two birds one post

Two things.

One you may know about if you follow me on Twitter, I'm sorry to double dip into my media presence like this, but I think it's important. Why is it okay and cute for us to talk about how fat we are but if we talk about the things we like about ourselves we come off as slutty exhibitionist show offs? Yes that's red. It's important. Do we talk about our fat because we want everyone to know that we know about that roll above our waistlines? If so, that's total bunk. Obviously if I (or anyone else) notice that you might be anything less than svelte, you have noticed it too and think it's ten times worse than I (and anyone else) think it is.
Do we do it to joke about it? Like our bodies are a joke? They aren't. They look the way we look because of the way we live. Babies make those bumps. Good times around the table with those we love create those lumps. Busy schedules and fatigue keep us from smoothing them out. It's life.

Here I am spouting positive self image on Twitter and I won't even tell the Tweeters what I like about me because boys follow my stream. Boys that I don't know. Boys that I will never ever see in real life but I don't want them to know that dammit, I think I look pretty good from the neck down. And the neck up. Even now, when I feel like I could drop ten pounds. I think I look pretty damned good and the less I'm wearing the better it gets but I don't want to say it too loud because then someone might look to see what the hell I'm talking about and then I'll feel scrutinized. What is our problem as a society? What is my problem as an individual?

I know it's not just me. I have something like 200 some followers on Twitter (give or take 20, depending on the direction of the wind), but only a dozen or so replied to my plea to stop crying about your pudge and start shouting about what you're planning to shake this summer. I think my exact words were something to the tune of asking whether anyone was willing to admit that they can't wait to parade their sweet sweet asses all over town as soon as the weather breaks. So go ahead. What do you like best about you? What will you be showcasing to the masses?

Thing two.
I have lost a lot of online followers lately. And gained a lot. It evens out. Lose 20 over there in my "Follower" box, gain 15. Then 6 more the next day. Google Reader tells me that 25 people dropped my feed on Friday, then 30 more picked it up on Saturday. I'm tired of the online excuses thrown out there by the bloggers. Feedburner blows. Reader is confused. Analytics is less than anal. Twitter drops followings. (No, a Twitterer stops following because they are yawning and then blames the site so they don't hurt anyone's feelings. We're geeks, we're not jerks).

Who cares?

Seriously?

Are you on Twitter because you need 100, 1000, 10K people subscribed to your feed so you can feel accepted in society? Do you think that those people care about you, truly? Or are they following you so you follow them so everyone gets stroked?
Are you on there because you have a message to share? With strangers, with friends?
Or maybe you have a ridiculously fast and outrageous brainfeed (I'm raising my hand) and you need to dump it somewhere before your heart explodes (I'm clutching my chest)?
Are you blogging because you want a fanbase? Or a place to share and record what's going on with you?
At the end of it all, I suspect you will just be glad to have your diary all in once place. And spell checked.
Your readers won't matter when you're through with this.

Maybe Jake will find my blog in 50 years from now and be grateful that he can read about his mom. Maybe you'll have forgotten all about me by then.

I'll admit that I think it's slightly awesome that people like my blogs and my tweets, that I get comments and emails thanking me for sharing, for making other people feel normal, acceptable, lovable, capable. That's my main ambition in life, and I'm thrilled it carries over here.
I'll admit that I want to call everyone who unfollows me a buncha bitches. But you know what? So what. Just because people don't like what I have to say here or how I chose to say it doesn't mean I'm not a good person. It doesn't change who I am or how I feel or what I do about it.

There are plenty of people who love me in real life who refuse to read this blog. I respect that. It used to hurt, but I understand. Some people don't want to see this blether. They want what I offer on the surface. That's fine. Lora Lite is easier to digest.

There are plenty of people who love me online who might not really like me if we sat down together. And that's okay too.

There are a lot of people in this world who I would never follow. Not down the street, not online. That's the way the worldworks.

It pains me to see my real life and online friends have their feelings hurt by numbers. NUMBERS! Stop! It's not that deep. I love you. You love you. Isn't that enough?

Internet feeds are the new junior high. I'm convinced.
Meet me by the gym at 3 so we can walk home together.
I don't want to be alone because what if someone thinks I don't have any friends?

earth hour, will you be mine?

I've been debating whether to take part in this whole Earth Hour thing.

Will Jake be asleep?
Most likely. So the lesson would be lost. He doesn't have a nightlight. His clock is a wind-up.

Will Dave turn off the tv or internet for something so crunchy? He's a lot of things, granola isn't one of them.
He will be out playing mangames with his friends anyway. Who I am quite sure don't even know about this.

Will I be able to stay up? Entertain myself by candlelight?
Who knows. I don't sleep much these days. Do cell phones count? I have Pandora.com on there and Google Reader. I don't need no stinkin eelectreeseedee. As long as my charge holds out.

My laundry is done. My house is heated with oil and as far as I can figure out, a hamster running in a wheel. It's primitive. That's for sure. I have a million candles, both olden fashioned wick&wax and battery (rechargable, natch) operated. I'm usually done eating by 8.30. I just bought a new book, promo-ed by one of my new.local.bloggy.besties because her dad wrote it and I'm a sucker for anything new and true and within a few degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Kevin Bacon's dad spoke at a few of my Urban Studies seminars in grad school. When I shook his hand, all I could think of is that I touched a man who touched Kevin Bacon's babypenis. That knocks off at least a degree and a half. And my dad's middle name is Edmund. Srsly, how many Edmunds are there? Two. My dad and Kev's dad.
I can call him Kev because I touched his penis. Within one and a half degree.

I need a shower.

So, I'm going to do it. The Earth Hour thing, the reading local history by candle light thing. Not any other nonsense that I spoke of, including showering. Showering can't be green, no matter how much Aveda I have in there.

I made up my mind after reading my uncle's post. Oh sure. My uncle blogs. And mentions math, which always makes my ears perk. Does your uncle blog?
Yeah, so what if he does. I'll bet he isn't two degrees separated from Kev's Kock.

I hate when people start C-words with K's. It reminds me of white supremacy. But I didn't want to type the work cock here. That's not cool. This is a family blog.

Somehow.

I might even do an Earth Night. It isn't hard for me, considering that I have a mental health disorder (I love that post) that makes me frightened of anything that plugs into the wall. Which reminds me, I think I need a new coffee pot because mine has some gunk in it and what if that gunk isn't totally dried out and it gets in the innerworkings of the maker and when I push "on" because I have an addiction the electricity shoots through my 130+ year old walls and into the machine and out of the button and into my finger which is damp from filling the pot and into my body and up through to my heart and I die?

It can totally happen. My other uncle is an electrician. He heard that it happened to a friend of a cousin of a coworker's wife and told me that theoretically, yes, absolutely.

Addiction kills.

q&a

This probably isn't really interesting to any of you, but it is fun to do so I'm sharing just in case you would like to do it with your kid.

Cut and paste these questions and ask, you have to put the first answer your child says...

1. What is something I always say to you? "give me a kiss" and "we won't watch TV right now".

2. What makes me happy? 'when you hug me" (so I did and he said "you make my heart feel better".)

3. What makes me sad? "when you can't give me a hug"

4. How do I make you laugh? if I could type the face and noise he made, you'd laugh too. Then he he sang the Fillet O' Fish commercial and I lost it.

5. What was I like as a child? she got a baby bottle and a pacifier and she was good. (I wasn't good, according to reports from my mom and I know I didn't have a pacifier)

6. How old am I? "33 in august and we'll all have threes. i'm three, you'll have 33 and daddy's 33 too" (He also knows my birthdate. I drill birthdays into this kid's head because they are so important)

7. How tall am I? "bigger and bigger like this" (hands outstretched)

8. What is my favorite thing to do? "clean up your stuff"

9. What do I do when you're not around? "work"

10. If I become famous, what will it be for? "cutting with scissors and blowing bubbles"

11. What am I really good at? "putting my toys away"

12. What am I not very good at? "pushing that button" (the 'windows' key on the laptop, which he is forbidden to touch)

13. What do I do for a job? "staple and stack"

14. What is my favorite food? "broccoli and cheese" (that's his)

15. What makes you proud of me? "when you poop in the potty" (me too)

16. If I were a cartoon character, who would I be? sponge bob and daddy would be patrick and lauren can be squidward (sorry Lauren, which ever of the two Lauren's he may have meant.)

17. What do we do together? "play and play" (this is his default answer whenever you ask him what he did during the day)

18. How are we the same? "we both have brown bears"

19. How are we different? "our brown bears are different"

20. How do you know I love you? "when you put my ABC blanket on me"

21. What do I like most about your dad? "he's a brown bear"

22. Where is my favorite place to go? "the play and touch and look museum" (It's not, because of all the touching and children involved. It makes my stomach lurch)

gold

There was a time in my life when I could count my girlfriends on one hand. Less than that. I couldn't stand the drama, the cat fights, the competition, the backstabbetyness. The full frontal assaults. It was too much. Boys were easier. And they didn't steal your shirts.

For the most part.

The tables have turned. Now it's the boys that are a drag. Most of them are totally kittywhipped, which blows. They used to be fun. Now they can't do anything without asking. 35 is the new 5. Mother May I?

What happened? Break free, boys. Dave and I were just talking about you the other day. I asked him if he's noticed it. He did. I asked him if I keep him down. He said no. I hope he didn't just say that so I wouldn't ground him and make him clean out the basement.

Anyway. The tables have turned.

I spend most Wednesday nights with my best localgirls. They spend most Wednesday nights with me. We eat and drink and talk about things we aren't supposed to talk about. That we aren't supposed to admit out loud. Things that make us weak. Scared. Happy. Horny. Pretty. Fat. Drunk. Calm. Silly. Straight. Old. Young. Us.

I spent this past Wednesday night with some of the girls who saw me through my Quarter Life Crisis. And they still answer my calls. Did you know me when I was 25? I was awesome. Just ask me.
Totally put together with focused direction and blinding sobriety.
You could really tell that by looking at me.
Me with my tank tops and platform shoes and Molly Ringwald hair and blue eye makeup.
I wouldn't give those days back. They were the second best days of my life.
We girls got each other through the rocky part of our twenties and now we are grownups. We are wives, mothers, educated, careered, committed, responsiblesque. And now we get to see each other through these times. We can laugh about this. We can cry. We can talk about it. We don't have to whisper. We don't have to lift anything up or suck anything in to feel good enough. We can Just. Be.

We earned it.

I spent Thursday afternoon at one of the Broad Street McDonalds with someone who I have known for 28 years. That is freakishly long. When we see each other the years fall away and we know how to put ourselves in a bubble and talk obnoxiously fast at the same time as the other and still hear every word spoken. We can cover a decade in ten minutes. A lifetime over frenchfries. And not leave anything out. It's always been that way, ever since the playground. Our lives are very different, but our experiences aren't and that's what counts.

Through all this I've learned there is something that runs through all of us. Something that is part of something huge. Something we all share. Something we won't share. Something that is so precious that we hide it, we steal it, we cherish it, we despise it. We seek it, we flee it. It hurts. It heals. It's yours it's mine it's ours it's nobody's. I'm not sure what it is, but I know what it feels like. It is bigger than me but small enough to fit inside my heart. My fist. My embrace. My voice.

It's motherhood. It's sisterhood. It's womanhood.
It's our lifeblood. It's a deathshroud.
It's the secret of everything.
It's why we are here.
Why we were born this way, with innie privates rather than outie.
I'm convinced.

I could end this blog right now.
Today.
I have figured out something huge that I've been struggling with for years through thinking and writing and sharing and asking but now that it's all straight in my head, I can't find the words to explain what it was that I was looking for in the first place. I think that means I win.
Today.

But it is 11.55 at night, so who knows what tomorrow will bring so I'll be back. Dragging us through 5000 word posts full of nonsense and madness and an order that makes sense in my head but not so much in words while I tackle something else.

Something bigger, something smaller, something different.

always on the scene

One of the perks of blogging is rubbing shoulders with famous people (and unloading all of the neurological misfirings that happen every minute on the minute inside my brain on the general public.)

Jake is going to freak when he finds out that I've been chatting it up with Firefighter Dayna this week. Sometimes he makes me pretend I'm Firefighter Dayna and he gets to be Fireman Sam and Tyler the Cat can make believe that she is SparklesnSpanner- because he doesn't really get that Sparkles and Spanner are two different dogs- when she isn't Rosa the Cat.

When I was in grade school, fire safety was drilled into our heads in a way that made it seem that it was certainly going to be needed because our houses were surely going to burn down because our parents burned candles and smoked in bed and if we didn't have fire evacuation maps and flashlights and a damp washcloth under our pillows and a meeting place outdoors and rolled up ladders in every 2nd story window our families would perish in the horrible inferno and it would be our fault. Because we were six year old Junior Fire Rescue Buddies and that was our job.
I remember the teacher telling us that it was our duty to keep our families safe and ask our dads to put windows in our bedroom doors so we could see if there was a fire in the hallway and draw maps of escape routes and test the smoke detectors every month because our moms and dads were going to burn the house down with their addiction and inability to spot faulty wiring. That's too much pressure on a little kid. I put socks on my doorknob because I didn't want my hand to melt if my house was on fire and I didn't know it and the metal got hot. I still don't open doors without feeling them first.

The more I blog, the more I realize my problems began at a very early age...

Jake is totally cool with fire safety. He isn't afraid of matches and lighters and candles and the fireplace, but he respects them. When I was a kid, if I came across a pack of matches I would freeze and scream for my mother to come get them. Jake brings them to me and asks me to put them up where he can't reach them. He knows stop, drop, and roll. He knows to stay low. He knows what smoke alarms and escape maps are but doesn't feel personally responsible for them. I owe it all to Dayna, because lordknows I haven't brought it up with Jake. I'm still to traumatized by all of it to even know where to begin.


So thank you, Dayna. I'm sorry I may have kinda geeked out a little bit when you emailed me. It's just that I'm a fan and I didn't know what to do and I see you on Sprout every day and I'm so appreciative that my kid doesn't have the same fire hangups that I do and it is all thanks to you.

And television.

Moral of the story: children's programming is good for kids, especially if they live in my house.

Author's note: I actually don't love for my kid to watch Fireman Sam because he always wants to do what bad old Norman does. Life imitating art is the pits. But, Jake loves the show so much that I let him, and then we talk about how Norman isn't cool and firefighters are our friends. It's a good compromise.

take it

Jake really wanted a robot cake for his birthday. But there are no robot cakes in 2009. Robot cakes are so twenty years ago.

I figured we would get a plain cake and I would make a robot on there. I'm crafty. Ish. I've been practicing robots for a month.

Well, so we may have forgotten the cake in the car for five or six hours on Saturday afternoon while we were setting up the party. And it may have been really sunny outside. And the (goofy) icing balloons sorta slid off the cake, taking most of the decorative edging with it. No big loss. We didn't want them on there anyway, it's just that ShopRite didn't have any non-flowery plain cakes in stock. Flowery robot cakes are kinda, well, you know, Rosie. I don't think that's what the boy had in mind.

I hope.

Enter Chips Ahoy.

And enter Jake, who couldn't bear to let his mother draw the robot when he "kando it, pleeeeassse?"

I have to say this is the best damn robot cookie balloon cake I've ever seen in my whole life.

hard

I am not a fan of co-sleeping. The "family bed". But I always wonder if it is humanistically natural for the whole damn fam to sleep in one spot. Probably, right? We are social animals after all.

It isn't like cavemen had Serta Pillowtops soft enough to drown their babies, or down comforters that were so light and fluffy that they could float over and adhere to little noses. Or Ambien. Or weight/alcohol/drug problems. Or one of the other millions of reasons that The Man tells us not to put baby in bed with us. They just hunkered together for warmth and protection and slept.

During the newborn months, I never felt like I could have (godforbid) saved Jake from choking or whatever faster if he was in my bed with me than I could if he was in the bassinet right next to me. As for nursing, it was just as easy to lift and latch that kid as it was to roll over and position. Plus I was sleeping better because I wasn't worried about crushing my baby with my boob that was twice as big as his torso. If there were gasping sounds or a fire alarm or this or that or the other, Jake was right next to me, but in his own little sleeping space. Safe from harm. I could get to him in two seconds.

Not that it didn't kill me to be six inches from that kid.

I thought I had it bad then.

Boy was I wrong.

It really pains me now not to sleep next to Jake. It really slays Jake not to sleep next to me. He cries and begs, I deny and try not to let the lump come out of my throat and through my tear ducts.
I love that kid so much and I miss holding him for hours and hours each day and I feel like if I could just curl up with him every night my life would be so much happier and he would be so much more pleasant and moon beams would dance on our cheeks and a rainbow would appear each morning to wake us and bluebirds would sing on my sill and baby deer would take their first wobbly steps down my hallway on their way to get a drink out of the toilet.

But supposedly it's not very mentally/physically/emotionally healthy for anyone to pile up into the big bed, according to Big American Standards.
Plus I like my own space. I'm sure I'd be ready to give him the boot by 1am each night when he had is foot in my windpipe and his sticky hand tangled in my hair.

I think it's weird that we get our own beds all through childhood and then you are expected to share them when you meet someone special. I think it's weird that we get our own rooms our whole lives, then when we move in with someone, we have to share. That's disgusting and unfair. But that's not the point. Or maybe it is. Maybe we aren't supposed to have so much personal space all the time. Maybe we should be near our people. Our pack. Our pride.

Am I really ruining Jake for life if I fall asleep with him at night? Probably not. I'm sure he will want me out Out OUT! of that room soon enough. I doubt he will need me to come into his dorm room and hold him "just five minutes more".

Am I ruining myself? More likely.

In those squishy warm warm classes that I take for professional development (teaching teachers how to teach parents how to parent, essentially. There are about 1000 hours of parenting/child development classes available to us. Which has saved my hide more than once) we learn to caution caregivers to be sure that they aren't filling a missing void in their lives by forcing affection on their children or bribing their children to be close to them.
Gah, I don't want to be that parent but I see how easily it can happen. I don't want to fill that elusive hole in my heart with my child's presence. It isn't his responsibility to make me feel better. It's my responsibility to get better so I can be sure that I am there to help patch his holes. To be a better mom. To enjoy time with him, rather than use time with him.
I don't want to obsess over the horror stories I hear each day and try to repair my soul by holding Jake tight against me while he sleeps. That's creepy.

Effective, but creepy.

So even though it is hard for us both sometimes, bedtime is still amazing. And most nights I make it out of there before one or both of us falls asleep in his tiny little toddler bed that seems to be shrinking by the day. And I can go in there and check on him and touch his face and cover his toes whenever I want during the night. And Jake will likely grow up to not be a serial killer who victimizes people who remind him of mommy. I might do some growing up of my own.

And everyone will be happy and not grossed out by our wacky family.

honest scrap

Emma from ...because I like waffles and blethers awarded me the honest scrap award! Emma is an Oxford Scholar, yes that Oxford, so everything she does is ten times better and more intellectually stimulating than everything we do over here in America. I'm very jealous of her and I want to have a beer with her one day. Over there, not over here. American beer is piss.

"The Honest Scrap award comes with a caveat or 2. Firstly you have to tell your readers 10 things about you they may not know, but that are true. Secondly you have to tag 10 people with the award."

Ten people.

Oh man. I have tagged a ton of people lately, and last time I asked someone to open up a little bit on the blog I got my head chewed off because OMG her mother reads and what if her mom knew what was REALLY going on in her life? That is horrifying. I totally understand.

I'm still a little skittish about asking people to do something like this. So I am going to crap out on the tagging and ask everyone who wants to do it to put their URL in the comments here so we can all find you and your ten deepest secrets. And if you didn't do the 25 things list, I urge you to do this one. Oh, and if you usually talk about your kids or your work or whatever on your blog, please do this. I want to know about you. Your kid is cute and all, but come on.

Ten things.

1 I never blog drunk

2 I'm a liar

3 I'm mostly in the bag now. I'm sorry, but it has to be this way because I have zero creativity lately and I'm a little amped up right now so this is really best for us all.

4 I am very regimented. It's how I give myself some sort of semblance of sanity in the midst of the madness. For example, I wash my hair on Wednesdays and Saturdays and I only clip my nails on the 1st and 15th of each month.

5 Which reminds me that I'm due for new socks and underwear. I buy them on the first day of each new season and I didn't make it out of the house this weekend because of Jake's birthday party.

6 Five more things about me. Isn't it funny how number 6 brings 5 more things but 10 minus 6 is only 4? That totally blew my mind in the second grade and gave me a complex that I would never understand math so I made it my lifelong mission to master the subject. My grandfather had a Masters Degree in Mathematics and my great grandfather his Doctorate. It's in my genes. I'm phenomenal at advanced math but still haven't grasped simple arithmetic.

I learned to spell arithmetic in kindergarten using the following mnemonic sequence: A Rat In Tom's House May Eat Tom's Ice Cream. It worked so well that I use them for everything. Even grocery lists.

7 When I was little I wanted to grow up so I could wear spandex and crimp my hair and chew bubblegum. I've never really done any of that. I find public gum chewing an abomination. But I like to keep a half a stick under my tongue for fresh breathing. Crimpers and spandex were out by the time I aged into them.

8 In middle school, I used to pretend I rode horses so the richgirls would like me.

9 I don't care much for rich people any more. Let me rephrase. I don't care much for people who flaunt their wealth. Especially if they are using it to perpetuate themselves rather than society. (Please give a little of what you have. It means the world to those that have not. Seriously, $5 buys more than a latte. Believe it or not. And, not all poor people are drug addicts. Surprise!)

10 All day long I thought about those little kids in the Montana plane crash and I couldn't get the image out of my mind of being on that plane and holding Jake on the way down and apologizing to him that I couldn't keep him safe, even though I promise him every day that I will always do my best to keep him safe.

thus, the drinking...

doctor, doctor. doctor, doctor

Today was Jake's big 3 year doctor's appointment. He was astoundingly well-behaved, unlike his 2 year check. I don't remember what he did exactly to boil my blood, but I remember him being terrible. To the point that there was probably a note in his chart about what a pain this kid can be.

The measured him by standing him up against a wall, which is different. He came in at 37.5 inches, which around the 50th percentile for height of 36 month old children. That's quite a jump down from the 70th-ish, where he was last year, but the nurse said if we laid him down to measure him he would be around an inch taller. Maybe more. But they don't lie them down at 3 years old there so whatever. It was crazycute to see him in his unders standing against the wall like a soldier, trying not to giggle and looking over at me out of the corner of his eye. I've never understood why people take pics of their kids at the doctors, but I wish I had a shot of that.
He stood on a scale like a grown up, and weighed 30 pounds, putting him in the 30th-ish percentile for weight. A huge jump for a baby who was born below the 5th. A huge jump because he is finally considered to be "thriving". They don't have to report me to the Department of Health as a mother who can't grow her baby.

Did you know that? That Jake was a Failure to Thrive baby? The only thing that kept me from being reported to the authorities was that he was ridiculously tall for his age for so long. Kids aren't tall if they aren't fed. I actually laughed at the doctor who warned me about being reported. I know exactly who my caseworker would be. I used to be her boss and we are still total bff. Bring it. We'll have our meetings at the bar, sans baby.

It was nice to take home a receipt from the doctor that wasn't marked FtT in red letters at the top. Proof that I'm doing something right. Jake has always eaten so well that it never worried me past the third or fourth month of his life anyway and the doctors were all very sweet about it after the first six months.

Unfortunately, the doctor couldn't find one of Jake's testicles, so it is back to the Urologist next Monday. She said it just seemed gone. All the tubes and tissue felt normal, but there was only one ball down there. She couldn't feel it up in his guts either. Great. It was there a year ago. Where the hell could it be? Under the car? On the roof? Where the hell do balls go?

It's upsetting because the doctor said the word surgery. I don't want to go through another nut cut for this kid. It's upsetting because no one wants one ball. It might be socially and emotionally awkward for him (although I think you can get an implant), and it poses a health issue. Kids with this problem suffer from testicular cancer at an increased rate. 1 in 100 if there are no problems post surgery. I don't even want to know what the chances are if there are problems.

I'm so over reproductive cancer. It's like a plague upon my household. Potentially. Hopefully not. I'm not going to freak unless I have to. The kid is 3, he has been well-monitored, and if something is wrong it is very early and I'm sure something can be done.

It isn't like the doctor couldn't find his liver. Or brain. Or left eye.

And maybe if he does only have one he will be a little embarrassed about it and he'll keep it in his pants until he is 40 and I will never have to worry about unplanned pregnancies and STDs and crazybitches stalking my little boy or breaking his heart.

And we will live together in an old motel out West, just the two of us with our 12 cabins and Jake can take up taxidermy.

Or maybe I'll let him get implants when he is 18. You know, a graduation present. Isn't that what I hear the kiddies are getting these days?

shortbus

So, it turns out that there is this thing called Blogher, which is more than just an ad box on people's pages. Who knew?

Not me.

I thought it was just something like Google Ads, not something like Woodstock. Or Jonestown. Or insert-the-name-of-somewhere-a-bunch-of-like-minded-people-flock here. It's like a movement. There is a convention in Chicago this year where I'm sure all the ladies will be making out and having pillow fights. Or burning bras and making progress on big issues. Or a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B.

When people mention Blogher on their blogs I just skim over the post because I thought it was about monetizing and I make zero cash by writing on principal. I don't want to sell out to the man, man. Not yet anyway.

I'm terrible at blog politics.

I like to respond to people's comments when they leave them. If you took the time to read what I had to say and then take more time to say something about it, I think you deserve a little love back.
I know not everyone subscribes to this idea, but I like a little back and forth with you people. It's why I do all this writing 5+ times a week. It's how I get to know how/who you really are.

It's how I get to know how/who I really am.

Also, in a related area? I LOVE when you talk about yourself in the comments. I say what I have to say about me, then you say what you have to say about what I had to say about me about you. Bloggers tend to be a little egocentric, so own it!
It makes me feel important and cherished and normal if you can tell me a story very similar to the one I just told you. I was reading a blog today where the blogger whined that his comments were full of other people talking about their own problems instead of talking about his. Um, it's called empathy, dude.
I am sad when commenters don't have an email address attached to their profile because it's hard to reply.

I love to Follow the blogs that I follow. I'm sad when people using blogger don't have a Follow box. I love when my followers follow me. It makes me feel shiny inside. Go ahead, do it. Remember when I put up the warning about if you followed someone your Gmail profile would show? That's old news. Google fixed that right away.

I love to put the blogs I follow on my Google Reader. Did you know you can find out how many people have you on their reader? Click "Browse for Stuff" on the left. Then on the "Browse" tab up top. Then type your blog name into "Search by Keyword" and then click on "Search for Feeds". (it's a little wonky now, don't freak if it tells you that you don't have a feed)
I feel like that feature should be easier to use. Bloggers need instant gratification. If we didn't need to know how many people loved us our comments would be closed, Site Meter would be out of business, and we would all write real books that people would read and never tell us how they felt about.
Dave tells me that we all stroke each other's cocks all the time with comments and awards and such and he thinks it's annoying. He's right about the stroking all the time part but I kinda like getting my cock stroked on a regular basis. That doesn't annoy me at all.

And what are you crazy people using Twitter for these days? I feel like the salesmen are taking over and there is no way in hells that I am following someone trying to pitch me something that I have zero use for. I use it as a dumping ground for things that my brain tells itself when there is no one around that I feel comfortable with sharing the things that my brain tells itself. Some people use it to tell us what they are eating for lunch. I get angry because I don't get a chance to eat lunch too often. I'm busy doing this. Or something jobby.

I'm taking weekends off from the computer and I'm loving it. Even though I walk around all the time thinking about how great it would be to tell the world what I do on a Saturday, the idea is gone by Monday and I just move on.

When's the last time you spent two full days away from your computer? It's liberating. But in all fairness, I have a Blackberry so it's not like I'm internet-free.

That's it. That's all I know about. I don't know how I made it this far so far. Seriously, I don't even know how to turn my work computer on or off. I just leave it on. Tech support LOVES me.

quitter

I just quit the Philly Moms blog, it just wasn't for me.

I kinda thought that Philly Moms would be a blog about oh, I don't know, Momming in Philly. It isn't, really. I thought it would be more of a secret society of mom's trying to raise their kids in an urban, urbane, innercity, nittygritty setting and all the unique and wonderful and awful challenges that we face. Could I have brought that there? Absolutely. I could have done what ever I wanted. But I already do that over here. And I think I can do it better here, on my own terms and in my own language.

I appreciate the practice of more direct and less personal writing that Philly Moms afforded me. I am sorta a shoot from the hip kind of girl, and Philly Moms forced me to slow down and realize that people aren't there because they know and love me and my nutsiness like they are over here at Jakezilla. People are there for a whole different kind of experience. I took a lot from that experience. I will continue to do so. But as a reader instead of a contributor.

I'm such a quitter. But I'm okay with that. Quitting it truthfully felt better than being accepted to write for it. Thirty two and a half years have brought me to the realization that I can't do everything, and as long as I try something with all my heart I can make a decision to either keep at it or stop doing it, which ever gives me greater pleasure in life.

Spouting a bunch of nonsense here? Keep at it.
Philly Moms? It was good while it lasted but now it's time to stop and try my hand at something else.

Now to decide what that something else is...

~~*~*~~

ps- here is my bio from Philly Moms. Maybe you'll learn something about me.

Lora lives in South Philadelphia with her kid, her cat, and her husband. She moved to the area in 1994 to enroll at West Chester University, and relocated into the city in 1999 to attend graduate school at Temple University. Lora works full-time at a non-profit public health organization. She transferred from social work to the parenting professional field shortly after the birth of her son, Jacob, in hopes that she would learn what the heck she was supposed to do with the boy so she wouldn’t screw him up.

Lora will be the first to tell you that she was shocked at how motherhood brought this busy little city girl lifestyle to a grinding standstill. Now that her son is a toddler, things are starting to fall into place a bit and she is figuring out how to make a new kind of "normal" for herself and family. She blogs about this (and just about everything else) at Jakezilla, and she posts pictures of all the crazy things she sees around Philly at Oh, the Urbanity!

happy birthday jake!

Three years old today. Sometimes I don't know how he is already three, sometimes I don't know how he is only three.

There is not much baby left in that little boy. Sometimes he pretends, all curled in my lap with his thumb in his mouth. He never sucked his thumb when he was a baby. He knows that, but he doesn't care. At least once a day he asks me about his babyhood, or tells me "when i was a baby i usedta...". Then he will tell me about when I was a baby and what I usedta do when his Mimi took care of me. The stories he tells about us when we were babies are exactly the same. He gets a kick out of the fact that everyone used to be a baby and we all used to be the same. When he talks about his Mimi to me, he calls her "your mom". I think that's wildly hilarious. "i'm gonna hang out with your mom". "i hafta talk to your mom, can you call mimi?"

He loves the fact that he will be big someday. He tells me that he will take care of me when he gets big and I get old because "that's the way the worldwerks". He loves to tell me all about how the worldwerks.

Jake has never been one to ask "why?" more than once or twice. When I get tired of making up/telling reasons why, I tell him that "it's just the way the world works" and he is okay with that. Then he tells me that the world spins around and makes day and night and seasons and time go by. Then he asks what time it is. Then he asks me if it is bed time and if he can just have "five more minutes".

I love bedtime. On so many levels. Bedtime means cuddles and deep thoughts and major questions and quiet. I love quiet. I love the way I love Jacob after he falls asleep.

Every now and then I ask Jake if he has any questions for me. I feel like it is good practice for ten years from now when he will. If he gets comfortable asking me questions now, maybe he will be then, too. Sometimes I ask Jake questions that make him a bit squirmy. I feel like it is good practice for me.
Jake always has questions for me. He says "why do's...". I want to correct him, but "why do's" is somewhat adorable. He wants to know things like why do's he likes some foods but not others, why do's he likes red so much, why do's we get big, why do's some animals be nice to people but others aren't.

Jake loves carrots and pizza, ham and broccoli, chicken and french fries, granola and "milkshakes". He craves beans & rice and nuts & raisins- he doesn't want them all the time but when he does, watch out. We had cupcakes for breakfast this morning, but he didn't even eat half of it. He turned down a bowl of ice cream last night. He isn't so much into the sweet stuff.

I blew up a couple dozen red balloons and put them all over his room in the middle of the night last night. Jake woke up around 1 to pee, and told me that "someone put some balloons in his room and it is sorta messy". He was happier about it this morning. There were presents at breakfast too. Candyland and Chutes and Ladders, a red umbrella, a red backpack, a 96er box of Crayolas. All wrapped in red. Red red red. Everything should be red. I'm assuming it is because McQueen is red. And McQueen is King. McQueen is God. McQueen McQueen McQueen.

McQueen McQueen McQueen. McQueen McQueen McQueen. McQueen McQueen McQueen. McQueen McQueen McQueen.

McQueen McQueen.

McQueen.

Ka chow.

I let Jake take his tricycle outdoors for the first time the other day. He loved it. He didn't use his pedals. He held my hand almost the whole way around the block "to be safe". Jake loves to be safe. He wants me with him all the time, "to keep him safe". He thinks a glass of water by his bed keeps him safe. He thinks that he can't keep Bear and Bluebunny safe at night unless his "door is open just a little tiny bit". He freaks about his carseat buckle. Won't ride his new bigboybike without a helmet (which he doesn't have, but will soon). Is very very careful to the point of annoying on the stairs. Jake is the Ralph Nader of toddlerdom. Maybe he will pick up the platform someday.

Have you ever heard Jake sing? I swear he knows every word to every song he's ever heard. I love watching him sing more than anything. His mouth is so exaggerated when he enunciates every syllable of every word.

Jake can write the letter J. Sometimes he can do an A. He can usually make a C. O is easy. B is impossible.

Don't call Jake, Jake. Unless you have special privileges with him or he isn't really paying attention. He prefers Jacob. I prefer Jake. I call him Jacob most of the time. Jacob is a weird word. It's weird to say and it's weird to look at. I like to look at it and think about what it would sound like with a short a and a soft c and a long o. What people who don't speak English might see. zzhacksewbah. Weird.

Jake is weird. Okay, he is different. He is. He is different from the other kids and I'm proud of that and I'm scared of that. Every mommy thinks their baby is supersmart and freaking spectacular. Mine is. I don't know what to do about it. I need a real adult to come in my house and tell me what to do. He remembers everything. It's creepy. He knows how to do things that I didn't know how to do until I was in grade school (snapping fingers, knowing about my innards, finding myself on a globe, weekdays, months, and seasons AND how they all happen, counting to 100, and such). He wants to learn how to count money and tell time, so I'll teach him.
He just gets things. We'll see where that gets him.

I'll ask him what he wants to be when he grows up tonight. He thinks everyone either builds things or "staples and stacks" when they go to work.

So, three. Wow. Everyone is still breathing three years into all this. There were some times there when I was a little short of breath, but I think I'm okay now. And Jake is doing great, and that's all that really matters at the end of the day.

scrapbooking

I want to thank all of you who have suggested that I enter Jake's pictures into contests and such. It fills my cup with joy to know that I'm not the only one in the world who thinks he is one of the Top 100 Most Beautiful Boychildren in the Whole Wide World.

But I haven't entered him anywhere.

Long time readers and my real life PIK (people I know) might know that back in the olden days I used to work with sex offenders. Good times. It was hard, I guess, sure. But I felt like my work might save one child from being victimized and that let me sleep better at night than did my weekend job of Pool Attending at the Holiday Inn.

Part of my job was to do home searches. We would flip the house upside down looking for porn and drugs and weapons. We always found it, despite those being pre-internet times.

Boatloads of kiddie porn was accessible before the internet?, you ask. Of course it did. Sadly though, more of it was homemade.

These guys made their own pornrags. Most of them would cut pictures of little kids out of the Sears catalogues and Kmart ads and such and paste them into notebooks or put them behind that clear film in those albums with the sticky stuff that turns yellow.
Pampers had little kids running around in no more than a diaper on the packages.
Hanes and Fruit of the Loom showed children having a great time in their underpants on the bag.
Lots of magazine ads showed cute babies running around, giggly and naked. Parenting and women's magazines were a wealth of peachy little asses and they probably only cost $2.50 at the time.
Children's clothing ads showed bathing suit ads, and close ups of kids' faces staring longingly into the camera.
One man took a bunch of GapKids posters out of the dumpster behind the store and hung them on his ceiling. Another had one of those huge Kodak posters that you see above the counter at drugstore photolabs. He cut the mouth out of a little girl's picture and used it as a fuckhole. And told us all about it when we asked.

I could go on, but then I would be talking about the people who volunteer at their church's VBS and Sunday school to take and develop pictures of the kids that attend and don't tell the pastor that they kept the doubles. Because no one questions a religious man who seems like he is helping. Especially in the hood where there is a huge lack of male rolemodels. Or the guy who has a zoom lens at the public pool. Or the camp counselor at the Y who didn't mind making sure that the boys behaved in the locker room. See, he was the only male counselor there so there was no one else to monitor the locker rooms. Or what goes on in them. He had this little point and shoot that didn't need flash. Or the guys who only dated women with children who fit a certain "type", or the uncles, fathers, or how about WOMEN who offended. That's a whole nother issue. I could go on, but those kind of guys aren't the kind that I'm talking about.

So, I don't want Jake's picture out there for someone to jerk off into. Do I have his pictures online? Yes. Can you lift them right off my blog and put them on your computer? Yes. Do I let him out of the house? Yes.

I don't want to be over paranoid, and I don't think I am. I just have little hang ups about things like that. When you've seen a child's picture with a pasty organic substance flung across it, your life changes forever.

I would LOVE to win a $10K bond that I can use to open an account for Jake's education. I would LOVE for other people to think my kid was so cute that they would pay me to take his picture (hughheffnerlarryflint). I would LOVE for my kid to be a child star (dannybonaducedrewbarrymore). Or, well, maybe not.

If Jake needs FAFSA to pay for college, so be it. I had to and even though I think it sucks that Sallie Mae owns me, I'm no less of a person. I'd rather have a student loan than a creepy adult fanbase.

reason 463s why you should never talk to me if you see me in the street

Tomorrow is my mom's birthday. My mom's FIFTY-FIFTH birthday.

Want to know something really neat that amazes me all the time about my mom? There was a time when half of my son was living inside of her. I'm guessing the awesome half. Weird, right?

When a mommy loves a daddy very much and they do the tickletickle laydown, a tiny babyseed gets planted into the mommy's tum-tum. If that baby is a little girl, all of her seedeggs develop inside of her tum-tum while she is still growing inside of her mommy.

33 years ago, that little baby girl was me, and one of my tiny little eggs was Jake.

Neat, right?

It's one of the reasons I cried when I found out that Jake was a boy.
Because I would never carry his children.

heh heh hellfire

I asked Jake if he knew what Easter was the other day.

He said "yeah, it's right here" while wiggling his butt in my general direction.
I said "no Jake, Easter"
He said " no mom, keister. kah kah K. kah kah keister. it's a K word"

My son is so smart.

Remember this is the same child who thinks that Jesus Christ is a curse word.

And he thinks that the Geico cavemen are Jesus, but he thinks we aren't allowed to say Jesus so we just say "that guy with a bad word for a name".

If my house burns to the ground tonight, we are all going straight to hell.

Just kidding. I don't believe in hell. I think we suffer enough up here on earth for our wrongdoings and when we are done suffering we get to be at peace. Beware the people dying slow painful deaths. They probably did something rotten at some point.
But if there was such a place, I'd be going there and taking my whole family with me.

We would have a great time.

We are more of warm weather people anyway. Dave could sleep by the lake (of brimstone) and I'd let Jake bring his little purple shovel and yellow bucket that he loves so much and after being sick for 6 weeks I'm looking pretty slim so I can wear a bikini again. My ribs are visibly present and you can even see my abs when I cough.

I spent a few minutes coughing naked this morning in the mirror and it did wonders for my self esteem.

I feel like I can take on the world right now.

because it isn't likely to happen in real life...

This is the famous "Ten Questions" as popularized by James Lipton on "Inside the Actor's Studio," originated by French television personality Bernard Pivot, after the Proust Questionnaire.

1. What is your favorite word? Love
Like in "true love" not like in "I love tacos". I do love tacos, but I could live without them. I'm talking about the kind of love that if I didn't have it in my life I would absolutely die. Or want to.

2. What is your least favorite word? can't.
Hearing people say "can't" makes me sad. When Jake says it my heart breaks because he feels that he is incapable of doing something and I can see the frustration and sadness and disappointment on his face. When adults say it, I wonder what is going on in their lives that they just can't bear to take one more thing on or what makes them think they are not able to do something.
Of course there are exceptions to this, but "can't" is so much more powerful than it looks from the outside.

3. What turns you on? zest.
Zest in life, zest in food, zest in the bedsheets, zest everywhere in everything. It's just so damned exhilarating.

4. What turns you off? jerkiness and sitting still.
I hate jerks. I hate when people sit still.
I hate when I'm a jerk. I hate when I sit still.
We should all stop being jerks and get off our arses and do something.

5. What sound do you love? here is where I am supposed to say my baby's laugh, which is amazing, but there is just something about the sound of the birds and the church bells and the ice cream trucks floating through an open window on a nice afternoon.
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine. Blowing through the jasmine in my mind.
Oh, but do you know what else I love? When you are taking a walk on a nice evening and hearing other people eating dinner inside their house through their open windows. The clanging of the oneida on the corelle, the laughter, the please-can-you-pass-the's, the crack of a beer, maybe the clatter (and smell) of the grill out back. Bonus points if dad has the baseball game on.

6. What sound do you hate? whining.

7. What is your favorite curse word? emmer effer
It's funny. And functional. And less vulgar than what it stands for. Because really, how many people are actually going to eff their emm? That is seriously disgusting. Even the really bad guys don't do that.

8. What profession other than yours would you like to attempt? I would like to be one of those Outward Bound counselors. Dragging people through the untamed wilderness in the name of cohesiveness and maturation sounds very rewarding. I would get all stinky and dirty and mosquito bitten and I would love it. For about a year and a half. And then I would be totally over it and I would transfer over to the Forest Ranger unit.

9. What profession would you not like to do? Farmer.
Early mornings, never making any real cash, killing your pets, touching unwashed vegetables all day, taking care of sick animals and plants and sending them off to be eaten by unsuspecting families who never know that the cows have tumors and ulcers cut out of their sides before their parts are wrapped up in those pink plastic trays and set into the grocer's fridge or that the grains they are eating are teeming with parasitic insects. I don't want to know what goes into the making of my food.

10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gate?
Thank you.

Just like Heather said, I love this part of the show, I always love to hear what sound people love & hate, and what they think God will say to them when they arrive in heaven. I tag everyone who reads this and blogs.

I heard once that James Lipton was a pimp in France. Let me go Snopes that. All signs point to yes. Weird. I wonder if he was a bitchslapper pimp or an all around nice guy that just happened to sell vagina for some pocket change. I would not like to be a pimp. That would be a little bit better than being a farmer, but hardly. I wonder if his favorite sound was the gentle whisper of dollar bills on a nightstand.

cohort

I had lunch with a fellow Philly Moms blogger last week.

Lunch with bloggers are like blind dates.

The lady at the next table over was totally eavesdropping on our conversation, and I had a hard time with it all because both my ears were plugged up with the plague and I didn't know if I was whispering or shouting, and I wasn't sure how loudly Grace was talking either but we were trying to get out all the awkwardness in the first five minutes of seeing one another because we are total BFFs online and the lady at table two LOVED it. I think she thought we were lesbian hopefuls.

It was like when we were little kids and we would have underwater teaparties in the pool. Did you guys do that? You sit on the bottom of a pool and pretend to talk and drink tea and whoever could stay underwater longest would win the teaparty because back in the 80s there weren't a lot of sports for girls so we had to make competition with what we were given. Extra points if you could understand what the other person said underwater.

Anyway, the reason why I don't meet up with many bloggers in real life is because I'm so weirded out by what they might think about me.

Grace thought I would be taller.
And louder.

I thought she would be shorter, and quieter. Because I'm terribly stereotypical and I think all Asians are tiny and silent. And she didn't take her shoes off at the front door. And she didn't pour me any tea. Or do my nails. Kidding about everything after the shorter and quieter comment.

I'm only 5'7". Maybe 5'6". I think I'm shrinking, which is actually normal for rheumatics. I am a quiet person when out in public. I'm much more outspoken while writing than I am in conversations unless I'm in the house. Then I go on and on and on about everything and nothing all at once and I'm usually able to pretend to or actually offend someone, but it is all in good fun and my friends know it and I think they sort of love that about me. At least that's what they tell me. I'm not afraid to talk about anything when I'm comfortable and there is a lot that I really love to talk about in real words that I would never talk about here.

Personal and family stuff. And religions. And sex. And drugs. And rock. And roll. And how all that used to fit into what my life was like before I was a mom. And girly stuff like hair and makeup and self tanner. I love self tanner and hair and makeup. OMG LOL

Oh, and guess what else? I don't swear much in real life like I do here. It's because this is a tap into my brain, not a tap into my public manners. Sometimes my brain swears but my mouth smiles. I have a pretty good filter like that.

Grace mentioned to me via email awhile back that I don't seem to fit in much with the other Philly Mom Bloggers. She said my life and my politics and my viewpoints on lots of stuff is just different.

She's right, now that I think about it. I didn't see it at first. I have these blinders on that lead me to believe that all moms are pretty much the same. And we are, at heart. But we aren't, in life.

I have developed some pretty solid internet friendships with a good number of girls over there, but we have different lifestyles. I like that, I like making friends with people who aren't like me. That doesn't happen in the real world so often. Birds of a feather kind of stuff reigns supreme on Earth.

I don't think that there are more than one or two of us Philly Moms that actually live in Philly. The other moms live out in the burbs, some an hour or two away and they never make mention on their blogs that they even come into the city more than once or twice a year.
Living and working and breathing in Philly is a big part of who I am. I've never had to make time to do yardwork in my whole entire life. I don't have a garage that constantly needs cleaning. I don't have a driveway to shovel. I don't even have my own car. I use my bus pass most of the time I need to go somewhere. Or I walk. I don't have to travel more than 300 yards to get everything I need. From prescriptions to imported cheeses to knock off designer purses. That gives me lots of downtime to do other stuff.

There are several stay at home moms on there. I would lose my ever loving mind if I had to stay at home. I don't know how they do it. It requires things that I have no tolerance for. Like STAYING AT HOME with a child ALL DAY LONG and minimal contact with grownups that aren't staying at home with their kids too. It's a lot of kids kids kids mommy mommy mommy house house house car car car all the time, I'd imagine.

They go to church and they don't whine about putting on a sensible outfit or curse God for having church be so damned boring and so damned early in the morning.

A lot of them have more than one brat running around and they are able to manage it and they hang out with other moms instead of single girls and they drink wine at home with dinner rather than whiskey at seedy bars instead of dinner and they have shiny hair that probably smells nice instead of a half-buzzed hairdo that smells like coffee grounds and olive oil and they don't have to figure out ways to hide their sailor tattoos from 9-5.

Their job as a SAHM (that's what we call them for shorties) is so much harder than my job as a... well, whatever it is that they are paying me to do here.
There is no pressure for me to grocery shop or cook dinner (I'm surrounded by cheap, good, even healthy take out and we have butchers and bakers and candlestick makers on every corner). I have tons of family in my neighborhood that will take my kid at the drop of a hat. There is no pressure for me to do laundry, to clean the house, to do something nice for my husband during the week because that's what Saturday mornings are for. I don't have to let out a dog. I don't have to prepare for my husband's colleagues to come over for dinner. I don't have to fill my child's day with wonder. I don't have to pack up the car and drive to find something to do. I can just roll out my front door. It requires very little effort. I don't even have to comb my hair because I could walk outside half naked with green teeth and I wouldn't be the craziest looking person I see. I don't have to keep up with the Joneses like a lot of my momfriends tell me have to do. No one cares about me and my crap and I don't care about them and theirs. It is a definitely perk of innercity living. You can be lazy and still be a good,well-rounded, busy person. I don't think I'd make it if I had the life that most of the Philly Moms have.

I am too weak. I admire their strength.

That makes me feel like a failure as a "lady" or as a "nice girl" or as the kind of person that my mom and my aunts and my grandmothers are/were and probably hoped I'd be but I really like my life.
Hear that world? I REALLY LIKE MY LIFE.

Holy crap. That was liberating.

And I love spying on everyone else's and borrowing little pieces of it from time to time to see if it might work for me. If it does I keep it for my own and if it doesn't I toss it. It all evens out in the end.

I love my son, I really do.

I just don't like him sometimes.

He's lucky I like him as often as I do. Me and kids are kinda on the outs with one another. Always have been, always will be.

Get that look off your face. I hear you complaining about people all the time. How much you can't stand your neighbor or your boss or your sister in law. People are the pits, man, and kids are people too. Rotten little people.

Kids are just so needy and so whiny and so underfoot all the time and the one I have constantly tests me and takes an hour to do something that I could do for him in five seconds and the way that he looks at me when I ask him to do something makes me want to shave all that hair off his back and feed it to him through a siphon.

The one I have also wants me all the time. He detests his father 80% of the time. That's annoying. And rude. And hard on me because one, I have to be this kid's entire world and two, I have to watch the heartache it causes.
Dave isn't mean. He doesn't yell. Jake has never been spanked, or slapped, or dragged, or pinched, or grabbed at by anyone. When the two of them are playing times are great all around. They are laughing and tickling and having horsey rides and races and tosses and catches. Then it's over. What gives? Jake can be an Oedipal little jerky mama's boy and I'm totally over it.

He's turning three in eleven days. The age that's the worst of the worst of all the worsts there ever are for the first decade of a child's life. I keep telling myself that, but it doesn't make me feel any better about it.

As soon as I've had it up to my ears with him he always goes and does something that is just so cute and reminds me that there is still a bit of baby in him yet and then I feel terrible and guilty and I try not to eat him up because if I ate him now he would be almost three forever and he would never be able to grow up and get jerky(er). Jake has never been much of a mispronouncer or babytalker, but there are a few things that he just doesn't have right and I don't want him to ever get it. Like getting turned "umpsign down". And he wants me to "sit right behind" him all the time instead of beside. And he still sings "ah bah doo anna ah bah doo" when we put his coat on, even though he can say "one arm through, and the other arm through" clear as day. Instead of "I'm going to get you" he still says "iminnaaaaa getcho" when he is really riled up. He still says "i wanna hold you" when he wants to be held. He asks me what he was like when he was a baby and tells me what he wants to be like when he is big.

I hate that I am tired of Jake's impossibilities so often, and that I call him a little asshole in my brain. That when I drop him at daycare I have to reprimand him about saying hello to the adults in the room and not pushing the one kid away (although I want to push that kid too. Not only is he ugly, but he is annoying) every single day. I hate that my few hours each day with Jake are spent teaching lessons and manners and struggling with his constant trying to one-up me and not playing all the time.

I know it is a stage. For both of us.
I know it is normal. For both of us.

I know that we are desperate to run around outside and blow some of this funk off of us. I know we have all been sick forever and it's bringing us down.

I know he doesn't test his caregivers, only his parents. That means I'm doing a good job even if I don't always like the job I have to do.

I knew that I would have to deal with this stage, that I would become exasperated with my child. Being exasperated with my child is so much different than being exhausted from taking care of my child's needs. I felt like a bad mom because I hated getting up at night and changing a million diapers a day and making tiny little mushed up meals every few hours. I feel like a bad person because I get tired of my child's behavior, and in turn my child.

I want to overcompensate for the way I feel on the inside and give Jake little treats and gifts and allowances and exceptions with the rules. I don't because I know that it will spoil him and give him the wrong message. I don't because I know I am able to keep my nasty feelings on the inside and Jake has no idea I feel this way because I'm remaining calm and consistent with him even though my insides are quivering from the time I wake up to the time I put him to bed. Quivering with guilt and frustration and love and hope.

I want to take a day off from mothering and be his buddy, and I know the weather will allow me to do this in exactly the right way in a few days from now. The ice cream parlors will be opening in the next few weeks and the sky will stay light long enough to go to the park after work and the air will be warm enough to bum around downtown for hours on end and do nothing but enjoy each other on the weekends. Doing things like that more than make up for the smarmy looks he gives me when I tell him to put his pants on and he puts them on the couch and tells me that I didn't tell him what to put them on, exactly.

sick

I'm not dead, thank you all for asking.
I was almost dead, but I think I'm getting better.
I feel vampiracle right now.
If I eat your baby I would be right as rain, but there are laws in place against that so I guess I'll just suffer through the last leg of this flu the old fashioned way.

I think I'm getting an ear infection. Seriously, to top it all off. I feel like someone strapped fish tanks to the sides of my head. I'd call the doctor but I don't want to go on antibiotics because I don't want to screw with my birth control or get a yeast infection. I always love how the first thing I'm worried about when I get sick is my pants.

Oh, I'd totally get rid of this strep throat but I just shelled out my pinky finger in exchange for a pack of pills and I don't want to waste the whole pack so let's just see what happens.
This festering puncture wound might be infected. But I don't want a bad case of the itchsnatch. I'll pour some rubbing alcohol over it.

Jake ran a fever of 104 all day yesterday. Dave had a meningitis scare last week. We are all in deep.

I really tried to keep whining about this plague off my blog since it is all over everyone else's and I can't think of anything to say that hasn't already been said or felt by the rest of you, but I just can't help telling you all how sick we are. I miss my friends. I miss food. I miss myself. I miss my family. I miss time off of the couch. I miss brain functions. I miss fitless sleep.

They are calling for highs around 70 this weekend, but they are calling for snow next weekend. I need to stop looking at the ten day forecast. It's bringing me down.

real post.

I don't know why I didn't write anything about my last cancer screening. I've been loosely (and sometimes not so loosely) mentioning cancer here for as long as I've had the blog, and I've gotten some really amazing emails and comments and support from my readers over the years. Thank you.

Maybe I didn't feel like talking about it because my cancer is located in my VAGINA and I didn't want to talk about my VAGINA because then you'd be thinking of my VAGINA and next time we talked you'd be staring at my VAGINA and wondering how it feels. (that's a loaded statement). Maybe I just didn't want to talk about it because who the hell wants to read about cancer anyway? Maybe I felt insignificant since we bloggers just lost one of our girls to lady cancer and we are all a bit down about it and I didn't want to unpiss on anyone's parade. Maybe I didn't want to talk about it because I was afraid the doctor was wrong, and I didn't want to jinx it.

Should I even call it my cancer? As in I own it? Do I? I'm not supposed to, say the doctors and the therapists. But it has been about as big a part of me as my pinky finger. Literally and figuratively. I don't obsess about it, but it's always there, worming around and seeming very useless until all of a sudden attention is drawn to it. Which happens in varying degrees depending on the time of year and phase of the moon and angle of speculum insertion.

You know what? It is mine. I own it. I'm bigger than it and if not for me it would never exist so it's my bitch. I have spent the past five years struggling to keep it from owning me and it looks like I won.

For now.

The last test came back negative.

This isn't the first time a test came back negative, but this is the first time since I've had my uterus, my cervix, and my vagina all completely biopsied and cut apart and sewn shut and taped together and twisted to look like an aluminum swan full of leftovers that the test came back negative. This time there isn't anywhere left for tiny little cancer babies to hide and grow and come back to bite me in the puss and maybe, maybe this means it's all over and done with.

I'm very happy about this.

I've been MIA lately, but I'm as okay as anyone suffering the plague is. I'd feel bad for myself, but we are all in this together so I know I'm not the only one losing lung tissue and sections of my colon. WTF is up with this(-ese) flu(s)?

I blame the Russians.

I feel like writing, but I don't feel like typing. Writing is easy, because I can just toss everything out there and be done with it. Typing is hard because I'm hopped up on cold medicine and my fingers are somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Floating.

flow ting.

floa ting.

flea tang.

fleeting.

flotsam.

float some.

Hello.

Luckily, Michelle over at My Semblance of Sanity is featuring a different Mommy Blogger every Monday from here until eternity and because I am really good at not doing work at work on a Friday afternoon and could get all of her questions answered, I am first in line!

Check me out here! And you'll be able to do so closely, my profile picture is giant on her page you be the judge whether I look more adorable and bewildered yet pensive and beguiling at 1" x .75" or at 4" x 3".

While you are over there, check out the work Michelle is doing at It's 4 the Kids. If you can't help financially, there are other ways you can contribute. Even if it is just by taking a look there and seeing what other families are going through so you can count your blessings around your supper table tonight and maybe toss a prayer up or some good karma or some fairy dust out to those who need it.

Thank you Michelle.

Also, as an aside, you know how I go through life thinking that everything is all about me and I am pretty much the axis on which this earth turns? No? Well, sometimes I do but usually I try to keep it in check. Anyway, when I sat down at my desk I checked my Reader and there were two posts (only two! In a whole hour! The rest of you suckers must be at home with the kiddos today. Snowday, holler!) in there. And both posts had my name in the titles.
There was this one from Michelle
and this one from from Muffy.
Big ups to Michelle and Muffy for making me feel like an all-important world-famous superstar today.
Three cheers to a cocktail of Mucinex, Pepto, Sudafed, coffee, and PediaCare -yes PediaCare- for keeping me awakish today.

I'd be a hot mess without meds.