Dear Red Vine distributor of the east coast,

Duuuude. It’s time to step up your game. In the age old battle between the mighty Red Vine, and the yucky, chewy Twizzlers, Red Vines are failing to be represented!

During our ride from Maryland to Maine, not one single gas station carried my beloved Red Vines. Not one!  (Between my 2 antsy kids, and my minuscule bladder, we stopped at many.)

It’s an abomination that Twizzlers are even in the same category as Red Vines!

Don’t let the fact that all of these gas stations stock Twizzlers dissuade you. The products may look similar, but any true licorice connoisseur can tell you that Red Vines are more different from Twizzlers than elephants from goldfish.

If they try to tell you they can’t stock Red Vines because it’s a conflict of interest, simply pull out a Red Vine and let them taste it! Be sure to prepare it properly first:

Open the carton about a month in advance. Leave it on top of your fridge, or on a high shelf – anywhere out of your sight line so you’re not tempted to eat them before they’re ready. After 30 days, they should be rock hard, and perfect for eating! Next to a stale Red Vine that has been aged to perfection, a flaccid Twizzlers rope will look like the pathetic excuse for licorice that it is.

Surely after they taste the perfection that is Red Vine, they will be unable to deny you admittance into their chain.

Let’s get on this, Red Vine guys! I wanna see this box at every convenience store on the east coast:

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Brecken has become quite the little helper of late. His newest obsession is putting things in the garbage. That’s not to  say that everything he puts in there is actually trash. Today alone he has put the following things in the can:

• 2 spoons
• 1 $63 box of new printer ink
• all of my clipped coupons
• 2 mini ice cream carton lids (Yeah! Actual trash!!)
• 1 ball
• 1 toy truck

He may have tossed a few smaller things in there, but I lack any motivation to go sifting through that nasty bag.

Dammit. Where are my keys?

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We took the kids to see Marry Poppins at the Kennedy Center on Friday night. We did so with great trepidation, as we weren’t sure that Brecken would be able to handle sitting still for such a long performance. Our tickets were complimentary, so we figured we didn’t have anything to lose. If Brecken started making a nuisance of himself, we agreed one of us would just take him out to the lobby.

He lasted a good 40 minutes. He was delighted by the music and scenery. His favorite part by far was clapping after each song.

This version of Marry Poppins melded the Disney movie with the books by P.L. Travers, so while it didn’t have certain parts from the movie (carousel horse race!) it had other parts from the book that were quite magical to see on stage (dancing statues in the park).

I once ran lights for a bootleg version of Marry Poppins. (Meaning some drama teachers simply turned the movie into a theater production – I guess it was legal because they didn’t charge $$ to see it.) It was colorful and delightful. They had the carousel scene, and the penguins and barn animals. They even had a low budget flying Marry Poppins! While the Kennedy Center production was wonderfully acted, and beautifully executed, I am confident in saying that the kids would have enjoyed the bootleg version more. Having watched the Disney movie more times than I can count, we were all eager to see the aforementioned scenes, and sing along with our favorite songs. This Broadway version features new, unfamiliar songs, and a bit of a dark undercurrent with angry toys that come to life.

So. Brecken.

I managed to keep him quiet by stuffing his mouth with goldfish crackers. Once those were polished off, he moved on to candy. He would shove a piece into his mouth and say loudly, “THANK YOU!” so I would shush him, and he would say loudly, “MORE! MORE CANDY!”

At one point an usher came by and shushed him. She was the archetypal grumpy old woman. She bent low into his face, and hissed “SHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh!” with enough venom to startle Brecken. Little did she know that Brecken had already laid claim to the word “Shhh”, so he immediately yelled, “No, MY ‘shhh’!” (If you repeat something Brecken has said in the last 5 minutes, he will scold you and say, “No! MY ‘what ever you had just said’”) I stifled his tantrum by shoving his binkie into his mouth and calling attention to the fake rain on stage.

Knowing that my fellow theater patrons had paid handsome sums of money for their seats, I frantically tried to keep Brecken quiet. When he started squealing for Daddy, I handed him over the seat, (Jesse and Karis were directly in front of us) and Jesse tucked him in a football hold and ran him out of the theater. I’m told they spent the remainder of the first act running laps around the lobby. Ironically, if Mary Poppins had been available, she could have whipped Brecken in to shape in no time!

Karis was loving the play, but I could tell she was fading fast. I knew she wouldn’t want to leave early, but she was getting fidgety and her eyes were drooping, so I made an executive decision to lie to my daughter. That’s right – I’m not above pre-schooler manipulation. I checked the program, and noting that the only song she would recognize in the second act was “Let’s go fly a kite”, I decided to let her think the play was over at intermission.

It was a perfect lie, made only more perfect by the fact that act one ends with Mary Poppins LEAVING. (Hello, abandonment issues…) I said, “Yay! That was great! Let’s go.” and because everyone else was getting up to hang out in the lobby, she bought it! She made it to the car, but was asleep before we left the parking garage.

And so ended our Merrill family version of The Griswold’s Visit An Opera House.

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I have a bit of a bug. No fever. Just swollen lymph glands, and a small, meticulous alien twisting my guts into knots.

Brecken also has this bug. I know this because the last two mornings he has woken up and said, “Yucky! Yucky pooooopie! MAMA!” Which is toddler speak for, “Well, I’ll be damned – I seem to have shit myself. Oh, and look – it has squished out my diaper  and pooled on my very cute, over-priced Pottery Barn sheets!”

I’m a slow learner an optimist, so last night, when that little voice inside my head (one of the many) told me to put pants on him lest he shit out his diaper again, I thought - Nah, it wont happen twice in a row. I was wrong. It DID happen twice in a row. Yay.

Even in the midst of having a nasty stomach bug, Brecken is such a polite little gentleman. He’s always the first to say, “Bless you!” if you sneeze. If he sneezes and you say “Bless you.” he is always quick to say, “Thank you!”

In the throws of a tantrum, instead of yelling “NO! NO! NO!” he will shriek “NO, THANK YOU!”

When he is upset that I wont give him yet another Honest Kids juice pouch, he will ignore my quiet “No.” and press the pouch into my hand, saying, “Apple juice please.”

This kid loves using good manners so much that tonight as he was patiently waiting for his dinner, he pretended to burp over and over again, just so he could excuse himself after each one.  Hilarious. It made me wish he had a little flannel shirt and mullet wig so I could capture the special beauty of the moment.

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The other day I got an email requesting a product review. While I normally don’t do solicited reviews, (my spotlight section is completely unsolicited – they are just products or random things I found interesting, or wanted to share with the world.) this request came from a costume supply store: http://www.costumesupercenter.com Hello? Costumes? Right up my alley!

I was told to pick an item from their site, and give an honest, unbiased review of it. The guy who sent the email (Hi Charles!) must be psychic, because though I haven’t ever written about it, I have a serious love for dressing up.

What? You knew that? What gave it away? Was it my theater nerd background, or my obsession with Halloween? Ok, fine, Charles isn’t psychic. Apparently it’s obvious that I was a drag queen in a past life.

I bypassed all of the Halloween costumes and went straight for the wigs!  http://www.costumesupercenter.com/hats+wigs+masks.html

My first choice was this retro housewife wig, because it would be perfect for a photo shoot I am planning. Sadly, it was on back order until September, and I am nothing if not impatient, so I continued looking.

(Click photo for link)

Next I thought, How ’bout a little Betty Page action?

Then I remembered I don’t have breasts anymore, so I’m putting my pin-up girl photo shoot off until I’m lactating again.

After much deliberating, I narrowed my choices down to this one:

and this one:

Natasha

A pixie cut flapper wig, or “Natasha”. Natasha intrigued me. Her name conjured sexy Russian accents, and the berating of someone named Boris, but her outfit was so clearly French. Oui?

It wasn’t an easy decision. It was my own Sophie’s choice. I have a few character videos I’m planning right now, and both of these wigs would work nicely for a piece I have in mind. Which to choose, which to choose?

I ended up going with Natasha.

Natasha arrived via UPS today, and I was double rainbow excited! I unpacked her, and slipped her on.

Oh my.

Natasha was a little jet lagged. That’s ok. I’m no stranger to costume wigs.

exhibit A

exhibit B

Costume wigs are cheap, and made of synthetic hair – think Barbie hair, only life sized.

I spritzed her, and shaped her, but she was a stubborn wench, that Natasha. I didn’t give up easily. The french are known for their attitude. I would seduce her! This is when I realized that I don’t know the first thing about wig seduction, so I took her down the street to the wig shop. Yes, I live right down the street from a freakin’ wig shop. You yuppies can keep your gated communities – I can buy fake hair, eat neon colored shaved ice, and preserve my wedding gowns, all without getting in my car. Jealous?

The lady at the wig shop put Natasha on my head, spritzed her, combed her, and trimmed her up around the edges. This woman was used to working with high end, human hair wigs. The kind of wigs cancer patients wear during chemo. She chuckled at my fierce desire to have Natasha look like she did in the picture. Then she charged me $4.00 for her efforts.

So now I have a slightly shorter, still lumpy and kinked Natasha wig. I will dunk her in water and leave her to dry on a wig form (one of those Styrofoam heads with the empty, zombie eyes) then I will play with her some more. My lesson: If buying a wig online, buy a very short wig, like the pixie one pictured above, or a longer wig, like the Betty Page. Had I gone with the short wig, I could just shake it out, and voila! Had I gone with a longer wig, the weight of the “hair” would weigh down any kinks. Sadly, Natasha is that tricky in-between length. Long enough to kink, but too short to fall flat again.

The Costume Super Center is a pretty cool site for your Halloween needs. They carry all the usual stuff you can get at those fly-by-night places that pop up in strip malls between now and October 31st, but they are a bit less expensive. If I can tame the mighty Natasha, I will probably buy a few more wigs from them for my aforementioned photo shoots and character videos.

So there you have it. My first solicited product review. It was fun. Though I’m not interested in getting bombarded with product review requests, I would be more than happy to review any new electric cars, 5 star vacation packages, house cleaning services, or mac products. (Steve Jobs – I’m lookin’ at YOU)

G’night, Internet.

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While visiting in Ithaca last week, Donna let me raid her basement  for treasures. Donna collects stuff at garage sales and thrift stores. She has a 1950′s fetish, which means you can always find awesome retro tid-bits in her basement.

While rummaging through the catacombs, I found a turquoise feathered hat which I HAD to take. I thought, I love this hat, but who would ever wear it? That question was answered just now when I dug through a bunch of old photos to find you guys a picture of Juanita (I’m getting to that – hold on). In one of my parents’ wedding photos, damn me if my great-grandmother wasn’t rockin’ an identical turquoise feathered hat. You’re dying to see a pic of it aren’t you? Well, you’ll just have to be patient. This clearly calls for a photo shoot.

I also unearthed an old doll. Old dolls are a dime a dozen, but THIS old doll bears a striking resemblance to my late grandmother, Juanita. It looks just like her, only a little creepy. I call her Creepy Juanita. I brought her home with me and now she sits beside my computer, wearing a Ms. Havisham-esq dress that was pieced together from old baby doll garments. (Don’t worry, Creepy Juanita! I’ll make you some proper duds soon.)

I tried to find a photo of the real Juanita to show you guys how eerie the similarities are. Sadly, most of my Juanita photos are bad scans from the early 70′s. This was the best I could come up with for now:

The real Juanita

Creepy Juanita

SEE? I told you they look alike. It’s uncanny, isn’t it?

So, now Creepy Juanita and I are BFF’s!

Saturday we went to the Nissan dealership and finally procured a second car. It was a compromise to say the least. Jesse wanted this:

Sporty!

And I wanted this:

Zero emissions!

We settled on a Nissan Altima with  dead torchered cow leather interior. It has a sweet audio package, so I can blast Air Supply with extra base. I’m pretty street.

As soon as the kids were in bed, I grabbed Creepy Juanita, and we took that baby for a spin – just us girls!

Me, in the new ride.

♫ I can’t fight this feeelin’ anymore… ♪

Everyone loves the new car. The only down side to it is the fact that I now have to get a Maryland driver’s license. Well, I would have had to anyway, because my license expires in 18 days, and I can’t renew it by mail again – even though I totally look the same as I did when I was 21, right? So that whole “needing a current picture” thing is moot. ::Sigh:: What. Ever. I guess I can’t deny my Maryland resident status anymore. Having a license makes it feel so official.

Cool person: “Where are you from?”

Me: “California.”

Cool person: “Oh, sweet. Wait. Why do you have a Maryland license?”

Me: “Uh… It’s fake. I thought it would be funny to have a fake license from a state chosen at random…”

Cool person: *Looks at the crazy Marylander and backs away*

Well, I’m going to call it a night. Creepy Juanita and I are going to go get mani-pedi’s tomorrow after we drop Karis off at school, so I want to be refreshed for that. ‘night, Internet.

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The title of this post is supposed to help you imagine a Clark Kent like man with a white lab coat instead of a cape. He has great posture, and stands tall with his fists on his hips. He is a DOCTOR, and therefore infallible.

I was raised in a medical family. I was taught the USDA’s food pyramid in school. I loved meat, and drank so much milk there should have been a twelve step program for me.

Nowadays I eat a different diet. Over the past several months, I have been transitioning my family to a vegan diet. It hasn’t been without challenges. In fits of frustration, I have caught myself saying, “Fine. We’ll be vegan in our home, and vegetarian out in the rest of the world.”

I’m trying hard not to make my kids resent our diet. I don’t deny them the occasional ice cream cone. I let them participate in school parties when there’s jell-o on the menu. I decided right away that I didn’t want to be a vegan-Nazi. I reason that making certain foods forbidden will only add to their allure.

I myself am stumbling through this transition. Take chicken and cow’s milk, for example. How do you explain to a 4 year old who desperately wants cow’s milk in her cereal, that we don’t drink it anymore? Why was it ok to drink yesterday, but not today? And chicken – Karis LOVES chicken. So I give her a great substitute, and she can’t tell the difference, but the REASON we don’t eat chicken anymore is for both health reasons AND ethical reasons. So do I continue to call it “chicken”, or do I explain that it’s what we eat instead of chicken?

I’m getting off track here. I was writing this post to highlight an awkward little moment that took place during Brecken’s two year physical. I really like Brecken’s group of pediatricians. The doctor we saw that day was a lovely man with an excellent bedside manner. When he was asking me the usual questions about Brecken’s development, he asked the standard, “How is his diet? Is he eating all right?”.

I realized it was probably relevant to tell him that we were transitioning to veganism. His eyebrows shot up.

“Oh. That’s…good.” He said. “Uh, vegan. That means no milk, right? How is he getting his calcium?”

I laughed, thinking he was making a joke. He didn’t laugh back. Instead he looked at the crazy vegan woman in his exam room and wondered why she was laughing.

I squinted at him and gave a half smile. “You’re joking, right? You’re not actually saying that cow’s milk is the best source of calcium for a toddler, are you? I mean, it’s not even a good source, let alone the best.”

He shuffled his papers a moment and cleared his throat. “Yes, of course. So. Um. How did you say he was getting his calcium?”

“Green leafy vegetables. Kale? Broccoli?” I craned my neck in a not-so-subtle attempt to see what he was writing in Brecken’s file. Most likely something along the lines of “Has crazy, vegan mother. Check for calcium deficiencies at next appointment.”

He looked up from the file. “He eats that?!”

“If I put it into an orange juice smoothie, sure.”

He seemed hesitant to ask the next question. “…And, for protein?”  He asked in a meek voice.

“Legumes, nuts, seeds, tofu, mung beans, insects.”

His head snapped up again.

“Just kidding,” I laughed. “We almost never eat mung beans.”

(No, I don’t eat insects. But I’m not opposed to adding them to my diet if someone will dry them and grind them into an un-bug-like flour for me. Come on, Internet – get on that!)

This guy has the right idea.

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We came home from Ithaca on Sunday night to a power outage.

The kids were thrilled to bathe by candle light, but the novelty quickly wore off mid way through Monday. Monday afternoon found us leaning against a wall in an empty shopping mall, charging my cell phone. Good times.

When we came home from our attempted shopping adventure – which featured a near pitch black Target for the kids to explore – I put Brecken down for his nap and snuggled Karis on the couch while crocheting her a panda bear. I started to feel uncomfortably hot, and thought it was just the lack of AC coupled with the  heat of our stuffy house. I moved Karis away, gave her some water, and told her to lay down on the floor (She looked like she was tired).

She was passed out within seconds. She woke up an hour later with confused, rabid eyes, crying and complaining that she couldn’t get her shoes off. She was bare foot. I calmed her down, and carried her blazing body upstairs to take her temp. 103.6º.

She cried as I bathed her in lukewarm water. She loved taking a dose of medicine. She was down to 102.8º and running around like a March hare in no time, demanding we eat Thai food for dinner.

Having no power really brought our little community together. Everyone sat out on their stoops at dusk to chat and feel the slight breeze pass by. Flashlights were shared, dry ice was gifted, B-B-Q grills were used as stove tops to boil pasta water. We even socialized with our elusive neighbors! They were idling in their giant Navigator, watching DVD’s with the AC blasting. (That 1970′s crying Indian Native American has shed enough tears over my neighbors to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.)

We talked with the dad, who refers to himself as “Mo”. He told us that his Navigator is a company car to impress clients. He is in “imports and exports” which Jesse says is a nice way of saying “terrorist”. He regularly travels to the Middle East on business. He has a six bedroom house there, and wants to take us to Ethiopia to have an adventure. “You Americans – you will love it!” (This was said directly following his proclamation that Americans are spoiled, and in Ethiopia most places don’t have electricity. Sounds like paradise.)

He then gave us the remainder of his sons birthday cake and demanded we allow him to take us out to an Ethiopian restaurant soon. I love our neighbors because they never cease to entertain. They are genuinely nice people… they just happen to have the sketchiest background EVER. And a huge carbon footprint. Terrorism and greenhouse gas emissions: Not my favorite qualities.

NOTE: Our power finally came on 29 hours later. I was sitting on my couch at the time, sewing by candle light (I can rock it American Revolution style when I have to). Our windows were open, and I could hear jovial shouts and elated shrieks throughout the neighborhood. People were less excited when they pulled baby Jessica out of that well that one time. We are pussies.

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Yours truly was featured on mom life today! Check it out here, and leave some comment love.

For those of you not familiar with mom life, it’s a web show hosted by two moms that live in LA. They host experts on each webisode, and talk about things like relationships, health & wellness, family time, how not to lose your identity when you become a parent… They can be a great resource for moms – and dads too.

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Many of you ask why I never post pics of myself. Well, I do, but admittedly not that often. It’s not because I’m trying to stay mysterious – I regularly post about gas for crying out loud – it’s just that no one really takes pics of me that often. So. This weekend there were a few pictures taken of me. The fact that I am sweaty, and drunk in a bar should probably be explained.

We went to Ithaca this weekend to visit Jesse’s father, step-mother and grandfather. Huns and Andrew also went up. We love going to Ithaca because it always means good food, happy kids and free babysitting!
The free babysitting allows for us parents to go haunt college bars and pretend we’re still young. I could totally pass for a college student, right? RIGHT?
Our adventure at The Chapter House began with an adorable bar tender that didn’t know the first thing about bar tending. She was cute – but that was the only thing she had going for her. This girl couldn’t even pour a beer correctly.
After three attempts at getting her to make my signature drink (a lemon drop martini for those of you keeping a scrap book of things you love about me) I gave up and said, “Just give me a Cosmo.”

She poured vodka into a glass and put a lime on the side. She then tossed a stir straw into the mix and set it in front of me. I was confused. I am certainly no expert when it comes to bar tending – or even drinking for that matter – but isn’t making a Cosmo on the exit exam for every bar tending 101 class? It’s not like I was asking her to entertain me with bottle flips ala Tom Cruise in Cocktail.

Two hot chicks at a bar. Literally. It was at least 107º in there!

Huns stepped in and taught her the secret way to turn a Cosmo pink. (Cranberry juice, for you beginners out there.) Why am I going on about our misadventures at the bar? The REAL fun started when we all decided to play pool. By that I mean we all said, “Let’s go play pool!” and I went to the pool area while everyone else stayed at the bar for twenty minutes.

Don’t worry – I wasn’t alone for long! That’s right, within minutes I was joined by two of Cornell’s finest. Well, technically ONE of Cornell’s finest, and his friend visiting from the Midwest; Ben and Evan, respectively. They regaled me with tales of  Ben’s big win at the robosub competition in San Diego.

Jealous? Robo Ben is on my right giving you that saucy wink. Oh, and ladies? They’re single!

By the time everyone finally decided to join me, I was officially drunk. Somewhere between claiming I could drive a bus full of kindergartners, and that moment, I had convinced the other bar tender to impress me with his lemon drop making abilities. He did.

Andrew bet me a buck that I couldn’t sink a ball when I broke. He later called it ‘the weakest break he had ever seen’, but lookie there – that’s me with my winnings:

Pool shark

The bar was pretty low key. We met an adorable ichthyologist named Erin (Hi Erin!). Erin schooled the boys in pool. She is studying a beetle that hurts pine trees? (If I got that right I will be amazed. My memory of our conversation is foggy at best.)

Erin the ichthyologist (bug lover)

My favorite quote of the night? That would have to be Huns saying something along the lines of, “I like it when you’re drunk! You’re not such a bitchy mom – you’re fun instead!” Thank you, Huns. I’ll be sure to remind you of this when you yourself have morphed into a “bitchy mom”. (Of four boys)

We played darts. Jesse and I kicked butt because the dart board kept giving us Andrew’s and Huns’ points because we are awesome dart players!!

Drunk and sweaty

All in all it was a fun night. Maybe we’ll do a repeat performance when we go to Maine this year. Mugga can babysit, and we can go practice being lushes with the townies.

Three lemon drops and a “Cosmo”

If you run into us stumbling down the side of the road, don’t worry – I’m a happy drunk!

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