This is after multiple go-arounds with a pumice stone. I basically sanded down my feet as if I were refinishing a chair.

Last week, Mooch and I attended a Mother/Daughter dance for her Daisy troop. Because I hate panty hose, I decided to try out some self-tanning mousse on my pasty winter legs.

It didn’t seem to be having an effect, so I gave myself a good shpritzing.

Unfortunately, I forgot about the effects of gravity, so didn’t notice that all the spray that didn’t land on my legs drifted down onto my feet.

The Big Puppy took one look at my Oompa Loompa orange appendages and said I had Snooki feet.

So what was the dance like?  If you can picture a hotel ballroom full of 100 shrieking seven year olds, their moms and a DJ BLASTING crappy dance music, you have an idea how many of these moms braved the long line at the lobby bar to get through the evening.

But beside horrific noise and a dinner that resembled food in shape only, we had a great time.  We all got dressed up, and Mooch looked adorable.  I even managed to forego wearing Birkenstocks, because I found a pair of high heels that I could actually stand up in*.  I even managed a bit of walking, but switched into flip-flops about mid-way through the night. Still, it was a major accomplishment to walk in heels, which I have pathetically never been able to do.  (Even toddlers in plastic dress-up heels manage better than I.)

I love the way high heels look, don’t get me wrong.  And I know Birkenstocks are butt-ugly and make me look like an aging hippie working at a hemp farm.

But.

I never trained myself to walk in them, and frankly, don’t understand how you can stand the pain.  (I have an excellent tolerance for pain, mind you. 31 hours of labor with a botched epidural  + an epidural headache = proof.)

But my toes don’t come to a sharp point, my arches aren’t shaped like Barbie’s and I can’t balance on a teetering spike.

So what was the miracle shoe?

They’re not Jimmy Choo’s, but at least they’re not these:

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I can't read this cover, but I don't care, baby. I know how to spell munney!

Did you hear the one about the multimillionaire teen who hates “stuff” like reading and writing?  I did, and wrote about it for my Dope of the Day column on that rockin’ site Funny not Slutty.

PS: If you don’t know the story of Margaret Donaldson’s quest to meet Justin Bieber, here’s a post you should read.  Then you can go backwards from there…

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I got an early Mothers Day present: the Listen To Your Mother show was a better mood lifter than a box of chocolates.  And unlike chocolate (and mothers, come to think of it,) it produced no guilt.  Laughs and tears, yes, and a huge amount of inspiration to write something good enough to get accepted for next year’s show.

It’s hard to fathom that Ann Imig created the first LTYM just two years ago, because it’s grown exponentially in that short time.  What was one show in Madison, Wisconsin became five and now ten productions in as many cities.  Next year, who knows?  The idea is so undeniably perfect — so malleable and timely and strong — that it seems hard to imagine it hadn’t been done before.

A dozen or so writers with stories to tell about motherhood, a captive audience hungry for the shared experience — it just works.

The New York show included stories about the authors’ mothers, kids, child-free lives, their siblings, their spouses… the stories took us to hospital corridors, sick beds, bedrooms… through tragedy and comedy.  It was a pretty epic journey — at once specific and universal.   I strongly urge you to visit the website and indulge in as many videos as you can.  This years’ performances aren’t up yet, but they will be soon.

If I had my way this Sunday, I’d sleep late, hang out at home with my family for a while, then settle in with a nice bottle of wine, an excellent box of chocolates (mostly dark, without any oxymoronic white chocolate poseur chocolates,) and just watch.

(The logo and photos are all from the LTYM website.  I hope that’s cool.)

OH!  According to the website, Listen To Your Mother tickets are still available in Madison, Northwest Indiana (but going fast), Philadelphia, San Francisco and Spokane.

*That’s a Taxi Driver reference, if you don’t know.  Not that Travis Bickle should be the first person to spring to mind when thinking about LTYM.  But then, if we could sit him down and make him watch all the YouTube videos of Listen to Your Mother performances (sort of like a very cool, feminist Ludovico treatment,**) things might have worked out between him and Cybill Shepherd, and thus, the whole mowhawk/murder scenario could have been avoided.

**That’s a Clockwork Orange reference.  I apologize, but this is how my brain works.  I’m going to stop now.

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Have I mentioned that I procrastinate?  Can I ask you to cast your eyes up to my header and read that part in the middle?  Or read How to Play the Procrastination Game, which I invented in 1982 but haven’t gotten around to manufacturing in board form.

I procrastinate particularly well when the task is something I care about, so… I’m gonna take another day to put up my impressions of the NY Listen to Your Mother show.

In the meantime, this post’s title constitutes my (lazy ass) Wordless Wednesday book review of this excellent memoir, which got richer as it went on. And which I read on my vacation at the end of March, along with two other good books I haven’t gotten around to telling you about.  They were good too.

Man, another Wordless Wednesday FAIL.

She had me at "normal."

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In a 24 hour period, I saw:

• George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic

• Louie CK  with either his real or TV daughters, (edited to add: real kids; I checked)

and, because I was at the thoroughly excellent Listen To Your Mother NYC show,

• Ann Imig and Deb Rox.  The blog royalty.  That’s why I saved them for last.  Oh, and Anne Flournoy (!), the creator of The Louise Log.  I had met Ann and Deb before (and when I say “met,” I mean that I had told them I was a fan, babbled nonsense in their general direction, then made a hasty escape) but hadn’t before met Anne.  Flournoy, that is.

All three talented, funny women were extremely gracious, which is always appreciated by we socially phobic types, I have to say.  I think I was marginally more composed when talking to Anne Flournoy, but that may just be because the conversation was shorter.  Around Ann Imig I become epically dorkish, the way I’d have probably been around David Letterman 20 years ago, had we ever met.

Photos courtesy of Anne Flournoy @TheLouiseLog; director Amy Wilson* (top) & half the cast, including producer Varda Steinhardt, second from left (bottom)

So as you can see, New York, my little home town, is awash with celebs.  Ho hum. Can’t swing a dead cat without smacking it into somebody famous.

Actually, the Parliament show was out here in the ‘burbs, but that just meant that the tickets were cheaper, I had a good seat, didn’t have to pay for parking, and was apologized to by a woman who  stood and accidentally blocked my view for like 45 seconds.  And the show was a lot of fun.

Phin had seen Parliament Funkadelic in its heyday, but I never had, so even though the band is largely composed of people who hadn’t been born when Don Cornelius was playing their songs on Soul Train, and George Clinton wore a hat and didn’t have wacked out rainbow dreads, I was happy to spend two hours at the show.

As for Louis CK, I was just walking down Broadway and there he was — black t-shirt, jeans, talking to his daughters.  If he’d been alone, I might have genuflected or something, but because he was with kids, I waited until they were past me, then snapped a quick shot to impress Phin.  And you guys, I guess.

The Listen To Your Mother Show was too cool to be relegated to the end of this post, so I’m going to resort to a…

Cliffhanger ending!

Tune in tomorrow to read all about the show.

*Post Script:  By all rights, I should have listed Amy Wilson among the celebs, but because she’s working with my friend Varda, I seem to be able to speak to her with some semblance of logic. And Varda should be famous, what with the gorgeous writing and all, but I’ve seen her in her underwear and vice versa, so she’s just folks.

• those who would sooner ride a motorcycle down the autobahn while naked and blindfolded than go scuba diving, and
• my mother.

I went on a solo scuba diving trip recently, and was lucky enough to meet a new dive buddy, Kari.  She also comes down to Cozumel alone, since her husband doesn’t dive, and we hit it off instantly.  (I don’t say that very often, but social awkwardnes-wise (is too a word,) I’m at my best when traveling.)

The diving on that trip was weird safer than taking a bath, in that there were unpredictable, difficult currents to contend with friendly lifesaver dolphins swimming along side us. But that difficulty dolphin buddy thing ended up being a good bonding experience, since we all had to depend on one another’s skills got to hang out with talking dolphins.  The boat follows the divers in Coz, so everyone dives as a unit.  If one person is doing something dopey or reckless wants to go shopping at Margaritaville, everyone’s dive will get cut short.

Kari takes video when she dives, and she was cool enough to send me these clips of myself underwater, so I could show Moochie.  Clip #1

Clip #2

Mooch was kind of underwhelmed, since you can’t see much besides me, but I thought I’d share them, nonetheless.  Because I’m scuba diving.  Which entails swimming around and breathing UNDER WATER.  And I’ve done it over 200 times, and been down well over 100′.  (Oh yeah, stop reading again, mom.)   It still amazes me that this is something I actually do, even though I get scared in wave pools if I can’t touch bottom, and have never dived head first into a pool.

I’m trying to revel in the accomplishment and share the experience with you, but also I’m trying really hard not to care how fat I look bobbing around wrapped in neoprene.

 The week before a show opens is called “Hell Week,” since rehearsals are run every night.  Moochie and Phin’s shows are now over, so we’re all starting to get back to normal schedules, but we were getting pretty exhausted with the every night rehearsal schedule.

I’ve gotten into enough hot water with Moochie teachers in the past, so I was hoping she wouldn’t  fall asleep in class.  I pictured her starting to snore, and having her math worksheet get drool-glued to her face.  The teacher would shake her awake, ask the reason she was so tired, and Mooch would reply “It’s because I go to hell week.” But because she’d be half asleep and have a worksheet plastered over her face, the teacher would only make out the “go to hell” part.

And then I’d have to go explain.

Luckily, she stayed awake, and the show was great.*

*She was in Seussical, Jr, which is filled with catchy, though sad, songs.  It also has some very questionable plot points for a kids’ show.  I’m going to write about it soon.

Now that's gotta hurt.

Want to hear the weirdest double feature I saw in the 80′s (at the $1 theater where your shoes would stick to the floor)?

American Werewolf in London and A Coal Miner’s Daughter.  A Natural combo, no?

They were both good, but had no business on the same bill.  And Coal Miner’s Daughter seemed to be eight hours long, but I’d have to google it.

Anyway, an 80′s double feature I’m more excited about are these two posts I wrote for Funny not Slutty’s epic, hysterical Back to the 80′s week.  If you want to see what I looked like in the 80′s or are wondering exactly which sitcoms were the best and the worst of the era, check out my posts.

But you should really look at everything there, especially if you’re old enough to actually remember that cheesetastic (is too a word) decade.

PS: A huge thank you to Jacki Schklar and Lakia Ross for working so hard on Back to the 80′s.  If I wasn’t so lucky and able to write for it, I’d be jealous of everyone who did.  The posts have been so, so funny.

PPS: I’m expecting that Smooshiest can confirm that I did, unfortunately, look exactly like that.

Can’t multitask.  At all.  Can’t figure out how to clear stuff off my jammed full hard drive.

I mean this literally, as in my external hard drive turned itself off because it’s full and now I can’t figure out how to access it to delete things, but I also mean it figuratively.  My brain is topped off and now it’s malfunctioning.

I was away (yes, on a great little diving trip, but still), then Phin was away (business trip to Vegas; no, really), and now we are in hell week for Moochie’s first play (Seussical, Jr. She plays a Who) and for Phin’s play, which I was stage managing until this week because I have to drive Mooch to rehearsals every day until the show opens on Saturday.

That’s why they call it hell week.   Phin was supposed to have a small, manageable part in his play, and I as going to work the whole show, but then the lead had to drop out, and Phin stepped in, so he’s stressed and super busy.  Also, his (our) show coincides with Mooch’s, so he will miss her Who debut, and I’ll miss the opening weekend of our (his) show.

And my neck and back hurt so much I’ve been wondering if I was in a car accident and just forgot about it.

So that’s why I haven’t been posting at all or commenting much.  I have been writing a few things for Funny not Slutty’s upcoming 80′s Week, which is going to be awesome, by the way, but because of the hard drive issues (computer and mental), I think some of what I wrote may be too jacked up to sort out.

But they were funny in my head…

Anyhoo, I think there are going to be a lot of great things up here:

So if you remember the 80′s, like John Hughes’ movies, know who Spandau Ballet is or wish that you had Jessie’s Girl, I’d keep visiting all week: April 15th — 21st.

Finally following the rules of Wordless Wednesday.