Showing posts with label aka Lola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aka Lola. Show all posts

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Here Be Pirates


Wow, things have been cranky 'round here lately. Let's lighten the mood with an old picture of Lola and I. Notice the lack of ringlet curls she now sports, the enormous chubby cheeks, the goldfish mush in her mouth. And me: crazy wild newly shorn (and definitely unbrushed) hair.
We are the two parts that make up the whole of Blackheart Lola. I've been meaning to explain the significance behind the name for awhile, and no better time than the present, correct?
Lola's first word wasn't the typical Mama or Dada. Instead, you could ask her, "Lola, what does a pirate say?" and she would enthusiastically reply"Arrrrrahhhh!" Does this even count as a first word? She's been my baby pirate for almost as long as she's been my baby and if she ever becomes a pirate to the tone of Cutthroat Island her name will have to be Blackheart Lola, the most despised piratess to sail the seas.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Reflections on a Child Well-Cooked

When I was cooking Lo, I was intensely curious to see what she would turn out like. When she was born, I was pretty disappointed because, well, she looked like zillion other babies have and will look: small, scrawny and squished. She's slowly becoming her own wonderful person and one month and eight days before she turns two, I'm going to record some of wonderful Lolaness I've experienced and predict what I think will happen next.
Lola has this little button nose. Her nostrils are perfectly round, the perfect size to stick baby peas or candy buttons into. Having done this myself as a child, I know it's a bad idea but it's still tempting because her nose seems made for foreign objects. Both Tee's and my nose are long and lean (probably the only part of me that can be described as such) and my nostrils tend more towards a keyhole shape, although I have resisted the urge to insert keys in them, I have learned some lessons in my 23 years...

Lola has beautiful lips. She has a sunshiney smile that lights up her whole face and invites the viewer of said smile to give one of their own. Right now, her face has the tendency to look very serious or somber if she's not smiling, a trait I must've passed on. I do hope she outgrows this as I have people who tell me I was forbidding and hard to approach if I was quiet and unsmiling when we met. Oftentimes this is because I'm either uncomfortable, shy or hungover, but I don't like coming off as unreceptable to new people simply because I'm not smiling.

This somber tendency does have the positive effect of contrast though, for when Lola does smile, it makes her face light up, her eyes crinkle, her dimples peep out and her tiny pearly whites flash. It should be described more as shiteatin' grin than a smile though, her jaws slightly opened, that naughty gleam in her eyes....

Someday, her face will elongate and her high cheekbones (just barely visible now) will emerge from her presently round, fat cheeks. Her tiny rosebud mouth will spread wider across her face and her lower lip will gain a sensual curve.

Those dark, dark eyes with those ridiculously long, black lashes will stay the same, just a bit smaller than most with a tendency to "squinch" up when she laughs. She'll use those unreadable eyes to hold someone's stare when they try to intimidate her, she'll likely need glasses to correct their inheirited awful vision and she'll poke them with the dreaded mascara wand poke known to women (and some men) 'round the world.

Her wispy baby hair with its ringlet curls will thicken...and thicken... and thicken til its a truly unruly mass. Her mama will NEVER make her cut or brush it if she doesn't want to, but dreads are a definite possibility if such is the case.

As for her personality, Lo prefers one on one attention with her fans. She enjoys singing, dancing (swing and slow) and reading books (YEA!). She has a strong streak of goofiness that when she's "caught" doing something weird, she'll give a little smile that conveys "yeah, even I know this weird, but hey, I'm Lola..." She's snuggly at times, often suprising me with requests of "up, UP" just to cup my face in her little hands, look at me, smile and give an eskimo kiss, so cute I could barf.

She's got quirks that stink of OCD like rigorously cleaning ANY lint or dirt from between her toes, thrusting her entire arm down my shirt to squeeze, place toys between and shout at my boobs and constantly rambling on about and demanding kisses on "owww-ies" until the damn things finally heal.

This might mean that I'm raising a bedreaded, bespectacled, smiley button-nosed,cleanfreak, hypochondriac lesbian but I choose to think it's probably just one well-cooked kid.

PS. More pictures of this wonderful kid of mine after X-Mas, we hear Santa might be getting us a camera...

Friday, November 21, 2008

Fastidious Lo


Lola is very different from me. Yes, we both think other people getting injured (we're talking a sharp blow to the funny bone, we're not sadistic!) is extremely funny. We both like cartoons like the BackYardigans. We both smile at men, a lot. BUT, Lo has some very girl-girl qualities that I lack. It might be that I have plenty of masculine qualities (read: low voice, ironic sense of humor, no girly squealing, no-strings mentality) and she's the normal one, I've no idea.

Some of these traits are ok. She doesn't like wind blowing her hair around. I enjoy the windows down, even far into the winter (with the heat BLASTING) but it's no big thing, when Lo's in the car, windows up, air on. Mildly annoying, but do-able.

She loves gaudy shit in her hair. My mom tells me I was attracted to the full-out sequins EVERYTHING during my 80's childhood. Ok, maybe she'll grow out of it. When she comes home from Tee's parent's with four pounds of ribbon, clips and do-dads in her hair, I inwardly groan but no harm done.

She hates poop. We're still trying to work with this one. Not that I love it or anything but her reaction to poop can get messy...

She hates being dirty. This kid will start taking off her shirt after a minuscule splash of juice gets on it, outside, in November, in Wisconsin. See also: batshit crazy idea. This still isn't horrible, some people must be clean. I don't, but I get it.

The deal-breaker is with traditionally "icky" things. I like slimy things. Scratch that, I LOVE slimy things. Not slimy edible things like raw calamari, more like fish and worms. Catching frogs in the smelly shoreline muck, hurray! Things that slither, my favorite! I get a goofy-ass grin and tingles from things that crawl like crabs and inchworms and tarantulas. Things that not everyone likes. Guess who else doesn't like these things?

I'll embrace my daughter's uniqueness, I DON'T want a clone copy of myself! Shit, I even buy her babies and hair things sometimes because I know it makes her happy but I'm going to take her fishing and I'm going to get her a pair of thigh-high waders and we're doing to catch us some slimy animals. We're going to visit the reptile room regularly during her childhood and we're going to buy some reptile friends.

I won't have a daughter who screams at the sight of a spider if it kills me! This weekend, I'm going to take Lo and Tee to get some firebelly newts, my first step towards converting Lola to the slimy side.

Postscript: Not ALL creepy-crawlies give me the jollies... Keep your centipedes at home people, or I'll unleash my inner girly-girl and jump onto your back until you "killitkillitKILLIT!"

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Testing, testing one two three

Is blogging a self-absorbed fad? Am I a pretentious mother to include Lola's name as the title of this blog when I know I'm going to be focusing more on my perspective as a single-ish, semi-self-sufficient woman rather than a 1.5 year old minor demon? Am I going to whine this entire blog.



NO. End of the introspection, on with the self-absorbed (yet let's face it, oddly theraputic) fad.



Name: Etta

Age: 23

Position in life: mother, "administrative assistant" (what a crock of shit, I'm a secretary striving to be as good as Maggie Gyllenhaal, any woman who can function in an office with her hands tied behind her back, wow.), sister (shout out Nelly), daughter-still-living-at-home, and cunty ex-girlfriend.



At this point, I'm not sure if anybody will be reading this so I'm going to go all out, bare all and say "fuck it," I'm not going to spare feelings for once, I'm going to sling dirt and swears and I have a feeling it's going to feel good.



Be prepared.