The world famous, awesome comedian, Kerri Pomarolli!
Monday, June 23, 2008
Letters to Lucy - He Snores, She Snores
Dear Little Piggy,
Well he's done it again. Another one of your daddy's traits has made it's way down the gene pool to you, my dear. Yep, you're both in there now snoring away like two little piggies. It's darling when you do it now. But if you follow in his footsteps, I'm afraid your wedding night will be like daddy's when mommy almost smothered his face with a pillow!
It makes me laugh how our children take on our genes and little tendancies. You really do snore little one when you're really tired. But that's ok because as a first time mom it always lets me know you're breathing. I sometimes when you were first born would run into your room in the mornings or in the night to make sure you were breathing.It sounds crazy but I guarantee you'll do it yourself. I even pulled the car over once because you were so quiet in the back seat. So I'll just take this little snoring thing as a gift from God to let me know you're A ok! Now if I could just do the same with your father…
Labels: Letters to Lucy, Mommyhood, Motherhood
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Letters to Lucy - Working
Dear Munchkin.
I'm trying to be a good mom and write this book so you can have something to look back on and realize that you were loved and cared for and every moment with you was sacred. Well I've done a bang up job so far because every time I think I have something profound to write about I can't make it over to the computer to record it. I'm too busy cleaning spit up out of my couch, washing and drying baby clothes stained with brown iron supplements or most recently chasing you around the house trying to explain in your language why it's not a good idea to chew on electrical cords or eat paper. You're so into eating paper while we were in the security line at LAX airport the other day you ate my boarding pass. Literally you ate it. I felt like a kid with no homework when it was time to show it to the security officer and I was sitting there holding my puppy/baby trying to explain why I didn't have a boarding pass! Nice Lucy..really nice.
Today you are 7 months old and in the past three months I've not done much writing in this so-called book I vowed to author. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I, after all, am a professional writer and I've written entire books before, believe it or not. But something happened after I gave birth you and all of my brain cells have somehow been sucked literally out of my body. I'm sort of a walking robot that breastfeeds and cleans and changes diapers and manages to sing a song or two once in a while and then collapses at the end of a long day and wakes up to do it again. Is this motherhood? Is this what they were talking about when they told me it was the best, most difficult thing I'd ever do? The joke with me is that I've attempted to keep my job. I've attempted to convince other people I can do anything else but be a full-time mom. Because no matter what, every mom is a full time mom. Just some of us are crazy enough to think we can handle other obligations. Maybe some other women can handle it, but I'm going stark raving mad! I love you to pieces and I wouldn't change having your cute little face in my life for anything in the world. And when you become a mom someday you too will wonder how it's all to be done and you'll probably call me and ask "Mom how did you survive?" I'll tell ya when we get there!
Love you.
Mom
Labels: Letters to Lucy, Lucy, Mommyhood, Motherhood, Working
Friday, May 30, 2008
My Marital Bed is Broken
My marriage bed is broken. No really, if you walk into our bedroom you will see that half of our bed is sagging to the floor. My side is neat and perfect. Ron's side of our brand new mattress has sunk into a deep cavernous mess. If you like splinters in your behind then you can come sleep at our place. This is because I pulled another scheme and got us into this situation.
After we got money from our wedding, we went and tried out many different mattresses. We've both had back problems and after watching Lindsay Wagner on the 1500th infomercial we decided to try out the "Sleep Number" mattress at the store. These beds are luxurious and wonderful. Each side has a remote control and you can pump up to your desired firmness or pump down to your desired softness. We fell in love with this mattress immediately and had to have one. The only problem was that they cost $2500 and they don't sell them used on EBay. I looked. We just couldn't afford to spend that kind of cash on a mattress when we were newlywed, full-time, starving comedians and needed the money for little things like rent and food. We were a bit heartbroken that we couldn't purchase our dream mattress but we agreed to save up for it. So about 6 months later we had saved some money and I announced to Ron we were going to get a new "Sleep Number Bed" very soon. He was thrilled. It would be our first grown up purchase.
What he didn't know was that I had the master plan. He was giving me $2500 for a mattress and box spring. I went online and saw all the knock off brands and stumbled on a bed that promised to be everything the "Sleep Number Bed" was and more. It was called the "Sleep Mumber" and it looked really swell according to the pictures and testimonials. Now that I think of it all the testimonials were written by the company's founders. ARRRGH! Hindsight is 20/20. But the big thing was that this bed was available now for a one-day only internet special of $1200. What a steal! I called up Luanne at customer service and she promised our bed would be delivered the very same week. I wanted to surprise Ron so I scheduled delivery while he was gone.
I answered the door and these two dudes were standing there at the top of my second floor apt with a pen and a clipboard. One guy says "Sign here!" and then he told me to come out to their truck. They had these big boxes and didn't look too fired up about carrying them to my apt with no elevator. The second guy wanted to leave. He came up with some excuse that the mattress wouldn't fit through my door. I was standing in the back of this unlabeled truck that looked like it had just come from some back alley making a pick-up. I wasn't letting them leave. I said "I'll help you guys do whatever needs to be done cause neither of you are leavin' till I get my bed!" So after a lot of wrestling and 2 phone calls to their manager they got the boxes up my stairs. Then I said" Ok get started and install my bed!" They both looked at me if I was insane. "Uh ma'am, I don't know what you heard but we're just the delivery company for whatever is in these boxes. We don't do installations. See ya...sucka!" Then they bolted out my door.
I was stuck there with huge boxes in my bedroom and no bed. I thought to myself "How hard can it be? I'm a strong woman. I can do this myself!" I got out a kitchen knife and started cutting away through all the boxes. I used all my might and even broke a sweat, but I managed to get everything out of the boxes. It didn't look like a bed at all. It was a bunch of tubes and plastic and bubbles and things that scared me, frankly. How was this going to provide those hours of heavenly sleep like Luanne promised? I spent the next two hours trying to make heads or tails of the whole thing. I don't read directions, so I just tried to make it up as I went along. I failed miserably.
Then at about 6:30pm Ron comes home and heads into the bedroom. He sees me whimpering in the corner surrounded by parts. He had no idea what I had done but I had to sweet talk my way out of the situation. I just wiped my face and said" Surprise Honey! Our Sleep Number is here!" He wasn't buying it because he knew good and well they would have assembled it for the price they were charging. He had that "I love Lucy" look on his face and then said "Kerrrrrrrrrriiiii...What have you done?" I turned on the waterworks hard and went into my sob story of trying to do something nice for my husband by surprising him with a cost-efficient alternative to the overpriced sleep number. So I told him all about the "Sleep Mumber" and its high customer rating. (Ok I made that part up!) I was hoping we'd both giggle together and order pizza. But he knew I had gotten some knock off blow-up mattress, ghetto version of the real thing. He also knew there was no return policy! He also noticed there were no numbers on the dial of our "Sleep Mumber" bed. We just had to twist the one remote up and down till we liked the firmness.
So we spent the next 6 hours trying to stay married. (Well I was trying) Let's just say our marriage was put to the test because neither of us is particularly handy. We've almost killed each other installing a shower curtain. No not a showerhead, the curtain is what was so hard because Ron couldn't lengthen the rod enough. We're a mess and we know it.
Well to make a long story longer. We did get the bed installed and then we actual passed out from sheer exhaustion. Over the next couple weeks we enjoyed playing with our little controls that puffed up the bed and actually felt quite accomplished. We saved a lot of money and had the same sleeping experience as all of the fancy people on TV.
Then something started to sag in the bedroom. No, not our love life...Ron's side of the bed. It was slow at first with his side kind of leaking in the middle of the night. He'd adjust his firmness level to really firm and wake up like Goldilocks saying "This bed is too soft!" I didn't think much of it at first because my side of the bed was holding up just fine. I attributed this to the time on our honeymoon when I got in our private Jacuzzi with no problems when Ron joined me and the overflow of water caused a tsunami in our hotel suite and we had to call the management to fix the darn thing. Once again Ron's issues with our equipment were not my fault! I was sleeping like a baby. Well when Ron wasn't snoring like a chainsaw! I could kill that man in his sleep, I swear! But that's another story altogether!
So night after night he pumps up his side of the bed to extra firm and awaken the next morning with the splinters from the wooden posts in his back and he'd get more cranky each day. I, of course, told him he had two options: 1) Fix the thing. 2) Sleep on the couch. I think I was secretly voting for option 2 because I'd get more snore-free nights and I think I deserve that for carrying his baby don't I?
The problem with Ron trying to fix our bed is that he has no actual skills in fixing anything and his buddy Tommy was out of town for a long time. Tommy is the one we call on to solve all our home improvement problems. We've made him the godfather of our child to ensure he keeps coming over to fix things out of guilt and obligation. So far so good! But Tommy wasn't coming to the rescue. After a very uncomfortable visit my parents even offered to help us buy a new mattress. My dad said it was like sleeping in a "Cave" when he'd wake up in the morning all sunken down into the wood frame. I took the money they gave us for a mattress and went to a spa! So sue me! I just gave birth and I think God wants me to have relaxed muscles and good fingernails. Ron started sleeping on the couch and our marriage hasn't suffered if you ask me!
Finally we decided we'd like to live in the same room after all. I kinda missed the snoring bear! So what were we to do? Suck it up and buy a new mattress? I didn't want to sacrifice my adjustable sleep number mattress for some normal one with no remote! And the new ones cost at least $2500. Well leave it to some ingenuity and Ron's hard work ethic to save the day. Well actually it was his good friend "Duct Tape" that really did the trick Ron got under the bed and taped up the hole in our air hose with Duct Tape and it all of sudden worked like a charm. We had no more air leaks and no more nights with Ron sleeping on the wood frame! It was so simple and only costs us $3.99 for the roll of tape! Whoever says Duct Tape can't do everything, including save a marriage, obviously hasn't tried hard enough!
Labels: Bed, Mattress, Sleep Mumber, Sleep Number
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Letters to Lucy - Bald is Beautiful
Dear June Bug,
My daughter and I are balding! Yep Lucy, that's what I'm telling people. You and me kid! We're in this together. We both came into this world with a lot of hair and a cool Mohawk. You still have yours but the rest of your head is suffering. These days you're still my beauty queen and people still fawn over you wherever we go but honey your hair looks like a cross between Albert Einstein or the Nutty Professor! You look like you stuck your finger in a light socket. And so much of your hair is gone we have to do the old man "comb over"! I can't lie. The other day because you were in blue...this lady comes up and says "How old is he?" I almost smacked her. I really did. Daddy calmed me down. The thing is that happened to me when I was 6. I had this beautiful hair and your Nana cut it all off into one of those absolutely appalling "bowl cuts" claiming I'd look like Dorothy Hamill. (She's a famous ice skater...looks her up in your ancient history books.) I vow never to cut your hair off in the shape of a bowl, Honey. As God as my witness! What was she thinking?
Anyway who am I to talk now either? I just started losing hair in the shower by the handful. My hormones are running amuck! It's pretty emotional for me and I keep running out with fistfuls of hair yelling at your daddy "Look! Look! I'm going bald! I'm losing all my hair. Life is over! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" So I know I sound like a raving lunatic but I think anyone male or female can understand that our hair is a hot commodity and we'd like to keep as much of it on our heads as possible. Even your dad understands this one, Honey. I immediately went to my friend the internet and www.babycenter.com to read that many others new moms experience the exact same thing with their hair shedding after delivery. I just thought it wouldn't happen to me. No matter who I talk to that has gone through it. I don't believe it's normal because it's now happening to me and it's new. I hate the unknown. Every single symptom I had in pregnancy scared me because it was new and unknown. I hate not knowing if and when my hair will stop falling out in mass amounts and when it will grow back. They say weeks or months and there's not much I can do to slow or stop it. I'm still trying though. Of course I'm loading up on fish oil and Vitamin E and anything else I've heard can help. I'm proactive that way.
I take the fish oil because since I'm still nursing you (because I'm awesome...thank you...thank you). The fish oil is what I took when I was prego with you and it's supposed to help your gifted brain to develop even more so you can grow up to be extra brilliant and discover the cure for cancer or baldness or play the violin and get a scholarship to college. Whatever you pick...we have several options laid out for you including: golf star, math genius, Olympic ice skater or world famous Dr. You don't have to marry a Dr. It's 2008..you can be a Dr. Your nana would love it. She could get free prescriptions!
But the thing that makes me laugh in all of this hair loss drama is that you as usual, don't seem to care at all. The more I get to know you and your happy go lucky attitude the more I aspire to be like you. You smile when you're fed and after a nice long nap you wake up ready to face the world and play to your heart's content. Whether you're in your favorite hand-me-down flannel PJ's or some ridiculous sequined number your mother has forced you to wear you still know you're a star and that you're beautiful inside and out. I pray to God you never EVER lose that attitude. I don't want the world and all its TV commercials and fashion magazines to influence you to think you're anything less than sensationally perfect in every way. God made you amazing and I don't want you coming home from school someday thinking your body isn't absolutely flawless. I think that one boils down to the fact I think my heart will break if I ever see that you are sad. I don't care that your thighs are adorably chubby. You have these delicious rolls on your belly that everyone wants to take a bite out of. I wonder if that bothers you. I don't think I'd like people biting my stomach all the time but it seems to make you giggle. Most things in this life seem to make you giggle.
What is your secret Lucy? Can I join you in your world for just one day? Can I put away the worries about my chubby thighs and roly-poly belly and come lie in your crib and stare at the Winnie the Pooh mobile and drift off to a peaceful dreamland? Maybe I should stop trying to fit into sexy lingerie or skinny jeans and just wear flannel footy pajamas all day long? I'll ask your dad what he thinks. It's not like he's trying to fit into skinny jeans or sexy lingerie. (Sorry for that visual baby...my bad).
I think if I was 5 months old and no one told me having hair was a big deal. I could relax a lot more. I am so overwhelmed every day as I watch you take on life's big challenges with total peace. You are learning to grab things now and sometimes you try and try with all your might to hold something in your tiny grasp. When it doesn't work and falls from your little hands you just smile and try again. You're really exploring how those hands of yours can work to your advantage and it's precious to watch. You can't crawl yet but when we set a toy in front of you, you find a way to scoot up to it as best you can. It's funny that you enjoy fancy baby toys and pieces of wrapping paper to play with the same enthusiasm. When we took you to the show this weekend and they let you play with these fancy sitting tables in the nursery you were in hog heaven. I felt kind of bad because our little home is so small I don't think we'd be able to fit a big swing or rolling table for you in it. I sometimes wish we had a bigger place and a yard for you to play in. For now we have a 4 ft patio and a living room/office which is all of 110sq ft for you to exist in. But I hope you don't mind because we'll always make sure you have food to eat and some kind of toys to play with and 100 kisses a day from each of us. For now you're convinced playing with mommy's headband on the floor is a true delight and I hope that doesn't change for a long, long time.
I love you little bug!
Mom
Labels: Bald, Letters to Lucy, Lucy, Motherhood
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
What's In Those Pies Mary Ann?
I realize in this blog I'm usually defending Christians in entertainment and saying how we always get a bad rap from the press. I'm convinced you should never believe most of the stuff you read about celebrities because the media's only concern is to sell the story. But seriously folks...seriously, sometimes the story is just too good to mess with.
Our dear sweet Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island i.e. Christian actress Dawn Wells got busted for having four marijuana joints in her car on March 11th, 2008. It was her 69th birthday and she was driving home from her party when an officer noticed her swerving on the road. He pulled her over and smelled the marijuana. She told him she had picked up three hitchhikers that must have been smoking it and she didn't know what it was (Very Christian). He arrested her and took her to the other "joint"!
The next day after she posted bail and her "friend" testified he was the one who left one of the joints in Dawn's car the day before. I don't know about you but if I was her "friend" I wouldn't want to be referred to some "hitchhiker". And what happened to the other three mystery joints? Was she burning prayer candles with them?
So we have two totally different stories going on here and both of them seem completely fishy. I feel like we're playing a bad game of "Clue" except this is the Gilligan's Island version. "It was the professor and Mary Ann ...with the pipe ...down by the lagoon...I mean freeway..." And why does it always seem to be the actor who has professed to be a practicing Christian that gets caught? So one of our own, again, has a scandal to overcome. But wait a minute? What if it's not Mary Ann's fault?
And come to think about it everyone was in a good mood after eating one of Mary Ann's special pies on the island. What if everyone was involved in a cartel of Marijuana on that "Three Hour Tour"? The Howell's were the Drug Lords, the professor prepared the joints, Ginger was the celebrity decoy, Skipper was in charge of shipments and Gilligan was quality control/tester. Maybe he's the one that got sweet little Mary Ann mixed up in all of this? Was Gilligan that hitchhiker? He did also play Maynard G. Krebbs on the "Dobie Gillis Show" the most stoned character on TV until Shaggy from "Scooby Doo" hit the scene. Gilligan was sneaking pot into Mary Ann's pies!
Come on people do the math! Poor Mary Ann was framed! That fateful night those castaways asked sweet Mary Ann for a ride and how could she turn them down since they'd bonded for so many years on that island. It's all a big Hollywood scandal and Mary Ann deserves the same treatment as Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. She now needs a book deal and a publicity tour about all that she's learned in prison and she'll soon be starring in her own Lifetime Movie of the week "When Pie is Not Enough; Baked and Broken - the Dawn Wells Story", Starring Dawn Wells. Just remember the next time you see a 3 letter crossword clue asking for a word to describe Mary Ann and it starts with "P"...you might want to reconsider before you write down P I E! I hope you readers know this article was written all in good fun. Ms. Wells has gotten her share of bad press lately and I just want us all to remember we're human and we make mistakes. Jesus said "Those to cast the first stone...not those who never get stoned!" Don't be so quick to judge or maybe you'll be the one in the STAR paper next month.
Labels: Celebrity Gossip, Gilligan's Island, Mary Ann
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Letters To Lucy - Top Ten Things To Do While Breastfeeding
1. Plan your next vacation-sans children.
2. Wonder who Pamela Anderson and Madonna hired as their "Wet nurses" and how you could get their numbers.
3. Ask God why if women carry the baby why couldn't He have men do the breastfeeding? Then remember it's because men are usually late and would forget to feed the children.
4. Play the minute game with the clock closing your eyes and seeing how close you can come to 60 seconds without peeking.
5. Remember what it was like to wear tiny lacy bras and wonder who Pam Anderson and Madonna hired as plastic surgeons and how you could get their numbers.
6. Think of all the chores that need to be done around the house and shout them off to your spouse loudly one by one starting each sentence with" Honey, since I'm breastfeeding your child could you..."
7. Make important business calls knowing this will be the one time your baby is quiet.
8. Realize your exotic dancing career will probably never happen now and being that you're a woman of great morals rationalize you're ok with this fact.
9. Vow never to do a topless scene in any movie even if Matt Damon is your co-star and the money will send your kids to college.
10. Look lovingly at your baby remembering that you will remind them weekly for the rest of their lives all the sacrifices you've made for them as their mother and they owe you big time!
Labels: breastfeeding, Letters to Lucy, Mommyhood, Motherhood
Friday, March 28, 2008
Letters to Lucy - Home
Lucy,
You won't understand this until you're a mom. But if you met me before you were born you would have seen a Type A (or type triple A as your dad calls me) woman. I was a go-getter. A "get it done" kind of gal. I had multi-tasking down to an impressive science. You name it, I did it! I took lessons, I read books, wrote books, traveled, lunched with friends. I was a woman with goals and those goals got accomplished. Now I can't even seem to find time to bathe! Yes you heard me! Bathing has become somewhat of a luxury activity, one in which the entire time is spent with me peaking out of the shower to glance at the video cam making sure you are still sleeping and alive. I just don't need the papers writing some story about me someday as the mother who took too long a shower and her child got out of the crib and starting eating glue or something.
But today I had chocolate cake for breakfast standing on one leg in the kitchen and forgot to brush my teeth completely. I managed to remember to feed you 30 minutes later than scheduled and now I've realized I lost your baby book that has never even been written in. How's that for "get it done?" I've turned into this walking breast-feeding machine that runs from the couch to the laundry and back to the couch for more feedings and then to the kitchen to clean dishes that have been there for two days. You daddy is a big help I must say. I've convinced him that all men have to do kitchen clean up and dust so he does it. But I just didn't think I'd be so "out of this world" when you were past 3 months old. Surely, I should have the hang of this new role in my life by now right? Not even close. I went back to work in December and you and I did some fun comedy shows together on the road and we made it back alive. Mind you we had "Auntie Karen, Aunt Lilly" and others to help but we made it. It's true when they say," It takes a village to raise a child." I guess they meant you, huh? I know God knew what He was doing when He gave me you. You're so mellow and even in the midst of life's craziness you have this calm cool look in your little blue eyes as if you're saying, "Mommy it's going to be all right!"
I'm a terrible flyer I have to tell you. I get so scared up in the airplanes when it gets bumpy and I keep praying to God to save my life and I make promises that I'll be a better person all the time. I think I've found true religion on many airplanes. But the other day when you were laid out on that little meal tray and our plane began to bump and thump. I was freaking out. I grabbed your dad's arm and tried not to turn it blue from my grip of steel. He just smiled and told me it was going to be all right and then gave me some made up scientific reasons we weren't going to die. I didn't believe him anyway. But in all the up and down bouncing you just laid there right below me with this very collected grin on your face. You stared me right in the eyes the entire time without looking away. I tried to keep calm and you just kept smiling. I could almost read your thoughts. I think you were saying "Mom, we've got this covered. I'm here with you now and it's all going to be ok." Lucy, you as my daughter have that effect on me every day. I came home after we landed and walked into our little home completely exhausted. I looked around and compared to your grandparents 8500 sq foot mansion, our 900 sq ft place looked cluttered and dirty. My type A personality was rearing its ugly head and I started to despair on all the cleaning I'd have to do right that minute.
There were things to put away, bags to unpack, clothes to fold. I was miserable already. Then I looked down, as you gleefully played on our big red couch happy as a clam. You exuded a radiance of pure joy to be in your perfect little home. I know you knew right where you were. You were at peace in all of the clutter. Because you knew you were in a place filled with love. So I threw everything down and played on that big red couch with you and your dad. We all cuddled up and watched two episodes of "I Love Lucy" on the television. Yes I let you watch some TV sometimes and I'm sure all the parenting books will tell me I'm a terrible mom but I don't care. The show had your name in it after all. I felt at peace. I had everything I could ever want and I'm not just saying that. I really felt content. I was happy to be home. Thanks Lucy.
Love,
Mom
Labels: Home, Letters to Lucy, Mommyhood, Motherhood
