5:00 Fridays

I am an ENFJ.

The J is for judging, which does not mean judgmental, though I admittedly am. That's only because I feel like I have pretty good judgment, of course. J girls are planners. Make that Planners...with a capital P. I bet you anything that my friend Christy is a J. She's already got her vacations planned through 2019, and I know she's packed for her Disney trip...in November. J people are into multiple Big Os. Alright folks, minds out o' the gutter. The Big Os are Order and Organization. Duh! Anyone who knows me should know that. Nothing is more of a turn on. Wa wa wa, as Chachi would say. People like me like to have things planned and settled.

Um yeah, that's why Mac Daddy and I just planned a beach getaway this morning. We leave tomorrow. As in the DAY AFTER TODAY. That's order and organization for ya. The epitome of planning.

Note that pre-kids we traveled with no hotel reservations. We would literally land and head to a hotel that looked cool. This was a bad idea when we were traveling in New England when I was six months pregnant with Bird. We literally found a room in the third state we stopped in, and for that we still love Maine. Talk about no room at the inn. Who says Mary and I have nothing in common?

So yeah, now I need to pack for the beach for three people (Mac Daddy's on his own, dude), and the laundry is still in the basket. The dirty clothes basket. And it's almost 6:00 PM. Did I also mention that I've held out on buying a new bathing suit so I'm heading out after dinner to look for one? I dragged Bird along today to do some swimwear shopping, under the guise of a big, high fashion solo adventure with Mommy, but all we found were suits large enough to use as a tarp. Bird can't even count as high as some of the sizes we saw hanging on the racks today. I cannot imagine the size of the boobs that jostle in the suits we saw today. Ouch.

In honor of our beach trip, I present to you, the Sandy Beach.

Get yourself a Collins glass, one of those tall skinny ones. Fill with ice, but no too much. No sense diluting the rum as it melts. Now add the following and stir.

2 oz. coconut rum (I'm partial to Malibu because it reminds me of some crazy fun times with my friend Jen in grad school.)
1 splash Grenadine
Fill the rest of the glass halfway with OJ (pulp free, but go for the calcium enriched to make this a healthy option)
Fill the rest of the way with Pineapple Juice (Can someone tell me why this only comes in a can?)
Garnish with a slice of lime (You all know by now the importance of garnish. Consider it mascara for your cocktail. Everyone looks better with it.)

Add a fancy umbrella, put on your hottest non-mom bikini, turn on the Don Ho, light a tiki torch, nestle your red toes (natch) in the sandbox, and drink up!

Cheers! See you next week...if I decide to come back...

Smiling Faces. Beautiful Places. For Heterosexuals Only.

There are some lovely places in South Carolina. I even know some lovely people from there. Mac Daddy and I have spent lots of time in Charleston and Myrtle Beach and had a grand time. I've been golfing in Hilton Head. I've spent lots of money at the outlets. The palmettos are splendid, the Battery architecture divine, and the food scrumptious.

It's the people who leave a bad taste in my mouth. Rather, the politicians. And the "family values" lobbyists.

Apparently South Carolina does not want gay tourists. Their money is like Monopoly money, I guess. Apparently discrimination and intolerance are woven into the state creed. Read all about it here.

Why are family friendly and gay friendly still mutually exclusive? Bird has a friend with two moms. They're a family and gay. And for the record, they are awesome parents and amazing women. I'm lucky to count them among my friends. Bird thinks it's cool that his buddy gets to have two mommies. I think it's a fine lesson at an early age. It's not like they're telling their son to not play with Bird because his parents are heterosexual. Gasp!

I've worked in marketing for over 16 years. I've worked in the tourism industry and even worked with the gay market segment for a fortune 100 worldwide financial services company. My desk has been covered in tourism research, budget proposals, signed estimates, and invoices. There is always someone on the client side approving the work and writing the check. Like any job, there is a checks and balances system to ensure the direction and delivery of the work is appropriate, on target, on budget, on time, and um, what the client wants. Yeah, I'd add what the consumer wants too (it's the most important element, actually!), but unfortunately, clients rarely care about that. I love how this whole campaign got through the system with none of the powers that be knowing about it. Sounds like South Carolina has some infrastructure issues to iron out.

And here's my favorite part from a high school principal who'd rather quit his job than approve a gay/straight alliance club at his school:
“Our sex education curriculum is abstinence based,” Walker wrote in a letter to the school. “I feel the formation of a Gay/Straight Alliance Club at Irmo High School implies that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

Can someplace explain this sex ed math to me? How does being gay equal having sex? Somehow all those straight kids aren't thinking about the birds and the bees? Are only gay people having sex? How exactly do we explain those 9100 teen pregnancies in South Carolina last year to girls ages 10 to 19?! No, you don't need reading glasses from the Walgreens aisles; it says 10. As in FIVE YEARS OLDER THAN MY SON! And isn't the word "straight" inherently setting up the the opposite to have a negative connotation?

Hmmm...seems to me that South Carolina has bigger fish to fry than gay people eating off the same forks and sitting in the same horse drawn carriages as the rest of us? Do you suppose restaurants have a separate set of dishes for brown people? Where does it stop? For that matter, where does it begin? What makes this attitude and blatant intolerance OK? What really irks me is that this mentality is not leaking its way into the next generation, it's being poured into their minds. Nevermind that South Carolina has one of the lowest literacy rates in the country. What are we going to do about it? Knock, knock. Does anyone care?

And we wonder why sterotypes are not so far from the truth.

Look, I'm brown. Don't think for a minute that I'd stop and ask for directions at a podunk gas station in South Carolina. I've gotten "the look" at boutiques on King Street, and that's with a Fendi bag on my arm (no doubt the lousy retail shop girls making all of $6.14 an hour thought was a fake). My point is that ignorance ignites racism. Stereotypes go both ways. Perhaps my vitriol isn't helping matters, but damn it, I'm mad. After all, South Carolina still sells t-shirts that say something about "the War of Northern Aggression." The rebel flag flies high. Seriously, get over it. There's another war going on right now folks, that's not just in any way.

I'd like to see the looks on the jowled faces of Oran Smith and David Thomas once the Wiccans show up toting cauldrons, chalices, wands, and incense. Wouldn't it be delightful to hold a Wiccan esbat to celebrate the next full moon in Columbia?

Perhaps secession was not such a bad idea. What do we do with the incorrigible state to my south? Apparently it doesn't want to play by the rules.

My Mom the Democrat

Liz, of Mom 101, Cool Mom Picks, and Momcrats fame, wrote this article that I just read in my new issue of Brain, Child. I actually laid in bed with Casey, my shaved Persian cat, purring upon my chest, while I read the whole magazine. Cover to cover. Ads and all. This story, for obvious reasons, was my fave. 

Mom-101: My Daughter the Democrat

I knew I liked Liz even before I found out she's my buddy's buddy. Yeah, that's what you call some bloggy sucking up. Only I mean it. No brownie points to be had here, but brownies would be nice. 

My mom is a die-hard Democrat.  You'd know that about her in the first, um, .002 nanoseconds of meeting her. When she met Bill Clinton at a book signing she called me in a tizzy telling me she'd never wash her right hand again. After his antics during the primaries, she scrubbed her hand with Lysol. My mom can't drive or swim or ride a bike, but she can manage to get herself wherever she needs to go to cast her vote. Nothing lost on her American citizenship. My mom definitely has a dossier on file with the Department of Homeland Security. Her phone must be tapped, unless she's on a party line with a tap dancer or a cow that types clickety clacking all the while we talk. 

My mom is the original Obama Mama. Check her out here. She's the one in the middle with her signature ginormous earrings about to signal lift off and even bigger purse. And note that the woman is always high fashion. She's the one who walked into my house when Bird was 8 days old and proclaimed that I needed to wear mascara every day to make myself feel better. This was, of course, a ruse just so she could stand to look at me. Nevermind that I had a newborn who couldn't breastfeed and a house under construction while she had a mom, sister, and a nanny when I was an infant. Do I sound bitter? Nah. Maybe just a tad. Until I saw this photo of my mom I had never seen her in a T-shirt. Ever.

And damn, I am so proud of her. 

Teaching your kids about political values is no different than teaching them about the values and morals you believe in general. In my case, the blue apple didn't fall far from the tree. If everything goes my way, neither Bird nor Deal will come home from college as Alex P. Keaton.

I'm meeting with the NC head of the Obama campaign tomorrow and taking Bird with me. When I kissed him good night I told him about the meeting and said that he's going to wear his Yes We Can! shirt.  Sleepy eyed and nestled under the covers, he stuck out his little hand and gave me a thumbs up and an incredulous grin. 

That's my boy. 

Just plain water for me, thanks.

I dragged my sorry self to the gym this morning for a quick, and I mean quick, workout. 45 minutes is better than 2 tuxedo cupcakes with extra chocolate chips and a side of Regis and Kelly. I was stuffing my overloaded, poor quality freebie gym bag into the locker and knocked all my essentials off the bench, towards the floor. The gym locker room floor. The same locker room of toothbrush fame.

Being the crazy OCD woman I am, I leaped across the bench, coming just this close to knocking into the taut mama next me, trying to retrieve my precious essentials before they made contact with the floor. That floor. And if you must know, my essentials include an MP3 player, little towel, water bottle, and Chapstick. Is this news to you that I am addicted to lip balm? Because I am. It's stashed all over the place lest I go without. Shudder at the thought.

So now all the gym ladies are looking at me like I am auditioning for the part of crazy lady #1 in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Redux. They are thinking that things falling onto a floor are perfectly fine, perhaps just a skip away from dandy in fact. All on eyes on me to see what the heck is so precious. The way I see it, all things that come into contact with my person are precious.

I knew better.

Lady Luck was scattering her dust elsewhere this morning. All my stuff rolled onto the floor. Now I know how the kid with the damn meatball must have felt. In the midst of my panting from sheer heroic efforts and total whacked out stress, I retrieved my stuff. The essentials. I wiped everything down with a wipe (baby wipes are a misnomer...the marketing opportunities are endless if Kimberly-Clark would just do away with the baby image on the packaging!). Yes, I keep a package of wipes in my gym bag (and my purse, tote bag, and glove compartment...oh, and the emergency bag in my trunk). Not green, I know. Someone give me a better alternative.

I digress, as I am known to do on occasion. Forgive me. Dirt really stresses me out.

Everything was fine. The essentials were no worse for the wear.

Except my water bottle. The essentialist of the essentials.

I picked it up and dropped it again as if it were coated in Dick Cheney's piss.

Only this was worse.

There was a solitary pube stuck to the little spout. You know, where my MOUTH would go! And yeah, it wasn't mine (not like that would have made a difference).

Now excuse me while I go dry heave in the corner.

The moral of the story is: when the given the choice between tuxedo cupcakes and exercise, choose the cupcakes.

5:00 Fridays

Today's cocktail is in honor of Mac Daddy's Wisconsin brethren arriving today. Four 40-year old high school buddies from Wisconsin converging on my house for the weekend. Did I mention they're all staying here? Four guys with a lot o' smack to talk, and perhaps a thing or two to prove, sleeping under my roof. Snoring. Boasting. Fart jokes. General bad influences on Bird and Deal. And yeah, that means Mac Daddy is absolved of all duties for the weekend.

Let's do some math just for kicks. Four men and two boys at Chez Dirt & Noise for the weekend. That makes six, count 'em SIX, sets of balls in my house for three days. Can you spell T-E-S-T-O-S-T-E-R-O-N-E? Dirt and Noise will earn its title in spades this weekend.

Actually, the fellas coming are great. They go way back with Mac Daddy and they have welcomed me into their Cheesehead fold with the ease of meeting a long lost friend. The guys get together every summer to golf, drink beer, tell tall tales, drink beer, talk trash, drink beer, eat chicken wings, nap, drink beer, and drink some more beer. They're from Wisconsin, what'd you expect?

Seriously, these guys are the ones who took time off from work, drove over two hours (one with a toddler in tow) to come to Mac Daddy's sister's funeral. Mac Daddy didn't expect to see them and he broke down at the mere sight of his friends walking through the church doors, ties adjusted just so, posture stick straight and perfect, expressions forlorn. At the death of Mac Daddy's father last year, these guys did it again...traveling through perilous winter highways this time. No words were exchanged. Just hugs, the really deep bear hug kind where no one wants to let go first. Shared tears. Eye contact that clearly said, "I love you, man." These guys are family.

As smelly as my house will be, I'm thrilled to see them.

In honor of the beer that will be consumed this weekend, today's drink is Wisconsin Limeade.

1 6-pack of Miller Lite (We're going with the Wisconsin theme here. Only a WI brew will do! Hmmm...that sounds like a fine tag line.)
1 can of frozen limeade (Go generic store brand here. Wisconsin is not a fancy place.)
sliced lime for garnish (Not that the boys from Wisconsin will appreciate garnish, but I aspire to be a proper hostess.)

In a really, really big pitcher, mix the beer (all of it, it's not like you won't drink this heat buster) and limeade. Mix 'er up really well with a metal spoon (reduces the foam). Serve cold in chilled glasses...redundant, no? Rest assured that I'd have some of those chilled glasses on hand if it weren't the for the three racks of spareribs, two pounds of shrimp, and two gallons of ice cream taking up all the space in my freezer...those boys have to eat something (OK the ice cream is for yours truly.)! Garnish (the ever important detail!) with a lime slice.

Make a toast to friendship and enjoy!

So refreshing on a muggy day. Those guys will think they've stepped off the plane directly into a vegetable steamer. Needless to say, we'll be enjoying our Wisconsin Limeade indoors in the comfort of a cool 78 degrees (several degrees cooler than the comfort of 82 that I prefer...my favorite temperature...see #22.)

Good Riddance, Jesse Helms

I am not from North Carolina, though I've lived here for over six years now and have no intention of leaving any time soon (only because Madison, WI is too freaking cold!). It is home, and I have a lovely, happy life here. When asked where I'm from, I always answer Virginia (with a qualifier that I live in North Carolina). It's where I grew up after all. And let's be honest, once a Virginian, always a Virginian. My friend Will gives me grief about not claiming NC as my home state. He wonders how long I must live here for North Carolina to qualify as my answer when the knitting chick next me to on a plane asks me where I'm from.

At this rate, never. I'm a bit miffed at my state right now. They just laid Jesse Helms to rest this week. Good riddance. Mac Daddy and I saw him at a local restaurant when we first moved here. When Mac Daddy saw him, he muttered under his breath, "I'd like to knock that walker out from under him." Apparently his mutter was more of a snort, so lots of people looked our way. Only a couple folks smiled sheepishly in agreement, expressing their solidarity more with their eyes than their words. Ripping on "Uncle Jesse," as our conservative neighbor calls him, was clearly against the rules in our new state.

I remember growing up in Virginia hearing about the racist vitriol that spewed from his lips. I remember my parents shaking their heads, thinking damn, I'm glad we don't live there. My nanny, a black woman with grown children and four grandchildren, has lived in North Carolina for decades and had to experience Helms' racism firsthand. A local newspaper columnist summed up what the Helms way would have meant to the black people of North Carolina. This is a man who was a vocal segregationist, openly discriminated against AIDS victims by opposing federal research and treatment dollars (PSHAW to his later regret...too little too late, my friend), and was opposed to instituting Martin Luther King Day. Social conservatism, ha! That's putting it mildly. This is a man who referred to our state's flagship university as the University of Negroes and Communists (UNC)!

Jesse Helms was a divisive man. His first bid for the Senate centered on a separationist philosophy: "He's one of us!" barked his slogan in response to his Greek-American opponent. Remember Ryan White? The kid who contracted AIDS at age 13 and subsequently died? Helms refused to speak to Ryan's mother when she went to the Hill to speak to representatives about AIDS research funding. Know what he said about the horrific disease? "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." Oh, it gets better. Know what he did to Carol Moseley-Braun in the elevator? He whistled Dixie. Yup, sure did.

You gagging yet?

Simply put, Jesse Helms was not a good man. I don't care how affable or gentlemanly you perceived him to be. A tip of the hat and a hidy-ho with an offer of a glass of sweet tea to passers by do not a gentleman make. Does a truly friendly, good natured man wish for the demise of an entire race? Good people do good deeds and inspire goodness. Helms fueled a racism and xenophobia so deep and hateful that it is still palpable today. Is this goodness? Are these the kinds of values you want your children to live by and pass on? I am sick that North Carolinians voted for this man for so long. I am sick that in death, North Carolina revered him.

No flag should have been flown at half staff if you ask me. Just because a man is dead doesn't mean it is time to celebrate his life. Grace does not befall the fallen if it was not due in life. Helms lived his life trying to suppress the rights of others; his was not a life lived by the decree of respect for all. So tell me, Governor Easley, why should we bestow respect on this man by flying flags at half staff? He was not worthy.

You can imagine my outrage at this.

I want Mr. Eason to run for office. If more people lived by their convictions as he did, we might be a better place. Sounds like the spirit of Paul Wellstone to me. Man, would he have been a refreshing jolt to the red blood running through the veins of North Carolina. Now let's think about something, police officers accidentally shoot and kill people and get a temporary desk job until the proverbial dust settles. Eason refused to lower the flag for Jesse Helms and is fired...oh, I mean forced into "retirement." Just or unjust?

Here's a comment from a local blog that a delusional Kristy left. It's almost laughable to me that people actually believe this crap. Last I recall from my history class days with Ms. Malone (and I majored in history in college), the nation was not knit together by God and the bible. Um, separation of church and state ring a bell, Kristy? Oh, you were probably homeschooled so you missed that chapter. I guess you don't know who Darwin and Martin Luther King Jr. are either. For starters, Kristy, your message would be more tolerable with some proper grammar and a comma or two. Punctuation simply can't be overlooked, my dear. If you're going to spew a load of crap, you might as well do it correctly.

1. "What a great Senator Jesse Helms was. To have never lost a political race is quite an accomplishment. I hope those who have opposed him realize that those who voted him into office are walking along side you even now and are continuing to vote for the values Senator Helms upheld. Knowing this state put him into Senate for as long as they did is only one of the many reasons I am proud to be from North Carolina. If you saw him in a negative light I implore you to look beyond secondhand information and read first hand his voting record (which is public information for those of us who like to make up our own mind about things rather than having our opinions handed to us by a third party). He believed every person was created equal in the eyes of God and voted to protect each one of this states citizens, even those who hated him. As for moral issues, if you disagreed with Jesse Helms and oh so many other more conservative thinkers please don’t take it out on us because sadly we can’t take credit for the ideals we try to uphold but rather look to God and the Bible from which the nation was knitted together. That is definitely who your disagreement is with."

   By kristy on Jul 10, 2008

In the South it would be perfectly appropriate to recount Kristy's story and end with a, "Bless her heart." Translation: "That Kristy is an idiot who refuses to take off her blinders. What a shame we have to deal with her."

Green babies aren't scary.

I just discovered this great book that I wish had been around when I was hunting for baby gear. It's written by a very clever (and may I say lovely), talented, and creative classmate of mine from graduate school. We have kids about the same age, and she has eco living down to a science. Her tips and ideas are actually feasible, budget friendly, and she doesn't pretend to be perfect (for example, she doesn't compost...yet). This book would make an awesome baby shower gift with an organic cotton blanket used as the wrapping paper.