I always adore when people post lists of classic stuff from the 80’s. Let’s take a trip back in time and check out some of the more obscure and underappreciated toys and shows from my childhood.
I adored mine. It was stolen by a fundamentalist Christian kid I used to hang out with. I remember her name. I will protect the identity of the thief. But, if she were ever to read this, I want it back!
The ears never got dry. It didn’t matter. I loved this moldy pup.
Clearly I have older brothers.
The only word to describe this is RAD.
My mom told us to throw them all out. I hid them in my closet for years before becoming so wracked with guilt I gave them away.
Another “no-no” in our crazy Christian family.
I had an obsession with Dotty because she wore roller skates.
I was obsessed with Wordsworth because he wore roller skates. There is a theme.
When I was born, my oldest brother looked through the hospital nursery window and sang, “See in the window, it’s Hannah Banana,” to the Magilla Gorilla tune.
I wanted to be the Little Prince. Yes, Prince.
I dare you to sing the song and see if anyone is cool enough to shout “bears” at the end. I have a friend like that. (although I refer to him as a fiend not a friend)
I love Tom Hanks, but this is still the best role he ever played. Take that Forrest Gump!
I watched the CRAP out of this show.
I admit it, I had a crush on Ponch. But, then he visited my news station in Miami and was groping all of the female “talent.” Grooosss.
I don’t care if Alanis Morissette was on this show. It was awesome anyway.
That’s it. I am quitting my job and dedicating the rest of my life to creating a time machine just so I can enjoy the 80’s again.
The latest addition to my toddler’s lexicon, “No way!”
This morning he was berating me using many variations.
“NO WAY, NO!”
“No way, no mama!”
The funny thing is that all I was doing was asking if he wanted to go downstairs or go find daddy or sit on the bathroom counter. Apparently these questions made him IRATE.
I kind of want to start using this when anyone asks me to do something I don’t want to do.
“You need to add this story to your newscast.”
“NO WAY!”
“Would you like to come to my crap selling party and buy a bunch of stuff you don’t want so I can make money while you hang out with a bunch of other chicks I suckered into it?”
“NO WAY, NO!”
Facebook should add a No Way button.
Sports-related post. Self-aggrandizing post. Workout post. Please join my cause and contribute money to it post. I look better in a bikini than you post.
“NO WAY, NO WAY, NO WAY, NO WAY, NO WAY MAMA!”
I just started on the HCG diet again.
I like to disaffectedly refer to it as the Help Control the Gut diet.
I won’t bother describing it. It works, removing fat from all of the right places during an insanely short amount of time.
It sounds awesome, if you don’t mind being perpetually exhausted and on the verge of passing out.
There are a plethora of subversive ways my life plots to derail the diet.
I go to my mother-in-law’s house and the evening begins with beer, nachos and queso. My father-in-law doesn’t even ask, just hands me a beer. I mean, when do I EVER say no to a beer?
My daughter asks me to blow on her nacho cheese which means I will inevitably have to touch it with my tongue or lips to be sure it’s not too hot. Biggest tease ever.
Thankfully no one notices I am steadily chugging water. I had no idea you could grow to HATE water.
The endless course meal moves on to toasted bread with olive spread. My mother-in-law asks me if I like sun dried tomatoes. I say yes, but I won’t be having any because because I am back on the dreaded diet. (She is aware of how said wretched diet works)
She says, “NO, no, no. I cooked all of this food. You are going to eat. No, no. You have to eat.”
I never know how to respond to statements like that. “Uh, no?” Awkward, awkward, awkward.
Then I get to watch as everyone eats rice and chicken along with assorted goodies, the kids sneaking Hershey’s Kisses and cookies.
Yesterday, I meet my husband and the kids at our favorite waterfront dive for lunch and he immediately slides a beer over and says, “This is yours.”
So sweet, yet so evil.
I had to push it back and instead choke down a drink with Club Soda that tastes like lighter fluid and is actually a “cheat” on the diet.
My daughter is great at sharing. I am so proud and so sick of her trying to force-feed me gold fish, fish sticks and mac n’ cheese.
Now, the world begins to conspire against me. We turn the clocks ahead an hour. My son is up late coughing and crying because he’s sick. My daughter wakes up from a nightmare at midnight demanding milk.
I drive to work, eyes half closed drinking black coffee. (which is allowed, but no other food until noon)
This means I am still falling asleep at work AND the coffee is shredding my stomach.
At lunchtime I have to walk past the vending machines to get to my pathetic portion of meat and veggies in the fridge. I NEVER notice the vending machines until I am on this diet. Now, I would stab a bitch for a corn chip.
Newsrooms are notorious for cakes, cookies, cupcakes, chocolate and everything bad. People just plunk it down on a desk for anyone to take, free of charge. Today, no naughty free crap trying to lure me away from the diet. But, someone has already offered me a Watchamacallit.
So, I sit here lips burning and fingers sticky from peeling an orange. I hate peeling oranges more than most people hate cleaning the toilet.
I have already started dreaming about carbs. I literally dreamed I was eating Tofu Woon Sen. It’s just vegetables, tofu and clear noodles… a meal most would consider “healthy.”
For me, it’s one more pair of pants I have to abandon forever to the widening abyss of items to donate to Goodwill that is my closet. It’s a living, breathing, gaping chasm, hungry for more.
But, not as hungry as I am right now.
I’ve never done crack or heroin, but carbs can’t be that far behind. I would eat uncooked grains of rice or raw pasta. I would snort bread crumbs.
Keep me away from all sharp objects.

Alma’s picture of herself (on the left) and Huxley on the right. She said we were drawing on “Ricin paper” instead of “construction paper.” Is she trying to poison me? Should I worry?
When I was growing up I had no desire whatsoever to have children.
I was one of those awkward people who didn’t even know how to smile appropriately at a baby.
I had big dreams of being a career-driven, serial monogamist in New York or Chicago.
I was oblivious to the existence of a biological clock until my Freshman year in college. What started it ticking? Those damn Baby Story shows on TLC. You could almost smell those sweet, powdery newborns.
Over the course of the next several years it was an upward trajectory toward parenthood.
You start picturing what your babies might look like.
Ticking.
Then you start picking names for your imaginary babies, usually horrible ones.
Ticking louder.
Then your friends actually start squeezing kids out and you suffer from baby envy.
TICKING LIKE TINNITUS.
You get married and then it becomes an obsession.
Every negative pregnancy test is a visual representation of your eggs shriveling up and turning black.
Every month that passes is a guarantee your child will have some horrible deformity or disability because you waited too long.
Your nightmares resemble the warning on the side of the Accutane box.
Then you get pregnant.
A whole different kind of clock starts ticking.
You spend the first three months anxiously awaiting the ‘safe time’ to break the news to your family, friends and work.
The next three months are waiting to find out the gender.
The next three are spent buying a billion things you will never actually end up using and clothes your child will stain and destroy upon the first wearing. They’re also spent being miserable and uncomfortable. You start to count every second.
I’m not gonna lie. I ADORED being pregnant. That changed when I realized my baby was pressing up on my hiatal hernia, causing me to have perpetual acid reflux and difficulty swallowing.
Then you count contractions.
Baby is born! Woohoo! Your 6-pound-whatever-ounce reason to live has arrived.
Then you begin marking off your baby’s developmental progress, another way of tracking time.
You worry about whether they’re at the appropriate age to eat rice cereal, whether they’re already teething or just sick, whether they’re behind when it comes to taking those first steps, those first words, those first anythings.
We happened to have two children in quick succession and then realized there was no way in hell we were ever going to have another. We hit the jackpot of crazy kids. Even my own mother recently confessed that both of my toddlers are “exceptionally difficult.” Not the kind of exceptional I was hoping for.
Then, something strange happens. There’s nothing to look forward to. There’s no tracking of time passing. There’s no marking anything off on a planner or calendar.
Now, you’re just supposed to live.
What? How do I do that?
The only internal clock I can find is the one that keeps telling me to bottle up whatever moments I have with my babies.
It’s counting down until they’re too big to sit on my lap, until they don’t call me “mommy” but “mom”, until they start dating and say they hate me.
Eventually, they will leave and I will be left where every parent ends up: crushed by the realization that my babies really aren’t babies anymore, but grownups about to embark on their own journey toward parenthood.
Now, my obsession with time is that I don’t have enough.
Every second slips away while I am stuck in traffic, folding laundry or working.
Don’t mean to talk badly of my profession, but there’s no denying that I would rather be exploring the great outdoors with my kids than writing about a guy accused of raping his pit bull.
Lately Alma has been trying to prove she’s “big enough” to do everything by herself. She’s big enough to get up to the potty by herself, wash her own hands and dress herself. If she tells me she doesn’t need me one more time, I’m going to burst into tears.
This is the beginning of the end.
My powdery fresh newborns are toddlers.
I will never cry tears of joy holding a tiny baby that is my own.
Shit, is this the sound of my real biological clock ticking?
1) 12 Years a Slave: 12 sounds about right. That’s when you can start making kids do their own laundry and load the dishwasher, right?
2) Dallas Buyers Club: I feel like Matthew Mcconaughey’s character.
3) Amerian Hustle: I actually look like Christian Bale’s character.
4) Frozen: My libido. We’ll thaw it out in a few years.
5) Gravity: Where did all my friends go? Oh, wait… I had kids. It’s like being adrift in space.
6) I wore heels to work for the first time in many moons yesterday and bit it hard at the bottom of the stairs ala J-Law. Who needs a fancy gown and an oscar nom to throw yourself to the ground like an a-hole?
7) Ellen: With the current state of my hair growing out process, I look like her only not nearly as beautiful.
8) Blue Jasmine: Didn’t see it, but read a description that included “a fragile socialite experiencing a meltdown.” Replace “socialite” with “working mom” and bingo.
9) I am just about as bad as Bradley Cooper at cutting heads off in selfies and Kevin Spacey could be my doppelganger in 95% of pictures I end up in.
10) Jared Leto. Along with every other woman in the world who tweeted this: I want your hair. Now.