You Know You're Getting Old When...

As the title of this blog stipulates, I have now officially noticed I am getting older.

• Is it that I'm in my 9th month of my 2nd pregnancy? No.
  
• Is it my impending 8 year wedding anniversary? No.
  
• Is it my new 30 year mortgage?

No. It's this:

"Witty, insightful, and full of random allusions to their varied interests, "Two Jersey Girls" is an award-winning blog about everything and nothing. Two twenty-something women write about what's in the news, movies, television, and their lives. An entertaining read, updated regularly, and quoted often."

That's right - the header of this very blog. Notice why I'm old? It needs to be updated. No longer can it read, "Two twenty-something women..." because we're both over 30 now. OVER 30!!

It seems like just yesterday Bea and I decided to start this thing. It was long before Twitter, back when MySpace was the cool networking-site, (back when Bea flat-out refused to use said MySpace), back when I was celebrating my first son's first birthday. It was before the insane move that ended up taking two years, before we had a black president, before we realized just how parallel the war in the Middle East is with the Vietnam "Conflict." So much has changed. I wonder where we'll be when I have to change the header to "Two forty-something women..."

Hang on...I'm getting dizzy...

Look What I Found...

The following was the first poem I ever had published. *sigh* It was waaay back in 2002. Enjoy, loves!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who the hell do you think you are?
Good Question.
I am something, or possibly nothing …depending on who you ask.
I am a sister
In more than one sense of the word
I am a daughter
No matter what I say
I am a friend
A girlfriend
A best friend
But oh I am so much more.
I stand before the ocean,
And feel so small.
And I realize that there are,
Or might be,
100.000 other people who feel the same way.
But not all of them are standing before an ocean.

I look up at the sky at night
And ask the stars what they are up to
Because
Well, no one else ever does.
And I know that Maria will call me from 400 miles northeast
And ask me if I saw that shooting star
And sometimes I can say,
“Yeah, I did”
And I know my nephew will call me from 500 miles southwest
And ask me if I saw the robin that was in his backyard yesterday.
And I tell him I did
Because I saw a robin today
And well, who knows?

“Lei non lo sa, ma penso di lei proprio ora”

And I realize that I am content just to be near you.
I like all your schemes and ideas.
Because I remember once holding out an empty hand.
And I remember when I was nothing more than
First mate of
Or cabin boy to
A shipwreck on the sea of Quiddity.

I am going to close the book now-
And then you turn off the set –
Give me the keys and let’s drive –
Let’s sit down in front of the ocean
Where you can quote Thoreau and I can reason like Whitman
“Ruminating of the frustrating dilemma of our existence…”
But OH!
There are still places in this world
I may have only seen in my dreams
Or in one of those 400 books that woman left me
Long before I could read.
I like books
The leather of the shell that protects
The slivers of the once proud sequoias
I don’t think the trees mind.
Rather killed for words than a paper towel.

What is writing?
Nothing more than a thousand useless letters on a paper
Formed and borrowed,
Pulled together,
Or pulled apart…
Maybe that’s why I enjoy it so.

I like the ocean.
I like the idea of the waves…
Where no one is in contol
I used to think that the waves were the earth
Waving to me to say Hi.
So I stood there…and listened to what it had to say.
A philosopher at age 6.

I saw a bird making a nest in a fallen tree
All I could think of was the irony.
I touch the pages of my notebook…
And think of what birds knew it first
Maybe that bird…
That bird with its home in a dead tree –
Maybe this isn’t its first
What kind of doomed existence?
Poor thing.

I am going down the ocean now.
Just so I can say hi
Maybe I’ll go at night
So I can talk to the stars too
I think they miss their 6 year-old Socratic friend.
Maybe I’ll go and tell them I’m still here.

So I've Decided

OK, because I'm currently babysitting 13 year-olds I've been doing a lot of self-reflection and I've come to the painful conclusion that I have no life. I really don't. To demonstrate:

1. Alarm goes off at 6:15
2. Get out of bed at 7
3. Dressed, prep and in the car by 7:15
4. Drive to work that should take 20 minutes takes about 30-40 because of traffic.
5. The traffic is where I do my hair and makeup - yeah I'm THAT girl.

GOD HELP the person who disrupts my morning routine. God Lord. It happened once when my neighbor stopped by because she saw me getting into my car and no one has heard from her since. Even I don't remember what happened to her.

1. Work by 7:50 or such, wherein I eat breakfast and begin to rant about the day ahead with my fellow teachers.
2. 8:15-3:30 I should be teaching, but lately we aren't able because testing is over and therefore we are just overseeing the kids while they pretty much go crazy. During this time I play on the computer.
3. 3:30-4ish is mostly a blur because I've zoned out to the drive home. Then I pick up Glow Bug, listen to the iPod for the rest of the drive, and talk with him about his day.
4. Whenever we get home, Glow Bug either A) strips down to only his pants and runs around outside or B) watches TV. During this time I go upstairs and nap.
5. The rest of the night is spent in front of the TV or on the laptop, with maybe a sprinkling of cleaning/housework thrown in. Before bed I prep my morning so I can get the maximum amount of sleep in the morning as humanly possible.

See y'all, I sleep way too much! My whole routine is dictated by the fact that I want to sleep in in the morning.

Yuck, seeing it all typed out like that annoys me. I want to be the girl who meditates (we have so much beautiful land where we live) when she gets home, and works out in the morning, and is talented at something other than applying the perfect liquid line during stop and go traffic. Although, let's be honest that is a talent. I should be on that show. Oh well, this rant was brought to you by the fact that it is 9 AM and I'm sitting in front of the computer because the students are writing newspapers (see above schedule). *sigh*

HELL YEAH!!!!!

Oh my GOD, YOU GUYS. OH MY GOD!!!!!

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

President Barack Obama.

I am so proud. Especially of you, Sid.

My Mosaic

I totally stole this idea from a friend of mine. It's a mosaic of "me."
Enjoy!

My favorite color- purple

Dream vacation- Winter Cabin (with TONS of great reading material)

What makes me happy- Laughing with my friends

What I am- a teacher

My name- Auntie Mame
My favorite food- pizza

Favorite flower- Hydrengea

Where I am from- New Jersey
My favorite dessert- Oreo's and Milk

Happy Anniversary!

As a celebration of our one year blog, Lady Bea and I have created our awards for the past year. Enjoy!!

Auntie Mame's Awards

Best Celebrity/Law Interaction
I’m going for the Lindsay Lohan 84 minutes in jail on November 15th. That was probably my favorite 84 minutes of year as well, if we were giving an award for that.
Best Train Wreck
Amy Winehouse. When her song “Rehab” first came out, Lady Bea was desperate to get me to buy the CD. Then I started reading about her, and seeing her, and seeing the cocaine dust up her nose. I know nothing of her music, but she has some die-hard fans out there and she is letting them down BIG TIME with not showing up to concerts, etc. The fact that there is video of you snorting cocaine on stage; that there are numerous pictures of you with cocaine clogging your nose; that you were wandering the streets of London in your bra at four in the morning; that you plea with your celebrity friends to post text messages explaining that you were shooting up with hookers, not fighting with your husband, really shows what is going on with you. For these reasons and a myriad of more: Amy Winehouse is my train wreck 2007.
Best Made for TV Movie 2007
Holiday in Handcuffs
I wish I was kidding. I haven’t even seen this movie, but the title alone makes my heart melt. I first thought this was a movie I had seen once when some friends and I crashed a ‘stag party’. It starred Rocco Stifferelli and Jenna Jameson; however a little IMDB’ing and I quickly discovered this is a different movie of the same title. Oh well.
Best happy/sad moment from tv shows
Best Happy Moment:
From “The Office” when Jim and Pam are both denying that they are together and the camera follows Jim and shows him getting picked up by Pam and he leans over and passionately kisses her. I shrieked!!
Best Sad Moment:
When I realized that NBC really was going to go through with the whole JD is having a baby on Scrubs. I haven’t been able to really watch an episode since. The story lines are shitty and the humor is gone. I can honestly say that my previous favorite show has officially “jumped the shark”
Most Cringe-Worthy Moment from "The Office"
OMG. When Jan submits Michael’s diary as evidence in her litigation against Dunder-Mifflen for false termination of employment (or as Beau refers to it “disemployed”). I can’t even go into detail. It’s just that bad. The entire episode.
Best celebrity hair
Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock’s episode titled, “Kenny’s Party”
Best Pop Song you secretly love
How much do I hate to admit this? I really love that song, "Better Than Me" by Hinder. GOD, I have no idea why. I can't realte to the lyrics and all his songs are about how he's cheating or thinking of cheating on his current girlfriend, but I love it nonetheless. Even the line "and the way your innocence tastes" doesn't disgust me as I know it should. Ugh. I hate myself.
Tv Show We Hate that People Won't Shut the Fuck Up About
One word: Jericho. Earlier this year it was announced that poor, idiotic, makes no sense, Jericho was going to be taken off life support. Then a bunch of crazed red-necks and hippies finally joined forces and rather than get the current president out of office, they used their combined power and got the show back on the air. GOD. Let gramma die, people.
Celebrity Couples We Could Care Less About
Zach Efron and Vannessa what’s her name. I haven’t seen High School Musical, I don’t care about either of them. I will say that he looks gay and she posed naked and Disney didn’t fire her. Didn’t Annette Funacello get fired when her she grew tits?
Best Books We Read All Year
Although I would love to say that the best book I’ve read all year was Marlon Brando’s Songs My Mother Taught Me, the best book I’ve read by far has been Gypsy the autobiography of “Gypsy” Rose Lee. She had such a horrible upbringing but there is no animosity in her writing. She is clear and just kind of says “this happened, isn’t that odd?” Some people claim that she didn’t write the book (even though her son states that he remembers her days of writing it and his reading the manuscripts), I tell these people to shut the fuck up. This is the book that made for the foundation of the musical Gypsy. It was terrific.
And worst
Of course the worst book I read this year had Danielle Steele’s name on the cover. It was the “Unauthorized Biography of Danielle Steele.” Ok, I love a good gossip (ya think?), but this was just a bunch of quotes from Danielle herself at various points in her life and various interviews complied and then the two authors explaining what an idiot she is and how she was lying. It was poorly written and had no point…and not in a good way.
Best website of 2007
McSweeney’s how I love thee. It’s an internet magazine (e-zine) that prints hiliarous essays, lists, monologues, anything by anyone. It’s updated all the time and makes for a great end-of-a-crappy-day reading.
Funniest thing of the year
Anything dealing with Britney Spears. Anything.
Best "Shoot Yourself in the Foot" award
Goes to Republican Senator Larry Craig and his crazy public bathroom antics. This was a tough decision on my part because the runner up (Trent Lott being outted by Hustler) makes me happy for the first amendment.
Way to go!!

I hate to be 'this person' but...

Ok, so I'm not one to air my dirty laundry in public (unless it will make for a fabulous blog later), but I'm having some serious Mommie issues and I need to get them resolved. So I turn to you , dear viewers of the Internet: help me out.
Joan (my own version of Mommie Dearest) was never a good mother. After many years and many hundreds of dollars of therapy I've realized that she is sick. Joan has Munchhausen. She made Dolly and I sick or made us think we were sick as kids and we were hospitalized a lot. I have serious issues with math because of it. Like, a whole year of basic skills is missing from my education (it took hundreds of dollars of tutoring to tell me that). A lot of the crapiness of my childhood is because she is sick, I understand that. But I'm having such a hard time letting it go. I still get so angry over the years I thought I wouldn't be able to have children, that I thought I had a version of chron's disease, that I took medicine because I thought I was bipolar and had night terrors. I still get so angry over the fact that when I am upset I can't just run into someones arms and let them hold me (Beau's arms are always open, but I can't bring myself to use them), because crying was forbidden in our house, and you had to stop immediately. I still sob openly at those wet the bed commercials because for years I never knew that other people had that problem to; I was told I was abnormal because I wet the bed, and I was sick.
The adult in me understands that Frank (my father, affectionately named after Frank [the dad] from Everybody Loves Raymond) was gone a lot because his wife was sick and he thought his girls were to. The adult in me understands that he had battles with depression because his life was a nightmare. But the child in me cannot forgive any of it. The child in me gets angry that he wasn't there to protect us from her. The child in me gets angry that he believed her, and hit us too.
I'm coming to grips with the fact that until I deal with some of this anger I'll never start to heal, but how do you do it? How do you stop being angry? A decade has passed and time hasn't healed it yet. Any tips?

Short One Today...

Again, I am thoroughly disgusted with the state of our country. With only five days of summer school left (praise the Lord) I am just now able to get to what will actually be on the national exam they will have to take. What have I been doing these past twenty days? Teaching fifteen year-olds what nouns and verbs are. I'm sorry, but you cannot teach semicolons and tense when they can't even tell you what the damn subject is. So I spend twenty days going over parts of speech that they didn't learn in middle school because that is not covered on their middle school state tests, so why teach it? I literally had a student ask me what a fragment was. Now that I have taught this, I have five days to teach them parallel structure and correct semicolon use.

Don't even get me started on the fact that only five of the fifteen I am teaching can read cursive handwriting. At the start of summer school I had a student who needed help signing for her child support check for her two kids. Oh, did I mention I teach freshman in high school?
There's that old saying that you can judge the state of a nation by how it treats its poorest citizens. Well, I work with our poorest citizens and I can tell you that America is in sorry shape.

Goodbye, Squiggy...

OK, I'll admit it: I have never been, 'skinny;' my body is built large and curvaceous (thanks to some good old Celtic genes), but I have been slender. I used to worry about never being a size 6, or not being able to see my ribs when I sucked in my stomach. Now I realize and appreciate my shape: I popped an eight pound baby out in 20 minutes!
Still, since Glow Bug was born, I haven't really taken the best care of myself. Well, if I'm being honest let me just say that I haven't taken care of myself since about 2000. See up to the millennium I had been very slender, Bea has the pictures to prove it), but in 2000 the medical powers that be thought that I had a type of Crone's disease and quickly put me on steroids to counteract the dramatic weight loss that is a symptom of the disease. Two months and forty pounds later - oh, it's not Crone's! Sorry! So the steroids were gone but the forty pounds stayed - right around my belly button: it's a spare tire I call "Squiggy."
Then Glow Bug came into existence, and I gained another 15. What are we up to now? 55? Grrreat. So now I'm a new mom with an extra 55 pounds on her. Well that's depressing so I eat my feelings. Low and behold I am now about 70 pounds above where I want to be. I can almost hear the slender girl in me screaming (although quietly as she is being muffled by Squiggy and the sound of coffee cake being digested). I've decided that the time has come to say goodbye to Squiggy and my friends 'Bagel' and 'Cheeseburger' (it was an emotional goodbye for the latter two, I must say).
The problem is: I'm not too sure how to go about doing this. I get the whole, "eat less, move more" deal and I do it. Hell, ponytail-man Tony Little and Pilate's-guru-to-the-stars Mari Windsor and I see each other every night for 40 minutes. I've stopped eating out entirely, and I've switched everything that might contain carbohydrates in my kitchen to whole grain. The problem is that we aren't just talking about 10-20 pounds here, we're talking 70!! That's the weight of the average third grader!!
I'm doing my best, but my friends cheese dip and mint chocolate chip ice cream are calling loudly.

A Temperature-Induced Geek Dream or Why My Subconscious Hates Me and How I Complain About It

So, I was fairly useless today. I slept late, went to Target, did some junk around the house and took a nap. Not in that order, though. I love napping. It's one of my favorite things. But whenever I nap in the middle of the day, especially when it's overly warm like it was today, I have really strange dreams. Today was no exception. I dreamed that Sylar from Heroes was menacing me and a friend. (For those who aren't giant geeks, Sylar is a bad guy who kills other heroes, eats their brains and steals their super powers. He's quite scary.) I was rather blase about this in the dream while my friend was freaking out. I don't remember who the friend was in the dream, but it was probably Mame, so we'll go with that. She can yell at me later.* The reason I wasn't concerned about the evil person trying to kill me? I was SURE that my boyfriend would save us. So sure that I was bitching that the random snack machine that was oddly in the room with us didn't have any Chipwiches.** Ok. Problems with this turn of events include:

1. Well, that's rather un-feminist of me. Generally, I'd prefer to have dreams that include ME roundhouse-kicking the bad guy in the face, not waiting for a big, strong man to do it.
2. I don't HAVE a boyfriend.
3. And while I've dated some nice guys, I've NEVER dated a guy who could fight off a super hero. I mean, really, who has? Apparently, in this dream, I was dating Dean Winchester. Or Jack Bauer. And of course, my subconscious neglected to have them make an appearance. Whatever, Subconscious. THANKS.
4. And finally? Said ass-kicking boyfriend NEVER SHOWED UP. I woke up just as the bad guy escaped from the chair we'd tied him to. (Oh, yeah. We tied him to a chair. BONDAGE! Heh.) THANKS, IMAGINARY SUBCONSCIOUS BOYFRIEND.

Boy, Freud would have a FIELD DAY with me. Heh.

*As Mame mentioned in her very first post ever, she routinely yells at me for things I do in her dreams. Or will give me the silent treatment. Ask her sometime about the "Eddie Izzard Incident." She's STILL mad at me. So, now she can be mad at me for endangering her in MY dreams. And for my deadbeat imaginary boyfriend. Sorry, Mame!

**Seriously. What kind of snack machine that dispenses ice cream treats DOESN'T have Chipwiches? The mysteries of the human mind...