Sandwich Ennui...

....What I happen to be suffering from right now. I am so damnably bored of my sandwich that I'm depressed. I didn't think sandwiches could cause depression, but mine is right now. It's taking every bit of my will power not to break down and get something sweet and/or salty from the vending machine right now, I am that disgusted with my sandwich.

It's like sitting there, right now, mocking me with its mediocrity. The wilting lettuce, the soggy in places bread, the 'this was stolen from the government surplus' cheese, the oversalted ham are just too depressing for me to even contemplate. Somebody save me from the boring sandwich blues.

Made Up Band Names: Entry # (I have no clue)

Pillow Physics

TM a conversation FIghting Nun and I had at 4:00 in the Effing morning. Ahem:

Fighting Nun: (Thump)
Bloody Munchkin: OW!!! That was your Pillow in my eye.
FN: Uhm.... I couldn't help it... it was Pillow Physics.
BM: (Considers starting angry rant, gets distracted) You know, that would make a great band name.
FN: Not really. I mean its short of PP. That doesn't work on a lot of different levels.
BM: (Considering it) Hee! Actually that works on a LOT of different levels. They could have a banner behind them, all P. P. That's hilarious.
FN: It's four in the morning, you're not thinking clearly.
BM: I am thinking clearly, that this name is clearly AWESOME!
FN: Bedwetting is a serious matter.
BM: That could be the title of their first album. Heh!
FN: Please go to sleep.

My Son

I'd like to say everything in my life is fine, that everything is turning up roses and everything is just great. But I can't say that. I can't even come close. Any time I get even close to thinking it's all going to work for the best, another shoe drops. That shoe just so happens to be a 3 inch stilletto and it just planted it's heel sharply into my skull.

See it's about my son. My seven-month-4-day-old son who apparantly has had the odds stacked against him in every direction since the day he was born. I don't know just how unlucky one person can be, but he seems to prove that someone can be very unlucky indeed.

From the day he was born, he had to fight. Every breath was a battle he had to win to stay alive. Some days, he was Rocky Balboa, fighting gamely, doing everything he needed to in order to win. Other days, he was being beaten soundly by Dolf Lundgren and there were at least a few times he looked to be down for the count. (This exhausts my Rocky knowledge and thus endeth the metaphors).

But then he was home and he was more than just Rocky Balboa. He was amazing. He had a great smile, an incredible coo and an infectious laugh that you couldn't stop. He was beautiful, in every since of the word. He had philosopher's eyes, the type of pensive look that someone much older, much wiser might have been using to ponder the meaning of life.

And now he might never have any of that again, we might not ever have that again. On November 4, the date that brought so much change to America, that saw a new president voted into office, another change was brought into my life. A horrific one. My son had a rather catostrophic event occur that stopped him from breathing. In a few blinks of an eye, his life was almost snuffed out. No almost. It was snuffed out and brought back. But brought back in what form?

With the type of acute injury he suffered, there is some brain damage. Not the worse case they've ever seen, not the best either. He's going to be starting from scratch. He'll have to relearn everything, if he gets any of it back at all. There's no complete road map for an acute brain injury like this. He could suffer severe cerebral palsy or he could be completely normal five, ten years down the road. Nobody knows. He could never coo again, which means he could never speak, he could never walk, or he could do all of those things no sweat. We don't know. We hope, we pray for the best possible outcome, that we'll get to see that smile again, that philosophical look again, but we don't know.

I don't know what to do any more, other than what I'm doing, but it doesn't feel like enough. I wish I knew what to do. As a parent, we'll do anything to make sure our kids are healthy and happy. If I was told that jumping on one foot everyday for the rest of my life would make my son better, I happily would. I'd become a rocket scientist/neurosurgeon/oper singer if I could just see his smile one more time. Hell, with all the medical terminology I have memorized for my son's care, I'm halfway to neurosurgeon now. The other two don't sound like much a stretch.
But that's not how things work. All I can do is be there for him. I sing him songs, I read him books, I soothe him, I play with him and I pray to every diety I've ever even heard of that it does the job. I try to have faith, faith that it will be o.k. I try not to get to eye-rollingly bored answering the same questions from family, friends, co-workers and everybody else over and over again. I try to ignore the annoyed feeling I get when people use the same voice they use with their 5-year-old when she's bumped her head. "Are youuuu Ooookay? Do yooouuu neeeed anything?" like Jesus Christ, my son is in the hospital, I didn't just scrape my knee and come to you whimpering, use your grown-up voice. I try to save all my dark emotions for the dark corners of our bedroom at night. I try to bolster Fighting Nun when he gets down. I try to let him bolster me when I get down. I try to hope. I try to hold on to this fantasy I have of watching my son play soccer with a bunch of four and five year-olds because I need that more than anything in the world. Also, watching four and five year-olds play soccer should be considered performance art because awesome. I try to picture the three of us (with the dog) on a beach somewhere, enjoying a day of sun, wind and water and I hope and pray I get that because God Damnit I F@#*ing deserve it.

Strange Musings on Dreams

So, I don't exactly know why, but I have been having the strangest dreams. I've blamed their occurance on the pregnancy, which may or may not be the reason. Truth is, I've always had wierd dreams (Suzanne Summers having all the answers, anyone remember that?) but pregnancy has somehow turned up the coocoo factor in my dreams. There was a dream involving Jessica Alba and Josh Hartnett and me and apparantly I was a spy that infiltrated Jessica Alba's brothel while Josh Hartnett kept Jessica Alba busy (I have no idea). And then there was another involving Sir Elton John, which I don't even remember the lead up to that one (Again, no idea). I just recently had a dream that my neighbor was housing a horse and a donkey in his backyard and there was something else about that dream that I can't quite remember that made it wierd.

But no dream has been quite as odd as the one this morning. So I'm watching a Monk episode in my dream. Nothing new there, but the episode was called Mr. Monk Versus the Killer Vampire and Kiefer Sutherland, bedecked in The Lost Boys leather jacket and looking badass, was said killer vampire, but then Monk discovers that Kiefer is killing people because they have drugs planted inside their bodies (which ew) and Kiefer wasn't just killing people because he was a vampire but because he had a drug ring and then Monk kills Kiefer Sutherland, but it wasn't Kiefer Sutherland's character he killed, but actually Kiefer Sutherland and I'm yelling "Tony Shaloub what did you do!!" And then I'm at Kiefer Sutherland's funeral procession yelling things like "Kiefer was my favorite Lost Boy", "I'll never be able to watch Stand By Me again" and, my personal favorite "First Renfro, then Ledger, now Sutherland!!! How will I go on?" I remember vaguely thinking "And he just got out of prison too!" when I woke up and then I had to briefly calm myself and remind myself that we are, as far as I know, not living in a Kieferless world, which automatically calmed me. Say what you want about the guy, the wierd Christmas tree attack, the erratic DUI behavior, the TV show I don't watch. But the world is better with him in it. And definately with Donald in it too. (He's one of my favorite characters on Dirty Sexy Money. How could I not love the Sutherlands?)

But now I keep worrying that there might be something slightly prophetic about the dream. At first I thought it might be tied to something regarding my unborn son who will share Sutherland's namesake (yes, Kiefer will be involved in my son's name. Shut up. I don't care what you think! I think the name is cool.) so I was worried that there might be something wrong with the little man. That was until the thing began his rigorous karate training on my ribs and bladder. Then I knew everything was fine. So now I'm worried for the actual Kiefer, and by extension, Tony Shaloub. Like, periodically checking Defamer to make sure nothing strange or worrisome comes up on Kiefer today worried. No, I don't get it either. I'm pregnant, hormonal and neurotic. That's my excuse. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go scour the internets to make sure nothing has happened to Kiefer.

My Big Fat Redneck Wedding

As a self-described pop-culture knuckle-dragger, I like to think there aren't too many things out there that are too base for me to watch. I mean, I use to watch Jackass, which I think is in and of itself a hero's trial. But there comes a point where I look at some of the stuff on television and think "That's way beyond, even for me." Last night that theory got tested. So usually Monday nights are kinda packed for me. I mean, I got Prison Break recording on one TV, I'm watching How I Met your Mother and Big Bang Theory on another. I'm contemplating how I might fit in Heroes (But thankfully G4 has taken the worrying out of that equation). But last night I had none of that. Blah-blah-writer's-strike-blah.

Fighting Nun and I were at a loss. He was flipping through channels and happened to stumble upon "My Big Fat Redneck Wedding" on CMT. (Yes, that's how desperate we were.) Which I vetoed. Then I made my famous call to the Chinese Place, then I went and picked up my order, which meant the veto was lifted in my absence. I get back only to realize that not only has Fighting Nun been watching it, he wants to rewind back to the beginning so that I might also bask in its glory. And then he tells me that Tom Arnold is hosting it, which lead to an argument about whether or not Tom Arnold could technically be considered a redneck over egg rolls. I had to finally concede to Fighting Nun's argument that Tom Arnold is truly a redneck. I mean the evidence is truly staggering in Fighting Nun's favor, I couldn't deny.

Then I sat down and watched the show. I have never watched a show that made me feel simultaneously dumb and way smart at the same time. I mean seriously. I know I dropped a few
IQ points just by watching the show but then I felt a whole lot smarter about myself because I know I've had a lot of stupid ideas in my time on this planet but I count myself lucky that outfitting my bridal party in camouflage doesn't happen to be amongst those ideas. Yes, you read that right. The bride-to-be not only outfitted her bridesmaids and groomsmen in camouflage, it was camo she bought at Wal-mart. On top of that, the groom wore a camo tux jacket. Those three words do not go together and yet I saw it with my very own eyes. And I'm not even at the best part yet. Her bridal party got camo pedicures. I'm sitting there, plate of Chinese food in front of me, about to take a bite of Sesame Chicken and then I see the camo pedicures and my mouth drops, I'm not even sure where the piece of sesame chicken I was eating went. I had to literally pick my jaw off my plate and put it back into place.

It was either at this point in the show or earlier, when the groom had his bachelor party which basically involved the groom and his cohorts shooting fireworks at each other, when Fighting Nun looked at me earnestly and said "Do you think Al Queada and Osama watch this and think 'America is fighting the war on terror to preserve that?", which seriously. And this was just the first episode. The second episode was just as mind-boggling but for completely different reasons. The necessity of a wedding dress to have pockets so the bride has some place to put her smokes for one, or a hard and grizzled cowboy going lingerie shopping, which, it really was as good as it sounds.

Somewhere, between the camo wedding and the grizzled cowboy wedding, presided over a minister who was ordained in prison (!), Fighting Nun said "Well, now I know how I'll be spending my time until the writer's strike is over." Which, yeah I don't know. Yes, on the one hand you have the unchecked use of animal taxidermy as wedding decorations (yes, that actually happened) but on the other hand, well you have your own self-preservation to think about. (But I probably will track down the next episode because the trailer for it was so awesome. It had possibly the best line ever, to wit "Come on honey, let's go constipate our marriage." As much as I appreciate writers, no writer would be dumb enough to think of that!) So My Big Fat Redneck Wedding. Come for the ill-advised use of camouflage and Tom Arnold's (surprisingly) fun remarks about the proceedings, but don't stay too long. Your sanity will thank you.

Figure Skating Rules!!!

So, It's been a couple of days, but I still haven't been able to get it out of my head....

Did anybody seem to catch the Figure Skating National Championships that NBC featured over the weekend? I couldn't have been the only dork, could I? And it's not like I was really looking for Figure Skating so much as it found me really and truly, but that's besides the point. So there I was watching figure skating on a Saturday afternoon and it just so happened to be my favorite figure skating event: Pairs. I love pairs, which may or may not surprise some people. I'm sure, that with my undying Filippe Candelero love, you'd think I'd be all about men's but no, The Pairs event has my heart. Call it risidual The Cutting Edge love if you will, but Pairs is where the money's at.

So I'm sitting there, basking in the awesomeness that is Pairs, watching the last Pairs couple, Inoue and Baldwin, skate. Not the best program. There was that little bauble, they weren't going to get first. O.k. whatever. So there program finishes, but the camera hasn't let off them because they haven't gotten off the ice... and then. And then! He (Baldwin) propose to his partner (Inoue). On the Ice! In front of all the spectators, all the cameras, everyone. Just bends down and proposes right there!!! And She says yes!!! OMG!!! Holy Crap people! That was so awesome! That was so Ice Castles and The Cutting Edge combined kind of awesome. Take "We forgot about the flowers" throw in a little "Just remember who said it First" and you only maybe get close to how awesome that was!!! Fighting Nun, who was playing video games upstairs had to run down and ask me what I was squealing at, it was that kind of awesome. Yes I squealed! Yes I cried just a little bit. (Yes, Fighting Nun rolled his eyes at me and told me to keep my squealing down.) I'm not even going to blame pregnancy hormones on what happened!!! That kind of moment deserves real tears! That was so awesome! I love figure skating!!!

My Vajajay Rides the Short Bus

Dear The Soup;

Thanks for being the inspiration behind my blog post title today! I couldn't have done it without Oprah's Vajajay and you!

Love;

The Bloody Munchkin

Ahem. O.k., so this is going to be an awefully long post that might only tangentially relate to the blog post title, but we'll see. So, uhm, I'm going to come right out and say it. I'm pregnant. I'm with child. I'm Juno (which if you haven't seen this movie, please, please go see it. I haven't given it a full review because I can't say anything that tons of movie bloggers haven't said better already. I'm looking directly at you Reel Fanatic!). While this doesn't really excuse or explain why I haven't been blogging regularly, it's the explanation I'm sticking with.

Let me start out by saying that this pregnancy has been a rollercoaster ride. Highest of highs, bottoming out into lowest of lows. AND that's not even my mood swings! (Rim Shot) Although I think Fighting Nun would disagree with that contention. It has really felt like one thing after another. First trimester? I had to go into the emergency room because of strange intestinal pain. Doctors couldn't quite figure it out, but the Ultrasound technician had a pretty good idea as to what it was. Wanna know what it was? Guess, come on, guess! I dare you! Trapped Gas. That's right. I went to the emergency room because I couldn't fart. Do you know the mileage a grown man with the humor of a twelve-year-old can get out of the term trapped gas??? You really don't want to know that answer but I now do. Thanks Fighting Nun. So that was dive number one in this roller coaster I call pregnancy, and then the roller coaster started climbing up and up again. Things were good.

Cut to Trimester two. Cut to the Ultrasound technician telling us it's a boy. It was a high point! But the roller coaster wouldn't dip on us would it? Would it? Cut to ten minutes later when a nice seeming but utterly unhelpful paranatalogist gut punches with some news that took us a whole week to comprehend. First, we were told there might be an issue with the baby's heart and secondly we were told he had a cleft palate. Up to that point we didn't really have a reference point to what either of those would mean. And there's the dip in the roller coaster which plummeted us, followed by a bunch of loopty-loop thingies. Follow that up with a trip to a pediatric heart specialist guy dude thingie and a clean bill of health on the baby's heart. Aaaaaand We're climbing again! Follow that up with a talk with an incredibly nice nurse for a cranial-facial specialist that specializes in clefts and we're still on the rise, although a bit unsteady. We haven't unclenched our hands from the bars yet, but we can breathe just a little bit.

Which now brings me to the blog post title. So, about three weeks ago, there was something weird.... going on.... down there. In the you know what. A day went by, I let it slide, but things were still freaky in vajajayville in ways that I didn't really have a reference point for. Finally, I call my OB, who was conveniently on vacation. I call the doctor taking his patients and they tell me to go directly to the hospital, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. Aaaaaand there's another plummet. Woooo! 3 hours and who knows how many thousands of dollars billed to my insurance later, and we still weren't any closer to what's wrong. It's been this on and off thing that we don't quite understand and has had me a bit concerned (read: freaked out) off and on for a few weeks now. Which brings me to a conversation Fighting Nun and I had that I probably shouldn't repeat, but I'm gonna anyway:

Cut to a car ride where I'm explaining my concern with... that region. Bloody Munchkin: It's still kinda... freaky.
Fighting Nun: I wouldn't worry too much about it though.
Bloody Munchkin: Why not?
Fighting Nun: Well you're vagina has always been.... special.
Bloody Munchkin: What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Fighting Nun: Well, I mean come on, think of your history here. Your whooha has always needed... special consideration.
Bloody Munchkin: Just what are you trying to say? That my vagina is in special ed classes?
Fighting Nun: Yeah, basically. Your vagina rides the short bus.

So, my vagina rides the short bus. I'm not sure where that conversation fits in terms of the roller coaster, maybe a lull in the ride perhaps? Since then, I've had the good luck of having to give blood for a gestational diabetes test that came back high (a little bit of a dip) which means I had to take another blood test that made my arms look like a) I had become a heroine junkie, b) someone had screwed up and put the stigmata on my body on the wrong place, c) I had been bitten by really wee vampires who couldn't make my neck or D) all of the above. I can't decide which. I think I'm going with D though.

Which brings us to now. So far during this roller coaster, I've come to realize I have a problem with trapped gas, I'm going to have a unique child with a cleft lip and my vagina rides the short bus. And crazily enough, I don't see the ride ending anytime soon. I'm going to hold on to the bars and hope for the best. Wish me luck.

Dear semi-teenage heartthrobs I used to have a crush on:

Stop Dying. No. I mean it. First Renfro, now Ledger. I just, I just..... man, I can't even put it into words. I haven't been this depressed over celebrity deaths since, probably Brandis, but I'm going to go even further back. River Phoenix. That one happened in my teens, and because River was River and I was a gushing teenage girl, I. Was. Devastated.

And now, I had barely dealt with Renfro and my heart as been ripped out again by Ledger? And thanks to the rule of three, I'm wondering who is going to die to make the trifecta, which has me more nervous than I've ever been for some of my idols of years past. God. I can't even get my head around this. I'm going to curl up in a ball and hide in a corner now....

The Baldwin Conspiracy Theory

I've had Baldwins on the brain lately. I think that it's due to the fact that they are inescapable. I mean, you've got Alec who is basically everywhere. And then, like a bad sore, Stephen keeps popping up everywhere all "Look at me I can ride a bull, look at me I'm on Celebrity Apprentice. Look, look, look over here." And you look, even though you don't want to, but mostly you're looking to see if his hair has grown out appropriately after Stephen let Vanilla Ice of all people take clippers to it. And then, on top of that now you've got Daniel's bloated figure haunting you from the VH1 channel. The only one I haven't seen lately is Billy, which I can never tell if that's a good sign or not. Like he's always hiding under a rock with Chyna and then all the sudden he'll pop out and say "Boo!" and then he'll go back into hiding and I have no idea what he's doing. And in my mind he was always the superior Baldwin anyway. And look, it's not like I don't know how that arguement goes all "Billy was in Sliver! I can not abide the movie or that Baldwin! Alec is the superior Baldwin! Look at his body of work." To which I say look at his body! There are many things I don't want to do in this lifetime and one of them is not to see Alec, Daniel, or Stephen shirtless and I definately don't want to see all three shirtless at the same time because. Yeech. The four Baldwin brothers are like the evolution of man chart, you know the one, where they show apes, then the cro-magnun and eventually it gets to us? Yeah, the Baldwins are like that except what that chart happens to be showing us is the evolution of Bloat, with Daniel back with the apes, Stephen somewhere with the Cro-Mags, Alec just a step above that until finally we reach Daniel, who is as good a picture of unbloated normalcy the Baldwins are ever going to show off. But all this is besides the point.

So last night, with absolutely nothing on TV, we decided to watch Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew on the aforementioned VH1. Tigerlady T told me to watch it because she said it was the trainwreck to end all trainwrecks and I have to say I agree with her. I mean it's really not pretty, what with Conway screaming and yelping and DEAR GOD THE ICY HOT! THE WRONG THINGS THAT WERE DONE IN THIS EPISODE IN THE NAME OF ICY HOT! I mean, I was convinced a disgusting porn was around the corner and what with Marey Carey in rehab, I'm amazed I wasn't wrong. And then of course, there's Daniel, or Daniel's bloated figure or the Ghost of Bloat Future or whatever you want to call him. The only thing more far-reaching in size than Daniel's Bloat was Daniel's Self-Righteousness, which for someone who has snorted a horse's weight in cocaine, I'm amazed he has that at that great a degree. But oh wait, he's a Baldwin, I shouldn't be surprised. Because of Daniel's bloat, or inspite of it, or who knows, Fighting Nun and I were still talking about him and the Baldwin's this morning, and more importantly we stumbled upon one of the greater conspiracy theories of all time. To wit:

Bloody Munchkin: What are you thinking about?
Fighting Nun, with a disgusted sigh: Daniel.
BM: Ugh. God I know. Clearly the most inferior Baldwin, not that he knows it at all.
FN: Isn't the Baldwin that died the most inferior Baldwin? You know, because he's dead?
BM: To my knowledge, no Baldwin has died although Daniel's been to the brink many a time, God knows.
FN: Then who am I thinking of? Chris... Chris?
BM: Penn. Penn's aren't Baldwins. Thank God for that. But I always get the Penns and the Arquettes mixed up. I don't know why I think Alexis Arquette is a Penn, I just do.
FN: Actually come to think of it, I have the same problem with Andy Garcia and the Baldwins.
BM: Wait. What?
FN: Andy Garcia. I think he's a Baldwin.
BM, utterly dumbstruck: How could you get Andy Garcia mixed up with a Baldwin?
FN: I don't know, I just do.
BM: You do realize that Andy Garcia happens to be Cuban right? And the Baldwins are... the Baldwins.
FN: I know, I know, but think about it. Maybe papa Baldwin decided to schtoop Senorita Garcia and the fruits of the union happened to be Andy Garcia and as some sort of extortion, Mama Garcia forced papa Baldwin to put her son through acting with the lot of the Baldwins.
BM, still dumbstruck: I have no idea how to even process this. You have a crazy yet beautiful mind.

With that, I kissed my husband good-bye and tried to forget the silliness that was the Garcia-Baldwin relation theory. But now? It's just off the wall enough to be true. I can just see it, Papa Baldwin handing Alec's leftover scripts to Andy. "Alec's been asked to play this casino owner for this movie with like Clooney or whatever, but he's already doing that with William H. Macey. Maybe you would want a shot at that?" In fact, I want to live in a world where this very thing is true, that Andy Garcia is the ill-begotten half-brother of the rest of the Baldwins, trying to live out from under their shadow, which is a sizeable task. Because have you seen the size of Daniel Baldwin's shadow? Mr. Burns is calling Daniel right now so that he can use Daniel's Bloat Ridden body to blot out the sun in another attempt to leave Springfield in darkness yet again. (Dude, I have a million Daniel Baldwin Bloat Jokes. I hope I don't get sued.) In the meantime, I'll see what I can't do about arranging a Baldwin-Garcia paternity test.