Yossarian Lives

Psst! Hi. Remember me? I used to write this blog. Semi-regularly. And semi-regularly, some of you would read it. Semi-semi-regularly you might have even chuckled. Maybe you only read it that one time you were Googling places to buy cans of cheese and you accidentally chose this result and thought "huh interesting" and found yourself lost, as you do semi-regularly, on a page where you had no intention of spending hours and later you wake up out of a sound sleep gasping, "oh my, I never did find that cheese can store, did I?!"

But that was a long time ago. Back when Osama Bin Laden was still alive and so was Amy Winehouse. When the last NASA space shuttle was still awaiting its final journey and people were still purchasing the Twilight novels at Borders. Back when Carmageddon was just a twinkle in a Cal Trans supervisor's eye. And Mark Anthony and Jennifer Lopez were still the happiest Latino couple in Hollywood (besides Eva Longoria and Penelope Cruz's teenage brother. Que scandaloso!!) Back when Steve Jobs was still wearing black turtlenecks instead of white ones** -- and way back when no one was occupying Wall Street except d-bags in stripey collared shirts with receding hairlines and black American Express cards.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, my blog. So then one day...POOF! Gone (the blog). Apologies all around. There really are no valid excuses for the laziness of not writing, but I will dish out an invalid one:

I had a baby, yo! ...a BABY.

And this "baby having" really sucked all the thinking juice out of my brain folds. It also kept me from going places and doing things that might be semi-interesting to blog readers. Surprisingly. Because one would think: Motherhood. Meh! No big deal. So my body is a disaster, so what?! So I get a little tired now and then, who cares?! So I can't drink dirty martinis until I puke whole olives, ride a motorcycle helmet-less at 130 mph, or do bumps of cocaine off a golden spoon-necklace until 6 in the morning ever again for a while?!! NO. BIG. DEAL.

Well, in actuality it was a big deal. The biggest deal. A deal soooo big, it has taken me seven months to shake the P.T.S.D. of the whole thing. And it was, to be frank, quite graphic and unspeakably painful.

Aw...never fear, my buddies! This is not about to become a "mommy blog." No way! Never. First of all mommy blogs are so full of pompous "I know everything there is to know and so does my little one" talk that they make me want to sew my eyelids shut. And second, my baby is the cutest and smartest in the universe and I wouldn't want to rub that in people's faces week after week.

So now that I have been back at work for awhile and the baby is barely even a baby at all anymore, I feel the need to give you a hint of how my life went the past few months. Just to catch you up. And instead of telling you what I DID do, I will give you a rundown of what I did NOT do. That could be fun. Here goes...

I didn't read.
Not one book. Not even half a book. And I intended to read a lot. In the ninth month of my pregnancy, I drew out an extensive plan of all the things I would get done while I was home with my quietly napping child. In this plan, I listed several books I planned to read. It was a noble list. There was even some re-reading on there. I would enjoy a Vonnegut or two, maybe tackle a Faulkner, revisit the good old standby Catch 22, and finally finish that book I never could finish years ago which still haunts me to this day, Delillo's Underworld. Anyway, let me cut to the chase before you label me a literary name-dropper: I didn't even get through the first 50 pages of the first Vonnegut. Instead I stared, lobotomized, at the pictures in US Weekly and tried to decide if Hillary Duff or Padma Lakshmi wore it better. (Padma did, btw.)

I didn't write.
Not one word. This is probably an obvious one since there has been no blog of mine to speak of for almost a year. But boy oh boy did I INTEND to. I thought by now I would have at least one screenplay, one short story, and the beginning of a novel -- all tucked away in my "Finished Writing" floor hatch. I also intended to write a whopping knee-slapper of a comedy pilot. It would be all about the krayzee poop capades that a husband and wife go through when dealing with a new baby. Man, that woulda been a funny show. But unfortunately before I could get it out on paper, the government (in cahoots with network execs) bugged my thoughts...AGAIN. And now my ideas have become a Christina Applegate sitcom in a coveted Thursday night time slot. That baby show idea was something NO ONE could have ever thought of except me. Idea number 10,000 stolen. Oh well. That's what I get for never doing anything about anything.

I didn't "not watch TV."
Not one day went by without it. Even though I promised myself I wouldn't expose my baby to such trashy background noise and would instead have soft classical music playing constantly in the background--I watched it all the time. "But you don't have cable," you say? "The comically large big screen TV hanging on your wall has been broken ever since you hung it," you remind me? Well let me introduce you to a little something I like to call Netflix. Yep. Through the magic of complicated electrical cables fitting into computer holes, I was able to get any and all episodes of Law & Order SVU at a moment's notice. All day. All THIRTEEN, unending, eyeball bursting seasons of it. And yes, I watched them all. So yes, I can answer any question you have about it. For example: yes, the law is the courtroom. And the order is the forcing confessions out of an unending list of falsely accused suspects and then finding the real culprit was the first guy you met but for some reason never suspected. And yes, Adam Beach IS a bad actor and only gets roles because he is Native American/Canadian. And for the last time, yes, Mariska's hair grows at an alarmingly slow rate and as soon as it touches her shoulders it chops itself boy-short again and YES, SHE SHOULD GROW IT LONG!

I didn't lose my mind.
I didn't. I swear.

Anyway. I'm back! So as long as my baby doesn't do anything to distract me (like move into another, more challenging stage) you can expect regular blogs from me until the end of time. Or the semi-end of time at least.


 **Too soon?