Dirty Harry, Friend of Mine

The other night upon returning home from some much needed girl time, I found my husband in a very good mood, an interested mood, a come hither and talk dirty to me mood. Having been married 16 years, naturally I was suspicious of this uncharacteristic attention.

“Have  you been watching Lara Croft, Tomb Raider again?” I asked.

“Nope–” he said, all deep throated and extra confident, “Clint Eastwood.”

Needless to say the boxed set is already midair on some Fedex plane. Make my day, Baby.

Things You Don’t Want to Hear on Vacation

There are a lot of things you don’t want to hear on your Mexican vacation. Here are a few of my favorites:

• We ran out of chips.
• Stop that! You want to get Javier fired?
• Go ahead, show ‘em. They don’t even have YouTube in Mexico.
• Why are the passports wet?
• You have transportation?
• Oh, he’ll be over there… sometime. Maybe tomorrow.
• I haven’t gotten up to pee all day!
• Just out of curiosity, where is my wallet?

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.

Talkin’ Smack About the Neighbors

Here in the land of suburbia, the sport of choice is competitive acquisition. The toy of year is the pergola–one of those trellisy wood things that go over the deck to look cool and kind of, sort of, block some sun. My husband has wanted to build one for years, but alas, he was beaten to the pergola by our next door neighbor. This turned out to be an advantage because, although he has suffered the Copy Cat stigma, he was able to construct his masterpiece just that much better than the neighbor’s.

We talked smack all evening about the superior nature of our decorative cross beams. Take that, Joneses.

Even the kids woke up this morning and declared, “Our pergola is WAY better than Mr. Joneses’.”

Their formal training has begun.

Be That Mom

My daughter is quite direct in expressing her needs. She once made a sign for my desk. It reads: “Be nice. Be cool. Cook good.” As a mothering mandate, it’s pretty good.

Last week was stormy in my part of the world. The seven day forecast showed dark clouds and thunderbolts on every single day. The Girl put her request in on Sunday night:

“Can you pick me up from the bus stop this week?”

“If it’s raining? Sure. I could do that.”

“Yes, Mom, you can do it. Just pretend you’re one of those [insert air quotes] caring moms.”

Feel the love?

The OTHER Thing About Sex

Yes, I know you’re getting tired of my kid’s sex-ed. But I’m not, and it’s my blog. Today the sixth grader watched “The Film” in health class.

“Yeah, the teacher finally told us that people have sex for pleasure.”

“Extreme pleasure,” I added.

“Really? Is it extremely pleasurable when you do it, Mom?”

Dialoguing in the Cube

I was fortunate a few weeks ago to land a great technical writing job working with some very smart people. It was fun to work with the best and brightest, and to be reminded of the corporate/consulting lingo I once spoke fluently. I barely hesitated when, on my first day, the partner who had hired me asked if I had been “onboarded.”

Absolutely. I’m on board. Now, where is Isaac with my daiquiri?

I Subscribe to GQ For the Articles

When I was in 8th grade I had ads from GQ Magazine taped all over my walls. Who was with me? We didn’t know all those beautiful men were gay!

<— This guy is not. At least, not when I think of him.

Johnny, I know I’ve been aloof lately. What can I say? Life gets busy. Just a heads up, though – if Sarah Palin gets the GOP nomination, I’m taking you up on that come-to-my-villa-in-France offer. But only if you stop waxing. Okay, no, that’s a lie. I’ll be there regardless.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a magazine to read.

Applying MBA Savvy to My Life

Many of my brilliant friends (and a few of the dull ones) are MBAs. They view the world differently than the rest of us–often in paradigms and matrices. Sometimes these contrived models of perception are even useful.

For example, some European genius came up this idea of order qualifiers and order winners. An order qualifier is a characteristic of a product or service that is required in order for the product/service to even be considered by a customer. An order winner is a characteristic that will win the bid or customer’s purchase. An order qualifier for a Big Mac is that it contain two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun. An order winner would be if the kid at the counter serves it quickly and with a smile.

To my family, you could learn a thing or two.

Order Qualifiers – to clarify, these are the minimum things you need to do in order to avoid my wrath:

• Picking up your crap
• Not smelling bad
• Never whining
• Leaving me alone
• Cleaning your own bathroom

Order Winners – things that will get me to stock the pantry with your favorite foods:

• Addressing me as Gorgeous, or Mother Dearest
• Keeping the dog away from me
• Foregoing the clothes you ‘need’ so that I can get my face sanded down
• Making dinner – and keep it healthy, would you?
• Programming the universal remote so that I can use it to actually change channels AND adjust the volume

A little advice from me to you. Make of it what you will.

My Belly Wrinkles are Thanks to You

The other day I was telling my family all about my friend’s belly dancing group and how great this woman looks and how fun I thought it would be to take some classes.

“I think I might take up belly dancing myself,” I told them.

My daughter looked at me with a blank stare. And it really was blank, not all snotty like it will be in a couple more years. She’s still sweet and basically approving of me. Still, she had a look.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She returned to her pancakes. Maybe she hoped the whole thing would go away.

“Not nothing. What?”

“Well,” she said, thinking longer before speaking than she usually does. “Do they even take people with wrinkly bellies?”

I smiled and laughed.

I envied her flat little belly–the one that will stay that way until she has her own little puddle of sunshine to point out that, oops, it’s not anymore. I did not tell her that my wrinkly belly has nothing to do with my age or my level of fitness or anything other than the fact that I foolishly mated with a man who is a full foot taller than me and who has an extremely large head. I did not tell this little ingrate that she and her brother each grew so large that I gained almost half my body weight carrying them around for nine months. Didn’t mention that the little suckers were so big and ill-positioned that they had to be literally cut out of my body. And that one day she too may suffer this hideous fate.

I just smiled and laughed.

My belly. Yeah, it’s a little wrinkly. You’re welcome.

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