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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

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. Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

...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. Read more →

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),... Read more →

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. Read more →