November 3, 2011 · 7:40 pm

Automated Restrooms – Is Technology Going Down the Toilet?

What do my son’s elementary school and our local Costco have in common? They both recently installed automated restrooms.

Gone are the days of catching the plague by handling toilet flushers, sink faucets and paper towel dispensers. Now you can stroll into the public restroom and never touch a thing besides your tender behind.

Automated faucet at school

It feels a lot like zooming into an episode of The Jetsons. You do your business, stand up, and the toilet flushes your remnants to oblivion. Just hold your hands under the faucet, and water magically streams over your soiled fingers. Some bathrooms are even equipped with dispensers that automatically release luxurious foamy soap. Then you just wave your freshly washed hands in front of the powerful dryer and voilà – you’re a vision of sanitary loveliness.

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

I’m all for automation making my life easier. I never want to go back to driving a stick shift or telling time by sundial, and if my husband had to trim our lawn with a push mower, the grass would be so tall you wouldn’t see our house.

Unfortunately, automation is not an exact science, so sometimes its usefulness backfires.

Automated Costco faucet trough

Take the afore-mentioned automated restroom. Technology has not yet perfected the automatic toilet seat cover, so I have upload that myself. It’s probably a good thing, because it could automatically dispense hole-less sheets of paper, leaving me sitting in a pool of my own excrement. I can see immediate recalls of that product.

So I have to apply my own layer of protection, which is pretty silly since that protection lies in a sheet of tissue paper less than a millimeter thick. One drop of any previous customer’s bodily fluids on the toilet seat will instantaneously be absorbed into the paper and transferred to my own buttocks. Not much protection there.

Next I take a one-minute break from my very very busy life to sit down and have a peaceful poop. This is the time in the day that I’ll tie my shoes. Rather than waste five seconds by stopping pedestrian traffic stooping over to fasten my laces, I’ll sometimes wait an hour until the time I know I’ll be sitting down to use the toilet. This is multitasking at the most insane level. And I pride myself on it. Sick, right?

Automated school hand dryer

However, the brain of my automated toilet senses that by leaning over to tie my shoe, I’m done going number 1 and number 2 and it will automatically flush. My butt is still glued to the sticky seat, and suddenly I’m getting an unwanted bidet of toilet water (not the fragrant kind) intermixed with my urine and feces spraying up my butt and back. And like the flame facing a firefighter’s powerful hose, I am drenched.

After using an entire roll of toilet paper to clean myself, I step to the automated faucets and hold my hands in front of the sensor. Usually one of two things happens. Either the faucet runs. And runs. And runs. And I feel guilty for contributing to the water shortage in Southern California. Or nothing happens. I hold my hands still. I wave my hands wildly. I curse the damn faucet and move on to the next one hoping that it, like its evil twin, does not think I’m invisible. I get enough of that from my kids.

Personally, I love the automatic foamy soap dispenser, but they’re hard to find. Public restrooms have come a long way from the days of doling out gritty Ajax-like soap that makes you feel like you’re massaging sandpaper into you palms. Most of the time you still have to pump your own soap – a task that seems to be too time-consuming for most kids.

Finally I move on to the last step – the automated hand dryer. There are frequently signs posted on these devises, proudly stating that they’ve been installed for your benefit (the restroom consumer, the one who gives away your product for free) so that you will not be contributing to the world’s overflowing landfills. Instead, the dryers are run on electricity, which in turn is generated by dirty coal, so you choose your poison.

The dryers are also governed by sensors, and you have to perform yet another mime act of waving your hands in front of it to make it work. It too has the misfortune of either playing dead or running long enough to blow dry a sopping Australian shepherd. The other problem: the loud noise scares the bejesus out of small children (coincidentally, always the noisiest ones). However, with the sounds of inadvertently flushing toilets, endlessly running sinks, thunderous blow dryers and screaming toddlers, the cacophony scares away those people gabbing on their cell phones as if they’re in their own private powder room.

As far as I know, restroom automation has not extended itself to automatic doors, although I would love to see that invention – particularly in busy restrooms like the mall or McDonald’s. I really hate touching a restroom doorknob and wondering if it’s wet because the previous supplier washed her hands, or because she  didn’t wash her hands.

I hope I live to see the day when public restroom automation includes wiping my butt. Unfortunately, this invention would probably suffer the same flaws as the faucet and the hand dryer – wiping too much or not at all. On the other hand, some people might like the “wipe too much” bug and return to their favorite restroom over and over, whether or not they have the urge to go.

That’s maybe something you’d like to add to the suggestion box at your local Costco.

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October 31, 2011 · 8:29 pm

Trick-or-treat! Smell My Heat! Give Me Something Good Or I’ll Tag Your @#$%& House!

Teen trick-or-treaters

When I was a kid, you pretty much stopped trick-or-treating sometime in junior high (what they now call middle school). Trick-or-treating was for little kids. Big kids went to parties. And as much as teenagers might like to have a bag full of Kit Kats and Snickers, the humiliation of being teased was not worth the free sugar high.

My daughter Emily is now 15, and Halloween is still her favorite holiday. Today she brought home four of her friends from high school. Were they going to a party? No. Tonight they’re going trick-or-treating.

When Emily was a toddler, trick-or-treating in her blue and white checkered dress and sparkly ruby slippers, and carrying a stuffed Toto in a basket, our neighbors loved to open the door and greet her.

“Look! It’s Dorothy! Can you click your heels three times and say, There’s no place like home?”

I’m sure they thought they were being clever, but we probably heard that line 20 times each Halloween.

Today Emily is 5’7” and has curves like Marilyn Monroe. This year she’s wearing black leather from head to toe in her authentic Cat Woman costume. Her friends are dressed as Tonks from Harry Potter, a pumpkin, Rorschach from Watchmen, and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I asked them why – if they are clearly no longer children – do they continue to trick-or-treat.

“It’s fun,” I thought they’d say. Instead:

“It’s the only time that we can dress up and act like children and still have it be socially acceptable.”

Emily and her friends go to a rigorous humanities magnet school, so an answer like this one is not so surprising.

Halloween is no longer just about the candy. Particularly in Emily’s case, candy is a bit of a hindrance. She has type 1 diabetes and can’t have a bite without an insulin injection. Most of her friends will pop a few pieces, but they plan to give the bulk of their booty to their younger siblings.

They also talked about selling it. I think they were kidding.

These teenagers love dressing up in costumes and traveling in a group. And it’s nostalgic for the good old days a decade earlier when they wanted to hold Mom or Dad’s hand when they crossed the dark street trick-or-treating, even when there weren’t any cars coming.

I’m embellishing this last sentence. I guess I’m nostalgic for the good old days. At least my 5-year old still holds my hand. And my 10-year old lets me trick-or-treat with her for a couple of blocks. Then she ditches me and joins her pack of middle school friends.

My kids: Little Lightning McQueen, Middle School Zombie & Teen Cat Woman

Emily’s teen friends mentioned that they like collecting a variety of free candy. I asked what were some of the more interesting trick-or-treat gifts they’ve received. I expected them all to say “pennies” or “an apple.” Their answers surprised me.

“Dental floss.”

“A Jesus pamphlet.”

“The guy’s phone number”

That last one was from my daughter, which really creeped me out.

I honestly don’t mind handing out candy to these kids (and yes, they are still technically kids for a couple more years). The ones I don’t like are the gaggle of teens who trick-or-treat without much costume creativity. Preschooler boys might have more facial hair than my husband, while the girls have unrealistically red cheeks and lips. At least I know it’s part of their costume. For the local teens, beards and lipstick are just part of their normal daily appearance. Do they really deserve one of my Dollar Tree gumballs for so little effort?

Instead of gratefully taking a piece of candy, they grab handfuls of the stuff. Then they go back for seconds.

“One piece each, please,” I want to tell them. But I’m afraid I’ll piss them off and they’ll come back to my home another day and tag it with their spray paint.

“STINGY HO!” will be plastered on our front door. However, no one will be able to read it since typical gang-speak graffiti is virtually illegible.

Or I’m afraid that as they’re going door to door trick-or-treating, they’re actually casing the joint. For those of you too young to know that term, it means seeing if you’ve got good stuff to steal.

The good news is, we ain’t got good stuff to steal.

The bad news is, we ain’t got good stuff to steal.

The costume-less teens also seem to be clueless on how to respond to the question, “What do you say?”

“Uh… trick-or-treat?”

“Actually, the answer is thank you.”

“Thank you,” they either mumble or shout like it’s a big joke. There’s rarely a polite “thank you.”

I’m scared that by giving these potential hoodlums a little lesson in manners, it’ll just piss them off, and they’ll be back when they see my car’s not in the driveway to teach me a little lesson in pissing them off.

So what’s the real age cut-off for trick-or-treating?

I don’t know if there’s an answer. But my guess is – if you’re old enough to trick-or-treat with your own children, you probably shouldn’t be bringing your own goodie bag.

So tonight, if you see a beautiful Cat Woman exclaiming “Trick-or-treat,” followed by a very polite “Thank you,” don’t be a creep and give her your phone number, or I’ll come back and tag your house.

And believe me, the word “Creep” on your front door will be very legible.

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October 30, 2011 · 12:28 am

It’s the Great (Squashed) Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Toy Story pumpkin limbs

My mother-in-law Lina has this extremely sweet tradition in which she invites my kids over to her home a few days before Halloween to carve and decorate pumpkins. Last year she discovered these nifty Mr. Potato Head-like decorations in which you can stick eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hands, legs, and accessories like mustaches and hats into your pumpkin. It’s also way less dangerous than handing my 5-year old an X-Acto knife, and since you’re not removing the pumpkin guts, there’s no mess to clean up.

This year she expanded her collection to Toy Story pieces, so Jake created Buzz and Woody pumpkins with outstretched arms and legs that made the pumpkins look like they were shouting “Hee Haw, Partner! Let’s go wrangles us some Ghouls!”

They decorated six large and two small pumpkins, and the collection sat on our living room rug all week like a miniature pumpkin patch that had been invaded by Andy’s playthings.

Tonight, my 15-year old invited a dozen of her friends over for a scary movie night, so I decided to arrange the pumpkins around the house to create a festive setting.

I went to pick up Woody, and I noticed that he had a white mustache. Funny. I didn’t remember that being one of the Mr. Potato Head accessories. It also looked very fuzzy and life-like – something you don’t see in the animated Toy Story series, much less on plastic limbs and body parts.

I touched Woody’s mustache, and it felt a little like hair, but also a little wet.

Then reality hit.

It wasn’t a mustache at all. It was a big hunk of hairy mold, which nature (or the Great Pumpkin) had strategically placed right under Woody’s large nose.

Moldy pumpkin

EEEEEEWWWWWW! Gross!

I glanced over at Buzz. He had grown a big black beard not only on his chin, but also around his sunken eye balls.

Oh my God! There was mold everywhere!

In the center of our living room pumpkin patch sat the largest pumpkin of all. A few days before, it stood about 18 inches tall and was about two feet wide. Now it was still two feet wide, but it was only about two inches tall. It had flattened like a soufflé.

I ran to get two trash bags – one to salvage the Mr. Potato Head decorations, the other to get these nasty squashed squashes out of my living room as fast as humanly possible. As I picked the pumpkins up, they disintegrated in my hands. I had an image of zombie brains as they’re turning to mush.

I managed to scoop up most of the mess, but unfortunately a huge ring of giant pumpkin goo had affixed itself to our rug. I grabbed a spatula from the kitchen and started scraping it like you would a stubborn cookie that refused to leave a cookie sheet. It refused to budge.

I explained the situation to my husband who was so happy to create a scapegoat for his sudden allergy flare up this week (he’s allergic to mold). Although he’s a Virgo, he’s not your typical clean freak, but in seconds he was rolling over the gooey circle with our rug shampooer.

So now, instead of having eight festive Toy Story pumpkins decorating our house this Halloween, we have a bag full of Woody and Buzz’s limbs, body parts and accessories, and a green bin outside with grass clipping, fruit rinds, and a thick layer of pumpkin mush.

You might think that the moral of my story is to wait to decorate your pumpkins until it’s closer to Halloween – especially when you live in sunny Southern California.

No. The moral of my story is, if you see a pumpkin decorated like Woody, and he suddenly grows a thick white mustache, be sure to snap a photo before you run to clean up the mess. A picture’s worth a thousand words, and I could have posted that single shot rather than spending 667 words talking about it.

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October 27, 2011 · 11:30 pm

Something VERY Scary this Halloween: FRANKEN-HITLER!

There’s a terrific family at my son’s elementary school who hosted our PTA board meeting dinner a couple of weeks ago. My husband and I arrived at their home around 6:00 and were greeted by an amazing array of outdoor Halloween decorations – gravestones, cobwebs, ghouls, and the crème de la crème – a 10-foot tall inflatable Frankenstein (technically Frankenstein is the doctor, and the guy with the stitched head and bolts in his neck is The Monster, but everyone thinks you’re a pompous ass if you point it out).

The dad proudly noted that he bought this air-filled monstrosity for the low-low price of only $10.

“Ten dollars?” we asked. How did he get such a bargain?

He just chuckled. “You’ll see on your way out.”

Later that evening we were heading to our car. It was dark, and The Monster was glowing. Well… most of it was glowing.

During the day, the Monster looked like any ordinary inflatable decoration you’d see in someone’s yard at Halloween (… or more likely at a car lot. Do these things really bring in customers? Fodder for another blog). But at night The Monster became much more sinister. Apparently the stitching on the upper lip cast a shadow, making it look like a mustache. Another shadow hit above the eyes. And suddenly, instead of a friendly monster who clumsily stumbles and grunts, The Monster was transformed into:

FRANKEN-HITLER!

Although he had two flapping arms in the air, one dangled a little to the side, so the right arm looked like it was giving the neighborhood a proud “Heil Hitler!”

Our friends’ monster/dictator gave me an idea. Wouldn’t it be great to have a whole yard full of scary Halloween dictators?

I don’t have the time or the talent to create illustrations for this blog post, but if I did, here would be some of my suggestions:

  • A giant flapping dismembered tongue for Mao Tse-Tung
  • Exchange Transylvania for Yugoslavia to create Vampire Slobodan Milosevic
  • Gaddafi Ghost
  • Use Cambodia’s Pol Pot as the boiling caldron
  • Sadist Hussein
  • Malnourished Africans can be real-life skeletons provided by Uganda’s Idi Amin
  • Mussolini Mummy
  • The Adams Family’s dismembered hand called Thing can be renamed as Crawlin’ Stalin

Crawlin' Stalin

Any of these dictators would also be quite convincing as the Grim Reaper or the Devil.

Unfortunately we won’t have any witches since as far as I’m aware, there are no female dictators.

Which is probably why the nighttime hobgoblin that makes my 5-year old beg to sleep in our room is called the Bogeyman – not the Bogeywoman.

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October 25, 2011 · 11:31 pm

Clean Up Your Own Damn Dish!

Our home is typically in a state of perpetual disarray, but there is one room in which I try to keep a semblance of sanitation – the kitchen.

It should be easy. My motto is “If you set it down, ask yourself: Is this where it goes?” Obviously a dirty dish would not be expected to spend its lifetime rotting in a kitchen sink, yet according to my family, this seems to be its intended home.

Last week I was working beaucoup hours and my wonderful husband saved the day (correction… days) by cooking dinner every night. I’m sure in his head he was keeping up with the dishes, but when I came up for air on Friday afternoon, I was greeted by not only dishes in the sink, but also many meals-worth of dishes throughout the house.

There were multiple glasses surrounding the loveseat/throne where my husband parks himself after work. In the kids’ bedroom I found three plates with dried ketchup, but not much else on the plates since the dogs finished off anything edible (which makes me leery – what’s the culprit in ketchup that even my dogs won’t eat?). Emily’s room looked like a frat house with about a half dozen glasses, two six packs of empty soda cans, and a couple of crusted soup bowls with spoons what would need to soak in a boiling cauldron for days.

I’m kind of a freak about conserving water, so I gathered all those water glasses scattered throughout the house and started dumping them all into our potted plants. When they were drenched, I moved on to the herb plants outside. Unfortunately one of the inside dumps came from my son’s sippy cup. I was a little confused that the water was taking its sweet time coming out, which is certainly against the law of gravity as I know it. A few seconds later, out gushes the not quite liquid / not quite solid mass of three-day old milk. I swear… I almost puked right on top of that curdled mess.

It really didn’t take that much time to clear up all the dishes, which makes me wonder why my loving family didn’t just clean them up in the first place.

About a year ago, I had enough of cleaning up everyone else’s dishes, and I hung the following note over the kitchen sink:

Don’t leave your dishes here


Please rinse them and

put them in the dishwasher


Yes, I know you’re

tired

running late

in the middle of something

planning to do it later

not in the mood

feeling special

too busy

 

PLEASE TAKE CARE OF

YOUR DISHES NOW!

As you can see from the photo, the paper is wrinkled and warped from water spray, and there’s a big hole where the exclamation point should be. You might ask yourself if my sign is worn from a year’s worth of water spray from my family doing their own dishes.

Nope. I think it’s mostly from me.

When I was married to my ex-husband, I didn’t hang up a note. Instead, I suffered for years with a slow-burn resentment about why day after day he didn’t just rinse his coffee cup and put it in the dishwasher. I decided to teach him a lesson.

I covered the entire sink with a layer of plastic wrap.

Did he get the hint?

No. He just thought I was crazy.

That part was probably true.

Today, I fantasize about covering the sink in plastic wrap, but my husband this decade will probably think I’m crazy too. So instead, I put up this sign that is obviously invisible to everyone else but myself.

How hard can it be?

Pick up your dish.

Rinse your dish.

Put it in the dishwasher.

I am so sooooo grateful to have a dishwasher. Frankly, it is a great use of storage for dirty dishes. And the best thing about it?

When the dishes are clean, it’s my daughters’ chore to put them away.

Ahhhh… indentured servants.

Another great reason for having kids.

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October 23, 2011 · 1:50 am

Please, Fairy Godmother… Please Make “Once Upon a Time” a Mega Hit!

Once Upon a Time premieres on ABC tonight at 8:00 and depending on the number of Nielsen families tuning in for that hour, it will mean continuous employment for thousands of entertainment industry professionals, or just another show destined for instantaneous obscurity.

As the show’s dialogue editor, I am so far down the entertainment food chain that I don’t even warrant a screen credit (that goes to my sound supervisor Tom deGorter who absolutely deserves to be there on the big screen – depending on how large your tv set is). Yet I’m still antsy. It’s kind of like the big release of a new car model. I’m the guy who installs the floor mats, and I am anxiously waiting to see whether or not it will be the next Prius or just another Gremlin.

My desire for Once Upon a Time’s success is not motivated completely by selfishness (although the trickledown effect of its failure for me would be long-term unemployment followed by home foreclosure… and my kids really like their neighborhood and schools). The fact is – I actually love this show. I’m starting work on episode #5 this week, and I am genuinely hooked.

I’ve always loved fairy tales, whether they’re Disney, Golden Books or The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (if you have kids, beware; they’ll make you read this one to them over and over and over…). As a kid I performed a skit called Little Red Hot Pants, and in my early 20’s I wrote a Snow White direct-to-video (that never even made it to video) featuring normal-sized men on their knees acting as dwarfs (today that would be oh so politically incorrect). For years I did the sound for my daughters’ plays, which included fairy tale musicals like Into the Woods, Once Upon a Mattress, and Honk. And I know I’m not the only adult who still appreciates a good fairy tale. Although I’m not a fan of them, I’m certain there’s some X-rated film out there with Goldilocks gasping, “This one’s too soft!” “This one’s too hard!” “This one’s just right!”

You must be a shut-in if you haven’t seen a Once Upon a Time billboard. It features either a creepy Rumplestiltskin or an evil queen who looks a lot like Michelle Pfeiffer if Michelle was actually 20 years younger. The fancier billboards actually change the two characters back and forth as you move, which makes me believe it truly is magical, since there haven’t been any reported accidents while drivers were gawking at the metamorphosis.

Once Upon a Time contains all your classic fairy tale characters: Snow White, Cinderella, various princes and evil queens, even Jiminy Cricket and Little Red Riding Hood. The most memorable character is Rumplestiltskin (played by the amazing Scottish actor Robert Carlyle from Trainspotting and The Full Monty). The settings are grand castles and dark dungeons, and it features elaborate costumes, hair and makeup, and a cast of horses that would rival a Miramax film.

But that only half of this fairy tale. The evil queen has put a curse on the fairy tale characters, and they are all transported to a present day New England Town with no memory of their true existence. Henry, an adopted 10-year old boy, is the only one in Storybrooke who is aware of the curse. He enlists the help of his skeptical birth mother Emma, a bounty hunter whom Henry believes to be the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming.

Once Upon a Time is created by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, the executive producers of Lost, so I’m hopeful that their fans will be seeking an exciting (and hopefully not so confusing) refuge since that show wrapped last season.

The show is scheduled against The Amazing Race and The Simpsons. Now in its 11th season, that race is no longer so amazing, and as much as I still love The Simpsons, after two dozen years of downing Duff beer, Homer can’t possibly have a functioning liver.

Watch Once Upon a Time tonight. If you don’t want to do it for me and my family, do it for yourself, because I think you’re going to love it. If you miss it or don’t have a recorder, you can watch it online here.

And because Once Upon a Time is owned by ABC (which is owned by Disney), there’s sure to be a new theme park ride or attraction based on the show: Snow White’s Scary Adventure.

Looks like they already did that.

Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

Ditto.

Stay tuned for the Grand Opening of Disneyland’s newest wild ride: Rumplestiltskin’s Spinning Room. However Disney will be the one taking home the gold.

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October 21, 2011 · 9:37 pm

Lucky to be Working Again?

Taking a break

First of all, let me tell you how grateful I am to have a job. Every morning I wake up to NPR, and by the time I get out the door there’s always a story about the unemployed.

From May through September, that would be me, as I mentioned in last week’s blog The Show Biz Hiatus Dance.

I’ve now been back to work for three weeks and have received two glorious paychecks. I’m not scrambling to grab another balance transfer on a 0% interest credit card to pay for the DWP bill, yet knowing that the temperature has to reach triple digits in my house before I turn on the air conditioner.

Because I am a very VERY busy mom, my calendar is always chock full of commitments, most of which I try to fulfill, and because I work from home, my schedule is flexible enough that I can usually pull it off.

Here was my extracurricular schedule this week:

Saturday:

8:30 am – 5:30 pm Models of Pride conference with Emily

6:00 pm – 8:00 pm Going away dinner for my neighbor

8:00 pm – 12:00 pm Colfax Charter Elementary Parents Social

Sunday:

8:00 am – 1:00 pm AIDS Walk LA

Monday:

9:00 am – 10:00 am Meeting

6:00 pm – 8:30 pm Colfax Annual Giving Telethon

Tuesday:

7:30 pm – 8:30 pm Meeting

Wednesday:

4:30 pm – 5:15 pm First basketball practice for Jake

7:00 pm – 9:00 pm Valley Village Homeowners Association Meeting

Thursday:

10:20 am –? Great California Shakeout

7:00 – 8:30 pm Take Mary Belle to Turning Pages volunteer group

Friday:

9:00 – 10:00 Celebrate my friend Lisa’s birthday

This doesn’t include car pools, daily community reading in my son’s kindergarten class, family dinner, chores, helping my kids with homework, or obvious things like taking a shower or sleep.

This was a tough week. I’m a dialogue editor working from home on the new ABC show Once Upon a Time, and frankly, the production sound sucks. There are probably a lot of variables of which I am unaware, but there should never be a reason why I should be cleaning 5000 microphone zaps out of a show. A job that typically takes me 50 to 60 hours this week took close to 80.

Where did I get those 80 hours? I made it to Jake’s first basketball practice, but otherwise everything after Monday was a wash, including the car pool, reading, dinner, chores, and even eventually the shower. And sleep. On Wednesday and Thursday I crawled out of bed, parked my butt in my Herman Miller Aeron desk chair and stayed there until the wee hours, leaving only to make a smoothie or use the bathroom.

Thursday morning, I got a call from the dub stage saying my tracks sounded like crap (ok, they didn’t use the word “crap,” but it was the same implication).

What? No one has ever accused my tracks of sounding like crap. My boss told me that they were trying to move along with the mix, but that I would need to recut the problem areas, which apparently were across the entire show.

While I was on the phone with my boss, I got another call with the caller ID from my daughter’s high school. Emily wasn’t feeling well and wanted me to pick her up. The school is 20 miles away, and I realized at that moment that there was no earthly way for me to finish my show by Friday.

I started to cry. Not just cry, but bawl my head off, heaving and jerking around like some daytime soap star. It was the hardest and longest crying fit I’ve had probably since puberty. My 15-year old was still on the other end of the line.

“Breathe, mom. Breathe. It’s ok. I’ll just lie down in the nurse’s office and wait til school gets out.”

I barely heard her as I cried some more and dripped tears and runny snot all over my bed. I wanted to take a nap. I wanted to die.

I sobbed a little longer, and then started working again.

My husband Tom came home from work, made dinner, and read to Jake. Mary Belle helped Jake with his crafty project (don’t get me started – those crafty projects will soon be getting an angry blog of their own). Emily took the school bus home and said she felt better by the end of the day.

I kept working.

I started to make better time.

It turned out that there was a technical glitch on the stage, and my tracks were actually not crap. Oops. I started to reclaim a small portion of my fractured self image.

I worked again until after midnight, then drove to Disney at 7:00 am with four more minutes of material to cut. I brought my laptop, MBox and drive and finished cutting on the stage, managing to stay just one step ahead of what they needed.

I left the Disney lot just after 1:00.

And now I’m on to the next episode.

I’m going to start early erasing some of my calendar for next week. And I’m thinking of turning on the air conditioner tonight, just to remind myself how lucky I am to have a job.

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October 17, 2011 · 2:29 pm

The Show Biz Hiatus Dance

Sorry folks.

I’m a little busy with my day job this week, meaning the one that pays the bills (or at least some of them). I’ve got a dozen ideas rolling around in my head, but I just don’t have time yet to jot them down via keyboard and upload them into cyberspace. So in the meantime…

For those of you new to Very VERY busy mom, I started this blog on North Hollywood/Toluca Lake’s Patch.com, the hyper-local newsite owned by AOL.  This was my very first post and appeared on May 4, 2011. I thought I might reprint it here, since I’m now currently on the opposite end of The Show Biz Hiatus Dance.

The Hiatus Dance as a tv sound editor

Man is the only earthly being that senses the concept of time, and as long as he’s been aware of it, he’s been slicing that time into “before” and “after” sections. Nine months of an anticipated due date is followed by decades of annual birthdays (which progressively become fodder for mock and ridicule). Our Gregorian calendar divides our years into B.C. and A.D., which more recently can be dissected into “Before Children” and “After Divorce.” And for many of us who are seasonally employed in the entertainment industry, our world is split into two distinct segments: “working” and “on hiatus.”Last week I was working.

This week I am on hiatus.

Work = money and no time. Hiatus = time and no money. And as Kipling said, “Never the twain shall meet.”

For over a quarter of a century, I have been a television sound editor, working primarily from September through May. I get a few breaks around Christmas and in the spring, but most weeks it’s 50 – 60 hours working on a strict deadline. And then faster than you can say “Nielsen ratings,” I’m unemployed.

Brisco County, Jr.

My busiest week on record is a total of 112 clocked hours, so when I say I was working every waking minute, it’s not much on an exaggeration. You know you’re working too much when you want to dial “9” before making a phone call, or instinctively grab a toilet seat cover when using the little girls’ room. My hardest month was May of 1994, when I was in the midst of May sweeps for my show The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., while simultaneously cutting the pilots for ER and Third Watch.

ER

After working 16-hour days for a couple of weeks, I went to work on Friday at 6:00 am and worked straight through until 1:15 Saturday afternoon. Then I went to a wedding.

Third Watch

I was younger then. Today that would kill me. And believe me, I would be praying for death.

Today’s 50-60 hour week should feel like part-time work. But now that I have three kids and a very busy life outside of work, it’s become a hard task to gracefully master. I’m lucky to have a husband who doesn’t work in the industry. He has a normal 40-hour week (albeit an early one – 6:00 am – 2:00 pm) and picks up a lot of slack. If we have home-cooked meals, he’s the one who prepares them. He’s often the parent who picks up the kids from school, takes them to appointments and helps them with their homework. It’s really hard to feel like a martyr when your husband is the one cleaning up the midnight flu vomit. But even he can’t do it all when my workload is heavy.

When I’m on a show, we eat a lot of Costco ready-made meals. I have to just accept the sticky floors and the thick layer of dog hair that accumulates in every corner of the house. Lack of exercise has made my hips even more Jell-O-like, and I blame sleep deprivation for making me forget the names of my children. My responses to Evites are posted in this order: “YES!”…. then “Maybe”… and finally a day or two before the event, a very apologetic “No.” I have a half-dozen saved phone messages from my 10-year old daughter pleading “Please come home Mommy! PLEASE!” and I have to create auto replies for my emails saying that it’s not that I’m out of the office, it’s just that I’m too busy to look at them.

Joan Cusack running in "Broadcast News"

When describing my work schedule to the 9-to-5ers, I compare it to two different movies, which is appropriate since I work in entertainment. The first is from the 1987 film Broadcast News where Joan Cusack has less than 60 seconds to leap over and under file cabinets, drinking fountains and small children to deliver videotape before the station is forced to cut to black. This hilarious scene shows the urgency and panic of working under an impossible deadline, and it’s similar to the nightmares that wake me up when I really need to be getting my beauty sleep.

The Slave Galley in "Ben Hur"

The other film is the rowing of the galley slaves scene in the classic film Ben Hur. I think of this scene whenever one of my at-home mom friends suggests that I make it a point of taking time to relax. This would be akin to a shackled Charlton Heston, rowing at top ramming speed, turning to the guy with the whip and asking “Can’t I just pause a moment and take a little ‘me’ time?”

I have it easier than most. Working in post-production (and for this season working completely from home) I have a certain amount of autonomy and flexibility as long as I get my show done.

Chained to work

Those who work in production are not so lucky. They get up at 6:00 am and travel to whatever location they’re shooting that day, and they are literally slaves until after the last scene of the day when the director yells “Cut.” They might finish up at midnight and do it all over again the next day. Granted, the crew has meals brought to them, but so do prisoners in San Quentin, but at least the convicts get a full night’s sleep.

And then there’s hiatus.

I actually get an adrenaline rush just thinking about hiatus.

Ahhh... hiatus!!!

My to-do list is miles long, and ranges from big projects like cleaning out my garage and painting the house to simple little things like picking my kids up from school on foot, or taking a moment to brush my matted dogs. I’m looking forward to reading a book. Yesterday I went to the YMCA and took my first Pilates class in four months. Unfortunately, today I’m walking like I just road a horse from Bakersfield. I also spent two hours at Target strolling down every single aisle – and I did it with my four-year old. As anyone with a preschooler will immediately attest, this should have been the equivalent of an afternoon in hell. Instead, I had a great time, although a variety of squirt guns and squishy balls magically appeared in my basket.

You used to know who was on hiatus, because you’d all see each other in the unemployment line the following Monday, but now (mercifully) you can file online. Marie et Cie and Aroma Café bustle with new summer regulars who finally have time to socialize or start that screenplay they’ve been talking about forever. The 12-step rooms are packed with those who finally have time to work on their addictions, or who are under the misconceived notion that they’ll get their big break by pitching to a celebrity during an AA meeting.

The workaholics have a big problem. If they don’t have a family or a hobby, the transition from 180 mph to a dead stop is just too extreme. They’ll end up like the stereotypical housewives – eating bon bons and watching Oprah, or in the case of the men, eating ships & salsa and watching ESPN.

Many friends of mine in the industry have a tough time making the work/hiatus transition, especially when they have kids. The ones with a full-time nanny have the easiest time, because they get a long vacation and don’t have to clean up a mess that’s been piling up for nine months. But those with a spouse who stays home with the kids tend to perform a confusing dance of Who’s Job is it Anyway? for the first month or so of hiatus. The hardworking parent finally gets some quality time with his little angels, but completely disrupts the routines established by the long-suffering spouse. The breadwinner thinks he deserves a little downtime but the homemaker resents having him parked on the sofa all day watching Law and Order reruns.

The at-home parent feels like a chump who has to play bad cop with the kids because the good cop/parent is suddenly home, taking back some authority and lets the kids stay up late, have extra dessert, or skip chores. This leaves the other parent dealing with cranky kids the next morning, hyper sugar highs or cleaning tornado-ravaged bedrooms. With this feast or famine style of cohabitation, I’m often amazed that entertainment industry marriages survive at all.

The West Wing

And then there’s the money… or rather lack of it. For those working on a successful show, hiatus is a vacation like one any other deserving American might take, only longer. In the late ‘90’s/early 2000’s I was the dialogue editor on the full seven-season run of “The West Wing,” and I always had an intense summer itinerary with my kids which included touring amusement parks, exploring every park within a ten-mile radius and taking weekly beach excursions.

brothers & sisters

However my current show, Brothers & Sisters, seems to be in a limbo state. It has not been picked up for the fall season, but its set has not been struck either, so I am anxiously waiting for the fall lineup to see if I get to go to the beach or start scrambling for another job. Maybe I’ll be on the next long-running hit show… or I might land a stinker that gets cancelled before Halloween. If the latter is the case, hiatus = beau coup time and a home foreclosure.

So much for the glamorous life of show biz.

Once Upon a Time

Here’s my happy ending –

This season I’m cutting dialogue on the show “Once Upon A Time” which premieres Sunday, October 23 at 8:00 pm on ABC. We did not lose the house, but our credit card debt now rivals those of many small nations. I am still trying to clean out the garage.

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Filed under Anxiety, Career, Debt, Financial Insecurity, Humor, Husband, Multitasking, Parenting

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October 13, 2011 · 12:21 am

Why Can’t the Real World Be Like Our Little Restaurant Fundraisers?

Mrs. Walker with kindergartners

Like other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, our local elementary school has been hit hard by budget cuts. Just last month Colfax Charter Elementary’s School Site Council voted to allocate an additional $68,000 to pay for five classroom aides, office staff, and our librarian – funds that in the past were paid for by the district, but are now paid for by the parents.

Besides an impressive 2011 API score of 910, Colfax is attractive to the families of Valley Village for its commitment to the arts, green program, and technology – all which are principally paid for by parent-run fundraisers.

Today it takes a lot more than bake sales to raise that kind of cash. Our annual giving campaign is in full swing, aiming to raise at least the $600 per child it takes to keep the school’s programs afloat. An outdoor movie night, holiday boutique and the upcoming Turkey Trot fundraiser will also hopefully make a dent in our stretched budget.

Last Tuesday we had a double-header, or what I called The Freeway Series minus the freeway. Green Apple China Bistro and Cold Stone Creamery are located in the same Studio City strip mall across from each other, and they both agreed to donate a percentage of their sales back to Colfax.

Teachers and our principal scooping ice cream

On our end, we did a little bit of advertising. We put flyers in all the kids’ backpacks, posted signs around the school entrances, advertised the day on our marquee, added the event to our weekly email blast to all the Colfax families, and made the announcement at our Monday morning assembly.

Green Apple and Cold Stone gave us a percentage of all sales for the day, and as an added incentive, the teachers were invited to scoop ice cream in 15-minute shifts.

Cold Stone line out the door 1

A good bake sale can bring in a hundred dollars, maybe even two. It takes a lot of manpower to make and sell the baked goods, a lot of dough in eggs and flour, and a lot of waste from unsold merchandise. Still, a hundred or two is a boost that can pay for some art supplies or repair a computer.

Yet in one day, these combined restaurant fundraisers brought our school nearly $1000! There was a steady line of customers streaming out the door for two solid hours at Cold Stone, and because the teachers volunteered, they didn’t need to pay for extra bodies during the busy hours.

Teachers scooping ice cream

It’s quite the win-win for all of us. Colfax gains a big wad of money, and the only expense was about $20 in copies for the flyers. The restaurants get a nice tax write-off, and a little bit of free advertising. They also get increased business for the day, and hopefully new loyal customers who will return again and again to thank the businesses that support their local school. The parents get a delicious meal and dessert, and didn’t have to pay a penny more than they normally would if they were going out to dinner. The kids have a great time seeing their teachers outside of school and giving them their order for a change. There’s a strong sense of community as the families have an opportunity to socialize.

Cold Stone line out the door 2

Don’t you think this could be a lesson for the rest of our ailing nation? Why don’t the big businesses give back to their community? Not just a tax write off, but something like 20 – 25%. Like the teachers, the community leaders should volunteer some of their time to mingle with their constituents and get their hands a little dirty (with ice cream, not with whatever muck dirty politicians swim in). The citizens will love those big businesses even more for helping them out and they will in turn become more loyal customers. The real winners will be the kids who get to reap the benefits of better school and a stronger community. And everyone has a good time in the process.

In a perfect world…

But until then, I’ll be buying my ice cream from Cold Stone and my Chinese food from Green Apple. And so will my kids. And then maybe even their kids.

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Filed under Financial Insecurity, Fundraising, Humor, Parenting, Public Education, Public Schools, Volunteering

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October 8, 2011 · 2:24 pm

♫♪ Don’t Know Much About Geography ♫♪

Barry Ritholtz

The World According to Americans

My friend Heidi posted this map to her Facebook page, and I realized that it’s unfortunately so true – particularly with American kids today. I am a huge supporter of public schools, but I believe that they are seriously lacking in teaching our kids about geography and the rest of our world.

I vowed that when I had kids I would never start a conversation with, “When I was your age…” and yet I do remember being taught geography in elementary school. We memorized the 50 states and their capitals, the Canadian provinces and their capitals, European countries and capitals, the rivers of Africa, the islands of Japan, and mountain ranges in South America. I can still remember most of them today, because I recite them in my head whenever I’m bored out of my mind at a long meeting.

Throughout California public elementary schools, the principal geography lesson is taught in the 4th grade on the missions and Native American tribes of the region. It has taken me decades just to remember the politically correct term “Native American” rather than the standard “Indian,” even though my nephew and two nieces are part of the Luiseño tribe from the Pechanga Indian Reservation (notice that people don’t call it “Pechanga Native American Reservation.” Go figure). I also have learned to not clarify “Indian” with “feather, not dot” while in the company of people I don’t know well and might interpret that I’m a racist, which I am not.

The 9-year olds at our local elementary school know all about the Luiseños and the San Gabriel Mission, but very few probably know that our state capital is Sacramento. If you ask them to point out California on a map of the United States, they probably can do it, but if they are offered to find it on a globe, I suspect that many of them would just be spinning it on its axis, looking for a dot that identifies the Luiseños.

The only reason our kids know the names of the states is from singing “50 Fifty United States” in chorus and “Boogie Woogie Bugle March” from Vaudeville. Thank God our parents raise funds for the arts, or the kids would be at a standstill after naming California and Florida. After all, Disney is the capital of those states, isn’t it?

There are states they might have heard of from other walks of life: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Jersey Shore, Hawaii Five-0, Texas hold ‘em, AriZona Tea, and of course California Pizza Kitchen. They probably don’t realize that Rhode Island is not actually an island, that West Virginia is actually northwest of Virginia, or that Washington State and Washington, D.C are not only not the same thing, but are on opposite ends of the country. If they had to pick out Hawaii from a map, they would likely choose the Channel Islands.

And that’s just the U.S. I’m absolutely certain that they have no idea that North and South Korea have a very different kind of boundary than the ones between the Dakotas and the Carolinas. They think anyone who’s first language is Spanish must be from Mexico and that Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese are just dialects of the same language. They wouldn’t know that the North Pole is smack in the middle of an ocean, and that the Middle East and Midwest probably have absolutely nothing in common.

These days, children not only have no clear idea where American landmarks like Mount Rushmore or the Washington Monument are located, they probably have never heard of these landmarks in the first place. However, they can immediately tell you were to find Forever 21 in the mall, or the nearest Starbucks or McDonalds. They are also quite deft at navigating their Facebook page.

Now that my daughters are in middle and high school, they are thankfully learning more about world geography. My own geographical cockiness bit me in the butt recently when Mary Belle came home talking about the five oceans of the world. I corrected her.

“There are four oceans.”

“No, mom. There are five.”

I immediately spewed off the oceans: “Pacific, Atlantic, Indian and Arctic.”

I asked her about the fifth, but she couldn’t remember what it was and said it was near Antarctica. I figured she was just thinking of some fictional body of water from Atlantis.

My husband called me over to the computer. He had Wikipedia open to Ocean, and wouldn’t you know – there’s a fifth ocean called the Southern Ocean, which is “sometimes considered an extension of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans which encircles Antarctica.”

Touché. I’d better start studying the globe a little better. And not the one that still shows USSR.

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