There are a few things that confuse me, a lot, even though I see them, um, a lot. Almost daily in fact. I don’t expect to ever understand them, but I’m becoming secure with confusion and uncertainty. They’re like old friends to me. You know. Old reliables. Good buddies. BFFs. Yeah. Okay. Enough of that.

So here’s ten. There are more.

1. Feeding babies & toddlers soda – WHY? They’re too young to even know soda exists, unless their parents introduce that crap to them. SO WHY DO IT? Why not just feed them healthy crap? The time will come soon enough when they start asking for crap food and crap drinks no matter how hard you tried to shield them from it, so why not take advantage of the brief interval of total control over their diets, without the whining complaints?! Not to mention, it’s a prime opportunity to look like a good parent without trying very hard. Psssht.
2. Giving kids caffeine – um, aren’t they annoying enough without the addition of stimulants?
3. Why female bathrooms don’t have more stalls than male ones – obviously, we need more. just look at the damn lines. Worried about equality? Whatever. Hundreds of years of a male-dominated society and you can’t do us this ONE TINY FAVOR?
4. License plate frames that say the make of the car they are attached to – Dude. We know you’re driving a Lexus. We can see the Lexus sign right next to the license plate frame. It’s actually JUST ABOVE IT. You’re kinda just being redundant, yo. No need to repeat oneself.
5. Leaving the stickers & tags on baseball caps – While I for one feel better knowing your Giants cap is indeed authentic, you look like a fucking asshat with that shiny sticker under your bill.
6. Baby stickers on car windows – okay so I understand how they get there. Kids stick them on the windows. What I don’t understand is why parents let their kids have stickers while they’re sitting in their car seats, judging from the number of people driving around with 1500 Dora the Explorer stickers on their rear windows. I mean what are they thinking? “It ain’t gonna happen to me?” – “My kid’s different?” And furthermore, why don’t they take the stickers off? Haven’t they heard of “Goo gone?”
7. Ed Hardy. In any form. We’ve been over this.
8. Leaf blowers – the name alone confuses me…”Leaf Blower.” Blowing leaves. Forcing air through a tube to move shit around. Not removing it. Not even cleaning it. Just blowing it around to a new location. And they are loud and they involve standing outside, usually in the sun, holding a loud roaring machine, pissing off every single neighbor in the vicinity…and for WHAT? Plus, who the fuck cares if there are leaves on your driveway? WHO? Oh right. People with neat houses and manicured landscaped yards.
9. How to fold fitted sheets – really, is there a way to not just wad them up in a vaguely rectangular shape? Is there?
10. Styrofoam plates – It’s a “plate,” and yet it melts when you put hot food on it. It MELTS WHEN YOU PUT HOT FOOD ON IT. Do you see a problem there?

Plus, they kill sea turtles.

And now we see, even fucking geniuses get confused sometimes.

or confused.

What I learned this week…

1. I love the look of sun-kissed tan kid faces. I love the shiny gold streaks the sun brushes across their hair. I love the freckles and the tan lines. It all says “summer” to me. It reminds me of being young and free all day and sunburned, with that perfect exhaustion, that in-the-sun-all-day glow, calm and serenity.
2. My kids have those sun-kissed faces right now. [Yes, I know the sun causes cancer.  No, I do not make a habit of it. But damn it’s sweet for a while.]
3. I no longer have insomnia. I now have wanttosleepallday-ia. It’s nice to have things back to normal. I think.
4. Speaking of normal, you know what’s NOT normal? The sleep habits of mothers. Check it out. All freaking week I’m exhausted. I mean my head hits the pillow at 10:30pm and my eyes are aching my body is like lead and my attitude is really not that nice. I wake up with the baby at 5 or 6am questioning suicide. So this morning I have a chance to sleep as late as I want. As LATE AS I WANT – I could catch up on all that sleep. And what do I do? Wake up at 9am. Can’t sleep more. WHY? WHY? WHY?
5. Do not talk about ghosts (not even nice ones) ever ever ever around 5-year-olds. If you do, they will suddenly be “scared.” Every night. Even though they’ve been camped on your floor for, oh, I don’t know, FOREVER, they will bump their neediness up a notch, demanding lights on and an adult presence in the room while they fade gently into safe peaceful non-ghost slumber. Fuck me I’m an idiot.
6. I mean seriously who the hell talks about ghosts around their 5-year-old?!?
7. My son will not pick up his messes without being asked. EVER. If you ask him, he will do one of three things: 1.) Ignore you; 2.) Fall on the ground in agony, struck suddenly immobile by a horrible stomach or head ache; 3.) Move to the area of the mess in question and roll around in it, half playing with it, half moving it around toward where it’s supposed to be.
8. I have no idea what to do about #7. None. I usually just end up yelling or beating my forehead with a meat tenderizer. [That was a joke.] Suggestions welcome.
9. I really want to send my kids to summer camp one week this summer, so they get to experience something cool at least once. But good god almighty it’s expensive. Shiiittt. Why do things seem so different than when I was a kid? Am I that old? We had no money, and I went to summer camp. I don’t get it.
10. Next weekend we’re going camping in Lake Tahoe with some of our favorite people in the world, which I’m hoping will balance the fact that camping with an 11-month old is freaking miserable. I do not learn. I don’t.
11. I don’t love mariachi music. From my house we hear it pretty much all day during weekends (our neighbors, evidently, love it). I hear it right now in fact. And no matter how long I listen to it, I don’t really dig it. Live it’s okay. Of course being forced to hear any music all freaking day long is pretty damn annoying.  Oh well. More proof I belong in a nice quiet yurt in Borneo.

Have a great week.

You can't really tell how tan they are from this picture, but they are. And it's lovely.

Yes. That was me.

I was the kid who rigged eeny-meeny-miney-moe.

If I knew we were about to do it, I would recite the little rhyme in my head, mentally jumping from person to person to figure out where the last word would land…then I would strategically place myself in the optimum position based on my objectives. And when I “won,” I would act surprised.

Maybe all kids act like that. I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve always looked out for number 1, first and foremost. From the beginning, if there was a way for me to win, “come out on top” or get my way, I’d do pretty much everything in my power to make that happen.

It never really occurred to me to think of you.

It never crossed my mind that perhaps I should yield a bit for the benefit of others, even sometimes.

I figured “well, if I’m able to get what I want, why not do it? If you really wanted what you want, you’d try harder.”

I was not mean. In fact, I used to give all my toys away to my friends. I was deeply sensitive and loved hard. It’s just that I thought I knew the best way to do everything. Always. And I never questioned myself. I had a terminal case of Captain Justice syndrome – I knew the right, fair, smartest way to do it, damnit, and IT MUST BE DONE THE RIGHT WAY.

The consequence? I was bossy. Really, really bossy. Not a bully physically, but a verbal bully. I was a yeller. I was a shithead. I simply had to have my way.

This behavior pretty much continued until, well, I’d rather not talk about it. But I’ll give you a hint: I was over 29 and under 31. Yeah. I’m a slow learner.

As a result, I never had too many friends growing up. I had my one best friend in the whole wide world, Claire, who I met in 2^nd grade and have loved like a sister ever since. We also moved a lot, which made longstanding relationships difficult. But mainly it was my personality. I probably wouldn’t have liked me either.

And the other day my little Ava was talking about her new school and she said something like “This is the year I’m going to make some real, close friends. This is the year when I’m going to get a BEST friend like you and Claire.”

And I realized the child is just.like.her.mother.

Sadface.

She’s bossy. She wants her way. She gets pissed when others don’t comply and just can’t figure out why they won’t just do it her way because her way is obviously the smartest and the best and the brightest and the quickest. Isn’t it clear to you people? This is the ONLY WAY. It’s right damnit. Justice must be done!!

Unlike The Seal Incident, which rendered me speechless, I feel semi-confident in my ability to give a little guidance on this particular situation, since I lived the exact same thing and have learned some very tough lessons in the department of extreme self-centeredness.

So I suggest she take it easy on others – that even if she sees her solution as the only plausible one, perhaps she use her friend’s idea just for the hell of it, to give her some room, some respect. Some space to just be.

And maybe her way is indeed the right way and the smartest, but does it really matter?

In 20 years are you going to care what happens right now on the playground? Is the friendship more important than who gets to be the queen or the princess?

I tell her that just because she has a stronger personality than the other kids, just because she’s outgoing and quick and super confident, that doesn’t mean she has to USE her power ALL THE TIME, just because she can.

Maybe she can CHILL sometimes, let the other girl win.

I wish I could just implant in her what took me 30 years to learn…that I am not the center of the entire fucking universe…that my identity is not wrapped up in the outcome of every single situation that comes my way…that it ain’t all my problem and it ain’t all my concern…and that most of the time (and this is a big one folks), when I think I am dead-on, 100% totally and completely RIGHT, I’m 100% dead-on totally and completely wrong.

I want to teach her that there’s freedom in forgiving. In letting shit slide. In letting something else or somebody else or even nothing at all handle some of the big shit. Captain Justice can take a nap.

What a tough gig, huh? Trying to protect another human from themselves. Trying to shield another from walking down the EXACT SAME ROAD that nearly killed you. Trying to help her be somebody, anybody other than me.

Or perhaps I should just forgive. Myself. For being me.

And her. For being me.

Chill. Let it slide. Let us both just be.

Cause I’ve never really been equipped to handle the big shit anyway.

“]”]”]

"I may be a princess, but I'll kick your ass." P.S. this kid does not lack confidence.

A few months ago I was in Marshall’s. And while standing at the check-out line, I saw one of the strangest things my eyes have ever beheld.

It wasn’t the near-toothless twitchy check-out lady who appeared REALLY INTO her job.

It wasn’t the baby in the car seat with a bottle of brown liquid (looking oddly like soda), propped up in her mouth, as if her parent’s only mission in life was to encourage her early tooth decay.

It wasn’t even the mother towing three half-naked screaming toddlers while she yelled at her (obviously unfaithful) significant other.

It was… just sitting there…quietly…lurking on the counter…

…wait for it…

Ed Hardy hand sanitizer.

I stared in disbelief.

“Is it SO?”

I looked away. Then back again. (You know, kinda like the way you stare at a car wreck or bar fight –  the weird sick fascination with the terrifying and gruesome?)

“Is it real?”

I looked again. Looked closely.  Squinted a little. Yep. ED HARDY HAND SANITIZER. For sale. At a store, where people go.

AND THERE WERE SOME MISSING, which means, lest my keen deductive reasoning skills deceive me…that people in fact purchase this item. Real humans pay real money for this real item.

Somebody actually says to herself “Well look at this! Ed Hardy hand sanitizer! Cool! I’m going to spend my money on THAT! Now I can sanitize my hands and look like a fucking moron all at once!”

Okay maybe I added that last part.

But let me just say this directly: I think Ed Hardy is hands-down the most idiotic, disturbing, offensive (in its stupidity) brand EVER TO EXIST ON THIS PLANET. Now I know there’s a fatal flaw in that argument, namely because I don’t know every brand that’s ever existed on this planet. But I’m stickin’ with it, because I’m willing to put money on the validity of the assertion that there is nothing more lame than Ed Hardy.

Nothing.

You either feel me on this one or you don’t.

But let’s talk about it for a moment. Let’s talk about why Ed Hardy is horrifying and may actually symbolize the end of all things cool in America – because it’s really not about aesthetics here. While I would never choose Ed Hardy for myself , that’s not my beef with it. I can forgive people for thinking Japanese tattoo images mixed with fake diamonds is cool. I guess. And it’s from L.A.; L.A. is weird. Plus, I walk around looking like a wannabe granola-eater lazy ass, choosing my clothes based on comfort and which items make me look less fat than others, so I’d rather not talk fashion.

And I could be wrong, but I don’t think Ed Hardy was quite as lame when it first came out. For example, they didn’t make hand sanitizer.

My beef with Ed Hardy is that it represents the obscene over-commercialization and sickening materialism in our culture. It is trying so hard to BE COOL that it absolutely misses the boat on coolness. Coolness is authenticity. Uniqueness. Doing your own damn thing.

Ed Hardy represents jumping on the bandwagon (or inkwagon, in this case) because tattooing is now cool.

It’s about the unending ego-driven pursuit of crap because it has a certain label or I think it’s going to say something about me – “I’m cool” or “I’m hip” or “I have money” or “I’m a fucking jackass.”

[I always blow it in the end.]

But my run-in with that hand sanitizer drilled something spectacular and appalling into my brain: apparently with some people, the yearning for labels extends into the realm of hygiene products. Notice they are “travel size”– so they can be put in a purse and pulled out strategically so everybody knows that this girl has COOL HAND SANTIZER. (Okay I actually just laughed out loud writing that. That shit is funny.)

It just seems ridiculous to me.

Have we become such slaves to marketing propaganda that we actually believe it matters what our hand sanitizer looks like?

Oddly, Ed Hardy himself used to be cool, at least on paper. Back in the day, he apprenticed under Sailor Jerry – THE Sailor Jerry – who was this traveling whisky-drinking outcast sailor who made his living tattooing people and singing songs about liberals and how they’re ruining America. Ed Hardy turned down a Yale scholarship to study tattooing. What happened to you, dude? Sell out much?

Whatever. I’d probably do the same damn thing, had I the opportunity.

I mean how the hell else am I going to get my ass to Borneo, where I can sit around criticizing people for their taste in clothing and $3.00 hand-cleansing products?

Anyway, here’s a photo so you know I’m not making this shit up.

what I learned this week…

1. Twenty-year old women either all have breast augmentation or I’ve forgotten how perky 20-year-old’s breasts are naturally.
2. Not that I’m looking.
3. Apparently I was not joking when I said I’ve run out of things to say. In the last three weeks I’ve only written 6 posts. Unacceptable. This will not stand. Next week I’m writing four. Lookout.
4. Someday I will become one of those grown-ups who listens to each voicemail they get in a timely manner. I will not be one of those individuals who stares at 37 unheard voicemails in sad and quiet desperation (because she hasn’t listened to any of them in 2 weeks) – deciding first to delete all messages from people she speaks to daily (husband, mom, etc. – because most assuredly those messages are purely logistical (“what time u getting’ the kids?”)) and all messages from people who she’s spoken with in the last 24 hours (because doesn’t the most recent conversation append and replace any former conversation?) – thereby whittling the number down to 24 and forcing herself to push the “play” button even when the phone has recorded 2 minutes 45 seconds of message that could have been said in 15 seconds or not said at all or better yet, TEXTED.
5. By the way, why can’t we all just TEXT, at least most of the time?
6. My kids are well-behaved in restaurants. They are. I’m owning that small victory.
7. I guess it’s alright to not feel overly compelled to sit in a café or small room or in front of the computer writing…because it’s summer. And I want to get out. It’s fun to get out in the summer. Especially when it’s 112 degrees. That’s really fun.
8. My 5-year-old son is incapable of flushing the toilet without being reminded. He will never do it, ever. Is there a mental handicap surrounding toilet-flushing? Sorry, Rocket’s future partner. I tried.
9. I finally discovered a serious advantage to being totally and completely disorganized: you can find ANYTHING in your car if you look hard enough. Last night we went to a party out in the country (which is, evidently, another climate, even though it’s 1.5 miles from my house). The wind started blowing and it got COLD. Like sweatshirt cold and I didn’t pack enough warm stuff for the baby. However, I was able to locate one pair of pants, one pair of socks AND A BEANIE in my car. Pshht. Well-prepared mother if you ask me.
10. In 3 weeks my baby girl will be one. Is it just me or do years actually pass by more quickly as you get older? Damn.