So it appears I will write my FTM Friday posts on any day other than Friday, and I most likely won’t do it weekly?

WILL I EVER BE ORGANIZED PEOPLE, EVER?

Oh whatever. Fuck the man. Go hard or go home. Live on the edge.

Et cetera.

Speaking of on-the-edge-living, how about some coconut milk body wash?

And…she turns in her badass card.

Whatever. Even rebels need body wash.

Ok so here’s the story behind this recipe. As part of the Great Shampoo Recipe Search of 2013, I came across this recipe for coconut milk shampoo (also linked below) and I was all “Oh em gee I have found my life force,” but unfortunately it turned my hair into something along the lines of greasy bamboo. Hmmmm. Not sure from whence that one came, but I can dig it.

I’ve learned that any shampoo with castille soap equals tragedy for my noggin. Sucks.

Anyway it totally didn’t work for my hair, but the recipe said you could use it as a body wash too, so I did.

And it worked for my body. Also my face. I use this on my body instead of soap. Between the body scrubs and this, I haven’t used soap since I went crunchy back in 2008. I’m kidding. It was January. Of this year.

I find this stuff luxurious and wonderful. You could make it as a gift for a friend or be selfish like me.

Please note that you can use whatever scents you want. I like tea tree.

I also think tea tree keeps bacteria down.

Also, if you use a whole can of coconut milk, you’re going to get a LOT of body wash. My recommendation is to put it in 2-3 containers and keep one in your shower. The others should stay in the fridge. Also, I add vitamin E because not only is it good for the skin, it also keeps bacteria from growing. I have had no mold issues with any of my products, but one of my homegirls out on the East coast had a problem with funky shit growing in her hand salve.

I told her it was an East coast thing so she should probably move here. You know, in the interest of hand salve.

So here you go. Coconut Milk Body Wash. (Adapted from here.)

Live it. Love it.

1/4 cup coconut milk

1/3 cup castille soap

1 tsp vitamin E (or 2 if you omit the almond oil)

1 tsp almond oil (or 2 if you omit the vitamin E)

15-20 drops essential oil(s)

1-2 tsp vegetable glycerin (optional – add for a thicker wash)

Put it all in your container. Shake. Use. Move on.

Xoxoxo

Fuck the man!

So it happened the other day.

My daughter, she’s eleven. She’ll be twelve in November.

She grew up the other day.

We were going to a town in the wine country, to hear a rock-n-roll band. We were going to have dinner first. It was a lovely evening.

She put on a dress, gloves, boots, a hat – and five years.

She wore them like a loose veil across cheek bones I never noticed, on the poise of squared shoulders, soft over eyes that knew something, something more than me, something adults know, or almost know, if they could remember.

She nearly stopped my heart when I saw her in that get-up, so beautiful she snatched my words away. I looked at her and kept on, harder and harder to see it clearly.

a woman?

The second I saw it it vanished, and there stood again my little one, my first one, who played in the sand and still does.

My Ava.

“Mama, I hate you!”

She yelled and ran off.

I stirred the meat in the pan and heated like the cast iron before me. I thought how dare she speak to me that way. I AM THE MOTHER. I thought about storming down the hall and demanding better treatment. HOW DARE YOU. Who do you think you are?

Well I’m a girl, growing up a little, and it fucking sucks sometimes.

A victim of biology.

Fuck biology.

Fuck hormones. And nature.

For taking my baby from me, even if it’s only in moments still, so young. A victim of a uterus and ovaries a decade or two before she even needs them.

I have no idea how to stand near this child. I have no idea what to say and where to reach as I watch her slip away, only in moments still, of beauty or rage.

So goddamn young.

But always moving away, or so it seems, until she tells me that she wants to hear my voice to feel better, and I want to cling to today for dear life. I want to hold it like a drowning man clings to a raft. I want to weave her back into my skin and hold her there like it was and it’s always been.

except that it isn’t. not anymore.

and I cannot.

“I HATE YOU!” the words sting my core because they’re true, for a moment, and maybe I hate her too. because how can I do anything different with this pain taunting me, dangling in my face. i know it’s coming. it’s right there.

losing her.

No, I don’t hate her, not really, even for a second.

They say she’ll come back, after the teenage years. That she’ll just seem gone.

They say it’s so wonderful again, after those years.

They say supportive things.

But what I see is that my daughter is growing up, and it’s all exactly as it should be, except that this is not a change a human can stomach. how can I take it? how can i accept it?

TELL ME YOU FUCKING WORLD, how can I let go? When all I want is one more day and one more after that of our little family and the oldest child still a child and she’s going.

She’s going anyway.

I can only let go, and yet I cannot.

Once again, here I am. A mother. The Mother.

With nothing.

I stir the meat a little longer and remember eleven and twelve and sixteen and how I couldn’t see myself in myself sometimes, and I didn’t know either. “Who do you think you are?”

I have no fucking clue, mom.

so I walk down the hall and open her door. she’s weeping into her pillow. I sit by her and say nothing, look at the trinkets and the papers and stuffed animals. I look at the jewelry and the books and treasures. I touch her arm. I see the clutter, the mess, the thousands of things on the walls. the notes from friends and things from second, third, fourth grade.

the little girl beneath a towering world.

her little haven in an untouchable world begging her to join it.

her place in my home, her home, all I can offer beyond what I am in all my broken form:  a mother, her mother, a new mother I guess, to a new form of child.

I see again it’s all just a series of being reborn. It’s all just a series of recreation, of being tweaked and carved into something new, as I kick and scream and weep for the old.

Just when I was sure it would never end.

Just when I thought I knew what tomorrow will hold.

I looked away for a moment and lost my baby.

In her room, I think I’ll join her.

I spend a good portion of my mothering life in a state of “What the fuck just happened?”

The rest of the time I’m like “Wait. I’m supposed to care about that?”

You know, I’m looking at magazines and headlines and websites and since they’re all saying the same thing it APPEARS that these things are central to motherhood and maybe, since those things don’t really interest me, I’M THE WEIRDO.

[Which we all know is true. I’m just sayin’ I don’t think it’s on account of my lack of interest Jessica Simpson’s birth plan.]

At first this bothered me. I thought I was the lost sheep among well-adjusted, um, mother sheep? Sorry. That went poorly. You know, like everybody was “in” on something and I was out. Like all the mothers are doing it, Janelle, what’s wrong with you?

It was like high school all over again, when the popular girls seemed to know how to wear make-up and date boys and I was like “let’s drop acid and listen to some Dead.”

What is with me and the bad examples today?

Anyway I admit it, I used to think something was wrong with me because I didn’t give a shit about most of the things mainstream media seemed to say were inherent in the experience of motherhood. It’s not that I have anything against these things, it’s just that they don’t have much relevance to my actual life, my daily experience of motherhood.

But as the years went by and I grew more secure in my own marginality, sagging breasts and generally poor attitude, I started meeting more and more women who can’t relate to “The Very Best Jogging Stroller!!” and “The Mommy Spring Must-Haves!”

In fact, I now know there’s a whole shitload of us in the same “Yeah, sorry, don’t give a fuck” boat.

So, as a helpful little guide (I’m so helpful, right?), I have composed a list of topics I keep seeing but just don’t care about.

Its official name is:

Shit I Don’t Care About but You Keep Talking About Anyway.
(and by “you” I mean “media,” obviously)

• “The cutest [insert holiday] Cupcakes” – Since I never, ever, EVER volunteer for any school-related event, celebration or activity, my need for appropriately themed cupcakes is pretty much nil. Furthermore, if faced with a cupcake need (beyond hormonally induced depression), I usually discover it approximately 8 hours before they’re due, resulting in an angry last-minute trip to the store and boxed cupcakes that are lucky to have frosting. If they have sprinkles I have achieved greatness.
• Best Yoga Pant – I don’t do yoga (though I’m always going to start “next week!”). If I did, it would be amazing and my pride would overflow and I’d be running around telling my friends what a badass I am. The type of pant I’m in would be rather superfluous at that point, don’t you think?
• “Matching Bras and Underwear” – If attending an event important enough that I’m contemplating my undergarments, I WOULD BE WEARING SPANX, which immediately renders the whole discussion meaningless. Do you see the problem here?
• “How to Please my Man in Bed” – Totally got this one already: Have sex with him.
• “How to Spice up My Marriage” – Have sex with him more than once a week. Why are we discussing the obvious?
• “How to Raise Gifted Children” – Honestly, at this point, I’m just hoping they don’t end up crackheads.
• “How to Plan a Week’s Worth of Meals” – I feel like we should start with 2 or 3 days and see how that goes before we get all carried away with “weeks.”
• “How to Get Along with Other Moms at Playgroups” – Should be renamed to “How to spot the mom as miserable as you are so you can get together and talk shit.”
• “How to Entertain Kids.” – NOT MY PROBLEM.
• “How to Engage Kids in Imaginative Play” – Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?
• “Baby Sleep Solutions.” – Lies, all lies.
• “Effective Disciplining Techniques” – Yes, thank you for the excellent ideas, which I will try so hard to adopt only to find myself 3 days later resorting to the old stand-by disciplinary technique of “yell, feel guilty, apologize, repeat.”
• “Favorite Baby Toys” – As much as you keep trying to convince me my baby will like [whatever] better than cardboard boxes, cell phones, kitchen utensils and/or the small chokable item she just discovered on the carpet, years of experience tell me otherwise and I no longer believe you.
• “Kate Middleton’s Maternity Outfits” – Also don’t give a shit about the maternity outfits of any other rich, skinny woman who looks better pregnant than I do not pregnant. Kthanksbai.
• Come to think of it, I also don’t care about their baby showers, nursery décor, strollers, weird-ass naming choices, or the $89.00 onesie they just purchased (with the ironic hipster slogan on the front).
• Any article with the word “vs.” in it (“Crib vs. Co-sleeping/Circumcision vs. Non/Bottle vs. Breast)” – WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M SOME SORT OF SADIST? All this article is going to do is result in the most insane horrific name-calling comment section you’ve ever seen. All the crazies come out for these fuckers. Please count me out.
• “How to have a Smooth Transition back to Work after Maternity Leave” – Replace “smooth” with “the least horrifying” or “least traumatic,” and we can talk.
• “How to Organize your House” – Reading an article as a first step to organizing my house is like sending an email to world leaders asking them to please consider world peace at their next staff meeting. NICE IDEA, completely ineffective.
• “How to Keep your Car Clean and Neat” – I’m sorry. Come again?
• “How to Nurse Discreetly” – Oh go fuck yourself.
• “Things you Shouldn’t Say in Front of Your Children” – I guarantee you that ship has sailed.
• “Food in the Shape of cute Animals” – I once made pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse. Then I felt weird inside for like a week. I’m pretty sure a vegetable panda would traumatize me for life.
• “How to make memorable holidays” – Um, “memorable” is not the problem. “Enjoyable” is the thing I can’t seem to find.
• “Easy Steps to Potty Training/Weaning/Sleeping alone” – Look, if you’re going to just make shit up, I feel like you shouldn’t be writing articles.

And now, my favorite topic of all time:  “How to be a More Confident, Guilt-Free Mother.”

This is pure beauty on account of the irony, because as we all know, the only way to achieve that is to STOP READING CRAP ABOUT MOTHERHOOD.

Boom.

I feel better already.

You?

I used to not cry about things like this.

The big tragedies. The ones that kill and kill and kill.

Columbine. 9-11.

I don’t think I cried about those. Not even a single tear.

Maybe I was just too self-centered. Maybe too young. Maybe I just didn’t get it, couldn’t feel it.

Humanity.

Maybe I hadn’t lived long enough to have that pain mean something, to me, safe and protected hundreds of miles away.

It used to feel unreal.

Like it was sad. “Wow, that’s sad.” But I didn’t cry. Because really. What do I care? It’s not me. I mean I cared because it’s sad, but it didn’t affect my life.

Or maybe I’m just an asshole.

I don’t know, I just didn’t cry.

But I cried today.

I was sitting in a staff meeting and I read an article on my phone. I read the words “8-year-old boy” and I put the phone down and I closed my eyes. And I fucking cried.

I felt so tired. Just so tired, beat.

I don’t know what I was crying about. I don’t know those people. I don’t know that boy. I’ve never been to Boston. But it was like this pain just came from the depths of me, out of nowhere and everywhere, from something that makes me the same as the mother who lost her son today and the people bleeding and the humanity.

I felt crushed under the weight of an idea of a boy gone.

A boy gone.

And when I cried the third time driving home, I realized I was wrong.

I know him. I’ve always known him.

I loved him.

I love him now.

I love him with all my damn heart. Because he’s a boy like mine or nothing like mine, and there’s something I recognize in him, something I know, like I know the people murdered and the youth bullied and the hatred and the war and your grandmother who passed away yesterday. And mine, who died 4 years ago.

A soul. Two eyes, hair, little hands and skin and a voice.

My boy. Yours.

If you let yourself go you’ll feel it too, the knowing. The friendship, the love, fond recognition of faces you’ve never seen. I know you.

And I wish you weren’t gone.

In a few days it will all be back to normal. The Facebook feed will be all the old meaningless shit and the news will have moved on and nobody will care except the distant passing glance. Of remembrance.

But at least today I cried, for an old friend, for a boy who was born and lived and died, like I have, and will, and you.

Humanity.

My old friends.

I guess I cried for you today.

hope i can recognize you tomorrow

Yay, FTM Friday on a Saturday! I love you!

I’m happy to back. I hate studying for comprehensive exams. I’m never reading another piece of literature. ever ever as long as I live. I hate literature.

And…I’m baack.

So good to see you.

Soon, as you may have noticed, the FTM situation is a little different on the blog. The FTM posts now publish on a separate page, which you can access in the menu on the left. It’s a long story, but I thank my friend Katie, who blogs here, for making that story happen.

And now. Face wash.

Check it out, one of the things that threw me into the world of renegade body products (Where do I come up with this shit? I mean seriously, renegade body products? I embarrass myself.) is the fact that face wash is SO expensive, and it just seems to result in the need for MORE products. Ya feel me? I mean you need one product to remove mascara/make-up. You need another product to wash your face. You need moisturizer. BUT, if you’re like me, your skin is always changing; read: sometimes I have acne. Other times it’s dry like the damn Mojave.

So you end up with like seventy five products, all of which are expensive.

But not now. Now I have 2, maybe 3 products, but I rarely use them all and they are cheap. Cheap. Cheap.

When I tell you this you may freak out, and that’s cool. This is freak-out safe zone. We’re all friends here.

I wash my face with a mixture of olive oil and castor oil. And it works. It works as well as the expensive stuff I bought. Maybe better. But definitely as good and it’s chemical free, and probably an 1/8 of the price.

So I read this post at Crunchy Betty (she’s like amazeballs, by the way) and I’m all “Wow, that sounds weird. That chick’s weird.” But I had already determined to get all hardcore up in here, so I made a mixture of 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 castor oil, then I threw in some tea tree because I have acne-prone skin, and I starte

d using it at night.

I lightly wet my face. I put about a quarter-sized amount of the wash in my palm then massage it into my face while running the super hot water. When it’s hot, I wet a washcloth completely, wring it out a bit, and lay it on my face for 20 seconds or so, then I gently rub the oil off my face.

ingredients, sans the boy

My face is clean, moisturized, soft, and it removes my eye make-up.

Apparently this is called the “oil cleansing method.” I would like to call it the “Fuck Yeah Cleansing Method.”

I do this at night, when I really want that “deep clean” (to remove make-up, dirt, sweat, depression and general malaise). When I’m washing my face quickly (because yes, sometimes 1 minute is too long of a face-washing commitment), I use a coconut body/face wash I’m going to share with you next week. PROMISE.

So people, try it. But first, read the post by Crunchy Betty (yes, I linked it TWICE). It explains all the different types of oils you can use and the benefits of each for different types of skin. I use olive as my “carrier oil,” and the castor oil is critical – you have to have it. I buy mine on Amazon. But you can use jojoba, almond, avocado, and many more. But you have to use the castor. That’s what’s really cleaning your face.

And you adjust the ratio based on your skin type: more castor for oilier skin, less for dryer skin. So I’ve actually made a couple variations to use during different times of the month, when my, um, fucking horrible hormones ruin my mood, body, skin, and life.

So here you go. Try it. You’ll love it. Or you won’t. But if you do you’ll have found a chemical-free, inexpensive, super effective  make-up remover/face-cleansing method. (Also, did you know you can just use coconut oil or olive oil to remove eye make-up? I will NEVER buy make-up remover again. Ever. Oil works so much better.)

“Fuck Yeah Face Wash”

Oily skin: 2/3 castor oil in whatever container, 1/3 olive or other carrier oil (almond, jojoba, grapeseed, etc.)

Dry skin: 1/3 castor oil; 2/3 olive oil (or other carrier)

“Normal” skin: ½ and ½ baby!

Not gonna lie, I feel like I’m going something nice for myself when I do this. It feels like a mini-facial. Only cheaper. And more green.

Whatever. It’s rad. Try it.

Let me know what you think.