Things I Can't Believe They Gave Me

1) A baby.

Seriously. I have answered the question "Does Daddy call you babymommy too?" I wear stilettos and mini-dresses kite flying, when she asked for pink hair when she was 4 I said "that's awesome" before the question was entirely out of her mouth. I ignore cussing if it's in the right context, in private, and in a reasonable voice level. I let her wear the next day's clothing for pajamas because we both enjoy the extra 15 minutes of sleep it affords. We fight over the last Twinkie-- and sometimes I totally win. No one is as shocked as me that I got away with it... the cosmos somehow totally screwed up and gave me a baby.

2) An Apartment.

Clearly, however, not a vacuum, dish soap, Pine Sol, a shoe tree, or any real motivation to use such things if I actually do have them. You may think 'Mold on your dirty dishes' or 'odd smells' would be some sort of 'motivation'. You may indeed... but you would be wrong.

Caring about those things would require some degree of 'Dignity'. What? I just said I wear mini-dresses to go kite flying: Don't act all surprised.

3) The Right to an Education.

I dropped out of interior design school a semester shy of having my license because I went and got myself in a family way. Somehow the universe saw fit however to let me go back to school 6 years later to get what I have always really wanted, a degree in Psychology. And it's true I have not yet gotten myself pregnant by a drunk ND English major (Oh, how I love the English majors...) in the midst of a drinking game called 2 shot Saturday. It's true I have not yet told a professor that I'm actually thinking so far outside of the box that I'm thinking outside of his box, and that's why he doesn't understand me, and that I don't care to write it out in small words right now because PMS reduces my tolerances for salary-earning ignorance.

This doesn't mean, however, that I don't bring Twizzlers to Film Class, leave my MP3 player on for one of my lecture classes on a frighteningly regular basis, start working on 7 page papers the night before they are due as a rule, or blog when I 'm supposed to be doing a 7 page paper the night before it is due.

4) A Computer.

I don't know how they gave someone so irresponsible, impulsive and scatterbrained something like a computer or the Internet. What I do know is that Sephora and Ulta are sooooo glad they did.

I know there are more, these are just the ones that at current... as I place an Ulta order while blogging instead of writing my paper, perched on my counter-top next to a 2 day old half eaten pop-tart and 3 lipstick lids but no lipstick, eating the last of my daughters Halloween candy and wondering just how I can cover my tracks before morning.

To whome it may concern

Yes, I realize that blogs have been better kept up by trained monkeys. In fairness, I have moved, brought the child I brought into the world to her first day (and all subsequent ones) of kindergarten. I have cut the cascading curls from my mid back, and now have a rather disgraceful mop of wakes that stop promptly before the chin-- not short enough to keep under a hat, not long enough to keep in a pony tail. I have seen an abysmal breakup, a tooth extraction, the tragic loss of my favorite pair of black heels, the ones with the round toe and ribbon cuff.

All and all, it has been a hard year.

There has been one upside, however: My pending return to the scholastic world. Yes, at 30 years of age I will be purchasing a backpack, writing papers, walking with boys to class. I want to feel enthusiastic about it, but all I can think when thinking about it for more than 20 minute chunks of time is "wow-- this is going to be sooo lame".

Which of course I realize to be what is actually lame.

One of my concerns (besides turning in papers on existentialism that have been drawn on in crayola and perhaps mommies lipstick if she feels like mixing mediums) is how I can get my own schoolwork done after said small artist has gone to bed... which is about what time my downstairs neighbor likes to let her mullet down and crank the 'Cops' or perhaps The Doors Greatest Hits on repeat. At first, I used to disturb her by pounding on the floor by midnight for some reason, but don't you worry-- she's since figured out that she can simply turn the volume up higher so as not to be distracted by my bizarre thumps and stomps and "Hey, shut the fuck up!" And that's a relief, I would hate to be a bad neighbor, but I'm thinking if I want to get papers done, I will need to cut the power supply to our home and do it by candle light at least a dozen or so times in the next few years.

And no, I don't need anyone to let me know how very lame that is.

A few things about today.

1) Krispie Kreme donuts are delicious and soft when microwaved for 8 seconds.

Ohhhhh, 'seconds'. At any rate, by a mer 2 minutes they have already begun to smoke and char to alert you to the mistake...a safety measure that interestingly enough is not boasted on the side of the box.

2) It's entirely possible for me to lose a passive aggressive argument via g-chat. Had you told me this yesterday, I wouldn't believe you. It seems the trick is to say something really sweet, about 3 minutes after you know I've already signed out.

3) Three year olds don't give a shit how sick you are when they want scrambled eggs, crosanka soup and hot cocoa for dinner.

4) Is it seeeeriously snowing on March 27th? Where is the global warming I was promised?

5) So I get into a debate with a friend of mine (this conversation took place on the computer--though was not the above stated fight). The 'argument', was based on my thinking that we are created only by our responses to the way we are seen, and he that we create ourselves by becoming who we pretend to be. I mean, that wasn't it, but it was in that vein. It was interesting and based on a Jenny Lewis line and a Carey Grant quote--People like us deserve just what we get being friends with each other.

So I stayed up for half an hour last night mulling over a few points I forgot to make, finding painful parallels to in my own life as a teenager as examples, as I drifted off trying to formulate an email detailing these wounds of my youth as they pertained to the exact point I was trying to make.

Which I did in the morning, perhaps a bit wordily, but I thought effectively. Lost argument number two came in RE: form... one dismissing little sentence...

"You think too much."

Hm. Fair enough.

6) I've been watching this ABC family show called "Greek" which is something between the 'Gilmore Girls' and 'The OC' (both of which are perfectly clever, and don't judge me...you know you watch 'American Idol' when no one is looking, we are all of us sinners).

Now, to be clear, I wouldn't trade anything I've done in my life for any reason. No other way was going to put me here with my daughter as the person and mother I am today.

None the less, this show has helped me to realize something, just this morning as a matter of fact...if I HAD done things differently, and say, gone to college at the right age, I would have been the best sorority girl.

And now, the world will never know.

And now, one more thing about today...

7) I've clearly completely wasted it.

Well, there's always tomorrow. Which is, I think, a new episode of Greeks for that matter. God bless us, every one.

It always happens...

...that when I buy a new journal because I've been doodling on napkins and torn open cigarette boxes, I suddenly find I have nothing to get out of my system. When I buy red shoes, I find that all of my red blouses are faded and torn, and I never wear the shoes, or blouses again. When I buy my daughter $30 jeans because they're soooo cute and she can wear them all winter, she has her first growth spurt in over a year.

OR, when my myspace blog is being posted in every day and I decide to be a grownup and just go start a real online journal here (Yeah, I know, I said blog, online journal and grownup in the same sentance. Haveave a sense of humor--you're the one reading one), that is the point at which I will have nothing in the entire world to put in it for days.

I just thought I would share that interesting wormhole in the universe.

Blogging

There are things about blogging I will never enjoy. Such as, the lack of spellcheck, the need to look up and use HTML, the option of adding smiley faces of any sort whatsoever for any reason whatsoever, and of course, one of my ex-boyfriends getting a link to it from some mutual social party and firing off a drunk email in the middle of the night about how they see I've had a child out of wedlock, and that I'm pretty poor...and that they bet I wish I would have stuck with them now, don't I?



However, there are upsides to blogging, and I suppose when it comes down to it, it remains one of my favorite features of the internet. I'm like an emotional bullemic, I need nothing more than to shove a typing finger down the back of my cyber-throat and purge the empty mental-calories that are every trivial detail of my boring and overthought little life.



So, for a bit of time it was E-Mom, one abrasive single mother's online journal. Of course one little emotional conversation with a 19 year old kid in the Verizon Technical Department in which I may have uttered the phrase "Listen, you little screen gazing dweeb--just do what the grownup tells you to and fix the password mixup on my blog.", and my entire Verizon account dissapeared completley. Note to self: Do not call the teenager in charge of your blog a dweeb under any circumstances, or be ready to lose a million brilliant posts and find a new blog-home...on your myspace.

Ick.

but, as myspace is the place where nothing ever works, and I would like a seperate home for my personal whatnots and my daily ramblings, here I am on blogger.

And I suppose that's all I have to report.