T shirts I don't understand

Yesterday at the Times Square station I saw a guy wearing a tshirt that said:

No
More
Bitch
Ass
Ness

Now, I'd had a glass of white wine on a fairly empty stomach and was traveling at rush hour and sweating my balls off, but...

I don't understand what Bitchassness is.

I do worry, however, that I might suffer from it.

Yessir, that's my baby...and I'll kick your ass if you're not nice to her

I generally don't worry about Lily and her social skills. She, like her mama, will talk to just about anyone, and generally conducts herself with healthy heapfuls of confidence that it took me about 33 years to cultivate.

Tonight we went to get a scooter pie at the health food store, and on the way home we passed by Ghetto Park, also known as Athens Square, a queer little miscellany of playground/skate punk arena/homeless party zone. I try to avoid walking past the GP with Lil unless we are really desperate for something social to do (which doesn't happen often, since, duh, we live in NYC), but tonight it could not be avoided.

"Can we stop and play, Mama?" Lily asked, eagerly licking melted carob off her fingertips, which sported the chippy remains of a sparkly purple paint job I did for her this weekend, because she cannot stop biting her goddamned nails.

I sighed, yanked my sweaty t-shirt away from my boobs, fanned my face with my palm, and nodded with resignation.

"OK," I said, "But ten minutes, Lil. Really. Agreed?"

She could hardly wait to skip away from me. "Yay! I'm gonna take my doggie and make a new friend!"

The "doggie" was a small stuffed toy given to us by Hope, our friend at the Goodness Gracious thrift store, which is right next door to the health food store. Hope is a big, friendly, gossipy Greek woman who absolutely loves Lily. She's known us since we first moved to Astoria and Lil was still residing in my uterus. Whenever we take one of our evening health food store trips, we always stop by Hope's and she gives Lily some kind of gift--a tiny jeweled purse, a naked Ken doll, a ratty stuffed animal. Stuffed animals are the worst, because I always worry that these gifts have bedbugs or lice or worse living inside their ancient synthetic batting. But what can I do? She's a nice lady, and I get the sense she'd get offended if we didn't accept her presents. Plus, try taking a shitty stuffed dog away from a kid who's just been handed a treat for no reason, and see what happens.

The park was full of kids, very few of whom spoke English or even were accompanied by parents as far as I could tell. I like this park in the evening because if Lily meets a pal and ditches me, I can just sit on my ass and text people or read a book without worrying about having to make conversation with anyone.

The usual cast of characters was hanging out across the park: Lloyd, the three-fingered "basketball coach" who begs for money on the N train "for the kids in my league", but who I never mind giving a quarter or two to because he has the friendliest smile I've ever seen and always tells me I'm pretty (narcissist. You need approval from the homeless that you're an attractive woman?)

Also present was the strange little German woman who definitely has an apartment, but who always asks people for money anyway, and who spends most of her days sitting in front of the key food with her docile irish setter, who she warns everybody "will tear your head off" if you get too close.

There were also lots of kids on skateboards, as well as the resident crackheads arguing with each other about chess games and whose turn it was to ask the 7-11 guy for coffee.

Lily, always at home with herself, marched right up to a pair of sisters, both a little older than she, and asked if they wanted to play.

What happened next tore my heart right out through my throat.

The two girls just looked at her, giggled, and walked away. Goddamn them.

Goddamn them!

I watched my little baby's face fall. This was, I think, Lily's first actual experience with rejection.

Every mean-spirited little tow-headed girl who ignored me in elementary school, every pre-adolescent boy who barked at me in the halls of my junior high school, all came rushing into Ghetto Park and stood hovering over my beautiful little girl.

And an anger rose up in me that I couldn't explain.

The worst was the way Lil tried to brush it off. She saw me watching, and just sort of shrugged and went to sit by herself and chatted quietly to her heinously dirty little stuffed dog.

God, you want to save your kids from ever feeling that way. And even more, you want to punish (preferably, in a painful way) any child who could possibly make your child feel like they are anything less than the amazing specimen you know them to be.

But fuck, you really can't.

You can only be there for them when the assholes make them feel badly, which they inevitably will at some point, and hope that you loving them will be enough to make up for it.

I'll tell you though, if I ever see those sisters again at the Ghetto Park, the gloves are coming off.

You Got Cooties

This is the newest sensation that's sweeping my house. We had family game night tonight and just when I was beginning to feel around on the floor for a discarded sewing needle, a piece of broken glass, anything sharp I might be able to stick in my eye to detract from the lobotomizingly boring game I was engaged in,

I. rolled. yet. another. five.

See, with this fucking game, you have to all take turns tossing a six-sided die (which, by the way, is super fun to do with a four-and-three-quarter-year-old who believes that the more she shakes the die, blows on it, and the further she throws it, the greater her chances will be of getting a good number), and each number you get corresponds with a Cootie piece: you throw a four, you get to pick your cootie eyes. You throw a two, you get a head. A five gets you antennae. Problem is, once you get the antennae, if you keep on tossing a five every time your goddamned turn comes around, you don't get to do shit. You just pass the die on to the next sucker as you become increasingly bored and angry at a vengeful god.
And you start wondering
a. how even a small child could find anything appealing about this brain-smackingly retarded game, and
b. if anyone would notice/complain if you took a slug of tequila each time you "visited the bathroom".

And you start thinking of other ways to make Cootie interesting.*

For example...

Take the Cootie box.



It is really the perfect size for, I dunno, a small animal, isn't it?

Say...



It might be fun to go spend some time out in front of your apartment building a while, catch yourself a squirrel, place him in the Cootie box, and let him, you know, "hang out" in there while you all take turns rolling the dice.
(Note: He might not like it).

Then let's change the Cootie rules a little here. Just for fun.
Let's say the next person to roll a five has to, I don't know, open the box.

I really, really think that would really make the game a hell of a lot more interesting.

*This inventive idea courtesy of this guy.

Pet Love

I don't really have anything interesting to say today and I'm really goddamned tired.

So I'm just gonna post pictures of me having borderline inappropriate relations with my cat.

If you wanna read something really interesting, click here.

Happy Tuesday.

Kisses.

Boundaries and Blathering

So, I've been thinking a lot about relationships, lately. Specifically, romantic ones. (Ooooh!)

Seriously, though. I feel as though Shawn and I have finally crossed over that scratchy, irritating line which separates friendship from murderous rage. We no longer feel the urge to bash each other in the face with cast iron frying pans when in each others' presence. This, I think, is a good thing. We're friends now. I feel that finally, something's turned...winter's become spring. There's respect there, and a gentleness with each other that I'm really grateful for. I remember why I liked him for all those years to begin with. And I have to say, a lot of couples can't necessarily say that after their marriage ends. So, good for us.

So this brings me to the question of the next phase of my life. What now?

How do I avoid another soured romance?

How do I keep from crossing that murky border that straddles passionate love and cozy complacency the next time around?

Ooooh, it feels so good to be seen as sexy, inventive, and lovely by someone new. But didn't it also feel so good to be able to lay on the couch with someone, after ten solid years together, and unzip my pants and grab my stomach and go, "Fuck! LOOK at this! I'm disgusting!!!" and have a good laugh together about it?

So. What are appropriate boundaries between couples?

And, how do I learn from the mistakes I made before?

Oh, how awesome the early part of a new relationship can be. You make sacrifices for your lover. You go to a vegan restaurant for her, sit quietly and sip your organic beer without complaint when the waiter brings you suspicious-looking nachos with unchicken and tofu sour cream. She puts her feet, clad only in rubber flipflops, in your lap beneath the table and scoots her seat a little closer so that your bodies can constantly be touching.

Romance is delicious. You infect each other with the desire to be close, to breathe each other in. You get drunk on each other. You can't stop touching. Even in bed, you palm his head or sling an arm over his hip so that you can stay together even when you part in sleep.

So how does this passion, this desire, this hunger, change?

Anyone?

How do you go from getting turned on by the simple sight of your lover's belly button, to ten years later, not really caring if he sees you wipe a booger on the wall behind the bed? (This is, of course, hypothetical. Purely.)

I guess it's only human to crave real intimacy. To feel as comfortable with a person as you do in your favorite old pair of jeans. Right?

So. I'm interested in your opinions here, lovers.

Happy weekend.

Mwah.

Grandma was a black widow

Do you think this woman looks evil?



I mean, she kind of reminds me of the nasty cafeteria nun in high school who used to yell at us while brandishing a giant metal spoon, but I'd be hard pressed to believe she was responsible (allegedly) for MURDERING FOUR OF HER FIVE HUSBANDS!!!

And maybe her son, too.

And she was trying to take out a life insurance policy on her grandson.

No shit.

Her name is Betty Neumar, and it seems all of her husbands have died either by getting shot in the head, 'falling off' piers, or getting sepsis. Hmmm. Something smells fishy in North Carolina. And I don't mean all the bikini bottoms on the beaches of the Outer Banks either.

I mean, greed does some weird ass things to people. If I got away with murdering one husband and got a windfall of a payday from the insurance company, I probably would be inclined to leave well enough alone.

Right?

But some people just get a taste of blood and cannot stop themselves.

Sounds like you got some 'splaining to do, Betty.

Her.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

And she was from me, of me...just hours before she'd been inside of me; I'd been blind to her for so long, only knowing her by the tiny hints she offered: the daily hiccups in the afternoon, pulsing in my abdomen like a tiny heartbeat; the way certain parts of her baby body presented themselves: the balls of her feet, the point of an elbow or knee straining against my stomach.

My stomach. Oh, god. It never stopped growing. Just when I thought I'd gained all the weight I could possibly gain, the skin of my belly stretched more, making room for her as she uncurled herself inside of me, taking up residence for what I had begun to believe was going to be the rest of my life. I had almost resigned myself to this: I would exist this way for the rest of my days, full with her. She would simply never leave.

I had become merely the host to something that had grown greater than me, greater than anything I had ever known or could have imagined. All day, every day, was about her. I couldn't take a deep breath. I could barely eat, which was such a fucking tease, since all I wanted to do was destroy whole chocolate cakes and ravage gigantic plates of pasta and meatless balls with my bare paws. There simply wasn't any more room inside of me.

When my labor began, a week past her scheduled arrival, I foolishly thought that giving birth to her would somehow be like having a really huge, uncomfortable bowel movement.

I was mistaken.

There was some pain at first, but mostly I felt pressure and discomfort as she descended, and I felt a growing urge to expel her. I bounced on my yoga ball and sucked jolly ranchers and laughed and had to stop talking every 15 minutes or so to experience a contraction.

Then things shifted unexpectedly and I was experiencing gigantic, rolling, terrifying pain. Wall-sized waves pulled me under and spit me back out. I was run over by a train again and again and again.

Her birth was the most lucid moment of my life: Dorothy stepping into technicolor Oz. The determination I found surprised and pleased me; I drew upon hidden reserves of strength that opened me up and let her pour forth from me.
And there. There. There.
There was the relief. I moved in seconds from one to two.
I would never again be the same.

But almost immediately the serenity and joy was gone. Breath to a tiny candle. There was confusion, cold. I sat, a gaping hole, as she was pulled from me. No sound came. The room was sour with panic and frustration. I was suddenly aware of the lights, so bright, glaring down on me. I was laid flat, open, but empty of her. Needing to touch her, but unable to find her. I felt my nakedness. I wore a pair of men's wool socks but my feet were so cold. Nobody would talk to us, nobody would look at us. They held her up for me to see, a tiny dream doll version of myself with black eyes and black hair.

And then she was gone.

To be continued...

Fever Dreams

I woke this morning at 5:30 am from a disturbing dream in which I dropped Lily off unattended at the movies to see "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (why? All this George Carlin talk, maybe?) so that I could go and have sex with an older man who had a penis that looked like a Starbucks' straw. This illicit act took place in my childhood home, on the floor of my parents' living room.

I peeled out of the dream with the intensity of a runaway racecar, sat upright in bed, and fought the unyielding urge to scream and claw at my face.

I knew I should have turned on the air conditioner before I fell asleep.

Water for Elephants, or More Nuggets of Wisdom from Lily Alice

I was driving Lily upstate yesterday to her grandmother's house. We passed the a mall, on whose property the Big Apple Circus had plunked its giant big top and all the horrors that accompany it.

I hate the circus.

I'm not going to go into vivid detail with my 4 year old daughter about why I don't plan on taking her to one of these festivals of pain and suffering (though Big Apple is rumored to be one of the more humane ones), but as we drove by I did mention that I wasn't a big fan of circuses in general.

And from the back seat, she asked,

"Why, Mommy? Too much clowns?"

Hee hee.

Happy Illegal Fireworks Day!

My Summer Hair Diaries

I've reached that inevitable point in the summer where I am seriously toying with the idea of chopping off all my hot girl hair.





I am fighting the urge though, because it's where I hold my power, man. I store all my charms up inside it, my feminine wiles, if you will. I like tossing it about when I'm having a conversation, or idly twisting a piece around my finger when I'm deep in thought. I like sitting in the sun and pulling apart all my split ends.
And I think that my poor neck would object if I were to take away the very thing I sweep off it so that it may be kissed.
It might object rather loudly.

But summer makes me crazy. I just hate having heavy piles of not-curly-not-straight hair sitting on my shoulders like a fur stole, trying to suffocate my soul.

And so I start toying with the idea of making it all go away.

So, I thought of some ideas. Did some browsing on the Google Image for celebrity hairstyle inspirations.

Thoughts?



Kristin Crackity Winehouse Hair. Think of the charms you could store up in that!





Kritney Spears





Hillary Kristin. (Obama for Change!)





Scientology Rocks! Kristin Holmes/Cruise





Posh Kristin





Oprah Kristinfrey


I'm having a thought right now...I need to start working again. Surely there must be some better use I could make of Photoshop.