A Charmed Life

Through My Glasses, Dorkily

There used to be a time, back in the old days when I was young and nubile (read: not old and in possession of stretch marks), when the thought of being naked all morning was a good thing, and would lead to even more Good Things.  That era has passed.  Yesterday morning was indeed spent sans clothing, dripping wet and in various bodily contortions, but alas, I was alone, and the only thing I was trying to discover on my body was...my lost contact lens.

See, I have sort of a chip on my shoulder about my poor vision.  As I've mentioned in the past, I've been wearing glasses since the third grade (which unfortuntely intersected with my years of wearing orthopedic shoes).  My lenses are thick enough that I'm no longer allowed in the woods during fire season, lest an errant sunbeam spark a raging inferno.  As a result, the only glasses I own are more than six years old, and I wear primarily contact lenses.  However, I'm so cheezed off to have 20-700 vision in the first place (yes, your vision is just fine, you did read that correctly) that I cheap out and don't keep my prescription up-to-date and filled.  As a result, I'm constantly running out of lenses, and running into objects, whenever something happens to my very last pair.  

 

Which is the situation I found myself in yesterday.  I normally shower with my contacts already in, because I otherwise run the risk of flailing about blindly and wrapping myself into the shower curtain like a shroud.  However, little Ari, with her SuperPowers of Infection, had managed to poke me in the eye and give me yet another stye, so I decided to let the hot water treat it first and insert my lenses  afterwards.  Exit shower, spray curl stuff into hair, get out lens case, open right lens cap, and...FUMBLE.  Followed by "vamoose".  Naturally, I started out by searching the sink, then the countertop, then the floor.  Nada.  Next I checked every square inch of the towel I had wrapped around me.  Still nothing.  Had it perhaps fallen into my hair, which was at that moment drying into a crunchy, Jeri curl-like helmet around my head, not having had the benefit of being combed while it air-dried?  I leaned into the mirror to check, but with my it-only-works-for-tweezing-eyebrow-hairs super up-close nearsightedness, my nose bonked into the glass before I could tell if there was a contact lens clinging to my ringlets like dew on a shrub.  

 

With no luck on the sink, floor, countertop or hair, there was only one place left to check for the errant lens: my naked, shivering body.  They say "men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses", but let me tell you, if I could describe how I managed to twist mself to check every inch of my skin for that stupid contact, I'd have guys lined up three deep to buy me dinner.  Or maybe LASIK.  

 

Still nothing.  You always hear how hard it is to find a woman's G-spot, but I'll tell you one thing, my contact lens must be the smaller of the two.  (Frankly, I think I still made out pretty well on this deal, because I can *buy* contacts.  But I digress.)  So I repeated my search, over and over, to no avail, and all the while getting colder, more ticked-off, and oh yes, TRAPPED in the house, since my really old glasses are not sufficient to me to see well enough to drive in.  (They're just strong enough to enable me to find my contact lens case, provided I can find the glasses case in the first place.)  All told, I spent over an hour on my hands and knees in that bathroom, which is really not nearly as clean as I thought I'd kept it, once I got 2mm from the dirt on the floor.  I honestly don't know how I could have considered putting anything from that floor back into my eye, unless perhaps I was going to go for the "Buy one stye, get one free" look.

 

Finally, James got home, and for some reason didn't seem a bit fazed to find me looking like a cross between Roseanna Roseannadanna and Little RIchard (WHY??  Does my hair honestly look like this the rest of the time?), curls on end, tripping over the cats, and trying to to a web search for my optometrist with my nose tapping out the keystrokes.  He drove me to the optometrist's office, which I hadn't been to in over two years, where I implemented my Free Contact Lens Strategy.  Luckily, what I lack in vision I make up for with ingenuity and personal charm, so when the good doctor heard the words "I searched everywhere for that stupid lens, including underneath my breasts", she handed me a new one, no questions asked, despite my lack of current prescription.

 

I did learn my lesson, though, and had a new exam done today, and bought myself quite the pair of "sexy librarian" frames, to boot.  The optometrist started chuckling again as soon as she saw me, and I got another free pair of lenses, plus a bunch of samples.  The moral of this story?  Sometimes, it pays to make a spectacle of yourself ;)

 

Happy Weird Wednesday!

 

 

Labor and Special Delivery

Happy Last Official Day of Summer, everyone! What did you all do to celebrate? I just spent my evening enjoying the lone perk of a single babymama, which is One Night a Week Without Babies.  Essentially, I sat out by the pool, putting the finishing touches on the tan that I got tromping around while grocery shopping on foot, followed by stuffing my face without having to simultaneously cut up someone else's food or keep it away from the cat. (Note: it helps to be wearing a spandex-reinforced swimsuit while eating potato chips and cheddar-bacon-tomato dip. I think I'll leave it on overnight, just in case.)  I blew my diet like it was a horny sailor on shore leave, and now that I'm stuffed to the gills, I'll do what I do every single night that I don't have my girls with me...talk about them incessantly!  It's Labor Day, so it's as good a day as any to write Arianna's birth story.

 

In fact, the last time I ate this much was the evening of December 31, 2009, right after giving birth to her.  Sure, the hospital was rated by UNICEF as one of the top 50 hospitals to have a baby in.  But what I was interested in was what I'd heard about their postpartum catering.

 

Not that I was malnourished when I checked in that day.  One of the awesome things about having a baby right after Christmas is that when your belly jiggles like a bowl full of jelly, everyone assumes it's the baby kicking.  Actually, Ari did do quite a job of treating my internal organs like her own personal pinata.  I used to call it "Liverdance".  I basically calmed her down the same way I do now when she kicked and screams...with a cookie!  Her BBS ("Big BIG Sissy") had thoughtfully gifted me with a tin of peppermint bark from Williams Sonoma, which I obediently ingested, not wanting my future baby to develop a taste for inferior holiday treats.  My middle brother, who we call Uncle Colonel around here, was staying with us for a week, and we had a blast cooking- and eating- together.  *I* had a blast watching his normally calm countenance blanch a bit every time another set of Braxton-Hicks contractions hit. "Deb...it's like you're a ticking time bomb!", he'd cry, and then go back to working on the Thomas Kincaide puzzle that he and Cornell were working on.  Mostly, I remember that week as one of the nicest holiday seasons I'd spent in a long time.

 

Then it was the 30th, and we drove my brother to the airport for his return flight home.  My due date wasn't until 1/7, but I was disappointed all the same that he hadn't gotten to see his brand-new niece.  He, on the other hand, was probably just relieved that he did not have to see my brand-new placenta. 

 

On the way home, we stopped at the ob/gyn's office, and when my very awesome babydoc saw The Look on my face..you know, the one that says GET THIS BABY OUT OF ME NOW?  she asked, "want me to strip your membranes now?  It might get things moving.."  For the experienced parents among my readership, you know this question is nothing like "want your windshield washed?".  For the underinitiated, I'll spare you the details, since you have work in the morning and the buzz from that last holiday beer has probably already worn off. Suffice it to say that stripping of said membranes is kind of like scraping lint off the trap in your dryer, except that the lint has nerve endings and the trap is your GIRLFRIEND, girlfriend!  YOWCH! 

 

It worked, though, like..well, like a Charm.  Within a couple of hours, Liverdance turned into a tarantella, and I turned to my family (Cornell, BBS and Sephie) and said, "Let's go out to eat!"  Wednesday night is Free Pie Night at the restaurant with the orange roof (hint: it rhymes with Pillage Sin), and since I dragged us there every week and the waitresses all knew us, it was time to get one last meal in without having to pack a diaper bag first.  Plus, even I'm not hard-core enough to cook while in labor.

 

Amazingly, unless you actually know me and my cast-iron stomach/hollow leg in person, I ate my entire dinner despite the discomfort, and then went home to try and get some sleep.  That worked for about two or three hours.  At around 4:30 a.m., I decided that I'd had enough (Cornell had probably decided he'd had enough for several hours by now, since I am not exactly silent about Killer Cramps from Mars), and he went downstairs to alert BBS that we'd be leaving for the hospital soon. My loyal and wonderful ex-SIL/BFF Lynn was slated to drive down to the house later that day, to pick Sephie up and drive her to preschool.  As timing would have it, Dave was out of town for the holiday week, so we packed up and left a house with not three dogs, but four..Winston, Dave's and my former pug, who has appeared much earlier in these pages, and who we were petsitting.

 

What I will always remember as we drove out of the neighborhood on that silent, dark morning was the enormous, brilliant moon.  My mother's cousin had commented to me weeks before that "maybe you'll give birth on the full moon- it worked for me!", and that's what I was thinking as I gazed up at December's "blue moon".  (I still think of blue moonstone as Arianna's birthstone, for that reason.) 

 

Despite my contractions, I hadn't dilated even a little bit, so they hooked me up to an IV and I shuffled painfully around the hallways for half an hour, willing my cervix to get with the program, already.  I paused only a short while, at the nurses' station, to warn them that they might be hearing a loud thump coming from my room, and if they did, to please go in and rescue poor Cornell.  He'd been feeling faint enough that I was actually holding him up at one point before starting my IV pole relay race.  Had I had a contraction at that moment, we'd both have ended up in the ER instead, no doubt. It wasn't his blood sugar, so I assume that he was just suffering from sympathy pains- not from my poor uterus, but from my overtaxed party-hearty digestive system.  As my contractions disappointingly faded, instead of growing stronger and more organized, I started to realize that I was, once again, HUNGRY.  I'd eaten only a banana since 4 a.m., and that because I needed somethig soft and easy to throw up again during transition.  (Can you tell I'd done this before?)

 

As "luck" would have it, the doc decided this was a "false alarm", and discharged me, and it was only through my protests that she agreed to have me checked in the office later that morning.  So...time for a real breakfast!  Rather than drive the 8 miles home, we decided to wait it out at Lynn's house in town, and stop at the local bagel store on the way there.  I'd already requested (read: DEMANDED) that Cornell order me my usual: lox and bagel on sesame, not toasted, chive cream cheese, extra tomato, light onion, no capers. And a diet Coke, 'cause Mama is done being healthy at this very moment.  By the time we arrived at the bagel shop, however, I was literally twisting myself into a knot, screaming, and couldn't get out of the car to go eat.  A normal person would have skipped breakfast at this point, but not I!  I waited in the car, gibbering like a hyena getting an unmedicated root canal, until my breakfast arrived and we continued on to Lynn's house.

 

((It bears mentioning at this point that I'd severely strained my back catching a falling armoire while moving a month earlier, which is my only explanation for how horrible the pain was, and the fact that the contractions spasmed from the small of my back to the nape of my neck.  I went through natural childbirth with Seph, assisted by a doula, and it was great.  A doula would have been nice this time, too, but honestly, I don't think even a djinn could've wished the pain away, it was so bad.))

 

I hesitated in Lynn's doorway, and in a lull between contractions frantically whispered, "I don't want to scare the girls!!"  My nieces were 4 and 13 at that point, and I worried about scarring them for life.  That's pretty much what their mother had in mind, though, because her reply was, "go ahead and scream!  I don't want them having sex before they're married!".  The next pain hit before I could point out that I wasn't exactly married, either.  Lynn was the perfect labor coach- calm and authoritative by turns.  When I tried to cross my legs in agony (which is not good for keeping the pelvis relaxed and open), she kneed them apart, yelling "get those legs open, girl!". Even in pain I have a smart mouth, and I yelled back "that's what got me into this mess in the first place!!"  And of course, in the increasingly small spaces between contractions, I ate every bite of my lox and bagel. Hey, it's a $9 sandwich!

 

Eventually, it was time to drive back to the hospital to have them check me again, and I did my best impression of an ambulance siren all the way there.  Cornell was remarkably calm, although he did stay well away from my reach.  Apparently, there'd been an incident 14 years prior where he lost some hair due to his ex-wife yanking it out during labor, and all of my reassurances that there was that much less of a chance, through male pattern baldness, that he'd lose any more, fell on deaf ears.  Come to think of it, "deaf ears" could have been how he survived the ruckus I was making in the passenger seat.

 

Fast-forward to the hospital room again, where I was now abjectly begging for drugs, DRUGS, get them in the pharmacy or the PARKING LOT, I don't really care, just give me the needle and I'll thunk it right into my own back!  The anethesiologist wheeled cheerily into the room, declaring "I'm the Candy Man!", and luckily got me my meds before I could embarrass myself before offering him sexual liberties in exchange for pain relief. I *hate* needles, which should tell you just about how bad it was, and my sweet and patient Lynn held my legs in her lap while it was inserted into my back.

 

Then I had the most blessed respite from back pain I'd experienced since before Thanksgiving, when I'd hurt myself.  I just lay there giggling and talking about DUDE, this is AWESOME, until my SIL and sleep-deprived fiance basically told me to shut up and get some rest. Which I did, while they played cards or something, until 2:45 when a starving Lynn said she was going to run downstairs for some take-out lunch.

 

That's when the nurse came in to check me, only to find that the baby had just about slid out from me relaxing.  I yelled for Cornell to call Lynn back in, STAT.  The doc came in (blessedly, she'd stayed late, so my favorite OB ever got to deliver), I gave two pushes, and BLAM!  my beautiful princess Ari-boo was born!  (Don't hate me, I'm a peasant, I pushed for barely 15 minutes the first time)  6 lbs, 2 0z, and 19" long, just 1 oz exactly over Seph's measurements, and a carbon copy of her middle sister.  The only thing more beautiful than her tiny sweet face was the look on her dad's as he cut the cord, then got to hold her for the first time.  The look on Auntie Lynn's face was pretty darn priceless, too, when she realized that she'd missed the whole thing during a ten-minute lunch break!  "I hate you- it took me three days to have your niece!!", I believe she phrased it.

 

Sephie and BBS got to see her later that afternoon- the resulting photos will be posted here once I get my new computer, but they're just fabulous.  Also fabulous, yet regrettably not photographed, was the huge post-partum dinner they served me.  You know you're in the right maternity ward when you order fries AND cake with your entree, and they ask you if you're like a milkshake with that, too? 

 

I toasted 2010 alone with my precious little one, since there were 4 dogs at home to care for and Cornell needed to sleep, anyway.  I admit, I was disappointed and lonely and overwhelmed, especially when Arianna turned out to be a born party animal, and wanted to nurse all night and hang out with me instead of sleep.  The next afternoon was wonderful, though, as I checked out exactly 24 hours after giving birth, and felt good enough to cook the lasagna dinner the hospital thoughtfully sent us home with.  Winston the pug was excited, too- he loves babies, and the grateful look on his face was clearly to thank us for bringing home a "fresh" one.  (He still loves her!)  And honestly, I had one of the best times in my relationship with Cornell that week, staying up late at night watching the "House" marathon and snoogling with our baby.

 

I can't bring myself to watch "House" anymore.  I don't have a home to babysit Winston in anymore, either.  Worst of all, there are two nights a week where I don't get to snoogle my sweet littlest princess at all.  But I did get to have her, and seeing her hug Sephie (when she's not yanking on her middle sister's long golden locks), hide inbetween BBS' long legs ("baby penguin-style!", she calls it), or hold her Papa's hand on their walks around the block...well, it's not the Everything I hoped it would be, but it's a very special Something. 

 

"This is my family. I found it, all on my own. Is little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good." -Lilo and Stitch, 2002

Through all of love's labors, I am so very grateful all the members of my little, broken family, who are the reason I have all of my wonderful Mommy Mondays.

 

You know the drill...go hug your mommies!

Whip Me, Beat Me, Make Me Use Canned Sauce

Last week, some time after coming up with the title of today's post, I made my first batch of homemade sauce in what seemed like forever, after months of relying on the inferior and/or disgusting canned interpretations that middle America is content to dump on their pasta.  Hey, when you're hungry, and you're lucky enough to live near a food bank, you eat what they give you.  However, *my* middle is not very American, apparently, and it's been squashing my little Sicilian soul to serve, much less consume, anything less than the sublime "sugo" that my dad taught me to make so many years ago. Canned sauce, to me, tastes like giving up.

It's been a rough ride, these last three years, since the last time this blog was updated regularly.  The adorable blonde moppet who appears so prominently in these pages is now a stunningly gorgeous first-grader, with golden braids nearly down to her waist.  Sephie is tanned, athletic and suprisingly muscular, mostly thanks to her dad, who's used his Time of Unfortunate UnderEmployment to teach her to hike, bike and swim. She's gone from being a late talker to being the sort of chatterbox suspected of having the ability to breathe through her ears.  That part is probably my genetic contribution, hard at work.  She's also an amazingly talented artist, although her flower pictures always seem to have a penis hidden somewhere in the blooms.  (I kid you not- as soon as I purchase a new computer to scan in her artwork, I will prove it!) Imagine Georgia O'Keefe if she'd worked for Disney, and you get the idea.

Dave, the ex-husband Formerly Known as Mr. Charming..is Dave. We split before our house in California sold, and managed to live together and sell it before moving to Colorado and THEN file for divorce.  The stress was unbelievable, of course- we did it the way we did because there was no way to calculate when our move was supposed to occur, and it made knowing whether we had to file with or without home ownership, and in what state, impossible.  However, by the time the divorce was finalized, we were good enough friends to go directly to brunch from the courthouse, and he was enough of a gentleman to treat, too.  We still drive each other nuts, but we're still friends, and staying that way. We trade recipes and funny YouTube videos, and I credit our friendship for how our daughter is turning out.  If and when Dave comes up in these pages, it'll just be as..Dave.  He's a straightforward kind of guy, so a lack of nickname seems more appropriate in this case.

 

Now onto the new cast of characters...enter "Cornell".  It's a nickname I called him in our early courtship, partly from envy of where he went to school, and partly because I have a deathly terror of being too mushy, even when I'm feeling mushy.  It seemed as good a blog alias as any, and I did ask his permission, first! I'll make this as brief as possible...we met, fell madly in love, he lost his job, I unexpectedly got pregnant, we got engaged, drove each other up the wall and down again, had a beautiful baby together, drove around those walls some more, and then had the most spectacularly awful breakup in my limited dating history.  We have a stunningly gorgeous 20 month-old daughter together, and we're trying to be friends again, for her sake, or maybe because if you ever truly loved someone, you'll at least always care about them.  If I'm still blogging 16 years and two months from now, I'll let you know how that part went.

And now I have another excuse to post Cute Baybee Pictures ad nauseam, again, at least when I get a decent computer again. Arianna, or Ari as she's usually called, was born on New Year's Eve of 2009, and has been a party animal ever since.  As in, on our most recent trip to Target, she patted her head in the lampshade aisle and said, "hat? HAT?!"  I can't make this stuff up, people.  Cornell's a very talented photographer, so the photos you'll be seeing of her in future will be a cut above (ok, several cuts above) the ones I took of baby Sephie.  Watermarked, too, since he does this on the side. If you're in the Denver/Boulder area and in need of a good photographer, feel free to hire him with confidence and thereby contribute to our daughter's college fund.)

 

Speaking of college fund..there is a character in the cast that I almost forgot to mention- Cornell's college-bound 16 year-old daughter. I don't have her permission to talk about her in my blog, so I won't, other than to say that I love the stuffing out of her, not the least for what a great big sister she was to both of my little girls.  In these pages, if I refer to her in passing, it will be with "BBS", for "Big BIG sissy", which is what I call her to Ari. 

 

And now last, but certainly not least, Da Moose. I can't take credit for that nickname, which is a moniker he received from an old girlfriend, which stands for "E. Norm Moose".  Get your minds out of the gutter, mine already lives there and is quite territorial ;) He's a retired Navy frogman and signalman, and has size 2X shoulders and knows how to use them.  Mostly for me sobbing on them, honestly, because I met him after my awful breakup that coincided with my father's passing.  I don't know why he's here (although, keep your eyes peeled for the mushy comment he's bound to leave even after I beg him not to), much less why he folds all my laundry into neat little rectangles (foreplay for a Virgo like myself) or makes me coffee every single morning.  It's probably my cooking, actually, since his job has him burning upwards of 4,000 calories a day.  In any case, he loves my girls, is best buds with Dave and gets along just fine with Cornell, and certainly seems to be completely content putting up with my nonsense, so...we got engaged last month. I'll feature Moose in his own post soon, since he more than deserves it :)

 

Back to the sauce.  Basically, I'm sick of the taste of giving up.  "Poor" does not mean "hopeless", "Un-wed Mother" does not mean "Candidate for Jerry Springer", and heartbroken does not mean broken beyond repair.  Yes, there are days, especially with my 40th birthday rapidly approaching, that I worry about not having such a charmed existence after all. Life lately has given me a fairly good whipping, but I've decided I'm too good to let it beat me. Next time it tries to bring me down, it's gettin' a face full of Ragoo, can and all.

 

Gotta work through the sad stuff before continuing on to happier things..next up, "Without a Song".

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home, Sweat, Home

Why am I writing this instead of soaking my tired muscles under a hot shower at this very moment? So that I can inform everyone reading this that please, for the love of pizza, if I ever try to relocate my belongs again (nobody say the "m" word, or imma jump off the balcony, and I live on the third floor now so that would smart some), you are to come over here and shoot me. Anyone who does not comply with this request will be pressed into service carrying ALL OF MY SHIT. Three days, 90+ degree temperatures, a pull-out couch, a stone kitchen table, and 15 hours straight of a migraine, and we're finally done, as of 9:30 PM. I think the last time I breathed or sweated this hard, I was having a great deal more fun! At least this place has A/C. Oh yeah..I've been living in a darling little 650 sq' Art Deco dollhouse since December. Great for a single Mama and her two baby girls, but not so big anymore when you add a Moose.. Oh yeah, again..not everyone knows who Da Moose is. Join us next time when I introduce the new cast members in "Whip Me, Beat Me, Make Me Use Canned Tomato Sauce".. 'Night all! P.S. To Wh-m It May Concern: thank You for my sweet, safe apartment all these months. It's been appreciated. P.P.S. Did you know, mosquitoes apparently like the taste of stress??

A [C]harmed Life

::taptap:: Is this thing *still* on? Of course it is, because I still pay for it, because I can't bear to part with the archives of my happier past. However, as it turns out, the yearly fee is still a damn sight cheaper than therapy, plus it gives me the added feature of being able to post Cute Baybee Pictures. So, for anyone who may be reading this who remembers me from 2007-2008, and for those Facebook friends who have stumbled across my archives, I'll try and bring the last three years into a brief focus first, before continuing on. Whe. I started this blog, I was a SAHM, upper-middle-class, happily-married mother of a darling little blonde baby girl, living in San Diego County, and newly-grieving the loss of my mother. Now, a few short years later, the former Mr. Charming is now Ex-Husband #2, BabyDaddy Extraordinaire, and, despite our very real differences, one of my best and most loyal friends. (I attribute this bit of fortune to not just an effort to maintain the well-being of our daughter, but to a mutual respect and genuine liking. Guess I'll find out when she turns 18, though.) Nowadays, I am the proud, sort-of-single mom of two gorgeous girls, living at poverty level. In the intervening time, I have gone through: a return to the work force,four job changes, a cross-country move, three local moves (and a fourth next week), a divorce, a long-term relationship, an unplanned pregnancy, a second healthy and beautiful child, a broken engagement, and am now engaged again, to someone who both of the fathers of my daughters get along with. (Thank G-D, because we don't need no imported drama here. The domestic variety is quite sufficent.) Oh yeah, and my dad passed, in the middle of the breakup/moving/heartbreak mess, in December. Clear as mud? Hope so, because the next post will be the new cast of characters. Pay attention, there will be a pop quiz ;) To Be Continued...

Beast Of Eden

An Open Letter To Eve, Mother of the Human Race:

Yo, lady! Yeah, you over there in the fig leaf. You know, we wear 'em a little lower on the hips, now. None of that tapered sh*t, either. Just sayin'.

I have a serious bone to pick with you. I am currently typing this with what feels like a Mack truck through my skull. Not a MAC truck, because then I would at least have makeup on, which I don't, because this migraine is making me feel like f*cking crap and lip gloss ain't gonna fix the problem.

Not gettin' it yet, huh? Almost forgot, we've evolved bigger brains since your heyday. Let me spell it out for you then... ORIGINAL SIN. You got to shake your tits at that asshat Adam and make him take a big ol' bite of an apple a day, keeps the Garden away, and *I* get to have migraines every month? Sister, you are a piece of work. You couldn't have held out for a cheesecake tree? We could at least have chilled out with a big piece and watched "Desperate Handmaidens" or something.

I'm wasting my time, here. I at least have something you don't have: a big bottle of Aleve and a Tupperware full of Oreo cheesecake truffles. (Whoops, I ate those already. B*tch. It's not like they grow on trees, thanks to you.) Oh, and a bellybutton. It'll look great in my bikini...soon as the bloating goes down.

Disrespectfully yours,

Your Great-great-great-great-great-great-great (how many "greats" are in 6,800 years, anyway?) granddaughter.

P.S. To Adam: I hope it was worth it, you perv. You realize it's all your fault guys have to put up with our crap.

A Murder of Prose

I don't eat bad food anymore.  By that, I don't mean to say that I only eat super-healthy and organic.  I simply enjoy food too much, and enjoy being at a healthy weight too much, to sabotage either of those things by wasting my time or calories on Little Debbie's Snack Cakes when I can have a Vosges-Haut dark chocolate blood-orange-and-Campari salt caramel instead.

Hold on, I got drool on the keyboard. ::mop:: 

I don't wear cheap clothes anymore, either.  That's not to say that I'm snooty or even overly stylish.  I simply prefer to pay a little more for a quality item that will last and fit me well than have a great big wardrobe full of stuff that's going to fall apart in the wash.

What this means is, even though this blog is written and paid for by yours truly, I won't waste my time writing drivel in this space when I know I can do better.  The problem is, right now, I can't seem to do much better.  I dread not coming here to pour out my feelings but I just can't justify writing crap as some sort of therapeutic exercise.

Plus, I hate coming to a blog that I read regularly, only to find that the author has stopped writing, rather abruptly, with no explanation in sight (or would that be, in site?)  So, if you visit this space often, thankyouthankyouthankyou!!  And also, I'm sorry I'm not nearly as funny or interesting as I feel like I used to be.

There's some personal stuff going on here that is taking more of my powers of concentration than usual.  If you know me IRL, you may or may not know about it, but if you do and you don't, please don't be offended!  In any case I thought I'd take a break here for the next several days, while I think about things some more.  Maybe after some time has passed I can stop feeling like I'm murdering prose, and be "raven" about writing again instead...

In the words of our Governator...I'll be back...

She Moves Her Body Like A Psycho

"Mad dogs and Englishmen", Dave remarked to me this afternoon, after I returned home from my midday, 9.3-mile walk in the 90-degree heat.  I like to take my long weekend walks while Seph is napping, but next time we're in the middle of a heat wave, I think I'll get my lazy behind up early, instead.  I didn't realize quite how exhausted I must have looked until I was walking under the freeway overpass (my "carrot-on-a-stick today was walking to the Coinstar to trade in a whole bunch of change for an iTunes gift card), and a young man honked his car horn at me and yelled, "You look hot!".  I didn't for one second believe that he was referring to how said lazy behind was looking in my black spandex running tights (hey, they wick sweat, that's all I care about).  Instead I felt my face, which had stopped sweating, and immediately drank some more water. 

What was I doing, walking such a distance in the heat?  Well, not like we were going to be headed to any San Diego beaches, that's for sure.  After the tragic fatal attack of a triathlete by a great white shark this week, I'm starting to think maybe being a couch potato is not as bad for your health as previously believed. 

The truth is, my left knee is still clunking ominously after a few miles of running, and I've been taking it easy on it for one extra day a week, substituting a very long walk for a short run to minimize the high-impact pounding.  I've also, for the first time, starting using the elliptical trainer- the one where your arms move, too.  Let's just say, I've discovered a way to make myself look even more ridiculous than simply sporting spandex. 

I know what you're going to say- elliptical machines are easy, right?  Sure they are, as long as you don't think too hard about what you're doing.  A long time ago I read a poem about a millipede who was tooling around just fine until someone asked her which foot went first when she started to walk.  Now put that poor millipede in Lycra and a sports bra and give her an iPod so she can garrote herself with the headphone cords and you have a basic idea of what my first ride on this beast looked like.   I flailed and flopped around madly like a reject from a Peter Sellers movie.  Then I got the rhythm, until a song I didn't like came on (how did that happen?  I picked out all the music on my iPod), and I reached over to hit the "fast forward" button and ended up RUNNING BACKWARD on the machine.  The good news is, I got my heart rate up, all right!  A friend remarked that this "sounds like a commercial!", and I agree...I just don't know for WHAT.  Coordination?  Ace bandages?  A remote for the iPod??

I am still tired and falling asleep at my keyboard...I'd get up and go to bed, but I can't remember which foot goes first...have a great Monday, everyone!

Demeter Reader

demeterreader
Originally uploaded by Debbie Svoboda

It's time for another "oldie but goodie".  As in, Deb hasn't been taking enough pictures of her adorable child because what aperture do you use for a tantrum, anyway?

This is Seph at 14 months, on our "Roamin' Holiday" in October 2006.  Bonus points to the first reader who can guess why I posed her in this particular spot.  A hint:  This is Ostia Antica, outside of Rome.

Happy Love Thursday!

Resisting A Rest

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's not Monday yet.  It's called "I'm the Mommy so I make the rules".  Or, you know, poetic license.

Seph is entering a stage where Bedtime has become The Unspeakable Evil, to be avoided at all costs. Her first line of defense is rather benign and consists of her running away from her otherwise beloved princess pajamas, yelling, "Noooo!  I go dwessed!!!"  Then she breaks out the big guns with "I hungwy!!".  It doesn't matter how much she's had to eat for dinner, either.  She turns into a nocturnal Hobbitt and demands "second dinner". This is very distressing to a good Italian mamma like myself, because what if she really is hungry?  The one time I let her "cry it out" on and off for two hours after her bedtime?  She really was hungry.  She plowed through two hard-boiled eggs like a bodybuilder and was out like a light. 

Once I've called her bluff on dinner, she switches tactics and turns to bargaining. All I can think is, her uncle is an attorney, and this is in the genes.  She  must have picked up on my love of reading, because her last line of defense is to lug her giant pink Disney Princess book (a birthday present from the aforementioned uncle) over to me and beg, "A tewwy?  Peeese, a tewwy??"  ("A story, please?  A story?"  Also, I think my spellcheck is going to explode.)

Chef's salad at bedtime, no.  A story?  Very reasonable, so why not?  Why not, indeed.  The stories in the book are a little advanced for her attention span at the moment, but she's a Disney fanatic so I tell her about the characters and the plot, anyway.  Guess which story is in the book?  Sleeping Beauty.  Here's me trying to explain: "This is Princess Aurora.  Her other name is Briar Rose. She's called "Sleeping Beauty because somebody gave her some bad..oh crap, can't say "medicine"...stuff, and it made her go to sleep! Ohh, double crap...I mean, sleeping is good, but not for her, and...hey, let's read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves!  You moron...your child loves apples...you wanna scar her for life??  Oh wait, here's Cinderella instead, let's read that one! 

Seph: (pointing to Evil Stepmother) "Who eez dat?"  Mommy:  That's her evil stepmother, who's mean to her...like you, putting her to bed without eggs...it's not her real mommy, though...oh great, teach her a nice rigid definition of "family"...

Seph: (pointing to Cinderella sweeping the floor) "What doing??" Mommy: She's sweeping the floor, because her stepmother and stepsisters are mean and make her do all the work...oh man, this is so coming back to haunt me the first time I assign her chores...

Luckily, after tonight's storytime fiasco, she decided to be Sleepy instead of Grumpy and went down without a fuss.  Now I'm the one who won't go to bed.  I'm finished writing my "tewwy", so maybe I'll go fix myself a snack. I hungwy.

Now go hug your mommies!

Burning Ambition

Wow, is it Wednesday already?  You know what they say.."Time flies like the wind...fruit flies like bananas!"  At least when it's Wednesday I remember I'm supposed to actually sit down and write something here.  Lately I think most of my blood is going to my poor, overworked quads instead of my brain! 

At least, that's my excuse du jour.  The sad truth of the matter is, despite my smarter-then-the-average-bear IQ (around 140, just smart enough to know that I'm too dumb for Mensa) and nerdly little glasses, I am...an airhead.  I open my mouth and 90% of the time, I sound intelligent and highly-educated,  The other 10%...like, omigod, I totally can't believe I said that!  ::vapid giggle::

I could blame it on genetics.  My mother earned her bachelor's, master's and PhD, all while working at least one full-time job and raising three kids. However, when asked, "what color was George Washington's white horse?", she'd get stuck and have to think about it.

I could blame it on being follicularly-challenged.  I was as blonde as my daughter until my third birthday.  Maybe the lack of melanin in my hair allowed the sun to bake my brain. 

Or I could take it as a blessing.  After all, I've never had the burning ambition to be a sooper genius.  Really smart people know how screwed the Earth is and it makes them miserable.  Look at what it did to poor Stephen Hawking.  You can't tell me it's just the ALS talking...uh, or not talking.  He's simply so blindingly intelligent that he's figured out the human race is going to die out unless we manage to find and travel to another planet with clean air, water and Internet access.  It's driven him round the bend, I tell you. (Still don't believe me?  Check out how much Al Gore has aged, in comparison to Bill Clinton.)

No, my only ambition in life has been to be a writer, and there's nothing I like to write about more than the crazy, true stuff that happens to me.  I honestly don't care how ridiculous I end up looking, as long as someone's getting a laugh out of it. Well, royalties would be nice, too, eventually.

So this week's story is about fire.  I'd bet the 96 cents I have left in my iTunes account (hint, hint!) that none of you reading this has ever set a Bunsen burner on fire before.  No, I don't mean lit the burner itself, I mean to set the entire thing aflame.  Junior year chemistry class, where the otherwise very nice teacher made it clear that anyone accidentally setting a fire would receive a "zero" for that week's lab. The hose from my burner was kinked a bit tight, and the flame hit the cloth-like covering over the hose and ignited the whole thing within seconds.  Imagine, if you will, a skinny, beetle-browed version of myself, hopping anxiously about like Beaker from the Muppet Show, trying to extinguish the flames before the teacher reached my side of the room.  No, I didn't go for the readily-accessible fire extinguisher, because I would have given myself away, gotten an F for the day, and my mother would have hit the roof.

Not that she had room to talk. Back when I was in junior high, we bought our first house, which had been built in the 1960s.  It came with the original stove, which had the broiler pan on top instead of inside the oven.  She made steaks one night and set the broiler on fire.  I mean it, THE ACTUAL BROILER WAS ON FIRE. And no, we did not have a fire extinguisher.  In her defense, the mental midgets who designed the stove had lined the inside of the broiler cover with thick paper.  Don't look at me, even I'm not that stupid!  I have no idea how we put the fire out...undoubtedly, it was my ultra cool-headed father.

Come to think of it, he put out another dinnertime fire, while out at a restaurant with my mother's parents.  They went somewhere fancy, with candles on the table and a napkin-lined bread basket.  My grandmother passed the basket to my father before the main course was served, and basically made camp-style toast on the spot.  Hmm, is that genetic argument gaining some weight?

My best fire story, though, happened  a few years ago, in this very house.  We were hosting a dinner party, and I had candles lit everywhere.  Among them were two gel candles that I'd gotten as a 30th birthday present and only burned once before. I set them next to each other on the bathroom sink.  As we sat down to eat, the smoke alarm went off.  No self-respecting Wop every burns dinner, so I was confused until one of the guests calmly remarked, "there seems to be smoke coming down your hallway".  The gel candles themselves had ignited, and there were two-foot flames licking their way up the mirror.  I didn't panic, because it wasn't like there was anything else in there to burn...I stood there like a moron, slowly thinking to myself, "I wonder if my little stockpot is deep enough to smother the flames".  Right about then is when Dave showed up with our fire extinguisher.  What do I call this story, do you ask?  Why, "the Bonfire of the Vanity", of course!

Do I have anyone "fired up" to tell a story of their own?  Leave it in the comments, and, um...no flames, please!  Have a great week!

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