Missed Connection.

Ya know, I know and acknowledge that I'm not exactly what people would call "desirable". My looks have faded, I'm usually carting a kid, who while adorable, screams "HEY, BAGGAGE!" (also, "HEY, I PUT OUT!"), and I'm mostly completely and utterly socially repugnant. But just once -- just one time in my life -- I wish I could be the subject of a Craigslist Missed Connection.

I'm not looking for romance. Quite the opposite. It's been so long since I was socially active that I basically step out my doorstep and hiss at sunlight and scurry back into darkness. But it'd be nice to know that just once, I was worth noticing, and not because I was apologizing profusely to some random stranger for my kid spitting on them (yes, it's a new phase I'm enduring right now, and yes, it's awesome to deal with in public -- almost as great as her concurrent anti-pants stance).


Someday, mark my words, I'm going to log onto Craigslist, peruse the Missed Connections, and there's going to be one waiting for me. It'll be perfectly written, observant and witty, and I will melt in response...

TO THE SUPERMOM IN THE MALL...
"You were wearing a sweatshirt with stains and crusted-on food of questionable origin. Your hair was pulled up in a meager attempt at a ponytail, most likely your closest excuse for hair styling, and the shimmering grease screamed out that you hadn't had an actual beneficial shower in a couple days. But despite the hurried attempt at makeup, the smeared eyeliner and the smudged mascara that you clearly had no time to look in the mirror at yourself and notice, it was apparent you at one time might've been sort of attractive.

"You looked kind of really tired, but with the authority that you used as you quickly U-turned that stroller out of mall foot traffic and lectured your toddler on spitting, I'm sure you'd be a wildcat in the sack. The way you sternly and aggressively stuck your finger in her face and told her, "NO. SPITTING IS NOT OKAY." assured me you were a woman who abides by her own standards.

"So if you ever take that shower and blow dry your hair out, most likely for the first time in three years, respond to this email."


Rawr, fellas. The line starts on the left.

Get back in the pool, whores.

I really, really, really hate this commercial:



You wanna know why? Because I used to use the Nuvaring. You know what happened when I used the Nuvaring?


Yeah. That.

(Disclaimer: I love my daughter more than life itself, no matter how completely, totally, and utterly unplanned her conception was.)

So whenever this commercial comes on -- and it's on all the fucking time -- I damn near lose my mind. I just want to scream at those stupid bitches to put their yellow swimsuits and swimmy caps back on and GET BACK IN THE GODDAMN POOL because when you decide to be all swanky in the hot tub in your slutty two piece bikini, that's when you get babies. That's right, THERE ARE BABIES IN THE NUVARING HOT TUB.

That's all.

Grinch Shield Down...

I don't like Christmas, primarily because my family hasn't really been into it for years and I sort of lost out on the whole "family gathering" warm fuzzies that most people have. My grandparents died when I was pretty young, and the natural course of events resulted in that the different "factions" of the family splintered off and did their own thing. It happens, but when you're not even quite into adolescence, you grow up feeling like you missed out on something.

Anyway, boo hoo for me. I don't like Christmas season. Whenever I tell people this, I'm usually met with shock, disgust and confusion. I've been forcing myself to feign enjoyment and involvement for Punk's sake, but I'm a Grinch at heart.

But my favorite Christmas memories involve my grandfather. After my grandmother died when I was 9, he kind of (as I best understand it as an adult) tried to take over both roles, which for an old Navy vet was no easy feat. Every winter before Christmas I would go to his house, and we'd make chocolate buckeyes together. (For those poor souls who are unfamiliar, or not lucky enough to be from the great state of Ohio, you can find out what you're missing here).

My dad and grandparents, ca. 1967

We'd cook them over his gas stove and listen to Christmas music and he'd talk about Grandma, and get teary while he did it. When you're about 10, it's kind of awkward and uncomfortable, but I really miss hearing him tell stories about her, about as much as I miss her.

While we were waiting for the chocolate to melt on the stove, I'd go dink around on Grandma's old organ in the back room of their house. I took piano lessons from ages 6-15, and I did pretty well for my age, I guess. I was doing more advanced stuff by the time I was 9 and 10. And I remember, as the house started to smell like chocolate, he would come back and show me on the keyboard, hen pecking with one finger, how to play the opening line of "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas".

He'd teach me the same opening line every year like it was the first time I'd ever been shown what a piano keyboard was. Maybe he forgot he'd shown me before, or maybe he was unaware I could play piano, and pretty well. But I think he just liked having that chance to show me something, on Grandma's organ. For a little bit, it was like we were hanging out with her again.

Looking back on my childhood and adolescence, I sat through hundreds of hours being instructed on the piano how to play nocturnes and overtures and everything in between by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, and Gershwin; and my most missed memory of lessons is Grandpa leaning over my shoulder, hen-pecking those eight notes, and so proud to be showing it to me.

All through college and even still, I make buckeyes every Christmas season, and I'm looking forward to Punk being old enough to "help" me in another year or two. It's just what I do. It's my communion with two people that I really, really miss, and feel like I got robbed of a lot of time with sometimes.

So yeah. I'm a bitch about Christmas. But it's just because I think about memories like this and I just really, really miss them.

Social network attention whoring

So the blog now has its own "fan page" on Facebook. And I swear to Flying Spaghetti Monster and upon everything I hold dear that I am not the one who made it, nor did I request that it be made. No. Really. I didn't.

Anyway, if you want to go be my blog's fan (you don't have to be MY fan, though hey, I might be a fan of my own blog and that fan page, because I'm a total narcissist), just search for "How to Become an Adult in Six Easy Steps" and go be a fan. Please be a fan. Discuss the blog, discuss how much I suck for never updating, I don't know. Be a fan and I'll be your friend, okay?

Photobombing

I did a lot of asshole things in college, most of which I was drunk during. A lot of things were broken, sinks were puked in, people were punched in the face (sorry Pagel), and drive-thrus were peed in. I've never claimed that I was the pinnacle of class and elegance in my early 20's... okay, maybe I have... but one of my favorite pasttimes of my college days was a hilarious trick known as photobombing.

What's photobombing, you ask? Well, I could give you a long, over-detailed and drawn-out explanation, or I could just copy and paste from the Urban Dictionary:

"The act where one or several persons ruin (sometimes improve) a photo by performing funny acts in the background which may include a dry gangbang, holding stick like objects up to your crotch or raising your clothing."

And then I could see you an Urban Dictionary definition and raise you a link to, and example from, This Is Photobomb:


So is the whole class clear of what photobombing is? Yes? Okay. Moving on.

And so, following my preceding statement and summary of asshole things I did in college, one of the few things I am extremely proud of was a school-year-long declaration of Greek War. For those who don't understand the intricate political workings of university Greek life (that's sororities and fraternities, not our gyro-loving friends from the Mediterranean), every sorority is different. You have the Stepford Wives, you have the bleach-blonde barbie doll sluts, you have the stoners and fat girls and the misfits.

I was Queen of the Misfit sorority. Don't get me wrong. We were fun girls. Hilariously fun girls. But we weren't your typical peroxide Malibu barbies. No, I rushed the Malibu Barbie sorority and wasn't offered a bid. Which is what sparked my long-running grudge -- like the awkward, dorky girl who held out hope for the head cheerleader to invite her to the class sleepover and that invitation never came (not that I'd know what that was like, *ahem* I had something else I had to do that night, so whatever), I declared war on the snob sororities, and with my army of misfit minions, I made the most amazing strategic move ever known in college Greek politics:

I declared a yearlong photobomb war.

By "war" I mean that most likely they had no idea what we were doing, and were probably completely oblivious at the time. But Flying Spaghetti Monster as my witness, when they developed their pictures (this was before digital cameras), there was someone mooning the camera behind the Barbies at the bar, or flying-lead-face-making behind them at Dance Marathon, or flipping off the camera in a recruitment picture.

I photobombed. I dropped the mothereffing Hiroshima of photobombs. For an entire year.

It got to the point that we could do it without even communicating to each other that it was photobomb time. I would just spy a group of AZD's gathering together, forming into your stereotypical sorority girl pose (no, I don't mean on all fours presenting to a frat guy...or passed out spread eagle... I mean the group pose in which the girls in the front row all bend down, hands on knees, boobs out, and everyone behind them leans forward), I would instantly running to leap through the background, or throw up a middle finger, or just look retarded/lost/confused, and I would find a fellow AOPi standing beside me looking equally retarded/lost/confused. It was like an unspoken call to sisterhood.

This, THIS, my friends, is why my sorority dues were worth every penny. Because for a split second, despite all the drama of who hit on whose boyfriend and what certain chapter president was desperately in love with a Lambda Chi Alpha, who said what and who stole whose shoes/boyfriend/whatever, we were united in our hatred and disdain. Loyal forever, Alpha to Thee, ladies! (Side note, I wonder if this is going to cause me to get another shitty email from headquarters about "image" and "sisterhood" and "saying fuck too much".)

It was kind of like Where's Waldo, except I was even dorkier than Waldo, usually much drunker, and much more self-congratulatory. Somewhere, in a sorority scrapbook somewhere, damn near every photo has myself and several other members of my sorority making obscene faces, gestures, looking lost, or flashing random body parts in the background. (Note: I don't mean my sorority's scrapbook -- no, we do it front and center as the object of the photo in our own sorority scrapbook.)

And today, those Delta Gammas may feel nostalgic and flip open and look through those scrapbooks, and they'll furrow their perfectly groomed and waxed brows, and they'll curl their perfectly manicured fingers into little fists and raise them in vain to the sky and they'll curse those damn photobombing AOPi's. And they'll rue -- RUE! -- the day they refused to give me a bid even though I was a legacy, and they'll wonder what kind of god would forsake them in that he would allow the AOPi's to ruin every single group shot they took, for an entire year.

It's the Curse of the Photobomb, my friends, and it was glorious. And you may be expecting that years later, now that I am more mature and have grown as a person, that I would apologize to the Delta Gammas and Alpha Xi Deltas and Kappa Kappa Gammas for ruining their lovely pictures.

And you're wrong. Fuck you, we were hilarious. The end.

FAMOUS!

I've mentioned The DP Show on here before, and it's a podcast I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically encourage everyone to listen to. And like female trailblazers before me in history, I have accomplished new heights for womankind through nagging, whining and boobflashing -- and I am now the first female co-host to serve on the show. So go CHECK IT OUT, BITCHES...

Confessions of the Cocktail Queen

I’ve waited a lot of tables in my time. There are a lot of different tables you can wait on, and the people who sit at them are as different as the tables themselves. High top bistro tables. Banquet tables. Booths. Alcove tables. Bar rails. I’ve waited on them all, and all the different breeds of patrons who have sat at them. They all have stories, from the hilarious to the depressing. But the best stories I have, in my career as a waitress, come from the round tables with the cushy lounge chairs on wheels.

I was a strip club cocktail waitress.

It’s not the noblest profession, I’ll admit – I wasn’t curing cancer or formulating a functional plan for world peace. And it’s not really something my guidance counselor had pointed me toward (instead, I was pointed toward journalism; because I’m convinced he hated me). But it was a functional employment for the time – I was a senior in college, broke off my ass prior to working there, and it paid the bills while still allowing me to go to school during the day. The job served its purpose, which was to pay my bills and allow me to eat.

So with that introduction in mind (I’m really bad about long-winded intros, sorry), I’m entering into a whole new domain of stories here at How2, ones that get filed under the “Stories My Children Will Never Know” tag.

One thing you don’t see often in strip clubs is patrons in wheelchairs. However, it happens, because contrary to popular belief, cripples are people too. I don’t know how paraplegics’ penises work, I’m pretty much convinced they’re like robot penises that go all BEEP BEEP BOOP and have “engage” and “disengage” buttons, but I can assume that just because your legs have been rendered useless by whatever arbitrary tragic life circumstances doesn’t mean you don’t like seeing leggy blondes with big fake boobs and series of poor life decisions rub their crotches in your face.

So anyway. Wheelchair patrons, while rare, aren’t completely unheard of. So while we all briefly noted the bachelor party when it came in, complete with a blushing groom in a wheelchair (like I said, they’re people too!), it really wasn’t a huge spectacle. The party took up camp in the VIP room, and as their waitress, I was a soon providing full bottle service with Jose Cuervo and shots of Patron. They were, for the most part, polite, and just having a good time celebrating their friend’s wedding the next day (because let’s be honest, who ever thought he’d actually find love?).

It was one thing for the dancers to give this guy a lap dance in his chair. No big deal. But after a good deal of tequila, the party thought it would be hilarious to sprawl their homeboy out on the VIP couch for a more intense session. So they picked him up out of his chair, which he went along with because, well, he was very drunk. And so, we had Wheelchair Guy being carried and posed in the VIP Room like it was Weekend at Bernie’s.

After paying for a private dance, the bachelor party decided to go walk (walk) up to the bar and get more drinks to give their comrade some alone time with Destiny, Crystal and Treasure. In that time, I’m sure he had the time of his legless life, nobody may ever really know – especially him. He was black out drunk. (Which may have been my fault.)

After an unknown amount of time, the bachelor party realized that The Groom’s private time was over, seeing the dancers wandering the club back on their usual routes, and went back to the VIP room.

This is when things get even more bizarre than they already were.

One of the partygoers comes up to me after they had disappeared back to the VIP Room.

“Hey, have you seen my friend?”

“Um, which one?” I ask, since there were probably a dozen of them. I scan over the floor to see if any of the guys were at the stage, or getting another drink at the bar. No luck.

“Uhhh, the guy whose party it is. He was getting a private dance and now he’s gone. His wheelchair is still in the room.”

Oh. You mean the GUY WHO CAN’T WALK? Is that what you’re telling me right this second? Did you LOSE THE GUY IN A WHEELCHAIR? Is that what you are asking me? Have I seen your friend, what, army crawling on the floor?

So this then begged the question: how do you look for a guy who can’t walk, and isn’t in a wheelchair? This is why I think they need to be tagged like cattle. Because you have no idea when your cripple is going to just roll away.

We put a notice out among the dancers and waitresses. The girls who’d been with him during his private dance said he was there when they left the room, albeit very close to passing out. So contrary to what his friends were suggesting, they did not carry him off. We then began scanning the floors, looking like someone had lost a contact more than lost their bachelor party honoree.

We wound up having to turn on the lights to look for him. His friends – all drunk out of their minds at this point – were convinced someone had carried him off. I’m pretty sure paraplegics have a pretty high mark-up value on the black market. It’s like the elephant man’s bones. Someone out there, probably some creepy Japanese businessman or Dubai prince, probably has like a whole collection of them. The entire club is at a standstill as we are looking for, and I repeat again, a lost paraplegic. No legs. He cannot walk. And he is lost, without his wheelchair.

Finally, I hear his friends yelling from the VIP Room, “We found him!” We all breathed a sigh of relief. The apparent story was that after the private dance, our bachelor drunkenly rolled off the couch. And being too drunk to understand which direction to crawl in to pull himself back up on the couch, he proceeded to roll/crawl under, waaayyy under, the VIP Room couch. (Which I’m not even going to begin considering what was under there…uggghhh.) Out of sight, out of mind, our Bachelor then passed out.

The entire club – patrons, servers, dancers, bouncers – applauded as he left. And I maintain that they really need tracking chips.

I'm awfully sorry.

And now, a message from Pee Wee Herman…



I’ve been a total serious downer lately. Sorry guys. My life is one gigantic shit show right now in ways I can’t even really begin to divulge. So my writing has started to show it – and I totally bailed on NaBloPoMo. I’m sorry. After comments on the Deleted Post (if you saw it, you saw it; if you didn’t, don’t worry about it… I decided it’s best to confront the issues in another way), I feel obligated to state (the obvious) that I really have the greatest readers, and friends, a girl could ask for. Thank you for your continued readership and support. It means the world to me and keeps me going.

In a Word Document at this very moment, I have an actual, substantial, hopefully funny and interesting post in the works. So please have faith in me. And it involves BOOBIES! Stay tuned…

Paper jam.

Besides being my #2 favorite song of all time (second only to this song), The Who's "Baba O'Riley" has always hit a deep resonation with me because of the opening synthesizer. If there could ever be a musical embodiment of how my brain works, it would be this. Constantly moving. Constantly frenetic and frantic and oftentimes incoherent. My brain never, ever, ever shuts off. I wouldn't go so far as to call it ADD -- I can pay attention quite well to things. Maybe too well. But it's always processing.

This is great in certain circumstances. Right now, I'm watching Monday Night Football, listening to music, writing a blog post, answering questions for my text-service query job for the place that I won't actively name but you probably know, and texting on my cell phone. I can multitask with the best and with terrifying accuracy and agility.

Sleep is difficult for me. My brain doesn't shut off to sleep. I've turned to remedying this with TV (I almost always require a TV on when I fall asleep, much to the anger/chagrin of many roommates and boyfriends), and oftentimes a combination of legal and illegal substances. The thoughts don't stop. The obsessing, the constant organizing and processing and analyzing, it never turns off unless I drown my brain with pointless late night television, or chemicals. Even then, sleep is difficult. I have, and still do, frequently go 2-3 days without sleeping. It doesn't come. It usually can't.

I tend to alienate people because I oftentimes get quiet. I can be the life of the party, loud and obnoxious, but often, I get quiet as I think and process the situation surrounding me. I move the furniture around the room in my head. I consider the amount of cream cheese on the bagel. I obsess on the pile of pillows over on that couch that are askew, and I'd love to straighten them, or refold those blankets on the back of the couch. People think I'm not listening; I'm listening. I'm just also running five or six other programs on the insane processing system that is my brain.

Even with that, I can function fairly well (although mildly socially retarded). But sometimes, there comes a glitch in the system. I start to think about a particular thought -- usually something unnerving, upsetting, or depressing -- and everything gets stuck. Whereas a normal person would probably think about it for a minute or two, decide to themselves, "That's too bad, oh well," and move on with their day, the paper jam continues. I obsess. I can't let it go. I fixate on it and it consumes me. It pulls me under.

I compare it to printing a 1,000 page document and the printer jams on page 2. The processing can't happen, but the damage can, and does. I become toxic as I continue to sink into this downward spiral of poisonous thinking. What follows is a predictable series of events for me -- I begin desperately grabbing for things that are stationary, things that are constant. Relationships are a big indicator. And if there's even the most remote sign of volatility in a relationship (whether real or imagined), I pull it into the spiral with me. I can't stop myself. I know what I'm doing and I can see it, even predict it, and I can't stop. The paper jam continues.

Things get dark. I get dark. I continue to fixate on what was once a minor problem and it is now an all-consuming black hole. I draw into myself. I alienate friends and family, particularly if I've pulled those relationships into the fray too. I turn off. I turn to sabotage, I make stupid choices and decisions in an attempt to cover up the downward spiral, but not necessarily stop it.

I can't stop.

I medicate. I drink. I draw further in. The lights get darker and the tornado gets bigger. The diameter of the damage gets bigger, and unless you know how to get me to stop -- which is essentially a solid, angry bitch slap, literally or metaphorically. The paper jam doesn't stop until you beat the shit out of the printer.

Oh, I get furious. I kick and scream. I lash out harder and more angrily, but the spiral stops. The machine has been turned off and groans to a stop.

I stop. I breathe. I think.

I breath. I surface. The fever breaks. I can think clearly again.

The well-oiled machine that is my processing ability fires up again. I go back to the frantic pace that is my mind, and all is well again.

But there is always the possibility of kinks in the system. I'm just always a little scared, after another "incident," that the people who clung on through the storm, may not have the patience to stay around to weather another one.

Routine, Remix.

In the almost two years since I became a parent, the mundane routine of my life sometimes takes me down a dark and depressing road. But one of my favorite parts of the day is bedtime and immediately after. There's such a finality to the day, the first point since about 8 am that I've been able to inhale and exhale in the same second, and can stop and look back at another day down -- good, bad or ugly, it's done.

The bedtime routine itself is predictable and set. Diapers are changed, fish are bed, last call bottles are dispensed (yeah, she still has a bedtime bottle... we're working on it). Sophie Bears are summoned and snuggled into and last kisses are doled out. I turn on Nine Inch Nails on her boom box in her bedroom, a gift from her beloved Uncle Ham, and I shut the door behind me.

Then I breathe.

That's when my last routine of the day begins -- picking up her toys. It's something I find extreme comfort in. The blocks go back into their box. The blankets get folded up and put back on the chair. The babies go in specific order in her little chair, which she will go to first thing in the morning and kiss them good morning. Her little kitchen is lined up with the decorative boxes along the window, which store DVDs (and I replace the DVDs she's become obsessed with plucking out throughout the day). Her ride-on car is placed in the threshold of her kitchen. The dishes and big wooden spoon she uses for snacktime are rinsed off and replaced in the sink of her kitchen.

The dog hair is swept up and vacuumed. The baby gates are set to Security Level Green, which means they're open and I don't have to keep smacking my shins against them as I hurdle over them. The stereo is turned off as I throw up a middle finger at the thought of listening to Kidz Bop one more goddamn time. The TV is set off of Nickelodeon and onto E! or VH1 or whatever random mindless crap I plan to stare at and zone out to shortly.

The day's done. She's gone to sleep. The toys are picked up. It's done. I've survived another day in a job I never thought I wanted, let alone would be able to successfully complete every day. I live to fight another day.

Bring on the liquor.

Auntie.

As of November 5, 2009, I am now officially an undisputed, self-declared AUNTIE...

WELCOME TO THE WORLD, JACK JACK! I love you already and can't wait to meet you with your "cousin" and sure-to-be-partner in crime!

Jack Scott D.
November 5, 2009
2:17 pm, PST
20 in., 7 lbs. 14 oz.

Queen Bee.

I've been going through some yearbooks and stuff stored at my parents' house, since they've finally committed to moving out of the house I grew up in, and I met the ghosts of my past as I unpacked a box full of trophies from my youth. I wish I could tell you the trophies were from Cool Kid Contests, and sports, and Most Blowjobs for the Football Team, and other highly-contested titles, but unfortunately, my biggest congratulatory bling came in the form of spelling bee trophies.

I was awkward at best through my junior high years. I was made fun of mercilessly, called “Stinky Tuna” because I sat with my legs open (I was a tomboy, lay off) and wore baggy clothes to hide the fact that I had boobs because when I wore things that showed them off I was accused of stuffing my bra. The only time I ever felt like I fitted in was when those aluminum chairs were lined up, the microphone on the stand was hot, and I could out-spell even Hicksville Middle School’s brightest.

I was the Spelling Bee girl. It was my niche. It’s what I did.

I remember my first taste of spelling bee victory. Fifth grade. I beat out Tyler Turnbull, the teacher’s son, with the word “soothsayer.” He cried. I gloated. And I got a cool trophy that immediately made me the object of mockery on the bus ride home. But hey, the bus driver said I did a good job and that’s all that mattered.

Subsequent bees were inconsequential. I spelled. I won. I gloated. I was reminded I didn’t have boobs and wasn’t pretty and didn’t wear clothes from American Eagle. Time passed and I continued to be the most mocked female in the class, but on spelling bee day, God have mercy on all of them. I wasn’t invited to your birthday party. I was shunned from your sleepover. You asked me to be your girlfriend just so I would accept and you and your friends could laugh at me. But dammit. I was going to out-spell all those little shits.

And I did.

Pretty kids don’t win the spelling bee. The quarterback who will eventually get a bigger scholarship than you goes out in the first round. The weird stinky kids are usually in the top 10, but rarely win. The spelling bee isn’t made for the winners of the world like those who joined a sorority or became a CEO. (Okay, I became a sorority girl but that was a completely different story.)

The spelling bee is awkward. The spelling bee is braces, bad acne, scoliosis and coke-bottle glasses. The spelling bee is the kids who get paper wads thrown at them and get tripped in the hall.

For two or three hours, we were better than them. We were the cool kids, if just for a little bit.

Some of my best friends I maintained through junior high and high school were weird kids I met at the county spelling bees. Kids who were made fun of and tortured like me. If the spelling bee is good for one thing, it’s a place where all those weird kids could be weird together. Then it turned into a complete bloodshed once those stage lights were on. But it was glorious geek blood, and it just made us into an ordained blood order of nerds.

The popular kids had their slumber parties and sports practices. They had their intimidating cliques in the hallway. They had their gaggle of hyenas in the backs of classrooms. But us? We had the spelling bee. It was ours.

And last night, I remembered being one of them. Being as tortured and awkward and misunderstood. And knowing that while on stage, those weirdos and dweebs and nerds felt like they mattered, felt like they had something special that was just theirs.

The other kids had plenty of opportunities in life to feel superior. But for us, the geeks and dweebs and mockeries of junior high, we have the spelling bee.

Routine

Sometimes, when I'm feeling especially resentful of being a parent and really feel like I hate my life, I feel consumed by the mindnumbing routine of my days. I miss and long for the days when I'd sleep til noon, go get lunch where the whim threw me, hang out with friends, maybe go to a bar, maybe not; take time to study or something equally unlikely.

Parenting is routine. Sure, she may decide to take off her diaper and smear a Poop Pollack on her bedroom wall again, and that might break up the day, but really, every day is achingly the same. I feel like I'm trapped in Groundhog Day but I don't even get the benefit of Bill Murray's humor.

Every morning, I wake up to a cheerful little voice babbling in the bedroom. I ignore it for another 15 minutes before she becomes irate, screaming and kicking the wall, and I come in to get her out of bed. She has thrown all the blankets and stuffed animals and Sophie out of her bed, and upon coming into the room, she points at the floor as though to let me know, "NOW look what you made me do."

I toss the blankets and stuffed animals and Sophie back into the crib and before she can argue this turn of events and toss them out again, I pluck her out and change her diaper, which is soaked, along with her pajamas, because this child is a pee machine. She screams and thrashes because it's cold and I have to do a move that is not unlike a full nelson as I wrangle the first Huggies of the day on her. I usually get kicked in the face at least once, usually twice. And she laughs. Then I dress her as we go through the different clothing items and body parts. She has them down at this point. "HAM? (Hand) SOCK! CHOOS? (No shoes, kiddo.) SHIRT!"

Then I hold her for a minute and she hugs me. Her tiny little body melts into mine and she pats on my back with her tiny little nugget hands. She gives me a kiss on the check, and I stand and I savor my "good morning" from my sweet little girl. I hug her back and squeeze her little body into mine until she spies her goldfish, Anna Nicole Fish, and we feed Fish her breakfast and then Punk wags her tiny little finger at it and sternly tells it, "EAT YOUR FOOD, YOU FISH." (It's really just a series of angry sounding vocalizations, but that's the sentiment.)

Before the fish food can even sink, she's asking for breakfast. "BITE? BITE? JUICE? BITE?" I set up her little chair and table in the living room and I turn on Handy Manny on channel 172 (Disney Channel, I think... I don't even know, I can turn on Channel 172 without even being conscious anymore). I get her juice (V8 Fruit Fusions, because it's one of the few ways I can pile vegetables into her), which I pour into her sippy the night before, and I break up a Nutri-Grain bar into four pieces and put it in a bowl, and I deliver them to her to she can watch her morning TV, eating her breakfast and drinking her juice, as I get around for the day. I prop up the Great Wall of Baby to corral her in to the living room and I quickly dash to my bedroom, because if she realizes that I've left the room she will tear down door frames to follow me.

I'm not a morning person. Anyone who has ever lived, crashed, worked, or had one night stands with me can easily attest to it. (I'm kidding about the one night stands. No, really.) So the routine has become burned into my mind and my subconscious to the point that I really have gone through it with my eyes closed. The day continues at a similar pace of routine and predictability. And a lot of the time I really miss the chaos that was once my child-free life.

But then there's always that first hug of the morning. That tiny little body melting into me, the little hands gripping my back, a soft little breath on my neck. That's the point when I realize I don't really miss it. No. This is good, too.

Pork poke.

Like a good American, I've been in a mad panic over the clear and impending doom of the H1N1 (or the "hiney" flu as it's become known in Casa de los How2). I'd meant to get Punk vaccinated a few weeks ago, but the day before her appointment she came down with a nasty cold. So plans were put on hold, and by the time I was confident she was no longer a vat of Toddler Tantrums, Snot and Fail, the vaccine had run plum out.

So you can imagine the moment of panic and hysteria when I got word that a high school about 45 minutes away was hosting a free H1N1 Flu Shot clinic for children. Oblivious to just what I was about to get into, I piled Punk into the car and drove the 45 minutes to the school.

This is what I saw as I pulled in:


(Forgive the shitty quality, it was taken with my cell phone.)

That, my friends, is a line. That wrapped around the entire goddamn school.

But I had driven that far. And I was being guaranteed the line moved quickly. So I stood there with my toddler beside me in nothing more than a light jacket, since I'd assumed we'd be ushered into a gym soon, and I smiled and thought to myself, I'm an awesome parent.

Two hours later and we were still outside waiting. In the end of October in the midwest, where the minute the sun sets it instantly gets cold. Punk was a trooper as much as a toddler can be, but she was bored and tired and cold. So after two hours of standing and waiting, I no longer had my sweatshirt on and was standing in 45 degree weather in a t-shirt, with my sweatshirt wrapped around my tired, pissed off child, who I then held -- all 32 goddamn pounds of her, dead weight -- for another hour.

We got to the front of the line, through the doors of the school, where there was a gigantic flourescent sign awaiting us:

"[Insert County Here] RESIDENTS ONLY. HAVE IDENTIFICATION READY."

This is the point where I got a lot of hostile looks from parents around me as I said (unintentionally out loud), "Oh you have got to be FUCKING KIDDING ME."

I had been waiting 2.5 hours to find out that I couldn't get my kid vaccinated. I was cold, she was cold, we were cranky, we were half an hour late for her dinner time at this point, and we were both exhausted, and my biceps felt like they were about give out. No. I was not turning around. Fuck that shit with a big strap on.

So as I got to the front table to fill out the necessary forms, I got creative. I made up a fake address in the town we were in, and I lied through my teeth when they looked at my ID and I said we'd just moved to this town, and I hadn't gotten my driver's license changed yet.

I have never once in my life claimed to be a role model or an example for ideal moral compass. But I challenge anyone in that situation to just turn around and take your pissed off, cold child home. No. Oh hell no I wasn't turning back.

Punk finally got her Pork Poke, and I struggled to keep myself from having a complete nervous breakdown when they told me she'd need the second dose in a month. "Just go ahead and wait in the bleachers for 10 minutes to be sure she doesn't have a reaction," the nurse said.

Now, my daughter's welfare is constantly a priority for me. But at that point, after over three hours of waiting in the cold with a pissed off, hungry, cold toddler, I'd had it. Fuck it. She might have a reaction, but she probably won't, and that was a risk I was willing to take.

I walked out the gym doors, walked half a mile back to my car, and strapped Punk in. And what followed was something that my kid(s) will one day know is a situation where we don't talk to Mommy for a good long while, as I drove with Battle of Los Angeles on irresponsibly loud and stared blankly at the road, without muttering a word.

Mommy was done.

NaBloPoMo

I've been a serious asshole about this blog lately. It feels like every other post I am whining that I have nothing to write about and apologizing like a little bitch for it. Sorry, I'm busy, my life's a wreck, I have nothing funny to say, blah blah blah... you know the routine at this point.

So it's National Blog Posting Month again. I figure my G's are in so I may as well jump in -- if for nothing else but to challenge myself to get back into writing and stop being a dick to my blog and the few people who actually keep coming back to read. I can't promise it'll always be quality, or funny, or pretty, or even coherent, but at any rate, yeah, sure, I'm in.

So hey, let's kick this shit off with a Punky Halloween Picture. Because my kid's teh win.

Discovery Zone: Darwin's Law for Kids!

Every year in America, an average of 7.2 million children are born. In 1985, the year I was born, I was just one of 6,438,239 fertilized embryos. Of those six million plus, there are currently 5,166,952 of us. So what happened to the missing 1,271,287 that knocked off between 1985 and 2009?*

Two words, my friends: Discovery Zone.

Some children had Chuck E. Cheese (or Showbiz Pizza, for you old schoolers). Some children had the local playground. Some had Parcheesi. But for many of us, particularly in the greater Fort Wayne, Indiana area that I grew up in, there was Discovery Zone, which, according to Wikipedia, can best be described as having been “a chain of entertainment facilities featuring games, elaborate indoor mazes designed for young children, including slides, climbing play structures and ball pits.”

But for laymen, Discovery Zone was more accurately, Darwin’s Law for Kids.

Ask the scarred, crippled 20-somethings of today about it and many will shudder in terror at the simple memory of the horrors of Discovery Zone. It was impossible to leave the large building of tubes, ball pits, slides, and arcade games without some form of head and/or internal injury.

My brother has a considerable crook in his nose that I can’t help but credit to the time I kicked him in the face somewhere within the tubes.

Within the tubes, the social hierarchy was similar to Lord of the Flies. It wasn’t uncommon to find corpses littering the tubes. And naturally, if you were an especially agile child, you could move through the tubes with considerable ease -- until you came up behind the notorious Fat Kid who never moved at the speed you wanted him to, especially in a rousing game of tag, at which point you would either A) trample him, B) maneuver around him and then kick him in the face, or C) push him to speed him up until he kicked you in the face.

Children can climb through the tubes with relative ease, but parents could not, which was especially to my 11-year-old advantage when it was time to go home and I knew damn well my 6'8" father couldn’t possibly come in after us. I was lucky, though. Usually you’d see one or two especially irate and lost parents screaming for their children and these children could usually be identified as the ones pushing/trampling Fat Kid out of the way. Or, there was a worse fate…

The ball pit.

To this day, I still remember the feel of young, nimble, rigamortic bodies under my feet in the ball pit. There was always that special breed of children who didn’t really like to play and instead thought it a good plan to lounge in the ball pit. (Often this was Fat Kid, crying after having his nose broken for the fifth time that day.)

Physics is but a cruel mistress in the ball pit. Ball Pit Kid eventually sifted to the bottom where he was either trampled to death and never seen again or simply suffocated.

There was another breed of child within the depths of the ball pit — Scary Kid. This was usually someone on the outer cusp of the acceptable age for Discovery Zone, probably 13 or 14, and utilized his age and size against the other merry children enjoying their time. He did this by hiding in the balls and then jumping out and scaring people. This was also usually the kid that peed in the ball pit — the weird kid your parents wouldn’t invite to your birthday party because he might poop his pants or pee in the pool. That kid.

Injuries were Discovery Zone’s beloved concubine. It was to be expected that you would return home with third degree burns on your elbows and knees (because nobody wore the optionally provided knee and elbow pads unless you were the Hypochondriac Child, who was also usually Fat Kid).

Broken noses and concussions were common, too, especially if you were Idiot Kid who would go into the obstacle course and try to do it backwards. I for one remember the rolly-slide -– a horrible torture device that consisted of rollers, which was great unless you were a kid like me, a little bit bigger than most kids. My skin would get caught in the rollers.

Discovery Zone, or at the very least the concept of it, is simply the corporate way of executing nature’s will. Because Fat Kid, Scary Kid, Lazy Kid…let’s face it, it was probably for the best that they were trampled to death or died of asphyxiation or massive head injuries. It's that kind of people who grow into our president of the idiots of society.

I survived multiple trips to Discovery Zone and I am an intelligent, productive member of society. And my brother, well, I was forced to keep an eye on him once lost in the maze of tubes, so he slid by, by default.

Discovery Zone went bankrupt in 1996 with debts raking up to $366 million, which, when you consider the assumedly gargantuan amount of liability lawsuits, makes sense. Our grandparents survived the Great Depression. Our parents, well, they made it through the 60’s and 70’s with enough brain cells left over to reproduce us. But for the 20-somethings of today, we survived Discovery Zone.

* I completely made these figures up.

Singing that Desperate song

I cannot tell you in words how much I love Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo on Desperate Housewives. On the season premiere this past Sunday, she had a soliloquy to an expectant mom that made me slosh my vodka and cranberry glass in the air in victory, a jubilant choir singing behind the preacher. I just had to share it again.

“[Your husband will be hands on?] Yeah… that’s not going to happen. Oh, he’ll be there at first, maybe even change a diaper or two until the novelty wears off, but those 4 a.m. feedings he said he’d help out with? Forget it. Does he have boobs? Then you’re the only bar in town. That baby can scream into a bullhorn and Johnny won’t budge. I’m not done. You’ll never wear a bikini again. You haven’t seen me naked. My stomach looks like Spanish stucco and my breasts resemble two balloons you find behind the couch a week after the party.

Most women are liars. My mother was a liar and her mother was a liar and your mother was a liar. It’s a lie every generation tells the next so they can get grandchildren. You need to hear this, you have to be prepared. Your children hate you and steal from your purse. Your husband will begin to buy your birthday presents at the car wash and the kicker, for the rest of your life there will be so many moments when you feel lonely, but you will NEVER. BE. ALONE.”

Pending news...

No. I'm not pregnant.




Since clearly you haven't read enough of my obscenity-laden rants, soon you'll be able to actually listen my manly voice as I harass you and insult your mother and make attacks against your personal integrity. It'll be just like you're one of my best friends, who regularly receive such voicemails from me!

It's an idea that's sort of been in the making ever since I first listened to, and eventually become a hapless groupie of, The DP Show, and now the ideas are finally coming to fruition. How quickly, I don't know. I'm terrified of change and technology, and whenever faced with the decision between anything or masturbation in my free time, masturbation usually wins.

But hopefully within the next two weeks, I will have this podcast thing up and running, and yelling obscenities at you thanks to the wonders of technology!

You've been warned.

Down here they all bounce.

I was traveling by myself with Punk on a 4-hour cross-state drive this weekend and realized it is an effort far more difficult than originally thought. Don't get me wrong, she's a superstar about traveling. She keeps herself amused -- pop on a DVD of her in her infancy and the kid is enthralled in a narcissistic trance for hours, toss her a Magna Doodle and a sippy cup and it's a pretty quiet drive.

Unfortunately, 2 hours into the drive and she was losing her shit this time around. So I pulled the Jeep into a rest area. I unleashed the Punk, grabbed her hand, and together we walked/toddled through the food court. But I sometimes forget: this is my child, and for reasons I should've foreseen a long time ago and gotten a tubal ligation before I ever had a child, she is fiercely independent and stubborn.

Which is a really nice way of saying, she's a massive pain in the ass sometimes, often in public.

So as I was trying to hurry along our exciting leg-stretching break, complete with a Cinnabon purchase, she decided she was over holding my hand. In a public area like a service station food court on a Saturday morning, I'm not letting go of this kid. This is a cute white kid with chubby nom-able cheeks and cute pink tennies -- she's worth her weight in gold on the black market, and damnit, after four stitches in my taint to get her here, I'm not down with that unless I'm getting a cut of the profit.

But she resisted anyway, and with almost 30 lbs. of heft behind her, she threw herself backwards onto the floor, her clammy midget hand slipping out of mine as physics threw her center of balance off and backwards into the wall. With a thud that only the gigantic and disproportional huge head of a toddler can create; one that everyone in the surrounding area heard.

So there's that moment where time stands still, everything is frozen except for your thought process as you try to evaluate the scene, as you see your child recoil and suck the air in and prepare to let out that god-forsaken, ear-piercing, stare-and-judgment-inducing shriek.

Fuck. Oh fuck. Did she hit that hard? Or is the wall hollow? Fuck, is she okay? Is she going to get up? Please don't scream. Please don't scream. Oh fuck she's going to scream. What the fuck do I do with the Cinnabons? Can I get to the vending machine or is she going to be wailing? Stop staring at me lady, I'm trying here. Oh god, she's screaming....

... and then you snap back to reality and snap into Mommy Mode. You spot a nearby bench and put your Cinnabons down and you crouch down and analyze the damage, and you pick her up and snuggle her into the same warm bosom she's come to love in her 19 months, not just because it's comforting but you're praying to whatever gods you haven't denounced that your Victoria's Secret-enhanced boobs will muffle that scream because OH MY GOD THAT SCREAM.

And as everyone was staring and I was trying to gather a toddler and a gigantic mom purse and her stuffed elephant and the Cinnabons (because for the love of god, child, Mommy needs a sugar fix), the kindly grandmotherly woman running the information desk comes scurrying up offering me a bag of ice. And while it was a genuinely sweet gesture, and I know she meant well, all I could think of was, "How in the big blue FUCK do you expect me to hold a bag of ice onto the back of a toddler's skull while driving?" (I mean, REALLY?)

The fact of the matter is, Punk really didn't hit the wall hard. It was a baseboard that was hollow, and the thud sounded far worse than the fall itself. Plus we were two hours into the trip and approaching naptime hard and fast, so basically anything would piss this child off at this point. Top that recipe off with falling down and smacking her head? Hello MELTDOWN!

So all I could spit out -- while attempting to speak over the screaming toddler -- was, "Thank you so much, but really it isn't as bad as it sounded." Which made me look like insane negligent mother of the year. Really, the only worse things that I might have said were, "I hit her far harder at home" or "As long as they bounce, GAME ON!"

And so I scuttled out of the rest area carrying my huge purse, the Cinnabon, and my change I'd hastily tried to gather for a Mountain Dew from the vending machine (only to discover I had $1.50 and all the 20 oz.'s were $1.75, seriously, what the FUCK?!?), and the furious, screaming toddler, and briskly headed back to the Jeep, where I crammed her, kicking and screaming, into her car seat, slammed the door shut, tried to look away from the stares -- most sympathetic, some bewildered, some leering (hey, it was a truck stop) -- said a silent prayer to Our Holy Mother of Vodka, and got back on the road as quickly as I could.

She fell asleep pretty quick after that. Don't worry, it wasn't a concussion. She woke up. She's just kind of cross-eyed now, no big.

Birth control, kids.

Writer's curse.

I haven't written in awhile, in case you haven't noticed. Which you probably haven't, because anyone who's been a regular follower of my blog has probably died, or left long ago, because it's been like what, three weeks? I don't even know. For-fucking-ever.

I have identified myself as a writer for a long time. I have the Chinese symbols for "writer" on the bridge of my right foot, so clearly it must be true. Also, I was 18 and retarded. But the curse of being a writer, or at least for me, is the crippling insecurity I feel every time I write something -- even on "my" blog, a place where I'm in charge, and if you don't like it, whatever, I can delete comments, I can disregard, I can basically call the shots. I am terrified of feedback. When I wrote for student publications, I was absolutely stone-cold-petrified of conflicting feedback.

There's a reason for it, though. When I was in college I made a really stupid, though very large (in the context of the time), journalistic mistake. The specifics don't matter, if you know the story you know, if you don't and really want to know, I can tell you, but the end result of it was the worst hate mail I have ever received. It got to the point that I was making my friends check and screen my email for me because if I read anymore of it, I was quite possibly going to kill myself. I'm not being dramatic. It was that bad.

So even now, well over four years later, I approach writing like a beaten dog who has an inexplicable unconditional love for its master. I love writing. It's what I feel like I am destined to do; in what capacity, I don't know yet, but it is what I feel happiest doing. But as such, I am constantly filled with doubt, loathing, self-questioning, and dread. I never think my stuff is good enough. Ever. I've mentioned it on here before and I swear I'm not approaching this like a 100 lb. teenage girl saying she's fat in search of contrary remarks -- I just really don't think I'm good anymore.

Was I ever "good"? Sometimes, I believe I was. I've been out of the "game" so long. I haven't even been published in what, three years? And I haven't even sought out freelance gigs in that time because I've come to doubt everything I write. Nobody would hire me. This shit is horrible.

I'm being honest here. I don't know why I write this blog. Sometimes I feel like I'm overflowing with delusions of grandeur, like I'm some gifted, brilliant writer with this hugely popular blog. One where people see it update in their Google Reader and instantly flock to it. One where people tell their friends, "Holy shit, this girl is hilarious." One with links to it from sites far and wide. I don't know. I think I know of like five people who actually read this, and at least two are related to me, the rest are personal friends or friends of personal friends. So I don't know who I'm writing for. Me? I don't know. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Writing, for me, feels like a hopeless one-way love affair that I am never going to win.

Even when I was writing regularly, to see my stuff in actual ink, it was a temperamental process. People who worked in the newsroom with me, or random friends who would be witness to my writing process, were used to my full-out tantrums while I would write. I'd get two paragraphs, furiously delete, scream obscenities and threaten to change my major, storm off and smoke a bowl, write six more paragraphs. Rinse, repeat. It took me hours to write simple columns and blogs. I was, and am, that cripplingly insecure about my writing.

So why do I do it? Why am I so masochistic? And I think the better question is, aren't we all? Aren't all writers a little masochistic? I have never met a truly egotistical writer. Find me a writer who truly thinks everything he/she writes is golden and epic, and I will find someone who is completely and utterly full of shit. We're a self-loathy bunch, we writers. And I guess I can't count myself too far out of the game when I still consider myself to be one.

Someday it'll make sense, and someday I'll actually keep up with this blog and make it entertaining, be it shitty posts, insightful posts, or funny shit that keeps you coming back for more. But in the meantime, bear with me while I'm pissy and writer's blocky.

Momma's alright.

My mother doesn't get a lot of credit on this blog. I know that, and she never really has been given much credit on any of my blogs -- often, she's the butt of jokes; such classics include her angry, ranting, crazy voicemails transcribed and posted to the world wide web for everyone to read, along with the rest of my blogs that generally embarrass and outrage her.

She doesn't know about this blog, which hopefully it will stay this way; not because I don't want to hurt her feelings, but it's more comparable to not wanting to poke a grizzly (or gristly, per Matt Pagel) bear with a stick. You don't really care if the grizzly bear doesn't want to get poked, or if poking will hurt the bear's feelings, but mostly because you just don't want to incur its crazy wrath and have the crazy bear rip off your arm and shove it in its crazy mouth.

To be fair, my mother is crazy. She is a raging bull in a china shop of emotional stability. She is politically and socially ignorant conservative, she is narrow-minded to the end and she has pushed every known button I have for as long as I can remember.

But as another school year begins, this is now the third consecutive end-of-August in which I am not going back to school. So sometimes I get a little wistful. I could tell you about moving into the dorms my first year of college, and watching my father's face turn a brilliant shade of crimson as we drove past the frat houses with sheets hanging from the porches that said, "Dads, Thanks for Dropping Off Your Daughters!" (and that was relatively tame... and I did pass out in a few of those frat houses later on). But instead, I'll tell you about my college orientation, and the night I realized, as a pseudo-adult, that my mom is okay.

College orientation took place about a month before the school year began for freshmen. It was a two-day process, day one being placement tests and day two being scheduling, and random pointless orientation and icebreaker shit in between. Because I lived about an hour and a half from my college, my mother and I stayed overnight in the accommodations provided by the school -- which was in a dorm room.

I went into this thing expecting that I would share a room with my mom. Lame, but whatever. I didn't want to be there; a tornado ripped through campus earlier in the day of my first day of orientation and basically wrecked the campus, and I missed my McDonald's manager boyfriend back home. I was in the gifted program and all the other kids I had to mingle with at the gifted orientation were too smart and didn't talk to me, and I just plain didn't want to be there. Then I found out my mom would be staying on the "moms floor," sharing a room with another mom, whereas I would share a room with another female orientee.

My mom and I are cut from the same cloth in that we are not social people. I'm just not. I'm sorry. So there was a look of panic that shot over both our faces when we realized we wouldn't be sharing a room, and would have to actually *gulp* socialize with strangers. But it was what it was, we accepted our lot, and bid each other good night as we went to our separate rooms on separate floors.

My "roommate" wasn't in the room when I got there, and the only indication I had that I even had a roommate was a duffle bag with size XS Abercrombie and Hollister shit all over the other bed. There was no TV, I didn't know anyone, I didn't feel like going out, so I called my boyfriend to whine about how much it sucked and tried to fall asleep. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up eventually by what felt like an earthquake. My twin sized bed was shaking. I laid stone still trying to figure out what was going on, until I heard the moaning and, after I tried to convince myself this was not happening, realized that my "roommate" (whom I had not met, nor seen, and couldn't pick out in a 2 person lineup) was having sex AT THE FOOT OF MY BED, while I slept.

Again, may I pause to say, there were two beds in this dorm room. She had her own bed she could have done this on. Furthermore, it begs the questions, 1.) Who gets drunk and picks someone up at college orientation? 2.) Who fucks on another person's bed while they're asleep?

I laid there for a minute listening to the giggling and moaning til I realized that I couldn't do this. I flew out of bed, turned on the lights, saw two very naked strangers having sex across the foot of the bed I was just sleeping in, and grabbed my bag (which, conveniently enough, was packed), and stormed out the door while snapping at her, "YOU ARE FUCKING PATHETIC!" I didn't even hear a reaction, perhaps because they were too busy HUMPING ON MY BED, and stormed to the common lounge of the floor, with my duffle bag, and slumped onto the stiff industrial-strength couch. And I sobbed. Fucking. Sobbed.

I hated college. I didn't want to be here. This place sucked. And I just had two strangers fucking on my bed. I hated college. I wanted to quit and I hadn't even started.

So I did all I knew to do. At 3 am, I called my mom's cell phone, and prayed she would answer. She did.

In the end, my mom came, sat with me on that ridiculously stiff couch, held me while I bawled my eyes out and promised me I'd love it here eventually, she had loved it here (yeah, she had also gone to school here), and it would be okay. Knowing I couldn't go back to my room, I begged her to let me sleep with her in her room. She shook her head solemnly as she explained that her roommate was asleep and she didn't want to wake her up. I figured my entire night was shot all to hell when she told me to wait a minute, went and got her stuff, came back, took my still-hysterical ass to the car, and then, at nearly 4 am, checked us into a hotel for the four hours we'd be sleeping before I had to be back on campus to schedule classes and finish orientation.

And to her credit, she was right. I (amazingly) returned to campus later that summer and would come to have some of the greatest experiences and memories of my life there.

That night I shared a king size bed with my mom in a hotel room and slept knowing that my mom, despite of all her insane tendencies and instability and rants and raves, loved me.

The only thing that would give me more satisfaction than I had that night would be knowing that girl got a raging case of genital warts. Which the STD rate of that campus is something like 50%, and I know I made it out of college clean as a whistle, so by law of statistics, and in the name of karma, I bet she did.

Pause for Cuteness.

I now take a break from my virginity-losing stories and tales of toddler tantrums to remind you again that I have a kid who is, ahem, fucking adorable.




Things Punk has been taught recently that I may or may not condone:

● Cheerfully chiming, "Don't get raped!" instead of "Good-bye!" as she waves furiously when we leave a place/situation, which includes but is not limited to grandparents' houses, Target, and kind passersby who smile cheerfully at her in public. I guess it is pretty sound advice.
● Openly referring to her dirtiest baby doll as "Dumpster Baby" -- to the point that you can now ask Punk where Dumpster Baby is and she will bring DB to you.
● The appropriate response to a vacuum cleaner is to scream, sob with huge, gigantic tears, and hide. I wish I could too, kid, I wish I could, too.
● The fluid motion of flipping people off by flicking off under your chin. I did NOT teach her this, that was my 19-year-old brother, her beloved Uncle Ham. But I can't de-program it from her, for the life of me. Thanks Uncle Ham.

Tantrum

Punk has become a huge fan of the Temper Tantrum, and it is making me want to kill someone.

Her tantrums don't just involve yelling and crying. They involve this shrill, banshee scream, one that I'm fairly certain has led the neighbors to believe I routinely kill her. You take away the scissors she's magically attained, or re-adjust her baby gate, or tell her no, and the screaming begins. And when you ignore that much, that's when she sprawls out on the floor and continues to scream while writhing. If you ignore the Tawny Kittaen-on-a-car-hood writhing, she then proceeds to assault you, smacking with tiny hands and biting if she's able to get a good grip.

My friends, I have a toddler on the cusp of the Terrible Two's.

What's the return policy on this thing? Usually at Wal-Mart, I know even if I bought something beyond the return policy, if I'm super nice to the customer service rep, and mumble something about "I know I've got the receipt somewhere" while pretending to shuffle through my purse, they'll let me return it as long as it's not too beat up. Can I do that with this child? Is it too late to say, "Ya know, thanks, but turns out we didn't really need it, and it's still practically new?"

Things that have spurred tantrums in the last 48 hours:

● Punky wanted to put her shoes on. However, with the futility that is Toddler Motor Skills, she was unable to do so.
● I had the audacity to offer to help her put her shoes on.
● I then attempted to take her shoes away so as to STOP THIS FUCKING MADNESS.
● Not putting the right kind of juice in the sippy cup.
● Having the audacity to expect her to eat a granola bar.
● Taking away a spatula that was being used to beat the dog
● Stopping her from stabbing herself with scissors.
● Idiotic and narrow minded conservatives spreading false panic about Obama's healthcare plan
● The cashier at Target looking at her
● Vacuum cleaner
● Diaper change
● Drew Carey on the Price is Right.

Dear God. I'm seriously, seriously going to lose my goddamn mind in 4...3...2....

Cherry.

If you're sitting there wondering if I'm really going to discuss what you're afraid I'm going to, based on the title, the answer is yes, yes I am. Sometimes in life, you stumble back upon people from your past who bring with them memories you've tried to forget/drink away/kill with lots of drugs/talk out with your therapist. Within the last month, I've been remembering my first real boyfriend in high school, J. Ah, young love.

I was a sophomore and J. was a junior when we dated. He was on the football team, drove a Chevy S-10 and could take me to prom, so based on these qualifications alone, I decided not only was he boyfriend material, but he was also the dream boat that I wanted to lose my virginity to. I came to this conclusion, however, while watching Carson Daly announce the newest Backstreet Boys video on TRL and sat in smug satisfaction at the sheer uniqueness of my belly-button piercing, so, you know, good judgment was really all in context.

I lost my virginity to J. in the cab of a Chevy S-10 while Creed was playing on the CD player, under the stars, parked in the middle of nowhere on a Tuesday night in August after a CYO Dance at St. Mike's (because church dances make me hot and bothered, apparently). I had a seat belt thing in my back the entire time and kept hoping we'd finish up in time for me to get home before curfew. It was what it was, and about what you expect for the situation. I gave him my class ring, he gave me his, and while listening to "With Arms Wide Open," we swore we'd spend our lives together.

A few days later we were at the county fair when those damn teen hormones kicked in again. J. had met me at the fair with one of his friends, with whom he had ridden over. He asked the friend if he could borrow the keys to his car, as he wanted to go get his sweatshirt for me, which was in the friend's car. What ensued was us going at it in broad daylight in the backseat of a 1990-nothing Chevy Cavalier at the county fair. I was smitten with this Romeo.

The kink in this hose is that apparently my hymen didn't break on the first go-round. It did, however, on the second. So there was now an unavoidable amount of blood on the backseat of his friend's car.

Like some sort of virginal squid, I'd left the backseat looking like a homicide scene. Which I was unaware of until the entire school knew about it, because said friend told everyone. EV-ER-EEEEE-ONE. So not only did the entire school in my conservative Christian town know I'd had *GASP* sex (SIN!), but they also knew (or believed) I'd lost it in this guy's Cavalier at the county fair and had bled all over everything in sight. It's funny and makes good writing material now (if you have no shame, which I don't), but at the time, it was devastating.

Sometimes, when I think it'd be nice to go back to my roots, I sit, and remind myself that my "roots" are basically two dueling banjos shy of Deliverance.

Though I'd say the fact I could have sex in a Chevy Cavalier, while not a testament to my classiness, does speak volumes for my flexibility.

But had it not been for those initial acts of teenage promiscuity, I wouldn't have embarked on the series of chain events of self-loathing and poor decisions that would eventually lead up to my 22nd birthday, where, drunk out of my mind, I became pregnant with the shamelessly adorable embryo that would become the shamelessly adorable Punky. So I wouldn't change a thing. It's like a slutty version of the Butterfly Effect.

Tired.

I made the rookie toddler parent mistake of walking out of the room for about two minutes yesterday, to deign to do something as absurd as urinate, and came back to the newest page in the long epic novel that is "Holy shit my kid is the antichrist I need an exorcist what the fuck have I gotten myself into?"

She had found a 3/4 full can of Mountain Dew. Was holding it, marveling at its shiny exterior and the sloshy, surely-illegal-to-toddler inside. Looked at me as I entered the room. And what ensued was one of those slow motion moments where you hurl yourself -- slowly, and in futility -- at your child and the can of Mountain Dew while moaning, "Noooooooooooooooooooooo..."

Then she proceeded to look at me, smile, and pour it all over herself.

That's when my world snapped back to regular speed. "WHAT THE HELL, KID?!" I yelled, taking the Mountain Dew away from her. "ARE YOU IN A DAMN RAP VIDEO?"

People joke at the Terrible Two's. And we all laugh and roll our eyes, and we say, "Oh, my kid wasn't as bad as people say they get!" And we act like we don't have bruises up and down our legs from stopping impending doom multiple times a day, or pounds of makeup to cover up the massive dark circles under our eyes. But they're there.

Chapters in this ongoing novel shall be titled as such:

"No, Punk, stop ripping shit off the shelves."

"I said stop beating the dog with the spatula."

"The dog's water dish is not where Mommy's memory card reader and digital camera go." (R.I.P., Memory Card Reader.)

"If you don't stop screaming I swear to GOD I will sell you on CraigsList."

"Why does this room smell like pee?" (And the follow-up question/chapter, "How did you manage to get pee all the way across the room?!")

"Poop on wall is not an appropriate medium for expressing your inner angst."

"Seriously? In your hair?"

"Trying to carry that disproportionately large bucket of water is going to end badly for you, and you're going to have no one to blame but yourself."

"Going Headfirst Down A Slide: Why You Will Regret This Choice"

"Oh really? That's what you think? Yeah? Well BOO-YAH, mandatory naptime, motherfucker!"

"What plane of reality do you live on where this is okay?"

"I recall with a relatively high degree of certainty that I said no."

"Jesus Christ. I've become my mother."

Def Leppard.

One of my strongest, and maybe favorite, memories from my childhood was my mom's music in the car. She was big into the 80's hair bands, and being the late 80's and early 90's, they were still remotely relevant. I could differentiate between Def Leppard, Poison, and White Snake by three, and could sing along to everything from "Once Bitten Twice Shy" to "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" before I was in kindergarten. I still remember the different album covers, as they appeared on the cassette tape cases. My mom would pop in a cassette tape, and we'd sing along happily to the bands that were clearly evidence of her youth.

While I really enjoyed this memory, it wasn't something I necessarily thought of until recently, when I was cruising through traffic with the windows down, blasting Rage Against the Machine (one of my all-time favorite bands) and caught Punky sitting in the backseat, bopping her head along to the music and giggling as I rapped along with Zack de la Roca and air-guitaring along with Tom Morello (one of the best guitarists in the history of rock, IMHO).

I listened to Rage long before Punk -- and driving while blasting it entirely too loud takes me back to a place before Punk, before marriage and Stepford Wifery and my achingly boring, mundane life. Back when I was ME, before How2 and before Mommy. And that's when it struck me: my mom was B. before she was Mom.

While brief, I had an entire lifetime before I became a mother. Like a past life, I was a totally different person; one that sometimes I miss being, one that sometimes I'm glad I've shed. And while Punk can dance and enjoy the music of my past life, she'll probably never know the stories behind it.

She'll never know that before it was just driving music, I sat and debated politics with friends in dorm rooms while "Battle of Los Angeles" blared in the background.

She'll never know that before I danced around the living room with her to The Wiggles, I danced on bars.

She'll never know that before I stayed up late with her when she was colicky, I stayed up late in coffee houses with good friends, talking and laughing about current events, politics, sports, and life.

She'll never know that before I let her draw on me with washable markers, I had two tattoos done to symbolize two different yet significant parts of my life.

She'll never know the life and career I gave up, and the pain I still feel for doing so.

Before sippy cups of apple juice, there were flasks of whiskey.

Before unconditional love for my child, there was the agony of loving someone I couldn't have.

Before I stayed up late, covered in baby vomit and weathering the flu, I stayed up holding back friends' hair while they prayed loudly, and with regurgitated Jager bombs, to the porcelain gods.

She will never know the complete detour that her very existence caused me to quickly and begrudgingly take, or the fact that she quite possibly saved me from myself -- or that I will forever be grateful to her for it.

First.

It's a monumental day in the Casa de la How2. A day that has long been in the making, long in preparation, and much anticipated. May I have silence for a moment while I present:


MOTHER-EFFING PIGTAILS.

Okay. So it's probably not groundbreaking to anyone but me. God knows she is definitely no Gigi in the follicle department. (Yes. Look at that picture. Gigi's a week younger than Punk. Can we all join together in a "No fucking fair!"?). But it has taken 17, yes, SEVENTEEN, months to get to the point that Punky finally had hair long enough to constitute a puny little piggytail.

Considering she spawned from two individuals who each have INCREDIBLE hair -- thick, shiny, strong -- and throughout my pregnancy I had worse heartburn than Pavarotti after an Indian meal, I fully expected her to come out with Rapunzel-length locks. Instead, Punky came out bald as a cue ball. Which made my parents especially nervous since they were concerned she may be a "ginger" like her father.

Okay. Babies are bald. That's expected, I guess. But then what little whisps of hair she DID have, she lost. So then she was like Homer Simpson without his little lines of hair. And it stayed that way. No hair. Zero. None. Til she was like six months old. And now she's been blessed with the rate that my hair grows -- which is, um, not at all -- so it has been an agonizingly long waiting process as I've stared wistfully at the pony-o's and barettes that I had in anticipation of styling my baby daughter's beautiful locks.

Even with the hair finally here, however, the dream was also shattered by the fact that I had to rassle her like a greased pig to get them in. It's okay; I mean, spinal damage heals, right?

New Kids on the Blog List

New on the blog list and my current obsession is The DP Show -- double teaming, slamming, ramming and pumping today's most penetrating issues and never calling them back. Just a good time all around and my guilty pleasure for the part of me that has a penis (I mean hypothetically, not the crotchal part of me) that obsesses over sports. And I don't care what the health clinic at BGSU says, that Matt Pagel is a nice boy.

So unless you like to rape ponies, and especially if you do, you should probably check them out. And subscribe to their iTunes podcast here.

So there you go guys -- I've got the snarky, sarcastic stay-at-home-mom market cornered for you. You're welcome.

Scapegoat.

Thanks to the magic that is Facebook, I'm able to stalk keep in touch with old friends from high school without actually having to talk to them. I've been feeling especially reminiscent lately, and was thinking about the dynamic of the "old gang." Looking back, I think I feel most sorry for Mary*.

Mary was what you would call the group DUFF. For those unfamiliar with the acronym, that would be the Designated Ugly Fat Friend. Every group of high school girls has one. If you don't think your group does or did, guess what, you were the DUFF. Sorry. I was the smart one. Jennifer was the funny one. Kylie was the bitch. Mary was the DUFF.

Remember Piggy from Lord of the Flies? That was Mary. She was large, she was anxious, and she was always paranoid we'd get in trouble. Mainly because we usually did, often with the law, and her mom was the 911 dispatcher in our tiny town, so any trouble we incurred (and then dumped on her), she would be punished way worse than the rest of us. So, being 16, 17 years old, we usually used Mary as the group scapegoat, usually because she was slower than the rest of us and unable to run from the cops and jump fences and not cry when being questioned.

Sometimes you just have to sacrifice the slowest member of the pack, and in our case, it was Mary. And we left her to the wolves pretty frequently.

The most blatant and obvious case of this was one night during a sleepover when we decided it would be funny to go toilet-paper (or TP, if you will) the house of an especially cute guy in our class, we'll call him John. Kylie had a huge crush on John, so when you're 16 and you like a guy, naturally the best way to address this is to throw toilet paper all over every tree in his yard, shaving cream his and his parents' cars, and take a shit on his front doorstep. Well, I didn't particularly like him, also he was my second or third cousin, so I shit on his front doorstep. Whatever, he wasn't my crush.

We couldn't drive yet, so we had Mary's older brother Nick serve as our chauffeur in exchange for beer money and a joint. We piled into Nick's Ford Escort and drove to John's house, where Nick sat in the car while we TP'd the trees, giggling and shushing each other and running around like the idiot 15-year-olds we were.

Then the living room light turned on. We saw a silhouette pass through the living room and knew our shenanigans were being thwarted. So we screamed, because that's what idiot 15-year-olds do, and ran to the car. Mary was the furthest from the car at the time so already had a longer way to run. This proved to be her downfall. That, and the fact that she was morbidly obsese.

It was John's dad. The front door swung open and out he came, in nothing but tighty-whities and tube socks, and came charging out after us into the yard like a madman. (John's dad was also sort of known for being a little imbalanced.) We threw ourselves into the car, screaming in terror because there's a 40-something-year-old man in his underwear chasing us and screaming at us. We screamed at Nick to drive off as Mary was leaping headfirst into the backseat of the car.

Mary only got the top half of her body into the car, and I still remember her grabbing onto me as the car sped off... and John's dad ripped her out of the car. It was sort of like those horror movies, where you see the girl getting pulled under the bed by whatever beast awaits and you just see her fingers desperately grabbing in futility?


Yeah. It was like that.

And we yelled at Nick -- MARY'S BROTHER -- to keep driving as we slammed the door shut.

To this day, I remember watching out the back window as John's dad SHOOK HER, screaming (we later found out), "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" and as she was being violently shaken, Mary managed to stammer out, "WHAT...ARE...YOU...DOING?!?!"

John's dad called the police, and then Mary had to wait at John's house for her mom to come pick her up. We left her there to die, more or less -- especially once her mother got ahold of her. In the meantime, Nick took us to the late-night gas station and we got ice cream.

Mary didn't talk to us for a solid week. Mostly because she was on parental-imposed house arrest. "Grounding" never really did justice for the degree of punishment her parents would put her under.

We were assholes back then, sure. But then the year after we graduated, John's dad died of colon cancer, so really, karma won out after all.


* - Names changed to protect... well, basically just for my own amusement, really.

Toddlaerobics.

Sometimes, people read celebrity gossip sites like Perez Hilton (despite the fact that he is a hypocrite and a horrible human being), and sometimes these blogs, so I am told, feature anorexic-looking celebrity moms, who apparently poo-poo the notion that they're anorexic and just say, "I have children! That's how I stay trim! Chasing after them!"

I have never been to such sites, because I am a serious journalist, but I know if I were to go to those sites, and if I stumbled upon such a statement by a celebrity whose personal life I know nothing of... oh, say, Posh Spice, aka Victoria Beckham.... I'd probably have rolled my eyes at them and declared, "What a load of shit. It's coke and anorexia! DUH!"

Yeah. Um. Apparently it's pretty true. Because having a toddler? Fucking exhausting, dude.

I had a brief conversation with another young first-time mom in the Wal-Mart check-out line today, her angelic 6-month-old sitting serenely in the car carrier seat, our conversation broken up every 40 seconds by my child pulling all of the magazines out of the rack. Then, as I bent down to pick everything up, took off running across Wal-Mart like she was being chased by El Chupacabra. Then thrashing angrily as I tried to detain her with my withering, exhausted arms.

I remember when Punky was at that stage. Sitting in her car carrier, batting away at whatever random toy I'd managed to strap onto the handle. Contained. Immobile. And A. and I would watch her and dote on her, and dream of how wonderful and magical it would be once she could walk!

Uhhh... yeah. We were retarded.

It seems like a novel idea til you have to chase your child out of the Chipotle kitchen, when you swear to god you just let go of her hand long enough to get your wallet out of your purse because for the love of christ, kid, mommy just wants a fucking chicken taco OKAY? Not so fun anymore when in the blink of an eye, she tears across the front yard into the street while you're fishing for car keys.

And in a new and super addition to her Mobility, Self-Mutiliation and Death Initiative, she's learned to climb up onto the furniture. Cute and fun when she's on the couch, sipping on her Sippy Cup and watching TV peacefully. Not so much when she figures out how to get onto the glider rocker and then decides to STAND UP. I started up a pool among my friends as to just how soon she'd manage to injure herself with that new trick. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm actually a pretty attentive parent, but there comes a point where you have to let go and let Darwin.


Congratulations to Kellie, by the way, who won the pool with her Tuesday entry. Glad to see someone can make financial gain on my child's suffering. Really, I'm like a minor-league Kate Gosselin. (Oh no she didn't! Oh I did, I just did.)

Combined, my Plague and Toddler Diet has resulted in almost 20 lbs. lost since early May. I guess I should change the name of the diet, though, so as to not convey the false idea of eating plagues and toddlers. That's just ridiculous. You can't eat a plague.