25

I'm been celebrating my birthday since yesterday because technically I was born on Saipan and since Saipan's on the other side of the international date line, I might as well start partying! It's like when I'm at work eating my lunch at 9:30 am and warding off stares from co-workers who think I'm a hippo when in reality, I eat lunch on Eastern Standard Time. And Pacific Standard Time. And whenever my stomach gurgles, "BACON MONSTER! RISE AND EAT!"

I'm 25 years old today. I have an spa appointment later this morning that includes a massage and hand and foot treatment. I'm a little wary of the "treatment," because it sounds like my hands and feet need an intervention for being so oafish all these years, as this will solve my affliction of being half-Pacific Islander, half-Shrek.

I have so much to look forward to now that I'm 25 like lower car insurance rates and Lipitor prescriptions. This is day is all about me and how awesome is that?

But the real question is, homes, orange peel grill:



yay?



Or nay?

A letter to my teenage self

Dear teen Mona,

Here's the only advice I can give you: stop wearing snakeskin pants. Just because Salma Hayek did it in Traffic does not mean that you can replicate that level of hotness. Please stop. It looks like you skinned an anaconda shortly after it swallowed another anaconda.

You are young and all the mistakes and successes you will make will lead you to me. You will have an awesome career with a nurturing and flexible company but you will have to suffer through demanding, post-menopausal bosses who will call you up on your honeymoon to ask you if you can drive in to work on an Excel sheet. Months after she let you go because there was no funding and she smack-talked you out of a job.

You will have a wonderful husband and awe-inspiring son, but first there will be dreadful, expensive timesink boyfriends. Don't pay for any of their bills. You know what you should do with the car payment you'll make to be a "good girlfriend"? Burn it. Or send it via Western Union to me and we'll play out scenes from Back to the Future! Lord knows, I'll need it. Which means you'll need it, too.

Sometimes you will miss your friend Isa so much, you will drive with the airconditioning at full blast, pointed at your face, so no one will know that you were crying. Someday you might be able to stop asking yourself what you could have done, what you could have said, but really, it was all out of your hands. Be prepared, but know that most days are not like that.

You will not be a lawyer, but you will still be a writer. You will learn how wonderful it is to be a mother, how life changes and continues and all you can do is just be prepared to completely unprepared. It's great. Trust me on this.

Love,

Future Mona

This post is thanks to the Cafemom Writing Challenge. Join in, peeps!

obligatory about me page (redux)

Hi there.

My name is Mona. I am 24 years old, but you wouldn't know that because I read at the level of a 25-year-old.

I live in Seattle with my son Nathan and husband Mike. I tell people that I moved to Seattle from Saipan because I wanted to go to college, which is only partially true. The real reason is that ever since I watched Sleepless in Seattle, I wanted to move to a magical city that could bring the forces of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks together.

"Kirida" is word in my native language, Chamorro, meaning "favorite girl." It is often applied to the youngest girl of the family and (spoiler alert!) that's me. Unfortunately, it's very confusing to most mainlanders, especially those who say, "kirinda" or "kerida" or "kilililili."

"Hello Insomnia" is a title I chose when I truly thought I was going through insomnia but really, I was just addicted to sending emails at 3 AM. And now, I don't know if I have insomnia, or am just unable to sleep when my toddler decides to suffocate me with his butt.



My husband is 27 years older than I am and if there's one thing to learn about shacking up with an older man it's this: men rarely have their shit together at ANY AGE. But I love my man and would do anything for him, like bring him his joint medication or slap on a fresh pair of Depends.



My son Nathan was born in May 2006. I really had him so I could have someone my age to play with.

I take pictures with a Canon EOS 30D, but don't ask me how it works. Thanks to my friend Branan, I know that when I'm stumped for technical jargon, it's easiest to describe things in terms of magic so here goes: when I push the button, a portal opens up that leads me past the Towers to the gates of Mordor.

Miscellany:

I like driving with bare feet.

I have birthmark on my right arm. It is in the shape of Greenland. It also has a mole on it, which I've called the "YOU ARE HERE" mark.

I used to think that I had really hip music tastes until I found out that my favorites were also on the soundtrack for One Tree Hill.

I have lived in only three places in my life--Saipan, Salem and Seattle. I would like to live in Portland, but since it doesn't begin with an "s," that's not going to happen. Maybe one day it'll be called Sortland and my dream will come true.

I like people who aren't afraid to swear, admit their love for Target or watch bad television.

You can find a previous version of this page here. I can be contacted at mona AT kirida.com. You can also leave comments because that's what'll bring us closer together, my internet friend.

first comic standing

In January I spouted off a lofty resolution of performing stand-up comedy before the year's up and this Saturday, I'm actually going to do it.

So I know it's a long shot. Only the first 100 people will be seen which means I'll have to there early. This will not be on television (so no chance of my mother finding out...yet). There will most likely be crowds and a few crazies, but this is where it starts, right?

I figure that if I admit it here publicly like this, you'll ask me later how it's going and I'll have to answer. This is why I'd hesitate to admit publicly that I'm on a diet because 1) who are we kidding and 2) that would call for some kind of will power. There's a better chance of reuniting both Koreas than there is of me being restrained successfully from a plate of cupcakes. But I don't have time to share with you the riveting tales of how I was owned by the 2 for $5 ice cream sale at Albertson's. As much as I am worried about polished punchlines, my real question is why after giving birth, my feet have swollen to a size so big that South America has banned me for fear that my dinosaur footprints could clear out the rest of the rainforest.

a cheap, dirty mess

Not everyone was happy that I got pregnant.

A few weeks after Mike and I found out we were having a baby, I agreed to go to brunch with my former co-workers and ex-boss. One of them noticed I was wearing a wedding band and asked if I had gotten married to which I said yes and added, "And I'm having a baby!"

Even though these women were phenomenal at transforming communities and helping immigrant families, they wallowed in the requisite office gossip, especially when it was aimed at me. Take for example the Christmas party when Mike and I arrived late and left early. They took this to mean that Mike and I were in an abusive relationship because all older man/younger woman relationships are abusive! Women in their 20s don't have minds of their own; they don't gain wisdom until menopause! And when another one told me that my "lack of typing" was a sign of Mike controlling me, well, chalk that up to domestic violence, not employee boredom!

And upon my sharing that I was with child, they said they would rather throw themselves down the stairs multiple times than be pregnant. Well, only one woman said that, but it was the general consensus that I was doing a pretty stupid thing by becoming pregnant so young. But there wasn't anyone at that table who said congratulations or mazel tov, and I was pretty pissed at the memory of their frowning, barren faces.

And now, over a year later, Nathan's awesomeness (and my new job's completely career-nurturing, family-friendly environment) has dissipated whatever disdain I had for those women. And even though I'm sure there was much fanfare over how big of a mistake I was making and how my stint at motherhood would be disastrous, I'm probably just as bad as they were since this is just my side of a dirty mess.

I'm going to a baby shower today where there will be a sure sighting of my ex-boss. But I'm not worried about seeing her since there's no better way to play oneupmanship than having youth, an Elton-John singing son and a sweet life. What has furrowed my brow is that the gal having the baby shower has told me that she does not want to have a "Target baby," because Target is cheap. Well, someone file that under "o" for OBVIOUS. Of course, Target's cheap. That's why I shop there.

Worse than that, this negates the parenting/consumer philosophy I was going to scrawl in the card, "Get it for free, buy it used, or buy it at Target."

I'll guess I'll have to go with the wise unsolicited advice I received at the grocery store, "Watch your baby."

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.

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.

two fat stories

About three years ago, my friend Leslie and I went to a Weight Watcher's meeting in downtown Seattle. This was a poor decision because it was right before Thanksgiving and the bulk of the meeting focused on what we weren't going to eat. The room was packed with women slipping off their shoes and stepping on the scale and then congratulating each other on that week's total. It looked like the entire Oprah audience decided to leave the studio and fill a Weight Watcher's meeting.

A woman with tightly drawn red lips passed around paper plates, instructing us to list what we were going to eat. I went to town in my circle, writing mostly ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, ham and some more ham. Then Miss Lips said that we were going to count up how many points we had based on our food. I stopped listening after someone asked how many points were given for gravy and she said, "Gravy? Don't even think about it."

I flipped the plate over and drew a weepy frown where real food should have been.

That was the first and only time I have ever attended a Weight Watcher's meeting. Now, three years later, I still get stalkerish mail from WW like brightly colored postcards with a sweaty woman smiling as she holds an eight-pound dumbbell in one hand and her unattainable idea of beauty in the other. (Because unrealistic notions of what a woman's body should look like have no points whatsoever.)

These mailings have always printed the same phrase: "Dear Mona, we haven't forgotten about you!" Lately, they've taken a darker bent, moving from, "Come on Mona, give us a call," to "Still fat, Mona? We're not! How do those pre-pregnancy pants fit? They don't? That's too bad. We've enclosed a tissue to wipe those tears. Remember, tears are five points!"

--

Yesterday as I was driving, I realized that I had been sitting on my phone. When I got home, I looked at the screen and it said, "NOT IN SERVICE." My phone couldn't pick up a signal from under my ass. I've been able to make calls in tunnels and parking garages, but not from the dark depths of my junk in the trunk. There are few things in life more embarrassing than contemplating, "How big is my ass that a call from under it would include roaming charges?"

Seriously, how much area is there? What does this information do to my measurements? What am I now? 36-24-48-contiguous-states?

And writing all this has made me hungry.

Unsolicited information

1. It wasn't until Anna Nicole Smith died that I learned how to correctly pronounce "executor," as in executor of the will. I had been saying it like, "execute-tor," like Skeletor. I don't know any other -tor suffixes, but if I did, I would list them here. Also, I found out that the statue of limitations and the statute of limitations are two different things. The statue of limitations is headless.

2. In the fifth grade, several branches of a Christian group called YWAM (Youth with a Mission) would visit our parochial school. They would sing Christian songs and accompany it with a dance routine. When American sect visited during assembly, one guy introduced himself by saying, "Hi. I'm John. I'm Korean and I'm from L.A." My whole pew busted out laughing because until then, the only Koreans we had ever known were from Seoul, not South Central. Koreans not from Korea? Whaaa? They don't exist! That was so absurd, it made our poor geographically ignorant selves hysterical. Sometimes, I wonder what it must have been like for John to be in front of giggling elementary school kids, trying to figure out what was so funny.

3. In the eighth grade, I joined my school's MathCounts, not because I qualified, but because my coach was too nice to point out that they looked down on counting on your fingers. Besides, the Korean kids knew everything. They were drafting blueprints for nukes when I was writing one-act plays for my Barbies. During the final round of the state competition, the smart ones went on stage while my friend Sara and I waited in the audience. When the answer was announced bellowed to each other, "See, I told you!"

4. My relationships with gay men have only been fleeting, like at the hair salon or the time when my friend Odawni forgot that I was coming over and instead, three gay guys let me into her building and said, "Come on in giiirl!" I have this idea that I am not fabulous enough for gay men. I will never be a gay man's Grace. That is not being homophobic, that is gay men being mona-phobic. I'm a mona-rity! Where's my parade?

5. If there's one thing I hope Nathan does not inherit from me, it's my inability to perform math. In second grade, I discovered that if I faked a stomachache, I could sit in the nurse's office long enough to skip over the dirty part of the day devoted to long division. And because I was feigning a stomachache and not an epileptic seizure (which is what my break-dancing looks like), no alarms sounded and I could relax on the paper-lined bed until I returned to class. This brilliant scheme to usurp Mrs. Miller's authority worked until my dad opened up a parent's note and I never saw the inside of the nurse's office again.

6. In the fifth grade, my teacher and her teacher friend in Kentucky orchestrated a trans-Pacific penpal program between the two classes. I received a letter from Andrea, a country girl who loved Garth Brook and horses. She wrote, "Do you like the SHOWER?" The question stumped me. Why did she put "shower" in all caps? Was there a deep abiding love for hygiene and general cleanliness in Kentucky? Or maybe the shower was a hangout spot, like the skating rink or the movie theater. After a week of formulating a perfect answer, I finally wrote back, "I don't know the 'SHOWER.'"

Her reply arrived weeks later and sealed my fate as the worst representative of Saipan ever, "Dear Mona, I asked you if you like the show E.R. Are you really that stupid or do you have to go to a special class hut for that."

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.

So you better treat (me) right

Until I took my maternity leave last April, which turned out to be the day I maternity left, I had been working consistently since I was 19. I've been a front desk manager, grassroots organizer, small newspaper editor, etc. I've been thinking a lot about the almost-jobs I've had, too, the places where I had been hired but had to politely (and sometimes not so politely) refuse.

There's a scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when right before a gun battle, Butch admits that he's never shot anyone and Sundance instructs him to "aim for the middle 'cause you're bound to hit something." That line sums up how I've applied for jobs, especially when I don't have a job and need that crazy thing called money.

There was a dry-cleaning place run by an attractive Asian woman (Asians and dry cleaners? Surely you jest!) and right after the interview she said, "I just want you to take this IQ test, here's some scratch paper." I had never heard of a dry cleaner wanting an applicant to figure out if John and Matt carpooled and Matt lived thirty minutes away from John at what speed would a train from Topeka have to be to reach Kansas City at five o'clock. I thought I would just be estimating how much it would cost to get raspberries stains out of ascots, not balancing equations. But for fifteen minutes, I was a math genius and the chemicals inside the building uncovered the seventh grade algebra lessons lodged in the bowels of my brain.

When I received the voicemail asking when I would start, I had to tell her no, I had already accepted a job elsewhere even thought that was a lie, I didn't want to smell like I had been huffing aerosol cans all day and I don't like doing laundry. (Tangent: And speaking of smells, I am utterly disgusted by Febreeze commercials. I mean, instead of washing and disinfecting your nasty, bacteria-laden sweaty sports gear, why not spritz it with some chemicals? That's nastier than wearing Bea Arthur's underwear as a face mask. Whenever I get a whiff of Febreeze, I think, "Something nearby must be really dirty.")

This stretch of motherhood has been the longest time I have gone without working for pay and has given me time to think about what ifs. What if I had taken that job at the literary agency? What if I moonlighted as a "phone actress" for guys into shemuscles? What if I did work from 9 to 5 (pm to am) shaking what my mama gave me?

And the point of this boring, what-is-your-point-Mona entry is to say that I am no longer a stay-at-home mom. I got a job! A paying job! With benefits! Break out the exclamation points, who's expressing strong feelings now, playa!

I decided to go back to work for several reasons. It was partly financially motivated because of small things like the car accident last month that didn't magically pay for itself and disappear into the field where bad decisions go to die (RIP stirrup pants). There were other reasons less cogent like, I think I could really lose weight this time because I will not be within seconds of the fridge and the pint of cookies and cream inside. Truth is, I want a career. In twenty years I am supposed to be at my maximum earning potential and that is not going to happen if I continue memorizing lines from Little House on the Prairie (not that that's a bad thing, it's just I can't make a living telling you what Pa Ingalls is going to say next). I want to go to grad school and use what I've learned for something other than owning the Victorian Literature category on Jeopardy.

My friend calls the first months the "cloud of motherhood," that you're stuck in a fog of baby demands and mothering and that's great because it's exactly what your child needs, but when your baby grows and eases up, you start to notice your own needs, too. And as she waxed hippie philosophic about discovering womanhood, wombs and the moon, I should have chimed in with something more eloquent than, "Yah, I'm just looking forward to wearing pants without elastic around the middle."

If you don't stop crying, I'm going to turn this ferry right around

The first time I ever took a ferry was when I was traveling from Saipan to Tinian to visit my friend Val who was staying there that summer. I boarded the ferry home with my newly acquired driver's license and two large watermelons her aunt had given me. I failed Saipan's written test so Val offered her inter-island DMV connections. What's more embarrassing than failing the exam every Harry, Dick and Jane Juan, Jun, and Serafin passed? Failing it at 18 years of age. I drove my golden brown Toyota Previa van illegally and had to go to another island to make it right.

I took a nap on the ferry and woke up to a Filipino man standing over me, saying, "Excuse me, ma'am, but you'll have to leave now." I rubbed my eyes and realized that the ferry was completely empty. I didn't have time to recreate the scene in which everyone walks by my open-mouthed, snoring body, my sister was supposed to pick me up outside and if I didn't get to the dock, I would be all by my lonesome with my fruit to keep me company. I jumped up and over the man, holding my huge watermelons and running as fast I could off the boat. There I was, huffing and holding those jumbo globes just so I could holler at my sister who was already on her way out. I could get a gold medal in the Porn Star Olympics with that stunt, I tell you what.

So when Mike was invited to Peninsula College to read his poetry and talk about writing, our small family took the ferry to Bainbridge Island and proceeded to drive 80 some miles to Port Angeles. Sometimes I forget how big America is. On Saipan, it took me thirty minutes to get from my house to the other end of the island and here, thirty minutes is a good drive time.

When we arrived at the reading, Nathan and I sat in the back of the auditorium while Mike took the stage. I decided to sit close to the exit in case Nathan entered a meltdown. When he did coo or say, "Ba ba ba ba," a woman turned in her seat as if to seek out who the hell brought in a baby, even though Mike was introduced several times as being from Seattle and having brought his wife and baby. I didn't see any other wife and baby pairs so I wasn't sure why this woman was staring me down like I owed her money. When I smiled at her, she rolled her eyes. And that was it. I was like, oh no you didn't woman. I went to the state finals in eye-rolling. I was 13 and my mom told me I couldn't have a birthday party because I was caught smoking in my room, so what did I do? I wielded my up-and-over eye roll, perfecting the international teen symbol for "Whatever!"

I'm no stranger to being openly dissed, but at my husband's poetry reading? I can understand why you wouldn't want a child at a quiet event, but Nathan wasn't going into hysterics, he was heckling his dad. Her frown was enough for me to grab the diaper bag and wait outside. I didn't want to disturb anyone else or risk fending off other eye-rollers because I can't do a leg sweep and push a stroller at the same time.

While Nathan sat patiently and chewed his books, I phoned my sister who offered this: "You're in Port Angeles? Wow, that's the same city in Passions!" I think she confused Port Angeles with Port Charles and Passions with General Hospital. Just a guess.

In 2007, I'll try to toughen up against disses and eye-rolls, though I might take some lessons in nursing with one hand and throwing ninja stars with the other.



--

Ferry travel cost us $30.00 roundtrip, but we did get our money's worth with these shots of the sunset over Alki Beach.

big fat lie

I once dated a pathological liar and for years after we broke up, I was pissed at the time I wasted with a guy who claimed to be a quasi-famous Northwest artist, a college graduate and also promised me a website (which never came into fruition). But maybe I should have focused my energies on learning about lying instead of wishing I had burned his Magic the Gathering card collection.

I have never been a good liar. When I do try to embellish or fabricate scenes to make myself look fabulous, the words feel heavy in my mouth, like I'm spitting out marbles. Yesterday at the gym, Nathan and I were in the women's locker room. We had finished our swimming for the day. The very svelte brunette next to me had an infant carrier at her feet, her baby girl nestled inside.

"Oh you have a new baby!" I said. Any baby who can still fit into an infant carrier and is not an seasoned 27-lb enormity like Nathan is to me still new.

"Yeah..." her voice trailed off. "She's four months now."

"Four months?" This woman looked like she could be my "after" picture. Her legs were so small, in my "Mona was such a fatty" campaign, I'd imagine she would stand in my jeans, her whole body fitting into one of my pant legs and she'd stretch the blanket of denim out to her right.

"You look great!" I added.

"Yeah, it's really hard to lose weight."

"You're telling me." She didn't have to tell me really. I was still standing in my one-piece Costco bathing suit, my flubs weren't exactly incognito.

"It's especially hard when you have two kids. I have another girl at home." She then looked at Nathan and said, "Do you only have one?"

And this was the moment I should have used the year with Mr. Pants on Fire to generate something other than, "Yeah, he's my only one." After she left, all the right answers came to mind like, "Yeah, but he was 27 pounds when he was born," or "No, I have six more at home." Because I tell you, I have an okay body for the mother of one, but a banging set of legs for a mother of seven.

What has two thumbs and is celebrating a birthday today?

Me!

The downside of being born in January is that everyone is broke from Christmas, so I end up with the leftover giftsets like a blush and eyeshadow palette meant for white Europeans or a Far Side desk calendar with the good pages torn out.



What kind of blows about being born on January 20 is that it's also the Inauguration Day, so every four years some guy takes the spotlight from me just because he was elected. Whatever! Damn you, US Constitution, with your freaking 20th Amendment getting in the way of my celebratory goals.

A few times Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday has also fallen on January 20 and there's an unwritten rule that says, "This is MLK Day, so don't complain jerkface!" I mean, I don't want to be the a-hole who shifts the federal holiday focus back onto myself, even though this is my freaking birthday. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Civil Rights Movement!

And no one really cares about my birthday when it's also the opening of the Olympic Sculpture Park and the final revelation of the code to unlock Manaphy, a diggity-dang animated POKEMON character.

I'm 24 today which means that I'm too old for raging keggers, Girls Gone Wild and Playboy's Girls of West Seattle or even their Girls of Saipan Special Edition.



But I'm not too old to use my pointy high-heels to pervert the sign at the Fauntleroy Blockbuster. Sexy time!

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.

The random report

My brother's coming in next weekend with his wife and son. Now that we both have families, I'm not sure how this will change the dynamic which I've known so long. One that involves phone calls that begin with, "What the hell do you want, Ramona?"

When I was 14, I stayed with my brother in Hawaii that summer. He brought me to a little shop where a guy made fake ID's for $50. The guy took my photo and placed it in a tiny plastic card that said I was 21 and from Fairfax, Virginia. As we left, I was starting to think that my brother was making an effort to include me in his super cool party circle until we got to his apartment and my first task was to buy beer from the Korean store across the street.

When the store owner scanned my ID and asked if I was going to school on the East Coast, I panicked and tried to say oh-so-smoothly, "Yeah, I just got done with spring semester..." and scurried out of there.

I relayed the whole story to my brother and he said, "Spring semester, Ramona? Don't you know it's August?"

--

I went to the Seattle Public Library downtown yesterday and thought it would be avant garde to take self-portraits of me, but then I chickened out once the librarians came around. So I pulled out my bag and acted as if I was actually rummaging through it instead of stuffing it with Cynthia Voigt novels. Here's me pretending that the contents of my Calvin Klein (free gift with purchase!) bag are so amazing that I. forgot. to. close. my. mouth.



--

I made an appointment to get an IUD on Monday. The last time I went for an IUD I got into a car accident. I didn't make it to the doctor's that day. I think God was trying to tell me one of two things: "Have more babies, Mona!" or "Get the hell off the road."

--

During the Christmas festivities, everyone played "Rob Your Neighbor" and fought over the bottle of wine someone brought in. Mike's godmother ended up with the fancy BBQ sauce set I gifted but I found her later trying to trade it with her grandson for a flask.

I picked this:



A six-piece gardening tool set which everyone tried to steal from me, but I was all, "Ahh hells no! I'm gonna these deez kneepads fo sho!" Besides, I'll need these tools to fulfill my ultimate dream of opening up an organic produce stand that also sells Steel Reserve and scratch tickets. I'm just trying to broaden my market, that's all.

--

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.

In which "I walked into a doorknob" might not sound so funny

Why couldn't I be on the flight in that movie Airplane? Sure there would be almost deadly yet comical food poisoning but at least there would also be jive talking and a topless woman streaking across the screen.

But everything that could have gone wrong did, save a deadly nerve agent seeping through the vents. First, my swollen-spider-egg-hatchery eye. It hasn't gone away. In fact, it's to the point that I should just stand behind Mike and say, "I didn't listen the first time." (Okay, no more dropping domestic violence jokes, but come on... nothing for that? Nothing?) And how attractive is flying with an eye and a half? It's like I've become a hag with a permanent wink. I'm the Million Dollar Baby, minus a million dollars.

The flight to Phoenix was fifty minutes late because the plane had to turn back right before take-off due to the cargo door opening. A little delay, they said, turned into almost an hour of one attendant or another stumbling over the "how to calm the passengers" script, telling us we will leave shortly and there should be some time to make our connecting flight. And all I could think about was how the Phoenix rises from the ashes and on this flight we were going straight into the fire.

During the flight, there was forty minutes of turbulence and every Wayne's World vomit euphemism came to mind. The path to the lavatories in the back where blocked by the beverage cart so I walked to the bathroom in the first-class section. The moment I walked up and noticed it was occupied, the bottle-blond attendant snapped at me.

"You'll have to wait back there by the partition," she huffed. Her hair flipped up at me like little middle fingers as I shuffled three feet back to the see-through Iron Curtain where I belonged. Could my coach-ass have been that offensive? It's not like it was Jurassic Park and every heavy low-income stomp I took caused ripples in their cups of red wine. I waited patiently until I could leave the $3 Famous Amos snack pack in a toilet where the first-class shit may not smell like roses, but it's still in a higher income bracket.

We arrived in Phoenix with a sliver of time to make our connecting flight, but even that was cut in half because we had to wait for someone to bring the jetway up. We had no way to get into the terminal because some stupid US Airways idiot didn't do his/her job. It wasn't like my sister who calls me and says she and her four kids will be right over and I have only thirty minutes to hide the silverware and break out the Top Ramen. They had three hours to make sure that people could get off the plane without having to use the emergency exit. When we finally entered the terminal, we rushed to the next gate just as they were saying that all passengers had to be on board.

I walked by the flight attendant, another skanky bottle-blond who hissed at me right as I had just sat down and was scrambling to make Nathan a bottle. She said, "You'll have to put all this overhead," like I was just going to leave the Lamaze toys in the row and in the case of a crash, she'd be the one smacked with a projectile Henry the Hippo.

"Yes, I understand that," I replied, interrupting her and holding up the bottle like she had never seen one before, "BUT I HAVE TO MAKE HIS BOTTLE FIRST." She was treating me like I had lolly-gagged in the terminal, perusing the gossip mags and deciding whether I want to read about celebrity revenge plots or diet schemes till I heard the final boarding call and decided it was time to take my Spongebob Strechpants family on board.

I imagined that if this had been some dive bar instead of US Airways Flight 666, she'd be considered the "hot one" because the other bar patrons would be amputees and war vets and I'm not sure where I'm going with this one other than to say she could have been nicer.

She did teach me something, though. Shortly after we buckled in, a family of five came through, holding Pizza Hut boxes and plastic bags from the gift shop. The stewardess was walking with the mother, saying, "Well, this close to departure, you won't be able to sit together."

The conversation continued down the aisle and the mother said, "Well, if we can't sit together, we'll just find another flight."

There was a pause and the skanky stewardess said, "Is that what you want to do?" and the woman shot back, "Yeah! If you can't get us to sit together, we'll get off the plane right now!"

I'm going to use that line from now on. The next time some woman's about to diss me at Target, I'm going to say, "Is that what you want to do?" and she will cower. If that doesn't work, I'll just tell her that my eye is contagious and I might as well pee down the baby aisle because that territory is mine.

On Flight 666, the little boy next to me used the reading light so he could suck his own toe. He squiggled off his cowboy boot, brought his bare foot to his mouth and sucked on his big toe. He slurped, then looked at me as if I had. no. idea. what was going on three inches over and continued slobbing away. It's okay when Nathan gets all uncouth and eats his own feet because that only helps me change his diaper and I guess it would be okay if you were a fetish performer in the back alleys of Bangkok because, hey, we all need to make a living, but when you're an eight-year-old boy and drops of your spit fly toward me and my son, put the digits down.

His mother was no help, either, especially when I kept waking up because her son's erratic sleep-positions brought his knee to Nathan's head. She just looked at me and Nathan and said, "It's so easy to travel when they're that age!"

Uh, yeah.

But I have to say, it's nice to be back home, in a place where if I need to empty out the contents of my stomach, there's no class divide and no one in my way.

eyes smote shut

Yesterday, my left eye started swelling in the "you should see the other guy" sort of way. I've woken up with bruises before, but that's nothing new. When we co-sleep with Nathan, I'm the one who ends up with scratches or wakes up in the pee spot.

But today, the swelling worsened. I remember reading about a girl who had a boil on her face and one day it opened and tiny spiders raced out because it had been a spider's egg all along. Dear Lord, lease let this just be a sty and not a spider's egg because the day that insects emerge from my body will also be the day that Mike banishes me from the sweet baby-making kingdom forever.

I think this is all karmic retribution because shortly before the puffing began, I had made some biting comment about a Price Is Right contestant. She was wearing a "Bob's Beauty" t-shirt and I thought, "I didn't know Hanes made tube tops." But that's not what I said. When she jumped up, all her epidermic layers giddy and giggly, I said, "Lady, it's Plinko, not a Honeybaked ham."

I think the penance is going to be more severe than tossing out all my mascara. My relationship with karma is simple--we just don't see eye to eye.

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."

"GAH!"

is what I said after reading this article on bloggers by Rebekah Schilperoort at the West Seattle Herald.

In case my sister or mother read the article and complain that I didn't pimp Saipan enough (or that I didn't use my Chamorro maiden name), here you go familia: SAIPAN SAIPAN SAIPAN.



If you're in WS, could you pick me up a copy of the paper? I can't leave my spot at the dinner table right now.

And here's a picture of my boss. I'm not sure if he's pining for the dog or the case of bud light.



Edit: Angelo pointed out that a little math could calculate my age, but Rebekah made me a year older. That is my fault, though. I've never been good with numbers, even my own. This is ironic because one of my biggest flaws is also a math term: A-D-D.

In which "I don't know what you're talking about" is my only line of defense

Here's a surefire way to embarrass yourself in front of the in-laws, especially those who bestowed beautiful gifts upon your son, spent about a grand on an elaborate party and surprised you with a mini-wedding reception, complete with a small wedding cake: experiment with your Crown Royale to Diet Coke ratio.

I am typically a happy drunk and once Nathan was put to sleep, I entered a level of nirvana most people have to meditate years to achieve. All it took was a fifth of whiskey.

The kicker is that my camera battery died during the baptism, so I'll have to ask people to email me the photos and during those conversations, I'm sure someone will say, "Um, Mona, did you know you kept screaming, 'I love Charles Dickens!' and 'Rock on, late Victorian literature!" or "I didn't know you could put your feet behind your ears like that. No wonder your labor was so easy!"

I am also trying to figure out whether Nathan's borrowed Baby Einstein exersaucer is saying "rocker" or "vodka." Maybe it is the latter and I drank so much that my hangover makes me hear things.

If I spontaneously combust, I won't get through security

Here's my New Year's Resolution: no more air travel unless it's a first-class flight and the person next to me is really interesting or asleep. And no flights in December.

Today has not been a good day, which I hope means my travel will be the polar opposite. I went to the Westwood Post Office with my sister's 70 lb. box o' computer and not only did I have to deal with stupid people standing in front of the door while I tried to wheel the dolly in, no one helped me when I stood there like an idiot hoisting up the behemoth onto the counter scale. Because I have no upper body strength, the box was suspended in mid-air until another postal worker could help me lift. And when the woman at the counter finally saw it, she said, "Sorry, it's oversized. You'll have to break it down or use UPS."

I couldn't use UPS because it was going to SAIPAN. No effing Merry Christmas to you, stupid postal worker who didn't want to take my prepaid postage or reasoning that I already calculated the height-width-volume online and the website didn't say anything about it being oversized.

What's worse is that I cut myself shaving my legs and now I know I'll get stopped by a TSA agent and they'll quarantine me because I look like I have leg herpes. You know it's going to happen.

And someone had better call the waambulance because Nathan became sick today. Of all the hip-hop-until-you-don't-stop times to get sick, why now? Why? Because congested babies on planes are so much better than snakes! Samuel L. Jackson's tagline should've had congested babies instead of mofo-snakes. Why doesn't anyone ever consult me about these things? I have some idears, tell you what.

It's almost 1:30 A.M. and I just finished packing Nathan's things. But my luggage is empty. Maybe I'll add that to the baggage I already have, which is crammed with my dashed dreams of becoming Little Miss CNMI (My eight-year-old heart broke after hearing, "Sorry Mona, but you need all your teeth to compete in this one and your silver caps don't count.") and my failed attempts to lose weight via Carmen Electra's Striptease Aerobics. That venture fizzled after I found out that if you stand on the street you can totally see into my house.

If the neighbors moved here for the view, they're asking for refunds now.

I need positive thoughts, my internet peeps. Wish me luck.

WTF update: I can't find the 4th rechargeable battery I need for my camera. And I need all four to juice them up. Stupid Duracell. It's a battery, not the other half of the golden amulet. I just want to take pictures, not open the gate to Mordor.

I haven't matured much

Yesterday, I ran into an old classmate at Target. She had just said yes to marrying her boyfriend of three years and was rosy with the newly-engaged glow. When she flashed me her 3-carat diamond ring, I took her bling-blinged-fist and shoved it into the air, yelling, "WONDERTWIN POWERS ACTIVATE!"

The conversation didn't last much longer.

If I see a reason to summon the forces of the Justice League in Target's baby section, I'll do it. It's not a shocker that I have a big mouth and crap comes out that I just can't help. It's like when you sneeze really hard and pee a little. You can't stop that.

--

Mike has a pair of black reading glasses I am convinced are designed for a woman. Here are my reasons: the rhinestones in the corner, the cat-eye shape, the menopausal vibe I get whenever I see it. I would take a picture, but I can't find the glasses. I'd have to ask him for it and I can't think of a reason other than to get photographic evidence that he cross-dresses his eyes.

--

While I am in St. Louis, I will be dreaming of my recently acquired box of awesome: a "vintage" 16-bit Sega Genesis game console. I don't care for all the wii and xbox frenzy. What I want is to finally master Mortal Kombat. Sonya and I have some finishing to do. Best part is, I got this for free! Free! Free stuff is greater than cheap stuff. Do you need a visual? Well, here is it is, on the house: free > cheap.



Welcome back into my life, 1992. You've been missed.

Pain at the pumps

Breastfeedng hurts. It has made my nipples raw and sore. I was really determined to solely breastfeed this child and I had given up all hope when he was losing weight. But yesterday my breastmilk came in and now I can finally live out my dream of winning a wet T-shirt contest without the use of water.

There's something very Pavlovian about how I run to this little one whenever he stirs. Mr. Boob-It-or-Lose-It cries and out comes right baby feeder or left baby feeder. During this morning's feeding, I told Mike, "I'm just Tits McGee to this guy."