Francie is my friend

Well, friends, there is a God.  The very same day I was blogging about my G-list celebrity sightings (let's face it, Fortune Feimster - who?), I full on interacted with a real celebrity.  It all went down when I took Camille to a gymnastics class.  I didn't know this beforehand, but apparently kids go there for gymnastics, and moms go there to hang out and socialize.  The gymnastics happens out on the floor, and all the moms sit in rows of chairs on the other side of the room, gabbing away about homework and school projects.  Amazing what qualifies as gossip when you're a mom, but there you have it.  

So there I am, chilling with the gals, when it starts to dawn on me that the mom sitting next to me talking about ditching cable in favor of Apple TV plus Hulu looks really familiar.  Turns out, it was Francie from Alias.  She looked a lot like Francie and talked a lot like Francie, but since it's been about 10 years I wasn't so sure.  Of course once I got home, I confirmed it on the Internets by looking up some of the personal details she dropped in the conversation.  Yes I memorized picayune details from the conversation for later research and that is stalking, but it's also just darn good legwork, people.  

And now, a warning to all of my plain old friends reading this blog.  Camille will probably keep going to the gymnastics class, and Francie and I will probably become really good friends.  And no I won't introduce you, and yes I will pretend I don't know you if I'm out with her.

Celebrity spotter

Let me just say up front - I live for celebrity sightings.  To me, a huge perk of living in Los Angeles is all of the celebrities milling about town, doing their business.  When I spot them, I go into spy mode and start loud whispering the person's name and direction on the clock face to whoever will listen.  (Like this: "Cameron Diaz, twelve o'clock, Cameron Diaz, twelve o'clock!  That's right people, Cameron Diaz was once walking straight at me at the Studio City Farmers' Market.)  However, since we moved to the Valley and my outings mainly involve driving to preschool and work and the occasional after-school activity, I don't see many celebrities these days.

Which is why I am happy to report that I brushed elbows with a couple celebrities recently.  First, I saw this gal at the Maroon 5 concert on Sunday night.  I will not be surprised if you scrunch up your nose and say "who the H is that" but she is a stand-up comedian and regular on Chelsea Lately and therefore a celebrity in my book:

Fortune Feimster

Yesterday, my sister had a celebrity sighting at her neighborhood Ralphs, one that was much more exciting than Fortune Feimster and therefore newsworthy.  She spotted him in the meat aisle, slinging some meat into his cart:

Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost)

Happy Tuesday!

Weekend recap

Happy Monday to you!  I hope you had a super October weekend.  We had a fun weekend of soccer and BBQing with the family.  I volunteered on the soccer field before Camille's game, meaning I spent 5 hours at soccer at Saturday and I may officially be a soccer mom.  

Last night, we went a little crazy and stayed out until 11pm on a school night!  We went to the Hollywood Bowl to see Kelly Clarkson and Maroon 5 in concert.  I've only been there once and never at night, and it was amazing!  It's an outdoor amphitheater, near the 101 freeway but you feel like you're in the trees.  It was 70 degrees out and such a beautiful night to be outside.

Today I'm a little tired.  And so I leave you with this:

A Million Little Pieces

Do you remember that book A Million Little Pieces, and how the author claimed it was an autobiography based on his alcohol and drug addictions, and Oprah rocketed him to fame with her extra special Book Club, and then it turned out he was lying about it and wasn't really the cool former junkie/felon he pretended to be?

I do too.  That book was published 10 years ago.  Do you feel old now?  You're welcome.

But seriously, ever since having children, I feel like my brain is in a million little pieces.  No hard drugs here, just falling apart au naturel.  It's like I can't get my brain to actually focus, ever.  It feels like the neurons in my brain no longer fire how they used to, and I can't think of words I need to use and feel just a little dazed all the time.  

It's hard to pinpoint when it started, but I think it's pretty safe to say it was the year of sleep deprivation that came with a newborn, and then the second year with the second newborn finally put me over the edge.  I'll admit, I'm kind of spazzy and high-strung to start with, but I think the number of times I freak out in a given week over "losing" my car keys (which are always sitting somewhere in the house) has grown exponentially.  Then, there are moments when I get really spazzy, and I probably shouldn't be on the road let alone caring for two small children.  Like the times I'm driving along, and then get a jolt of panic, and look up in the rear view mirror to confirm that, yes, I do have two children in the backseat and I didn't just accidentally leave one at home.  Sometimes a little screaming in the backseat is helpful to know everyone is present and accounted for.

Sure, it's no big deal when you're doing Playdoh molds or building a birdie nest out of pillows.  Probably having a whacked out brain makes that stuff a little more fun for everyone.  But, then there are the times when I'm supposed to be really concentrating or problem solving (like um, lots of hours at work) and my inner voice starts yelling at myself that I need to snap out of it and focus and stay on track.  

Oh that's the other fun thing.  Along with my brain being fried, I feel like I have a much louder inner monologue that is super annoying.  The voice in my head is constantly lecturing me, about how I'm running 5 minutes late, if only I had left 5 minutes earlier, oh look at the clock now maybe I won't be as late, oh shit I am going to be late still.  (A friend of my sister's purposefully sets her car clock hours and minutes off, so she won't know how late she is.  It's true, once you're in the car, there's nothing you can do about it anyway.  Might be worth trying.)  Or sometimes the voice is consoling me, like when I say something weird in passing to a parent in preschool and I feel all self-conscious about it, but I just need to calm down because that parent was probably half-listening to me anyway.  I swear this wasn't so bad before kids, either.  It's like the years of being with little babies who can't speak and having one-sided conversations out-loud with myself have spawned a crazy voice in my head.

The little voice also likes to sing a lot, and I think I make it worse by watching The Voice.  I get about 4 hours of singing from the tv, which gives the little voice in my head all kinds of material to work from all week long.

My theory is that I have entered a state called "mom-brain" and that a lot of us suffer from it and don't really talk about it.  Is this a fog that lifts as some point, or can I do some mental exercises to shake it?  Like maybe a little Sudoku or a crossword puzzle every morning to get the neurons going?

Wednesday Plans

Hey, did you hear?  The government is shut down.  If you need me, I'll be speeding in my car and parking on the red.  Oh what's that, it's the federal government?  Ok I'll smuggle in some drugs instead.

I guess that means no one's working on my passport, boo.

My DVR

I'm a pretty big tv person and I look forward to unwinding in front of the tv most nights.  Here's what I'm watching these days:

- The Voice - I pretty much watch this on my own, since my husband can't take too much singing at a time.  I can't really blame him, two hours of singing a night is a bit much, and the judge banter is fairly annoying.  I just love the singing - they're so good!  So, I end up watching pieces of the The Voice all week long.  Sometimes I'll pick a favorite contestant, and a lot of the time I'm fast-forwarding country singing (is it me, or was there A LOT of that last season?).

- New Girl - A lot of people I've talked to find this show too annoying to watch, but I don't get it!  I think it's hilarious!  This is one 30-minutes that goes by way too fast.

- Homeland - We've only watched the first season because Showtime is taking forever to release the other seasons, but we loved this show.  It's hard to believe the same characters are still going in Season 4 (mainly Damian Lewis) so I'm kind of worried that Seasons 2 and 3 are going to get repetitive.

- Castle - Some network has been running Castle episodes 24/7 so we decided to try it out.  I don't really like the actors but it's a fairly entertaining show.  Kind of like CSI meets Psych.

- Psych - Also one of our favorite shows.  We love the actors and everything about it.  Has it started again this fall?

- Damages - I'm not sure if this show is taping any more seasons, but I'm including it on the list since it's one of my all-time faves.

- The Blacklist - I haven't seen the Blacklist yet, but I'm hearing too much good stuff about it to ignore it any longer.  Will be trying it out this week!

Party Planning

Welcome, readers!  Natalie's second birthday is just around the corner, so today I'm thinking about party planning.

I feel like I have evolved as a party planner and have a lot of wisdom to share.  My wisdom is this: bouncy houses are amazing, and the Costco sheet cake is God's gift to moms.

Before having kids, throwing a party meant picking up booze from BevMo and getting some new CDs.  For really fancy parties, sometimes I cooked, and I used the oven and all the burners on the stovetop at the same time.  No decorating to speak of, except maybe filling a vase with flowers and throwing on a tablecloth.

Then, Camille's first birthday rolled around.  I can't remember how it started, but somehow everything snowballed and I found myself up for hours at night scouring the web for party planning ideas.  I blame Etsy for making a lot of this research possible.  I was completely stressed out about what crafty decorations I was going to make, what adorable theme we'd have, how the theme would look 20 years later in pictures and whether I would live in infamy as a rad mom.  The more you love your child, the more decorations you painstakingly make by hand, right?  And talk about the peer pressure.  At one point, another mom mentioned that they were having a farm party for her daughter's first birthday, complete with hay bales, a live petting zoo, and a hayride for 100 people.  A neighbor down the street had a choo-choo train making laps around the block.  The me today would have been impressed for sure and maybe had a quick thought about how birthdays are a marathon and not a sprint, and no kid remembers the first one.  But back then, these little tidbits almost sent new-mom me over the edge.

So back to Camille's birthday.  We ended up with a "zoo animal" theme.  I spent days making ribbon pom-pom centerpieces (which I still have on display in the living room, 3+ years later, because I can't bring myself to disassemble what took so much effort to build) and labeling animal cookies boxes with "Happy birthday" stickers, and then after completing those projects, I fell off the wagon and finished things off with Domino's Pizza, Costco cake, and some balloons from the grocery store.

Here's a picture of the pom-poms and animal cookies:

pom poms and animal cookies

the birthday girl

Despite my failure at decorating the perfect party, it was a terrific day, thanks to great guests and beautiful weather.  It was then and there that I realized elaborate party planning is for the birds.  At Camille's second birthday party, we discovered the awesomeness that is the bouncy house, rounding out my current party repertoire.

Costco sheet cake at second birthday

 Third birthday bounce house

I don't mean any of this to judge people with actual party planning skills.  I have been to so many lovely parties, that were planned to the smallest detail, and I have been thoroughly impressed.  One Minnie Mouse-themed birthday party was so adorable that it completely sealed the deal for me that I can never accomplish an awesomely decorated party and am right to stop trying.

And so Natalie, if your second birthday involves a Costco cake and bounce house, and maybe one Dora balloon, and we call it a Dora party, I still love you!