momtrolfreak

I'm HUGE in Australia* (*"HUGE" = "virtually unknown except for this one cul-de-sac")

Google Analytics can be somewhat addicting. You can spend hours slicing and dicing the information about your blog traffic going up or down (they like me, they really like me), how long people stay on your site, how many subscribers you have, how often they visit, and even what countries they live in. For instance, I am quite popular in Canberra, Australia. HOW COOL IS THAT? While the majority of my readers are in the U.S., I have a surprising number of German, Australia, and Turkish readers. The Swedish seem to not like me much--I think it's because of that whole IKEA debacle.

I haven't really looked at Google Analytics much since those first formative months of blogging, when I was obsessed with my subscriber counts and such. So if you've unsubscirbed because I pissed yu off, I haven't noticed. Which is ok because, well, you unsubscribed, so you don't even know i just said that. You douchebag. <-- or that

But I just got back on Analytics because a friend mention that you can see what search engine search terms most often lead people to your blog. I FIND THIS FASCINATING. Of course "momtrolfreak" as a search will get you here. And "mom control freak," natch. I won;t bore you with the ones that make sense. But check this out, ya'll: people have been led to this blog by typing into Google (or wherever) the following terms:

"dinosaur dolphins"

"IKEA rug powder" (see incident above--this one makes sense, and more than that, it gratifies me to know that someone else has experienced the phenomenon of IKEA rug powder because that means I WAS RIGHT and the freaking thing was DEFECTIVE, you cocksuckers)

"bad mommy fuck"

"bad mommy fucking"

"fucking hard core mom and wives" (ok, really? I'm thinking this is one guy, searching repeatedly, but somehow it all leads to my blog. This should lead to some sort of soul-searching on my part about how much I curse, I suppose...nah)

"do it in front of me" (yeah, baby....at a loss on this one)

"funniest shit on the internet" (why thank you, Google, for leading them here)

"herpes is at my daycare" (wow, that's unfortunate. I'm thinking my post about glitter being LIKE herpes was really what this person needed--webmd probably would have come in handier. Although, if there is a rampant herpes epidemic at your kid's daycare, you could probably use a laugh)

"fuck me gently with a chainsaw" (what is your DAMAGE, Google?)

"hobo sad clown painting" (people search for these?)

"mombewbs" (Anissa, is that you?)

"whackyourfather" (like, as in kill him? wow. you really can find anything on the internet. I wonder if the potentially fratricidal person who visited my site found anything useful? The only thing I've done to get back at my dad was to sign him up for cooking classes in order to try to get him a new girlfriend)

"penis sexy" (ooohkay)

"king size douchebag" (that's more like it...wait, is this also about my father?)

AND MY FAVORITE....

"Kenny G allergic to shellfish"

Oh, Kenny! I had no idea we had this in common!!! Awww!

So, fair readers, are you the person who got here wondering about Kenny G's shrimp problem? Are the fratricidal maniac? Do you live in Canberra?

ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW. Tell me your story. How the hell did YOU find me?*

*Most interesting reasder response will win...something. I don't know. I have some stuff lying around: Frog's atrocious candy-free "gingerbread house" from school (who needs frosting when you've got COTTON BALLS!?) A flip-up kiddie toilet seat cover? (TOTALLY CLEAN!) An authographed copy of my book? (disclaimer: "my" book refers to the fact that I own this book that somebody else wrote and then signed. It's by David McCullough. It's about the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a really long book for being about one bridge. Wait, I think I already gave it to my dad. That was his punishment.)

Writer's Block: An Identity Crisis in One Act

Whenever we read a book to Frog we always include reading aloud the cover/title and the name of the author.  People think it's weird not to just skip to the good stuff, but it's always been important to me for him to know that these wonderful collections of paper and pictures and fantastical ideas don't just magically appear out of nowhere, that they are the product of someone's imagination. Even at three and a half he knows who his favorite authors are and says their names with me ("Shel Silverstein" sounds really cute with his slight lisp, by the way, as do Maurice Sendak and Sandra Boynton and Richard Scarry--man, authors' names have a lot of S's).

[Sidenote: We were at our local bookstore (the fabulous, independently owned Unabridged) and he walked right up to the counter and asked them if they had "Polar Express" and when they gave him that one, he said "do you have more Shel Silverstein books?" The school had just done a little play with selections from Where the Sidewalk Ends and he became a huuuuuge fan. (His favorite poem is "Someone Ate the Baby." Good thing we stopped at one kid.)]

A few weeks ago we were about to read one of his Busytown books when he said "Richard Scarry is an author, just like you, Mommy!" I was a bit taken aback. Turns out my husband, completely bypassing what my "real" job is, has been telling our son that what Mommy does is write books. Granted, telling a three year old that I work for a medical not-for-profit wouldn't mean anything to him, so it's easier just to say "she writes books." Aquaman told him that when he's bigger he can read a book written by Mommy because they are not kid books (the plural here--"books"-- cracks my shit UP. Not only have I not written "books" I have also yet to have written "book").  I probably won't FINISH my novel until Frog's a grown up (seeing as how I wrote five chapters in 2005 and then found out I was pregnant and, um, yeah. Five chapters.), so that's fine.

But I got...this sounds silly, but I got a teensy bit upset that my husband told him I'm a writer.  

I've won writing awards; I've been published academically and presented papers academically; I've gotten honors and nominations for this blog; I have had essays published in magazines; I've reviewed and been a guest writer on other websites...but I don't call myself a writer. I only do it as a hobby, see. I only spend maybe 15% of my leisure time (of which I have none) doing anything related to writing. So, 15% of 0% is not a lot of time, and certainly not enough to claim a title. 

It just sounds so unbelievably pretentious: "I'm a writer." I'd be a poseur, bragging about being a poet or something at a cocktail party and then finding out I was talking to Maya Angelou or something. Not that I wouldn't recognize Maya Angelou. You know what I'm saying.

"I'm a writer."

I just can't imagine this being my response to "So what do you do?" Not yet. For now, my day job persona is the stock answer. I imagine it will be for a long time. it's comfortable, I'm good at it, and I can talk about it at length, which is something I can't do about writing.

I used to sometimes answer "I'm an actress" back when that was true, and it always got annoying: "OOOH! What have you BEEN in?" they'd ask, and I've have to stand there and list my resume and watch their eyes for glimmers of recognition and approval. I wouldn't get any, because most of the places I worked, while quite established and respected and paying gigs, even, weren't necessarily "known" to those who weren't in the business or at least avid theatregoers. If your average Joe asks where you've appeared and you don't say "Steppenwolf" or "Broadway" or "CSI: MIami" or some such shit in the first two breaths, you're not gonna measure up. So I'd mention the Goodman (true, but only as an understudy), and if they didn't even know what THAT was (God help them), I'd mention a couple of my commercials and a recurring role I had on Prison Break on FOX and they'd get all excited. Which made me really sad about the state of art in America today, that Prison break was more legit to your average person than, say, playing Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of the classics of American literature. Tennessee who? they would sometimes ask. Yikes. 

So I really don't want to go through that, now, from the writing side of things. Until I say "I'm a writer" and then they say "where have you been published?" and I can say something super fantabulous like "oh didn't you read my piece in the New Yorker last week?" then I'm just not gonna put myself out there. (and the closest I have come to that are my really awesome entries for the caption contest, but even those don't win, although once my caption DID win but they attributed it to someone else because me and this guy sent in the same thing, so that was both gratifying and annoying but still, here I am not published in the New Yorker).

n the meantime I'll just stand over here, in the shadows, clutching my pen drive with my five chapters and my crinkled copies of my published essays and maybe that tiny blurb they published of mine that time in Wondertime and paid me real money for and my encouraging-but-nonetheless-rejecting letters from big important places. I'll just stand over here, next to my refrigerator, with those items, and meditate on being a 'real' writer like Richard Scarry and Shel Silverstein.

I'll meditate on living up to my child's idealized version of who I am,

imparted to him by my husband's idealized version of what I can be. 

I started this post to go on the blog; I started the blog to get back to writing; I started writing because I had something to say; I swallowed the spider to catch the fly; I don't know why I swallowed the fly; I think I'll die.

I've got to read fewer children's books. 

When Readers Attack

Fear not, gentle readers. I have not "actually" been "attacked." I have simply been "nudged" by loyal reader "Ed," who keeps telling his diary about how I've abandoned him. I love this, not only because it makes me feel important, but because this is exactly the reason I started a blog. My idea back then was to blog in order to get myself writing and to KEEP myself writing, because in my mind's eye I would ostensibly have established some sort of responsibility to somebody. It is oh so easy to put off things that you enjoy (like, for me, writing, yoga, eating) in favor of powering through the day getting a million little sniggety to-do list workity-work things done until finally, at night, you collapse in front of, say, True Blood with your honey. But when you get stuff in your comments section from people saying they miss you, and then you look and see how many subscribers you have and that they didn't go away and are still waiting for you to say something....well, gosh darn it, it makes you feel all warm and gooey inside. So you write. Not, like, mind-blowingly awesome prose--I just don't have the energy for this right now--not that anything on here has necessarily been mind-blowingly awesome, but work with me here.

So, as a means of catching ya'll up real quick-like so that I can move forward from here and still make sense, here's a quick rundown. Okay, making sense is a high bar. Let's aim for recognizable English, shall we?

Dear Ed's Diary (et al),

Here's what I've been doing:

Vacation: Vacation is good. You should take one. Water parks are fun. I didn't used to like them, or even enjoy getting my face wet in the shower, actually, but wow. Fun. Who knew? It is also nice to see family, when you can. What is not fun is trying to do three vacations in quick succession at the end of the summer. Because then you come back to work and you cry and you don't write in your blog anymore.

Work: Really really busy with, like, work stuff that would so not interest you. Stuff that makes my brain hurt. And a lot of it. Note to self: Taking basically three successive weeks off and then having to get ready for a big big big meeting coming up, sort of exponentially makes it so that it feels as if you've actually gotten 9 weeks behind, and as if while you were gone, a chimp was rearranging your files for you so everything would be 'easier' to 'find.' You come back and things don't really even look familiar. Is that my handwriting? you think, looking at your post-its. And then you get overwhelmed. And then you work and work and work until you can't work anymore. And when you work at home, the guy next door decides to fix something loudly with a hammer that sounds like someone packing cigarettes against their palm, which makes you want smokes even though you don't smoke anymore. And then when you're at the office, there are these pesky meetings. And people talking. And crazy crack ho ladies crashing into cars and ending up in a high-speed police chase that ends up dead-ended in your office building's parking lot, so that you are ordered to leave your office and come away from the window in case shots are fired. And the funny thing about that is that my office is in a very fancy suburb, and many of the coworkers that live near my office don't like to come into the city because it's dangerous there and there's a lot of traffic. Yes, but in our traffic, the crack hos don't speed or run lights, because we have those handy surveillance cameras.

PHOTOS: Dad's houseboat; Aquaman & FrogBoy jet skiing at sunset; FrogBoy waiting for the plane home

School: Frogboy's new school is AWESOME. His teacher is this really cool, Guatemalan, vegan (I am a vegan vicariously through her, as I eat bacon). lady who even has a supercool name and tons of experience and a real curriculum and who plans to teach about the environment and have the kids put together school supply backpacks for kids in Africa and just, wow, super cool stuff. It's weird to be at a big school that has big kids in it, too (unliek the insular private preschool where my kid WAS a big kid), but it's weird in a good way. And he loves it. There has not been one single fit of clinginess, he always wants to go, and he loves packing his lunch (public school lunch in Chicago SUCKS, by the way, and don't even get me started on the breakfast, which most days is FROOT LOOPS. Huh?). He is a BIG BOY NOW and loving it. Especially the accessories: lunchbox with litlte bento box thingies inside, water bottle, Wall-E backpack....

Frog Quotes:
first day of school, wearing an "S is for Spaceship" t-shirt:
"Look Mommy, S is for Rocket!"
Impressing the new teacher? Fail.

later...
Aquaman: "What'd you do at school today, kiddo?"
Frog: "Nothing."
Aquaman: "NOTHING? You just sat and stared at each other all day?"
Frog: "Yes like this": (pouts & glares)
Aquaman: "Wow, that sounds boring. Do they not have any toys to play with at school?"
Frog: (rolls eyes) "Of COURSE they have TOYS , Daddy, or else we would have to LEARN all the time!"

making pretend ice cream cones at home in his room as I play "customer."
me: "Can I have mint chocolate chip?"
Frog: "No you can't eat that one because, because it is not a good flavor for girls it is a recipe only for a MAN so you eat this choklit one."

My Sister:
She's doing great, except for that whole thing a few hours after her surgery where she go up to go to the restroom (because the nurses said it was ok) and the incision sites on both side of her groin area (front of hips, kind of) started SPEWING BLOOD EVERYWHERE. My mother got this really high-pitched "everythingisfinedontworryaboutmeimnotabouttopassoutatall" voice when she was recounting this story. Sadly, I was not there to witness. Sounds like a scene out of Kill Bill 2.  Margot is really into Halloween, so, you know, it added to the decor (and then she didn't need to buy the baby oil). Thank you so much to all of you who sent me private messages or made comments or twittered for updates. She's recuperating well now except she is still very skinny. She's me, like, minus forty pounds. And I'm no skinny minny, but I don;t really have forty pounds to lose, so yeah, too skinny. She is, however, getting to eat foods she has not eaten in YEARS because of the Crohn's. Like carrots. Who knew anyone would ever be excited about that? It's as if she's 6 months old and trying First Foods. Baby steps. Oh, and everyone is okay, post-flood. As long as they can get to a Chick-Fil-A SOMEHOW, my family will survive.

PHOTO: Dude, I just spent ten whole minutes looking for a photo of Lucy Liu with the top of her head chopped off, before I realized I have "inappropriate content" filtered on my google settings. Sometimes parenting sucks.

My mother:
Is back in Scotland. I find this both irritating and inconvenient. Make it stop.

Aquaman: ...is really enjoying this year of teaching. It's nice when people get to spend all day every day doing what they were meant to do...like, living their calling. You know? This is very unfamiliar to most people. I'm happy that he's happy. But it's kind of not fair that he has that AND he gets summers off. Oh wait, I made him build me a kitchen. Never mind.

Grad school: Taking my last class now. Last one ever. OMG now I might actually have to DO something with my life.

....Nah.

As for the Big Ass Exam, we should know any day now. They said two weeks. The options are fail, pass, and pass with commendation. I am such a nerd that I will be disappointed if I don't get commendation, of course. Probably too much to ask, since I didn't even finish Middlemarch. But come on: has ANYONE? I effing finished ULYSSES, for God's sake, but Middlemarch was just boring as hell. Oh and HEY: You know what's funny? Trying to read a book that big and imposing-looking at a waterpark. Yup, nothing to see here, folks, just a little light summer  reading...a little 18th-century Chick-Lit. after this it's Bridget Jones and then The Manny...

Kitchen:
So. So. Purty.

Other:
Yet again there are babies EVERYWHERE. A woman at work just had her second, and there was a shower for someone else yesterday, which really brought back the memories. I like babies--I love holding other people's babies. And then giving them back and sleeping all night.

And I really, REALLY love being asked CONSTANTLY by well-meaning adults when I am having my second one. Oh and my kid keeps begging me for a little sister. Awesome. This is from a while back but in case you missed it:
Frog: "[Friend] is really lucky to have a new baby, right Mommy?"
Me: "Sure...."
Frog: (nodding) "Yeah. Reeeally lucky."
Me: "Do you wish YOU had a baby?"
Frog: "Oh yes, I think so!"
Me: "Yeah, babies can be cuddly and nice to hold....but they don't really play with you until they're much older. And then they take your toys.
Frog: "That's okay Mommy I will share." (he kills me when he says things this sweet)
Me: "But what if we got a baby, and then it cried all night while you were trying to sleep?"
Frog: (laughing and walking away) "Mommy, that's silly; we wouldn't get the CRYING kind of baby."

Oh, glad we cleared that one up.

Clearly I ordered the wrong kind last time.

 

The New Yorker's First-Ever Centerfold

Great, now I have to hide The New Yorker from the kid.
(It's from an article about traveling in Siberia. The caption is totally serious, stating that she's a "woman selling vegetables" and where her town is, but come ON, this has to be intentional, right?)