BAN THE CLAW December 30, 2008

THE CLAW

Do you see this thing? This evil tool from the game room of the pits of hell?

It’s the claw game.  Most of you have seen one.  It’s the gargantuan crack-like monster lurking in the corner of dusty and dirty game rooms in mid-rate family restaurants across the land.

And Bambi is addicted.

I mean it, I am not sugar-coating it.  Where did I go wrong?  Why can’t she be drawn to the mint bowl like Alpha or the lollypop stash like Cracker?  But Bambi aims higher.  Oh, and let me say also that Bambi is a doll.  A gorgeous, sweet, funny, lovable sweetheart and I love her more than anything.  But she turns…Every time we encounter the crappy animal stuffed beast, she spots  it, right at the moment when we walk in.  If she doesn’t find one right away, her eyes bulge with her mission, eyeballs ever searching, jutting, tearing apart the layout with tiger-like prowess.  She makes her mark and she starts to jiggle, jostle around and sweat.  And she spots her Shangri-La.  She is instantly transformed, she is Gollum.  THE CLAW THE CLAW, THE MIGHTY CLAW.  From the second we sit down, she starts the “claw whine” and I know how badly it will end.  It will end with her crying all the way home.  But let me fill in the middle.

She starting the please game.  “PPLLLEEEASSSEEEEEEEE. “

“Honey, you can’t play that game, we go through this every time.”

“But Mommy, just ONE TIME.”

“No, sweetie, no one ever wins.”

(This is when, conveniently, the little brat from the next door table returned with her gloating father, carrying a cheap ass, Korean-stuffed, lower-quality-than-carnival-crap teddy bear.)

DAYUM

“MOMMMMMMMMM-”

“Just- Honey, can we order first?”

Movie in my head:  I walk over the table, grab the satanic prize  from the little brat and then I smack the dad in the face repeatedly while yelling at him for not being a team player.

If parents across the world would just say NO, then the owners of these establishments would remove them for non-use.  But we get suckered in.  Because we are hungry and we want the cheeseburger and draft beer and we can’t have them until they stop begging and we give them a fucking quarter.

We try to avoid this.  Mike and I do a “claw check”  when looking for a place to eat, much like the old “kid friendly-non smoking” peek in from days of yore.  He double parks and I run in.  If there is a claw, we move onto the next Applebees-barnabys-Hackneys-TGIF’s-crap place that we are looking to dine at…

Santa even had the elves construct a real claw game for HOME.  She plays with it non-stop, while I crouch in the corner and whack my head repeatedly with a wooden spoon to the beat of the circus song that plays over and over and over and over and over an

This should sate her, we gave her the crack pipe.  We let her use it in the comfort of our home.  Surely, she need not go out to get a buzz.  But crack kills, kids, crack kills.

We had an incident the day after Christmas.  Damn, I let my guard down ONE MINUTE.  We were heading to meet family at Buffalo Wild Wings.  It was my cousin Coconut’s birthday and we were all coming together to celebrate.

THERE WAS THE CLAW.  Stop staring at me, you big red greedy whore. You thief, you stealer of little tykes’ hopes and dreams.  Starter of addictive personalities.  DON’T EVEN LOOK AT IT.

What could we do?  We couldn’t leave, this was not our gig.  I could have said, “a table please, very far away from the claw”,  and an older motherly hostess would, with a twinkle in her eye, lightly chuckle while winking and lean in to whisper, “I completely understand, let’s see what we can do”.  And she would put us in the farthest corner from the devil box.  Alas, we didn’t have Aunt Bea, but this young waitress at the prime of her life with her tight sports jersey and her perky, non-breastfed boobs and she would not get it.  She will know soon enough when she starts to breed, but this time,  the slutbag she seats us right smack dab in front of it.  Not directly near it, but riiiiggghhhttt where Bambi can stare at it.

Who am I kidding?  She would have found it.  All the kids were walking around, scoping out the video situation.  Planning and strategically toying with our money in their quick little minds.

I was at the women’s table with the mommies and the offspring.  “A round of chicken tenders, chocolate milk back, for everyone!  And three beers for us, please.”  Cracker was getting a cold and was not recovered from her 5 minute nap in the car.  She whipped off her shoes and hunkered down into doublefisting both her and Bambi’s chocolate milk.  Seven minutes after that, the caffeine kicked in, her legs started to pump and spin like the Road runner, and for the next hour, I chased her while she did laps and half tripped every nubile, perky breasted waitress in the joint.  My beer was neglected.  I needed one of those hats with the beer holders and the straws – Spongebob recently owned one of those.  So J.

And everytime she came back, she went to me first.  Ol Battleaxe Betty who tells it like it is.  “No one ever wins, sweetie.  They make them that way.  Yo-”  (And piping in from the party of 8 in the corner) “I got one Daddy!  I got one!”

Bambi claws at me, “SHHHEEEE GOOOOTTTT ONNNNEEEEEE, MOMMMMYYY PLLEEASSEEEEEE”

“Go talk to your father.”

And Mike who is sitting at the guy table, shoving habanera teriaki wings in his mouth with one hand, and alternating drinking his beer and playing computer poker with the other.  He licks his fingers clean and gives her money.  And the  nightmare continues.

Mike gave the lil nugget almost THIRTY dollars in the span of an hour and half.  Are you fucking kidding me?  AND, it was in 4 quarter increments.  Do you know how many times that means she went back to him to ask for more?  And he gave them to her?

Oh, but by no means was she alone in all this.  She had a partner in crime.  My cousin, Felt and his wife, Teeth, have two adorable little boys, Heisman and Wrestler Fan.  Heisman and my very sweet Alpha were happily content at the end of the table, wolfing down smily face fries and taking turns with the Nintendo DS.  Apricot’s little guy, Star Wars kid, who is like a 4th child to me, brought a little buddy along with him so all the boys were content in their mini-man-dom.  Cracker continued to run laps while gnawing on a chicken tender, which leaves us with the dynamic duo, Bambi and Wrestler Fan.

Those kids were nothing, if not diligent.  At one point, Wrestler Fan, I think was amazed at her determination and put all his efforts into grabbing one for Bambi.  And we all rejoiced!  Our champion!  Our knight!  Victorious!  Slaying the dragon and bringing Guenevere the riches of the world!  Now she can shut it, sit down and eat her mac and cheese.  But it wasn’t the one she wanted.  She wanted the MONKEY. And there were tears.  She flung the unwanted stuffed alligator at Cracker, who screeched with glee and whipped it at the couple behind us.  Bambi was finally cut off.  “You are CUT OFF.”  She remained pouting at her seat, in claw rehab.  There she moped, moaned, keened and wailed until I finally chugged my Blue Moon and declared to Mike, “Wipe your wing-stained mouth, help me grab Cracker and let’s hit it.  I can’t stand it anymore.”  And we dragged Bambi to the car, and she cried the whole way home.

The next morning, my cousin and Coconut’s wife Apricot called me, trying to entice me with bloody mary’s and HBO mockumentary marathons.  As tempting as it was, I was in my own different little rehab, so I had to decline.  But before we ended our chat, she added, “So, wow, Bambi really is addicted to the Claw.  You weren’t kidding.”

Thus,we move on..we start anew, we remain vigilant in our quest for non-claw dining and we strive to encourage home use.

And the bright side is that, although she is tiny enough to do it, she has not been one of the Chuck E Cheese idiots that have tried to climb inside.  Dumb, Bambi ain’t. 

And Now For Something Completely Serious…Part 2 November 12, 2008

The mom of Voxx came on the second day.

She came in like a bat out of hell.  A large woman with the poodle perm and a cane like her daughter’s,  the old gal had a mission: to tell Voxx and anyone else who would listen the exact dollar amount of all their delinquent bills and how much money they do not have in their bank account.  Voxx and Ethan Frome owe over $600 to Nicor.  That’s a lot of gas.  And they are really really late.  But they only have $64 dollars and some change in their bank account.  And not one iota of this is something that I should know.

Our very sweet and patient Phillipino nurse, Bandaid, came in announced Movie Tuesday!  She let us pick a DVD and she ordered us some popcorn from food services.  The mom of Voxx pulled up a chair and the two us enjoyed a little Meg Ryan/Kevin Kline French Kiss, while Voxx shaked with the DT’s.  I actually really enjoyed her company.  She was my second favorite visitor.

The only problem was she just couldn’t stop talking about Voxx and Frome’s financial situation.  I was actually starting to sweat and get he DT’s myself.  I was withering and writhing to hear about someone else’s uncomfortable and unfortunate financial troubles.  And when mother of Voxx insisted on calling Comcast right from the room, I decided to go try to take a shower .  All my trials, Lord, will soon be over.

The shower?  Not successful.  I washed my hair with what felt like nail polish remover and was I really clean?  I mean REALLY?  Was I? I felt like as I was standing in there, little amoebas of germ nasty sprung from the walls of the institutionalized shower and stuck onto my flesh.

But it was fun in there compared to pity payment party in bed area two.

Mother of Voxx left and the damn woman took with her Voxx’s hand lotion.  Shit.  I heard about that for the next 7 hours.  She told me about 9-10 times.  She told Bandaid.  She told One of the many annoyed and perplexed doctors who rotated in and out of our room.  She told the food service lady.  She called a lot of people on the cell phone, too.  In the end, I gave her my lotion.  I think she threw it at her closet later on but that’s okay, she can go ahead and keep it.  I’ll get more.

On Day three, I woke with a migrane.  I have no idea why.  Hm.

I have never have one like that before.  I even rated it a sad face number 10 and I have NEVER picked that one in my life.  Every flicker of light was a BBQ skewer in my cornea.  Every sound was a swinging bat over my head.  It even hurt to move.  So, it was so frickin awesome when Voxx’s Kenyan Physical therapist came in the room for her workout session.   BECAUSE HE TALKED LIKE THIS AT ALMOST SCREAM LEVEL AT ALL TIMES IN A VERY THICK KENYAN ACCENT AND APPARENTLY HE ALSO THOUGHT MAYBE VOXX WAS NOT JUST A DRUG ADDICT BUT COMPLETLY 100% FUCKING DEAF.  FOR ONE HOUR. Who was the one whimpering now?  Me. I did.  I whimpered for 60 minutes.

Again, *sigh*

This was about the point that I realized that this is not really happening.  Like scenes like thisare made for movies or books, just so fucking ridongulous that they are a cliche.

A cliché is a phrase that is so overused that it has lost its meaning.

My existance in that room was a true dead metaphor.  I was worse off than when I got there, but I needed to leave now more than ever.

Here came the groan. I heard her stretch and moan in pain for the curtain.  She ripped it back and then I had to look at her sagging tits again hanging out the sides of her hospital gown and she thrusted a pencil at me with a menu that had a piece of macaroni and cheese on it.  “Write your address on the back.”

THINK MAN, THINK.

WhatnameshouldigiveherwhatnumbercanImakeupcanIgiveherafalseemailaddressbut shewillknowshewillknowandsheknowswhoiambecausethedrsmadeabigdealoutofmebeingaperformer

andwhensheheardthatshefreakedoutandtalkedandtalkedandralkedaboutcomingtoseemeeperformand

whatnumbershouldigiveherifilieshewillstalkmeandcometoashowandkillmeafterwards

I gave her my name.  I gave her my address and my phone number.  I even gave her my email address.  The good one.  Because I had nothing left.

I am home now.  Every time the phone rings, I do a Voxx check.  She hasn’t called. Which…is sad.

And I really hope she is okay.

But I really, really, really need to start taking vitamins so I NEVER end up in the hospital again.

And Now For Something Completely Serious… November 10, 2008

It has been a long time since I have been inspired to blog.

My hospital stay with pneumonia last week was a catalyst for me jumping back on the wagon here.  Actually, it was my prescription drug-addicted roommate that put me over the edge.

It was bad enough that I struggled to breathe with a viral cement in my chest and my out of control asthma, horrible that I was on (and still am)  8 different medications that prevent me from sleeping.  But I was forced to endure three straight days of her moaning and screaming for her next round of meds. It was something out of a bad dream, to be completely cliche.

With every Shirley McClaine/Terms of Endearment rant she went on, I felt the box of hell that I was trapped in enclosing around me in the little corner of Good Shepard hospital room 342, bed one.  At one very low point, I was was in fact begging the nurses myself to not skip her dose and wake her up because when she would waken, she would already be withdrawing and I could not handle one minute more of the mania.

She was actually in there for a week already before I got there, with a torn rotator cuff.  She fell and her daughter found her.  I don’t know why she fell.  She has a cane propped up near her bed.  I don’t know what it’s for.  She pees in a bed chair an arms length away from my head.  Behind the curtain, of course.  In my mind, I secretly discouraged her from drinking any liquids so I didn’t have to lie there and listen to her spray in a plastic container next to my head.  Just to let you know, she hadn’t had a bowel movement in a week.  She told everyone this.  I was actually quite relieved about that.  And let’s call her Vexx.  I will save you the Google: Vexx means Goddess of Pain.

When they initially wheeled me into the room on my gurney, Vexx looked at me and said, “What kinda shit is this?  They told me my new roommate was gunna be a guy.”

Charming.

Fantastic.

Vexx sadly also suffers from internal lupus, fibromyalgia and side effects of diabetes.  Although, one of the many annoyed and perplexed doctors who rotated in and out of our room insisted that she was borderline diabetes and does not need to be on a special diet.  And then she would cry.  Because I think she wanted as many ailments as possible that might qualify her for an extra narco or V.

It is no wonder she is on a lot of medication.  It is NOT her fault that she has a drug addiction.  She is in pain and she needs relief and sadly, the body develops an intolerance, therefore the need for an bigger dosage.  I think pain pill addiction is the saddest because it comes out of a place where you are in physical pain and you need help managing it.  He children probably do not understand this.  They just see that their mother has gone away and probably have stopped wondering if she is ever going to come back.

In some of her more severe withdrawal moments, I could see her sitting up and rocking, hugging herself and screaming, throwing Kleenex boxes and lotion bottles and she would cry that she hates this stupid fucking hospital because gets more meds at home.  She should be home…she should be home…she should be home…she locks her pills in her bedroom so her kids can’t get them.

One of the many annoyed and perplexed doctors who rotated in and out of our room verified that she was born in 1959 and I had to pump up my oxygen when I overheard that.

Surely Vexx was in her late 60’s.  I pegged her for almost 70.  I thought it strange that she rambled about her 14 year old daughter and that she should be at home helping her with her homework.  I knew that something was off: I thought national Enquirer, old ladies having babies, images of elderly women breastfeeding infants swirled in my mind.  She is NOT ONLY 10 years older than I am.  But alas, Vexx very much the definition of rode hard and hung up wet.

He kids did not want to visit her.  In a rant, she told me that they miss their old mom…they don’t like to see her like this…do ya think?

On my medication, my heart rate stays at a constant 108 to 135.  But when she would pass out after a dose, she would drift off and I would see my monitor bump down every once in awhile to 103,102,101…ahhh…sweet relief.

I didn’t have any visitors until I broke down on the second day and called Mike crying to pop in and see me.   I was losing my edge with her, unable to endure much more of her unsolicited conversations through the curtain.  The nurses gave me headphones so I could plug into my remote control and watch 12 uninterrupted sleepless hours of a House marathon on USA network.  I am sure the headset cost me about $100 but worth every penny.  They are still in my purse in case I have to go back.

But let’s discuss the visitors of Vex…

The first night I was there, her husband came in, an Ethan Frome, a sad insurance salesman who is apparently about to get downsized, as I hear from one of Vexx’s many erratic cell phone calls.  He is a little man, beaten down and there isn’t enough Wild Turkey in the world to help him forget that that this woman is going to eventually come back home.  She cried and she whined and said to him, “Why didn’t you call me back, I have been calling and calling you (and believe me, she did) and he said to her, “There is something wrong with my phone, it keeps on going dead” and Ethan Frome and I both knew that it’s dead because he can’t bare to turn the god damn thing back on.

Vexx tries to throw the curtain open for the tenth time to show me the mickey mouse boxers that he brought her from his underwear drawer.  And she has been showing them to me all day.  She repeats herself a lot.  I start to clutch my keegel when I hear her stretch and moan in pain for the curtain.  She would pull it back and then I have to look at her sagging tits hanging out the sides of her hospital gown, shaking sad Ethan Frome’s ridiculous Disney boxers that you know he got for Christmas 5 years ago.  She yells at him for bringing her some of his old t shirts for her to wear: he “fucked up” because they have “baloney pits.”

*Sigh*

all I could do at that point is sit back and wait for the nurse to come in and check my vitals so I can signal her to pull the curtain shut again. I could fffffeeeelllll him trying to leave.  I can hear him saying, “Ok, well..” half a dozen times, he cannot take one more minute with her.  I think about what it was like when they met and fell in love?  She was the outgoing one.  Did he court her?  Were they affectionate?  How long did it take in their marriage before he became shrunken by her constant badgering, nagging, complaining, whining, crying, never ending beat down.  Or did she become that way because he never paid any attention to her?  Wasn’t interested in hearing the sound of her voice?  If I have to hear the sound of her voice one more time, I think that I might stab her with a fork and then we will see how much medication she will need.

Frome leaves and Vexx howls.  I buzz my nurse for an Ambian.  It’s going to be a long night.

But now here I am back home.  I am tired now, really feckin weak and still trying to recover.  I get really short of breath and need to lie down after every little mundane task.  It’s all very Camille.  But I am not cleansed of this experience quite yet.  I still have yet to talk about the mother of Vexx and the gas bill visit.

The world seems to me a lot darker after the time change.

Really Looking forward to Spring in Chicago. March 25, 2008

Winter, you beggarly, benumbed wench, Leave us.

Somebody had a little too much XTC in their Special K this morning.

The Shopping List. March 23, 2008

My fucking Easter Grocery list.

DAYUM, I had a day. I am not going to bore you all with the insanality of Mike and I trying to prepare for our family Easter Birthday party at our house tomorrow. Let’s just say, today involved a lot of snot, fevers, hangovers, cleaning, shopping and me army crawling under a car on the wet slushy ground to try to get my fucking Easter grocery list.

To protect the innocent i.e. my children, I will refer to them as (Kid A: male. 8 in two weeks) ohhhhh, let’s call him….Apple. No, that’s gay. But if he is we will love him anyway. Let’s call him…Alpha. That’s masculine.

The middle one (Kid B: Girl. 6 years old. Insane like her mother) will be Bambi. The little one, kid C, the runt of the litter shall be herein entitled Cracker. (Cause she’s crazy like her mother)

Alpha and Cracker (this is already a disaster) are having birthdays in two weeks. Cracker was born on the date of the month the day before Alpha, insuring him a life time filled with resentment, misunderstanding and jealousy. And speaking of Jealously, Bambi, literally the Most Jealous Person In The World, is very lucky that the other birthdays fall near Easter, so for a lifetime, she will be showered with Cadbury bunnies, useless stuffed animals and all the peeps Bambi can shove into her little mouth, all under the guise that “she is special and deserves presents, too.”

But back to the fucking Easter shopping list.

I leave the kids with…Mike. Oh well, I already outted him and he is not so innocent anyway. Oh, and one thing, I always forget my lists. I will spend hours on a grocery list, categorizing them by aisle sometimes, for ultimate efficiency. I have been known to actually type them up in an endearing little word document, complete with bullet points. I start these lists sometimes moments after I return from a previous grocery run, when I need to add all the things that I forgot to get on that trip. Needless to say, I work hard on these lists and I quite literally always forget them. I leave them on the counter or shove them in my coat pocket and leave my coat in kitchen. Often, it makes it to the car but it gets lost in the Mcdonalds bags, outdated Mapquest directions and ye ol’ forgotten grocery lists of times gone by…

The point is, I rarely have a list when I get into a store. Then I get in the store and I roam the aisles aimlessly and in a very unorganized fashion, as I drool and mope and give dirty looks to the people who are crossing off things on their little fucking lists with their little fucking pens and I hate them and I always forget at least three things.

Well, I threw this list together today. I think I even wrote it on the back of a Chase deposit envelope on the way to our 5 million dollar Costco run this morning. It wasn’t neat, it wasn’t alphabetized or categorized by aisle or expiration date, but God DAMN it, I was gonna remember to bring that fucker IN with me. Super T (Target with food, The Ultimate Tarjjjayyy) was ridiculous. I got the last possible spot in the last possible corner of the very impossible end of the mall. But I grabbed my fucking Easter grocery list and I went a-walkin. I was chatting with my cousin….Apricot….and I was bitching about how much money we have spent already and WHHHHHHOOOOOOOSHHHHHH

a gust goes by and I’ll be damned if that fucking list didn’t blow right out of my hand. And now watch me as I chase after it because It.Will.Not.Defeat.Me.It.Will.Not.Define.Me.It.Will.Not.Bring.Me.Down.

And it lands literally in the exact middle of the undercarriage of a car parked in a handicapped spot. If I got out a ruler or measuring tape or some sort of Numb3rs Charlie Eppes math graph and figured out the exact middle point of the exact piece of inch that is directly in the middle of under the car, I could not have gotten closer. I CANNOT REACH IT. My cashmere sweater and my jeans are all wet and I am starting to laugh a little like a loon.

I KICK THE CAR! I SPIT ON THE LIST! I TRIP THE OWNER OF THE VEHICLE!

I do not of these things but I want to because I am PISSED.

I didn’t even see the owner of the car, but come ON, it snowed yesterday but now it was sunny and all the snow was slushy and melting and awww man, do I have to get DOWN there on my hand and knees? I am still talking to Apricot who I hang up on by mistake when I have to fucking LAY DOWN on the ground to try to reach the fucking Easter grocery list.

There is a lady staring at me. I feel compelled to explain my situation and I am happy to have an audience.

“I am having a day. (Crazy person laugh) I dropped my shopping list and it went under this car and I can’t reach it and blah blah blah blah blah (interspersed with crazy lady laughing)”

She stares at me for what is a really kind of an uncomfortable amount of time. She says nothing but goes into her trunk and pulls out this thing. This glorious, beautiful, long, pointy thing. I think its an extendo-broom.

She’s says, “I use to clean house, yes?”

God love her.

She squats down and grabs that little fucker and I am jumping up and down in the parking lot like I need to be parking in my own handicapped space for mental reasons. I actually think I may have hugged her, I am too embarrassed in front of myself to try to remember exactly what I did but I think I said things like,” you are an Easter gift” and something about Jesus. I don’t know. Don’t make me look back, but the point is…

I got the fucking Easter shopping list.

It made it into Super T and for the first time like…ever…I FORGOT NOTHING.

Happy Easter.

Her Skin Grew Over the Seat… March 13, 2008

There is a very sad woman, who was just recently removed from a bathroom she has not left for over 2 years.

“A 35-year-old woman who sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for so long that her body was stuck to the seat had a phobia about leaving the bathroom, the boyfriend said. ‘She is an adult; she made her own decision,’ said her boyfriend, Kory McFarren. ‘I should have gotten help for her sooner; I admit that. (DO YA THINK???) But after a while, you kind of get used to it.’” Full article here

DUDE.

jg;nb;eoirj[utj[ojewb[oiemnit]0i,bpk]rpnkr

I can’t even find the words to type how insane that is that he let her stay in there, sitting on the toilet. Bringing her clothes and food to her everyday. “They had conversations and had an otherwise normal relationship”…

People are FUCKED up.

On a lighter note, I love Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. He would never let her ass mold to the toilet seat. They are the Once couple and they are dating in real life.

I am slightly obsessed with them. I google them a little bit too much. My husband and I are in love with that movie and “Falling Slowly” has become our song. I promised Mike that I wasn’t going to blogtrash him if I started this blogging thing, but I can’t help it. He totally man-cries when we listen to that tune. And I don’t blame him – it’s totally emotional for us. For whatever reason, does an emotional thing to our souls.  Jesus, that is a stupid description. But seriously, I almost want to stop listening to it, to avoid ever getting sick of it. My 6 year old daughter is learning the song and I am accompanying her really badly on her $34 pink rock and roll ToysRUs guitar. It’s a kick ass version soon to be sweeping the charts over at youtube.com – look out for it.

There is a video of Glen and Marketa performing on Michigan Avenue and there is like, NO ONE THERE. There are maybe 2-3 people looking at them at the end, like who are those fucking people? Don’t bother me on my lunch hour.

Here is the link to the video…

What the FECK. If Mike and I knew about that, we would have not only been there, but we would have been FREAKING OUT. In a totally embarrassing and inappropriate way. We may have even tried to make out with them, I don’t know, but it would have been strange, weird and cool as hell.

I sang last night with a friend at Maxime’s downtown and I got home tooooo late. I woke up with my eyes fastened shut by my fake eyelashes. I was in my bra and underwear and I passed out still wearing my fake bling jewelry. It left little indented marks all over different areas of my skin. I am a hot mess and I need to go take care of myself before the girls think Courtney Love has now become their mother.

Who’s The Old Wheezing Bag with the Mic? March 10, 2008

I am getting too old and no one will hire me.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I mean, I am still working, of course. And I get to perform in cool places like the Plush Room in San Fran and Chicago’s Drury Lane Water Tower. But let’s not sugar coat, this, Blanche: I am a lounge singer. Nothing glamorous. A girl’s gotta work cause baby needs a new pair of shoes. Quite literally.

We move out to Bumblefeck and there is NO WHERE to play. I sit in every once in awhile as the house vocalist at Pirro’s in Woodstock and I have the random job here and there, but other than that, there is not a whole lot going on. I am used to working at least once a week, if not more.

And this is not me trying to book Carnegie Hall people. We are talking about me trying to get a booking singing in a measly corner of a 3 star restaurant singing Besame Mucho will you gnaw on your calamari. But lately, I can’t get arrested. I know for certain that it’s not my voice because vocally, I am sharp as a tack. Process of elimination points out that it must be the way I look.

Perhaps it’s just something small like restaurant managers being worried that servers may trip over my sagging breasts, or that my gnarled, rugged and scraggy skin with turn people off from ordering the Veal Piccata. Perhaps it’s my distended and paunchy middle-aged housewife form, that is, time and time again, shoved in a black cocktail dress like haggis.

Not that I am NOT working on that. I wash my face, brush my teeth with whitening toothpaste, bathe and exfoliate every day. I shave my legs every once in while too. But I live in a land where finding time to pee without a toddler on your lap is a challenge, so taking care of myself is pretty much on the bottom of the list.

Example of daily to do list:

• laundry
• Clean bathrooms
• dust shutters
• Make dentist appts.
• birty party invites
• wipe asses
• remove crusty snot off cheeks
• do 5,000 things, then, if there is a few minutes before bed
• make time to poop

I have been dieting and have lost 15 pounds already, thanks to a great support group of my online mommy friends. I am not exercising yet because frankly, I am too busy blogging.

At this point, I am virtually a solid so I need to get moving and shaking a little bit. Instead of being one of those dieters that hangs a fridge picture of Pauline Porizkova (See how feckin old I am?), I mean Kate Moss (gawd, she’s practically geriatric now, too) Mary-Kate Olsen, I can hang up a picture of Bette Midler in Vegas.

She’s still working. Big time. If I hang her up on the fridge, surely I will thing twice before going in there and making my typical lunch: a cheese sandwich, with cheese soup, mac and cheese with a side of cheesecake.

I am going into the studio Tuesday with this new guitarist (who I will from now on refer to as Dracula to protect the innocent) that I have been working with, some 24 year old guy from Transylvania, who RIPS it up, seriously, he is so good. I am optimistic that we can get some work together as a mother-son duo.

Dracula and I need to think of a name. Here are some ideas:

Liza and Gest

Old Vampira and the Young Transylvanian

Depends

Senile Sally and the Caregiver

What do you think? Well, listen, you let me know if you have any ideas. D and I are open to suggestions.

Yesterday, when I dressed to go on a family Costco run, I noticed that I have a corrugating, puckered, wrinkled mess on my neck. This is a serious situation we have here. I actually and I shit you not, put on a silk scarf around my neck that would have made Diane Keaton weep with pride.

After our studio session, Dracula and I are going to have a promo pic photo shoot soon. If that doesn’t work out, I should actually send this picture and see how many gigs we get

I gotta wrap this up here so I can go kill a duck and rub the lard on my new neck wrinkles.

Pineapples, Cottage Cheese and 4 Million worth of plastic. March 8, 2008

(Insert 50’s housewife music here)

OhNoTheyDidn’t.com, my source for this delightful day in the life piece, states, “Don’t know who Jocelyn Wildenstein is? She’s a New York socialite who’s reportedly spent over $4,000,000 on plastic surgery over the years to keep her husband” To read about who in the hell she actually is, Click here

I just…I…

Hm.

Dear Peter Bogdanovich, if if you ever decide to do a remake of your sensational 1985 Oscar winning Mask and would like to replace Eric Stolz because he’s to busy filming Howl, please look no further.

Feck. March 7, 2008

FeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeck

I love the word, fuck. Love it. But since it’s St’ Patty’s time, I like to say FECK. Feck Feck feck.

I am going to write a book.

I have decided this. My life is and always was, excessively goofy. It is pretty much a daily occurrence for something ridiculous to happen to me. And I think I owe it to my children to write this shit down. I am working on the outline now and I have already run unto a problem. I am getting to the high school years and now I don’t know what to do. I need to make a call here because there is some FECKED up shit and do they really have to know everything about their mother? I mean, I don’t know half of what my parents did and frankly, I. Don’t. Wanna.

Do they need to know about how I lost my maidenhood or how I scaled my wall drunk at their grandfather’s 40th birthday party? Do they want to read about how I chugged a bottle of Jack Daniels and peed on Sean Gorley’s living room carpet, only to wake up in his soccer uniform (shin guards included)? Must they hear about me trying to make out with a hot BBQ and do they really need to know about my crazy Boulder band daze?

I think not. So I will have to be really selective. But that crazy stuff. That’s the shit that I want to remember, too. It’s good for me. It puts hair on the chest. Reminds me that my kids are never going to be allowed to leave the fecking house. If I had my druthers, they would all be put in a convent until college. But then they might come out weird.

And so what do I call this blockbuster? Oprah’s next book club selection and the reason for my future Pulitzer?

Mama was a Slut but now she makes a mean PB and J? Mommy is bad with money and let me tell you why? How to fuck up a perfectly privileged childhood and education by Mommy? Hmm…Not so much.

I think I will focus on the fun stuff and remember that my children, even if full grown will be reading this and while I want to give them a true account of the many faces and places of Mommy, I want them to respect me. And so I guess I have to respect myself and leave out the scary crap. Maybe I should do and unabridged adult version. Entitled Mom does Porn.

Oh, this will be fun. One more thing for me to fit in my already insanely busy day.

Feck.

The Pogues Made Me Blog, Love Aunt Barbara. March 6, 2008

There. I am officially doing it.

Last night, I had a moment of clarity when I realized that here I was, almost 40 years old and moshing with smelly men, and that I needed to start a blog.

Why not, everyone else is doing it. And who the hell is going to read it anyway?

So, about my night…

I went to the Pixies WHOOPS I mean Pogues show last night (I bought last nights tickets as a Christmas present for my husband, I thought I was buying him Pixies tickets…when he opened them, he wasn’t going crazy. I said WTF, honey, Merry Christmas, he said, cool, you love these guys. I was so excited that I guess I subconsciously bought the wrong ones.)

 

WOW. What an interesting night. Now, I love the Pogues and I saw them at a summer music festival in the late 90’s, Shane McGowan was not in the band anymore. He is a massive drunk who is an amazing artist but man, google his image. He drank so much he…just…forgot to deal..wit his teeth. Whoops. Eventually he was kicked out of the band in the 1990’s. That festival that I saw was pretty tame for some reason, anyway I don’t remember it being to out of control but you should have seen the oldest member of this boardblog site in the irish MOSH PIT last night.
Shane was so drunk that they made the audience wait an hour and a half before they came out. That sucked. (I heard the next day that he was late because they couldn’t find him. They couldn’t FIND HIM. God, I love that about him.)

I realize that I am an old fart, but I thought I looked kinda cute and I certainly thought I was fooling everyone with my cute little mini skirt, boots and peekaboo top. Until some guy bumped into me and said, “Oh Hey Aunt Barbara. When did you get here? At least you boobs still look good.”

THUMP.
OMG.

I literally was crying in the bathroom. Then I was crying because I was crying in the bathroom. Then I realized how gross the bathrooms are and I cried because everything is so different now, I mean, I NEVER cared about how gross the bathrooms were. Now, all I wanted were some baby wipes and antibacterial lotion.
When, seriously, when did I get old?
I am going to be 40 next year and I literally feel like I am still in my 20’s. I have such a warped sense of self.

Also, I miss smoking. The ban has created a whole other problem.

People stank.

Even before the concert started, as we all piled in like cows to the slaughter, I am smelling the nasty of all these people around me and I realize, I miss the smoke smell. I can’t handle the guy in front of me who clearly has not showered for days after, let’s see (I analyzed his stank for the better part of an hour) curry, beer burps, a random beer fart here and there, uh, and the worst smell, that make me throw up in my mouth a little bit, did someone get a little somethin somethin lately, DUDE. BATHE. O. M . GAWWWDDD.

Then the band started and Shane was spitting and practically puking on everyone through the nubs of his 4 remaining teeth and then people started to sweat. (By the way, the band was amazing. Shane is fucking insane, but he is stilll awesome. Love Spider. And Phil Chevron was back in action after battling throat cancer and it was the highlight of the evening to see him singing “thousands are sailing” – quite amazing. And so ends my mini-review)

I am a little damaged still from the whole scent experience. Lift the ban so I can fill my lungs with smoke instead of stinky drunk Irish college boy.

Speaking of drunk Irish college boy, 15 years ago, this kind of a scene was like a candy store for me. I LOVE drunk Irish college boys. Well, I did but man, it’s hard to look back at what I used to find hot. I was a total tard.

The funniest thing all night was Mike and this other older guy blocking me. They were my bodyguards, shoving and punching people away from me. Mike has his leather coat on and never took it off. We had to leave a little early because we thought he was going to have a coronary.
Feck, we are old.

But the date ended perfectly when we went to our most favorite city hang out, The Green Mill, and drank a dirty martini and listened to Gypsy Jazz…. A great, if not incredibly stinky night. Merry Christmas to me.