Comment of the Day, July 31, 2006

Zel and I are at his work, and I’m heading down the hall to go use the ladies’ room and I see someone I know. We don’t know each other well, but we say hi to each other when we see each other. She’s one of the secretaries.

Be nice to the secretaries and janitors; they have hard jobs. And, they hear EVERYTHING, so they can fill you in on information when you need it.

I had the main door to the ladies’ room open.

She said, “You still haven’t had that baby yet?”

“Nope; about another month or so,” I said.

My friends who have been pregnant said they’d get comments like this towards the end of their pregnancies, too.

This was the first time anyone had said anything like this to me.

She started to say something else, but I said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to use the ladies’ room.”

I’m learning to be assertive about my bladder.

Besides, I didn’t want to hear about how she knew someone who delivered their uterus.

New Favorite Radio Station

KFYE-FM, out of Fresno, is my new favorite radio station.

California radio station changes format from God to sex

"Now it calls itself "Porn Radio" — "all sex radio, all the time," with a suggestion that people under 21 not listen."

I'm glad they have the warning. But, the kids are listening to much worse than "Sexual Healing".

Comment of the Day, July 24, 2006

I went into the ladies’ room today. Not that the act of using the ladies’ room is different from any other day.

But today, there was a different conversation. I don’t want to engage in conversation with everyone I meet along the way to the bathroom or with all the ladies in the ladies’ room. I’m trying to work at work; my boss gave me the deadline of being done with all of my shit by August 1. During the last month, she wants me to be able to go home and take a nap in the middle of the day if I feel like going home and taking a nap.

But for some reason, everyone wants to talk to me.

Sometimes I get lucky and don’t bump into anyone in the hall or in the ladies’ room. Today, I didn’t get lucky.

Picture this: I’m heading into the stall, turning around to shut the door so that I can pee my brains out. I hear, “How are you feeling?” Apparently she and I are on the same schedule today.

It’s the woman who saw me earlier, when I was pale and needed to get something to eat, which I had planned to do as soon as I made a used water deposit. But, because I was pale, she insisted that I go down to where all the nurses work and have them check on me…take my blood pressure, which was fine, just fine.

“Oh, hi,” I say in a polite manner. “I’m fine, thanks, just fine.”

“Well, you were so pale earlier. I remember how it was when I was pregnant with my daughter. I needed to eat every couple of hours,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m finding I need to do that, too.”

“Well, how far along are you?”

“Baby’s due at the end of August”, I said.

“Oh. Well, I was your size when I was 5 months pregnant. My labor and delivery were really bad, too.”

This was where I should’ve said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to go,” and simply shut the door. I had the opportunity, but I let it pass me right by.

Fortunately, I was able to tune out most of what she said. Zel is the Master of Tuning Out. He does it to me all the time, and that’s ok. Our relationship works.

She went on, and this is what I heard: “Blah blah blah…ended up going into the Big City by helicopter…blah blah blah…and I delivered my uterus.”

I thought she meant her placenta. Nope. She said uterus. She said it more than once, so that’s when I decided that she knew the difference between a placenta and a uterus. She said it was so rare that they wrote about her in medical journals.

“But don’t worry, the chances of that happening are only like 1 in 200,000. But, because you know me, it’ll probably happen to you,” she jokingly said.

Nice. Don’t joke about that shit, ‘cause it’s not funny. It’s mean.

My Parents and Computers

The thing that frightens me about My Parents and computers and the Internet is that they don’t know how to use either one.

It frightens me because my entire life, they pushed education, and, they’re unwilling to educate themselves how to use the computers and the Web.

They’re Baby Boomers.

Isn’t this the generation that took the world by storm?

Isn’t this the generation that protested Vietnam?

Isn’t this the generation that had the great musicians?

The Beatles. The Stones. The Who. Zeppelin. Springsteen.

Some of whom inspired people to get up off their lazy asses and do something?

Dylan. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.

Isn’t this the generation where the sexual revolution started? Aren’t they the last generation to fuck anything it wanted to without fear of contracting HIV?

The other thing that frightens me about My Parents and computers is that by not being willing to learn, I think they’re making themselves functionally illiterate. There are senior citizens in my community (and throughout the world) that have not only learned to use computers and the Web, but embraced the technology.

Zel and I can’t function without our computer or access to the Web.

All of our music is on the computer, and the music is on from the time we get out of bed until we go to bed late in the night.

We get our news from the Web.

We stay in touch with our friends, who live all over the place, via email.

And, don’t get me started with the shopping I can do on-line. The closest mall is a 90 minute car ride away. I love the fact that I can shop without having to travel...or be presentable to the rest of humanity. I’m able to maintain the Baby Kaos registries on-line. Because we didn’t purchase the stock when it was a brand new company, I kick myself every time we purchase something from Amazon.com.

When our ISP is down, Zel and I get crabby. We start to shake. We’re mean to each other. We’re Web Addicts. We consider going to a Web Anonymous meeting, but we’re not down with the 12 steps. We can’t get past the first one: “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable,” because we can still manage our lives. We can function.

Then there’s the business end of it. I cannot comprehend how offices were run before computers and email. I submit my monthly reports to the State on the Web. I’m able to email colleagues and not have to waste money playing phone tag.

Zel is teaching summer school right now, and the courses are on-line. He’ll teach most of his classes on-line after Baby Kaos is born (nice for lots of reasons!).

I do want my parents to be on-line, but when they were, if I didn’t email my Mom back within 5 minutes, she’d freak out and call me.

It happened when they were on-line before. "Amelia!" she would scream into the answering machine, because I would be at work. "Why haven't you emailed me back yet? I emailed you a few minutes ago and I haven't heard back from you! Are you ok? What if you slipped in the shower and you hit your head? Should I call the LVPD?!"

I guess you pick your poison.

My Mom and the Internet

My Mom called, letting me know they were looking at specific dates to come up and see Baby Kaos after he’s born. He’s due at the end of August. They’re looking at coming up the third week of September.

In booking flights for her and my Dad, she did it the old fashioned way: she spent her day calling the airlines.

It isn’t very easy to get to Our Little Town; not like when we lived in Vegas. In order to get here, you need to fly into the Big City, then switch airports (there’s a free shuttle) and fly about 30 minutes to Our Little Town on a little single-engine plane; or you rent a car and drive for 2-1/2 to 3 hours. It takes some work to get here, and that’s something we were conscience of when we moved; we didn’t want to have to run the hotel for a house we had when we lived in Vegas (no disrespect to the friends who came to visit!). So, she needed to contact several different airlines for the flight to the Big City; then she needed to contact the one airline that flies from the Big City to Our Little Town.

But I digress.

After she called the airlines, she called me, because she’s always looking for an excuse to call me.

She told me her flight plans, but that she hadn’t booked anything yet because she wanted to double-check that the dates would work for us. The airline was holding tickets for her and My Dad for 24 hours. The dates were fine, just fine.

We hung up so she could book the tickets. Then she called me right back, letting me know the cost of the flights, and that they were going to drive from the Big City to Our Little Town (she doesn’t want to get on a single-engine plane, which is understandable). She wanted to know if I thought she could’ve booked cheaper flights if she had booked it on the Internet.

“Probably,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “we don’t have the Internet, so I guess we’ll just have to live with what we paid for.” My Mother is very gifted at being passive-aggressive. I’ve learned to ignore most of it.

In May, the night before they left for their trip to Hawaii, she called and said, “I tried calling the airline because they said you could check in for your flight before arriving at the airport, but then when I called, they said you can only do that over the Internet. But, we don’t have the Internet, so I guess we’ll just have to live with checking in at the airport.”

I didn’t volunteer to check her in. Partly because of the passive-aggressive thing. Partly because I wasn't comfortable doing such a thing. And, fortunately, she didn’t ask.

“You may want to think about getting on-line, Mom. Zel is planning on doing a web page for the baby and we may even get a camera and you could watch video of him,” I said.

“Well, I don’t know. Your Dad didn’t really like having the Internet before.”

When My Parents had the Internet before, my brother was in middle and high school. He’ll be a college senior this fall.

Every time they would get on the web, they would get pissed off. Then my Mom would say, “Let’s call Amelia! She’ll know what to do!” as if I were a superhero. But, she’s always looking for an excuse to call me.

And I would tell her every time, “Mom, you have a slow connection and you need to upgrade your computer.” Really I was telling her in a nice way: “Mom, you own a piece of shit.”

But, she didn’t think she needed a new computer. Why spend the money on a new computer when this one works fine, just fine?

So, she put it off, figuring if you ignore the problem, it’ll just go away. Kind of like if your brakes squeak and you turn the radio up (which is not something I do, but I know some people who do).

“As for pictures of the baby,” she said, “you can just print them off and mail them to us. Or, can you email them to your Little Brother and then he can print them off? Is that even possible? I don’t know.”

“We’ll figure something out, Ma,” I said out loud. “Breathe,” I said inside my head.

My Dad and the Internet

My Parents are not on-line. They were for a while. But they were using a Mac they purchased when My Little Brother was in Kindergarten. He’ll be a senior in college this fall. Fortunately for him on many levels, our parents decided when he graduated from high school that he needed a new computer.

In addition to an antiquated computer, they were on a 56K. Not sure why when they have cable television. So, Dad would get really pissed off because the pages would take forever to load. And then Mom would say, “Well, I don’t know why it’s so slow. Let’s call Amelia!” because she’s always looking for an excuse to call me.

Then My Little Brother moved out to attend college, taking his new computer with him. That’s when they disconnected their ISP.

My Little Brother is on-line, and I send him pics of my Bulging Baby Belly and he thinks it’s cool that we can communicate for free. Being Jews, that’s important, yo.

The other day, I had an Internet Lessons from my Dad.

My Dad was telling me about a girl that my Little Brother went to elementary, middle, and part of high school with. She was hiking in the Andes and she and her brother fell into a crevasse and were killed. They were both experienced hikers; they had hiked to the top of McKinley. She was majoring in something to do with the outdoors or environmental issues from my alma matter.

“Not sure if you saw it. It made national news,” Dad said. Zel and I don’t watch much television; we get our news from the web. And, no abc.com and cnn.com aren’t on the list of news sources (and just for the record, neither is fox.com).

“What a horrible thing. I didn’t read about it. Maybe I’ll go to your local newspaper’s web site and check it out,” I said.

“Well, it’s on the Internet. You can go look up Peru and it’ll come up,” he said. “Don’t you guys get a lot of your news on the Web? Well, you go look up Peru and you can read all about it.”

Just what an expecting mom wants to read about: someone’s children who were hiking in the Andes and died.

My Dad continued: “That’s what this guy at work did. He got on the Internet and then he said to me, ‘Well, what do I look up?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know. Try Peru.’ And he typed in Peru and we read all about it,” said my Dad.

Bless his heart. He truly has no concept of how to use the Web. Just for kicks, and because I’m a good kid, I Googled Peru. There were 446,000,000 hits, and the first one was from cia.gov.

And, then I remember that I have the luxury of talking to My Dad. And I remember that I have no idea what she feels. And I remind myself to be patient with him.

I Have No Idea

I have no idea what you’re dealing with.

Or what you’ve dealt with everyday for the last 6 weeks.

Or what you had to handle when you went home to visit. And you went to see your new niece, who is simply lovely.

And you had to leave her earlier than you wanted because you received word that he was sick.

So, you go to the hospital for 16 hours a day. Making sure the nurses are doing their jobs, even though you’re not a nurse, but you could be after the 16-hour shifts you pulled.

I can relate to being at the hospital for 16 hours a day. And being a pseudo-nurse. And how time seemed to stand still.

And the being afraid part; I can relate to that, too. Afraid that the person you love more than anyone else in the world, the person you’ve depended on for forever, is sick and you’re afraid he’s going to die.

And you’re pissed off because you feel helpless. And you question why this is happening; he’s a good person. Why is he so goddamned sick?

I had that experience with my husband. He recovered.

But your Dad died.

And I’m sorry.

I have no idea what it feels like to loose a parent. And the child in me hopes to never know. But the adult in me knows I will eventually.

And I think about how we are at two completely different places in our lives: one of us dealing with death and the other dealing with creating a life.

And I know we’re both afraid of the future.

I send you positive energy all the time. Sometimes, I dedicate my yoga practices to you. I did when your Dad was sick, too.

Sometimes, when I speak to my Dad on the phone, and he goes off on a tangent, and then a tangent, and he keeps tangenting on and on, and it takes him about 10 minutes to get back to the original point, I get frustrated and roll my eyes. I think, How in the goddamn does Princess Diana relate to Hemingway? Where is he going with this one?

And, then I remember that I have the luxury of talking to my Dad. And I remember that I truly have no idea what you’re feeling. And I tell myself to be patient with my Dad. I remind myself that I need to be thankful for the time I have with him; because it may be the last time I talk to him.

I didn’t know your Dad that well; I only met him a couple of times. But he was hott. He was tall, and had grey hair, and a handle-bar moustache, and a beard, and he wore glasses. And he walked with a cane, but it was this cane that was distinguished. It wasn’t one of those canes that you buy at Walgreen’s. It was cool.

I know he would’ve taken me in if I needed a place to sleep. Unless I was on crack. He may have taken me in, but then he would’ve said, “Amelia, you really need to put down the crack.” And I would’ve done it, because I respected him.

And I so appreciate your Dad. Because he created you. And you are truly amazing.

I love you, Mel.

Childbirth Education Class

We started our Child Birth Education Class. It’s actually a series of classes. There are 8 of them. The first four discuss what to expect during labor and delivery, and provides us with some helpful tips.

Yes, there’s that whole “breathing thing”. But, Stephanie the Childbirth Educator said the important thing is to breathe because if you don’t breathe then it takes oxygen rich blood away from the baby and sends oxygen rich blood to your extremities, which is part of the fight or flight response to stress. If blood goes to your extremities and away from you uterus, you have a more difficult labor.

There are 14 couples in the class (Mel, that’s 28 people). That’s a goddamned lot of babies on the way.

A few babies are due in a couple of weeks. There are several babies that aren’t due until the end of August or beginning of September. There’s one baby that’s not due until October. Take it down a notch, Mom. You could’ve started a bit later. Really. Don’t be so goddamned over zealous about squeezing that baby out’cha pussy.

Zel and I are one of two “older” couples in the class. The other “older” couple is…well, she’s probably close to 40, and he looks like he’s about 30. Not sure, but whatever works for them is fine, just fine.

All of the other couples are in their mid-twenties. There don’t seem to be any expecting moms that are in their teens, which is a good thing! (Does that mean our prevention programs are working? Because we know abstinence only programs aren't working. The kids are a-fuckin'!).

There was one dude who had on a General Lee shirt. You heard me. General. Lee.

He clearly didn’t want to be there. I’m not making this statement because he was wearing a General Lee shirt. I’m making this statement because he sat there with his arms a crossed his chest with a scowl on his face for most of the class. His wife seemed kind of into class. But he was forced to be there. Bless her heart. I hope she’s up for the challenge.

"Leaky"

The latest nickname Zel has come up with for me is Leaky.

Because my boobs are starting to leak.

Love and feathers,
Leaky

Deli Counter Girl

“Hiiii!” I heard a female voice say.

It was one of those hi’s that was sung. And made into at least two syllables, maybe three.

“Hi. How are you?” I heard Zel say.

“I’m gooood,” she sang again. Two syllables.

I turned around, because I was curious to see who Zel was chatting with. We already had our freshly cut smoked turkey breast from the deli (which I can’t eat), and I knew we were in a bit of a rush because the England/Portugal game had started about minutes ago. I thought perhaps it was a student. It was Deli Counter Girl.

She was leaning on the counter, and when she saw me, she didn’t lean quite so hard. Her energy changed a bit. We said hello to each other, and smiled at each other. Then I took the cart and walked away.

It was apparent to me that she wanted to try and be a student of Zel’s. Perhaps get an A for anal sex. B for blow job at the very least.

We didn’t say hello to each other like dogs pissing a circle around their territory. We were cordial to each other. But, it was pretty obvious to me that I didn’t need to be in the conversation, so I left.

Zel caught up with me a few minutes later, and I was smiling at him.

“What?” he said. He was a bit concerned as to why I walked away.

I laughed. “Dude, she wants to fuck you so bad it’s sad. You should just bend her over that deli counter and F her in the A,” I said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But, I don’t think she could handle you. She’s a child.”

We left the store and continued our conversation in the truck on the way home.

Zel said, “A child? She’s gotta be at least 21, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, she’s probably 21. But, just because she’s 21 doesn’t mean she knows how to give a good B for blow job.”

“I could teach her,” he said.

“Yup, you could teach her.”

We drove a long for a few minutes in a comfortable silence.

Then Zel said, “Think she licks pussy?”

“Nope. I think she is a pussy and has never been with another woman. She’s not comfortable sexually around other women. Did you pick up on her energy change when she saw me? She wasn’t quite so gushy once she knew I was there, listening to her sing to you” I said.

“You’re imagining things,” Zel said. “It’s gotta be your raging pregnancy hormones.”

“No, dude. I’m intuitive. Deli Counter Girl totally wants to be your girlfriend.”

"She's cute," he said.

"She's cute," I agreed.

Maybe...

...Just maybe, he was flipping off his mom and dad for making him enter the stupid contest in the first place.

Little Mr. Apricot Flips Off Crowd, Loses Title

Freak accident?

How in the hell does something like this happen??

David Hasselhoff was shaving at a gym in the Sanderson Hotel on Thursday when he hit his head on a chandelier, showering his arm with broken glass.

Was he jumping on a goddamned trampoline?