One of Those Days

Yesterday, was one of those days where I would have traded my life for a carefree single girls. Oh, to have an apartment, where when things break you call the manager and wait for him to deal with it. The luxury of only having one persons laundry to contend with let alone dishes. It sounds like nirvana. I picture myself eating grapes in a flowing gown on a futon couch.

Instead, I was confronted with blocked plumbing, which I discovered while doing laundry. During the rinse cycle it had created so much pressure it blew the lid off the main and blew, I won't tell you what, all over the front lawn. That, then needed to be cleaned up by none other than me with a gardening shovel and a plastic bag. Once that was done, I tried to call someone to snake the drain, only to find the phone line was down again. I've been having a consistent problem with my phone, as I write this, there is a man crawling around under my house trying to figure it out. This was also a day my four year old has no school, so she was yelling for all manner of assistance. Did I mention the day before I had gone to the dentist to get a crown? So I was also working through a bit of an Adivan hang over, I'm very phobic of dentistry so I had to take something to relax enough so they could preform the procedure. So as you might guess I was not feeling the joys of home ownership or parenting.


Fortunately, I did have a workout planned for the early evening, I don't know why but when truly frustrated with life, working out seems to relax me, or maybe just redirects my thoughts to being frustrated with my body. Whatever the case, it staved off a total melt down. The workout was followed by pumpkin carving with the family unit. By the time we were done I have to admit I was loving my life again.


Now, I still haven't been able to shower, cause the drains won't get snake till this afternoon and I can't say that futon couch doesn't still hold some appeal, but really I don't think my back could take sleeping on one of those contraptions these days.


All I can say in closing, is that when you find yourself faced with the unmanagableness(is that a word) of life, just hold on long enough for the joys of pumpkin carving to save you. They will!

Picky Eater

I have to confess for many years I took pride in my daughters ability to eat just about anything. She loved sushi, asparagus, salsa, anything....and all was right with the world. We never had to carry around peanut butter sandwiches. We could just go to any restaurant or house and she would eat whatever was put in front of her with two exceptions, peanut butter and potatoes. It was glorious
Last spring she turned four and it has been a slow descent into a all carb diet ever since. Where she use to be happy to have eggs for breakfast, she will only eat pancakes or french toast now( into which I hide flax seed), because I'm not crazy about the constant syrup intake I can force her to have oatmeal occasionally, and sometimes even an egg but only if I put it between two pieces of bread, open face is a crime punishable by an extremely long whining session and possible foot stomping.
At lunch I find myself trimming off crusts something I swore I would never do. Now I come to find, if I don't trim the crust my child will take one bite from each quarter and label the rest yucky with crust. So there I am with grilled cheese sandwich in hand trimming away. It's definitely my penance, for all the times I thought I can't believe that mother has allowed her child to dictate like that.
Dinner is yet another sad affair, where she use to eat salad gleefully she now picks out olives and avocado and leaves the rest in disgust. She might eat one infinitesimal piece of meat. Her main course is always a huge serving of rice with soy sauce.
Perhaps she's vegan, though she does eat cheese and god love her she'll still eat sushi. Somehow she must know that that was the one thing we wouldn't have minded her giving up since she can really run up the tab.
The one thing she will eat like all other children is candy. There, she is without preference, no matter the texture, color, or flavor. It's candy, all she wants to know is how much can I have and when.
So what I really want to know is, how long does this last...Is it some kind of taste bud anomaly....Does anyone know where I can get crust less bread??

No on Prop 8

Proposition 8 is a proposed amendment to the California constitution which if passed into law would be known as the California Marriage Protection Act. This California ballot proposition will appear on the November 4, 2008 ballot along with eleven other statewide propositions. Proposition 8 is one of four ballot measures which propose to amend the California state constitution and appears on the ballot titled as Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.
If it passes, it will add a new constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that will say "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" and it will be known in law as the California Marriage Protection Act[1]

This is the description I pulled off ballotpedia.org

After seeing too many yes on 8 yard signs and actually hearing a contemporary of mine say they voted yes on it(absentee). I just want to beg people to vote no on this.

Even if you think that domestic partnership allows same sex couples the same benefits as opposite sex couples. It does not give them the same cultural, and social ones. Separate but equal is inherently unequal as ever.

What could be more American, more Christian, than equality for everyone.

Of Equal Importance To Voting Early

Monty Python and The Holy Grail

is Playing tonight at 7:30

at

Culver Plaza Theater

9919 Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA, 90232

(310)836-5516

I have never seen this on the big screen. Have you???

Los Angeles Early Voting

You can vote early at:

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/ County Clerk
3rd flr. Room 300212400 Imperial Highway,
Norwalk, Ca.
90650


Monday-Friday 8am-5pm
Now thru November

3rdSaturday & Sunday 8am-4pm
October 25th & 26th, and November 1st & 2nd

Be Positive

As things get gloomier and gloomier on the economic horizon, the world around me keeps turning up with examples of the benefits of being positive. Not to get all "The Secret" on you, a book/video I have neither read nor seen. Still I keep coming up against people who are just so damn positive, maybe I should.

I like to think I'm pretty positive but I got nothing on this crowd. They walk through life expecting it all to work out and somehow it does. Maybe it's in their blood? Maybe they put out positive vibes...I have no idea. But, these people win cars, have anonymous benefactors, face the possibility of infertility with a smile and that's just to get started. They're not Polly Anna about it either, they work hard to reach their goals, but when those goals require that little bit extra the "universe" helps them out.

I don't know if you can force this or if it just has to be your natural disposition. But I'm going to give it a whirl. I will hold the thought that all things are possible and that if I truly want something there must be a way to achieve it.

I have a MySpace friend, named God, who once asked "what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?". Maybe this is the secret these people know. They do seem to just go for the seemingly unattainable. How many times do we have ideas that we toss because on thinking them over we decided they are too improbable? I know I do it all the time.

So, here's to being positive, may we all reap it's benefits!!

Theatre

Well, after what feels like a very long break the theatre season started back up for me last night at the Ahmanson, with 9 to 5 the musical. It started off a bit uneven, but got it together after the first few numbers and then I really liked it. The book is pretty faithful to the film, much of the dialogue is taken directly from the film. I was surprised how much of it I remembered. I think the movie must have ran and reran on the Z channel about a million times when I was a kid. So I remembered lines like " I'll turn you from a rooster to a hen in one shot".

Allison Janney (who I adore), played Violet, had a great number, that she did really well. The whole cast was really great. The Mr. Hart(Marc Kudish) character had a lot of hysterical business. Both Doralee(Meagan Hilty straight from playing Glinda at the pantages) and Judy's (Stephanie Block also from wicked but the NY show)characters did several wonderful numbers. The Roz (Kathy Fitzgerald) character had two standout numbers, both done brilliantly. Dolly Parton did all the music with mostly great results.

This show only has one more week before it goes to Broadway. I recommend it, if you can get there. Saturday I'm going to a Q and A with the cast. I'll let you know if there's anything interesting to report.

With Wicked finally closing at the Pantages, I should be back to a full schedule of shows this Fall and Spring and Summer. Besides the Ahmanson and the Pantages, I also got a few ticket to shows through LA Theatre Works. No Geffen this year though. I'll post anything I think is fabulous!

Community

Today we had our street yard sale. This morning before I set up our yard sale I went for a morning walk with three of the other mom's on my street. In August we had our block party. When I need someone to watch my kid for an hour between my going to work and my husband getting home. I have at least three people on my street I can call to cover me.

I HAVE COMMUNITY

But it wasn't just a lucky real estate choice, it's taken some major commitment/fun on all our parts.

When I first moved on to this street with my husband(pre-kid) we were the party house. We had lots of late and loud parties. The last and most notorious a 4th of July complete with totally illegal firework show.

Two months later I was pregnant, with mild complication, that shut the parties down. At this point I would say we knew our immediate neighbors, with varying affection levels.

It wasn't until I had my daughter and started walking up and down my street on an hourly basis that I started to meet everyone. After about a year of chatting I had heard from several people they'd like to have a block party. It was in the organizing of the block party that our community took form.

It turned out there were a lot of kids on the block and their families were some of the most active in the block party planning process. I think it was after the second block party we formed a baby sitting coop. Which has devolved into a very informal coop, where we all just help one another out, and figure it all evens out at some point.

Long story short, if you feel you don't have community (because of your own misdeeds or otherwise) in this crazy town, make one. You gotta meet your neighbors, not just the ones next door, the whole street. Find a common interest. The yard sale thing is really fun if a block party is more than you want to get involved in. It really is a snow ball effect. Seems like every year something new gets started. Last year one of the neighbors set up a pot luck pumpkin carving party, this year we're thinking about having a chili cook off and movie night in November.

These parties are at least as noisy as my pre-kid ones but we're all in bed by 9 and no one gives us dirty looks the next day.