Pregnancy Dreams

I'm definitely someone who has always been a wacky dreamer.  In fact, one of my earliest and most bizarre dreams I can recall was when I was around twelve or thirteen years old.  Our old black lab, Tar, was on her last leg.  She had gone blind and deaf and would stumble through the house and fall down on the reg… it was terribly depressing to watch.  We knew doing the right thing meant her days were numbered.  This was also my first experience with imminent death, and it felt like a rock in my stomach.  I loved my Tar baby (you can blame my parents for any tone of racism here) and I didn't want to let her go, but the end was lurking in nearby shadows - a fact I couldn't escape, not even in my sleep…

I closed my eyes, desperately seeking refuge from the reality that I was about to lose my best friend, when I saw him - my father, walking into the laundry room with a meat cleaver and a white apron.  Instinctively I knew what was happening behind the locked door: he was "putting Tar to sleep"!  I pounded on the door, sobbing hysterically, and when he finally opened it, I saw his white apron was covered in blood, and I knew it was too late.  Tar was gone.  He silently pushed past me, leaving the horror of killing my dog behind him.  And there in front of me, I saw her: all chopped and ground up in a bunch of plastic bags.  He had made hamburger patties out of her.

So this is the mind I'm dealing with.  Fast forward to now: I'm three and one-half months pregnant, and things on the 'ol dream front are getting out of control.  In my defense, I'm not entirely responsible for the oddity of my dreams in my current state.  Supposedly, raging hormones are to blame.  And even though I'm not very far along - barely into my second trimester - the hormone fuel for my dream machine is in full effect.  While I can't remember what I've dreamt every single night, I started keeping track of the most vivid ones, of which I decided to share a short sampling, below:

Buzzfeed.com

- I was with Shree and Jen, and we were getting ready to go out for a night on the town!  First stop: Tom Cruise's house.  Suri was having a birthday party and we were going to crash it.  Somehow Shree knew the password, so we just cruised by (see what I did there?) the guard at the gate.  The lot was massive.  The party was in full swing in the backyard - kids and adults, a bouncy house and pool - the whole kit and caboodle.  Shree and Jen disappeared to God knows where, and I was just meandering poolside.  Suddenly, I noticed a baby that had slipped into the deep end and was sinking towards the bottom.  I quickly grabbed him by his feet, pulled him out of the water, and hit his back until he coughed out the water and started breathing again.  I called out to the crowd for his parents, but no one claimed him.  So I took him home as a party favor.

- I was trying to rob a house with my mom and brother.  Also, I was thirteen again.

- I was at my parents house, and someone was trying to murder us.  I didn't know who the killer was, but I knew he was upstairs.  Next thing I know, I'm in the garage, and I've captured the killer.  Only, he was a miniature person, no bigger than a baby doll.  I knew I needed to kill him, so I asked my brother to hand me an axe so I could chop off his head.  I set the murder doll on the driveway and pulled his head from his body, revealing a spinal column that looked more like an umbilical cord.  Then I took the axe and started hacking through the cord.  It turned into a fleshy material I couldn't cut through, so I just kept hacking and hacking, turning the little guy over  and over so I could go at it from different angles.  "Fortunately," I thought, "there's no blood!"

- Charlie (my seventeen pound Ewok dog) was a bigger, white fluffy dog.  She had a bigger brother (or sister) she was racing around with, and they took off chasing two monkeys.  I was trying to explain to the owner of the monkeys, and older gentleman, that she's a nice dog and was just playing, but he was embroiled in a heated argument with his son over the injustices "we" (white people) were handing the Native Americans.  All of a sudden, I was in the middle of a "battle field", and it felt like the mid-1700's.  There was a white guy dressed as an Indian, trying to stand up for his "brothers", but aligning himself with their group only insulted them more.  So one of the Indians threw a spear through his forehead.

- A girl I work with, we'll call her "Amy", took my job.  I knew it was her, even though I couldn't see her face, and I was PISSED.  I was complaining to T.T., my co-worker, about Amy as I sat on the toilet, taking a shit.  No matter how many times I wiped, it wouldn't get cleaner.  Simultaneously, I couldn't figure out what T.T. was doing in the bathroom with me.  I kept wondering why he was there, and why he wouldn't leave.

- Woke up early this morning worrying that I would sleepwalk into the kitchen and slice my wrists.  I was too scared to go back to sleep.

- I was doing a lot of speed.  I only paused for a second to consider the baby, and whether or not all this speed I was doing would hurt him.  I justified it by telling myself, "Well, at least I'm not drinking…"

And just last night:  I had a dream that my brother took a woman in a wheelchair, with no arms or legs, as his date to my wedding, and all I could think to myself was, "That's a funny looking prostitute."

Constant Craving

Craving:  I know all about it.  In fact, I’d venture to say that most humans with a pulse – whether they choose to admit it or not – do, too.  Even Nuns.  I bet those birds crave a thing or two now and again, (and it’s been well documented that Priests do).  

But suppose it’s not fair to speak on behalf of the population as a whole.  In that case, maybe I am unique in my craving?  Maybe no one else on Earth, past or present, has ever known what it feels like to desire something so strongly as to become almost possessed by it – certainly not the estimated 2.1 million members of Alcoholics Anonymous worldwide*.   

Sticking to my personal experience, I’ll share that my sense of craving began in infancy.  Not that I was capable of coherently identifying or understanding, that, what I was feeling was called a craving, but I certainly cried out for milk when I was craving food.  And when I craved sleep, I let that be known through blood-curdling screams as well.  As I developed, I began to comprehend that I most definitely craved safety.  In fact, I feel comfortable identifying “safety” as my strongest need on Maslow’s hierarchy.  

This craving for safety morphed into an uncontrollable anxiety that crippled me throughout my entire childhood – most likely perpetuated by my getting lost at Santa Anita racetrack when I was two.  Anxiety wracked my being – the only thing that could quell my nerves was to know where my family was at all times, and the only way I could do that was through control.  I began to crave control – which is a futile and exhausting effort.  Later on down the road, I discovered the only other thing that could mitigate my fears – alcohol.  

It didn’t take long before I began to crave that beast.  Even when I had a drink in my hand, I was already nervously anticipating the next – I needed to make sure there was enough supply to medicate my dis-ease.  Before I knew it, I couldn’t function without it.  Sure, I had plenty of moments when I was dry, but I always felt more relaxed with booze coursing through my veins.  The problem is:  inevitably it stops working (quicker for some than others).  And much to my dismay and benefit, alcohol stopped working for me around the time I was thirty.  Suddenly I craved relief – relief and rest from the exhaustion trying to control a drinking problem creates.  I craved it like I had never craved anything in my life, because I was at the end of my rope.  It was now a matter of life or death, because I knew my soul was empty and it was only a matter of time before my brain caught up to the idea that death may be a more suitable option.  

I got a taste of sobriety and hung on for dear life – I began to crave recovery.  It gave me a new lease on life.  I was surfing a “pink cloud” and I had never felt so good.  Life got better fast, and before I knew it, life was actually good.  I started to dream again, and as my dreams grew, so did my vision for my future.  I had ambition!  I started to crave achievement… success!  

I dove, head first, back into the entertainment industry (my only constant love) with unadulterated enthusiasm and vigor.  I put twenty thousand miles on my car in four months, driving back and forth between San Francisco and Los Angeles, until I finally cut the apron strings and made the move to live in La La Land amongst all the other transplants and dreamers.  I landed in features, then television; and during the course of my employment on a procedural drama I would never be given the opportunity to write for, something even better happened:  I met my future husband (in a rather roundabout way) through a co-worker.  

We jumped into a relationship, and before I knew it we were engaged and I was pregnant, and that, in and of itself, introduced a whole new comprehension of craving (apart from FroYo at 10pm) – I had a craving for Life, and a deeply burning desire for the life growing inside of me to thrive and be healthy.  Now I crave the knowledge and empathy necessary to make me a good parent – a parent equipped to raise a well-adjusted and capable child, one who can differentiate between right and wrong and who “makes good choices”, as my father once (and still does) badger me to do.  I crave compassion.  And lastly, I crave the power to stop cursing like a truck driver, cuz that’s really gonna fuck up my kids.

*Estimated worldwide A.A. individual and group membership gathered from service material from A.A.'s General Service Office, revised June, 2014.

Offspring, aka: The Highest Form Of Narcissism

The other day, my boss's six year old daughter asked me why my pig was wearing a cape.  Since I couldn't very well tell her it's his "rape cape," I told her the pig was flying, and he was carrying his friend.

I think I'm ready for parenthood.

This is a bold statement coming from the girl whose level of patience for people in general, let alone children, is microscopic.  I understand a proclamation for the desire to have kids, as made by a girl who once hip-checked a baby into the side of a changing table when he was about to roll off, seems questionable, if not altogether unnatural.  Also, I genuinely don't know what to do with babies when I have to pee.  I once propped a baby up in his chair and set him in the corner of the bathroom, facing the wall, while I relieved myself.  

And yet here I am, preparing to slingshot myself into motherhood.  (Naturally when I have kids, I'll have to make sure they remain illiterate so they never read this blog.)  I guess that very statement is a testament to the legitimate concern of whether or not I would be a fit parent.  Other red flags might include thoughts and facts such as:

• If my child is born with red hair, how young is "too young" to start dying it?  (To be fair, this is way less harsh than my mother, who swore that if she ever had a baby with red hair, she'd flush it down the toilet.  Well, look who lived to tell, mom.) 
• My history - as I've divulged in previous posts thus far.
• My French, as in my constant requests that you pardon it.  I have nothing to offer my child in the realm of a foreign language. 
• I don't really like other people's kids, but am holding onto the belief that I'll like my own - at least that's what everyone says will happen.
• I'm not married, and if you're a stickler for tradition, you'll have a strong opinion against my need to procreate out of wedlock. 

At this point, you're probably wondering why I believe I'm a good candidate for parenthood.  Firstly, I never claimed I'm a "good" candidate, but I think we can all agree that as long as I'm not raising my child in a drug den, there are a lot worse parents out there than the one I would make.

Secondly, if I don't shit out a kid, who will take care of me when I'm old?  Not to mention I don't have a savings, so I'm counting on my child's athleticism or dramatic talent to rendezvous as my 401k.

Thirdly, I just really want to see what a mini-me would look like.  And isn't that the main reason to have children, anyway?  Because I could be like Brangelina and adopt the United Nations and start my own soccer club, but who has that kind of energy?  And honestly, if any of my adopted kids ever got in legal trouble, I can't use the "blood is thicker than water" defense to justify my denial of their guilt.  I just don't know if I'd stand by them.

Not to mention, I'm really starting to feel like the odd-man-out on Facebook and Instagram.

Granted, I'm not entirely looking forward to stretch marks or weighing as much as Mama June Boo Boo Honeypot whatsherfuck.  Frankly, the thought of a little alien parasite growing inside of me, stealing my nutrients and going poop in my stomach makes me retch.  But the fact that I still get teary eyed whenever I watch old reruns of TLC's A Baby Story has to count for something, right?  It means I'm not a complete stone heart.  That somewhere inside my Grinch-like soul, there exists a sliver of humanity and compassion.

If there's any redemption to be had in this drivel, it's this: I happen to think my sperm donor is rather handsome.  I've come to know him quite intimately, and he's the smartest man I've ever met.  He kills it at Jeopardy, you guys.  He's wildly funny, and he understands my off-beat impropriety.  He matches my level of crazy in the sense that he's chosen to be with me, and for some inexplicable reason, he stays.  He brings the goods.  In other words, he's good breeding material, and I know he'd make a wonderful father.  So if there's any outstanding concern for the blight that would befall the human race should I happen to introduce a new Being, rest assured that as long as the father is present, this kid's in good hands, and society will be safe.

  

Let's Define "Crazy"

"Crazy" is a word assigned to any chick who exhibits feeeeeelings.  You know, those pesky little emotions that result from BEING ALIVE?  Oh, yeah... those.  This fuckin' word gets tossed around as carelessly as an STD, and comes with about the same stigma.  Maybe it's time to dig a little deeper and clarify so all you dipshits understand why calling a chick crazy actually makes her... crazy.

"Crazy" is boiling a bunny.  Can we just agree?  Granted, this is a fictional example, but I think it goes without saying that obsession usually leads to poor decision making, and that is real.  There have been many documented cases of real-life obsession, and this constitutes being "crazy."

Like driving from Houston to Orlando to kidnap your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, while wearing space diapers so you don't have to stop to go to the bathroom; like ex-astronaut, Lisa Nowak, did.  Wouldn't want to miss your window of opportunity to pepper spray that new bitch in the face, bind her hands and feet and dump her in the ocean.  Sometimes commitment to the cause means crapping in your drawers, and that is fucking crazy.

Lisa Nowak Mug Shot

Or climbing down your boyfriend's chimney.  What?  Is "boyfriend" too strong a label for a man you met on the internet and only went on six dates with?  Eh, we'll give "love" the benefit of the doubt and say no.  Is lodging yourself in his chimney whilst climbing down like Santa to spy on him a little nuts?  Yes.  This is certifiably crazy.  Especially when he catches you up on his roof staking the place out a full two weeks before.  (That's called a red-flag, but also: crazy.)

NYPost.com

Is bombarding your significant other with text messages when you're upset, instead of waiting to get home and have a conversation with him in person, crazy?  No.  It's excessive, annoying, and probably unnecessary, but is not, by the above standards, "crazy."

Is jealousy "crazy"?  No.  It's unattractive.  How about insecurity?  Nope.  It just makes you look really fucking ugly.

There also exists such phenomena as: differences of opinion, misunderstandings, and miscommunication - all of which fall under the category of "being human."  When I raise my voice, it's because I assume you can't hear me over the noise of the chatter online.  When I cry, it's not because I'm on my period--

THE PERIOD.  The expressway to crazy town.  If you want to see crazy come out to play, boys, invalidate a woman's feelings by attributing them to her monthly cycle.  That's a sure fire way to invite the real crazy to the party.  If you want Hasenpfeffer stew for dinner, ask a woman if she's on her period while you're having an argument.

Listen, I'll concede that, in the heat of the moment or out of sheer frustration, we women have a flair for the dramatic.  We can be a little "over the top."  (We can also be cool, calm, collected and make kick-ass great arguments, but I'm talking about the "Crazy" mis-label here, not the "Bitch" one.  That's a whole other blog entry.)  I admit that I have come a bit unglued and have spiraled down the rabbit hole.  But I'm not crazy, and I can say this with certainty, because despite the obscure - albeit true - instances of crazy that have made headlines, I've been up close and personal with crazy.  I've seen crazy first hand, and it looks like this:

Crazy is delegating my grown son to place a tracking device on my estranged husband's car so I can keep tabs on where he goes.  This makes it so much easier to identify where he parks at lunch so I have time to key his car.  Repeatedly.

Pictures?  Old keepsakes of our time together?  Little mementos of the heart?  Oh, they're taped under my toilet seat lid, so they can have the pleasure of smelling my ass as I defecate and face my pool of urine after I relieve myself.  

Who am I talking about?  My grandmother, of course!  Sweet little old granny was fucking crazy.  Crazy is a broken heart, on steroids, backed by action.  Crazy is a bitter tongue fueled by alcohol and heartache.  

Lazy is a blog, recalling all the tears I've cried and the hurts I've felt, offering up countless tales and admissions of my wrong doings, hoping someone can identify and relate so I don't feel so alone while searching for atonement.  

So let's lay off the crazy talk, eh?  Most of us just have a lot of scars, and we're trying to get by the best we can.

  

Spoooooky Halloween Game

If there was ever a game designed to let the skeletons out of your closet, it's Game Of Things.  Or maybe that's just been my experience playing it, because the company I keep are a group of twisted and depraved sadists that jump at the opportunity to throw their loved ones (me) under a bus in front of new players (my boyfriend).

And, yes, all you wanton, unchaste twenty year-olds, I am the dork who is talking about board games.  This is what my "wild nights" have been reduced to.

For those of you unfamiliar with Game Of Things, it's like Cards Against Humanity meets Balderdash - the Reader chooses a card, players supply a response, and the group tries to choose who's answer belongs to who.  As with Balderdash, in Game Of Things players are given the opportunity to write their own answer to the question card.

Example
CARD: Things that would probably keep you out of heaven:
ANSWER: "Taking Helen Keller skydiving."
OR...

CARD: Things that don't exist but you wish they did:
ANSWER: "Female orgasms from intercourse."
ANSWER: "Heterosexual Catholic priests."
ANSWER: "Condoms in Tijuana."
OR…

CARD: Things you shouldn't tie to the roof of your car:
ANSWER: "Dead hookers."
ANSWER: "Garbage bags filled with aborted fetuses."
ANSWER: "Your mother-in-law."

You get the idea.

But when you're playing with a group of assholes and it's your turn to read the card, you might find yourself reading a bunch of answers written in the first person to make it look like you're talking about yourself - as commonly (always) happens to me.

Example
CARD: Things you never remember:
ANSWER: "All the guys I blew when I was in a blackout."
ANSWER: "The child locked up in my basement."
ANSWER: "Which guy I pooped on during sex."
Etcetera

Most of these answers are tongue-in-cheek.  When I play, it's usually with a particular friend - we'll call her Satan -  who knows me very, very well.  In other words, Satan's got the dirt on me.  And that dirt is sooooooooo fun to mold an answer from, especially if the other players don't know if it's really true or not.  (Go ahead.  Guess which answer above is true about me.)

In the spirit of insulting your friends for the sake of competition, I've been able to sling a few back her way.  For instance, a group of us consisting of Satan, my brother, Satan's BF and my BF (who has fortunately read my posts and still loves me), were playing not too long ago, and I ever so casually referenced a particular dalliance of her dude's from his past…

SATAN'S CARD: Things that warrant an apology:
MY ANSWER: "The hickey that Tijuana stripper gave your boyfriend before he fucked her on his bachelor party weekend." 

Naturally we all had a good laugh.  If that marriage didn't end in flames, he never would have met my friend.  See?  Everyone wins.

Then there are instances where Satan will flat out attack flaws of mine - like my inability to cultivate and nurture an interpersonal relationship in the advent of technology…

CARD: Things you would wish for if you found a genie in a bottle:
SATAN'S ANSWER: "Kristin puts down her phone."

And that's all fine and good.  Because when a card like this shows up…

CARD: Things you can't believe that someone actually did...

Watch out!  Cuz I'm coming back with this…

ANSWER: "Fucked a family."

Because that's what Satan did, she fucked a family.  (Really, would you have expected anything less from Satan?)

Back when Satan was practicing better living through chemistry, vanilla sex turned into a threesome, which turned into group sex, which turned into the kind of hangover you can only nurse your way through from atop a barstool.  Now imagine the hot twenty-one year old son of the couple you ran through the night before shows up, with eyes like Paul Newman and swagger like George Clooney, and he takes the seat next to you.  And, Holy Shit!,  what a sense of humor on this kid - the ultimate panty dropper, am I right, ladies?

Before you know it, Satan's heading home with jailbait.  And because we were roommates at the time and the walls are thin, I could hear the rest.  Also, he snuck out at 4am wearing nothing but the cat blanket and a pair of my flip-flops he found by the front door.

And that's the real beauty of Game Of Things: it's a fast way to get to know people, and an even better way to end friendships.  Or at least weed out the sensitive squares who can't take a joke, or a little razzing.

Girls Night Out

I had just been dumped by a dude that wears a thumb ring.  I felt like I was at the end of my pitiful rope: I was recently sober and unprepared to deal with raw feelings without a substance to bevel the edges.  Fortunately I have a great best friend, and she understands misery.  Without taking too much creative liberty, this is what happened the evening she attempted to get me out of my head by forcing me to join her for a Girls Night Out dinner:
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Why You Don't Make Jokes About Rape

The two criteria my mother was adamant about me finding while I was shopping for apartments were:

• secure parking, and… 
• a gated entry  

I landed on a property with a gated carport (but sports a wall in the back I could easily step over), and an entrance every delivery guy and plumber in town has the code for - including my pervy boyfriend.

Wall "protecting" carport.

But my favorite amenity of the property is "the rapist gate."

The rapist gate is my pet name for the insurmountable obstacle that stands between safety and a torn perineum.  It's like Ft. Knox, and it's the only way to access my building from the carport.  The problem with this Sentinel is that it possess a persnickety lock that mocks me every time I attempt to use it, and flat out rebuffs me whenever I'm in a hurry.

If you're still having trouble picturing this, imagine my gate is Gandalf:

I stick my key in the hole: frozen.  I jiggle it around: nothing, no movement at all.  It's getting dark, I glance over my shoulder - right to left - I'm feeling exposed and vulnerable.  I jiggle some more: my key won't budge.  Sweat beads form at my brow.  I can feel a presence, I know it's coming.  Through the gate I spy the front door to my apartment - it's so close!  The hair on the back of my neck raises - do I hear footsteps?  I jiggle the key in the lock more furiously: it's fucking jammed!  And then, without warning, he's on me, slamming my face against the wrought iron, mussing up my good hair day (a gentleman he is not), and it's game over.  As predicted, this gate was the death of me, and my vagina.

At least this is how I imagine it would go down.  It's never actually happened to me.

The question I like to ask is: Is it still considered rape if I get wet?  Because I'm the fucking sicko that likes to joke about rape being a high form of flattery.

Fast forward - I'm at a housewarming party, talking to a group of acquaintances (aka: people I barely know) when I bring up my "rape is flattering" philosophy.  I can tell my audience doesn't take me seriously to begin with, so why not spice up the conversation a bit?  Fuck it.

Luckily for me, everyone laughs and plays along.  We're not squares here!  One guy even jumps in and starts talking about the time he took a shower in the fetal position after a bad date.  Okay… We all kinda quiet down, our faces still holding half-cocked smiles, as this guy proceeds to explain that everything was going great!  They were hot and heavy, really going at it… he was definitely aroused and this girl obviously knew how to work it.  She had a bit of a reputation for being a whorebag, so she better know what she doing!  So there he is, hard as a rock, going at it with this chick on the couch, when she slides her panties off from under her skirt, pulls him over to her, and rams him inside her.  Before he could stop or back away, she wraps her legs around his waste - locking him into place - and goes to town.

At this point, he's the only one laughing as he tells his "joke," while the rest of us stand there, mouths agape, staring at him in silence, until--

Me: "Um… that's called rape…"

Party-goer: "Yeah dude, you got raped."

You see, it's all fun and games until someone actually gets raped.

Now everyone's just getting fidgety and downright uncomfortable, so he tries to explain that the real reason he was rocking back and forth in a fetal position in the shower afterwards was because he was afraid she gave him an STD.  Yeah, I'd be afraid of that too, if I got RAPED.

Suffice it to say, don't I feel like a goddamn asshole.  And I no longer joke about rape, I keep it where it belongs: in the bedroom, during role-play.