Things to Make Your Brain Hurt

I have many things I want to write about but not a lot of time this week. I have work, as usual, and I also took on a quick freelance assignment which will take up some time after work this week. I do, at some point, want to discuss the recent Brookings Institution study which shows that the middle-class is shrinking dramatically in metropolitan areas across the U.S., with Greater Los Angeles ranked dead last in a survey of 100 American cities in terms of the percentage of middle-class/mixed-income neighborhoods. This is not shocking to me, since LA is both the capital of the entertainment industry, which is the source of an obscene amount of wealth, and also the capital of the working poor – see reports like the United Way of Greater Los Angeles’ Tale of Two Cities: Promise & Peril in Los Angeles. But as I read more about it, I am hit with the very dreadful feeling that Los Angeles, and indeed, many of our urban areas with this kind of extreme divergence, are not going to be very fun places to be in the coming decades if this trend continues. And I am a city gal, for better or worse. I’ll try and post more thoughts about this if/when I have time.

I Went to the Party Y'Know and I Did the Smurf

My friend Cee’s latest post reminds me: hey, I’m having a birthday soon. I had the brilliant idea to throw myself a birthday party this year and yet, strangely, I haven’t gotten around to planning it. Well, I’ve done some preliminary Internet research on venues, but I haven’t actually called anyone about booking a room. My invitee list is at 20, and the party would be in two weeks! Eeps. Um. So. The problem is that when I actually have a moment to think about the party planning, I am inevitably at work. In a cube. And still, fairly new to the job – indeed, within my probationary period – so I don’t want people to overhear me making party planning calls from work and think I am a slacker, even though we all know that in my heart of hearts, I am.

Really, all I want to do is get some friends I haven’t seen in a while together and drink and shriek with laughter and all that. Although two of my friends are pregnant, so they can only drink lovely frozen fruit drinks, if they even bother to come out at all (one of them is due in September, so she may not want to fool with such foolishness). Nonetheless, I have largely chosen this group because convened together, they will no doubt spawn splendidly wondiferous hijinks of madness and mayhem. I am envisioning, for example, my friend Ratboy singing karaoke with nary a karaoke machine in sight, as half of us shrivel up from embarrassment and the other half egg him on at high volume. I love my friends.

Maybe I will even post pictures. Blurry, off-center pictures. Blargh! Drunken madness!

Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life

BEFORE 9 AM

Things I have seen this morning, before having my coffee:

1. License plate holder that boldly proclaims “I’d rather be praise dancing”

2. Tiny Asian twenty-something wearing tiny denim mini-skirt and tiny purple T-shirt with huge Timberland knock-offs, untied, no socks. No socks! It was already 80 degrees here in Koreatown at 8:30 this morning. Sweet Jesus!

3. A continuation in the mystery of the missing three-hole punch series of e-mails that have been sent to ALL staff in this building. While it initially appeared that one of our IT staff may have taken it home, you will be most interested to learn that one of our Vice Presidents actually nicked it to work on stuff for our kids’ programs over the weekend. Still have not heard jack from the IT staffer whose co-worker informed the world that he took it.

TO HUMIDITY AND BEYOND

Work has been crazy this week, and by the way, it’s crazy hot here. Viva’s school lost power at 11 in the morning on Tuesday, and thank God they have a pool, because I think the kids stayed in it for most of the day. Unlike many places around the city, county, state, and country, power was restored by the next day, so we did not have to call upon the babysitting powers of Viva’s grandpa, who honestly is never happier than when he has some kids around him to fuss at, but I was still apprehensive about what the hell they would do all day.

Okay, the quiet part of my morning is ending and I must ramp up to do some work. Perhaps later in the afternoon I’ll get into some praise dancing in my cubicle. I think my next-door cube-mate is Pentecostal, so perhaps he won’t complain.

If you can believe it, you can achieve it. Can I get a witness up in here?

Into the Frying Pan

Hey guess what? It’s hot. I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned it to you yet. Maybe you haven’t noticed, because no one else is talking about it. It’s pretty incredible, when you think about it, how no one is stating the obvious. It's summer, and we live in Southern California. We're all running our air conditioners and dishwashers and turning all the lights on for no reason, and I'm sure there are power outages and people dying from the heat, my GOD, the heat. I just wish someone would talk about it so we could get it all out in the open. It's not like every single person I have talked to today has mentioned it. They're all in denial. I mean, seriously.

Holy crap! Sweet W and I are so psychically connected, so as one in our oneness, that he just called me to find out how my day was going, and he said, “It’s SO hot outside.” I burst out laughing.

“Why is that funny?” he said.

Honey, it just is.

The Annual Grouch Convention

Now SCRAM!

In my cubicle, on my desk, sits a little fake metal trash can (henceforth known as LFMTC), and inside it is my own personal stash of paper clips. I am not overly attached to the paper clips, but the LFMTC has some sentimental value because of my ties to public television, and I have had it for many, many years. This morning, I opened the LFMTC to grab a paper clip to fasten some papers together, and found that whereas yesterday, the can was ¾ full, today, there are only a few paper clips rattling around in the bottom of it.

Dude! Who is so hard up that they have to steal my paper clips? What is UP with that? You can buy a box of 100 at Staples for 49 cents. What is wrong with people?

Aside from that, it creeps me out that someone specifically went hunting around my desk and had to open the trash can to see what was in it and then stole something so trivial out of it. Wack job.

There’s a Metaphor in All This

In other world news, Prison called us again last night. But this time, Prison didn’t leave a message. You might think Prison is calling us because we have a very common last name and perhaps Prison is confusing us with someone else that Prison wants to call collect. But here’s the thing: we have an unlisted number.

Do you think Prison wants to borrow some paper clips? Because I’m running low.

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Happy Friday, my lovelies. There’s a frosty cold beer calling my name…oh, wait, that’s just my coworker snarking about some screw-up. I’m off to get the latest office dirt. Smooches!

Twenty-Three Days to Go

My birthday is coming up. Again. Funny how they do that.

Sweet W. recently asked me what I would like for my birthday. I honestly have no idea.

World peace? Do they still make that? That is what I want. I swear, the world has gone berserkers.

In anticipation of people asking me how old I'm going to be, I was fully prepared to say "Thirty-five." And then I realized I've gotten to the age where I'm saying "thirty-five" to sound young. Thirty-five is not young, kids. Nor is the age which I actually am.

If I weren't so frickin' senile, I might have realized that in the first place.

Thirty-five was a good year. But thirty-eight* has great potential, don't you think?

* I don't know why this is freaking me out so much -- I shrieked inwardly when I typed it and my insides turned to toxic sludge. I have friends who are older than I who no doubt will comment here to tell me how much I'm boring them. (Hi, Splooey!) "Call me when you turn forty," they will no doubt say. "Yawn."

Ack! I am about to be late for a meeting. Cheerio!

Ask a Health Professional Before Use

Sometimes Sweet W is up really early in the morning or really late at night, and this is because he doesn’t require the same amount of sleep as a normal person. Perhaps that last bit isn’t exactly true, because he may require the same amount of sleep as a normal person, but his body simply won’t allow him to sleep for more than five hours at a time. (This is rather bothersome to me, as it means that 95% of the time, when I wake up in the morning, he is not next to me. And I like him. It would be nice to roll over and have him there, snoring softly, half-smiling and dimples flashing.) (Sweet Dub’s mouth naturally turns up at the corners, and he has really deep dimples which show pretty much all the time. These features make him look like he’s a happy-go-lucky guy, as opposed to cynical and full of contempt for his fellow man*.)

Last night, he fell asleep at 9 pm, and woke up at 3:45 am, which is actually a lot of sleep for him. But I tell you this to say that he was up, and turned on the TV at that ungodly hour, and was assaulted by a commercial screaming “Head On! Apply directly to the forehead! Head On! Apply directly to the forehead! Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!” while a pleasantly smiling woman applied what appeared to be a glue stick to her head. I know this because he had the presence of mind to grab the remote control and tape it for me. He only caught part of the commercial, and he played it for me this morning, and we looked at each other in baffled amusement.

“What the hell is it FOR?” he said, which was just as bafflingly amusing, because we all know I’m smart**, but not THAT smart.

Well, my friends, if you haven’t run across the commercial yourselves, Head-On is apparently a headache remedy which is available in fine drug stores across this great land, and even on the Internette. Head On has a fine marketing department which is doing a bang-up job. The product is homeopathic and I have no earthly idea how it works, but their commercial is truly mind-boggling*** and great.

Tune in next time, when I deconstruct the BET Awards. What the hell, they were only what, three weeks ago and I'm just getting around to watching them on my fake TiVo? What do you want from me?

* I don’t think he’s full of contempt for all of his fellow men. Just some of them. And some of the women, too. He’s all equal opportunity like that.

** Yes, we all do know this. It has been independently proven by a team of researchers who have not quite yet published their findings.

*** I just typed mind-bloggling. What does it mean?

"Feel Good" Music? Not So Good.

I got some really good information yesterday from one of our agency people who works in the field with troubled kids. I am working feverishly to incorporate some of her input into my proposal, and I’m waiting for another agency person to call to take me off-site to see some of our agency work in action. I have foundation research to do as well. And now, thanks to my cube-mate, I am listening to the instrumental version of Alicia Keyes’ “If I Ain’t Got You.”

It makes me want to rip off my own head and hurl it at the radio.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…


P.S. My boss is currently at war with the He Who Rules Our Small Bit of Universe, Head of Moving Offices Around. She is threatening to go to the President & CEO if he doesn't move me into my own office (which we've already picked out -- quite nice, but there are political issues about moving the existing tenant out, because she will then have to share an office with someone else. It's all very delicate. OF COURSE.).

Drowning in a Vat of Smooth Jazz

WARNING: This post has nothing to do with its title; it's just how I feel after a mere 2 hours of being at work with a cubicle-mate who keeps his radio tuned to 94.7/The Wave.

So it’s officially been a month since I started this job, and I still like it. I am neck-deep in writing an interagency grant, so I have become the meetin’est meeting-goer imaginable. I have also had a chance to go on a work-related field trip and see some of the long-range planning of the company, which lends a whole new, “Oh! So that’s the big picture!” dimension to what I do. And, since we are such a large organization, there is the added benefit of someone having a birthday or retirement party once a week. Nothing wrong with cake!

Sweet W has been (true to form) very sweet as we have made this transition. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he picks Viva up from school, hangs out with her and makes dinner (!!!*) while I work out. I do the same for him on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then on Fridays we usually all go out as a family for pizza or order in.

Since we have given up for the moment on looking for a house to rent (with or without the option to buy) (which is a long and disheartening story which I do not wish to revisit at this time), Sweet Dub has also gone on a home improvement kick and spent the last three weekends sprucing up the run-down shotgun shack we live in. He’s completely reconfigured our home office, and last weekend did the same with our walk-in closet. I have been resisting the idea of renting storage space, while he has been advocating for same with all the vigor of Robert Duvall in The Apostle. We may actually be able to hold off on renting space to store stuff like his comic book collection, my art supplies, Christmas decorations, and the assorted lights Sweet Dub used in his video production days. And hold on to your hats, because we Might. Actually. Paint. Our bedroom.

Perhaps this time we will stick to one color, so as to avoid the exhausting, labor-intensive, three-week “if I have to paint anymore I will stick my head in this bucket of Ablaze SW 6870 paint and end it all” debacle of our last painting efforts.*** I don’t know if we are aesthetically capable of that, but I will let you know.

* I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Sweet Dub’s momma, who has many other fine qualities, did not teach either of her children to cook. Sweet Dub’s sister, Diva, taught herself to cook and is quite handy in the kitchen now, but when I met my beloved, Sweet Dub was pretty limited to eggs, burgers, and steak. He could pretty much grill anything, but I think that comes part and parcel with having a Y chromosome. In our years together, he has expanded his repertoire quite a bit. Having said that, I still have no idea what we’re eating tonight. Sweet W’s momma is fortunate to be married to a man who cooks**, since otherwise she might subsist on takeout, canned tuna, and black beans with salsa.

** Our dearly loved and loving Wash, Sweet Dub’s stepfather and Viva’s PawPaw. For whatever reason, Wash did not impart his love of cooking to either Sweet Dub or Diva.

*** Blogger is acting up and not letting me embed a link back to my own shit. Fuck that noise. As I said, our last painting efforts: http://mamablahblah.blogspot.com/2005/01/i-miss-you-do-you-miss-me-really-that.html. Maybe I can come back and fix this later.

Raise Your Hands in the Air, and Wave ‘Em Like Ya Just Don’t Care

A SHOCKING SECRET REVEALED!

I am not very tall. I say I am five-foot-one, but that is on a good day. I am actually five-feet-and-one-half-inch tall, but that is really just too much to expect me to say. It does not trip off the tongue as one might like.

And still and so, when I went shoe shopping this weekend, I bought two pairs of very flat shoes. One for work, and one for fun. The work shoes are pretty basic, but cute and comfy:

The play shoes might not come across onscreen as cool as they are in person:

Dude! They’re METALLIC SILVER. It was the last pair they had at Nordstrom. I totally rock. Can’t wait ‘til Casual Friday.

I revel in my shortness, by the way. (Even if it makes me look like I am standing in a hole when I go to get coffee with one of my co-workers, who is 6-feet tall and even so, wears a bit of a heel. She rocks, too.)

A FOND FAREWELL

Speaking of revelry, a good time was had by all Sunday afternoon during the send-off of one of my dearest and rottenest friends, who is moving five million miles away from me back to the Midwest for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me. During our send-off, we drank a tea called “Spicy Revelry.” Somebody in the marketing department was clearly having a good time sniffing glue.

I will miss my dear and rotten friend badly, even though as it is, I see her maybe twice a year. Bon voyage, my dearling!

IT’S RHYME TIME!

I recently posted something about how Viva is all into the wordplay these days. Lucky reader, here is a continuation! Today, in the car, she proposed a rhyming game, and it quickly devolved (unbeknownst to her) into a bewildering array of inappropriate verbiage. In the 7-10 minutes it took to get from our home to school, here is a selection of rhymes that were offered (by Viva, not me):

“Door, WHORE!”

“Television, HELL-A-VISION!”

“Tow truck, HO TRUCK!”

“Bike, DYKE!”

I was just waiting for her to say “Truck, FUCK!” You know it’s inevitable.

Spot Trends? Stop Trends.

I have been so busy at work and at home that I have neglected this blog terribly. This will, it seems, be par for the course, since this weekend I have four separate events to get to. I am tired just thinking on it.

My quest for comfy yet cute work shoes continues. Recently, I found a cute pair of sandals made by Dansko that I think will actually fit the bill. Of course, the store didn’t have them in the color and size I need, so I special-ordered them. Paycheck in hand, I wait. Hungrily.

At the store I went to, which was privately owned (i.e., not a chain “mall store”), I walked in on a conversation between the two store employees on hand, during which they were talking about how women of a certain age have no business wearing certain outfits.

“At some point, you have to accept reality,” the older one (let’s call her Blanche) said. “Support garments are made for a reason.”

Her much younger counterpart (we’ll call her Minnie) made some small noise as if to speak, but Blanche steamrolled on: “I mean, I wear pantyhose every day under my pants, so you see a smoother line.”

“What?!” Minnie said. “Don’t you get hot?”

“Beauty is pain, sweetheart,” Blanche said. “Who wants to see bulges and fat rolls? Not me, honey. The other day,” she said to me, “there was a woman in here, had to be sixty if she was a day, wearing a midriff-baring top. Can you believe? These women need to recognize, and stop thinking it’s twenty years ago. ”

“Amen to that,” I said. “The other day I saw someone wearing a short denim skirt with those leggings with the lace on the bottom? You know what I’m talking about? Like they used to wear back in the ‘80s?”

“Oh my God,” said Minnie, who by the way was wearing a very fetching red-with-white-polka-dots halter top. (Hence, the name.)

“I know,” I said. “And she looked about 45 years old. I think if you were young enough to wear it the first time around, you should not wear when it comes back into fashion. If it has, which I am hoping it hasn’t.”

“I don’t know,” said Blanche. “This might not be a bad thing. At least she’s covered up.”

“Hey, you know, you’re right,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, what about you? You looking for shoes?” Blanche said.

“Oh, that,” I said. And now, paycheck in hand, I wait. Hungrily.

From Humdrum to Fundom

Here I am at work, and there is literally not one other person from my department present, and may I remind you that I am only in my fourth week of work? I can always research stuff and read, which I have done today, but a lot of what I need to do right now hinges on other people’s feedback. So I am just kind of sitting here and not wanting to read more of this particular book I’m reading, which although fascinating because of all the info on brain development, is also kind of a downer because it is applied theory, meaning it talks about child neglect and abuse and how that affects the developing child’s brain. Guess how it affects the developing child’s brain? Not good, that’s how.

So while I need this as background info, and while the president of the organization suggested I read it (which I took as a mandate, because I see her every couple of days and she might ask me about it), I have to do it in short sessions, with breaks between. And I am not feeling like reading more of it right now, so I took a break.

I took a drive up to Wacko in Los Feliz, about 15 minutes away. And you know, I should preface this by stating that the thing about moving to a new job is, you may want to cultivate a fun new persona there. I’ve been trying to figure out how to decorate my Desolate Cubicle of Humdrum Humdrumminess. It is barren and gray, and short of buying some batik bedspreads and throwing them hither and yon, for a sort of boho-chic drapey effect (which I haven’t done, because let’s face it, that might just be too much), I have been at a loss for ideas. I have a couple of plants and some of Viva’s artwork up, which makes it a bit warmer, but it’s still pretty sterile.

Well, happily, I have discovered my new shtick. Wacko carries vintage replica tin toys which look like they hark from back in the day (pre/post-World War II-era, I guess). I found the coolest damn miniature carousel and Ferris wheel, and the toy actually plays music, in addition to the carousel and Ferris wheel moving around, when you wind it up. Wacko’s fantastico collection includes robots, a duck with a spinning beanie on its head, other carnival-type toys, and more spaceships, cars, and airplanes than you can shake a vintage replica splintery stick at.

It takes so little to make me smile, in my dimwitted simple way. Ooh, look! Shiny!

What are Words For?

Viva has always been ahead of herself verbally. At this point in her development, she is into all kinds of wordplay – she is really into rhyming, jokes, and is teetering on the edge of liking the concept of puns. (Yes, puns! That’s my baby! Someone once told me puns are the lowest form of humor, and you know what? Whatever.)

She and Best Friend, while not completely at peace, have come to some sort of understanding and are chummy again. What delights them to no end, and gives me a terrifying look at the gum-snapping, lip-gloss-wearing, cell-phone-blaring teenyboppers they might become, is the “See you later, alligator!” routine. Last week, I was witness to this:

BestFriend: See you later, alligator!
Viva: See you later, elephant! [collapses in laughter]
Best Friend: See you later, monkey! [gasping for air]
Viva: See you later, alligator! [practically peeing herself]
Best Friend: See you later, baby head! [screaming like a hyena]
Viva: See you later, elephant! [falling over herself]

It was strangely hilarious, I’ll admit, I guess mainly because they were cracking themselves up. So yesterday, Viva started up with the “see you later” bit with me, and I responded with, “After a while, crocodile.” She gave me a look like the light bulb had illuminated over her head, but maybe it was only a 40 watt bulb. I explained to her that the key to the routine was the part where it rhymes, and that she got the part where she had to add another animal at the end, but that it was supposed to rhyme.

Mama: So you say, “See you later, alligator—“
Viva: See you later, alligator!
Mama: And then I say, “After a while, crocodile!” See how that rhymes at the end?
Viva: Uh-huh!
Mama: Okay, now I’m going to say it: See you later, alligator!
Viva: Not for a long, long time, elephant!

My love for her swells into my chest like a big, big, fluffy marshmallow.

Al Pacino! Al Pacino! Al Pacino!

So I was sitting here at my desk, with nothing left to do, and it was Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend (we don’t get Monday off, but pretty much everybody is taking Monday as a vacation day, so I will be one of three people here since I am new and thus have no vacation time to take. It will be me and one person from Payroll. Seriously.), and anyway, I decided to blog, and the. Power. Went. Out.

It’s back on, but it’s 4:12 PM. I think the power outage is a sign that I should pack up and go home, but there seems to be a crew of diehards hanging about.

Before I go, let me tell you that I had a couple of “meet and greets” today, with a couple of department heads, and I was feeling a little unprepared, but they both went well. I was well-pleased with myself, and went strutting down the street back to my office building a la John Travolta back in the Saturday Night Fever days. “Well you can tell by the way I use my walk…”


And then as I was nearing my building, an incredibly sweaty man with wacked-out eyes passed me, drinking an orange soda, and screamed, “Well, that mu’fucka was SLOW!” as I passed him.

Sometimes I think the universe just lobs you one to check your reflexes if you’re getting too cocky.

Have a delightfully unbalanced weekend…

P.S. Someone just came over the PA system and said, "Please be advised...we are having...electrical problem." And, end scene. Well, that's helpful, thanks.

Tip for the Newly Employed

When heating up Trader Joe’s Middle Eastern pizza in the employee kitchen cube*, do not get so distracted by the person you are talking to (because you are talking about shoes! On sale! And the sale may still be going on! And she bought a pair of cute pumps for 20 bucks at the outlet store where the sale is happening!) that you put the pizza into the toaster oven on a Chinet plate and press “toast.” And, even after your co-worker leaves, either not noticing your gaffe or not telling you, do not get so lost in your own thoughts that you don’t even think to check on your pizza until right before the smug little toaster oven “ready” bell dings.

Chinet does not smell so good when it’s been browned.

For more helpful tips on returning to the work world, send your check or money order for $19.95 to:

I am a Moron
P.O. Box 00
Los Angeles, CA 90000

But act now – supplies are limited! (Mainly because we haven’t figured out yet how the photocopier works.)

But wait, there's more! Tip #2: Do not finish your lunch at your desk, eating Pirate's Booty and scattering cheesy Booty dust all over your black pants. It does not add to the über-professional, "I can handle anything" appearance you are going for.

That's right, only $19.95. Act now! You don't have to be a moron!

* We have an actual break room in one portion of the cavernous office space we lease, and a cubicle with a sink, toaster-oven, mini-fridge, and microwave in another portion of the cavernous office space we lease.

The Bell Tolls

My brother-in-law Big Mike’s grandma passed away yesterday. A few hours later, we learned that the mom of one of Sweet William’s cousins (I think she is his cousin, too) had a stroke and passed away as well.

This is all sad enough, but they say these things come in threes. I dread the ringing of the phone.

No Mickey Mousin' Around

I don’t have time today to write something altogether witty which will change the lives of everyone who reads it. What I can give you is my fallback position, to wit: my ongoing Vivamentary (Viva + commentary, or Viva + documentary, or, oh, whatever the hell).

Viva is going on a field trip today to, of all places, Chuck E. Cheese. I have never in my life been to a Chuck E. Cheese, nor has she. She is beyond excited and it is all she could talk about for the past 24 hours, which brings us to this morning:

Viva: Are you going to be with me at Chuck E. Cheese?
Mama: No, I have to go to work, baby.
Viva: Oh. Are you going to have fun at work like at Chuck E. Cheese?
Mama: Honey, there is no way I’m having as much fun as you are today.

About twenty minutes later:

Mama: You know, I’m not even sure where it [Chuck E. Cheese] is.
Viva [solemnly]: That’s because Chuck E. Cheese is a far new land.

I forgot to mention that she woke up screaming at 2:30 this morning, having a nightmare about bugs, and when I rushed into the room, the first thing she said was, tearfully, “I’m going to be late for Chuck E. Cheese!” presumably because she realized she wasn’t going to get enough sleep.

I hope that it’s all that she thinks it is, and more. It is, after all, “where a kid can be a kid.” I kind of think preschool itself is where a kid can be a kid, but maybe I’m just a killjoy.

A Cautionary Tale

Oh, and by the way, Banana Republic's shoes are quite seriously not worth the money. I own at least three pairs (bought specifically for office use, not for any serious walking) and each pair gives me blisters in a different spot. I am sitting her at work putting a band-aid on my pinky toe, thanks to the cute wedge slides I bought a few years ago but have rarely worn. And the most walking I have done today is from my cubicle to the restroom. What the hell?

I think Amnesty International denounces Banana Republic in its latest reports on brutal torture around the globe. Were my shoes made in Guantanamo Bay?

Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay (or not)

So clearly, this job thing is cutting into my blogging time. Who would have thought?

For now, I have decided I will compose brief blog entries at work in Word, as a break in between doing the very important work that I do. I will then e-mail said entries to my personal e-mail address. And then I will post later, at home, whenever I can get access to my computer. Since I have a work event tonight, it doesn’t look very hopeful.*

I wish I had some dirt to dish which would make this more interesting, but so far, work is going well. My colleagues are delightful – they work hard but have fun doing it. Of course, because it is right now so perfect, it may not last. We are all worried because the company is doing some restructuring, and the laid-back, really cool, totally together boss** of our department is moving to a new position. They will begin looking to fill her current position at the end of the summer. She will be on the search committee, thank God, and I think she has good instincts (after all, she hired me). So maybe this will not be a bad thing.

Other than that – oh, my dear friend Cee has started her own blog, and much to my shame, she has actually been writing regularly. She has realized that you can pretty much blog about anything and she dreams of writing about toilet paper and the like. Check her out rightchere, discussing her deep love of U2.

Okay, back to work. Tune in again later, when I count paper clips in real time!

* I lied, I’m posting from work because I actually have the time. See what a slacker I am?

** Who, by the way, is a published novelist, I just found out -- getting ready to release her fourth book. Told you she was cool.

Dilbertitude

I know how enjoyable it must be for you to read about what a weepy mess I am since I started this new job. But if I didn't have this new job, I couldn't tell you about what happened at work yesterday, and how giddy I was at the sheer Dilbertness of it all.

About mid-morning yesterday, this e-mail went out to all staff in our building:

Good morning!

After a complete service check on the refrigerator in the staff lounge of suite 700, it has been determined that the cooling mechanism is inoperable. To complete the repair we will need everyone’s cooperation. Please remove any items you currently own in the refrigerator or freezer. There is another refrigerator available in the staff lounge in suite 725 to store your items. Sorry for the inconvenience. We will have this repaired ASAP.

Okay, fine. But 40 minutes later, we all received the following message (labeled HIGH IMPORTANCE) from a staff person whose cubicle is right outside said staff lounge:

Jesus is moving any left items on the refrigerated that have not been removed by now.

For a moment there, I thought the Messiah had come and was removing the "left items," in which case, I can see why this would be a message of HIGH IMPORTANCE. That would be kind of cool, especially because 6/6/06 just passed without anything truly unusual happening. But sadly, no.

Ah, the work world. I see now what I've been missing...

New Job, Day One. Teetering on the Edge.

First day of work: not bad. Simply exhausted from the preparation and organization leading up to it, so I am sitting down to blog rather than making Viva's and my lunches as I should be. Get off my case!

Sweet William was supposed to pick Viva up from school today, so I called him at 5:05, as I was leaving work. "So, you're on your way to get her, right?" he said.

"That is so not funny," I said. "Where are you?"

"We're in the elevator," he said, meaning that they were already home. I heard Viva's sweet little voice piping up in the background. "She says to tell you we got you a flower to celebrate your first day of work," he said.

"That's so sweet," I exclaimed, and then we got off the phone and I started bawling as I was trying to negotiate through traffic in Koreatown. By the time I got home, fifteen minutes later, I had pulled myself together. I walked through the door and my family greeted me with cries of exuberance. Viva showed me the flower, and I kept my shit together and told her it was beautiful, and then she said, "Mama, I am so proud of you for your first day at work!" and I said, "Thank you, sweetie!" and I had to walk away because I was starting to cry again.

Sweet William hovered about me in wondrous disbelief, and then went back to the living room figuratively if not literally shaking his head, while I stayed in the bedroom, blubbering onto my new green shirt.

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I have never been much of a cryer. Since Viva's birth, I do tend to be more weepy than before. And right now, I am just a frickin' emotional mess.

On to Day Two.

Classic Class Notes

I went to an all-women’s college, and my classmates are all full of energy and gumption. Our alma mater is a place where young women with agile minds explore what engages them intellectually and become the news-makers and world-shakers of tomorrow. No, seriously. My fellow alums are intense, self-directed, ferociously smart and funny women.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I receive my alumnae magazine on a quarterly basis, and I read the “Class Notes” section with great interest. I don’t only read the notes for my own graduating class, because it fascinates me to see what other women of different ages and stages are doing with their lives. Usually, class notes go something like this: “Hannah Smythe’s acclaimed one-woman show has been extended until August 31, 2006. After winning an Obie Award and being featured in Dramaturgica Magazine, Hannah says she is overwhelmed and gratified by the response to her performance…” or “Gillian von Schmidzel writes in from Guadeloupe, where she has been pioneering radical advances in pediatric heart surgery. She reports that her eight-year-old twins are whining about being back in school after a six-week family backpacking trip in Croatia…” or “Valentina Morales has opened a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont while working on her PhD in Economics and raising her three children (Zoe, 5, Chloe, 4, and Ned, 2).”

But I was recently reading my alumnae magazine, and in a class that is not my year, read what has to be the Best Entry Ever. Excerpt below:

[Discussion of attaining doctorate degree, then:] Meanwhile, I got ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church a year ago and am serving part time at a local [Big City] parish as well. I embarked on a gender transition about four years ago and took some extra time in both of my vocational tracks at that point…[Other Classmate and I] just celebrated our 13th anniversary…which was kind of confusing because now we have another anniversary: we got married this past October! What can I say: I’m grateful that [All-Women’s College] helped me become the man I am.

Who can top that? Certainly not me. My life seems rather beige in comparison.

------------------

In other news, I was saying something to Will the other day about my new boss and how cool and understanding she is, and he said, “That’s because you’re the bomb!” Viva immediately and furiously said, “NO! I’M the bomb!”

And since she really, truly is: Can’t argue with that.

On Hair

So Blogger is still down, which is very frustrating and actually made me start looking at other free blog hosting options. You see how fickle I am?

At any rate, I have the feeling that I will be blogging much less these days, now that I am working, so moving the blog might be a moot point. We’ll see.

I am once again writing this in Word and hoping to post later. If I can’t post today, I’m definitely moving the blog.

The reason I wanted to post was (of course) because of the sheer cuteness of Viva. This morning, I was doing her hair. Earlier in the week I had sectioned it off into little square and triangle sections and twisted her hair into Bantu knots, but when I went to pick her up Tuesday afternoon they had all come out, so her hair was just in these really cute kind of curly twists. I have not been able to replicate that, naturally, but I didn’t want to start from scratch. And even twisting the knots back in takes at least half an hour, depending. So this morning I took each section, did a double-stranded twist, and then started piling all the twists on top of her head and kind of entwining them with one another, then clipping the ends of two twists at a time with a tiny butterfly clip – ending up with about 8 multicolored clips all around the crown of her head. I neglected to take a picture, but it looked cute*, and most importantly, it only took about 15 minutes.

At any rate, Viva then said she wanted to be “the barber” and proceeded to put butterfly clips in my hair as I was trying to get her shoes on. This pretty much was as awkward as it sounds, almost akin to playing Twister. Then we fed the fish, brushed her teeth, grabbed her lunch bag, and left the house.

After I dropped her off at school, I went to the bank and the drugstore, and got back home about 9:30. I started cleaning the bathroom, and for some reason, brushed the top of my head with my arm in the process. Hey, I’ve been walking around with various-sized butterfly clips of various colors randomly clipped into my hair! I had no idea she used that many. I must have looked insane (well, even more so than usual) when I dropped her off this morning.

* At some point here I will broach the importance of hair in the black community – specifically, how important it is that you do not allow your child to go around with her head looking a mess or you will be in for a talking-to, or at the least, people talking about you behind your back. In my case, it is even more fraught with meaning, as it is quite possible that people think Viva is adopted or at the least has a white mother, the implication being that I will not know how to take care of her hair properly.

The more hard-assed among you will ask why I even give a shit what people think of how I take care of my child. It’s not that easy. I like to do Viva’s hair. She likes to sit in my lap as I do her hair, and it’s a nice way for us to be close in the mornings (or Sunday evenings, when I wash it and comb it out and try to work out a style that will work for the whole week). And I love to see other little black girls whose parents take the time to do their hair. On some level, I do buy into the idea that taking the time to make your kid look nice is an expression of how much you love your kid.

Hey, this is threatening to get longer than the original post. How did you trick me into that?

NOTE: I was able to log into Blogger at 11:27 AM and tried to post this, but I’m having a persistent problem with the server connection being reset while the page is loading. Flip flop floop! I’m moving my damn blog. I’ll try and post this again after lunch.

1:58 PM. Switched from Firefox to Internet Explorer, tried again. "The page cannot be displayed.” Frickin’ frickety frack!

Friday, June 9, 2006, 1:05 PM. Finally able to post this thing. I am beyond pissed off.

On Writing

I clicked over to Blogger today to put together a post and found that it was down for maintenance – some database problem that they are trying to fix. I was already feeling a bit lethargic and out of sorts, so I decided to write something else, and then I got bogged down in what I was trying to write, so I went online to research a little bit, and then I got suddenly sick of the whole enterprise, and that led me to wonder why I do all this in the first place.

Why do I write? I write because that is the only way I can make sense of my world. I write because if I don’t, my head gets all muddled, and writing helps to clear it out. I write because if I don’t, I start to get irritable and distracted.

I started writing when I was just a kid, and I was fortunate to have teachers who encouraged me – much love to Miss Johnson at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, who told me my stories were good enough to be published – and a family who would actually read my stuff out loud with great enjoyment. I had grandparents who allowed me to use their old manual typewriter, banging sporadically away with glee. (I shudder to recall some of those early efforts, which were blatant ripoffs of Judy Blume themes.)

Now, at times I read through my blog archives, and I think, “Oh, that was pretty funny,” or “Hey, that was clever,” but not lately. I find myself less witty these days, more critical of my own writing, and that takes away from the sheer fun of it.

I do not aspire to great literary lionhood here. The blog is here for fun, to help me get my thoughts down somewhere and let me stretch my writing muscles. I was working on a book for a while, here and there, and while at first I thought how great it would be for it to be published, as soon as I started thinking that way, all the joy went out if it. It became a grind.

“How’s the book going?” people would say. And recently, when they found out I was going “back” to work, “Did Lisa finish her book?”

The answer, of course, is no. Lisa did not finish her book, and Lisa feels a bit guilty about that, because it appears that Lisa had a whole bunch of free time for almost an entire year and did not make much progress. Lisa did a whole lot of laundry and dishwashing, cooked a lot of meals, went for walks, did some yoga, blogged a bit, scored some freelance work, interviewed for various jobs, and spent a lot of time with her family.

If the book is really all that damn important, it will get written eventually. And it may even be me that writes it.

NOTE: Posted on Friday, June 9, 2006 at 1:04 PM: two days after my first attempt. Grrr.

Drive, She Said

Have I mentioned that I talked to my new boss on Friday and that she told me to take an extra week to get organized, since they waited 'til the last minute to tell me my background check went through? So I'm not starting until next week! My new boss is so cool! Seriously.

Okay, I have to stop here for a second because my neighbor and his girlfriend are having really loud sex next door. While his wife is at work. And that's just the slightest bit distracting. Okay.... and, they're done.

Hmmm, where was I?

Oh, so now that I am going to be working, there will be times when Sweet William will have to pick Viva up. This means that we need to buy a new car seat, since we only have the one. Now, since Viva is getting to the uppermost height limits for the one we already have, we are not buying the exact same one, because that would just be silly. But that also means that I had to do exhaustive (exhaustive!) research on car seats and find one that she can use until she goes to college, because I am sick of having to buy such things every couple of years. And I also visited not one but four stores to find the one I want. And while my initial impression was that we might be able to get away with spending about $100 on a car seat, naturally, this was not the case. Because I will skimp on many things, but safety is not one of them. And thus, my friends, I just plunked down $250 for the new seat, and here's the bad news: we may actually end up needing two more of these. One to replace the one in my car, and another for my father-in-law's car (he is our backup emergency Viva-picker-upper.).

So it looks like my first paycheck is already pretty much earmarked for car seats and paying off the credit card from buying work clothes. Whee!

P.S. For those who are wondering, we ended up with the Britax Regent, which Viva can use until she is up to 80 pounds (ha! like when she is 13) and up to 53" tall (like when she is 6 - d'oh!). It's swell.

Life is Too Short to Wear Tight Shoes

While out with her daddy yesterday morning, Viva stepped in poo. Sweet William brought her home and put the offending shoes out on the balcony, with every intention (I am SURE) of cleaning up the shoes eventually.

Said shoes are fairly new K-Swiss knockoffs from Target, and technically, they are at least a half-size too small.* The motivation to deal with prying the dried poo off the shoes and cleaning them off is, in my case, very small. I just passed by the balcony and they're still sitting out there, shit-stained and fancy-free.

It seems clear to me that the most logical thing to do is to go buy new shoes and completely ignore the shitty shoes. They are now officially Outcast.

* Viva got her feet measured on Friday, and scored a new pair of shoes on the spot from the chi-chi kids' shoe store in Larchmont Village. She is now wearing another half-size larger. We have been meticulous about measuring her feet because every now and then we realize she has red marks on her feet because she's outgrowing her shoes. So now, it appears, we need to get her measured every 4 months or so. You know, kids are expensive. Have I mentioned this?

Vapid, adj.: Lacking liveliness, animation, or interest

Apparently, I start work on Monday. I called the HR department and the HR rep has been frantically busy so she gave me one of those, "I was just about to call you" kind of lines, and I found that irritating, because although we had tentatively said that I might start next week, nothing had been confirmed, and apparently still nobody knows what my hours will be and my new boss was working at home today and the HR rep didn't have her phone number so blah blah blah, well, just show up Monday at 9 AM and let's take it from there.

It's all very odd. I did an inventory of my clothes yesterday, and found that I am still lacking in "office-type" things to wear -- in fact, I do still need to buy shoes, definitely -- but I think I can manage for the first week or so with what I have. The issue here is that I actually weigh less now than I did before I had Viva, which was the last time I needed to wear office-type clothes. I weigh about ten pounds less than before, and thus some of my clothes are really ridiculously baggy. I was already quite petite before: I am almost but not quite five feet and one inch tall, and I am very small-boned. Until recently, I sometimes ended up buying clothes (mainly T-shirts and sweatpants/yoga pants) in the kids' section of clothing stores like Gap and Old Navy. Even so, sometimes they fit, and sometimes not. But now I have to buy grown-up clothes, and there's the rub.

I found myself recently in the petites' section of Banana Republic, trying on a suit, and the pants were too long. IN THE PETITES' SECTION. Lawd, help me, Jeebus.* I went shopping again yesterday and spent some time at Ann Taylor Loft -- I tried on about twenty pieces of clothing, and only three fit.

"Am I shrinking?" I said to Sweet William. "Because now I'm wearing the same size suit I wore when I interviewed at colleges, way back in the day."

I don't think I'm shrinking. I think the damn retailers are doing the damn vanity sizing, so people who are actually a size 12 think they wear a size 8. And the retailers do not adhere to a standardized size, so you might wear a 4 in one brand, or a 0 in another. I love clothes, but I'm beginning to hate shopping. (I can't believe I just typed that.)

I know, this has to be one of my most fluffy posts ever, but some days are like that.

Edited to add: I am not the only one having problems in this area. The Happy Feminist writes about "dressing room distress," linking to other bloggers in the process, and brings up one of my frequent complaints in regard to women's versus men's clothing: men only need to know their inseam and their waistband, and they can walk into any store, pick up a pair of jeans, pay for them, and walk out. Here is where I'd like a little gender equality. Why does buying jeans have to suck so much** for women?

* A Google search for Jeebus reveals not just the disputed origin of the word, but also an absolutely friggin' fantastic GenX congregation for "those who don't always have a clear picture of who Jesus is." HOT!

** I also tried on jeans at Banana Republic. They all looked like ass. And not in a good way.

For Better or For Worse: The Preschool Version

Yesterday, while we were making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies together, Viva said (apropos of absolutely nothing), "You really are a very good mommy."

And then, when I was putting her to bed last night, she asked if she could marry me when she grows up. Yup, she is delightful. She is raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. I think she is even schnitzel with noodles. I want to kiss her and snuggle her and dunk her in my coffee and eat her up.

Except:

Dearest Viva has brought home some life-force-draining-bug from preschool with her, and it has felled us all. By this I mean that despite having loads of plans for the Memorial Day weekend, at which we would celebrate birthdays and housewarmings and barbecues with a variety of delightful friends we haven't seen in ages, we spent the entire weekend in the apartment, sniffling, coughing, sometimes getting along, and sometimes making each other miserable. I kept Viva home from school today (in this! My last week of non-employment, which was to be a Me-Fest for the ages! A 4-day week of reflection, and shopping, and getting a facial!), and since she got up at 6:45 AM, by 10 AM I was hustling her out of the house. My favorite libraries open at 10 AM...on Wednesdays. Today, they open at 12:30. We actually drove to THREE LIBRARIES that were closed. At the second one, Viva burst into tears in the parking lot, but by the third, she was stoic. She just looked at me with resignation from the back seat.

"Don't worry," I said, buckling myself back in. "I know the library closest to our house [i.e., the one with the worst selection of books to choose from] is open early on Tuesdays," and it was, and even if it hadn't been, I think it might have opened as we were driving toward it, purely from the irresistible strength of my will.

We found books, old favorites and new, and we read for a little while there in the kids' room at the library, and then I suggested we go home and have lunch, and we got back to the car at 12:08 and I realized I was parked in a "NO PARKING TUESDAYS NOON TO 2 PM STREET CLEANING" zone, and yet miraculously managed to avoid getting a ticket. I have had really good parking karma lately, praise all that is holy.

So we went home and I made lunch and tried not to bother Sweet William, who was sealed in the bedroom taking a nap on his lunch hour, and Viva and I read books sitting on the floor and eating a picnic lunch of salami sandwiches and tortilla chips and blueberries and strawberries, and then I read some of her books to her a second time, and gave her a smoothie with some Children's Tylenol Cough and Cold in it, and surprise, surprise: she won't nap.

I fell asleep on her bed, waiting for her to fall asleep, and I was rudely awakened by her crawling on top of me, hitting me several times with a pillow (which I ignored), and then jamming her pointy little elbow in my ribs with all of her 29.5 pounds behind it (which I couldn't ignore, because, hello? OUCH.).

"I'm not tired!" she said. "I don't want to take a nap!"

I don't want to marry her so much today.

P.S. She has interrupted me at least 512 times in the creation of this post. No exaggeration.

P.P.S. Wanted to write part of my post today about this entry on Girl Bomb, but don't have time. "Is your work done yet?" Viva says. Must go, but here is an excerpt, because it encapsulates a lot of what has been going on in my head lately:

When I was young, I wanted to write so brilliantly, so originally; I wanted to find words that had never been combined, wanted to fit them to ideas so beautiful and profound that your life would change just reading them -- the world would be illuminated from within by possibility and hope, and you would be awash in feelings of triumph and peace. I wanted to write in undiscovered colors, beyond blue and orange and pink; I wanted to create something that had never existed before, something necessary, something lacking.

Lately I've had trouble composing an email, writing a blog post, opening the pages I've been working on. None of it is good enough, it's all just noise, just me wanting to hear my own voice. Say something smart, I beg myself. Say something meaningful. Say something that will help other people live their lives, and be happy.

I Am Not the Answer Lady!

Wow. Despite the fact that I am not yet working, I seem to have a lot going on. I spent all day Tuesday doing stuff related to my new job. Since I will be working in an agency that has direct contact with children, I had to fill out a stack of paperwork, which I then returned to the agency. They then arranged for a physical exam (to ensure I have no communicable diseases), fingerprinting (which is now done with a hi-res scanner -- no ink!), and background check (to make sure I haven't been convicted of anything nasty). I then had to return to the agency to turn in additional forms generated by said activities, and I have to go back to the hospital today to confirm the results of the tuberculosis test. Jesus!

I am glad that they are so cautious -- I guess by law, they have to be -- but I am lucky I don't have an office job where I'm trying to wrap everything up during my two weeks' notice.

IT ALWAYS COMES DOWN TO FOOD

Moving on, the other day Sweet William and I were talking again about my last post, about being poorer than my cousins and how awed I was at the stuff they had in their homes. Since Sweet William comes from a similar background, he could totally relate. He remembers being amazed when visiting his stepbrother's cousin's house and realizing, "They have three kinds of cereal!" Because at his house, there was one box and that was it. You had to finish off the first box before someone would buy a different flavor. His stepbrother's cousin would actually mix three cereals together, for example, Honeycombs, corn flakes, and oh, I don't know, Froot Loops.

Now I can put two and two together, and I can tell you that when Sweet William buys cereal, he always buys three boxes. And he always mixes them, usually adding some sliced fresh fruit, and he eats it without milk.

That got me started thinking about what I felt deprived of as a kid, and the answer is (predictably) odd. Whenever we would go to holiday dinners, I always went crazy for the olive and pickle dish. When I was a kid, I imagined that when I grew up I would buy olives whenever I felt like it. And now, I am never without a jar of Spanish olives in the fridge, and rarely without a jar of black or Kalamata olives. It's the Spanish olives that were the big deal for me, and even still, it's not like I pig out on olives every day. It's just nice to know that they're there.

The fact that I can walk into any 7-Eleven and buy a bottle of Pepsi whenever I want is a big deal to the 8-year-old who lives in the back of my brain. She does a little ecstatic dance while she waits for me to plunk down my money at the cash register. When I was a kid, I was only allowed soda on very special occasions at other people's houses, and then only half a glass -- and even then, only ginger ale. I wasn't allowed to have cola at these occasions until I was about 9 or so, and my mom strictly regulated it due to the sugar and caffeine. We never even had soda in our own refrigerator until I was a teenager -- and it was such a huge deal that it sticks in my mind. One day, I was helping my mom put the groceries away, and I opened one of the bags and found a gargantuan 2-liter bottle of Pepsi leering out at me.

"Oh my GOD!" I shrieked. I couldn't have been more shocked if my mom had taken up smoking. (And since my grandmother's sister had died recently of lung cancer, and my grandmother was subsequently trying hard to quit smoking, that is saying something, indeed.) "Why did you buy this?!"

My mom shrugged, as if all the habits of my lifetime to date were just a silly fleeting nothingness, and said, "I needed a boost."

SPEAKING OF WHICH...

My mom has been on my mind a bit these days, because Mother's Day just passed, and her birthday was yesterday, and we are estranged. I feel I am working very slowly through the five stages of grief for this relationship. And still, every time I think of her, I think, "I really miss my grandpa [her father]," who it would make more sense for me to be grieving for, although he died two years ago. It is all very complicated and tied up together.

My mom is largely responsible for instilling in me a fascination with human behavior and a love of words, music, art, and humor -- all of which are huge pieces of my life, and all of which have shaped the woman I have become. She was also and always incredibly supportive of pretty much everything I tried to do. So it is odd now not to have her in my cheering section, and for me not to be in hers.

It's a weird thing, this being a grownup. I'm still waiting to have all the answers.

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The title of this post is attributable to my mom -- it's what she would say when we asked her innumerable questions she couldn't answer. Hear it in your mind's ear, said with a slight laugh, in an exasperated slight Boston accent. There you have it.

Welcome to the Desert of the Real

NEW! A MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH!

Lo, these past few days I have had a canker sore, and great and terrible has been my annoyance. I have tried a couple of home remedies -- swishing with warm salt water, putting soy sauce directly on it, and eating salty potato chips -- but the damn thing will not be cowed. Last night it was throbbing in a dastardly way as I was trying to sleep, and thus, this morning I went to Target and bought Orajel Protective Mouth Sore Discs. The package says it "relieves pain immediately on application," which it should, since the active ingredient is benzocaine. But it also says that the discs form a dissolvable oral bandage to block irritation for hours so the sore can heal. What it doesn't say is that this dissolvable bandage takes far, far too long to dissolve, so even fifteen minutes later you're left looking like you've got a lipful of snuff or something. I am so sexy right now, I know you wish you were me.

RANDOM BITS OF VIVA

"Wouldn't it be great if I had a baby and you had a baby and we could take care of them together and then our babies would have TWO MOMMIES?!"

LESS IS MORE

Two of Viva's cousins -- let's call them simply C and T* -- were here over the weekend. By this, I mean that they came to visit their grandparents, my in-laws, who live just two doors down from us in the same apartment building. You can see what comes next, can't you? Every time they visit, they make a beeline for our door to play with Viva and enjoy the Land of Enchantment that is her room.

This is fine, because they are pretty well-behaved little girls, for the most part, and if we aren't doing anything anyway, I can just sit around and read while they play. It's win-win, because Viva is In Heaven the entire time they are here. T is 6, and C is 10, and the 10-year-old bosses the younger two around and keeps them in line. But inevitably they arrive without warning, play for an hour or so, and then tell me that they're hungry. Since I have no warning, and since this generally happens on a Saturday after we have gone through all of our food for the week, I generally don't have a lot to offer. This time, we went through all the fruit I had on hand, along with all the cheese, crackers, and juice boxes, while waiting for Papa (their grandpa) to bring some pizza. Ultimately, despite pleading from both of them to sleep over (!!), they went back to their grandparents' in the evening, and then -- you guessed it -- called us at about 10 Sunday morning. I invited them back over, but this time I had ulterior motives: free babysitting while we did some spring cleaning of our balcony.

I washed the sliding glass doors, Sweet William cleaned the patio furniture and washed the floor, and I brought in all the random crap that's been sitting out there all winter and cleaned it off. While we worked: (a) eventually, C got tired of hanging with the little kids and decided to read a book on the couch, meaning that (b) Viva and cousin T were left to feed on each other's hyperactivity, leading to (c) a huge amount of shrieking laughter, playing of kazoos, tambourines and harmonicas, hitting each other with punch balls, and just general mayhem, and (d) T came across Viva's camera, picked it up and asked if she could take pictures with it. I told her there wasn't any film in it, which was a little white lie because there was still film in it but you can only take pictures with it outside because it doesn't have a flash and I didn't want to have them all stampede out onto the balcony while we were still cleaning it. And THEN! T opened up the back of the camera! Thus exposing all the film! So all the pictures I had taken (mainly of Viva and friends on the school playground) are gone forever!

Sweet William said I looked like I was ready to kill her. Don't get me wrong, I love them and all, but after two days of having them over, my patience was wearing thin. I really enjoyed C this visit, but T was working my nerves, because she is a little button-pusher. She demands a lot of attention. (This, from the mother of a three-year-old!) But Viva loves her cousins so much that she bursts into tears when they leave, screaming and crying like her heart is breaking. Then they start getting weepy, and it's all a big mess. Lawd, help me, Jesus, it is operatic in scale. Once they left, I put Viva down for a late nap, and sat luxuriating in the silence.

Their visits are almost always followed by a discussion between Sweet William and myself about how relatively well-off we are. I grew up with not a lot of money in a family in which mostly everybody was better off than we were. I remember visiting cousins and being awed by how much stuff they had, how big their rooms were, how clean their homes looked. I was at various points jealous and contemptuous of them, depending on my mood, and it wasn't until I grew older that I got more philosophical about it. Now, I understand that what your family makes (or doesn't) does not reflect on you and your worth as a human being, but back then, I remember feeling shamed and small when confronted with the sometimes huge disparities between our lives and those of our cousins.

I mention this because C and T's mom (Sweet William's stepsister) is a single mom, head of household, who doesn't work. They live in a one-bedroom apartment and neither of the girls' fathers is involved in their lives. Money is tight. Their mom can't get them everything she wants to. Things are stressful. At one point, a few years ago, C and T's mom left the girls with her aunt, ostensibly just to babysit for a few hours, and took off for a week without anyone knowing where she had gone. At that point, Sweet William's sister, Diva, and I began discussing what to do about the children. We didn't want to break them up, but Diva already has two teenaged boys, and we were living in the same apartment we do now, so we didn't think we had enough space for two kids. Sweet William and I were still newlyweds who ultimately wanted to have kids of our own. We talked about each of us taking one of the girls and raising them ourselves. Ultimately, of course, their mom came back, but I think now about how different our lives would be, all of us.

Right now, we see the girls every month or so. When they are here, they always exclaim over everything in Viva's room. They're amazed that she has her own room (their mom sleeps in their living room), not to mention her own bathroom. They pull out every toy and game she owns and play with everything. They are eager to please and very well-mannered, and every single time they come over, C asks to borrow something, sometimes indirectly, sometimes not. This time, she wanted to borrow the Winnie the Pooh books that I've had since I was about 3 or 4. They are old paperbacks that cost 95 cents each, and they are yellowed, and some of the pages are a bit raggedy. Some of my most cherished memories are of my mom reading the stories to me and my sister as we all snuggled together in a big chair after bathtime, drinking what my mom called "Winnie the Pooh" drink.** I couldn't do it. I'd saved these books for years, long after other childhood favorites got sorted through and given away.

"How come Viva has these?" C asked me. "They're chapter books, she can't read them."

"They used to be mine when I was a little girl," I said. "I've been saving them for her for a long time. You can read them if you want."

"Can I take them home with me?" C asked.

"Oh, sweetie, they're so old," I said. "They're kind of falling apart already, I don't know how well they'd do in a book bag or something. Can you just read them here when you come?"

"Okay," said C, but I know if it were me and I were 10 and my little 3-year-old cousin seemed to have everything, I'd be pissed off or at least hurt that my auntie wouldn't let me borrow something the 3-year-old can't even use.

So of course, I'm guilt-ridden and thinking about buying her copies of the books for herself, which leads me to think about other books I liked at that age, and how much she would like them, and wondering if that is enough. I am glad she likes books so much, and I'd like to encourage her, and I don't want her to feel bad when she comes over. I can see so much of myself in her these days.

THERE IS NO SPOON*** SEGUE

Hey, if you, like me, grew up listening to a lot of soul and R&B, and if you haven't discovered this site already, check out one of my latest obsessions: Soul Sides. Very cool blog wherein DJ O-Dub posts his discoveries in soul, funk, jazz, and hip-hop, sometimes posting several versions of the same song, or hipping you to old school stuff you may have missed. Also check out his blog roll -- I could spend hours there.
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* I tried, oh how I tried, to find pseudonyms for them that were sort of similar to their real names (because otherwise I am sure I would mix them up), but I kept coming up with names like Chinara and Tanisha -- and even in fictional Internetland, I just couldn't do that to them. And before you get all like, "What makes Viva's name any better? You all so bougie, you need to check yourself," let me just say that, in case you haven't figured it out, Viva is a pseudonym based on her own early mispronunciation of her name, so if you're judging me, you're judging me on the wrong damn name, anyway.

** Which seems to me, as much as I can approximate it in my memory, to be warm milk with honey and cinnamon in it.

*** Shout out to The Matrix!

A Little Peace...and Quiet

There is a helicopter circling overhead, flying so low that my seat, not to mention the rest of my apartment, is shuddering. Since I am going to have to leave fairly soon to go pick up Viva, I would prefer it if whatever police chase/news story is going on would oh-so-nicely move itself just a few blocks north and west. Just a wee little bit. Just a smidge. Thanks!

I haven't seen anything on this next tidbit in the mainstream news, but perhaps that's because I haven't been looking. Evidently our esteemed president has issued a proclamation declaring May 29 as "a day of prayer for permanent peace." WHAT?! Isn't this also the joker who proudly labeled himself our "War President"?? Alternet's Bob Geiger says it better than I can: Irony alert: Bush asks people to pray for peace. Favorite quote: "Isn't this just a bit like Charles Manson declaring a mental-health day?"

Permanent peace, indeed. I've got his permanent peace right here!

Down the Drain

I just wrote a post -- pretty lengthy -- and my computer froze up. Well, no problem, I thought, I'll just close the program, relaunch the browser, go back in and recover my post with Blogger's handy (and aptly named) "Recover Post" function. Well, it didn't work -- it froze my computer up again. And now my post is gone forever.

Arses.

At any rate, take a look at this article about the Vito "Live Free or Die" Spatafore storyline on The Sopranos. The actor who plays Vito, Joe Gannascoli, has led a pretty made-for-TV life. Interesting.

I am severely sleep-deprived (Viva had innumerable bad dreams last night), and my brainwaves are not what they should be, so I'm going to end here. I promise to write something utterly scintillating tomorrow.

Operation Get A Job 2006: Mission Accomplished

Holy fuckin crap! My prospective employer just called and offered me substantially more than I expected! I am totally floored.

I guess I really am the bomb. Respect!

Operation Get A Job 2006: Results Pending

I have two posts in mind and I hope I get to put both of them on here. I am a little jittery this morning because (a) I just drank one of these and I haven't eaten anything yet today; and (b) my mother-in-law called me to tell me that my prospective employer called one of my referrals (who my MIL works with), got a glowing reference, and told her that she'd be making me an offer today. I did a salary survey online for similar jobs in the LA area and realized I've been underestimating how much this job is worth, so I'm ready for any salary negotiations. My prospective employer called and left a message while I was out at the supermarket this morning; I called back but didn't reach her, so we are caught up in phone tag and my stomach lining appears to be eating itself.

Deep breaths. Everything will be fine.

I am also waiting for an assignment from my freelance client. Oops, I forgot I need to invoice him today. I am wondering if I should just continue freelancing for him a couple of times a week for a while even if I accept this job -- it's not hard work, and I can usually finish a project in a few hours' time, so I could technically do this on weekends. I dunno. We will have to discuss.

God, I'm nervous. How weird. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Brats-a-Rama

I spent all day at Kidspace Museum today, helping to shepherd 9 three-year-olds hither and yon. Inevitably, I had a power struggle with Best Friend, during which she screamed at me, grabbed my arm, hit at me (didn't connect), and threw paint at me. All because I told her she had to share.

She is seriously from Hell.

More when I get a moment.

P.S. If that moment doesn't come before Sunday, Happy Mother's Day, all! Take a look at this video:

Smidge

The interview went really well. The President/CEO wants to marry me and have like ten thousand of my babies. And, despite leaving my car in a one-hour parking space for one hour and twenty minutes, I did not get a ticket.

Sweet.

A Quickie, But Not the Way I Like

I'm off to my job interview in about an hour -- second interview, this time with the President & CEO, the VP of Development & ER, and the HR rep. It struck me as odd that I would be meeting with the President, when this is not a VP position -- it's not even a management position -- and after some thought, I realized they must be scoping me out for something else. I am really overqualified for the position that I am applying for, but I do actually want the job, because it combines stuff I'm really experienced in with stuff I'm not and want to gain more experience in. Sorry for that awkward sentence construction.

But I also want this job, and not a director-level position -- which is actually where I should be, career-wise -- because this is my first foray back into any kind of office job since 2001. I don't want a 60-hour-a-week, manage-5-people kind of job at this point. I'm not serious about climbing the corporate ladder right now. But I'm wondering how to phrase that without sounding like, "This is just a fluffy little job that I'm going to slack off at," because I really don't see it that way.

Well, we'll see how today goes. I have my suit all pressed and waiting and I have my writing samples all together in tidy packets like the good little dorkette that I am. I guess I should have lunch and shine my shoes.

CAN VEGETARIANS EAT ANIMAL CRACKERS?*

How weird and sad yet cool is this? Last month a hunter shot what turned out to be a polar bear-grizzly hybrid in Canada's Northwest Territory. It's not cool that the bear is dead, but cool that he existed in the first place. Except that the reason he existed is because his father probably couldn't find food in his own natural habitat. And what with the global warming and the ice melting, it's possible his mother was moving farther south looking for food.

Heavy sigh.

BEYOND CHICK LIT

My friend Splooey e-mailed me this morning:

The New York Times has proclaimed "Beloved" as the best in American fiction in the past 25 years!

You can go here to read the story and the 1987 book review (by Margaret Atwood, no less). It is, no doubt, an incredible book, but I'd forgotten how truly heavy it is. The excerpt makes me a little queasy with remembrance.

All right, chickadees, I must fly. Cheerio!

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* George Carlin.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Don't you hate when you've been running around all day doing various things and then once you get home, you've decided to do laundry and clean your bathroom and the fumes from the cleaners start making you feel lightheaded and you realize all you've had to eat all day is a handful of Fritos?

I am on a little bit of a health kick these days, so the Fritos simply don't make sense. Speaking of which, I got this organic microwave popcorn from Whole Foods because I was feeling all like, "I know I'll need a snack at some point, but I don't want to eat something BAAAD for me," and let me tell you, this organic microwave popcorn sucks ass. It is a grave disappointment, my friends.

SERIOUSER AND SERIOUSER

I hate to drag you into this, but Viva is having some trouble at school, and this, well, troubles me.

Well, first the good news. The Spring Show was hilarious. Viva was center stage, absolutely adorable, and she didn't miss a beat during their whole firefighter song. Here she is, just before the show, as they were getting ready to process out of the classroom to the staging area:


See that little girl to the left? The one who is looking at the camera warily? That is Best Friend. Best Friend has, for some time, been a thorn in my side, because Viva has picked up some unpleasant behavior from her. I've spent a lot of time working on Best Friend, because Viva likes her and if Viva likes her, I need to find out how to like her too. But it's been hard, because she is just mean.

Viva's teacher, Miss Jean*, actually broached the subject of Best Friend with me a few weeks ago. She said, "We had a long talk today about Viva and Best Friend's friendship, and how it's not nice to call names, and how if you're friends, you need to be nice to each other."

"Oh," I said. "Were they fighting?"

"Well, Best Friend tends to...um, well, sometimes she'll be Viva's friend, and sometimes not, and there never seems to be a clear reason --"

"Yes," I said. "Best Friend can be very moody --"

"YES," said Miss Jean. "That is a good way, a much nicer way, of describing it. But Viva is very sensitive, and she gets SO upset, Best Friend makes her cry."

"It's so strange," I said. "They're so little, and I never thought that I'd be dealing with not liking her friends this early! I mean, of all the kids in the class, Viva had to end up with her --"

"Maybe she likes a challenge," Miss Jean said. "But seriously, Viva is friends with everybody, and she plays with all the kids in the class, and I think Best Friend gets jealous."

We agreed that the best move in this case was to redirect Viva toward playing with the other kids and to spend less time with Best Friend. This seemed logical to me, in the sense of "if you misbehave, you [Best Friend] don't get what you want [Viva]." Miss Jean has since put Best Friend in time out when she catches her misbehaving, and has tried to teach Viva to stick up for herself verbally.

However, it seems that this has only escalated the problem, and now Best Friend is scratching, spitting on, and stepping on Viva. Viva apparently does not hit back, but just bursts into tears. Sweet William has concluded the only thing to do is to teach her how to hit back in self-defense: "I think you're going to have to slug her," he says. I am really against this -- we have consistently told her that it is wrong to hit, that that is not how you solve your problems.** Viva seems to agree, at least for the moment.

This morning, I talked to Miss Jean again, and she agreed to speak with Best Friend's mom to let her know what was going on and to try to get to the bottom of it. Hopefully, the ugly behavior will stop. If not, is it time for a smackdown? I can't stand it.

* Not her real name.

** I have also seriously begun to question spanking, even though we do it pretty rarely. How can we tell her to use her words when there's a problem, if we don't do the same? But that is an issue for another post.

Yearning for Freedom

Last night, Sweet William and I were settled on the couch, voluntarily having our blood pressures spiked by yet another nailbiter Lakers-Suns game, when the phone rang. Now, we have Caller ID, and there is a very short list of people we allow to interrupt us when we are watching the playoffs. Or at any time, really. The short list includes very select family and friends.

It does not include anyone calling from jail, but that, my friends, is who was calling us. The Caller ID said, succinctly, "PRISON (213) XXX-XXXX."

"PRISON?!" We both said. "Who would call us from prison?" Soon after that, the phone started blinking to let us know someone had left us a voicemail. The voicemail said that this was a collect call from a correctional facility and that the cost for the call would be $3.32 for the first minute and then $0.06 per minute for subsequent minutes, but it never did say who was calling us.

"Hello? Who's this? Prison? Oh, PRISON! Yeah, Prison, great to hear from you, how've you been? Overcrowded? I'm so sorry to hear that, that's -- rioting? Aw, no. Right, right -- excessive force, right, I know. Yeah, yeah -- oh, it sounds like our time is almost up, Prison. I'll have to holla atcha later, but you be good, hear?"

What the hell? Am I living in Bizarro World?

Exceeding Every Expectation

IN WHICH IT IS REVEALED THAT I AM THE BOMB

So, remember my interview yesterday? This morning, I hadn't even finished typing out the text of the notes I was going to then rewrite by hand (because yes, I am just that anal) when I received a message from the place I interviewed with yesterday afternoon. They want to set up a meeting with me and the President & CEO of this place.

I wonder if it's because I took my bottled water with me after the interview? I mean, they offered it, and I drank part of it. Was I supposed to return it? Am I in trouble?

Or must I meet with this woman because they do, in fact, want to offer me a million dollars, a corner office, a masseuse and personal chef? Oh, and dental. Don't forget dental.

The next interview isn't until next week, so we'll all have to suffer until then.

OFFENSIVE FOUL!

Speaking of suffering: damn Lakers lost, so on to Game 6. And what fresh hell is this? Kwame Brown is finally a factor on this team and he gets charged with sexual assault. He is either (a) a dumbass, not to mention a sorry excuse for a human being, if this is true; or (b) still not very bright, if the charges are false. I know that only he and his accuser know what truly happened. But why put yourself into a situation where there might be any doubt?

Innocent until proven guilty. I really hope this is not true.

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

Viva's Preschool/Pre-K Spring Show is scheduled for this Friday, May 5th. She will be dressed as a firefighter, singing "Hurry, hurry, drive the firetruck," and it promises to be The Most Adorable Thing Ever Seen. Ever. Except. It looks like there's a slight possibility it might rain, and this being Southern California, and it being MAY, the show is supposed to take place outside. Lawd, Jesus.

Keep your fingers crossed.

KIND OF FUNNY, AND YET NOT.

In my online reading about the rising gas prices here in the U.S., I came across this article about "Little women in big SUVs," a surprise hit on NPR's Cartalk, which has propelled it to iTunes. Here's a link to the lyrics and a link to video with the song on CNN.

What is funny about this is the women who watch it and seem to think it's not about them, because they're not 90 pounds. It is so, so hard to hear anything with one's head in the sand, though -- so I understand the confusion. Honestly, I do.

Our Feel-Good Pick of the Week

SPINWATCH

Well, my interview this afternoon went well. They love love loved me and offered me a million dollars to come and work for them, 25 hours a week, and they said they'd send a limo to pick me up every morning. Oh, and dental. They have dental.

We'll see.

AN ASTONISHING RANGE OF STYLES AND EMOTIONS ON DISPLAY

Viva: Yuck, yuck! Aaaaaahhh!
Sweet W: What's the matter?
Viva: Yuck, there's something in my mouth. It's yucky!
Sweet W: What did you put in there?
Mama Blah [drawn by the screaming]: Is it something you ate?
Viva: Aaaah, yuck! Phtheh! Phtheh! [trying to spit it out]
Mama Blah: What IS it? Is it from something that you ate?
Viva: No, it's from when I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

BASKETBALL JONES

My Lakers have really pulled it together in the last month or so, particularly in the postseason, and while I don't want to jinx them, it looks like they may actually beat the Suns in their best-of-7 playoff series. Sunday's game practically gave me heart failure, and I'm hoping tonight will be a little easier on me. If the Lakers do pull this off, they will next have to go head-to-head with the Clippers, which will be frickin' fantastic. It ain't over 'til it's over, but here's hoping.

Oh, and since I am sure Kobe reads this blog: congrats on the new baby! The Blah Blahs' silver rattle from Tiffany's is on its way! And let me just add, how weird is this? Kobe's wife and Shaq's wife each gave birth only six minutes apart. On different coasts. Stranger than strange.

PARENTING 101

So, the place where I interviewed today? Is a non-profit agency that provides assistance to low-income families and the like? And among the many many services they offer is parenting education?

So I arrive today for my interview, walking up briskly in my totally conservative conform-to-all-they-tell-you-about-job-interviews suit, and as I approach the building, I can't help but notice a small (maybe fifteen-month-old?) toddler lying with his face pressed against the filthy sidewalk, screaming his head off. His mother (presumably) was standing with a stroller under a tree, a couple of yards away, watching him expressionlessly as he screamed and threw the Giantest Tantrum in the World, Ever, and the sidewalk (filthy!) underneath his face was wet with tears. And I know people who lives in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but my house is not actually glass, you see, it's acrylic. And while I have read that you should basically let your kid have his/her tantrum and not intervene, I have to say that if a matter of hygiene is involved, I don't think it's a bad idea to pick your kid up off the filthy (filthy!) sidewalk, regardless of how much more pissed off it makes your kid.

At any rate, I went inside, had the receptionist page my interviewer, was welcomed and taken upstairs to a meeting room, and sat and waited for the interview to commence -- and I could still hear the kid screaming. Maybe, as with me, the mailman's jerkin' him 'round and put his million dollar check in someone else's box. Or maybe he just wants something deep fried and covered in chocolate. Life's hard out there for a toddler. But I do hope his (presumed) mother was able to find some measure of assistance on this trip.

As for me, I'm off to go pick up my own little armload of joy. Peace out.

A Day Without Immigrants

There are two major demonstrations planned for today in the Los Angeles area -- one, at 10 AM, which will be confined mainly to downtown, and the second, starting at 4 PM and beginning at MacArthur Park and moving down Wilshire Boulevard to La Brea Avenue. The second demonstration is expected to be the biggest, and Wilshire will be closed from 2 PM to 8 PM.

For those who aren't familiar with Los Angeles, the Wilshire corridor is a main thoroughfare in the city, running from downtown all the way to the ocean. It is probably one of the most traveled east-west streets in the metropolitan area. Closing it off basically cuts off a major traffic artery.

Viva's school has elected to close at 12:30 today due to all the street closures. Lena, the woman who cleans our apartment building, was here yesterday, on a Sunday, sweeping floors and taking out trash, because while she has permanent resident status, she is an immigrant and lives in a building with other immigrants who are threatening their neighbors to comply with Immigration Day boycotts. She says if she goes anywhere today, these neighbors have threatened to smash the windows of her car. Kind of goes against the whole spirit of the thing, as far as I'm concerned, but maybe that's just me. I'm interested to hear what she has to say when I see her tomorrow.

I'll stop here because I have to work now since I must leave to pick up Viva in a couple of hours. So much more to say and no time to say it!

Edited after lunch to add: Viva claims she is going to take a nap right now. After spending some time reading a variety of hateful messages on various discussion boards about the immigration rallies, I am completely drained. Went looking for something -- anything -- a bit more positive, and I just had to include this quote from LA Voice:

...in case you worried that President Bush had somehow managed to ignore the multiple significance of the date, he actually proclaimed today "National Loyalty Day."

Whew. That helps. I didn't realize it was all so simple!