My son doesn’t eat meat.  He rarely eats dairy.  Therefore, how does he get his vitamin B12?  Sometimes I really second guess myself about raising my son vegetarian, worried that he doesn’t get all the nutrients that the meat lovers get, and that this deficiency will somehow turn him into a spindly little skeleton with an underdeveloped brain.  That would completely contradict my belief that humans are meant to be vegetarian.

I’m not a vegetarian, by choice.  I’d like my son to decide on his own whether he wants to introduce meat into his diet.

I came across this article, which dispells the vitamin B12 myth.  Supposedly, B12 is found in animal derived foods. Many other sources claim that vegans and vegetarians might not get enough B12, and it’s this big scary deal if your toddler is lacking in that area. Well, calm down ya’ll. Here is one important excerpt from the find:  “All of the Vitamin B12 in the world ultimately comes from bacteria.  Neither plants nor animals can synthesize it.  But plants can be contaminated with B12 when they come in contact with soil bacteria that produce it.  Animal foods are rich in B12 only because animals eat foods that are contaminated with it or because bacteria living in an animal’s intestines make it.” From The Vegetarian Way: Total Health for You and Your Family (1996) Virginia Messina, MPH, RD, & Mark Messina, PhD p. 102

I also came across an article that referenced a study that was done on developing nations that have a large population of vegan diets. There is no B12 deficiency there thanks to the fertilizer being used on their plants. This “not enough B12″ thing is just another scare to make people think you really need meat in your diet. You don’t.

There is a lot of “scare” factors on the internet that try to make it seem like a vegan or vegetarian diet for a toddler is inadequate. I’m glad I came across that website, it really put my mind at rest.

We remember the scene in “Sex and the City” where Carrie looks like crap (for once) and almost smacks into the ex-boyfriend of all ex-boyfriends, Aidan.  Then he turns around to face her and *plop* there’s a baby on his tummy.

I’ve never run into an ex, or even someone I’ve just casually slept with, who now has a baby.  (Or one that I know of.)  I don’t know what it’s like.  However, I have run into a couple of former blasts from the past while my son was snug in his Baby Hawk.

I expected the reactions to be negative.  I’m not sure why.  Mostly because I thought of these particular men as “anti-baby” — having kids being the last thing on their mind, or having a vasectomy being the next thing on their mind!  I imagined them reacting in disgust, complete with a think bubble stating, “Holy shit, thank goodness it wasn’t me who knocker her up!”

The first ex I ran into was at a dive bar.  Baby boy wasn’t with me on this one, but it was definitely a reunion I never thought I’d have since he had moved away and we were no longer speaking.  I eyed him from across the way and approached him, and we shared a warm hug and sincere smiles.  As we uttered the usual “What are you up to?” I told him that I had a son, and he told me that was great.  “Really great,” in a very caring tone.  What a change from his mood swings and Jeckyll and Hyde personalities!

Another ex passed me by in the street and was excited to see me with my son strapped to my chest.  “Congratulations!” he said, observing my son’s face.  We hadn’t seen each other in a couple years, and I noticed how he aged some.

I saw a poster for a book signing for Jamie Lee Curtis at Borders Bookstore’s alpha home base (store 1 is in Ann Arbor, man!)  I definitely did not get the same shock as the time a few months ago when I saw that JEWEL was going to do a mini concert!

When I say Jewel, yes I do mean Jewel Kilcher of “bad” poetry book fame.  I’m not going to hate on her book like so many others did, however.

If you know me well, you’ll know that I get a kick out of things that I don’t normally like.  The best example of this that I can think of are perms.  You know, like for the hair?  I want a perm.  And it’s not because I think a perm is fashionable… it’s because I think getting a perm would be funny.

So I thought that going to see Jewel do her mini concert would be funny.  “Pieces of You”, Night in Shinging Armour…  that Jewel.  Funny.  The last time I saw her she was in a J-Lo phase awkwardly dancing to “Intuition”.  HOWEVER, I am not going to front…  I was a fan back when I was a sophomore in high school.  My brother bought her CD and I remember probably shedding a tear or two (shut up) when listening to “Don’t”.

I invited my friend Dustin to watch her because I figured he might think it was funny also, and I had this daydream that only thirty people would show up and I’d get to ask her questions during her Q & A about fashion and what she’d put on a mix tape and I’d get to write about my special session with her on here.

 Um…  so…  we got there, needed a wristband, and over 200 people showed up on Borders’ second floor.  Jewel got up to perform and she was pretty and charming and joked with the audience.  She talked about how she went to school at Interlochen (which is where my ex-boyfriend went) and brought a hunting knife to school with her fresh off of the Alaska boat.  Her words, not mine.  Then she talked about her year living out of her van which my ex said never happened because she went to Interlochen.  However, both stories  exsist side by side because she received a full scholarship to attend Interlochen to sing classical voice.  Later, she didn’t go to college and instead worked for a computer warehouse and was fired from her job for being late too many times.  That’s when she had to live out of her van.  She said she almost shoplifted a $34 dress, and then she realized that she had a choice whether or not she would steal that dress.  She said, “Wait a minute, what the hell makes me think that I can’t make $34?”  And that’s when she wrote “Hands”, which was also the first song she heard on the radio on September 13, 2001, after emerging from camping with her boyfriend and unaware of the events of September 11, 2001.

She also cried the first time she heard herself on the radio because the studio release of “Who Will Save Your Soul” makes her sound like Kermit the Frog.

Eventually she had to do her CD signing, and I didn’t have a CD, so I took my son to a vacated part of Borders to put him back in his stroller.  That’s when Jewel emerged from nowhere and walked past me — my summers as a high school student listening to her baby-ish voice slapped me in my face with a blonde swoosh.  I got shy and giddy and we smiled at each other and in that moment it wasn’t funny.

Yeah, so I’m happy I went to see Jewel sing at Borders.  Whut.

In college, my best friend had a roommate who was about as vain as a varicose. She was a model, and because she was compared once to Laeticia Casta, she really milked that compliment and acted like she was the shit. And she was the shit, literally. She suffered from colitis. I didn’t know what colitis was until I met this girl.

I also didn’t like her very much because she could be such an unlikable snob! She’d made some comment about this great find I had — a pinkish/purple suede trench with a rabbit fur detachable collar — and how it wasn’t cool because I got it off of the discount rack!

My friend who was pre-med at the time informed me about a link between colitis and narcissism, and this has always intrigued me. I found this to be very interesting. That Miss Almost Laeticia was so full of herself that she couldn’t even make it to the bathroom to poop. What an unfortunate medical condition.

I was reading “Psychogenesis and Psychotherapy of Ulcerative Colitis” by J. Groen, MD, and this doctor points out the following that he observed in his patients suffering from this condition:

1.) Well developed intellect.
2.) Exaggerated carefulness and neatness. (I remember her being really anal about cleaning up after parties.)
3.) Sensitive, and sometimes oversensitive.
4.) Narcissism is always present, sometimes even under false modesty.
5.) Egocentric.
6.) Ambitious to a limited degree.
7.) Fearful and cowardly.
8.) “they gossip and complain about who they hate but do not fight them”
9.) Great need for love, sympathy, and affection.
10.) Exagerrated, infantile conception of love.
11.) Male cases had an abnormal affection for their mother
12.) At first these patients are difficult to talk to.

Look at number 8! It sounded like an an article written by someone who got badly burned by a person with colitis, much like this article I read about Borderline Personality Disorder. It was in Psychology Today. The doctor wrote about an affair he had with a BPD patient who just downed a charcoal shake after an overdose. It sounded very bitter and as if he was writing the article to spite her.

The colitis article was also written in 1947. I am interested in reading more recent case studies. While I know that all people who have colitis aren’t egomaniacal clean freaks, I would like to explore the other side of that — do people who are full of themselves have problems with their bowels?

There’s a scene in the new Sex in the City movie (shut up, you know you secretly want to watch it) where Carrie and Big are sitting together in bed and she asks to use Big’s glasses. This totally reminds me of (shut up) me and my boyfriend because these past two weeks I have been living as a dorky squinter. Definition of a dorky squinter: Someone who isn’t wearing glasses but should, resulting in geeky facial expressions such as wrinkled noses and exposed front teeth when trying to peer at things in order to see them. I lost my five year old Burberry emo glasses and have been using my best friend’s reject contact lenses and my boyfriend’s blue emo glasses as back-up when I need to see.

They got used during a wedding I was in (had to!) and during a lot of the eastern conference NBA play offs (ugh, let’s not talk about it). Also, during said Sex and the City movie which I hate myself for thinking about too much since I have not forgiven Carrie for her views on bisexuality or Miranda’s typical racism.

Anyway, back to Carrie and Big in bed. Carrie is wearing a sexy chemise and not an oversized T-shirt with boxer shorts.

This reminds me of a movie my best friend S suggested I watch called Last Kiss starring Zack Braf. I don’t know if I spelled that right and spell check doesn’t work on names, unfortunately. In the movie, one of his friends says that his girlfriend is perfect because she’s beautiful (debatable, but I’m hating) and just like “one of the guys”.

My question is, do guys really want to date one of the guys? I’m teetering on dangerous sex role stereotypes here, but let’s try and interpret what “one of the guys” attempts to mean. Swearing? Farting? What else? Baggy dirty clothes? Watches sports?

My friend Jillian and I were talking about how great it is to have guy friends to hang out with because hanging out with girly girls can be too overwhelming.

“I can only say, omigod, these shoes are so cute, so many times before I start wanting to throw up,” she said.

Honestly, I were only allowed to talk about fashion in this blog while having to write in it every day, I think I would sneak in a review of a Pistons jersey somewhere. Oh, wait, I did do that! Having a good group of guy friends is definitely a plus. I used to only hang out with guys all the time — sports, drinks, sex talk (for awhile it was only the guys who would talk about sex) — the only thing was I wore stilettos and skirts back then. And I will say, hanging out with the guys definitely got me the most attention.

So dating “one of the guys” is good, but what about committing to her? I get worried that I fart some foul smells a bit too often in front of my partner and don’t give a rat’s ass about how I look at times. As I write this, however, it crosses my mind that it doesn’t mean that I’m being “too much of a guy”, but just careless.

I asked one guy I know whether or not he would date a girl who acted like one of his buddies. His immediate response: “Is she pretty?” The farting had to be controlled, but going to a game was a plus.

But wait, some women just don’t like sports.

I don’t think the point here is to all of a sudden gain an acute interest in NBA stats and players (my personal forte), but don’t dog it if you haven’t tried it (number one) and (number two) let’s say you don’t like sports. Fine. I think another quality that is unfortunately considered a “guy” quality is just speaking your mind with that biting sarcastic humor of yours that can go one on one — like Mortal Kombat but with insults and/or cleverness.

While I realize I’m using lots of masculine stereotypes, we should know the story about the woman who took doses of testosterone. That’s for another article, however.

People tend to have a love hate relationship with girls with short dos. Some consider it a don’t, while others have a strict preference for the pixies. My take?

The current answer is HOT HOT HOT. I’m going short a la Jean Seberg in Breathless, the indie-mother of all American in Paris films. I was surprised to learn that a couple other of my friends are going the super-short route as well.

Drinking Shandies (not bousgie) with my friend J over some garlic shrimp (bousgie) pizza, we were discussing our desire to crop our locks with the risky new “it” look.

“I like it,” she said. “It gives me an excuse to dress like a slut.”

I, on the other hand, like the ambiguous gender look. Especially lovable: My son won’t be able to yank my hair into bruised oblivion!

Photo courtesy gonemovie.com.

I am not embarrassed to admit that I at first Hate Watched the Sex and the City a few years ago, but then I became a fan on the DL, then an out-in-the-open fan — but a self-loathing one.

Hate Watching is an interesting sub-category to “hating” — something even the best of us are guilty of.

What is it with our intrinsic interests in things we loathe? I really want to go in depth about this idea. From hate-dating (dating a person you completely detest!), to hate watching, to even the irony of wearing fashion you hate… it’s a very interesting idea.

I can tell you one thing though: I do not hate crocs and gaucho pants enough to wear them.

It was an unsurprising reaction that I’ve observed in the dating world: someone with a kid gets several points knocked off their Desirability Factor. Even a friend of mine who is a parent now told me about his decision not to ask out a girl in college because he found out she had a kid. Hotness factor? Doesn’t matter. A friend of mine, S, has a crew of hot gal pals — the if the SATC Bible were Nylon and not Vogue. One of her crew is a Jordana Brewster look-a-like and gets second and third glances from the cute little former-hipsters turned Anthem model guys. That is, until they find out she’s a mother.

It happens to be a common reaction. Remember that show on TV, Blind Date? The pop-up video version of reality TV dating? One guy got set up with a mother, and he dumped her as soon as he noticed her “stretch marks” as he viciously told her. “You’ve got kids, I can tell by your stretch marks.” She even wound up trying to tempt him with a topless swim, but he left her out in the pool by herself. “I don’t want to walk into a ready-made family.”

I was talking to one of my good friends about this. “Would you date someone with a kid?” I asked him.

Without hesitation, he answered, “Absolutely. Especially if they are a good parent, because I feel like the qualities that makes them a good parent would translate to the relationship as well.”

I felt that was interesting insight. Though there are definitely good parents who suck at relationships.

Until I had a baby myself, I honestly didn’t think I would ever date someone who had a child. Admittedly, that wasn’t a great mentality. My reasoning was the usual “baby mama drama”. I couldn’t really comprehend how someone who had a child with another person could really be over the person who they had a child with. I always figured it was too strong of a bond and I would come second to that no matter what.

I realize now that isn’t the case. I have a baby now and of course he is my life and love, but I do understand how you can have no sentimental feelings for the other parent. Most pregnancies are unplanned, and sometimes they are with a person you don’t want to be with and you decide to keep the baby. It’s as simple as that.

Loving Day is June 12, a day that celebrates interracial marriages. It is named after Mildred Loving, whose marriage to Richard Loving in 1958 caused them to be banned in Virginia as man and wife for 25 years! Their case went to the Supreme Court. After nine years of legal bullshit, the Court found unanimously in their favor. This was in 1967. In 1975, Richard passed away when a drunk driver hit their car. His wife, Mildred Loving, recently passed away.

She issed a statement last year supporting same sex marriage. “I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

Interracial and multiracial unions definitely are something to celebrate and to support! There is a girl I know who did not want to have a child with someone of a different race than her because she wanted her children to look like her. I found that interesting on many levels, but one being that when she eventually did get married she married a man who was Korean and she is Taiwanese which is not the same race! I think there are still many people who are under the misconception that racism and the stigma against interracial couples are a thing of the past.

Photo courtesy NPR archives.

I’ve noticed Chanel Iman’s beautiful face in recent issues of Vogue. When reading an article about the Met’s Costume Gala in NY Mag, her eyecatching golden yellow gown caught my eye as a favorite.

I don’t know much about this lady, but I have good vibes about her career. She is biracial and bicultural. Her father is African American and her mother is Korean. She is currently homeschooled. She is a Ford model — just like my good friend. With a name like Chanel Iman, how can you go wrong? It sort of reminds me of Dionne and Cher from Clueless, but her name resounds with classic fashion icons rather than diva has-beens.

While I love some quirk in my fashion, Chanel Iman definitely inspires and reminds me that Vogue is the fashion Bible for a reason.