Mandajuice

Easter Weekend

Oh what a weekend! I spent most of Friday horizontal on the couch in Joel's office, so as to avoid throwing up. I mean, not that I CAN throw up, because my plumbing no longer works against gravity, but I WANTED to. Do you guys know how long it took me to finally let go of my novel after I finished it? Almost TWO years. That stick up my butt had been wedged in like a wood screw and when I finally clicked publish, I thought maybe I'd magically feel better. But then I sat there all day thinking - OH MY GOD MY MOTHER IS READING MY NOVEL. Right NOW.

Two naps, people! I took TWO. Apparently that's what I do when I feel overwhelmed: I SLEEP. I would pay good money to buy tiny rocks made of sleep, which, if I could, I would chop up with a razorblade and snort into my cranium with a rolled up dollar bill. But Steve Jobs hasn't made an app for that yet, so I had to go old school and roll myself into a fetal position until my brain shuts off. I may have drooled on Joel's leather cushions. Just a little.

After a hard day of writing and/or napping in Chinatown, I put on my stupidest suede shoes and we went to synagogue, which I can't wait to write about on year of sundays. We met our friends Rachel and Ben there, who are expecting their first baby this summer much to everyone's delight, and they made a great addition to the year of sundays team. Have I mentioned that? That any time you'd like to tag along on one of our religious adventures, you are more than welcome to? The more the merrier! I'll be posting an updated WHERE page any minute now, so you'll know where we're headed next.

After Shabbat, we all schlepped to Beasaus, where we stuffed ourselves silly on fried chicken and waffles and I tried to use a perfectly good bottle of Pinot Noir to make myself feel better about the fact that PEOPLE ARE READING MY BOOK.

I honestly didn't feel better until Saturday morning when the reviews started coming in and my mother called to report having read GRAVY all in one sitting and that the ending made her cry. "It does have a lot of sex in it, though." Woohoo! Mom is still speaking to me! And I could tell she genuinely liked it, even though I made her buy it like everyone else. (Rule #1 of being an author: make your family wait to read your work until it's too late for them to change your mind about it!)

I can promise you that my fiction will always include plenty of the following:

1. Food. Duh.

2. Sex. The real kind. (Which isn't always pretty, is it?) (I'm including some EPICALLY horrible sex scenes in my erotica series and they might be the best stuff I'll ever write because they are so painfully honest.) (Honestly hilarious. Nothing is funnier than really bad sex. Not even fart jokes.)

3. Music. Preferably soul.

I mean, what else would you expect from ME?

I have very simple goals with my fiction. Basically, I want you to turn the page. That's pretty much it. If you sit and read my novel in one sitting, I feel like I've done my job. I have a huge temptation to ask readers a bunch of questions (like, when did Amanda P. Westmont disappear in your mind and become Ella Roberts?) but I will spare you the excessive book talk and instead focus on writing the next one, which is already a million times better than my freshman effort.

Saturday night we got all dressed up and went to the fundraising auction for Lane Hunter Dance. Lane is a good friend of Joel's whom we both adore and who is also an insanely talented dancer/choreographer. (Think SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE? Only the answer is YES! Yes, you can because you are Lane Hunter.) Lane also designed the cover for Gravy, so, you know, he's one of those annoyingly gifted people, which is all that more annoying due to his stunning good looks. (Also: SINGLE!)

For the auction, Joel and I set up a table where for five dollars, we chatted with you for a few minutes and then wrote you a note about who you REALLY are. My favorite was the one we wrote for a mutual friend: "You are like a jujube. Sweet, but definitely chewy. You remind me of the first time I went to the movies on my allowance and had the theater all to myself."

Then the boys put Lady Gaga on and I dragged Lane out to the stage and made everyone dance. It was a blast, except we forgot to take even a single photo of ourselves, which is at least the third time Joel has put on his suit (which is so hot, I would totally rip it off his body with my teeth if it hadn't cost as much as a mortgage payment) and we've gone out without taking a picture.

Anyway, my point is that the Easter Sunrise Cemetery Service came SUPER early Sunday morning. Not even all that napping had prepared me for getting up at 5:30AM. We were even too tired to make-out before church, which is as blasphemous as it gets in our world.

By the time the service was over, it was a scramble to get ready for the kids, who I got on loan from their dad for a few hours Sunday afternoon. It was Joel's first Easter (literally EVER), so he helped me with the pirate map while I set up the Easter baskets. It wasn't until I went to go fill the plastic eggs that I realized I had ZERO Easter stuff in storage. NONE. I called Dave in a panic because my kids were due in less than an hour and I wondered if he'd ended up with the giant Nordstrom bag filled with plastic eggs I'd last seen in our garage before the divorce/foreclosure/nuclear disaster. He didn't have them either, so I hauled ass to Wal-Mart to grab some. I came back with 130 eggs, worried that it wouldn't be enough.

"That's a LOT of eggs, Amanda. Are you sure we need that many?" Joel can be so adorable when he's clueless!

"You'll see."

Joel just so happened to be in the bathroom when the kids arrived.

I hollered to him to hurry up, but in the three minutes it took for him to finish up and wash his hands, he had missed almost the entire easter egg hunt.

Too many eggs indeed.

 The treasure hunt was a hit, as usual.

Alex got a cool Hot Wheels bathtub toy.
And plenty of Peeps to 'splode in the microwave.Genoa got a play-doh cake making station, which kept us both well-entertained for the hour her brother spent in the tub.

I also got an Easter ham.

I can definitely say I've had worse weekends.

I wrote a book!

And called it GRAVY.

I hope you love reading it as much as I loved writing it.

For now, you can buy it on Amazon.com. I promise it'll be available on Nook within 24 hours (but probably sooner!)

I didn't include the recipe in the book, so I'll post it here now.

RECIPE FOR TOMATO GRAVY

2 each, 1 pound, 14 ounce cans of peeled whole plum tomatoes (preferably Muir Glen Organic)

2 each, 6 ounce cans of tomato paste (go Italian if you can find it!)

1/2 an onion, minced

5 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (again, go Italian if you can!)

salt and pepper

2 bay leaves

Basil leaves, fresh

1 SECRET ingredient (sorry, you have to read the book to find out what it is!)

Heat olive oil in a large sauce pan and add onion and garlic. Cook until onion is translucent, not brown. Blend the whole tomatoes in a blender or food processor and add to the pot. Add paste, bay leaves, basil, salt and pepper and SECRET ingredient. Let simmer for about two hours.

Pour over a pound of your favorite pasta. Feeds 2-4 people. I never make it without tripling the recipe and filling my freezer with goodness. ENJOY!

It's in God's hands now...

And by "God," I mean amazon.com. I'm afraid GRAVY is stuck in purgatory, folks. I've sent my first baby out into the nethersphere, but it hasn't appeared for sale yet. My ibook clicky pad thing is already worn out from hitting refresh so many times. 

Anyway, stayed tuned. You'll be the first to know when it becomes available!

Blogging for Gawd at Beliefnet.com

Remember lo those many months ago when I first began this spiritual quest of mine? Thanks to a link from my lovely cousin Amber, I started my journey by taking an online religion quiz at beliefnet.com, where I learned that my personal belief system falls under the banner of Secular Humanism.

(Go take the quiz if you haven't yet! It was like having a flashback to all those quizzes I used to take in Seventeen Magazine.)

I had no idea that my inability to stay in the moment without thinking about that sink full of dishes or the next plot point for my novel would eventually lead to co-authoring a blog with my bald-headed atheist boyfriend. So it came as quite a surprise when only a month into writing a Year of Sundays, we got an e-mail from beliefnet.com (the world's most widely-read religion website!) asking us to move our blog to their site. (And, you know, actually get PAID for the huge effort and time commitment the project turned into).

We're still in the process of transferring our archives, but we're officially up and running over there. Today you can read Joel's post about our trip back in time to Jehovah's Witness land, where he partook of the sacrements and was shunned (literally asked to leave!) by one of his oldest friends. My post will be up tomorrow and you can expect five posts a week from us from now on.

The fun part is that I get to update my writing resume to include RELIGION because apparently writing about money and sex wasn't pissing off enough people already.

On Saturday, we held court in my living room and announced the new blog to our nearest and dearest. I think we crammed about fifty people into my two-bedroom apartment and I made an enormous pot of tomato gravy to celebrate my upcoming Kindle release. (Recipe on Friday when the book comes out!)

I always forget how much I love hosting parties (or how long it takes to recover from my hangovers), but Saturday night was one for the record books. We held a religious-themed white elephant gift exchange (which I'll be writing about on yearofsundays soon...) and my apartment is now an enormous, glittery shine to our lord and savior Jesus Christ.

Of course the best gift was this treasure from one of our favorite local commenters, Jules.
It's CHARLIE THE UNICORN! And apparently he's up to some auto-erotic mischief with that there horn of his. Oh Julie! You silly sleepy head! You know me too well!

Brought to you by the letter A for Alexander and Arachnid

I have much good news to share from this weekend, but no time to sit down and write about it until after work tonight, so stay tuned. In the meantime, please enjoy this video of my son being a first grade rock star.

His dad can take full credit for the work on this one, since they did it together, including several trips to the library and all the practice time. (Our rule is that if the project is due during your week with the kids, the prepwork is also your responsibilty. I hope his next project falls during my week!) I was proud of both of them.

Blog, Book and Birthday Party

Joel and I are having a shin-dig tonight to celebrate our Year of Sundays project (with some big news!), my soon-to-be-released novel and our two April birthdays (35 and 45!). I haven't thrown a party since our Christmas party and I forgot how much I love all the prepwork that goes into feeding a few dozen people and getting them drunk. I think I have a genetic predisposition for merrymaking. (If you're local and didn't get my facebook invitation, let me know! It's not to late to join the fun.)

I've decided to release my book on Friday, April 22, because it just so happens to also be the seven year anniversary of mandajuice. In the meantime, here's a sneak preview of the cover:

Sexy Time

With two overlapping custody schedules, it doesn't often happen that Joel and I are both available and kid-free on a Saturday night, but last Saturday turned out to be one such night. Since Portland is the per-capita strip club capital of the United States, Joel and I hit the ATM for some dollah bills and then we hit the clubs.

[Does that make me sound like a baller? WE HIT THE CLUBS!] [God, I'm old.]

We started at Devil's Point, which is tiny, with only one stage and where the girls are mostly tattoed and creatively pierced, but where the owner doesn't require those ridiculous slutty plastic shoes. Instead the dancers wore ballet slippers and tied them with ribbons up to their knees, which was insanely sexy. These girls were obviously DANCERS, too. I mean, your average stripper weighs as much as my left thigh, but the way these girls mocked the force of gravity while snaking up and down that pole, I knew any one of them could kick my ass. As hot and bothered as the dancers got us, this club didn't serve any food that wasn't fried, so we moved on to the Acropolis.

The A-crop is probably the most famous club in Portland, well-known for its five dollar steak, iceburg lettuce bar and cheap pitchers of beer; it's the place you go for a stag night. Unfortunately, it's also Everything That's Wrong With America. From the guy in a JC Penney suit who couldn't be bothered to take his bluetooth out of his ear while the dancer did that crazy thing where she rolled her buttcheeks independently from one another an inch from his face, to the girls who are every bit as plastic as their platform shoes, it's just... WRONG. I sat there watching my gourmet foodie boyfriend devour a T-Bone while I chugged three dollar well drinks, ate a baked potato and scribbled notes on the back of some business cards because, hell, that's what I do and it was more of a turn-on than watching the show.

Here's what I came up with (click to bigify):

After dinner, we finished our rounds at the Lucky Devil, where a series of monkey bars over the stage means the girls are even more enthusiastic and athletic. They don't look bored because they aren't; that's what the jungle gym is for. There wasn't a drop of silicone in the house (well, at least not on the stage) and the girls had some of the most beautiful body art I've seen yet. One dancer had a sexy black line running down the back of each leg as if she was wearing seamed stockings, but which turned out to be some kind of lettering. Unfortunately, all the stage-side seats were taken, so I never got close enough to read it. My guess is Tolstoy. I plan to head back there so I can inquire.

Curiously enough, this particular brand of grown-up entertainment, at least in Portland, Oregon, is a decidedly co-ed activity. I am never even remotely the only girl there and most people show up in couples, although rarely do they spend as much time sucking face in public as Joel and I do. (Yup, we're still that annoying couple at the bar.) The dancers seem to flirt a LOT more with the women in the audience than the men, so I always go home feeling like a million bucks, even if my wallet is lighter for it. The entire evening ends up costing less than a movie and dinner for two at the Olive Garden and I get to feel like I'm contributing to the arts in a very direct way. And hell, there's nothing better than watching a dancer try to look sexy as she scoops up wads of cash and scuttles off the stage to count it.

Montage

Joel and I went to Montage on our second date, which was technically our first real date because it was the first time we actually went anywhere besides my apartment. I would wax nostalgic about how hot and heavy we were back then, but that hasn't changed a bit, so instead I'll wax poetic about how six months ago, I had no idea I'd someday find myself sharing a table at Montage with him and our CHILDREN.

On a Sunday after CHURCH.

Or that I'd still be so infatuated with him that I can't resist the urge to send him naughty texts over my BLT.

It seems like every Sunday after church we have a pow pow in the car about where to fine a good CHEAP meal and every week we have trouble coming up with anything besides pizza. There are a hundred fantastic happy hours in Portland, but unfortunately none of them take place on Sundays at 2:00.

But today Liza threw the name of her favorite mac 'n cheese restaurant into the ring and when I googled Montage from the passenger seat, I learned they not only have a brunch menu from 10-2:00, but it's also  fabulous AND cheap. The kids split an order of cheddar mac for FIVE BUCKS. It would have cost me more to take them through a McDonald's drive-thru.

See also: Montage sells BOOZE. Fresh squeezed OJ and Monopolowa? Yes please. I'll have another.

We took some great photos at lunch and I suppose I could just let them speak for themselves, but what fun would that be?

First we passed the camera to Joel, who caught this lovely shot of me with my girly.

Then me with his girly.

Then it was my turn, so I got my two favorite brown-eyed boys to smile pretty for Mama.

And then? Well then it was Alex's turn to be photographer. Brace yourselves.

He made us a little silly.

But this series of shots he took of his sister? These are getting framed.

When it was her turn, she caught a beauty herself.

Those curls. Man.

But honestly, I think I took the cake with the next one, which may be one of the best photos I've ever taken. Genoa and her leftover mac 'n cheese mouse.

The look in that single eyeball tells the story of her entire personality. 

Liza loved her tomato basil pesto mac, too, and she wrote about it on her food blog today, so you should definitely head over there and give a girl some props. 

So far, 35 is awesome.

Thirty-Fine

So. Thirty-five. It seems like a Big Age. A milestone.

All I keep thinking about is that I remember my own mother being 35 and how this strange thing happens when you're a kid - you think your parents didn't exist before you knew them. So in a morbid, self-centered sense, we CREATE our parents. I gave birth to my mother when she was 35 because that's how I first remember her.

To my eight-year-old mind, she was so... ADULT. So grown up. She had it all together. My dad's company had recently gone public and she was in the process of building her dream house. Here she is in the then-kitchen with her dad: She was a year away from getting pregnant with her fourth child.
She had a LOT going on and it's hard for me, now that I'm 35, not to make comparisons. 

When I said as much to Joel, he looked at me like he wanted to smack me silly and immediately reminded me that I have PLENTY going on.

I have the two best children on earth! Two children who woke up full of happy birthdays and snuggles.

I might not have a bank account filled with IPO money, but I'm getting a tax refund! And I can pay my own bills. Just barely, but STILL.

I'm about to self-publish a novel. (SO! CLOSE!)

I am obscenely proud of my two blogs, one of which has some pretty exciting stuff going on behind the scenes (annoucement soon!).

I have a day job that I enjoy more and more every (other) day.

My best friends are some serious kickass broads.

I have never felt more connected to another human being than I do to Joel Gunz - intellectually, emotionally, physically. I had no idea love could be this fantastic every day.

I weigh 183 pounds, which wouldn't normally be something to write about, except that I weighed 7 pounds more than that three weeks ago and I was able to easily recognize and rectify the problem. I will never be thin, but I don't think I'll ever be fat again either. My lifelong weight issues are pretty much my bitch.

Last year I skipped my Graceful Aging Project (in which I take a picture of my naked face every year on my birthday) because I didn't feel graceful at all. In fact, I doubt I've ever felt worse about myself than I did the day I turned 34. There are some photos, but even now, I find them difficult to look at and I'm still not ready to post them.

But here I am at 9:31 this morning without a speck of face paint.

There's no other life I'd rather have than the one I get to wake up to every morning. I'd like to think my kids are giving birth to a very happy mother.

Thirty-FINE indeed.