Too many mental tabs open today.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Camp Mom


So every year I have K home with me in the summer, I wait for this all year long. Last year it took about a 4 hours for me to second guess this decision. She ended up going to dance camp for a few weeks. This year I vowed to do a myriad of activities and make sure she was learning every step of the way. I also found workbooks that have a lesson for every day of vacation. I thought she would fight me on this but she loved it and can't wait to see what she has for tomorrow.

Here is an itinerary of the first day at Camp Mom:

9:00AM Welcome photo. OK, it's actually a little project I'm doing but it works here too.
10:30AM Field trip and food tasting at Trader Joe's.
11:30AM Special treat from Coolhaus truck. We have a rule here at Camp Mom, if we pass this truck we must stop. Who knew it would happen the very first day?
12:00PM Lunch
12:30PM Visit to the petting zoo. Or hanging with K's new guinea pigs.
1:00PM Finance lesson. Quick trip to the ATM to fund the rest of the week.
1:30PM Fiscal responsibility lesson. Picking up a few things at the 99 cent store.
2:00PM Beautification project. Self car wash.
2:30PM Swimming lesson. Playing in the pool while mommy sits for a while.
5:15PM Karate class. Actual karate class.
6:15PM Music class. Piano practice.
6:30PM Schoolwork
7:00PM Dinner
8:00PM Practical Zookeeping with special guest dad.
9:00PM Bed

That's a pretty long first day of camp!! I wonder if I can keep up the pace all summer.

Lights out!!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Ruthless and toothless


Just wanted to share K's new look. After a bit of drama, she lost her second front tooth. All I can say is that I love this smile. So does our favorite photographer who booked her for a magazine shoot on Sunday and another shoot next weekend.

Who says you need teeth to make it in this business? In fact, right after she lost her first front tooth K went on a commercial audition for Target, they didn't ask if she had a flipper (fake tooth) either. They booked her, missing tooth and all.

Proud of my toothless little girl!!

Monday, June 20, 2011

How to erase your mistakes


So for Father's Day I thought it would be a fabulous idea to make D some sort of video or photo montage set to music. He's made me so many I figured he should have one. I looked though my applications and saw that I had iMovie and iDVD, both perfect (I heard) for this type of project. After days and days of carefully selecting and dropping pictures into the appropriate drop slots, I ended up with nothing but cheese. It totally sucked because the one person I knew could do this in a second was D!

Then I figured out that it was actually easy to do in iPhoto. After selecting my photos and music I had created a masterpiece! I cried every time I watched it so I knew it was good. During the making of my epic piece I noticed that my computer was lagging. It was super slow and that stupid spinny rainbow made an appearance all too often. Of course I couldn't tell D, I had too much evidence on my laptop. I would have to wait until after he saw the video. I didn't want him snooping around and yelling at me for having too many giant photos in different places.

After K and I presented our gifts I gently told my IT hero what was going on. He checked it out and told me that my pictures were too big and I needed to make some space. I was only left with 2 gbs. He had some pocket drive for me (like I know what that is), I asked him if the trash in my iPhoto was slowing it down, of course it was, I never empty it. I said I could probably delete a lot of the pictures anyway since I usually take hundreds at a time. Besides I still had pictures of the ex-emotional vampires and shape shifters. I felt the need to wipe them off my hard drive, just as I had wiped them from my memory.

It felt great! I spent over an hour hitting the delete button, if there was a picture that I liked I just used my handy crop tool and voilĂ , they were gone. If only it had been that easy to do in real life. Banning all negative energy from my memories (actual and computer) was quite relaxing and the end result was amazing. My computer was suddenly quicker. I suppose bad energy can have an effect on anything.

Is it possible that I had made a mistake? No way, all those memories were based on lies, and they now sit where they belong. In the abyss.

The best part of all this? I haven't seen the stupid spinny rainbow in a while.

I really hate that thing!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Keep it in your pants.


I have no idea who Ann Landi is but I stumbled onto a blog post of hers today and it made me laugh. She writes about the uselessness of the dick pic and how women and men are not turned on by the same things. Receiving an email from a guy she didn't know holding "a kielbasa-sized erection" did not have the effect it's sender desired. I'm glad I didn't date in the age of camera phones, I can only imagine the collection of crotch shots I would have amassed. Do all men carry pictures of their junk on their phones? That's not sexy, it's sad. Although if it's all you've got you have to work with it right?

I'll say a little prayer tonight to thank the lord for giving me and D the strength to work through our problems. Dating in the Twitter Age would be torture for me.

Enjoy:

Dating After Divorce: Nix Dick Pix
Ann Landi

Of all the courtship rituals indulged in by the male of the species, sending photos of your penis, whether lightly draped or proudly unsheathed, has to rank among the most bizarre and, as far as I know, unprecedented in the whole of human history.

I can't think of a single notable heterosexual lover, from Adonis to Tiger Woods, who wooed with the kind of visuals intended to demonstrate "Hey, baby, I got a great big package for ya!"

Isn't this more of a gay thing?

Or so I would have thought until recently. Representative Anthony Weiner's antics only made blatantly evident what appears to be a trend in Internet "dating" (I use quotes here because it seems there was not so much as a cup of coffee or a martini involved....just a solicitation to online hanky panky).

And the behavior is not limited to teenage boys with locker-room fixations about dick size, but afflicts even males of a certain age, who have been married and divorced (maybe even more than once), and who are back in the arena, looking for action again.

A case in point: I recently received an email from someone totally unknown to me. Part of her handle read "beyondlove," and the subject line was "thank you." It didn't look like spam, so I opened it. My correspondent informed me that she was distressed that her boyfriend of eight months had been writing to me over Christmas of last year. "He carelessly left open an email on my computer," she informed me (I guess to let me know that she hadn't taken the initiative and broken into his account). She told me she'd discovered that "David" had sent me photos of his dog and his house at the shore. Now I'm not really an email slut--I don't maintain multiple correspondences and then forget the names of my prospects--but I could not for the life of me remember this guy.

So I asked for more details and "beyondlove" sent a few. The dog was a golden retriever, and the house was a beautiful shingled Cape with a pretty front porch. And then it all came tumbling back to me. Yes, we were flirting online around Christmas time. Because I was dateless over the holidays, I had posted an ad on Craigslist looking for a yuletide companion. Nothing too naughty, at least for starters: hot chocolate and tree trimming would have been just fine.

"David" seemed like a good possibility, even if he was many miles away. We'd gone to the same college; he sounded smart and savvy and directed me to the website for his law firm, where his official corporate portrait showed a man I would definitely trust to defend my interests in court. He also sounded a bit full of himself (women, he wrote, would get in line for his favors), but I played along and sent a couple of photos. Then came his of the house and the dog. And a short time later, he emailed me himself in the altogether, his face cut from the photo, holding a kielbasa-sized erection.

And now I was really turned off. Not at the size or heft of his member--which were both indeed impressive--and not because this was the first dick pix to come my way. Many times I have posted ads on CL looking for a "mature relationship" or something resembling a reasonable first date, and the response has been, in at least a dozen instances, a photo of the respondent's pride and glory. Sometimes with a line or two of text. Sometimes without. (This is one of many reasons I've decided to forgo Craigslist forever, even if the spontaneity and no-fee advertising make this site so appealing.)

What is wrong with these guys? An informal poll of my women friends reveals that they find this tactic extremely puzzling, if not downright vulgar. I can only assume that since men get the hots for all sorts of revealing photos of the female anatomy, they assume the ladies will have the same reaction. And drop everything to run down to Starbucks for a coffee date.

Wrong-o, boys. The reverse ploy to arouse interest with what is known in the porn trade as the money shot simply doesn't work on women. Whenever I received one of these, I giggled or gulped and then passed it on to my best gay male friend, who has more of an appreciation for these come-ons.

"Beyondlove" and I had a few more exchanges. My advice was to dump him: if he "cheats" online, how far would he go outside cyberspace? I never brought up the subject of his cock shot....the woman was in enough pain without further details. But I realize, post Weiner's weiner, that I now hold in my saved mail the evidence to seriously mess up "David's" career, if I chose to go in that direction. Or if he chooses to go into politics.

Let's keep it classy, guys, and remember Robert Herrick's advice to women. Simply translate the duds into tight jeans and a shirt unbuttoned just so:

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

Or just send the poem. She'll be at Starbucks in no time flat.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

world destruction



I used to love this song. When I was 17 or 18 I used to hang out and dance at the Roxy in NYC, Afrika Bambaataa was the DJ on some nights.

Yesterday I was doing Music Appreciation on Facebook with my BFF J and I pulled this one out, I always love being brought back to that part of my past.

As I listened to the words I realized that they are so fitting for what's going on in the world today. We better get our stuff together we are truly becoming a disgrace.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Tweets are Everlasting

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Oh my poor Weiner. If you know you me then you know the one person in politics that I absolutely adore is (was) Anthony Weiner. Every time his congressional rants were posted online I immediately reposted them. My political crush was legendary and I looked to him as my own version of Jefferson Smith. Plus he was from my old neck of the woods. When the rumors first surfaced about his boner picture on Twitter I felt a wave of nausea, I knew it wasn't going to end well. The "I've been hacked" excuse was as thin as the fabric covering Mr. Weiner's bulge. When it became evident that all of Breitbart's accusations were true I felt completely sick.

I don't care that he engaged in sexy banter with various women, in fact I was actually a little jealous of them. I don't care that he was stupid and sent pictures of himself either. I don't even care that he came across sounding like a fifteen year old boy. I care that he lied about it. I care that not only did he lie but he actually accused Breitbart (a man I honestly believe to be a bottom feeding parasite) of lying.

Then, when finally faced with an emerging shit storm of his own tweets, emails and pictures, he went on television and gave his version of the disgraced public figure "I'm sorry" speech. It was impressive, I'll give him that, too bad it was a week too late. I'm thankful that he didn't haul his beautiful wife Huma up there with him, I hate when they do that.

Immediately following the Weiner Show my Facebook page resembled the AP Newswire. I was on fire with comments, arguments and jokes. In fact some of my best material is up there for all my fiends to see. I received condolence calls and emails from people who knew of my fondness for Weiner (at least the jokes are still funny). Looking at it now though, it's not really that amusing.

What is wrong with people? Don't they know that once you send a picture of your junk it's out there forever? Gone are the days of single use dirty Polaroids. You would think a tech savvy guy like Weiner would know that.

I guess what bothers me most is disappointment, I learned a hard (!) lesson that every man is human. While I wanted Weiner to be above it all, I guess he really can't be, and as I watched him crying I realized that he's only sorry because he got caught. Had this come out that it happened years ago things might have been different. He would have been apologizing for mistakes he had previously made, he would have been truly remorseful because of his past indiscretions and not because his hand was recently spotted in the cookie jar.

So Mr.Weiner, the next time you want to impress a lady you don't know, tweet a line from her favorite poem or song. It shows that you know the true way to a woman's heart (and other regions) is through her head.

Here is a few lines you might want to use:

Everlasting Everything lyrics
Wilco


Everything alive must die
Every building built to the sky will fall
Don't try to tell me my
Everlasting love is a lie

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all

Every wave that hits the shore
Every book that I adore
Gone like a circus, gone like a troubadour
Everlasting love forever more

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all

Oh, I know this might sound sad
But everything goes both good and the bad
It all adds up and you should be glad
Everlasting love is all you have

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all
Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all
Everything alive must die
Every building built to the sky will fall
Don't try to tell me my
Everlasting love is a lie

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all

Every wave that hits the shore
Every book that I adore
Gone like a circus, gone like a troubadour
Everlasting love forever more

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all

Oh, I know this might sound sad
But everything goes both good and the bad
It all adds up and you should be glad
Everlasting love is all you have

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all
Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

With friends like that.


“If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.”

What a great quote. At the beginning of this year I would have laughed at it. Finding out that your "friends" are actually emotional creatures of the day and night sucking the positivity out of you can have some unpleasant effects. What sprang from that was a knowledge that not all people are inherently bad but when a warning flag is raised, pay attention. When hundreds are raised run like hell!

Out of those ashes came some of the most amazing friendships a girl can have. Instead of a complete distrust I did the opposite, just dove in, head first, into the friend pool. Emerging with me was a support system so strong, I doubt that anything could break it.

Even during my busiest days these people make any moment a memorable one and I just want to thank them.

Thank you for showing me that not everyone has a hidden agenda
Thank you for making me laugh so much my mascara runs down my face
Thank you for not talking behind my back, you know I hate that
Thank you for sharing your families, I love your kids, spouses and S.O. as much as I love you
Thank you for not pretending to be something you aren't. I recently got rid of an emotional shape shifter and I now know the signs
Thank you for loving my daughter, she loves you right back
Thank you for helping me through any problems I bring to you, I need a voice of reason, not just a nod of agreement
Thank you for telling me that I look like crap when I look like crap
Thank you for being honest and trustworthy
Thank you for being you.