Friday, November 28, 2008

Colon Blow

I was reminded of this video by Catscratch Diva's comment. Thanks, Cat!

This could be me this weekend (fingers crossed!)


It's not unusual to be loved by anyone

Happy Thanksgiving, lovers!

How was your holiday? Happy? Plentiful? Mine certainly was.

My family and I ate like starved dogs yesterday afternoon (Thanks mom!), and then I kicked off my shoes and retired to the couch to pass out. I was later pulled from the sticky web of my food coma when my dad produced a VHS tape of all the home movies my grandfather had taken of us when we were little. My parents had had them transferred to video and we all decided to watch. So I grabbed some cold stuffing and Lily and I snuggled together on the couch.

Holy Christ. My grandfather was a man of few words, but he was a quiet artist of sorts, and managed to capture moments on his old fashioned silent video camera that I'd forgotten even happened. His movies of our family were intermixed with trips he and my grandmother took all over the country (My mom and I both shrieked with delight when, in a shot of 1960s Vegas we saw a sign outside the Flamingo Club for TOM JONES: ONE NIGHT ONLY), and he managed to get some really beautiful shots that conjured up memories I hadn't expected.

Being the body-obsessed freak that I am, I was of course transfixed on the evolution of my chubby little girlbody throughout the many stages of my childhood captured on betamax.

I'm glad that Lily's lithe little string bean frame seems to take more after her father's Irish potato famine side of the family rather than my homemade manicotti-loving, wine glugging, Italian side. It will hopefully save her some middle-school heartache and money on therapy later in life.

Anyway, I never weigh myself. I do not keep a scale in my home, and I never step on one, unless forced to at my yearly checkup, and even then it makes my palms sweaty and my heart pound. Is there a story behind this? Yes, of course. Am I going to tell you? Not today, no.

In any event, my parents own a scale. And, since I've noticed that the majority of my pants have been getting increasingly difficult to button over the last 6 months(due to, I am imagining, a heavy dose of romance, thai takeout and a bit more red wine than necessary), I wanted to see for myself exactly how much weight I'd gained since last stepping on a scale.

Well, holy fuck.

Um, more than I'd expected.

So, in anticipation of a long holiday season filled with debauchery and home made baked goods, I thought I'd take some preventative steps and do a little detoxing beforehand.

I did the Master Cleanse once before, and it was not fucking fun. In fact, I wanted to kill myself.

BUT I didn't drink caffeine during it, and this time I plan to dose myself with green tea in addition to spicy lemonade.

Also, I only lasted three days last time, but I did feel pretty damn good afterwards. Anyway, I think this is probably a good way to kick over a new leaf and get back to healthy, glowy me. We'll see.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Train to Crazytown

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to get on the W train and flop my hiney into one of many available seats. I cracked open the Metro and basked in the soft, noisless calm of a morning commute during a holiday week. Aaaaah.

Then the train rolled up on the Lexington Avenue stop. As we slowly approached the crowded platform, I heard an eerie sound that I couldn't quite place. Could one thousand bunnies be getting mutilated with ice picks on the subway platform? No, no, no...that can't be it. Maybe it was a child screaming, I thought.

Awsome. There's must be an angry toddler, strapped in a stroller against his will, freaking the fuck out and about to be wheeled right into my car, signaling the end of my peaceful ride to work. Great. Thanks, god. Fucker.

I looked through the windows and was unable to see the shrieking little fucker in the crowd. Man, he was mad, huh? And as the doors opened the raspy, phelgm-choked warbles got louder, and then I saw the source of the noise.

It wasn't a child at all. It was a middle-aged woman.

She was clad in a heavy red parka and had short hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Strapped to her back was a brand-new backpack with a NY Jets emblem on it (and they won this week, so I know that wasn't making her upset).

Wait, what? This woman looked like a librarian or a first grade teacher, not some lunatic shrieker.

And yet. As the doors closed, encasing this horrified, psychotic littler person in the car with us, she continued to pour forth a bone-chilling shriek, kicking occasionally at the heavy metal subway doors with her sneakered feet. From time to time I could make out some form of a sentence in her shrieking: "NONONOIDON'TWANNA", or something to that effect.

It was creepy and sad, but New Yorkers have a way of deciphering right away when a crazy person is dangerous, or just a run-of-the-mill spectacle we simply shouldn't make eye contact with. This lady was clearly the latter, as was evident in the way the commuters (myself included) eyed her with mild curiosity, then calmly inserted our ear buds and cranked up our ipods.

Now, I couldn't help feeling a little badly about this (I'm Italian, and also was rasied Catholic, so guilt is sort of my stock emotion most of the time, but still); I felt bad that our first instinct is to ignore someone right in front of us with an obvious mental illness. The mommy in me wanted to walk up to the woman and wrap my arms around her until her screaming ceased. I wanted to just hug the shit out of whatever inner child was reliving a terrible trauma continuously on the MTA for all of early morning NYC to see.

I'm not gonna stand on some soap box and expound on the ills of a society that treats the crazies of the world with antipathy and disdain. The whole thing just struck me as sad, is all. I'll leave it at that.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Poetry

My friend Mary Catherine just posted a bunch of new poetry on her facebook page. And this inspired me to write some poems, too. See, I've had a rather annoying weekend. Nothing terrible happened, just a series of irritating events that sorta scraped me raw, made me tired and irritable...kind of like if my sanity was slowly and repeatedly rubbed with a cheese grater over the course of 36 hours.

So, by Sunday night, I had to decide whether to laugh or cry at the state of things.

So, I decided that I would write some poems, because when the going gets tough, the tough get poetic. I don't know if you guys knew that I wrote poetry.

Well, I do. And it's pretty goddamned awesome. And I've decided to post a few for you, because good art should be shared.

HA-HA
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Remember on Saturday night, how you accidentally called me from the strip club you were at or wherever at 1:30 in the morning because your cell phone was in your pocket or something and you woke both me and Lily up?
That was really funny.




CONTEMPLATING
I was just laying in the tub
staring down at my naked form
and realized how awesome it is
that I never have to have sex with you again.




TRUST
It would be nice
If sometimes I could give you my ATM card
And send you to the cash machine down the street
So you could take out some money to pay the Chinese food delivery guy
And I could stay home and play with Lily and relax and not worry about you stealing money from my bank account.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Domo Arigato, Mrs. Roboto

You're not supposed to come out of a parent-teacher conference sweating and fighting the desire to go home and self-flagellate.

But twenty minutes with the droid who calls herself my kid's kindergarten teacher made me want to scratch at myself till I bled. I, along with some other parents, have noticed that this chick doesn't exactly give off the warm-and-fuzzies usually associated with a kindergarten teacher, but last night I began to really think she was in the wrong field. Maybe she'd make a good banker. Or a vice cop.

Shawn and I sat on tiny chairs with halved tennis balls stuck on the bottoms of the legs ("Cute touch," I said. "Yes, it reduces the noise," Robotface responded),
and listened to this 24-year-old, childless virtuoso of child development explain, with no lack of judginess, how she is 'concerned' about Lily's 'kissing the boys'.

Interesting.

"Really?" I asked, "Kissing boys? More than one boy?"

No, said Bionica. Just one boy.

Ah.

"Which boy?" asked her father.

"Oh," she quipped. "Well, she's kissed Lucas a few times."

Aha. Lucas. Right.

Lucas, who has been her best friend since she was 6 months old. Lucas, who is the only boy from our neighborhood to be accepted with Lily to their K-12 charter school. Lucas, who, during a playdate about two years ago, got into Lily's toddler bed with her and pretended to be the "Daddy" (which entailed rolling over and looking annoyed as Lily sat up and "nursed" her baby doll).

Lucas, whose mother is my one of my best friends.

Yeah, I'm worried about Lily kissing Lucas.

I think, if I were this teacher, I'd be more worried about finding a new job when I get her ass fired.



Have a wonderful weekend, M'Lovies!!!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Enjoy the silence?

It's weird. I'll have a week when I'm all but bubbling over with inane observations on politics, parenting and Lindsay Lohan, and then I'll just get stopped up and have nothing to say to you guys. Like there's a big, fat tampon stuck up my brain or something.

But fear not, faithful readers. I'm back. And I've much to say.

Not really. But there is big news... Babydaddy got his own place.
After gypsying around NYC for the last 18 months, patrolling various friends' couches and grabbing quick bits of nutritive sustenance at the home of yours truly, Shawn's moved into his own apartment. Praise all that is holy and the blessed virgin!

He has his own room in a large apartment that is close to Lily's school and is inhabited by quiet, dumpling-frying Chinese men.

Last night Lily had her first sleepover at Daddy's. I was excited for them to have some bonding time with each other and for me to have some bonding time with a bottle of merlot. But instead of reveling in the peace of a night to myself, it, I found myself suffocated by the quiet. I got naked and shuffled through the rooms of my apartment in my slippers, talking to the cat about how it was flurrying outside and did he want to watch "The Office" with me? I got three DVDs from Netflix!
But he just looked at me with lazy disinterest and rolled over for his belly to be scratched.

This morning was even weirder. How strange to take a shower by myself without a little person shrieking from the living room,
'MAMA, ARE THESE ON THE RIGHT FEET?!????!!!!!'

How interesting to watch the news without the warble of my 5-year-old lobbying for "Dragon Tails"; how foreign to wrap only myself in outerwear, to make sure only one person peed before venturing out into the bone-cold morning air.
I walked right to the subway without making the long detour to the bus stop, without Lily skipping next to me, chattering away in a faux-fur coat and licking the peanut-butter coating off her granola bar.

All in all, it was kind of a letdown. It really sort of sucked.

I miss her.

In other news, I have a cold sore. It's gross. And it hurts, especially since last night I accidentally bit it in my sleep. I've never had the mouth herpes before, and can't shake the vicious irony that I made it through all of my whoring college years without contracting an STD and suddenly at 35 I loook like I've been sucking dick in an alley. I've been dabbing at it with tea tree oil, because I'm all natural and shit. But damn, how long does it take for these things to go away?

Happy Wednesday!!!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Whoopsie

I love when celebrities say really dumb shit.
Poor Lindsay Lohan. It's not like she needs any help looking like an ignoramus.

I had to watch it a few times to figure out what she muttered under her breath, but I'm pretty sure it was an unpleasant descriptive word for African Americans that hasn't been politically correct to use since blacks and whites had to use separate water fountains.




So, thoughts?

Did she say "colored" president?
Did she say "Good" president?

Yeah, um, Lindz, the trailer park called. It needs it's trash back.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

NaBloPoMo, No problemo

Except, no.

I considered doing this for exactly three seconds, thinking, Hey! Here's the perfect creative exercise to force to write every day! Except that

a. Thinking about doing that makes my neck break out in itchy blotches as I revisit college expository writing classes, taught by el beatnik jerkoff in a black turtleneck. This jackass liked to show up at the bar on Thursday nights, buy us shots, and then conveniently 'forget' how he'd propositioned me by Friday morning.
Plus, being forced to 'freewrite' in this manner tends to conjur up nothing but traumatic memories and I have a therapist for that, so thanks anyway, hoss.

b. I could torture you guys with a daily spew about some funny shit Lily did, or how annoyed I get with my ex husband on a daily basis, simply so that I can say I wrote something on this blog every day for a month, but I like you guys too much to do that to you. Well, some of you. A couple, maybe.

So I'll just take a moment to tell you all that I am in a disgustingly good mood today. I started taking B vitamins, and I'll tell you, my serotonin levels are through the roof.

Also, Starbucks has put the holiday cups into rotation, so IT'S ON.
There's something about those crimson hotcups with the scattered snowflakes that just makes me feel happy. My $5 latte tastes better in that cup. I see people wrapped in their wooly coats on the chilly streets of Manhattan and just sort of give them a nod and raise my cup a little bit at them, like, yeah, man. I get you. Totally. Sympatico. We are one.



Things are looking up.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Life is short

This was my first thought when I woke up this morning with a 5 year old's leg slung over my shoulder and a fat, purring cat sprawled across my back.

I woke from a dream where Lily and I were friends with Billy Joel and were invited to his house for a playdate with his children. Yeah, I know he only has one grown daughter. I'm from Long Island. Pipe down.

So, we were given very strange and secret mapquest directions and drove to his house on a four-wheeler because we had to take all these dusty back roads. Then we got to his mansion and Christie Brinkley was living there, in her own section of the house. And I was like, awww, it's so cool that they are keeping it friendly for the kids.

Hmmmm. Wonder what's been going through my brain lately?

So, we had birthday party number 3 yesterday, and all I can say is thank the holy ghost all that crap is over. Lily managed to keep her Princess Leia buns on all day though, and dang, she looked cute.

I'm going to try and practice meditative breathing this week. Life is short. Why be a hater?

Leia.


Help me, Baby Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. Omglol

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Bye, Bye, Fuckface


Helloooooo, Democracy!!!!

Monday, November 3, 2008

TAG.

Yay!!! I've been given the smackdown! From Kirsten, my new favorite psychomommy. How could you now love a woman whose blog is called "Momjeans", for christ sakes?

It's simple. Just write six random facts about yourself. Then tag six friends.

Wheeee!

1. I used to want to be a news anchor and a professional author and Debbie Gibson.

2. My parents have been married for 38 years. My sister and I are both divorced.

3. I met my boyfriend on blogger.

4. I love slippers. I have about 5 pair of them. I need to change into them as soon as I get home from work. If I'm not wearing them around the house, I feel awfully naked.

5. In 1996 I drove cross-country by myself and my car overheated in the Mojave Desert. It was 100 degrees, and I had no cell phone, no credit cards, and about $100 in cash. Maybe I had a phone card. What an asshole.

6. When Lily was born she was really sick, and I slept with a lucky stone that a crazy hippie lady gave me on my wedding day. I rubbed it all night long every night with my thumb and she got better. Somehow a part of me still thinks the rock had something to do with this. I still have the rock on my book shelf.

OK fuckers, here's to you:

Do this, Jack, because you say I never tag you. You know I love you though, so here.

XL, I want to hear from you.

Jeremy, because you're you.

Hey Kim! Tag!!!

Hi, Ron...you've got work to do...

Kara, because you haven't blogged in weeks. Come back to me.

Halloween candy + ice cream cake + free-flowing merlot = I can't button my pants.

WTF??? I am wearing a pair of pants at work today that were so big on me a year ago I needed a belt with them. A BELT, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

Now, I sit indian-style at my desk and feel my tummy bulge over the rim of these bad boys that I could barely fucking snap this morning. A tummy, I should mention, that is slowly creeping its way into part of my back. What do you even call that, a back-belly? That shit ain't right.

My friend Kelly came over for Lily's birthday on Saturday and we were comparing our ruined stomachs, hiking up our shirts and grabbing fists full of gut bulge, trying to gross each other out. Only, she has a rock-hard yogabody that she'll bounce back to in a few months, since she had her second baby a mere six months ago. Me, I had one child five years ago. So what, I ask you, is my excuse?

When my marriage came crashing down around me a year and a half ago, I went on an involuntary hunger strike and got all hot and gaunt-looking, so much so that it led my friend Kara to say, "Hey, dispair suits you!" And I actually thought that was such a great compliment, I used it as my Myspace quote. Hey, old habits die hard.

But what's this, god? You've got to be all 'fair and shit'? Now that I'm feeling all happy again, I have to get fat? This hardly seems fair. At least let me button my goddamned pants.

On that note, here are photos of Lily in her pumpkin costume. And yes, she did refuse to wear it trick-or-treating. Instead she donned her crappy piece of shit Cinderella dress and some fairy wings and decided to be a flying princess. She didn't trick-or-treat anyway, she ended up getting upset in the stairwell of Heather's building, and watching tv with her friend Lucas's grandma in their apartment instead. This was very upsetting for me when I went clawing through her candy stash that evening, only to find some skittles (blegh) and a few measly peanut butter cups. Ah, well. I still can't button my pants though, so fuck everyone.