The myth of the perfect baby

So one of my lifelong dreams has been to be a tattoo artist.  I'm not sure I'll ever become one, but a rather "easy" substitute is henna.  I henna'd my hair a lot when I was a teen.  My mom taught me how and we did it about every 60 days or so for years, but I wanted less realistic colors so went the way of the colorist and forgot all about henna for years.  Well, MY daughter brought it back up a few months ago and we did out hair.  I forgot how much I LOVE HENNA!!!! So it came time to order a new batch and I went to my favorite ebay retailer for the brand I love (Jamila) and I'll link her in the bottom of this post or in a comment :) We did a test batch because this was a different mix than we usually would use, I'm out of lemon juice and we wanted to try apple cider vinegar.  So we mixed up a test batch and waited for the dye release.  The batch was way too small to do anything but maybe try a few tattoos, so I added some honey to it to see what I co...

When I was pregnant with Phiz, my case manager at Care1st called the area I live Never Never land, because if you need good medical care you're never never going to get it.  Oh my good golly is that ever the fucking case when it comes to good old Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center's Emergency Department. Over the last week I dealt with a nasty clogged duct in my left boob.  THE boob, the one with the pacemaker up top, so it's painful when that boob even gets full, let alone a clogged duct, but they happen. Of course when it happens it's that boob and the duct right under the pacemaker. Since the pacemaker is generally sore ANYWAY, and something I never mention because frankly, if I mentioned every time something hurt on me I'd never say anything else.  So the clogged duct had a weird milk blister thing that I was able to get easily with a sterilized tweezers and the milk started flowing just fine and all was well that day. The next day, the duct was clogged a...

YEAH WELL I'M NOT. So get the fuck over it.  I'm flawed.  I'm notoriously flaky.  I cancel on appointments that make me nervous.  I do weird shit.  Sometimes? Sometimes I pull off sane and no one is the wiser, but for the most part, you just get to know me and realize I hide a lot, a lot of the time.  Most of it is for no good reason, I don't even know why I don't tell people some of it.  I guess I could have warned you this was one of those introspective blogs where I get all weird.  I'll probably post you some shit later in it that is entirely more fun, so don't despair, my Ativan will kick in. Moving on, I'm an appointment canceling queen.  Sometimes, it's not because I don't want to go, but sometimes it really is.  In my defense they were all non emergent appointments.  Not in my favor they were all for the little boys.  But here's the thing, there's that weird stigma about putting a leash on your kid and no matter how cute...

So I've told you all before (and some of you know me personally) that that house I live in was my mom's childhood home.  I'm not sure how much I have mentioned about my mom's previous in home care giver but he happens to live across the street.  He was horrible at his job, he sucked at cleaning, he rarely cooked for her and when he did it was salt laden grossness that she wouldn't eat.  He relied on my step dad to care for her and when my step dad died, she lost a bunch of weight and that took us a while to put back on her. When we moved in, about a month later he had a hernia surgery (supposedly) and basically stopped doing any of the cleaning even though at that point we lived mostly upstairs and the baby was still small enough that he made very little mess anywhere.  We didn't ask that he clean up after us at all, in fact we cleaned the house no problem, all we asked of him in return for the 93.3 hours a month he was being paid by Los Angeles county's I...

I don't know how many of you believe in ghosts, or spirits or energies.  I happen to firmly believe.  I live in a house filled  with energy.  My stepfather and my grandmother both died here within months of each other, not to mention that my grandpa had already been hanging around in spirit for about 20 years and my brother about 10.  Then my uncle passed away and he manifests as a sneaky little boy like my mom remembers him from her teenage years.   If I wasn't already a nut job, living in a haunted house might do it.  You'd think anyway.  But this isn't my first one actually, I've been a haunted person for longer than I can remember so I'm rather used to it.  The hard part here is that it's people I love and wish I could have back.  Why I'm so lonely for them in death I don't know, I wasn't very nice to them in life for the most part.  Maybe this is my Karma?  Perhaps. I'm also faced daily with the memories and the belongings...

Yeah, I live in the desert.  It's hot here and I grew up drinking water with no problem.  In fact, as kids we were only allowed one soda a day if we were good and only at dinner if we ate what mom told us to.  I carry a water bottle wherever I go.  Like, literally everywhere. I don't even have to be going more than two blocks away and I've got my water with me.  My sons on the other hand won't drink anything that isn't flavored.  So I have a HELL of a time getting anything not carbonated or sugar filled into any of them. Morgen will occasionally drink plain ice water but it's rare.  In the very heat of the summer, he takes water bottles with him, but at home, it's soda or juice or a punch type drink.  Maxwell will literally gag on plain water.  He's such a drama queen it's ridiculous and I want to laugh at him when he does it, but I try to hold back for the sake of the other children.  Then there's little Mr Peanuts aka Memphis.  ...

Parts of it are forever etched into my mind, others got lost in those moments that my heart stopped beating and there was no oxygen to my brain.  There are bits and pieces of a lot of things like that.  That day, I wish I could remember every detail. I remember that R slept more than I thought any man with a wife in labor should.  I remember that after so many false alarms and so many shots to prevent it, I was so happy to FINALLY be having my baby.  I remember thinking that I didn't know what I was going to do with two daughters. (But in turned out they were very wrong and I had a son instead.) I don't remember the drive there.  I don't remember the sound of his cries, or the smell of his hair after they'd bathed him.  I don't remember they was it felt to put him to my breast that first time. It had gone all wrong anyway.  This wasn't how it was meant to be.  I labored so long, after 11 weeks of going into preterm labor and it being stopped...