Yes, I know, I know! If I still have readers, which after what, 8+ weeks I shouldn’t expect? Apart from the fact that I’ve been employed by the boss from Hell. I mean, guy still is batting off the fresh brimstone when he arrives every morning. What am I meant to do about this?

For the first thing, I have been in this business for 28 years and have always HAD a secretary not BEEN a secretary. That alone should be disquieting enough, right? Except also that this guy is undercutting me by like $25K per annum in pay, and believe me, he ought to be giving me combat pay instead.

This economy puts you to serious issues. On the one hand, I’m glad he’s not trying to undercut me by $35K, which believe me people are anxious to do; I’ve been looking for 10 months. On the other, I ache to call him on the carpet and read him the riot act. Either way, it’s 2:30 a.m. and I’m wide awake, thinking. Mamas and daddies, persuade your kids out of the legal profession, okay? It is no longer an Honorable Profession. It’s no fit place for civilized people. Just ask my husband.

Anyway. I promise to post something interesting just as soon as something happens in my life apart from batshit boss, endless laundry or Oh my God, what did Boolie spill on the Pergo this time? Meanwhile, read The Thirty Mile Zone if you want excitement. They always have the latest Michael Jackson death aftermath news, which is good schadenfreude if nothing else.

Next Monday the family leaves on an abbreviated vacation to Sequoia National Park. This an extremely beautiful place, and I’m looking forward to going back there, because I haven’t been in, Lord, 14 years? But travel with three small kids can be extremely daunting, and I’m anticipating the trip with a mixture of pleasure and trepidation.

I did the smart thing and made reservations at the Wuksachi Lodge, even springing for the deluxe room. We were going to go with the rustic cabins, which are much more economical, but which can best be defined as mostly like a tent, but with walls and electricity. I worried, with the kids, though. We had an adventure in camping nearly three years ago which still gives me nightmares. So I’m playing it smart.

But Sequoia is, well, a national park located in the middle of scenic nowhere. It’s nearly a five-hour drive, and the kids just aren’t used to that stuff. They complained plenty about the length of the trip the last time we went to San Diego. In general, here are my fears:

• The kids will start complaining on the way up there, which will drive Ben crazy while he’s trying to drive because they complain in three-part harmony, and boy are they good at it. And where is there to stop on the way? Ha. Mostly nowhere, or places which are even worse than nowhere.
• Boolie will have to pee every five miles, and little girls just aren’t good at peeing by the side of the road.
• The kids will get to Sequoia and say, in essence, Right. Big trees. Cave. We’re bored. Can we go home and play Wii now?
• We will all be eaten by a bear, and I’m a huge fan of not being eaten by a bear.
• Although at least if we are eaten by a bear, the kids won’t be able to complain they’re bored.
• The food will be both abysmal and expensive, and there are extremely limited dining options in the park.
• I will forget to pack something extremely key, for which a replacement won’t be available in the park.
• The van will malfunction somewhere along the way.

That about covers it. It’ll probably be a good trip, but at this point, imaging how many things could go wrong, I’m pretty much shittin’ kittens. If was just Ben and me, we’d get by. But when you start traveling with kids, it’s a whole new ball game.

Wait. Do I still have a blog here? Well, my God, of course I do. Except when I don’t. But Woodland Elementary School has gone into its usual end-of-school-year posture of standing on my neck and standing on it hard.

California has a legally mandated free school guarantee. Theoretically, my children are meant to attend school for free; due to the fact that Ben is disabled and I’m presently unemployed, they even get a free lunch. (And they say there is no such thing!) But even public schools always have their hand out. At the end of the year, for some reason, they hit us up especially hard.

Today was the Woodland Elementary Jog-A-Thon, where kids run laps for money with nothing to show for it but the free T-shirt. I pledged $25 per child — a pretty typical amount. Just this past Saturday, the Kaiser-Woodland carnival was held, whereby all the kids at both schools were exhorted to eat and drink and play, proceeds to benefit both schools. Last week I shelled out $10 each for two Woodland T-shirts for the boys. Every Friday they have Spirit Day, at which time (surprise!) everyone is expected to wear their Woodland shirts.

Next week is Open House. That will involve the Book Fair, which benefits both Scholastic and the schools, and a burgers ‘n’ chips dinner supplied for free by a local merchant and paid for generously by the parents, proceeds to the schools. Not to mention the end-of-year teacher gifts and the snacks for Jog-A-Thon and so on and on and on.

I’m not really complaining. (Or am I? I believe I’ve just kvetched at length.) We are fortunate to have a world-class school district with extraordinary teachers and maximum 20-child classes. Compare that to LAUSD which has teachers who border on illiteracy and class sizes of 30 or so. Newport-Mesa USD relies largely on local property taxes, which are hefty, meaning that we haven’t been touched by the waves of teacher layoffs that have touched other districts in the county. The fallout is a bit daunting — I had to attend a brief meeting and provide three forms of proof of residency and property ownership last month just to keep our boys in NMUSD schools — but the benefits are considerable.

Still, I’ll be glad when a month has gone by and they stop squeezing us for this year. The last day of school is June 19. For my boys and for my checkbook, it can’t come early enough.

Of course I didn’t mean I would stop blogging. You think I’m ever going to shut up? Think again, flyboy. I have Serious Issues to consider! Like what to do with the black eye Boolie gave me last weekend. (I leaned down to hug her just as she suddenly snapped her head up and bounced it off my browbone.)

This is a serious, serious black eye. Immediately there was a bruise visible on the browbone, and by the next morning it had burst forth in blue and purple from my eyebrow to an inch below my eye. That thing is — was, as it’s finally starting to fade — fucking spectacular. Watching a black eye evolve is like watching a sunset. The shifting patterns, the changing hues. From blue and purple to yellow and green and then to a sort of maroon as it prepares to fade. Lovely.

But here’s the problem. I figure that anyone who doesn’t know us will take one look at me and assume either that I pulled an Amy Winehouse and staggered into something (fist? door? could be anything with that broad), or that Ben popped me one. Which reminds me of a joke. What do you say to a woman with two black eyes? — Nothing. You already told her twice. (And yes, yes, I know domestic violence is not funny, and hereby issue this disclaimer blah blah blah.)

Anyway. So if we are for example having lunch somewhere, should I explain my eye to the waitress when she comes to our table? It seems I shouldn’t, but you have to figure she’ll be wondering about it all through lunch. Possibly the entire wait staff will be wondering: Hmm, she doesn’t look like a loadie. Nor like Nicole Brown Simpson, for that matter. Perhaps she’s part raccoon?

Rather than explain, I’ve taken to keeping my Ray-Bans on indoors when anywhere besides home. This sometimes makes it hard to navigate, and also, it must make me look like some tourist trying to be all California cool. So should I explain that? No, I’m not an asshole, I just have a black eye. But I don’t want you to see it. That’s why the sunglasses. Or something. Ordinarily I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks, but a black eye is one of those things that just screams Think something!

And the eye makeup problem is a real bitch, too. I have to wear eye makeup — trust me, I do. So do I put makeup on both eyes? The bruised one seems to have quite enough colorful pizzazz already, but I don’t want to be asymmetrical. Perhaps I should have blacked the left eye as well, to match? Well, too late.

I told you I had serious issues on my mind.

It’s wonderful to have Ben home from the hospital, and finally I can sleep again — he was admitted on a Monday and discharged on a Friday, and in the intervening days I got all of 2.5 hours sleep. (I’m not exaggerating. I counted.) What I didn’t count on was how completely disabled he would be when he came back to me. I’m now running the house completely on my own while caring for the kids and caring for Ben. This comes as something of a shock.

There was, you know, a reason why I changed my major from Nursing to English at the end of my first undergrad year. At the time it seemed a rather random decision, but I know now that it was the Universe whispering in my ear: Because verily, thou shalt spit in the patients’ faces and tell doctors to go fuck themselves. I’m just not the Florence Nightingale type. Not that I’m not nurturing to my family, but it’s a more rough-and-tumble sort of nurture: Hey kid, get over here and get some noogies, then let’s watch Robot Chicken. This, however, is not an appropriate way of dealing with a man who is in either extraordinary pain or a Vicodin haze, and furthermore cannot walk much, lift anything, take out the garbage, or be of any help whatsoever.

It’s a daunting task. And did I mention that in addition to doing everything both of us used to do, and taking care of the kids, I’ve had to become a sort of de facto dietitian and pharmacist? I devised a daily medication schedule, posted it on the pantry door, and oversee his meds four times every day (because he is on meds and might not remember). I also maintain a day-timer calendar wherein I record his weight, his temperature (which must be taken twice daily to watch for infection), and spend considerable time daily in devising and cooking heart-healthy meals. And cleaning up afterward. And keeping a lid on the kids. And making sure Ben takes his daily walks and uses his little breathing-practice thingy and that his incision is healing properly.

This is not going to last forever, of course. In the context of our lifetime, it’s a blip, a drop in the bucket. But damn it, I’m not at all certain I’m up to the task. Oh, I can discharge my duties, but the trick is to perform them with a sunny and patient attitude. Sunshine and patience are not generally counted among my skills. People have said many things about me, but Oh, she’s got the patience of a saint is not one of them, nor is She’s so cheerful, a little ray of sunshine. No, my reviews have run more along the lines of Damn, she’s a bitch or Smile, will you? You don’t smile enough! The work I can handle, but achieving the proper attitude is testing me to my limits.

Don’t tell my husband, of course. The last things he needs, atop all his other woes, are worries about his wife. (Come to think of it, he’s on enough Vicodin that I’m not sure he knows he has a wife.) And I hate to admit it, because I fucking hate this expression, but this experience will probably build character. Besides, it might be post-surgical me someday. And I am here to tell Ben that payback’s a bitch.

So last week Ben and I had lunch with his mother. I’ve always had a bit of a thorny relationship with her, although there’s no real animosity between us — apart, of course, from the usual animosity harbored by a mother toward the girl who her only son finally married in midlife.

It’s just that MIL and I are both very opinionated and stubborn, and said opinions are usually completely at odds, especially regarding childrearing. This stands to reason, since she’s a very 1950s buttoned-down, conservative sort of lady who believes in building character and following all the rules, which are many. Whereas I’m a sort of hippie chick who tries to go with the flow, live and let live, you know. Plus she doesn’t mind telling people how to raise their children — in fact, she insists upon it. I just do my thing and blow her off. Also, I was raised Catholic and she (for reasons never explained) is staunchly anti-Catholic.

Despite that, or quite possibly because of it, she started Pope-bashing the minute we were all in the car. You know, that to-do about advising Africans against using condoms. And I don’t mean that she disagreed with the Pope; I mean that she excoriated him. There was much bandying about of some really pejorative terms. I’m anything but a good Catholic, but I’m Catholic enough to feel very uncomfortable hearing this whether I agree with the Pope or not. (I guess she was trying to make me forswear my possibly Papist ways and denounce the Church.)

She kept trying to engage me in the conversation, but I just said Well . . . a few times and got very interested in staring out the window. I really don’t want to start sparring with her. Not worth it, and besides, poor Ben.

But she was just getting started. I have no idea on earth how the topic arose, but MIL brought up circumcision and why it’s absolutely necessary to do it, and what dire results there will be if it’s not done. Both my sons are intact, and she very well knows that. Bear in mind that the last time I birthed a boy was in 2003, so you could say it’s a done deal.

I politely explained that there’s no medical justification for circumcision according to our research. She said the presence of a foreskin leads to hygiene problems. I told her it’s easy to keep clean. (I forcibly restrained myself from asking if she thinks it’s reasonable to cut off a part of the body just because we don’t feel like washing it.) She harrumphed. Stalemate.

But she wasn’t done; she then turned a hawkish eye on the earrings, six in total, dangling from my ears. (I don’t think she’d ever seen me with more than one pair before.) Well, that certainly is a lot of earrings. What is that, three piercings? When on earth did you do that?

Nineteen ninety-three, I said.

Well. I certainly hope you haven’t gone and pierced Julia’s ears! she went on.

Are you following this, people? Jesus hemorrhaging Christ, the woman chastises us for not mutilating our sons and in the next breath forbids us to mutilate our daughter. HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?

Special Bonus Joke:

A man is having digestive problems and goes to see his doctor. The doctor examines him and tells him he’s got a tapeworm. Here’s what you do, says the doctor. Every night for the next three nights, I want you to shove a hard-boiled egg up your ass. And then shove a Tootsie Roll up your ass right after. And come back and see me the day after the third night.

The guy of course thinks this is extremely strange. How will that help? he asks. You’ll see, says the doc.

So the guy does it. Every night for three nights, he shoves a hard-boiled egg up his ass, followed by a Tootsie Roll. The next day he goes and sees the doctor. The doctor immediately shoves a hard-boiled egg up the guy’s ass and grabs a hammer. The guy wonders WTF.

After a few seconds, the tapeworm sticks his head out the guy’s ass and says Hey! Where’s my fucking Tootsie Roll? whereupon the doctor hits the worm on the head with the hammer.

Cured.

Is there anyone so self-absorbed as a woman on a diet? I’m not an unconscionable heifer, but early in 2009 I became aware that I had packed on some tonnage through the months of general depression and malaise that followed my mom’s death in November. Now, in my case, “overweight” means “more than a size 4″, which is really depressing. The fact is that I am a short sort of miniature person, and when I put on 10 or even 5 pounds, my ass starts to resemble the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Well, actually, that looks more like boobs. But I digress.

My husband is a pretty good sport. Of course, he has to look at my ass more than anyone else, so he has a personal stake in its lack of immensity. But I have suddenly become a general pain in the hindquarters as regards anything pertaining to food. It’s all Oh, I can’t eat that or I have to look up how many points or, worse, God, do you know how many grams of FAT are in that steak and egg breakfast you’re eating?  Honestly, I don’t know how he hasn’t killed me by now. Oh, that’s right, he has to watch me undress for bed every night. Never mind.

I’m aiming to take off 20 pounds and therefore get down to my fighting weight, as opposed to my I’m nearly fifty and had three kids in the four years after my 40th birthday, so back off, asshole weight. I’m figuring this will take a few months if I don’t get extreme about it, so I’m doomed to be a pain in my husband’s ass for the foreseeable future. It’s the plight of every human female above the age of 40 who can’t afford extensive plastic surgery and doesn’t have the time to work out 3 hours a day.

Still, I think back with extreme jealousy to the 25-year-old me who sat behind her desk eating M&Ms all day, never worked out, and weighed 105 pounds. If this sounds like you, enjoy it while it lasts, because it won’t last. Someday you’ll be just like me, eating a bowl of raw cabbage with noncaloric salad dressing (there is such a thing! and it doesn’t taste much like doodoo at all!) just to keep your ass from needing its own Congressman.

Ben and I are sort of in mourning today. Late last week, CBS announced that it was changing the local talk radio station, 97.1 FM, to (YET ANOTHER FUCKING) Spanish-language station. And I almost cried.

97.1 is, or was, the home of my beloved Adam Carolla and Frosty, Heidi and Frank. Of course, if you’re not in L.A. or one of their (FUCKING FORMER) syndication markets — or if you haven’t heard me have on about how great they are — these names probably don’t mean very much to you. You might understand if you’re a Howard Stern fan. These were my friends who drove to work with me in the mornings and picked up my kids with me, and goofed around and kept me company in the car and made me laugh. A lot of Angelenos felt this way. But apparently more Angelenos than that are Hispanic. So my radio friends are gone.

Friday’s shows, the last ones, were damned near funereal. Worse, I now have nothing to listen to on the car radio. I hate all of the available music stations, unless and until they come up an Elvis Costello/Jenny Lewis station. Of course this means those two get more airplay in my car on CD. Apart from that, it’s the local AM news station. Damn, damn, damn.

Ben and I have noticed that whatever we like gets cancelled or discontinued. The example which pops to mind is this completely awesome frittata Trader Joe’s used to sell, which was wicked good and which we bought and ate often. Of course, they don’t sell them anymore. I suppose it’s because what we like is usually different to what everyone else likes. I’d be better off if I listened to Beyonce and watched American Idol. So much for social diversity. So much for individuality. And so much, damn it, for 97.1.

Adam, my friend: Mahalo for all the great radio. I know we’ll hear from you again. Frosty, Heidi and Frank: You’ll be back, hopefully not in some cityful of ASSHOLES.

Going Like Sixty tagged me with a meme to issue instructions to our new President, whoever he may be, in 100 words or less. He called me a Republican lawyer married to a Republican lawyer. Well, that’s partially true; I didn’t finish law school, voted for Clinton twice, and voted for Obama today. My husband Ben, who is indeed a lawyer (and isn’t he fucking sorry), has usually voted Republican and today voted for McCain, mostly because I suspect his RNC mother threatened to disinherit him if he didn’t. That’s fine; as Ben knows, a red vote in California doesn’t count for jack point shit.

Anyway. I don’t have 100 words, but I can do Top Ten lists, and this is what pops to mind. Mr. President, please:

1. Don’t be an asshole.
2. Think outside of party lines. (Bill Clinton didn’t think outside of panty lines, hee.)
3. Don’t be stupid about the Iraq war.
4. Try not to embarrass your country in front of the world as several of your predecessors have done.
5. If your name is not Obama, don’t kick the bucket and leave that twat in office.
6. If your name is not McCain, don’t be a total socialist fairy.
7. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
8. Take our country, and your duty to EVERYONE in it, very seriously.
9. See what you can do about the economy, because honestly.
10. Don’t be an asshole.

I didn’t bother to count words, but I am seriously pressed for time. Many of my friends have quit blogging. I will, however, tag:

Tenille of Gluten Free Frugal, a brilliant prairie supermom career woman.

Holly of Nothing But Bonfires, because she’s a (recently engaged!!) British expat and sees the U.S. with fresh eyes.

Dana of Angst du Jour, because she’s Canadian and also sees the U.S. with unbiased eyes.

Jennifer of Faking It, because she’s as sincere and earnest as I am irreverent and pungent.

That’s all I’ve got. See y’all on the other side! And a special P.S. to whichever party loses the election: NO. FUCKING. WHINING. PLEASE.

(I figured it out! I figured out how to put foreign special characters in a blog entry! By totally cheating, is how: I generated an ñ in Word for Mac, then I cut and pasted it into WordPress. Perhaps there is an easier way. But I am so pleased to have spelled jalapeño correctly, with the proper foreign shit and so on.)

Anyway. There has been this major to-do about salmonella for the past several months, and a number of culprits have been bandied about, with the temporary (very personally irritating to me) result that tomatoes were, for a time, pulled from restaurants. Because I was eating too many Subway $5 footlongs at the time, and breathes there a sub on earth whereon you can hold the tomatoes without causing something to seem seriously wrong? I needed tomatoes on my Subway sub, dammit. Especially if you order the BLT sub and have to go without the T. Those were dark, dark times. But eventually the FDA shrugged and said Okay, maybe we were just kidding about the tomatoes, although the salmonella origin was not so much known. Perhaps, they suggested, it was iceberg lettuce. Or cilantro. Or, we just don’t know, and aren’t you glad it’s just salmonella and not anthrax?

But now today they came out and pointed the finger at jalpeños, and it just feels right. Because I hate jalapeños. They are just not a proper food for Americans to eat.

It was one of the most confounding things, to me, about coming to California: how suddenly I was meant to eat like a Mexican and to think things like frijoles and jalapeños were normal or even desirable. At the time I left Delaware in 1984, there were two Mexican restaurants in the entire state, and one of them was a Taco Bell. I first confronted Mexican food in the University of Delaware dining hall in the late ’70s (Mexican food has the universal food-service appeal of being both cheap and filling), and what I ate was a burrito. And then, for the first and last time, I wrote out one of those little slips for the “Suggestion Box”, and dropped it in, and what it said was this: Your burritos taste like cock. I thought you should know this. And I wasn’t kidding.

I have learned after 24 years to like some Mexican food, in particular the carnitas burrito mojado (which doesn’t taste like cock). I’m still suspicious of the meat in burritos; Ben was once eating Mexican food in the Arizona desert and was served a meat described to him as desert elk, which, as it later transpired, was in fact burro. (The word “burrito” should make you suspicious, right there, as far as that goes.) I still think jalapeños are from the devil. And for once, the U.S. Government agrees with me.