5:00 Fridays

Mac Daddy has been gone since Sunday morning, not to be home until Saturday morning. That means I played the role of a single mom all week. Luckily my supporting cast, Bird and Deal, have had extraordinarily good behavior (except for a spell Thursday night). Nonetheless, I suck at being a single mom. Wow do I bow down to the folks who do this day in day out with no respite in sight. All I had to do was chant the Little Engine That Could mantra to keep my sights set to Saturday. Single parents, like my dad was, deserve a standing ovation, any support we can provide, and a helluva a lot of respect.

So to wrap up my week, I found the most perfect drink (and lucky me just happened to have all the ingredients on hand!).


Absolut Stress
1 shot Absolut vodka
1 shot Malibu rum
Generous splash of cranberry juice
1/2 shot peach schnapps
Splash of pineapple juice

Add the goodies to your cocktail shaker that you've already filled with ice. Shake. Let the stress out. Pour into a highball glass with some of the ice. Garnish with a skewer of cranberries and half moon slice of orange. What a way to use the BOGO bags of cranberries out this time of year!

Put your feet up, undo the top button of your jeans if you must, exhale, sip, sigh, ahhh...

On My Mind in Downward Dog

I got my body flowing at the gym this morning. I took some new class called Body Flow that supposedly adds a dash of pilates, a dollop of tai chi, and a whole stinkin' handful of yoga, mixes it all up, and gets your chi centered and your abs shakin'. Only not so much. Like with anything, when you take the best pieces of stuff thinking it's going to make a magnificent new widget, it fails miserably. This was the crazy quilt of gym classes. The indiviual elements are way better than the sum of their parts. I just wasted an hour getting gyped. One hour of time that I'll never get back. You know how much I hate to work out anyway so this was particularly irritating.

So instead of feeling all centered and relaxed and other such stuff that I'm pretty much incapable of achieving anyway, here's a taste of what galloped around my mind while doing sun salutations, warriors 1 - 3, and downward dog:

John, Paul, Ringo,.... Who the heck is the other Beatle? Hmmm, can't even picture him. John, Paul, Ringo, drawing a blank. Must remember to ask Kate.

I have organic beets in the fridge. What shall I do with them? Maybe I'll try making soup. It is soup season. Damn, it's cold.

I need to pay some bills. Must remember to pay bills. Must remember to pay bills.

Whatever happened to my old friend Portia Barnhart? She's not on Facebook. Why the heck aren't people on Facebook?!

It's only been 15 minutes?! Egads.

Where can I find those mitten and boot warmer thingees that you pop and use to stay warm? I need to find some before we march in the Christmas parade on Saturday morning. Too bad it will be too inappropriate and too early to add some bourbon to my coffee to stay warm. Or will it?

I really need a haircut. What am I going to do about this gray hair?

Gary is a funny name. Funny name for a sweet swaddled newborn. Baby Gary. Not working for me. Roxanne too.

Is it going to take us seven hours to drive to DC again this Thanksgiving?

When is this class over?

That's girl's pose looks totally worse than mine. Look at me, rockin' the yoga pose. Ooops, not so much.

I think I don't like yoga because the clothes show every bulge. I would look great in fencing gear.

My friend Nancy fenced in college. She's not on Facebook either.

Grilled cheese for lunch?

I haven't bought new shoes all season.

I went to Target three times this week. I have a feeling we'll go again before the week's over.

Deal's room needs a rug.

How can I be Indian and suck so much at yoga? My people must be ashamed of me, first math and science, now yoga. We invented this stuff, didn't we?

That instructor is so thin she's concave.

I hate that she is saying tushie. What, are we three year olds in here?

Um, what time is it?

Don't let me fall asleep during this vibration meditation thing. This is not my idea of a good time.


So you see, the class was a bust. And I have recipes to find and people to track down on Facebook.

Wordless Wednesday: Brothers

Boys Like Pink Too

Do you see what I'm doing in the photo up there? I'm playing the role of Al Bundy, helping my son Deal put on some red glitter Dorothyesque dress up shoes. He was 2. It was his birthday party at a children's museum. Stop the judging. Pull up your jaw. Roll your eyes back into your head. Take a breath. He was 2, people. 2.

And you know what? Deal is 3 now, and his favorite color is pink.

Mac Daddy and I don't care. His favorite color will change 10 times before he hits grade school. Bird's favorite color changes almost daily or every time he grabs a new crayon from the Crayola box of 64. And if Deal is 54 and still loves pink, I don't care. In fact, Mac Daddy can rock a pink shirt. Hubba. Hubba.

My point is this: Shut up about my son's sexuality. He's a preschooler for cripe's sake. Really, should we be talking about sexuality at this tender age? I bet you wouldn't want me waxing about your 3-year old daughter's sexuality. Sounds dirty, right? Because it is! You are twisted people. Deal is not to be taunted, judged, or otherwise mocked. Deal is quite simply the sweetest child you will ever come to know. There isn't enough room in cyberspace to list the many ways he shows his utter sweet demeanor. And yes, I write this from the frustration stemming from multiple comments at school.

The fathers in preschool who guffaw at Deal's little "all about me" sheet that lists pink as his favorite color should take a good look in the mirror. You're deriding a child, assholes. Ditto to the moms who look in horror when Deal trapses around in those red glittery shoes at the children's museum. Some have even been brazen enough to flat out ask me if I'm okay with that. Gee, are you okay with your son's snot ridden hair and satanic laugh as he sticks his hand down his pants and then sucks his fingers, lady? Shut the hell up! Then those queen bee moms retreat to their little friends and whisper and point. Yeah, high school clearly is alive and well. The difference now is that I'm not the one being taunted. Don't fuck with me when it comes to my sons.

Do these same mothers and fathers denigrate little girls when they dress up in scrubs or a firefigher helmet? Do they sneer when girls like blue or green or other such colors we tag as masculine? And why do gender roles need to be so clearly defined? Does society tell us that girls cannot be assertive and boys cannot be sensitive? Au contraire, mes amis! Bird asked Santa for two dolls for Christmas when he was 2. He also had a pink toy stroller. He stuffed it full of super hero figurines and raced it around the house. Deal is rough and tumble and can wallop the heck out of a pitched baseball. Both of my sons cause a ruckus with their wrestling, sword fighting, and car racing. Well, that's the stuff they do with Mac Daddy. They are plenty happy coloring with me or doing a craft project or rocking out to Aerosmith for Dance Party USA.

I don't really give a damn what my boys become, as long as they are kind, genuine, productive, and smart contributors to society. I hope they have a good sense of humor and their dad's easy going nature too. I would be so ashamed if my sons grow up to be like those dads in preschool.

Deal loved those glittery shoes so much that he picked them out to give to his buddy Sarah for her birthday.

Children = Entropy

This is why I don't have more than 2 kids. This is how my living room looked after 2 five year olds and 2 three year olds took over and held me hostage in the bathroom. They could have at least banished me to the kitchen where there was wine.

My friend Caroline posted on Facebook about how her kids schemed every night about ways to wreck her clean house. A commenter left a remark that children equal entropy. I failed physics and pretty much every science class I ever took (I am really the only Indian in the whole world who is bad at math and science.) so I looked up the definition. Entropy: a measure of the disorder of a system. Systems tend to go from a state of order (low entropy) to a state of maximum disorder (high entropy). Mac Daddy and I = low entropy. Add children to the equation, FOUR of them, and you clearly have high entropy. They can't help it; it's a physical law just like gravity.

Oh hell, let's be honest, it doesn't take four kids to wreak such havoc. One can do that in a matter of seconds with the right super hero powers at play.