It’s So My Mom.

…Like me.

Mmkay, short post today, ’cause I have lots of junk to do before going home to Texas and indulging in meatballs.

But two short newsy items.

This just in: The io9 team just put up a post about females having babies later in life and thusly prolonging their life spans (at least according to studies on fly genes, of course, which are really reliable sources). The comments are better than the story. The consensus? Bitch and moan, we don’t want to live longer. Wahhh. Shut the hell up.

Sorry, I’m PMS. Big time. (Mom tie-in: From the first time mom used this shorthand to justify a particularly rotten temperment, the little linguist in me was perplexed: “You’re Premenstrual Syndrome?” This, of course, is not the question to put to the woman who is PMS.)

Other: I’m reviewing a new release from first-time author and fabulous Dallasite/single mom Kim Gatlin. Her new book Good Christian Bitches is such a guilty pleasure (the cleavage-heavy book cover caught the attention of every male within a mile of “my” coffee shop), and terribly familiar territory if you’re used to SMU sorority girls that never quite make it past that stage of life. Or if you were raised Catholic like me, where after services let out, people tried to run over each other in the parking lot.

How you say, C’est la vie in Latin?

I am apparently not staying with my parents this visit. My mother doesn’t want me leaving my big, annoying suitcase in the guestroom in the event that I stay over at my boyfriend’s or a friend’s. So it’s best if I just stay elsewhere, she says.

So this will be quite a homecoming.

Having a hard time finding a famous male model to strike your fancy? Leave it to the gay men at one of my new favorite sites, GayestEver.com. After all, they were put on this earth to be impeccible arbiters of good taste (although their tastes can run to the skinny side).

I’m becoming more obsessed with gay men as a I get older, just like mom. Though for a different reason than her: I think they’re hilarious. I got in trouble with my bf for interrupting his optimizing my blog last Tuesday to make him look at the extremely gayified preteen boy dancers on Dancing With the Stars. Slicked back hair, waxed everything and deeply open shirts–these boys looked like Paris Hilton’s dog, unnaturally coiffed and hairless.

My mom however is preoccupied with making sure everyone knows that Tom Cruise and Ricky Martin are gay. She takes this job very seriously.

<Suri Cruise flashes across screen>

Mom: [Head snap immediately to the person next to her] “You know that’s not his baby, right? He was married to Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman before Katie Holmes, and NEITHER ONE got pregnant. He’s gayer than a two dollar bill, man. He is GAY.”

<Ricky Martin scene [circa 2000, of course]>

Mom: What a shame.

Me: What?

Mom: You know he’s gay, right?

Ah. The holidays. The food. The family. The impending meltdown.

Oh yes. My mom is apparently already buzzing at everything she’ll have to prepare for that day, since she’ll be getting no help from her sisters, who will be coming in the day-of from out of town. That’s unfortunate, because she’s not gonna let me help. Everyone knows that a daughter’s touch will make your oven blow up. At least, my mom knows that.

My boyfriend wants to go on a bender for a boys’ night the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. In Austin. An hour and a half outside of San Antonio, where our families will be celebrating the holidays. Says his friends organized the event. They’re going to the UT game Thursday. Don’t they feel the need to celebrate Turkey Day with their families? White people. I swear.

You won’t find us half-Mexicans skipping out on the requisite face-stuffing with fambly. I’ll certainly be subjected to grandma’s 100-degree, dark-as-the-bat-cave house. And I’ll like it, dammit. ‘Cause I’ll be schnokered.

I just REALLY. HOPE. that my bf gets his butt up and back in town the next morning in time to smile along with the rest of us.

The mom won’t answer the phone to tell me what time the festivities will start so I can plan to be there two hours later, which will be the actual time of commencement.

I also have to figure out how I’m going to cook a green bean casserole for my bf’s sister’s gathering without oven heat. Solar power? With my mind, perhaps? It’s a good thing I read Matilda.

…So I shall give credit where credit is due. (Sorry, her Web site says, “Blame me for Motrin Moms” or something like that.)

If there’s one thing I do appreciate about mommybloggers (and I do appreciate them in MOST cases), it’s their capacity for civility. Just dont mess with their baby chicks.
Hell, I don’t get it. I’m not a mom yet.

I didn’t mean to implicate my dad in that previous post. I don’t presume to know what happens in my parents’ marriage. I don’t believe my dad cheated–what child would? What I was trying to say, though, is that my mom and I tend to store a log of perceived wrongdoings, real or not. The log gets heavy.

And the whole bit about who my mom should have married–that was a joke. Guess it wasn’t funny. But dad raised me to laugh at harsh jokes that only we thought were funny. Mom thought they were tasteless. (Or maybe she didn’t get ‘em. That’s what dad always said.)

If it’s not obvious already, I have always been a daddy’s girl. That’s partially why the transformation into my mom is so mystifying. But still, inevitable.

Anywho, I definitely get my sense of humor, and irreverence, from my dad. He sent me this picture for my blog. I’ll let you guys figure out what it means.

Not all ice queens are born that way. We’re made.

A couple years ago, during one proselytizing session on the importance of choosing a lifelong mate carefully, my mom divulged her belief that my father spent some time with his ex-wife after my mom and dad were married. I wanted to believe she was just being crazy ‘ol mom, but really, only she and he know the truth. One of them more than the other.

Women get billed as being crazy when a good part of the time, it’s our gut instinct telling us something isn’t right. And then we investigate, and all hell breaks loose.

If we choose to stay in a relationship after lies and deceptions have been revealed, we’re bound to be a bit bitter. Maybe that’s what happened to my mom. Now that I’m in a similar situation, I can’t help but think—what if I end up like her?

I’m not becoming my mom so much as empathizing with her. Here’s a big fat “You were right mom.” That’s a bit vague, only if you’re not a woman.

Stumbled across this article form a new Texas-based Webzine called Totally Her. It’s called “How My Mother Helped Me Choose the Right Man.” About the best ways our moms can advise us on our relationships. This is awesome, practical, and shows why mom really does know best after all. But really, a lifetime of example says even more.

In the end, no relationship is perfect. You have to choose what faults you’ll live with. My mom should have married a Christian man with a lot of money. The kind that wouldn’t mind my Alzhemeric grandmother movin’ in.

I’m still deciding what, if anything, I’m willing to put up with.

I have the same hankerings now. My mom really wasn’t a big night eater, though we did both go through a late-night Doritos and Jenny Jones phase when I was quite young.

(Note: Eating at night does not necessarily make you fatter. Rather, it’s the total intake of calories in a 24-hour period that matters. Harvard Medical School doctors even recount evidence that even women who got up to eat in the middle of the night weren’t fatter than those who didn’t engage in this seemingly destructive habit.)

All this to say, I guess, that late-night noshing–-even hypothetically–hell, even not late at night-–is a powerful woman-bonder. Works with my girlfriends, too.

Martha Stewart figured this out a long time ago. She’s a bitch, yeah. But that bitch can cook.

I feel diplomats and politicians don’t harness this phenomenon enough. I would go to a Palin rally for sure if there were real, rugged Alaskan fare there. Politicians are always so keen to invite their constituents to “come on the campaign trail” to see how they really are. Well …

Palin was so gung-ho about all the native game she shot. But where was the plated reindeer? Alaskan salmon? Surely the GOP had another $150,000 lying around to support the Gov.’s local fisheries. And how about some brew from The Moose’s Tooth? A little booze goes a long way toward goodwill. Maybe in 2012.

I wouldn’t recommend Biden do the same in his presidential bid. He made Scranton sound like a hellhole.

So I’ve been collecting links to put in my blogroll (that’s the fancy term for the list of blogs and/or Web sites you usually see on the right of a page), and I really must say I’m having a hard time finding some that fit with the humorous daughter theme of this one. Type “mom blogs” in Google and you’ll have more hits than would be useful at a hippie party. Type in “daughter blog,” and you get a lot of returns about Meghan McCain (blech) and a father/daughter blog from a Filipino dad. That’s about it. So I’m asking you all to submit your favs.

I do have a couple to add: Margaret and Helen is a blog by some eightysomething women who have been friends for sixty years. More importantly, they’re funny. Most importantly, they hate Rush Limbaugh. Seriously, these old ladies are hilarious. “I’ll stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops acting like a bitch,” Margaret (or Helen) opines. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Salon.com isn’t a blog, but they have insightful and intriguing long-form journalism. And The Straight Dope has been around for a while. I dare you to not find the answer to some question you’ve carried your whole life–not the existential ones, but more like, “How many calories are in sperm?”; “Does the Holy Grail really exist?” and “Did someone really hang herself on the set of The Wizard of Oz?”

Dooce is by former Mormon/Web designer Heather B. Armstrong, who grew up in Memphis but eventually moved to the big L.A. When her too-revealing blog came to the attention of higher-ups at her Cali firm, she was fired. Now she’s living quite comfortably off her Web page, complete with pics of her dog in a banana costume. It helps her blog that she’s, like, a professional everything.

Lastly, I couldn’t forget Ze Frank. If you’re bored at work, you’ll surely find something on his megalomaniacal page, chock-full of interactive game-thingies and his own myriad impressions and musings.

Pull your weight–what do you read??

Yes it worked! Now you can follow me at www.twitter.com/somymom … it tweets everytime I update/edit posts. Along with my daily musings.

Sweet!