Upon catching my husband watching Laguna Beach

Me: So, deep down, do you really want to be white, rich and 17?

Mike: Well, I am white and I once was 17. Two out of three ain't bad.

--

Our first year wedding anniversary is coming up and I am out of idears. I want to make it special because my husband is a good man. You see, he puts up with me when I call him, "Father Time" or tell him that I hope Nathan is out of diapers by the time he needs his first package of Depends. Yesterday, I told him I was feeling down and that maybe blackberry picking would cheer me up. He said, "Don't worry, I'll do it."

An hour later he came back with this.



His stained, pricked fingers poked out of the thin latex gloves. He asked if I felt any better.

That's love, I say.

--

I should tell you this story: two summers ago, Mike wanted to take me to a Storm game. It was the Storm BBQ Tools Night so the first 300 people get BBQ tools with the Storm logo. It was on. I had never been to a WNBA game before and I wasn't sure what to wear so I wore what I always did when we went on dates: a black dress and heels (haaawt!). Once we were seated, a woman with a Storm clipboard came up to us and asked me if I wanted to play in a half-time game called "Hot and Cold." The premise was that a contestant would be blindfolded and chase the mascot Doppler across the court. The crowd would clap if he/she was "hot" and boo if he/she was, you guessed it, "cold." I immediately turned to Mike and said, "You'd be PERFECT for this!"

The woman shook her head and said, "Uhh, no. This would be more fun if a girl participated."

Mike grabbed my shoulders. "You have to do this!"

Before I could protest, I was already being ushered to a room on the ground floor. The clipboard woman explained again how the game worked and showed me an autographed basketball that I could win. A man showed up and introduced himself as the guy would be helping me on the floor.

It was happening so fast. I told her, "This is such a coincidence. This is my first basketball game ever!"

She just smiled, nodded and added some Storm t-shirts to my goodie bag.

I couldn't focus on the game even though I was close enough to see the sweat fly off of Lauren Jackson's forehead. I was too busy hating myself for wearing ridiculous, impratical, come-hither heels and praying that I would. not. fall. in front of 8,000 screaming lesbians.

The floor guy told me it was time and handed me a blindfold. I was thankful that I wouldn't have to see the faces watching me transform into a full-on Hee Haw jackass. Maybe half-jackass, half-headless chicken. In heels.

"Don't worry!" He assured me. "It'll be over quickly."

I followed him into the darkness. Here's where it gets fuzzy. I remember the announcer asking the crowd to help Ramona on the court. I remember the crowd screaming and floor guy saying, "That's it, walk this way." And when the crowd booed, he said, "Now turn!" My hands were outstretched. I hobbled. I wondered how my heels were affecting the court. I hobbled some more.

Then I felt my whole front push into a soft cushy mass. Thank God, I thought. The effing mascot.

When I pulled the blindfold off, Mike was right in front of me.

"Hi baby! What are you doing here?" I asked. "Did you see me out there?!?"

I hadn't recognized that look on him. He looked like I had told him the oysters he just chucked down were three days old.

Another fuzzy part: I don't remember exactly what he said then. My ears were filled with crowd noise. The arena lights were harsh and disorienting.

He kneeled. He spoke of loving me and wanting to be with me and somewhere in all that there was the question, "Will you marry me?"

And I nodded at first and then said yes for the next two days.

--

Okay, I'm going to log off now because The Cheesy Love Department just called and told me they have an opening.

Things I was not doing the last time I wore these shoes

1. Thinking about babies

2. Thinking about constipated babies

3. Shoving a glycerin suppository up the clenched, unyielding butt of a constipated baby

4. Hovering over a screaming, constipated baby, shouting, "You can poo Nathan! Come on, poo!"

5. Shoving said suppository back up baby's butt after baby farts it out

6. Wiping my sweaty brow after said constipated baby with said unyielding, clenched butt deposits half his weight into two diapers and onto feces-free pair of non-maternity pants

7. Saying out loud, "Wouldn't it totally rock if Journey's 'Don't Stop Believing' was the soundtrack to this scene?"



Sing it, Steve Perry. Sing it.

What made my morning

Watch this now. It's the cutest animation I've seen: "David's New Snail"

I can't wait until Nathan can talk.

I think I'm going to regret that last sentence.

I spit on you, Microsoft

So I had to change the template because this website has been crashing IE browsers. I'm so embarrassed. This reminds me of the time when I was in second grade and no one told me that I had tucked my skirt into my stockings thus, everyone could see that I was wearing my Monday undies two days late. Eesh.

Oh no you didn't!

I got dissed by another mom at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, of all the friggity-frack places in the world to get dissed. I can understand getting dissed at Macy's or Sizzler, but Wal-Mart? What bloated bag of hate disses a fellow mother in a place that sells stirrup pants for 8.97?

While my mother scoured the shampoos, I spotted a woman with the same Graco travel system model. As she approached me, I waited for her to look at my stroller then look at her stroller and laugh and shrug at the sheer coincidence of two people with the same stroller in the same green plaid fabric. Then we would have one of those scenes in the movies when two people hold hands and spin each other around and the camera zooms in on each face while the world blurs behind them.

But instead of grabbing my hand and frolicking in a meadow, the woman turned her body away as she passed. She went all Adam Smith on me, sticking her invisible hand to my face, saying, "Talk to this!" Paa-shaa! She had to have seen me. My gargantuan stroller and I were not in stealth-mode. And those Curious George band-aids were not *that* interesting.

I wanted to yank the scrunchy out of her hair and yell, "Awww-hell-naah! We are pressing instant replay on this mutha and you and I are going to have a moment!"

And if Nathan could walk, I bet he would have kicked her in the shins to avenge his mother's dissing.

My mother, the couch director

Tonight, I carried Nathan into the living room and found my mother talking to the television in quick whispers, "Hurry up! Hurry up! One, two, three.." This prompted me to tell her, "Mom, I don't think the cast of Jaws 2 can hear you and if even if they could, I don't think they speak Chamorro."

Sleeping with the Enemy is up next. She'll probably be telling Julia Roberts how to swim.

the other "c" word

My mother's back in town and already there are these gems:

Scene 1

Me: She's in that WIC program.

Mom: The wheat program?

Me: The WIC program.

Mom: The WEC program?

Me: Yeah, Mom. The WEC program. For women, elephants and children.

Scene 2
Mom: Oh Mona there's a big bird on that field! It's geese!

Me: Yes, they're wild geese.

(Pause)

Mom: Can we shoot them? You know, for Thanksgiving?

--

Until yesterday afternoon, my husband had skin cancer. It was basal cell carcinoma. It is very common and luckily, treatable. He didn't want me to say anything because his mother died of skin cancer and that word triggers fear in his siblings who are quick to worry, panic and recite rosaries. And yesterday, my mom became a babysitter hours after her plane landed just so I could accompany my husband to the surgery center. Now he has a maxi-pad taped to the side of his face, covering a nickel-sized crater where the cancer used to be.

Also, his TB test came out negative. His cancer has been carved out. There are no worries now. We have a doctor in the family.



--

This weekend, I drove almost two hours to buy 13 cans of 12.9 oz Enfamil lipil with iron formula. I saved 116 bucks. If she had let me use a coupon or one of my Enfamil checks, I would have collapsed.



--

My breast situation has been replaced with my utter hatred for our living space. Before Nathan and the deluge of baby acoutrement that came with, this apartment was fine. It yielded us enough space to have one cat and maybe the occasional single visitor. I didn't need an intercom to find my husband, I could just yell. But now, with my mother and her luggage here and the three baskets of laundry waiting for my lazy ass, there is no room. I've seen more distance between that one-armed sufer girl and the shark.

How do you keep it together? My ears are open.

On notice

This is cool.

What I bought at Costco

Size 3 Huggies, sockeye salmon, chips, strawberries and a baby.

Not shown: the 14 other babies that came with Nathan. At Costco, they don't let you buy just one.

Videos that serve no purpose other than to please me

My son, activated.

You Tube(rculosis)

Yesterday, Mike received a letter that one of his students has respiratory tuberculosis.

Yes, you read that right. TB. Tuberculosis. Festering bloody lung disease. The very same.

Did we all of sudden leave 2006 and step into 1846, when tuberculosis was the height of Victorian fashion? Hell, they even had "fainting rooms." Instead of taking that lemon of news and turning it into Victorian luxury, I spent the bulk of the afternoon feeling like a leper and frantically calling my son's pediatrician.

I was told that I couldn't get a TB test without doctor's orders. So I left a message for the doctor and was told she would get back to me. The whole "getting back" process didn't happen until half an hour after the office had closed and after I hollered at the receptionist, "What do you mean, she's with a patient right now? Don't you understand? My son and I have been exposed. I want something done now!"

The pediatrician calmed me down over the phone and told me that unless my husband and I had been in close, continuous contact with the sick student, the likelihood of contracting tuberculosis was slim and that I should put away the sterile bubble-home I was about to move my family into.

"So I shouldn't worry?" I asked.

"You shouldn't worry." My doctor said.

"So I can go outside?"

"You can go outside. Besides, you could have already come in contact with someone with TB and not even known it."

Thanks Dr. Quinn, that last sentence really made me feel better.

Since becoming a mother, I have been instilled with a frightening power and responsbility to care for my child and a fear that I will fall short no matter what I do. I boiled water, sterilized bottles and binkies, cleaned, washed and folded and still I was slapped with a terrible, seizing "What if?" What if my husband has TB, gave it to me, and I gave it to Nathan? What if my son's growth is stunted and he will be placed in an iron-lung because of me?

I was ready to get some bubble wrap together and create a makeshift fort so my son and I could be protected from the infectious, germy world. I was already imagining the 10 o'clock news reporting that the CDC traced the tuberculosis epidemic to a Seattle woman who decided to take her three-month-old son to Target and also had the audacity to breathe on people.

I'll put the baby gas mask back in storage now.

--

My lactation consultant suggested I take fenugreek to increase breastmilk production and since one engine is down, I figured, why not? She didn't tell me, however, that fenugreek smells like an autopsy. I hate taking pills (which is kind of how I got into this baby chaos), especially these brick-sized odorous ones.

--

My son is suffering from male infantile baldness.


See that equator of scalp beginning to emerge on his head? What gives?



A bear hat serves as a cute remedy and clever disguise.

conversations with a cheapskate

Me: Did you get the pacifiers from Target?

Mike: Yes.

Me: Did you use the coupon I gave you?

Mike: Yeah. The guy gave me a weird look though. He asked his manager if he could use it.

Me: Oh. That's probably because the coupon expired last month.

Mike: Oh really? You could have told me. It was only fifty cents.

--

In other cheapskate news, I drove 27 miles to buy an Exersaucer for $10. Ten dollars! The cheapest one I've found in a consignment store went for 25 bucks and it didn't have any toys. I know Nathan doesn't exactly have the head-control skills (Wouldn't that be a great name for a band? Head-Control Skills? Or maybe a porn. Head-Control Skills 27. Geez Mona, you're talking about your son on both sides of the parentheses. Get a hold of yourself, woman), but doesn't he look cute already?

Mona's Boobs: a musical of hope!

My doctor wanted to see me last Saturday even though her office was closed. She instructed me to meet her in the ER waiting room. This whole post would have dripped with drama if I had started it with, "I had to go to the ER last Saturday," which is true and untrue. Anyway. When she arrived, she waved at us through the glass window. I didn't recognize her at all. No blue scrubs or crisp lab coat. Her ponytail was looped through a baseball cap and she dressed in jeans and a shirt that exposed three inches of midriff.

Mike said, "She's wearing that?"

"She has carte blanche over my breasts and she signs my pain pill prescriptions. She can wear whatever she damn well pleases."

She strolled in and told us that we would have to wait a few minutes for the other couple to arrive.

There's another woman going through this? What? I'm not some side-show freak? I should toss my Deadwood audition tape? Man, my One Boob Mo act was going to take me places.

"She had it worse than you." she said. "She had to be put in the operating room." She continued to tell me that my breast abscess was not uncommon and that she had seen three other women that week with the same problem.

If you had seen this woman, you would have thought she had just given birth. She hobbled in with the help of her husband. Her eyes were dark and puffy. Her husband walked at her pace, asking her if she was okay, if there was anything he could do.

Later, when the doctor set us up in our respective exam rooms, I said to Mike, "See that husband? Did you see how he held her hand and walked her?"

"Did you see my hands?" He replied. "They were holding our son's carseat."

When we left, my little family waddled out with the other couple. My doctor looked at me and said, "You can shower on Monday if you'd like. It'll feel good. Unless, of course, you feel squeamish."

"Yeah, I'll feel squeamish. In fact, I don't think I'll ever take a shower again." The other husband turned back at me and smiled at my joke. But what could I say? I had an audience.

This makes me grateful that my doctor wasn't my mother or else she would have also taken the opportunity to publicly remind me to prepare a paper "U" on the toilet seat before use, like she did at every freaking restaurant. That's how I learned to have great bladder control. If I could hold it until we got home, I wouldn't hear my mother say, "Are you going to bathroom? Are you going to put toilet paper on the seat? MONA! DON'T SIT ON THE TOILET, OKAY?"

And whenever I walked toward the restroom, red-faced and wishing I had been born into a different family, I would leave my ghost Mona back in my seat, saying exactly what I wanted her to: "WHAT WAS THAT, MOTHER? I DON'T THINK EVERYONE HEARD THAT! DON'T PLANT MY ASS ON A NAKED TOILET SEAT? GOT IT! WILL DO!"

--

Since I had to start with a new doctor for this breast debacle, my doctor gave me a "Breast questionaire," which included the cancer history in my family (none to date) and a requsite inquiry into my smoking and drinking (also zip, except for the Steel Reserve in the fridge). Then came the question, "Any recreational drugs?" She paused and looked up from the clipboard as if I had to fill in the blank with, "Yeah, heroin...but that's only on the weekend. But the shrooms have me by the ovaries, I tell ya. By the o-va-ries."

--

I'm re-thinking my birth control options. Right now, my birth control method has been looking at my screaming son, or the gelantinous belly pushing over my pants and saying, "No baby-making tonight, dear." One of my friends is getting an IUD, which is tempting, but geez, I've had enough female invasion.

--

I broke down and bought jeans at Target. Nathan was asleep in his car seat until I had my pants around my ankles, then he woke up and needed comfort ASAP. Do you know how hard it is to try on pants while keeping a stroller in motion? I didn't major in this, sir. I purchased the fat jeans in haste because I was tired of watching my white pantless self moving my child back and forth. Unfortunately, I bought the riddle-me-this jeans. My dilemma: if I go without a belt, I risk exposing my muffin top or worse yet, my "coin slot." If I do wear a belt, it bunches up the fabric around the crotch which makes my crotch look enormous. I have the Grand Canyon of crotches. So what do I do? Go for the mega-mound or the crack-is-whack look?

--

And if you're wondering how I'm doing, I should tell you that at my last doctor's appointment, she said I was healing and the area looked "marvelous," which is a very funny thing to say to a woman with a breast that looks more like someone extinguished a cigar on it. But it's getting better. It'll be a couple of weeks before it's healed completely, but at least I have my good boob, that's all I can say.

My son eats his hand

Baby stew

Baby stew
Originally uploaded by kirida.

If you're hungry tonight and need a quick recipe, how about some baby stew?

P.S. I totally jacked this idea from Amalah.

P.P.S. Nathan is going to wish digital cameras were never invented.

An open note to my mother

Dear Mom,
Please do not pronounce Mary Magdalene's name as "Mary Madeline." They are two different people. Here's a visual:


Mary Magdalene.


Mary Madeline.

See the difference?

Love,
Mona

This is my confession

I am a lazy breastfeeder. I admit it. I see all these pictures of mothers sitting upright or standing, holding their children in the crooks of their buff arms and I think, "Forget that!" Since I had me Lucky Charms stiched up after the delivery, it hurt to sit up, sit, or think about sitting. I was given a vital doughnut, a small inflatable plastic doughnut (durr) that was so whoopy-cushion-thin I was sure it would go pffft under my honky tonk badonka donk behind (I have trouble calling body parts by their scientific names, if you haven't noticed. I fear for my child.). I breastfed lying down and the position stuck. I never tried the football hold until last week. Seriously. For the first two months of Nathan's life, my world looked like a photo that hadn't been turned clockwise.

And Nathan enters a deep, quiet, slumbers when we are lying next to each other. When I try to extract myself from his vacuum-mouth, he seizures awake until his piehole is corked with my unwounded boob. This makes me think of Rip Van Winkle. I theorize that the real story goes like this: Mrs. Van Winkle breastfed the lad, sleeping next to him under that shady tree for 20 years until she awoke with an adult son still attached and realized she needed a life. And maybe some Junior Mints. I don't even know if they had Junior Mints in the Revolution, but if this is my rendition, they did. A shelf bra wouldn't hurt either, because after 20 years of gravitational breastfeeding, could you imagine?

cupcake in the computer room

Me: Can you get me a napkin for this cupcake.

Mike: (pulls out a napkin from the drawer)

Me: Don't give me your jack-off napkins!

Mike: I use these to blow my nose!

Me: Is that what you call it?

Mike: I use these to blow my nose!

Me: Why is it then that you always have to blow your nose in the computer room, huh? It's not that dusty!

--

In other news, my son is a changing.

1 day old


3 days old


11 weeks

The battle of the boob

I couldn't sleep last night because it felt as if someone stuffed hot coals into my left breast and then held the boob over an open flame while massaging my wound with a Tinian hot pepper rub. So there was some slight discomfort. Mike had already left for work when the pain had become so intense that I was crying in the bathtub. I called the doctor's office at 8:45 and they told me they could get me in at 9:30. So I took all the short-cuts, meanwhile thinking what I would tell the officer if I were to be pulled over for speeding. I would strip off my shirt, point to my bruised, deformed boob and yell, "Is that good enough for you, Officer Chang?" (I say Chang not because I am racist against my Asian brothers and sisters, but because the only cop to ever pull me over was an Asian patrol officer named Chang and since then, all cops have been Officer Chang to me.)

I told my doctor that I didn't know what else to do. Was I supposed to buck up and deal with it? She said no, and that the only option they had left was surgery. Instead of moving me to an operating room, she opted to perform the minor surgery there in the office. I don't know why they call it minor. Anything involving a knife and a part of my body deserves "major" as an adjective. In my fantasy hospital, I would be put into a deep sleep, landing into a dream involving me and Zidane. I would wake out of my slumber, my hair would be perfect and my boob would be magically healed. I could be Sleeping Boobie! But instead, I was in a white, sterile doctor's office with three women standing around my bare chest. There weren't any mobiles hanging above or pictures of tulip fields posted on the ceiling. I shut my eyes and listened to the sound of plastic containers opening and voices instructing me to breathe in, out and repeat.

Giving birth to Nathan was the last time I had to go through this rolling, searing agony, but I could deal because there was going to be a baby at the end. But today, I had the same kick-to-the-ovaries-level of pain and instead of a baby (and the sweet epidural), I gave birth to a whopping medical bill.

But it's over. What else can they do to me? It throbs, but I'm much better now. I'm wearing a gauze tube top (a boob tube, if you will) and having a good time with my friend Oscar Oxycontin.

--

During every moms group meeting, we start out with our highs and lows. Since I've already covered the lows during this post, I will share an awesome snippet with you.

Last weekend, Nathan and I sprinted over to the local Safeway for their grand re-opening sale. He began to cry so I gave up searching for some items and headed to the register. I swiped my Safeway card through the scanner and Nathan continued doing his "meep meep" weep. The cashier looked at him and me with that, "Oh poor you" face and said, "It only gets worse from here, buddy." She was referring to Nathan. No one calls me buddy. When she scanned the receipt to pronounce my name, she said, "You won a DVD player!"

Even though I already have a DVD player, I was elated to win some electronic goodness. If Nathan hadn't started to cry at the moment he did, I would not have been the 90th person to win a free DVD player. Oh I love supermarket promotions!

Ask Nathan who really won the DVD player and he'll raise his hand.

Christmas in August

I've decided to cut off my left boob. I'll be One Boob Mo. That way, when you're chugging beers at the biker tavern with your friends Snake Bite, River Rat and Scuzz, you can tell them the story of the woman who cut off her own boob because of the searing, throbbing pain. One Boob Mo, that's me.

And this story is my gift to you.

--

Nathan's featured on postivefanatics.com.



Cool, no?