So things are almost back to "normal." Car keys were found last week, and Steve's new Electronic Key Finder arrived and is on his key ring. Washing machine was fixed this morning. Turned out to be the pump. Completely repairable and not due to any misuse on my part. I question why a pump would go on a two year old machine, but hey, whatever. My car will be getting fixed on Monday afternoon.

I got a call this morning that the Vagina Costume is not quite the right color, so I have to redo some of it, now necessitating a trip downtown to shop fabric, which I should have done in the first place. And I should have shown the client swatches. I knew that if they had enough cash to meet my rate, they have enough of an opinion to see swatches first. Like I haven't been doing this for almost 20 years or something! They are worried that it doesn't look enough like "real" labia. I guess men spend a lot more time gazing at photos of them...the shape is perfect, but the color is off.

So to Michael Levine's we go, after nap. I must take a shower where I can actually wash my hair. That seems to be the thing that gets skipped. I can get a shower in, brush teeth, put in contacts, but that extra 20 minutes that is washing, conditioning, detangling, more conditioning, combing out, and semi-drying my curly/frizzy hair happens 1.5 times a week.

The vagina costume is finished except for it's wig, and it looks fabulous. If such a thing can. Carla should be coming over to model, but I will at least get a shot of the client in it, when he picks it up this afternoon. I'll get the wig on and the invoice printed during morning nap, which should be any time now. We may even get a trip to the park in, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

I signed up for the LA Kids Consignment sale yesterday, and got all of my info this morning. It is heaven for the obsessive compulsive organizer. Printing of bar coded tags, specific hangers and placement of tags, tagging guns, drop of times of 15 minute increments signed up for 2 months in advance...Martha Stewart would be proud.

What Dexter would not eat the past three meals-

the ground up chicken breast with "baby" sweet potatoes
"baby" peas
"baby" banana rice cereal
real applesauce

The keys have been found. They were under Steve's desk, UNDER a power strip that was loaded with plugs and cords. We both had looked under the desk, but it never occurred to me to look under that. It will next time.

So hopefully they haven't reprogrammed his car at the shop, and the found keys will still work. Then the mirror can be put back on my car and we will end the week as we started.

It has sucked being trapped. Yes, we have gone for some nice, long walks, but I need to get to the grocery store and to find the ugly shirt for the show on Friday.

The new stroller arrived yesterday, and it is awesome. We went for a walk this morning, and it handles the torn up sidewalks like a champ. I am inspired by Steve's Aunt Mimi, who recently lost 50 pounds with Weight Watchers. She walks every single morning. I used to walk every day when I lived in NYC, just getting around, and even working on set you have to walk around the back lot. (Though the craft services table is what kills you.) So hopefully, with the new stroller and the Bjorn carrier, we will be walking every day, and I can reach my goal of getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight by my birthday at the end of April. It is not out of the question, just slow and steady.

What Dexter would not eat this morning:

rice cereal, plain
"real" applesauce
baby sweet potatoes
baby peaches
"real" oatmeal, with a splash of "real" milk, no sugar

any combo of the above

I have some chicken breast thawing that I will grind up with the sweet potato for his lunch. He had the same thing out of a jar yesterday and loved it.

We still have not found Steve's keys, and for some reason, is has depressed the hell out of me. I've moved past laughter and anger to profound sadness. I have a feeling it will cycle back to anger.

We live in a one bedroom apartment, that is fairly neat and clean. It's no Elle Decor, but it looks like Cluttered IKEA. I don't know what is worse, not finding the keys or eventually finding the keys in whatever hidey hole Steve's brain decided was a great place for keys while he dealt with a headache.

Why is the basket by the front door so hard a concept to grasp?

The keys can not be in this house.

"Somebody's got a case of the Mondays!!!"

Steve lost his car keys, real good this time. We turned the house inside out and upside down, and gone. For a couple of hours there was some thought that they had fallen into houseguest Andrew's bag and gone home to Florida with him, which at least would have been an answer, but it was a dead end. The keys have to be here somewhere, as he had set the car alarm.

We decided he should just take my car to work. He then ripped the driver's mirror off while backing it down the driveway. He still drove it.

Then this afternoon the washer/dryer died.

In brighter news, Dexter actually ate an entire jar of baby food. He gobbled up a Stage 2 chicken and sweet potato. I'm just going to start making my own food now, as he is never going to eat the stage 1 food. I now think he wasn't eating any of it because he didn't like the taste or texture. He has been spitting it out after 5 or 6 bites for a month. He also doesn't like a piece of banana in the mesh bag thing, but he was all over a piece of honeydew when Simone and I took him to lunch.

Someone is asleep, giving me a few moments of stolen time...

I still have not gotten paid for the puppet job...but I have two other new projects on my plate. A couple of hats need new ribbon and horsehair (to pin them to the actor's head) for a stage musical my friend Marcy is designing, a bio about Ginger Rogers. Very la-la work for me.

Then last week I got a call that made me realize it must be January, asking for a walk around Vagina Costume. That's right. Some guy has the bright idea for a talking vagina. My neighbor Ben the prop master, suggested I google "vagina costume" on the internet as he needed one of these a few years ago for whatever MTV crap show he was working on at the time. You would not believe how much of this sort of thing I have made over the years. Big foam penises, scrotums, vaginas...no really, that is a hilarious idea that has never been done before.

There it was, for $53, a felt vagina costume. I tried to get the guy to just buy that one, but he wants a better quality job, and he is willing to pay for it. So using it as a model, he will get a polar fleece version, that can also be laundered, which I suggested might be necessary. Just sayin'. And it will look great, so I'm happy to provide what the client wants.

As a comedian, though, I question the logic of a GUY in a talking vagina suit. Personally, I think of my genitals as distinctly female. Sassy, but always female. The real joke would be to have WOMAN in the vagina suit, perhaps as sassy black chick or tough talking butch lesbian or Cougar-y Kim Catrall type. But I'm guessing whatever the end material of Guy in Vagina Costume is will not be aimed at women, but at the Howard Stern demographic. But then, wouldn't you put a hot chick in the suit? Maybe one with hot legs and we shorten the suit a bit and she wears fishnets and heels?

A whole series of different women in the vagina suit...taking The Vagina Monologues all the way to THERE.

Perhaps it's supposed to be a Man-gina, which a joke men tease each other with when they are acting like women about something. It always conjures up a sphincter image for me, but I'm not quite sure if it's always that literal. Anyway, could it have been a talking butthole instead? Which my sister has actually had to make recently, BTW for...(here's an AWESOME transition...) TIME SUCK! A internet series Steve wrote for Cartoon Network.

"Currently airing on SuperDeluxe (the internet arm of Cartoon Network)
Time Suck was created by four Emersonians: Alex Coen, Adam Peirce, Mike
D'Alonzo and Steve Johnson. Adam, Mike and Steve are "This Is Pathetic"
alum as well.

Join cubicle drones Patches and his canine cohort Benji, as they travel to the end of the Internets, one bizarre video at a time. Tightly written, awesomely produced and hilarious, Time Suck is a must view."

The butthole in question doesn't actually talk, but instead has a chicken coming out of it. Chicken Butt. And all of the videos are spoofs of dumb stuff on the internet, not the actual dumb stuff.

The series is very funny, and I hope that you check it out. And it give it a good rating if you like it.