Titles of Romantic Comedies If They Were Set in Austin in the Summer

Not So Pretty Woman

The Way We Were When I Wasn't Sweating Every Goddamn Minute

My Best Friend's Wedding Where I Got Heatstroke

Sleepless in Seattle, Bloated in Austin

Some Like It Hot And That's Why They Are In Asylums

My Big Fat Greek Ass Is Stuck to My Leather Car Seats

When Harry Met Sally She Was Propositioning the A/C Repairman

The Dangers of Leaving the House

Yesterday I went to a downtown coffee shop to write. Of course, by "write", I mean "nurse a $5.65 non-fat latte for 3 hours while eavesdropping on the people nearby who were having a whisper fight about his seeming inability to stay away from someone named 'that fat, fucking ex-girlfriend of yours'". It was just like a soap opera, only with ugly people and great dialogue.

They soon left to either have make-up sex or file mutual restraining orders, leaving me with nothing else to do but write. And by "write", I mean "log on to the free Wi-Fi and gleefully click on the"Hot Hollywood Gossip" link". Now first, let me say that my laptop screen is very large. And that I don't consider Rumer Willis, daughter of Demi and Bruce, exactly "Hollywood" or "hot". So when my screen was suddenly filled with a rather life-like "Par-Tay Pic!" of her holding a giant, inflated condom up to her mouth, I wasn't very impressed. The table full of elderly women next to me holding their Bible study, even less so.

Today I'm writing in my closet.

Better Names for My Kids' Slip 'n Slide

Slip 'n Cry

Slip 'n Whine

Slip 'n Run Up The Water Bill

Slip 'n Bruise

Slip 'n Get Into A Fistfight With Brother

Slip 'n Chafe

Slip 'n Trip A Pissed Off Mommy

Slip 'n Rip

Slip 'n That's It, This Damn Thing's Going Back To Target For A Full Refund

Tonight on the Lifetime Movie Network for Women

8:00 p.m. - "Wife, Politician, Betrayer"

While a risk-taking Congresswoman (Judith Light) fights to rescue her bi-racial son from an evil, deaf nurse (Valerie Bertinelli) who stole him from the hospital, her husband (Rick Schroeder) must save their their town from a devastating swarm of radioactive grasshoppers. And then they all get cancer.

10:00 p.m. - "Attacked at the Gym: The Gloria Holstein Story"

When Gloria Holstein (Tori Spelling) joins a gym to lose the 150 pounds she gained during her nasty divorce from cheating ex-husband Tom (Rick Schroeder), little does she know her Beginners Spinning class will soon turn deadly when sexy personal trainer Zax (Richard Grieco) has an attack of low blood sugar and starts tying sweaty women to the elliptical machines with their own iPod cords. Will Gloria's untoned biceps be strong enough to fight him off? Will her heart rate get too high and cause chest pains? Or will she give in to her maddening desires and lustily spot reduce her thunder thighs on the Pilates apparatuses with Zax?

12:00 a.m. - "Seduced by Seductive Seduction"

Perfect wife Melissa Gilbert (Melissa Gilbert) thinks she has the perfect husband in Rick (Rick Schroeder). But when best friend Valerie Bertinelli (Tiffany-Amber Thiessen) posts an amateur porn video of herself shaving Rick's private parts on MySpace, Melissa's perfect life instantly spirals out of control. Suddenly, she loses her newborn baby in the Banana Republic Men's section, her blind daughter becomes a Croatian prostitute and her dog is diagnosed with herpes. But can a chance encounter with high school sweetheart Jake (Rick Schroeder) restore her heart and save her from saving herself? Only Melissa knows.

2:15 a.m. Paid Programming

Yeah? Well, Foomomchoo!

The cool women at the very funny www.foomomchoo.com interviewed me last week for their weekly podcast. I'm not that exciting, but the rest of their site has lots of hilarious "questionable advice from women on the edge". If you do listen, Nellie & Sheilah are the ones with the sexy, deep voices that sound like Kathleen Turner's before she became a bloated alcoholic. I'm the one that sounds like Dakota Fanning before she became a bloated alcoholic.

A List of What Are Apparently The Only Eight Punchlines Preschoolers Use for Their Jokes

To Get to the Side Over There On the Other Side!

Wait...I Need to Start Over.

Because He Was A Poopypants!

I Don't Remember.

Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana!?

Because He Was A Poopypants Who Fell in the Toilet!

I Forgot This Part.

Underwears!

The Mouth Hole

Help! Help! Chris! Can you come downstairs? Hurry!

OK, I'm here. What's the emergency?

You won't believe this, but I just saw a big, black hole on the roof of Jack's mouth! It's the size of a pencil eraser! I'm freaking out!

What? Let me look. Jack, open your mouth. Open your mouth. OPEN YOUR MOUTH!

Open your mouth for daddy, Jack! Open up! Like this! See how mommy's doing it? OPEN!! Say "ahhh"! Say "ahhh"! OPEN UP YOUR MOUTH NOW! IT'S A MEDICAL EMERGENCY!

Knock it off, House. It's open already.

Good job, Jack! Oh, my poor, poor baby!

Hmm... OK, I think I see something.

Oh, my God, I was right! What is it? Is it a tumor? A hole? It IS a hole! I knew it! How the hell did he get a hole on the roof of his mouth? Has he been eating chemicals? Did he drink the Febreze? Because that stuff kind of smells appetizing, don't you think? It's like fruit cake in a spray! In fact, sometimes I even think about licking the couch after I've sprayed it, but only when I have low blood sugar and...do you think it's congenital? Do you think it's something his dentist should have noticed? This is horrible! We should call 911. Should we call 911? Let's call 911. No! Let's just go directly to the ER. We can take my car--I just got gas, which by the way, was $3.00 a damn gallon, can you believe...suitcase. I should take a suitcase, right? Do you think this means he needs surgery? Does it mean he has a disease? Does it mean he can spit out of his nose, because at least that'd get him on TV, well, reality TV, but...

Are you done?

What do you mean, am I done? Of course I'm not "done". Our BABY, our precious little 3 1/2 year old BABY has...

Broccoli.

Um, what?

It was broccoli. On the roof of his mouth. And now, it's gone. It's a frickin' medical miracle. In fact, why don't you call CNN and tell them all about it. Ask for Wolf Blitzer.

Oh. Ha! That's funny, isn't it?

Not really.

OK, it's not. But look on the bright side--at least we know he's eating his vegetables! Right? Right? Where are you going?

Upstairs. I think I saw a red mark on the cat. Looks like scurvy.

Oh, come on. Just leave me...wait. Did you say "scurvy"?

Just Sexier With "Que"

Barbarique

Syncophantique

Semi-Automatique

Completely Psycotique

Heavy-Duty Narcotique

Company Picnique

Katie Courique

The Philly Fanatique

A Mother of Two Little Boys Has a Phone Conversation With Another Mother of Two Little Boys

Hi, it’s me. (LOUD SCREAMING IN BACKGROUND)

Hi. (LOUD SCREAMING IN BACKGROUND) How are you?

What? (EVEN LOUDER SCREAMING IN BACKGROUND)

That’s good. Hold on…GET YOUR HANDS OFF YOUR BROTHER! NOW!

Listen, I just wanted to…FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS ON YOUR SHORTS?

Me, too.

You too what?

What?

CAN'T YOU TWO SEE I'M ON THE PHONE? JUST LEAVE ME ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES! IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?

Alright, I just shut myself in the closet, so now I can talk. Oh, this is much better. So did you hear that... (LOUD BANGING ON THE DOOR) Crap! How'd they find me so damn fast? What, does Toys 'R Us sell frickin' satellite tracking systems now?

I just have a second, but I wanted to tell you that…

CAN’T YOU SEE MOMMY'S IN THE CLOSET? I'LL BE...WHAT? BLEEDING WHERE? OK, I’LL BE THERE IN A SECOND. I SAID I'D BE THERE IN A SECOND! JUST PUT SOME PRESSURE ON IT!

Do you have to go?

Blue.

What? I didn't... (LOUD CRASH IN BACKGROUND FOLLOWED BY HYSTERICAL CRYING)

What?

It’s crazy here. I have to…

It’s an asylum here. I'll…

CLICK.

Neighborhood Watch

My annoying neighbors are moving. Heading off to parts unknown. Slippin' out the back Jack and makin' a new plan Stan. And as I watch them pack up their sticky belongings, I can't wait for them to leave. But I sure will miss them.

They sold their house in a mere two weeks, advertising it as a “Tuscan Delight!” Of course, the closest that house has ever come to resembling an Italian villa was probably when the 12 year-old genius living there smeared pizza on the wall, but I guess it wouldn’t have sold as quickly being touted as a "Cat Piss Charmer!" or a "Weedy Wonderland!". Those realtors know what they’re doing.

When we moved next door to these people two years ago, I eagerly waited for them to welcome us to the neighborhood. I’m still waiting. Sure, I could have gone over there and introduced myself, but doesn’t etiquette say they should make the first move? Besides, then I couldn’t have launched my one-sided grudge match against them. When the suburbs don’t offer enough drama, offer some of your own, baby.

Giving them official nemesis status meant I was free to spy on them as often as I liked. I called this my “daily surveillance”. My husband called it my “weirdly paranoid personality disorder that compelled me to peep through the blinds like a junkie on the run”. Same thing, really. I figured that since they didn’t take five minutes to come over and tell me about themselves, I was entitled to learn about them on my own. And learn about them I did. For example, I learned that when the husband is outside in their pool, which is eye level to our kitchen window, he likes to whip it out like a firehose and pee in the bushes. Which are also eye level to our kitchen window. By the end of last summer, I’d seen his penis so often, I could probably pick it out of a police line-up were it some day involved in a crime. And let’s just say, it’s a distinct possibility. That thing looks like it’s got plans.

One day, while surveilling/peeping out the side window, I saw the aforementioned 12 year-old genius and his equally bright toady friends lighting things on fire. On their wooden deck. Now, assuming they were probably kicked out of the Boy Scouts for insubordination, wouldn’t they still know this was a bad idea? I mean, even cavemen knew “flame plus wood equal three-alarm fire” and their brains were the size of kiwi fruit. But as I stood there waiting for the deck to go up in flames like a Viking funeral pyre, I started to admire the little cretins. After all, they weren’t folding laundry and defrosting organic chicken. They were livin’, man. Flirtin’ with that bitch named disaster. “Who cares if we get sent to a quasi-legal boot camp for at-risk teens,” they sneered. “These cans of Lysol and Aquanet are gonna burn, dude. Burrrnnnn!!!”

When this incident ended rather anti-climatically without a visit from an emergency crew, I waited eagerly for one of the 12 year-old’s other moronic schemes to pay off in sirens. When none did, my interest in the anti-neighbors finally started to wane a bit. Alas, grudge matches, like love affairs, quickly grow stale and die when the possibility of serious grave injury wears off. And so, after months of no real action, I stopped caring about what they were doing and gave up my daily viewings. Now these people were no longer my wildly intriguing arch enemies bent on neighborhood domination. Rather, just a slightly annoying chubby family who lived in a badly painted house and didn’t put their trash cans away in a timely manner. Which didn’t make them that much different from anyone else on the block.

I admit the flame still flickered on occasion. Like the day they weren't home and five muscular African-American men had a hip-hop party in their pool. Or the night the genius and his toadies were on our lawn at 2 a.m. loudly calling each other "Ass Clown" and wrestling like five year-old girls. But for the most part, the thrill was gone.

Then I saw their “For Sale” sign go up two weeks ago and suddenly, all the old feelings came rushing back. I was outraged. Hurt. They were leaving me? Didn’t they know how much I cared about them? Didn’t they know how much I needed their pseudo white trash freakiness in my life? Who was going to supply me with amusing stories I could tell my friends now? The fricking honor student across the street?

But then I realized that maybe the real reason they were moving wasn't because the Homeowner's Association finally forced them out for violating more deed restrictions than the Clampetts. Maybe it was because they knew that leaving was the best thing for all of us. After all, if there's one thing the royal family of Dysfunction Junction must truly believe, it's "get your ass out while the ass gettin' out's good". Or at least that's what the bumper sticker on their Hummer says.

In just a few weeks, an unlicensed moving van will show up to carry my nemeses to an unsuspecting planned community in another part of town. I’ll watch them go with a sad, sentimental smile on my face and send them off with a small wave good-bye. Then I’ll go inside my house and wait for the new neighbors to arrive. And when they do, I know I should go over there and welcome them to the neighborhood. But already, I know I won't. After all, where's the drama in that?