Who Says…you can’t enjoy a pop song?

I just realized I like this song. Is it a Disney manufacture? Yes. Is the “Star” actually singing? I think so.


I know a lot of people hate the “pop princesses” that Disney churns out. Approximately every 4 years or so, as soon as one becomes a bit too old for the tween crowd there is another waiting in the wings, ready to be over exposed and exploited. Lord knows I have made snarky comments on the interchangeable moppets’.

I believe that for many of them, Disney, their parents, the media, and they themselves do a disservice to society as a whole. But truthfully this affects me in no way whatsoever. Spotty Chop has no interest in them. Of course he may someday. Perhaps his heart will even break because of one of them. I will have to cross that bridge if it’s ever in my sights, but not today.

I think the world can do worse than a song that tells kids to question people that are full of negativity. It sucks that kids may have to hear this message in a song, but let’s face it, some kids have parents that SUCK, and some kids simply need to hear things multiple times before they believe. Hell, it isn’t just kids that need to hear the message.

Not everyone has a Spotty Chop in their lives.

You’ve got every right to a beautiful life…

Some of My Favorite Muppets Moments (thanks You Tube)

Bohemian Rhapsody



Ode to Joy


Julie Andrews


Liza Manelli


Linda Ronstadt


John Cleese


Sandra Bullock


Martins Telephone


Star Wars


Patrick Stewart


Alphabet Song

I’d like to be a whale please…

this email made me giggle




Recently, in a large city in Australia, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym.


It said, "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"


A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern,


Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans.) They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don't exist.


If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don't have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex?


Just look at them ... where is IT? Therefore, they don't have kids either.


Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me:


I want to be a whale.



P.S. This is an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends.

With time, we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room, it distributes out to the rest of our bodies.


So we aren't heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy.

Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good grief, look how smart I am!¨

Memorial Day Camping at FransTed

I figured I should probably try to get this post in seeing as we are going camping again in a little over a week. God we love camping but let me tell you that this trip didn’t start off so great. I spent the night before tossing my cookies all night, why? Who frelling knows. I then had to pack up the car myself, not a big deal, I do it pretty much every trip as Boy Toy is always working. I felt like ass, it was hot, I wanted to clean the house so I could come home to a clean house…never happened.

The trip up was fine, we listened to the first 3 books in the Secrets of Droon series. Spotty LOVED it. He has mentioned that he wishes we had a DVD player in the car like Grammie, but I think books on tape/cd are so much better. I also found in Newbury Comics a CD of Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. We don’t have this book, but have Falling Up and we read it often. Anyhoo, Traffic SUCKED. Boy Toy was in a panic as the Bruins were playing an important game. We finally get up there and scope out a couple of bars to see if they have the game on. They do, but they are all crowded. We pull into the campground and a note is on the office door “no movie tonight Bruins Playoff on!” Boy Toy is in 7th heaven. We fly up to the site, put the outside of our tent up, he runs down to watch hockey. It starts to rain which turns into one of the worst thunder storms they have seen in a long time. Of course it is pouring. I am trying to get the rest of the tent together, it is pitch black, I have gotten our things under a tarp, Spotty is a little freaked out by the storm and all I want to do is throw up. I was certainly not as patient with Spotty as I should have been. I broke the pole of our additional shelter (goes over the table and keeps tons of stuff dry). Boy Toy comes up and I am huddled in a ball in the middle of the tent with Spotty leaning against me. It’s after 9pm we haven’t eaten since 2. Boy Toy drives us down to the office, we get milk and eat cereal. He drives us back to the site and then goes to watch the next period. Spotty and I eat cereal, I put two air mattresses on the ground with the sleeping bags on top and say “I am DONE, lets read”. Side note: our tent is German made, I have mentioned it on several occasions. I LOVE this tent. I would marry this tent and have its babies. But, the tent itself does not attach to the floor so long story short, bugs can get in. I did not care. We read and slept and the next morning had no bug bites at all (and as we ALL know by now, the Bruins won and advanced WOO WOO!)


Saturday was great, we hung out at the campground did campground things and also did the Littleton thing. I was starting to feel better and Spotty was feeling better because we set the tent up the right way “it just doesn’t feel like camping with the tent all wrong”. Sorry buddy.

Sunday was Story Land. Spotty and I had a blast.

Wasn’t the best trip we have had, far too much drama between Boy Toy and I. Here’s to hoping the next trip has less asshattery.

Holy Shit! The Bruins Win! 6/15/11

DO YOU BELIEVE

GO BRUINS!!!!!

Can't wait for Wednesday

Dear Spotty Chop you were 75 months old a week or two ago

Before you went to sleep on Mother’s Day you came up to me and took my hand. “Come with me you said”. You brought me into the kitchen and looked up to me and said “Would you care to dance?” It’s so funny but I go around thinking “I couldn’t possibly be more in love with you” and then you do something that makes me realize that my love for you truly has no bounds.

We went to the Big Apple Circus and let me tell you it was a circus! The first Friday in May I said to Boy Toy – Hey don’t forget we are going to the Big Apple Circus on Sunday, we need to skip swimming. Tuesday as I drove home I thought to myself “self, we need to grab those tickets to see what day...oh FUCK, we missed the friggen Circus. You have been looking forward to this for about a year. It is the only “event” that you kept bring up. Back on line I go and somehow got front row seats for this past Saturday. You LOVED the seats. When the miniature white horses came out you looked at me in wonder. “MOM, they look like unicorns, without the horn!” Later on in the program the Asian troupe was out and one of the girls was sitting facing us. You were giving one of the guys a “round of applause” and she smiled at you. You stared at her and then blew her a kiss. She got the biggest grin. God help me but we are in trouble.

I need to pay more attention to the queues you give. One soccer game you were grumpy, refused to run, wouldn’t listen to the coach, basically had a lousy attitude. I pulled you aside and said “I’m not sure what your problem is, but if you can’t pull it together you will not be playing video games today.” You had a bit of a meltdown. I had you sit on my lap and I told you “you are not trying; all I want you to do is do your best and have fun”. You said “ok mama I will try”, and you did. Were you running as much as you usually do? No, but you were running, and you had a smile on your face, and? You got a goal! Your first! Later that night? Temperature of 103. You are normally 96 or 97. I told you I was sorry about soccer and said “if you didn’t feel well you should have told me”. You said “I didn’t know I didn’t feel well”.

Our first camping trip this year was memorable; you wanted to go down to the office by yourself. We couldn’t think of a reason why you shouldn’t go, so off you went, with a walkie talkie, you were told to call us when you got to the bridge, when you got to the office and then when you were at the bridge again. With the first trip under your belt you went down at least a couple of times a day. You even convinced some of the campground personnel to give your rides on the golf carts.

We had our first trip to the Drive In! We watched Kung Fu Panda 2. We picked you up right from the YMCA. We were the 2nd car in line. You had a great time. We had a great time. At one point when Po’s mom had to hide him to keep him safe I started to cry because that’s just what I do. You got really concerned and kept patting my arm and head, “its ok mama, it’s ok”. You are so frelling sweet!

You tried french toast and like it, you didn’t like lemon squares. You still love reading the Boxcar children. You won’t eat chocolate chip muffins anymore, or parmesan cheese. You are on the fence about yogurt. Sometimes you will and sometimes you won’t, same thing with milk, specifically chocolate milk.

I am sure there is more to talk about, but it will have to wait till the next letter. Know that I love you more and more each day. You really are the sunshine in my life.

So what did you do last night?

Here in Massachusetts (I love spelling out the name of my state, kind of crazy, but it makes me happy . MA- SSA-CHU-SE- TTS. Actually now that I am singing it, it has a similar cadence as my last name. Who knew?

It was a crazy night. I was playing a video game (I sometimes get in 15-20 minutes before I go pick up Spotty Chop. Yes, I could get him earlier, but he always asks if he can stay longer so he can play with his friends, I don’t mind so we usually end up staying until the last kid is shipped out.) Anyways, I was playing Harvest Moon, and as I believe I have mentioned ,not even my profile, but Spotty’s profile that I deleted accidently and now am trying to get him back to where he was, when I saw the cable box flashing ERC (our emergency channel thingy) I thought it was a test. I had trouble at first understanding what I was seeing, there was a tornado warning (not watch) and when it switched back to the news a man was showing us a picture of where the projected path of the tornado was going and funny, it was headed our way. I grabbed food, water, blankets and big pillows and put them next to the basement door. Then I drove like crazy to get Spotty. I spoke to the head counselor and asked if she had heard about the tornado, she had and in fact the director had called earlier to tell them to find an emergency safe spot, which she had. I know where it is and it’s as good a spot as I would have picked. I am very glad they had a plan and were ready to implement at a moment’s notice. I felt much better once I had my hands on my boy. As we drove home I explained to Spotty that we would not be able to play video games or watch TV right away and proceeded to tell him about the Tornado. I asked him if he knew what a tornado was and he said it’s a big wind that can crush houses. I told him that I had a safe place for us in the basement and that I was going to gather stuff so that we could be down there and keep safe. He said he would get his toys together so we could play. I also told him that it was super important that he listen to me and if I said “get to the basement” he needed to run to the basement without arguing or stopping to get anything. Once we got to the house I started bringing everything to the basement including books because you need books to get you through any sort of adversity. Unfortunately our basement has turned into a…shit hole, ok maybe not that bad, but we store lots of crap down there and since the bad flooding of last year there is more stuff that is unorganized so it was a bit of a challenge to navigate quickly behind the bar. Once everything was in place I told Spotty to come on down, I had put down a featherbed and had lots of floor pillows and blankets and several lanterns so we were quite cozy. Our house phone didn’t work, and of course my crackberry doesn’t get reception in the house which meant that I could see that Boy Toy and my parents were trying to call me, but I was unable to pick up the phone to get a connection. Boy Toy did eventually manage to get through once to see if we were ok and to say he was coming home as fast as he could. He has some kind of “weather alert system” on his phone, which makes sense as he works out doors, but it showed him that there was a lot of violent activity where we lived and he worried. At one point Spotty asked if we were going to die. I told him I had no plans on dying, and that we would be ok.

Long story short, we were fine, the tornado never actually came our way, we were able to sleep in our own beds.


God Damn you folks in the mid-west, how the hell do you do it? That was some scary as shit stuff there, I am glad this happens only once or twice every 50 years. I can’t imagine how scary it would have been had the tornado actually touched down where we were.

Springfield MA, snaps to you! I hope you never again have to go through something like that.

Forgot to add -- I was emailing one of my colleagues in London this morning and told him what went on last night. After saying he was glad everyone was ok said:

We had some quite heavy rain at the weekend. I had to turn the radio up as I was sitting in the conservatory reading. All very annoying. Max asked if a thunderstorm was coming. It wasn’t.

I almost wet myself laughing.