Parenthood = Redefining Hell on a Daily Basis

Today we went to the MVA to register our cars and (finally) get our new driver's licenses. We took Noah with us.

***

Dear Nice Lady Who Let Noah Play With Your Shiny Nice Pen,

I love you. May that simple act of kindness be rewarded with decades of flawless skin and a good seven or eight hot young cabana boys.

Love,
Amy

PS Although perhaps you only needed to say the thing about Noah not looking a thing like Jason one time, and maybe not so loud.

***

Dear Mystery Person Who Spilled Froot Loops All Over the Floor In the Waiting Area,

I hate you. I know I should probably have empathy for what was most likely a desperate situation, but that's just bad parenting karma there, man. May the next dozen public restroom floors you encounter be littered with crushed-up Oreos.

Hate!
Amy

***

Dear Lady In That Line Over There,

You are in the wrong line. You want that line, over there. No, the line past that one. Yes. But only if you have the right form filled out. Oh no, that is the wrong form. Take a number from that window; they will give you the right form. THEN you get in that line over there. Yeah. But get out of the line you're in know. I'm pretty sure that's where you register as a sex offender.

Love,
Trust Me, I've Been Here All Day

***
Dear Jason,

That is so great that you found a wireless Internet signal to use! That is fantastic! I'm so happy for you and your little laptop and oh my god if you do not step away from your email and help me corral our child I will run you over with our newly tagged and titled car in the parking lot and that cop over there would LET ME because I think the sound of Noah's screaming is causing feedback on his walkie-talkie.

Love,
Death Is Not An Option and Neither Are Floor Froot Loops

***
Dear Tropicana 5% Fruit Juice Beverage-Like Product From the Vending Machine,

When will my son's eyeballs go back to normal?

Just Wondering,
A Concerned Parent

***

Dear State That I Now Live In,

I am not a terrorist, despite looking like one on my license photo. I was just kind of...wound a little tight by the time it was my turn.

Love,
Now Serving Number 321

PS The GIANT CRAB floating next to my head isn't helping things either, you know. Why not just Photoshop a checkered bib and a shaker of Old Bay onto everybody's photo while you're at it?

PPS Dude. Crabs are delicious. I would like to go eat some right now.

Back from the Brink

Bleh.

So while no members of my family showed up at my house to kill me after that last post, my preshus son certainly gave it a sporting effort. I once again fell victim to that parenting phenomenon where your kid gets a single solitary ooky diaper and then BLAMMO, you are beyond violently ill for the next 24 hours, crouched on the bathroom floor and praying for the sweet release of death, or at least begging your stomach to GIVE IT UP ALREADY, YOU ARE COMPLETELY EMPTY YET CONTINUE TO PUNISH ME, WHY, WHYYYYY?

Ahem. What? Enough with the vomit talk? Okay!

(Shall I shake you down for some more money instead? We're at $5,430 [dudes! awesome!] -- 78% of our goal. I have a wine-and-cheese cocktail party this weekend with our community council and neighbors and really don't want to go with pink hair. Especially since I think they may already not like us because ours is the only recycling container with so many glass bottles instead of plastic, not that I would ever check and maybe dump a couple wine bottles into someone else's recycling container and then deliberately put our empty milk cartons on top or anything. No. I would never do that. Anyway, Stacy and Heather still need your donations. Thanks!)

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me as I attempt to claw my way back to health and sanity. I was going to reward your patience with a hilarious video of Noah throwing a terrifically pointless and snot-nosed little temper tantrum -- the kind of video that would generate a lot of tsk-tsks from people because HOW DARE I MOCK MY CHILD'S PAIN FOR SHINY INTERNET NICKELS -- but there's something wrong with the file and I can't get it to upload correctly.  Damn it.

So here, you get this instead.

Ties that bind.

I get asked all the time about what I won't blog about. Is there anything I keep to myself? Anything I purposely avoid?  It's easy to assume there isn't, since I'm pretty open and transparent about a lot of things here.

But I do have one ready answer to that question: I don't blog about my family. Yes, I've written the occasional entry here and there. My parents' health, usually, and I think I've made some vague references to our general fucked-up-ness, and while it's tempting to mine that fucked-up-ness for Sedaris-family comedy gold, I don't.

My family is the one situation I have a hard time finding the humor in. I used to jokingly describe us as "the Brady Bunch, except that everybody hates each other."

I don't make that joke anymore.

And I don't blog about my family. Which means today is tough, since I've been home in Pennsylvania with family since last Tuesday.

Sigh.

We're a family that repeats the mistakes of previous generations -- the very mistakes we always swore we would never make. We hold grudges for years. We forgive but we do not forget. We expect too much and give too little.

We're a family that avoids confrontation at any cost. We're a family where people grab their car keys and storm out the door when things get ugly.

We point fingers with one hand and hold full glasses of wine in the other.

We take sides. We manipulate and guilt trip. We gossip. And we finally explode and yell and cry. The floodgates open and decades of hurts and slights come spilling out, and every delusion and pretension about who I am and where I come from are crushed under the weight of my family's daytime-talkshow-like baggage.

Then we all sing Happy Birthday and eat cupcakes and pretend none of it ever happened.

We're a family with certain members who, after realizing that family is really all we've got in this world, have opted to go it alone instead.

We're divorce at its worst.  At its most painful and scarring.  We're alcoholism and obesity and abuse and co-dependence and cancer and mental illness.

We're also Christmas mornings and homemade stockings and laughter and old movies and pulling together in a crisis. We're inside jokes and ten of two and grandbabies and the very best of intentions.

I don't tell stories about my family here because even though I'd like nothing more than to hear that we're not the only family like this, I need to believe -- for Noah's sake-- that none of it really matters, and that one day he'll have happier stories to tell about us.

I should not be allowed out of the house without adult supervision. And perhaps a leash.

Two words about my trip:

Newark.

NewYork.

See how those two words are not quite the same? Two whole different letters and also TWO WHOLE DIFFERENT STATES.

And yet -- when spoken by an Amtrak NE Corridor conductor over the loudspeaker, they sound very much the same. Especially since some jackass decided that Penn Station is pretty much the greatest train station name in the history of train stations, so...yeah.

I was listening to my iPod and wondering how much whiskey I would have to drink to sound like Amy Winehouse when I heard the conductor over the loudspeaker. I yanked my headphones off and heard something like: Newyweark Penn Station.

Hooray! Am in New York! And look! We're about 10 minutes early. I can meet Isabel early and get started on that whiskey plan.

So I grabbed all my stuff from my cushy delicious business-class seat (snob! snobby snob!) and hopped off the train. I stood on the platform and yanked on my thin little jacket (please note that I was dressed for DC weather, including short sleeves and bare legs and open-toed wobbly heels, and my only source of actual warmth was a scarf my mother had forcefully knotted around my neck that morning in PA, while wondering how she managed to raise a daughter who consistently forgets that weather is not the same across the entire East Coast and also showed up with a coatless, sockless toddler).

And this point I actually looked at my surroundings and...hmm. This doesn't look right. I've been to Penn Station a million times and this...hmm.

Oh look! A sign! Newark Penn Station.

Newark. New Jersey.

Oh. Fuck.

I spun around right as the doors shut and then stood there while my train and my delicious cushy seat pull away from the station.

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckity FUCK.

First I kind of panicked. Then I kind of laughed at THE IRONY, THE BURNING IRONY.

My mom had tried to convince me to take NJ Transit (a super-cheap and sort-of grody light-rail line, for you non-locals) because she hates driving to the Amtrak station in Trenton. And I sniffed and snobbed that I don't like NJ Transit -- there are no bathrooms or assigned seating on the train and it takes 30 minutes longer to get to NY and the people on it are always smelly and one time we saw a fight break out and did I mention how many times I've sat next to smelly people?

So there I was, stranded in fucking Newark, silently praising the baby Jesus for NJ Transit as I dashed upstairs to fork over an entire $3.75 for a ticket to the Other Penn Station.

I missed the first train to New York by literal SECONDS (there's a symbolic lesson for my elitist ass in there, with all the doors that slammed in my face, and also something about why the sneakers-while-commuting look is actually pretty smart), and then had to wait 20 minutes for the next one. I had goosebumps all over and my feet were getting swollen and angry in my leopard-print open-toed shoes. I kept checking my watch in terror since I had no idea how long it would take to get to NY. (I could have just asked someone, but was scared to, lest the answer was "an hour" or "three days, by boat, beware! Ye skurvy dogs!")

The train came, I got on and sat next to a lovely young woman. I heard Amy Winehouse emanating from her iPod headphones. I continued to check my watch and grit my teeth over HOW SLOW the train was going -- look! that guy on a bike! can we at least go that fast? -- and was ready to claw my eyeballs out when we stopped at Seacaucus. I sent Isabel a number of increasingly-enraged and profanity-laden text messages. She didn't respond so I stopped, lest she was re-thinking her decision to employ such a freaking dumbass.

I called her when I got to the Other Penn Station, only to realize I had the wrong number. BECAUSE OF COURSE I HAD THE WRONG NUMBER. MOTHER OF GOD.

Dear Random Person Out There: I really hope you don't get charged for those text messages, and I'm so sorry about all the bad words.

Can you believe I was still the first person to arrive at lunch? My nervous-traveler-tic had prompted me to buy a train ticket with an arrival time of over an hour-and-a-half BEFORE the meeting, and thus saved my ass from my should-not-be-allowed-out-unsupervised tic.

Laura arrived next, looking SO FREAKING LOVELY (and warm! in her winter coat! I wanted to steal it! so I could use it for kindling to start a fire because I was SO DAMN COLD). I jumped up and said hi and shook her hand and immediately started yammering away about this and that and Laura smiled politely for awhile and then finally asked me who exactly the hell I was because I'd never actually told her my name.

(Oh! And how about later when she caught me intently checking out her dress and asked me if her boobs were leaking. Yes. I am a master at this social interaction stuff.)

Anyway, Laura Bennett from Project Runway (I say that only because up until yesterday morning Jason thought I was going to meet with a contestant from America's Next Top Model and was really getting disturbed by all the "she's such a ROLE MODEL! she's my IDOL!" stuff I was saying) is one of the nicest, funniest and most-down-to-earth people you will ever meet. You will want to be her best friend and throw dinner parties in her honor. The PR gossip she dished just about made my head explode and we ate fondue and drank wine and I kept interrupting everyone with my stupid jokes and also kept thinking about what outfit I should have worn instead.

Then we all piled into Laura's minivan (!!) and went to pick up a couple of her boys from school. Then she dropped me off at my sister's apartment so I could visit my little nephew and go with him to...where else? Gymboree.

Isabel took all the photos for the day and I will have those soon, although judging from what I saw on her camera I believe Twiggy's verdict would be that while the camera absolutely loves Laura, it absolutely dispises Amy and her giant shiny head.

The only picture I took was this one, last night, at the Other Penn Station:

I hope I don't need to tell you which train was mine, and whether all those other lovely ON TIME trains were Amtrak or NJ Transit.

Post Title? THERE IS NO TIME FOR TITLES!

Hello! Goodbye!

Dudes, I am on my way out the door to catch a train to go to New York City, and I have no time to edit out all the extraneous words in this sentence. Because I am having lunch with Isabel (of AlphaMom.com, who reads me everyday and should know better) and...Laura Bennett, my very own personal Audrey Hepburn, and about five minutes ago I seriously thought I'd forgotten to pack my shoes -- the shoes around which my entire outfit is based, if I may have a Carrie Bradshaw moment -- and I just about blacked out.

I found the shoes! But my hair is pink! And I forgot my coat! And I need to leave right this second and this is going to END SO VERY BADLY.

Pink for the Cure

Am totally over the pink hair, to be honest. Everyone assumes I'm Noah's nanny and a little old lady did that shifting-handbag thing in an elevater the other day. And I got fucking dagger eyes from another mother at the mall when she saw me dashing out of Gap Kids after my escapee toddler. It was fun at first but now I am over it. I am ready to be my boring, status quo, washed-out blonde self again.

But I'm not washing it out. In fact, I'm getting ready to re-color it. Gulp.

I am keeping it pink until this team is fully funded for the D.C. Avon Walk for Breast Cancer on May 5th and 6th. Gulp.

Once they hit their goal of $7,000 I can jump in the shower with an economy-sized bottle of shampoo, but not until then.

I originally planned to walk with them, but I'm honestly not sure I can get in shape in time. I have been...uh...more than slightly glued to the couch for the majority of the past year. So 39 miles in a little over a month sounds like a recipe for a wheezing, whining disaster. So instead of offering up my hamstrings, I can offer up my hair.

Look! They're almost halfway there already! Is easy! We can totally do it! 

And now for the biggest gulp-worthy challenge of all: if the Pink Ladies raise $10,000 or more I will dye my hair any freaking color you guys pick. We'll do a poll, or something. So if you've ever kind of decided that you secretly hate me and everything I stand for (life! liberty! handbags! and the pursuit of whole-milk cheese!), now's the time to parlay that hate into something good. Donate now and then tell me to dye my hair electric green.

Which: oh, Jesus. I look hideous in neon.

So please donate to Deidra, Stacy and Heather via their individual pages, and then check out the team progress page to see how we're doing.

(My mom is still 100% cancer-free, by the way. The masectomy recovery was a long, hard road, but she appears to have kicked cancer's ass completely. Yay! But still, there is Too Much Fucking Cancer out there. Enough with the Fucking Cancer. Let's kick Fucking Cancer in the Fucking Nuts! Go team! Woot!)

This Happens Every Damn Friday.

It's raining outside. The warm weather of earlier this week has been absorbed back into cold, wintery gloom. I think there might actually be some ice out there, and it already seems like ages since Noah and I played out in the backyard in short sleeves and bare feet.

He's alseep right now, and probably will stay down for most of the afternoon. Ceiba is curled up next to me, occasionally sighing one of her wheezy little dog sighs. Max is curled up in her dogbed in front of the fireplace. Maybe I could start a fire.  I think I would like some hot chocolate. Then I could sit and write all afternoon -- warm and blissed out, the perfect atmosphere for thinking deep thoughts about life, the universe and everything.

Maybe I should dust off that book outline I wrote six months ago. Maybe I should make dinner in the crock pot. Maybe I should put Noah's baby photos in that album I bought and frame some for above the fireplace. The kitchen actually needs mopped, but getting the house clean would feel so good right now. A sense of accomplishment, no matter how small, for I am at peace with how domesticated I've become.

I should exercise. I should make Noah's next doctor's appointment. I should bake cookies for the neighbors.

Wait. Is that the mail? Jesus Christ, Ceiba. Shut up. SHUT UP.

Look! It's just mail! Envelopes and...ooh.

Fuck it. I'll talk to y'all on Monday.

EDITED TO ADD:

(Wait! Wait! You know who can get my nose out of US Weekly and back onto the computer? Laura Bennett, that's who. She totally asked me for a personal favor, if you define "me" as "my boss, who forwarded it to me, but holy crap, that's about as close to touching God in heaven as I've ever gotten, and I once hugged Andrew Shue." Anyway, check it out, babies, and leave a comment if you are so inclined. And I define "inclined" as "bored, because no one else updates their blogs on the weekends so it's not like you have anything better to do, right?")

So Many Blogs...

...and so little actual life experience.

Which means it's redirect time here, since I have nothing left to talk about. Except how pretty it is outside and how much better lying around on a gigantic-ass parachute in the backyard sounds over...you know...MORE GODDAMNED BLOGGING.

So! For those of you interested in hearing more about the goofy pink hair and seeing another photo or two, please to be clicking over to the Advice Smackdown at AlphaMom.com. There you shall be rewarded with a rare treasure: an entire post about my hair, which dude! I never talk about my hair. Never! Do I even have hair? I honestly hadn't noticed.

For those of you interested in hearing about what a huge ass I am around minor celebrites, please to be clicking over to MamaPop.com. There are also some photos of me, although my huge ass is not pictured. Just my head. My very, very drunk head.

For those of you interested in none of those things, here! Some pictures. Of other things.

Clowns on parade.

FAIL.

im in ur backyard lookin all shifty like.

No more baby. At all. Not even a little bit. Sigh.

 

SXSW Day Over: Uh. Oops.

Wait. What just happened?

I mean, I blinked a couple times, and then there was some business with the clocks, and I think I ate a taco, and now I am back home.

Oh. And my hair is hot pink. What?

Scene from a random blogger party where nobody was chopped up into tiny bits and sent down the garbage disposal, but thanks for your concern.

Okay, some other stuff is coming back to me now...laid-back chilling with readers and some fellow adorable rocktastic superfantastic bloggers on Saturday, somehow ambushing Jen into taking me shopping and drinking and cheese-plating in South Austin, where I stood in the bathroom line with Alan Cummings and THAT went just about as gracefully and suavely as you can imagine, and also Luke Wilson and Paul Rudd are really freaking hot in person but at least I did not hug them and then talk about peeing, so...like. Score.

Alan Cummings. And Jen's hand. Not pictured, and yet oh so obvious: A Lot Of Cocktails

Our panel went great, although considering who my fellow speakers were, how could it have not? I'm a little scared to listen to the podcast (not available quite yet, thank God), however, since more than several times I would just START TALKING before THINKING ABOUT TALKING. I mean, that's nothing new, but this time there was a microphone there to amplify all the blahblahblahblah lamejoke blah, followed by Asha or Tracey saying the exact thing I wish I had said instead.

If I ever get to the point where I can charge money for public speaking appearances, I am so going to charge a higher rate for an optional strip of duct tape over my mouth.

The breakfast of champions! Or at least people who forgot to change their damn clocks for &*%$#@! daylight savings.

Then, oh my God, we went to the Lonelygirl15 panel and I just about wiggled in my seat from my geeked-out energy. I mean...look. I TOOK VERY SMALL FAR AWAY PICTURES.

They uploaded an episode live! The dorkforce in this room was OFF THE CHARTS.

So perhaps you can then imagine my state of mind when this happened. The LG15 guys! Talking to me! They have my card! Which...I had printed in 2004 and includes zero contact info and a cryptic line about mittens. But still. They were so nice and seemed kind of surprised by my manic fangirling? Like I do not strike them as your typical Alternate Reality Gamer? And maybe quoting large chunks of the "LGPedia" was a little creepy?

Could we have more shit draped around our bodies?  Tools.
(Thanks to Zoot for being the official photographer of Big Moments in Computer Geekdom.)

Again though, they were so nice.  I am going to send them links to my bitchin' vlog. Which I do not have yet, but according to some of the folks on the "Rise of the Blogebrity" panel, video blogs are going to kill us old-fashioned text-based blogs so I better GET ON THAT.

(Eye roll. EYE FUCKING ROLL.)

Uh. What else? Tracey suffered from dehydration and exhaustion the first night and I beat that joke into the fucking ground. In fact, I still am, because I'm an asshole friend who was all, "Well, drink some water and lie down, I'm going out, text me!" Danny rocks, his wife is hot, Asha is just freaking lovely and I teared up anytime I thought about how much my friendship with Zoot means to me and how it eases from online to in-person so effortlessly. Except that I always call her Zoot instead of her real name. I can't help it. She's just so Zooty.

We're obviously up to something, although for some strange reason I cannot remember what it was.

Anyway. Sniff. Blubber. Memories.

By Sunday I missed Noah and home so much it was prickling a little, and by Monday the mere sight of a little boy who might possibly be Noah's age, give or take five years, physically hurt me.

I got home last night and Noah teared up, ran to Daddy and refused to even look at me.

I wonder if the hot pink hair had anything to do with it?

HAAAAAAAAAAA. Fucking poser.

And now I'm done. Must sleep. Out of diapers. Not sure child was bathed. Must go write on blogs. Monetize. Corporatize. Zzzzzzz. 

SXSW Day One: The Line That Ate My Soul

I don't want to talk to about it. I just want to LIVE. I DON'T WANT TO DIE IN THIS LINE. Like the people of Pompeii! Covered in dust, clutching each other, while archeaologists forever ponder WHY? WHY DID THEY STAND IN THIS LINE? Water, food and alcohol were mere steps away, and yet they REMAINED IN THIS LINE BECAUSE SOME VOLUNTEER WITH GREEN HAIR TOLD THEM TO.

Anyway. 45 minutes to get a fucking badge. Some dude from the Village Voice cut in line in front of us and we all yelled at him, but he didn't care, because he's from the fucking Village Voice. And the guy next to me on the plane snored the whole fucking time! Also I have had a LOT OF CAFFEINE!

It's going really well! I am going to go lie down now. God, my feet really smell.