My stepmom usually comes over early on Monday mornings and helps me out with my girls. She holds Pringles while I drag Viva through her morning routine of getting dressed, eating, and brushing her teeth. Sometimes Stepmom will take over the morning routine and I’ll snuggle the baby. At the end of it all, Stepmom shuffles Viva out the door and drives her to day care and I collapse in my favorite chair with a fat baby and a big sigh of contentment.
This Monday, I cancelled on Stepmom because Viva had a rough night of sleep due to coughing and I didn’t want to force her out of bed early. Naturally she woke up at 7:00 anyway, but I was happy to have the morning to lounge with her and watch “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” “Hearth’s Eve” no fewer than three times in a row.
My morning began with coffee and whining: “I wanna watch ‘My Little Pony.’ The one where they get really cold.”
In this thrilling episode, the Earth Ponies, Unicorns, and Pegasi perform a play about their origins. Therein, we meet these creatures who fly around in the clouds feeding on hatred and anger.
“What are they called again, honey?” I tease. “Winnebagos? Wilburs? Windsmackers?”
“WINDAGOES, MOM!” She is only 32 months old, but she’s perfecting the “you are such a bleedin’ idjit” tone.
“Whatsawhoseits?”
“Mom, do unicorns fart?” she grins, then answers her own question. “Nooooo, unicorns don’t fart! They don’t have butts!” I don’t know if this is true. I’d have to ask Kelle Hampton, unicorn expert. I’m pretty sure unicorns fart either glitter or confetti.
Pringles just giggles at Viva and grabs handfuls of her curls every time Viva gets close enough.
It was around 9:15 when I finally belted both kids into my new (to me) Nissan Versa hatchback and headed to day care with track 12 of “Snacktime” by the Barenaked Ladies playing. That day, we only got to listen to track 12 over and over. Viva is big on repetition in entertainment right now.
After a successful drop-off, I stopped at my local supermarket for milk (and yes, gummy bears and ice cream too. There. You got it out of me. Happy?). I decided to allow myself one morning a week to eat my favorite junk food and then be good the rest of the week.
Driving up the hill to my house, I always slow at the intersection where there is no stop sign. Once I see there is no oncoming traffic, I speed up to my driveway a block from the corner. My rented home is on a big corner lot that is quite unkempt because the landlord doesn’t pay for a gardener. As a result, people often throw trash in our yard or, even more annoying, cigarette butts. Sometimes teenagers loiter and make-out there, but not very often. Once I chased away a couple of boys sharing a bong in their car on a Tuesday morning. If you have to get stoned at 9 in the morning, what the hell do you do to RELAX at the end of the day?
As I slowed for the uncontrolled intersection, I noticed two women sitting on the corner in front of my hill. They were smoking cigarettes and chatting happily to each other. They had long dark hair, hoodies, jeans and sunglasses. The uniform of the young. I felt annoyed they were there. Those cigarette butts will end up in my yard, I thought irritably.
I enter my house through the kitchen door at the side because the driveway is closer to that door. My front steps go down a hill approximately 20 yards to the street below. Hedges and trees obscure the view so that a person standing on the sidewalk cannot see my house and I cannot see a person standing on my sidewalk.
With Pringles on my hip, I walked down the winding front stairs and peered around the hedge. The women were still there, smoking and chatting.
“You ladies waiting for someone?” I asked. Both turned slightly and looked at me briefly. Both said “Yeah.”
The one on the right smiled pleasantly and said “Our car broke down up there,” gestured vaguely,”we’re just waiting.”
“Okay,” I replied equally pleasantly. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Thanks,” one sounded annoyed.
“Sorry,” the other sounded embarrassed.
Back in my house, I realized I’d left the milk in my trunk, so Pringles and I went out the back door to the car again. I looked up the street to see if I saw the broken down car. I didn’t.
And then it hit me.
Somebody ordered a bunch of merchandise with fraudulent accounts opened in Odie’s name when his identity was stolen last week. There are strangers sitting in front of my house. It is 10:30, about the time FedEx usually shows up.
I called the police, expecting the dispatcher to say there was nothing she could do, but they actually said they’d send someone right away. While I waited, I kicked myself internally. Why did I go out there and tip them off? That was stupid. I should have been more suspicious. Now these perps know my face and that I have a young baby. Nice.
I couldn’t see much from my house, but I did see a police car cruise slowly up and down the street. Pringles was overdue for a nap, so I wrapped her up and nursed her, then walked her around, peeking out the window from time to time. I saw a couple more cars and about four officers standing in the street chatting. I love living in a nice town where the police are not very busy so when you call for them, they ALL come.
Damn it! I tipped them off and they got away! So stupid! I didn’t even want my ice cream anymore I was so upset with myself.
That, my friends, is pretty upset. It was Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Fudge Caramel Swirl. I have to be quite out of sorts to be thrown off my binge.
Pringles was sleeping peacefully in her swing when a burly officer in body armor showed up at my front door. He held open his notebook and showed me a FedEx tracking number.
“This is the package they were going to steal,” he announced.
“You caught them!” I actually squealed. I admit that now.
“YOU caught them,” he chuckled. “Nice work.”
The police arrested two females, one with the tracking number on her, neither with I.D. or car keys or phones. Someone had dropped them off to pick up the merchandise. Probably boyfriends. Girls can be so stupid. I’ll bet they won’t give up the real perpetrators of this crime. They’ll take the grand larceny charge, do their time, and probably be rewarded with some stolen jewelry for their loyalty.
Don’t give me that “it was just petty larceny” shit. You get me.
I wish I could say I was sleeping easier. It’s a total cliché, but I feel violated. Strangers have my address, phone number, my husband’s social security number. They have seen my face and know I have at least one young child. These people tried to steal from me. They were at my home. It’s a terrible, sick, creepy, furious, scared feeling.
Nothing funny about it.
And the bitches didn’t have my popcorn maker.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Rhymes with Repressed
Kelle Hampton enjoys the small things, unless the small thing is the word “breast.” She wrote that on her blog. I’m not making it up. Her need to buy a breast pump because she was away from her nursling led to what she termed an uncomfortable discussion about her cans and how much milk they do or don’t make.
I’m glad that she has nursed Nella for two years. Bravo! All children benefit from breastfeeding and I imagine it’s even more important for special needs children to get all the mommy goodness they can. I don’t get her sudden squeamishness, though. She has even shown pictures of herself nursing and made reference to it many times. So why the icky wiggles over a little titty?
In a most Victorian manner, Ms. Hampton finds the word “breast” oogie. Maybe she would prefer “white meat.” Whatever she chooses to call her dirty pillows, I wish she wouldn’t help perpetuate the idea that discussing breastfeeding is unseemly. Additionally, she admitted to pumping her girl spheres in a public bathroom. I would like us nursing mothers to collectively refuse to go anywhere near a toilet in order to pump or nurse. Toilets are for urinating, defecating, vomiting, and if you’re a Hollywood starlet, snorting coke.
Sunday I was at the Aquarium of the Pacific and I had to nurse. We were waiting out front for our friends with the discount passes, and I sat on a concrete bench next to a large group of differently-abled adults in wheelchairs. Using a technique I saw on a YouTube video, I tucked my daughter into a fold of my Moby Wrap, turned her sideways, whipped out a mammary tip, and fed my child.
Just a quick digression: I have decided that I am in favor of the Oxford Comma, so I will be using it henceforth.
It wasn’t so long ago that people like the ones in wheelchairs beside me were hidden away from public view because of shame and discomfort on the part of the general public. There is still strong sentiment from non-lactating people that chestglobes should be similarly hidden away, lest anyone be made uncomfortable.
Even some mothers who give suck to babes will disdain moms like me who feel perfectly entitled to pull out a boobie whenever my kid needs it, whether I’m at home, in a restaurant, in my car, at the park, at Disneyland, or waiting outside of the Aquarium of the Pacific. More modest women will say they cover up their gazongas in public. My response to that is, why should I? To make you more comfortable? Why are you uncomfortable? You’ll see more of Kim Kardashian’s sweater meat on the cover of US Weekly than you will of mine while I feed my baby. She won’t tolerate a blanket over her head, and who can blame her? And I will not go sit on a toilet or even near one so that strangers don’t have to feel uncomfortable.
I breastfed three month-old Viva in the restroom of the Museum of Modern Art here in L.A. because I didn’t want to embarrass my mother-in-law and her husband. Even Odie was a bit squeamish of stray areola in those early days. It was a terrible experience that involved most of my senses, and I vowed never to put us through it again.
I make an effort. I don’t seek to make anyone uncomfortable. All through my twenties people wanted a glimpse of my melons, and now that I have need to bare them, nobody’s interested. Still, I have some modesty. I don’t just flop out a knocker, shoot out a practice squirt, and smoosh a baby onto it. A person would have to try hard to get a glimpse of my nipple in the split second it’s bare to the world before Pringles covers it with her mouth then conceals it with her head. The problem is that people see me and know that’s what I’m doing, even though they don’t see my udder. It stirs up all of their institutionalized and cultural disgust for breastfeeding, despite the fact that they don’t actually see anything.
Why don’t I just pump milk and give Pringles a bottle in public? Why should I? Again with the comfort of strangers? Pumping is difficult. I only ever do it when I need relief from engorgement. Ms. Hampton was talking around this very thing when she wrote her post about her dislike of the word breast. She needed a breast pump because she was engorged. Her umlauts were uncomfortably full of milk that her body in all its wisdom was accustomed to feeding to her daughter. But, ew! The woman who isn’t allowed to cuss on her own blog because of her daddy gets “uncomfortable” writing about how much milk she produces for infrequent feeding of her toddler. Her level of “ew, ew, ew!” makes one think she were talking about vaginal discharge or anal seepage. Nursing is not an elimination function like pissing or crapping. It isn’t drainage like pus. Breast milk is not santorum.
Another reason it’s difficult for me to pump is that Viva insists on helping. And she sucks at it. Horrible, unintended pun and it stays.
Naturally, people who follow a blog are fans of the blog, so no one criticises KH about her dislike of “the word rhymes-with-detest.” Many of them agree and think it is hilarious that she cannot discuss what comes out of her nipples without blushing for shame. “Hey, I too despise my own body! High five!”
Without overtly criticising lactivists, she pokes fun at the women who work in the store where she bought her breast pump. According to her, when you tell baby boob sucker enthusiasts you are going to discard your pumped milk, they all reach for their smelling salts.
When are we just going to get over this already? They’re just boobs. In France, they’re featured in shampoo commercials. Here in America, we have restaurant chains named after them where you can get the best chicken wings (ironically, they do not make them out of breast meat). The waitresses will have those hooters popping out the top of their tank tops, but put a baby’s face on one and it’s offensive.
Let’s do it. Let’s stop being ashamed of the words that describe the bodies Dove soap ads tell us we’re supposed to be so proud of.
There is nothing wrong with making milk. Cows do it. Goats do it. I’m pretty sure even unicorns do it.
http://youtu.be/rKO_7uMT5ko
(I stand corrected. Unicorns bottle feed -fast forward to 3:48)
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