Tag Archives: classy

Best Bedtime Hack for Toddlers – You Won’t Believe How I Did It!

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Most parents can relate—bedtime with little kids is capital H Hard. Especially when you’re right in the thick of it with multiple littles. Like, how?! How do you get your kiddos to go to sleep at the right time to optimize their health and well-being while also keeping YOUR cup full and protecting YOUR own mental health? And hey, maybe your partner’s too? Is it even possible!?

Lucky for you, I’ve got the answer. It took me over five years, three littles, and LOTS of trial and error to figure it out. And I won’t even make you read a whole article before getting straight to it! Ready for the cliff notes version? The answer is:

Give up.

__

OK, whew. That first part was a joke. That was clear, right? Or did you think that I suddenly started talking like a millennial influencer who uses ChatGPT to write her podcast scripts? Talk about capital H hard, I’ve never sounded so bubbly in me whole life. It amused be for 30 seconds though, so I guess it was worth it.

Anyway, I really did give up on the idea of bedtime. Goddammit I hate bedtime. BEDTIME! I SWEAR TO DR. BECKY I’M REALLY THIS PISSED JUST THINKING ABOUT BEDTIME. TELL ME BEDTIME ISN’T PROPAGANDA BULLSHIT SPEWED FORTH BY THE PATRIARCHY TO FORCE MOTHERS TO FORCE CHILDREN TO SLEEP SO MEN CAN WATCH FOOSBALL. WHAT? YOU THINK THAT’S NONSENSE? YOU THINK I’M CRAZY? OK WELL FUCK YOU MOTHAFUCKA I SPEND MY WHOLE LIFE TRYING TO GET THREE KIDS TO SLEEP IN THEIR OWN BEDS AND WHAT DO I GET IN RETURN? JUST ENOUGH TIME TO WASH DISHES BEFORE EVERY ONE OF THEM WAKES UP, CRAWLS INTO MY BED, AND SPENDS THE REST OF THE NIGHT 1) NURSING 2) HANDBOOFING* 3) KICKING 4) CROWDING 5) AND GRINDING BABY TEETH IN MY GODDAMN EAR. I’M UP EVERY 20 MINUTES BETWEEN 9:30PM AND 6:30AM WATCH OUT FOR ME BITCH I DON’T GET TIRED!!!!!!!!!!!

So, yes, it was time to try something else.

I have a 5 year old, a 3 year old, and a 1 year old and up until about a week ago, we spent, at a minimum, thirty-two hours a day doing our nightly “bedtime routine.” This consisted of:

7 to 7:30pm – Bath time
7:30 to 8pm – Chasing children around the house, trying to brush their hair and put them in pajamas
8 to 8:15pm – Wrestling
8:15 to 8:18pm – Brushing teeth
8:18 to 8:25pm – Asking them to go to the bathroom
8:25 – 8:30pm – Asking them to wash their hands
8:30 – 8:35pm – Filling water cups
8:35 to 8:55pm – Reading books and telling dragon/ghost/witch stories
8:55 to 9:00pm – Getting yelled at because I didn’t tell the right dragon/ghost/witch stories
9:00 to 9:05pm – My turn to do some yelling
9:05 to 9:30 – Going between two beds and a crib, singing songs and patting backs and presenting dissertations on the benefits of sleep, etc.
9:30 to whenever the sun rises – I don’t know. Dozing off and waking up over and over and over

You bored? Same. For us, bedtime routines were exhausting and tedious and—worst of all—thankless because they don’t work. I read so many books and tried so, so hard to do it right. Put them to bed earlier! Give baths! Read books! No screens!

ALL 100% PURE BULLSHIT.

Then I listened to about two chapters worth of Hunt, Gather, Parent and heard the author say something about how only western cultures do bedtime. I didn’t bother listening any further, didn’t dig for details. That was enough for me. Your dog could’ve told me the same thing and I’d have said, hell yeah fuckin right, let’s send it. That night, I told my husband, “We are done trying so hard. I don’t give a shit when they go to bed anymore, let’s stop fighting.”

It’s been working! And by working, I just mean there’s no more yelling at bedtime. I’m still not sleeping very well, but I wasn’t anyway, and at least there’s no yelling. The only rules are—

  1. Brush teeth.
  2. Go to the bathroom.
  3. If dad and I are going to bed, then you have to lie down too. I don’t care where.

Two nights ago, my oldest slept in his underwear. Last night, his clothes for the next school day (which was awesome, by the way. Made getting ready for school—which is our other big battle—so much easier). And they’re pretty much going to bed at the same time they were falling asleep before, but now we’re just spending those extra hours hanging out together rather than battling.

The one drawback is that it means we can’t watch whatever we want on TV. I’m trying to think of a good example of a dirty show, but it’s been so long since I’ve watched TV anyway that I can’t even think of one. True Blood? Haha. Clearly it’s not a sacrifice for me. And Durt will still watch sports or whatever around them, so that’s fine.

Am I a parenting expert now??? Check back soon for more tips and tricks for still not sleeping great, but maybe shouting less!

*Handboofing is just when babies stick their hands inside your shirt to keep their hands warm.

Hemming and hawing

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I wasn’t going to write about my pregnancy hemorrhoids but then “hemming and hawing” came to me this morning and I thought, who am I to deny fate? So here’s a post about my butthole.

If I had to choose a theme song for the past couple of months, it would be Busta Rhyme’s Light Your Ass on Fire. That is because MY ASS HAS BEEN ON FIRE for the past couple of months.

I’ve had mild hemorrhoids for most of my adult life. Who hasn’t? An itch here, a smear of blood there, big deal! A few years ago I made an appointment to go to the doctor’s because I had this weird bump on my knee where I’d gotten hit with a softball. (I don’t play softball—I was just helping a friend so her team didn’t have to forfeit a game. What a bad, bad sport grown-up softball is. Softballs ain’t soft! Out-of-shape adults have no business hitting and throwing hard ass balls at each other!) Anyway, I made an appointment and my doctor wasn’t available so I had to see a different one, Dr. H.

Dr. H was the coolest. She was the doctor for an Olympic-gold-medal-winning team, and so nice, and so helpful. SO helpful indeed, that after she ultrasounded my knee and confirmed it was a clump of scar tissue or something from getting hit from that piece of shit softball!!!!, she asked if I needed help with anything else. I was in the middle of a bloody b-hole bout, so I decided to bring it up.

Me: Now that you ask… I think I have a hemorrhoid but I’m not 100% sure.

Dr. H: Well your uncertainty is easily remedied! Roll on over and pull down them pants.

Me: Oh.

I rolled over and pulled down my pants.

Me: Aghh this is really gross. I am so, so sorry.

Dr. H: I know, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. But I look at buttholes all the time, doesn’t even faze me. Yup, congratulations. You have a hemorrhoid!

And that was the extent of it. At my next checkup, my primary care doctor saw it on my chart and brought it up. For some reason I thought he might want to take a gander at it too? I asked him and he politely declined. HAHAHAHA of course he did. Being a doctor must suck.

Since then, I’ve lived in a happy state of mild hemmy flare-ups. Until I started having kids.

After giving birth to my son my undercarriage was in, um, some disarray. There were tears and rips and stitches and things even the doctors didn’t recognize, along with some popped hemorrhoids. To say I was uncomfortable would be an understatement.

I always assumed it was all pachinkal related—the tears and whatnot. NOT SO! That was all hemorrhoidal, my friends! I now know that because I popped a humungous hemorrhoid a couple months ago and my downstairs felt the same as it did post-birth. My god. Who knew a throbbing purple grape coming out of your butt could cause so much agony?! I was nearly incrapacitated.

I was sure it wouldn’t go away until after I give birth, but it only took a week and a decent amount of blood loss before it started feeling somewhat normal. I believe the grape has shrunk and just become part of my b-hole topography. I’ve since popped another, smaller hemorrhoid that isn’t nearly as painful, but still requires careful treatment.

My treatment plan, which is the same advice you read/hear everywhere:

  • A few times a day (certainly after any pooping takes place), soak butt in hot water for 10ish minutes
  • After soaking, fold a soft ice pack in half then stick in buttcrack, between pants and underpants
  • After icing, stick a witch hazel pad in buttcrack and leave it for a while

I don’t mess with Preparation H because I’ve used it before and don’t notice that it does anything, and it’s gross to apply.

 Happy hemorrhoiding!

P.S. I FaceTimed my mom before posting this to ask if it was too gross to talk about hemorrhoids, and she was outside and her 65-year-old friend/neighbor heard me and said “I GET ‘EM TOO, THEY’RE NO FUN.”

What my toddler eats in a day

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Back in my Instagram days—so like a month ago—I used to love those “what my toddler eats in a day” posts.

One, because I like food.

Two, because I like getting ideas for food.

Three, because I like to see how my kid’s diet compares to other kids’ diets.

I stopped looking at those posts because of that last point there, number three. My son—a super fly 2-year-old who I’ll call Mr. T—eats pretty well, I think. For example, he had an egg for breakfast the other day. That’s good, right!? But he sure as hell don’t eat three pieces of tofu, organic beans, and a broccoli and salmon smoothie everyday (or ever). And it seems like that’s all these Instagram influencers feed their children.

So I’m going to list out Mr. T’s daily diet because… I want to, mostly. Nobody else cares. Maybe it’ll encourage me to feed him better? Cause two nights ago he basically only had a glass of orange juice for dinner and then was out of his mind hyphy for like, three hours. Are sugar highs real? I don’t know. I’m no nutritionist. But no matter!

Yesterday, he ate:

  • Grapes
  • Few bites of a raspberry fig bar that he carried around for an hour and called a burger
  • Half a blueberry waffle
  • Orange juice (shit)
  • Slice and a half of American cheese
  • Banana
  • Orange
  • A very large strawberry
  • Baby carrots
  • Half a peanut butter sandwich (whole wheat!)
  • Half a chocolate croissant (not whole wheat!)
  • Some whole milk
  • Half a fruit leather

Midday note: It’s now 2pm. Is that too much food? Too many snacks? Damn, sure seems like it. The two of us is just jungry all the effing time. 

  • More baby carrots
  • Bath water
  • Broccoli
  • Yellow pepper
  • Significant amount of ranch dressing
  • Beef pizza with onions and olives (sounds disgusting right? we all succumbed to near debilitating gas afterwards and Curtis claimed my burp was “one of the nastiest things I’ve ever smelled in my life”)
  • One Godiva chocolate
  • A couple sips of whole milk

OK, the end. That was good. Thanks for reading.

Oh wait, one more thing—my son has a wicked old pediatrician (he was also my pediatrician when I was a kid) and at every checkup, his doctor tells me to make sure I’m feeding him chopped beef every day. That’s what he says. “Make sure to give him a little bit of chopped beef every day. You can serve it with whatever he likes. Mayonnaise, ketchup, whatever. He needs to eat furry animals for the iron.” Do other pediatricians prescribe that??

What’s This: Round Two

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I had an OB/GYN appointment the week after I posted that blog about my weird undercarriage. I wasn’t planning on asking my doctor what’s the deal with my pachink, but curiosity got the better of me. After my doctor smeared my pap—aka stuck a double-sided shoehorn in my cervix and scraped it with a chimney brush—I gently broached the subject.

Me: Hey, um, so… I’ve got a weird question.

Doctor, stepping out of her HAZMAT suit: Cool, I like weird stuff. ‘Tis why I spend all day checking in on strangers’ downstairs. What’s up?

Me: When I finished pushing my baby human out last year, the doctors said something about my… flaps? They was like, “What’s that? IDK but I was gonna snip it off lol.” Any idea what they were talking about?

Doctor: Hmm.

Me: Yes, hmm! That’s effed, right?

Doctor: Pretty effed. Maybe it was *some medical term I don’t remember.* If I’d been there, I probably would’ve pulled that out with a pair of forceps.

Me: OK thank you for that information SEE YA LATER BYE.

That’s actually what my doctor said: that she didn’t know either, but it was probably some indecipherable medical term, and then that she would have “pulled it out with forceps.”

This seemed absurd to me. That a doctor might nonchalantly pluck an extra bodily appendage off a ho with a set of forceps. I asked my mom if it seemed absurd to her too. She hemmed and hawed for a minute, then told me that her doctor once found an extra pachinkal part on her too.

“Oh yeah,” says my mom. “After I gave birth to one o’ y’all, my doctor mentioned some dangling hangle or another. She said I could ‘tease it out’ later on. So that’s what I ended up doing. Not that hard.”

DID YOU KNOW THIS?????? THAT FAJINAS REGENERATE LIKE MUFUCKIN LIZARD TAILS?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??! WHY HAS NO ONE EVER TOLD ME THIS BEFORE???????????????????

I’m so sorry for the overabundance of passion and punctuation but holy shit, why did I not learn about this in health class? I know all about gonorrhea and, like, wet dreams (gross) but ain’t no one ever told me that at some point during my life I’ll probably grow a couple extra haginas.

Who knew!

What’s This?

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I haven’t written anything in almost a year because I don’t think I’m funny anymore. I once thought I was kind of funny, maybe even actually funny, and now I do not. I’m just your average awful middle-aged mom, wiping down countertops and changing diapers and being unfairly demanding of my loved ones and judgmental of my neighbors. I’m a boring ole biddy who can’t live up to her older, funnier self.

At least that’s what I thought. But I just went back and read some random posts from 2011 to 2015 and HOLY. Not good, not funny, only embarrassing. Do you know how grand a relief that is? To know that I was never that funny at all?! I feel liberated. Free to blog to my heart’s content, with no fear of failing short of any expectations. Congratulations to me!

With that happy news, I’d like to finally share a story I’ve wanted to tell for a while. The point of this story is strictly to bring shame upon my family—particularly my brother-in-law who was embarrassed by my last post about my boobs. IF YOU THOUGHT THAT WAS BAD, YOU’LL BE ESPECIALLY UPSET TO LEARN THAT… 

I have a weird vaghina.

Quick editor’s note: I’m mostly going to use euphemisms and made-up/misspelled words to refer to my *downstairs* because I don’t want this post to show up in too many questionable Google searches.

OK, again: I have a weird vaghina.

I only found this out about a year ago, which is very surprising when you consider I’m a 30-year-old who’s had countless OB/GYNs check me out over the past decade or so. Actually, I will try to count them.

  • Blonde lady gynecologist who only ever made small talk about ticks
  • Old man gynecologist who told me I had a VERY COMMON, NOT STD rash around (not on!) my nether regions
  • First obstetrician who had hideous clavicle tattoos and talked to me with a mouth full of food, the disgusting idiot
  • Second OB, excellent and extremely tiny
  • Random OB when the tiny one wasn’t available
  • Another random one
  • One more random one
  • Dude OB with a nose ring who confirmed my water broke

That’s eight doctors. Eight doctors who have all seen hella pachinkos in their lives. Eight doctors who spent many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars studying them. These mofos probably take continuing education courses on, like, labias and pubic hair every year. And yet not a one of them ever told me that my pachinko looks different than most.

It wasn’t until moments after pushing out a small human, while simultaneously trying to attach his squirming mouth to my nipple and also getting my shredded undercarriage stitched up with a needle and thread, that anyone ever thought to mention it. 

And the only reason I learned about it then is because there were two doctors down there—the resident who was practicing her backstitch and the incredibly mean on-call doctor who was teaching her—and they remarked on it amongst themselves. Here’s an excerpt from that moment in time:

Nurse, helping me breastfeed: OK, now, pinch your tiddy like this and shove it in there just… like… that! Oh, poo. Your nipple’s inside out.

Baby, crying: Who are you? Where is this? What is that? Why is world? When is how?

Doula, taking pictures: *Snap* *Snap* *Snap* We can crop out the blood! Your boobs look huge! *Snap* *Snap*

Baby Daddy, losing steam: Great job! You did so good! Cool if I take a nap before the Pats come on?

Doctor, instructing: All right, now stick the pointy end right through that dangling piece there.

Resident, stitching: Oops!

Doctor: No not that piece, this torn one here.  

(What follows, unfortunately, is verbatim)

Resident: Got it. And what’s this?

Doctor: Not sure. I was going to get rid of it, but since she came with it I figured we’d leave it.

Resident: OK.

Let’s repeat that one time: NOT SURE. I WAS GOING TO GET RID OF IT, BUT SINCE SHE CAME WITH IT I FIGURED WE’D LEAVE IT.

And that’s it! That’s how I found out I have something extra down there? I have no idea. I wanted to follow up on that fun revelation but I was distracted by, u know, my brand new human and all the sharp instruments and hands poking around my ripped apart fajina.

I never even thought to follow up with my own doctor (the tiny, good one) when I saw her a few weeks after that for my post-delivery checkup. She took a gander down under, called it “beautiful” (HAHAHAHAH I wish I were kidding; she was talking about the healing but still, wicked gross), and then sent me on my way.

I finally got brave enough to take a mirror down there a couple months ago and I gotta say it is, um, pretty weird looking. Like, maybe a rogue flap or two? Or just heavy-duty asymmetry? I really, truly don’t know. I’m not interested in doing a Google search to compare it against more conventional hoohas. I mean—mine works, right? I got a really, really excellent baby out of it. We good!

Confused with mountains

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Big boobs.

Dog, my boobs are so big. They were pretty big before I had a baby, and then I had a baby, and holy smokes. I would say I had mom boobs before I became a mom, and since becoming a mom they’re more like grandma boobs. My boobs look like Mrs. Doubtfire’s except approximately six thousand times saggier. I wish I had Mrs. Doubtfire’s boobs.

And breastfeeding! Most of the time breastfeeding is messy but convenient, until you go a little longer than normal without nursing and suddenly your boobs fill with coal and shattered glass and your nipples erupt and you have to spend a full 24 hours nursing, pumping, punching, squeezing, and burning your boobs.

There’s so much I want to say about boobs and breastfeeding. But I have a little baby and I don’t sleep that much, so I have neither the time nor the brainpower to form like, a cohesive story or anything. So here are several unrelated boob thoughts—

1.

Like I already said, my boobs are rather saggy. They’re also really dense. The lactation consultant at the hospital actually called them substantial, as in: “You can’t expect that baby to hold up those substantial breasts up on his own! You got some heavy, floppy tiddies, girl.” But because they are so heavy, and so floppy, I can stick a lot of things underneath them.

Screen Shot 2019-04-06 at 10.47.07 AM

Here’s a list of actual things I have successfully carried between my boobs and ribs, and the difficulty rating in doing so (1 is easy, 10 is hard).

  • My cell phone – rating: 1
  • A TV box (also known as a remote control) – rating: 1
  • A 350-page novel – rating: 1
  • A can of diced tomatoes – rating: 3
  • A half-full bottle of wine – rating: 4
  • An L.L.Bean boot – rating: 6
  • An acorn squash – rating: 5

Things I could not carry:

  • A whole pineapple (hurt pretty bad to try, actually)

2.

My baby and I read Dr. Seuss’s One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish a lot because it’s a dope book. I re-wrote the Gox poem (“I like to box. How I like to box!”) to be about breastfeeding.

I need to pump. 
How I need to pump!
So, every day,
I pump my lumps.

Then I dump.
I pump my lumps.
I pump and then
take a lump pump dump.

This poem is symbolic of my need to pump out my oversupply of milk every day, and how also breastfeeding makes me poop. I come so, so close to pooping my pants most days now.

3.

When my milk came in a couple days after giving birth, I felt shaky and achy and had a low-grade fever. I called up the doctor and we agreed that I couldn’t have mastitis (infected tiddy) already because my boobs didn’t hurt and I barely had any milk yet.

Turns out I had milk fever, which is when you get a little feverish when your milk comes in. But if you Google “milk fever,” you will find that almost all of the results are about cows and goats and other barnyard mommas.

Screen Shot 2019-04-07 at 8.13.09 PM

“…and shuffling of the hind feet”

Milk fever is primarily seen in dairy cattle but can also be seen in beef cattle and ALSO ME, YER GIRL.

4.

When I lie flat on my back, my boobs flop to either side. I could easily nurse two babies at the same time. Send your babies to me, I’ll nurse em.

(For real, why not? Pumping sucks, I got too much milk, and wet nurses used to be a thing! But your babies probably won’t want me milk. We went away for the weekend and I didn’t bring my pump, and my baby slept the entire time, and my boobs went out of control. I tried to get my niece babies to help an auntie out and they tweren’t having it. When I offered my boob they were.so.creeped.out. It was kind of funny, to see such confusion and terror on the faces of sweet babes. Also a little insulting. LIKE WUT, MY MILK AIN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU??)

5.

Actually, I tried my own milk and I think it would’ve been perfectly good enough for them. I’ve drank the milk of thousands of cows I don’t even know—why wouldn’t I try my own!?! It was fine. Sweet and watery.

I may not love the way these boobs of mine look, but I’m pretty thankful for the sweet and watery melky cabrera that comes out of them and feeds my baby so good. So, thank you, flopping tiddies o mine.

 

Bunny Killer

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The other day at the vet’s office, I ran into a woman I used to work with at a college. I was in line with my newly toothless dog* and she was at the register, waiting to check out.

“Oh, Amy? Amy my former colleague?” I asked, knowing full well that it was indeed Amy my former colleague.

“Hi…” she said HELLA tentatively, very clearly not remembering who I was.

“Amy!” I admonished. “I get that I’m 3.5 years older than the last time I saw you, and many, many pounds heavier, and my face has not quite held up to the past year’s emotions, but YA KNOW ME. I took photos of you for the alumni magazine! I endangered two of your children by taking them off-roading in a golf cart! I helped your husband, the staff farmer, wrangle sheeps!”

She still ain’t recognize me, but she tried to be friendly.

“Yes, right. How are you?” she asked.

“Great,” I answered. “The vet just pulled a bloody broken tooth out of me dog’s smelly head. What’s good with you?” As I asked, I noticed a very petite cat carrier at her feet and deduced there had to be a very petite cat within. I bent down and confirmed it.

“YOU’VE AN ADORABLE KITTEN!” I screamed.

“I do!” she nodded, now friendly for real. “Eight weeks old. She’s a bunny killer.”

Chico, my dog, was sniffing the cage and the kitten hissed at him. I pulled him back like, holy shit, that is a goddamn bunny killer in there. I’d never heard of such a thing.

(Note: Most of the previous dialogue was made up, but the following conversation is verbatim.)

“A bunny killer?” I asked. “That’s crazy! How many bunnies has she killed?”

Amy looked at me but didn’t respond, then turned back to the woman behind the counter to finish checking out. I waited a few moments for a lull in their exchange before continuing my interrogation.

“Like, full-grown bunnies or baby bunnies? How does she get to them?”

Again, Amy just looked at me. She seemed confused and I realized that I’d misunderstood her. I was acting as if it was a bad thing, this bunny-killing kitten of hers, but she and her husband were farmers. Bunnies were a nuisance in their world. They probably got this cat specifically to kill bunnies, so they could eat them or something.

“Oooh, did you get this cat specifically to kill bunnies?” I asked.

Again, she looked at me. At this point—maybe three minutes into my questioning—I could tell she definitely didn’t feel like talking about it. BUT THEN WHY BRING IT UP AT ALL, AMY?!?!?

“Wait, so, has she even killed any rabbits yet?” (This time I used “rabbits” instead of “bunnies,” to sound more professional.)

Finally, she answered me.  “You… you keep talking about killing bunnies. But all I said was ‘she’s an itty bitty kitten.’”

“OoOoOoOoOohhhhhhhhhhh,” I said, very embarrassed. “Yes, she is a small cat.”

She finished paying her bill and nodded goodbye and left.

*Here’s a picture of Chico’s mouth.

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My take on the news

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I’ve decided to start blogging about current events. I have a journalism degree PLUS I recently started reading/subscribing to The New York Times. I believe that makes me the most qualified person in the world.

Thinking I’ll do this every day, or a couple times a week, or whenever I feel like it/only this one time. For the inaugural post I’ll do the lead story on nytimes.com. And I’ll always try to do that (the lead story), but I’ll reserve the right to choose something else when I want to.

The all-new Audi S5 Coupe.

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My take: The car looks very shiny and blue, which is excellent, but I’m not sure that’s a real road it’s driving on. This is most likely fake news.

Celebrity sightings

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Quickly, and before I get into the very important business of celebrity sightings, please remember that your senators and House representatives work for you. You can call them up any day (and every day) and ask them to support the causes you care about, and stand up against policies that concern you.

For instance, you could find your Senators’ phone numbers and call them up this very minute and ask them not to confirm Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, who doesn’t believe in providing free and appropriate education for children with disabilities.

You could call them up and tell them you’re concerned about the president’s order to ban refugees from Muslim countries from entering the U.S.

Or you could call them up and complain about traffic in your city, or that the water tastes gross, or whatever. But remember to call them and to keep caring. That’s how democracy survives.

(BTW, it’s better to find the phone numbers of their local offices and call those.)

OK, on to the very important post:

Earlier this month, my oldest, sweetest, kindest sister took me to see Hamilton in New York. I can’t even begin to articulate how wonderful an experience it was. Michele Obama called it the best piece of art she’s ever seen in her life, and a bigwig at the Public Theater in New York compared Lin-Manuel Miranda, its creator, to Shakespeare. Nothing I could say would add anything to what’s already been said. It was really, really, really, good. I cried a couple times, and laughed a lot, and smelled more farts than I care to remember.

(For real. Those seats are packed seriously tight in the Richard Rodgers Theatre, and someone’s booty was working overtime. They smelled like the farts of a child, as a note.)

So instead of trying to review the best piece of art ever created, by Shakespeare’s successor, I will tell you about the other great part of trip to New York City.

I
SPOTTED
SO 
MANY
GOTDAMN 
CELEBRITIES

Celebrity-spotting is my favorite hobby. I love it. Holy moly do I love it. I don’t know why—I don’t read gossip magazines, I don’t write fan mail, I don’t even ask celebrities for pictures or autographs when I spot em out and about. But for some reason, I sure do love spotting em out and about.

And that’s important, that they’re out and about. When I worked at a radio station I got to see musicians fairly often. While it was fun and I loved it, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as spotting celebrities in the wild. When you see them at a radio event, you know they’re going to be there. You expect it and it takes no effort. But when you catch a glimpse of Constance Shulman, voice of Patty Mayonnaise and actress of Yoga Jones, walking down the avenue, that takes work.

I didn’t see Constance Shulman when I was in New York earlier this month (I saw her about a year ago, and it was fly as hell). But here are the three (3!!!!!) celebrities I did see earlier this month. You may not know any of them. If that’s the case, be even MORE impressed by how good of a celeb-spotter I am.

In chronological order of sighting:

Nick Kroll

He’s in The League and dated Amy Poehler for a little while. We were standing in line for Hamilton, and Nick Kroll goes strolling by. I says to my sisters I says, “OH SHIT LOOK WHO IT BE. NICK KROLL THE KING.” They laughed because they thought I was kidding, and then they looked and saw freaking King Kroll.

Not sure why I’m calling him the king. He good but no, he no es royalty. 

Nick Kroll

Oh, you must think I’m losing it, putting Nick Kroll on this list twice. YOU WRONG I AIN’T LOSING IT. I truly did see him two times. After the show was over, and within ten minutes of leaving the theater, Mr. Nick Kroll goes strolling by again. I says to my sisters I say, “OH SHIT LOOK IT’S NICK KROLL AGAIN.” Once more, they laughed, thinking I was bluffing. Once more, they realized the reason in my words and bowed to my skill and greatness.

It seems like maybe he saw Hamilton with us, but I’m not convinced. Apparently he’s got his own Broadway show right now, and he was walking in the wrong direction for leaving the theater. I don’t know, but I do know he looks far more trustworthy in person than he does in movies and on television. Not that he looks untrustworthy on TV, he just looks exceptionally trustworthy in person.

Oh and very quickly: those eyes of his. Pretty big, right? They look so sticky, Nick Kroll’s eyes do. I bet they’re cat fur magnets. My mom had an employee who once claimed to have 100 cat hairs in each eye. That’s a total of 200 cat hairs. I bet Nick Kroll has had 200 cat hairs in his eyes before. He king tho.

John Magaro

Have you seen The Big Short or Carol? Or Orange is the New Black? He’s in those. We were heading back to the car after the play and I looked my right and saw a familiar man in a beanie, carrying a paper bag.

“Ooh this beanie-wearing playa,” I thought. “I know I seen this beanie-wearing playa before.”

I was carrying my niece and so he got ahead of us, but I ran back to my sisters and told them, “Hey go chase down that man, I swears to Dog he famous.”

So they chased him down. He couldn’t see them, on account of walking direction and eye placement on human heads, but those two sisters of mine jogged up right behind him. They got a good look at his grill, shrugged, and came back to tell me they hadn’t a damn clue who he was. He was on to us by then, and ducked into a building’s vestibule for eluding purposes. It was a terrible escape plan, because when he left the vestibule he again had to pass us. I got another good look, and knew for sure I recognized him, but couldn’t place him. I could picture him being sad, and being someone’s boyfriend, and having an Italian accent.

It was really bothering me so on the way home from NYC I pulled up a list of the top box office movies for 2016, and then the top box office movies for 2015. The second I saw The Big Short, I knew I had my man. I texted my friend about it and she remembered he was also a little New York Italian man in OITNB. 

Abigail Breslin

She was the little dancing girl in Little Miss Sunshine. My sisters missed her, because they’ve got TERRIBLE celeb-spotting abilities, and also she’s an adult now and it’s hard to spot child celebrities when they become adults. But me, YA GIRL, I seen her and recognized her so A$AP it was a miracle.

Whoa, I didn’t realize she’s Spencer Breslin’s little sister. That’s the kid from The Cat and the Hat. He also played the adult-child elf in The Santa Clause. Neat.

Anyway, she was smoking a cigarette and was walking with two people. Actually I just found her Instagram and this is almost exactly what I saw.

Please comment below with your best celebrity sightings. I love to hear about them as much as I love to live them.

Benjamin Franklin Did Not Make New Year’s Resolutions

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Pretend it’s the 1700s and you run into Benjamin Franklin at a cheesesteak restaurant in Philly.

“Benjamin, my man,” you say. “Happy New Year! Make any resolutions for 1757?”

“No,” Benjamin Franklin says, taking a bite of his cheesesteak. “Homey don’t play dat.”

He leaves a hundred dollar bill in the tip jar, pats you on the back, and walks out the door. Through the restaurant’s front windows, you see him toss the rest of his sandwich to a seagull. The bird catches it midair.

Ben Franklin didn’t make New Year’s resolutions because Ben Franklin didn’t need New Year’s resolutions. His entire life was a resolution.

When he was 20 years old, Benjamin realized if he ever wanted to make a Founding Father out of himself, he’d have to step his game up.

“It’d be dope to invent important things,” a young Benjamin thought. “I want to invent fire departments and libraries and post offices and other good things. Maybe glasses and wood stoves, too. I bet I could figure out how electricity works. I bet I could be the president of Pennsylvania. I bet I help America gain its mo-fuckin independence, for God’s sake.”

He slept on it for a night.

“Yeah. I’mma do every single one of those tings.”

So he did. But like I said, he knew his game needed improvement. He sat down and wrote a list of the virtues he thought would make him a better man.

“I want to be more industrious and resolved, but less smelly and slutty. Also, cheaper and quieter.”

His list virtues included: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility.

That’s 13 in total, which was auspicious as hell because:

  1. The OG USA had 13 colonies, so that’s nice
  2. 13 goes into 52 a clean 4 times, so that’s math

And thus Benjamin had his plan. In a series of four 13-week cycles throughout a year, he would spend a week focusing on each of his virtues. At the end of each day, he’d reflect on how he’d done did. I think he had a crew of playas doing the same thing too, and they’d all meet up to discuss their progress every now and again. Benjamin claimed to have never fully perfected his virtues, but we can agree the dude probably came pretty damn close.

I know Alexander Hamilton’s the hottest Founding Father around right now, but Ben’s always been my man. Having played him in a fourth-grade production about time-traveling revolutionaries, I feel extra connected to the dude. And so for the past two years, I’ve been doing as Ben would—working on my own list of 13 virtues.

I’m not telling you all my virtues, because they’re personal and intimate and I might not even know who da fuq you is. I can, however, share a few.

Change

Last fall, I cut 8 to 10 inches of hair off my head. I wrote a whole blog post about how much I hated it. Here’s a fun fact: I didn’t actually hate the haircut—in fact, it looked way better than my long witchly locks ever did—I just hated that it was a change. I am terrified of change.

I don’t really want to get too deep into it (it requires more self-introspection than I am capable of), but some smart psychologists, James and Elizabeth Bugental, talk about it in their article, “A Fate Worse Than Dying, The Fear of Change.” This is what they say:

“When one feels that identity and the known world are in danger of being swept away, it is truly terrifying. The price of preserving the familiar meaning world and one’s place in it may be literal and physical death.”

See—I’m afraid change will beget death. But most changes don’t, and it’s not like anyone can avoid death anyway. So, we might as well have good haircuts in the meantime.

Presence

For me, presence simply means: DON’T CHECK YOUR EMAIL AND SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE WEATHER SO EFFING MUCH.

I still do, but maybe 1% less than I used to.

Environment

I try to recycle more and drive less. Mostly because, from what I understand, Earth will be uninhabitable pretty soon, and that will be bad for all of us.

Those are the only ones I feel like sharing. But I do have 13 of them, and I do try to focus on one per week. Sometimes I forget, and sometimes I remember but don’t bother thinking about it. But no matter what, it’s been a useful exercise, if only because it makes me feel like Benjamin Franklin.

If you were planning on making a resolution, maybe try this instead. Or don’t. Remember, the world might be uninhabitable pretty soon, so it won’t matter.

Happy 2017!