Update: Meatloaf burning in the oven of my brain

I finally got “Sister Christian” out of my head, only for it to be replaced with “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” by Meatloaf.

8 comments September 18th, 2006

My inferior, infidelity-and-80s-pop–addled brain

Oh, my brain is full this morning. It is full of things I wish it were not full of, i.e., all the words to Huey Lewis’s “The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Still Beating,” and “Sister Christian.” I don’t know why she’s the only one to say okay, I don’t know why she’s motorin’, but I’ll be damned if I don’t know all the words.

Continue Reading 36 comments September 15th, 2006

Crisis parenting is my bag!

I have confidence in fevers!
I have confidence in poop!
I have confidence that puke will come again
and I’ll make you see
I have CON-FI-DENCE in me!

Continue Reading 17 comments September 12th, 2006

Kindergarten

She started kindergarten today. I’ll admit there was an attempt on my part to buy back her love with some new pink size 11.5 Hello Kitty Mary Janes, and some very exciting new surprise school supplies tucked away in a pink-and-purple pencil case. I took blurry pictures of her doing her maddening praying-hands pose under one side of her face (”because it looks pretty”). I let her have two muffins and two donuts at the Welcome Back breakfast at school. I told her I was very proud.

But she looks through me. I am starting to question my existence.

Continue Reading 51 comments September 8th, 2006

I just like the way this sounds

Hannah is driving me red-hot mad. —Sophie

14 comments August 29th, 2006

Look! Look at my door! Look at my strange hex-faced child!

Follow every Benjamin Moore rainbow until you find your dream, baby.

Continue Reading 27 comments August 25th, 2006

I gave Gloria Putnam Smith back to the people at Enterprise

I just thought you should all know that Gloria Putnam Smith and I broke up. We tried to work things out, but after she told me to TURN RIGHT ON LOMBARD STREET and then GO .6 MILES—which would have put me squarely in front of an oncoming freight train—it all went downhill. (Well, I went uphill. Gloria Putnam Smith wanted me to go downhill.)

It was a long week, but I am back home now. It’s late and I should sleep. I don’t know how to write about the trip. My brain is whirring and I keep hearing this line from Cabaret: “You know the funny thing about Herman? There is NOTHING funny about Herman.”

Aside from Gloria Putnam Smith, there was nothing funny about Herman.

Send funny vacation stories. Missed you. Hope you are all well and very air-conditioned.

22 comments August 22nd, 2006

I am in a strange place with no one but Gloria Putnam Smith and I don’t think she likes me very much

I could say I need you, Gloria Putnam Smith. Let’s be best friends, Gloria Putnam Smith. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Gloria Putnam Smith. But I have learned some lessons in my life. So I just reach out and touch Gloria Putnam Smith with my right index finger.

Continue Reading 28 comments August 17th, 2006

You know it’s a bad moving day when

Please go over to my mom’s blog and show her some love, because the poor woman could really use some right now. Yesterday’s move is a very long and ugly story, one of those depressing tales that leave you pretty sure that people are basically terrible.

Continue Reading 17 comments August 15th, 2006

The Mater arrives today

At this very moment, several sweaty, strapping young men are loading boxes and furniture into a van in Philadelphia while my mother stands at the kitchen counter hyperventilating beside her cellphone and counting her cash several more times. If she doesn’t have a list on paper, she is definitely going over one in her head. By now, she will already have convinced herself that she’s lost her purse—and her apartment key—at least three times. By dinnertime today, if all goes well, she and her purse and her well-thumbed cash for the movers will be here, and she will have a new apartment key she’ll worry about misplacing.

Continue Reading 22 comments August 14th, 2006