Final MILFL Post - The Mom Part

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MILFL Series 4: It Might Be Aspergers

Last week I posted about cockblocking yourself from connection. I think it's a real thing. I think it's universal, and I think it can happen with any number of nuanced variations on the theme of not believing you're worthy of that connection. Whether we're sabotaging a good thing because we don't think we deserve it or compromising our identity by being who we think others want us to be, we suck at connecting with others because we are stuck in this paralyzing fear of being truly and deeply seen. That kind of vulnerability opens us up to the risk of being deeply hurt. Again. Because we're all damaged—come on guys, we wouldn't inflict these toxic relating patterns on other people for the fun of it (unless you're a sociopath. Then you probably wouldn't be reading this blog that's always about feelings and shit). They're risk-management strategies.

Except they end up being like risk-avoidance strategies. And they really do preclude us from having the experiences of love and belonging that drive our lives and make it worth it.

Last weekend I was invited to drinks by a dude I'd met once before while out with friends—interestingly enough, the night I had decided going home was better than going big, which you can read about here. I cross-checked with our mutual facebook friend to see if there were any obviously sociopathic red flags about him. My moderately reliable source couldn't name any, so we met up at a bar near the university campus. When he showed up in a button down shirt, I thought "Oh fuck. He thinks this is a date."

We had a good hour's worth of predicable conversation, from get-to-know you chat and friendly banter to who do we both know in our town and the occasional comment on the local political climate's woes. Socially, nothing was out of the ordinary.

Now, this is a guy who does stand-up comedy on the side. If you haven't had the pleasure of socially interacting much with comedians, you may not know (but could probably guess) that to most of them, everyone's an audience. So, not unexpectedly, this guy starts half telling me about, half performing some of the "bits he's working on."

And one of them happens to be about the time in his life when he shat in boxes in his back yard.

Um. Yes. I heard all the gruesome details, beginning with the water in his apartment getting shut off after he didn't pay the bill. Then came his brilliant idea to put kitty litter in his toilet after he took the-dump-that-wouldn't-flush. I also got to hear how he cut out the straps of the bottom of a lawn chair to fashion a rudimentary commode he utilized in his backyard. Which was fence-less.

Our drinks out ended soon after he told me that story, but not before he asked me to feel a lump on his back; he said he often pondered whether it was tumorous. I asked him if he had Asperger's. I told him it's okay if he did, I'd be cool with that. He said, "What's that? I don't think so." I explained it's where people get real awkward in social situations, and how sometimes people with Asperger's say inappropriate things. He said he didn't have it.

It's true that you never know how much comedic material is exaggerated for effect, and to his credit, he texted me a few days later and apologized for not being on his best game. Still, I can't but be struck by how effectively this guy cockblocked himself within 90 minutes. The really interesting thing is, he disclosed to me that it's essentially a huge part of his performance strategy too. He goes up and makes several horrifically offensive jokes in the first few minutes, the audience assumes he's an asshole, and then he works the rest of his material in character, as an asshole. He says it works for him, to manage on-stage jitters.

Offstage, however, I didn't see how it was working for him. Not that he was an asshole, per se, but all that poo talk did me in for any chance of a second social engagement. Which I politely texted him upon receipt of a string of messages from him over the course of the following week, in the last of which he demanded an answer to whether I'd give it another go.

And because I was quite proud of myself for (what I figured to be) a civil and benignly honest answer to his request to hang out again, I did not anticipate the force of the vulnerability hangover with which he came at me a few days later. With a drunken late-night voice mail and a barrage of facebook messages (followed by a de-friending) he denounced me as immature and stupid, as well as a coward for not telling him to his face why I wasn't interested in seeing him again (as if his shitting in boxes in his backyard and then telling me about it wasn't an acceptable reason) after loudly affirming his own awesomeness, special person-hood, and value as a potential person in my life.

I was honestly surprised by the violence of his reaction; it indicated that maybe he had on some level, made himself vulnerable to me, at least insofar as his ability to do so. And so when I said "Thanks, but no thanks," something snapped. I'm guessing that on some level the experience was excruciating for him (nobody enjoys rejection), and that he took my kibosh on future hangouts deeply personally; somehow maybe he let part of his sense of self-worth get wound up around my interest in him. Or maybe it's that he sincerely believes he's 100% deserving of acceptance, and anyone who fails to embrace his box shitting doesn't meet his standards.

Or maybe he has Asperger's. I'm not sure.*
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But failed dating exploits and other people's vulnerability and rejection issues are not the point of this blog series. The point is to figure out how I can tack the L onto being a MILF for myself. And as entertaining as it may be to occasionally dissect other people's emotional problems, blogging about them doesn't make me loveable.

Okay, so we're back to square 1: What does make someone loveable? In this most recent anecdote, I really was sincerely proud of myself for the way I had manage to resolve this dude's asking me to go out again. I thought I had been polite and direct, which was a huge improvement for me. Because throughout my life, I've sucked at rejecting people. I would either vanish entirely, with the person interested in me throwing voicemails or emails into a black hole from which nothing ever returned, or I would just not reject them altogether. I've always felt terrible guilt around rejecting others, especially guys who were into me. To the point where I would compromise my own feelings in the situation trying to protect theirs. It probably explains a lot about my past relationship patterns, and why I've said "yes" to a whole bunch of shit that I didn't really want. And though I've realized that that's not being kind to myself at all, saying "yes" when you mean "no" is a hundred times shittier for other party, because when you're finally honest that you're not acting with integrity and doing what you want for your life, you have to bail out. And what you bailed out on was something that someone else really did want. (Again, I'm so sorry).

So again we're back to the L-ability being linked with having the courage to live from your whole heart, just like my Ted Talk adopted sensei says. And I wager that for that kind of courage to blossom, you got to have a whole lot of faith in yourself, and again, believe you're worth treating yourself right.

*Impairment in social interaction is only one indicator of Asperger's Syndrome. For more information on Asperger's or the autism spectrum, I recommend this site for an introductory look from a parent's perspective.
Toilet image from inspectapedia.com
Post edited by SELF.

MILFL Series 3: GO BIG OR GO HOME (I went home)

I sucked at being a MILF this week.

An illustrative example: 

One afternoon I walked into Best Buy—the superstore for gagdets and other first-world shit you don't need—looking moderately cute and ready to get my flirt on with some store associates.

It was a spectacular failure.

My mission's strategic planning was deeply flawed from the start, since I walked in with my father and my child. "No matter," I think to myself. "I've got curves and can talk boys up pretty well. I can do this MILF stuff." After several minutes of playful chat-up with Victor, an attractive cell phone sales associate, I felt like I was in good territory. Even better, my father had gone on a walk around the store with my kiddo to keep her happy. Things were looking up. I wasn't expecting a pick-up or a phone number, just that warm bubbly feeling of successful mutual flirtation. I was beginning to think that I may even be able to pull it off despite the family accessories.

I had been talked into a sales transaction, and my flirty Best-Buy helper had just requested payment, "And that's fifty dollars even." Great. Here you...oh shit. Where's my wallet? I double check my purse: yeah, there are my keys, some diapers, tiny sunglasses, some old Kix, a few kleenex full of babysnot, and absofuckinglutely no wallet.

I become more acutely aware of the queue of irritable and impatient customers forming behind me. At this point I also remember that my family, who had heretofore been a minor hindrance in my witty conversational parries, were nowhere to be seen. My only recourse is to call my father to locate them in the store and ask him, out loud, to come bail me out.

As my dad swipes his credit card through the electronic card reader, my shame is complete. Utter MILF failure.

My last MILFL post was about confidence. My experience at Worst Buy was certainly no reflection of such confidence. Neither really was the following anecdote, but stay with me, there's a point to all this.

I recently went out with a dude I knew peripherally years ago who randomly hit me up for a drink. We didn't know each other well enough to be genuinely interested in each other, so getting drinks was less of a date and more about spending a few more hours in the same 6 foot radius to determine whether we could be interested in each other. We met with this guy's friends at a smoky dive because bottled domestics were only $1.

One dollar beer. That should have been my first clue that the evening would be less than stellar. One dollar beer is indicative of cheap dives where the patrons come to get drunk, and get drunk quickly and cheaply. I braved it out for another hour or so, but the guy I had arrived with just seemed bored. Maybe he thought ennui was cool. It kind of made him seem like an ass. As the clock crept up on 11pm, I had lost interest in the whole affair. It was glaringly obvious that the conversation wasn't going to be worth my time, and I was still at least several hours away from any good action with this guy, and frankly, that effort was beginning to look very not-worth-it. I excused myself to the restroom, having $2 worth of piss poor bottled beer in my bladder.

After vigorous hand-washing with inadequate smelling soap, followed by my own personal application of anti-bacterial hand-gel hanging from my key chain (a real dive, this place was), I go to head back to our table, when on the inside of the bathroom door, I see this:

And I thought: yes, yes I am. Too beautiful for this half-assed social ritual in which the players are bored and lazy and more concerned about cheap beer and a six-foot radius than actually learning anything valuable or genuine about each other.

So I went home to my kid. I had to shower before snuggling her since I was soaked in cigarette smoke, but I felt so great for having left, because I finally believe

I am worth it. I'm worth more than cheap beers and apathetic conversation and a potential sweaty midnight groping session. Maybe that's not exactly confidence, in the strict definition of the word, but I'm finding that when you have the courage to treat yourself kindly, you won't let anyone else treat you otherwise. Similar to the sabotaging dicks of last week's post, the ones we become when we can't quite believe we deserve to be loved, being willing to compromise your own sense of self-worth in order to be liked makes you a pushover, not a MILFL.

I think these dysfunctional relating patterns (of dicks and pushovers) all come from the same place. Maybe, like this lady says, it comes from somewhere called the swampland of the soul. I have a hunch it has to do with not believing we're enough, and when we don't believe we're enough, how can anyone else? Then you end up cock-blocking yourself from authentic love and connection.

But I fully believe there's something universal about this self-cock-blocking of authentic connection. We do it. We all do it. If you're feeling brave, send me your anecdotes and stories of your own experimenting with attempts to be L-able, and what you have learned from them.

Photo By Libby Williams, whose blog may be found here. Posts are edited by SELF.

MILFL Part II:Lessons in Confidence: Or, How I Pulled a 21 Year Old

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Musings on How to Be a MILFL (Mother I'd Like to Fuck...and Love) Part I

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Tips on Living in Poverty # 5 Haggling and showering

Haggle. On everything, everywhere. Okay, maybe this tip won't work at box-stores and corporate chains, but you can haggle anywhere that's locally owned and with a moderate chance of successfully lowering the price of your goods or services. Haggling is not like bidding on Ebay (although you can often find stuff cheaper there than at retail prices); haggling is an art. I haven't mastered it yet, only dabbled, but the place I started haggling most successfully is with my medical bills. Yes. I said that. Doesn't matter if you have insurance or not, or how large or small the bill is. If you flash cash money around, more often than not, your medical provider will take however much it is and zero your balance.

Here's why: every doctor's offices and hospital sends out 1,000,000 bills every year. About 320 of them get paid. Insurance companies do their thing, and then saddle you with the remainder of the invoice. But what they're not telling you is that they'll take as little as 25% of the invoice if you can fork over the cold, hard cash (or check. Possibly Krugerrands) up front. Have a $5,000 hospital bill? Offer $2,300 cash (no tips on how to legally obtain the $2,300, sorry). It's in the hospital's interest to snatch it up immediately, rather than set up a payment plan with you for $10 or $25 a month for the next twenty five hundred years. "YES WE'LL TAKE YOUR MONEY NOW rather than gamble that you'll ever be able to pay-in-full on that piss poor payment plan." Medical care is expensive shit, and yeah they're going to bill you for all they can, and rightly so - they got bills to pay too. But how many times have you just unthinkingly returned that little detachable slip with your credit card number written in the boxes for the five payments of $190? Once is too many.

Medical debt may affect your credit, but since it can never go into collections, medical providers can be screwed if you just never pay. (You should pay. Always pay something.)  So they're actually pretty stoked when you offer cash. My first was with a piddly bill; some of my outrageously enjoyable gynecological procedures this year weren't covered by my insurance. I got a bill for $160. I took them a $100 bill and said "can we call it even?" They never blinked an eye. Shit, I should have offered $60.

***

Showering: change it up. Cold showers apparently save energy and make you prettier than hot showers. I guess saving energy is saving money. Also, you could try my method of going a couple days in between showering or hair-washing. Lately I'm wondering how time/energy/money saving that is, though. When I find myself tasked with cleaning my body after five days that spanned activities such as exercising, getting baby pee/vomit/poo/snot on me, volunteering at this awesome horse ranch,* and cooking,  I spend a hell of a lot more time scrubbing to make sure I'm squeaky clean, as opposed to when I shower everyday: then it's more of a half-assed soapy rinse. I guess before I promote this tip, I should experiment and compare the combined times of my showers across two weeks: one week of showering everyday, versus another week of showering twice, and see which method actually saves time. But that sounds like a hell of a lot of effort.
* beware super cheesy promo youtube link

The dubious validity of the showering conversation as viable tip on living well in poverty tells me it's about time to end this series.

Comic courtesy of  Jen Heller Meservey

Tips on Living in Poverty #4House hold items + merchandise

Today I'm sharing some of the good shit I learned about how to live in poverty growing up. Which I did. I was the kid in school from that povertous family who qualified for free/reduced lunch but were a little too proud to use it if it wasn't absolutely necessary. My mother came from money (quite a bit of it) and grew up a favored member of society in small town deep South, but married into my dad's true blue collar family and his unambitious career and has been somewhat heartbroken about our poverty ever since. Her family didn't approve of her po' boy choice, and with a combination of other factors, left us no money. So growing up we were poor. And my mother and father did an amazing job of making household things last, getting good quality at better prices, and teaching the payoffs of frugality and fiscal responsibility. Today's gems include:

• Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. I can't tell you how many times I came to my mom as a kid with a lotion bottle saying it was empty, and she did some magic* and tada, I had 7 or 8 applications more. *Practical tips: cutting the top off lotion bottles (or in half) and scooping out all the juice until it's squeaky clean; or always taking complimentary travel size products from hotels, and then actually using them at home until they're entirely gone (see first tip above to maximize lotion usage); or saving ALL leftover foods, no matter what portion size, and eating them. All. (before they went bad, most of the time).
   
• Second-hand everything you can (not mattresses or car seats). Garage sales, resale shops, craigslist, whatever. Retail prices suck balls. Furniture and clothes last mostly forever and are pumped into the market at a deluging rate. Plus, then when you buy those awesome designer jeans for $35 you're not obligated to feel guilty about your direct purchase contributing to the shitty labor conditions in Bangladesh where people are literally dying, sandblasting your pair of jeans . You're capitalizing on someone else's contribution. Which I think is just good sense. Or, for even better sense, buy a non-designer pair of jeans for $10 and take the other $25 and invest in something worthwhile. Like dinner with your kid. Or planting a tree. Or world peace.
  
  
• Make the library your best friend: Libraries nowadays have books, TV shows and movies on blue-rays, DVDs, Educational materials, stuffed animals and story-times and reading nooks for kids, & internet access ALL for free as well as cheap printing rates. The cool libraries, like the one in Salt Lake City, have cafes, comic book shops, and writing centers that help with resumes and shit. The only thing that's missing is a bar. Although, as I type this, it maybe seems the cool libraries aren't as helpful for your budget if you're tempted to impulse buy at cafes and bars.Whatever. Maybe you can panhandle outside for a cup of coffee. Stuart recommends it.
  
  
• Compromise on your morals around responsible consumerism wherever you can live with it. Ok, I kid. Mostly. But seriously, when you're poor, you buy shit from WalMart, even when you know they're evil and killing the planet.*
  
  *No vouches for the reliability of information in this link. I didn't even read it. I simply thought, "Sure, Wikipedia probably has decently accurate crap on this subject." Mostly because I had friends who admitted that they read Wikipedia rather than text books and successfully graduated from medical school.
  
  

Thanks for the lifetime of advice on how to be kind to my pocketbook, mom & dad. It's gotten me this far in life.

Next time: Haggling. It's still a real thing.

All photos are linked to their originating web publication. 

Tips on Living in Poverty #3: Find Free Rent

Prologue: It's been intimated this week that I've been acting ungrateful recently, despite my dutifully continued efforts to keep the kitchen clean, plan meals and grocery shop, and keep babysitting requests to the minimum of necessary school/work time, or during naptime, or after kiddo's sacked out at 8pm. So I'm dedicating this blog entry to my very generous, sometimes cantankerous, often insufferable, but always loving and endearing Rent Sponsors: this one's for you, mom and dad.

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Find Free Rent: Now, I'm definitely not recommending any clearly unhealthy/illegal ways of finding free rent like trading sex/information/romantic emotional attachments for a place to live. What I am saying is that, if you want to live in poverty well, should you somehow be able to make an arrangement work for you with that rich uncle or parents/grandparents that are greedy for time with your kiddo, if you can make that work and not shoot yourself or anyone else: Do it. It GREATLY improves your standard-of-living not to have to pay a third or half of any income (or more!) just to have a private residence. E.g. you can afford to buy a new shirt, or toothbrush every once in a while.

It has its downsides, I admit: I fantasize about moving out almost daily. I talk about it on about a weekly basis, and about once a month I pack my family into my car and drive around the shitty parts of town looking for FOR RENT signs. I get stared at because I'm a white girl driving around somewhat-ghetto-neighborhoods in a 5 year old car with a dog hanging out the back window and a baby singing really loudly in the back, sloooooowly creeping through the hood staring out trying to work out in my head how I could keep utility bills low enough to afford the $600 in rent they're probably asking for a two bedroom house with a backyard and car port. Like I said, not the bests neighborhoods.

While other downsides include never really being able to have friends over and having zero phone conversational privacy, except when you go sit in your car like a sixteen year old talking on the phone to the boy they have a crush on; the conveniences of free rent are manifold.

Below are some TIPS ON LIVING IN POVERTY that I would be pressed to implement to a greater degree had I not sold my autonomy in exchange for a free place to poop in private.

3a: Eat a meal from free samples at the grocery store. Whole Foods, Sam's Club, United Supermarkets, HEB, and probably variations of your local grocer will give samples out on at least one day a week. Make the rounds to all the sample tables when you first come in, fill up your cart, and make another round. bingo. free meal.

3b: Sign up for all the free government shit you qualify for, then DON'T FUCKING TELL ANYONE. Apparently it's like, uncool to receive government aid. (Unless you're over sixty-five (then you're entitled) or disabled.) Uncool means a lot of things, especially in Texas, and one of the things it means is UnAmerican. It's apparently UnAmerican to utilize the social programs we have been paying taxes for since getting a job at sixteen or whenever. Apparently, we should say we support them when we're asked about them at parties or social gatherings, then go real quiet and create an awkward silence that indicates our discomfort with a situation in which someone we know actually USES them (if we're "liberal"). If we're conservative, we should just bitch about how millions people are living comfortably off welfare for free and are doing diddly to contribute to a better America while we, the hardworking and morally unblemished "middle class" pay to support their crack habits. We say this while simultaneously drinking a bottle of $250 scotch and preaching about the charity of Christ.


3c: Become best friends with the Schwann man. Or the PeaPod delivery guy. Or whoever in your area goes around the neighborhood in a big truck delivering food. And by "best friends," I totally mean wear short shorts and a low cut shirt while jogging out to his truck where he's making a delivery to a neighbor, offering him a bottle of water when it's 100 degrees outside. Either he will start to slip you frozen meals on the sly, or he will become a creepy prowler around your house, stalking you. If there's no grocery delivery near you, you can always try a UPS man/woman. Never know what's in those packages that could be of value or use. Hey, worth a shot.

Tips on how to live in poverty #2 More Condoms (I already screwed up the series by lying to you in my first post)

So before we get to today's tip, I figure I should make a caveat or condition or some other vaguely but not quite appropriate c-word about this mini series of how to live in poverty. It kind of really only applies to people living in the US. And it will only ever occasionally provide truly sensible tips, like coupon cutting or carpooling, but lor' help me none so boring.

So yeah, the subtitle of today's entry, I already lied to you. In the last entry I recommended you spend $2 on condoms with the two billion percent savings you got by spending $1 instead of $20 on a pregnancy test. (200%? 2,000%? fuck, I'm terrible at math)

But here's the real deal:
#2: NEVER PAY FOR CONDOMS. How much do you shell out for a pack of Trojans or even the cheapo Lifestyles at Walgreens or wherever you go? TOO MUCH because the thing is, you can always get condoms free. Hmm? What's that you say? FREE, I say! Community agencies are dying (ugh, sometimes literally shriveling up for lack of funds) to give away condoms for free. (So maybe while you're snagging their free shit, say "thanks.) Places like Planned Parenthood or your local HIV-Testing or LGBT(QIA)-Friendly facilities all have them sitting in little tan woven baskets on the counter. Most of the time you can just walk-up and grab a handful and leave. No one asks you questions. In fact, the people who work/volunteer/slave in these places are happy when shit like that happens. Then they know that they're contributing to a world with fewer unwanted babies, abortions and STDS. And come on, guys, safer sex is totally better sex. Also, some open AA or Al-Anon meetings have such baskets of free-condoms sitting out. FREE. FREE, GUYS, FREE!!! THAT MEANS NO MONEY. So get over yourself and the erroneous idea that "those places" aren't somewhere you want to be. Free stuff, dudes, and better yet, free condoms, and free happier, better, safer sex. Go forth and don't multiply.

Tips on how to live in poverty #1 Knocked-Up(?) Times: Diapers & Condoms

So most of my followers probably know me personally, and you'll know that I'm a single mom of a one-year old, working two part time jobs, and going back to graduate school. Which is enough to validate anyone's struggles to dog-paddle above the federal poverty line, even without the still growing student debt currently totaling more than my taxable income in 2011.

Fortunately for me, I've got parents who are enamored of my poop-machine and let me and the entropic monster live in their house (a considerably nicer than one I'd be able to afford on my own right now) in exchange for doing the grocery shopping, cooking, and not using the television during Jeopardy or Judge Judy. 

Still, even without rent due on a monthly basis, costs of Life don't stop: insurance, diapers, caffeinated coffee, you know, the basics.


What follows will be a series of short tips on how to live cheaply. Most of my tips are awesomely shameless. And by shameless, I mean, they don't always color in the lines of what a nice white girl having grown up protestant in West Texas is generally expected to do. And by awesome, I mean, they save money in a real way.

#1 Buy pregnancy tests from The Dollar Tree. Seriously guys and gals alike: quit spending $20 on those First Response or Preggo Now? tests that you get at the drug store, grocery store, or convenience store. Dollar Tree tests accurately confirm a positive pregnancy. How much are you out? Less than the cost of a single condom! Then take that other $19 you would have spent on pretty packaging and marketing promises, and spend it on a package of diapers at Target. (Hidden tip #1) They are farrrr better than Walmart's brand, and cheaper than all the others. Unless your test turned up negative. Then you deserve five $3 drinks at your local happy hour. With a nice celebratory $2 tip for your server. (I'm assuming you spent the other two dollars on condoms. Which is what you should have done in the first place).

I don't lie.

Living With Old People (Or: Intergenerational Household Quirks)

More on the pill-stashing. Apparently is mostly valid. Over this last weekend my father ended up in the ER with a giant kidney stone, emergency surgery, and then another follow-up surgery. Sooo...I guess if you have a history of kidney stones it's okay to put a Lortab or two of your daughter's in the occasional pair of pants. Just in case.

My mother is another quirky one. Who refuses to believe she's in old age. Got all sorts of offended at the post in which I mentioned my "elderly" parents. Pure statistics people. Given average life-span, you're past middle-age, which is old age, which equals elderly. Let your ego go free. It's okay to be an ego-nudist, when the alternative is an ego-hoarder.
(not sure that analogy made sense, but I'm a headcold and a glass of wine past bed time, so fuck it.)

So yeah. The most interesting thing about living with my mother is her prattling. Yep, like a two year old (there, mom, I reinstated your youth for you) wandering around the house at her daily business talking away. To....who the FUCK knows. An example of her monologous conversation:
"Where's my doo-lolly [sic]? I think I left it....I swear it was...okay...now...now then...if I'm gonna make eggs, how much pepper should I....Did Gordon [my father] put the hand-mixer in....there?...no....where....I wonder what I have scheduled for the....OH MY GOSH THIS PHOTO IS ADORABLE...[gasp] and there's a video! [plays video approximately 30 times]..Annie Gordon you guys have to come see this... ... ... Oh my. Oh my my my my my. ANNIE COME SEE THIS--this photo is why people say your daughter is beautiful. tsk. tsk. It's so unfortunate when people have ugly babies."
The thing is, my mom has gloriously embraced her role as grandmother. And loves to get in touch with all her grandmother friends and compare her granddaughter's beauty, wit, charm, and intelligence to other infants she quasi-knows through facebook. And the kicker is she says EVERY thought process OUT LOUD. Which means I know a good deal more about information that's usually protected by HIPAA than is palatable. But whatever, I also get poop on my hand/harm/hair/clothing at least once a day changing a dirty diaper. Such is my life.

Also, I don't dress slutty. I just wear my shorts and a tank-top year-round in my house because my father keeps the temperature above 70 degrees in December. I think in July he sets it to 78. At least I get to show off my hairy legs.

why TV really fucks you up

Specifically shows like CSI. Maybe mostly just CSI. I was driving back from Dallas last weekend and was thinking about how CSI has flat out ruined my life. I'm already verging on being a sincerely anxious and guilt-ridden person due to multiple converging factors, not least of which is having been raised in West Texas Bible Belt Thumping Baptist Hellfire and Damnation Will Eat You In Your Sleep, Sinner! culture that is Lubbock, Texas. In any case criminal investigation shows that prove how ANYONE can be found out by the trail of evidence that they inevitably leave behind no matter how meticulous they are really mess with my anxious and guilty mind.

Example number one: I fart in a room with lots of people. I know this is rude. I either couldn't control it, or didn't care enough to leave the room. Then I think of Grissom's and Willows' disappointment when they spray some magical scientific fart-detecting spray into the room that will turn my poop-smelling gas purple and the trail will LEAD RIGHT UP TO MY BUTTHOLE and then everyone will KNOW and I will be damned. Forever. And then my glee at causing other people's olfactory discomfort anonymously will entirely dissipate, unlike my fart, which probably has actually gained potency in its rounds offending people in the room. Which only makes me feel guiltier. Fuck you, Grissom and Willows.

Example number two: I steal from my parents. The only two things I actually steal and not borrow are things I'm most ashamed of. My mother's old lady boxed wine and my father's prunes. Yes. Those. I think "my mother will never know because the wine is in a BOX" Therefore it's really difficult to gauge the level of wine inside. BONUS FOR ME. Until my guilt and fear kick in. I remember stealing booze from my friends parents in High School (Sorry, Jeff and Linda) and feeling little to no remorse. Probably because I was getting drunk and then too concerned with the hangover to feel guilt. But when I steal a glass from my mom's shitty boxed wine to have with my pasta that I cooked for dinner, ALL OF A SUDDEN I AM CONSUMED BY FEAR that my fingerprints will glow blue in the dark and she'll know. Or that the little bit of wine that comes out at the end after you've quit pushing that little dispenser button, like the little bit of extra piss that men shake out of their penises after they're done peeing, will dribble onto the pristine white fridge and I'LL BE FOUND OUT. Nevermind that I could (a) ask my mom and she wouldn't care or (b) wipe up the post-release wine dribble. I am probably too lazy. Or something. In any case, I'll be enjoying my glass of wine with my lemon-olive oil bay scallop linguini with arugula and BAM I'll think about how one of the cute CSI dudes (Sanders or Stokes) would totally be disappointed in me because I had failed to adequately cover my tracks. Which is impossible anyway, because no matter how genius those criminal fuckers are on that show IT ALWAYS COMES OUT. And then you're going to jail. "YES oh my god I'm so sorry YES I did it! I drank a glass of your wine! I know I should have just asked but I didn't and now I'm going to be condemned to a jail of hellfire and damnation."  Fuck you, CSI.

Yes. I said prunes earlier. That's the thing about living with old people. We have lots (like POUNDS) of prunes on-hand at any moment. Which is useful when you realize you haven't pooed in a couple days and you want an all natural way of jumpstarting your digestive tract. Besides the guilt and fear felt when I imagine that my father will send me to the Lake of Hellfire and Damnation/Jail when he discovers that the prune container is turned 30 degrees to the left, which was NOT how he last left it, thereby deducing that I was the dirty culprit who stole from him, having prunes on hand is kind of nice. But definitely weird.

Other weird things about living with old people, like how they stash pills in various articles of clothing, to come in next post.

how babies change (you)

It's pretty obvious how my baby changed me. I went from smoking joints with my roommates after work and staying up till 3am watching Dexter before loading myself with caffeine for my 7am shift and topping off with a cigarette for good measure to ACTUALLY being a responsible, (mostly) law-abiding and (overall) healthy adult. I think my mother would like for me to be able to say that I now use less profanity, but that's just not fucking true. I do try to censor myself for those little ears though. Most of the time. How embarrassing is it going to be when the Molls gets around to talking and is as comfortable with with the words "shit" and "hell no" as she is with having to "piss" in the potty. Which we totally say. Piss is an amazing word. It's an onomatopoeia. I'm in favor of most of those.

Whatever. The FUNNEST part of seeing change happen is seeing it happen in OTHER people. My best friend and partner in occasional criminal cahoots these past twelve years Sarah Little was one of the last people I expected to fall in love. Yeah. With a boy too, but here I'm referring to a baby. She went from making fun of fat-ankled preggo ladies and gagging at the *thought* of ANY human's pissing and shitting in their pants on a daily basis to ooohing and ahhing over my "Chubble Bubble." She had a picture of Molly's freaking 4D (or whatthefuckever) ultrasound AS HER DESKTOP BACKGROUND for MONTHS before Molly was born. Now she's planning to have her own. Hear that? no? It's the slurping sound of my fucking adorable baby SUCKING Sarah Little Flanigan IN to the *decision* to procreate.

Suckaaaaaaa.

In other news, I joined a gym. One that has a playroom you can leave your kids in for a max of 2 hours while you go chase sanity on a treadmill.  I feel pretty good about that. I mean, I totally fell into the consumerism trap of also going and purchasing new gym shoes today, because you know, I can't get fit in old gym shoes. that would be like, impossible. Or at least uncool. Whatever. Now I have new-gym-shoe confidence for when I realize that that carrot of sanity is attached to an effing string dangling in front of said treadmill.

reflections part 3: birth

Honestly, I may never have decided to have a kid. Then if you'd told me ANYthing about birth, I DEFINITELY would never have decided to get preggo. However, having been through it all, I'd totally get knocked up again someday (in theory. providing I don't have to repeat the subsequent divorce, baby-daddy drama, and single parenthood). But yeah, in the context of that elusive-as-the-abominable-snow-man stable and loving relationship, (pregnancy and) birth would be a cinch, now that I know how to do it.

and here's how:

1- don't freak out.
2- obsessively research and read EVERYTHING you can find about the physiological processes of labor and delivery so you feel prepared.
3- listen to other women's stories of their experience of labor and take them with a grain of salt. They won't match yours.
4- GET PSYCHED.

I, being the hippie dipshit I am, went totally drug-free. If god strikes me down with another little human parasite, I'm totally doing the birth part at home. Drug-free was nice, because my body went into endorphine-adrenaline overdrive, which apparently it's supposed to do. Anyway, my intensely personal and largely graphic birth timeline:

Tuesday, February 23, 2011

3:36 PM: This email is sent to my coworkers:

I keep having contractions and getting confused whether I’m having contractions or have to poop. It might be both.

7:00 PM: I go to have my photo taken for the church picture directory. It was like fucking fourth grade. I am having contractions (which feel like someone grabs your belly from your ribs to your groin and scrunches it up in a fist) every 10 minutes, and this man I've never seen before is asking me to turn my chin a little more to the left. "A little more. That's it, now relax your fingers under your chin. Pull your chin into your chest a little" JUST TAKE THE PICTURE I'M IN FUCKING LABOR.

Wednesday, February 24, 2011

9:00 AM: My dog needs to be walked. I hear that walking brings on baby. I will try this, esp since I was getting my belly squeezed by a GOD's fist every ten minutes all night long. I walk dog. Doubling over every 6-7 minutes to breathe. My poor dog doesn't understand that my profanity is not directed at her and that no, she actually isn't behaving like a goddamnmotherfuckingshit that is intense.

10:00 AM to 3:00 PM: I alternately sit on the exercise ball in my room in the dark "meditating" to buddhist chanting music and do "cat-cow" yoga poses to coax baby out into the 30 degree weather.

6:00 PM: Hospital with my mom.

8:00 PM: Watching 30 Rock with my mom and dad in between contractions and giggling.

10:00 PM: Hit wall (also known as transition). From there if I talked specifically about it it would be all birthy and shit. like dilation and stuff. This is also the time my dad left. Pussy.  Suffice to say:

I cried

I vommed

I screamed

I squatted & hands-and-knees-ed it

I got pissy with the doctor when she wanted to stick her fingers up my chatch yet again

I got pissy with the doctor when he wanted to break my bag of waters

I got pissy with the doctor when LOTS OF THINGS*

I got the Nuggo out with my bare hands

and I squished her to my chest
at 1:34 AM Thursday
February 25, 2011

I did NOT:       I DID:
poop                have a doula, with whom I am still in love
whimper          need help to piss. (it's hard when a 7lb human is falling out of your hoo-hah).
take drugs        sneak food into the hospital. Fuck their policies. I needed my strength.
have an IV       say thank you to the nurses everytime they did nice shit for me.

*When I first check in, the doctors did not have a record of my birth plan. That had been approved by my ob-gyn. I called bullshit, and busted out my OWN (second) copy. Bearing the doc's signature. I still had to push back on several issues that the hospital wanted to do to me, THAT HAD ALREADY BEEN APPROVED THAT I DID NOT HAVE TO DO. Like:

*break my water

*stay confined in my bed

*check my cervix every 3 seconds

*make me wear a hospital gown (i had my own dress that gave me feelings of safety and empowerment and other psychological BS)

*not eat anything (THIS IS THE DUMBEST RULE EVER. I'm sorry, I'm about to do the purported equivalent of participate in an entire Pro-NFL game without any sort of sustenance? Yeah, that's the best idea)--also: who made this comparison? Someone who has probably never done both. Even more likely, someone who has done NEITHER. Most certainly, some academic fuckwit studying caloric expension in a finite amount of time and applying it over broad and incompatible circumstances.

Next time: underwater. with a scuba-mask on.

The dog and the Nuggo have become inseparable

Told you. 

(Apologies for the cell-phone quality photos. It's difficult to whip out a camera in time with these two!)

 

In these two videos, they are playing with a cork. It's totally too big to be a choke hazard. 

Plus I was filming, ahem, I mean watching them, just in case.

 The dog totally photo-bombed this pic. Maybe she wanted those Brussels-sprouts

 mugshot, waking up from naptime

 9pm, bedtime

7am the following morning

(where the fuck was I supposed to be (co-)sleeping??)

Tangent: Now that I'm a stay-at-home mom, I cannot tell you how ecstatic I am to be going out for happy-hour this evening with some adults.

TONIGHT!

On Presence

I've been asked by a couple of my friends, with more than a little suspicion in their voices, when do I write my blog entries?

Touché.

One of the last blog posts I composed while working at the symphony. Literally. Sitting in the wings, making sure assholes don't rush into the theater and try to find a seat while the musicians are playing.

Which, the more I thought about it, I realized is kind of cheating.

Cheating because, here I am, sitting in in front of this great orchestra playing some phenomenal works of Great composers, and I'm writing a fucking blog entry?

Apparently, it's really difficult to be present. Like, completely and wholly present in the moment, whatever that moment is. I suck at it.

Yoga is one of the only things that does it for me. For the one hour or forty-five minutes or the seventeen minutes I manage to squeeze in before my id monster wakes up from her always-too-short nap, I can be doing yoga and 100% present in the movements of my body and breath and mind. It is addicting.

But what about when I'm not doing yoga? I'm all over the freaking place. I am constantly finding myself reading, checking the weather, checking effing facebook, playing games on my phone, pretty much ANYTHING but being present.

Which really sucks. I mean, here I am, spending more time at home with my kiddo, having left my job TO DO SO, and I'm checking facebook? What the fuck is wrong with me? I could be sitting next to the little monster playing on the floor, talking to her, all up in her face (probably distributing my reeking breath from my lazily unbrushed teeth; since leaving work, my personal hygeine has plummeted) trying to make her giggle and connecting and bonding and shit.

But I'm writing a blog entry in my head. I gotta work on that, man.

On a related, but probably tangential subject, I wrote another poem. It's got kind of buddhist-y feel to it. And the post above was kind of buddhist-y about mindfulness, so I thought this was the best chance I had to slip it in, even though it's hard for me not to associate poetry with emo right now. I mean, isn't most poetry emo?

except HIP-HOP. I should start rapping.

_______________________________________________________________


True story: last night I dreamed I haunted
an oceanside house filled with sand drifts and
whisperings of hushed regrets.

The walls were weepy driftwood

bowed and warped and splintering

my fingertips as I groped my way through  

unfurnished and salt-streaked rooms

colonized by dear-johns I’d slighted

and old lovers I had carelessly stung,

come to collect on my conscience’s debt.

I tried to undress my long skirted sorrow,

as if contrition were garments to shed

or redress could be sewn up by apology only.

Then the house

sighed on its hinges,

flung wide a window,

shuddered and groaned

a tone poem born

of the vast nearby Sea

frothed and nudging tenderly

to summon fresh its first memory

with a whoosh: to forgive

to let go, to be friendly and soft

hearted, warm; to let peace murmur in

with the tide, to remit

the damages done

and pardon
us all.

Then the wind dwindled to low humming lilt,

familiar and brisk and filling my palms

with a palpable heat. I unghosted the halls,

unlatching doors, and quietly crooning

these words of absolution

for the loafers and pokes who were dawdling.

They could stay at their will or go when they would:

I told them this treaty will hold, and it did.

Yes, even on waking.