a hallow's eve fish tail

I love Fall like Susan Lucci loves botox. The crisp, cool air and pumpkin patches, the red buds beginning to blossom, the leaves turning golden across all of the beautiful golf courses that I can't afford to play on. But particularly, the munchkins yoda-ing around..all donned up in their pirate garb and princess tiaras. My husband and I have more fun than the kids, I think. He carves me my annual dracula jack-o-lantern and after the babes are tucked in, it is creepy movie time for Mom and Dad. Just Jamie Lee and the two of us Mags. Yeah. We're old.

This year, for our girls, it has become all about the mermaid. Yep, no goblins, no ghouls, no fangy beasts for my kiddos. They are frou-frou all the way, those two. However, they have agreed to my chocolate cemetery cake, complete with skeleton and worms, but that's about it in the scary department. I couldn't even talk W. into being Ursula to T.'s Ariel. I tried to tell her that the villain is the most fun...all those black octopus legs, blue eyeshadow and the bleached-up do. "No", W. said, "You can play her if you want to, Mom". And once upon a time was when this chilling nightmare began. Over black bog and eerie dale, I traipsed, looking for two beautiful mermaid outfits that in the end would only elude me...leaving me alone, shivering..bobbing, as it were, in a cold, dark sea. Oh, I guess I could have purchased online long before the holiday, but then that would mean I was one of those organized multi-tasking super-moms, wouldn't it? And we all know that's a bunch of spine tingling malarkey. At least not these days as Mama has been sucked up in what seems to be a tornado tail that just won't quit. Hey, that would have been an appropriate fit for me this year..Dorothy!

Anyhoo, after all the pleas and wails and begging them to consider something else to wear, my two little monsters simply would not have it. It was going to be a flashy, fishy princess of the ocean blue or nothin'. "A purpl-ey fishtail and bra, Mom! Don't forget the bra!" Uh-oh. Now here is where the story gets really frightening and the tot abuse comes in. I'm making them. Yep. You read that right. Me. Mama Mags. Creating not one but two super-duper flipper outfits. Gives ya chills, doesn't it? And so it goes. I have glued, sprayed, sequined, scissored and drank my way through crafting the two freakiest things you've ever seen this side of the Great Pumpkin. Walt's rolling around in his coffin about now because of what I've done to the image of that poor Little Mermaid. I have a feeling my girls might end up being tarted instead of touted on Halloween night. Yes, thanks to yours truly, Ariel has reached a new level..from wide-eyed, fire-haired beauty to trampy skank o' the sea. It would appear that Triton had to kick her out of the kingdom after Sebastian found her playing in her underwater cave with something besides a dinglehopper. Short of hiring a seamstress or bribing my buddy that works for Disney, my babies are simply gonna to have to grin and bear it. Or should I say, grin and wear it. That or hush their yappers and squeeze into last years recycles. In the years to come, looking back on the photos in horror, they'll see that their old mother made it with love...with untalented hands and no ability to art or craft, mind you...but every last crooked stich was made with a whole lot of love. And just a wee bit of cursing. Poor tykes. They wanted June Cleaver for a mom but got Roseanne instead. Now that's spooky.



P.S.) For any of you out there that would like a good movie rental for the 31st..Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow is mine and Geez' favorite. Depp is very funny in it..joined by a wonderful cast...nicely shot and put together. Unlike my two tacky mermaid creations.

krumpin' with the maverick

Some may say I do not have respect for the Office of the President. I do. Some may say that I am mocking the dire situation this country is currently facing. I am not. Some may say I'm a goofball and downright silly. They may be right on that one. All I do know is that there are some really cool dudes out there workin' CGI. God bless 'em. Mama needs as many laughs as she can get these days.

ba-rock the vote

Dear Lord. I had the nightmare of all nightmares last night. Forget the 4th. I'm going to the courthouse immediately!

super mama

Click here to see my moves!
I've never looked thinner, dah-lings!

G 51

Note to self- Don’t rent a pull at your heartstrings flick (Sex and the City) that you only just now found 1 hour and 30 minutes of precious time to see after its twelfth-of-never release date, even though it was at one point your very fave series shared with one of your very fave buds in the world (remember our "Sex on Sundays", Tim?). Then while watching said film, decide to re-read a letter from your mom that for years your sappy self has carried in the small side pocket of your purse that tells of how much you are loved and what a good mother she thinks you are (not too shabby since she is the best in that department), all the while being only hours away from your menstrual cycle and then wash down all of the above with two very strong vodka tonics. Oy hormone vey. The tears have been a flowin' these days. Yep, life is coming at me double time as my sweet mamacita took a nasty fall three weeks ago on her carport, face first, and ended up in the ICU for a harrowing week and is now sitting in re-hab, almost three weeks later...eating some scary things that kinda look like chicken, popping wheelies on her walker but recovering, thank the heavens above.

After only an eighth month hiatus from my Lifetime medical melodrama, I am back at it... sans Joanna Kerns. But I’m lucky to have another lovely co-star milking the drama with me...my ole sis. Another oy goes out to her. Our heads and hearts are exhausted, but like Emeril, we’re kicking it up another notch, working our tails off, and are looking forward to bringing our sweet mammy back to her nest by hopefully next week. Only after completing a major safety overhaul on her casa and setting up some extra health care hands to help us get her back up square on her tootsies and to stay there- away from throw rugs, all things pointy and stairs. Oh, yeah, and concrete. Definitely anything under the heading of slab needs to have a big red circle and a line through it, for sure. Talk about scary Halloween stuff. Whew. More of that entire saga to come. But let me just say, for an 87 year old lady, she is one tough broad. I come from good stock. It looked like Apollo Creed had his mitts on her for a few rounds and then with a long left hook outta nowhere, he decided to TKO me while he was at it. She is my heart and my hero and it will sure be nice to see her back in her easy chair, sipping java, before too long.

And speaking of TKO’s...this Mama’s sort of flabbing out again. It's kind of like Raging Bull- The Latter Years. The gym has fallen off the priority list and I’d like to say I don’t need it because I’m phat but alas, I’m not. It’s more like the "f" kind. Well, I won’t go that far, but let’s just say Big Daddy’s chunky monkey is on the way back. Thank goodness, love is blind. That’s exactly what it should be, too. It’s better for all parties involved. I’ll save ya the whole blubbery song and dance and just put a link right here to an earlier post...regarding the extra 16 pounds o’ Mag that I tread milled off of me last year. Well, crap. I guess this means I had better revise that little priority list of mine and place pounding the pavement in early morning runs right at Number One. With three exclamation points following. Will someone out there tell me how Angelina can have eleven babies and her arms are still the size of spaghetti noodles?? Oh, life is cruel, my friends. So are the forties. And yesterday, the arthritic hand of fate, placed me in a dusty closet looking for one thing but finding another...a wedding gift from my husband- a beautiful wooden box full of memories and skinny-ness, circa early ‘90’s.....back in the day, when I had killer gams, a flat stomach and a tan. Well, I guess the tan ended up not being so good as basal cell took it’s vengeance on me two years ago, resulting in four stitches on the old temple. But the nice young body parts...well, that's always a good thing. Tortuous perhaps, but always good...in a brutally gnawing reflective kind of way. Yes, those were the good ole days when I also was the proud possessor of a nice décolletage which in the here and now has become more like the inside spread of the National Geographic. I guess that’ll happen when you carry two watermelon-sized humanoids in your midriff. Oh, hell, I better stop weltering in all this mid-crisis mud. Besides, I gotta hoof it over to the nursing home. There's a mean game of Bingo with me, mom and my three year old T. written all over it.

:)

23 days

Well, in less time than it takes for a rat to gestate, it looks like we’ll have us a new Prez. The sides of my mouth are beginning to curl up as the map becomes just a little bit bluer everyday. That is, if Jeb and all those chads behave themselves. But seriously, folks...

I believe in my man, Obama. I have to. What has unfolded in this country within the last eight years with a certain cross-eyed bozo at the helm has left us broken in both wallet and spirit. And most, unfortunately, 4,115 less of us are able to feel anything at all. So what does Stuart Smalley tell us to do when the chips are down? That doggone it, we’re good enough, we’re smart enough and the global community can like us again! We just have to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and immediately if not sooner get those wind turbines a whirling and give me and all the other normal Joes out there a Hybrid that we can actually afford. I’m not usually one for putting away the sarcasm, as that and a mean Australian Shiraz can at times be my only salvation, but we gotta know when it’s time for all those hokey things like hope, renewal, change for the better, and, hey, I’m even willing to go out on a limb here and theorize that we just might get really crazy and completely hokify our cynical selves and actually believe that it might be possible that one individual's proactive measures, sans whining, can create a ripple in the pond effect to others and so on and so on and that then..we just might kinda have a pay it forward type of thing going on. All that eyeball-rolly stuff is real, ya know? Shakyamuni wasn’t born yesterday. Oh, well, he was, but you know what I mean. We can make a difference. We can make change happen. Oh, well, change is gonna happen whether we friggin' want it to or not. But it can get better, right? We're just going to have to pay 700 bil for it to do so. Oh, come on. That's not too bad. If we could just get Brangelina and Mylie Cyrus to pitch in between the three of them, we'll have it covered! If all this sounds to touchy feely for ya, then click here for a much more adept, less Mag-netized way of putting things..positive plans lying right on the table, there under our snoots. Plans that maybe we can put into motion? Heck, I'm not going to pretend I really know what to do about this oil sitch. I wish my noodle was smart enough to figure it all out. Oh, well, I'll just have to leave it to all of those brainiacs in the think tanks. As I said in an earlier post..maybe I ought to just get a cart and a donkey and go from there. I do have a double lot now. And the kids have been begging me for a pet. What I really need is T. Boone's money and then I could ditch everything, grab my brood, and go to Tahiti and just sit on my butt looking out at that azure heaven where my biggest decision of the day would involve picking the color of the umbrella that would float in my nightly mai-tai.

I’m sorry. I don’t think just because you spend five years in a room with only a light bulb and communicating by tap qualifies you for the Presidency. I do, however, think it shows that you have great fortitude, quite a bit of courage and bravery thrown in there and a very, very determined will to survive. I also don’t think having a couple of journalism classes and seeing Russia out of the kitchen window qualifies ya either. But I dunno..if there are three things that I am just not up on...they would be lipstick, mavericks and soccer. One of 'em, I haven't ever tried, and two, I haven't done in quite awhile. I also don’t think that just because you fought in a war means you love this country any more than someone who did not. Your religious faith? Whatever is fine by me. Just run my country to the very best of your ability, don't thieve and put the separation right on back in between the church and state. Underline it, enhance with bold and use capitols! I certainly do believe though that one absolutely, unequivocally must be an intellectual to run this country..that sheer chutzpah and sound bites simply aren’t enough. I think it's evident to us now at what happens when you put a C student in the Oral..er, I mean Oval Office. Oh, yeah, and while I've got a wish list? Please have the dignity, the class..the cajones, to shake your fellow candidates hand after a debate instead of shuffling your Stepford wife into that position. "That one" would appreciate it, I'm sure. Oh, settle down, Mama. I wish life were like the movies, I’d much prefer a Dave, but alas, it isn’t, so we gotta hang in reality. Besides, nobody gives a hooey what I have to say anyway, but they do if we all say it together.

W. asked me the other day who those ‘two men on the T.V. were’. I had to bite my dry witted tongue and and really try to explain to her what this process means to and for all of us. Not just us here in the States but abroad....at how rocking the vote is more important than ever....at just what it means when people on T.V. stand with big signs in their hands....at what freedom and liberty and equality, you know, all that other hokey stuff is about. I decided I’d refrain from filling her in on how our foreign relations are completely in the crapper, how so many of our military have died senselessly, at how women once had to fight tooth and nail, enduring physical pain, in their struggle for us fellow ladies to even have the right to vote this November in the first place. I mean she’s only five, for goodness sakes. I’ll wait and tell her all that next year. Maybe in a few years after that, when she, herself, is older and wiser, she can try and explain to her mom the craziness of Mr. Bin Laden sitting pretty in a cave, noshing a pita, safe and sound...albeit receiving mountain dialysis...and why he is alive and goes unpunished...to explain the utter nonsense to me of getting socked in the mouth by mean ole Bobby on the playground, but going after Billy for doing it.

I think in some way that this country, in essence, has become the father that my candidate never really had..providing the encouragement, the opportunity, the freedom of discovering just who he was..who he felt that he could become..who, perhaps, he was always meant to be. The scrappiness and tenacity of those who loved him..who worked hard to give him the chance to prove himself stands for just about everything American that I can think of. The stats for young African-American men aren’t very pretty as only 8% of these boys will go on to graduate from college..that the level of incarceration is 7 times higher than those of our white citizens..that 50% of these young fellows are being raised in single parent households. Barack beat against all of the prejudice, misconceptions, preconceptions and the sad fact this country has those kind of stats in the first place for any of our citizens. He couldn't have done it without those that came before him, however, as that is always the case in a nation's history. Barriers were broken through on a personal level, and I have the audacity to hope that the achievements he has accomplished along his 40 something year long journey will transpire to a lot more across the board for this country and we will see a difference. He’s talking it..let’s have some good energy that he will soon be walking it. Besides isn’t it great to have an orator again? It’s been a long eight years since ole Bill.

Oh, yeah, things have got to get a little better. I mean, gas has fallen to $2.79 a gallon (oh, my) and my Wheat Thins have gone back down to two for five bucks. And haulin’ our tired, old, poopily-insured rumps to the polls is a good start to better, don’t ya think? And btw, while you are ambling your way over to that local booth of yours on the 4th, lest not forget what a great privilege it is to be able to even participate in an election. Oh, there I go again..with all that blasted hokey stuff. May I also take a moment (it is my blog, after all) to be so bold to suggest that while you’re behind the curtain, with your venti latte, in that confining little box...that you punch the spot next to the one that has the exotic name? Trust me. You'll be glad ya did. I have only one major regret in my life. And that was when I sang Stoney End in my 10th grade high school talent show. So hopefully this won't be another one. Yeah, I simply must have to believe that things will improve. I'm a mom. Optimism is a requirement. Besides, my kids can't have a bitter wise-ass as their mother all of the time. And double besides- somebodies gotta protect us from stumpy guys in bad suits. Yep, it’s high time we said goodbye to tex-mex and tractors and hello to a cool brotha. Lord knows, if my babies had been born in the Palin household, they would have been christened Mangle Blue and Khaki Salmon. And me? Guzzle Red. Okay, now that one's just not funny. Hits too close to home, I think. And my hubby, Plop Hero, completely agrees.

Oh, relax, my conservative pals. A girl’s gotta keep her sense of humor when she’s sitting square in the middle of a red zone.

See ya at the Polls!

for women on the go