The Passion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Two things caught my eye in recent news and seeing as they’re related in a weird sort of twisted way, I thought it’d be fun to talk about both of them.

1.) Hoping to cash in on the new audiences reached with the success of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” 20th Century Fox has created a new brand, Fox Faith, which will produce, create and distribute “morally-driven, family-friendly” programming. As part of the home entertainment division owned by Satan Himself, Rupert Murdoch, Fox Faith will target Evangelical and traditional, conservative Christians.

Oh, the irony! Such an impressionable flock being led by a Media Conglomerate as shepherd. I wish I knew the book of Revelations better, I’m sure there’s a verse fitting for this. Something like “Follow ye men who strive to taketh over the world with faux news and mongering of the fear. Hide thine eyes from moving images and shield thy souls from those who would bare the skin of their flesh or the loins from which fruit springs. Embrace ye, O Censorship, and cast out those who dare to live in defiance of The Laws of the Kingdom. So sayeth me.” Or something like that.

2.) A North Carolina high school student has been suspended for coming to school dressed like a pirate. Why was he dressed like a pirate? He is a Pastafarian, which requires its followers to dress in pirate regalia. A Pastafarian is officially a follower of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Below are some of their key beliefs:

• An invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, including a mountain, trees and a midget (spelled “midgit”).

• All evidence for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM tests Pastafarians’ faith by making things look older than they are (q.v. Omphalos). “For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 11,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how that can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.”

• The Pastafarian belief of heaven stresses two points. “A) It has beer volcanoes as far as the eye can see & B) It has a stripper factory.

• The religious text of the Pastafarian religion is called the Loose Canon. In place of the ten commandments, it contains eight “I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts”, with a looser moral code.

• “RAmen” is the official conclusion to prayers, certain sections of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and so on, and is a portmanteau of the Semitic term “Amen” (used in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and Ramen, a noodle. While it is typically spelled with both a capital “R” and “A”, it is also acceptable to spell it with only a capital R.

Now, I propose this: The Pastafarians get an inside guy to get a job at Fox Faith and produce a big, epic God-fearin’, Bible-worshippin’, patriotic, Jesus-fest of a movie. They ship in arkloads of Christians for the big premiere, all over the country, and when they’re all settled down in their God Pods (cinema seats to you and me), Apostle Popcorn resting gently on their fully-clothed and modest knees, they get a big surprise. Instead of a movie about family values with a soundtrack by Amy Grant, they get a movie about His Noodly Appendage, complete with Keith Richards playing the part of the Anti-Global Warming Pirate, Paris Hilton to play the Head Stripper in the stripper factory, and David Hasselhoff to climb the Mountain and read the eight “I’d Really Rather You Didn’t”s. Hoff is the anti-Christ, after all.

That girl is poison

I spent my morning watching my child for signs of intoxication — staggering, inability to focus on objects, lethargy and the intense desire for pizza. Let me explain…

At about 10.30, The Noble Child woke up from her nap. We were already supposed to be at playgroup, as it’s her last week of going (it’s for 0-12 month babies and she’ll be 12 months on Monday) so I was in a hurry to finish getting ready. I plopped her down on my bedroom floor with a soft book and a few blocks and proceeded to dry my hair and gather our things together. She had her back to me just a few feet away, happily playing with her toys. Or so I thought.

When I was ready to pick her up, she turned to me and I looked at her in bewilderment. What was that white stuff all over her hands and face? What was that little tin she was holding? Aww, shit! In the tin was a solid perfume that I received for Mother’s Day, the kind you rub your finger over and then dab on your wrists or neck, or wherever. It must’ve fallen out of my handbag and onto the floor without me noticing. And, to be honest, I often let her play with my handbag and its contents because it keep her busy and I didn’t think anything in there could harm her.

I wasn’t actually sure if she had ingested any or not but I immediately wiped her hands and face off and cleaned up the chunks of perfume that were laying around. I thought ‘what the hell’ and dabbed a bit on my neck as well. Might as well try to salvage some! When I finally picked the cheeky little monkey up, I realised she smelled like a French whore. I mean, she smelled good, but I think if she had burped, an actual rose would’ve bloomed out of her mouth and dropped its fragrant petals at my feet.

I knew that eating perfume couldn’t be good but wasn’t sure if it would be considered poison and if I should worry or not. I took her to the playgroup anyway and thought I’d ask a health visitor while I was there. I casually walked into the office and asked if eating perfume is bad. They decided to phone Poison Control just to check, even though she hadn’t vomited and seemed fine. I felt quite nonchalant about the whole thing and wondered if that made me a bad mother. Some people would rush their precious angels to A&E if they so much as coughed when they were eating or bumped their heads on the floor. I’m a little less of a worry wart. When my sister was here visiting, she was holding Amelia and feeding her animal crackers when she turned red and couldn’t breathe. I calmly said “She’s choking”, took her from my sister’s arms, turned her over on her front, and gave her back a couple of whacks until she coughed up the soggy biscuit, and then carried on the conversation where we’d left off. So, I’m not an overly anxious parent.

But I felt really bad (okay, not really, but I have to say that) when a very serious-looking health visitor came over to me and said she’d spoken to Poison Control and they said that the toxic substance in perfume is ethanol (alcohol) and asked me if she’d been acting strangely, staggering, unable to focus, etc.. I had to bite my lip to keep from bursting out laughing and forced myself to think of puppies dying so that the mental image of my daughter, drunk off her ass at playgroup, didn’t give me away. I nodded a lot, with furrowed brow and just said ”no” to everything because she had been acting completely normally. I did make the joke about keeping an eye to make sure she didn’t order a pizza or go out for cigarettes and luckily the woman laughed. Whew! That could’ve gotten me a visit from CPS.

So now that it has been established that my nearly-1-year-old is, in fact, not drunk, I need a drink myself. Roll on 6pm!

There’s a Button bandit on the loose

One of my favorite sweet treats is Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Buttons in a smooth milk chocolate pudding. They come in these little packs with the Buttons on one side and the pudding on the other so you can mix them together. Imagine combining these two

Mmm. You see what I mean, right?

So, imagine my surprise when I got home with my little treasure of a dessert and sat down to eat it, only to discover some ass clown had peeled back the edge of the package and stolen the Buttons! What kind of savage does something like that?! Either steal the whole thing or leave it. Don’t just abandon the velvety chocolate pudding there all by itself, Button-less. I mean, it’s just common courtesy. There must a Thieving Bastards Conduct Code out there that prohibits the stealing of only one half of a chocolate treat.

I know I should have thrown the whole thing away since it had been opened and tampered with, but I wasn’t going to let the Thieving Bastards win. So I ate the pudding angrily, with narrowed eyes. I’ll show them. *shakes fist angrily at sky*

An open book

I just finished reading The Kite Runner. I don’t recall the last time I shed actual tears after finishing a novel. I held it to my chest like a dear friend and cried like one does when moved by the good in people, at feeling so lucky to have glimpsed into a world so descriptive, so hopeful. I highly recommend it. Thank you, NYS, for recommending it to me.

I’ll probably read a non-fiction book next, one I got from the library and is due back in a week — Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain by Sue Gerhardt. It seems a bit scientific in its approach, which I’m not normally a huge fan of as my attention is better held with books of a personable style with real stories of real people. Not that I can’t comprehend scientific texts, just that I prefer them to be written in such a way that the jargon and factoids don’t get in the way of the message, written in plain, bold terms. But it looks interesting, nonetheless.

Also on my upcoming reading list:

Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan (a gift from Jen — thanks J!)

My Life (Bill Clinton’s autobiography). A mammoth book that I am about 2/3 through but haven’t picked up in months

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zaron

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

Death, much better than this

Friday night: after two days of taking care of a sick child by myself, I got her to bed and settled down for a well-deserved break. I had a bottle of red on standby, a baked potato in the oven, and a dvd ready to go. But suddenly the baked potato didn’t seem so appealing and the thought of drinking wine was making me gag and I was so tired that I couldn’t believe my eyes when the clock read only 8.30. I was afraid I was coming down with whatever the Noble Child had been ill with and thought it best if I go to bed in case it was a long night. Boy, was I right. I was up no less than six times in the night, kneeling before that cruelest of deities, the Porcelain God. The babe woke up at 2am and I tried to get her to sleep in bed with us in the vain hope that she would sleep later but to no avail. The girl is an independent sleeper and doesn’t like to be cuddled in bed. So back to her room she went.

Saturday morning: The Noble Child awakens again at 6am. I force Paul out of bed and tell him to get her while I do my little dance between the toilet (to puke), the sink (to wash hands and brush teeth), the kitchen (for fresh water) and the bed (to DIE). He lasted until nearly 9am whereupon he announced that he too was feeling ill and needed to come back to bed. I could’ve killed him. I’d taken care of a sick baby for two days with no help from him and now that I was sick there was no one to take care of me. The nerve! Hmmph. After goading him and accusing him of just being hungover or lying through his teeth to get out of baby duty, I saw how green he looked and recognised that look. Aww shit. We both had it — bad.

Saturday — noon: In an increasingly lethargic state, unable to pick up The Noble Child or play with her in between bouts of Toilet Tango, I began to panic. There was simply no way I could cope with looking after her all day and night in this state. I began calling for help. First, my inlaws. They were out of town shopping and wouldn’t be back for another couple hours. Shit. So I called Lisa, who lives very nearby. She’s pregnant so can’t risk getting this shit but I hoped her husband or brother could help out, take the kid out for a couple hours or something. But they were doing a construction project on their bathroom and couldn’t leave it. Double shit. Lisa called Sara who said she could come over at 1.30. Even though that was only 90 minutes away, it seemed like an eternity. I cried at the thought of another long hour and a half of trying to chase after a crawling baby and keep her out of the bathroom and listening to her cry while I was heaving my guts up on the bathroom floor. Finally, Sara arrived and whisked Amelia away in her pushchair so I could crawl back into bed. Sweet relief! Paul’s parents arrived just as Sara was bringing her back so they just did a handoff and didn’t even wake us up. Bless their hearts. I owe them all BIG TIME.

Saturday night: Paul’s parents brought Amelia back at her bedtime and got her to bed and went to the store and got us some Sick People Essentials like Lucozade, grapes and crackers, and left us in peace on the sofa. I nibbled on two grapes and drank about a gallon of Lucozade and crashed out at 8pm. Paul fell asleep on the couch, too tired to move. We were such a pitiful state. We were too tired to even watch tv. The thought of hearing voices and having to comprehend English didn’t seem like a feasible thing at the time. At least the puking portion of the day was over though.

Sunday morning: Amelia up at 6am. I did early baby duty and didn’t feel all that bad, just extremely weak and tired. Paul’s parents picked Amelia up at 7.30 and took her for the entire day so we could rest some more, get ourselves and the house back in order. I seriously don’t know what we would’ve done without them. I shudder to think.

I wouldn’t wish that nasty bug (aka The Stomach Virus That Fucked Me, Repeatedly, Until I Begged For Mercy) on my worst enemy. Well, I could think of a couple people….

If you’re gonna spew, spew in this

I was all set to write a long, serious, meaningful post today and apologise to my adoring fans for being so absent as of late. And then I fed my daughter an egg sandwich and Thursday officially ended before it began.

First she puked on my bed, down the side of my bed, and on the rug. This was about two minutes after I’d gotten out of the shower myself so I was clad only in my underwear with a towel perched haphazardly on my head. I rushed her to the bathtub and plopped her in it but she’s already finished hurling so I stripped her and hosed her down. New nappy and outfit, bed stripped and rug placed in washing machine and we were good to go. I strapped her into her high chair, placed her in front of the Mac, and let her bang away on the keyboard with the Alpha Baby program that she so dearly loves while I finished getting ready. She was so happy banging on the keyboard that I figured I’d vacuum quickly while she was off of the floor and occupied. Big mistake. I heard a cough and turned the vacuum off to listen and heard the unmistakable sound of vomit splattering on the floor. This time the vomit was mostly down her front, in her hair and in every nook and crevice on the safety straps of her high chair. Joy! Bath and outfit change number two follow.

In between bouts of puking she seemed pretty happy so she was fine playing on the kitchen floor with her tambourine while I cleaned the high chair and did the dishes. Vomit is really difficult to get out of ridged nylon straps! I started to make lunch for myself when I heard her stomach churn again. I was able to get her to the bathtub in time but the piteous way she looked at me, with tears in her eyes and a retch on her face, made me feel absolutely horrible. There is not much worse than seeing your child feel unwell and there’s nothing you can do for her. I rubbed her back and cuddled her, not caring if puke got on me too, and we cried together.

I realised after outfit change number three that I had only one nappy left and no wipes. Ga-reat. I rang my mother-in-law who just happened to be at the store and she, saintly woman that she is, brought some over a little while later.

So all of my plans to spend the day writing have been dashed. Londonist? Sorry! Meaningful blog entry? Nada. But if I could, I would make it all better for her and I don’t care what I’d have to give up to get it. No more chocolate chip cookies, EVER? Done. No more cute wedges in the summer? No problem. No more large glasses of cabernet sauvign…Now, wait a minute. Some things are just worth throwing up for. Amelia will learn this sad lesson one day as she too chugs her large glass of wine too quickly and spends an entire day examining the contents of her stomach lining. So I think we can safely keep that one. But the others? They can go. I’d even give up pickles for her, and anyone who knows me is gasping right now and trying to pick their jaws up off the floor.

I never did learn another language but I’m becoming fluent in Mother’s Love. There, there baby. Sleep, my angel, sleep. Mama’s here.

Mi Madre Su Madre

It was Mother’s Day in the UK yesterday, my first. Here’s how my day went:

4.45am – wake up to feed baby
5.05 – back to bed
6.30 – baby awake again; Paul jumps up to get her and let me sleep
8.38 – wake up from blissful sleep; make coffee and cereal; go back to bed to read
9.15 – Paul and Amelia come into the bedroom and give me a card and gifts (book on wine and some lovely perfume and lip gloss from L’Occitane en Provence)
10-12 – Get showered, tidy up the flat, dress and feed Amelia
12.15 – inlaws arrive to take us for a drive and to do a second viewing on a house
1pm – look at house again; decide we really like it and want to put in an offer (!!!!!)
2.00 – go for coffee; get annoyed at Paul for letting Amelia drink half of his mocha frappuccino
3.15 – back home
3.30 – Amelia down for her nap; get chicken in the oven
5.45 – sit down to eat a roast dinner (chicken, roasted potatoes, squash and peas)
7.30 – Amelia to bed; surf internet
8.00 – curl up in bed with the laptop to watch Prison Break; drool over Wentworth Miller. Again.
9.00 – Oreo break; more PB
11.00 – bed

I could get used to this Mother’s Day stuff! The 8.5 hours of (nearly uninterrupted) sleep was the most precious gift I could’ve gotten. Since I’m American, I think I’ll insist on the same treatment in May for the US holiday. Now if I could just convince Paul…

Baby did a bad, bad thing

Amelia took her first, teeny tiny step yesterday. We were at a playgroup and I was chatting to a couple other mums, watching Miss Thang out of the corner of my eye, when I saw her pick up a plastic toy, stand up, and then look longingly at the baby’s head just out of her reach. She looked around for something to hold onto but only empty space flanked her. So, determined as ever, she hesitantly put a foot forward, and then the other one. Success! She grinned and just as I exclaimed “Oh my god, she just took a step! Yay!!!” and everyone’s heads swiveled round to see, she took the toy in her hand and began repeatedly bashing another baby’s head with it. When I told Paul about it he said “So we’ve figured out what her incitement to walk is — violence.”

Oh dear. What are we in for?

She also had what can only be described as her first temper tantrum the other day. She kept turning the tv on and off, on and off, and pushing on the screen. Since we are borrowing a friend’s tv right now while ours is being repaired, I had to be quite stern about her not touching it. A series of firm ‘NOs’ followed by picking her up and removing her from the area and distracting her with toys didn’t work and when I caught her going for the tv again I said in my Meanest Mommy voice “Amelia! No!” she looked at me with the widest eyes and stopped dead in her tracks. And then laid her head down upon the floor and began wailing. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and laugh a bit before I scooped her up to comfort her. Oh, to be inside the head of a baby on the verge on toddlerdom. It must be like a Jackson Pollack painting in there: colorful, a bit crazy and all over the place.

The girl’s not even one yet and I’m thinking that shares in Prozac (for me) might be a good idea.

Another story up over at Londonist — btw, the guy in the picture? He looks eerily like my ex-boyfriend. Gulp.

Un-Desperate Housewife

Don’t you love it when you have one of those days where you get so much done without ever feeling stressed and at the end of the evening you just feel perfectly content? I had one of those today and da-ammmmn it feels good! I did the food shopping (where I found many bargains), the cleaning, packaged up some gifts and other things I need to mail and got them ready, made some appointments, began organising a baby shower for my dear friend Lisa, looked for houses online, filled a prescription for Paul, went to a playgroup with Amelia, sent some emails and wrote another story for Londonist.

After that, I got Amelia to bed, cooked dinner, hung up two loads of laundry, cleaned my bedroom, did the dishes and updated my personal website with new pictures and video clips of my baby girl so that family and friends in the States can keep up with her progress.

Right at 10pm, I sat down with a vodka tonic to watch Desperate Housewives. I realized that if I’d been wearing pearls with a sweater set today and baked a cake, you could’ve mistaken me for Bree Van De Kamp/Hodge. Instead, I had one a baggy blue shirt encrusted with a bit of snot on the shoulder (Amelia just loves to bury her head there when she’s got the sniffles), jeans, and not a matching accessory in sight. Ah, well. I’d rather have this life than be worrying all the time if my husband might bash my head in and remove all of my teeth in the middle of the night. I know Paul is way too lazy for that. Who would clean up the mess and get rid of the body?

Speaking of Desperate Housewives, can I just say how much I love Lynette? She is my favorite character. I love that she flashed an old man just to get a liquor license. And what a great comeback when Tom barred her from attending his pizza place’s grand opening and then acted all disappointed when she turned him down for sex — “You barred me from your opening…” Great stuff. If I was a bit like one of the characters it would have to be her. Who are you most like? I know we’ve got some closet Brees and Gabbys up in here!

And this, just because it’s funny. I thoroughly enjoy seeing former 80s pop stars looking ridiculous.

Net worth

So I’ve been brainstorming and researching and figuring out how I can both earn some money by working at home and also keep doing (unpaid) writing to build up a portfolio. While my sister was here she helped me come up with some ideas for making contacts in the writing world and I’ll be going through that list item by item in the coming week or two, ringing around, emailing, and just generally pestering people and places to give me a chance. I’m cheap! Hell, I’m free!

I did manage to get a story in yesterday’s Londonist, my first one for them. I’m so thrilled that I got to throw in an A Team reference and say “pity the fool!” I’ll post the links here when I’ve got stories up over there. It’s a start!

And again, thanks to my sister who told me of a friend’s sister who does the same thing, I may have a great idea for working at home. Seeing as I love all things internet, online and otherwise wired, I think that being a Virtual Assistant would be perfect for me. Anyone who knows me knows I’m highly organised, a lover of lists and good at nagging, er, reminding people of what needs doing. I can imagine nothing more perfect for me if I could do it part time from home. I’ve got the experience and the skills, all I need is a bit of a home office set up and the sanity required to look after a baby/emerging toddler while working from home, and I’m good to go. Though I guess I also need clients, which might be harder to come by. I’ll also be — EEK!! — self-employed and having to do all the blah-blahdy-blah paperwork and tax stuff that goes along with it. I think I will be spending the next few days on the internet and in the library, figuring out how to set myself up for business.

If I get any more virtual I may just disappear altogether and be a mere hologram of my former self, and then I’d feel contagious, outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous. Noble’s my name, no one else is the same. Ooh ooh ooh, N!