Community Building Goes Commando

I have learned in the past couple of months that when you say yes to attend a meeting because they “just really appreciate your input”, that means you have actually committed to working on the project. And when you tell the organizers that you can “help” in a particular area of the project’s execution, this means you will be heading up that committee. Try it, you’ll see.

Anyway, I accidentally volunteered to build a playground. And when I say “build a playground” I don’t mean showing up on the work day and assembling some pre-fabricated pieces. I mean I signed on to “make it happen.” (What could I say? They appreciated my input.) While I’m sure I’ll meet some wonderful people and learn valuable skills (including community building) throughout the process, so far it’s just a source of material.

Picture a dozen adults tasked with choosing playground colors. The organizer pulls out 30 or so metal and plastic samples and tells us we must choose two metal colors and one plastic color–and we must devise three different color combinations. 30 x 2 + 1 to the 3rd power? That’s like infinity, right? I looked at the clock and tried to ignore the growl in my gut.

Almost immediately preferences emerged. Clear factions formulated and soon there developed a rift between The Bolds and The Naturals. Voices of reason tried to steer the color conversation to practical matters like the color’s effect on the temperature of different surfaces. Heated debate about reds vs. yellows vs. greens and browns continued. An old man wondered aloud why we were even building a playground. “Let them play with sticks!”

After much shuffling of metal and plastic samples, two natural color schemes and a combat motif were chosen.

Ahh… I love the smell of community building in the morning.

Containing Myself

I lost my Container Store virginity last week. I’d heard the hype so I walked around an outdoor shopping mall in north Dallas for forty minutes waiting for it to open on July 4th. Sure, I was also avoiding my family, but that’s another story. Inside the store I had to pry myself away from magnetic doohickies that stick to your locker door – holding lipgloss, concealer sticks, and other essentials for surviving high school. Despite the fact that I’m not in high school and have no locker of any kind, I actually had to tell myself-repeatedly-that I had no use for such things. This is how intoxicating the Container Store and any other place of its ilk is for me. I’m mesmerized in certain sections of Staples, dumbfounded in the closet area of Lowes, and stupefied among the office supplies at Target.

I am a consumer of home organization porn. I want to believe–I do believe–that life is better when its contents are properly stowed and labeled, preferably in a clear typeface. Getting organized causes me to simplify, to cull all those unnecessary objects from my life, or at least contain them in space-efficient decorative bins. The process works for ideas too. Just check my hard drive, my internet spaces, the 3-ring binders that grace my not-very-orgnized shelves, the post-its on the white board I’m using to plot my novel.

A friend of mine has a pantry that has to be at least 100 square feet. Her custom built home is not some ridiculous mansion and she has no servants to fetch the Sunday linens; the woman simply values organization. There is a place for every can of mushroom soup and tiered platter in that miracle of modern kitchenry. To be that organized, equipped…. well one could probably survive the apocalypse in a place like that – if one had enough adjustable shelving and plastic boxes.

Sometimes I think it’s a joke, all this planning and organizing – just one more way to procrastinate. But then the loan officer calls about my refinance. I reach into the drawer next to my computer and pull out the file labeled “refi” and pull out the document she’s requesting before she finishes her sentence. Sickening, isn’t it?

Breaking Up Is Always Hard to Do

I took my son and a friend to the pool the other day, where they ran into the friend’s ex – AND her family. Apparently it was a pretty bad break up. While these 12-year-olds managed to avoid court, there was some lengthy arbitration over the custody of the silly bands.

Field Day Debrief

School’s out, but somewhere at this moment a group of women sit scheming new ways to make next year’s Field Day even better than this year’s celebration extraordinaire. These dedicated souls have been crossed trained on the Candy Walk and the Sponge Race; they have screened the best DJs; they have scoured the internet for more inventive crafts; and they have negotiated the best price on sugar sand and plastic tubes. They know when to put more kernels in the popper, understand the MIT developed matrix scheduling of class rotations, and know just how long it takes to inflate a bouncy slide. Quiet as its kept, I hear next year we may even have misting stations to keep the spoiled little snots more comfortable.

I say we go old school. Toss them in the playground with a rope and a hose (sunscreen optional), blast some music we can all agree on (can you say Guitar Hero?), and cordon off the grown-ups in a beer garden. I’ll chair.

Youth is But an Afternoon Away

Ah, youth, that fleeting feeling of being immortal, invincible, even irresistible. Short of things that are against the law, abjectly amoral, or just really bad for us, how do we recapture that feeling? Cosmetic procedures, that’s how!

In my inbox today, advertising for all the youthening I can afford:

Botox
I have yet to try this new old standby, though I have actively been trying for a year to get my neighbor, who is an ear, nose, and throat doctor, to let me host a party where we gals drink mojitoes and he shoots us up with botulism. So far, he’s not biting. Not a very good friend, that one. I mean, so what if the toxin can spread away from the injection site, causing everything from breathing problems to loss of bladder control? No who would believe I am perpetually calm anyway.  My friends would think I’d been replaced by an alien. Or a robot.

Organiceuticals

This is the latest marketing spin on youthful potions that are supposed to erase all the lines and somehow reverse the effects of gravity. Made with ingredients like coffeeberry, these sound more like breakfast food than magical elixir. And why so pricey? I’m thinking of whipping up something in a compost pile out back. Come on over.

Laser Hair Removal

The offer of the day is “Buy One Area Get 2nd Area For 1/2 Price”. Of course, the 1/2 price is for the “equal or lesser value” area. How exactly is this determined, this valuation of my hairy areas? Is it the quality of the hair? The quantity? And how does one get a handle on that before committing to the procedure? Is there an appraisal process? Does someone drive by the house and snap shots of me in unfortunate postures? Is there a hidden camera at the yoga studio perhaps?

So much to ponder. It makes my brain feel tired, and old.

Valerie Bertinelli on The View, and in Cleveland

I hate to admit I was planning to tune in to The View tomorrow just to see if Valerie Bertinelli had started to gain all that Jenny Craig weight back. I’m petty like that. But when I started picking around the internet, I found another reason to watch. VB’s got a new sitcom scheduled to air this summer called Hot in Cleveland. She will star with Wendi Malick (Just Shoot Me) and Jane Leeves (Frazier) in the show about three best friends from L.A. stranded in Cleveland.

Why am I excited about this? It has recently been suggested that agents and editors are only interested in women’s fiction set in New York or L.A. Maybe this TV show will lend some cred to the un-sexy, the non-coastal–therefore legitimizing Bentonville, Arkansas as a respectable setting for my novel.

Stop laughing.

Besides, she was married to a rockstar and worked with a woman who engaged in consensual incest. Val’s got stories.

I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review.

Vintage View: Rosie, Elizabeth, and The Donald

After more than twelve years, The View may seem like a daytime institution, but when the show began it was groundbreaking. Smart, opinionated women not only talking about their lives and the day’s events, but arguing about them. Add some celebrities and fashion advice and they had a hit. I liked it then and I like it now. The gossip isn’t as good as on my driveway, but the fights are sometimes smarter.

And speaking of fights, my favorite co-host was Rosie.

Pick your side, but this clip is exactly what Barbara Walters set out to create with this show.

And who can forget Rosie’s rant against Donald Trump. (I like him, but her criticism was spot on.)

I’m not fat or gay. I’m not quite as obnoxious as Rosie. Not quite. But I like to challenge people. I’m the Rosie of my circles. Of course that’s why I love her. Or maybe it was the hair. If Trump had her stylist, everything could have been different.

I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review.

Positive Reinforcement?

I’ve gotten into a bad habit of letting the dog get on the furniture. It seemed harmless when he was younger, before he got into the habit of peeing on his own front legs. My pet has zero discipline. It’s my fault. And now it’s a problem. Case in point: I don’t watch a lot of TV, but the other night I really settled in, cocooning myself on the couch with blankets and a pillow. I kept smelling something. What was it? What’s that smell? Could it be.. Dog Ass?

That’s when I decided the dog was done relaxing himself on places I put my head.

The first day started out right. I smacked him off the couch and vowed to do so until he figured it out.

“Just make sure you give him positive reinforcement too,” my husband said.

Positive reinforcement?

[mumble, grumble] ”That’s not how I operate”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

Keep your ass off my pillow and you won’t get slapped. Positive enough?

Can Someone Please Explain Cotillion?

I sent my son to cotillion and I don’t know why. I mean it was cute and all, seeing him dressed like a little yachtsman, a miniature polititian, but what was the point? Over the course of ten weeks the kids learned some dances, which they will never use in actual social situations except for maybe at their wedding. If my prayers are answered that won’t be for at least another two decades and they’ll forget by then, right?

The culmination of cotillion was the Holly Ball. We parents dressed up and joined the kids in the gymnasium of the Boys and Girls Club. There were jackets and corsages. I’m not sure what it is we’re preparing them for. Maybe if the dances were held at a country club — if we belonged to one of those, and if it were the type that hosted formal dances and not just happy hours where surgically enhanced housewives got drunk and rationalized screwing the service guy at the Lexus dealership – maybe then it would make sense. But from where I stand, it doesn’t.

This year I had it easy. I had a boy in cotillion. That meant one outfit, week after week. If the girl wants to participate, I’m into it for eight dresses. But I don’t think she’ll bite. She’s smarter than the rest of us. One look at the panty hose and white gloves and she’ll call bullshit. God, how I love that girl.

Let’s Have Fun This Thanksgiving, Shall We?

I am not hosting Thanksgiving this year. Know what that means? It means it’s going to be awesome is what that means! I am going to eat, drink, and probably talk too much. I am going to be thankful for all the insanity. And I’m going to write it all down. The good, the bad, the hurtful and rude. Be warned.

Won’t you join me? I’m issuing a challenge–to make your Thanksgiving way more funner. This year, collect quotes. Whenever Uncle Fred or Auntie Annie spit out a racial slur, when your parents pick at your lack of ambition or your excess forearm flesh, when your inlaws inquire as to your status with child or without–write it down. Share them here in the comments to prove that every family is crazy, or just to make someone else feel better that yes, your life really is worse than theirs. Or funnier. You get to decide.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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