Month: January 2006

cover art!

really happening
an actual book to buy
many copies of

Hey! I’m shilling for the book again – the cover art is finally up over at Amazon! It says the book is coming out on May 31st (the wee one’s birthday!). But I have it on authority that it will be in stores before that, so you all know what you can get your mamas for Mother’s Day.

Also, if you want to support the publisher, you can go directly to their web site – they have a whole page with cover art and blurb and everything (but you can’t pre-order on their site. Not that you have to. I’m just saying). I guess I should stop feeling weird about shilling for the book and just get comfortable with constantly harassing everyone I know to buy it.

Yay! Book!

Also, in case you were wondering, which you probably weren’t, the other book is still out there being shopping around to various publishers. We’re having a lot of luck finding editors that love it enough to want me to rewrite the whole thing, but no one who loves it enough to actually want to publish it after the rewrites. Which, as you can probably guess, is eternally frustrating. It’s good in that editors are reading it and liking it… it’s bad in that no one has liked it enough to sign any contracts. So we soldier on, The New York Agent and I, and I feel lucky to be getting this far, to have gotten this far, but… but… but…

third grade

for just a moment
we forgot about spelling
and stupid fractions

Twenty years ago (!) when the Challenger exploded, I was in the third grade at a small elementary school in a small town in Florida. Third grade was in portables then, because the school was overcrowded. They were small and dank and I had strep throat like six times that year because of those stupid portables. But on liftoff day I was at school, excited to watch the shuttle like everyone else. And being in the portables gave us a front row view of the launch.

We watched the countdown on a TV at the front of the classroom and then the teacher gathered us up in line to go outside to see the launch. (We shared the same coast with the Kennedy Center and were able to see almost all of the launches – from school, from home, from pretty much anywhere.)

So we trooped out of the portable, excited and jabbering, and went to meet the crowd of the rest of the third graders who were clustered not too far from us. For some reason, my class was late (most likely because my teacher at that time was an idiot, but possibly because we were fooling around and taking too long to get in line). By the time we got outside the explosion had already happened but no one really knew what was going on.

I remember looking up and seeing the divergent trails of smoke and thinking that something definitely wasn’t right. Other launches had never looked like that. Then I immediately began to try and justify why there might be smoke trails spinning off like that. Maybe NASA was really sending several shuttles up and didn’t tell us. But then I noticed that the smoke trails weren’t going any higher. And I saw my teacher crying.

The students were all rushed back into the classrooms as soon as the teachers grasped what had happened. We didn’t quite know what to think or do, but we were instructed to be very quiet and our teacher said a prayer. Even at nine-years-old (or thereabouts) I was resistant to hearing a prayer in a public school, but now that I think about the situation and how horrible it was and how so many young school children had just witnessed it… well, I can forgive that prayer in that pubic school.

And then the day went on. Reading, Math, Lunch, Social Studies, Recess. And it seems like those smoke trails stayed in the sky all day, slowly blowing away with the wind. I don’t know how long they really stayed in the sky. Maybe it’s just that I remembered them there all day, but I could swear that even as we walked to lunch the smoke was there, looming over us, changing the day, and all of us, forever.

mother of the year

not that I forgot
it was the TIME I forgot
those are different

Uh, yeah, so I forgot to pick up the wee one at school today. Well, not forgot per se… I just, for some dumb reason, thought I was supposed to pick him up at 2:30 instead of 2:00. Even though every other time I’ve picked him up from school on a Thursday I’ve picked him up at 2:00.

So right around 2:17, I was farting around on the computer when it suddenly dawned on me that DUH, THE WEE ONE’S SCHOOL ENDS AT 2, MORON. I drove like 90 mph out of the neighborhood to go fetch him. Luckily his school is only about 3 minutes away. And even more luckily, I didn’t run anyone or any animals over in my hysteria.

The wee one was, of course, the last kid to be picked up. But he didn’t seem to notice. He had a lollipop and was helping the director clean up her office.

MAN.

Can I just say how bad I still feel? And to top it off, both of my phones – the land line and my mobile – are all jacked up today. So the school was trying to call, but to no avail. One busy signal and one straight to voicemail made them believe I had been possibly abducted or skipped town or something. When I got to the school I think they were just as relieved to see me as I was to see the wee one.

Then, on the way home, I drove past the turn off to our neighborhood. Totally missed it. And then I ate a Viactiv that was expired. And now I have to go the stupid pharmacy to spend more money on MORE FRIGGIN medicine, because the goddamned antibiotics that gagged me and gave me the poopies ALSO gave me a fucking yeast infection… wait for it… ON MY TONGUE (no jokes or I will come after you with a mean and pregnant vengeance).

So.

I’m a yeasty-tongued mother of the year. And if THAT doesn’t sound like Dixie Chicks song, I don’t know what does.

Fuck, y’all. Today sucks.

I’m totally serious

it will be here soon
chocolate would be OK
NASA stuff, better

I’m completely serious here. If anyone out there wants to get me something special for Valentine’s Day, here’s my spiel on the most bad ass stuff in the world. Who needs heart-shaped boxes full of chocolate when you could have a heart-shaped box filled with 99.8% air?! Rad.

typo, etc.

boob-grabbing not cool
even if you’re tacky, gay
yet I will exploit

OK. For everyone who is googling "Scarlett Johansen" and "boobs" yes, I spelled her name wrong in a post long ago, and that’s why you’re being sent here. No, I did not talk about her breasts. Or at least I don’t think I did.

If, in fact, you’re actually searching for the horrifying moment when Issac Mizrahi groped her during the red carpet melee of the Golden Globes, then take a look here and you can see the horror for yourself.

I get that she’s a movie star and he was trying to make TV "exciting" or whatever, but still. Someone slap that dude. Even raging E! gay guys should know better than to touch stranger’s bathing suit areas.

coffee

so it was decaf
the taste was still loverly
and it was hot, too!

I had a decaf cafe au lait tonight. And it cost $2 which seemed like a good deal. And it tasted very good. And I haven’t been sick yet. And it’s been so long since I’ve had coffee of any sort I feel like maybe I even got some kind of vicarious caffiene buzz out of it.

Wait.

Who amvi kidding? I just wrote "ami" for "am i" and then instead of hitting the space bar I hit the letter "v." I’m so tired I can’t even type. that or the cafe au lait was spiked. Oooh, the Gestator’s gonna be pissed.

jaysus

Christianity
not necessarily bad
but kind of stealthy

The wee one is being indoctrinated into Christianity, which, as long as we keep him centered and answer his questions and keep him away from zealots, is fine. He’s all into Veggie Tales now, and thanks to his mother’s day out pre-school deal, he’s singing all these religious songs.

He definitely puts his own stamp on things, though. Yesterday he was singing something  about "crazy lord" and I asked what he was singing and he said it was the "crazy lord hallelujah song." So I’m guessing it’s really "Praise the Lord." If he interprets it as crazy lord, though, more power to him.

And, again, in the car today he was singing, "The tea is weak but he is strong." I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be "We are weak but He is strong," but, again, I dig the interpretation, so carry on, wee one’s creative mind.

Not 100% digging the Veggie Tales, though. Especially the movie. It’s bogging down in oppressive preachiness, but it’s disguised with colorful cucumbers and turbaned asparagus and funny accents. I wonder what Pat Robertson says about Veggie Tales?

Wah

must swallow a pill
that is same size as baby
how do mules do it?

I am such a baby. A whiny baby. Why? because I have to take medicine. I HATE taking medicine. I hate how it makes me feel. I hate that it has side effects that could kill me. I especially hate having to choke down ginormous pills twice a day.

When I was a kid I could never swallow pills. I was taking liquid Amoxicillan until I was in college. And when liquid wasn’t available, my mom would open up the capsules and mix up the powder in applesauce. Talk about nasty. (Just a note: she wasn’t doing that for me in college. I did it myself then.)

As I got older and had a baby I learned that swallowing big pills had benefits – like narcotic type benefits that are really swell after you’ve spent 18 hours pushing a nearly nine pound baby out of a not so large orifice.

So, suddenly, I could swallow pills. It was like a miracle. I still didn’t like taking meds, but it was easier without the gagging and retching and all that.

THEN, THEN, I found the best general practitioner in the whole wide world who, instead of making me swallow pills, just gave me a shot in the ass every time I was sick. What wonder that was! I didn’t like getting a shot, but 2 minutes of pain vs. a week of choking down horse pills – hallelujah.

But now that I’m pregnant, I guess the shots are out. Or they don’t have a shot in the kind of medicine I have to take. Stupid antibiotics for a stupid infection. So I have to take these HUGE pills twice a day. And sometimes I can get them down and sometimes not. So I had to sheepishly ask my doctor if I could also have a liquid prescription as a back-up. Now I have a choice: gag on gallons of foul pediatric liquid, or gag on horse pills. It is not a choice I like.

Also, this medicine apparently has the "rare side effect" of sometimes killing people with intestinal problems WEEKS AFTER taking it. I even read a CNN story about how the problems this antibiotic causes are becoming resistant to other medications and people – namely PREGNANT WOMEN – are dying more often. Excellent.

Reading this makes me want to chuck all the meds into the toilet. But then again, if the infection gets worse it could cause preterm labor and 16 weeks is way too early to have a baby.

This, I guess, is what they call "weighing risks and benefits." Well, it sucks. And this medicine sucks. And I hate it. And wah.

Hoopty-hoo

a cloudy Monday
time slows down, as do bowels
not really ha ha

We are once again dealing with snot burn, here in the haikuoftheday family. But it doesn’t seem too bad, and I found this really, really old Mary Kay stuff that I have that is basically like rubbing candle wax on your face. It’s working wonders for the wee one’s pink cheek patch of snot burn. Of course, he may end up being the first three-year-old with blackheads. We’ll see.

Hey guess what? We have a frog! And a Black Mollie! We just introduced them to the Red Platy and the Blue Guppy Thing. It’s all very exciting and nothing has tried to eat anything else yet, and they all survived the night! This may sound boring to you, but it is quite thrilling, actually.

Speaking of thrilling… Golden Globes anyone? I know it’s not as prestigious as the Emmy’s or Oscars or SAG awards or, really, anything, but it’s the awards show where everyone gets hammered and so that’s fun. At least for the first 7 and a half hours.

I wrote a long thing with Globe picks over at the curlyhairedTVdork blog. And, look, you can go to the Austin360 TV page and click straight through to the blog. Well, as long as I keep it updated you can. That’s cool.

And I watched 24 last night. Except for the last ten minutes of the second hour because the TiVo stopped recording because the football game went long and I KNEW I should’ve added extra time and just forgone recording Grey’s Anatomy, but I was lazy and now I don’t know who the mole is. Is there a Golden Globe for run-on sentences? Cause I just won it.