dammit! The wonder stuff for Baldo's eczema is carcinogenic in rats.

Excuse me while I beat my head on this desk.

happy birthday baldo Three years old.

On the one hand, I can't believe it.

On the other hand, these have been three very strange and twisted years.

quorn I love Quorn.

I love Quorn so much that when I opened a box just now, I tried to eat a piece (they're nuggets) while it was still frozen. I don't care if it's made from zoo-animal scrapings and fermented in the LA River. I. Love. Quorn. I will eat Quorn until the FDA orders it off the market.

I also love Vioxx. I took Vioxx once, when I had a headache that lasted three days, and it made me a better person. I'm not telling you that you should take Vioxx or eat Quorn. I'm just saying that in my own small way I like to live dangerously.

In other news we are nearing the Birthday Party of Doom, at which Quorn and Vioxx will be served in Bob the Builder tableware. With juice boxes and flaked coconut. And I got drinkable corporate yogurt, which must be hidden from Baldo, lest he pound the tiny bottles one after another and pass out in the corner surrounded by empties.

Now for more Quorn.

the greatest train layout in the history of everything

self-portrait

not suitable for children I had no access to our CD collection (long story, involving OCD), so I availed myself of our old rickety tape collection while foraging for playtime music. I put on a mix tape I made in college. It wasn't significantly different from my current musical choices, which saddened me.

But there was King Missile's "Leather Clown." I remember the exact moment I got into King Missile, long before the travesty of "Detachable Penis" (worst. song. ever). I was listening to "Exposure" with Your Host David Sadoff, and he played "The Boy Who Ate Lasagna and Could Jump Over a Church." As soon as it was over, the phone rang, and of course it was The Other J., my high-school buddy turned webmaster, asking me if I was listening to David Sadoff and did I hear that song? Anyhow. "Leather Clown" was on during playtime with Baldo.

"I'm glad you're not really listening to this," I said to Baldo, who was putting together a section of Brio "wacky track." (My train layouts always require lots of wacky track.)

"But I am listening," he corrected.

"What is this song about?"

"It's about church!" he beamed.

Church? Okay. Sure. Church.

Here. Let me bore you. For the ultimate in narcissism:

1. If I were a month, I'd be: November?
2. If I were a day of the week, I'd be: Wednesday
3. If I were a time of day, I'd be: 5:37 a.m.
4. If I were a planet, I'd be: Mercury
5. If I were a sea animal, I'd be: a shovel-nosed guitarfish.
6. If I were a direction, I'd be: pianissimo
7. If I were a piece of furniture, I'd be: a hassock
8. If I were a historical figure, I'd be: Grover Cleveland
9. If I were a liquid, I'd be: Atarax syrup
10. If I were a tree, I'd be: a loquat
11. If I were a bird, I'd be: a sparrow
12. If I were a flower, I'd be: freesia
13. If I were a kind of weather, I'd be: a low-pressure system
14. If I were a mythical creature, I'd be: a jackalope
15. If I were a musical instrument, I'd be: claves
16. If I were an animal, I'd be: a marmot
17. If I were a color, I'd be: beige
18. If I were an emotion, I'd be: mild annoyance
19. If I were a vegetable, I'd be: eggplant
20. If I were a sound, I'd be: thwap!
21. If I were an element, I'd be: nitrogen
22. If I were a car, I'd be: a Nissan Quest
23. If I were a song, I'd be: Mas Que Nada
24. If I were a food, I'd be: a wheat roll
25. If I were a place, I'd be: a branch library
26. If I were a material, I'd be: Dacron(TM)
27. If I were a taste, I'd be: sour
28. If I were a scent, I'd be: unwashed woman
29. If I were a quote, I'd be: "Can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?"
30. If I were a religion, I'd be: Baha'i
31. If I were a word, I'd be: febrile
32. If I were an object, I'd be: a motherboard
33. If I were a body part, I'd be: an elbow
34. If I were a facial expression, I'd be: mild annoyance?
35. If I were a part of a house, I'd be: the doorstop
36. If I were a subject in school, I'd be: Latin
37. If I were a cartoon character, I'd be: Jay Sherman
38. If I were a shape, I'd be a: polyhedron
39. If I were a number, I'd be: 12

happy birthday, dad

In honor of my dad's birthday, I will refrain from bad language, political partisanship, and references to my body's mysterious feminine processes. I'm going to blast his favorite song (to my knowledge), which is "Honky Tonk Women." If I can find any watermelon in February, I'll cut a piece for myself and put salt on it, slice up some tomatoes, have a steak for breakfast.

My father and I are almost ideological opposites, but I still love and revere him. He's stubborn and determined but surprisingly soft-hearted, a hard worker, and a helluva nice guy in the old-fashioned mold.

r not us So we went to a birthday party at the Big Scary Children's Superstore in Cedar Park. The honoree was one of Baldo's school chums; we love this kid, and sometimes he'll come running up to me on the playground, yelling, "Hey, Marrit! Hey, Marrit!" so what's not to like?

The Big Scary Children's Superstore, of course.

I really do try to give these things a chance. I really do. I don't want to be some kind of asshole mom who gives the kids playsilks, carob, and sycamore roots for fun. Everything I read, see, and hear tells me that kids should like to run around with eyepatches and pirate hooks and Nerf balls, but whenever we approach that environment mine cowers in the corner biting the rash on his hands. And he becomes instantly fixated on independent play with the nearest object, such as the waistband of his pants.

Even his school chum E., who is a delightful robust child, withdrew from the juggernaut of intense stimuli by staring vacantly with her finger up her nose.

Of course the important thing is that the birthday boy dug it, and I should leave it at that. But I can't.

At this store, they've got an indoor playscape (let's call it Rotavirus Island), a barber shop for kids, enough Thomas the Tank Engine paraphrenalia to delight the hardcore fiend, and multiple party rooms, but they don't have soccer balls. The pretend mops and brooms are branded with Mr. Clean; the play food is little plastic simulacra of Subway and KFC. And did I mention that there are no soccer balls? Just parents drinking Pepsi, trying to get their kids out of the rain and out of the house on a dreary boring Saturday. Your one-stop shop for all your childhood needs (except for soccer balls, which you don't really need, so we don't stock them). Is it any wonder we all have diabetes?

I can't even imagine trying to navigate that place with an autistic kid or a kid with sensory-integration problems. As it was I scooped Baldo up into my arms mid-meltdown (his and mine) and ran out. When we got back to the car, he was perfectly delighted to put on his eyepatch and hook.

my funk When I was reading last night, I got asked how writers with little kids can find time to work. The answer: We don't shower. Now I'm sitting here trying to work on an assignment that I literally cannot complete because my fetid armpits are so distracting. I just thought I'd take a break and mention that.

fuck you, walt disney I can understand why there aren't enough toys in the Sick Kid Room at the pediatrician's office. Nobody wants to hose the toys down later. I get that.

But I have to object to the constant Disney loop. Especially when the movie in question is that King Arthur one (see, I don't even care enough to look it up), and it's got swordplay and burning buildings and my kid is burrowing into my arm screaming for it to go away. What, it's not enough that the kid has staples in his head? You gotta scare the shit out of him in the waiting room before you pry the staples out with a blunt tool? What, he's Job?

So we went out to the front desk, and I asked the receptionist to turn off the movie. Which of course makes me That Mother. You know the one.

"I can't do that," said the receptionist. "There might be other kids in there who want to see it." Actually there were two other kids in there--one was passed out, and the other was chewing on his fist.

"You can wait in the room down the hall if no one's in there," she suggested, indicating the Rash Room, whither we are frequently banished because Baldo's eczema makes him look like a leper. The Rash Room is an oversized closet full of oxygen tanks and disposable enemas. It's not a fun place to hang out. Well, at least not for me.

So I turned to Baldo. "She says she can't turn it off," I said.

He flopped onto his back and started wailing. Now, my kid is Freakishly Verbal, so there's no mistaking what he means. "That is so terrible!" he bellowed. "That movie is so scary and I don't like it! I don't like that movie at all!"

Yeah, it got turned off.

You want to give me shit about being an overprotective mother with a wussy little boy? Get in the ring.

brilliance. sheer brilliance. ChezMiscarriage, of course.

sheeeit Somebody sent me a pie! But I can't eat it because it's pecan.

Other J., I'm looking in your direction.

staples: yeah, we've got that So my kid was flinging himself around the living room yesterday, listening to Iggy Pop, and I just had to sit down and cry because he's so grown up and punk as fuck. Case in point: He has staples in his head. He got them on Saturday after an unfortunate head-bonk episode involving a door frame and a tantrum. It was horrifying and scary, but now he's just happy as a little stapled-up clam.

I never had staples on any part of my body until my caesarian, and then they were these giant box staple things on my abdomen. I wept bitterly because my natural childbirth had been foiled, and now box staples were holding my entrails in. A horribly churlish weekend nurse pried them out before I was discharged and sent me home taped-up with Steri-Strips.

Baldo's staples are tiny and silverish, and they look just as if someone opened up a Swingline and, well, stapled his scalp closed.

He yells, "I wish life could be...Swedish magazines!"

I'm a big dork and I took a picture of it

to-do list

1. Smoke some bud with Willie Nelson.
2. Register at a hotel under an assumed name.
3. Get thrown out of a bar.
4. Eat at a miniature train-themed restaurant.
5. See the midnight sun.
6. Be on the marquee at BookPeople.

candy land Great. Somebody totally ripped off my idea for a Candy Land movie. Except there's no Michael Chiklis as Gloppy, the molasses monster more goo-some than gruesome. So what's the point? I give up.

discomfiting The animated robot version of Ewan McGregor does something to me. It doesn't help that his name is "Rodney Copperbottom."

much better now I needed this today. I find it reassuring.

See the bunny with the 3.5? That's me, waving to you.

we are all so fucked You know I don't like to talk politics because...ahem...my family is reading, but did anyone else notice that we're all completely fucked? Just checking. Fake journalists? Invading Iran? Refusing to meet with North Korea? Declassified 9/11 commission report released after the election? Check, check, check, and check. I could go on, but better bloggers do that better.

What I can offer is strategies on coping. Fucking story of my life, that, "strategies on coping."

I finally gave in and ordered some stuff on Amazon because I couldn't for the life of me find a particular book in stock at a store in town, and I had a $34 gift-certificate balance. And that was nice retail therapy. Nice compulsive spending--the province of bourgeois mothers since time immemorial.

Why didn't anyone tell me about Ted Leo and the Pharmacists? They help considerably, and I do love pharmacists.

Oh, no. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists just said something about "detainees who were barely kept alive." Whoops. Strike that recommendation. Somebody get some pie in here.

valentine, the destroyer Ah, yes. The Valentine's Day angst has begun filtering into the blogosphere and will no doubt build to a shattering crescendo over the weekend.

We don't observe it here. We shrug and say, "Ehh.." Even the kid.

"Do you want to give cards to the kids at school?" I asked him yesterday.
"Not so much," he said. That means "no." When did he become Paul Reiser? I really can't say.
"Are you sure?"
"Ehh...Not so much."

J. and I used to have an annual tradition of watching Sid and Nancy on Valentine's Day--it is a love story, and a pretty sincere one, despite that whole murder thing. And then we'd go out in the morning and eat breakfast at the Waffle Spot. We'd pat ourselves on the back for being ironic, or whatever. And then one day while we were sitting there (in the booth at the back of the room) we decided to get married, and so we did. Then we moved away and started a family, and to my knowledge there is not yet a Medieval-themed breakfast diner in Austin. And that's fine. Austin doesn't need it. San Diego needs all the help it can get.

This morning Baldo wanted me to tell him a story. So I told him about a person who moved away to live in a big city with a subway and tall buildings and a big stinky river that ran through it, and there was lots of snow and a methadone clinic next to her house. And she made a friend, and they went bowling sometimes all the way out in Alewife (because the only alleys in town are candlepin) and they went to movies and to various lectures (because they were graduate students and very boring) and ate pastrami reubens at the Deli Haus, and he still liked her even after she made him sit through the director's cut of Bullet in the Head, and she still liked him even after he totally gave his number to some knee-walking hood rat while they were on their first date, and she is never going to let him forget about that one, no way, not even after ten years. And anyhow, they decided to be friends for the rest of their lives, so they climbed up on top of a mountain and promised to be nice to each other and help each other out whenever they had problems.

"That's the end!" Baldo yelled. "Hooray!"

this will amuse no one but me And that's what blogging is all about.

Baldo likes to climb our chain-link fence. He can actually get pretty high up on it, too.

So when he does it, I ask, "How'd you get up there?"

"It wasn't easy!" he yells.

He knows me so well.

I had to
Hmmmm. You are most compatible with "Regular
Guy" Steve. He's okay, a genuinely nice
fellow, but isn't really all that different
from your last boyfriend, now, is he? Why not
try stretching your horizons a bit now and
then?

Which Steve Burns Persona Are You Most Compatible With?
brought to you by Quizilla

urban vocal percussion We eat. We breed. We trash.

This week's Trashy Movie was Krush Groove. Not terribly trashy, though we did see Rick Rubin in a pair of tight colored briefs.

Shudder.

Why did no one tell me that the Human Beat Box is dead? That he's been dead for ten years, even?

bobthebuilder.com

buckethead

tapioca flour

peepeye

Baldo

OCWKTWS My friend Kari calls it "Oh, Crap. Who Knew That Was Scary?"--those moments when your child is unexpectedly terrified of something evidently benign, despite the presence of something evidently harmful.

Case in point. My kid is afraid of everything. But he loves pirates. He wanted to get a book about pirates from the library. And so we got Pirates, a grade-schooler type book that actually has pictures of buccaneers with cutlasses and scurvy dogs hanging from the gallows. And the decapitated head of Blackbeard mounted on the ship's bow.

Is he afraid of it? Hell no. He is, however, afraid of another book we checked out concomitantly: A Porcupine Named Fluffy.

I've also considered whether anything in our videos--essentially Blue's Clues--might be frightening to him. And indeed: he is afraid of the Paramount logo and its accompanying theme song.

hey, why not? My First Blog.

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to 1998.

moreover I don't know if I still have any readers left over from Back in the Day(tm)--sometimes I'm not sure if I have any readers at all, not that it would stop me if I didn't--but for those of you in the know, I got a very official-looking letter in the mail from bankruptcy attorneys in Delaware concerning The Company.

Again, I could have plotzed.

awwwww My kid cracks my ass up.

(Yes, this is one of those kind of posts.)

"Murry's really rocking!" he opines, as we are listening to Old 97's. "I may have to dance." And then he does--a movement indistinguishable from his usual running around in circles.

"I want to party," he tells me. He's already using "party" as a verb. "I'm going to get down my party things so I can party." Which means his play food--teacups, saucers, &c.

Today he made "coffee" in his play kitchen and presented it to me. Along with "pie." I could've plotzed, I tell you.

Today I got my hair cut by a new stylist. She's an eczema mom.

"What are your triggers?" she asked me.
"All kinds of nuts and seafood. Yours?"
"Sugar, gluten, and nuts. Did you know there's peanut oil in Tide?"
"Really?"
"And they don't have to label it because it's not food."

I say fuck you, Proctor & Gamble. Fuck, fuck, fuck you.

We were going to see The Jellydots today but had to bail because Napless Boy was running on fumes by 3:00. Parents of the world, let it not be said that your child will give you readily decipherable clues concerning his or her physical exhaustion. Mine runs completely and totally amok and does not pass out. It took me a long time to figure that one out. Now I'm on top of it, but we go nowhere. No parties, no shows, no Central Market, nada. Even the stuff for kids starts at 4 p.m., which is too late. So we ended up at the old standby this morning--Radijazz--and I had an earache before we even left an hour later. The CDC really needs to throw a tent over that place. Yet we love it so. Even when they ran out of regular coffee.

I don't care if we all get rotavirus. If we get run over by rampaging eight-year-olds. If I bellyflop into the volcano and other parents have to pull me out (e.g., today). You make a place where families with young children can be together and interact and not be stuck at home between the four walls, and you have a friend in me for life, compadre. It's butter on the toast if you play New Order. If you acknowledge that parents have a right to be social, that we deserve better than the McDonald's playscape, then you had me at hello. Thank you so much for existing.

j'adore Candy Band.

I couldn't not say anything I won't link to it, but yes I have seen the article in the Times about "mommybloggers." Hang on; let's bring the trash can a little closer. There.

Blllllllaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.....

Whew!

So stop calling, please.

Here's my impression. Ready?

Why are these boring, narcissistic women who totally aren't writers like I am tormenting the world with their verbal emissions, as if, like, somebody cares?

Gee, sport. You don't have to read it if you don't want to. Or do I detect a whiff of sour grapes because other people are getting book deals?

I've been blogging since 1998. I write about dumb shit. That's what I do. Sometimes I write about other things, and people have been known to pay me for that, though never very handsomely. I wrote about The Best Job I Ever Had and How I Got Laid Off from It. I wrote about How I Got Married to a Person with Roaring OCD, and How I Discovered Him Organizing My Shoes One Night While I Was Sleeping. And then I had a baby and went nuts, and what, I'm not going to write about that? Look, if I were a shepherd on the island of Mallorca, I'd write about that.

I also read blogs. People tell me about their car repair bills, about their stupid meetings at work, about tweaking their recipe for enchiladas, about their bad dates, about how they got so drunk, about their weight-loss efforts (though I always skim those entries--even I get bored sometimes), AND YE GODS do they tell me about watching TV, listening to music, and going to shows. It's not as if the Old Gray Lady is going to run something in the Sunday Arts, like, "Austin woman attends Eisley in-store; view blocked by tall man" (or is the Times upstyle?).

There's a strange bias in the world against motherhood--against talking about it, against writing about it. "See, we already have these two memoirs about motherhood, but these damn breeder bitches won't shut up!" Yes. We also have ever so many memoirs about falling in love, recovering from addiction/alcoholism, growing up in an abusive family, and traveling in Asia. God, if I ever have to read about traveling in Asia again, I'm going to do something drastic. Dare to mention it in your blog, and I might shop a piece to the Times about how boring and narcissistic you are.