When I was 14 I demanded a pager from my mother. I told her if I didn’t get one I’d run away to my boyfriend’s house. AGAIN. I’d done this once before and it was a disaster that ended with me being Grounded For Life after the police had to come get me. But that’s a story for a different day…

The pager. Yes. Every cool kid had a pager and how was I supposed to know that a party location had changed or been busted last minute without this trusty devise to keep me connected!? My very EXISTENCE ON THE PLANET EARTH rode on whether or not I had that clear devise sticking out of my tight Calvin Klein jeans (clip out thank you very much, I totally wasn’t a belt loop clipper. Eww.) and I was not at all ashamed to remind my mother incessantly by yelling, slamming my door and telling her I hated her.

FINALLY I got one.

Mom: This pager is for ME to get ahold of you. I don’t care who you give the number to, who pages you, how many times a day it goes off. If I page you, you better call me back in 5 minutes OR BE DEAD.
Me: What?! The field party I’m going to tonight is AT LEAST 20 minutes from a phone. And first I have to find somebody sober enough to drive me there and hope we don’t get lost in the desert on the way.
Mom: *blink*
Me: I’m kidding. Kind of. 10 minutes?
Mom: There is nowhere in this city, county OR STATE that is more than 5 minutes from a phone. And if there is, YOU DON’T NEED TO BE THERE.
Me: But…
Mom: *glare that was so hot it melted icebergs on other continents*
Me: Five minutes. Got it.

I can’t tell you the number of times that Stephanie and I snuck out and I’d get The Page a 2AM and I’d completely ignore it and sneak back in the house around 4ish and hope that she’d taken enough Klonopin to forget she had ever paged me. It really is a miracle that my mother even TALKS to me today. Let alone, be one of my best friends who I confide so much in. Because if I were her, I’d totally hate my guts.

We bought Cassidy a cell phone today. She’ll be 9 in 3 months and is not the first kid in her class to get one. Or even the second or third of fourth. She was “so happy I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight”. We have a list of rules a mile long and she’s perfectly happy to just HAVE the phone.

Me: So we understand? The phone is to call Ben, myself and in an emergency, Nana. If you want to call anybody else, you MUST ask for permission first.
Cassidy: I know. But I can still hold it and play with it and look at it though. IT’S SO COOL, MOM!!!

Every once in awhile I call my mom out of the blue and apologize.

“I’m so sorry about that time that the police brought us home and Stephanie was arrested and I had to wake you up in the middle of the night so the cops could explain to you that we were pulled over in the WORST PART OF TOWN. I think I understand how you felt now.”

“I’m SO SORRY about that time I lied to you about the smell in the house when you came home that Sunday. I didn’t realize that 300 drunk people in the house could SMELL SO BAD and I scrubbed for 24 straight hours and the smell, it just WOULDN’T LEAVE.”

Tommorrow it will be:

“You know all those times I didn’t call you and you sat up and wondered where I was and if I was alive and when you’d ask me about it I’d just yell at you and slam the door in your face? I’M SO SORRY!! Let me buy you lunch and we’ll go shopping for shoes we don’t need and I can grovel all day and tell you over and over again how wonderful you are.”

*Bonus points to those of you old enough to understand the title.

Dear Hollywood Starlets,

Please eat.

I have an almost 9 year old daughter and it kills me every time we see you on the TV and you look emaciated and high. I want to invite you to dinner and cook you a big steak and feed it to you and pat your head and tell you it’s going to be okay. It’s OKAY to eat.

Cassidy has friends at school who already count calories and skip lunch. This started LAST YEAR in THIRD GRADE. These girls worship you. And I know that your first response to this is going to be “I didn’t ASK to be a role model” but please kindly shove those words up your ass. I’m sure they’ll come out during your next colon cleansing and I swear, words are very low cal/low carb.

So you didn’t VERBALLY ask to be a role model. You DID ask me to go see your last movie, buy your posters, your music, your entire clothing line, your perfume, your book, your dolls, your energy drink, your makeup line, and whatever other products you’re being paid to push this week. Little girls like my daughter pay for the alcohol, cocaine and laxatives you swallowed for dinner last night so please, for me, just take a few minutes tomorrow and squeeze a meal in between cigarette breaks and flashing your vagina to cameras. And I don’t mean four grapes. I mean A MEAL, something that contains all the food groups. And no, Redbull is not on any part of the triangle.

A concerned mother,
-Antigone

P.S. - I’d like point out that Miley Cyrus is excluded from this letter. AT LAST, a role model I can stand behind! The music makes me somewhat homicidal when I’m forced to listen to it in the car but still, HOW FREAKING CUTE IS MILEY!?

I talk about the book below but will warn you before is starts.

7:00PM Friday - We got to Barnes and Noble because I decided to go eat dinner with my mom and Cameron. THANK GOD, we got done pretty fast because if we had gotten there any later we’d have been there A LOT later than we were. There was a line to stand in to get a wrist band to determine where you’d be in line at midnight when the book was released.

10:00PM Friday - We got a GOLD E21 band about three hours after we got there. I didn’t thing we’d actually have a book till about 2:00AM based on how long it took JUST to get the wristband.

11:30PM Friday - After going home to see Ben who had been at the track all day, we drove back to B&N to get in line. I find out they are letting in people 50 at time. Gold A(1-50), Gold B(1-50), Gold C(1-50), etc.

12:30AM Saturday - As we are walking in the store, they stop the family in front of us. They have BLUE E(51-100) and are told then need to go to the BLUE E group, which will probably be let in an HOUR from then. Cassidy is ecstatic that she got to be awake when it changed from Friday to Saturday. HA! Kids.

12:45AM Saturday - Walking out the door, book in hand WOOHOO!!!

1:30AM Saturday - After getting Cassidy into bed, Cameron set up for the night and reading 2 Chapters I crawl into bed, exhausted from only about 4 hours of sleep the night before and being awake for 21 hours.

10:00AM Saturday - Get up, take car to stereo shop to fix everything the fucked up the weekend prior, eat breakfast with, drop off Cameron, run to Home Depot with Ben.

12:00PM Saturday - FINALLY SIT DOWN TO START READING. Getting up to take a 15 or so minute break every hour or so.

5:00PM Saturday - Go to eat dinner. Stop at Outback. One out wait, HELL NO! Go to Aqui which is PACKED! NO! Ask Ben if we can just grab Taco Bell so I can get back to reading. He agrees. Love that man.

6:00PM Saturday - Back to reading.

4:30AM Sunday Morning - Finish Book. Take about 15 minuted to lay there in the dark, think, absorb, then drawl into bed.

** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT ** SPOILER ALERT **

I was actually kind of disappointed with this book which made me incredibly sad. It felt to me like it was going well and then she got to the end, was in a hurry, pulled out the *warm fuzzy feeling cookie cutters* and used them to end it.

When Mad Eye was killed in the second chapter I felt a little rush of tension. It set the book up to be a tense, nail biting, fast paced, page turner. It was SO HARD to put the book down but I was exhausted and didn’t want to read it in that state. The next day going in I felt a nervous excitement and maybe that was a mistake because the book just didn’t live up to that initial feeling.

Some people are complaining about the slowness of the almost never ending tent scenes. I actually liked that part. They were kids, age appropriate. Almost waiting and wanting somebody to step in and tell them what to do, where to go, how to fight. Loved the graveyard scene, loved the action at the Malfoy’s, loved the Gringots caper, loved the drama at Lovegoods… And then everything went stale.

I feel like the Hogwarts fight scene was lackluster. Like JKR had a lot more written there and didn’t include it and that was SUCH a mistake. There could have been an epic battle there. And there were some scenes that were funny, but nothing POWERFUL. Professor McGonagall leading the desks into battle, priceless. Neville facing Voldermort the way he did, awesome.

But the final battle between Harry and Voldermort, predictable and cookie cutter. The ‘purgatory’ scene with Harry and Dumbledore I feel could have been either written better, or completely eliminated. Not including Lupin’s death was a so wrong. Lupin should have been given an epic fight scene, possibly trying to save Tonks or in reaction to Tonks being killed. I think that Neville should have gotten to kill Bellatrix but that was a selfish want on my part and Mrs. Weasly coming in to save the day was somewhat comical.

But the epilogue?! What was THAT about?! Worst bit of JKR writing to date. It was so out of place, so forced, and SO obviously there to make sure that you closed the book with the warm fuzzies which I think was a big mistake. It seemed thrown together as an afterthought with some very important players left out. As bad as it was, George should have been included. And Luna? And the NAMES! Really?! Lilly, James and Albus Severus?

I really wish that she hadn’t gone the “safe route”. I wish that she’d put more FEELING into it. She had the chance to make this book something spectacular. Something powerful and memorable and lasting and to me it just seemed like she let it fizzle out because she was too scared to upset her fans…

I’m going MIA till I’m done with Harry Potter. I read the last book in a day so I’m sure it won’t be long. MSNBC already has spoiler warnings on posts and the book isn’t even out on the East Coast yet. Boo to MSNBC. Bad form, people. BAD FORM!

Anyway, The Princess and I are heading to dinner than over to the bookstore in our matching Gryffindor tank tops. GEEKS! HA!

So. I’m turning off twitters and email to the phone and logging of the ‘E’niverse till probably sometime Sunday.

Have a good weekend everybody!

PS - I might log on long enough to post some shots from the book release, but that’ll be it.

For awhile I was really debating what to do come July 20th. I mean, it’s the last book. This is the last time that Cassidy will have the chance to wow her grandkids someday with, “I waited all night in line for that book.” So in the end, I’ve decided that doing it for her alone is worth it.

But I swear to God, if somebody decides to drive through the crowd yelling out who is killed, it will become that time where, “Your great-grandma finally crossed the line to Crazyville and killed somebody over that book. True story. She grabbed him by the neck and actually shoved his own head into his own asshole. Up until then it was just a figure of speech that nobody ever really thought was possible. Not your great-grandma though… she proved them all wrong.”

Plus, I totally bet Ben $10 that I’d make it to midnight.