Mother, Inc

love bites

California Dreaming: Los Angeles (Part 1)

September 4, 2009

Leg 4: Stargazing in the City of Angels

Being in LA was exactly what I expected it to be. Having lived on a staple of Hollywood fare pretty much all my life, I felt like I knew all the shops along Rodeo Drive from when Julia Roberts sashayed down the street in Pretty Woman. I even had the soundtrack in my head as I tried to reenact the scene. Sunset Boulevard, Orange County and Santa Monica were all familiar places from various movies. The sidewalks and palm trees. Blading on the Venice Boardwalk, chillaxing in Newport Beach. Ah, I felt like I was home.

The first thing we did upon reaching LA was to head to Staples Centre to catch a Lakers game. It happened to be game night against the Houston Rockets (The Yao, baby) and being the die hard Lakers fan that he is, the husband refused to check into the hotel until we caught the game. Only thing was, we didn’t have any tickets and we had to loiter outside the stadium looking for black market ones. We eventually got a pair of courtside tics from a burly dude at half price just 5 minutes before the whistle blew and it was like winning the lottery.

: We looked like crap after a 7 hour drive so there’s no way I’m putting those pics up

I wasn’t a fan of either teams, but it was the Yao, so being Chinese and all, I pledged my allegiance to the Rockets for the 80 minutes while the husband was screaming himself hoarse for the Lakers. The game turned out to be quite a cracker. Kobe Bryant stepped up with a buzzer beater and I was the only crazy Rockets fan booing him and being stared down by a sea of yellow and purple. Although, the highlight for me was watching a showdown between a feisty little black lady and a giant Italian dude whom I suspect has links with the Mafia cos he sounded like Don Corleone and said Omerta a lot. Or it could have been Berta. It was kinda hard to tell with all that noise.

I was really excited to check out Hollywood Boulevard and I even promised the husband that was THE place to meet Brad Pitt and maybe we might even get spotted to star in the next Rush Hour. Well, nobody told me that famous Hollywood stars didn’t spend all their time hanging around their stars on the walk of fame. Because if I had a star on the walk of fame, that would be all I did. Just sitting next to it looking all smug and pleased with myself. All. the. time.

: Spare me some change

I bet the husband $5 and a lifetime of gloating rights that he wouldn’t be able to make a stranger give him money. Which he totally won. Also, the guy who threw him a quarter was actually really cute and possibly gay.

I did manage to take a photo with the Cat in the Hat, which cost me a dollar. I still feel ripped off when I think about it now. I was too shocked that he made me give him a dollar for the photo and I was partially afraid that he would summon Thing One and Thing Two to sit on me and start rhyming if I didn’t pay up. The worst thing was the husband actually managed to take a kickass photo with Borat (I swear he was real) FOR FREE, which was actually way cooler than some stupid striped cat.

: I know, I’m a sucker.

: Very nice, how much? FREE

The thing about LA is that there’s just so much to do and see. The 5 days we spent were barely enough to cover all the main attractions and unlike SF, we hardly had time to sit and watch the world go by. We would be in downtown LA in the morning, and by the afternoon, we’d be in Venice Beach and finally, to Santa Monica to catch the sunset. Speaking of Santa Monica, it was a place filled with awesomeness. It was where we met and fell in love instantly with Sha-Shaty. The guy has mad sax skills.

: The soundtrack still gives me goosebumps

: Santa Monica, where I was trying to do the whole walking into the sunset thing.

Another great thing about being in LA? In-and-out burger. It is by far the best burger I’ve ever tasted and we had it everyday for because we couldn’t get enough of it. Fatburger doesn’t even come close. And Carl’s Jr tastes like McCrap in comparison. It is THAT good.

by Daphne

kids inc

Anyone knows how to cure Bag Lady Odor?

September 3, 2009

It’s not for me, obviously, because I smell wonderful all the time. But seriously, I need a cure for a severe case of bag lady odor. And I need more constructive comments than moth balls and talcum powder.

See, it’s actually for my baby girl. My beautiful baby girl, whom I love to bits. Who also smells like a bag lady every morning. And not just any ordinary bag lady but the kind that has been living in an attic for the past 25 years surviving solely on the fungi she grew in her armpits. Yeah, *that* kinda bag lady.

It’s bizarre, really. Every night she goes to bed all clean and smelling like rainbows and strawberries. Then 7 hours in her cot (in an air-conditioned room, mind you), she wakes up and… BAG LADY. It’s not even the smell of body odor after a vigorous workout, which would be perfectly normal seeing how she squirms and grunts all night. But it’s the unmistakable smell of an 85-year-old lady who’s lived in an attic. I kid you not.

I suppose it’s not a big deal because it does go away after a shower, but for a little lady, that’s just not cool. I mean, ok, if it’s just a phase that goes away after a while, that’s fine and Mama can find a way to not pass out while picking her up in the morning. But what if it never goes away and even when she’s 25, she still has to rush to the toilet every morning to ward off the bag lady odor. I feel for the dude who becomes my son-in-law and wakes up on their honeymoon to his grand-aunt Ingrid.

I tried googling it, but nobody seems to have that problem, so I guess I’m all on my own here. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Oh wait, Kirsten, if you’re reading this and wondering why no boy is asking you out, Mommy tried her best and it’s just incurable. The best shot you got is hoping that these nice people will find a way to make the smell disappear.

by Daphne

I (heart) my boobs

September 2, 2009

I just gotta state for the record that I’ve got TERRIFIC boobs. I didn’t say terrific-looking boobs so you can stop staring, thank you very much. They’re terrifically productive, and they’ve come a long way from the days of being nice-but-completely-useless. Not only have they matched the demand of my milk drinking machine, they have stepped up and far exceeded expectations by producing way more than needed. I’m up to 8 bottles of extras so I can go out galavanting for a whole day without worrying that she will starve to death.

I have waited for this day for so long that all I could do this morning was to open my fridge door and admire the milk bottles all lined up neatly in a row.

milk-bottles

Now that I’ve officially joined the league of milkmaids all around the world and I can heave a sigh of relief because it means I’m not a bad mother, I’ve gotta say that society these days are not kind to breasts. I mean, you don’t see any other body parts coming under such intense scrutiny, like “Oh, your little pinky can’t fit into your ear canal? That’s terrible and you’re now less of a human being.” Or “OMG your nose isn’t producing enough mucus? Maybe you should get a nose job.”

The moment i got preggers, it seemed the whole world was interested in my boobs. I had lactation consultants manhandling them and complete strangers asking if you was successful at breastfeeding. Even the old lady who lives next door had a detailed and mildly inappropriate conversation about them when she walked past and saw me expressing milk. Ok see, where I grew up, my breasts are no one else’s business but mine and NOBODY talks about them, much less touch them.

While I was stuck at the hospital for 27 hours, I was bombarded with tacky posters of how BREASTFEEDING IS THE ONLY WAY and the evil formula was going to make my baby self-destruct. Except that I already have a baby who survived on formula milk and he seems to be doing fine (fine being relative because he likes to eat dirt a lot, which might not be the case had I given him breast milk). But even then, I felt terribly guilty all the time for not being able to breastfeed him, like I was shortchanging him or something.

And the husband will tell you that I went through a completely irrational phase of blaming *everything* on formula. He catches a cold, it’s because of formula. Can’t sleep, formula. Can’t eat, also formula. For a while, I was beating myself up everyday for not feeding him the all-powerful breast milk.

It used to really get to me, especially when folks who found out I didn’t breastfeed him gave this sympathetic-but-it’s-all-your-fault look and proceeded to berate me on the benefits of breast milk. It took every ounce of my self control and then some to not stab them and feed them their own guts. I KNOW BREAST IS BEST (the person who came up with that cheesy line should be beheaded by the Dear Leader himself), but there was a time when they were broken and refused to work.

So you can understand why I’m so proud of the fact that they’re fixed and no longer spoilt. And why I’ve got to shout it from the rooftops, so everyone will stop asking me if I’m breastfeeding, and going on and on about why it’s the elixir of life.

PS. I know I said breast/boobs 12 times in this post and if you’re conservative about that sort of thing, BREAST BREAST BREAST BREAST BREAST. For good measure.

by Daphne

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