Jami Speaks to the Nice People In Hollywood

Dear Hollywood Producers of Comic Book Movies, Hi, first off, thanks for finally starting to turn the comic book movies over to people who understand the genre. We appreciate that the people who are making the comic book movies seem to be "getting it". Second, we love this new Batman series. Really, it's excellent. Saw the Dark Knight today and loved it. That's how the Joker is supposed to be. Harvey Two-Face? Excellent. As much as I love Tommy Lee, that character was so wrong. But this - perfect. However, and I do so hate to complain, for the love of Gotham, will you please stop trying to give Batman a love interest? The man is mentally unstable and bum-deep in vigilantism, not at all in the right place for dating. Yes, I know, plenty of crazies date, but the point is that Batman is not one of them. Look, Superman has Lois, and you can't do Spider-man without MJ, because they are part of the story. But Bruce Wayne is a billionaire playboy by day and angry crime-fighter by night. This leaves no time for falling in love. He doesn't do it. See, I know you think that it makes it more attractive to the non-geek ladies, but believe me, if they weren't going to go see it without the romance, they're not going for the 3 minutes of on-screen kissy-kissy. The fan boys don't want to see Bruce Wayne mooning over some made-up childhood sweetheart. The action movie fans aren't there for smooching. There is no reason for it. It's just wasting time. Thanks, Jami Now, a quick shout-out to my geek friends, I would not object to a subplot that included Talia al Ghul, the closest thing, IMO, that the Bat has to a lady-friend. But that might just be me.

Jami Brain Dumps From the Last Few Days

A few quick things from the last few days . . . At the park, Eddie's running around as usual while two girls, age 6-7ish, are on the big climbing thing. I hadn't been paying them much attention, as they conspired and giggled and climbed, but then they took over the swings next to where I was sitting and I heard one say to the other "This is the Ewok planet. Be careful, because we don't want to be captured by the Imperials!" Yay! My heart soared. The next generation of Girl Geeks. What possesses people to buy a car too big for them to drive? This morning, I watched as an older couple made at least 4 attempts to park their Chevy Suburban LT (a "car" approximately the size of my first apartment) in a normal parking space. After holding up the 20 or so cars who were trying to exit the parking lot, the driver pulled it mostly into the space so that they could get around him. Then, once the traffic cleared, his wife (I'm assuming) got out and made air traffic control signals/ blocked oncoming cars so that he could pull all the way out again, straighten out and finally pull all the way in. Here's a tip, folks, if it takes you two people to park your car, it's the wrong car for you. There is no reason these people need a car that size, unless they are lifetimes members of the Annoy the Humans club. I won a gift basket at Gymboree. This is not surprising, as it was a raffle and for most raffles I enter, if they are picking more than one or two tickets, I tend to win something. Not the huge things, but I do seem to win fairly often. It's one of the many perks of being me. The Husband is unusually lucky with cards. If you've seen Maverick, you know at the end where he needs the ace and sort of "thinks" it up to the top of the deck? I swear the Husband can do that. That's why we stick to board games. His voodoo doesn't work on dice, spinners or what-have-you.

Jami and That Homeless Guy

Did you ever see something that just stuck with you? I was downtown a few days ago and walked by the park that I used to be able to see from my office window. I immediately flashed back to a day when a coworker and I sat at the window for about 35 minutes and watched a homeless guy walk around that park, luring pigeons. See, we started watching because he was clearly trying to get the pigeons to come to him and it wasn't really working. He'd throw some food at them and then run to where they flocked to eat it. The process was hilarious, and I'd called her over to watch with me. Then, suddenly changing strategy, he sat down and took out handfuls of something (food??) from his coat pockets. He put one arm all the way out and the other about halfway down that arm. And to our utter shock, one of the pigeons landed on his outstretched hand. Faster than you'd believe possible - he closed the other hand on it and had a pigeon. We sat stunned, as he stuffed it into a nearby duffel bag and repeated the procedure. FIVE TIMES. We debated calling someone - who do you call about a homeless man nabbing pigeons?? Is it even illegal? We didn't know and before we could even take action, he picked up his pigeon-laden bag and strolled off. There are too many unanswered questions on that one to even start asking, so I'll just say: every now and then I think about That Homeless Guy. And his 6 captured pigeons. And wonder.

Jami Insists You Watch This

If you enjoy any combination of the following:

• Joss Whedon projects
• Superheroes
• Musicals
• Neil Patrick Harris
• Seriously hilarious shorts

Go, right now to Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog which is only available for a very brief time but is so very laugh-out loud-at-your-computer wrong. You will forever regret missing it. Watch all three acts now, before it's too late.

GO! GO!!!!

Jami Is Too Sticky To Blog

Dang, it's hot.

Jami Cleans the Bathroom

No, it's not so rare that I felt the need to announce it, it's just that I hate cleaning the bathroom. I'm a bit on the germ-a-phobe side and even our bathroom, which I clean regularly and I know that just the three of us are using it, it's still the bathroom. It's just gross and I hate it. But today, I was cleaning the bathroom and I thought "Hey, at least I have a bathroom to clean, right? Some people don't." It got my brain going on a really good path and here's what sort of flowed. This has some God-stuff in it, so if that bugs you, well, you might want to pop on over to some other blog:

• Thank you, God, that I have a bathroom and a family to clean it for.
• I am grateful that I can clean my bathroom. There are people who would gladly scrub my toilet if it meant they had the ability to do it.
• Thank you, God, for a Husband who works so hard so that I can stay home and clean my bathroom.
• I am thankful that I live in a place with clean, hot water any time I want it. (unless I've already used it all)
• I thank God that I was born in a country where I can make all the choices I've made that brings me here cleaning this bathroom. Where I could even choose to hire someone else to clean it.
• Thank you, God, that I live in the age of great cleaners and the floors you don't have to wax, so I know that most of the germs are dead and I don't have to worry about waxy build-up.
• Thanks, God, that we had the wisdom to buy a house with only one bathroom so I don't have to go do another one, next.

So that's my little message. I cleaned the bathroom, I cleaned the attitude. Good day.

Jami Wants to Meet the Person Who Buys These

I drop Eddie off at his new "big boy" sports class, where Mommy gets to leave and wander off through the Galleria (expensive, upscale mall). I have an hour to kill and I spot that sign that no woman can walk past - "Shoe Sale". Yay!

However, at the Galleria, "sale" doesn't always mean affordable. I get to the first table and see shoes starting at $59. Hmm, not really "sale" to me. The next has a mix, some are as low as $39. Better, but still not what I look for. Then I see a table covered with the style of shoes in the following picture:

So you have here, your basic plastic sandals with big fake rhinestones. Bedazzled Jellies. Gotta guess? Are you thinking $19.99? You would be wrong. $79. On clearance. Seventy-nine dollars! The FIRST sale tag,above the clearance tag said $99. If you bought these shoes on "clearance" for $79, you should be slapped for being stupid. I don't care how rich you are. If you bought them on "sale" for $99, you should slap your own self and send me the video. If you bought these for whatever the heck full price was, more than $100, obviously, you should drive to my house wearing these shoes so I can slap you out of them, video it and post it to YouTube.

And I love shoes. I do, but come on. These aren't even a brand name (or at least one I'd ever heard of). Just saying.

Jami, Two Weddings, One Medical Emergency

It was quite the busy weekend. M got married. My friend Giovannna got married. And my parents broke my baby. Both weddings were lovely and totally, completely different. Beautiful ceremonies, gorgeous brides, fun receptions and of course, great food.

Then, at the second one, my parents call. Hi, having fun? Oh - Eddie's bleeding profusely from the head. Maybe a stitch or two.

Inside my head: AHHHHH!!! MY BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Out loud: Oh, okay, uh, what happened?

A little accident on the playground. They were thinking of taking him somewhere, you know, just to check. We got it sorted out. The Husband solicitously asked if I wanted to leave - before the prime rib was even served. But the boy was repaired with a minimum of trauma - no stitches, just glue. Yeah, they superglued my child's head back together. Here's the after photo:



Fortunately, there was plenty of vodka at the reception to keep me from worrying about my poor injured baby, who had already forgotten where his boo-boo is and was mostly annoyed that people kept asking him if he wanted to talk to mommy when he just wanted to go back to playground.

Jami's Got a Lot of Reasons to Smile

Great Family:

Newlywed Best Friend:

Good silly friends:

Another Newly Married Friend:


It was a pretty good weekend. I'll tell you about it later!

Jami Goes to a Lot of Trouble to Post These Pics for EDW's Enjoyment

The dress for Saturday night:



Friday Night, it's a darker blue that I couldn't get to come out right in these pics.


Close up of the detail:


And of course, the shoes. Ignore the red-white-blue toe sparklies, they are coming off tonight:

Jami Does Drugs

To make a long story short, the Husband poisoned me. You are most likely to be poisoned by your spouse. Actually he got poison something (we aren't sure what - oak, sumac, whatever) and contrary to what they tell you on the Internet, he shared it with me. I had a little patch of it, about the size of three of my fingers. But is kept spreading and itching and looking more and more weird. And seeping. And peeling. Yup, it was gross. I got to the point I itched and burned and spread and hurt so much that I had to go to the doctor. Who said: 1. We don't know what it is and we probably never will. 2. It doesn't matter, because we can still treat it with drugs. Yay drugs! So I'm on steroids and anti-histamines. I haven't had too many side effects, though I do feel like blasting my quads and maybe beating up some nerds. Oh, but when they say "Take with food" they are not kidding. And they don't mean Diet Coke. Apparently, steroids can make your blood sugar drop, and eating nothing but Diet Coke for several hours before you take a couple of steroids does not help that situation. And remember, don't touch your spouse if you suspect he/she might be poisonous.

Jami Races the Lights

You know what I hate? When I am halfway across the T tracks (light rail trolley system) and the lights start blinking. I know, in my head, if the lights just started that a crash is not imminent, but I still feel panicked. My car's on the tracks and the lights are blinking! AHHHHHHHH! The "AHHHHHHH!" is about as long as it takes for my car to no longer be on the tracks, since I'm already moving and almost over them when the light started in the first place. This has happened to me three times in the past week. Those T's are out to get me.

Jami Learns a Disappointing Fact

In the course of a conversation with one friend, she mentions that one of the reasons she is no longer close to a mutual acquaintance (let's call her Mary) is the racial slurs she uses. Mary and I have just been getting to know each other, this other friend has known her for several years, so I guess Mary either hasn't felt comfortable enough around me to use the offensive words, or knowing that I'm from a multi-culti family, she has restrained herself. This is one of the problems with political correctness - it calls racism where there sometimes isn't, and it helps people who are racist hide it better. See, I'm a big believer in: if you're racist, let the world know it. Use the most crass, evil offense words you know. Use them all the time. This is the USA and you have the total right to believe any crazy thing you want. And I have the right to not want to be your friend if your ideas don't work for me. But I have to know what you think to decide if we can be buds. I respect you and your beliefs, but that doesn't mean I want to spend too much time exposed to them. So let's be upfront about it. In a world where it's not longer socially acceptable to even admit there are differences, people who think those differences are important are increasingly harder to spot.

Jami Ponders the Wrong Movies

For those who aren't aware, the Husband manages a video store. Therefore I have been privy to all the secret inner workings of video rentals. It's not as exciting as I make it sound. Fairly regularly, people return movies to the wrong store. The most common, at least at the Husband's store, is a movie returned to a different store in the same chain. Easy to do, I guess. Or people figure it's all the same company, right? The store managers make regular trips around to trade all the confused movies and it all works out. Then you get the people who return the movie to the wrong company. This takes a higher level of not paying attention, as the boxes generally have the store name right there on them. "Hmm, this says Bob's Movie Rentals, but I'm sure that it goes back to Movies, Movies, Movies." The competitors make nice for hostage exchanges. It's that common. Once the Husband even got on that had been borrowed from the library. But yesterday, he had a new one. One we'd not seen before. Movies returned to the store that were not rental movies. Someone had dropped movies in the return box that were in the original box, no store label, not from the library. And, they were porn. Not your hardcore stuff, a couple of the "Girls Gone Wild" variety. So what would possess someone to donate their personal porn to a rental store? I have a few ideas:

1. Let's say Bob owns some porn, but his beloved wife doesn't know. One day, while cleaning out his desk, she finds these videos. She doesn't want them in the house, but she also doesn't want them to take up space in the landfill. Wasteful, you know. So she figures she'll take them to the closest video store and hopefully some lonely single man will get to use them. Recycle, reuse and all.
2. Bob is about to get married. He knows his wife-to-be will not be happy to find these videos in his underwear drawer. He thinks about selling them or pitching them, but he still wants the option of viewing them when he gets the chance. He figures he'll take his favorites to his normal rental place so that when he knows she'll be out of town, he can at least go rent them.
3. Bob borrowed these videos from a friend, but now he's forgotten who. He's too embarrassed to start randomly asking friends if they had lent him porn, but no one has mentioned them. He decides to drop them at the video place and then if someone asks him about it, he can point them in the right direction.

These are my theories, but really, I guess we'll just never know.

CORRECTION: The Husband has had this happen before, but not with porn. This is even more confusing to me, why give a perfectly good non-porn movie to the store?

Jami Loves the USA

Hi folks, Happy Independence Day! I hope you're going to take a moment to day to celebrate that you live where you can think and say and do pretty much what you want, when you want to do it.

Jami, the Crazed Deer and the Upper Lips

Our neighborhood is being terrorized by a crazed deer. Yup, you read that right. It's a Momma Deer with two little ones, so you can't blame her too much, except that she's a bit psycho, even for a new mommy. She bent the neighbors' fence trying to attack their dog. She stalked a different neighbor up his driveway into his house. She brazenly glared at the Husband from halfway across the neighbors' yard while he MOWED THE LAWN - have you ever heard of a deer sticking around like that? I feel like a nutcase grabbing Eddie and Joxer and running inside when I see a deer coming, but that's where we are. Hope those little ones are up and out soon. EDW recently did this post about waxing of the upper lip. In it she mentions bleaching and I have to say, seriously folks, what is the point of that? We can still see the hairs, plus then you get the weird root thing, it's just odd looking. Like you have a half-black/half-white mustache. Seriously, wax isn't that expensive, and from having my eyebrows done, I can say it can't be that painful. Get some. And if you stop by EDW's blog, be sure to vote on the polls she's got going.

Jami's Two Part Series of Having Friends - Part Two

If you didn't read yesterday's, you might want to start there. Either way . . Part Two: It's Important to Have Not-Mommy Friends Not-Mommy Friends (NMF's) can either have no children, yet, or children but their youngest is an adult. You need Not-Mommy Friends because you have to be able to go out sometimes and they are way easier to schedule with than Mommy-Friends. I remember, I do, before kids. A friend would call me up and say "Wanna go see a movie?" and I'd say "Sure!" and meet her at the theatre. Maybe go to dinner. Now, it goes more like "You want to see a movie?" "What day? I have to see if the Husband is working and if not then I have to find a babysitter" "Okay, I have a sitter for Thursday night or Sunday afternoon" "Okay, Sunday afternoon I can do if we can see a movie that starts no later than 2 and come right home without even watching the credits". Aeire, who I have mentioned before, I'm certain, is a great NMF. She still has obligations and schedules and stuff, but if I want to go hang out, we can find a time. She doesn't have to deal with a sitter or cancel because her kid threw up. We don't have to figure out if we need the car with the carseat in it. Plus, she's totally cool. You need Non-Mommy Friends because you need someone to remind you that there are other things to talk about besides children. Sure, you can mention your children or what you did that day, but your NMF's aren't going to stand for an hour of discussion of Potty Training Issues or the co-sleeping debate. They will remind you that there are books and movies and world events and fashion and whatever else. You need that. Turn off the mommy-side of the brain for awhile and remember who the rest of you is. You need Non-Mommy Friends because they are usually the ones you've known the longest. When you become a parent, it seems that most of the new friends you make are through parent-stuff. The NMF's you keep are usually the ones you had before the little ones came along. They're the ones who threw your shower, even though they didn't know what the heck half the stuff you registered for is. They are a part of who you are now because they were a part of making you that person. And they'll probably end up being Mommy-Friends at some point, so don't let them go now. You need them more now - they'll need you more then. It's what friendship is about. It's important to have Non-Mommy friends. Here's a shout out to the people I love - my friends of the Mommy and Not-Mommy variety. Each of you is special and wonderful and makes my life as rich as it is. Thanks, God bless you - I love you!