Keeping A-Breast of Things

Over the past 10 years since the "upgrade" of airport security, I have accidentally passed through those security checks with all sorts of liquids and gels that well exceeded the 3-oz limit. My carry-on luggage has had razors, nail clippers, pocket knives and hand cuffs. (Don't judge me!) I've carried marijuana, a couple of ecstasy pills and a bag of mushrooms with me to Europe (again with the judging... I was wild and crazy then).... Nothing, not a second glance at all. ,

For what ever reason,though, a 1-liter, unopened bottle of water seems to be an issue.


Yesterday I flew from Los Angeles to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Entebbe, Uganda with a manual breast pump in carry-on. I sent my back pack down two conveyer belts to be checked and they said nothing... Now, a breast pump is a pretty odd looking thing in person. Stick it in a plastic bag, into a backpack and send it through the x-ray machine and it should set off someone's alarm. But no... again, though, that 1-liter, unopened bottle of water that I had just paid $2.75 for in the airport store, that I took out and showed them, is a huge threat!!! Go figure.


Point is, their job is not to catch the things we showed them... that's easy. Their job is to find that 10-oz bottle of body spray I didn't want them to take from me. Or maybe those illicit drugs I was carrying. If a crazy-looking contraption like a breast pump doesn't catch their attention, then why should we even bother with the TSA?
[This post was written in October 2011. Spawn was 4 months old]

How Nice to Meet You Again

So, this here MILF has been the worst at keeping up this blog. We are going on two years... I am so sorry. There have been a whole lot of wonderful developments.

Let's see... first with the updates...

1) Had that baby. A girl- YES!- We agreed on a name that I have loved forever, kept the middle name theme I started with SnotFace, no baptism or anything religion oriented. She is now 18 months old and for this blog, I am calling her Spawn.... Trust me it is better than Brat, Bull or anything else I often want to call her. This child is difficult.

2) SnotFace- I'm not even sure I can call her that anymore- My goodness, how she has grown and matured. She is now officially taller than me- only by a 1/4 of an inch- and prancing around with the awesome pair of tits she stole from me while nursing. She will start high school next year and that is frightening. She LOVES her sister and is the biggest help and the best sport about the amount of attention Spawn requires.

3) San Fransisco- After a few years of only getting contract work, he has finally landed a full time position at a media company. He was quite lucky to be able to work from home the first year of Spawn's life. Fatherhood has made a profound effect on him. I will touch on that more later.

4) Me- So, yeah... I have made leaps and bounds in my performance art career, unfortunately that is not as monetarily lucrative as one would hope. Tho, that is not really a surprise. As far as journalism, not much. I have been home with-child- in both ways- and now I am so far out of school that I feel I must go back. I have been making strides to open my own studio space and really owning the woman I am and how I want to apply it in my life.

This is actually causing a bit of upheaval in this MILF's life and relationships. I was going to change the "description" part of this blog because, well, I am not exactly a single mother anymore.

So those are the abridged updates for the fam. I will post more because I need to write and toddlers are pretty interesting. As are teens and it has been quite the adventure parenting with someone when i am so dang use to parenting on my own.

Also. I apparently have a few backed up draft entries. I guess I will finish and post those soon.

What's in a Name?

Everything if you ask me. It’s your identity, your personality, your confidence, your future. Some people don’t take it quite as seriously as I do; it’s just about having a cute name or the name you always loved. Sometimes, tho when you look at those names you find out that it means something awful.

In the quest for our child’s name, San Francisco and I found out that Brendan… as in Brendon Fraiser the cute actor…. means ‘smelly hair’ !!!! Can you believe that? Not that we were thinking about naming our kid Brendan, way to common for my taste, but still. There are a bunch of kids running around named Smelly Hair. The same thing with Trina…. Yes it’s a variation on Katrina, but in French ‘la trine’ is the toilet and that’s just too close for comfort.

I must say, naming Snot Face was so much easier. I didn’t really have to consult AND agree with anyone. My family had their input, but it was all my decision. I tend to like less traditional names, but strong and full of meaning. A name that will stand out in a stack of 100 resumes from various Johns, Julies, Davids and Dianas, but not quite as crazy as celebrity choices like Rumor or Apple.

San Francisco, however, likes the Johns and Dianas. Then there’s the input from friends and family. This gets hilarious, but is good to have. At one point I was considering Gaia for a girl (means earth in Greek). I think it’s gorgeous. My girlfriend is Samoan and she informed me that it sounds like the Samoan word for ‘shitty’. Taking into consideration that I live and interact with a lot of Samoans, I decided I’d better not use this one. Which makes me sad, but it’s best.

The flipside is that another rather outspoken girlfriend seems to have an aversion to ‘Ls’ and ‘Ss’ in boy’s names, she thinks it sounds weak. Well, all our choices for boys contain at least one or both of these letters, but she is set on getting me and San Francisco to move to her way of thinking…. Ain’t gonna happen! This short list was too hard for us to come up with.

My favorite family input came before we really started looking at names, from San Francisco’s mom during her visit. We were discussing types of names and where I got Snot Face’s, what about biblical?... heck no… how about my brother’s name… no, I don’t like naming after people….

“Really,” she said, “but if it was a boy, you would name it after his father, right?”
“No, Mamma Z, I would not.”

“Well, why not?” she got indignant, “I knew all along what his name was gonna be. What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing is wrong with it, Mamma Z,” and I repeated, “I just don’t like naming after people, it’s not original. Plus, it would get confusing around here.”

“I just don’t know what’s wrong with it? I think it’s a perfect name.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I had to get out of it, and then I thought... San Francisco has a dad and I piped in, “but what was wrong with Jerry?”

Oh Good God

So San Francisco’s mother was visiting and the topic of our getting hitched came up, as it has almost every time we announce the news of Baby.

“So you guys are never planning on getting married?” She says.

“I wouldn’t say never, but let’s just get through having this baby.”

“But the baby needs both parents.”

I remind her that Baby has both parents, as San Francisco and I have been living together for a year and a half, been together for going on four years and don’t plan on breaking up anytime soon.

“But if something happens,” she hesitates, “if he messes up, what’s to keep you from just taking the baby and leaving.”

“Well,” should I or shouldn’t I… I should, “He has messed up plenty all ready and I’m still here. If he messes up again a marriage certificate is not going to stop me from leaving….. “

I pause.

“In fact, if we were married and he messed up, I would probably be more likely to leave.”

“Uh huh….”

She pauses.

“Well what about what God says?” She asks.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not religious. I just don’t have one. I was raised Christian, and as an adult, I’ve decided that it just doesn’t work for me. I’ll spare you all the rest of just how I feel because, truly, I can go on and on and get more technical, but it won’t be pleasant and I’ve learned that this topic makes people quite uncomfortable. Because of this, ever since I met San Francisco’s mother two and a half years ago, I’ve been instructed to simply say ‘no I don’t belong to a church.’ So how am I supposed to get out of this one?

Logic is my friend… yes?

“Plenty of people get married who DON’T believe in god. I don’t think we should take such a step because someone says that’s what god wants us to do.”

“Uh huh.” She looks back at her book.

Whew, that was close. I’ve begun to break a bit of a sweat…. Oh wait… No, no logic is not my friend.

A couple minutes go by and she breaks in with….

“Well, are you guys going to baptize the baby?”

WHOOOOAAAAA!!!! What happened to marriage?!?!?!? I search my brain for a clever answer.

“Baptize, I thought you guys were Catholic.” She gives look that just shows what I know, “You know, we haven’t talked about it.”

“Well do you believe in God?”

Oh, shit! Not the direct question. Anyone who knows me also knows that if you ask me a direct question I answer with the direct truth. It’s like someone cast a “Liar Liar” spell on me. I squirm in my chair…. Try to hold it back …. Nope, can’t do it…. Deep sigh.....

“No, I don’t.”

Now this, of course, opens up a whole can of ‘well I don’t know where he turned from God’….. “I gave him a good Catholic education’….. All to me implying that I’m some sort of harlot who is pushing San Francisco into the depths of hell.

Well, not so much. I tried to assure her that I haven’t swayed her poor unwitting son away from the lord god, that he knows how I feel, and I know how he feels, and told her that if she has any concerns over her son’s soul, she should simply talk to him.

The exchange between San Francisco and I has focused on a different issue. …. Alliance.

New Beginnings

Good lord how did I end up getting into this one?

Here I am, finally graduated with my BA. SnotFace is now in middle school. San Fransisco found us a beautiful 2-bedroom place in a fantastic neighborhood... and.... I'm pregnant.

I thought I was half way done. In the clear. The hard part where they need you there all the time was just ending and I could focus more on me and my goals as a person... Not just as mom.

In a way it's perfect timing. SnotFace can totally help. I just turned 31. San Fransisco can finally learn that parenting is not as straight forward as he seems to think.

I know, I know... the whole "a mom is the greatest thing, your greatest accomplishment" just doesn't do it for me.

Rib It!

The announcement of the release of Princess and the Frog was met with much excitement in my home. My daughter was excited for the first Disney Princess feature since 1998’s Mulan. (Though, I argue Mulan was not a princess. Therefore the last true princess film was Pocahantas, in 1995.) She was born in 1999, so we loved the idea that for the first time we would get o see a Disney Princess film together on the big screen. To top it all off, this princess would be black, and to my little girl, who has lately been finding much pride in her African American ancestry… this was gonna be good!

Before going to see it, I did some research to mentally prepare for any upsets. I wanted to make sure here wasn’t anything that would really tick me off or that I would have to rectify for my daughter. Stereotypes are one thing; they are almost endearing in a cartoon character. (Do be prepared, this movie is chock full of them. My favorite is the Cajun firefly Raymone.)

What I found was the African American community all up in arms, not so much about the stereotypes, but everything else, from the original name of the heroine (Maddy, which was changed to Tiana) to the prince’s ambiguous ethnicity, was ticking them off. The Disney animators were making concessions left and right in order to get it right.

Rumor has it that the animators even had a black model come in and act out the scenes to capture the true movements of a black woman. They didn’t want the black women to go “Oh, she’s not really a black princess. They just painted her brown; she looks like every other princess.”
It could and probably would happen; it’s just how black folks are.

With all that huffing and puffing, it amazed me that no one mentioned the most obvious problem with this film. Much of the focus is that the prince isn’t black, because he has an Indian name and a Brazilian accent. But, I found something worse.
Set in New Orleans during the 1920s Jazz Era, Tiana is not a princess, but a workaholic waitress set on realizing her dead father’s dream of owning a restaurant. She saves every penny she can and works two jobs while her best friend, the daughter of the wealthy mayor, frolics around being cute.

The buzz around town is the arrival of Prince Naveen of the fictional Maldonia. He has been cut off by his royal parents for his lazy and womanizing ways. He has to settle down and become productive before his family will endow him with his inheritance. Guided by his affinity to jazz music, he ends up in New Orleans just in time for Mardi gras. Soon after his arrival he meets up with Shadow Man, a voodoo practioner, and gets himself turned into a frog.

Also, just in time for the celebrations, Tiana earns enough money to buy the building for her restaurant. This means she gets to go to the masquerade ball at her best friend’s mansion, where Prince Naveen will also attend. At the celebration, the poor girl is all dressed up when the realtors tell her she has been out bid for the property.

This is when she meets the little green version of Prince Naveen and he coaxes her into kissing him which turns her into a frog. This is where their adventure begins. They end up in the bayou, pick up a couple of sidekicks and try to find the old voodoo witch doctor Mama Odie so she can turn then back into humans.

All frivolous and trivial descriptions of ethnicity aside, my concern lies with the type of prince the black girl got. The other princesses have princes who go through hell and high water for them. They battle dragons, slay ogres and outsmart witches just to get their woman. This Prince Naveen does nothing. Tiana gets them out of trouble, Tiana makes them food and Tiana rows them through the bayou to Mama Odie.

All Prince Naveen does is decide, ‘Hey this chick is kinda hot. She’s smart and she does everything. I think I like her.’ Somehow, she falls for it!?!?

Forget that she doesn’t get a “black prince,” this cartoon upholds old Restoration Period themes where the black women are depicted as hardworking as well as beautiful, while their male counterparts are incompetent. This image was a tool used to exploit black women during that time and is still prevalent in the black community. Too many strong black women have stuck it out with no-good black men, and for what? A handsome face?

What’s more, Tiana works her butt off to earn the money for her restaurant and somehow she still needs some prince’s lazy behind in order to get it. I worry about the self esteem of little black girls around the nation who now have implanted in the back of their minds that their prince shouldn’t fight for them because she’s just a little black girl.

IT’S RAINING, IT’S POURING

It’s been really, really pouring lately here in SoCal. I’m sure it could be much worse, I could live on the east coast, but the rain is bad enough for me. I don’t like rain unless I can sit at home bundled up with a book in front of the fireplace. But, I’m a mom, a student and I still have to work, so I find myself sloshing through the rain far more often than I want.

Snot Face, however, is different. Tuesday morning it sounded like the rain was going to break my window in. I woke San Francisco and asked “if I take her to school will you pick her up?”

“Yes.”

When I opened my bedroom door there was Snot Face in the hallway decked in her blue plastic parka and a smile on her face.

“K, I love you see you later.” She said.

“Hold up missy, I’m taking you to school today.”

“But I want to ride my bike,” she whined. “I like the rain.”

“It’s pouring out there,” I argued.

She stomped, she pouted, she tried to talk back. It was cold and wet outside and I sure didn’t want to go out. I thought about giving in…Why lose the 15 minutes I had left to stay snuggled in bed?

I shook it off and put on my Uggs. It was too cold to have her out there, the rain was too ferocious and I was worried that her long parka would get caught in the spokes of her bike and that she’d end up face first in some gigantic puddle along the way. So I held firm…. And the ungrateful little thing wouldn’t even give me a kiss goodbye as she got out of the car.