best birth control....EVER

*the following is an actual, word for word conversation I had with a friend over the phone*


Me: Hey S., how's it going?

S.: Good, it's going great!

Me: Yeah? How's Alora? Is she getting big?

S.: Oh my God, she's growing up so fast.

Me: Really? Awww, does she remember her crazy Aunt Tracy?

S.: Right now I'm not sure she remembers ME. But sometimes when I tickle her and she giggles, then she looks at me and... uh oh.

Me: What?

S.: Uh, I gotta go.

Me: Why, what happened?

S.: (cheerfully) Alora just pooped so hard it sprayed up the back of her shirt and onto my pants.

Me: OH

S.: Wow, it's on my shirt too.

Me: MY

S.: K, call you later, alright?

Me: GOD.

S.: ::hangs up::



Dear Universe, if and when I decide to ever have kids, could you just send me one in the form of a well-adjusted 19 year old English Lit major so we can talk and have coffee and stuff? And spare me the poop-spraying and sleep deprivation and temper tantrums and teenage dating ordeals?

mmmmkkkay thanks.

conversation

Disclaimer: I am the least football oriented person on the planet. I really don't give a frack what happens when men strap on 400 pounds of protective gear and about 800 pounds of ego on themselves and rush towards each other for approximately 2 and a half minutes before someone calls a time-out. Give me a hockey game, a rugby game, or a soccer (the REAL football) game any day of the week.

With that in mind:

Me: Who's playing the Superbowl this year? It's the Saints versus someone, I know that much...

Benni: You really don't know who's playing in the Superbowl? Really?

Me: No...why, is that bad?

Benni (rolls his eyes): I'll give you a hint. (Benni neighs like a horse.)

Me: The...Horses? Is that a team?

Benni: (neighs again)

Me: The...Wyld Stallyns? Please tell me they're from San Dimas. (does wicked Bill and Ted air guitar)

Benni: (looks at me like I'm the weirdest person on the planet) Okay, how's this? (pantomimes shooting a gun)

Me: The...Dead Horses? Um...the Cowboys? It's the Cowboys, isn't it. They shoot horses, don't they?

Benni: (can't take it any longer) It's the Colts. The COLTS. Get it? They're horses, but there's also a gun named the Colt?

Me: The gun you pantomimed wasn't nearly heavy enough to be a Colt.

Pause.

Me: I'm just saying.

Thanksgiving conversation

So we're all sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner and we have this tradition where after everyone has dished their food but before we're allowed to eat any of it we all go around the table and say what we're grateful for, so this way we can all listen to each other ramble and stare longingly as the food on our plates get cold. I like to think my mom came up with this idea as a way to teach us willpower, or patience, the former of which I have tons of, the latter, um, not so much. In reality, though, especially after she reads this, she'll probably come back with something like, "It teaches you GRATITUDE for your food."

Which is true, I am much more grateful for my mashed potatoes when they are room temperature.

So as usual I make some smart-ass comment at the table so everyone elects me to talk first and I say how I'm grateful for the food that we have on the table and that I'm able to be with the ones I love on Thanksgiving, and we go around the table and we finally get to my mom, who mentions a few things she appreciates about all of her children and when she gets to me she notes that she really enjoys reading my blog (Mom, I keep forgetting you read this damn thing) and really likes my writing style, even when I call her weird.

Six more pairs of eyes at the table swivel towards me as the following conversation happens at the dinner table during Thanksgiving.

Brother: You called mom weird on your blog?

Me: Wait, what? Can we start over?

Mom: You called me weird.

Me: I did not.

Mom: You did too. There's a picture of me with Bobby (the kitten we got her for Christmas last year) and underneath it says "Weird."

Me: No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. The blog TITLE is called "Weird" and I put that picture up to make me happy. It's your mother's day blog, remember?

Mom: Well, then, why do I keep seeing that picture with the word "weird" underneath it?

Me: I didn't put the word "weird" underneath! The picture isn't weird, I wouldn't do that!

Cousin: God, Tracy, why do you have to be such a dick?

Me: Okay, we're going to get to the bottom of this RIGHT NOW.

(By this time everyone else is eating).

So I head over to the computer in the living room and sign into my blog, and pull it up on the screen.

Then I call everyone over from eating their dinner, because sometimes I really am a dick.

Me: (pointing) Look. LOOK. It does NOT say "weird" underneath the picture. The "Weird" is the BLOG TITLE.

Mom: Well, then it shows up somewhere else in your blog, a lot smaller, where it calls me weird.

Me: (starting to get a bad feeling) Wait, do you mean...this?

And sure enough, when it comes to the smaller little links at the bottom of my posts that show related posts with the same labels, there it is. A picture of my mom with the kitten and it says "weird" underneath.

DAMMIT.

Me: Okay, fine, would you like me to change the title of the blog?

Mom: YES.

Me: FINE.

So I did.

I changed the blog title to this. And the punchline is? When I look at that blog in the "You Might Also Like" section, it STILL says "weird." Even though I've changed the title.


God hates me.

PS If you want to read my mom's response to the questions I asked her in the "Weird" post, they're here, and they're adorable.

Dark side of the dinner party

First of all, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who weighed in (no pun intended, honest!) on their thoughts about food for my last post. I loved all of your kind, thoughtful comments; they totally made my day. I love how so many of you view food as comfort and love, or a way to honor the memory of someone who's passed away, or find it an expression of your creativity. And I can completely identify with those of you who struggle with what food means, and how much balance it requires in our lives. Ugh. I'm right there with you. And I've definitely been to that place where food is simply fuel to get me going through the day, or helping me fend off boredom.

So my gratitude goes out to each and every one of you for letting me know I'm not alone in occasionally making food my best friend, my worst enemy, my lover, or my family. :)

And speaking of food, I'm gonna hold off today on posting about what I did this weekend (hint: it was at a cemetery), but I wanted to tell you guys a funny anecdote about a dinner party my guy and I attended last week.

I made toasted goat cheese bread for the party and (okay, okay, I'll just start using his name already) Benni made some sort of divine kielbasa and cooked onion and green pepper kabobs (does anyone else have an almost Pavlovian reaction to the word "kabobs" by automatically conjuring up Bret and Jemaine of the band Flight of the Conchords? No? Okay, I'm insane). And to answer your question, Lira, no, Benni is not my Jewish Mother who yells "You're too THIN!" (that's YOUR job, girl), he's the son of a New Jersey pizza-maker. That should explain a lot.

So we head over to the party where I promptly meet my long-lost BFF, this artsy-cool chick who is about as socially inept as I am but dresses way better and says the word fuck in front of her dad, who's standing right beside her nodding when she uses it in the sentence, "UC Santa Cruz weirded me the fuck out." She's a few years younger than I am, infinitely more cool, but totally me, if, you know, I wore orange nail polish and dyed my hair black. And said fuck in front of my father.

Anyways, so Benni is talking about how he went through his rebellious (read: totally hot) phase where he got a couple tattoos and went skydiving, and I kid you not, this girl almost chokes on her bread as she starts laughing when he mentions skydiving. We wait for, you know, the crumbs to stop flying when she finally wipes her eyes and explains.

Turns out she had a friend who went skydiving a few years back with some crusty old skydiving instructor, and I should explain something about skydiving right now: the first few times you go skydiving, you go tandem, which means you are literally strapped to your skydiving instructor in case you freak out or black out or urinate all over yourself, one of which I'm planning on doing when I eventually go, I haven't decided yet which one will make the best Tweet. Probably the urine.

So imagine this poor guy jumping out of a plane, first time sky-diving EVER, tied into his flight instructor so that his back is up against his instructor's stomach, and his flight instructor growls, "You're in my world now," before promptly DYING OF A HEART ATTACK approximately 10,000 feet above the ground, and this guy at some point has to figure out a) that his flight instructor is now dead, b) how the hell he's going to land, and c) how the hell he's going to land strapped to a dead body.

So the three of us are literally crying in laughter at our table, which is about the time that other people, seeing that we are obviously laughing at something, wander over and ask, "What's so funny?" and all we can shriek out between the tears and hysterical laughter is "He had to land on the dead guy!!" and "You're in MY world now!"And people would just sort of back away and head towards the dessert table.

Sometimes, you just gotta laugh at the horrible and tragic. But man...are those not the best last words EVER?

And with that...Happy Monday, everyone! :)

conversation x2

So I spent a majority of Labor Day weekend actually helping out a spiritual youth group, doing chaperone-type stuff and assisting some of the workshop leaders who were giving various talks to kids aged 13-17. The Labor Day event was geared towards kids visiting from all over the nation who were interested in seeing a more spiritual perspective on how Hollywood (and the entertainment industry) works, and I was asked by the director of the program to be part of a panel discussion Saturday night.

So just in case you couldn't tell from previous conversations recorded in my blog, here's how you can tell that I was raised in a family of smart asses:

Me: So, _____ asked me to speak on a panel Saturday night for the youth group event.

Mom: Really? What about?

Me: She asked if I could talk to the kids about how I use spirituality on a daily basis to help me overcome challenges with my career.

Aunt: That's great!

Me: Yeah, so I thought I'd stand up, and the first thing I would say to the kids would be-

Aunt and Mom: "What career?"

Me: Hah. Hah. Hah. Very funny.

(Pause)

Me: I hate you both.

Also, in case you're wondering, my mom and aunt are identical twins, so quite frequently I'm not only getting crap from both of them, but crap from both of them at the EXACT SAME TIME. You try arguing with twice the regular amount of sarcasm.

Anyways, I hope you all had lovely Labor Day weekends and are enjoying a short week as much as I am :) Happy Tuesday to y'all!

conversation*

Mom: (handing a book over to my aunt) This is a great book, I definitely recommend it. I finished reading it on the way over here.

(My aunt and I look at my mom.)

Me: What do you mean, you finished reading it on the way over here?

Mom: You know, at red lights.

Me: You READ at red lights?

Mom: Yeah. What, you don't?

Me: NO.

Mom: Then what do you do at red lights?

Me: I WAIT FOR THEM TO TURN GREEN.

Aunt (to my mom) : How do you know when the light turns green?

Mom: When all the other cars start moving-

Me: Or when the honking starts behind you -

Mom: Seriously? You just wait at a red light? But it's so long.

Me: It's like a minute and a half, mom.

Mom: But that's so LONG.

Me: Well, I definitely don't read. Mom? You really read at red lights?

Mom: Well, sometimes I do Sudoku.

*This conversation was brought to you by Adult A.D.D.

Random Tuesday musings

Ok, so to follow up on a couple things I've put out there in the past few days:

a) apparently you CAN hide yourself on Facebook, you just click "Offline" on the chat section. Sorry guys, I'm a little technology-challenged (I once turned my cell phone French by hitting, oh, TWO buttons and then obviously couldn't change it back because all my menu options were then IN FRENCH) so I'm a little slow on the trends. Hey, did you guys know there are cellphones out there that can take pictures?! And check email? Holy crap... :)

b) I have to say the debate is still-ongoing with the whole "Do I wear the t-shirt of the band to its own concert" issue. Not world-changing stuff, mind you, but hey, world peace has to start somewhere, and it might as well begin with us agreeing on the little things. Ban Ki-moon, take note. And hire me.

Krista has a good point that we Californians try to be as obscure and random as possible to thus make us even cooler - and I think Stewbottum gets to the source of it pretty quickly as well -- it all started off as TEAM pride, with music being the default (and Gwen noted, quite correctly, that the two are totally different.) I'm totally with Drollgirl about getting annoyed at the little trendsters who show up to concerts these days, and Des, I like to think that musicians appreciate fans no matter what they're wearing!

I think Celia summed it up best as "who cares how long I've been a fan?" -- people should be way less interested in what others are doing and just freakin' get out there and enjoy being who they are, regardless of what anyone else thinks. (Celia - I'm from Merrimack, just outside Nashua, by the way...and I'm totally jealous you got quality-Krista time). Both AJ and Jenn pointed out that this isn't necessarily an issue separated just by coasts (gah! An entire country seized in a concert t-shirt epidemic!), and Archana gets some serious cool points for naming the correct movie (Empire Records) that I quoted, but I gotta say, Archana -- the best concerts I've been to (and Flogging Molly is definitely one of these), the bands played their music much longer, louder, and insanely better than off their albums. If I go see a band that plays exactly how they sound on their CD, why did I bother...and believe me, I've seen my fair share of bands who do exactly that...and sometimes even worse. But when Green Day invites people to come up from the audience to play their instruments for them, or James Hetfield and Lars do drum battles at their Metallica concerts, or Flogging Molly riffs for 15 minute sessions...damn is it worth the price of that ticket...and maybe a few obnoxious tweens and some drunk idiots here and there.

I think we can probably concede, much as Shanna Suburbia pointed out, that wearing an older t-shirt from the band isn't quite as bad, and I think Jo, Sarah Alaoui, Iva, and Wine and Words are still making up their minds either way. As for you, Mildly Sensational... yes, I was totally going off of the movie PCU, and I love you too. :)

With that wrapped up, I can now move on to the two most interesting things that happened yesterday (besides the fact that I finally got to hang out with a wonderful girl last night for the first time in eons) by letting you all know that yesterday, while waiting in line at the bank, I was hit on by a blond guy named Hudson. In front of his mother.

Yes, Hudson and his mom were waiting just in front of me and he suddenly turned around, flashed me the most adorable smile I've seen on a guy in quite some time, and proudly announced that at home he had a rock and it was his and not mine.

Hudson was probably 3 and 1/2 years old.

At which point, his mom turned around, took one look at me and then Hudson, rolled her eyes and replied, "He's gonna be a big flirt."

At which point I'M thinking, Yes! I still got it!

And in the flirt/unexpected love department, approximately twice a year my cat Mocha (yes, occasionally she guest blogs on here) decides that she adores me and wants to be my pet. So late last night, after getting myself tucked into bed, she crawled all the way up the covers (she usually stays down by the foot of the bed), head-butted me to let me know that she now owned me, then curled up against my stomach and fell fast asleep. And it wasn't even cold in the apartment.

I think my jaw dropped. Here I was, thinking I was just an indentured servant for her...turns out she actually likes me once in a blue moon!

I hope you all are having lovely Tuesdays and that you enjoyed the Great T-Shirt Debate as much as I did. I loved hearing from all of you and I'll try to pose some more controversial questions in the future...like, is it okay to put salt on food that someone just cooked for you? That's always a touchy one... :)

east coast vs west coast, part two

So this conversation started, as many good conversations do, in the parking lot of a Trader Joe's. We park, I'm talking about how freakin' excited I am about the Flogging Molly concert we're going to next month, he drops the bomb. And by bomb, I mean that he says, "Yeah, I just wish I had a Flogging Molly shirt to wear to the concert."And I look at him. He looks at me. Wait, what?

"You're kidding, right?"

"No. If I had a Flogging Molly shirt I would totally wear it to the concert."

"But...you're AT the concert. You'd be That Guy. You don't want to be That Guy!"

"What does that mean? That Guy? Because I'm wearing the t-shirt of the band I like to their concert? It shows I'm a fan."

"NO. It shows you're That Guy."

"Well, on the East Coast..." blah blah blah words.

Anyways, he goes on to say that on the East Coast there is nothing stronger than what they refer to as old-school fan pride. That is to say, if you've been a fan since the beginning of the band's creation, or first album, or whatever, you can show your pride and how much you like the band by wearing an OLDER t-shirt (this is key here, folks) from ANOTHER concert or tour to show that you've been a fan for a long time and thus you are cooler than all those hip wannabes that are just now finding out how much your band kicks ass. Point in case, when we went to the Metallica concert in Jersey together, there were a ton of older Metallica t-shirts being worn, and none of those guys looked embarrassed to be wearing them. Or that they wouldn't be able to kick my ass if I made fun of them.

And I am baffled by this. Because all my life, since I moved to California at the tender age of nine, through Smashing Pumpkins and No Doubt and Beastie Boys and Green Day and Depeche Mode and Rage Against the Machine and U2 concerts, it has been drilled into me: never.wear.the.t-shirt. Ever. Unless, as Krista pointed out, it's to be ironic, which rarely works. Mostly you just look like the person who's trying too hard. And if there's anything we abhor in SoCal...it's trying too hard.

Which brings me back to the fundamental difference between East Coasters and West Coasters. East Coast people are totally cool with how proud they are, almost rabidly so, of their sports teams, bands, neighborhoods, ethnicity, whatever. And if it's suddenly hot and trendy, but you liked it BEFORE it was trendy, then woe to the guy who tries to claim he's a bigger fan than you. Because fan pride is what it's all about, and being there before the band or artist "sold out" and got big is a huge claim to fame. East Coasters like to go against the grain, but in a "damn the man, save the Empire" kind of way (give yourself a pat on the back if you know what movie that's from). On the East Coast, you get made fun of for not trying hard enough.

But California plays it chill. We have so many different neighborhoods, ethnicities, restaurants, sports teams (hell, we even have two basketball teams!), up and coming bands, tv shows, and artists, that we float from scene to scene and pretend we don't really care. Trying too hard or caring too much about one particular band is the ultimate un-cool. So we scoff at those who wear the t-shirts and show off their 13 year-in-the-making fan pride. We try to turn it around like, "Yeah, I just got here, I don't even know the name of the drummer, and that actually makes me COOLER than you." Our detachment from ever truly loving, caring, and rabidly following something is what supposedly makes us cooler than everyone else.

But...I dunno. I got to say, since I started writing these two posts...maybe those prickly New Englanders are on to something. Maybe it IS kind of awesome to follow a band since its days back as the opening act of some lame music festival where we saw what it would take others decades to see, and to wear that band's shirt in pride, to show that we actually followed through and have cared about something long before it ever showed up on YouTube or TMZ.

So...I turn it over to you guys now. Yes, we can probably all agree that buying a t-shirt at a concert and then putting it on before you even get back to your seat is kind of lame, the trying-too-hard to end all trying-too-hards.

But what if you've been following a band for years, catching them in concert as much as you could, and you dig through your wardrobe, pull out that concert tee from 1995, when the album kinda sucked but man did they give an awesome show, and you wear it so that all the little fourteen year olds out there who don't even know who Kurt Cobain is anymore can be just a little bit embarrassed for jumping on the bandwagon when you built that bandwagon's damn WHEELS.

Thoughts? Comments?

east coast vs west coast, part one

So I'll just put it out there that I'm sort of an LA transplant (that's what we call 'em out here...those from other parts of the country who come to sunny Los Angeles to make their dreams come true.)

I was born, raised, and grew up in New Hampshire, then moved to the OC when I was nine. In some ways I am very much a California girl, except for the part where I don't actually tan, but that's not because I'm a New Englander, that's because I'm Scottish and Dutch and go from pale to sunburned back to pale. As a Scottish-Dutch girl, I was built for being a kick-ass fighter and being very organized, respectively, and I do both equally well. Tanning is not required in either Scotland or The Netherlands (raise your hands if you thought Dutchland, then smack yourselves), nor is it required to start a bar fight or make a swell to-do list. I rest my case.

The California parts of me are the "woah, chill, dude, just feel the energy" aspects of my personality; an undying curiosity of what, exactly, my neighbors are up to; a love of all things ocean or sunny; and the crippling fear that I will be the first to show up to a party. I really can't help it, it's in the water here, kids.

There is also the all-important California attitude of playing it cool. (This will come into play later, everyone, so pay attention.) As a Californian you are expected to not care TOO much about any one thing, not try TOO hard, and look as if there is always some place a little bit cooler where you COULD be, but hell, you're a saint tonight, so why not just grace everyone with your presence and stay here. As a wildly over-enthusiastic spaz, I rarely do this one, but every so often I fall prey to it.

What I retained from New England (and more specifically, New Hampshire), is the will and drive to succeed at everything I do and base my self worth off of how productive I am; a very strong resistance to anyone who tries to tell me what to do with my life, ever; the general feeling that if I feel crappy, a four-hour long walk through a forest will help clear my head (think Robert Frost); and STUPID FRAKING CAR WHY ARE YOU GOING BELOW THE SPEED LIMIT AND IN FRONT OF ME. That last one really freaks out the poor visitors to New England. Sorry, guys. In my last post, I noted that I was courteous and polite driver, and I am now... after driving for several years and scaring the crap out of my friends.

Side story: Until I was about 21 I thought it was perfectly fine to stop my car about three and a half inches away from the car in front of me at intersections. Finally a friend politely asked me exactly what the hell I was thinking.

"This is the way I was taught to drive," I replied.

"And who taught you to drive, may I ask?" (apparently my friend was Mr. Belvedere)

"My dad."

"And what driving experience does your father have?"

Pause.

"He was a cab driver in Boston."

Riiiight.

Anyways, this isn't a post about my poor upbringing as a super aggressive Boston cabbie in training, this is about something entirely more important that seems to be a huge contention between East Coasters and West Coasters. Are you guys ready?

This is about whether or not you are supposed to wear the t-shirt of the band that you are currently at the concert of.

Part two to follow on Monday as I explain my reasoning...so have a good weekend :)

questions and answers

So... did YOU know my mom was reading this blog? Because I sure didn't. Until I drove down to visit her for Mother's Day today, and as we were chatting on the phone about what food I was going to bring, my mom said, "By the way, I answered your questions."

"What questions?" I asked.

"The ones in your blog."

"You...read my blog?"

"Yep."

"So you've...read...my mother's day blog."

"Yep."

"So you already know what I'm making you for Mother's Day."

"Yep. Honestly Tracy, you told the whole world you were conceived in a Winnebago?"

"Um. I don't think the WHOLE WORLD is an accurate headcount of who's reading my blog. So let's just say I told approximately 23 people."

Anyways, my mom copied and pasted my questions into a Word document, then emailed me the answers. And when I asked if I could post some of her answers on this blog, she said yes. Enjoy, and Happy Mother's Day. :)

To Tracy on Mother’s Day, 2009

Was I planned?

Oh, Lord! I can’t believe I told you that story. It’s time to rewrite history: I had a magical encounter with a most perfect man (no, not your biofather). We were totally in synch, spent the day eating chocolate covered strawberries, while wandering around a white sand beach with the breeze gently flowing and the waves gently lapping at our feet, talking about everything under the sun. We never actually touched each other because our communion was so perfect that it wasn’t necessary. And 9 months later you were born.

Did you feel ready for me?

Yes. I was ready for a little girl in my life. You completed our family. Boys are great, but every mother needs a daughter – like you.

How was the birth? Honestly. You can tell me. Did it suck? It sucked, didn't it. You can tell me.

It wasn’t bad at all. You were born at home in your own bedroom while friends and family partied around me. You started speaking as soon as you made your appearance (“Ma! Ma!”). The nurse said most babies don’t know how to make the “m” sound and just go waaaah or aaaaa, so we knew right away that you were a superior being.

How was I as a baby? Was I a little punk that cried incessantly?

You hardly ever cried. You entertained yourself by lying on your back and doing calisthenics, throwing your legs straight up and then crashing them back down onto the crib mattress. You did this so regularly that 4-year-old Jeff could direct you: “Put em up, put em down.” You also read books while I changed your diaper and we engaged in word games: Me: “You’re a superbaby.” You: “You supermommy.” (A couple grammar mistakes there, but you were only 18 months old.) My friends were very impressed with your word skills. I took them for granted.
What do you remember most about me growing up?

That you were happy, fun, so smart, and I loved every moment with you. You were the little girl in the Abba song, going off to school with your backpack (decorated with a “Mean people suck” sticker) waving absent-mindedly at me as you left because you were eager to tackle the day.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in raising me?

I can’t think of any. Wait, maybe…um, I’m still thinking. I’ll let you know.

When was the time you felt I let you down the most? What about the time I made you the most proud?

I can’t ever remember you letting me down (unless it was the time when you told me you “totally hated me” because I made you wear your Brownie dress to a Brownie event, not knowing that no one ever wears a Brownie dress for any reason.)* There are so many moments when you’ve made me proud that I don’t know where to begin. One that comes to mind is when you played Polonius in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” at Chapman. More recently it was your performance at the improvisation theatre, which was hilarious. And making Jody into such a likable character. But it isn’t just your acting that makes me proud. I’m so proud of the wonderful person you are.

How was I as a teenager? What did you want to say to me as I was going through those years?

I wanted to say, don’t grow up too fast, don’t leave because I can’t imagine life without you. But I didn’t want to hold you back, so I hope I never said that to you. (If I did, I’m sorry. Mothers have to learn to let go.)

Now that I'm an adult, what choices that I've made do you support the most? How about the least?

You have relentlessly pursued your dreams of acting, and I’m so proud that you’ve stuck with it, even through discouraging times. But I’m also glad that you haven’t made acting the center of your being. You have filled your life with other activities that bring you much joy.

What would you like me to do for you to make our relationship even stronger?

Come home more often so we can spend the day at Laguna Beach together on Fridays. Keep calling me to check up on me, so I don’t go astray. Never give in to sadness; don’t ever lose your joy. When you’re happy, I’m happier.

Oh, and yes. Of course I remember reading you "Goodnight Moon."

*that Brownie dress was hideous. You gotta draw the line somewhere.

conversation*

Me: So, Mom, what did you think about the pilot episode of Hell Froze Over?

Mom: I loved it! I thought it was really great.

Me: Yeah? I'm so glad to hear that.

Mom: Yeah. It was really funny.

Me: Awesome. I'm just relieved that you weren't offended or anything.

Mom: Well...

Me: Uh-oh. Well?

Mom: I just...

Me: You just...what?

Mom: Nothing.

Me: No, really. You can tell me.

Mom: It's just...that when you showed your panties to the guy...

Me: Oh, Mom! I told you there would be sexual stuff, but they didn't actually show anything. It's not like I was naked.

Mom: Oh, no, I'm not upset that you showed your panties.

Me: Then what are you upset about?

Mom: I just don't understand why you would show your panties to THAT guy. I mean, he's so clearly the WRONG GUY for you!





*this conversation actually happened. This? This is why I love my mother so much.

umm...that's a good thing, right?

Me: Hi, Mikala!

Ten year old Mikala: Hi.

Mikala's mom: Mikala, you remember Tracy, don't you?

Mikala: Noooooo.

Mikala's mom: Sure you do, Tracy is your aunt's best friend! You've met her lots of times.

Mikala: Noooooo.

Mikala's mom: Remember, Tracy's the one who makes noises like a squirrel when she eats bread at restaurants?

Mikala: OHHH! HI TRACY!!



You can't make up stuff this good.