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....