All About the Boobjamins

It is a powerful thing as a young woman when you first discover the power of the boob. Once they've really grown in and rounded themselves out they become part of the arsenal of sexuality that a woman learns to use or not use as she sees fit. It is fairly indisputable, the power of the breast - just ask women like Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra who wouldn't even have careers were it not for the enhancements of brave and talented surgeons. I've been lucky in the boob department - I've always had nice breasts, I think, a nice handful, good shape, relatively unscarred...and I have enjoyed their usage throughout my life. But now, alas, the boobs have taken on a whole new dimension.

Of course, those that have followed my career know that my breasts were, for good and bad, part of public domain long before they became Property of Nahanni. But now, they really feel as though they belong to someone else, and I must admit, I'm starting to want them back. I still struggle with the division between the sexuality of my breasts and the utility of them which has taken over my life for the last year. Sometimes I feel like they enter a room before I do - and not necessarily in that powerful 'I'm a young sexual being hear me roar' kind of way. I think my life has become all about the boob - a territory that has been taken over by a tiny and now quite demanding interloper - and I'm trying to wrest back power from the rebels.

Beyond all the early struggles with mastitis and the latch and all that came with it, I have enjoyed nurturing my daughter, nourishing her with these amazing little milk bars. But now she is at the stage where she jams her drool coated chin into my chest at the fist inklings of thirst - no matter where we are. I will admit that this is somewhat better than my friend whose daughter (I think, adorably) repeats 'Boobie! Boobie!' until she gets what she wants, but I can see that too on the horizon with my smart little one and I don't know how much longer I want to keep this up.

I'm also struggling in a little battle of wills that Nahanni and I are having. Most babies have a preferred side and Nahanni is no different. The problem is that she is now refusing to nurse from the other side and it can turn ugly at times, with her crying and struggling against me, and me laughing because it's really so very comical at the same time. She pulls back from the offending side, makes the ASL sign for 'more' repeatedly and then thrusts her little pointy finger into the correct breast with a sharp 'J'accuse!' sort of screech. It wouldn't be anything but hilarious except that I'm starting to fear my left side will become mutantly large while her neglected right hand sister withers into oblivion. And I have to further admit that I'm scared milkless to see what the whole terrain will look like when the milk goes. Makes a very strong case for 'extended nursing'...

Yes, I have a wonderful and loving husband who heartily (and I believe honestly) contends that I am beautiful no matter what, but I lament the passing of my powerful former boobies. Now that they have become mommy-boobs, is there any going back? Will I ever be able to regain the territory lost to pointing fingers and little sharp teeth?

I suppose only time will tell. As with many things post-baby, all is not as it was - although I think I'm doing pretty well for a woman in her...um, very late twenties. (Ha, I never get tired of that one...) I will soldier on, and slowly, I will pit my will against that of my tiny milk-loving dictator, oh, she of the pointing, accusatory finger and a thirst for all things mommy. I can only hope for an easy truce and a return of at least some of the property to its original owner...

From the Files of the Domestically Challenged

I am not a talented housekeeper.

I've finally figured it out and am in the process of accepting and forgiving myself. I have struggled all my life with this, it is an affliction. I've always loved the look of a place in which every little thing is neatly tucked away, where counters gleam and surfaces sparkle. Of fridges neatly ordered, diligently sorted, of tightly folded towel bundles, crisply sheeted beds, floors glossy like teenaged lips. I possess these things, however, on a very limited basis -- like distant family whom you miss dearly, they come around far too rarely and stay too little time.

I try. I really, really do. And for a very long time I have blamed myself for the fact that it just never stays together. I clean all day long it seems, and still, it tends to look like a disaster zone despite my best efforts. I have bitched and moaned, lamented and wailed. I have tried everything, all the while wondering what it was that I was doing wrong -- until the other day. Until the other day when I finally determined that, of all the things I am talented at (and I proudly admit there are many) I am not a talented domestic goddess. I do not possess that incredible gene which allows you to keep your fridge both stocked and organized, jars lined up like little soldiers, freezer stacked with efficiently labeled items awaiting my perusal at dinner time. Underneath my sink looks like a bomb went off, my pantry looks like pygmies have been rooting through it. And piles. There are always piles.

It's not that I don't spend many hours arranging and rearranging things in the great and unending hope that someday it will stay how I left it. So I have begun to make peace with the fact that I simply seem to suck at domesticity. It is making the whole thing much easier to bear - the same way you can be excused from understanding how your car works because you don't understand small machinery, or how the stock market works because you are not good with numbers - I can let go of the whole thing because I am just not good at it.

I envy people who are. It is a marvellous thing indeed to witness it - at my mother-in-law's home, for example. There cereal boxes are labeled with their opening dates, items with batteries list their dates in the bottoms, facecloths are rolled into little curled colonies of neatness. Me? Not so much. I fold things neatly (although one of Nahanni's favourite games is to undo them as quickly as I fold them) and put them into their designated spots but inevitably they wind up in a tangle. There is never enough something or other in the fridge or pantry, I constantly forget to buy milk or toilet paper or cream for coffee. I mean to take down the recycling, to scrub the baseboards, to recaulk the tub. I'm just not good at it.

Is that a valid excuse or a cop out? Is it akin to the people who frequent fast-food eateries for the majority of their meals and then say it's not their fault for being fat? I'm not entirely sure, but I will say this. I have heard so many mothers, my own included, say that they wish they wouldn't have spent so much time bothering to clean when their kids were little and for once, I am taking heed. It seems like good advice for someone like me who is indeed, domestically challenged. My house is relatively neat and relatively clean. It is cozy and lived in and there is a lot of love. Could you eat off my floors? Well, you could, but I wouldn't recommend it. We live here, we exist, we use things, we make messes and I figure the sooner I accept that the better it will all be. There's not going to be a day when there are no longer dishes to be put away or laundry to be done. And if there's something or another to feed Nahanni with I'm sure we can survive the few things that I always forget to pick up. Yes, there's cat hair on things, there are spots on the walls and dust on the shelves. But it's not my fault -- I'm domestically challenged.

What a Tangled Web We Weave

There have always been bullies. For me it was the Popen sisters - a series of increasingly angry girls who seemed to love to torture others - me in particular. It is unclear to me what their specific reasons were for their often cruel dislike of me, but they remained thorns in my side until I went to high school. I have a very specific memory of laying a shocking upper-cut to the jaw of the largest of the clan who had wrapped her meaty, bejeweled hands around my skinny 10-year old neck. She was so completely agog, holding her chin gently, as though a toothache, that she forgot to beat the hell out of me and I ran like the wind. I can honestly say she never bothered me again after that. Her younger sister, however, took particular glee in cutting off a large swath of my hair one day while I stood talking to someone in the main office during lunch hour. I heard the metallic lick of the scissors before I ever heard her, then felt the feathery shards tumble across my shoulder. Knowing she wanted to see me cry, to see me rail against her cruelty, I simply brushed the hair aside and continued my conversation, robbing her of her moment of spiteful glory. I wanted to cry, I was furious at the violation, but I refused to give her the satisfaction. My blood boils even now to think of it. And still, there are bullies out there - only now, they prefer cyberspace, a place where the cruelest and dullest among us have the opportunity to act dismally and with impunity.

Anonymity does fascinating things to human beings - it can turn them into biting, awful creatures who delight in saying cruel and unseemly things to others. The anonymity of the internet allows people to feel invisible, makes them feel as though they wear some impenetrable cloak which protects them, and, they seem to feel, buffers them from any social graces to which they may be required to adhere in the real world. I met a cyber-bully just recently,by accident through youtube.

I have an account on yahoo which I had used to post videos on youtube before I could embed them here on the blog. I check it randomly, use it rarely and so I had not seen that someone had made comments on the ‘Nahanni 8 days old’ entry. Blindly, dumbly, innocently I clicked onto the link and unwittingly put my hand into the beehive of a bully.

People have, on occasion, commented on the videos I have on youtube - all of which were put there so that friends and family could feel close to Nahanni even though they are far away. Invariably people have said kind and wonderful things about our beautiful, charming daughter. On this occasion, however, a 41-year old Canadian man using the moniker ‘trinitymike’ decided that he had little of real import to add to the world and left a flurry of cruel comments about me, about my daughter and her name. I was gobsmacked. I could not believe that a complete stranger would have nothing better to do than stumble around online inserting himself into other people’s lives and then insulting them on it. Insulting a 4-month old baby even! It shocked me further how incredibly angry his comments and his gall made me. It was like those times in traffic when someone who’s watching television and talking on their phone flips you off and you carry that hard, bitter stone with you half the day because you simply cannot believe what an a**hole that person is. This made me insane with rage. I could hardly log on and reply fast enough to this imbecile.

And just like that, I got sucked into an argument with a complete stranger in cyberspace.

I know that I should have just let it go, just as we would tell a young child who is taunted by their peers, but I just couldn’t. I have never been one to step aside out of magnanimity and let a slight go. I am not one to back down from a battle, particularly one of words. I remember years ago working on a show with an actor who was fresh off the new-kid boat. He was the most annoying person I have ever worked with and he made me insane with his immaturity and naive and ill-conceived view of his place in the industry. He kept pestering me to tell him how old I was and I finally said ‘Why is it bothering you so much that I won’t tell you?’ and he responded that it was bothering him because I was being, and I quote: “a sycophant” about it. I stood there, mouth agape trying hard not to laugh in his face. Like a small child trying to use big words to impress, he had clearly yanked two pronounceable words from the ether and figured he would fling them at people in the hopes that they would be more stupid than he. When I laughed that I was most certainly not, his intelligent retort was “Yes you are, you’re being obsequious” - which served only to cement the impression that he was a complete idiot. Case in point -- never enter into a war of words with someone who is obsessed with New York Times Crossword puzzles and who highlights words in the dictionary once she’s looked them up. I know what the official definitions of those words are - by heart. Furthermore, if you know me, you know for certain that of all the things I may be, sycophant is not one. I’m sure I would have a much more high-profile career if that were only true.

Why was I so unable to refrain from entering the fray of words with this anonymous stranger? Why was he so inclined to view and then insult the lives of those whom he knows not a whit, let alone two people obviously celebrating the life of a their new child? What is happening to us culturally that youtube and facebook are defining the way we deal with each other as human beings? And how do I reconcile my aversion to this cultural phenomenon while at the same time being part of it, even if it is only a toe dipped into the frothy brew of cyber-cultural swampland?

Where women’s magazines used to be the best purveyors of fodder for the self-hatred of a generation, it seems that the ether of the net is the new wasteland where you can learn to hate yourself -- and others. Now you can look up old friends (or even strangers) you would otherwise never have thought of and see how fabulous their lives are in comparison to yours - or insult their perceived lack as the case may be. The internet is the place where we can put our best, or worst faces forward, and we often do both. Certainly I don’t put my worst pictures up here on the blog, but by the same token, I also try to be as honest as possible about the state of my life, and it isn’t always pretty. And although more and more people seem to be reading this blog, I never began it with any intention other than to keep our family and friends in the loop of Nahanni’s life. I really enjoy writing here, I consider it great practice for what I hope is a burgeoning writing career - but I never expected that perfect strangers would end up peeking in my cyber window. I have my obviously public persona and that has been out there on the net for good and bad for a long time and I have invited people in with my open email since the beginning and have only had a few true weirdos and almost no harsh words that I can recall. It shocks me that the cruelest things I know said of me on the net were actually about my daughter. But I suppose this is the cultural vat in which we swim.

I’m not going to stop putting things out there - the link with my family is too important, but I will have to learn not to let petty comments like his rile me so completely that I can feel my blood pressure pressing against my skull like a drum. I tread carefully through cyberspace, dubious and mistrusting as always and I remain anonymously on facebook - and that is only so that I can commune with snowshoeing and adventure moms. Well, that and play Scrabble...

My name is Keegan and I am addicted to words. Watch out.

[endnote: 'trinitymike' apologized on youtube and admitted the error of his ways. Perhaps all is not lost.]



PS. a little walking video for the folks...