In two weeks, half of the damn internetowebosphere is going to descend on Manhattan for the annual BlogHer conference. Well, the half that I’m not on. I’m going camping with this chick for her birthday. Because nothing says, “I love and value you, and I sure am glad your momma shot you out of her chocha on this day, 24 short years ago” like making that person smell you after 3 days without a shower in the middle of a Texas summer.

If you’re going, you might want to check out Mom 101′s primer for bloggers hitting the big city, and Adam P Knave’s ongoing primer for the big city hitting bloggers. If you’re not going, well, you might want to check out The Retropolitan’s summary of Cloverfield, which is damn near the best virtual tour of New York you’ll ever take. Complete with horrifying monsters and equally horrifying plot developments.

Since I can’t go to the conference, but I still want to take awkward self-portraits with my partners adentro crimen, I’m having a little get-together on Saturday night for anyone and anyone who wants to come. It’s officially the Houston Pre-BlogHer meetup, but I like to call it Mochadad’s birthday party plus. The plus being six months or so. Shut up, everyone likes birthday cake.

Morton’s the Steakhouse has opened up their bar area for us and will be extending their weekday ‘Power Hour’ prices to us for the evening, including $5-$6 select appetizers, $5 select beers, $6 select wines and $7 select martinis (Manhattans totally included. Themes, we stick to’m).

Everyone is welcome to attend, and no, you don’t have to dress like it’s prom…just no hats. They’re kind of weird about hats. You can get directions to Morton’s from the map below, or call 713-659-3700 if you get hopelessly lost. There’s a parking garage on Fannin Street and Valet out front, which is actually pretty reasonably priced.

See you there?

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The first time I got on an airplane, I was an unaccompanied minor. Except that back then, there really wasn’t anything called ‘unaccompanied minors’ and I was accompanied by my older brother and my two very little siblings. Eddie sat way up somewhere else on the plane and I sat with J & J, making sure they ate their Kudos bars and didn’t spill their many airplane-sized cups of soda.

Eventually, they just gave us the cans. You can get anything on an airplane if you whine enough.

I never did fly with an adult in all the times I’ve flown back and forth, Philly to Denver, parent-hopping my way through my childhood. And that never seemed like an issue at all; I mean, it’s getting on a plane, sitting down for three hours and getting off the plane – not rocket science. I was 13 whole years old, I knew everything, and I found flying to be intoxicating.

Now, actually flying the plane is a little bit like rocket science, and since I always loved flying so much, when I had the opportunity, I learned how to fly them myself. I have yet to find anything as exhilarating and freeing and close to godly as piloting an airplane. Maybe I haven’t done much with my life, maybe I’ve never seen the world, maybe I’ve never even seen Detroit, but at least I’ve flown airplanes.

But the problem, for me at least, with knowing how to fly the airplane is that now I know every single thing that can go south, literally, when trying to keep a few tons of metal aloft. Knowing how to do it took the magic out of it for me, and made me the world’s worst airplane passenger. Learning how to drive made me the world’s worst auto passenger, too. Really, ask my husband. My complete inability to sit in the passenger seat and not completely freak the fuck out has almost driven that poor man to the divorce lawyer.

I think that if I’d just not learned how to fly an airplane, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now shivering inside while my husband sits at a gate with our sons, waiting to load them up on a plane and send them to Denver for two weeks. I wouldn’t be going through all the worst case scenarios in my head, if only I didn’t know what they are. I wouldn’t be worrying about whether or not they can get oxygen masks over their faces, or whether or not they will whine their way into cans of Sprite.

Or maybe I would. Maybe I would because those are my babies, and they’re going 1500 miles away from me, where I won’t be there if someone falls off a bike and scrapes their knees, where I can’t come get them if it turns out that they don’t still get along with the best friends they left behind four years ago when we left Denver. That powerless feeling I get every time I buckle my seat belt and put my tray table up for take-off isn’t much different from the powerless feeling I’m getting sending my sons into the world on their own for two weeks.

But I guess the best things in life are the ones that leave you feeling helpless – like motherhood, like launching yourself through clouds and over mountains, like letting go.  I never knew how to see the world until I saw it from a few thousand feet up, and maybe I don’t know how to see my kids for the little men that they are until I see them from a few thousand miles away. I guess it’s time to let them go. I supposed I have to let them go, and trust that I taught them how to put mud on a bee sting and ask politely for sodas and behave even when I’m not watching.

It took me a while, but I learned how to fly. It’s taking me a while, but I’m trying to learn how to give my kids wings, too.

1. Acquire ear infection.

2. Ignore ear infection.

3. Get driven mad by ear infection.

4. Pour half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide down ear.

5. Open and close jaw, letting the peroxide get all the way into brain.

6. Remain seated with head at 90 degree angle from body until all the bubbles stop.

7. Rinse.

8. Repeat.

9. Stick Qtip into ear. Like, all the way in. Like, brain matter in.

10. Swab out perohmygodthereisadeadbuginmyearcanaloxide.

(The cop story’s anti-climatic end.)

The problem with having no depth perception is that you spend the better part of your life with a mascara wand lodged firmly in your left retina.

The problem with being an idiot with no depth perception is that the cops keep calling your house.

See, the thing is, I have this habit of leaving things on the hood of my car. Things like Nathan Jr, things like three cell phones, consecutively. But not like hamsters and cookies, oh no. I have much more creative means of killing them off. Also, things like Gucci purses (yes, it was real and yes, it was fabulous) (was is the key word in that sentence fragment). Now that doesn’t have too much to do with the fact that I can’t see how deep onto the hood of the car I’ve left my kidnapped child, my yet again brand new uninsured phone or my designer purse that I will never be allowed to own, ever again. That just has to do with the fact that I’m really, really dumb.

Also, consistent. Bygones.

Also also, really fucking lucky.

Every time I’ve left my purse on the hood of my car, it’s been pummeled beyond recognition, eventually pushed off to the side of the road, recovered by one of the five good people left on earth, and turned into the local police department. With everything in it. Well, except that one time that I found it before anyone else did and the answer, my friend, really does blow in the wind just like every last dollar I have to my name does. My debit card, however, just lays there and takes it like the little bitch it is.

You can totally use a smashed flat, tire-imprinted credit union debit card at all major retailers. See, you learned something today. You’re welcome.

You cannot, however, use lost glasses anywhere if you never find them again. This is the second time I’ve lost them, and they’re the second pair of glasses I’ve ever owned. That, friends, is called batting a thousand. You wish you were this awesome.

The first time I lost them, I was eight months into being an illegal alien and had no concept of how to use my new Canadian health insurance, so I waited months to get a new pair. This last time I lost them, I was eight months into being deported and had no concept of how to use my new American health insurance, so I’ve waited months to get a new pair.

Well, that and I left my damn wallet on the hood of my car again. With everything I own in it. Including my insurance cards.

But the good news is that there are 6 good people left in the world, and one of them lives somewhere in the middle of Godonlyknowswhere, Texas, and while watering his lawn one fine summer morning, what did he stumble across but a red wallet belonging to yours truly. And he turned it in. To the local police department. With everything in it. Including my insurance cards.

So the police department called my insurance company and my insurance company called me and I called the police department and now all I have to do is drive back up to Godonlyknowswhere, Texas, to claim my slightly soggy and totally recovered wallet.

Except that I can’t see far enough in front of my face to drive to the grocery store, let alone the middle of Texas, and I can’t get new glasses because my insurance card is in my wallet which I left on the hood of my car in the middle of the night in the middle of Texas. And my wallet is in the local police department which also happens to be the local prison and I’m pretty sure it’s against several laws of both God and man to propel more than 1/2 ton of metal, without any measurable amount of vision, any further than you can drag it.

Which isn’t very far. My gym card was in there, too.

I’m sitting in the same bar I’ve sat in every night for the past 6 nights, somewhere in the middle of Los Angeles, all by myself. I always think that these work trips are going to be so totally amazingly awesome, that I’ll get so much done and enjoy the peace and quiet I am constantly begging any deity who will still listen to me* for.

And then I get here and my daughter calls me to tell me she meeds me, momma, and my middle son has emoticon text wars with me and my oldest son tells me every single thing he’s done for me to keep the house together while I’m gone, and I try to go to the gym to sweat out the fact that I undeniably miss them but what I really end up doing it eating all the cheesecake room service will bring me and watching MTV all night, which doesn’t actually have music on it anymore. Yo Yo Yo, MTVdumbteenagers! It just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

And so I fall asleep at one and I wake up at four because my ears are ringing from the silence which is okay because in three days, when I’m home, I’m going to be bitching about how my house is clearly an echo chamber and how, though I do little right in life, I can totally make a mean pair of lungs. Three times over, in fact.

Yes, there is a point, and it is that we’re talking about getting enough rest at my little review blog and it’s the very last post in a series that ends in $100 gift certificate going to one of the commenters, so get going already. I’ll be sitting here trying to figure out what the point of this Bachlorette show is.

*Turns out, there aren’t any. Not even that delicious Flying Spaghetti Monster.