Resolved: Double strollers are cool and baby number 2 may be evil

Here's a debate that goes through my head:
I want another baby.

No, Mona, you don't want another baby.

I'm still young and full of life! I can handle another child!

Give me a break. You're so tired when you come home from work, you can't even make it through an episode of LOST.

Well, that's because they switched the time to 10 o'clock! If they had kept it at 9, I would know what's going on! And why aren't people hairier? They are very smooth and attractive for not having shaving equipment around! And where's Walt? And why hasn't Hurley lost any weight?

What if the next child turns out to be like one of The Others or worse, Damien?

Then Nathan will have to enter the priesthood at 18 months so he can perform the exorcism. We'll have to keep it in the family. Maybe then he can tell me what those polar bears were doing on an island.

Be honest, why do you really want to have another child?

Well, double strollers are kind of cool.

I don't want another baby. But I want another baby. And this is how I'm flip-flopping in my mind. Chances are, we'll be able to plan the next one, but Mike and I aren't sure when that'll be. Some days, we look at our slobbering child with Gerber puffs stuck to his face, who squeals and bah-bah-bahs at us and think, maybe we're okay with just one. Nathan is so full of awesome and (generally) good health that the odds might not be in our favor in having another baby who loves cats (and their respective food) as well as his parents.

But the real issue here is that during a lunch-break stroll through Pottery Barn Kids at the U-Village, I was disgusted by their "Sail Away" room set. Obviously, no Pacific Islander was consulted when the design-for-the-rich team came together with a $2,695 Speed Boat Bed and Trundle. Why would I shell out almost 3K for a bed that looks like a boat. Why not buy a boat that could be used as a bed? Then when your child grows out of it, you can use it as a boat! And why are convertible cribs only used for beds afterwards? Why couldn't you convert a crib into, say, a gazebo? An island kitchen? A complete set of the 1978 World Book Encyclopedia? My Nintendo GameBoy from 1988 with super high Tetris scores?

But no one asked me, which is why I return to the inner dialogue with my voice of reason, one who doesn't think that double strollers are reason enough for another baby.

On the net, no one knows you're a hovel

What is it about house hunting that reminds me of my ex-boyfriends? Discovering quaint real estate phrases like, "charming" and "starter home," really mean "breadbox" and "hovel," is much like realizing your starving artist boyfriend is an uneducated oaf who is very skilled at creating skulls and crossbones with Photoshop's airbrush tool.

It's disheartening.

I am inundated with collectors from Woulda, Coulda, and Shoulda, LLC, whose office is inside my head. Why didn't I squirrel away every dollar I received from my baptism, First Holy Communion, confirmation and high school graduation? (Catholics make bank!) Why did I have to buy that knock-off Barbie doll with the interchangeable heads when I was eight and later at 18, why did I insist on purchasing the entire series of Planet of the Apes on DVD for Mr. LetMeJustFinishThisGame who had no job (unless you consider raising your Half-Life 2 ranking above ComradeBadger241 a serious career move)? Why Mona? Why didn't you know to buy real estate when you were 14 and living on the other side of the Pacific Ocean? What do you mean you had to get an education first and you had absolutely no source of income? Wouldn't you rather have a house than know the plot theories of Beowulf? You would at least know how to create skeletons on the computer.

And it doesn't help that tonight we received a notice to move out in 10 days or comply. Comply with what, you ask? Well, that's what I was what-the-effing. Apparently, our neighbor below is accusing us of banging our car doors into her car and dinging the side, even though the small glitch in her complaint is that she is never home when we park our car. But whining to the management is enough to get someone (almost) evicted, or at least put on record as not being very good neighbors. I learned enough about tenant law when I worked as a part-time apartment manager, so though this is just a warning and not a notice, it's the first of many things that the folks below to make our lives hell. (Pregunta: how do we comply with something as baseless as preventing damage to a car that's not even there? If you figure that out, you can help me in my quest to save endangered unicorns and stop the deforestation of Candy Land.)

But before we came home to the Get Out Now, Do Not Pass Go notice, Mike and I seriously considered two properties. One in West Seattle (thanks for the heads up, Alison!) and one in Burien. The West Seattle one shaves about ten minutes off of Mike's commute and is located by a sweet elementary school, grocery store, and best of all, TARGET! But it needs work, particularly the landscaping and a lot of the exterior. Ahhh, but I think fondly of the location, something the Burien property sorely lacks. That house is small, but well maintained. It has a sliver of yard and a long strip of gravel driveway. The stacked washer and dryer is in the second bedroom. I'm not sure where we would fit the office. And though I'm sure I would have a similar spacing issue with the West Seattle home, I would have much more opportunity to expand. I couldn't add onto the Burien home since it's on a hill and well, the backyard is standing room only. I think I answered my own question.

It's time to break up with this apartment. I've found someone else.

Real moms...

Real moms grin stupidly so they can feed their children before they're allowed to enjoy their vegan seitan sandwich. Just so you know, "seitan" sounds very much like "satan" and for most of the meal, I thought I was eating a sandwich influenced by the dark prince.



Real moms also take whatever kind of kiss they can get, even if it's a chomp on the nose.



Real moms also seek revenge by dressing their sons up in uber-preppy vests and berets. If you can't use your words, you can't complain. Actually, you can, but I can't find "WAAAAH!" in my Nathan-to-English dictionary.

(thanks Odawni for the photos!)

Nathan Le Pew

Nathan Le Pew
Originally uploaded by hello insomnia.

Meet my French son, Nathan Le Pew.

ass-inine matters

The other week Mike had his first colonoscopy. I'm sharing this partly because whatever prompted you to have that "GEEZ Mona, another TMI post?" reaction upon reading the previous sentence is what causes most people to miss treating a preventable form of cancer.

Because we have already battled a small bout with cancer, I was more freaked out than Mike was. He was fine going on the requisite liquid diet and drinking the sweet gunk meant to clean out his system, but I couldn't help thinking, what if? What if this is it and I'll have to raise Nathan by myself and he'll end up on Maury Povich as one of those kids who hates his mama and has to go to boot camp or worse yet, Shalom in the Home? Oy vey, that's meshuggeneh!

I was mostly afraid of the recovery process because my friends, or so-called friends, warned me that he would be out of it, that I should expect taking care of two babies and to find an adult stroller for Mike (answer: wheelchairs!).

So when the nurse told me that the wait would be an hour and a half, I didn't think it would be two and half panicked-filled hours staring at a clock and haphazardly leafing through last year's US Weekly (whenever I read old celebrity mags, I feel like I have some psychic power because upon reading about Britney's thrice-vag-flash, I totally know what happened next, pathetic tv-addled great pop culture oracle that I am).

During the wait, I watched other patients walk through the recovery doors and I wondered what state Mike would be when he appeared. I was touched by a professional looking guy who practically threw down his laptop and blackberry when his wife was wheeled through the doors. The nurse listed out the results of her colonoscopy, but he just focused on his wife, kissing her cheek, rubbing her hand and saying, "How about we get out of here, sweetheart?"

Having witnessed such a tender exchange, I was floating on love-by-osmosis until the recovery doors opened to a woman accompanying a wheelchaired man, a man who could not stop talking about how much pain he was in and how the doctors said they needed more tests because it could be cancer.

Granted, if you've had a camera examining your crevices for a few hours, then you have every right to announce the amount of pain. But not in front of me, dude, especially when I'm waiting for my husband who may or may not have cancer. Let's get all Depeche Mode and enjoy the silence, mmmkay?

One of the dark and morbid facts about marrying someone significantly older is that it's likely he'll die before I do. I grew up with my mother as a widow rather than an active wife and I think about that, especially when I'm in a hospital waiting room, secretly planning how I'll handle Nathan all by my lonesome. I don't know if I have these morbid fantasies of planning funerals and obituaries more than other women. I'm not alone in thinking the worst, of quickly jumping to conclusions based only on hearsay and speculation. But while in that waiting room, where I was privy to the open pain of others and faced with my husband's mortality, it was easy to include myself in that sad sphere.

And just when I had constructed a mental map of where I would spread my husband's ashes (into ashtrays of the smoking sections that still exist in this country) he doesn't want to be buried), the doors opened to my husband *walking* out. I wanted to jump up and yell, "I thought you were going to be in a wheelchair!" but I couldn't do that with Mr. Wheels still within earshot. (Thanks, friends, for instilling fear into my hypochondriac heart.)

Mike held out the laser-printed color shots of his colon. Four windows capturing pink and brown. "Two polyps," he announced, "but no cancer."

Smiling at his glamour shots, he reached for the stroller, our sleeping son still inside and said, "Let's get out of here, Mona. I'm hungry."

This is how I'm going to decorate Nathan's room

Downtown at Flora and Henri
Originally uploaded by hello insomnia.

From Flora and Henri--this is how much toilet paper you could buy for the cost of one of their sweaters.

sniff me out like I was Tanqueray

This is me after driving 150 miles so Nathan could be watched by someone other than PBS' afternoon programming (What? Dragon Tales won't teach Nathan how to change his own diaper? Only how to live in freaking Dragon Land???), Mike could spend the rest of the day paralyzed in bed and so I could make it to the office to work for a grand total of FOUR hours.

Just as a sidenote: I wear heels because I'm too lazy to hem my pants and any height elongates my stumpy we-want-to-welcome-you-to-Munchkin-Land legs. I need all the help I can get. My pants are so big, they're like two windsocks sewn together. I've gotten offers from used car lots to borrow my conical leggings so they attach it to a high powered fan and turn it into one of those air-blown balloon attractions used to attract customers.

So the next time you pass Burien Motors and see my jeans blowing in the wind, flapping at your windshield, remember me.

--



Odawni sent me this picture of me "back in the day." I feel like I'm looking in at a life of which I have only a fond, but vague memory. Here I am smoking (!), drinking with reckless abandon (!!) and wearing a shirt that no longer zips up (!!!). You see that birthmark there on my right arm? Because of my flabby arm girth, it's just a speck of a dirt now. I've had people come up to me asking if it's a birthmark or if I just missed a spot.

Truth be told, some days I want to smoke again. I want to go into the tobacco shop dressed incognito, wearing a sweatshirt and sunglasses, and slip the man behind the counter a five. What stops me is that I like the way I smell now. I wear Calvin Klein's Escape for Women (thanks to my days in Juvie). Also, what if those chemicals trap themselves in my body and after I breastfeed Nathan, he'll look at me under some second-hand high and say just like those smoking grandmas who station themselves in front of slot machines, "WHERE CAN I GET SOME QUARTERS?"

Also, two months after this picture was taken, I found out that we were pregnant with Nathan. Luckily, it was in my bathroom and not in the one working stall at the bar. It wasn't like I slipped out of happy hour long enough to take an EPT test with "There once was a man from Nantucket" poetry scrawled behind me.

I think the most shocking part of this photo is that I'm pictured as a woman, and not as I truly am: a 27-year-old fisherman named Jun who washes his cut-off mesh jerseys in the ocean by beating them with rocks. Who says the camera never lies?

--

And all this talk of drink and debauchery prompts me to share with you this song from Amy Winehouse. Isn't that a great name? I think my stage name would be Mona Wineinaboxhouse. How fitting.

my thought on Seattle real estate:

The only property we can afford is Hidden Valley Ranch.

prescription for baby fever: more infant cowbell

This is the face of a 10-month-old baby who has a fever and is trying to calculate how many times over the past 24 hours his mother has stuck a thermometer up his butt.

Infant's motrin has helped curb the fever, but the side effect is that Nathan does not sleep. It reminds me of that Gilligan's Island episode when they found a crate of vegetables and after everyone had their share, they found out it was radioactive. Nathan's is like Mrs. Howell, who ate sugar beets, since he zooms around as if someone's hit the fast forward button.



This is also the body of a 26-pound baby boy who has clearly outgrown his Bumbo, a foam seat designed to hold a baby up to 14 months. He is puzzled that many months ago, he was "this big."

seeing green

Did you have an awkward moment this week? Did you have a lengthy conversation with your boss only to discover that spinach was lodged in your teeth? Did you strut through downtown with a visible panty line? Well, internet, I'll see your catwalk face plant and raise you one sighting of the ex-wife.

It was inevitable. We live in the same part of the city. We shop at the same grocery store. As far as I know, we have the same last name.

I wouldn't have known it was her because I don't really know what she looks like. There aren't any pictures of her in this house. The few pictures tucked in Mike's photo albums promptly became kindling. Sage was burned shortly thereafter.



When the bus rolled stopped on her street, I knew that it was her. The few details I still remembered--tall, super-short gray hair--led me to figure out that it could only be the former Mrs. H. When she swiped her card through the reader and inched her way down the crowded bus, her eyes didn't meet mine because I was suddenly focused on the psychic ability of my iPod's shuffle settings. How did you know I wanted to listen to Journey, dear iPod? Sing it, Steve Perry. Sing it.

I doubt she knew it was me, the new Mrs. H. The last time she saw me, I was eight months pregnant, shopping at the grocery store with Mike. That's how she discovered that Mike had remarried and his new wife, 36 years her junior, was with child. What happened afterwards was some very uncordial talk with mutual friends peppered with questions as to whether or not we had planned our baby, etc.

Then she did the mature thing and gave us a wedding gift, a gift certificate to Eats Market Cafe and said that I looked very becoming as a pregnant woman.

Thanks to her, I had the salmon.



I doubt that would have happened on Saipan, where jealousy is common and all-consuming. That's not to say that every single relationship is marred by competition and pettiness. I'm sure that there are couples who can openly talk about their past without one saying, "Pa-shaa!" or obvious eye-rolling. Instead of the blanket statement that began this paragraph, I'll clarify with this: my relationships on Saipan were tainted with "who the hell were you talking to" arguments.

I was the subject of much bathroom graffiti because I dated so-and-so's ex, or danced with someone at a club's Teen Night. And I carried this useless habit into my relationship with Mike. I was jealous over things that had nothing to do with me and I had no control over. Her name was verboten. I couldn't visit the places they had gone together because he was there with her.

How silly is that? To cancel out most of Western Washington because my husband was there with someone else?

And even though, I'm not that person anymore, the jealous woman who has to burn traces of past lovers and everything pre-Mona, I couldn't muster up the courage to say hello. What was I going to say? "Hey, did you get our thank-you card and by the way, have you legally changed your name, yet?"

I kept my eyes on the shifting landscape outside the window until I watched her exit the bus. I then reached for my phone, dialed my husband at work and said, "Guess who I just saw?"

Nathan's face as I explain to him last night's episode of LOST

goodbye insomnia

goodbye insomnia
Originally uploaded by hello insomnia.

Why you wouldn't want to eat all my cookies, pin it on me and subsequently get into a spat...

...especially with some lame line like, "You're going to get it," because here I was with the comeback of the year:

"Oh, are you going to give it to me, like you gave it to those cookies?!?!"

Aww yeah. Bring it.

And while you're on your way, pick me up a box of Newman O's.

Elseweb

Tastespotting featured a mango hedgehog recently. Have you seen Tastespotting? It's one of the best food blogs because it satisfies my food blog criterion: it makes me hungry and makes me wish I had a better camera.



I don't think it looks like a mango hedgehog unless you've never seen a mango before, like my sister-in-law who thinks Hawaii is part of Asia. It looks like someone ruined my mango with two raisins and a raspberry.

--

Would you go over to Jurgen Nation and cheer on Stacy as she starts her new jobby-job? She couldn't possibly make the same mistake I did--pilfer fashion tips off of Ugly Betty. Eesh.

--

I'm going to frame this x-ray of a bullet behind a little boy's eye in case Nathan ever thinks of getting a BB gun or re-enacting A Christmas Story.

In which the voice in my head tells me to shut up

Last night Mike and I experienced the sheer frenzy of dining at the Rainforest Cafe. I thought we could just stroll right by the throngs of parents and children in the store and get a seat, but just as I was ready to request a table for two and half, this park ranger-dressed teenager asked me, "Did you check in at the elephant?"

Puzzled, I asked, "We have to check in at the elephant?"

"Yes, you have to get a passport at the elephant in the front." She pointed to a half-elephant purple platform (Too bad it was the front half of the elephant. I could have had fun with the tail end) where two identically-uniformed rainforest rangers with fancy microphones called out to the crowd, "Patricia, safari of five? Your adventure is about to begin!"

We received our "passport," a slip of paper listing our 45-minute wait time. In most cases, Mike and I walk out if the wait time is unusually long, but this was Rainforest Cafe. We were at the mall with our love of the environment and rain forests! I have watched The Forbidden Dance enough times to know that seductive hip gyration can help the rain forest and curb corporate deforestation!

So Mike shuffled his tennis-balled walker to the bench while Nathan and I took a field trip.



While Nathan and I perused the racks (heh) of their new "Secret Embrace" line, I thought how many brainstorming meetings Victoria's Secret execs had before someone came up with a title as ridiculous as "Secret Embrace." If I spent upwards of $52 on an invisible lace push-up bra, it would sure as hell be a Public Embrace. For 52 bucks, I would be telling anyone within earshot how much money was on my puppies. And why "Secret Embrace"? They're my breasts. How secret could an embrace be with my own body? Am I going to talk to Miss Universe and Miss International (the good one being Miss Universe) and schedule some rendezvous point?

And while on boobs, I figured out something else: I do not want breast implants. If I'm already unsatisfied with the state of my breasts, why would I want them in a larger size? It would just be more of boobs I don't like. I don't understand shelling out ten grand to stuff silicone into my paw patties. I would, however, pay that amount for something else: breast transplants.

After breastfeeding for almost a year, I don't want to be on an episode of Pimp My Rack. I want to start over. I really think this could be achieved. I would be the first breast transplant patient. I would be a medical breakthrough in breast surgery. With all the advances in medicine and technology, I think it's feasible to replace my breasts with, say, the breasts belonging to the woman I saw last night shopping for an IPEX bra top. Speaking from a reputation of staunch heterosexuality, if I had to choose a boob donor, it would be this woman, for she had the most symmetrical pair I have ever seen (again, in a heterosexual way). I don't even think they carried her size, 38 J, J as in jelly on a string.

I wear a 26 Z. I wear a z-bra. Get it? If you do, when you stop laughing over my comic genius, could you tell that to Nathan, because he doesn't get that joke.



EDIT: My husband just informed me that the breast transplant joke has already been done by George Carlin, who performed it the last time he was here in Seattle (a show Mike went to *without* me). But that z-bra/zebra joke? All mine.

a fancy feast, indeed

I have a good suspicion that Nathan just ate cat food. How good is my suspicion? I just found his hand in the cat food bowl and his mouth smelled like fish.

I haven't read anything on what age to introduce cat food to your baby, but this makes me think that kitty litter is cheaper than diapers.

Let's try "head" for a title

I know Dave Lieberman and I would get along well, and by get along well, I mean, if ever we met and Mike said, "It's okay honey, you already told me that he's on your list," and then Dave agreed to meet me at room 121 at the Marco Polo Inn on Aurora Avenue (classy!), let's just say I'll give him a good deal. Wow, that didn't take long for me to get all hookerfied.

Dave Lieberman shares the last name with the anesthesiologist who injected that sweet love juice epidural into my veins, made me forget about the Pitocin-induced belly trauma and did it all in 12 minutes. Few men have made that kind of lasting impression on me in such record time (unless you're the fang-toothed kid I was stuck with during Seven Minutes in Heaven. *shudder*) And Dave only takes 30 minutes to share in my love of good deals. He's one of the few on the Food Network I hope never catches a bullet with his teeth. He never says "yum-o," or "sammiches," or "My name is Rachel Ray and my breasts look like I'm smuggling peas in my shirt." And he's a Lieberman, too! That's a good sign, right? Aren't all Liebermans related?

--

I've been seeing a lot of new mothers at Target recently, the ones who ferry their hand-sized infants in monstrous travel systems. It feels like I'm looking at myself a few months ago, when I took three-day-old Nathan to Target for the first time in his own monster-stroller. Everytime I took him out, I could hear a voice in my head go, "Sunday-Sunday-Sunday!"

I can tell they are new moms not from the solar eclipse caused by their gigundo stroller combos or the dark circles under their eyes, but because most of them spend thirty goddamn minutes comparing the Target brand of lavender baby wash to the Gerber lavender baby wash. I haven't had that kind of furrowed brow since I took the SAT or since I was 18 and had to buy ground beef for the first time and realized I didn't know how to buy red meat (it doesn't just appear in my freezer like it did at home? Say what?) Can I tell you new moms right now to get the Target brand because they're the same effing deal and Target costs a dollar less?

That whole post-partum idealistic, "I may be cheap, but I won't be cheap for my son!" mantra I held steadfast didn't last very long and I'm a sliver away from scrounging through the Goodwill donation bin for clothes to shimmy over my son whose protruding belly does not fit the 6-12 month clothing even though he is NOT 12 MONTHS YET. WTF, Carters? Why can't you use a small, medium, large, very large (that's me! ding ding!) system instead of something as deceptive as, "Here is a jumper that fits infants who are less than a year old," because those clothes do not fit my child's Sputnik head or his body that weighs about 1/4th of an elderly Chinese woman.

--

When Mike and I went to dinner the other night, I spotted a new mother and father hurriedly eating their food and checking their baby. The infant seat was faced away from me and I just had to see the mysterious squirmy baby, like it was the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction. As we headed out, I stopped by their table.

"You have a new baby!" I said. They nodded in appreciation and I took this as a signal that it was okay to look inside.

To say the newborn was squishy looking would be a very kind statement about a baby who really looked like an old Mexican man had been shrunk down to baby-size and shoved into a pink dress. I know this sounds horrible for a mother to say about someone else's baby, because all babies are beautiful, right? But not this one. That's not to say that she'll never grow out of it and be doomed to a life of Cheech and Chong references. But still. That face was almost haunting.

"Your baby's so... alert!" Good save, Mona. Smooth move there with the general statement about babies. Of course she was alert. Her eyes were open. Now that I think about it, that's what a lot of people said about Nathan when he was a newborn, but as squishy and scrunched up as he was, he did not look like Cheech Marin in a dress.

this is what I call justice

Thanks to Jonniker, I know next week is Steak and BJ Day (NSFW) and thanks to my husband's smart-ass comment that I spend too much time on the internet, he'll never know.

why we need a house

This is how my new neighbor introduced herself: "Hi, my name is T. I used to have a house, but I don't anymore."

From her introduction, I gathered that perhaps some dire circumstances led her here. Divorce? Failed kidnap attempt? Mice infiltration? She had to distinguish herself from the other residents who do not have former houses.

And in a neighborly way, I offered, "If we make too much noise, let us know because none of the people staying there before ever said anything." But what I should have said is this, "NEVER let us know if we make too much noise."

Maybe in some other apartment communities, the residents are unified and congenial. They bring each other casserole dishes of bread pudding and feed pets while one is on vacation. Here, we live in isolation, save a courtesy wave or obligatory pleasantry. Throughout my whole pregnancy, my neighbor across the way didn't even acknowledge my protruding belly until I saw her in front of The Children's Place in my last trimester. She nodded at me and made a curved motion in front of her stomach, the international sign for "pregnant." But not a word after that.

I'm assuming that new neighbor T. lived in a home with excellent soundproofing. She could have had a karaoke festival (Can I get a, "Teenage Wasteland"? Woot-woot!) in her living room without her neighbors peeking out the windows. But in this small Seattle blip, if you hear something, pretend you didn't.

We are mindful of noise, but agree that with apartment living come the booms and bangs that waft through particleboard walls. The developers built this property on the cheap and instead of quality soundproofing, what separates our floor from hers is chicken wire and cotton balls.

This should be in the newsletter.

For the past few days, she has knocked at our door to let us know what we are doing.

"Every time you sing to your son, I can hear it."

"Oh. Sorry about that." I've been repeating that phrase even though I wasn't sorry for singing to my son. And when she came yesterday to tell us, "Every time you walk, I can hear it," I wasn't sorry either.

If we had been re-enacting in the King and I, then maybe I would suggest to Mike that we cut down on the ballroom dancing. If we had been singing Slippery Fish into a bullhorn, then I would probably put the bullhorn away (Charlotte Diamond is like a shaman to Nathan, that song has healing properties).

But Mike and I have been singing to Nathan the same way for the almost ten months he's been with us and have been walking the same way for the past four years we've lived here. Maybe she's trying to tell us that we're too fat to walk and that if we lost weight, it wouldn't feel like the ceiling is coming down on her. And maybe we should tell her to go back to her house, which was probably in the third circle of hell, where the three-headed dog Cerberus pines for her return.

T. isn't as bad as my other neighbor, but I'll give her time before she's outside, using up my parking space to rotate her tires and blast that stupid song, "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" (And why is it that that's the theme song of most unattractive people and seven-year-olds?) I'll turn the barbershop a cappella down a notch, but the mobility? The movement? The walking from the couch to the fridge? Forget it.