Anne Nahm

Yeah, this whole post makes me feel like I’m in this Seinfeld Clip.  Enjoy!

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It is raining here, and we just got back from vacation, and my husband is working, so today I took the kids to the grocery store to pick up cake mix and sprinkles and such.  I figured I’d bake a cake, let them decorate it, and my birthday present would be (aside from a cake covered in Swedish fish, marshmallows, kid boogers and sprinkles) a half an hour on a rainy day in which the kids were entertaining themselves.  Also, since my hair is still falling out (postpartum) I picked up some drain-o for the bathroom sink.

You know where this is going, right?   I was with three monkey howler kids, looking tired, buying drain-o and birthday cake mix.  I’m not sure the situation warranted the extreme eyeball I got at the check out line.  Zomg, not taking kids out with poison birthday cake, check-out girl.  Also:  Not sure if I am more disturbed by highly raised Eyebrow of Concern, or the fact that they still let me make my purchases and go on my way.  Way to scorn and not protect.

Perhaps more on our superfantastic holiday vacation later, but the thing that sticks out most in my mind is that my husband went totally mad for taking pictures of me breastfeeding on this trip.

Perhaps it was because of the squeaky sofa bed we were sleeping on did not afford for any sex.  Well, truthfully, it afforded us sex the night we arrived in Anaheim, but the next morning I was a total no sex convert.  I mean, zealous, born-again, still-trying-to-pull-a-spring-out-of-my-ass style, despite my husband’s requests for debauchery.

Or maybe it is because I found myself nursing, standing up, in line to ride It’s a Small World on what turned out to be “A Very BUSY DAY” at Disneyland, at least according to the blinking traffic signs on the highway, and thus I found myself pretty much giving a breastfeeding demonstration to the wandering masses.

Anyway, for some reason, my husband thought it appropriate to shoot a Anne Nipple Photo Montage.  Am debating putting it up, but perhaps when I cut out my face, and the baby’s face, all you are left with is a nipple out on what turned out to be a rather cold day.  Oh, and some shocked looking tourists in line behind us.

But I’ve always kind of fantasized about joining the ranks of being naked on the internet, so now maybe it is my time to shine.  We’ll see.

Yesterday I was over at my parents’ house with my kids.  We were making popcorn ball snowmen for the holidays (I know, set your faces to ‘awww’ and fire at will).  The big kids were having a great time and the baby was completely Looney tunes angry that I would not let her dive head first into the pot of popcorn goo.  She is in that stage where she growls at everything.  ‘Happy’ sounds like a tiger cub purring.  ‘Pissed off’ is like she was hatched at Jurassic Park.  Yesterday, she was full on T-Rexing over goo denial.

Anyway, as I was taking the her away from the festivities, my mom directed me to read the Christmas letter she was getting ready to send out.  My parents are real AC/DC types who won’t send any cards for three years in a row, and then they’ll send out handmade cards with pictures and a two-page-letter insert that tells every possible detail about anything that has happened to everyone in our family.  I’m not even kidding.  In the 2006 Christmas card, my mom told approximately 200 of her nearest and dearest that I got an episiotomy in January.

But!  My parents don’t like to embarrass me on purpose (I’m pretty sure, anyway) they just have boundaries different from mine.  And so I was kind of shocked yesterday to get down to the paragraph about me and see my dad had bragged that (among my other awesome yearly accomplishments) I was still keeping up a blog.

I stood there in the smell of popcorn with Li’ll Growler squirming in my arms, and I saw all the stuffed envelopes on the table, and I had to sit down.  Now, my dad knows I have a blog, but he doesn’t know how to find it, and he’s never shown any interest in the contents.  But the truth is that from time to time I do tell him or my mom about it.  Enough for him to know it is a BIG ASSED SECRET anyway.

And so I turned to him and said, “Dad, you wrote in this letter about my blog.”  I didn’t know whether or not I was allowed to ask him to reprint 200 papers.  And I guess I also assumed some had already gone out.

My dad looked at me and said, “Is there anything else you want me to take out?  I could take out everything and no one would know anything about you at all.”  and went out to work in the garage.  Then my mom came over and said it would be no problem to reprint the letters and no cards had gone out.

It got me thinking about secrets, and how they are a form of control over another person.  I was pretty much trying to control what came out of my dad’s mouth. But it was either tell him or not tell him about my blog, and I wanted my dad to know about me.  Since my parents’ boundaries are so blurry, and my husband likes his boundaries nice and defined, I frequently get caught in this awkward place, unsure of what is an appropriate privacy or openness or secrecy.

My dad came back in about a half an hour later.  I said, “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

He shrugged and said, “one day you are going to be a famous writer, and then everyone will find out anyway.”  He said it with such a strange mix of emotions on his face.  Like he was so proud of me that he couldn’t understand why I would try and hide part of myself, and so he was also disappointed in me at the same time.

Anyway, I almost got outed from the blog closet by my own dad.

As an aside, I have been thinking about getting a job next year, and what that will mean for keeping or ending this blog.

I have mostly thought of this blog as a foolish endeavor, something likely to come back and bite me in the ass in a million different realized and unrealized ways.  A month ago, I was pretty sure I was going to deep six this place when I put my professional hat back on.  But the way my dad looked at me yesterday, like he was a little ashamed that I was so embarrassed of this part of myself, that I have to hide and deceive and not be true to the whole of who I am.  I don’t know.  I would not be a writer at all if not for this blog, but to accept the person I am here into the person I am in real life seems like it can only bring bad things and ridicule.   Plus, I’m guessing most people would fire my ass from the workplace if they read this and realized I was their employee.

I don’t expect you to fix this problem for me, natch.  I’m thinking out loud is all.  Certainly, if you are spelunking with me this far into my navel, you are probably escaping into your computer from your own relatives for the holidays.  I will be leaving for the holidays on Monday, so if I’m not responsive, it’s not because I’ve gone nuts.  I’ve just gone to Disneyland.

He wants your love, love, love.

It’s been raining a lot around here.  When the clouds broke, Baby J used this spider web as a hammock, kicked back, and threw up some wicked pretty rainbows.

I asked him, since he was in the miracle making mood, could he possibly make me un-see my mom singing For Your Entertainment yesterday?  Because so much Do. Not. Want.