MOMMIE DEAREST

Again, I must interrupt the Wedding Series for an unimportant update. Please bear with me.

Emily and Rachel have begun the de-Emily-fication process of their room. Could I put that a more depressing way? Probably not. But that’s what it feels like because they are systematically removing all traces of her from the room. Anyway, they share a lot of clothes so decisions have to be made about what stays with Rachel and what goes with Emily. The first night went surprisingly well. They only argued over who HAD to take clothes that neither of them liked. The next night was less amicable. Rachel was "difficult" according to Emily, and wouldn’t tell her what she wanted. Rachel defended herself by saying she was just sad. I popped in and out of the room trying to defuse the situation by making accusations such as, "Why don’t you ever wear that cute dress?" and "Is there really a tag still on that skirt?"

Last night Rachel picked out the movie we watched off of Emily’s summer movie list. It was Billboard Dad...perhaps the cheesiest Olsen twin movie ever made. And I rolled my eyes but let them play it. Emily suggested Mighty Joe Young instead, but I said I didn’t like movies about gorillas. Then she offered Summer of the Monkeys, and I had to admit I don’t like movies about ANY primates. I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person.

David has started football workouts and thinks that exempts him from doing anything around the house. But he did make me some cotton candy last night.

Dave has brought in so much produce that I have been forced to boycott the kitchen. I feel overwhelmed when I can’t find one inch of counter space.

As for me, it seems that Emily’s college is interested in having me write a parent blog for them. I thought about asking Emily if she minded, but decided against it. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m worried about getting my children’s stamp of approval on what I tell the world. Most of the time, I make a conscious effort to present them in a positive light. But sometimes something they do or say is so funny or strange that I throw caution to the wind and post it even though a tiny amount of public humiliation may follow. This is called collateral damage, and should be perfectly acceptable if the related incident is funny enough, don’t you agree?

But the whole parent blog thing did start me thinking that someday my children might want to sell the sordid story of their upbringing to Lifetime. It will be about a mother who abused her children by blogging about them, revealing all their idiosyncracies for public consumption. Of course Faye Dunaway would be perfect to play me, the evil mother, but is she still alive? If not, they could probably get that frumpy actress who was so deliciously sadistic in that movie with James Caan. I can’t remember her name.

Incidentally, I handled a case one time where one of the parties did such strange things that another party involved thought he might be able to sell the story to Lifetime. He asked me who I would want to play me in the movie and I immediately said Meryl Streep. Wasn’t she the one who delivered the greatest movie line of all time ("A dingo ate my baby") with that strong Australian accent? Who wouldn’t want her? Of course, no dingos would be involved in our movie and she would have to say boring stuff like, "Yes Judge, I’ll prepare that Journal Entry" and "Could you forward that email to me?" so maybe Meryl wouldn’t be interested.

I had the same old, same old for lunch today. Plus a peach off our tree.