lol bush

our days to mock George W are limited, but it seems like he's happy to give us fodder up until the last, grizzy moment of his 8 year rule.

click here for more hilarious photos and captions.

tree goddess

my green-thumbed friend, erin, was featured on this girl's blog (?) for being a superwoman.

the blog's name is skirt. i love that. of all the deragatory names a woman can be called, i think "a skirt" is the best one. maybe b/c i have always liked skirts, or because my legs are my only body part i haven't wanted to subject to unnatural procedures, but i think if someone called me a "skirt" i'd feel kinda sexy.

and i call myself a feminist. sheesh.

like when my friend andrea and i went to see naomi wolf sophomore year in college, and naomi asked the women in the audience to tell everyone what they wanted to be before male white corporate oppression squashed their dreams. andrea begged me to tell the overpacked memorial hall that i had wanted, desperately, to be a maid. i'm not sure if a black and white outfit was part of my child fantasy for my future, but right about now i'm making the connection between my maid aspirations and liking being called a skirt.

but i digress.

check out my dear friend erin's five minutes of internet fame here!

what's in a name?

naming a baby is hard.

we knew that osa would be our middle name for a girl forever. we both adored it, it was adam's grandmother's name, and the fact that it means "girl bear" in spanish is too damn cute.

alexandra came to us out of nowhere at the 20 week ultrasound when we found out we were having a girl. we looked it up and it means "defender of humanity." beautiful. the two together worked--they had a nice cadence when said aloud and honestly, if you're going to defend humanity today, you've gotta be a bit of a bear.

we thought this through. or, we thought we did, but we didn't take into account the lovely brooklyn and long island accents that are pervasive in our neck of the woods.

for some reason, folks here CANNOT say alexandra. it becomes some mess that sounds like alexander, but with an "a" and a "rer" sound at the end. like "alexandraer." it bugs the crap out of me.

i heart brooklyn. i truly do. why else would i continue to be shoved into an apartment that resembles a clown car if i wasn't happy here? but this mispronciation of such a simple name is driving me looney.

it seems that the linguistic rule here is that words that end in "a" = "er"; words that end in "er" = "a". here are some examples:

jupiter = ju-pi-tah
mirror = mire-rah
lisa = lise-er
alexandra = al-lex-an-drer
idea = i-dee-er

with a last name like mine (ungemah), i honestly tried to find a name that was impossible to screw up. obviously, my efforts were futile!

vacation moochers, chapter 1

this summer we are vacation moochers.

i'm not sure how dictionary.com would define mooching, but here is what we are doing: we have generous friends who either rent or have good beach real estate, they invite us to come along, and we unabashedly squeal, "Hell to the YES!" and we're there. we show up with baby in tow, buy groceries and stuff to help out, and pray that our charm doesn't wear off.

our first vacation mooching (of only two--we're not that out of control) was a visit to sound beach, on the north shore of strong---ahem, long---island to hang with amy, james, and sammy. the house was great, the view better, and james' cooking, as always, was the best. i felt like i needed to go to fat camp after our 3 days there.

some highlights of our trip =
soft shell crabs
drinking multiple drinks while watching the sun set
stories of amy in africa
babies kissing
beach glass
jared, the 9 year old stalker
pork chops, portabellos, and peaches
the color survey

THANKS amy, james, and sammy!
smooches.

human billy goat

i had a startling revelation today.
i have become a human billy goat.

with alexandra's onset of real people food (not that canned stuff, which, although organic, still seems like wet cat food to me), i have developed the habit of human garbage disposal.

i'm sure all of us who feed kids end up ingesting cheerios, string cheese, chicken nugget pieces, etc. that we don't want or need to eat. it's mindless. the baby wants to feed you, and holds her hand out so lovingly, how can you say, "sweetie, mama's ass is the size of your pack n play...i gotta give these empty calories a rest!"

but i have taken this eating of crap to a new level.

today, i was straightening up the apt, i kept finding veggie booty and annie's wheat bunny crackers all over. but instead of picking them up and putting them in the trash, i popped them into my mouth and ate them. the SICK thing is, i didn't even NOTICE i was doing this, until i found a piece of ancient veggie booty, tossed it back, and couldn't even chew the thing b/c it's consistency was that of rubber. i went to the sink and spit it out, disgusted at my billy goat habits.

what has become of me? i need a mommy muzzle!

girlfriends

i started the daunting task of packing last night. we are moving downstairs (more on that in another post), and we have so much stuff crammed into our little apartment that even though we won't move for another 6 weeks, it is simply necessary that we start purging and organizing now.

i began by packing up all my photo albums. they have lived in the uppermost right corner cubby of our floor-to-ceiling bookshelf for 6 1/2 years. i have scaled our library ladder many times to get to these photo albums, but last night i took them all down and packed them away in a rubbermaid plastic tub (we'll have more storage in the new apt, so lots will get tucked away).

but, of course, i had to look through each of them before putting them to rest. i found photos of car trips to VA when i was 17, wearing my cut-off jean shorts and tights that i thought were so cool. prom photos, graduations, parties throughout the years of college and life immediately thereafter--the sin party and black sunday brunch from my life in durham certainly created some hilarious photo ops. my move to nyc, my life pre-Adam, my life pre-baby...all tucked neatly away in cheap and expensive albums, documenting my life so far.

as i poked adam relentlessly telling him stories he'd heard before of this or that photo, i was amazed at the consistency of the girlfriends in my life. i have had a solid foundation of girlfriends from age 11 until present. two certain cliques: my first high school group from park view and my UNC/post-college group. all six of these women are still a part of my life. of course, new people have come and gone, but they have remained constant.

i know that these women are my family in many more ways than my family is, but seeing them stick with me through fat and skinny, blond hair and ear-muff cut, boyfriend after boyfriend, happy and depressed--all in images--make me love them even more.

i am a lucky girl.

China-like ideas...

...that I had today:

Before seeing my family next, I think I'll go to therapy for one whole hour to purge myself of all the issues that have cumulated in the past 34 years! Yes!

No! I think I'll try to lose my last 6 lbs of baby weight by not eating for a whole five minutes! That'll show those love handles who's who, dammit!

On the other hand, maybe I'll run a marathon this weekend since I did run 3 miles this morning....even though I felt like dying the whole time. No worries, it's a great idea! It's totally going to work!

Or, maybe I'll try to clean up dozens of years of rancid air pollution so that Beijing's air quality will be Olympic-worthy by turning off some factories and restricting driving for a few weeks!

Brilliant!