farm tots

Last Saturday, we headed down to the South 47 Farms. South 47 sounds like a gang. Maybe a gang of white organic Eastside farmers that aggressively battle the chemical crew who come in yelling, "Pesticiiide!"

I didn't see any Pacific islanders there, but that's no surprise. I can spot Pacific islanders if I'm actively looking and by actively looking, I mean, turning on A&E and watching Dog the Bounty Hunter. Because that show accurately portrays how Pacific islanders always smoke meth and jump bail. You won't see me on that show. I always pay my bondsman IN FULL.



They offered hayrides for a dollar and it would have been more fun if Nathan hadn't tried to jump off the wagon or laugh maniacally at strangers. I had to sit on the wagon bed, (HA! No cushiony hay bale for you, mother!) to keep Nathan from exiting. When I stood up, my pants were dirty and hay covered.

All of a sudden, an old woman swept off the hay and dirt bits from my pants and I jumped. She said, "Oh, I'm not getting fresh with you dear."

Okay, so two things: 1) how cute is that? Who says "getting fresh" anymore? and 2) Doesn't touching a stranger's butt fall under the definition of "getting fresh"?

I know I attract older people, but geez. This is a stretch.

And speaking of older people, I offered my husband this comedic gem this morning:

Me: So, when was the first time you saw Billy Joel in concert?

Mike: 1971.

Me: Was he calling himself William then?

Enjoy!

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.

Happy Father's Day!

After watching a riveting episode of Cheaters

Me: I could never cheat on you, honey. I'm afraid of disease!

Mike: ...

Me: Oh. And I love you?

Mike: Well, I'm glad your love for me falls second to your fear of the clap.

During last night's episode of LOST

Me: You know, if I had to choose between Jack and Sawyer, I'd definitely go for Sawyer. I mean, Jack's smart and all, but he has way too much baggage. Also, Sawyer would also be a lot more fun. I don't think Jack would be that interesting--

Mike: WHAT IS THIS?!? ARE WE HAVING A SLUMBER PARTY?

Me: I'm just saying that if I had to choose, I would choose Sawyer because he's really hot, and--

Mike: SO YOU WANT ME TO BRAID YOUR HAIR NOW?

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.

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.

My son has more hair than Britney Shears

Who cares about Britney Shears when Nathan's raving over Rice a Roni?

Relay for Strife

Today as I walked into work, I noticed a woman a few yards ahead collecting donations for Relay For Life. She donned the full-throttle anti-cancer regalia--shirt, cap and flair--though I'm not sure what pro-cancer regalia would be, maybe a big tumor, smoking a cigarette and wearing a shirt reading "ALL UR ORGANZ R BELONG TO US"?

As I neared her, I entered the zone where the petitioner has to scope out potential donations or signatures and make the move. Our eyes met and I wasn't sure if I could really say, "No, I'm in a hurry," because by saying I'm too busy for cancer is just asking for a huge cheek carbuncle to grow and stretch my facial features so much that I'll have the profile of the Jack in the Box guy. But before I could mumble an excuse, she gave me the nano-second size up and turned around like I wasn't even there.

Dissed! Again! Then I realized why she didn't want to ask me for a donation. She saw me and figured, she's too fat. How could she even walk in the Relay for Life when just thinking about walking makes her tired. She probably has to iron her clothes on a hot boat.

But am I really too fat to help fight against cancer?

I'll probably have to get signatures for my own cause: Race for a Cured Ham.

After watching the news segment about 16 weddings in one Baghdad hotel

Mike: Do you think they're registered at Target?

Me: No, they're registered at Al Tar-zhay.

It's a uter-US, not a uter-YOU

So Mike and Nathan accompanied me to my IUD appointment and after I had taken off my skivvies, Nathan started crying. If my half-naked body sent him into tears, imagine if I had gone the full-monty? Mike wheeled the stroller out of the room, leaving me alone with the doctor.

As she measured my uterus, she said, "Adorable. Just adorable." Her voice trailed off like she was admiring a Picasso.

"Um, excuse me?" I was taken aback. I wouldn't say my vagina is adorable. I mean, it's okay looking, but definitely not a stunner and sure as hell not adorable. I've had a baby so I know I'm not going to win any Miss Vagina World pageants anytime soon.

"Your son," she said. "He's just adorable!"

She wasn't my regular doctor. She was a new one who couldn't get through all the preliminary medical questions without giggling like, "Have you had any unprotected intercourse with ejaculation in the past two weeks? No? Hee-hee, okay!"

It reminded me of that episode of Beavis and Butthead in which they take a sex ed class but they're not supposed to laugh or they'll get expelled and the whole time Mr. Buzzcut (sad, I remember his name) says, "And we're going to be talking about the PENIS! And the VAGINA!"

I had expected to walk out of there looking like I had been on a horse all day, but the whole deal was twenty minutes (the longest part being the preparation) and relatively painless. Nothing like the horror stories about cramping or bleeding my friends, or so-called friends, had warned me about. They were trying to scare me into having more babies and I'm sure my in-laws paid them to do it.

Hello 2007!

I have only one feasible resolution this year and that's to stop yelling, "HELLO!" when I phone people. This was suggested by my sister who asked me to just say, "Hello, Bobb," instead of my usual trans-Pacific holler.

I have another less realistic goal for '07: take a stand-up comedy class. I've always had a dream of working a stage. In second grade, I used my show-and-tell time to rehash Sinbad jokes, including one on how bikinis looked more like dental floss. I filled Nathan's first baby book with preggy material instead of entries on his arrival.

I'm no stranger to the mic. In high school, I competed in tons of debates, mock trials, and speech cups, so stand-up couldn't be too far from that. Instead of arguing intelligent design in high school curriculum, immigration reform or the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, my topic will be, "Resolved: you are a bacon monster."

Here's hoping for laughs in 2007.

Ah, good times

2006 has been a sweet and shattering year for me. In the grand tradition of end-of-the-year lists, here's my favorite posts which coincidentally enough are the same ones that make my mother pray for me. If she asks, this blog is really an online forum for devout Catholics. Okay?

In an interminable and in no real order sort of way:

Mona's guide to football

"Sir, this is not cutting the yellow wire. This is your son. I've done all of that, with one hand and a boob hanging out. So there."

"I hope my cervix doesn't have to do that."




"...She said, "There, doesn't it feel softer?" Yeah, like my fist is softer than my knee..."

"You know Mona, you have to be very strict with your panty. You can't just leave it lying around."



"what they say about fatty-fatties and two-by-fours"

"So today I had a long talk with my last name. We took a walk on Alki and we laughed over memories, like how many times I've received credit card applications in Spanish..."

"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..."

Futile positions to induce labor



"She went all Adam Smith on me, sticking her invisible hand to my face, saying, 'Talk to this!'"

"The Tell-Tale Diaper Bag"



"I don't remember the book of "I'm Better Than You" being in the Bible."



"...I want the largest kotex you can find... And I don't want anything with a frou-frou name like Serenity. I need something solid like Fort Knox. Do they sell Fort Knox?"



...the cashier can scan the receipt and announce, "You've saved forty dollars," and I can say with much hand gestures and sports-arena-level enthusiasm, "You're damn right I saved forty dollars! Who's taking the Safeway now, sucka?



"I bet you can't run up to that truck, punch the guy inside and run back without getting hurt..."

I know more about what's going on in Walnut Grove than what's happening in Seattle.

Here's a list of acts of brotherly love which I never reciprocated



This morning she vetoed my sweater because it's too tight. Of course it's too tight. I'm 38 weeks pregnant. Everything is too tight. You know what isn't too tight? Bedsheets.

"...crazy people have phenomenal memories, but it's about the cats they lost at the taxidermist and scratch tickets that were one number or coconut off from winning the big one..."



"I didn't marry my husband for a passport. I married him so I could get his 2003 Nissan Altima which I've already named 'The Silver Bullet.' Duh."

"At first, I thought, 'Naton?' But it makes sense because Nathan is half-white, half-rastafari."

The Chamorro method of shipping

My sister in Phoenix called me this morning asking me if I knew anyone flying in tonight from Phoenix who would also deliver the package of party favors for tomorrow�s baby shower. This is the Chamorro method of shipment. Find someone, anyone, flying to your destination and kindly request that they schlep your cooler of fish, plastic bags of ice keke and lemon powder or in my sister's case, a box of overdue party favors. I'm sure shortly after the Postal Service reached Saipan, there were Chamorros willing to bypass that in favor of a cheaper routing system.

"Oh, I thought mom would have gotten into a fight with Uncle Frank and then fly over to Arizona�"

I don't know what makes my sister bank on family violence, but I don't believe her excuse. She's known for a month about this party and my mother's been here since Monday. Everyone knows that. More people are calling my mother than me and my mother hasn't given birth since 1983. In any case, my mother will be receiving a box by tomorrow and will have to promptly pay for the delivery.

Even if that's what my sister assumed, it's in poor taste to assume at all. You know what assuming does. It makes an ass out of u and Ming. Poor Ming. Poor Chinese guy.