Friday, June 22, 2007

One, Two, Three, Nose, Five, Thirteen





Dear Bean Girl - You are just shy of 21 months old. How is it that in such a short amount of time, that I can't recall what life was like before you came. Your Dad and I often remark just how bored and silly we were.

Lately you are extremely interested in bellybuttons, shouting NUDE BABY IN THE HOUSE, although when you say it sounds like NUDE HOUSE. When focused, you count up to 19, but almost always, you say NOSE instead of FOUR. You call all of the cats Boat. You are very attached to anything that resembles the Baby Bear from your favorite book, The Three Little Bears. You colored all over your grandparents TV in the beach house over Father's Day weekend. You have started to feed your stuffed animals your meals.

You have been experimenting with calling me Mama, Mommy, and Meghan - my title changes with your mood. When I pick you up from Yaya's house in the afternoon, I am always Mama, and you run with all your little gusto might to meet me at the gate for a major hugging session while shouting MAMAMAMAMAMAMA, and then you demand "Okay, Mama, juice baba Okay." You won't each much beyond apricots from Yaya's tree, spaghetti, strawberries, and cheese. I am currently wondering if I shouldn't just transition you into vegetarianism along with me as you don't seem to like meat, but I am not there yet.

I tell your Giggle Grandma everyday how amazing you are, and the little things that make up your day. You are my joy, baby girl.

My favorite phrases as of late:
"Yay, I DID it"
"Oh, okay, tank uuuuu."
"Apple"
"Hi Mama. Hi Daddy. Hi Boat"

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Bean Dreams

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Important Random Facts

USC.

USC stands for THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

USC does NOT stand for The University of South Carolina.

You might need this information at some point in your life.

I sure wish that someone would have passed that little tidbit of knowledge off to me before I had 80 expensive galleys of a USC football book printed with my brilliant fucking marketing plan to include a regional tour in SOUTH CAROLINA.

Good Job, Devine.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

The Devastation of Book Worms

The 2007 Book Expo America proved to be everything I remembered it to be a few years ago...exhausting, thrilling, geeky, fabulous, schmooze-festy, and booze-fueled, only with many MANY more attendees and a serious lack of air-conditioning. And let me tell you, it really is unpleasant to deal with people in the book world while they are perspiring. Unless they are from The Today Show or something. But anyway, it was a HOT as well as a HOTT show in many regards.

I left my Handsome Husband and fabulous Bean girl and the Bad Cats last Wednesday, train bound for NYC at 6AM. You would think that early that the train conductors might take pity on a girl like myself, obviously exhausted and out of her mind with details, appointments, etc, etc, etc, and would NOT YELL AT HER WHEN HER SLEEPING BODY SLUMPED INTO THE ****EMPTY**** CHAIR next to her. I am not kidding - this horribly disgusting and mean woman kept waking me up any time she saw my body cross over the invisible line of "the other chair that you (me) did NOT pay to sit in." I hated her and calmed myself with visions of her fat lonely bitchy self eating waffles on a TV tray at night ALONE. Bitch. You should really get another job, one where you aren't such a BITCH all the time.

Anyway. So, I get up to NYC and the energy of being back in the City was so invigorating I chose to walk the oh, 20 blocks or so to the hotel at which I was an attendee of some marketing sessions. That wasn't the best of ideas since I was merely a sweat hog and not the fabulous Marketing Diva I planned on becoming when I hit the panels. I decided that while in NYC, it would be okay for me to smoke, too. Klassy, right?

After the sessions and a good nap, I met up with a colleague and we meandered through Central Park without any mission, really, other than to be outside in Central Park. I think it made both of us rather super-wistful about missing our respective children, so we indulged in some of the most amazing vegetarian food I have EVER had, and a drink to make us feel less sad about the absent bambinos. It was quite nice to be so low-key in a city that I almost ALWAYS get into trouble while visiting.

There was a little cocktail-party hosted by our company craziness that occurred, but nothing that a Polish cab driver found interesting when my colleague packed me into the car - hotel bound to sleep off my own silly over indulgences. She is very proud of "drinking you under the table" , though, so I can let her have it. It wouldn't be BEA without being just a little hungover. If you haven't been, you'll just have to trust me on that one. Suffice to say, my company passes out wine at 4 PM each day of the trade show...see?

My company was specifically promoting two of our most recently published titles which (thankfully) both proved to be a hit. I saw many old publishing and bookseller friends...some that were more than friends at one time...some that were never friends but I still find them intimidating so I stopped by to smile funny at them...some that will be friends but they don't know it yet. Handsome and BEAN WONDER CHILD came up on Friday to join in the calendar of events, and other than her scoring PINK EYE and keeping Handsome in the hotel with her sick self almost the entire time, it was a fucking blast!

Books we scored:
- Alice Sebold - Almost Moon (fecking weird stuff)
- Tom Perrotta's new book, which he signed to the Bean instead of Handsome
- a book on the Armenian Genocide (light reading for the train ride back)
- Sebastian Faulk's new one
- a book by COURTNEY THORNE SMITH from "Melrose Place" (heehee!)

and some other random goodies. Also spotted Richard Belzer and Stephen Colbert.

It took me many days to recover, but Baltimore doesn't look so usually shitty right now. =)