Proud mama

I realize it's been a while since I have blatantly gone on a bragging streak about my wee one, so here goes!
Monkey turned 2 back in May. He's getting bigger, of course, and although the issues he had with eating/speaking are still there, he has really come a LONG way. Allow me to list (yes, lists! mama loves LISTS!) the new and wonderful things he has been doing lately...

• Vocabulary now consists of Mama, Dada, Baba (bottle), dinky (his version of stinky, in referrence to a desperately needed changing of the diaper), Hi, Byebye, Baby (both pointing to himself and greeting a very cute girl in the mall), Booya. The last one started out as BOOOOOOOOO being screamed really loud in public places, but recently morphed to booya. Can say Mine, although doesn't know what it means (thankfully). Recently started calling my dad Popo. The cats are 'iggies', and his stuffed doggie for bedtime is Oggy.
• Sings. Yup, he'll run around and sing an odd little tune of Lalalalalala. I swear this has nothing to do with mama's obsession with Katamari Damacy.
• Eats pasta, ramen noodles, Fig Newtons, cornbread, oranges slices.
• Rides down the slide all by himself! he climbs up the ladder, swings his legs around, and scoots forward saying 'weeeeeee'. Priceless!
• Figured out how to come into the game room, turn on the guitar amp and then strum on Daddy's electric.
• Actually puts his toys away! He knows to put the legos in the lego truck and the rest of the toys in the toybox.
• Plays basketball and catch.
• Can put together about 4 legos at a time.
• Knows that socks and shoes go on his feet. Although he takes particular joy in taking them OFF, when mama goes to put them on he calmly sits back and sticks out his tootsies.
• Loves giving eskimo kisses, which we've dubbed Nuzzles.
• Has been attempting to brush his own teeth and hair. The latter isn't very effective, but is dang amusing.
• Knows that 'Going Bye Bye' means putting his shoes on, walking out the door and opening up the cardoor. He will go through these steps usually before I have even grabbed my purse.
• Knows that when you move the little sticks on the game controller, something on the screen moves. Yes, my son's a gamer!
• Has begun experimenting with crayons.
• Picks the dandelions in the backyard and immediately presents them to me.
• Goes into the kitchen and grabs the tupperware I keep his goldfish in, opens it, and happily nibbles away.

He's constantly learning, and I can clearly see the development. I think he's at the point where he's playing catchup with a lot of his peers, which is obviously a huge relief to us. You can really see the delight he takes in the world around him, which is a beautiful thing. He's experimenting a lot with babbling and different sounds (his favourite thing to do is sit on my lap and have a 'growling contest'. Whenever he's outside he is just running from one end of the yard to the other, picking up leaves and sticks and examining them.

Thank heaven for little boys! I decided I am going to go through some of his outgrown baby clothes (which I was hording for the next baby) and donate them to whoever is running Hurricane relief programs in my area. Seeing how everyday life with my son is such a treasure, it makes me realize how the simple things mean so much.

Hurricanes and Humanity

Like most world-concious people, I am watching in horror at the approach of Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans. This rare category 5 storm is carrying 175 mph winds, and is more than likely going to obliterate coastal Louisiana. I mourn the loss of the beautiful historical architecture in that city.
But most of all, I am mourning the loss of our humanity. Why do I chose to use such a dramatic term? I've read the last few articles as the government finally declared an evacuation order on the city. There are approximately 100,000 people that simply can't go. Either they don't have transportation (because they are impoverished), or they can't manage transportation safely (elderly). So, what are we doing? Leaving them there.
President Bush got off his warloving ass long enough to give them the formal declaration of emergency, but I don't exactly see our remaining National Guard rushing down there to help these people. What's wrong with us? How can we justify leaving anybody behind in this awful storm's path? We can send thousands of troops to the Middle East, but we can't organize a goddamn evacuation party on our own fucking soil?! How the FUCK can this happen? 100,000 people. That's a big number, although it's still a manageable one. But we can't get some troops down there loading people onto trucks or buses? Better load up 100,000 body bags later then.
Oh, send them to the damn Superdome. FUCK YOU, what about the people who can't FUCKING get there? I'm sorry, but I hate sitting here like a helpless lump watching this shit. I can only hope that humanity actually has a little bit of glimmer left in them so that people who are perhaps living next to some of these folks are helping them. Because it horrifies me to know that now money in this country truely does mean the difference between life and imminent death.
I feel like God is giving us this last ditch chance to prove that we still consider human life precious. But we're not exactly jumping at the opportunity.
Even if you aren't religious, please pray for these people. Pray for the 70 yo woman with arthritis who can't drive and was left in her home. Pray for those people who had to give up the luxury of a personal automobile in favour of groceries who have now been doomed. And pray to GOD that the rest of the nation that can do something gets off their asses and DOES SOMETHING. Get those people out of there NOW.

Ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb

Woot! Finally redyed my damn hair. Those who know me are aware this is only phase one, though. I put on the base coat of red, will add the multicoloured streaks later. Must attempt to get part time job first before I go too technicolour-happy...

Life's Little Constants

There are few things in this day and age one can consider a constant in their day to day life. Sometimes this very fact can seem very depressing. But I have a few, and I would like to share. And we all know how much mama likes to make her lists....

• My son will say or do something that will completely crack me up or melt my heart daily (if not hourly).
• I will get at least one gawking stare at the grocery store.
• I will be mortified at today's youth by going to the mall.
• I never have enough money for the things I want, but always find a way to get the things I need.
• There isn't enough milk in the world to satiate a boy who refuses to drink anything but.
• Groceries will always come up to more friggin money than I thought they would, and therefor I will always curse at my Safeway receipts at least one a week.
• I will always have my tattoos. And there will always be some dumbass to comment on them.
• There will be 5 people out of 10 that feel my former 'career' is a horrible thing worth their scorn, but another 5 willing to totally back me up and give me props for my brutal honesty and unabashed position of staunchly defending my ability to chose whatever the fuck I want to do to keep a roof over my head.
• Despite my education, people will assume by my physical appearance or speech pattern (given that I curse without shame) that I therefor must be a HS dropout welfare baby on crack.
• WIth all the people who will consider themselves 'against me' I will always simply regard them as an endless supply of fodder for my rants on this blog.
• Most politicians would rather rally themselves behind completely worthless causes 'of the moment' to seem like they are important and actually doing something, nevermind the fact that the state of education in this nation is abyssmal, we have a needless and costly war going on overseas, gas prices are ungodly, our economy is still floundering, (especially in the light of so many companies exporting jobs), and hate and violence still rages within our own borders. Furthermore, there will always be some dipshit backwoods politician that is dead set on making his hatemongering propaganda into political 'reform' in an attempt to set our nation back several hundred years, and there will always be enough narrowminded midwest out of touch bible thumping pricks who will defend him.
• Someone, somewhere is being persecuted. But someone elsewhere is making it a personal mission to end that via peaceful means.
• The majority of you reading this on a constant basis do so because you agree with me. The minority who don't will always get themselves up in a tizzy about something I write, regardless of how many warnings I slap up on the main page of motherhoodlum.com to stop reading the damn thing.
• My husband will 9 times out of 10 say something completely offensive to me, and 10 times out of 10 I will always forgive him.
• No matter where I move, I will always have one extremely weird ass neighbor.
• My Kung Fu Fighting Hampster will always be hysterical to me.
• I will always look good in black.
• I will never look good in pink.
• I will always question my ability to look good period, but will know that this is simply stemming from an irrational problem with my self-esteem dating back for decades now, and regardless of how I feel, there will still be someone out there at any given time willing to boink me.
• Since I have become a mother, I know I will always consider one life in this world more important than my own.
• Since I have become a mother, I know there will always be a mess in my house, no matter how many times I clean it. And that no one in said house will appreciate either portion of this statement.
• Despite all the things I have listed above, very few things in life are constant, therefor change is the only real constant. Which, for anyone paying attention, is the very meaning behind the tattoos I bare.

Flashbacks

So, today I was puttering around myspace and realized I hadn't filled out the whole 'school' part yet. Bored and going rounds with insomnia (which is when my brain makes irrational and bizarre decisions), I filled it in and typed in a querie to find fellow alumni. Since no one I know today would know my erratic educational history, allow me to give the lowdown.
I went to a normal Highschool for my freshman and sophmore year. And I am talking NORMAL, the district I was somehow crammed into was proliferated with a lot of hoity toity yuppy types, doctors and lawyers and their rich bratty kids. And mormons. Lots and lots of mormons. I am amazed any coffee shop stayed open as long as it did there. Everyone shopped at the Gap and Banana Republic, so needless to say I stuck out like a sore fucking thumb. The funny thing was I was constantly lumped in with the druggy types or labeled a whore for having male friends, but I was probably one of the straightest pegs there. I was even in choir for chrissake! Even though that was the bastion club of all mormons and tight-laced types, I managed to weasle my way into a bizarre friendship circle in there.
But the rest of the time outside of the music room I was miserable. I hated a lot of the teachers, and was hated by a good portion of the student body. What should I have expected though, I had a pierced nose and wore combat boots in a sea of khaki and pastel plaids. I constantly felt like the curriculum moved at a snails pace, so when I discovered an alternative high school I jumped on it. I ended up switching to Independence for what would have been my Junior year, although I devoured the textbooks so quickly I completed my senior curriculum before the session ended, and was promptly handed my walking papers with flying colours. When I first enrolled the counselor there had already had me in a previous summer school class (taken following my freshman summer so I could take even more choir, I was friggin obsessed and now years later I am once again tone deaf). After I had enrolled she had me take some additional tests and before I even began the junior/senior warpspeed year, I was enrolled in a nearby university. The program she finagled me into was called ACT, Accelerated College T-something. The gaggle of us in the district that made us through were supposed to just dip our toes into the whole college experience by taking some jerkoff courses like archery or beginning art. Being the freakish overacheiver I was, I ended up enrolling in a full load of standard college courses, which sped up the whole Sharona gets a degree before she even turns 18 thing. Damn, I was nuts. No wonder I had grey hair at the age of twenty.
Anyhoot, going back a few paces, like I said, I did attend a normal highschool, with over crowded classes and everything, for two years. I formed the typical high school bonds, yet somehow drifted away from every single signature in that last year book. I didn't leave Sacramento until the tail end of '97, so I really don't have much of an excuse for it. But, fastforwarding to the modern day, I pulled up a list of people who would have been in my class, and the years above me (I can count on one hand the people in my year I actually associated with, the rest were all a year or two above). As I scrolled through about 11 pages of people, I recognized NO ONE. Not one soul, and most of them were in my own original year. On the last page I found a gal from choir, but only recognized her because it said "choir' and we weren't a big ensemble. Was I completely blind during those years? I remember the rich kids torturing me half the time, but was it so bad I tuned out their very names and faces? Were the people I called friends at one time so inconsequential that I cannot see them staring me at me on the screen? Or am I actually getting older, and the times have carried me too far to remember these people who shared what should have been my 'formative' years? It's a rather cold thought, really.

Stupid People and their questions

As we all know, mama's biggest irritation in life is being surrounded by stupid people. Dear God, they are everywhere. I wish they'd wear little signs around their necks so we could know when they were coming. You know who these people are. They write checks in the grocery store for a candybar, and can't figure out the Uscan system (seriously, what is so fucking hard when the little voice says 'please scan your first item'?! There's a goddamn picture!!). They cannot comprehend why you must have exact change to ride the bus. The concept of a cup size at a coffee shop being referred to by it's ounce measurement is beyond them. But most of all, they feel the need to talk to ME. And then I am forced to fend off a volly of stupid, stupid questions.
So, dear readers, I share a few of the more common ones with you, as well as they delightfully obscure answers I've created to them. Most are designed to scare the piss out of the ignorant moron asking them. Feel free to swipe these, as most likely a few of you have had to deal with these inane queries yourself.


Is that a tattoo?
Motherhoodlum answers:
Nope, a very intricate birthmark.
What (grab arm and stare) DEAR GOD, where did THAT come from?!?!?!

Inevitably this is followed by...Did it hurt?
Motherhoodlum answers:
No, it felt...wonderful. (immediately adopt a glazed over stare. Drooling is a nice touch. This response is almost garaunteed to end the conversation, and hopefully send this person scurrying far far away from your breathing space).

Not as frequent since I took out various piercings, but...Why would you get that pierced?
Motherhoodlum answers:
To freak out people like you. Is it working?
More convenient to keep my keychain there.
It wasn't intentional, it was a freak flyfishing accident.
Because they won't pierce internal organs yet, so I figured this was a reasonable substitute.
I am part of a cult that believes emulating swiss cheese brings us closer to the holy one.

Is that your son?
Motherhoodlum answers:
No, I steal children that bare a striking resemblance to me.
Nope, dinner!
Twin brother, mom just kept her legs crossed a reallllllllllllly long time.
He is my Lord & Master...(again, glazed over blank stare, semi catatonic smile)

My all time favourite of the dumbass questions was back when I used to dye my hair a lovely shade of blue. Some twad at the market actually asked me, "so, you dye your hair that colour?"
My immediate response was "Nope, I'm part smurf".

Feel free to add anything else you've had to creatively come up with to combat these morons we unfortunately must deal with in our daily lives.

Laaaaa La la la la la la la laaaaa

Some of you may see this and think, 'oh, mama's in a sing songy kind of mood'. However, there's a select few of you that instantly got an annoying Japanese pop song stuck in their heads. Yes, Mama finally got her little hands on a copy of Katamari Damacy, that Japanese made form of digital crack for the new millenia. For those who think I've lost it, Katamari Damacy is a PS2 game that is ridiculously bizarre and delightfully addictive to all who pick it up. The premise is straight out of an LCD hallucination, you are the 'prince of all cosmos', with a sausage shaped head. Your father, the King of all Cosmos, is a drunken lunatic in serious need of medication, prone to referring to himself in the oh-so-annoying royal 'we', and who takes the father-son relationship to a whole new codependent and fucked up level. He broke the stars in the sky, because he's an idiot and was either drunk out of his gourd or more plausibly taking some galactic form of ecstacy, and has now charged you with repairing it. Because he can. Of course!
Anyhoot, you do this buy rolling around a giant 'katamari', which is akin to those stickyballs we use to get from teh grocery store and irritate siblings with. it looks like a psychadelic cat toy, and anything you roll onto with it sticks and becomes part of the katamari, growing bigger and bigger (like your cosmic father's ego). Eventually you go from rolling up dice and lint to whole towns and countries! woot! But seriously, that's all you do in the game, roll a little fucking ball around and curse incesantly at anything that gets in your way. I cursed a lot in this game. The box says something about not using the buttons on the controller so as 'not to stress the player', so all you are using to control it are the analog sticks. Not stressful my ASS, I dare anyone to play this game and not be on the edge of their seat whining and fidgeting like a crackhead as the timer clicks down and your ball ain't big enough. You start screaming at the boxy image of the cat and swearing out loud he will rue the day he smacked the fish off your ball, and giggle like a maniac when the ball is big enough to roll him up into. Then you obsessively play the level over and over again so you can find the present and make the little prince wear a chef's hat. Obviously it would be a rather tricky game if the folks in the world were as spartan as some of us poor folks. But apparently in Japan they leave five thousand hair pins on the floor, and oodles of sushi laying about on plates randomly in the middle of the street. And lots of men have bangs sticking out five feet in front of their heads. Then, when your katamari is large enough to roll up buildings and such the world gets even more twisted, as there are dozens of 'jumbo man' people flying through the air, and a rash of mountain sized octopi plaguing the Atlantic. Scary.
So, yes, I am currently spazzing out playing this game. Fear my Katamari!!!

Mmumf!

This is the sound I am most commonly making these days, usually while in the grocery store. It's been almost three weeks now since the surgery, but I am no where near eating solid foods, and boy does that SUCK. My diet currently consists of:

• Ice Cream
• Yogurt
• Fruit Smoothies
• Mashed Potatoes
• Oatmeal
• Canned Peaches
• Overcooked Rice
• Overcooked Pasta (Angelhair only)

Does this suck? YES! aside from being an Atkins nightmare (and fuck that, I friggin love my carbs. My own personal version of hell includes everyone being on this nonsensical craze, and Satan telling me Pasta has been outlalwed. Nooooooooooooooo), it's very...well, bland. I never thought I would tire of ice cream, but as I am limited in flavours that don't contain large chunks of foreign goodness, it's beginning to get old. I can have chocolate, vanilla, and sorbet. Lately, I've taken to Mint Chip, my all time fav, and just slowly letting the chips melt on my toungue. This usually results in the entire mess being melted by the time I am done though. I swore off mashed potatoes for the rest of my natural life after the first week. Oatmeal? Well, thank god Quaker feels my pain, and provides a few varieties. The overcooked rice thing is a new addition to the line up, and is so far working out ok. I adore broccoli au gratin, and the rice variety has the veggie bits in small enough pieces that I can swallow whole.

Aside from it being a dismal experience for my palette, it's become friggin hell on my waistline. When your options can be contained to one pantry shelf, you desire it all the less. And we all know what happens when mama eats less, she becomes the incredible shrinking woman (minus the irritating acting of Lily Tomlin). Beh, I'm getting thin and bored all at the same time. I tried to eat a tuna sandwich yesterday, only to hang up the attempt halfway through because my jaw was screaming. Being done in by a processed protein is hell! I was able to get through a whole hotdog today though, so I am going to attempt fries tomorrow when dad comes by.

Ah, Daddy Days. For those going 'huh?', my father, who I am exceedingly close to, comes over every wednesday because he has it off of work. We usually go out to a nice meal, although that's of course not been an option since I've been incapacitated. Although we could conceivably go to some diner where I'd suck down a milkshake and longingly stare at Dad's cheeseburger, he has thankfully saved me that torment. You know what gets me? I was a friggin vegetarian for 10 goddamn years before I met my husband. A decade without beef or poultry (I occassionally ate fish during that spell, as I have always had a hard time with nutrition and it was one of the concessions I was willing to make to get protein and amino acids into my system). But I've had to go three weeks without a burger and it's driving me up the damn wall. I don't know if this is a testament to a hideous eating regime that living with Rick has made me accustomed to, or simply a sign that in my years I've become increasingly stubborn when it comes to sacrafice. I've always done bad with Lent (bad catholic, BAD!), but this is fucking ridiculous.

*sigh* I swear I am going to do a dance on a table when I get to eat a steak again. Seriously, Black Angus will want to kick me out (or hire me, I am damn good!). On the upside, the swelling and bruising on my face is now officially GONE, so I look like a normal (albiet more slender) person with a...din ding ding! Kick ASS smile. Seriously, I am so not ashamed to toot my own horn in that respect. Back before my teeth began to show the signs of deterioration, I was known for my broad and toothy grin. Shawntay used to call me the ball o' teeth when I laughed, and I figure the moniker was accurate. The denture is, surprisingly, smaller than my original set (I had been blessed/cursed with slightly larger front teeth. I wouldn't say BUCK teeth, as they fit my poufy lips, but they were there). I had been terrified that having a denture would leave me with unaturally large, square, too even to be natural teeth, but apparently the science of making the doohickeys has come a long way. Unless you knew what I had done, you seriously wouldn't know. Well, that is until you saw me covetting your fajita.

Facts of Fornication

Being that I randomly get emails in regards to my former occupation (not to mention the umpteen questions I get upon friends discovering it), I figured I'd set the record straight on exactly what I used to do. Heck, I may even give a few highlights on my trip down memory lane.
Yes, I worked in the adult industry. I've made no secret of it, save to a choice few members of my family. Yes, both my parents know what I did, although my mother only knew after the fact. My dad? Well, he knew the day before my first interview (and yes, strippers get interviewed). So, what exactly did I do? I worked as a stripper, the ol' standard pole dancing, stage humping naked gyrating to a three minute crappy 80's tune and give you a lap dance if you are nice kinda stripper. But that really didn't last that long. I hated the personal contact, and the backbiting of the other dancers was too much for me. So, I went to what I stuck to the longest, and what ultimately led to meeting my husband, online porn. Although that sounds plenty lurid, it was actually quite dull. I sait in front of a computer for 6 hours. Half the time, in lingerie, the rest of the time...not in lingerie. During the clothed portion, I was just luring people into the VIP area, and chatting, basically. I had a microphone on the camera, so it was pretty cake. The rest of the time I was in the VIP room and my hands were, shall we say, occupied. But, for the record, only with MYSELF. I never onced boinked some guy on camera. There was one occassion when I got to play around with a girl in there, but she and I knew eachother, and it was not something our bosses expected of us. It was just fun. The whole experience, was well, unique. I had my up days and down days. Most of the men there were ridiculously nice (if a bit obsessive), although we'd get those choice few who were complete retards, or just utter assholes and sexual deviants who probably shouldn't be unleashed on society. If they were overly abusive, they got a friendly little boot from our onstaff moderator. Yes, he was paid, and he sat in another room operating the cameras and technical equipment. The VIP room was actually a seperate room, and it had three wall mounted cameras that could be moved by our tech's remote control. The camera designated to be on our face was for some reason the one all us girls denoted as the 'tech cam', so if we were trying to talk to him, we'd look at that one. Or we'd make goofy faces to see if he was still awake. It got to be a pretty dull gig at times, especially since I always worked the grave shifts. I liked it because there was less people, and we felt like we could get away with more. In the VIP room, we were supposed to be getting down to business (and this was every half hour), but we usually didn't. We'd chat, or appease the fetish guys.
show me your feet! Show me te toeeeeeeeees!!!!!
I ultimately ended there shortly after Rick and I were together, and returned to the 'normal world'. I sold commercial printing for a spell, and then attempted to work for an escrow office. I say attempted because teh jackoff I worked for there was an utter freak with a penchant for screaming at the topic of his lungs and taking great pleasure in watching me get flustered. Unfortunately, this asswipe knew my former occupation, and chose to finally bring it in full glaring view when he gave me some tirade about only being pretty to look at, but not much good for anything else. Of course, as he attempted to conclude his rant by wrapping up with some nonsense about knowing how to grow watermelons (which was about knowing how to grow things as opposed to knowing when to give up...bla bla bla), I had calmly packed my things, and then threw his keys in his face and screamed "I'm not a fucking farmer you asshole!" and stormed out of his office. Yeah, ti went realllllllly well.
I tried to work for another net porn company, but their pay was erratic and the owners were really shady, so I split and went to the infamous Deja Vu. I chose to work downstairs, in the peep booths, though. Really, it ended up being the best of both worlds. I had the good pay possible with working live, but a lovely glass screen keeping the ruddy hands o' the public far away from my derriere. Hell, I could still tune them out and pretend they were the faceless denizens of the net I was accustomed to by just looking at the reflection on my side of the glass. But boy, I guess something about a tattooed girl with black hair screams "I love the freaks!" because boy did I get them. I seemed to be the exclusive Freak Mistress there for a while. Guys with any kind of fetish, from the tame foot lovers to the out-there "please can I have a glass of your urine?" ones. Actually, I kid you not I was dispensing my own bodily fluids at least once a week there. Got paid pretty dang well for them, too. The most awkward was the guy who just wanted to watch me brush my hair. ah, well, easy money.
Yeah, I had some ridiculously shitty days there, too. Especially towards the end. It was already off season, and my pregnant belly was just starting to show. I was hormonal like a friggin' hurricane. Seriously, Tom Cruise had nothin' on my mood swings. The customers were getting fewer and fewer, and the money was trickling. When I didn't get picked for a show, I was devastated. I worked a few days there making absolutely NOTHING. Luckily, I had a boss from heaven. I swear, both the guys who managed there were amazingly nice people. We all sat down and agreed I should go ahead and quit before I got to the point of being one of those bitter angry strippers who would randomly curse out customers. And that was that. Yes, this is the briefest possible summary I could possibly give to the collective 3 years of my life spent in the buff. I may eventually try and publish the book I wrote about my experiences.
Since I am trying to set the record straight here, once and for all...I was NEVER a prostitute. I was NEVER a private dancer, although I tagged along once with a friend who was and decided that one gig was enough. I NEVER had sex with a customer, unless you count my husband. I was NEVER in porn as far as having sex with a person whom I wasn't already intimate with on camera. So, that's that. Any questions?