Wednesday Spaghetti

Alright. 

I've been totally slacking.

I mean, how hard is it?

It only costs about $3, and that's if there are more than 6 or 8 of us here.

So, what?  A buck fifty?  Two?

And I came up with the idea.

You'd think I'd stick to the plan a bit better.

It's the time, man.

I just haven't had any time.

Or energy.

You know how I get when it's cold outside.

But the nice weather is back.  I'm back.  Back on my own personal crusade to get people to sit around my table and to get people to sit around your table.

We all eat. 

Every day.

And I think it's high time that we start doing it together.

Wednesday Spaghetti is back, in full force. 

Every Wednesday at five o'clock or so I'll be putting a pot of water on the stove and waiting for people to file in. 

And if they don't come? 

If it's just Jake and I sitting down to supper? 

Well, that's just fine.

What is Wednesday Spaghetti?  In technical terms, it's this:
Wednesday Spaghetti was formed to increase public awareness of the need for families, caregivers, and peer groups to spend quality time together in an in-home, casual dining setting in order to discuss general life issues, household guidelines and practices, personal habits, issues, and goals, educational habits, issues, and goals, employment habits, issues and goals, family habits, issues, and goals, physical health-related issues, sexual health-related issues, emotional health-related issues, spiritual issues, relationship issues, community events and resources, and other such topics; to support and conduct nonpartisan research, educational and informational activities to increase public awareness of the importance of togetherness, communication, and good nutrition; to provide simple to make, nutritious meals to any family or group in the community, regardless of race, color, creed, sexuality, religious beliefs, ethnicity, economic status, or location at no cost to the family or group.

But really it's this:
Turn off the tv, silence your phone, and pull up a chair.  It's time to eat.

There's a tax ID number and all the paperwork in place making it an official non-profit, there's an oft-neglected WedSpag blog and a "real" website in the works, there's people doing it all over the country every Wednesday, there are homeless shelters and drug rehabs and churches doing it (at my suggestion!! I love when people do what I ask!!), it's happening in my house, and I hope it happens in yours, and now you can find Wednesday Spaghetti on Facebook.  Check it out, hit the "like" button, and maybe try it out in your kitchen if you aren't already. 

It doesn't have to be Wednesday, it doesn't have to be spaghetti, it just has to be some time, some thing, some where, and some body at a table with you.

I promise you will be amazed at what happens.

As some of you know, working with victims and offenders of sexual abuse is a cause near and dear to my heart.  It's not an easy job, and I'm not doing it directly now, but I do work with a few agencies who specialize in victim's services (and juvenile offender services.  Did you know that up to half of all offenders are juveniles?).  It's a touchy subject and uncomfortable for everyone.  But it is a real problem and one that is never going to go away.  The only way to help someone who has been victimized is to report the abuse, prosecute the offender and remove him or her from the victim's life, and treat the victim.

The only way to know where to go in case your child is ever raped, molested, or otherwise victimized is through community notification of resources.  Beyond the police and courts there is a network of dedicated individuals who devote their lives to helping people who need their help.  Would you know where to go if your child needed help?  What would you do if your child was accused of victimizing someone else?  It all happens in nice, normal families like ours you know.

Not too many places are willing to broadcast PSAs for the places that are there for people in need.  Luckily Comcast is not one of those places.  Did everyone in the Philadelphia area see the spot for JJPI?  I work with them, and I know that there was a good number of calls in to the cable company to stop running that spot because of uncomfortable words like "sex", but they continued to run it and it worked.  There was an influx of calls to the agency from people in need.  Some people will tell you that sex crimes are down, but the people in the know are pretty sure that it's reporting that is down, not incidences.

So what's the point?  I got this in my email today:

For Immediate Release

May 25, 2010

(HARRISBURG) The Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape is urging Pennsylvanians to contact WBEB 101.1FM in Philadelphia and express their displeasure with the station’s decision to deny PCAR radio advertising space for its HERO Project campaign.

            The station denied PCAR space because the 30-second public service announcement, urging adults to report child sexual abuse, contained the words ‘rape’ and ‘sexual.’

            WBEB’s General Manager Blaise Howard offered PCAR space only if it altered the wording to remove the word “rape” from the organization’s name and say “child abuse” instead of “child sexual abuse”, citing that the station’s listeners would be upset by the words that are currently used.

Howard stated to PCAR’s executive director that WBEB doesn’t take “explicit ads” because they are a “straight laced” company. However, the station does play sexually suggestive music by artists such as Prince, Madonna, Lady GaGa and George Michael.

            “Child sexual abuse is not about sexuality.” PCAR Executive Director Delilah Rumburg said “It’s about violence to our children. If the station doesn’t believe its listeners could handle hearing words about abuse, imagine what child victims of sexual abuse are experiencing,”.

“We believe that our message is important to Pennsylvanians. All we are trying to do is get information out to the public that there is help and healing for survivors and their families. We don’t feel that modifying the language is an acceptable compromise. The station is asking us to censor information that could actually help their listeners. Their decision is appalling and perpetuates the veil of silence that continues to hurt victims in need of help.”

            PCAR is urging residents to call the station at 610-667-8400 and voice their displeasure with the soft rock radio station and to ask the station to make a substantial donation to their local rape crisis centers.

            To listen to the HERO Project public service announcements visit http://www.heroproject.org/.

If you are a member of the media and would like to run the HERO PSAs or print advertisements, please contact PCAR at 800-692-7445 x154. 

If anyone is willing or able, please make the telephone call.
If you aren't able, please leave a comment here, as I will be forwarding this post and all comments to the station.  I've opened the blog up to anonymous comments for this post because I understand you might not want your name tied with what you may share

It upsets me to hear the words child sexual abuse and rape.  It makes me want to throw up.  But what's worse?  Knowing that there are so many little ones out there who aren't getting help because their parents don't know where to go or that feel that they can make it go away by ignoring the offense and hoping the kid will just forget.

I have a child, and we have gone over Okay Touch/ Not Okay Touch (Good Touch/Bad Touch is out, btw.  The research has shown that children feel that they are bad for letting it happen, not that the offender is bad for doing it) for years now.  We talk about it two or three times per week, at length.  I feel it is that important.  Sure my view is skewed because I've seen so many victimized children, but I'm sure you have too.  You just don't see them in a clinical setting so you don't know they are victims.

Jacob doesn't use the words "sex" or "rape", but he's heard them.  On PSAs.  And when he asked me what "rape" meant, I told him that it is when someone touches someone else's penis or vagina without permission, and no one ever  has permission to touch a child's penis or vagina except for doctors, moms and dads, and anyone that mom and dad allows to bathe a child or change a diaper.  And he wasn't traumatized or shocked by my answer.  He hears the word sex on television and the radio all the time.  It's everywhere.  He's heard it so often that he never asked me what it meant.

If we were listening to the radio and we heard this PSA he may or may not ask what it is about.  But I would know what it was about, and that could make a world of difference if someone raped my baby tomorrow. 

coloring my parachute

You know how when you are a student, and you have to report your occupation, you write "student" in the box or you say "student" to the person who asked you and your entire identity is formed around "student".  You get discounts and free stuff and all that?

And I have friends who didn't go back to work after they had their babies and when anyone asks them what they do they answer "I'm a mom" and they get love and hugs and support and people say things to them like "you have the hardest job in the world" and "I don't know how you do it".

Well, you don't usually get paid to be a student, and sure as certain no one is paying anyone to be a mom.  But Student and Mom are two very valid careers. 

I'm going to start doing that.  I'm not so much a student, and I don't ever tell people the mom thing because I can't bring myself to be the sort to gratuitously talk about the damned kid all the time.  But I'm going to start telling people that I'm a writer and a photographer and an actor.  Yeah, I'm not getting paid for any of that.  Yeah, it's not my day job (that I won't be quitting any time soon in order to pursue those things).  But it's what I like to do.  And it's what I "do", technically.  I write, I take photos, and I act.  I do all those things.  And it sounds so much cooler than my job. 

When I explain my dayjob- which is hard to do- people usually say something like "I don't know how you do that" or "I can't work with those people, they would make me sick" or "my mom is a social worker/therapist/whatever" or "oh, man" and then they want to hear horror stories ("so what's like, the worst thing you've ever seen/heard/whatever") and when I tell them, I get sad or mad because they're so bad.  And seriously?  Work is only 37.5 hours per week.  And that's when I go everyday.  I get three weeks vacation, nine paid holidays, three floating holidays, eleven sick days, and nine personal days plus we get off early every Friday in the summer.  There are 168 hours in a week.  Why should define myself by something I do less than 22.3% of my time? I sleep for 50, sometimes 60 hours a week.  Technically sleep is more "done" than work.

I'm going to start living in the five to nine and keep my nine to five out of my mind when I'm not ninetofiving and see where it takes me.

So, next time you see me, ask me what I do.  And I'll tell you. 

And I want to know... what do you do?

I was going to blog about how awkward it was to purchase a colon/liver cleanse and a box of taco shells yesterday, and how I tried to do self checkout but it was broken so the runner cashier who is always asking strange questions and redirecting shopper traffic redirected me to a regular lane and he did me the "favor" of carrying my two items to a new checkout and he read the back of the cleanse box and then stared at my gut and butt for an awkward number of seconds and then the cashier asked me if I had any plans for the weekend and I said "you're looking at them" and he laughed but only nervously and I laughed but it came out creepy but then I thought that this website was so much funnier at talking about awkward situations:

Click here
OMG this is the funniest. thing. ever. Enjoy.

I had to do one of those dumb exercises in a workshop the other day where we had to share what we would ask Jesus if we had a chance to meet him.

Well, I ask Jesus all sorts of questions all the time, so this was hard for me to come up with.  I wanted to say "I'd like to ask Jesus how he feels about being part of this stupid exercise, and why someone paid with tax dollars thinks it's okay to ask a room full of strangers- some of whom are wearing kufis and burqas- questions about Jesus".

But I didn't.

And I wouldn't ask him how he dealt with farts and hard-ons and acne and stuff when he was a teenager.  I already asked him that.  And I wouldn't ask him if there are aliens because I learned the hard way that he's a ultra touchy about that kind of stuff because he sort of was an alien for awhile.  Landing on Earth from the Heavens and all.  Did you know Jesus gets mad when people don't believe in aliens?  And when Jesus gets wrathy?  Watch it.  He's all like, "Bitch!  Don't you know I is one?  I came down from outer space and shit.  There's a little book about it, called the Bible.  Maybe you've heard of it.  Sucka.".  And I didn't ask him about peace or sandals or whether manna was made from grains or algae and whether forty years then is the same amount of time as forty years now. 

All valid questions, by the way.

I want to know how he feels about being responsible for so many deaths.  People have killed mad amounts of other people in Jesus' name over the years.  And I just want to know what he thinks about it.  I mean, does he feel bad about it from time to time?  Does he pace around and rub his beard and think "Dad dammit.  What is up with these people? Stupid inaccurate translations of ancient texts gots people in a tizzy".
Does he really believe that people have to follow him in order to get to Heaven?  And if so, when someone dies because he or she doesn't accept him into their hearts, is he all like "too bad fool, now you're going to hell" and releases the trap door at the Pearly Gates?  Because that is WAY assholish.
Or is he all like "my bad.  I'm really sorry about that guy who took your head off in my name.  Just for that I'll give you a free pass into heaven.  If you'll just take this harp and these wings and this toga, Roger here will get you settled on your cloud".  And then Roger would come over and take the person who died in a crusade or something over to his spot.  Or is he just like "meh" and shrugs his shoulder about the whole thing.  Is Jesus a "that's the way the cookie crumbles!" type guy?

That's what I would ask Jesus if he and I went to lunch together.  BTW, my question was a little bit different than everyone else's question.  Sometimes it amazes me what people haven't already asked Jesus.  Seriously, it's like people pray about the most boring crap ever.

I'm guessing Jesus would be like "Lora, my child.  I know that my name is responsible for the untimely passing of many souls.  But like Genghis Khan, or Kim Jong-il, Hitler, or good MEian (Jesus doesn't feel comfortable saying CHRISTian, so he says Me-ian) people like George W., it was not I that took those lives.  It was the hands of others doing work that is dirty.  I have no guilt nor reason for blame laying.  Now, please go about your business here and stop bothering me with such ponderances.  I have a meeting to go to, and there will be nectar and unleavened breads served.  I'm effing starving.  Peace be with you."

And I'd be all like "and also with you!".  Then I'd have to get back to work to write a case note about it since it was done on work time and figure out a way to enter Jesus into the database.  It's tricky when someone doesn't have a social security number and the system won't let me enter 0000 as a valid year of birth.

When I was little, I read a lot of books.  A lot a lot.  My grandmother was a librarian.  So she made sure I could read when I was three and by the time that my classmates were just learning one-syllable words, I was reading novels.  Picture books had very little use to me.  I wanted words, and pictures took up so much page space where I thought words should be.

I'm very well-read.

Or was.  I don't read too much contemporary fiction.  Nor do I care too much for any non-fiction.  Jesus invented the History Channel for a reason.  That reason is so I can sit on ass that God invented and learn while having the luxury of two free hands that can be used for snacking.  Books+snacks= mess.  I hate to see someone eating and reading at the same time.  It cheapens the medium.

One of the books that I didn't read was Where the Wild Things Are.  It was banned from several libraries when my grandmother would have been working there, and I'm guessing that is the reason she never picked it up for me.  I finally got to it as a teenager, when I was babysitting some kids.  I didn't like it then, and I didn't like it when I saw it years later at a friend's house.  Remember, I'm WASPY, and we don't catch on to emotions very quickly.  I thought the book was dumb and boorish.  WASPY people think most things are dumb and boorish unless they are about education or whiskey or social advancement.  But, I bought it for Jake when he was very small because kids are supposed to have Where the Wild Things Are.  He didn't like it much.  He was scared of the monsters.  So I tucked it away for the better part of two years.

Two weeks or so ago I pulled it out again to show him that it wasn't so scary, and he agreed.  "It's not so bad", he shared.  "I told you so, now go to bed.  Monsters aren't real.  Sweet dreams".
Then I saw the movie, which pulled up all sorts of childhood inadequacies and lingering issues and parental fears and stuff.  Feelings.  Ones that didn't go away by looking at my diplomas or drinking whiskey.  Ack. 
So, I pulled the book out again to see what sort of emotions I could dredge up in Jake.  If I was going to be heavy in the heart, he was too.  Dammit.  We're family.  All for one and all for me.

Note: I have worked extremely hard to foster and develop Jacob's Emotional Intelligence these past 4 years.  It's sort of what we specialize in at work, so I figure I may as well carry it over to my home and make it the crux of my parenting style.  EI is pretty damned important in the world these days.
Mostly because we are all basically retarded stunted when it comes to feelings and stuff.  If there were helmets and knee pads and short yellow buses for people who are emotionally retarded slow?  I'd wager to say we'd all be a bunch of special needs kids.  By "we all", I mean "me all", fer sher.
Also, when you Google "emotion"?  Emotional Intelligence is the first thing that Google suggests.  So I guess the idea has really caught on.  Good on that.

Every page of Where the Wild Things Are is so incredibly charged.  Each word is important.  Each picture.  The body language and the facial expressions and the placement of characters.  Everything.  The book is traditionally about anger, but Jake pulled out revenge and sadness and bliss and hatred and neglect and loneliness and concepts of hierarchies of power and maternal love and maternal frustration and child love and child frustration and the cyclical and volatile nature of all the love and frustration mashed together and judging people on appearance and the importance and experience of nurturing others even if you aren't well-nurtured and trusting other people to keep you safe and working up the courage to face the unknown and and and.
All I did was read the words and ask Jake to tell me about the pictures.  He came up with everything else on his own.  We spent over an hour with the book.  All I said was the text.  All I did was nod and touch his hands, his heart, and his face.  He did all the talking.

There aren't too many times I am able to tell myself that I'm doing a great job with my kid.  I'm afraid I'm coming off as pompous or maybe that I'll jinx things or I'm looking through rose colored glasses.
He's good.  Ish.  He's kind.  Kinda.  He's lovable and loving and loved.  Sure.  But my mission to put him in touch with himself and others and provide him with a strong and useful vocabulary to describe what he is feeling, what he may feel, and what others are or may be feeling is working.

I'm really proud of him and I'm really proud of myself.

Now if I can figure out a way to stop him from jamming his socks and boogers in between the couch cushions.

Let's practice.  Using effective and well-constructed I-Messages.

"Jacob, when I find your mess between the couch cushions, I feel very __***___ because it seems to me that you are not respecting the rules of this house and these messes create extra work for me.  This is time that we could be spending together playing but instead I'm stuck chiseling your snots and digging for socks.  Before you put your hands down that crack, please think about what you are doing and how it may make me feel."

***Clicking on those stars takes you to a list of thousands of feeling words.  Now to chose one that is all encompassing of the way I feel when I'm doing grunt work for a four year old...

There was a thing floating around blogs a few months ago where you were supposed to list everything that you didn't like but felt like you were supposed to.  I didn't do it because I'm always so negative and I didn't want to dwell on stuff I dislike.  I hate chocolate, and red wine, hillbilly "rock" music like Nickleback and Lady Antebellum.  Who isn't a lady so much as it is a group of one girl who reminds me of a tubby Tori Spelling and two dudes who look like I would hate them if I knew them in real life because I don't like their haircuts or their clothing choices and I really hate all the gratuitious wedding band shots in their video about getting drunk and horny.  I guess it's okay to get shitfaced and slimecrotched if you are married and white.  But when single black guys start rapping about drinking and doing it everyone goes up in arms.
The music is not good.  Despite what America is voting for on VH1.  I lump people who like those two bands and all music that sounds like those two bands into the same group as cigarette smokers.  There has to be a reason why people like it/do it, but I can't identify with those reasons and it is polluting my atmosphere and scrambling my aura and it's unpleasant to eat near it.

I don't like dandruff.  It's tiny pieces of people's heads that fall off and stick to their shirts.  The last thing I want to look at when I'm talking to someone is small chunks of their head all over the place.

I don't like pants that make girls look like they have ill-placed penises.  When the fly sticks straight up when they sit down, you know? 

I don't like cell phone ringers.

I don't like unfitted t-shirts.  On men or women.  If you don't think you can pull off a fitted t-shirt, chose another form of top.  Unfitted t-shirts make everyone look 20 pounds heavier and eight times sloppier than they really are.

I don't like socks that aren't perfectly matched.  Even if I buy bags of identical white socks, I still match them according to dinginess. I've been known to Sharpie marker each pair with a number so the same socks get worn together and paired together for life.  Socks:Swans.  This was a subject of controversy on The Marriage Ref recently.  I don't normally watch the show, but I did catch this segment and the wife's lack of respect for the importance of properly mated socks disgusted me and made me think less of her as a wife, a woman, and a human being.

I am mad at my favorite personal care company, Aveda.  They continue to sell products that have been discontinued, they aren't taking steps to reduce packaging, and there are parabens in the face cream I use.  I'm anti-paraben, which is why I shop there.  They've discontinued the cream because so many people complained, but still sell it on their shelf.  I went to Lush the other day, despite the revolting smell that oozes out from the store.  It smells worse outside than in.  What the heck!  Remember when they used to say that KFC and Dunkin Donuts pumped a smell out of their vents to lure people in?  It's sort of like that.  It smells all producty outside but inside it smells like bleach and grease.  Well, Lush doesn't smell like bleach and grease, but it doesn't smell like a dirty hippie inside.

I don't like patchouli.  My brother used to have a HeMan guy named Skunkor and it was scented with patchouli.  Enough said.

I bought a shampoo bar from Lush, and the girl who sold it to me swore up and down that there were no sodium lauryl sulfates or parabens in it.  So, I bought it and then I went online to see if there were directions (I wasn't sure whether to rub the bar on my head or make lather in my hands and rub the lather on my head) and sure enough, guess what is listed in the ingredients?
Yep.
Do I think that these things are going to kill me and my family?  No.  But we are a tender headed and eco friendly people, and they are irritants to both our skin and the planet.  So, I try to avoid buying them.  It's hard to do.
But the good thing is that the shampoo bar doesn't have packaging, so even if I'm poisoning the ground water and the outermost layers of our scalps, at least I'm not buying plastic.

I do like that the local hockey team is winning, even though I don't really like them in real life.
I do like that the Phillies are doing well.
I do like that even though yesterday was torturous weather, the 10 day outlook is sunny and warm.
I do like that I am almost totally over my stage fright, which is good because I have a show in 11 days.  I did some improv stuff in front of some famous people (name dropping: Scott Adsit from 30 Rock and Christina Gausas from the late and great Conan O'Brien Show) the other day and even made one of them cry (her, not him).  Not all improv is funny, and  I've been trying to do some serious stuff lately to challenge myself.  I mean, I know I'm funny.  That's why I felt comfortable starting this whole thing.  Doing not funny stuff is harder for me, but much more therapeutic.  Because that's healthy, right?  Working out all my issues on stage and letting Pete Hornberger think that it's acting and not me talking publicly about what keeps me up all night...
I do like vegetables.
I do like some fruit, as long as it's ripe and not too sweet.
I like my toenails.  They are adorable.  Even when they aren't painted.
I like having a suntan.
I like having two or three fingers of scotch when everyone else is drinking wine.
I like wearing dresses.
I like my hair, even though it's unruly and weird in some spots.
I like my job.
I like my house.
I like all the beings that live there, even that thousandlegger I found in the shower the other day.
I like the thousandlegger better now that he's dead.
I like rotary phones, and how I can't remember numbers that I have memorized when I'm using it.  My fingers know more numbers than my head does.
I like my record player, and all my records, despite the fact that only T.Rex is getting playtime these days.
I'm a jeepster for T.Rex.
I like contemplating what tattoo I may or may not get next.
I like Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine Pens.
I like pink Himalayan salt.
I like playing with blocks.
I like exfoliating.
I like washing dishes and clothes but I hate putting them away.
I like taking cell phone pictures of my surroundings and posting them on the internet.
I like finding an extra fifteen minutes today to make lists like the crap slapped down above.
I like blog awards even though I learned that people stop reading as soon as they see an award at the top of the page, so here they are at the bottom:
(suckers):

This one is from Jon  at Me Vs. College.  The zombie award goes to bloggers who "teach and enlighten their readers".  I've never thought of myself as a teacher, and certainly not as an enlightener, but I'll take the compliment!

Sammy gave me the versatile award and likened me with a camel pregnant with quadruplets.  Um, thank you.  And that's actually the nicest thing someone said to me, seeing that you equate versatility with lumps.  Speaking of lumps, have you guys been watching Adventure Time on Cartoon Network.  Holy wonderfulness.  It's the best show on television. 

Lucy passed out the colorful heart award and the rules are to list ten things that you love.  I think there are ten up there, but I'm not sure.  Lucy's blog is fun because it's a giant mix of things she hates and things she loves, plus she was on The Tyra Banks Show and did a bloggy tell all about her time there.

oh hai-low.  i can has thyme 2 blawg? 

Life's been working at mach speed lately.  All good things, thankfully.
I try not to make this into a personal day to day journal but then when I don't I find there is no time to sit down and type out what has been going on in my brain.  For that you should probably thank me.

Work is upside down right now, no time to get to this there.  That's what I like to do, you know.  Slap a post down on company time.  I figure that since I don't get a chance to take a lunch and I don't smoke cigarettes I am entitled to do this while other people are out back killing themselves and the flowers.  I'm pretty dead on certain that I have a job for Fiscal Year 11, and that's a good thing.  If layoffs come for me I'll take it with a smile in FY12.  A summer off with Jake before he goes to school?  Yes please.

Home is nice and quiet and comfortable, and I can't bear to have the computer open after sitting in front of the desktop all day.  I'd rather take my warm glows from the television and the fireplace and the reading light that rests over my shoulder and doesn't disturb me when I accidentally fall asleep before the ten o'clock news.

Jake has passed a, well, I'll call it a stage where he was assholey about everything and now he's bunches of fun again.  He wants to stay home all the time and when he doesn't want to be here he wants to be on his bike or at the park or on his bike on the way to the park. 

My cat is still alive, if anyone was wondering.  I've been giving her more wet food than dry and it seems to have almost cured whatever was ailing her.  In doing the research about whether dry food or canned food is better, I came across a quote on someone's veterinary page that went something like "dry food is mostly carbs, and it's not like lions and tigers chase biscuits across the savannah".  True that.  I noticed an instant change when I switched her food.  Instant instant.  It's like she's kittenish again.  And none of that sad low mewoling anymore.  If I would've known it was all due to her knotted up guts I would've switched her sooner.

What's it say when your paragraph about your cat is twice as long as the one dedicated to your kid.

Enter the crazy cat lady.

I've been doing all sorts of improv stuff lately.  That seems to be taking over nicely.  We haven't had a practice with the whole team yet, that comes next Sunday.  But there are all sorts of emails and texts and Facebook stuff (yes, I said Facebook stuff.  I caved and joined.  But I still don't see the point of it.  Blogs and emails and REAL HUMAN CONTACT are so much better than constant status updates about what ever current bologna sandwich stuff is plaguing everyone right now.  Yawn.) going on surrounding that, plus I have a couple practices between now and our class show (May 30th at the Shubin, I think, details to follow, you are all invited because it's free but seating is limited.  But it's byob so I suggest that you b some b and if you don't get in you can always hang outside and d your b out of a brown bag while you troll South Street.) so my life is pretty full of making stuff up as I go along.

What else is new, right?

The weather is getting nicer, despite the cold snap this week, and that's always a welcome change.  I'm not an indoorsy person (unlike my child, who is the indoorsy type and it kills me) but I think anything under 75 degrees is cold so I've been alternating between exuberant and totally bummed these past few weeks.

My lavender is in full bloom, and I'm dying for this weekend when I can open the sliding glass door that leads out to the deck and have that rosemary/tomato/basil/lavendar smell blow down the hall and put me to bed at night.

I've found small miracles in shorts made with the underwear inside.  For the gym, I mean, not for real life.  I always avoided buying them, but I found a pair on sale (adidas princess shorts, fyi) and they are so much better than anything I've ever worn.  The underwear keeps your shorts in place, so there is none of that tugging and yanking and crotchcrawling that happens in the natural course of treadmilling or elipticalling.  If this were the Oprah show, you would find a pair under your seats right now. 
They are that good.  I want everything in my life to have built-in moisture-wicking panties.
Everything.
I'm looking at you, kitchen gadgets and car horns.

I'm feeling better, by the way.  Most all of the awful side effects from that last migraine medicine have worn off and the ones that linger are manageable for now.  The new medicine seems to be working, and I'm taking it at half the dose the doc recommended.  I'm a little pill shy these days. 

I'm booked solid from now until the end of June, and it doesn't look like a Family Vacation is going to happen this summer.  I didn't sign Jake up for swim classes this summer because it was rough losing every Saturday to the class last year.  Hopefully that means more Saturdays at the beach or park or whatever.  Or maybe I can still sneak into the hotel pool where I used to work a decade ago.  You didn't need a room key to get there.  Maybe I'll check that out sometime after Memorial Day on my lunchbreak.  Dave's uncle still works at that hotel, but I'm guessing either we can sneak past him or he won't tell.  Either case, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. 

I'm in a wedding this summer in my hometown, and I'm seriously considering taking a week or so off and spending some time up there, if I can juggle work and life.  My dress should be in any day now, and I'm scared to put it on.  It's red, and I look terrible in red.  Did you ever get one of those pimples that are really sore and white in the center and red all around it?  That's pretty much how I look in red, my head and shoulders will be the purulent part.  I'm scared.  But I'll bet the black and white pictures will be the awesomest.  I have a fabric swatch somewhere and I think that if I get a water proof mascara and a good co-ordinating lip stain I'll be pretty for a good part of the night.

See?  This is why I haven't been posting.  Because my brain and fingers are full of things you could care less about...

Last Tuesday, which seems like a million years ago, I had the chance to speak with Thomas Balmès, the Director of BABIES.  I hadn't seen the film, so I didn't have many questions about what was in the movie.  I  mean, babies, right?  

I'm pretty sure there are just lots and lots of babies doing lots and lots of baby things in the movie.

So we just talked.
We talked about his experiences around the world, and my experiences here in Philadelphia.  We talked about what it's like to be around people who don't look the way we do, speak the way we do, act the way we do.  We talked about what it's like to open your self and your heart and your eyes to the ways others are looking and speaking and acting.  We talked about cultural parenting differences that we've run across and little foreign tricks that we may have picked up along the way that we use with our own children.  And after we figured it all out, we agreed that what babies and children and parents everywhere need most is love given and time spent.  Not toys or clothes or silly things with bold black and white patterns to stimulate neural growth and visual acuity.  Not educational television or classical music pumped into their brains from the time of conception.  Not trips to the zoo or outings to the museum or eighty seven different games and books on the shelf.

Time and love.
And the opportunity to explore the world around them.

That's it.  That's what is most important.  He learned it by traveling all over the globe, I learned it from traveling all over the city.  The best and most well adjusted kids get plenty of time and plenty of love.  And we struggle to give those two things to our kids.  It seems that everything else is so much easier to give, doesn't it?
We have love.  We all have that, we all give that when we can.  It's the time that runs short these days.  We work, we sleep, we eat, but we rarely take time or make time to play.  To breathe.  To show our children the things we surround them with and what those things can do for them and what they can do with those things.

There used to be a stats page hung up at the office showing how much time parents spend playing with their children.  Pie charts and graphs and demographics and all that spelled out in four colors, blown up to poster size.  I forget what the specifics were, but it was something like working moms in the US and UK spend an average of 20 minutes per weekday actually playing with their children and working dads 11.  And it wasn't much more time for moms and dads that stay at home.
There is always something else to do.  Important stuff that has to be done like preparing meals and executing housework and flipping laundry and running errands and wiping noses and blowing arses (wait, reverse that) and the endless stream of emails and texts and phone calls and all that other grown up stuff gets in the way.  We may be with our children, but we aren't giving our whole selves to them.

And all our children want is us.  Despite the whining for the best new thing on the shelves or cooler sneakers or two cookies rather than one and three thousand other things, all they want is a little bit more time with their moms and dads.
And I'm willing to guess is all that we really want is a little bit more time with them.

I hope everyone has an amazing weekend.  Schedule some time for yourself, for your kids, for your pets, for your friends, and your mom.  Turn off the phone and the television and the world and take some time with the things and the people and the love that is around you.


But not before clicking here to help with my community service project:

I had free passes to go see BABIES last week, and invited Samantha to go along.  Long story short, they gave out way too many passes and we didn't feel like fighting a bunch of bitches so Sam and I ended up at the bar.

Because I'm nice and I'm trying to be better about what I say about people with whom I have major problems, I'm going to abbreviate this story, but you wouldn't believe what a Sense of Entitlement some people come with. Or maybe you would. If there is one thing I hate more than spoiled children, it's spoiled adults.


"Ladies, it's a movie.  It comes out in theaters everywhere very soon.  Go see it then.  No need for pushing and yelling or tears.  It's a film, and you paid nothing for your free pass.  It's not like they are handing out real live babies in there.  This is why we as a gender have historically been branded as "hysterical".  Because of people like you.  Thank you for setting the public view of women in general and mothers in particular back about one hundred years."

I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and maybe these people were just nervous to be in the City or maybe they are extremely tired stay at home moms who really needed the night off or burned out working moms who did a lot of schedule shifting and baby juggling to be there, but the attitudes that were shown made me embarrassed to be within ten feet of these, these, movie goers lest anyone thinks I'm friends with them.  The kind of women who give women and mothers a bad name.  Total b-words.  C-words even.  It was surely a sight to behold.  Too bad the people giving out free passes didn't foresee the mayhem.  There was a disclaimer of First Come First Served on the ticket, but the theater sold too many tickets and there were too many free passes and the wind was blowing the wrong way and someone's hair appointment went late and someone else chipped a nail and someone got their period and then that one started crying so she started crying and then we all fell apart.

That's when we made our exit.  I wonder what happened to the people who didn't run.  Maybe we should say a prayer or have a moment of silence or something.

Oh, and to top it off?  Some people brought their babies to the movies.  I have a Zero Tolerance Policy on children at movies for grownups.

I was disappointed that I didn't get to see the movie, but I would have been pissed to be in there with the whiners and the screamers and the brats.  And their babies.

Just a few more days of clicking, I promise!


(I never read my own blog from a reader, but I've just found out that the icon to click isn't showing up in reader. I wonder if this has been a problem the whole time? Anyway, please kindly click over to my blog and then click on the BABIES ads if you would. All proceeds and winnings are for charity after all)

I'm not dead. I'm ignoring you.

I needed some time.  Now I need some time to make up for the time that I took.
Time runs scarce these days.

So, I'm feeling much better, thank you.  I didn't know how bad off I was until sometime in the middle of last Friday when the world stopped, readjusted, and started back up again.  Did you feel it?  No?  Weird.  Because it was huge.  Colossal.
Sometimes our planet does that for me.  I'm in good with gravity or the axis or retrograde or (insert hightech spaceterm here) or something.  It pays to worship the earth, because it worships you back. 

I'll be all like "oh, that was bad" and earth will be all like "Poor baby.  I can fix it.  Ready?  Hold on." and then we do a backwards spin and I get a do-over.  This time was a little harsh, with the oil spill and the eruption and earthquakes and stuff.  My bad.

I have lots to say, now that I'm not swimming in cafeteria grade potatoes anymore.  I'm good at working backwards, so backwards I will work.

First off, I'm not dead.  Thank you for your emails and phone calls and text messages and such.  But isn't it weird how I could be and no one would know what happened?  I could get hit by a bus and unless one of my real life bloggy buddies found out about it on the 5 o'clock news and posted it on her blog and someone read that and posted it on their blog and someone made a button and took up a collection to give to my family to help with Jake's education no one would ever know what became of that girl who used to write over on that fever blog thing, whatever that means, the one that wasn't really a mommy blog but wasn't all that informational nor political except for sometimes and current events were rarely mentioned and I think she was a social worker but maybe not and it was funny in a weird way sometimes but also really sad once in awhile but it wasn't bad because even though there tears there were jokes in with the tearjerky stuff but you could maybe learn something over there once in awhile and what was her name again?

Exactly.

That's why internet relationships are strange.  Because you know people rather well but you don't know their last names or how to get in touch with their family in case of emergency because we are all so secretive about our last names and who our families really are and stuff.  

But, not dead.

Quite alive, in fact.  And happy that Philadelphia has made it's annual jump from 55 degrees to 90.  We don't have much in between stuff here, and we actually did get some last month, but I was to busy stewing in my own head to enjoy it much.  I gardened the hell out of my porch and backyard this weekend and last, so that's looking nice.  I mean, if you want to come over or whatever I'm just saying it is pretty out there.  Not that you have too, it's just that I'm feeling so much better and all.  The lavender is ready to bloom and I just put in tomatoes and rosemary yesterday.  There is nothing like that good filthy smell of a tomato plant, is there?  And rosemary?  Well, you don't even have to eat it to enjoy that.  It makes everything smell like Tuscany.  Even though Tuscany doesn't really smell like rosemary.  Tuscany smells like Pennsylvania.  I have that on good authority.  More on that next month.

Lots of stuff happened last week that I really want to tell you about, hopefully this week will be slow so I can catch up on reporting.

So, remember the improv audition?  From a couple weeks ago?  Well I think I told you I got that callback, and that was last Sunday.  And it went well.  I was at the peak of weirdness from the medication, so I was a bit out of sorts.  It was the first time I realize how shitty this stuff was making me feel, actually.  Full on migraine plus the side effects plus the whole "gee, I hope I do well" thing but at least I wasn't nervous.  I knew three people out of the 15 that were called back and I recognized one of the guys from the group I originally auditioned with.  Score that.  Familiar faces in familiar places are always welcome.  The only bad part is that I had a good ten years on almost everyone in the room.  Almost, I'm guessing.  But what the hell?  Right?  I mean, that's going to happen more and more.  I'm older than some of my doctors, than lots of people I work with, than the pharmacists and lawyers and police officers and therapists and fire fighters and psychiatrists and veterinarians (yes, veterinarians) that I run into during the job. I'm getting older.  Better.  Older.  Wrinklier.  Wiser.  Older.  I scan left hands and bellies.  No one is wearing any marriage jewelry.  The girls are all pretty skinny, or at least they aren't the right kind of round.  I'm guessing there aren't any other moms in the group.  So much for peers.  "Excuse me, ma'am" someone says as she steps on my bag. 

And there it is.
The Ma'am.

Whatever.

The audition went well.  It was fun.  Mostly games and scene work, nothing heavy.  No time for me to pull out any big guns or show off any techniques I've learned unless I work them in quick among the shifts of a seven or eight line scene.  Any jokes I told I told from my own life experience.  It's easier that way, 'speshery when yer kinda drugged up an' shit.
Including the one about getting high on ecstasy at Planned Parenthood before a pelvic exam.  Do you guys know that story?  It's a good one.  Remind me to tell you later if I haven't told you before.  And listen to me now- don't ever take candy from anyone.  Even that guy from your freshman biology lab.  Especially if he's mysteriously hanging out in the waiting room at Planned Parenthood.

Wait a week to hear any word.  A week seems long but it's just the first couple days that drag.  The last few just slide by with hardly a thought toward the Improv Team.

But the word is good.  And I'm on the team.  Hopefully they weren't looking for spacey older chick, because that's not what they are going to get at go time.

So now that you guys are so used to seeing BABIES banners all over the place (click that please, and tune in tomorrow for that saga)


I'll probably post fliers for, like, my shows and stuff so you guys can, you know, totally come out and support me and laugh at all the right places and whatevs.