{Wordful Wednesday} We've Been Snowbound For Three Days :: Send. Help. Now.

We're snowbound. Again. Being held hostage by all the ice and a bunch of people who can't drive on said ice and a city that has absolutely no plan for removing it beyond "waiting," as my hilarious sister-in-law/BFF Angelou put it, "for the sun to come out." In the meantime, my kids are eating us out of house and home, bouncing off the walls, k-i-l-l-i-n-g me with the "I'm bored" and the "Can I."

God bless their teachers—one and all.

I do not know how they do it.

I promise you, I've kicked them out the house more than a coupla times. Nope—I don't care how cold it is. Get out. Do something. Rollerskate on the ice. Build a snowman. Take your camera out and get some pictures of nature in a deep freeze. Breathe heavy on the windows and draw your name in the steam. I don't care. Just. Get. Out. And take the dog with you. 

This is them being cute in the snow. Just before Nick and I locked them out the house.

Maybe we'll let them back in.

Eventually. 

He Wants It, She's Too Tired To Give It: The Sex Lives Of Married Folk—Bali-Style.

One of my favorite TV shows ever is CBS's Sunday Morning. It's like NPR with pictures—thoughtful, interesting, fresh, and above all else, intelligent. On any given Sunday, you might get a profile of Lenny Kravitz and his interior design prowess, a retrospective of Kandinsky, and a smart, in-depth look at the fools behind Jackass, and every last one of the stories will make you think and stretch and happy you ended the hour feeling smarter.

One of the Sunday Morning features I'm really loving is Steve Hartman's "Everybody In the World Has a Story." Hartman gets someone to pick a random country off a globe, then dude finds some random person to interview and—voila!—there's an interesting story in the making.  And the story he found in Bali? Priceless.

Check it: Wayan Kamar and his wife, Wayan Sriani got issues. He wants sex. She's too worn out for sex. He's frustrated that he's not getting sex. She needs him to make some changes so she'll be in the mood for sex. You know—maybe wash a dish or two, cook a dinner, hit a girl off with some flowers, light a candle or something.

Um, sound familiar to anyone?

Hartman put it best in his wrap-up when he suggested that this couple's story "goes to show that when you dig beneath race, religion and politics, you'll almost always find someone you can relate to." He added:

In fact, after traveling around the world twice telling strangers' stories, I've concluded the only real difference between humans is that some people on Earth live for purpose and meaning—and the others are men.

You said it, brother. (I didn't, but I wish I did—LOL!)

You so have to watch this video. And if you're a total heathen like me and mine, you won't go wrong spending Sunday morning in your pajamas, drinking coffee and enjoying this thoughtful show.

Get It, Toyota: MyBrownBaby Hearts The "Swagger Wagon"

Just so you know, ain't nothing funnier than watching white folks be "down." Like, seriously? He didn't have to be bald with the glasses, but that helped. So did all that talk about "rolling hard through the streets and the cul-de-sacs," and  "cruising to the playdates lookin' all slick." And the babies as video vixens? Priceless. If Toyota was looking to make me giggle, mission accomplished. I'll never look at the Toyota Siena the same way again. Like, ever.

Of course, the reason we all laugh is because none of us thinks we're anywhere near as corny as these two. But er, um, yeah: Next time you're in the mirror, lean in a little, and conjure up the image of that smirk on your kids' face when you rolled down the windows on your swagger wagon and turned up the volume on Jay-Z's "Dirt Off Your Shoulder."

Uh huh.

*snaps fingers, nods head to the beat*

The Swagger Wagon

Yeah the Swagger Wagon

It's the Swagger Wagon

I gots pride in my ride...

{Don't forget to take the MyBrownBaby Survey—do it and I'll love you long time.}

WANTED: A Wife

Forty-one-year-old woman with husband and three kids seeks consort/right-hand lady/stand-in to cut a sistah some slack/work out some things around the house when she just can’t take it anymore…

Must be in love with children—even when they cry, whine, ignore parental orders and slap box literally every five seconds for no other reason than that a fellow sibling looked in their general direction. This love runs a full 24-hour cycle; be prepared for middle-of-the-night duty, when you will get smacked in the head at will at all ungodly hours of the night for water/puke/pee/sore tummy/diarrhea duty that could include several 3 a.m. jammie and bed sheet changes, some stomach rubbing, and a lot of cuddling until they’re back off to dreamland, even if you’ve got to be up at 6 a.m. to iron school clothes, pack lunches and book bags, whip up a healthy breakfast and make sure the little funkmasters’ molars, pits and booties are clean enough for public scrutiny…

Must be able to use your “free” time during school days to scrub the house spotless, sort, pre-treat, wash and fold mind-boggling amounts of grass-, poop, and sweat-stained clothes, schedule all appointments with the cable, plumber, HVAC and lawn guys and somehow make it back to the house from the grocery store/dry cleaners/post office/random errand run before or after the stupid “four-hour window” so as not to lose the appointment you sweated two weeks to get, and be proficient enough in fixing all of that stuff to know when you’re about to be snookered for all your cash by male service providers who think your lack of a penis makes you a complete idiot/ATM…

Ability to (quickly) whip up meals that would make Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio slurp and ask for seconds an absolute essential; if you can’t anticipate the likes, wants, needs, desires, and dietary restrictions of everyone in the house and make said meal healthy enough to pass muster with the Today Show’s Joy Bauer, you’re an epic fail and need not apply. Ditto if you don’t have ESP or the uncanny ability to catalogue in the recess of your brain the whereabouts of every… single… solitary… random… thing… that belongs to family members, who will be much too busy to put their things away, let alone find it without uttering, “Where is [insert said random stuff here]?”…

Should be prepared to balance checkbooks, five-person schedules, and all doctor and dentist appointments and room parent, PTA, church, neighborhood association and community service volunteer assignments with grace and never-let-‘em-see-ya-sweat aplomb; driver’s license a must, as you’ll be the one scooting from one corner of town to the other to ensure your young charges make it to soccer/ballet/trumpet/Mandarin practice and countless after school activities, somewhere in between all of that other volunteery stuff you’ll be doing.

Oh, and yeah: Be ready to screw like a porn star. In full Victoria's Secret fashion show runway-worthy costume. Especially in the middle of the night when you finally make it to the bed and your hot head hits the cool pillow and you’re thisclose to that two-hours-worth of sleep you’ll squeeze in before that middle-of-the-night, “I threw up” slap you’ll be getting…

Base salary: Less than minimum wage. Bonuses come in the form of occasional hugs, kisses and the rare “thank you for all that you do” declarations (usually negotiable after total emotional breakdowns and threats of bodily harm).

Serious inquiries only, please. Weak, shabby, faint-of-heart women need not apply. Suckers definitely welcomed.

Editor's Note: "Wanted: A Wife" was written exclusively for Parenting.com's The Parenting Post. To get great mom-to-mom advice and tips on childrearing and motherhood, visit the MyBrownBaby Page at Parenting.com. 

Room To Spare

So four more months and Mazi will be headed to Lafayette College.

Which means... SPARE ROOM!

What? Ain't no shame in my game. Before the back wheels on his suitcase get over the front door threshold good, I'm pulling the crime scene tape off his bedroom door, donating his bed to the Salvation Army (or maybe we should burn it), emptying the rest of that sucker out, and turning that bad boy into something really adult and special. At dinner last night, we all plotted what we'd do with our newfound space:

Mari: It could be a second guest room.

Nick: Exercise room!

Lila: I know! We could put a couch in there and hang some pictures and sit and look at them. Like a museum.

Me: Oooh! Oooh! I got it! *snapping my fingers, dramatic pause for emphasis* A craft room! I could move my sewing machine in there and make more drapes and practice drawing and doing collages and...

Mazi: *pouting* Um, we could leave it just the way it is.


Dead. Fish. Eyes.

C'MON, SON! #getdaf*ckouttaherewitdatbullsh&t!

Wordless Wednesday—If You Think This is Bad, You Should See The Other Kid!

Okay, so Lila didn't lose her two front teeth throwing 'bows. Well, not really. Let Mari tell it, and an unfortunate jostling incident with her sister over a bowl of pasta just "helped" the first tooth fall out. The second tooth is somewhere on the soccer field, having been "helped" into the grass when it made an unfortunate connection with a fellow teammate's forehead.

Yeah.

Anyway, I just got a kick out of the snaggle-tooth phase. Too cute.

Lila would like the tooth fairy to know that she prefers cash, but checks are fine, too. Just leave all monies by the door, please. You may be world renowned and all, but she doesn't really dig strangers all up in her room in the middle of the night.

Thanks.