Target Just Sucks So Much

When I read this badass post about princesses on Anti-Racist Parent, I got some really good ideas and references to cool books I can buy for my little one. Yeah, in a few years. haha. I also was forced to reflect on that aisle in Target that is so infuriating to pass by. The one with princess stuff, tiaras, feather boas, tutus, Hannah Montana. There is a certain harmlessness in wanting to be traditionally feminine- I am merely opposed to the idea of entitlement through nothing but luck, which is what a princess is. I’m dealing with this sort of princess mentality with one of my sisters. I know it’s funny to call it that, but she honestly acts as if everyone else in the house is such a bother to her if we ask her to merely wash dishes. And she calls her little sister lazy. I think it’s because she’s in color guard and her color guard friends are beyond disgusting. One of them knows Spanish but refuses to speak it, and is content with being mistaken for white since she is half-white. They sit around talking shit about people they know for hours. And this sister has had the audacity to twice tell me that I don’t do anything all day. I was infuriated both times, eager to defend myself, or just tell her, I READ ALL DAY LONG and I MAKE CURTAINS! I guess I have some issues with her right now. It started back when I told her why I would never BUY flowers to give someone: they’re ‘factory farmed’ with dangerous pesticides, but the kicker is, the men and women who pick these flowers are severely hurt by the freshness of the pesticides when they are picked. Their hands turn black, get poisonous crystals in them, and for what? So that some dull, uncreative male can uphold his end of the patriarchal agreement? She told me that since she doesn’t see it, she doesn’t really care.She thinks I’m immature to care, and that I should just accept economics. How simple!

ANYWAY.

Since I plan to not step foot in Target with my child, (at this moment, maybe naively, I can’t imagine why I would ever have to) I feel confident I can avoid at least THAT aisle. But then there are Target ads, not usually offensive, just wildly consumerist (duh, they’re ads), which are not so easy to avoid. Blogsurfing for Target-related stuff led me to this article. The ad picture speaks for itself, so I’ll include it right here:

Yes, that is a woman with her legs wide open and her crotch at the bullseye of Target’s logo- a feeble attempt at making it look like she is making a snow angel. I don’t believe anyone is being nitpicky. It’s hard not to notice this.

Okras and Tomatos

I’m relishing the last time in my life I will be able to lounge around. Sleep in. Lose control a little bit, or a lot, depending on how bad my heartburn is.

The weight on my chest is part being out of shape but mostly apprehensiveness.

I’m gonna start a band with Vicky

MOROSE MOMMY- maternal diy punx.

I have gained 20lbs, who knew?!?!

Now two Day at the Veterinarian pic. Sofia is wearing a hand-me-down blouse from her horrid, stuck up cousin as well as her signature silk headscarf and cotton purse.

 

Cooking in the garage with hurricane Dolly.

BELLY KIX!

For about three days the baby was not stirring very much. I know not to panic because babies have sleepy and active days, but I started to worry last night. The child must have known momma was worried because it started pummeling me mercilessly. It was really distracting as I tried to sleep. And today it’s doing sumersaults again. I hope it’s loving all the iron and protein I’ve been getting. It definitely gives me more energy.

Yo it’s so good to see friends and just hang. I think it’s really awesome that Noemi and Vicky are going to live together and help each other out so much. I’m just gonna miss Vikcy and it’s especially sad that she’s moving now that I’m going to Edinburg. When I’mf inished eating I’m gonna go measure the windows at the new apt to start making curtains. I bought the fabric today and I’m also gonna finish up the baby blanket that has been hidden away in patch form for a while.

The Phrase

I see what’s radical about saying “if men approve, it’s not feminist.” Radical is just not the right word for what I feel it really is. Unfair, maybe. I feel like I’m on a seesaw. When I’m close to the ground, I understand why I feel indignant toward the above proclamation. When I’m up in the air, I feel like I can see the horizon, where feminist meets chill, and the danger of my bourgeois upbringing’s skewing of reality, and the guilt of having that partner who has a dick weighs me back down to the ground where I swell up with anger, thinking, why can’t I move my body seductively to give my partner a hard-on? This feels so awfully anti-sex. I wanna be sexy! I don’t shave or wear things to make me smell girly! If I did, so what? Is it okay when a guy does it because wearing make-up makes him queer? Am I just like those white people who complain about being marginalized in a radical community? Am I just the Chicana feminist version of them?  I feel like I should sit down and shut up. I’m lucky that I have a partner. And some would say I’m ‘lucky’ that he’s a male. But I wanna relish my life, not worry about what it ‘makes me’ by default. So this is a terribly inward rambling, nothing revolutionary or consuquential, except that when you change yourself, you change the world. Right?

Naughty Picture Time ;]

Picture Post!

I look exceptionally pregnant.

seesaw where the monjitas play

our hearts pump love in downtown weslaco

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Marc, Mustache and I

Just Tales

Two or three or even four unexpectedly weird things have happened in the past few days.

Our ’stray’ dog L, pictured below for yr pleasure was accused of biting! Now, we’ve had this pup for three weeks, and he has never showed any sign of agression. But I would’ve been able to accept the accusation despite this fact because you just really never know. Except my mom and her friends saw it all go down, and they all claim the the little girl he nipped accidentally was pushing him violently away from playing with her dog. She pushed him in the mouth and her sensitive little girl skin was ALMOST broken by his teeth. Her dipshit father who routinely allows his three children, all under the age of 8, to play outside by themselves (like she was that day) in the front yard… near traffic… with no fence… anyway, he decides that calling animal control is the best option. And he further decides (actually the fact that he is a beater around the bush decided this for him) that he would say to my mom: “I just want him to get held for a little while, for some testing, to see if he has anything.” Well, having animal control being called on a puppy that accidentally nipped a little girl isn’t THAT frustrating, but dealing with someone who spits bullshit in your face and wants you to lap it up is. Animal control/the pound kills dogs, they don’t test them, and certainly not for free. L was now destined to contract parvo and die just like his predecesor, the dearly loved Panchito. So I put him the car and drove him away before animal control got there, and Marc’s friend Beto took care of him for the night… Then this morning Marc’s mom took him to get his vaccines and dewormer and he is going to move in at her house until we move into our new place. Poor fugitive dog.

I got a text from my good friend since 7th grade that he got arrested for DWI last night. I really, really hate drunk drivers. Really bad. And I don’t feel sorry for him. He drives drunk a lot, and it really makes me sick. He brings Taco Bell to my house and his bad attitude along with it. I know this doesn’t sound like I’m talking about my good friend, but he hasn’t always been like this. I have known him for a long time and love him like my brother. But he is changing, and has been since a nasty sexual abuse rumor spread about him in high school. I know why it pained him so much: even I ostracized him before I, many damaging months later, really listened to what he had to say about that night. Anyway, this guy, who has been a part of my family since 7th grade, being fatherless and living in a house with an abusive grandmother and a terribly submissive, ‘uneducated’ (which I believe always shamed him, but I have always expressed that it shouldn’t) mother, texts me to tell me he got arrested for this DWI. But I think he deserves it. And I’m relieved that it happened. And being arrested for driving while intoxicated is one of those few things I think people deserve to be jailed for a couple of nights for. Drunk drivers may as well be shooting a shotgun blindly on 10th street. So damn.

Another incident involving the cops has surfaced… but it’s not okay for me to talk about it on this blog or even to another person, at least for a while. Let’s just say I felt conflicted, but now I understand why. And it’s cool. It’s all good.

As for my pregnancy, here is the creepy creature:

And a gratuitous Marc pic:

Mm mm.

Hurricane Anxiety

The nightmare I had this morning lingers in my stomach. I was so painfully mourning Marc in my dream that I felt sick when I woke up. In the dream, Vicky sees me longing to die and pleads “No, the baby!” My belly was slightly bigger than in real life, and I ran as fast as I could with Vicky, holding hands. The strangest theme in most of my dreams since I became pregnant is not being able to fit in spaces. In this nightmare, I asked to go to the bathroom when I was inside the evil alien doctor’s office, and the cubbyhole that I had to crawl through to get to bathroom was impassable with my distended tummy.

We got a picture of the child floating in my stomach today. I was in such a haze at the real doctor’s office this morning. Dr. Flores, I really don’t care for your ways. She told me my scent of garlic was ”too strong, girl!” As if I welcomed her critique of my odor, as if I should thank her for letting me know that I stunk, as if I should be embarrassed. I smell like garlic cuz I shove it in my cunt three times a day, asshole.

I keep tearing up when I think about my nightmare. I couldn’t tell Marc about it without crying. It’s just a stupid nightmare about a meteor striking and releasing aliens that turned everyone into blissful, dancing, brainwashed shells. It’s just a coincidence that everyone in my dream that is a part of my family was already an alien, and sprouted a huge hunched back at the battle call of the alien meteor. The crippling heartbreak of seeing Marc fall at the hands of an evil alien just won’t go away. What a fcking hideous feeling. Just no no no no no. I don’t want this hurricane to come. I want to go somewhere, a hot air balloon, far above the storm, and all my friends can be in hot air balloons near me and we can send paper planes to each other and share snacks. I don’t want Marc to die…. If my mom caught me crying because I’m trying to write a blog about my nightmare, she’d laugh and tell me to stop being a fraidycat. She would probably think I’m crying because of my childhood fear of tornados. But I’m not a child anymore. I just have such a terrible fcking feeling in my chest, and I want to go to sleep until Marc comes home from work.

DISGUST

I was participating in the No Border Wall March this past Saturday. Somebody ahead of my friends and I was smoking a cigarette. As if the extremely toxic smoke of a cigarette is not intrusive enough, there were lots of kids around, and a couple of pregnant ladies, including me. So after a few minutes of deliberation I decided to approach the guy, alone. It was a mistake going alone because he attacked me verbally, accusing me of arguing for argument’s sake.

After I posed the question “Since I’m pregnant and there are children around, can you wait until after the march to smoke?” He said he would TRY. His exact response was “I’ll TRY not to smoke.” Later he claims he said he would try not to smoke AROUND ME. Either way, he didn’t stick to his word. Not a minute (that’s not an exaggeration, I had only turned around for a few moments before smelling it) after he finishes his first cigarette he, presumably out of spite for this outspoken BITCH asking him to have some compassion, lit his second. And he stared me down when I noticed. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut; I said “You know, it’s none of my business, but you are obviously not a person of your word.”

Angry that I didn’t take his abuse, he sputtered things like ‘get over it, walk in front of me, you are just saying this to be argumentative’ (yeah!!! as if my fetus is just an argument!) and he was SMIRKING at me. I’m all alone, big big mistake, because I know he sees the opportunity to be as nasty as possible. The only girl witnessing this doesn’t say shit. She just stares. Then the guy proceeds to, instead of turning his head, stare me in the eye (it was a really scornful stare, it made my stomach drop) and blows smoke in my direction. I shout “You’re blowing smoke in my face!” He says “No, I’m not, look, it’s going behind me.” I respond “I can SMELL it, and I just thought you should know that you are blowing smoke in a fetus’s face and now you have that on your conscience!” He said ’shut the fuck up’ and I turned away, unable to control my shaking.

It was the first time I felt so vulnerable to pregnancy-influenced, amped-up emotions. This guy was also cementing the terrible feeling of loneliness I have been experiencing because of the lack of safe space even in a presumably radical community. I can’t help but wonder if he would have reacted with such hatred if a fellow man had approached him about this, and I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like if I had approached him RUDELY instead of sugar-sweetly. This guy took advantage of me being alone. I had felt like I was in a positive place, and that the conversation would end with us laughing and talking, maybe him asking if I had a boy or girl in my obviously swollen tummy. This guy was a total scumbag, it was written all over his face. The girl was empty-eyed and looked me up and down repeatedly. I found out later they’re ‘friends.’

Later in the day, coincidentally, I was introduced to this scumbag by a really cool guy I know. Like, a really cool guy (who obviously didn’t know what had gone down). It was awkward but funny at the same time. It was almost satisfactory in some ways.

You just never, ever know who will go out of their way to make you feel like you are an asshole for suggesting that you be taken into consideration. I mean, what the fuck? Blowing smoke in a pregnant girl’s face? You low, low human.

Miz Mary Mac

So while the psyllid kills our citrus trees, I am just chillin with the dogs. Marc went to work, my ma is outta town for a week and my sisters are with my dad on their way to the Grand Canyon.

My yeast infection seems to be clearing up nicely… Still a little gooey in the morning, but I’m not so miserable. I am getting really sick of garlic, though. I’m not gonna get sick for 10 years the way this is going. Two heads of garlic per day!

Dance party at my ma’s house pretty soon. No noobs.. ;]

Vicky showed me this SM feminist blog, and I’m really outraged right now, naturally, after having read all this shit about legal cases against parents who are into bondage, rape fantasy, spanking and other harmless if consentual shit. What the fuck is happening? I feel rather scared after reading that because, well I LOVE TO BE SPANKED VERY VERY HARD. And I learned what ‘vanilla sex’ is, and how discrimination against nonvanillers or people with nonconventional sexual desires is rampant, by the legal examples. Well, I’d say I’m pretty boring compared to BDSMers… but I think ANYTHING that makes someone feel that sexy rush and unmatchable ecstacy of doing exactly what you want to or with your partner is so rad… I fail to see where the problem lies, if there is mutual consent. I’ve just never really thought about BDSM discrimination before. I understand that lots of people think it’s weird, but it gets really serious and dangerous. People who are otherwise unashamed of their kinkyness are forced to be quiet about it because oh shit they could get their effin kids taken away, lose their jobs and shame their families!

This kind of fearsome Hate for the Unusual is best friends with Homophobia. They go out to eat at steakhouses together and do it in the missionary position every night.

I’m gonna go rinse miz coochie now. Peach ya’ll.