Spike will try anything these days, even when I don’t offer him a dollar. He hated the California roll he had on Mother’s Day, but thankfully didn’t vomit it all over the table and, teary-eyed and puff-cheeked, managed to swallow it down. I clapped with elation. And I have faith that sushi will enter his repertoire one day, and not in a begrudging way.

He loved the kale chips but only for a day. The next time I offered he said, I don’t like them anymore. C’est la vie. Happens all the time with kids and new foods.

Peaches, the girl who eats grass, leaves and raw onion, refused to try the kale chips but did go for a few leaves raw. She brought a baggie of them to school for afternoon snack. Her idea. I felt so proud I’m sharing it with you now. (I figure I’ve created a wide enough margin out of all my neurotic failure confessions to brag once in a while.)

I had to know what her teacher thought. I imagined kvelling of the highest order, since I descend on all my childrens’ teachers to talk food. But apparently while the kids snack, Teacher busies herself at the very important Teacher’s Desk. This is what Peaches told me when I interrogated her. I guess I would too. But still. Teacher had no idea that while most of the kids munched on orange goldfish crackers, a strange and magical leafy snack was being delightfully consumed in her midst. I am a little affronted.

Finally Peaches decided she’d try a kale chip yesterday. It was love at first bite. She eschewed the raw variety and insisted I videotape the occasion, which I did, thrice.

Then she asked for them this morning as soon as she woke up. I guess this means I’ll be schlepping to Whole Foods again today. Honestly I’d rather laze in bed, watching the sun filter through my skylights, listen to the birds and lawnmowers, procrastinate embarking on my next project by blogging and reading one of my umpteen library books, Bringing Up Bebe, which begs discussing and makes me crave brie. Oh, and nap. Napping is such a luxurious, precious pastime. I would love to take it slow today and not rush around like a spastic, irritable freak. I’d like a day off from that please.

xx

P.S. Here’s how I make kale chips—
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Throw your bunch of curly kale into the sink and wash them.
Tear the leaves from the ribs in chunks. Compost the ribs or do whatever you like with them.
Spread out the kale on two cookie sheets. A single layer is best but don’t sweat it if the leaves are a bit crowded.
Pour some EVOO over them, maybe a couple Tablespoons. Eyeball it.
Sprinkle some Celtic Sea salt over them, maybe a half teaspoon.
Massage the oil and salt into the leaves, rubbing them tenderly till all the leaves glisten and your hands feel like they’ve just returned from a Sardinian spa.
Pop the lot into the oven for 25 minutes and go read a good book.
Test with a spatch to make sure everything’s crispy. If not, remove the done chips and replace the still soft chips into the oven.
Turn off the oven and let them dry out. Then get them out in another 10-15 minutes or so.
YUM.

Hey, so I’m having this urge—almost physical, with my heart pounding—weird? Pitiful? To rejoin facebook, what with my renewed mission to get myself out there as an artist and writer and blogger. More people’d know I’d blogged, etc., and I could post that pic of Peaches’s new shoes, and get back into the fray, the flow, the party. Problem is, I’m afraid I’m really just stirring up trouble for myself. as if I am on the verge of tackling a new project—the 80s collection—and the WIN side of me wants to do this but the LOSE side of me says not so fast Buster, and is gearing up to distract and otherwise sabotage my Win self, who is trying so fucking hard, or at least it feels that way inside my brain. It’s bad enough to check how many tweets and likes my posts get on the blog, but on top of that to check in with facebook to see how many people like my updates, or write on my wall, and if it’s zero, how that has been known to crush me. Plus my penchant for flying off the handle or being inappropriately uncensored, in public, in a place that I have no control over, which are all the reasons I deactivated in the first place…okay maybe I just talked myself out of rejoining. Thanks Hunny!

xx

P.S. My daughter’s first pair of heels. Am I screwed? Or am I simply encouraging her artistic self-expression? The girl loves dress-up. Maybe it doesn’t help that I just listened to the Jillian Lauren WTF podcast. I cannot wait to read her books.

P.P.S. Bryan’s response: “Glad I could help.”

P.P.P.S. Asking for donations in a blog post is ineffective. In case you were considering it. As Spike would say, Epic Failure. Feel free to prove me wrong here. (I had to link it. Just in case.)

I think that’s also why for so long I developed crushes on pop stars and actors, and regular schmoes too. I longed to be validated, rescued. But it’s the work that really validates. Doing the work, rescuing yourself. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to know this in every cell in my body. I even found this Deepak Chopra article
that details the correlation between self-pity and self-esteem through pro-action.

This morning while perusing an article about Obama’s declaration of support for gay marriage (hoorah!) I saw this ad for Bank of America. This guy, the owner of something successful called Pink’s was quoted as saying, “Success means never assuming you’re entitled to it. You have to work for it.”

Like, duh, right? Because the truth is, Lena Dunham left behind a class full of kids with money, parentage, opportunities. All of the head starts she had. But she worked her ass off, and I’m sure there are a few classmates who envy her now.

I can’t hang my failures on my lack of grooming. The math don’t fit no more. I used to buy it. Now it’s all on me. Mortifying and yet liberating.

The media compares Dunham’s work to Cheever, Woody Allen and also to one of my favorite comedians, Louis CK. He’s another one who works non-stop. He produces so much new material, all in the name of providing for his daughters, and other successful stand-ups are blown away by his level of productivity.

Anyway, this is just to say I get it now. If I have it in me, I have it in me. I might be a lazy fuck and get nowhere. Maybe I can stop fighting myself then and accept my lot in life if it turns out to be true.

Okay time to wake Spike and make his lunch. Running late!

xx

It’s mid-life crisis time, it’s mid-life crisis time, da da da da dee doe, it’s time to start the show…

To the tune of Howdy Doody, playing in my head on this most bountiful of days, the sixth anniversary of my daughter’s birth. Am I thinking of her? No. Me! Me! Always me. Her dinner is planned—chicken wings, rice, succotash, ice cream. Her school snack is bought—Mommy was too nervousy breakdowny to bake something homemade. Maybe if her party were on the horizon instead of just over I’d be a baking machine. But I’m still hungover from the emotional intensity of putting together the whole fairy fashion-tale thing. The apples alone, oh my God. Gosh. Oh my gosh. That’s what we’re supposed to say.

And speaking of emotional intensity, I’ve been having a major crisis, as I mentioned in the previous post, all in my head (as usual). The surrounding players are largely unharmed and by looking at me you might just think I’m tired. Or a slob.

Most of my worst crises, if not all, have to do with the inner workings—self-esteem, ego, self-perception—of my still-forming mind. I say still-forming, because I finally got my life-shit together in a functional, quasi-adult way at the age of twenty-one, which makes me, in a born-again sense, only twenty-two. How’s that for a concept? Eh?

By that logic, this is no mid-life crisis at all! It’s a post-adolescent thing! Cake, right? Hell no. I hated every minute of adolescence. Except that first bong hit. That was cool. All that hope infusing my brain cells that, sadly always ended in paranoia and grout-scrubbing. With a toothbrush. Yet again, this burst dam of sanity might be, as Byron Katie calls it, “the thought that kicked me out of heaven.”

I alluded in the last post that since it’s not very typical anymore for me to experience great bouts of self-loathing, in the past year anyway, that it must be my dieting that caused last week’s upheaval. Or maybe it was the batch of fudgie squares I baked—grain-free! Low sugar! Organic eggs! But still sugar! It could be the pollen, the cloudy weather. The increased exercise, which has ceased to be a reality because now I’m just an exhausted old lump. Who knows? I’m trying to say that I really don’t know why I am back in this vortex of depression. I just am. And as usual I am trying to gain some insight from it that can catapult me to a better, wiser place.

It doesn’t help that the edges of this thing are ringing with the whispered judgment that I am heinously self-involved and should just cross City Avenue, head into West Philly and volunteer with those who have less than I do. Of course I should. I should! But I don’t. I should write more, garden, take walks, call a therapist, clean the house, lay down, take a friend to the movies, stop feeling sorry for myself. So many shoulds it’s driving me crazy.

Sarah Silverman said, I heard this just now on Marc Maron—I’m listening to old WTF podcasts, she said that she learned from her therapist that we’re all looking at the future through a pinhole. This was in response to his question, what’s going on with you next? In your career? She doesn’t know, she says, and she’s not obsessing because of this pinhole metaphor she learned. It means that we cannot predict what’s going to happen in our lives, nor could we ever, so stop trying.

Look back on your last decade. Could you have said with conviction that you knew what would happen? I couldn’t. I couldn’t predict that I’d be getting therapeutic life advice from Sarah Silverman. Her Ron Jeremey pinky finger joke is etched across my brain. You can experience it here, at 5:26. The future, she says, unfolds no matter what you surmise. I’d add, so just follow your bliss as much as you can. This is in the hope that Joseph Campbell was right about that. And that you have the luxury of following your bliss at all. I have a couple hours a day in which to do so. Here I am. Twenty-one minutes to go! Tickticktick…

There are so many possibilities for us and we narrow in on one, maybe two that just have to manifest or else we think our lives will end. This is true for me. I have ten rejections on my novel so far and if it doesn’t get bought, I will surely wind up training as a barista at Starbucks. It’s novel or Frappuccinos, and that’s that. Because I have to start bringing home some bacon starting in September, or else we are screwed.

That’s the premise of this whole thing. I hate putting all my eggs in this one basket. I know it’s masochistic, unrealistic, and something else that ends in “istic” so there can be a poetry slam vibe happening. Pessimistic.

One of my earliest rejectors said that my book was not “breakout material.” I’d never heard this term and looked it up. It means a thing that stands out from the rest. In my internet travels I eventually came across a book called Writing the Breakout Novel. The local library had the workbook version, which I borrowed and proceeded to plod my way through over the course of a week, including a lonely weekend when Bryan took the kids to Brooklyn. The book suggests putting tension on every page, which I can get with. Make your character more heroic. This would definitely help my heroine. Have someone die. Break an arm or leg. Raise the stakes, then raise them again.

I wrote thirty pages of notes. I added a death, a broken ankle, a badly bruised and sprained shoulder, a stroke, and finally, a tree falling through the protagonist’s roof during a storm. I added heroic qualities, found places where I could insert more tension, and raised the stakes.

Even though I didn’t make any of these changes to the actual manuscript, I mapped out a huge revision in my notebook that threatened to tear apart the novel I’d already written. I could see it toppling like a detonated dollhouse. I went to integrate my new ideas. And realized I had two different books.

So I started writing another book. I got five chapters in and lost steam, feeling my voice suffocating under layers of contrived breakout techniques, not to mention the fact that I was rewriting a book that hadn’t been solidly rejected yet. There are still six publishers to go.

I closed the new document, put my notebook away and piled the Breakout Novel Workbook with the stuff to be returned to the library. I felt confused and discouraged. Overwhelmed and paralyzed.

High stakes life and death fiction is not typically found in my wheelhouse as the hip kids say these days. I’m more into relationships, emotions, crises of self-worth, status, romance. Heroic journeys to be sure—they fill me with highs and lows—but along an interior, often lonesome terrain. There’s high drama in simply trying to get my daughter dressed for school, for instance. It feels like a life or death situation. But is anyone interested in reading about it?

Perusing Netflix in my burgeoning funk, I wound up watching, of all things, Tiny Furniture, an award winning indie feature film by that girl who does Girls, which I haven’t seen, because I don’t have cable and haven’t watched on the internet. Yet. I’ve since heard the intro about six times on NPR.

In other words, the movie blew me away. Its stakes were, on the surface, low, its hero wasn’t, in any overt way, heroic in the breakout sense of the word, as Donald Maass seems to have meant in his how-to books. Not much happens at all. No one dies. Except a hamster. No one breaks a limb. And yet I was riveted. There was tension throughout, in the way everyone related to each other. The girl is the female Woody Allen I once aspired to be, back when I was a film major at Syracuse University.

With this in mind, I felt weirdly humiliated by her success. Because I never got anywhere near to being Woody Allen. I never made a feature film. I wrote a couple screenplays but they sucked. I hadn’t even found my voice back in the late 80s. I was still trying to be somebody else—mostly Madonna.

I thought, Lena’s nailed exactly what I’m trying to do in my work. She reminded me to show the humiliation of what it’s like to be me, floundering, trying to be my best me and failing, yearning to be graceful, or at least wise in my self-acceptance.

I was thirty by the time I stumbled upon my voice in a Gotham Writer’s Workshop. This voice was naive, arrogant, confused. Well-meaning, satirically observant—humor amidst the pathos kind of thing. I’d written a personal essay about the time I slept with the lead singer of Depeche Mode when I was fifteen and something clicked into place. I have a collection of essays from this time period—the asymmetrical 1980s. Almost twenty of them that I still plan (yearn) to shape into something publishable, marketable, breakout-able.

As the Tiny Furniture credits rolled, my thirty pages of breakout notes felt like a wrong turn down a dead end. Not that broken limbs, dead bodies and fallen trees are to be dismissed. They have their rightful place, maybe even in one of my projects. I’m kind of into the fallen tree, to be honest.

But, and I can stand back a little and see its trajectory now, the self-pity sprouted, a sturdy green shoot in the dirt of my confusion. I thought, how is it that I’m still trying to figure it all out at forty-two, when I thought I’d already figured it out, and this Lena Dunham girl has absolutely nailed it at twenty-three? That’s how old she was when she premiered the film at SXSW.

If you’re reminding me through the screen that I have two young kids, I hear you. My rational self knows it’s irrational, this unfair comparison. But wait. It gets worse before it gets better. It’s just how I roll.

I was gobsmacked at how self-knowledgeable she is at such an early age. When I was in my early twenties I was lost, yearning, planning a wedding, grinding my teeth, heading faithfully to weekly therapy from my Carroll Gardens apartment. I hadn’t even discovered my writing talent yet. I had no idea I could write. Or liked it. Or any of it.

And then there was the revolution of this young woman’s body. Holy SHIT, I thought as she revealed her rumply dumpling onscreen again and again. It was nothing short of magical. Talk about a breakout. And here I was since the age of fifteen wishing for lipo on my thighs, so filled with disdain for my body, berating myself for not looking like Elle Macpherson in a yellow Body Glove bikini; then yoga-ing, running, kettle-belling. Oh yes it’s good for me, moving around, dancing as fast as I can. Endorphins! Strengthening! But come on, who are we kidding? I want to look hard. Hot. Sexy. Then Lena Dunham comes along and communicates this idea that, Hey. This is what I look like, and I’m not really interested in turning myself inside out to be someone else. I’m going to show my rumply. I’m going to feature it in my feature film.

I was blown away. Filled with envy at her bravery, her vision, her confidence, her genius.

Well you know me, I went on a mad Google after that. And learned things that filled me with such a weighty sense of inadequacy that I spent the rest of the week, as described in the previous post, weeping, yelling at the children, and cursing a blue streak. I even wished I were dead for how worthy I felt as a writer by then. I am the meanest when it comes to myself. I thought that chapter was closed. Ended. Kaput. But no. Maybe I will never escape.

That apartment in Carroll Gardens was a twenty-minute walk to my workplace back in the late 90s. I worked at a school. A private school. An elite, progressive, ridiculously expensive private school called Saint Ann’s. While I was planning my wedding, Lena Dunham was attending fourth grade there. By the time I left to pursue acting and then writing, she was just a freshman.

I know in my rational mind that Lena’s success and her privileged youth—two working artist parents, SoHo loft, money, education, travel, creative support—have nothing to do with me, who was raised by two well-meaning but ill-suited parents, both of whom suffered from depression and anxiety, and who didn’t mean to undermine me or objectify me or not take me seriously but did anyway. Maybe the dysfunction I grew up with cursed me with this particular brand of masochism where I take other peoples’ successes personally. Or maybe I was just born that way.

This is why I love Marc Maron so much. It’s his frigging gig. He has a joke about it in one of his sets. I swear one day I am going to write him a fan letter. I keep writing it in my head. It’s going to be LONG.

Somehow though, I listen to Maron’s podcast and feel inspired. He’s nearly fifty and just hitting his stride. Listening to him, I feel like belong. Like I’ve found my tribe in his underdog point of view, and in his wacky, angry, passionate, searching, brutally honest comic guests.

But then I watch this beautiful indie film by this incredibly young Oberlin graduate and feel like I’m the most deluded chump who ever chumped. WTF?

When I started working at Saint Ann’s I taught first grade. The world, I realized, was these kids’ oyster. I remember thinking this as I watched them dissect owl pellets for a “Night” curriculum project as casting directors from Dreamworks hovered in the corner taking notes and whispering about the kids. I so wanted them to pick me. They wanted little Sophie.

My next thought was, well why not me too? That was the moment I finally came clean with myself, admitted that I wanted to be an actress, and signed up for a summer conservatory program, reasoning that if it didn’t work out, what came next would be honest and authentic, since this was the first authentic, honest career choice I’d made after a string of choices I’d quit—graphic design, advertising, art education…

If these kids could inherit the world, then I could too. I treated my time at Saint Ann’s not as work, but as my own education, and nearly got fired in the process. I observed, not unlike a kid locked outside a sweetshop, because although I felt inspired by my surroundings, I did not feel like a card carrying member.

My fellow students included Zac Posen, Paz De La Huerta, Jack Dafoe, Eva Amurri, Lola, Stella and Vito Schnabel. Ry Russo-Young. Jemima Kirke. And Lena Dunham. Before them there were Spike and Joie Lee. Jennifer Connelly. Mike D.

I worked inside a fairy tale. And there were many times I felt like an evil queen, desperately seeking counsel in a hand mirror, and the mirror always let me know that I was not as fair as the others. I became so tunnel-visioned I couldn’t even see that a creative, valid and valued world existed outside its hallowed halls. Madge herself never went to Saint Ann’s. It was like I brainwashed myself into believing I was a piece of shit, just because I wasn’t a Saint Ann’s or Ivy League alum. I’d done this to myself my whole life. My time at Saint Ann’s helped me to hone my technique.

And so, last week, my Lena Dunham jealousies piled on top of each other and nearly drowned me, even though I absolutely adore her and can’t wait to watch Girls. Really. If I can survive it.

And here I am now, typing this gargantuan blog post. I don’t know if I am anywhere nearer to clarity. Maybe a little actually. Maybe a teeny bit. Seeing it all typed out at least organizes its flow.

All I know for sure is that the wise voice inside me, currently a little anemic, makes herself heard like the tiniest Who in Whoville. She shouts from the top of a crooked striped spire, bleats into a little horn: just keep writing!

I cringe typing this all, because the future is only a pinhole. What the hell do I know?

xx

A few Halloweens ago in Prospect Park I saw a yellow labbish type dog in a pink tutu. I took a picture. I thought it one of the most heartwarming images I’d ever seen. One of those sweet confectionaries that makes you smile even when you’re in the middle of a pity party. I am halfway motivated to troll through my archives, locate it and post it here. But small people are slamming doors and stomping and screaming downstairs. And it is Mother’s Day, a day of rest, right? A day to luxuriate, eat bacon and blog.

Ah yes. Here she is. At least I hope it’s a she.

I felt compelled to copy the canine ballerina look in miniature for Nyla. She was a sport, wearing the tutu for quite a while till Spike came home and restored her dignity. He’d been at another party down the street and hadn’t been in on the plan, see.

There’s Nyla below greeting arriving guests. She was very polite. Didn’t try to eat anyone, didn’t even growl or bark, except at the vacuum cleaner before the party. God I love that dog.

We gave feather boas as party favors and then started the strip-tease activity set to Christina Aguilera music, from her recent oeuvre. So titillating! The parents who chose to stay especially appreciated it. How thoughtful, they murmured, about the pole we’d rented from the local fire department.

I don’t have pictures of the pole because I am joking. Ha! But the boas. That was real as you can see. Woohoo! as Xtina would say.

Between nibbles of puff-pastry-wrapped mini sausages and juice-box sips—this was no Primal party—the girls did actually create dazzling paper crowns. Very fashion. I only spent $85 on sparkly supplies. A bargain! You don’t even know if I’m joking! Neither do I!

Peaches was adamant that we have pinkie cupcakes. It was far easier than the Hello Kitty cake, the flower cake, and the butterfly cake from yesteryears. Phew.

Peaches is not quite a woman. She is still a girl. But the pose captured below shimmers with the essence of jaded teen. I am so done for. No really I adore the kid. I do. We just spend far too much time together. Can’t wait for summer! HA!

Then there was the whole thing where Peaches insisted we have white-chocolate-dipped candy apples. With sprinkles. She’d read about them in this book. She tore out the recipe poster and gave it to me. For a long time I could not wrap my head around these apples. I’d never heard of white chocolate-dipped apples, and envisioned a lot of weird-tasting, wasted apples. I suggested apple slices half-dipped in white chocolate artfully arranged on a pretty platter. Peaches said no. I suggested strawberries dipped in chocolate. Elegant! Peaches said no. The whole point, she explained, was to have a whole apple on a stick.

Swamp chicken counseled that Peaches is our princess and should have the treat she wants for her party. I felt conflicted about that. On one hand I don’t want to raise a deprived child. On the other, I don’t want an entitled brat. Minimizing my resentment and/or guilt is also relevant. Parenting decisions are so hard sometimes. But I usually defer to Swamp Chicken sooner or later. He’s the steady sturdy one.

The scary thing was that Peaches began uttering a phrase, with attitude, that rattled my soul: “It’s my party,” she’d say. Like a warning, an ominous prediction for the year 2021. She used it during the Great Apple Debate and again in Kitchen Kapers when we were shopping for sprinkles. She spied the large, regular-sized cupcake wrappers and decided we should have them, when I suggested we get the gold mini wrappers, for the mini cupcakes I planned to bake.

She said, “But Mom. It’s MY party,” very insolent, and I shivered. But not before explaining that since I am the one doing all the work, and since we only have mini-cupcake pans that cost me a a fortune at Williams-Sonoma before I knew any better, we will ALWAYS and FOREVERMORE make mini cupcakes, until it has become spectacularly apparent that I have gotten my money’s worth, until we’re stacked to the ceilings in miniature, sugary fluff, and when she is all grown up she can make all the regular sized cupcakes she wants. Gosh darn it.

Perhaps this is partly why I spent the week leading up to the party weeping and yelling at the children between fits of shirking my motherly duties—cooking, supervising, not cursing a blue streak… If you’re wondering at my loss of emotional calm, I’ll tell you this: I tried dieting recently. You know, eating less. Exercising more. Bikini season prep*. The emotional tailspin it threw me into was about as attractive as our compost heap. I have so much to say on the subject, but it veers so violently from the topic at hand that I’ll save it for another post. (*Of course it could have been triggered by the six homemade fudge squares I couldn’t resist, hot from the oven. Or it could be hormones, age, external stimuli, pollen. I might never know.)

Finally the day was upon me and it worked out, the apple thing, with far more ease than I’d thought. I felt silly for fretting. Really silly. It was Swamp Chicken’s suggestion to bag them and give them as favors instead of serving them as party fare, which eased most of my angst. The man is brilliant. Someone should give him money. A lot of frigging money.

In the end everyone seemed to appreciate the unusual apples and I thanked Peaches for planning such a creative, imaginative party. I love you so much, sweet girl. You’re so fashion.

Happy Mother’s Day. Thanks for playing along. May all your dreams come true.

xxx

I’ve become one of those (hopefully) harmless weirdos who baby-talks in an insufferably high-pitched squeal to her dog, out loud, in public (as if I didn’t embarrass the children enough). To the tune of, “Who makes the very best poopy-doopy?” And, “Who’s the cutie-wootiest doggiest-woggiest?” And, when I unleash her after a walk at the foot of the driveway and she bounds toward the backyard like a greyhound-pomeranian mix, “Who runs like the wind?” And later, she licks my face, making sure like a doggie in the frenzied throes of OCD, to try and reach my brain through my left nostril. Repeatedly. (She’s almost there.)

It’s maybe disgusting. I admit it.

Still, “WHO’S A GIRL!? WHO’S A GIRLY WHIRLY WHIRL??”

So that’s the story with that. We even took Nyla with us into town for an urban walk this afternoon. I wore my new Tom’s shoes and felt fashion. I got that usage from Peaches and I’m sticking with it. It don’t take much these days. To you know, feel fashion.

There she is, lounging on an Adirondack chair we scavenged from the side of the road. Oh my goodness! It’s Nyla! She’s so furry. She’s so blond. Brigitte Bar-dog! My teeth hurt from not eating her all up.

I asked Swamp Chicken if he loves Nyla and he shrugged. “Eh,” he said. “I just feel like she’s someone else’s dog.” I said, “Whose?” feeling a bit taken aback that he is not swooning over this animal like I am, even though I finally got the memo back in ’02 that we are NOT the same person, my husband and me. He replied, “Yours I guess,” and my heart swelled despite my indignation. (I just knew he’d say mine!) Then I petted her and sniffed her fur, upon which lingered the scent of sweet sweet berries from her grooming a few days ago. What a good doggie! Oh Nyla!

Okay I’ll stop.

But I’m not the only one going bananas over their pet. My dad! Holy fart-balls! And my stepmom! Got a kitten! This is huge news, in my brain anyway. My dad, in my lifetime, could barely deal with other humans—close relations or strangers—and never had a pet, though he stated—like an eerie warning—on numerous occasions that his favorite dog breed was the German Shepherd. I believe a flash-fantasy erupted in my childhood brain of this dog attacking me on his orders when I left the light on in the bathroom.

But now he’s got a Peke faced Persian named Harry who does not frighten me, and who he adores so much that he can’t make it all the way through evening services without worrying about his boy, and even leaving before the Aleinu. I am very happy for him. Poo poo as his ex-wife (my mother) would say.

Peaches and Spike loved meeting him over the weekend. Meow Harry! What a smush-face.

Okay moving on. Here’s the part where I ask you for money.

No really.

Wait!

First I’m going to show you my bruise. As a segue. Not as a guilt trip, I swear. Can you see that shadowy spot above my freakishly bulbous wrist bone? Do any of you have over-large wrist bones? I think I have met one other like me over the years. One, she whispers. 

It’s my kettlebell bruise. I’m a righty. Which means I’m a spaz when it comes to completing cleans on my left. The bell bangs my wrist over and over. Do I feel like a badass all the same? Yes I do. I use the word clean, effortlessly in a sentence, as kettlebell jargon. As if I know what I’m talking about. Plus, Lifting heavy things will do that to you. It must be all those endorphins.

A spastic bad-ass but still. And a bit of a goof too. Can you be goofy and a bad-ass at the same time? Or are you a goof posturing like a bad-ass as you smash a twenty-pound bowling ball into your arm again and again with a stupid hormone-induced smile on your face? And does this perhaps simply make you a loveable loser? Or a dorky, delusional winner? Whichever it is, I need to improve my form before I seriously injure myself. Because endorphins are addictive.

My trainer/instructor is this lovely woman named Michelle who has trained rigorously so I trust her when she says that lots of beginners go through this while learning proper technique.

Well Yoga, I’m going to take a lesson from you and listen to this bruise. I’m going to take it seriously when it bites. This bruise gives me pause when I think further about going to Crossfit classes, which employ all kinds of crazy kettlebell shenanigans that titillate and terrify me all at once. This is especially beneficial since A) a good friend of mine hurt her shoulder pretty badly at her first ever Crossfit class, and B) a brand spanking new Crossfit is opening up just down the street from me. OMG!

{By the way, blogging these past half-dozen years has gently pried my eyes open to the fact that I am prone to become intensely focused, not unlike a recovering addict, on certain pursuits—yoga, paleo, yoga, Pema Chodron, yoga, Byron Katie, etc., some of which I stick with and some of which I abandon (with abandon). Google at your own risk.}

So every year Trainer Michelle puts a team together to do Pushups for Charity, so I joined the team. I mean how could I not? I’m always feeling like a stingy old asshole for not ever giving money when someone telemarkets us—wait, scratch that. I don’t ever feel bad for not giving when someone telephones us for money, which is about four times a day, every day. But I do want to contribute something to somewhere, and this came along and it felt pretty right. I’ve got a page where you can donate here. It’s hooked up to your Amazon account and couldn’t be easier.

The gist is that we perform as many push-ups as we can in ninety seconds, and you can donate per push-up or give any amount you choose, the latter being the option I personally find to be less of a hassle. The event will take place on Saturday, May 19. I am training for it presently. So far I can do thirty-three military push-ups in ninety seconds, plus 7 on my knees. So my number to beat is forty. Boo ya!

All the money goes to The Boot Campaign, which benefits wounded soldiers. This includes the ones with emotional issues like PTSD, which is something that resonates with me. Articles like this one in the New York Times I found to be particularly moving.

And there we are—Team Performance Fitness. Training. Vigorously. 

And there we are again at kettlebell class. In the picture below you can see that I’ve already scored a pair of KettleGuards for my bruised forearms as I hone my clean technique. Yes, you have my number: ANY EXCUSE TO BUY GEAR.

Like I said, it don’t take much.

Peace! {and fashion,}

I have deleted entire posts in this taut, teeming state of mind. And then I regret deleting. I regret it because I always envision one hater. This hater assumes different forms but he/she always thinks the same about me: that I am an idiot. No one’s ever said as much. Sure I’ve had the odd few who ask me, “How can you share all that personal stuff?” But they don’t usually know me very well. If they did, they wouldn’t need to ask. It’s in my DNA.

So in the interest of respecting that DNA I’m going to try and turn over a new leaf and be more truthful about who I am, and just be the person who says things that later make her cringe, and stop trying to be that quiet motherfucker over there in the corner who always looks really polished and stylish but never adds anything to the conversation and has no regrets other than wishing she didn’t cut her own bangs.

Owning and accepting that I am not the most graceful swan in the alphabet soup has got to be beneficial for someone, if only so they can say after a flickering jolt of identification that they are sure glad they’re not me. I guess it’s about waving my freak flag and waving it high. Connecting with other real humans out there. I can’t do that by censoring myself.

So back to the cringeworthy stuff. In the last post I wrote, “I remain obsessed for the time being with Marc Maron, convinced we are twinnish, that we share a kinship that will somehow inevitably signal and symbolize my imminent success as a writer…”

The very next day I got my first response to the fifth draft of my novel, and as if the universe opened its starry mouth and hocked a loogey on my head, it was a rejection. If you’re counting at home, it was my ninth overall. I am catching up to Kathryn Stockett. Not bad company, right? So that’s what happened with that. I wrote, I cringed, I felt like an asshole, and I wrote some more in an effort to wipe the universe’s boogers from my face.

In other news, Spike started Little League and it’s taking over our lives. It’s insidious! I’m not going to get into his playing or anything like that here. Suffice to say there are games and practices all the time and we are not a very sporty family. I do appreciate the value of team sports. Let’s leave it at that.

Lucky number 7 up at bat ladies and gentlemen.

3. Those cows make my favorite yogurt.

My favorite yogurt sells for $4.39 at Whole Foods, and over $6 at an even snootier natural foods place nearish-by. But if you drive to Seven Stars Farm, which happens to be forty minutes from my house, it’s $2.50. And they’ll sell you cases of mixed expiration dates, low weight or broken seals for a discount. This is very exciting to me.

I bought three cases for $43 last week. That’s $2.30 per container. Score! That’s my fridge. Drool.

And at the opposite end of the drool spectrum, there’s the possum that died in our driveway this morning.

When Bryan found it, it was still moving, staggering a step or two and then keeling over, again and again. Animal control told him on the phone that it’d cost $65 to remove it from our property, but if it’s in the street then it would be free. My husband, being an economical man, nudged it into the road with a shovel, where it breathed its last breath while we made jokes with a passing neighbor about playing possum. It just died while we were making fun of it. It was so unceremonious but happily surreal in that way mornings are when the unusual occurs after a string of mind-numbing sameness.

Animal control called for a squad car. Nyla and I waited while Bryan sped off to work on his bike, his hands washed of the whole deathly ordeal. Officer F___ arrived a few minutes later. He was one of those orangey fellows with long teeth, yellow eyelashes and a beanpole body that sways like a willow tree and can’t seem to stand up straight without its owner widening his stance. He asked me to gather a trash bag. The only ones we had were tall kitchen bags—the girly white ones that don’t fill you with confidence that they can effectively encase a dead possum.

I told him I’d get something better. Something thicker. After fruitless rummaging in Bryan’s tool area I returned with two enormous Lego bags and before Officer F___ got a shovel from his trunk, he asked where the children were. I told him they were asleep, and he said, “Well just keep them inside because if it isn’t dead, I’m going to shoot it.”

I howled with laughter. Why I’m not sure. Maybe because the thing was obviously dead. Maybe because I am a crazed housewife who’s so bored out of her skull that the idea of shooting a possum at the foot of my driveway while my children sleep is thoroughly amusing.

Officer F___ didn’t have to shoot it because it was indeed dead as dead can be, and not playing possum. HAHAHAHAHA. I doubled the mustard-yellow bags and held them open while the policeman shoved the rag-doll body of the possum inside, complaining that he could’ve used a bigger shovel. I laughed maniacally some more, joking that I’d like to bring the bag into Spike’s room and wake him up with the promise of new Legos! When Officer F___ didn’t laugh I apologized for joking, explaining that it was my coping mechanism.

For coping with, you know, LIFE.

I don’t see how the day could get any more exciting than that.

But who knows?

Love and kisses,

The good news is that I’m spending my non-blogging time being a more or less decent housewife and mother. Or maybe that’s not even true. (*See previous post.) No, the weather is warm and I’ve been taking hour-long brisk walks, lip-syching with the cast of Glee. These walks help me keep in shape for my new fitness regime—my kettlebells class. I go once a week and it’s one hour of ass-kicking swinging fun. We do routines with names like Turkish Get-Up, and well, I can’t remember any others. If I were doing Crossfit, which I am not because I can’t afford it and it’s just far enough away from my house to be a pain in the ass, I might be doing routines with names like Nasty Girl. Doesn’t that sound like waist-whittling fun? I think it might kill me.

Yoga has left the building of my universe, I guess it’s official. No longer is asana on my menu and my spine is eternally grateful, though I miss all those kick-assy arm balances. I tried in vain for two years to fit myself into its postures and poses and liquid flowy moves. I bought blocks, straps and private consultations. I went to workshops, trainings and back doctors. I paid dearly in tears, pain and money. I blogged about it. Now my class card remains frozen in mid-year and I wish I could get a refund, but the policy is strict. I’ll have to chalk it up to karma. Or something. Obsessive compulsion. Maybe I will return and stay vigilant—refusing to bend my spine in any direction that we both know will result in days and nights of aches and whimpering complaints. The money thing niggles at me. Or maybe I’ll chalk it up as a loss and never buy any year-long fitness card again. Too risky. My back though. It’s no longer a regular topic of conversation. I am thankful for that.

Anyway. So I’m back, luxuriating in the written word, sharing with you all. Hmmm…. (That’s me luxuriating.) I remain obsessed for the time being with Marc Maron, convinced we are twinnish, that we share a kinship that will somehow inevitably signal and symbolize my imminent success as a writer. I may be deluded on this, certainly narcissistic, especially as I am still waiting to hear back from my agent regarding the last batch of publishers she sent my fifth draft to. Add masochistic? But at the moment (maybe it’s hormones, or my allergies) I am willing to share.

I guess that’s the thing with Marc Maron. He’s the neurotic, narcissistic Jew with the very cool job of interviewing other comics, writers and actors. I know I mentioned this earlier but these things circle in my brain like turkey vultures. Maybe it’s a stone I turn over in my mind, examining its facets so that I can try to absorb its brilliance. I love good conversation. And that’s what these podcasts provide me with—really satisfying conversation, where one or the other participants says things to which I nod vigorously, thinking, exactly. Chris Rock of all people reassured me that living in my head, isolating myself, listening to music and allowing that lonely fog to seep into my bones is about the best thing I can do for myself as an artist. It’s required. Rainn Wilson was another good one. That man is scarily well-adjusted. Who knew? I like it when they talk about spirituality. Anyway, living in the burbs among people who largely are not artists can be isolating. Then again, living in Brooklyn can be isolating when all the artists you know from your kid’s preschool are far more successful than you are. I can’t win, in other words. Except when I go inside and swim around, sealing myself off from the world.

But it’s weird. You seal yourself off not only from the world, but from material that feeds your productivity. So you strive to strike a balance. You go out in the world, stumble, get angry, say something stupid, witness mind-blowing idiocy, and then retreat again, and that nugget of searing regret or anger or wonder or obsession feeds you, feeds the mechanism inside you that makes you unable to resist the lure of writing shit down.

That’s what I came here to talk about in the first place—regret. I said something stupid at the family seder the other night. I bitched about the artificial ingredients of a box of macaroons that were blazingly bright and obviously store-bought. This was to my niece, who’d asked me what was in them. “Crap, probably,” I replied, smug, full of my Primal self. (Ew.) “Who brought them?” she asked, and from behind me, my step-sister-in-law (in my family we have hyphens galore), says, “I did,” to which I flinched where I stood and mouthed the word SHIT and turned as pink as her offerings. I felt horrible. I berated myself for the rest of the night, telling myself that old standby, “Elise, you should know better!” That is one of my religions of masochism. My foot-in-mouth disease has caused me to visibly cringe on numerous occasions throughout my life, not only in the moment the foot enters my mouth, but also in the replaying in my mind, sometimes years later. Here, let me tell you about each and every one of them!

Wait, I’m not going to do that.

I wanted to apologize to her but a summit with Bryan and then another with my step-brother-in-law (not her husband but my step-sister’s) convinced me it would make matters worse because if she didn’t hear me then I’m stirring up trouble that was never there in the first place, and two, if she had heard me she might tell me off and who needs that? Still, I felt horrible. Like, when am I going to learn that the world at large, in this culture anyway, eats artificial, chemicalized, factory-created food that I personally won’t anymore, but did happily only a few years ago? When am I going to greet reality, have some compassion and stop being such a food snob? (Note: this is NOT your invitation to agree with this passage in the comments section. I get it. Painfully so.)

I don’t know. But I am working on it. Thankfully I didn’t lose any sleep over it, and the pink cookie-bringer and I did converse smilingly afterward which reassured me that I am not a total asshole.

The good news about me being so hyper-sensitive and unforgiving about these relatively little slip-ups is that hopefully I am not making bigger messes the way I am sure I used to. At least I know in the old days I ruminated with my heart quickening over things I said and immediately regretted. Bryan will attest to this. The words sounded fine in my head the second before I spewed them, I swear! I was also probably drunk. That doesn’t happen anymore. I’m super-bore. (Again, no need to agree with this in the comments section.) But this is yet another tick in the positives column for living a fairly isolated existence as a suburban SAHM—the less I socialize, the fewer chances I have to say something stupid.

And the more opportunity I have to troll the pages of Celebitchy, where I can witness, horror-struck, the choices of famous people that are so regrettable it must eat at them like cancer. Do you know about Samantha Brick? How about Lara Flynn Boyle? I’ve never felt more grateful to be me with my asinine quip about pink cookies.

At the end of the day though, I have to keep being me, and the me I’d like to be is the me who knows, finally and irrevocably in my bones, that it is much safer and kinder to keep my mouth shut unless I have something insulting to say that I know everyone in the room will agree with.

My niece, the stinker, liked those pink macaroons better than the all-natural homemade batch I’d brought.

Thank you for bearing with me.

Love,

This wouldn’t be a big deal if he were say, fourteen. If he were fourteen, it’d be expected, although still sad and anxiety-provoking. I don’t want teenagers who tell me to fuck off. But still, the kid is a newly minted eight. That’s him in the birthday sombrero.

It was his first fuck you. And now that I think about it, I could hear through those two staccato syllables, his exploratory joy, a heady exhilaration to be hanging out there on the precipice of adult-like experience where no second-grader in the Lower Merion school district has gone before. Well maybe a few have, but I don’t know about it. Most parents around here are puritans who wear their virtue on their nubbly beige polyester Kohl’s three-quarter sleeves. and I am sick of feeling lousy because I am not like them, and not just because I shop at Urban Outfitters. This suburb, largely, is no mirror for me. I am not walking among my kind. I am a loner, Doddy. A rebel. 

I admit. I started it. I said fuck you first. I did. But he was being an asshole. And I just couldn’t help myself. I was exploring new territory too, see. Also, I have very little self-control. Not all the time, but more than I’d like. Certainly I’m one of those moms who really needs her kids to do as she says and not as she does. I mean how the hell are my kids going to have self-control when Mom’s blazing through the house yelling her head off over things like tracked mud, forgotten milk-stained glasses, Harry Potter Lego hair gone missing for the third time in as many days?

So yeah, when I’m pissed at the kids, the curses fly. This one just happened to be directed at my son. Usually I’m more like, “Get that fucking homework done! You’re pissing me the hell off! Mother-fucking fuck, I am so sick of this shit, I feel like a goddamned slave! Stop treating me like fucking garbage!” I’m not usually telling him to fuck off personally.

How it all went down was, he was working on his first major book report. The kids were instructed to draw four illustrations that explained the plot of a Magic Treehouse book, and fill a white shopping bag with four items that related to the story. Spike’s story was Carnival by Candlelight, which takes place in a city I very much want to visit one day—Venice. I wasn’t about to go shopping for items to fill the bag with—a bird-beaked mask from the 1700s, say, or a clown doll to represent the festivities, or an old timey wooden palette. Instead I went exploring through the basement and through drawers, keeping my eyes skinned for anything that seemed relevant. It was more fun than I’d had for a while. Sad and scary.

Meanwhile, why was Spike not doing this himself? Because his mother is a control freak? A do-over addict? Impatient? Unwilling to quickly papier-mâché a Carnival mask or build a gondola out of moistened toothpicks? All of the above?

I came rushing back upstairs with three yellow feathers—for the winged lion, a paintbrush for Tiepolo the famous painter, a small jar which I filled with water for the canals (clever!), and finally in the dining room I unearthed from a sticky sideboard drawer, a half-burnt candle.

“Oh my God, Spike!” I cried. “This is perfect!” I held up the stub. “Do you get it? It’s a triple-threat! You’ve got the title of the book, the setting, and the time period! There was no electricity! They city was aglow! This is awesome!” I practically peed my pants.

“Nah,” he said.

“What?” I was incredulous. “But it’s perfect!”

“No way. Do not put that in my bag.”

“Are you kidding me? This is perfect! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Shut up, Mom.”

Oh yeah. That’s the magical thing about writing down real exchanges that occur. I’d totally forgotten about the shut ups until I began chronicling the incident. He told me to shut up a number of times. Maybe this set the stage for the subsequent hurled insults. I remember balancing on the precipice, somewhat conflicted. In many ways, or maybe just one major way, I don’t want my kid telling me to shut up. It’s rude and disrespectful. But the tone of his voice was so jaded and sarcastic. There was enjoyment there. For the sparring. Can we call it sparring? Is that too generous? For whatever reason, I wasn’t ruffled. Maybe I was too excited over the candle.

I also wondered, who makes the rules? If by following someone else’s parenting rulebook and getting pissed at my kid for telling me to shut up when I’m not actually feeling pissed, I’ve lost before I’ve even begun. The fear sets in, that my kid will forever disrespect me, that he’ll run with the druggie crowd, sneak out his window at midnight and wind up working at Target (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Then I’d begin to bully him, threatening, shouting and finally making damn well sure he ended up in tears. This is how my childhood went with my dad. It SUCKED. But with me, after I traumatize my children, I am traumatized as well, heaped in a pile on my bedroom floor, wishing to come down with a quick case of sudden death.

I know now, unlike some of you perfect moms out there who take credit for your child’s naturally docile disposition, that I have very little control over my kid. He’s going to do what he’s going to do and it’s my job to…what? To lose my shit as little as possible and also not feel like a doormat. And you know, guide him the best I can so that he will want to be a mensch who burns to learn. Does it really matter that he told me to shut up when I was basically forcing him to put a candle in his shopping bag?

I challenged him to go find something as good or better. He couldn’t. He told me to shut up again. I told him to think about it, don’t give me an answer right away. He said shut up. Maybe three or four more times. Finally I said…what? I can’t remember. You suck? You’re lame? Put down the crack pipe? Something like that. He told me to shut up again. Then I said it.

Fuck you. I was almost smiling. It was like jumping out of an airplane. You know, that plane I will never jump out of, because I am not a daredevil. I get nauseous on a swing-set.

And he said fuck you too. And I could hear the corners of his lips turning up slightly as he said it.

We each paused then, in a bubble of our own, what in acting they call a “private moment,” where you sit in the emotion and let it “inform” you so you are guided naturally as to what the hell to do next. I stood there in the dining room knowing that we’d crossed a line together that could not be uncrossed, while Spike remained quiet in his room, probably wondering if I was going to take away his dessert, or worse, come in howling like a banshee and make him pay.

We hadn’t said these fuck yous to each other’s faces. Could we have? Would we have? I think if we had, we’d have burst out laughing. That was the mood in the house then. There was anxiety over the homework, and also excitement, that the report was more fun than we’d (I’d?) imagined, and that it was almost complete. Overall though, I wasn’t losing my temper and neither was he. It was matter-of-fact fuck you-ing. Courteous almost. Like an Austenian waltz. Can I say Austenian? Yes I can. I just Googled it. It’s in the New Yorker. I mean if you can say Dickensian, it’d be sexist not to be able to say Austenian.

Anyway, later I lamely punished him. Lamely because come on, we all know I missed my window. Lamely also because I let him do the thing I told him he couldn’t. Which was to play Moshi Monster on my computer. I told him when he asked why not, “Because you said fuck you to your mother.” We laughed. He was lying on the floor on his back, in tantrum pose, but he was not whining insufferably. I asked him if he wanted me to step on his face and crush his skull till his brains squished out through his nose. He said no, held up his hands in weak defense, giggled and supposed that his brains would be more likely to spew out his ears.

In other words, we were getting along, in our own unconventional, un-Hallmarky, bad-ass (hell yeah!) way. And I think it’s high time that I begin to accept that we might never be an even-tempered family who always say socially acceptable things, and respond to situations in a way that would be condoned by smug holier-than-thou assholes and Parenting Magazine. And the more I think about it, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fuck yeah. I wonder what’s on sale at Urban.

xo,

I know I’m insane to think it wouldn’t be this way, that my childless, solitary zen-like peace would not be destroyed, but does it have to be so brutal? Does Spike really need to kick his sister and moan about his homework the second we enter the minivan for the two-minute ride home from school? Does Peaches have to pitch a fit when I pick her up from a friend’s house because our floors are no good for sock-skating the way Kaitlynn’s* are?

And then when we get home and I punish her for being rude, for not saying goodbye and thank you to Kaitlynn’s incredibly nice and patient mom Kimberly*, by forbidding her screen time, and by only giving her scrambled eggs for lunch—no fancy sides of juice and honey bread today, little girl—does she have to spite me with a plate full of ketchup when I sequester myself upstairs to kvetch to Bryan and cool down?

I charged her two bucks for that stunt. Will it help? Will it suddenly render my daughter a thoughtful and polite houseguest? Not any more than it will morph me into a mother who knows what the fuck she’s doing.

Jesus Christ. My throat hurts from shouting.

It’s as if I’d been lovingly gardening all morning and a belligerent homeless person tromped through my vegetable patch, squatted over the ruffly, waxy lettuce and took a shit. Or like I’d just spent an hour preparing a meal for my family, really considering which green vegetable would best complement a plate full of pecan-crusted salmon filets, and the kids sneered at it, told me it was gross, lay down on the floor in protest, their voices keening, scraping my insides like those abortions I never had. Oh wait. That actually happened. Monday night. Not the abortion. That was back in 1990 and you can read about it in this book. I meant the salmon. And obviously it wasn’t the first time the kids have snubbed my dinner menu and it won’t be the last. I want to say, kids, you’re lucky to be alive. Eat the damn fish. And shut the fuck up.

There’s so much I want to write that my head feels all jammed up. There’s so much to catch up on. To whom exactly I’m not sure. I just like to document this shit publicly and maybe I’m finally understanding why I do this in a way that doesn’t shame me. The reason I haven’t been blogging is twofold: 1. I was feverishly revising my novel (doesn’t that sound important?) and 2, I was hibernating. Now that I have sent the draft to the powers that be, and now that I’m learning to embrace my inner emotional exhibitionist again, I can come out of hiding and blather on. Yay self-examination!

Catching up: I haven’t been reading anything about Primal or Paleo, which has made it easier for me to see how fanatical I became at times (ahem) about food (and who am I kidding, I will go insane about it in the future I’m sure). But I love a good perspective shift to nudge me in my ass. I still pick up my weekly order of farm food, eschew most packaged bullshit, and I definitely still marvel at how different EVERYTHING is when you JERF. Okay. Primal update. Check.

I took a break from Mockingjay maybe because I have grown weary of its female protagonist, so capable, unromantic and stoic that I can hardly believe in the possibility of her actually existing, especially at an adolescent age. I guess Katniss Everdeen is not, after all, my cup of heroine. But so many people love her. I think it’s because we all want to be her. I think it goes along with my old, “God life would be so much easier if I’d only wanted to be an accountant” philosophy. To not be neurotic and over-thinking and analyzing and investigating, second-guessing, doubting, seeking, yearning, questing and fretting all the fucking time. Wouldn’t that be sublime? To just sit down, crunch some numbers and then grab a mojito? Katniss is not much of a fretter even though she does take time out from bow-hunting humans to weigh the potential outcomes of her choices, which of course hold the very existence of civilization in their fragile balance. It’s not the same as being the girl who cries in the bathroom at nearly every job she’s ever held. I’d probably get an arrow through the eyeball for that.

In the interim I nearly drowned myself in episodes of Party Down, which weirdly, Swamp Chicken not only turned me onto, but wasn’t convinced I would love. Back in the day, like a month ago, we’d put the kids to bed, I’d cozy up on the sofa with my computer, trolling the archives of Celebitchy while he’d guffaw quietly to himself watching Party Down. Or Children’s Hospital. Finally, in the interest of salvaging our adult relatings (because I have lofty goals like that), and curious as to what was making him so giddy, I fell in fucking LOVE, not only with my husband’s excellent choice in entertainment, but with the show (and who am I kidding, with Adam Scott). Through every tear-stained howl of belly laughter where I’d punch Bryan in the ribs to accentuate just how profoundly I was affected, I felt like I’d come HOME. I mean, Hell, I pursued acting. I catered. I failed. I grew cynical and slightly crazed. And I write. What is there not to love? Have you watched it? Used to be you could InstantPlay it on Netflix, but then Starz cut ties with Netflix, and now I have to wait some unforetold amount of time to watch the rest of season two, which blows A$$.

Which brought me back to the library, because by this time there was no way I could take earnest, apocalyptic Mockingjay. So the other week I found a book lying on the kids’ table at the local branch. I couldn’t resist picking it up and skimming it because here’s the title: Blood, Bones & Butter. Right up my ex-veg, marrow-worshipping alley. Turns out it’s written by Gabrielle Hamilton, who owns and chefs at Prune, where I ate way back in 2009 with my friend Kristi, who is a fantastic and generous and kind-hearted soul I met through this very blog, or rather its previous incarnation. Kristi keeps me going, keeps me writing. She is a treasure. Poo poo as my mother would say.

The book makes me feel like shit because Gabrielle Hamilton IS Katniss Everdeen. She would kick Katniss’s ass while I hid in the bathroom weeping. The book makes me so goddamned hungry though. In between fits of inadequacy and awe, I can’t stop stuffing food in my face.

Oh wait. I can stop eating long enough to take some pictures of myself wearing my new twisty hairdo. You know, in solidarity with hacked actresses everywhere. I put a fist to my braless, flapjacky-flat chest for you, Joan Holloway.

Anyway it was Kristi and her husband’s suggestion we meet in New York and eat at Prune all those years ago. I wrote about that adventurous night here. Maybe we can go back again one day. Now that I roast marrow bones at home, I suspect it would be an even more appreciated experience.

From Blood, Bones and Butter it was onto another entertainment suggestion from my dangerously in-the-know hubby, who I think I am falling for again in my mid-life. It’s like I just noticed this hunky guy in my living room and was like, hey, who’s that fine piece of ass? I would like to hit that. And it turns out he’s my fucking husband! How lucky can you get?

So Bryan was like, all quiet and unassuming, all low-key like he is. He whispers, you know there’s this podcast. And now I’m obsessed. In between my other, non-Bryan-approved obsession with Paz de la Huerta, which we HAVE to talk about another day. Jesus.

SO. The podcast is WTF with Marc Maron and again, it’s like coming home. The guy’s a comic and he interviews other comics, everyone from Weird Al to Russell Brand (who I admire. Really). And others like Jon Hamm (Don Draper!), Diablo Cody, Anthony Bourdain and Bryan Cranston (whose interview was surprisingly boring).

The thing Marc and his guests (usually) do is talk about how much it hurts to be human, how crazy and shitty and narcissistic we can be, especially those who enter the field of comedy. And even though I am not a stand-up, I did heavily pursue acting, going so far as to perform numerous times with a troupe called Mission: Improv-able! (Yes that’s right, headed by this guy), and now writing, and well, I relate.

I have a new respect for stand-ups. And I feel validated in my not-so-particular or unique brand of shittiness. Because it’s easy to lose your way in the winding sleepy streets of suburbia where life takes on a vacant, strip-mall sheen that smells like ketchup, and everyone around you is discussing discipline and recipes and you used to pursue your creative dream all the time and now you mostly pursue dirt and messes.

But when I pick myself up off the bathroom floor and dry my tears, I am reminded why I am here, and it is to share the truth as I see it until someone says, RIGHT ON MOTHER FUCKER.

…and then, like, pays me.

$$,