Mandajuice

Help me update my About Me page? Pretty please? With a side of spaghetti sauce?

Seriously? My About Me page is at least two years old, still says I live in Washington and includes nothing at all about Joel, my chickens or the fact that I'm single again.

I keep trying to sit down and write it, but it turns out I don't have that much patience for myself.

Help a girl out?

I think it would be hilarious to fill my About Me with quotes from readers. Almost like the back cover of a book, only raunchier (I hope).

Leave them in comments? Even a sentence or two would be rad.

Things I haven't been writing about

1. How hard I miss my kids now that I live alone.

2. How rad Joel's new apartment is.

3. How much I miss him, but how much happier we both are.

4. How there's the family you're born with and the family you pick.

5. How My People are pretty fucking fantastic.

6. How I'm not being HALF as slutty as I thought I'd be now that I'm single.

7. How some people don't know what metaphors are.

8. How I'm developing a fetish for the company of older men.

9. How I'm also developing a fetish for irking those most in need of irkage.

10. How much fun I'm having dating.

11. How female ejaculation is totally NOT a myth.

12. How inappropriate it is that I just said that. (But it's TRUE!)

13. How I keep having strange dreams about my mother.

14. How Genoa keeps losing her shit when I visit her at school for lunch because she misses me.

15. How Dave and I are on speaking terms again.

16. How for the first time in years, I feel a strange softness toward him.

17. How we may actually be on the same side when it comes to the kids.

18. How much I'm looking forward to our Halloween party Saturday.

19. How I've finally decided to rent out the basement now that it's empty.

20. How I better get off my ass and clean it so I can show it to prospective tenants!

Skinny

Remember that Pie in Sky goal I set ten years ago? The one where I wanted to lose so much weight that I would literally be half the woman I used to be?

So.

Uh...

Yeah.

That happened.

It's funny, there's been so much other filler in my life lately that it didn't feel like all that big of a big deal. In fact, because there is so much else going on, I only mentioned it to my therapist in passing and then she had to stop me in the middle of a sentence and say WHAT THE HELL?!? That's kinda huge! I mean, this whole BRAIN-BREAKING maybe Amanda ISN'T a size 14, maybe she's a single digit thing was her fault in the first place.

So I suppose it is a big deal.

I'm a size 8.

The last time I bought shirts, two out of three of them were a size SMALL.

SMALL.

Wait.

WHUT?

The idea of all this breaks my brain in ways I'm not sure I'll ever be able to understand. All I know is that everyone keeps telling me I'm "skinny" and it simultaneously makes me want to break their faces in and/or kiss them on the mouth. With tongue.

There's nothing sweeter to a fat girl's ego than being called skinny. It actually turns me on to hear it. But then my inner feminist says FUCK YOU! I am not the number in the back of my pants! And I am NOT skinny. I'm just a much smaller version of Amanda.

Oddly enough, I finally feel like the real me. The photos actually match the self-portrait.

The true, deep down, authentic, ugly Amanda says yes to life and yes to magically delicious food that she prefers to prepare herself with bacon grease and things she yanked out of her back yard, but she also eats juuuuuust enough and then pushes her plate away sans regret. She knows what it means to be full. Because SHE'S full. And she can wrap her long "skinny" legs around the back of your neck and lock her feet together behind your head.

Not that she's done much of that.

Yet.I'm TERRIFIED, you guys.

When I was 30-40 pounds heavier, I filled out my skin just enough to be plump and juicy. Now I'm literally a bag of bones and skin. Don't even get me started on how Joel thinks I need to start wearing flats because heels make my legs look "too skinny." Even the kids have complained - when I lay on my back to snuggle them, my ribs and hip bones are apparently too "pokey." My once-ripe breasts now hang like willow branches atop my ribs and GOOD LUCK finding my nipples when I lay on my back! I can't even chase them down myself.

I have never felt this good about my body, nor looked worse naked. I have the libido of a 14-year old boy and the skin of an 80-year old woman. I LOVE my body, but no amount of exercise is going to make up for the missing half of my former self.

And that's what terrifies me most. Somehow, being this size and weight means beautiful George Clooney look-a-likes want to wine and dine me. They want to buy me dinner and make out with me in the back of their Maserati's. (True story.) (Whose life is this?!?!)

But sex? Nudity?

Sweet merciful baby Jesus on a pogo stick! I. am. not. ready.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in. I will say yes. But the next few months are going to be the PEAK SEASON of my thriving on discomfort policy. I am going to experience some white-hot, steel-toed rejection. This chapter will require a level of personal vulnerability that I can't yet begin to fathom.

So I'm trying to give myself the benefit of the doubt, the same one I happily extend to everyone I meet...

My life has been painful and twisted in ways I've only just begun to understand. And my skin - all of it - is the way I wear that history on my body for everyone to see. I'm like a burn victim - permanently scarred. My skin tells the story of how I survived a jump out of the 20th floor window of a burning building and how much braver/stronger/better I am for it. I'm trying to embrace the fact that the ugliness of my story makes me MORE beautiful, not less.

But much like my next two novels, I'm only a work in progress. 

My only promise is to click PUBLISH when I'm done.

LiSten

Alex turned nine on Saturday and I'm not sure I can even talk about it without crying. It's funny, I used to think my mom always loved my older brother more than she loved me (which may or may not be true), but now I think it was just as likely that he was simply her first born. It's probably universal, that nostalgia bump you get from the kid who first made you a parent, especially, as in my case, if being a mom is sometimes the only thing that reminds you you're not a child yourself.

Nine years later and I still have those, "HOLY SHIT, WE MADE A PERSON!" moments on a regular basis.

Especially because the person we made is just so spec-fucking-tacular.

Alex has more enthusiasm in his pinky toe than most people have in their whole bodies. He is passionate and explosive and smart and hilarious and more full of love and forgiveness than any nine-year-old boy should ever be. The older he gets, the less worthy I feel of being his mother. Because he's a boy, he and I don't have as much in common as Genoa and I do. He and his father can talk for hours - about guns and video games and tires and airsoft guns - and I'm grateful that they are so close. But just as often as not, I feel melancholy and inadequate. We haven't found our THING yet and I desperately want us to have one.

Which is why I got this on his birthday, in his handwriting, lest I ever forget:

Age nine, captured forever on my wrist! A spot I chose specifically to remind myself that nothing is more important than listening. And there's no one more important for me to listen to than Alex and Genoa.

I know it seems weird to go get a tattoo on my kid's birthday, but I offered it up as a suggestion and he loved the idea. As long as we got voodoo doughnuts first.

Then we went over to Anatomy, the same shop where I got my first tattoo, and did the deed.

I love how Alex is always blurry in photos because he can't even sit still long enough for the shutter to close. He loved being there watching my wrist get tortured. I realize I'm probably a terrible influence, but he thought it was a pretty cool thing to do on his birthday.

I thought it hurt like a motherfucker. Perhaps even worse than his birth.

LISTEN, BITCH! Trust me when I say this isn't a word I'll soon forget.

Instead of a big party, Alex just wanted to have a sleepover with his closest friends, so they all came over and played beyblades until the wee hours.

I'd like to think he had a memorable birthday. I'd also like to think that whatever it is our "THING" is going to be, that's it's right around the corner. I'll just keep listening until we find it.