I gave away the dog. You know… the one we found at the shelter? Loved on for a couple of months? Lost? Found? And overall enjoyed?

The one that made me believe that maybe I wasn't such an evil bitch after all?

Well it turns out that I really am a bitch.

But I can live with that.

But now that you're already thinking less of me…

I secretly hate being "green".

No, not like with envy (I think it's rather healthy to want to do violent things to Clive Owen's wife)… As in crunchy, environmentally, non-destructive, supper-happy-go-hippie green .

I hate being "green".

There I said it.

I hate being "green".

There I said it again.

Look, in all honesty, I'm perfectly content turning off the water while I'm brushing my teeth, carrying organic cotton shopping bags, using steam to clean the house rather than harsh chemicals, buying organic, cutting back on the pollution/waste…

Hell, I'm perfectly content only bathing the kids every other day.

I recycle.

I conserve.

I think.

I even really listen to Peter as he goes on and on about global warming rather than just pretending to do so (like I do when he talks about football)…

But, demmit, these freaking lightbulbs are driving me insane.

You know the ones… the little halogens that supposedly last for years, shave hundreds of dollars off of your energy bill, and no doubt will make this world a "better" place?

The ones that, up until a few months ago, were like $8 a piece and well beyond the budget constrictions of a family of five living on one income?

The ones that suddenly got "generic" and are now just pennies more expensive than the regular "earth-hating" bulbs?

The ones that were suddenly sitting on my kitchen table in large quantities because I asked my husband to stop and pick up some lightbulbs for the guest bathroom?

The ones that took my lovely southern-contemporary home and made it look like a hospital?

Yeah, those.

They're driving me insane.

And, no, not like "coo coo for cocoa puffs" slightly crazy insane…

Like I'm about two inches away from sweetening his tea with rat poison insane.

They're just soooooo ugly.

And mama don't do ugly. Well, at least this one doesn't. Yes, that officially makes me an environment-hating, dog-giver-upping, evil rotten bitchy snob.

They've simply got to go… but I can't reach them.

And now that I'm about to bribe my husband with sexual favors in exchange for him giving up his dream of saving the world and taking the god-awful ugly bulbs down, you can add manipulative slut to that sentence as well.

But I can live with that too.

(Notice that I didn't even bother to mention my refusal to give-up my dishwasher or my non-desire to start line-drying my unmentionables… But, hey, you can only think so much less of a person in one blog post, eh?)

I wanted to let you all know that the we've just re-launched the brand-new MommyMatter.com, which is one of my other sites.

We've actually got a giveaway going on right now sponsored by this fabulously darling company called TEAlicious for a custom gift basket with all sorts of great goodies. All it takes is a comment to be entered.

Plus, I'll be putting together a blog directory from which I'll feature a new blogger each week, so if you've got a moment, please stop by and add your name and info to the database! (Hey, it's free advertising!)

If you're interested in becoming contributor/editor for the site as well, please drop me a line and let me know! We've got a "Daily Scoop" column which covers just about everything under the sun as well as "GimmeGimme" for product reviews and recommendations and "Celebebe" for celebrity baby news.

Our forums currently have over 600 members with an average of three to four hundred thousand page views per month, so it's a great venue to show off your writing and promote your blog. (Every page contains an author bio, so your site's address always appears with your contribution.)

So… whatcha waiting for? www.MommyMatter.com

In my last post,  I talked about how much I like titles.

And as I mentioned then, the post was actually supposed to be a quick review of Sex in the City (the movie, not the act) as it pertained to the title of this post (which in turn had absolutely nothing to do with anything). Unfortunately, I rambled. A lot.  Thus, my movie review has found itself with an entirely new post with an entirely new title that isn't so very clever at all.

Confused?

Yeah, ummm, welcome to my rabbit-hole of a head. If you happen to come across a little bottle labeled "Drink Me"… Don't.

You Put the Banana in the Dragon's Mouth and It Turns Back into the Baby, Right?

That title is a reference to an episode of Roseanne where she and her sister are discussing pregnancy dreams (you know, the ones where you're breastfeeding twelve purple monkeys and a red-headed  version of your husband all on one nipple?). 

It  really had no major significance at the time other than  the fact that the pseudo-Nyquil did nothing other than give me pseudo-pregnancy dreams. However, as I typed it out, I was reminded of something very very important:

I HATED THE LAST EPISODE OF ROSEANNE.

Like, with a passion, dude.

You see, in that fateful last episode, Roseanne shocked us all with the fact that everything- everything- had been made-up. Dan had died years before. Darlene was actually with Mark. Becky with David. Jackie was really a lesbian not her mother. No one ever won the lottery… Made-up.

All of it.

(Yes, yes, I know that there's some irony there, but ignore it for a minute, okay? I can't make a point if you keep interrupting.)

And while I get that surprise endings are all the rage,  it completely ruined one of my all-time favorite television series for me. I can't watch an episode of the show (Dear Nick at Night Gods, I love you.) without remembering that travesty of a finale.

I guess it's a lot like watching City of Angels for the second time (which I've never done, mind you)… The fact that, yes, indeed, a troubled human and struggling angel can- against all odds- meet, fall in love, and even do the nasty on the livingroom floor  is  somewhat RUINED by the knowledge that if the troubled human and struggling angel do meet, fall in love, and even do the nasty on the livingroom floor, the human will be promptly run over by a truck.

Which they will. And she does.

Yeah, I just can't see how that'd be fun the second time around.

Which leads me to my point (you totally deserve a gold-star for getting this far):

I LOVED THE LAST EPISODE OF SEX IN THE CITY.

Okay, maybe love is a strong word. I loved the last episode of Six Feet Under. I  liked the last episode of Sex in the City. A lot.

The thing that I really loved was the fact that they wrapped everything up nicely… Like "stuck it in a Tiffany-bue box and tied it all together with a silk ribbon" nicely. We saw just enough of a happy ending for each of the characters (Carrie got Big, Charlotte got a baby, Miranda realizes that love will get you through anything? Samantha got that hot dude…)  to  be able to draw our own conclusions of their future and say that  that was , truly, a finale.

But then they went and ruined it.

When one unwraps a Tiffany-blue box tied all together with a silk ribbon, one expects to find… I don't know… Tiffany? Perhaps not, but at least something better.  Definitely something new.   

And while the movie itself was not bad per se, it was put together very similarly to how they put together episodes in the past. It felt much like I was sitting down to one of the all-day marathons on TBS (except for the whole nudity thing).

Which in itself is great as I happen to enjoy the all-day marathons on TBS. (As do most Sex in the City fans with small children, I would assume.) What's not great is that because the movie was put together as if they simply took out commercial breaks between each segment, it feels as if that perfectly ended finale never happened at all and they've simply come back to say,

"It was all made-up."

And this time, when they finally got around to ending it, they found themselves all out of Tiffany-blue boxes and silk ribbons and had to settle for that leftover Christmas gift bag that was crumpled up in the back of the closet.

And while the Charlotte in me can smile and say that it's the thought behind the gift that counts, the Samantha in me says that one should never buy  jewelry  from K-Mart.

One of my most favorite things about blogging is The Title…

And not just the title (and subsequent subtitle) of the blog in general, the title of the post itself intrigues me.

As do the created titles of your pictures, your sections, your characters, your persona, your children, your marriage… If you can slap a title on it, I'm interested. And if you can do it all cleverly; I'm not only interested, I'm turned on.

Like a radio, I tell 'ya.

The art of titling is in fact just that: An Art. A contrary art, to be sure, much like the art of blogging or baking or, hell, even parenting. But An Art nonetheless.

Which, of course, we all know is in the eye of the beholder, n'est-ce pas?

Let's say you bake a cake from scratch, throwing in this and that ingredient as your mood demands… And it's good. So good, in fact, that you decide to go and make it an official recipe of sorts and create a permanent record- such as a recipe card or blog entry, whatever- signifying your achievement. You've noted down all of the ingredients, the correct measurements, the proper technique, the color of your apron, the set of hair… And the only thing left to do is give it A Name.

Let's see… You were wearing your grandmother's favorite hand-me-down apron while you were baking and even used REAL butter like she would have done. So "Grandma's Chocolate Cake" would definitely be an option. Or perhaps you used two drums of Lady Godiva baking chocolate in the icing and would willingly beat the hell out of your own mother over a slice. So "Slap Your Mama Chocolate Cake" is more than appropriate. But then, of course, it's the third week of the month, it's 100 freaking degrees outside, you're carrying around about ten pounds of pure water weight, and the only goddamn reason you decided to stand in front of hot-ass stove in the first place was because you forgot where you hid that damn bag of Milanos that you were saving just for these kinds of moments.

So you settle on "Have a Happy Period Chocolate Cake"…

Because that stupid slogan miraculously made sense to you the very moment you took a bite.

I, of course, download your recipe immediately. Why? Although said recipe title is based off of your own personal experience and emotions at the time, I'm a complete pop-culture whore (and woman) and can truly appreciate your hatred for that fucking slogan. Of course, not everyone has a period (or uses Always products for that matter); so in the end, the title has much more personal value than universal meaning…

But those of us who do have periods and use Always products think you're bloody brilliant and want to be your friend.

Plus, my Grandma hated chocolate.

The same holds true for titles in the blog world.

At least I think it does.

I love that you make me sing James Taylor and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

And, yesterday, I followed you home [a stranger] from someone else's sidebar solely based off of the fact that you made a great play off of what has been my favorite novel since the age of eleven.

Just a handful of examples out of the masses…

Like I said, An Art.

And though I know that not everyone realizes that Judith Shakespeare was born of the brilliance of Virginia Woolf and that, in essence, a blog can be a room…

Or that I associate Paul Simon lyrics with cleaning the house because he was in my mother's cd player on occasion while she cleaned house…

Or Elton John with living in Arkansas, The Beatles with Matisse, Garden State with eBay, marriage with Grace Potter. or the esteemed Cry-Baby Walker with Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecake…

Or that the title of this blog itself is based off of a quote from Oscar Wilde that was so perfectly "me" that I couldn't pass it up.

But some of you do.

And that turns me on.

Like a radio, I tell 'ya.

And while this topic originally started out as lead-in to how the origins of the title of my last post plays a huge affect on my review of Sex in the City (the movie, not the act), it has turned into a rather pointed little monster of its own. And rather than including the review now and causing you to actually have to use those pitchforks and torches on the gal who hated the movie that everybody loved after reading a post about titles and Paul Simon and chocolate cake; I'll write-up the review in a seperate post of its own and end this one with a little encouragement for you to tell me about your favorite titles…

And if they had anything at all to do with your period.

Yes, I'm still alive.

Sorta.

You see… I've been drowning in a sea of snot (of my own and the relatively related) over the last week and have finally managed to catch hold of that piece of driftwood long enough to pop up for air.

It. Has. Been. Miserable.

To say the least.

To say the most, it's a sea of green snot… with the occasional bouts of toddler diarrhea.

And is anyone else really dissatisfied with the quality of NyQuil since they got rid of that "clear up the passages" ingredient in lieu of the pseudo (pseudo)-"clear up the passages" ingredient?

Because, dude, it so doesn't clear up the passages. Even if you take twice the recommended amount… Which I do. Because I am the product of a joyfully mis-spent youth. And Louisiana. In an era where the drinking age was eighteen. And I was a fifteen sixteen (because that sounds a little better)-year-old with great breasts.

But it does makes for great dreams though.

Damn crack heads. (The ones who killed the pseudoephedrine not the ones in my dreams- they all look like Brad Pitt. So we're good there.)

However, I'm feeling a bit chippier at this point… despite the fact that chippier isn't a real word. I still can't breathe properly, of course, but I no longer feel like I've been run over by a semi.

Perhaps just a mini-cooper.

Or two.

Complete with clowns.

Oh! And the dog? The one the husband lost (on purpose, I am sure of it)? He's home (thanks to in part to an appropriately placed file in a homemade doggy biscuit).

But I'm not acknowledging that until he's had a bath.

Because the smell of his misspent [doggy] youth is much worse than the smell of mine…

Although I do recall someone saying something very similar to/about me once.

But I'm saving that story for the officially unofficial biography…

Or maybe next Friday.

Eh, who knows?

Oh! And if you made it through all of the above sentence fragments, mis-used ellipses, and snot references with no substitute-sweetener aftertaste or other equally distressing ill effects, then be sure to come back tomorrow for my post on why I hated *HATED* Sex in the City (the movie, not the act itself) and why I'm a selfish, evil, environmentally UN-friendly nougat-centered bitch.

Bring your pitchforks.

(And vodka.)