Author Archives: jaclynschoknecht

An Interview with Biggie and Smalls

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three_on_a_swingAs part of the 30-day blogging challenge, my assignment today is to write a post that includes a new-to-me element, like an image or video. I’ve already done both, so I’ve decided to conduct an interview which I have not yet done (If you’ll recall, you guys conducted the interview with Kanye West, not me).

In considering who to interview, I looked far and wide, remembered that it’s 15 degrees (Fahrenheit!) outside and recommitted myself to not leaving the house. Luckily for you, dear readers, the witty, charming and only occasionally maddening Miss Biggie and Miss Smalls are here within the confines of my warm house. They’re also bored out of their skulls and ready to murder each other because they’ve been home on winter break for the last 2+ weeks. They’re now stuck here for yet another day with school cancelled due to the frigid weather.

You see, children in Atlanta don’t even own clothing warm enough for standing at bus stops with temperatures in the single digits. The former Chicagoan in me scoffs at the concept of calling off school for a “cold day,” while the former Los Angeleno in me is like, “Aw, HELL no! I’m going to sit my freezing ass down right here by this space heater and not move again until the temperature hits 50 degrees!”  But I digress.

Anyway, as you’ll see below, the girls had lots of insightful things to say about my current and former careers. They also really, really want cookies.

Q: What kind of work does mommy do?
Biggie: Taking care of us and doing your blog.
Smalls: Taking care of us and doing your blog. [Hmm…maybe I should ask Smalls the questions first.]

Q: What does Mommy do to take care of you?
Smalls: Giving us baths, kissing us goodnight, tucking us in at night…
Biggie: Making us food.
Smalls: Cookies! Can we have dessert?

Q: What do I do during the day when you’re at school?
Smalls: I don’t know. I’m at school.
Biggie: Dishes, laundry, clean the house, go get groceries, go get your nails done. Daddy says you just get coffee and tea.
[I give Ad Man a dirty look and kick him out of the room.]

Q: What should I do during the day?
Smalls: Go and get a surprise for us…like cookies or something. Or you should bake cookies.
Biggie: Go look at French Bulldogs. [The ladies of the house want a French Bulldog. Ad Man doesn’t want to clean up poop.]

Q: What kind of work did Mommy do before Biggie was born?
Smalls: I don’t know!  It was before she [Biggie] was even born!
Biggie: You were a lawyer. And you made a movie…a documentary. [At least someone has been paying attention.]

Q: Do you know what kind of lawyer Mommy was?
Smalls: What’s a lawyer? [Sigh.]
Biggie: You were someone who helped people who someone else thought did something bad. And you would defend them. [Yes, like representing the poor major film companies that didn’t want to pay their producers’ royalties.]

Q: What’s a blog?
Smalls: Something that you write down things on on a keyboard. People read it on the other part of the computer [pointing to the screen].
Biggie: Something some people write that goes out on the internet for people to read.

Q: What do you think mommy’s blog is about?
Smalls: You talk about what you do at your house like giving us baths and taking care of us.
Biggie: About your life. Like, a few days ago, you wrote about how messy our house was. [Specifically, Biggie’s bedroom.]

Q: If you had a blog, what would you write about?
Smalls: My family and friends.
Biggie: You could write anything. You could even write about your butt!  I would write about my friends and me.

Q: What do you think I should write about next?
Biggie: Why you started your blog…you know, so you could have something to do when we were gone. Or what you did before you started your blog, like where you lived and where you went to school and stuff.
Smalls: I don’t know. [Smalls is clearly starting to check out at this point.]

Q: Do you think I should spend more time or less time writing my blog?
Biggie: Less time so you can hang out with us more.
Smalls: More time so you can do a better job. Like if you messed up, you could do it again.

Q: What kind of school did mommy go to?
Smalls: A college?
Biggie: You went to elementary school, high school and college. You studied Geometry and Geography and French. [Huh?]

Interlude while the girls show me how they pretend to fall down.

Q: How do you think my life is different now than it was before I had kids?
Smalls: You have to take care of kids. You didn’t then.
Biggie: Mostly the same except for the part about having kids.
[Yep. Exactly the same…except for the having kids part.]

Q: Do you think mommy should go back to work full-time?
Biggie: No, because I want to hang out with you.
Smalls: No. You should stay and snuggle with us…because you do love my snuggling.

Q: Do you think mommy is funny?
Smalls: Yes. You say funny stuff.
Biggie: Yes. You make funny faces at us through the car window at the gas station. [I kill it at the gas station.]

Q: What do you like least about Mommy?
Biggie: You can sometimes be mean. Like about making my bed and cleaning my room.
Smalls: Sometimes you’re so busy you don’t get to play with me. [Like, for instance, when the thought of playing one more game of pretend with Littlest Pet Shop animals makes me want to bang my head against the wall.]

Interlude while the girls demonstrate their “mime-in-a-box” skills.

Q: What kind of work does Daddy do?
Smalls: Advertising. What does advertising mean? [OK…I feel better now.]
Biggie: He makes advertisements and commercials in a big office building.

Q: What kind of work do you want to do when you grow up?
Smalls: I don’t know. [She’ll drive around the country for a year in a smelly van with her boyfriend and his bandmates.]
Biggie: A veterinarian, an artist and a fashion designer. [She’ll change her major seven times.]

Q: Do you want to have kids when you grow up?
Smalls: No, It’s kinda scary because they cut open your belly. Do they always cut open your belly?
Me: Well, either they cut open your belly, which is called a c-section, like I had with you two, or usually the baby comes out of the mommy’s vagina.
Smalls: Eeeeewwwww! [This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed this, by the way.]
Biggie: I want to adopt two girls. [Sucker!]

Many thanks to my darling daughters for providing MommyEnnui’s readers with such a clear, detailed and accurate description of my life before and after children.  I suppose all that’s left for me now is to move on to blogging about my butt.  Stay tuned!

Who Is This MommyEnnui Anyway?

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This month, I’m participating in WordPress’s 30-Day Blog Challenge which means I’ll be posting or doing a new task to make MommyEnnui better every day. (See how positive and proactive I am in 2014?) The challenge is geared toward new … Continue reading →

The 15 Suckiest Things About 2013

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george_and_friendsI’ve been in a bit of a post-Christmas funk lately. This happens to me pretty much every year, so it’s not unexpected. Christmas was my mom’s favorite holiday which makes me miss her even more at this time of year. There’s the typical holiday let-down after spending so much time and energy planning for something that’s over in just a day. Also, the weather is crap, which never helps.

Anyway, I thought rather than fighting my gloominess and attempting to write a hopeful, looking-forward, end-of-the-year post, I’d just go with it and make a list of all the things that really sucked about 2013. So, let’s say goodbye to all the bullshit of the last year.

The 15 Suckiest Things About 2013

  • The Boston Marathon Bombing.
  • Due to Congress’s pissing match over the U.S. budget, government employees and contractors spent two weeks in October doing yard work and growing beards when they could have been, you know, working for the government.
  • Kim Jong Un appeared to be filling his father’s notorious shoes quite nicely. 2013 was a particularly rough year, however, for his uncle and ex-girlfriend.
  • The weather continued its epic rager with tornadoes in Oklahoma and the midwest, flooding in Colorado, northern India and central Europe, a massive typhoon in the Philippines and wildfires in California and Arizona.
  • Rush Limbaugh continued to exist. Lou Reed did not.
  • #Hashtags became ubiquitous. #Annoyingashell #Deargodpleasemakethemstop
  • Florida’s “Stand Your Ground Law” forced a jury of otherwise reasonable adults to acquit admitted murderer, George Zimmerman.  Zimmerman apparently failed to learn his lesson and continued threatening loved ones at gunpoint.
  • The Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own citizens. Syria’s standoff with the United States and the UN scared the crap out of everyone.
  • Justin Bieber made his bodyguards carry him up the Great Wall of China and speculated that Anne Frank may have been a “Belieber” if she weren’t so busy hiding from the Nazis.
  • The NSA made Orwell’s 1984 seem quaint.
  • Miley Cyrus gained even more notoriety with her infamous AMA “performance” with Robin Thicke and that foam finger.
  • Mustaches became a “thing.” Kids held mustache-themed birthday parties. Huh?
  • Mass shootings continued. Gun control fizzled.
  • Lance Armstrong whined to Oprah like a little girl. No offense to little girls.
  • George W. Bush finally found his true calling as a celebrated painter of dog portraits. (Or maybe that’s one of the most awesome things of the year. It’s a tough call.)

Please join me in bidding good riddance to 2013. Here’s wishing your 2014 is crammed full of love, health, happiness, success, unicorns, rainbows, bushels full of money and adorable newborn babies in flower pots!

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Our Christmas Letter Is Better Than Yours

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holiday_newsletterMommyEnnui has quite a few readers from outside of the United States, so today I thought I’d provide a little cultural lesson about a beloved American holiday tradition…the Christmas Letter. The origins of the Christmas Letter go way back. I’m pretty sure the first letter was sent by one of my Dutch ancestors, but don’t quote me on that. The purposes of the annual Christmas Letter are to update those whom you haven’t seen in a while as to your family’s many successes and occasional health issues over the past year and to give a shout-out to the Christ child. The following is a compilation of every Christmas Letter I’ve ever had the pleasure of receiving. (Well, except for my friend Ed’s. His are actually pretty damn funny.) Only the names have been changed. 

Dear Friends and Family,

The time has come again for our yearly Christmas letter. First, I’d like to start by quoting the Bible extensively…[Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse…]

Last year, a few of you brought to my attention that there are people of other religions and ethnic backgrounds who also celebrate holidays at this time of year. While I strongly feel y’all are just trying to steal the spotlight from the baby Jesus, the Bible teaches us that everyone deserves love and forgiveness. So, I forgive you for your attention seeking. Anyway, I hope you enjoy lighting your Kwanzaa wreath this year.

With that said, I’d like to fill you in on all the details of our family’s busy, busy year. We are just so blessed. I can’t believe our baby, Sienna Brianna is in preschool already! We actually had a bit of a challenge finding the right school for her since, as I mentioned in last year’s letter, she had memorized the Periodic Table and was conjugating verbs in Mandarin and Latin before she was 2 years old. We didn’t want to rush her right into middle school though (where she rightfully belongs) because that would disqualify her from the Junior Miss Mensa Brains and Beauty Pageant. We’d hate to deprive her of one more first place award she could add to her college applications next year.

Kiffany Mackenzie is still reeling from the IOC’s denial of our application for an exception to the minimum age requirement so she could compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The committee ruled that, at 12, she is just too young. We, of course, know better, but rules are rules I suppose. The good news, however, is that we’ve built a regulation Olympic-sized bobsled track on our property, just behind the pool, and a guest house for her live-in coach and tutor. So, you know she will be working hard to take across-the-board gold medals in 2018!

The twins John Thomas and Harry Willie are, not surprisingly, taking the college world by storm. While it has been an adjustment for them being at two different schools (Yale and MIT, respectively), that hasn’t stopped them from building their software company together via Skype. They got a call from Microsoft’s attorney recently, but they’ve decided to put the sale of the company on hold while they spend a year overseas on a mission to help train orphans to make microchips for minimal-to-no pay. Their dedication to helping the world’s children learn a valuable trade is just so inspiring.

Bob recently took a bit of a sabbatical from the firm after 23 years without a vacation. It was so sad always seeing our yacht just sitting in the harbor with no one to take her out for a spin. That is, except for when the boys’ high school friends tricked them into bringing those underage girls and illegal drugs onto the vessel and disappearing to Catalina for a week. We’re blessed to have such kind and trusting sons. Anyway, Bob took out the Golden Parachute and has been sailing around the Caribbean and down the coast of South America for the last six months. He is scheduled to return home just in time for Santa’s arrival!

Sadly, I could not take the time off from my extensive volunteer work in order to join Bob in his travels. After all, the Junior League doesn’t run itself! I also didn’t want to leave my tennis partner in the lurch especially since we recently took first place in the All-Star Tennis & Rackets Association’s All-Region Tournament and are on a 47 match winning streak.

We did endure a pretty terrifying health scare this year. Bob’s mom Marjorie had been feeling a little out of sorts for the last few months. She had severe diarrhea, a sallow complexion, her hair was falling out in clumps, her urine was a shocking shade of safety orange, she had one droopy eye, excessive earwax, a tweak in her neck and recurrent toe fungus. Well, she finally went in to see the doctor and received a devastating diagnosis. She is gluten-intolerant. We were all shocked, but she’s been so brave. The person who has taken the news the hardest though is our cook Winnie. She is just beside herself trying to rework our traditional holiday menu to accommodate Marjorie’s disease. Please pray for Winnie as she adjusts to this difficult change.

And so my friends, as 2013 draws to a close and we look upon the dawn of the coming year, let us all turn our hearts into pools of golden sunshine and praise the Lord for our many blessings. In closing, I would like to share the remaining portions of the Bible not quoted above…[Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse, Bible verse…]

We hope you are blessed with all the blessed blessings that we’ve been blessed with this year!

With love,
Coralee, Bob, John Thomas, Harry Willie, Kiffany Mackenzie, Sienna Brianna and Barkley (woof, woof!)

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Wishing You a Fully-Medicated Holiday

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green_smocked_xmasI’m sitting in Starbucks writing and celebrating the fact that I have, once again, survived the yearly elementary school holiday program. Ad Man is somewhere in Pennsylvania attending meetings and freezing his ass off so he’s missed the holiday celebration, yet again, this year.  I know he feels terrible for missing it, but that doesn’t keep me from being bitter. (Hell, if I wasn’t bitter, what would I write about?) Year after year, I’m the lonely mom sitting in the overheated gymnasium, frazzled from getting the kids up and on the bus looking somewhat decent at 7:05 am and managing to make myself presentable–generally by spraying lots of dry shampoo on my greasy roots–so I can get to school early and stake out my spot near the front so my kid doesn’t think I’ve forgotten her and freak the fuck out.

Smalls and the rest of the kindergarteners led a celebration of Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chinese New Year and Las Posadas.  When I was growing up, I didn’t know any Jewish people, let alone the dreidel song!  Today’s holiday program did more than just give lip service to all the many holidays though. The kids learned about the culture and traditions of the diverse groups of people who celebrate each holiday and performed a couple songs from each of them.  It really was a breath of fresh air from the vanilla-white-Christian-only suburb I was raised in outside of Chicago.

Where there is little diversity here, though, is in the way Southerners dress their children for the holidays.  We were eating breakfast this morning, Smalls in her usual uniform of skinny jeans, a paint-stained t-shirt and leopard print Vans when I realized in a panic that she needed something festive for the holiday program or I’d likely be ejected from the PTA.  So, I threw her into a red Crewcuts dress with black polkadots, black tights (miraculously without holes) and sparkly purple shoes. Close enough.

Most of the other kids were all decked out in their holiday finery.  Many siblings were dressed alike, or at least, in coordinating outfits. The typical Christmas uniform for a little girl in the South is a red, green or red-and-green plaid, smocked dress with poufy sleeves.  The smocking is usually adorned with Christmas trees, snowmen, ornaments, Santas or a combination of all of the above.  The more, the better, actually.  In the absence of Christmas iconography, the dress must be monogrammed. In fact, monogram everything!  The outfit is not complete until you add frilly white socks, patent leather mary janes and a monolithic hairbow.

The boys generally wear matching holiday sweater vests or red polo shirts with plaid or khaki pants.  A few really do it up in tiny versions of their daddy’s slacks, starched shirts, sport coats, ties and loafers.  I was just glad Smalls’s hair was kinda brushed, her face was free of chocolate and she wasn’t wearing yesterday’s underwear.

Parents vie for seats at the very front of the gym to get the best view from which to watch their darling children through an upheld iPad. Moms and dads who didn’t manage to set their alarms early in order to beat the rush, worm their way to the front regardless, where they elbow other members of the mom-and-dad-arazzi for a prime spot on the imaginary velvet rope.

There are always a few working moms and dads (but mostly dads) who stand outside, negotiating deals on cell phones while pretending to peer through the smudged gym windows at their children belting out Christmas carols and doing adorable, choreographed arm movements.  These are the ones who will later cross their fingers when they hedge their bets and tell their kid that their favorite part of the performance was “when you sang…um…Jingle Bells?”

I have a soft spot in my heart, though, for the parents who rush in after the program has begun, dressed in week-old jeans and a sweatshirt smeared with spit-up or jelly, dragging along a crying younger sibling.  You can always spot the kids that belong to those parents. They’re the ones with bedhead, rocking a football jersey, pajama bottoms and untied sneakers.  These are my people.

I’ll also accept on my team the “holy-shit-I-thought-the-performance-was-at-10!” mom who you see running down the street carrying the crucial Santa hat that is conspicuously missing from her kid’s head.  You know, as she runs, she’s hyperventilating and calculating how much therapy will be needed before her child is able to trust again.

However, I’ll most likely never be friends with the festive, but tastefully dressed, mom with the perfectly coiffed hair, impeccable nails, diamonds the size of grapes, handsome husband who never travels on important days, and five well-mannered children all in coordinated holiday ensembles.  That is, unless I happen to run into her at my psychiatrist’s office and catch her wild-eyed, clutching to her breast a bouquet of prescriptions even bigger than mine.  In that case, I’ll put an arm around her, assure her that I understand and invite her over for a mid-morning cocktail.

After all, it’s the season of goodwill to all men and women…even the crazies.

Is a Birkin Too Much to Ask?

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hermes_boxes_xmasGrowing up, my Christmas lists were legendary. I truly embraced the concept of a ‘wish list.’  My mom would always have a gentle conversation with me prior to Santa’s scheduled arrival in an attempt to lower my expectations. (Ad Man has now taken up the tradition, much to my chagrin.) She explained that Santa had so many toys to make for so many children, he couldn’t possibly afford to give a Barbie Dream House and a pony to every girl who asked for them.

As I got older, I added things like diamond earrings, an Hermes Birkin bag, Johnny Depp and various luxury automobiles to my annual lists. Did I expect to receive them from my parents? Of course not. I wasn’t stupid, but a girl can dream, can’t she? To this day, I still include a few shoot-for-the-stars items on my wish list every year. Below are my humble requests for 2013. While I won’t be holding my breath, I’m still hoping for a Christmas miracle!

  • A cashmere Snuggie
  • A live-in IT guy (No, unfortunately Ad Man does not fit the bill.)
  • A French Bulldog puppy guaranteed not to chew, pee or poop on anything and never to wake me up before 8 am
  • Butt implants
  • A television that automatically mutes Christina Aguilera whenever she speaks on The Voice
  • The back and neck of a 20 year old…oh, and what the hell…throw in the boobs too while you’re at it
  • A teleportation device so I never have to spend more than 20 minutes in a car with my children ever again
  • Self-cleaning toilets
  • A self-emptying dishwasher
  • A new car just fancy enough so that I don’t continue to surprise valets when I tip them
  • Botox that never wears off…one Groupon and I’d be forehead-crease-free forever!
  • A beach house, a mountain house and someone other than me to clean them (This item is dependent on the teleportation device. I’d like the complete set or nothing, please.)
  • A cabana boy with bad eyesight who’s a good listener, gives amazing backrubs, makes a mean Dirty Martini and never, ever calls me ma’am
  • Sets of dishes, glassware and towels that all match and have no chips or stringy bits
  • If I can’t get a teleportation device, my second choice would be a high-speed rail system between Atlanta and Los Angeles
  • Some goddamn peace and quiet
  • Zero calorie wine that doesn’t taste like ass
  • A new HVAC system (Remember, I’m shooting high here.)
  • Oops!  I almost forgot…peace on Earth
  • My pre-pregnancy memory back

What are you hoping for this holiday season?

I Am Not Worthy

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bandaid_handsI want to thank my dear friend Kanye West for filling in for me last Friday.  I hope you found his parenting advice helpful. I must apologize for being a bit of a slacker this week. I’ve been (gasp!) working. Yes, I’m engaged in some seasonal labor. No, I’m not the mall Santa’s new grumpy middle-aged elf. I can barely manage my own children let alone hundreds of kids who are up past their naptime, wearing their itchiest Sunday best, and wired from a steady diet of candy canes and goldfish crackers.

Actually, my friends K and G own an amazing gourmet sweet bread company and cafe here in Atlanta called Breadwinner. I can’t help but boast…their bread was named one of Oprah Winfrey’s Favorite Things in 2011. And you know Oprah is the world’s foremost expert on Things. Anyway, they do a ton of business at the holidays, shipping thousands of breads across the country. So, I’ve been doing some pretty serious packaging and shipping these days. As I sit here, I have a heating pad on my neck and shoulders and band-aids on the bloody stumps that used to be my fingers.

This little trial run as a working mother has been eye-opening. Thus far, I’ve worked a total of three, five-hour days. I’m still getting home in time to meet Biggie and Smalls when they get off the bus, but I am completely exhausted! Granted, as I mentioned, it is fairly physical work (I mean, those bows don’t just tie themselves!), but you’d think I could handle a few measly five-hour days. Instead, until now, I have not managed to write one word for this blog, do a moment of exercise or wash one piece of laundry. The house is in shambles and our dinners this week have been, shall we say, uninspired. As far as experiments go, I wouldn’t exactly call this one a rousing success.

I bow down to working mothers everywhere. I am clearly not worthy to stand in their shoes. When I was first out of law school and working as an associate at a law firm, there were weeks on end when I didn’t get a day off. I always worked at least one day each weekend and rarely left the office before 7 pm. Twelve-hour days were typical. I’m not saying it was fun, but I managed to keep up that pace for a few years without falling apart physically or losing my mind, which I’d say is a win. So I have to question whether I am a weenie now because I’m old or just because I’m out of practice.

Don’t get me wrong, there have also been some very positive aspects to working outside the little fiefdom of my house. I don’t fall into the Today Show/Facebook black hole in the morning while drinking my tea, failing to emerge for hours. I actually get up and shower every day. I’m eating an actual lunch instead of scarfing an energy bar and a handful of nuts between errands. I’m having contact with human beings other than the person working the Starbucks drive-thru. I take pride in my work. My ribbons are tied and trimmed beautifully, my breads are carefully packaged and I only occasionally find a crucial enclosure card left on the table and have to unpack 50 boxes to figure out which one is missing a card.

Most importantly, I get a real sense of accomplishment from the work. You can’t wrap and pack 300 loaves of bread for a corporate order without feeling a certain satisfaction. That is one thing I’ve sorely missed from my days of working full-time. Being a stay-at-home parent is a marathon rather than a sprint, and you rarely even see the finish line on the horizon, let alone cross it. Most of the things you do accomplish in a day…cleaning the house, doing laundry, cooking, helping the kids with homework…just need to be done again tomorrow. I really miss the finish line.

Luckily, in the next few weeks I have, among other things, a birthday slumber party to throw for Biggie, Christmas presents to buy, wrap and either ship out or hide, stockings to stuff, cookies to bake, a holiday party to throw for Ad Man’s employees and a blog to write. Maybe it would help me to visualize all those tasks lined up before a finish line beyond which lies copious amounts of wine, a pint of ice cream and a nice, warm bed. If not, I’ll just take the wine and a few Xanax-laced Christmas cookies, thankyouverymuch!

Kanye West Answers Your Parenting Questions

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kanye_headshotDearest readers, I’m busy buying useless crap at the dollar store to fill Biggie and Smalls’s Christmas stockings just like Jesus would do, so I’ve asked my close friend Kanye West to fill in as guest blogger on MommyEnnui today. Kanye and I go way back. He grew up in the Chicago suburb adjacent to mine (at least 45 minutes from the mean streets of Chi-Town…don’t let all that tough talk fool you) and we loitered in the same malls as teens.

As you may know, Kanye’s soon-to-be wife, Kim Kardashian, gave birth to their first child North West this past fall. Because, in his words, Kanye is full of “awesomeness…beauty, truth and awesomeness,” he is more than qualified to provide some sage advice. Here, he answers your most burning questions about his new bundle of joy and advises you on your parenting dilemmas.

Q: Kanye, every morning turns into a battle with my daughter over choosing an outfit for the day. Do you have any tips?

Kanye: Imma tell you what I do with my babygirl. I pick up the phone and call my friends Tom Ford, Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld and Donatella Versace and I have ‘em each send over a bunch of fly outfits in baby size and that gives me lots of options for dressing North to coordinate with what I put Kim in that day. Whether she flyin’ on a Lear to Paris for the Louis Vuitton show or she just playin’ in her private 20 acre park with the nannies, my girl be dressed to the nines at all times. When she gets older, she won’t question my fashion advice because I’m a fashion God, yo.

Q: How do I teach my child about managing money?

Kanye: Well, North is in a position of a level of royalty like the Prince and Princess of London, so she ain’t never be worryin’ bout money, you feel me? But, I grew up with a single mom, rest her soul, in [the middle class suburbs of] Chicago so I know all about bein’ poor. I would just tell your kid, “Havin’ money isn’t everything, not havin’ it is.” Tell him Kanye said that. You should also tell him, “The less said about the pterodactyl the better.” Yeah, I said that, too. [That was actually Mark Twain.]

Q: My daughter worries that she’s not as thin or as pretty as other girls in her class.  How do I teach her that beauty isn’t everything?

Kim_Kanye_c_uKanye: This is a hard question for me to answer because I only surrounded myself with objects of exquisite beauty. My BabyMama Kim is the most beautiful woman of all time! I’m talkin’, like, arguably of human existence…the top 10 of human existence. And, North, she the most beautiful baby in the history of the world. Maybe the universe. As a matter of fact, North should be on the cover of Baby Vogue. Everybody knows it. Anna Wintour knows it; Obama knows it. Even the Pope knows it! Anyway, tell your daughter that the world needs people that aren’t, like, good looking because without them, the perfect people wouldn’t be so special. She shouldn’t try to go into entertainment though. In my business, beauty is a talent and it sounds like she don’t got no talent.

Q: My son says he wants to be a rapper just like you when he grows up.  Do you have any advice for him?

Kanye: Imma stop you right there. That just ain’t possible. I am the number one human being in music. That means any person that’s living or breathing is number two. I mean, my music isn’t just music, it’s medicine. Every time I make an album, I’m trying to make a cure for cancer…musically. But you can tell your son, if he works really, really hard, wears limited edition Nikes and he dress fresh at all times, maybe he can grow up to be the second best artist in the world. Or, third…after me and Michael Jackson. Oh, then there’s Jay-Z. So, fourth. He could maybe be fourth.

Q: My daughter is very shy. How can I help her become more confident and outgoing?

Kanye: That one’s easy. Just give her this advice from Kanye, “Believe in your flyness…conquer your shyness.” Boom…done!  Also tell her Kanye says, “I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder.” She’ll like that.

Q: What were your favorite books as a child?

Kanye: I’m not a fan of books. Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig [Jane Austen] up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talkin’ to people and livin’ real life. I would never want a book’s autograph, you know? I’m a proud non-reader of books.

Q: My wife is scheduled to give birth to our first child this spring and we’ve decided not to find out the sex beforehand. We’d like to give our baby a unique name. Do you have any suggestions?

Kanye: You want your baby to have a name that’s strong and confident…a name that don’t bow to the man so, when it grows up, that baby can rise to the highest pinnacle of truth and awesomeness. If it’s a boy, you should name him Hermes, Summit or Kanye. If it’s a girl, I’d go with Apogee, Apex or Kim.

Q: Do you have a special routine for getting North to bed at night?

Sweet_North_WestKanye: If I’m not on tour, in Cannes on Jay’s yacht, or writin’ my feelings down on paper to keep their heat from setting me afire inside, I like to spend as much time as possible with my babygirl. Me and Kim try not to be away from home at the same time so one of us is always there watchin’ over the nannies, makin’ sure they not leakin’ shit to the press.

So, when I’m around, I sing North to sleep with this lullaby I wrote special for her. It goes like this, “Stop everything you’re doing now/ Because baby, you’re awesome/ Don’t let nobody get you down/ Because you’re awesome/ You don’t need to listen to the haters/ You must be tired of running through my mind/ Can I come inside?…I’m also awesome…/ I’d rather do nothing with you/ than something with somebody new/ Because baby you’re awesome.”  And one more thing, I never give my babygirl a fur pillow. Fur pillows are hard to sleep on.

*Please note, this is a work of satire. Kanye, it would be a waste of your precious time to sue me. I haven’t received a paycheck in 8 years.

I Blame the Elf!

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elf_in_captivityOK, you little shit…I know you’re hiding around here somewhere. You’re already late. It’s December 3rd and you were supposed to make your long-anticipated arrival two nights ago.  Ad Man, the official finder in this house, is on an island in the Caribbean, so not only am I already in a pissy mood, I’m also flying solo in my search for your skinny, red ass.  I have torn apart closets and dug through every Christmas decoration box.  You’re not hiding in the guest room, the utility room or the laundry room.  I even checked the doll bin in the toy room just in case. Nada!

Tomorrow, Biggie and Smalls will undoubtedly be regaled by their classmates’ tales of elves who appeared, as scheduled, this morning.  I’m sure many of them performed crazy acts of mischief that made the kids laugh and laugh.  But not my daughters because they have an unreliable elf who doesn’t turn up when expected and never does anything more mischievous than hanging upside down from the kitchen light fixture.

We’ve explained to the kids that you don’t pick your elf…your elf picks you.  And, we just happened to get one who is a serious underachiever.  You hide in a new place almost every night (except for when you’re snoring on the couch “watching TV” by 9:00 pm or when you collapse into bed exhausted because you’ve been all over town trying to locate that one toy that’s the only thing your kid wants for Christmas) but, that seems to be the extent of your commitment to providing holiday spirit around here.  You never make snow angels in powdered sugar or paint Ad Man’s toenails while he’s sleeping.  I’ve never once seen you have a rave with the Barbie dolls, “accidently” squeeze out toothpaste everywhere or spell out festive messages in mini marshmallows.  I’m beginning to suspect you never even look at the creative suggestions I send you from Pinterest.

I suppose I could just run out tomorrow and buy a new elf, but I really never wanted you here in the first place.  You were a gift from a dear friend who couldn’t possibly foresee the unrelenting stress you’d cause me from December 1st (or whenever you deign to bless us with your presence) through Christmas Eve.  As if I don’t have enough to worry about during this neverending month as it is!  Heaven forbid I buy another elf and then you decide to pop out from one of the girls’ underwear drawers. How would I explain the sudden appearance of two of you little #@$%ers?

Bad Elf

I have this eerie feeling you’re sitting in a corner somewhere being entertained by my frantic search while eyeballing me with that smug, retro smirk on your face.  You’ve probably snuck behind a long-forgotten stack of size 4 jeans assuming (correctly) that I’ll never need them again but knowing I won’t dare donate them because that would be admitting defeat.  Not cool, man.  Not cool.

I’m tempted to tell Biggie and Smalls that you went out for a cup of hot chocolate and just never came back.  They’ll forget about you soon enough.  Just wait until I pull out that Lego Friends advent calendar…you’ll be yesterday’s news.  So, I’m giving you one more chance to crawl out of whatever peppermint scented hole you’ve hidden yourself in and bring some g*dd@mn joy to these children or, I swear the next time I see you, I’ll set fire to that unflattering red and white felt jumpsuit you insist on wearing year after year!  Consider yourself warned.

And by the way, tell your friend the tooth fairy that I’ve seen the two wiggly front teeth in Small’s mouth so she’d better be prepared with some dollar coins or at least some crisp bills. That bitch is totally unreliable.  I’m not about to cover for her again with a handwritten IOU slipped under a pillow as the sun is rising and a toothless kid is stirring.  She’s got one job to do…how hard can it be?  Seriously!

Stuff I Found…

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rough_night_playmobil…When I Should Have Been Scrubbing Thanksgiving Dishes

I’ll be honest.  It’s the day after Thanksgiving and I’m sleepy and still somewhat hungover.  I’m feeling fat, not funny.  So, this is the perfect excuse for Volume 2 of ‘Stuff I Found’… Enjoy!