I am turning 30 in November.  It's kinda freaking me out.  I was always one of those Kurt Cobain/Jesus wannabes who never thought in a million years I'd make it this far.  It just wasn't that cool to think about life with kids, a career, stretch marks, a couple spare tires.  Yet, here I am.  My heart beats, my children run amok, in spite of my teenage gothic will to die before I grow old.

So I'm thinking of actually celebrating my birthday this year.  I obviously can't go totally nuts, because of aforementioned kids and career, but a nice 1-week shindig sounds good.  I am looking for spiritual and psychic renewal.  I want to see things so heartbreakingly beautiful I fall to my knees and weep.  There are so many places in the world I want to see; I haven't even been to continental Europe (too busy going to summer school, always playing catch-up).  I need to narrow things down.

So a question to the universe: You are about to turn 30.  Where would you go?  And, would you take your husband? 

The rough multiple choice would be:

A. Europe (Spain (even though they totally pissed me off with the slant-eye ad, the fuckers), Italy, France, Germany)
B. Middle East (Israel, Lebanon, UAE)
C. Some exotic island nation (Cambodia, Bali, New Zealand)
D. Scandoland (Iceland, Sweden, Denmark)
E. Good ol' USA road trip
F. ???????

A couple months ago a housewife rating scale from the 1930's made its way around the Internet.  Basically, husbands rate their wife's merits and demerits in various aspects of housewifery and charm.  It's jaw-droppingly sexist and inaccurate, of course, like your wife gets +10 points if she enjoys "marital congress," but loses points if her pantyhose is crooked. 

I asked Tim to rate me, and the resultant snarkiness was hilarious.  His answers say as much about him as it does me.  And honestly, some of them are flat out LIES, I swear.  :)  Here are the results:

> How Do You Rate In The 30s marital test?
>
> Merits: (worth one point unless otherwise stated)
>
> 1) Dresses for breakfast
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Sort of
Gay, yes
No
n/a
Yes
Sometimes, but then is bitter about it =)
Sort of, but irrelevant for us.
No
True, but irrelevant
Yes!
No
A bit -- squeals loudly at minor stuff sometimes.  Basically no, though.
Hose...?
Heh
No that's me.
That's a demerit?
Sexual banter with that jackass... what's his name.  Not really though, in general.
Not so much.
Total: 15

"Don't worry!  It only hurts a little bit the first time, but after that, it's nothing!"  My mom assured me last week when she told me she made me an appointment for some sort of Korean weight loss body massage.  Mind you, this was after she told me she had it done to her face and it hurt so bad afterwards she couldn't handle the pain of a rubbing a powder puff on her skin.

I nervously checked in for my 1:30 appointment today at "Jennifer Skin Care."  They knew who I was before I said a word.  "Oh, you must be Mrs. Kang's daughter.  Wow!  You're bigger than I thought!"  Jennifer eyed me up and down, with a glint in her eye which can only be described as "hungry."

I stripped down and climbed onto a massage table...covered in 2 layers of thick vinyl.  I felt like I was the hired "entertainment" at a sex party.  Jennifer called over her "unni" (big sister) and the two of them got to business.

How would I describe their method?  They basically grab a handful of fat (or what they think is fat, but is actually nerve endings) and forcefully run their thumbs/elbows/rolling pin (no I am not joking) up and down about 20 times in the same place until you call uncle.  The goal was to rub the fat against your bone, generating heat, dissolving the softened fat, and hopefully pushing it to be processed as waste.  Yeah, the science really blew my mind too.  They also used some kind of vacuum device that would grab a small piece of skin at a time and they ran that over my entire body, so it was like a gigantic Indian Burn.

What killed me was that they made no allowance for pressure points, so sometimes my leg would start twitching and cramping up while they press the pressure point behind my knee again and again and again.  The most painful areas were my kidneys, which were kneaded, knotted, and switched places multiple times, and the rolling pin across my spine.  This whole process took two and a half HOURS.  Needless to say, I was crying by the end of it.

They played good cop/bad cop to try to make me laugh all throughout.  Jennifer was good cop and her territory was my upper half, and she'd coo to me to let her know if it hurts too much and she'll back off.  Well, she never did, but at least she was apologetic about it.  Unni was bad cop, and she was the one pushing all the pressure points in my legs. When I begged her to ease off, she'd say it's the fat that's hurting so it's good for me.  However, Unni had one interesting method that didn't hurt me physically and never failed to make me laugh.  She'd fist my upper thighs at a good steady pace, hurling insults at them, and asking me how in the world did I ever get this fat?  My mom is skinny, why didn't I listen to my mom?  Just the thought of getting fisted for real by someone this grouchy made me lose my shit, but then again I was probably certifiably insane by that point.

I tried to meditate and get to my happy place.  There was some ocean sounds CD playing in the background, and by then the combination of sweat/massage oil/vinyl had me sliding all over the place, so I imagined I was swimming in the ocean.  Swimming la la la, hear the waves, but then HOLY JESUS a shark has taken a large bite to my ribcage and I am going down down down okay think of something else...Guantanamo!  I imagined I was held captive and these women were trying to pump information out of me but I was valiant and remained silent.  Then I thought about waterboarding, and how that supposedly only took 15 minutes.  I imagined being waterboarded, because then I would have been done by then.  It sounds fucked up, but that was the only happy place that helped me at all.

Anyway, 2.5 hours later, I was given respite and they did a cool-down massage which immediately kicked in the Stockholm Syndrome complex and I felt so, so grateful for these two benefactors who gave pain but have now taken it away.  I cried extra tears of gratitude.  I got to change back into my clothes and my ordeal was done.

Actually, no I wasn't done.  Once I got to my feet, I immediately wanted to hurl and faint at the same time.  I was seeing stars and I dropped to my knees in their lobby.  They let me back on the massage table and sleep it off, but after an hour I was still fucked up, alternating between shivering and blacking out.  Jennifer and Unni attributed it to the fact that I had too much fat, and they activated a bunch of it, and my body was getting used to the extra blood flow.  I thought (and still think) that I was going into shock, but hey, I'm not an MD nor a Korean massage therapist.  There was no way I could have driven home, so I called my mom.  She gave me a few sips of Coke and I felt okay enough to crawl to her car.  She drove me to her house, yelling at me for being a big embarrassing pussy, and helped me into her living room couch while I tried to remain conscious. 

As we drove off, I remember Jennifer and Unni waving cheerfully at us.  "See you next Tuesday?" they cried.  "Yes!  She will be there, same time!" my mom yelled out the window.  I just rolled my head to the side and dry-heaved.

I'm feeling better now, after some fluids and dinner.  And I have to admit, my belly has gone down considerably.  It's most likely from sweating so much, and I'd much rather get wrapped in seaweed and relax under a heated blanket to get that effect, but I'm definitely intrigued despite of the aching pains and blossoming bruises I am feeling right now.  Maybe I'll even try it again next week.  After all, it only hurts the first time, right?

The task is simple:
Post a picture blog of the celeb men you'd let impregnate you

In truth, there are probably hundreds of men I'd let impregnate me in my dreams; here are the top 10.  To make this more interesting, you should imagine the pictures to be taken right after I asked them to have sex with me.  I LOLed.

Thom Yorke


David Bowie


Brian Molko


Gael Garcia Bernal


Mos Def


Daniel Henney

Stephen Colbert


Shawn Christenson


Adrian Brody


Morrissey


Honorable Mentions (but they're dead):

John Lennon


Oscar Wilde

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Now playing: Sam Sparro - Black & Gold (Marcussen Album Version)
via FoxyTunes    

 
Last night, Isaac was running around naked before his bath.  I caught him in the hallway poking at his penis.

"Hey Bu, is your penis okay?  Does it hurt or itch or something?"

"Nope. I'm just seeing how long my pipe is."

"Your pipe?"

"Yup.  Look.  This is how long it is."

"Wow, that's a very long pipe."  It actually was a lot longer than normal because, well, you know why.

"And it gets smaller when I squeeze it." And he savagely pinches his pipe, and whaddaya know, down it goes.

Tim managed to keep a straight face, but I couldn't hold it in.  I masked it as a coughing fit then dunked him in the tub.

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Now playing: The Pretenders - Boots Of Chinese Plastic
via FoxyTunes    

Oh, he rocked my world!  All 8 juicy inches of him.  I still have his taste in my mouth -- sour, briny, sweet.  Mmmm.

It was our first encounter.  He was a Vienna Beef frank, split down the middle, filled to the brim with brown mustard, raw onion, nuclear-green relish, celery salt, and pickled peppers.  He was surrounded by slices of pickle and tomato on both sides, and everything was wrapped in a very spongy sesame seed roll.  He was a messy lay: two bites in and I was covered in goop.  But Chicago Dogs are not for the dainty.

I don't know the history behind the evolution of the Chicago dog, but the flavor is definitely intriguing.  I can't stop thinking about it...all these questions race through my head.  Is it more briny than salty?  More sweet than savory?  How in the world does a hot dog get drowned in a Crayola-green sea of relish, and THEN pickles?  And how can the average midwesterner handle those peppers?  And of course, will I ever see him again?  Maybe, although every girl out there will be clamoring for some high-quality weiner.  He'll move on.

The concept is so simple!  Bad cakes!  But man, I laughed until I cried.  Nice clean fun is funny again!





BTW, Emily's daycare is on vacation this week, so I've been stay-at-home-mama and other than wanting to scoop my eyeballs out with a spoon by the end of the day, things are going swimmingly!  She's sooooo cute and cuddly, and also really, really LOUD and demanding as fuck.  Where the hell did she learn that shit?  Sigh.  Anyway, she caught on quick to this blog.  Every time a new cake image appeared, she gasps, points, shouts "WHOOOOOA!!!" then laughs hysterically.  Sigh.  What a cutie.  But I also have a teleconference in 6 minutes.  Such is my life!

I dunno, maybe because I had a dramatic weekend, but I am just reduced to a tub of weeping goo over little things today.


Xtina sings softly to her son, Max, for Rock the Vote!


A brief synopsis of the story of Christian the Lion. Whitney Houston alert! But for this video, it works.


Another tear-jerking story! Do y'all remember this memorable image of the Marine and his young bride that won all those photographic awards last year:



If you don't recognize this soldier, his story is here.

Anyway, poor things, they have divorced earlier this year. The Times Online has the story, and oh, it says so much about youth, marriage, veterans, small-town America...but yet still comes down to 2 very young people who got swept up in something much bigger than they are and married too soon. Oh, my heart!!!

Yesterday started out normally with a typical smattering of errand-running, bickering, and sighing-then-crashing-into-the-sofa.

Around 2:30, we were gathering around the table to have a snack together of fruit and cheese.  Emily decided she wanted to sit in a big people chair instead of her high chair, so from across the table I observed her heaving her belly up, and both knees somehow caught the chair up and she started to rise...then BAM!

She fell to the floor, hitting the back of her head HARD.  She's fallen and hit her head before, but this noise...was sickening.

I rushed over to her and she's lying on her back, her face contorted into pre-screaming position, but she wasn't crying as much as holding her breath.  When I picked her up, she gave this very strange strangled exhalation of a scream, then went limp in my arms.  Totally limp.

Now I started screaming.  I screamed at Tim to call 911, and screamed again to stop acting so goddamn calm or else they won't think it's a real emergency and tell them to hurry because yes she's breathing but really shallowly and she won't open her eyes oh my god oh my god.

I held her upright and kept rocking her, saying her name, but getting no reaction.  In a couple minutes she was breathing more slowly and sucking on her pacifier, but still with eyes closed and no reaction to vocal stimuli.  It took about 4-5 minutes for the paramedics to arrive, and they found me sitting on the couch (with no pants on), holding Emily, who now looked like she went from a dead faint to...sleeping?

From their point of view, Emily looked like she was taking a nap, but when we told them what just happened, they decided she needed to go to a pediatric emergency ward, which luckily was just a few minutes away.  They gave me time to put on pants and pick up her insurance card, and meanwhile the neighbors were treated to the sight of a limp Emily being carried out of the house by a hunky fire fighter and strapped to an adult-sized stretcher.  The sight of her was just terrible, she was wearing a navy blue ducky dress and her little feet were splayed like a doll's...as Tim commented later, all they had to do was hang the toe tag on.

So off we went to Long Beach Memorial...I sat up on the stretcher with Emily in my lap, still out like a light but snoring, so we all agreed that most likely she's asleep and not dead.  The paramedic in the back pricked her finger for a blood glucose test and we got no reaction.  Then he had the brilliant idea of taking her pacifier out and then she fluttered her eyes a bit and frowned.  He kept assuring me that she was fine but I wasn't convinced until he tried to put an IV in her arm and she immediately jolted up, took one look at the stranger-man causing her pain, and did her trademark Emily scream-cry.  That's when I finally sighed in relief and relaxed a little.

By the time we rolled into the hospital, Emily was totally back to normal.  She scream-cried at everyone who looked at her, tore her pulse/oxygen sat cuff off 3 times, and ran out of her room many times, giggling with glee.  After a couple hours of this "observation," the resident doc told me she thought Emily fainted because she simply ran out of breath, then went straight to sleep mode from there because it was her normal nap time and the fall was so traumatic.  It made sense to me (and more importantly, the senior doctor) and we were released with no fuss.

But WHEW!  Those sounds and images are forever burned into my brain.  That was absolutely no fun, and what do I see this morning?  Emily trying to climb back onto the very same chair for breakfast.  Luckily, I was right there to pick her up and plop her into her rightful seat.

A few good things came out of yesterday:
1. 911 response time in our neighborhood is pretty amazing: it would have been < 1 min if our neighborhood fire dept. wasn't on another case.  Still, 4-5 minutes is pretty darn good.
2. Miller's Children Hospital is on the Long Beach Memorial campus with its own pediatric emergency unit, which is nice to know.  They're really great too!
3. Lesson learned: I might need to start wearing pants around the house, in case of emergency.
4. At the hospital, Emily and I discovered a fun toy: plastic medicine dosage cups.  From tea parties to stacking games, they provide precious minutes of entertainment.

Couldn't you have waited until after the inauguration of the country's first multiracial president? Tsk, tsk.

Our lovely Senator Helms

Y'all know what I'm talking about!  It's Miss Universe season again!!!

As you may recall, last year I had my hopes up for Miss Honey Lee, whose beauty and charisma tickled me to no end.  She didn't win, though, losing to Miss JAPAN of all people.  Argh.

Anyway, this year's hopeful is Miss Ji-Sun Lee, who is Honey-esque in looks (although not nearly as adorable), but sluttified.  Like, hella slutty.


This is her just coming off the plane.  This is her TRAVEL WEAR, guys...her version of flannel pajama bottoms and flip-flops involves 0-inch-inseam shorts and 4-inch-heel hooker boots.  This girl means business.

As another example, here is her national costume entry:



She's all the way in Vietnam but I can still see her nips.  Hells yes, babies, this is OUR YEAR.  Bring it on!!!

Hi!!!!  I'm drive-by blogging from Colorado, where one of my dearest college friends got hitched to the best girl EVER.  I mean, seriously folks, the woman can tootsie-roll like I have never seen AND do a down-home Texas hoe-down...all in a wedding dress.  Absolutely amazing.

The ceremony was amazingly sweet and romantic, and there was not a dry eye in the house.

Anyway, for some reason I was in a strange, tired, listless mood during the later part of the reception and left before the wedding party held a second-round Guitar Hero tournament back at the lodge.  Maybe it was the altitude, or maybe I just felt out of place a bit.  It's weird being a mom two times over and your friends know all the latest rap songs and the accompanying dances.  I made it further than the grandmas, so I guess all is not lost.

Anyway, here is another great commencement speech, this one from my alma mater.  Oprah Winfrey shared some life lessons she learned during her career, and I didn't think I could admire this woman more, but now I do.  It is amazing to think that a person can build an entire empire around their personality and self.  I wonder how it must feel to be that likable.   Her sincerity and warmth are so strong you can feel it through a television screen.  Absolutely awe-inspiring.

Yes!  I am!  You wanna know why?  Because our courts made George Takei THIS happy:


(Sorry for stealing the pic, Jezebel!)

And when George Takei is happy, I'm happy.  Congratulations to all the newlyweds from today and here on outward. 

And my fellow Californians, don't let the homophobes vote this beautiful equality away!  Register to vote and make sure to vote "No" to the proposition up in November.  Especially if you live in places like Orange County.

PS: For extra "Awwwwwww":
"I don't want to be domestically partnered to George Takei, I want to be married to George Takei," Altman said. "And beginning today in California, I can legally marry George.Takei. I'm the happiest guy in California today because I get to marry George."

Okay, now that I'm in LA, I encounter Kobe Bryant EVERYWHERE.  Not the actual person, but his image and name.  I know it's NBA Finals time, but I hear "Kobe kobe kobe" all around me.  Even when people hate him, all they talk about is how much they hate him.

Anyway, I'm sure you all have seen the viral video where Kobe jumps over a speeding Aston Martin.



Impressive, huh?  But it could also be faked.  I didn't doubt that he could do it, but I doubted the fact that the LA Lakers franchise would allow him to risk life and limb in order to sell a couple more sneakers.

Oh, but my friends!   THIS is not fake!




100% pure grade A awesomeness.  Suck it, Celtics!!!

JK Rowling gave the commencement speech at Harvard this year.  You can listen to it here, as well as read the entire text.

Absolutely spot-on and amazing.  What an amazing sage of a woman.