from Peasoup to blackbird to me

Created with fd'sFlickr Toys.

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker).

The Questions:

1. What is your first name? Poppy
2. What is your favorite food? right now? peaches
3. What high school did you go to? The Winsor School (seen here at the Head of the Charles)
4. What is your favorite color? Red
5. Who is your celebrity crush? John Lennon
6. Favorite drink? I'm fickle. Right now it's Pimm's Cup.
7. Dream vacation? I'm fickle. Right now I'm dreaming of Dublin.
8. Favorite dessert? Trifle. And I never get any.
9. What you want to be when you grow up? A nun.
10. What do you love most in life? Husband, son, daughter. (Sorry, f-i-l--not you.)
11. One Word to describe you. Charming
12. Your flickr name. poppisima. There was one picture, but the permissions are screwy.

The Evolution of the Mommy Blogger

Fueled by this morning's third cup of tea, my brain cells are synapsing furiously, and I've come up with an insight I'd like to share with you.

If your children are too old to call you "Mommy,"¹ they've reached a point in life where their focus is increasingly not on you. And yours, no doubt, has broadened a bit beyond them.

This means that if I blog--and I don't know whether you've noticed, but I do--I am a mother, and a blogger, but not a Mommy Blogger.

I am far beyond the stage of Braxton-Hicks contractions, centimeters dilated, nursing bras, play groups, potty-training, naps, Elmo, Dora, Disney Princesses, super hero pajamas, Junie B. Jones, and A Series of Unfortunate Events.²

This frees a lot of time and energy to pay attention to other issues, like high school, college, and whether I'm going to get any grandchildren out of all this.

So I am not a Mommy Blogger. I am a Housewife Blogger who is trying to become a Grandmommy Blogger. I do this by teaching my children to say "please," "thank you," and reminding them to put on their antiperspirant.

Because everyone knows that to attract the opposite sex long enough to produce offspring, you need to avoid stinking to high heaven. It's true. Case in point: Charles Darwin, father of modern biology, author of The Origin of the Species, and father of 10 children, was supposed³ to have smelled fabulous.

¹ In this household it was spelled MAMY, and I have the poster paint signs to prove it.
² Which? Those books? Were.
³ By me.

I Am One Pissed-Off Mother-Blogger

I don't know whether you've noticed, but I don't act much like a sorority girl--at least, the way sorority girls act in my imagination, because I went to a college that didn't have sororities, so "sorority girl" is this mythic concept to me, and you know what? This is a rotten beginning. I'll come in again.

Hi. I'm extremely plain-spoken. Blunt, even. And when I try to make nice--when I put the time and energy into saying not what I'm thinking, but the polite, can't-we-all-just-get-along version of what I'm thinking--and after all that nicey-nice shit it doesn't work, I get frustrated. Very frustrated.

I'm the de facto foreman of Mamarazzi, the group blog founded by Susie Sunshine. Usually this is a point of pride for me, but not lately. For one thing, for months now the site has needed to be updated. Badly. I mean, the masthead has names of people who haven't written for us for years. (Lindsay, you know I heart you, but you stopped writing for us in 2006.)

And then on May 13th, comments stopped working.

And now the site won't come up at all.

And our site administrator won't answer my emails.

You think Joan Crawford was a mother with anger issues? I'm about to duct tape my arms to my torso, because otherwise I'll punch someone.

Live blogging Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Yeah, I realize it's not exactly liveblogging the season finale of Lost or So You Think You Can Dance. And frankly, if I weren't doing Blog365, I wouldn't bother.

I mean, how interesting are my attempts to steal ideas for what to plant in my front window boxes? Not very. But I'm trying to enjoy my summer, that season that is rumored to be showing up any day now. What about all white flowers, like the containers outside the library?

Wouldn't that give my windowboxes a certain Sissinghurst vibe?


Because my house totally qualifies as a Stately Home. No, really, it does. Ask anyone.

Meanwhile, it's chilly enough in my not-so-stately home that it seemed like a good idea to put on a sweatshirt, and now I'm wrapped up in a microfleece blanket in front of the television.

Buster Keaton is adorable. And my blanket is cozy. And I'm falling alseep. Tune in tomorrow when I decide whether I'm liveblogging or sleepblogging.

... and then frivolous.

I don't know whether I've mentioned it, but the weather? In Chicago? Really sucks.

Take today. Here it is, almost June, and today's high was 47 degrees. Yesterday, when it was supposed to rain, it was sunny and warm with a high of 87 degrees.

Which meant that I spent a long time at a friend's Memorial Day party sitting in her backyard watching rabbits frolic over the green lawn while children played catch and a baby sat and pulled grass up and crowed with joy and the whole time, I was thinking "This can''t be happening. Somebody spiked my Diet Coke. I'm tripping."

And then this morning when I was scrambling around looking for hoodies and long pants for my children, because it was FUCKING FREEZING and looked like it might rain, I was thinking "Now this? THIS feels normal."

And this has made me realize--at long last--why Chicagoans go so mental in the summer. And I am not exaggerating. "Mental" is the precise word to describe the situation. You get a couple of days with decent weather and all of a sudden it's as much as your life is worth to try to cross the bike path along Lake Shore Drive. And if you're driving? You can't even get off the drive at Fullerton or Belmont. And Grant Park? Forget it. Don't go near it. There's a festival. I don't know which one--Gospel, Blues, Jazz, the Taste of Chicago, Venetian Night--but forget it! There will be a quarter of a million people there.

I've decided that I really need to enjoy summer my own way. Like maybe not so much with the grilling, because frankly, it doesn't excite me too much. And margaritas and rum drinks are too fattening. And those festivals with the crowds--eccchhhh, no thanks.

But every day, I'll make sure to do at least one thing I can't do in the winter.

Today I went out and cut bunches of lilacs--white and purple--and they are all over the house.

I ate asparagus at dinner. And strawberries for dessert.

I can't think of anything else I did, except for not wearing a coat when I left the house. (But at 47 degrees, I was wearing long pants and a sweatshirt. I like summer very much, but I'm not risking frostbite.)

Poppy gets serious

You know what this is? It's my grandfather's draft card. He filled it out when he was doing a medical residency in Montana.

He was born in Virginia and went to medical school at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Why Montana? Well, apparently he was a Robert Service fan, and he wanted to see the kind of country that Service wrote about.

He served as a physician in the U. S. Army in France during WWI.

The whole time he was in the army, he arranged to have his entire paycheck sent directly to my grandmother. To keep himself in spending money, he played poker.

Every Memorial Day I think of him, whom I never met, and of the suffering he saw during the War to End All Wars. Apparently they'd run out of medical supplies. Like morphine. And he'd have to operate without it.

Apparently he came back from France a different man.

Memorial Day is not just the start of summer.

An open letter to PETA

Dear People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals:

Yesterday I came upon this ad on the Go Fug Yourselves site:



Who Is The Sexiest Vegetarian? PETA's 8th annual World's Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity contest has begun and we need your help choosing the hottest of 2008!

Who's sexier? Adult film icon Jenna Jameson or Hero cutie Hayden Panettiere? Actor Milo Ventimiglia or musician Mos Def? You tell us.

Check out the nominees & cast your vote!

---
Now PETA, let me ask you something. Is it OK that I've only heard of one of those people--that being this Haydn Planetarium person? I mean, am I completely out of it for never having heard of Milo Centipedia or Moses Deaf? Or are all these people--as I suspect--essentially D-Listers?

And as for the "adult film icon?" Frankly, I'm glad I've never heard of her.

I mean--and I'm asking this with all due respect: is it actually possible for someone to be an "adult film icon"? Does this category of celebrity actually even exist? And even if it does, isn't the phrase "adult film icon"--let's be honest here--a euphemism for "porn star?"

Come to think of it, isn't "porn star" really an oxymoron? Because we all pretty much agree that a star is someone who is really, really famous, but honestly, what kind of person would admit to knowing porn stars by name? (I mean, except for some pathetic loserish basement boys, and/or the twerps who write reviews for Hustler magazine?)

OK, so maybe I'm dating myself and Hustler (which may or may not still exist--who knows? Not I) doesn't review porn videos anymore.

But still. What I'm saying here is, aren't we reaching pretty far down the publicity barrel? I mean, you're trying to convince people to treat animals ethically, but you're using porn stars as examples of decent, well-meaning, ecologically-correct citizens?

And one more thing, PETA. Isn't it sort of funny that someone who won't eat meat is apparently earning a living making movies where she swallows a lot of tube steak?

These are just a few questions, PETA, and there's no rush getting back to me.

Seriously, I'll just be here clubbing baby seals until you reply.

Yours very truly,
Poppy Buxom

Well-rested and ready to rumble

Last night, my husband and I went out to dinner, where we ate and drank delicious food (seared scallops and shrimp risotto) and then went to the ballet where we watched extraordinary fit young people dance around wearing very little clothing--and found ourselves regretting the risotto, not to mention the roll before dinner and the three glasses of wine.

Sobbing with remorse over our carb-ridden, exercise-free bodies, we drove off in a cab to our friends' condo, where we drowned our sorrows in another glass of wine.

Shortly afterwards I went to bed, to sleep the sleep of the unjust. And woke up this morning--I don't know the time--with one thought on my mind: I DON'T HAVE TO GET UP. So I went back to sleep.

And didn't wake up until 10:30. Whereupon I woke up and starting clicking around my laptop. Only to see something both weird and funny. I'm drafting a response.

Tune in tomorrow when I kick big porn star butt.

Nobody can see me through my magic newspaper shield

My stress levels are shooting through the roof again.

Yawn. What else is new?

Nothing I want to talk about.

Which? Is yet another reason I'm really a man. Believe it or not, even though I've been a girl for decades, the phrase "I don't want to talk about it" comes to mind. When it all gets to be too much, I shut down. Just like a man. The person hiding behind the newspaper who only grunts when you try to start a conversation? That would be me.


Bring me a plate of bacon and eggs and some coffee or shut up.

So I'm at Mamarazzi today.

For "op-ed piece" read "blog post" and you have it.

Is it the DayQuil or is this article in the Onion actually pretty funny?

Numbers

I've got eleven minutes to post. So I'll keep it brief.

425,945 cold and/or virus germs
+ 1 skipped rehearsal
+ four tablets of cold and/or virus medicine
________________________________
17 YouTube videos watched
2 foot stack of old magazines put out in recycling bin
3 boxes old files moved down to basement
2 wastebaskets full of old makeup tossed
2 loads of laundry washed dried and folded
3 pounds of oven-barbecued ribs cooked and cleaned up
6 dozen Quadruple Chocolate cookies baked and packed up for son's advisory party
1 shoddy excuse for a blog entry

Penises

Things are heating up in Iceland. Sigurdur Hjartarson, founder and owner of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, the world's first museum devoted entirely to the penis, has received four offers for the only specimen missing in his collection: the human phallus, or as we like to refer to it when we're not indulging ourselves by writing semi-plagiarized press releases, the one-eyed trouser snake.

That's right. The museum has pretty much every kind of penis you can imagine. Blue whale? check. Hamster? Check. To prove it, here is a picture of Mr. Hjartarson posing next to a stuffed bull elephant's winkydink.


Personally, I can't imagine why someone would start collecting penises in the first place, let alone start an entire Musee du Sausage-fest.

And why Iceland? This seems to me more the sort of thing you'd find in New Orleans. Particularly the French Quarter. Especially during Mardi Gras. I could totally see The Johnson Museum of OMG I Am So Drunk! OMG look at that one!

But wait. The squeals, the pointing, the loud shrieks of laughter? All the exhibits would shrink away to nothing.

So that's why the museum is located in Iceland. The exhibits are shy.

Joy rushes in where angels fear to tread

I've been catching up on the action over at Suburban Correspondent's The More, The Messier, and I saw that she had accepted an assignment: to come up with 10 things that give her a joy rush.

So, because I'm feeling all copy-catty these days, here are mine. Read on to discover what a self-centered idiot I really am:

1. Monday mornings. For you working stiffs, Mondays are the start of your work week. But I am a housewife and the mother of school-aged children, so for me, Mondays are the day when everyone gets out of my face and leaves me in relative peace and quiet for six or seven hours. Mondays are also the day when I don't need to drive anywhere until I take the kids to their 5:30 karate class. And so, to all of you who shout "Thank God It's Friday!" I counter with a quiet whisper of pleasure that everyone is off doing something constructive, leaving me alone to think my little thoughts in peace.

2. A freshly-made pot of piping-hot tea.

3. A short stack of much-desired new books and the chance to sit down and read them. And not be interrupted for a couple of hours.

4. The moment I realize that spring has finally arrived in Chicago. For the record, this was a week ago today.

5. Watching my children perform in their music groups.

6. Having them come watch me perform in mine.

7. Looking at my children's baby pictures. After I look at the first three or four, I start banging on their bedroom doors shouting "Come out here RIGHT NOW and look at these ADORABLE baby pictures. Can you believe HOW CUTE YOU WERE? No, you CAN'T because it's UNBELIEVABLE."

8. Fun times with my huzbin.

9. Making people laugh helplessly. Bonus points if it's my huzbin. More points if it's my children. Even more if it's all three of them.

10. Finding a brand-new way to make an idiot out of myself on the internet, and, I hope, make a few more people laugh helplessly:

I give him a C+. But I'll keep him.

It's been a long day. So I stole this from blackbird.

According to Esquire Magazine, a man should be able to a lot of shit. blackbird decided to see what her husband could do. I figured I'd play, too. Here's the list:

1. Give advice that matters in one sentence.
Nope. He's not so much with the advice-giving. When he does, he does the conversational equivalent of a dog going around in circles before lying down. It takes him a while to get going, is what I'm saying.

2. Tell if someone is lying.
Oh yeah. Litigators tend to be good at this.

3. Take a photo.
Nope.

4. Score a baseball game.
Maybe. It's never come up.

5. Name a book that matters.
Definitely. And let me tell you--you've never heard of it.


6. Know at least one musical group as well as is possible.
What he can tell you about the NBC Orchestra will boggle your mind.

7. Cook meat somewhere other than the grill.
He's actually better with the broiler.

8. Not monopolize the conversation.
This doesn't happen. He's a beautiful audience. (Why do you think I married him?)

10. Buy a suit.
He's OK, but tends to want to ignore the fact that he should really be wearing a short.

11. Swim three different strokes.
Probably. Back, crawl, and probably side.

12. Show respect without being a suck-up.
No. He doesn't tend to have to show a lot of respect. But he has great manners, so you can't tell.

13. Throw a punch.
He knows not to put his thumb inside his fist. Other than that, he knows no more than I do.

14. Chop down a tree.
Nope.

15. Calculate square footage.
Yes.

16. Tie a bow tie.
No, double-underlined.

17. Make one drink, in large batches, very well.
Yes.


18. Speak a foreign language.
"Oui." "Ja." "Dooway" (Mandarin Chinese for "correct.")

19. Approach a woman out of his league.
Are you kidding me? He's a chick magnet. They go to him, baby.

20. Sew a button.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.

21. Argue with a European without getting xenophobic or insulting soccer.
Loves debating and wouldn't get xenophobic because that's stupid.

22. Give a woman an orgasm so that he doesn't have to ask after it.
Well. Now you know why we have cork-lined bedrooms. And what do you mean, "an orgasm?" Single orgasms are for pussies.

23. Be loyal.
Extremely.

24. Know his poison, without standing there, pondering like a dope.
Yes.

25. Drive an eightpenny nail into a treated two-by-four without thinking about it.
No.

26. Cast a fishing rod without shrieking or sighing or otherwise admitting defeat.
No.

27. Play gin with an old guy.
No, but he plays gin with me. Do old girls count?

29. Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped.

Definitely. I think he invented quantum physics. At least, if all those sheets of paper covered with equations mean what I think they mean.

30. Feign interest.

Yes. Because I'm not always this fascinating.

31. Make a bed.

Yes.

32. Describe a glass of wine in one sentence without using the terms nutty, fruity, oaky, finish, or kick.

Yes. But he might talk about "berries."

33. Hit a jump shot in pool.

Nope.

34. Dress a wound.

Yes. Boy Scouts again. But thank goodness, we've never had to see him do it.

35. Jump-start a car. Change a flat tire. Change the oil.

All the time, yes, and I don't know.

36. Make three different bets at a craps table.

No. Gambling doesn't interest him.

37. Shuffle a deck of cards.

Yes.

38. Tell a joke.

No. His job, should he choose to accept it, is to laugh at mine.

39. Know when to split his cards in blackjack.

No, because gambling doesn't interest him. But if you made him play blackjack, he'd be good at it, because he's all about math and statistics and computer programming and physics.

40. Speak to an eight-year-old so he will hear.

Yep.

41. Speak to a waiter so he will hear.

Yes, but I'm better at dealing with the help. Partly because I pushier, but mostly because I've been a waiter, so I know how to time and phrase my requests.

42. Talk to a dog so it will hear.

Definitely. All dogs are good dogs, and he tells them so. Unfortunately, he's allergic to dogs, so we can't have one.

43. Install: a disposal, an electronic thermostat, or a lighting fixture without asking for help.

Yes. Yes. Maybe. Definitely: install a home theater, fix a computer, and get the wireless DSL working.

44. Ask for help.

Not so much.

45. Break another man's grip on his wrist.

HAHAHAHAHA maybe if you mean our son's.

46. Tell a woman's dress size.

No. Thank God.

47. Recite one poem from memory.

A children's one, probably.

48. Remove a stain.

No

49. Say no.

Yes.

50. Fry an egg sunny-side up.

Yes.

51. Build a campfire.

Yes. Because he was a BOY SCOUT.

52. Step into a job no one wants to do.

Yes. And he's OK with it. I feel guilty, though.

53. Sometimes, kick some ass.

Not. at. all.

54. Break up a fight.

No.

55. Point to the north at any time.

Yes, but in Chicago, that's easy. Even I can do it. Even though I was never a BOY SCOUT.

56. Create a play-list in which ten seemingly random songs provide a secret message to one person.

No. Well, I suppose he could, but this is not the sort of thing that would interest him. This seems like something someone would do who had an encyclopedia knowledge of pop music and a lot of time on his hands would do. Which is not my husband. He did like High Fidelity, though.

57. Explain what a light-year is.

Ab-so-fucking-lutely, and at the speed of light (or Mach-1, to the cognescenti.)

58. Avoid boredom.

Yes.

59. Write a thank-you note.

Can do. But I do it for him.

60. Be brand loyal to at least one product.

Liquor counts, right? Then totally.

61. Cook bacon.

Yes. Duh.

62. Hold a baby.

Hold and swaddle and give bottles and change diapers. He adores babies.

63. Deliver a eulogy.

Maybe. But I'll cut him some slack and write mine for him.


64. Know that Christopher Columbus was a son of a bitch.

He says Ferdinand and Isabella were much worse.

65-67. Throw a baseball over-hand with some snap. Throw a football with a tight spiral. Shoot a 12-foot jump shot reliably.

No, no, no. I don't think he knows what any of that means.

68. Find his way out of the woods if lost.

Definitely. He's on his second GPS. Also? BOY SCOUTS.

69. Tie a knot.

Totally. Do I need to say it again? BOY. SCOUTS.

70. Shake hands.

Yes.

71. Iron a shirt.

Yes. But he sends his out.

72. Stock an emergency bag for the car.

He carries a AAA card instead.

73. Caress a woman's neck. Back of your fingers, in a slow fan.

What the hell is this? Does this stupid magazine really think there's one correct way to please a woman? (Snort!)

74. Know some birds.

Raptors are his favorite. Mine, too. I love it when they caress the back of my neck with their flesh-ripping talons.

75. Negotiate a better price.

No. I do the bargaining.

I guess That Stud Muffin I Married flunked, but it's OK. I never wanted to marry an Esquire man.

If you're curious, read the article here--blackbird liked it.

Me? I was "meh" with it. I don't give a flying fuck about all that manly shit.

I mean, changing oil, forsooth. Why would you do that when it's easy and inexpensive to get someone to do it for you?

I figure a guy can be as ignorant as he wants about shit like that, as long as he can pay someone else to do for him. After all, if I expect a guy to change his own oil, doesn't that mean that some guy is going to expect me to sew my own clothes? Or bake my own bread?

Which, by the way, I can do.

And so can my husband.

10 good things about today

1. Commute downtown shorter than expected.
2. Rehearsal was shorter than expected
3. Went away for weekend but did not forget telephone, laptop, and iPod chargers.
4. Apartment is clean.*
5. Appliances are working.
6. Finished a book.
7. Rediscovered Tom Petty music video DVD.
8. Husband adores me.
9. Thai food delivered.
10. Vodka martinis.

* Actually, I cleaned it. And it took me about five hours. But what really counts is that I look around and don't want to throw up.

Alltop (Albeit in the Basement)

I don't know if you've noticed, but lately it's been impossible to leave a comment over at Mamarazzi. Not even if there's a peerlessly funny post about the veins on Christina Aguilera's breasts. Or a picture of some old weird guy flashing Catherine Zeta-Jones. Or a video about a mother who is still breastfeeding her eight-year-old daughter.

I mean, that last one--you'd expect a comment shitstorm to erupt, wouldn't you? We sure did. And yet it debuted to a resounding silence.

So we're working on getting things fixed. In the meantime, I figured I'd check our Mamarazzi email account. Who knows, there might have been hundreds of frantic emails all bemoaning the fact that they couldn't leave a comment about how a Mini-Me might be the help that Amy Winehouse so obviously needs.

After I talked our hundreds of fan off the ledge, I dug a little deeper. And guess who sent us an email?

Guy Kawasaki. Yes, the Guy Kawasaki. Mr. Apple Evangelism/entrepreneur/author/speaker himself.

He was sending us Alltop badges to post on our site.



Why on earth was he doing that? We're not on Alltop. Alltop is for TMZ, Perez Hilton, Go Fug Yourself, Mamapop--sites like that.

So I checked it out. Guess what? We are. (You have to scroll way down to the bottom. Way down. But hey, we're there!)



Congratulations Kristin, SarahO, and Susie Sunshine! We so totally rock!



And we have nowhere to go but up. Top of the world, Ma (marazzi)!

Mommybloggers made me gay.

Actually, Mommybloggers didn't make me gay. But reading mommybloggers taught me something very important about myself:

I'm a man.

This is how I know. I've been reading blogs for four years. Most of the bloggers I read are women. I'm getting insights all the time into What Women Want. Sigmund Freud? Call me. I have the answer.

The thing is, I don't want it myself. Which means I'm either a freak or a man. I'd prefer to be a man.

So here's why I think I'm a man:

I don't like to talk on the phone.
I don't like to get dressed up.
I wear what I like and don't really care what's in style.
I watched a single episode of Sex in the City and hated it.
I've never watched Lost, Dancing with the Stars, or American Idol.
I find all soap operas to be insane wastes of time.
I don't really enjoy shopping at Target.
I don't really enjoy shopping, period.
I hate malls.
I don't like going out to lunch.
I don't really understand hinting around or attempts to manipulate me.
I don't find Justin Timberlake, Brad Pitt, or David Beckham sexually attractive.
When my children get hurt, my first reaction is to tell them to stop whining.
I don't like chick lit.
I do like Patrick O'Brian novels.
I think everyone should smell like soap and toothpaste.
I don't even know how to order coffee at Starbucks.
I don't care how things make other people feel.

and most important:

I am extremely uncomfortable when strange men flirt with me.

See? I'm a man.

Same thing but deja-vu

Last night my husband and I broke new cultural ground by attending the concert for which we had tickets. 

As opposed to showing up for the dress rehearsal for a totally different production. By a totally different cultural institution.

The weird thing is that the whole evening felt like deja vu--at least until the music started. I hired the same babysitter. 

My children ate this 

frozen crap, and I drove down to have a much better dinner here

and then walked through the park

to the theater

to hear

conduct

And it was fine. 

I had a much needed and very refreshing nap while a lot of people sawed away on violins. 

In order to avoid sleeping through the second half of the concert, which featured a Mozart triple piano concerto, I drank a cup of coffee during intermission. 

This perked me up tremendously, helped me drive home safely, and then caused me to have insomnia for most of the rest of the night.

Which is why, despite all the Mozart I heard yesterday, this entry isn't any smarter than usual.

Seen on the red carpet at the opening of The Grinch Who Stole Fashion

Monday, Monday

When you sit down to write something, it's always best to have a point.

But just so you know, I've spent the whole day looking for one, but I haven't found it yet.

And now it's 10:30 p.m., so I figured, shit, I'll have to write a post even though I still don't have a point.

So I'll tell you about my day.

First, I swept the house clean of human life. Except for my husband, who decided to make a 9:00 conference call from home. Just to be nice, I canceled my plans to go into the living room and conduct Wagner's Ring cycle by playing all four operas on CD and waving my arms around while I made soulful faces in the mirror over the fireplace. This is my usual Monday routine, but out of the goodness of my heart, I thought I'd skip it just this once so my husband could make his call.

I also neglected to do the laundry, which is another one of my Monday routines.

I did make the beds, though. And I picked up my daughter's room, which was so messy that wow, someone was going to get her butt spanked! But then I realized that since my daughter was at school, and my husband was busy downstairs blathering away about patent litigation, and mine was the nearest butt, that someone was going to have to be me. I didn't want to get spanked, so I picked up her room.

OK, so that was pretty exhausting, so I took a three hour break to read your blogs. And check my email. Where I found an email from a high school classmate to remind me that whoops, I'm old. Shit!

So I went to the supermarket to buy frozen dinners, because what spells youthful joie de vivre like stocking up on frozen dinners for the babysitter to give your kids--the babysitter you have to hire to watch your kids? Because your kids--and by extension, you--are so young? I mean, what's drabber and dowdier than being an empty nester? Right?

Then I put on a lot of makeup, including some red lipstick mixed in with my usual my-lips-but-better shade of pinky-brown, because what projects dewy-fresh naivete like bright red lipstick on your teeth? Nothing, that's what.

Then I drove downtown to have dinner with my husband. I had Alaskan Halibut, because what says "you need to eat more fish and build up your brain?" like this blog?

But then! Then we went to the theater to hear Music of the Baroque. But the joke was on us, because Music of the Baroque wasn't playing tonight. Instead, we walked in on the final dress rehearsal of Chicago Opera Theater's latest production, John Adam's wacky romp The Flowering Tree. Because nothing says "get some fucking reading glasses" like showing up at the theater on Monday for Tuesday night's performance.

And nothing says "I used to be on the board of Chicago Opera Theater " like my tactful refusal to tell the internet what I thought of the performance.

And now we have to do the whole dinner/concert thing over again tomorrow. The good news is that I'll have the opportunity to top off the tank with more fish. Which is good, because as I think I've made clear, an adequate amount of brain-cell-fostering fish has obviously been missing in my diet. And it is SORELY NEEDED, my friends.

Happy Mother's Day to ME.

So what did I do to celebrate? Breakfast in bed? Praise? Presents?

Nope.

I was the first up and out of the house, which means breakfast in bed wasn't going to happen.

And somehow no one saw fit to give me a present. My kids are too old now for the bouquet of construction paper flowers or the necklace of giant beads on a stretchy elastic. And the husband will soon be paying for a new driveway and back deck. So no gifts.

Praise? As if! Except for the general cracking up from the hilarity that is Poppy's poop jokes, no praise wended its way Poppywards today.

So what, I thought to myself as I drove home from yet another grueling rehearsal, shall we do to celebrate MY DAY?

And then it struck me. Ironman. Which I've been trying to force my son to go see with me. Well, it being Mother's Day, what more perfect opportunity could there possibly be for forcing not just my son, but my entire family, (including my delicate, high-strung daughter) to sit through 90 minutes of explosions, violence, and special effects?

None, that's what.

So I did just that. And afterwards, I made my husband take us out for sushi.

And now, as the sake-filled Poppy sinks slowly in the west, we close the current chapter in the internet book of her life, or "blog," whose current entry could just as easily be called "How to Use an Utter Lack of Tact and a High Degree of Pushiness to Get What You Want for Mother's Day."

Honestly, I should charge big bucks for spelling out my techniques in such clear, concise prose. Movie tickets and sushi don't grow on trees, you know.

Oh Hai.

The marriage counselors at Earthlink.net were just about to teach me this really great new twist on raita when my husband informed me that he had fixed the internet by replacing the cord that connects the modem to the telephone line with a new one. It appears the little pluggy guy had died.

And just when I was getting ready to publish The Joy of Indian Cooking. Damn it!

But oh internet, I'm back.

Can you feel the love tonight?

Still dead

You know how you really mean to get to the gym and work out, except life is so rushed that you never go?

Well, not only do I not have time to go to the gym, I don't have time to call my marriage counselors in India and learn how to make poppadums get the wireless DSL working.

I have to buy a sleeping bag for my daughter to take to a bithday sleepover because we can't find the ones I know we had a couple of years ago. And a birthday present for her to take. And buy something frozen for the babysitter to microwave for my son for dinner. And make sure the white shirt/tie/black pants are ready for my son to wear to a music competition tomorrow. And drive downtown and open the apartment for my sister-in-law. And get dressed for a black-tie event tonight. And hope my husband gets back from Delaware or D.C. or wherever he is at the moment in time to meet us there.

So I'm in the public library checking my email for the first time in three days and finding all kinds of last-minute shit about the music competition and the black-tie benefit and so on.

Just so you know, my middle initial is S. Which at the moment stands for "Stresseating."

Generalissimo Internet is still dead

I have spent hours on the phone with the marriage counselors in India.

The relationship between me and the internet is still in the toilet.

Mobile post sent by PoppyBuxom using Utterz. Replies. mp3

Earthlink.net killed the internet star

Oh hai.

When I went to bed on Tuesday night, the internet and I were BFFs.

On Wednesday when I woke up, the internet had moved out and taken all his stuff.

I called the marriage counselor, i.e., Earthlink support, and had some long and fruitful sessions. I've learned a lot. And I've tried all kinds of new moves. But the internet has not yet moved back into my house.

On the other hand, I'm getting to know the Earthlink support personnel pretty well. Any minute now I'll be asking them for a new recipe for Dal.

Kid, see the psychiatrist--Room 604

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL."

And that? That is how I feel about Special Education and Individual Educationamal Plans and conferences and basically, school.

It's the end of the school year and there are final concerts and special events and field trips and big long term projects. Everything involves more homework, more forms to sign, more children to talk off the ledge. But who's talking me off the ledge? No one. My stress levels have shot through the roof and are now orbiting the earth like a fucking satellite.

If you work at my children's school and call me up today? I'm going to scream at you. Guaranteed.

Kill, kill, KILL, KILL.




On the other hand, the lawn guys are here, which is nice because the yard was starting to look like throw-up. So there's that.

iPawd

more cat pictures

My life is like my blog

It's busy.





You could even call it cluttered.








Even though I realize that it's better with lots of white space.




How about you--is your life like your blog?

I can has silence?

You guys, it is so lucky that the Genius at the Genius Bar actually did give me a new iPod yesterday. (Excuse me for a second while I go lick it ... oooh, yummy.)

Because today has been one of those days. One of those days where the moderately charming and mildly amusing Poppy has been forced to deal with the conversational output of other human beings for hours and hours. And hours.

This is because I:

a. stupidly volunteered to pick up a fellow chorister who lives two towns south of me, meaning that I had a car full of company on the drive to church;*

b. dealt with warm-up, church service, and rehearsal, none of which is silent;**

c. ended up driving the first chorister and an additional one back north;***

d. arrived home at 4:00 to have my husband ask whether I wanted to help him take a few large items to rummage sale drop-off;****

e. having finished that enjoyable activity, had my daughter walk in and say something like (and I might possibly be misquoting her) "Wanh, wanh, I can't find the sheet for my Independent Reading Project, so please comb through the house and find it, and then do my homework for me;"*****

f. upon having placed said daughter on a sofa to watch Little Women (the independent reading project is about Louisa May Alcott) walked into the kitchen to cook dinner only to find my husband having a noisy and protracted work-related phone call. So I put on [lick] my new iPod [/lick] to listen to an audiobook while I cooked dinner;******

g. and spent dinner listening to my now much more cheerful daughter chatter about various and sundry things and my son try to tell jokes. *******

So. No wonder I'm now HIDING IN MY FUCKING BEDROOM.

If the phone rings, I'm going to flush myself down the toilet.********

-----

* The first fatal error of the day. And it was only 8:30 a.m.! My, aren't I an early bird.
** At this point, becoming a Quaker looks pretty fucking good.
*** And one of them wanted to return some shoes to Marshall's, so I had to wait for them.
**** The answer was no, of course. But I did it anyway.
***** Don't worry; her helpless act not only did not gain her any substantial homework assistance, it also lost her her iPod and Nintendo DS.
****** The broccoli was undercooked and the chicken was tough. Serves him right.
******* Thank God there was wine.
******** Here's my living will, for those who care; if I flush myself, do not call a plumber.

The imminent death of my iPod

Oh hai.

I'm at the Apple Store at the Old Orchard Mall in Skokie, IL. This is a mall I completely and utterly hate.

I mean, more than I hate malls in general, which is quite a bit.

They keep adding on to this mall, and there doesn't seem to be any consensus whatsoever as to what constitutes attractive or even practical design. As a result, if you look the quaint phrase "higgledy-piggledy" up in the dictionary, it will be illustrated with a photograph of this mall, whose motto should be "Where consumerism, poured concrete, and piped in music vanquish common sense and good taste."

So anyway. I hate this mall, which puts me in an evil humor. And I'm here to get my iPod fixed. And there's a really long wait for the "Genius Bar."

I have a long-term, not particularly happy relationship with the "Genius Bar." Did you know that my current iPod is my third? In this (and about one other way) I can actually call myself an early adopter. Check it out and be impressed: I had the original 5 gig iPod--the one with the click wheel that really turned.

It fell victim to the famous Apple "Logan's Run" Battery Scam, where you charged your battery 30 times, and then, when you'd grown accustomed to having an iPod, and your machine is packed with great music, and has reached a peak of youthful energy and indispensability, it dies.

So then I got the cute little blue Apple iPod mini, which had no more memory, but was little and adorable. Except eventually I filled it up, and the click wheel never worked all that reliably, anyway.

And now, the iPod Classic 30 gig, with video! And a bright color screen! And a pretty decent-sized hard drive!

Except it stops sometimes for no reason. And it freezes up. And when I select a file to play, it freezes and then moves forward one file and starts playing that one instead.

So I am here, first to bitch at the first person who asked me if I needed help, and then, in an hour and ten minutes, to be completely polite to the so-called "Genius" at the so-called "Genius" bar, who, I predict, will treat me like I'm a moron because I'm a 50-something housewife in a pink sweatshirt.

And then I will shove my iPod up his ass.

And then, they will give me a new one, if only to get me the fuck out of the store before I get ideas about where to put the iMac (with the 24-inch screen) I'm currently blogging on.

And I'm going to click "publish post" and walk away with this up on the screen for everyone to see. Because I'm cheeky that way.

Last minute Mother's Day gifts

Just kidding. You have over a week!

But in case you forget--again--I'm sure your mother will be touched to receive a thoughtful Mother's Day greeting card from someecards.

Something truly heartfelt and touching, like this card, will make her realize you fully understand all the sacrifices she made in bearing you, nursing you, and bringing you up.


Meanwhile, because I'm not satisfied with a greeting card, not even a funny one, I demand to be given this:


And I don't care if it breaks the "no gifts that plug in" rule.

It's CUTE. I WANT IT. GIMME.

p.s. Unfortunately it's manufactured by an English company and has the wrong kind of plug, so it won't work in America. Stupid Brits! Between the way they screw around with the language, drive on the wrong side of the road, play cricket, and talk with those irritating, "I'm-so-much-smarter-than-you" accents, I say it's time to start Revolutionary War II: Colonial Backlash!

Or not. Just give me all your Cadbury--the good stuff, not that shit you export--and I'll go away quietly.

GLORY BE 2 CEILIN KAT, AN HIS KITTEH, AN TEH HOLY GHOST.

Ceiling cat says, click and read.