Accent Vlog: Lawn Guyland in the Hizzouse!

So, I’ve been busy making a zillion behind the scenes changes and plans for this here little old blog, all of which will come to fruition next week. That’s why I’ve been super absentee. Well, that AND partying in Palm Springs at a fabulous wedding, my daughter starting preschool and way, WAY too much Words with Friends (SOMEBODY PLEASE MAKE ME STOP!).  Seriously though, I’ll be back to posting regularly next week when the site is all new and sparkly and fresh and “YAY!!”.

For now, I made a video blog. Now everyone can hear me whine my way through a whole 5 minutes! My public speaking professor in college once told me my voice was “in the basement” and that I made everything I said, even the most romantic sonnet or inspirational speech, sound horribly sarcastic. Like it was a joke… and I was a valley girl.

Excellent.

So it seemed fitting, then, to take part in this “accent” meme that’s been floating around for the past few weeks. Now, I don’t think I have an accent at all, despite growing up on Long Island and living in Crooklyn for the past 6 years, but I don’t know. Maybe I do. I do know this: when I stopped recording and watched myself I was all “HOLY SH*T! MAKE IT STOP! REDO!”, but there was no point in taping it again. This is my voice (and my awesome, attentive parenting). It is what it is. I’m like a 16 year old bratty Long Island girl. Don’t laugh.

 

** Props to the smokin’ hot “Not Mommy” for inspiring me.

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Wordless Wednesday: Shhhh

For the past few weeks, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning Lotte has gone to camp and the dog has gone to playgroup: leaving me alone to do laundry and scour the apartment breathe. There’s something so calming about my Wednesday morning solo walks through the awakening neighborhood to the farmer’s market in the park. Camp is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

Now, please excuse me while I unapologetically suck down an ice coffee with my feet up while catching up on Real Housewives of New Jersey. All child-rearing and housekeeping and no play makes Tracy stabby.

Just ask my husband.

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For this Wordless Wednesday I linked up with the fab mamas at Live and Love… Out Loud, Project Alicia, Moms Own Words and Angry Julie Monday.

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Throat Punch Thursday: The Douchemobile

Dear owner of the nondescript beige car that was parked on 13th Street yesterday,

What? Excuse me? There were many nondescript beige cars parked on 13th Street yesterday? You’re right. I’m talking about this one:

Hey buddy, your car alarm went off between the hours of 12:45pm and 4:30pm. The. Entire. Time. Screeching. Honking. Eardrum-splitting decibels of noise all up in my face for FOUR HOURS.

Do you know what happens between the hours of approximately 1-4? It’s motherfucking nap time, my friend. NAP. TIME. Nap time of many small neighborhood children who, because we live in a dense urban environment, were unable to take a nap because of your stupid car. Nap time that was much, much-needed in many apartments so the harried, frazzled, sleep-deprived mothers could take at least one hour to catch up on the Housewives of NYC reunion. One precious hour to themselves. One precious hour where they don’t have to sing Trot Old Joe 9000 times.

I’m not even talking about me. I have a chill 3-year-old, but what about the people with tiny, scream-y infants? Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to get some scream-y infants to take good naps?! Have you ever tried to tiptoe through your apartment while avoiding certain creaky floorboards in the hardwood lest you wake up the scream-y infant? Have you ever put a baby in the tightest burrito swaddle on earth, borderline straightjacket-style and rock, bounce and loudly “SHHHH” said baby for two straight hours until they finally give in and you get a tiny moment of relaxation?

You know what REALLY fucks up said tiny moment of relaxation?

Your stupid car alarm.

And what about the writers? This is Brooklyn! How could you disturb the flashes of brilliance taking place behind laptops in coffee shops throughout the neighborhood? Isn’t anybody thinking about all the novelists?! The bloggers?! Shame on you!

Here’s the thing: it’s not a deterrent. I couldn’t. Care. Less if someone steals your car. Seriously. Nobody is calling the police. Nobody is jumping up from behind their MacBooks shouting “Oh my WORD! It sounds like crime is afoot! Come on everybody! Let’s form a community watch and stop the car thief!”.  That’s not happening. I didn’t glance out the window until TWO WHOLE HOURS had passed, and only THEN did I peek out to see if anybody had placed any disparaging notes on your windshield. Somebody could have stripped your car down to the bare frame, and we would have all been like, “Meh. Just turn off the fucking alarm, ok robber? Thanks. XOXO.”.

Do you see what I’m getting at, Mr. Car Alarm Douchenozzle?

I did wonder, for a brief moment, if I was just being a jaded, lazy NYer, so I did a little googling. Did you know there are a gazillion blogs, websites, community groups and movements solely dedicated to trying to eradicate all car alarms in NYC? There are. It’s not just me. It’s everybody. Everybody hates you, Mr. Car Alarm Douchenozzle. EVERYBODY.

95% of the time your badass Viper alarm goes off when the fucking wind blows, or when a Fresh Direct truck rumbles by on their way to deliver someone’s case of Pampers and bundle of kale. It’s almost never an actual thief. Even if it is someone with malicious intentions, odds are nobody will help save your car. We’re too busy rummaging through junk drawers for a sharpie so we can scrawl an expletive-filled note for your windshield.

So, Mr. Car Alarm Douchenozzle, on behalf of all residents of NYC, be they mothers, fathers, infants, writers, acupuncturists, puppeteers or dog walkers: please shut your fucking car up right now. Everybody hates you.

XOXO,

Everyone

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Hot Stuff

Unless you live under a rock, you know that we’ve had a nice little heat wave for the past few days. I have to say: I didn’t mind it. In fact, after the thousands of blizzards we had this past winter, where our streets didn’t get plowed for about a week (in NYC!?), I welcome summer with all its stickiness. Now that Lotte is old enough to really hang out and is no longer a tiny, whiny cryfest, we’ve been doing some pretty awesome things recently. I’m ticking things off my summer bucket list like an efficient supermom. Ok, ok, we still manage to watch Wall-E, Bolt, or Toy Story 2 what feels like every five seconds, but we’ve really been taking advantage of living in the city lately.

 

Last week we went to Pier 6, one of our favorite parts of Brooklyn Bridge Park at the end of Atlantic Avenue. The last time we went was in March, when I was in the throes of potty training madness. Since they didn’t have bathrooms open yet, Lotte may or may not have tinkled through her skinny jeans into the sand area. Luckily we were the only people there, and nobody knew. Until now. Sorry. Fortunately the potties have been completed, so we won’t use the sandbox as a litter box anymore.

 

Seriously, though, it has to be one of the greatest parks in the history of EVER, with an amazing view of downtown Manhattan. Look at this awesome view:

I wish I had more pictures of the actual playground areas, like “slide mountain”, the to-die-for water park and the biggest sandbox in the universe, but I feel sketchy taking pictures at playgrounds. Isn’t that sad? At a couple of NYC playgrounds parents have recently been reprimanded by park workers for taking pictures that may have other people’s children in them, so I’m always reluctant to even take a picture of MY OWN KID playing with a fountain, lest some crazy person comes to yell at me. Lame. I DID snap an iphone pic of the most amped-up mom there, though, because she was so into the water park I swear I caught her elbowing toddlers so she could have a turn.

She was literally leaving kids in her wake. That guy behind her was clearly checking out her ass since she was the only adult there in a bathing suit. Go crazy mom, go!

 

Friday was my birthday, and Lotte and I went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens to see the Jim Henson exhibit. The temperature in my car while driving on the BQE read 104 that day: it was balls hot. The film museum, however, was really, really cool. Super interactive, interesting, modern minimal design… and air conditioned. Huzzah! I wanted SO BADLY to take pictures in the Jim Henson exhibit, because they had a few Fraggle puppets, Miss Piggy in her wedding gown (from Muppets take Manhattan), Bert and Ernie, as well as a bunch of props from The Dark Crystal (which I LOVED when I was little but looks creepy as shit now that I’m an adult), but there was absolutely NO photography allowed. There were security guards and museum workers around every corner, but like a complete badass rebel I snapped one pic with my phone.

Rowlf! Watching the footage of the making of the Muppet Show and Sesame Street actually made me a little teary. I was a huge Henson fan. HUGE. I’ve tried to get LJ into the Muppet Movie and Fraggle Rock, but she might be a little bit too young. Of course she couldn’t pass up a little bit of THIS guy:

On Saturday NYC felt like a urine-scented, roasting pan in hell, so we did what any sane family would do in a stanky heatwave: we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge! Totally out of our minds insane, clearly. At 5pm the temperature read 96 degrees, but we soldiered on, and then turned back around and went RIGHT back to our heavily air-conditioned apartment, gasping for air and recovering from heat stroke.

See that group of people under the Manhattan Bridge? That was a wedding. How awesome is THAT?

Yesterday the heat broke (barely), and since Pete had to go into the office to work on a pitch (on a Sunday! BOOOO!! Hisss!!), LJ and I hit our usual spot:

God, I LOVE summer.

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Wordless Wednesday: Brooklyn Botanical Garden

After a long holiday weekend at the beach followed by a few days trapped inside with a feverish kid, we took the bus to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden this morning. It was *probably* not the best idea to go on a day when it’s 95 degrees outside with 9000% humidity, but there were a lot of sprinklers on throughout the grounds that we could sprint through to keep us cool. Big ups to pretty flowers on a summer day.

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For this Wordless Wednesday I linked up with the fab mamas at Live and Love… Out Loud, Project Alicia, and Angry Julie Monday.

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Wordless Wednesday: Beating the heat at the Brooklyn Museum

Last week we had a few days where NYC was just unbearably steamy, especially for the beginning of June, so we headed to my favorite weekday time-suck: The Brooklyn Museum. The weekday mornings are always ridiculously empty, almost in a deserted, slasher flick way, so I don’t feel bad when LJ starts shouting “LOOK MOMMY!! LOOK AT HER BOOBIES!!! THAT LADY’S NAKED!! HAHA!!”. Before we left our apartment we made a scavenger hunt list of all the things we wanted to find in the artwork: a dog, a train, a princess, a river, a circle, a tiger, a mommy, some kids and a red square. We found them all because my kid is a super intellectual tiny genius. (NOT AT ALL because I bribed her, and told her if she helped me find everything on the list I’d buy her something from the store. Not at ALL.)

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Wordless Wednesday: Coney Island Rocks

After my horrific, soul-crushing Monday, I have to say: I kicked Tuesday’s butt!  LJ and I spent the entire day at Coney Island where we just LOVE the kitsch, the rides, the snacks and the overall awesomeness. (Plus, running into Zach Galifianakis around every corner didn’t hurt.)

 

 

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