Clara's birthday is a palindrome this year! 01-11-10!

Here is our beautiful girl in all her nine-year-old splendor. Holy crow. Nine is such a big number.

I heard a program on NPR about six-word memoirs. What a nice idea for those of us who can afford to be a bit less wordy. Break us down into tidy little packages of six. And, heck, I can think of plenty of six-word sets that, while not exactly memoirs, could have been written (and have often been uttered) by our fabulous, nine-year-old Clara. Piece of (birthday) cake!

Here is six-word Clara:

• I can get a soccer scholarship.

• I need to organize my stuff.

• Do I sound like Taylor Swift?

• I should do my homework first.

• Lots of third graders have ipods!

• I'd like another bowl of cereal.

• Get out of my room, Trevor!!

• Please let me finish this chapter.

• I love when friends come over.

• Let's snuggle on the couch tonight.

• But I didn't even touch him!

• Come on, Trevi, let's make something.

• Can I go on the computer?

• This was the best day ever!

Clara will have to give the six word memoir concept a try. I bet she can rock six words like nobody's business. We are so proud of you, Honeybun. Happy Birthday!

La La Land

Thankfully, the wardrobe/self-image crisis that has been plaguing me for most of 2010 was anesthetized by my coworkers who, sensing my despair, threw their clothing and make-up at me until some of it stuck.  So I got on the plane with a massive carry-on full of other people's stuff, and a People magazine (so I could read about folks with much worse self-image issues than my own).

As it turns out, there was quite a lot of fun to be had.  Dancing blissfully until closing time at a crazy, sweaty, thumping, grinding, LOUD Hollywood nightclub?  Check.

Hobnobbing and drinking specialty rum punchy drinks at a lavish CBS party?  Check.

Not taking enough pictures, despite carrying the camera everywhere?  Check.

Posers

I've been running around like the worst kind of maniac all week, trying to get together some sort of non-frumpy outfit that will gag and conceal the Kindergarten teacher-slash-suburban mom that has taken over my being in recent years.  I'm not just doing this for a lark, though. Thing is, I really should wear clothes in LA this weekend.  So I go to Macy's, which is a corner of the mall I can kind of hide in, while the rest of the mall goes on around me without unnerving me too much.  I pick things off the rack that are expensive, and have brand names that sound like I might have heard them before.  I take more than the allotted number of items into the fitting room.  I try and try again.  I'm The Little Engine That Could of the fitting room.  I start to feel slightly hopeful, but then I suddenly lose momentum when I try on something so expensive and so ridiculous that it gives me an instant headache.  I make ugly faces at myself in the mirror, and then make normal faces, which look good by comparison.  I go home feeling like Macy's has failed me, and that LA is no place for someone with my bad attitude about shopping.

At home, I look into the bathroom and see this:

"What are you doing, Manny?" I ask.

"Practicing posing."

"What for?"

"Well, if I want to be in a magazine someday, I can do this pose, and be in the magazine, or maybe on a commercial for Aquasand. Don't I have a beautiful smile?"

"Yes, you sure do."

Trevi is a much better poser than I am.  And his kind of posing doesn't require $200 jeans.