are you there, dog? It's me, kerensa

"Mommy, you look as pretty as a picture", he said, his three year old arms enfolding me, as I tried to leave the house. "I don't know what I would do without you", he said, his twelve year old arms enfolding me, as I tried to decipher all the mysteries of our family's future. It's funny, with all of the books they write, the articles in magazines, the blogs by mommies, they don't touch on the period of mourning you will endure. They talk about the best rocking chairs (none of them, by the way. The kid doesn't want to rock, they want to suck on your boobs. 24/7. They don't give a shit if it is in a rocking chair, a folding chair, or an electric chair in a lightning storm. They especially don't care if it is a Pottery Barn rocker made from organic free range goose feathers. Boob- it's pretty simple.) They don't tell you how you will blink a handful of times, and that baby who was once content to just lay on your chest, with the

When I was nineteen years old, only a year into adulthood, and only hesitantly an adult, a man sexually assaulted me. We had met in our apartment complex one night, at the community pool. He was good looking, a military man, cocky and confident, and I was going through the end of my first relationship away from my small hometown. I invited him into my home. I kissed him. I let him into my bedroom. That was where my permission ended. When I told him no, he proceeded to try to shove his genitalia up the leg of my shorts, and when I began to cry and told him to stop or I would scream, he told me I was a tease. And I felt guilt. I am going to say that again- I felt GUILT. As a girl, I had been preconditioned to believe that I could feel bad for getting a guy "worked up", and I didn't kick him out. I slept on the floor next to my bed, while he slept in my bed, and I woke to him trying to do the same thing, only to my face. That time, I was done. Typing these words out makes

I am going to preface this with the fact that this story may or may not contain anecdotes about poop. If you have never pooped, you may want to opt out. That's the last warning I will give. Like a prairie dog, it will pop its head out without notice. In June, I took a spectacularly large fall down some spectacularly hard stairs. The sound I made upon landing most certainly broke some sound barriers, and the fuckity fucking fucks that I howled reverberated through our neighborhood of old people. Luckily, they are mostly all old and can't hear that well anymore. The hematoma that decided to grow out of my ass, like an alien in a Sigourney Weaver movie, made my one side look Kardashian-esque. The other side stayed firmly in the middle age mom jean category. Needless to say, my workout routine, scant as it was, was put on the back burner. I gained a good fifteen pounds in two months. I am pretty sure the hematoma weighed at least ten. The other five was sympathy wine. Pinot Grig

We have all been there, in the throes of self- flagellation, our children leaving hurricanes of crumbs and syrup, our spouses closing a door on us, either literally or figuratively, and we make the ultimate mistake. We open up Facebook. We do it in search of validation, or friendship, and we end up falling deeper into the spiral of self doubt, and I am angry. I am angry that women are already told how high the bar is set from an early age. We should be this thin, this smart, this athletic, this strong. We must be domestic, but not too domestic, as our feminist foremothers would have fought for naught. We must work, but not too much, or our children will suffer. We must live for our kids, and our spouses, but always remember to put ourselves first. The lists of suggestions on how we should be better mothers, better wives, better females is endless, and the pieces of advice seem to contradict each other so fast and so furious, that we realize we must make up our own rules. What we see

This blog will not be about religion- Christian or Muslim Fundamentalism, and how often extremist beliefs cause war and death. It will not be about politics, though it could be easily, and will somehow be misconstrued as such anyway. It will simply be about guns. And in an effort to clarify- not my desire to remove guns from all citizens, as my utopia would dictate I do, but the assault rifle and why protests against gun control are counterintuitive. In 2012, a young gunman walked into an elementary school, where small children were reading Harry Potter in a library, and singing America the Beautiful in music, and struggling through multiplication in math. Like Columbine, the young gunman was a white kid, pretty well off, and a little "misunderstood". In a short amount of time, he opened fire with a Bushmaster AR 15 Assault weapon and killed 20 kids and 6 grown ups. In the same amount of time it would take most of us to wash a sinkful of dishes, or put on our makeup, or driv

My mother has given me many gifts throughout my life, but I think one of the most valuable was the gift of knowledge, most specifically of female friendships. I was raised seeing the rich tapestry women weave amongst themselves and with each other. My mother had many kinds of friends, almost all were artistic or creatively motivated. One friend designed her whole house from things she found on walks, one went on mini road trips with my mom to pluck quills from roadkill porcupines to make jewelry. She had a friend who didn't like children, and who spoke to us as adults so as to trick herself into believing we weren't children. She had friends with whom she smoked, with whom she drank, and on one occasion, with whom she skinny dipped. Many of my childhood memories are of my mother laughing, sitting at our  table in what we called the breakfast nook, surrounded at all sides by windows that used to cast our kitchen in an ethereal glow in the late afternoon. Sometimes, she was on

This workout story is retroactive, which, as we chubby girls know, is perfectly acceptable. After all, we can justify grocery shopping as cardio, sex as calisthenics. giggling as aerobic (3 calories per minute- look it up!) Several years ago, some friends (whose identities shall remain hidden for reasons henceforth explained) and I decided to check out "spinning" at the Y. Mind you, this was years before there were whole businesses devoted to such evil practices. I had tricked myself into believing that there may be a whole workout devoted to spinning in leg warmers to tunes like "Spin You Right Round". I. Was. So. Wrong. We will start with the music, which, as we saw previously, is a spot of contention with me. If I were the one running a class like spin, which would only happen if proverbial pigs flew, we would be listening to songs by Justin Timberlake, because if that curly haired youngster tells us to Rock our Bodies, we will most certainly do so, but also be

So, I will start out with the positives of the Hot Yoga experience. Number one- It does good things for my body. I think. I really don't know since I have never been here before, but it is probably better for you than donuts or drag racing, which are both more fun. Number two- There is a man in my class whose body belongs on the cover of a naughty romance novel. This can also go in the Con category, because it is distracting, and also because it makes me less likely to downward dog for fear of dog-like gas. Number three- The heat. I actually prefer 96 degrees. It is one of my favorite degrees of all time. It is why I moved to Arizona, and why I often question why I moved back. Number four- the friend on either side of me. You're not allowed to talk, which goes against everything I stand for, but knowing they were there gave me some kind of good chi, or happy vibes, or what have you. They also fall under the Con category, because they are both thin and pretty and bendy. No