Girlfriends and the Sex and the City movie

Yesterday was kind of a stressful day for me. Without going into too many details, the last business day of the month requires the submission of status reports to our firm's two biggest clients, and, as such, is generally a day of stress for me as I frantically try to get them done before 3:00.

Adding to my stress was the fact that Gabriel has been having a lot of headaches this month, which culminated Thursday night with something that looked like a migraine - he was doubled over in pain, nauseated, holding his head. Frankly, it was scary...very scary. And because I found it very scary, I accused Husband of not being scared enough or concerned enough. I don't think it made a lot of sense - I'm not really a sensible person when I'm worried about my kids.

Friday morning Gabe's head was still hurting (although not like the night before) and called into my office to say that I didn't know when or if I was coming in, and that I would try to email the information needed for the reports if necessary.

I took Gabe to the doctor, where it was suggested that Gabe may be having a headache side-effect reaction to a medication he has just started taking for enuresis (which is really a saga that deserves its own blog post, but, I'm not going there now). Anyway, the doctor told me to have him stop taking that medication, and monitor for severe headaches over the next 3 or 4 days, and if they don't go away, we will talk about a cat-scan next week. He seemed fairly certain that the problem was the medication and not all of the very scary places that my worst-case-scenario head was jumping to.

As I was leaving the doctor's office with Gabe, my Girlfriend CB called to say that she was in town and did I want to have lunch? (She lives in a small town about 45 minutes away, so, I don't get to see her as often as I would like.) So, Gabe and I went and met CB for lunch at a Lebanese place we all like, and it was just...incredibly reassuring and comforting to have lunch with a girlfriend who could listen to my concerns about the whole headache debacle, and just by her presence make me feel like things are okay and right with the world. Or, I guess, if they are not okay and right with the world, at least we are not facing the things that are not okay or not right all alone...

After lunch I took Gabe to my office, and he played on "webkinz.com" on my computer, and I dealt with my reports and two cases that needed my attention. Then Gabe and I went and picked up Lana from school, and I took them to my sister's house for a playdate with their cousins.

I left my sister's, and went and met my Girlfriends H~ and K~ for our planned Girls Night Out for the Sex and the City movie.

The three of us had drinks and hors d'oeuvres and dessert at a brew pub across the street from the theater, and then we walked over and spent almost 2 and half hours laughing and crying and laughing and crying at the sagas of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha.

And I just...LOVED* it.

So, here's my advice: if you loved the show, or even if you didn't love the show, but, watched it now and then and enjoyed it - grab some of your Girlfriends, go to dinner, and then go spend 2 hours laughing and crying and laughing with the girls of Sex and The City.


LM

*all except one thing (involving Samantha, who is probably my favorite), which I will save for a post next week, when I will have assumed that anyone who really wants to see the movie will probably have seen it.

And It's Poetry in Motion

As I was picking up our standard Friday night sushi-takeout order (because evidently I have an addiction to California rolls that must be fed at least once a week), Husband called to say that he and Gabe had lucked into a pair of tickets to this evening's baseball game. Lana was with me in the car when he called, and heard me say, "oh, that's fine, Lana and I will just have a 'girl's night in'."

When we arrived home, my girlfriend H~ called to ask how we were getting along with a problem we had been having with our pool filter*, Lana clamored to talk to her. (Lana loves H~ unabashadly, and loves talking on the phone.) "We havin' a girl's night!" she exclaimed. "We gonna paint our toes, and watch a movie and take a bath!"

She chattered some more on the phone, and when she hung up, she started up the stairs, swinging her hips and singing "girls night, we havin' girls night" to herself. Shortly thereafter, we heard her door shut and CD player start up, loudly, blasting The Indigo Girls. Because, evidently, Closer to Fine is the appropriate soundtrack for Girls Night In.

So, the boys went to the ballgame, and Lana and I painted our toes and took a bath and watched Tom & Jerry, and also went out for ice-cream, and I cannot imagine a more perfect 'girls night in' for Lana and I.

Sometimes Lana takes my breath away with the sheer joy she finds in the simplest pleasures. She was bubbling over with happiness this evening. It was contagious.

LM

*(H~ works human resources for a large pool and spa company, she was my go-to person when my filter wouldn't work yesterday. Specifically, it was blowing, but, not sucking, and with pool filters (as with so many other things in life), when there is blowing without sucking, nothing good can come of it.)

She's Got High In the Sky Apple Pie Hopes

Driving home from work and school today, Lana says to me,

"Mommy, turn the radio down for a minute."

I turn off Rihanna singing "Take a Bow". (I cannot decide if I love Rihanna or if I hate Rihanna - I kind of like this song, though, but, not so much I mind turning it off.) (Note that we are not listening to NPR on the way home because they made me cry hysterically while driving last week TWICE*, so, I consider the news too dangerous to listen to while driving at the moment.)

"You know what I'm gonna learn, mom?" Lana asks.

"What are you going to learn, Lana?" I respond.

"I am going to learn how to fart REALLY REALLY LOUD. Super loud. I am."

Dream big, baby girl. Dream big.

LM

Things to do in Seattle with Children

As it turns out, Husband and I will be taking the shorties to Seattle this summer (I hesitate to give actual dates because I am paranoid that there are Internet crazies out there who will use the information to, you know, break into my house and steal my cats or something.) (Of course, they would have to get past the gated community and the attack dogs and the moat, and stuff.) (Kidding!) (Mostly!) (Maybe.) (But, if you're an internet crazizoid, believe me when I say, we not only have a really large attack dog, but, also...a cougar.) (We keep the cougar outside, because, whew! Have you ever SMELLED an attack cougar? They are RIPE, I'm telling you.)

Um, I digress. I need to know THINGS TO DO IN SEATTLE WITH KIDS. (Not to be confused with THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, which is the name of a deeply disturbing movie, which you would definitely NOT want to take kids to in ANY city, Seattle or otherwise.)

Okay, so, hit me, oh Internets - what are the "must-see" things to see with children in the Pacific NW?

LM

Oh Angelina, the Things That You Say...

Angelina Jolie and I have a couple of things in common.

For example, we both adopted older children from Vietnam.

We both have a biological child as well.

We have both attended the Cannes Film Festival. (Yes, that's true, I've been to the Cannes Film Festival. It's an AMAZING experience.) (But, that's not the point of this blog entry. Maybe another one, later.)

But, Angelina recently made a comment at this year's Cannes Film Festival that clearly indicates that Angelina and I may not even be from the same planet.

I got this quote from NBC.com by the way, so, I'm trusting that she actually said it.

Discussing her pregnancy, Ms. Jolie said,

"Like most women, I love being pregnant.” She added that pregnancy makes “you feel like more like a woman than you've ever felt. You just feel like everything about your body is there for your baby.”

I read that this morning and I went, "WHAT IS SHE SMOKING???"

I know that there are SOME women who LOVE being pregnant. I know that they do actually exist because my sister is one of them, and she will tell you that she LOVED being pregnant every time, and she has five biological children, so, I don't think she's kidding.

But I think Angie might be pushing the envelope when she claims to speak for "most women".

She definitely is NOT speaking for me. I HATED being pregnant. I was a TERRIBLE pregnant person. I was rude. I was surly. My co-workers lobbed protein bars over the walls of my cube (I was a number cruncher for a research firm at the time, I hadn't gone to law school yet) before they would come ask me for stuff. I constantly crunched ice and cried at the drop of a hat - such an attractive combination.

Additionally, I SOOOOOOOOO did NOT feel 'more like a woman' than I had ever felt. I felt like I had been invaded by an alien life force. I felt like someone was digging his toes into my rib cage while simutaneously shoving his index fingers into my bladder. (Who might that have been???) I had heartburn for 9 straight months. Frankly I think it's hard to feel "womanly" when you are waddling, burping, moaning about rib and hip pain, and crunching tums and ice at the same time. (Oh, yum, a little tums-flavored frappe in your mouth. Tasty. Not.)

I did not feel "womanly". I felt enormous and awkward and sick and pained. I felt...wretched.

Maybe it's easier to feel 'womanly' and beautiful when you have designer maternity wear and $500 shoes, and a team of people to do your hair and make-up. Maybe I'm being too hard on her, but, I did so much want to smack her when I read that this morning. (Except that I would never really smack anyone, certainly not a pregnant woman, I mean, I'm surly sometimes, but I'm not really cruel!)

I have no doubt that Angelina loves her kids as much as I do. (As much as I love mine, I mean. I don't love Angelina's kids.) (Not that they're not lovely children, I'm sure they're perfectly nice and all, I just don't, you know, love them, I've never even met them!)

But, I do have to disagree with her.

Of course, even my disagreement is not going to stop me from going to see her new movie coming out next month. It's about a SECRET SOCIETY OF HITMEN. (And hitwomen, evidently). How can I resist???

LM

OH - I forgot to mention, one OTHER thing Angelina and I do NOT have in common - I have never worn a vial of Billy Bob Thorton's blood in a bottle around my throat. I swear. :-P

To light up the darkness and show us the way*

Because the news these last few days is SO VERY GRIM...

I bring you the distraction of an amusing story about my funny little man....

I believe I have mentioned before that my Gabriel is something of an old soul. He also, not surprisingly, loves music.

(His love for music is not surprising because everyone in my mother's family, save for me, is very musically talented. I, myself, CAN carry a tune in a bucket, but, much to my family's dismay, just barely.)

Gabriel likes many, many kinds of music - he even will listen to freeform jazz. (I have always WANTED to like jazz, but, the truth is that, mostly, I don't.)

His favorite albums are (and have been for the last 5 years) the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack, and "Down From the Mountain" (which is more music from the artists on O Brother). He listens to the 'O Brother' soundtrack on repeat at night, all night long. (It is for this reason that Gabe's room is on the opposite side of the house from our room, because Husband has trouble sleeping with Ralph Stanley singing "O Death" in his ears. (Go figure.))

But, back to Gabriel - he is not at all hemmed in by his bluegrass roots. Yesterday, for example, he was listening to Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls" on Husband's ipod...he has broad musical interests.

A few months ago, Gabe came home from school and asked if we had any John Denver CDs. He said that they had heard some John Denver songs in music class that day and he had liked them and wanted to hear them again.

And because Husband and I are both children of the 70's, and nostalgic, I said, "of COURSE we have a John Denver CD" and pulled out John Denver's Greatest Hits from our CD shelf, and Gabe took it to his room and he listened to it for a while. He came back down and said that he really liked "Sunshine on my Shoulders", but he was upset the album didn't have "Calypso" on it. And I said, "what song?" and he burst into song, singing (loudly) "AYE CALYPSO WE SING TO YOUR SPIRIT"..."but I can't remember the rest of the words".

And then for four days, he walked around the house singing those same ten notes over and over and over and over and OVER AND OVER again, until I was forced to obtain a copy of the album Windsong from the library, so that he could at least learn the rest of the chorus so I would not be forced to strangle him.



So, "Calypso" became a favorite song of his to listen to, or just sing to himself. He is a BIG FAN of the song. (What I find adorable about 8-year-old-boys is that they really have no clue about what is "cool" or "not cool" - so, that at this age, Gabe is free to like or not like whatever music he wants. He has felt the peer pressure a bit with games/toys/TV Shows, but, so far, he is uninfluenced by his peers as far as music goes. I like this and I hope he continues to buck his peers and listen to music he really enjoys just because he enjoys it and not because it's what everyone else is listening to.)

At any rate, Gabriel loves the song Calypso with all the passion that an 8-year-old-boy can muster.

SO, with all that in mind...............rewind to the end of our vacation in Jamaica last month.

As we were sitting outside our hotel in Negril, waiting for an awfully long time for the bus to leave to take us to the airport in Montego Bay (and I swear I will finish my review of Beaches Negril, I will) - the driver got on the bus and said it was going to be a few more minutes before we could leave for the airport, and everyone on the bus groaned audibly. The bus driver says, "Shall I entertain you with a bit of Caribbean music while we wait? I could play some reggae?" The driver was smiling and some of us smiled a bit (but mostly we were still annoyed by the wait.)

"What? No fans of reggae? How 'bout I play some Calypso, then?"

And my earnest, happy, little boy jumped up from his seat on the bus, jumped up and down clapped his hands and (loudly) said, 'OH! YES! YES! Play CALYPSO! I LOVE CALYPSO!"

Everyone on the bus laughed. (Presumably because they thought it was hysterical that such a small child had such a huge preference for a particular type of Caribbean music. I didn't feel the need to clarify that my kid was actually hungering for a John Denver song.)

The bus driver looked at Gabe and said, "I'm sorry little man, I can't actually play any music."

And Gabe pouted in an adorable kind of way and said, "I guess I'll just listen to it on my mp3 player" and he put on his headphones, where he proceeded, presumably, to listen to John Denver, while the rest of the bus, no doubt, thought he was soaking up the sounds of the Caribbean.

LM

*John Denver, Calypso

Why Do The Babies Starve, When There's Enough Food To Feed The World?*

The aftermath of the cyclone has me really, really angry.

I don't think "angry" is a big enough word to describe what I'm feeling about this situation.

I just went to thesaurus.com for a better word. It suggests: furious, wrathful, ireful, rabid, and fierce.

Maybe I should say I am full of a furious, rabid ire about this situation? Do you think that would more adequately sum up what we should all be feeling?

This junta, composed of the ignorant, the wicked, the greedy, and the phenomenally short-sighted, are going to be responsible for the deaths of a million people. (In addition to having oppressed the Burmese people in unspeakable ways politically and culturally for the last 19 years, but, let's not even start on that conversation).

These these reprobates, these vicious wretched assholes, are going to let people starve and dehydrate to death, or fall to disease, because they don't want to allow in enough aid to help their own people.

I just want to strangle them.

LM

*Tracy Chapman, Why?

Happy Mother's Day!

Heaven....and tonight's Grey's Anatomy

I have been to Nirvana, and its name is Hot Stone Massage.

Hand's down, best Mother's Day present EVER.

I've had massages before, but, I'd never had someone slide hot rocks covered in lavender scented oil over my skin for an hour. I highly recommend it as a fabulous way to spend sixty minutes of your life.

______________________________________________

On tonight's Grey's, when Christina Yang started to sing Like a Virgin in the morgue, am I the only one who thought she was actually going to start to sing the Weird Al Yankovic version, Like a Surgeon?

I mean, it would have been appropriate, no?

LM

You Will Not Be My Forever Mommy

Nicki wrote an interesting post the other day about attachment being a journey, and journey through, not necessarily a journey to. I'm trying to keep that in mind when our own attachment dance gets off kilter.

I spend a lot of time feeling like we take two steps forward and one step back. Which is an improvement over the first few months of parenting Lana, which often felt like taking one step forward and two steps back.

It is not always easy to parent a child who is old enough to know that she has been given away. More than once.

It is not always easy to parent a child who loved the mother who mothered her, and who knew that mother loved her, even as that mother took her back to the place of her original abandonment and then walked away.

I cannot imagine how unbelievably painful that must have been for Lana's foster mother. I met her. I believe she was well-loved and well-cared for. I know it hurt her to hand her to us.

Last night Lana had a very rough night. She was over-tired (she had spent the night before with my sister and brother-in-law and their kids, which meant she was up late and woke up early). She threw an extremely impressive fit. Several in fact, one after the other.

She was upset, legitimately so, because Gabriel has a ton of friends in the neighborhood and Lana doesn't really have any. I understand her distress about this, I do, but, I cannot waive a wand and create a posse of 4-to-6-year-old-girls out of thin air. There is a five-year-old girl next door, but, she has rebuffed Lana's efforts to make friends. (The child is a twin, and I've never heard her speak to anyone but her twin brother. The twins play with each other almost always, and rarely with other kids. Which kind of sucks, because it would be nice if they would play with my kids, but, they don't.)

Anyway, the point is, Lana doesn't have any friends in our immediate neighborhood, and Gabe has lots, and last night she was really really upset about that, because Gabe was playing with his friends and Lana was wailing, "I don't got no one to play with," over and over.

Then there was fighting over who could be with me in the TV room, and Lana wanted to have, "mommy all to myself" - and a fight ensued and there was screaming and wailing and gnashing of teeth and it just. wasn't. pretty.

She curled up next to me as I was putting her to bed, and I rubbed her back for a while, and sang "Clementine" and "Five Little Ducks" and I said, "I love you," and she said,

"You will not be my forever mommy."

"I will be your forever mommy," I said. "I will be."

"No," she said. "You will not be. Not forever and ever. Not for always and always."

"Forever and forever, for always and always, I'm your mommy."

"I don't like you," she said.

That broke my heart a little bit, but I said, "But I still love you."

"Goodnight mommy," she said.

Before I closed the door, I told her again, "I am your forever mommy, Lana." She didn't answer.

She cried in her sleep, a lot, last night. She does that when she is overtired, and when she has had a bad fit. It's like she continues the argument in her dreams.

This morning she gave me a bunch of kisses and said, "I love you mommy." And before I walked out the door she ran to me and said, "one more kiss, mommy, one more hug." So I gave her one more kiss and one more hug, and she was in a good mood.

But I still don't know if she believes, deep down, that I am her forever mommy.

LM

Flashback

Because Lana's preschool is closed this week, and because Wednesday is an always an early court morning for me, I dropped Lana off with my sister this morning and I won't pick her up until tomorrow evening. (It made more sense for her to spend the night with her cousins than for me to pick her up at 6:00 this evening and drop her back off early tomorrow morning.)



As a result, Gabriel, Husband and I spent the evening together, a kind of flashback to the family we were up until 16 months ago.



It was...peaceful. We went out to dinner and there was no squabbling over the ketchup or who gets to sit by mom or dad or who got better crayons. I looked at Husband and asked him if this what our life was really like before Lana. And he said, 'yes, basically.'



I guess my life was a lot quieter before. And it was a lot easier to line up a babysitter for one quiet little boy than it is for two children...



However, I've just put Gabe to bed, after reading a chapter of "The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy"*, and singing a song**. But now the door to Lana's bedroom is open and her pink bed is empty save for her stuffed bears and while I'm reminded that my life was probably quieter before, it lacked the sweet soundtrack of a little girl who is always singing, and often laughing, and generally making our lives more interesting.



I won't lie and say it wasn't nice to have some one on one time with Gabe, which is something I rarely have now.

But, I'll be happy to see my little girl when I pick her up tomorrow night.



LM



*if you have an eight year old boy in your house, you should be reading him this book. it's hysterical



**Gabe, such an old soul, is partial to having old timey hymns sung to him at bedtime, and tonight he requested 'Be Thou My Wisdom'. This reminded me of a night several years ago, when I was studying for the Bar at the Law Library, and Husband called me exasperated at Gabe's bedtime, asking what song Gabe wanted him to sing that sounded like "beet juice with them?" And I said, "Be Thou My Wisdom"? And I stood in a quiet corner of the law library and very very quietly sang a verse of that very old hymn into my three year old's ear through the phone...and that is probably my ONLY sweet or tender memory of the horror of the two months I spent studying for the Bar.

Lovely Lady Lumps

In which I blog explicitly for the purpose of breast cancer awareness.

So, if that makes you uncomfortable, well...go away for now and come back next week for something less about breasty business and more about...honestly, I have no idea what I'll blog about next, but, odds are good the words "ta-tas" will not be involved.

Can I start out by saying I am really not a fan of the "save the ta-tas" campaign?
I've been seeing lots of stickers and magnets that say this lately. I appreciate the sentiment, conceptually. I'm just not a big fan of the term "ta-tas" I guess. It seems like we could come up with something better...do you think "Rescue Our Racks" is too subtle? How about "Safeguard the Gazangas?"

I know it sounds like I'm being flip.

But here's the thing about me - sometimes I use mocking humor to shield myself from things that are painful and/or scary to think about it. So...please accept this facet of my personality and let's talk about our knockers for a few minutes.

The unfortunate truth of my medical history is that I have breast cancer in my family. Hence, I was recently written a referral to go and have a mammogram.

Maybe 35 is the age at which all women are sent to get a baseline mammogram - I'm not sure. All I know is that the last time I saw him, the good Dr. J~ looked in my file and said, "you have a history of breast cancer in your family, it's extremely important for you to get a baseline mammogram." And he wrote something on a form and handed it me and I said, "ok".

I am embarrassed to admit this, but, the referral Dr. J~ wrote for me floated around in the glove box of my car for about 2 months, because...I am a coward. I had heard so many horror stories about how awful mammograms are, I didn't want to go.

That was stupidity, really it was. I avoided having a potentially life saving test done because I had heard it was painful, uncomfortable and embarrassing.

But, I finally made the appointment, and the worst thing about it was something I had never heard before, which is this: if you are going to to get a mammogram, you are not supposed to wear any perfume, deodorant or lotion on your torso.

Yes, I'm serious.

It's crazy, I know. But, that's the rule. So, my first piece of advice on this topic would be, make your appointment first thing in the morning so you don't tiptoe around your office for several hours making every effort not to exert yourself at all and avoiding your co-workers at all costs lest you start to smell bad.

When the time arrived for my appointment, I sat in the waiting room of the lab practically shaking with nervousness and full of anxiety.

I was really pretty freaked out by the time they called me back.

The radiographer told me to take off my blouse and bra and handed me a hospital-gown-type thing, except that it only covered my shoulders and chest.

Which brings me to my next piece of advice about getting a mammogram which is DO NOT WEAR A DRESS TO YOUR MAMMOGRAM.

I had almost worn a dress to work that morning, and I was SO GLAD that I had worn a skirt and a blouse instead, because, had I worn the dress, I would have had to take the whole dress off and I would have been standing there, waiting for my mammogram in nothing but a half-hospital gown and my underwear.

Frankly, with all the distress I was already in, I don't think standing there in nothing but my polka-dot-panties would have done anything positive for my frame of mind. So, I was very glad that I was able to keep my skirt on.

The tech took me into the mammography room and asked me several questions about my health. The strangest question she asked me how many pregnancies I had had, and then the next question was something like, "have you ever given birth to a living child?" And I looked at her thinking, "boy, that could really be an incredibly painful question for some people" - and then I realized that I hadn't answered her, and she said something like, "well, women who have had successful pregnancies have lower rates of breast cancer than women who haven't" and I thought, "wow, that kind of adds insult to injury, doesn't it?" but what came out of my mouth was "I have one biological child and one adopted child." And that seemed to satisfy her.

So, I guess my next piece of advice, is be prepared for the fact that they might ask some questions that will rip your heart out if you've ever had the occasion to have your heart ripped out before...

Next, we walked over the machine, and she took a heating pad off of the mechanism (so the plates were warm) and she, basically, put my "girls" in-between the plates one at a time, and squished them and took radiographs (??pictures??) of them at various angles, and that was it. It didn't really hurt much at all. In fact, it hurt my armpit more than anything else, because there was one angle that she needed that was awkward.

I will say that the radiographer told me I had "perfect breasts for a mammogram" and no I am not making that up. Evidently, 'perfect breasts' for mammography purposes are that they are "not so small that it will pinch" and "not so big that they overflow the plates". So, there you go, for once in my life, I can say, categorically, some part of my body is, in fact, perfect. :-P

It was much much much less awful than I anticipated. And I was much relieved a week later when I got a letter that said that my mammogram had not shown any abnormalities.

Now, I now that mammograms are not fool proof. And it's important to go to your yearly exams and keep mindful of changes in your body. But, the bottom line is, if there's a referral for a mammogram floating around in your glove compartment - go get it, call the lab, make an appointment, and GO. It's not so bad. Really. And it just might save your life.

LM

everything's broken, everything's vacant, everything's wasted time* or, I've got a heck of a case of writer's block

Folks, I've got writer's block. In a big way. And not just in a bloggy way, in a general way. In such a general way that I haven't even sent any pithy, vaguely amusing emails to any of my Girlfriends (and in fact, I just sent an email that said, basically, "hey, I'm sleepy. how 'bout you?" That's NOT communication, that's...I don't know, pathetic or something.) I haven't answered emails from clients that need answering because I cannot eloquently wrap the words into some graceful way of saying, "sorry, but you're screwed" - (and really, no one wants to hear that...even from their lawyer...)

There's a judge on the other side of the state who had his clerk call me asking me to write a memo "fleshing out" the argument laid out in my motion for summary judgment. Which I am pretty sure means, "the judge is inclined to rule in your favor if you can come up with ONE MORE REASON why he should." And here I sit, staring at an empty Word document.

So, here's my random, stream-of-consciousness post that I am forcing myself to type out of desperation, 'cause words are my life, if not my livelihood, and the words are just. not. flowing. So, topics on my mind, in no particular order:

Vietnam - not thinking about it

Mammograms - I'm going to write a whole post on this, but, basically, if you are of the age where you need to think about this - go. get. one. I did, and I will write about it shortly.

DNA testing in criminal cases - this is why it should be done. In this case, I'm just left wondering why the hell it wasn't done 15 years ago.

Domestic Violence - I think that men who set their wives on fire should not get to be so lucky as to die from their own stupid, wicked hands, but should spend the rest of their lives locked up in a very small windowless space with a really big angry roommate. This just makes me want to weep, so, on a [MUCH] lighter note...


Friends - I had the pleasure of spending Saturday evening sitting on my the back deck of Family4Peace's house, with our friend CB and a pitcher of Margaritas and all the necessary fixings for peanut butter s'mores. It was...perfect. (And, um, if you've never made s'mores with a layer of peanut butter in them, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??? GO. You will, like, moan. I promise.)

Also, over the weekend, I attended a tea tasting with my girlfriend K~ and some other mom's from our Families with Children from China group. It was very interesting, but, I want to go on the record saying that 9 cups of tea, even 9 SMALL cups of tea, is too much tea in a 90 minute period. I have been drinking berry flavored green tea like a madwoman since the tea tasting, though. Yum.

Movies - I had a date with Husband last Friday and we went out to dinner and came home to watch a movie called "The Matador" starring Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinear, neither of whom are particular favorites of mine, but....it's really good and they were surprisingly awesome in it. The movie was written and directed by a guy named Richard Shepard. I think we have established previously that I have an inexplicable "hit man" fetish, so, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I loved this very dark comedy about, you guessed it, a hit man. The movie has a tragic understory, but, wow, I loved it. So, for anyone out there who shares my black little heart - go. watch. enjoy.

TV - That Mitchell and Webb Look on BBC America on Friday evenings. Why aren't you watching? It's raunchy and wrong and twisted and strange and IT MAKES ME LAUGH VERY VERY HARD. Here is a (not work safe) link to one of their sketches. Party Organizers Discuss Scooby Doo

Grey's Anatomy is back again tonight with it's second new episode since the writer's strike. Rumor has it Addison returns. Probably there will be some kind of improbably coincidental obstetric emergency that pops up?? I'm kind of ticked at the writer's for ruining the LAST functional relationship on the show - why did they have to GO and MESS with BAILEY? Why? Why? Isn't anybody allowed to be happy in Seattle??? I kind of wish that, instead of Grey's, we could just have an episode of Private Practice, because, while I don't particularly care about Addison, I want to see Violet and Cooper finally get it together. Is that wrong of me?? (And why oh why did I write that down? Because now the writer's of Private Practice will come up with some reason to kill Violet or Cooper or both of them. Because they are just cruel to their fans that way.)

Music - I am listening to NOTHING NEW. I have been listening to Mike Doughty's "Haughty Melodic" and Jack Johnson's "In Between Dreams" and The Killer's "Hot Fuss" all week. I need some new music, so, tell me, what are YOU listening to?

I'm off to write a memo for that judge now.

LM

*Fuel, Wasted Time