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gracias por ayudar, as Damn Fuck Dora says A little bird sent me something from my wish list. Thanks, sweetheart.

damn fuck Dora Fucking great. My kid can cuss.

It took a long time to manifest, considering the time I spend swearing like a longshoreman while I manipulate oral syringes, wipe up smeared excrement, and attempt to quit smoking.

We were playing the Dora the Explorer cooking game at nickjr.com, which is our alternate reality. (Sometimes I dream in nickjr.com.)

"Dora, why are you putting raisins in the cornbread? That's crazy," I opine.

Baldo smiles in agreement. "Damn fuck Dora," he adds.

It's not even a comprehensible sentence. I would expect, "Dora's cornbread is so fucked up."

So now we have instituted the Swear Jar. It worked wonders in J's classroom until the parents complained.

Someday my child is going to read something I've written and realize that I owe millions in back payments to the Swear Jar, that I'm always going on about shit this and fucking that, and that people are shits-for-brains and fucktards and assjobs, even when I write for publication. And all my careful explanations about powerful "Anger Words" we don't use unless we want to hurt someone's feelings and make them cry? Yeah, fuck that. I'm not living what I preach. I know it.

Possible clause: Primary caregivers of children in diapers are exempt from the Swear Jar? Primary caregivers of children in diapers need the full vocabulary of exclamations to express our horror at the things we find? I'm working on it.

gum control What a drag it is getting old.

In addition to all the other shit you have to worry about--you can probably intuit the shit I'm talking about, since we're all soaking in it--now I have to worry about gum care. My gums are not healthy and pink. They are recessed and ugly and distractingly painful. And did you know that bacteria can get inside your gums, travel through your circulatory system, and strike you deader than Johnnie Cochran? I'm going to have to move through life schlepping a cart of IV antibiotics.

So I dug around in the bathroom cabinet and found my old Sonicare, which I used for about a year. 1999? Maybe. And I'll be fucked up the nose if I can find a replacement head for that thing. It's like asking for Le Car parts. ("You drive a whut?")

There are two models; each has gradations of scientific technology. One can remove the corrosion from a car battery. The other is the one I seem to have. I think.

Phillips offers "accessories" to "spiff up your Sonicare." Of course I got really excited. Do they have ringtones? Ironic crocheted Sonicare cozies? Nope. (Note to self: Add "ironic crocheted Sonicare cozies" to Marrit's List of Boffo Ideas and make millions as Gen-X population ages.)

allez! Don't ask me why, but for several months I've been wanting to buy a Mini Cooper. Not to offend any Mini Cooper enthusiasts who might be reading, but there's just no solid reason for me to buy a tooty-ass little vehicle with no trunk that gets the same kind of gas mileage as my (paid for) Volvo wagon.

It's the marketers--they know which strings to pull, and I am a very responsive puppet. (Except that outside of the metaphor, I have a very real fear of puppets.) Certainly if I were to somehow obtain a Mini and drive around in it listening to Keane, I would feel Free. Right?

Then I realized that what I really want is the car I've always wanted: The Car. Le Car, that is.

Today J. told me a story I'd never heard before--which is unusual for us--about how a Le Car was ripped from his hands at an insurance-company auction while he was in the market for his first car. I wept.

No Muppets! Ever! We are convalescing.

My pity for my poor ill child is tempered the way I keep falling down laughing at his stuffy-nosed little voice. The cosmos gives you these two things together--misery and amusement--for a reason. Reach out with both hands.

It's a weird flu in that I keep having bursts of energy alternating with massive chills. At one point yesterday I mowed the front yard (while Baldo watched from the porch, cheering me on). Then I came in and collapsed on the couch. I don't understand this.

Most parents would be delighted to have a television-averse child, but it sure would be nice to wrap up in blankets and sit on the couch together for longer than eighteen seconds. To this end J. and I went over to Vulcan Video to get a proper family "movie." J. went in and was gone for twenty minutes. Finally he materialized in the window, giving me a thumbs-up and holding Volume 10 of The Muppet Show series. Victory!

I love The Muppet Show. The first crush I ever had was on Gonzo. (I mean, come on! That nose? The possibilities.) And Volume 10 has the best episode ever--Debbie Harry. It begins, however, with James Coburn, and I didn't recall that he smashes chairs with Animal and does, in fact, rough up some muppets during the speakeasy number. This didn't go over well. Animal attacks some octopi on stage. That didn't go over well either. And the closing sequence reminded us that our own childhoods were lacking in...uh...racial sensitivity. (Newsflash: James Coburn Not a Model of Racial Sensitivity.)

The plus: "Bear on Patrol." People, "Bear on Patrol" is as subversive as "Dog Day Afternoon." The police officials are bumbling and inept, incapable of retaining the criminals once they're apprehended. They suck up to authority (the unseen "Chief") and make weak excuses for their inefficacy. The Muppet Show is hot stuff, a real cultural flashpoint for the turbulent 1970s. And as soon as I saw the opening shot, I knew.

"It's the one with Banana-Nose Maldonado! It's Banana-Nose Maldonado!" I yelled. He's got a banana for a nose. Why not?

"Did you remember that, just like that, or did they say something about it?" J. asked.

I just knew.

For the last two days I have attempted without success to talk Baldo into "more Muppet Show." He's not having it. We got so lethargic yesterday that we did lie around, febrile, watching his preferred choice of entertainment, "Classical Stretch" on PBS.

flu The flu: bad.

Cleaning up after hail storm while having the flu: worse.

Chocolate soy-nut clusters from Whole Foods: priceless.

The peanut-allergic rejoice. And a happy Easter is had by all.

motherhood, writing, publishing A thinkity think piece from Brain, Child.

fuck. this. Not having a good day. Not having a good day at all.

Bad, bad rash. Both legs and feet. What can I do? I can't put anything on it but Vaseline. It never stops. Three years and it's never stopped, not for a day.

People don't understand.

There was an Easter egg hunt at B's preschool today. I went to the teacher supply store and bought sheets of stickers and handfuls of little pocket-sized water colors for egg stuffers. And every single egg we opened today was full of candy. Peanut-butter cups. Jellybeans with dyes. Bright blue-colored marshmallow bunnies.

Look, I never wanted to be the asshole mother. But what can I do to make you understand the way he fights with me because he won't wear shoes? What can I say to you about how he crawls under the bed to scratch his rash when I take his jammies off in the morning, and how he won't come out, and how I breathe deeply and I count to five, and I ask nicely for him to please come out, and he won't, and I have to pull him out, him scratching and kicking and biting me? And now he kicks and bites so that I'll give him a time out in his room, so that I'll leave him alone long enough for him to pull off his shoes and socks and scratch?

And I can't help it--I'm just a human being here--and I'm so tired of being his punching bag, his pincushion, and so many times I've wanted to yell, to spank, to walk out the door, to try to get my life back wherever it is out there, somewhere. And we've already given the antihistamine that's supposed to help. We've already seen all the doctors allowed by our HMO, and they've already thrown up their hands and told us we've exhausted our options.

And I can't get it out of my mind, all these high-minded writers for the New York Times and Salon who are theorizing that our children have no privacy anymore, that writing and motherhood are incompatible, that we are narcissistic and navel-gazing and lack good judgment. What, I wonder, would they have me do? What am I supposed to do? I've left tearful messages on people's answering machines all day. I've stood by myself in the corner of the playground while other people's children--who can wear shorts when it's hot in Texas, unlike mine--ate bright green marshmallow fluff. Because I'm the asshole. Because they don't get that if my child eats a miniature Hershey he'll be clawing his feet bloody and punching me if I try to stop him. And I can't stand to be such a drama queen about it, but goddamn it, what else do I have for myself?

parents = bad There's an interesting item at Yahoo! News this morning. It leads with "Pushy Parents May Be Harmful for Kids' Health."

Read on, and it turns out to describe a London study in which children with recurrent and otherwise unexplained abdominal pain improved after receiving psychiatric treatment. You might just as well conclude that "Children with Unexplained Health Woes Benefit from Psychiatric Treatment." But no--the article spins it so that the parents cause their children's symptoms by "insisting on batteries of tests for their children, even though their ailment has no apparent physical cause."

Gee whiz. How else would you rule out an apparent physical cause if not through batteries of tests? Sounds like medical science to me.

oh what fun it is I don't like Raffi, but I do like these dancing badgers.

I also like the speech feature in AppleText.

Sometimes I ask myself, "Marrit, why are you using AppleText?" and the answer is "Because my XP box, the Gerbilator 3000, is totally fakakta, and from there it's kind of a long story in which I tell a certain computer tech to kiss me before he fucks me next time," and there will be a next time--perhaps my motherboard will turn inside out before it explodes, perhaps the Gerbilator 3000 will actually catch fire, the way our power lawn tools do.

But for now I'm focusing on the positive: I can make J's computer read my writing aloud. I can make it say "French techno-music moped handjob" in its mellifluous voice. (It knew the word "handjob" but not "moped.") You should hear it say my name. It does something to me.

I could have plotzed Baldo recognizes and sounds out printed words now. But that's not the cool part.

He read the word "movie." I was apoplectic. I didn't know whom to call first.

hippie grocery hell So we went to the giant new Whole Paycheck this morning to purchase dye-free products for the home and kitchen. I thought we were going to have to leave Baldo in trade at the register.

We are going to eat bowls of spinach for every meal. Well, practically. We did manage to find a loaf of bread without dyes or nuts or hazelnuts or sunflower seeds. Eventually. I think it was $8. On the plus side, it's pretty goddamn good bread. I'd be really cheesed if the $8 bread tasted like shit.

yellow number five, five, five, five "It's the dyes."

So sayeth the Hippie Grocer assisting J. with a carton of Tushies, the Total Shite Diapers Made with Genuine 100% Sawdust, which absorb about half a milliliter of liquid before turning into a heavy sludge and collapsing. They're great for nighttime, I tell you. You could put a Tushie on somebody and throw them into the East River and no one would ever find the body. But you'd have to tape it on because the tabs only work once.

You know what they don't have? Dyes.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: My kid is covered in a pinprick rash. And he's screamy. And he's hyper. Sound familiar?

"I think it's the Huggies," J. proposed. We got a supertanker of Huggies from my mom when she was visiting. "The rash starts around his groin."

"I don't think so."

"The hippie grocer says it's the dyes."

It has to be something. And since Protopic causes lymphoma...

"Dyes?" An unseen hand hit me with the clue-by-four.

People are allergic to dyes. We've never eliminated dyes. We've eliminated latex, nuts, soy, dairy, wheat, rice, fish, and corn syrup. We went through six months of (very expensive) naturopathy. But we didn't eliminate dyes.

"Well, what have we done lately that's new?" I asked.

We put Tub Tints in the bathtub. We started wearing diapers with colored inks. We've been eating whimsical colored goldfish crackers.

And so I started tearing through the house like only a depressive neurotic mother can. Dyes in: our cereal, our soap, our dishwashing liquid, our macaroni and cheese. All of which I hurled into the backyard because it felt so fucking good to throw things out the window. I love to throw things out the window.

I never wanted to become this person. I was raised in the 1970s with Mr. Bubble and vienna sausages, and it was good enough for me, dammit. But basically I have this choice to make: I can descend into Hippie Grocery Hell, or I can sew my kid's pants to his socks and medicate him around the clock. He'll never learn to use the potty because his clothing is grafted directly onto his skin.

Thomas the Spank Engine Let me make sure I have this right:

Thomas proves that he's a Really Useful Engine, so Sir Topham Hatt gives him two cars, Annie and Clarabel, as a reward.

Sir Topham gives Thomas two subs, basically? Who writes this stuff, anyway--Anne Rice?

starfuckers, inc. Much is made about the celeb-spotting at SXSW. Here's my version.

I totally saw Jonathan Rosenbaum at a screening tonight. He was talking to my friend Gerry. I went over to say hello but was too freaked out to butt in and introduce myself.

On Saturday I saw Owen Gleiberman in a hallway. I turned around and ran.

I guess that's it.

people, I beg of you No more montages of estrangement set to Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah." Okay? I just saw, like, the sixth one. I don't want to have to get all snarky about it. I only have 150 words. We're going to have to come up with a universal signifier of the "Hallelujah" montage because I really think viewers should be warned.

I've got great news! Here's where I do my dwarfish Black Lodge happy dance:

Sash is here, and she has Saved My Ass.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.

My mother is an American Bad Ass.

More good news: It seems you can in fact have a Crazy Mother and turn out to be just as generically functional as the average person. Or so I conclude from the following conversation overheard on our flight back from the O.C.:
AIR-HEADED WOMAN: Yes, and I have a twin brother. He goes to NYU!
GUY ON THE MAKE: Are there any other kids in your family?
AIR-HEADED WOMAN: Gawd, no. My mom always said if she had any other kids, she'd kill herself! (giggles) GUY ON THE MAKE: Yeah, that's funny.

Not really. When mothers say things like "I thought I would lose my mind" or "I'm going crazy here," they're not kidding. But it's good to see that the children aren't scarred by it, that they can still grow up to be bubbly little elementary education majors at Florida State.

Poor Guy on the Make, however. Air-Headed Woman started in about how God has a plan for each of us, and then it was on to the 34-year-old guy she's schtupping. He has no plans to marry her, and she reports that her "biological clock is ticking." Good luck with that one, sweetheart.

style sheet Having been an editor for myriad years, I am delighted to see the style sheet (a.k.a. "word list") generated for my own manuscript. Here are some peaches:

• The Best of British Spanking, Volume 8
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man
• “The Mail Song”
• Noo-noo
• Mr. Sprunk
• Curtis, Ian
• Delirium Nocturnum
• Chiklis, Michael “The Commish”
• Battle of the Bulge
• “Are You Ready for the Sex Girls?”
• Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
• Kilroy Was Here tour
• Minimum Standard of Childish Glee
• Morrissey
• Neocate
• You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again
• The Starland Vocal Band
• Thorazine

party monster

We love Norm's

the fun zone

this is how we take a self-portrait in the o.c.

anemone and me

beach blanket Baldo

Little Corona

Costa Mesa, 4 a.m. PST

Bob the Birthday Cake

Welcome to the OC, bitch Here's a shout-out to all my peeps in the Southland.

Wait a minute: Do I have any peeps in the Southland? I think there might be two.

In no particular order, random observations from a weekend spent in and around Costa Mesa. I'm timing my roots, so the list will conclude (perhaps abruptly) when it's time to rinse.

1. You will never find a tampon machine in a likely place (such as Norm's restaurant, which has the greatest cup of coffee in the entire universe). You will only find a tampon machine in an unlikely place (such as the Newport Beach Elks' Lodge).
2. If you do find yourself without a tampon machine at Norm's, tell Lois that Marrit says hi.
3. Southern California is overpopulated and frantic, but the locals have ways of coping--such as the 24-hour Rite Aid, where you can buy Dewar's and Calms Forte whenever.
4. J. and I invented a game you play in Newport Coast: Spot the Mercedes in 60 Seconds. If you can stand on a major thruway in Newport Coast for an entire minute without seeing a single Mercedes-Benz pass in either direction, you win, and you get to go to the Gelson's coffee bar. I made it to forty-three seconds, and sure enough, here came a Mercedes. It was being towed, but we still had to count it.
5. During the same outing, J. was sitting on a swingset talking on the phone with Uncle Kevin while I built a sand castle with Baldo. I heard a strangled cry and looked over to see J. sprawled on the ground. Full somersault off the swing. And pantless. He somehow pantsed himself falling a foot and a half onto the ground. And it must have hurt because he laid there for a good forty-three seconds with his butt out--long enough for at least one Mercedes to pass, and long enough to amuse the nearby paramedic team, who were called to service some guy playing pickup basketball in the gym. I laughed until I almost puked. I am not a good spouse.
6. The people of Corona del Mar appear to have been treated with a salt rub and placed in a dehydrator. Everybody looks kind of sunken, yet delicious, like buffalo jerky in yoga pants. And you must have absolutely flat ceramic-ironed hair, or you will be sent home.
7. God bless the OC Reader.
8. The best French fries in the world are at In 'n Out Burger. No contest. Too bad you have to live in California to have them. (Query: Now available in Nevada and Arizona? Confirm.)
9. If we still lived in California, we'd be in Barstow or something. I don't understand how anyone can afford a domicile.
10. KROQ sucks. I'm sorry, I know, I know. I know I should genuflect at the feet of KROQ, but it all sounds like Asian jokes and hot-chicks stuff to me. Yes, I know KROQ plays The Arcade Fire. I know. But there's also a lot of "I was SSOOOOOO drunk!" and "Please buy me fake boobs!" and the cheesy-shit factor was so high that if I heard another commercial for Full Throttle while we were driving around, I was going to pull over and have liposuction and collagen implants.

Oh, shit. I forgot about my roots.

playdate Dear Other Boy:

I think you are a delightful child, and my son is likewise fond of you. However, if you persist on peeping at us during his diaper changes and observing aloud that Baldo "has such a little penis," I don't know if we will continue to play with you.

I am running out of reassuring words for Baldo, who is starting to develop some kind of inferiority complex and wants to talk about his penis during the drive home. I'm really not ready for these conversations.

Your friend,
Marrit

P.S. Baldo's penis is not little. It's wearing a sweater, okay?

good news and bad news Of course we got shafted out of the NIN ticket presale. For the show at Stubb's. On the last day of school. I mean, could it get any better besides, say, throwing in a free pie with admission? Probably not. Perhaps, like, a pie personally baked by Trent Reznor? Then again maybe you don't really want to eat that. There's certainly enough cornstarch backstage for a nice filling, though.

People I love have offered to actually camp on Friday for the main sale, which will be taking place while we're en route to the O.C., bitch. These are wonderful people.

I did my Angry Sims stomp for a while, then realized it's probably just as well.

"With that $70, we could get seven hours of babysitting," J. pointed out.

"Or we could get seven pies from Whole Foods," I said.

We just don't have disposable income for entertainment. And if we did, pie and babysitting is more in line with where our lives are right now.

But then again J. can talk because he saw NIN in 1989 at a tiny club in Tijuana. He can't even describe the experience.

"Okay, you have to tell me everything," I exhort.

"It was just so...whoa."

"How, specifically?"

"It was total pandemonium."

"All right. In what sense?"

"It was insane."

"Can you provide a particular example of an insane event?"

"Just everything."

And then we were going to go on the Downward Spiral tour. We were living in Boston, and we were at the stage in our relationship in which nobody really wants to get out of bed. He made two tries to Ticketmaster and gave up. It occurs to me now that he could have just brought the phone to bed; it was cordless. Sometimes we're so stupid that I could kick myself now, ten years later. Ow.