blah blah blog

It's A Girl

Here's another (albeit shallow) reason - click here for previous reason - that I don't have children. My friend, the daughter of the wonderfully wacky matriarch mentioned in the entry below, went to the hospital on Tuesday to induce labor. For TWENTY-FOUR hours, little Kumari refused to come out and they finally had to have a C-Section. Poor papoose is going to hear that story for the next eighteen years. I think my friend will be saying "the hell with breast-feeding - give me the bottle. Of vodka!"

The great news is that mother and daughter have the same birthday. What a present!

In other good news - also in the shallow department - I trash-picked a perfectly good drafting table yesterday, complete with hip-hop and rasta stickers.

Book Launch-A-Go-Gov

Monday night I had the pleasure of attending the launch party for Chef Govind Armstrong's first cookbook small bites big nights. It was held at his restaurant Table 8 on Melrose. I try not to miss a party given by anyone in Govind's family because they are always sure to deliver some sort of hilarity or spectacle. A couple weeks ago they held a baby shower for his sister and over a hundred of her friends and family members. Govind cooked and the entertainment included three near-naked stilt dancers.

The matriarch of this spirited family tends to make her kids' eyes roll quite a bit but it is always done with a twinkle. When she arrives at a party you know the party has begun. As it was last night. I was chatting with her and asked if she was wearing a vibrator (I meant pager) to alert her if her daughter was giving birth, as she is about to any second. She pointed to her boyfriend (actually directly at his crotch) who was fumbling with his camera trying to take our picture, and said, "That's my vibrator!" The boyfriend, still fumbling, said of his camera work, "I'm no good at this." And I swear to bwana, even though it was loud and she has an accent, I distinctly heard her say, "He's good at other things though - HE CLEANS HIS BUTT IN ALL THE RIGHT WAYS."

I literally crumbled with laughter. I thought to tell Govind that he would not believe what his mother just said...but oh, right - he would.

Persons About To Have Babies, Don't Read This

This is why I don't have children. One might immediately think I'm going to rant about the Virginia Tech massacre and that certainly tops the list as I don't think I'd be very good at letting my children leave the house from plain 'ol fear of fear (as our president likes it.) But that's not what brings me to todays topic. Example B begins with my friend - a single mom, lets call her Betsy and her 14 year-old daughter, lets call her Kay.

I've known both of them for seven years. Kay was the sweetest, adorable 8 to 13 year-old I'd ever met. We talked clothes and music. We went shopping and I gave her my hand-me-downs. Straight A student, talented musician - every mother's dream.

Then she turned 14, had a really bad experience with a boy and entered high school. Kay did a 180. She started a lesbian relationship with a "shy" yet clearly manipulative 17 year-old, began lying to everyone and quite possibly is about to flunk the ninth grade.

Betsy was trying to deal rationally with this raging hormonal angry teen till the night before Kay was to shoot a national commercial and came home with a giant hickey on her neck ("the cat did it"). Then came the notes in the backpack that Kay was smart enough to leave available. They were all from Kay's gal-pal and the ones that didn't reference sexually suggestive material were aimed at Betsy and how much they hated her to the point of threatening her. Not just your teen ha-ha, your mother is a bitch, she should die. These had all that and worse. The kicker was a cartoon drawn in panels with each one depicting how this gal-pal was going to kill Betsy. Really imaginative and horrific.

I wanted to kill Betsy myself when she informed me that after Kay was finally confronted about the school notes, she went into hysterics of crying and apologizing and pleadings, convincing Betsy to join her in a ceremonious burning of the notes... "You didn't." "I did."

All right, so this has been going on for months and Betsy has done her best at accepting this relationship even though they both defy her and disrespect her on a regular basis. Betsy did a lot of research about this whole raising a teen thing and ended up writing a contract for Kay in order to control her privileges. Not sure that was going real well but at least Kay signed it and Betsy had something to refer to.

Kay has been seeing a councelor. She reportedly didn't mind seeing a councelor but as with everything in the last several months she started using it as a tool for bad. Did I mention that she's a good little actress? A few days ago she decided to tell her councelor that Betsy was abusive. The councelor suggested that if that was the case then Kay should call Social Services. So she did. She told them that Betsy was a drunk (funny because Betsy has had three alcoholic beverages in the last three months - it had been making her sick.) She told them that Betsy smoked pot on a daily basis (funny because Betsy should be at the top of the list of medical marijuana users, but she isn't). She told them that Betsy lost her job (funny because she runs her own company, granted it's not always keeping her afloat, but nonetheless...). And of course she told them that Betsy was abusive.

Well, in short, Social Services showed up, questioned Betsy and her 8 year-old son and so far sees it for what it is. What baffles me is that this once-smart girl didn't see beyond hurting her mother - if this went/goes further she and her brother would/will end up in a foster home and oh, wouldn't/won't she be surprised?

I no longer know this teen - unrecognizable in behavior and attitude. I understand every 14 year-old thinks they know more than their parents and lots of them think they hate them. I was 14. My mom recently told me I was always a happy kid till I hit high school. But that's another story.

This story amazingly has three-point-two, possibly four more years of high school to add to it. Can you say "emancipate"?

My child, who is also an angry brat with an attitude - is a terrier named Oscar. I can live with that.

A Melrose Place

Sunday I saw the village idiot at The Village Idiot, er what I meant to say was that I saw Dennis Rodman at The Village Idiot. I believe it was tequila that he shot back while waiting for his woman friend.

The new public house on Melrose is the perfect place to enjoy a pint or a cool glass of wine (or shot) after a lack of success at the Melrose Trading Post Flea Market. Two days of junk shopping for the new home and I came up empty handed. So today I bought A vacuum cleaner. The perfect activity for those long playoff games.

With margarita in one hand.
No worm.

Go Bulls.

Easter With The Southsiders

Mary Jane gets poetic.

Sacrificial lamb cake included.

Murphy's Blah

There can't be a person on earth that enjoys moving. Our hired mover even hates moving. It is especially fun when you take yourself to the emergency room the day before the move. I had organized the packing every day for the three weeks beforehand and as soon as I packed and taped up a dozen boxes, David would move them to the garage. Just about ten minutes after the last box on Wednesday night I felt the strain. My sciatica was back in a new and BIG way.

Thursday morning I had a hike to do. Gingerly. Two ibuprofin - HA! My friend with the bathroom pharmacy was down to nothing in the vicodin/neurontin/soma department. At 11:30 I called the Kaiser line and went through their system which determined that I needed to go to the emergency room. I finished two more appointments - gingerly, canceled one and drove to Hollywood. Left turns made me tear. When I stepped off a curb and had spasms, I thought for sure I was about to crumble and become the lady on the ground crying, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

They injected me with a high dose of anti-inflamatory and waited for forty minutes. It did nothing. They wanted to inject me with morphine but alas, I was driving so they sent me home with vicodin and flexeril. And told me to lie down for a few days. For crying out loud, that was not about to happen. My favorite part about packing and moving is unpacking. How was I to lie on the couch with four dozen boxes stacked in front of it?

Two things I learned during this move. One - dogs love carpet. Two - vicodin doesn't work for sciatica. We'll see how the latest prescribed prednisone works but that damn Chihuahua that made me chase after him today wasn't helping AT ALL.

It's a Dog Day Afternoon.
Sciatica! Sciatica! Sciatica!