trip the light fantastic

For about thirty minutes every morning, light ricochets through the fish tank and flashes a patch rainbow patch on our couch.



Am I the only parent who still gives her son a bottle? Nathan will not take a sippy cup and I've bought all kinds and colors. Our pediatrician suggested forcing him to use it by removing the bottle all together, and either, I'm too weak or Nathan doesn't latch onto anything not resembling a boob, but it hasn't worked. And why is it with this transition that I feel a tinge of guilt and shame that I haven't moved my kid into the sippy cup pack when it seems like every other child has had it so easy? I hardly felt any remorse for formula or going back to work, but when we're in public and I pull out an avent bottle, I swear I feel those eyes darting at me! But he'll move on, right? I won't have to send him care packages when he's at college and wants to drink beer out of a bottle you can sterilize in the microwave. Right?

But moving on--this is also an excellent photo to share Nathan's important discovery last week: his penis. Now whenever the kid is stripped down, he tugs at his cash and prizes and looks at me with a grateful grin, as if his wang had been made by Fisher Price and I attached it to his body for his enjoyment. I can just imagine sharing with my moms group how I had paced the toy aisle at Target, and how it was between the penis and the Sit-to-Stand Giraffe and as you can see, the wang definitely won out.

And in writing that last euphemistic sentence, I know that I'll have to teach him the proper names for genitalia or else I'm going to get a teacher's note saying, "Let's schedule a Parent-Teacher conference about Nathan referring to his penis as the 'downtown bonanza.'"

this is why I straighten my hair every. day.

my simpsons character
Originally uploaded by hello insomnia.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

It's common to reference David Bowie's song, "Changes," during moments of well, change (OMG, how fitting!). And though I've shied away from jumping on the ubiquitous ditty bandwagon, I can't think of another song that adequately expresses transition and stutters at the same time. Art imitating life yet maintaining sensitivity towards speech impediments? Check and check!

And there is so much movement and upheaval right that I'm running on fumes. This has been my first week on the new job so along with the frenzy of getting into the new-job-groove, my off-hours have been dedicated to tending to my mother's obsessive need to drive to every Dress Barn within a 50-mile radius because who knows, maybe the Dress Barn in Olympia might have last season's capri pants!

Also, I'm certain she makes her yearly pilgrimage to Seattle just so she can ask the QFC seafood counter for their remaining pounds of salmon necks. Necks! Did you read that? I have to drive my mother to the grocery store so she can ask them to clean out the part of the fish that no one wants. No one except for a 64-year-old Chamorro woman who calls methamphetamine meta-feminine and who talks about the Golden Girls as if they're real people ("Mona, you know what Blanche said today?").

On Monday, my brother, his wife and their two-year-old son arrive here from Hawaii and will stay with us for four days until their new place is ready on the 6th. So if you've been keeping count, next week Chez Mona will host seven people (!!) not to mention, my mother's tendency to point out how much she disagrees with my clothing choices and that needs a whole floor unto itself. For example, I can barely fit this shining snippet into the upstairs master bedroom: "Untuck your shirt or else you'll look like a man." That's actually a pretty good tip because by untucking my shirt, I'll be able to hide my huge penis. Who knew?

I should read more

My new job, complete with a $12K raise in pay (kegger at my house!), benefits and retirement, has only been sweetened by the conversation with the gentleman who processed my new employee ID card:

Me: Have I seen you somewhere before? I feel like I recognize your face.

Him: [Takes off glasses] Well, if you're familiar with GQ or Esquire, I've been on the cover a few times.

what can brown do for you?

It is wrong when you’re watching those What Not To Wear on TLC and you agree with the fashion victim's choice of clothing before the makeover? I was watching one episode and thought, "That's perfectly reasonable to have seventeen different hoodies."

In Seattle, people wear tons of black and I'm included into that monochromatic mix. My clothing choices are so boring, you'd get more a vivid color palette from a fax machine.



To move away from that trend, I've amassed a huge amount of brown-colored clothing, because you know how BROWN totally jazzes things up! (WOW, Mona, that brown jacket really brings out the brown in your slacks!) My closet is so filled with brown, on the days I don't look like Debbie Downer, I look like the UPS guy.

I don't think I've ever been trendy or fashionable ever. I've mostly missed in that category (read: stirrup pants AND ruffled blouses). Most of my clothing was sewn by my mother, including this hot little green mumu:



And all this nonsensical hoopla is thanks to the brand-new job I start tomorrow and because I'm flustered by how unattractive a name like Dress Barn is and how the only decent outfit I have is the one I wore to the interview because geez, that's too soon to start repeating ensembles.

the distended truth

Nathan's feet aren't that big. I had to buy him size 7 shoes so he could see his feet over that protruding belly.

I swear, I don't know how those handcuffs got there

Can I just freak out a little here because my mother is coming TOMORROW and there is still so much to clean and HIDE. I'm practicing lines like, "Some sinner must have gone into my closet and put those movies there, Mom. They're not mine, I swear," and "This is the button you press if you want to watch Gunsmoke."

Last year, my mother wrote a book on how to be a wife, but it wasn't on how anyone should be a wife, but rather, how MONA should be a wife to MIKE. I haven't even given any thought to it, but now that she's coming tomorrow, she'll find out that I haven't been waking up at the crack of dawn to hem all my husband's pants and I only use one setting on the iron: hot.

I also inherited her sewing machine and all I have to show for it are four yards of polar fleece and a photo of me tonguing the thread.

So if you have any unfinished pillow cases I can pawn off as my own, I'd really appreciate your sending them my way. And if you have a cave on your property where I can temporarily store certain, um, items, that would be greatly appreciated, too.

the sound and the frugality

If I tell people that I graduated with a degree in English, I rarely mention that it was with an emphasis in creative writing. I've found that if I share that bit of biographical gruffle at a party, it invites the response: "Oooh, I've always wanted to write a book." I never follow-up with a question because if you wait long enough, the person will add, "I want to write about my life."

But this person doesn't want to write a book, this person just wants to out everyone who's wronged him. There are some people whose lives are so compelling and phenomenal that they truly deserve a space on the autobiography shelf, but then there are others who just want to devote chapters to the Man Who Cut Me Off in Traffic and Times When My Family Should Have Hugged Me Instead of Make Fun of My Snaggletooth.

I wouldn't write an autobiography, I would just write Cliffs Notes so you could skim through the time my cousin Geraldine forced me to call a telethon because New Kids on the Block was performing and she wanted to talk to Donnie and you could read the one life-summarizing sentence: I am cheap.

Sometimes this are-you-kidding-me-with-that-price-habit overcomes me and I still want to believe this is 1998 and a tall vanilla latte should not cost $3.25 and a free gift with purchase should come with every purchase (I'm looking at you LANCOME!).

The last time I took my car into the shop, the mechanic reset the battery which set off some anti-theft device in the tape deck. I don't even know what the proper term for that is, the poor vehicular vocabulary I have. When the "check engine" light goes off, I pop open the hood and go, "Engine...check!" It flashed, "ENTER CODE," and I would have entered the security code, only, I didn't have it. I don't think I ever did. I rifled through all my car paperwork, checked the manual, thought of countless combinations to unlock my sweet 80's mix waiting to flood my car. I tried randomly pressing buttons, but I only had so many chances before the stereo would reject my entries and completely shut off. And it did.

I went without a stereo and figured that I would just buy it later.

This was in December.

These past few months haven't been too terrible only because I bus most of the time and if I'm in my car, it's only for errands or to drop Nathan off at the babysitter's or drag racing, but who has time to listen to Depeche Mode while drifting a Dae Woo?

And my husband, who has been the most flummoxed at my extreme thriftiness (or laziness--the words are interchangeable), picked me up from work on Friday in my car. Before I had time to nag him about what happened to his car--an accident? another ticket?--he opened the door and there was my brand new stereo system complete with a CD PLAYER! Can you believe that? Not a lame stock tape deck, but an actual stereo with a face plate. I repeatedly thanked my husband for the luxury and had to refrain from sticking my head out the window and yelling at passing cars, "HEY! My stereo has a repeat button and it really will play the same song over again!"

hair apparent

In today's stupid confessions: I was afraid of Nathan's first haircut. After months of male infantile baldness, his head sprouted thick, luscious locks. I was afraid that cutting his hair would revert him back to that baby face, the one we had lost along with the infant car seat and size 3 diapers.

But when Mike and I started receiving comments from passerbys about how cute our *little girl* was, something needed to be done.

I had seen a kid's store with a salon inside at the upscale shopping mall near my work. I had an idea that it would be pricey but when the hairstylist said, "All kids cuts start at $25," Mike and I said, "Okay, we'll be back." The "we'll be back" really means, "We'll never be back unless we wake up from a drug-induced coma and in that medicated haze believe that $25 PLUS TIP is a reasonable price for four snips." But that last sentence takes a lot of time to spew out especially when you're trying to keep a 13-month-old from eating white bits off the carpet.

What I really wanted to tell the stylist was that for the last two years, I've had my hair cut at a Vietnamese woman's small dimly-lit shop and even though I only understand every other sentence, it costs me twelve dollars. She asked me once, "So, do you WAWK?" And I said yes because I wasn't sure if she had asked me if I walk or if I work because yes, I work and to get to my work, I call upon my mobility.

Last weekend, Lisa and Branan solved our hair woes by inviting us over to their compound for a barbecue/haircut and not only did it not cost us anything, they grilled a delectable pepper-crusted pork tenderloin from a recipe! I had forgotten that people still refer to books of these instructable gems. None of the steps asked them to take the food out of the microwave half-way and stir! And even more shocking, none of the ingredients included KC Masterpiece!

And we ended the night by transforming my son from a fair-feathered little girl into a shaggy-headed boy.





And here would be the perfect place to insert an "after" photo, but unfortunately, all I have to offer you is a shot of Nathan performing that weird-suspended-in-air feat from Smooth Criminal.



Or how about this one of Nathan showing absolutely no fear as we flung him down a plastic slide?

Happy Father's Day!

next he'll ask who ordered the chicken parm

To celebrate the Sopranos season finale, I taped napkins to the side of Nathan's head so he could be Paulie Walnuts.





I think it goes really well with the Aloha shirt and COWBOY pants Mike dressed him in.

the silence and the fury

Last night around 7:45, I was certain that my husband and son were dead or at least trapped in a bloody, mangled wreck and the car was blocking three northbound lanes on I-5.

Mike had called my office at 5:40 to offer me a ride home, just after the woman from 3-Day Blinds had left our house. (FYI: It's really not 3-Day Blinds unless you pay $200 extra. Maybe their original name was "3-Day Blinds Only If You Pay Us $200, Sucka!" but it just wasn't catchy enough. And what's up with drapery companies in general sucking from the sweet teat of my wallet? We got another estimate from Budget Blinds totaling $1616.96 and that was the sale price. Whose budget is that? Liberace's?)

I insisted that I just take the bus, but he said he was on his way.

So I left my office, walked from my building to the parking lot outside and waited.

And waited.

I knew he would be late because freeway traffic is terrible at rush hour and also his regular route through a side road was completely closed due to construction. But I figured he would know how to drive to the other side or he would at least call my cell phone or office or shoot flares into the sky, signaling that he was nearby.

In those two hours, I descended through into the varying stages of panic. First stage was, "Okay, Michael. Anytime now." Then it was increasing levels of furrowed brow annoyance. I did the Marge groan as cars passed by, cars driven by people who knew how to be punctual. Cars filled with people who were picked up as scheduled and were headed to their warm homes.

I'll admit that in previous cases of my husband's tardiness, I've casually pondered how I would go on as a widow. What I would say at my husband's funeral. If I would actual carry out Mike's wishes and spread his ashes through the last remaining smoking sections in the country. But Mike always showed up just in time and pounced any worry that I would have to start calling hospitals.

It was like Waiting for Godot, only the existentialist lines were replaced by my haphazard flipping through a blinds catalog trying hard not to look like a hooker. Because women sitting down on a bench after 7 PM waiting for their husbands and fashioned in Dress Barn's Easter Sunday line of floral blouses (thanks for the gift, mom!) are really prostitutes. But I couldn't read anything. What if Mike had parked the car, lugged out the stroller and was ferrying our son my way? I couldn't see him if I was focused on woven shade textures. And I couldn't leave. What if he drove by, saw that I wasn't there and drove on home?

After an hour and a half, I called my sister in Arizona to find out if she could search through Seattle traffic cams for webshots of crumpled up cars with a father and toddler inside. But her computer was too slow and could not handle my drama. So what did I do? Lure more innocent people into my web of overreaction!

I then called Branan and asked him if I should just go home or should I wait another hour as I was very much prepared to do, to which he answered, "You're going to wait an hour?" which really meant, what kind of woman waits in a parking lot until 9PM for a car that may or may not show up? (Answer: streetwalker!) And while he had asked his wife Lisa for a second opinion, up rolls my husband and son. In a car untouched by a fender bender or flat tire or random bolt of lightning.

"Oh, there's my darling husband," I said to Branan, only, I replaced "my darling husband" with "that &%&$(#@!"

I had been standing outside my building for almost two hours with nary a phone call. I had dragged the LBC family into my dilemma and pulled them away from their lovely evening of chatting about how they always pick each other up on time and infiltrated their home with some crazy woman's worry that her husband and son are dead and she'll have to take in boarders to cover the mortgage. Sorry Lisa. Sorry Branan.

So Mike had arrived to my work at 6 and found his normal route completely blocked off. He asked a guard how he could get to my building and the guard answered that he would have to pay a $250 ticket if he parked anywhere in the construction zone even after Mike pointed out that he was just picking up his wife and he had a one-year-old in the back. In addition to the high levels of douche Mike encountered, he transposed the last numbers of my cell phone and instead of reaching me, he repeatedly bothered some 80-year-old man who didn't know who Mona was. Then he drove home, saw that I had not taken a bus and he returned to my work, only driving through the unfettered road and found me waiting alone in an empty parking lot.

So all of this was just to illustrate how my husband was two hours late picking me up and how if he had died, I would have probably dug up his body and screamed, "How many times do I have to give you my cell phone number!"

Mike apologized profusely and said that because of my ordeal, I don't have to get him anything for Father's Day. Great. Now what am I going to do with a shirt that reads, "GOODBYE TENSION. HELLO PENSION."

Please stop believin'

After watching the Sopranos series finale last night, I have one question for David Chase: Um, the hell?

I had no sympathy for Meadow's frustratingly long parallel-park scene. She was driving a BMW. Who has sympathy for people with seat-warmers? You know what I do with a cold seat? I sit on my hands!

Instead of letting AJ join the military, they gave him a BMW M3. They should have given him one of those thick padded suits so he could run while an attack dog chases him down and mauls this stupid depression subplot.

And Journey? Of all the Steve Perry ballads, why did you have to choose, "Don't Stop Believin'?" I mean, really? What was the logic there? To resurrect painful memories of my 9th grade prom and my lackluster date who wouldn't dance with me until I slipped $10 into his pocket? And only after I said, "That's not dancing! You have to move," did he pull a robot/Tae Bo lunge/karate chop and insisted, "There. I moved."

You owe me a Hamilton, David Chase.

Let's just say that I know how to treat geriatrics

Me: That guy on TV kind of reminds me of your dad.

Mike: Oh, you mean he doesn't have any teeth and he wants you to massage him?

so does that mean I'm it?

So yesterday Nathan and I spent the morning trolling through West Seattle's various yard sales. When these domestic dealings are successful and I come away with awesome finds, it's an exhilarating experience that boosts my cheap-loving ego. When they're not as fruitful and the space is filled with rusty bundt pans and frayed and pilled Strawberry Shortcake blankets, a part of me dies. The part that could have been doing something of great social and political import, like watching the A&E channel.

And this excursion around the 'hood took about an hour and a half, which was enough time for this to happen:



So can I get an internet witness that it sucks like a vacuum to arrive at our brand-new home and find that someone had taken a sharpie to the side of it? I could handle the mattress debacle, especially since I knew the culprit and I was satisfied with how it was handled. But this.



Yes, it can be painted over but that's going to take time and money and any effort on my part would totally counter the work I'm doing for my political sect: the Poor and Lazy Party. And worse yet, this isn't art. If they were going to do it anyway, why didn't they knock and ask us for our input? I could have said, "Write something with 'Nathan' in it," or "How about one of those directional signs that tell me how many miles it is from here to Saipan or England?"

But what they did instead was draw some acid-trip math equation, some circles that look like butts and initials.

If he/she/they had been trying to mark their territory, they could have just peed around the perimeter. That's what animals do, right? If I had come home to a pee moat, I would have been esctatic that the real owner was here and was going to take over our mortgage!



And stars? Give me a break! At least put up a unicorn or liger or something with rainbows. But stars? This belongs on the front of a Trapper Keeper, not my garage.

Our neighbors called the police since they were tagged, too, though not to the same extent. And what did the police do? Shelve four murder cases, flip on the flashing cherries and zoom right over, of course! Actually, four hours later when my neighbor along with two cops knocked on the door, I was holding Nathan whom I had just fed his tomato sauce and pasta dinner.

"Sorry it took so long to answer. I was trying to put in the baby gates."

"Oh I can see why," one cop said.

I realized then what he must have seen: a toddler with a scrape on his face (thanks for not being more cushy, sidewalk!) and shirt with bright red stains on it. Nice job, Mona. Invite the cops over to witness the child you've beaten and bloodied. Why don't you fess up to the iPod you listen to in your car because you're too cheap to get your broken stereo replaced! The cops will love how you talk into your earbud wire like it's an actual phone!

The cops did take our information and also took some pictures. They said they didn't think it was gang-related, (Unless we're being attacked by the Lollipop Guild!) and pretty much chalked it up to what happens when you live in a busy district, which is what I had expected they were going to say.

One time I was attending a conference in Chicago with some female co-workers and we had gotten so hopelessly lost at night that we pulled into a 7-11 to ask a cop for directions. He was puzzled that we were in that shady neighborhood because we shouldn't have been there so late. In addition to telling us that it was okay to run any red lights if we felt unsafe, he also gave us a police escort to the freeway.

If I had been offered a police escort for the next few days, I think I wouldn't be as upset about the damages. Because arriving with the cops at Target is almost as good as a limo, right?

To Catch a Predator: Grocery Store Edition

I was at the grocery store earlier this week when I found myself staring at two-year-old's expensive brown leather sandals. It was easy to tell that he was wearing the real McCoy. There was no cracked pleather or vinyl sheen. And as I was calculating how much more his shoes cost than my five-year-old Mary Jane's, I realized his mother was watching me watch him. She was a tall woman whose perfect bob was the same shade of blonde as her son's.

Say something, Mona, so you don't look like an idiot, the voice in my head instructed. And this time, try hard, would ya?

"I love his shoes! Where did you get them?" I feigned. This is the classic inquiry if you don't know what else to say to another mother. It's easier to ask another mother where she bought something because you're sure to get some expected retail answer unlike the time I filled an awkward silence with my co-worker by oohing over his cologne and asking him excitedly what that delicious fragrance was. His answer: "Ban roll-on deodorant." Way to go, Mona. You armpit lover.

"Oh, I got it at Nordstrom." The woman cooed the way women do when they drop a fancy name. You'll never hear me say, "These jeans? Jordache, dahhhling."

"They're 'See Kai Run.'" The woman added. "They're new. From the spring line."

"I didn't see them the last time I was there!" I exclaimed again. This was true. The last time I went into Nordstrom was two years ago and I was just looking for the bathroom.

How low have I sunk to fake a conversation with a rich woman so I wouldn't look like a predator?

Truth is, I'll never be able to begin a sentence with, “I was shopping at Nordstorm’s the other day…” For one, I don’t even know if it’s Nordstrom or Nordstrom's and sometimes I spell it Nordstorm which sounds like a Norse Mythology Outlet where you can buy overstock fishing nets from the Loki, God of Mischief Collection.

All I know is that I've seen license plates that say, "I'd rather be shopping at Nordie's!" and that these plates belong to drivers who have never had to break a sweat because they were trying to gun it up to 30 mph while driving a Dae Woo.