You say it’s my birthday? It is, it is!

Happy day to me! I’m home, in my jammies, working nonstop because The Book is due on a few days, but it’s quiet and cool, and I’m happy.

I woke up to a crawly, happy Baba O’Riley, who crawled all over me, giving me raspberries and clapping his hands, and then I got Freebird dressed and ready for school - normally I’ve left for work by the time they wake up. And then, as Hubby was taking the boys to the car, Freebird said, “Bye bye mommy. You can go write now! Time to write!”

Yup, you are so right, dude.

Yay! Happy birthday to me! I hope your day is marvelous as well!

Here are things you should not do when it is 100 degrees:

1. Be in Manhattan. There, it’s at least 110.
2. Be sick with a migraine.
3. Be sick in Manhattan. It’s 110 degrees and it takes an hour to get home.
4. Be sick in your office bathroom in Manhattan. It’s not 110 degrees there but you’re still an hour from home.
5. Be sick in the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
6. Be sick in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in a garbage can. It’s more than 110 in the garbage can, at least judging from the smell. However, the smell moves the sick part right along at a clipping pace.
7. Be sick in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in a garbage can in 110 degree heat by yourself, still an hour from home.

If you can avoid those seven things, you’ll be in a much better place than I was the past two days. Thank heavens for central air in my house, because I got in bed and didn’t leave for 2 days.

And may the person who invented percocet be gifted with spontaneous chocolate today and ever after.

After sitting on the threshold of the great Democratic National Orgasm as superdelegates jumped one after another into the boat that says “Obama,” I went upstairs to work while Hubby, with much glee, watched election returns. He also went to the grocery store because he is a prince among men, but that’s not the point of this entry.

I was idly clicking through some of the coverage online, and found the greatest comment ever. On the AmericaBlog, in response to an entry that shows a report on MSNBC that Clinton’s camp has said that she won’t accept the VP spot but that Obama better dare not offer the spot to another woman.

*(blinks)*

Anyway. Best comment ever:

She’s like Wayne’s ex-girlfriend in Wayne’s World.

Stacy: You don’t like it? Fine. You know Wayne, if you’re not careful, you’re going to lose me.

Wayne Campbell: I lost you 2 months ago. We broke up. Are you mental?

AWESOME.

ETA: It was only a matter of time before the best of the LOLBamas showed up. Here’s This one cracked me up like whoa.

Watch this.

From the Good News Network

Liveblog Emmys + percocet = I make no guarantees that I’m going to make sense.

Ellen Pompeo is weird looking already but she is currently sporting 3/4ths of a hairstyle. WHY WHY WHY?

I do not as a rule like dresses that are tight all over but fare at the bottom. It’s only nice for your ankles but you look like the opposite of having your pants around your ankles and trying to walk.

This theatre in the round style is just bizarre. If you are wearing a short skirt at the Emmys? You are PRAYING the camera isn’t up your hoohah when you decide to cross your legs.

Katherine Heigl (aka Keigl) just won an Emmy and TOTALLY said “Shit.” HA! And I’m always touched when winners acknowledge the other nominees.

The writers for the various variety shows should be nominated for just the part where they say their names. The Bill Maher feet under the men’s room door thing made me wheeze.

Whoever this guy is who won for the Tony Bennet miniseries, I couldn’t turn the volume down fast enough.

Ali Larter looks like she’d be a lot of fun to have a beer with, but she also looks like after that beer, she gets reallllly doofy.

There is no limit to the depths of my loathing of Ryan Seacrest. The only person I want to smack around more than him is that guy Billy who is like a super-annoying Ryan Seacrest.

RBelle has a fast forward button. I do not. My channel changer is on the same dohickey as the nurse call button, so I can lower the volume and summon drugs but I can’t fast foward.

There’s more!

1. I forgot how nice it is to have lunch and shoot the breeze with someone who knows you really well, and even if you don’t see each other all the time, you can still hang out in person like you do it all the time.

2. Really good pizza? IS REALLY REALLY GOOD.

3. A beautiful day in NYC? Awesome. If I hadn’t left early on Friday for le Ultrasound du 20 weeks, I’d leave early and shop my brains out. And really? I’m not one for shopping, especially when standing up for 45 minutes means I better find the ladies room STAT.

(That’s one thing about NYC by which I cannot abide: the scarcity of easy-to-find bathrooms that are (a) open to the public and (b) bathrooms you’d actually deign to use. I go out on the street and in the back of my mind there’s a lone gps signal receiving no feedback asking, “Where’s the nearest bathroom? Where’s the nearest bathroom?” It’s like trying to find the exit nearest to your seat on the airplane and knowing there isn’t one, only instead of an exit it’s an “exit.")

4. I had the 20 Week Ultrasound, which I LOVE, on Friday afternoon, and it was a hoot and a half. Thumb sucking! Posing for pictures! Attempts at 3-d scans with no success. And a very very happy, healthy baby shimmying around in there, showing off legs and arms and hands and feet (gotta make sure that there are 5 fingers and 5 toes per hand/foot, since polydactyly runs in my family), and an adorable little baby profile. Of course no revelations of gender, sorry to say.  But oh, how I love the 20 week extended visit.

5. Slightly bad news with a slightly happy twist at the end: my placenta has parked itself a liiiittle too close to my cervix. While it won’t move toward it and cover the cervix up, if it doesn’t move back it’s something to monitor, since it could make a delivery through the Valley of my Lotus Blossom a bit of a challenge (not that I have problem with having a c-section. I don’t care if the baby has to come out my sinus cavity, so long as there’s a healthy baby and a healthy mom at the end). Happy twist at the end? I’ll have another ultrasound at 28 weeks to double check how the internal baby blanket is and where it is, so I will have another visit to say hi to Baba O’Riley.

6. I’m now able to move fully into my maternity wardrobe since it’s finally consistently in the 60s, and I have pieces to layer with. I do need some maternity pants, though, which would be a nice thing to have. Thankfully, I have a gift card for Motherhood, home of the Most Inflexible Return Policy Ever, so I can shop for pants.

7. On a non-mommy, non-pregnancy, non-maternity front, Hubby and I had another one of our “check in with our financial long-range plan” chats, mostly because I was nursing weird notions to pack up and move to Montana, and it’s very comforting to be on the same page with someone as far as immediate money and long term money are concerned.

8. I do need to get cracking on my five-year goals, though. Wonder if i should make a list: what’s the five year goal list? I’ll have to ponder that - and ponder if I want to share it! Telling the internet about stuff like that makes me feel like I left the house without pants on. *checks ass* I do have pants on right now. Phew. 

I saw the Oprah on “The Secret,” which is a bestseller to the best of my knowledge judging solely by the number of people I see reading it on the subway.

Ever since I started taking yoga (which I have off and on for years), I’ve been both fascinated by the devotion and enthusiasm some of the teachers have had for concepts that revolve around terms like “energy” and “universe” and “karma” and “dharma” and “yer momma.” Ok, not that last one.

I figured most of the time I’d get a good stretch out of classes, my back wouldn’t hurt and I’d feel like I used to back in high school when I took ballet two or three times a week. I didn’t anticipate feeling as really you-have-no-idea freaking good as I did, especially when I took yoga twice a week after work in NYC. Not that that is an option any longer, but I do try to find yoga classes near me that fit my schedule ("my schedule” being tempered with a Very Healthy Dose of Laziness).

So everyone who is reading The Secret, in a nutshell, is taking a crash course - as far as I can tell - in dharma, karma, and the Law of Attraction. This isn’t a surprise, really, since The Secret was inspired by a book that takes its inspiration from Hindu teachings.

The basic instruction on “the Secret” that I’ve found reminds me very heavily of the ideas that were taught by two of my past yoga teachers: that everything you do, think, and say creates a palpable effect on the world around you, and the wish that all beings, everywhere, be happy and free.

The problem I have with the connect of “attraction,” as in “The Law of,” is that there’s an inherent element of narcissism, that you use this law for self-gain and personal acquisition, and I think that misses a good portion of the point of the whole idea. If you visualize what it is that you want for yourself, you’ll get it. Makes sense, but why should the focus be on what the individual wants and needs?

That said, one thing I do like about the whole Secret thing is that blame and responsibility are not the same thing. You aren’t to blame for your problems, but you can be responsible for changing your circumstances. In fact, you’re the only one who can effectively make the change you want. So if you are, say, unhappy, and you want to find happiness for yourself, you’re the only one who can do that.

Of course, the balance of the self-awareness taught in yoga is tempered with an awareness of ones place in a large and complex universe filled with a LOT of other beings as well. You are important, but You are also one of many, many, many. It’s not all about you, but you are important.

It can get very cheezy to go on and on about it, and if I were reading some of the things I think about, I’d totally roll my eyes and snort. But I can’t reject outright the people who openly embrace the ideas of “the Secret” and who embrace yogic practices and pursuit of meditation and tranquility, because I know that they’re on to something.

Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript of a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.

-Rumi