I do it for the bunnies

My youngest is 5 and I've not lost all of the weight I gained while pregnant with her. I gave up on losing the remaining 20 and would settle for ten. I lost ten last year, but gained it back. Since then, I've been losing and gaining the same five pounds and just can't seem to break through to other side of that ten again. Every time I'm close I get really happy and then blow it. This has happened so many times that I began to think Oprah must be right -- there has to be an emotional component to all of this.

That's when I remembered about the rabbits. If I drop to a size 8, the chocolate people will start killing bunnies.

"I'm like a slipping glimpser"

Kid's really are natural artists (these are Lizzie's from her 3rd year) . Just don't frame their art and then hang it where the sun will shine on it and fade it.


"I'm in my element when I am a little bit out of this world: then I'm in the real world-I'm on the beam. Because when I'm falling, I'm doing alright; when I'm slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting! It's when I'm standing upright that bothers me: I'm not doing so good, I'm stiff. As a matter of fact, I'm really slipping, most of the time, into that glimpse. I'm like a slipping glimpser."
— Willem de Kooning

Winnie's Dear Santa letter

I have been a reely good child for hafe of the yere. Aney way waht I want for christmas is a BoBa plese

"Fuckin lady" and other word mishaps

When Winnie was newer to the language, she got a few things wrong. When she sang, she sang loud, proud and sometimes the wrong lyrics (happens to the best of us).

Dinah won't you blow your horn, was sung as, "Dinah won't you blow your whoooore!"

She loved the groove of Jimmy Hendrix and would sing along to Foxy Lady like a rock star would, "oooooo, fuckin lady".

On the cute side were things like word scrambles caused by letter combos that were too hard for her. During her "cr" phase, names like Krista, came out "Cherkots" -- and ice cream was, "ki - you".

Both of my children still say "zewing" for, sewing. On one of her lists to Santa this year, Winnie even asked for a "zewing machine".

My Lizzie loves the "chixie dix"

"Mom, she says 'there's a devil in that angel face,' -- I really love that part," said a sweet and very sincere Lizzie.

I'm not a country fan, the CD belongs to a friend of mine (really, I'm just holding it for her). I'm glad we have it just so I get to see my five year old form her lips real cute when she belts out those country r's. And the pantomime she does for the whole thing will about kill ya by cuteness-- it's all on tape (as directed by Miss Lizzie, "Get my feet. Go close up on my hands here. Oh, get my face on this part.")

Target, don't start messing around

I do not want to see a mediocre holiday sweater for $99.00 dollars in your store. In fact, I don't want to see any item of clothing, no matter how marvelous, for $99.00 dollars in your store.

The whole thing about your store is the walking in and seeing all the trendy stuff and knowing that I am surrounded by bargains -- it's all bargains. Remember that shimmery silk throw you sold me from the clearance shelf? Five bucks -- good times Target.

I come to you for the cute t-shirts that if they start to look crappy after a few washings, I don't care because it was 8 dollars -- a couple of latte's worth of feeling cute for a few wears.

If I am going to spend $99 dollars on an article of clothing -- it's going to be from Anthropology, or somewhere equally sensational -- people will be looking at me, perhaps asking aloud, "where did you get that fantastic sweater?!" and it will not be a purple cahmere deal with rhinestones on it. Who can tell the difference between real cashmere or a department store imitation anyway? Not my crowd.

You can keep up with the cheap designer lines (that black affordable tulle skirt? Love being a girl!). Take it easy with the new "bargains", remember who are and why I love you.

The happy couple

Every picture of me should be over exposed, my skin looks fabulous! This is the freckle-less look I was trying to achieve with all of that lemon rubbing when I was 13. It was probably all of that counter productive lathering with baby oil and frying in the sun which foiled my freckle removing plan (Don't look at me, glamour magazine said the lemon would work).

That's right, I'm married to Lemmy.

There is a God

I am suffering from parental guilt and angst in the highest today, so imagine how nice it was when I came upon a card Winnie has made for her pregnant teacher and it goes like this:

to Mrs. Hansen from
Winnie! (picture of a heart with a smiling star inside of it)

On the inside it says:

I hope you Love your babby as much as my mom loves me. (picture of a happy person on a hill -- star in the sky)

Well, there's one good thing

Winnie doesn't know the word "fuck" or that it is a swear word.

I got into it with Rich this morning while trying to put my foot down about what he wants to get Frankie for Christmas. He wants to get him an airsoft gun -- I say fine, when he can demonstrate responsibility. This is after I was over-ridden about the axe and now we have a hacked up oak tree, retaining wall and an entire tree gone from our lower front yard. This after I was over ridden about video capabilities in his room and we now have many useless DVD's because he can't seem to figure out what the big deal is about putting them back in a case, or at least not stepping on them. This after several hundred dollars spent on pumps for the turtle tank because he can't be bothered to keep it on, or (consistently) keep it clean -- not only destroying the pumps one after another, but also providing the stench of raw sewage throughout the house when it does get turned on. Etc. etc. et-fucking-cetera.

No turtle for you.

I don't care if it's a tiny LCD screen, no video in the kid's rooms.

And when your mantra is, "yeah, so?" -- no fucking airsoft gun.

My disciplinary ideas get over ridden because I'm a step parent, but who do you think the finger will be pointed at when this kid is a menace to society? You got that right, the adult who spent the majority of time with him -- in our case -- the step mom.

It's very difficult to have separate styles of discipline for the kids. It is a very sucky part of having a blended family. Of course there are better, more correct, more effective ways of doing things -- but this is how ours works.

It sucks that I lost my temper in front of Winnie this morning. When I apologized for swearing so much and reassured her everything was going to be okay, "mommy just ran out of patience, but I'll get more," she said, "you only said two swears mom, shit and hell." That's when it became clear that she doesn't know about the word fuck yet, because I used it in every tense it has.

I also decided to officially throw in the towel on giving my kids the perfectly nurtured childhood (who was I kidding anyway?). My new aim is to provide just enough dysfunction to make them interesting people, but not so much that they are damaged beyond reason. I hope to provide the coping skills necessary to deal with any damage caused by the flaws in my parenting.

I think it's a solid plan.

I've lost my will to blog

No blogging will...

Is this wrong?

I know this boy -- he's a man, but I'll call him boy because he's pretty like that. He would be in the Johnny Depp, Orlando Blume-ish category. Good looking without being too pretty, not rugged, but a little dirty (in a, used some product to achieve it, way), slightly chiseled, but not enough to be a soap star. He's the type who can do funky things with his facial hair and it doesn't look like a stupid attempt to be cool -- he is the cool that is followed, to the detriment of many a regular face. Whenever I see him a soundtrack of Joan Jett wondering about touch begins to play ("...Whaaa-ayre? Thaaa-ayre! -- yeaaaah, oh yeaaah!").

Not only niiiiiice to look at, but funny, and smart. His wife is crack up too, that is why it is such a bummer that they are parting ways. I don't care what personal issues these two have that is causing this split -- it's screwing up my party plans for the both of them to be here working the crowd.

I was talking to a friend about it being a tough call for who to have to the party, she interrupted in a no-brainer tone, "Trevin, then we can look at him." It was never a real question anyway because the wife is the one who stepped out of bounds and he was in the circle first and some people are angry with her and blah, blah blah -- that's a story of compassion for another time -- I'm here to share my Trevin induced drool.

Now, I know I've mentioned cute boys before -- it's not a wandering eye thing, nor is it a thing where I want to touch myself over every good looking guy I see. This mention is because he is exceptional and the other mention was to take my mind off of the four thousand dollars it was going to cost me to have that cute guy survey my land.

I'll tell you one of my happy Trevin watching memories -- it was Trevin with bonus -- the second cutest boy I know, Ben. Here is how our circle of friends happened to bring me a week of aesthetic joy in my miserable state of being nine months pregnant (nothing like having someone squirm their head on your bladder from the inside, and kicking your lungs while they're at it).

...I was nanny to my best friend's kids, Trevin and Ben were doing ordinary house painting together at the time (Trevin is now a modern day Davinci doing church murals with his company and Ben is a fireman -- if I wrote them as characters in a book, you would pitch the book across the room for being full a crappy romance novel hero's). You see where this went -- my one friend hired our other friends to paint three rooms in her house.

I didn't care how pregnant and dumbstruck by their collective hotness I was. I was a happily married woman -- go ahead and think I'm creepy for staring at you for days on end --I'm good just sitting here.

And I was.

They both might be at the party too, still waiting for an RSVP from Ben, ("Do you wanna touch? YEAH! Do you wanna touch? YEAH!...).

Did I just do that?

Did I just make my kids stop playing and now they are watching TV because I was all done dealing with the fight over which blanket was going to cover the patient?

Nutcake

I get nervous when my stock of wooden matches drops below three boxes (the big ones) -- I like to have them around because I feel they would be a good item to have in any kind of Armageddon type scenario. (The possible flaw in that plan could be the actual Armageddon where I might wind up with all of those matches and surrounded by hell fire ... I'd be so pissed.)

When my husband leaves a phone message from the airport, I won't delete it until he is back home and safe --you know, so if he dies I'll have his last words to pine with.

I worry that my worries will manifest -- I take action to prevent their entry into my subconscious (where they could weave into the fabric of life unawares), so if ever you see me waving in a zig zag fashion to no one in particular -- what you are actually seeing is me erasing my thoughts from the universal chalk board.

What is it good for?

Winnie: "You better stop or I'll send you to the war!"

Lizzie: "What's a war?"

Winnie: "A war is when you fight with people on the other side of the Earth."

About his music

To put the George Michael into further perspective, his collection contains music like this:
Grateful Dead, Phish, Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Pink Floyd, Taj Mahal, Ben Harper, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Talking Heads, R.E.M., Dave Mathews, U2, Bunch of obscure bluegrass and the kind of stuff from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou, and more, much much more -- but none so strange a fit with these selections as that George Michael.

He watches Austin City Limits and picks people apart, or enjoys them and uses words like "syncopation" when talking about them.

While I am all, "It's got a good beat, you can dance to it," he is into the technical side of music and holds his artists to very high standards.

And my baby knows the technical side, at least as far as I can tell. Imagine my surprise after three years of marriage, when we go to a holiday party and the host has a full drum kit in the basement and my baby sits down and starts beating on them like a rock star would-- and well, very well --not just bar band good. (Upon investigation, I learned that he played syncopated jazz in high school --that explains the knowing what the hell syncopation is, and perhaps the Kenny G. -- I just don't know).

I knew he hadn't touched a drum in at least four years -- this was his rusty attempt and it rocked (and it wasn't just me and my Adam Ant loving self who thought so).

His discerning ear has cost us a few bucks too. Sleep experts would have a coniption if they knew the sound system we have wired in our bedroom (it really is the best room for the surround sound). Those high end speakers all sound good to me, but not Rich -- he has logged many an hour purchase planning, hooking up and tweeking a fabulous sound system for us all.

I will say, once you get used to high quality sound, you can hear the difference. We used to go to the theatre, "Why is it so freekin loud?" and now it's all, "This theatre sounds like crap and can't they turn it up a bit?"

It's not that we listen to ours super loud, it's that the sound hits your ear different and makes it seem louder -- I think.

For me it's like when CD's first came out and people said, "Hear it? Hear how clean that sound is?" I didn't, "I guess so," --not at all. But now, when my buddy Jeffrey* breaks out an LP, it's like a static machine with some Rush playing in the background.

So again, I wonder -- what's up with the George Michael?



*The only person I know with a working turn table and an extensive collection of hair band LP's.

Freddie say, what?

When was the last time you heard Killer Queen? It is all over my realm today -- I was singing it this morning and Rich asked, "What kind of champagne was she drinking?"
"I don't know." I tried to sing to find out, and quickly realized I don't know a lot of the words to that song.

Rich said, " I don't either, but I was with Daphne yesterday and we were picking up gifts for clients (booze) and she went past the champagne and started singing it and sang the name of some champagne."

"Is that why I'm singing Killer Queen this morning? Were you singing it?"

"No (he must have been). But when we got in the car it was on the radio."

"No way."

"Yeah."

"That's a lot of Killer Queen going around, what do you think it means?"


Figures, the universe tries to send me a message and I can't figure it out because it goes like this:

She keeps her mo at the station, in her pretty cabinet
Hmm hm hm hm hmmm, she spoke just like Marie Antoinette
A la dee a remedy for someone and Kennedy
Da danti de de dation you can't dec -LI-iiine

Caviaaar and cigaretts, thought shEEE couldn't care a less
--Extroooo-dinarily nyIce, she's a killaaah -- queeeEEEN

Gun poooowdah, guillotine, dynamiiiite with a laser beam, garaunteed to blow your mind, ANYTIIIiiime

Wa, wa wa wa wa naaooowWwWwWw...

Oh, fortheloveofPete -- I'm married to Howard Stern

He doesn't eat balongia off of my ass -- nor does he spank me with a salami, or anything like that. But he is the same guy -- I recognized him last night on 60 minutes. Very casual words came rolling out of his mouth about his staff of twenty years and how he has been hard to work for.

The way Howard described why he was the way he was -- I became one with the television due to the clarity of the moment, "Oh for fuck's sake -- I married you?!". To paraphrase what he said: he is controlling due to utter focus on his singleness of purpose of using his iron will to bring about his vision.

I wish I had the transcript of the exact words because they sounded so logical and respectable, and while truth, they glossed over the picture of disfunction a little too easily.

Howard said he realized that he could have been a little more involved in the human relations aspect of things...Yeeees! Very good idea Howard, but you still really don't know what that means do you -- I want you to know what that means because it could give me a glimmer. But, you don't -- I could tell by your girlfriend. I'd probably think your selfishness is cute too if I were a baby, dating a filthy stinkin rich and famous guy.

Here's the main problem with these smart, hysterically funny, visionary types -- they are not integrated personalities. You deal with Jeckyl, you deal with Hyde and Trump and Mother Teresa and Jerry Seinfeld and Sting (because of the slow good lovin, although not exactly the all day Tantric process -- we are talking separate personalities here -- when he's on, he's on), and Underdog and this one Deadhead guy, and there might be a gay guy too (I'm not sure, but it would really explain a lot of the anger, and some of the fashion choices, and the Kenny G. CD he owned when I first met him...Okay, and he bought a Best of George Michael CD quite recently -- he made me purchase for him. Am I in some kind of denial here?). Wait, my apologies to the gay community -- nothing explains that Kenny G. CD.

Anyway, there is no filtering process in this type of person. Any given mode takes all the concentration they have -- they pick the best personality to deal with the task at hand and if the asshole is the best guy for the job, there's no Mother Teresa sugar on top and so on.

I don't care what kind of Sage Zen master you are -- this person will suck you in and wear you out. Either stay away, or be prepared. Stern's wife made it twenty one years -- I wonder if I can hang that long.

Why my inner world is so rich today, while my outer world is being somewhat neglected

Links, that's why.

I didn't make it a day on my self grounding off of google. My mother sent me an article wherein the author uses the word learnt -- which causes a clunk in the reading and I have to know if it is a legitimate word -- oxford has my answer to this and so much more.

Next, I start doing my daily blog rounds --I check in with my kindred pritz, then I check in on karla --who's child must be on the move or she is caught up in the holiday frenzy, because she is slowing down on the posts. Karla is funny and she has funny readers, so I link to other blogs via her comments because I haven't taken the time to figure out how to blogroll anyone and my "favorites" file is a sea of junk already. I check in on this sweet and funny woman , then to the common wombat, who uses words like "feco-centric" and links to this other funny fella -- who in turn, linked to this woman.

That last link is the reason that it's past noon and the responsible person in me is about to have a stroke from all the inactivity and neglect happening in my house today (only because this isn't my first time with this kind of surfing abuse-- I'm working on a string of days here) . All "to do list" guilt aside, I'm pretty sure finding her blog is my karmic reward for deleting one of my regular reads. He was a very talented writer, but too old to be as self absorbed as he was. Not that there is anything wrong with a little self-absorption, but he was a bit too hollow -- I felt dirty for indulging him.

Now the other instant karma is getting me -- I hear yelling, lots of yelling -- when the kids go without parenting for too long, they turn on each other. I think I'll go intervene before the body blows begin.

"Happiness Pie"

Have you ever seen "Brain Candy"? I could use some Gleemonex right about now.
But ya know...I didn't come here to bitch, gripe, piss, or moan today.

I just came to wish everyone a good day.

Here -- hoping life serves you a big fat slice of happiness pie.

"Christmas Week Suicides From Around the World"

This is the headline I come across while looking for a bit of news on a friend of my sister.

I need to stop reading Noam Chomsky and I need to stop answering the phone. Anymore dwelling on the Death Star or anymore bad news -- the news I got about my sister's friend has me all twisted up.

My sister's friend did not kill herself, but she tried -- right after she did something that I won't repeat. It's the kind of information that can't sink in so it hangs out -- searching for a non existent resolution. There's not enough distance, I can't fill in the blanks with compassion -- I'm just horrified by how the mind can crack.

I'm way too deep in reality.

I need to isolate. Some say isolation is bad -- I say information is bad.

A slower pace at least -- a girl needs time to process. I'm grounding myself off of Google until further notice.