Thanks for joining the first Hunger Action Friday!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the last week’s Hunger Action Friday by commenting and posting.  We raised $25 dollars (which provides 175 meals!!) towards my VIRTUAL FOOD DRIVE for Feeding America. CLICK HERE to donate and keep it going!!

Here is a thank you message from Feeding America:

Thanks for joining us for our first Hunger Action Friday!

On March 23, we asked you to help us raise awareness about hunger by inviting a friend to join the fight and talking about it on Facebook and Twitter. We were excited to see so many of our Hunger Champions get involved and speak out about hunger—and we were even more thrilled to see a boost in new membership registration over the weekend following Hunger Action Friday.

Even though Hunger Action Friday has passed, you can still help spread the word by telling your friends, family, and coworkers about Feeding America and urging them to join us today!

Here’s what a few Hunger Champions said on Hunger Action Friday:

My husband, Tom, and I collected cans of soup from family, friends, groups, neighbors. Finished with 781 cans for our Mid South Food Bank here in Memphis, TN.  –Barbara I just recruited a new Hunger Advocate to help Feeding America in their effort to fight hunger in America. Are you helping feed America? Get started today! –Cathi As I receive food from our town’s food bank I urge all to donate when you can—without this program I do not know what I would do, Thank-you all for helping fellow Americans! –Laurie Tomorrow is Hunger Action Friday. We’ll be featuring Feeding America on tomorrow’s Food and Farm, noon EDT on America’s Web Radio, brought to you by Feedstuffs FoodLink. –Ray

As you can see, our first Hunger Action Friday was a big success. It got people talking about hunger—and motivated all of us to do something about it.  Thanks again for your support!

Be on the lookout for more details about our next Hunger Action Friday—Friday, April 27!  We’ll let you know what you can do that day to help raise awareness of hunger.  Until then, visit the Hunger Action Center for more ways to get involved.

As always, thank you for your dedication as a Hunger Champion.

March 23rd is Hunger Games and Hunger Action Friday

March 23rd is a Big DAY! The Hunger Games is opening (totes have my tix) and it is also Hunger Action Friday.  Here’s a message from Feeding America on how you can take part.

 Hunger Action Friday is almost here! This Friday, March 23, help us raise awareness of the need to protect our nation’s hungry by recruiting at least one new Feeding America member to get involved as well. Then tell us what you did through email, Twitter (#HungerActionFriday), or by posting on our Wall. Help us spread the word!

Learn more at Feeding America: http://feedingamerica.org/

LIKE Feeding America’s page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FeedingAmerica

DONATE to my Virtual Food Drive to help the 1 in 6 Americans struggling with hunger:  http://help.feedingamerica.org/site/TR?pxfid=3683&pg=fund&fr_id=1140

For my part, I will donate a dollar to my virtual food drive for any comments I receive before midnight tomorrow night, 3/23 !

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Cray Cray Christmas

I bitch. That’s what I do. I’m a complainer, I always have been. Thank God I’m funny about it at least!

My natural state is to focus on what I don’t have instead of all wonderful things in my life. And nothing brings this sniveling streak out in me more than Christmas. Ever since I was a kid and my entire family would cram into my grandmother’s stuffy one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living building where they would reminisce about the wonderful Christmas pasts they used to have pre-me. Big Italian Christmases with homemade sauce, spicy sausage and small-town neighbors coming over for my Great-Grandmother’s famous cookies. My Aunt would often say how, as kids, her and my mother and uncle would run up and down the stairs to work off all the food and make room for more. Because another amazing meal was coming after Midnight Mass.

I would listen to these stories with a palpable Christmas lust. And an anger formed in my tiny Grinch heart because I always felt cheated that I had arrived into this family right when everything went to crap. That my childhood Christmases involved endless car drives back to my mother’s hometown with my parents fighting the whole way, illness, guilt (Catholic and Italian a divine mix) and my Christmas stocking on the cold tile floor of my Grandmother’s tiny nook of a kitchen because that was the only area of the apartment out of sight. My mother tried her best but when the stories of the good ‘ole days, back when Christmas was actually fun, would start up after dinner I would go into my Grandmother’s bathroom (the only room with any privacy) and cry. Or, sometimes, if it wasn’t too frigid I would go out onto the porch shared by her floor. I’d look out at the twinkling lights of the small town that we journeyed to twice a year, but where I wasn’t actually from since we moved away when I was little, and I could never shake the feeling that I’d somehow missed out on my own family. On belonging anywhere.

Every year I say I’m not going to let Christmas make me crazy and every year it does. I could bitch now about all the ridiculous things that have made me want to cram a candy cane down someone’s throat in the last few days and believe me there is enough fodder to make it frakking funny. But I’m not going to do that. There are five days to go in my Cray Cray Season and I am going to write about five people this year who have made my life particularly special.

• MARK FISHER -  I feel like a walking commercial for Mark Fisher Fitness sometimes but the positive impact he has had on my life this year has been extraordinary. At a time when my self-esteem was at an all time low he made me feel like a Super Ninja. The words sad dog, porn star, snatched, Turkish get-up, “my Why”, GLORY and of course NINJA have become a part of my regular vocabulary. Along with improving my overall health, Mark continues to make me feel like a hero of fitness and inspires me to ‘get better!’ every day. I am the Kelly Clarkson of Snatched, having won the first 6-week Snatched before/after picture contest in January. And through donations and by winning back my entry money, Mark also helped WGWaFA raise $600 for Feeding America. I am so proud of him that he has recently opened the Ninja Clubhouse, a full-time location of his very own and I’m so excited to take classes there in 2012! CLICK HERE to check out Mark Fisher Fitness!!
• ROB & JUSTIN -  I am cheating a little bit here with a two for one. But when my sister got married, that’s exactly what I got. Two for one, a brother and a nephew. Two geeks who love Superman and comic books (and also golf and McDonald’s but nobody’s perfect) and have treated me like family from day one. They have visited NYC twice, once just to come see a play that I wrote! We have taken a cruise to Alaska on the ‘BrokenBoat’ and have rocked Halloween. There is a quote from the movie “Say Anything” that I have always loved Don’t be a guy; the world is full of guys. Be a man.   And Rob & Justin are two men who I am very lucky to have in my life.
• My niece. Ever since they pulled my niece out of my sister and dumped her little gooey body on me (if you are ever in the position to watch a cesarean, trust me stay on your side of the curtain. It’s like an eclipse, once you look it’s hard to look away and it burns your eyes!) my world has never been the same. This year I got promoted to Auntie KJ. Whenever I’m talking to my sister on the phone and she tells my niece, “Guess who I’m talking to? It’s Auntie KJ” hearing her little voice pipe back, “I need to see her!” is the greatest thing ever. She is smart, feisty, has her mother’s facial expressions, loves to yell “Poop Feet!” like her Auntie KJ taught her, and is the most fun person I know. She has brought the Christmas spirit back to our family and I am so proud and honored to watch my sister become an amazing mother.
• BILL – He is by far the most random friend I’ve ever had. Our friendship is 90% hilarious emails/texts and 10% fabulous food. It is a rare and magical combination. He checks in on me when he doesn’t hear from me in a while, never gets sick of my complaining (funny or not), is pro-Ice Cream and a supportive fan of my writing and my fundraising efforts.  I long for the day when I no longer have disastrous dating stories to tell Bill but until that day at least his hilarious email retorts make it all worth it (almost…)  Once, when I had my heart so badly broken I could barely function this message from Bill was the first thing to truly make me feel better:

Two more things. These aren’t nice but I’m being honest and I am an inherent pessimist and cynic. That helps me and maybe it will help you. I’ll root for your final act but, of course, have to figure shit like that generally doesn’t happen (as you know). And I think the whole “me, not you” stuff is always bullshit. Especially from men. We’re never trying to figure ourselves out or really analyzing things. We’re just narrow-minded, self-destructive, extremely selfish morons.

• TOMMY – My niece’s half-brother is one of the sweetest young men I have ever had the pleasure to know. In the short time that I knew him, my two favorite memories of Tommy are – the two of us trick or treating around my sister’s neighborhood the year we all dressed up as Peter Pan characters. He was Peter (or rather psycho-Peter which was way cooler because it involved fake blood) and I was Wendy. And dancing at my sister’s wedding. He looked so sweet with his sweaty tousled hair and purple tie. He was so excited to be there, for our families to all be joined and to dance. I never minded less being single at a wedding. There are still moments when I am in church, or on the subway or even at the gym when I have to stop and remind myself that Tommy is no longer with my family. His loss was far too soon but I often see his sweet face in my niece’s smile. He is her angel. Tommy’s kind heart has forever touched my life and my family.  Please take a moment to visit the site for the Memorial Dog Park in his honor.

There are many, many other friends and family who have made my life special this year.  My sincerest thanks to all of you and to all the generous people who have donated to my virtual food drive to help Feeding America fight hunger in our country. CLICK HERE if you would like to DONATE and help me reach my fundraising goal!

Happy Holidays!

Rudolph Wrap-Up

Thank you so much for everyone who played the Rudolph Drinking Game last night!  Here are some of the evening’s top comments:

Gavin -  Santa’s a lot like Steve Jobs.

Ivanna -  Don’t shower with Comet!

Rio -  Clarice, do you remember the lambs? wrong game

Eric -  Blonde toupee on a deer is ok, but a red nose . . . .

Todd – Bumbles also drip-dry, apparently       & Sarah – and comes out dry! it’s a miracle…drink!

Rio – I love to play with Charlie in my box

Gavin -  When does Rudolph kill Aslan?

Brett -  What’ up with the butt shot?

Julia -  That lumberjack is the kind of man I’m looking for. A beardy, big ginger man with a pickaxe!

Julia -  Damn it Rudolph, that nose of yours! Dick!

Todd -  That’s exactly how fast I gain weight during the holidays.

Gavin -  All those umbrellas lead the misfits right back to the trash.

Amanda -  Man, Santa just got the last word too. It is Rudolph’s special.

And a $50 donation has been made to Feeding America in honor of the grand winners of the evening, Todd & Eric with their combo comment:

Todd:  Is the doll only a misfit because she’s a girl?

Eric:  She wasn’t originally a girl.

And  due to my total incomprehension of the time difference between the East and West coast  (aka WEST COAST FAIL) one brave Rudolph player continued to comment to a nearly empty FB house.   So a special $25 donation has been made in the name of Lauralea for her hilarious represent of the West Coast viewing.  My favs are:

Lauralea

• Here son, put on this black face…

• Why is the guest room in King MoonRisers castle so freakin’ small?

• I mean, Rudolph’s parents are missing for a year and all Santa is worried about is that Christmas is coming and he needs Donner to pull his sleigh? Dick!

• How come the Owlfish just gets shoved off the sleigh without an umbrella? I’m calling the SPCA!

Thank you to everyone!  Together we have raised $235 for Feeding America.  That will provide 1645 meals to the 1 in 6 Americans struggling with hunger this holiday season.  Please take a moment to donate to my virtual food drive or pass this link onto friends and family:  http://help.feedingamerica.org/goto/whitegirlwithafatass

And a special shout-out to Adam McGovern with his minute by minute Rudolph Wrap-Up – my top pick:

Minute 21: “Being different is what makes it so grand” — it’s LITERALLY What She Said!

CLICK HERE to check out all of the comments on the Rudolph Drinking Game Facebook page.