The Sassy Curmudgeon

Hairy Situation (NOT About Genitals, Relax)

2012-01-23T09:00:00.006-05:00

Awhile back before I got pregnant, Jeff and I found ourselves with a lazy weekend afternoon. We put our heads together and decided on three goals: get high, have sex, and cut Jeff's hair.

The sticking point was: what order to do them in? It was the very definition of a high class problem. Or, OK, maybe a low class problem. Certainly the problem of a childless person who didn't know how good she had it. But a problem nonetheless.

It seemed unwise to get high first and then take a pair of scissors to my husband's head. But then, who wants to have sex with little hair cuttings falling all over the place? Luckily, once we were high we were too lazy to do the haircut. Pot has a way of making everything seem less important than watching YouTube videos and eating Wheat Thins.

Even though his mop remained shaggy, Jeff dodged a bullet. The one and only time I had ever cut human hair I accidentally snipped off a piece of my friend Charlie's scalp. In my defense, I think I was high at the time. (Oh, college.) And my Jem doll's circa-1991 buzz cut did little to recommend my styling skills.

So you can imagine my abject horror when last week, Jeff grabbed S.'s rattail and demanded that I snip it off.

See, our son came out of the womb with locks to rival Liberace's, a trait he gets from his dad:

Jeff at 2 months; S. at 3 months (in his badass passport photo--hey TSA, someone doesn't give enough of a fuck to sit up straight. Or to sit up, like, at all.)

But after a few weeks, it became clear that our S. was not only probably the president of the Hair Club For Babies, but that he was cultivating what could only be described as an Extreme Mullet.

I feel confident in classifying it as "Extreme" because the traditional mullet, as everyone knows, is "business in the front, party in the back," while S.'s was decidedly a party at every angle.

I blanched at cutting my son's hair for three reasons, aside from the aforementioned sucking at cutting hair in general:

Since S. is uncircumcised, it would be the first thing anyone snipped off of him, ever.
(Okay, except for his fingernails, which will soon be Edward Scissorhand-ian seeing as I cringe every time I wield the baby nail clippers. It's like playing Operation, except that if you miss, instead of getting that freaky buzzing sound you chop off one of your progeny's digits.)
I always want Jeff to keep his hair shaggy and he ALWAYS cuts it against my wishes, and S.'s is the only head of hair in the household I have any control over (mine doesn't count, due to its fondness for settling into a triangle shape and, lately, falling out in clumps).

Still, no one wants a baby who looks like 80s-era Richard Dean Anderson (KIDDING, obviously--everyone secretly wants that), and so I amputated the rattail. Based on my handiwork I expect Frederic Fekkai should be contacting me shortly...

Before and after. Bald spot not my doing.

... maybe to cut the ribbon on his next salon opening with a pair of oversize gardening shears.

My New Boss

2012-01-16T09:51:00.001-05:00

I don't know about this job, you guys. My boss just farted and grinned, and then demanded that I feed him instead of continuing my Lost marathon on Hulu Plus. (I'm picking up a lot on my second viewing of the series, like: Why doesn't Kate have a mustache? I know they had food and water and a shower in the hatch, but unless the Dharma Initiative air-dropped some Jolen bleach into the jungle, homegirl should have some facial hair by season two. Also, that the best way to tell someone you would like them to stop talking is to hit them in the face with the butt of a gun.)

Anyway, back to this boss of mine:

He has vomited into my cleavage. More than once. He passes out all the time, often on top of me. The other day he licked my shoulder. He grabs my boobs whenever he gets the chance--other people's boobs, too; like Honey Badger, he don't care. He soils himself constantly and expects me to clean it up. He insists that I carry him everywhere. In the middle of a conversation he'll start crying. When he's not drinking or sleeping, he spends most of his time staring at lamps.

You know, I'm starting to think that he doesn't have much experience in upper management.

P. to the S., y'all: Any readers in the Brooklyn area should check out Momma C's art show at the 440 Gallery!It's called Imagined Light: Memories of Rome, and is on display through February 19.

It should be noted that in all of my 31 years she has not once pooped through her onesie and onto her bouncy seat. Some people are classy. Ahem.

Does This Baby Make Me Look Fat?

2012-01-06T11:13:00.000-05:00

So, we all know that it's a bad idea to pose for a photo with a supermodel or Tropical Miko, Beautiful Island Friend of Barbie. If we do that, we are basically asking to look trollish in comparison.

But nobody ever warned me not to pose next to a baby.

Last weekend we gave S. a bath, and then I took a shower, which is the real shocker. Feeling impossibly fresh and clean and pure, I allowed Jeff to capture the Precious Moment on camera.

Even his tits are bigger. Sigh.

Little did I know that by posing with my son I was essentially stepping in front of a funhouse mirror. Here is how you will look through baby-colored lenses:

Baby: Skin as creamy, unblemished and soft as top-shelf Brie.
You: The discolored leather used to make knockoff handbags at Payless.

Baby: Clear, piercing eyes.
You: Rheumy, pink orbs speckled with dust and--probably--Oreo crumbs.

Baby: Adorable button nose.
You: Lumpy, sun-stained and blood vessel-blossomed schnoz that is at least twice as big as when you last checked.

Baby: No teeth.*
You: Crumbling, wine-splashed reminders that it's been a year since your last cleaning.

Baby: Chubby little hands with dents for knuckles.
You: Horrifying geriatric hands with pulsating veins and giant, arthtritic joints.

Baby: Smooth temples.
You: Crow's feet that NASCAR could use for its next superspeedway track.

I've learned my lesson. When you look back through your albums, son, this is why Mommy isn't in them. Don't let Daddy claim she was too busy pooping.

*Actually, S. ALREADY HAS A TOOTH. And another breaking through. At THREE MONTHS. This is what my bagel-stealing** hath wrought. Also I just found out I have hyperthyroidism, so I didn't actually lose the baby weight because I am genetically blessed, or because Jesus loves me and wants me to have more cheeseburgers.

**Yes, I am going back today to give them the money. I don't need this on my conscience, or on my karma. DO YOU HEAR ME, BAGEL GODS? I AM SORRY, OKAY???

Also, yes, I know this photo is fairly adorable. I just have to be self-deprecating; it's my spirit animal. You understand.

The Bagel & Schmear That Ruined My Year

2012-01-02T19:22:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure 2012 is doomed for me, and not just because of the End of Days as predicted by the Mayans (way to be a bummer, Mayans, ending things on December 21, just before Christmas but not until AFTER I will have bought everyone's presents--can I redeem my AmEx points from hell?) and potentially saved by receding-hairline Lloyd Dobler (I never saw that movie--what happens?)

No, my year has been karmically fucked by a bagel with a schmear.

See, yesterday Jeff and I went for a jaunty New Year's Stroll, accompanied by our Adorable Spawn. I'm sure we looked like a slightly downmarket J. Crew ad--something you would find in a crumpled Sears catalog your dad keeps in the bathroom next to the toilet. Anyway. The world was our oyster, and then we went to Bageltique Cafe.

I know. I KNOW. I had no business eating a mound of dough that puts on such ridiculous airs. BagelTIQUE? Are we en France? Are we wearing striped boater shirts and carrying baguettes and putting curly little penises on our lowercase c's? (Incidentally, my neighborhood also has a restaurant called La Bagel Delight). So that was my first mistake.

My next mistake was thinking that the universe owed me a free bagel. It was around noon the morning after the annual holiday most likely to end in excess drunkenness, ill-advised make-out sessions and ugly crying, and so even though Bageltique was out of everything bagels (it really IS the end times, y'all) the line was long with bleary-eyed twentysomethings eager to gulp down weak coffee and danish in the hopes of filling the pits of their stomachs with something other than regret. The guy behind the counter was taking orders at lightning speed. I think he thought someone else was ringing up customers. But no one was. So a team of three (no doubt hungover) guys were killing themselves to make food that no one was paying for.

I know. I KNOW. I'm an asshole.

I thought they would take my money when they handed me our breakfast. But no one did. And at first I thought, Free bagels! What a good omen for the new year! Sure, it's no everything bagel. But it's something!

But then it dawned on me as we continued our walk, noshing on our Euro-chic boiled rings: That was not a good omen. That was my test.

If I had given the harried Korean man my $5, I would have had a good year. If I had been a good Samaritan and told them they were giving all of their food away for free, then I would be writing this post from the deck of my yacht, to inform you all of my book deal and unseasonably good hair.

But as soon as I realized my misdeed, the baby woke up and started crying, I spilled coffee on my coat, and I'm pretty sure I felt a chin hair sprout.

There's no hope for me; save yourselves.

Happy New Year.

Another Failed Video Blog, But This Time With MORE BABY

2011-12-21T09:28:00.000-05:00

Like more cowbell, it's never a bad thing.

Liquid Capital

2011-12-14T21:40:00.000-05:00

As of this week, I have a new get rich quick scheme: breastmilk faith healing.

Hear me out.

Remember my wonky red eye? Well, my mom--who is kind of a hippie homeopath but who also has freakish Demi Moore-like skin even though she currently qualifies for Medicare, and therefore whose beauty advice I trust implicitly--was all, just put some breastmilk in it. So I did. The process wasn't pretty--it involved a shot glass and a woeful lack of hand-eye coordination--but it worked. Now all I want to do is set up a tent outside the Port Authority and squirt breastmilk on the lame, making young children toss aside their crutches and do somersaults.

Tiny Tim just needs a tit.

My other revelation of the week: I finally know why there are pockets on baby clothes. S. has all of these cargo pants and T-shirts with functional pockets. It's not like the baby has any socket wrenches or fountain pens, and even if he did, the only thing he can manage to do with his hands is accidentally hit himself in the face while sleeping. So up until today I assumed the pockets were for surreptitious drug smuggling (for shame, Baby Gap). But wait! This afternoon, after eating, S. vomited directly into the breast pocket of his striped onesie.

Form meets function. Slow clap.

Two Posts In Two Days? PSYCH.

2011-12-07T09:52:00.000-05:00

Don't worry, I haven't left Jeff and the baby and escaped with a box of wine to a La Quinta Inn with free wireless. This post is service-y but fun. Like a hilarious prostitute!

The amazing Momma C was interviewed on Babble, dropping her expert knowledge about childbirth. Go learn about whether you can have an orgasm during labor, and why it hurts so effing much (the labor, not the orgasm--which you're not going to have, by the way. Spoiler.)

Also, I've been posting over at Aiming Low (I get paid for it, hence my prolificness [sub-parentheses: Is that a word?], don't hate):

In Defense of Scrooge
Killing My Inner Child, One Christmas List At a Time
How To Fail At Sleep-Training Your Baby
FUPA: The Owner's Manual

You've got to admit it's a nice break from my whining about motherhood, though. Think of this as your own room at La Quinta. You are welcome.

All I Want For Christmas

2011-12-05T22:05:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all, I'm back! Sorry for the radio silence, but I got a bacterial infection. On my face. I didn't realize that could happen, either. THE MORE YOU KNOW.

It started with a really busted-looking eye. On Thanksgiving my left eye turned redder than Santa's rosy butt cheeks and everyone kept telling me I looked exhausted. The next day it started oozing. Jeff suggested that I might have pink eye, and when I laughed him off he gently reminded me that someone who handles another person's feces all day AND who has a penchant for dramatically rubbing her eyes to communicate just how many kittens she would drop-kick for a decent night's sleep might have a pretty good chance of getting poop in her peepers. He also pointed out that using a bed pillow as a nursing pillows might be getting fecal matter all over my entire face, but if that's true it has also cleared up my postpartum acne, so I'll turn a blind, disgusting eye, I think, to that theory.

I've also not had the best week. We took S. on his first car trip, to Jeff's homeland of Massachusetts for a wedding, and ten minutes into the drive I realized that I had neglected to bring the head support accessory that saves your baby's head from turning around, Exorcist-style, in the event of an accident. Being the McGyver wannabe I am, I fashioned an impact-absorbent ring around my son's head using sweatpants from Baby Gap. But then the panic set in: HAD THESE TINY LEISURE PANTS BEEN CRASH TESTED??? I made Jeff go 20 as I cursed myself for being a bad mother.

Later, after we made it to the Worcester Marriot, our eardrums shattered from the brain-bending screams that result from strapping an infant into a confined space and then deigning to get stuck in weekend traffic, I made the mistake of giving our wailing, gas-afflicted son gripe water. Gripe water is basically just fennel and ginger extract, and is supposed to calm colicky babies. But S. was having none of it. After feasting only on my Twix- and root beer-flavored breastmilk for ten weeks, he was unable to appreciate the subtleties of homeopathic herbs. Which is to say, he gagged and then promptly projectile vomited into my cleavage.

Which brings me to my 2011 Christmas list, much simpler than those of years past:

I want to not have puke in my hair all the time, like it's my new product (I thought I was past that after the night in college when I mixed vodka, Mountain Dew, and independent film), and while we're at it, I want a retractable ponytail a la the 1971 Growin' Pretty Hair Barbie so that my adorable spawn cannot twist my locks into his death grip whilst screaming directly into my ear.
I want someone to weld a bassinet onto a Roomba so that S. can sleep in perpetual motion while the sediment of two months worth of take-out is simultaneously removed from the living room rug.
I want to be able to wear a shirt that does not pull down easily to expose my boobs. I had no idea how constrictive a postpartum wardrobe is. You don't fit into your old pants, and all tops must be flasher-friendly. Oh crew neck sweaters and underwire bras, how I miss thee.
I want to be able to wear any shirt--even matronly nursing tops--without putting yarmulke-like breast pads on my nipples to avoid those ever-fetching milk stains that mark new mothers like wet, twin bullseyes.
I want to be able to regularly eat foods that do not come packaged in convenient bar form, and that do not have to be cut up and fed to me while I bounce on a giant ball and half-watch Community (fudge excepted).
And despite all of the petty bitching above, I want to be able to spend forever just being in the company of my gorgeous, charming, magical, cleavage-vomiting son.

Yes, I know, puke. Literally and all over your heart. Did you like that kamikaze dose of Christmas cheer? More's a-comin. As soon as I fit in a shower.

How Does Any Parent, Anywhere, Ever Get Anything Done, Like, Ever?

2011-11-21T12:19:00.000-05:00

So, remember when I used to get all stressed out and announce all dramatically that I had to take a break from blogging, because doing half-assed As Seen on TV! workouts and keeping track of all of the various Gossip Girl plot lines simply took up all of my free time, and doing all that plus writing about my pubes on the Internet was about to just push me over the edge?

Ha. Ha ha ha ha. Hahahahahahaha. Oh, hindsight, you are such a sanctimonious asshole.

Before I had S., I imagined that the days of my maternity leave would be full of long, languid stretches of baby nap time that I could spend reflecting on motherhood, thinking up funny things to say about it, and regaling you with stories that would catch the eye of some book agent who would sign me immediately for a debut nonfiction bestseller, Mother Eff: Getting Through The First Year Gracelessly.

I thought that at the very least writing one post a week would be easy. But S. has other plans. I have, I am learning, what some might call a "high needs baby." He sleeps restlessly. He cries easily. He eschews Mary J. Blige's call for no more drama. Look, I love him forever and there are a few hours a day when he is a sweet, gurgling charmer, but a mellow baby he is not. When he gets really worked up, Jeff and I have taken to quoting from Say Anything:

"You must chill! You must chill! I have hidden your Firebird keys! Chill!"

He doesn't get it.

The first thing people always ask is if he is sleeping. And the answer is, it's complicated. I mean, yes, he sleeps, but he prefers to sleep on my body, and does not enjoy being removed from the warm embrace of my spit up-stained sweater. If I wait for about twenty minutes, sometimes he will stay asleep when I gingerly transfer him to the bassinet like I am holding a live--and irritable--bomb. But most of the time he will instantly wake, giving me a look that says, "Bitch, you did not just do that." And then he will cry.

Even on my lap, his sleep is not always sound. If, for instance, he falls asleep nursing and then loses his vise-like grip on the nip, a violent Stevie Wonder-like head bob ensues, accompanied by a shrill wail. "WHERE IS MY NIPPLE?!?" he seems to say. "WHERE THE FUCK IS MY NIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEE?!?!?! SHAKESPEARE CAN GO FUCK HIMSELF, FOR THIS IS REAL TRAGEDY. THIS IS TRUE PAIN." Other times, I will move ever so slightly, or Jeff will cough, or a flea somewhere in the country will softly sigh, and he will startle, and we'll have to start the sleep process from scratch, bouncing wearily on our giant exercise ball.

This is all a long way of saying that I have about ten minutes total during the day when I have free use of both hands, and if there is a muffin anywhere in the vicinity the blog is screwed.

On Thursday, he is two months old. I am told it will get better. Please hang in there until it does.

Lucky for him he's cute.

Of Mice and Very Small Men

2011-11-10T19:36:00.002-05:00

There is a mouse in my house.

I saw it for the first time last Friday, while I was nursing S. and watching my fiftieth consecutive episode of Mad Men. I closed my eyes and hummed and stayed in my rocking chair until Jeff came home... forty minutes later.

I saw it again--or thought I saw it; it was a corner-of-my-eye kind of thing--on Wednesday, and immediately left the house under the pretense of getting a latte. S. was my unwitting accomplice.

It had been well documented that I am terrified of rodents. If Carrot Top giving me an erotic massage is my 10th circle of hell, my 11th is the hallway at the Museum of Natural History which is part of the "North American Mammals" exhibit but which I have alternately christened "The Hall of Rats." It's literally a bunch of rodents tacked up to the wall. (Granted, they're behind glass, but seriously, anyone with a hammer and some nails could do this at home.)

Anyway, I don't know what to do. Most days I spend 6 hours alone in the house with no one to protect me from four-legged critters but a tiny man who spends most of his time vomiting on himself and smiling toothlessly at walls. Moving, according to Jeff, is not an option. Any tips that don't involve just growing a spine? I'm thisclose to ordering an anvil and some sticks of dynamite from the Acme Corporation...

P.S. For those of you not sick of baby posts, I wrote about failed sleep-training over at Aiming Low. I may or may not call my son "the world's greatest cockblock." (He totally is.)

What Childbirth Feels Like, And Other Burning (Pun Intended) Questions Answered

2011-11-03T11:58:00.001-04:00

First, two disclaimers:

1. I started this post on Monday, which just goes to show you how much free time I have these days. S. only naps in his bassinet for about an hour; the rest of the time he insists on lying across my body like a cooing, grunting sack of flour, trapping me and forcing me to re-watch every episode of Mad Men while eating mini Clark bars. So every day I have a Sophie's Choice* of shower, meal that does not come in individually wrapped packaging, or dicking around on the computer (which encompasses blogging, ordering more baby shit from Amazon, and trolling my Facebook feed for breaking news, because I just don't have time to read the paper, let alone pick through the gonzo slush on CNN.com).

*Only not, you know, as important

2. I know that there are some (maybe a lot) of you who could give two shits about babies and boobs and everything else that comes with new motherhood, and I want to take this opportunity to say that I appreciate your reading it anyway--if you still are--and that sometime soon I hope to be able to write about topics other than poopy balls and sleep-deprivation. For now, though, please cut me some slack because this baby is all-consuming, and I mean that literally. He consumes me on a daily basis, 8 to 12 times.

And on that note, here's another post about orifices and the human beings that sometimes come out of them:

So, no one actually asked me what it felt like to push a baby out of my body, but I'm going to tell you anyway, because when I googled "What does childbirth feel like?" in order to try to do a Karate Kid montage of mental and physical preparation, all I found were a bunch of Yahoo message board posts in which women basically just said that it hurts, that they'd blocked it out, or that they couldn't really describe it.

Before I gave birth, I kept joking to my horrified mother that I was going to live-blog the experience, but even if I'd done that it wouldn't have clarified anything for you. It probably would have looked something like:

5:50 am: First contraction!!!!
5:55 am: Shit, these are close together.
7:30 am: Owwwwwwww.
8:00 am: [Retching sounds]
8:30 am: FUCK EVERYONE IN THE FACE.

In between contractions, I focused on looking pretty.

10:00 am: Hi, guys, this is Jeff. Una says if I try to get her to type anything else into her phone she's going to kill my entire family. She's mostly screaming now. It sounds like Gilbert Gottfried got stuck in a garbage disposal.
1:00 pm: Jeff again. Dude. I can never unsee this.
1:30 pm: I've been to hell and back. Baby is bare-assed; I'm wearing a diaper. How is this fair?

So before I block it out completely I want to document the sensations of my* birth as best I can.

*Obviously, everyone's experience will be different. One woman's stabbing vagina pain of death is another woman's unrelenting, shooting genital hellfire.

First things first, I skipped early labor. That's the beginning stage in which you supposedly feel relatively mild contractions every half hour or so, but can still do things like bake cookies, watch movies, and walk places without crying. So I don't know what that feels like, but compared to active labor I'm going to assume it feels like dry-humping the Stay-Puft marshmallow man.

Active labor, for me, felt more or less as follows: First, it's like the baby is putting a corset on you, but being a bitch and making it too tight on purpose so you'll pass out at cotillion and ruin your chances of ever dating the heir to an oil fortune (everything I know about high society I learned from Gossip Girl). The pain of contractions wraps around your belly and shoots down through your pelvis. At first you can breathe through them, but soon you have to moan and then yell into a pillow. The corset is suddenly made of knives, and they are stabbing you in your ladybits.

The worst part, for me, was "transition." This means that you are fully dilated and that the baby's head is moving through your cervix. Of course, at the time I didn't know I was in "transition." I thought I was in Dante's heretofore undocumented tenth circle of hell, except instead of Carrot Top attempting to give me an erotic massage, I was simultaneously splitting in half and feeling like I was about to shit on my duvet.

For the record, these are my other circles of hell.

After transition comes pushing, which most people assume is the really painful part, but for me it was a bit of a relief, because I got to be an active participant in the birth and not just a moaning, writhing, passive victim. From movies and TV you think that after pushing for five minutes the baby comes out, which is sometimes true for second or third births, but for first-timers pushing usually lasts for a few hours. But! The good news is that you won't know how long it's taking because you're too busy concentrating on each contraction--which now feels like you're attempting to push a barbell out of your ass--and the sweet, sweet sixty to ninety seconds of peace and painlessness you get in between them. The bad news, of course, is that it ends with a human head coming out of a place you equate with recreational pleasure.

The head coming out hurts, y'all. I won't lie. I can't describe it any better than that it feels like what it is: a head coming out of your body. There's a stretching, burning sensation that gets more intense with each push. But by that point you're all, "GET THIS THING OUT OF ME, NOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!" so the pain takes a backseat to the most focused bearing down you will ever do. Birth makes your worst poop experience seem like shooting down feathers out of a T-shirt cannon.

So basically what I've just told you is that childbirth hurts. Who knew? My insights are invaluable. But seriously, here's something no one else says: the most alien sensation of all is when the body comes out. Because even though you've done the head, and your vagina is passed out cold and your central nervous system is shuddering and pouring itself a shot of Jameson, nothing will prepare you for the feeling of having a set of little arms and legs pulled out of your abdomen and through your baby chute. It's not so much painful as it is incredibly weird. But then you get your wrinkled little spawn plopped on your chest, and the oxytocin starts flowing, and suddenly you are dry-humping Mr. Stay-Puft... with your heart.

Are you vomiting yet? Good. Onto the Q&A, straight from the comments/Facebook!

Did any of your neighbors hear the labor/birth? When you give birth at home, how do you get a birth certificate?
Luckily, both our downstairs and upstairs neighbors were away for the weekend, and our fourth floor neighbors didn't hear a thing. I should totally take back that wine and earplugs, right? And when you give birth at home, your midwife has the birth certificate application form with her, you fill it out, and she mails it to the city clerk, or whoever handles that stuff.

How did Jeff handle things? Was he nervous about the home birth, were you? How long did it last? Are you one of those ladies that say it was the most amazing and beautiful experience ever or was it just "worth it"?
Jeff was amazing. He was there for me throughout the labor, holding me, whispering that he loved me and telling me that I was doing great. He stayed behind me while I was pushing and didn't make any inappropriate comments about my compromised vagina, although he did later tell me that S.'s debut looked like "a hair volcano," since our son's flowing locks preceded him out of the womb.

Neither of us was especially nervous about the home birth. Obviously we knew that if anything went wrong we would need to be rushed to a hospital, which is never a comforting thought. But then again neither of us likes or feels comfortable in hospitals, so we were happy to be in our own apartment. As it turned out, I had an absolutely ideal home birth. My labor only lasted seven hours, and there were no complications whatsoever. And while my birth was amazing in many ways and I wouldn't change a thing, it hurt like fuck which kind of cancels out the beauty. So I'll go with "just worth it."

Circumcised or uncircumcised?
Un. You might have already guessed that based on the fact that I had a hippie home birth. And I know people are VERY opinionated about this issue, but my decision was based on two things: 1) It was not important to Jeff; and 2) We had no religious reason to do it. Sure, I'm not super excited about reading up on how to teach my son to properly clean his wang, but I also couldn't bear the thought of snipping off a part of him. That said, I don't judge anyone who makes the choice to circumcise. And I'll thank you to extend me the same courtesy.

I could not help noticing your eyebrows. Did you wax just before your due date? They look amazing!
Yeah, I put this question in just to flatter myself, but since I spend most days in sweatpants and a vomit-covered sweater, sporting a hairstyle that can best be described as "side ponytail struck by lightning," I need a boost. The answer, gentle reader, is that no, I did not wax my eyebrows pre-labor. It's just that years of maintaining/fighting off a unibrow have given me plucking skills that make me quite the Operation hustler. But like Eeyore might say, thanks for noticing.

And now I will distract you from the fact that I have no ending to this post with a smiling baby.

People Who Have Seen My Boobs: A Comparative List

2011-10-26T22:06:00.000-04:00

April 13, 1980 - September 24, 2011

Tulpehocken bunkmates, Camp Onas (unavoidable communal showers)
8th grade gym teacher (traumatic accident during swim class)
College boyfriend
Gynecologist
Jeff

September 24, 2011 - October 26, 2011

My father
My mother-in-law
My brothers-in-law
My grandmother
My aunt
My uncle
My 21 year-old male cousin
My mother's book group
Jeff's best man
Our landlord
The pediatrician
The cable guy
Waiter, busboy, and approximately 10 other diners at Cafe Luluc on Smith Street
Anyone walking past our building after dark who may glance up to see a weary, half-naked woman frantically wiping poop off of her screaming child's genitalia under harsh overhead lighting

If only I could blame any of the second group on an ill-fitting bathing suit....

Pump Up the Jam

2011-10-17T22:59:00.001-04:00

I have this book I read over the summer called "Breastfeeding Made Simple". Today I pointedly farted on it.

OK, that's a lie. I didn't. But I should have. Because breastfeeding? Not so simple for me.

Exhibit A:

I MS Painted some shorts on myself for everyone's sakes.

That's how you're supposed to breastfeed an infant when you have a clogged duct on the underside of your boob. My atrophied triceps and thigh muscles were not amused. Then again, on the plus side, he's going to be great at shotgunning beers someday.

Exhibit B:

#YouKnowAWhiteGirlHasAFeverWhen she starts flashing pretend gang signs.

That's me throwing up "I'm hardcore" fingers with a 102-degree fever right before feeding S. on a breast that seriously looked like a Macy's Day float filled not with air but with the burning fire of a thousand angry suns. Right around Wednesday of last week, my girls started resembling Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger from the movie Twins: one was red and rippling like one of Mr. Universe's steroid-laced glutes, the other was soft and tubby and started making its own limoncello. I would rather have watched that movie than had mastitis, though. In fact, I would rather have given birth again. I'm totally serious. At one point I was sobbing and biting down on a wooden spoon while feeding S. on my teat o' pain and watching the Breaking Bad finale. He already has lots to talk about in therapy. I do what I can.

Exhibit C:

This is my new BFF, an Ameda elite breast pump. I love that it looks like a '50s typewriter, or some kind of stenographer's machine that your tits dictate into. "Take this down, Ameda. I'm feeling a bit nippy today!" Whenever I'm not feeding the little man, refreshing the various cotton pads that line my entire body, or picking out my least stained pair of Christmas-themed pajama pants to wear in order to seduce Jeff into ordering me Thai food, I am hooked up to this thing like a Holstein. A very underachieving Holstein, I might add. My cups do not currently runneth over, they dribbleth out.

So, I think I've provided you with enough sexy mental (and physical) images for the week. You are totally welcome, as always. Don't say I never gave you anything.

Amazing Talents of the Newborn

2011-10-11T19:16:00.000-04:00

So, you know what's not fun? Mastitis. Which is what happens when boobs stop being polite and start being real, if realness can be measured in searing pain and fever. Between the jacked up nipples and this nonsense, there is so much drama going on with my mammaries that they should have their own soap opera. Tits of Our Lives, maybe, or Nips Landing.

Anyway. Before I fell ill, my mom gave us this DVD called "Amazing Talents of the Newborn." It's about how babies can mimic your facial expressions, crawl down to their mother's breast to feed, handle a power drill with surprising accuracy, etc. But having observed Baby S. for 17 days now, I decided to start my own list.

1.The innate Black Power salute:

He also does a "Heil Hitler," but it's not as cute.

2. The unbelievable ability to shoot poop up underneath their own tiny balls.

3. The Spidey sense to wake up screaming precisely 30 seconds after you finally fall asleep.

4. Stealing second base:

5. Accessorizing on a budget:

More to come as soon as I recover. And please let me know if you have any specific questions you want me to answer on the blog about the birth or first few weeks. I've been understandably distracted (mostly with scrotal cleaning--that shit is no joke).

No Sleep in Brooklyn

2011-10-05T20:11:00.000-04:00

They never tell you how hard it is.

Well, OK, they do. It's just that you, hugely pregnant and well-slept and freshly showered, throwing back fried mac and cheese balls like it's your job, don't hear them. Because you have big plans to spend your first few postpartum weeks gazing beatifically down at your clean, glorious newborn as neighbors drop by with myrrh and frankincense and maybe a nice bottle of Sancerre.

And then. Oh, and then.

Then you suddenly wake up on the living room floor at 4 am, wearing mismatched socks, one boob hanging out, manually rocking a bouncy seat as you listen to something called "Ocean Waves," but which you suspect is actually just someone's shitty iPhone recording of an industrial dryer. Your week-old infant is wailing, and you must choose whether to let him cry while you pee or take him with you. A moment later, squatting over the toilet while trying to keep his blankie out of the stream, you begin to seriously question your decision-making skills.

Your new go-to conversation-starter is a state of the union on your nipples. You tell visitors that they look like they got into a bar fight. And you should see the other guy. He had... really hard gums. Ba dum bum. I'll be here all week. No, seriously, all week. On this couch, mouth breathing and having fever dreams about actually falling asleep. No one laughs, and worse, no one offers you wine.

But it's getting easier. I turned on my computer. I typed this blog, albeit one-handed. It's getting easier every day. And this little face makes it totally worth it:

Baby Joy!

2011-09-28T08:27:00.000-04:00

I meant to post again this weekend, but then... I had a baby.

Meet the little man:

Put up your dukes.

He is completely amazing. He has instantly changed our lives.

I made something with my vagina that's not gross to look at! Unprecedented!

They have the same little bitchface.

He was born Saturday, 9/24 at 1:09 pm, and I'm happy to report that none of my fears were realized. I did not poop, nor did my butt fall out, even though at many times that felt like the point of the whole exercise. I did not burst all of the blood vessels in my eyeballs. I had a beautiful natural birth in my own home with my mother and my sister by my side. And I know that's not funny, or even particularly sassy, but right now I'm just too in love to care.

Of course, I also let my son pee in his own face on his first day of life, I'm unable to move somewhere discreet when I need to fart, I can't go to a pizzeria because someone might try to knead and toss my belly and cover it with sauce, and my nipples might break off sometime this week. So don't worry, there's lots of fodder for whenever I emerge from this totally surreal, sleep-deprived, sappy, weepy stupidly happy stupor.

I've decided not to use his name on the blog just because I don't want him to be Google-able before he's a week old, and will refer to him by S., which is his first initial. But you guys have followed me for a long time and so I want to tell you his name without typing it. The photo below--an art project I worked on in the weeks before his birth--should do the trick.

I'll be back soon. I have to go... mother, I guess?

Three One-Sentence Emmy Rants

2011-09-19T17:05:00.000-04:00

After years spent not actually watching awards shows so much as attempting to frantically transcribe them via live-blog (a feat made no less difficult by my hunt-and-peck typing skills*), it was a relief to be able to sit back and watch the Emmys last night like a normal person. However, I feel the need to go on record with a few things:

1. Julianna Margulies Is Gorgeous, So Why Is She Dressed Like A Decorative Floor Lamp Inspired By Crystal Barbie?

On the upside, the bodice really makes me want to play Mancala.

2. The Death-O-Meter Montage of Fallen Stars Requires Neither An 80s Space Graphic Background Nor A Bunch of Canadians Dressed Up Like 98 Degrees Doing A Bad Jeff Buckley Cover At A Hot Topic-Sponsored Funeral In Front of a Fog Machine

Dude on the left: TAKE OFF YOUR FEDORA. You are indoors, and you are not Wyclef.

3. Paz de la Huerta's Makeup Artist Needs To Stop Drinking

Paz also needs to cut her hair before it gets to third base.

As you were.

*I blame this on the fact that not long after he broke up with me, my first real boyfriend gave me "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" for my birthday, and therefore I now equate nimble typing with heartbreak. That, or I am just really lazy.

The Mother's Prayer For Its Son

2011-09-15T19:58:00.000-04:00

With thanks and apologies to Tina Fey, who did this first, and better.

First Lord, grant him enough athletic talent so that he does not weep openly during gym class, but not so much that he joins a team necessitating jockstraps that I must wash.

May he know peroxide only as a salve for scrapes, and not as a way to look more like Guy Fieri, for he hath not the coloring for it, oh Lord.

Unless he spies a cut of meat from the thigh of a pig’s hind leg and wishes to alert his brother, please Lord, let him never utter the word, “Broham.”

I know I do not have to ask for an awkward phase, for it is his genetic destiny, but I beseech You, make it just long enough for him to develop a good personality and not so long that he arrives at college having never touched a breast that did not belong to me (unless he is gay, Lord, in which case sub in “ass” for “breast,” and ignore the second part of that sentence). And while we are on the subject, make him deft at hiding porn, condoms, and tube socks used for masturbatory purposes, because I do not want to see that shit while putting away laundry.

Let him discover marijuana and alcohol in the company of friends who prefer to watch Comedy Central and eat too many Oreos rather than set fire to trash cans, shoplift from CVS, and pierce each other’s septums.

Guide and protect him, Lord, if and when he decides to get a motorcycle license, rent a speedboat, join an a cappella group, or go to Burning Man.

May he be handsome but not douchey, for it is the douchebaggery that attracts the damaged romantic partners and reality television casting directors, not the handsomeness.

And see that he loves and respects me enough to wait for my death to publish his memoirs.

Amen.

Transformations

2011-09-13T10:45:00.000-04:00

More substantive post to come later this week, promise (although I did write a post about Sesame Street and other nostalgic pleasures that will probably warp my child for Aiming Low).

Also, I promise I'm getting a haircut tomorrow, so that my son doesn't confuse me with Rousseau from Lost.

Telling The Neighbors

2011-09-09T08:32:00.000-04:00

Back in May, I told you I was planning to give birth at home, and, being the neurotic New Yorker I am, rather than voicing any concerns about the logistics of labor in a brownstone that hasn't been renovated since Kennedy was still alive, I worried about how to break the news to my neighbors.

Well, I decided. Along with a bottle of wine and some earplugs, Jeff and I left these notes at each door:

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day to give birth in the apartment above you, would you be mine? Could you be mine?

Click to enlarge, read, and marvel at my even handwriting.

Now the only question is, how do I tell my dry cleaner?

Deep Thoughts

2011-09-06T08:38:00.000-04:00

The Notorious M.O.M.?

2011-09-01T08:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had a post up on Aiming Low about how I judge other people's drugstore purchases, and then I got home to find a box containing nipple cream, a baby rectal thermometer, and giant maxi pads. I wish I could say that this was just a fantastic coincidence--another amusing story of swag gone awry--but I totally ordered them. Because I'm going to be a mom soon, and moms have sore nipples, and brand-new baby butts that need occasional temperature-taking, and private parts that leak.

I know that a lot of women identify as moms the minute they conceive, but as much as I've always wanted children, I don't feel that way. My mom's a mom. Your mom's a mom. Michelle Duggar is a mom (and her vagina is probably like one of those wind socks you see waving outside of car washes). I'm not a mom.

Or am I?

My friend Beth made me this needlepoint. So I guess it's official.

I already wrote the existential mommy-blogging crisis post, and this is not that. You know I'm going to write about this baby, and you're going to love it, or tolerate it, or stop reading altogether and make my eyes--and my heart!--leak as much as my sore, sore nipples (guilt-tripping is the only mom thing I have down cold.) No, the existential crisis I'm having now has nothing to do with blogging. It has to do with mothering.

I no longer pull my pants up when I go to the bathroom before bed (my logic being that I'm about to take my pants off anyway, so why waste the energy?) When I see a brown smear on my clothing, or the couch, my first instinct is to lick it. I have read Rick Springfield's autobiography but I sometimes recycle the Sunday New York Times without reading it. I can't sew or type or properly fold a shirt or make hospital corners. How am I allowed to be someone's mom?

"Not mother?"

To paraphrase Keanu Reeves in Parenthood, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car--hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole* be a mother. Where is my instruction manual?

*Hey, wait, doesn't "butt-reaming" mean anal sex? I think it would be hard for a literal asshole to butt-ream, don't you?**

**I am nothing if not a critical thinker. Maybe I am cut out for this.

P.S. I'm sorry if the title of this post made you think I was going to rap. But that would have been unpleasant for everyone involved.

Dakota Fanning's Flower Penis and 8 Other Dumb Fashion Ads

2011-08-29T08:54:00.000-04:00

If I've learned one thing from the cumulative 150+ hours of ANTM I've watched/drunkenly shouted at over the years, it's that fashion shoots are meant to tell a story (well, and that it really hurts to put in a weave). True, in Tyra's case that "story" is often limited to "emotionally unstable young women are thrown into anti-gravity chambers dressed as racial stereotypes," but still. Stories are important. Otherwise it would just be models... modeling clothes. And what purpose would that serve?

So as I was flipping through InStyle while waiting out the hurricane in my underpants and came across this perfume ad, I couldn't help but wonder, Carrie Bradshaw-style: What is this image trying to tell me?

If it's that Dakota Fanning has a vagina, thank you, Marc Jacobs, I always assumed that was true, although to be honest I don't think about it often because I'm pretty sure that would get me arrested in some states. If it's that Dakota Fanning has a penis, I did not know that, but it's her choice, and effeminate boys are really hot right now anyway. And if it's that your new perfume bottle is comically large and looks like a collectible vase from the never-before-seen Lisa Frank Home collection, then job well done, sir.

But that wasn't the only inspiring tale among the magazine's fall fashion ads...

Tamzen searched in vain for a Starbucks bathroom, even though she was reasonably certain she would be unable to remove her pants.

Yes, she was drunk. Yes, she was colorblind. And yes, Honey had gotten dressed in a Port Authority bathroom. But at least she was ready for the PTA meeting.

Only after coating herself in Crisco did Esme realize that it might be hard to hold on to her bag.

Tallulah though the doorman looked different, but she really didn't have time to inquire, as she was already late for her Fashion Institute seminar, "Head to Taupe."

Though she found Frodo unbearable, Galadriel really connected with Mondrian.

Humiliated that she had arrived at the equestrian vampire banquet wearing almost exactly the same gown as two other women, Oksana could do nothing but clutch her muff in fury.

While she sometimes missed her feet, Chamomile was thankful that she no longer had to save her tips for that bunionectomy.

And! I even spotted a Cole Haan model doing my favorite modern fashion pose, the third world toilet!

I might have to renew my vows with ladymags, you guys. I forgot how much they have to teach us.

35 Weeks And Stayin' Classy

2011-08-25T17:10:00.000-04:00

As you may have heard, New York City got hit with a massive earthquake on Tuesday that caused great devastation across the region, knocking over yogurt cups and causing ceiling lamps to swing gently from Battery Park all the way up to the Bronx. Baby and I survived, only to learn that there is a hurricane headed our way this weekend. Should I start stocking up on Off! for the coming plague of locusts?

Just kidding, what I'm really focused on is balling up very small socks. Duh. Priorities.

Is it sad that this took me an entire day?

Yes, yes, y'all, we are DEEP into the nesting, and have actually accomplished a lot in the past few weeks when we weren't busy watching old 30 Rock episodes while eating too much Popeye's, or trying to figure out why our baby seems to be shaped like a donut (he can't have two butts, can he?). We painted, we built the crib, we got a rug, Jeff lugged a loveseat out of the apartment, my sister and I washed and folded enough baby clothes to tide the Duggars over for at least a few months.

Of course, when it comes to my clothes, I stubbornly insist on continuing to wear my normal wardrobe (excepting, of course, anything made of pleather, or that has a waist... or legs). Anyway, as a result, I am looking extra classy these days:

You are welcome, son. I promise I will pay for your therapy someday. As soon as you finish organizing your sock drawer.

Nobody Puts Baby in the Remake

2011-08-19T08:21:00.001-04:00

Two years ago, I came back from vacation to news that John Hughes had died. That should have taught me to read a newspaper while at the beach, but no—instead I had to spend six days trying to beat the world record in cheese consumption and posing as a cover model for an imaginary pregnancy issue of Garden & Gun.

That’s why I was shocked to discover, upon my return, that another 80s icon is about to die a slow and painful death.

Yes, folks, they are remaking Dirty Dancing.

I know. I’ll wait for you to apologize to whomever you just slapped.

Anyway, apparently Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights was not enough of an assault on my childhood memories (I was indoctrinated early, by my aunt, at age 8, and had choreographed an interpretive dance to the entire soundtrack by the following year). No, now DD has to get the Footloose treatment, i.e. a remake with no colon and shitty subtitle to distinguish it from the original.

I realize that director Kenny Ortega doesn't need or want my input, but I've decided to drag out my casting couch anyway, to assemble what I think is an ensemble that will both please the young'uns (who weren't even born when The Lift That Launched A Thousand Amateur Copycat Injuries unspooled on movie screens) and placate the aging die-hards.

So, first things first: Frances “Baby” Houseman. I’m going on record here to say that if Lea Michele gets this part I will carry a watermelon all the way to her house, set it on fire, and lob it over the electrified fence. Ditto Kristen Stewart. The only acceptable Baby is someone who has more expressions in her arsenal than “facial jazz hands” or “sullen nostril-flaring.” A non-traditional beauty like Jennifer Grey would be nice, but we all know that if Jennifer Grey started her career today with her original nose, the best she could hope for is a walk-on as one of Blair Waldorf’s minions in Gossip Girl. So I’ll be realistic and accept that they’re going to want someone sexier. The most obvious Jews are Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Rachel Bilson (P.S. I had to Google “young hot Jewish actress” for research, which I’m sure puts me on some government watch list), but they’re all too cutesy. Baby needs to be convincingly awkward. Which is why I nominate…

Kat Dennings.

"I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you!"

She’s smoking hot, and a little on the old side for the role (she’s 25), but she’s got a nerdy, mature vibe that jibes with Baby's feminist intellectual leanings

The next most important casting choice, obvi, is Johnny “Nobody puts Baby in the corner” Castle. I know that Hollywood is going to be knocking on the doors of all of those shrimpy, testoster-phony tweeners like Zac Efron and Taylor Lautner and those beefy Australian Hemsworth brothers who look like Children of the Corn raised on L.L. Bean and steroids. But Johnny Castle is supposed to be man (I’m guessing 25-ish to Baby’s 17, although the late, great Swayze was 35 when he made the movie), so I think we can do better, and at least find someone whose pubes have come in. (And someone besides Channing Tatum, please. There have got to be other actors who can both dance and lift weights.)

I’m kind of feeling Ryan Gosling for this. I know he’s not super muscular and I’ve never seen him merengue, but I think he could really pull off that sexy bad boy from the wrong side of the Catskills thing, no? And look, I picked the most flattering photo to argue my point:

"You just put your pickle on everybody's plate, college boy, and leave the hard stuff to me."

As for the supporting cast:

Bryan Cranston as Dr. JakeHouseman...

"When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong." (Except when I'm cooking crystal to pay for my secret cancer treatments.)

Jerry Orbach was hard fucking core, and so is Walter White. He will go all Heisenberg on your ass if you step to his daughter, Gosling, so respect.

Blake Lively as Penny, the knocked-up dance teacher who spends most of the movie being an asshat...

"God wouldn't have given you maracas if He didn't want you to shaaaaaake 'em!"

This casting choice will appeal to the teenage set, and there's nothing Lively does better than look vaguely slutty and distressed.

Lea Michele can be Lisa Houseman, because the whole point of Lisa is that she's annoying as fuck

"Oh, my God. Look at that! Ma, I should have brought those coral shoes!"

Donald Glover as Billy Kostecki...

"She's knocked up, Baby." (Okay, so Billy maybe doesn't have the best lines.)

Betty White and Alan Arkin as the kleptomaniac Schumachers...

"..."

They deserve bigger parts, anyway.

Jessie Eisenberg as Neil Kellerman...

"I have to say it. I'm known as the catch of the county."

Justin Timberlake as Robbie the creep...

"I didn't blow a summer hauling toasted bagels just to bail out some little chick who probably balled every guy in the place."

...and Susan Lucci as that insatiable cougar who sleeps with Robbie.

Ta-da! You are totally welcome, universe. What do you think? Am I onto something? Or should I just bite my tongue and face the inevitable: Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron, and his man-bangs singing "This Overload" while popping and locking?

Beached

2011-08-16T07:51:00.001-04:00

I'm ba-aaack!

Begrudgingly, but still. I had to be physically removed from an Adirondack chair, and not only because I didn't want vacation to end, but also because I seriously could not get up by myself. I waddled around for days thinking that the baby had dropped, but actually I'm an asshole and it turns out you probably shouldn't balance one-legged on a piece of driftwood while eight months pregnant.

In 2007, Jeff took this photo of me:

That's still how I picture myself, but it turns out this is what I actually look like:

(I had to approximate, since Jeff used a film camera. I was so confused, and kept looking for the photos in the viewfinder, like the time my friend's daughter couldn't understand why it was impossible to fast-forward through live television.)

Luckily, large amounts of cheese seemed to assuage my poor pulled pelvis. And Jeff gave me loads of butt massages, regardless of where the pain actually was.

This man kneads a mean glute.

Oh, and of course I debuted my patriotic bikini, a day I like to call The Unbearable Whiteness of Being, Part Deux.

What's more frightening: my deathly pallor, my freakishly short legs, or the fact that Old Navy cannot be bothered to line up its seams correctly?

Yeah, it's not exactly on a par with slurping wine from between my breasts, but what can I say? These days, just standing up unassisted feels daring.

Also: While I was away I had two new posts at Aiming Low, one on how to (possibly illegally) watch TV on your computer and one about the glory of the adolescent awkward phase (I'll take any excuse to post unibrow photos in a public forum.) And I've been posting Onion-esque satire at Insert Eyeroll; you can find my first few posts here, here, and here.

Belly Up

2011-08-06T17:31:00.001-04:00

I'm off to the beach for a week. This is exciting, not only for me but for all of my fellow beach-goers, because unbeknownst to them, they are about to see me rock a bikini at eight months pregnant.

It's coming for YOU!!!

For some reason as the weeks leading up to vacation ticked by, I found myself increasingly opposed to buying a special maternity bathing suit. Every single piece of clothing I've bought so far is made of jersey and should be able to stay in my wardrobe after I give birth, assuming I don't mind wearing T-shirts that reach my mid-thighs. But a maternity bathing suit is something you can't wear when you're not pregnant, and the cute ones usually cost at least $50. So I put my swollen foot down. I took Nancy Reagan's advice and just said no.

Now, though, I'm kind of regretting it. Don't get me wrong, I love my belly, and in private there's no state I'd rather be in than semi-nude (I say semi only because I feel that underpants are necessary for sitting on the couch, especially when we have company over--call me old-fashioned). But there's something that feels a little wrong about baring a pregnant belly in public. It feels... extra naked. Almost pornographic. Maybe because of the tumescence and all the blue veins?

Also, it might have something to do with the fact that I purchased the aforementioned bikini while in a Baby K-Hole, and as a result it is red and white striped with blue trim.

I am going to look like an egg-shaped American flag, and I won't even have my Wine Rack for solace.

But on the plus side I bet I could make a great fetish calendar. I smell a nesting project!

What's The Opposite of Breaking News?

2011-08-03T08:24:00.001-04:00

So I'm sitting here in my underwear amid a pile of Tootsie Roll wrappers trying to think of a blog post that doesn't have to do with being knocked up, and all I can come up with is, Sometimes, I like to pick my nose using Q-Tips.

Just to clarify.

This is what I've been reduced to: Bizarre, pantsless confessions before 10 p.m. with no red wine in sight.

Once when I was a kid I made a fake newspaper for our family. It was called The Dean Street Gazette or something like that, with headlines like, "Fifi Wanders Off For Hours, Finally Discovered Under Guest Room Duvet." (Fifi was our cat--the one I accidentally exhumed from the grave while writing a stoned letter to my mom, remember?)

If I did that now, the front page news might be, "Air Conditioner Smells Faintly of Wet Garbage; Would Buy New One But Meh--Target Is Far," or "Monday Night Madness!! Jeff Breaks Down Boxes From Amazon; Una Writes Thank-You Notes While Half-Heartedly Watching The Tudors."

Not that my life is not awesome, because clearly it is--Jeff just walked by on his way to the kitchen and was all, "Do you need more Tootsie Rolls?" And I was like, "Um, YES, how did you know?" And he was all, "Because there are only two wrappers next to you, that's how." And I blushed and winked and decided not to tell him that there might be one or two more stuck to the underside of my thigh (I blame the leather couch)--but I just don't do very much anymore that doesn't fall under the category of eating, sleeping, or sitting in front of the fan palpating my stomach and wondering if Tums have an expiration date, or last forever like astronaut food or Twinkies.

So I guess this is just a long-winded way of saying that I don't write about anything but being pregnant these days because... well, see above.

But seriously, I do recommend the Q-Tip thing. Sanitary and satisfying. It's totally going in the op-eds this week.
____

Also: I wrote an article for The Observer this week about My Little Pony and the grown men who love them!

Pregnancy-Related Band Names, by Jeff

2011-07-29T11:48:00.000-04:00

I love my husband so, so much. An email I just received:

Subject: Great pregnancy-related band names

This is all I’ve thought about all morning for some reason.

If only I had talent.

New Age: Bag of Waters

Metal: Colostrum

Gangster Rap: Linea Negra (racist???)

Punk: Nipple Confusion

Blues Rock: Witches Milk

I like "Bag of Waters" (which is a kind of creepy-sounding name for the amniotic sac*); I can picture Jeff with long Sonny Bono hair and a zither.

*P.S. Jazz: Amniotic Sax. Your turn!

Perineum? I Don't Even Know Him!

2011-07-26T08:07:00.000-04:00

This photo becomes relevant later, I promise.

Hi everybody! I’m Dr. Nick!

Sorry. Not another guest blogger. Just me, with Simpsons Tourette’s.

Actually, I think there’s something in the air lately--our air conditioner, which Jeff finally had to install once the temperatures in New York broke my are-you-fucking-kidding-me meter, makes the bedroom smell like mildew, but I also think there might be some nitrous oxide in there, because the other night I decided to ogle my own tumescent naked form in front of the full-length mirror, and promptly started laughing hysterically at the sight of my own butt crack.

(I actually exclaimed, “It’s my crack!” before I broke down completely. If you were wondering what I’ve been doing instead of blogging, there you have it.)

This slap-happy relationship I have with my perineal region will obviously take me far as I prepare for labor. Perineal is a doctor word for privates, by the way, and it’s used a lot in prenatal classes and books, because, and I’m not going to mince words here, that is where shit is going to get real in about 9 weeks And no, I am not talking about the potential for literal shit, though there is that. I am talking about the Dali-esque stretching, melting, and general surrealism that is going to be taking place.

(I was talking to my friend Lin about names recently, and was explaining that while Jeff and I do have a name picked out, we’re keeping it a secret until he’s born. “I kind of feel like The Goonies,” I said. “Like, it’s his time down there, and he doesn’t get a name until he comes out.” Lin thought for a second and said, “Until he comes up in Troy’s bucket! Which is the best euphemism I’ve ever used to describe a vagina!”)

But seriously, think about it: Let’s say you build a ship in a bottle. (I don’t know who does that kind of thing, but it seems wholesome, something to bond over with a meticulous and exceedingly patient parent.) Anyway, let’s say you build your ship, and then you want to get it out. Now, there may be a fancy way to do this without breaking the bottle, but I spent most of my childhood craft time making Spin Art and weaving questionable potholders on plastic looms, so I don’t know it. I would just smash the bottle to smithereens and then try to glue it back. Which is why lately I’ve been eyeing an old bottle of Elmer’s we keep in the pantry next to the garbage bags while I do my kegels.

Speaking of which, women start to get a lot of mixed messages about vagina fitness in the last eight weeks or so of pregnancy. I mean, I was under the impression that you want to try to train it to spring-load back into place as soon as that baby pops out. But then, all of a sudden when you get to the third trimester you start hearing about “perineal massage.” That sounds nice, right? It sounds like a back rub for your taint. BUT NO. “Massage” in this case is a gross misnomer. They should call it the perineal taffy pull instead, because what you are actually supposed to do (oh, and if you’re eating breakfast or something, and you’ve somehow gotten this far, maybe stop for a minute to reflect on the Goonies metaphor and then come back when you’ve finished chewing) is hook your thumbs inside your... Troy’s bucket and pull down until it burns. UNTIL IT BURNS. And then you are supposed to hold that pose for two minutes.

The great news, of course, is that you can have your partner do this for you if you can no longer see or reach past your belly. Because nothing says foreplay like a little vagina tugging.

I’m sorry, this post went off the rails. How did I start with an innocuous Simpsons reference and wind up writing what could pass for S&M erotica?

Oh yes, the crack.

Crack is whack, kids. Listen to Whitney.

TGI...WTF? Sugar, Spice, And Everything Horrifying: Sister Zoe's Guide To Baby-Shaped Shower Cakes

2011-07-22T08:22:00.001-04:00

Since the first week after learning of Una’s pregnancy, I have spent ample time online looking at lil’ baby things. Unfortunately, I am poor and cannot buy my nephew the diamond-encrusted pacifier that he so clearly needs, nay, deserves.

But, I am in charge of the baby shower, so that means I can actually shop around for decorations and a cake. Well lemme tell you, baby shower supplies are a goldmine for TGI...WTF. Like whoa.

Though I could talk for a while about the horror of baby shower decorations, lets just skip to the real gems that are the cakes. I’m sure many of you mamas have seen a few of these suckers circulating the shower scene, because they seem to be quite popular.

One trend I seem to be seeing a lot of is something I’d like to call the “Dead baby on a cake”. Now, some of them, like the one below, seem like innocent enough accidents. I’m sure this was supposed to be all precious and it just didn’t occur to anyone that the dessert table would look like an open casket wake for an infant.

But this next one, well, this one feels to me like Mexican baby Jesus died in childbirth and was laid to rest under a scrap of buffalo rawhide (or, you know, an animal that actually populates Mexico). I don’t know why this baby reminds me of dead Jesus, but it does, so that can’t be good, right? Especially when molded out of marzipan.

Now let's continue on to the “We purposefully baked the baby! Ha!” category. This trend has the potential to be even creepier, I think… Though, maybe a few of them, like the first two below, lean more towards a Hansel and Gretel vibe…. unfortunately a better alternative to what follows.

If this photo didn’t show the baby in an actual oven, perhaps it could look like this was just a very fat baby in a onesie. Still, why is everyone tryin’ to eat beh behs? And can someone tell me how these dolls aren’t melting?

I kind of love this one because it looks like the baby itself is giving birth inside the cake. Push, baby, push! Yum.

All right though, the real winners of the “We purposefully baked the baby” category are the ones that look like roasted pigs on platters (notice I’ve eliminated the “Ha!” because there is no trace of attempted whimsy in these guys). Why not just stick an apple in baby’s mouth and call it a day?

I’m glad someone captured the moment below, because it shows exactly why it is creepy to make a cake in the shape of a baby:

Should’ve gone all the way and made it red velvet.

Then there is the special subcategory of creepy baked baby cakes that also probably taste like ass. I’m not sure how “sacrificed demon flesh baby” could even be served. Do you think people ate him with ketchup?

At least give him mini pepperoni irises or something. Geez.

In this next tasty looking masterpiece it seems that baby is being harvested before it reaches full term. What pregnant woman doesn’t want to arrive at her shower to see a life-sized cake of her dead body on a satin platter? How fun! It’s fancy, like a casket!

Her abdomen is so carefully cut open to reveal a wee baby floating around in amniotic fluid! I wonder what flavor Jell-o was used to get such a realistic milky yellow tinged hue… maybe white grape? Really, guys, this looks like the edible adaptation of a bad 70’s prom themed horror movie. What’s worse about this cake is that it seems like it was really fucking hard to make, and it brings to mind those jars of animal fetuses soaking in formaldehyde from 10th grade biology. It’s less appetizing than the awful baby shower candy bar game…

This game isn’t as bad as that toilet paper game where guests let mom know how fat they think she is by guessing how many sheets of toilet paper it’ll take to fit around her belly. At least this game has chocolate, even though it’s trying its hardest to ruin it by showing its likeness to baby shit. I’m not gonna front, I’d secretly eat that melted snickers out of a diaper once all the guests left.

Creepy Honorable Mentions:

Fetus cookies!

Baby Rachel Maddow cupcake topper!

Piñatas in the shape of babies! C’mon, who OK'ed this glaringly obvious party foul? I know, maybe you’re thinking, “ It’s a pull sting piñata! Harmless fun!”

Nope.

Really?!

But the real question is this: Would my candy-obsessed sister beat a paper mache baby to a pulp for a torrent of tootsie roll midgees? I’m undecided*. Lets take a vote.

*She totally would, but so would I.

Scenes From a Marriage: Freudian Fetus

2011-07-20T09:16:00.000-04:00

The Scene: Abed on a Sunday evening, trying to figure out what part of our future son's anatomy we are prodding in my belly (we literally don't know his ass from his elbow).

Jeff (to fetus): What do you think?
Me: About what?
Jeff: About... everything.
Me: But he doesn't know anything yet. All he knows is the darkness that surrounds him, and occasional glimpses of his penis.
Jeff: Then he knows all there is to know about being a man.

(Interactive!) Texts From My Sister: The Morning Scoop

2011-07-15T09:07:00.001-04:00

Zoe: This morning I walked outside to see a man pooping on 21st Street. He picked it up and threw it away, though... sooo that's good?

Me: Oh my God. But yeah, I guess that's as clean as you can be in that scenario. Why not just shit into a bag though?

Zoe: Word. I'll suggest that the next time I see it.

Nightpeeing

2011-07-12T08:01:00.000-04:00

With apologies to R.E.M...

[Super serious instrumental intro]

Nightpeeing deserves a quiet night
The dripping faucet in the bathtub, broken years ago
Keep the lights off and keep your eyes half closed
Feeling around blindly reveals the toilet seat is up
Suddenly I realize
I forgot to buy TP at the grocery store
But I’m already sitting down

Nightpeeing deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
My bladder’s like a peanut,
The fear of waking up,
Stuck inside the toilet
I need some fucking paper
These things would be okay
In the light of day

Nightpeeing, I’m up five times a night
September's coming soon
This brick will leave my womb
But what if then it’s worse?
My girl parts will be... bigger
I might need some Depends
White noise rainforest machines
Could not describe nightpeeing

[More cowbell]

P.S. Tomorrow I'll be talking even more about peeing on Aiming Low. I know, you don't have to tell me: I make you so proud.

My Jessie Spano Moment

2011-07-06T08:14:00.001-04:00

I've been wanting to write this post for a long time. Wait, that sounds like I'm about to tell some really juicy story, or admit that I'm really a middle-aged man from Duluth, or that I know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa, or that I got a sweet book deal and am writing this post from my Hamptons cottage while listening to Edith Piaf and banging out the next Catcher in the Rye, only with more Melrose Place references. I'm not, and I don't, and I didn't--although I do think that if Holden Caulfield had been able to watch Billy Campbell's development over seasons one through three he would have learned a few things about becoming a man, and how to release rage through nostril flaring instead of breaking children's records and having violent revenge fantasies about elevator operators.

No, the truth is that I'm just tired. And stressed out.

Actually, the real truth is that I just finished weeping hysterically to the end credits of Working Girl, and that this forced me to confront some things about my life.

Namely, that I can't continue to juggle all of the things I've been juggling.

Spoiler alert: This is NOT an "I'm quitting my blog" post. You can relax.

When I started this blog five and a half years ago, it was a tool for me to hone my writing skills and have an outlet to say what was on my mind to no one in particular. It served both purposes fantastically, for a while. But then people (you!) actually started reading it (the story of how in the hell that happened is here), which was surprising and wonderful and made me feel great.

But, being a perfectionist with an anxiety disorder, it also began causing me stress. Having people read my writing meant I had to keep it up... like, on a regular basis. And, being a perfectionist with an anxiety disorder, I decided that "regular basis" meant "every single day." I lived in fear of you abandoning me if I faltered in my posting schedule.

Obviously, I started to let that slide this year. I stopped posting as regularly (to a perfectionist, this means "only four times a week") in order to focus more energy on the freelance opportunities that were coming my way thanks to the blog. Then I got pregnant. But I didn't slow down. That was a mistake.

Lately I've been feeling like the blog is an obligation as opposed to an outlet, and as a result I feel like I've been half-assing it. Correction: I know I have been. It's not intentional, but after a long, draining day at work and a few hours spent on a piece of writing I'm getting paid for and therefore must prioritize, I don't have anything left. So I piece together scraps or root through my brain for material. And seriously, you guys, after five and half years (practically Blake Lively's entire life!), pickins are slim. Stories start to get recycled without my even knowing it, so that the blog increasingly resembles one big America's Next Top Model highlights show. You click over here expecting a new episode and it's just ten-second clips of bad weaves and people falling down when they walk.

Anyway.

This is all to say that: A) I want to devote more quality time and energy to the blog and write more posts I feel proud of; and B) I need to take better care of myself and prevent a mental breakdown that would harm both me and the precious cargo I've been lugging around on the subway and up on to tractors.

So I'm telling you now that I'm going to be posting less frequently for a while, at least until my maternity leave starts in September. I'd rather write one awesome post in a week than four okay ones. (Which is not to say I'll only be posting once a week, but I'm going to use that as a minimum goal).

Part of me didn't want to tell you at all (see above re: perfectionism) and hope you wouldn't notice. But I know you are all smartypantses who can count to at least 10 without the aid of an abacus (or your toes), so that wouldn't fly. Plus, I feel like I owe it to you to be able to admit that I am fucking tired and that I need help. It's like you're the Zack Morris to my Jessie Spano. I'M SO EXCITED, you guys! I'M SO EXCITED! I'M SO... SCARED.

P.S. I wonder if that phrase is copyrighted by the Saved By The Bell scribes, because if not, that would make the perfect title for the book I'm working on about pregnancy. (And by book, I mean "three paragraphs I saved on my desktop in a file called 'Book.'" I aim high.)

P.P.S. No one asked me to write the current 350-word opus that is "Book." It's just one in a number of side-projects I'm neglecting. Like turning the "nursery" into something less resembling a Salvation Army janitorial closet.

Excerpts From My Photo Shoot For Knocked Up And Tractor Pullin' Monthly

2011-07-05T07:59:00.000-04:00

Happy belated 4th!

I'm building a ship in a bottle, people. That crotch seam knows what's up.

I do all my own stunts, like Angelina Jolie.

If you're unknowingly getting sunburned right now, put your hands in the air!

Unborn Child of the Corn.

All photos courtesy of my beloved husband, who, when he wasn't busy eating grilled meats or placing me precariously on farm equipment, built a dam.

Dam, that man is fine.

Subway Nemesis, Vol. 1

2011-07-01T08:38:00.000-04:00

Today I'd like to introduce a crappily finger-painted comic I like to call...

This week, it's this guy:

It's hard to communicate douche-iness with finger-painting, but trust me: Asshat.

He was sitting like so when I waddled up, the ever popular "elephantiasis of the testes" wide-legged stance:

I was so naive.

Surely he would shift to accommodate my fecund heft?

But no.

This is what I should have done:

"Excuse me, sir. Unless your dick is 15 inches long, weighs two pounds, and makes you fart uncontrollably, I believe I have rights to that space."

This is what I did do:

I'm so going to blog about this when I get home.

The Baby K-Hole

2011-06-29T08:35:00.001-04:00

So... I've never actually done ketamine. I feel I should state this up front. But from what I've read (which is, admittedly, limited to the James St. James memoir Disco Bloodbath, later made into a movie called Party Monster starring Seth Green, who I can't really imagine as a glittery club kid because he will always--ALWAYS--be Kenny Fisher...

... HI. Welcome to the other side of that embedded video. I didn't really have anything else to say, but it's hard to enclose a YouTube clip in parentheses.) Anyway, from what I've read, sometimes if you do a lot of it, you fall into what is called a "K-hole," a sort of memory blackout that leaves you unaware of anything you did (St. James recalls emerging from one and finding a note to himself that read only, "Evil must be baked at 650 degrees.")

Before Jeff and I got married, I feel into a few wedding K-holes. But those were no match for the baby K-hole I fell into last week. (Picture a pot-bellied Alice in Wonderland tumbling down the rabbit hole, only instead of chasing a rabbit she's chasing a Pop Tart, and instead of a cat she's got a "Slumber Party" double DVD of My Girl and My Girl 2 that may or may not have been purchased at a truck stop.)

It all started innocently enough. I was comparison shopping for rocking chair cushions (yeah, and I'm pretty sure it was a Friday night--this is how I do it, Montell Jordan). Then somehow I was looking at crib bedding, and then rectal thermometers, and then, through a chain of associations I an unable or unwilling to reconstruct, I became obsessed with finding a Monchhichi onesie.

Monchhichi, for the uninitiated, are a line of Japanese stuffed toy monkey dolls that became popular in the early 1980s and were marketed by Mattel. They look kind of like if Rolf from the Muppets had knocked up a Cabbage Patch Kid:

Jeff's nickname as a baby was Monchhichi, because at one day old he already had more hair than most full-grown Wookies:

I myself went for more of a Joan Jett vibe coupled with a look of thinly-veiled alarm:

Point is, there's no way around it: this kid is going to be hairy. So a tongue-in-cheek onesie seemed apt.

And yet, that doesn't explain how I quickly found myself on eBay, bidding on tiny PVC figurines made in the 1970s that feature Monchhichi characters in a variety of sports poses (one of them is just holding a baguette and wearing overalls, which is more my speed, really).

Did I mention that, at two inches tall, these are choking hazards? And that they're made from the same material responsible for sewage pipes and pleather? But they're so cute. (You should see the tugboat captain.)

Sigh. Rocking chair cushions: totally a gateway drug.

Scenes From a Marriage: ABCs & S&M

2011-06-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

The scene: Saturday night dinner date at a local French bistro. Out of nowhere, Jeff puts down his fork, looking stricken.

Jeff: We're going to be parents.
Me: I know. Together. It's stronger even than the bonds of marriage. ... Or bondage.
Jeff: [Laughs] Is there a safe word?

I consider this for a moment.

Me: College.

Ten 80's Movies Outfits I Covet Beyond All Reason

2011-06-27T08:04:00.001-04:00

I watched Dirty Dancing over the weekend, which is never not a good idea. (Quick aside: Jeff has never seen it. Can you believe it? I had to explain the whole plot, which ended up sounding way less awesome than the actual movie: "So this Jewish feminist, Baby, goes on vacation in 1963 to a cheesy resort where there's segregation--but not between blacks and whites, between the dirty-dancing goyem waitstaff and the stuck-up clientele. Anyway, this dance instructor gets a back-alley abortion and Baby has to get her dad--who was on Law & Order for a really long time but then died and sometimes is in those organ donor subway ads--to help, because he's a doctor. Then he's mad. But then she has sex with Patrick Swayze and they profess their star-crossed love by performing ballroom dance in front of a small crowd of rich Jews in the Catskills.")

But I digress.

One thing that struck me was how, every time I watch it, I want to reach into the TV screen and rip Jennifer Grey's clothes right off of her body. Specifically, the sweet jean shorts and tank top she is wearing during my personal favorite scene, the Forbidden Bridge Dance Montage:

Ugh, look at that. I could vomit from pure envy. Yes, I realize that the shirt is tucked in, and that a waist belt is involved. I'm also pretty sure she's wearing white Keds. I don't care. I want to BE her, right down to her Tatum O'Neal perm and old nose.

That visceral reaction inspired me to expand my list of 80's movies outfits I would totally cut a bitch to get my hands on...

#2: Adventures in Tablecloth-Inspired Eveningwear

If I had to choose the one celluloid scene that best encapsulates my deepest soul, it would be the opening from Adventures in Babysitting, when Elisabeth Shue dances around her bedroom to "And Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals. Perhaps it is by the transitive property that I thereby covet this odd, long-sleeved velvet-slash-gingham party dress that she dons for her hot date with Bradley Whitford. What can I say? The way she shimmies into it while lip-syncing and making love to the camera is basically the most impressive multi-tasking I have ever seen.

#3: The Gravity-Defying Slushie Frat Party Boob Shelf

This photo doesn't really do justice to the amazing ensemble that Winona Ryder wears to the frat party in Heathers. Herve Leger wishes he could make a bandage dress as flattering and curve-hugging as this pencil skirt/overalls combo, and I add points for the off-the-shoulder sweater with the cleavage brooch. Christian Slater's face says it all. Lick it up, baby. Lick. It. Up.

#4: Sweet Sixteen And Always Been Pissed

I think we can all agree that Samantha Baker just doesn't give a fuck. But it's exactly this effortless ennui--and her ability to layer and accessorize--that wins me over. (We shall not mention the disheveled best friend with the unfortunate hair clip who looks like she's 45 and should be working Hollywood Boulevard with Julia Roberts and Laura San Giacomo.)

#5: The Hungry Like A Wolf

Natty Gann was my jam! It was like Mallory from Family Ties became a newsie. Plus, she had John Cusack. And a wolf! And a sweet tomboy wardrobe! I mean, it wasn't sweet, really, because she was a homeless runaway, but still.

#6, 7, and 8: Chicago Chic

I was going to go with Sloane Peterson (if I'd had access to a fringed leather jacket and pleated stone-washed shorts in the late 1980s... well, it would have been extremely unfortunate, but oh, how I prayed for them), but then I saw this photo and realized that I covet all three of these looks. Maybe Ferris' most of all--that vest! Le sigh! Cameron has a kind of Arnie Grape vibe going on, but secretly it was him I had the biggest crush on.

#9: Ione Have Eyes For You

If I had been allowed to design my wedding dress at age 12, this is exactly what it would have looked like. Listen, Diane Court: You stand up straight. Admit you're special.

#10 The I'm Gonna Be 40... Someday!

Wearing suit jackets makes me look like Peter Dinklage dressed as an airline stewardess, but that doesn't stop me from desperately wanting to wear houndstooth and felt bowlers. I know everyone loves Annie Hall when it comes to filmic representations of 80's menswear, but I prefer the quirkier Sally oeuvre. I guess what I'm saying is, I would like to partake of her pecan pie.

Jeff just made me think of at least 5 more examples, so consider this list TO BE CONTINUED...

TGI...WTF? Blood, Jweats, and Tears

2011-06-24T08:19:00.000-04:00

Okay, I totally called this.

IT WAS A JOKE, but sadly, it has become reality (why couldn't this have come true, universe?) Also, how exactly are these different from the circa-1989 acid-washed, elastic-waisted jeans me and my fellow elementary school classmates wore so proudly, envying the way they bunched attractively around each other's hips and ankles?

I hate you, fashion. I really hate you.

And not in the subtextual, When Harry Met Sally way.

The Redemption of Sister Zoe: A List of Virtues

2011-06-22T08:31:00.000-04:00

Hey ya’ll!

It’s been a while, huh?

To be honest, I shied away a bit after telling you all my deep dark secrets. Unfortunately, as I suspected, I horrified most of my family, and even some friends--whatever, guys, I was just tellin’ it like it is. This isn’t a post about my sexual escapades with Nickelodeon characters though…but before I get on to my main point (I sort of have one), here is a brief* list of some things about me that will hopefully serve to counteract the image of a drunk prostitute that I so vividly painted for you last time.

I am going to school to be a midwife (this does not mean I will be delivering babies in the fields of South America with a pot of hot water and some torn up bed sheets. Somehow many people are still unclear on what midwifery is. Sigh. Sorry, I’m not trying to start this list off all judgy)

In the mean time I am getting my birth doula certification, which means I will be providing labor support (emotional, physical, what have you) to women and their partners (I really do hate that saying “partners” makes it sound like I’ll be working exclusively with gay couples… not that there is anything wrong with that… but you feel me).

I’m a nanny! I know, I know, you’re thinking, “But you drop so much prescription medication on the floor!” I do…but somehow I am very good with babies. I looooove babies. So when not chain-smoking and being curmudgeonly, I walk around the city with the cutest little fellow strapped to my chest. Just thinking about it makes me miss his sweet little round head!

This is not that fellow. This is my friend Phoebe's daughter. And despite her best efforts I didn't let her have any beer.

Errr lets see. Wholesome qualities... I’ve never really stolen anything. When I was 11 or so my friend and I took two peaches from an outdoor fruit market. We felt so bad that we wandered for an hour trying to find a homeless person to give them to (you know, to make up for the awfulness of our ways), but with no success we returned to the market, confessed, and paid the 65 cents for our peaches.

When I was little, I felt so strongly that all of my stuffed animals had feelings, that I brought all of them (two garbage bags full, no lie.) on our summer vacation because I didn't want anyone to feel left out. There was also a rotating schedule of who got to be my main sleeping companion (sort of like now… KIDDDING!) Written out, this better illustrates my childhood OCD tendencies than my wholesomeness.

Despite my slightly irrational childhood fear of vomit, I have traveled--traveled--to help friends deal with unfortunate vomit dilemmas on more than one occasion (four). I developed a reputation for being good at this. I know--how the fuck does one do that, right? Well, when I was 14 and throwing my first house party, someone vomited in my bathroom sink (aim for toilets kids!). After some hard work with rubber gloves a plastic cup, fast forward six months and I was being called to clean steak fajitas out of a bathtub, Jager out of a washing machine, you name it! If I’m really trying to illustrate my humanitarianism, I once found an unconscious college kid sprawled out in front of my apartment and scooped vomit out of his mouth to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation.

That last one just felt obnoxious. I wanted to say bombastic, but that’s not really right, and also, tell me who can use that word without thinking I’m Boombastic say me fantastic…she touch me on my butt say I’m Mr. BOOM! But I digress…

I am also excessively nice to people in customer service positions. I only fly into screaming rages at Julie, Amtrak’s automated agent. I feel bad that cab drivers have to drive me places, and that waiters have to bring me food. When cashiers in training fuck up every transaction and have to call their managers, I feel bad for them because I know that everyone on line is plotting their death (Admittedly, my first thought is the detailed plotting of their death, but then I feel bad for them, does that still count?). I also yell at racists, and I immediately apologize to cats when I feel I’ve been mean to them. I guess you could say I’m sort of like mother Theresa.

* NEVER believe me when I promise to be brief. I am pretty much incapable of this.

Yesterday my brother-in-law accused me (lovingly) of being “so full of hate”, and suggested that I share it with the world through blogging. Well I disagree, Jeffrey, I am clearly full of love and buckets of guilt.

Now that we’re all clear on how charmingly multifaceted I am, to my main point: MY SISTER IS HAVING A BABY. Like for real she is, no joke, have you noticed? Every time I see her, that little belly has grown, so I KNOW this is for real, guys. I know this is common knowledge, but there is a person living inside of her. Can you believe it?

I am head over heels in love with him already. He was being a tad withholding and wouldn’t kick for me for weeks, so we had a moment of beef, but then he did and now we’re biffles. I have so much to say on this but I took up the whole post talking about how great I am. My bad. There will be many Beh Beh Z/aunthood related posts in the near future, cause this baby is only gonna get bigger and the weather is only gonna get hotter, and my sister will need to spend a lot of time eating ice cream sandwiches and napping in front of a fan. But for now I’ll just say that the time I used to spend watching reruns of Real Housewives and eating cereal straight from the box is now spent watching reruns of Real Housewives and embroidering tiny pastel things. Turns out I have no embroidery skills, but the kid can’t turn out lookin’ crazier than this, right?

1) We lived in Texas, and 2) as far as I know I wasn’t born a Guatemalan boy, so I’d like an explanation for this outfit, mom.

Also, don’t worry, Una, I’m not actually attempting to make your child clothing. I once hemmed a skirt with a stapler.

Will Blog 4 Food

2011-06-21T07:59:00.000-04:00

Sorry, guys, I have to do another shit-I-did-when-I-wasn't-here roundup today. But Sister Zoe has a guest blog coming tomorrow, so get excited! It is hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, that I almost don't want to post it because it will show me up. Especially when it follows this. But fuck it, I have prizes for you guys.

I have amped up my Pimping Myself Out to Pay for 2029 Tuition (Or, Who Am I Kidding, Maternity Jeggings) Tour, in which I review things for money. Only instead of having sex with anyone I get free shipments of yogurt and stuff, and also the hourly rate's not nearly as good.

But seriously, thanks to BlogHer and their partners I do have some great giveaways this week over on my review blog, The Punky Reviewster. One is the aforementioned Alpina yogurt tasting, which gives you a chance to win a $200 Visa gift card, and the other is the second installment of my HomeGoods shopping adventure, which offers a $100 HomeGoods gift card. All you have to do to enter is comment, and it would make me so happy if one of you guys won, for real. I never give you anything. I need to have a week when I do an Oprah's Favorite Things. Except instead of cars, you'll get 99-cent bags of Tootsie Rolls and scented garbage bags. I can't see you right now, but I'm going to assume you're screaming with joy and clawing at your faces.

ALSO: I have another post up at Aiming Low. It is not about vaginas, but it is about babies, which come out of vaginas, so by the transitive property I am still obsessed with cooters.

I don't usually use the word "cooter" but it's past midnight and this level of tiredness is as close as I get to feeling drunk these days. It's getting crazy up in here! But you already knew that, when I mentioned scented garbage bags.

Seacrest, out.

Parental Priorities, Chapter One: Naming Rights

2011-06-20T08:05:00.000-04:00

Names are important.

(I know, I'm so deep. How do you stand it?)

Still, you have to admit, they are. And I'm not even talking about people names, which I'll get to in a moment. I'm talking about paint names. We're getting ready to paint the baby's room, and we know we want it to be green. What shade of green? Well, there's "apple blossom" (cute!). There's "lily pad" (CUTE!!). And then there's "dill weed."

Someone at Benjamin Moore does not want anyone to paint their house "dill weed." They could have called it "old sage" or "African Kermit," but no. Dill weed. And I'm sure that's not the worst paint name out there. If I were the CEO of Benjamin Moore, I would make a nice dark brown and call it BM (for the company's initials, obviously).

I am shallow, so I choose a great many things based on the name. Like nail polish ("Strawberry Margarita," after my favorite summer beverage), Jamba Juice (whatever makes me sound the least like a moron, i.e. no "Mango-a-go-go"), primary care physicians (but seriously, how else are you supposed to pick?). I cannot in good conscience bring my son into a room painted the color "dill weed." The color should be adorable-sounding, or, at the very least, stately.

In terms of the kid's name, Jeff and I only have one hard and fast rule: he can't share a name with anyone either of us has slept with (sorry, Jon Hamm!). We probably could come up with stricter parameters (no hyphenated first names ending in -Bob; no Muppets; no serial killers; no corporate sponsorship*), but not associating our child with sex (at least, other than the direct role it played in his conception) is all we can muster the energy to care about.

*Dorito Zorabedian does sound pleasantly ethnic, though. I bet he'd play in the World Cup.

Well, that and the relative cuteness of the random name assigned to the color of a paint swatch by a bored BM intern, obviously. Priorities, we rock at them.

Bonus Fun Fact: According to What to Expect, this week our unborn son's balls are descending from his abdomen into his scrotum, a trip that the book says "can take up to three days." I would like to officially claim the movie rights to that treacherous journey. I'm thinking Jake Gyllenhaal and Scott Caan would make great testicles.

The Rain in Brooklain Stays Mainly... In Our Bedroom

2011-06-17T08:19:00.000-04:00

Last night it rained in New York--hard.

And normally I love the sound of rain. Except that in this case it sounded especially vivid, like one of those rainforest noise machines (I personally have never wanted to sleep in a rainforest, mostly because of those creepy red-eyed tree frogs that look like they would waste no time chewing off your lips in your sleep).

As my eyes fluttered open around 3 a.m. it dawned on me, like that babysitter urban legend:

The rain is coming from inside the house!

Indeed, I leapt up to find droplets springing from our windowsill--not through the window, but through the wood. Figuring our upstairs neighbors had left their window open, I called them to complain, but they didn't answer. So I stumbled around gathering towels and mixing bowls, which sort of kept the deluge off the floor.

It's nice to know the water is brown, though, isn't it? Our ceilings must be full of chocolate.

Jeff was still asleep, so naturally I woke him up and burst into tears so that he would share in my misery. He put on pants, went upstairs to bang on the door (no luck, again, although I know they were up there because I heard them moving around), went outside to have a cigarette*, and promptly fell down the stairs**.

*He's quitting, don't worry. The baby will not grow up in a cloud of Pall Mall smoke.
**Also, he's fine. This story does not end in the hospital. In fact, it ends here, because I am too tired to think. I tried to go back to sleep but then a leak sprung over my pillow--only on my side, of course. Then I curled up at the foot of the bed and had a stress dream about an earthquake, during which all of our neighbors came into our apartment while I was naked. Also, it was still raining inside. Only that part wasn't a dream.

Like Oprah's Book Club, But With Slightly More Incest

2011-06-16T08:23:00.002-04:00

I am generally late to the game when it comes to literary phenomena. I think I read Harry Potter for the first time in 2005, eight years after it came out. I'd read about it in my Entertainment Weekly, I'd heard people talking about it... I'd shrugged. How great could it be? I thought. It's just a kids' book.

Little did I know...

The same thing happened with Twilight, except in that case I didn't read the books at all (I give Stephenie Meyer props for dreaming about a vampire who sparkles like the cover of my 1989 Lisa Frank Trapper-Keeper and launching a thousand fan sites, but she is not a good writer. Sorry. I can forgive crappy writing only in the case of salacious celebrity autobiographies, and even then, there had better be some really good stories about sex with a member of an 80s metal band.) Anyway, I skipped straight to the movies, and mostly just so I could play a Twilight-themed SceneIt! with my friend Margaret. The best part of my introduction to Twilight was that it happened right as Breaking Dawn, the final book in the series, was being released, and I got to hear my otherwise-sane friends have conversations like this:

Friend 1: I don't know, Bella getting pregnant seems like bullshit. I thought all of Edward's bodily fluids were replaced with venom. Doesn't that include sperm?
Friend 2: I know. And even if he did make sperm, aren't his balls like the temperature of the polar ice caps?

Maybe that's why he was so moody.

Anyway.

Yesterday I finally succumbed to The Hunger Games.

Only three years late, so I'm making progress. But OMG YOU GUYS. There is a reason people are freaking about about this. I opened the book as I boarded the A train at 42nd Street around 8:15, and I didn't stop until I finished it some four and a half hours later. This is better than that time I found a dog-eared copy of Flowers in the Attic at a church sale (the irony was lost on me then) and spent the next few years of my adolescence being grossed out that I was kind of rooting for the brother and sister to do it (I really hope you've read that book, otherwise I sound like a total perv).

Oh, who am I kidding, I am a total perv. Now that I've read the first book all I want to know is, do Katniss and Peeta have sex? This is what pregnancy hormones do to me. This and inspiring me to buy Twix ice cream bars at the grocery store but no actual dinner ingredients.

But seriously, who wants to read these books with me? Because I need people to talk to. Let's start a book club. It will be just like Oprah's, only instead of launching careers and influencing the zeitgeist mine will investigate whether or not Rick Springfield's memoir Late, Late At Night is composed entirely of "Jessie's Girl" lyrics.

Texts From My Sister: New York Needs More Public Restrooms

2011-06-14T07:42:00.000-04:00

There's a drunk person on my street screamin "I gottttta poooop!" hahhhhha

Poor guy. And poor... whoever had to use whatever dive bar bathroom he wandered into after him. (Seriously, only slightly less well-known than "Beer before liquor, never sicker" is "Shit where you quaff, pick up the staph.")

My Tony Awards Acceptance Speech

2011-06-13T00:03:00.000-04:00

Oh my God, you guys. I seriously cannot believe I'm up here right now.

I remember back in third grade when my class put on a production of the Nigerian folktale "It's All the Fault of Adam" and I was the only African washerwoman not to be given a speaking role, I almost gave up before my career even had a chance to blossom. But instead I held my turban high and looked out at the crowd as I scrubbed my invisible soiled linens, and thought, Someday, I will fucking own you. And here I am.

I know I'm not the best actress in this room, or even, probably, in any room that has more than five people in it. I know I'm not the best singer, either, and that I like to drunkenly claim that "How Will I Know" by Whitney Houston is "my" karaoke song, even though if I'm honest with myself I really don't have the range for it. I may not have a dancer's legs, poise, or even basic coordination, but I try, god dammit. My junior year at Wesleyan--which some of you may know as the school with the naked co-ed dorms and humanities class in pornography--I took part in a modern dance piece set to the music of the Kronos Quartet. I wore a mesh top and orange underwear that showed through my dance pants. The underwear part was a mistake, but everyone later agreed that the performance was a tour de force, especially the six-minute segment where I pretended to be inside a tiny box. No one could believe I never studied mime.

That summer, my best friend Anna and I staged an alternative sketch comedy show at Collective Unconscious, a charming blackbox theater on Ludlow Street. In one bit, Anna pretended to be Edgar Allen Poe doing a commercial for syphillis medication. In another, we performed an interpretive dance to Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" using vegetables as props. Everyone applauded, but even then I knew that no one understood my art.

Until now.

I have to tell you, one of the sweetest things about this victory is beating out January Jones as Estragon in T-Pain's musical revival of Waiting for Godot. That bitch can't act, and this Tony Award proves it.

In closing, I'd like to quote a few lines from the 90s R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné!: "It feels good yeah/It feels good/Oh it feels good/Sure feels good to me."

P.S. This post was Jeff's idea. I asked him for a subject and he suggested this--"It's topical!" or a post about me hosting the Tony Awards. But then he reconsidered: "It would just be you and your mom on the couch with a magnum of wine, commenting on what was happening, and then someone else would have to introduce the nominees." Truth.

Navel-Gazing

2011-06-10T08:58:00.002-04:00

Although I do a lot of figurative navel-gazing on this blog, I've never been much of a literal navel-gazer. Mostly because I never used to see my navel much during day-to-day activities. Now, it's front and center. In my favorite position (cross-legged on the couch with a pillow behind me and something awful like Teen Mom on TV), in my favorite beat-the-heat outfit (gym shorts and a bra), it stares up at me like a little well in a mound of bread dough.

I try to talk to the baby, when I remember to. It's not the most natural thing in the world. Mostly our conversations are awkward and one sided.

Me: "Whatcha doin' in there, buddy?"

Fetus: ...

Me: "You kickin'?"

Fetus: ... (translation: "Duh.")

Me: "Are you kicking because you liked those tacos or because they made you angry?"

Fetus: ... (possible translations: "AHHHHH!!!!! I LOVE TACOS!!!!!!!!!!!"; or "You know beans give me hiccups, you bitch!")

I've also been singing to him. My favorite so far is "Be My Baby" by the Ronnettes. I also want to learn the words to "Cry Baby," by Janis Joplin for an ironic lullaby when he screams later on. Of course, that one's kind of fucked up, if you look at the lyrics, but I don't think he'll know.

And if he doesn't like it, he can always throw up on me.

For now, though, he's my captive audience.

Everything I've Always Hated About Summer* *But Was Too Afraid To Admit: Volume 2

2011-06-09T08:17:00.000-04:00

So last summer I came out about my hatred of melon, madras, and beach volleyball, and oh, it hurt so good. And since it was 98+ degrees today in NYC, and lugging my belly around felt like doing a three-legged race with an amputee in a shallow pool of molasses, I thought it was a good time to pick up where I left off.

Ahem...

White Jeans. I don’t know who decided that wearing head-to-toe white in the summer was important (maybe Diddy?). Look, I know that white reflects sun and keeps you cool and looks nice on boats. And if you have been blessed with a set of slender, shapely legs and the ability not to spill whatever you happen to be eating immediately onto your lap, then please, knock yourself out with the albino denim.

But unless you live inside a Ralph Lauren ad amongst nothing but sun-bleached rocks and immaculately scrubbed yacht decks, white jeans are not a practical item of clothing. Think about it: what do you think of when you think of summer? Barbecue, right? Grass. Sweat stains. None of which are allowed in these pants. And if you live in New York, forget it. One step outside your door in July and you'll be blasted with a steaming puff of street grime-filled air that would turn Justin Bieber black.

Victoria Beckham, demonstrating the ever-popular "hip dysplasia" fashion pose. She is not, presumably, about to sit on the NYC subway or eat a plate of ribs.

(Some of you may recall that I own a pair of white jean shorts, which makes me somewhat of a hypocrite, but in my defense I don't look good in them. Are you happy now, Diddy? ARE YOU??)

Frisbee. When I walk through the park or along the beach and see a group of people throwing a frisbee around and laughing, I don't think, What good, clean fun, or even, Wow, that guy really needs to put his shirt back on. No, I think, I am going to get hit in the face.

The Hipster Reappropriation Of Old Lady Sandals. Remember back in the summers of the early aughts when we all used to shuffle around in those $3 mesh slippers favored by elderly Chinese women? (I used to pair mine fetchingly with my cropped sweatpants during trips to the corner bodega for toilet paper refills. It was a sexy time.)

Anyway, lately I've been noticing these on everyone:

Now, it bears mentioning that these sandals have been in style for a long time, at least among certain sectors of the population. For instance, my mother's Polish cleaning woman has worn them since the late 1980s, usually with the kind of thick support hose you could insulate walls with. And look, better that young women are wearing orthopedic footwear than hooker heels. But really--can't we stop taking the old ladies' shoes?

Gazpacho. I know I'll make some enemies here, but if I wanted to drink cold tomato sauce... well, you'd probably have to lock me in the Ragu factory overnight, Career Opportunities-style, because there is no way I'm doing that voluntarily, I don't care how floridly you pronounce it, Alex Trebek.

Salsa: It's what's for dinner.

Honorable mentions: Men in Adidas sandals; air conditioners set to "cryogenic freeze" setting; skin cancer pictorials in my Us Weekly.

Weiners And Take-Out: A Weekend Well Spent

2011-06-07T07:54:00.002-04:00

The Bloggess has a weekly feature she calls "Shit I Did When I Wasn't Here." This is me stealing it.

So, here's what I did over the past few days:

I wrote about the dangers of cell phone crotch shots for Aiming Low.

Doing my best Blake Lively, purely for educational purposes.

I also bemoaned the lack of decent summer television for Weekly Seven magazine.

I sat around while Jeff painted his office and I didn't help at all.

Then I ate a truly horrific amount of cold Chinese noodles with sesame sauce, but I don't have a link to that (and seriously, you should thank me).

Right now I'm up late working on a project for my, you know, "real job" (another thing I do when I'm not here) while someone is kicking me from inside of my body, hence no substantive post today.

Except, no, I'm underselling myself. A nudie pic PSA is totally substantive.

As opposed to cold noodles with sesame sauce.

I mean, seriously, I might as well eat paste.

UPDATE: I also got invited by BlogHer to go on a shopping spree that could win you--yes, you!--gift cards to HomeGoods. Go check it out!

Distressing By-Products of "Nesting," Part Two

2011-06-05T22:46:00.000-04:00

...or, Humiliating Artifacts Uncovered Whilst Cleaning Out Future Nursery:

Exhibit A: My bridal shower ribbon hat!

Maternity friendly!

Exhibit B: The business card of one of the two (!) strippers my sister hired for my bachelorette party!

Yes, that's his real name. Yes, that's his real hair. Only one way to find out if that number's still valid!

Exhibit C: My college ID card! (photo taken senior year of high school at a passport studio... and you know my track record with those)

Jeff literally recoiled when I showed him this.

And now for a poll: What should I trash? What should I keep? And what was an exotic dancer doing with an AOL account in 2007?

TGI...WTF? Fetus In A Fright Wig

2011-06-03T08:24:00.001-04:00

I should really be keeping a week by week diary of what I read in my pregnancy books, because there is some jacked up shit going on in my belly right now. Take, for example, this passage from Week 24 of What to Expect When You're Expecting:

Is your baby a brunette, a blonde, or a redhead? Actually, right now his locks are white since there's no pigment yet.

Say what? In all of the instances I've imagined what the little guy looks like floating around in there, Don King has never come into play. Until now...

Photo of Jeff at 2 mos. used for likeness. P.S. He's not jaundiced, this photo is just 31 years old.

Or--worse!--what if his coif looks more like Jay Manuel's (aka "Mr. Jay" from ANTM)?

Photo of yours truly used for likeness. P.S. In this one, instead of Photoshop I used Microsoft Paint. Can you tell? Also, yes, that is a romper. Shut up.

I only know one thing for sure, and that's that this is not the last time I doctor photos of Jeff and me as babies to make us look like we have grown-up hair, because damn, that is precious.

ALSO: I have a new post up at Aiming Low about test-driving kegel balls. I really hope the Internet implodes before my son is old enough to read it.

Why I Would Probably Die In The Opening Scene of An Action Movie

2011-06-02T09:03:00.000-04:00

There was a tornado warning in New York yesterday. I was in a screening of X-Men: First Class, trying to keep the baby from going prematurely deaf by muffling the bone-rattling explosions with my copy of Fit Pregnancy (which is a total sham, but that's a post for another day), when I got the text from Jeff.

And much like the last time a tornado came to the city, I reacted like someone who learned everything she knows about tornadoes from The Wizard of Oz and Helen Hunt.

"Should I stand in a doorway? Wait, no, is this the basement one? Shit. Should I go in the subway? It's dripping what looks like acid rain and there's a lady near the turnstiles with no pants on but I have an unlimited MetroCard so I can live down there until mid-month if need be. Oh, also! There's an Au Bon Pain next door. Should I go in there so that I can have muffins available in case I'm trapped? The cashier is pretty small but I bet he would let me hide behind the sandwich station."

"Just stay indoors," my husband said slowly, as if talking to a particularly feeble puppy.

Now, I'm in no way trying to make light of tornadoes, which are terrifying and destructive and which just over a week ago killed over a hundred people in Joplin, Missouri, devastating an entire town. But New York is ill-prepared for natural disasters. That's why movies like to send over floods, asteroids, and alien invasions--the severed head of the Statue of Liberty rolling like a bowling ball down Broadway makes a pretty good special effect. Unfortunately for me, movies are the only training I have in emergency situations. If I can't hole up in the library with Jake Gyllenhaal, or storm the subways with Lt. John McClane, I'm lost.

There's a character in the X-Men movie called Darwin, so named for his ability to adapt to survive in any situation. I am... like the opposite of that.

Sigh. At least Jeff has better disaster instincts than to run to the nearest muffin. Maybe our kid still has a chance.

Scenes From a Marriage: Breaking Up Baby

2011-06-01T08:12:00.000-04:00

Me: It’s weird, when I used to think about having a baby, I never thought about sharing it with someone else.

Jeff: (immediately) I get the top half.

Me: No, that’s not what I meant. I just never imagined being able to relinquish control to another—

Jeff: OK, I get the front half.

Me: Stop it, we are not dividing the baby. I’m talking conceptually.

Jeff: Fine, I get the head and extremities. You can have the torso.

You Know What Sucks About Working On Memorial Day? A Lot Of Things.

2011-05-31T08:29:00.000-04:00

One, people will not believe you. "You're working?" they will ask incredulously. "On Monday?" And then, after a pause: "You know that's Memorial Day, right?" Salt in the wound.

Two, your favorite sandwich place will be closed. Worse, it will have a cute sign in the window reminding you once again that it is a holiday, dumbass, and you will have to get your lunch from the corner deli, the one with the stock boy who hits on you even though you are five months pregnant. "Hello, beautiful," you will hear him coo as you attempt to balance a package of mini donuts on your belly so that you can reach inside the fridge for a root beer, and you will wish for a moment that his fetish was just for helping sweaty women shop.

Three, the trains will still be running on a weekend schedule, which is to say, as slowly and irregularly as an obstructed bowel, and it will be hot, too--hot and fetid enough that for a moment you will look up from your magazine and wonder if you could, possibly, actually be inside someone's ass.

Four, someone on Facebook will soberly remind you why Memorial Day is called Memorial Day (Cliffs Note version: dead soldiers), and then you will feel like an asshole for being so self-righteously cranky about putting in eight relatively easy hours at the office (it's not like you're working in a coal mine, honey) and having to eat your sandwich on a regular roll instead of ciabatta.

That won't stop you from devoting an entire blog post to it later, though.

(Imagine Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda: "Asshooooooooooole!")

Writing With My Mouth Full*

2011-05-26T09:13:00.001-04:00

So, I'm going to take a little break from blogging starting today and going through the long weekend. I'm feeling burned out (those of you who've mastered basic addition have probably noticed that I've been posting less, but I'm not so much burned out from this blog as I am from my day job and extracurricular writing gigs, plus keeping up TSC--I think my other endeavors have sapped all of my writing mojo.)

How I've been feeling lately.

Hopefully a short time off will get me excited and inspired again. Have a fabulous Memorial Day. I'll be back next week!

*I was going to title this post "Una and the Chocolate Factory," but then that seemed too abstract and cruelly misleading. Some close friends of mine are moving to Gettysburg, PA, near Hershey Park, though, so one day soon I will make it a literal reality.

Ab-solut Freedom

2011-05-25T08:34:00.001-04:00

I got my issue of Women's Health in the mail yesterday. The cover promised me Flat Abs--Fast!, but I had to shift around slowly in a circle in order to see it, peering over my increasingly bulbous belly. Then I laughed, the throaty, self-satisfied cackle of someone who has known true freedom, or who is plotting Dynasty-style revenge.

Because as a woman, there is no cult more powerful than the cult of abdominal worship. You get registered as a lifetime member against your will, and once you're in, there's no getting out. It's like Scientology, but with the ab roller instead of the e-meter (and the cult of abs loves the gays).

But for 10 months at a time, if your ovaries cooperate, you can defect.

It's like one of those MasterCard commercials:

Approximately 16 pregnancy tests: $112
Health insurance: $600/month
Out-of-pocket ultrasound because your expensive health insurance still manages to suck: $350
Elastic-waist maternity pants, voluminous blouses, bigger bras, shoes half a size larger than you normally wear: $500
Creams that will control your exciting new acne without giving your baby horns or a tail: $40
Tons of baby shit*: More money than you have. (*not literal)
Not being able to see your vagina: Eh, I'm sure it's fine.
Not having to worry about flat abs for 40 weeks: Priceless.

(Psssst, I'm available, MasterCard, if you need me. I'll bring the sweatpants, you bring the complimentary bikini wax. Because seriously, I'm flying blind down there.)

Inner Monologue, With Attractively Clogged Sinuses

2011-05-23T09:26:00.000-04:00

Well, the Rapture didn't happen, which is good, mostly, except that I'm still sick so I really could have used an excuse not to blog.

Because all I've been doing for the last 72 hours is blowing my nose, drifting in and out of sleep while watching craniotomies and heartbreak on Grey's Anatomy* (I'm still only at the beginning of season 7, but have watched so much of this fucking show in the past few months that my kid is probably going to turn out to be a really needy doctor, through osmosis) and adding twee baby outfits to my online registries without consulting Jeff.

*Also, can we talk about the Frito-Lay commercial that runs every ten seconds on my Hulu? There is no way that blonde makes potato chips from scratch for her family using actual tomatoes. Plus, those corkscrew curls would not hold up leaning over a deep fryer.

What else? Hmmm. I've been researching diaper pails, which is only slightly more demoralizing than receiving giant sanitary pads in the mail. Also I had a really good muffin today. Like, really good.

I would have made this a video blog to mask its inadequacy except I haven't washed my hair in days and the sides of my nostrils are flaking off faster than Charlie Sheen's septum.

Hey-oh! Still got it.

Hack, hack. Sneeze.

Fin.

Whoring Myself Out On The Internet, Part Infinity

2011-05-20T12:27:00.000-04:00

And now for those links I promised you this morning when we were having coffee and talking about glitter penises.

First, I'm over at Aiming Low writing yet again about a body part below the belt. My feet!

I totally just saved my mom and dad's lives, because the third time your daughter writes about her see you next Tuesday on the internet is the charm for a massive coronary. From what I've heard.

Next: someone found me interesting enough to interview. I KNOW. Allison from the hilarious blog Fucked in Park Slope (not literal; safe for work--you are welcome again, parents) chose ME as a "Profile in Courage." Courage, in this instance, means talking about men's sandals and the perils of pooping in a birthing tub. It's all relative, but still, if you're a soldier in Afghanistan you probably should not read this.

Have a great weekend, everyone. If the world ends tomorrow, this will be my final blog post, so I'd just like to say... Shit. I do not have a speech prepared. Be excellent to each other? See you in hell, maybe? I'll bring the Cuervo, you bring the limes. XOXO, Gossip Girl.

TGI...WTF? Pajamas and Pejazzles

2011-05-20T09:01:00.003-04:00

Two things:

1. The Jews (of which I am a member, albeit not in very good standing) have a saying, dayenu, a Hebrew word which means "It would have been enough."

So, for instance, if God had only given us rompers, dayenu. If He had decided to stop at jumpsuits, dayenu. If Pajama Jeans were the only pajama-based product deemed appropriate for humans to wear in public, dayenu.

But I guess it wasn't dayenu, because now there is this:

No, it's not a Nerds Halloween costume. That, friends, is a "OnePiece," which the British are trying to make happen (thanks to reader Summer for the tip!) And not as a wear-around-the-house adult onesie. As something you wear in the outside.

Okay, in fairness, that one is pretty fey. How about this gangsta number:

You down with O.P.? Yeah, me neither. Good luck taking a dump in that thing.

2. Remember vajazzling? I thought it would go away, too. Well, now there's pejazzling, in which men adorn their upper pubic area with Swarovski crystals. I have a few problems with this:

A. Shouldn't it be penazzling?
B. Shouldn't it actually be pube-azzling, since if we're being honest it's not really the penis itself getting this treatment?
C. This only leaves one more private area to adorn with jewels, and I personally don't want to live to see anazzling. If this means the Rapture has to come tomorrow, so be it.

P.S. Check back later today--I'll have a new post up at Aiming Low plus an interview I did with the blog Fucked in Park Slope. (It is part of a series called "Profiles in Courage." Stop laughing.)

Splendor In The Gas

2011-05-18T23:01:00.000-04:00

"Isn't there a Slanket somewhere you should be filling with your farts?"

Salma Hayek said that to Liz Lemon on an episode of 30 Rock, and now I always think of it when I pull on what I have come to know affectionately as "my Slank." But now that I have pregnancy gas it's not as funny, because it's true.

God, I am the worst. All day I've been burping uncontrollably, and then my nose started to run, but only out of one nostril, which seems worse somehow. I don't know if I have allergies or a cold, and I don't really know how to tell the difference because aren't they basically the same, except that one is caused by tree pollen and one is caused by that peanut M&M you ate even though a consumptive toddler had been palming it like a tai chi ball before you "borrowed it" from them?

Anyway.

I was trying to work despite my carbonated intestines and liquid sinuses when my upstairs neighbor started playing Rock Band. More specifically, he started playing Smash Mouth and Blink 182 on Rock Band. I burped my dismay but I don't think he heard me, so instead of working I ate an ice cream bar and read about Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child in retaliation. Then he played "Sister Christian" by Night Ranger, which you know is my aural emotional kryptonite, so I had continue not working for a little bit in order to weep softly into my right nostril snot rag.

Jeff pretends he's still attracted to me, but I'm pretty sure he's lying so I won't fart on him, or start to cry. Lately I've been anchored on the couch every night, resplendent in my machine-washable polyester caftan, surrounded by wadded-up tissues and food wrappers, looking like Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau. I might as well be in one of those dioramas at the Museum of Natural History:

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first century before the new Ice Age, the Una ranged over eastern North America and parts of western Europe, although it generally preferred to stay within a one-mile radius of its apartment. Although it resembles a sloth in appearance, the Una is actually more closely related to humans and apes. Its name is derived from the reported (and photographically confirmed) unibrow it was born with and later removed. Una can weigh over one hundred pounds, but appear much larger because of their oversize sweatpants and voluminous "Slanket" coverings, which bear traces of some staples of the Unas' diet, such as artificial cheese dust and coffee Haagen Dazs. The Una became extinct after experiencing sudden cardiac death brought on by hysterical weeping to the power ballad "Sister Christian" by Night Ranger, an American rock band that gained popularity during the 1980s and then faded into obscurity.

My nails are looking pretty good, though. So I've got that going for me.

Sister, Sister

2011-05-17T08:33:00.001-04:00

Seeing as I am convinced that 1980 was only 20 years ago, it is somewhat perplexing to me that my little sister turns 25 today. Yes, somehow she is now 4 years older than me. I can only conclude that I have Benjamin Button disease.

Anyway, remember that episode of Sex and the City when Carrie gets stood up for her birthday party and there's this drunk girl at the restaurant who yelps, "25... fuck, I'm old!"? I used to think that. Now Zoe thinks that. I'm sure she's spending her birthday being vaguely depressed instead of doing shots of Jamo at a bar. In fact, I know this, because A) We LaMarches always cry at least once on every birthday, and B) Zoe is spending the day in the outer reaches of Brooklyn caring for a four month-old baby without a phone. My sentence structure kind of sucks there--I'm not saying that the baby doesn't have a phone, because obviously all newborns are now equipped with built-in Bluetooth. I'm saying that Zoe doesn't have a phone, because she left it in a cab yesterday. Which means that she can't get lovey-dovey calls on her big quarter-life birthday. Hence this lovey-dovey blog ode.

(Okay, it's not lovey-dovey yet, but I'm building to that. First I have to show you her sweet Guatemalan pants from 1988.)

See? Worth it. OMG SO CUTE. I WANT TO EAT HER FACE.

Ahem.

Anyway, my sister is brave and brilliant and beautiful and oh so much stronger and wiser and ballsier than I, and a perfect example of this is that she would probably kick my ass if I got too sappy in such a public forum. Another example is her giant neck tattoo:

Kidding! That's ink. She modeled for a friend's photo project. But seriously, doesn't she look bad-fuckin'-ass? And gorgeous? Like one of those Vogue models pretending to be all ethnic and Maori? Except even better because her eyes aren't blank and glassy and she's not jumping for no reason while wearing a silk romper and a fright wig?

OK, so clearly I didn't map this post out before I started. And I apologize, because my sister deserves better. But I just love her so much it makes me kind of frazzled. She's like my Fight Club power animal. She's inspires and amazes me. When she was little, she wanted to be like me (she even used to put tin foil on her teeth to approximate my adolescent braces). Now, all I want is to be more like her. (Yes, this means I'm going blonde. Look out, world!)

But seriously, please help me show her some love and join me (and The New Kids On The Block) in wishing her a very happy birthday.

I LOVE YOU, BOO. I hope that kid is doing a baby samba dance in celebration of your awesomeness.

Bumpwatch... Like Baywatch, But Without the Slo-Mo Beach Running

2011-05-16T08:44:00.000-04:00

So, I started 3 different posts tonight and they all sucked. One was about how Angela Chase said that Sunday nights make you want to kill yourself, and how that is, like, so true. One was a really sad list of things I've avoided doing so that I can catch up on Grey's Anatomy on Hulu. And one was a post bemoaning my writer's block and trying to distract you by posting a photo of my distended abdomen. BABY JOY!

Like A Good Neighbor

2011-05-15T17:13:00.000-04:00

I am planning a home birth.

Now, I know what you're going to say, and let me answer some questions for you: Yes, Jeff is going to grow Jethro Tull hair and start wearing flannel. No, there will be no barn animals (unless you count the mice who live under our sink). Yes, I realize this means that I won't have access to pain medication. No, I am not allowed to smoke pot first. (I already asked.)

My mom had both me and my sister at home, so it's normal to me, the same way a hospital birth is normal to most people. And of course if anything goes awry we'll be whisked away to the hospital so that the baby and I are safe. But the purpose of this post isn't to defend home birth to skeptics. It's to ask a simple question that's been haunting me since I got pregnant:

What do I tell my neighbors?

When my mom had me she and my dad were living in a cavernous 6th story loft just northwest of Union Square; they had the whole top floor of the building, and since this was 1980 I have always assumed that whoever lived beneath them was busy either shooting heroin or painting in the nude when I arrived. When my sister was born we lived in a little suburban one-story house in Austin, Texas, separated from the neighbors by 30 feet or so on either side. But I live in a small, four-apartment brownstone with cracked ceilings and holes in the floorboards. I can hear my upstairs neighbors have sex, play Rock Band, and even drop cutlery. In my bathroom there is a vent that seems to lead directly into another apartment, because I can always hear someone sighing softly, presumably while on the toilet. Seriously, what do I say?

"Hello, neighbor. Sometime in the next month or so you will hear terrible screams coming from my apartment. It could be at noon or it could be in the middle of the night. Do not be alarmed; I am merely giving the gift of life. I plan on using a birthing tub, but from what I hear those suckers are pretty hard to break, so the chance of my flooding your apartment with my baby water is quite low. Regardless, please accept this $7 bottle of wine and this set of airplane earplugs as a token of my sincere advance apologies."

Hmm. I may have to work on my speech.

Adventures In Sitting, Baby

2011-05-10T08:29:00.001-04:00

I got a seat on the subway yesterday.

FINALLY.

I have been glaring at people for weeks now. I'll be standing, and a seat will open up, but not right in front of me, so in order to grab the open seat I either have to lunge like a selfish asshole, or let someone else take their rightful seat, since by New York law if the subway seat directly in front of you opens up it's yours, pregnant women and the elderly be damned.

That's why I get so pissed off when I'm standing in front of a seat and my person (yes, softly dozing octogenarian Asian man with the bag full of asparagus, you belong to me now) gets up and then the person next to them shifts over. I feel like, when that happens, I should be able to taser the person, or at least take them on Judge Joe Brown.

(Judge Joe Brown was on in the hospital waiting room when we got our ultrasound. A teenage boy was being taken to court by his grandparents for defaulting on an $1800 loan. And this boy must have been challenged, because everyone knows that daytime TV courts do not smile upon entitled, ungrateful children who swindle their elders. That's Gossip Girl you're thinking of, son, don't get it twisted!)

Anyway. I guess I could have told people on the subway that I was pregnant, but it kind of takes away from an act of kindness when you have to force it with pity. Plus, there are so many things aside from wiggly uterine growths you can't tell by looking at someone. What if I had said, "Excuse me, I'm pregnant," and the big, strapping-looking man in what I considered to be "my" seat had said, "I have testicular cancer"? What then? Would we play rock, paper, scissors? Or something without the word "rock" in it so he wouldn't get self-conscious about his ailing balls? I don't know.

That's why I needed to wait for someone to look up, notice my burgeoning belly, and give me their seat. Or, I should say, that's why I needed to push out my stomach comically and sigh until someone noticed.

(It takes a lot for a pregnant woman to get a seat these days, because people are so afraid of mistakenly offering their seat to a woman who is not, in fact, pregnant. And here is a public service announcement for those people: Just get the hell up. Don't say anything, just get up like you have somewhere else to be, like maybe over next to the charming man singing aloud to the violent rap song he's listening to on his iPod. Best case scenario, you let a pregnant woman sit down. Worst case, you let a woman who has just eaten a giant burrito sit down, and believe me, she needs it, too.)

I'll admit, I felt a little guilty, after the elation that someone had finally identified me as knocked up as opposed to just husky subsided. The man whose seat I took stood all the way to Penn Station, while I struggled to focus my attention on the cheery New York Times Magazine article I was reading about a fatal Air France plane crash. But then I caught the eye of a man across the aisle, who got on at my stop in Brooklyn and who hadn't given up his seat. And I glared at him. And then I felt better.

Motherhood is changing me so much already.

Scenes From a Marriage: Fetal Eavesdropping

2011-05-09T08:09:00.000-04:00

Jeff puts his ear against my stomach.

Me: What do you hear?

Jeff: Shhh.

Me: Zeppelin?

Jeff:I smell incense. And he's saying something, too...

Me: "Mom, get out of my room!"

Jeff: I think he's masturbating.

We're going to be awesome parents.

Note To My Future Son

2011-05-06T07:51:00.000-04:00

I told myself that I would not turn into the woman who posts her ultrasound photos on the Internet. And yet...

Here you are. And I'm completely smitten.

(Even though it looks like you have no arms.)

(Not that there's anything wrong with that. I would still totally adore you.)

(And, I mean, look at Lieutenant Dan, from Forrest Gump. He did okay.)

(Wait, nevermind, he was missing legs. Plus, he was kind of a dick.)

(But you get my point.)

Cinco de Babe-O

2011-05-05T08:26:00.000-04:00

Today, assuming our fetus is an exhibitionist like its mother, we'll find out if we have to start saving for her wedding or for the bail we'll have to post when he tries to shoot himself out of a cannon while trespassing on private property. Stay tuned. And feel free to place bets. The prize is the smug feeling you'll have knowing you correctly identified a baby's genitalia without even looking. Which is priceless, really.

Nothing Comes Between Me And My Calvins... Except For My Sink Urine

2011-05-04T08:53:00.000-04:00

I cannot get enough of this ad. I crack up every time I see it.

If you're a man, I guess, it's supposed to say, "Come fuck me in this public bathroom, quick, and then buy your girlfriend expensive jeans."

But if you're a woman, it mostly says, "Excuse me, hag, but I'm peeing in here. Topless. While she watches. There is a Denny's next door if you need to relieve yourself."

Tweeting the 5th

2011-05-03T08:11:00.000-04:00

Here’s a dirty secret: When something major happens in the news, part of me cringes, even if it’s good. Prop 8, healthcare reform, bin Laden's death... even if I'm glad about it, part of me sighs.

Why?

Because I know that my Twitter and Facebook streams will flood with commentary. And because I know that I will have to decide whether to join the fray.

I tend to shy away from politics in my “public” persona on the blog and social media (ahem, the 2008 election notwithstanding… longtime readers will remember that I was—often drunkenly—obsessed with everything Obama from July through November of that year). It’s not that I don’t care, but I’m non-confrontational by nature, and internet pile-ons have never been my thing. I enjoy a good political debate from time to time, but preferably lingering over dinner with a bottle of wine at the ready, and a good buzz already going. Not under the harsh fluorescent lights of my office, caffeine-deprived, exchanging tense 50-character messages with some guy I don’t even know who’s a friend of my friend, has a profile picture of a bikini-clad dolphin*, and who apparently has no qualms about coming off like a loudmouth asshole to strangers.

*Note: This is not a real descriptor. If this guy actually existed I would totally friend him.

I lean, as Beyonce once sang, “to the left, to the left,” and have a collection of (generally) like-minded friends who tend to express their political opinions freely online. So when Osama bin Laden's death was announced last night, the status updates started pouring in.

They ranged from the celebratory ("I feel like NYC should be drinking and dancing in the street for the next 24 hrs.") to the sincere ("So happy for my president, hopeful for my country, and grateful for all of the servicemen and women who made it happen.") to the jokey ("Osama bin Laden? Nope, Obama been Killin!"; "Hawaiian Black Man Responsible for Death of Homeless Arab Recluse") to the disappointed ("man... i know he was 'evil' and all, but it still creeps me out to see people celebrating the death of another human."). None were offensive, all were valid responses. On some level I agreed with all of them. But I couldn't bring myself to comment, or post my own update, or even click "like."

I wish there was a button for "tacitly agree with the motivation behind this, but do not wish to participate, much like middle-school sports."

But then I feel guilty for not saying anything, as if that act itself says something, the something being "I enjoy posting updates about the sex lives of former Melrose Place cast members and things I have eaten off the floor, but I have no interest in the war on terror."

So, for the record:

Am I glad bin Laden is dead? Yes.

Do I find it kind of disturbing to raucously celebrate a death, regardless of who died? Also, yes.

Am I kind of suspicious about this whole "burial at sea" thing? Yes, captain.

I mean, come on. That's some Days of Our Lives shit. "Who, Brock? Oh, he died. He was, um... buried at sea. That's why there's no body in the casket, only the ashes from when Chastity burned down his condo after she realized he was pretending to be his twin brother, Brett, to get the deed to her diamond mine. Brock always loved the ocean. He even had a birthmark shaped like a seahorse... that's how they knew it was Brett who fell to his death after last year's ice cream social at the cliffs. So, yeah... he's at sea. Definitely not coming back for sweeps. No way."

Distressing By-Products of "Nesting," Part One

2011-05-02T07:57:00.001-04:00

1. There is now a cardboard box in my closet marked "WIGS."
2. Knowledge that there were additional wigs that didn't qualify for the aforementioned permanent wig storage box, due to their irreparable misshapenness, or suspect stains.
3. The discovery of a sheaf of crude drawings stapled together, labeled "FOOD BOOK" in a childish scrawl, and the subsequent inner debate as to when, exactly, I had made this: age 4, or during a Hulu commercial, waiting for the Mr. Wonton delivery man?
4. Sore right butt cheek (mysterious)
5. Realization that Entertainment Weekly's Greatest Hits: 1991--unearthed inside a mint condition Jansport backpack--does not include "Finally" by CeCe Peniston.
6. Realization that CeCe Peniston, despite the promise of her spectacular name, never really did anything else.
7. The cessation of gingerly placing wigs into FreshDirect boxes in order to watch this:

Peniston: 1; Nursery: Zip.

TGI...WTF? It's A Nice Day For A... Royal Wedding!

2011-04-29T08:33:00.003-04:00

I'm not really that into the royal wedding. I mean, don't get me wrong--I'm glad they're doing it, especially since, while Kate may be able to wait, William's hairline clearly cannot. And from what I can tell so far, the Queen looked like a delicious stick of Land O' Lakes, which is how I want to remember her always.

So, yeah, I'm not doing much in the way of celebrating today. I'm probably just going to paint my nails...

It's like wearing ten hugs!

Have some tea...

They should totally make Jersey Shore versions of these. Then your Early Grey could taste just like that syphilitic hot tub!

And eat some cake.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

(This was originally one of those creepy Twilight cakes made by the types of people who sell uteruses made out of felt on Etsy, I think, but rub off the glitter and slap on a veil and, voila!)

(Also, is it wrong that I want to just lop off the top of Wills' head just to see what it looks like inside? I really, really hope it's red velvet.)
___

P.S. This is your weekly reminder to go to my review blog and enter to win a $100 Spa Finder gift certificate. Remember what I said about the Korean baths and karaoke? It could become a reality!

What John Hurt Must Have Felt Like in Alien, Before His Untimely Death

2011-04-28T08:19:00.000-04:00

I’m 18 weeks pregnant. Apparently I should be feeling this thing move any day now.

Except, how will I know what it feels like? People say it feels like popcorn popping, which would be helpful if I’d ever thought to use my uterus for snack-warming, but as it is I have a microwave, so while I know what popcorn popping sounds and smells like, I have no idea what it would feel like if it were happening inside of me. You might as well tell me my baby moving will feel like a the Jamaican guys at West 4th Street playing the steel drums, or Patrick Dempsey vigorously brushing his hair.

Some others say it’s like a flutter, akin to butterflies in your stomach, or the feeling you get going over the first big drop on a roller coaster. I’ve felt those things, but not recently.

No, either my baby is too busy watching shadows on the uterine wall (the closest it has to TV--sad!) or is really adept at doing burrito impressions. Either way, I'm kind of proud.

I’ve read that it can hear now, too, so I’ve been talking to it sometimes. Nothing major, just small talk.

"Do you like that, baby?" I'll ask while steamrolling through a plate of waffles, or rubbing lotion on my belly. It's a rhetorical question, of course. I assume the baby enjoys all of my activities--that it thrills at filling up online shopping carts with maternity clothes that will make us look like we live on a stylish prairie, and cares about whether that bitch Alexandria will get her comeuppance on America's Next Top Model.

"I love you," I'll sometimes whisper. Not when I'm around other people, who might think I'm expressing my secret adoration for a table lamp or my own reflection, but when I'm alone, lying in bed, cupping my belly with both hands.

"I love you."

And then I sit, waiting expectantly--like I have so many times in my kitchen, watching that butter-stained bag inflate as it spins on the glass plate, bathed in yellow light--for the first pop.

Fun With Idio(t)syncrasies

2011-04-26T07:59:00.000-04:00

1. It's been a cold, rainy winter here in NYC, but more than once (more than twice, more than three times a lady) I've found myself wearing heavy rubber waterproof boots on days with bright sun and clear blue skies. I never check the weather. It's just something my brain will not abide, like calculus or being able to identify birds. So every morning I wake up, and if the sky is gray, I put on my rain boots and grab my umbrella (somehow it never occurs to me that the sky might be gray because the sun hasn't risen yet--Phi Beta Kappa is so proud). And so, a few hours later, I walk down the street trying to act like my sweater dress and wellies are a statement, like how the Olsen twins used to dress like hobos totally on purpose.

2. I say farhead instead of forehead. Jeff gives me shit about this all the time. I don't know why I do it, but in my defense, the forehead is the part of your head farthest from the ground. Well, except for your scalp, but that's really just an extension of the farhead when you think about it.

3. I can't whistle unless I suck in instead of blowing out. I literally suck at whistling.

4. I can snap the fingers on my left hand but not on my right hand. So if I need to say "Snap!" and illustrate it with a sassy hand gesture (which happens more often than you might think even though this is not 1992), the object of my display must be on my left; otherwise I have to incorporate a spin, which is an advanced move that I really don't have the ankles for.

5. Thanks to Jeff, I can now only remember his dirty joke lyrics to certain songs. Like "Blinded By the Light" ("Wrapped up like a douche, another boner in the night!") or "If You Don't Know Me By Now" ("If you don't blow me right now... you will never, never, never, never blow me... oooooh.") Technically that's his idiotsyncrasy, not mine, but it still means I can't sing karaoke when children are present.

Also: I have yet another somewhat graphic post about my ladyparts up on Aiming Low! Phi Beta Kappa is, again, SO PROUD. But on the bright side, two separate companies have offered to send me kegel exercisors (basically, vagina barbells), so I must be doing something right.

Cooking With Sassy: Sacrilegious Easter Cake

2011-04-25T08:23:00.001-04:00

I was away this weekend, celebrating Jesus' resurrection with honey ham, so please accept this recycled--but still delicious--Easter recipe as I rush to shower and find pants that fit before I am late to work:

1. Buy frozen Sara Lee pound cake. Serve with whipped cream and strawberries.
2. Approximately 2 weeks later, gingerly lift brick-like remains of cake from aluminum container. Arrange in center of plate.
3. Using whipped cream, make a mound in the center of the cake and two football-shaped ears at the top.
4. Find raisins. There are always raisins somewhere--check your carpets and the bottom of all of your purses. Use smidges of whipped cream to affix raisins above center mound in approximation of eyes.
5. Before you put it away, dispense whipped cream directly into mouth. (Whipped cream never goes bad, plus at least you're not doing something more dangerous, like whippets.)
6. Did you bake a cake in the last three years? Then surely you have some dusty tubes of congealed icing somewhere in the pantry! Drag those suckers out, and use to make nose, eyebrows (optional), mouth and inner ear.
7. Use icing to write tender Easter message to Jesus (alternative idea: "What's up, Doc?")
8. Post on blog; horrify Catholic relatives

Serving instructions: Actually, you probably should not eat this.

Happy Easter!

TGI...WTF? When Charmin Loses Its Charm

2011-04-22T09:24:00.004-04:00

I have been inundated lately with genius suggestions for TGI...WTF?, which I love not only because it lets me interact with you, dear reader, but also because it means I have to do less work, which is my general goal in life.

Today, let's look at "The Comfort Wipe," suggested by Deborah F. Imagine a cheap toilet brush/anal probe manufactured by Swiffer to hold your TP so that you don't--gasp!--have to crush or fold toilet paper, an act our poor ancestors slaved over "for 100 years" (before that, they used wool, lace, or hemp, which were much less labor-intensive unless you count the treatment of anal scratching.)

My favorite quotes:

"It extends you reach a full 18 inches!" (Because who can reach their butt using just their arms?)
"It's as easy to use as a shower brush!" (Because it is a shower brush, just with a weird ET head instead of bristles!)
"Just press the release button and the tissue drops right into the toilet!" (Great for people whose arthritis prevents them from unclenching their fingers!)
"Think about it... toilet paper is really archaic, and disgusting. The Comfort Wipe is a modern solution." (Toilet paper is not inherently archaic or disgusting, but shooting excrement out of holes in our butts is. Why not get to the root of the problem and replace our colons with awesome--and santitary--marble slides?!?)

Then again, maybe I'm just jealous because I wasn't the first person to think of taking an ergonomic dildo and using it for human waste disposal.

That's probably it.

P.S. If you haven't already, visit my review blog and enter to win a $100 Spa Finder gift card courtesy of Olay!

Fingerpainting My Morning Commute

2011-04-21T08:52:00.003-04:00

Without fail, I am waiting for the train, standing too close to the yellow lines and listening to a motivational 80s movie theme on my iPod when...

Some bitch runs up just as the train comes in so that she can get in the door first.

I glare at her all the way to Times Square while she struggles with her Sudoku.

It's my version of eating my Wheaties.

This was going to be a longer post, illustrating the many offenses against subway etiquette that I record each day--I'm an amateur transit cop out of the Dwight Schrute School of Superiority--but I got tired after three drawings. To be continued...

Also! Today is my first post over at Aiming Low, in which I introduce myself by worrying about vaginal prolapse. I hope I make you proud.

The Meek Will Inherit The Gym

2011-04-20T08:45:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid, I lived in fear of organized sports. This was a surprise to no one.

1980

I fail at crawling.

1983
I fall headfirst down a flight of concrete steps. (That’s got to explain my lack of motor skills, not to mention my love of Bethenny Ever After, right?)

1986

One day in first grade, upon learning I have gym class, I begin to weep.

Apart from totally dominating at scooter soccer (probably because the handicap was already built in), I was not good at any physical activity that required hand-eye coordination or strength in any part of my body. Even Red Rover terrified me—what if I couldn’t hold on tight enough? What if my tiny 40-lb. body couldn’t break through the chain of fists? WHAT IF I GOT CALLED OVER??????? I had some anxiety problems.

At the Quaker camp I went to, even though they were supposed to be peaceful, they would occasionally force me to stop making God’s Eyes and participate in a Lord of the Flies-style game of Capture the Flag, in which counselors would smear our faces with Ponds cold cream tinted with food coloring, stick a bandana in the back pocket of our shorts, and make us run around trying to “tag” someone out by grabbing their bandana. Needless to say, I surreptitiously removed my own bandana, used it to wipe the cold cream off my cheeks, and sat on the sidelines pretending I was going to vomit (I used the same general tactic for dodgeball, except in order to sit out I first had to get whacked really hard with a partially deflated orb, which made the same sound as a belly flop and hurt just as much.)

So imagine my inner child’s delight upon reading yesterday that the Department of Health has deemed Capture the Flag, Red Rover, kickball, dodgeball, and wiffleball unsafe for children! Oh, happy day!

Actually, I don’t agree with this decision at all—kids get hit with balls sometimes, and as long as they’re not attached to a human man it’s totally OK, even character-building!—but man, I would have been thrilled to get out of those activities with a legitimate, government-endorsed excuse back in the day. How much grief and humiliation would have been spared! How many more God’s Eyes I could have made! Red rover, red rover, let... me sit on my ass watching Saved By the Bell re-runs. Yes!

The more pressing question is, of course, how can I avoid passing on my wimp gene? Unless I man up, my kid may not have the muscle tone necessary to control its own bowels.

Learning Math From Tyra Banks, and Other Benefits of Too Much TV

2011-04-19T08:28:00.000-04:00

I watch, as you all know, a lot of TV. Like, a lot. I have a pretty busy work schedule, but I make time for what Jeff calls my "stories," whether I'm watching them on Hulu, downloading them from iTunes and watching them on my tiny iPod screen during my commute, or streaming them through some sketchy third-party website (thanks, Showtime, for not making your shows available anywhere that won't get me arrested. You air Weeds, man... I thought you'd be cool.)

Anyway.

I may waste a lot of brain space on being able to recall the sordid romantic history of every character on Gossip Girl, or the full names all of the Real Housewives' children, but I also learn things. In fact, I could, if pressed, cobble together a well-rounded education from my favorite programs. Ahem...

Math:
When seven beautiful girls stand before Tyra Banks, but she only has six photos in her hands, than means one girl is getting her skinny ass kicked to the curb. Subtraction!

Health Ed.:
If you work at a fictional hospital, you have a 5,000% chance of developing inoperable cancer, getting shot by a disgruntled former patient, falling into a freezing river, getting pregnant unexpectedly (women only), being hit by a bus, or being burned beyond recognition at least once every other season. But on the bright side, you will always look unnaturally sexy in your scrubs.

Social Studies:
If you place five to six narcissistic idiots in the same general geographic area and have reality cameras follow them constantly, they will have the same fight, over and over, until one of them either has a nervous breakdown or gets a spin-off show.

English:
Guidette (n): Female form of guido, slang for a working-class, urban Italian-American
Gorilla juicehead (n): Large-muscled guido fond of steroids and/or fresh-squeezed OJ; affectionate term sometimes used to describe Jane Goodall

Science:
Physics can help you locate the exact coordinates of a mystical, time-traveling island! But, once you get there your nose might start to bleed and then you might die (also file under: Health Ed.)

Gym:
Jumping over a quickly rotating bar while standing on a slender column over a body of water is harder than you think. So is finding a small flag in a trough of whipped cream.

Spanish:
For $800... Of all the countries with español as an official language, this one is last alphabetically.
What is Venezuela, Alejandro!

Seriously, I might as well be watching Baby Einstein DVDs. Who needs a masters degree? I'm a graduate of the school of life... or, at least, Lifetime.

It's My Onion And I'll Cry If I Want To, or Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Pregnancy That The Internet Tells You Anyway

2011-04-18T08:27:00.000-04:00

The internet is good for a lot of things. For instance, email, social networks that allow you to flip idly through vacation photos of people you barely know while avoiding doing your taxes, and websites that helpfully identify your post-yoga leg cramp as a probable sign of bone cancer. (Thank you, Al Gore!)

It is also good, I have recently discovered, for finding out disturbing E! True Hollywood story details about your developing fetus. I signed up for weekly email updates on what my small parasite is up to, and let me tell you, it is educational. For instance, in week 11, just in time for Mardi Gras, we learned that our fetus had visible nipples (nice try flashing people for beads, baby, but no one can see you in there). At 14 weeks, s/he could "squint, frown, grimace, and pee" (note to my future child: angry urination never ends well). And this week--17--it is apparently spending most of its time practicing "sucking and swallowing" (stay classy, What to Expect When You're Expecting).

Some websites also like to tell you how big your baby is, usually compared to fruits and vegetables, which are cute and benign. This week it's a fig, next week a navel orange, etc. On the flip side, one site I shall not be visiting again told me that my fetus is currently the size of a small gerbil. Right. Because in addition to weight gain, gas, and acne flare-ups, what I really want right now is to imagine a rodent floating around inside of me (no offense, Richard Gere). Anyway, this week I'm carrying around an onion, which may explain why I burst into tears with such frequency.

Another fun internet pregnancy game is: type any symptom or foodstuff into the Google search bar and wait for someone to tell you that you are about to have a miscarriage, usually in frantic, misspelled ALL CAPS, because, presumably, the sanatorium only gives them computer privileges for 5 minutes at a time.

Sigh. Who would have thought that some day, we'd have to enable cookies to study the miracle of life? My grandmother didn't have pregnancy books or the interwebs. She gave up either drinking or smoking, but she can't remember which one. She didn't need an iPhone app to tell her if her weight gain was on track, or a weekly text to inform her that she was turning into a human urinal. She just sat back, enjoyed her cocktail (or cigarette), and tried not to get kicked in the stomach. A very manageable to-do list.

Then again, I am glad that I live in an age in which I can know the moment my little nippled onion is able to grimace...

... because if it inherits one thing from me, I kind of hope it's my bitchface.

The Gift Card That Keeps on Giving

2011-04-14T12:01:00.000-04:00

I got a ton of gifts yesterday. I got an iPad (Ahhhh! You may now place bets on how long it will take for me to drop it and/or christen it with yogurt), a Shake Weight, earrings, a prenatal yoga class card, some sweet maternity clothes, roses, and a jumbo Tootsie Roll, the kind that looks like one really boss Lincoln Log.

So now I'd like to give you a gift--that's right, it's time for another sponsored giveaway post! Last time it was all about frozen breakfast food, but you'll be happy to know that I've classed it up and am now doling out a $100 Spa Finder gift card courtesy of Olay. (Baby needs a new pair of shoes, y'all. Don't judge.)

I had to run the promotion on ad ad-free page, so I created a new reviews-only blog. You can find the post here. Good luck!

P.S. If it were up to me, I would give all of you a spa day. We'd go to one of those giant Korean bath houses in Queens and take a big communal soak, and it would not be weird at all, and then I would treat you to my karaoke rendition of "Nobody Does It Better" while handing out free smoothies.

Look What Jeff Got Me For My Birthday!

2011-04-13T09:03:00.001-04:00

Because there's nothing sexier than a pregnant woman with a Shake Weight! YES!

(Instructional video coming soon, obviously.)

(Check out my tough face reflected in the weight! It knows I mean business. And by business I mean monkey business, because any exercise device that simulates an enthusiastic handjob is not getting used solely to tone my guns.)

(Also, I just woke up. Excuse the whole facial area.)

Pregnant in Chucks

2011-04-12T08:45:00.001-04:00

So I'm recapping Pregnant in Heels for HuffPo. It's a low point, even for me, but it's brainless, bitchy fun, and at least I know I won't get hurt in the end [sob--Mondo!--sob].

I don't expect you to read it, or care, but I have had a hell of a day, working from 9-8 (9-11 if you count ragging on entitled, fertile couples from the comfort of my pajama pants as "working"), and tomorrow is my birthday--which I plan to spend doing as little as possible--so this is the best you're going to get for now. I mean, I basically showed you my tits yesterday, which should tide you over for the week, really.

Sisterhood of the Expanding Pants

2011-04-11T08:11:00.000-04:00

As of last week, I stopped being able to button my pants. I'm like Al Bundy, only all the time.

I've had this problem before, most notably in 2003, a year in which I put on 10 pounds thanks to post-collegiate stress disorder and a part-time job at a sweater factory with its own (free!) peanut M&Ms dispenser. That time, I dieted on vodka, cigarettes and Luna bars. This time, it's not an option. I have to wear pants to work if I want my coworkers to take me seriously, and my belly is only getting started.

I had to do something.

First, I got all Survivor Man on my pants and fastened them with a hair elastic:

Yeah, I am basically MacGyver. Try not to be jealous.

Pros: Discreet; handy for bad hair days
Cons: Fly at half-mast no matter what you do; bad hair day will cause pants to fall down

When the hair elastic got too tight, I decided to class things up a bit:

Because nothing says "business casual" like pinstripes and a rubber band.

Pros: Roomy; handy for sling shots
Cons: You're not even trying anymore. There are two buttons, you know.

As a last resort, I even tried wearing the denim leggings Jeff convinced me to buy as part of his Sartorial Humiliation Quest '10 (see also: rompers). But they cut me off mid-bump, much to my (and, I imagine, the baby's) chagrin:

Just because you're only 3 oz. doesn't mean it's too early to worry about bulge maintenance.

Pros: No pesky buttons; kind of look like jeans... from far away
Cons: Muffin top; muffin bottom

People were telling me to get the Bella Band, or some other such product that would extend my pants' life while making me looking less like someone who lived in a tent on the side of the highway, but I was all, no thanks, I've got a whole ball of rubber bands and a drawerful of ill-fitting leggings, thankyouverymuch.

That's when Jeff stepped in and bought me the Tummy Tube.

The Tummy Tube is a spandex tube that hold your pants up while making the rest of you look like it is wearing a t-shirt that has been cropped at the wrong end. (Warning: photos below--courtesy of Jeff (I have to write that so he doesn't sue)--mildly NSFW).

Why, hello, officer. Is there a law against looking this sexxxxxy?

If you wear the Tummy Tube with a black shirt, it's hardly noticeable. But I'm not really interested in using the Tummy Tube for its God-given purpose. Instead, I celebrate it as a three-in-one maternity powerhouse. For example, who needs pants at all when you have such a bitchin' miniskirt at your disposal?

Oh, God. This is the most unflattering photo I have ever posted. Why am I the color of raw chicken?

But of course, the real intended use for the Tummy Tube is contained in its very name...

My fly may be down, but my summer wardrobe is definitely looking up.

TGI...WTF? Creepy Baby Products, Part 1

2011-04-08T09:01:00.000-04:00

The first in what I'm sure will be a series, otherwise known as "my registry," I give you...

...the Zaky Infant Pillow.

It's like Anne Geddes hacked off Guy Smiley's forearms. Or if Thing from The Addams Family and his identical twin became wet nurses.

Now, I should mention that these were developed to comfort preemies when their parents couldn't hold them, and I am not heartless; I want those preemies to feel the dismembered love and heal. But... these still look fucking creepy. There is just no way around it.

There, there, child. Just relax and let Papa Smurf push your soft little head into the carpet.

Unrelated: I totally forgot to tell you guys my most shameful and hilarious fate trick in yesterday's post. In elementary school, when I would play Oregon Trail, I would name all of the people in my wagon after boys I had crushes on. He who did NOT die of dystentery by the time we reached the Willamette Valley was deemed The One.

I Saw The Sign

2011-04-07T08:20:00.001-04:00

Yesterday morning, I may or may not have been sneaking in a quick Grey's Anatomy episode before work when my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, and I don't usually pick up those calls because they are invariably either an irate Spanish-speaking man who insists on calling me Luis or some earnest freshman from Wesleyan, my alma mater, trying to get me to send them money for their new nudist performing arts center or whatever. But yesterday I was just chillin' in my sweatpants eatin' some eggs and watchin' a biopsy, and I thought, What the hell? Live a little.

"Did you call to make an appointment in this department?" asked a friendly, West Indian-sounding woman when I picked up the phone.

Um... I don't think so. What department is this?

"Neurology."

No, I definitely didn't.

"OK, thank you."

Click.

Maybe it was just the Grey's Anatomy, but as soon as I hung up I thought, Shit. That was God telling me I have a brain tumor.

Because, seriously, why would a random hospital call me to ask if I called them? I have never once gotten a live person on the phone at a hospital when I actually needed to. It is a fact that in 2007 I took Jeff to the emergency room and the only person on call was a homeless woman in a wheelchair asleep by the vending machine. And now they're calling me? It had to be a sign.

I'm big on signs. I'm like Mel Gibson in the cornfield (is that what happened? I didn't even see that movie). Anyway, what I'm saying is, I have a little... problem with believing too much in fate sometimes.

For example, I often play iPod roulette. I step out my door in the morning, set my iPod to shuffle, and decide that whatever comes on will determine the course of my day, or, at least, contain some hidden message, like an aural horoscope. Sometimes this works out, because I have a lot of Nina Simone and The Beatles, so I'll get "My Baby Just Cares For Me" or "Let It Be," which are both pleasant and straightforward. Other times I set myself up for bad omens like "Everybody Hurts" or "Toxic." But more often I'll get something cryptic like "Humpin' Around" or "Eat Em Up El Chill," (or one of my 1500 Christmas carols that I forget to remove, year after year, so that I'm constantly flipping past "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" in the middle of July when all I want is my summer jam) and so I have to play again and again until I get a clear message (I realize that I'm starting to sound crazy now).

I also ascribe irrational psychic powers to my BlackBerry... or, more specifically, to my Brick Breaker score. Once, on the way to a job interview, I decided that if I beat my high score I would get it (and I did!) Since that worked out, I then decided that somehow I could control other things with the BlackBerry, like when I might get knocked up. What should have been a mindless diversion morphed into a crazy high-stakes game with fate as I attempted to will myself to become impregnated by manipulating a tiny ball (which sounds wrong in so many ways). I might actually have a touch of OCD. When I was an adolescent, in the summers my dad and I would play paddleball at the beach. We got pretty good, even getting a volley up to 500 once. Before every round, though, I remember I used to discretely kiss both sides of the paddle. If I didn't, I was convinced I'd falter.

Wow, guys, this has been really therapeutic. I just convinced myself that I'm probably not dying of a brain tumor, but that I should really think about starting therapy again. Of course, to make the final decision I'm going to consult the ol' iPod.

"Girl, You Know It's True." (HA! I didn't even fake that. But damn. Even lip-synced it stings.)

I'll Take My Brotherly Love With Whiz, Please... Wait, That Sounds Wrong

2011-04-05T07:38:00.000-04:00

This weekend I squired Jeff to Philly (can a woman squire? You know what, I don't care, I totally squired, especially if squire means "drove somewhat erratically on the PA Turnpike, occasionally calling other drivers assholes while adjusting her glasses") for a whirlwind weekend. The pilgrimage was, ostensibly, to see my patron saint David Sedaris do a reading, but we were also looking forward to seeing nerdy sights like Independence Hall and partaking in the local steak-and-cheese-based cuisine.

Jeff decided to take his film camera with him (what is this, 1998?), so there are no instant memories for me to share. I guess I'll just have to post random photos from the past to illustrate. Like...

Jeff (right) and his brothers posing in short shorts in front of a Pennsylvania well! This is relevant to our trip because we passed Armani Exchange on Walnut Street and saw a sign advertising a sale on men's shorts--two for $100. I laughed and laughed, because if there is one item of clothing that should not cost that much money, it is manshorts. Especially since Jeff can just wear my homemade Daisy Dukes if he feels the need to show off those gorgeous gams of his (no, seriously, he has great legs. But shorts don't do much for him since he's covered in fur. It's like he's always wearing pants.)

Where was I? Oh, right, cheesesteaks.

The last time Jeff was in Philly was for a bachelor party last summer. He does not remember much, except for going to two strip clubs (one classy, one trashy, you know--for balance) and almost getting arrested for trying to use his ID to get one of his buddies into a casino (the guy was over 21, but had left his wallet at the hotel, probably because he was so drunk). But Jeff does remember experiencing cheesesteak nirvana, sometime around 2am on South Street, so after we checked into our hotel we wandered over to try to find this meat mecca. You should know that Jeff does not often get truly excited about food, so the fact that he was leading me around like a bloodhound to track down this place was telling. All he could recall was that it was "chrome" and "awesome." But somehow his Spidey sense prevailed and we eventually found ourselves at Jim's Steaks. There was a line wrapped around the block, and as soon as we got on it, four guys dressed as the Ghostbusters walked by. It was kismet.

An hour later, after I had inhaled my first cheesesteak ever, I looked like this...

Also taken in Philly, circa 2006! Relevant!

...even though I spilled beef on my pants. Or, maybe, especially because I spilled beef on my pants.

I had made dinner reservations at a schmancy steakhouse, but Jeff and I looked at each other, congealed Cheez Whiz glistening in the corners of our mouths, and said, "Fuck that." Instead we bundled up our third, emergency cheesesteak and high-tailed it back to the hotel, where we took a bubble bath and watched Dante's Peak while Jeff drank a fifth of Jack Daniels. It was literally one of the best dates of our almost 8 years together. When we checked out the next morning, Jeff insisted that we leave the Mr. Bubble and the bottle of Jack so that the housekeeping staff could see what fun we'd had (although, in retrospect, the Mr. Bubble combined with the chicken fingers I'd ordered from room service off of the kids' menu might suggest the presence of a single, alcoholic parent and their lonely, albeit clean, progeny...)

The next day, we were planning on taking a tour of Independence Hall, but after we got our (free) tickets, we started walking, and all of a sudden where did we find ourselves but back in line at Jim's. Yes, friends, we consumed a sum total of 5 cheesesteaks in under 24 hours and didn't see a single goddamn sight. In fact, on our way to the suburban theater where D-Sed was reading, we even stopped at an Outback Steakhouse so that we could eat even more and see even less. Then I got to watch my idol, in a bow tie, read from his diary and make multiple blow job jokes.

Best weekend ever.

The M Word

2011-04-04T07:47:00.000-04:00

You're not going to become a mommy blogger, are you?

The above sentence was taken from one of the many lovely comments I got on my pregnancy announcement post. And I'm mentioning it here not to shame the commenter, but because it's a totally valid question, and one that I've wondered myself over the past three months:

I'm not going to become a mommy blogger, am I?

The truth is, I don't even know how to define the term "mommy blogger." Now that it's entered the popular vernacular, it's a label that gets slapped on any blogger who also happens to be a mom. But is that the sole qualification? Does a blogger who gives birth, or adopts, become a mommy blogger against her will? And does it have to be a bad thing? Am I asking too many questions? Do I sound like Carrie Bradshaw right now? I couldn't help but wonder... does mommy-blogging lead to mommy-flogging? Okay, I'll stop.

But seriously, what is a mommy blogger?

I'll start by trying to whittle it down.

On the one hand, we have moms and moms-to-be who start blogs specifically to write about parenting or to document their growing family (maybe they started the blog during pregnancy to keep friends and relatives up to date, or maybe they just needed an outlet through which to vent/coo to an audience about their chaotic, juice box-filled life).

On the other, we have women bloggers who then become mothers. For the sake of argument, lets say they've spent the better part of their twenties documenting their every PMS outburst and drunken online shopping mistake, and then--lo and behold!--they settle into a domestic routine and proceed to blog a lot about their marriage, much to the chagrin of their very patient and underrepresented spouse. After a few years of wedded bliss, they decide to further the species through intercourse, blogging all the while (well, not during the intercourse... unless they are exceptionally dextrous). Are these women no different from the women in the first category? (Keep in mind that I am not biased at all.)

Through an informal Twitter poll, I found that most people define a mommy blogger as someone who only blogs about her kids and/or being a mom, excluding all other aspects of her life. The general consensus was also that it was generally derogatory, suggesting a person who considered herself superior based solely on her ability to procreate (although one woman said she liked the label because it "means I found enough time to mom AND blog!")

But here's the question that keeps sticking with me: Is possible to be a mom who also just happens to blog? From everything I've heard, becoming a parent changes your life. And if you have a blog that's basically just a glorified diary of your life, as I do, wouldn't it naturally follow that after I give birth the blog will focus--if not exclusively, at least heavily--on my child and experience of motherhood?

Of course I'll still do posts about stupid fashion trends, petty food-related crimes, trashy TV shows, and my relationship with Jeff. But come fall I suspect this blog will be all about baby, at least for awhile.

So what do you think? Will I change? Will you care? Should I worry? Or should I just say, motherfuck it?

The Go(d)spel(l) According to Jeff

2011-04-01T08:05:00.001-04:00

So yesterday I got an email from Jeff's mom, Lee:

Una, what is the name of the musical that Jeff was in in high school? The one he won’t let you see (he played Jesus). Thanks.

The answer to her question is Godspell. I almost got to see it once. Back in 2004, when Jeff was still living in Massachusetts, I would come up for weekend visits. But since Jeff worked in retail he often had to work weekends, which left me and Lee free (I LOVE RHYMING!) to take long, romantic walks, get hopped up on Dunkin Donuts iced coffee, and go shopping for tracksuits. It also left time for her to show me Jeff's baby photos and all of his videotaped high school plays. One afternoon, she was getting ready to screen Godspell when Jeff came home. When he found out what we were up to, he basically did a slow-motion action movie dive between me and the cassette. "You can never watch that," he said in all seriousness. "I will break up with you."

At the time I chalked it up to the embarrassment of young love, similar to the first time you accidentally fart in front of the person (I first farted in front of Jeff after doing a somersault and an Olympic landing pose. True story.) But over the years, his adamance has only intensified.

"Hey," I'll sometimes joke, "You know what I'm in the mood to see? Godspell!" And he'll say, without looking up from what he's doing, "I will divorce you."

Jeff has seen me in Runaways, he has seen me in my Blossom hat, leggings, and ferocious unibrow. He has seen me try to drink wine from my own boobs.

I have heard him sing "My Way" completely drunk at karaoke in front of a roomful of strangers (who yelled out, "It's John Mayer!" Hahaha. But I digress.) How could this be worse?

In my mind, I picture loincloths, and jazz hands.

When pressed for comment, Jeff said only "I'll still divorce you," and "You'll never know," when asked what was on the tape that he was so ashamed of.

I fear that the urge to open this Pandora's Box will only grow stronger with time. You might say, day by day. (Right, honey?) The only thing currently saving my marriage is that we don't own a VCR... and the fact that I am easily distracted from plotting with new episodes of Modern Family.

The Blame Game

2011-03-31T10:42:00.000-04:00

First of all, I have to thank you all so much for the incredible outpouring of excitement and support. Jeff and I feel so loved, and so does The Bean/Baby Z/Fetus Kahlo/Beh Beh LaZor (my sister came up with that last moniker, based on Zsa Zsa Gabor).

Secondly, I meant to blog last night, but falling asleep before 10 kind of cramps my productivity. In fact, I fell asleep on top of Jeff on our couch, and when he attempted to move me I actually kicked and wailed. He then tried to pick me up, and I whined, "I'm not a baaaaaaaaaaaaby."

"Could have fooled me," he replied. I sat up.

"Well, actually," I said, pointing at my stomach, "I am part baby."

That is the biggest perk of pregnancy so far: blaming the baby for everything.

I can blame it for inexplicably crying while doing dishes... and then abandoning said dishes until they begin to form the same slick, cheesy coating that is currently protecting The Bean from being pickled by amniotic fluid.

I can blame it for the state of my digestive tract at any given moment, and any effect it may or may not have on the air around me.

I can blame it for weight gain, regardless of how many entire pizzas I may have consumed that week.

I can blame it for forgetting to do things like return emails, brush my teeth, or pay my taxes (right, IRS?)

I can blame it for my constant fatigue, since it makes me get up twice a night to pee (and is, in fact, peeing inside of me as I type this. So, double pee.)

I can blame it for not being able to wear pants, and thus favoring a fetching evening ensemble of my oversize Tim Gunn t-shirt and sweat socks.

I can only imagine all of the future things I can blame it for: missed work days due to "child illness," financial ruin, loss of bladder control...

This baby is going to be born such a sucker.

30 & Pregnant

2011-03-29T22:00:00.001-04:00

I wasn't planning on writing this post until my birthday. For some reason I thought it would be fun to make my big reveal on the day I turned 31. But then I thought, fuck that! Why settle for one day of congratulations when I could get two?

Okay, actually, that's not what I thought at all, until just now (because it's true). I did kind of want to wait until the bump looked more like a bump and less like some backed-up Chipotle, but gah! You guys have no idea how hard it was to wait three months to post this.

Babies grow fast, y'all.

Kidding! I'm only 14 weeks, not 48. This is more like it:

Contents: Compressed air, pizza, fetus.

Actual size.

I wanted to tell you about how I found out I was pregnant because at work one Tuesday I received a drugstore.com package I totally forgot I'd ordered containing 6 pregnancy tests and two boxes of Dr. Scholl's plantar wart removal pads (do you think they judged me while packing it? I do...) and even though I was at work I was all, fuck it, I want to get my drink on tonight, so I went to the ladies room and peed on a stick. And then I had to go back to my desk and try to act normal. And then when I got home I told Jeff and he made me take another test even though I was kind of dehydrated, and this one was digital, and when it said "PREGNANT" we took a photo of it because we're saps.

I wanted to tell you about how I managed to completely avoid morning sickness and how I felt all superior until I suddenly developed uncontrollable gas, which Jeff thinks is super sexy, especially when he's putting the moves on me and I say something like, "Baby, I don't know if I'm going to fart or vomit."

I wanted to tell you about how we saw the baby on an 8-week ultrasound and it looked exactly like the Glo Worm doll I had in 1984, except without the nightcap.

I wanted to tell you about how I hold my jeans together with a rubber band, and haven't washed them in 10 weeks for fear they will never fit again. About how my boobs grew a cup size, and how I probably could have skipped getting Jeff an expensive birthday gift because I've never seen him more thrilled.

There is so much ground to cover, I just don't know where to start. So maybe I won't. Maybe I'll save it for the coming weeks and months, which, I'm sorry to say, will likely be full of what UsWeekly likes to call BABY JOY! But don't worry, I'm still me. Just... bigger. Fuller. Definitely gassier. And with an extra heartbeat.

Nobody's Erfect

2011-03-29T08:03:00.000-04:00

I took this photo back in October, and have had it on my desktop ever since. It serves as a reminder that nobody's perfect, not even people whose job it is to put up signs spelling the word 'perfect.'

I've needed the reminder recently, because thanks to a busy work schedule and a new project that's taking up a lot of my time (and which I'll be able to tell you about soon), I often feel like an inadequate blogger. Sometimes it feels like I've just run out of things to say, and then I'm reduced to writing about shoe trees and my own butt, and even though I'm lucky enough to have readers who actually express interest in seeing a photo of my newly reorganized shoe tree (oh, and at this point I should reveal that it's actually one of those hanging canvas sleeve things, not a true shoe tree--I know, I'm a charlatan!) I still worry about letting you down.

BUT.

Nobody is erfect. Not me, not you, not the person who decided to put a safety cone at the bottom of a ladder (like that's going to stop me someone from trying to climb it). Definitely not the person who copy-edited this tee-shirt:

If your labia look like that, see your gynecologist.
(Jeff wanted me to caption this, "Loose lips sink ships." HA.)

So, yeah, I may not have a ton of inspiration this week, but at least my labia haven't freed themselves. God only knows what a NATO intervention would do down there.

Anatomy of a Blog Post

2011-03-28T07:24:00.000-04:00

Here's a typical Sunday night at my house:

I am falling asleep on the couch in my Slanket, half-heartedly watching an 80s comedy involving either Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy assuming someone else's identity, with predictably hilarious results.

Jeff nudges me, and I make a noise like a wounded elephant.

Jeff then says, "I think it's your bedtime."

"But I haven't blogged!" I moan.

"Let it go." Jeff says.

"Nooooooooo!" I whine. "I can't. My readers will think I abandoned them. Or died."

"Okay. Do you have anything to blog about?"

"Well... I reorganized my shoe tree. And I think I pulled a muscle in my butt."

"Go to sleep."

But! Obviously I have defied Jeff's orders because here I am, at 10:30, pulling a blog post out of my pulled-muscle ass, because I will always choose quantity over quality.

And you can quote me.

TGI...WTF? Ultra Unsound

2011-03-25T08:08:00.001-04:00

Hey ladies! Have you been looking for a belt that doubles as a Storm Trooper helmet AND X-rays your nether regions to broadcast your uterine activity like so many episodes of Keeping Up With The Kardashians?

"Nice belt buckle!" "Oh, thanks... it's my fetus."

Well, look no further than the PreVue pregnancy screen, an "abdomen attachment" that acts like the oven light God forgot, projecting an image of your developing baby using ultrasound technology.

Before I continue mocking this, let me say that I understand, on a basic level, why some people might want it. As someone who's had a miscarriage, I understand that many women have pregnancy-related anxiety that might be soothed by being able to check in on the baking bun whenever they needed reassurance that all is well. But come on, people. This is fucked up. You are subjecting your baby--not to mention your body--to constant, high-intensity sound pressure that has been shown in some cases to enhance inflammatory response and heat soft tissue. You might as well just hump a microwave, is what I'm saying. Well, you might be saying to yourself (hopefully with a finger snap), Tom Cruise bought an ultrasound machine for to use at home on his ~~employee~~ wife Katie Holmes. To which I say, yes, that is true. And if you want to take medical advice from someone who believes in Xenu and feels that it is acceptable to place his feet on Oprah's couch without asking, then be my guest. But in my opinion, when you're taking it a step further than Tom Cruise, you'd better stop, drop, and roll yourself over to Betty Ford before you become a danger to yourself or others.

But I'm not being fair. According to the PreVue site, the device lets family members (or bodega clerks or bank tellers) "connect with the fetus in its context." The context, I guess, being just floatin' in amniotic fluids tryin' to grow some organs! The site's illustrations are helpful in demonstrating its myriad* uses.

*R.I.P. Heather Chandler.

Like, forget playing Mozart to your belly! Why not teach your fetus how to read? After all, it's never too early to start your unborn child on the path to an Ivy League education. (Only, since the ultrasound doesn't go both ways, does she realize the baby can't actually see her book?)

Judging from the above, I'm assuming that the PreVue doubles as a delicious, steaming bowl of spaghetti bolognese that your husband can munch on in lieu of intercourse. Which is, actually, a really savvy feature.

Just make sure to read the manual, and don't under any circumstances, push "eject."

You Give My Heart A Bone-On

2011-03-23T09:21:00.000-04:00

Wow. I had no idea how my post yesterday would strike a chord with you guys. I got super weepy reading the comments. And even though I didn't mean for my story to be so depressing (I sort of pictured telling it as a stand-up comedy monologue with lots of Seinfeldian word emphasis), I was touched by how many of you shared your stories of middle school misery with me. It was like an "It Gets Better" for the non-gay but unpopular.

Anyway, to lighten the mood and cleanse the palate a bit, I wanted to share an email I received yesterday, titled "For Your Robust Bone-On." I've added my reactions in red.

Dear Una,

Yes?

Experience the efficiency of most innovative medications we have for your penis!

Oh. Haha. You mean the penis with which I get bone-ons? Not only are you bad at gender identification, but I suspect English is not your first language.

Do you worry, when you climb under the covers, that you’re starting something you can’t finish?

How did you know I was reading Oprah's unauthorized biography?

Well, now advancements in natural medicine are making it easier than ever to promote a strong libido, firm, natural erections and enhanced desire.

It's really not that titillating. I don't think she even does it with Steadman.

Now thanks to this exciting natural breakthrough, you could get an erection “on demand” and when you do, sustain it long enough – and keep firm enough — to fully satisfy your wife in bed. Even if you’re in your 70s, 80s or older!

Gross.

As a doctor,

Oh, I highly doubt that.

I’ve learned something over the years that may surprise you—age has very little to do with sex. There are men out there having the best sex of their lives well into their 80th year and beyond.

Hef doesn't count. I've read he just watched gay porn and falls asleep.

Lucky? You bet.

Eh, I don't think it's luck. Bone-ons don't just fall from trees, you know.

But you too could give your body the nutrients it needs to support your entire sexual health.

OK, fine. I'm listening. What?

Best doctors al over the world use antibiotics to treat they're patients’ bacterial infections.

Wait, what?! Where did that come from? Are you saying I have a UTI? What happened to your spelling? And what happened to my penis? I knew I should never have trusted anyone who couldn't come up with a proper euphemism for erection. Good day, sir.

The White Girl With No Friends, and Other Stories

2011-03-22T08:26:00.000-04:00

Last Friday Jeff and I went to see the first preview of Mike Birbiglia’s one-man show, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, at the Bowery Theater. If you haven’t heard of Mike Birbiglia, you should download his stand-up on iTunes, or get his book, Sleepwalk With Me. He is hilarious, and my favorite thing about him is that his humor comes pretty much entirely from his own painful or awkward life experiences.

I don’t write a lot about pain on the blog (awkwardness, I think we can agree I've got in spades). I touch on it, in a self-deprecating way, but I’m still a little scared to dive in. (Which may be because I can’t dive. I never learned. The closest I can get is putting my hands together like a steeple and falling as gracefully as possible off of a diving board while bending forward. I also never learned how to tread water for more than thirty seconds at a stretch, which is why I avoid boating and also why I was never allowed to go on “dingles” at Camp Onas, which sound like scatological underpants findings but which were actually day-long canoe trips.) Anyway.

Mike’s show (yeah, we’re on a first-name basis, in my mind) got me thinking about pain and humor, and how they’re intertwined. So I thought I’d share a story of one of my most painful memories, from the files of adolescence, that nebulous period of budding self-awareness in which all emotional pain is new and sharp and most likely to burrow under the skin like a jagged splinter for decades to come.

This particular story takes place in seventh grade. I looked, as you may recall, like this:

For reasons at the time confounding and deeply hurtful to me, one April afternoon my best friends Vanessa and Jesse suddenly and unceremoniously broke up with me in the locker room before gym class.

“We don’t really want to hang out with you anymore,” Vanessa said.
“Yeah,” Jesse piped up. “It’s not you … it’s us. We’ve changed”
“Also we’ve been talking about it,” Vanessa said, “And we think you’re really annoying.”

So that happened. I self-medicated with bedtime Garrison Keillor tapes and Blossom hats. And then I tried to find some new friends. The only other girls in my class were, for lack of a better term, the Asian clique, a group of about six Chinese-, Japanese-, and Korean-Americans and one beautiful, dusky Indian girl named Marina. I don’t remember how or why we started hanging out, but knowing 7th grade me I just inched closer and closer to them and started laughing knowingly at their jokes and following them around, hoping they wouldn’t notice that I hadn’t always been there.

Things seemed to be going well for about a week, but then one afternoon, as I was having a snack with my mom after school, I reached into my backpack and found a folded-up note.

It had been typed up and printed on computer paper—an incredibly formality for adolescents in the early nineties. And it wasn’t a note, really, or even a letter. No, it was a one-page burn book.

“I don’t even know why she hangs out with us.”—Alice
“I hate her clothes!”—Dorothy
“She’s so annoying!”—Helen

Yes, they had typed up quotations as a means of rejecting me, as if they were blurbing a nonexistent book I had written called The White Girl With No Friends, or testing out dialogue to workshop a play of the same name.

It stung. The instant pain and humiliation knocked my breath out of my lungs. And the worst part was that my mother was right there. She saw it. She knew.

I was thirteen, friendless, and, by all accounts, unbearably annoying. I had acne and braces and a mushroom haircut. I wore the wrong clothes and fetishized A Prairie Home Companion. My life felt over.

But it got even worse.

The next day, at school, Marina approached me in the hallway.

“Did you get our note?” she asked gently.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s okay.”

It’s okay.

That’s the part that breaks my heart. It’s okay. It was not okay. It was cowardly and cruel and devastating. I had nothing to lose at that point. I could have said, “Yeah… and fuck you and your dot-matrix printer.”

But I didn’t. I said “It’s okay” because I wanted them to like me even while they were rejecting me. I wanted to be voted Most Agreeable Middle-School Outcast 1993.

Which is funny, when you think about it. And, of course, sad and more than a little bit pathetic.

But funny. Because it so completely sums up who I was in seventh grade. And who, in many ways I still am.

When I do write my bestselling memoir White Girl With No Friends, however, I'm so going to use the dot-matrix line. Because that bitch had it coming.

Michael Jackson Lyrics For Lazy Couples

2011-03-21T08:10:00.001-04:00

(Sung to the tune of "Rock With You." Invented by me and Jeff while preparing dinner, after watching too many clips of Jimmy Fallon impersonating famous singers on YouTube...)

Female part*:
*Same-sex couples, please forgive the presumption, and change gender references accordingly

Boy, close your eyes
Let that Slanket cover you
Don't try to fight it
30 Rock is on Hulu

Relax your mind
Lay back and pour me some wine
You got to rub my feet
While I go pick a boogie
Share that Haagen Dazs

I wanna chillax with you all night
Drool on you till sunlight
I wanna spoon with you all night
We're gonna sleep the night away

Male part*:
*See above

Leave those socks on the floor
There ain't nobody there but us
Girl, in those sweats
There's a magic that must be love

Just take it slow
'Cause we got so many episodes of this show
I'ma rub your feet
But I think you have a boogie
Share that Slanket of love

I wanna nap with you all night
Spoon you into the sunlight
I wanna laze with you all night
We gon' 30 Rock the night away