Happy Halloween



Image, uh, stolen from Chris.

Also, a nice writeup about Jack's last gig starring Alastair.

Sarah B. linked to this two months ago, and yet only this morning, upon waking, in a moment of supreme clarity, did I understand what it really means.



Click on the image to read the whole thing.

I thought "Do not disturb the sexy" described a state of being, like, "Do not disturb the peace" [peace n a state of tranquility or quiet.] And I was like, what kind of state is "the sexy" to be in? Is it some supercharged Harbin Hot Springs-like atmosphere where everyone's naked and wet and ready to go at it like dogs and raccoons?

Finally, this morning, I realized that do not disturb the sexy is being used to describe a certain type of person in the same sense as, "Do not disturb the dead," or, "Do not believe anyone in the defense department."

Isn't that so like Puffy to challenge my grammatical assumptions?

Two months of background mental energy to figure that out. Imagine what I could do if I really tried.

Startling juxtapositions is us. Monday's post seems to have stumped everybody in the comments department, I don't know why, maybe because the bleak story of the nameless migrant farmworker selling her truck's tires to feed her seven children threw some badly needed perspective on your petty little difficulty with getting Mr. Sparkles to his grooming appointment by 10:00 a.m., hm? I'm speaking for myself, naturally.

Actually, we had a successful morning full of dorking around: cleaning, putting stuff we don't use much down into the garage, playing sort-of-nicely in the sandbox next door (someone -- yes, you, Shorty -- is having trouble exercising impulse control in the sand-throwing department). Jack came home for a sandwich, and after Jackson went down for his nap Jack persuaded me to have a quick snuggle and zzzz . . . . Out cold! Both of us! For an hour! I woke up in a total stupor, Jack brought Jackson out crying and put him into bed next to me where he passed out again. For another hour! Since my arm was trapped by his head I just grabbed the closest New Yorker and read, cozier than thou, listening to him snurgle. Then we had lunch and watched A Baby Story. My sacrifices must have pleased the stay-at-home goddesses because that, my friends, beats the shit out of any spunky-career-gal-with-great-boots-and-mad-editing-skills morning I ever, ever, had.

It's Jackson's sixteen-month birthday and he's in love. It's an unrequited love. She doesn't even know he exists. He doesn't care. Everything stops when her video comes on. He loves the part where she jumps on the bed. He stares. He drools. He isn't subtle, but do you get girls like her by being subtle? Well, maybe, but not if you're only 2' 8".

In other news, I was excited to notice that in Robinson's, where I was trying on bras yesterday, the dressing room shelf had a built-in ashtray! Just when I was about to shout over the door and ask the saleslady if I could bum a smoke I realized that it was probably just a round steel cup for holding straight pins. My next real shock was to see myself half-naked in a full-length mirror. When did I start looking like an extra for The Grapes of Wrath? I used to have this big round babyfat moon face and a curvy body, and now I look like a walking Richard Avedon photo. Next thing you know I'll be radicalizing fruit pickers and sneaking sips of factory liquor at the ice cream social.

I have nothing else of substance to say today, but I invite you to click on each of these photos to learn more about the women behind them. Edited to add: I'll tell you what you won't learn if you don't click: both women were photographed at age 32.

I love the Switch ads, but I really love the fake Switch ads.

Dear Kitty,

Thanks for hitting the newspaper last night! Bravo!

Hugs,
Mom

Dear Jackson,

How do you like hearing "No!" eight thousand times a day? Fun, isn't it? I like it, too, it's very relaxing.

I also like the way you've started throwing things at my head. The cell phone didn't leave the bruise you were hoping for, though. And nice try grabbing for the butcher's knife while your dad was making dinner last night! A-plus! (Next time, try setting the oven to 450° and putting your head inside to distract him first.)

However, I think the karmic wheel rolled your way this morning at the doctor's office: your naked ass on a scale in a refrigerated exam room. And shots, too. Three of them. Ouch! I bet you were wishing you hadn't thrown the Tylenol out the car window. Heh. Oh, well, AT LEAST YOU DID IT IN STYLE.

Oh, sure, we all obey Miffy, but it takes a really, really stoned-looking little primate to shop with Monkey!

Love always,
Mom
<--- click

This is a picture of my innermost deepest most inner soul.

[UNBELIEVABLY CUTE, HOME-MADE IMAGE OF MIFFY REMOVED PER MIFFY'S LAWYERS]

My soul's name is Miffy, and it has a little theme song sung by children whose first language isn't English.

Meefee, Meefee, wve lufv yoo
Yoo alwayz know juzt whot too doo
Two long earsz and botton eyesz
And juszt my size
Meefee, Meefee oh so troo
Wve doo lufv yooo.

I know my soul has a theme song because I bought the video. The dream sequence is amazing. Miffy's parents are well-dressed, and loving and supportive without the slightest hint of the erratic hypersexuality typical of their species.

They give all their love to just one little Dutch cartoon bunny and that's Miffy.

Miffy!

Meefee!

My little most innermost innocent soul. Why are you so popular in Japan? You are not Hello Kitty, Hello Kitty is a terrible sad weak over-marketed imitation of everything you represent. Hello Kitty should be ashamed. Bad, bad Hello Kitty.

Miffy, Miffy, oh so true, even though I'm pretending to buy all this stuff for Jackson and he couldn't give a shit, Meefee, wee lufv yoo.

It occurs to me that as often as I visit Sarah B.'s site (two, three, four times a day -- she's sneaky with the afternoon updates) I haven't linked to her nearly often enough. But now that she's Internet engaged to that nice boy in Atlanta who needs to get laid, well, the sky's the limit for her.

An avant-garde horological concept. (What happens at the top of the hour? Does a little Grim Reaper come out and escort the big hand back over to 00? God I love hate the Swiss.) Personally, if I'm going to spend $10,000 on a watch (which I'd only do after all disease and starvation in the world has been eradicated), I'd get the Frank Muller. Or if I'm feeling more pharaohistic, this one.

Jackson's new words:
Baby -- Said very musically, with the first syllable about four tones higher than the second: "BAAAY-beee."
Okay -- Sounds like a game show host coaxing three dim contestants into the lightning round: "Oh. Kaeey."
'Nana -- Might be indicating "banana," we're not sure yet.
No -- It was inevitable. He says it very gently, though, shaking his head, like he's trying to break the bad news to poor, poor you.
Boom! Boom! -- As in, "Boom, boom! Shaka laka laka boom!" And then you pause and look at him expectantly and he says, "Boom boom!" and you say, "Shaka laka boom boom!"

Interesting things that I find Jackson doing when it's been quiet -- too quiet
1. Playing with his trucks.
2. Sitting in the bathroom sink, playing with the faucet. But wait, it gets better: I really like it when he pulls up the stopper and the sink fills to the brim and I walk in and he's sitting there on the lip of the sink with his feet pulled up to his butt (so his toes won't get wet, presumably) and he's holding a toothbrush in each hand with an electric one vibrating away underwater and he looks at me like, What?
3. Eating cat food, or, this morning, bringing me brown wet globs of sitting-overnight wet cat food -- two big handfuls. And I'm like, where'd he get the pâté?

I'm one of those people who knows a little bit about a lot of things and nothing in depth -- nothing! -- so I am amazed at women who not only understand but follow American football. You know, those girls who have a team. Like Mimi and the Bears (oh my GOD I'm going to write a theme song to a Saturday morning cartoon RIGHT NOW), and my best friend from high school, Tamara. Tamara decided in fourth grade that she would like the Miami Dolphins (because of those little dolphins with little helmets squeezed onto their neckless heads, although probably not because of the Dolphins helmet sprinklers), and she's been a Dolphins fan ever since. I will never forget going up to Vermont to visit her and listening to her instruct her stepson in the intricacies of touchbacks, or safeties, or, well, something like that. (This site has a lot of good football history, so that if I ever again laugh at the names Tennessee Titans or Baltimore Ravens I can remember 1925, when the NFL had the Providence Steam Roller and the Pottsville Maroons.) The amusing thing is that whenever Jack gets Tamara on the phone they get into these long football conversations about coaches and trades and I have to go pick lint off the carpet for an hour or two in an effort to find something more interesting than listening to half of a conversation about Al Davis. There are men who spend their entire adult lives trying to kill other men on TV every weekend and are famous to millions, and no matter how freakishly thick their necks are I would not be able to spot them at the Hallmark store at the mall. However, being married to a Raiders fan means that if I don't know who Al Davis is I will be calling to reserve a cot at the Home for Battered Raiders Wives next weekend. Which is why it's really, vitally important sometimes to know just enough to make someone think I know more than I actually do.

Last night I dreamed that there was this sort of big, society-wide game run by one guy, where he'd give one person a series of slips of paper that he'd written on in pencil that would tell you to do certain challenging things, or give you some big life lesson to think about. The guy was a friendly presence and everyone knew about him -- he looked like either Hall or Oates, I get them confused, the one with dark hair and a mustache -- and there was always a lot of talk about the game. Thing is, everyone who played it ended up killing themselves. No one besides the guy knew what was on these slips of paper, but they apparently drove everyone who read them to suicide. And then I started getting them. I'd see the guy leaving my street with a big smile, and I'd look in my hand and I'd have a slip of paper there with pencil writing. And I was so upset because I didn't want to die so I kept throwing away the slips of paper without reading them but they'd just keep appearing anyway.


I think this is (a) a dream about confronting the inevitability of death, and (b) a good sign that I've gotten over all those teenage romantic death cravings I used to have, that I've gained a sort of healthy "life wish." Although I'm still very interested in death, what it feels like, etc. I once actually went so far as to do a self-portrait (it was an assignment to take your own photo in the manner of another photographer, so I chose Rudolf Schafer [for whom there are no good links]) as a cadaver in a morgue. It really creeped out my boyfriend at the time. And don't get me started on ouija boards. I totally should have been a Goth, except I never really got the allure of the depressed Morticia Adams fashion aesthetic. Morticia, after all, was quite a cut-up. I think the funniest thing I ever saw was Italian Goths. In England all the Goths were really scruffy with tattered cuffs and wiggy, sugar-coated, dyed-black hair, but in Italy they were all perfectly groomed with these nice shiny crucifixes around their necks. This was the 80s, though, maybe everyone's over being a Goth by now and are being something clean-cut and respectable, like Mods. Here in Santa Barbara we actually have a gang of semi-Mod scooter riders who get on their little sewing machines and ride up and down State Street in a colorful gaggle. What do they call themselves? Why, The Vesparados, of course.

An open letter to my cat.

Dear Kitty,

Really. What's the deal. The litter is clean. So why the two-part dumps? Why always on the extension cord? It has to go around your box, I have no place else to run it, unless you want me to tack it to the ceiling. Unless you want me to tack your ass to the ceiling.

So what's the problem? Are you mad about the thyroid medicine? The fact that I grind up the pills and try to hide them by mixing them into that bland, medical, old-cat wet food? Or are you just upset that you're fifteen years old and your fur looks funny and the baby always grabs your tail to keep you from running away? Is that it, you're jealous of the baby? Aren't you over that yet? He's staying, you know. And he'll be here a lot longer than you if you keep shitting on the floor. Remember what happened to Venus, the one who kept peeing on the couch? You don't know, do you? She just disappeared. Hmmm, I'd think about that if I were you. Think about that next time your ass is dangling over the edge of the litter box and you're about to plop out another little gift for me.

Oh, and guess what? As soon as we move we're getting a dog.

Your pal,
Mom

Hey! Yesterday was Fussy's one year anniversary. Don't go back and read those first posts. Really.

Why not enter the Masturbate for Peace bumpersticker contest?

When you party as hard as the Muffinman . . .

. . . some nights it's lights out a little earlier than usual.

Another great thing about Jackson is that he has no idea when he's done something utterly disgusting. Like plunge his hand into wet kitchen garbage to fish out a cork (or, as we call them, Infant Esophageal Blockage Devices). Or the other night when I was bathing him and he took a big shit in the water. Thank God I'd already scrubbed and shampooed him squeaky clean so I could get him away from the chunky floaters toot sweet. And he has no clue, he's just like, Here's the "poop" hand sign and now I'm going to run out of the bathroom wet and naked and go stick my hands into the cat litter box. Which is especially treacherous because my hilariously elderly cat likes to take these two-part dumps. She'll squeeze out a nice turd, climb out of the box, and scratch at the floor in a civilized manner, and then she'll go, You know, I need to go in for one more round but, whoa! it stinks in there! Hmmm, I could lay log #2 here on the newspaper in front of the box, but what if someone wants to read those stock market tables? I think it's best if I just explosively deposit a quart chocolate pudding right here on this tangle of electrical cords. Ahhhh.

And Jack wonders why I always want to go straight to sleep at night with a pillow over my head.

Other husband-related observations: When I first met Jack he was a rough-and-tumble construction worker driving around with his tools in the back of a car he'd borrowed from his sister, wearing a $1,200 watch, whose hair always smelled great.
Other things Jack owned in 1995:
1. A quilt bedspread with matching pillow shams and a bed skirt
2. Not one but two bread baskets, a long one for baguettes and a little round one for rolls
3. A bulimic Abyssinian cat named Auda Abu Tayi
He's got a studly truck now, the cat went to the Humane Society (they have a no-kill policy, don't worry), and the quilt is trashed, but we still use the baskets every day.


Yesterday, Jackson and I joined our downstairs neighbors and their son, daughter-in-law, and almost-three-year-old granddaughter for a ride up to the Santa Ynez Valley. We had lunch with the cowboys at the Longhorn, where it seems to be a cultural imperative to gun your engine several times before shutting it off, thus awakening any babies who might be sleeping in other cars, thereby depriving the parents of said babies a chance to eat anything substantial before they have to get up to prevent baby deaths-by-drowning in decorative barrel-fountains. Then we drove to the Melville winery, which was closed for Columbus Day, so we just skipped the whole wine tasting thing, even though Jackson's developing a taste for local pinot noir. Then we looked at some property near the water that we might all move to, our downstairs neighbors taking the big house and Jack, Jackson, and I taking the double-wide trailer across the highway from the beach. I only got to see the trailer from the road, but it's supposed to be old and funky in a good way. At first I was excited, but now I'm having second thoughts. I know it's so ultra hip around here to live in a done-up trailer, but I don't know. Do they have insulation? Heat? Water? CABLE INTERNET SERVICE? Or will I be beating our clothes against a rock down at the creek for entertainment? These and other questions will be answered, if not tomorrow, then sometime soon, I'm sure.

We are angrily awaiting the Great Pumpkin, because he gypped us last year.

The next time I want to trick you into eating a raw egg, I know just how I'm going to do it -- I will hide it in cookie dough. Yes, I'm baking again. It's that damned Neiman Marcus cookie recipe, it haunts me like the theme to a television show about a suburban witch. (You're so clever, you got my very subtle Paul Lynde reference. I really want to see this one: "Episode 190: Super Arthur. After tangling with Dr. Bombay, Arthur becomes everything he thinks of, including Superman.") I am making time in my life to do things I want to do and everyone will just have to deal with it. Mostly this means my constant companion, the Nut, who will soon be awake and want a cookie, and before I know it he'll be a 100-pound kindergartener like those kids they interview for articles about weight-loss summer camps, who say things like, Yeah, I like it when my mom uses both chocolate and butterscotch chips in my blueberry pancakes.

Also, I will warn you now that I am becoming very fond of hiding links in photographs, so be sure to click Paul's picture below to learn of The Sad Death of Paul Lynde.

I dreamed I sat down in a film festival audience next to Paul Lynde. I said, Oh, hey, Paul, and he said, Hi! He didn't say my name so I knew he probably didn't remember it, but he was comfortable with me and he had some interesting things to say about real estate.

So, I'm feeling better, thanks to everyone who said nice things (and extra thanks to those who, though they think I'm a ridiculous whiner, restrained themselves from hitting the comments button to tell me so). I had an important realization about the exercise of power Monday night while watching an episode from the second season of The Sopranos. Though I don't have time to get all Foulcauldian on your ass, I will say that I was just tired of being nice all the time. It's a long story.

Earlier that day -- pre-epiphany, so I was still feeling huffy -- we went to the beach because the apartment was unbearably hot. (I am not a beach person, I get bored very quickly, even with a bag full of books, so don't ask me to go to Mexico with you or you will see just how silent and miserable I can be, but if you're like Jack you'll enjoy yourself anyway and not play my foolish games, so that I finally have to get over myself and drink a few pina coladas at the swim-up bar.) Jack went swimming, and Jackson and I just sat on our blanket and looked out to sea philosophically, me thinking about how empty I felt, Jackson eating ice cubes and wondering how not to let his feet touch the sand at any cost. How could a boy who clung to my shoulder when I took him near the water still end up with a butt crack full of grit? Honestly.

I finally got my Yankees Glitter Tiny Tank in the mail, just in time for a Yankeeless postseason. Oh, well, maybe I can console Jack with it somehow. I'm sure I'll think of something.

Yesterday was Dykeish Mom Day at the park. Lots of lone moms in LPGA-type outfits and sensible haircuts eyballing one another. Plus we also had the usual chatty hippie contingent (and their longhaired babies with names like Elijah and London). Nobody really struck my fancy, though, so that dream three-way will just have to wait.

And finally . . .
Things I have found Jackson reading upside down in the last week:
1. A copy of Madame Bovary with the cover ripped off
2. A cassette of James Mason reading Lolita (abridged)
3. A Shambhala Pocket Classic version of The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton

That's one deep baby.

(Click the picture for the full image.)

I need a big soul kiss from the universe right now and I'm just not getting it. It feels like it's time to Explore Big Stuff. All because I spent a depressing half hour looking through want ads the other day (after not replying to the e-mail from the guy who found my resume on Hot Jobs and wants me to market his fancypants product), and I realized that, fulfilling and noble though motherhood often is, I better get off my glutes and find another justification for my existence pretty soon because Sir Napalot will be changing my diapers before I know it and I'll have done nothing more with my life than write some forgettable travel articles and complain. Yes, I know, there was that mopey post from last week where I decided that being the Artful Blogger could take the place of actual creative work. But There Must Be More To Life and it just keeps slipping out of reach. That little part of me that cries along with Alanis Morrisette, the part that I've worked so hard to squish to death? It always slithers back to life, then it wraps its tendrils around my heart and squeezes real hard when I'm trying to be ordinary and make a grilled cheese sandwich or buy a microwave oven at Costco.

Thanks for the book, though, Barry, it made my day.

I used to enjoy playing the flute until a series of boyfriends made me feel like a total dork about it. "Hey," they all snickered, "do you know any Jethro Tull songs?" Flute is not an instrument you can rock out on. And it's barely a jazz instrument (go on, you, bolster me with tales of Hubert Laws and Yusef Lateef). Oh, it's fine when you're twelve and you take ballet, too, but when you grow up and start dating musicians of the garage-band variety you don't get so much as a pat on the back for your ability to sight read Bach.

Yeah, I wish I was learning to play a really cool instrument like Todd is.

Look! It's an online reverse telephone directory.

Part of yesterday's rockin' good time at the auto insurance broker was getting to know said broker. He was the only worker in a tiny office with a constantly ringing phone, so the normally long and tedious process of writing up a new policy was brutally attenuated by a hundred interruptions, and was made even more mindnumbingly delightful by the Nut's repeated escape attempts. Yes, always bring a one-year-old who's hungry, tired, and high on bathtub enamel fumes (just kidding, I would never let that happen) to a paperwork-filled hour in a hot tiny office with a man whose victim-of-Catholicism mother, it turns out, had eighteen children, and once this probably-terribly-ignored-as-a-child insurance agent discovers that you're not bringing your child to church every Sunday he'll start with the panicky questions:
"How are you going to do it?!"
"Do what?"
"Bring this beautiful child up without faith? He's going to be a wild animal!"
Golly, what fun we had with this conversation. And it's impossible to explain to most churchgoers that you do have some faith, that God isn't out of the question even though church is, that you once had a vision of the Virgin Mary in a motel room outside of Sandusky, Ohio, so you feel that things are going to be okay even if you never watch Going My Way again. Fortunately, religious conversations don't horrify me the way political ones do*, so my stomach didn't get all jumbly, and once we were done I was able to wrestle Jackson back into his car seat and drive home with steady hands. But not before insurance guy stretched out his arms toward Jackson as we were leaving and said, "May the Lord bless and keep you! God bless you! God bless you, Jackson!"