Pattitopia

I recently got an email from a reader that said "I wish I could live inside of your head for a day just so I could see what is going on in there. I bet it would be a blast!" Although I am quoting from her, I will not publish her name because she was most likely drunk or high when she wrote that and I don't want to embarrass her. Although I do admit that for the most part my head is a happy place to be, it is also sometimes an annoying and bitchy place to be, as you've seen in my PMS postings. But recently I have been trying to focus on the happy place. Even when bloated, bitchy and crampy. I call my happy place "Pattitopia" and it totally rocks.

When my son gets annoyed with people, he teleports. He just closes his eyes and says "I'm teleporting. I'm teleporting." I don't think that technically it's working since he's still standing in front of me, but I just let him do his thing because (a) I think it's awesome, and (b) I can totally relate. I try to pretend I'm living in Pattitopia every day, although sometimes people or things annoy me enough to drag me back to reality.

After an incident at Academy the other day where some lady was totally freaking out about a mis-marked price and being a complete buzzkill to anyone within earshot, I realized that the public needs to learn about this wonderful world and it's laws. You may see me out in the neighborhood, going about my business...but inside my head, I'm in Pattitopia. The way it works is as follows: If you are within ten feet of me you are a visitor in Pattitopia and therefore must follow the rules and regulations of Pattitopia. Ten feet is more than close enough to drag me into your moody web and I'm just not having it, so if you plan to get that close, slap a smile on your face and keep it light. Now, I completely admit that I get bitchy about stuff just like anyone else (sometimes more than anyone else), and if I am bitching about something you are welcome to join in, but you are not allowed to start the bitching unless it is about something you know I hate, i.e. Glen Beck, Paris Hilton, Mariah Carey, Ann Coulter and guys wearing skinny jeans. In Pattitopia, I set the tone. My topia, my rules.

Pattitopia has a fixed population of 3 humans and 4 animals. The humans are of course, me and my sweet Paul Rudd, plus my bodyguard, Spunk. Spunk is a friend from high school who is a bodybuilder with arms the size of my thighs, and he has agreed to protect me exactly like Kevin Costner protected Whitney Houston in that movie where she sang the hell outta that I will always love you song. The only differences are that  the colors are reversed and I am not a crack whore.

The 4 animals in Pattitopia consist of finger monkey, teacup pig, mini hedgehog and pee wee pony.  Eventually I will allow each pet to have a mate so they can get busy making me more tiny animals, but for now they are all innocent and single. And someday I will also have a dolphin. As soon as the lazy animal biologists of the world figure out how to make a miniature one.

The weather is always sunny in Pattitopia. The average temperature is a comfortable 75-80 degrees. We have white sandy beaches, palm trees and beautiful mountains and forests. There are bottomless margaritas, wine and Pacifico. Paul likes dark beer, but it's not allowed in Pattitopia and even though I love him, he's just gonna have to deal because it's not called Paulatopia. The only foods allowed are Mexican food and Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and they are miraculously fat-free.

In Pattitopia The Brady Bunch and Laverne and Shirley are always on television. Except for the Cousin Oliver years on The Bunch...those sucked.  My friend Jeff is allowed at any time as long as he's wearing a sleeveless shirt and riding his bike. My husband is allowed at any time as long as he is in "Vacation Steve" mode, which is his super- relaxed and fun mode. Ethan is allowed as long as he doesn't fart or whine. My friend Neal is allowed at any time as long as he's willing to P-Hug. There is lots of P-Hugging in Pattitopia, and as a visitor you do not have the right to refuse a P-Hug. If I feel that you are leaning out of the P-Hug, you will have to deal with Spunk.

                                                

Even though it is warm, I am always allowed to wear my Beeker hat in Pattitopia, and even though it is dorky and I look completely idiotic in it, everyone must tell me I look amazing. There is no John Denver music, photos, or video allowed. Under no circumstances is math allowed in Pattitopia. While birds are more that welcome to do flybys in Pattitopia, they are not permitted to land or to poop. And under no circumstances are crows allowed anywhere near Pattitopia due to the fact that a few years ago one tried to peck me to death when I was at the Zoo. It repeatedly dive-bombed me and pecked my noggin until it drew blood. Crows are assholes.

Day passes are free to Pattitopia. When you come into the 10 foot circle you are accepting a pass and agreeing to my rules and regulations. While I welcome and love visitors, if you start to sing that Rocky Mountain High song, talk bad about Johnny Bravo,  or just plain annoy me, you will receive a citation. If the trouble continues, you are out. A world needs rules to run smoothly. That is one of the few things my brain retained from my Government class in college. That and the fact that seeing your professor in a kilt is in no way pleasurable.

If I Was Still In School I'd Be In the 22nd Grade By Now. So yes, I'm Old.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm neither (a) Smart enough to make it to the 22nd grade nor (b) Well-Behaved enough. I would've either flunked out or been thrown out way before year number 22. But anyway...

School started this week and although I was happy about it, I was also a bit sad. The Boy is getting big. Like, nothing fits anymore big. He is nine. Which in dog years is about 63. And since he is really hyper, has pretty foul gas, pees in the yard, chews on anything that's left lying around the house and often makes barky/howly type sounds, I think he actually qualifies as a senior citizen in the canine world. This is bad news for me, because it means that technically I'm even older than I thought I was, but the good news is that I did not have a litter of Boys. Even though I love him more than the whole wide world, one is fine. Plus, if I'd had a litter, I would've pimped the kids out to cable TV and bitched at The Hub all day in front of the cameras, which would have forced him to turn into an Ed Hardy-wearing, slut-dating douchebag. Then I would've had an affair with my bodyguard, divorced The Hub, and gone on Dancing With The Stars where I would have danced like a slightly stiffer than usual corpse and been a complete bitch to my partner and  judges in front of a slightly disturbing number of American television viewers. That all sounds like way too much work for me. So I repeat: One is fine.

Aside from being sad about me and The Boy getting older, I was also sad about having to wake up at 6:15 am. Although I actually consider myself a morning person, I am a much better morning person when allowed to wake up from my natural body clock, i.e., my bladder. My bladder is pretty good at waking me up about  3 times a night, and once it wakes me up and it's light out, I just go ahead and get up. But so far this week, my bladder has not been properly set and is going off at 4:30 when The Hub gets up, so I go back to bed and am in deep REM sleep having dreams of my friend Jeff and I grocery shopping pantsless when the alarm goes off at 6:15. (By the way, don't worry. Jeff is a chef and was only helping me shop for ribs. I was the only one pantsless, he was only shoeless, and nothing dirty happened. Plus he knows all about the dream and is neither frightened nor filing for a restraining order as of yet.)

As for The Boy, he seems to be settling into 4th grade fine. He is happy with his teacher, although after finding out she is a reader of this blog, I am nervous. When she told me she was a reader I had only, hours before, told Eat Pray Love to suck my balls. While I am happy and flattered that she admits to reading this piece of crap, I am also thinking "Great Patti. Now The Boy is the kid whose mom writes about humping and ball sucking, and I don't see how that can be a good thing." So I would like to take this moment to say to Mrs. Shoemaker:  Although I write about things that can sometimes be considered inappropriate, The Boy is not a subscriber, and never in your class will he talk about humping, and if he does you can feel free to smack him upside the head. xxxooo, Patti

So now I am trying to get down with the fact that I have 9 months ahead of me to write, do Pilates, walk, ride my bike, volunteer too much,  paint things, daydream about tiny things, cook things, have lunch with friends, organize the holy hell out of everything, lay by my pool alone, watch Matt Lauer, play Rock Band with whoever I can convince to come over, clean things, and to be alone. So far, this week has consisted of me wandering aimlessly around the house kind've (gulp) missing my little boy, but I'm sure I'll get past that pretty soon. Probably in a few weeks. Or possibly by about 3:30 today when The Boy gets home and he and his friend Luke are running around screaming and shooting me with Nerf guns. Yep. 3:30 oughtta do it.

Eat Pray Love Can Suck My Balls

Not that I actually have balls, but I hated Eat Pray Love so much that I would take hormone pills, have the surgery, do whatever it takes to grow some balls, just so that Eat Pray Love could suck them.

This is not a movie that I would ever go to of my own free will. A few years ago when Oprah and all of her estrogeny minions were getting their rocks off on this book, I flipped through it at the store and saw enough to know that it wasn't for me. BUT, when my friend Lee planned a girls night out to see the movie and go out for dinner and drinks, I couldn't say no because #1) I loves me some dinner, #2) I loves me some drinks, and #3) Lee would probably guilt-trip my ass off if I didn't go. And that Lee? She knows how to work the guilt.

Let me just say right now that I love Julia Roberts. LOVE her. But this movie made me turn on her. Any person who would choose to be in this movie is not a person that I dig. I also noticed at the beginning credits that Brad Pitt produced it. Brad Pitt. Now, I also loves me some Pitt, but he can suck it too. Although I'm sure this is all somehow Angelina's fault.

The woman in this movie, who is unfortunately a real live person, was a whiney, annoying pain in the ass. She's an author. She's gorgeous. She has money. She's married to Billy Crudup. Billy Crudup is a catch, people. But this chick was bored and confused about the meaning of life and stuff, so she dumped Billy and got a young actor boyfriend who was James Franco, who is even hotter than Billy. But then she got all whiney about him and laid on the floor and pouted and stuff, then dumped him so that she could go find herself or some bullshit like that.

So she goes to Italy and eats a lot and gets too fat for her pants. Really. That's about it. Nothing else happens there but gluttony and pants shopping. Then she goes to India and whines and complains an prays. I don't know what the heck she was praying about, but I'm sure it was shitty. And in India this chick is surrounded by mega-poor people who are covered with flies and take baths in muddy potholes in the street. And even though she's wealthy and pretty and still slightly bloated from so much yummy pasta and pizza, she still doesn't have an epiphany and say "Holy crap balls! I am the luckiest bitch alive! I'm gonna give these people some money and take my spoiled blonde ass back to America and get a life!" Hell no. She just whines more.

Then she goes to Bali to have some love, which she gets offered by some cute young Australian dude who gets naked and wants to skinny dip with her, but she turns him down and hooks up with Javier Bardem. I'm sorry people, but Javier Bardem looks like a Latino Baboon. The bitch and the baboon first meet when he almost runs her over while she's riding a bike, and I'm praying like I've never prayed before that he turns around and goes back to finish the job and saves us all the pain of watching her do or say anything else. But instead of killing her and becoming my favorite movie character in the history of movies EVER, he falls in love with her. Hence the "love" part of the title. And after, like, a zillion hours of that whiney crap we don't even get the payoff of a sex scene. But I guess that was okay since the couple to my right were making out through the entire movie, which I totally understand because it was so freakin' boring. But they were MAKING OUT. Like, licking each other's faces off and rubbing all over each other from foot to face, and humping each other's legs etc.... When I got super suicidal bored I leaned over and whispered to Lee to see if she wanted to dry hump a little, then I rubbed her leg a bit for emphasis. But she turned me down. Under normal circumsataces I'm not normally a lesbian, but this movie made me realize what severe boredom can do to a person. It can drag your ass out of a closet that you didn't even know you were in.

When a miracle happened and this nightmare of a movie finally ended, a bunch of chicks in front of us clapped. If the world made sense they would've been clapping because that crapfest was finally over. But I'm pretty freakin' positive that they were clapping because their freaky suburban asses actually liked it. Possibly even loved it. They clapped. Sweet Baby Jeebus on a tilt-a-whirl, you guys, they clapped.

My faith in humanity is once again shaken, but my interest in dry humping is rekindled. If dry humping can save you from the eye/ear bleeding that is this movie, then by all means hump away. Just invite me to join you next time. Please.

Reunionizing: Let's Pretend It's A Word

So, regardless of the multitude of Ozarkian, rednecky, kidnappy obstacles that were in our way, we finally made it to Missouri with one canceled credit card and flashbacks of ice bucket pee, but without any unwanted hillbilly husbands, which I consider to be signs of a successful trip. If the ice bucket pee-er had been me, this trip may have fallen into the "unsuccessful" category, but since it was only a 9-year-old boy who #1) has the proper equipment needed to comfortably and un-splashily complete an ice bucket pee, and #2) thought it was an amazingly awesome and unparalleled travel experience, it equals success in my book. Nobody died. Nobody got unwillingly hitched. I may or may not have sat in human poo...that's up for debate. But in my book, poo or no poo, all went well.

Next event: 20th high school reunion. Thank God. After eating nothing for two days but water, almonds, cheese sticks, turkey jerky and air, Stephanie and I were dying to get on with this whole reunion business, which would culminate in an actual 4 food group representing, oven cooked, plate requiring meal on night two. AFTER we had already fit ourselves slimly into 2 night's worth of outfits without bloated bellies or butts.

The first night of our reunion was at a bar. A smokey bar. A hot, smokey bar. I asked the bartender guy to turn up the air and he said it was up all the way, so I asked him to show me the thermostat, you know, for proof, and for some reason he said no. Did my Perry Mason, Kojaky, Columbo-y bell go off? You bet it did. Especially when someone else asked him to turn it up and he told them it was broken. Anyway, now that we've established that the bartender at Bruno's Bar is a liar, I shall continue....

From the moment we arrived at the bar it was like a freaky "This Is Your Life," which is some old-timey show that our parents or grandparents watched that I really know nothing about except for the fact that people show up to tell stuff about you that you may or may not remember and you have to try to guess who they are. This was like that. Except for the stuff they tell about you is stuff that you probably don't remember because you were drunk, or high, or something like that. Also, alot of these people just boldly break the whole reunion name tag rule, which is really annoying, especially when you realize that maybe you retained memories of about 10% of your classmates faces, and of those 10% only about 5% still look anything remotely like they did 20 years ago. To those of you who came up to me excitedly to tell me how happy you were to see me....if you weren't wearing a name tag, I may have faked the reciprocating excitement. Don't take this in a bad way. I probably still liked the "Now" version of you, I just didn't remember the "Then" version of you. Some parts of high school are foggy.

I heard stories. I heard stories of things I did that I have no memory of doing. Do I trust these stories? I'm not sure. Do I think there was a plot to convince me of things that were completely fabricated? Possibly. I am nothing if not a conspiracy theorist.  Anyway, I love, love, loved seeing everyone. Whether I remembered you or not. It was more fun than I've had in years....drag bars included. I was told many times that I looked exactly the same as I did in high school. EXACTLY. While I suspect that most of you would consider this a good compliment after 20 years of environmental skin damage, baby having and general life stress, I don't. Please observe:

This is me on the left, looking hot to trot in acid washed jeans, giant black earrings, and bangs taller than the Sears tower. On the right is me sweating my ass off at Bruno's with my friends Neal and Alicia. Notice the flatter hair, smaller earrings, and you can't see the proof, but trust me...I am not wearing acid washed jeans. Do I look EXACTLY the same? Now, I have to  tell you that months ago I tried to convince Neal that we should go Good-Willing and get some 80's clothes, do our hair up high and show up at the reunion like a blast from the past and be all like "What are you guys looking at?" and act like we just never moved on, style-wise. But Neal was more concerned with looking all handsome and stuff, which I suppose worked out well because when I was in the bathroom stall at one point that night I heard a group of girls discussing how "hot" and "beautiful" Neal was, now that he's grown, like, a hundred feet and everything. But since I have heard no stories of anyone in the men's room discussing how "hot" and "beautiful" I was, I'm not sure I made the right decision in following Neal's lead in fashion. But whatever.

 Even though it was hot and smokey and I only remembered a small handful of people, we had a blast.  It was interesting how we found ourselves spending the most time with the people we didn't really even know in school, and how I found myself clicking with some who I never, ever crossed paths with at all. When you've gotten 20 years older and all the labels and cliques have faded away, you just talk to everyone and have a good time. Then you close the bar down and cram into a loud, giant pick-up truck, driven by a tiny girl, and you go to Denny's with a couple of ex- football players who you thought were douchebags because you pretty much thought all jocks were douchebags, and you find out that you really would have gotten along perfectly the whole time, but it's okay because you're having fun now, and you have 5 cups of coffee at 2 am and you laugh your brains out and have lots of fun until you finally get to bed at 3:30 am but stay wide awake until 6:30 because you're a freaking moron to drink 5 cups of coffee at 2am because you're not 18 anymore and you need your sleep. And while you lay there between trips to the bathroom with your tiny, old lady bladder, you still think: Who the hell were those people without the damn name tags?

If only Match.com or eharmony had a Gynecological Branch (and FYI it's not crotch.com which I typed in & is something so totally different)

Don't worry, I do have more stories to tell about my trip and my High School reunion, but I have to interrupt those stories with another, more pressing topic. My beloved, patient, good-natured, patient, warm, patient, extremely likable and patient OBGYN has totally ruined my life and retired on me. Out of nowhere. Although some friends and family seem to think he faked his retirement, as one might fake their own death, in order to get away from his most "complex" patient, I have to believe that he really did just grow tired of the whole looking at ladies in-betweens all day and move on to greener, less genitally pastures. As a matter of fact, I am fairly certain that he has probably been crying alot and needing, like, therapy and stuff to get over the fact that his life is gonna be so empty and meaningless without me. But none of that really matters, because I will now need to break in a new Dr. which is something I don't look forward to at all. But I do have a wish-list for that lucky new Dr. who gets me as a patient, and I hope that one of you will know someone who fits this description: 

Married white female, age 38 (doesn't look a day over 18), seeks new Gynecologist (male or female ok) who is into having long conversations with kooky blondes in paper gowns, that may or may not have anything to do with anything even remotely related to female health. Must also be able to handle a patient with a file that needs its own cabinet. Must be tolerant of a patient who questions everything you say, sometimes googles and returns to you with print-outs, drawings and diagrams of things she questions. Must not have a super baby-centric office, because I have closed up shop in that department, and no longer find rooms full of pregnant women or women with babies all that adorable. Must be alright with having a nickname, something along the lines of Dr. Meatloaf or Dr. Dirty Dancing (as all my Dr's do) because I have about a million Dr's and am not good with names and must give you one of my own creation. Must be able to take a joke, inappropriate banter, etc... and have a good if not great sense of humor, although must not cross a line into creepy territory such as a past OBGYN who told me, among other things, that I was immaculately groomed...one of the best he's seen, and showed me his collection of antique dildos. Must, Must, MUST have wonderful PA or Nurse because as a professional patient I know that those people are the ones I will most often have to deal with, and if I don't like them, I don't like you, due to the fact that you employ them and if they suck there is obviously something wrong with you as well. Definitely must have extremely short wait-time, I'm talkin' less than 20 minutes max, because this patient's time is just as valuable as yours and I will not waste it sitting in a room of crying babies and looking at 8 year old Redbook's with Kathie Lee and Celine Dione on the cover. If Dr. is a male, must not be too handsome, because that makes being nude and in stirrups just so much more awkward. BUT, Dr. must also not be too ugly, because if I have to drop my pants for someone, they really can't look like a troll. Must also hate Pina Colada's and get really pissed off when they are caught in the freakin' rain.

Stirrupsgirl18