Soul Pancake Prompt

List Five Details About Your Life That Distinguish You From Others

1. I broke my wrist while unfastening my own bra.
2. I once had a nerve bubble in the vicinity of my right elbow that was so large that the surgeon photographed it and submitted it to some freaky nerve-bubble surgery journal.
3. My witchy Scottish grandmother passed some of her gifts to me but they hardly ever work--except that I sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling that I know too much about what some people are really thinking.
4. I once saw an angel in my college apartment kitchen. He was washing his hands. Great wings but I have often wondered what he had to get clean from. That was also about the time I first started to understand that sleep was not just for the weak.
5. I write it all down. All of it.

Oooh, I Want This

Oh, Jacqueline Sanchez, you have captured my heart right here. When I am rich, I will buy this from you. I will buy TWO.

Comment of the Day

Re: organic quinoa pilaf. "Mommy, I don't want this mush to be the last thing I eat."

This Week in Wisdom

1. Never regard the threat " . . . or I'll poo in my Batman jammies" as idle.
2. Even those of us with classic profiles can suffer the indignity of nose zits.
3. Booking a holiday more than two hours in advance of departure tempts the gods to throw some mucus your way.
4. It is completely worth however much it costs to have someone else deal with the coonhound's "fish bum" issues.
5. It is not as easy as you'd think to find a red Lego lightsaber beneath the deck. It's easier to, say, find two wasp nests.
6. Wal-Mart isn't the hell hole I'd imagined it to be. For an evil empire, it is at least brightly lit and features an extensive array of baseball bats.
7. The whole "guys in trucks" thing is STILL NOT OVER.
8. You will miss the coyotes howling when you can no longer hear them.
9. The little indigenous grey squirrel? The cute little one with the white rings around his eyes? Yeah, he's a shit like the rest of them.
10. Always make it clear to the arborist that he is free to use your bathroom. Otherwise, you'll catch him peeing on the raspberry bushes outside your bedroom window when woken from your sick bed by the sound of. . . oh no is that a burst tap in the garden??

Strategic plan

Hey, DARPA plagiarized my strategic plan!



The only thing they changed was the little truck at the bottom right, which is supposed to be a station wagon.

Check out Danger Room for more. If you want to know why I read something called "DangerRoom," you've not been paying attention.

Take it easy with Malcolm Gladwell

Just finished up Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" -- and MAN did it ease my mind about not being able to afford private school. As it turns out, the incredibly successful amongst us get that way by putting in their 10,000 hours of practice and then, essentially, being in the right place at the right time.

Now all I have to do is figure out where that place is, and stand there with Kid waiting for DESTINY.


Note to Malcolm Gladwell's mommy:

Try to get him to do something with his hair.

Summer Camp Redux

This summer, I hereby pledge: no summer camp.

Instead: ice cream in the park.
Swimming outside (or inside if necessary) at least twice a week.
Bike riding without training wheels.
Teaching Elvis more stupid tricks.
Camping in the backyard.
Early morning strawberry shortcake pigouts.
Midnight awakenings to look at constellations.
Memorization of all Star Wars openings.
Building a bat house.
Learning to work a yo-yo.
Setting hula hoop records for the voodoo bungalow.
Learning to turn a cartwheel.
Baseball!
Face painting.
Bakugan tatoos on bottoms if desired.
Freezies and pop.
S'mores.
The great smell of Deep Woods Off!

Some days are better than others

Tonight, I had to pretend that I was really (*really*) the Emperor Palpatine in order to frighten Kid into bed. As I turned off the lights I could see in his wide glassy eyes that he and his shrink will be discussing this episode at some length one day.

Happy Mother's Day

Mariama makes peanut butter for a living. Do you like peanut butter? Do your kids? Why not support Mariama this mother's day.

Blessings on us all!

All Worth It

Okay, look, I know I've had some. . . unkind words for Kid's kindergarten teacher--who is in truth a lovely, intelligent and kind person with loads of imagination. It's just: Cuddly Pup. And the taxidermy. The owl pellets. The field trips to frozen dales.

Ah, but the Mother's Day gift Kid brought home from school has wiped the slate clean. Behold:



She's taught him to have a good ear:


And a good eye:


Good taste:


No flies on this Kid:



And best of all:

Embedded

Live, from the battlefield of the work-at-home mommy. THIS IS LIVE.

I'm on a conference call. Direction: Be Enthused. Order came in 10 minutes ago. I have created Eau d'Enthused by eating a chocolate Santa, drinking two cups of coffee, and doing four deep-knee bends. Am now creating Eau d'Enthused with a Chaser of Advil as a result of popping right knee from its flimsy but comfortable point of stasis.

Elvis the flatulent coonhound is taking shelter beneath my desk. He never does this. What will I discover when checking the living room? Please don't lick my feet Elvis. It's gross plus it makes me really worry about what I'll find in the living room.

Must. Close. Office. Door. The sound of not one but two toilets flushing (women cycle sympathetically, boys pee sympathetically) (why not vacuum sympathetically?) must be disguised by sudden fit of coughing.

There is mustard on my pyjamas. How??

Distracted. Come back to conversation to hear "snide, irreverent, provocative" -- is this bad or good? What I'm to do or what I'm to avoid?

The client sounds like Commissioner Gordon. Da na na na na na na na Da na na na na na na na BATMAN, Batman, batman.

Did I just hum that into the receiver?

This all sounds good. This is a fun job. I love this client. I love my friend who is also my client who is also sort of a part-time boss and so is the other friend and they both have the same name. It's a good name. Good friends. Good client. Wait: thought leadership. Write that down.

Directive two: Ask lots of questions. Not about any of the Wiggles or Commissioner Gordon.

OH SHIT IT'S THURSDAY. The cleaners are here. Please Elvis don't howl, don't--oh Elvis. Sssshhhh. Ssshhhh.

Gagging noise from Cleaner 1 tells me that there is something in the living room that is Very Bad Indeed.

IM from neice. Her mother is, like, SO UNFAIR. I know baby, I know, I IM back to someone who works with me in Los Angeles. WTF??? I get back.

I thought you were Abby, I write back. He doesn't know Abby and thinks, not for the first or last time, that I am retarded. A bad word. I remember when it was okay to say that. Perhaps my reluctance to give it up reflects a wish to be 9 again. I don't know what his excuse is.

Thank God this call is recorded, I think, not for the first or the last time. Thank God.

I hang up the phone. TWO SECONDS LATER, in comes a very wet Kid, holding two worms. Yes, I can see that it's raining. Yes, I do know that worms come out when it's raining because they'll drown otherwise and then birds will get them. Yes, it's unfair. Yes, I feel terrible for the worms. Yes, they can live in the bathtub. You're welcome.

The doorbell rings. FedEx. A manuscript that I agreed to edit about three years ago has arrived. Dread. Fear. Dread. Do not open. Forget about til next week or possibly longer. Settle down to write thought leadership on subject matter unthought of before this morning. Before 15 minutes ago.

TWO SECONDS LATER, in comes frightened Cleaner 2. Do I know there are worms in the bathtub? WORMS? I shriek. Oh, worms. Yes. Would you mind throwing them outside, please? MOMMY! Shrieks Kid I assumed was in the basement. MOMMY, IF YOU THROW THEM OUTSIDE THEY WILL DIE.

Horns of a dilemma. This is where I am. On the horns of a dilemma. Do the worms live or die?

Note to self: Potential magazine article on whether worms live or die. Somehow work in "bathtub gin."

It all comes back to gin.

Chaotic

This whole new Hasbro Channel is making me feel sort of queasy about children's programming in general. It really is all about selling toys. I know: "Duh." I kept hoping there was something else to it, something that could justify my giving in and letting Kid watch the shows that he loves.

For example: Kid does love him some Chaotic, but that show's mission is to make him bug me until I buy him a $6 pack of trading cards, despite the fact that he has no one to trade them with (other moms being brainier than me I suppose), cannot read the made-up mythological nonsense, and isn't allowed to play the game online. But every nerve ending in his tiny body is crying out about the M'arrillian Invasion and the Orb of Foresight or whatever goof is going on this week.

Idea: a trading card game based on the heroisms of everyday motherhood. "The Nexxuss of Nail-clippers." "The Fugue of Hysterical Weeping." "Dental Floss World Storm." "The Rise (and Fall) of the Matriarchy." "Acid Wash Underpants" (An Ultra Rare Card).

Say, this is fun.

Turns out that A LOT of the trading cards don't have to be modified at all to fit into this new game. Check it out--this is just at random from the "S" section:

Scepter of the Infernal Parasite
Screeching Scare
Serenade of Subordinance

Does that not sound like a typical day at your house?