In which I reminisce about being a racist stalker

June and I hung out all day in the loft yesterday because my husband works and I don't have a car. I guess I could go outside with her stroller but it's in the trunk of our car and also it's cold outside. So we stayed in the loft and played with her light-up snail that's annoying as shit.

This bastard.

I confess that I have the TV on sometimes when the baby and I are in the loft. No, she doesn't watch it. She's not allowed to look at the screen either because I'm like High Expectations Asian Father in that I don't want it rotting her brain and giving her ADHD. I, on the other hand, already have ADHD, so when she's nursing or otherwise completely occupied, I flip channels for something to watch.

We actually came across an old 90's movie today called Opportunity Knocks. I hardly remember the movie now, but I used to watch it all the time back when Blockbuster was still a thing and my dad took my brothers and I out to rent movies every Friday night. I should have just bought it. I don't know why I didn't.

Anyway, this movie sucks and makes no sense. It's basically just an excuse for Dana Carvey to do a bunch of racist impressions (that I'm sure I thought were hilarious in fifth grade). But I used to love it and everything else he acted in because I used to be obsessively in love with Dana Carvey. Not only would I rent all his movies from our Blockbuster, but I actually would print pictures of him off the Internet and paste them in a scrapbook. Seriously. I had this photo album where I'd post old family pictures and totally hilarious 90s catchphrases that I saw on the Internet (like this), and in the very back of the scrapbook there was a two-page spread of Dana Carvey pictures, like some psychotic ex-girlfriend voodoo shit. I even remember which picture I thought was the dreamiest:

This was in the middle of the scrapbook. And it was huge. 

So far, June does not seem to give a shit about Dana Carvey, which is cool with me because he's not really that cute anymore and kind of looks like a fifteen-year-old lesbian.

Super cute, you guys! 

I was a fucking dork when I was a kid. I literally cringe when I think about all the dumb things I used to think were so cool. For some reason, I brought the Dana Carvey scrapbook to school and would show my friends how dreamy he was and talk about how I was seriously going to marry him when I turned 18. I don't remember their reactions but they were probably like, you're a total idiot n00b.

(Side note -- I cannot wait to see what kind of boys my daughter is going to crush on. I can't wait to see the person she's going to be in general, really, and I have to stop myself from wishing she'll hurry up and get bigger so we can bond over this type of thing. I heard a saying once that is so true -- that babies are like presents that open very slowly, and I have never, ever been good at waiting to open my presents. She sat up by herself the other day and I was like HURRY UPPPPPPP I want to see the person you're going to become! Start talking! I don't want to be one of those "cool moms" who try to seduce their daughter's boyfriends or something, but if we could bond over our mutual 90's-era-Dana-Carvey crush, I think that would make me the happiest mother in the world.)

Probably every kid thinks he or she has the monopoly on what is culturally relevant and cutting edge, now that I think about it. I wasn't allowed to watch MTV when I was younger, but one day (I probably "rebelled" and turned it on, I don't remember) I saw the music video to Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" and I thought this made me the most hip person in the history of the world. I would go around being like, so have you seen Soundgarden's new music video? Yeah I thought it was pretty great. I saw it on MTV when my parents were sleeping, so, you know, I'm pretty cool or whatever.

I was also stupid as hell. Seriously, I was not smart. When I was five or six I was obsessed with the Babysitters Club series and all its characters -- especially Claudia, who was funky and wore bizarre dangly earrings and loved to draw. Claudia was Japanese-American, which was like a martian as far as I was concerned, and I used to pray that God would make me Japanese-American too so I could be funky and exotic and good at drawing (racist much?). When it became painfully clear that God was not going to turn me into a Japanese girl, I literally would stand in the bathroom with the lights off  so that my hair would darken (my hair bleached in the sun). And if that were't the most retarded thing you've ever heard, while I was standing in the bathroom with the lights off, praying to God that He would make me Asian, I would tape my eyes back to make them squint, like a Japanese persons'. MOST RACIST LITTLE KID EVER. And I seriously thought that if I did that long enough, I would look as authentically Japanese as Claudia Kishi.

Claudia's dad was probably like this though

Let's just hope June has her father's genes.

Meth, milestones, and public breastfeeding

My husband and I are bona fide hermits, especially on the weekends. Our favorite pastime, second only to drinking beer/eating pizza, is finding new TV to watch on Instant Netflix. We're addicted, and even more so since we've discovered the mind-melting awesome that is Breaking Bad. Every night this week we've stayed up until midnight watching this damn show. And after every episode we kept saying, Just one more. Just one more hit! It's exactly like being addicted to meth. I'd imagine.

So that's pretty much what we've been doing all week. We finally finished the third season on Friday night, which meant we had no idea what to do with ourselves for the rest of the weekend since season 3 is the last season that streams on Netflix right now. Fortunately we have a child that needs to be changed and played with and occasionally fed, so that gave us something to do while we endured Breaking Bad withdrawal and racked our brains for something else to watch.

While we were tweaking like a couple of meth-heads, here's another thing that happened:

Oh hey Bruce Willis, what's up?

The baby is sitting up -- unassisted, for the most part! Four days ago she could hardly balance herself enough to sit upright for longer than a minute or two, and I had to supervise her constantly so she wouldn't fall forward on her face at a moment's notice. That was four days ago. Now she can sit on the floor and play with her toys like a real live little girl. Her favorite thing to do now is to sit in front of a spread of toys and pick them up one by one and lick them, so that's what she did while we found a movie to watch. 

(We ended up going with Bad Teacher, by the way, which was a terrible non-movie that tried entirely too hard. I guess they thought that vulgarity would be funny just for vulgarity's sake, and I'm not really sure why because this isn't Victorian England and hearing a grown woman say the world ballsack has no shock value to it anymore. Plus Cameron Diaz is starting to look like someone's mom, so we didn't really buy into her whole sexed-up, frat-boy persona.)

I still totally look 25, right? RIGHT YOU GUYS?!

We also made a special trip to grandma's house, went to the library, and ate at a new sushi restaurant in our town's business district. I took a picture of the food before I ate it so I can relive the memory anytime I want.

(Oh, and I actually fed the baby in public successfully for probably the first time ever. For the record, I cover up in public when I'm breastfeeding because I don't like strange grown men staring at my fun-bags. I would love one of those Michelle-Duggar style nursing covers, since whenever I try to discreetly feed my baby, she always manages to unlatch at the worst possible moment and reveal my boob to anyone who happens to be looking over at us. And since she has a habit of grunting and screaming if she doesn't get the boob in her mouth fast enough, she pretty much guarantees that everyone in our proximity will be looking over at us. Not cool, baby.

I don't agree, however, that because I'm nursing I should retreat to a dark corner or something. Sometimes that's what I do because that's what makes me comfortable personally, but I'm so over the notion that I'm supposed to remove myself from society completely and feed her in a bathroom or something. And yes, there are people who totally think that's what needs to happen, like the owner of this shop in Dekalb, IL who kicked a nursing mother out of his store because she was breastfeeding, calling it a "disgrace." Seriously. I'm willing to bet this homeboy isn't going to kick someone out of his store who happens to be wearing a low-cut shirt or a push-up bra, but nursing mothers are "obscene" and his "rights" are being infringed on, and God, and the Bible. Makes total sense. I so desperately wish I would have been nursing at the time of this protest so I could have joined these ladies and owned this guy with his non-logic.

And for the record, I have fed June in a bathroom before -- but only because we were in Mass at the time and I'm a total breastfeeding novice. For the first few months of breastfeeding at least there is screaming and crying and finagling and re-arranging and milk squirting everywhere, and I felt like it was just a common courtesy to do that somewhere other than a quiet church. But I still hated it. Feeding a baby next to a toilet is effing disgusting, and I would pray to the baby Jesus that there weren't poo particles floating around infecting my child with E-Coli. My point is that choosing to breastfeed is cost-friendly, emotionally beneficial, nutritious, and it's been proven to reduce the risk of about a million diseases, including SIDS. Mothers need to not be shamed into thinking it's unnatural or deviant or that it's on par with taking a shit.

That's my spiel, as the Jews say.)

Anyway. Right now I just drank a bunch of caffeinated iced tea, so I'm all hopped up and queuing up a bunch of songs on a YouTube playlist (that's what poor people do, instead of buying them off of iTunes). My music playlist right now is wack. I have no discerning palette whatsoever, so I literally just listen to anything that sounds catchy. Right now on my YouTube channel I'm listening to a compilation of the White Stripes, Beyonce, and a bunch of random shit (like this song by Enya). I used to listen to this song all the time when I was five or six. On the weekends I would steal this CD from my mom and blast it in our living room and run around in circles pretending I was a ballerina. As though ballerinas just run around waving their arms in the air and yelling the lyrics to "Orinoco Flow."

LET ME SAIL, LET ME SAIL, LET ME CRASH UPON YOUR SHORE

And that was the weekend.