At Least I Know What She Wanted To Buy At Target

Found this one when I was straightening her room. It may or may not be related to yesterday's list:

Is she trying to re-enact a scene from the movie "Fargo"? Slay some vampires? Cross-stitch me a "Bless This Mess" needlepoint to hang on the kitchen wall?

I better not piss her off, just in case she actually manages to get her hands on any of this stuff.

Another shawty post... no need to click.

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The Girl Is Starting To Worry Me With Her Lists

I found this when I was cleaning up the random papers on the coffee table early this morning:

I can't even begin to figure this list out. I mean, she's SEVEN YEARS OLD. Midgets and prison? Is this a list of things she wants to do over the holiday weekend?

Nothing below the fold, no need for clickage.

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I'll Take Manhattan

This weekend, Manager Dad and I wanted to give Spawn an end-of-summer last hurrah by planning a weekend activity that was more fun than our usual trip to Costco. I have a friend who lives in New York City who was going to be out of town, and she very nicely (although I am pretty sure I saw fear in her eyes) agreed to let us stay in her apartment.

With the free place to stay, I thought we could do a weekend on the (sort of) cheap, but I must have been smoking something because as anyone with half a brain cell can tell you, Manhattan is not known for its great bargains. Everything we wanted to eat, see, or do cost a minimum of eighteen dollars per person. We probably could have stayed home and bought a used Toyota Corolla for less money.

But if Mastercard is to be believed, you can't put a price on family memories, and I was determined to expose Spawn to some legendary New York attractions. So naturally, first on the list was to sample authentic regional cuisine at a Times Square tourist trap themed restaurant. According to Us Weekly, Brad and Angelina took all five hundred of their kids to a place called "Mars 2112," and they're all worldly and shit, so if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me. They start your 'experience' by stuffing you into a sort of elevator pod thing which simulates a rocket ride to outer space:

The Girl: (cackling) THIS is the coolest restaurant EVER.

The Boy: (terrified) I think we are really blasting off into space. (Grabs both of my ears and shouts directly into my nostrils). DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE ON MARS! I PROMISE TO BEHAVE FROM NOW ON!

The Girl: (turning green) Actually, I think I am going to throw up.


We got out of the simulator and The Boy spotted the costumed 'aliens', which made him completely unhinged, so he spent the entire meal in a state of panic, hiding under the table whenever any of the waitstaff even LOOKED in our general direction. We wound up throwing away most of Spawn's $15-a-plate dinners because the pasta was "too slimy" and the sauce "too chunky." After that, we gave up on restaurants and fed them a diet of bread, bottled water, and bananas, just like the monkeys at the Central Park Zoo.

We did a double-decker bus tour, although we had to de-bus after twenty minutes due to kid boredom and the absence of bathrooms. A pedicab bike tour through Central Park was a lot more successful, although it wasn't quite as much fun for the kid that was biking us around. Between the screeching of the bike's gears and the pained expression on his face, it was clear that he regretted offering to take all four of us in a cab built to safely carry MAYBE two people, and even then only if those two people were Kate Moss and Keira Knightley.

Hands down, Spawn's favorite part of the trip was shopping. We gave them each a $20 budget, which lasted about fifteen seconds at their "retailtainment" stores of choice: American Girl and the Pokemon section of the Nintendo store. Even I was excited about the Nintendo store because they had a stash of Wii Fits*, which I'd been dropping hints about as a potential birthday present ever since we got the evil Wii in the first place.

So thanks to the magic of capitalism, the trip was a smashing success. Spawn had so much fun that The Girl cried the entire train ride home because she didn't want to leave the city.

And now, back to reality, and the new school year, which starts Friday. I'd like to give a special middle finger shoutout to our local Board of Education. Thank you so very much for making the first day of school the DAY BEFORE the Labor Day holiday weekend.

*Warning: Do NOT subject yourself to the Wii Fit unless you have very high self esteem, and/or have been drinking. I took the "fit test" and despite the fact that I run 35 miles a week, it began taunting me, first criticizing my my Body Mass Index and then asking me if I trip and fall a lot because it thinks I am uncoordinated. But the kicker was when it loudly announced that my Wii Fit age as SIXTY ONE. I will NEVER hear the end of this from my family.

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Saving The Drama For Her Mama

Last Friday, summer camp officially ended.

To mark the occasion, the counselors decided to stage a hip-hop dance recital, because after all, nothing says “I’ve had a great summer” better than a bunch of white Jewish kids trying to breakdance to the vocal stylings of Kanye West.

The NIGHT BEFORE (thanks for all the advance notice, counselors!) I was informed through the state of the art “crumpled note in backpack” communication method that I was supposed to pack a black t-shirt for her to wear as a costume.

The Girl hates black, so she didn’t have one. And because I didn't find the note until after the stores had closed, I couldn’t buy one. So I made a rookie mistake, stupidly assuming that she could just get through the entire two minutes that she was going to be on stage in one of MY old shirts.

The morning of the show, The Girl put me on notice that I had to be at camp by 6, an hour before the recital started at 7. This of course guaranteed that some coworker would decide they absolutely HAD to have a last-minute meeting, and since it was critical to have it THAT DAY, it of course started at FIVE O’frigging clock.

So I didn’t even leave the office until 6, prompting a white-knuckled Grand Theft Auto-style drive up the Merritt Parkway.

I walked into the auditorium exactly 5 minutes before the show started. I looked around and it was like I had stumbled onto a battlefield scene from Braveheart: face-painted anarchy. Wild-eyed kids were running around in various stages of physical undress (and emotional distress), waving their arms and shrieking at whichever dazed-looking parents happened to be closest by; whether or not they were their own parents didn't seem to matter.

I spotted The Girl, who was accessorizing my black t-shirt with a look of white-hot fury. The shirt was enormous on her; the sleeves hung past her elbows and the bottom was brushing her knees. Her mouth was stained with fruit punch and her hair was matted with partly dissolved cotton candy, giving her the appearance of a tiny, ferocious Courtney Love.

"YOU. WERE. SUPPOSED. TO. BE. HERE. AT. SIX!" she screeched at me. Manager Dad threw up his hands and gave me a look of You dug your own grave on this one, Miss Latey Laterson.

She stomped over and stretched her arms straight out and started whirling them around in tight helicopter circles, making the sleeves flap like gigantic mutated bat wings.

"This (sob) shirt (sob) is (sob) too (sob) big. (sob sob sob) I can't be expected to PERFORM in THIIIIIISSSSSSS!"

(Insert additional sobbing)

I looked around, desperate for an assist, but everyone was either scraping their own kid wreckage off the floor, or was deliberately avoiding eye contact. Finally, one of the counselors saw an opportunity to upsize their end of summer tip by helping me out.

He hustled her onto the stage, where her tears magically dried up and she danced her little heart out, bringing her role of pint-sized hip-hop-‘ho to life with a level of enthusiasm that made Manager Dad fear for her future commitment to chastity.

But I was in no position to complain. If a dash of pop culture misogyny can be THAT effective in curing emotional outbursts, bring it on. I will sell out my feminist principles faster than Jamie Foxx can drop a chorus of, "Git down girl, go 'head, git down".

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On Hiatus

Thanks to everyone who has made writing this blog so much fun. I'm going to be taking a break for a while.

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My Long Overscheduley Nightmare Is Almost Over

I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm ALMOST sure that it's not an oncoming train.

I have eighteen half-finished posts. End of summer Spawn emotional train wreckage! Vast right-wing conspiracy of back to school extortion! Secret affairs and breakups! Horribly embarassing photos of myself as a child! But that will all have to wait until I finally have time to write some shit, hopefully tomorrow.

In the meantime, I had signed up to be a part of Neil Kramer's wicked cool Great Interview Experiment, which I mightily wish I had thought of in the first place. As serendipity would have it, I was matched with my ruminative friend John Dove, of Buddha on the Road fame. John and I have swapped many emails in the past. He's even motivated me to buy a book on mediation, although I have not been able to calm down enough to actually READ it yet.

So if you're bored visit John's posted interview of me. If nothing else, reading about my neuroses should make you feel that much better about yourself.

Nothing below the fold today. Special note to Bites: I PROMISE am going to fix my frigging popup window issues but I don't have the brainwidth to deal with it today. I need to find a high schooler or some other child labor to exploit to fix my technical issues.

Nothing below the fold, no need for clickage.

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Further Proof That The Girl is My Biological Daughter

I twittered (tweeted? twattered? twut?) yesterday about how when I got home last night, The Girl came running up to me, all kinds of proud because her front tooth was loose.

"How'd THAT happen?" I asked her.

"My friend Katie kicked me in the face today!" she said happily.

Katie must have some sort of karate belt, because she did a solid job on on that sucker. Not even 24 hours later, the tooth fell out. I don't know if it's residual paranoia from being kicked in the head, or if the kids at camp are questioning the existence of the Tooth Fairy, but The Girl clearly senses that something's not right with our story. After she fell alseep I found this note under her pillow, in a Ziploc bag along with her tooth:

Yep, she takes right after her suspicious, cynical, type A old momma.

P.S. We gave her three bucks. What's the going rate for teeth nowadays?

P.P.S. Our answers are under the "click here to read more."

P.P.S.S. Haven't slept more than 4 hours straight for the past week. May pass out any minute. Please inject caffeine or stronger substance directly into my veins.



We answered "it's a secret", "sky blue, like yours," and "golden."

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The Miseducation Of America's Youth

Let me apologize AGAIN for the stench of laziness wafting from my blog this week.

I still haven't caught up from vacation and now I'm taking five MORE vacation days to teach an undergraduate advertising class at a local college. I've been spending all of my free time reading the textbook (which I never bothered to do when I was actully in college) and getting my lectures ready.

Tuition is about $4000 per kid with 11 students. And someday, I will pay roughly twice the GDP of Guam in order to send my own Spawn to college. This makes me feel like a high-priced call girl and therefore obligated to give my paying customers their money's worth. And if they start getting bored, I can always bust out some stories about how high Tom Green appeared to be on one of my photoshoots, or list of all of the reasons why it's a bad idea to eat craft services sushi.

In honor of the damage I will be inflicting on tomorrow's business leaders, this recycled post is from another time that I faced a hostile audience. It's old, so it kind of sucks. Endure/ignore at your discretion.


Perils Of The Linen Closet

Yesterday morning, I was struggling with my still newish, un-MILFy haircut, trying to get it to a place that didn't make me look so much like Tilda Swinton. Somehow I managed to cut my hand on my hairdryer, causing me to smear blood all over my tasteful Banana Republic career separates.

After working my way through all of my favorite expletives (The Boy – (“Mommy, what does (rhymes with rock pucker) mean?”) I grabbed a Band-Aid from the messy bin in the linen closet and doctored myself up.

After changing into a new outfit that had the least amount of stains and wrinkles, I passed out hugs and lunches, wrote a preemptive note of apology to The Boy's teachers for when he repeated the new words I'd taught him, and headed off to Dunkin Donuts (the High Ridge location if you're keeping score) for 24-ounces of sweet caffeinated salvation.

With the double D in my car cupholder (because there ain't no D's in my other cupholders - The Evil Twins can barely muster up a 34A nowadays) and twenty minutes of driving ahead, I tried to put my mind through the mental gymnastics that help me get into work mode. I had a big presentation to give to some important types at work, and I didn't want to LOOK like as big of a jackass as I was FEELING like on this particular day.

Flash ahead to noon. I had just finished delivering my presentation. It was jam-packed with every feature and function that Powerpoint has to offer: charts, graphs (of the pie, line, AND bar varieties), bullet-pointing, animations. I'd hit them with forecasts, projections, conclusions, educated guesses, visionary speculations. I used words like "paradigm shift"and "step change." I had props and prototypes. I had my admin order lunch, because serving food is pretty much always guaranteed to put managerial cogs in a good mood.

But my magnificence was met with silence. Finally, one of the women spoke up. Six heads in various states of gray and/or baldness swiveled toward the sound of her voice.

“Hey,” Female Executive That I Had Once Liked said loudly. “Is that a Hello Kitty band-aid on your hand?”

Why yes. Of course it was. Thanks for pointing that out. And let's all also watch the spectacular explosion of my professional reputation, while we're at it.

Six heads whipped back and forth between staring at her and staring at my hand. It was like a bunch of teenage boys watching Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova play Wimbledon naked.

“Um, yes," I said. "They sell them at Target." If I didn't sound stupid enough, I added, "They have My Little Pony ones too.”

“Good to know," said Female Senior Executive Who Just Barely Spared Herself a Blog-Lashing. "I need to get some of those. My daughter hurts herself all the time. Now, let’s talk about your recommendations….”

Life Lesson #1: Sometimes, the Power of Mom can be your saving grace.

Life Lesson #2: Always look before you Band-Aid.

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It's No San Francisco

Last night, the Fairfield County Blog & Grog Society (founding member: Always Home And Uncool) had our second meetup. It was like a miniature BlogHer, except with mosquitos, nachos, and men. The other difference? No swag. We couldn't even get free drinks from the bartender, who remained unmoved by the huge lies about the mighty weight of our combined blogpower.

We had people ranging from a twentyish hip-hop writer to a fortyesque government chemist to an internet philosopher to a guy with anger management issues. We had not just ONE, but TWO real authors, and Sarah brought an advance copy of her upcoming book for us all to stroke and oohh and aahh over.

Connecticut Mom's Family Financials (who is ridiculously cute in real life) drove TWO hours to come, while the split personalities of Fancy Pancakes and Stamford Talk were chauffeured by their husband, who got sick of all of the shop talk and took off, leaving them to take the train home with Station Stops. Luckily, Fairfield County Child lives just a short stumble away.

We missed The FTF (who gave some lame excuse about celebrating his anniversary) and This Is Not Going To Help, who appears to be trapped in a cave somewhere in the Ozarks.

We even had a reporter from the local paper covering the event, which was great until I came down with a slight case of the drunks and gave her a detailed list of all of the things I'm not supposed to blog about. Then I started trying to convince Beth (who is now my new favorite person because of our shared love of Zalman King erotica) that she should host a Vibrator Night at the spa that she owns until she very nicely pointed out that the LAST THING she needed to do was associate a legitimate spa with porn, since there are already enough perverts in this world trying to get massage therapists to give them a happy ending.

But aside from that, the event was a smash, and we have decided to make this a regular thing. On the third Thursday of every month, you can find all of us at Monster B's in Stamford, Connecticut. If you're ever in the area, please, come on by.

Maybe you can help us get that cheap bastard owner to FINALLY cough up some free drinks.

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