Mother's Day for Single Mothers

My day started with my aunt leaving me a voicemail to wish me a Happy Mother's Day, and to play me a song that reminded her of my dead mother.

I poured myself a cold bowl of cereal.

I slept about three hours last night, due to my own child waking me up frequently, for unknown reasons. She began chattering away steadily at 6:30am, and continued non-stop for the next 14 hours.

"Look what I can do!"

I contemplated the idea of an Irish coffee, as it was an acceptable morning beverage, I needed to be awake, and I also needed to be drunk.

Grandma wanted to go to a museum for her day, so we headed off to see an impressionism exhibit, which my child wanted no part of. Since Grandma planned the trip right around lunchtime, I spent two hours lugging a whining, stomping, hungry 4-year old around a museum, and left with steam coming out of my ears. Then we sat down to a nice dinner, and by "nice", I mean "terse", and "left me wondering how long I would have to uncomfortably sit with my head in the oven before the fumes finally overtook me".

I really hope I get to spend the upcoming week hearing about the brunches and jewlery and days at the spa from all my married friends. That would be awesome.

Next year for Mother's Day, I would like an infectious disease, please. Something that would have me drugged up and isolated, with nothing but a TV and a remote to keep me company.

I'm going to go sit at my kitchen counter with a bottle of tequila and sing Chavela Vargas songs until I pass out.

I Guess I Could Tweeze a Little.

I am officially on vacation. For the entire week.

Except for a small meeting today with a client, but it was in the middle of the week, so I was officially well-rested. I had time to do laundry, apply large amounts of heat and product to my hair, put on makeup BEFORE I left the house and NOT while driving, and leave the house in a relaxed and timely fashion. It was crazy!

The meeting went very well, and afterwards, I stopped off at my daughter's daycare. Apparently, during my usual routine of work, parent, insonia, nap, work, parent, insomnia, nap, my appearance falls to a low position on the ol' priority list. There seems to be quite a noticeable disparity between my regular daily shlump attire, and my infrequently professional-looking self. I work from home. I'm not a morning person. Yoga pants are a 24-hour thing. Sometimes, for 24 hours.

When I arrived at my daughter's daycare, teachers stopped and turned to smile at me. Someone held the door open. It was like the scene from Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts steps out of the elevator on the way to the opera, and she's wearing her strapless red gown, and everyone in the lobby turns to look at this stunning young woman, smiling in approval.

My god, people, it's just a little mascara.

Currently accepting Sugar Daddy applications. Thank you.

The Day I Almost Lay Down on Railroad Tracks - My Mother's New Computer

If you woke up this morning feeling great, poured yourself a cup of coffee, made it to work with relatively little hassle, and settled easily into your day with all the optimism and fresh-faced idealism of a bored, civic-minded rich kid, you're missing out on a mind-blowing experience that I feel compelled to share with you.

Go buy your mother her first computer.

Purchasing a computer for the otherwise technologically-illiterate is a surefire path to prescription medication, alchohol over-indulgence, and the eventual (but certain) completely new experience of the taste of gun metal in your mouth.

Back in the 80's, I should have seen this coming. I laughed out loud at the parents who made me come home whenever the electricity went out during a storm just to reset the blinking clock on the VCR. Oh, ho ho, so funny. And bite me in the ass it did.

I got tired of shopping for and booking all of my parents' flights on line, checking them in 24 hours before departure, and printing out their boarding passes and driving them over to their house. I got tired of them asking me about the mystery of "the email" and "the google". I thought that instead of my mother tirelessly bugging me for printouts of the 7,000 photos I take of my child in photographic hard copy format, I would purchase them a computer, thusly forcing their transition out of the Ottoman Empire and into the Space Age.

BOOM boom BOOM boom BOOM boom BOOM boom.... da.... da.... daaaaa..... DA DAAAA!

I tried to conduct our initial introductory classes in a helpful and pleasant manner, and thought they were successful. However, our following classes included such deflating questions from my parents such as "What's a mouse?" and "How do you turn this stupid thing on?". Now my mother just calls me in the middle of my workday, asks, "Are you busy?", gets a distracted "Yes", and then launches into a convoluted series of questions for the next fifteen minutes, the essence of which is "How do I print out page 2?".

Lucky for her, her future son-in-law has St. Teresa-like patience, and recently interrupted a dinner at a friend's house 6,000 miles away to log into a web-based program to access my mother's computer and help her to print out page two.

I was going to get her a GPS for her birthday.

She'll be getting a map and a magic marker.

The Man Bang. WHY, America???

I actually saw this haircut THIS WEEK. Man bangs, straight across the forehead. Of course, the guy also had a gigantic bluetooth headset wedged into his earwax and a pick up truck that read "AMERICA - speak to her in English" emblazoned across the back window, so he was bottom barrel scrapings, but he's still sharing my oxygen. And his hair offends me.

I thought this was some kind of farmer thing. Not that south Florida is some sort of metropolitan mecca of style, but jeez. I've caught both of my fiance's kids with straight bangs, and I'm not sure if it's the fiance, or the kids mother, but it will end. I will shave their little heads. Or just a straight line down the middle. Or a big circle, right on top.

America, you make me weep.

The Relaxation Kick in the Pants that I Desperately Needed

Hello friends. I'm your Vitameatavegamin girl. Are you tired, run-down, listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle.

I just spent a few days in Jamaica, and I fell asleep last night dreaming about green mountains, sandy white beaches, and turquoise water. Yeah, I work in the Caribbean... but there's just something about the Jamaican people and those crazy mountain roads that makes me want to just pack up my shit and move over there. It's not just the sunshine. I have sunshine. People are just so laid back that you're forced to relax, and I got more sleep in a few days than I have in the two weeks prior to my trip.

Patois is more than a language, it's like Jamaican flavor - it's the difference between plain chicken and jerk chicken with smashed scotch bonnet peppers. There's "yes", and then there's "ya mon". "Wa g'wan" is so much easier than a stiff "hello, how are you?".

I'm shutting down, and going to go have a Red Stripe on the balcony and listen to some music. (Maybe some Natasja Saad - a Dane who spoke crazy patois like a native, and seemed to really embrace everything Jamaican.)

Jah bless. :)

Even More Reasons Why I Should Be Living Alone on a Mountaintop

Today I was getting a pedicure, and they sat me next to two blonde mid 30-somethings with gigantic purses in yoga pants who sipped their fat free lattes and contstantly said "Yah!" to each other.

I silently cursed myself for not having my iPod with me.

"So, basically, I go to meetings ALL day. I have meetings with Marketing, and... everybody else. I'm just CONSTANTLY on the computer. He says, 'Lisa, your job is to just move the dial bit by bit', you know?"

(Wide eyed "I'm listening" sip from friend): "Yah!"

Lisa, "moving the dial bit by bit" isn't putting money in anyone's pocket. He's keeping you around because your completely round, tan, symmetrical plastic tits are nice to look at, albeit a little bit too close together in the front - remember, it's called "cleavage", as in "cleaving" or "splitting"... you know what, never mind.

When Lisa's nails were done, they moved her over to the drying table, and she turned around and kept blathering on to her friend about her big jobby job. I had a feeling you could stick her head in a fish tank and she'd keep talking until she inhaled tank gravel and died.

Then I headed over to the supermarket. Picked up my coffee, heroin, and family-size box of tampons, and got on line. The woman in front of me had a cart overflowing with crap, but put it all on the register with one hand. Slowly. As she talked on her cell phone, she carefully regarded her purchases as if each can of Spaghetti-o's were a hand-stitched Italian shoe. It took her seven full minutes. I know, because I counted to 426.

There should be horns on the fronts of shopping carts. Or sharp steel spikes.

People of the world, there are people around you. And behind you. And in listening range.

Shut up and get moving.

That is all.

Weird Things My Kid Said Today

"Tell me what crucifixion means RIGHT NOW!"

"What's a comedian?" It's someone who's job it is to tell jokes. "Knock knock." Who's there? "Comedian."

"You're the best mom in the whole world. You know how I know?" No, how? "Because I just said so. You wanna try again?"

Working from home used to seem like it would be so much fun.

My Wish for the Children of the Economic Downturn? Less Shitty Music.

Woo fuckin' hoo, the economy's in the crapper! You know what that means, don'tcha, kids?

BETTER MUSIC. And I for one, am thrilled to bits.

The blues, ska, early rap (back when it meant more than gold teef and a spot on MTV Cribs), Vietnam-era rock, punk... hard times makes for great creativity. I, for one, have had enough of Miley Cyrus and her foot-stankin' Uggs, and am ready to revel in the sounds of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

PAIN! GIMME PAIN AND SUFFERING!!!

I have no idea who the Jonas Brothers are, and I intend to keep it that way. Until, of course, the Hollywood capitalist regime is overthrown by the masses and their severed heads wind up on sharpened sticks as a warning to other talentless pretty boys with expensive haircuts and a blinding lack of life experience.

I can hear the battle drums thundering dimly in the distance, and I giggle to myself in anticipation of the bloodshed.

I can't even keep track of subversive music anymore. Hard rock is way too stylized for me these days. No one's saying that James Hetfield couldn't have used a haircut, but ever since Metallica got extreme makeovers in 1996, I've had a bad taste in my mouth. Everyone's overly marketed, instantly accessible via Twitter, and churning out mp3's based on graph trends. At least Amy Winehouse is still drunk and disorderly. She's like the mujahid of the entertainment industry, dynamite strapped to her chest and willing to fatally OD, because THAT'S A CREATIVE AND SUFFERING ARTIST, MAN.

Do teenagers with razor blades to their wrists listening to some kind of music that matters even exist anymore? I don't just mean Gothopotamus. Purple ponytails in Dayton, Ohio and a strong love of Cheetos doesn't translate into anything meaningful for me. OK, so you like eyeliner, safety pins, and the color black - you've taken something truly beautiful and turned it into the tasteless flavor now known as "Goth", displayed by cutesy Japanese teenagers who also have pink Swarovski-encrusted cell phones and throw up chirpy peace signs like Paris Hilton's still looking for a new BFF.

You should all die.

Wake me up when the revolution comes.

Old Lady has spoken.


Over and out.

We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful. Only Because We Slept Late and Are Only Just Now Unloading the Dishwasher.

It's a normal Sunday morning - I'm vacuuming, putting the laundry away, and watching some ducks float across the lake.

My friend Robert, on the other hand, is getting ready for this evening's opening of Alice Tully Hall, a 4-year architectural project that he just completed, hailed by the New York Times as "a revelation". My childhood friend Gary (who I've decided is the nicest person on earth), is up for an Academy Award tonight.

I am wiping scuff marks off the moulding in the living room and mentally tracing back the steps of my life to see where I veered away from fame and fortune, desperately trying to discover if any of my dwindling existence is salvageble. And these scuff marks won't just get cleaned on their own, I'll tell you that much.

If it weren't for the boring Facebook statuses of other people, I might actually feel sorry for myself. Alisa's trying to get organized. Allison's making something in the crock pot. Noel is hung over. (That's my girl.) David is getting a massage from his cat. (Been there). Lauri is watching her turtles while they sleep... (wow, folks, I think we've found a winner).

It's amazing how Facebook can cast such a harsh and judgemental light on my own failure, and yet, simultaneously comfort me with the sad lives of others. Point a screeching finger, give a hug. Scream, "WHY AREN'T YOU MORE LIKE YOUR SISTER?!", and then bring me a hot cup of tea and a cookie. It so parallels the relationship I have with my mother. No wonder I respond to social networking so well.

Thank you, Facebook. Thank you for breaking me so I could learn to love myself.

I just went into my downstairs bathroom with some Windex and a paper towel, and said to myself in the mirror, "Wow. I really thought you'd be taller."

@TwirpingTweetyTwodTwootie: Paper Dress, Stirrups. Yowzah.

I just signed up for Twitter. I'm not sure why - I think it was mostly because I was aware of the fact that I was avoiding it.

Twitter's pitch is "Real life happens between blog posts and emails."

Thank you for reminding me. I wasn't sure what all that superfluous stuff was, without anyone there to instantly validate me. Real life. Gotcha.

Little does Twitter know that between blog posts and emails, I pretty much just drink myself into a stupor. Not a lot of Twitter fodder there. Or "Twodder", if you will. My alcohol-induced comas are not Twittertastic.

I was able to check my Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts and see which of my friends were already Twittering. Out of my hundreds of contacts, six of them twittered. Or send "tweets", as the kids are saying. My peeps and their tweets. This is sounding a little too Easter eggy for me. And the fact that I'll be 40 in a few short years, and am blogging about my tweeting peeps, is unnerving. At least I'm not still saying "posse".

Fo' shizzle.

So next week, when I have an appointment with the gynie, if I tweet about it via a text message, does that become "twattering"?

I'm just sayin'.

TGIT.

Sir, I asked you not to play the song again, didn't I.

OPA!

It was Greek week for me this week - we went to a fantastic Greek festival with some friends, and the same friend took me to see Mamma Mia when she scored some unused season tickets from an uncle.

Mamma Mia was fantastic. I should really brush my hair and go out on a Saturday night more often! We had orchestra seats, and sat behind two women in their late 50's who were dripping in diamonds. Neither of them could stop dancing in their seats when the ABBA music started to play, and they were absolutely adorable.

The festival was also amazing. We went in the afternoon, and the kids hit the rides, and we all sat down to dolmades, and saganaki, and pastichio... and there was a baklava sundae (crumbled baklava on top of ice cream) that I refused to taste because I was certain it would spoil me for all other desserts for the rest of my life. Seriously.

Around dusk, we hit the ferris wheel. Smartly, someone had placed a snowcone machine next to the long ferris wheel line. Malena got a red one, and I got a blue one. We teetered precariously in a rickety ferris wheel seat, our lives dependant on someone's ability to use a wrench. From the top of the wheel, we looked over the treetops as the sun went down and the sky turned pink, and our paper cones began to collapse and drip ice water on our hands.

"Fuck it", I thought, and swung my legs back and forth as Malena and I screamed and giggled and my panicked friend Jeannine tried not to turn her head over her shoulder to watch us in horror, lest she allow her seat to gain any momentum.

Since Jeannine's husband drove, I got to sit in the back of their minivan with the rest of the kids, and watch Ratatouille on the sleepy ride home. It had been a perfect day, I had a snowcone, there wasn't a single complaint about any of the food, we swung like monkeys on the top of the world, and now, someone else was behind the wheel. It made me fully appreciate how wonderful a kid's life can be when you fill it with new sights and sounds and shit that's just fun.

Oh, to be four.

I hope you're having fun, baby. :)

No Longer Just a Month in Mommy's Calendar

This week, at my kid's school, a few of the parents have been in to talk about their jobs to the kids.

No one invited me. Apparently, "sits around in pajamas and watches YouTube" isn't a viable profession. Talk to the hand, sir, the paycheck speaks for itself.

But I digress.

The kids were visited by a dental hygienist, and a policeman, and when I dropped my daughter off today, there was a fireman sitting on the floor with 50 tiny people staring at him.

I stood next to one of the other moms, who explained that the fireman was "Uncle Tim", and that the police officer earlier in the week was her husband. (Talk about public safety at holiday get-togethers!) She mentioned something that was so interesting - which I had never thought about before, but that I thought was so valuable.

The reason Uncle Tim wanted to talk to the kids, she explained, was because he wanted them to see what he looked like under his uniform.

"Don't we all," I thought to myself, but quickly steered myself back to the conversation at hand.

As we spoke, Uncle Tim, who had started out in a teeshirt and pants, pulled on his jacket, and showed the kids how it protected him from fire, and then his hood. His hood covered his head and neck with a small opening for his face, and the kids laughed as he pulled it on. To encourage the idea that he looked silly, Uncle Tim stuck out his arms and waggled his fingers as the kids watched intently and giggled. He pulled on his helmet, and still smiling, pulled down the face mask and quickly pulled it up again. He waved at the kids with both hands, and they clapped and laughed.

The other mom explained that Tim tried reaching out to school groups because the one time children might see a firefighter up close is in the middle of a fire. In full panic, kids come face to face with giant creatures in heavy, large outfits with reflective tape, breathing like Darth Vader with helmets that cover their faces and their arms outstretched, and the children run in the other direction. A firefighter in person is much larger and more frightening than a small, happy cartoon. That realization absolutely took my breath away.

Talk to your kids' school or local fire department and see if you can arrange a similar visit - it could make all the difference.

Thanks, Uncle Tim!

Top 10 Reasons Why Today was the Most Amazing Day, Ever:

10. I wasn’t freezing my ass off in DC today

9. George and Laura got into a helicopter and went to go live in a FEMA trailer for a year, even if only in my mind.




8. Charlie Brotman almost started off the inaugural introductions with “LAADIES AND GENTLEMEN… CHILDREN OF AAALL AGES…” was it just me, or did you feel like you were at a tractor pull for a minute, there?

7. Aretha’s hat. You work it, Miss Franklin.

6. “…we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right”

Amen.


5. Maila Obama brought a camera and was taking photos. I LOVE that!


4. The large amount of shoes that were taken off feet today and shaken at news cameras.

Suck it, George.









3. Bill Clinton, looking delicious as ever. I LOVE YOU, BILL!!








2. Lest I forget, we have a black president.



And my number one reason why today was the best day, ever, is:


1. Dick on wheels.

I was perched three inches from my TV screen, screaming, “PUSH IT DOWN THE STAIRS! JUST PUSH THAT WHEELCHAIR DOWN THE STAIRS!!!!”




I really need to change the ringer on my phone to better reflect my celebratory mood.

But it's medicinal!

A container of Fleur de Sel caramel ice cream in your shopping cart at the check out line is as subtle as a box of tampons, or a tee shirt with "I HAVE PMS" in blinking LED lights emblazoned across the front.

It's chocolate and sugar covered in salt, and folded into ice cream.

Don't even try and tell me a woman didn't invent that.

DON'T EVEN TRY! I'LL SMASH YOUR SKULL!

(bursts into tears).

Sorry. I'm a little moody.

:)

Hey, neighbor!

Every once in a while, a noise emanates from my neighbor's apartment that I, through my finely-tuned detective skills, have identified as an Australian aboriginal bullroarer. See video below. It's like that, but about 20 times louder.

Either that, or they're trying to start a propeller plane in their living room.

I wish I had a digeridoo. We could jam.

Now I just feel compelled to find some weird noise so I could compete with them.

LAND!

Today, after three weeks of my child being home with me due to travel and the holidays, I dropped the kid off at daycare.

I hugged her teacher like she was land after 90 days at sea, and ran out of the building screaming.

I am so not made for this stay-at-home-mom shit.

Menudo, la boda & from here to there.

When we’re placed on this earth, we can stay where we are and lead a life that fits into the natural landscape, or we can push ourselves away from our landing point and turn ourselves into a completely different animal. If we wind up far enough away from where we started, we can always look back over our shoulder and see the winding path we took to get to where we are.

If you’re adopted, though, the path between where you started and where you ended is as credible as the trail you traverse when you pedal like crazy on a stationary bike. You never really went anywhere, and yet, here you are. Sometimes, you can see Point A and Point B, but they never quite seem to come together.

It’s especially hard to bring these two points together when there are no set rules for re-establishing the relationship with a biological family. I’ve been in contact with my biological family for about ten years now, and the dynamic and the strength of our connection is constantly shifting. This month, I brought my fiancé and my daughter to El Paso for my cousin’s wedding, and it was the first time I had anyone with me other than Malena. Thomas became sort of a grounding rod back to myself as I stepped into the dimension of the “other me”. The “other me” is where my name is Mari, and not Mary. I’m Mexican, but I’m not. It's "home", but it really isn’t. This is my “family”, and yet the connection between us is often as tenuous as a spider’s thread.

We flew to Dallas, and then drove 9 hours to El Paso, since gas is currently cheaper than airfare. We got off the plane and into a car, and there was nothing around us but scrub brush, trucks and oil fields. Right outside of Stink Creek Road, just west of Sweetwater, the GPS read that we should continue east and make our next turn in 421 miles. It was boring in the sense of "I wish there was something to look at", but not as bad as sitting in the lotus position for nine hours trying to quiet your mind-boring.

In El Paso, the wedding seemed more American than Mexican, but the food inbetween was exactly what it was supposed to be. Thomas had his first experience sitting at a table with a dishtowel covering the hot tortillas. He tried his first margarita (didn’t like it), and ate menudo (chiles, hominy, and tripe), (definitely didn’t like it).

Malena was a flower girl. She looked beautiful and behaved badly. She also felt a little ostracized from the other little girls, since she was the only one who didn’t speak Spanish. I felt her frustration. I watched her, wanting to jump in and run across the dance floor and chase the other girls around, but they left her in the dust and wouldn’t let her in. There’s just no explaining to a 4 year old when these things happen. She was bored, and I felt bad for her.

The bride and groom were beautiful.

I took my grandmother for her first manicure. She told me she liked Thomas because he didn’t look down on them for being poor. I don’t think Thomas truly grasped the life my grandmother’s led, crossing the river every day when my mother was young to clean houses in Texas illegally, or how they used to live in one room without a real roof, or my grandmother losing her first child to malnutrition because there just wasn’t enough to eat. And another to illness. And my mother to a gun.

I’m never really sure what they think of me or how they see my life. I’m not sure how easily Point A and Point B fit together, but I’m glad we went. And I’d give anything for a big bowl of menudo and a dishtowel full of hot flour tortillas right about now.

Space - My Final Frontier

The boyfriend flew in 10 days before Christmas so we could attend my cousin's wedding in El Paso, Texas.

For his Christmas gift, I made a small booklet tied with a red ribbon, detailling a trip I had arranged for the two of us. I rented a convertible so that we could drive up to Cape Canaveral and visit the Kennedy Space Center, which he's wanted to do since he was 10 years old. He had even managed to talk his teacher into letting the class out early that year so that he could go home and watch the shuttle launch.

Can you say "nerdy"? I think you can.

The car was fantastic. It was a 2009 model, and it was a little windy at 6am when we took off, so we bundled up and put the heat on so my toes would be warm. It was the first day I had been feeling better after a week and a half with some terrible daycare flu, so I was happy just to be upright and outdoors.

I had booked us on the NASA Up Close tour, which drove us all around the space center and near the launch pad. He was pressed up against the tour bus windows - I snuggled up and took a little nap. Space, schmace, I was tired.

We broke for lunch and I laughed for a good half hour at his misinterpretation of "Automatic Door". I walked out just before Thomas, carrying my food on a tray, and hit the handicap button with my elbow to open the doors. Thomas saw the words "Automatic Door" and the open door and sauntered out after me... not realizing that he should have pushed the button, the door closed around his wrists. He couldn't pull his hand back, because both hands were holding up a tray, and I couldn't get up to help him because I was laughing too hard. So for a good minute, all I could see was a tray jutting out of a door, and both of his hands clenched around the sides, and the door stuck around him while I tried really hard to stop laughing.

After lunch, we moved over to the viewing bleachers. It was a beautiful day - in the upper 70's, and sunny, with a really nice breeze. We were laughing and joking around, when I suddenly heard the clunk of his knee on the metal bleachers and realized he was proposing. We had talked about this for a while, and the ring was a ruby and diamond ring I had picked out, but it was incredibly sweet nonetheless. He's wonderful. And he got to get engaged on a NASA property, and is now King of The Geeks, as far as I'm concerned.

So I'm gittin' married. :)