Things to do in D.C/POTUS press conference

When Max was in utero our nicname for him was POTUS, Z & I both love the politics and POTUS seemed like a grand generic name until we knew just who it was that was wiggling around in there. It has only been recently that we've stopped calling him that and I am not sure that I've ever done it here...wondering why too, since POTUS is a totally great baby nick name for a blog!In fact my very first blog was named Sam, Moo and POTUS too. It was hastily abandoned due to the crazy puking of being pg and then ya know; the Ohio Debacle.
Hmmmmm. Must think about that POTUS nick name.

Anyway, POTUS Max had his very first press conference at age 4 months when we were interviewed by a German TV station about Obama and how popular he was.

Max did great! Me? I'm utter crap without a script. For reals. No public improv for me! I once accepted the LA Weekly award for best show and thanked the people who put toilet paper in the theatre bathrooms. (ok...first off, those guys never get enough thanks. I mean, being stuck in the bathroom without TP is AWFUL! Boy, for a gal who is not big on talking about bodily functions this marks two posts in a row which feature TP in a prominent role.) In our family, I am not the go to gal for interviews or improv. Zach on the other hand should really be taking over the Tonight Show. He is quick as lightning and funny as all get out.  I stammer and shake and just embarrass the living daylights out of myself. (I am great on stage if something goes wrong however...but being ME and just talking? Hell. No.)

Over the break we decided to take a jaunt to the Newseum and check out Tim Russert's office among the many other cool things they have there. Did you know that no matter who Tim Russert was interviewing, if his son Luke called he always took the call. He would put Tony friggin Blair on hold for his son and expected the people he worked with to so the same. He and his employees didn't miss little league games or ballet recitals, isn't that amazing? He was a great journalist but an even better father. You see the evidence of it all over his office. Drawings and pictures of his son. Talk about having his priorities right!

DC has crazy cool museums of course, but the Newseum gives you great bang for your buck. It's crazy interesting and I was knocked back with emotion several times.
The radio tower from the top of the World Trade Center will leave you breathless.

Anyway,  there are a lot of fun interactive things to do at the Newseum and you just know this family wasn't walking away from any chance to be on tv. It's in our blood. We're all born honest-to-goodness attention whores.
So, when we reached the area to be a real live newscaster we happily got our little tickets and stepped in front of the camera! One note, if you are trained in tele-prompter as we we are these things go slower than molasass in January, but still it was a BLAST.
Both of us reported from the White House, natch. One stuck to the script (me), and one had all the workers laughing hysterically at their improv (guess who, Zach of course!).
After we watched ourselves we realized had left someone very important out!

POTUS MAX!

He stole the show of course. Clearly he takes after his father.

Here Comes the Sun

Did you kids watch the HBO Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert? If not you should it's amazing. Sting, Stevie Wonder, Simon and Garfunkel, B.B. King...it's awesome (for lack of a better word). For me the most moving part was (surprise!) when Paul Simon, Graham Nash and David Crosby sang Here Comes the Sun. I've decided this is going to be my new theme song, a la Ally McBeal (hello 1996). This song is recurring in my life and ya know what? Maybe it's trying to teach me something.

I knew this girl once, man...she rubbed me the wrong way when I met her. Just everything about her made me mad. But she loved me anyway as a friend and she wore me down! We became friends and she taught me so much, forced me to confront things about myself and my fears that maybe weren't so pretty. On New Years Eve she showed up at a theatre I was performing at to tell me (and my then boyfriend) that she loved us. It was a NYE task at the party she was attending, they had to act as though this was the last night on earth and tell people they loved how they felt. She drove all the way into Hollywood on NYE to tell us.  She told me she loved me and never for one moment did I doubt it.

She always used to say:

 "You can't fly if you don't jump out of the plane!'

Man, I can picture her clear as day telling me that, extending her arms and tilting to an angle. She lived life in the moment at every moment. I wasn't nearly as close to her as some, but she made a huge impact on my life, she blessed me with long talks and emails and she blessed me with teaching me how to live a little bit. I'll never forget her, or the lessons I learned from her.

We got an email right around Halloween asking us for good thoughts as they had found a spot on her lung. We gave every good thought, prayer and bargain we could give.
When the diagnosis of lung cancer came I emailed her and she told me  she was gonna kick this things ass and she'd be home for Thanksgiving so I should make the mashed potatoes, ma, lumpy just like she liked em.
She never lost her sense of humor. I never saw her again. She didn't take visitors, and even if she had I was pretty low on the totem pole, although I know she would have welcomed me with open arms. I honestly believe she didn't want any of us to remember her frail and in a bed. She was so vibrant, that's what she wanted to leave us with.
She died in January. Gone way too soon. Gone way too fast. Not enough people got to experience her life force because there is NO other word for it. She was a force, a force of nature, a force of Joy. Just an all around FORCE.
Her funeral was astonishing. We enjoyed, yes enjoyed, fantastic stories about her told by amazing people. We laughed and oh holy hell did we cry.  She had been in a cast of RENT and at the reception following the funeral her cast busted out with Seasons of Love. Everyone in the place held their breath till it was over, and then we all cried the ugly cry.

One of the things I remember most was her sisters talking about how she passed, peacefully as they played Here Comes the Sun on the guitar and sang to her. Can you imagine a better song to leave this world too?

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, 

and I say it's all right 

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter 

Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here 

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun 

and I say it's all right 

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces 

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here 

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun 

and I say it's all right 

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... 

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... 

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... 

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... 

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes... 

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting 

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear 

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, 

and I say it's all right 

It's all right 

It has been a long cold lonely winter since we left Los Angeles, but maybe the sun is coming...and I'm going to try to be open to what it brings and be vibrant like she was, be brave like she was and tell the people I love that I love them like she did.

I guess she is still teaching me a thing or two.

Smithsonian Merry Go Round.

Halloween- on the late tip.

Growing up amongst our group of friends we had different kinds of mothers. For instance, if you were going camping it was Mrs. Petersen you wanted. If you were doing Arts & Crafts you didn't want anyone but Dub's mom. My mom was the theatre and museum mom. She was also the Halloween Mom. A mom with a theatre degree is invaluable during the month of October. Only a mom who has paid her dues in the costume shop knows how to turn a simple empty (and very washed out) tuna can into a bracelet worthy of Elizabeth Taylor, or turn an old comforter into a ball gown of epic proportion. My mom rocked Halloween.
Therefore she happily threw a great Halloween party for me and all my little goblin and princess friends every year. There were games and crafts (Dub's mom overseeing of course!), a costume contest (we all totally won, mom is Montesorri cool like that) it was a great time. The year I turned six was a big halloween in our family. My mom was WAY into Egypt and this was the year she was finally going to let me be the princess of all princesses. Cleopatra. The year before my mom had been Cleopatra and I was as green with envy as a kindergartner could be. The wig, the gold snake crown (I only wore the crown from the Lower Egyptian region, rejecting the tall section which represented the Upper region. I only wanted the gold crown!), the long white gown...the JEWELS! Oh, how I wanted to be Cleopatra and this year? Was my year!

Here is where there would be an uber cute picture of six year old

me all eyes and black wig.

Yes, that would be what you would be looking at if my mom knew how to work her scanner.

The party went swimmingly, all of us decked out in our Halloween finest or silliest.  We headed out for bobbing for apples (no thank you, not this year. Did I mention my WIG and CROWN and LIPSTICK!! Yes. Cleopatra wore some awesome red liptick) As well as being an amazing costumer and party thrower my mom also makes the yummiest caramel popcorn balls. Delish! She would even let me and Dub sneak tastes of the warm gooey popcorn as she made them. It was awesome.

She hung these popcorn balls and we all lined up, hands behind our backs, for the competition! Who ever could eat that popcorn ball off the string got a seriously cool present. We stood there for ages, trying our best to get those popcorn balls as they bopped us in the face and then bounced out of reach on their little strings. The parents murmurred wondering what was going on? We had all done so well last year at this game! No one's costume was in the way...what was the problem?

Here is where you would see a picture of six year old Cleopatra mouth open
wide attempting to scarf that darned popcorn balls.

Something is missing that would help win this contest....front teeth.

The problem is we were six. No one had any front teeth. And if you are attempting to eat a caramel popcorn ball swinging from a string off the back deck during your Halloween party...front teeth REALLY help. In fact, they are necessary for any kind of success. After some giggles at our toothless expense (thanks parents) the popcorn balls were cut down and we chomped away on them happily using our eye teeth.

Right now I feel that our life is sort of like that popcorn ball (don't you dare read that with Forrest Gump's voice in your head. Stop it right now) and I'm that six year old toothless girl again. I'm all dressed up and ready to go (if dressed up is cute yoga pants and a tank top that says 'Minky') but I can't quite get a bite, get a hold of that yummy caramel popcorn ball. I can taste it, but I can't get it and the harder I try the more it bounces away before it swings back. I'm hoping that over the next year my metaphorical front teeth grow in and by this time next year we will be in our own place and have moved forward! Right now we are in such limbo with Zach's career and mine too..I'm signing with a voice over agent this week, so that is grand, but the big question of NY or LA is still looming, and so far there is no clear answer. So we wait. Patiently. Or not so patiently. But we wait...having little tastes of that caramel popcorn and just waiting for the right time - and the right teeth - to take that big, fat, crunchy, life changing bite.