Oprah, You're on my List (But not Really)

I have a bone to pick with Oprah. Oprah Winfrey. You heard right, I'm not afraid to pick bones with her majesty, I've got some balls.

Here's the thing. I used to have a subscription to O magazine. No, it did not come free with my subscription to the Utne Reader or Atlantic Monthly, or the New Yorker, I ordered it of my own free will, and I enjoy it. I even read Dr. Phil and Oprah's what I know for sure, and it helps me kill time while I'm not cooking dinner. Anyhoo, I started to get real irritated like, because, I believe that, as a subscriber, someone who keeps circulation numbers up and helps sell advertising so Oprah can buy more dogs and chenille throws, that I should receive the magazine at least one day before it hits the news stands, and never one day later. But that didn't happen with O. I would go to the grocery store, and longingly look at the issue in the magazine rack, wanting desperately to read what nuggets Suze Orman had for me, and I would have to wait, sometimes very impatiently, for my issue to come in the mail. I even called the 800 number for the circulation department a few times to complain, and all they could tell me was that it isn't considered late until the last day of the month of the issue, or some B.S. like that.

I let my subscription lapse for this reason. I thought, "to hell with this." and I started to buy it at the grocery store along with tampons and instant oatmeal. But the cover price is so much more than the subscription price, and I love getting anything in the mail that isn't junk or bills, and Oprah herself kept sending me letters and offers for 50% of the newstand price, and finally I succumbed to her wooing, and ordered a two- year subscription.

Yesterday, I watched the Oprah episode with Ellen Degeneres and Portia DeRossi talking about their love (I let Leila watch it too, I thought it was a good teachable moment) and Oprah and Ellen went on and on about how they shot the cover for the December issue ON NEWS STANDS NOVEMBER 12! They were on Michigan Avenue in Chicago giving away free autographed copies, and you know what? I DONT HAVE MY NOVEMBER ISSUE YET! Don't tease me with December when I haven't even seen the Thanksgiving recipes that I will never make in the November issue!

As I write this, I am worried that I did get the November issue, and on of my rare cleaning jags, I put it away in the designated magazine place in my bedroom and forgot about it. Hold on a sec' I'm gonna go check...

No! Ha! I was right! October is in there, and November is nowhere! My subscription just started a few months ago so I have, like, a year and a half of this bullshit left.

I'm calling you out, Oprah! (or Ms. Winfrey if you're nasty) I want my November issue in the mail TODAY and I want the December issue in the mail TOMORROW, one day before I see it in the grocery store, or else! Or else I will, um, not watch your favorite things episode? Nah, can't do that, I love that episode. I know! I will NOT read your book club selection! So there!!!

(Here's the other thing, though: if, like in my fantasy land where I'm thin and my feet are two sizes smaller, I am ever on the Oprah show, or if she showed up at my door with a camera crew to hand me my November issue in person, I would totally recant and blubber and be all, "Oh, Oprah, I didn't really mean it! Your magazine is always worth the wait! Ha ha ha!" So really, I don't have any balls at all.)

***ADDENDUM*** Just got my mail, and my magazine did not come today. Oh, its ON!

Ambien in Seattle

Here I am, in Seattle!  Its raining, and cold, and there was great thunder and lightning.  Yay!  Its sunny and 63 degrees at home; eff that noise!  

I have a little bit of the blues over the old birthday.  I don't care about the age thing, whatever, but I just can't seem to have a happy birthday.  I even left the state this year to minimize my yearly birthday disappointment, and it followed me.  I'm not sure if the external factors are exactly what I think they are and I'm not crazy for feeling blue, or if I'm just one of those people who is destined to be impossible to please.  I just don't think the latter is true.  And I can be really freakin' good at other people's birthdays; not every person, every year, without fail, but I can really pull out the stops when I am inspired, which I often am.  Sometimes I don't even send a card, but sometimes I'm a damn birthday genius.  And you know what?  Its not that hard.  Its not a stretch.  It doesn't cause me stress or tax my faculties.  It brings me joy.  

I've considered canceling future birthdays and just taking myself to a movie and buying myself a present and getting my eyebrows waxed or something, but I'm afraid people would think I was eschewing my forties or being a drama queen, and neither of those things are accurate.  So, I guess I'll just keep having stupid birthdays and smiling and saying thank you when I'd really rather forget the whole thing.

In other news, its crab night tonight.  CRAB!  My favorite ritualistic meal.  You sit, you pick, you drink, you lick your fingers.  Some people eat as they go, some make a pile (that would be me.) East coasters eat it warm, west coasters eat it cold.  Some people eat it as is, some people dip it in butter, but I make a delicious mix of mayonnaise and curry powder that I dip my fork into and then spear some crab and create the perfect bite.  It takes forever, you have plenty of time to get wasted, and the more you drink the sillier you get, and you laugh, and drool a little and go to bed full and happy.  Crab is love.  Crab is joy.  Crab would probably be a disgusting insect if you turned the ocean and the land inside out, and people wouldn't eat it any more than they would eat - actually, I can't think of a gross insect that someone on the earth wont eat - but you know what I mean.  

So, even though my birthday is Monday, I'm officially changing it to tonight.  Crab and best friends make everything better.  And ambien.  Ambien is pretty good.

Swine Flu-haha

I have a bone to pick. Swine flu hysteria is sweeping the nation, and its pissing me off. I know no one wants to get sick, I get it. I get it probably better than anyone. And I know its hitting kids more than adults because they don't have antibodies to fight it. Swine flu is not new, its been around a while, so older people have already had it and wont get it again. And I understand that the flu has broken out prior to the vaccine being available, and everyone is freaking out. But here's the thing: Its a flu. Flu is always dangerous to a certain segment of the population, and sometimes some people get sicker than other people, and no one knows why. No one can explain why most people who are getting the flu have mild flu-like symptoms, but some are getting super duper sick and ending up in the hospital. I almost died from what started as a simple strep infection, for chrissakes, and to this day no one can explain to me why, just as no one can explain to me why I was felled by another strep infection from a variety of strep that all of us have all the time, but is normally asymptomatic. Its a mystery!

If you're sick from the flu and it sucks and you're miserable, I feel for you, I really do. Being sick in bed, especially when you have kids around and your husband goes to work regardless of your needs, is awful. But barring any unforeseen and random haywire super flu bug that lands you in the hospital, you'll be okay. Your kids will be okay. Its a flu. It sucks. You'll get over it. My family once had something that will always be known as Sick February, a three-week period a few years ago where all three of us had something terrible. We were all puking and dehydrated, and had fevers and aches and pains, and it SUCKED. I was so sick, that when Leila went into the back bathroom (where we keep the cat box) to throw up, I went in there to rub her back and noticed she was kneeling on cat litter with bare knees. Mother of the year! It was the first time Leila ever had diarrhea, and I had to try not to laugh at her on the toilet: she just kept yelling, "Its so STINKY!!!" I asked her if given a choice between diarrhea and puking what she would prefer, and she reluctantly chose diarrhea. Wouldn't you?

Am I being overly harsh? Maybe. Maybe I'll get angry comments, but I just can't seem to get worked up about this. I have only gotten two flu shots in my life, and only because they were available at my workplace and I wanted other people to get them so I had to, too. If I have access to a swine flu vaccine, I'll probably get one because I have asthma and a history of mutant angry bugs that want to kill me. We may have actually had swine flu last week; Leila had all the symptoms, but it honestly didn't occur to me that it might be the dreaded H1N1.

So, get your vaccines, stock up on Tamiflu, do whatever you need to do to feel secure. I'm just gonna chill. Boy, wont I be eating my hat if I come down with the flu...

In other news, I'm getting on a germ infested plane tomorrow for my extended birthday weekend with my BFFS in Seattle Washington. If you're a reader from that area and are dying to meet me, let me know, I'll try to squeeze you in to my party-my-ass-off-eat-and-drink-too-much weekend. You know what they have up there in Seattle? Rain!!! La la LA! I'll try to post from there, but it might mean putting down my wine.

Oh, and also, I had two requests for pictures of the sofa, so here you go. The rest of the room is not finished yet, so don't judge me.

Too. Many. Decisions!

Sorry, readers, I've been busy.

We got our sofa! It is beautiful! It makes everything else in my house look like garbage! So I have been on a mission, trying to find a rug and a coffee table that suit my particular needs, (smallish, round, glass - the table not the rug) and here is what I have learned:

1) I could never EVER be an interior decorator.

2) Rugs are WAY more expensive than they should be.

Also, I have become completely overwhelmed by the decorateur balls I am juggling. Last night, two strong men and Rob were wiggling the big part of the new sofa through the front door. It never occurred to me that the thing wouldn't fit, but, there they were, taking the door off the hinges and discussing the respective merits of either ripping out the door frame, or sawing the legs of my new sofa and then reattaching them. I couldn't watch. I stayed in the kitchen and thought about dinner. Why I didn't swill wine, I have no idea. Oh! I know! All my wine is in the wine rack in the coat closet, the door to which was blocked by the old sofa. Can you believe that I went through this without wine? My friend was here with her three kids and just stayed calm and kept the children happy, and thank goodness. I was at my wit's end, and I wasn't even doing anything.

Miraculously, the too-big sofa made it through the too-small door, both unscathed, I went to In 'n Out burger to get everyone dinner, and later, I got to my wine.

Here's the thing: I stupidly took on redecorating the living room at the same time as I took on Leila's shit hole of a room, so let's go back to that for a second.

I have now completed the purging part of the project. I have taken ten bags - yes, you read correctly, TEN BAGS - of stuff out of her room. Plus, I made her try on all her clothes, and took another two bags of clothes out of there. All the little pieces of things that I found behind the dresser and the bed etc. have been reunited with their kin, and the rest has been tossed. And you know what? LEILA HASN'T NOTICED A THING! Ten bags! No noticing! Then, I told her that Daddy and I thought it would be a good idea to create a room that reflected a bigger kid, and she was all excited. We ordered some new sheets, and we rearranged the furniture. She loves it, keeps calling it her "new room" but I'm less sure. I am stuck on whether to put the desk away for a while, or get new book shelves and a keyboard stand, and I just can't get my arms around it. I know, I'm a big whiny gasbag with an embarrassment of riches, blah blah blah, but this is hard! The living room! The kid's room! Its too much for me, especially since it requires parting with pieces of furniture which is very difficult for a person whose parents are sleeping on the same mattress and driving the same car that they bought 46 years ago (That is not a jokey joke, its completely true.)

I really want to finish the little movie I'm making about her room, but I can't until these decisions are made. Stay tuned, though, it'll happen. I also told her that Daddy and I (really mostly I) organized her room in such a way as to make it easier to clean up. I didn't tell her that that meant getting rid of half the stuff in there, but last night was the true test, and it was crazy easier to clean. Mission accomplished! Meaning exactly what it meant when W used it; We're not nearly done in there.

Happy Halloween!

As I am writing this, right this minute, it is Halloween Night! Bwahahahaha! AAAAAAACK!

My neighbor across the street did a major haunted house deal with smoke machines and skulls and scary music, the works. So I went out and bought extra candy to accommodate the extra trick or treaters, and you know what? They are skipping my house to go across the street and check out the haunted house! Can you believe that? They'll be back, OH YES, they'll be back...

I have been feeling nostalgic for the Hallows-ween of my youth, one hundred thousand years ago, when 99% of the costumes were homemade, and 99% of us went as ghosts, witches, hobos, gypsies, and cats. We would watch Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! once, we would dress up once, for halloween itself, my mom would put a little make up on me, give me a black mole, and my dad would take us out trick-or-treating, and ask after every house, "did you say thank you?" Most of the houses did not decorate, and if they did it was a cardboard cutout of a scarecrow. Or maybe that was just my house. There was one house that had a couple of tiki torches going up the stairs and I would not go to their door for any amount of candy, or even a full sized snickers.

We did not collect for Unicef. Halloween was for kids, and was not a teachable moment for anything but avoiding apples with razor blades. Neighbors who you knew actually made home made treats like popcorn balls, and, I don't know about you, but I trick-or-treated with one other friend and that was it. No one went out to eat, no one with little kids went to a party and left their house dark, and I got to eat as much of my candy as I wanted or ration it out to myself, it was my choice. And if I ever became constipated, my mom would rub my back while I sat on the can and tell me it was from eating too much candy, whether it was Halloween or not, and I thought that was true until my twenties.

But, alas, things have changed. A lot of the costumes are store bought (although I have to admit I am seeing some fine examples of mother-sewing at my door tonight) and the kids come to the door in clumps of five or more, and half of them don't say trick or treat. I have to make them say it in exchange for the goods. Two separate kids have actually asked me, "How many pieces?" instead of trick-or-treat and thank you; my response was, "How about no pieces, would that work for you?" I don't ask for much, just that they do their part by saying the magic Halloween words, and I'll load 'em up.

My friend is giving out granola bars. Jeez. Honestly. I beseeched her to please, please just give out the good stuff for once in her life. Don't be the raisin lady, or the granola bar lady, or the toothbrush or spare change lady. Buy a bag of mini snickers, have a sip or two of wine and get it over with. I called her tonight, and she's not even home which means that innocent little children, with store bought costumes and Unicef boxes have to climb the stairs to her front door only to find a bowl of granola bars, for chrisakes.

Yes, its true, I rock.

I Suck

I only have a minute. I have a pretty packed day today. I have to make banana bread, or the bananas that I bought for this purpose will go past the point of their usefulness, I am going to lunch with someone I don't know, I have to finish assembling L's costume, I have to tidy up the house AGAIN, and then all the regular stuff like picking the kid up from school, listening to her bullshit, and making her take a bath and do her homework. God, I hope she's in a better mood today. I'm starting to worry that she's having a real problem, and it isn't just sleepiness or something.

I did some time in her room today. Over an hour. It took that long to go through her bin of artwork and her "pink bin." The pink bin is where all the little plastic pieces of shit go. Rubber balls, spider rings, spare change, Barbie shoes, game pieces, plastic bugs, a toy tank and a toy alligator, broken necklaces, hair bands, and today I found a sock that I'd been looking for. Between the two bins I hauled out one whole grocery bag of recycling and another whole grocery bag of garbage, and that's the two bags for today.

The longer I work in that room, and find all the teeny tiny pieces to games and sets of things, and trash, and broken things and all that CRAP, the lousier I feel. I don't know how hoarders do it. Seriously, I don't know how they don't just run screaming from their piles of stuff or just light their houses on fire. I have so let this room go, and the deeper I dig, the worse it gets. We all know I will never win awards for my housekeeping, but this is something entirely different. This child is living in a landfill of her own making, and I am letting it happen. Oh, the shame!

But this is ending. I've now hauled a total of 6 bags of stuff out of there. The big container in the garage is full, and I'm not nearly done. There will come a day when that room is habitable again, and it will be soon! In the meantime, I'm leaving it a mess so it is less obvious that things are missing. So far, she doesn't suspect a thing. I've decided that when I get to the point where she has to notice, like I'm moving furniture and stuff like that, I will tell her that, since she's almost eight, its time to make it an eight year-old's room, and play it like that. I'll let her pick out a new sheet set (from a mother-pre-approved selection) and that will be her great contribution. She'll never know what happened, except that her room is manageable and easier to clean, and her games have all their pieces and all is well with the world.

Now I have to get ready for lunch. Bon appetit!

Who Peed in her Cheerios?

This must be the week of crabby. Leila is so irritable and cranky and frustrated, its like she's getting her period or something. Jeez. She was all drama when I picked her up today, so I thought I'd cheer her up by telling her I recorded Its The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and that we could watch it together when her "stuff" was done (homework, piano practice.) But instead of happiness, I got treated to a tirade about how she HATES Charlie Brown. Who hates Charlie Brown? I mean, maybe Lucy, but she's really just passive aggressive; what's to hate? So I changed the subject and when we got home, she dumped her stuff on the big green chair, and started to open the TV cabinet and I was all "You have to finish your stuff first." and she was all, "You didn't say that!" and I was all, "Yuh-huh" and now she's plinking around on the piano, not actually practicing, just farting around, and there's a sign on her door that says in big rad crayoned Letters, "Leave Me Alone!" Fine, crabby pants, I'll just take a little nap and mind my own bees wax.

What is up her butt lately? I know she's getting over being sick, but she was fine a few days ago, she should be even finer today. I've been putting her to bed early (its convenient when they can't tell time; you say "time for bed!" and they don't argue) so if she's just tired I can't see why. I'm making sure she has healthy, protein-filled snacks, but she's still just pissing all over this nice day. I'm blaming everything on second grade. So far, its been a tough school year.

Speaking of healthy snacks, I'm in the halloween candy. I left it alone for almost two whole days, but last night, while Rob was playing guitar, I had some smarties and a butterfinger. You'd think I would have at least tortured myself about it, hemmed and hawed, bargained with myself, or felt guilty afterwards, but really I just ripped those bags open and got some candy out as casually as if I were getting the mail. Maybe deep down I just knew it was inevitable. Its hard to live with two open bags of halloween candy. Talk about haunting. I think Poe should have written about housewives hearing mini chocolate bars calling to them. Screw ravens. A bag of mini Babyruths is way scarier.

I hauled two more bags of crap out of Leila's room today. Stuffed animals, dress-up stuff and a few odds and ends off her desk. You still can't tell anything is missing, and, luckily, neither can she. Bwahahahahaha! Stay tuned for a mini movie about her extreme room makeover; I'm putting my iMovie skills to work and its all for you!