No Licensed Characters Ever! (Said I, Before Having Children)

This morning, Thalia picked up the phone on the nightstand and started dialing.

"Who are you calling, Sweetie?"

"Big Bird."

"Big Bird? That's who's on the phone?"

"Elmo."

"Oh, you're calling Elmo? I bet he'll love that."

"Tinky"

"You're calling Tinky Winky now?"

"Dipsy"

"Wow, that's a lot of people you're calling. You're very popular."

"Zoe."

"Oh, Zoe too? And what do you want to say to Zoe when she answers the phone?"

(Long pause)

"Hey, Bert."

Second Annual Monday Morning Oscar Wrap -Up

Yes, I'm the 6,459,875th person to weigh in here. But what else is a blog if not an opportunity for everyone with an opinion to disseminate it amongst the masses? And so, back by popular demand (i.e. one person asking me if I'd do this again), I present the awards I wish they'd given out last night:

Best guest appearance by a humanoid award – Nicole Kidman who traveled all the way from the planet Botoxo.

Best use of dead animals as a cosmetic - Kirsten Dunst whose lips came courtesy of the blood of some roadkill snatched off the 110 on the way to the show

Most overlooked agent – E! Preshow host Ryan Seacrests’ agent who should have been thanked more profoundly than any other.

It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp tribute award- Ellen Degeneres. While I’m of the belief that she should wear what makes her comfortable, a maroon velour suit by Juicy Couture couldn’t have been the only option. At least she could have accesorized with a white fedora to match the shoes and worked the theme.

Most likely to find a cure for narcolepsy - The producers who decided to put all the technical awards up front this year and make us wait two hours for awards important enough that the winners don't get their speeches cut off by the orchestra after four seconds.

Biggest letdown – Naomi Watts, pregnant, glowing and spectacularly gorgeous. Thanks for selling us all out, beeeeeyatch.

The if it looks like a duck and has a mouth like a duck but dresses like an ostrich it must be Penelope Cruz award – Penelope Cruz.

Most surprising cameo – Captain Kirk's jacket, around the shoulders of Jennifer Hudson.

Least surprising loss - Eddie Murphy. Dude, you can't drive past a Norbit poster on the way to the Oscars and really expect that the academy is ready to take you seriously as an actor, right?

Most likely to get legions of anorexic girls to hit the nearest Mickey D's – Debi Matenopolous' preshow quip about not eating. It’s about time the skin 'n bones set had a totally unappealing spokesperson at its helm.

Best writing: George Clooney's line: “I was just drinking backstage with Nicholson and Gore...I don’t think he’s running for President.”

Best writing, runner up: Ellen Degeneres' introduction of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as "People Magazine's sexiest man in America to play Truman Capote."

Cruelest message board discussion - Speculations about 7 year old Jaden Smith's mental abilities after stumbling over the teleprompter script. I chalk it up to age. And being blinded by the shine off Nicholson's head.

Most likely to have the nursery decorated upon conception - J Lo, already sporting some rockin' maternity duds.

Most disturbing mental image of the night – Ryan Seacrest asking whether Helen Mirren "has a dirty side.”

Most disappointing loss: Robert Altman, RIP

Most long-awaited acceptance speech – Al Gore's. Hopefully the directors of Jesus Camp won't demand a recount.

The Final Word on Hipster Parenting. (Oh, Who am I Kidding.)

I want so very much to let this topic die. It's been analyzed to death by far more astute bloggers than I.

But then David Brooks had to go and cover it in his NYT Column today, Mosh Pit Meets Sandbox (Times Select subscribers can check it out in full online). Apparently it's a slow week for Republican talking points about our glorious successes in Iraq.

Mr. Brooks goes on to express that hipster parents are bad. Pastel clothing is good. "Inevitable" hummus snacks are bad. Ironic tees with statements like my mom's blog is better than your mom's blog make our children "ludicrous." And evidently Mr. and Mrs. Woods should do penance for naming their son Elijah, as it's one of the names the columnist deems "abusively pretentious."

"I'm not against this indie/alternative lifestyle," he writes, pseudo-apologetically before going on to rip into it. Apparently he is okay with "this indie/alternative lifestyle" provided he can dictate exactly what it entails.

Come out with your hands up and step away from the tahini.

So yes, I've tried to avoid the subject up until now. But there's something about seeing a 50-something Republican pundit in a pink tie telling me the do's and dont's of appropriate infantwear and child-naming that compels me to respond.

Is it possible, for goodness sake, that generations evolve? That they do things differently than the parents before them? They use their children to mirror their own values and ideals? Just a stab in the dark here, but is it possible that parents today, more cynical, more media-savvy, more independent than those who came before them, are simply behaving as parents they way they behave as people? And, call me crazy but, the fact that someone like Mr. Brooks is uncomfortable with it all, isn't that one of the defining characteristics of a counterculture in the first place?

David Brooks' generation of parents played their children the Beatles music they liked. And now that we play our children the music that we enjoy, we're being challenged to grow up and stop behaving like children ourselves.

Hm.

The funny thing is, I'm not a hipster parent by any stretch. I may be cool by Tallahassee standards--giving the Midwest a break here--but as Nate will assure you, I'm hopelessly establishment. Anyone who's ever seen me dance in the last fifteen years will agree. I think I'm more like most parents, making parenting choices piecemeal from various and often contradictory places. We have been both co-sleepers and heavy TV watchers. We are devoted to organic milk but not above transfat-laden french fries. We play Belle & Sebastian and we play Elmo Sings the ABC's. We own the Black Boot Booties (shown at top, courtesy of the awesome Mahar Dry Goods) because they're hilarious. Not because we're trying to stay "one step ahead of the Cool Police."

So I'd hate to think that when I hit the streets of Brooklyn (who knew we were making such a hipster move when we got there; and here I was thinking we had simply gotten priced out of Manhattan) with my new baby in her Doc Maarten booties, that it will lead David Brooks and his ilk to leap to make value judgments about me. Especially when those value judgments are that I'm self-absorbed, emotionally stunted, and unfit to breed. Or, as it was expressed in the column: "Parents who refuse to face that their days of chaotic, unscheduled moshing are over."

Oh, how I mourn my days of unscheduled moshing, truly I do. Why, an impromptu mosh would really hit the spot right now. You got me there, David.

It's actually funny when you think about all the criticism leveled at some of the Babble columnists and bloggers I love over the past couple of weeks. Your kid wears a Ramones tee? Hipster parents! Selfish parents! Consumerist parents! Kid sits in a Bugaboo? Spoiled kid! Kid with no values! Kid with no future! Because as we all know, no one who was raised with any kind of worldly possessions whatsoever ever grew up to contribute anything of value to the world. Face it, if you're not living in squalor, or at least pushing your kid in a Goodwill-rejected stroller salvaged from a Newark street corner on a Sunday morning, you might as well give back your ACLU card, you fraud.

And yet, last I heard, knowing all the lyrics to Blitzkrieg Bop hasn't been scientifically correlated to the level of commitment you have to your children's health and well-being.

The way I see it, it's all just one more non-issue in the media--one more working mom versus SAHM, one more cocktail playdate, one more breast versus bottle--to force us to question our parenting skills.

Don't do it.

You're all better than that.

The Third Trimester Spread

Today I hit week 30.

The only image in my head this past week, as I've literally felt my belly stretching, was one of those gro-sponge animals you find in your Christmas stocking. I could feel the changes taxing my waistbands and pushing my skin to new limits. The hips widened, the waist broadened, the and the expansion went just as north-south as it did, east-west, if you get my drift. Let's just say mama got back.

It sucks. Big time.

The clothes I packed two weeks ago are not fitting the same way. Slimming oxfords now look boxy and short, and long tees protrude in the back like a bustle on an 18th century ballgown. If my breasts enter the room 5 minutes before the rest of me, then my ass leaves 20 minutes after I'm gone.

But oh, how the memory of it lingers.

I want to be one of those confident, cool in my own body women. One of those women who can grab handfuls of my own fat and stroke my cellulite while purring, Pretty! Womanly! The type who thinks all pregnant women glow with radiant beauty, and that stretch marks are just kisses from God's favorite puppies. But instead I'm the woman that can't stop doing ass checks of every woman I pass on the street. In fact, if I have spent any time with you in the last few months, then yes, I have thoroughly examined your ass and deemed it superior to my own. Yes, that goes for you and you and you too, Missy.

It kills me to have spent last weekend in the Babystyle dressing room, nearly tearing the too-tight XLs to get them off of me, all while listening to a perky young thing in the next room oohing and aahing over how absolutely adooooorable every piece is and she just can't choose between them.

Meanwhile - white! She was buying white maternity clothes!

The nerve.

I can't look at my huge body and say it's beautiful. I don't think it is and I'm sorry for whatever first-wave feminist sensibility that may offend, or whichever whiny Gen X parent blogger I might sound like. Perhaps what my body is doing is beautiful with all this baby-making business, but that's an important distinction.

Lord knows I want to grab me a big honkin' swig of that Dove Kool-Aid, so I can see real beauty in real shapes, above all my own. But here's the funny thing: I don't think I should have to.

Instead what I wish is that we--I--could stop caring so much about physical beauty altogether, and start valuing whatever it is that comes after beauty in life. Maturity? Wisdom? Lower car insurance rates? Perhaps it's time to acknowledge that perky boobs and an enviable rear silhouette are best left to the 20-somethings. Those of us in our 30s and beyond, we've got far superior things to offer the world. We're in possession of traits that matter more than peachy skin and taut, toned arms that don't ripple in a gentle breeze. I am older and not quite hot but still fairly cool woman with a decent sense of self and profound love of my child. Hear me roar.

But it's hard when you're seated in a leather chair at work, terrified to stand up, for fear that someone will snap a photo of the indent from your ass cheeks and email it around the office.

The Vagina Dialogues

The other night, I was putting lotion on Thalia during a diaper change when she grabbed her genitals and said, "butt!"

"No, honey," I corrected. "That's your vagina."

Cough.

Gulp.

Eep.

Deep breath in...

Exhale.

Phew.

It was hard. Harder than I thought. Which makes no sense at all, if you know me. I was raised with an open, liberal, communicative mom, the kind who said vagina and penis the way other moms might say peanut butter and jelly. All things reproductive and anatomical were discussed in our home with acute candor; let's just say my mother felt absolutely no hesitation in handing ob tampons out at my eighth birthday party so that my friends could dunk them in water and see what happens.

(Okay, there's a little more to the story than that--as a weird pre-adolescent tradition, we used to hand the giggling birthday girl a tampon under the table, freshly purchased from the vending machine in the ladies' room at the Ground Round. My mother's response, upon seeing that faded mint-green box in my hands at the restaurant was, why pay for a quarter for it when we have them free at home?)

I am the type of woman who can sit in a business meeting and blurt out, "Ow! The baby's kicking my cervix!" And while my coworkers (and Fun Mike in particular) may blush, I do not.

So why was disgorging that word from my lips so hard? And why did I wait a whole 19.5 months to get a move-on in the arena of naming the girl bits in the first place? Whatever the reason, I'm trying to get past it, pronto, because I don't think there's an up side to my discomfort with it, however small and however inadvertent it might be.

Here's a start:

VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA.

See the lengths to which I'll go for my kid?

Yes, I could call it kitty or whatever parents are calling such things these days. It might even be more comfortable for me at first. But I just don't know what good can come of euphemisms exactly. Does calling the play The Hooha Monologues somehow make a vagina less...I don't know. Real? I just imagine all these church lady types sticking their fingers in their ears, squeezing their eyes real tight and squealing, "make it go away! Make it go away!" As if denying the word long enough might somehow lead their actual vaginas to mercifully cease existing as well.

How do we instill in our daughters that a vagina is nothing to be ashamed about, if we're ashamed to even say the word in the first place? Don't girls have a hard enough time with their bodies as it is?

Then, right as this whole topic was unfolding in my mind, a new story cropped up, one that gives me some hope in a backwards logic sort of way.

For it seems that this pattern of censorship and semantic substitution is not some sort of anti-female conspiracy at all, but an equal opportunity witch hunt against all medically correct descriptions of body parts, both male and female.

Apparently ten year-olds should not read books, even Newbery award-winning books like The Higher Power of Lucky, that mention, in an entirely appropriate context, such things as...

(Church ladies feel free to click elsewhere now. Right now! This very minute!)

scrotums.

Better to call them balls, I say.

Apparently the heroine of the book, a ten year-old girl, wonders what it means when she overhears that a dog was bit in the scrotum by a snake.

Collective gasps ensue.

What exactly is the hangup here? Yours? Mine? That of the librarian quoted in the Times article who said, "I don't think [I] want to do that vocabulary lesson" in explaining why her library won't be carrying the book?

Are we afraid that there's something inherently adult about having anything beyond a "pee pee hole" or a "dingdong?" Are we nervous that if children know the real word for their organs that they'll put them to use in nefarious ways? Or is it really about us and not our kids at all, an underlying fear that we'll be kicked out of the Junior League if suddenly word gets out that little Olivia blurted out PENIS during a hot game of Ring-Around-the-Rosie at playgroup.

Let's also remember that in the case of the book, it's a dog we're talking about here. A dog. And a dog's scrotum, as we all know, is not exactly tucked into his BVDs out of the sight of impressionable children.

"I don't want to do that vocabulary lesson."

Because...

why again?

I don't know.

And so, starting now, we're going to talk about vaginas more often in our house. Maybe not at the dinner table when the great-grandmother comes to visit, but when it's appropriate. If I feel myself deliberately avoiding the word, that's exactly when I'll know it's time to bring it up. Down the road a bit, Thalia will even be able to understand the distinction between the inner parts and the outer parts. But for now she can hardly distinguish her back from her shoulders, so it makes sense to me that we're starting with a single world.

(Also down the road, though probably not quite so far down, I will have to figure out a better word than "butt" for her butt. There are some things that daddy the comedian teaches Thalia when mommy is at work, and sometimes mommy has to undo them. )

In the end, I just want a daughter who's proud of what she's got, and confident enough to name it when the need arises. I don't want her having to call it a hooha or a chacha or a vajoogee or a Coocooloocoo McGillicuddy.

At least until she has her own blog and needs to work it for laughs.

Cops: Marina Del Rey

A shrieking, sobbing, bruised woman running out of her apartment in her underwear.

A cop drawing a 9mm and screaming at three suspects to "get on the fucking ground before I blow your fucking brains out."

Squad cars, ambulances, fire trucks.

Neighbors hanging off terraces and outer stairwells, whispering about the guy in 210 who was beating the crap out of his girlfriend before barricading himself in his apartment.

The three suspects uncuffed, photographing their bruised wrists on camera phones, taking officers' business cards and witnesses' phone numbers, while remarking that as black men, this kind of thing happens around here every single day.

The real perp being carted out of his apartment, unconscious, strapped to a gurney, blood seeping from a head wound through a thick white bandage--

All in the courtyard beneath our 2nd floor terrace.

And yet the only image I keep replaying in my head is that gun in the air, not 20 feet from where my daughter lay sleeping.

We spend so much time as parents worrying about sugar, about TV watching, about Bratz dolls and bedtimes and things that are really so fucking insignificant in the greater scheme of hell that this world too often forces us to confront. Maybe we do because it's too scary to think about those other things, the ones we can't control.

Hug your kids.

Forgive Me New Yorkers, For I Have Sinned

This morning, a glorious, sunny 75 degree morning with not a cloud to be seen, I headed out to get bagels.

Three blocks away.

In my car.

I'm sorry, my Big Apple brethren. After just two weeks in LA, I have gone to the dark side.

However I can assure you that I am still fighting the good fight in complaining about the quality of said bagels every chance I get. Also, pointing out to anyone who will listen that flavors like Pesto Tomato and Cheddar Jalapeno are entirely inappropriate.

I See Famous People

In both New York and Los Angeles, you can't swing a cat without hitting a celeb. The difference is, in LA they're actually aiming.

LA is more than a celebrity-oriented culture. Celebrity is the culture.

(And this is not leading to a dig on the lack of culture here. Yes, I know there's the Getty. Blah blah blah. Tell me one more time, LA, how you have the Getty so I can do the happy culture dance for you.)

Come to think of it, celebrity here is more than culture, it's currency. You can't just golf, you have to golf at Jay Leno's Club. You shop at Gwen Stefani's Trader Joes, work out at Peter Gallagher's gym, make reservations at DeNiro's new restaurant and probably have your aura cleansed by Suzanne Somer's freaking aura cleanser. Your kids go to Annie Lennox's kids' school, play soccer around the corner from Debi Mazar's house, and if you call early enough in the week, you can probably get Cameron Crowe's nanny to sit on Saturday night.

When I first let on that I was planning on moving here, I got an OB-GYN reco from a friend that was supported not by the doctor's hospital affiliation or thriving practice, but the fact that her patients include Juliana Margulise and Barbra Streisand.

Well!

If she's good enough for Babs' vagina, certainly my own D-list hoo-hah will be satisfied at my next pap smear.

Is it possible that even the doctor's offices in LA display rows of faded, autographed headshots?

To be fair, it's not like New Yorkers are entirely above the guess who I know/saw/split a cab with in a snowstorm game. There isn't a downtown mom who doesn't have her Uma at the Bleecker Street playground story, or her I peed next to Liv Tyler in the bathroom at Bliss story (that would be me). We're certainly not shy about relating our celebrity sightings, or participating in the occasional shameless cocktail party name dropping one-upmanship; I'm plenty guilty myself. However I do think that we have enough confidence in our choice of supermarkets, thankyouverymuch, without having to add that Paul Giamatti buys his arugula there too.

One of my favorite LA-celeb-meets-NY-nonchalance stories took place at Balthazar, an A-lister dining mecca in Soho (and Nate's former employer, fabulous table-waiting god that he was) where I was once cool enough to actually be allowed to eat. Or at least push a goat cheese salad around on my plate while fondling a glass of Riesling. One night I was there with a friend when I spotted an acquaintance across the room. I ran over to the other side of the restaurant to say hi. When I got back to our table, my friend was practically choking on her steak frites with laughter.

"What's going on?" I asked her. "What happened?"

"Well right there," she said, pointing in the direction I had just come from, "is Sylvester Stallone."

Sure enough, there he was at a six-top. Little guy. Lots of hair product.

"He saw you walking towards him, all excited, and gave his entire entourage the biiiiig eye roll. As if to say, oh no, here comes a fan. He straightened up, turned to face you, assumed the fan-greeting position...and then you walked right on past him without so much as a nod."

That's me in New York for ya.

Me in LA? Different story entirely.

For some reason I become far more of a overt gawker/brazen fan/annoying sycophant when I'm on the West Coast. I don't know if the constant sunshine somehow melts my cynicism, or whether I'm just fitting in.

It's not as if I would run up to Jerry Seinfeld while he's trying to eat his lobster bisque and and attempt to pitch a comic remake of Sophie's Choice, or yell, "HEY, YOU'RE JERRY SEINFELD! SAY MULVA FOR ME!" But still, when I'm in LA, I want to see some damn famous people.

Last week I went to Lunafest's very cool short film festival accompanied by world-renown hipster parent, Rebecca Woolf (who, by the way, might be too cool for preschool, but evidently not to hang out with the likes of me). In New York my vibe would have definitely been "don't look now, but there's Amy Brenneman behind you..." while examining my shoes. But here? I found myself digging frantically into my bag for my camera and snapping photos of her while she posed for the paparazzi. Rebecca was kind enough to ignore my indiscretion, even after I made fun of her for getting seconds on the tofu on a stick that passes for hors d'oevres 'round these parts.

(Where's the pigs in blankets? Where's the cheese puffs? Come on LA, get with it!)

Faaaaaaamous blogger Rebecca, aka Girl's Gone Child, aka Babble pinup girl, who can get a table at the Ivy on a Saturday night simply by flashing her son.

Amy Brenneman working the green carpet as faaaaaamous bloggers avoid the limelight by sneaking around the back behind the posters.

I even mentally calculated the celeb-to-mere-mortal ratio to determine exactly how place to be the Paramount screening room was at that particular moment. The math turned out to be relatively easy considering "co-hosts" Brooke Shields and Laura Dern were no-shows. The answer was about 300:1. Possibly 300:2--there was one guy there who definitely looked like the kind of guy who could be someone.

So of course I was lured into a primo PR opportunity this week by CBS and Warner Brothers, with the promise of one-on-one celebrity encounters dangled in front of me like loaner Harry Winston diamonds before the Oscars. Shiny! Pretty!

And what diamonds they were - Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Wanda Sykes, Clark Gregg, and indeed the whole cast of The New Adventures of Old Christine.

Which I of coursed called the Old Adventures of New Christine pretty much every time I said it.

Sanctimommies hit prime time television.

It was pretty cool that big old CBS decided to reach out to little old bloggers to spread the word about a prime time sitcom. I was honored to be invited among women I was actually excited to meet - the hilarious Yvonne who had me laughing through the whole event, and not just because she confessed to the cast that she passes gas when she's nervous; Amy and Dawn from Mommytrack'd who are great friends of Cool Mom Picks and we, great admirers of theirs; the Manic Mommies podcasters who really aren't all that manic, in a good way; the wonderful bloggers behind Everyday Goddess, Self-Made Mom, The Soccer Mom Vote, House of Prince (one more pregnant chick in the bunch!), the Mommyblog; and finally Tim from LA Daddy who introduced himself to the group as Susan, of Mommy Has a Secret. I don't know if anyone else got it, but from that alone, he should have been on that set writing, not visiting.

Yvonne, flashing the universal symbol for,
"yes I was able to control my nervous flatulence."

We all had one thing in common: We were basically the only ones in the room who knew what a blog was.

Oh, the very special joys of interviewing a panel of actors you adore who have no idea who you are or what you're doing there. Me, celebrity. You, some kind of internet person with bad hair.

The truth is, I knew some of the performers about as well as they knew me, which did even the playing field a tad. Before CBS contacted me, I had seen a single episode of the show. After they sent me a few DVDs, I'd seen a couple more.

You know what? It's funny. And I'm not just saying that because I got the opportunity to pee on Stage 5 of the Warner Brothers lot in the very toilet where Julia Louis-Dreyfus might also pee between takes.

The exceptionally appointed bathroom of Stage 5.
"Celebrities: They expel bodily fluids just like us!"

I love that the show was created by Kari Linzer, an phenomenally smart and accomplished working mother, even more impressive considering the Tailhook-like gauntlet she must have walked to get there. And I like that the main character of Old Christine is a career mom herself, and an imperfect one at that. (Know any of those?) In fact, when one of the bloggers mentioned the increase of working mothers portrayed on TV, Kari challenged us to name one.

Nothing.

"Medium," Wanda Sykes finally offered. "But she's crazy."

Which leads me to the embarrassing moment of celebrity adoration you've all been waiting for.

(Drumroll?)

After telling Wanda in front of everyone--oh, and on camera, to boot--that I thought she was one of the funniest women in [sic] the face of the planet (I'm sure Julia loved that) I chatted with her for a brief moment after the panel and told her that her boobs looked fabulous.

They did. There were all hoisted up and bolstered together and just bouncy and full and totally cleavalicious. Fabulous.

Then I told her I wanted to write for her one day. Actually, worse, I think the words I used were, "I will write for you one day."

No sooner did the words escape my lips then I planned a direct route back to the bathroom, where I would put my head in the toilet bowl and keep it planted there until everyone cleared the stage for the evening 6 or 7 hours later so I could sneak out the back unnoticed by all but the security guard who would take pity on the sobbing pregnant woman and give me a golf cart ride back to my car and a bag of peanut m&ms.

Fortunately, Wanda was gracious. I think her actual answer was, "well okay."

Then she added, "What's your blog called again?"

And she smiled.

So that's not all bad.

Plus, she said blog. Maybe for the first time ever.

I had a much more normal conversation with Tricia O'Kelley and Alex Kapp Horner, who play the scene-stealing Mean Mommies on the show. They just reminds me of friends of mine, actresses who are totally cool normal people who finally get a big break then keep pinching themselves that they get to go to work every day and get paid to do what they love. Also? Hilarious. If Alex blogged she'd put us all to shame. I've decided right then we should be best friends when I move out here. I will braid her hair and give her pedicures and she will ply me with Groundlings gossip.

The funny thing is, after all the anxiety, all the nervous anticipation, the fumbling for interview questions, the sweaty-palmed handshakes, the trembling in the presence of comedic legends and bona fide network stars, the highlight of the whole day was pretty clear.

It was spending time with the writers I love.

I suppose that doesn't bode well for my future as a celebrity stalker.

I'm Not Ready. (Is Anyone Ever?)

By 26.5 weeks gestational time, nearly 2 years ago, we had a crib ordered, bedding being custom-sewn, nursery paint selected. I had spent easily 657 hours researching bottle nipples and infant baths, which changing pad cover was the cushiest and which nursing pads left the least obtrusive outlines under your stained cotton bra. I had given Thalia a nickname, The Bean--original, I know--if not an actual name.

I had written something of a pregnancy journal for her, even if it is too embarrassingly bad to ever share. I had read to her. I had sung to her. I had squinted my eyes hard and tried to envision what she might look like based on a few fuzzy sonogram shots.

By 26.5 weeks gestational time, i.e. today, i.e. the third trimester is upon me, i.e. holy shit there is really a baby inside me and it's going to come out one day very soon and it might actually need things--

I have done nothing.

Nada.

Forget nursery colors, there's not even a nursery. I haven't researched double strollers. I haven't dusted off the breast pump.

Not only don't we have a name picked out, we haven't even discussed it.

Although I am warming up to Moxie Crimefighter Too.

We don't even have a nickname. Sorry #2, you've simply been saddled with #2. I promise to make it up to you with extra dessert one day.

I'm not sure to what degree this lack of planning is simply the standard for baby # next, or a dastardly way of avoiding thinking about the inevitable changes to come.

Try as I might, I can't picture what our life will be like with double the daughters. I want to imagine buckling them in the car for a quick run to the store (to refill my Percocet scrip, no doubt). I try to see plane rides across country, hopefully on wide-bodied jets with the rare four seats across. I attempt to envision wrangling them both into a booth at the corner diner on those Saturdays when slapping together my own grilled cheese sandwich just seems too big a burden. And then I see myself opening the paper while seated alone at the diner with both girls, picking up a pen, opening the crossword as one of them starts to fuss and...

That's when my brain screeches to a halt, pulls an illegal U into oncoming traffic and finally steadies itself with more comfortable questions like whether we're out of milk or if I'll have time to get a pedicure during the week.

Hate to use an outdated ghetto-fabulous phrase, but it's like my subconscious is waving a flattened palm in the face of my conscious and saying, Oh no girl, don't even go there.

Of course as Nate reminds me whenever I allude to panicky feelings, we're not the first ones to have spawned twice, ya know. And so I try hard to keep in mind that there are families out there with four kids. Or seven. Or single moms raising twins. They're adapting, surviving. Better - they're happy. But instead I think of these stupid exchanges that keep happening to me. A couple days ago I met a woman who stared at my belly and exclaimed, "Your kids will be HOW FAR APART? Are you CRAZY? Do you know how HARD that will be? What were you thinking! You're not going to keep working are you? Now THAT would be nuts."

Yes, she really used the word crazy. Yes, she really yelled it.

I just smiled and nodded and plotted future ways to humiliate her in public.

And then dwelled on it for the next 48 hours.

Truth be told, I am not exceptionally worried about where the new baby will sleep, what she'll wear or even what I'll scribble on the birth certificate that first morning in the hospital as I cradle her in the crook of my other arm, carefully avoiding the wound from the IV. I know that breast pump is around somewhere and if we can't dig up that infant bath, we can certainly get a new one.

I know that overall, of course everything will surely come together in the end. It always does.

But I am a little worried about why none of it has felt like a priority just yet.

Who Knows What Weirdness Lurks in the Heart of Mom101

Whatever Gingajoy wants, Gingajoy gets.

(Also, Kristen and Catherine are doing it and if they jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, by golly, so would I!)

So with no further ado, I give you six weird things about the already fairly weird Mom101.

1) I spend an absurd amount of hours thinking about totally useless things, although I think you already know that by now. (See: hair salon names) For example, I have never understood the tag line With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good. WHY? What the hell does that mean? Does Smucker's mean "good jelly" in some old Germanic dialect? Is there some sort of arcane law on the books about quality standards of pectin products starting with an S? Or is it because the name is so bad we'd better make our jelly twice as delicious?

Meanwhile, it's not even good. So I don't understand where they get off using this tag line at all.

And yes, I lose sleep over this stuff.

2)I cannot watch Wheel of Fortune. Literally. It makes me crazy. Remember the woman who had seizures upon hearing Mary Hart's voice on Entertainment Tonight? That is me with that freaking theme song. I have to leave the room if it comes on and someone insists on watching the total idiocy that is The Wheel.

Let's be honest, you are watching adults play hangman for a half hour. Hangman! It's not even fun when you play it yourself. And they always buy the damn vowels when they already know the word. What's that about?

3)I once had a small part in a low-budget film that made the NY Film Festival back in the mid-80s. (Yes it's on IMDB, but no I 'm not on there so don't even bother.) I was terrible, and so was the film. I was playing some guy's teen daughter and his girlfriend brings him home a t-shirt advertising Stiff Records that says If It Ain't Stiff, It Ain't Worth a Fuck. My big line was, "well if you don't want it, I'll take it."

The director has also dabbled in gay porn, or so I've been told.

4)I'm a huge devotee of runes. It's an old Nordic method of divination, like Tarot, only very positive. It's helped me through some tough spots. It also scared away about about six boyfriends.

5) I love the feeling of a leg wax.

6) Once I have an incorrect lyric in my head, I cannot possibly get the right words to come out ever again. To this day, if we are ever at a party together and Stayin' Alive comes on, you will hear me sing those illustrious lyrics, "We can try to understand the New York Times' old anchor man."

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Okay so maybe some of these aren't so much weird as peculiar. But I don't know you all well enough to discuss my third nipple or my taste for lamb's blood.

(Kidding. Please don't call PETA on me.)

I think I'm supposed to tag someone to do this next so...I'm thinking fellow bridge-jumpers Chase, Stefanie and Christina will have something fun to say on the subject.

He's Learning

At least this morning, when he was compelled to redo the diaper that I had so haphazardly fastened, Nate preceded his lesson with, "I'm not trying to criticize and it's not a big deal but..."

Final Score:
Fragile ego: 1
Overblown working mom insecurity: 0

Hot Stuff!

I've been feeling pretty darn good about myself this pregnancy, all things considered. It helps matters that pretty much everyone is telling me how much better I look this time around, and how my face no longer looks like an enormous omelet pan that swallowed all of my features.

I've been mentally prepared to strut my bloated stuff around LA over the next month, showing off the new overpriced maternity duds, standing tall next to the cute little skinny girls in my office, while crowing to anyone who will listen about how I feel sooooo much better than last time, how it's soooooo much easier not to overeat when you're not home and depressed on bedrest, how I'm sooooo happy to have gained sooooo much less weight.

Walkin' tall. Workin' that booty.

Last week, just before leaving town, I hit the OB for a little routine sonogram action and some orange soda pop. As I was wiggling back into the jeans, I asked the nurse, "just curious - exactly how much more did I weight at 27 weeks last time around? I'm guessing about 10, 15 more pounds, right?"

Exact. Same. Number.

Exactly.

Which means that everyone I know simply has the God-awful image of third trimester, omelet-faced me painfully seared into their memories. A third trimester omelet-faced me that is now mere weeks away from haunting my bathroom mirror once again.

Pass the Cheetos.

With a side of blue cheese dressing.

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Just a note - if you ever have the opportunity to hit a Super Bowl par-tay in el-lay, if you don't score an invite to Rebecca's, you don't know what you're missing. Roast turkey! A sandbox! Uncle Frank! Toddlers on dueling pianos! She beat me to the photo essay, mainly because I can't find my damn camera usb cord, but the gratitude is all mine.

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Hey, turns out I've been nominated for the Share the Love Blog Awards along with quite the roster of impressive bloggers, many of whom I adore myself. So it's hard to say, hey! Vote for me! But if you did I'd just be tickled. And if not...well, share the love. Vote for someone else. It's all good.

I was nominated for Best Humor (Mom101 versus Dooce - now there's a horserace), Best Writing (the overuse of semi-colons fools 'em every time), Blogger You'd Most Like to Meet (come on down! I'm in Marina Del Rey all month!) and Blog You'll Never Stop Reading (I dare you to say that again this time next year).

The only complaint - I was gunning for Best Site Design. Maybe 2008?

Midwestern Hair

I have been asked by several readers of my last post if I wouldn't mind further explaining the concept (or perhaps my concept) of Midwestern hair.

I swear, I'm not one of those New Yorkers who discusses "flyover states" without irony, or says things like, You're from Idaho! No way, do you know Bob from Ohio? But there is such a thing as Midwestern hair, even if not all Midwesterners have it. It's a fact. Just like there's a New York accent or a California tan or a Texas inclination to put minor felons to death.

Truth be told, you don't even have to be Midwestern to have Midwestern hair.

The Patron Saint of Midwestern Hair. Cue the harps.

Midwestern hair is a cut that just misses (at best). It generally incorporates style tricks from a decade or two earlier, like angled overgrown sideburns in front of the ears or a spikey top with shorter sides. Or perhaps it's just a sad helmet-looking thing that hangs there over your head as if it weren't even attached to your scalp in the first place. The word shellack comes to mind.

To say nothing of the color. The word shellack comes to mind.

Indiana hair. For real.

South Dakota hair.

Of course living on a coast does not guarantee one a spectacular haircut, I assure you. I know my own hair is hopelessly inadequate. It always has been, ever since my mid-80s Ducky 'do. Or even sooner. There's one photo in my baby album of a 3 year-old me, just out of the pool, with an opaque mess of dark unnatural looking curls parted down the center, falling into my face and covering it in spotty patches. Years later I came across the photo and asked my mother whether I was wearing her wig.

Indeed, my hair is my beauty cross to bear, which is why I work the cleavage. Much rather you look there. However since in New York we pay six times as much for a cut--or sometimes 32 times more for it--we feel entitled to act as if we look better than everyone else.

Orange County Mom Hair looks great on the over-70 set!

NYC hair. Don't look directly at it - use a mirror for your own safety.

However we do have one thing in NYC that other cities don't: Better hair salon names.

Our salon owners, for the most part, seem to save their creativity for the inside of the salon and simply use their names for the outside. But in smaller towns and cities, wow, you just can't beat the salon names.

I've always loved driving through unfamiliar places and checking out the name of beauty establishments. They are simply the best in any retail category, bar none. And because I am a total freak whose mind works in absolutely useless ways, I mentally categorize them, if not actually jotting them down somewhere.

First of all, there are the cliche names that you see absolutely everywhere: A Cut Above. Shear Elegance. Mane Expressions. Pizzazz. Foxy Lady.

Don't believe me? Google "foxy lady" and hair, and you get 124,000 hits.

Then there are the fast and loose spellings which seem to permeate this retail category like no other: Nogginz. Sassi Styles. Topp Notch Hair. Changez. Kutterz. Hairdooz. These are also the people whose children are named Madysynne and Tymythy, no doubt.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why Topp Notch Hair was chosen over Top Notch Hair. Maybe the latter was already taken?

This summer when we were driving down from Raleigh/Durham to Carolina Beach, I caught perhaps my favorite name ever: Best Little Hairhouse. It absolutely works as a pun. Do I want to go to the best little hairhouse? Why, yes! Yes I do! Other salons are not so smart about their puns. I can only imagine what hair do's and don'ts occur at the following establishments:

Scissor Happy, Lowell, AR
"Take just a little off the si...no? Um, okay."

Doc Scissors, Boise, ID
They make you wear those paper gowns.

Tangles Hair, Freemont, NC
Bring the kids!

Anything Goes for Hair, Omaha, NE
Is this a good thing?

Fanny Brice Salon, Reynoldsburg, OH
Evidently that other contemporary style icon, Ethel Merman, was already taken.

All About Nails! Columbus, NE
The first place you should think of for a cut and color.

Curl up and Dye, Logan, WV
It just gives every customer a warm fuzzy feeling.

Headgames, Madison, WI
Maybe we'll give you the cut you want...maybe not. You'll know when you take off the blindfold.

Crosshairs, Kansas City, KS
"Next victim?"

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, Lincoln, NE
A truly transformative experience

Although there is one single worst name for a salon that I uncovered this morning while searching for hair salons. I kid you not, this is an actual place, and more frightening yet, it's a chain. I saw it time and time again, in cities across America from coast to coast. I beg of you, go someplace, anyplace else. Please. For me. For the children.

It's called J.C. Penney

Okay, Getting a Little Freaked Out

Here I am in LA. Again. Only this time, I'm here for a whole month. Yes, a month. That's one month. As in, month.

Fortunately I've got Nate and Thalia with me, one of the absolute killer benefits of having a SAHD for a partner. And thanks for your concern, but no, I'm not in the same scary hotel as my stay a few weeks ago.

Actual disgusting half-eaten toast photo from post about previous hotel stay. See, I wasn't exaggerating.

This time we're in a long-term corporate apartment that's not too bad. While it does feel a little retirement community-ish and I'm totally freaked out by the wall-to-wall carpet as all New Yorkers are genetically programmed to be, it does have a gigunda swimming pool that had Thalia squeaking and jumping up and down the moment she saw it. Followed by whining and crying and sobbing the word "swimming!" over and over the moment we kept walking past it.

Swimming! In February! Outside! LA does have its advantages, even if you are forced to sell your soul to obtain them.

So Nate and I are on the couch watching Seinfeld reruns, trying desperately to stay away past 8pm PST. (Update: It's now 6:56 pm and Nate is snoring. Rats.) Our room is on the second floor, with a little concrete terrace off the window. Unfortunately, it faces the adjacent building, about 35 feet away, and looks directly at an exterior stairwell.

So here's the thing:

For the last two hours, a middle-aged woman with a midwestern haircut (sorry midwesterners), wearing jeans and a watermelon Juicy-style sweatshirt has been walking slowly up two flights of stairs reading something in her hand, then slowly down two flights of stairs. Up...and down. Up...and down.

Two hours.

Never looking up.

Any guesses?

WNBC Blogger Summit. For Bloggers. And Me.

Last night I was invited to a blogger summit (that's, "blogger summit") by WNBC in New York. These means a few things:

1. Free cheese cubes

2. Feeling like the littlest fish in a very big pond. Or smaller. More like a microbe on a zit on a goiter of the littlest fish in a very big pond. Who's eating cheese cubes.

You sort of know you're out of your league when the moderator opens by asking the 130 or so of us "Who here writes a business blog? Politics? Local news? Real estate? Tech? Sports? Gossip? Okay then! So let's begin..."

Wooden furniture making? Vegan dessert recipes? Analysis of poetry from cross-dressing heterosexuals? Apparently all above the ranks of personal blogging; to say nothing of parenting bloggers specifically. I mean hell, he didn't even mention shopping or design. And this is New York City. Shopping is our religion.

When the majority of attendeess have nametags identifying them with Gawker and Gothamist and guy who invented all the tools you blog with, they're sort of the prom kings and queens to my nerdy wallflower for the night. One woman stared at my nametag identifying me with Mom101 and Cool Mom Picks and asked what kind of blog Mom101 was. I told her. Blank stare. I said, well maybe I should just start introducing myself as Dooce, hahaha. Blank stare. Heather Armstrong? Huge blog? CNN guest? Urban dictionary entry?

Blank stare.

Man, it would have gone over huge at BlogHer.

Luckily I had the charming, hilarious and delightful Laid-off Dad by my side the whole night. Little did he know, even if he had wanted to stray more than a foot from me at any given time, he couldn't. I crazy glued our jacket sleeves together.

The point of the evening seemed to be encouraging all of us to give WNBC free stories. I'm still not entirely sure what we were promised in return. I do recall at one point hearing a guy in a suit use the phrase, "link love." Although I do give them credit for reaching out to the blogging world in a formal way like this. It's something broadcast media, particularly local news channels have been so slow to do (if at all) that it was actually fairly revolutionary if you crossed your eyes and squinted and looked at it hard.

We had access to the reporters and the producers and news directors and anchors. It was fascinating (and a bit heart-wrenching) to talk to reporter Jonathan Dienst who told me about working 9:30 to midnight five days a week while trying to carve out time for his three young kids. Or David Ushery who was so excited to talk to LOD I thought he was going to lick him at one point.

Mom101 and LOD chat up anchor David Ushery. Note delicious plate of cheese cubes in foreground

And funny enough, when I mentioned to their family and education producer that NBC's Today Show was on the lips of every parenting blogger this week, she had no idea what I was talking about. Guess cocktail playdates really are the non-issue I was hoping they would be. Sometimes it's good to spend time in a bigger pond, even if it's only for a night.

But I was happy to have been able to pitch the idea to some of the news directors that they should go beyond the political, sports, business blogs for scoop. I mean Izzy demanding her local Publix get those Maxims up high where they belong? That's a story. Badgermama's assessment of kids schilling crap for their schools? That's a story. Parental outrage over an ad on the N-spot? That's a story.

I know none of them involve arson or pedophilia or the limbs of dead prostitutes in freezers, but something tells me I could live without that garbage on the news ever again.

In summation:

Lowlight of the night: Sitting in studio 6A, aka the Conan O'Brien studio all night, waiting for the "really big surprise" we'd been promised only to find out it was not a visit from Conan O'Brien, but a hat.

Highlight of the night: Learning from one of the Gawker editors that Padma Lakshmi is allegedly a big pothead.

Which reminded me I couldn't stay for a non-alcoholic beverage with the A listers - I had to run home to watch the Top Chef finale.

Priorities.

Seriously.