One Lucky Bastard Am I

Miss Spoken is Irish. Not completely, but she's more Irish than she is Greek. More Irish than she is Portuguese. And more Irish than she is German.

Let's see just how Irish she is. To do this, we shall start with (and end with) Irish stereotypes:

1. Yes, she's Catholic. No, she's not a practicing Catholic, unless you count the religious art hanging in her house ('cause she thinks it's cool) or the neck-weary crucifixes she wore in the 80s or the time(s) she actually did go to church but told her mother that the holy water burned. Which reminds me ... Miss Spoken's sister, Miss Led,  thinks her bedroom is haunted and therefore has asked her mother to send her holy water. Miss Spoken has suggested to said mother that she instead send toilet water. Sort of like a placebo. This proves that not only is Miss Spoken a certified genius, but she is also funny(ish).
   
2. Yes, she loves the Kennedy Family. Once upon a time, Miss Spoken was the proud owner of a gorgeous black dining room table that was supposedly owned by a Kennedy. Which Kennedy, you ask? Who cares. Any Kennedy. And because the owner before Miss Spoken bought this table at Christie's, she believed it with all her heart and would spend weekends loving this table, polishing this table and totally making out with this table (which is a reoccurring theme for Miss Spoken).
3. Yes, she loves potatoes! She loves them fried, mashed, baked, baked again and stuffed with wonderful things like cheese and onion. God help her, she's even had them on her pizza.
4. Yes, she's a brawler? No, she's not a brawler? Miss Spoken refuses to answer, citing some bullshit excuse about self-incrimination and outstanding warrants. Blah-blah.
5. No, she's not an alcoholic ... per se. Aren't Sundays supposed to be about drinking? And so what if she relies on her 4:00 glass of Chardonnay (stop yelling at her 'cause it used to be 3:00) and Miss Perceived is the one who told her to take a shot of vodka in the morning ... just to settle down when life throws a big pile of shit at your already shit-coated extremities.
6. No, she does not have the Luck of the Irish. She has the Potato Famine Raped By Vikings kind of Irish luck. The kind of luck that delivers your menstrual cycle like a tsunami while you're in the middle of the woods camping. The kind of luck that always finds you in a Wal*Mart line where a price check needs to be done and the person doing the checking is fucking brainless. The kind of luck that shapes itself into a virus resting in Miss Spoken's chest and sinuses the day before she is to host a dozen people in her house for Thanksgiving. 

Conclusion:  Miss Spoken is too Irish for her own good and should consider being more Greek or maybe more German. More Greek/German stereotype tests to follow.

Babbleville's Town Trollop

Did I ever tell you guys that Babbleville has a Town Trollop? And did I mention that she lives just a couple of houses down from Miss Perceived and I? She sure does. And guess what?

We hate her. And it's a Fill a Sock With Quarters and Beat the Slut Out of Her kind of hate.

Here's the back story. Town Trollop is somewhere in her 20s and has three kids - Blondie (10), Punk Ass (11?) and the Girl Who Never Wears Shoes (2). Miss Perceived and I got to know them over the summer because Blondie and Punk Ass were left alone all day to wander the streets of Babbleville looking for food, friends and in Punk Ass's case, things to burn.

Punk Ass looks like he came from the Village of the Damned, is supposed to be medicated for ADHD and has some "anger management" issues which seem to increase the longer he goes without meds which is always because Town Trollop doesn't see to it that he takes them. She admittedly "gave him" to his Dad because he's so out of control. Oh, and did I mention that I walked in on Punk Ass taking a shit in my personal bathroom? Uggh....

The Girl Who Never Wears Shoes is dirty, whiny and always on Blondie's hip. I saw Blondie once strolling her sister at 7:30 in the morning by herself. I suppose it's good practice for Blondie because once she hits puberty and the boys start to pay her some much craved attention, I'm betting Town Trollop won't be there to help her and she'll find herself knocked up and waiting in line to redeem her WIC vouchers. I hope not, but you know how it goes.

Oh, and they have a black cat named Jig. Which is short for Jiggaboo. Which makes Town Trollop a slut and an asshole.

So, Miss Perceived and I were sort of forced to keep and eye on and feed Blondie and Punk Ass over the summer because they'd show up at the pool, and they'd come over when we weren't at the pool and because we like Blondie and because we are responsible adults when we're not sipping vodka in the morning. Fortunately, Punk Ass is now back with his Dad for the school year so I can stop hiding the matches and taking inventory after he leaves my house. And I can use my bathroom without the fear of walking in on some pale, demonic looking kid cupping his penis and crapping in my toilet.

But the drama continues. Because Town Trollop likes to tell stories about the men she meets online. Like the guy who pretended to get a call from his father and then pretended he was at the hospital and then left her at his house hoping she would leave. Which she didn't do until many, many hours later. After she took a nap. And when I joked about whether or not she went through his drawers to "look for a pen," she laughed and said, "I know, right?! Like, I found a bunch of money! I could have totally taken in. And I've been calling him all morning but he hasn't called me back. Crazy, right?!" Riiigghht.

And how she sometimes puts her kids to bed and then leaves to go to the gym. At ten o'clock at night.

And would I like to watch her kids for $100 a week. Ummm..... hell no. And aren't Miss Perceived and I already doing it for free?

And our hate for this chick escalates as Blondie explains that her mom has said that she's going to start food shopping so Blondie can have a fucking Pop Tart for breakfast before school. And because Knock, Knock .... Can I borrow a pencil because my mom didn't buy me any and I need to do my homework. Blondie also comes to my house every morning before school and walks with the kids and I which is fine by me. Except that I have to hear stories about her fucking mother. Like the time I was dressing the kids and she asked to use a hairbrush because Town Trollop and her stayed at her boyfriend's house overnight which is about two hours away and Blondie had to get up at 5:30 and didn't have time to do her hair.

But what's really got me pissed, is that Blondie has been asking me to sign her homework for her. Because her mother doesn't have time. And today, she asked me to sign her Progress Report. JeezusChrist!  After I inhaled deeply, bit a hole in my cheek and then pressed  the heels of my hands into my eyes so as not to tell this little girl that I thought her mother should have a hysterectomy; that I thought her mother was setting her up for total failure; that when I saw her mother I was going to pull out that sock full of quarters.

But I didn't say any of that out loud. What I said was that I was uncomfortable signing the report. That her grades were awesome (all As and Bs) and that her mom should really see this to which she replied once again that her mom was busy. So I signed it. 

But I'll be stopping by Town Trollop's house tonight. I'll leave that sock full of quarters home because as far as I know, there's no Wi-Fi in county jail. 

What Do Cannibalism and Miss Spoken Have In Common?

Donner Memorial State Park

Where else would the residents of Babbleville decide to pitch tents and expose themselves to the elements? Ya'll know your history, right? Here are Miss Spoken's cliff notes for those who were smoking pot in the sixth grade:

It was the winter of 1846 when some hardboiled emigrants tried to make their way to California via the Sierra Nevada mountains. Cue blizzards, human suffering, exhaustion, starvation, frostbite and cannibalization of the dead. Forty-one deaths, forty-six survivors.

Alright. Now that that's out of the way let's cut to modern day times where Miss Spoken and Miss Perceived, along with our party of thrill-seeking campers, are making our way to the very spot where this great American tragedy occurred.

That's when all hell breaks lose in my covered wagon.

With Johnny Boy at the reins, I'm looking over our reservations when it occurs to me that our reservations are for September 11 which means today is September 11 which means that I made a Gigantic Fuck Up when I booked two rooms at the Days Inn in Santa Barbara for September 11 when they should have been for September 18! Ugh!! I could vomit, I might vomit but either way I'm certainly going to cry or punch myself in the face because those rooms cost me almost $400 and I missed the 48 hour cancellation time and I'm freaking the fuckmesideways out when Legal alerts me to the fact that The Boy has a bloody nose. I look in the backseat and there is blood everywhere. It's a hyrdrant. Legal deftly whips the cover off her pillow and stops the river that is my son's blood. One disaster averted, I make about 40 desperate calls to my mom who is always home but for some reason isn't today but needs to be so she can call the Days Inn, pretend to be me and weave some bullshit story that gets me my money back.

Once this Babbleville Party makes it to Donner, things get better. I'm able to reach my mom and The Boy isn't dead. We unload fourteen days worth of survival goods for our two night stay. This cache of riches includes things like sleeping bags, crayons, bats, Xanax, etc. The tents go up, the beer goes down and the kids already look homeless and hungry.

Always the paradox, Miss Perceived pulls out flavored vodka (girlie, right?) but then drinks it straight out of tin cup (manly, right). Legal probably takes one too many pulls from the bottle because the next morning she is dry heaving behind our tent. And because I'm a caring kind of mom, I pat her on the back before I tell her to take her ass deeper into the woods because the last thing I want is that Thug Gang of Chipmunks, that has been circling our site, to get all crazy drunk with her undigested Smirnoff Citrus Vodka. Nobody wants to see boozy chipmunks fist-fighting their brothers and having regrettable sex. Not only that, but this is Bear Country. Bears. Hence the metal bear-resistant food lockers and the warnings not to keep toothpaste in your tent. 

This second day also brought on a game of hide-and-go-seek in which Johnny Boy got caught like a three-toed sloth half way up a tree and Miss Perceived proved that she could haul ass. My gay brother kept trying to get everybody to go see the beaver dam which of course led to many a joke about beavers of the vagina kind. So much so that Legal declared us disgusting. Cause we are. And we love talking about vaginas.

I continued my trend of fucking up greatly when, as I prepared to make our traditional breakfast of french toast and sausage, I realized that I had forgotten to pack the butter, the sausage and oh yeah, the freakin' eggs. And at dinner, I realized I forgot ketchup and mustard for the hotdogs and hamburgers. Unlike the Donner Party 163 years before us, the Babbleville Party was able to remedy my clusterfuck by saddling up for the Safeway ten minutes away. Plus, we got more of this for Miss Perceived:

Miss Spoken likes her ladies liquored up.

Introducing .... Miss Perceived

Remember when Miss Spoken (that's me) promised to introduce you to my saucy neighbor, Miss Perceived?

Well, wait no longer because Miss Perceived and I, along with Johnny Boy, Puppet Boy, Legal and a small army of children are heading up to Donner Lake for one final farewell to the heat-goddess-bitch Nevada likes to call Summer. I have to make these introductions pre-camping trip because who knows what kind of shenanigans will ensue and I just want to make it clear ahead of time that she is not what she seems.

Oh, Miss Perceived ......

Don't let the blonde hair, the golden tan, the lashes dipped in eight coats of mascara, the sprightly disposition or that Colgate smile fool you.

When I first met Miss Perceived I was sure that she had spent some time at the top of some sophomoric cheerleading pyramid. Did she have jazz hands? Bet she actually had a high school sweetheart and his name was Chad "the Chadster" Bingham. Did she listen to Britney Spears and sip Slim Fast through a straw while cursing her trumpet-tongued Chardonnay slurping neighbor (yours truly)?

Miss Spoken did not want to like Miss Perceived. Miss Perceived appeared to be so good-natured, so nice, so good with her son The Regulator, so ... I don't know ... blonde. But as time trickled on here in Babbleville, Miss Spoken was reminded of one very simple truth:

All blondes are evil.

Miss Perceived is like a carnivorous plant.... gorgeous, but with an arsenal of unexpected traps and rapid movements meant to distract you from her objective -- consumption and survival. 

Miss Perceived was never on top of that cheerleading pyramid but I bet she probably kicked down a formation or two back in the day. It's possible she screwed the quarterback and maybe his girlfriend, too. You're more likely to find a Brown Eyed Girl on her Ipod than a Womanizer and in fact she likes a shot or two of Grey Goose in the morning when Dick Head (also known as her ex-husband) decides to live up to his name and be an actual dick head. Miss Spoken likes that; she likes that a lot.

So in summary, Miss Spoken was in fact completely wrong about Miss Perceived and is now truly, madly, deeply in love with her. Or is at least willing to sneak into her tent and use her portable toilet this weekend.

Letter to a Vagabond

Dear Lady at School Who Only Wears Pajamas,

School has been in session now for what, a week and a half? Everyday I do the drop off and the pick-up thing. Actually, I do that little routine twice because Boss Lady gets out at 11:30 and The Boy isn't released until 3:00.

Every morning I manage to throw two waffles in the toaster for The Boy because without his waffles he will in fact go screwball ape shit crazy and every morning Boss Lady gets her cereal. I consume coffee. Sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's vodka. The Boy's hair gets all spikey and semi-mohawked and Boss Lady gets a ponytail. If these early morning hours go smooth enough, she might even get her beloved pigtails which is saying something for my time management skills because Boss Lady has more insane intersections in her hair than downtown LA which means getting a straight part down the center is damn near impossible. I do it because Boss Lady is ... well ... bossy and she sometimes rubs my back when Legal makes me want to drink lots of Nyquil and sprinkle Flexeril all over my Raisin Bran.

Anyway, in the midst of this regularly scheduled chaos, guess what lady? I manage to walk out of the house in actual clothes. I sometimes even dismiss my bedhead by running my fingers through my hair and on occasion, I have even found the time to throw on a pair of sunglasses so as not to frighten the little ones. So why JesusHellChristShit do you always arrive at the school in your Powerpuff Girls flannel pajama bottoms, a flimsy tank top, no bra and some slippers? And why are you wearing Powerpuff Girls clothing in the first place?

It drives me C.R.A.Z.Y!

You arrive at 3:00 in the exact same thing! Oh, and by "arrive" I mean that you walk. You walk to and from school in your pajamas and slippers with four kids; two of them trailing behind you in their pajamas as well. Can you not find 60 seconds within that 6 hours that the kids are in school to, ohh I don't know .....  get dressed? Are you writing the Great American Novel? Studying quantum mechanics? Or are you watching General Hospital and re-runs of Dog the Bounty Hunter?

Look, I don't know if you reside within Babbleville's finest real estate or if you live in the prettiest little double-wide you ever did see. Either way, I'm just tired of being confronted by your nipples at 8:45 every morning and hearing the sound of those damn slippers as you shuffle and flop your way back to the couch.

Enough with the damn pajamas and buy a fucking bra.

- Miss Spoken

My Gay, Lady Gaga and the Texas Roadhouse: A Love Story

Last week My Gay turned 25. By everybody else's standards he's irritatingly young but, as I mentioned, he's gay so he's all aflutter with concerns that he might be past his Purchase By date. Whatever. I'm 37 so in Gay Land, I'm already expired. Soured. Curdled.

Regardless, it's a day of celebration or at the very least consumption. I checked out our Babbleville Local Directory of Crappy Happenings but alas, the Gay Rodeo was nowhere to be found. Because what better way to say Happy Birthday than with a little bit of this:

And a whole lot of this:

I had to settle for the culinary stylings of the Texas Roadhouse which was fine by me because with My Gay and Puppet Boy in tow, I was confident we could bring some Brokeback swagger wherever we went. And at this point, I'd go anywhere if it meant getting my posterior out of this house and my feet into these Fergalicious Red Croc heels. 

Ahhhh ..... heels. Paired with Mac's Viva Glam Matte Red Lipstick.

Sweet nectar of love.......

The Roadhouse did not disappoint. I feasted (yes.... feasted) on the world's most well endowed chicken smothered in Guaranteed-To-Make-Your-Ass-Wider White Gravy with a side of Straight-To-The-Thighs Mashed Potatoes. Lady Gaga was our bartender. My Gay line danced with the staff while twirling his napkin in the air and also rode on a saddle that they wheeled to our table while we sang his Birthday praises. My little Annie Oakley is all done and grownded up. Sniff. Sniff. 

P.S. Told you we could bring a little Rainbow colored funk to the joint.  Yee-haw bitches!

Coming Soon .... The Chronicles of Babbleville

Holy Hell, people! I cannot believe that come Monday, the kids will be back to school. Well, not entirely. Sage is 18 now and still "exploring" her opportunities. Translation: wasting the day away on some social networking site and then making brownies after I go to bed. And well, Boss Lady was born after some lame-ass cutoff date so she has to do another full year of pre-school which is only 2.5 hours long and so beneath her superior intelligence that it's almost an insult but we'll take it anyway.

Alright, so maybe it's just The Boy that's going back to school full-time ... but I Can't Wait!

Here's one reason:

I've been holding back from you, dear readers. What with suffering through a summer of outdoor activities and tending to little things like feeding the kids three squares a day and making sure my internal cauldron of craziness does not boil over, I have neglected to describe in any kind of detail the outrageous cast of characters on and around my block. This neighborhood is some kind of wonderful; a fantastic hybrid of Sesame Street meets Cops meets those old school, late night movies on Showtime that us kids were never supposed to watch but we so did.

These ladies deserve to be fleshed out properly and now that I have an extra 2.5 hours in my day, my goal is to do just that. But first, I have to come up with a pseudo-name for our tiny little corner of the planet.

I think I'll dub thee Babbleville.

Unless ya'll got something better.