the slack daily

Present and Produce.

Two blog ladies who I really love - Sizzle and the Hollywood Housewife - put their new year's resolutions in the form of a mantra or an intention, something that is an overall guiding principle for the 365 (366?) days ahead.

The last six months has a whirlwind. The second half of 2011 saw me getting back into the writing game full-time as I made my return to tween TV on the new Nickelodeon show How to Rock (premiering February 4!) I went from noodling around on a couple of scripts to run-throughs and tape nights and the writers' room and a regular paycheck and other exciting developments that I will have to share with you at a later date.

I find that I require a lot of downtime. Or I think I require a lot of downtime. I tune out "to think" and "to work on a new idea" and while I do that, about 10% of the time is spent thinking the rest is literally in a time-suck that finds me coming to two hours later leaving comments on strange Tumblrs.

So my intention for the year is to be present and produce. Whether it's scripts or blog posts, whether it's miles run or time spent with Will (rather than time spent next to Will on our respective laptops on our respective projects and respective Twitters.)

Of course, we won't be producing any offspring. My uterus will retain its amateur/Olympic Hopeful status.

Here's wishing you everything you could possibly want in 2012, by granting you the wherewithal to actually go after it.

Hearts,

sm

2012!

New Year's was spent as it has been for the past three years: no makeup, in my PJs, drinking champagne, and livetweeting the Twilight Zone Marathon.

Sidenote: I am going to be FORTY this year. When did that happen?

 

Daisy was bored by it all.

 

We were asleep before midnight.

Hope you had the holiday you wanted. As for us, we have a fridge full of Italian food and a group of friends coming over to eat it. (Which is precisely the holiday I wanted.)

I'd like to be here more this year, but as always, you can find me on Tumblr and Twitter.

The You're Awesome Holiday Letter

Every year instead of getting gifts that are probably awesome but just add to our "stuff" I send out a "you're awesome" letter. To friends, family, or random people on the Internet. Sure, it's not commercialized and it doesn't kill the environment and you can't unwrap it and force a fake smile ("IT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED!") and it's not a Lexus with a shiny bow.

But it's free, it's easy, and it just takes a little bit of time to make someone's day.

So pretty much not what the holidays are about. But I encourage you to do it anyway.

I am a Horrible Human Being.

OPERATION RESOLUTION!

It's the most wonderful time of the year to discover how we irrevocably screwed up the past three hundred and sixty-some days. Wasted hours, ruined relationships, missed opportunities litter the halls with a bloated fat man in a diaper who was way cuter when he was Baby New Year 2010.

Usually the only thing I resolve to do is floss, because it's the sort of resolution I can handle: cheap, easy, and it only takes a couple of minutes.*

But I'm trying something new for this year. This year, we're gonna crowdsource that shit.

What should my resolutions be? Professional, personal, vegetable or mineral, it's up to you. Leave 'em in the comments - or - if you prefer to be anonymous, you can drop me a line here on my Tumblr (anonymous question enabled.)

I'll post the best ones (or all of them, or the ones I'm going to attempt, or whatever the hell I want) on January 1, 2011. 

 

 

 

*Insert sex joke here.**
**Insert sex joke about inserting here.***
***Insert sex joke about inserting here.****
****Prepare for sex joke event horizon.

Season's Awesomes.

Will & I don't buy presents. For each other or anyone else (except our niece and nephew, who are 6 and 3.)  we've had good financial years and bad ones, but we've always preferred having experiences over stuff.  Or we buy each other stuff during the year.

(This isn't a dig on anyone who does presents. I love presents! But I like the right gift for the right person rather than just HEY I BOUGHT YOU CRAP TO OPEN.)

With friends that I see regularly, I don't buy presents because I feel like we're giving each other the gift of company. We make food together, or make each other drinks, or they pick me up to take me to the ER when I've busted my ankle.

But there are times I wished that I was organized enough to do cards or somesuch every year, for those people I don't see.

I always have this grand plan for the holidays where I'm going to send out cards and buy gifts and donate to charity in people's names and then suddenly it's December 20th and that scrap of paper with your address that I saved from that time you sent me that thing is buried on my desk but it doesn't matter because I didn't buy holiday cards and my donations have gone southwards because things were a little more tight than usual this year and I think well, crap, I want to do something.

So starting last year, I started sending emails to those people. Think of it like a Christmas letter, but instead of it being about ME, it's about THEM and their awesomeness.

Maybe it's cheesy, but I figure people aren't told how awesome they are on a regular basis. So it's a little Season's Awesomes.

Anyway, feel free to steal this idea. It's recession-proof!

Mom's the Word.

So Mother's Day is today. You know what that means:

FREE MIMOSAS.

Alas, I am not a mom. Although I do carry photos of my dog on my phone, tweet about her poop, and make emergency visits to the vet at midnight, this puts me in the category of DoggyBlogger rather than MommyBlogger. 

You moms get all the breaks! Do you know that I had to get stretchmarks ON MY OWN? I didn't have the good fortune to create another human to put through college to earn my stripes! And what are diapers, other than really big poop bags? But does anyone say "awwwwww, who has a poopy diaper?" when my dog craps on their lawn? No! (Although her lack of poop does have mystical powers.)

And now they give you free booze. You know what I have to booze! I have to pay for it!

That said, Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there: the ones who raised their kids who are off and grown, those who still have them parading through the house, those who raised kids, regardless of their biological attachments, those who want to be moms, and to those kids who raised themselves.

And to my mom, who somehow let me live past adolescence. Thank god that lazy gene is dominant.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

You'd Better Watch Out...

While I waited at the vet for Daisy's medicine today, Santa Claus is Coming to Town was playing over the loudspeaker. A family was there to board their cat for the holiday, but things were backed up so they had to wait. The mom kept her little girl occupied by singing along:

You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
He's making a list
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice
Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
O! You better watch out!
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town

How is it that I've celebrated 37 Christmases and I've never noticed that this song is about a stalker?

While you and yours are busy getting a restraining order against good ol' Santa (aka St. Nick, aka Kris Kringle) I want to take you back in the wayback machine, when pictures had rounded edges and we wore plaid suits sans irony.

A young slackmistress, around four or five years old, was getting ready for bed on Christmas Eve. I was about to crawl into bed when I realized that I hadn't put out anything for Santa.

I ran downstairs.

Mom! Mom! We have to put out cookies and milk for Santa!

Without turning around from the mixer where she was whipping up a batch of cookies, my mother replied

I think Santa would prefer a beer and a salami sandwich.

This sounded suspect.

Are you sure? I asked skeptically.

Positive, my mom replied. That's what Santa really wants.

I ran downstairs to the beer fridge in the basement, retrieved a Schlitz, and then ran back upstairs.  I slapped a couple of pieces of salami between two slices of Rosen's rye and placed the sandwich plate and the beer on the table in front of the tree.

It's gonna be the best Christmas ever! my mom yelled after me as I scrambled up to bed.

And it was.

Blessed are the Huge-Bowmakers. (And the FOK.)

Blessed are the huge-bowmakers, the Lexus manufacturers, and those who, in the words of this guy, spend $50K on a car without consulting their partner.

LET THE HOLIDAYS BEGIN!

Happy Holidaisy!

(click to biggify)


Happy Holidaisy 2007
Happy Holidaisy 2006