Monday, February 21, 2005

"Hand Her a Glass of Wine, and Send Her To Bed"

It's RAINING, it's POURING, I WISH I were SNORING!

I am soooo tired. My kids are in the kitchen "cooking," and it's not even 6 pm, so I CANNOT GO TO BED YET. We had a very fun day at Fisherman's Wharf with some out-of-town guests.

Fisherman's Wharf has a BAD RAP. Locals disdain it. But we had a BLAST! Very kid-friendly place and the parking's pricey but close. The Wharf's easy to overlook if you're a LOCAL SNOB who HATES TOURISTS (translation: just about everyone). We all are SNOBS here in the Bay Area, ya know, who live on "Snob Hill" and party with Danielle Steel and Gavin Newsom.

While slumming at Fisherman's Wharf, we ate at the Sea Lion Cafe and watched the sea lions sunbathe. (Oddly, it was LOVELY in San Francisco but raining in Marin--'tis usually the reverse). Then we went to this AWESOME aquarium with an arched tank so you'd stand on a moving walkway and watch SHARKS and BASS and STURGEON *ZOOM* overhead! You could pet skates, bat rays, and starfish at the end of it all. VERY FUN. ('Member how I said YESTERDAY how my childhood was WARPED and my Chinese luck bar PROVED it? This is my second chance, and I'm becoming well known for being a little... well... IMMATURE.)

I wouldn't touch the sea cucumber, though! My son pointed to some goo at the bottom of the tank and asked the docent, "IS THAT SEA CUCUMBER POOP?" The docent went, "ummm yeah I guess so" and so we all RAN AWAY.

That was a premonition of things to come. As we were taking a photo with the boats and Bay in the background, he WHAMMED his hand onto the ledge to make a point--RIGHT INTO A PUDDLE OF FRESH SEAGULL POO. Ughhhhhhh!

Of course, I was once a Girl Scout. (Well, no, I wasn't really, but I like to INFLATE MY CREDENTIALS.) I am a FRIEND TO ALL, a SISTER to every Girl Scout, and I am ALWAYS prepared. My purse is positively BURSTING with Kleenex, Purell, and alcohol wipes. So after a little spit and scrubbing, his hand was COMPLETELY sanitized.

Believe it or not, something similar has happened to him before. A bird pooped on his head one day at school and in his lunchbox another day. Those damned seagulls getcha every time. I HATE SEAGULLS! They're loud, dirty, and aggressive. But 'tis another post, to be posted another time....

According to superstition, it's LUCKY when a bird poops on your head. But I think they just say that to make you feel better about being covered in bird crap. A bird pooped down my back once at Pac Bell Park. (In case you were wondering, BIRD POOP DOES NOT LAUNDER WELL.) I was out a coat, and the Giants got skunked. And my son was the "lucky" one kid in 300 who gets stuck with Type 1 Diabetes. No one ever said which KIND of luck you get.

Maybe you get better results with SEA CUCUMBER POOP. The aquarium docent looked pretty happy with the way his day was going, so who can say?

And then we made it into our cars, and then it began TO RAIN WITH ABANDON.

Ugh, I do RAMBLE!

I started this post with the intention of giving all you writers out there this link:

The Top Ten Self-Promotion Mistakes.

Authors these days know that they can't depend on their publisher to do all their promotion for them, unless they're Stephen King or my MOST BESTEST MOST GLITZIEST MOSTEST GLAMOROUSEST FRIEND, fellow San Francisco Snob Danielle Steel. And I'll bet even Stevie and Dani do some self-promotion. (At those glitzy cocktail parties on Snob Hill, where I hang out with them and my other good friends Gavin Newsom and Gordon Getty and Willie Brown, eating canapes and drinking champagne.)

But seriously, did you know how you might accidentally promote a losing image? Overstay your welcome? Big mistakes you might make on Amazon? This is definitely worth reading and printing out.

Enjoy your week off! (Or is it just us San Francisco Snobs who have to deal with this invention called "Ski Week"?)