Since I have no time to write on subjects that don’t involve dating in random cities strewn throughout the United States, I’ll instead post some photos of Skye I found on my computer while searching for some specific baby photos of Finley, which of course I was an utter failure at locating.  Not to worry–no doubt I’ll stumble across the baby pics when searching for photos of Fergie eating our vacuum cleaner at a later date–that’s pretty much how stuff works around here.

At any rate, back on topic.  It’s official–there’s some major Fergie hound missing going on around here. I actually find myself following Skye around, hoping she’ll do a no-no, and my son has taken to asking, “When’s Fergie coming home?” on a regular basis.  Meaning about once every ten minutes.  Even hubby admits that he misses our naughty liver girl.

And since I couldn’t ever get Skye to perform any misdeeds in front of me (she’s more of a closet bad girl, that one), I had to instead settle for looking at these photos I found.  Still no misbehavior, but they are kind of cute.

So without further ado, here’s Skye performing her patented spin moves:

In a roundabout way, my husand took a day off work due to our failure to file our ‘07 taxes.  You may remember that we, or more correctly, I, birthed our second child at home.  Supportive as my husband was, I don’t recall him straining his nether regions for hours attempting to push our 9+ lb daughter’s head into the world.  Private parts aside, when you deliver your child at home, you must apply for a birth certificate through the Office of Vital Statistics, presumably to make sure you and your child are actually legal residents of the state of California. 

Personally, I fail to see how this all works.  Us homebirthers have to cough up three proofs of address, three notarized affadavits as proof of preganancy and residence, and a bunch of other completely nonsensical papers.  When I had my son at the hospital?  I’m pretty sure I just filled out this two-minute form and paid my hospital bills and they were all like, “Okay, here you go–your son’s all legal and stuff.”   Obviously, I need to send the midwives of our state some industrial strength backscratchers and then thrust them forth into the governement offices, to perform a few backdoor deals of their own.

The government generously grants you a year to apply for the birth certificate before you have to appear in court and explain to the judge why you are so lazy and imcompetent that even with a twelve month allowance, you failed to drag your sorry ass and that of your infant to the designated government office. 

So yes, we pushed it a little close for comfort.  In fact, had we been participating in a drinking game in which every time our government worker tsked or commented on how LONG we waited to get our daughter’s birth certificate, pink elephants would have started appearing.  But really–we did have over a month to spare.  I guess the converse of that is we waited eleven months to get the certificate.  And truth be told, we weren’t really motivated by concern for our daughter’s legal status, but rather, by greed.  Not only is that second baby a big tax write-off, but we want us some of good old Georgie’s economic stimulus money as well.  I figure it will buy my Orange County commuting husband about one day’s worth of gas.

So most likely our tardiness in procuring the most important document our daughter will ever possess alone grants us the imcompetent parents of the year award.  And then there’s the part where later that same day, my husband shatters our coffee table and manages to bleed all over my son and the rest of our house, right before people are scheduled to take a class in our home, except they’re really not because I got the date wrong.  But that’s going to have to be part two—all that bleeding and tsking and goverment office smell makes me sleepy.

I regret having to inform you that your beauty products suck balls.  After slathering on copious amounts of your face creams and washes for a month, I look nothing more like Cindy Crawford than I did before I started.  In fact, I’m reasonably certain had I poured said products on my ass, I would be just as close to my end goal of resembling an aging yet suspiciously youthful-appearing ex-supermodel.

I do, however, look exactly like someone who has repeatedly drowned her delicate facial skin in sub-standard beauty products most likely made from fish urine and whatever other crap that lying bastard on your infomercial saw fit to throw in while smoking weed and partying it up on your tropical island locale.  In retrospect, I should probably be grateful that my skin is merely flaking off rather than being eaten alive by some random strain of island, fish-urine loving bacteria.

Also, whatever gave you the impression that after paying $29.95 for a one month supply, I would then gladly fork over the bend-me-over-the-beauty-counter-and-rape-me price of $109.95 for the second month’s supply?  Was it when I shouted “No!” when your phone salesperson asked if I would like to sign up for another month?  Or perhaps when I screamed, “I ONLY WANT ONE MONTH AT $29.95 AND THAT’S ALL–DON’T SIGN ME UP FOR ANY MORE!” after listening to the same salesgirl blather on in an attempt to peddle all sorts of other meaningless Meaningful Beauty paraphernalia.  By the way, I fail to see how a Meaningful Beauty bumper sticker is going to bring me that much closer to cloning Cindy’s pouty lips.  And perhaps if your products made me look even one iota more like Cindy Crawford than my dog I would happily cough up the extra COMPLETELY UNAUTHORIZED charges:

And WTF Cindy?  Don’t you make enough money on your husband’s overpriced and under-poured Sky Bar drinks?  Must you pimp yourself like some nasty Flavor Flav wannabe ho on the QVC while batting your lying doe-like eyes and robbing Lancome and L’oreal of their hard-earned market share?  Why don’t you just do us all a favor and start selling your plastic surgeon’s business cards?  Because I’d sooner believe your youthful, amazingly unwrinkled skin comes from ingesting the pus off a boil-infested toad than from the daily use of Meaningful Beauty’s skin-kill products.

And tell me, what’s with the name?  Did you steal it straight from Engrish?  I mean, who the hell wants ”Meaningful” Beauty, anyway?  In the future, I will happily stick with my Shallow and Vacuous beauty products, thank you very much, since they seem to actually work and don’t cost the same amount as a small home in Oklahoma.

In case of any lingering confusion, no, I do not wish to purchase another month’s supply of Meaningful Beauty.  And Cindy Crawford owes me $109.95.  The deceitful bitch.

Warmest regards,

Debra

So Friday afternoon I get an email from my husband at work. Here’s the email:

That alone is beyond my comprehension. How does a grown man reach the ripe age of 37 without knowing a failproof way to tell if his shirt is on correctly?  But it gets better.  Because then he shows up at home at 6:45 p.m. on Friday night AND HIS SHIRT IS STILL ON INSIDE OUT!

Me:  “Hello there, King of the Dorks.  Just out of curiosity–did it ever occur to you at any point throughout the day to put on your shirt correctly?  Just for kicks?”

Hubby, eying me quizzically over a mouthful of pasta:  “Huh?  Shirt?  Why?” 

One of our more scintillating dinner conversations. But back to the point–it’s not like my husband works at—at—at a place where inside-out shirt wearers work, whatever planet that might be on. He works in a large, professional building, full of lots of professional-looking people.  Minus one, of course.

And this isn’t the first time. I remember an occasion ten plus years ago, before we were married.  My husband flies in for the weekend to visit.  We’re hitting a “trendy” bar in Newport Beach, so en route from the airport we stop by the mall so he can pick up some appropriate clothing.  Indeed we have to stop BECAUSE HE FORGET HIS LUGGAGE.   As in, all of it.  Who does that?  The man literally shows up at the airport without a suitcase, without a duffel bag, without anything other than his wallet and the clothes on his back.  Which were so not appopriate.

So he puts on his new clothes and then we’re in line at this bar in Newport and my husband is smiling and chatting with the girls behind us. He then remarks to me, “Oh, the girls out here are so friendly!”  Color me thrilled.

About an hour later we’re walking around inside and my best friend suddenly points at hubby’s back and starts laughing and I notice his shirt is on INSIDE OUT with the price tags dangling halfway down his back.   And it hits me.  The “friendly” girls he’d been talking to in line had giggled and said, “Is that the new style?”

Of course hubby just laughs it off as always, citing his “boyish and amusing” defense.  But now I’m wondering if there’s some kind of latent pathology here.  And Stacy and Clinton, where the hell are you when you’re needed?

Actually, this sport was recently created by my son and his friends and dubbed “The Naked Show.”  Which sort of leads me to a question.  At what age is in inappropriate for children to play naked together?  And if you answered “four” its probably a good thing you don’t live close by, because my child loves to run around sans clothing.  Come to think of it, so does my hubby. 

This is honestly something I struggle with because on the one hand, you don’t want to make a huge deal of completely natural preschooler curiosities, potentially scarring your child for life.  On the other, you don’t want to operate totally outside of the social norms, potentially scarring your child for life.  So how do you find the balance gracefully?   Obviously, there are social boundaries governing this sort of thing.  Hence the reason why people don’t take a stroll through the neighborhood or go out to dinner with their special bits dangling out in the open.  Which is probably for the greater good.  Think of the extra sanitation that would have to occur involving park benches and restaurant chairs if everyone ran around naked all the time, not to mention the potential leap in the rate of crabs.  Although I’m sure your friendly neighborhood frat house would remain the easiest place to become acquainted with those.  Don’t ask about the crab races that go on there.  Seriously–don’t ask.

All joking aside, I’m actually quite angry now.  I’m angry because I had the cutest photo to go with this post, of Connor and two of his friends, jumping au naturale on the trampoline.  But then doubts started plaguing me.  What if people think I’m a horrible mother for putting a picture of my nude 4-yr-old and his friends up on the web?  What if somebody comes to arrest me for perpetuating child pornography or some other such nonsense?  Or, what if some crazy sick twisted creep found my site and completely sullied the innocence of my son’s joy?  Surely we live in a world where we shouldn’t have to worry about such things and yet here I am, with no photo. 

And I wonder if this is an issue everywhere or just in our country, with our seemingly open-minded sexuality actually masking something more prudish and repressed.  Because I think its fairly obvious there’s some kind of weird issue with nakedness here.  I mean, ponder the absurdity of this for a moment–you can see boobage galore in virtually any PG-13 movie known to man and yet a mom goes to breastfeed in public and people literally freak.  Like suddenly, the mere glimpse of a naked bosom might make them faint from the impropriety of it all.

And just to be a little more inconsistent, until recently the same full frontal nudity in women that would earn a movie an R rating or maybe even a PG-13 would get you an NR-17 if not worse when the man showed his parts.  What kind of sense does that make and more importantly, what kind of message does it send?  And what do breastfeeding and movies have to do with co-ed naked trampoline bouncing photos?   At this point I really have no idea.  My mind just works that way sometimes.

So taking a calming breath and getting back to my original topic–if anyone knows where to find the completely well-adjusted middle ground between raising a flasher versus rearing a repressed neurotic body freak, please clue me in.  Because right now, I think we’re leaning towards flasher.

Addendum—my husband is genius-like person.  He’s single handedly managed to make my photo postable while at the same time adding a little patriotic spirit:

 Although I’m pretty sure my Republican friend whose child is featuring Obama over his private parts will have a slightly less flattering name for him.

One day, she’s basking in the sun without a care in the world:

The next, disaster strikes in the form of an absent hot tub cover:

It’s like the epitomy of the Project Runway slogan, only in reverse: One day you’re out, and the next–you’re IN! And I guess Skye is a glass half full kind of girl, because this is the second time she’s made a splash and yet she’s already back in the saddle, sunbathing on the hot tub again.

Or maybe she thought we needed a little excitement around here, since Fergie and her crazy brother Leo are visiting “Nana” in Colorado. You see, my family is entirely insane and to ensure we demonstrate this adequately, every few months my dad takes various dogs on interstate road trips between California and Colorado. I wouldn’t be surprised if a clause of “Do you, Jerry, solemnly swear to rent a variety of minivans and drive the family hounds thousands of miles each year to different households, purchasing them burgers along the way and letting them sleep on the hotel beds with nary a complaint, so long as you both shall live?” was added in to my parents wedding vows. I guess that would involve some special telepathic gift on my mom’s part seeing as how we didn’t have Ridgebacks until after I graduated college. Which could explain why I was always getting busted in high school before I even got the opportunity to do anything wrong.

Anyway, we said our good-byes on Saturday. Leo was in his crate less than a minute before wreaking havoc on his bedding:

And Connor says good-bye to Fergie:

It’s really nice to share the chaos for awhile but I have to admit—we miss our little Ferganator.

It’s also beyond me how he can sit and watch television in Spanish. He doesn’t even UNDERSTAND Spanish - except maybe a few of the words that appear on a Taco Bell menu. But even those he can’t pronounce. I know, I know–that “quesadilla” is a tricky one.

And then there’s the music. You see, hubby doesn’t take the time to actually learn the lyrics to anything, but he routinely sings (loudly) the words he thinks they are singing. Words that typically have no bearing at all on what the songwriters actually put to paper. Any attempts at correcting him fall on completely (tone) deaf ears. That’s if he doesn’t get mad at me because, “it ruins the song” for him. Because apparently he’s never recovered from the heartbreak of learning that Sugar Ray was actually singing “Every Morning” and not “Captain Morgan”, his favorite rum.

Anyway, the last few nights have been espcially painful because he’s rediscovered some random 80’s song by Pizzacato Five. He just can’t get enough of the video, which features two dudes and some scrawny chick wearing racoon hats and executing the most random dance moves known to man. He literally plays it about fifty times in a row, over and over again, until I want to pick up a stapler and shove it right into the varmit-killing lead singer’s brain. And as an added bonus? MY HUSBAND SINGS ALONG!!!!!!!! Which is beyond the realm of all that is decent and good, considering the entire song is IN JAPANESE.

He also had to point out how some random French band, Nouvelle Vague, looks like they attempted to rip off the dancing from the Japanese video. So not only do I have to listen to him butcher the lyrics to yet another song, but as an added bonus my brain is now being tortured by two horrible dancing sequence rather than one.

And now I have the damn song stuck in my head only I don’t know Japanese either so “Twiggy yo shee hee yo hee haw” is about as good as it gets. Maybe I’ll just stab myself with the stapler instead.

And if someone could please tell me when the current fashion turned to skin-tight dresses cut down to the navel and up to the bikini line, I’d be mighty obliged.  Nina and Michael definitely would not approve.

Or maybe I’m just getting old.  Unfortunately, not quite old enough to ditch the penis straw.

At any rate, here are a few random shots from the night:

“Well what d’ya know, there’s a penis in my purse!”

“Hey, get your own penis!”

The poor girl seated behind us was obviously jilted at the altar.

Another bar, another bachelorette.

“Do I know you?”

“Don’t bother me–I’m boogeying.”

“Doin’ da butt!”

“No wonder my neck hurts!”

 ”Sooners!”

Random cleavage shot.

“Hey look–no hands!”

“Hey look–no twins!”

“I use L’oreal–and I’m worth it.”

The aftermath

:

So after unwinding and enjoying girl talk for a few hours, I stumble into my house at about 11:15 p.m, ready to crash into my bed.  Only to discover this:

Hello there, big pile of trash on my floor.  Here’s a closer view:

Either a cyclone hit my house while I was nonchalantly slinging dice at Bunco or my hubby and son decided to play a few rounds of recycling man and failed to tidy up.

Talk about a buzz kill.

And see that?  I didn’t totally neglect my word challenge.  Okay, maybe I have neglected it just a wee bit.  But do you have any idea how hard it is to use a word about well-shaped buttocks in polite mixed company?  Or to even pronounce one half of a monster like Brobdingnagian?  More on that later, though.  I have other loose ends to tie up here.

And we have a winner for my first ever Great Purge give-away! Instead of using the random number generator to pick the winner, I have the genius idea of telling my son to choose a number between one and ten. 

How smart am I?  Not only am I blogging and giving away random crap invaluable gift items from around my home, I’m also teaching my son about numbers.  So he ponders for a moment.  Then goes with sixty-three five hundred twenty-eight.  Hmmm.   So I have him pick again.  And he chooses forty-two.  Well, at least this is a number I am familiar with, but given the small number of entries, it doesn’t get me any closer to finding a winner.  Finally, in desperation I say, “Great job, Connor!”, close my eyes and punch a number on my phone.

And so semidesperatehousewifehas the good people at VTech to thank for her new Billabong dress!  May her legs remain young and de-varicosed for many moons to come.

And now on to the new item up for grabs.

I had this junk foisted upon me won these things at a Tastefully Simple-Cookie Lee party I attended about two years ago and as you can see they haven’t been worn yet.  It’s not that I don’t think they’re perfectly lovely.  But somehow crosses always remind me of my Madonna phase in high school and I’m just so not willing to revisit my fashion sense from back then.  Lest I start donning white boots and jean mini skirts to go along with it.  And perhaps even a scrunchie or two.  

So here are some photos:

Sorry the second one is so blurry.  I was just trying to give you an idea of the greeness of green that are the crystals.

So if you’re interested, leave me a comment telling me about your favorite cheesy outfit from any time period.  Mine?  Probably this hideous white ultra-mini with a black band around the waist, ultra-short black biker shorts underneath, and a black lycra midriff baring top.  Because it just wasn’t trampy enough without baring a little extra stomach.  Hopefully the 17-year-olds of this generation are making much smarter fashion selections.

The contest will be going until Friday night, at which time I will pick a winner and post a new item up for grabs!