May 4, '05

Sitting on the plane, coming home form Florida. Terrible turbulence, this computer keeps bouncing around and I'm worried it might hit me in the face. The lady next to me is asleep, thank Heaven, I thought she was gonna talk my ear off the whole flight. I'm always worried my seat mates are either going to talk to me or spend all thier time reading over my shoulder, so I can't read anything but really dry articles, none of the fun racy ones. Not that I brought any fun trashy mags with me this time, the kiddies are here too, and I may be a terrible mom but even I'm not going to read maxim in front of my babies. The sleeping monolith stirs....if she reads this, who's worse, her or me?

This has never happened to me before, but I think I'm gonna ralph. I've never experienced motion sickness in the past but I don't feel so good. I'll keep you posted. Luckily, I haven't eaten anything so worst case, we'll get some dry heaves.

We've had a lovely trip...we stayed at a friends condo in Estero, and it was very swank. Spent every morning at the pool, every afternoon at the beach. The weather was awesome, the kids body surfed all day long, then dinner and more pool time, some boob tubery and bed. Just goes to show you, kids'll only spend all their time playing x box if there's nothing else to do.

Molly is asleep. Wheeeeeeeew.  Asleep, or possibly just in a toe-jam coma. Explanation: Mol is very into picking her toes these days, and when I say picking I mean chewing. Well, to be fair, she picks and she chews. But it keeps her occupied for what could be considered a disturbingly long time, that is, if I allowed it to disturb me, which I don’t.  It keeps her occupied and her toes clean, so what’s the harm? It’s not like she’s lighting puppies on fire. No idea where that came from. Anyway, sometimes she complains that her feet hurt because she’s eaten her toenails down to the nub, but that’s only happened twice or so. This morning we were rushing around, trying to get ready to leave for the airport, and I’d already tossed out all the leftover food we’d bought and cleaned and closed the kitchen and she started whining that she was hungry.

“Food’s all gone, Mol.”

Meg: “Molly, why don’t you just eat your toes?”

 (everyone laughs)

Molly, in a panicky voice: “I DID!”

Almost forgot, this exchange happened after Mike found the rental car keys…dangling from an electrical outlet, where she’d jammed them in. OMIGOD.  By sheer luck, someone had switched off the electricity, you know how sometimes a whole rooms lamps and whatever are controlled by one light switch? Someone had switched it off, which is the only reason our vacation didn’t end even worse than it has, by being called home because our beloved mother/grandma/mother-in-law has passed away.

So we scrambled to get an earlier flight home, the airline was horrifically unhelpful but we did manage to get one, with a connection in Indianapolis which I doubt we’ll even make since we sat on the runway for an hour before even taking off.  The kids finished all their puzzles and crosswords and Mike his magazine before the plane left the ground, and the book I brought is sheet. I bought one of those horrible chick-lit pieces o’crap…look, I’m not gonna pretend I don’t read the things, I do, and you know what? Some of them are fun. Certainly as good as any of the spy/thriller/book-with-the-word-“Prey”-in-the-title-Vince-Flynn-religious-end-of-days-hogwash-crapola books everyone else reads, so why should I have to defend myself? She asked defensively? The point is, the one I brought with me sucks. I don’t know what it’s called. It’s the color of an Easter egg and has a martini glass on the cover.  The girl is a clueless twit, her friends are all wacky alcoholics and her mom is eccentric.  Everyone’s British. You get the drift. But still I defend chick-lit, because like any other genre, some of it’s readable and most of it isn’t.

I finished the book Little Children halfway through the week, it was good but not as good as Election, but I can’t wait to read all his other books. Now there’s a writer. So, since needed something new, I picked up this collection of short stories that was the condo, called something beachy, don’t remember, but it was a bunch of stories cobbled together and put out by the Key West writer’s coop, the blurb on the jacket was all about how they were sick of rejection from the man so they published this thing themselves.

Cool, I can get on board with that, I’m down with the counterculture…….YEEEEEEEK three stories in, it’s quite obvious why the man keeps rejecting them. WOW. Every story in the collection started with a “shocking” sentence, you know like “Teddy his the body next to his pajamas” or something, then they were all the same and they all STANK.

I have to stop, the lady next to me won’t stop reading over my shoulder (SEE??) and it’s making me really uncomfortable.

May 11, '05

So the commercial goes something like this:

(guy with soothing and persuasive voice)

"Remember when you said you were going to have parties and nice deck furniture? Well, when are you finally gonna buy some, you loser? No one wants to sit on orange crates and bean bag chairs, and while we're at it, no one wants to see your ugly beer gut in that tight t-shirt either. Ikea. It's time."

And there's a sort of little movie going on in the background, like they got the cast of Thirtysomething: the Next Generation together and they're enjoying wine and everything matches and everyone is really calm and happy and smart.

Well I want to be calm and happy and smart, so I bitched at Mike that I was sick and tired of living with garage sale bedroom furniture and couldn't we just get a coupla matching dressers at Ikea, where they cost about a dollar fifty? I mean we seriously have the world's worst crap in our bedroom, rightly believing any extra dough should go to our lovely, delightful offspring instead. It's in the parent handbook under martyrdom.

Mike has this giant lime green highboy with rubber basketballs for handles, I have some rickety piece of Kenny Chesney I got from my sister that barely holds all my bathing suits, and our tv sits precariously on this horrible shaky glass thing, and ever since Finny was attacked by our glass picnic table I'd just as soon not have any around, you know? Mike says ok, I'll by you the Ikea stuff, are you sure you don't want to buy real furniture, though? Money's a little tight right now but you had a hell of a year putting up with my absence and I'm willing to spring for some grade A, primo Scratch 'n Dent action for you, baby.

No, no, the Ikea stuff actually looks decent, I say. Plus it's so very very inexpensive. Mike hits the road and I paint the walls a screaming orange, imagining it to be the perfect beachy backround for my matching Ikea Blarftwat dressers.

An hour later, Mike and I are surrounded by piles of lumber and millions of little screws. The instruction manual has no words, just vague drawings of a happy man assembling furniture in the nude.

So an hour after that, sweat-drenched Mike has the frame of one of the dressers put together, but he's nailed the little cardboard backing to the front of it, where the drawers are supposed to go. Sidenote: Part of the dresser is made of cardboard. This was not mentioned in the commercial. So he has to pry the backing off the front with a hammer, and of course the horrible cheap wood splinters like a mother. So we now have a broken, cardboard splintery mess instead of a lime green highboy with rubber basketball handles, which wasn't out on the curb ten minutes when the old junk man down the street was loading it into his pickup and waving.

I hate Sweden.

May 21, '05

Watched The Apprentice finale Thursday night,  Kendra rightfully won. Tana was such an obnoxious dink and all her "I went to the school of hard knocks" crap was so damn tiresome, wadn't it? YOU WENT TO COLLEGE FOR THREE YEARS, GOT MARRIED AND BECAME AN AVON LADY.  She acted like she just fell off the boat  and learned english yesterday.  How 'bout that for the next round, Trump? Apprentice: Cambodia! Give some girls whose only alternative is prostituting themselves to rich Americans a chance.  Anyway.

After it was over, we were channel surfing and came across something on Mtv called True Life: I'm on a Diet.  I'm sure it's been on a thousand times and I'm sure you've probably all seen it, but it's new to me, so there.  The show featured three  twentysomethings all whittling for different reasons: The blubby beauty queen who crash diets for pageants and porks out during her off time, the nationally ranked wrestler, and a hugely obese office worker.

The beauty queen of course lived in Houston, one of the only places where I guess it's just acceptable to say "I do beauty pageants".  She was pretty and sported that all-over college girl 15 pounds of whale padding,  and like all college-aged girls everywhere these days, felt perfectly comfy piercing her big belly and showing it off anyway. Her fat tub stage mother, who never didn't have a greasy sandwich of some sort hanging out of her mouth, never let up on her, kept telling her how gross and out of shape she looked.

"I've never seen your ass so wide!  Look at your thighs, can you get ANY definition when you pose??"  And the beauty queen would just look at her reflection, grimace, and say she needed to go tanning. So many things wrong with that whole story it's tough to pick what to pick on.

The wrestler starved himself in lots of different and horrifying ways all in the name of "winning nationals", that vague phrase usually only heard in the movies. I guess it wasn't that vague considering he was a wrestler, but it reminded me of The Cutting Edge. Doubtful the skinny wrestler had a move in his arsenal half so sweet as the Pamchenko, though. After a big match when wretler boy could relax for a coupla days, he went out to eat with his family, ordered a veggie omelet and his mom burst into tears because he wouldn't get something greasier.

The obese office worker got herself some dopey old-school trainer, one of those way too beefed up nobs who wouldn't let her eat anything but boiled chicken. What great motivation! Everyone knows you can't lose weight unless the food tastes like crap, right? Idiot. And of course her friends, who were all blobs themselves, were incredibly unsupportive and made sneering remarks about her fruit plate lunches. She lost 50 pounds despite her stupid trainer and she was so happy to finally wear a bathing suit, and her bitchy friends looked at her in it and were like, "Whatever, you're still disgusting."

The whole show was totally depressing. I hope the office worker gets new friends.

In yesterday's USA Today: In an article about Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the Brad/Angie movie: is it OK to double colon like that? Anyway here's the quote: Another one! I'm on a roll! So here's the quote:

"Although the couple, who have been romantically linked in recent weeks, met on the set of 'Smith', there's little in the film to prove the rumors that an affair between the two broke up Pitt's marriage to Jennifer Aniston."

HUH?? What was this guy expecting, the film to stop and that old guy from Singin' in the Rain to pop on screen and say, "Folks, this scene is clear and irrefutable proof that this movie broke up Brad Pitt's marriage to Jennifer Aniston. Enjoy the rest of the show, now that you know they really were doing it and not acting."

On the opposite page from that story was a picture from that new Excorcist movie, I believe officially known as The Other One, but it's a really scary looking picture so I had to try really hard not to look at it. Of course that didn't work and I ended up staring at it way too hard and then I couldn't sleep. WILL I EVER BE FREE FROM EXCORCIST RELATED THINGS??

So this is a pretty dull and pointless letter, but in a shocking turn of events, it's raining and there's just not much else to do. Molly is sitting next to me coloring, Meg is at Girl Scout camp and Finny's at karate.  This is the THIRD week in a row his baseball game was cancelled. I may or may not take the boy to see Star Wars this afternoon, and we are going to a pig roast tonight.  Nothing like a pig roast in the rain.