"Artoo Come Back Here At Once!"

Let me just start right off my saying that I would like to come back in another life as Jack. This kid picked the right two suckers for parents. Let's just say there isn't a playmobil rescue vehicle to be found in the tri-state area. Oh and we're *ahem, Roberto* is building him a tree house (with a fire pole and a zip line!). I can't help myself. It started before he was even born. "Oh no, I don't need anything new, when I can buy this super soft organic onesie with teensy tiny green stripes for my fetus!" "Who needs to go to the gym when you can burn calories shopping for star wars legos, and superhero I Can Read books?" I overdo it. I know this. He's spoiled. But he's not rotten. Not yet. I swear.

We had his birthday party on Sunday. It was awesome. Toddler mayhem. Wait, are they still toddlers at 3? He seems like a kid now. I guess I have to stop calling him the baby. I have to stop saying: "SSHHH! The baby's sleeping!" And: "It's in the baby's room, I'll get it." sniff, sniff.

I told Jack on his birthday that the day we brought him home from the hospital, I took him right upstairs where we both fell asleep, him on my chest. It was sunny and warm in the room. Because we had just moved in we didn't have curtains yet. I had hung sarongs in the window for privacy and so the light was warm and pink. The short drive home had tired us both out and we slept like that for a good hour or two, neither one of us used to him being outside. I think about that nap all the time when I see his powerful little legs running down the sidewalk in front of me, or watch him "breakdancing" in the living room with Nipper Knapp." That little man was the size of a loaf of bread, and he napped right on me."

Jack likes to hear about how he cried when he was a little baby, "boo hoo hoo", but he's not interested in how small he was. My dad used to tell a story about the way my butt would leave a little wet mark on the seat of his truck after we'd drive home from Lucy Lachance's pool when I was a kid. And the little butt mark would only be "this big" and he'd hold out his thumb and index finger to indicate an impossibly small space, like he couldn't believe it. I can't believe Jack isn't that my little rump roast anymore. He's a small boy who keeps telling me, that soon "he's going to grow into a big man".

Ok, enough weepy mess making. The party. Pizza was consumed, presents were opened, a Darth Vader piñata was smashed to pieces. But one guest sadly did not make it out alive. Weeks ago, Jack told me he wanted a pink R2D2 cake. I was all for it. But then the hate mail began. How could I do that to Jack? How could I do that to R2? I would never be forgiven! The shame would be unending! I caved. It would be blue. It would be funfetti. The head would be silver, and OH MY GOD WE DON'T HAVE ANY SILVER FROSTING OR SPRINKLES OR ANYTHING! Nipper did a last minute Williams Sonoma run on Saturday night. He's an enabler. I decorated all the pieces after Jack went to bed Saturday night and then put it together a few hours before the party.

Everyone ooh'd and aah'd the cake when they came in. I had done it! Baby Big 3 wants an R2D2 cake? Hush little baby don't say a word, mama's gonna buy you a...

Did I mention it was kind of a hot day?

The kids decorated Star Wars cookies, and raced around the house. The tidy ones neatly lining up Jack's trucks like a car show. The messy ones dripping icing on the rug. All of them high on sugar and the sound of their own voices. It was great.

We were outside enjoying the post piñata melee, when my neighbor Anna came out with a soft but mournful look on her face. "I have something I regret to inform you. R2D2 is dead. Well, not dead entirely. Your mother sacrificed her shirt, and propped him back up, but, well, you'll see".

I raced into the house to do damage control. NOT THE CAKE! He had warmed up and his buttercream frosting had gotten slicker than gulf of mexico (too soon?). I should have put him in the fridge, but he was four layers high and on the cake tower it would have meant taking out a shelf, and people, I'm just not much for that kind of you, know, planning.

I examined the "blood on the wall" that Smacksy described as "very Peckinpah". I thanked my mom for putting him back together. And just as we were laughing about the whole thing, I heard a sickening wet sucking sound from the kitchen. I turned to see through the dining room door just as R2D2 LAUNCHED himself off the counter onto the floor. It was just too much for him to go on like that. His life was never going to be the same. We've ruled it a suicide. No way it was an accident with the trajectory of the fall of the counter, and the distance he covered, landing miraculously in the middle of the kitchen floor. R2D2 quit on us. We ate him anyway.

French Skinny suggested next time I use a dowel, then later sent me an email apologizing for suggesting a dowel while poor Artoo lay bloody on the floor. Love her!  I was worried that Jack was going to be upset when he saw this sad cake coming at him with a frosted up 3 candle lit. But he grinned like a fool as everyone sang Happy Birthday, and happily told his Nana it was the best cake ever as he shoveled sugar spoonfuls into his mouth.

I'm a squanderer

I squander time, and good will, and fancy face cream, and all kinds of other good stuff. I don't mean to do it. I always begin with the best of intentions. I will be efficient today. I will return every phone call I receive. I will not use the $60 eye cream on my decolletage in the hopes that it will "reconstruct" that whole area.

When I was 14 my best friend told me she thought I worked better under pressure. Huh. Why do I remember that? Because it's true? Prolly. But it's not like I waste time laying around looking at my belly button. I waste time making other projects for myself. That way, in case I'm not FREAKING OUT enough about the one or two things on my plate, the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth things on my plate are usually sufficient to keep me crackin. I know I've talked about the sinking feeling that the resounding answer to "how do you do it all?" is probably ADHD. Truth is, if I wasn't doing all this stuff, I'd be getting myself into a heap of trouble. No doubt about it. No idea what kind of trouble, but I'm sure I'd be good at making that too. Mommy stopped crafting, and that's when she started robbing banks. You know, just to see if she could.

SO to keep myself on the up and up this week, I started, and finished a few things! So long prison orange, hello pink lap quilt. It's kind a disaster. I had an hour, and I wanted to finish it, but I didn't have one whole piece of batting, but I did have three, so I tucked them all in there, and sewed the edges, and then realized that whoopsy tootsie, as soon as I wash it, those middle pieces are going to curl up inside the thing and be all lumpy and make me hate myself. So I just stitched them in. Just went and sewed a couple of ugly lines right across my pretty pink quilt. You win some you lose some.

Burned two Yodas did I

Today I started preparations for Jack's birthday party on Sunday. Let's be honest, I started preparations days ago. Today I started baking. I'm making an R2D2 cake. My mother practically begged me not to. She sent me an email with links to two Pasadena bakeries who make specialty cakes. She said "I'm buying". She offered to send me to a spa. Again, she said "I'm buying". But how sad would it be, the mom who made ladybug and owl, and  minnie mouse cakes for her friend's kids bought her kid an R2D2 cake. There's not enough ice cream ala mode to wash that down.

R2D2's refrigerated noggin

You think I could get some ritalin from some kids in the neighborhood?

Will work for soy lattes

Jack's birthday is next week, but we're having a party Sunday. I'm making an R2D2 cake. Oh and star wars cookies. Remember a few months ago, when I was FREAKING out about Jack playing pretend "shooting thing"? I have since gone to the dark side. Now everything is a "shooting thing" and I play along as long as he gives whoever he "shoots" a kiss after they fall to the ground. Kisses make everything better. I baked all day today, while trying (and failing) to get the music rights to a song we want to use in the pilot we are submitting to the NYTVF. But I guess that's another random skill I now have. Here's what my resume would look like if I had to get a job tomorrow. Or maybe just a random list of stuff I can do. Resume writing is not one of my skillz...

I'd attach this picture because "Yes I AM a Rocket Scientist"

Sadie got me this for my office because she loves me, and she's a good friend, and it's perfect. 

Sells stuff on tv

How to have snarky thoughts

Grows own corn and blueberries

Funny dancing

Editing

Good oral hygiene

Irony

Total recall on most conversations I had before 1992

No recollection of anything that has been said by me, to me, or around me for last 3 years (not really a skill, unless someone needed an amnesiac to hang around with. But who needs that? Not Nipper Knapp, that's who.

Bakes fancy cakes that usually hold together through the party

How to take a picture

Knows that you have to get both performance, and publishing rights on songs you want to use in your tv show or movie, and where to find the people who hold those rights

Takes rejection like a champ, except when it hurts my feelings, and then I cry, a little or a lot

How to pick a husband

How to explain a crazy dream in detail to someone who could care less. (it's like I was in high school, but it wasn't high school, and you were there, but you were really Beyonce, but I knew it was really you, and I couldn't push any of the buttons on my camera, and then we were all on the roof for no reason, and Jenny who was actually Edward James Olmos wanted me to open a present, but I was afraid of the present, even though I knew it was my favorite kind of socks)

Makes soy lattes

Paying bills (usually on time)

Eats as much as a man, but doesn't brag about it, because knows how to be a lady

How to make a crying kid forget what they were crying about and laugh

How to make an ass of myself (both with, and without intention, although more skilled at the latter)

How to make up lyrics to songs that other people wrote

I wonder if there is an employer out there looking for my particular skill set.