i am just a girl...

i never write about politics. and i never write about religion. i barely even read about either one. i believe in democracy and i believe in God. i am not a fanatic about either one. i am just trying to live and enjoy life every day. with my husband. and my kids...

this economy sucks and of course it affects me. i have 3 kids to feed. and a shitload of bills to pay. like most people i know. it doesn't matter where you live...

after catching highlights of last nights debate this morning, i have been thinking about this. #1. there are entirely too many blowhards trying to out do one another. and #2. it will not really matter who wins this presidential election in nov. the rich will get richer and the entitled will become more entitled. and the middleclass, which is where i am, will get shit. it never changes. no matter who is running the country. unless i suddenly get rich, which i will not. or i suddenly go on welfare, which i will not. i will get diddley squat. and learn how to CONTINUE to live with diddley squat...

so why complain. the blowhards have the mic...

and speaking of blowhards, my fav blowhard is my husband. the funnyman. i use the term blowhard for him as a term of endearment. affection, if you will, for his talent. without the blowhards in washinton and everywhere else, he would have very little to talk about. and when he has the microphone he is telling a joke about those blowhards. and if he is telling a joke, he is probably making money. and bringing it home. so i can spend it on milk and coffee. and cable tv so we can watch hbo and the politicians talk. so he can tell more jokes and make more money.
and i can, well, i am just a girl...

i buy my coffee at trader joe's...

hurricane/tropical storm ike or whatever it was blew through cleveland and the rest of ohio the other day. and it caused all kinds of problems as you may know. most of the people i know suffered at least a power outage of some sort. more like a power outrage around here. it flickered in my little world a few times. i did manage to get 3 loads of laundry done along with 2 kid showers and 1 kid bath through it all. lucked out i guess....

it was a hot and humid sunday after a rainy friday and saturday. my garage sale sucked...all of the local weather people on my sunday morning shows said it would be windy this evening. i enjoy watching the weather. i obviously do not plan my day around it. we are in cleveland, ohio after all. it snows in the month of may here. it is 75 degrees until halloween sometimes. hard to predict. i have a taylor instrument stormoguide. it is the most accurate way for me to anticipate a storm of some sort. or at least a low front. and like i said, if you live in cleveland, there are plenty of those coming in...

well my barometer's needle was heading to the left. slowly. and it got pretty low. 29.03 or something like that. whatever. i am not a meteorologist, but that is low.

it was windy. creepy windy. and the kids were freaking out. closing windows and doors. it didn't help that they were watching jurassic park on the dvd...we had surround sound. literally...

after getting them to bed under protest, i put on the football game. which sucked if you are a browns fan. it was bad enough the buckeyes lost in california the night before. this game was going no better. the indians had already lost that afternoon...

bitch bitch bitch...

so i flip over to my beloved sunday night hbo. it is something i really look forward to. my new addiction is 'true blood'. love it. and i usually roll my eyes to vampire or zombie movies. i have had to watch the kind of vampire movies and zombie movies that jeff likes. the crazy ones. the kind of vampire or zombie movies that have a virus involved. and the vampires/zombies are fucking insane. jeff loves these movies. i really am not into them. i will make an exception for the grindhouse series though. but all in all i like my zombies dead. and i like my vampires to be dracula. you know, the old superhost stuff...

this new series is fantastic though. and i love to talk about it. but none of my friends watch it. no hbo. tragic for them. many of my friends think paying 11 bucks a month is too much for about 25 premium channels. between hbo latin and starz outerspace, there are a ton of shows on. sure there is never anything to watch, but who cares. sunday night hbo is the bomb. i guess my friends would rather drink a lot of starbucks...

i got thru all of my new vampire show and then some, when out went the cable. fuck. i was gonna watch entourage. i only catch it once and awhile, but i like it. along with tv went the cable internet. oh no...now what. radio silence. the power flickered a few times. i had to sneak in and reset the kids' alarm clocks. they had school tomorrow. jeff had to get up early. well early for him. anything before 9 am is early for the comic...

monday morning comes and i go out to get my plain dealer and debris is everywhere. jeff was out the door already. i called him to see how the roads were. he said the school buses were running. what he didn't tell me was it wasn't a chagrin school bus he saw picking up children. so i get the kids out the door and we are waiting for the bus. and waiting. and waiting. i really hate mondays and the school bus rolling up to my driveway always puts a smile on my face.

the only thing that rolled up was my neighbor who works at one of the chagrin schools. she gave me the news that all of the district was closed. no power. no phone. blah blah blah. well the kids are happy as shit and run into the house. i just stood there in my running clothes. practically weeping. i had money to spend at starbucks...


now don't get me wrong. we lucked out with the storm. we had everything that we needed. no trees fell on my house or car. no trees fell in my yard. we didn't have cable or internet but that was ok. i have plenty of dvd's. the kids could play outside. i had plenty of munchies for them. they plow thru food like you can't believe...

so i get a few calls from jeff. he wants to know if the internet is up yet. i tell him no. he tells me he needs to get something emailed today. tells me i should call time warner and see what is going on. now so far my day has been ok. kids are too happy that there is no school to even be cranky. so i don't bite his head off. or laugh at him because does he really think time warner cable is worried about his email. he had all of sunday to do it. half of northeast ohio has no electricity. who cares about his email... god help you if the power is out and you have kids home from school and you happen to have a well. with no electricity, there is no water. no water, no flush. could be a long, stinky day in the township.

i suggest he take his laptop to a venue with wi fi. oh yeah. but that would be a hassle he says. shit. that would have been my excuse if i were him. gotta go. see you in 3 hours. lots of email to send from starbucks 3 counties away from here. dummy...

the cable/internet came on in time for the 6 pm news. i watched channel 3 with a smile on my face. the smile vanished a short time later when i learned that the schools would probably be closed again on tues. so much for my trip to starbucks to sit in the corner and drink coffee and make fun of people. i was recently cashed up from the garage sale afterall. but it was ok. i had hbo and i had the internet. and i had coffee...

a dog of a day...

summer is almost over. it bums me out. i will miss the warm days. miss the flip flops. miss the bikini. i will soon move my running inside to the treadmill. i can only stand so much windburn. then it is $200 at the estee lauder counter at dilliards to find the right products to unfry my face. i can't afford that these days. spend too much money on milk as it is...

as i ran this morning i was thinking about a conversation i had with my funny husband. he is not always a laugh a minute. in fact days go by without a joke. some days self absorption takes over the humor. we do get into some thought provoking discussions about life. our individual history and what we have learned from it. i no longer wonder so much why people do what they do. now i worry only about what goes on in my own house.

we were talking about our marriage. and our previous marriages. what is different about this one. i will only speak for myself since it is my blog and not jeff's.

so this morning i was reflecting on this labor day. how hard it is to be a wife. to be a parent. to be a step parent. it is all work. and it is all fucking hard. i am quite used to the ride. getting on and staying on. making decisions and staying with them.

some people choose an ideal. and try to marry it or live with or have their career be it. sooner or later i think they realize that the living up to that ideal is not fun. they realize that they are not living in the present. you can't successfully live an ideal. because sure as shit reality gets in the way. it may be yours or it may be someone elses, but it is real. and it needs to be dealt with.

my first husband chose to live an ideal with me. we did all the perfunctory things. got married. bought a house. invested. got 2 dogs. had 2 kids. then a certain reality set in. and things changed. he probably never really was happy being with me. but i was happy with our life. i was living it. when it was painfully obvious that he was not in the same reality i was, it was over for me. and it was awful for me. but i got thru it. i don't think it was every hard for him. he missed living with his kids of course, but i do not think he ever missed me. because he never was in it to begin with...

my marriage to jeff on the other hand, is different. i feel a wide range of emotions on a daily basis. i firmly realize that i can't control shit. except me. which is a handful and was discussed previously. that is the reality. we live. day to day. paycheck to paycheck. no one said anything about being reckless though. we are just here now. if one of us gets a little ahead of themselves, the other slows them down. and then we are back to hand in hand. i have good boundaries with his career. i let the funnyman be funny. i give the artist the space that he needs. when he is entirely too self absorbed, i let him know.

i am not sure how it all happened but it works. and sometimes the funnyman points it out to me. we battle on a daily basis about parenting issues. and money. and everything else. but it means we care.

so that is what labor day means to me. we are the working class. it is all work. the marriage. the parenting. the daily grind. as mundane as it can be.

among other things, i get a little funny on the side...

we all deserve a happy labor day...

all quiet on the set...

summer vacation ended in our house this morning at about 0755hrs. or so. we have children in 2 different schools. all in the same district. the chagrin falls school district. have you heard of it?

i run the morning show in our house. i am the producer. i am the director. i take care of wardrobe... i prefer to handle those chaotic fast paced activities that parents have to deal with. the morning rush and the afterschool rush. the dinner rush. the homework rush. the bath/shower time rush and of course the bedtime rush. everything in between functions on its own. no one should have to tell a kid how to play or screw off. the rush times need a shepherd or a drill sergeant. as fate would have it, i am both...

jeff has the talent to entertain. as a matter of fact, he is the talent. he should wait until a fun diversion is needed. where kids or adults have down time. where fun is to be had. or when he gets the call from me, the morning show director...

usually his talent is not needed in the morning. the kids need to move towards a common goal. getting to the bus stop. on time. with breakfast digesting in their stomaches. with their backpacks full of the required assignments to be turned in. with a decent outfit. without tears...

as much as the funnyman can make one laugh, he can also bring one to tears. like many fathers can. if they are doing what good parents do. it happens...

so here it is a new school year. i have been preparing for this morning show for about 9 weeks. since summer break started. not that it was tough to sit at the local rec center by the pool all day with the kids, but you do it all summer long and tell me you can't wait for that school bus to roll up to your driveway around labor day. it can be difficult to be home with kids all summer long that are too young to get a job. think back to how fucking crazy you made your mother during the summer when you were bored. which is about 25 minutes into any activity. blah blah blah. i really don't like to complain about my kids on paper cause us girls utilize our girlfriends for that. before we begin to share stories about our husbands and in laws...

back to today. i got my ass up early so i could do my morning run. before anyone got up. as i ran thru the neighborhood i saw some of the high school and middle school kids waiting at their bus stops. before 0700 hrs. and all i could think of was 'look at those happy faces'. they just glared at me with that blank expression that kids have. no one recognizes me when i run. baseball hat on. pulled down like billy costigan in 'the departed'. clipping along...

jeff wanted to see the kids off on the first day. i thought that is fine. just don't interefere with the rhythm. or i will beat you. many women will tell you that the father will sometimes slow them down. i like to use jeff as an ace in the hole. if i am having a problem with something on a school morning, he is the big gun i pull out. i can summons him out of his slumber to get things moving...

i am the director of the morning show. i have been doing it long enough to know when to call 'action!!!'

i am not that anal, but on the first day of school the kids need to have their heads on. just keep moving and get there. once they are in a groove, in a few days or so, there is time to screw off a little in the morning. but not on the first day.

all my pleading and prefacing with jeff about the first day went to shit in about 30 seconds. i am in the bathroom trying to get my shit together. drying my hair or whatever. i hear jeff yell at the oldest. 'you're not wearing that'. what the fuck i thought. didn't we go over this. i didn't call 'action' yet. didn't i beg him to stay in bed until the last second so he could go outside with us and take happy pics. it was only a damn jacket...

it was no big deal but it could set the tone for the day for me. i was going to be home with jeff all day. (after i had coffee with my girlfriends of course). an argument about bullshit before he is properly caffeinated is a big no no in our house. i have learned my lesson...

so everyone went outside and we took first day of school pics. happy pics. the kids got on their respective buses and off they went...'cut!!!'

day two is nothing like day one. the comic will sleep right thru all my directing of the children. thru all the sound checks. the wardrobes changes. thru any last minute script changes. he will be sleeping peaceful in his trailer until i call 'action!'

meat hooks

the first time i was called a handful i was floored. what did he mean when he said it. it was a friend of mine who said it. i will call him kevin. he is more like family to me so i know he was not blowing sunshine or smoke up my ass. he was teasing me to make a point. he told me to ask my husband if i didn't believe him.

i was not sure what kevin meant. i have always thought that i was low maintenance. you know, easy to get along with. do whatever as an activity with friends. not fussy about eating or sleeping. i do like my girly things but i can hang with the fellas and talk baseball, etc.

so back to a handful. what does this mean. does it mean i am hard to handle? out of control? a petulant child. my exhusband called me a control freak. which was not true. it was the other way around. but it serves his life well and he seems to be very happy these days. so i couldn't be happier for him.

i have always thought, (and blogged) that the person you wait for has the control. that is obvious. i am always doing the waiting so that couldn't be it.

my husband uses a handful of hair product on his head and i barely use a dime size so that couldn't be it. the grooming differences between the comic and myself are amazing. you would think he had more hair than fabio. and he never ever throws out the container. i humor jeff and buy expensive goop for him to put on his hair. it is about an inch and a half long and receding. please don't get me wrong, he looks very cute. but does he need to use that much. hell no. so he has all these almost empty jars of wax, putty, pliable molding stuff and defining whip on his side of the cabinet. maybe he is collecting them. or he feels like will smith in 'i am legend' and somehow he will be the last survivor in the city and he cannot possibly run out of product. his hair would be tragic.

i really do like it when he spikes his hair and it goes in all crazy directions on his big old head. he looks put together is a messed up sort of way. his hair reflects him. it has got some wisdom and a lot of humor to it. just like him...

sometimes he will shower and exit the bathroom sans spiked hair. we will be just hanging out at home. just the two of us...not going anywhere. no trace of product in his hair. it just lays there flat on his head. he looks like an enormous child. (which is what he is). i will ask him if he is gonna put some stuff on his hair, you know, spike it. he will say 'no, we are just hanging out.' you see the flat, lifeless hair drives me crazy. so i will say 'go put some wax, paste or pliable molding goop on your hair it is driving me nuts...'

so anyways, back to what my friend kevin was saying about me being a handful...

the brink truck

when is a ball bust just a ball bust or when does it cross the line. i guess it is up to the individual. we all have lines that we draw in the sand or sidewalk. and we also have people that know how to obliterate those lines. enough said.



my dilemma is that i live with a true artist. whose brain never shuts off. he wakes up and it is clicking. he may not be ready to express it with conversation or eye contact, but it is firing.



i have learned, although i do not always abide, to leave him alone for a bit in the morning. it is not coffee that he needs, it is time. he does love his coffee and that was already covered in a blog long ago. he needs time. how long. who the fuck knows. when he is ready you will know. i usually find out he is not ready the hard way...



sometimes i bite back. sometimes i retreat. over the years i have learned to pick my battles. this works well with parenting. but should i parent my husband. hell no. most women say you have to...



i fucking refuse. he is not a child. he is as artist. and i am not bashing artists here at all. they are some of the most interesting and fun people around. but this is what i write about. living with one. so get over it if you disagree.



sometimes ball busting is like a game of volleyball. and i say this because i am inspired by watching the olympics. the skill and timing that is involved is so impressive. back and forth. they give and take. land on their ass and still keep going. great stuff.



you know teasing is for the little ones. ball busting is for the adults. boundaries are for everyone. boundaries are taught to us at a young age. they are exercised as adults. too bad that is not always reality.



i understand the rule of three that pertains to comedy. three happens to be my fav number. don't know why, it just is.



maybe that would be helpful for our ball busting sessions. a third party. a boundary guard. or maybe i could be a mind reader so i could tell when it is ok to give as well as recieve.



that would be my power if i was a comic book super hero.

but i have no super powers. just a lot of wit. i need it to be married to a comic. to be married to jeff. not to keep up with him in the funny business though. i need it so i can keep up with me...

a giant pink bunny

i was going to share a landscaping story with you but i shall save it for a rainy day. yardwork is not my thing. not jeff's either. despite what he says. so what if he worked on a sod farm back in the 80's. i cleaned apartments. doesn't mean i like to buff floors. but like anything else in home ownership, it is a necessity. unless you relish the neighbors coming around with pitchforks saying 'mow the lawn, mow the lawn'...

like i said, a story for rainy day. and fay will soon be here according to dick, andre and melissa, the fox 8 cutie. by the way she is too pretty to do the weather. i take that back, she is exactly what cleveland weather needs. she is sunny and 80 all the time. cute girl. and i am not saying that all the other meteorologists in cleveland are ugly, she is just sharp and cute and the one i happen to watch in the morning. which is really the only time to watch the weather. once your out and about, you should know what the weather is doing. right?

back to what i was going to talk about.

yesterday jeff was home during the day doing what comics do during the day. screw off. just kidding. i will hear about that one. he was loading video onto his youtube page. which is JeffBlanchardComedy. i do not have the link but if you can get here, then you can there. right?
we all have to struggle a little don't we.

so he was busy doing that in the basement where his office is. where it belongs and where it will always be. you could imagine. disaster. low lighting please...and time will get away from him down there. he is able to have a little quiet and create whatever he needs to create. he can block out any noise. it is a gift. but i do bug the shit out of him. i always need to ask him something. although in my defense i will say that if he handled it after the 5 th time, i would not need/want to ask him again. and again...

i take off for about an hour or so. when i come back he is messing up the stove. i would say cooking but that is only a phase. it turns out to be a mess for me. you see how that works. second time that day i might add...i sit at my computer to comb thru all the emails i have from people superpoking me on facebook. i have a fb friend in jersey that i routinely superpoke. a comic by the name of alan kaye. funny guy. ok it is the only application i have left on my profile beside astrology. i refuse all the others... jeff is now sitting in the next room eating. i hear a chirp/beep. sounds like a cell phone or a smoke detector but somewhere else in the house.

i asked him if he heard the chirp. you know it is possible to imagine shit around here. he said oh yeah that has been going on. for how long i asked. awhile he said. now what the fuck. i get these kinds of answers from him all the time. for a bit. not too much. not too expensive. a little bit of money. not too late. these are the kind of answers you give when you are trying to get out of something. the man who makes a living on talking cannot seem give me an answer i can use. i want him to be articulate. you know, like he is on stage...

chirp. there it goes again. so now i get up from my important superpoking fest to try to figure out which smoke detector is chirping. they are hard wired in but i am pretty damn sure the 9 volt is talking to me. go figure. it was in the basement about 10 feet from his computer. where he was for most of the afternoon. and i bet that thing was chirping for 45 minutes.

so i found a battery in the fridge. isn't that where you keep them...and jeff replaced in for me. he is so handy isn't he. and we worked on it together. well at least i did...

i need a little trim...

all the chatter about the cleveland browns pants. i agree with my friend, the professor, they make you want to vomit. those pants that the browns lost in last night were dreadful...

makes me think of some other dreadful wardrobes. my husband's for instance. now there has been great improvement in the last few years. lots of purging. clothes that are too big. too small. too trendy. too busy. and just plain ugly were tossed.

of course he wanted to donate them. to what. the uglyass resale shop. or the god awful goodwill store. my suggestion was to donate them to waste management. in a large, black 45 gallon garbage bag. i mean get over it...

he has been very good at it. usually surrendering clothing that he has hung onto for many years. but sometimes he is reluctant to part with a fav t shirt. even though it has 3 holes in it. he said he could do yardwork in it. that implies that he actually does yardwork. which he rarely does. i will not stand and applaud because he has cut the grass with a 36" troybuilt mower. but that is a future blog. there is far too much creativity going on in this house to pull weeds...

i will give him credit. he puts up with a lot of editing. i will trim the fat off of anything. big mouth that i am. he will be ready to walk out the door to do a gig and i will say do you really want to wear that belt with those shoes. and the belt will not even show. no his belly does not cover it. his bowling shirt does. what if he is on stage and in the midst of a bit he raises his hands over his head and the wrong belt is visible. never mind the belly at this point. you can see everything on stage...

if he resists, i remind him. over and over again. it is not me they will be talking about afterwards. doesn't matter what you did or said. your outfit sucked. jeez don't guys know anything...

up there on stage it is the whole package that is being taken in. you better look cool if anything. as far as i am concerned the slob look on a 42 soon to be 43 year old is out. way out...

are comics as superstitious as athletes. i think so. i tell jeff he sucks before every show. and what an embarrassment he is. it seems to work for him. he kills every time. but i will not let him leave the house with the wrong shoes on. someone better edit me...

tom petty said it best...

tom petty had a great album/8 track/cassette out back in 1981. hard promises. as far as i am concerned it was his best. i sure miss stan lynch...

the waiting. something big. a woman in love. they were all good...

all those great songs reminded me that it wasn't gonna be easy to always have to wait or love sucked and it had to be worked on daily. life isn't fair. and you better enjoy the ride cause it is one way...

so back to waiting and waiting, which is all i seem to do. maybe i am too damn efficient. in fact my exhusband told someone that was why he married me. apparently the novelty of efficiency has an expiration date. or was that redundant. i guess it was cause a novelty implies novelty. and in the dictionary under redundant it says 'see redundant'.

now jeff, my husband, makes everyone wait. effectively making him in control. how the fuck did that happen. i thought it was supposed to be good to be on time and return phone calls.

well the other day he was waiting for a very important phone call. several times zones away i might add which makes it worse cause somehow this makes you wait 3 hours longer...go figure.

let me say that jeff is never late for a gig. never ever.

back to waiting, as you are waiting for a point here i am sure. get used to it. this is the way of the world. consider this a training text. an exercise in attention span. i have said this before that i have to listen to his voice on the voicemail. he rarely answers any ringing phone. he moves from various sedentary positions in the house until he is ready to engage. the bathroom seems to be his favorite place to hide these days. keeping up with current events i suppose.

back to the phone call. he was waiting and waiting and it was driving him batshit crazy. i get accused of not having any empathy. are you shitting me. if there is one thing i can empathize with it is waiting. i have the patience of a saint. anyone who knows both of us will agree with me on this one.

so what did he do. he decided to call them instead. a great fucking idea. i wish i had thought of it. i did about 6 hours before. of course, being efficient, i know better. i also know to never ever say i told you so to a comic. unless you are in the mood. to battle that is. but this time i did say it. i couldn't help myself. i needed to amuse myself.

but this time there was no battle. the news he received with the phone call was too good. or maybe after living with a noncomic ball busting wife he has learned to empathize with me...

switching driveways

i have writing about living with my funnyman husband for sometime on myspace. on a whim i decided to park my blog here instead of its usual space. for those of you who really must read them they can be found at www.myspace.com/monkeyblanchard something like that.



anyways...i will give you the readers digest version. i have been married to a local cleveland comic for a few years. it is my second marriage. my first marraige was to a police lieutenant. i literally went from one extreme to another. it took me awhile to figure out that all men are not created equal. they are all, in general, the same. mostly different than women are. not as easy to figure out as we once had thought. throw in kids, money, health and all that shit and you suddenly realize you are doing and saying what, as a young adult, you said you would never do.



now we are all in the thick of life. i am in my mid forties. fuck, i typed it out loud. if you haven't fucked up by now, that fuck up is right around the corner. so instead of going the other way, embrace it.



i digress. the reason i am telling you all of this is becuase i found out AFTER i got married just how different artists truly are. and this will be the reason for my blogs. my pursuit for sanity. my vent. my rant. i truly love my husband so do not think i am merely bitching about him. i live for words. i actually love to argue but do not, no matter what he says, pick fights. i merely embrace them. stay in the scene and hold my ground. and go toe to toe with one of the best comics around. i am his best heckler. sometimes his muse. always his pain...



enough backstory. read the old blogs mentioned in the first paragraph. and blah, blah, blah. you soon will know the rest...