Monthly Archives: May 2012

It’s All Fun and Games Until a Juicy Walks into a Window

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Today is your lucky day! I am too sleepy/busy to write a post that has an actual point to it, so I am resorting to a story that I’ve been saving for just such an occasion. I was tempted to tell it back when I was preggo, but I knew the day would eventually come when I would need it to fill the time between feeding and changing the baby.

It’s the one about the time a drunk Korean call girl ran into a plate glass sliding door. This one is rated R so if you are in the habit of reading random blog posts to your chillens, I would advise against sharing this.

Here we go.

In case you want to Google it, when B and I lived in Korea, we lived in Jukjeon-dong, within the larger city of Yongin-si. If you Google it, you’ll find that Jukjeon is a bit south of Seoul. It’s an easy 45 or so minute bus ride to the center of Seoul or a 50 minute ride on the subway; not too shabby for a Saturday or Sunday commute but kind of a pain after a long day of work on a weekday. Therefore, pretty much the entire foreigner population in Yongin and Suwon was beyond thrilled when a new location of Geckos - a popular foreigner bar in the heavily international Itaewon area of Seoul – opened in Jukjeon. Not only was it close to us, it was literally across the street from our apartment. We’re talking a five-minute walk from our abodes to cheap booze.

Yeah, that’s as awesome as it sounds.

This place had it all. Of course, the company we kept there was pretty outstanding to begin with, seeing that we were close with and actual friends with all our coworkers. Geckos was our watering hole. The food was good, the drinks were cheap and delicious, the bartender – nicknamed “Jamisil” after a brand of soju – was fantastic and loved us. Almost every Friday night, and often weeknights too, we would all head over to Geckos for dinner or drinks and to unwind. The staff got to know us and love us. It was Our Bar.

So, one Friday night after dinner on Euro Row, B and I headed over to Geckos to meet our friends for some drinks and general revelry. As part of a sizable yet still pretty cozy group of foreigners in our area, we immediately noticed some new faces that we had never seen there before. In the middle of them was a guy – let’s call him Joe because I don’t remember his real name – who B had met before. He was Canadian but by some stroke of coincidence, B grew up down the street from Joe’s uncle in Memphis.

Our friend Steve found this pig in the garbage outside his apartment once and it made the rounds in all our friends’ apartments until someone finally decided to give to Geckos in January 2011. Rumor has it that it’s still there.

Once he got his drink, B headed over to the bar to say hi to Joe. It turns out it was his birthday and the newcomers to Geckos were his friends celebrating with him. Amidst Joe’s friends was a conservatively-dressed Korean woman. This was not odd at all. We all assumed that she was one of Joe’s Korean co-teachers.

So an hour or so passed by. By about 9:30 the bar was getting busy and everyone there was taking advantage of delicious, inexpensive cocktails and beer and thus becoming more and more intoxicated. More of our friends arrived and more of Joe’s friends arrived to celebrate his birthday with him. At one point, I glanced over at Joe’s table and noticed that the Korean woman who had been celebrating with him had made a costume change: she was now clad in the apparel of a “Juicy Girl.”

“What is a juicy girl?,” you may be asking. I wish I could tell you exactly, but I never got an altogether straight answer while I was living in Korea. A juicy girl is an ambiguously sexualized woman who is paid to hang out and drink with a guy or group of guys all night, but it’s kind of up to her if she ends up making sexy time with the guy later. Sort of similar to a geisha, but at the same time not at all because geishas don’t wear tube tops and hotpants, nor do they get plastered with their male hosts. Plus there’s the whole “hundreds of years of serious tradition” thing with geishas, and call girls go back way farther than that in one shape or another.

Why she started out the evening dressed as a librarian and then changed into a hoochie, who knows? Maybe that was part of the whole fantasy or whatever. But it turns out that gal was hired by Joe’s friends to keep him company for the evening. What great friends.

B and I are no prudes, much (much!) less so our friends, but we were a little shocked to see this little arrangement taking place at our Geckos that night. I mean, the place has a kids’ menu for cripes sake. Save the ho-hos for Seoul, buddy. We’re in the ‘burbs!

But how could we begrudge this guy his paid hotpants-clad companion? Whatevs, we thought. Let’s just see how this unfolds.

So the drinking continues, the bar gets more and more packed, and everyone is having a grand ol’ time, as per the usual. Miss Hotpants was living it up with everyone is Joe’s party and drinking a lot. Despite the fact that Coyote Ugly seemed to always be on TV in Korea, she had clearly never seen it before because she was actually drinking shot after shot and not spitting them out. Dude, even I could teach her a few things about being a juicy girl. Me, the one whose relationship with beer has a tumultuous past.

She drinks, she dances, she is everyone’s best friend. Until…

I was at the bar with my friends Paul and Sally chatting and drinking something like crappy beer mixed with tomato juice and Tabasco. All of a sudden, we hear a loud THUNK followed by the reverberation of glass against steel. The entire bar – filled at capacity at this point – all stopped, turned around, and saw Miss Hotpants in a crumpled puddle on the ground trying her hardest to get back up and continue the revelry. She had walked straight into a plate glass sliding door with so much force that the door had been knocked out of alignment with its railings.

A woman close by helped her up into a chair and procured an icepack for her. How could we not feel bad for this poor girl? Getting drunk with a bunch of foreigners who can hold their liquor not better than her, only to walk into a window and develop a mild concussion? Whoomph.

But she was not down for the count. In less than five minutes she was up partying again whilst the bar staff busied themselves with getting the glass door back into its railings, much to the chagrin of English teachers at the bar who needed – NEEDED – their $3 beers  posthaste (notice how I shimmied that word in again? I’m on fire!)

The bartenders at Geckos could blow fire as well as perform maintenance on sliding doors. Can we say “well rounded”?

She latched back on to Joe, as this was presumably what she was paid to do, and the partygoers of Geckos quickly forgot about the incident. Moments later, Sally and I decided to make a quick potty run.

Upon entering the bathroom, Sal and I quickly realized that we were not alone. Not by far. In a testament to their classiness, Joe and Miss Hotpants had already staked out the joint for deal-sealing.

After making eye contact with Joe in his mid-coital ecstasy, Sally and I barfed in our mouths a little and hightailed it out of there. Having had a few adult beverages at that point ourselves, we decided it would be a great idea to go tell the staff that the ladies’ bathroom needed immediate attention as someone had made a giant mess on the floor. Koreans are prompt if anything, and they hopped to it with the same swiftness they had when they had to realign the sliding glass door and headed with a mop and bucket to the ladies room to find the loving couple.

Miss Hotpants was immediately thrown out of the bar, with her large totebag filled with both of her outfits.

Joe was drunk and hopping  mad. He found Sally and me amongst the crowd and decided to share his feelings concerning this matter. We saw him coming from across the bar and braced ourselves.

Shots! Shots! Shots! Shots! Shots!

“Not cool. NOT COOL.” He directed his abbreviated-for-affect diatribe solely towards Sally. I guess he hadn’t seen me.

Sally, a normally terse and calm individual, leveled with him.

“OH REALLY? You know what’s NOT COOL, bro? I’ve had three drinks in the past two hours and right when my friend and I here decided to visit the bathroom, what do we find but your sorry behind in the ladies’ room with some prostitute, BLOCKING THE TOILET.”

Joe was speechless. I give some of the credit to Sally growing horns and reading him the riot act right then. But I give most of the credit to the vast quantities Joe had consumed up to that point because right then, in one fell swoop, he turned to walk off, vomited, and passed out on the floor. The night was over for poor Joe.

For a second I thought of making this a Tales of the World for Miss C. However, it quickly occurred to me that there is little to learn from a story about a Korean call girl drunkenly walking into a sliding door and then getting thrown out of a bar.

Except, maybe, don’t ruin your life. That’s a pretty good lesson, I suppose, but hopefully she’ll get it elsewhere.

The Other Side: Notes on the Second Month

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Can you even believe I had planned on posting three times last week? I so silly. HA. I seem to have momentarily forgotten about the whole I-have-a-baby-now thing.

I’ve been busy trying to map out Miss C’s schedule, not to be confused with forcing her into a schedule. That would be the most fruitless endeavor I can come up with right now, on par with trying to chop down a tree with a herring. No, I’ve basically just been writing down every single thing she’s been doing and at what time, like when she goes to the bathroom, eats, and sleeps. At some point I will analyze all my data and make some graphs or something. I’m not entirely sure why exactly I’m collecting all this data. Maybe if she grows up to be a CPA or something else number-crunchery, she will appreciate the pie graphs in her baby book detailing her bowel movements. I don’t know.

Now make the baby eat, sleep, and poop at regular intervals!

But based on my overall energy level and lack of desire to cry whenever she does, I’d say things are going amazingly well. Dare I say I’m getting the hang of having an infant? Knock on wood.

She’s a pretty freaking awesome infant, to be sure. The only time she really goes into crisis-mode crying is when she is gassy, and even then she’s developed quite a virile colon that will deal with any discomfort she’s in posthaste. (I have been wanting to say “posthaste” for awhile.)

I am amazed at how I had taken for granted that we enter the world knowing nothing whatsoever. It is deliciously delightful to see Miss C observe the world for the first time. Yesterday, I parked her in her little rock n’ play thing next to the tub while I took a bath and she smiled and cooed at a bottle of Pantene and a green loofah for no less than 15 minutes. She is beyond fascinated with the paintings we have on our walls and she ADORES being on her changing table. She can be wailing, and we’ll just put her on her changing table, even if she’s not dirty, and immediately she’s happy and smiling. I will have to ask her what was so great about that when she can talk.

I am 100% sure I am jinxing myself by saying this, but she is actually beginning to *kind of* sleep like a normal person. The last few nights, she’s been out like a lamp no later than 10PM, and then she will occasionally sleep until 5 or 6AM, with only one quick midnight feed and diaper change. As much as I enjoy watching Shee-Ra at 2AM, I’d rather be sleeping.

If Karma is listening, I was just kidding. She sleeps horribly. I am so crabby from lack of sleep. Grrr.

In the past couple weeks, I have also discovered that the grossness of being projectile spat-upon is only matched in the hilarity of seeing one’s spouse being projectile spat upon. The other day I was reading in the bedroom when B yelled from the other room, “Help. NOW.” I came in the living room and both he and C were covered, I tell you, covered in spittup. I laughed like the apparent nine-year-old boy I am.

So things are really, really good. I’ll leave you with some pics from the last month.

Oh, AND the promise of an upcoming post about someone walking into a plate glass window. I’m really excited about it, if you couldn’t tell.

Keep feeling fascination.

After a bath, a frog tries to swallow the baby.

“Yeah, so I tells ‘em, you gotta get a Boppy, too!”

Chillin’ on the changing table, AKA the happiest place on Earth

Getting Some Stuff Off My Chest

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You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t really written a lot about breastfeeding since having Miss C. This is odd, of course, because it’s basically all I do. With all the TIME hoopla, though, I think now is the time for me to go on the record with some quick notes and thoughts, “quick” being the key word because I’m sure you’re just as tired of hearing about it as I am.

Breastfeeding is hard. Well, having a newborn is hard in general, especially for me who basically has no idea what I’m doing. No, really. NO IDEA. But breastfeeding and all the related issues surrounding it are a big part of what makes it hard. This is especially true when everyone has an opinion about it, moralizes it beyond recognition, and judges you for not doing things the same way they did things. Heck, even if you do things exactly the same way as someone else but don’t do it for their reasons, you’re gonna get judged.

We’ve had our difficulties. Everyone has. My milk didn’t come in fully for weeks, and Miss C wasn’t back up to her birth weight until she was three weeks old. When she finally had regained that weight, I cried at the pediatrician’s office. Then she had a growth spurt and I was literally nursing her on the hour, every hour. And she still wasn’t gaining. It was massively frustrating.

One day a month in, it occurred to me that I hadn’t left the house for more than twenty minutes without Miss C since she was born. I just wanted to go to the grocery store, for Pete’s sake. I had pumped about two ounces for Miss C (that was all I could get considering she was nursing around the clock and I was still struggling to keep up with her), but I just bit the bullet and made her a bottle of formula for B to give her while I was gone. We had TONS of formula laying around the house because you’re bombarded with free samples of it when you’re pregnant.

And guess what? She took the formula and didn’t die! AND we are still bonded! AND it nourished her! AND she’s gaining weight!

And we’re not bad parents. I’m still primarily breastfeeding her/feeding her expressed milk, but you better believe she gets formula too. Giving her a bottle gives me comfort that her little belly is full.

So the other day I was reading this book called The Essential First Year because, y’know, I need all the help I can get. And here’s what this tome of wisdom said about bottle-feeding:

You may hear that bottle-feeding is better for modern families because the father can share the joy of feeding his baby and the mother can sleep while he does some night feeds. Oh please! Every parent knows that feeding is the baby’s basic need and has to come before father’s joy or even mother’s sleep. Anyway once a mother and baby have had a month or so to learn breast-feeding, father can give as many bottles as he likes  - of expressed milk.

Yeah, well “every parent” also (hopefully) knows that they should create a feeding routine that works best for their family. If that includes exclusive breastfeeding, that’s great, but they’re not going to hell and their baby is not going to die if it gets *gasp* a bottle filled with *double gasp!* formula. I promptly shut the book and returned it to the library with a note to the next reader to stay away from this judgey-pants book. (It sucked for several other reasons too but this is the one that finally made me shut it.) This book was meant to be a general instruction book of a baby’s first year, so its in-you-face message of damnation if a bottle and formula ever comes into the picture really, really turned me off. I’d agree that it’s important to establish breastfeeding in the first month if that’s what you want to do, but there are about a bajillion babies out there that were never breastfed and only ever knew a bottle and formula, and guess what? They turned out fine. Actually, not just fine. Exceedingly well.

First off, if the baby has a father like B and Ande over at & Squatch Makes Three who cares enough about his newborn child to want to share in its feeding, I am ALL ABOUT including him. Dads are parents, too, people. If the child is blessed enough to have a father who doesn’t just see it as a lump of salami during those first weeks but as his baby, then you better believe I am going to indulge him the pleasure of spending some time with her in his arms, giving her nourishment.

Also, a mother’s sleep is not just a luxury; it is a major, major necessity. In the first months, rest is what can separate a new mom from a crazy-pants lunatic. The only reason I’m remotely cohesive and sane right now, 7 1/2 weeks in, is because I go to bed at 9:30 and B gives Miss C a bottle in the interim period before I get up and nurse her at 3AM and then again around 7AM. I am human and would resent the heck out of my new role as parent to Miss C if I lacked the clarity rest gives me. Rest makes me not want to cry when she cries. Rest gives me tons of patience. Rest helps me access my compassion. Rest makes me better for her.

And those are my remarks on breastfeeding.

The End.

In Heaven

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We remember a lot more of our early childhoods than we give ourselves credit for. When my mom was here meeting Miss C awhile back, she asked me what my first memory was, and I immediately thought of my brother’s birth when I was 3 1/2 and how he “gave” me a Barbie and a bag of M&Ms as a gift. Trevor was nothing if not thoughtful as an hours- old infant.

I’m not talking about the newfangled Ponies that are aware of their irony. We’re going sugary-sweet OLD SKOOL.

But then, the other day, something triggered an even earlier memory of mine. I recall being  really, really little and asking my mom what Heaven was like. I don’t remember what she said, but I do remember asking her if my room in Heaven (because, duh, you get your own room in heaven) could have My Little Pony wallpaper and a My Little Pony bedspread, to which she said yes. When I was small, the image of God that I had in my head was of an old giant with a long white beard sitting in a chair, wearing blue jeans. He was old and bearded, of course, because He was God and predated everything.Thus facial hair. He was sitting because that is the posture of wisdom and omnipotence, according to small me. I suppose I pictured him wearing blue jeans because that made Him a bit more down to earth or something. He could wear whatever He wanted, being God and all. Why not jeans?

I like my three-year-old theology. It is simple, wishful, and nonjudgmental. Of course, it can’t really help you sort out real problems, but what real problems does a three-year-old have that s/he must sort out all on her own? We’ll leave those to the grownups.

When I was small, I chose a My Little Pony theme for my corner of Heaven. This got me thinking what my slice of Heaven would look like now. I came up with a few things.

1. In Heaven, Arrested Development never gets cancelled. It goes on and on, never “jumping the shark” despite its affiliation with several former cast members of Happy Days.

2. In Heaven, WASP-y girls like me can perform Outkast’s “Rosa Parks” for karaoke without the prompter. And it’s not ironic; it’s just AWESOME.

3. In Heaven, all coffee is organic, fair trade, and perfectly roasted. It’s fresh all the time. You never run out of sugar and cream at home, CoffeeMate is not the only thing offered to accompany your cup of free coffee at Jiffy Lube, and your favorite “Keep Austin Weird” mug that you got on your honeymoon never breaks into five pieces.

4. In Heaven, you never feel the pressure to read dud books that people recommend to you. Also, you aren’t judged as a vile, hateful human being when you say that you don’t like Harry Potter and really don’t understand what all the  fuss is about.

5. In Heaven, breastfeeding is easy.

6. In Heaven, you can bottle the smell of newborns.

7. In Heaven, you don’t have to use coasters because cups never leave rings on your furniture.

Most of all, in Heaven you are reminded by everything you see, hear, and taste of the wonderful memories of your life and where they came from. You recall them at the precise moments when you will appreciate them the most. Even the hard things that you don’t remember relishing at the time are recalled happily because they added texture to your experience. The smallest things point to the biggest things and make you realize how connected they are.

Everything is fine. And not at all creepy.

What is your Heaven made up of? 

Miss C Emulates Gregor Samsa

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Last night I had a bad dream. The sad thing about it is that I know that it will eventually be real.

In my dream I awoke like I do most mornings around 5:30 or 6 and went to the baby. In my dream, though, she wasn’t a little lump swaddled and sweetly sleeping in her bassinet. Over night she had grown from her current six week old state. She was at least 35 pounds and three feet tall. Her face had filled out; it was longer, more mature. Her hair was long and brown, her current soft dusting of hair replaced by brushable locks.

I pulled her out to feed her. My back ached at the strain of the lift that is normally so effortless. She wiggled out of my arms and promptly began toddling across the room. I didn’t know whether to feel proud that my baby was walking or horrified that she had acquired this skill overnight.

I went to B to show him what had happened and what she was doing. When we both returned to her, not only was she still walking, but she had somehow procured some of my clothes and had put them on. I was mortified. I told B to call the pediatrician. Something was very wrong. Babies shouldn’t grow like this.

He was calm. “This is only natural,” he replied.

I collected her in my arms and rocked her like a newborn. She struggled and ran off to play.

At that point I woke myself because I couldn’t stand it anymore.

This is probably the most easily interpreted dream I’ve ever had. This,

has turned into this,

in a matter of six weeks. And she’s not stopping for anyone.

It’s beautifully heartbreaking.

The Weighting

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See there in the title? I made a funny. This is the post about losing baby weight. And the blog is called The Waiting. Get it?

I kill myself sometimes.

A rough depiction of cute me prior to giving birth

So, yeah, having just had a baby, I gained some weight. Some. A lot. Whatever. By the end of my pregnancy with Miss C I had gained 45 pounds. Not too shabby, eh? I really packed it on during the third trimester and I’ve got the stretch marks to prove it. I’ll admit that they are kind of gross and road mappish, but since I’ve never been a bikini-wearer in the first place, I’m not concerned about them. They’ll fade away eventually. I actually kind of like the idea of them serving as a souvenir of my pregnancy. Is that weird?

At my postpartum visit to the OB last Thursday, I was weighed and I’ve lost 15 pounds since right before Miss C came, which I think sounds dead-on. I also got the go ahead to start intense cardio and strength training again, so right after I left the doctor’s office, I made a b-line to the local YMCA and joined up. I went three times last week and burned about 500 calories during each visit.

…..and a rough depiction of me now

I am not someone who enjoys and relishes working out. Just not. I like the way I feel afterwards with the rise of happy endorphins and all, but the act of exercising itself is not pleasurable for me in-and-of-itself. I wish I could be one of those people who goes out running and just loses herself in it; B is, and I’m jealous of him for it. But right now the main incentive for me to go to the gym has nothing to do with sweating it out. I’m going because I don’t want to have to replace all my pre-preggo clothes and because I need to have an activity that I do without Miss C. There’s a nursery/daycare there but the idea of leaving her on all the germ-covered equipment among nasty germy kids makes me cringe, especially when her squeaky-clean dad is more than willing to hang out with her at home while I go. So she’ll stay with him.

I want to lose 40 pounds in addition to what I’ve already lost (and I don’t count those 15 pounds because they were all Miss C, placenta, and water weight.) Forty sounds good because it will bring me to ten pounds below what I weighed before I was pregnant, which I could have stood to lose back then anyway. I figure that as long as I’m losing weight, I may as well bite the bullet and lose those extra ten pounds as well.

I’m giving myself ten months to lose it because it took me ten months to put it on. I’m kind of dreading this whole process because it requires a level of commitment that I don’t really know if I have as of yet, but I’m hoping that working out and my continued commitment to breastfeeding Miss C will make me less of a saggy baggy elephant. And I’m sagging, boy oh boy.

This month also marks the one-year anniversary of my last haircut. Yeah, I know. I have gone without even a trim since May of 2011, and I’m kind of embarrassed about that. I have had super short hair since I cut it off in 2000, and I guess by others’ standards my hair is still short (it’s now a little past my shoulders), but to me it’s long and I HATE it. I feel like Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite because I’m hot all the time and I just want to shave my head.

But don’t worry, Mom. I’m not going to.

She reads my blog and likes my hair long and is not afraid to tell me. Come to think of it, so does B. However, he chooses his battles with me well so he doesn’t put forth energy into convincing me to keep it the length that it is. Such is the fostering of a happy spouse.

But I need a new look, but not because I’m a mom now. OK, so maybe it’s a little bit because I am a mom now. So sue me. I’m thinking something like this:

NOT mom hair. But even if it were, this makes it worth it:

I’d stay an elephant forever, get a heinous haircut, and even don mom jeans for this gal.

Tales of the World: Just Saying No

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For the first installment of Tales of the World for Miss C, check out this post. 

When my friend Kendra visited Miss C and me last week, we got to reminiscing as old friends are prone to do about our days in elementary and middle school. She is probably my only real remaining friend from those days, so I rely on her to remind me that my penchant for eating a jar of peperoncinis with a large glass of milk is well-established as one of my most disgusting oddest cravings. I did that when I was a kid; now the training wheels are off and I can down an entire jar with no pain-dulling beverage whatsoever, which pretty much freaks/grosses out everyone.

Just say no to smoking and yes to cuteness.

We also got to talking about being members of the Smoke Free Class of 2000. (Yes, this was a Thing, and I even linked to a 1989 NY Times article to prove it.) Basically, being born in 1981 and 1982 meant that Nancy Reagan and the girl who played “Rudy” on The Cosby Show were going to try their dardest to keep you from smoking by way of your public school guidance counselor. Kind of a mall Santa Claus-type thing; since they couldn’t do it themselves, they sent out a representative to do their work for them.

From first grade onward, we were drilled in the protocol of Just Saying No to smoking, specifically. Pretty much anyone from our class could spew the stats on how many people die in America from smoking every year and what the lung of a lifetime smoker looks like postmortem. The lung assembly resulted in me many students being ushered from the cafetorium to put their heads between their knees so they wouldn’t barf.

I totally got on board with saying no. This is probably because no one was asking me to smoke in the first place, but we needn’t split hairs. In sixth grade, I even wrote a poem wherein a girl gets approached on the playground by some older kid (who else?) to smoke but she declines in iambic pentameter. Did I mention that I wrote this poem on my own accord? Yeah, it wasn’t assigned; just did it on a Saturday afternoon. (For further reading on why I’m a nerd click here.)

Two triple zero, everyone’s a hero.

By the time the year 2000 rolled around, I was a beacon of light for the smoke-free agenda. Bill Clinton was in office but Nancy Reagan was still in my heart. On my eighteenth birthday, in a misguided display of my staunch opposition to nicotine, I went to a gas station with Cameron and her then-boyfriend to buy a pack of cigarettes which I would then flush down the toilet in an act of defiance. Nevermind that I was giving the tobacco companies money by doing so. It was the gesture that counted.

I sidled up to the counter with my still-underage friends flanking me and immediately blanked when the attendant asked me what I needed.

I asked them, “What kind am I supposed to get?”

“Marlboro Reds,” the chorus chanted.

“Ah yes, one pack of Marlboro Reds, please.”

To this, the attendant rolled her eyes. “You do realize I’m not going to sell you cigarettes now that you’ve clearly shown that you’re buying them for your friends, right?”

Fail.

Why it was more important for us to be smoke-free than our friends from the classes of 1999 and 2001, I cannot explain. Perhaps it was our birthright for our lungs to be especially looked after by First Lady Nancy, who saw the potential in us and was adamant to protect us from the dangers of smoking.

So Kendra and I were talking about our smoke-free indoctrination when she said, “Well, I guess it worked pretty well because I never smoked.”

I guess this means I failed Mrs. Reagan.

Because I did smoke for about fifteen minutes in college.

What can I say? College brought out the rebel in me. My gateway drug was Pringles, which I had consumed maybe only a few times in my life due to the fact that my mom had the pesky habit of feeding us actual food during our formative years. Before I knew it, I was unabashedly bringing Pop Tarts into the dorm and eating them too with no abandon, not only for breakfast but for dinner in-between meals as well. Months passed in my downward spiral and before I knew it I was making midnight runs to Taco Bell for chalupas. The destruction of my body was well underway via junk food so it was only a matter of time until I undid the best efforts of my parents and the Ad Counsel and started smoking.

Ranked only slightly lower than cigarettes on the “Things That Will Make You Die” List

It began easily enough and ended in an all-night ralph session. Out of boredom and curiosity I smoked a few of my sorority sister’s cigarettes one night and subsequently coughed up a lung. However, if I am anything it is determined, so once I discovered that ultra light cigarettes existed, I was all about them.

Yes, nothing is cooler than a nineteen-year-old girl carrying out the same rebellious acts as eleven- and twelve-year-olds, and for the exact same highly sophisticated reasons. The only difference was that my defiance lacked teeth since I was, you know, legal and all. I certainly wasn’t impressing any of my peers with my pack-a-year “habit,” but I never would have known it at the time because I was too busy to notice. My time was monopolized by constantly posing with the cigarettes in front of a mirror and practicing how I would hold them at parties. I was one happening gal.

My foray into smoking ended as abruptly as it had started. One night I was up studying for finals, which had all been scheduled for the following day. I thought to myself, “This seems like a nice opportunity to try out this chain smoking I’ve heard so much about.” Great plan. Keep in mind that over the course of the prior six months I had smoked maybe three packs of cigarettes. Maybe that many. Likely far less.

So that night when I staged the Great Chain Smoking of Emily, I was probably four hours in to my binge when I got horribly sick to my stomach and ended up ralphing for hours. When I finally went to bed I felt like I had been hit by a Mack truck. Surprise, surprise. I’m not a born smoker.

Why is this a Tale of the World for Miss C? Is it to show her that smoking is bad for her and she resist the urge to try it? Is it to demonstrate that I have been there and done that so there’s little she can do to shock me? Is it to make her jealous that I had the likes of Nancy Reagan looking after me in my formative years?

Well, yes, but it’s mainly to remind her that she is a product of me. She’s got that nerd gene that will shine through whether she chooses to embrace smoking or compose poems against it.

The moral of the story is to just write poems about smoking. It’s way healthier.

Om Nom Nom: “Chili” Pasta Salad

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It is a fact of life that chili is a nearly perfect dish. It’s hearty, it’s spicy, and its vegetarian versions actually taste delicious if prepared properly. One problem that it does pose, though, is that it isn’t exactly suited to summer consumption unless you are trying to clear your sweat glands. Despite my Southern upbringing, I don’t “glisten.” I sweat, and it’s gross.

Now that I’ve totally revolted you by putting the image of me sweating in your mind, I am going to give you a recipe.

This is why I am not a regular food blogger. FAIL.

So, moving on. My mother in law Sidney made this “chili” pasta salad for us last summer and we were immediately hooked. It takes some of the best things about chili and makes them fit for consumption during the hottest days of summer. It’s delicious and easy to make when you want something filling but don’t want to be in the kitchen all day. It’s a crowd-pleaser and makes a great addition to any potluck.

Or you can be like me and just eat the entire bowl. No judging.

INGREDIENTS*:

1 12-oz. box farfalle (bowtie) pasta

1 lb. lean ground beef

1 15.5-oz. can kidney beans, drained and rinsed

2 ears sweet corn, shucked

8 oz. cherry or grape tomatoes, halved

1 small red onion or 1/2 a large red onion, finely chopped

1 cup chopped cilantro

3 tbsp. olive oil

4 tbsp. fresh lime juice

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

2-3 tsp. chili powder

shredded Monterey Jack cheese, to garnish

*This is the kind of dish you can totally wing it with. If you like corn, add more. If you dislike cilantro, substitute parsley or even spinach. Make it your way.

STEPS:

1. In a large pot, bring 5-6 cups of salted water to boil and add the ears of fresh corn. Boil them for about five minutes and then remove them and allow them to fully cool. They should be firm and not mushy. Meanwhile, season the ground beef with S&P, brown it in a nonstick pan, and then drain the excess fat if there is any (if you use lean beef there shouldn’t be much). Once it’s browned, set it aside to cool.

2. Bring the same water you used to cook the corn back up to a boil and add the pasta and cook it until it is al dente. Drain it and set it aside to cool (or if you’re impatient like me, just rinse it with cold water.)

3. Once the corn is cool, remove the kernels from the cob by holding each ear upright in a medium bowl and running a chef’s knife down it. The bowl will catch the kernels.

3. In a large bowl, combine the kidney beans, the corn, the chopped onion, the halved tomatoes, the pasta, and the ground beef.

4. In a small bowl, whisk the olive oil, the lime juice, the chopped cilantro, and the garlic together. Add it to the pasta mixture along with the chili powder and mix it all together. When serving, garnish with the cheese.

Be sure to subscribe to Kendra’s blog Over the Spoon for more great recipes and food writing!

I’ll Keep Being Weird

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There must be something good in the water in Austin, Texas.

I say this because I just noticed that several of the blogs I love such as I’ll Sleep When They’re Grown and A Rich Full Life are based out of Austin. Indeed a cool town with some cool people.

If you sleuthed around for about 20 seconds, you’d discover pretty easily that my last name is Austin. I took it when I married my husband, so when we decided to go to Austin for our honeymoon, I enjoyed notifying everyone we encountered on our trip of the “hilarity” of this. “The Austins in Austin! Can you believe it?! Want to give us a discount?!”

We first went to Austin when we were dating in college. My friend Martin was going to graduate school at UT so on Spring Break we drove to visit him. B and I had only been dating for about five or six months, so our trip there was the first time we really spent a prolonged period of time together. Going there was such a great experience that when deliberations about our honeymoon location had gone on and on and on for what seemed like months, we eventually were both like, “Hey, we both love Austin. Let’s go back.”

Which we did.

The motto of the city is “Keep Austin Weird.” Is it weird there? No, not in a Twin Peaks way. It’s just cool. If Fred Armison and Carrie Brownstein had really wanted to, they could have made Austinsia instead of Portlandia.

In a little Sunday night tribute to Austin, I thought I’d share with you some photos from our honeymoon in Austin. It’s not our anniversary or anything. I’m just in the mood to give props to a cool little city where we started our marriage.

Hotel San Jose, where we stayed on our trip

“Corridor” of Hotel San Jose

At the Texas State History Museum (B is on the far left wearing a white shirt.)

To. Die. For. ICE CREAM!

Everyone should include a round of putt-putt on their honeymoon.

Costume shop

Found in an antique store

Prehistoric grackle

The ceiling at one of the many locations of Baby Acapulco’s

Wuv.

Colors

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Graduation season is upon us. Lately, every time I log onto Facebook, I see my friends updating their statuses saying that their final projects and theses have been submitted and they just picked up their caps and gowns. B’s work schedule has changed a bit to accommodate the exams, and in a couple weeks he will have a really long day at work when he attends the students’ graduation.

I finished graduate school in 2005. I indeed graduated, but it wasn’t with the acclaim and excitement that I had always thought it would be. When I was a college student, I loved studying and I fancied myself an incredibly serious student, which I was to a degree, face-stuffing and all (see “About” page). At that time I fashioned my identity to be pretty one-dimensional, with my role as a student and a smartypants at its core. It was academic achievement or nothing for me. Even my decision to date B, who was also a really dedicated student and generally bright person, was partially self-flattering because being with him meant that I was a really good student who only surrounded herself with people who confirmed that image I believed in so much.

So there was no question that I would go to grad school directly after college to get my MA, and do so with the gusto and success that I had received my BA. I saw this as an absolute fact, and I never once questioned it. My decision to go to grad school was as simple as black and white. When I got there and struggled to keep up and to maintain the same enthusiasm that I had when I was in college, you can imagine how befuddled I was. All of a sudden, things weren’t as obvious to me about who I was. Surrounded by people who I saw as smarter than me, I was forced to admit that the “obviousness” of me as an academic wasn’t panning out. I finished the degree, but I hated every second of it, and I didn’t attend my graduation ceremony.

I have until recently tended to see most things in black and white, just like I did graduate school. Things were either right or wrong, I was either smart or stupid, things were going entirely well or incredibly badly. I rested on the perceived polarities in my life for direction when I couldn’t find any elsewhere and I went through years gauging situations based on my extreme perceptions.

Now, I would say that there are quite a few problems with seeing all things in terms of black and white. Having gotten to know a lot of the readers of my blog through your own blogs and through your comments, I have a feeling many of you would agree with me on the pitfalls, and there are plenty. Whether you agree with me or not, I’d love for you to tell me your opinions in the comments.

But the one downside to approaching life with an all-or-nothing attitude that has caused me the most trouble is that when you see things in these absolute terms, you have to be incredibly convicted of your thoughts. There really is no room for doubting yourself. And obviously, if you have any vulnerability or insecurity about what you’re doing, you’re going to have some major problems.

To be sure, I have a lot of insecurities. A LOT. I doubt myself every single day. Even when I   think I’m making the right choices, I am still fraught with anxiety that I’m going to screw up because I wasn’t 100% sure from the get-go of my plans. I also have a hard time self-gauging how I’m generally doing in life, so I’ve relied on seeing things in black and white to give me some sort of false confirmation that I’m doing OK.

I’m really glad that as I’ve matured, my inclination to see things in black and white has diminished. It’s extremely difficult to be a good partner to your spouse if you’re adamantly reluctant to deviate from some arbitrary set of perceptions you’ve set out for yourself. Most of the problems I had with B during the first years of our marriage were based in me having some black and white expectation of what our relationship should look like. And now that I’m a parent, I’m learning that it’s altogether impossible to be happy if you can’t bend and curve with your family or allow yourself to see the colors of life beyond black and white. You just have to open your eyes, see the colors, and recognize that they make each day a whole lot more interesting.

Van Gogh, Sower with Setting Sun (1888)

Miss C responds well to things that are black and white. She’s only about five weeks old, so those two opposites give her some meaning to the wholly new and foreign-to-her world.  She needs those polarities. As her parent, though, I am happy to see the colors of life. I make decisions now based not on the way I want to see things but on the complexities of the places that are in between opposites. And right now, that is something I will stand by. I may not wholly subscribe to any one philosophy of parenting, but that’s what’s right for us. I am a parent who lets the colors of the world inform the way I bring up my daughter.

It’s a lot more beautiful that way.