I am full of good ideas. This is perhaps not one of them though.

My mother is getting married this weekend. A lovely Sunday morning brunch wedding. Most of the female guests, I imagine, are going to be wearing floaty dresses in a summery pastel palate. I am going to be wearing a skanky black cocktail dress that makes me look like possibly I am the paid escort of one of the other guests.

I hardly ever wear makeup, but whenever I get a big zit I feel compelled to wear an enormous amount of eyeliner; like, amounts comparable to Alice Cooper. My hope is that people will be so distracted by my insane raccoon eyes that they won't notice my skin issues.

I am putting this same delusional concept into play for the wedding. A few days ago my son leapt onto our bed while I was sleeping, bounced across the mattress, and dove into my prone face in an enthusiastic and painful attempt to give me a hug at 5:45 a.m. I got a big hug, a toddler yelling, "Hello mommy! WAKE UP!" in my ear, and a fat lip.

So my thinking is that if I dress like a hooker on my mother's wedding day, everyone will be staring at my inappropriate clothes, and nobody will notice my swollen, purple face. Good plan, yes/yes? Just please don't let me get a zit too, because lord knows what kind of next-level distraction tactics I will have to employ in that case.

Turns out, it wasn't allergies

(this is pretty much a cut and paste from an e-mail, but I thought others might be interested...)

So, score one in the DOG column in the eternal debate: should I have a kid or get a dog? I think it is unlikely that a dog would secretly shove a peanut up his own nose in MAY necessitating multiple doctor visits in JULY to find out what the hell is going on. Yes, Nort has had a peanut living in his nose for over a month.

A PEANUT in his NOSE for a MONTH.

What kind of parent am I??? The ear nose throat doctor was super nice (and very cute in that older doctor way) but he had a rack full of what appeared to be his collection of shiny, pointy, medieval torture devices. Turns out it was his array of things-stuck-in-your-nose removal tools. I recommend you never put anything up your nose for fun, because getting it out later (say, a month later) is pretty traumatizing. Did you ever see Total Recall? Pretty much like that. Like a disgusting magic trick, he crammed an Edward Scissorhands like contraption up my son's nose and, with a flourish, came out with a peanut. He said he had already taken a googly eye out of some kid's ear earlier in the day.


Also, he gave me the peanut back! What on earth am I supposed to do with it??? Save it until he is a teenager and show it to girls he wants to date? My sister said I should bronze it and wear it around like a Tiffany bean.