Saturday’s Baby (and cat)

Sugar

OK, I’m going to come right out and confess it. If a nutritionist followed me around and documented what I ate for a couple of weeks, she’d tell me that my diet consists of at least 70% sugar. I also love sushi, bacon, spinach ravioli, foie gras, pork belly, and chicken. Other things, too, I love a trip to a foodie restaurant, and there’s not anything that I won’t try at least once. But what I’m talking about is my daily diet. Let’s zero in on THAT.

I start most of my days with a venti cinnamon dolce latte with whipped cream from the Bucks. I’ll restrain from looking up the nutritional information on their website, because that would ruin my enjoyment.

There is always candy in my house. Look how I said that, all coy, as if I have someone else to blame. There’s always candy in my house because I BUY it. Twix bars, Milky Ways, Kit Kats, Whoppers, Heath Bars, whatever. Now let’s address the ice cream. And Eric’s favorite Superhero ice pops. And the Klondike Bars.

Two weeks ago, the holiday mood hit me, and Eric and I consumed about 6 gallons of egg nog before we realized that we were on a treacherous road heading straight towards disaster (waddling straight towards disaster, I should say).

And oh yeah, when we drank the egg nog, we poured it over 3 scoops of vanilla ice cream. Egg nog shake, bitches!

Point is, I’m addicted to sugar. You can’t keep me from ordering dessert in a restaurant. With a coffee and Bailey’s. Bailey’s, which has, you know, sugar.

Two ways my hypothetical kid could go: One, eat all the sugar in our home and become morbidly obese by the age of 8, not to mention experiencing sugar rushes the likes of which no second grade teacher has ever encountered. Nobody wants their kid to be the one who had to be peeled off the ceiling. Or two, I’d have to put a baby gate around the kitchen. And lock my pantry. Because honestly, I am in no mood to share my sweets. -K

Nurse Jackie

Has anyone been watching this show? Eric and I just watched the whole season. Thoughts:

1) One of her kids is ten and is beginning to show signs of OCD and anxiety disorder. At TEN. She doesn’t even draw sunshines in her pictures. Sad.

2) Jackie is addicted to pain pills. Now, is this to ease the pain of her life? Her life with two kids? How did this begin? Did she need to dull her senses before the kids, or just after?

3) Being a mom is hard enough without one wackjob kid and a drug addiction. -K

Days of the Week Panties

These are a cute idea. Now I’ll tell you why they’re not.

When I was in school, the hot thing to do (proving just how demented kids are) was called “shanking”. Now, as an adult, I’ve come to know this term to mean a prison stabbing, but when I was a kid, it’s what other kids at my school called it when you’d run up behind someone and pull their pants down, leaving them standing in their undies for all to point and laugh. A wave of this behavior struck in my fifth grade year, and all sorts of precautions were taken – people stopped wearing anything elastic waisted, tightening their belts, and buying tighter jeans. The only time everyone was really vulnerable was during gym, when we all had to wear those hideous school-issued navy blue gym shorts that said “Cape Fear Academy” on one leg.

So there I was, the chubby girl in the infield of a gym class softball game, standing glumly, waiting for the next batter, wondering when I was ever going to get a tan (answer: never) and a boyfriend (answer: 11th grade). BOOM. The shanker struck. Time moved in slow motion. I was in in the middle of my classmates, some in front of me, some in back of me, standing. in. my. underwear. I heard laughter echoing in my ears, and then, “It’s FRIDAY! And she’s wearing her Wednesday panties!” I stuttered out, “N-n-n-NO! I haven’t been WEARING them since Wednesday, I just picked these up by accident. B-b-b-but, they’re CLEAN, really!!!”

It was no use. The die was cast. It was Friday. And I was wearing my Wednesday panties. I would be known for two years as Crusty.

Sigh. -K

We Just Can’t Cope

We were in Long Beach with a friend this weekend, and Eric totally walked up to a group of young kids and said, “Boo”. Ha! How mean! He asked me if he could growl at another group. I told him to behave.

Also, walking through the child’s playroom-type section to get through to the register at Ikea this weekend was total madness. I thought I was going to cry louder than those kids. The whole experience made me all itchy and worried. BIG KIDS CAN GET SCARED TOO! -K

Peace Out

I’ll be away from the computer for the next few days, check back next week, hopefully I’ll be back up and running then. In the meantime, if you don’t have a kid, do me a favor and:

Walk around your house naked

Spend the money you’d have to spend on diapers on wine

Sleep til 10am this Saturday (but get in bed, this tub does not look comfy)

Just cause you can. -K

Holy Tuition, Batman.

Check out what I read today:

A good rule of thumb is that tuition rates will increase at about twice the general inflation rate. During any 17-year period from 1958 to 2001, the average annual tuition inflation rate was between 6% and 9%, ranging from 1.2 times general inflation to 2.1 times general inflation. On average, tuition tends to increase about 8% per year. An 8% college inflation rate means that the cost of college doubles every nine years. For a baby born today, this means that college costs will be more than three times current rates when the child matriculates in college.

Which means, if you have a baby, go ahead and get that second job waiting tables at The Olive Garden NOW. -K

Read on Twitter

At a kid’s birthday party where the parents served carrot cake instead of real cake. Seriously, if you don’t love your kids, don’t show it. -lukeinvan

Uh Oh.

Saturday’s Baby

Becky sent me this pic of her adorable baby. Of course, everyone knows that I much prefer children when they’re sleeping, so points scored there. Is it just me or does this kid have a wee too many toys hanging from the car seat? It’s like a carwash with toys instead of swishy flaps. What happens if the kid wakes up and completely freaks out because there are brightly colored animals attacking its face? I want video. -K

Bathroom Etiquette

I was reading an article about weird things that toddlers do, and #8 on the list was that they often throw toys, household objects, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, and whatever else they can get their little grubby hands into the toilet. Something about toilet training making them fascinated with the ole’ porcelain bowl. Dude. My idea of a good morning includes not having to fish my iPhone out of the place where Eric does his dirty business. -K

Hairstyling

It was the phrase I dreaded hearing the most when I was young…“Come here and let me fix your hair”. There is no pain quite like the pain of a mother in a hurry running a brush through tangled hair. Every little girl wants to be cute and have all sorts of hairstyles, but it would save everyone a lot of time and tears if we instituted a military-style jarhead cut for all kids. The barrette/ponytail holder/scrunchie manufacturers would have some objections, but I think it’s worth a discussion.

I didn’t realize until I got older that I could have had it worse – at least no one was putting cornrows in my hair. Good Lord, the things that black folks go through with their hair – I can not complain even a little bit compared to some of the craziness going down in those beauty parlors.

Which leads me somehow to ask, have I ever told you about My Most Embarrassing Moment As A White Person? Um, so, years ago, I met Busta Rhymes, and I congratulated him on his recent win on VH1’s “Celebrity Boot Camp”. To be fair, I had only briefly seen a commercial for it in passing, I should have just kept my mouth shut unless I had actually watched the show and knew what I was talking about, because yes, oh, dear, sweet, Jesus, forgive me, Busta Rhymes was not on that show, it was Coolio.

I can’t believe I just admitted that to the internet. Someone else better share an embarrassing story in the comments. -K

Pink Eye

I have pink eye. Health is such a funny thing. Well, not funny ha-ha, but more funny like dude, humans are weird in that we tend to take all parts of our body for granted until there’s something wrong with them. You don’t appreciate how great it is to breathe until you get asthma or break a rib. You don’t appreciate walking until you have to use crutches. And I didn’t appreciate the glory of healthy eyes until I got pink eye. I can’t put my contacts in, I keep tearing up, it itches but I’m not supposed to scratch it, and blinking is painful. Also, I’ve heard that I have to throw away my eye makeup!? What? I dunnooo.

The thing about pink eye is that it’s contagious, so, if I had a kid, they’d have it too and then I’d have to listen to someone else whine. -K

Less dirty clothes

I’ve been going to the same dry cleaners, Sunny Cleaners, for eight years, despite the fact that we moved away from her location in Hollywood four years ago. For three years I would truck on over from Beverly Hills to see my cheerful Sunny, a lovely Chinese woman, and now I make the trek from downtown. Being a small town girl living in LA, I enjoy the comfortable feeling of walking into a place where they know my name and seem happy to see me (she always yells “Mulphy!” as I walk in the door, it’s like an Asian Cheers).

Feeling familiar is a hard thing to achieve in LA. I’ve been living downtown since March and the people at my neighborhood Starbuck’s still don’t know even my drink order. When we were filming in Georgia, it took about a week before they started making my coffee as I walked in the door. I’m not saying the South is perfect, but when it comes to friendly customer service, they’ve got LA beat in a major way.

So, I was chillin’ at Sunny’s this weekend as her employees scurried around collecting all of our clothes for pickup, and Sunny says to me, “You and your husband, you married long time now.” I smiled and said, “Yes, five years, and living together for ten, so we are definitely old and boring”, thinking that she was going to congratulate me for being in a long term relationship in a day and age where they are such a rarity. Nope. She said, “You have baby NOW!”, like an order, like a direct command, as if what she really wanted was for me to squat down and go into labor right then and there.

Anonymity. Maybe I’ll reconsider its perks. -K

Cutest Cousins

Here’s my cousin, Sarah Grace, as a jack-o-lantern (being escorted by her folks Christi and Jack):

Here’s Eric’s cousin, Isaac, the Panda Bear:

And here is Kaylee the Princess and Tristen the Cars Pit Crew Dude:

Who needs kids when you’ve got such adorable relatives? -K