First and foremost, let me thank you for watching the movie 27 Dresses with me. I know it wasn’t exactly what you had in mind when you said, “Did we get anything new from Netflix?”
Secondly, thank you for resisting the urge to groan, an urge I’m sure was particularly hard to resist during any of the following moments:
a) The Benny and the Jets sing-a-long at the bar
b) c) The entire bridesmaid dress montage
d) The line, “Get over here.”
e) The line, “I cried like a baby.”
I’m sure you had the urge to groan through pretty much the whole movie except the line “Bridezilla’s on the loose!”, when I distinctly heard you laugh. I know this movie was a more painful experience for you than 13 Going on 30 or even How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. In the future, I’ll make sure to no longer subject you to movies with a number in the title, unless that number is II, III, IV, V, VI or 300.
Lastly, I feel obligated to tell you something:
When you asked me what we had received from Netflix, I neglected to inform you that in addition to receiving 27 Dresses, we had also received Iron Man. I’m not proud of what I did, but I knew what your answer would be if I gave you both choices.
To make up for it, I hereby suggest a compromise.
I will watch any of the following movies with you:
a) Any Rambo film
b) Any western starring Clint Eastwood, even High Plains Drifter
c) Any film starring Jean Claude Van Damme
Call me old-fashioned, but I still snail mail my holiday greeting cards. I’m about to start working on my Christmas newsletter and I still need my family photo (unless I use our Halloween shot, because let’s face it, everyone wants to see Husband and The Boy dressed as robots in their Christmas cards), but for the cards, I am covered.
I give you Personalized Christmas Cards from GalleryCollection.com. They have a HUGE variety of holiday cards to choose from, but I’m a fan of their environmentally friendly options. They offer recycled paper cards, like this pretty one:
And they offer cards made from paper stock made via wind-powered energy, like this die-cut one:
If you’ve ever driven around California, you’ve undoubtedly seen those cool wind-power turbines. Now’s your chance to buy some of the cards that put those babies to use. Cool, huh?
But wait, there’s more!
Not only are you satisfying your eco-conscious yearnings when you buy GalleryCollection.com’s cards, you’re also supporting the Joey DiPaolo AIDS Foundation. GalleryCollection.com donated a ton of holiday and birthday cards to the Joey DiPaolo AIDS Foundations, which will be used by their Camp TLC Teens Living a Challenge. Camp TLC is a summer program where teens with HIV/AIDS can find camaraderie and fun in the summer. According to the Camp TLC website, most of their participants were born with HIV/AIDS and orphaned. This being the season of giving, surely even the Grinchiest of you want to help these children out?
So go to GalleryCollection.com. Buy their cards, support environmentally friendly processing, and help children live normal lives. Don’t you feel good now?
Last night, I saw a band called The In Between perform on the Duke Fightmaster Show. They did a really good interview and their music makes me think of Led Zeppelin.
They’re playing at OC Tavern tonight and The Coach House (at a benefit for Friendship House) tomorrow night. If you’re in the area, you should check them out.
The last time I went to OC Tavern, my friends and I decided to play pool. We enter the pool room, where one table is being used by twelve-year-olds (OC Tavern offers family dining) and the other table by adults. My friend goes and puts our quarters on the twelve-year-olds’ table and when he comes back to me, I say, “What are you doing? Why don’t you put the quarters on the other table?” and he looks at me like I’m the idiot and says, “Because we’ll totally beat those kids.” Rather than accept our challenge, the kids just left the table when their game was up. And now you know: I bully kids out of their pool table.
So if you see me at the show, feel free to buy me a drink. And, I don’t know, maybe later, we can go play some pool.
Dinner last night with the in-laws involved my usual Thanksgiving Day routine: wine, food, sleep. While I often go to the movies on Thanksgiving, I passed on it in favor of that comfy couch and throw pillow, and my SILs saw Four Christmases without me while my children went night swimming with their cousins without me (have I mentioned before that I love California weather?).
In light of my dog’s health issues, I didn’t want to leave the Notorious F.O.X. at home for the day, so she joined us for Thanksgiving and managed to uproot one of Mother in Law’s rosebushes while there. Thanks, dog. Thanks for that.
That rosebush had it coming!
Thanksgiving feast consisted of turkey for the meat eaters and Tofurkey for the veggies. I made a gluten, soy, dairy, and egg-free pumpkin pie and cornbread for The Boy to eat with his turkey and Mother in Law surprised me with this Thanksgiving present:
I’m all shook up.
While some of you might think this is a bottle of wine, all you have to do is turn it on its side to realize it is, in fact, a gun:
Just imagine how I acted AFTER drinking the wine…
Happy post T-day, y’all. Hope your days were equally eventful.
The morning shower left droplets on the red and brown leaves and recently mowed grass. There is a light fog, probably leftover marine layer and the sun has finally come out. The whole park screams “Yes, I am that beautiful.”
We spend some time walking about the park and the kids sing “It’s November” to the tune of “Where is Thumbkin?”, something they learned at school and can’t get enough of (they’re fans of Albuquerque the Turkey as well, but haven’t memorized the lyrics). The Boy and Little No Limit scurry about to the tune of their song, their footsteps swishing and squishing their way through wet grass. They pick up fallen leaves. Leaf after leaf goes securely into their plastic bag for them to bring home and examine one by one for nuances in color, the random caterpillar, and full vs. broken.
The dogs are happy to be out on a walk, sniffing for all the latest and greatest pee-mail and leaving their appropriate responses. Another dog goes by in a car, a toy pinscher, wearing a sweater, barking at us.
Don’t even try, little dog in human clothes, you will not win.
Little No Limit is wearing jeans with large wet circles on both her knees from kneeling in the wet grass. She jumped in a puddle. I know her socks are soaked. I hope she doesn’t catch a cold. I worry if The Boy should even pick up leaves because the other day when he did that at a different park, his eye swelled up and his elbows and knees turned red and the doctor said he probably touched/rubbed against some plant.
I was talking about that incident this morning on the phone with my sister in law. “It’s so hard,” she said, while talking about how to protect our children. “What are we supposed to do, put them in a bubble?”
Honestly, there are moments. Moments when I think, man, I wish I could just do that. Hide them away in a bubble or a sanctuary like the guy in Once Upon a Day. But then I remind myself that that’s crazy talk. That I can’t lock them away. That that doesn’t protect them or help them. That I can’t stop everything, or perhaps anything, from happening to them.
I read a quote recently, attributed to Corrie Ten Boom: “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.”
I am a worrier. There is no way around it. I worry about everything I do, everything I don’t do. I can’t stop myself. I do at least restrain myself, though, and force myself to not let my worrying stop the kids from being kids.
And so I watch my daughter get her shoes and pants wet and I watch my son play with the leaves. And the only thing that happens are smiles. Smiles and red, exuberant cheeks, and giggles, and more of “It’s November.” And I am thankful.
I just finished reading Second Nature by Alice Hoffman. I was into it at first, then it slowed down for a while, then I just sort of hurried through it to the end. (WARNING: moderate spoilers following)
Second Nature is about Stephen, a man raised by wolves who is found by trappers and turned over to a hospital, and Robin, the woman who introduces him to life among humans. It is about love and all its manifestations, and about the darkness that can exist in any human.
Love exists in so many relationships in this book. Robin and Roy. Robin and Stephen. Stephen and Connor. Old Dick and Ginny. Old Dick and Stephen. Robin and Michelle. Connor and Lydia. Michelle and Lydia. Stuart and Kay. Roy and The Doctor. Erotic love, familial love, adoring love, new love, old love, earned love. There was Michelle, mother of Lydia, who worked as a high school guidance counselor but when she realized her daughter was growing up she found the advice she usually gave to other parents much harder to swallow. There’s Robin and Roy and their teenage son Connor, all of them judging one another for the way they handle their intimate relationships. And then there’s Old Dick, a wonderful character, the grandfather and main caregiver to Robin and Stuart, a man who didn’t seem to give a damn about his family but as you learn more about him you see what he does value — courage and the adventurous spirit. He’s a modern take on early American lit figures, the man who values land and exploration.
Second Nature also takes place on an island, which adds a sense of claustrophobia and inevitability to all this tension, that there is no way to escape love. Or death (no man is an island, anyone? oh, the irony). And this love, this love that has everyone on the island up in arms, thrives off a single unspoken rule here, a rule that drives Stephen crazy as he tries to adjust to living among men vs wolves:
When it comes to love, you mustn’t speak.
Don’t ever say what you’re truly feeling. Don’t ever say what you mean. And those who do pay a price in this book. That is what compelled me the most in this book, the way it always went back to Stephen and his animal tendencies from living amongst the wolves, and one of the best parts was Stephen’s reflection on acting on impulse. To act on impulse AND not be wrong. There is no debate in the woods, no time to question if something is or is not the right move. There is only a moment to do it, and do it right, or suffer the consequences. And entering a world of humans where every move is scrutinized and everything can mean something else, and lo, even the people you least suspect can turn out to be the worst kinds of people anywhere – it’s almost too much for Stephen. He’s gone from living amongst wolves to humans, or is it the other way around?
The reason I continue to read Alice Hoffman, above all, is because I am a fan of magical realism. I’m a fan of believing that a man could be raised by wolves and after a few months of hanging with the humans would simply fit in. I’m also a fan of Hoffman’s descriptive passages, of blood in ice, of cold weather and warm bodies, of our beautiful world.
I leave you with this passage and you can decide for yourself if this book is up your alley:
One afternoon, when the light was cool and bright, Stephen went into the kitchen to fix their lunch, and when he returned he found Old Dick crying. All at once Stephen realized what had been happening during those hours when they didn’t speak: he had been learning to tell what it was Old Dick wanted just by looking at him. That he should ever know a man as well as he knew one of his brothers was disturbing, but it was also a simple fact. Stephen put their plates of soup down on the night table, then bundled Old Dick in a blanket, the heaviest one he could find, and carried him downstairs. It was nothing to carry him. Stephen felt he could have gone on forever, but he stopped in the center of the lawn, where the pile of scarlet leaves was scattered on the grass. This was all Old Dick wanted, to see the sky, not through glass but as it truly was, a blue dome so brilliant it could bring tears to a man’s eyes.
The Boy’s speech has made marked improvements since the start of Kindergarten. I’m sure some of you experienced your two and three year olds telling your life story to strangers, but I’m only just now experiencing this. The Boy wants to show the parking lot attendant what he has in his pockets or introduce his entire family to anyone we encounter. He’s very chatty these days, and he has this hilarious explanatory tone to his voice that sounds like a cross between his teacher and Husband.
Today was my usual day of dog walking, parenting, and errands, with a dash of psychotic breakdown and a few shakes of randomness to ensure my kids have something to talk about in future therapy sessions, and then, of course, The Boy, dispelling his little proverbs.
Let’s start with the dog walking. Hey, all you dog walkers out there, it’s a simple rule: if your dog poos, pick it up. Why is this rule so difficult to comprehend? I understand there is the occasional lapse in memory where one might have forgotten the doggy bag, in which case you pick it up later that day or at the very latest on your next walk. I understand that sometimes your dog might go in a bush and you might feel it’s not harming anyone since nobody will actually set foot there, but you should still pick it up. What I do not understand (nor do the grooves in the soles of my Converse understand) is why in the name of God’s green-and-pooed-on earth you would leave a pile in the middle of a sidewalk. PICK. THAT. UP. There is no excuse for dog poo on a sidewalk. If you’re so lame that you don’t pick it up, at least kick it to the side. Why would you leave it in the middle of the sidewalk? That’s just lame.
I got home and The Boy saw my shoe and said, “Oh no!” and put his face to his cheeks a la Macaulay Culkin and then said, “You have a yucky shoe. You better wash it.” He also pointed out a rather big gob of white paint that Little No Limit poured onto the backyard cement and then stomped around on in her latest attempt to be an artiste, and then explained to me, “She did that. I told her not to.”
So I’m irritated about my shoes and this paint I need to clean up and tell the kids we will be going to library to return the movies. Last week, we rented three DVDs from the library. Angelina Ballerina, a recurring checkout, The Muppets Wizard of Oz (look for a hilarious cameo from Quentin Tarantino), and Max’s Words, in which the key words were “I’m too scratched up a DVD to watch.” For the past week, the kids kept asking to watch it despite that I explained every time we couldn’t. And every time they asked, they picked up the DVD and carried it to me wherever I was, the bedroom, laundry room, garage et al. And I kept telling them, “Please leave the DVD on the shelf because I don’t want to lose it.”
Lo and behold, today arrived and it was time to return the videos and Max’s Words was nowhere to be found. And after dealing with dog crap on my foot, I was just mad. Mad about the dog crap. Mad that I had asked them to change into their clothes and The Boy yet again wanted to go out in pajamas and cowboy boots, explaining to me, “But sometimes I wear cowboy boots with my jams [TheBoyspeak for pajamas].”
I demanded they help me find the DVD and the Boy nodded and put his hands on his hips and said, “I’m serious about this. This is NOT funny.” Which was kind of funny, but then I felt a little guilty, like I had totally scared him into talking like this.
We eventually found the DVD under the couch and then we went to the library. We checked out some new DVDs, had a nice lunch at Selma’s, and then went to Lowe’s. The Boy wanted to show everyone the new DVD he’d rented at the library, Word World, and asked everyone if they could spell C-A-T or T-R-U-C-K or H-O-U-S-E.
On the drive home, I was almost hit by no less than four cars, all of whom were simply NOT looking as they were pulling out driveways, crossing over parking lots, etc. I mean, seriously, I was really freaked and felt like that Simpsons episode where Homer’s horoscope told him he was going to die.
Mmmm, horoscope…
I got back home, and the kids sat down to watch Word World with their leftovers from Selma’s and the Notorious F.O.X., after an hour of biding her time and lulling us into a fool’s trance, scored big time on sneaking away with Little No Limit’s last slice of pizza. Little No Limit screamed from the living room and when I got there and witnessed the atrocity, I actually pulled that pizza slice from Notorious F.O.X.’s mouth, which may not sound like the wisest thing to do, to part a Chow Chow and her food mid-chew, but in addition to not wanting her to get away with such conniving behavior, it’s also not good for her health to eat people food, and her health is ailing as it is.
I should have bitten you.
Afterwards, The Boy put his arm around Little No Limit to comfort her and said, “You know, sometimes, there are some dogs who take other people’s foods. Would you like some of my potato chips?”
And finally, after all this, I laughed the good long laugh I needed all day.
You know, sometimes there are people who don’t pick up dog poo. Would you like some of my potato chips?
You know, sometimes there are people who don’t look while driving. Would you like some of my potato chips?
You know, sometimes there are kids who say the darndest things. Would you like some of my potato chips?
You know, sometimes there are bloggers who are shameless enough to write ‘kids say the darndest things.’ Would you like some of my potato chips?
Today, Sister in Law and I held a garage sale, or as I call it, cleaning my house. I am not capable of throwing anything away because I feel wasteful but I also have nowhere to store all the things I don’t use, so the garage sale is my opportunity to have strangers pay me to clean my house out.
I got rid of, among other things, clothing that doesn’t fit, shoes that hurt, purses I don’t use, a belt that hasn’t fit me in three years, and the ubiquitous garage sale item, “Oh how did that get in there? That’s not for sale.” (As if I would sell my First Communion cross pin or the silver bracelet my piano teacher gave me when I was eight. I have few things to pass on to my daughter. These are two of them.)
After four hours of chit chat, SIL and I had $300 between us. Not bad for a morning of coffee and gossip. She commented that we should do the garage sale thing every couple months because she had no idea I lived in such a garage sale happy neighborhood. But she also didn’t realize my secret of success.
Elvis.
I stood Elvis out on the sidewalk, and – no kidding – person after person told me they stopped because they saw Elvis, and inquired if he was for sale.
I serenely told each and every offer that Elvis was spoken for. One man did take the Big Shoe though. Farewell, Big Shoe, Elvis is glad to see you go. He always was a jealous guy.
