Month: September 2012

Don’t Judge…He Really Deserves It

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

My husband really is a great guy, even if I sometimes find myself having to repeat those words as a mantra of sorts.I could certainly do worse than to have a husband who goes to work, pays the bills, loves the kids, and at least pretends that he should keep himself in good physical shape.

Sadly, my husband doesn’t read my blog, so he’ll never know those things. While I can freely write them for the entire internet to see, if I were to walk up and tell him how pretty close to great his is, it would just result in him getting to be too big for his britches. Gotta keep ’em humble. And a little bit afraid, but that’s another post.

His major character flaw right now, though, is that he absolutely cannot stand our little dog. His hatred of this poor little animal knows no bounds. I, too, am not this animal’s biggest fan, but (mostly as a reaction to his venom) I am on the brink of painting her nails and carrying the little thing around in a Kenneth Cole handbag.

The dog’s greatest flaw is her constant need to use our entire house as her personal toilet, something that my germaphobe husband cannot live through. (I forgot to mention that he’s a germaphobe…it’s Hill. Air.Eee.Us). Whenever the dog has a tinkle moment (if you carry the dog in a purse, you have to refer to it as tinkling), my husband gets on the floor with eight chemicals and a portable carpet shampooer and begins scrubbing at the spot like Lady MacBeth on crack.

So here’s the fun part: I’ve been going through the house for the past month spilling shot glass-sized puddles of water on the floors. I’ll give you a dollar if you don’t tell him.

It’s absolutely hysterical to see him calmly walk into a room, stop, turn, peer closely at the tell-tale spot on floor, dab it with his toe to see if it’s actually wet, then go positively ape-shit and start gathering his supplies. He drops to the floor cussing under his breath and scrubs violently for about ten minutes.

The best part is, I’ve also been keeping a map of where I’ve done this and I’m rotating out the spots so eventually he will have deep-cleaned the entire floor. The living room carpet should be finished by sometime next week and you can now see your reflection in the kitchen grout.

My dog is neither this smart nor this athletic.

The Memes Are Chasing Me!

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First, I cannot write a blog post about internet memes without a shout-out to my awesome friend and fellow writer, Rachel in the OC. She has been diligently educating the world on the proper pronunciation of the word “meme,” even going to great lengths and vodka-infused research on how it should be pronounced due to its Greek roots. I think the vodka might have extended the diligence and the research, but don’t tell her I said that.

So there we were, minding our own business at a cross country meet. Hundreds of high school girls with their hair in the requisite bouncy ponytails were lined up to run three miles on this really grueling, muddy, yucky course, our daughter included. Wait, I have to back up.

I have to tell you about last week’s cross country meet. Why yes, as a matter of fact, society screws over every single Saturday of your life when your child is good at sports. I digress. LAST WEEK, unbeknownst to us, our daughter stepped in a hole and twisted her ankle during the warm-up. Every time we saw her during the three-mile race, she was crying and on the brink of outright sobbing. Even for someone who was injured, it was a little bit embarrassing, mostly because we could feel the ugly stares from other parents and hear their whispers: “Those monsters shouldn’t make her do this, what kind of parents make a child cry???” Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, some of those ugly comments came from my own husband.

*IN MY DEFENSE: There were lots of girls crying during this race. Apparently, it’s just a thing they do. And none of them had seen that great baseball movie where the guy yells in her face, “There’s no crying in baseball!”

Back to yesterday’s race. I had prepared my daughter all week for the fact that it’s really not okay to cry while running, even if you’re injured. We worked out a strategy to hold back the tears: total bribery. If she made it through the race in good spirits and got close to her goal time, I would buy her these boots she’s wanted for weeks. Go ahead, judge me, then ask me if I care.

So the first time she passed us yesterday, she wasn’t exactly crying but she wasn’t looking like she was having fun. And despite the other people around us quietly applauding like this was a golf tournament, I began screaming, “BOOTS! BOOTS! BOOTS!” I’m sure the other parents thought I had entered Dora’s pet monkey in this race.

Our running child perked up a little bit when she saw us because how do you not crack a smile when a middle aged woman is screaming, “BOOOOOOOTS!” for no reason? Then I began screaming, “SMILE! You’ve got to SMILE! THIS IS FUN! WOOOOOOOOOO!” That brought on a full-fledged tooth smile for only one second before she recovered and said: (drum roll)

“I can’t smile, I’m Kristen Stewart!”

It was the proudest moment of my life. My twelve-year-old isn’t allowed to play on the internet and she’s never seen any movie starring Kristen Stewart (except for that kids’ movie she made about a board game that sent the whole family into outer space). But yet, somehow, she just knew.

Sadly, my daughter didn’t make her goal time but she did such an awesome job that I told her she could have the boots anyway. Then even more sadly, we went straight to the mall to get the boots she has dreamed about for two weeks, but they look like hooker boots and I had to tell her no. She’s getting a pair of jeans instead. Unless they look like hooker jeans.

The boots looked a lot like this. You’d better be able to run really fast if you think you can pull those off in public.

Okay, THIS One Is The Shameless Commercial

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Yup, my new book is out. It’s amazing how you go through the lengthy process of writing a book, and the whole time you’re writing you can’t be bothered to clean house or cook. “Honey, I’m writing my next book!”

Then you have to go through this whole process of editing your book, so it becomes, “Honey, I’m EDITING! I can’t make dinner, just put in a pizza.”

Then you go through the process of finding a publisher (no cooking, no cleaning, just LOOKING), then if you’re lucky enough to find a publisher after a year of not cooking or cleaning, you have to remain in daily contact with the publisher because a lot of stuff goes into the months-long process of publishing a book. “But honey, that’s my publisher on the phone…just peel back the foil before you stick that in the oven!”

Of course, now I have to market my book, which means interviews and blog tours and stuff. There’s absolutely no way I can cook or clean AND market my book.

This is where you would think my husband would just give up and start cooking all of our meals. But no, he’s nothing if not persistent and by golly does the man have hope. If living with me through the writing, editing, publishing, and marketing of four books wouldn’t teach him to just go ahead and buy himself an apron, then he’s never going to learn.

And on that note, my fourth book was published yesterday. I’m completely wiped out. The most productive thing I did today was to refill the salt shaker, and I only did that because I wanted some popcorn and it just seemed like the housewifey thing to do.

I don’t see how I can ever cook or clean AGAIN, so I do have to figure out what excuse I’m going to have now. NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, so there are story lines to plot and characters to sketch. I dug out an old manuscript that was so bad, I probably should have burned it but it might have contaminated the fireplace if I had…that thing could probably use a few rounds of editing. Then of course, there’s marketing this new book: buy my book (I make marketing look so easy).

In total seriousness, my fourth book, Knowing Autism, is available from Amazon. It’s short, cheap, and it’s way friendlier than my first autism book. It’s actually a kind of helpful hints book for all the other people out there who interact with autistic people. Sort of like the book I wish I could make people read before they were certified to hang out with my kid. I don’t think I have that authority, but I’m working on it.

Jewish Singles Need Lovin’, Too

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I can’t do anything on a normal scale. If I’m going to do anything, usually anything that is painful or mildly criminal, I’m going to throw myself completely into it face first and usually end up injured in some way.

This week, I received a garbled voicemail from some federal whatever unit of the federal whatever department OF MY BANK. There’s no better feeling than standing in your classroom holding a cell phone that you can’t talk on and seeing the voice-to-speech message that says something or other about your bank account. I had to wait two hours to figure out what happened.

I got in touch with the lovely young man from the federal something-or-other who informed me that there were fraudulent charges on my bank account. My first panic-stricken thought was, “No, those charges for three dildos and 16 pounds of asparagus are legitimate. They’re medicinal.” He asked me to verify my identity by giving him my social security number, which I COMPLETELY REFUSED TO DO BECAUSE I’M NOT STUPID.

“Ma’am, I’m calling you from your own bank. I already have your social security number. I’m just making sure you’re the real person I should be talking to. Seriously, I’m looking at every bit of personal private information you could possibly have.”

I, however, work in a jail and I’m not about to speak my blood type, let alone my social security number. We finally met in the middle. He would say the first letter or number of my address, and I would say the second, and then he would say the third, then I would say the fourth, etc. Why yes, as a matter of fact, it was my plan, why do you ask?

And it turns out there was actually one very serious fraudulent charge on my account: to J-Date, for $1.

I suddenly felt really, really bad for a lonely Jewish man who was staying up late looking for love and trying to get his overbearing mom off his back. He probably just transposed two numbers when he was typing in the info, probably from the sheer giddiness of meeting the girl of his Hebrew dreams on the internet. And besides, who steals your credit card info and charges $1 to it? If I managed to figure out how to get someone’s financial information, I’d be drunk at the beach before the payment finished processing.

I asked the very weirded-out man from the federal whatever if we could just let that charge go. He was very confused, and the more I tried to explain it to him, the more confused he got. I don’t think he’s very good at his job.

I’ve had a number of male Jewish friends over the years tell me they wore fake wedding rings just to go grab some milk at the grocery store to avoid being swarmed. My logic is, if this poor man is having to resort to meeting girls via a Jewish dating service then he either a) lives in a part of the country with zero other Jewish people or b) he’s just utterly hopeless at meeting people.

So I was all for letting the charge stand, and setting a limit of like fifty bucks. This poor man needs lovin’ and I shudder to think what will happen if J-Date rejects him because his credit card was invalid. Sadly, the bank said it doesn’t work that way, even after I strongly hinted that I could not conduct my personal financial business with an institution that was so obviously anti-Semitic. And anti-dating.

You can’t see the girls’ moms off camera telling them to stand up straighter and smile more.

List of Victims: Alphabetical or Chronological?

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

I’m in a murderous mood today. I know, you’re already wondering what member of society has a) done something heinous to me and b) is gonna die in ways that it will take the cops weeks just to figure out who it is, let alone who killed him. Sadly, I don’t have a victim in mind, I’m just being a bitch right now.

I really have had a rough week, this already being Tuesday and all, but it’s not one of those funks that you can just throw wine and barbeque sandwiches at until it goes away. It’s one of those life-is-so-unfair-I-just-wanna-die kind of funks.

And that’s what’s making it so frustrating. If there was an actual real live about-to-be-dead person who had hurt me in some way, I’d know how to handle it. Trust me, cutting the brake lines is for amateurs. But I can’t even exact revenge on someone because my grumblies is just from the general blah of life. How do you get back at life?

Since plotting revenge is always very therapeutic, I’ve started a list of ways I will hurt the next person who wrongs me. Of course, I have them categorized by how awful the offense was, how intentional it was, how far the reach of the actual crime extended, and so on. It’s quite a masterpiece. And it’s making me feel better already.

Feel free to buy me this for Christmas because it’s awesome and I like to be really organized and because it will make me not kill someone. Just don’t get your fingerprints on it in case the cops ever nab it as evidence.

Lorca’s Week In Review (Sports Edition)

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Well, that settles it. My offspring were slow runners in the family’s first-ever attempt at organized cross country running, my college football team barely got through in OVERTIME in a game that should never have made it to overtime, and I’m pretty sure people still think ping pong is an Olympic sport. I give up.

I rounded out the week by breaking a computer that I didn’t think was even more breakable, finishing the writing of my latest book (woohoo!), and drinking celebratory wine that was imported all the way from Birmingham for the occasion. Fortunately, I remembered to dye my hair BEFORE the wine this time.

I still found time to Pin funny stuff, and here’s the proof. This video is probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in years, even if I am going to burn in hell for laughing at it.

And no, angry commenters, it’s not a funny video because he’s scared or because he’s overweight, it’s funny because his aunt’s the only person in his life willing to say to the kid, “Get your butt up on that ride! NOW!”

I reviewed another grown-up-like book for my day job, and it was another one of those books that pulls you in from the very beginning. Cascade was worth every penny and every minute.

In unrelated news, I figured out today that it is almost October, which means two things: Halloween and NaBloWriMo. Only one of those things is sexy, and I’ll let you use your imagination to figure out which one it is. Have a great week!

Sometimes You Have to Kiss a Few Frogs

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , ,

Once upon a time, there was a gorgeous blogger who was just so eff-ing tired. She happened to be a princess. No, wait, a queen. Yeah, she’s a queen. A really good-looking one, one whose boobs were still perky and whose gray roots didn’t show all the time. She was awesome.

Her life was pretty tough. She had these two beautiful princess kids who were slow and untalented, but they usually sat there looking pretty and saying really nice things, so nobody minded that much.

One day, a real bitch came along and cast a spell on the queen and her whole castle. Everybody in the castle became really good at extracurricular activities. It got so bad, that at one point one of the little princesses actually had cross country practice, band practice, piano lesson, and baton lesson ALL IN THE SAME DAY.

The queen became tired. She wished she could be a frog so nobody made her drive them anywhere because it’s illegal for frogs to drive a car in forty-three states. And because she was the best queen who ever lived, her wish got granted. The End.

Don’t panic. I wasn’t really turned into a frog. That’s the frog head I made for my daughter’s Halloween costume last year during the entire month of October when I should have been sleeping, but instead realized that just laying there for four hours a night really wasn’t all that productive and was kind of self-indulgent. It still fits.

It’s a Terrible Disease with No Known Cure

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

I despise clothes shopping. It’s weird, because I have really strong memories of loving clothes shopping when I was a preteen and I also really remember my mom hating clothes shopping back then. I wonder if her hatred of shopping and my hatred of shopping are linked by the coincidental introduction of a twelve-year-old into the mix.

ME (stupid, stupid me): What about this shirt?

12YROLD: I can’t even say what’s wrong with that one.

ME (angry stupid me): Well, I can say what’s wrong with the one you’re wearing…it’s about to be on fire.

12YROLD: Ugh! Whatever.

ME (switching gears): How about these jeans?

12YROLD: They look stupid.

ME (at least I’m not the only stupid one around here, I’ve now been joined by the pants): What’s wrong with them?

12YROLD: They’re too long. I won’t be able to wear them.

ME (stupid sigh): You haven’t even tried them on, how do you know they’re too long?

12YROLD: Everything’s always too long. You know, because of my condition.

ME (back to stupid): What condition?

12YROLD: Mo-o-o-om, my condition, you know. (looks around and whispers) I have elfilepsy.

ME (nope, still stupid): What the hell are you talking about?

12YROLD: I have elfilepsy! I’ve always had it! I have to take medication and everything, and so nothing fits right.

ME (stupid laughing): oh my god did you just call it elfilepsy??? Bwahahahahaha!

12YROLD: MOM! Stop laughing! It’s very serious and I can’t believe you’re laughing at me!

ME (stupid snorting): I can’t help it! Wait, now I can’t breathe! Really, I can’t breathe! Okay, no wait, come back, I’m not laughing anymore.

12YROLD: I always knew you were mean but I can’t believe you would laugh at me for this.

ME (this will never stop being funny): I’m not laughing at you for having elfilepsy, I’m laughing at you for pronouncing it elfilepsy! And for thinking it’s a disease that makes you short!

12YROLD: What are you talking about???

ME (trying to sound not stupid while dispensing medical advice): It’s pronounced epilepsy, and it doesn’t make you short. It makes you kind of shake uncontrollably and wet your pants.

12YROLD: Oh. So how long have you had it?

ME (she’s so stupid): Watch it, missy! Anyway, really, it doesn’t make you short. And wait just a second…we’re the same height! Why would you think you have elfilepsy if you’re as tall as I am?

12YROLD: Like I said…how long have you had it?

NOTE: It’s amazing how much you can learn to love shopping after that conversation takes place. Sadly, I did actually shake uncontrollably and pee a little bit every time I remembered her telling me she had elfilepsy.

ANOTHER NOTE: Also sadly, she does actually have elfilepsy. I mean, epilepsy. I’m also really kind of embarrassed that she didn’t know what it was. We should probably eat dinner at the dining room table as a family a lot more.

EXTRA ANOTHER NOTE: Don’t bother leaving ugly comments about what a bad mom I am, because I’ll just delete them. In all seriousness, she has the really mild kind of elfilepsy that is completely controlled by her medication, so it’s really not that bad that I never told her about it and that I kept shoving pills in her all these years and she never bothered to ask why I was drugging her. I just thought we were good. It’s a short people thing.

Lorca’s Week in Review (The Cheap and Easy Video Kind)

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This week was a total wash. I caught a cold from an inmate and I barely had the energy to complete rudimentary personal hygiene tasks, let alone blog about the weirdness in my life. So here is a great video of my oldest daughter’s brilliantest idea ever: attempting a cartwheel in the hallway leading to my office. Basically, this one video kept me from having to think of anything profound to say here.

In more mature news, I reviewed a great book called No Easy Day. It was written by a member of SEAL Team Six who was there when Bin Laden was taken down. Probably the most interesting thing about it was it was completely void of any gung-ho, kill-me-a-towel-head mentality. It was honest and intense, but it carried a humility that I didn’t really expect from a military book.

On my autism blog, I told a really convoluted story about refusing to help my autistic child carry something heavy. I promise I had a good reason. (hint: it was a drum set headed for my bedroom)

On my YA blog, I explained how writers need coffee to make the whole thing work, and how editors need tea to keep them from killing us writers.

In funnier stuff, it’s amazing how I didn’t have energy to cook dinner but I managed to find the strength to waste a lot of time on Pinterest. Here you go. You’re welcome.

In other crazy blog news, all this crap happened:

My mother once said to me, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. I don’t think she had any idea it could be so bad.

Dung—A Comfort Food

The Super Spud Trilogy (yup, potatoes, and yup, three books about them)

Have a great week!

I Don’t Have to Be Good EVER Again

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That’s it. That’s all they took on day two. My bone marrow is so awesome that they don’t need more than that to save a guy. I should get a cookie-shaped medal. Made out of cookie.

Okay, so all of my greatness from the past week is over and I’m home recovering from my superiority over the rest of the human race. I’m bruised and cranky but I’m STILL basking in the feeling of smuggery over literally everyone else.

For those of you just stopping by, I donated bone marrow to a total stranger and let me tell you, it was not quite the picnic it sounds like. You might be misled into thinking it’s all free T-shirts and being fed cookies by the staff while you slowly drip into a tiny ziploc baggie, but it’s actually full of Viking-sized needles that look a lot like screwdrivers. There was a ton of pain, but I do have to admit that none of it was just because the nurses thought it would be funny to wiggle the needles around while fishing for a different vein.

I’m pretty sure I did more than my fair share of whining during the entire process, but it was mostly because it was day seven of No-Wine-Gate and we had already gone to DefCon Get-Me-A-Fucking-Drink. You can’t take away my merlot AND poke me. It’s just not right.

Now that it’s over and my super venom is at this very moment being injected into someone else, I am taking all kinds of liberties with the rest of society. I got to get on the airplane first, just because I limped up to the flight attendant and told her, “I’m really sore from donating bone marrow. Is there any way I can go ahead and get in my seat so that no one bumps my limbs?” The off-property parking people brought my car to the door of the shuttle bus because I told them, “I just donated bone marrow, and I mean, like, a lot of it, and probably more than the legal amount they were allowed to take because my guy was REALLY sick, and my legs hurt.”

I was planning to use this bone marrow excuse with the cashier at Walmart today, but I’m afraid I’d have to explain what bone marrow is and why you need it, so I’m just going to tell her that I’m a recovering heroin addict and I might go nuts if I have to stand there too long. She would probably be more familiar with that scenario.

Basically, I’m giving myself a time limit on how long I get to milk this, but since I got home last night and my husband decided to go watch high school football with his brother instead of coming to see his wife who’s been gone for three days DONATING BONE MARROW (and because he doesn’t read this blog…I’ve warned him that he really should start checking it out), I’m going to tell him it takes three more days to regain full use of my limbs and another six weeks to recover from the weakness from having my bone marrow sucked out. I don’t plan on cooking, wiping, or mopping anything for the foreseeable future.

In all total seriousness, donating bone marrow is awesome. Of course it hurts, but so does cancer. It was an incredible inconvenience that cost me a lot of time and some sick leave, but so is cancer. It did crazy things to my body, but so does cancer. Go get registered to donate by checking out NMDP.org and you’ll have your own excuse to jump in line at Starbucks.