Munch

Moments after this picture was taken, I ate the baby. Can you blame me?

It only took the husband fifteen minutes to eat his share of the birthday cake. Admittedly, it was not a big share, seeing as the girl has a thing for icing and I have a thing for cake, and both she and I can be pretty aggressive when it comes to things like icing and cake. Still. He got some.

So, yeah, fifteen minutes, give or take, to make his way through his share of the cake. It's taking him considerably longer to make his way through the mounds of virtual birthday love left to him by all of you. Rest assured that he is finding it all very satisfying. He may have to have a cigarette afterwards. Which, fine.

Means that he'll stay away from the rest of that cake.

He Says It's His Birthday

This man? I love this man. He's a big ol' doofus, and sometimes a bit of an ass, but he's my hero, my heart, the love of my life. And it's his birthday.

And seeing as he's always asking me why he doesn't get more love on this here blog ("Why don't you write about me more?" I didn't think you'd want me to. "I wouldn't mind." Okay. ---silence--- "Are you going to?" Maybe. ---silence--- "You could explain to everyone that I'm really an ass." DONE.) I thought, why not make this all about him? Which is to say, why not ask you to make this all about him. I'm tired today, and besides, I need to go out and get him cake. You all should do the work. Leave him some love in the comments, and then I'll take all the credit. (See, honey? I got the intarwebs to make love to you on my blog! Happy now?)

He likes puns, dirty jokes, music and links to stupid things on the Internet. He's been known to laugh at pictures of meerkats. If you have any tips for making the perfect espresso, catching fish, or dealing with moody wives, then I'm sure he'd like to hear about that, too.

Dispense your gifts in the comments. I'll get the cake.

Mary Shelley Had NO IDEA

I really, really wish that yesterday could have been one of those days that I posted something profound and/or heartfelt and/or intellectually stimulating. Because, god knows, I don't want to come off as just another stupid, narcissistic mommyblogger who suffers from some terrible delusion that people want to read about what she thinks or - gods forbid - about her children or her depression or whatever trials and tribulations related to motherhood that she thinks - wrongly - might interest anyone other than herself and possibly maybe four or five other similarly deluded women who've gone off their meds. But, dammit, I went and blew the wad on thoughtfulness last week, and then went and spent my remaining brain cells railing against misogyny yesterday, so whaddya know? You're just going to have make do with my vagina.

Nope. Not a bunny, not a reindeer, not Glory Hole with Chewing Gum (Triple J Truck Stop- Yuma, AZ, 2003), not The Wind In My Vagina, not a minimalist profile of a very sad donkey (all actual suggestions, please to go read and pee yourself.) No: these are my hideous nethers.

That was a picture of my lady parts, artfully sketched by my doctor. Although I suppose that we might say that it was less art than it was artifact of doctorglyphics: it was an attempt by my doctor to explain to me how it was that yes, things can get worse than a fourth-degree tear sustained in an emergency delivery! That fourth-degree tear can end up with a botched repair because the surgery was performed so hastily and under such trying circumstances. Yep: botched repair. Sloppy stitchwork. Sewn up wrong. Ripped and slashed in birth and then stitched up roughly into some hideous, half-healed, scarred-up mess. Monster-nethers. Frankenvulva.

Click to enlarge, if you dare. MWAH-HA-HA-HA.

I don't know about you, but I don't recall anybody ever telling me, ever, that the vaginal delivery of a baby could result in varying degrees of genital mutilation. Which, you know, is probably not surprising, given that stories about ripped anal-sphincter muscles just wouldn't do much for the sales of those glossy pregnancy magazines. And I can't blame my mother for not telling me, nor the Canadian education system for neglecting to cover the subject of SEX ORGAN DAMAGE in middle school sex-ed. Because, yes, that would probably have scarred me for life, and my parents and my teachers and the architects of sex-education programming in the province of British Columbia knew it. So, it's no wonder, then, that I had no way of knowing that after giving birth I would, indeed, end up scarred for life.

Of course - of course - it was all worth it, the miraculous gift of my beautiful son - my beautiful progeny - being more than ample recompense for the damage sustained to my birthing parts, which did, after all, just do the job that Nature intended them to do (not, however, particularly effectively. JUST SAYIN) yadda yadda blah. But still. My joy at the gift that is my son does not in any way mitigate my frustration with ongoing nether-discomfort, my distress at the possibility that I will go through the rest of my life with a Frankenvulva and my determination to get it fixed and put the damage behind me (figuratively. The damage is, after all, literally behind me, and, also, below me. But whatever. Details, schmetails.) So. Is he going to hear about this at his wedding? HELL YES.

(Not really. Not unless I'm drunk, that is. Which is a possibility, I suppose. A good one.)

(Anyone who had any illusions about me being some kind of gentle and gracious soul is really, really disappointed right now, I guessing.)

(There's no way to close this kind of post elegantly, is there?)

(The end.)

A Picture Is Worth Years Of Therapy

I received this cunning little sketch last week, and it has been sitting on my bedside table while I decide its fate. To scrapbook, or not to scrapbook? To consign to the bottom of the dustbin, or to frame and display in the front hallway? To deconstruct as artifact of postmodern motherhood, or to roll eyes at and discard?

A fistful of Smarties to anyone who can tell me what it is, or at least make some outrageously funny suggestion so that I can appropriate the narrative of this sketch and reframe it into something that won't keep me awake at night. Which, yes, is a hint.

(It's two sketches, actually. The scribble below the fold is a separate image, scrawled with a flourish to underscore a point about the main image, above the fold.)

In Which My Son - Clenching My Heart In His Little Fist - Eclipses Me Utterly

And why not? If you were publishing a story about a certain blogging conference in the New York Times, and wanted an eye-catching photo to complement that story, the image of a heart-clenchingly adorable infant draped over his mother's back as she bogarted a microphone at one of the sessions is far more arresting than the front view of said mother bogarting said microphone, no question.*


Front page of the New York Times Style section at ten weeks of age. The heart, it bursts with pride.

*No comment - YET - on the fact that the article makes women-bloggers sound like a bunch of sappy doofuses - doofi? - in which case, arguably, pictures of said women clutching their adorable babeez just underscores the relentless media focus on estrogen and vaginas and flowers and unicorns and shit when it comes to women bloggers, instead of the fact that we're writers and tech-geeks and business-persons, but whatever. I'm still chuffed about the picture.