A cat nap in the shade. There's a cat in there.

We have arrived as a family.  We have a cat, one that does not urinate on our pillows, and now we officially register on the exist-o-meter.  And I can’t begin describe the good feeling I get when I see Licorice RUN to snuggle in bed with one of my little girls.  Or when she snoozes between my snoozing husband’s legs and rests her face on his, uh…man equipment.  And all this coziness of purrs and snores and cat faces on questionable pillows sort of makes the trauma of her clawing and snagging my couch worth it.

No, it doesn’t.

But of late, the cat has given herself a green light to surge her feline force.  She plays New Year’s Eve Party with three toilet paper rolls per day.  She climbs up our screens.  She sleeps in the window treatments.  And in The War of Cat and House, no one wins, and signs of paw-made wreckage and kitten dominance corrupt every corner.  And through her extended occupation of our home, I struggle to maintain a sense of motherly virtue, wherein I can exude patience and the perspective that Licorice is one of God’s creatures and that we shouldn’t eat hamburgers.  But we do eat them.

This cat loves the smell of Napalm in the morning.

And I, like many women, am a hollow-souled home furnishings-loving demon, who would come shamefully close to trading my family for a warehouse of gorgeous bed linens.  So when the cat starts to ruin my window treatments, my homemade window treatments, it’s very hard not to SCREAM,  AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH  EEEEEEEOOOOOHHH!  OOOOO.  GGRRRR-RAAAR! And that’s an understated depiction of my rage to make me look good to the internet.  And my kids are ecstatic at my shrieks because, FINALLY, someone besides them is in trouble.  “Mommy, the cat is TEARING up the couch.  Oh my GOD,” they say triumphantly from their anxiety-riddled Tattle or Be Tattled On psyches.

Fortunately, I’ve been looking to revamp these window treatments.  And along came Home Improvement Project #23.  Stay tuned.  Rebuilding will occur.  Peace will be restored.

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Jenny McCarthy in her role as a babe who doesn't vaccinate. Image via Wikipedia

A few days ago, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a 2009 ruling that there is no connection between vaccines and Autism.  I’m going to repeat that:  there is no connection between vaccines and Autism.  The erroneous theory, based on a 1995 study by Andrew Wakefield, has long been dismissed by scientists as contradictory and faulty, and, of late, FRAUDULENT.

But since the 1995 study, many parents of Autistic children are demanding answers and compensation. As would I if I believed thermisol, the preservative formerly used in most vaccines, were the cause of any neurological atypicality developing in my child.  But in addition to these struggling and searching parents are lawyers.  And there are people with master’s degrees in Liberal Arts who work as administrative assistants at the lawyers’ offices, and then they go for drinks with their friends and tell them not vaccinate their children.  And there is Jenny McCarthy who has done extensive research on the, um, internet.  And now the world is awash in vaccination paranoia. Oh no.

And no matter that study after study disproves any connection between vaccine and Autism, smart people who eat granola will tell their smart friends who eat granola (I love granola, especially hemp seed granola from Trader Joe’s) not to vaccinate.  And then it’s, Hello, Pertussis! Come on in, Measles.  Have a seat on my face. And then kill me.

And the myths around vaccines are the most widely held among the, wait for it, rich and educated. And this is what I have been trying to tell my readers since day one. THE RICH ARE STUPID.  They are. This comes from too much shopping.  Lululemon is such attractive sportswear.  And I’m guessing it corrupts the mind. I would never ever doubt myself if I looked that good. But when you wear the brands of a major discount store, you just HAVE to introspect, because you kind of look like crap. Self-doubt is a healthy side effect of economic disadvantage.  And impassioned self-adoration makes room for no such virtues.

And then there’s education. Education doesn’t make you smarter.  It just gives you more info about which to be misguided and stupid. Vaccination opponents will use terms like “allopathic care.” And they will feel triumphant because you’re looking up the term in the dictionary as you prepare your rejoinder.  And the Good Vocabulary Users think they’ve achieved an ideological victory when, in fact, they’ve only triumphed linguistically. Yes, educated people have the same capacity for stupidity as uneducated people do. Your dad having money to pay for your college does not make you smarter. It makes you lucky.

So I’m not sure what type of science it will take to convince people of science, but it should really come down to science. And if not, well, I guess it will come down to vocabulary, great shoes, and the ability to pay for private school.  And Jenny McCarthy’s chest, which, let’s face it, has given her the voice she has today.

And being anti-vaccine will be a required perspective of the ladies and gentlemen of high society.  And we will guiltlessly sip our Fair Trade Chai in cafes, as our children sit home with the babysitter, suffocating from Whooping cough, and we will say, “Oh dahling, don’t you know, vaccination is only for the lower clahsses?  And inoculation is only necessree for those of a diseased breeding.  What poor unfortunate minds they are that cahn’t decipher the conspiratorial code of Western medicine.  Tsk-Tsk.  Pshaw!”

Shop Greta, your unofficial provider of non-Lululemon yoga apparel. It’s not that we don’t like Lululemon, but they sell independently, not with the gorgeous folks of Amazon.com. At least, I assume they’re gorgeous.

Flared leg, fold over waistband yoga pants

“Peace Dove”

Nature’s Path Organic Pumpkin Flax Plus Granola with Omega 3 Fatty Acid 35.3 Ounce Box.  (Greta says:  Oh my god, I love this cereal!)

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During this first week on Weight Watchers, I have been shackled by Thin Man’s Law in a margarita-free world.  I have not been eating seconds, thirds and fourths.  I used to eat elevensies, and I would repent of my reckless ways to my husband who would kindly muse, “Maybe you’re a Hobbit.”

The better eating is not so bad, but the tummy ache I’ve had ALL WEEK is painful and painfully ironic.  The identified culprit:  coffee.  c-c-c…  I’m not even going to repeat it.  And please don’t extol the virtues of tea because I know them.  I used to be a teetotaler back in the day when tea bagging was just for loving couples.  So I can drink tea and like it.  But oh, coffee.  How can I avoid the drink that is now practically a verb?  You can’t DO tea.  Or meet for ice water.  And what am I to cling to now that I can no longer have a twelfth helping of spaghetti and meatballs?

I mentioned the drama to my friend Glennie who is studying homeopathy.  Uh-oh.  And she agreed with my doctor and my other friend with a bad stomach that coffee is the root of all evil.   And she fed me apple cider vinegar for my acidy stomach.  In a shot glass.  And I sat with salad breath as my stomach burned for an hour.  And then it got better!  After five days of agony.  Go, Glennie and her homeopathy.

But then I made the mistake of telling her that I went to the dermatologist (yes, it’s National Overhaul Your Greta Week) and I told her of their plans to destroy the over-activity of my sebaceous glands (this is code for mom zits), and she tried to tell me that I have to stop eating sugar because it’s binding with my estrogen and having a party in making me not look like Cindy Crawford.  (My translation.)  Glennie is probably right, but I am not going to live in a sugarless world.  To not make muffins from scratch with fresh blueberries is to not be human.  And, no, honey will not do as a substitute.  I don’t do Nabisco.  You can keep your high-fructose corn syrup and your partially hydrogenated whatever.  But I’m keeping my spoonfuls of sugar even if they bind with the devil.  No one ever argued with Mary Poppins and got away with it.

Sorry, most wonderfullest readers, for being such an Apolo Anto Ohno in the Overshare Olympics with this post on my medical condition.  And it’s like South Korea just skated past me and told a story of its in-vitro fertilization with the sperm of its best friend’s husband.  So now I have to speed past them with a full account of my pap smear.  But you needn’t worry.  I will settle for the bronze in this race and just tell you that it was a routine procedure.  Stirrups, cold speculums and all.

So I’m fighting the battle of whatever in the name of a good butt.  I just wish the ass and the head weren’t always so opposed in their interests and achievements.  Because today my head hurts.  All for the love and care of my stomach.  And I suppose my butt is benefiting from this, too.  As will all of your eyes as the days unfold.

Now, FOR ALL ANATOMY… AAAAAAAHHHHH!

Shop Greta.  And stop the pain.  Maybe.

Organic Raw Apple Cider Vinegar Unfiltered – 16 oz – Liquid

Advil-Ibuprofen Coated Tablets, 325ct

Tagamet Acid Reducer, 200mg, 30-Count Tablets (Pack of 2)

The only change from the Before photo is that I got a really terrible haircut. And I am wearing more make-up and smiling because, by golly, it's an After picture. Even if there is no aftermath to the Before photo. And somehow my knee cap has moved.

I can’t wait any longer.  I’m getting older.  My doctor said I need to lose fifteen pounds.  And I’m just not getting the kind of service I used to get at Home Depot.  Have you heard of the correlation between a low BMI and good customer service?  If I can’t find the science, I’ll create it.  “In a non-blind, self-study of one woman, who was controlled for absolutely nothing, it was determined that 100% of these women…”

You may have read Why I Can’t Lose Weight and about how I was planning on losing weight.  And since that day in May, when I embarked on a SUBTLE plan to change my lifestyle in the direction of weight loss, I have achieved NO RESULTS.  (See Before and After photos.)  Apparently, I was far too subtle in my approach to getting thin.

Yeah, I said it.  T H I N.  I like the word.  Not thin thin, ho-y thin or model thin (as if).  But thin enough to run up and down stairs and along paths because you’re too impatient to walk.  Thin enough to lift heavy things.  Thin enough to feel like the Road Runner, all flitty and meep-meeping.

So I’m removing the over-subtlety of my approach and starting a serious, weight loss plan for emotionally mature adults.  One that doesn’t involve starvation, clinical depression and the sole eating of Lucky Charms.  My methods of yesterdecade, the wasteland that was my twenties.

So, I joined Weight Watchers.  Online.  And I now have a program to help me not eat seconds, my kids’ leftovers, or two-and-a-half margaritas with unlimited chips and salsa.  And guacamole.  A “GOOD” fat which has been good enough to rest its unused units of energy as junk in my trunk.    Apparently, I, unsupervised, can’t be trusted.

I’m a very lenient policewoman.  Oh, have another bite.   What’s one more muffin?  One is not a frightening number, is it? Until you multiply that one times 365 times three years.  And you get a serious case of mom butt.

So I bought a little virtual pal that says, “Ah-ah-ah,” and “oh, no no.”   And this little computer program is not demoralizing like an unsympathetic human voice that might stupidly croak,  “You’re eating THAT,” when you just happen to be THINKING about sucking on one Lifesaver for an hour-and-a-half.  If you ever find yourself over-observing and micromanaging anyone trying to lose weight, I recommend that you drive yourself down to the County Jail and make a citizen’s self-arrest for criminal acts of annoyance.  Demand a life sentence without parole.  Because NOTHING is more dispiriting to a dieter.  Forgive the expression.  Dieter.

And Mom butt.

I just might get you this time.

Subscribe.  And behold the madness.

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School Supplies

This is what my daughters’ Back to School kit looks like.  In the 70s, we selected R2D2 folders and unnecessarily complex roll-top pencil cases.   But somehow now, our Back to School Zombie Program Mode directed us to invade only one section of Target:  Health & Beauty.  Why, you ask.  Because girls suck at math and need only look good to ensnare men who don’t suck at math and who will one day sponsor their math-free existences.   Of course that’s what I mean.   Yes, it is.

That’s why we’ve been doing MATH ALL SUMMER LONG.  Multiplication, division, adding, subtracting.  If it’s a number, I’m sure we’ve tossed, twisted and torn it up, and tried to do right by the other side of the equal sign.  We did.  And not because I think girls should do math, but because I love brawling with them over doing math, every odd morning in July and August.  Math hell + summer fun = y.   Y.

And so, since the summer has been desecrated by school work, it stands to reason that the school year would, by contrast, begin with the magic of nail polish.  And my daughters’ entrance into a leisurely year of high anxiety STAR Test prepping should have all the feathery fluff and glitz of a Homecoming Day parade.  And, we all know school is just great hair for girls and kickball for boys.

The true measure of a human being:  Can you survive SUMMER?  Which is why, after a summer of our own Very Ungenius Math Camp, you might find me saying, Tsk.  School is for PUSSIES.

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