NY Times, gateway drug to Playboy

Saturday morning Leta woke up at the inhumane hour of six o’clock. We let her talk to herself until about 6:30 and then we started the day with a bottle and a quick check of the NY Times online. I’d been told that the story about — oh God, please forgive me for writing these words, world, it’s not my fault — MOMMY BLOGS, was going to be running this weekend. As Jon plopped the bottle into Leta’s redneck toothy grin (she has four teeth coming in, all at different lengths), I scrolled down to see my daughter’s rosy cheeks ON THE COVER of that paper. If it had been at all biologically possible, I would have pooped my pants.

I had a hard time containing my glee — not because I and some of my fellow women writers were made out to be selfish, resentful, overreacting pigs in search of validation; funny that none of us were informed that the article would run with that notion when we were interviewed — but that my child’s green eyes were staring at me from the pages of a national paper.

I wanted to call someone and share the news because I am a mother and a human being and that’s a natural reaction, no? But it was 6:30 AM and no one I knew would be awake at that ungodly hour ON A SATURDAY MORNING, GOD THIS JOB IS HARD, PLEASE VALIDATE ME. Except, wait! My father, the son of Granny Hamilton who used to make a point of calling him at 7 AM every Saturday morning of his life just because she enjoyed being mean — I miss that woman so badly — he’d be awake! And if he wasn’t, well then he could just SUCK IT.

Yes, I do tell my parents to suck it. Doesn’t everyone?

So I called my father at 6:30 AM, 7:30 AM his time, and of course he was awake. I told him to check out the NY Times website so that he could see his granddaughter’s face RIGHT THERE, the heir to the Hamilton Chin in all her chubby glory. He seemed really excited, but asked what he could do to get around the required registration to see the article.

Huh?

“You don’t have a registration to the NY Times website?” I asked.

“Daughter of mine,” he answered, “I do not want the NY Times to know who I am.”

I stood there speechless for a second, mainly because my father worked for a computer company for over 37 years, a rather large and important computer company, a computer company that makes computers and does stuff with computers, and he was afraid to register on a website. I should have known this considering the fact that he uses coupons to buy Krystal hamburgers.

“Well then, give them the wrong information,” I told him, inviting him to the dark side, the side where you make up email addresses and phony names so that your inbox can be saved from COCK and PUSSY spam.

“I could never bring myself to do that,” he said, his dignity intact, his soul still counted among the few who will make it to the Celestial Kingdom of Heaven because they registered to the NY Times website with their real information, or better yet, didn’t even register at all to that EVIL LIBERAL RUBBISH.

However, he did break the law of the Sabbath and purchase a hard copy of the newspaper where Leta’s face covered the entire top fold of the Styles section. His secret is safe with me. I won’t tell the Lord.

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I need to give a HUGE shout out to Phil and Greg at my hosting company, Liquidweb, for extending the amount of bandwidth on my account to handle the traffic generated from Leta’s face in a national newspaper. Liquidweb has been SO good to me. Thanks, you guys.

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As of today, January 31, 2005, the amount of money raised through Google this month is $1,009.81, all of which I will be donating to Asian Tsunami relief funds. Thank you, thank you, thank you.