authentic self.

So.
I have never really been a girls' girl.  And I've always tried so hard to be a girls' girl.  Why am I not a part of the sisterhood?  Why do women always feel so uncomfortable around me?  These questions are sort of rhetorical but also not.  I would actually like some insight into this so if you have any, please feel free to e-mail me at lindsayoquinn@gmail.com (but of course, you cannot comment on my blog because I don't want any anonymous comments anywhere in my life.  Anonymous people don't deserve to be heard.  That's why you can't comment... I know it hurts some of you, but you can blame the Anons of the world for this).
ANYWAY.
My struggle with the female race began very early on in life.  My best friend growing up was a girl named Jamie (who will love that I mentioned her, I'm sure).  And she was always a girls' girl.  She made friends so easily (still does) and I always got jealous and tried to convince her to just be mine.  She was loyal for a very long time but I just got exhausted constantly having to prove I could be everything to her so that she wouldn't want any other friends (much like how I ruined many relationships with men in my past, actually, come to think of it...).  It's not as if I never tried to have girlfriends.  But I could never do the hand-clappy games, I could never jump rope.  I was also kind of a dirty kid; like running around the neighbourhood in my bare feet kind of kid.  Girls always thought I was weird.  That really hurt my feelings.  And then in elementary school the most popular and pretty girl in the school saw me picking my nose and eating it in the library and that just completely blew my chances of having girlfriends for the next 5 years.  Don't judge me, I know you did it as a kid too.
Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the booger-eating, but whatever.
So I was a lonely little girl, and I used to comb the hair of my troll dolls in a corner on the playground because I just didn't have friends, but wanted to look as if I was too busy to care (which I wasn't doing well at all).  And then I got into middle school and instead of bothering with girlfriends, I just started having boyfriends.  Everyone told me I shouldn't bother having boyfriends until I was all grown up, but I didn't listen and so I spent almost every day from the age of 12 to 22 having boyfriends.  I wonder why boyfriends always came so easy to me while girls remained aliens in my world.
High school proved to be every bit as difficult.  Try as I might, I just couldn't relate to most girls.  The most popular girls in my grade showed interest in letting me into their circle, and I blew that by trying too hard.  I knew I was trying too hard, and tried not to try so hard, ended up making myself look like a total retard and then that was a wash, not surprisingly.  I remember one particular time when I repeated something I read in a Cosmo magazine.  Something about having to shave your armpits in all directions to really get all the hair, and the beautiful girl with a million friends I told this to just looked at me like I was a 4 year old and said "yeah?"
yeah.
As much as all of this used to bother me, keep me up nights and dreading every monday morning, I think it was good for me.  I always had at least a couple of friends, and I've never really been good at nurturing my existing friendships as it was and really couldn't handle anything more, anyway.  But as I grew up I slowly developed a sense of self.  In between boyfriends and trying to be just like all the girls that I knew and admired most, of course.
But now, at the age of 24, I have finally become my unflinchingly authentic self.  I know who I am, who I want to be and who I want to be around.  I wish it hadn't taken so long.  But it did.

If I could just go back and change anything, I would have just not bothered with all the boyfriends.  Ew.

from this day on, i own my father's gun.

I only have a few memories of me and my father together when I was a little girl.

When of those memories takes place at a fair.  Just one of those little set-ups in the parking lot of a mall.  Dad and I didn't have a whole lot to talk about on the way there.  He bought me cotton candy.  While we were there, there wasn't a whole lot my dad was willing to do.  We played some games, and I think he won me some big stuffed animal.  Was it red?  Anyway, he had no choice; he was too chicken to go on any of the rides.  He wasn't much fun to go to the fair with.
But a little bit of harassment and harping throughout the evening finally got him on the "Berry-Go-Round" Please see photo below.

Yeah, that thing.  And believe me, I practically had to drag him kicking and screaming.  But he did it for his little girl.  And he pretended to have fun on it, but I could see in his eyes that he felt like a caged animal on the way to the vet's.  

We called that day Daddy Daughter Day (like on the Simpsons).  We were supposed to have a lot of them.  I don't think we did, though.

Another memory.  Around the same time.  Dad has a disgusting ingrown toe-nail that smells and changes colour according to his mood (this is my perception of things, anyway).  We are off to the hospital to get the rogue toenail removed.

Dad is on a slab.  There are a couple of nurses, they stick a needle in his big toe to freeze it.  Dad yelps, "GEE-zuss Chrise" and I start making fun of him for being such a baby.  Next, the most disgusting thing I have ever seen: the nurses literally lift up the toenail with a tiny crowbar (or this - again - is my perception of it) and snip, one by one, the little veins and strings of flesh that connect the toenail to the toe (this is still vivid in my mind).  Dad is crying.  Really crying!  It looked painful as shit, but I didn't let him forget the day he cried over a toenail.

I can only recall one time my dad ever gave me a bath.  And I'm not sure why he had to do it - I'm sure he didn't volunteer.  

I was in the tub that he had run for me, but it wasn't right at all.  There were no bubbles.  It was like dad had no idea how kids liked their bath.  How could this be?!  I wanted the bubbles.

So he poured in the pink Mr. Bubble. 

And nothing happened.

So he poured in more Mr. Bubble.

Still nothing.

He read the bottle. 

He then decided we needed to splash around to make the bubbles.

Have you ever done this?  Not easily done.  This is why you are meant to pour the Mr. Bubble under the tap while it is running.  But anyway.

Me and dad were splashing in this bath like crazy and although we never really achieved the desired bubble bath, we did turn the water pink and I had the best bath ever, just splashing around like crazy.  I wonder if he remembers this...

And the time we went to Illinois and discovered how many cornfields there are in that state.  So many.  Days of driving through corn fields.  We bonded over a week, drinking marshmallow Dairy Queen Blizzards (since discontinued) and missing civilization among the corn...

When we walked in the front door the night we got back fron Illinois, everyone was sitting in the livingroom watching Children of the Corn.

He who walks behind the rows...

Dad and I have had our off days, too.  Especially now that I'm grown up.  He likes to criticize my life, he likes to tell me that my husband will leave me someday because I spend too much money, he likes to tell me how much it broke his heart when I dropped out of University.  He likes to remind me of all of my failures and he likes to make me cry when he drinks.

But I am his little girl.  And I know that he just didn't always know how to relate to me, but he tried every chance he got.  He really did.  He's a good father, no matter what he thinks of himself.

	Elton John - My Father's Gun .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

This has nothing to do with the post but: how come you jerks don't comment?

So.
When Mike and I started dating (as with all new relationships) poop and farts were something that we pretended just didn't happen.
We all do this.  I think.  The last thing we want to happen in front of our new boyfriend or girlfriend is fart, or - GOD FORBID - get diarrhea.
Mike is incredibly regular.  He has to poop like 5 minutes after waking up, every morning.  (I hope he doesn't mind that I'm blogging about his poop... he never reads this though).  So when I had my own place and Mike would spend the night, he would always rush out super fast in the mornings.  I just thought he slept longer than he should have and had to get to work really early.  But no.
Mike had to get in his car and drive halfway across the city to his house so he could take a poop before going to work every morning.  And I mean every morning.  He spent the night all the time.
What a desperate human being.  I didn't know the truth for a long, long time.
I did really well for quite a while!  No pooping incidents or farts for months!  Mike cracked first.
We went out for dinner and something Mike ate "didn't agree" with him (why do people say that?).  We headed back to my apartment and Mike bashfully admitted that he was feeling a little sick.  And he stayed in the bathroom for a while and I sat on the couch, thinking long and hard about what has happening.
I'm not a monster.  I knew that Mike was in that bathroom freaking out because the lovely exterior of our new relationship had been compromised.  I now knew that he pooped.  And he was doing it just a few feet away.  He must have been mortified.  So I just contemplated how the situation should be handled.  It isn't the kind of thing you can just not comment on.  I had to make him feel better!  I knew he was super embarrassed!  What if I were in that situation?
So when Mike emerged and stood before me, I just said "Everything is fine.  And if I'm ever in that position I want you to make me feel as comfortable as possible with this type of utterly devastating inevitability" and with that, Mike felt comfortable pooping at my place.  Milestone!

I was about 5 months pregnant before I ever farted in front of Mike.  (Is anything more embarrassing?)  For weeks I had been preparing him for it.  Pregnant women fart like crazy.  Ask anyone - going 5 months without letting one slip in front of Mike is practically unheard of.  But yeah - I kept telling him "this is going to happen, and when it does I will rip your head off if you laugh at me, fucker!"
So this one night I was sitting in the hallway and while I was getting up it happened.  I did it.  I farted.  And I immediately turned red as a lobster and was all like "DON'T LAUGH!  I TOLD YOU!  YOU WERE WARNED!" but Mike laughed.  Obviously.  But I was glad that he did because if he didn't laugh we would have just stared at each other awkwardly and I probably would have cried.

He still doesn't know that I poop.

OH MY GOD WHERE HAVE I BEEN?!

I know, I know.  I'm not even going to make any excuses this time; I just fucked off for a week because I had nothing to say.  Let's just call it a mental health week.  And I still don't have much to say, but I'm forcing myself to blog today because I don't want to get too comfortable with not blogging, because whenever that happens I just stop entirely and have to start all over again when I do feel like it.  HOLY RUN ON SENTENCE.
So.
This one time, in second grade, all the cool girls had sticker albums.  I had a stupid ghetto one with stickers that all came from the dollar store instead of the cooler, more expensive kind that you got near the check out at Canadian Tire.  (You know what I'm talking about, ladies).
Because I had such a shitty little sticker collection, I had to get creative when it came to acquiring some smelly stickers, or fuzzy ones, or bubble ones, or anything that wasn't a GOOD JOB smiley face sticker, which I had in excess.
Why am I talking about my 2nd grade sticker album, you ask?
Well I have been thinking about friendships lately.  I have been thinking about all the ways in which I could be more nurturing to the friends that I have.  So I have had to re-evaluate the ways in which I have been, for lack of a better word, negligent.
So when I had to get creative about getting new stickers I usually stole them when the owner of the sticker book left it unattended or I would beg.
There was this one sticker.  It was a bunch of grapes and it was brand new, it still had tons of smell left in it.  And smelly stickers were the rarest and I love the smell of artificial grapes!  I had to have it.
The owner was a girl named Trisina, who always ate disgusting shit at lunch time to get attention (like putting her entire lunch in a glass of water, stirring it up real good and then drinking it) and she was the first girl that I ever knew who kissed a boy.  She got the sticker from another girl, Monica, who was my best friend at the time.  She was Czech and had always written really stupid looking lower-case R's, I remember like it was yesterday.
In order to get this grape sticker, I begged.  Please, please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeease?
Trisina said no.
But you have, like, 6 other smelly ones
Trisina said no.
Please?  I'll be your best friend!!!
(I have no idea why in the hell I would offer that up as a reasonable trade.  Even today I find it hard to believe that my friendship is worth more to anyone than a grape scented sticker.  Just kiddin')
Anyway, Trisina laughed and I didn't get the sticker.  So I told the teacher.  She didn't give a shit.  I pouted for the rest of the day.

The next day, after show and tell, Monica and Trisina were sitting next to each other.  Or, rather, Trisina had stolen my spot.  The bitch.  So I confronted Monica and she told me that she and Trisina had decided to be best friends.  WHY!  I never found out why.  And I don't remember if their friendship lasted or if I ever got Monica back on Team Lindsay.  Childhood memories always stop somewhere.  But the important thing is that I learned a valuable lesson that day.  Friendship is not some tangible, unimportant thing that you can trade for stickers.  People value stickers more.  And no one likes being dropped as a best friend.  Especially for the slutty girl who drank liquid ham sandwiches.

I guess what I am trying to say is this:
I love you guys.  And all the grape smelly stickers in the world wouldn't make me forsake you.  Now let's get together and get drunk!

back to school!

I was thinking about school today, and how never having to go back is probably my favourite thing about being grown up.  I use the term "grown up" loosely.
So much to hate about school.  So so much.  Didn't everybody hate it?
Some kids in school were just perfect.  They were beautiful and you never knew how they got such a fantastic wardrobe.  They never wore running shoes and they made you feel small and pathetic.  I wore running shoes every day.  And until I got my own job, chances are they were my mom's old running shoes.  I wore those Filas for, like, 3 years.  Thanks, Ma.
All those fucking perfect idiots in school always had so many friends, didn't they?  That was another thing. Never had many friends.  I was such a misanthropist.  I always have been.  Still am.  The social hierarchy of high school was so damaging to me, I still have a hard time looking blondes in the eye.  Those scary bitches control the world.
Stupid teachers.  So many stupid, dumb-as-fuck teachers.  Don't get me wrong, there were some great teachers.  A few of them I even keep in touch with over facebook.  But most of the teachers in this world just have no business being teachers...
With all of the things there were to hate about school, the biggest thing, the worst thing, what I hated more than anything, was pairing up.  Remember pairing up?  Getting into groups?  Working on shit together? Shit that would be about 83x easier if you could just do it by your fucking self?
How I hated pairing up.  Oh, how I hated getting into groups.  This almost always seemed to happen when I was having a terrible day.  I don't know, my boyfriend would find out I kissed another guy or someone would dump fucking tomato juice on me or something and then I'd have to work on some arbitrary, ridiculous, stupidly easy worksheet with them.  Conjugating verbs, which incidentally, 98% of high school students just can't comprehend.
Pairing up was so awful.  There were only a few options in terms of roles that you could take on during a group activity.
You could be the person who takes on the leadership role and winds up doing the entire thing her/his self
You could be the person who does absolutely nothing and just sits there saying "why can't we just do this ourselves, I hate this shit... wha wha wha" (this person usually has home-made tattoos that they gave themselves in the back of the classroom with a safety pink and a bic pen)
Or you could be the idiot who tries to help but whose every idea is just stupid. (and then the first person listed would have to find a way to let you down gently without actually saying what everyone is thinking: that this fucker is stupid)
Or, finally, you could be the person who just jokes around, wastes time and gets everyone playing MASH.  Remember MASH?
So, to all of the brave soldiers who are carrying the torch through these painful and awkward years, good for you.  Keep on truckin'.  It may be tempting at times to just drop out, LORD KNOWS!  But you can't.  This bullshit will only make you stronger.

Happy back-to-school, suckers!!!

a screamer, just like mommy (get you mind out of the gutter)

So.
Carter's got this new thing.  And I am always excited when Carter gets a new thing.  But this time I'm a little less thrilled, because his new thing is
SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS FOR NO REASON!!!
It's awful.  We'll just be sitting on the couch and then, out of nowhere, he will just scream. And scream.  And scream and scream and I have to miss, like, 10 minutes of an awesome movie that I'm watching.  He's not crying, mind you.  He's just opening his mouth and screaming.  Because he likes the sound of his screams, I guess?
When we put him to bed now, we have to listen to him scream himself to sleep.  Literally.  He will scream until he passes out.
It's awful, but at the same time I have never seen anything so adorable.  My little boy just sitting there screaming until he's blue.  It's cute.
The thing that's cutest about it is that he gets that from me.
He has to!  Mike is the calmest man ever.  I have never heard him scream.  Seriously, never.  But I come from a long line of big mouths.  And I spent my entire childhood screeching and screaming.  I must have been the most annoying little demon troll people had ever seen.
And my dad?  The sound of his speaking voice rivals the volume of most men's yells.  This is one of his more endearing qualities.  It can be pretty cute.  Except for when he's drunk, because then he's usually insulting you loud enough for the neighbours down the street to hear, unbeknownst to him.
And now there's wee Carter.  Who, as I am typing this, is in his crib screaming.  Not crying.  Just screaming.  You can actually hear that he is beginning to lose his voice a tiny bit.  But he doesn't mind.  He couldn't be happier than to just scream.  All day long.
This is my life at the moment.  It has been for a few days.  The phase hasn't passed yet.  And if he is anything like his mother, then it isn't a phase at all.  He may spend the rest of his life screaming contentedly.

OMG LIKE WTF

HA! So I was wondering what I was doing a year ago today, so I headed over to my old blog and looked through July 2009. Here is the entry from exactly one year ago (note: I did not know I was pregnant yet, was not engaged, lived in my own place, worked in a bar, drank a whole lot):

Riiiiight... so the concert was righteous. Didn't make the money I expected, but it was still righteous.
But that's not what we're going to write about.

I got so drunk last night that I woke up this morning with a pounding headache and no idea where my phone is (and it isn't even a cell phone).
I vaguely remember talking to Mike, but I don't remember what we talked about or anything. I also drunk dialed a few other people. So dumb. What did I say? What did I do?
Where is the phone?

There are only a few places a phone could have disappeared to. One of them is the fridge. You never know, right? Another place is behind beds, under beds, couches, behind other shit, in Breakfast's hiding spots. Nada. Where did I put the phone in my drunken stupor?

I checked the parking lot behind my building. I checked my shower. I checked the kitchen sink. This just makes zero sense to me! How could this have happened?!

So anyway, it looks like you won't be getting many calls from me, unless I hike the 3 blocks to the nearest payphone. Which I am unwilling to do. If anyone needs me, you can get me the old fashioned way. You can throw stones at my window. Not through it, though. I don't know if I got so drunk that I deserve that, necessarily. But maybe. You just never know.

Any idea where a drunken Lindsay may have put her phone??

HAHAHA! SERIOUSLY? I rule.

Random:

mum jams: reading in bed - emily haines & the soft skeleton