Today I'm guest posting at the deliciously naughty Meg's place: A Mom Two Boys. Meghan has been galivanting with her husband sans kiddos in NYC and beyond for the past week. She is having a life of excitement. Other than having the natural covering of my Mound of Venus ripped off, my excitement consists of rolling into Beverly Hills for dental appointments. It is such a thrilling experience, that I had to put it on Meghan's blog. So please ...follow me over there.
| Tweet |
|
|||
Assignment: Christine, can you please make me look good? Not just good, but ...STEAMY. You see, I've had a week of the most AMAZING, kick ass guests on my blog and I've got to come back from vacation with a little sashay in my flat ass. The fishnets are getting a little saggy and I turn 47 this month. Oy! I know, I'm not Jewish, but there's no better expression. So, give it all you got, baby! Oh...and I'm only posting this because most of my readers will never meet me and think it's true because it's the last time I'll be called hot. Well, before menopause hits...
Here she is...the dark...the divine...the always delicious...Flutter....(the check's in the mail, babe!)...my final guest poster. What a week...*sigh*
*****************************
Did you know that JCK is hot? Seriously. Like, flaming, gloriously beautifully sexily hot? Because I am here to tell you, friends...she totally is.
She is beautiful and kind and when the F word trips off her dainty tongue, it sounds like glittery prose from a profane fairy. She will lay on you for photos, if you let her. She will drink booze, rifle through free books and smile so large that her beauty blocks the moon, in other words? JCK is the shit.
In the best way possible.
She will pat your knee, laugh hysterically and make you cry in the middle of a dive bar in San Francisco. Although, I imagine the same rules would apply in any city. When I curse? I sound like a trucker with no manners. When she curses? Magical waves of sass filter down, and drown you in a tsunami of fabulous. Her purse is cuter than yours. It just is. And you can't even hate her. BECAUSE SHE IS TOO NICE.
She will look amazing in everything she wears, handle her booze like a pro, and compliment you on your dress. In other words? Everything you think she is, she is....but amplified. In fishnets. How ever did we all get so lucky to have her in the blogosphere?
********************
Flutter
A survivor, a writer, a knitter, a cook. Sometimes someone who kind of sews, a beginning painter, a diabetic. A singer. An amazon with a predilection for high heels and vamp nail polish. A wearer of red lipstick. A friend, a fiance, a sister, a daughter, a soft place to land. Able to belch like a trucker, write the perfect thank you note and laugh at a fart joke.
Poetic, loving, struggling. Dark and divine.
flutter is a girl named Christine, and she writes here. but be nice, she bites.
| Tweet |
|
|||
The lovely Jen from Rants and Raves has agreed to guest post on Motherscribe today. Jen is a mom, wife, aspiring writer and nanny. Yes, that is correct. A nanny. I know I make that sound like ...well, like...she's divinely insane, because she is a mother and chooses to watch other people's small children. Her sense of humor is always there, and she's the one you want to hang out with after a looong, It's JackO'Clock!! day.....Enjoy!
*********************
Watching The Olympics Makes Me Feel Like A Shlup
Don't go running for your dictionary. "Shlup" isn't really a word. I made it up when explaining to my husband how I feel when I'm around our friend Rachel. Rachel always looks good. She is always dressed in clothes that flatter her, in the current styles. Her hair always looks good, and her makeup is always flawlessly applied. Think Stacey on What Not to Wear - she even looks a bit like her! To say that I feel "frumpy" around her, just didn't quite say it. "Shlup" means frumpy, but it also means a person who needs to work on themselves in a certain area - like, say fashion or fitness.
Let me start by saying that I don't exercise. I know that I should, and believe me, the desire is there, but the willpower, and the ability is not. I have signed up for various fitness classes in my adult life, and each and every time, I hurt my back, and had to quit the class. The only class that was the exception was when I took water aerobics. Those 60 year old ladies and I - we were fierce! We looked good and we knew it.
Jim and I have really enjoyed watching the Olympics. We taped it, so we didn't watch it as it was happening, but we did watch a little, or sometimes a lot of each event. For some reason, this year, more than any other, I was in awe of it all. The things that those athletes can do is simply extraordinary!
I watched Dara Torres, a 41 year old mother of a toddler, who in my opinion, deserves a medal just for getting her body to look like that at the age of 41, win a silver medal.
I watched Michael Phelps, set record after record, winning more medals than any other athlete in one Olympic game. He swam 17 times over nine days and broke the world record in four of his five individual swims.
I watched as divers jumped off a tower the height of a 3 story building, hitting the water at a speed of 35 mph, head first, again and again.
I sat on my couch, eating chocolate chip cookies, as Constantina Tomescu-Dita ran, and ran, and ran, and kept running long after winning the gold medal. (I was beginning to wonder if she could stop!)
I sat with my jaw hitting the floor as I watched the women's water polo players swim back and forth across the pool again and again, and throw a ball into the net, while treading water, and avoiding being drowned by another player! They did that for 32 minutes! How they don't get a leg cramp and drown I don't know. I think one of those ladies could beat me up with their big toe.
Jim and I sat on our couch, him eating chips, me eating cookies again, watching the girls rhythmic gymnastics event. Did you see what those girls can do with a rope and a hoop?! At one point, I exclaimed through a mouthful of cookies, "Jim, she just touched the back of her head to the heel of her foot! I doubt I can touch my head to my knee!" We both leaned over to try to do just that. Jim groaned, "Ow! That's hard on your back!", and I started to laugh. Then, I was the one in pain. "Oh! Ow!" "What did you do?", Jim asked, also laughing. I sputtered out, while laughing and trying to breathe, "I got a sharp pain in MY BOOB!" Then I laughed until I cried. I shouldn't laugh that hard. I might throw my back out.
| Tweet |
|
|||
Imagine a grown-up slumber party in which you get to wear comfy PJs, kick up your heels and have a drink. Talking late into the night lying on a bed, with a pillow tucked up under your chin and a bag of Oreos to dip into. She regales you with delightful tales of her children and listens to yours. And that laugh & sexy voice draw you in.... That would be a night at Kellan's place. She's got the house where all the kids and the grown-ups want to be. So...come on in....and join my guest poster today...On the Upside.
***********************************
| Tweet |
|
|||
Thursday Drive is a blog where the writing makes you catch your breath. Jennifer's natural gift and the lyrical quality of her words transports you. Someday...oh, someday...we will meet for whiskey and a long drive...ogling cowboys...Dive in and relish! Thursday Drive is my guest poster for today...
***************
The smell of school clings to them, and I inhale it. The smell of pencils and crayons and textbooks, of the cafeteria and the sweat of them from their time on the hot playground. We dump the sand from their shoes and put them away for the next morning. A round of snacks follows, and then we talk about the day.
One at a time, each of my two children climbs into my lap. I ask them three questions every time (though those questions turn into more): What was the best part of your day? The worst part? The funniest part?
Those queries take us further than How was your day? ever could. They carry us past the one word answers of Fine and Okay, and into the heart of what happens to them when they step out of the car and into the swirl of backpacks and the sounds of "Love you, too!" every morning.
My son is in fourth grade now, and my girl is the second. For most of the year, they spend the better part of the day in a world that is their own. Among their own friends, facing the bullies, learning to function in a group--the last, a thing I can't teach them well enough at home. There, they decide that they love math or English or P.E. or music the best. They navigate the cafeteria line, and learn to play the violin in the school's Suzuki program. Whole dramas unfold without me there to moderate. If they fall, someone else is there to apply the salve of bandage and words.
They step out of my car and into the world. I let go.
The day will come when, more often than not, they will share their stories with me by phone or email, and it's not likely to happen every day. Odds are, they will live far away from me, and maybe I will hear the just the highest or lowest of their stories.
But, at this age, they tell me they want to live with me forever, that even if they go away to college, they will come back home for good. To that, I smile (and think, "Oh, heck no!"). But then I tell them they can live at home as long as they like, but that I'm sure they will each want to find a place of their own when they're old enough. It's what they need to hear, at age seven and nine, when they are far from the edge of the nest and need feel no danger of being pushed out of it.
If I do enough things right, someday my girl will call me to say, "The funniest thing happened today." Or my boy will email me to ask, "I've had the worst day. Can I get your advice?"
And when I'm lucky enough to have them with me, sitting beside me or across a table, the scents that are familiar now will have left them. They will no longer smell of pencils or markers, or need me to shake the sand from their shoes. They will have collected pieces of the world on their own, and what they have found will be impossible to shake loose. They will know as much as I do about the world, and maybe more.
But when I hug them goodbye and send them back out into that world, I will close my eyes and breathe in, for that moment that they are close to me. They won't even notice, or they will. But maybe they will remember it, this little thing we do now.
And there's a chance--a good one, I hope--they will remember that it was one of the best parts of their day.
It is certainly one of mine.
| Tweet |
|
|||
Whenever I read The Happy Geek, I am tempted to pull up stakes and move to Canada. Aaahh...Canada. What IS it about those Canadians? They have that ...something. Less angst? More able to poke fun at themselves? I'm not sure, but I do know one thing. Happy Geek is a delight! Enjoy her guest post today...
**************************
Hey. This is Happy Geek. I blog at The Happy Geek. I know, I am a fountain of originality.
I was utterly delighted when JCK asked me to write this post as it gave me another reason to put off cleaning out my husband's filing cabinet. Mind you, it's been put off for 4 years, what's one more weekend?
I know, some of you are asking "why are YOU cleaning out his filing cabinet?" Well, let's see, last week I needed a copy of our 2007 tax return. Couldn't find it. Even after 30 minutes of searching. The 1997 one, I found that one right away. That's when I snapped. I decided that after 4 years of nagging and crabbing I was gonna have to do it myself. Right that moment. However, once I got started I realized that this cabinet is the thing that nightmares are made of.
I am not usually a terribly anal person. I don't aim for perfection because trust me honey, I will never get there, but I cannot stand clutter. I am a HUGE fan of streamlining. My motto, "when in doubt, throw it out." If you are a pack rat, chances are good that we cannot be friends. I already have one rather large pack rat to deal with and I made a vow to stay with him forever. He's really all I can handle. I love my hubby dearly, but I tell you, looking back I would have re-wrote those wedding vows just a little bit.
In hindsight I would have made it clearer that I was having and holding just him, not his classroom notes from every class he took from fourth grade on. (I only wish I was kidding.) The man has a PhD and we have pretty much every paper, note and project he has ever done in his academic career.
Some of you may be asking, "Hey, I want to be your friend, how do I know if I am a pack rat?"
I have a simple test.
1. Count all the thermoses in your house. (This includes the ones in your garage, shed and camper.)
2. Subtract the number of people in your household.
3. Subtract the number of times you have used said thermoses in the last three months.
If you wind up with a positive number, you are a packrat.
If you are still saying "well, there are four in the shed, three in the cupboard downstairs, the two in the kitchen...," Congratulations, you are a packrat with issues.
Anyway, the filing cabinet. It would be one thing if he was an organized packrat, I might let him keep all his swimming certificates from elementary school, but when they are shoved into a folder with the manual for my stove and a picture of his dog when he was five, well, it's all got to go. Yes, the manual can go too, we no longer have that stove. We sold it with our condo. In 1998.
And that is just one folder. We have two drawers full of these. Guess what I shall be doing for the next week or so. My life is truly glamorous.
So, thank-you JCK for a chance to visit Motherscribe, chit chat with your friends and pretend to be in California. I even wore my sunscreen. Hey, when you live in Alberta you pretend a lot.
You pretend that the first snowfall will not be in less than 2 months, pretend that there are beaches, pretend that the prairies really are beautiful.
Now I should really get back to this filing cabinet. Anyone got a flame thrower?
| Tweet |
|
|||
A few months back I came upon a woman with a rapier wit so sharp and a philosopher mind so keen that she took me aback. A PhD, 9 kids, a Professor at Auburn University...yes, she is all of those things. Intimidated? Yeah. But, she won't let you be. And that's what I love about her. So, here she is...my guest poster...The Philosopher-Mom.
Compare and Contrast
Every teacher from preschool to grad school has a toolbox equipped with a standard set of assignments. "Find the main idea," for example, ranges from "Tell what happened" (preschool) to "Synopsize the thesis and analyze the supporting argumentation for validity and soundness" (grad school). One of these staples is "Compare and contrast." Preschoolers are asked to find how things are alike and how they are different -- who among us can resist singing along to "One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn't belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others, by the time I finish my song?" Graduate students are instructed to adjudicate between contrary theses, referencing both internal and dialectical criticisms of each. (Hmm. Maybe I should try the musical version next time.)
Never having been honored with a guest-blog invitation before, I approached JCK's flattering request with all the earnestness of a grad student with an important assignment. I thought long and hard -- much longer and harder than I do on my own blog, to be sure -- about my theme. I considered a faux episode of Temptation Island, a virtual tour of a famous Lynchburg, TN distillery (only four hours' drive to the northwest!), a poetical ode to JCK's passion and verve. But in the end, it was the trusty teacher's toolbox that offered the spark of inspiration. Compare and contrast: Motherscribe and the Philosopher-Mom!
Compare: We are both mothers. Contrast: Motherscribe has a very young BOY and a very young GIRL 10 months apart. She writes their names in all caps. The Philosopher-Mom has a putative adult boy, a verge-of-putative-adult boy, an older teen girl, a teen boy, a young teen girl, a preteen girl, a tween boy and a tween girl 9 minutes apart, and a young girl who is beloved by all except the teen boy who thinks she is insufferably spoiled. I try not to write their names at all, because they all know how to get on Blogger and search "The Philosopher-Mom" for their code name, and then post impertinent comments giving their side of the story which, of course, no one wants to hear. Least of all me.
Compare: We both write. Contrast: Motherscribe writes moving and evocative poetry, and whimsical dialogues with and between her children, and elegantly wry descriptions of mishaps that, no matter how mundane, hint at libidinous resolution. The Philosopher Mom writes self-serving parodies of popular song lyrics, and "he-said-she-said" diatribes between her children, and pedantically dry pontifications of ethical theory variations that hint at no resolution whatsoever.
Compare: We both own fishnet stockings. Contrast: Motherscribe wears them to clean house, hinting at libidinous resolution. The Philosopher-Mom doesn't wear them at all, because they have been stolen by my young teen daughter who, fashioning herself as a "Rock-Goth" (which sounds to me like something J.R.R. Tolkien would have fantasized), wears them with black combat boots, a purple and grey plaid pleated knee-length skirt, a black Guns n Roses t-shirt, and fingerless lace gloves...black, of course.
Compare: We have several mutual friends -- Jenn of Juggling Life, Cheri of Blog This Mom!, and of course, Jack Daniels. Contrast: Motherscribe lives within two hours of the ladies, and savors Mr. Daniels with Coke. The Philosopher-Mom lives tragically far from the ladies, and slings back my Jack straight on the rocks, with a Cuban cigar in my other hand. Oh yes I do. Just not in front of the ladies.
Compare: We both have been lost on our way to Columbus, Georgia. Contrast: Motherscribe was picked up at the Birmingham, Alabama airport (which is three full hours from Columbus, Georgia) by a relative who was familiar with neither Alabama nor Georgia. And the driver simply missed a ramp on the interstate. So it was not only understandable, it wasn't even her fault. The Philosopher-Mom lives within 45 minutes of Columbus, being connected to that city by a single US Highway. And I'd been there at least two dozen times in the past year. This is not only inexcusable, it's not even understandable.
Compare: We both have been rear-ended en route to a sketchy-sounding rendezvous. Contrast: Motherscribe got it coming up to a sudden traffic jam on I-5, on her way to meet Jenn, Cheri and me for drinks and salads at the Anaheim California Pizza Kitchen. (Okay, so there's another contrast: Motherscribe had a salad, as did Jenn and Cheri; I had a pizza. By myself.) The Philosopher-Mom was the passenger in a young male coworker's Corvette Stingray on the way to lunch at a resort restaurant 50 minutes west of our office, when a drunk driver in an old Buick station wagon failed to put the brakes on his enthusiasm for a better look at my coworker's car. This was back in 1984, please understand, when I was not married. Although my coworker was. And the Corvette was registered in his wife's name, so the police had to call her for the accident report. Heh. Heh. And this story appears here, on my guest blog for JCK, so that my kids will never find it by searching through "The Philosopher-Mom" for ammunition they can launch in my direction. NOT that anything would have happened, mind you, even though the Philosopher-Mom had not yet discovered Jesus and ethical theory. But it sounds almost as sketchy as meeting women whose blogs you read, women who may not even really be women -- who may not even really exist. Right?
Compare: We admire each other greatly and would go to tremendous lengths to help one another out. Contrast: Motherscribe is diligent and organized, having orchestrated the aforementioned not-at-all sketchy rendezvous with several bloggers situated throughout Southern California that neither of us had met in person. The Philosopher-Mom is dissolute, disorganized and perpetually tardy, having been asked by JCK in the politest possible way to have my guest post in her inbox by Tuesday. And it is now mere minutes from Wednesday. Good thing -- and here's another contrast -- my time zone is two hours ahead of hers. So maybe, if I'm lucky, she won't assess a late penalty on this assignment.
| Tweet |
|
|||
Merlot Mom asked me to be a guest poster on her blog today, while she vacations in...Japan. The WENCH! She describes her blog: Remember when you could spend hours talking to your girlfriends over glasses of wine? Now we rarely get enough time to go to the bathroom. I want a place where I can hang with my girls, laugh, cry, bitch, and talk about sex. Remember when we used to actually kiss and tell? So pour a glass, sign on, and join me for a virtual girl's night out. Sex not included.
A GIRL'S NIGHT OUT WITHOUT THE MAKEUP: Because sometimes the regular grapes just won't do.
Piqued your interest? Thought so. Merlot Mom is good. Really good. As in...delicious... go see! And she's had some fabulous guest bloggers over the last week!
This past February, a friend of mine encouraged me to enter a writing contest: Moms who Write, for a local LA magazine. The essay was to be a slice of life on motherhood. I submitted a piece called "Where life is a bit bumpy with a Boy & a Girl 10 months Apart." Basically it chronicles what it was like to discover myself pregnant while having a 9 week old infant. Otherwise known as...INSANITY 101 by JCK. Although my piece didn't get picked by the magazine, FISHNET HATERS! the woman who created the contest, Amy Simon: Cheerios in my Underwear, contacted me about a month ago. She has turned Moms who Write into Motherhood Unplugged, which is a radio show and a stage show. She asked IF I would be on the radio show this month. Ummm...YES? So, today I am going to do a radio taping of my piece, which will air later this week. Now I may be sounding all nonchalant and such, but my heart is going A PING A PONG A PING A PONG. I am VERY excited!!! So at 5pm PST today, be thinking the good radio VIBES for me. (I'll have a link up next week, if you're interested in hearing the broadcast.)
Tomorrow we leave for our summer vacation. The kids are packed, the laundry is done. I'm halfway there. In honor of taking a real vacation, I am going to have 6 divine guest posters this week. I've been a huge fan of their's for months and it is with much delight that I can share them here with you. Please welcome them while I'm gone, and leave them some comment love, won't you?
If you are new here, please make yourself at home. My archives are on the right hand sidebar. Take a gander. On this blog I explore parenthood, self-expression and poetry while existing on caffeine, chocolate and the occasional whiskey... fishnets optional.
Ta Ta!
| Tweet |
|
|||
