I thought I should mention that I plan on going to the BlogHer conference in San Francisco this July. It's on the same weekend as the yoga workshop I really wanted to go to again, but since I bailed on the conference last year I felt like I should maybe start alternating -- one year I'll spend that weekend being a limber, hiking vegan, and the next year I'll spend it shopping, chatting, and eating my weight in dim sum.

So, barring another death in the family, I will be there. I'm trying to organize a reading night where people can get up and read their favorite posts and then have lots of cocktails to help them calm down. It's not on the schedule yet but we're working that out and when we do we'll have an open call for submissions.

Lastly, I put another image and link in my sidebar, it's for Rita Arens's anthology "Sleep is for the Weak," which you can order from giant online retailers (here and here), or from local independent booksellers (here). It features lots of bloggers who are also parents, including me. The cover art is adorable! I'm told it makes an excellent baby shower gift. There will be a launch party for the book at BlogHer, and lots of events all over the country and at some point in September I will be at a book event down in L.A. with some of the other folks in the book so stay tuned. I know I've said I feel comfortable speaking in public but the idea of doing a book signing is making me hyperventilate four months in advance. What's the difference? The difference is that one thing doesn't scare the shit out of me and the other one does. /sales pitch.

Seriously, standing behind me and humming a little tune like that is how my six-year-old tries to get my attention and it doesn't work for him either. Snapping your head around to check out my ass is a chump move, too. This will definitely be the last time I go shopping wearing sweaty yoga clothes, the power of my endorphins clearly attracts the wrong sort of chimpanzee. It was sort of hilarious that at the split second I turned my back on you to flee toward the fresh fruit you called after me, "Does anybody actually eat this stuff?" Oh, sonny, let me learn you something. If you're looking for recipes then yes, chat up someone old enough to be your mother. If you're looking to hook up, the ignorant, helpless routine is only going to attract people who want to mother you. It's a lose-lose.

It's that goddamned cougar thing, isn't it? Lard help us all.


Evolve, buddy.

Yours in low cholesterol,

Mrs. Kennedy

It's interesting, coming on the heels of all the blogular insecurity I felt this week, that what's helped me get over it is, 1. posting about it and getting some good, supportive comments, and 2. pushing my opinion out there without worrying who was going to call it bullshit.

Lovely Alice took the week off so I wrote her Wonderland column for her. If I'm ready to embrace parenting commenters, surely some of the most opinionated human beings ever to set fingers to keyboard, I must be getting back on my feet again.

The other thing I did was publish a post over at MamaPop that did not criticize a Hollywood actress for taking off her clothes in a magazine photoshoot! The apocalypse is surely at hand if I didn't self-consciously try to play both sides of the issue and come out looking like I agree with everybody.

I don't know if anyone's really noticed but I've had a terrible time finding the nerve to post much lately. I've been trying to figure it out -- is it burnout? Is this the end of Rico? -- and I honestly think it boils down to some sudden insecurity that hit me while reading about the Democratic campaign. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I felt like it's impossible for anyone, anywhere to ever be Right, capital R, Platonic ideal, absolutely correct about anything. I just started feeling wrong, whatever I said, spoiled and entitled and stupid and boring and white and incapable of understanding anything outside of my suffocating sub-suburban bubble.

Whee!

Jack and I had a giant fight the other night, a real "Fuck you!" "Fuck me? NO, FUCK YOU!" extravaganza. It certainly made Jackson stand up a little straighter. He was in the shower for the worst of it, actually, and when it was over and I was cuddled up in bed reading a book with him, Jack walked in -- you could tell he still had his back up but was wholly reasonable once again -- and said, "Jackson, do you know why I yelled at Mommy like that? Because I love her." I laughed, and later Jackson and I were able to have a good talk about how you can fight with someone and still be friends.

"But why didn't you cry?" he asked me. This was an astonishing echo from my past, as my Grandmother Marriott asked my mom the exact same thing. Generations of Marriott men have been yellers, evidently -- my grandma married one and so did my mom - and my grandmother always used to burst into tears to make it stop. But my mom never did, she just silently sat there and waited for my dad to yell himself out so she could go on with her business until he cooled down and apologized.

"I grew up with a dad who yelled a lot," I told Jackson. "When I was little, I'd hide in the closet. It took me a long time but it doesn't scare me anymore. Plus, I love Daddy and I know Daddy loves me. I know he wouldn't hit me, or leave, or make me leave, so it was okay to see him get angry and to yell back at him."

I found this clip on YouTube yesterday, it's Craig Ferguson, whose show I've never watched, talking about why he can no longer make fun of Britney Spears. It's about twelve minutes long so I forgive you if you don't have the time to invest in it, but if you do it's absolutely worth it, he's amazing and I'm a fan forever now because of this.

We bit the bullet and went to Costco last week and you know what? When you're throwing out half the food you bought there three days later because the fruit is moldy and the cheesecake tastes worse than sugared cotton balls, what's the point of paying a $100 membership fee for access to a bunch of rotten food? Certainly a person can buy only so much discount lawn furniture.

Hauling $25 worth of cheesecake to the garbage today, though, allowed me to reflect on the mindset of deprivation with which I was raised. My father would have made me keep the cheesecake no matter how many of my expectations it failed to meet, he would have clogged his heart with a fresh slice every day until it was gone. I once accidentally burnt a batch of cookies and he stopped me from scraping them into the garbage, saying, "That's good food you're throwing away!" -- black oatmeal cookies -- BLACK -- and to prove his point he stood over the sink and ate every last one. And probably enjoyed them. Food in our house was good only if it was cheap and sweet, not if it actually satisfied any nutritional needs your body might have.

Internet-trolling Dumpster divers, I welcome you to my discarded cheesecake. My conscience tells me I should maybe at least have composted it but there's no way to do that where I live, the condo association having a strict policy against leaving boxes of rotting food in the bushes. And what with us living so far afield, the nearest population of street scavengers is up in Santa Barbara where the police actively discourage the distribution of anything that would even temporarily clog a sidewalk with vagrants, runaway skater kids, or migrant workers.

What a weird world we live in.

So NATURALLY Cookie went into another heat cycle, because apparently I don't own a calendar, or any anticipatory consciousness whatsoever. Well, that's not true. Last month I'd gotten her in for a heart scan to make sure she'd be okay going under anaesthesia -- most vets worry about putting bulldogs under due to their mashed-up snouts and, in Cookie's particular case, a little click her heart was making that no one could figure out. And they still can't, but it wasn't something that would prevent her from being spayed, for which an appointment was helpfully scheduled, by me, to coincide with yet another biannual bleed.

Now, I wasn't all that worried about Cookie getting knocked up accidentally because Peewee's only, what, seven months old? Yeah, well, it turns out I have a Googling deficiency as well because seven dog months isn't the same as seven people months. Seven-month-old human boys have barely discovered their own ball sacks, whereas seven-month-old puppies have fully-matured sperm that would really like to meet any available fertile eggs you might be willing to introduce them to.

Except that Peewee, comically, doesn't have a fucking clue how to get 'em up in there.

I was loading the dishwasher this morning when behind me I heard an ominous thump! thump! thump! thunp! and I turned around and found Peewee trying to hump Cookie's head while it banged into the refrigerator. If he's not trying to hump Cookie's face -- hell, half the time we find her trying to hump him -- he's got his face buried in her coochie while she stands there quivering. If it goes on too long she just flops down and goes to sleep.

"Hey, she's just like you," says Jack. Ha ha.

Anyway, now Peewee's taking Cookie's neutering appointment, and by this time tomorrow his fuzzy little balls will be floating in a keepsake Mason jar on my desk. Oh, I thought about getting him some prosthetic balls, but they'd be for me, not for him, he's too stubby to get his nose down there for a peek, much less a lick.

So farewell, Peewee's balls! Although the vet says you'll still have sperm for up to another month and we need to keep you and Cookie separated, just say the word and I will carefully duct tape a bag of frozen peas to your affected area until the swelling goes down.

Here, I made this for you.