This is Ann, Megs Daughter. She is in UCLA Medical Center Neuro Intensive Care Unit. Right now she is in room 6429. I’ll let you know when and if she gets out.

Last week I posted this poll to get an idea of how I should handle a man who made me “the other woman” without letting me in on the scam. I think that I’m gonna finish this little escapade today and then, I’ll merrily go on about my life. But it might be worth a look later today just for the helluvit.

http://diaryofmydivorce.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-poll-question.html

Some of you may remember my matricidal cousin…

…Paul Mergel. It appears as though he has gotten away with murdering 2 women…one was my aunt and the other was a New Jersey woman I never knew, but found herself ablaze after Paul tired of her. Occasionally I write something about the sonofabitch and although I hadn’t planned to do it today, I was put into this position when I received an email from someone I won’t name:

“hes in the Monmouth county jail here in new jersey Georgia refuses to extradite him because its a small misdemeanor he has for gun possession”

I made some calls and found out that Mergel is, indeed, in Jersey, specifically in the Monmouth County lock up. Here is a list of his charges:

Hazlet TWP. Failure to pay fines………………………………..no bail
Hazlet TWP. Bad Checks…………………………………………..$600 bail
Unlisted Agency Driving on revoked list……………………$500 bail
Middletown TWP. Contempt of court…………………………no bail
Middletown TWP. Driving on revoked list………………….no bail

Monmouth County has had him since September and as of this morning, he has no date set. But…the lady at the county said that it takes 2-3 months to go to court so this hideous waste of space could potentially go to court any day and find himself walking amongst decent folk and that can’t be.

My next call is to the Georgia prosecutors who don’t think that it’s worth a trip to Jersey to grab a murder suspect. I find that so ironic considering the red flags that went unnoticed in the Hassan case. If Mergel gets away and kills again, who do we blame? I hope those folks are pondering that possibility.

Now I’ll call the Gogia folk and ask some questions because because I CANNOT BELIEVE that GEORGIA would let Jersey keep a prime suspect in a murder case. Then again, maybe they’re trying to get back at Jersey for letting him leave the state after the death of his “girlfriend”.

I’ll figure out what I can and than I’ll let you know exactly who will be responsible when this thug is eventually set free. They say after you kill once, it get easier. I wonder what they say after you’ve gotten away with TWO murders?

More info:

http://diaryofmydivorce.blogspot.com/2008/09/100-opinion.html

Ordinarily, being quoted in New York’s Village Voice would be quite a treat. But when Village Voice contributor Roy Edroso quoted me, he also de-sexed me…or is it re-sexed? Cross-sexed? As many do, Edroso assumed that I was a man and he used the pronoun “he” in reference to me…twice…and that’s just not right. I happen to be a she…I always have been. I’m not one of those ex-dudes who had their manhood hacked off..I’m an honest to goodness woman, with PMS, a tendency to act coy when I have a flat tire and an absolutely acrimonious attitude to my cheating ex who, if Karma exists, is being bitten by a huge spider bite on his left testicle as I type this.

Sometimes, I can fool people who aren’t paying attention because I drive a car really well, I usually make perfect sense and I rarely, if ever, lose control of myself and go into some female tantrum. Yeah, I’m an odd woman, but a woman nonetheless.

Of course, some things I do will give me away immediately. For example, watch me try to parallel park…like a set of knockers on a chest, my parallel parking is a sure gender giveaway. Also, if a cop pulls me over, I WILL cry. I won’t even wait to learn what I allegedly did to earn the personal roadside service…I’ll just start the water works before that cop taps on my trunk for whatever it is that cops tap on trunks for.

Also, I LOVE sports…on TV. I have no business around balls, pucks, large wooden sticks or golf stick thingies. I just end up crying, further confirming my female status. But…I know what a touch back is, I can name 8 ways for a batter to get to first base and I know what a power play is. I love football, baseball and hockey. That’s not really “he” stuff…that’s just tomboy stuff. That STILL doesn’t make me a “he”. I may enjoy the hockey game, but I AM a woman and I can prove it before the game is over. You’ll know that I’m a “she” as soon as you notice that my tendency to remain stupefied for most of the game because, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how they get that big piece of ice in the building. The doors are NOWHERE near large enough. I guess it will have to remain one of life’s little mysteries.

My passion for sports aside, I don’t know why some arbitrary dude who’s never met me would assume that I am a “he”. I wasn’t trying to be a “he” when I wrote the piece to which Edroso was referring. I can’t convince others that I’m a man when I TRY to do it.

In one of the first movies I ever worked on, I played one of 5000 Union prisoners of war during the Civil War. Back then I would go out of my way to try to get close to the camera and I tried everything I could think of to get my puss on the screen. I’d hide behind tall guys and pop out when they said, “Action!” or I would stand up front with my back to the camera until it started rolling and I got caught EVERY SINGLE time I tried it. One day I actually taped down my boobs during PMS and had some friendly make-up man give me some facial hair. The director, John Frankenheimer, was never fooled. Not once. That man caught me EVERY single time. Then I ended up in “deep background”. That was behind ALL of the other background players. On the bright side…it was in front of the plywood cut-out people in the back. So, try as I might, I cannot pass as a man in front of another man.

But…let me put a few coherent thoughts together…and to the rest of the world, I’m a dude. A part of me feels as tough I should be offended by that.

“Others worry about fallout. “I assume another publicity hungry freak will try to top peeing on The Savior of all Mankind,” says {Flagged For Removal}. Then he provides samples: “Pope answers ad on Craigslist to be a ‘host’ at an S & M party. We find out he likes to play the submissive male…” We hope he’s registered this with the WGA.”

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/10/outrage_du_jour_2.php

Photo shoots everywhere.

Sidewalk cafes, cell phones and people in a hurry.

Pretty women everywhere!

People the size of the mannequins!

Hair, hair everywhere.

People actually riding the buses.

Fishermen 20 feet away from a $50 piece of tuna.

Frankie Avalon's grandkids at Malibu.

Pelicans!

Good morning!

I spent the weekend hanging out with a guy who entertained me from the moment he came to pick me up Friday night until he left for the week last night. (He went home to sleep…I’m still a Los Angeles virgin!)

We had a lots-O-fun going to see Jethro Tull, Malibu, Farmer’s Market and just walking around. We had GREAT food at a restaurant called Du Par’s which is at the Farmer’s Market. Yesterday we started out for Brentwood and Bundy Lane so that I could take pictures but we were mainly walking and by the time we got close to our goal, we were losing the sun so we just turned around and went back to my place to make-out. I haven’t done that in a while and I plan on doing it much, much more…even if my daughter keeps catching us and saying, “ICK!”

You know, you can kiss a lot of bad kissers in a lifetime and lord knows that I certainly have. So, it’s always a nice surprise when you come across a really accomplished kisser and I certainly have. Unfortunately, there are far too many kissing fish out there and I’m very disappointed after most kisses planted upon my lips. Oddly enough, a bad kisser has just as much confidence in their kissing abilities as does a really GOOD kisser so just in case there are any bad kissers out there (and chances are there are a LOT of them!), here are a few things to ponder BEFORE you assault another person with your lips:

1. Hard lips are only good for expressing derision and you should NEVER express derision in a kiss. I hate it when I kiss lips that seem to be in a foul mood, relax those bad boys and enjoy the moment.

2. If the lips you’re kissing keep wandering away from your mouth, consider the fact that you might be offending them with your tongue, your lips or your facial hair.

3. This seems to be a tough one for some moustachio-ed men…if the person you’re kissing continually jumps and says, “OUCH!”, you might have one of those faces that hurts. Be on the look-out for sharp hairs. You wouldn’t want to kiss a porcupine and neither would I!

4. If the chick has road rash on her cheeks, you should stop rubbing her face with your own.

5. Just because she let you kiss her, that doesn’t mean your hands can act like Daniel Boone, keep them away from boobs, crotches and backsides for at least a FEW make-out sessions.

6. Here’s a good rule to remember…if your hands aren’t soft, touch others softly with them.

7. A kiss is hard to refuse if you have your hands on both sides of a woman’s face.

8. Pay attention to a short person’s neck…they might be badly positioned. You never want a chick to remember you as the person who gave her whiplash.

9. Tongues should NEVER encroach uvula’s…if you’re going to let one out to play, keep good control of it.

10. Your best bet is to let another person kiss you for a bit and when you figure out what they’re doing, do it right back. It might not be exactly what they want, BUT…they can’t get mad at you for doing it!

My ex could have used some lessons in kissing and I’m glad I didn’t help him out. It’s nice to know that he’s annoying someone else with his mouth, moustache and bad breathe.

I captured this picture in Camarillo California yesterday...isn't it cool?

I lived in California before but that time I was in Petaluma, a bit north of Frisco. I occasionally saw celebrities, on and off of movie sets. Now I actually live IN Hollywood so I seem to see quite a few…so many so that I’ve even been surprised at how many I’ve seen. I stopped mentioning them after about 4 because it was becoming rather boring and to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have known who most of them were if someone hadn’t told me.

Saturday night I was at a place called Busby’s shooting a few games of pool and minding my own business when the bartender asked the guy who was playing pool at the other table why he looked so familiar. The guy said that he was on Madmen, a show I’ve never seen. I didn’t have a clue who the guy was and I didn’t know his name so it wasn’t really worth mentioning.

What I should have mentioned about Saturday night was that I had a beer and 3 sips of a Bacardi and Coke after taking a pain pill Saturday afternoon. I did all of that without eating so I sort of deserved what happened on the way home. Unfortunately, others who DIDN’T deserve it paid for my stupidity.

After a few sips of my drink, I started to feel a bit queasy so instead of waiting for my daughter to pick me up, I started walking home. After walking for about a mile, I decided to hop on a bus for the last mile down La Brea. I don’t know if it was all the people dressed in costume that tightly packed the bus, the movement of the stupid thing or the fact that I never did eat, but I quickly turned green and felt an impending and unstoppable need to puke.

Luckily for me, the bus was approaching my stop so I pulled the string to signal a desire to get off of the bus. I was actually relieved for a moment because, despite my best efforts, I was about to blow chunks and I hoped to be able to do so at the intersection of La Brea and Melrose and NOT on the bus. I won’t tell you how far I went to avoid heaving all over the bus, but trust me…my efforts were valiant.

They were all for naught. Before the bus came to a stop, I barfed on the arm of the guy sitting to my right. Then, without missing a beat, I got the leg of the guy on my left. That’s when the bus stopped and I bolted without apology. All I wanted to do was get off of the bus before it happened again. I’m not blaming any of that on the Madmen dude, but it was quite a coincidence that I lost my beer shortly after seeing him.

Although I felt badly about leaving the contents of my stomach in the lap of some dude dressed up as a vampire…I planned to find a way to spin my short bus ride into a humorous story and I did so for most of Sunday. But I DID feel for the 2 guys who caught the wrath of my gastro-intestinal upheaval. I even tweeted an apology on Twitter on the off chance that the barfed upon guys were cleaned up and reading my tweets but I forgot to tell you guys about it until right now.

Then, yesterday my daughter and I stopped at a gas station in Camarillo. I was sitting in the car as my kid went in the store for dog food and although I noticed the chick in front of me stick the pump into the gas tank of her Suburban, I certainly didn’t know who the anorexic wench was so I paid no attention to her.

When my kid got back in the car, she told me that the woman in the Suburban was Rachel Griffiths, an actor on a show called Six Feet Under. I’ve never seen that show so even when my daughter told me who she was, I didn’t know her. And I couldn’t see her because she was sitting in the Suburban as the gas pump was hanging out of the left side of it all by itself.

Apparently, my daughter was a fan so when she made eye contact with the skinny chick, she smiled at her. By that time she was also pumping gas and not likely to run away from her own car to mob Griffiths. Also, it was the middle of the day and the gas station was full of men so I can’t imagine anyone feeling threatened, certainly not by the smile of a young woman.

Now, I know my kid. She isn’t a nut and she has seen her share of celebrities around town and as a planner of the Golden Globe awards. Star spotting has become very commonplace to her and if she wasn’t a fan of Six Feet Under, she probably would have walked away without smiling.

But as soon as she DID smile, the middle-aged quasi-celebrity jumped into her vehicle as though Jack the Raper had just shouted “You’re next!” at her. So even if I wanted to see her, I couldn’t unless I was nutty enough to wait for her to get back out of her gas guzzling truck/car and I’m not THAT nutty at all.

I’ve long ago lost count of the famous people whom I have met as well as those with whom I’ve worked. I can safely say that, with the possible exceptions of Bill Murray and Sally Fields, every single star who I’ve met has been as pleasant as a normal person would be.

It doesn’t surprise me that a nobody would hide from “prying eyes” because it seems as though the sweetest stars I’ve encountered have been the most celebrated. For example, Bob Hope, Charlton Heston and Harrison Ford were all more than gracious when I met them. I met Ford at a party but Heston and Hope could have easily avoided me. They didn’t. Instead they behaved liked regular human beings.

Those 3 men were stars that most people on this planet would know. If they were pumping gas along with 10 other people, at least 9 would have recognized them. But Rachel Griffiths would need quite a few more gas pumps full of people before anyone would pick up on her identity. She should be pleased that ANYONE knows who she is yet rather than return a smile from a fan and continue pumping her gas…she chose to go to all the trouble to jump back in her ride with the gas pump hanging out of the side of it.

I didn’t think about it until I was back on the freeway but if I see her again, I’m sticking my finger down my throat and blowing chunks all over her Suburban, her left arm or her right leg.

The clock on this computer is finally correct. I guess it’ll screw itself up sometime next spring but for now, I’ll enjoy the convenient little time keeper in the corner and it’ll actually tell me the truth for a change. I don’t have to do any math, I don’t have to consider what time zone I’m in and by the time I get used to this method of time keeping, it’ll be wrong again.

I’m sure there’s a way to fix that sucker but when I sit at my computer, I usually have something else on my mind that takes precedence over the clock thing. Instead, I sit here for 6 months of the year chronologically challenged and wishing that there was a clock around here with the correct time on it. I sometimes think that I should offer myself as the poster child for procrastination but once again, there’s always something more pressing to take up my time.

You may ask why I don’t just stop what I’m doing and fix the stupid thing. Well, there’s a reason for that. Since I moved to the West Coast, I always worry about the people who like to read this crap in the morning. I don’t want to screw up their evening by making them wonder if I ever did get around to writing something and I certainly don’t want to mess up my own evening worrying about people I’ve never met so I’m always in a hurry when I sit down to write and with my daughter around, I notice how much time I spend writing. Sitting alone in my own place lends itself to writing more so than having a kid around seems to.

See? I’m digressing again and digressing is really just written procrastination, don’t you think?

I feel the need to do it again so here goes. My daughter keeps BBC on the television so much that she’s beginning to get a British accent. I’m not really sure how to change the channel without alerting her to my actions. She keeps that remote control so close to her that I can’t really do it discreetly, even if I wait for her to fall asleep. It’s not like I can do anything without the remote…if I tried I might end up pushing a button that can’t be un-pushed without the remote. Then I’d have to come right out and tell her, “I’ve screwed up the TV, I need the remote.”

That would start an argument over “Why didn’t you just get the remote in the first place?!”…after all, “What you did just doesn’t make sense!” I never claimed that I made sense and I never said that I wasn’t a flake. As a matter of fact, I’ve colored my hair blonde as a warning. If she assumes that I’m brighter than your average blonde, it’s on her.

You know that look that you get when you get caught doing something incredibly stupid like eating a co-worker’s lunch, locking the car keys in your trunk or asking a Pet-Mart associate where the peanut butter is? Well, I seem to be getting that look often and I don’t think it’s fair. I could take her into MY house and get annoyed every time she breaks one of MY arbitrary rules but it just wouldn’t occur to me. Even if I wanted to take the time and energy to do that, I’d just procrastinate until I forgot about it and nothing would come of it so I don’t even bother pondering over such minor transgressions.

I may notice a person who does something that annoys me, but unless they keep on doing it in front of me, I won’t go out of my way to bitch at them. It would be like trying to reason with a drunken person walking down the street…it’s not worth the time so I just keep walking to my destination. My daughter would stop and take the time to bitch at the drunk and there you have the difference between her and I.

The difference between a drunk and myself would be that I remember all the stupid stuff my kid tells me. Unfortunately, I never seem to remember to avoid irritating her. On Halloween she got mad at me for eating a candy bar. If eating a candy bar on Halloween can get you in trouble, who’s gonna worry about which kitchen sponge is for the pet’s dishes and which one is for people dishes?

And one more thing…I’m not nice because I don’t know HOW to be a bitch…I can do that quite well. I simply CHOOSE not to.

I have a hard time keeping up with all of the new words that seem to pop up in daily use nowadays. Ordinarily I can figure out the meaning of new words by the way in which they’re used. I heard a new word recently and I thought that I knew what it meant. It was used in reference to me by someone who obviously doesn’t appreciate my humor so I just figured it was something bad. And since it was used by someone who only knows me online, I knew it had to be because of something that I said or did on this blog.

A while back I wrote a post about my odd feet. I didn’t know that they were odd until people started pointing that fact out to me. I have very long fingers, legs and toes and my second toe is so long it’s actually longer than my great toe. I posted this picture of my malformed foot to go along with the post regarding people who suffer the same ailment:

My freak toe doesn’t bother me, and as far as I know, I’ve never suffered any discrimination because of it. But, I know how people frozen with 8th grade emotions think and most of them would seize the opportunity to make fun of me and my toe. That’s OK, I’m not stuck in 8th grade so I couldn’t care less what some nit wit says about me or my abhorrently long second toes.

Having met more than my share of feeble bullies, I can sort of see the effete attacks before they come. So, after publishing that picture of my malformed toe, I wasn’t surprised to hear that there was a name for that deformity and some childish man-wannabes were using the derogatory term in reference to me. When I became aware of the sad little attempts to annoy me with the toe jokes, I brushed them off and never really thought about it again.

Then, this morning my daughter said that one of her toes was hurting her. That made me think of my toes and the freaks who made fun of them. My daughter seems to be rather hip about things so I decided to get her opinion and see if my toes qualified for the nasty little moniker given to them by some computer troll.

As my daughter walked into the kitchen where I was sitting at the table, I took the sock off of my right foot, stuck my foot up in the air so that it was pointing at my kid and asked her, “Do I have a camel-toe?”

Well, she knew what it meant. First she looked at my face and then she asked, “Are you kidding?” Of course, I was NOT kidding and she could see that. It caused her to laugh for a very long time. She laughed so hard that she couldn’t tell me why it was funny. Eventually she did calm down enough to say, “Look it up on the computer…search images so you can see one.”

I did. Apparently camel-toes have absolutely nothing to do with feet, or toes for that matter. Even after she stopped laughing, my daughter couldn’t quite explain what an actual camel-toe was, but she was able to say that I did have one in this picture of my backside:

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, it seems as though the camel reference has something to do with two humps.

You know, if I had met someone with a really long second toe, I very well might have called them “Camel-toe”. Knowing me, I would have said it right to their face and with my luck, they would have known exactly what a camel-toe was.

I’m glad that the issue came up with my grown daughter, I could have asked ANYONE had the thought had popped into my head at a different time. Even so, it was slightly embarrassing. I’ve asked a few stupid questions in my life…here are some of the more asinine queries that I’ve made:

1. I took a letter to the Bensenville post office so I could send it to my cousin who lived about 10 miles away. I asked the man if they could send it air mail. He responded, “You could if there were any planes flying from Bensenville to Roselle.”

2. After a night of making love I asked the father of my kids what the fishy smell was. He laughed so hard he had an anxiety attack.

3. I asked my father the name of the song that goes, “Bingo, bango, bongo” over and over again. He didn’t even laugh, he just shook his head and walked away.

4. I walked into Auto Zone and asked for the “small funnel”. I needed one that would help me get the oil in the little hole. Instead, the guy showed me the BIG hole that said OIL.

5. I walked around the Dollar Store looking for someone to tell me how much the sponge in my hand was. Luckily I realized where I was before I actually asked for the price check.

6. My ex had a woman calling our house, I found someone else’s make-up in our car, he stopped calling me from work and he treated me like shit. Then I asked, “Is there somebody else?” That may be the single dumbest question that I, or any other woman, has ever asked a man.

I tried to come up with 10 stupid things that I’ve asked people but I only came up with 6. Do NOT let that lead you to believe that those are the ONLY dumb questions I’ve ever asked. They’re the only 6 that I can come up with right now. I may remember more and if I do, I’ll be back to let you know about them.

For now, I have to take my dog for a walk. He LOVES Los Angeles but they do have a law that ALL dogs (except breeding dogs) have to be de-sexed. That poor dog is a virgin and now he has to lose his testicles without ever having a chance to use them. How sad.