Friday morning brain dump

1. I heard this kid refer to his mother by her first name and I only know that it was her first name because she corrected him with, "My name is 'Mommy.'" If Nathan ever calls me Mona, I will have to lock him in a room filled with the dreams I gave up to have him, like gracing the cover of Playboy's Attention Target Shoppers Special Edition.

2. I received a care package from my mother. Her care packages are stuffed with a bounty of Dress Barn and JC Penney shoulder-padded jackets and floral pastel skirts. I doubt I'll wear any of them unless I'm going to Easter Sunday mass or I suffer super early onset menopause.

3. Last Friday, Mike had to pick me up because my sinus headache was so bad, I was already google mapping the nearest pharmacia where I could pick up horse tranquilizers or whatever it is they call it in Tijuana. Pain Go Adios!

4. Mike says that the older Nathan gets, the more he looks like me.



I guess this is true. Check out my first grade portrait:



You didn't know that I grew up as a red-faced Japanese boy? I did. Sadly, all I can say in Japanese is, Hamu wa? Dame desu yo! Translated: Ham? That is bad/not allowed.

fenced in

fenced in
Originally uploaded by kirida.

spin me round

We took Nathan to the Zoo because surprisingly enough, he grows weary of our small house even though hello, my child who does not pay for the mortgage, we have seventeen HBO channels! HBO Latino is almost like Dora! And FYI: fancy cable doesn't pay for itself, kid. You watch Taxicab Confessions and LIKE IT.

The moment Mike saw the glass-encased carousel at the zoo, his eyes lit up and he said, "Oh we have to do that." I'm sure he saw it as an opportunity to have a genuine family experience. What I saw was a potential battle with my 21-month-old, a child who wanted to roam free in the grassy field outside the glass house, not sit on some mechanical pony while tinkly music piped in overhead.

It is very difficult to clutch a wriggling child while trying to give my husband the evil eye whenever the circular hell trap afforded me the view to say, "YOU DID THIS TO ME!" Equally frustrating was watching my husband turn a very expensive camera, lens and flash setup into a simple point and shoot because he doesn't know how to zoom in! It is also very difficult to smile while hoping that my husband this time FINDS THE SHUTTER BUTTON! THERE IS ONLY ONE!



I guess it wasn't so bad, even if I had to wave Nathan's hand for him and bellow into his ear, "SMILE AT DADDY! THAT MAN THERE IS YOUR FATHER AND YOU SMILE AT HIM RIGHT NOW!"

I don't mean to be such a Debbie Downer, but gold stars and sunshine lose their magic when your post-birth vagina has the spacious square footage of an airplane hangar. I'm just saying.

West Seattle Blog is your new bicycle

My Blarch Badness interview is up at Seattle Metblogs (Thanks Dylan!) and I'm glad I got to share my mad love for my round competitor and gracious nominator, West Seattle Blog. I've been very fortunate to have even been included in this Battle in Seattle and to have made it this far, but I believe West Seattle Blog deserves the prizes, which include a one-night stay at Hotel Max *and* winning the internet.

So, in the spirit of praising already awesome people for their fictional but still awesome doings, I'd like to tell you why you should vote for West Seattle Blog:

1. WSB rotated your tires

2. WSB wants your chocolate chip cookie recipe

3. When you put on makeup, WSB asks, "Why ruin perfection?"

4. WSB learned how to say "I love you just the way you are" in five different languages

5. WSB won't play Fog Hat's "Slowride" on Guitar Hero unless you're on the second controller

6. WSB loves your hugs and high-fives

7. WSB says you win at life

8. When WSB orders coffee, they don't leave room for cream, they leave room for more awesome

9. WSB taught you to not to put eggs and milk in the same grocery bag because they'll catch odors

10. WSB just wants you to have a good time

Why didn't I think of this before?

Thank you, internets, for this: Stuff White People Like

PJ!

My friends Kim and Sean finally had their son, Peter John on 2.19.08, weighing 8 lbs 4 oz.

It was a long and exhausting wait for this huge, snorgle-worthy baby to arrive, a wait that included my falling asleep in the delivery room's couch and then snoring in front of everyone, my sleeping in the waiting room and again snoring, but only, this time, like a "baby seal," and my not sleeping but watching that Duggar family on TLC thinking, they have done this like 70 times.

Please file this under Begging, Shameless

I'm still in the running for the Blarch Badness tournament grand champion and tonight my poll closes. Now with the addition of real prizes, I feel that I will have to use my energies to not only shamelessly lobby votes from you, my dear internet friends, but from a pool which includes but is not limited to:

1) my First Holy Communion class from Aumsville, Oregon

2) people who also ask the question, "How many times is too many times to eat bacon in one day?"

3) women who did not have enough money in middle school to buy velvet chokers so instead fashioned them out of stretched scrunchies and clip-on earrings

4) people who quote The Office with reckless abandon, even to people who do not watch The Office

5) Liberal arts majors whose vast knowledge of Victorian literary theory is only tapped into when Jeopardy! is on TV

6) people who play Dance Dance Revolution until they get tired and finish out the game by kneeling down and playing with their hands

7) people who can adamantly defend their side in the ninja vs. pirate debate

8) drivers who were behind me that one time the light took so long to turn green and also thought, "The hell?"

9) people who suggest to their pregnant friends that when it's time to push, they should lean on their sides, stretch out their arms and say, "SUPERMAN DAT OH!"

10) people who spend 10+ hours in a hospital waiting room, waiting

el presidente

I'm here at the hospital waiting for my friend Kim to give birth. The doctor says she has a few more hours before she actually delivers but I'm guessing in half that time she'll kick me out for taking all the kotex pads in the room and turning it into a makeshift sumo wrestling costume or for suggesting yet again that El Presidente is a pretty good name for a boy if you give birth on President's Day. Or if you want your son to be a Mexican wrestler.

Soon there will be another baby boy in the world and another friend of mine will enter this crazy yet surreal world of motherhood in which our babies turn into little humans and we are left gripping onto as many of these moments as we can.

VD in review

We didn't make it to Taco Del Bus thanks to my cold that has reappeared, now with 30% more unattractiveness! Mike, Nathan and I celebrated a family Valentine's Day at Casa de Denny's. Have you ever driven by Denny's or some other chain diner and wondered, "It's Valentine's Day, who would eat there?" Let me answer that: I would. And Mike would. And Nathan would, but only because we strap him into a high chair and stuff star-shaped nuggets into his toddler maw. Our low-brow family dining preferences combined with my lifelong ambivalence toward flowers (starbucks gift card > soon to be dead roses) made for a a wonderful evening with my two favorite boys.

Also, My dear friend Deece knitted me a scarf with pockets! It is a beautiful creation that just blows my mind because now I do not have to go to Target to pick up new mittens or steal gloves from hobos (again). I wish I had some yarn or knitting vernacular because all I can say is that it is very well done.



And in addition to a fabulous pocketed scarf, she knitted matching hats for Mike and Nathan. See how much Nathan loves it?



And here's a question: Do I look Japanese? I mean, if you didn't know that I'm Chamorro and from Saipan, would you think, "Wow, she could totally be backup for Gwen Stefani and giggle whenever Gwen says, 'Super kawaii!'"



Domo, my internet tomodachis!

Happy VD!

I had to take Nathan to the doctor yesterday because he has two ear infections raging his huge head. The doctor said to use warm drops of olive oil instead of fancy homeopathic drops. I wish I had known that before we bought fancy lavender scented ORGANIC ear drops with a woman breastfeeding on the box. I think there might have been a moon in the background because I thought the only thing that would soothe the savage beast my child has transformed into would be a hippie store with a whole shelf dedicated to womb-moon correlations.

I was not prepared for how messy it would be and how Nathan would rather stick his finger into his slicked ear canal and then proceed to touch everything in the living room. And this would be fine if I wanted to have couch scallopini, but I don't. I don't want to live in Olive Garden where they say when you're there you're family when my real family has never told me that it'll be a 45 minute to an hour wait before we'll be seated nor have they ever huffed out an arms akimbo response of, "No, Ma'am, we won't watch your child while you wait in the bar."

But the drops seem to be working, which is enough reason for us to leave Nathan with his daycare provider so we can go on a date! A real date! And my internet friend, if you can guess which taco bus we'll be dining in tonight, you get a gold star. Happy Valentine's Day!

This vote is for the children

I have moved on in the Blarch Badness blog showdown! Now I am up against the very witty and multi-syllabic hillku. I figure that the only way to win this is to dust off my 1995 copy of Mortal Kombat cheat codes or shamelessly employ my internet friends to vote for me.

I've hired Nathan as my lead campaign strategist. He feels the best tactic is to stick a tube of toothpaste in your face until you clickety-click my name.

another post that is not very funny

Whenever I endure a stretch of crazy days, I wish I could be like Evie on that show, Out of This World. I have always believed that the power to stop time is the most efficient superpower to have, far more useful than x-ray vision and worlds better than flying. I would never want the ability to fly. For one, I don't think a high altitude would make me seem skinnier. Also, I don't want my gigundo body blocking out the sun. Nothing ruins a day more than causing a solar eclipse because you've been eating bacon all week.

--

When I was 13, my oldest sister grabbed my hair and sawed off a thick, jagged ponytail. My mother was off-island and so she decided to punish me because I had sneaked out of my house the night before to hang out with my boyfriend and his friends, sipping beer and acting so cool. A 13-year-old misbehaving? How unique! What a shining post-pubescent diamond! Though I have long since overcome the hatred harbored toward her for wrecking my looks and transforming my soft locks into a boycut/fro (a bro-fro!), I have never been comfortable with anything shorter than a shoulder length cut.

But if I told you my hair actually looks like this, would you advise me to just cut off all my hair and start over?

--



I took this photo a few weeks ago at my very pregnant friend Kim's baby shower. The game was to feed a partner baby food while both of you were blindfolded. And you know what? No one thought my Abu Ghraib references were very funny.

what I have going for me

This week has been wracked with the work-related weary. I have had countless meetings and these meetings started to pile up, their agenda-limbs and transcribed-minute-arms tangling into each other until they refused to conduct themselves unless someone showed up with a velvet-bagged bottle of Crown Royale. And while that metaphor makes absolutely no sense, it does explain why there's a recurring line in my Outlook calendar that reads: KEGGER.

But today is Friday and the internet is leaking clickety-click goodness: first there's another episode of My So-Called Life on abc.com and I am loving the crushed-velvet babydoll dresses and early 90s teen angst! And this week's repeat is a better version of that Saved By the Bell episode in which Zach dumps his fat date for the cheap bottle-blonde but somehow in twenty minutes he redeems himself by dumping the blonde openly at the dance and swaying with Ms. Token Fat-People-Have-Feelings-Too.

Second, Jezebel's friday fine-lines feature is up! Lizzie Skurnick whips out the kind of rich wit that makes me want to forget writing and crawl into a cave because I will never be that brilliant. And since West Seattle doesn't have any caves, I could use my talentless hands to wield a spork and dig into the side of a hill.

On her review of My Darling, My Hamburger, she summed up my entire history of painful and misaligned female friendships: "Liz tells Maggie her hair looks like 'thin fungus,' and Maggie loves her anyway, because, as Liz asserts, 'it's true,' and anyway, Liz has the kind of remote, galactic beauty that causes lesser planetary objects to be pulled into her orbit effortlessly, periodically setting them aflame as they burn through upon entry.

And thirdly, I am numero uno in the Blarch Badness People category! Way to go my internet friends! Please continue to clickety-click "Kirida," until the polls close on Tuesday, my self-esteem thanks you! Biba!

the claw

the claw
Originally uploaded by kirida.

I have a huge work event tonight that will suck up most of my day. In the meantime, I've hired my son to perform exorcisms and other cast-out-the-devil tasks. You should try him. He's cheap.

blarch badness: vote for change!

I'm very honored to be nominated for Blarch Badness. I pale in comparison to my fellow contenders who make me ask, "YOUR COLLECTIVE COOLNESS. CAN I HAS IT?" I don't even feel like the Ron Paul or John Edwards in this bracket. I feel like I'm wearing a bedazzled cat sweater in a room full of um, normal people? For those of you undecided folks or those trolling through here wondering what the hell a "kirida" is (answer: not a food!), here are some facts that separate me from the other candidates:

My name is Mona. I am the only Mona in this bracket.

I am the only one with a son named Nathan.

I am the only one from a small tropical island called Saipan.

I am the only one who is married to someone 27 years her senior.

So as the leader of the Mothers-to-Nathans / Geriatric-Lovers / Former-Saipan-Residents party, I am shamelessly requesting your votes. You can vote once a day until the polls close on Tuesday at 9 PM.

Tell your friends, neighbors and spouses to vote for me! And if you aren't married, find someone, marry him/her and then spread the good word! Remember, a vote for Kirida is a vote for change, specifically, the 83 cents I have in my hand.

CNN, less entertainment news, more politics, please

Just heard on CNN's Showbiz Tonight, after hours of political banter and speculation: "Who will make a greater contribution to society: Paris Hilton or Nicole Richie?"

My son

Originally uploaded by kirida.

He looks like he belongs on Fraggle Rock.

25 is the new 60

Sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, I threw my neck out, which I didn't even know was possible since I don't even have an AARP card nor have I cut off all my hair and begun donning big wooden African jewelery. What's next? THE CHANGE? Will I become one of those people who say things like THE CHANGE and Aunt Flo and va-jay-jay (seriously, stop. And non-Seattleites, stop thinking that there's really a hospital called Seattle Grace).

But my neck and shoulder muscle cramps have made it pretty difficult to do anything other than creeking out, "I'm going to live with this misery forever!" When my husband suffers any ailment, he sincerely believes he is dying and I must rub his head and whisper, "You poor poor baby."

When I'm sick, I believe that I am going to continue wallowing in this disabling pain and must be ferried to the ER where they will shelve all the heart attack patients, roommates who thought it was a good idea at the time to tape their penises together and stab victims in order to accommodate some lady who can't even sit up to blog because she "slept funny."

In non-Mona-whining-again news, I'm nominated for Metroblogging Seattle's Blarch Badness! I plan to roll out my campaign strategy this week since I'm up against some pretty heavy contenders, contenders who don't have a dark bottomless void where self-esteem and a moral compass should be. It'll be like the real election only with bribes and without any promises for change!

Mona and the almost-President

I saw John Kerry speak. This brings the total list of famous people I have met in person up to two. The first famous person I ever met was Levar Burton. I was at a world youth conference in Hawaii and he came to speak. I don't even remember what gems of advice I plucked from his panel discussion, but I do remember a table of Austrian teens interrupting by belting out the Reading Rainbow theme song.

And if you're wondering, John Kerry is one tall brother. Levar Burton is the size of your average lawn gnome.