Zoe: Why is Yia Yia standing out in the parking lot?

Me: She’s reserving a parking space for Aunt VeVe.

*pause*

Zoe: Where’s Aunt VeVe?

Me: She’s driving around the parking lot, trying to find a parking space.

*pause*

Helena: Is she wondering where Yia Yia is?

Me: One can only hope.

*pause*

Helena: I see Aunt VeVe! Here she comes!

*waves and jumps up and down*

Zoe: Aaaaaaaand there she goes.

*long pause*

Helena: Does Aunt VeVe even know what Yia Yia is doing?

Me: No one knows what Yia Yia is doing, honey.

Helena: Is that why everyone is honking at her and telling her to get out of the way?

Me: Yes.

*long pause*

Zoe: You kinda gotta admire Yia Yia. She won’t budge an inch.

Me: My entire childhood is on display in the Marshalls’ parking lot. And you guys wonder why I’m tense.

*pause*

Helena: There’s Aunt VeVe again!

*waves and jumps up and down*

Zoe: Aaaaaaaand there she goes.

*pause*

Zoe: I’ve never seen Yia Yia wave her arms like that before.

*pause*

Zoe: It’s almost like she’s dancing.

Me: What are you doing?

Zoe: Updating Facebook. This is hysterical.

Helena: Can I take a picture too?

Me: No. I do not want photographic evidence of my lunatic family on Facebook.

Zoe: Too late.

Helena: Here she comes again! AUNT VEVE! AUNT VEVE!

*waves and jumps up and down*

Zoe: Aaaaaaand there she goes.

Helena: Wow, did you see that? Yia Yia almost ran.

*mouth agape*

Helena: Oh my gosh! What is that noise?

Me: If memory serves, that is either a hyena giving birth or Yia Yia yelling.

Helena: Who is she yelling at?

Me: Aunt VeVe. And probably God.

Helena: But Aunt VeVe can’t hear her. She can’t hear anyone.

Me: Yia Yia doesn’t care about details.

*pause*

Zoe: Uh oh.  It’s almost noon.

Helena: Uh oh.

Me: Don’t worry. We have at least an hour and a half before Aunt VeVe starts panicking about rush hour traffic and we have to go home.

*pause*

Zoe: Should we get Yia Yia a chair or something?

Me: She wouldn’t use it. That would be sign of weakness.

Helena: There’s Aunt VeVe again! How come she can’t see Yia Yia?

Me: Because she can’t see over the steering wheel.

Zoe: Aaaaaaaand there she goes.

*pause*

Helena: Too bad we don’t have popcorn.

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Remember when I was going to go all blogstar on you and show some initiative by writing an ongoing series called Stuff I Love? Where I was going to periodically post about things I adore, things that I neither gave birth to nor married? And I was going to compile the posts into one ginormous collection that could be searched and cross referenced at will? And it was going to be the very definition of AWESOME?

Me neither.

I wrote one post about aliens and another about epiphanies and then suddenly the laundry piled up, Oliver pooped everywhere, the kids fought incessantly, I had to find Helena a pioneer costume and teach Zoe how to drive, I had to find something other than cornstarch to serve for dinner, my aunt fell and then yelled at me because I tattled on her to my parents and then finally, Lost chewed up my cerebral cortex and hocked a loogie with it onto my ambition and before I knew it, three months went by and the whole concept of Stuff I Love fell by the wayside, lonely and neglected. It would occasionally wake me up at 2:00 a.m., and try to get frisky with my brain but my brain was all OH MY GOD, SERIOUSLY? RIGHT NOW? YOU WANT TO DO IT RIGHT NOW? I’M EXHAUSTED. FINE. KEEP IT SIMPLE, NOTHING FANCY. AND HURRY UP.

So moving forward, I’m going to try to pay a little more attention to Stuff I Love in hopes that it will stop waking me up in the middle of the night for some nookie and let me get a decent night’s sleep.

This is my new watch:

It’s a bangle watch by Brighton and before I say anything more, let me just clarify that I am not a spokesperson for Brighton, no one compensated me for this post because no one pays me to say anything nice about anything and this is probably why I don’t say many nice things. SEE, NATE? IT’S NOT MY FAULT.

This watch is heavy and chunky with a seamless magnetic clasp, giving it the illusion of a traditional bangle. I adore this watch. Sometimes I appreciate it even more than I do Nate because it will tell me the time whenever I ask it to without prefacing its response with a distracted “Wha? Hang on a sec … OK, now … wait … hold on … d’you need something?” and some frantic scrolling on a crackberry.

This watch was my Christmas gift from Nate although, to be honest, it didn’t look like this when I opened it Christmas morning. On Christmas morning, it looked more like a delicate gold-tone bracelet watch with a traditional jewelry clap and mother-of-pearl face peppered with little diamonds, and it came in a box emblazoned with the name “Citizens.” That particular watch was a very glamorous, lovely watch for a very glamorous, lovely woman somewhere but it didn’t exactly suit the lifestyle of the more practical woman to whom it was gifted, the woman who spent her days banging out useless blog dribble on a computer and waging wars against hard water stains and underarm razor stubble and morons who were genetically incapable of parking between the yellow lines. And, more importantly, it wasn’t a bangle watch.

So I returned Nate’s beautiful watch and went in search of what turned out to be this one, all with Nate’s blessing which was cloaked in an exasperated NO ONE MAKES REAL BANGLE WATCHES ANYMORE! IF YOU WANT ONE, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO DRIVE TO THE END OF THE STREET AND TAKE A LEFT AT THE NINETIES. BRING ME BACK SOME PARACHUTE PANTS.

Admittedly, it’s substantial size and weight dwarfs my freakishly scrawny and bony wrist but it’s a small price to pay for a stylish, sturdy watch that has no annoying chain that will snag on my sweaters and bungee jump to the pavement. And chances are also unlikely that it will stow away on a sleeve and enjoy a ride through the permanent press cycle anytime soon. And I honestly think I could bonk a would-be attacker on the head with it and stun him long enough to kick his balls into neighboring Pennsylvania.

And bonus! When I push it up my arm, it can completely obscure the weird lumpy bump that has copped a squat on my forearm for almost twenty years. I just keep repeating IT’S NOT A TUMOR over and over to myself and it makes me feel better, but only if I do it a là Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop so it comes out sounding more like IT’S NOT A TOOMAH! Otherwise, it doesn’t work and I wind up freaking out about the whole lumpy bump thing, envisioning all sorts of scenarios including, but not limited to, aliens inserting a monitoring device under my skin to observe how the female member of the species manages to get any rest while sleeping next to her mate who is single- handedly responsible for keeping the alien pods up at night with his snoring.

You can find Brighton accessories here. I love most of their stuff and when it comes to decorating my body, they’re my go-to place for lumpy bump cover-ups. If they ever come out with an industrial strength bra, I’ll be golden.

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We did not buy into the whole Zhu Zhu pet insanity known as Christmas 2009, when otherwise perfectly sane and rational adults ran all over town like lunatics while screaming OH MY GOD, IF MY KID DOESN’T GET A STUPID WIND UP TOY THAT LOOKS LIKE A HAMSTER STRUNG OUT ON METH AND IS PROBABLY MADE WITH TOXIC CRAP BY CHILD LABOR CAMPS SOMEWHERE IN CHINA, MY LIFE WILL SUCK FOREVER. By not buying into it, I mean that when all the stores started selling out of them and crazed people started hocking their own plasma to buy them off Ebay, I became proactive and by proactive, I mean that I took precautionary measures by hogtying Nate and throwing him down in the basement where, even if he McGyver’d himself a laptop out of our sump pump and some patio furniture, he still wouldn’t have any Internet access if and when his brain decided that Zhu Zhu pets were a distant relative of the Chia pet and hey, if he once paid $80 online for a Chia pet, he could most certainly do it for its kin.

Our house remained a Zhu Zhu free zone until last week when out of the blue, Helena asked Nate to take her shopping for one because she had $20 to spend and watching it get saved inside her piggy bank for her college education was boring boring OH MY GOSH, CAN WE PAINT SOMETHING AND WATCH IT DRY BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE A LOT MORE FUN THAN MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE, MOM boring. This would be the same $20 she won from her father a couple of weeks ago when he bet her that she couldn’t eat an entire lemon wedge … rind, pith, pulp, seeds and all. I’m just grateful the bet wasn’t $100 over curried lamb brains or something equally as expensive and repulsive because quite honestly, they haven’t invented a bet yet that can be turned down by either Nate or his shorter, bespectacled, nine year old DNA imprint.

You are probably wondering why she didn’t ask me to take her shopping, right? Because I am the mom, after all, and shopping with my little girl is supposed to be one of the things that makes that wicked scar above my lady garden and the stretch marks on my boobs and ass all worth it, right? But if you were a nine year old and wanted to waste your hard-earned money on an ugly wind-up toy rodent that is not only too young for you, but that will only keep you entertained for all of 3.9 seconds before it winds up as the concubine of horny dust bunnies under the couch, who do you think would be most persuaded to drive you to the store and make it happen? The anal-retentive parent whose tongue swells up with hives at the mere thought of impractical spending and who recently complained about a $20 karate shirt and who refuses to pay $40 for ugly ass karate shorts because her kid can suck it up in ghee pants and an air conditioned dojo? Or the parent who can’t walk by The Sharper Image in the mall without coming home with a deluxe shiatsu massage chair, talking meat thermometer and miniature flying helicopter in his wallet?

The Zhu Zhu pet came home and, as predicted, Helena played with it for all of two minutes before abandoning it in favor of picking a scab off her leg and I slathered Benedryl all over my swollen tongue and stapled my lips together so as not to holler I TOLD YOU SO at the top of my lungs to anyone who will listen, which is no one.

Luckily for us, however, someone in this house has found value in the Zhu Zhu:

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.e