Monthly Archives: September 2011

Friday afternoon I had a little kitchen accident. I won’t bore you with the details because there isn’t a chance in the world that one of the details would make me look smart or competent. This was day three, and I assure you that day four is no better.

When you walk around town with a black eye everyone asks how it happens. I’ve found that looking people dead in the eye, shrugging and saying “bar brawl” unnerves them. They all look at you in disbelief and say, “Really?” I reply, “No” and smile and everyone laughs. They then tell me I’m funny and forget to ask what happened which saves me a small amount of humiliation. Small. I’ve also found that telling our friends that Mr. G. punched me was not met with laughter, but rather anger. Maybe I’m not all that funny? Perhaps you can help me with a better story for the shiner?

Since Mr. G. was traveling on Friday I let Jane have friends sleep over. I left school with three girls and Alexander and went straight home to knock myself out. I was so frustrated that I flung $40 at the kids and sent them to the diner around the corner to go have French fries and milkshakes for an afterschool snack. I told them to leave a 15% tip but only 10% if the waitress wasn’t nice to them because they’re kids.

After my meltdown my Mom and Stepdad (Doc) came over for dinner and I proceeded to order out. We got California Chicken Café because with Mr. G. still out of town we have to eat all the food he hates in a hurry. Alexander and Doc played catch in the backyard for about 843 hours. I don’t know what it is about boys and men that they can throw a ball back and forth and never tire of it.

The girls were extra sweet to Alexander so when they went upstairs at 10pm I stayed downstairs and enjoyed some time alone (on twitter…of course). When I headed upstairs at 10.30 the three girls were in Jane’s room gathered around a computer and all the lights were on on Alexander’s room but he was sound asleep. I guess it was a longer day for him than I’d realized.

Saturday morning was a whirlwind of friends popping in from out of town, Jane playing soccer and Alexander playing baseball. Jane’s two friends ran all over town with us because I was going to take them to the Family Day Picnic. The Family Day Picnic is this massive picnic at a camp that has waterslides, dunk tanks, a soda stand, swimming pools, foam machines and more. It’s what you’d see when Hollywood makes a corporate picnic, actually, it’s what you have seen when there’s a picnic on TV. The site is often used for TV and film.

As we were heading out the door Mr. G. called, his plane had landed. We waited so that Mr. G. could join us at the picnic. Apparently I was out to punish my husband. He lasted approximately seven minutes. At $35 a person that brought us to $5 a minute and the most expensive picnic ever attended by a Gottlieb. We went and had a nice lunch together.

I returned to the picnic and my two kids plus three extras. Belted six of us into a car that seats five and prayed like hell that my illegally tinted windows were illegally tinted dark enough.

Naturally three of the four freeway lanes were closed and our twenty minute drive turned into an hour and fifteen. I arrived home with too many children and the shakes.

I think we all collapsed Saturday night after the three friends had been picked up by their parents. Sunday morning Jane and I got up early so I could take her surfing. After she’d enjoyed surf camp so much a there’d been a groupon for surf lessons. Since it was reasonably priced I snatched one up. I had a beach bag ready to go and I was ready to spend a morning sitting on the beach watching my daughter surf.

No. Such. Luck.

Surf lessons are limited to three surfers per instructor and Jane was paired with two adorable twenty somethings who kept calling me “Mom” and squealing. It’s entirely possible that Jane noticed that I was about to deck one of them when she begged me to surf with her. I walked back into the surf shack and they found another instructor who took us out.

Jane and I had a lot of fun on our longboards. There was no sand and we were surfing over rocks in Malibu so we paddled where we might otherwise have walked with our boards. While I was remembering how to pop up Jane was hanging ten and riding every dinky wave that came her way. After about an hour I decided to actually USE our lesson and I let the instructor set me up for waves and I stopped paddling.

I’d forgotten how free you feel on the water. Even in a crappy crowded bay surrounded by fisherman and Euro tourists I felt free. I didn’t think about anyone, or anything I just thought about getting in front of a breaking wave and letting the force of the ocean move me. When I would come to rest near the shore I’d lay myself down on the longboard and watch my daughter’s face glow as she caught wave after wave after wave. She’d hurry back for another ride indiscriminately loving them all.

We surf a little like we do everything else in life. She does it her way and I do it mine.

When Mr. G. leaves town the kids and I waste no time in doing all the things we cannot do when he is here. We do wacky stuff like eat Mexican food and sleep without the air conditioner set to 64 degrees. In fact last night I turned the AC all the way up to 68 degrees  (it’s a little warmer upstairs where the bedrooms are). In preparation for my two nights alone in bed I went all crazy and remade the bed.

You see since Mr. G. so enjoys the cool air on him while he sleeps I added an extra blanket to the bed. We sleep with a flat sheet, a blanket and then a fluffy feather comforter inside a duvet. It’s a lot of layers and it keeps me warm until about 4am. At 4am I typically wake up a little overheated. I readjust and fall back asleep. It’s not horrible, but it’s the way I’ve been living for a few years now and it’s not what I’d call “good”. When I remade the bed I stripped it of the blanket and went to just a flat sheet and the duvet. When I put the blanket against my skin I was horrified to find that it’s a really crappy polyester blanket. It’s no wonder I’ve been suffocating.

The problem with making a bed is the same problem as every other part of your life. Without a little distance you have no clue what’s really there.

Last night I slept better than I’d slept in years. I am not meant to spend a third of my life covered in polyester.

On to the bombshell. I am an asshole. This isn’t news, everyone knows I can be/have been/might continue to be. Half of my readers are my family and friends and I’m convinced that the other half of you are waiting for an implosion. Congratulations waiters, this is the day you’ve been waiting for.

Up until last week the internet (the blogoshere in particular) was a place that I saw as Utopian. I thought, wrongly, that bloggers shared snippets of their lives with us. I believed that what they said was true, or at least their truth. Last week a little light was shined on someone local and I suspect that they’ve been running scams and hurting people in the process. I’ve heard from people who were caught in the wake of destruction and I remind myself that white collar crimes have very real victims.

My trust is limited now. I don’t even trust my own judgement as much as I’d like to.

When I read about bloggers quitting their jobs and then going into debt and then asking for money I want to scream at everyone and say STOP GIVING STRANGERS MONEY. And then I want to remind everyone that when you have kids you don’t get to follow your bliss anymore. You get to GET A JOB.

Most importantly, and most bombshellish is the revelation that Shellie Ross is a wanted (arrested?) woman. Shellie Ross tragically lost a child to drowning in December 2009. Laura Freed writing under the pseudoym Madison McGraw started asking questions about Shellie, how the baby died and whatnot. Laura was relentless and clearly saw that something was wrong. I thought at the time that Laura should have laid off and let the Ross family bury their child in relative peace. I posted Laura’s whois data, which is really underhanded, crappy, ____ [you fill in the blank].

Laura (AKA Madison McGraw) came under fire being called every name in the book. She didn’t back down.

Sometimes moms just band together. We see a woman struggling and we try to protect one of our own. Sometimes we stop thinking and just react. When a dead baby is at the center of things we protect the mom the best way we know how because she is living our worst nightmare.

It appears that Shellie Ross is actually Shellie Schnell. Shellie has [probably] abandoned another family in Ohio and owes [it seems] tens of thousands of dollars in back child support. This is completely indefensible behavior.

I’m flawed, we all are. The problem is that the internet is a giant megaphone where we can amplify our flaws and I’ve certainly used this platform more than once to prove to y’all that I’m capable of supreme assholery. What I want to say to Laura is that I’m sorry. I was one of many who led the charge against you, and we were wrong. We did the wrong thing for what we believed were the right reasons. It’s not an excuse and it doesn’t make it any less deplorable, it simply attempts to explain why. It is not nearly as noble as doing the right thing for the right reasons which Laura did here.

I’m tired after spending seven hours on ustream giving things away yesterday. There are still a few things to ship but really I’m just tired. It’s dry out and I have a headache. Alexander woke up at 5am with a bloody nose that wouldn’t stop and now I’m headachey and overtired.

I had to tape for Momversation and my tripod broke, which isn’t really that big of a deal except that my camera won’t hold a charge so I have to keep the camera plugged in to tape. The tripod is rickety and the camera is plugged in so now the weight of the cord is pulling the tripod over and finally I just had to tape the camera to my bedroom window and hope for the best. Thank gawd they have editors there who make me look NotStupid.

I went to an event that I thought started at 11, but it had begun at 10. I was right on time at about 12.15. The three people that greeted me did not know what event I was talking about, sent me to wrong floors and yelled across lobbies, “Where are the Mommy Bloggers??” I realized that as much as I say that I don’t mind being called a Mom Blogger I really really really detest the term Mommy Blogger. They should have just called it, “An event for dopey women with no career path.” That’s what Mommy Blogger implies.

So I left. Because I was just hungry and looking forward to seeing my friends, but I couldn’t give up four hours of my day, and I really wasn’t happy to have been treated poorly at the onset. I suppose on a different day I’d have stayed. Not today. Today I’m just a high maintenance woman looking to be surrounded by people who don’t want anything from me.

Mr. G had to go to Las Vegas. He brought the kids to school this morning on the way to the airport and I noticed he’d packed swim trunks. I guess he’s planning on having some down time. There is nothing I hate more than business trips to cities where people go to fuck strangers. I don’t really have issues with my husband, but every so often the fucked up wilderness of blue laws and fundie polygamists in Utah looks like a good place to send him.

I’m going to deal with this headache and ship out the rest of yesterday’s prizes. Remind me never to do that again. It very closely resembled work, and I think we all know that I’m not looking to have that thing interrupt my lifestyle.

Come to ustream NOW for the 20k giveaway day. I can’t believe it’s finally here.

Free desktop streaming application by Ustreameb.com

At last night’s soccer practice Junior was in cute overload mode. He was freshly fluffed and bouncing around the sidelines looking for love wherever he could find it.

One of the moms on the team was sitting in her chair and put her hand down to pet him. Junior bounced over to her and we compared notes. We both have poodles.

Aren’t they smart.
Well yes they are.
And easy to train.
My goodness Junior was trained in a day.
They don’t bark.

We nodded at each other knowingly because all those other assholes at the park have horrible beastly barking dogs.

And then Junior lifted his leg and peed all over her daughter’s soccer water.

If anyone knows where I could find a Bubba Keg I’d be grateful.

Today I’m guest posting at MCAF . Please click the link to read the full post.

Today is a warm day. You are not looking at fog creeping over Los Angeles. You are looking at brown haze that covers my city dropping particulate matter into the eyes, ears, mouths and noses of it all. We exercise and breathe in deeply gasping fresh air only to breathe in brown dust and dust too small to be seen.