Wait...I have a blog?

Sorry, I took a little break.  I had to go to the bathroom.  It only took a few months and now I'm back.

It's confusing to me how little time I have now, compared to when I was working.  I'm up between 7 and 7:30 am, and V passes into unconsciousness at 7:30 pm.  Between those hours, I am at her every command, wiping her butt and wiping snot off her face if she hasn't already wiped it on my shirt.  I have until 7:30 pm until whenever I go to sleep to clean the apartment, do dishes, do laundry, cook myself dinner, prepare V's food for the next day, watch Downton Abbey and cry hysterically and yell at Cora to stop making that face and making forehead wrinkles!, and then it's 1 AM, which doesn't leave that much time for blogging.  During daylight hours, I can't cook, or email, or shop unless it's for (her) food.  The start of any such grown-up activity causes a great deal of shrieking.  What are you looking at you serf!  Look at me!  Look at me! Look at me!  LOOK AT ME YOU EFFING GIANT!!!  

But she's 18 months so it comes out as ENNNHHH!  ENNNUUUUUAAAAHHH!  GSIDBGODISLAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Which brings me to my latest anxiety.  I was surfing a baby board earlier today and came across a post by someone who asked, "My pediatrician asked me to count the number of words my 18 month old could say.  Do you count 'I love you' as one word or three words?  I'm at 115 words if I count a phrase as one word."

My first reaction was to mentally poke her in the eyes and slap her in the face.  OBVIOUSLY this is not a real question.  This is a ruse, to show how many words her pants-crapping genius says.  Like it matters if the kid can say 115 or 155.  Your pants crapper is a freaking genius okay?  That's what you wanted to hear right?  Shut the eff up.  I can see your cellulite.

What was worse though were the comments that followed.  "Oh my 18 month old can also say over 100 words!"  "Oh I stopped counting my kid's words at 75!"  "I told my pediatrician she knew over 100 words at 15 months (ahem 3 months ahead of you), and the doctor was very satisfied."  I hate you, you smell and I think you're lying.  You mothereffers.

I hate them because they make my stomach contract into the size of a pistachio.  V can say 8 words, 6 if you don't count "uh oh" or "oh no" as words.  Maybe I should count each of those as two words.  She knows words like "ball."  That's useful.  (That was sarcastic.)  99 percent of the time she communicates by grunting, whining and pointing.  I don't know why I obsess over this.  It's not like she is going to 16 and still grunting and running into walls.  I can't pinpoint the source of my anxiety.  It can't be the fact that she might not get into Hah-vah-de because well, I didn't get into Harvard.  Nevertheless, I read books on the acquisition of language, learn that there are Advanced Toddlers and Slow Toddlers and I freak the F out.

Maybe it's time to start tutoring.  Just kidding.  Maybe.

Lullabies

I don't know any children's songs.  The three that I do know, I learned from V's baby music class.  They are three lines long and involve spiders and other vermin.  There is also one about a bus.

Right now, V's go-to lullabies are Dreams on Fire, that song from Slumdog Millionaire, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow.  SOtR was the audition song for the 8th grade show choir in middle school.  Every girl in school was in chorus, and every girl wanted to be in show choir.  It was the Glee of the 1990s.  When I was in 7th grade, they sang and danced to Good Vibrations.  OMG SO COOL.  But Ms. D only let 12 or so girls in there every year, and of course it was the group of popular girls (i.e., not I because I thought it was ok to wear a car windshield on my face as glasses).

And there was an audition.  One song you had to sing in front of Ms. D, and another song that you had to dance to with two girls already in show choir.  I practiced every day.  I was going to make it.
That day came.  I stood in front of Ms. D and the two show choir girls, and I opened my mouth, and my heart seized.  I was having a panic attack.  But I couldn't not sing.  So I tried to sing anyway, and it sounded like someone had cut my vocal cords, like I was freaking Don Corleone.  Ms. D was accompanying me on the piano, and she had this look of OMFG on her face and the two show choir girls were looking at me like I had pooped myself.  I don't even remember the dance part, but I could have done back to back handsprings and levitated and I still wouldn't have made it in.

So when I sing SOtR to V, I make it a point to SING it.  Like I'm in show choir--loud and with fake vibrato.  Finally, a captive audience!  I know lullabies are supposed to be soft and soothing but I am a performer damn it, and V no longer gets startled. 

SOtR doesn't always work to soothe her to sleep, such as last night when she woke up after I realized that the heat in her room was on too high and dashed in like a monkey banging two cymbals.  She was so.freaking.pissed.off at me, and screaming her adorable little lungs out.  I tried the standards, and then had to pull out a classic and one of my all time favorites -- All I Want to Do is Make Love To You (All Night Long) by Heart.  I remember seeing the music video for this song the first time when I was in middle school at my BFF's house, and thinking holy guacamole, are they allowed to sing that?  YES.

It was a rainy night, when he came into sight
Standing by the road, no umbrella, no coat
So I pulled up alongside and I offered him a ride
He accepted with a smile, so we drove for a while

I didn't ask him his name, this lonely boy in the rain
Fate tell me it's right, is this love at first sight
Please don't make it wrong, just stay for the night
All I wanna do is make love to you
Say you will, you want me too
All I wanna do is make love to you
I've got lovin' arms to hold on to

So we found this hotel, it was a place I knew well
We made magic that night. Oh, he did everything right
He brought the woman out of me, so many times, easily
And in the morning when he woke all I left him was a note

I told him I am the flower, you are the seed
We walked in the garden, we planted a tree
Don't try to find me, please don't you dare
Just live in my memory, you'll always be there

All I wanna do is make love to you
One night of love was all we knew
All wanna do is make love to you
I've got lovin' arms to hold on to

Oh, oooh, we made love
Love like strangers
All night long
We made love

Then it happened one day, we came round the same way
You can imagine his surprise when he saw his own eyes
[here I look deep into Violet's eyes]
I said please, please understand
I'm in love with another man
And what he couldn't give me
Was the one little thing that you can

All I wanna do is make love to you
One night of love was all we knew
All I want to do is make love to you
Come on, say you will, you want me too

All I wanna do is make love to you
One night of love was all we knew
All I want to do is make love to you
Say you will, you want me too

All night long ...

And it worked.  She shut up and went to sleep. 

Unconditional love

The other day, Violet pulled open my bathrobe, saw my sad boob and said "Ohhhh!" with delight and amazement. That is unconditional love right there. I love this little hell child.

I have a few hang-ups, one of which are my boobs (should that be two of which?). Obviously, since they have been mentioned in 89.6 percent of my blog posts. I think girls understand. Boys, imagine that your wonderfully large, tree trunk of a penis shriveled up one day, to become a bent twig. You.Would.Freak.Out. And you would think about your penis a lot. "Why did it shrivel? If I eat more, will it grow again? Or will my body just get fat, making my penis look even smaller?"

I know I have mentioned "penis" in 67 percent of my blog posts, but I have no particular issue with penii. I think evolutionarily speaking, the penis should have developed into a less fragile and less swingy thing, and it should really be contained inside the body or an orifice for better protection (such as our internal organs, our eyeballs, eardrums, etc.) but that's it. I swear, I don't actually think about penii ever, unless I am blogging. That is the only time it springs to mind. Blogging is making me a pervert.

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Location:Your butthole

Mom Friends II

I decided that I have to make more of an effort to make mom friends.  They were not going to come up to me, so I would initiate.

OK!  I told this dad who has this tiny little girl, "her feet are so cute!".  The girl is 15 months or a little older, but she is very petite and has feet the size of a 6 month old.  She basically looks like a walking 6 month old.  The dad said, "yeah, thanks!" and we went onto have a conversation about baby shoes, how expensive they are, and how there must be a black market for used baby shoes that we have been excluded from (his idea, not mine).  I gave myself a pat on the back and two gold stars.

But it ended there.  He and his impossibly tiny daughter left the sandbox and went to laugh casually with the other adults ("ha-ha-ha! Oh Roger, you are so funny"), while I sat with my outcast, sand-throwing daughter.

What went wrong?

Maybe I weirded them out by staring too much.  Would you be creeped out by the sight of this young woman, intently focused on you, day after day?

I was going for friendly.  "Come talk to me.  Come on.  I'm not a psycho killer.  We can share some of my daughter's snacks.  She's too little to fight us.  Come over here."  No?

Maybe they can sense that I am being fake.  Maybe I should have said, "Hey, have you asked a pediatrician why your daughter's feet are small?  Are you sure that is not a medical problem?  There is a reason why there is no black market for used baby shoes.  Have you seen used baby shoes?  They look like a dog chewed on them and got shoved up someone's butt."  Then we could have become best friends forever.  Me + Roger 4eva.

I want to grow boobies

I was getting dressed and she pretty clearly said, "Mommy, I want to wear a sports bra too."

I am Asian, so I was flat until I began taking the pill in college.

Tangent: whenever my friends started taking the pill, their boobs exploded. I haven't googled this, but I'm sure that it's the extra estrogen, tiny knives or whatever is in the pill that makes this happen. I am surprised that that is not listed as one of the side effects: "Caution. Taking this medication may increase your breast size by a cup or more. On the other hand, you will become very popular with the boys, and t-shirts will look hot on you."

I gained weight (double digits) at work because it was hard to cry if I was chewing. Then I had a baby and for 4 months I looked like a really fat Playboy model. And then my boobs got depressed, and they remain so to this present day. Taking the pill now does nothing, because my body is old. They still look like little frowny faces.

Anyhoo, I remember insisting to my mom when I was 11 or 12 ish that I HAD to get a training bra. My friends were white, and they all had things to put in their training bras. So we went to some store, and I picked mine out. It looked like a bra, but it was thinner than underwear, and the cups were flat triangles. Perfect!

It's very unfair to have to wear the mark of your puberty on your chest, so that every boy in your grade can see for himself if you are developing. Thanks, God, for that. In 4th grade, I once decided to feel my chest from over my t-shirt to see if I could feel any bumps. Unfortunately the whim struck me in the middle of class, and Joel R. with the blood clot in his eye saw me and sang "you were feeling yourself up!" while pointing every fucking time he saw me, and each time I had to lie and yell back, "no I wasn't!".

"you were feeling yourself up!"
"no I wasn't!"
"you were feeling yourself up!"
"no I wasn't!"
"you were feeling yourself up!"
"no I wasn't!"

All 4th graders know that silence is tacit agreement, so I had to respond every single time. Dick.

It would be different if boys also had to wear their parts on their chest. Then the girls could compare whose nads are bigger. And the girls would whisper about the best way to undo a penis cup with one hand, stare at the boys' penis cups and totally ignore their faces and hoot while outlining the shape of a large penis with their hands as the boys scurried away. And then the same man who invented the booby jail would have invented man-bras for men that would go on their penii. And then people in the 50s would have invented penis cup shapes that bore no resemblance to their body parts, like square cups, but were considered more visually appealing. And then people in the 80s would catch onto the fact that a lot of men were stuffing their cups with tissues and socks, and they would have invented padded and push-up penis cups, to enhance men's manhoods. And then people would come up penis cups that swooped lower, to show more penis, and then make cut outs in the fabric, which made no functional sense but was supposed to be alluring because you could see more penis.

Then I could tell Joel R. that his nads were so, so small, and life would be fair.



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Beds are for weenies

Lately I have not been able to get to sleep at night. Maybe it's because I want to watch three episodes of the Sopranos back to back but I don't sleep until past 1 or 2 am and have to get up at 7. 6 hours is just not doing it for me anymore.

I was at my parents' house today and I was feeling a little tired. I kneeled down in front of an ottoman in the living room and laid my torso and head on it.

I woke up an hour later with my arms and legs hanging off the ottoman and my face in a pool of drool, and my dad in the room watching tv.  Thanks, dad.  Why would I want someone to wake me up and lead me to a bed or sofa, when I can rest on this tiny, luxurious ottoman?

 

The demise of print

Newsweek magazine is ending their print publication and going completely online.

This was the one news source that I read regularly in high school, because my mom said I had to if I wanted to go to an Ivy League college. It was pretty good and I liked the pictures.

Recently I picked up an issue that was sitting on my parents' kitchen table, and the thing had shrunken to the size of a pamphlet. It was like meeting Ryan Gosling (who is medium-hot) and he opened up his pants to show you his small, flaccid penis. It was that sad.

I know some people have issues with newspapers and magazines going online, but have you tried to read the print edition of the NY Times? I would only buy it if it came with a free arm. Sorry but I don't want to carry 10 lbs of recycling, most of which I am not planning to read anyway.

Going online is the way to go. It's a more efficient and less costly way of distributing content. People can "share" and "like" things. Your fingers are not stained black and you will never have a "eat Cheetos or read the paper" dilemma again.

So, in conclusion, putting your content online avoids the problem of small, flaccid penis. I think I summarized that right.

** Edited to add a picture, because pictures make everything better:

                             "Please, honey, it can get this big when I want it to."

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