You Should Be
How’s everybody enjoying their holiday season? Already had a few teary fights and regrets? Having a lot of life-altering meditations and heart-to-hearts? Thinking about your life and what has happened to it? Determined to be able to see your feet again by this time next year? I hear ya, friend. I lift my non-alcoholic beer to you in solidarity.
I’m entering the final stretch of a very long period of time that has been my Visibly Pregnant season. It is exhausting — not just because of how pregnant I am — but because it has brought out in full force the You Should Be’s.
How I Might Have Just Become the Newest Urban Legend
[AUDIO NOTE: I performed this piece this past weekend at Anna David's True Tales of Lust and Love (also starring Melissa Villasenor, Morgan Walsh, and Claire Titelman.) I highly recommend listening to this tale in all its mortifying glory -- it's better with the sound of an audience screech-laughing in horror. Here's the link to the recording of the show. (On iTunes here in the 11/12 show.) I'm the third story.]
[WARNING: This story is not for the squeamish.]
So I’m super pregnant. And with that comes all these horrible things. Like, I can’t feel my fingertips – haven’t been able to in weeks. It’s carpal tunnel, it apparently happens to pregnant women, and it’s shitty. My gums bleed when I brush my teeth, I’ve lost all the hair on my arms, I am down to one position in bed where I can sleep without my legs going numb, I’ve got this cold I’m not allowed to take anything for other than hot baths and pity parties, and there’s a parasite that lives inside of me that absorbs all of my nutrients. Or as my El Salvadorian housekeeper likes to say: “Your baby is stealing your beauty.”
Some Things About Myself That I Need To Work On
* When I’m in a public restroom and a lady comes out of the stall, I really want to stop saying “Thank you” to her when I pass her on my way in. And I mean, I really thank her in a genuine way, every time. There is no need for this thank you. It’s not like I was about to pee my pants. If anything, all it does is draw attention to the fact that I’m about to use the toilet she just finished using. I will be in her “pee space,” as the mother of an ex-boyfriend of mine used to say when she’d scold him for using the bathroom before I did.
That has also stayed in my head forever, so I will now share it with you. She said when boys pee they stand in front of the toilet, and there’s a “stream of pee space” that is created that is exactly where my head goes when I sit down to pee right after him.
* I need to work on not being so obsessed with the pee space.
The day I have to finally admit that I might be rapidly turning into Hoda.
I’ve mentioned before, but probably not on pamie.com, that I watch Kathie Lee and Hoda most mornings. That’s not exactly true — I have it on while I’m working. Depending on which part of the house I choose to work from that day (couch if I’m feeling frustrated, desk if I’m feeling self-punishey), I will let the TV do its thing from The Today Show all the way to that silly fourth hour of booze and constant chit-chattering. It makes me feel like I’m at an office, stuck in a corporate job I can’t stand, and I’ve got Kathie Lee and Hoda at the next cube going on and on and on about a movie one liked that the other didn’t that starred an actor whose name they can’t remember, or they’re ranting about a young starlet whose behavior they don’t understand, or sometimes — unfortunately — Kathie Lee’s talking about her sex life with her husband. But they really do make me feel better about my drinking, as most days I wait until at least after two to drink as much as these two sloshy ladies
These Boots Are Made for Mocking
Dear Stacy:
UPDATE.
These boots you helped me find, both are going back.
The Frye “banana” is really more of a tan, and might work if I popped it with a crazy red or that blue you were coveting. That being said, it fits like a galosh, and is really pooling around my ankles. The Madewell boots are extremely tight at the top of my calf, making me look like I’ve got muffin top legs, and pool so much around the ankles I appear to be melting.
sadness. diving back in.
-p
maintenance
Yesterday I made a list of people I needed to call to schedule appointments. At the top of the list: allergist. Mom called yesterday morning and said, “Have you seen the wheat doctor yet? I really want you to be able to eat bread again.” I think the next time I come to town, she’d like to be able to serve “normal food” again. It’s very difficult to eat like a proper Polish girl without pierogies. Also, I don’t like life as much without pierogies.
jacked.
I’m covered in bruises.
Not little tiny ones, but the kind where people grab my wrist and go, “Oh, my God. What happened to you?” It started with just a couple, but now there’s a rather large one on the inside of my left elbow that’s getting uglier every day, and one on top of my left forearm that actually hurts. This morning stee pointed out little ones along the back of my left arm. There’s a scratch on the inside of my right arm. I don’t know where it came from.
morning.
Goooood morning.
I’m early for a meeting, and there’s wireless here. Yesterday I had a 9:00 meeting on the other side of town, which meant I left at 7:30 and still was a few minutes late. This morning I have an 8:00 meeting, so I left the house at 6:30.
I’m here almost a full hour early.
I promise I’m not dead.
I’ve just been incredibly busy.
I could write about my current work schedule, and the different jobs I’m juggling concurrently in books, television and film, and have a deep discussion about trying to have it all in a town where you’re never done trying to have it all while trying to keep some semblance of a personal life intact.
well, it’s another entry about my boobs.
Just got back from seeing Inside Man, or The Inside Man, or whatever it is. It doesn’t matter. I wanted to see it because Clive Owen is amazing, and if the entire movie was him doing that first monologue straight to the camera I would have been much more entertained.
Consequently, about half an hour into the movie I started thinking about writing this entry.
There’s a scene that’s in the trailer, so I’m not spoiling anything, where the bad guys make everybody in the bank strip to their underwear. This taps into something I’ve never talked about here, mostly because it hasn’t come up. I recently confessed my this confession to a co-worker, and while he did give me the, “Every day I learn something weirder about you” look, he didn’t suggest I keep this neurotic fun fact to myself, so I’ll blame all of this on him.
The scene confirmed my fear, and let me know that it was a perfectly normal, rational thought to have each morning.
When I get dressed, I always think, “Is this what I want to be seen in when the bad guys bust into the building and force us to strip down to our underwear?”
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