm, which means there are 3 hours left in your 6 month birthday. I like to quantify things, which you probably already know about me. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I love you? 10 being squishing a mouse in my pocket-love? 417,000 to the power of you. I have also never been good at math. You smell like the color of cream, of warm sheets, wet gums, of things multiplied and growing.

I look at this photo and can't help but think that one day this will be the direct gaze staring at me from a graduation pic, a wedding photo, from the corner of a business card should you become a real estate agent, I don't know. Just this: there you are. My boy. All boy. I don't know how much is me putting gender on your everything, but you are: such a boy. The way you laugh when your sister makes a loud noise, your stance before you even know how to stand.

At night you sleep in our bed. You fuss and grunt, babble, call out until I push my boob into your mouth, and then you breathe deeply, sigh, sleep. There is no other way to put it, this dance, nothing poetic about poking my nipple around in the dark across your face until I feel your wet mouth open. I'm sorry to embarrass you already but it's funny to think of the first time you encounter a "real" girl's boob, how I think you will push yourself into it greedily and then fall instantly asleep once you make contact.

Sorry.

Moving on. You like airplanes and cats, carrots, the window down when we drive. You are big. 91st percentile, and lately you have started to do this backstroke thing across the floor, opting not to crawl quite yet but to push yourself laying down on your back like a fish. Oooo. You sound like an owl, my backward fish-owl boy who smells of cream of wheat and soft.

183 days, give or take, like I said: I suck at math. A lifetime is what it is, these last 6 months, yours. Because I am just that: yours.

Love,
Mommy

Thank You.

Truth: I used to not like Thanksgiving. What with all the family dynamics, dysfunction, all those dishes to wash. I did not particularly like turkey, the stuffing heavy with slivered mushrooms ground, impossible to pick out. Pumpkin pie is only good the first few fork-fulls, you know, pecan pie tasty if it weren't for the actual pecans. No, I did not like any of it until now. This second. Today, with a kindergartener. Hands traced into toms, feathers glued to gourds. This hat made from bunched up paper bags so that it looks as if she has two turkey legs on top of her head. And that freaking smile.

I guess finally I get it. The gratitude. The giving, the on-my-knees, no way, why me, how did I get here, how am I so lucky? The kiss their cheeks by the fire, a quick inhalation of laughter, the actual taste of thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

As an Aside (And as a Title), I Would Love to Surprise My Dad With His 1972 International Scout But I'm Thinking It's a Goner

Bryan does this annoying thing when we watch movies. That is, if there is so much as the slightest possibility of someone dying, like maybe the mother starts to cough a little and it's obvious that in the next 90 minutes she is going to die of lung cancer because duh, people don't cough in movies unless death is imminent, then Bryan sits up and looks back at me. To see if I'm crying. He looks at me with this smirk on his face that says you are such an emotional fish, except of course when I push him away he says what? You are cute! It's because you're so cute. Consequently I have not been able to cry during a movie in quite some time and feel totally constipated.

So last night I showed him this 5 minute flick and watched his eyes get seriously shiny.

Back in the day when I used to wear men's vests to school, also known as 1990, Bryan had a `75 Chevy Caprice (which istotallyalmostthesamething as an Impala if you so much as bring up the difference to him). He spray painted a fishbone across the hood and God help me if Zoey is anything like me, but for some reason I found that fishbone-painted Caprice sexy, even if it did start with a screwdriver. So there's that.

And before you get all jaded consumer--believe me, I went there, too--apparently the brothers started the quest to find their father's Impala and only contacted Chevy to see if they wanted to film the reaction. Their father was indeed miked, but told that they were filming a piece about three family generations when his car pulled up.

So let your eyes shine on.
xo,
S

Gimme Gimme

I think I may have given up. That is: once upon a time I yearned for high heels. Strappy numbers in gold. Now I want these sensible shoes, something I can really rock the shit out of at the grocery store:Clean up on aisle pretty please. Size 8. Black. Just sayin'. Actually, you know what? Forget it. I can't wait for someone to buy these for me for Christmas. Purchasing...now.

Then there's this beanie. Don't even. I know it has a pom pom, I SEE the pom pom. It is yellow, yes, the pom pom is yellow which makes it a yellow pom pom and still I want it.
Also? This flannel nightshirt from Little Larry Bean. Size large, monogrammed, traditional 3 letter style with last initial in the middle: SMC. Let's see: Uggs, a pom pom beanie and large monogrammed flannel L.L.Bean pj's...I'm painting quite the sexy picture of myself aren't I?Yeah baby. Well then, let's kick this up a notch. Because I also want these Super Skinny Sparkle Jeans (take it from me--the pic doesn't do the sparkle justice). They're only $36.95, but the problem is they're from the kids section at Gap. Yeah. I bought them for Zoey and feel downright covetous whenever she wears them. So here's my question: I'm a fairly medium-thin (albeit flabby thin) woman. Think I can fit into a girl's size 16? 18? Truth: on a scale from one to fucking pathetic, how bad would it be for me to wear sparkley black jeans from the kids section at Gap? Really fucking sad? Well what if I wore them with a yellow pom pom beanie? Oh stop.
Also at the top of my Xmas list is a Kindle Fire. Like seriously at the top. I want it like the pre-2008 me wanted stuff. Get it? Because pre-2008 me didn't know that the economy could/would crash and that materials goods meant nothing. I wanted shit more then, like I thought it all mattered. That's how much I want the Kindle Fire. I think it matters even though I know it doesn't which makes no sense but neither does the fact that The Gap doesn't sell those goddamn Super Skinny Sparkle Jeans in grown woman sizes.

So that's what I want for Christmas. In case you were wondering. What I want now on a Tuesday night wearing my ratty flannel nightshirt with the monogrammed initials SJC, that's how old it is. My maiden name, and I got married 6 years ago. Gimme Gimme please. And you?

WTF Wednesday: The Answers Edition

No real questions today with the exception of this photo:
Instead, in a total word-vom of wha'the-fah-ness, here's a list of strange facts that will make you the most popular girl at the cocktail party (unless of course there's some other girl giving out hand jobs in the loo, in which case knowing that beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts and worms like fried bacon isn't going to do a thing for you).

1. There's a spider in Brazil whose bite causes an erection that lasts for hours.
2. Jackie Chan was in the womb for 12 months.
3. A banana is a berry but a strawberry isn't.
4. The total weight of all the ants on the earth is roughly equal to that of all the people on the earth.
5. Hitler was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
6. You will create enough saliva to fill two average-sized swimming pools in your lifetime.
7. There is enough fuel in the tank of a jumbo jet to drive the average car around the world four times.
8. A portion of the water you drink has already been drunk by someone else, maybe several times over.
9. You are taller in the morning.
10. I cannot stop at nine facts so I am just typing here. For the record, I also want to say that #6 and #8 make me nauseated. According to Br'er Rabbit I shouldn't say this to anyone, but I hate spit more than anything else. Seriously. I'd rather eat a spoonful of someone else's poop than drink a glass of someone else's spit. And I don't say that lightly. For some reason I have thought about this conundrum at length which is probably why I don't have a retirement plan in place or know what is going on with the presidential candidates. I am too busy choosing between poop and spit. What about you? Which would you choose, and/or who is Ron Paul?

That's it people of the wwwtf.
xo,
S

Standard Time

I think I've got me a case of the sads.
Or a mild case of the mehs, I don't know. The end of Daylight Savings Time, sure. It's stupid how every year we all turn to each other at 4pm and say it feels like it should be 8! When duh, it happens every year, how are we still surprised? But yeah. It feels like it should be 8.

On the bus home tonight I read the news. Something about how the cost of climate change is expected to be enormous and then that bit about Penn State. Fuck--what is wrong with people? With all of us? It makes me want to spend an hour plucking my eyebrows in a magnifying mirror. (Which is what I did just now before starting this post so if you see me tomorrow don't look too closely at the outside of my left eyebrow because it's kinda' not there anymore.) (Oh, also? I have always wanted to be able to raise one eyebrow in bemused skepticism, but when I try it just looks like I'm trying to hide the fact that I farted while having a stroke, and now I certainly can't raise one eyebrow seeing as how one is a shadow of its former self.)

Or it could just be the Mulling Spices I bought this weekend at Trader Joe's. How I have ruined one pot simmering them to make my home smell safe and warm and right. How I think that if I pay my bills and balance my checkbook that everything will be ok, the world tepid, ten year old boys untouched. How I tell myself that at least it is 8 o'clock twice a day, I mean that's good, right? So I put on my chenille sleep socks and pad around the house softly once everyone is in bed, putting things away where they belong, smelling of orange peels, allspice and cloves.

WTF Wednesdays: Mathalete Edition!

So because I really do hate the word hump, I think I'm going to call this recurring Wednesday doohicky WTF Wednesdays, as in the slow slide into Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (WTF) with a side order of good ol' fashioned What The Fuck (WTF). Yes?

This week's WTF Wednesday Edition is for the mathalete in all of us (stay with me here, I need you)...

1. If you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance that your answer will be correct?

a. 25%

b. 50%

c. 60%

d. 25%

WTF.

2. Did you know that the last two digits of your birth year + your age = 111. For example, I was born in 1972, so 72 + 39 = 111. Try it. This is true for EVERYONE this year. (Next year it will be 112 if we make it past the Mayan calendar.) WTF.

3. If this dress on the left is $188 at Anthropologie and I have a $100 gift card, should I buy it for $88 or wait to see if ever goes on sale risking the chance it will sell out? (If instead of answering the question you all go out and buy the dress in a size 6, I will cut a bitch.) WTF.

In the classroom of life I am totally trying to cheat off of you. Seriously--can you move your shoulder a bit? I can't see your paper. I hate math, but questions one and two are freaking me the eff out. How the Huh? And question #3 just needs some rationalization.

Happy WTF.

S

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.