Tomorrow will be my first Mother’s Day. Today I got to see my own mother and we took her out for Cuban food.

My gift from my mother was a platinum gold diamond ring with pave clusters. It is really beautiful.

Today was also my friend’s birthday and he had a dinner at an Italian chain. It was slightly awkward because I didn’t know that many people and my boyfriend and I were stuck at the end of the table with the baby. It’s always weird being the only people with a baby (especially when the other parents left theirs at home). What’s also very weird is when people ask about my “husband” when I’m not married, because they see I have a son. I used to hate it when heterosexual couples used the term “partner” because it seemed like they were posing and using a label that tried to put them in the same boat as same sex couples who use the term “partner”.

Actually, partner is a very appropriate term and I wish people would just use it more often. I am definitely in a partnership and maintaining the partnership is very important because we are also parents! We will always be partners.

Fashion-wise, today I wound up using my tank top as a diaper on my son because we ran out of diapers.

So, remember a few posts ago I was pining over my identity being a mother who loves fashon and the whole blogsphere involving mom blogs and where do I belong etc etc?  Well, I landed a job writing as a fashion expert.  Meaning, that’s where I will write about that.

 Here, I can write about being a mother who is going to a party for the first time in eight months without having her child in the next room or strapped to her bosom.  That’s right, folks, I helped plan a party at a I-wish-I-was-in-Brooklyn venue with a few fashionable and partially pretentious people (the exceptions being, of course, my friends — because who needs pretenses when we buck to keep it real).

 The big question is WTF do I wear?  I am no longer bound down to shirts that are condusive to breastfeeding and shoes that will not throw my balance off kilter when I throw my babe over my shoulder.  My entire wardrobe is up for the running!  I’m leaning towards a black bra, see through white tank top, a black lame miniskirt, and some bling around my neck that will blind people this way to Sunday.

I will admit I feel a bit haphazard in my identity as a mother.  Part of me feels like I’ve reverted back to high school and I have to figure out which cafeteria table of moms I have to sit with.  And that is ridiculous because it reflects an obvious insecurity and lack of maturity which I should have since I have a baby…

 is what people who are judgmental would say.

The thing is, I was really thrown into this.  I got pregnant while on birth control.  I had a 10oz grand marnier martini the day before I took my pregnancy test.  I was not walking the path to motherhood, in fact I was only dating J’s father for three months!  But now that I am a mother, I love being a mother, but I am also having a severe identity crisis because I feel like I don’t have a posse.  I don’t have my Samantha Jones to talk to about sex or Miranda Hobbes to talk to about having a son.  Most of my friends are five years younger than me and single, but I’m definitely the only parent.  My cell phone used to ring off the hook, but now I’ve been put aside like last season’s Louboutins.  You really recognize who your real friends are after you have a baby.

So here is the community of “mom bloggers”.  I am a mom, and I am blogging.  So does that make me a mom blogger?  Yes.  But after googling “mom blog” (which, by the way, has a really ugly aesthetic ring to it), I found a plethora of sites I wanted to join…  but I don’t quite… fit… in?  However, I am a mom!  So how does that make sense?

It brings up something that I’ve been thinking about ever since I was pregnant.  Society definitely smears this outfit onto women when they have children.  There’s the MILF fantasy, or mothers are pear shaped and non-sexual, we are also put under microscopes, having their every action judged as to whether it was a good decision in its effect towards baby.

I don’t want to pigeonhole myself as a mom blogger, although I think it’s important to point out that I am a mother.  I am a mother and I still like fashion as I always have.  I still love writing as I always have ever since I was in kindergarten and stapled my own newsprint books together.  I was even chosen to read my first one on Michigan NPR back in ‘86.  These things are just me and who I am.

When I write about fashion, I’m a woman who also happens to be a mother, writing about fashion.  Sometimes it will pertain specifically to mother-esque things:  like ditching a diaper bag for instance.  But sometimes I’ll write about a pair of shoes and you will not see the mention of the word “baby” in the article.  And that’s that.  It doesn’t mean I’m not a mother in that moment.

One of my greatest claims to fame is this article I wrote about Pity Dating.  I would even go so far as to say it is an even greater claim to fame than placing in Seventeen Magazine’s Annual Fiction Writing contest two years in a row.  Why?  Because I still have people coming up to me and telling me how reading this article stopped them from going on a pity date, and probably stopped them from giving pity head!

Here it is, written two years ago: 

Perhaps my nickname should have been “The Bleeding Heart of Dating”.  It’s a little different than being a “bottom feeder”, as Ian likes to say.  Nostalgia has reared its ugly head recently, and my mind has been puking memories of my dating/relationship history.  Some of my worst experiences, hands down, involves “pity dating”.

What, exactly, is pity dating?  It’s if you go out with someone — not because you like them or are attracted to them — but because you’re too nice or scared to say no.

A sub-genre of the Pity Date is a date you don’t know you’re going on, probably because you are kidding yourself - you think you’re hanging out “as friends”.  (That is the most common one for me.)  They never asked you if you had a boyfriend, or didn’t call it a “date”.  It’s like getting tricked!  Another sub-genre of the Pity Date, is “Pity Head”.  I talked to two separate friends about pity dating, and that term came up both times.  I would just like to say this: DON’T pity date.  If you’re worried about hurting someone’s feelings or something, just think: Your bleeding heart could lead to you feeling obligated to put a dick you don’t want in your mouth, voluntarily.  Putnam told me about one of his close friends who went out on a pity date, and she kept going on pity dates with this guy, and eventually married him, and now she lives in the woods somewhere with her husband and she is not happy - you know she is giving pity head for the rest of her life!

I went out on a pity date once where he and his mom picked me up in his mom’s station wagon.  He took me to a party in a trailer park where there were about five people in the trailer, where we were drinking wine coolers, Kahlua, and Southern Comfort.  The cats were named Kinky and Porn Star.  The guy was telling me about his former heroin addiction and how he didn’t really like receiving blow jobs.  There were other people there who wound up driving me home because they were worried about me.  But then one guy who drove me home propositioned me for a threesome and told me he had a really big dick and he saw the way I was “looking at his girlfriend”.

The other guy got really pissed when I kicked his ass at pool. Then he told me, “You know, I’m really good at giving massages.”  I looked at him like he was crazy and said, “No, thanks!”  Then he got defensive and said, “I wasn’t offering you one!”  But later he was telling me how he was a virgin and he didn’t know if his dick was big enough to fuck girls.  “I wish I could just pull it out and show it to a girl so she can tell me.”  I didn’t respond.  Then he told me that he could make a girl cum just by touching her boob.  Then he told me he was a psychic healer and touched my arm that had a cyst in it and told me it would be healed.

Sometimes it’s not enough to say you’re busy.  Sometimes people really persist on that shit.  They will ask your schedule and what you are doing between the time you get out of work and the time you have to go out with your friends and it’s like WTF?  This creepy guy who left a Valentine in my mailbox at home used to do this all the time.

I don’t ask people out because I don’t want to be the Pity Date.  Pity Head, good god.  JUST SAY NO.

best friend is moving to NYC in a few hours. I’m going to miss her a lot. She is my partner in fashion and skin care. I really admire her and wish her the best, but I still feel a sting of envy because of the regret I feel from never moving there when I had many chances. Well, I guess we all know what “they” say is right. Hindsight is 20/20. Ain’t that a bitch.

We had some coffee together, and the barista was surprised when I gave him my co-op owner’s number. “Oh, you’re from around here?” I wasn’t sure what he meant. Usually, I just assume people automatically think I’m an immigrant by looking at me even though I was born and raised in the US. But later, when he invited us to a b-boy battle he hosts every Friday night, I realized he meant one of the best possible compliments you could ever pay me.

I don’t look like I’m from this boring-ass town.

I feel like it just snapped in my head one day. I hate Ann Arbor. I have lived here since I started college and I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of my life here. To its credit I have had lots of good times. 2003-2005 and early 2006 was a great social scene. My son was born here. But honestly, it gets old really fast. You can really wear this town out. I created the Ann Arbor hook up tree and it is the most incestuous thing ever.

So, me not looking like I’m from around here makes me incredibly happy, because I am not from here and I certainly don’t want to look I am from here.

What does looking like you’re from Ann Arbor mean? I’m not sure, but I think it has this midwest slop attached to it. I’m probably going to get hated on really hard for saying that, but whatever. Much love to the mid west, but as a whole we can’t dress that well.

Handbags are an obsession of mine. Having the perfect one slung on your arm can sometimes seriously feel a lot better than having a hot date. Good handbags are phenomenal and intricately styled with quality fabric and hardware. They don’t take on a boring “classic” look, but isn’t necessarily so trendy that it will only survive the current season.

Surprisingly, I don’t have as handbags in my collection as one would suspect. With a few vintage clutches here and there and a few designer keepsakes, I haven’t added to my arm accessories as much as I have attended to my shoe closet. That is because of how extremely picky I am. My favorite one is a vintage piece that I bought ten years ago. It has bamboo handles, a gold clasp closure, and looks like a giant gold and clear coin purse. It doesn’t see the light of day as much because now I am toting for two as a new mother! I’m not a big fan of diaper bags. They’re bulky. They have frumpy pockets. It’s ok to be critical because it’s me carrying the bag, after all, not my babe. While I know there are oodles of “designer diaper bags” out there, they still have that boxy diaper bag look — not very flattering or fashionable. Moms, I sincerely believe, still have the right to remain foxy!

The perfect handbag would be large and roomy, but not awkward when you put a lot of stuff in it. The designer who got the style down is Miss Rebecca Minkoff. Rebecca Minkoff is a young designer with a fresh look in her line that’s not only stylish but funky. Check out her “Morning After Bag” if you want a hot alternative to a diaper bag sans the elephants marching all over it (granted, elephants are super-cute, but maybe not so much after your infant has graduated to wearing Superman undies and can carry his own sippy cup). The leather Morning After Bag comes in different shades of leather. Try pewter to go with the Spring 2008 dulled metallic trend, or the vibrant tangerine for a brand new twist on the retro color. Rebecca Minkoff’s bags also have a lot of personality. They come with a play calling card (if you call the number on it, you’ll even get to hear the answering machine of a sexy voice!). Her lines also tell a story, the mark of a very creative and playful designer. She’s won the hearts of Rachel Bilson, Hilary Duff, Bijou Phillips, and lil ol’ me.

I knew that the designer diaper bags weren’t going to cut it when I walked into Kate Spade to eye the coveted momma purses. I was left unimpressed. They still looked like diaper bags! In fact, I found myself preferring the quilted Baby’s R Us tote that my brother got me with the parade of zoo animals marching on its pocket. At least it wasn’t trying to pretend it was something it wasn’t. When my mother got me a roomy creme and black canvas tote, I realized that I can arm myself with baby goods (cloth diapers, diaper covers, booty wipes, cocoa butter, a back up baby ribbed tank top in case the breast milk comes up) and do it in a handbag I love anyway.

Well, my dumb ass went the whole day with my contact lenses in the wrong eyes. Fuck that shit. I couldn’t switch them around while I was at work, so I just suffered through it. I worked on my comics a little. I have two storyboards going. I just need to perfect the sketches and the dialogue.
I think I freaked TK out by the erotic e-mail I wrote him. I reiterated the tame version to you. He didn’t e-mail me back. Dammit. I was hoping for some masturbation material before I went to sleep tonight. But whatever. Looks like I’m going to eat a can of chunky beef stew and rice and call it a night…

OH! RL came into my job today. RL is this design engineer for Toyota who asked me out awhile ago and I used to have a thing for him. We talked for a long time. He’s really cool. He collects motorcycles and plays in a band. We talked about the movie One Hour Photo. He liked it more than I did, but I admitted I liked the dream sequence where the blood starts gushing from his eyes. I told him I liked the color scheme and the contrast of the crimson blood squirting in the white atmosphere. He asked me if I watched it on DVD or VHS and I said I saw it in the theater, and he thought it was cool that I noticed the color schemes because it was something they talked about in the director commentary of the DVD. He’s a really cool guy. RL, RL, RL. He mods his bikes. I wonder what his looks like…

Also at work, I tortured myself by watching swimfan. It literally made me wish I was rearranging my files instead. Sometimes I like to torture myself by watching really bad movies. If you like to do this, here are some suggestions: The Prodigy, Dungeons & Dragons, Riding in Cars With Boys, and Maid in Manhattan. After that, you will be bald from ripping your hair from your head. A pure S&M dream.

when i was at the aut bar with my friends, i was talking to this one guy about shopping, and man, he gets some really fly clothes for really good prices. bcbg… he really knows his shit. that’s what i like: a good shopper! he’s got strategy and everything. “don’t impulse buy… everything gets marked down, you have to study the store’s trends,” he told me, over a basket of nachos. he got this cashmere scarf for like, 75% off the original price (in chicago, though, so that doesn’t help me since i have no wheels). would i pay a $40 train ticket to go shopping in chicago? maybe. i told him he had to take me along the next time he goes.

tonight, something out of the ordinary happened… i hung out with my ex, cj. we’ve just b.s.’d for so long about hanging out it seems like. he’s really a good friend of mine. i thought it would be weird to see him but it was really natural. we cracked jokes. you know, i just realize i don’t have bad break-ups with any of my ex-boyfriends. well, any of them who really count, anyway. i guess if you count this guy i was with in high school who drew a picture of a cow, said it was me, and told me that i would never amount to anything special and that nobody would ever truly love me… you can say me and him had a bad break-up. but i don’t like counting him as a boyfriend. anyway, cj has a lot of goals and ambition. he was telling me how he applied to between 40-50 jobs last summer. he’s really trying to get this book published that he wrote about his grandmother, who is native american (seminole, i think). he wants to go to florida for spring break to try and do an interview for his book. he’s also writing a screenplay that his cousin is helping him with. cj told me he’d help me get back on track because i confessed to him that i’ve recently retired from my position as slacker extraordinaire. so… anyway… what was it like to see cj again? just like old times, my friend, just like old times. whenever i see him it’s like i can’t believe how good looking he is. i know that is really shallow but he’s gorgeous!
now the question is: will i see tk on my birthday? do i just search for reasons to be mad at that poor guy? i think i do. i should ease up. it’s just, i’ve been bugging him that it would mean a lot to me if he could see me on my birthday for months now. i mean, if the situation were reversed, and he told me how much it would mean to him for me to be with him somewhere that far in advance — or even with short notice — i would at least get a bus ticket if no one could drive me, you know? i really don’t understand how he sorts out his priorities sometimes… maybe i’m just… maybe i just expect too much? but how can being with tk on my birthday be asking for too much? i even asked for it to be my christmas present from him… i guess i’ll find out in a couple days. don’t get me wrong, tk is amazing. i’ve been thinking about him 24/7 all through break. but i feel like he’s not really happy with me, you know? like i’m too much in a bad way. or i’m too exhausting, or demand too much attention. i guess it’s just my perspective that hey, i’m not exactly the easiest girl to get into a relationship. so if i go that extra mile, it has to be for something spectacular. you know, the earth shattering, mind blowing, passionate, sensational, totally in-love “i hate you/i love you/now screw me” type of deal. like jack said to phyllis during their wedding vows on the young and the restless, “i used to be a cynic but meeting you i’ve learned all about love, i’ve learned that love is the answer, i believe love heals all wounds, i believe love is eternal, can survive everything”. i want that. i want to have a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. i want the “if you miss a day without your friend, your whole life’s off track” sort of love. little notes. surprise phonecalls. because i’ve had that with someone before and it’s like, once you’ve had that kind of love, well… it’s hard to just settle for an 8 on that scale.

ugh! i totallly did a “boyfriend job” today.

boyfriend job: (noun) a task, chore, or activity that is either dirty, annoying, scary, difficult to lift or twist, that i postpone doing myself and wait around for a guy to do. yeah, this sounds like me taking advantage of the whole gender role thing…. ok, i am… one of the many reasons why i decided to leave single-hood and join the realm of couple-dom.

i changed my vaccuum cleaner bag. which doesn’t sound like a horror story… but trust me, it was. that thing hasn’t been changed since my freshman year, and i am to graduate this may. therefore… the bag… wasn’t functioning as a bag anymore. meaning… i had to scoop out dirt, hair, broken glass, and dust with my latex gloved hands from my vaccuum. it was just caked and crammed with all sorts of stuff i never wanted to see again… which was the main reason why i vacccumed that stuff up in the first place. it was quite disgusting.

well, at least my carpet is clean.