The truth is I was on off doing important Hollywood stuff this weekend. I didn’t want to tell you because nobody likes a braggart and everyone would be all “That betch — she thinks she’s soooo cool. Hmmmph!” (But check out mah sexay platform cast boot. Is HOTT!)

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But I’m back home now and have resumed my usual routine of buttwiping, cooking avoidance and work. Mingling with Hollywoodlians was fun but I was anxious to get back to my humble abode.

So anyway, on Thursday night, I was trying to to pick up the video feed from The People’s Party but it never came online.

However, I did spend at least an hour chatting with other non-BlogHerettes and it was a lot of fun so we came up with the idea of hosting a weekly (or possibly bi-weekly) blogger chat every Sunday at 9pm-ish EST.

Sunday night Blogger Chat details:

URL: http://www.chatzy.com/735818165306

Password: bloggerchat

Time: 9-11pm EST

Note: Anyone is welcome. You DO NOT need to register or log in to join the chat. Just input your user name and the password “bloggerchat” Then, on the next screen, choose “Join Chat”

Please to be gracing us with your presence!

And speaking of Thursday’s chat, we were quoted on the hilarious Blogtations.

*Props to Rose McGowan for loaning me her hot bod and platform cast boot.

If you’re at BlogHer, you’re probably not reading my blog. If you’re NOT at BlogHer (like me), you’re probably tired of reading about how much fun everyone is going to have without you so I’ve compiled some great distractions for your reading pleasure. No need to thank me :)

Why I Love Women’s Bodies All women should read this.

China’s All-Seeing Eye China’s biggest factory city is now officially under Big Brother’s thousands of watchful eyes. Is this our future, too?

A Lost Art: Instilling Respect When did parents stop being parents and why are they afraid of their kids? This is something I frequently rant about. Also, reading I Just Want My Kids to Be Happy, which is tangentially related. (via Suebob)

Phone Sex ~ The Book Who’s on the other end of the line???

Hey, you in the crib! Hand over that DNA right now! Last April, an obscure bill became a law that allows states to catalog and warehouse your baby’s DNA. Forever. If this doesn’t creep you out, you’re not paying attention.

Hey, look! I wrote this. Maybe Tampa doesn’t blow as much as I thought it did.

A Heavily-Photoshopped Ann Coulter Marked Down 67% *snicker*

Who would actually use this crap? Putting sour, puckery chemical stuff inside your lady parts so it will be tighter? Um…no thank you. But hey! What about him putting some toxic, chemical-laden, anti-puckery enlargotastic stuff on his man parts? Same difference, right? ( via Feministing)

By now, assuming you’re something of a regular here, you know that I broke my foot and am now NOT attending THE social event of the season for women bloggers (and the clever man or two who opts to attend because he will be surrounded by unescorted women for the duration and due to the overall lack of competition, will be treated as a semi-rockstar).

Believe me, I have vacillated on my decision since I found out my foot was broken and even AFTER I sold my conference pass.

I kept weighing my doctor’s orders to stay off my foot against the amount of fun I imagine I would have and of course, when many a good friend tries to cajole you into changing your mind and lovely, kindhearted folk offer everything from piggyback rides to wheelchair chauffeuring and even others so generously offer to share their rooms… Well, it’s a siren song that is most difficult to resist and even as early as yesterday I was still waffling a bit and trying to convince myself that my foot is SO much better than it was two weeks ago; that a little hilly walking in the fair city of San Francisco and a dash of drunken debauchery and raucous fannypacking (see my Flickr for a few PG-13 examples) would be completely harmless.

Well, after all that, it would seem that maybe this trip was doomed from the start because when I called American Express Travel last night to cancel my flight, I found out that I had no return ticket.

That’s right. I had NO TICKET booked to return home from SF.

This means one of two things — I’m either meant to go to the west coast and never return home (tempting given my scorn for and loathing of Florida) or I wasn’t supposed to go in the first place.

I’m still not completely sure how this happened but I distinctly recall, albeit at about 3:30am, selecting my round trip flights there and back, that the total was about $500, and that that I was using my points to pay for part of the ticket and my credit card to pay the difference. Easy peasy, simple dimple, right?

Apparently not, as my kindly Amex travel rep informed me… It seems that when you go to pay for your ticket, there is some obscure button that you must select to indicate that you are paying for a one way, round-trip or multi-destination trip.

I guess I didn’t select the right button — BUT the tip off to this error should have been my itinerary.

Yes, I looked at it. No, the lack of a return flight didn’t register with my sleep-deprived brain. Durrr.

Ultimately, however, my mistake ended up being in my favor because when you cancel a one-way flight, you get a credit with the airlines (minus a HUGE fee) that you can use at any time for any flight in the next year.

If I had canceled a round-trip ticket, I could only use the ticket for the exact same flight — same departure and arrival times, airports and stop overs. The chances of me using that ticket would have been pretty slim and it’s non-transferable so I couldn’t even sell it. My mistake actually kind of saved me a lot of money.

The silver-lining? The money for the ticket came from my Amex points so it didn’t cost me any actual Benjamins and I have a $64 credit with the airline.

I suppose I could have a different attitude and cry over my 25,000 lost points but something tells me that with so many obstacles being put in my way, I simply wasn’t meant to go.

And when the universe talks? I listen.

But the rest of you lucky betches with your two good feet tucked neatly inside covetworthy new shoes — have an awesometastical time, take many pictures of yourselves making many toasts in my honor at the party that I’m supposed to be *sniff* co-hosting, drink lots of water before bed with Sudafed* and for the love of all things good and decent, NO DRAMA, okay?

Promise?

xoxo

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*Sudafed is a guaranteed hangover cure but it has to be the kind you get from behind the counter at the pharmacy, not the weak, useless kind sold straight off the shelf.

Have you ever seen a dog scratching an itch by wiggling around on it’s back in a state of what appears to be Snoopyesque joy mixed with utter pleasurable abandon? Now imagine if that dog was a person with a cast on her foot. And imagine that the person is me while I itch under my cast.

AHHHHHHHH YEAH!

So the other night, while scratching my foot and ankle with a letter opener, my holy-shit-stop-the-itching-madness tool of choice, it occurred to me that scratching an itch of this variety is quite possibly the best feeling IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

I started making a mental list of things that are physically pleasurable — sex (duh), going pee after you’ve been holding it for a long time, stretching, doing anything while taking ecstasy (Oh hai — teh drugs are bad! Turns you dumbz! JUST SAY NOES!) and quite frankly, the under-the-cast scratch is definitely in the top five, possibly number one. This was confirmed by the huz, who walked by while I was on the bed scratching with the letter opener, and noted that I looked very uh…happy. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate — unless you’re under twelve, in which case, you shouldn’t be reading this blog anyway as it’s at least PG-13.

All odes to pleasurable foot-scratching aside, this very morning I happened to see a woman squatting down behind a bus stop bench peeing. Well, I don’t have actual evidence that she was peeing but her pants were down and really, short of peeing or pooping (Sorry, I just really gross out on pooping euphemisms like ‘taking a dump’, ‘pinching a loaf’ etc. We keep it real around here when it comes to bowel movements. TYVM for understanding) what the hell else would she be doing squatting with her pants down? And why right there? There are no shortage of bushes, dumpsters and backs of buildings around as perfectly acceptable (well, LESS unacceptable) places to go relieve yourself if you’re the outdoorsy type. I did consider that maybe she was afraid of missing her bus. BUT STILL.

And then I felt bad for judging her behavior as totally f*cked up. Maybe she had a REALLY GOOD reason for peeing right there in front of oncoming traffic. Then I recanted my feeling badness and just decided that it was gross and unsavory and definitely needed to be blogged because really, other than the time my BFF and her boyfriend saw something really bizarre in a similar locale involving a pantsless woman, a gas station water hose and a crying man — holy mother o’ jeebus, I can’t even begin to explain it — how often does one encounter random people relieving themselves roadside? And the turnpike doesn’t count. I’ve seen dozens of people peeing off the turnpike. The difference is that they thought they were being discreet in the woods with their butts turned to the highway. THEY MADE THE EFFORT. The bus stop woman? Not so much.

I also saw a little boy of about 3 or 4 peeing at the park the other day. Just standing there with his dad, peeing. No tree. No building wall. Just a-peeing right there in the mulch. It was still nasty but somehow more excusable a) because he was really little and we all know little kid pee is less gross Oh, stop with the faces already. It’s TRUE. and b) he wasn’t on the side of major city thoroughfare.

The takeaway from today’s post? Under-cast scratching is almost better than sex, peeing on the side of the road is NASTY and f*cking holy hell!!!!! I just caught my 187 yr old totally-litter-trained-forever cat peeing under my husband’s desk

WHY DID THE PEE THEME HAVE TO BECOME PERSONAL?

WHYYYY??????

Dammit.

Hello, remember me? I’ve been busy being on pain medication (horrifying of highness!) sleeping a lot, working and baking. But my God, have I been baking! Baking bread, baking brownies from scratch, baking chicken, baking pizzas from homemade dough…

My foot is still broken and it actually hurts more than it did last week. I don’t know, something just tells me that when you take your first step of the morning, feeling like someone is stabbing you in the top of the foot with a red-hot nail isn’t a good sign. But alas, I continue to hobble around (actually it’s more like lumbering but hobbling sounds slightly less unattractive, don’t you think?) and I’ve even gotten up the nerve to drive but it’s just with my toes and thus, I must drive like an old lady and break waaaaaaay before I need to stop.

So how was your 4th of July? Mine was the same as it’s been for the last few years. We go to the top of a hospital parking garage and watch fireworks over the bay. When my son was about 5 weeks old, we wanted to be near the bay to watch fireworks but all these dipshits kept shooting off firecrackers and I’m all HELLO? Mom with newborn is going RIP YOUR FACE OFF if you light another firecracker within 300 feet of us. My husband could see my own hormonally-charged fuse getting dangerously short so he hustled us away from there and spotted the hospital parking garage right down the street (where my son was born AWWWW!) Now we go there every year, along with a gazillion other people. But see, because it’s right there at the hospital? NO FIRECRACKERS.

Have I mentioned that I’m like a cranky old person when it comes to fireworks at the consumer level? I HATE THEM and I despise all the easily amused idiots (This is Florida. Need I say more?) in my neighborhood that insist on shooting off the really loud mortar-type fireworks until 2 in the morning. I seethe for hours and my kids don’t sleep and seriously…every year I hope against hope that someone will injure themselves playing with that stuff so that there will be one less asswipe to fantasize about running over with the momvan. Tomorrow I’m going to go yell at some kids to get off my lawn while shaking my cane at them (or in my case, a crutch) and then go for the early bird special at the Piccadilly Cafeteria, braking excessively with my big toe all the way there…

Friday afternoon at doctor’s office: This is how my foot looked when I was 39 weeks pregnant. But rest assured, I’m not pregnant and my foot is not normally this bloated and shapeless.

Saturday morning: It is, however, the bitter new occupant of this rather ugly, awkward and dreadfully ginormous cast.

Saturday evening:

Note the progression from merely chubby foot to slightly bruised and casted foot to totally purple and hideous casted foot.

Diagnosis: partial fracture and two heinously torn ligaments, compliments of a seemingly harmless little accident.

Forgive my naked and unfashionably hyper-cropped toenails. Once the cast was on and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a pedicure next week in honor of BlogHer 08, I cut them super short.

Which reminds me… I’ll be wearing this stupid thing for the next 4-6 weeks and I’m not supposed to walk on it for more than a few minutes at a time unless using crutches (which I officially hate), need to keep it elevated, blah blah blah — so I can’t go to BlogHer this year.

I suppose I could guilt some of you into waiting for me as I hobbled ten feet behind you everywhere we went. Maybe one of you would even be so kind as to carry all my shit so I could use the hated crutches.

But I really don’t want to be that person so I’m going to stay home and live vicariously through Twitter.

And? I’m selling I’ve sold my 2 day full conference pass for the bargain price of $200. They’re currently going for $298 so it’s not a bad deal.

I considered giving it away but dude…we have a ridiculously high deductible on our shitass HSA (health savings account) and thus none of my treatment was covered. I owe BIG! bucks for this fun-filled suckstravaganza.

So help a sistah out and buy my 2 day conference pass. Hell, make me an offer!

Or if you don’t need a pass, perhaps you’d consider mentioning my little fire sale on your blog? Surely someone out there still needs one. Think of all the good karma you’ll be racking up :)

(And just so you know…I’m really sad about not being able to go. I’ll miss ya’ll)

I haven’t blogged about this at all but last month I took my son to an early intervention screening thing for speech. He failed the hearing screen in one ear and was also flagged for a formal speech evaluation.

After jumping through eleventeen hundred hoops that included one trip to the pediatrician, twenty days of antibiotics (for a sinus infection that was causing his eardrum to retract), a formal audiology evaluation that indicated my son is not, in fact, partially deaf, mountains of paperwork and numerous requests for things like birth and medical records, we finally went for the BIG speech eval today.

I don’t need anyone to tell me the child needs some intervention in the way of speech therapy. I also don’t need anyone to tell me that in spite of his sometimes unintelligible speaking, my son is whip smart and has excellent receptive language skills — meaning he understands everything we say — and apparently his vocabulary level is extremely high. He gets that from me ;)

Unfortunately, articulation was the last part of the 3+ hour evaluation and we ran out of time. Without including the articulation score being factored in, he ranks one percentage point above the number in which therapy would be recommended.

This means that even though the speech pathologist can clearly see that he needs help, she is required to go by the numbers. If she decides, based on some criteria I’m not aware of, that taking the articulation part of the eval on another day isn’t necessary and thus doesn’t have a number to factor into the overall score, he will be refused interventional speech therapy BY ONE PERCENTAGE POINT.

After all the BS we had to go through to get there, it hardly seems right to score the kid without completing what I would consider the most critical part of the whole thing.

Quite frankly, the vibe I got is that they systematically refuse anyone who doesn’t have a severe disability. And if that’s the case, then WHY refer him for the eval in the first place? It’s obvious his issues are not severe.

I don’t want to jump the gun and get all pissed off just yet because maybe she WILL call us and ask us back to finish the test, but if she doesn’t? I WILL BE LIVID.

The woman kept asking me what my concerns were and I tried to tell her that my concern is that he will not be able to communicate with his peers or teacher in preschool and that at three years of age, he should be able to have a basic conversation, which he cannot. Is this not a valid concern?

I told her that there is no way he could have attended in the preschool program my daughter was in at 3 yrs. because the ability to communicate was an absolute necessity.

She gave me a bunch of “Yeah, but…”

Yeah but nothing. I know my child and I know, as he is right now, that he isn’t ready for preschool.

But keeping him home? How is that going to help him?

Putting him in a class of two year olds? How is THAT going to help him?

Of course, if we had better insurance or were independently wealthy, I could just take him to a speech pathologist myself and skip all this shite. But we don’t and we’re not.

Mood: IRRITATED

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In other news, I got a bread machine (AKA the best invention ever for people who detest cooking)! I know I’m about a decade late to the party but dude, I’m SO excited! It’s a Cuisinart Convection model and I can’t WAIT to get baking because, IMHO, one can never have too much bread in their diet. MOARRRR CARBS!!!!!!!!

Hello, homemade raisin bread and cheese bread and pizza dough and cinnamon rolls. I can’t wait to eat you up. NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!!!!!

Yesterday I took P to this pond next to Target to feed the ducks and other assorted water fowl. It’s such a weird place for a conservation pond and frankly, I don’t know where they get off calling it that because the pond is full of parking lot run-off water and a sick amount of litter.

It’s surrounded with a chainlink fence but the ground isn’t level so the ducks can squeeze under it and wander around in the little grassy area where people like me go to feed them. I go there, as opposed to other ponds, because there are always a bazillion ducks there while the other ones are hit or miss and nothing spells disappointment like kids all hopped up to feed ducks that aren’t there.

So I brought a bunch of stale bread and we proceeded to feed these gorgeous ducks and their ducklings, a few pigeons, these tall white birds with pink beaks and one odd small black duck-like creature with a bright red beak.

While we were there, an elderly couple came up and were watching us feed the ducks and talking to us. The woman went to the grocery store next door to get them some bread of their own while the man and I made small talk under a shady tree and P gave the last of his bread to the baby ducks.

I don’t know how we got on the subject but somehow we started talking about the environment and in his thick accent (Austrian or perhaps Swedish?) the man, who had to have been at least 70, noted that because of decades of rampant and unchecked use of poisons and chemicals, we rarely see frogs or butterflies anymore; that we’ve ruined the earth in the quest for financial gain.

Of course, this isn’t news to me and I was totally nodding my head in agreement when he said he fears for his grandchildren and he doesn’t want to imagine what life on earth will be like in thirty years. The sadness in his voice was palpable

We continued to talk and it seemed so odd that I would make this man’s acquaintance and that we would have this common ground. No offense, but I generally find older people, especially ones like my MIL, who has lived a life of privilege, to be completely clueless and apathetic about the things he and I were talking about so it made the experience a tad surreal.

When his wife came back, our focus turned back to the ducks and we eventually parted ways but his sad words are still echoing in my ears.