Back...ish

It's been a retardedly long time since I've updated this blog. I have been a little busy.
Well, a lot busy. Also, since I've discovered twitter (username: krissyface73...follow me! And just watch the hilarity ensue!!), I generally only have enough energy for 140 characters worth of bullshit every day, and that has sort of satisfied my need to express myself. But I do miss you, blogger...I do...

Since we last met, I have watched my small fry graduate from first grade (it was so cute, but I'm glad they won't have another 'ceremony' til 5th grade, b/c, really? Pomp and Circumstance for 7 year olds? Really?), gotten a new job and bought my own house. That's right, lovelies. This bitch be a homeowner. It's kind of alarming to imagine any bank that would give me a mortgage, but it turns out, quite a few were willing to take a chance on a girl like me and cross their fingers and toes that I'd make my monthly payments which, so far, I've been able to do.

So the tone of this ongoing yarn that is a (basically honest) chronicle of my (sometimes awesome, sometimes downright scary, mostly fairly status quo) life will, you'll notice, shift a bit, as I'm no longer the sassy single mama in NYC but a homeowner in the deep south.

Really.

I know, I can hardly say it with a straight face, either.

So stick around for riveting tales of Kristin shopping for the right garden hose!!

Killing fire ants!!!

Baiting mouse traps with peanut butter!!!

Getting drunk on her porch swing while listening to peeper frogs!!

I promise this time I'll try and stick around more.

xo

And I'm 12 again

It's amazing how the brain works. It stores everything that's ever happened to you, but without you realizing it. Like a camera behind your eyes. You're the Big Brother of your life. Nowhere is this more evident than in dreams. Dreams are incredible; somehow the protective wall that keeps us from going insane during consciousness comes down in sleep and we remember everything...the way a 13 year old boy smelled when he leaned so close to whisper something to you. The way it felt when the popular girl reduced you to a pile of ash with a simple glance and a word about the stain on your shirt. The way you were so self-conscious about how your tummy hung over the lip of your too-tight jeans. Dreaming of junior high sucks.

Labor Day

I was at a birthday party with my kid the other day. It was at one of those huge enclosed play-areas that smells like old cheese and armpit and where your kid peels off her socks and screams 'HURRAH!' before skittering off and kicking you to the curb for two hours. You're left to sit huddled on a gym bench with the other moms and you all chat and pretend to have more in common than the fact that your children were all born in the same year. Yay.

Actually, I like Lily's friends' moms. Most of them are really kind and friendly, though I'm still getting used to the southern culture of, oh, what do you call it again? oh yeah, manners. In comparison, my New York mom friends and I were disgustingly candid. We would sit on benches in the public parks of Queens, slurping coffee and bitching about everything from the inefficiency of our vibrators to our partners' bathroom habits.

The women I've met here are a bit more reserved. I don't think it's a bad thing; it's just not something I'm used to. I've had to be a little more careful in sharing all the wigged-out details of my life here. Hell, maybe that's an improvement. Perhaps it's even a sign of my own maturity. Imagine?

Here's an example. One mom, a native of Colombia married to a cajun guy (what?) was talking about how, while visiting family in Colombia this summer, her daughter learned all about sex while hanging out with older children. She started apologizing profusely to the other mothers in case her daughter 'told our kids about how babies were made'.

The other moms seemed genuinely troubled by this. One mom said, 'Weeeellll, I told my daughter that God takes a little bitta Mama and a little bitta Daddy and puts it in Mama's tummy. Then when the baby's ready, the doctor just cuts it out. I had a C-section, so I have a scar and everything.'

She was commended on this while I just clamped my fucking mouth shut. I was the mom who, when asked where babies came from, sat her 2 year old down in front of Dr. Google and looked at pictures of the human anatomy, explaining intercourse in primitive, scientific detail. I didn't pretend that menstrual blood was 'a cut in Mommy's hiney' (as one mother put it), and I nursed Lily until she was old enough to ask for it.
I'm not saying I hold the keys to good parenting (obviously, have you met my kid?), I'm just saying that I did things a little differently. I'm happy with the results, but I don't always remember that my methods of parenting might be considered a little bit...against the grain.

Especially considering that at 3, Lily was wedging babydolls up her dress and reenacting birth scenes with her friends (several times I walked into her room to see her on her back with a stuffed dog between her legs, screaming, 'ARRRGHHH!', while her pal Lucas, ever the relegated to role of 'Dad', yelled, 'Push! Push! I can see the head!').

Lily nursed her babies and stuffed animals and carried them in makeshift 'slings' I fashioned out of ripped up sheets. She was like a baby earthmama, and I didn't see anything wrong with it.

I still don't, but I am realizing more and more that there are a variety of ways to raise kids, and my way isn't the only way. Hell, maybe it isn't even the right way, but it seems to have worked so far. If anything, I'm becoming more open-minded living in Louisiana. Maybe even more than I ever was in New York. I think that's kid of kick ass.

Smells

I have taken up jogging. Sort of. That's not why I haven't been writing. But I'll pretend that it is.

The thing is, you get so into it once you realize you actually CAN do it...the running, I mean; you do a 5 minute stretch, then 10, then all of a sudden you're RUNNING for TWENTY MINUTES STRAIGHT, which is quite a feat for the girl that always puked during the 600 yard dash in elementary school. I'm not athletic. At all. I mean, I was always picked last for teams and the boys in school actually took pleasure in pegging me in the face with that godawful red dodge ball that made the tinny BWOING sound when it bounced off your head.

So, being able to take up jogging, and actually KEEP jogging has been, for me, an accomplishment.

But I took a couple weeks off...you know, shit happens, you go on vacation, you drink too much red wine and can't fathom making your bobbly legs doing more than carrying you to the coffee maker. And getting back on the horse is hard, my friends. Haaaaard (thatswutshesaid).

The last couple days I've been trying to run again. And since we've had a couple cool days here in Louisiana (like, under 90), breathing has been pleasant and easier (the humidity doesn't make it feel like your lungs are coated in hot, sticky caramel). I've also noticed that the scents in the air have been more pervasive and powerful.

I don't know why the olfactory sense memory thing is so incredibly strong, but tonight I felt like as I did my 30 minute loop around my suburban neighborhood, I re-experienced about 4 or 5 different moments of my life. Like, actually felt like I was there.

I ran past an orange tree, and the blossoms--thick and tangy, saturated the air around me and I was in my grandmother's Florida backyard all of a sudden, locusts ticking as I practiced with my cousins for the play we were going to perform for our parents that night. It was to be "The Wizard of Oz", and my cousin Simeon was directing, and, of course, I was going to be Dorothy. My sister, cast as the tin man, would later cry as we tried to wrap tinfoil around her 5 year old body and attach a funnel to her head. We would make a yellow brick road out of 200 napkins and later, while watching "The Muppet Show", Kermit would sing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', and we would take it as some kind of cosmic sign.

Then I passed a rosebush, and the sweet, delicate scent took me back to eighth grade, when I first started wearing Tea Rose perfume (still do). I was the mayor's wife in our production of "Bye Bye Birdie" and the mayor was played by a sad, unfortunate, short kid who would for some reason develop a fixation on me in college and actually stalk me (more on that in another post. He also friended me on facebook. I was like, really? um, no thank you.)

The stench of garbage oozing out of an overflowing can reminded me of summers in New York City, and having to wake up at 3 in the morning to walk my neurotic dog, hoping that I didn't get raped and wondering why the hell I didn't own a can of pepper spray.

What is it about scents and why do they affect us so strongly? The hold a smell has over me is really, really incredible. I love it though. I love that I can smell Estee Lauder's Youth Dew and think of my mother in a linen dress and diamond stud earrings, going out on a date with my dad on a Saturday night and feeling so sad over being left/excited about having a sitter/amazed at how beautiful and feminine my mother was. That to me, is a pretty powerful thing. Don't you agree?

So

Hey, Dudes. I haven't written anything on here lately because I haven't had anything interesting to say. Still don't, obviously.

Why am I getting all these spam comments in Chinese?

I'm going to the beach for a week with my awesomely insane family and I hope that I will enter a more enlightened state whilst there, a la Eat Pray Love or some shit like that. Talk to you soon.

Love,

Krissyface

Just my two cents.

I was driving through the great state of Texas the other day, where everything, they tell me, is bigger. Even the pro-lifers, apparently. I mean, if I'm to go by the multitude of bumper stickers I saw on the I-10. Jeez, man.

Now, I'm happy for you to practice whatever religion churns your butter and helps you be a better person, get through this crazy life of ours, yada yada yada. It's when you splash your beliefs on the back of your car that I get my hackles up. Especially if the information you're proclaiming isn't exactly accurate.

The bumper sticker in question had a large face of an angelic looking little blonde-haired-blue-eyed baby smack in the middle of it (why are they always white babies? I mean, they are, though) and said, "ABORTION STOPS MY BEATING HEART!"

Now. Let's be fair here.

No, it actually doesn't.

No, 6-month-old baby with a couple of brand new teeth and the ability to smile and giggle and suck from a nipple and breathe on your own...no, abortion does not stop your heart.

Now, take a photo of, say, a date-sized fetus, all veiny and pulpy and grey looking and put that on a bumper sticker, and yes, I'll agree. An abortion would, in fact, stop that heart from beating. But it's funny...I've never actually seen a fetus on a bumper sticker.

oh, oh, it's magic...

Have you ever tried Rain organic vodka? Well, it comes in a luuurvely bottle that looks like it was hand made by a glass blower in...wherever it is that glass blowing is popularly practiced. It has a blue glass stopper and it looked so pretty sitting there on the shelf at the liquor store, its crystal clear liquid swirling pristinely, beckoning and taunting: "Come on...I've been distilled seven times. SEVEN! I'm organic, and you know what that means: Health Food. That's right! Vodka is now good for you!"

I just had to have it. Me, the born-again vodka drinker, washed anew after having discovered diet tonic (woot! buh-bye calorie-laden cabernet, 'red to the lips, right to the hips' no more!), I was so excited I almost uncorked that shit in the car home, just to see if it was as magical as its packaging promised.

Well. Two drinks last night, and I wasn't feeling a thing. No floaty-I'm-really-pretty sensation which is my usual result from a couple VTs. So, I had another. And then, yep. One more. Mistake. I went to the bathroom damn if the bed didn't look so cozy and sweet to me...

I woke up at 4 am with a hammering in my skull, and the beginning of what might be the worst hangover I've had in years.

I hate you, organic vodka. Die a thousand deaths.