Anne Nahm

So here is what I have been doing to combat post-partum depression: Walking, walking, walking. Talking, talking, talking.

My butt? You can’t quite bounce a quarter off it yet, but at least when you throw a quarter at it, the coin drops to the floor instead of imbedding itself into my flesh as if my ass was made of Stay-Puft Marshmallow Goo. So things are looking up.

I am thinking of having a t-shirt made. Here are the options: “my ass is Nano-liscious”, or “crazy butt skinny”. What do you think?

No one would get it except you guys, but that’s cool. It would be like we had an inside joke between us. And if you saw me walking down the street, you could think, “oh my God, there’s my good friend Anne!”

And then? You’d think, “but … umm… Well, I’m not going to say ‘hi’ because she sure looks like a tool.”

Ha!

Here are some words of wisdom I have heard while walking and talking with loved ones:

“Ever notice that food that smells like the food is bad? You don’t want to eat fish that is fishy. Or egg that is eggy. Or beef that is beefy. Why is that do you think?” (Husband)

“Make sure you kick the dog that bit you.” (Mom)

“Two days with your kids and now I’m depressed!” (Dad – laughing of course. Kidding, I hope.)

“…My grandmother pulled the husk of the corn back and showed me how the kernels were fresh and new, but the rest of the plant was almost dead. She said, ‘sowing seeds takes everything out of the plant’. I didn’t understand her then, but I understand it now.” (Mom)

“You’re not somebody’s mother. You are always the girl I married.” (Husband) (Yay!)

“Mommy-mommy-mommy! Agghh!” (3-year-old. She’s such a trooper.)

Anyway, we will be out of town the next couple of days starting tomorrow. Funeral. Yeah, I know. The party over here just never stops. On the other hand, it shows you are better off. Maybe that will be my new t-shirt: It’ll have a coffin on it and it will say:
Think Outside The Box

And just as a gruesome little PS? The guy died on Saturday. It will be a closed coffin because he was ill for a long time. The husband wants to look inside to say goodbye. He has been warned that there was no embalming used. Anyone know what to expect? Crypt Keeper? Lime Green Jello? What?

After struggling for a while weighing the most embarrassing thing about yesterday’s post (was it the self indulgent tripe? The sentimental self pity? So hard to decide!) I concluded that this fact beat out the rest: That damn title. I went to bed, drooling into my pillow, “I like big butts and I can-not lie. You otha brothas can’t de-ny…” Boy was the husband confused. And I have to admit, a little turned on.

But where was I? Oh yes. Embarrassed! Stepped over the comfortable line of self-disclosure! Wish I could suck all those thoughts back into my head and leave you staring at a blank screen. Etc.., Etc. Let us never mention it again!

In the spirit of saying stuff and then refusing to talk about it ever again, I am stealing this meme from asskicka. You know the one: I say stuff about all ya’ll, you read it and guess who I’m talking about, and I refuse to name names. If they don’t call it The Tease, they certainly should. But what the hell – here’s a bunch of stuff I think about people on my friends list that I wanna say but am a bit too socially awkward to word the right way. Enjoy!

1. Every time I read you, I want to tell everyone I know to go read your cool assed journal. But you are friends only.
2. Reading your blog is like watching someone meditate – it feels like commenting is an interruption. Really? When I pull up the comments box, I feel like I am about to fart in church.
3. I can’t make this sound right no matter how hard I try, but when I think about you, I often think of strange colored underwear. But not in a bad way.
4. When you write, you sound real angry. I often want to say something nice to you, because you also seem very sad. The anger frequently scares me off from saying anything.
5. I laugh my ass off every time I read your posts. I often want to steal your lines and use them myself. I haven’t… yet. But mostly because I think I’d get caught.
6. Your userpic reminds me of my childhood best friend and whenever I see it, I feel absurdly warm and gushy towards you.
7. I’m always drawn in by how gentle you are.
8. Your life is like some weird Indy film. It’s too strange not to be true.
9. I’m still not sure if you are a man or a woman.
10. Put it behind an LJ cut. I’ll probably read it anyway. But when I have to scroll down for three minutes to get past it, it feels like the blogging equivalent of being forced to smell your armpit.
11. I suspect you have some kind of stat counter on your posts and it freaks me out a little bit. I’m not sure why.
12. I think you are smarter than I am.
13. Where did you go?
14. I can see why you stay, but I hope you are at least entertaining the idea of leaving. Sometimes just knowing you could leave makes staying better.
15. Seriously? Write more. How do you expect me to cyber stalk you** when I miss so much?

** in the good, police sanctioned, non threatening kind of way, of course.

I don’t know when I noticed life was life at my expense
The words of my heart lined up like prisoners on a fence
The dreams came in like needy children tugging at my sleeve
I said I have no way of feeding you, so leave
But there was a time I asked my father for a dollar
And he gave it a ten dollar raise
And when I needed my mother and I called her
She stayed with me for days

— Indigo Girls, “Prince of Darkness”

All hail the drunken post!

I once described my father as the kind of dad “who would walk through fire for me. But anything less than that… I dunno.”

Does that make sense? He thought the best way to be a good dad was to work as hard as he could. So he was gone before the sun came up and came back home after the sun went down.

I guess I was always afraid to ask him for anything less than walking through fire because I was afraid that the answer would be “no”. And if the answer is “no” to a lesser request, how could I ask him a greater one?

I am 31 years old, and I finally had the opportunity and the desperation to ask him to walk through fire. And he did. I called him from 3,000 miles away and said, “I’m having a hard time and I need help.”

He said he was sorry and then he said in his nervous voice, “Ok, I am hanging up the phone now.”

And I said, “OK.”

And we hung up.

And then I hit re-dial. He picked up and I sobbed, “That’s not OK. I just need you to listen to me cry.”

And then I cried for? 5 minutes my time. It must have been… Oh, a thousand years in Dad-time. But he listened. He did not hang up.

And 5 days later, he was at our doorstep. Even though I knew it hurt him to be here.

Sometimes when someone nutures something deep in the hurt part of your heart, your head is not even sure what it means. I’m not sure what it means, but my heart feels mended.

There. Let me be embarrassed by that tomorrow morning.

Just so you know, I did actually fall off the face of the earth earlier this week. Guess all those fat scientist bastards** were wrong. It has an edge. I flung myself over it.

Fate declared “I ain’t letting that bitch get out early!” and pulled me back from deep space with a little help from our friend gravity. I orbited our pancake shaped planet until late Tuesday afternoon, when I collided with remnants of Sputnik and fell like a comet back through the atmosphere. I landed in Canada, and I have been hitch-hiking my way back to the States for the better part of the week. Man, am I bruised, oxygen deprived and a little cold.
Not buying it? Ok, Ok, the truth now:

I was sitting in the middle of a big white room, eating nothing but Post brand cereals. I was surrounded by Post It notes, Postage stamps, Post cards, and earrings that were missing their Posts. Weird, huh? Yeah, I know.

And as I was sitting there, stuffing myself with cereal? All I could think was, “damnit, I know there is something I am supposed to be doing this week. Whatever could it be?” I almost had it, but then the husband came in, looked around and said, “Anne, you must be dumb as a post if you don’t get it.”

And then I woke up.

Seriously? Where have I been all week? Well…

Having two kids is hard. Yeah, don’t nod in sympathy when I say that. It’s not hard like gee I wanna whine about it during the commercial break of The Young & The Restless, but I’ll shut my yap once the show starts again ’cause it’s really more of a pain in my ass than hard hard. It’s hard like I wanna bitch slap people who give me that sympathetic nod. (Not you, dolls – just everybody else).

I mean, they tell you it’s hard, but they should really write it in big red letters on all your birth control: TWO KIDS IS HARD. Not playin’ – just sayin’.

In fact, if I ruled the world, they would print that on all condoms in Itchy Ink. You’d read it, you’d boink around, and then your respective baby-making artifacts would be kind of itchy and uncomfortable for the next few days.

It would remind you, as you are scratching your groin as most people scratch their heads when they are really, really thinking hard: TWO KIDS IS HARD. Don’t forget this piece of wisdom. I read this post? And how do the French say it? (Translated, of course because I don’t speak French) It is to laugh! Were ya’ll with 1+ kids reading this post and just wetting your big-girl panties over my lack of understanding?

Because if you were? Could you step up and give me the facts next time I am making a total Pollyanna Asshole of myself? ‘Cause back then, there was still time to locate my neighborhood black market and see what the fetching price was for a healthy infant.

I keed! I keed!

Sort of. No really. Just kidding. Love the kids, but as I’m sure I don’t have to say (but will say again for the benifit of all you not-yet-parenting-two) TWO KIDS IS HARD.

Words of wisdom appreciated.

**Asked the husband, “who was the guy who discovered the earth was round? Copernicus? Galileo?”
HUSBAND: “Actually, even the very early Greeks knew the earth was round. It was only a widely believed myth that the earth was flat.”
ME: “But who was the guy who proved it? I need a name.”
HUSBAND: “Ummmm… Everybody knew.”
Except for me I guess. So thereby they are renamed “fat scientist bastards” for their accomplishment of knowing the earth was round.

I am sure that most of you are aware of the intricacies of Family Law. Particularly Section 82; part E; paragraph 2, which states, “the individual who uses the last of the toilet paper shall herein be responsible for replacing the roll. No exceptions.”

I won’t name names, but the plaintiff in this case states that the defendant has not held up his husbandly duties and replaced the effing roll because it. is. out. of. paper.

The defendant alleges that the roll is not, in fact, out. of. paper. There is, in fact, another potential usage to be made of this toilet roll.

The plaintiff’s first offer was to have the defendant try and get ‘one more usage’ out of what remains on the toilet paper roll. But that just seemed too cruel. And plus? The plaintiff does the laundry, and she imagines one hell of a skidmark if she set this demand on the defendant.

So instead, it is up to trial by a jury of peers.

Here is the evidence, ladies and gentlemen. What say you?

And as for sentencing phase. What are the options? You decide.

Oh, and PS? I totally had to go in and blur myself out with photo-shop, but if you look real closely? That blob next to the toilet? It’s me! Hi!