All things on cable TV considered, I wish my hotel had porn…

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I am trapped in a hotel in a Boston suburb. Therefore I did what I always do in this situation: I did the grown-up thing. I went to the bar and got myself multiple drinks, got myself drunk and depressed. Depressed. Apparently alcohol is a depressant. Shit! So that’s what I have been doing wrong. I am always a bit embarrassed by my being a sad, teary drunk. So it is not me. It is the alcohol.

Do you know what cures drunkenness and self-pity before you can say Xanax? A convenient case of indignant outrage. Courtesy of hotel cable TV. Yeah, smart ass. Not porn. I wish it were porn. At least it would not have left such a bad taste in my mouth.

Did you hear about this new anti-healthcare-reform commercial that’s said to be aired nation-wide, starting tomorrow?

The commercial that is getting lots of positive feedback on conservative blogs and websites shows a bunch of white people Euro-Americans looking into the camera, sprinkled in between with three non-white-looking people, and of course, with a mother and her toddler daughter who is sucking on her lollipop, all wide-eyed and innocent. The mother, looking into the camera, says, “I guess we are racists.” (Is your daughter even old enough to be against the healthcare reform? No? Then she is fine. We don’t know about you though.  <– Just kidding! You people have no sense of humor… <– Just kidding! Again!! Did you see what I am trying to accomplish here? I slay me.) The commercial ends with a young, nice-looking African American* man saying, “I guess I am a racist.” (Congratulations, dude. You just got your one and most likely only starring role as an aspiring actor!)

* Someone is very proud of that ending. What a strong finish! See? It’s a black man = He cannot be racist = All the others lily white folks cannot be racist either. Hurray! Martyrs, all of us. “I am Spartacus!” *Cough Cough*

I am the Queen of Passive Aggressiveness. Yet I am floored by the rampant passive aggression exhibited in this video. They must have consulted the Italian, Chinese and Korean mothers in the world. (Sorry, ladies, I love you guys. But have you seen yourselves in the soap operas? Yikes!)

This is what I call Preemptive Jackassery. This is similar, similar ONLY in my poorly-formed analogy since I have had too much to drink at the hotel bar by myself, and NOT in degree, to my calling myself a bitch which liberates me from doing all bitchy things.

“I guess I am a bitch BUT your baby really is ass ugly.”

“I guess I am a bitch BUT those jeans do make your butt look fat.”

“I guess I am a bitch BUT my honor-roll student can totally kick your bully kid’s ass.

Or your calling yourself a dick so you can kick baby kittens.

Or my husband’s saying preemptively, “Honey, I know I am an asshole” just to get out of doing housework throughout the entire marriage.

Remember how Newt Gingrich called Judge Sonia Sotomayor a Racist?

Finally, one thing we can all agree on: we are ALL racists. What’d ya know?

Well, what’d ya know? There’s more.

Sarah Palin reportedly left Hawaii (where she went to the first of the four colleges she attended) because, cough cough, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.”

I have to say, she is being quite brave by still wanting to run for the President in 2012 despite her fear. Think of all the Asian people she needs to meet when she runs for POTUS AND all the Asian countries she needs to visit when she becomes POTUS? She will need to meet with Chinese government officials, mostly male most likely, and shake their hands. Yeeeewwww! It’s going to be like the Indiana Jones trope: “Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?”

“Asians, why do they have to be Asians?”

You go girl. Confront your phobia.

Know thyself. Be thyself.

27 Replies

It is 2:03 am. I am all of a sudden wide awake.

Note to self: Listening to PRI Selected Shorts podcasts while cleaning the house is a sure way that your mind will become overactive and that you will have trouble falling asleep.

I will pay for this indulgence: lying down on my Therapy Couch and talking to you all, my imaginary friends, (I am going to start calling you Soren Lorensen I think…) soon since I have a 6:30 am flight to catch and I have not packed yet. Coming here has clearly become a serious addiction. I carry this urge at my throat to write something down all day long. I am afraid to open my mouth lest a scream may come out.

I often panic when I am made aware of this since it feels so similar to Narcissism…

Someone very wise, probably wiser than Confucius since she is female (and Confucius was obviously not) and women rock because of our uterus, that I have had the privilege of meeting through this little patch of heaven I call my Therapy Couch (or hell on some bad days I won’t lie to you) told me that she could tell that “blogging is both a creative outlet and just outlet” for me.

She was right. When I first started doing this, I really did not expect anybody to come by and get into a conversation with me. I saw this as a different medium of talking to myself since I have been doing that inside my head for a long time. Why not? I simply jotted down whatever came to my mind. No self-censorship. And no editing either, to be very honest with you.

It felt like liberation from Facebook. From the potential for censure by family, friends, colleagues. It felt like liberation from Twitter. From the bondage of 140 characters. And it felt like the earth after rain. It felt good.

When I began to have supportive friends who stop by on a regular basis, to check me out and make sure that I am still operating in a socially acceptable manner, I was flattered yet incredulous. “Surely they have mistaken me for someone else, or something else.” With that self-congratulatory realization of “OMG I have fans” came the burden to please. Or at least, since I have no mental filter once my mouth starts running, the fear for offense. The desire to please everybody, nay, the compulsive need to please everybody is one of those soul-killers that I am trying to escape. I am afraid I may have lost my way.

At the risk of sounding like I am trying to recast myself as the cliche in I’ve Never Been to Me… I am getting back on my journey to understand myself better. The peeling of the onion. What is more important though, is that once I find myself, I really need to just be myself. Perhaps the being and the finding happen at the same time.

So…

Dear Soren Lorensen,

I hope you will stay. But if you outgrow me or the other way around, I wish you the very best.

As always, a pretentious rambling such as this will not be complete without a quotation from a famous, yet just a tad out there, writer. Preferably by e. e. cummings. Here it is.

To be yourself

“We have nothing to fear from love and commitment”

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The State of New York voted down the gay marriage bill yesterday. By a vote of 38 to 24. There are 32 Democrats. Somehow I am not too surprised. Not because I am familiar with the NY political scene, but lately people have been letting me down. I am losing faith. (Don’t worry. This is supposed to be an inspiring post!)

Tea Parties.

Townhall crazies.

Birthers.

People who don’t know that you CANNOT be a Nazi AND a Communist at the same time.

Sarah Palin’s book, on the New York Times Bestseller list.

The fact that now I can remember Rush Limbaugh with fondness. Ah, the good old days before I was made aware of the existence of one Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck.

I found the panacea for my doom and gloom as far as humanity is concerned today: Senator Diane Savino, a Democrat from Staten Island. Or rather, since we all should be wary of blind hero worship: we learned of her strong position on one issue today, and I plan to reserve my full-throttle love affair with her until I have a chance to know more about her other political beliefs and standings. But I will say this:

I am absolutely in love with her speech at the New York Senate floor yesterday defending the rights of gay people to be legally married.

The video of her speech is turning into the latest, hottest Internet Meme as I write. At least in the parts of the cyber world that I wander. People were elated to witness an impassioned speech explaining why voting YES to gay marriage is the right thing to do, that is at the same time rational, humorous, engaging, and moving. Perhaps the defeat in the State of New York is not for naught. Here is the silver lining: a plainspoken, easy to understand, relatable argument, from a Roman Catholic nonetheless.

* Like a dork, I sat down, listened to her while frantically trying to type down her words. So I can read them again. So I can read them out loud to anybody who would listen. Like a great Jon Stewart episode that speaks volumes of truth amidst the laughter. The transcripts for the highlights of her 7-minute speech is after the jump. IF you don’t feel like watching the video, or perhaps you disagree (and if so, I appreciate your staying around), please do read the highlights. I typed them out for you, my imaginary friends!

On the fundamental of the gay marriage bill:

“This vote is not about politics. It is not about democratic politics, or republican politics…

This vote is not about an issue of politics. This vote is about an issue of fairness and equality, not political. It is the fairness of two people, who are of the right age, of sound mind, who choose to live together, share everything together, and want to have the same protection that the government granted those of us who have the privilege of marriage and treated it so cavalierly in our society.”

On how she helped someone else see her point:

At 3:09, Senator Savino tells the story about her encounter with a stranger who stuck his head inside her car and asked her whether she was going to vote YES, and why. She reminding him that they could, as a matter of fact, go and get married at the city hall the next day, and nobody would question the quality of their relationship. Their commitment to the marriage.

“Do you think we are ready for that kind of commitment?”

The man saw her point.

On the role of the government as far as marriage is concerned:

“We in the government do not determine the quality or the validity of people’s relationships. If we did, we would not issue three quarters of the marriage license we do.”

On “what we are really protecting”

“Let me ask you something ladies and gentlemen, what are we really protecting?”

“Turn on the television. We have a wedding channel on cable TV devoted to the behavior of people on their way to the altar. They spend billions of dollars, behave in the most appalling way, all in an effort to be princess for a day. You don’t have cable television? Put on network TV. We’re giving away husbands on a game show. You can watch The Bachelor, where thirty desperate women will compete to marry a 40-year-old man who has never been able to maintain a decent relationship in his life. We have The Bachelorette in reverse… That’s what we’ve done to marriage in America, where young women are socialized from the time they’re five years old to think of being nothing but a bride. They plan every day what they’ll wear, how they’ll look, the invitations, the whole bit, they don’t spend five minutes thinking about what it means to be a wife. People stand up there before god and man even in Senator Diaz’s church, they swear to love, honor and obey, they don’t mean a word of it. And so if there’s anything wrong, or any threat to the sanctity of marriage in America, it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right, and we have abused it for decades.”

The powerful conclusion that should be the rallying cry for the march:

“We have nothing to fear. We have nothing to fear from people who are committed to each other. who want to share their lives, and protect one another, in the event of sickness, illness or death.

We have nothing to fear from love and commitment.”

Update: Andrew Sullivan over at The Atlantic explained what I called the “silver lining” a lot more eloquently, with more punch (which is expected since I am not a writer but a stream-of-consciousness-typer-aka-excuse-for-illogical/bad-writing). And I am loving it too. There is hope, peeps. There is hope.

“[E]very time this question is thoroughly debated, and each time we put ourselves, our dignity and our families on the line, we win even if we lose… Civil rights movements always move forward by occasionally moving backward. And at each moment in the struggle, those unpersuaded watch us, how we respond, who we are. Anger and sadness are more than legitimate responses. But so are calm and confidence.” Andrew Sullivan

Update: I found a blog whose host took the time out to transcribe the entire speech. Amazing!

Hello, December!

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"Ma! There is nothing inside!"

"Ma! There is nothing inside!"



If not for the end of NaBloPoMo, I would not have been so eager to see December, in all honesty.

Who's your daddy?!

Who's your daddy?!



Sorry, December. It’s not you. On second thought, actually, it is you.

I am just remembering the things I need to accomplish before we get on the plane to DC for Christmas on December 20. I am too scared to start making the list. Christmas shopping is the least of my worry right now. (Hello! Walgreens and CVS!) Real Fear #1 is that I may need to send out a Christmas card, NOT with the adorable picture of my kids smiling after I yell “DAMN IT! SMILE NOW OR I WILL DO IT FOR YOU!” which sadly is an annual occurrence, BUT of a picture of James Garfield since it is extremely tempting AND it just seems so much easier than trying to capture the smiles of my kids in the midst of whining, grabassing and soon sobbing.

(Do we have an English teacher in the house? I am sure the above sentence is a prime example for teaching your students how to fix grammatic errors. You can use it for free. You are welcome).

Real Fear #2, or perhaps it is simply Annoyance #1: Advent Calendar. HOW TO FILL THAT SUCKER EVERY SINGLE DAY MORNING? Oh, and REMEMBER TO FILL IT EVERY MORNING. That would help.

I forget, the way I forget that “tooth fairy brings a coin the night you lost your tooth”, saved only by crawling under the bed and yelling, “Oh, honey, look! It is here all along. It just fell!”

An advice to you out there without an Advent Calendar but are considering it: Do NOT do it. But if you must, make sure you get the Advent Calendar with BIG spaces for the stuff. Ours has itzy bitzy spaces that are meant for the Lilliputians. I kid you not. It is a great source of stress for me every year, trying to figure out WHAT in the hell I can shove into that tiny hole, for TWO kids.

I decided on Quarters last year. I was so proud of myself: Who does not like cash?

Well, my kids don’t.

You think I can get pieces of coals that can fit in that box?

I comment therefore I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing…

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November 30. Yeah baby!

I am finishing this NaBloMoFo with a special edition of “I Comment Therefore I Am”…

Unknown Mami

… because it is Monday. And Monday, especially Monday after the long Thanksgiving weekend, absolutely sucks ass, especially if you work in an office…

In this edition, I will share with you how I abuse my privilege as a reader and commenter of blogs…

Eat me

Eat me



The Sky is Falling asked her readers this question:

So, if you were making a list of “Dat’s Some Funny Shit,Yo,” what movies/TV/books/blogs/etc. would you include? What has informed (or malformed) your particular brand of humor? What falls in the category of Sorry, I Just Don’t Get It? Any deal-breakers (for example, “If I found out you loved/hated __________, you would be dead to me.”)?

She had no idea what she had done: it’s like dangling fat dripping meat to a hungry cougar. I totally took the bait. So I commented at 8:14 PM:

Hey, the jokes made me cry and smile at the same time. {{{hugs}}} if hugs from strangers over the internet are not too creepy for ya. We are a family of cracking “inappropriate” jokes at “inappropriate” moments also. I eagerly clicked on all 4 YouTube links and realized: I need to spend some time watching them so I can test my love for you! So, I will be back. Also you left us a homework at the end. Maybe we (your loyal readers) need to write posts in response to this question. 🙂 Promise: I will be back.

p.s. You are making it very difficult for me to tend to my motherly duty. Your posts all make me think too much and I am now constantly distracted! LOL

An hour later… I wrote some more:

I’m back! Sorry it took so long since I have StumbledUpon almost all of them, and tweeted 2 of them! LOVE Eddie Izzard. (Confession: I only watched him on YouTube. We have no cable. And we don’t watch that much TV not because we are snobbish but because we have no time) I was also distracted because I found him pretty… That clip is funny as hell. “We stole countries with the cunning use of flags.” Bloody BRILLIANT! I want to go around and say “No flag. No country” now. I love the Strong Bad one too. (Confession: have never really watched the Homestar Runner show EXCEPT the Strong Bad email sections) I actually saw Louis CK when he was on Conan O’Brien. LOVED IT and then told everybody I know that travels frequently. Yes, we bitch about air travel all the time. I did curtail my bitching afterwards. Now I say to myself whenever my flight is delayed: “At least I am not travelling with my kids.” Being a parent does give you life-changing perspectives. LOL. I have to confess: I was not laughing at the Muppet Danny Boy clip. Sorry! BTW, I checked my StumbledUpon and saw that I had “favored” a Jackass clip. OH NO! But it’s the one where they dressed up as pandas and ran around in Tokyo. I liked it because they were clearly idiots, and the clip shows, at least the way I interpret it, that the Japanese have a great sense of humor and a great deal of tolerance for stupidity as exhibited by foreigners, i.e. they are our guests. We shall not laugh at them, but rather, laugh with them. I told you: I need to write an entire complete post to answer your question. Good one though!

In her other post, “If You Drink At Every Parenthetical in this Post, You Probably Should Not Drive” (by the way, isn’t this an awesome title? And of course I commented on it…), she asked her readers yet more questions. I think she has a death wish by Comment Hogs or something.

I haven’t told my sister about this blog. What do y’all do about the whole anonymity issue? Do you have a chosen circle? Are you totally incognito? Reasons for/against?

I absolutely rose to the occasion and commented THREE times.

NOVEMBER 25, 2009 5:21 PM

I love the title of this post. I need to stop by to say hi, but I need to go focus on Mr. Monk since it’s his birthday. BUT I will be back ’cause THIS topic hits right at home. From your loyal reader aka NOT Love Greg*

NOVEMBER 25, 2009 8:07 PM

Short answer for now because I need to clean up the house and put together a grocery list for Thanksgiving… Parents-in-law flight arrives tomorrow at 9 am! I am anonymous not because I am afraid of stalkers (Not that famous yet so no need. LOL) but because I am worried that someone from work may chance upon my blog and then the whole company would know. I don’t talk about work still since I am paranoid. I really want to complain about being the only woman in my office sometimes but I refrain from doing that now since well, just in case. A few of my very close friends who I can trust know about my blog. My husband knows but does not read it often. Sometimes I wish he didn’t since I wanted to complain about him really bad often… None of my family knows. Well, my side does not read English. My husband’s side… Well, let’s just say my MIL is a devout Catholic and my FIL thinks Fox News is the greatest (for which we have made fun of him and he’s ok with it…) They are really very nice and very kind and they treat me like their own daughter. We get along fine since we do NOT talk about politics or religions. Again though, I don’t complain about people in my life really JUST IN CASE. Any passing complaints directed towards people that you do care are best left unwritten. That’s my take. Because you never know when the written thing is going to come back and bite you…

If you do tell your sister about this blog, and if she does want to start her own blog, you two should think about hosting a blog together. This way it will definitely ease the burden of having to write a post every day (or even every other day). That being said: I don’t know how you would deal with “popularity contest”, “competition”, and “jealousy”. I am human, and I am bound to feel jealous if my sister’s posts are more popular than mine on the same blog… Think about WHAM! as an example… 😉

(Sorry for bad grammar and yet another long comment!)

p.s. Totally dig stream of consciousness writing.

NOVEMBER 25, 2009 9:55 PM

OK. What kind of SHORT answer was THAT?!

There you have it. Oink. Oink.

* The “Love Greg” joke requires the reading of this post Creepoid vs. Bitch for which I also left a long comment. Totally worth it, my imaginary friends.

The Internet has changed forever what we take pictures of…

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… even more so now that Smart Phones are becoming ubiquitous. For the better… or for the worst?

To a certain extent it has changed WHEN and WHERE we take pictures. The way we interpret the world. The way we caption the things we see. Now every snap shot that comes through my daily life deserves demands a caption of its own. A running commentary, subtitle of some sort.

Got to go?

Got to go?



Need a job?

Need a job?



Bookstores are fun!

Bookstores are fun!



"Mom, that's you!" "Awww. You guys..."

"Mom, that's you!" "Awww. You guys..."



Sarah Palin's new movie?

Sarah Palin's new movie?

When in doubt, complain about your spouse…

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I have nothing.

Tis 3 am 4 am on Sunday morning, I am supposed to have published a post on Saturday to meet the NaBloMoFo objective: Guess. One post every day. I have only three more posts to go. For someone who has not filled out a journal past page 10 since, eh, ever, I am actually quite proud of myself for having come this far. Yet, I have nothing. Is it possible to have Writer’s Block when you are technically not a writer? How bad you ask? So bad that I am humming this in my head …

Now THAT is bad, huh. You believe me now?

This brings me to present you with yet another filler post called…

Things My Husband Said that But for the Mercy of god My Children Didn’t Become Orphans with One Parent in Jail…

Scene 1

I suffer from severe morning [sic] sickness. So severe that as soon as I started heaving, I knew I was pregnant with Mr. Monk even before I peed on a stick, that I lost 10 lbs. in the first two weeks in my first pregnancy and almost 20 lbs., in my second pregnancy, that I practically lived by the toilet throughout the entire pregnancy, that I did not stop involuntary vomiting till Mr. Monk was born, that I felt I was starved for nine months and made the mistake of making it up by gaining weight after the pregnancy when clearly I should have done it the other way around…

This is not about how my husband took it upon himself to name the toilet The Porcelain Throne, as in “She is worshiping the Porcelain Throne again.”

On our way back from a routine checkup, after the doctor reassured me that my rapid weight loss during the first trimester was not endangering the baby especially since it happened the exact same way with my first born, my husband claimed that he had a theory about WHY I AM PUKING MY GUTS OUT, and also about WHY I AM HAVING IT TOUGHER THE SECOND TIME AROUND.

“Oh, really?” I was curious. With sincerity.

“How much did you weigh when we first met?”

“Hmm. 155 lbs. I think.”

“So when you were pregnant with [the oldest], you were like what? 165 maybe?”

“Yes…” I don’t care who you are or what kind of solid-fortress relationship you have got going there. Nothing good is going to come out of a pontification on a woman’s weight by her husband. Nothing.

He got really excited now. “You see. You lost about 10 lbs. in two weeks right? So you quickly got down to your ideal weight.”

“Ok…” Again. Nothing good is going to come out of the said husband mentioning the word ideal weight. Nothing.

“You were a lot heavier before you were pregnant this time, right?… [Mulling it over] You were like 180 lbs. no?”

Oh. For the love of god. Please see my comment above.

Taking a deep breath, I corrected him, “No. I was like 172. TOP!”

“Well, but you WERE heavier.” He got more excited because he could see his theory was going to be proven. Soon.

“Fine.” Heh heh. We all know what THAT means.

“So you see, this is the NATURE’s way to get you down to your ideal weight as soon as possible, again.”

He didn’t say it, but I could hear the “Ta da!” in his voice. Unfortunately, he was NOT joking. This was for him a scientific theory. Or, at least, A theory. I could SEE the words forming in 3-D gigantic block letters. With Jazz hands.

TA-DA!

 

“So… are you saying that I am throwing up because I am FAT? I am FATTER so I throw up MORE?”

…

 

In case you are wondering, NO, I did not murder him right then and there. No, I did not divorce him either.

My apology to all the foremothers before me that have fought for our liberation. My apology also for the fact that there is not going to be a SCENE 2. I thought there was going to be but I ran out of steam. I am now all indignant all over again. And as you know, indignation drains your energy faster than an amorous vampire bite.

As a consolation prize, here is a short vignette of Things My Husband Said… in case you haven’t got enough of this Tomfoolery Jackassery:

 

“What does NaBloPoMo mean?”

“It means National Blog Posting Month.”

“Huh?”

“*sigh* It means I have to write a post on my blog every single day for the month of November.”

…

…

“Do you know, *cough*, that December is NaBloJoMo?”

Nice try.

No dice.

Left-Handed

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I have been thinking about my parents a lot lately, especially yesterday. Thanksgiving does that to you, I guess.

In all honesty, I try not to think about them because when I do, the sense of guilt soon becomes too overwhelming: I have been lost to them since 1993 when I came to the U.S. for graduate school. The originally temporary stint abroad that was supposed to last only two years became the reality of me and them separated by the Pacific Ocean. And, oh, yeah, the land mass from here to the West Coast. Tenuously connected through phone calls, calculated according to a 14-hour time zone difference.

I sometimes wonder whether my father had regretted telling me, “Don’t come home for the summer. Travel around the U.S. You will be home less than a year anyway.” THAT was the summer I met my husband…

Sometimes I get upset at myself on behalf of my parents. Then I turn towards my own children and warn them, abruptly,

“When you grow up, if you move to a different continent, I am going to be really, really, really mad at you!” My teeth gnashing.

I’d walk away and hide myself in the bathroom, work myself into tears, remember this is probably how my parents feel, then become even more upset and turn into a hysterical mess.

Oy.

I did not realize my father is left-handed until this March when we visited my parents. They noticed that Mr. Monk was writing with his left hand.

“He’s left-handed? I guess it is ok nowadays to write with your left hand. Your father is left-handed too.” My mother said over the phone when I was back in the U.S.

“No. He is NOT!” I defended myself, against an accusation of inattentiveness that was not there.

“Oh yes he is. He is supposed to be left-handed. He writes with his right hand, indeed. But, you have never noticed? he uses scissors and knives with his left hand.”

Of course I have never noticed it. I left home when I was twenty-four. I was too young, too educated, too busy to live my life to notice my parents. As I get older and know better, however, I am not there to catch up.

Ever since that exchange, I often try to remember my father opening a letter with a pair of scissors (He does not believe in letter openers) or dissecting a pork shoulder roast (his favorite) with a cleaver. I imagine him using his left hand.

I don’t know how to explain to my husband or my boss that I really need to fly home because I need to see my father use his left hand…

How pumpkin pies are made…

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Happy Thanksgiving!



Thanksgiving has not been forgotten. Well, sort of...

Thanksgiving has not been forgotten. Well, sort of...



Well, yeah, you have to click on this thing below that says “click to continue…” to find out how pumpkin pies are made…

Ready?

Ok.

Are you sure you want to know?

Ok. Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

"How pumpkin pies are made" What do you expect?

"How pumpkin pies are made"* What do you expect?



You are welcome.

* This is one of those “Internet Memes” that have been emailed around. I do not claim any credit for the wit and skills involved in answering this specific mystery (Mystery #2854) in life.

Happy Birthday, G.K.!

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Every Thanksgiving since 2002, I know what to be thankful for…

I had deep vein thrombosis when I was five months pregnant with my youngest. I limped for two weeks without realizing that, Hey, it is more than a muscle strain since it is not getting any better after so many days. Oh, and look! Your left leg is swollen and purple and you cry when you move. Is that normal? Oh, by the way, you are pregnant. Perhaps you should go have a doctor check it out just in case? You dumbass!?!

…

When I did see my Obgyn for my regular monthly check-up, one look, and she sent me to the emergency room. When there, I was whisked away to the ICU and promptly had an umbrella filter inserted to prevent any clog from going into my lungs. X-ray was involved. Blood thinner medications. Lovenox shots. I cried every day.

“What an idiot?! Now I am endangering my baby by being such an idiot!” I could not have been more upset at myself.

We were so relieved and grateful when he was born. Perfectly healthy. A beautiful baby boy.

My Thanksgiving Baby

He is the child that keeps me on my toes.

He is the child that asked me, “Is it hard to take care of us?”

He is the child that sidled up to me while I was doing the dishes, patted my hand, and asked, “Did YOU yourself have any dinner yet?” while his father and older brother were wrestling on the floor.

He is the child that is sensitive enough to suggest, “Don’t call me Mr. Monk!”

He is the child that dances the interpretive dance while the Casio plays Canon in D.

He is the child that speaks with a British accent after watching too many episodes of Charlie and Lola and Kipper.

He is the child that wears a fedora and tips his head at the ladies.

He is the child that is already really worried about what he is going to be when he grows up.

He is the child with an old, old soul.

He is the child that says, “I am different. Deal with it!”

He is the child that makes me question myself all the time whether I am good enough as a person.

He is the child that makes me wonder whether all the love you could give is still not enough to love your children with.

4th birthday

He turned 7 today.

Happy Birthday, G.K.!