FERTILE

Back...ish

2011-05-27T11:42:00.001-07:00

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

2010-12-09T03:28:00.000-08:00

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

2010-09-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-29T15:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-07-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-07-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

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.

(Green) Thumbs Up!

2010-05-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

I'm sloooowly, sloooowly getting the hang of domestic life. Like, it's really only taken me 8 months to realize that if I leave the laundry basket (whether its filled with laundry or not) on the floor next to the washing machine, the cats are gonna pee in it. Every time.

And I've got quite the garden growing out back which is yielding numerous sweet cucumbers and a teeny tiny pepper, which didn't taste rancid or anything!

Fetal cucumber. Go ahead, make the dick joke. I know you want to.

Behold: Magic tropic heat makes green things grow good!!

As you can see, greenery grows rampant in the wilds of southern Louisiana, whether you help it along or not. So you'd have to be a complete ass to do what I did in the front yard. Or, you could just be me.

We bought these two giant feaux clay pots to put perennials in and stick in the bald spots in front of the house where we don't have any other shit growing. They were kick ass: plastic but you couldn't even tell! And they had the perfect weathered-bohemian-yet-still-tasteful look of something purchased at Pottery Barn instead of Wal-Mart (shhh. Don't tell though).

So I put some pretty flowers in there and waited for the magic to happen. Except I forgot one thing. To drill a hole in the bottom of each pot. So, every time it rained, which it does just about every goddamned day around 4 pm here, the pots got more and more full of rank, mossy, slime-filled mudwater that had nowhere to go. Soon it started to overflow onto the lawn. And all the flowers turned brown and crispy and promptly croaked. And then came the smell.

Oh, the smell. Like horse manure left to decay in a bog...a smell that actually stings your nose with its foulness. This is what I picture zombies would smell like.

So, I spent this afternoon dumping out fetid, stagnant slop from inside these pots so that we could drill the holes in the bottom we should've drilled at the start.

And I got some fresh dirt and new flowers that got plopped into the pots, even though I could swear I could hear tiny screams coming from their tangled roots: No!!! WE DON'T WANT TO DIE LIKE THIS!!!

So, we'll see. At least I grew some vegetables though. One step closer to my dream of living off the land. Right? Right???

Wondering

2010-05-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

Not to be gross, but just how long IS it ok for a kid to have blue diarrheah after consuming a 16 oz blue bubblegum slushie? A day? Several? This is getting weird.

Crazy Motherfuckers

2010-05-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

This, um, club I used to belong to told us that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I need to keep telling myself this. Like, repeat it like a mantra when I'm about to bust a cap in someone's ass.

Can y'all feel me?

Proper use of adverbs

2010-05-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

When the teacher plopped Lily into the back seat during carpool this afternoon, she smiled and gestured toward the oversized granny shorts that my kid was now sporting, which I most assuredly had not dressed her in that morning.

"We had a little... issue with the black paint...hope it comes out! Bye!" Slam.

"Uh...wow, honey, how was your day?" I said into the rearview as I pulled out of the parking lot, watching Lily pick at some dried black paint spatters that streaked her legs up and down like she'd been splashed with tar or...what was it they called it in the Grimms fairy tales? Pitch? I think so. Anyway, she looked up and shook her head, annoyed. "Well. I didn't want to wear these GARDENING shorts," (the oversized dorkified bottoms actually had carrots and tomatoes and other vegetables emblazoned on them)"But I got paint on me."

"It's ok, sweetie. I'm sure it's washable paint. So, did you make an awesome picture, or what?"

"No. No, mom. No, Listen, I wasn't painting. No. See, I got this paint on me because APPARENTLY there was black paint on the bench and I sat down on it, and that's how I got all covered in it." She shook her head with disgust.

Apparently things aren't always what they seem.

my big, fat ass

2010-05-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend and I embarked on this new fitness journey a couple weeks ago, called 'Couch to 5K'. (You can google it, but I'm too lazy to post the link...see? This is part of the problem). Since we both love sitting on the couch so much, and we both enjoy an evening cocktail or several, while sitting on said couch, we both noticed that we were starting to develop extra fleshy rings around our midsections and decided to do something about it. Yay, us.

In addition to beginning this descent into the burning hellfires of making our bodies move quickly and often, a process which slowly unfolds over an 8 week period during which you are supposedly going to ease into being able to run an entire 5k without difficulty, I decided to explore the world of raw foods too. I have only had one glass of wine in the last week or so, and have instead been drinking decaf chai tea in the evenings while curling up to The Office and True Blood on the DVR.

I started making zucchini 'spaghetti' and raw pestos and healthful sauces and nut 'cheeses' and stepping up my salad intake big time, in the hopes of jump starting my health. It's been fun experimenting with new recipes and reading about the benefits of going raw, or mostly raw (there are certain things I won't give up, like coffee. And vodka, sometimes).

So Jeremy weighed himself a couple days ago and he's lost a whopping 5 pounds. This after continuing to drink beer and eat whatever he wants for two weeks. I, however, gained a pound. What gives????? Anyone? ANYONE???

PS I hate you, universe.

No Santa Claus

2010-05-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

So last night at dinner, my kid announced that she no longer believed in Santa Claus. "Well, how do you think all those presents get under the tree, then?" I asked Ms. Smarty Pants. This was met with a look of pity/weariness, which I find comes from my 6 year old more often these days when she's assessing me and my many, many shortcomings and deciding whether or not her mother might actually be, in fact, retarded.

"Um, the MOMS and DADS put them under there."

I remained composed(ish), "Well, I suppose they COULD do that, but it would be kind of hard, wouldn't it?" (Why this would be less plausible than Santa bringing the presents by breaking in through the screen door before visiting 10 zillion other houses in one night, I don't know, but I went for it).

Jeremy thoughtfully bit into his burger and said, "One year, I decided there was no Santa Claus, too. And I didn't get any presents that Christmas." Lily looked alarmed. I had to clamp my mouth shut at this point, because the twisted, dark-mother side of me wanted to one-up that one by telling Lily that kids who don't believe in Santa not only don't get any presents, but that Santa comes and steals the toys they already have, just as punishment, a la David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries (pure comic genius). I didn't, though.

Instead, I drew upon my motherly sensibility (as if I actually had some), and tried to bring the focus back to the whole mystery of the thing. "Well," I said, "I think it's nice to believe in a little magic. The spirit of Santa Claus is certainly wonderful to think about, no?"

Lily, at that point, took 'spirit' to mean, 'dead', and decided that Santa died a long time ago and it's his ghost who brings presents to all the little children.

And I decided to just let it go.

Chick Lit

2010-05-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

Time gets away from me when I'm in the library. I get anesthetized by the delicious musty-worn smell of thousands upon thousands of books with their technicolor covers and plastic protective casings. A calm washes over me as I stand in the middle of an aisle, perusing all of the uncharted territory I've yet to discover: all the new adventures, romantic yearnings, sexploits and murders I've yet to dive into and immerse myself in. I liken it to perhaps what herbal tea drinkers experience at the end of a long day, curling up with a steaming mug of sleepytime. Being a maniacal coffee addict, I can't relate. But it must be nice.

Anyway, usually I love my library time. It's one of the only things I get to do by myself (Lily does often come with me, and sometimes even collapses into a beanbag chair with an easy reader, but once the childrens' librarian yelled at me for leaving her alone in the kids' section b/c she was too young to be unattended. Fucking Christ. I could SEE her from where I was standing. And it's not like creepy child molesters hang out in public libraries. Wait...Nevermind), but yesterday I found myself getting ornery as I languished up and down the aisles, noticing that more and more of the shelves were stuffed with books fall into a newly popularized category people call "Chick Lit".

Maybe it actually isn't THAT new. But Chick Lit, as a genre, annoys the hell out of me. Encased in candy-apple red or fuck-me hot pink book jackets, a lot of these literary morsels are nothing but formulaic, uninspired dreck disguised as 'writing for women'. Titles such as "Don't Make Me Choose Between You and My Shoes", " See Jane Date", "Friday Night Cocktails", and a series called "The Shop Til U Drop Collection" irritate me to the core.
I don't consider myself to be a scholarly writer by any means, and I'm far from established or successful, but if "White Bikini Panties" can get shelf space at the local library, then by god, why shouldn't the carefully documented journal I kept of my daughter's bowel movements for her first three months of her life?

All right, that's not fair. Not all Chick Lit books are crap. I know this. I'm really just letting off steam. I think it's because I'm feeling like I want to take my writing to the next level somehow. I love to blog, but I want to see my own book on a frickin library shelf some day. Hell, even if it's in the clearance bin at Barnes and Noble, I don't really care, as long as it gets published. Truth is, I'm kinda scared. OK, terrified. There. I said it. Happy?!

Just Let Go...

2010-04-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

I just taught my daughter to ride without training wheels. It was exhilarating and terrifying and also really annoying, especially when she toppled over and angrily flipped her bike (with surprising Superman-like strength), stomping and air-punching like Rocky on after a bad hit at a crack pipe, telling me she was REALLY MAD that she couldn't manage to keep her balance.

However, she kept getting back on. And on. And on. And I kept giving her overly-enthusiastic words of encouragement ("OMG, you're DOING it! LOOK at you! You go girl!!"-- so embarrassing), gripping the back of her little banana seat, ensuring her equilibrium before giving her a gentle push and actually letting go, watching as she pedaled off with those impossibly little-yet-strong, mosquito bite-smattered, sun-browned legs, pumping the pedals and keeping the bike going and going.

I think the hardest part of the whole experience was actually lifting my fingers off the seat and watching, yipes, with half-lidded eyes and Botox-like frozen-bared teeth, as she flew away from me. By herself. Knowing that she could do it on her own made my mama bosom swell with pride, but it was also almost impossible to believe and it actually hurt a teeny bit. This little girl, my kangaroo-pouch buddy, was off riding a bike by HERSELF?

Yep, she was. And it was awesome. The end.

Blog Hopper

2010-04-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

Hey dudes.

I'm back over here because, well, I get bored and itchy at work sometimes and I wanna write, but I can't access the Sex and the Humidity blog from here because it has the word 'sex' in it and is blocked. I live in the south now.

Although, in fairness, when I worked for a giant investment bank in NYC they blocked things like that too. Probably because the poor, overworked young bankers liked to spank it to porn during the rare breaks they got during their 18 hour days. Whatever.

Anyway, I'm glad they didn't take this blog down. I'll blog at SATH still too, but this one I'll be updating more. I think. I hope. You never can tell. So...follow me. Come and enjoy the ride.

Love, K

NEW BLOG, BITCHES!!!

2009-08-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

Hey guys...I've created a new blog and I'll be over here from now on...

http://sexandthehumidity.blogspot.com/

Bookmark it! Tell your friends (in case you have any)...

mwah!!!!

Love n stuff, Krissyface

Here we go

2009-08-13T05:26:00.000-07:00

well, this is my last day in New York. I just woke up from the most bizarre dream. No, my dreams are getting more and more fucked up as I approach the big move. This one had me staying in a hotel in Thailand (?) and James Earl Jones and Dick Cheney were both staying there too. There was a community bathroom and I saw both of them naked getting out of the shower. And they both had pierced scrotums. JEJ had dangling earrings of Ganesh hanging from his balls.

The other night, I was boarding the airplane to Louisiana, but the door was really tiny and my ass couldn't fit through and I got stuck. I felt really claustrophobic and freaked out, then woke up. Also, I dreamed I was at a party with my boyfriend and we got in a fight and I slapped him across the face. Then ran away but got chased down the hall by a patron of the party (an older lady) who yanked my pants down and sharply spanked my on the ass. I assume these are anxiety dreams. I mean, this is a bit of a life-altering plunge I'm about to take, yes? I mean, who am I if I'm not the saucy NYC girl blogger with the sassy five year old? It will take me a little bit of time to figure out where I fit down south, but I'm confident I will.

Those dreams, though. I am surprised I'm not dreaming about how the fuck I'm gonna travel across the country later today with a small child and two freaked out cats.

That one I'm really anxious about.

See you on the other side, m'lovlies! Mwah!!!!!

New York, New York, you're a hell of a town

2009-08-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

Hi, y'all. As most of you know, I'm relocating from NYC to the deep south, and this whole tearing-up-of-the-urban-roots is taking place in about a week. A week!

Holy SHIT!!!

I have been so busy wrapping up my freelance job, packing up my crap (sweaters and snow boots going in storage at mom's, kick ass!) and drinking heavily that I have hardly had a minute to stop and think about what I'm really doing.

I will probably start a new blog once I'm settled with lots of funny (sad? pointless? retarded?) anecdotes about what it's like being a transplanted NY girl living in the wilds of southern Louisiana.

What should I call it? I need help, you guys. Give me some ideas for titles.

Anyway, as I was waiting in line at Starbucks this morning, and a girl with a headset walked up and down the line of itchy, undercaffeinated city folk taking drink orders, I thought, goddamn, I am so not gonna miss this. Really, I'm not. I have told my boyfriend repeatedly that the drive-thru Starbucks alone is worth the move to Baton Rouge, and I meant it.

I will miss a lot of things about my beloved city, though. I won't lie. I just can't think of them right now. Let me get through this Venti iced coffee and I'll blog more about that later.

So...the adventure continues...stay with me, folks. This is just the beginning...

Attachment Parenting, my ass.

2009-07-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

I'm all hopped up on Dunkin', folks...what is it about humidity and the reek of steaming asphalt that makes me crave giant doses of iced french vanilla with half and half and two Splendas? And of course I get an immediate brain freeze/artificial-sweetener-tumor-induced headache, but it's so, so worth it.

So Lil and I had her yearly dental check up this morning, and I sat there slack jawed and drooling with shock while the sweet, gentle-voiced dentist went over her x-rays and told me basically that my kid's teeth are rotting out of her head.

She's five.

And we're basically vegetarian. And I keep sugar to a real minimum. Yeah, she likes gum, but we both chew orbit pink, which, though packed with ingredients I can't pronounce that produce golf ball-sized nodules in lab rats, doesn't contain any actual sugar.

And I'm good about dental hygiene. I am. I make sure Lily brushes her teeth with the goddamned American-Dental-Association-recommended motorized toothbrush in the shape of a bloated Cinderella at least two times a day (ok, at least once, but we really try for two).

So, what the hell's going on here?

So I gave it some thought, and I think I figured out the likely culprit: breastfeeding.

Sonofabitch. I'd heard stories about the sugar in breast milk affecting baby teeth if little'uns were permitted to nurse on-demand all night long for long stretches. And I spent two straight years in a state of of sleep-deprived, borderline psychosis because my kid loved to nurse, and I wanted a happy and healthy kid who was securely attached to her mama. I went to La Leche League meetings and am a huge proponent of breastmilk being the healthiest way to nourish babies and toddlers. I even went to the nurse-in they had in front of the ABC building a few years ago, when that C-U-Next-Tuesday Elizabich Hasselblech said she wasn't going to nurse her baby and Barbara Walters nodded, saying, "I get so uncomfowtable when I see a mothew nuwsing in pubwic!"
I sat on the sidewalk in midtown, amidst all my crunchy momrades (I just made that up! Get it?) and yanked my feedbags out of my dress to make a stand that nourishing a hungry baby in public is not offensive or disgusting!!!

And yet...here I am in cavity city.

I wouldn't have traded Lily's upbringing for anything, and I definitely agree with a lot of the principles of attachment parenting. Lily rode all over NYC in a sling and/or backpack from the time she was born, slept next to me, was permitted unrestricted access to my all-night titty bar for years. Her babyhood was happy and the connection we share is probably very much due to the bonding we did during her infancy.

But damn. Is Dr. Sears gonna pay my dental bill?

I think not.

It seemed perfectly rational at the time.

2009-07-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

I was catching up on List of the Day's blog, and I came across this photo.

Now, clearly this pic was photoshopped for the purpose of eliciting a giggle, but for me, it conjured some heavy, stashed-in-the-attic sense memories of an irrational phobia I used to have, and it was positively chilling for me. Positively chilling.

I used to be afraid of swimming in my pool as a kid and being chased by a great white shark while I did laps. No, seriously. My hyperactive kid-imagination actually convinced me that it was possible for a helicopter to fly over the pool overnight and 'drop in' a great white shark (why? hell if I know), which would then sit at the murky pool bottom, hiding and waiting for me to dive in for my morning swim.
This thought paralyzed me for months, and eventually I would only go swimming if someone else was there too, say, like my little sister. Because that meant the shark would get her first, and that was more than okay by me.

Of course, my fear of great whites came from the movie "Jaws". I mean, I wasn't allowed to see it, but I clearly remember being freaked out by the movie poster and the cover of the book, which my mom had, with the naked girl cruising along the surface of the water at dusk while a monstrous, mountain-sized shark lurked just below, ready to chomp her in half with its giant, knifelike teeth.

Thinking back, I realize that most of the illogical, weird kid-fears I had were spawned from movies I wasn't allowed to see but somehow either managed to watch or find out enough about to scare the crap out of myself. Hell, some of those movies I probably shouldn't even be watching now.

For example, When I was 9 I was staying over at a friend's house, whose mother was way Jesusy and thought somehow it might be appropriate to allow two little girls to watch "The Excorcist" (edited for TV, but still). This was, I can only assume, the mom's way of warning us of what might happen should we fail to meet the standards expected of good Christ-loving children(luckily, she never knew about how we used to practice kissing in her daughter's room, or about the raunchy scenarios we acted out with our barbies). After the movie, I asked the woman if kids could actually get possessed by the devil, and she said, very solemnly, "Well. I really, really hope not."

Also, though I never watched "Silent Night, Deadly Night", I think I must've seen it at the video store, and the image of the guy in the Santa suit holding the knife, and the blood all over the snow, had me convinced me that my whole family was going to be brutally slaughtered while coming home on Christmas Eve. I remember praying in the car all the way home from church that we would be spared this horrible butchery, because the idea of never getting to open my toys the next morning was practically too much for me to stomach.

I was also constantly convinced that my loyal black lab had rabies. Every time the temperature topped 80 degrees and she started panting in the back yard, I'd yelp for my mom to come and check to see if she was foaming at the mouth.
Thanks, Stephen King.

So, needless to say, I won't be showing Lily any frightening movies any time soon. If she has half the imagination I had at her age (and I suspect it's even wilder), I'll be opening a door to years and years of mental torture, and I'm probably doing that well enough on my own without any help from scary movies.

So tell me, guys, what irrational fear did YOU have as a kid???

This is why I suck

2009-07-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

I think I'm just too hippy-dippy and free-spiritish (read: lazy as fuck) to keep to a schedule of posting a photo a day.

BUT. This project has made me realize that I need to pay more attention to this blog. And I intend to. So sometimes I'll post silly pictures, sometimes I'll write stuff. And when I don't feel like it, well, I just won't. You can always find me spouting off bullshit on Twitter and Facebook if you're really interested. Which...well, let's just leave that one open-ended.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I love you, Ferrtileblog. You're like my neglected little sister who was fun to play with when no kids my age were around, but who got thoughtlessly tossed aside like a stinky sock when the cool older chick down the block came to play Charlie's Angels With No Shirts On in my backyard. Always dependable. Always present and ready for a game of barbies. I will try not to take you for granted as much.

I've been having crazy dreams lately. Mostly I think because I'm preparing for a big move from the city in which I've dwelled for the last 9 years -- from the apartment my daughter was born in, from my friends and family and favorite liquor store -- and planning to defect to the hothouse tropics of Southern Suburbia. I'm all Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and mint juleps and afternoon siestas like Scarlett O'Hara. More on this topic to come, of course, as plans unfold.

Mostly my nightly sleeps have been fraught with terrifying scenarios where I am lost in a mall/subway station/high school and late for something. Or I'm about to take a final exam in a subject I've never studied. Or go on stage to star in a play I've never rehearsed. I fake it fairly well, but basically I can't fool anyone and feel as transparent as saran wrap.

I've had enough therapy to understand that these dreams are simply my anxiety over making a big change, working itself out in my subconscious.

They still suck, though, and make me wake up feeling all bloaty and sweat-filled.

More later, bloggers. I loves ya.

Tattoos

2009-07-11T05:25:00.001-07:00

It occurred to me that I'm gonna have a hell of a time dissuading my daughter once she decides she wants to decorate herself in permanent body art. Because I'm all hardcore and shiz.

Like Mama...

Like daughter.

Skull earring

2009-07-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

I was taking pictures of myself in the bathroom again (to post on facebook? To avoid the monster hair/toothpaste/phlegm/god-knows-what-else clog in the sink?), and I thought you'd like this. All two of you who still read this blog.

Thoughts? Abandon 365? Keep going? I dunno...it's kinda fun...

That doesn't seem right, somehow.

2009-07-08T07:11:00.001-07:00

Two porks AND a tofu? Most tofu-eaters I know don't tend to ask for a pork to go with it, let alone two.

Just my two cents.

I know I owe a picture. I'll post again tonight. Hi!

Please.

2009-07-06T13:10:00.001-07:00

This made me smile. Well, smirk, rather.

Good Night, New York City

2009-07-05T18:20:00.001-07:00

When I was little my mother made up a bedtime song that she used to sing to us, to the tune of "Springtime For Hitler", called "Bedtime for Babies". I didn't know who Mel Brooks was at the time, so I didn't find anything funny about the song at all. Quite the opposite, in fact; the tune made me so unbearably sad that I used to run and hide under the kitchen table and sob. I'm still not sure why the song itself upset me so much. Just like I can't explain why "Bohemian Rhapsody" made me freak out so hard in the back seat of the car one night my dad had to pull over and have me breathe into a paper bag. The song scared me, I dunno. It made me think of dark things. I thought maybe The Exorcist was singing it or something. A child's mind is a bizarre thing indeed.

Anyway, I'm not sure what brought that up. Maybe it was this pic I took tonight of Lily and the cat at bedtime, and how my city bedtime routine is so different for my kid than my mom's was for us in the sweet, suffocating quietude of 1980's suburbia. Lily crashed out in my bed tonight under the open window and had a street lamp for a night light. And her lullaby was the hard thunk-thunk-thunk base of some asshole playing 'Rumpshaker' in his parked car in front of our building.

G'Night, NY, you city that never sleeps, you.

July 4th and the aftermath

2009-07-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna post twice today because I suck.

But get off my back, man. I'm doing my best.

Here is a picture of a firecracker that almost took my goddamned head off.

OK, I exaggerate. But if I didn't, I wouldn't be me.

Mwah!

Making up for lost time...

2009-07-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys! OK, I was doing so well with my 365 project and then I totally fell down on the job (and on my face. Drunk).

Sorry I wronged you.

But I'm back. And celebrating July 4th in Southern Louisiana, a place I never in a million years thought I'd be spending any July 4th, ever, but as it's looking more and more likely, a place where I'll be spending many July 4ths going forward.

And, as it turns out, you can buy fireworks here in bulk like it's Costco.

Frigging insane.

So, happy 4th to all my lovelies, and here's hoping I don't blow any fingers off.

Mwah!

Hello, Mother lode.

Badass firecracker, that's me.

Apparently Britney Spears has her own fireworks, as well. I bet they're slutty and prone to psychotic outbursts.

Again, with the bananas

2009-06-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

I spied this strange pile of banana skins by a garbage can on my way to work this morning. Either a gorilla was walking up Madison Avenue and missed the trash, or someone wants me to fall on my ass while tossing out my coffee cup.

Very funny.

Banana Phone

2009-06-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

My boss is out today, so I'm being an ass.

Home Alone

2009-06-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

Lily went with her Dad and I'm having a really hard time filling up the space.

I miss her.

At least I'm not totally alone...

365: Day 5

2009-06-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

Lily has reached that age where her childlike curiosity leads her to ceremoniously disrobe all of her toys, even the ones with no discernible genitalia (which, I kind of hope, is most of them). She tore the britches off poor Animal with the fervor of a starving dog with a bone, then left him in a lurid heap on her bed like a washed up, schlumpy porn star.

I'd like to say that I have no memory of doing this myself as a child, but I distinctly remember a Disney World trip at around Lil's age when my cousin Simeon and I each got a Pinnochio doll, and engaged in a dead heat race to see who could strip him of his lederhosen first.

I am pretty sure he won.

365: Day 4

2009-06-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning to a smear of poop on my bedcovers and a kitten scampering away with shit feet because he stepped right in his own excrement while trying to cover it up in the litter box.

Asshole.

So, Lily and I gave him his first bath today.
I thought he might go like Michael Jackson, his little heart was bursting and beating so fast out his chest.

But instead, we dried him off and Lily carried him around wrapped in a towel like a baby for a while, then he crawled up on my pillow and passed out.

Shhhh.

365: Day 3

2009-06-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

I couldn't find a stirrer this morning and was too lazy to walk my ass to the office kitchen to get a spoon, so I used a nail file.

Because I'm disgusting.

365: Day 2

2009-06-24T17:30:00.000-07:00

I snapped this picture carefully because this is from the cranky old Italian ladies' garden around the corner. They're two sisters who spend most of their time going to church, wiping tomato sauce on the aprons covering their housecoats and growing, ironically, some of the most exotic and gorgeous flowers I've ever seen, much less in Queens, NY.

But they're grumpy as hell. One in particular reminds me of the witch from Rapunzel, who made the man promise to give his first born daughter to her for stealing radishes. It wouldn't surprise me if she whacked me on the wrists with a wooden spoon for taking a picture of her garden.

Anyway, it had just rained, and I thought the leaves looked cool.

And now, for something completely different...

2009-06-23T12:01:00.001-07:00

Hi, folks!

Maybe some of you have been wondering why this blog is covered in cobwebs lately. Probably you're not, but hell, maybe you are. Fact is, I post even less often than I have sex, so I'm falling down on the job, obviously.

I want to blog more. But since they upped my medication I can't seem to focus on anything.

(Crickets)

So. I decided to take some of the pressure off myself and start a PROJECT 365.

Why?

Well, for one thing I'm hoping it'll light a fire under my arse to be a teensy bit creative each day. Also, I need a fun project. A diversion, if you will.

So, here goes.

PROJECT 365 DAY 1

Amazing myself that I can put on a pout despite the fact that I am positively rotting inside from lack of sleep and a summer cold. Kill me. Please. Someone.

See y'all tomorrow! Tell your friends! Mwah!

Dumb Shoe Review: The Sandal-Boot.

2009-06-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

This is the most impractical shoe I have ever seen.

My favorite thing to wear in the summer is BOOTS! Yeeeeeah! I love to coat my ankles and the tops of my feet in non-breathable suede. And thanks, shoe designer, for adding an open-toe to this fashion disaster so that the puddles of feet sweat have a place to runoff, instead of just stagnating inside my bootie/flipflop.

I like trends. I read Womens Wear Daily (sometimes. Ok, not that often), but I draw the line at this. This is ...insane.

I remember when I first moved to New York City almost ten years ago, I was kind of overwhelmed by how attractive, shiny and fashion-focused everyone seemed. I busted my ass (and credit card, HA!) buying slashed-price designer fashions at Loehman's and TJ Maxx and using my sewing machine to alter hot thrift-store pieces I snagged so that I could feel sophisticated and hip on a budget, while working a slave-wage-payin' publishing job in Chelsea.

It sort of worked. The trying to look good, I mean. Some days were a hit, others, I cringed when I saw my slouching reflection in a store window, wondering if perhaps I'd dressed myself that morning in a fit of hysterical blindness.

However, and this is the honest truth (from the mid-30's sage who's life experience can benefit you, young reader!) ...over time I began to realize that even if you're wearing hottest trend of the season (ie skinny jeans...oh, you hateful fashion 'staple'), if you aren't comfy in your own skin, you're just not gonna look good.

And that's the truth, Ruth.

Here's my goddamned question, though: Why does it take growing older to grow wiser?
How come I couldn't feel this good about my looks when I actually didn't have crow's feet and thighs that kissed each other when I walked around the village? Huh? Huh?

It's not freaking fair. But still, it's ok.

I was thinking about all the freaky things I used to wear when I had my first job at 22. I had a pair of pink and black wool bell-bottoms that looked amazing with my polyester button-down shirt and manic-panic'ed burgundy hair.

My only leftover cutting-edge fashion accessory now is a nose ring and a messy ponytail. But it's cool.

I guess when you think about the steel toed Doc Martens I used to wear (my dad would chortle, "Don't you need a prescription to wear orthopedic shoes? Waka Waka!"), the sandal bootie isn't really that bad. But still.

I will not be wearing that crap this summer. Bet on it.

I bet they never made a Ringworm Barbie.

2009-06-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

I hate unexpected days off from school.

As a single parent with a freelancer's inconsistent (ie spasmodic and well-below-the-poverty-line) income, I get panicky with the slightest upset of our stone-clad school routine. Quite simply, if mama don't go to work, mama don't get paid. And if Mama don't get paid, well, there are just so many creative recipes you can come up with for canned cat food, get me?

But this week I was fucked. Fucked, I say! The school nurse called me to come pick up my kid because she was itching with ringworm (we both got it from the filthy kitten), and though this localized, common fungal infection (everyone can get it! Not just poor people!!!) was no longer contagious, I figured I'd better not argue because I really don't need Child Protective Services coming by and judging my mothering abilities when they see the state of my domicile.

So, during our quarantine in the apartment (which I somehow managed to clean during a Hannah Montana marathon) Lily and I cooked up an epic game of Barbies that sucked up a good part of the afternoon.

When I play with Barbies I can't help but shudder with relief that I have a little girl and not a boy. I could never, ever muster the same enthusiasm for toy trains or baseball cards that I do for Barbie and her entourage of Kens, Skippers, and more-cheaply manufactured cousins with names like "Benign Girl" and "Vogue Fashion Princess", whose bodies are crappily assembled and coated in lead paint, but still fit into the same hooker clothes made for the authentic Mattel brand.

I delight in brushing out the tangles of knotted Barbie hair, and the pulling of tiny clothes over stubborn rubber legs (why haven't they done something about that? smooth, hard plastic would be soooo much easier, am I right??), I even like slipping teeny shoes onto Barbie's ridiculously weensy feet, though it does conjur a terrible memory of once finding a spider in a Barbie shoe when I was six and freaking out so hard I almost threw up.

Lily is tough on her Barbies like I used to be. She keeps them naked, thrown together in a bin, their feet gnawed on and hair clotted with god knows what because they have spent too much time in a backpack or under the couch or floating in the bath tub. She is abusive as hell to them, but still maintains a loyalty to these dolls that I have to respect. It makes my little mom heart thump with a nostalgic pride.

With my Barbies, I eventually gave up and chopped all their tangly locks off. I then graduated to ballpoint pen eyeliner and lipstick and punk rocker earrings, which I fashioned out of pilfered straight pins stuck right into Barbie's tough plastic ears.

Eventually, my pre-pubescent urges lead me to the inevitable sex-play grind-a-thon of naked Barbie and Ken (or Shaun Cassidy or Donnie Osmond), and to make the scenario more realistic I took tiny bits of chewed Big Red gum and made nipples for Barbie's impossibly conelike, immovable breasts.

Somehow, this helped.

It's difficult for a mother to picture her daughter locked behind a bedroom door and ignoring calls for dinner while she mashes two dolls together in an attempt to work through pre-teen horniness, but I guess it's inevitable.

And I guess Barbie and Ken are better specimens for sexual experimentation than, say, the next door neighbor or some little douchebag on the school bus.

I really have no idea what this post was about.

It's a damn shame.

2009-06-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

Why would anyone want to burn down a topless coffee shop?

Is this what the world is coming to?

I'm wracked with grief. My eyes are sore and bloody from sobbing.

Why, god? Why?

Lying Liar

2009-06-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

I don't particularly care for lying to my kid. Like, if Lily asks me straight out if there is a Santa Claus, I am not going to tell her that yes, some grizzly old fucker is able to haul his fat ass around the world in one night and drop off stuff you can get at the neighborhood Target to every child who's been good that year. I can't say that with a straight face. Instead, I'll smooth Lily's hair and kiss her forehead and try and turn the question around (a solid, well-practiced tactic of passive-aggressive parents everywhere), as in, "Well, Sweetie, it's a wonderful thing to believe in. What do you think?"

This lets Mama off the hook, because I know Lily's candy-colored, hyper, 5 year old brain can't focus on the question long enough to really decide what she believes, and she's already moved on to the next thing ("Do you think he'll bring me a Bratz doll anyway, even though you think they look like trampy Barbies?")

Anyway, lying isn't my favorite thing to do. Sometimes stretching the truth is
necessary, though. Like in the case of the loss of Lily's first wiggly baby tooth, which she yanked out while watching "Little House" and ran to show me with blood dribbling down her chin, I told a little fib. I helped her place the dainty little nub, almost like a doll's tooth, in the special "Toothfairy Tin" her grandmother gave her, and we stuck it under her pillow.

Then, viola! Next morning, when the tooth was gone and a folded-up dollar bill was in its place, I, with my giddy mommish tendency to cherish these once-in-a-lifetime moments, was as surprised and joyful as she was that the tooth fairy had actually visited. (I also mused that probably "A dollar was a special treat for the first tooth, and maybe the tooth fairy would be bringing nice, shiny quarters from here on in").

This morning, however, I told a flat-out lie.

See, last night around bed time, the cats were making a fuss about something in the hall. I flipped on the light, and there on the floor, curled up in a fetal ball, was a teeny baby mouse. Aaaah, shit. That's what I said, too. Loud enough, unfortunately, for a certain someone to hear me over the whirrrrr whirrrr of her Cinderella electric toothbrush, and Lil came running to see what I was cussing my face off about.

She watched in horror as I coaxed the not-yet-dead victim into a tupperware container and deposited him on the windowsill right outside the kitchen.

"I bet he'll be fine in a few minutes...just in shock," I smiled and gave Lily a hug. When we got into bed we talked about how Baby Mouse would find his way back to his his warm nest where Mommy and Daddy Mouse would take care of him and nurse him back to heath with mouse tea and lots of kisses. Sigh. Lil said she wanted to check on him first thing in the morning, and if he'd disappeared, that meant he was alright.

Right.

So, after the kid drifted off to sleep, I made my way into the kitchen to get a drink.
I checked on the sill and there was Baby Mouse, in the exact position I'd plopped him, very much no longer alive. I saw as I glanced closer that his little ear had been torn and his stomach was starting to leak out from underneath him.

Ahhhh, fuck.

So, I made a decision, and this might make me a shitty person or a good mother, I still haven't decided.

I reached out the window and gave Baby Mouse a gentle, one-finger flick down, down, down to the great street below.

Then I drank a double bloody mary with extra tabasco.

This morning, Lily bolted out of bed and skidded into the kitchen. Bleary eyed and slurping coffee, I barely realized what she was doing when she came and bounced, thrilled, onto my lap. "He's GONE! He's GONE! He's okay! The mouse went home to his family!"

I smiled. I nodded and said, "Yep, he must have. He's gonna be fine."
Then I hugged my daughter close and made a tiny contrition to the great judger above (whomever that might be) for this teeny transgression.

Sometimes the truth is just nothing but bullshit.

We want the precious

2009-05-27T06:45:00.000-07:00

I have been too busy to write much lately, but I will take time to photoshop a picture of my kitten next to that Lord of The Rings guy. I promise I am not gonna turn into one of those bloggers who only writes about her cats. I hope.

That shit's funny though.

I need a kick start on blogging here. Who has an idea of a topic for me to write about?

Crazy Cat Ladies!!

2009-05-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

Well, this has been quite a week. I don't have long to write, because I need to resume the patrolling of Lily and our new Kitten, Nugget, to be sure he remains alive and not squished to death, as she cannot seem to stop carrying the little guy around like a baby and putting him in baskets like he's her own personal baby doll ("Stop checking on me, mom! You woke him up! He's FINE!").

See, we had to put our elderly cat friend, Cleo, to sleep this week (my brave parents did the actual deed), and at 17 she was ready and went peacefully.

We realized though, that we really liked having two cats, so I located this very interesting organization online that traps, neuters and releases feral cats in NYC. The older woman I talked to on the phone was adorable if not a little too friendly (I learned all about her recent hysterectomy during our first phone call)... I imagine she spends a lot of time with her cats.

We met her at a residential house in Queens in which there was a basement containing about 50 feral cats in cages and their babies. Holy shit! She catches these kitties, spays and neuters them, and tries to adopt their babies out to good homes. I was impressed.

We picked out this little guy, and brought him home in a car service, where he barfed all over me and crawled up my neck onto my shoulder while our driver, a Bengali gentleman, kept asking me out for a light Indian dinner and a Bollywood movie ("Tomorrow?" "No. Thank you. I'm not interested." "Monday? You work Monday?" "Thank you, no. I'm really not interested in going out with you." "I'll call you Monday then.")

Lily and I camped in her room and watched Little House on the Prairie DVDs while Nugget, our newest friend, jumped around and snuggled and got to know us. Poor Sea Monkey was barred from the room (this kitten is tiny, and I didn't want him thinking he was a toy), but they have officially met this morning and seem to be getting along ok.

I'll keep y'all updated...

xo

When you're trying to elicit sympathy, it's best not to threaten

2009-05-15T05:22:00.001-07:00

Dear Man in Dirty Red Tee Shirt on 7 Train,

I realize that you've probably had a tough life. I do. And I'm sorry for that one leg of yours that is significantly shorter than the other makes you walk with a limp. I'm sorry that your malformed foot doesn't quite fit in your sneaker and that it takes you longer than the average crazy person to make it down the middle of the aisle during your nightly canvassing of the rush-hour 7 train.

But I have a bit of advice for you, red-shirt wearing, hostile beggar. When trying to garner empathy from your fellow commuters (and collect gin money), it's best not to threaten to kick our asses if we don't give you change.

When you pulled your shirt up to show us the deeply-grooved scars on your back, and that short Mexican guy snickered, he was only doing so out of discomfort. I don't think that calling him an Oompa-Loompa-Looking-Motherfucker really added anything to the mounting tension you created by being both hostile and vulnerable at once, concurrently begging for money and telling us we are all assholes.

If I might, perhaps I can offer you a bit of advice, sir. Maybe take a trip to Times Square and watch how the more polished, seasoned spare-change solicitors do it. I think the best course of action is:
1. Enter train at a stop.
2. Briskly walk the aisle giving spiel about how you're living in a shelter but trying to get a job.
3. Ask politely for extra change.
4. Tell us God Bless.
5. Exit at next stop so as to not to create discomfort among fellow passengers, and try again in the next car.

I think that's really what works.

Here's what doesn't work:

Standing in the middle of the train, stop after stop after stop, shouting expletives with your shirt hiked up over your head, calling your fellow riders 'Foolios'.

It just makes you look silly.

Just a little friendly advice, sir. Food for thought, if you will.

Have a blessed day!

Love,

Krissyface

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! And I'm sorry about the title of my last post.

2009-05-10T14:35:00.001-07:00

Apparently Mom didn't like "Snakes on a Plane".

My parents are retired English teachers, and they actually read my blog. I know. I don't understand it either.

I come from a family of big readers and grammar savants; in fact, I'm the only person in my immediate family without a graduate degree. Because really, you don't need a Masters to excel in WiseAssery.

Still, I like that my parents read the blog, even if they do give me crap about some of the content. They don't believe anyone should be censored, even though I know they secretly hope some day I will start to curb my rancid tongue and maybe talk about my vagina a little less.

I really appreciate my parents' open-mindedness with regard to reading and writing, though. As far back as I can remember, my sister and I were always allowed to read whatever we wanted. As long as we were reading something, my parents didn't care if it was the back of the cereal box or an Archie comic or Jackie Collins; they just wanted us to love the process of reading as much as they did. And we both inhale books like giant piles of uncut cocaine.

When I was maybe eleven or so, my mother picked up Judy Blume's Forever at a rummage sale and tucked it away in a corner shelf of our living room library and told me that I could read it "When I was a little older and ready".

Why not just dangle a salt lick just out of reach of my giant, panting animal tongue? Of course I snuck that book into my bedroom whenever I had a chance and dog eared every page (especially the ones where the guy introduced his girlfriend to his penis, whom he named "Ralph", omg), sharing it with friends and even sneaking it into school a couple of times. I was cool as shit because I had that book. It was my golden ticket; I used it as a bargaining chip to get invited to slumber parties. Of course, after I fell asleep the popular girls took it and read it under by flashlight after dunking my hand in warm water to get me to pee my sleeping bag. But I digress.

I think by the time Mom asked me if I felt 'ready' to read the book, I'd memorized the sex parts so thoroughly I could recite them. I'm pretty sure I did.

Anyway, the point is, I have really cool parents. I don't think I tell them that enough. Thanks, mis padres, for your unconditional acceptance and understanding when it comes to the unpredictable (yet endearing!) antics of your errant elder child.

Happy Mother's Day, Mamacita. And Hey, Dad. Nice to see you too.

Love,
Krissy

There's Motherfuckin' Swine Flu on this Motherfuckin' Plane!!!

2009-05-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

I was traveling this weekend and was startled/entertained/confused by the number of people I encountered in various airports across America (because I'm a jet-setter, doncha know...actually, no. I just buy my tickets on Priceline and cannot afford a direct flight anywhere so I get to see the insides of various airports as I run to connecting gates spilling my Starbucks all over me) sporting this look.

Now, come on, people. Really?

When my plane descended into Laguardia, I launched into a mini-sneezing fit because recirculated air always makes my nostrils itchy, and the woman next to me was practically turning herself inside out trying to avoid sharing any breathing air with me in such a confined space. I gently wiped my nose, put my hand over hers and patted it, saying, "Don't worry. I think the meds I'm taking have made me less (cough, cough) contagious." Then I planted a big, wet french mouthkiss on her.

I'm not trying to make less of this potential pandemic (okay, yes, I am), but I do think people are overreacting just a weensy bit here.

I found this website that actually sells "Swine Flu Masks". Click here if you want some of that shit, but warning...limit three per customer! So, you and your husband and child are safe. But your baby is shit out of luck.

But you can buy some of these instead.

Hey, get an extra one for your babysitter and see what kind of long-term damage you can inflict on your child's emotional development while keeping him all Swine and Dandy and flu-free!

I ask for so little in this life...

2009-04-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

I will be SO PISSED if they end up closing the Queens County schools because of this swine flu bullshit. Mostly because having a kid at home will keep me from enjoying my newest favorite pastime, watching trashy TV at the gym.

I don't have cable, so I inhale the rot-yer-brain crap that's shown on the workout-vision TV sets that are conveniently built into the machines at my gym. This is amazing to me. You simply plug in your headphones and you have access to reality TV, soaps and about 9 different court shows. I don't know if I love working out now, or if I just spend an extra 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer because I just HAVE to see how that paternity test came out on Judge Hatchett. Either way, my ass thanks you.

Have you guys ever seen Steve Wilkos? I love this guy! I think I am having the same kind of weird masochistic sexual fixation on him that I had on the meat cart guy near the playground in my neighborhood; he's big, bald, sweaty, unabashedly masculine, and looks like he'd smell like a steak kebab. He flips over chairs when he gets pissed at the irresponsible babymamas on his show, but he's also tender and sweet with, say, the gangbanger who kicked his pregnant girlfriend in the belly, but really, really wants help to get out of the thug life, ya know?

It's really engaging. I can't get enough.

Even though a lot of moms go to my gym, I think I'm probably the only woman crying on the treadmill because I'm so moved by the transformation of a teen prostitute or because I've seen justice given to the woman who sued over the $200 faulty weave that made her very hair fall out of her head.

Thank you, Fitness Center, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Walt Disney is rolling in his frozen grave

2009-04-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, (and I apologize to you folks, for so many reasons...but really, what the hell is wrong with you people anyway?!) you might recall me blogging about my weird-ass dreams. Recently I wrote a whole wastebasketful of nonsense about a recurring nighmare in which I have the painful urge to the pee and can only find filthy, feces-encrusted public toilets available for my use. Oh, and I'm also usually barefoot.

Last night's dream, though...I don't know WHERE that came from. I did drink a stoopid amount of pink champagne at a friend's birthday party and then go home and stuff microwave popcorn in my face while watching repeats of Grey's Anatomy, but I am not sure why I dreamed that Lily and I went on a vacation and had to share our hotel bed with two full-grown female lions.

The lions were tame(ish) and liked to cuddle, but shit, they were still fucking gigantic bloodthirsty jungle cats with claws specifically designed to tear flesh away from bone. And this thought plagued me as I crawled into bed with my child. Maybe it's all the Christian the Lion stuff I am seeing on the internet. I think they just wrote a book about that guy. Anyway.

So, it gets weirder. I'd also forgotten to pack any clothes for the trip, but my aunt was kind enough to supply me with an adult-sized Mickey Mouse bathing suit. But stuck inside the crotch was a used menstrual pad, filled with blood, and I couldn't seem to remove it.

Thoughts, guys?

I dyed my hair.

2009-04-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

I call this shade, "Throw Me In The Water And See If I Float, And Then Burn Me At The Stake, EEEEEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEEEE!".

Mile High Club

2009-04-20T04:56:00.001-07:00

It has come to my attention that I need to blog. I've been away on vacation for the last week and writing was not in the forefront of my mind. Ok, I was mildly inspired whence I was looking at Youtube videos of Chris Rock musing about Tossed Salads, but I couldn't quite conjure anything that would be acceptable for the masses. If you google 'Chris Rock' with 'Tossed Salad', you'll see why. But do so with caution.

Oh, but I had forgotten what an interesting experience it is to travel sans adult partner with your five year old child.
That's actually not true; I've never even done it. I have little to compare with this experience, in fact.

I can only draw upon one excursion, lifetimes ago, when our family was still intact, and we traveled to South America on a film shoot. Lily was a little more than two. My DVD player crapped out about halfway through the flight and the Benadryl I'd administered on the knowing urges of my jet-setting mother friends had the opposite of the desired effect, in that it made the kid hyper as hell. She spent a good part of the flight bouncing in her seat, kicking the shit out of her tray table and attempting to run down the aisle to bust in on First Class. Eventually she melted down and vomited all over herself and me, and a during our ear-popping descent, a helpful passenger offered her a stick of Juicy Fruit, thereby igniting the kid's lifelong obsession with gum.

All this was happening as her father was seated in the back of the plane among other film crew members, engaged in 'meetings' or something. It should be noted that at this time I was still trying to convince myself and everyone else how important my husband was, to our family and to the world at large. So important, in fact, that hey, we got this free trip to South America and all I have to do is sit with the kid on my lap the whole flight and not complain! Small price to pay for the experience, right? Right? Wrong.

But I digress.

Now my child is older and, presumably, more mature and will as a result be a more companionable travel comrade, I'm thinking. And I have to say, I was right for the most part.

It was Lily who sat pretzel-legged and unperturbed, watching "Hannah Montana" on my ipod when our tiny plane hit a patch of turbulence. I began to believe in magical creatures, swearing that a giant must have mistaken us for a toy plane and was punching at the sides of our vessel in a crude attempt to amuse himself. I was acutely aware of the thin membrane separating us from The Other Side—this being imminent death—and felt certain that every passenger had drawn the same number in the game of life upon boarding. The jig was up. Game over. What a way to go.

Lily was completely unfazed as I watched, from the unfortunate vantage point of our front-row seats, as the steward scrambled to his perch, quizzically located right next to the cabin door/escape hatch, and fastened his seat belt, then proceeded to hoist two mystery straps over his shoulders which I was sure were attached to a parachute. Son of a bitch, I thought. He's gonna totally ditch. He's gonna jump out of the plane and I'm going to die holding an empty peanut bag and cup of bloody mary mix.

But that didn't happen.

Eventually we sailed through the rough patch and the bile in my throat slipped back down to my stomach and all was well. And I realized that the most frightening thing about the experience wasn't the turbulence itself, because I've been on bumpy flights on my own before and never really minded. It isn't my chosen way to go, but I'll ride down in a fiery fuselage if it is my fate. I'll suck on the free oxygen and clutch my passport, so they can identify me later. I'm not really afraid to die.

What freaked me out was that I was on this plane with my child. With Lily, who has yet to experience much of the world and to whom I have sworn, by the very nature of our mother-child bond, to protect and keep alive at all costs.

And it's funny because she didn't even notice my panic, my racing mind, the fact that I was stricken and terrified and smearing the passenger window with my sweat-soaked palms, in an attempt to somehow control what was going on around us, to protect her from harm.

Yet another example of how motherhood is a total ruse, how completely unfair the whole thing is. But I guess, you know, that's alright with me.

Easter Thug

2009-04-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

Tonight we wrote a letter to the Easter Bunny, instructing him to please take the stinky pink and blue and lavender eggs sitting in the basket on the kitchen table and hide them "in a place where no one will find them" (this was Lily's request).

We left him a plate of baby carrots and a handful of Puffins cereal and I reminded her that EB would only come if she went to sleep early.

Then she asked, "Mama, how is the Easter Bunny gonna get in our house?"

This is a question I hate. Living in an apartment in New York City doesn't really allow for working within the framework of the Santa-coming-down-the-chimney scenario, or the Easter Bunny hopping in from...wherever he hops in from. All our holiday characters climb in the window from the fire escape like cat burglars and it doesn't exactly enhance the fantasy.

So I gestured toward the kitchen window. "I left it open a crack, so he could get in that way, see?"

Lily was horrified. She hopped up from the kitchen stool and promptly removed all the little plastic Princess statues from the window sill and transported them into her room.

When she came back I was smiling. "Is that so the Easter Bunny will have an easier time getting into the house, baby?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. It's so he doesn't steal them."

I bit my lip. "Honey, he isn't going to steal your toys."

"Well, what if he does? What if he comes in the window and takes all my candy? Should we hide everything?"

Christ, Almighty. So I spent the next 20 minutes explaining that just because the Easter Bunny comes in through the kitchen window like a convicted felon, it doesn't mean he's gonna steal our stuff.

But getting her to sleep totally sucked, because every creak or cat mewl she heard had her convinced that the Easter Bunny was arriving ahead of schedule to make off with her Barbie Trans Am or Polly Pocket cruise ship.

Holidays shouldn't be this complicated.

Look what we got at the thrift store!

2009-04-07T05:19:00.000-07:00

It rained like a bastard yesterday. God, it was endless. I stood outside waiting for the bus under the awning of our building AND holding an umbrella. And still I got soaked. Don't wear clogs in the rain, guys. Just don't.

So around 6 pm the sun sort of started peeking out and Lily and I decided to go for a walk and get a scooter pie.

And, of course, stop at the thrift store to see our friend Hope and so Lil could try and score a free crappy stuffed animal or dirty barbie or old heinous purse.

She really really wanted this.

And I couldn't, in good conscience, say no.

How could anyone?

Full circle

2009-04-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

I have a history of bringing strays home. Not just men, but also animals too.

When I was about 19 and away at college, my suitemates and I thought it would be a good idea to get a kitten. This was after the rabbit debacle the previous spring ('Cadbury', bought around Easter and existing in my dorm room beneath crudely fashioned cage of a milk crate, shitting little nuggets everywhere and thumping his goddamned feet 24 hours a day, ended up the size of a large cat and 'escaping' from a hutch in my parents backyard that summer, before being transported by my Grammy Alice to a 'farm' upstate).

So we went to the pet store and picked out the frailest, most needy-looking kitten in the place. She had a drippy eye and sneezed nonstop. Of course this is the animal for me, I thought. Of course it is.

To make it up to our Jamaican suitemate, whom we did not consult on this purchase and who hated the us, we let her name the kitten. She called her "Nesta", after Bob Marley.

Well. Nesta did fine in our little suite until we had a fire drill. My friend Keri stuffed kitty in her parka and we ran outside, gathering near the building until we were told we could go back. Our RA came over to talk to us, and, oops, little Nesta popped her head out of Keri's coat to say Hi.

That was the end of the cat in the dorm, see.

So, Grammy Alice saved my ass again. She took the kitten and kept her as her own. She renamed her Cleo (for Cleopatra, as she was a gorgeous gold and black), and played with her ("She loves it when you put her in a paper shopping bag and swing it around! She just goes crazy!"), and loved that cat right up until the she died. Alice, that is. She lay in a hospice bed in front of her big window, slipping away from us, and we held her hand and told her it was okay to let go. And Cleo curled up in a ball at the foot of the bed, seemingly bereft. Devastated. Alice died last month at the age of 94. Cleo was 17.

Actually, I should say Cleo is 17. That cat is as old as fuck and still kicking.

And now she's living with me. I had promised Grammy Alice months ago, when my aunt and mother were dangling the assisted living carrot in front of her, that I would take Cleo and care for her when she moved out of her apartment. And I kept my promise, even though my lovely grandmother slipped away before she got to the assisted living 'sunset' of her life. Probably best.

So, Cleo came to me a few weeks ago, skinny, disoriented, pissed off and traumatized. She hid behind Lily's bed for about a week, coming out only to eat and poop and hiss at Sea Monkey, who was absolutely entranced by her.

We seem to have settled into a routine and the two cats are tolerating each other, though occasionally I'll be jolted awake by hissing and shrieking as they startle each other on the way to the litterbox or in the wee hours of the night. And this morning Lily came in wiping her foot, saying, "I think I just stepped in Cleo barf!"

But it's par for the course, I suppose.

And I'm glad to have the chance to do this for my grandmother. It's what she would have wanted.

And really, it's only fair.

Thank you, Ann Rule, for making me feel better about my life.

2009-03-29T12:35:00.001-07:00

I happened upon a little used book store on St. Marks last week. It was a sweet little shop with colorful wooden stools scattered throughout on which were scrawled in thick black sharpie: "NOT FOR SITTING!!! WE NEED TO PLACE BOOKS ON THESE!! DON'T EVEN THINK OF SITTING HERE!!!"

Charming little out-of-the-way place. Friendly too.
I was especially taken by a sign inviting me to browse their 'outdoor garden' bookery, which was actually a bunch of overstuffed metal shelves stuck outside the door, covered with a tarp. There were chimes out there though. And that was cool. If not freaking eerie on a cold March night. Like horror movie eerie.

Anyway. I damn near peed myself when I discovered an Ann Rule book I haven't yet read, and snapped that bitch right up for just $3. The book is A Fever In The Heart, (A Bestselling Story of Obsession, Manipulation and Murder!) and I'm of course savoring it each night like a sweet little snickers bar hidden under my pillow before bed.

I love true crime books. Love them. There is just something horribly, deliciously captivating about the graphic details of a crime committed by your average American boy-or-girl-next-door. One common thread I find in reading these fiestas of pain and suffering (and I've read a bunch) is that nobody ever would've ever expected it to happen. Ask any neighbor, third grade teacher, babysitter, the guy who sold the victim/perpetrator their cigarettes and whiskey, and they'll all say the same thing: "Those people? Oh, but I can't believe it. They were so nice, such good citizens, neighbors, PTA parents...I'd never have expected he would have been a serial murderer! Or that she'd have shot her children point blank in the backseat of her car! That woman? No way she'd have ever killed her husband for insurance money. I'd never have thought it possible."

Hell Yeah. That's the draw for me, for sure. The idea that anyone can commit a crime of 'passion' if driven to it under the right circumstances. A hot, dry night in the midwest, a lighted match and zip! You've set your house on fire with half its occupants asleep inside. Whoops!

And I admit it. Reading these books makes me feel just the teensiest bit better about my own life. Not that I really have much to complain about these days. But when my single mama patience runs needle-thin at the end of the day and I ask Lily just a little too gruffly if she would just eat one more bite of goddamned macaroni and cheese, I can rest assured that I'm doing a hell of a lot better than these poor saps.

Also, I'm pretty glad I don't own a gun or know anybody with ties to the mafia.

Big day

2009-03-25T12:59:00.001-07:00

It's my birthday, and a pigeon pooped on my face!!!

Corn Pads

2009-03-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading Lily Anastasia Krupnik, by Lois Lowry. Since I'm working from home more and am able to pick Lil up several days a week, I've discovered that there is a public library right next to her school. Sweet relief. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I tend to get palm-sweatily anxious if I don't have at least one book in rotation at all times. It keeps me from coming unglued.

I love the library. I love the overheated aisles with shelves and shelves of brand new stories. I love the musty smell of books that have passed through thousands of hands (and maybe even helped some stray scabies make the journey from your home to mine. Thanks!)...several times I've lost track of time and almost gotten to school late because I'm all sprawling with legs askew on the floor, pawing through a pile of novels to decide what to take home and what to leave behind.

I have this new thing with trying to get Lily to love all the books I loved as a little girl, but conveniently forgetting that I didn't discover a lot of these beloved paperbacks until I was at least 7 or 8 and could actually read. Of course I think Lily is smart, but having to stop and explain every concept and phrase from a Judy Blume novel to a 5 year old isn't really my idea of a rockin' good time. (I only read her Otherwise Known as Sheila The Great, which is really innocuous. It doesn't deal with periods or jerking off or mouthkissing or anything).

Anyway, last night we were laying in her bed as I read aloud from Anastasia. We came to a part about Anastasia's teacher taking off her shoes under her desk, and her corn pads being visible through her stockings. This was terribly intriguing to my child.

L: "What are corn pads, Mama?"

M: "Oh, they're just these little sticky things you put on your feet if you have...rough spots."

L: "I want some corn pads!"

M: "No, you don't. You don't need corn pads. Should we continue with the story?"

But she wouldn't let it go. She insisted that she needed corn pads and wouldn't listen to the story until I agreed to take her to the Duane Reed the next day and buy her a goddamned box of them.

Finally, we finished a chapter and she went to sleep, dreaming happily of our trip to the drugstore to buy footcare products.

And then I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of wine and planned to get some fucking Dr. Seuss books tomorrow.

Parasites 'N' Me! A History.

2009-03-15T14:46:00.001-07:00

Warning: this post contains copious amounts of icky. You may come away scratching yourself. Not for the faint of heart. But then, if that describes you, you wouldn't be on this blog anyway.

Hi! I'm Kristin. And I'll be your host (HA!) through this historic journey. If at any point you feel the need to throw up, I totally don't blame you.

When I was four I was a little dirt digger. I had a fun hobby of collecting ants from the back yard and placing them in my roller skate wheel. I'd place the skate on its side and then spin the wheel to give the ants a 'ride', like their own little amusement park. Sometimes the ants would fly out and I'd have to gather them and put them back in. It was my understanding that ants liked to be entertained in this way, and that I was doing something to make their mundane lives more fun. By my side was always my faithful black lab, Samantha. I have very distinct memories of sitting outside with Sam during this time, and feeding her ice pops. What I don't remember is developing ringworm. My mom said I got it probably because I was always naked running around in the grass and I hated taking baths. Some things don't change. Maybe I stepped in dog poop or even sat in it and didn't know it, because I think ringworm is spread through feces or something.
I don't remember the treatment for ringworm but I remember being completely freaked out that there was actually a worm lodged under my skin. I kept squeezing the skin to try and get it to come out. I'm pretty sure it went away quite quickly though.

When I was six I got lice. Probably from some dirty kid. There's always that dirty kid in your class and I always ended up befriending that kid. What sucked about this was that I had long, tangly hair that fell to my butt almost (my mother liked to keep me looking like a fundamentalist mormon) and the toxic chemical treatment that mom force-combed through my locks until my scalp was bloody didn't work. It got so bad that I had to cut off all my hair to a shoulder-length bob. Lice was maybe the best thing, fashion-wise, that ever happened to me in childhood.

When I was about ten I was doing my homework and playing with my hair when I found a tick behind my ear. That was fucked up. I remember scratching it and thinking, gross. How did I get a fuzzy pimple back there? And why can't I pick it off?
I ran downstairs and my poor mother had to deal with my hysteria. She tried everything to get it off...I think she even lit a match and tried to burn it at one point, but in the end we drowned it in rubbing alcohol and intoxicated on fumes, the fucker fell off. Mom flushed him down the toilet and I remember being nervous for a while that it would make its way back up the bowels (excuse the pun) of the septic system and bite me on the vagina.

Let's fast-forward a bit now. Remarkably, I made it through my college years without any nasty bloodsucking parasites living in my pubic hair, but when I was 25 I got married. Then I was legally bound to a parasite. Ha! Seriously though.

I went on my honeymoon to Puerto Rico. I spent the days of that week reading Ann Rice novels and baking my skin to a golden bubbly eating delicious tropical fruit. No problem, right?

Wrong. About three months later I expelled, during a (somewhat lengthy, but) routine bathroom visit, a flat worm the length of my arm. You may ask, how did you know you shit out a worm? Do you look at the toilet after you have a movement? Yes.
And so do you.

I had to fish it out of the toilet with a pair of tongs (that went straight to the dumpster) and put it in a coffee can to bring in and show my doctor. Ever sat in the waiting room of your doctors office with a giant Chock Full O Nuts can between your legs? It's mildly humiliating.

In the end, I was prescribed some kind of poison that tasted like baby aspirin, which killed anything that might have taken up residence in my intestines. And I haven't seen the likes of those guys since.

Which brings me to my most current brush with parasitic nastiness. I started developing what I thought initially to be a rash on my hips, legs, and boobs. It itched like a bastard, and nothing seemed to help it...not calamine lotion, not tea tree oil, not epsom salt baths, not getting drunk and trying to forget about it. My whole life became about scratching. I was like a homeless dog with incurable mange. I was actually rubbing skin off from scratching.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. It gets so you can't even think about anything else.

I finally went to the doctor and was told that I had scabies. Yes. Scabies. What almost-36 year old woman gets SCABIES?!
That'd be me. I'm still not sure how I got these nasty little mites that lodge under your skin and just relentlessly bite the fuck out of you, but I'm now focused on getting rid of them. I had to coat myself and Lily last night in a toxic cream that 'must be washed off in the morning!', according to the novel of a warning label.

And so here I sit, sippin on coffee, still with the urge to scratch, but less so.

I'm hoping this is the last chapter in this here story.

That was an accident.

2009-03-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry about that blanky mcmystery post, guys. I wrote something, then deleted it because it was stupid, but accidentally hit 'publish'; then my computer was feeling ornery and every time I tried to go back and delete the post itself, the internetz crashed on me!

Goddamned bastards!

So then I said fuck it, I have better things to do. Like watch youtube videos of bedbugs.

Oh, but more on that later.

Anyway, I assure you that my strange black hole of a post was not a philosphical experiment in headfuckery, though I am thrilled that you guys think I have enough flickering brain cells left to pull that off. Ah, if only I could give you all a soft, patronizing pat on the head for that one. Or a loving tap on the heinie. To show my great and abiding appreciation.

Anyway, I've just been busy busy busy. I cannot tell you how much time I have spent on Google this week researching bedbugs, convinced that I must have a little army of them burrowed in my mattress or light switch (they can hide in there!), or pillows or something. This research takes up so much of my time, I hardly have the energy for anything else.

I have been waking up for the last week with angry clusters of welty, itching bites all over my hips, butt and back. I don't know what the hell is going on. I changed my facebook status last week to say something like, "I hope it's just a spider bite!" and about 12 of my helpful friends commented that spider bite my ass, it sure as heck sounded like bedbugs.

Yet, a thorough search of my bed, floor, walls, bookshelves, drawers, pillows and couch revealed nothing. No indication of anything amiss. Not even bedbug larvae or a dead stray guy or anything. I did however find an overdue library book. That was nice.

So the itching continues. It's killing me. Tea Tree Oil and Caladryl are not alleviating my discomfort, but are staining my clothes and making me smell like the Whole Foods.

On the upside, the kid seems unaffected. So, maybe it's hives? eczema? Or shit, maybe it's that flesh-eating bacteria. That would be just my luck. Now that I think about it, that's probably it.

2009-03-11T11:52:00.001-07:00

The people I meet

2009-03-06T05:06:00.000-08:00

I'm lucky enough to make friends wherever I go. That's because I'm friendly and really open-minded. Also, many people frighten me. And I tend to be nice to everyone, especially when I'm afraid that being anything but will perhaps get me backhanded in the mouth or burned with a cigarette.

Case in point...

I've been spending a lot of time in the south lately.

I found myself traveling a long distance in a Louisiana taxicab yesterday in the company of a very interesting lady driver. Because she caught me at a vulnerable moment and called me 'baby', I said, "Sure! No problem!" when she asked if I minded her smoking.

Immediately I slunked down in my seat and started to roll down the window ("That one don't work, baby...here, let me put down mine...") and thought, you asshole, Kristin. What the hell did you just do?
See, when it comes to carsickness, I am even worse than your nerdiest, most hayfever-prone, nearsighted, cape-wearing, drooling, sniveling second cousin. You know, the one that puked in your dad's hat on every car trip you ever took as a family? Yeah, that's me. Only I get even more nauseous and can gag on command. I've been known to groan and put my head between my legs on rides to the 7-11 down the street.

And here I am telling this woman she can smoke on an hour-long ride to the airport. Duh.

There was something charming about her though. Even in her spandex shorts and flip flops, which showed off a red chipped-off pedicure on her dracula-ish toenails. The woman was so obese her cheeks almost hid her eyes. But she was sweet. And I was having a bad day. So I needed a little sweet. I got the sense that she would invite me over to her trailer and make me ovaltine and give me fresh mint from her garden or something.

Then the inevitable happened.

We started talking about Hurricane Katrina. This poor woman's house was leveled during the storm, but she proudly announced to me that she would not take a handout from the government. "No sirree, I work for my money. Not like some people..."

I love sentences that start with, "I'm not predjudiced, but..."
And this one was no different. Sigh. This lady opened her mouth and my, what a rant came tumbling out of it.

And since I'm a nice person, and tend toward passivity, I find that people feel comfortable being racist around me or something. She started talking about how the only people accepting help from FEMA were the black folks, and how they were dragging the culture of Louisiana down, and blah, blah, blah.

I wasn't feeling feisty enough to get into it with her. And plus, I know I cannot change a woman's mindset in one cab ride.
So I didn't say anything. And I kind of feel bad about that now.

I got to the airport and surprisingly didn't vomit on the street as soon as I stepped out of the cab. Even though I kind of really wanted to.

Maybe I should have asked to borrow her hat.

Saturday in the park, EVERY day's the Fourth of July!

2009-02-28T17:11:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody!

Been a spotty poster lately. I'm sorry, darlings. I just feared I might've run out of things to say. Then I walked through Madison Square Park on my way to work this morning, and ping! I thought of something to tell you.

First, let me just say that the squirrels in Madison Square Park are more like little puppies than they are squirrels. You walk by a cluster of them tittering at each other on the park bench, and you make a little clucking sound at them with your tongue, and they run at you in bands of 4 or 5, eager to climb up your legs in the hopes of getting a nut or treat. It's very bizarre. You get the sense you could cradle one in your arms like a kitten if you wanted to. But as my babysitter Isabel learned when she was little, after a lot of lost blood and a rabies shot, squirrels don't really want to be grabbed and hugged.

Anyway, let me tell you about some of the things I saw in the park today, besides the squirrels, that got my rusty brain gears turning:

1. Group of zen-ish asian peoples practicing the Tai Chi in heavy coats and woolen scarves and mittens. You've got to hand it to these folks. I mean, shit. It was cold this morning. And yet, here they are, committed to their quiet, fluid, meditative movements, or whatever the hell it is they do. It was mesmerizing to watch, anyway. Which brings me to

2. Weird Robert Chambers-looking guy in preppy Irish sweater, smoking cig and watching Tai Chi people, as if he were contemplating picking one to kidnap and violate under a tree nearby. Or eat for a snack. He had an intensity in his eyes that would definitely red flag him in a bar as the guy who always carries date rape capsules his pocket.

3. Homeless man wearing coat and pants that were stuffed with newspapers (clever!) to keep him warm. He was slumped like a sleeping fat pidgeon, head tucked into his chest. On his feet were mismatched soft hospital casts...like the ones they give you when you sprain your ankle.

4. Skeletal woman jogging in a lipstick-red parka, attached via skinny rhinestone leash to an equally starved-looking poodle, wearing four doggie sneaker/slipper type things the exact same lipstick color as the woman's coat.

Now. This is what struck me. Not that it made me wanna cry or go out and start a revolution or anything, because, please, I've got enough on my plate...but, it made me stop and think for a second, is all.

There seems to be such an ever-growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in this world. I mean, here we have a man who keeps all his earthly belongings folded into filthy shopping bags and stuffed in a cart, who cannot afford shoes on his feet on a cold February morning, who's probably not had a decent meal in weeks. And jogging by in the same park at the very same moment, there's a woman who probably doesn't do much eating either, but for veeeery different reasons, and she's got enough extra money to buy on goddamned shoes for her dog.

What's that about? You don't have to answer. Or answer, if you like.

It just struck me as sort of sad.

Now I have truly seen it all

2009-02-24T18:41:00.001-08:00

You guys. You guys. You have to watch this.

Seriously. I thought maybe I was tripping when I first watched this...like, wait, who totally dosed my overpriced Wall St. Pret A Manger salad with brown acid? Seriously.

Fatherhood Examiner: Shocking Video of Two Year Old Smoking Cigarette

Fatherhood Examiner: Shocking Video of Two Year Old Smoking Cigarette

Posted using ShareThis

PS. I have to give credit, once again, to Cary. He posted this on his facebook profile and I shamelessly stole from him. Again. Cary, if you weren't so good, I wouldn't need to bite off you.

Great, now I'm going to get fired for surfing porn sites

2009-02-18T05:39:00.001-08:00

My company is hilarious. They block every site known to man where you might engage in 'social networking' (ie fun), like myspace, facebook, linked-in, and twitter, yet I can still access most of your blogs, which are nothing but filth.

This makes me scratch my head in confusion. Or it may just be the bedbugs.

Just kidding. I don't have bedbugs. Yet. But I just read that these little bloodlusting monsters are on the rise in New York. By 34%. How you end up with 34% more bedbugs in a matter of months I am not certain, but I definitely have invested in those plastic covers for the mattresses. But that's actually because Lily still pees the bed sometimes. Sigh.

Anyway. Back to the internazis at my job. Yesterday I was trying to access a link on LOTD, where I could take a quiz to see if I'm an asshole or not (thedipstop.com, it was), but it was blocked because it was characterized as 'pornography'. What the hell? Pornography?

Great. That's just great. Now not only am I forced to focus on my actual job because I can't chat with my friends on the facebook, but I'm going to be branded as a pornhound by the management too. Oh, well. I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.

In other news, I've recently acquired a funky orange beret, which I've been rocking throughout wintry NYC. It's warm, and helps people locate me if I get lost in a crowd. However, one of my co-workers has taken to calling me Rerun, which I most assuredly don't appreciate.

I don't see it. I mean, come on. His beret was red.

I just wanna clarify...

2009-02-15T16:43:00.000-08:00

Red Bull does not, in fact, give you wings.

I am knocking one back presently as I rub my eyes and pinch my own hiney to try and stay awake to make it out for a night with the ladies.

And the only place I feel compelled to fly to is my bathtub.

Anne Coulter is a yeast infection upon society

2009-02-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

Hey. Hey you, Ann Coulter. You vile, birdfaced bitch.

You and your fake tits need to recognize. Normally I dismiss your ridiculous, wildly ignorant assaults on educated America with that simple head shake I reserve for the hopeless crazies on the subway, but your recent indictment of single mamas as the cause of 'most of societal problems' is just too much.

Too much, m'lady.

Hey, hey...Ann Coulter, Have you ever been a single mother?

No?

Oh. Well, you ought to try it. It's totally awesome. In fact, it's most women's childhood dream. I know when I was ten years old laying nightly in my pink canopy bed, contemplating what wonders my future held, I prayed relentlessly to my virgin mary nightlight that the good lord would grant me a child with an incapable disappointment of a father who bailed on his basic daily responsibilities, leaving me to do most, if not all of it, by myveryownself.

In fact, I often find myself supressing a gleeful smile that I got my very wish... especially on the nights that my daughter keeps both of us up with a hacking cough, then barfs all over my pajamas and insists upon sleeping curled up like a little turtle with her feet in my face, thereby keeping me from getting back to sleep at 4 in the morning, although I need to be up at 6 to get both of us ready for school and work.

With the exception of the Octomom, who is crazier than a bag of circus clowns, I think very few women embark upon the great journey of motherhood expecting that they will be doing it all on their own. And yet, more and more of us are. And the (growing) number of us out there are busting our asses to do it the best we can, while our babydaddies maintain active social lives, pay child support sporadically, and pop in on weekends for pizza and movies.

Curious, then, Ann Coulter, why you don't perhaps point your sharp little judgement stick at the deadbeat daddies of America, and ask why the hell more and more men are shrinking out of the picture, abandoning their obligations and getting away with it?

Actually, Ann coulter, I've a much better idea.

how's about you just take that there sharp, pointy judgement stick and stick it straight up your ass?

Overheard in the elevator today

2009-02-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

Girl #1 (largely caboosed, wearing ill-advised stretchy pants, extremely Staten Island-accented):
So, are you going out with him tonight?

Girl #2 (sipping coffee, smoothing hair, might be a midget):
Yeah. He got tickets to a show from one of his clients.

Girl #1:
Oh! That's cool. This is the guy with no neck right? But you might like him?

Girl #2:
No, no, no. He totally has a neck.

Friday Feeling

2009-02-06T13:36:00.000-08:00

My sister and I used to looooove Fridays, because

1. duh, there was no school on Saturday and we could sleep in, then get up and watch The Snorks in the spare bedroom while scarfing as much Crispix as we wanted without interruption (until our dad came and made us hold the giant lawn bag open while he did away with the raked leaves in our yard. I hated that.)

2. I had a huge canopy bed (and Lisa had a little twin bed...WHO was the favorite?), and on Friday nights, if we promised not to be too loud, we would sleep together in my bed and stay up late laughing and joking, sometimes till one of us peed the bed. Or until we got in a fight and I physically kicked Lisa back to her matchbox of a bedroom. I was a terrible bitch of a sister.

3. My parents would take us out to The Pancake Cottage, where I would get the Marine Boy Special (fried fish sandwich and fries) and we'd play "Playing with the queen of hearts" on the jukebox.

I have Friday Feeling today. But for other reasons. (Wiggles eyebrows).

Do any of you have Friday Feeling? I hope, for your sake, that you do. God knows you deserve it.

Oh! And here's a coffee spitter for your weekend. That's my new term. Coffee Spitter. God, I am really so down with the young people lingo.

Mwahs and Mwahs and Mwahs!

Tub Time

2009-02-04T04:48:00.000-08:00

Me and Larry Flynt Down in the Subway

2009-01-30T05:50:00.001-08:00

New York is so weird. Sometimes I love living here, and sometimes it feels as though the city is a nasty schoolyard bully that steals my lunch money and then repeatedly punches me in the face until blood is running into my mouth and I am spluttering knocked-out teeth like chiclets.

Friday was one of those days. I just felt defeated and tired. A rat on a wheel, if you will. Sometimes it happens.
Even to me.
I know, hard to believe.

At the end of the day, I peeled through the crowd on the N train and actually scored my ass a vacant seat. Then suddenly I sniffed and sniffed. Something smelled like an old sneakers rotting in a vat of spoiled milk in rat-infested deli somewhere. Warm waves of stale, burned coffee rose up to my nostrils like cat pee on a shag carpet. What the fuck?

I grabbed my purse and realized that the smell was me. Awwwwwesome. I had purchased a brand new oversized travel mug (Ha HA! what a clever devil I was, buying a cup three times the size of a grande latte, so as to transport more caffeine than humanly possible on my morning commute, and not have to stop once for a refill! Yes! Brilliant! Snaps to me!!!) and it had dumped inside my bag, and a stream of cold, end-of-the-day coffee was peeing quietly onto my leg.

Nice. Thanks, Baby Jesus. Why, man? Why?

Anyway, regardless of the fact that I smelled like the dumpster behind the Starbucks, I was not getting up. New Yorkers fight hard for their subway seats; we have an obnoxious sense of entitlement to a hard-won ass-planting if we can score it on a rush-hour train. This is ironic of course since most of us spend our days sitting on our duffers in climate-controlled cubicles, but still. I learned how hardcore New York subway seat jockeys can be in my ninth month of pregnancy. I was still commuting to work and sometimes I could stand for an entire 25 minute ride, my jutting belly literally poking some white collar fuckwad in the Wall Street Journal that he had splayed open to better enable his hiding and pretending not to notice me.

But that night I almost did give up the seat. Because a giant boulder of a man came and stood over me.

He was terribly unfortunate-looking. He had a huge, protrusive stomach and the jowly, frog-like face of Larry Flynt, with a neck that sagged lazily over the collar of his buttoned-up shirt. Wait a second, I thought. Larry Flynt can't be on the NYC subway. He's in Washington, petitioning Obama for a porn industry bailout. Besides, he's in a wheelchair. He can't hold a wide-legged stance in my personal space on the N train. That man's legs don't even work.

Gross. This dude was most deliberately standing inside the invisible box where there's only room for me. Even on a crowded train there's still your dance space and mine. You don't need to say it, it's just what we all know. And so, like a freaky secret between just us, he stood there. And stood there. And I couldn't do anything.

Then he started clenching and unclenching a fat, purplish fist. Then he put his hand in his pocket, removed it, and poked his tummy. Then he reached down and readjusted the front of his pants. He systematically repeated these actions while I sat there, all of this happening disurbingly close to my face.

Goddamn it. Not moving, I thought. Don't care how uncomfortable you try and make me. You can't win. I win. Today is for me.

It became a dance...I watched as he took on a rhythm: clench, unclench hideous fist, place hand in pocket, take hand back out, poke belly, shift balls.

Still I would not move.

Then, inexplicably, he got tired of trying to engage me and moved on to someone else.

The train stopped at Queensboro and a flood of people migrated to the 7 train and he shifted his stance to tower over the Asian model in the stilettos and faux-Cheetah coat, which wasnt even being worn ironically. I guess he thought she was more worth the puppet show than me.

And I rode the remaining stops home, wondering...did that really just happen?

More things said in bed

2009-01-29T05:21:00.000-08:00

We can't seem to stay off the topic of conception these days. My kid has a knack for asking the really difficult questions right as we are both drifting off to sleep.

Last night she wanted to know where she was before she was in my belly.

Um.

I told her that her spirit was waiting for me to be ready for her. (???)

At hearing this, she got a little freaked out, asking, "So, I was a GHOST?!"

I explained that, no, your spirit is like your soul, your essence, who you are before you have a body (Jesus Christ, are five year olds supposed to ask such philosphical questions?)

Then she thought about this, and said, "Ok. So, how did my soul get inside your belly then?"

How would you have answered that question?

I'm in a crappy mood today, by the way. It's been cold as a bitch in the city and it keeps on snowing. It makes me feel itchy all over and long to run away to a beach somewhere warm.

But hey, at least I don't have cello scrotum.

Comings and goings

2009-01-27T05:33:00.000-08:00

What a difference there is between coming and going.

On the way there, you notice the beauty of flying at night. Out the window the floor is strewn with tiny Christmas lights, endless, with an inky streak of black above. Even higher, you watch as stars breathe into the open sky, so close you could almost swallow them down.

The flight home, though, is different. The sky is flat and gray, heavy with humidity. Takeoff is a dull pull, your body literally tugged between ground and sky. Sky wins, and every second becomes a reminder of being taken further and further away.

You rise into haze, remembering the feel of his body, so present, so solid, the electric hum of a cat purring by your head. You remember things he said into your hair as he touched you. You remember never wanting to move from that place.

Hard to believe that only hours could put such distance between you. It's painful to think about; it's mean.

You still have bits of it with you...a camera filled with pictures, the smell of his home tucked into the clothes in your suitcase, the feel of his sheets on your skin.
But it isn't enough.

You curse the patchwork of ground below you, brown and ordinary, a tangible reminder of the space between you.

You'll get home, it will be freezing. You'll turn on the heat and talk to him on the computer until your eyes are glazed. You'll be grateful that it's 2009 and that you can communicate that way, but still, it isn't the same. It isn't his fingers slipped inside the top of your jeans, it isn't you stepping into his embrace, his arms closing around you like safety, like home. You can't smell his freshly scrubbed skin or his mouth. You can't feel his fingers wrapped tightly around yours.

So you comfort yourself with hope. With thoughts of a future. Of a time when a morning alarm simply means getting up for work, parting for the day instead of for weeks at a time.

You ease back into your days without him. And it starts to feel less like an open sore. You tell yourself that this is temporary.
It's just a matter of time.

That some day soon you'll be able to stop having to say goodbye.

Nighttime Questions

2009-01-21T17:25:00.000-08:00

Lily and I were snuggled under her princess blanket last night and I had just finished singing three Joni Mitchell songs to try and get her to fall asleep. I thought she was out, but then she popped up her head and said, "Mama, Do you have to get married before you have a baby, or after?"

I sighed. "Well, some people do it before. A lot of people, I guess. And some do it after, too. And also, some people never get married, and they still have babies".

She nodded slowly, staring past me.

"Oh. Ok. So...were you married when you, you know, did the...the thing..."

She giggled self-consciously. Now. Here was a golden opportunity for hip mama, sexually open, you-can-ask-me-anything mama to swoop down with her pink PVC cape and strap-on and save the day.

But Hip Mama totally failed me. I start to giggle too.

"The...thing? What, um, thing, sweetie?" (I know what's coming, and I want soooo much to be cool about it, so why the fuck am I reverting to 4th grade, braces-clad, braided-hair Kristin who just learned what a tampon is in health class?!!)

Lily looked stricken. "NO! You're gonna laugh. It's hard for me to ask."

I straightened up. Ahem. "Honey. You can ask me anything. Anything."

"Well," She paused. "I'm talking about the... the thing in the...butt".

Then I totally lost it. I busted out laughing. Shit, there goes my chance for a sexually healthy kid. I'm screwed.

No, my kid isn't a little perv who is confusing sodomy with intercourse. Trust me. She just can't tell her butt from her little ladyparts. She never could. No matter how many times she sits naked on the couch with her legs swung over her shoulders, pointing at her hiney, asking, "Mama, this is where the pee comes out, right? And the baby too?", and no matter how many times I gently correct her, the kid still doesn't understand what's going on down there.

So I said, "Sweetie, do you mean the penis in the vagina?"

"Yes! yes that! That!" (Big relief spread across her face).

"That's sex. Intercourse. And no, you don't have to be married to do that. But it is something people who are in love, um, do."

Hip Mama gets a big, fat F.

The more things change...

2009-01-19T19:15:00.002-08:00

The more they don't, really.

My mother tells stories about how I was her teeny shadow when I was a little'un.
I'd follow her all over the house, dragging my baby dolls and my Fisher Price Farm wherever she went, plopping myself down quietly to play, just to be close to her. I especially liked to follow her into the bathroom.

Between my sister and me, I don't think the woman had a private bowel movement in upwards of six years.

I found it hard to imagine how any child could be so obsessed with her mother that she'd even follow her into the crapper.

Then I had Lily.

1979

2009
(Note the Polly Pockets have replaced the Fisher Price Farm).

HAPPY OBAMA DAY!!!!

I Love New York.

2009-01-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

Holy Furquing Spit!!!

Think you had a shit day yesterday?
Well, at least you didn't plunge into the Hudson River on a plane headed for sunny North Carolina, motherfuckers.

Craziness!!!
So yesterday I popped into Newsbar to grab a soy latte before going to see my therapist and talk about myself for an hour. Because I was trying to have a Me-Day.

Newsbar has these three flatscreen tvs that hover over the chalkboard that lists the variety of pricey (but oh so yummy) coffee drinks. The TVs run continuous feeds from various news channels, and usually I find it really distracting.

But yesterday I just stared, agape, as three televisions streamed video of the crash of US Air Flight 1549, which had plunged into the frigid Hudson just minutes before, only blocks from where I was.

Holy Crap!!!

Talk about quickly snapping things into perspective.

The sight was breathtaking and horrible, as I imagined the poor, terrified, freezing passengers and what their final thoughts must have been before crashing into the river to meet their icy doom.

But everyone on board survived.

Amazing, just amazing.

The captain, it was said, was a total superhero; he glided the plane to a
gentle(ish) landing, literally floating atop the river, allowing everyone to get out.

Commuter ferries and police boats from NY and NJ descended upon the wreckage and heroically got everyone to safety.

Today I'm really proud of my city.

Kisses.

Just in time for Christmas. Er...or, Valentine's Day...

2009-01-15T08:39:00.001-08:00

Hey lovers...
Just a quick note; I had to turn comment modification on because apparently there are some crackpots out there who like to spam blogs with their weird creepiness. Anyway, if you comment and it doesn't appear right away, don't panic!!! It will! Promise. Hopefully I can turn the modification off soon and we will all may comment freely once again, and all will be right with the world.

Love, Krissyface

Now, on with the show...

So, I'm bored at work again. And you know what that means.
No, I'm not watching internet porn. That's what you guys do.

No, no, no sillies!!!I'm scouring the youtube for some of the strangest videos I can find, so that I may creep you all out with them!

Today we take have a peek at some of the most wack-ass toys ever. Remember Kenner?
Have a look!

This is freaking kick ass.
Is this the most bizarre doll ever? I am now going to go on an ebay manhunt for this horror show so that I can scare future generations of little Krissyface girls with it...

How about this one? I know I always wanted to practice milking on a toy...cow.

I don't think he's circumcised.

This looks fun. But not at all. You can tell the ad agency reallllly burned the midnight oil trying to figure out a way to market this one and make it seem...not lame.

She's really into...trolls?

What's the meaning of this?

2009-01-14T11:48:00.000-08:00

My co-worker just emailed me:

"Retail Penetration. Is that what I think it is?"

Thoughts?

Maybe I need to get my child out of New York City before it's too late.

2009-01-12T05:30:00.001-08:00

I grew up in on suburban Long Island. We didn't have much in the way of crime.

With the exception of a few local eyebrow-raisers, life in my neighborhood was happy and uneventful. There was the family with domestic violence issues a few blocks over, the the mom regularly showing up to school functions with black eyes, causing much whispering; and of course there was the 'guy in the van' who was, I think, requisite to every 1980s suburban neighborhood, trolling around the perimeter of the elementary school with his blacked-out windows, offering kids rides and candy and opportunities to 'come see my new puppy', causing major white-people hysteria and a newfound need to lock front doors.

But other than that, my neighborhood was insular and cozy.

Occasionally as a kid I'd sneak out of my room and steal downstairs while my parents watched Hill Street Blues. I'd crouch behind my mom's chair and pull my knees up to my chest, covering my mouth to muffle my clever giggles, while I stealthily watched what I assumed to be complete fabrication of crime in some distant, big, bad city. Shit like that didn't really happen, right?

Perhaps you'd call me sheltered.

But Lily? she's a city kid, through and through.

She's been riding the subways since she was old enough to get stuffed in the baby sling and toted everywhere; she digs the grittiness of New York, you can just tell. She adores street musicians, public parks, the Nuts For Nuts guys.
When she first started to talk her favorite people to chat up were the grocery-cart homeless on Steinway Street, who absolutely loved her. "Look at those eyes!" they'd warble and lisp, "I love you, honey. I love you."

When we went to a festival in my hometown last summer, she tugged on my sleeve and asked me 'where all the brown people were'. She's just never known anything other than the diverse, urban landscape she's been reared in. And in some ways, I love that.

But I'm also starting to worry that city life might be having a hardening effect on my little'un.

For example. Last night, after a lovely dinner with my mom and dad, we pulled up to my building, and saw an ambulance and police car parked out front.

"Oh, I hope it's not Mr. So and So", I said, shaking my head.
My elderly neighbor has been suffering from dementia and as of late has been prone to wandering the lobby in his underpants and forgetting to turn off the stove.

But Lily had a different idea.

My five year old offered,
"Probably it's a homeless person, trapped under a car."

"Oh?" my mother said, raising her eyebrows.

Then, as if that weren't enough, Lil added,

"And probably, he's DEAD."

Yeah. That could also very well be it, Lil.

Maybe it's time to move?

Pre-weekend antics

2009-01-09T07:29:00.001-08:00

Hi, Friday Darlings!

I'm blogging over here today.

Go on, now. Get your ass over there before we all get caught up in that giant snowstorm that's hitting New York tomorrow and our internet connections get knocked out.

Don't flip your toboggan, now!

xoxoxo

Big Pimpin'

2009-01-07T05:49:00.001-08:00

I need a new job.

I'm spending a lot of time on Craig's List lately, applying for every single opening in my field, and I'm sick of coming up with fresh, snappy cover letters specific to each position.

"I'm an out-of-the-box thinker!"

"I'm so organized, people think I have OCD!"

"Please visit my web site to view my varied and dynamic portfolio!"

Please. Fuck this. I am so bad at selling myself. This is why my freelance business is currently stagnating. I can't pimp myself out for shit.

Here are some excerpts from today's exciting job postings:

"CATALOG designer to work ON-SITE for a company that produces TEDDY BEARS and STUFFED animals...
The client is requesting a designer who can show work that is whimsical and magical and teddy bear driven - you know, cute stuff. Think Hello Kitty catalogs for grizzly bears..."
(Hello Kitty for GRIZZLY BEARS? Really?)

"Photography company needs assistance on wedding album designs...we are looking for a multi-tasker with a great sense of humor!" (Why? Because wedding photos are so goddamned cheesy and pathetic all you do is laugh at the ridiculousness of them? Count me in!)

Recently I answered an ad for a freelance designer to lay out a calendar for a "gay guy who wants to surprise my boyfriend with a playful present for the new year".
Hey, I thought, this sounds like a fun project. And I love the gays.

Then I called the guy. And he called me back 5 minutes later. This is never a good sign: too eager.

Him: "Hey! So, I don't really need a designer, per se...what I really need is a photographer."

Me: "Well, I'm not a photographer though; I'm a graphic designer".

Him: "That's OK! I have a digital camera. You can come to my apartment and we can do the photo shoot here...what's your hourly rate?"

Me: "Um...well, I dunno...$75?"

Him: "Cool. That's fine. So....yeah, would you feel comfortable taking nude photos of me?"

Me: "Nudes? well, I suppose that would be alright."

Him: "How about ... well, photos of me, you know, ejaculating?"

At that point I politely wished him good luck and suggested he might want to just contact a cheap escort service in the east village if all he wants is to jerk off in front of someone.

See? This is what I deal with.

It's goddamned rough out there.

Well, sweetie, they cut off their beaks so they don't peck each other to death

2009-01-05T05:16:00.000-08:00

Warning: This installment is lousy with graphic animal-rights propaganda and shameless run-on sentences.

Happy 2009, bloggers!!!

Let's all take a deep, meditative breath. Now let it out. Gooooood.

My yoga teacher tells us that we have to exhale completely in order to empty out and get rid of toxic shit and make room for newness and fresh possibility.

And that is precisely my plan for the coming year.

In yoga class, though, it would be nice if I could focus better during shivasana (meditation). I'd be so much happier if I could just lay there and control my wildly restless legs and stop the theme from "Happy Days" from threading throughout my brain on an endless loop while I'm trying to find inner peace.

(Sit on it).

It's hard though. A work in progress, anyway. Speaking of which, over the holiday break, Lily became a vegetarian.

Well, she said that she was becoming one. Because her friend Jack went veg a few months ago for reals, and she thought it sounded like a cool move.

What's funny though, is that Lily pretty much already is a vegetarian. I don't cook meat at home, and she spends 90% of her time with me. However, while visiting with Babydaddy's family over the break, my child could not resist the temptation of greasy fried bacon strips and ground pig butts in sausage casings being dangled at her lips at every turn, and thus kept pledging to 'um...become a vegetarian starting tomorrow'.

She seems sort of serious now, though, after a little help from PETA's Vegetarian Starter Kit (which we luckily happened upon in the city at a newsstand on Saturday!)

When I first went vegetarian, I joined PETA (by 'joined', I mean I think I sent them maybe a ten dollar check and then became the lucky recipient of an endless barrage of gruesome literature depicting bloody, starved dogs mistreated in Korean kennels and crazed, neurotic monkeys suffering from mange and disfigurement in labs across the world).

In any event, Mama used this as yet another opportunity to teach young'un about the ways of the world (or the world the way I see it, rather). Together we pored over high-gloss photos of beakless chickens in battery cages and broken-legged pigs stuffed in crowded stalls. Lily was apalled.

"You mean they HANG THE CHICKENS UPSIDE-DOWN, MAMA?!?!?!"

I Nodded. "Yep."

"But why?"

"Well, it's easier to cut off their heads, I guess."

I didn't go into grim detail about how how it's easier if they're upside-down because the blood flows straight into drains that way, and how the slaughterhouse guys have to wear rain boots and slickers to protect themselves from spatter. Wheeee!

Oh, there is really so much to impart.

Maybe tomorrow we'll go over that.

Official

2008-12-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

The papers came yesterday. I knew they were coming because I'd gotten a slapdash cellphone message from my lawyer, telling me it was over.

My lawyer - and it still feels funny to say those words, "My lawyer", so ridiculously grown-up sounding, so tragically responsible - is a kindly older gentleman, a friend of my parents. He doesn't practice divorce law but agreed to take my case because it was going to be a 'friendly, easy one'.

And it was.

The divorce, I mean. It was pretty much, on paper, very friendly. Very agreeable. No assets to speak of (duh), a handshake, a nod, a basic agreement on monthly child support, open visitation, custody. Straightforward. Easy. Simple.

Ha.

Divorce is never simple. Never easy.

When I opened the big white envelope and looked through the 'official' documents, I started to cry. I'm not even sure why. I've shed so many tears over the last year and a half over this crappy roadkill of a marriage, to continue crying over it seems redundant and childish and really, really fucking boring.

The wounds have long scabbed over and I've moved ahead with my life. I don't love this man anymore. We've been apart for so long that this, the divorce, was really just a technicality, insurance for me that our tangled, toxic history can finally be placed behind me, lock the door and throw away the key.

A wise man (my dad), told me, "There is no looking back now. You can only look ahead." And it's true. So true. Still, to see it there, on paper, 'Judgement Granted' as of December 12, 2008, it just made me feel so sad. There was a beginning date to this marriage, and now there was an end date.

I cried for my youth, for my brutal naivete and recklessness. For promises I never, ever should have made, wouldn't have made, had I not been 24 and idealistic and completely out of my mind.

I was having lunch with Kara today and we were talking about love and addiction, two themes with which we are both intimately acquainted.

As I sat across from her, talking, laughing, holding a hot cup of coffee between my palms, I felt like I stepped outside myself and was looking at a confident, calm, mature, accepting woman who was speaking with my voice.

Who the fuck was this woman? And how did she get here? How did she slip into this vinyl diner booth, where did she get the money to pay for her coffee?

And why is she wearing my jeans?

I said,
"Do you know what the best thing is about my life now? I'm not afraid of tragedy anymore. You know, I lived a somewhat sheltered life; nothing really bad ever happened to me. So when it did, it nearly destroyed me. I lived almost in fear of something tragic happening, because I knew that it was just, mathematically, only a matter of time. And now that it has, and because I lived through it and came out of it stronger, I know I could do it again. It won't kill me. Boy, is that liberating."

And that's the fucking truth.

So, yeah, I'm still not sure exactly why I was crying. Maybe it wasn't at all because, omg, I have no idea how I got to this place in my life.

Maybe, really, I was crying because on some level, all along, I always knew that I would.

Shaun Cassidy and me – The love story continues

2008-12-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Part II
Imaginary friends and paper towel tanktops
I continued to watch The Hardy Boys every week and despise that whore Nancy Drew.

And so my love for Shaun grew and grew, and, as is only natural, things progressed with us to the obvious next level:

The Hardy Boys had become my imaginary friends.

Here's how it worked. My friend Kelly, who lived down the block and had two older brothers who not only wouldn't play with her, but also tortured her, spent a lot of time at my house. We played pretend girl games like Gilligan's Island and Supermodel and she was, I think, the first person I ever kissed. We were five though, so calm down, you goddamned drooling sex perverts.

Anyway, Kelly always enthusiastically jumped right into the strange, illusory worlds I created. She was the perfect, willing beta to my alpha-girl commander of pretend play, always consenting to be Ken or Gilligan or even Jack in "Three's Company".

It was during these pretend games with Kelly that I first got the idea of playing Nancy Drew. This morphed into Nancy Drew and 'Friend' (She was, of course the 'friend'), then eventually it became Sexy Nancy Drew and 'Sexy Friend'.

Being sexy at five meant taking off our shirts and sneaking a paper towel roll up to my room, then ripping off lengths of Bounty and winding them around our middles, thereby creating our own home made tube tops. Crimes always got solved better when Sexy Nancy Drew and Sexy Friend wore disco clothes.

Now, in this game, we didn't actually solve any crimes, we just chased the Hardy Boys around my house. We would spend hours running up and down the stairs, clutching at our tube tops, popping in and out of bedrooms, on the hunt for those elusive Boys.
Once we found them, we would bring them back to my room (sometimes via lasso...I also loved Lynda Carter's 'Wonder Woman' at the time) and kiss them.

Chasing The Hardy Boys was hard, dirty work.
We would skid into the kitchen and demand my mother tell us their whereabouts. She'd look up, take a sip of coffee, then gesture wearily with her cigarette, "That way..." and go back to her book.

I played this game whenever Kelly came over, but also by myself. Sometimes I would skip the chasing part altogether and bring the Boys Hardy right into my room. Sometimes I let my little sister play too, but at three, Lisa did not yet understand the intricacies of seductively solving crime. Not to worry, though. That Christmas, Lisa and I would receive Shaun Cassidy dolls and things were about to completely change...

(to be continued...)

Shaun Cassidy and me

2008-12-22T06:21:00.001-08:00

I would like to tell you guys a heartwarming holiday love story, delivered in several parts. Our tale begins in 1977 and comes full circle at its climactic end in the Christmas season of present day.

Part I

I was four years old in 1977. I first discovered Shaun Cassidy when my mother introduced me to "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries" television show. I'd had a collection of old Nancy Drew books in my room that, since I couldn't read yet, I used for playing library, pretend-stamping the inside of each worn hardcover and marveling over the 1950's black-and-white drawings of Nancy in various states of peril.

I didn't know then that I would later grow to hate that bitch of a girl sleuth and burn at her with misunderstood carnal envy. See, not only was Nancy Drew a cool teenager, with developed breasts and long feathered hair and eyeliner, but she also got to solve dangerous crimes every week with Joe Hardy (played, of course, by Shaun Cassidy), who was a rock-star/boy detective with chest hair, and on whom I had developed a hardcore fixation.

I watched the show every week with religious fervor. I pulled the groovy gold pillows off our couch and arranged them the floor where I lay with my black lab, pretending to brush her with an ashtray while I somehow tried to make the precious hour of mystery and romance go sloooower.

My mother, with an instinct to feed her little child's interests/obsessions (a drive I fully understand now because of "High School Musical"), bought me Shaun Cassidy's rock record, which became my favorite thing ever.

I didn't realize until years later that "Da Do Run Run" and "Be My Baby" were not songs stolen from Shaun, original writer and performer. In my eyes he was a rock god. But the best part of the album was the centerfold inside the record sleeve. This was a full-frontal photo of Shaun lounging against a rock or a tree, wearing tight jeans that emphasized the wonderful bulge of his crotch.

I will confess that, after being tucked into my white canopy bed at night, I pulled that centerfold out from under my pillow and licked that bulge so many times that it began to look worped and worn. I simply couldn't help myself.

I got my hands on one of my older cousin's "Tiger Beat" magazines and convinced her to give me a glossy pull-out photo of Shaun, which I then taped to a pillow and stashed in my closet to also took out at night, in order to practice my kissing. (Again, this was really only licking the picture until there was a hole in Shaun's mouth, because I had no idea how to kiss yet.)

But I needed to be ready for when I actually met him.

I was utterly, utterly convinced that when I got old enough, I would go to Hollywood and sit in the front row of his concert and he'd drop his microphone, shocked at the sight of me, and pull me up onstage to sing "Be My Baby" to me.

Yes, Shaun. Yes, of course I will. Duh.

To be continued...

Because I love you.

2008-12-19T05:47:00.000-08:00

And I want you to have a good weekend.

Tee hee.

Oh, and I hope you all have lots and lots of sexual intercourse this holiday.

Mwah!

Apparently I have bad gaydar.

2008-12-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

When I'm bored at work I like to play this game in my head called 'gay or not gay?'

I listen to the conversations of my co-workers and watch their moves and try and figure it out.

Apparently my gaydar sucks, though, because there's one guy I work with who I have known for a while; he is short and smells really good and always comes over to my desk to say hi and shoot the shit about graphic design and I kind of always thought he was flirting with me. I just found out, however, that he has had a serious boyfriend for like, years. Huh.

Also, there's one guy who absolutely stumps me. Here are some thing's I've observed about him, and maybe you guys can help me figure out whether he's dick or vagina:

1. Likes to greet people with "Ciao!"

2. Apologized yesterday to a co-worker for being 'so bitchy before'

3. Whistles and sings to himself at his desk, a mixed variety of top-40 songs, especially Pink and Celine Dion, and this morning he was singing "We are all in this together" from High School Musical

4. Has professionally frosted hair

5. Talks to grandmother daily on phone

6. Has 2008 calendar on desk of Rockefeller Center

7. Has paperclips on desk arranged in separate containers, organized by size

8. Gets pissed when co-workers borrow his febreeze without asking

I need some help here, bloggers. I am stumped, stumped, stumped.

Kisses.

Santa is made-up, sweetie. Just like god.

2008-12-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

I sort of tread lightly around the idea of Santa Claus.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no scrooge, but I simply don't like to encourage the belief that, instead of me getting Lily gifts, there is a fat jolly old bitch who sneaks in the window (we live in an apartment, so we've had to revise the story somewhat...no chimney. So Santa is a sort of creepy cat burglar), and brings her presents that he made in his 'toyshop' (China).

While I certainly don't want to have that kid who marches into kindergarten and ruins Christmas for all her pals by announcing that Santa is bullshit, I'm not a big fan of lying to my daughter, either. Especially when I'm a hardworking single mama who isn't that keen on letting some made up guy take credit for bringing my kid shit that my hard-earned dollars bought, that my tired ass waited in line at Kay Bee's going out of business sale to purchase, that I spent precious work hours online at Amazon to order.

Still, there is merit to the magic of Santa. I have learned much since last Christmas.

But. Unless Lily comes out and asks me if Santa is real, which she hasn't, I sort of just don't mention him. He's there in the backdrop, a nice idea, part of a Christmas parable that makes the holiday more magical and sweet. But I think the holiday is about so much more than presents and Santa Claus. I don't really talk about him that much, and I certainly don't weild him as a weapon to keep Lily's behavior in line, as so many American parents seem to do. There's this secretary at work, who I hear daily screaming on the phone at her four year old, "Stop hitting Grandpa, or Santa won't bring you any toys!!!"

That shit is fucked up.

It's a Christmas miracle!

2008-12-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

Wheeeee!

It's a new week, and I still have a job. It's 65 degrees outside (WHAT?!), yes, it fucking is, and I'm determined to let the sunshine in. I'm about to take a lunch break and go enjoy the Christmas finery glittering along 5th avenue, while licking an ice cream cone in short shorts and flip flops.

These are strange times, indeed.

This weekend Lily and I found the only theater in New York City that was still showing "High School Musical 3" and I stuffed my purse with juice boxes, pirates booty and smoked almonds (my lame version of movie junk food). Dude, that movie was so freaking good. It just made me totally giddy. And I deserves some fucking giddy. Lil and I were dancing in our seats and clapping like maniacs. I swear to god I was a gay man in a past life.

I feel like I wouldn't like me if I met me

2008-12-11T06:03:00.000-08:00

This week has sucked a bunch of hemorrhoid-riddled anus.

First, I seem to have an ever-diminishing supply of pants that I can still button, and even fewer without visible coffee stains. Reaching into my closet to pull out one of these winners first thing in the morning really sets a shitty tone for the whole day, ya know?

Plus, my workweek has felt like one continuous episode of "American Idol"; I've been watching, with diarrheah-inducing nervousness, as a parade of my co-workers gets called into my supervisors office to find out if they are "safe" or "in the bottom three" or simply getting booted off the show (with a generous severance package!).

Also, it has rained for the last three consecutive days and you know what havoc that wreaks on my hair.

And, um, I gave blood yesterday and have decided I'd like it back. I can't afford to give away any more parts of myself, as it turns out. I feel like I've lost some of my powers.

All this bullshit is making me feel unsettled and kind of frightened, frankly.

A normal girl might just let go a little and allow the people around her to pick up the slack for once. But not me.

No, sir. I put on my bitch face and curl up in a ball on my couch and seethe and throw things at people.

Now, Git

2008-12-10T06:56:00.000-08:00

Hey! I'm blogging over here today.

Because on that blog, I can say even more retarded things.

Come visit! Bring friends!

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

2008-12-08T10:41:00.000-08:00

With the close of another year, I find myself reflective.

Sigh.

As Lily gets another year older, I think back on all the things I didn't know about when she was a baby. Goddamn, I was an ignoramus. I realize that if I ever had another child, I'd be certain to pay closer attention to certain signs.

God, I wish I'd known about the signs when Lily was a baby. Things would have been SO much easier.

Alas. In spite of my own bumbling ineptitude, I have managed to keep my daughter alive for the last 5 or so years. And because I am a caring nurterer, I want to pass on some of the things I've learned. You know, in the interest of helping you all out with your own families.

For instance:

It's really important, when taking your baby out to see the friendly neighborhood garbage truck pick up its daily load in the morning, to remember not to stand directly under the dumpster. That shit is way heavy. You never know, you know?

Don't run over your baby with a tractor.

Plastic bags, though really sweet-looking adornments, do not really make good hats.

Oversized buckets filled with unidentifiable substances (such as, say, pickle brine, cleaning solution, vodka, lye) should be kept on high shelves so that baby cannot fall into them (and you KNOW those babies are curious!)

And finally, I think just as a general rule, keep this one in mind:

Watch out for those goddamned little buggers, man. They will fuck your shit up. They will take away your ability to ever have a good nights sleep for the rest of your life, because in the beginning, they want to freaking breastfeed all the time. Then, they keep you awake at night because all you do is worry about them. These are the things nobody tells you. Watch out. Also, they will rob you blind. Keep your wits about you. Just a friendly warning.

Here's to a FINE '09!!!

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose

2008-12-04T05:27:00.001-08:00

OMG, I just came into work this morning and was greeted by the coolest thing: an email from the CEO of my company!!!

I know, ME! Getting an e-mail from the CEO!!! So cool!!!

The message outlines the "Accelerated implementation of our strategic plan" for 2009.
Neat!!!

First, it's super cool that the CEO would think to include me on the distribution list of this very important email...moi, a lowly contractor, a spec, really, swimming under the radar in the tiny creative department of my buttoned-down corporation. I am so psyched to be receiving this 'top secret inside information' about the company's 'strategic plan'. I mean, you know you've really arrived when you start receiving The Corporate Spam.

And, well, since I have a teeny girl brain and I don't speak CEO, I had to have a co-worker come over to my cubicle and translate the exciting news about 2009 for me.

Okay, lessee....Lemme break it down for you:

1. Strategic Plan = Laying off 5300 employees! Wow! That is some real creative thinking. Lighten the load, make the company stronger!!! I feel ya!

2. Accelerated = We were gonna wait til some time next year to do this, but, aw fuck, let's just do it now. This way you can get some 'extra holiday bonding time' with your families, and run back to the mall to return all those Christmas gifts you bought that you won't be able to pay off when the Visa bill comes next month. Your kids don't NEED all that crap, anyway. Also, you'll probably need the extra time to put your house on the market and call your parents to see if you can move back in with them for a while. Cool? Cool. You know, it's all about people in this business.

Looks like perhaps I picked a good time to be a freelancer. Unnattached, flowing in the wind...and available to help my friends pack up their personal belongings in boxes and cart them out to their cars.

Gulp.

Quite the conundrum

2008-12-02T11:46:00.000-08:00

Well, I just went to the ladies room at work.

And there, in the stall I generally frequent (third one in...never, EVER use the first one; it is, statistically speaking, the one used most often and, in my opinion, the one most likely to give you crabs), I saw the strangest thing.

Behind the toilet was a big piece of lettuce.

Now. How the heck'd that get there????

Inquiring minds want to know.

Thoughts?

Happy Anniversary to Me

2008-12-01T05:44:00.000-08:00

Exactly one year ago I started this blog.

It's been quite a year, my friends. Quite a year.

I've met a lot of wonderful people through this blog, and I love reading your posts and look forward to all your comments.

For those of you who have been entertained by my ramblings, I thank you for visiting and continuing to come back. For those of you who come here hoping to see naked pictures of me, I will continue to taunt you with the possibility of that in the future.

Thanks, y'all!!!

MWAH!!!!

Colon Blow

2008-11-28T10:44:00.001-08:00

I was reminded of this video by Catscratch Diva's comment. Thanks, Cat!

This could be me this weekend (fingers crossed!)

It's not unusual to be loved by anyone

2008-11-28T07:06:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, lovers!

How was your holiday? Happy? Plentiful? Mine certainly was.

My family and I ate like starved dogs yesterday afternoon (Thanks mom!), and then I kicked off my shoes and retired to the couch to pass out. I was later pulled from the sticky web of my food coma when my dad produced a VHS tape of all the home movies my grandfather had taken of us when we were little. My parents had had them transferred to video and we all decided to watch. So I grabbed some cold stuffing and Lily and I snuggled together on the couch.

Holy Christ. My grandfather was a man of few words, but he was a quiet artist of sorts, and managed to capture moments on his old fashioned silent video camera that I'd forgotten even happened. His movies of our family were intermixed with trips he and my grandmother took all over the country (My mom and I both shrieked with delight when, in a shot of 1960s Vegas we saw a sign outside the Flamingo Club for TOM JONES: ONE NIGHT ONLY), and he managed to get some really beautiful shots that conjured up memories I hadn't expected.

Being the body-obsessed freak that I am, I was of course transfixed on the evolution of my chubby little girlbody throughout the many stages of my childhood captured on betamax.

I'm glad that Lily's lithe little string bean frame seems to take more after her father's Irish potato famine side of the family rather than my homemade manicotti-loving, wine glugging, Italian side. It will hopefully save her some middle-school heartache and money on therapy later in life.

Anyway, I never weigh myself. I do not keep a scale in my home, and I never step on one, unless forced to at my yearly checkup, and even then it makes my palms sweaty and my heart pound. Is there a story behind this? Yes, of course. Am I going to tell you? Not today, no.

In any event, my parents own a scale. And, since I've noticed that the majority of my pants have been getting increasingly difficult to button over the last 6 months(due to, I am imagining, a heavy dose of romance, thai takeout and a bit more red wine than necessary), I wanted to see for myself exactly how much weight I'd gained since last stepping on a scale.

Well, holy fuck.

Um, more than I'd expected.

So, in anticipation of a long holiday season filled with debauchery and home made baked goods, I thought I'd take some preventative steps and do a little detoxing beforehand.

I did the Master Cleanse once before, and it was not fucking fun. In fact, I wanted to kill myself.

BUT I didn't drink caffeine during it, and this time I plan to dose myself with green tea in addition to spicy lemonade.

Also, I only lasted three days last time, but I did feel pretty damn good afterwards. Anyway, I think this is probably a good way to kick over a new leaf and get back to healthy, glowy me. We'll see.

Train to Crazytown

2008-11-24T06:36:00.000-08:00

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to get on the W train and flop my hiney into one of many available seats. I cracked open the Metro and basked in the soft, noisless calm of a morning commute during a holiday week. Aaaaah.

Then the train rolled up on the Lexington Avenue stop. As we slowly approached the crowded platform, I heard an eerie sound that I couldn't quite place. Could one thousand bunnies be getting mutilated with ice picks on the subway platform? No, no, no...that can't be it. Maybe it was a child screaming, I thought.

Awsome. There's must be an angry toddler, strapped in a stroller against his will, freaking the fuck out and about to be wheeled right into my car, signaling the end of my peaceful ride to work. Great. Thanks, god. Fucker.

I looked through the windows and was unable to see the shrieking little fucker in the crowd. Man, he was mad, huh? And as the doors opened the raspy, phelgm-choked warbles got louder, and then I saw the source of the noise.

It wasn't a child at all. It was a middle-aged woman.

She was clad in a heavy red parka and had short hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Strapped to her back was a brand-new backpack with a NY Jets emblem on it (and they won this week, so I know that wasn't making her upset).

Wait, what? This woman looked like a librarian or a first grade teacher, not some lunatic shrieker.

And yet. As the doors closed, encasing this horrified, psychotic littler person in the car with us, she continued to pour forth a bone-chilling shriek, kicking occasionally at the heavy metal subway doors with her sneakered feet. From time to time I could make out some form of a sentence in her shrieking: "NONONOIDON'TWANNA", or something to that effect.

It was creepy and sad, but New Yorkers have a way of deciphering right away when a crazy person is dangerous, or just a run-of-the-mill spectacle we simply shouldn't make eye contact with. This lady was clearly the latter, as was evident in the way the commuters (myself included) eyed her with mild curiosity, then calmly inserted our ear buds and cranked up our ipods.

Now, I couldn't help feeling a little badly about this (I'm Italian, and also was rasied Catholic, so guilt is sort of my stock emotion most of the time, but still); I felt bad that our first instinct is to ignore someone right in front of us with an obvious mental illness. The mommy in me wanted to walk up to the woman and wrap my arms around her until her screaming ceased. I wanted to just hug the shit out of whatever inner child was reliving a terrible trauma continuously on the MTA for all of early morning NYC to see.

I'm not gonna stand on some soap box and expound on the ills of a society that treats the crazies of the world with antipathy and disdain. The whole thing just struck me as sad, is all. I'll leave it at that.

Poetry

2008-11-23T18:29:00.000-08:00

My friend Mary Catherine just posted a bunch of new poetry on her facebook page. And this inspired me to write some poems, too. See, I've had a rather annoying weekend. Nothing terrible happened, just a series of irritating events that sorta scraped me raw, made me tired and irritable...kind of like if my sanity was slowly and repeatedly rubbed with a cheese grater over the course of 36 hours.

So, by Sunday night, I had to decide whether to laugh or cry at the state of things.

So, I decided that I would write some poems, because when the going gets tough, the tough get poetic. I don't know if you guys knew that I wrote poetry.

Well, I do. And it's pretty goddamned awesome. And I've decided to post a few for you, because good art should be shared.

HA-HA
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Remember on Saturday night, how you accidentally called me from the strip club you were at or wherever at 1:30 in the morning because your cell phone was in your pocket or something and you woke both me and Lily up?
That was really funny.

CONTEMPLATING
I was just laying in the tub
staring down at my naked form
and realized how awesome it is
that I never have to have sex with you again.

TRUST
It would be nice
If sometimes I could give you my ATM card
And send you to the cash machine down the street
So you could take out some money to pay the Chinese food delivery guy
And I could stay home and play with Lily and relax and not worry about you stealing money from my bank account.

Domo Arigato, Mrs. Roboto

2008-11-21T05:37:00.000-08:00

You're not supposed to come out of a parent-teacher conference sweating and fighting the desire to go home and self-flagellate.

But twenty minutes with the droid who calls herself my kid's kindergarten teacher made me want to scratch at myself till I bled. I, along with some other parents, have noticed that this chick doesn't exactly give off the warm-and-fuzzies usually associated with a kindergarten teacher, but last night I began to really think she was in the wrong field. Maybe she'd make a good banker. Or a vice cop.

Shawn and I sat on tiny chairs with halved tennis balls stuck on the bottoms of the legs ("Cute touch," I said. "Yes, it reduces the noise," Robotface responded),
and listened to this 24-year-old, childless virtuoso of child development explain, with no lack of judginess, how she is 'concerned' about Lily's 'kissing the boys'.

Interesting.

"Really?" I asked, "Kissing boys? More than one boy?"

No, said Bionica. Just one boy.

Ah.

"Which boy?" asked her father.

"Oh," she quipped. "Well, she's kissed Lucas a few times."

Aha. Lucas. Right.

Lucas, who has been her best friend since she was 6 months old. Lucas, who is the only boy from our neighborhood to be accepted with Lily to their K-12 charter school. Lucas, who, during a playdate about two years ago, got into Lily's toddler bed with her and pretended to be the "Daddy" (which entailed rolling over and looking annoyed as Lily sat up and "nursed" her baby doll).

Lucas, whose mother is my one of my best friends.

Yeah, I'm worried about Lily kissing Lucas.

I think, if I were this teacher, I'd be more worried about finding a new job when I get her ass fired.

Have a wonderful weekend, M'Lovies!!!

Enjoy the silence?

2008-11-19T05:11:00.000-08:00

It's weird. I'll have a week when I'm all but bubbling over with inane observations on politics, parenting and Lindsay Lohan, and then I'll just get stopped up and have nothing to say to you guys. Like there's a big, fat tampon stuck up my brain or something.

But fear not, faithful readers. I'm back. And I've much to say.

Not really. But there is big news... Babydaddy got his own place.
After gypsying around NYC for the last 18 months, patrolling various friends' couches and grabbing quick bits of nutritive sustenance at the home of yours truly, Shawn's moved into his own apartment. Praise all that is holy and the blessed virgin!

He has his own room in a large apartment that is close to Lily's school and is inhabited by quiet, dumpling-frying Chinese men.

Last night Lily had her first sleepover at Daddy's. I was excited for them to have some bonding time with each other and for me to have some bonding time with a bottle of merlot. But instead of reveling in the peace of a night to myself, it, I found myself suffocated by the quiet. I got naked and shuffled through the rooms of my apartment in my slippers, talking to the cat about how it was flurrying outside and did he want to watch "The Office" with me? I got three DVDs from Netflix!
But he just looked at me with lazy disinterest and rolled over for his belly to be scratched.

This morning was even weirder. How strange to take a shower by myself without a little person shrieking from the living room,
'MAMA, ARE THESE ON THE RIGHT FEET?!????!!!!!'

How interesting to watch the news without the warble of my 5-year-old lobbying for "Dragon Tails"; how foreign to wrap only myself in outerwear, to make sure only one person peed before venturing out into the bone-cold morning air.
I walked right to the subway without making the long detour to the bus stop, without Lily skipping next to me, chattering away in a faux-fur coat and licking the peanut-butter coating off her granola bar.

All in all, it was kind of a letdown. It really sort of sucked.

I miss her.

In other news, I have a cold sore. It's gross. And it hurts, especially since last night I accidentally bit it in my sleep. I've never had the mouth herpes before, and can't shake the vicious irony that I made it through all of my whoring college years without contracting an STD and suddenly at 35 I loook like I've been sucking dick in an alley. I've been dabbing at it with tea tree oil, because I'm all natural and shit. But damn, how long does it take for these things to go away?

Happy Wednesday!!!

Whoopsie

2008-11-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

I love when celebrities say really dumb shit.
Poor Lindsay Lohan. It's not like she needs any help looking like an ignoramus.

I had to watch it a few times to figure out what she muttered under her breath, but I'm pretty sure it was an unpleasant descriptive word for African Americans that hasn't been politically correct to use since blacks and whites had to use separate water fountains.

So, thoughts?

Did she say "colored" president?
Did she say "Good" president?

Yeah, um, Lindz, the trailer park called. It needs it's trash back.