f*ck, i am excited! i really can't even remember the last time i saw live music (it may have been bright eyes and feist the winter i got pregnant with??) but a friend is taking me to see TV On the Radio in boston tonight....AND a couple months back i used a little of my tax return to get tickets to the jenny lewis show in boston next week; i'm taking a friend on wednesday! two shows in a week, WOO! is it bad to say that i'm going to party it up for once and get reeeeally drunk tonight?!

(great song, although i'm not crazy about the video)

i'm sure you ladies don't remember, but a few months back Chris Mason organized a counter protest in Boston to raise money for every minute that the Phelps clan protested the opening of the Laramie project. i was really looking forward to going but it ended up being during the weekend of that crazy ice storm that left most of new england a disaster zone...i was bummed to miss it, but chris and i have talked a couple times through email and i've been following his current cross-country trek while he films for his Driving Equality documentary. he just posted this clip of yesterday's interview with Shirley Phelps, and it's pretty unbelievable. plus he got a tour of the "factory" where they make their signs, and they actually gave him one as a memento. he says in his blog that they were actually very kind and welcoming to him, but i'm unclear on whether they knew he's gay. i love his comments in his blog about how freaky it felt to be filming her with the camera he had paid for with money raised by counter-protesting her family...it's kind of a mind-fuck, huh? and, by the way, i almost fell off my chair when she uses the expression "it's on like donkey kong" during the interview.

anyway, here's the link to the clip http://drivingequality.com/2009/06/02/god-hates-who/

I wept when I heard the news. There really aren't any words....this man has devoted his life to serving women and he was murdered because of it. My heart goes out to his family, friends, and co-workers.

I found this press release from NOW to be very powerful and pertinent: http://www.now.org/press/06-09/06-01.html

This was a horrible act of terrorism, and should be treated as such.

how the hell have i not heard of this crafting docu-feature til now?? it looks wonderful, and i'm all geeked out because nikki mcclure is in it and i luvluvluv her. i just wish there was going to be a boston screening...boo to that.

aaaanyway, check out the preview and get more info here: http://www.handmadenationmovie.com/

i'm so pissed right now. i'm not sure if you mamas are familiar with jezebel.com; i stop by there sometimes to check out the posts even though i'm frequently annoyed by some of the content, and by how dictatorial the editors there are about commenting. they play this assy little game where if they don't like your comment you get "disemvoweled", which means they take all the vowels out of what you wrote as a warning that you're pissing off the jezegods. oftentimes it's for a good reason-- trolls and rude assholes, etc-- but i was disemvoweled today and i am PISSED.

one of the main "rules" at jezebel is that there's no body snarking allowed. so if they post a picture of lindsay lohan people are welcome to comment on how wasted she looks and how she wears leggings as pants, but not on how skinny she is or whatnot. i think it's a good policy, although somewhat hypocritical considering some of the writers' own snarkiness that goes on.

so in this morning's gossip post there was a blurb of "news" that said "Rosario Dawson will star opposite — ugh — Kevin James in a romcom called The Zookeeper. What is up with the schlubby dudes getting hot ladies?" i couldnt help but wonder about the fairness of this statement, so i commented "okay, jezzies, i've gots to know: why is body snarking okay when it's about a man?? that rosario dawson/kevin james blurb reeks of snarkinss to me. imagine if the statement were something like 'kirstie alley is set to star opposite brad pitt in new movie...what's up with schlubby ladies getting hot dudes?' i'd get disemvoweled for saying something like that, no?"

and imagine my fucking surprise when i checked back to see what the other readers thought and my comment had been reduced to "ky, jzzs, 'v gts t knw: why s bdy snrkng ky whn t's bt mn?? tht rsr dwsn/kvn jms blrb rks f snrknss t m. mgn f th sttmnt wr smthng lk "krst lly s st t str ppst brd ptt n nw mv...wht's p wth schlbby lds gttng ht dds?" 'd gt dsmvwld fr syng smthng lk tht, n?"

WHAT THE FUCK?!? i meant to open up an honest dialogue about why we, as women, react so strongly to snarking about our bodies yet often allow and even encourage the same thing to happen to men. i didn't intend to come across as insulting or unnessecarily inflammatory, and i don't think i did come across that way, so what the fuck is their problem with me? I WAS CENSORED FOR CALLING THEM OUT ON THEIR HYPOCRISY!

ugh. you are dead to me now, jezebel.

here's monkeygirl and our friend nate spreading some joy on the side of the road yesterday. we got like a hundred honks and waves (we live on a busy road) and it was so much fun...it cracks me up that they look so serious in this picture because the rest of the time they were giggling and cheering "woooo!" when people would honk at us. when we woke up this morning noa said "i need my honking sign, mama!"

i know a superthick wool scarf is a bit out of season, but i don't give a shiz right now. i finished my first project tonight, and IT CAME OUT FANTASTIC!

she keeps scratching a scab off her face and seems absolutley fascinated and undisturbed by the blood. she did it again today in the car and even after i cleaned her up with some wipes she still had some caked blood all around her fingernails...we stopped by a local farm to feed the animals a few minutes later and she stuck her hand in a goat's face and said with a sinister little grin "you wanna eat my blood??" i don't know whether to laugh or worry.

the idea that women who receive child support for their children must be living in undeserved luxury is one that i've been hearing more and more lately, although i'll admit that i probably just notice it more since i'm an aforementioned "child support queen" myself. the latest incarnation of this ignorance that i've seen comes, unfortunately, from a good friend who is angry that his ex-wife got a tatto. i'm shocked and disgusted by his attitude and wish i hadn't seen such ugliness from him, and now i feel like i've seen his "true colors" and can't look at him the same way anymore.

I just recently learned that Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870, written by Julia Ward Howe (author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic"):

before i discovered this community it was like i was lost in the woods at night; finding hip mama was like tripping over a flashlight. *all* of you mamas here have helped illuminate the path in front of me in your own way, and i don't know where i'd be without you. a million thanks for all the love and light you've contributed to my life, and i truly hope i've been able to help light your own paths in some way, too. i love you all so much! xoxo

I pulled out some of my old high school journals recently and skimmed through them, and although much of it is the same boring woe-is-me teenage crap that you'd find in anyone else's old notebooks, I am slightly impressed by how much of a handle I had on shit. I mean, I may have been in the throes of adolescent misery, but some of my attitudes were kind of spot on. For instance: "and now we are useless slugs incubating in this place, growing fatter and lazier with each passing day." Huh. I'd forgotten how pessimistically honest I can be until I found this stuff.

An old friend came over the other night and we had a great time. We've been flirting online for a few weeks so I had a feeling that if he came over there'd be some making out, and there was . we stayed up until like 430 in the morning watching funny ass TV shows and kissin' on and off, and it was so frigging nice to have the company (and someone to feel me up a little, heh). The problem nos is that I don't seem to know how to handle him giving me even a little bit of postitive attention; I get weirded out and feel smothered by what is really only his way of letting me know he's thinking about me. He's actually a NICE guy, and I don't think I know how to handle it, mamas! I'm officially fucked the hell up.

i'm getting really tired of dealing with the same problems over and over with noa...so i debuted the sticker chart tonight.the four things she seems to have the hardest time with lately are playing nice with the rats (without pulling their tails and squeezing the hell out of them), helping clean up her toys before bed (she tends to chuck shit against the wall and bellow "CLEAN UP!"--not so helpful), using the potty (rather than removing her diaper and whizzing on the floor), and staying in her bed at night (lately she gets up for about a dozen different reasons; "i'm thirsty!" "i forgot to say goodnight to roxy!" "i needa go next door and tell nathan something!" "i needa brush my teeth again!" and my personal faves, "there's foxes under my bed!" and "the smoke detector is going off!").

so there's a discount bookstore down the street (everything is 80% off the listed price! craziness.) and i figured that every time she fills up a row in a category (with 8 stars) i'll take her and let her pick out a book. she helped make the chart--"i wanna green chart! green is just sooo beautiful!"-- and she picked out the stickers herself so i'm hoping that she'll be excited about the process and start taking pride in doing her "chores" so she can put some stickers on that bad mother.

she got her first sticker for cleaning up her books at bedtime, woo-hoo! she was so sweetly proud to put her first sticker on the chart...she kept saying "i really gotted a sticker!" so far so good....

have any of you tried this before?? did you get a good response??

i deleted adam from my facebook "friends" last week and tonight i got this message from him:

"Im a little upset that you deleted me as a facebook friend. i know we arent so friendly, and i honestly dont really want to be your friend, but i DO like seeing all the updates and pictures of Noa that you post, so I promise to never write anything disparaging about you, or ever post anything that will hurt your feelings ever again if you re-add me as a friend. I know there is also a 'privacy factor' where you dont need me seeing you flirt all the time with Steve and Ken, or whoever you want to talk to, but i do really like seeing the pics and videos of my little girl. If you think it would be ok, can we be facebook friends again? P.S. I was just kidding about Ken and Steve -A"

Jill and I met 17 years ago when we were twelve, on our first day of seventh grade. I've known her through junior high lunchroom drama and the beginning of high school, through first kisses, first boyfriends, lost virginity, first jobs, first cars, graduations, fledgling adulthood, much heartbreak and just as much laughter, breakups, make-ups, weddings (hers), and now our daughters' births.

it's been two months since i've been touched in any sexual way, and right now i am crazy horny. seriously, i am so desperate to get naked and bone that i'd probably jump the first guy who came within five feet of my bed while my kid wasn't around. here's hoping it happens sooner rather than later, right? (eta: this may have been partly brought on by the fact that i'm currently reading "twilight". although there's no actual sex in it, the sexual tension between edward and bella is practically tangible. meow.)

my best friend jill (the one who got married last may) was due last monday with her first baby....her doctor administered prostaglandins to her cervix this morning and now she's having some pretty strong contractions about ten minutes apart. she's about to take a bath then play some mario kart with her husband and see where the day takes them, and she's going to check back with me at 8 to let me know how it's going. i'm so excited and weepy and proud right now....her birthing journey is beginning!

i stopped by the library tonight to try to find out what's going on wednesday in our community and learned two things: the librarians that were there tonight are kind of bitches, and apparently my town doesn't celebrate teh earth day. so my alternate plans are to head to the park bright and early that morning to do some cleanup with noa, and then to come home and do some planting in the yard of our building. then that evening my neighbors are taking us to the opening of disney's "earth" at the imax theater...i know that noa will *love* it, so i think it'll be pretty kickass time.

frolic barefoot in the grass, mamas!

so even though we don't even speak to each other or look each other in the eye, adam and i are still friends on facebook and i noticed this morning that he posted an album called 'noa'. i made him move out when she was seven weeks old because he was drinking heeeavily and being verbally, emotionally, and minorly physically abusive to me, but i still tried to be a "nice guy" and used to take all the pictures i took of her (and i took them constantly, so there were alot!) and put them on discs and give them to him so he'd have them. it annoyed the piss out of me when he posted them all on myspace, because it gave the false impression that he was actually AROUND and had something to do with those hundreds of moments i captured on film. like, i used to think people would look at them and think "wow, he's such a great dad!" without even knowing the TRUTH, which is that he was never around and i raised her and took care of her 24/7 (still do, actually) while he fucked around and drank and partied and then patted himself on the back for the few hours a week he'd hang out with her at his mom's house. i kept giving him the pictures until she was a few months old and a friend told me that he'd posted a picture i'd taken of noa and i with our heads together and captioned it "here's noa with some kind of gross ugly mole growing off her head" (referring, of course, to my face.) so i was like "fuck him!" and stopped giving him the pictures.

for some reason this morning i was thinking about some of the shitty things people have said to me throughout my life and whether they affected me or not, and i really started wondering what other people's *WORSTS* are. it's interesting to me how differently people are affected by words; i may not be too bothered by one mean-spirited thing someone could say to me, but someone else could be sent into a tizzy over that same thing, you know? or vice versa; an insult that someone else shrugs off could be something that would make me make me collapse in tears.

someone recently gave us a bunch of movies on VHS, and since noa has been sick all week with a high fever and cough we've been doing alot of movie watching. her favorite lately is bambi, and she's insisted on watching it over and over this week. she's really been so sick that she hasnt even wanted to be off the couch, so i've just been letting her relax and watch tv all day if that's all she feels up to. i started getting a liiiitle bit sick of bambi after watching it, oh, 10 times lately...so yesterday i tried to convince her to try something new.

they love to climb around in noa's doll high chair!