Advice for the advice-needing

In this Momversation, Eden and I provide Rebecca with sex tips and tricks. She's pregnant with twins--you'd think she'd know this stuff by now. But alas. Lucky for her that we're around!

Here are some things I did in places that were not here.

HELLO, WORLD! I've had some coffee. Not a LOT. Okay, a lot.

"New bottle full of Pedialyte instead of milk, fuck you. I don't even KNOW you. Okay, screw it. I will drink this bullshit once. Yes, okay. This is all right. No, wait. No, on second thought, fuck you. Fuck you in the ear. I'm going to slap you all the way into Idaho if you keep coming at me like that. Pedialyte. Can I get some fucking Pedialyte up in here? Who do I have to blow to get a bottle of goddamn Pedialyte? Oh, you mean THAT STUFF? Oh, fuck you."

This is but one excerpt from three of my favorite posts from last week!

"Let's face it: newborns are weird-looking. They cry a lot. They're terrible at board games. And yet many mothers profess to have instantly fallen deep in love with their scrunchy-faced, pink, kind-of-boring babies. Who can say why this happens? It happened to me, and even I don't understand it. But it doesn't happen for lots of mothers."

7 tips for new parents. Oh, magazines, you sure do love the numbered lists.

BY THE WAY, did you know that you can now comment on my Redbook posts via your Facebook account? It's true! Come with me on this magical journey! This magical...commenting...journey.

"When Hailey was born, Victor's grandad said that cats eat babies and he said that he was going to come over and slit our cats' throats and throw them in the garbage. This is all true. We shut the cats up with the baby whenever he was in the neighborhood just to keep them all safe but none of the cats ever even tried to eat the baby. Is Victor's grampa crazy or is there something wrong with my baby?"

No one gives an interview like Jenny. But no one.

Finally: this has nothing to do with me, but these videos of "Chloe Sevigny" have made me terribly happy this week. I can't stop laughing at them. I can't stop! Call 911!

Seriously. "Ironic coin skort"? I can't even write that without laughing.

T minus fifteen

No way has it been twelve days since the last time I posted. Stop lying to me, blog.

Speaking of days-since-or-until-whatever, in fifteen days our book comes out. Fifteen. Five. Plus teen. TWO WEEKS AND A DAY. I am both excited and also I feel like I might throw up, a lot, at any given moment. Which partially explains why I haven't been posting as regularly as I prefer. When I'm not fighting the throw-up urge I'm emailing people and shamelessly pimping out the book on Twitter. So far everyone's been exceedingly tolerant, but I expect they'll grow tired of me eventually.

So! Have you pre-ordered your copy? (That's an affiliate link, by the way. Which means I get, I don't know, .02 cents for every order? Unclear.) Of course you've pre-ordered! What a silly question. I can't believe I even asked. Please forgive me.

So we've been awfully busy doing I'm not sure what. Running in circles? Planning stuff? Fretting? At any rate, I am now, tonight, Valentine's Evening, so tired I could cry. And listen--I'm not going to lie to you, I've had some wine. I think this means I'm officially drunk-blogging. It's my first time! Okay, I'm not drunk. But definitely a little tipsy, whether from the half-glass of wine I had (Melissa is rolling her eyes so hard right now) or the possibly terminal exhaustion.

Have you seen what Scott did, to promote the book? He created this book trailer, is what. (Yes, writers have "book trailers," now. Like it's not enough we wrote a book. We also have to make a movie.) Scott's a film editor by trade, so it was very convenient that I married him. When Eden and I told him we wanted his help creating an educational filmstrip about the book, he was all, "Allow me." And we were like, "Do you want a script?" And he went, "No I do not. Do not worry your little heads over a script, for I have Ideas." Then he went ahead and did this. We had almost nothing to do with it. This, you guys, is a work of art. You can't imagine how much work went into it. Try and imagine it. WRONG. More.

Maybe I had an entire glass of wine? Anyway, here you go:

Pretty amazing, right?

Some people who watched it had questions. Like so:

Q.: Who did the narration?
A.: If you don't get it right away, then the photo at the very end should provide a really obvious clue. If you still don't get it, ask a friendly grown-up!

Q: Wow, who'd you get to do that impersonation?
A: That's not an impersonation. That's the real deal.

Q: Huh? But how...but...where did you find that audio clip?
A: There was no single audio clip, my adorable friend; there were countless clips, some of them one word long, which my husband manipulated expertly, as is his way.

Q: Why is Scott not a ridiculously famous film editor like that Thelma whatshername who edits all of Marty Scorcese's films? And by the way I call him Marty because we're close friends.
A: I ask myself that constantly, Friend of Marty. I believe it'll happen soon enough. 

Elsewhere...

Before I get to my other stuff: on my post Don't Get Too Excited, reader Kate Vinée left a comment with the following quote from John Green, and as it's the best thing ever, I wanted to share it with you:

"Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff.... Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like, jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can't-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is, 'You like stuff.' Which is just not a good insult at all, like, 'You are just too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.'"

Hooray for nerds! And thank you, Kate, for sharing that quote!

And now: hey, look at me, writing things. As of this coming week and for every week after that I'll be posting every weekday at Redbook, so be sure to, you know, go there. But also come here, because if you don't I just don't know what I'll do. This week marks an awfully big milestone for Finslippy. What is that milestone? You'll have to come back to find out.

1. More about giving my kid the flu. You'd think I was the first person to ever get another person ill.

"He kept running into our room to see if we were ready to come out and play with him. "I will play anything as long as I don't have to touch your stuff," I croaked. 'No touching.'"

2. About spanking. I kind of can't believe we're still debating the pros and cons of hitting another human being, but there it is.

"So what is spanking teaching your children? We're supposed to model for them how to behave maturely and responsibly, even when we're upset or angry — especially then. Perhaps I'm missing the point, but I doubt your child will be happy or productive in life if he's bending people over his knee every time he has an argument with them. (Depending on his profession, of course.)"

3. You down with OPK? In which I admit to not being across-the-board enamored of other people's kids. I'm surprised I haven't received any hate mail on this one, but I'm not giving up yet! (Note the search-engine-optimized title on the header: "Mom Blogger Who Hates Other People's Kids." I never said "hate"! No hate, Redbook! None!)

"I used to find babies adorable across the board, and now when I see them all I can think is, thank God I don't have one of those. Because instead of its cute pudgy cheeks or shock of hair poking out from its cap, all I can see is all-night crying and ceaseless diaper-changing."

And as if that wasn't enough, I also did a Momversation video (remember those?), below. All I can see when I look at myself in this is how sick I was. This was taped last Thursday, when my fever had just started to climb up, and I look like I'm tearing up with emotion--which would have been appropriate, given the subject--but in fact I'm just glassy-eyed. This one's about death! Death and pets! Two things that should not go well together, but apparently do, all the time.

Update on January 23, 2011 by Alice

What! I totally forgot to add both Let's Panic updates. I've had a busy week!

1. Our response to the Tiger Mom brouhaha: "Why Borderline Hysteric Southern Mothers Are Superior," written by the late Edwina Williams, mother of Tennessee Williams.

"Successfully mothering a tortured playwright is work—constant, numbing, endless, drunken work. You must systematically tear down your child’s self-regard while at the same time dismantling your own sanity, while maintaining a veneer of respectability for the neighborfolk who might come sniffing around. All to fill your child with precious subject-material that will one day fuel his muse!"

2. Nine Months in Captivity: a Fetal Memoir by T.B.A. Williamson, formerly incarnated as Brigadier General Josiah “Bucky” Warshaw, U.S.M.C. Just what it sounds like.

"I realized this morning that my teeth are gone! Those bastards must have knocked me out and filed them down to the roots. Still, I’ve regained feeling in my fingers and toes, which is a relief, although my body seems to be covered in a fine, downy hair. God knows what they’ve been feeding me through this blasted tube in my belly."

Whew!