Why I'm Not Mature Enough to be a Webmaster

Can't help it. The term
"Administrative Backend"
Simply cracks me up.

Talk Less; Listen More

if you stop talking
and listen for one second
you'll get your answers.

On the Road Again

Commuter's Lament

one third of my life
spent with children and deejays
no wonder i'm odd.

Road Hazard

Hey, Mercedes Girl
Texting while doing eighty -
Drafting your obit?

HWJD

That fish on your car
Must be praying really hard
Not to become scrap.

Author's note: this post originally caused quite a kafuffle; if you're interested in learning more, check out MamaKu #8 of July 27, 2010.

On Car "Decor" in General

Reducing your life
To stick-on decals and such
Strikes me as bizarre.

The Fast Lane

There's always that guy
Going sixty in the left.
I can't stand him. You?

Nasty, Brutish, and Short

i romanticized
the keeping of my own hens
they eat their own young.


Couldn't figure out why egg production in the Maison du Poulet was down until I caught one of the Chanticleers in the act. Eating eggs. Might have been one of hers, maybe the laying of another hen, but .... eeeeewwww!! I guess during the idyllic establishment of my own henhouse I blithely skipped right over the chapters about how nasty chickens can be. Not only will they on occasion peck each other to death (sometimes out of sheer boredom), but they often develop a taste for eggs.

Cannibalism is bad enough but eating your own offspring ratchets the ick factor up quite a few notches.

"Curing" this behavior is tough and sometimes impossible. You can try calcium supplements in the feed, putting golf balls in the nest (chickens are dumb enough to confuse Titleist ProVIs with the product of their own loins) and just hanging out near the coop until you catch one in the act and tell her she's a "BAD chicken!" but ....

In the end, if a certain hen just won't quit eating eggs, you have to remove her from the flock altogether, because ... let's face it ... having one of your BFFs stalking you while you're trying to have a baby so she can immediately eat it would upset even the mellowest of souls. An egg-eater can spoil the whole flock. This means a more "final solution" for the offending hen, and that, my friends, is the subject of another post altogether.

My friend Miss Kate - who actually grew up on a real-live working farm, in Missouri - has watched with some bemusement as I've set myself up as a Suburban Lady Farmer. Like any good Daughter of the Midwest, she's taking my disillusion in stride and encouraging me to do the same. Apparently there are things even grosser than eating your own young.

I don't think I'm ready for that, yet, so ... haiku!

Early Morning Haiku

Green at 5:00 am

O, recycling truck
Must you do your good work now
Outside of my house?

The Snooze Button Controversy

You like to wake up;
Go back to sleep; wake up; sleep ...
Let's just say I don't.

Mommy Needs her Java Fix

Of course I love you
It's just I will love you more
After my coffee.

Suspicious Character

Time to cut your hair.
The Neighborhood Watch calls you
"Suspicious character."



Is it bad when you turn onto your street and note a really scruffy looking guy lurking around only to realize it's your own son?

For Better or For Worse

Let's get one thing straight:
"For better or worse" did not
Cover bad music.

Most of the time I really enjoy the tunes the Big Kahuna puts on our shared playlists. He does have a maudlin penchant for sentimental folk ballads, however, that makes me want to download the entire Andrew Lloyd Weber collection and sync it right into his iPhone. How do you like that, Big Guy? Huh? Huh!

CatKu

Thursday

Sweet little kitty!
Why are you gagging like that?
We are much concerned.

Friday

Sick cat went to vet
many tests ... all appears well.
Four hundreds bucks, please.

Saturday/Sunday

Kitty will not eat;
Lies around, looking horrid.
Children are frantic.

Monday

Yaak ... monster hairball.
Feeling better now. Meeeeooow.
No more hair band snacks.

Shout out to Guest Haiku-ist, my sister! Also to her family and their newly acquired (and, apparently, indiscriminately greedy) feline.

Product Placement

Mammary alert! To male and/or prudish readers (that means you, Dad): If the very thought of breasts and bras (mine, anyone's) makes you all flustered and uncomfortable, stop reading now.

Unless it's too late, in which case, you might as well enjoy the haiku.

Back fat in bra cups.
False advertising? Or just
Good product placement?

The back story (pun intended) on this one has to do with the age-old female practice of making one's "bosoms" (as my grandmother used to call them) look bigger and more perky than they really are. I say age-old and use my Granny as a reference here, because one of her favorite stories involved the time during their 1920s courtship when my grandfather Clifford took her up in an (unpressurized) airplane and tried not to notice when the inflatable falsies in her shirt began - literally - blowing up. Fortunately both Granny and Papa possessed a good sense of humor and were able to laugh the incident off ... at least, as Papa would inevitably assert when Granny had finished relating this saucy tale at family gatherings, he was spared the honeymoon surprise experienced by most men of his generation when the buxom women they'd just promised to love honor and cherish took off their "Lady Parts" and put them in a drawer.


Well, here it is, almost a hundred years later, and things haven't really changed. Gel inserts have replaced blow-ups, and surgical implants have added a whole new dimension to the practice, but the fact remains that many of us who are less-than-well endowed in the Lady Parts department are always on the lookout for a good enhancement opportunity.


I thought I knew every trick in the book, but this one took me by surprise ... you might even say "aback."

Ha.

As those of you who may recall all the way back to LifeKu post #3 ("Dressing for One of Those Days"), earlier this summer I experienced the sad and (literally) painful loss of My Favorite Bra. That sorry tale utimately had a happy ending; those of you who are curious can go back and look in the comments section of that post.

For me, however, it was the process as much as the outcome that proved really interesting ... even, one might say, "uplifting."

Ha AGAIN.

Anyway, a-bra-shopping I did go, and I met a very nice and very knowledgable saleswoman (or "fit consultant," as she prefers to be called) in the Nordstrom's lingerie department. According to her, the secret to really rocking a good bra lies in one's ability to incorporate the entirety of one's "torso flesh" (aka "back fat") into the cups of the aforementioned brassiere. This involves, literally, using one's hands like little fleshly backhoes to "scoop" everything forward, back to front, so that once the scooping is done and the bra is safely secured by its clever little front closure ...

Voila!

Instant cleavage.

Cheating? Maybe. But only a little. And far less alarming than having your beloved's boobies explode.

Attention Teenagers

You aced your APs.
Great! Since you're so smart, surely
You can clean your room.

Aw, you grew your boobs.
Thanks for sharing them with us.
Now put them away.

On the contrary:
I do not exist solely
To embarrass you.

The fact you called me
"Mommy" makes me wonder if
You need more money.

Ode to Joe

the hinge and fulcrum
of my oft imbalanced life
are your frozen foods.



I complain about the parking lots as much as anyone, but - as God is my witness - but for Trader Joe's I would have no social life and my family would go hungry six days out seven. Im just sayin' ...

People of Walmart

People of Walmart
Never fail to make me smile
Just like the icon.




Betcha thought I was going to follow up with some snarky comment about Middle America, clinical obesity, and chronic bad taste. WRONG! Actually, what's makes me happiest about http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ is the knowledge that there are people out there who are secure enough in ther own skins to wear whatever the hell they want to go grocery shopping. Some of them even bring livestock!

I love a good dose of chutzpah, I really do.

Mad Cat

Asked to wash the dog,
Kids went for extra credit;
Shampooed the cat, too.

...and now he's sitting in the corner, staring balefully at me. As if it was my idea. It's kind of scaring me. If I don't write any haiku for a couple of days, would someone please check on my welfare?

poorly written

it's just possible
my horrible penmanship
caused the recession.



My husband just spent forty-five minutes on the phone explaining to Jim at the West Coast Wells Fargo Call Center that the check they just cashed for two hundred and fifty dollars was in fact a check for two dollars and fifty cents. (Well, I lost my water bottle; it was hot, and all I had in my yoga bag was my checkbook.)


They figured it all out, but the Big Kahuna reports that at one point while they were looking at the online .pdf of the check, Jim said "Sir, I got my supervisor right here, and we both agree this is the most illegible instrument we've ever seen."

Kahuna just texted me the image. They were right. My handwriting sucks.

I'm not allowed to write any more checks.

iPain

you got an iPad.
Good for you! Now put it down
and get back to work.

Of a Certain Age

"Of a Certain Age"
Nothing says it better than
A pair of duck lips.

Gather 'round, girls. Boys, you come too. Mama wants to talk to you.

Actually, what I have in mind is more of an intervention. Because I'm worried about you. About all of us, really. There's something very personal we have to discuss before things get any further out of hand.

No, don't try to hide that Peet's cup behind your back. I'm not about to deliver a lecture about the dangers of consuming too much caffeine. And don't worry about your diet, either, because Mama would be last one to point fingers in that direction. The secret of your daily visits to Crushcakes is safe with me.

But you ... yes, you with the big sunglasses you've been refusing to take off ever since you "went to San Diego for a wedding" ... of a friend none of us has ever heard of before ... You stop trying to sneak away and sit yourself down right next to me.

And don't look so smug, Mr. Former-Wearer-of-Baseball-Hats-At-All-Times. Your hair plugs may have grown in a little since you proudly started showing us your fuzzy new dome, but you're still a victim and you still need to hear this:

We're not fooling anyone.

I'll say it again, because the feigned looks of innocent surprise peeking through the otherwise blank expanse of your collective Botox-brows indicates a certain degree of denial is still at work here:

We ...are...not...fooling...anyone.

In fact, not only are we not fooling anyone, but we are making ourselves foolish. Those sunburned tourists in the socks and speedos that we make fun of at the beach? They are laughing at us. The slacker kids who hang out in front of de la Guerra Plaza asking for money snicker when we walk past not because they are stoned but because they can see very well what we are trying so pathetically to hide:

Our age.

Dammit, people, we are middle-aged. What in the name of Don Draper is wrong with that? When our parents were in their forties and fifties, they accepted the fact and still had fabulous cocktail parties and even (although it grossed us out when we were teenagers and forced to think about it on those occasions when things got a little loud) fabulous sex. With each other. Wrinkles, bald spots, laugh lines, and all.

Yet here we are, reaching the same confident, sexy stage of our lives and instead embracing that - "Hey! the kids can drive themselves to the movies; let's make martinis and go skinny-dipping while they're not home!" - we're trying desperately to recreate the physical attributes of a youth we should be proud to have moved past. A s if preternaturally smooth skin, inflato-lips, and strange-looking Rogaine hair will make us look younger and more appealing... instead of the opposite.

Don't make me say it. You know where this is heading.

The bizarre appearance of faux-youth is as much a part of our cultural consciousness as the combover, yet, just as that hairy practice inexplicably persists, here in good old SB altogether too many of us continue to believe that we may be the one exception to the national joke. We believe against all reason and even People Magazine that we may be the one person on the planet on whom cheap, artificial procedures don't look ... well ... cheap and artificial.

Now, please don't get me wrong. The purpose of this intervention is not to self-righteously unload on cosmetic surgery in general. If going to a licensed, qualified professional and shelling out the big bucks it takes to address a physical flaw or fault that really, really bugs you is going to make your life happier and more fulfilling, then by all means go for it. (Mama would do this in a heartbeat, if the joint spectres of a Santa Barbara mortgage and college tuitions didn't haunt her far more than her incipient jowls.)

But please, for the love of all that is right and beautiful about being "of a certain age," quit going out and injecting yourself full of weird stuff that just makes you look weird. The next time you are invited to a Botox Party, think of Kenny Rogers. If your facialist suggests you do something about those laugh lines, remember how cute Meg Ryan used to be. If someone with a syringe says she can "fix" your lips, sum up a mental image of Janice Dickinson, and run for the foothills.

If all else fails, think of Mickey Rourke.

Well, I guess that's it. Thanks for this time together. I think we've accomplished a lot today, and Mama's got a few other things she'd like to do before the kids get home from the Airport Drive-in.

Skinny-dipping, anyone?

New Party Game!

Oxy, Vi, Per, Hi!
add to dro, co, con or li;
tin, set, done or dine ...

Multitasking Mama

Tell me that YOU can
Wield crutches and the plunger
Both at the same time.

Public Bathroom Haiku

Hygiene Horror

Your failure to wash
Makes me see you and your hands
In a whole new light.

Note to the next stall over

Potty Etiquette
Suggests you end your cell call
Before you pee.

Disappointment Strikes

Disappointment strikes
Deep in the heart of she who
Finds the roll deplete.

Brain Freeze

Ow. Ow, ow owow.
So it's not on my diet.
Did I deserve that?