Inland Empress

I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine

Yesterday marked five years since I walked down the aisle in a poofy, white dress and stood under an ivy-entwined canopy with my pale, anxious fiance. I managed to avoid getting red wine spilled all over myself when his hands trembled as he lifted the goblet to my lips for the traditional blessing. He smashed a small glass under his foot on the first try and everyone cheered. Somewhere I still have the embroidered satin cloth it was wrapped in, the first thing I owned that gave my new married name.

We spent our anniversary Sunday in Pasadena eating Chinese food while the monsterling charmed all the other patrons. He's amazing when he behaves; chatty and cheerful, pointing to all the things he can name, waving hello to the next table, grinning like the Cheshire cat. But the best thing he did for us was to sleep through "Return of the King," which I'd been dying to see. We even paused the DVD a couple times just to make sure he wasn't howling with rage that no one had come to tuck him in again (and again and again). Nothing. He was out. Cool.

When Plosh and I first met, my idea of romance was to have him come back to his apartment after working late to find my clothes strewn in a path to his bedroom. Then there was the night I spent several hours on a single massage for him. I wonder if he knew when he was tilting that goblet dangerously toward me what he was in for -- that the massages would give way to weary pats on the back, then the hasty peck on the cheek. That clothes strewn seductively would turn into piles of moldering laundry. That we would spend four hours in the dark on our anniversary and not move.

I like to think if Plosh knew this, he might still have married me.

Of course, I still believe I'll fit the negligee I wore on my wedding night just as soon as I lose those 20 lbs., which will happen any day now. Any day. I just know it.

TV haiku

Magic video
casts its trance-inducing spell
You say: quick, let's screw

Happy anniversary, sweetie.

The do-re-mi of doom

We are late to Minitaur's music class, but I let him meander the halls of the community center, patting his sticky hands on the walls and chirping to himself. Why hurry? I know what awaits. Sure enough, as we get nearer the classroom, I notice windows rattling. Stabbing pain shoots through my head. I open the door to see seven or eight other mothers gritting their teeth. Yes, instructor Toan Deff is once again singing at a pitch only dogs can hear.

It is particularly noxious this week. Toan introduces several new songs to her repertoire, and, true to form, forgets the words that are posted on the wall behind her. She stops. Squints. Starts over. One of the Mommies goes into convulsions and must be carried from the room. The children clap and stomp and wriggle in happy oblivion.

Toan gets an idea. Let's all be airplanes! Can YOOOOO be an airplane? She spreads her arms and lurches around the room, screeching "zoomio, zooooooomiiioooo." It is the best impression of a wounded ostrich I've ever seen. But my limbs begin to twitch even as Minitaur joins the line of awed worshippers bobbling along after her.

By the time she gets to "She'll be coming around the mountain," Mommies are flopping around like orcas after exposure to submarine sonar. Blood trickles from my ears. It's time for her good-bye song, in which she squeaks farewell in whatever languages she can remember, which is astonishingly few. She attempts to squeeze "sayonara" into two syllables while hitting a "note" several octaves above high C.

I lose consciousness. All is blackness.

My widowed husband presses charges and Toan Deff is sentenced to life in a Cistercian convent, where she must maintain a vow of silence.

The 10 Really Strong Suggestions

Imperial Memo
From: Me
To: G-d
Re: Jewish holiday of Shavuot

First of all, let me congratulate You on the anniversary of handing down the 10 Commandments to Moses and the Israelites. I'd say 3,000 years is a righteously long time for Your children to live by one set of rules. Plus, they're pretty easy to remember, seeing as how there's 10 of them and all. The 87 Commandments would've been a bit tougher, I think.

Since we're supposed to follow Your example in all things, I set myself to adopting a few commandments of my own. Note the small "c" as I lack the ability to toss bolts of lightening or dispatch transgressors to Gehenna, so much as toss fits or make life hellish, which isn't quite the same.

But here goes:

1. I am the goddess, thy Mother
2. Thou shalt have no other bedtimes but the one I set
3. Thou shalt not hit, bite or scratch me
4. Thou shalt not play thy Father off against thy Mother
5. Thou shalt observe my need for rest and keep it holy
6. Thou shalt not scream murderously in public
7. Thou shalt not steal from the cat's dish
8. Thou shalt not commit potty in thy pants
9. Thou shalt not be unbearable while others witness
10. Thou shalt not covet every damn thing on the store shelf but what I buy for thee

Photo album update

Some new photos of the wee one, taking him up to age 16 months, are in the "Seth and More Seth" photo album listed at the bottom of the righthand column.

I mean, just in case you were interested, you know. Not that you have to, you understand.

Of course, if you don't, you'll be missing out on the world's cutest tot.

Why it doesn't pay to get out of bed

Plosh earned his nickname this week. Talk about rotten timing.

He's planned for this big, whoop-de-doo conference all year. He fretted and daydreamed and PowerPointed. IT geeks from newspapers all over the country showed up Monday evening. They were slated to have their big banquet last night (Tuesday) at a fancy-pants steakhouse in Los Angeles. This was his chance to network and shmooze his way out of a lousy job at the LA Times, where he fetches water, er, fixes software problems for reporters and editors.

So guess which week Minitaur brings home Virus #87 of the year. And guess which nights he wakes up howling every two hours while kicking his father in the ribs. If you guessed "this week" -- you win!

Yesterday, I was shocked to see my bedraggled, sick and depressed hubby standing in our doorway at 4 p.m. He'd been battling nausea and fever all day and struggling to stay awake, the poor dear. He bailed midway through the conference's first day and skipped the banquet.

Worse, the one panel he did attend was all weasely LA Times journalists bashing his hard work to the entire industry without giving him an opportunity to defend himself. And he says much of what they dissed simply wasn't true. Why not just emasculate him and get it over with? Forget the Liberal Media, how about the Technically incompetent, it's-never-my-fault-whiny-bastards Media?

So he came home to lick his wounds, stick a thermometer in his mouth and watch the American Idol finale with me. He slept in the spare bedroom to make sure he didn't get kicked to death, and this morning was out the door before 7 a.m. to trudge back to the conference.

And he doesn't even get a lousy steak out of the deal.

Pre-school rant update

A few weeks ago, I whined about the monsterling getting waitlisted at our pre-school of choice. Well, I just mailed off my deposit. He's in!

Starting this autumn, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings I won't have to scurry after His Hyperactiveness. My hubby plans to drop him off en route to work, meaning I'll get two whole mornings each week to make myself a pot of tea, prop my feet up and, well, that's it. That's all I plan to do.

How long is it until September?

My life as a tank

In my next life, I am coming back as a tank. I don't know much about tanks, except that people tend to get out of their way. When I am reborn as something cumbersome and oblivious, I will spend my time in outlet malls where I will clash with other tanks for the right to hog the freeway-sized corridor and lumber as glacially as possible while still actually moving.

I will trawl through every single store searching for a sexy little number in a Size 248. Failing that, I will seek something not too sack-like. Failing that, I will drape myself in my favorite designer label, "irregular."

I will try on only 4-inch high heels with enough straps to satisfy the most ardent fetishist. Military experts will no doubt concur that high heels are better suited than tank treads for assuring the slowest, most arduous pace on flat terrain. I will buy make-up in colors so garish, oncomers will mistake me for a traffic signal. My license plate will say something like 2SEXY or HOT1 or CU L8R.

I will make my husband, Mr. Tank, tattoo his arms with pictures of nekkid ladies much skinnier than myself, plus some occultish symbols that even he doesn't understand but which look appropriately malevolent. He will plod beside me in a wifebeater undershirt so everyone can see the nekkid ladies, and the undershirt will cling in such a way as to draw attention to his man-boobs.

We will refuel in the food court, frequently, and with great fanfare, as we bump and scrape past each table until we find the last two titanium-reinforced seats. We will then position ourselves strategically for the best people-watching, and express amazement at how some folks could go out in public looking the way they do.

Here we go again haiku

A contest of wills
two raging storm fronts collide
it must be naptime

Eat my kumquats

Know any good kumquat jokes? Me neither. Which is a pity, because the word sounds like it should be the punchline in a dirty joke, doesn't it? As in, ". . . and then the bartender told the blonde, 'No, miss, I meant his kumquat.'" Ha ha ha!

I'm stuck with these sour, thumbprint-sized fruits that aren't really all that funny, and in fact are miserably sour. It's harvest time, but we're running out of potential victims to dump them on. We used to rely on Plosh's office. The first year, one of his coworkers took home the whole bag. Success!

But then she returned them in candied form. Did we ask for them back? Did we? Huh? We couldn't insult her after all her hard work creating gelatinous gobs of puckery yuck. So we kept the jar in the fridge for a respectable amount of time and then threw it away. Year after that, the next recipient made us preserves that Plosh actually attempted to eat. And then threw away.

Last time 'round, we made a huge jug of kumquat wine. Yes, wine. We do crazy things like that around here. Or, usually, half-do them. Which means it's still sitting in that jug, waiting for us to either bottle it or throw it away. If we bottle it, we'll have to concoct some "private label" prevarication and dump the plonk on whatever suckers aren't wise to us yet, if we can find any.

This year, I'm thinking of skipping straight to the "throw away" part. That is, if I can be bothered to pluck the tree. Leaving the fruit for the birds and squirrels only works if I can induce the critters to partake.

Know any good kumquat jokes?