August 9, 2012 · 12:57 pm

The Mom Olympics

Pumping up for the Mom Olympics

I’ve never really been into spectator sports, unless of course it involves watching my 5-year old son in Toluca Baseball and praying that he stops playing in the dirt. I love going to see the Dodgers, but if they suddenly closed the concessions stands and I couldn’t wolf down a Dodger Dog, I probably wouldn’t fork out the 50 bucks. And although I love his enthusiasm, I just don’t see my husband’s attraction of yelling at our tv on Sundays at a bunch of helmet heads who obviously can’t hear him all the way in Florida. Are these big guys really going to move faster with my husband is calling them a tool?

This week he’s is trying to lure the whole family into watching the Summer Olympics. Tom is gushing about his respect and amazement over the physical feats of these athletes who have been training for their sport even before they grunted their way through the birth canal. I’m enjoying bits and pieces, while my daughter Mary is learning the lingo about gymnastics (They didn’t stick it!) and coaching me on the athletes’ names, countries and probable endorsement deals.

All this hype has persuaded the YouTube MomPulse channel to ask the question: “What would be in the Mom Olympics?” So in honor of the 2012 Summer Olympics, I have proposed:

12 Categories for the Mom Olympics:

#1 Fastest sun block application

#1 Fastest sun block application

You earn extra points if your kid is crying, but lose points if he’s crying because you squirted sunblock in his eyes.

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#2 Shotput toys from the living room back into the bedroom

#2 Shotput toys from the living room back into the bedroom

You lose points if you happen to hit a kid or dog walking by.

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#3 Synchronized teeth brushing

#3 Synchronized teeth brushing

SpongeBob toothpaste is allowed.

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#4 Fastest sprint to save your child from entering the street

#4 Fastest sprint to save your child from entering the street

Most moms would beat any Olympiad’s Gold Medal record in this competition.

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#5 Hosting the largest slumber party without committing homicide or suicide

#5 Hosting the largest slumber party without committing homicide or suicide

Extra points if your guests are particularly high maintenance.

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#6 Judged by distance, time and amount, how many groceries can you carry from the minivan to the house?

#6 Judged by distance, time and amount, how many groceries can you carry from the minivan to the house?

Extra points for using your own reusable bags. Not because it’s a more difficult skill; Mom Olympics should be environmentally friendly.

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#7 Hurdling over dogs to answer the phone

#7 Hurdling over dogs to answer the phone

Don’t you hate when you waste all that energy just to get a telemarketer?

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#8 Most patience while teaching your teenager to drive

#8 Most patience while teaching your teenager to drive

See #5 above. The homicide or suicide rule applies to this event as well.

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#9 Standing high jump while trying to dust the top book shelf

#9 Standing high jump while trying to dust the top book shelf

For the Dad Olympics, they use a footstool. Or rather, they tell their wife to use a footstool.

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#10 Driving the most stressful car pool without flipping anyone off or using the wrong 4-letter words

#10 Driving the most stressful car pool without flipping anyone off or using the wrong 4-letter words

Extra points if you have to listen to the same Glee song over and over.

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#11 Creating the cheapest edible meal for a family of 5

#11 Creating the cheapest edible meal for a family of 5

I wanted to post a picture of an off-brand macaroni and cheese made with nonfat dry milk and Butterbuds, but then I’d have to eat it, which would violate the second part of Rule #5. It would be inedible and might create inadvertent suicide.

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#12 Triple jump homework help

#12 Triple jump homework help

This is harder as your kids get older and start taking calculus. Unless you majored in math, which is unlikely for most moms. What a shame.

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It’s too bad I didn’t have time to book a flight to London this year, but I hope to see you all in 4 years in Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Summer Mom Olympics.

“Adeus!”

That’s “Cheerio!” in Portuguese.

To view my Mom Olympics vlog click the link below:

MomPulse Vlog: What Would Be in the Mom Olympics?

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July 30, 2012 · 9:33 pm

Very VERY Busy Stagnation

During the summer when I’m on hiatus from work and the kids are off school, the world is my oyster and the possibilities are endless. I wake up in the morning excited about my choices for the day. Should I clean out my closet? The kids’ rooms? The garage? The pantry? Weed the side yard? Trim the trees? Plant grass seed in the bare spots? Read a book? Update my address book? Hike? Go to Pilates? Take the kids to the beach? To the park? Write a blog or shoot a vlog? Sort through emails? Juggle the bills?

Where do I start?

I start them all.

I started gutting the kids’ room, but now the living room is filled with donation bags and their room looks like the Wicked Witch of the West flew through it.

I started sorting through CDs, but I’m halfway done, so there’s still a pile on the living room floor. “Blues?” “Alternative?” “Heavy Metal?” I’m mainstream rock so I have to ask Tom about his categories.

I started cleaning out my closet, so now I have a pile of too-big-or-too-small clothes and hangers on my bed.

I started putting in a landscape border for plants, but the border is still stretched across the driveway.

I started going to Pilates, but I didn’t stay for the optional final stretching because I had too much to do at home.

I started weeding through emails, but I’ve only made a dent.

I started writing about a dozen different blogs but didn’t post any in the past two weeks.

I’ve started three dozen things, but I haven’t finished anything.

I am so completely overwhelmed, my completion rate has become stagnant. If I have a choice in time management, I end up running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Someone should cut off my head.

My husband tells me to breathe. I’m trying to meditate, but my mind keeps wandering back to my to-do list.

Yesterday I was determined to finish the half-done things and today I finally reached a turning point.

I’ve finished my first blog post in two weeks (this one).

The kids’ room is clean, the donation bags are banished to the patio, and the CDs have been sorted and alphabetized. The grass seed is planted. I’ve deleted a ton of emails and only have 2975 to go. I’ve put about a thousand miles on my new minivan transporting the kids from one summer activity to another, so my mom points are back in the black.

I’m on a roll. The rest of my tasks are coming along.

I’m done hyperventilating.

Just in time to get ready to go back to work.

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July 16, 2012 · 10:27 am

Playing Whack-a-Mole with 0% Balance Transfer Promotions

There was a time when I was floating near the top of the other 99%. My student loans were paid off. Other than my mortgage, I had no debts. My credit score was just short of 800, and I could stroll into nearly any shop or restaurant and charge it, then pay the full price 25 days later without ever giving it a thought.

Then I had kids. A divorce. Studios started paying tv sound editors five days of pay per show instead of six. The television season shrunk and fewer union films were being made. Overtime dried up. I remarried, and we bought a fixer upper near the top of the market and took out a second mortgage at the peak to start repairs. I went back to school for a second master’s degree while my new husband earned his MBA and started on his PhD. We had a baby. A year later, the writers’ strike brought the entertainment industry to its knees. And then the final nail in the coffin: the housing bubble burst.

It all sounds like some bad made-for-tv movie from the 1970’s, but instead of being a woman in peril running from my wife-beating husband or recreational drugs gone bad, I was trying to escape from something much more sinister: the flailing American economy.

Although our home hasn’t drowned completely underwater, it’s basically bobbing in the sea like a buoy. If I was Noah, those animals would already be picking bunkmates.

Our savings ran out. So did the second mortgage. But with our great credit score, we started seriously considering the offers that we used to throw away along with craft catalogs and obscure charity labels.

Receive 0% Introductory APR on purchases and balance transfers for one year.

It was like free money – almost. We just paid a 3% fee and we could postpone the bills. Certainly we could pay it off within a year. We signed our John Hancocks and slept like babies.

And then the roof caved in… literally. We replaced the 80-year old pipes and windows, but the funds ran out before we got to the Spanish tile roof. Each winter the tarp over our house grew bigger until we had a 1700 square foot sail strapped over our entire roof billowing against the wind, ready to make our home airborne as if we were Dorothy flying over Kansas. Tiles were flying like exploding landmines and this back burner fix suddenly became a front burner emergency.

We took advantage of three different credit card offers to come up with $11,700. And within months we were robbing Peter to pay Paul – taking out one balance transfer deal to pay off the balance of the one the year before.

Accumulated stress caused me to have a serious case of shingles to my head and eye and landed me in the hospital for nine days last November. The hospital and doctor bills came to over 100 grand. Insurance paid for most of it, but we were still responsible for about $3,000. I also missed weeks of work in an industry that doesn’t offer sick pay.

Needless to say, we have been taking huge austerity measures these past few years. We rarely eat out. The only movies I go to are at the TV Academy where I’m a member. We shop at thrift stores, and only when we absolutely need something. The Eurozone would be proud.

In the past few years I have become quite adept at the balance transfer jugging act. I have billpayer and autopay paying more than the minimum amount each month and I’ve created fluorescent notes reminding myself to have the balance paid before the interest goes into mafia amounts.

We had two cards doing just that in mid and late July. So on June 24th I applied for yet another balance transfer, and this one had an even better deal – no balance transfer fee.

As the day got closer, I started calling the automated operator of the credit card cards being paid off to make sure the transfer was made.

It wasn’t.

Because it was under Tom’s name, they wouldn’t talk to me – the lowly wife – so I had him call. He was told that they were still considering the request.

Considering a request? This card loves us! We did the dance with them two years ago, paid off the balance, and didn’t touch the card for a year. We had available credit of over ten grand.

I was starting to sweat. I juggled some bills, got some temporary advance cash and had funds covered the day the big interested was to start. We had another 3 grand due for this card the next month so there wouldn’t be any need to stop the payment.

Phew!

In the meantime, I kept calling the second big interest card, but that one still hadn’t gone through. I bugged Tom to call them again.

It turns out that we were denied.

What? Why?

Because we already had an account.

Duh!

Apparently the credit card company thought they were sending the offer out to some random Joe who had no credit history with them at all. Since we already had an account, we weren’t eligible.

That’s like offering a homeless guy on the freeway off ramp your leftover McDonald’s fries, but when you discover that it’s your next door neighbor you nab the greasy bag back.

I’m not by nature pushy, but I suddenly became the cartoon wife with the rolling pin in her hand, demanding that her husband fix this or else.

Tom convinced the credit card to give us the deal… almost. They wouldn’t give us the free fee. But it’s only 1%, which is $100 cheaper than the standard 3%.

So now we continue with our game of financial whack-a-mole. I start back to work in September, and we’ll continue paying down our huge accumulated chunk of debt.

Now I know what it’s like to be Greece.

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July 12, 2012 · 6:44 pm

It’s My Fundraiser and I’ll Cry if I Want To

I love our school. We’ve been going to Colfax Charter Elementary School since Emily enrolled in kindergarten in 2001, and since then I have accumulated literally hundreds of friends who are in my iPhone contact list – most whom I am happy to say are probably not dodging my call.

I’m on the Restaurant Committee, which is the team that lines up monthly fundraisers at local restaurants that give our school 20 – 30% back. We publicize the event on our marquee, on Facebook and Twitter, in an email blast, and by putting flyers in the kids’ backpacks.

These events take place during the school year, but recently I suggested that we try our hand at summer fundraisers as well. With the exception of flyers in the backpacks, we could publicize the events every other way, and instead of a monthly event, we could make them bi-weekly since the kids and parents will certainly miss each other and want to have a mass gathering.

The first fundraiser of the summer was yesterday at California Pizza Kitchen. Our last CPK event at the beginning of the 2011-12 school year brought in over $800 in profits for our school, so I was anticipating more of the same.

All three of the other current members of the Restaurant Committee were out of town, so I did all the typical social media posts and then shared them on my Facebook page:

 I’m going at 5:00 today. Who wants to join me?

I sent emails to everyone who was in Jake’s kindergarten class, and any other kindergartners who were in my address book, and even though it’s been a year since Mary moved on to middle school, I invited all her friends as well.

As I picked up Mary from drama camp in the Colfax auditorium I shouted out for everyone to join as for dinner at CPK at 5:00. I did the same when I picked up Jake from Colfax’s Farm Week Summer Camp.

Right before we left for dinner, I looked at my Facebook post to see how many Likes, Comments or Shares I had for the gathering.

Not a one. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.

Colfax’s Facebook page had one Share: Mine.

Usually at least someone would have given me a half-hearted Like, which might be something in between a 🙂 and a 😦 – maybe like a :/, but then that would have required a Comment, and as I just said, there was nothing. This post was in Facebook Wasteland.

The lack of comments to my post truly reeked of disinterest, as if I had suggested something duller than my kitchen steak knives:

Who wants to join me for my annual dusting of the ceiling fans?

Who wants to join me in the heart of a Sig Alert?

Who wants to join me at the DMV?

At least these posts might have sparked a laughing  :-)) or ;) winkingwinking 😉 response.

Undaunted, I forged ahead with my dinner plans. Mary, Jake and I arrived at 5:15, just to add a little time for possible latecomers. Unlike last fall’s CPK fundraiser, there was no long line of cars waiting to be parked from CPK’s complimentary valet. There was no crowd of four dozen people outside waiting to get a table. And as we walked in, there were customers at only three tables, and I didn’t recognize a one.

I thought of walking away without buying anything. We actually don’t have the luxury of eating out in our budget. The bill just gets tacked on to the credit card we won’t have the money to pay off until I start back to work on Season 2 of Once Upon a Time next September, and September is still a long way off.

But CPK only offers free valet parking if you get validated, and you can’t really get a validation if you don’t buy anything. Also, since I’m on the Restaurant Committee and the only member in town who could participate, I’d be a hypocrite to walk away without buying something.

I decided to get the food to go since I was going to get something for Tom anyway. Fortunately Emily’s a vegetarian who doesn’t eat wheat or dairy. I’d just tell her the whole menu would give her the trots.

I ordered a kid’s mac & cheese for Jake, kung pao pasta for Tom and jambalaya pasta for myself, and the portions had better be enough to split it for lunch tomorrow, dammit!

Mary wanted pizza AND salad, and I nearly choked. That girl always has champagne tastes with our beer budget, or since Tom and I don’t drink, it’s kind of like Dollar Tree apple juice vs. Martinelli’s sparking cider. I told her we have frozen pizza at home, so she settled on the Caesar salad. No chicken.

The bill came to $46.93, and I tried to look on the bright side: over 9 bucks back for our school and I didn’t have to pay a tip for a waiter.

We sat at the counter waiting for our order while Jake colored in the kid’s menu and Mary practiced her Belle lines from Beauty and the Beast.

No Colfax families. No big 20% back check. No fun reunion.

I wanted to cry.

But this was a public place and I would look like a wacky woman.

On the other had, no one here knew me.

There weren’t any Colfax families here to witness it.

I wanted to cry even more.

I held it together. Barely.

About ten minutes later, a miracle occurred! A Colfax mom arrived with her 4th grader. Heather and I did the Box Tops fundraiser a year ago, and I was so happy to see her, I wanted to cry – in a good way. But it turns out she was having a special mother/daughter dinner while her husband and son were gone fishing, so I didn’t want to intrude.

A couple of minutes later, Lina arrived.

This is when I really want to cry, and not in a good way.

Lina is my mother-in-law, and I invited her to join us for dinner. She drove herself to CPK after a hard day at work, and here I was, about to grab my to go bag. I had completely forgotten that I had invited her. I offered to stay and get a table or buy something for her so we could go home or to her house and eat it, but she was obviously despondent. I could tell she felt rejected, and I didn’t blame her.

I felt terrible.

I mostly felt terrible because I assumed she was feeling terrible that I didn’t have the thought to let her know that the evening was cancelled. She walked away without validating her ticket, and by the time I caught up to her she had already paid the valet.

That’s when I started to cry.  It began as a silent whimper. I felt sorry for my mother-in-law and our little school and the fundraiser that didn’t bring any money. That whimper snowballed into a bottomless shame pit.

You’re the dork who thought we could have a successful summer fundraiser!

No wonder no one came. Nobody likes you anyway!

How the hell are we going to pay for this meal anyway?

Your mother-in-law hates you!

Now your kids are hearing you cry out loud and they’re going to either be scared or think you’re emotionally unstable!

You really are emotionally unstable. Doesn’t a straightjacket in a rubber room sound like a good solution?

I used to go down this rabbit hole a lot in middle and high school, but I thought I had gotten better as an adult. Obviously not. By the time I got home I was blubbering like an idiot.

My husband Tom has absolutely no personal comprehension of the mood swings created from PMS or menopause or insecure women feeling downright bonkers. But he gave me a hug anyway and wondered out loud how such an intelligent lady can spin out of control so quickly.

He invited me to go to Family Swim at the Y, where no one would question why my mascara was running. And after watching Jake dog paddle while wearing his goofy goggles, I felt better.

Today, nearly 24 hours later, my original Facebook post still sat empty. So under the Like – Comment – Share buttons I wrote a comment to myself:

Nobody likes me.

Maybe someone will click the Like button on that one.

But then it begs to question:

Does that mean they Like me?

Or do they Like that no one likes me?

I shouldn’t be on the Restaurant Committee for my elementary school. I should be enrolled in the elementary school. Because clearly, my self esteem in this instance is still in the 1st grade.

On the bright side, our little CPK fundraiser ended up with 14 Colfax receipts, taking in $605.80 and a donation of $121.16.

To the other 13 families who came to Colfax Day at CPK last night:

Thank you so much! I’m so grateful I could cry.

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July 11, 2012 · 12:29 am

20 Tips for a Successful Slumber Party Without Committing Suicide or Homicide

Growing up, my sisters and I seemed to celebrate every holiday, birthday and end of the school year with a slumber party. We invited all the cousins and then we could each invite another friend, which added up to about a dozen dozing bodies plastered across the living room floor and an honorary Sainthood nomination for my mom.

The slumber party for my 9th birthday. Notice my brother Michael hamming it up in the middle.

My daughters started having their own slumber parties over ten years ago when Emily was in kindergarten. But it’s my 11-year old Mary who has turned our slumber parties into the Valley Village equivalent of an Oscar party, with nearly 20 girls participating. Whether her friends are playing toilet paper bride (where the girls split up into groups and create the most elaborate wedding gown out of toilet paper), piggly wiggly (a game where you try to guess who’s hiding in which sleeping bag) or Chubby Bunny (where you cram as many marshmallows into your mouth as possible at one time and still audibly utter the words “Chubby Bunny” without choking or vomiting), Mary and her friends have just celebrated their eighth year of slumber party gatherings, and the events keep rising to new heights.

Last Saturday night we had 17 middle school girls and one boy over for a Colfax reunion slumber party (the lone boy did not sleep over), and Emily had an additional two high school girls in her room. Because I’ve been doing this for a number of years, I decided to compile a list for the parents who are slumber party novices in the hopes that one day, they too will become as demented as I am.

20 Tips for a Successful Slumber Party Without Committing Suicide or Homicide

1. Know your limits. Just because your daughter’s friend’s super soccer mom can wrangle two dozen girls at a time, it doesn’t mean you can do it without turning into a psycho killer. Start out easy – perhaps three to five girls at a time and build from that.

2. Unless you can invite every single girl in the group, keep the slumber party on the QT. As an adult, it’s devastating to find out that everyone was invited to a party but you. It’s ten times as devastating for a tween. Tell the girls not to talk about the party beforehand. With Facebook and Twitter, everyone will know afterwards, but then they’ll have a couple extra days to try and grow a thicker skin.

3. Warn neighbors in advance that you’ll be having a slumber party. Tell them that the karaoke contest will end by 10:00 pm and stick to it. Unless it’s a particularly quiet group, don’t host a slumber party in a backyard tent unless you want to be treated to a late night visit from your local police.

4. Audition potential slumber party guests with a short play date in advance and then don’t invite anyone who is high maintenance. This means anyone who is rude, a picky eater, a whiner, a crier, a tattler, or a girl who always complains about a tummy ache.

5. Announce the rules in advance and repeat them as needed: Be nice. No one gets left out. For hide and seek, the garage and refrigerator are off limits. Anyone who uses the “B” Word (bored) gets to scrub my toilet. Then we’ll see how bored they are. No drawing on each other’s faces with a sharpie while they’re sleeping or putting their hands in warm water to try to get them to pee, or sticking their bra in the freezer (yes – I did it all as a kid so I know everyone’s tricks).

6. Make sure to have a phone number where parents can be reached at all times and tell them to keep their phone on. Have them set it on vibrate if they’re on a date night at the movies. Warn them in advance that if their little darling becomes too high maintenance, they will receive a call at any moment for them to come and pick her up – even if it is 4 in the morning. Most parents will laugh and think you’re kidding. Make sure they know that you’re not. I once had three parents drive up to my house at midnight because their kids were convinced that a slumber party meant that they were staying up all night. I let them know that they were welcome to stay up all night – in their own beds.

7. Keep the food cheap and simple.Uncooked pepperoni pizza from Costco is best. Pop it in your oven, and slice it into small pieces. When it’s halfway gone get a show of hands as to how many more pieces the girls will be eating and pop another in the oven. Tell the vegetarians to pick off the pepperoni. Ask anyone with a food allergy to bring their own meal and offer to reheat it. The last thing a slumber party mom has time for is acting as a short order cook. Serve grapes, cut up a watermelon and serve make-your-own sundaes with toppings prepared in advance in paper cups. For breakfast, slice Costco muffins into quarters or heat up Poptarts.  For our party we paraded down the street to Yum Yum Donuts the next morning and every girl ordered her choice of donut.

Slumber party aftermath – a trip to Yum Yum Donuts.

8. Make the girls clean up their own messes. Just because you’re not their short order cook, it doesn’t mean that you want to be their maid. This means clearing their food after meals, hanging up wet suit and towels if they’re swimming, and not spreading their bags all over the floor.

9. Use disposable plates, cups, napkins and utensils. I know it adds to my carbon footprint, but it seems like the better alternative to wasting 5,000 gallons of water in the dishwasher and risking all my dishes being broken.  Label drink cups with girls’ names and keep all drinks outside or in the kitchen. Otherwise you’re liable to have apple juice poured in a sleeping bag and ants you’ll never get rid of.

10. Don’t serve sodas. There’s no nutritional value, you’ll have a lot of half-filled cups floating around, and for large slumber parties, caffeine is only your friend if it’s in your body. I prepare a 5-gallon jug of Crystal Light punch and have a gallon of juice and milk available. Or they can always drink water.

11. Get used to the noise. The larger the party, the bigger the wall of sound. The girls are having a good time, and unless you hear the cries of actual pain, you might as well accept that it’s going to be noisy. Think about wearing earplugs. And stocking up on Advil.

12. No cell phones. Girls don’t need to be texting other friends about what they’re not doing with these friends because they’re too busy texting. They can post an occasional photo to Facebook, but if a girl has her face glued to her iPhone, take it away until morning. If she refuses, see Rules #5 and #6.

13. Have some inexpensive activities in mind to keep the girls occupied: karaoke with a bunch of Glee DVDs; hide and seek; a board game like Apples to Apples; watching a recently released or classic movie. The very best is to have a pool. If you have a house and host a lot of slumber parties like we do, it might be worth it to invest in an above-ground pool.  After just two summers it ends up being a lot cheaper than paying for a laser tag or theme park party every year.

14. Rearrange the furniture so the girls can sleep on rugs in the middle of the living room. If they start fighting over who gets to sleep on the couch, give it to the girl who is most low maintenance.

15. Give a countdown to lights out time. Tell the girls put on their pajamas, lay out their sleeping bags, pillows, and brush their teeth at least a half hour beforehand. Five minutes before, let them have a drink of water, but keep the water in the kitchen. Then turn out the lights and let them get settled. If anyone is afraid of the dark, keep a light on in another room for a few minutes, then turn it out once they’re asleep.

16. After two warnings to be quiet, grab a pillow and blanket and go sleep with the girls. The last thing a chatty girl wants is for a mom to be overhearing what she’s ranting about. However, once they start hitting the tween years, let them stay up as late as they want – with a warning to both them and their parents: their mood the next day will worsen in proportion to how late they stayed up.

17. In the morning, have girls put everything that’s theirs into their own pile in a corner or against the wall. Anything left over on the floor needs to be put away. Not by you.

18. About 20 minutes before pick up, search the house and yard for anything that doesn’t look familiar. Set it in the center of the room and make sure everything goes away. If you find something unfamiliar after the party’s over, take a picture of it, or rather them – despite your best efforts, you’re sure to have a lot of lost & found items. Send one email to all the parents and attach the photo.

19. Make sure your kid does the clean up after the party. If she’s reluctant, let her know that it’s the last slumber party she’ll ever have. And stick to it. You may end up really crossing your fingers that she refuses and you never have to go through this again.

20. Keep this list where you can find it easily for the next party. Unless your daughter doesn’t follow rule #19. Then you can chuck it along with the rest of the mess you’ll be cleaning up.

Your daughter is young for such a short period of time. A slumber party is a great way to share lifetime memories, develop deeper friendships, and earn the gratitude and admiration of all the other parents who are much too sane to venture into such lunacy.

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July 7, 2012 · 1:51 am

Ooh… Something Shiny!

If it’s 9:15 pm on July 4th anywhere in the United States you can pretty much guess that every warm body is going to be looking upwards. They’ll be saying “ooh” and “aah” and hoping that the couple of big explosions in a row don’t signal that the grand finale is coming, because they’ve been waiting a full year for this event.

This Independence Day, we had planned to climb up a ladder and watch fireworks from the roof of our patio because I knew my husband Tom would be pooped out and tired of crowds. Instead, I ditched him (and I am truly not kidding – he was very happy to have the house to himself) and joined some friends at the redundantly named Moorpark Park to watch fireworks.

Moorpark Park does not have a fireworks display, but it’s only a few blocks away from CBS Studio Center (AKA CBS Radford), which is home to NBC’s Parks and Recreation, CBS’s CSI New York and the syndicated television show Entertainment Tonight. Besides making tv shows, the studio also hosts an annual 4th of July event which includes food, a kids fun zone, and culminates in a huge fireworks display. The downside is, it costs 20 bucks and frequently sells out.

Most people like a good deal, but quite a few want it completely gratis. Think of Napster, residents leeching off their neighbor’s Internet service, or when the LA basin diverts Northern California’s water southward. Like these notable freebies, hundreds or perhaps thousands of people annually flock to the streets adjacent to CBS Radford to watch the fireworks for absolutely no cost. Because the studio will probably not build an incredibly tall Great Wall of China-like barrier to protect the sky above its head, the fireworks show is visible to everyone within an eight mile radius whether or not they fork over an Andrew Jackson greenback to watch. The studios are spending much more effort trying to re-build that Great Wall of China to try and keep the formerly Communist country from bootlegging all their DVDs. An unpaid sneak peek at a local pyrotechnics display is small potatoes in comparison to the billions lost in the entertainment black market.

Usually I’ll secretly embezzle a fireworks show from the privacy of my own backyard ladder (that is until we got our new roof that wouldn’t cave in), but this was my first time stealing the show with a crowd of other like-minded thieves. No one else seemed to have a guilty conscience. They weren’t discussing whether or not they should go back another day and tip the Studio City Chamber of Commerce (the organization that puts on the fireworks show), or that someone with a hint of integrity would deliberately close her eyes rather than watch without paying a fee. So like the sheep that I am, I followed. I watched. I oohed and I aawed.

My friends have been doing this for years, so they knew the best place to park the car, the spots in the park that are not blocked by building or trees, and the perfect time to arrive without being caught in a traffic jam. We spread out our blankets and waited for the show to begin. Then one of my friends turned to me and laughed.

“Wait till the cars start parking in the middle of the street.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but she explained that because all the parking spots within a half mile were taken, that people would start creating their own parking spots in the median.

I thought she was kidding. But she wasn’t.

At 9:15, the CBS Radford fireworks show began. And so did the new parking lot.

I’m not sure exactly what was going through the drivers’ heads. Most likely they were driving their merry way when a big bright flying thing shot into their peripheral vision.

“Ooh… something shiny.”

So they slammed on their brakes. And finding no available parking spots, they stopped in the middle of the street and watched the pretty lights.

The car behind them did the same thing. And the next. And so by 9:16 pm, the entire middle lane of Moorpark Avenue was instantly transformed into a parking lot.

You would have thought that there would be a lot of angry drivers trying to turn left and were physically impossible to do so. But there weren’t. A few cars drove east or west, but one single stationary line of cars was suddenly stretched end to end for a half mile in both directions.

Major gridlock

By 9:30, the show was over, and the cars started to move, as if the colorless, smoky sky awoke them from their trance. The vehicles slowly pulled out from the median and joined the flow of traffic… which immediately stopped again. Apparently the thousands of onlookers from CBS Radford and its nearby streets all flowed onto Moorpark Avenue simultaneously and were transformed into a gridlock of monumental proportions. At that moment, a police car, fire truck and paramedic approached the nearby intersection of Moorpark and Laurel Canyon with lights and sirens blazing. I don’t know if it was a serious accident or just a fender bender, but if the line of cars was moving slowly before, it was definitely stopped now.

My friends and I strolled a couple of blocks back to our parking spots and were probably home before the gridlock moved a yard – most likely because the onlookers passed by the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles, stopped, transfixed and uttered:

“Ooh… something shiny.”

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July 4, 2012 · 4:38 pm

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Instant Gratification

When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and had it co-signed by our forefathers, I’m sure they all had lofty goals in mind in their quest for “the pursuit of happiness.” More accurately, “happiness” 236 years ago probably meant straying as far away as possible from anything that made people overtly unhappy – war, poverty, disease, imprisonment, death. I try to put myself in the shoes of these young Americans-to-be and wonder what would have made a citizen happy in the year 1776 compared with 2012:

Food:

1776: Americans planted their own seeds, watered and tended their farms or gardens, then harvested, prepared and cooked their food. They were happy not to starve.

2012: Americans are only happy if they can super-size their meal and get it NOW! Except for the ones on diets. They prefer to starve.

Shelter:

1776: After half a year of building it themselves, Americans found pleasure in moving into their stone, brick or wooden homes on their own homesteads.

2012: Americans are happy to pitch a tent in the freeway off ramp bushes as long as the highway patrol doesn’t see them. Other Americans are happy to live in their own homes until those houses are foreclosed. Then they are not so happy.

Clothing:

1776: Americans were happy to grow cotton, spin it into thread, weave it into fabric, cut out the fabric patterns, and then sew their clothes that they passed on from sibling to sibling.

2012: Americans are happy to buy as many clothes as possible until they’ve maxed out their credit cards. They are only happy for the first nano-second that they’re actually wearing those outfits. They’re still paying for those clothes long after the apparel has gone out of fashion, and their younger siblings refuse to wear them because they’ve gone out of fashion.

Medicine:

1776: Doctors used leeches to drain poisoned blood in an effort to keep their patients healthy and happy.

2012: Insurance companies are leeches who drain the life’s blood from those who are insured, and yet many of those patients are still not particularly healthy. Those without insurance either die, go into debt for the rest of their lives, or rack up billions of dollars in bills that the American taxpayer gets to pay. No one is happy. Well… except for maybe the insurance companies.

Education:

1776: Americans were happy to get a free education. Children learned how to read and write at an early age in public schools; however higher learning was a privilege only for wealthy white men.

2012: Although all Americans are offered a free public school education, it is often greatly criticized, and many young adults graduate without knowing how to read and write. Higher learning is available for all Americans – as long as they score 2400 on the SAT and allow themselves to go into permanent debt from student loans. Or they’re wealthy white men.

War:

1776: Early Americans from all social classes gladly fought in the Colonial War to be free from British tyranny.

2012: It’s primarily just the lower social classes who enlist in the war against Afghanistan to be free from… I’m not exactly sure, but I don’t think anyone is happy about it.

Pastimes:

1776: People found bliss in simple pastimes like reading a book or conversing with friends.

2012: Americans with jobs work too many hours and spend too much time on their commute, so they don’t have time for a happy pastime. Americans who want that job but are unemployed are too broke and depressed to be happy doing anything. Those who deliberately don’t work are the happiest of all. They watch reality tv on their big screens all day and fantasize that they’ll be discovered on American Idol, or they will be the star of the next Entorage. They like to converse with their friends by text and Facebook and badmouth all the haters out there.

Blogging:

1776: People often put quill and ink to paper to document their day in their diaries and journals, recreating their happy moments. Unfortunately, these diaries are often lost or destroyed, so their lives and thoughts are gone with them, and we’ll never know how truly happy they were.

2012: Millions of people tap away at their computers, iPhones and iPads in their web logs (blogs) bitching about their day, or how things were so much better 236 years ago. Then they hit “send” or “upload,” and it’s all there for the universe to see… forever. They might actually be happy, but posterity sees them as selfish, money-grubbing, ungrateful sloths.

Maybe 236 years from now, in the year 2248, Americans will again be happy just to have clothes on their backs, food in their tummies, and a roof over their heads.

Or they’ll look upon 2012 as the good ol’ days.

Funny how things always seem happier in retrospect.

I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July!

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July 1, 2012 · 11:13 am

SPF: Severe Pigment Fry

Ouch! Where’s the aloe vera?

As a kid, during the summer months my skin perpetually existed in three distinct states: burn; blister; or peel.

This was before suntan lotions had SPF ratings. SPF actually stands for Sun Protection Factor, a standard that really should more accurately be called I Wish I was Born an African American to Why Wasn’t I Born an Albino?

Growing up in sunny Orange County, we often spent the day at the beach. Even though there were four of us kids and we were just a year apart, my mom managed to coat us all with Coppertone to keep us from burning. Yet an 11:00 am to 5:00 pm shift of building sand castles and collecting shells in the hot Southern California sun turned us all into lobsters. It was a miserable trip home with all of us sweaty and sandy and feeling the effects of first degree burns covering 80 percent of our bodies.

Before the magical natural use of aloe vera, everyone used Solarcaine, which felt cool when it was sprayed on, but I’m not sure if it actually did anything.

We winced a lot and walked around with our arms partly outstretched, and it was difficult to fall asleep on sheets that suddenly seemed unbearably rough as sandpaper. We observed the places where blisters appeared – our noses, our backs, our bellies. Once when I was 13 and my bosoms were blossoming, a one-inch wide and two-inch tall sunburn blister appeared directly between the two larger sprouts. My mom nicknamed it my third boob.

Eventually the blisters would pop – either as a natural progression of healing, or more likely because we decided to pop them ourselves as a science experiment to see what lied underneath the bubble (always something gooey and gross).

In a few days, the neon red color would start to fade and our skin would begin to peel. This was my favorite part. And I don’t mean favorite as in a favorite stuffed animal or a favorite ice cream flavor. I was literally obsessed about peeling skin. As we watched television, we’d take turns sitting astride each other’s butts and peel our sibling’s backs. My brother and sisters and I would have contests on who could tear the longest peel. Sometimes we’d save the peel as if it was a prized souvenir. To this day I love to peel things – wallpaper, glue, hangnails. I really should look into a 12-step program for my peeling disorder.

Camping at the beach with my sister and the nieces

From May through September, my nose was one permanent scab. I wore zinc oxide, which for a short time seemed cool because that’s what the foxy lifeguards wore on their noses, but looking back, I think I more resembled a failed mime.

In my teens, I switched from Coppertone to Hawaiian Tropic in an effort to attain the perfect tan. It was an impossible dream. My Irish/Scotch/Finnish lineage guaranteed that the only thing brown on my skin would be my freckles. I dreamed that one day I’d get so many freckles that they’d blend together and become a true tan, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Emily with her porcelain skin

Hawaiian Tropic was later discarded for pure baby oil as I deliberately fried myself in the sun. Once I got past the burn-blister-peel cycle, I actually acquired an honest to goodness tan one summer, but it proved to be way too much work. It required riding the bus for an hour to Newport Beach and lying all day with my fingers outstretched so I would tan in between them, and turning every 20 minutes like a rotisserie chicken to maintain and even color. The bus ride back was an hour and a half, and an hour of it was standing room only with my bottoms full of sand, carrying my towel, beach chair and baby oil, and hoping that I wouldn’t blister.

Mary – my freckle-faced beauty

Thankfully I started a long line non-stop jobs and didn’t have the time to work so hard on my tan. Looking back, I am truly grateful for this calamity as it’s the principal reason my skin isn’t wrinkled like a prune today.

These days I wear sunglasses and a hat outdoors. My daily moisturizer and lip balm both have built-in sunscreens, and I coat my kids in SPF 70 whenever we’re outdoors for any extended period of time. My almost 16-year old Emily has beautiful porcelain skin, and she wants to keep it that way. My daughter Mary has the most adorable freckles, but any time her pediatrician sees them multiplying, the doctor reprimands me like a bad dog, so I try to keep her coated as well.

Jake – the Whitest Boy in America

My son Jake is so white he is nearly translucent. I don’t know if they make SPF 100, but if they do, it would be because they had Jake – the whitest boy in America – in mind when they created it.

Last week we went camping at the beach with my sister Tammie, who is to this day a bona fide sun worshipper. If she was matched with a Sherwin-Williams paint chip, she would be French Roast. Tammie wore her SPF 2 cooking oil while I plastered on the SPF 50-70 variety of creams, sprays and lotions. And yet, somehow I was burnt to a crisp. Not blister-burnt like the old days, thank goodness, but burnt enough to have it smart, and red enough to need regular coatings of aloe vera.

Tammie sun bathing

But now I have mixed emotions. I want my skin to heal and go back to my 21st century acceptable pale complexion.

On the other hand, I’m dying to peel my back.

Maybe I should look into those Peeler Anonymous meetings.

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June 27, 2012 · 11:41 am

Have Car, Will Travel – As Soon As My Daughter Gets Her License

Emily with her 1190 Volvo 240 DL

My daughter Emily is a resourceful gal. She’s not quite 16 and doesn’t yet have her learner’s permit, but with her own hard-earned money she’s already purchased her first car – a 1990 Volvo 240 DL. She bought it for $1,000 and spent another $500 to get it in top running shape so in a week or two when she gets her permit she’ll be traveling in style. Even though she just got the air conditioner refurbished, it’ll have to be in not-so-cool style since an adult (most likely me) by law has to drive shotgun for the next six months.

For a 22-year old car, her Volvo is in great shape. Rather than shop for a flashier car, Emily is thrilled to own an automobile with some character to it, as well as a great safety rating. There’s a reason that the incredibly bad (and mercifully short lived) 1992 tv show Woops! featured a main character who survived a nuclear holocaust because he was driving his Volvo at the time.

It’s déjà vu all over again, as the oft-quoted Yogi Berra used to say. I was just 15 and a half when I bought my first car – a 1967 Chevy Chevelle, which like Emily’s auto was an older, white, 4-door sedan. I scored it for just $350, which was a sweet deal for any running car, even back in the Carter era.

Not my actual car but a re-creation through the magic of Power Point

It used to be a Shell Oil test car, so my vehicle had the letters R2-16 stenciled on the sides and top. Star Wars was released the year before, so I called my car R2 for short, as in R2-D2.  Although there weren’t any visible rips, I could feel the seat’s springs popping through my bony butt, which made for an interesting ride on bumps and curves. One door didn’t lock; another didn’t open. The roof had a one-inch hole in it, so the inside got a little wet on rainy days. The passenger side floor had an even larger rusty opening, so it was quite a conversation starter to be able to watch the road racing below my guests’ feet. I used to compare the hole to the main title sequence of The Flintstones, since instead of running his car on horsepower, Fred literally ran on foot power.

For some lack of common sense on my part, I affixed my first bumper sticker to the back end:

“I’m not a cowboy. I just found the hat.”

This was three years before Urban Cowboy. God knows what I was thinking.

I was quite the dweeb.

Back in 1978, an 11-year old car seemed mighty long in the tooth, yet Emily’s new car is old enough to successfully get carded in Vegas. Even though it is officially an antique (apparently cars get that rating after 20 years) our new mechanic at Zen Volvo told us she’s got a lot of good years left in her. I’m assuming Emily will refer to it as a her, but knowing my eclectic daughter, her car is bound to be ambisexual.

I wish I had taken pictures of R2 during the short time I owned my Chevy Chevelle.  I guess I should have thought to randomly take a shot with my cheap Kodak camera, drop off the film at Thrifty Drugs and wait a week or two for the film to develop in a lab somewhere far away, but it never occurred to me that my first car would be totaled in a freak head-on collision only a few months after my 16th birthday.

Today it’s a breeze to pull out my iPhone and instantly post a photo of Emily and her new car to her Facebook page. God willing, Emily won’t be losing her new wheels in a freak head-on collision any time soon. But the good news is, even if she did, she’d probably walk away from the accident without so much as a blister. After all, this is the car that survived a nuclear holocaust, and lasted two decades longer than a failed sitcom.

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June 18, 2012 · 12:37 am

For Father’s Day, My Husband’s Wish is to Just Be Left Alone

Marc, Tom & Lina at the Saturday night Dodger game against the White Sox.

My husband Tom loves baseball with a passion, so for the past few Father’s Days, we’ve taken him to a Dodger game. It’s a perfect tradition – leave at noon for the 1:10 game, stuff ourselves with Dodger dogs, cotton candy and this incredibly tasty ice cream bites treat called Dibs, and take in some sun. It’s a bummer that Emily and Mary can’t make it since they spend Father’s Day with their dad (my ex-husband), who of course trumps step dad, but we take Jake, Tom’s mom Lina, and one or two of Tom’s childless buddies.

A few weeks ago Tom revealed to me he actually isn’t as fond of this tradition as I thought he was. In fact, it turns out that he not only hates day games (too much sun), but frankly he doesn’t like going anywhere on a Sunday, even if it does seem like fun. Apparently he would like to spend and entire day resting up from weekend fun, which basically nixes any holiday that falls on a Sunday – Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter. If he had his way he would hold Hallmark hostage until the card company switched all those big days to a Saturday. Better yet – Monday so he can get a holiday from work.

Emily, Mary & Jake at the Dodger game

This actually works out better for all of us since it means that Emily and Mary can join us. They don’t really follow the game, but they do like the food. The girls and Jake also like clapping with the organ, doing the wave, and trying to hit the illegal beach ball that gets bounced around in the stands. We brought our friend Marc, a huge sports fan (he attended every single home Kings game and three that were out of state), but he’s got a bah-humbug attitude about these activities. I was afraid that Marc was going to climb over the bleachers and pop the beach ball with a sharpened soda straw. Still, it’s always fun to go to any sporting event with someone who’s a fan of the game.

Tom had a bit of a damper for this year’s Father’s Day. He came home from work early Friday with a horrible upset stomach and it lingered on through the weekend. Although he trudged through the Dodger game, he didn’t really feel like eating anything, which is kind of like going on a cruise when you’re in the middle of a cleanse. Sure, you’ll have a good time, but the meals are a big part of the trip.

Tom & me at the Dodger game after I ate too many garlic fries

On the other hand, I gorged myself on a platter of garlic fries which were dripping in either oil or butter, and then it ended up reeking from my pores all night. Needless to say, Tom spent Father’s Day Eve sleeping on the sofa. There’s nothing like garlic sweat to really mess up an already upset stomach.

The next morning, the kids and I cooked Tom a special meal of extra-thick bacon and a huge omelet with extra cheese, or what should have been called The Clogged Artery Breakfast. I was still full from the night before, the girls we going to eat breakfast with their dad, and Jake was dying for a Poptart since it’s a treat he only gets on the weekends. So Tom was left to eat by himself, or at least pretended to eat while we were watching. With his wobbly stomach, he probably dumped it in the trashcan as soon as we left the room singing Happy Father’s Day to You.

The kids serve Tom breakfast on the sofa

The girls departed with their dad, which left just Jake and myself to celebrate Tom’s fifth year of fatherhood (sixth if you count Jake kicking around in my stomach). I figured it was Tom’s big day and he could spend it any way he wished.

And his wish?: to be left alone to watch westerns all day and play the MMO game Dark Age of Camelot with his virtual friends.

Just one funny card. No gift to open. Lina bought the Dodger tickets and I bought all the food there, and since Tom didn’t feel like eating, that pretty much means that I gave my husband bupkis for Father’s Day. Jake drew a picture of himself on a palm-size rock and made a paper tie for his dad.

Jake gives Tom his Father’s Day gifts

We gave Tom his wish for the most part. Jake played with Legos. I cleaned the house, which was so filthy it should have had cauthion tape stretched around it. Jake and I ran some errands and brought Tom some minestrone soup for dinner.

Pretty boring. But for my low-maintenance husband and his queasy tummy, it was a great Father’s Day.

The nice thing about today is that it will be very easy to top it next year.

If you’re a dad, I hope you got exactly what you wanted for Father’s Day.

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