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.