Spooooky

Happy Halloween everybody. I hope you and your children are so hopped up on cheap candy and scary stories by 8 o'clock tonight that you all throw up. That's what I did on my first Halloween night out. I was probably 3, maybe 4. I made it 2 houses, promptly barfed and was taken home. I get excited about holidays. Which is why I've been listening to my Christmas Pandora (I'll post it to my FB page after this post, it's mostly classic Christmas like Ella, and The Rat Pack) station for weeks MONTHS. I try to hide it from Nipper, but last week I was caught in the act listening on my iphone while getting ready for an audition. Nipper Knapp is disgusted, but I remind him that the holiday spirit is the only thing that warms his wife's cold cold heart.

But here's what I'm really excited about this scawy holiday eve. The Rubbermaid Reveal Spray Mop. No shit. I'm afraid...it's true. I went to Target to get candy for the zero tricker treater we're prolly going to have tonight (we live on a big hill, and today's kids, including mine, are lazy), and I bought this thing. FINALLY I can use my organic, overpriced, great smelling cleaner, (or just vinegar and water) to clean my floors. Yahooo! Plus I can wash the mop pad in the washing machine.

What's spooky about this is that I'm really excited...about a mop. True story. Kid's be telling it round the camp fires for years to come.

Crystal Fixative Lacquer for Wizards

I woke up this morning and realized I have something to share with the world. It's not a like penicillin or anything, and I didn't invent it. But if you've never heard of it, I might be like the Jonas Salk of hair products. Ok that analogy made no sense. Apologies all around. 


I found out about this from a make-up artist on a frozen vegetable commercial a few years ago. Who knew frozen food could bring so much glamour to my life. It's called Davines Wizards No.7 Crystal Fixative Lacquer. It's hair spray, and it smells sort of vanilla-y, but also sort of like candy, and also like something from my childhood that I can't place. It's a pretty light hold, so if you're looking for you know, shellac, this is not it. But I love it, and I wanted to share it with you. 

Enter Sandman...please

Fact: Jack does not kick in his sleep. His movements are far more subtle and insidious. So we've already given up on trying to get him to go back to his bed once he wakes up and wanders into our bed. We did a few nights of getting up and walking him back in there. Most nights Nipper Knapp just ended up falling asleep with him, the two of them smashed together in Jack's tiny twin. Other nights there were tears, and sometimes we were strong, but mostly, we caved. We are tired! It was late! He's only going to be little once! Someday we'll wish he was small enough to cuddle between us.

Ok, so fine. Most nights it's fine. He wanders in anywhere between midnight and 3am. Sometimes he comes in so quietly we don't notice he's there until morning. Lately though, he's been coming in and announcing something in full voice. "I have to pee" or "I already peed and I'm all wet" or "Is TODAY a school day?"

I try to shush him, and get him into the bed as quickly as possible, straddling the drift between sleep and awake. But some nights it's no contest. As soon as I hear his door open, I'm up. I lay there willing myself back to whatever dream I was in. Last night, I dreamt that Smacksy was married to Richard Dreyfuss. They lived in a little bungalow with a picket fence, and as she was introducing me to him, I was trying to remember if I had actually worked with him, or if I had just put working with him on my resume to pad it up a little. I wondered this aloud. Because EVERYONE uses Richard Dreyfuss as a boost on their acting resume. The rest of the dream had something to do with wiping a baby's bottom while changing a diaper and NEVER being able to finish. Wipe after wipe after wipe. I'm not well.

The worst part is, the kid likes to make contact. He also doesn't like to sleep under blankets. So within minutes he is sideways in the bed, above the blankets. The nights when his bowling ball head is smashing into mine, I can usually manage to stick a pillow between us and get on with it. But the nights, Nipper Knapp get's the noodle and I get the tootsies are murder. He does the little thing with his toe. It's like he's doing some kind of stretch. Little evil circles with that toe. Sometimes it's on my leg, sometimes my arm, sometimes it hits in the middle of my back. Tiny little erratic toe circles of doom. There is no escape. The circles work through any pillow barrier. The further I move away, the more he scooches closer, like one of those giant drills they used to make the chunnel.

Last night I ended up sleeping half on the throw pillows that I put on the floor when we go to bed, I was so far off the bed. I love my child, but I just want him to know now, when he's 13, and morose, and wants to sleep until noon, it's ON. Jack Knapp, your loving mother has 10 years to plan her revenge, and it will be sweet served cold. Love you baby.

I rode the subway by myself

It was a month ago, but that doesn't make it's happening any less AWESOME. I know people do this every day. But not me. I'm a born walker. I could walk from here to Albuquerque. San Francisco was the perfect city for me to live. I lived there for 7 years, 6 of which I didn't own a car. I walked everywhere.

No one walks in LA. I mean, maybe a few blocks, but not the way people walk in other cities. Everything is too spread out. The sprawl. I don't think about it now, but I do miss the walking.

So when we were in NY for the NYTVF last month, I decided to meet my friend Paige one morning, at FAO Schwarz before our afternoon meetings. I could walk there from where we were staying, but I'd have to take the subway back to Tribeca. I bought a giant Thomas the Train retractable bridge with a lighthouse, foghorn, boat, and two trains with golden buffers that could be recognized by his new Tidmouth Sheds talking railway dealie he'd gotten from Nana because of the devastation of us leaving. I had the girl unwrap the whole thing and put it in a bag, so I could carry it on the plane. Never mind the risk of the foghorn sounding repeatedly during the screenings. Never mind I spent more at Fao Schwarz than I did on any meal we had in NY all week (sad sad mommy fact).

Paige walked me to the train, and even made sure I went to the right one and didn't end up in Queens. Oh and I think she swiped her metro card for me because I didn't have one, and waiting for me to get one would have made her want to blow her brains out. Also she's really nice. So ok, big deal, I got on the train by myself rode a few stops, got off.

our little team in NY

BUT, the next day I got a call from my agent. I was going to have an audition. The next day. IN NYC. Holy smokes. I was going to have to put on make-up, figure out the right train based on the address I was given. ROCKET SCIENCE!!! I had been listening to a friend complain about the subway, about how it never runs on time. I smugly told him that I had ridden the train all by myself the day before and thought the subway system was a miracle of human engineering.

The next morning, I got up early, got ready for my audition, walked out the door of our friend's apartment, walked two blocks to the train stop only to find it was closed. Well, not closed. You could go into it, and stand there and wait for a train, but no train was going to stop there. There was a sign. NO DOWNTOWN TRAINS AT THIS STOP. Except it wasn't some big official sign. It was hand scribbled on a piece of regular 8x10 paper and taped to the wall, on the way OUT of the station.

Never mind, I am a savvy NYC subway rider, I walked two blocks over and caught another train that I new stopped near my audition. It arrived, I got on, I sat, I got off, I auditioned, I got back on, I had a very nice talk with an old mormon lady from Birch Run Michigan, I got off. As I exited the subway, I had the strong urge to by a tam, so I could throw it in the air. I didn't get the job, but OH, our pilot, Gentrification, won Best Writing, and got some great reviews. Yahooo! You're gonna make it after all...

your lips will thank you

Right before we left for NY (I'm getting to that, I swear) Sadie came over and brought me this new lip balm, (only it's called lip treatment because it's fancy) because she loves me, and she's a good person. It is sheer, and has the faintest plummy tint. It's also spf 15, and I love it. It smells a little bit like something I had when I was a kid, but very faintly. Some kind of kid make-up. Bonne Bell Dr. Pepper lip Balm?

I'm fixin to get the Rose version too.