April 25...

So I says to the guy, I says...

Did you sleep at all last night, waiting for me to finish yesterday's story? I'm being facetious, of course. I actually slept quite well, but I did have some disturbing "Capote" inspired dreams...watched it last night and it was excellent. I've not read In Cold Blood, but I shall. As soon as I finish The Starter Wife, which I mentioned earlier I was reading. It's a lot better than I was expecting, she (Gigi Lavangie Grazer) can actually write and she's a hoot. I have to admit I was amused to find out Brian Grazer just dumped her...I wonder if she knew it was coming and that's why she wrote this book?

OK. I talk to myself a lot, especially when I'm out running. Running is my prozac; it's how I clear my head and de-stress and when I get all my good ideas.

You: You get good ideas?

Well, OK, but ideas anyway. The problem is I tend to verbalize them, not internally but for rizzle. I also do it when I'm driving, walking, cooking, gardening and sometimes, according to my husband, sleeping. If you see a girl around town, a tall, bosomy woman with beautiful, glossy long hair and striking features, (think Catherine Zeta Jones) muttering to herself, that isn't me.

I'm the chick behind her in the dirty sweatpants, and I am also muttering to myself.

The other day I was sititng here reading the paper while Molly ate her breakfast, and I looked up to catch her having an animated conversation with absolutely no one. Why couldn't she have inherited my impressive, um, my impressive...I can't think of anything. Let's move on.

I have a wedding this weekend and nothing to wear, although I did just buy a fabulous pair of cork-soled slingbacks. They have a peep-toe, which works for me...I can't really do all-my-toes-are-hanging-out-in-full-view sandals, much as I love them on others. My toes are not for the faint of heart, and exposing them at wedding would just be cruel.

I'm concerned about Andrea Bocelli night on A.I. tonight. Who's bright idea was that?

April 24 '06

Let's get back to the Tomkitten. I know, that nickname is cloying with a heaping helping of cloying on top, but it's stuck in my head and I'm defenseless against it. In case you live under a rock, (don't you hate it when people say that? Like, how come just because I'm not interested in the same stuff you are, maybe I read different magazines or newspapers or are concerned about things slightly more substantial than that one-toothed freak and his brainwashed girlfriend's glandular experiment it means I live under a rock? Whether voluntarily or involuntarily? Although I can't think of one good reason why a person would voluntarily live under a rock. The point is, I didn't know about nor do I care to learn about the Tomkitten, so take your dumb blog and go pound sand. Like that.) you know that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes "had their baby" (finally found a baby that looks sort of like them and can now return her obvious, size-changing belly prosthetic) a few days ago, a girl they named Suri. I think it means "This baby isn't fake" in Hindu. Awright, awright, I'm not gonna pick too much, there is an innocent child involved here. Here's hopin' it grows up healthy and happy...which reminds me, is it just me or has Nikki gone strangely AWOL on the two starter kids since Katie entered the picture?

Gwynnie Paltrow had hers several weeks back, a boy she and Coldplay guy named Moses. I suppose they couldn't very well name the baby "Jim" or something when his sister's name is Apple.

"These are our children, Apple and Matt." It wouldn't have been fair. Although "Bob" would've been kind of funny.

All these new cele-babies have got me wondering, what was in the bottled water last fall? Rachel Weitz, Gwen Stefani, Brangelina (pick a friggin' country and stay there, by the way. We get it, "anywhere but America!" Sorry we inconvenienced you by buying tickets to all your bad movies and making you filthy rich. And it's the travel equivalent of Michael Jackson wearing an outlandish disguise to the zoo so as not to be noticed. Please, we just want to be left alone! Which is why we insist on marching through every airport in the Universe in the last two months with our entourage!) Mariska Hargity, and now OK! is reporting that Britney and Kevin are expecting again. And I'm not talking about another round of acid reflux or the munchies, though I believe that's a given for those two.

Enough news from the world of make believe. Time for the here, the now, because life is for the living and I'm not gonna take it anymore!

I talk to myself a lot.

It's this weird thing, I know, and it drives Mike crazy, probably because he doesn't like to be reminded that I already am. Sometimes he'll say to me, "Stop it. You're doing it again," and I'll be like "Whatever do you mean, oh spouse of mine?" Actually I've never said that. I have to go now, I'll finish this later. I know it's been sparse around here, the salad has been downgraded to a few bits of brown-around-the-edges iceberg, but what can I say? It's been really nice out lately. I'll catch you later and finish this gripping tale of how I talk to myself.

Out...

April 19 '06

Ahhhh....a stolen moment...I've been thinking about this all week, wondering when a window of time would open up and I could sneak away to be with you...every time I thought I could, someone would barf or my significant other would be all up in my grill...

I'm having an affair with my blog.

N'kay. So I hope ya'll had a happy holiday weekend, I did. (And I'm not talking about Easter, I'm talking about the birth of the Tomkitten! Surely it will be a national holiday soon, right?)

Mine was just grand, in fact. And yes, someone barfed, but it was simply from an overindulgence of candy, pretty commonplace where kids are concerned. In a perfect world, they wouldn't do it at midnight when I'm already asleep, but no one ever said life was gonna be all rainbows and barfing only during prime time.

I just finished these great books by some woman named Emily Giffin. Yes, they're quintessential chick-lit, so what? They were fun. I've said this before but it bears repeating: Every genre of book has winners and dogs, chick-lit ain't no different. Some of them are good and most of them stink, just like with all other types of books. And I like them, so there, and anyway at this point in my life I'm not afraid to say that awarding a book a Pulitzer is tantamount to saying it sucks. Don't get me wrong, if they were just randomly passing out Pulitzers I'd take one, I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eatin' crackers, you get me? (Insert snarky comment here, something to do with pigs flying or snowballs in hell or the like. I get it.) I'm just saying there are certain cliches about girls that I completely live up (or down) to, and gobbling up pink paperbacks and spending far too much time at DSW are two of them. I have never, however, sung into a hairbrush or been in a pillowfight with my girlfriends. And now I'm reading a piece of total trash by Uber-producer Brian Grazer's wife. Too soon to tell if I like it or not. But I also just read A Hole in Texas by Herman Wouk, and yes I did just throw that in there to show I'm not completely brain-dead since everyone respects (Pulitzer Prize Winner!!) ol' Herm.

Back to American Idol.

We weren't at American Idol.

Well we are now, are you gonna let me talk or are you gonna nitpick? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be so crabby. I stayed up too late reading the above mentioned chick-lit books. Oh, I almost forgot. I go to the website of the gal who wrote them and not only are her books good she's also totally gorgeous and super young. Fook. Feck. Faaaaaaaaaaaaack.

Back to A.I. Last night was the best night so far by a mile. Everyone was great except Kellie, but I still like her for being so Hee-Haw, and Ace, who makes my skin crawl. I admit I'm sort of over Chris and his fake vibrato, my affection for him has been transferred to Elliot, who is so completely, adorably endearing with his deafness and diabetes and the fact that he must marinade himself in awkward sauce before every performance. Simon dissed his goofiness last night and SIMON CAN GO TO HELL.

Tip of the hat to John for "awkward sauce".

Gotta go.

April 14,'06

Good Friday…no meat, no pigging out…my kids are mad because I enforce it for the whole family, including Molly, even though (as they loudly and constantly remind me) “the rule is you don’t have to do it until you’re 14!”

Tough. I don’t think it’ll kill 3 kids who have it pretty good in my estimation to go without a baloney sandwich or dessert for one day. Gotta teach these youngsters that this weekend isn’t all about chocolate bunnies and egg hunts!

I’ve shown great restraint in the eating of the Easter treats, by the way; I’ve only had to re-buy jelly beans and a bag of Dove eggs, I haven’t so much as looked at the Whoppers and even I wouldn’t eat Peeps.

They’re outside dyeing the eggs. I can’t believe how quickly they’re racing through them. It used to be a day-long thing at our house growing up. My mom would boil about 5 dozen eggs and we’d divvy them up and I swear, we’d still be working on them at dinner time. And if someone had to leave or go to work or practice or something, their eggs were put safely away so they could finish up at their leisure.

“Go to work or practice…what do you mean, the older kids did it too? How odd…isn’t egg dyeing a young child’s pastime?” you may be thinking.  Probably not though, if I know you, you weren’t thinking at all which is how you got knocked up in the first place.

I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

Oh yeah, the eggs. Absolutely the older kids did it too, and like pretty much everything else in our house, it became a competition, “who can dye the best eggs”. We spent hour upon back-breaking hour hunched over those dye cups, making intricate patterns with rubber bands, variegated color, multiple colors even…Mary Louise used to hold her egg in the dye in stages,  then when it was done in one direction, she’d let it dry and do it again in a different color. The whole competition aspect really boiled down to Mary and Joe, nobody else could touch those two when it came to Easter Eggs or Christmas tree ornaments.

The egg-hunt the next morning was pretty cut-throat, too. We’d all go jump into my mom and dad’s bed when we woke up, and wait for my folks to go make coffee and do whatever they needed to do (probably hide the eggs, come to think of it,) and then we had to line up youngest to oldest; in theory, this was meant to give an advantage to the smaller kids, but the reality was it just put us in danger of getting trampled and killed once the signal was given and the stampede began. But even though he was one us young b-squaders, Billy always won because he was the fastest. I never found any eggs, I was just happy to have made it down the stairs alive.

One year my mom decided, as a way to try and make sure everyone got some eggs, to mark them with our various initials. The new rule was that you had to find the eggs marked specifically for you and the winner would be whoever found their eggs first.

What she didn’t count on was the instant blossoming of the strategy that when someone found an egg that wasn’t intended for them, they’d re-hide it so well a bloodhound couldn’t find it.  I may not be winning, but over my dead body are you gonna win. I’ll bet there are still eggs hidden in that house somewhere.

I have a vivid memory of Andy, perched on the dining room mantel, reaching up into the high cupboard and finding an egg…it was marked with my initial. He and Billy were neck and neck for first place. In a fit of rage he bellowed “DAMMIT!” and spiked it onto the floor.

Not only did he not win, he got sent to his room. It wasn’t as bad as the time he got sent to his room for the duration of Thanksgiving dinner for tricking me into sitting in my mashed potatoes (at Joe’s urging, by the way)….Billy took it upon himself to go tell Andy that we were moving to Florida and he couldn’t come because he had to stay upstairs.

HAPPY EASTER, EVERYONE!*

*if you don’t celebrate Easter, then have a nice weekend.

April 12, '06

Guess what I've been doing instead of writing on this blog:

A) cleaning and putting away all the bedroom humidifiers and getting out and cleaning the basement dehumidifier

B) washing all the windows

C) storming the capitol

D) discovering the fishipod

E) eating bonbons with impunity

If you guessed A,B, C or E, you'd be wrong. That's right, I was discovering the fishipod. That was me.

And anyway blogging season is over.

HA! You fell for it, admit it, for a second there you were like "There's a blogging season? And how come I didn't know? And why is it over?" Hey, that's a fun thing to do; say that to someone the next time you're around a group, say "blogging season is over, it'll start back up in July" and see who pretends they knew that. How to win friends and influence people: Trick them into making themselves feel like a-holes!

I almost started bawling when Elliot was in the bottom three of Idol tonight. I've been all about rooting for Taylor and Chris, but Elliot has grown on me week after week and darn it, I kinda want him to win now. He has the best voice and he has diabetes and he's deaf in one ear and seems s'darn sweet and his eyes kind of go crossed when he sings and he breaks my heart. If he'd gone home tonight I woulda fainted.

Had to pull the car over today when Molly went absolutely cracker-dogs because a spider was crawling on her window. She was screaming so hard and loud I thought her head was gonna go Scanners, remember the movie Scanners when the guy's head blows up? We had illegal HBO at our house, back when no one had HBO and the only movies I ever remember them showing were Scanners and Slapshot.

Office Space is on...gotta watch. Whenever I read or hear of talk that Jennifer Aniston isn't a movie star, I remind them that she was in office Space and can therefore die proud no matter how many Rumor Has It's she makes.

Movies I have to watch whenever they're on, no matter how many times I've seen them and no matter that I own them on DVD:

Office Space

Overboard

When Harry Met Sally

It Happened One Night (only first saw it about two years ago!)

Casablanca

Hoosiers

Stayin' Alive

and a shout out for Liz and Mel, Postcards From the Edge. (they introduced me to the sheer beauty and perfection of Shirley MaClaine's performance in this movie.)

Anyway, I must've been in about seventh grade when JP and Joe and maybe Woody, I can't remember if he was involved or not, came home with a giant dish, wrangled it onto the roof and presto, fuzzy HBO, there for the taking! And at the beginning you could only see it if you were actually sitting on the roof.

They literally put my mom's little black and white bedroom television out on the roof, set up lawn chairs (it was the dead of winter, too, so they sat out there all bundled up in parkas and sleeping bags) and watched illegal HBO. My mom didn't want us younger kids out there watching filthy R-rated movies but what can I say? Slapshot and Scanners, saw them both at least 75 times.

I love this movie.

April 8 '06

She stood at her bathroom sink, trying to remember when her last dose of Advil cough and cold had been. Ten? Yes, it must've been around ten, since she was almost certain she'd gone to bed soon afterward. But wait...she hadn't been able to sleep, the pain in her throat had been so acute she'd gotten up and taken a Tylenol pm...or had she taken two? What time had that been? She couldn't remember. Cloraseptic... the Cloraseptic was how she'd gotten the penicillin down. She stared down into her water glass and realized she could no longer feel her hands or feet. She groped for the toilet and sat down hard on the closed lid. The little fishies on the shower curtain danced in front of her...they were laughing again. WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING she raged, and lunged forward, impotently batting at the fabric before hitting her ribs on the side of the tub. The shampoo she always kept on the shower shelf (the container said 'Redken' but it was continually re-filled from a vat of Herbal Essences she kept in the linen closet) fell down off its perch with a loud, wet thud. A silverfish skittered past. She felt the hot bile rise up in her throat and scrambled to the comode

Forget it.

My surround sound is out of the shop at long last , hurrah! No more watching movies with the dialogue drowned out by the background noise/music. Honestly, I don't know how I got through those dark days, it speaks to the strength of the human spirit is what it does. I'd do it again, though, and you know why? Because it taught my kids something no amount of book learning or Scientology ever could; it taught them that hard work, patience and perseverance in the form of no less than 17 phone calls to the Bose product support team per week for the last three months pays off. The bad news is, we don't know how to hook it back up.

Watchin' Idol...

Honestly, what can be said about Kenny Rogers? If you thought Barry Manilow looked ridiculously stuffed and mounted, Kenny does him one better and actually looks like he had a head transplant.

He looks like if the real Kenny Rogers had a distant ancestor whose fossilized corpse had been unearthed during an excavation of Pompeii. And then re-animated to sing. My goodness, watching him try to push those notes out, I fear he's going to split his face in half.

Good gravy, Ace is safe?? COME ON, PEOPLE! The guy cannot sing at all and his look screams last year. I don't think a week has gone by that he hasn't kicked the 'long sleeves under short sleeves' look, which any seventh grade girl knows is over.

Mandisa's goin' home...I have to admit, she didn't do anything for me, I thought she bellowed more than sang. But for her to go home before Bucky, Ace or Kellie is absurd.

I'm loathe to even mention this, because I'm actually embarrassed by how sick my house has been this winter, but I am currently suffering through another bout of death flu with a side of strep. Every family I know has been dealing with it, and I've never experienced anything like it in all my years as a person who occasionally gets sick. This is the second time in a month it's run through my house.

Well why don't you just take some Theraflu or Sudafed?

Ha! This strain of whatever it is laughs, laughs I tell you, at conventional over-the-counter remedies. Believe me, I've tried them all and trying to fight this beast with cold-ease is like trying to find human tissue in Kenny Rogers.

I feel like I have a bumble bee in my throat and my ears are both about to lay eggs. I coughed up something last night that bore a disturbing resemblence to a mouse fetus. The good news is, I have the deliciously rank sheen of a fever sweat about me at all times. Mmmmm....sexy.

April 4 '06

Saw “Thank You for Smoking” this weekend. A+. Solid, solid entertainment; it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie I enjoyed that much. Really sharp, really funny, all the performances spot-on. And the sex scenes between Katie Holmes and Aaron Eckhart that mysteriously disappeared from it at Sundance, causing more speculation that Tom Cruise is trying to control the Universe, were still in it.

I mentioned a while ago that I wouldn’t see a movie at the Uptown, but see it there I did. Yuck that place is gross. How hard would it be to just clean it up a little? I mean it’s a great big space with a cool balcony and all that, but the seats are all broken and when you sit in them the ghosts of flatulence past (or should I say 'passed'? A few more like that and I'll be ready to headline somewhere in the Catskills) come wafting up and surround you in a musty, dusty cloud. Then you spend the rest of the show with your kiester resting on the seat’s internal bar, since there is no padding left whatsoever.

But the show was great and no one got shot.

Afterward we went to Chino Latino for a drink, and the bartender wouldn’t serve me because I didn’t have an i.d. Lost it at Roger Clyne last week. We ended up at Muzz’s house, drinking beer and telling stories, home by Burt Blyleven. Now that’s my kind of evening out.

Came home from wherever I was yesterday to find Molly laid out on the couch like a boneless ragdoll, able only to operate her tear ducts, which were on overdrive. Her dad was sitting on the floor in front of the television, fiddling with it and seething.

“Your daughter broke the TV,” he says to me.

“What do you mean, she broke the TV?”

“I mean she shorted out the TV. She washed it.”

“What do you mean she washed it?”

“I mean I was downstairs working and she came running down to tell me the TV was making a weird noise, and I came up here to find her with a bucket of soapy water and a washrag and the whole television was completely soaked with water.  She washed it.”

Sho ‘nuff, the girl washed the TV and it didn’t work any more.

Called Best Buy, asked them what to do, they said they could come out and look at it a week from Monday.

I went over to Molly, who was still on the couch looking about as miserable as I’ve ever seen her. Molly is one of those kids who childhood just doesn’t suit. It absolutely chaps her hide that she’s not the one in charge around here, and usually when she’s disciplined she takes it like a well-trained soldier, very "you can take away my crayons but you’ll never break my spirit!"

This time she was as sad as sad gets. Having her dad, who spends most of his time wrapped around her pinky finger, that upset with her was more than even she could take.  

"Molly, whadja do?”

She looked up at me with her face all scrooched up and tried to tell me, but all that came out were a few little squeaks and she was crying again. I need to mention, simply to add to the heartstrings factor that she was wearing the Easter dress I bought her two weeks ago that will be unrecognizable by the time the big day comes around because she put it on the moment she got it and has only taken it off for the odd bath.

I briefly considered not letting her wear it until Easter, but then decided what the hell, it’s a 14 dollar dress from Target and the pleasure its gives her is off the charts.

Every morning she prances downstairs in it and spends a few minutes doing the “I love my flowery Easter dress” dance. I did tell her she couldn’t wear it outside at first, but I’ve given that up, too. By next Sunday she’ll look like the little match girl but who cares anyway?

So there’s my poor contrite baby in her tattered Easter dress, unable to even speak she’s so sorry she wrecked the TV.  Mike settled down, he knew she didn’t do it on purpose, for Heaven's sake, she thought she was doing something good. He gave her a hug and told her he loved her resigned himself to the fact that he was gonna be watching the big basketball game on the basement television.

But guess what? The dern thing dried out and it was just fine, came back on a few hours later. An NCAA miracle is what that was.

April 1 '06

Last night I watched "War of the Worlds".

You might think that in this flick, Tom Cruise plays a giant spazz who won't rest until the truth comes out, but he doesn't. He plays a giant spazz who won't rest until the truth comes out who has kids.

Kids he's trying to save from the big scary aliens who come down to Earth and terrorize everyone for a day or so until they

SPOILER ALERT

get dehydrated and croak, in one of the biggest busted-rubber endings of all time. Honestly, Steven Spileberg has had some doozies in the "Are you effing kidding me, it's over??" department, but this one takes the cake.

And Mr. Cruise's performance was so subtle, so nuanced....I was especially taken with the scene in which he stares at himself in the mirror with wild-eyed horror and disbelief, the thick powder of incinerated human remains covering his head. He splashes water on his face and says "Hubabubbabubba..." over and over again, obviously too torn up to even process what's happening just yet or how to proceed. But wait, then there's another scene where he's like, "You want a peanut butter sandwich? You want a peanut butter sandwich?" over and over again, obviously too torn up to even process what's happening just yet or even how to proceed.

Awright, look, I know we don't watch movies like War of the Worlds for the subtlety and nuance, but after investing 2 plus hours of my time, I think I deserve better than a long shot of Mr. Cruise backlit by a sunrise (the better to showcase his ball--huggers) and a Morgan Freeman voice-over explaining to me what the hell just happened. And c'mon, another Morgan Freeman voice over?? It's becoming a joke to have that in a movie. The guy is turning into Wilford Brimley.