Hee Hee...

I love watching old legislators use the word "sexting". Fun to use as a verb - "Teenagers who are sexting are being charged as sex offenders".

That makes me giggle inside.

Au Revoir Good Pregnancy Joo Joo….

Well, it’s official. I am no longer pregnant. Yes, I realize that on January 8^th when a child came out of me I was technically “no longer pregnant", but in the weeks following the actual birth it seemed all the good pregnancy joo joo was still lingering. I know I bitched and moaned about being pregnant but the fact is there were some pleasant side effects. The whole hair thing was at the top of the list (maybe that was even the entire list…I can’t be sure because the pregnancy brain is still lingering which means I can’t think properly).

Anyway the point is, my hair was the thickest its been since I was 10 years old. See before I got pregnant, me and the maintenance guy Mike were on a first name basis. He or one of his guys would come on over to our apartment on a monthly basis to pull the giant wookie out of the drain. My husband repeatedly apologized for this and even offered to do it for him. Mike’s guy Tom says the wookie keeps him employed, so from that point forward we would dutifully call him without apology. Then one day I found myself in the family way and miraculously the wookie decided to stay in my head. So for the last 12 months we haven’t seen Mike (with the exception of the washer/dryer incident which isn’t worth talking about).

The wookie was thick and shiny and easy to style. I enjoyed drying my hair. I could even let it air dry and it didn’t look like hell. It was awesome and I hoped against all hope that this was a new and permanent condition. I knew better….but a girl can dream can’t she?

So, two days ago I was in the shower happily washing my hair when I pulled my hands away to find the wookie was back. I was sad as I watched half my hair gracefully swirl down the drain. Au revoir wookie…it’s been a good run. Tell Mike & Tom I said hello….

Turn down your inner monologue please...

Here’s the situation. You’re walking down the street and your inner monologue is going in your head.

Hey buddy, 1972 called and they want their facial hair back.

Dear lord, someone needs to go shopping for a new pair of jeans. Didn’t it hurt when you stuffed yourself into those?

Does that person not own a mirror?

Put down the aqua net lady, your hair is scaring me.

Nice skirt, don’t your ass cheeks get cold hanging out like that?

Back away from the spray tan before I start to sing the ompa loompa song....

I can’t stop it. I know that when I see the tragic humanity outside my front door I can’t help but stare…and then smirk or perhaps raise my eye brows. I wear sunglasses a lot for this reason. It’s amazing I don’t get my ass kicked. Anyway, I used to wonder about a certain category of women. You look at them and think – “They could be totally good looking if they just lost a few pounds and cleaned themselves up.” You ‘ve seen them - they wander around in pants that are too small for them, visible panty lines, hair looking like hell…you know who I’m talking about. I would see them and think to myself – why on earth would you set foot out of the house looking like that?

Well people, I now know who those women are. Their pants are too small because they aren’t willing to buy new pants because the old pants will fit eventually. The maternity pants don’t stay up and were pretty frickin ugly to start with. And the underwear..well you wouldn’t see that panty line if the damn pants weren’t so small. The hair – well that’s an unholy mess because they didn't have time to style it, dry it or sometimes to wash it. Yes, those sad looking individuals that are badly dressed and don’t care are the species we all know as working mothers.

So, when you see me roll into the office in pants that are shamefully too small with my hair pulled back you should shut your mouth and turn off your inner monologue.

Screw the Cow, I'll just buy the Milk...

My mother used to tell me when I was a kid that no one buys the cow when they can get the milk for free. While it's a nice sentiment (and certainly makes guilty Catholics everywhere feel good about that whole abstinence business) my husband disproved that one when he married me.

I would now like to modify that statement. "I would rather buy the milk as long as I don't have to be the cow." Let me explain....

I recently returned to work and I now have a serious love hate relationship with a breast pump. For a total of 40 minutes a day I am exposed and hooked up to what amounts to a fancy vacuum. I have purchased a pumping bra that my husband believes is some sort of S&M paraphernalia. It's a messy business..blockading the office door, pulling the blinds, whipping out the girls, strapping yourself in, WOOSH WOOSH WOOSH. I just know that everyone can hear this wooshing from 6 offices away.

All the while reading articles like this and this. Yet I continue to put my little containers in the office fridge and redress myself twice a day. Here's why, and my work husband can mock all he wants with comments about about organic food and ergo strollers... I can't be sure that this whole breast milk thing isn't important, so I'll do it just in case.

So as I sit there thinking how undignified it is to be hooked up to a Hoover, I read something like this and I think about how bad I would feel if someday my poor kid has nasty dermatitis all over her just because my selfish ass didn't want to be Bessie the Milk Cow.

Well, even Bessie has her limits. There are only so many times a day you can get naked in your office and still reasonably conduct business. That said, our little friend gets one bottle of formula a day. It's one out of roughly 6-7 feedings. So by my calculations I'm only a good mother 83-86% of the time. I think I can live with those numbers.

Why do People Always Call the Cops on my Family?

I know I’ve been MIA lately, but as usual it’s with good reason.

#1 The tiny human living in my house goes to daycare which involves an enormous amount of crap to be pulled together each evening. It also requires that I wash 65,000 bottle and pumping parts as well as wash poop out of tiny little clothing. Curiously the human brain is programmed to entirely forget about your pre-child life so you don’t feel badly about this self inflicted punishment.

#2 I started work again and it’s already busy.

#3 I occasionally like to talk to the person I married. Yesterday we actually turned off the TV, put the kid down for a nap and had a conversation. Interesting concept…talking.

#4 With grandparents 3000 miles away, I have to keep that kid blog chock full of pictures and videos so they don’t feel like I’ve robbed them of their grandchild.

So I’ll stop whining about my life and tell you a funny story about my grandmother.

A few months ago my husband and I spent the evening over night at my parents house. In the middle of the night I heard this really loud pounding I couldn’t place. I woke my husband up and after several confused moments we realized the pounding was not at the front door as we suspected, but rather from my grandmother’s bedroom. She was sitting on the bed knocking on the window like a mad woman yelling “Help!, Help!”.

I went in and she told me that she got lost and thought if she knocked that someone might come and help her. I can’t say that her logic was flawed, I did get out of bed and come find her. The antics continue on and off for the next few months. Sometimes she wanders around the house in the middle of the night yelling at my parents to get up, sometimes she screams from her room. But, she has always stayed in the house….until two nights ago.

So she's staying with my aunt for a few weeks. Keep in mind this is a neighborhood she lived in for the better part of 15 years. In the middle of the night she gets up in her nightgown and bare feet and walks out of the house in 40 degree weather while everyone else was alseep. She proceeds to cross the street and arrives at the neighbor’s house. It’s at this point that she starts pounding on her door and yelling. Understandably the lady who lives there (alone) is freaked out and calls the cops. Four squad cars show up and find a crazy old woman in her nightgown banging on the door. They begin knocking on surrounding doors to figure out where nightgown lady actually lives. They soon locate my aunt and as my grandmother is walking back into the house she turns back and says to the police, “Thanks for helping me out boys!”.

Unbelievable…nightgown, bare feet, totally disoriented and she still manages to flirt with the men.

Homeless Love & Delinquent Parentling

As my maternity leave winds to a close I've been frantically trying to wrap up all the things on my to-do list that I've been ignoring for the last 2.5 months. Ignoring is easy when you can always find something else to do...like clean up the never ending mess of poop. So yesterday since the weather was warm (and because I don't fit into my suits for work) we took a walk down to the stationary store to check out the progress of the birth announcements. Yes I realize my child is almost 3 months old, shut it.

Chestnut Street in the low teens is a scary place. Dirty dollar stores, cheap clothes and a really large liquor store. It makes for a really special crowd of people. It's starting go through a bit of a renaissance...maybe that's a bit overstated but the gayborhood is starting to expand into scary town and as a result there's a cute stationary store.

So here I am rolling along with my curb climbing urban stroller when I see two bums yelling at each other in front of a food truck. Unfortunately this is going on about 20 feet in front of me and I have no where to go but straight ahead. As I powered through the mess all I could smell was poop. These dudes smelled like a big pile of poop. I have become a connoisseur of poop and this was more like the dog variety...like a dog that has been sleeping in its own poop for a few weeks. Ugh...keep moving..breathe through mouth.

So as I'm passing by the poop man he stops what he's doing and yells "DAMN". I can't be sure at this point if that was directed at me or the other poop man but either way I'm not stopping or turning around. The yelling continues and this is when I become acutely aware of the fact that the comment is directed at me. Just "DAMN" over and over really loud and drawn out. I'm not sure if I should start running or be flattered. After all, this girl is 10/15 lbs from her fighting weight so she'll take all the compliments she can get. (Yes, even when it's from a scary homeless man that smells like poop.)

Thankfully the stationary store was only a few hundred feet away so I was soon surrounded by the comforting glow of Cranes stationary and Montblanc pens.

The child was being reasonably well behaved for the shopping excursion and that's when I noticed the tell tale grin that was on her face. She was down there in that cute little stroller sleeping bag shitting her brains out. When we got home I was left with the delightful task of cleaning up the poop. At first I though the diaper had contained the mess but as I was redressing her I noticed a spot of yellow on the waistband of her little pants. I pondered my next step.

I could...
A. Pull off all her clothing (it was not a snap up) and put her in a new outfit then undress her in a few hours to give her a bath and put on another new outfit OR,
B. Pretend that I don't see the yellow poo smear, return her to the pants and then give her a bath in a few hours and then put her in a new outfit.

Clearly any good mother would have chosen A. I am clearly not a good mother and so I decided that the poo mark was barely noticeable (and on the inside I might add) and I was saving the environment somehow by conserving the water & electricity required to wash an additional onesie.

Some day future generations will thank me...

My Husband the White Dude

My husband came home and introduced me to a new website. A woman at work showed him. (She's black and this becomes relevant in a moment.) It happened something like this.

Her: You should get a pair of New Balance sneakers
Him: Why because I'm a white dude?
Her: Umm, no. Huh?
Him: Oh, it's one of the posts on Stuff White People Like

She finds this amusing and shows him one of her favorite websites. This is where he found this video. Aside from the various insane photos, I am seriously disturbed by this video. Who has time to do this kind of crap and did he make that leotard himself?

Excuses, excuses

I haven't written in a while because I'm busy raising a human.  You know how that is...tedious but apparently very important since they can't do it themselves. On the upside, when the little one is not eating, pooping or screaming, I get to spend hours randomly surfing the Internet.  So here are some things I'm enjoying.  From my twisted post pregnancy brain to you (presumably not post pregnancy).  And don't bother asking how I have random hours to spend on the Internet but no time to write. I'm well aware that makes no sense...it's just how it is.

First off, here are some funny t-shirts.  I am a big fan of the "I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey" shirt.  Why? I'm not sure.  This is followed closely by the "My butt hurts" shirt. I think I may have found my sister's next gift... Keep in mind that I got her a Bedazzler for her birthday. For those of you who know my sister, you can expect bedazzled gifts for the next few months.  You don't have to thank me, I know you're excited.

Which brings me to my next item.  For those of you out in the Western Suburbs of Philadelphia - be advised (compliments of that very same sister) that there is a class called Bling It". I have visions of her showing up with her Bedazzler in hand to make me key chains and sparkly heart and star jeans. Awesome.  I'll post a picture of her first gift creation.

Speaking of pictures, part of the reason I haven't been writing is because I'm just too busy posting pictures of the cuteness on my new kid blog.  Yes, there is a blog dedicated to the daily happenings of the eat/poop/sleeper that is currently swinging 10 feet from me.  Its sole purpose is for my mother and father-in-law to show their friends.  I have of course removed the site from search engines and such, but my brother-in-law was still mildly disturbed that we put our child out on the public Internet.  Perhaps there's something to this paranoia?  Here is a site entirely dedicated to other people's pictures on FLICKR.  It is also one of my favorite places to go for entertainment. (Thank you to my Denver fashionista for giving me that link so many months ago...)

I believe that site is indicative of a larger issue from which we've only begun to see the fall out.  People are dumb..this we know. Technology has now made it possible for those same dumb people to spread their bad behavior to a wider audience.  Now I need only go to Facebook and I can see all sorts of awful things. If I can see the awful things on the sites of people who should know better, think about the people who don't... Elections are going to be so much fun 15 years from now. 

And yes, I said Facebook. C'mon I have nothing to do but update my FB status with cute quips about poop and drool.  Sad, yes.

But here's something that someone passed along on FB that's pretty funny.

And now, I have a small screaming human to attend to...

The Philadelphia Parking Authority is Ridiculous

Why you ask? Because when I tried to pay my ticket online they wanted to charge me $1.50. Hmmm. Let me think about this... I can slap a 42 cent stamp and mail you a check or I can pay you $1.50. How much you wanna bet that it costs them more than a buck and a half to process a check.

Ridiculous...

And how about this crap with the meters going up to $2 an hour and then $3 an hour this July.

Like I said, ridiculous...

Just Say No

Yesterday I woke up with wicked back pain.  I haven't felt this pain for approximately 40 weeks....this was the one good thing about pregnancy.  Hormones that are like one big muscle relaxer all day and all night.  Well, that and the really thick hair.  Anyway, I limped around like a fool until I realized that I had Percocet.  Nothing like a little narcotic action to make mama feel better.  Percocet was the only thing that got me out of bed after my c section.  I liked it because it didn't make me feel doped up.  So, I figured this would be an excellent solution to my little problem.  

So I popped one in my mouth and waited.  About 30 minutes later I realized I was really dizzy.  Oh dear, I'm stoned.  Hmmmm. Unexpected.  Husband laughed at me.  Exact quote, "I told you that it would mess you up."

This was unplanned and unwelcomed because my whole day was focused on a trip to The Container Store.  Yes, my life is that dull that I planned an entire day around a modular storage store.  Shut it.  The bottom line is I'll be damned if I let a little narcotic episode get in the way of my organizing fun.

So husband drove his stoned wife and his kid to the store in Jersey.  I brought the stroller so I didn't have to lug around a 600 lb car seat.  It's a good thing, because I was all over the place.  I wheeled that kid into quite a few shelves.  $300 later, husband was busy working his magic to get all that crap stuffed in a four door sedan with baby seat.  Poor child had a clothes drying rack jammed on one side of her and a bag of crap on the other.  

We arrived home and I had the excellent foresight to pull two filets out of the freezer along with some cauliflower soup.  So I peppered up those steaks and put the oven on broil.  A quick check of my faculties told me I was still looped.  (Those of you who have ever seen me cook can attest to the fact that I don't drink while I cook because it usually results in disaster.)  After an impossibly long time in the oven I pull out the steaks and stick the meat thermometer in one.  45 degrees....

If I had half a brain I should have realized that after that much time in the oven nothing could still be 45 degrees Fahrenheit.  Of course after repeating this exercise several more times with a similar result, the only thing I could think was, "God, this is taking an awful long time to get to 150 degrees...what gives?".  Of course it didn't sink into my doped up brain that a 45 degree filet would basically be frozen.  Like I said, there's a reason why I don't drink while cooking.  At some point it dawned on me that the damn meat thermometer had somehow switched to Celsius and I was in the process of turning two very nice filets into hockey pucks.

In the infamous words of Whitney Houston...Crack is Whack.  And, narcotics make you do bad things in the kitchen.