I Wanna Be Elated

Well, it’s finally hit. I’m officially bored of being at home and am looking for ways to satisfy my creative urges, bring a bit of money in so we don’t end up in poverty, and work from home successfully while still raising my daughter. Since I just don’t have the voice for phone sex, I’ve had to look to my other talents. Luckily, the only thing I’m good at (writing — though you wouldn’t know it fom some of these posts) can be done anywhere and doesn’t require much capital or many supplies to start up, So even though I have no idea where to start or if it will work out, I’m going to throw myself into it as much as possible and see what happens.

I’m looking into something called the Writer’s Bureau which gives you ‘assignments’ and you work through them at your own pace and get feedback and critiques along the way. A personal tutor then helps you find your niche and market it to your intended audience. They guarantee that students will have sold enough work to make their course fees back by the time they finish. I’ll have to look into this place more carefully but it sounds good in theory. I’m so cynical, however, that my first instinct was that it must be a scam of some sort, or just really crap. You know what I mean, it seems cool to start with and then BAM! next thing you know you’re forking thousands over to a guy named Leonard and blindly believing in his promises to make you a better person. Sort of like Scientology.

Anyway, I’m excited about this because if I don’t follow my dream to be a writer soon, I doubt it will ever happen. I want to love what I do and I’m young enough that I can spend a few years giving it a shot. If nothing’s happening by the time I turn 30, I’ll pack up my pen (or keyboard, more like) and go back to a boring, soul-destroying, time-consuming, life-draining desk job. I won’t settle for becoming Milton from Office Space just yet.

Foolproof Hangover Cure

1. If you feel like you’e going to puke, try to do it before you pas out. It’s so much better to get it out of your system and then sleep rather than letting it all digest and then throwing up that yellow stomach bile in the morning. Blech!
2. Dink a pint of water and take two ibuprofen.
3. Sleep as long as possible in a dark and quiet room. When you awaken take two more ibuprofen and drink as much water as you can, being careful not to gulp. Sipping is the key!
4. Nibble on a saltine or dry piece of toast until you are sure you’ve successfully bypassed any further kneeling at the Porcelain God.
5. Once water and saltines/toast are staying down, go to nearest McDonald’s. Eat two hashbrowns and a McMuffin of some sort. DO NOT DRINK ORANGE JUICE! You don’t want acidic drinks churning around in your battered stomach. This is a rookie mistake so if you are over 21 years old and still doing this, it’s your own stupid fault that you keep throwing up. If McDonald’s isn’t your thing and you look at least somewhat presentable (fully clothed with no knickers on your head or your friends’ artwork drawn all over your face with Sharpies), you may proceed to the nearest greasy spoon for a full English breakfast and endless cups of coffee and water. Don’t forget to tip your waiter in your drunken stupor!
6. Crawl home, curl up on the sofa, and put in a mindless dvd that requires no brain cells to watch. I recommend Friends or old Tom and Jerry cartoons.
7. If your other half is home and not hungover or as hungover as you, make him/her your slave for the day and in your feeblest, most fragile voice ask them to fetch you blankets, crisps, drinks, more hashbrowns, more dvds, etc.. until they storm out and leave you in peace and stop looking at your matted hair and bruised shins in disgust.
8. Call your mother and pretend you have the flu so she will keep saying “you poor baby!” and make you feel better.
9. Swear to never drink again, as long as you live.
10. When the hangover is gone, crack open another beer/bottle of wine/vodka and rejoice in your short-term memory loss.

I’m a Cow, Can’t You See?

I’m telling you, having a baby is amazing. The biology of it is just staggering. What has to happen for conception, how the embryo grows, how a woman’s body changes and expands during pregnancy and labour and provides nourishment for the baby after its birth. It’s mind boggling, really. I’ve never been one of those people who gush about how pregnancy and birth is such a miracle and so beautiful, yada yada yada, but something happend the other day that made me realize just how strange it all is. So strange, in fact, that, although it was fucking hilarious at the time (and still is, IMO) it also dumbstruck me.

I have had to face up to the fact that we are all animals at our deepest core and no matter how much we like to think we are of superior intelligence and excrutiatingly complex, we aren’t really. We’re just mammals with instincts and innate responses and the rest is just society’s imprint on us, not Nature’s. We analyze and condition everything to death so that we can’t even see how Nature still controls us and we are powerless to resist. Let me explain…

A couple weeks ago I emerged from the bath wrapped in a towel from the waist down and walked through the living room before I went to get dressed. Paul had our daughter on his lap and was playing something to her on the computer. She was laughing and smiling and they looked so cute. I stopped to watch them. The song playing was called “I’m a Cow” and had accompanying video, even though I couldn’t see the screen. As I stood there listening to this very weird song about being milked, I felt something warm dripping on me. Hubby and I looked at each other in horror as we watched milk drip and spray from my own cow-like milking apparatus (i.e. BOOBS). I was completely flabbergasted as this had never happened to me before and I didn’t know why or what to do. I ran around the living room frantically trying to find another towel and/or some kind of container. I had sprung a leak, quite literally! I thought I would die laughing.

The hilarity of the fact that this happened while listening to that particular song changed to amazement when I went online and discovered that what happened to me wasn’t just coincidence or a scene from one of those lame comedies where the new and useless parents have a baby and don’t know what to do with it, but was in fact just Nature having a laugh at my expense. Apparently anything that I associate with milk or babies will make me leak because my body is conditioned to respond to that stimuli and produce more milk. Crazy, eh? I, a reasonably intelligent and modern woman of the 21st century can do nothing to stop my boobs from spraying all and sundry when I hear a cow moo. That’s fucked up. Hence my Jack Handeys (deep thoughts) above.

Now that I’ve officiallly freaked you out and most likely made you mightily uncomfortable with strange mental images and cow songs, listen to it yourself and then delete this entire experience from your memory. I’d better get down to the barn for milkin’. Moooo!

Someblobby Loves Me

*cue ‘Hallelujah!’ music and angels trumpeting from on high and me doing a happy dance*

My baby is sleeping in the other room and I am the one who got her to sleep. I didn’t do my usual trick of feeding her, holding her until she falls asleep and then gently putting her down and saying 10 Hail Marys as I creep away. Nope, this time I got her to fall asleep on her own. All. On. Her. Own. Well, okay, there was a little bit of help involved from a hair dryer, a pacifier and a Coldplay song (how could it NOT put you to sleep?) but I still think I am the most awesome mother alive right now. If you have children you will know what I mean. If you don’t, just pretend that you’re my next door neighbour in this building and your bedroom wall is on the other side of the nursery. Then you’ll be praising me too.

Now that she’s snoozing I can get down to business.

What I really wanted to talk about is how much personality is starting to emerge from this gal. I hate to say it but for the first few weeks she was just a blob, really. A cute blob that I love with all my heart and would do anything for, but a blob nonetheless. In the past week, however, she has started to smile, coo and gaze at things for longer periods of time. She has discovered her fingers and toes and has almost gotten her thumb in her mouth a few times. She snorts and then goes silent, no matter how hard she was crying, when I put a bib on her, she sure knows when it’s feeding time!

She smiles whenever she sees the blue hippo hanging on the handle of her carseat and loves it when I tickle her belly and then touch her nose. When she grins that gummy ol’ grin at me, I just melt. It means that all this hard work is paying off and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Someday she’ll tell me she loves me and that will be it, I will officially turn into a pile of mush. Someblobby loves me and I never thought it would feel this good.