Do You Hear Voices?

Elmo in the White House

2010-07-22T12:34:00.001-07:00

Snookums and I are big fans of that Sesame Street episode where the First Lady plants a vegetable garden with Elmo and some racially balanced toddlers. So the other day when I was trying to convince Snookums to eat her salad, I said, "Eat it all up so you can grow up big and strong like Mrs. Obama."

"Where's Mrs. Obama?" Snookums asked.

"She's in the White House," I answered.

"What's she doing?"

"She's having dinner with the President," I said.

Snookums shouted, "She's having dinner with Elmo!"

I Am A Man

2010-06-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

Recent conversation with Snookums, now 2:

Snookums: You a little baby.

Joan: No, honey, I'm all grown up. I'm a woman.

Snookums: You a man.

Joan: No, I'm not a man, honey. I'm a woman.

Snookums: YOU A MAN!!!!

Snookums' Subpeona

2009-06-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

My daughter is lovely. She is also litigious.

Shortly after I uploaded this photo to my Facebook page, a process server appeared at the door and shoved a document at me. Snookums was suing me for . . . you guessed it, invasion of privacy.

I went over to Snookums, who was very busy screwing and unscrewing the lid of a jar. "Snookums!" I said. "This is my house, my computer, you're my daughter. You have no right to privacy!"

Snookums gestured out the window at the sound of a dog barking. "Woof woof! Woof woof!" she shouted.

The atmosphere at home has grown tense. I have left the pictures up. Meanwhile, Snookums has updated her Facebook status to "It's Complicated."

So Glamorous!

2009-06-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

So tonight I was walking home from the subway, down a small side street. There was no one else on the street except for an unexceptional-looking older fellow who resembled R. Crumb.

As he walked by me, he said, "Oh gee, you're sooooooo glamorous."

I'd say his voice was dripping with sarcasm, but it was more like soaked. More like flooding with sarcasm. Like, my-living-room-ceiling-has-caved-in-and-my-upstairs-neighbor's-bathtub-is-falling-through sarcasm.

I said, "What?"

"You're just so glamorous I can't believe it," he sneered. "I guess you think I should be asking for your autograph or something. You're soooooooo glamorous."

Thanks for bringing me back to Earth, crazy man. 'Cause you know, I was feeling pretty glamorous there for a minute, in my stained trenchcoat, Payless shoes and Goodwill handbag.

Thanks for keepin' it real.

Electronic Babysitter, My Ass

2009-05-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

When I was pregnant, my feelings about kids and TV were just like every other overeducated upper-middle-class mom's: "My child isn't going to watch TV! No sirree!"

Since having Snookums, of course, I've done a total 180. Now I'm like, "Let's turn on the TV and see what's on! Then I can have five minutes to myself."

Only problem is, IT DOESN'T WORK.

Snookums will look at the screen for 30 seconds max, then she runs back into the kitchen shrieking, "Mami! Mami!" and clinging to my leg like a barnacle. Meanwhile, I'm either a) pouring a boiling pot of spaghetti into the strainer, or b) holding an electric drill in my hand as I try to childproof another knife drawer.

I've tried Sesame Street, Curious George, even those dumb Baby Einstein videos with the hand puppets. She's indifferent to all of them.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends NO TV at all for the first two years of a child's life. I remember reading that right after Snookums was born and thinking, "Oh, no! Guess I'll have to stop watching Charlie Rose while Snookums is nursing!"

Nowadays, of course, I'll watch back-to-back episodes of Boston Legal or Criminal Intent while I try to get her to go to sleep. Bring on the inappropriate language, bloody corpses, guns . . . none of it makes any difference.

Maybe full-frontal nudity? Except that would probably just make her hungry.

Happy Birthday to Me

2009-05-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

Today's my birthday. I'm . . . fortyish.

How did I "celebrate"? With 90 minutes of conference calls, a visit to the pediatrician to determine that Snookums did not have swine flu, a greasy gyro purchased on the street, and a couple of glasses of cheap red wine.

I'm not in much of a celebratory mood, seeing as I found out yesterday I'm not pregnant, despite having transferred five fertilized embryos into my aging womb 12 days ago.

Indeed, I'm downright bummed. Not to mention broke. But I'll get over it.

And until I do, I'll keep drinking this cheap wine.

Beam Knock Me Up, Scotty

2009-05-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

So I'm doing IVF now and yadda yadda yadda. (Just for the record: We did not have any help when I got pregnant with Snookums, even though I was 41 and hadn't been trying for that long. But that was two years ago, so there you go.)

This morning I had my egg retrieval, otherwise known as "Now, just get all woozy and cozy and go to sleep for a few minutes while we stick a needle up your hoo-ha and suck all your eggs out of you! Oh, and by the way, that'll be an extra $500 for the anesthesiologist on top of the $4,500 you already paid."

I'd been a little freaked out by the idea of this whole thing -- and not just the money, which was bad enough. But I kept picturing either salmon roe sushi and those deliciously salty little red circles exploding, or a spaceship with aliens with big cat-shaped eyes probing me and using my embryos to colonize Jupiter.

Anyway, they got 23 eggs. My doctor was practically clicking his heels together, so I guess that's an unusually high amount. Now I have to look forward to Zany Dad giving me painful progesterone injections in the ass for the next couple of weeks, possibly longer. And we'll do the "transfer" -- otherwise known as, "Now we'll just shoot the fertilized embryos back inside you! And by the way, the doctor's fee is $4,500, cash only!" -- on either Thursday or Saturday, depending on how busy the sperm and egg have gotten in the meantime.

I told my doctor to leave the test tube in a darkened room with some R.Kelly playing. He thought that was funny. But he didn't seem to like the joke about aliens.

Just Call Me "Octomom 2" -- Or Not

2009-04-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

As I may have mentioned, the third round of intrauterine insemination (IUI, otherwise known as Ai Yi Yi!) failed. So now we're embarking on IVF, otherwise known as creating a sister or brother for Snookums in a test tube.

My sister, who's a labor and delivery nurse, asked me how many embryos my doctor was going to "transfer" (this is a euphemism for how many fertilized eggs are they going to stick inside me).

"Oh, I don't know . . . Seven?" I said, uncertainly.

A few days later, she called me back in a panic.

"I'm really concerned about the fact that you're having seven embryos transferred," she said. "A lot of obstetricians I work with think this is totally unethical! Have you thought about the fact that you'll probably have to have a reduction?" (That's a euphemism for aborting the extra embryos so that you don't end up like Octomom.)

So the next time I saw my doctor, I asked, "How many embryos did you say you were going to transfer?"

"There's no upper limit," he said. "It depends on how well they do in the lab. For someone your age I usually transfer three or four. The most I've transferred is six, and that was for a friend of mine who's now pregnant with a singleton."

So that was a relief. But in the course of all this, I made the mistake of Googling my doctor, Mitchell Essig. Should I be upset about this clipping I found?

Enough With the Pretentious Names Already

2009-04-21T20:56:00.001-07:00

One of the most vile cultural trends I've noticed recently -- besides the use of cell phones as walkie-talkies -- is parents giving their kids Irish last names as first names.

Over the weekend, I was at a children's party thrown by the mothers' group I belong to, when I heard a father say to his son, "Hey, bro."

Now, that's casual, I thought. Then I realized he meant it literally. Not that his son was also his brother -- that would be gross -- but that his son's name was Brody, as it said on his little nametag.

Boys named Brody, Brady, Riley and Murphy. Girls named Wiley and Addison (isn't that the disease JFK had?). At the same party where I met Brody, I met a baby boy named Beckett. I have yet to meet a boy named Joyce -- but I did meet one named Killian the other day.

I say, if you're going to give your kid one of these Irish names, why not go all out? Name him or her McGillicuddy. Or O'Shaughnessy. Or Bumstead, for fook's sake!

Tax Day: Brought to You By Satan

2009-04-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

Remember how the other day I felt like this?

That changed quickly yesterday. After talking to my accountant, I felt like this:

She called to say I owed OVER TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to the IRS.

And I was even paying taxes quarterly! It turns out the handy worksheet my previous accountant -- or should I say "accountant" -- used to calculate how much tax to pay only accounted for Social Security. No federal taxes, no New Jersey taxes, no New York taxes. Boy, did he screw me.

Thank God I had the money to cover the bill in my savings account. Of course, I was hoping to use that money for other stuff -- like IVF treatments, since it's looking increasingly like the only way Snookums is going to get a sister or brother is from a test tube.

I don't know why I didn't Google the "accountant" like I do everyone else. Because if I had, I would have found this website. Dead giveaway the guy's a charlatan...

International House of Paper

2009-04-13T20:50:00.000-07:00

This is how I feel right now:

I just finished ~~filing our taxes~~ sending our paperwork to the accountant, which meant I not only had to go through a year's worth of my own paperwork, but I had to organize Zany Dad's office, which looked like it was designed by a hamster (paper piles everywhere).

In the course of doing so, I found a sweepstakes form Zany Dad had filled out to win a "handy chore tractor." ("Can you ever have too many tractors?" the form asks. "Yes, you can," I reply.) Thank God Zany Dad is so disorganized he forgot to mail in the form, because I don't think our neighbors would have appreciated a 4,000-pound tractor sitting in our tiny backyard.

The other irony is that the sweepstakes entry was made out under MY name, not his. This is because Zany Dad is a Privacy Freak. So not only did he want a tractor he'd have no use or room for in our urban neighborhood, he didn't want anyone to know it was his.

First DYHV Celebrity Sighting!

2009-04-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

I was walking up Sixth Avenue from my office today during lunch, when who did I spot sitting at an outdoor table at the Belgian restaurant on the corner? Richard Belzer, from that Law & Order spinoff, SVU or SUV or whatever it's called.

I realized as I was writing this post that the only celebrities I've seen in New York are from Law & Order: Chris Noth (whom, most remember as Mr. Big from Sex and the City, but who'll always be Det. Logan to me) and (before he died, obviously) Jerry Orbach -- also, strangely enough, at Markt, when it was in a different location.

Before Snookums was born I saw Anderson Cooper at 23rd St. and 7th Avenue. He is very, very short.

Richard Belzer was very, very tall. He's also better looking in person than on TV. Not that that's saying much.

5 Fun Activities When You're Pregnant

2009-03-31T19:24:00.000-07:00

1. Sauna. That intense heat is just soooooo relaxing for you and your unborn babe. Helps relieve those pregnancy aches and pains, too!

2. Blue cheese sampling. What mother-to-be doesn't crave dairy? And no wonder -- all that calcium helps build strong bones in the li'l fetus.

3. Dodgeball. Not just for fifth graders anymore. The jumping, running and throwing are a great stress reliever, and an excellent cardio workout to boot.

4. Whisky tasting. Haven't you always wondered what the difference is between Irish and Scottish, single malt and blend? Indulge your curiosity and find out now, before the baby comes along and you can't go out anymore.

5. Build-your-own meth lab. A fun weekend project that doesn't even take a whole weekend -- you can set up a lab in a coffee pot, even! It's that simple.

A Stroll with Snookums

2009-03-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

Joan and Snookums take a walk around their neighborhood in Jersey City. They pass a Sikh man in a turban.

Snookums (pointing at turban): Hat! Hat!

Joan: Yes, yes, sweetie, that's a hat.

They pass a gangbanger.

Snookums (pointing at gangbanger's enormous, half-laced Timberland boots): Shoe! Shoe!

Joan: Yes, that's right, that's a shoe.

Snookums (pointing at gangbanger's snarling pit bull): WOOF WOOF WOOF! WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF!

Dog goes berserk, barking its head off and straining at its leash. Joan tries to get Snookums past the dog without it managing to sink its fangs in her tender flesh. Snookums continues to bark like a maniac.

Joan (trying to distract Snookums): Look, honey, look at the bird!

Snookums (looks up): Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet!

They pass a soccer field.

Snookums: Ball! Ball! Ball! Points at passing Arab woman in headscarf pushing a stroller. Hat! Hat! HAT! HAAAAT!!!!

Joan (points to woman's baby in stroller): Look, honey, look! What's that?

Snookums (quietly): Baby. Points at baby's nose. No?

Joan: Yes, that's right, that's the baby's nose.

Snookums (points at baby's eye): Ah! Ah!

Joan: Yes, that's the baby's eye, very good.

Snookums passes gas, makes farting noise with her mouth, laughs uproariously.

The Ideal Job for Snookums

2009-03-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

When you have sex in the United States -- or anywhere, for that matter -- you might wind up having a baby. But if you're really lucky, you wind up having an elf. Which is what Snookums is, as you can clearly see from this photo.

(I always used to tell Zany Dad he reminded me of an elf -- specifically, of that elf who wanted to be a dentist, from The Year Without a Santa Claus. Little did I know that I carried the recessive gene for elfishness.)

Apparently, the entire nation of Iceland believes in elves, according to an article I just read in Vanity Fair. The Icelanders haven't been reading this blog or anything, it's just part of their cultural tradition. In fact, when Alcoa tried to open an aluminum-smelting plant there a few years ago, it had to hire an official government inspector to certify the construction site as elf-free.

I kid you not. There is a civil servant in Iceland who actually gets paid to check whether there are any elves (or "hidden people," the politically correct term) on construction sites.

This would be the perfect job for Snookums. Who better to spot an elf than a fellow elf? When she spotted one, she could point at him with her tiny, elfin finger and speak to him in Elvish, asking him to please leave so the nice Americans can smelt their aluminum.

Lose Weight by Blogging about Great Sex in New York with Celebrities!

2009-03-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

I asked my friend Lennart, who has a popular blog (at least that's what he tells me, but it's in Swedish so he could be lying), how I can get more than, say, 6 people to visit this blog. His advice?

"Write really long headlines full of buzzwords. Every time I write a post with the words 'sex in the United States' in it, I get tons of hits from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They find my blog through Google."

He also suggested I avoid topics like babies shitting in bathtubs. He would probably hate the post on farting I wrote yesterday.

In other words, Lennart thinks I should ditch my mommy-blogger demographic for the repressed-teenage-Muslim demographic. But I ask you, which has more purchasing power that will appeal to advertisers?

Okay, so I don't have any advertisers, but I hope to have at least one someday.

Tomorrow's post: Find a job by blogging about great sex in New York with celebrities!

Only 15 Months Old, and Already Making Fart Jokes

2009-03-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

I may have created a monster -- or a comedic genius.

A while back, I started a joke with Snookums where I'd make farting noises with my mouth when she passed gas. Then the other day, Snookums was perusing a baby magazine and came upon an ad for Desitin, featuring a baby's bare bum. She immediately started making farting noises with her mouth.

At first I thought she was just making the noise randomly. But a few pages later, there was another photo of a baby's behind -- and she pointed at it and started making those farting noises again.

I still can't believe she can make the connection between a noise she makes with her mouth and an image of a butt. That's a lot of abstraction.

So is it brilliance or precocious immaturity when a preverbal toddler acts like a 12-year-old, or the former President of the United States?

St. Patrick: Patron Saint of Bodily Fluids

2009-03-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a recap of my weekend:

Took Snookums yesterday to a lab where they drew blood to test her for lead exposure. (This is a routine screening.) After they were finished, her Band-Aid came off and she dripped blood all over her onesie and my (formerly) white coat.
Last night, Snookums took a huge dump in the tub while I was bathing her. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever taken a huge dump in the tub while you were bathing, or has my daughter ever come over to your house and taken a dump in your tub?
Tonight when I was getting ready for bed, I accidentally let the hem of my nightgown dangle into the toilet -- and ended up peeing all over my own nightie. Gah. So now, instead of the sexy Donna Karan nightie that zips open for easy access, I have to wear the granny gown that buttons all the way up to the neck. I look like Ma Ingalls. Zany Dad is not pleased.
Did I mention I have my period?

Finger-Lickin' Good!

2009-03-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

Mmm.... with curry dip.

And they're patriotic!

Top 5 Gifts for Pregnant Women

2009-03-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

1. Native American Spirits. Nothing steadies those preggo jitters like a puff on a cigarette, and these are made from 100% organic tobacco.

2. Sushi. It's a little-known fact that gestating women don't get nearly enough mercury. And raw fish is way more nutritious -- cooking destroys vitamins!

3. Blue cheese. Moms-to-be need calcium for two! Best to buy fromage bleu from France or some other country where they don't pasteurize it -- again, heat destroys vitamins!

4. Bourbon. Face it, pregnancy is stressful. After a long, hard day struggling up flights of stairs and standing on the subway, what expectant woman doesn't appreciate a few shots of Maker's Mark?

5. Crack. Sure, the rest of the population has moved on to meth, but knocked-up ladies appreciate the classic pick-me-up. Now available with a special pipe for women only: "LadyCrack."

Help! I Need a Decoder Ring

2009-03-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

OK, so I thought the email I got yesterday about belly buttons was ~~batshit crazy~~ unusual. Then today I got the following in my inbox (from a totally different person, btw):

Before this enlarged new assignment, I've already have a finance accounting deal with 30+ members need supervise with lots of operation initiatives, client interaction, cost and team management daily, it's my first time to work with local and global transition, solution team, and 7+ territory clients for a new 50+ team size finance accounting deal outsourcing in, I dedicated a lot and get involved from the initial plan stage ,contributed my finance accounting experience , seeking for expertise opinions globally to help transition team, clients get the new deal transitioned in , we've passed through a very hard time, for this client had never got any experice on outsourcing, they had unbeliverable high expectation and constraint project schedule requirement and changed their detail support module frequently, request for accelerated transition and go-live under technology, people and operation not ready circumstance, which made each of our project team stretched step by step to identify optinal solution to drive our way out for success with client satisfaction and our acceptable risk level, this is a great team work with resources leverage cross geography, functions.

Clearly, this person is stalking me. Trying to impress me with their tales of unbeliverable high expectation and operation not ready circumstance. Even worse, it's working! I'm succumbing to their experice and optinal solution. It's all because I used to read those bizarre ravings on bottles of Dr. Bronner's soap:

"Replace half-true Socialist-fluoride poison & tax-slavery with full-truth, work-speech-press & profitsharing Socialaction! All-One! So, help build 4 billion Hannibal wind-power plants, charging 96 billion battery-banks, powering every car-factory-farm-home-monorail & pump, watering Babylon-roof-gardens & 800 billion Israel-Milorganite fruit trees, guarded by Swiss 6000 year Universal Military Training."

At least Dr. Bronner actually wrote THREE sentences, not one.

Does Snookums Work Here?

2009-03-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

I was editing a document the other day at work and came across the term "workstreams," which I didn't understand (I edit documents written for IT consultants, so this happens at least once a sentence).

"What are workstreams?" I asked my writer, who in turn asked the person he'd interviewed. Here's her reply:

"That means they give a belly button to any action or goal so that everyone knows what their goals are."

Can anyone explain what this means? It's at points like this that I want to put my daughter on the phone with these people, so she can shout, "Ha! Shoo! Geh beh deh beh deh beh baby boo!"

The Tie Gives the Lie

2009-03-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

Seen on 6th Avenue in Chelsea the other day:

Short, middle-aged man on cell phone, talking earnestly to someone on the other end about his "credentials" and his "expertise."

Speech contradicted totally by his tie, which had giant Mickey Mice all over it, visible from 50 feet away.

Why I Haven't Been Here. Or Happy.

2009-03-05T20:51:00.000-08:00

Due to an ~~insane error~~ honest mistake on the part of Zany Dad, I did not have Internet service for a week. Then my aunt died, so I was out of town for a couple of days attending the funeral.

But one good thing came out of all this: I learned that you don't have to be a kid to order a Happy Meal!

Seriously, I always assumed that Happy Meals were for children only -- kind of like New York City playgrounds (which have signs reading, "No adults unless accompanied by a child"). But apparently, there's no age limit.

How did I not know this before? Just dumb, I guess. (My sister asked how I cheer myself up when I'm down without Happy Meals.)

At least now I won't need to bring Snookums along the next time I go to McDonald's. Unless, of course, I want to eat in the playground.

Baby Model Catfight

2009-02-22T19:32:00.000-08:00

Here, finally, is the issue of Babytalk that Snookums was photographed for.

That is not Snookums on the cover. It is an evil rival who copied Snookums' look -- ivory skin, reddish hair, almond-shaped blue eyes -- only she stuck her tongue out at the last second to win the editor's favor.

That tongue move was the baby model's equivalent of "Blue Steel."

Snookums may have no choice but to challenge little "Luna" (as the beyotch calls herself) to a "Toddle-Off."

Quotes of the Day

2009-02-19T21:35:00.000-08:00

"This drug is producing bloodless revolution in antithrombotic area." -- said by a Polish employee of the pharmaceutical company I write for. (I was told to ask him what he liked best about working for the company; I suppose it's all those bloodless revolutions the company foments, as opposed to the bloody ones that have wracked his homeland for centuries.)
"She became a bona-fide media star, a working-class Paris Hilton." -- from a New York Times article on a reality-TV star who has cancer and plans to die on camera. But how can you be "a working-class Paris Hilton"? Isn't that kind of like being "Bill Gates, only on food stamps" or "Tiger Woods, but sucky at golf"?
"Until you've eaten with a chimp and bathed with a chimp, you don't know a chimp." -- from a New York Post story on that nutjob in Connecticut whose pet chimp was shot after he ripped the face off her ~~best friend~~ -- whoops, the chimp was her best friend. The one who got her face ripped off was her best human friend.

If it weren't for Tuesday's vagina comment, I'd be calling this post "Quotes of the Week."

Something You Don't Hear Every Day

2009-02-17T19:20:00.000-08:00

"What you've got in your vagina right now is worth $20,000."

No, that's not what my husband said to me on Valentine's Day. It's what my gynecologist said to me this morning -- referring to the probe from the ultrasound machine that she had left inside me for a few seconds while she went to get some piece of equipment. (To give you some context, she prefaced this with, "Don't jump up suddenly or anything.")

It's a sentence I will probably never hear again -- unless I festoon my fa-chotch with diamonds. (thanks, Happy Hour Sue -- I think).

Or have sex with Warren Buffett.

Who's Your Daddy?

2009-02-15T21:25:00.000-08:00

Snookums was watching Sesame Street the other day, and the Count came on. You know... the Transylvanian vampire who teaches children how to count in a Bela Lugosi accent.

Snookums looked up at the screen, pointed and shouted, "Daddy! Daddy!"

It was most unusual in that normally she says, "Da-da." But she was especially careful to say the word correctly: "Da-dee." As if she didn't want there to be any confusion: This was her father.

My mother (visiting for the weekend) and I dissolved in laughter.

How to Tell If Your Therapist Has Been Paying Attention

2009-02-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

My husband went to see his shrink the other day.

"I don't want to be a paralegal anymore," he told him. "I want to change careers. I think I'd like to be a nurse."

The shrink said, "Why don't you just get a better paralegal job?"

My husband said, "Obviously, you haven't been listening to me for the last five years. As I told you before, the law can be wonderful as a mistress, but is terrible as a wife."

How to Keep Your Job During the Recession (Or Maybe Not)

2009-02-11T19:31:00.000-08:00

I had lunch today with a friend from my old job in magazine publishing. She is now editor-in-chief of her own magazine, a sister publication to the one we used to work on.

Like most other businesses, the parent company of these publications is reeling from the recession and putting pressure on the editors to slash costs as much as possible. But my friend isn't toeing the line.

She compared her own approach to dealing with management to that of Vinnie, our former boss, who's still editing the magazine we both worked on. "Vinnie's attitude is, 'I'll do anything to keep my job,'" she said. "Mine is, 'I'll do whatever I want,' because ultimately it doesn't matter." (Case in point: She was forced to fire her art director recently, even though her magazine saw a 20 percent increase in ad page sales last year.)

So, if you still have a job, here are two ways to keep it:

1) Be like Vinnie. Do whatever management asks.

Results thus far: Vinnie is now editing two other magazines besides the one he officially edits -- for no additional money. He also had to fire his longtime art director. His freelancer budget was recently slashed to zero, so he now has to rely solely on his in-house staff of three people to produce all content, which isn't possible. (I used to work there; I know.) On the other hand, Vinnie is a master of office politics and has kept his job through thick and thin over the past 15 years.

2) Be like Terri. To hell with what management wants.

Results thus far: Terri is still the editor of just one magazine, not three. (In fact, it was after she turned down the "offer" of editing the other two magazines that Vinnie ended up doing it.) However, she does write about a third of it herself, which -- if you know anything about how magazines work -- is not a good use of resources. And again, despite a banner year in ad sales, she had to fire her art director, as I mentioned above. But her freelancer budget, oddly enough, hasn't been eliminated. (I should also mention that while Terri is not as Machiavellian as Vinnie, she also knows how to play the corporate game when she has to.)

It's too soon to tell how well these two strategies will play out. Terri seems to think she'll get canned, which would be a victory for Vinnie's strategy -- albeit a Pyrrhic one, since Vinnie would just end up editing her magazine in addition to the other three. For no raise.

Stay tuned...

Office Bitch

2009-02-09T21:09:00.001-08:00

I had a call last week with the client I work with on the German project. (She is American, by the way.) I was hoping for some feedback for her on the articles I'm supposed to be writing -- something along the lines of, "This is why we're writing about X, this is the angle we want, this is the value for our readers."

Instead, she didn't bother to prepare for the call. She wasted my time for an hour, rambling on and thinking out loud about how to cover Eastern Europe in the "Country Spotlight" section. (Yes, I know Eastern Europe is not a country. This gives you an idea of how fecked ep this project is.)

"Hmmm.... Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary...." she said. "I don't really know anything about these countries. Are they near each other?"

I explained that the countries were all in the same region, they were all former Soviet satellite states, that they had certain historical/cultural traits in common, etc.

"Well, I'm looking at a map here," she said. "It looks like most of them border on each other."

(Long pause while she she thinks. She doesn't think very fast.)

"Hmmmm... Maybe they're all Muslim countries?" she suggested.

This woman is at least 10 years older than I am -- in other words, she grew up during the Cold War and was probably in her 30s when the Berlin Wall came down. How could you think Poland is a MUSLIM country? WTF???

You know what's even more enraging than the fact that such an idiot is in charge of this project? The fact that she makes six figures and drives a BMW.

Katie Couric is a Total Nitwit

2009-02-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

I just watched Katie Couric's 60 Minutes interview with the crew of that US Airways plane that landed in the Hudson River. For those of you who missed it, here's a recap:

Katie: How did you feel when you heard the engines cut out? Did you pray?

Sully: No, I left that up to the people in the back of the plane.

Katie (to flight attendant): What was going on in the cabin at that point? Were people crying? Was anyone praying?

Flight attendant: (generic, nondescript answer)

Katie: But could you talk about praying? Whether or not passengers ere praying, or if you were praying, or if there was anyone praying?

Apparently 60 Minutes is aiming not only for the geriatric demographic, but the psycho-Christian geriatric demographic.

Oh, and in other 60 Minutes news: There's this hot new band all the young whippersnappers are listening to, called Coldplay. Their music is pretty edgy and alternative, but they're a phenomenal success! Go figure! We've never heard of them before, but now you have, so you have something to talk to your grandkids about.

The Myth of German Efficiency

2009-02-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

In my day job, I work with Germans a lot. And for the most part, while perfectly pleasant to work with, they totally conform to the stereotype of being incredibly anal and hidebound.

But efficient? Not a chance. In fact, I would say they prefer to make work for themselves -- and therefore, me -- than do things in a faster, easier way.

Here's an example I wish were NOT typical. Someone I interviewed for an article said she had some emails from her colleagues supporting some of the points she'd made in our interview, and that she could send them to me. So while I was putting the article together, I emailed her requesting them.

In a couple of hours (efficient), she sent back an email containing 3 attachments. They were jpegs. Odd, I thought. But I opened them anyway. Each jpeg contained a single quote -- the promised quotes from her colleagues (not efficient).

So I opened each jpeg separately and tried selecting the text, copying it and pasting it into another document where I had all my notes for the article. This was a very cumbersome process and it took about 15 minutes to get all 3 quotes into the section where I wanted them.

Then, the next time I opened that file, they weren't there. Instead, there was some kind of error message saying they couldn't be "read."

So I started all over again, opening each jpeg individually, this time transcribing them into the document so I could be sure I didn't lose the information. So a task that normally would have taken less than a minute had wasted about a half-hour. (And this doesn't even include how much time it took to create these mysterious jpegs in the first place.)

Is it just me, or is this incredibly inefficient? Wouldn't it have been easier to just send the quotes in the body of an email?

I'm counting on the one techie who reads my blog to post a reply that will explain this.

Is Abu Ghraib Hiring?

2009-01-31T20:11:00.000-08:00

Because if they are, I know a little 13-month-old who should totally send them her résumé.

Today, Snookums subjected me to sleep deprivation, made me stand for hours (with her perched on my hip -- I'd like to see Rumsfeld do that!), and administered various forms of physical abuse, including biting, kicking, hitting, and screaming loud enough to hurt my eardrums. She also kept making me go topless.

About the only thing she didn't do was make me wear a hood and stand on a box. But there's always tomorrow.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly

2009-01-30T20:03:00.000-08:00

I met up with my friend Bob yesterday. As you can see from the photo, he has long hair. And he's one of the last guys in New York who do. The proof? He was out the other night at a heavy metal bar in Brooklyn with his girlfriend and another friend (female), and three guys tried to pick them up, thinking Bob was just one of the gals.

"Can you believe that?" he said. "Even in a heavy metal bar, I'm the only guy with long hair."

That may be true among adult men, but I've noticed more and more boys lately with shoulder-length hair -- like, practically every white boy over the age of 7. Recently, when my husband saw a photo of the two sons (ages 8 and 12) of a college friend of mine, he mistook them for girls.

I'm not sure what cultural phenomenon explains this, but I have a pretty good idea. And you can see it here.

I Am a One-Woman Laboratory

2009-01-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

I'm now on my third round of Ai Yi Yi and, because the first two tries didn't work, my doctor is getting really aggressive with the drugs. First I started taking a little pill twice a day that's supposed to make me menstruate. On the fifth day, which was yesterday, I started combining the pill with nightly injections of Lupron -- which, ironically, is used to treat symptoms of prostate cancer. (Zany Dad's father took it for this purpose.) Then, sometime after all this makes me get my period, I'll have to start the Repronex injections again -- except this time Doc wants me to take SIX vials, or double what I started out taking.

With the first two Ai Yi Yi rounds, I didn't really notice any side effects, but this time I'm kinda crabby and wondering if it's all them hormones. Or maybe it's just lack of sleep. And you know what the irony of that is? That here I am, up past midnight again, describing all the crazy things I'm doing for the chance to get pregnant again. Meanwhile, I have to get up early tomorrow to interview some doctors for an article I'm writing about some newfangled birth control pill.

Breasts Breasts Breasts!

2009-01-27T21:11:00.000-08:00

So I just read a blog about how to make people visit your blog more, which I'm desperately trying to do since NO ONE READS THIS DAMN THING. Anyway, it suggested that after you have a spike in traffic responding to a particular post, you should do a follow-up post on the same topic.

Not surprisingly, yesterday's post about breasts -- tits, ta-tas, hooters, funbags, whatever you want to call them -- got a "spike," if you can call 17 readers a "spike." So here I am, trying to think of something else to write about breasts.

Did you know Gwyneth Paltrow had a boob job? You can read about it here -- but I warn you: It's one of those annoying "Did she or didn't she?" type posts. Anyway, if she did it was for professional reasons: She goes topless in her latest movie.

And here's more news about boob jobs: They're becoming more and more common among men, at least in the UK.

Finally, here is concrete proof that I don't live in the real America: I've never heard the word "breastaurant," apparently a commonly used term for eateries in the Hooters mold, such as Twin Peaks or Bone Daddy's (neither of which I ever heard of either).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go strap some mini-vacuum cleaners to my own breasts and suck the milk out so I can freeze it and feed it to my baby at some later date.

"Without Breasts, There Is No Paradise"

2009-01-26T18:23:00.000-08:00

Last night Zany Dad was watching soccer on Spanish TV when he happened upon a telenovela.

"What a title!" he muttered.

"What?" I asked.

"Sin Senos No Hay Paraíso," he said. "Without breasts, there is no paradise."

I looked at the TV, expecting to see one of those Spanish-language variety shows where a guy dressed as a bee is surrounded by women in bikinis.

"That's weird," I said. "With that title, it should be a comedy, but it looks like a drama."

It is. Sin Senos No Hay Paraíso is a Colombian soap opera that tells the story of a girl who becomes a prostitute to get out of poverty, but has to get implants when she discovers her ta-tas aren't big enough to attract the coke dealer of her dreams.

The only thing more preposterous than that plot is the fact that NBC is apparently working on an English-language version.

I don't dare tell Snookums about this show, because she'll insist on watching it.

"We Are All of Us in the Gutter, But Some of Us Are Looking at the Stars"

2009-01-25T19:09:00.000-08:00

I was on the train the other day going to work in Manhattan, when I saw a man and a woman who somehow looked Japanese to me. (That probably sounds very un-PC, but I just had the feeling, based mostly on how they were dressed, that they were from Japan, as opposed to China, or Korea, or the Philippines, any of which would be more likely in my neighborhood.)

That impression last a split second as I got on the train. I sat down, started reading my magazine and forgot all about them.

A few minutes later, I happened to glance over at them and I saw that the woman (it was an older woman and a younger man, I assumed they were mother and son) had folded a foil gum wrapper into a tiny paper crane.

Origami. I sat there a moment and contemplated how amazing it was that she had literally transformed a piece of trash into art.

Anybody else on that train would have wadded their gum in it and thrown it on the floor.

Snookums Meets Snow

2009-01-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I bundled Snookums into the new snowsuit she got for her birthday and took her to the park to discover snow.

Snow, Snookums.

Snookums, Snow.

Pleased to meet you -- NOT!

Notwithstanding these photos, it seems Snookums and Snow didn't get along very well. This comes as no surprise, considering Snookums' strong dislike of Snow's posse -- Hat, Boots and The Ever Lovin' Glove Twins.

Even so, her cousins in Brazil will be jealous when they see these pictures. Snow to them is like palm trees to us folks from New Jersey.

This Teleconference Has Grown Tiresome

2009-01-21T21:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had a teleconference with a bunch of Germans for a newsletter I write for a pharmaceutical company (I won't tell you the name, but they're the people who invented aspirin).

While a lot of the people I work with on this newsletter are just regular folks, this team is, shall we say, VERY CHERMAN. Everything has to be done a certain way. Very, very anal.

But you know what's kinda cute? When they try to sound American while acting totally German. So "Dieter," the guy who's my boss on this project, will say, "Now, if you could do X, und zen Vy, und Z, und zen follow up wiss Drs. A, B und C, complete zis checklist und submit a sprrreadsheet, zat vood be really grrreat!"

He should have said, "I vood be as happy as a little giiiiirl."

Conspiracy Theory

2009-01-20T20:40:00.000-08:00

So you know how Cheney supposedly pulled a muscle in his back while he was moving boxes?

Here's what I think really happened: He pretended to be injured so that he didn't have to stand up while Obama took the oath of office.

Think about it: Since when does the Vice President, a guy who's had, like, EIGHT HEART ATTACKS, lift heavy boxes? Like he doesn't have other people to do it for him?

Secondly, it's just the sort of diabolically brilliant plan only Dick could come up with. Don't you agree?

I have to confess, the whole time I watched the inauguration, I kept hoping someone would push that wheelchair down the Capitol steps.

Just Do As She Says, and No One Gets Hurt

2009-01-19T18:43:00.001-08:00

Right after Snookums was born, I started calling her "The 6 pound, 5 ounce CEO." And it's only gotten more like that.

I used to laugh at parents who were controlled by their kids. How can something that weighs 100 pounds less than you boss you around? I thought.

Oh, the irony.

I am completely in the thrall of Snookums, The 18.8 Pound CEO. Whatever she says, goes. Because she wouldn't have it any other way.

Time to change her diaper? Nope. Time to flip over on her stomach. Or stand up and start dancing. Or -- if the diaper is full of crap -- to wait until I take it off, then sit down so it smears all over everything.

Time to get in the high chair? NO!!! Time to arch her back in protest and scream. And when she arches her back, there's no way, short of breaking it, I can get her to bend. (Tickling her used to work, but she got wise to that pretty fast.)

Babies don't fight fair. No Marquess of Queensbury Rules for them, no sirree! Or Robert's Rules of Order for that matter. Parliamentary procedure goes out the window as they pinch, scratch and gouge their way to victory.

Which is why, if Snookums and Mike Tyson got in a fight, Snookums would win.

Even if she lost part of her ear.

How to Perform Better at Work: Do What You Love

2009-01-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

I did an interesting interview the other day for an article I'm writing for a corporate client about Marcus Buckingham's career training programs. I'd never heard of the guy, which means I must be living on a desert island because he was on Oprah last April. But I found his ideas intriguing. Here's what I learned:

1. You'll go farther in your career by focusing on the things you enjoy doing -- and spending less time doing the tasks you hate.

In Buckingham's world, your "Strengths" aren't necessarily the things you're best at doing. They're the things you love doing, even if you're not the best at them. They're the tasks that make you feel "in the flow" while you're doing them -- energetic, as if time is passing unnoticed.

In contrast, your "Weaknesses" aren't necessarily what you're bad at. They're the tasks that drain you, that you put off doing because you don't enjoy them. You might even be good at them, but you can't stand doing them.

Most performance management systems try to get you work on your "needs improvement" areas. But if these are things you can't stand doing -- Weaknesses -- the effort it'll take you to go from bad to mediocre in those areas isn't worth it. Instead, you should focus your energy on doing what you love to do -- your Strengths -- and you'll go from good to outstanding or even extraordinary in much less time.

2. The best way to be a team player is to offer up your individual Strengths.

When we're working on a team, we typically think we should do whatever the team needs. The truth is, the best way to maximize team productivity is to communicate what your Strengths are and offer those abilities. That way, your teammates know when they count on you to be your most brilliant and engaged.

3. If there's a work activity you can't stand (a Weakness), try getting out of doing it. If you can't do that, change how you think about it.

You know how you hate having to turn in that TPS report every month? Here's a thought: Maybe you don't have to. Sometimes, big bureaucracies have you doing tasks that aren't really necessary -- you just do them because your predecessor did them, but if you stopped, no one would notice, or care.

If the task is something you can't get out of, however, maybe you can change your perception of it. The woman I interviewed said she was coaching a lawyer who said he hated redlining documents. She asked him for a Strength, and he told her he loved negotiating contracts.

She said, "OK, so the next time your marking up a document, think of it as the first step toward a negotiation. Imagine yourself in the negotiation room, bringing up this point or that point."

He tried it and told her it worked. He doesn't love redlining documents now, but at least he feels somewhat neutral toward them. Which means the energy he used to waste hating doing them can be redirected toward something more productive -- like clobbering his adversary in a negotiation.

My Cat Has a Hormonal Imbalance

2009-01-15T19:47:00.000-08:00

For years, I've lived with a cat who's a snuggle addict.

Unlike the other members of his normally standoffish species, Monte is always leaning all over me, pushing his body against mine, lying on top of me no matter how many times I shoo him away.

Before I had a baby, I used to joke that I was going to have to buy a Snugli and wear him around the house.

I may still have to do that. If this video is any evidence, I may even have to breastfeed him.

Fortunately, now I realize this is all a hormonal imbalance. See, I was reading this article about hormones associated with mammalian pair bonding, and I found out that in males, vasopressin creates urges for bonding and nesting.

Monte obviously has an excess of vasopressin in his system. Now I just have to find a drug that will correct this. Is there a vet in the house?

Stroke of Genius

2009-01-14T19:20:00.000-08:00

This morning, I received the following email from a PR flack in Argentina:

***************************

Good evening,

I am in charge of the Press department at Hospital Universitario Austral. I am sending you this press release so you can learn about the relationship between the waistline measurement and stroke risk, based on a study recently published in Stroke magazine.

Thank you.

Regards,

Mariana Israel.

CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH

Waist Size, Indicator of Stroke Risk

Waistline measurement should not be greater than 102 cm in men and 88 cm in women.

For a while now, research has been done on the relationship of obesity with coronary heart diseases. A new study published in December in Stroke magazine shows that overweight means also a greater risk of suffering a stroke.

[. . . ]

***************************

Some questions:

1. Mariana, why are you sending me this email? Are you telling me I'm too fat?

2. Why do you say "Good evening" when you sent the press release this morning? (And don't think I'm going to fall for that time zone excuse -- the time difference between New York and Buenos Aires is negligible.)

3. Do you realize how HUGE "88 cm" sounds? This is why the metric system sucks, and why fat-ass Americans don't use it.

4. If I wear a slimming, all-black ensemble, will it prevent me from having a stroke?

5. What about vertical stripes?

Titties in The New Yorker!

2009-01-13T20:29:00.000-08:00

The New Yorker this week has an article all about tits!

OK, not really. It's about breast pumps.

These milking machines have become so ubiquitous, the author claims, that in some cases they're actually promoted instead of breastfeeding. That is, women are feeding their babies milk they pumped into a bottle when they could simply be breastfeeding them. (This is especially in the United States, where we have no maternity leave to speak of. So companies are getting tax breaks to set up "lactation rooms" so that poor women can work and pump instead of staying home on welfare and breastfeeding.)

I HATE pumping. I hate schlepping the goddamn Medela Pump In Style back and forth every day on the subway. It's HEAVY. And I especially hate having to put it on the floor when the train is crowded, but sometimes I have no choice.

I hate having to hook myself up to it twice a day while I sit in the supply closet at work.

Of course, I'm glad I have it. It's kept my milk supply going so I can keep breastfeeding Snookums when I'm home. (And lately, Snookums pretty much wants to breastfeed nonstop when I'm around. Her idea of the perfect situation would be for me to take off my shirt the minute I got home and go around topless so that she could grab a sip whenever she felt like it.)

The time I hated pumping most was when I had to go visit a client. I was in the early stages of breastfeeding Snookums, so my breasts still got engorged. I was too embarrassed to ask my client for some privacy (now, I wouldn't be), so I went to the bathroom with the intention of pumping. But there was no electric outlet.

I ended up sitting on the floor in an empty office, pumping while I was hiding under a desk. Why? Because the office had a GLASS DOOR AND WALLS, so hiding under a desk was the only way passersby wouldn't see me.

Men Are the New Women

2009-01-12T18:59:00.000-08:00

I overheard the following snatches of conversation between two women in the locker room at my gym today:

"On my birthday, he took a gift my friend had given me -- a beautiful orchid, worth $200 -- destroyed the birthday card, and gave it to his sister. And I didn't find out until later when my friend called me up and asked about it!"

"He let strangers wear my clothes. My fur coat."

"I married a woman, Jane. I married a woman. He was the lady of the house."

Actually, I take that back. It wasn't a conversation. It was a monologue.

How to Prepare for a Phone Interview

2009-01-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

I know my faithful readers -- all three of you -- have been waiting with bated breath to hear what happened after my hour-long job interview yesterday with Rosetta Stone.

First of all, I PREPARED for the interview, which I originally didn't plan on doing, since I wasn't all that sure I wanted the job. But I went online and I read this. And this.

The biggest thing I did was to actually take the advice of dressing up for the interview as if it were in person. I took a shower and put on a suit, makeup and high heels.

And you know what? It worked. Because every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who looked professional, which helped me sound more professional as I answered the questions.

One thing I didn't do was rehearse my answers enough. The articles I read said you should have four or five points you want to get across and keep telling the same stories about yourself over and over to illustrate those points. I wasn't that great at this -- especially since the interviewer spent a lot of time asking me about jobs I'd had 15 years ago.

Long story short, when we got to the end of the interview, the interviewer asked me if I had any questions. I said, "Yes, what is the salary range you're offering for this position?"

It turned out to be about half what I'm earning now.

So my takeaway from all this is:

1. Prepare for a phone interview just like you would prepare for an in-person job interview.

2. Companies should be up front about salaries. If Rosetta Stone had been open from the beginning about the kind of pay they were offering, that woman could have spent an hour interviewing someone who was a better match. As it was, she wasted her time. (My time wasn't wasted, however -- I got a blog post and a lot of new information about job interviewing out of the experience.)

Job Interview

2009-01-08T22:09:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when Joan gets sick of her job crafting propaganda for Fortune 500 companies, she goes a little crazy and starts looking for work elsewhere. Like here. Or here. Which is how she ended up with a job interview tomorrow at Rosetta Stone.

OK, enough with the pretentious use of the third person.

In reality, it was my mother's fault. (I can't wait until Snookums starts talking so she can start saying things like that.) Anyway, my mother is always trying to convince me to move down to Virginia so she can see Snookums more often, so one day she forwarded me a classified ad from Craigslist in Charlottesville that said Rosetta Stone was looking for a "publications editor."

Of course I was all, "I can do that! I speak four languages and I used to write test prep! Plus I went to college in Virginia so they'll love me! I'm perfect for this!" So I sent in my resume. Then they emailed asking for this, and that, and some writing samples, and so on.

The next thing I knew I was faxing them a four-page job application (mandatory, even though it was redundant because they already had my resume) and signing a non-disclosure agreement (also mandatory) and a bunch of other crap, all before we could do a PHONE INTERVIEW. For a job I don't even know if I want, because I don't have any idea what the salary is. (And it would have to be pretty high to convince me to move to Harrisonburg.)

So tomorrow morning I have a ONE-HOUR phone interview. It was supposed to be today, but when the HR person found out I could only talk for 30 minutes -- because I was all, "I'm at work, and I can't really be away from my desk locked here in this supply closet where I pump breast milk for a whole hour because it usually only takes me 15 minutes to pump and my boss will wonder what the fuck happened to me" -- she rescheduled for tomorrow.

Stay tuned. The next post may be written from Ole Fuhginia.

Did They Look Taliban?

2009-01-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

(This post has been brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security.)

The other day I was getting café con leche from my favorite Hispanic restaurant in Journal Square when I witnessed something odd.

A Muslim couple (bearded man, woman wearing a headscarf) was standing outside on the street with a giant, battered suitcase on wheels. An older Muslim man in his 60s with a big white beard walked by. He was very devout -- I could tell by the prominent prayer bruise on his forehead.

The younger man approached him and began speaking in Arabic. Now, I know maybe five words in Arabic, but it was enough for me to notice that this guy was not a native speaker at all.

The older man immediately responded in perfect, unaccented American English: "I'm sorry, but I don't speak . . . " and he and the younger man started talking in English. It seemed the couple was looking for a certain mosque.

The most mysterious part of this whole occurrence was the older man. He looked more Egyptian than Pharoah, and from his advanced age it seemed unlikely he'd been born in the United States. But he spoke perfect English
. . . and no Arabic? Then how does he understand the prayers at the mosque?

Fast forward to today: I'm coming out of my favorite café con leche place again, and there's the Muslim couple on the street again, along with their ubiquitous battered suitcase.

I realized they were standing there probably because that building -- which is right next to the Hispanic restaurant -- has a mosque on the second floor. I also remembered that this was the mosque that was once the redoubt of the infamous Sheikh Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric who helped plan the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.

I don't know what this all means, but I'd like to think these three people were all inept American spies attempting to infiltrate the mosque, about 15 years too late. Sort of like when undercover cops show up at rock concerts to bust pot smokers, but you can spot them a mile away because they're wearing their big black shoes and white tube socks.

P.S. The title of this post was inspired by something that happened to a friend of mine shortly after 9/11. She was on an Amtrak train and a large family sitting nearby was making a lot of noise and creating a disturbance. She went to find a conductor to complain about the noise. When she finally found one, he demanded, "What did they look like? Did they look Taliban?"

Mother's Milk, the Magical Elixir

2009-01-06T23:08:00.000-08:00

When I got home from the office today, Snookums had a fever of about 101. It had come on suddenly after 5 o'clock, the nanny said, and she was very sleepy and not interested in playing.

I breastfed her for a few minutes. And lo and behold, the redness in her eyes went away and the color returned to her cheeks. And she suddenly wanted to play. And climb up the stairs. And eat.

She still has a fever (of about 103, the last time I checked) but she already seems much, much better. It was an amazing transformation.

Maybe I should try some mother's milk the next time I'm sick.

Too bad it tastes like ass.

Hello Kitty: Sold into Slavery

2009-01-05T21:14:00.000-08:00

The dolls shown at right were obtained from a McDonald's in Kuala Lumpur several years ago. They depict Hello Kitty and her groom, Dear Daniel, dressed in Malay wedding costume.

Hello Kitty getting married? Wait a minute. Hello Kitty is supposed to be a CHILD. Who still lives at HOME. Relishing her mama's apple pie and playing with her twin sister, Mimmy.

No doubt ~~Dear~~ Nefarious Daniel purchased her virginity from her parents. Daniel, who learned ~~pornography~~ photography from his father, wants to be a "cameraman" and likes "cheesecake."

Is anyone seeing a pattern here?

On the other hand, maybe Hello Kitty isn't so innocent after all. She is, after all, depicted on a ~~vibrator~~ massager. (It has three speeds: regular, fast, and Helloooo Kitty!)

Hello Kitty. Children's toy? Or synonym for pussy?

Ai Yi Yi!

2009-01-04T18:38:00.000-08:00

I have my period. Which means the second attempt at IUI (intrauterine insemination) didn't work. Sigh.

Just to bring you up to date: I was lucky enough to get pregnant spontaneously (i.e. without fertility drugs) with Snookums in early 2007, just a few weeks before Zany Dad had surgery for prostate cancer. I don't know if you're as versed in the male anatomy as I am (and really, could anyone be as much of an expert on male anatomy as Joan?), but after a man has his prostate removed, he doesn't ejaculate. So, no baby goo. Hence, IUI.

When I went for the IUI on December 23, the doctor let me look at Zany Dad's sperm under the microscope. "The motility isn't very good," he said, by which he meant the sperm weren't especially active.

I looked under the microscope at what looked like a few teeny-weeny black dots here and there, just sorta chugging along. It reminded me of Zany Dad in the morning when he has to get up for work and can't get out of bed.

Like father, like sperm.

Let's hope the next IUI round works.

Paging Dr. Freud . . .

2009-01-03T21:51:00.000-08:00

I awoke from a delicious nap today having had a most horrible dream in which some retarded guy was pursuing me, wanted to get next to me, kept coming after me, and I kept fleeing. I remember the sense of feeling overwhelmed and just wanting to be alone and away from this repulsive creature.

I awoke and reflected on the meaning. Hmmm . . . a drooling, semicoherent creature running after me, pawing me, grabbing me . . .

I wonder who that represents?

Snookums' New Address

2009-01-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that Snookums has moved. Her new address is:

1000 Doo Doo St.
Poopytown, NJ 12345

I swear I never changed so many diapers in my life.

A New Year's Observation

2009-01-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

All the practice I've had communicating with Snookums sure came in handy on New Year's Eve. Over the past few months, I've learned how to interpret -- or at least pretend to interpret -- nonsensical babblings, like "Ga ba da ga ba ba?" and "Fweh?" I found myself drawing on those skills frequently the other night talking to people who'd had too much to drink.

Like the totally soused lesbian who told me she made jewelry. I asked, "What kind?" and she mumbled, "Centrifugal, centrifugal," as she waved her little one-hitter around.

Bonus observation: Everyone thinks Barack Obama got that "Yes we can!" stuff from Cesar Chavez. But he really got it from Bob the Builder.

2009: You're Lookin' Fine!

2008-12-31T14:24:00.000-08:00

What is Joan Novark doing for New Year's, you ask?

Well, she's getting Snookums all bundled up to go out in 39-mile-per-hour winds!

And she's going to drive into Manhattan! That's right: the SAME NIGHT EVERY BRIDGE AND TUNNEL PERSON IS DRIVING IN!

Once we pick up Zany Dad at his Dreary Job in the Financial District, it's off to the Upper West Side to visit Zany Dad's zany sister and her rich, eccentric BF!

(Zany Dad once said he hated the Upper West Side so much he could never go there without hurling. I plan to roll down the car windows the minute we cross 59th Street.)

No, seriously, my ultimate destination is a party downtown in the West Village. I plan to leave Zany Dad and Snookums' at Zany Sis's and high tail it out of there for some raw oysters, roasted suckling pig, Prosecco and obscure 80s music.

Things it's not polite to discuss at said parties, but I might anyway (cf: Prosecco, above):

1) The idea of serving a suckling pig. After all, Snookums is still suckling, and when she was really little (and pink) she resembled a piglet. Zany Dad said he couldn't eat a baby pig in good conscience. I suppose I should be more principled, but I'm too friggin' hungry.

2) Did you know you should only drink wine from Italy, Argentina or Brazil? It's true: I read an article about the high levels of heavy metals in wine, especially from Eastern Europe and France. That's why I'm bringing Prosecco and an Italian pinot noir to the party. Eccentric BF, however, apparently went out and bought NINE bottles of wine and Champagne in expectation of our arrival, even though I'm the only one who drinks.

See you next year!

Mommy and Me in the Garden of Eden

2008-12-30T21:56:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to a party and asked someone I hadn't seen in several months how things were going since her baby was born in March. Her response?

"Things are OK now, but I went through three different episodes of postpartum mania."

It all started exactly three months -- to the day -- after her baby was born, and she took him on a self-designed meditation retreat. In a cabin in the woods in upstate New York, she bonded with her baby when he was awake and meditated or wrote in her journal when he wasn't.

Eventually, she became convinced she could read his every move. Literally. "I thought he was signaling to me with his hand gestures," she told me. When he waved his hand in the air, she thought he was telling her to write in her journal. So she did. In four days, she wrote 143 pages.

"I wrote this whole religious-ecstasy vision thing about how we were in the Garden of Eden together," she said. "I felt very euphoric and peaceful, like everything was perfect."

But just as it did for Adam and Eve, things turned dark. Her husband wasn't bonding enough with the baby, she decided. Her voices or visions told her to "implode," which she took to mean withdraw into herself and meditate more intensely, making her husband take care of the baby. So when she got home, she told her husband to watch him while she meditated.

She put the baby in his bassinet. Pretty soon, he was screaming. She ignored him. So did her husband, who was on a work call. Then she was screaming and not making sense. Her husband called her mother and his sister and they came over. She was delusional for two days, but they finally convinced her to check herself into a psych ward.

"The thing was, I agreed to go and I signed myself in, but I didn't realize they'd take my baby away from me," she said. "The first three days without him were a nightmare. I was screaming, inconsolable." Her doctor tried to put her on antipsychotic drugs but she refused to take them because she wouldn't be able to breastfeed.

After 10 days, she was released. Then, on the day her baby turned four months old -- exactly a month after the first episode -- she had another Garden of Eden vision in which she and her baby were in paradise. She went back to her doctor and agreed to take the antipsychotics, "but after four days I stopped, because they turn you into a zombie."

On the day her baby turned five months, she had the third episode. "The other two times, I felt very positive, very euphoric," she said. "But this time was bad. I was paranoid." She became convinced her baby was the Messiah and that she had to smuggle him out of New York to another state. "I thought my husband was in on it and that he was going to meet us there," she said.

In the middle of the night she snuck out of the house with the baby. "I kept getting into taxicabs and then feeling scared or upset about something the driver said or did," she said. "Finally I realized I was in a fear state and it wasn't a good place to be, so I just went to a friend's house."

Long story short: She took antipsychotics for about two months, which meant she had to stop breastfeeding. But today she's OK and off the medication.

I'm not a shrink, but I play one on the Internet, and my Google search tells me she had postpartum psychosis, an extremely rare illness that only affects one or two women in a thousand.

On the other hand, it's possible she really did have a religious experience. Maybe her baby really is the Messiah. (He's awfully cute.) If the Virgin Mary were around today, wouldn't we put her in the psych ward the minute she said her child was the son of God?

Gratuitous Butt Shot #2

2008-12-29T21:02:00.000-08:00

Some of you might remember a story I told a few weeks ago about how I saw one of the people I share office space with retouching a photo of a woman's butt.

Well, today it happened again. Only it was a different guy this time. Who works for a TOTALLY DIFFERENT COMPANY.

I was in the office for only a few minutes today -- just long enough to walk by this guy's office and see a photo of a woman's naked butt up on his computer screen.

The woman in the photo was wearing some sort of sequinned garment that just happened to be open so that her ass was completely exposed. The nudity seemed too out of context for a women's magazine, and the shot wasn't really cheesy enough to be soft-core porn, nor was it artsy enough to be considered, well, artsy. I couldn't figure out where a shot like that would be published.

I would have asked the guy who was working on it, but he was on the phone engaged in what sounded like a very intense conversation. Probably about butts.

Oh, and another thing that's weird about my office: This place is on the second floor.

Great Classic NJ Diners

2008-12-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

In my previous job/life, before I had Snookums, I used to travel all over the world. I ate squab in Egypt, fried caterpillars in Mexico, and freshly slaughtered pig (yes, it had been screaming moments before) in Borneo.

Nowadays, if I can spend the weekend discovering some great diner, I'm happy as a clam. Fortunately, New Jersey is famous for its old diners. Here are three of my favorites -- two discovered just this weekend!

1) The White Mana Diner, corner of Tonnelle Ave. and Manhattan Ave., Jersey City.

Launched at the 1939 World's Fair (and it looks every bit its age), the White Mana features a circular layout rather than the typical rectangular, railroad-car design of most diners. Kinda run down and dingy -- both inside and outside -- but the White Castle-style hamburgers are great. And cheap.

2) Summit Diner, 1 Union Place (corner of Summit Ave.), Summit.

This tiny spot (only eight booths and 20 stools) is the place to be in Summit on a Saturday morning. You'll have to wait for your table, but you can amuse yourself eavesdropping on the regulars. Service is, shall we say, indifferent, but the prices can't be beat. Afterwards, you can walk off the food by strolling around Summit's Fifties-style downtown, which even features -- gasp! -- a movie theater.

3) Bendix Diner, 464 Rt. 17, Hasbrouck Heights.

I just went to this place today for the first time and can't believe I didn't know about it. It's a classic American roadside diner that's been featured in umpteen TV commercials and the odd bad movie (Jersey Girl). Built in 1947, it's also in much better shape than Summit or White Mana -- and is sparkling clean, too (even the bathrooms). The service is also a lot better. And while it's not dirt cheap like the other two, you won't go broke eating here either -- I'm still full from the Reuben and fries I chowed down eight hours ago.

Special bonus: The White Mana and the Summit diners are accessible by public transportation.

Eat Your Butt Out

2008-12-27T19:06:00.000-08:00

Today Zany Dad and I spent the day at the house of friends in Summit, NJ. The husband, who is from Poland originally, served us this delicious honey-soaked poppyseed cake that's some kind of national delicacy, and Snookums couldn't get enough of it. She kept pointing her tiny finger at it and angry-moaning -- kind of like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- until I gave her more. And more.

At one point Zany Dad looked down at the black clumps of poppyseeds that were sprinkled all over the chair and floor.

"Oh no -- we are going to have to clean this up!" he said. "It looks as though she is eating it with her butt."

Come again?

"It looks as though she is eating it with her butt," he repeated insistently, as if I were deaf.

Normally Zany Dad speaks near-impeccable English. (His idea of bedtime reading is Nathaniel Hawthorne and Joseph Conrad.) But every once in a while, he slips up.

Like one time he referred to the Beatles as "the Bittles." And another time, he said, "I think our tenant has a crunch on you."

But this time I have NO idea what he's talking about. But it kinda sounds good -- like "talking out of your ass." So I'm going to start using it, and to hell with what it means.

Aloha, Snookums!

2008-12-26T19:56:00.000-08:00

Snookums went to a Hawaiian party today. Unfortunately, this had nothing to do with our new president and everything to do with the fact that a member of the mothers' group I belong to is originally from Hawaii. She even plays the ukulele. (That is not her in the photo, by the way.)

So we brought some musical instruments -- a tambourine, a shaker, a squeaky toy -- to the playroom of Malia's apartment building. She played "Itsy Bitsy Spider," "The Hokey Pokey" -- the usual playlist for the one-and-under set -- on the ukulele, and the babies just sort of sat around and stared at each other. That is, when they (meaning Snookums) weren't crawling over and grabbing another baby's stuff, or playing an instrument at a totally inappropriate time, or COMPLETELY IGNORING THE DIRECTIONS (it's your right foot, dammit, not your hand! You put your right foot in and you shake it all about!).

The other babies mostly sat there placidly and smiled while their mothers fed or changed them and chatted. Not Snookums. She didn't stop moving for a second. Finally she found a way to amuse herself by pushing another baby who was sitting on a little car around the room endlessly. Every time she got to the wall, the other baby's mother would turn the car around, and Snookums would run across the room to the opposite wall, pushing the other baby. This went on for a full five minutes -- an eternity in Snookums-time.

Maybe she has a future as a pedi-cab driver.

All Hail the Baby

2008-12-25T19:29:00.000-08:00

This'll probably be seen as sacrilegious, but it's Christmas, and I tend to take things literally, so I can't help thinking that this holiday is all about worshiping a giant baby.

Considering I spent the past year in the thrall of Madame Bossette, that makes me wonder what the Baby Jesus was like.

Was he cranky? Colicky? Did he keep his parents up all night for months on end?

Did he throw his food on the floor?

Did he grab Joseph's nose and pinch it really, really hard, then grin when admonished not to?

Did he point at whatever an adult was eating or drinking and make incessant, angry noises, demanding to be given whatever foodstuff that was -- even if it was a glass of wine or something else children aren't supposed to have?

Did he demand to be breastfed constantly? Did he bite Mary's nipples? Did he rip her blouse open to try to reach the milk?

Oh, no, you'll say. He was a perfect little angel. Well, don't forget: He was a man, too. A man who started out as a baby. One that we all worship. . .

Snookums: Indifferent to Her Jewish Heritage

2008-12-24T15:54:00.000-08:00

On the fourth night of Hanukkah, Joan Novark brings to thee . . .

a Dancing Dreidel bear! Snookums, unfortunately, couldn't care less.

Was anyone besides Joan unaware of the second verse of this song?

If the Shoe Fits, Sniff It

2008-12-23T20:55:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine recently placed an ad on Freecycle listing a bag of women's clothes she was giving away. A few days later, after the bag was already gone, she got the following email:

Any old/used flat heels pumps too? I can take from your hands.

When she replied to say that the clothes had been taken, the person wrote back:

Any other well worn shoes you may have???

"I thought, 'This poor woman has no shoes,' " she told me. So she wrote this response:

"Hi, I don't have many shoes as I tend to wear the same ones forever. I have a pair of black flats from Urban Outfitters I don't want, they were very uncomfortable to me -- I only wore them once. I also have a pair of weird clunky pink shoes with heels that aren't too comfortable either. You can have these if you want but I doubt you would be that comfortable -- though maybe people's feet are different."

The answer?

These are not for use. I only want your oldest/worn/well worn shoes. Only shoes from a nice beautiful lady, worn by her, so I can feel the scent, and really want to kiss her feet, rub them to my face, and become her slave.

I cried for the man who had no shoes, until I met the shoeless man with a shoe fetish.

There Goes My "Retirement"

2008-12-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

Today at work we got into a discussion about credit cards and how much interest they charge, etc., and how before you know it, you owe so much money you can't pay it back.

I brought up the example of a friend of mine, who recently declared bankruptcy because her husband, who had a small (and unsuccessful) business, was using their credit cards to pay his employees' salaries.

My boss said something like, "Yeah, when you're not bringing in any income . . . " and trailed off.

A couple of minutes later, after we'd talked about this and that, I, being the kind of ~~tightwad~~ responsible consumer who pays her credit card bill in full every month, said, "Whatever you do, don't charge payroll to your credit card!"

I was thinking my boss would laugh, or say something like, "Of course not, how stupid do you think I am?"

But he didn't do either. He didn't say anything at all.

Which makes me wonder exactly where he's getting the money to pay me.

Do I Look Like a Cow to You?

2008-12-21T05:53:00.000-08:00

Last time I checked, I had only two legs, one stomach, and no horns. Yet when Snookums looks at me, all she sees is Big Ol' Bossy (with apologies to one of my favorite bloggers).

Witness this video, in which I chant, "The dairy's closed!" while Snookums is thwarted in her attempts to reach her milk faucets.

p.s. My mother said she'd never seen girl babies act like this before. Does this mean that Snookums is tending towards the, ah, Sapphic persuasion? If so, I hope she gets her own talk show.

The Human Pincushion

2008-12-19T19:33:00.000-08:00

I'm now on my seventh day of Repronex injections and my second day of Cetrotide, some new hormone thangy the doctor put me on to lengthen my cycle for this round of IUI. I still have to take Repronex and Cetrotide injections every night until Monday, when I'll give myself an injection of Ovidrel to make me ovulate in time for the insemination Tuesday morning.

I've gotten used to giving myself shots by now, but I'm still not used to having to do two injections instead of one. It's difficult to find two spots on my belly where I'm not going to mind having a big red, sore patch the next day -- especially since Snookums likes to kick me in the stomach while she's nursing.

Hmmm . . . Maybe I should have called this post "The Human Punching Bag."

Why Jersey City Sucks

2008-12-18T21:02:00.001-08:00

Dear Jersey City,

I've been with you since the Clinton Administration -- longer than I've been married to Snookums' dad, even. And I tried to stay faithful. I even bought property here, in a decidedly NOT gentrified neighborhood.

When New Yorkers put you down, I always defended you. And what did I get in return for my loyalty? Nothing but lies, misdeeds, caddish behavior

. . . Well, I've had it. They're right. You SUCK. And here's why:

The other day, I was trying to catch a bus at Journal Square. The first rule of Journal Square is, no one knows anything. And yet there are so many, many questions! Such as, "Why is EVERY SINGLE ESCALATOR being repaired during rush hour, when you guys just replaced all the escalators only a few months ago?" Or, "Why the hell can't I find a goddamn trash can ANYWHERE in the station?" Or, "Why did you get rid of the one and only mailbox? Was it because you wanted to FORCE me to have to carry my mail to Manhattan before I can send it?"

But on the day in question, I didn't ask those things, because I know better. Rather, I approached a man in a tie and shirtsleeves, who was standing at the bus station with a clipboard in his hand, and simply asked, "Do you know what time the Society Hill bus is coming?"

"I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T KNOW!" he shrieked, as if he were one of Saddam Hussein's minions being asked, post-invasion, if he'd ever heard of a little something called the Baath Party.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, taken aback. "I thought you worked for the bus company."

"I DO work for the bus company!" he shrieked.

"And you don't know when the Society Hill bus is coming?"

"I DON'T KNOW! I CAN'T TELL YOU THEIR SCHEDULE! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW???"

I gestured toward the clipboard in his hand. "Would you maybe let me take a look at that?"

"NO!" he shouted, snatching it away.

At this point, another passenger came up to us. "The bus comes every 10 minutes or so," she said.

Thanks, lady! Asked and answered! You'd think a guy who works for the BUS COMPANY would be able to provide that information, wouldn't you?

Oh, I forgot -- he works for a bus company in JERSEY CITY.

We've got bus dispatchers who refuse to tell you the bus schedules! We've got city councilmen who pee on the crowds at Grateful Dead tribute concerts! And don't even get me started on our cabdrivers, who tell you where THEY'RE going, rather than the other way around.

No wonder we're the laughing stock of the nation.

She Woke Up Screaming

2008-12-16T19:27:00.000-08:00

I recently came across some notes I took during a few days when Snookums was about three months old and barely slept. Reading them over, I wonder how I got through that time:

3/26 3:45 - 6:45 slept.

I woke up first; she was v. agitated but still asleep. Changed diaper (wet). She

SCREAMED for several minutes.

Fed 6:55 - 7:10.

Slept 7:20 - 9:20.

Nursed 10:00 - 10:20.

Slept 10:30 - 1:40. Diaper wet only.

Fed 2:00 - 2:15.

Slept 4:15 - 4:45.

Fed 5:40 - 6:00.

Changed diaper 6:45 (dirty).

Fussy from 7:00 - 7:30. Put her in Bjorn.

Slept 7:30 - 8:00.

Slept 9:00 - 9:15.

Fed 9:30 - 9:50. Fussed.

Slept 11:00 - 11:45. Woke up screaming.

Fed 11:50 - 12:00. Tried various sleep strategies: rocking, Snugli, weak Sleepytime tea.

Didn't work.

Breastfed again 12:30 - 12:41. Calmed her down (she had been SCREAMING) & she fell

asleep but woke up the minute I took her off breast. Gave bottle 12:45. 1:00 - 4:00 Zany

Dad up with her. Slept 4:00 --

I'd like to come up with something funny to say about this, but it's late, I'm getting over the flu, and Zany Dad is next to me watching Charlie Rose interview Henry Kissinger. So I have NO sense of humor right now, sorry.

Ai Yi Yi!

2008-12-13T21:24:00.000-08:00

Take a swan and wring its neck. Skin the bird and, under a full moon, lay its skin in a shallow hole with the feathers face-up. Add eggs -- five for every child you want to bear. Atop each egg, place the talon of a blackbird and a black stone. Circle the hole three times, clockwise, then close it with a clod of earth.

That's an ancient witches' spell to help women become pregnant, from the latest issue of Archaeology magazine.

I thought about this today because I'm getting ready for another round of intrauterine insemination (IUI -- or as my mother calls it, "Ai yi yi!"). Only instead of wringing swans' necks and putting blackbird talons and black stones on eggs, I'm taking four vials of Repronex, mixing it with saline solution and injecting myself in the stomach.

After five days of doing this, I'll go to the doctor for some exams and he'll give me a pre-filled syringe of Ovidrel to take home to inject myself with. Then I'll go back to his office the next day for the insemination.

I hope it works this time. The injections aren't nearly as bad as I thought they'd be, but the whole thing is expensive -- though cheap compared to IVF -- and I just want it to be over.

Oh -- the end of the witches' spell goes:

As soon as you are with child, empty the hole, or terrible things will come to pass.

Since She Came Out of Her Mother

2008-12-12T21:30:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about the day Snookums was born, and it made me remember a funny story that happened to me a few years ago.

I was waiting on the subway platform on my way home late one Saturday night and got into a conversation with the guy sitting next to me, a kid who was probably about 19 or 20. He started telling me all about his car. And what a car it was.

For starters, the only person allowed to drive it besides himself was his mother, who had taken it to Atlantic City for the weekend. He told me how much it had cost to have it custom painted, what his monthly car payments were, how he always parked it in shade to protect the finish.

He also told me how he'd adorned it to celebrate the many aspects of himself. The driver's seat had a customized Italian-flag design to celebrate his Italian heritage, the passenger's seat had an Irish-flag design to celebrate his Irish heritage, he'd had a rainbow painted along the bottom of the car to celebrate his bisexuality and placed a giant decal with his boyfriend's name on the passenger side.

(Oh, and did I mention he was from New Jersey? Perhaps you've guessed that by now.)

After listening to this for a few minutes, I realized this was the kind of person who definitely had a name for his car. (I am not such a person, by the way. I loathe driving.) "What's your car's name?" I asked.

"Madonna!" he blurted out, almost before I'd finished the sentence.

"Wow, that's cool," I said, mostly just trying to make polite conversation. "You know, I have tickets to her concert this summer at Madison Square Garden."

"Getouttaheah!" the kid exclaimed. "I been lovin' huh since I came outta my mother practically."

And that's how I feel about Snookums: I've been loving her since she came out of her mother.

Happy Birthday to Snookums!

2008-12-11T22:04:00.001-08:00

Snookums turned one today. I spent a lot of time thinking about how tiny she was when she was born and how little sleep I got. She slept in such short stretches I didn't even bother trying to sleep when she slept, the result being I often didn't go to bed until 4 a.m. Then when she woke me up again crying, I'd be so sleep deprived that she looked like just a big head with a pair of tiny waving arms underneath, and no body.

And she'd be so wide awake I'd think, "Is she on cocaine?" And "Can I have some?"

And our boiler kept breaking down and it was the middle of the winter and the air in our bedroom was so cold and dry that went I picked her up, blue sparks would fly off her blanket.

And I remembered how she didn't have a typical newborn's face when she was born, such delicate, well-formed little features -- long lashes and perfect lips, and pretty little hands and feet.

And how I loved the smell of her little neck.

But mostly, I remember how at first she suffered from gas pain until she finally discovered how to release it, and in the middle of the night I'd hear these little angry yells from her bassinet, followed by long volleys of farts.

Halfy Holidays

2008-12-10T20:51:00.000-08:00

This week I realized the value of completely ignoring your husband.

See, Snookums' dad had been saying that because he's Jewish, he's against Christmas and Santa and he wasn't going to celebrate it and didn't really want his daughter to celebrate it and etc., etc., and no, you couldn't celebrate BOTH Christmas and Hanukkah because it didn't make sense since the religions were opposed to each other and besides, Hanukkah was really just a made-up holiday anyway, to compete with Christmas and blah blah blah.

I got his point. (Especially after listening to him go on about it for 20 minutes.) But I wasn't looking to have Snookums accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior -- it's just that I grew up with Christmas and I wanted her to enjoy it too. (Besides which, it's totally pagan anyway. Christ was born in the spring, not the winter.)

But none of these arguments worked, so at a certain point I decided to just ignore him. I started by buying her a "My First Hanukkah" book, which got him all enthusiastic about getting her a dreidel and lighting the menorah and so on. Then I bought her a Christmas stocking and he didn't object, even thought it was cute.

THEN, we went to a holiday party held by the mothers' group where we live. There was a Santa in the corner taking pictures with the children sitting in his lap. And suddenly, Zany Dad was all, "Let's get Snookums' picture with Santa!" So we did.

The next day, I said, "I was really surprised at how enthusiastic you were about getting Snookums' picture with Santa. I thought you were against promoting Christmas."

And he said, "Look at this way: Imagine we were in Saudi Arabia and there was an old Arab man, and Snookums sat on his lap."

Whuh? So is he saying it's just some sort of cultural custom you follow because you happen to be there? OK, fine -- except that contradicts all the speeches I heard for months. And also, an old Arab man is not a religious symbol. Now, if Muhammad wanted Snookums to sit in his lap, maybe this argument would make sense.

But it doesn't make sense. And you know why? BECAUSE SNOOKUMS' DAD IS BATSHIT CRAZY!

Especially since (as he confessed while placing Snookums on Santa's lap), he had his OWN picture taken sitting on Santa's lap, 40 years ago, in Rio de Janeiro.

Help, My Husband Is Gay!

2008-12-08T20:48:00.000-08:00

I've written previously about Zany Dad's fascination with macho professions -- truck driving, tugboat captaining, buffalo farming (OK, I didn't mention that one, but that was the main reason he wanted to move to Brownsville).

So when I went upstairs to the computer room the other night, I was quite surprised to find Zany Dad enrapt in an article about Liza Minnelli's new Broadway show.

"Can we go? Can we get tickets?" he asked.

"Oh, I didn't know you were gay," I said.

Zany Dad insisted that in Brazil, Liza Minnelli is not a gay icon. At least, not exclusively. Well, all-righty then!

If I look back on this years later and wonder how I couldn't have noticed, um, certain tendencies, I can't claim I wasn't warned. . .

Zany Baby Daddy

2008-12-07T20:48:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that I've been neglecting to talk much about Snookums' dad, other than that he hates his New York paralegal job. (That's not him at left, by the way -- it's character actor William Fichtner, who looks like him.) So here are a few more facts about Zany Dad:

He subscribes to Hobby Farms and Backyard Poultry.

He used to subscribe to American Tugboat Review.

For years, he wanted to be a truck driver. Or a tugboat captain.

If it were up to him, right now we'd all be living in Brownsville, Texas. (This video gives an idea of just how much that would suck.)

Oh, and he's Brazilian. And Jewish. Oy vey. . .

Preacher Feature

2008-12-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

(Continued from previous entry.)

The cemetery seemed to be where this family liked to hang out. When we got there, the girls and I took me on a walk while they pointed out the graves of people they knew. Then we all went up and sat in a little gazebo while the father led the whole family in about 10 minutes of hymn-singing.

What was supposed to be a spiritual, or at least pleasant, experience just seemed creepy. There was a military flavor to the whole thing -- especially the way they all fell into song in a split second, as if they'd be punished if they didn't.

Which they would be. Back at the house, while we had lunch and I tried to keep Snookums from crawling out of the high chair and onto the table, "Teresa," the mother (not her real name) explained that they start "disciplining" their children at three months.

"Whenever they touch something they're not supposed to, you basically give their hands a little flick," she said. She also tried to claim that this didn't hurt them -- but this didn't make sense because she'd just finished saying that they would associate the "sting" with that behavior and therefore not do it again.

"You don't childproof your house," her husband added, "you houseproof your child!"

As I tried to hold Snookums down so she wouldn't fall off the high chair, she started fussing. Shoki -- a young Indian guy who was hanging out with the family for the weekend -- joked, "Looks like you could use some of Teresa's discipline."

"It's not Teresa's discipline. It's God's discipline," Rachel said.

As we were leaving, the family gave us a creepy Amish book about disciplining your kids called To Train Up a Child. It advocates using "switches."

Now, whenever Snookums misbehaves, I tell her, "If you don't watch out, I'll send you up to Maine for some Amish discipline!"

My Stephen King Weekend II

2008-12-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

(Continued from the previous entry.)

It took us about 15 minutes to walk to the cemetery, during which time I chatted with "Leah" and "Rachel" (not their real names), who are eight and twelve, respectively.

As Leah pushed Snookums in the stroller, she confided that she was so glad Snookums was a girl: "If she'd been a boy, I would have been so disappointed."

Before I even had a chance to ask why, she explained: "In our community, people of the opposite sex who aren't related have to keep at least an arm's length from each other."

Ohhhh-kay, I thought. From BABIES?

"Ninety-nine percent of all marriages end after the first year," Leah went on, eerily confident in the way she parroted misinformation. "This is because of all the inappropriate behavior between men and women. You have to keep Snookums away from older men now, so that it doesn't develop into a habit when she's older."

Uh-huh, I thought. I'll get right on that, sister.

By now it was pretty obvious that any question these girls asked me was not innocent, but had an I'm-better-than-you-because-you're-a-Godless-sinner agenda behind it. As in:

"Do you ever let Snookums wear skirts?"

"Sure," I said.

"How much of the time?"

I mean, what kind of question is that? Am I supposed to say I let her wear them 30 percent of the time? 50 percent of the time? 62 percent of the time?

"Oh, sometimes," I replied.

"Are you going to let her wear bangs?"

Here, I wasn't sure what the right answer was. Were bangs good or bad? Somehow the question implied they were bad -- but why, for Crissake? I answered something noncommittal.

"Do you know how to sew?"

"Not really," I said. "I mean, I can sew on a button or mend something if it's torn, but I don't really sew."

"Well," said Leah, very pleased with herself, "when we get back to the house I'll have to show you the dresses I made, and the quilts, and the sweaters. . . "

We hadn't even gotten to the cemetery yet, and already I was starting to hate this smug, self-righteous little bitch.

"How can an eight-year-old be a bitch?" you ask. All I can say is, That's what I used to think.

TO BE CONTINUED

My Stephen King Weekend

2008-11-30T04:46:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the Howard Johnson's in Vernon, Connecticut! I haven't been able to blog the last couple of days because Snookums and I have been trapped in a Stephen King novel.

First, we drove all day Friday from Auburn, Mass. to Bangore, Maine, where we stayed at the Fireside Inn. Not a bad motel -- free Wi-Fi and continental breakfast, fireplaces (gas) in the rooms, but our room smelled like there was a gas leak and when we had to switch rooms, I tried to convince the staff to give us some of our money back. No dice.

Anyway, the next morning Snookums' dad's friend came to drive us out to his little family compound in East Corinth. It was REALLY in the middle of nowhere, and seemed more Stephen King with every passing mile -- windy roads and frostbitten trees, little depressed trailers with junk strewn around them, churches of every Christian denomination imaginable. When we finally got to the Crazy Christian Compound, there was an amazing vegan breakfast awaiting us. But the first sign something was odd (besides the fact that mother and daughters were dressed identically in dresses that reached to the ground) was the fact that when I went to use the bathroom, I couldn't find the soap.

I asked the oldest daughter, who -- as my husband described her -- is 12 going on 22. "Where's the soap?"

"We don't use any," she replied, a hint of smugness in her tone.

Thank God I'd brought my hand sanitizer. Snookums' dad later found out from the girl's mother that this is for religious reasons -- something along the lines of, "Moses and Jesus didn't use soap, so there's no need for us to." They do, however, use soap to wash their dishes and their clothes. Go figure.

Things got even weirder when we all took a walk after breakfast to the local cemetery . . .

TO BE CONTINUED

On the Road . . . with Huggies

2008-11-28T05:47:00.001-08:00

I'm writing this from the La Quinta Inn in Auburn, Mass. (yay, free Wi-Fi!), where we've stopped en route to Corinth, Maine. The other day Snookums' dad decided he wanted to take a road trip to visit a friend up there who runs a cheap vegan restaurant in the Wall Street area and -- believe it or not -- commutes between Maine and Manhattan several times a week.

I've mentioned before that Snookums' dad is very unsatisfied with his job as an overworked, underappreciated paralegal. His friend, who happens to be a Seventh-Day Adventist, says he'll teach him a franchise method so he can learn to open his own vegan restaurant/bakery. (I have to say, their baked goods are amazing -- all the more so because they contain no eggs, milk or butter.)

We originally thought we'd stop in Lowell, Mass., since this was more or less halfway between Bronxville (where we had Thanksgiving with some friends) and Corinth. An old friend of my dad's lives in Lowell and is the executor to Jack Kerouac's estate. He's kind of a weird, mean guy, but I thought the enticement of seeing his old friend's grandchild might make him more amenable.

But we took a different route, and now we're in Auburn, getting ready to leave for the remaining five-hours-plus journey. I know ol' Ti-Jean (Kerouac's childhood nickname -- it means "little John" in French) would never have taken a baby on the road with him. Worse, he would have refused to admit his paternity. And Sampas would have ultimately taken his side.

Still, there's Snookums' dad behind the wheel, his copy of On the Road tucked into his suitcase, alongside the diapers and onesies and baby cereal.

And Snookums' First Word Is...

2008-11-26T20:37:00.000-08:00

Baby.

Yes, she's very self-referential.

She's been saying "baby" for weeks now, but randomly, as she babbles, so I wasn't sure if she knew what it meant or not. Then I showed her a photo of a friend's baby and she shrieked with delight, pointed straight at it and said, "Baby."

I still wasn't totally convinced. (I used to be a fact-checker in a former life; can you tell?) But then I showed her the picture the next day and she did it again! So now I'm a believer...

Viva Glam

2008-11-25T21:21:00.000-08:00

My friend Goody 2 Shoes came up with a great description of this blog: "It's about how to have a life, a 'glam' urban career, and a baby and still keep a great sense of humor."

Naturally, I was flattered. And I'd love to agree. But I can't resist pointing out all the unglam things about my "career":

-Exhibit A: I just finished updating a spreadsheet -- and it's after midnight.

-Exhibit B: The bathrooms are dirty. AND unisex.

-Exhibit C: You've all seen the room where I pump breast milk.

-Exhibit D: Having to read -- or worse, employ -- phrases like "integrated solutions," "human capital," "leveraging content."

-Exhibit E: Last week I interviewed a guy who actually DICTATED the PUNCTUATION. As in, "In July my title changed from quote manager unquote to quote director unquote, period."

-Exhibit F: Conference calls. Tomorrow I have three -- back to back. 'Nuff said.

I guess no job is really glamorous when seen from up close. Which reminds me of that old joke about the guy who cleaned up after the elephants in the circus. When someone asked him why he didn't look for a better job after so many years, he replied, "What? And leave show business?"

Pain at the Pump

2008-11-24T17:51:00.000-08:00

Hi there! Welcome to the room where I pump breast milk every day. See how spacious it is? And so many windows! If you look closely, you'll notice a vacuum cleaner right alongside my chair -- it's just that clean.

Another sign of cleanliness: that bucket and mop right by the door -- a door made of glass, by the way, so it lets in tons of natural light!

Of course, we wouldn't want any pesky co-workers peering through the glass while Joan was busy manufacturing milk for Snookums. This is New York, after all, not Amsterdam. That's why I've cleverly devised a tasteful privacy screen out of an old whiteboard. It's not for nothing that some consider me the Martha Stewart of Medela-land!

How to Get Back into Singing After Having a Baby

2008-11-23T19:22:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me an email a few weeks ago inviting me to a Tierney Sutton vocal workshop at Birdland. I signed up immediately -- it had been a year since I'd taken a voice lesson and months since I'd sung in front of anyone except Snookums, but I figured the $100 would be worth it if it jump-started my jazz diva ambitions again.

I took a couple of brush-up lessons with Nattacia, my voice teacher, did my vocal warmup in the morning, left Snookums with her dad and headed out to Manhattan. The song I'd brought with me was "Down with Love," which I used to sing at pretty much every open mic I attended.

After I sang the song -- too slowly, which was my fault because I counted the band in wrong -- Tierney said, "I like the pissed-offness!" She also said my voice had improved in pretty much every way -- which she attributed to the baby, but I'm sure was really the three years of intense vocal technique I'd done.

So how do you get back into singing after having a baby? Be fearless. Take some brush-up lessons. And practice, practice!

She'll Totally Be Rocking It By the Summer

2008-11-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

Snookums' friend Claudette arrived from China, bearing adorable baby clothes (bottom photo). The top is a super-cute fleece hooded vest that masquerades as a bunny costume. The bottom is a pair of Hello Kitty red corduroys with lace-trimmed pockets. Even better, the pants are lined to make them extra warm for the winter.

The above photo (first from left) is of a onesie I bought for a friend who's about to have a baby boy. As you can see from the design, Elvis lives! I bought Elvis and the Brigitte Bardot T-shirt from a street vendor in Soho. The Brigitte shirt is for Snookums' first birthday in a few weeks. I was uncertain about the size, because it seemed too big, but the vendor (who silkscreens the shirts himself) reassured me.

"She can wear it over a long-sleeved shirt for now," he pointed out, "and she'll totally be rocking it by the summer."

If you were here with me now, I would do an awesome imitation of his Swedish accent while repeating, "She will toootally be rrrocking it by the summer," and we'd both laugh really hard. But you're not here, so just do your best to try to imagine how funny it is.

Sheila Jordan Turns 80

2008-11-20T22:08:00.001-08:00

When I started this blog, I promised you fun! Excitement! Stories about exotic travels and brushes with celebrities.

Well, maybe I didn't, but that's what I had in mind. Honest.

Anyway, instead of conference calls and breast pumps, tonight I'm able to bring you a little glamour. Last night I went to hear Sheila Jordan sing for her 80th birthday at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola. (For those of you who haven't heard of Sheila, I urge you to listen to this.)

Unlike other aging divas I've seen recently -- like, ahem, Julie Wilson and Annie Ross -- Ms. Jordan can still sing. Not perfectly -- there were some wobbly notes here and there -- but she doesn't embarrass herself like Ross or just cop out and do a Rex Harrison like Wilson.

Sheila was backed by a wonderful band and had a great set list. I'd post the names of the musicians and the songs, since I wrote them down, but I'm just too tired to go find that scrap of paper right now.

(By the way, if you'd told me 20 years ago that not only was I going to LIKE jazz one day, but I would eventually become such a jazzhead that I'd sit in a dark club writing down the names of all the songs and musicians, I probably would have punched you in the mouth.)

Anyway, happy 80th birthday, Sheila! May you continue performing for many more years.

And the Bad Mother Award of the Week Goes To...

2008-11-18T21:14:00.000-08:00

Ms. Joan Novark, for letting her daughter get soaking wet in a torrential rainstorm!

For taking her out in the freezing cold without a hat!

For letting Snookums cry herself to sleep!

For feeling annoyed -- not sympathetic -- at such crying!

For giving her back her bottle when she throws it on the ground -- without cleaning it first!

For feeding her breast milk that was left out all night!

For letting her play with used hypodermic needles!

How to Interview Someone Who Doesn't Speak English

2008-11-16T18:25:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot of articles about a small seaside town in Japan called Obama that launched a pro-Barack publicity campaign called "Obama for Obama." I wanted to learn more, so I decided to write my own article about the guy who organized the campaign and victory party, Seiji Fujihara (pictured here).

Google searches revealed that Mr. Fujihara is the head of the Sekumiya Hotel in Obama. I called the hotel, but the man who answered the phone didn't speak English.

"Can I speak to Mr. Fujihara?" I asked.

"Go home tomorrow," he answered. "Hi! Thank you!"

After a few minutes of this I finally said goodbye and hung up.

At first I laughed about it, but I was disappointed. I had really wanted to write the article. Then I remembered that a friend of mine speaks a little Japanese--she used to live in Japan while working as a jazz musician. I called her, explained my predicament and she emailed me some handy Japanese phrases.

The next day, I called the hotel again. This time a woman answered. "Konnichiwa" (good day), I said, very slowly. "Eigo o hanashi-masu ka?" (which means, "Do you speak English?").

To my amazement, she replied, "Yes."

"I'd like to speak to Fujihara," I said in English, and then -- just because I didn't want to waste my friend's work -- repeated it in Japanese: "Fujihara ni hanashtai o kudasai."

She put me on hold for a few minutes, then Mr. Fujihara himself came to the phone. But after I introduced myself and explained I wanted to interview him for an article, he said his English wasn't good enough for an interview.

But I wasn't ready to give up. So I asked if he could respond to questions in writing. He agreed to have me fax him some questions he could write answers to.

So far so good. Then I got his answers. They were short and cryptic, almost like haiku.

For instance, I had asked him to name the most challenging aspect of planning the Obama victory celebration.

He wrote, "The hula of man named OBAMA BOYS. I made our debut on November 5."

I asked, "Is there anything else you would like people to know about planning this event?"

He replied, "I told you that I owned the friendly feeling in Japan, and I was good, and President-elect Obama knew Obama-shi in that."

I couldn't really use his quotes, but I still managed to file my story. So here are my tips, kids, on doing interviews with people who don't speak English:

Don't give up. If I hadn't called back, I never would have connected with Fujihara.
Reach out. Think, "Is there anyone in my network who could help me with this?"
Be flexible. Non-native speakers will probably find it easier to do a written interview, so be prepared to accept their answers in that form. And also be prepared to, as journalists say, "write around" their answers when they don't make sense.

What's in a Name?

2008-11-14T18:12:00.000-08:00

I was browsing the job classifieds recently, as is my wont, and I came across a listing for an editor at the magazine for Alcoholics Anonymous members.

The magazine is called Grapevine.

Um. . . is it just me, or is this a really bad name for a magazine for people who shouldn't drink? Isn't this kind of like naming a magazine for people who've kicked heroin The Main Line, or for ex-nicotine addicts The Smoking Gun?

Snookums' First Fashion Shoot

2008-11-13T18:56:00.000-08:00

So I left the house at 7:15 a.m. yesterday with Snookums and Dona Maria, Snookums' nanny, to go up to Central Park for the Babytalk fashion shoot. It's a good thing I allowed so much time (our appointment was at 9) because the trip involved three subway lines, at least two miles of walking and lots of schlepping of a big, ridiculously heavy stroller up and down stairs during rush hour.

Finally, we were there by the fountain at Cherry Hill. Inside the trailer, I scarfed down some lemon-poppyseed muffins and coffee while the stylist bundled Snookums into a white Ralph Lauren down coat, worn over a magenta fleece hoodie with toggles and tiny distressed denim jeans.

Outside by the fountain, a crowd of about seven people -- the stylist, photographer, a woman whose job seemed to be waving toys and tickling Snookums with a feather and otherwise trying to get her to laugh, and assorted technicians -- crowded around making endless minor adjustments to the angle, lighting, positioning, etc.

After about an hour, we were done, and Dona Maria and I headed back toward the subway while I called a client I was supposed to have a conference call with and told her I was at the pediatrician's because Snookums had been up all night crying and I thought it was an ear infection and I just wasn't going to be able to call in at 11 a.m., so sorry!

The client said she would have the call recorded because the new manager wanted to spend the first 15 minutes "setting the tone" and that way I could listen to it later. First time I've ever heard of a someone SETTING THE TONE for a STATUS CALL. You know, like "How's that interview with So-and-So going? Think you can get it to me by Friday?" WHERE IS THE TONE IN THAT???

But I digress. The main point I wanted to make here was that Snookums may be on the cover of the February issue of Babytalk. Then again, she may not. It turns out that magazines routinely shoot several different babies for a cover and then decide at the last minute which one they're going to use. But at least we got $100 out of it -- minus the agency fee, of course.

When Work Is Not Safe for Work

2008-11-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

My office shares space in a loft in Chelsea with a bunch of other companies. I don't know what most of them do. Today a messenger arrived with a package for one of them and when I went to tell the guy, I noticed he was retouching a photo of a woman's butt. The weird thing was, it wasn't a very erotic photo -- it was an exaggeratedly large butt, and not in a good way, as if someone had Photoshopped the wrong-sized derrière on someone else's body -- and he just sort of casually looked up at me with an expression like, "So what?"

I logged on to his company website and one of the things they claim to do is "corporate communications." Which is what I do. Unfortunately, I don't get to sit around all day retouching butt shots. Most of the time I'm in annoying conference calls listening to people drone on about messaging and strategic this or that and integrated whatever.

Snookums Passes the Audition

2008-11-11T18:23:00.000-08:00

Snookums had an audition yesterday at Babytalk magazine, and today the modeling agency called to tell me she'd gotten the job! Pretty amazing considering she's only been on three auditions since I registered her with the agency a few months ago: Baby Gap, T.J. Maxx and now Babytalk.

Tomorrow we'll have to get up at the crack of dawn to head into Manhattan. The shoot is in Central Park and the agency said Snookums will even get a trailer to hang out in! Call me a stage mother, but I just hope her modeling career takes off so her father can quit his job from hell and become her manager.

Cacophony of Talking Toys

2008-11-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

"Green triangle!" declares the turtle before launching into the first verse of "Camptown Races."

"Hel-LO!" shouts the telephone. "It's for YOU!"

"Wanna play?" asks the cell phone.

"Red circle!" replies the turtle, and begins belting out "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

"A is for apple," whispers the table. "B is for baby."

"Mary had a little lamb..." chants the turtle.

"The buttons on the phone go beep beep beep, beep beep beep, beep beep beep," announces the telephone, to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus."

"Let's count!" says the turtle. "One, two..."

"...the buttons on the phone go beep beep beep," continues the telephone, "when you call your friends!"

"I am Edison Wise Wings," announces the eagle. "Remember my children. Be grateful for what you have."

Random Observations

2008-11-09T19:42:00.001-08:00

Sometimes when Snookums is nursing she rolls her eyes back in her head like a heroin addict. She slaps at my breast like a junkie trying to find a vein.

When Republicans talk about "energizing the base," it's not just a noun. It's an adjective.

McCain's losing formula: AGE + RACE = RAGE

Obama's winning formula: RACE - AGE = ACE

New President Commits #1 Most Annoying Grammar Mistake!

2008-11-08T21:22:00.000-08:00

I watched Obama's first press conference the other night. And while it was wonderful to once again see someone with a brain up there at the podium answering journalists' questions, things took a turn for the worse when Obama described his meeting with President Bush.

"President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I to visit him and Laura. . . "

No, dammit, he invited Michelle "and me." Me, me, me, me, me!

Welcome to My Brain

2008-11-07T23:22:00.000-08:00

Hello there! Come right in. I know it's a bit cluttered in here. I hope you don't mind. Just push some of those papers out of the way and pull up a chair. Fix yourself something to eat if you feel like it, while I think out loud here for a few minutes.

Let's se. Where was I? Trying to pick a blog topic. The possibilities:

-Obama's Victory. Could call it "Oh! Bama!" Of course, like the other 52 percent of the electorate, I'm elated, and -- like our next First Lady -- for the first time I'm proud of our country. Especially since I was so afraid of a last-minute Republican surge that I personally called 50 strangers in Indiana and Nevada the night before the election to BEG them to vote for change.

Naaaa --- too obvious. Everyone's talking about our new, black president. Booooring! Need to find a different angle.

Wait, what's that? That New Yorker article about psychopaths that I need to finish. OK, later, later. Concentrate...

-The Eighties are Back. About the aerobics class I went to the other day, and how cardio is the new aerobics. It's like the eighties again, but with a twist. The instructor was wearing a sweatband and we boogied to revved-up Janet Jackson tunes. Could end with the point that, just like 20 years ago, the most important man in the world is African-American (then: Michael Jackson. Today: Barack Obama). Could illustrate with a photo of Jennifer Beals from Flashdance.

I hear my daughter's voice downstairs. I wish I could be with her instead of upstairs in front of this computer. Maybe I should look at the want ads for a while, get a different job. Hmm... research chief at a travel magazine. Must have eight years' experience and speak fluent Spanish. Who are they kidding? Anyway, it's yes to the second, no to the first. Wonder if I have a shot...

OK, Joan, OK! Back to work!

What am I going to eat for dinner tonight? Rice and beans again? Dumplings from Panda Express for the third time this week? Maybe just a few handfuls of granola straight from the box. It's so hard to cook anything with Snookums crawling all over the kitchen like a a potato bug. I need a new diet. Better yet, I need a chef who will prepare tasteful yet healthful meal made of organic ingredients, preferably vegetarian.

Maybe I should buy that vegetarian cookbook by Mark Bittman, for inspiration.

I can't believe my editor complained that my description of the leadership seminar was "too laundry-listy." Now she wants me to come up with another way of saying leadership has to be earned. Leadership is a two-way street? Leadership is as much bottom-up as top-down? Will non-native English speakers even understand this? Because it sounds kinda kinky if you ask me.

Obama won! I almost can't believe it. The politics of hope beat the politics of fear. I wonder what my father would say if he were alive.

The best response came from Maya, the eight-year-old daugher of my friend Jeanne in Chicago. When Jeanne told her daughter that for the first time, someone of African ancestry had been elected president, Maya said, "But we all have African ancestry."

Amen, sister.

Vote for Whitey

2008-11-03T20:07:00.000-08:00

I've been volunteering for the Obama campaign, and while making calls from home tonight, I spoke to my first out-and-out racist: a 79-year-old man in Indiana who, when I announced myself as an Obama volunteer, started calling him a "nigger" and a "black bastard" and going on about how "blacks have destroyed this country."

I hate the old "what about Hitler?" ploy, but I figured it was a pretty safe bet that this guy didn't admire Hitler, so I asked him if he would conclude that white people were bad based on the record of Hitler, a white man. He started using profanity and accusing me of being "rude" because I was from New Jersey. I knew it was a waste of time talking with him, but I was actually finding the whole thing pretty amusing, so I pointed out that I hadn't used any profanity or racial epithets with him, and here he was using them with me while accusing me of being rude based on what state I was from.

He apologized, but the next thing I knew he was calling me a "nigger lover."

"Do you live with a nigger? Do you live with a nigger?" he demanded.

I refused to answer the question and asked him if he was planning to vote tomorrow and who he was going to vote for. (I wouldn't have bothered except that I was working from a script that wanted me to get answers to these questions.) He shouted, "I don't have to tell you that!" so I said, "Well, I'm going to put you down as voting for McCain -- the white candidate." Then I smiled and hung up.

First Halloween

2008-11-02T18:47:00.001-08:00

Snookums had her first Halloween the other day. She dressed up as a bumblebee (actually, I did it for her) and went to her father's office for a party for the families. I wore her in the Bjorn and tried to pretend my back wasn't hurting while I ate grilled cheese and cupcakes and other food I wouldn't let Snookums eat. Thank goodness she's not old enough to notice the hypocrisy.

On Friday we gave out candy to trick-or-treaters. I'd bought peanut M&Ms, Jolly Ranchers, and Hershey's Kisses (dark chocolate). I ate most of the M&Ms myself and gave away nearly all the Jolly Ranchers. (One fat little girl who came to the door said, "I love Jolly Ranchers!" and took enough for three.) This year, the kids all had costumes -- not like what happened when I first moved to this neighborhood and the only kids who rang the bell were too old, and not wearing costumes. I remember asking one kid where his costume was. "It's in my backpack," he lied. "Well, go home and put it on and come back and I'll give you some candy," I replied.

Most Annoying Grammar Mistakes

2008-10-29T19:03:00.000-07:00

1. "Between you and I."

It's ME, dammit -- ME ME ME. Would you say, "Between she and they"? Of course not. So do you realize you sound like an IDIOT when you follow "between" with the subject "I" instead of the object "me"?

2. "Companies who . . . "

It's "companies THAT." "W ho" refers to people, not things. So don't come to me with tales of companies "who" care/make money/give back/etc. Not until you correct your grammar, anyway.

3. "Feel free to contact myself or So-and-So."

This is a standard closing sentence to company memos. For the record, "myself" is reflexive -- as in, "I asked myself why I was working for a company that, between you and me, accepts less than operational excellence."

Here is an example of the correct way to use "myself."