I could pretty much do an entire segment of Madonna flashbacks because I was such a huge Madonna fan throughout my teen years (still am, but not quite as hardcore now). I still remember standing on a window ledge in my grandmother’s house, a ledge that was actually huge and very much like a stage, and I would sing loudly to “Like a Virgin”, dancing around and having no actual understanding of what I was singing. I never knew if my parents were appalled or amused.

I could also feature some of my other favorites like “La Isla Bonita” or “Material Girl” but I had to choose one and I went with “Like a Prayer”.

I think that was my first real experience with controversy and it immediately sparked a life-long curiosity for anything deemed “unacceptable” by a specific group of people. And between Madonna gyrating around a church in lingerie, accidentally cutting her hands to create the same cuts as Jesus had when he was crucified, a statue crying and later crying blood tears, bringing a statue to life, and dancing in front of burning crosses, well there was a lot for people to get up in arms I suppose.

And oh my God, I loved that video. I loved the video, loved the song, hated when the video was pulled from video stations, and loved when they brought it back – usually for some kind of “controversial videos” special.

So yay for the Internet, because then you don’t have to wait for MTV to feature it on one of their lame shows.

(I also think I may be one of the few people who loves Madonna as a natural brunette – I still think she looks amazing in this video!)

Poor Breanna caught a cold which mostly peaked yesterday, but she was still stuffed up and a bit run down today. That sure didn’t slow her down when it came time to celebrate that it was her birthday though. She was very excited to tell us that it was her birthday and she was three.

She didn’t even ask about presents when she got up so I was able to inhale some coffee and get her to eat a bowl of cereal. She was seriously just happy to go about her day, playing and enjoying herself. But as soon as I asked her if she’d like her presents, her eyes lit up and she clapped while saying, “ooh presents!”

The first present she opened was from Hayley. It was as much of a surprise for Hayley as it was for Breanna – big sisters have big mouths so we hadn’t told her what her present was. 🙂 Breanna is “mildly” obsessed with the movie Wall-E and by mildly I mean that there have been hours where she has insisted that we only address her as “Wall-E” while she walks around on her knees beeping and humming. So when she opened the bag and saw Hayley had given her a little stuffed Wall-E and a little plush Eve, she nearly exploded.

To be honest, the Wall-E is so cute that I really want one that I can have sit on my desk. Ahem.

Next, she opened up the package that had arrived from my sister. Amanda had found this cute little ice cream set to go with Breanna’s kitchen toys. It comes with a plastic cone, scoop, dish, and parfait glass. However, the banana and three scoops of ice cream are fabric with velcro that allow you to stack and attach them together. Breanna loved it and she served us ice cream cones regularly throughout the day.

Finally she got to the gift from us. She opened the bag and just about squealed when she saw it was the V-Tech Tote & Go Laptop (I was amazed to find the English version on the shelves right away!). I got the idea because she had said she wanted a computer like mine. When I saw that this was reasonably priced I figured it would be perfect. It’s for ages 3-6 so there are a few games she can already do now and a lot that she can grow into so it’s something she can enjoy for some time.

She looks like just as much of a nerd as me.

We also believe in doing a sister gift where the non-birthday girl gets a little something too, so Hayley got a nice little beading set and she’s already made herself a nice necklace. I’m filing bead/jewelry kits away for future reference for Christmas.

I had asked Breanna the other day if she wanted a pizza for her birthday or some spaghetti. It was no surprise to me that she immediately asked for “suppa-ghetti” since it’s her favorite. She was very happy to have her favorite meal for dinner and then she was ready for cake. Since we’re having her birthday party on Saturday we didn’t want to do a big, fancy cake tonight because it would just go to waste. Instead we decided to save the big cake for the party and tonight we just got one of those frozen Deep & Delicious chocolate cakes. She seriously didn’t care – all she wanted to do was blow out the candles and eat the cake.

Overall, I think she had a really great birthday. I still can’t believe she’s three!

Wow has she ever changed.

(A few additional photos over here)

This time three years ago Breanna wasn’t here yet. She was almost here. It’s just past 11 pm now and I think at this time I had just gotten Hayley to bed after attending a birthday party and I was reading birth stories while contracting. I was in utter denial that the contracting meant anything since every pregnant woman can tell you that if you get your hopes up about labor, it’s probably not real. Labor generally only becomes real when you stop saying, “ooh, maybe!” and start saying, “oh, shit!”

Or in my case, having your water break in bed at 7 am. Your mileage may vary.

It was weird to me today to think of time. On the one hand I can’t believe she’ll be three tomorrow, on the 20th. How is it possible? Surely she’s only about 6 months! On the other hand, I couldn’t believe that three years ago today she was still hidden away and I had no idea what she looked like, how big she would be, or what her personality might be like.

Time somehow manages to be both slow and far too fast at the same time.

I can’t wait to get up with her tomorrow and give her the birthday presents we got her! But for tonight I’m going to snuggle beside her for a bit and hold on to the one last day that she will get to be two years old.

*******

Thank you so much for the feedback on yesterday’s entry. It was probably the most incredibly personal thing I have ever written for public consumption and I felt a little naked and exposed after the fact, but the comments I’ve gotten have made me feel better about sharing something I don’t normally talk about too often and I’m grateful for the response.

You’re fine. You’re walking down the street, the same street as any other day. Maybe it’s a nice day. Maybe the temperature is just that perfect midpoint between cold and hot. A gentle breeze might blow past you. You’re in a relatively good mood. You feel happy, you don’t have anything in particular on your mind. Maybe you’re even listening to music while you walk.

You go into the store because you need to buy toilet paper, or maybe you need diapers, or hell, you just decided to go pick up some chocolate bars as a treat for your kids. You’re walking down the aisle and all of a sudden something changes. Someone else may not have noticed the change but you’re so familiar with this sensation that you can’t help but feel it immediately. You realize that your heart rate has accelerated. Not a lot. Nothing that makes you break your stride but it’s definitely faster.

You frown because you know what that usually means, but you force yourself to keep thinking about what you came here for, or to concentrate on the music in your ears, or to look at the labels on the products you’re passing.

Except nothing is distracting you as you realize that your heart rate is not slowing down, it’s not even staying at the status quo: It’s getting faster. And a little faster. And then too fast. It feels like you’ve been exercising hard, the way it used to feel when you did aerobics at the gym or how it used to pound after a good, solid two-hour kung fu workout. The problem is you haven’t been exercising hard; you didn’t even break a sweat walking to the store. Your heart is not pounding because of exertion. You know exactly why it’s pounding, thudding, thundering in your chest, your throat, your ears.

You decide to start taking long, slow breaths, only you have to fight to do it because as soon as you consciously think of your breathing you realize that for the past 60 seconds it’s been coming too fast, too shallow. You force yourself to fill your lungs with air, hold it, and release it. You keep inhaling again before you’ve completely exhaled no matter how hard you try to control it.

You get to the shelf holding whatever you wanted to buy. Maybe you had to think hard to even remember what it was that you needed so badly because all you want to do is breathe properly and slow your heart back down before an artery bursts. You quickly grab what you need.

You carry on through the store, searching for the other things on your list. You realize you’re sweating. It’s not very hot out, but you feel like the sun is all of ten feet away. You open your jacket or push up your sleeves, wishing it was appropriate to strip down completely to cool off as much as possible.

You try to swallow and realize your throat is dry, too dry and you nearly gag. For a second you feel like whatever’s in your stomach is going to make a rapid exit up and out onto the floor. You breathe, breathe, breathe, reminding yourself to slow down. But everything is fast. Your heart is too fast, your lungs are expanding and constricting too fast. Your feet start matching their pace. Your brain says something is wrong and by god you had better keep moving or there’s going to be trouble. As long as you keep moving, just moving, you’ll be fine.

You’re still trying to swallow, still trying to convince lunch to stay where it is. You feel like everything is too tight so you start tugging on the neckline of your sweater, trying to pull it away from your neck where it’s clearly squeezing you and trying to choke you.

As you grab the last of what you need, you do an abrupt 180 and head for the nearest cash as quickly as you can. As you race past the displays, past people, past posters on the walls you wonder why everything is so surreal. Faces are too bright. Everything is too bright. You feel like someone has adjusted the color intensity on your surroundings and everything is just a little too over-saturated.

You get in line and curse that there are two people in front of you, why the other cash isn’t open. You breathe, you breathe, you mutter to yourself under your breath, reassuring yourself that you’re okay, you’re fine, you’re nearly there, if you can just get out that damn door it will all be right again. Sounds explode in your ears. You wonder why everyone is talking so loud. Everything is amplified, as though everyone around you is speaking directly into your ears, into your brain.

You’re closer now, only one person in front of you. Things go just a little blurry, they way they look when you first wake up and can’t quite focus. You try to stop yourself from swaying and realize that it’s actually your head spinning. The customer in front of you leaves. It’s your turn. You just need to act like a normal person and then you can get out.

You all but throw your purchases on the counter and start fishing immediately for your bank card while you wait for the friendly cashier who is too bright and too fuzzy and too loud to ring up the total. You swipe your card and try to make your fingers stop shaking long enough to punch the right numbers.

While you wait for the transaction to complete you notice things aren’t that bright anymore. You might actually even think you were getting back to normal except for the fact that your heart is now racing so quickly that you wonder how it’s still going, and you’re breathing so quickly that you wonder if people can hear you, but surely they can’t because everything is still so goddamn loud. Then you realize that the brightness is fading because your vision is getting dark and fuzzy around the edges and now your head is spinning more and the world is kind of tilting just a little to one side and your stomach is climbing up your esophagus and you’re not sure if you’re going to faint or throw up or maybe do both but you do know that if you don’t grab your card and your bag and get the fuck out of there right this second then something bad is going to happen and you’re trying to count because sometimes counting backwards by threes from three hundred distracts you from things but there’s no distracting this time and you need to leave, leave, leave, now, now, NOW.

And then you’re done and you get through that door as fast as you can without raising suspicion – good lord, no raising suspicions, that would only delay you from getting outside – and you lean against the wall and pretend to be putting your wallet away or looking for something in your bag, but really you’re just trying to inconspicuously gasp for air, you’re trying to remember what number you were counting, and you’re resisting the urge to sit on the ground with your head between your knees.

Then as air starts to surround you, you feel your heart slowly but surely thudding a little more dully than before, gradually winding down. You realize that you can get a full breath into your lungs again. The dizziness is still lingering but you feel the way you used to in college when you’d reach that slightly tipsy but not quite drunk level and you can cope with that. Still trembling a bit, partly from aftershocks and partly because you finally stopped sweating, you start walking towards home. You’re drained so you can’t walk too quickly, but you’re too bruised inside to walk too slowly so you settle for a moderate pace. You can feel traces of a headache seeping into your skull but you don’t mind too much because you know that it means it’s over now.

Later, at home, when everything is normal, when you’re normal again, you think back on it and decide that it was rough but there have been worse times. And you survived. Again. And you will carry on to face it all over again some day. You don’t know when. It could be tomorrow, if you’re lucky it might not be until next week. You wish it would surprise you and never come back, but you know better by now. Regardless, you congratulate yourself for not letting it win this time.

And that is what it’s like to have a panic attack. That is what it’s like in my brain when my fight or flight trigger gets flipped and I have no way to stop it. That is what it’s like to be me on a regular basis.

Today I took a little bit of time with my coffee to catch up on a few blogs I hadn’t read for about a week and one of them was Carrie’s blog. I am so very happy that I was able to find that quiet time today because thanks to her I have discovered a movie that is now on my list of “Holy shit, I HAVE to see this!” movies.

But first I must ask – WHY WHY WHY did no one tell me about this?! Repo the Genetic Opera. Oh my God. Totally my kind of movie. Here’s the official trailer:

Okay, let’s see. Anthony Stewart Head. Anthony Stewart Head as a legal assassin who, in a futuristic world of organ shortages, repossesses organs if the buyers fall behind in their payments. Anthony Stewart Head SINGING about being a legal organ-harvesting-from-living-people assassin. YES PLEASE.

Paris Hilton has a role in the movie and normally that would totally turn me off but in this case a) she’s so unrecognizable that I only knew it was her because I was looking for her, and b) in the clip I saw, she actually wasn’t bad at all.

And Anthony Stewart Head singing outweighs her anyway.

Aside from the trailer, I urge to to watch this short behind-the-scenes clip. The man is amazing.

There’s also this clip – Zydrate Anatomy – which is incredibly catchy. I keep singing it to myself. It shows Paris Hilton, she comes in at 0:53 and you can see how she’s barely recognizable. (Please note this clip is a little, er, explicit at times so it’s not particularly safe for work or young’uns.)

Continue reading →

I’ve made some professional changes, speaking in the blog sense. While I’ve enjoyed writing for Inside Motherhood and Geeky Traveller over the past year or so, I’ve learned that my passion lies elsewhere. The truth is, I’m a bonafide celebrity kind of person. I love reading about them and evidently I love writing about them. PittWatch is my absolute pride and joy and b5media will have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers at this point.

Also, I forget if I ever mentioned it or not and I’m too lazy to check, but quite some time ago I was asked to co-blog the Britney Groupie blog because the original blogger’s schedule was hectic. That was working out pretty well but he ended up deciding to bow out, so now that blog is all mine too.

And now, I’ve decided to let go of Inside Motherhood and Geeky Traveller because I really feel they’d flourish more with people better suited to them.

So instead of writing those two blogs, I’m now also writing about Christina Aguilera over at Aguilera Buff. Between her and Britney I’m starting to feel like my pop music fandom is being exposed. Sad but true, I love my ex-Disney star pop music.

I’ll be finishing up the other two blogs until the end of the month but then I’ll hand over the reins to someone else. Then, at that point, between Brad/Angelina, Britney, and Christina, plus my celebrity style blog at Style Crunch, I’ll officially be a celebrity blogger.

Not to be confused with a blogger who is a celebrity.

*******
Today Hayley asked if we could have McDonalds for breakfast but George had played last night and got home at 3 am so he offered lunch as an alternative.

Usually when we go to McDonalds, the kids eat half a french fry and then want to go into the play area. We get them to wait until at least one of us is finished if we’re not sitting directly next to the room so that we can be there to watch them but they’re always frantic to get in.

Today they were amazing. Hayley ate her entire cheeseburger and about half her fries, then waited for George to finish eating. Breanna ate half her burger and half the fries and then they went in and were well-behaved, playing for about 45 minutes (part of the reason that they both fell asleep quickly and easily today – late night last night, sleepy today, playing hard, good combination).

Sometimes they frustrate me but then they have their great moments too.

*******
When I first saw Justin Timberlake doiing his “Dick in a Box” skit on Saturday Night Live, I laughed so hard that I cried and figured he could never possibly be any funnier than that.

I was so wrong.

If you missed this week’s SNL, please go here and watch Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, and Paul Rudd in the “Single Ladies” skit.

I just about died. George actually came out from doing something to see what the hell I was watching because I was laughing so hard.

*******
I think I’ll finish up this beer while I catch up on last week’s episode of Criminal Minds. I hope you had a great weekend!

George had to play tonight and the kids had had a bit of a rough day, so I decided to have a girls’ movie night to cheer everyone up. We had just gotten Kung Fu Panda and I knew they would probably love it.

After George left, I popped them into a quick bath to relax them a bit and once they were in their pajamas I spread out a quilt on the floor in the living room. While I had some green tea for my throat (and green tea is pretty appropriate for a kung fu movie set in China!), they had a small bag of chips each and some juice and we settled in to watch it.

It was such a great movie (yes, I write for PittWatch and yet I had not seen it yet – I don’t get to see many movies until they’re out on DVD). The kids enjoyed it, Hayley in particular, and I loved being able to laugh at some of the jokes that they didn’t quite get.

Jack Black was so perfect for the voice of Po and naturally I loved Angelina Jolie as the voice of Tigress. It was all very cute and funny and exciting. I enjoyed seeing cartoon renditions of some of the animal forms that I used to learn back when I did kung fu (especially Tiger and Snake).

The only problem I had was during one of the training scenes there were bowls full of Chinese dumplings and now I’m craving some with no way to have any. Alas, my beer and Tandoori BBQ chips* will have to do somehow.

And with that, I’m off to find another movie to watch now that the kids are finally asleep!

*Seriously. Tandoori BBQ chips. It’s like worlds colliding. Someone took one of my favorite foods (chips) and combined it with one of my other favorite foods (anything Indian) and they are SO GOOD.

I really need a hair cut. It’s getting desperate because I’m starting to eye my grown-out bangs critically and I know where the hair scissors are. That’s never a good thing.

I really liked the cut I got last time, right at the end of the summer. The bob is technically a good cut for me, except that my hair doesn’t like it. It doesn’t co-operate well with the whole concept of curling under at the ends. It prefers to flip up instead. It’s been an enormous pain in the ass trying to get it to behave, and within an hour, one side is always flipping out again no matter what I do. Now that it’s grown out a bit more, I just brush it out and up at the ends anyway.

At this point, I want something that will work with what is natural for my hair. Last Saturday when we went to a birthday party, my friend had one of those hair magazines lying around because she had just gotten hers cut. I flipped through it and found an updated shag cut that I think will work with my hair, my face shape, and my preference for bangs. Lots of bangs.

I don’t know when I’ll get around to going, but I’m hoping my hair god will agree that it’s a good idea for me. If not, I think I’m almost ready to just say, “do something with my hair” and let him do whatever he wants.

Yes or no on the shag?

(I’m too Brit-influenced, I seriously can’t say shag without giggling like a 12-year-old boy.)

I’m ready to douse everything and everyone in this place with Lysol, or bleach, or maybe a bit of both. Then I’m going to buy a SARS mask for Hayley to wear to school. Because I finally got over whatever I had last week, was more or less fine, if a little tired – and then yesterday I noticed that my throat felt weird. I recognized it, but slipped into denial mode, telling myself that clearly I was just thirsty and needed more water.

Right. Today it feels like there’s a big ball of broken glass in my throat. I was able to go back to bed from about 8:30 until 11 but it didn’t do much good since I felt groggy for several hours after the fact.

I am so tired of people being sick around here. I really want to get flu shots for all of us, but you’re supposed to be reasonably healthy at the time – by the time we all feel well at the same time it will be summer and flu season will be behind us anyway!

Enough already!