Blog

I decided to go "pro" with the blog so I could get comments. So comment away. Just keep it clean ok? Otherwise my puritanical offspring might charge me for the Swear Box.

I've decided I write better under time pressure. By the end of tomorrow I'll have chauffeured my kids over 1000 miles in the last five days. Yet I've already completed chapter two of "the next book", because I made myself a deadline that I'd get the synopsis and first three chapters to my agent before I head off to LA next week. Writing is like going to the gynecologist for an internal - you can always think of a good reason to put it off. That's why I have to set myself deadlines, until this next book is under contract and I've got an editor setting them for me.

7/26/05 Rolling, Rolling Rolling....and being in touch with my inner tweenybopper

Since 3pm on Monday afternoon I've driven over 400 miles. Mary Poppins (ie, my kids' nanny) is on vakay this week, and of course, it happens to be the week that one child is in camp in Bridgeport at the Beardsley Zoo (zoo camp - brilliant!) and the other is at pottery camp at Hand Painted in Stamford. Both camps start and finish at the same time. I could do with one of those Time Turner thingies like Hermione had in the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Monday evening I took my daughter and two of her closest and most precocious friends to see Hilary Duff at the Hartford Civic Center. I know I'm getting old because I actually liked the warm up bands, namely Teddy Geiger and Tyler Hilton, more than I liked the main act. Teddy Geiger in particular is really talented and a name to watch.

During Hilary Duff's set I spent more time watching the girls dance and hold up the "I love you Hilary" poster my daughter had made than looking at Hilary herself. The girls were hilarious - so into it - their first arena concert. There were very few men in the place, and the ones who were there either had earplugs in, like the guy across the aisle from me, or seemed to be trying to walk with an extra macho strut as if to ward off all the estrogen surrounding them. Although I guess prepubescent girls don't give off all that much estrogen do they? It's been a while since I studied biology. Like over 20 years....

I'm going to write a column about the whole Rove thing, but I just couldn't believe that Rep Pete King actually had the chutzpah to say that Rove deserved a medal for outing Valerie Plame "because it showed Joe Wilson was a liar". The Wall St Journal had an editorial on a similar theme. These guys have really gone through the looking glass, I tell you. They believe their own PR. or should I say, KR? (ap)?

6/29/05 (later that evening...)Possibly The Best Description of Bush's Iraq Policy EVER!

It's like assaulting a building because you're convinced WMD-wielding terrorists are there and want to kill you, discovering there's nothing there but a big warehouse full of newspapers, accidentally lighting the newspapers on fire, and then when people ask what the fuck you're doing in the building in the first place answering, "putting out the fire."

Will "W" ever learn to pronounce "Nuclear" (that's NEW-CLEE-ARE, dude!) correctly? Will Congress ever propose an amendment prohibiting anyone who can't say the word correctly from having control over this nation's nuclear arsenal? Will Sarah's TV survive all the things she throws at it every time she has to listen to W make a speech? Does this dude really believe his own PR? Do all those "swing voters" who voted for him finally realize what a huge mistake they made?

Got another NICE (even EXCEPTIONALLY NICE) e-mail today - this time from Jerry Gilio, who wrote:

Often, I feel like a fool standing alone in a forest, screaming his rage at the unhearing and uncaring trees. My tenuous grip on sanity relies on people like you who feel the same way and have a public forum in which to share it. You continue to make me proud that I know you.

Dude! Make Me BLUSH why don't you?! Seriously though, I can put up with a lot of hate mail if I get letters like these last two once and a while to keep me going... Thanks guys!

6/28/05 - Got a NICE e-mail today in response to my latest column. Well, whaddya know? Three cheers for Pattie Tucciarone, who wrote:

I very much look forward to your columns in the Greenwich Time, and I'm writing to suggest you just hit "delete" at the first whiff of an "unfriendly", shall we say, email. On second thought, why not print some of them, including the senders' names? My head is ready to explode on a daily basis after reading the paper or catching up with what passes for news these days. If it weren't for Jon Stewart, Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio and the internet, I don't know what I'd do to preserve my sanity.

I am right on the same page with you, and I am hopeful that there will be more of us. The tide does seem to be turning lately, and my only question is why is it taking so LONG for people to see that we are being led astray, lied to, taken down the path to financial ruin, and that the emperor and ALL of them have no clothes!

Now I have to listen to W tonight (heaven knows I can't WATCH him)....and hear about continuing on "the clear path to freedom". THERE ISN'T EVEN A CLEAR PATH TO THE AIRPORT IN IRAQ! (That's from Randi, by the by). Anyway, keep up the good work....you are doing what Americans are supposed to do, and you are doing it with taste and grace. Thank you.

Thank YOU Pattie! It's knowing there are folks like you out there that gives me the strength to put up with the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" I get from so many other readers!

Can't wait till school finishes tomorrow. In my house it's hard to figure out who is more excited that it's over, the kids or me, their Mom, who finally doesn't have to wake up at 6 and start acting like a drill sergeant before even having had the benefit of a cup of Java. After tomorrow I get a whole few months of slobbing around in my PJ's. *starts singing* "Schooooooooools Out for Summer!" *ends singing, mercifully for the dog, who is unfortunate enough to be within earshot.

So after a 15 year marital hiatus I re-took up tennis two years ago. This spring I figured I had to face my choke factor head on (you know, where you can serve 10 serves in a row in the box during practice but double fault the minute you're playing for points) so I signed up for the Hudson Valley Tennis League with Armonk Tennis Club where I play in the winter. Our team has been like the Bad News Bears, losing every match. My doubles partner, Karen and I didn't even meet each other, much less play together, until we took the court for the first match. But last week during that unbearably hot, humid weather we won our first set and played our first three set match. Which we lost. But hell, we won a set. And today...we WON!!! Figures its the last match of the season when we finally get the groove on. But what the hell. *starts singing* "We are the Champions"

So apparently NYC Mayor Bloomberg signed legislation that all new sporting facilities, theaters etc have to have double the amount of ladies rooms as they do men's. About bloody time!! Although when I went to a baseball game a few weeks back, I commented that it was the first time I'd been somewhere the men's room line was longer than the ladies.