Wrap your head with this material...

Things I'm snotty about: - using a picture of your kid or your dog or your cat as an avatar. I want to see a picture of you. Sometimes it helps me know who the hell is talking online. I like pictures of other things and I look at them. In albums. - posting annoying status updates. Writing a status update in all caps never SOLVED ANY CAUSE. ever. There's no one who no longer has cancer and no animal with a new home with updated vaccines because you changed your picture to a cartoon and wrote about it on FB. If you want to help, find an organization/child/pet and donate time and money. And I mean both. - trends. I tend to like them for 10 minutes but as soon as I see them happening over and over, I hate whatever it is. See snuggies, when fiction writer's main character is a writer, smartphones, blog awards, robot vocals, etc. - Twilight. I'm sure its very addictive or whatever. I just think you should be ashamed of your addictions. (see also Grey's Anatomy. I am asham...

"yeah, let's hope i can haul my sorry hernia crotch to the house" "Anyone have an old punching bag, or a sibling with no nerve endings, that I could borrow?" "You know its a good tights day when one person says, "Nice stockings?" and another says "Your legs are weird. They make my eyes feel funny." "Dear school bus full of black kids, I play basketball for the exercise. Stop laughing." "If I ever saw an amputee get hanged, I'd just start yelling out letters."

"I'm growing up. You'd be so impressed. Today, I gave a presentation in which I said the word "invaginated" like 5 times without cracking up once." "That's funny. For some reason I've been seeing the word "vaginismus" a lot lately and every time I do, I wish it was spelled "vaginisthmus." It could be next to the cape of good hope." "Reach for the stars, M!" "Yeah, the porn stars." "Dear tattoo artists, Its perfectly ok to respond with, "No, cause that will look fucking stupid!" Love,...Eyeballs" "turns out John Wayne is a real live person, and not a character played by Clint Eastwood. stay tuned for other things I learn today by watching television but couldn't care less about." "If, while flipping through channels I see three or more movies starring the same actor, I immediately assume said actor is dead." "Just waited on a woman who smelled like smoky...

I find myself praying lately. Which is weird because I don't really believe in god. I don't believe with any sort of certainty that there is NO god, but I tend to think there isn't one. I can get behind the idea of goodness. And I can get behind there being a possibility of a force of goodness. Maybe that's god. Or something. Either way, I've found myself praying. Here and there. It started at an AA meeting. My dad's been in AA for 18 years now. In AA birthday years, he can vote. That's quite an accomplishment. And the way he keeps a hold on that sobriety thing that's so important for everything else in his life, is by continuing to be active in the program. And sometimes I go to meetings with him. I went most recently to a meeting with him on New Year's. At the beginning of an AA meeting there's a moment of silence for those still suffering in the throes of alcohol. I held a client out to the forces of goodness in that moment. Wh...

Do you have some days that are mentally stimulating? Where you just have all these interesting and seemingly novel ideas pop in your head? Like a muse has been playing songs in there all day. I always think "oh, I should toss that in a blog" on days like that. "ooh and that too." And it'll go on all day and I'll have enough for one of those vomit-mouth mishmesh blog entries I'm so fond of. But then, half the time by the time I open the lap top to write it, I can't remember a damned thing. Its like the muse is really a children's book character that I only I can see. "I swear I had a fascinating epiphany to share! No, really, I did." Anyway, since the really interesting ideas are probably being hoarded by that tooth fairy, muse bitch, I'll share what's left. I was watching a documentary last night about this guy who was at a party when he was 16 and someone was murdered. He was falsely accused and lumped into a group with the act...

I don't do resolutions. I think they're stupid. And clearly they don't work. I think everything's stupid sometimes. Its one of my less attractive personality traits- a tendency to get all look-down-my-nosey. Its lame. But I'm just so cool. Or snotty. Or something. Anyway, I figure if you need to change something about your life, you need to change it now. I mean now. Or tomorrow when you've got a plan for how to do it. But a magic analog change of the year, flippy number, brand newness... not going to do it. Change come because you work for it, becuase you're ready for it, because it needs to. My brother makes minutia resolutions. Like that he'll randomly turn on his turn signal more often, or use words that start with q more often, or something equal inane. I love them. One year, he reset his trip-tick in the car every time someone did something utterly stupid. I don't think he ever got above 3 miles. But I'm on the cusp of some ...

"At Walgreens, asked whatever the best cold medicine was to make meth with. Not sure why they had to involve the police." "Today, in order to fight child abuse, I'm eating pringles and drinking diet cherry dr. pepper in my jammies-I figure its at least as effective as changing my profile picture to a cartoon- if not more so..." "Dear Mom, You are one of my biggest inspirations in life. You picked yourself up so many times when life threw you down. Even though you gave Harley, the dog, away and spend way too much time at church, I love you much and will see you soon. Happy Birthday! Love, your daughter, mike." "Tonight, I learned how to remove pine tree sap from hair. After more than an hour I THINK I might be sap-free, and I smell like a peanut butter/olive oil/soap dish. New perfume? Not quite. Needless to say, no cookie baking happened and the Christmas tree and I are not speaking right now." "There's no 'i' in ...

he constructed his personality in a junk yard just took things other people discarded and wore them around his neck noose tight fight with all your might to carve out what's yours a hubcap doesn't have to be what it appears I'd use yours to make a mean grilled cheese

Jeesh, haven't seen you guys in a while. What's it been, like a month? You'd think I'd been doing something important. Like being a mom. Really, I've been sewing a stalking. Holy distracted-and-horrible! I meant, STOCKING! From scratch. Every stitch, every sequin. Look who's crafty now, bitcheS! Sorry for calling you bitches. Around holidays and other some such marked events, I always think back. Sometimes I can't remember what I was doing the previous year. Or I think back and think, "meh" But last year, I found out I was pregnant on New Year's Eve. On account of the whole drink/not drink decision thing. So I was all happy, and nervous, and scared, and nervous and happy and scared. And nervous. And happy. Because I was just happy the first time I was pregnant, but that didn't turn out so good. And what's lame is that after you have a miscarriage, all you want in the world, I mean ALL you want in the world, is to be pregnant again. A...

Ever notice how midgets on TV are only in entertainment. They're actors or porn stars or wrestlers. No midgets are just boring accountants or childcare providers or bank tellers. So I started thinking, "What job lends itself well to being a midget?" And the answer I came up with is, tailor for hemming and midwife for baby catching. In both cases the height thing would be a real advantage. In other news, did you know you could spell tepees "tipis." I want to pronounce that tea piss. Which I think makes a good urban dictionary word for the dribble of pee men don't bother to wipe off the end of their wangs when they pee. Or a midget dingle. Happy Hump Day, ya'll!

Got 2 messages from a client on my voicemail today. One said he thought I was back from "maturity leave." The other said he was glad I was back from "maternity labor." I love my job. Sometimes anyway. (but not as much as I love my kid. Its hard to be back at work. The silver lining is funny messages.)

"Our new nephew is pretty cool. Just for clarification, would you like to be the creepy uncle or the drunk uncle?" "Let's alternate for a while and see how we feel. You go creepy, I'll stay drunk, and we can have a little sit down and compare notes annually and then decide. I just don't feel comfortable comitting to one or the other just yet." Mom: "Oh hey! That's Tony Hawk on Yo Gabba Gabba" Kid: "You mean that old man trying to skateboard?" "I feel so dirty. Are all my teeth still there? Am I carrying a puppy mill puppy? Do my jeans have pockets? Are my roots showing? Going to WalMart is so scary! I need a shower!" "ah, December 1st. The day I spend all day debating which feels tighter- my budget or my waistband. No one likes a chubby poor chick. No one." "Thanksgiving. Not a good day to be my pants." "Eat that turkey bitch" - Ike Turner, Thanksgiving 1965

This morning I woke up fine. I showered and did all my boring morning crap. Including starting laundry. And for some reason, as the my to do list got lighter, the rest of me felt heavier. Heavier and sadder and sadder. Inexplicably sad. Some mornings are just like that though. They come with a heaviness of immobility. A desire to just sit there. Inside the sadness. Let it engulf you and let the tears come. But then I got up and saw a picture of a friend's baby in our papasan chair. And I thought of all the places that papasan has lived. I got it free from a boss I had when I moved into my first apartment. Something like 10 years ago. When we first got it, we had no cushion for it. So as we unpacked, it collected newspaper and tissues and other crap and that's what we sat on. Until a friend gave us a real cushion. Which years later got pretty much destroyed by a cat I had. And then it had no cushion again. Until we got one with a gift certificate when Rob and ...

Do you have captain-obvious realizations? You know, like when I realized I couldn't get out of being pregnant. Only this one was worse. I was reading a book and in it the main character talks about real parents. She says real parents are never as good of parents as they try to be. And it hit me that I will not be as good at being a mom as I want to be. I'll try, but I'll end up screwing it up. I mean, I'll raise a competent man who can function in society. I'm not saying I'll screw up to the tune of a 45 year old living in my basement with a giant gut and no prospects who plays video games all day and means I never have company over again. I'm just saying, I have an image in my head of never yelling, always listening, reading constantly, teaching him to play the piano, and ski, and participating in his school, sending him to Swedish camp, and and and... I'll screw it up. A little. Its like every other project I've started and failed at in my...

I was having this beautiful moment with Magnus last night. I was rocking him to sleep, humming in his ear, and periodically kissing the fuzzy hairs that rub my chin when he relaxes against my chest. It was one of those moments that made me go "this is why people do this. its all worth it." The stitches, the new stitches, the stretch marks, the crying, the never sleeping all night again...all worth it. Then I realized what I was humming was this: Even when life is beautifully touching, its funny too. P.S. I love being a mommy and humming and talking gibberish and making faces and singing off key and dancing it out in the living room. Its rad. Hope you're rad today too.

My husband sings this song to the baby all the time with the modified lyric of "and would you cry, if I stole your pacifier?" You don't have to listen to the whole song, this is just to get you the right tune. In other news, here's Magnus at Halloween. Ridiculous, how fun it is to dress up a baby for that holiday. This is what he wore underneath the pea pod It glowed in the dark, a fact I noticed in the middle of the night when I got up to feed him and saw that he'd gotten a glowing arm out of his swaddle.

When I was a kid, my parents had this policy that you could ask anything and get an honest answer. It went hand in hand with another policy of theirs, which was you could use any word as long as you knew what it meant. They'd quiz you occasionally too, just to make sure you were paying attention. "What's 'pissed off' mean, Karin?" "It means perturbed." I was a bit precocious. My parents rarely used the parental copout/freakout/I-don't-want-to-talk-about-this card of "I'll tell you when you're older." So I probably would have learned about sex pretty early no matter what. But as it turned out, I learned about sex from the movie Porky's. I was 4 or 5. In 1984, movies were a big treat. You couldn't just watch pop one in the DVD player at any time. You had to see it at the theater, or you had to wait for it to come out on network television. Most mommies reading this were probably born after 1984 so I'm giving a r...

I couldn't come out for National Coming Out Day. You know, because I'm not gay. I like ladies. Just not their lady parts. Well, boobs are nice. Everyone likes boobs. Anyway, I did get a pink triangle rattle, which we've dubbed the gay pride toy for Magnus. Oh and name him after his gay grandad. So I guess that was good. Anyone notice that National Coming Out Day was the same day as Columbus Day. That makes me happy. Because I think it would make him turn over in his angry whiteman grave to know that homosexuality is accepted and welcomed on his day. Because Columbus was a douche. Which reminds me of that time in Chile when my homework was about Christopher Columbus but I didn't know his name was Colon in Spanish so I wrote a sentence about the colon. Ha ha, what a douche. When you're on maternity leave, is it like vacation where if you want a beer at an odd time of day, say like 2 pm, you just have it? How about just because its Tuesday? I didn't ...

Today ChompSki, our boxer dog, was especially annoying. He just kept wanting to go outside. Our yard's not fenced. But ChompSki usually sticks close by. He stays to the back yard, does his business maybe visits the creek behind our house for some mountain spring water, then heads back to the sliding glass door. Today though, he kept going in front. He's not allowed to do that. He knows he's not allowed to do that. He normally behaves pretty well. Not today. So when I got the baby all packed up to go to a lunch date, I notice a skeleton on the driveway. I should mention that I've been watching way too much Bones. What? Its what I've been doing while breast feeding. You can't read while breast feeding. So when I see the carcass in the driveway, I think its a body. And then I realize what a spaz I am. And what a gross dog I have. No kisses for ChompSki today.

I still can't decide if I should write about this, what I should write about this, how I feel about this, how I should feel about this. But here it is. Magnus was a twin. Was. big WAS. Not for long. Maybe 5weeks. But still. Because I'd had the miscarriage, I called and made an appointment right away when I found out I was pregnant. They saw me at 5 weeks. Did and ultrasound and saw two little blobbies. I asked if it could be twins and they said yes. Could be. But not necessarily. So I came back at 7 weeks. Because they were hoping to see a heartbeat then. They did. It was Magnus's. By then there were dark spots on my ultrasound too though. They didn't like that. Doctors weren't sure what it meant. Could be another miscarriage in waiting. Could've been lots of things. So I waited another 2 weeks to go in for another ultrasound. At 9 weeks they were hoping they'd be able to tell but said it was possible they wouldn't. I counted daysho...