motherhood
something happened last weekend...something pre-eminent and noteworthy. serena and I crossed a very important milestone. yay the kind of milestone that is indeed a true test of what kind of parent you may be for the rest of your life. my child...my angelcake...my mild mannered sweet honeypot...wigged the FUCK OUT in public. she spazzed...in the middle of ikea...a screaming brown miniature figurine amongst a backdrop of cheap swedish architecture...she screamed and screamed and turned beet red and hollared and looked at me hatefully. I went into panic mode...she'd never acted like that before and I really have gotten quite used to having a "good" baby. it's almost like she was born with that part of your brain that says "don't do that, it's embarassing" as opposed to most other kids who pick their nose, scratch their ass crack, scream, stomp, roll around on the floor in a tantrum, stare, point, beg and just generally act like simians in public until that fraction of their brain matures. even if serena got extra irritated while we were out before, she'd always wait until she noticed she was back in the familiar confines of our apartment before she'd start hollaring at us. my guess is that she was tired and wanted to lay down instead of being hung like a parachuter in her baby pounch. she would've been right as rain had I brought her stroller, but blue promised that ikea had their own strollers to use. this should've been when a very wise piece of advise christopher gave me should've kicked in: don't listen to people with no kids. but I did. and the strollers at ikea were for MUCH older kids...they were made of metal for shit sake. I could've killed blue. so around 4pm, when serena realized there was so stroller for her to relax in and yes indeed she was still stuck in that harness she just went a+ apeshit for twenty minutes straight and all the pacing and cooing and begging and switching her position in my arms couldn't satiate her wailing. at one point, under my breath and through clenched teeth, I said "shut up serena shut up". then I felt bad...like one of them crazy bitches who start beating their seeds with tomato cans in the middle of the supermarket.
eventually she got too tired to continue and fell asleep. I wiped her tears away and then my own as blue casually waited in the longest line on earth for a hot dog. and serena was a good girl all the way back to manhattan on the ikea shuttle, and even maintained her angelic demanor when we met christopher at his job and had to wait for him to get off. so she's yet to show me any signs that another moment like that might be on the horizon, and I've had her out with me a lot over the past week. with her stroller. earlier at work she chillaxed as per her usual attitude the entire time...half the office didn't even realize she was there. I had to take her in with me today as christopher's managers are tryin to play hardball regarding our vacation next week and scheduled him today and wednesday - the days he usually watches her while I go into the office. their excuse for giving topher a hard time? because he had "two weeks off in april". here's my issue: I love how these niggas are acting like that was some leisurely hiatus...like he went to vegas and ate chips and salsa off stripper's backsides when in actuality that was the first two weeks after serena was born. one of his supervisors likes to frequently mention that not even he got two weeks off when his kids were born but his kids also weren't born ill. his wife probably didn't have to spend two extra days in the hospital because of a fever. bitches. habitual line steppers. I can't wait until topher no longer has to work retail...he's too intelligent and charismatic to waste away in the confines of his current position...what's more he knows that shit and they can't stand that he's not a mindless zombie ass-slurp.
when I take serena around town with me, I get stopped constantly by heads who tell me how beautiful she is. the grumpiest, grungiest heads on the train smile at her when I push her stroller into the car. she has melted the bleekest of expressions. and this is men and women alike...one potentially lascivious religious kat stopped me today to inform me that serena was a gift from god. I think he was kinda hitting on me, but he seemed to be warming up a church recruitment as well.
potentially lascivious religious kat: that is one gorgeous little baby
me: thank you
plrk: she's your first?
me: yea she is
plrk: she looks like she could be muhammad ali's kin...that must sound odd
me: my father looks like muhammad ali, so no it doesn't (yes it did, but my father really does look a lot like muhammad ali, he's gotten that comparison for like forty years so...I dunno, he must've been eyeballing my kid pretty hard to see a resemblence like that)
plrk: that little girl is a gift from god
me: yes she is
plrk: that's why she's so beautiful, cause she is blessed...she's an angel delivered by god
me: um...yes
plrk: she is a blessing from the lord
me: ...
plrk: and so are you...I can tell by lookin at you
at this point I think he looked at my tits. I'm pretty sure he did. he licked his lips too. nah, I'm kidding. he did look at my tits though.
I digress...a good portion of the individuals who stop me to dialogue about serena are other mothers...every now and then they have their babies with them too. which brings me to my point...I feel like it's good etiquette to say "yours too" when a woman with a child tells me how cute my kid is. but sometimes...the child...isn't...cute. so I wonder...do people with less then attractive kids know that their children aren't really all that cute? do I do myself a disservice by lying about how cute their kid is because I feel some misplaced obligation to return their compliment? now it's not like I've encountered any gremlins yet but it's just good manners...one of those things you just do, not because you necessarily want to but because you should. like giving every kid in your grade a valentine in elementary school, even the bullies and the dorks...like buying the cute girl at the club's ugly friend a drink too...like giving up your seat on the train to old people...like getting up after sex to retrieve the paper towels to wipe up the wet spot...feel free to add your own.
jay (b.k.a. traj) is back in new york for a couple of months to get his proverbial hustler weight up. I saw him for the first time in two years last week. the last time I saw him his father had died and I flew to florida to help bury him...this reunion was much more joyous because he got to see serena for the first time. it was just so cool...I didn't feel like I was catching up with an "ex", I felt like I was spending time with an old friend...which is how we'd always wanted our post-relationship relationship to be, but it's hard to predict how those things will work out. I have had good tidings in that I am truly friends with all of my exes. mostly because I only have two - jay and tori. anyway...could've been tense...particularly when I've shacked up and procreated with someone he'd probably considered competition for awhile. regardless it was peace, and when christopher got home from work the two of them clicked like arm and hammer. they even left me and beans behind in the house to go to the grocery and liquor stores. they came back with bags galore; jay decided to cook. blue dropped by after work, too, and soon after antonio joined us...so we had ourselves a nice little house party in the sweltering, awful heat, complete with carribean-style chicken and noodles, and grey groose and pineapple juice courtesy antonio (he also brought coconut rum and mojito mix much to my and christopher's appreciation...being mostly "stuck" in the house now that we're parents is very bearable when we can at least get DRUNK! I'm just kidding. we're so sophisticated an shit, we don't even need to get drunk anymore...we get warm). it was mad peace peace peace...I've said it many times before and I will say it many more times in my life - I love my cipher. blue had never seen the matrix if you can fucking believe it...so we popped it into the DVD player and relived the awesome. she remarked afterword that she wished she'd seen it years ago before bullet time and other matrixian inventions had become par for the course. anyway, the next day I woke up with strep throat, but I told that story already.
what else what else? I went to the MAC store with blue the other day to get some powder...it was jumpin in there with everyone from model chicks, ghetto hootchies and hoodrats to muslim women matching their eyeshadow to their headwraps. one pretty chick caught my eye inparticular. she was getting her face beat, as the gayboys say (she was receiving a make-over), and before my eyes she went from eh-okay-kinda-cute to triple-take-material. there was something so sensual about the girl although my staring wasn't sexual in nature, big round ass inside her jeans aside...when her face was done she turned her face this way and that in the mirror, primping her short spiky hair, slowly realizing how fierce her shit was at that moment...it was like a character study. I wondered if anyone had ever caught a glance at me, blissfully unaware I was being studied, and watched me like that. admired my beauty...or admired my humble admiration of my beauty. deeper still I have these moments when I feel completely outside of everyone else...like theres one giant inside joke shared between the entire population of the universe but not me. there are certain heads who give me the impression they're the gatekeepers of the joke - the beautiful people, the outgoing, the ones who draw everyone around them, the tastemakers, the trendsetters. I don't feel kin to anyone on that level. I wonder if I've ever made anyone else feel like that? this girl named stacey I went to high school with called me "a heather" a couple years ago as we reminisced...I guess that's pretty ironic. I spent my high school years feeling constantly left out and to this day it persists in it's own ways. I fear passing that feeling of isolation onto my daughter moreso then my asthma or allergies.
iron chef is on. the original, not the american version...which is actually growing on me cause I dig bobby flay. but nothing is like the japanese iron chef...and their over-abudent, decadent use of foie gras, truffles, and caviar ("for saltiness!"). I think it'd be mad interesting if instead of a secret food item the chairman gave the chefs green tea. green tea battle. starbucks now makes a green tea frappachino, come to think of it. I sampled it yesterday and it's very weird. I like it.