One good thing about today

My alarm clock didn't go off this morning. The first thing I was aware of was the sound of my children, dressed and breakfasted, yelling goodbye as they got ready to leave for school.

So much for my job security.

I've been replaced by an iPod with the alarm clock setting.

Oops, I did it again

Even as I sit here with my laptop, I'm blowing off another social engagement.

This time I had showered, laid my clothes out on the bed, plugged in the hot rollers, and lined up the spackle.

I was glumly inspecting my roots in the bathroom mirror, wondering when I was going to get a chance to have them touched up. I ran through this week's rich, indigestible feast of unenjoyable activities.

Suddenly I realized that this week was even worse than I said it was in yesterday's post. I don't have a rehearsal on Wednesday. I have a performance followed by a luncheon.

This means the week looks like this: tea, luncheon, luncheon, capped by my brother's rehearsal dinner and wedding, at which point I'll be in the presence of the Wicked Witch of Boston and Vicinity, otherwise known as my mother.

This is a week straight out of Emily Post. It's a vast cornucopia of ladylike events, and frankly? I'm no lady. I can pass for one, but it's a strain.

The cry goes up: " Too much Talbots! Not enough Eff word!"

Honestly, the more I thought about this week, the more my heart sank, and the more I realized that I badly needed to make some cuts.

Then I thought about how much I really didn't want to get dressed up and drive downtown to meet Carmen Dell Orifice at a tea.

Well, the tea party won the prize for the event where my absence would be the least noticeable. There won't be seating, and only a couple of people will even notice that I'm not there.

So here I am, being my bad-ass jeans-wearing self.

You know, it's lucky I met Miss Manners two weeks ago, because if I saw her today, I'd have to dive under the table and hide.

I'm not good enough at math to come to any hard and fast conclusions

but I think I need to figure out time travel. And fast.

See, I've figured something out about myself. When I have to do something I don't want to do, afterwards, when I'm safely home again, I feel entitled to spend 2 to 3 times the amount of time I spent doing the crappy activity doing what I'd rather have been doing instead. Call it "decompression time" or "down time," but when I get home, I feel that I have the undisputed right, nay, the duty to bury myself in some kind of misanthropic people-ignoring activity to get the taste of society out of my mouth.

Example: if I go to a party that turns out to be pretty boring, I spend (party time) + (getting ready for party time) + (commuting time) + (time getting out of my Spanx and stashing the contact lenses) ... well, you see how it starts to add up.

Today, for example, I was at church for three hours, doing choir-y things and keeping my son in overpriced Starbucks goodies to bribe him into attending his confirmation class.

So then I had to rest up from all this time spent 1. acting civilized, 2. not saying the eff word, and 3. trying to order things correctly at Starbucks.

OK, so THEN I'm sitting on my bed, listening to an audiobook, drinking tea, and maniacally rearranging my Facebook lil Green Patch (and if you haven't seen this stunning work of art, you really must) when my son came into my bedroom and reminded me that I was supposed to take him out clothes shopping.

So I reluctantly dragged my weary ass off the bed and drove to the mall and bought him his fifth or sixth navy blue blazer (honestly, when will I learn? He'll just grow out of it) plus a pair of shoes and two pairs of jeans and my lord, it almost killed me.

Remind me never to take him to a maul without doing some reconnaissance work first. I mean, I had no idea where to get him a pair of jeans at this mall. We searched through about six stores just to find something that didn't have all kinds of stupid-looking embroidery all over the back pockets.

But I finally found a Gap, so that was OK. Anyway, my point is that when we got home, I retreated to my room and fooled around with my Green Patch until dinner. I completely blew off an afternoon service at church that I was supposed to be singing at. (I think it was my unconscious deciding that I still wasn't ready to find out what Taize services are like.)

So I think today I spent maybe five hours doing things I wasn't all that into. And about the same amount of time reading and fooling around on Facebook.

Which isn't too bad, but this does not bode well for the rest of the week, which is the point I'm trying and failing to make. I have a tea party to go to tomorrow, where I'll meet the incredibly old and scary lovely and gracious Carmen dell Orefice (whom I will NOT call Carmen dell Bodily-Orifices.) On Tuesday I have another Ladies Who Lunch event that promises to be about as grim as they usually are. Wednesday shouldn't be too awful, but on Thursday we fly to New England because my older brother is getting married (again) and I'm going to see my entire family, including my MOTHER who you may remember is giving me a royal pain.

When I get back I'll have to spend three straight weeks trading virtual plants with total strangers on Facebook. The only way I'll be able to get the beds made and pack the lunches is if I get my hands on the Time Turner thingie from Harry Potter and I Forgot Which Book It Was In. Otherwise my face will meld with my laptop from the sheer horror of having spent so much time dressed up in uncomfortable clothes not saying the eff word.

I've died and gone to heaven.

It had never occurred to me that I could find old episodes of How Clean is Your House on Youtube. But they're there.

In fact, it's a vast cornucopia of Television for the Smug.



I'M IN LOVE.

Mamarazzi says "Consider the source" and comment here

Can you believe that comments are still broken at Mamarazzi? Actually, I'm sure you can.

But did you know that we're actually thisclose to revealing a swanky new design? Well, we are. THISCLOSE.

Meanwhile, what do you think of Cate Blanchett

Photo source: Marie Claire.com

being told What Not to Wear by Pamela Anderson?

OK, this one is all over Google. And Google is all over her.

Let me know.

I had all kinds of adventures today

but I don't have time to tell you about them now.

I'm too busy playing Palin Bingo.



Sure, the debates are over, but this is what YouTube is for, right?

Does this cupcake make me look fat?

Well, my friends, tough titties if it does, because it's a blog award, and I'm all about the ego strokes.

This award is from tutugirl, who has excellent taste in blogs, and I'm not just saying that because she picked me. Listen up, oh ye of little faith; she also picked the Hotfessional, so there. Also a couple of gals I've never heard of before and now need to check out.

And let me tell you, not only am I thrilled to win this award on its own merits, I'm also thrilled because it gives me something to blog about.

I don't know whether you've noticed, but blogging has slacked off around here. It's not that I'm not blogging regularly, because I am. I take that whole Blog365 thing very seriously. (Too seriously.)

But there has been a certain ... meme-ness seeping in. A tendency to indulge in the facile or the quick-and-dirty. A certain reluctance to engage--to talk about what I'm actually doing.

The cry goes up: This is Poppy's blog. Where's her slice of life?

It's up there, disguised as a cupcake.

Which pretty much sums it up for me at the moment.

First of all, if I were to really let it rip, the slice-of-life stuff I'd write is so brutal and ugly that it's unthinkable. I mean, my readers would quit on me in total disgust if I told them this stuff. And it's not that I think Sarah Palin represents the nadir of modern political so-called "thinking," because I said something along those lines yesterday, and it worked out fine.

No, the indigestible truth is this: my mother wrote me a very unpleasant letter about two weeks ago. And it really pissed me off. Big time. And now, every time I think about blogging about something going on in my life, all I want to do is post about what an asshole my mother is.

The thing is, she's really old. I should show some respect. And anyway, she won't be around forever, so I should just suck it up. And anyway, a mommyblogger knocking her own mother? This just seems wrong. We get to BE lovably imperfect mothers, but do we get to HAVE them? I don't know. I don't notice a lot of women knocking their mothers on their blogs. Kids, yes. Husbands, hell to the yeah. Mothers? No.

So there's that.

Now my other real-life stuff just reveals that I'm a brat who is spoiled rotten.

I mean, you aren't about to weep vats of tears over the fact that my cleaning ladies move my stuff when they dust and don't put things back when they're done, and I have to go around and rearrange my mantelpiece and my perfume bottles and other little knick-knacks. And it drives me crazy.

See, that's petty, right? And I'm spoiled. Somehow I don't think that would generate 137 supportive comments and ((((hugs)))). You know?

So, these days either I feel like a turdball for simmering away, full of repressed "OH YEAH, WELL FUCK YOU" type feelings that I refuse to actually express about my mother, or I feel like Marie Antoinette sitting around blogging while someone else deals with my wretched refuse yearning to be put out in the trash can.

I'm telling you, sometimes you just can't win at this blogging gig.

Except for today, because I just did! I won a prize.

Thanks, tutugirl!