Rrrrripe!

Consumerism causes us to want certain things that we don't always question but which are pretty downright wacky, no? Take, for example, shampoo commercials. They peddle products that purport to renew our hair and give us a "healthy cuticle." You want a healthy hair cuticle, don't you? Of course you do. Healthy cu--DUDE. Isn't hair pretty much dead? Isn't that the point, that when we cut it, we're not slaughtering live fibers but hocking off some dead mop?

Today, in New Adventures in Cooch Probing, the mid-wife took a peak at my cervix and concluded it was not yet ripe. You could not believe my indignation. How dare she say that about my cervix?! I mean, it's good that it wasn't rotting, either, but I was so sad. After all, when a woman allows you such access to her Lady Land, the least you can do is tell her something nice. I don't know what that would be. The furniture is pretty? Love what you've done with the place? Hearing my unripe cervix was not yet "a laboring cervix," I felt so depressed. Go ahead. Just take all my lunch money and tell me my hair is one big pile of unhealthy cuticle while you're at it....

***

But then I got home and discovered some brilliant spoils had arrived from Matilda Sue and company. All thoughts of the unripe were dashed when I beheld this package. I really got all wobbly-lipped when I saw the bracelet. I'm ga-ga for the handmade jewels, but when I noticed the MOM charm (seen below in blurry format) and realized I was soon going to be a person worthy of wearing a MOM charm, I really got the shivers. The time was ripe for such a feel-good gift, and I'm thankful to my friends who might otherwise never know the perfect timing of their kindnesses.

Get your guesses in now, kids.

The wee one will be here in no time....

The Year of Becoming

I will remember 2007 as the year in which I started to become several things, and, to note, it was the year that I started to become several things I had always wanted to start to become.

Including someone's mother. I've always wanted to be one. Really, always. I never envisioned my life completely untethered. I've been playing house, literally playing out scenarios in which I organize all of my cassette tapes for hours as though this is my Real Grown-Up House, or playing them out in my mind's eye, thinking about what kinds of voices I'll render when I read my kids bedtime stories. I'm so excited to become someone's mother in the new year (unless, of course, bambinorino arrives in the next few hours after realizing the clutch tax break he/she'll give his/her mother). But I know that to become someone's mother is to become someone's mother each and every day of Lego spills and Broken Curfew nights. Unlike apple pie wherein it's done when the timer goes BAWNNN, becoming someone's mother takes a long time in the oven, I hear. So let's get this baby preheated.

2007 was also the year that I started to become a writer. Now, we are not broadcasting live from the Actor's Studio, so I won't pontificate about My Craft or salute my many influences and writerly diversions. But I will say that it's been a great privilege and a great challenge to become a full-time writer this past year. Bossman said that the more one writes, the easier it becomes, much like writing music. The more you listen, the more you play, the more you write, the symphony just follows you. I'm so far from hearing the symphony. But I can see where my writing has improved in the past year, which required a great number of ego checks and even a letter from a fellow student who noted,

"Higher stylists recognize that commas are optional in many instances. Maybe you could look that up."

Oh. Oh ho ho ho ho HO. I'm looking it up, all right. Especially if looking it up, whatever it may be, can help me to become better, a better mother,...
a better writer,..
a better rubberband ball maker,
a better user of vending machines,
a better pumper of fuel,
a better sidewalk chalk artist,
a better stirrer of skim milky mochas,
a better hummer of bad commercial jingles,
a better taker of vitamins,
a better neighbor, a better wife, a better daughter, a better sister, a better version of what I am becoming....