Yep.

Yep. That's my kid. She's pretty cool.

Shaken Mama had a really great post about life happening in a house, and it really got me thinking about our house, and how much living we've done here in such a short amount of time. Ferris Beuller said life moves pretty fast, and you never really realize how fast it moves until you stop and watch it for a minute.

This was A.'s house before I came into the picture. It was his bachelor pad. So much so that, when I came inside for the first time on our third date, he kept the lights off. We hooked up on his old couch, that was so decrepit that I got a nasty bruise up my spine from the boards that stuck up from the cushions. There was a big Hank Williams poster on the wall; that was the lone wall decoration. He had a picture of Jeff Goldblum staring at you in the bathroom. Everything was sticky. There was a pile of tires in the living room that somehow constituted a coffee table. The kitchen table was buried under mounds of clothing. He kept his laundry in the dryer and pulled things out as needed.

Not too terribly long after we started dating, the lease on my apartment was up. I started looking for a new apartment and A. suggested I move in with him. I thought he was joking. I signed a new lease for six months, which I had planned to coincide with my college graduation so I could be free to chase job opportunities without being pinned down by a lease.

Six months later, he asked me again to move in with him, and I agreed. After all, I'd been paying about $500 a month for an apartment that was basically a storage unit, since I was crashing at his place every night anyway. I started moving my stuff in, bit by bit, during the last month of my lease.

On June 14, two weeks before my lease was up, I sat in the tiny bathroom of his house and stared at a pregnancy test that was blinking "PREGNANT" at me. (Yeah. I needed the fool-proof digital read.) I took a shower in the tiny shower, which we've since remodeled, trying to wrap my head around what it all meant. I stood in the dining room when he came home and we stared at each other, trying to wrap our heads around what it all meant.

He proposed to me as I sat on the same couch we'd hooked up on the first time, the same old couch where I'd sat up late writing final papers and studying, where we'd drank beer and played video games. The same old couch that my water broke on.

The second bedroom was the "guest bedroom," with all of A.'s guitars on the walls and a bed, where our friends passed out after insane nights of drinking and rocking and belligerence. It was gutted and is now a pink and green rose garden-themed nursery. Our daughter's crib sits where his amps once were. The room we rarely went into is now home to our greatest joy.

The hardwood floors where I passed out so many times now reverberate the plat-plat-plat of little, still a little unsure, feet. The trash that was once filled with beer bottles and fast food bags now sits with diapers and boxes from whatever random brightly colored toy she's brought home from the grandparents this time. The old couch where we fucked, loved, studied, drank, and smoked eventually got sold to a college student for $50 (with a matching loveseat), who didn't ask about the weird stain on the middle cushion, and we bought a new couch, and the living room that I'd originally so carefully designed in marroon, sage and tan is now mostly "primary color" themed with toys everywhere.

About a year after the date where he reluctantly brought me into his house that was embarrassingly dirty, A. carried me over the threshhold of our front door when we came home from Las Vegas after getting married on Halloween 2007. Yes, he picked up and hauled my orca-whale-fat, 5.5 month pregnant ass over the threshhold. Now I catch our daughter standing at that storm door, giddily, furiously pounding on the glass and giggling at the sunshine outside.

The porch where we used to get drunk with friends and play guitar, much to the neighbors' chagrin, now has a primary-colored plastic swing on it, complete with flower boxes full of "pretties." The lawn that we used to mow only when we were being threatened with violations from the city now stays pristinely mowed, as Punky follows behind with her pink Little Tykes mower.


But she keeps a good amount of distance, because the sound of the mower scares her a little more than she'll openly admit.

It's been almost two years since I moved in, since we found out I was pregnant, and life began changing at rapid pace. And it'll continue to change and morph until we eventually move to a bigger house and start over, and someone else will move in here, most likely completely oblivious to the furious amount of life that's happened in this little house.

But in the meantime, I'll sit on this couch (the new one, where the only stains are from sippy cups, and there aren't any potential injuries waiting to happen) and smile at the changes that have come and continue to come.

Welcome to my cult.

Apparently, your husband may take things the wrong way when you start excitedly telling him, "Oh my god, I have two new followers!"

Considering my strong (borderline militant) aversion to religion, it really shouldn't be put past me to start a cult, which he's convinced I've done following my message board exodus (HOLLA at the 9th!). That, and hey, I WAS a sorority president. Which is basically the same thing since it also involves robes, candles, secret rituals, drinking essentially toxic substances and puking a lot.

Or it could mean that I have followers on Twitter. Which let me say right now: NO. I have absolutely no interest in Twitter. I think it's ridiculous. I have MySpace, I have Facebook (and I had Facebook when it FIRST came out, when it was just for college students, and all of my aunts-in-law couldn't find me, friend me, and then cluck their tongues disapprovingly while I use the F-bomb freely and describe my bowel movements in far too much detail). I refuse to get Twitter. If that makes me an old fogey, fine. I don't get kids today, I guess. I'm old and out of touch. (For the record, I am 23. Jesus Christ, I'm almost 24.... I'm getting old.)

Okay, so the "followers" I was referencing were the followers of this blog. It makes me happy. I'm a tempermental blogger; I am pissy about my op-ed writing, always have been, and just about every post you see has gone through a rigorous routine of, "Shit. That's not funny. That's stupid. Why in the fuck would anyone read this? God, I'm retarded. Why do I even blog? Who even cares?"

But apparently two new people care, which is pretty cool. So hi. You guys rock. The people who read this blog regularly, whether or not I actually know you and/or am related to you (which constitutes approximately 50% of this blog's readership), make me SQUEE with narcissisic glee.

One of the new followers is a kickass chick by the name of Kayla Linzy, and holy balls, I wish I was as cool as this chick when I was 17. (Which was all of, like, six years ago?) So her blog is cool and you should go there.

Anyway. For the people who stop by and read, thanks. For the people who comment, thank you thank you. I suck at responding to comments, but I do read them and appreciate all the commiseration and advice. Sometimes it's nice to know I'm still entertaining people, besides my husband, who is usually more embarrassed by my latest ventures into screaming at fast-food employees (only the rude ones), vandalizing neighbors' WRONG political opinions, and dancing like a 21-year-old club slut around the house.

I don't know what I'm saying. I'm still vomiting out my mouth and out my butthole, and apparently verbal vomit is also included. Also, I'm really dehydrated and probably hallucinating.

Quarantine.

I woke up at 11 o'clock on Saturday morning, amazed that I had slept so late, and moreso, amazed Punky had slept so late. This brief rested amazement quickly transitioned to concern that my child may actually be dead, so I tiptoed down the hall, peeked into her bedroom, and was met with what would become the general household theme for the next three days.

It was sort of like the end of Apocalypse Now -- peeking into her room and seeing my baby girl laying in her crib, looking up at me miserably... and then the puke. Oh my God, the puke. It was everywhere. The quilt. The sheets. The bumpers. The blankie. The carpet. Everywhere. Curdled milk from her late-night bottle. Everywhere. (We won't get into the stench. But trust me on it.)

I didn't have long to survey the damage before I heard her tiny little body beginning to retch, and I realized that hey, human beings need to be TAUGHT to puke in the toilet. So I was quickly in a race against the devil to run with my gagging child and get her over a toilet or similar receptacle. That's when the Exorcist came to mind.

I've never really dealt with baby puke. I can count on one hand the number of times Punky has thrown up. She wasn't a spit-uppy baby. She's never had the flu. So I had no idea what I was dealing with. I was dealing with a lot of puke. After the third outfit change, I just let her roam the house naked (besides a diaper), because in a stroke of sheer awesomeness, the flu also hit while the weather has been in the 80's and we have no central air, which is just great. And ya know, any and all regard for laundry instructions on bedding just goes straight out the window of the priorities list when you're dealing with puke. Cold water only? Nope. Line dry? Fuck it. There's puke everywhere, I just want to throw this in the washer right now and not have to see it ever again.

But of course, being sick, she is also still The Punky, and in sheer Punky form, was needlessly adorable through it. I could almost deal with it better if she'd be a raging, screaming asshole through it all. Instead she was content to sit on whatever lap was open to her, and look adorably pathetic:


Sunday she seemed better. Still a high fever, still miserable, but the puking had been traded for diarrhea, and at least she was able to hold down some Pedialyte. I thought we were clear.

Then Sunday night came around. And right about the same time, around midnight, A. and I were each on our respective computers and almost synchronized, looked at each other and muttered, "Oh God, I don't feel so good..."

And so began the spread of the How2 House Plague, and a long night of two grown adults puking and laying around miserably, looking at each other and wondering if maybe we tried TWICE as hard, together, death would come for us quickly and stealthily.

We really need to move soon, because one bathroom doesn't cut it when there's two adults vomiting and shitting in a horrible, furious storm of bodily fluids being expelled at forcefully high speeds. In a particularly classy move that I'm sure bode well with the neighbors, I wound up vomiting off the front porch because A. was doing the same thing in the lone bathroom.

So today, Punky is running circles around us while A. and I ro-sham-bo for who gets to watch her while the other lays miserably praying for death. I tried to be a good wife and run to McDonald's to get us Powerade (because they have a drive-thru, thus allowing me to stay in my car)... and then I puked in the McDonald's parking lot. I have done far worse in fast-food drive-thrus, thanks to the horrible demon that is Jagermeister, but it seems so much worse when you're coherent enough to understand what you're doing. And it's lunch rush.

In light of everything though, at least it's a rapid weight loss, as the benevolent and awesome Anna has pointed out to me (from her safe location far far away from me, protected by IM and thousands of miles). I'm frankly a little disappointed that this didn't hit before the sorority reunion. Because once I'm able to stand for more than two minutes without vomiting, I'm going to look FABULOUS.

Ya Gotta Eat.

Last night I pretty much ensured A. and I can no longer go back to the Rally's downtown (Checkers for you Southern folk).

Okay. I went there late last night for late night snacks and ordered cheese fries. NO chili. NO onion. Just cheese on fries. Go through drive-thru. Check the box since last time they still made it with chili. There's chili on it. So I go back through and explain there's chili on it, I asked for no chili. Go through again.

This white trash nasty old bitch takes it from me like she didn't believe me, and gives it back to me after a couple minutes. I assume that since I brought the error to their attention, surely it's okay now. I check really quick and it looks right.

Get home, A. opens it up, and basically they just put more cheese on top of the chili. It was the SAME GODDAMN THING I'd given them, except they heaped on cheese so you couldn't see the chili.

A normal person would've probably chalked it up to a loss. Oh no. No no no. I take the cheese fries and drive the 15 minutes BACK downtown and go through the drive-thru again. (I wasn't going through the walkup because I wasn't wearing a bra and trust me, I'm not getting out of the car like that.)

The drive-thru and the walk-up were both packed and there's this poor girl running both registers as best she can, while being bitched at and screamed at by this white trash bitch I dealt with previously. The girl rang me up before, and to her credit, the receipt DOES say "cheese only." I know it's not her fault. She just rings the order in and hands me the bag, which she can't even get that done right now without getting bitched at. I pull up to the window and I can hear her saying (pretty politely) to White Trash Bitch that, "She asked for just cheese, no chili."

"WELL IF YOU HAD RINGED IT IN RIGHT WE WOULDN'T HAVE THIS PROBLEM!"

And you could tell the girl just didn't want to get yelled at anymore so she didn't argue. She peeks out to tell me it'll be a minute and I smile sweetly and say, "It's okay, it's not your fault. You rang it in right."

The White Trash Bitch comes to the window and practically throws the fries into my car, "Here's your cheese fries." No, "I'm sorry," nothing like that, all while still bitching at the Register Girl. I open the bag to check my order and White Trash Bitch hollers, "Ma'am, you need to pull forward."

Uh-uh. That's when hell breaks loose.

"NO. I have wasted enough of my time tonight because YOU can't make an order right. YOU can wait ONE FUCKING MINUTE while I check and make sure that YOU didn't fuck up my order AGAIN."

"Don't you swear at me [she had been cussing up a storm at the poor girl the whole I time I was in drive-thru], I made it myself. There's just cheese on it now pull forward."

"NO. Obviously you have shown you are incapable of making an order correctly, on top of that you LIED to me the last time I came through. So you can hold the fuck on. I'm sorry YOUR life is so fucking miserable that you have to work nightshift at Rally's and get wet by yelling at this poor girl, who as far as I can tell is the only one here capable of doing her job right."

I checked my fries. They were just cheese.

"Hey, just cheese. THANK YOU."

Speed off.

And so. I can't go back. But I DID wait until I got the food before I started yelling. And I didn't eat any of it, A. ate it all... just in case there WAS spit.

And now a shameless plug.

You may or may not have noticed, but my parenting style is a little "off the beaten path" in terms of baby nursery music (she dozes off to Nine Inch Nails at night), child nicknaming (Punk) and theme selections (punk rock skulls, hot pink and black plaid, etc.). So combine that with the fact that I get extremely bored and stircrazy, and the end result is me sewing a lot of stuff and creating my own Etsy store.

And so, I announce the opening of my very own store...



Punk E. Laine. Conventional necessities for the unconventional baby.

Right now I'm specializing in crib sets, and currently moving into baby car seat covers:


(a current prototype I'm working on, currently being tweaked before hitting the store)...

And probably clothes eventually. The Etsy baby market is pretty much swarming with baby clothes, though, so that'll be later, once I get rolling on everything else. But yeah. There ya go. Go buy my stuff, plzkthx.

Sorority Reunion: A Review

When I was in college, quite possibly the most defining experience of my matriculation was my time as a sister in a sorority. I held a number of offices in my sorority, most notably of which was chapter president. My time in the sorority was filled with ups and downs, uppers and downers, best friends, bitches, beer bongs, water bongs, date parties, scholastic requirements, highs and highs and lows. It was an awful, wonderful, exciting, depressing experience, but it largely shaped who I am and defined my college experience.

That being said, this weekend was my chapter's anniversary, and so, I made the trek back to Ye Olde University (sans Punky, thanks to the almighty Grandparents!) to hopefully see my old friends (whose lives I have faithfully stalked thanks to Facebook), relive some old memories, and spin my tales and wealth of knowledge for currently active members. I packed bags, I planned, I coordinated my outfit, I spent an hour on my hair, and I looked hot.

I arrived for a brunch this morning, which I paid $25 for, and arrived to realize that it was pretty much the same atmosphere as a timeshare seminar (which I have also done). It was a call to alums to come and donate money to the chapter.

I can understand the need for alum support in a chapter. I really, really do get that. And I wouldn't really necessarily have a problem donating a bit here or there to the chapter if I knew it was going toward a beneficial cause, i.e., scholarship. Who am I kidding, I wouldn't really care if it was spent on a keg for a date party.

My issue, however, was this: there were no more than five current members at this brunch. Five. Out of a chapter of 70+. Five. The rest of the chapter couldn't be bothered to show up to a brunch where the plan was to appeal to alumnae to fork over some cash. I mean, shit, even Jerry Lewis gets some of the muscular dystrophy kids on his telethon. And as I sat there eating my $25 muffin and drinking my coffee, I found myself wondering: if the actives don't care, why the hell should I?

The whole thing was really irritating me, as I sat there listening to the presentation of how "in need" they are for alum support, when I looked down at my Dolce & Gabbana shoes, Express jeans, Tiffany bracelet, and Coach purse, all of which I'd carefully selected for status symbol purposes among people who would recognize it, and I realized.... this isn't me. Had I been six years ago, the person I am today, I would have run far and fast away from sorority rush that fall. I munching on my $25 muffin and realizing, "This is fucking lame." By "this," I don't just mean the begging and soliciting, I mean the whole damn thing.

Whenever I mentioned I had a daughter, there was the brief pause for a "SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!! A LEGACY!", and by the third or fourth time, as I was standing and thinking how ridiculous the whole thing and the whole institution was, I realized I really didn't care that my daughter is a legacy. If she goes to college someday and comes to me and tells me she's not interested in joining a sorority, I'm really okay with that. If she does want to join a sorority and not mine, I'm okay with that too. I almost really wish she wouldn't join one. Already at 14 months, I think she's above it.

I guess really, what happened today, was the closing of a chapter in my life. I came home, took the "SORORITY ALUMNA" license plate frame off my car, and tossed it in the same box in the basement as my Big Sister paddle and quilt of my old sorority t-shirts. I slammed the door shut to the storage room and to that chapter of my life, and scrambled back up the basement stairs to escape the bad memories, feelings of guilt, and spiders.

Mostly the spiders.

Neglect.

My poor little blog has fallen by the wayside as of late, ever since I got a job.

(*GASP!* Did you hear that? She got a job!")

Okay, not real job in the sense that it requires me to show up for 40 hours a week, smile politely at people while writing passive-aggressive notes and sticking them in the breakroom, or wearing a bra, but a job in the sense that it's something to break up the monotony of saving my kid from smashing her head onto the hardwood floor YET AGAIN, or smearing fingerprints all over Daddy's VERY EXPENSIVE LCD TV, and I get money for it.

I can't tell you where, per se, but I am a "guide" of sorts for a text-messaging service where people from all over the country text in random questions and guides such as myself answer them. I'm a professional Googler.

I've been doing this for about a month now, and it's addictive. Every question I answer, I make about 15 cents (some categories are worth more than others, 20 cents being the highest). I gotta say, it's not a bad rap, considering I spend a good four hours on the computer, and it's this or I sit and read Perez Hilton for hours on end. And you can only look at pictures with cum paint-shopped onto them for so long before you start picturing it on the faces of everyone you encounter throughout the day.

For the most part, I keep busy answering sports scores (because I'm a sports guru and it's one of my specialities), but for some unknown reason, I am also frequently bombarded by questions from adolescents wanting to know how to deal with the awkward relationships that create the cruel joke that is the pre-teen years.

Which really, I'm hardly one to give advice on. My pre-teen years were awkward at best, hell on average. I had one boyfriend in that time frame, Cory Jones, whom I dated most of seventh grade and he broke up with me in health class the same day we were doing our CPR certification tests, so I was choking on snot and tears while trying to revive a plastic dummy. No amount of alcohol swabs could clean that dummy off for the poor soul forced to use it after me. But yeah, he was the new kid in school and basically I nabbed him up before he could realize that I was a pathetic loser who was obsessed with the Spice Girls and stuffed her bra. (He never did discover the latter. We never rounded first base, thankyouverymuch.)

So now here I am as a 20-something, trying to pass myself off as confident and socially adept just because I got married and spawned, and trying to give relationship advice to 13-year-olds. And really, the only way I'm capable of dishing out such advice (and being paid for it, no less) is with a couple glasses of wine, or shots of rum, in me. Because 13-year-olds are so horribly awkward and socially retarded anyway -- the best advice they can receive should come from a 23-year-old recluse drinking herself to a sunny buzz while sitting on her couch wearing the same clothes for a third day in a row. I KNOW BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN THERE, DAMNIT.

My favorite question I was asked, which I must say I was pleasantly swimming in my third glass of wine, was, "What do I do if my parents catch me fingering my girlfriend?"

I pondered this for a minute. Sat and swirled my cheap box chardonnay in its glass, pondered life for a minute, then responded, with my sage wisdom: "Remove your finger."

This is pretty much the norm for what I get asked. Lots of relationship questions, such as, "What do I do if I just had sex with my father?" (Answer: "Incest is illegal, and if you are under 16, it is also child molestation.) and explaining every sexual position from 69 to the Wobbly H. Wanna know? Because I know and I will tell you. So help me God, I will get drunk and I will tell you.

Other questions that I have saved in my top 5 for this week:

Q. Can a 13 point 5 in dick kill a girl?"
A. Most vaginas are only four inches in length, so chances are the girl may feel discomfort, but will not die from it

Q. Where can we buy 7 pounds of weed in Orem, Utah tonight?
A. The Orem City Police Department is located at 95 East Center, Orem, UT 8407. Phone number is (801) 229-7070.

Q. What if I'm a girl with a penis?
A. If you are a female and have a naturally grown penis, you may have questions beyond what I can answer.

Q. Can I have a line to make me sound smart?
A. I just sent a text to a complete stranger asking them to make me sound smart!

Q. Is it possible to get more than one penis lengthening surgery?
A. Men with penile dysmorphic disorder were particularly likely to be dissatisfied with the surgery's results.

Look for this to become a regular feature of the blog; at least as long as I remember to do it, or until I get legal action threatened, which is how past regular features on my blog have ended.

Death stare.

If there's one thing I've become far too accustomed to as a parent, it's the disapproving death stare I receive from ... well, just about everyone when I go out in public. It's not always an immediate death stare. It actually starts out as a happy smile, accompanied by a little sigh and a gutteral, "Awww" in the back of the throat. It's especially common with the geriatric breeds. But then the smile falls, usually as a result of something I do, and you're left with the death stare.

Things I have done in the past week that have warranted the death stare:

1.) Telling my daughter in the middle of JoAnn Fabrics, "Dude, I have to take a MASSIVE shit right now."

2.) Driving through a busy parking lot with a tantruming baby in the back seat, and, with the car windows down, yelling, "Shut up and ENJOY RADIOHEAD!" while concurrently cranking up, yes, that's right, Radiohead.

3.) Getting cut off in traffic, slamming on your breaks, and yelling in front of a busload of schoolchildren, "Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?"

4.) Walking past a douchebag old lady trying to back into a parking spot and loudly saying to your child, "Punky, that's called double parking. That's what douchebags do."