Fat Willy Taft

That's what Nipper is going to start calling me if I don't knock it off. "Good morning Fat Willy Taft! Jack tell Fat Willy Taft good morning!" I'm going to blame the holidays, and the turn of the weather. It's been in the low 70s all week in LA, you know sweater weather. Last weekend I made two giant lasagna dishes filled with comfort food for us to eat all week. I made brownies, bought some mint fudge covered oreos, which are like kryptonite to me, and I would like to tell the good people at nabisco that they are ruining my figure... but also that they have made life worth living. Yesterday I made the salted brown butter crispy treats from smitten kitchen. And then I had the brainstorm to melt some scharffen berger dark chocolate and dip the tops in it. Nipper Knapp and I have eaten half of them already... since yesterday.

I don't know that I've gone on a food bender like this since I was a kid. When I was 9 or 10, I would sneak down to the corner store and buy a bag of mini reese's peanut butter cups, and eat THE WHOLE BAG. I would hide them under my pillow, so my mom wouldn't know. I would buy a tub of chocolate frosting and eat it with a spoon. For the life of me, I can't figure out why I did this, but I would spread butter on saltines and sprinkle them with sugar and eat them. I was a baby closet sugar smack. What's funny, is that as an adult, I am much more of a savory food person. I'd much rather have something salty or cheesy than something sweet. But as a kid, I couldn't get enough. Maybe I'm going through puberty again...

The red holiday cups are back at Starbucks, and along with them the treat I think about a good part of the year. The gingerbread latte. I think about it before I go to bed at night. As in, "fuck I have so much to do tomorrow, and there's no way I'm going to get it all done, but hey, at least there will be a gingerbread latte in there somewhere...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz". Unfortunately this year, I've given up caffeine and so I thought I'd have to go without. But I decided to try it anyway, and of course I'm hooked. Something about a hot beverage that's made for you by someone else, that you can carry around with you, feels like the ultimate in being nice to yourself. The bad part is that I'm a little ashamed of my order, because it's basically just a milky syrup delivery system. This is what it sounds like "I'd like a grande soy gingerbread two pump latte with no foam and no toppings".  Hello douchebag, nice to meet you. I'm filled with self loathing every time I say it.

Today, when I got up, Jack and I went through the drive through Starbucks by our house. They have the little screen up that shows your order as you're telling the person inside what you want. Here's what it looked like:

1 Grande Hot Chocolate
1 Horizon Milk
1 Grande Soy Gingerbread Latte (ask me)

There it is, confirmation. I have become the dressing on the side person. I have become a high maintenance orderer. I used to be happy with butter on a soda cracker and now I need a thesaurus and a manager approval to order coffee.

I'm not crying, I have some popcorn in my eye

Querida Internet,

Number of times I cried during the movie 2012:

TWO

Just wanted you to know what kind of girl you're dealing with...

xoxo
Mrs Nipper Knapp

Cute as a button!

Some of you may have already seen my friend Annie Little in the new Kindle commercial. If not check out her website www.annielittle.com to see the spot, and download the song for FREE off Amazon. I am so excited for her!

Shameless self promotion

The thing we do for money is pretty silly. We dress up, not in costumes, but in clothes your mother would wear to a bake sale and pretend to be someone else's spouse, or mother, or office mate, and we convince you to buy stuff. Stuff that you need or don't need. Stuff that needs selling. Nipper Knapp and I are actors and we mostly (only) do commercials. If someone had told me at 23 that I would have a great career doing commercials, that I would support my family, and get health insurance, and be able to spend most days laying around the house with my family, I would have thought they were nuts. I also might have gone back to school. Which would have been dumb. Because I have a great life. It's a little unstable, but whose life isn't? 

Over the years, I developed an interest in photography and started shooting actors headshots, which led to shooting models, which led to shooting stuff for designers and magazines. I had lots of luck, and friends who helped, and I started to think that maybe acting in commercials was just my day job, and that photography was what I really wanted to spend my life doing. At last I felt in control of a creative process. 

And then I had a baby. 

I don't know why it's not talked about more, but no one told me that 1/4 of my brain matter would be removed upon delivery of my sweet baby boy. Just right out the door. What's my name? I don't know. Where is the bottle warmer? No idea. What shutter speed should we shoot this at to create shadow on that side of the girls face, but not lose detail completely? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Are you kidding me? I have to do math? I can barely remember what I like to eat. Scratch that, I have no idea what I like to eat. I have momnesia.

Now, I have to admit that much of my ability to reason, and the logic portion of my brain had returned once Jack grew past infancy. Unfortunately the desire to work out complicated problems not involving how to get Jack to sleep through the night did not. Frankly, I didn't care anymore. Didn't care about putting on make-up to go to an audition. Didn't care about learning the lines once I got there. Didn't care that people probably thought I was a mess. Didn't care about taking pictures AT ALL. As a matter of fact, most of the pictures we have of Jack in his first year were taken on our iphones. I didn't even feel guilty about not caring. I was so filled with maternal longing, and crazy hormones, that I didn't really notice anything missing. I also didn't get much of any work that first year. Great for bonding with Jack, not great for our pocketbook. 

When Jack was about to be a year old, one of my dearest and oldest friends from childhood contacted me. She was getting married and she wanted me to shoot her wedding. I said "NO". I told her that I don't really shoot weddings. I told her that she should hire someone who specializes in weddings. She told me that she wouldn't take no for an answer. I didn't tell her I was worried I'd ruin her wedding by taking awful, uninspired terrible, no good pictures. I thought "I haven't touched my camera in a year, and maybe I don't know how anymore." I was having a serious crisis of confidence. She insisted, so I said I would do it , and then I immediately set to spending every night looking at wedding photographers sites. 

OH BOY! I forgot how much I loved this stuff. I forgot how much I love photography, and images, and wedding dresses, and flowers, and happy people's faces! I forgot the thrill of a challenge. As the day approached I hired an assistant for the day of the wedding. They were getting married in Sonoma so I couldn't use any of my old assistants here in LA. I found him on craigslist and he turned out to be completely non crazy, and didn't murder me as the cake was being cut or anything. Which was a big relief. 

Long story short (too late for that I know) it went really well. The location was beautiful, the bride was beautiful (duh), and did I mention the pictures were beautiful. It all came back, just like riding a bike. I made a mental note of all the shots I needed to get. I consulted the bride and groom on anything or anyone special they wanted me to shoot (their shoes, crazy aunt esther, etc...) And the thing I was the most concerned about, the part of being "the wedding photographer", was AWESOME. Turns out, I love to be bossy! And I'm good at it! Who knew? (shut up Nipper)

So in the year that followed, I randomly had a few other couples ask me to shoot their weddings, and I enjoyed each one more than the last. Some of the weddings have been travel jobs, one in Michigan, and another with a wedding in San Francisco, and a reception in Malibu, so I've had to really put on my thinking cap, and be prepared. It's been challenging and so fulfilling. It seems there IS a way to blend that thing I loved pre-baby, with something that is do-able post-baby. I no longer have the heart for putting together lavish shoots with models, and stylists, and clients. I do have a love of family, and friends, and as much as it makes me want to throw up a little in my own mouth to say it, a love of love. Excuse me... lobotomizing myself now.

So I've put together another blog. SHUT UP you say! No, but it's true. It's going to be for the weddings I shoot. So it won't be filled with any clever anecdotes about how I destroyed something, or made Nipper Knapp want to commit sepuku. But it will be filled with stories of love, and happiness and pretty pretty things that clever brides think of to make their day sweet and personal and perfect. Feel free to pass along my photography site, or the wedding blog to anyone you know who's getting hitched. Who knows, maybe someone you know has been dying to have the quilted northern girl shoot their wedding. 

The trench

I've been avoiding talking about this. I guess I thought if I didn't talk about it, it would go away. OR, it would magically get fixed by the plumbing fairy.

The downstairs bathroom (still unpainted) smells bad. It's always smelled bad. When we came to look at the house they had candles burning in there. I should have known. And I don't mean, it doesn't vent well, or it smells a little musty. It smells BAD.

Imagine if you will a port-a-potty. I want you to close your eyes, and imagine that port-a-potty is at a week long music festival in Texas, and it's day three. The temperature outside is 97 degrees and the port-a-potty is right next to a BBQ stand. Ok now imagine that somehow that port-a-potty is accidentally locked and left to sit in the sun and heat until day seven when it is picked up by a guy named Jerome. Poor Jerry goes to work on getting it open, and when he finally succeeds in his mission, the door flying open, the wickedness that emerges knocks him back on his ass, and melts his eyebrows clear off. That my friends is the smell I'm talking about.

It comes and goes as it pleases. Sometimes it's gone in under and hour, and sometimes it lingers all day. It seems to be worse in the morning, but then sometimes it disappears for months at a time. It seems to have no correlation to how much the toilet is used or if water is run in the sink. Leaving the door open or closed makes no difference whatsoever.

Sometimes when you get up in the morning, you go into the kitchen, and as you round the corner by the fridge it hits you like a brick wall. The smell is so bad it actually triggers the fight or flight instinct in me. It also fills me with disgust and shame. Why do we have a smelly room?

We've had so many plumbing problems with this house, and I know in my heart of hearts that what it needs is for someone to come in, and redo the whole system top to bottom. It also needs to move into a better school district, but that's not going to happen either. When we moved in, there were pipes that were running uphill to drains, and leaky pipes. We lost a wall in that downstairs bathroom to a leaky pipe. That cost us a couple grand in pipe fixing, mold abatement, giant blowing fans, and dry-walling. My father who was here visiting, said if it was his house, he'd have fixed it for $7.32 and a trip to home depot. It was his way of letting us know our mold is bourgeois.

Ok, so the smell seems to be getting worse in the last few weeks. I think it's crying out for me to pay attention and finally call in a professional. My greatest fear is that the plumber will be just as stumped as we are, and we'll have to pay him $300 to tell us there is nothing he can do. Or worse, we'll pay him $300 to pretend to do something that in no way makes our bathroom not smell like a trench full of rotting flesh and poop on fire.

Yay homeownership!

Don't fence me in...

Sunday morning Jack and I went to the Studio City farmers market. It's a little bit of a hike from here, but they have a petting zoo, and pony rides, or as I like to call it "Salmonella Village". They have a teenage kid walking around with a pooper scooper, but as you can imagine, between the animals crapping and the toddlers stumbling around high on baby bunny torture, it's a disaster. Chickens are popping out from under every surface, and the baby goats with crap encrusted furry butts are grazing up against every surface. This is like hell for someone like me. You know, someone who values their life. But Jack gets to pet a bunny, laugh at a chicken, and see where hamburgers come from, and so, I endure.

I watched in horror as a dad allowed his one year old, who was barely walking to crawl around on the ground, where fresh crap had just been scooped. He was also wildly clutching for bunnies, getting handfuls of sawdust which he was crazily rubbing on his face. There are not enough wet wipes in the world to clean this child, and his parents should just start over.

They have these little foot pump driven hand washing stations outside the gates. In order to wash your kid's hands, the water comes out about four feet off the ground, you have to hold them up while urging them to put their hands under the water. While holding your wiggling 30lb bundle of joy, and pumping furiously with one foot, you must somehow free your right hand (or your left if you're a communist, or my mother, or Barack Obama) and try to squeeze some soap onto the their hands, which are now everywhere, but under the soap dispenser. You do all of this, sweating, trying to speak in your sweetest patient mommy voice, while a line of parents and their E. Coli tainted children pile up behind you. You try your hardest not to shout "PUT YOUR HANDS UNDER THAT WATER AND RUB THEM TOGETHER OR SO HELP ME GOD I'LL MAKE YOU REGRET THE DAY YOU WERE BORN!" Because you know, he's two, and might not yet understand threats of this nature. Too vague and philosophical.

Holy Shit and Merry Christmas!

So I think I should have gone into another line of business. i.e. the business of being crafty. I could have been one of those quirky ladies at the local "art fair" with comfortable shoes, and an unnecessarily long braid. Oh and I'd use that crystal deodorant and eat lots of hummus to fit in with the other craft ladies...

Here is my tree topper. It really doesn't look anything like the one from Anthropologie. But in fairness, that thing is really freaking complicated, and made from NASA materials. This is my ode to that one. It cost about $30 in materials. So... there's that too. I'm actually not sure I want to put it on top of the tree, because it's so freaking sparkly and pretty, that I kind of want to hang it on our front door to alert the neighbors that someone REALLY fancy lives here. All the more incentive for them to rob us.

In other news, I spent the whole day cooking stuff from Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Family Style Cookbook. Poor Sadie, her husband Tom is from Vancouver and his 78 year old father fell and broke his hip while visiting Butte Montana this week. He had supplemental insurance that every Canadian purchases before entering the U.S. It covered his surgery, but won't cover his rehabilitation here in the states. Sadie and Tom can't buy him insurance here, so that he can get well close by, because he has a "pre existing condition". Yay America! So Tom flew up there to get him and his motor home back to Canada two days ago. She and Hattie are flying solo for the foreseeable future. So I thought I'd make some chicken and biscuit stew, and homemade mac and cheese (with gruyere) to tide them over for a day or two. Oh, and did I mention Sadie and Hattie have a terrible cold? Of course they do, because life is HARD people!!!

Ok, I have to go watch the Roomba that Sadie lent me clean my kitchen floor. Jack likes to shout "Go Roomba GO!" when it's cleaning. He's such a supportive child.

tweet this suckas

Them's fightin words missy. I have no idea what twitter is. I mean I do, but not really. I signed up today, because the super savvy Nipper Knapp says that having a blog, and not being on twitter is INSANE. I signed up and tweeted my first tweet. I don't have any followers yet, so it's sort of like talking to myself on the internet. Maybe I'll just tweet my innermost thoughts for the next few days until I cause some kind of social unrest. I have filter problems as it is. I say things all the time that don't need to be said out loud. I'm sure this will end disastrously. I'm also sure that this is some kind of beacon signaling the end of my thinking life. But, uh, YAY twitter.

http://twitter.com/mrsnipperknapp

oh, so Barack Obama DID make it. I see. I stand corrected.

I went to Michael's in the Burbank today. I ate an In&Out burger in my car, in the parking lot. Which pretty much made me the biggest loser in the world. Call off the search, we've found the worlds lamest person. I was in between auditions, and had to eat, and I had to start my search for the elements to make up my awesome Anthropologie rip off tree topper.

Ok, so after spending AN HOUR in there, with Oprah's entire studio audience, I think I know why the tree topper costs nearly $400. I also saw what I would look like if I didn't stop eating In&Out burgers in my car. The tree topper consists of no less than 42,000 different things that cost $7.99 a stem, plus some kind of unidentifiable silver thread or floss or wire, that doesn't exist. They made it up. I had a thought that maybe I should order the stupid thing and take pictures of it, and then return it to the store. But that thought made me feel like I was on the slippery slope to becoming Sarah Palin or Joseph Goebbels or something. Not cool dudes, not cool.

Ok, so here are the contents of my basket. Please note the ten tons of leftover Halloween candy in the background. We only had 4 trick or treaters this year, which was thoroughly depressing. At least this year they were kids. Last year we had several groups of teenage cholas and their babies. The babies were all inevitably dressed as lil' devils and their child mothers were all dressed as sexy something or other. Sexy nurse, sexy fireman, sexy teenage mother. I'm getting old. I'm too ashamed to say how much it all cost. My plan is to use what I need and return the rest. I had a hard time narrowing down what I'd need in the store. Plus I was afraid one of those ladies was going to ask me what I was making if I hovered in any one spot too long, and I would have had to say "Something beautiful and expensive and nothing like the monstrosity you are here to construct!!! I'm different from you!!!!!!"

The dining room table is covered in glitter and faux teeny tiny ice cubes, and Nipper Knapp is pacing back and forth trying to remember the plot to arsenic and old lace, and his chances of acquittal.

I'm just trying to by my baby a new pair of shoes. Mea Culpa

I'm playing the mother of newborn triplets and a four year old in a commercial this week. The real mother looked at me and my skinny jeans and then she punched me in the face (in her mind...)  I don't look like a supermodel, but I'm nowhere near what I looked like after giving birth to Jack. When I was 26, I played the mother to a 12 year old boy in a yogurt commercial. A few years ago, I auditioned to be the wicked mother of a man who was my SAME age. This business is super helpful to women, and their view of how women should look. If I see one more face botoxed beyond recognition, I'm going to barf. LADIES: it doesn't look better, or normal, or "fresh". It looks WEIRD!!! Skin doesn't look like that. Sorry that I contribute to some of these images. But someone's got to pay the mortgage. 

Obviously, I should have gotten a PhD in romance languages, and gone on to be an interpreter at the UN, but ladies and gentlemen, I decided to sell stuff and be pretty as long as nature would allow. I see the bite coming, don't you worry, I see it.