Straight From the Bottle

Browse by Tags

• Greatest (And Not So Greatest) Hits, 2007

  (Cue ballad-esque music.)   2007 has been a year of highs and lows. Agonies and ecstasies. Moments both predictable and surprising. Good times and bad. Smiles and frowns. Bad days and good nights. Tears of joy and depression. (Insert bad High School graduation speech cliche, here.) So it is with great honor and gratitude that I present you with the top ten high-points of Straight From the Bottle! Followed by this year's "stinky diapers" or low, sad, and/or difficult moments:     Ten Tasty Tushies (Good Times) 2007   1. All Those Wonderful Outings (Even if by the time we got there it was over) Better late than never, as they say. (And high-fives to "they" who "say".)   2. Freedom Isn't Free (It's actually pretty expensive after airfare, hotel, etc, etc.): My first solo-trip away from Archer made me realize the importance of having a life outside the mother hood.    3.  I Fall In Love... With a Friend: Who also happens to have a son Archer's age. (And I'm happy to say, we're still going strong, today.)   4. Archer Turns Two, Wins Hearts: Another gushy letter but how can I help it? I mean... Really.   Read More... Posted Dec 29 2007, 03:25 PM by GirlsGoneChild with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: Nostalgia, 2007, Happy New Year

• Nightmares on Crib Sheets

  My earliest memories involve nightmares. Waking up screaming and sweating, waiting to be rescued by my mother in her nightgown or my father rubbing his eyes. Most nights they would take me back to bed with them, or my mother would sing to me or my Dad would scratch my back. The nightmares persisted, almost every night for five years. Eventually the nightmares became less. I started sleep-walking instead. Once I sleepwalked to the staircase and tumbled all the way down. I woke up bleeding from the head and totally confused. But most of the time I just woke up in the bathroom or on the bedroom floor. There was nothing worse, though, then the nightmares.  I had a recurring fear of skinny objects. A phobia. In my dreams toothpicks had legs and they were all marching side by side, thousands of them, kind of like that scene with the broomsticks in Fantasia. I hadn't thought about my nightmares in forever. Not until Archer started waking up screaming. Standing in his crib, holding open his curtains, staring out the window like he was watching something horrific. Sweating and shaking-- totally inconsolable. This has been going on, now, for the last few nights and I don't know what to do. I wish I knew what the dreams were about but he cannot tell me. He just screams and shakes and I do what my parents did for me, rub his back, sing to him... The ants go marching one by one, hoorah. ...Until he falls back asleep, up against me on the couch or in bed. Like right now. His little head on my lap as I type this from the safety of our couch, where nightmares cannot reach him for whatever reason. I remember feeling so safe between my parents, like nothing could touch or harm me. Like everything was going to be okay. I knew that Boogie-men couldn't reach me and there was no such thing as monsters under my parent's bed. Not even marching skinny toothpicks could find their way back into my subconscious. In many ways I still believe that-- that when something scary happens, or upsetting, that I can just run away to my parent's house. That they will take care of me. Protect me from boogie-men or the scary things in life. The complexities. The fears of having so much responsibility, of feeling unprepared for domestic life-- for marriage and motherhood and being an adult. Waking life can be just as scary, just as out-of-control as nightmares. Sometimes even worse. The inner-demons we wrestle with in our waking life cannot be killed with a lullaby or a parent's warm embrace.   Read More... Posted Aug 10 2007, 12:32 AM by GirlsGoneChild with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: Nostalgia, nightmares, growing up

• One Upon a Time... The Beach Was a Place to Relax

  I grew up on the beach, frolicking in the white sands in slow motion, in a tan bathing suit and Jamaican braids. Oh wait. That wasn't me. I was the one in the bikini perpetually up my ass, tripping on dead jellyfish on my way back from the snack bar to my towel, where I would lie for hours empty of thought, concentrated fully on the status of my tan, which for the record was never very impressive.   Ah, yes. In those days I didn't even have to pack a towel. I just stripped down to my bathing suit and sprawled in the sand, face first. The beach was a place to relaaaaax. But only during the off-season. Summer was a different story. As soon as June hit, families would march down the sandbar in hoards, swarming the beach like flies on dried sea-kelp and as the day progressed I would inch myself farther toward the bluffs, where I could have *some* quiet.   Of course one could never fully escape the sand-kicking toddlers.   "Ughrrrrr," I mumbled. "Can't you keep your kids on THAT side of the checkered flag? Please?   Fast forward to.... Today when the beach is once again beneath me, but there is no such thing as "relax."   The beach has become a weekly activity. One, because it's way too hot on the Eastside and although it takes a lot to get me to go west of La Cienega, the promise of wet sand between my toes as opposed to the firey shit we have to endure at our local playground is enough for me to devote entire mornings to packing four HUGE tote-bags of snacks, towels, changes of clothes, diapers, swimmer diapers, swim trunks, graham crackers, cherries (de-pitted), water bottles, empty water bottles for ocean water, extra socks and sweaters (in case it gets cold), mounds of wet-wipes,  SPF 1000 Sunscreen for "little faces" and 749 sand shovels. Not to mention the great fun of bracing the 10 Freeway.     Read More... Posted Jun 26 2007, 08:48 PM by GirlsGoneChild with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: Nostalgia, beach, summertime

• Hit Him and He'll Hit You Back

  I don't condone fighting by any means. I'm into peace and love and vegetarianism. I don't agree with guns. Or the death penalty or spanking. Or even yelling. I'm all for passing the pipe and loving thy brother. I have never been fond of haters. Of any kind. I wish we could all just get along and make out with each other. Or at the very least, play nice.   When I was a little girl I was regularly pushed around. I grew up on a street full of boys who, annoyed with my cooties, threw rocks at my face, bitch-slapped me on the school bus and once gave me a concussion from pushing me off my bike. They called me "Becca woof-woof" when they weren't calling me other names like "Dog" and "Uglystupidface" I tried to pretend like I didn't notice. I'd get back up, smile and hold back tears until I was alone. Or in the house where I would wail and scream and snort all over my mother's jeans.   I bought my own Vision skateboard and some Jimmy-Z shorts and tried to blend in with them. Maybe if I looked like less of a girl, they would teach me how to ollie off of their plywood ramp. I had no idea how to stick up for myself. And you couldn't pay me to push someone back. Or talk back. Or anything.   I kind of assumed it was genetic and was afraid that Archer would be like me. Which is why when Archer got smacked in the face by the playground bully the other day, I did the cheerleading spirit-finger thingy when I saw him smack back.   It isn't that I advocate violence. Not at all. I just don't want him to take anyone's shit. Or get pushed off his bike without some kind of defensive strategy. Even if he is wearing a helmet for protection.   It's a crazy world, man. People don't play nice. I wish they did and we could all sit around in the sandbox and sing Koom-bi-ya, but we can't. People are angry. Crazy. Mean. And like to throw rocks in each other's faces.   And although two wrongs don't make a right, neither does one wrong and one weakling. I know because I was the child in the sandbox with sand in her eyes and bruises from the boys in the neighborhood, who sat there like an asshole, crying her eyes out.   And I REAAAAALY don't want that to be Archer. Because it sucked.    ***  Posted Jan 26 2007, 08:13 PM by GirlsGoneChild with | with 139 comment(s) Filed under: Nostalgia, Violence, Bullying, Sandbox

• A Heartbreaking Closet of Staggering Teensy-ness

  Confession: I still store half my shit at my parent's house. The garage is overflowing with High School memorabilia, old journals and cardboard boxes full of origami-folded BFF notes that I never got around to tossing. And now, because our house is relatively small and considering how much baby shit a family accumulates/doesn't need at all but feels obligated to have because everyone says so needs, it probably doesn't come as a shock when I admit that I store all of the stuff Archer has outgrown at my parent's house. From the bassinette to the Baby Bjorn to the Infant car seat-- it's all here. At my parent's house. In my old bedroom closet. In my brother's old bedroom closet and my sister's old bedroom-closet. (Yes, I have monopolized the entire house with my baggage. I'm rotten.)   Today I surveyed the piles of infant-loot. A friend of mine just had a baby boy so it was time to organize and select hand-me-downs. I went through the boxes and bags of infant gear, teensy-tiny infant sleeping gowns, cute-lil baby jeans, doll-clothes-like onesies and those hand-made booties that once upon a time were so sweet and wonderful but a year later, have now become heart-breaking. I lost it when I opened Archer's "Infant to 6-month" hat bin and sorted through the dozens of pageboy caps and knit hats and beanies Archer grew out of WAAAAY too fast.   Where did it go? Oh GAWD! Where did it goooooooo...?   My brother found me in a heap of baby booties this afternoon, sobbing like an insane person.   "Um... Bec?"   "Just, Go, David. LEAVE ME BE! Just GO!"   So he left, muttering something along the lines of "What the fuck happened to her?"    For the record, I have no idea. My only solace is knowing that one day soon we might get pregnant again and I can recycle these cutie-batooties.   Frankly, I don't know how parents part with their children's clothes.  I'll probably end up doing like my Ma-in-Law who kept all of my husband's baby-stuff. Old teddy bears, blankies, etc.   I mean... How many little boys get to rock Daddy's personalized sweaters circa back-in-the-day?     After an hour of caressing every breast-milk stained onesie and sorting through piles of Archer's infancy, I collected a pile of suitable hand-me-downs and dried my weepy eyes. Then I came downstairs and begged my husband for another baby.   "You're insane."   I blame the teensy-tiny baby clothes and those stupid friggin hats and booties, man.   Like Kryptonite for hormonal, baby-obsessed bitches like me.   ***  Posted Dec 27 2006, 10:11 PM by GirlsGoneChild with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: Infancy, Hand-me-Downs, Baby Gear, Nostalgia