Anne Nahm

On to the day’s embarrassing confessions, Women-Stuff Overshare Addition:

1. The third week of Sudafed is taking its toll. Am drying up. Baby is also on growth spurt. Spent last 48 hours marathon nursing. Both days ended in my child greedily sucking down formula.

Can’t decide if I feel like a failure for ‘giving up’ or for being such a dumbass I got nipple blisters before putting down my Joan of Arc Nipple Flag and surrendering to what most people recognize as The Real World.

That place being where people realize, ‘duh… she’s not going to be a meth freak as a direct result of you feeding her formula. Mebbe as a direct result of her early memories of you freaking the eff out… but not the formula per se.’

2. Got my period this morning. Let me tell you how that kind of additional hormone swing has been a stabilizing force in my day. Come Sunday, I can choose to get on the pill and hope that this 489th effing course of antibiotics is, indeed, the last one. Of course, the pill apparently also reduces milk supply. So probably not. However, if I miss this menstrual boat, the husband gets to make another month of these sexy comments: “You know Anne, I went into the tire store yesterday, and I think I got a little turned on by the smell of rubber.” Ha.

3. I am not letting my husband sneak in. Not even a little. In the past, I could always run through my head a half-second-scenario of having a whoops! kid, and be OK with it in my heart of hearts. I know that’s not very sexy, but I am a cold logician even when I am doing really slutty stuff. Is more fun that way.

I am kind of devastated that I can’t be OK about that anymore. Not right now anyway. I get afraid to write these things because I think, what if one of my kids stumbles over this when they are old enough to understand? But then I realize they won’t be ‘old enough to understand’ until they have kids of their own. And then I think they won’t hold this against me at all. Hi kids! Mommy loves you!

4. The husband woke up in the middle of the night to tell me I am the Cloth Monkey. I have been crying all morning about it. I love that man.

… But my end of the Crazy was that the chicken suit had to hide my true identity.

Middle Sister: Do you really like your bridesmaid dress?

Me: Yes.

Middle: Really?

Me: Yes.

Middle: …. *sigh*
Middle: …. We could keep looking. I want you to feel really good about it. It’s just so much stress to try and get everything right with the dresses and the location and the cake and everything, and I want to know you are going to be happy.

Me: I am. But this is going to be your day. I would wear a chicken costume. In fact, I don’t want to even develop an opinion, because I want to be totally flexible for whatever you decide to do.

Middle: So you like it? Really? I know it’s a bridesmaid dress, but it’s going to look really good.

Me: Ok, now you’ve kind of got to shut up.

Middle: Ok. Seriously. It’s OK. I’m going to think about something else now.

Me: So I have to tell you something. I keep an anonymous blog on the internet. And now I’m going to be the kind of lame where I tell you that much and then I ask you not to ever speak of it again or try to find it.

Middle: What?

Me: I just didn’t like always telling you that I’m doing ‘nothing’ when you call. It felt like I was keeping this huge part of who I am away from you. So now you know. I am also doing that.

Middle: Really?

Me: Yeah. I started it because I’m really insecure about what people think of me and that if anyone knew what really goes through my head, they would think I’m lame or gross or something. So now I have this great loop-hole where I can risk saying what I think with no real world repercussions.

Middle: Cool. Anyone like you? On line, I mean.

Me: Oh yes. I’ve got them all fooled.

Middle: Well good then.
Middle (looks out the window)
Middle: (twitches)
Middle: (bites fingernail)

Me: What?

Middle: Aghhh! I’m sorry, but… I have to ask: Do you really like the dress?

Middle Sister is here for the Thanksgiving weekend. Here’s her first Middle-ism (so far):

Aunt: This dish you made is really good!
Middle: Thanks! The secret ingredient is ‘sneeze’.

After stuffing myself silly on Thursday, I got the honor of trying on approximately infinity bridesmaid dresses Friday. Hello, NASA? You can send a man to the moon, why can you not make a bridesmaid dress fabric that does not cling to the hollow of one’s belly button? After two kids, it’s the kind of Not Pretty that could deter people from eating wedding cake. No one wants to see a belly button indentation that bounces around like a slinky-down-stairs when I get up to dance.

In a mad fit of estrogen related tearfulness brought on by too much taffeta and sea-foam green, my mom and my sister told me this story they both knew**. I tell you, you haven’t lived until you are bawling over this story whilst wearing a feathered cocktail dress two sizes too small and watching your belly button jiggle in the three-way bridal mirror.

There once was a tribe of people who lived on a string of islands. In order to prevent interbreeding, the law was that a man and a woman had to have a certain degree of un-relatedness in order to marry (i.e., no first or second cousins).

As it was a small community, there came a time when the king had to marry and there was only one woman available.

She was from a far island, and the king had to travel by boat to visit her family. As custom dictated, the king met with the woman’s father before he saw the woman.

The woman’s father said that he was terribly embarrassed: His daughter was not very pretty or charming. She was not very smart and she did not keep herself up well. He was very sorry that the king was backed into a situation where he could not choose the most beautiful and charming woman of the whole tribe.

The traditional payment a groom made for a bride in this culture was some number of cattle. Standing inside a small abode that could have used the money of a king’s bridal payment, the father of this woman told the king he need not pay any cattle.

The king left without saying a word. He did not stop to meet the woman before he went back to his home island.

The people in the woman’s village began whispering that perhaps she was so lowly that a king would not even take her as a wife for free. Then, a single cow arrived to the woman’s family as offering. He had agreed to marry her.

The next day, another cow. The next day another. Each day, another cow arrived and the woman’s bridal payment slowly increased from marginal to average to impressive to unheard of.

As the days passed and the people around her began to re-evaluate the woman’s worth based on the ever increasing number of days each ending with another incredible addition to the woman’s bridal payment, the woman started to take care of her hair and stand up straight as she walked through town. Until the time that 100 cattle had come over 100 days and the woman could raise her head and accept that she would be marrying into royalty. She left her island to marry the king.

On her hometown village, she became known through legend as the raga-muffin girl who became queen. Years later, she returned, not in her queenly finery but in commoner’s clothing. No one from her own village recognized her as she had changed so much under the care of someone who valued her. At last, a very old villager came out to see the woman passing by. He said, ‘is this you? Are you the raga-muffin who became queen?”

And she replied, “No. I am the woman worth 100 head of cattle.”

** They did not recall the particulars and so I am just telling it to you the way they told me. If anyone has a correction or the source, I’ll be glad to add it.

ETA: bon left this info in comments:

Ahhh! You asked the right person! I’m sure that the tale starts back way before the Mormon retelling of it… but as many Polynesians are LDS, we have the best versions of this story. This is the story of “Johnny Lingo.” You can actually rent the dolled up, and longer version of Johnny Lingo at your local video store. Strangely, the LDS version is a bit sexier.

You can ask any Mormon friends to get you a version of the 70’s rendition of this sweeet tale. Personally I think it’s worth it just for the laugh you will get, and the awe you will inspire when you can correctly interject the following movie quote into a conversation with a Mormon… any Mormon. The quote…

“Mahanna, you ugly.”

OR, if you don’t know any LDs folks in your area… you can take a chance and contact the Mormon missionaries. They will be more than happy to fix you up with the classic Johnny Lingo, give you a Book of Mormon, teach you the “discussions” and/or baptise you. Just sayin’.

Directly we arrived at the pre-wedding party, all individuals who had spawned after the year 2001 were directed into the basement lair of the party house with their respective children (as has been a Flowers in the Attic tradition since… Oh, I dunno… The year 2001).

In deference to the hostess who corralled all children and their hapless parents to the basement, I will not utter the words “food poisoning” . Or even just plain “poisoning”. However, following a trip to the hor’dourves table downstairs, all those partaking in the salsa dip suddenly developed a raging case of the ‘flu’.

Our introduction to this rapidly passing intestinal distress commenced by the puking of a three-year-old boy. Who also apparently gorged himself on Cheetos. You’ve never really seen projectile vomiting until you’ve seen it in day-glo orange all over a white carpet.

And here’s a little fact of life I had not encountered until this past weekend, but with which you all may be familiar: When three year olds throw up? It apparently scares the beejeezus out of them. In our case, this resulted not in a tidy little pile of puke in the corner, but a screaming child running around and spewing vomit like a broken fire hydrant.

Also? Apparently kids who puke all over themselves and run in a circle of pukey panic? They are greasier than piglets dipped in Vaseline. Fun times, people. Fun, pukey times.

The second event of the night was when my husband and his brother got on board the puke train. Having no brothers myself, I am often baffled by the interaction of healthy, seemingly intelligent/sane males when they get together. So competitive! On death’s effing door, and they have to whip out their respective manhoods and a measuring tape.

My husband? Figured he won by immediately upon feeling the tweaking of stomach muscles, pulled up his big boy britches, poked his finger down his throat, and puked until he nearly coughed up a sphincter. Then went back to the hotel and slept the sleep of the righteous. Or the weak, depending on whose side you happen to be on.

The younger brother? Figured he won by refusing to puke. His mighty stomach acids would conquer those puny vomit inducing bacteria. Take that, food poison…. er, flu! Nothing escapes the digestive tract of Younger Brother once Younger Brother makes the executive decision to eat you!

The next morning, pink and peppy, my husband laughed his ass off that Younger Brother was green and weak from not being smart enough to expel the offending bacteria. Younger Brother laughed his ass of that my husband puked like a bulimic adolescent and was not strong enough to kick that bacteria in it’s green and frothy ass.

I don’t know who is the winner of that particular Darwin contest, but I know who the losers were – anyone who had to kiss those bastards the next morning. Bleh!

Am back! Weddings are nice and everything, but next time there is a family obligation that involves a plane trip and wearing fancy dresses, I may consider simply opting to spend my time in some sort of spanking machine instead.

This week’s trip would surely be worthy of turning the dial up to ‘pink belly‘ and just bending over. And here is where it gets all delicate re: talking about the in-laws. So I will simply say (for now, anyway) that I have known my husband since 1993. But I am mentally disadvantaged by my Protestant-Birth-Control-Happy-Minimal-Child-Rearing upbringing. I cannot remember the names of any of my husband’s relatives. It is beyond me. My brain is just not geared to family obligations that involve more than 5 adults. And even then? Whew! Did you see all those five people? Cheeze and rice! My head is spinning with all the people.

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My father in-law? Eight siblings. Over a twenty year time span. And those people? They have spouses and kids of their own. And they all get together, people. And being related? They all kinda look like each other. And after a while, all the names start rhyming or some such crap my brain just can’t get around. But c’mon people, it’s like… Fifty people. Fifty!

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Love them? I do. Recall each of their names or names of their children when I have an aunt Carolyn and a niece Caroline? I cannot.

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It is like some big Jeopardy! Fest. I fully expect Alex Trebek to whisper in my ear, “the woman you are talking to has a husband Jack and two kids. Name either the wife or one of the kids! Do-doo-do-doo…”

The answer is always: “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

And being the self confident and charming wife that I am to my husband? I am usually a big crap-load of social awkwardness until such a time that I can escape to the back bedroom and pretend I still smoke just so I can get away.

Tomorrow, we are going to my parent’s house for Thanksgiving. Would somebody mind giving me a purple nurple and a pass saying I’ve paid my dues and do not need to attend? Thanks!