what does joblessness look like in your city?

here's what it looks like in mine.



Hundreds line up for 1,014 new Charlotte jobs

Charlotte's beleaguered financial sector got a dose of good news -- 1,014 new jobs in a business helping borrowers with troubled mortgages. (Source)

us, weakly...

foolishly, in my thirst for celebrity gossip, i have allowed Us Weekly access to my email address. this makes it possible for me to receive breaking news from one of the industry's most reliable journalistic sources. without these emails, how else would i know that Jen and Brad recently met up for a 1 am hotel meeting, Ashley Simpson is still a moron, and Madonna's cashier's check was accepted for the purchase i mean adoption of little Mercy?

but mostly, Us Weekly helps me keep track of The Bickersons. you know: Jon & Kate Plus I Hate Your Stinkin Lying Cheating Bitchy Guts.

today's THIRD email (really, Us Weekly? 3?) shared this tidbit with me:



well, whattaya know! it's Jon & Kate's 10th anniversary! but they're still battling marriage problems! AND new cheating allegations! gosh, it's really tough to tell whether the two will be celebrating...

UNLESS YOU LOOK IN THE CENTER OF THE PAGE where Us Weekly helpfully puts us out of our misery by telling us that Jon & Kate Celebrate 10th Anniversary Today! and the magazine gets the ball rolling on that celebration by showing us pics of the happy couple unhappily separated this spring! that's JUST as romantic a gift as aluminum or tin!

as you can tell at the bottom left of the page, Kate appears to be absolutely shocked that it's been ten years already! i hope she's not worried about how she and Jon are gonna celebrate their one score together....



well. apparently, she's getting the party started by murdering one of their kids. JUST as romantic as aluminum or tin!

thanks, Us Weekly. your helpful emails have managed to help me waste more hours on the job than the squiggle haired boss from Dilbert.

eighteen months later....

today is a pretty awesome day. it's the 18th month in which everything in my life changed: eighteen short months ago Trixie and Dixie made their grand entrance into this city and my world.

to say that it has been a harrowing adventure is putting it mildly. over the last year and a half i have experienced:

* tiny size 1 diapers with giant poops

* LOCHIA

* a daycare provider who was out of her complete and total mind

* the sorrow of immunization shots and ear piercings

* three hour crying jags. in stereo.

* the evolution of Caesar hair styles, to DC fades, to full blown little girl curls

* rolling, crawling, standing, walking, running

* baby teeth and morning breath

* diaper rashes from hell

* happy shouts of "hiiiiii!" in the morning and when picking up from daycare in the evening

* arm waving jam sessions in the backseat listening to Janet Jackson sing about Control

* the evolution of pretending to use the remote control like a phone to holding a thumb and index up to the ear to mimic a bluetooth

* the never ending joys (for her!) of reading Brown Bear over and over and over and over and over and over and over and....

* hugs and kisses out of the blue, complete with mmmmmWAH sound effects.

while experiencing all these great things, i have also experienced the lows of self-doubt, fear, anxiety, depression, frustration, and immobility. i have been fortunate to have a good core set of friends who i can call and can prop me up and talk me through the disaster, whether real or imagined.

when i look back at how much my life has changed, i gotta admit there are a few things i miss. like being able to get up and go when i feel like it, happy hour, waking up an hour before i have to be at work and still making it to work on time, buying myself a party shirt and going out over the weekend, not being exhausted all the time, not doing laundry CONSTANTLY, not having to cook dinner, going to the movies more than once every 13 months, okay did i say a FEW things i miss?

but taking the sum total of all those things, i wouldn't trade them for anything with the joy and amazement i feel when i'm spending time with my kids.

*but Boca! what about those moments when you are bitter and angry and exhausted from the pressure of 2 toddlers running all over your house like langoliers?*

yes, dammit, even then. underneath it all.

i'm glad i accepted this mission, raising these two little girls to be strong, intelligent, funny, fearless women. i hope this works out for us all, because it's way too late to try to take them back to the hospital for a refund.

and speaking of money spent, did you know that you can easily keep track of the cost of supporting a child over her lifetime by simply converting her baby book into a spending ledger?

i learned that from Married, with Children.

What's WRONG with these People??

as you have probably heard, the prez and the missus had another fantastic date night, taking in a show in NYC. here i was thinking it was a nice, romantic moment shared by two people clearly in love...well, thank the LERD for Rick Santorum, who let me know it not only served as an example but...kinda....overshot the mark?



Take it Rick!

Number one, I think it's great that the president has a date night with his wife. He's a role model.He's a role model in particular, whether he likes it or not, in the African-American community.

right on, right on...

Here we have a president of the United States who says that marriage is cool. You have respect for your wife, and you treat her with the respect and dignity that she deserves. And she is part of this team. And it's not just part of professional team, but it's also part of a personal, romantic team. I think that's all great. So I think it's important that he keeps having his date night.

yes, that is great. especially since we've never had a married president before. wait...wait, we have, but black people haven't been influenced by the marriages of white people. we only respond when we see other black people doing something. kinda like running away from a club shooting.

wait, what?

I think he has to realize that flying to New York is self-indulgent. Go down to the corner bar and have a drink, a shot and a beer. It does not matter where you go with your wife, is that it's with your wife. That's really the point... I would make the argument, the simpler the date, the more normal it is.

...did this dude just suggest that the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES should take THE FIRST LADY to a bar and just have a drink? why in the world would the man holding the most important office in our country do that, Rick?


It connects to people. Here is what you do. Here is how you do it. And it is not going to Broadway. All right, once in awhile, you do something special. But it is mundane that really makes the marriage special, but because you are with your wife the mundane isn't mundane. It's special.

so, by saying connects with people, he means black people. because black people don't go to new york and they don't go to broadway plays. and a black woman is not going to think it very special to fly her to another city and treat her to a broadway show! nah, nah, naaaaaaaah....here's what you do....here's how you do it: take her to Smitty's for a couple shots of aristocrat, then head on back to the criz-zib, play some big daddy kane, and work it OUT.

huh.

you know i just cannot take it. i cannot even begin to climb that mountain that this man has laid out in front of me. i can only say a few things before i completely degrade and start screaming at my computer:

1) rick santorum is no expert on marriage and no one asked his advice. so what's with the paternalistic, condescending attitude? why does this guy, who's about the same age as Obama, and who lost his re-election bid think he can tell the President how to date his wife?

2) by suggesting the president merely go to a bar for some shots instead of taking his wife to nyc to broadway is absurd. and i know he isn're really going to go there with something being "self-indulgent" when Dubya used Air Force One regularly to travel to and from his private ranch in Crawford, TX. do you now how much it costs to use Air Force One per hour? over $50,000. it's a 2 hour flight from DC. and he visited Crawford 77 times during his administration. do the math.

3) this script follows all too closely to what many people of color have experienced in this society by our paler, well-meaning neighbors. it's patronizing, infuriating, and biased thinking based on racist notions of the black community.

4) with regards to the usual complaints at this junction of any race conversation of someone "always playing the race card" i have this to say: if you don't want me to play the race card, quit dealing from that particular deck.

sexiest gums in the game

so the T-1000 exists after all? luckily, we can stop it with cough syrup and save humanity.

makeover, you guuuuuuuuuuuuyyssss!

i threw some paint around, freshened up the place....you like it? does it make my butt look big?

maybe your sanctimony sucked the oxygen out of the building....did you think about that?