Mama and I spoke on the phone last Thursday.  Below is  the transcript.  Well, except that it was in Russian.  But I swear, this is a certified translation.  Or maybe a certifiable one.

“Did you hear that a cat got the swine flu?” I asked her.

“What are you talking about?” she asked me back.

“I read on the internet that a cat was diagnosed with H1N1,” I explained.  “In California.”  I have no idea where the cat was, but doesn’t California sound probable?  The state is enormous, I’m sure there’s a swine flu cat in there somewhere.

“A what?”  Mama was acting as though I were speaking in a foreign language.  Which I supposed Russian is, but not to mama.

“A cat!”  I said. “CAT!”

“What about cat?  What’s wrong with Nicki?”

“Not Nicki!  CAT!   A cat has swine flu. Not Nicki cat.  CAT SWINE FLU.  Meow has oink, mama.  Can you understand me?  MEOW HAS OINK.”

“Meow has oink?” she said.  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Well, he does. In California.Schwarzenegger is probably involved.”

“World is crazy.”

“”Yes,” I agreed sadly.

P.S. It turns out that the cat is in Iowa.   There’s just no stopping Arnold.

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Did you do your part to help me steal Adrian from Husbandrinka?  You can read about it here, but then rush here and vote five stars!

Did you enter The Mouthy Housewives’ holiday card giveaway?  Can you afford to miss it?  Enter here.

Did you know that I went to the Big Apple Circus this weekend with my kids and Husbandrinka?  I did. And it was fun.  Please read my review. Because if you don’t, they’ll never let me go again.  And other bad things will happen.  To everyone.

A few weeks ago, I tweeted something about having had it up to HERE with people asking me to vote for things, so it only makes sense that I am now asking  you to go to YouTube and vote for my friend Adrian’s (and his gorgeous kids’) video.

I tried hard to think of a reason that this isn’t hypocritical, and the only thing I came up with is that it’s not nice to call people hypocritical.

Besides, it’s for a greater good.  See, Adrian is originally Husbandrinka’s friend. They’ve known each other since they were both working in Berlin in 1992.  (I just asked Husbandrinka if they were there for the fall of the Wall and he said “no, seeing as that happened three years before.” Like normal people are supposed to know that.)

Anyway, I decided that I want to steal him from Husbandrinka.    Because he may be one of his coolest friends.  He’s all English and African, living in France, with a French supermodel-type wife and three well-mannered children who speak English fluently, albeit with a Teletubby accent.  And after my children spend time with Adrian’s children they say things like, “that idea is rubbish, mommy!” which is totally endearing if you don’t pay too much attention to what it actually means.

So, please vote for them!  It would mean a lot to me.  And you get to see the gorgeous kids!

And if they win, Adrian will get to take the inaugural AirFrance airbus (that’s TWO FLOORS of airplane!) flight to NYC with one of his kids.  (Husbandrinka just told me that the plane is called the A380, and not the two floors of airplane. I can’t believe that he has Adrian and I have John.  Who last week told me “have you washed your shower head recently? Because you can get Legionnaire’s disease from it.”)

Personally, it would take two floors of Xanax to get me on that flight.  Plus, I’m really curious how Adrian will handle telling his two kids that they are not the Chosen ones to accompany him on the flight. I love these Sophie’s Choice scenarios.

The good news is that you can vote every day!  All you have to do is log onto YouTube (which is the same as logging onto your Google account and hit the fifth star.)  It would mean a lot to me.  Especially when Adrian comes to NYC and announces to Husbandrinka that I’m his favorite family member now.  I promise to capture that moment on video.

I’ve been mulling over a  few post ideas  for the coming weeks, and I thought that t I would tell you the topics that I am considering and you’d tell me what is most interesting, or maybe  least uninteresting. Ready?

1.  Whenever someone says, “you may be pleasantly surprised,”  you won’t be.

2. I moved my blog from Blogger to Wordpress. I was pleasantly surprised.  Except I almost killed someone.

3.  I need to lose weight.  Want to know the conversation with mama that made me decide? With some side comments from Husbandrinka.

4.  Nicki’s bedtime ritual.  Ferber, anyone?

5. Peri-menopause.  Husbandrinka wants to know “how long this bullshit is going to last”.   For some strange reson, he is not soothed by an estimate expressed in terms of years.

6.  In the news:  Carly Simon sings to her surgeon boyfriend’s patients before surgery to soothe them.  (Hey, how come Michael Jackson didn’t consider that form of relaxation?)

7. Mama and papa’s crazy former assistant.  Who said fun things like, “I know there’s a famine, but the Ethiopians are looking fantastic!”

8. Update on Looka, my parents’ newest Doberman baby.  And my nemesis.

So, please let me know what you think.  And if you have a chance check this out. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that this isn’t something that I usually do, so please go and leave me a comment so that the other Mouthys don’t make fun of me and make me wear the curlers.  Thanks.

So a few years ago some people decided to spin Christmas with the whole “Jesus is the reason for the season” thing.  I think it’s because they were late with their Christmas shopping  and wanted to deflect a little.   Which is totally fine, except for us Jews, who prefer the Estee Lauder gift set aspect.

But I’m glad that we still have Halloween.  Where we can all enjoy mass consumption of candy without any pretense of spirituality or thinking of others and WWJD.

Because I’m fairly certain that it would be at odds with what my family would do.

Last Sunday, the morning after some intense Trick or Treating,  I came across Fairly Odd Mother’s blog post with the wonderful suggestion of what to do with all the leftover Halloween candy.  Basically, you have your kid gorge on a few pieces and then send the rest to our soldiers overseas who are fighting for our freedom, or destroying the world as we know it, all depending on your worldview.

I thought it was a great idea, especially because it got the candy out of the house and confined the size of my ass to the tri-state area.

So I decided that I was going to present it at breakfast as a  fun idea, and therefore give my children the choice to do the right thing.  As opposed to jamming it down their throats.  Which between you and me is a real time saver.  Anyway.

“Dear children,” I said.  “I have a fun idea!”  Now my children are not morons and they know that “fun” is momspeak for “opposite of fun”, so they looked appropriately apprehensive.

“What say you each pick five pieces of candy and we will send the rest of your loot to soldiers who are fighting in the war and who sadly do not get a lot of mail. Or candy.”

I caught my daughter’s eye and I could see a glimmer there. She’s a do-gooder, just like me.  In her crafts class last year, she knit hats for poor people. In Africa.  Why not kill a few birds with the same charitable stone?

My son was having none of this bullshit.

“So what?” he said. “I don’t get any mail, either.”

“Yes,” I conceded.  “But to be fair, you’re also not fighting in a war.”

“Yeah, but the soldiers didn’t send me anything.”

“Like what? What do you want soldiers to send you?”

“Like a GUN.”

“Oh.   They’re not allowed to send guns.  But it would be nice to send them candy.”

“I don’t know,” Husbandrinka weighed in.  “It sounds like a scam to me.”

“What kind of scam? To get candy scam?”

“They have all sorts of scams these days,” he told me.

Later, I called John.

“I don’t like this one bit,” he said.

“What’s not to like, soldiers getting candy?”

“We pay taxes, the government should provide them with sweets. Besides, do we want them jacked up on sugar in the war zone?”

“Isn’t that good?  They need energy.”
John wasn’t convinced.

I called Mama.

“Wonderful idea, get the candy out of house. You gain weight.  Everyone in America fat.  No candy, no need.”

“So we’ll send it to soldiers.”

“But do it in real.  Not Colonel Marinka and Sergeant Husbandrinka.”

“We’ll keep some pieces, naturally.”

“I see nothing naturally about it.”

So there you have it.  Our family is at a standstill.  Thank goodness we still have candy to keep our energy up.

So this is what I don’t understand.  If you are a criminal, enjoying an afternoon of, say, murder and mayhem, and the police come over to talk to you, as they arrest you in anticipation of further discussion, they are going to read you the Miranda warning.

And unless you’ve never seen an episode of NYPD Blue, Law & Order or Cops, you know exactly what that is.  They warn you that if you start talking, what you say can and will be used against you.  To like prosecute you and shit.   What I don’t understand is why no one gives me a similar warning when my son starts asking me questions.

Like yesterday morning.  I’m getting the kids out the door for school, and as I lock the door, Young Ladrinka says to me, “When I’m a grown up, can you buy me a 3-D house.”

“No,” I tell him.  Because it is my favorite word and I enjoy denying my children things.  Also because I don’t know what a 3-D house is, but it sounds expensive.

“Why not?” he asks.

“Because when you are an adult, you will work and buy your own house,” I lie. I don’t want him to know that by the time that he’s grown up, Obama will have perfected the cradle-to-grave handouts and every child of every comrade who voted for Hope during the Dawn of 2008, will be given a mansion.  A mansion that previously belonged to the Upper Brackets.

But I didn’t want to tell my son that because, well, I like to lie.

“Can you at least get me a debit card?” he’s not giving up without a struggle. “Because with a credit card, I know that you have to pay it back.”  Which clearly doesn’t suit him business model.

“Don’t worry,” my daughter pipes in.  “When we are in college, we will get both! I can’t wait.”   Yes, I’m not looking to her to finance my stay at the Sunny Prunes Home for the Aged.

“You will both get credit and debit cards when you have jobs,” I measure my voice.

“But I need to pay to get a job!” my son protests.  I am mildly alarmed that he’s in the mafia, but I let it slide.  Because what kind of an idiot confronts a junior mafioso?  Not this idiot, that’s for sure!

“You don’t have to pay to get a job.  I mean, you have to pay for your education, like college and medical school.”

“I’m not going to medical school!” he says.

“Why not?”

“Because I am not interested in medical,”  he insists.  “So how will I get a 3-D house?”

I don’t see how I can get out of buying it for him, do you?

Hello.  I’m Marinka. And I’m not participating in NaBloPoMo.  You know, that modern cult that gets bloggers to post daily for a month in order to combat the National Blog Post Shortage.  I wish my friends participating well.

So this post doesn’t count.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t usher you over here to read Neil’s fantastic guest post.  Oh, it’s about sex, so if you don’t like stuff like that, don’t look.   Especially oral.

I adore Neil and not just because he let me do a guest post on his blog last year when I was a baby blogger.  I blog heart him because I’ve met him at three different events and he’s so charming and funny and I just want to talk to him and chase all the other women away.  For some reason he doesn’t seem to like that.  Go figure.

I have news!

I have a new baby brother.

Here he is:

Hi! I'm new! And so much cuter than Marinka! She's old!

His ears have been circumcised:

I hope they're better at the ear cropping than they are at the photo cropping thing!

Mama and papa adopted him last week because they are too old to have a biological baby without appearing on the cover of national weeklies.    Also because they are not Dobermans.  But that doesn’t mean that they will love him any less!

He’s supercute. And that is the foundation of love. You don’t see Angelina adopting mutants, do you? Mama and Papa are just like Angelina.

A few weeks ago, mama told me that she wanted to name the new baby puppy Luke, but she was unsure because I have a neighbor whose name is Lu.ca and she didn’t want him to be offended that a dog was named after him.  My view was that first of all, why would he get offended? Besides, it’s not like Luke and Lu.ca were the same name!  She and papa should name the dog whatever they want, for heaven’s sake!

So impassioned was my speech, that mama and papa promptly named their baby puppy Lu.ca.  Middle name= Marinka’s Neighbor.

I told them to spell it Looka and John is enraged because he said that’s an entirely different pronunciation.  But since Looka isn’t an elocution specialist, we’ll let him be. So it’s Looka Marinka’s Neighbor.

Already there has been some confusion when my daughter said “Oh em gee! Looka is adorable!” and Husbandrinka became concerned that she was referring to our neighbor. I can’t wait until Looka comes over and pees in the kitchen!

So anyway, I’m having a bit of a hard time adjusting and am regressing a little.  Why wasn’t I enough for my parents? If they truly loved me,  would they have another baby? I hate him! He’s so young and shiny and bouncy!  But more on that later.

For now, please welcome Looka to our family! He better be good blog fodder.
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Don’t forget my wise advice today at The Mouthy Housewives. Back me up on the bitch-slap, will you?

Last week I got on Twitter and was greeted with an announcement that I could set up Twitter lists to better manage the people that I follow.  At first I became excited that I could manage them to perform menial labor tasks for me, but apparently, I could just organize them into lists by labeling them.

As Twitter explained:

Lists are timelines you build yourself, consisting of friends, family, co-workers, sports teams, you name it.

And then I was informed that I’m on several lists, including “people I’ve met“, “faves” and “would fuck“.
Now, personally, I am much too lazy to make any kind of a list, but even if I weren’t, here’s a thought that haunts me:  OTHER PEOPLE CAN SEE MY LIST!
So that pretty much would limit my list title choices to “People I love” and “People I adore”.

Because I’m thinking that the other kinds of lists wouldn’t be that popular.

Like:

1. People I follow back because I’m afraid that if I don’t, they will snap and kill us all, especially me.
2. People who will get sued by Ambien for infringing on their patent.

3. Horoscope Hores.

4. Cuntest Tweeters

5. Yes, please link me to every new post you write.

6. Hooked on Phonics Tweets, Now With Typos!

7. Retweeters Anonymous. One Day We Will All Learn To Properly Use @

8.Profound Quotes Tweets, Now With Poison Pill!

What list categories are you holding off on?

Saturday is the weekend when no one really reads blogs, probably because they’re all Orthodox Jews.  Which makes Saturday the perfect day to post things that make me somewhat uncomfortable, things that I do not think will get a lot of attention.  And possibly to confess to a few drive-by shootings.

But that’ll come later.

Today, I wanted to tell you something that I did yesterday, something that still  really bothers me.

My 8 year old son has a fucking annoying habit of speaking in a high pitched voice.  He does it for fun and there are times when I think that I can actually hear my skull fracturing as a result.  But when he adds a semi-butterfly dance to it, fluttering his hands and sort of prancing, I totally lose my shit.  And I did yesterday.

I’ve asked him not to do it before, because it is annoying, but he does it every morning.  He thinks it’s funny. He probably thinks that my being so annoyed by it is funny.

And I wanted him to stop. And I did it by saying, “when you do that, it looks really gay.”

Yes, in 2009, in NYC, in Greenwich Village, I told my son that a bit of playacting made him look gay.  To be fair, if this is about fairness, I did not use “gay” as a synonym for “stupid”, as so many teenagers do.  No, I meant that it made him look homosexual.

I am trying hard to avoid a Jim Baker-like crying fiasco where I ask people, including my son, for forgiveness.  But his reaction haunts me.

He stopped. And he became serious.  Like the Wii-is-broken serious.

“I am not gay,” he said.

“There is nothing wrong with being gay,” I told him.  Even though a mere two minutes earlier I implied the exact opposite.

“I know,” he said. “But doing that doesn’t make me gay.”

I swear this isn’t a mea culpa.  It’s more than that.  It’s my trying to figure out why I said what I did, how I knew that saying that something “looked gay” would be the perfect way to get him to stop doing it.

I told John and he went to his desk and emailed me a “I can no longer be your fag and I’ve alerted headquarters” letter.

I emailed another friend and he suggested several interesting and rather kind possibilities for my reaction.

But I’m struggling with it.

When I was in my 20s, I read Edmund White’s The Beautiful Room is Empty.  It is maddening when people say “this book changed my life” (especially when the book was written by Nora Roberts) but that book reminds me of the unknown struggle that so many teenagers, coming to terms with their sexuality, face.  It’s sobering.  I think about that book frequently, and I feel like I betrayed its spirit.

I’ve often said that I didn’t care if my children grew up to be gay, so long as they were happy.  And I still believe that to be true.

But if it’s true, why did I, in a moment of irritation, say “it looks really gay”?

So the other day, I’m hanging out in front of St. Patrick’s, and not just because H&M is across the street and I see this:

These are NYPD. New York's finest. On horseback. Just so you know.

And first I think, aww! blondes have the same amount of fun as brunettes! And then I look closer and I’m all like, “who does that bitch’s color because I can tell you this much, she ain’t no Bergdorf Blonde.”  Because that’s how I talk to myself when standing in front of St. Patrick’s. And contemplating a ho-over shopping spree at H&M.  And then, because it always takes two sentences max for me to refocus on myself, I get depressed about my hair.  Because my dye jobs haven’t been fantastic lately. And if you pay fantastic, you want fantastic.    So I have to break up with my gay.  Which is hard, because, no  joke, I’ve known him longer than I’ve known Husbandrinka.  Unless I’ve known Husbandrinka longer. But I don’t want to look like that horse on the right. (Although to be fair, I also don’t want to look like the horse on the left, who seems to have some sort of running injury).

So this is what I’m doing. I signed up to be a hair model for a super-prominent salon.  You sign up on line, give them all your information, upload a photo, and viola! They call you with an appointment and some students practice on you. (Unless what they do is kidnap you and sell your organs, in which case this blog may be on hiatus. And stay away from any black market livers you may find on line).   This way, even though I’m cheating on my colorist, at least I’m not paying for it.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.  Prepare yourselves for a cautionary tale.  I may be on duty in front of St. Patrick’s, if I’m lucky.

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Have you checked out The Mouthy Housewives?  I’m there every week? And so are Wendi, Kelcey, Heather and Jessica!  Come visit us!