I am desperate to go shopping, yet all I've done is to go online and buy t-shirts for Jack that I don't have the nerve to wear myself.



It's a cat, licking its butt! It's from the Museum of Menstruation, and it says, Not feeling fresh? He'll love it.

Also, this one is perfect for gigs.



It's from the big brains at Mighty Girl. Because Jack just does not get enough attention from women. Plus, he already has this one:



Can you read that? It says "Hot as FCUK." Dyslexic people always have a good chuckle when they see that one.

And everyone likes the one that says, "I don't get out of bed for less than a grand," but I had to restrain myself from actually pulling it out of Jack's drawer and taking a picture of it. I mean, this is a blog and all, but I had to ask myself: does a sane woman post photos of things she finds in her husband's underwear drawer? No.

BUT A SHAMELESS EXHIBITIONIST DOES.



See! I left it in the drawer.

In case you're interested in another James-the-Non-Pledge-Sayer story, I got an e-mail from my dear friend Brian who, surprisingly, knew the junior high school version of James.

"Seeing that picture was a real trip down memory lane . . . which in this case is called Cinder Alley [a ye-olde-timey Denver mall-within-a-mall that no loger exists]. I remember running into James there at least twice on my way to Zeezo’s Magic Shop. He’d be in the funny little game store that sold D&D stuff and classy pewter chess sets. I also remember a science fair where he made a Tesla coil that was an absolutely gorgeous object, copper wire wrapped around glass. Clearly the coolest thing there, he didn’t win because the teachers suspected that he had help from his dad. The irony is that it’s easier to make a Tesla coil than it is to get a Dad to be interested and involved in a science project."

We were both also able to successfully Google James and found his home page, which I really do not want to link to for fear of repercussion, but I'd like to note that he's now a philosophy professor at a respectable university, with four unfilmed Star Trek episodes to his credit! So once again, bravo James, you unstoppable force of geekdom!

God, I love it when people say funny things about Jesus. In this current climate, I think we should just keep a long line of those "I can see your house from here!" jokes coming. And, please, I love Christians, I love Jews . . . how could I not love anyone who can knowledgably QUOTE GOD? There's so much wisdom there, and yet I just nod off in front of the Koran every time. I nod off in front of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, too, I don't discriminate. I am just missing that Bible-study gene. I mean, I can be filled with all sorts of holy feelings while reading Auden or Yeats; once I burst out into uncontrollable sobs in that part of Westminster Abbey that looks like the tomb of every major male white Western poet who died in the last 500 years. That's my religious experience. Plus all that time on the ouija board. (Like, why stop at quoting God when you can channel the other side.)

So now that you're moderately horrified, I must link you to two other people who are also going straight to hell:

The Gospel of Debbie by Paul Rudnick

And I’m like, Mary, are you dating Jesus? and she says, no, he’s just helping me, and I’m like, you mean with math? and she’s like, no, to not be such a whore.

What Would Jesus Test-Drive? by Jesse Lichtenstein

Jesus: What if I want to peel out at a stoplight?

Sales Associate: Well, it starts out with the electric motor, so ...

Jesus: I see. Suppose some kid in a Corvette cuts me off, then floors it and starts to pull away?

Sales Associate: Well, I mean ...

Jesus: Because it sounds like you’re trying to sell me a shiny new golf cart.

I laughed, I cried, I wrote some of it.

Plus, it has a monster on the cover! RRRRRrrrr!

Greg explains it better.

So click and buy! It's far less exhausting than combing through the archives of a dozen weblogs far more scandalous than mine.

/self-promotion

Click on that, I beg of you

When I was in sixth grade, we didn't say "one nation, under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, we said "one nation, indivisible," and I don't know if it's because whoever was principal of Columbine Hills Elementary School in 1969-1976 made that simple, perhaps nostalgiac decision all by himself, or if the teachers banded together to radicalize that particular building (Miss Vandenbrock! Wore pantyhose but didn't shave her legs!). Dr. Michael Newdow's argument on the subject before the Supreme Court on Wednesday is excerpted here. The fact that Newdow thinks that too much social pressure would come to weigh upon the tiny shoulders of any little kid who decided to just shut up for a second while everyone else in the room said "under God," well, this Newdow guy should have met James. James was a fifth grader in my class. He wore his NASA t-shirt for the class photo and was always on the lookout for ingeniously appropriate ways to quote Mr. Spock from Star Trek. On top of that, he boldly proclaimed that he didn't have to say the Pledge because it was against his (Jehovah's Witness?) religion to pledge allegiance to anyone/thing but God. And after awhile we'd all had about enough of James's pointy-eared "you're being an illogical human" persona, so I don't think anyone really cared what he did during the Pledge. He was just borderline exasperating-but-still-(to me)-funny enough to convince us that he didn't care what we thought (maybe he'd already taken so much shit anyway), and he seemed to have no problem just sitting at his desk drawing Klingons on his PeeChee while the rest of us said a bunch of words we didn't understand.

It's twenty-eight years too late, but bravo, James, for being relentlessly Spock-like!

Which little boy wished he had pointy ears? Want to see a full-grown man in a leisure suit? Click on it! Click on it!

Last night Jackson actually said to me, with proto-teenage irritation, "MOM, I'm not a kid anymore."

"Jackson, you're two-and-a-half."

*not sure what this means*
*pouts*

This will interest no one but me, but here are two of Jackson's latest original (as opposed to the above, must-have-heard-it-on-Dexter's Laboratory quote).

1. (Sitting in his carseat, thoughtfully licking his upper lip) "Boogers taste salty."

2. (Sitting in his carseat, perhaps contemplating his upcoming ride in a cold grocery cart) "Kids like to stay home."

I guess he does his best thinking in the car while we're listening to Poor Little Critter On the Road.

This morning I was lying on my yoga mat doing what I think is probably Mary Roach's favorite pose (corpse pose! Get it? Hey! I made a Mary Roach joke! Yay to the three people who care!), and I overheard my teacher giving a little impromptu Sanskrit lesson to the woman one mat over. He said that the Sanskrit word bhaga means strength, but that if you pronounce it wrong (i.e., without the H, so it's more like bugga) it means anus. Wow, way to trip up those Sanskrit-as-a-Second-Language students, right? But since I'm lying there at the end of practice all corpse-like and such, I start thinking about how the British spent buttloads* of time occupying India, and what's that most favorite of British occupations?

Yes! BUGGERY!

Pretend you're Hugh Cary Grant and say it with me: Bhaga off!

It makes perfect sense, right? Anus, bugger, all those limey twits doing what they do best when they're far away from God and country and the misses' fuzzy little yoni (bonus for clicking on that: you get to see the wondrous vulva puppet).

So I come home and manage to find a little time to Google bhaga and bugger and Sanskrit and bloody fucking Typhoo Tea and I get absolutely nowhere with this hypothesis. I get fuck all. Dick. Squat. Worse than squat: I get stuff like this, which is "worse" because it completely ignores my Important Linguistic Discovery.

However, I am utterly, completely, hypnotically convinced that I am absolutely right about this. I just need to unearth a few nineteenth-century pornographic Royal Navy recruitment brochures hygiene pamphlets and I. WILL. PROVE IT.

*Heh.

Is there a Judy Blume book about this? Sure, now Jackson's sitting on the couch singing a song about how his pecker tickles, but when he turns eleven we'll have to have a talk with him about how to avoid getting sperm in the cheese.

This video* has probably been the most mind-bending thing on Jackson's playlist lately (in between viewings of the new Shrek 2 trailer, the Spider-Man 2 trailer, the Scooby Doo 2 trailer**, and browsing for Power Ranger toys on Amazon). (Must I link to those, too? Can't you find them for yourself?)

The other fun thing we've been doing -- and god knows it's probably a direct result of all of the above -- is being woken up in the middle of the night by a screaming little boy in the middle of our bed. I thought he was too old for this? I thought Family Bed meant instantly comforted child who'd always go right back to sleep? No. Wrong! Now is the age when many children develop "night terrors." What does this mean? This means DADDY SLEEPS ON THE COUCH.

However, it being the worst of times, bed-wise, means that there's half a chance it's also the best of. Why? Two words: female ejaculation. (WHILE JACKSON IS AT SCHOOL.) I know not whyfore, folks, all I know is that it makes me want to roll out of bed, grab the remote, scratch my balls and check the NCAA schedule on ESPN. I now have a dick and cuddling is for pussies!

This post pretty much assures that I won't give my dad this URL, like he asked me to.

*link via mister pants
**Because we are all about NUMBER TWO

Edited on 4/18/07 to add link to video feed that didn't exist when this was originally posted.

Since half my neighborhood knows better than to answer the door when I'm standing on the other side waving a Ziploc bag full of something I made too much of, I've now taken to poisoning everyone on the Internet, one by one. Though I once labored to appear to be the type of person who'd sooner choke on her own greased fist than consider spending $20 on Aztec cocoa, I must now reveal that I am indeed the type of person has considered spending $20 on Aztec cocoa, and that my heart paliptates when a link to a new fudge recipe shows up in my inbox. I have no photo documentation of me scampering off to the kitchen to boil up a pot of wholesome homemade candy, and then boxing up a hunk of it and mailing it off to the fudge recipe link sender, who appears to be made of terrycloth, only half expecting that a terrycloth person would actually eat something that came from someone who's basically a total fucking stranger. However, I now have evidence that said fudge was graciously received and cleverly rehabilitated without the use of marshmallow paste. Please to enjoy: MONKEYFUDGE!

I've decided that I want to increase the volume of my hair. I want a conditioner that will turn my hair into a bullhorn transmitter for my every thought. I want to walk down the street and have my hair hump my head to the rhythm of the beatbox of my mind, so that my skull reverberates like a Honda with two Shaq-mansion-sized speakers turned up to twelve taking up the whole back seat. With its windows rolled up.

That's the kind of volume I want. With a delicate apple-ginger scent.

Santa Barbara is kind of a large small town. Last I heard we were some 90,000 souls (arrr! I loves me some old sea cap'n diction). This may help explain why several of Jack's old girlfriends never became people we'd cross the street to avoid, nor mere receivers of brief hugs in the frozen food aisle, but a freakin' integral part of our lives.

Names are changed to protect my ass.

Mantissa Back when we were newly married and dirt broke, Mantissa got Jack a job at the construction company she worked for, and suddenly he was making more money than he'd ever made in his life. This despite what sounds like a really awful break-up, about which I can't share much detail except for the fact that one party recommended that the other party find a good psychotherapist.

Voluntaria I don't know much about Voluntaria's relationship with Jack, apart from the fact that it didn't take them long to realize they were better off being pals. Now she cuts Jack's hair, and whenever I feel the need to pay someone else to approach my head with scissors instead of doing it myself, I, too, feel that my arteries and eyeballs are safe with Voluntaria.

Vociferata Vociferata has a lovely daughter three months older than Jackson who is also his friend at preschool. Therefore, I see Vociferata at school at least one morning a week; lately we've been comparing notes on quelling separation anxiety. Again, I don't know all that much about their relationship, though Jack does credit Vociferata for leading him through an almost entirely parasite-free food odyssey of Oaxaca.

Dahlia I think that, given the option, Jackson would just up and move in with Dahlia. They are totally, uninhibitedly enamored of one another. Last week we were at a small dinner party, and Jackson hovered near the door for thirty minutes waiting for Dahlia to arrive. They played almost nonstop, and then Jackson ate dinner sitting in Dahlia's lap. Jack acknowledges that if anything ever happened to me, he would have to buy the house next door to Dahlia so that she and Jackson would never again have to be more than twenty feet apart. Though Jack threatens to have him digging ditches the summer he turns sixteen, Dahlia, who owns several successful bars, will probably have Jackson doing something far more prestigious first, like loading coolers with ice and being told to quit smoking pot in the alley.

Jinxy The breakup with Jinxy was the toughest on Jack, so naturally I had to become, like, best friends with her. She no longer lives in Santa Barbara, but she still comes back for business, and for a long time I was so curious about her that whenever she was in town I'd invite her to lunch and quiz her about her life with Jack. It probably wasn't an entirely healthy thing for me to do, but it stamped out any traces of jealousy I might've harbored, and we found we had a lot in common. Not two weeks ago I literally bumped into her at yoga: our mats were about twelve inches apart and we almost beaned each other rolling down out of supta konasana simultaneously.

Morticia Well, maybe just the occasional hug in the frozen food section, okay?

More Songs About Buildings and Poop

Jackson's Joke #2

Q: What happens when you eat a lollipop?
A: You have a lollipoop.

This is the other thing we do

Jackson runs off to poop.
He comes back with the wipes box in his hands and demands that someone wipe his butt.
Then he says, "Let's go look at it! Dad! Mom! Come!"
He leads the way down the hall.
At the end of the hall, he raises an arm to stop us.
All of a sudden we're in Platoon.
We flatten against the wall.
He turns back to us, holds a finger to his lips, and says Sshhh.
We go sshhh.
He motions us forward again.
Everyone starts tiptoeing toward the door.
At the bathroom threshold, he stops us.
We hold our breath.
Confident that he's created the appropriate amount of suspense, he leaps through the doorway and points and hollers, "THERE IT IS!"
We rush in to see.
"Pee-WEE!" I say, fanning my hand appreciatively.
"Good one!" says Jack. "That's a regular California Cornback."
"A SNAKE CAME OUT OF MY BUTT!" shouts Jackson.
"It's broken," I say.
"Yeah, it's a broken snake," says Jackson. "Let's flush it!"
His performance has everything: suspense, pathos, unconscious references to movies he hasn't seen yet.

I call it Triumph of the Poop.

The Daddy Saddle

Yesterday we took Jackson to Jack's job site to look at a big grader that had sunk up to its cab in mud. I put Jackson up in the driver's seat (wheee! I'm the boss's wife and I'm going to put my two-and-three-quarters-year-old inside your huge piece of heavy equipment! It's okay, he hasn't had any nighttime cold medicine) while two guys with shovels tried to dig the monster out. After I got Jackson down, he started doing his little crouching dance, which can mean only one thing.

Me: Do you have to pee?
Jackson (quietly): Mom, I have to poop.
Me (calculating that the nearest job site port-a-potty is a quarter of a mile away, and in god knows what condition): Hey! Here's your first chance to poop in a bush!


He seemed pretty game as I lead him toward an out-of-the-way spot. When I helped him get his pants down and explained how he had to crouch a little so he wouldn't hit his boots, he started getting a little panicked, but the urge to purge won out. Then, there we were, in a world without wipes or toilet paper. Just like a Cormac McCarthy novel! I quickly found a fresh, green, shiny, young, nonpoisonous plant with leaves about the size of bananas that looked exactly like something my parents used to have in their living room, and I deeply humiliated it by tearing off all eight shiny leaves and wiping them up my son's butt crack. I can't say they were the most fragrant and absorbent things I've ever used on a butt crack, but they were clean and I think I mentioned nonpoisonous.

Pretty soon I'm going to be able to rename this blog What We Talk About When We Talk About Poop.

We've decided to help Jackson celebrate his Irish heritage this month by buying him boxes of Lucky Charms. I feel that the special prize Hot Wheels car inside is representative of St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland. (Driving, get it? Heh.)



In other news, Jackson has made what we believe may be his first joke. We were standing outside looking at the stars last night, and I was running through the constellations and planets that I knew: Orion fighting Taurus, Seven Sisters, Cassiopeia, plus Venus and, uh, the moon! Hey, that's six! (If you had as many un-stoned trips to the planetarium as I did as a kid, I would hope you'd retain at least that much information.) So I tell Jackson how Cassiopeia is that big W in the sky, like she's sitting in her chair, and Jackson goes (are you ready? this is the joke!) -- he goes, "Is Cassiopeia PEEING ON THE STREET?" And I just looked at him like, Oh my god, was that a joke? Like, first you've got this perspective that she's not billions of light years away but is close enough to be threatening to us by hovering over our street, you're speculating that she's on a potty chair, AND you noticed that she's got PEE in her name? Is it too early to call Mensa? I mean, it's not the kind of joke that's going to get him a gig with Leno, but, you know. Bravo, kid!