12 weeks to blissful stupidity

This is the wrong decade to be on maternity leave.

In my normal, non-maternity leave life, I am too busy to watch much TV, only managing to squeeze in half an hour or an hour per day at most--some days not even that. Which is hardly the American way, and yes, of course it always bothered me that I was failing to permanently damage my brain in that very important way. Sure, the alcohol was picking up some of the slack in terms of brain damage, but there are certain types of demolition that only excessive TV-watching can accomplish. So when faced with the prospect of a few months of maternity leave, I was eagerly anticipating filling my days with mindless TV shows, hopefully emerging at the end of it all sounding like one of Miss South Carolina Teen's cheerleading buddies.

But I was unprepared for how mindless TV has become. The stuff currently airing makes the crappy shows of the '80 and '90s look like videotaped college lectures. I despondently searched the on-screen guide over and over, first adding only nature shows like Planet Earth, Growing Up..., and Nature. But that's not enough TV to fill the day, much less the day and night spent doing those every-three-hour feedings that newborns demand just to be obnoxious. So I lowered my standards and picked through the guide again, adding one or two more shows. Then about a week later I lowered my standards further and grudgingly added one or two more. And so on. Lowering my standards is something I'm pretty familiar with by now. It's how I found many of my friends. Sometimes in life you have to go for quantity over quality, what can I say?

At any rate, here's the abject sadness my TV-watching life has spiraled into:

Meerkat Manor: Combines the "you're a cerebral TV-viewer" appeal of a nature show with cheap soap opera drama as the narrator fills you in on which rodent is cheating on her lover, which rodent is trying to steal her sister's man, and which rodent is willing to kill his brother to gain social status. TV shows on Animal Planet often leave the viewer feeling as if he's learned a thing or two; this one teaches you that, apparently, rodents can be evil, conniving motherfuckers. A lot like the rodents in the next show on this list:

Rock of Love: Crack-crazed hookers battle it out for a chance to blow a middle-aged rock star who hasn't been relevant since 1989. Half the fun is counting the million innovate ways Brett Michaels covers his balding head with do-rags, cowboy hats, skull caps, and aging strippers.

Flipping Out: This one has actually become an addiction. What's better than watching an anally retentive gay guy (oh, come on--don't stoop to the obvious jokes. If you want that, go back to Obvious Jokeville and don't come back) lose his fucking mind over every little transgression of his staff members while scheduling acupuncture sessions for his cat? And the guy is insanely gorgeous, if you're into insanely gorgeous gay guys, as I know some of you are.

Snapped: True stories of real-life rednecks who kill their spouses in a diabolical plot to keep the Social Security disability checks all to themselves.

No, it's not quite what I had in mind when I imagined my TV-filled days, but it'll have to do. I can knock off a few brain cells this way, and what's left can probably be wiped out later with inhalants. In the meantime, you guys can monitor my intellectual demise as my blog posts get dumber and dumber. (Insert obvious joke here.)

This one is going to inspire you.

Some of you have been whining like a bunch of little girls that it's time for me to get back to blogging. Point taken. While it was only fair that I got to take a little break while I was mired in the all-consuming misery of pregnancy, and then a continued break when I first brought home my bouncing bundle of screaming, pooping joy, you make a good point: Enough is enough. It's time for me to stop thinking of myself and start thinking more of you, my friends inside the computer.

So here I am, and I'm ready to get back to telling you all the exciting details of my life. To that end: I've decided that this new baby we have in the house should be my inspiration for turning over a new leaf. Yes, the old me was pretty fabulous, that's true...but it's funny how a new baby, so fresh and innocent and uncorrupted, can make a person contemplate the flaws in their own life, and want to strive for something better, something cleaner. So please see below my 5-point plan for emerging as The New Me:

1) No more drinking first thing in the morning. I generally get up with the baby at 6:30 or 7 AM, so my day starts early--but in the interest of restraint I will patiently watch the clock until 7:45 before I start mainlining straight vodka.

2) No more shoplifting cigarettes and then selling them to grade school children for a 300% markup. I always knew that was the wrong thing to do, but I did it anyway, and I'm ashamed of that now. From here on out, I will cut the kiddies a break and only mark the smokes up by 200%. That will cut down on the amount of money they have to steal from their mothers' purses, so everyone's karma improves. I'm feeling pretty good about this one.

3) No more picking up and killing hitchhikers just for the sport of it. I can't promise I won't kill a hitchhiker here and there (that would be like promising I won't eat or sleep ever again!) but from now on when I do it, it will be for more philanthropic reasons, like to spare them from a life of impurity, or to make the world a better-smelling place.

4) No more mocking the elderly. I want to free up more time for mocking the disabled, the poor, and the abused. I really think I've gone as far as I can go in terms of mocking the elderly, anyway, so this one is a no-brainer.

5) No more wasting all my time by spending it with my children and husband. From here on out, I pledge to devote way more time to surfing the internet for porn, cruising internet sex chat rooms, and of course, blogging. I will allot what I think is a very fair and reasonable amount of time each day--exactly 15 minutes--to family, and the rest belongs to the internet. I've had the foresight to purchase a small egg timer to make sure I don't accidentally go beyond the 15 minute mark.

So there you have it, and I think this proves that I'm the kind of person who is always meticulously striving toward self-improvement. You guys could stand to exhibit a little of that perfectionism yourselves. It's not too late: You, too, can change.

I spawn.

Some of you are waiting for an update regarding my reproductive state. Others of you hate it when any blogger mentions pregnancy and children, because what's more boring than hearing about other peoples' kids? To that latter group, I sympathize with you and tend to agree...until I find that a lot of you are also readers of Dyckerson's blog--which means you have a far greater tolerance for boring reading material than you even realize. So, screw you: I'm posting an update.

Of that former group--the ones who do care whether I've had the baby or not--you probably fall into two camps:

1) People who simply like babies and want to share in the happiness of a new birth, and

2) People who traffic in stolen children and are always on the lookout for fresh meat. I suspect my readership has a significantly higher percentage of kidnappers and crooks than is found in the general population, so I'll chose carefully what I reveal about my situation.

That said, I did indeed go forth and multiply, and the end result is a healthy Caucasian female named Chase. If you know where to find my Flickr pictures, feel free to go there and take a look. If you don't know where to find my Flickr pictures, there's a reason for that, pervert, and it's going to stay that way. However, I'll offer you one peek here: And please don't be alarmed; she actually does have arms and legs. You just can't see them in this picture.

So there you have it, and that's all I'll say on the subject, because I don't want to bore you with any of the minutiae...unless you do something to piss me off. Then I'll tell you the birth story in excruciatingly graphic detail. So tread lightly, you pricks.