Remember that old skit on Saturday Night Live–Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey? They play that fuddy-duddy music in the background with a still shot of a cliché landscape, and an ominous Bible voice that reads the words scrolling down the screen, which are typically a twist on an old saying. Here’s one for you:

Well, I had a deep conversation today, or something of that nature with Milo, who is now 25-months old. Here is our rhetorical thread:

Me: Buddy, do you think I will ever write another manuscript again?
Milo: WHY?
Me: Well, because it’s always been a dream of mine.
Milo: WHY?
Me: Because most everyone has a dream. It’s how God wired us.
Milo: WHY?
Me: So that–
Milo: hhhWHY?
Me: So that we have some kind of purpose, and a gift we can share with others.
Milo: OH NOOO.
Me: What?
Milo: I FAHHRTED.

As you can see, this is our new word this week–FAHHRTED, but in his defense he says it when he burps too.

Also, as you can see I need to have more adult conversations. Although, this blog has been my saving grace. WHY you ask is it my saving grace?? Blog writing is a bit like lacing on ice skates and gliding out over a smooth wide rink, this big white field I’m typing in. (woohoo, check me out…) I can go on and on without being interrupted, without plateau questions, without someone (like my husband) twirling a finger in the air telling me to wrap it up, get to the end of the story. Without an editor using strikethroughs. Without executives pontificating over my content. I can say whatever I want to say, and you’ve just go to listen, or click out. It’s your prerogative.

It’s also like standing in a field with a white knuckled grasp on a bunch of balloon strings. And with each confession, I let one go. There I said it, poof. And there I said it–this other thing, poof. Poof. Until I’m sending up all these brightly colored balls of energy and my thoughts are less heady. I have a creative outlet to go to after a long day that may or may not involve: dog gurking, removing shoe polish from Milo’s hair, circling the Trader Joe’s lot 10x for parking, tug-of-war with the iPhone that was dunked in the bathtub, too much, too much whining and another foul diaper full of squishy peanut butter.

Because I don’t want to talk about this with you moms’ on the playground. We can read it plain as day on each other: the dark bags under our eyes, the scraggly hair, the tone in each other’s voices, “I said, DO NOT steal her juice.” Instead let’s talk about the neighborhood co-op progressive dinner, who drank too much, or how the mom up the street has this incredible au pair and doesn’t have to work. Her father invented what?

Let’s send up nebulous thoughts into cyber space, kvetch, nestle into a cozy chair with a warm cup of coffee and warm each other’s hearts with pictures of our munchkins (when they aren’t scream-crying).

On that note, I’ll leave you with one more Deep Thought for the day:

With tears of empathy,

M

I realize this pic looks like one of those poorly developed Polaroids from back in the day, and the washed out color really doesn’t do this gorgeous day justice. But I had a dark shadow over my face and Dean looked like he was pregnant with an alien. Hence the filtering and cropping.

Yes, it’s November in the Bay Area, and we’ve made our annual pilgrimage to Half Moon Bay to buy live crab right off the boat.

Milo kept yelling “HI” through the guardrail at this fisherman below sitting on the bow of his boat, but I think the poor guy felt mocked. No one came down to his side of the pier. We found that buying crab is kind of like choosing which nightclub to go in to. You tend to want to be at the place other people line up for.

This year the crab is $6 per pound, which can only mean one thing… inflation! Two years back it was $4 per pound, They said for a dinner party of eight, we’d better get two crabs per person. As you can see in the pic below, these Dungeness crabs were pretty big boys. We got forty pounds of them.

Dupree has caught a cat claw or two in the past from getting too close. I’ve gotta think a crab claw is much more lethal. Luckily Dupe was a little gun-shy.

After we left the pier and started on the drive home, we came across a rare gem of a beach–one of the only ones that allows dogs on leashes on this area of the coast. It was a bit of a hike to get down there, and I was wearing 3-inch suede heel boots. Yeah, go me. But I took my time scaling down the rocky cliff, and it was well worth it.

 I snapped the above pic right before we all ran to the edge of the cliff. You know your kid is a fast little shit when your 6-foot-five husband has to break out in a sprint to catch him.

Just like running on the beaches of Cabo San Lucas, same plush velvety bronzed sands sans the Don Julio hangover. Plus, these waves weren’t at a vertical trying to pound us down and suck us in to a wicked undertow.

Perhaps a real live Maverick here. We’ll never know. Although, something tells me the Mavericks aren’t in full hooded body gear, even in November. They’re more of the reckless, saltwater in-every-orafice kind.

HBC: “HomeBoyCrew for life” – Dean likes to say

Quite possibly one of my favorite pics of my fellas. Although Dupree is showing us his ass. I suppose if he was facing me, tongue hanging out and ears cocked, it would all look staged.

“Hold still,” was what I kept telling Milo as I wrapped my arms around his frenetic limbs. I wanted to teach him to pace himself. Not to outrun the excitement.

After leaving the beach, the floor of our Traverse now covered in a fresh blanket of sand, we drove through a small town behind five Italian sports cars in different colors. It started with an older Ferrari and ended with a brilliant aerodynamic red one with glinting rims. Dean dubbed the spectacle the “small wiener convention”. I laughed, and thought back to when I’d dated a guy with a yellow Ferrari and how cool I felt riding in it, except for that it was yellow. Bright yellow. I mean if you are going drop boatloads of cash on a car, why in the color of Tweety Bird? After a few dates, I couldn’t handle his baby talk anymore, specifically when he used the word “nummy” at Ruth’s Chris. (Which also may have something to do with a cartoon-colored sports car), and so that was the end of that.

But I realized riding in that very moment, in our sand-speckled SUV (that now reeked of MacDonald’s fast food)–that I’d take a three-row family vehicle with car seat, wet dog on my feet and belching husband any day over riding shotgun in a Ferrari without a ring on my finger, and a promise for tomorrow.

I have everything I want in this moment, the love I’d always craved when I was single. I’ve realized it doesn’t always come in the prettiest package, or with exactly the right words, but it’s something you feel deep inside despite your issues, and you know it’s the real thing. It took so long to get here, but I’m so glad I waited.

OH! And Milo has a new word this week. “Happy.” He said it again while studying my face for a long time there in his car seat. I think he picked up the word from the last page of The Little Blue Truck. He said it again, “Happy,” then nodded slightly, agreeing with himself before he closed his eyes and drifted off into highway slumber.

“Yeah, buddy,” I said brushing a lock of hair away from his eyes, “We are. Happy.”

M

While running late to the train station this AM with a lead foot on the gas, I slammed on the brakes to end up behind this license plate holder.

It’s proof there are still realistic people on this planet, and when you live in a town that borders Berkeley (who is now trying to ban cigarette smoke in domestic households) sometimes you’ve got to wonder.

How would my life look if I was normal? On the outside it’s got to appear that way to some people, but I’m pretty sure I come from a long lineage of people who have always raged against some type of machine. The man who fathered my mother: a drinker, swindler and racketeer. He frequently conned people into investing their savings in his oil drilling runs to Texas but he always came up dry. He eluded the government, tax collectors and investors and vanished when I was three weeks old. Years later we learned he had a whole other secret family.

My father’s father: a traveling motor home evangelist, disciple of TBN. He hung on every word ministered by Paul and Jan Crouch. Late at night, I still see Jan on cable with her lavender Marie Antoinette hair and mile-long fake tarantula lashes. They say women who pile on the makeup and hide behind it, are just plain hiding.

Here are some other hidden facts about people in the media you are familiar with:

1. Dr. Ruth is a trained sniper. She can load a Sten automatic rifle in under a minute.

2. Steve Jobs became a vegan because he believed that would eliminate the need to bathe.

3. Kesha (that seemingly airheaded blonde singer) has an IQ of 150 and scored 1500 on her SATs.

4. Before acting, Christopher Walken was a lion tamer.

5. James Lipton was once a pimp in France.

I’m not saying I’m normal. I’m far from it. But that’s material for several other blog posts. Until then, here are some fairly innocuous things from my past:

1. When I was younger and people told me to pursue writing, I replied saying I wanted to be a mortician. Something about the quiet calm and serenity and the ability to make people over.

2. I try never to step on cracks in sidewalks.

3. I have a tattoo on the inside of my ankle that says Danza (the Italian word for dance). My  girlfriend thought the uppercase ‘D’ looked cool in the sketch at the parlor. Now people think I had a thing for Tony Danza (my husband being one of them).

4. I used to pen love letters for my classmates in school. They’d get the boy, I’d get their lunch money.

5. Growing up, I insisted my mom call me Shannon (no idea why) and cut all my hair off. She wouldn’t bend on the name so I referred to myself in third person as ‘Shannon’ and negotiated a butchered ‘do from my mom, a former beauty school student.

If you ever feel like a misfit at times, like your uniqueness is a detriment in the high school of life – I’ve got a clip below that will make you feel better instantly. Dean has been watching a show called Eastbound & Down. It’s a total guy show about this ex pro baseball player who can’t let go of that life and has to prove to everyone years later that he’s still a baller. Curled mullet, big flapping gut, faded jeans and all. He’s producing homemade self-help videos and pumping his flabby body up with steroids. When life gets to be too much, he climbs on to his leopard-print jet ski with his metaphorical middle finger in the air.

Just spend a few seconds with Kenny Powers now, and you’ll instantly feel more sane:

Dear readers, (what are you one, or five at this point?) would you say you are fairly normal? And if so, how do you define that? Is everything knitted together neatly, all tied up in pretty red bow?

What’s one weird fact about you?

I’d love to know.

M

Life gets weird sometimes. And when it does, you’ve got to put on your leopard-print panties, stick your neck out, and do something a little different. So on this spontaneous Sunday morning, we got in the car and drove to Oakland Zoo.

We finally spotted someone taller than dad. (Dean is 6’5)

Milo wasn’t all that excited about the sprawling safari smackdab in the middle of the urban compound, until we played I-Spy. I started at close range, “I-Spy a rock. I-Spy a fence. I-Spy a sassy girl.” Then we increased our depth of field and he gave me an ecstatic “I-Spy jurafff”! Still for a 2-year old, I think it looks like just another page in the board book.

But Milo went ape-shit in the petting zoo. I felt like a derelict mom running after him with a camera while he chased these guys, stuck his finger in their butts, smack-petted them and tried to make up for it all by feeding them delectable sticks, weeds and rocks.

But isn’t this too cute below?

Little buddies

Simpatico. Just two little souls in our big metropolitan meadow.

Then… on to the baboon exhibit which is always a hit–although we couldn’t see the new baby girl up close. I lifted this pic taken 4 days ago by local press:

Mom and Baby Kodee (1-month old) – photo credit to Bay Area News

The other baboons lounged around picking bugs from each other coats, trying to look sexy with their Jupiter-sized hemorrhoids.

Inspiration for Fall Fashion 2017

Apparently, their swollen red butts indicate an increase in hormones. It’s also a way of attracting mates, and the redder they are–the opportunity for more offspring.

Speaking of attraction, I still do not believe all the scientific crap “proving” that we evolved from apes. Although I do believe in something called microevolution. But the primate family tree, c’mon, I mean if you look at a baboon real closely and then hold up a picture of Josh Duhamel:

You be the judge.

So, anyways, after all the hairbrained fun, we meandered up to an open field near the parking lot to find an explosion of strollers, diaper bags and human children running amok between parents holding coffee mugs and ziplock snack bags.

Then I saw something, something just not right. At first glance, just an educational sign, one of those expensive ones tucked off the walkway between some trees. The headline said ‘Hayward Fault’ then went on to explain how we were standing on top of it in that very spot. WHERE THE CHILDREN ARE PLAYING, completely oblivious. The sign went on to give the history saying it was part of the San Andreas Fault system, like check out this cool piece of trivia. Like how baboons are found in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and how elephants shed real tears like humans.

HELLO. The last major quake for this fault line was in 1868 and they are due every 140 years. We are now at 145 years! So why in the hell have we built a gathering spot for the most innocent generation of our breed on top of a major fault line?

There are some f*cked up things in this world that I just don’t understand.

But I suppose in the meantime, I’ll go on about my business walking on two legs instead of four, making peanut butter squares and posting pics of assholes.

– Your eternal optimist

Lady Baboon

This is not about drag queens, Type A personalities, passive-aggressive tendencies or Freudian Oedipal complexes.

No, it’s much simpler. And it’s all in the name of fashion. Because as moms we have to wear the pants (at least in winter).

So like Usher, I have a confession. I suffer from a chronic weakness called fashion envy. When I see certain names: Vince. Oscar. Chloe. Vivienne Westwood – it’s an emotional affair. And when they’re flaunted by bitchy-looking city girls’ with disposable incomes, it enacts a deep-seeded loathing. To get revenge, I fictionalize these girls as villains, catalog-ing their traits away for when the day comes and I can write them to the page. That mythical day when I can write fiction all day long.

But until I write a book that’s optioned into a Paramount blockbuster, or invent the next million-dollar idea on the Shark Tank, I’ll remain a flash sale shopper. An undercover Internet sleuth. Scouring the pages of hautelook, Gilt, Ruelala, Shopstyle and Milliondollarbabes for structures and silhouettes that speak to me.

Kinda like this:

Meet the pants that changed my life in five seconds flat. Yes, it was a Tuesday in a San Francisco Madewell changing room when my self image shifted (just a little).

I fell so deeply in love with these pants (especially since they were 50% off) that I purchased them in Deep Olive AND a hip Mustard hue. They sit low but not too low (no plumber’s crack – thank you). Plus, they’re stretchy enough to pick up toys from every angle off the floor, and allow me to play Twister when Milo starts hucking food off his tray.

Right now, depending on when you see this post, they are on Lyst for $30 off.

So now I bop around town looking casual chic, mixing and matching to my heart’s content. (Next on my list – fitted tops to camouflage my kangaroo pouch.)

As you see, slowly but surely I’m figuring out how to wear the pants. Be the boss. Get my sexy back. And it’s only been two years since the little man was born. Only!

As a mom, is there a fashion find you’ve come to love? Please let me now. I’d really love to know.

Until then,

I’m a little less frumpy than I was yesterday.

That ‘Around the Way Girl’